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The State Bank of Vietnam has decided to set new rules for how banks use their funds, asking banks to increase their investments in government debt, according to a circular released last Friday.

When the new regulations take effect on July 1, the ratio of government short-term funds held by banks raised from deposits and other sources and returned to customers within a year  will rise sharply.

Foreign-invested banks and private commercial banks will have to use 35 percent of their short-term funds to buy government bonds. The ratio is currently 15 percent.

The ratio for state-owned banks and partly-private commercial banks will be adjusted to 25 percent from 15 percent.

Bonds have been a key source of funding for government spending on infrastructure, transport and energy projects, as well as to offset the state budget deficit.

Vietnams public debt last year continued to rise to an estimated 51.1 percent of gross domestic product, higher than the 47.3 percent recorded in 2014, data from Fitch Ratings showed.

Fitch also forecasts that Vietnams public debt will rise to 53.7 percent of GDP in 2016 and continue to rise in the medium term unless the government tightens fiscal policy.

Vietnam ran a budget deficit of VND66.4 trillion ($2.96 billion) in the first five months of this year, according to the countrys General Statistics Office.
Gurgaon, May 31 : Union Ministers Anant Geete and Kiren Rijiju on Tuesday said the biggest achievement of the Narendra Modi government has been to curb widespread corruption in the system.

Addressing a press conference here on completion of two years of the NDA government, the ministers also said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been a decisive and strong leader.

Unlike the previous UPA government, touts are no longer seen in the North and South Blocks in Delhi, the ministers said. "You will not find even a single such person," said Rijiju, the Union Minister of State for Home Affairs.

Union Heavy Industry Minister Geete said: "There has been not a single corruption charge against the Modi government since it took over in May 2014. We have a Prime Minister who is always available for the people, who is strong and decisive."

Geete said the prime minister is the "pradhan sevak" (prime servant) of the people and he has directed his ministers to serve the people similarly.

The central government has announced 52 programmes which will directly benefit the poor, including schemes like the Jan Dhan Yojana, the Atal Pension Yojana, crop insurance, Start-up India, Skill India and Stand-Up India, Geete informed.

At least 22 crore 83 lakh people have opened bank accounts following the Jan Dhan Yojana, he said. About Rs 37,000 crore has been deposited in these accounts, Geete said.

Also, more than one crore people gave up the gas subsidy, which in turn has helped the government to distribute new free LPG connections to five crore poor households, said Geete.

"Moreover, by touring the world the Prime Minister sent out a message that India cannot be ignored," said Rijiju, adding "the Prime Minister has developed a rapport with the world leaders."
New Delhi, May 31 : A special court here has asked the Centre to file its reply on refusal to grant sanction for the prosecution of the then NDMC chairman in the case of Shivaji Stadium's upgradation during the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Special Judge Ajay Kumar Jain on Monday also issued summonses to nine accused, including two public servants and a foreign company.

Those issued summonses are the then New Delhi Municipal Council's (NDMC) executive engineer Vinay Kumar Gulati, superintendent engineer Randhir Singh Thakur, China Railway Shisiju Group Corporation and its subletee company Simplex Project Limited and five individuals.

The five are Simplex Project's CMD Balkishan Das Mundhra, Director Jai Kishan Bagri, Sudershan Das Mundhra and Raghav Das Mundhra, and Jiashu Zhao, a representative of China Railway Shisiju Group Corporation in India.

The court directed for their appearance on September 14 after taking cognisance of a charge sheet dealing with criminal conspiracy, cheating and under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

The case relates to alleged illegalities in awarding works entailing expenditure of more than Rs.160 crore to ineligible foreign company for upgradation of the Shivaji Stadium for the CWG Games.

The upgradation work was awarded to China Railway Shisiju Group Corporation by NDMC officials by allegedly abusing their official positions in connivance and conspiracy with the private persons, the central agency claimed.

The agency said the then NDMC chairman Parimal Rai, heading the empowered committee at that time, knew about the company's ineligibility but did not take steps to remove objections and facilitated the award of contract to China Railway Shisiju Group Corporation.

The court found prima facie material against Rai but observed that it cannot take cognisance as the central government had refused to grant sanction to prosecute him.

"...prima facie material for taking cognisance against Parimal Rai is found during investigation. Therefore, public interest as well as the interest of law demand that the allegations should be allowed to be examined by the court, particularly when the competent authority has not given any reasons for withholding the refusal to grant the sanction."

The court said it has the jurisdiction to look into the present order of the competent authority to withhold the grant of sanction.

"In view of the above discussion, the competent authority is directed to disclose the reasons for the refusal to grant sanction from prosecution of Parimal Rai, the then chairman of NDMC, within three months of receiving this order. In case of failure to comply with this direction, the order for withholding the sanction is liable to be set aside," the court said.

"It is also clarified that the competent authority should apply its mind independently over the relevant material and need not be influenced by observations in the present order."

The court directed the CBI to submit the order copy to the central government or competent authority and file a report within seven days.
New Delhi/Rabat, May 31 : India and Morocco signed two agreements on culture and diplomacy on Tuesday, the second day of Vice President Hamid Ansari's three -day official visit to the northwest African nation at the invitation of Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane.

"Moving closer to Morocco. VP Ansari meets PM Abdullah Benkirane, holds delegation level talks in Rabat," external affairs ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup tweeted.

"The two leaders witness exchange of agreements in culture and diplomatic traning," he said in another tweet, adding that India honoured Benkirane with a traditional shawl.

Ansari's is the first vice presidential visit from India to Morocco in nearly 50 years after the visit of then vice president Zakir Hussain in 1967.

He arrived in Rabat on Monday on the first leg of a two-nation tour that will also take him to Tunisia.

Ansari is being accompanied by union Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilisers Hansraj Gangaram Ahir and four members of parliament belonging to different parties.

Earlier, addressing a press conference on board the special aircraft to Rabat, Ansari said that India maintained traditionally strong ties with Morocco and Tunisia, both important partners in Africa.

He said that India has a substantial economic relationship with Morocco on account of the large quantity of phosphate which was imported by India and was critical for agriculture, according to statement issued by the vice-president's office.

He mentioned that there were a few other sectors where cooperation was deepening such as automobiles, pharmaceuticals and information technology.

The vice president also indicated that Bollywood films might find ideal shooting locations in Morocco.

"India's trade with Morocco stands at more than a $1 billion," he said.

Touching upon India's close ties with Tunisia, the vice president praised the success of the democratic process in the country, speaking of how different political parties managed to work together in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.

With Tunisia as well, the vice president mentioned that phosphate was an important item of trade, and there was the potential to expand economic cooperation including the presence of Indian investments.

On a question on India's cooperation with Morocco and Tunisia in tackling terrorism, the vice president said that India continued to work closely to share intelligence and security related information with these countries.

"Sharing real-time cyber security related information was crucial in the efforts to tackle terrorism," he added.

Responding to a question on increasing presence of China in Africa, Ansari said that both countries had different approaches to engaging African nations, and that India did not see itself in competition with China.

He highlighted the historical connection, and the common struggle against decolonisation that India shared with the African continent, and that India had always sought to partner it in the development journey, particularly in areas like information technology, telecommunication and health.
MetLoop Chief Global Strategist Trevor Leeds Were thrilled to be aligned with CertainTeed. It is one of the most dominant companies and manufacturers in the industry with rock-solid relationships with thousands of credentialed contractors." -- says MetLoop Chief Global Strategist Trevor Leeds

When MetLoop first demonstrated its precision weather-forecasting technology to Jay Butch of CertainTeed Corporation, he knew it was something that contractors should have at their disposal on a daily basis.

MetLoops technology is as state-of-the-art and cutting-edge as it gets, says Butch, CertainTeeds Director of Contractor Programs.

As a result, Metloop and CertainTeed entered into partnership discussions and today they have announced an agreement in which CertainTeeds contractors receive exclusive access to MetLoops technology at special discounted rates.

Were thrilled to be aligned with CertainTeed, says MetLoop Chief Global Strategist Trevor Leeds. It is one of the most dominant companies and manufacturers in the industry with rock-solid relationships with thousands of credentialed contractors. Were proud to be associated with them and offer their contractors our unique platform. It brings tremendous added value to both MetLoop and CertainTeed.

MetLoops technology enables contractors to know if a hurricane, tornado or any other weather disaster is going to directly hit a particular home or building -- and when  with 95% accuracy. The technology was created by a team of contractors, meteorologists and developers who detected huge inaccuracies of weather-forecasting companies.

Nothing like this has ever been available before to contractors, Butch says. This is a great tool for our credentialed contractors. It is a game-changing technology because its predictive versus reactive. To me, thats the biggest plus. It allows contractors to see whats coming and know exactly where a storm is going to hit. It gives them a jump on the competition and gives them another critical touch point with their customers. Its a win-win all the way around.

Previously, only the U.S. military had access to this unique technology that predicts the most accurate weather forecasts possible. MetLoop negotiated a deal to re-purpose the military-grade weather-forecasting technology for the civilian market, bringing a new level of accuracy and specificity that did not previously exist.

In the military, with lives and equipment at stake on the move or in battle, military forecasters have to be accurate, says Rocco Calaci, MetLoops Chief Meteorologist who has 40 years of experience, including 20 years as a Senior Meteorologist for the U.S. Air Force. We now use the same technology. We provide the highest degrees of accuracy from the first alert to the time of impact.

MetLoop is the only company that only uses meteorologists who are both military-trained and NEXRAD certified. The combination of this uniquely-trained team with a proprietary system changed the industry landscape, Leeds says. We have address-specific alerts -- not broad-area forecasts but alerts based on precise locations.

Severe weather forecasts and alerts were typically broad-based, covering large geographical areas that include many properties that are not directly impacted despite receiving weather alerts.

This is because the alerts are based on algorithms that are not designed to be highly specific and often miss smaller weather events altogether, Calaci says.

MetLoop, on the other hand, receives real time, raw data from every Next-Generation Radar (NEXRAD) station across the country, as well as thousands of smaller weather-monitoring devices.

It also utilizes military-trained, operational forecasters to interpret this data and produce highly-granular alerts and forecasts down to the individual building level, 24/7.

MetLoop alerts are 95% accurate while other weather-forecasting companies are often closer to 65-70%.

Contact: RichardEdward(at)MetLoop(dot)com, 949-648-3815

For more info, go to MetLoop.com.

About MetLoop: Metloop is a revolutionary company created by meteorologists, building contractors, technology developers and seasoned executives. The Fort Walton Beach, Fla.-based company takes a unique approach to weather forecasting and analysis, having re-purposed military-grade technology for the civilian market, bringing a new level of accuracy. MetLoop is the only company that only uses meteorologists who are both military-trained and NEXRAD certified. MetLoop works in conjunction with a variety of industries and companies including insurance carriers, building contractors, utility and energy companies, manufacturers, suppliers, and home security and automation companies.

About CertainTeed: Through the responsible development of innovative and sustainable building products, CertainTeed, headquartered in Malvern, Pa., has helped shape the building products industry for more than 110 years. Founded in 1904 as General Roofing Manufacturing Company, the firm's slogan "Quality Made Certain, Satisfaction Guaranteed," quickly inspired the name CertainTeed. Today, CertainTeed is North Americas leading brand of exterior and interior building products, including roofing, siding, fence, decking, railing, trim, insulation, gypsum and ceilings. A subsidiary of Saint-Gobain, the worlds largest building products company, CertainTeed and its affiliates have more than 5,700 employees and more than 60 manufacturing facilities throughout the United States and Canada. The group had total sales of approximately $3.3 billion in 2015. http://www.certainteed.com.
Campbellsville University is excited to announce their acceptance of the largest regional development gift in school history.

The gift, a prominent office building located at 1150 Danville Road, was donated by Harrodsburg attorney and lifelong Mercer county resident Michael Conover. The building will be renovated and re-dedicated as the new Campbellsville University Harrodsburg Education Center.

The rapid movement from our alumni meeting to having a location within two weeks shows the seriousness of the people of Harrodsburg in making Christian higher education available immediately, President Michael V. Carter said.

Renovation plans include turning the existing building into a two-story, 10,600-square-foot facility on a five-acre parcel of land. The center, located at the southern city limits of Harrodsburg along U.S. 127 at the junction of the U.S. 127 Bypass, will house administrative offices, degree-based academic programs, and certificate programs.

With support from a coalition of Mercer County community-minded churches, Campbellsville Universitys Church Outreach program will now begin working directly with the community in formulating plans to raise scholarship funds for local students. The City Commission is in support of efforts to raise upward of 3 million dollars for students to use as soon as fall 2016.

We have been listening closely to the residents of the region, said Wes Carter, the university liaison for the project. Surveys for high school students, community members, [and] business and industry [members] are being circulated. Meetings are being held with focus groups.

About Campbellsville University

Campbellsville University is an accredited Christian university that was named one of the top southern regional universities in a ranking from U.S. News & World Report; the university, which is based in Kentucky, offers 17 masters degrees, 63 undergraduate degrees, and pre-professional or postgraduate programs. The universitys degree programs typically combine Christian values with career-specific knowledge and skills. Campbellsville University helps students pursue higher levels of education by providing loans, financial aid, performance grants, and other forms of support; anyone who wants to learn more about Campbellsville University can visit http://www.campbellsville.edu or additional information.
Iron Chef Alex Guarnaschelli is June's featured chef for Amy's Bread Chef Sandwiches for Good Blending Parmesan, Provolone, and Maplebrook Farm fresh Mozzarella, this cheeselover's eggplant sandwich is served on a toasted toasted Ciabatta roll.

Whats for lunch, New York? The newest sandwich in town comes with the ultimate of endorsements. Celebrity chef Alex Guarnaschelli has created the sandwich she says she would choose as her final meal. Featuring eggplant, three cheeses, and plum tomatoes, her Eggplant Parmigiano with Fresh Mozzarella is the latest offering in a unique campaign by Amys Bread to raise money for good causes.

I really think this is what I would eat for my last meal on Earth, said Guarnaschelli. Its so simple and, when done right, sublime. I cannot stop eating this! The noted chef is a judge on Food Networks Chopped and serves as executive chef at New Yorks Butter restaurant, among other achievements in the culinary world.

Guarnaschellis sandwich is the latest offering in Amys Bread Chef Sandwiches for Good, a collaboration between New Yorks favorite bakery and some of the citys top chefs. Each chef chooses a charity to benefit from a portion of the proceeds. Guarnaschelli has selected Alexs Lemonade Stand Foundation (ALSF), which has raised more than $120 million toward a cure for childhood cancers. The organization had a simple but heartfelt start in 2000 when 4-year-old cancer patient Alex Scott set up a stand in her front yard to raise money for the cause.

We are excited to be partnering with Chef Sandwiches for Good and our friend, Chef Alex Guaranschelli, to raise funds and awareness for Alexs Lemonade Stand Foundation this June, said Liz Scott, Co-Executive Director of the Foundation. Through the efforts of these generous partners, we are moving closer to achieving the dream of my daughter Alex, a cure for all kids with cancer.

Amys Bread newest signature sandwich will be celebrated with tastings and lemonade on Wednesday, June 1, from noon to 2 p.m., at Amys Bread Chelsea Market location. The sandwich will be available for the entire month.

Launched in March, Chef Sandwiches for Good has given New Yorkers a new sandwich to love each month, served on Amys hand crafted bread, which has won acclaim across the nation. Each featured sandwich also includes at least one ingredient from The Pantry by Amys Bread, a specialty store with products that complement the delicious crusty breads.

Also scheduled to participate in coming months are Lynn Bound, Anita Lo, Missy Robbins, Bill Telepan, Gabriele Corcos, and others to be announced.

The Sandwich

Guarnaschellis creation pairs eggplant with a sauce made of onions, garlic, red pepper flakes and San Marzano plum tomatoes among other delightful tastes. A cheese lovers dream, the sandwich is made with Parmesan, Provolone and Maplebrook Farm fresh Mozzarella and served toasted on a ciabatta roll.

About Alex Guarnaschelli

Junes featured chef is a winner of the networks The Next Iron Chef: Redemption. The daughter of an esteemed cookbook editor, she began work under the tutelage of acclaimed American chef and restaurateur Larry Forgione and further developed her skills in a work-study program at La Varenne Culinary School in Burgundy. After returning to the United States, she worked at Daniel and other top restaurants. She opened Driftwood Room at Nautilus South Beach in Miami in 2015, the same year she began her one-woman live comedy show, Busting My Chops, at Carolines on Broadway.

About Amys Bread

Founded in 1992, Amys Bread is a pioneer of the artisan baking movement in New York City. Everything is made by hand, using slow fermentation and traditional baking methods. With retail shops in Hells Kitchen, Chelsea Market and Greenwich Village, kiosks at The New York Public Library (42nd Street and Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center) and a production kitchen in Long Island City, the company specializes in crusty, hearth baked bread as well as sandwiches, sweets and old-fashioned layer cakes made with the freshest natural ingredients. Amys Bread supplies more than 200 of the citys top restaurants and specialty food stores and also offers online catering, local deliveries and shipping nationwide.

About Alexs Lemonade Stand Foundation

Alexs Lemonade Stand Foundation (ALSF) emerged from the front yard lemonade stand of cancer patient Alexandra Alex Scott (1996-2004). In 2000, 4-year-old Alex announced that she wanted to hold a lemonade stand to raise money to help find a cure for all children with cancer. Since Alex held that first stand, the Foundation bearing her name has evolved into a national fundraising movement, complete with thousands of supporters across the country carrying on her legacy of hope. To date, Alexs Lemonade Stand Foundation, a registered 501(c)3 charity, has raised more than $120 million toward fulfilling Alexs dream of finding a cure, funding over 550 pediatric cancer research projects nationally. For more information on Alexs Lemonade Stand Foundation, please visit alexslemonade.org.
Rolltape, an audio messaging and micro-podcasting platform for helping people strengthen their relationships with friends and followers, announced a pilot partnership with BuzzFeed Audios popular Another Round podcast series. The pilot officially kicks off today with the airing of Another Rounds weekly episode, which produces a new show for download every Tuesday. This first-of-a-kind pilot is made possible through Rolltapes new novel offering Rolltape Radio, a creative community for anyone to create and share user-generated content in a podcast-like format.

Podcasts have traditionally been a one-way monologue delivered to their respective audiences. However innovative podcasts, like Another Round, are seeking new ways to introduce other voices and unique stories to their listeners.

Podcasters have traditionally asked their audience for suggestions, feedback, and leads on stories using voicemail or voice memos, however this approach isolates listeners from hearing and enjoying each other's submissions. Poor audio quality and workflow issues often make it difficult for producers to incorporate listeners' voices on their shows.

With the evolution of podcasting and the introduction of personal podcasts on Rolltape Radio, were creating a 3rd channel for podcasts. Now podcast audiences can respond to podcast material, listen and discuss each other's perspectives, then share stories on social media and the web, noted Jessica Taylor, Rolltapes co-founder and CEO. We think other podcast producers will also love the ability to include their own branding and seamlessly select and use listeners material on their shows.

Podcasting is growing in popularity across all demographics. Consumption is up by 24% from last year. Spotify and Google are just the latest companies to announce plans to rollout podcast offerings. With approximately 325,000 podcasts available in the App Store, Americans are consuming more audio storytelling. Apple projects users will consume 10 billion episodes in its app.

Another Round is a weekly BuzzFeed Audio podcast series featuring, Heben Nigatu and Tracy Clayton. The hosts conduct interviews with guests on topics about race, gender, pop culture, and more. Recent guests have included Broadway musical Hamiltons creator Lin-Manuel Miranda and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

About Rolltape

Founded in 2015, Rolltape Inc. is a female-founded mobile development startup. The privately-held company is based in San Francisco, California. Its namesake platform, Rolltape, is a free mobile app available for iOS devices worldwide. Rolltape lets people create user generated content by making short, five-minute audiograms to share stories from their lives, update friends and family and keep relationships stronger. Creators can personalize their messages with mood music and custom images  the perfect way to send festive, fun, memorable, and heartfelt greetings to loved ones. Interested parties can visit http://www.rolltape.com for more information about the app.

Follow or connect with Rolltape via the following channels:

Listen to a Rolltape Radio greeting: http://bit.ly/1qXJ4fo

Download Rolltape on the App Store: http://apple.co/1n2ZukI

Rolltape is now available to English speakers worldwide.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RolltapeApp

Twitter: @RolltapeApp

# # #

Editors Note: (Artwork available upon request.)

Press Contact:

Carmen Hughes

Ignite Public Relations

Carmen(at)ignitepr.com

+1.650.576.6444
Dried-up rice is seen on a paddy field stricken by drought in Soc Trang province in Mekong Delta in Vietnam March 30, 2016. Photo by REUTERS/Kham

The Japanese government has pledged a $2.5 million grant to support Vietnams fight against the worst drought and salinity it has experienced in almost a century.

The funds will be channeled through UNICEF to handle acute malnutrition and improve water supplies in the most affected areas, said a UNICEF press release on Tuesday.

A joint assessment carried out by the Vietnamese government, the UN and non-governmental organizations in March, estimated that in the 18 most severely affected provinces, as many as two million people have no access to clean water and 1.1 million dont have enough food.

More than 60,000 women and children are already malnourished, and about 1.75 million people have lost their livelihoods as the drought worsens, according to the assessment.

The emergency program will target 150,000 people who are in desperate need of clean water, and 120,000 pregnant women and 7,000 children who are in need of food aid.

Japans contribution is critical for UNICEF to be able to deliver life-saving interventions for a vulnerable population who are the most exposed to the adverse effects of climate change, said Youssouf Abdel-Jelil, UNICEF representative in Vietnam.

Vietnam has for the first time called on the international community to support a $48.5 million emergency response plan to address the worsening drought in the country.
www.brg.com We are thrilled to congratulate our clients and BRG team members on these awards, said Reeves Davis, BRGs Vice President overseeing the ARCHIBUS Practice.

BRG is pleased to announce they were honored with two awards of excellence at the 2016 ARCHIBUS Nexus Conference  the 2016 Award for Best Customer Service and Support and the IWMS and TIFM Business Alliance Award.

We are thrilled to congratulate our clients and BRG team members on these awards, said Reeves Davis, BRGs Vice President overseeing the ARCHIBUS Practice. Its always rewarding to see deserving people recognized for their contributions to their organizations and our industry.

IWMS and TIFM Business Alliance Award

BRG and our valued client EMC were awarded the 2016 IWMS and TIFM Business Alliance Award for creating tools and systems that enable the most effective and efficient Business Practices. These international companies are having a global influence on the healthy growth of real estate, infrastructure and facilities management technologies.

Best Customer Service and Support Award

BRG employees Donissa Berryman and Larissa Gosain were awarded the 2016 Best Customer Service and Support Award, which ARCHIBUS presents to a business partner who demonstrates consistent, exemplary service and support of a clients ARCHIBUS implementation, providing both technical and business expertise.

Larissa and I are excited to receive this recognition for Best Customer Service, said Donissa Berryman, BRGs Support Center Manager. We are committed to providing BRGs clients with valuable and effective support, and are glad to be part of BRGs great technical team.

Client Awards

Four of BRGs valued clients were also honored as 2016 ARCHIBUS Award recipients. Both the Region of Waterloo and Citrix were awarded the Distinguished User Award, which is presented to organizations that have provided sustained leadership in implementing and using real estate, infrastructure, and facilities management technologies.

Red Hat was awarded the Application Excellence Award, which is presented to organizations that have demonstrated a unique, innovative application of the ARCHIBUS software to their companys own needs and overall structure.

Hamilton County, Ohio, received the Energy Efficiency Award for "... reducing their energy use and costs with innovative technology and management methods - shrinking their carbon footprint, and serving as an example for others to model."

This years Conference, held at the Marriott Marquis San Diego Marina, consisted of four days of case studies, panels, technical briefings, best practice sessions, and a Services Expo. Attendees gained insights into shared user experiences and benchmarking from ARCHIBUS users around the world.

To learn more about ARCHIBUS and the ARCHIBUS Awards, visit their website at http://www.archibus.com.

###

About BRG

BRG helps clients by designing and implementing integrated solutions to address complex workplace challenges. They specialize in advisory services, technology deployment, and program and project management in support of Facilities Management and Corporate Real Estate organizations. BRG is a global company with employees in more than 35 cities and on four continents. For more information, you can visit http://www.brg.com.

Media inquiries contact Nicole Salerno

+1 214.777.5139

nsalerno(at)brg(dot)com
This milestone release of our Product Information Cloud will make it simpler than ever for 18,000 of our brand customers to control their product related content on all channels, explains Nick Parnaby, Chief Marketing Officer, 1WorldSync

1WorldSync, the leading global multi-enterprise product information network, announced today that it has passed a significant new product capability milestone with the launch of an upgraded Omni-Channel catalog, and series of apps that enable brands to take control of the digital commerce content on all channels to market. Available immediately, this 1WorldSync Spring 2016 Release includes Apps that help businesses address regulatory demands, increase cross-channel sales and improve product transparency.

This series of Apps were added to 1WorldSyncs existing capability of publishing information to an open discovery engine, as well as providing Brand Owners the ability to search and browse over 200+ Recipient playlists.

1WorldSync has evolved its core cloud-based product catalog with an intuitive adaptive interface, and the inclusion of a portfolio of plug-in apps that help product managers and eCommerce teams to grow sales with specific customers across the globe, or deliver compliance with regulatory and consumer transparency needs. New apps in this release include information and syndication capabilities to sell products through Google, Walmart Stores Inc., GMA SmartLabel and for UDI-FDA compliance.

 The Google app includes a playlist of attribute requirements by Google with the export capability to publish to the Google Manufacturer Center in their required format.

 The Walmart Stores Inc. app allows users to provide web-ready content for the Store Assortment Online Initiative ensuring the right web-ready content and attributes are provided to Walmart. Users can easily and efficiently provide by using the defined playlists setup in the app.

 The SmartLabel app enables businesses to quickly assemble the product labeling and imagery needed to create, enrich and easily syndicate hosted SmartLabel pages to consumers, in alignment with the specific template for SmartLabel defined by the GMA.

 The UDI app guides healthcare and medical device product manufacturers through an FDA GUDID (Global Unique Device Identification Database) playlist, including validation of their product content to ensure compliance with UDI requirements.

With the rise of Omni-Channel retailing, and consumers expectation of a consistent experience, regardless of physical or digital channels, our customers have consistently challenged us to make it as simple as possible to collect, organize and manage digital product information, explained Nick Parnaby, Chief Marketing Officer, 1WorldSync. This milestone release of our Product Information Cloud will make it simpler than ever for 18,000 of our brand customers to control their product related content on all channels, and for our retail, eTail and app developer community to create compelling consumer engagement and conversion, on any channel.

About 1WorldSync

1WorldSync is the leading multi-enterprise product information network, helping more than 18,000 global brands and their trading partners in 60 countries  share authentic, trusted content in the hands of their customers and consumers, empowering them to make the right choices, purchases or health and lifestyle decisions.

Through its solutions, technology platform and expert services, 1WorldSync provides solutions that meet the diverse needs of its customers. For more information, please visit http://www.1worldsync.com
Morrison & Foerster, a leading global law firm, is pleased to announce the hiring of four new partners in the San Francisco Bay Area. Three partners  Dario Avram, Patrick D. Huard and Alex S. Kaufman  join Morrison & Foersters Private Equity Investments & Buyouts Group, and the fourth partner, Sara L. Terheggen  joins the firms Corporate Department.

Messrs. Avram, Huard and Kaufman all come to the firm from Kirkland & Ellis with significant expertise and relationships in the private equity space. Dr. Terheggen joins Morrison & Foerster from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, combining a public company practice, advising on numerous corporate finance transactions, initial public offerings and corporate governance matters, with a fund practice, working with private equity and other funds on fund formation and other transactions.

Dario, Patrick and Alex bring impressive private equity experience and will play leading roles in the firms efforts to build a prominent private equity practice in the Bay Area, Eric McCrath, co-chair of Morrison & Foersters Private Equity Investment & Buyouts and Mergers & Acquisitions Groups, said. These hires signal our intent to further invest and strengthen our leadership position in the San Francisco Bay Area market, traditionally the firms cornerstone.

Brandon Parris, co-chair of Morrison & Foersters 390-lawyer Global Corporate Department, added: Sara is a highly accomplished lawyer who will help us continue to expand our public company, corporate finance, and fund formation practices across the firm. We are committed to growing our bench of talented, next generation partners in the Bay Area who will play key roles in the firm.

This latest addition to the firms partnership is another example of the momentum that Morrison & Foerster is enjoying so far this year with lateral hires. Recently, Morrison & Foerster welcomed a group of eight government contracts partners to its Washington, D.C., and Northern Virginia offices, including David Churchill whom Chambers has referred to as a dean of the government contracts bar. Beyond this, 10 other partners have joined the firm in 2016, including three more in the United States, four in Asia, and three in Europe.

Here is some further information on Morrison & Foersters newest partners.



Dario Avram, a partner in Morrison & Foersters Financial Transactions Group and Private Equity Investments & Buyouts Group in San Francisco, works on financings for M&A deals and other leveraged finance transactions. Mr. Avram regularly represents private equity sponsors, their portfolio companies, and public companies in a variety of U.S. and cross-border transactions in connection with acquisitions, secured loans, and revolving facilities, trade and receivables financings, and restructurings, ranging in value from $5 million to more than $1.5 billion. Mr. Avram earned his J.D. from the George Washington University Law School and his B.A. from the University of California, San Diego.

Patrick D. Huard, a partner in Morrison & Foersters Private Equity Investments & Buyouts Group in San Francisco, has more than a decade of experience representing private equity funds in M&A and other investment activities, including acquisitions of both public and private targets, divestitures, recapitalizations, and portfolio company management. He regularly represents private equity funds and their portfolio companies in structuring and negotiating strategic and leveraged acquisitions and divestitures, joint ventures, equity financings, venture and growth equity investments, executive compensation matters, corporate governance, and other general corporate matters. Mr. Huard earned his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and his B.S. from Santa Clara University.

Alex S. Kaufman, a partner in Morrison & Foersters Private Equity Investments & Buyouts Group in Palo Alto, advises industry-leading private equity funds and their portfolio companies on a broad range of M&A and other corporate transactions, including leveraged buyouts, growth equity investments, dividend recapitalizations and divestitures. He has significant experience advising investors and issuers in a range of industries, with an emphasis on mergers and acquisitions in the software and technology sectors. Mr. Kaufman also counsels venture capital funds and investor-backed companies with respect to growth equity investments, executive compensation, and corporate governance matters. He earned his J.D. (with honors) from Emory University School of Law and his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Sara L. Terheggen, a partner in Morrison & Foersters Corporate Group in Palo Alto, has advised on numerous corporate and private equity fund transactions with an aggregate value in excess of $90 billion. She has extensive experience advising companies and private equity and other funds in a variety of industries, including technology (semiconductors, software, and Internet), health care, life sciences, consumer products, financial, media, and retail. Her capital markets practice includes leading transactions for both companies and underwriters in connection with public and private offerings of equity and debt securities with particular expertise in initial public offerings. Her private equity experience focuses on advising sponsors in the structuring, formation, and offering of private investment funds, including private equity funds, real estate funds, hedge funds, venture capital funds, co-investment vehicles, and other alternative investment products. Sara has been recognized on numerous occasions for leadership in her profession and community by the University of Oregon, The Recorder, Super Lawyers, Public Counsel, and Silicon Valley Business Journal. She earned her J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, her Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State University, her M.Ed. from the Pennsylvania State University, and her B.S. from the University of Oregon.

Morrison & Foerster continues to be top-ranked as an elite firm in Corporate/M&A Nationwide by Chambers USA 2015. The firm advised on 138 M&A transactions in 2015, with a total value of approximately $195 billion, including 19 transactions of greater than $1 billion. Morrison & Foerster is also ranked as one of the most active law firms by Private Equity Analyst based on the number of private equity and venture capital deals the firm negotiates and closes, as well as for GP and LP fund formations.

ABOUT MOFO

We are Morrison & Foerster  a global firm of exceptional credentials. Our clients include some of the largest financial institutions, investment banks, Fortune 100, and technology and life sciences companies. The Financial Times has named the firm to its lists of most innovative law firms in North America and Asia every year that it has published its Innovative Lawyers Reports in those regions. In the past few years, Chambers USA has honored MoFos Bankruptcy and IP teams with Firm of the Year awards, the Corporate/M&A team with a client service award, and the firm as a whole as Global USA Firm of the Year. Our lawyers are committed to achieving innovative and business-minded results for our clients, while preserving the differences that make us stronger.
Join NETA for PowerTest 2017 in the Golden Land of Promise. This premier electrical maintenance and safety event will offer attendees the opportunity to advance their professional development and knowledge on the most relevant industry topics.

NETA, the InterNational Electrical Testing Association, invites professionals involved in the specifying, maintenance, and testing of electrical power systems to save the date for PowerTest 2017. Over 1,000 participants will gather February 27- March 3, 2017, at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, California.

Since the early 1900s, California has been known as the Golden Land of Promise. Vision, ingenuity, resourcefulness, and purpose are Southern California qualities that will inspire PowerTest 2017 as the industry comes together to share knowledge and improve quality, safety, and reliability across all types of power systems.

Located in the heart of Southern California central to the mountains, ocean, fertile farmlands, and just outside Los Angeles, Anaheim is home to the Disneyland Resort  and its massive complex of Disney rides, restaurants, hotels, and shops  as well as the Anaheim Convention Center.

This premier electrical maintenance and safety event will offer PowerTest attendees the opportunity to advance their professional development and knowledge on the most relevant industry topics. PowerTest 2017 will also provide numerous opportunities to cultivate business relationships, develop cutting-edge skills, exchange ideas, and influence the future of the electrical power systems industry. Attendees participate in technical presentations, interactive panel sessions, a symposium led by a team of experts, the New Product Forum, and in-depth post-conference seminars.

For example, on Monday, PowerTest 2017 features a full day of 27 different technical presentations from which to choose. Specific topics within Electrical Safety, Protection Relays, Battery Systems, Equipment and Reliability, and Power Transformers are designed to expand thinking and generate new ideas. The afternoon features a symposium panel discussion on Low-Medium Voltage Circuit Breakers  Aging Infrastructure, followed by a welcoming evening of Southern California hospitality.

Tuesday morning panel sessions give attendees a unique opportunity to engage in an open discussion and ask questions of subject-matter experts in the areas of Electrical Safety, Protective Relays, Circuit Breakers, and Power Transformers. A complimentary lunch is offered during the PowerTest 2017 Trade Show that afternoon, featuring more than 100 top-tier electrical power vendors who share a mission of delivering safety and reliability-based solutions to everyday challenges. Wrapping up an exciting day are the popular PowerBash Awards and Reception.

Wednesday and Thursday are dedicated to even more learning, with attendees choosing from 12 in-depth, four-hour seminars. These technical seminars cover current technical topics and important industry issues to prepare attendees for challenges ahead. PowerTest 2017 concludes on Friday with educational content dedicated to engineers, technicians, and project managers who are responsible for the quality of electrical power systems.

NETA urges attendees to save $100 by taking advantage of the Early Bird Registration, which opens September 1, 2016, at http://www.powertest.org.

Sponsorship and exhibitor opportunities are available for companies seeking leadership visibility at the event. NETAs industry partners are encouraged to reserve exhibit space and confirm sponsorships as soon as possible. Inquiries should be directed to Laura McDonald at 269-488-6382 or lmcdonald(at)netaworld(dot)org.

ABOUT NETA

NETA is an ANSI Accredited Standards Developing Organization that creates and maintains standards for electrical maintenance and acceptance testing for electrical power equipment and systems, as well as a standard that addresses the certification of electrical testing technicians. NETA is an association of leading electrical testing companies comprised of visionaries committed to advancing the industry standards for power system installation and maintenance to ensure the highest level of reliability and safety.
Our contact center requirements are growing fast. Thanks to the IMG 2020s scalable and modular platform, we are able to expand quickly and efficiently through license upgrades or by purchasing additional units.

Dialogic, a cloud-optimized applications and infrastructure solutions provider for service providers, enterprises, and developers, announced today that DNT, a leading IT service and solutions provider in China, selected the Dialogic IMG 2020 Integrated Media Gateway to build its first cloud-based contact center for its new line of business, which designs contact centers for its clients.

DNT needed a flexible, high compliance, high availability gateway for its dynamic Chinese network environment. By using the Avaya-compliant, standards-based, high-quality IMG 2020, and with the assistance of Dialogic Professional Services, DNT was able to quickly roll out its outsourcing business service at a lower overall cost while continuing to use their existing Avaya infrastructure.

Our contact center requirements are growing fast. Thanks to the IMG 2020s scalable and modular platform, we are able to expand quickly and efficiently through license upgrades or by purchasing additional units, said Xing Shen, General Manager of Innovation Center and Finance Business Unit at DNT Company. Dialogic Professional Services also allowed us to focus on rolling out this new business venture without having to worry about interoperability between different technologies.

We are pleased that DNT has selected the IMG 2020 as the connectivity solution for its first cloud contact center needs, said Jim Machi, Senior Vice President of Product Management and Marketing at Dialogic. The flexible SS7, PRI, and SIP protocol support of the IMG products has enabled support of Avaya solutions in China and other regions. We look forward to fulfilling customers needs as they virtualize their business services.

Dialogics Avaya-compliant technologies can be seen at International Avaya Users Group Summit from June 5  June 9 in Orlando, Florida.

Go to the IMG 2020 product webpage for more info.

About Dialogic

Dialogic is a leading cloud-optimized solutions provider for real-time communications media, applications, and infrastructure to service providers, enterprises, and developers around the globe. Based in Parsippany, NJ with offices worldwide, Dialogic helps 48 of the worlds top 50 mobile operators, and nearly 3,000 application developers build and deploy on agile networks. Learn more about how Dialogic is enabling agility by following us on Twitter @Dialogic, and visiting http://www.dialogic.com and the Dialogic Blog for the latest industry news, trends and advice.

Dialogic is a registered trademark of Dialogic Corporation or an affiliate or subsidiary thereof (Dialogic). Other trademarks mentioned and/or marked herein belong to their respective owners.

About DNT Company

Shanghai Dragon Net Technology Co. Ltd. was established in October 2001 and publicly traded at Shenzhen Stock Exchange since July 2011 (stock number 300245). It is a high-tech company dedicated to providing high-end IT services and total solutions. Through years of rapid development, DNT has become a leading IT service & solutions provider in China.

Despite traditional IT infrastructure service covering maintenance service, professional service (consulting and deployment), managed service, DNT also becoming a hyper converged infrastructure product and solution provider with PBDate, PhegData, and Pridata products. DNT is leading the private cloud development with Pcloud/DCOS solutions to help customer leverage advanced internet technology. With huge R&D investment, DNT not only advanced in cloud/Converged infrastructure/Big Data products and solutions, but also provide Internet+ communication business solution as a SAAS solution to help customer reach their clients using internet channels in addition of traditional voices calls with powerful build-in big data intelligence. DNT is transforming from traditional IT infrastructure expert into internet IT infrastructure expert from pure service provider into service and product/solution provider.

For questions about DNT, please contact the DNT hotline: 400-820-5030.

Contact

Dialogic

Tim Moynihan

VP of Marketing

(973) 967 5001

Timothy.moynihan(at)dialogic(dot)com
Beginning this summer, UPMC will provide clinical training opportunities for FCMG physicians and nurses, both in Haikou and in Pittsburgh, with an initial focus on medical, radiation and surgical oncology.

UPMC and First Chengmei Medical Industry Group (FCMG) of Haikou, China, have signed an agreement to collaborate on the development of health care services for the people of Hainan Island, the southernmost province in China. The agreement is UPMCs third health services partnership in China.

Beginning this summer, UPMC will provide clinical training opportunities for FCMG physicians and nurses, both in Haikou and in Pittsburgh, with an initial focus on medical, radiation and surgical oncology. In addition, a team of UPMC experts will visit Haikou to observe clinical practices and offer recommendations on hospital operations, including information technology, supply chain, patient satisfaction and quality.

FCMG, a subsidiary of First Investment Holding Group, solely owns three hospitals in the greater Haikou region, including the Hainan Cancer Hospital, an Orthopaedics Hospital and the newly built Chengmei International Medical Center. First Investment Holding is one of the oldest and most renowned local enterprises, founded when the Province of Hainan was established in 1988.

First Chengmei Medical Industry Group conducted an exhaustive search for the best possible partner in creating our international collaboration, and we selected UPMC based upon its extensive international experience and its recognized reputation for clinical excellence, said Lin Shi Quan, executive director-general of Hainan Cancer Hospital and chief executive officer of FCMG. Most importantly, UPMC has proven its commitment to the development of health care programs of excellence in China. We expect this initial one-year agreement to grow into a long-term relationship covering a multitude of clinical services.

Charles Bogosta, president of UPMC International, said, UPMC is pleased to initiate this important new relationship, our third major agreement in China. Like UPMC, FCMG is committed to achieving international standards of clinical excellence so that patients can get the best possible care close to home.

In addition to its work with KingMed Laboratories in Guangzhou for the provision of second-opinion telepathology services, UPMC helped to develop and supports the operation of the Xiangya International Medical Center in Changsha.

# # #

About UPMC

A world-renowned health care provider and insurer, Pittsburgh-based UPMC is inventing new models of patient-centered, cost-effective, accountable care. The largest nongovernmental employer in Pennsylvania, UPMC integrates 60,000 employees, more than 20 hospitals, more than 500 doctors offices and outpatient sites, and a more than 2.9 million-member Insurance Services Division, the largest medical and behavioral health services insurer in western Pennsylvania. Affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences, UPMC ranks No. 13 in the prestigious U.S. News & World Report annual Honor Roll of Americas Best Hospitals. UPMC International provides hands-on health care and management services with partners in 12 countries on four continents, while UPMC Enterprises functions as the innovation and commercialization arm of UPMC. For more information, go to UPMC.com.

http://www.upmc.com/media
Imarc has been named a winner for the 2016 MITX Awards in recognition for its website redesign of imarc.com, rebrand and internal marketing campaign.

The Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange (MITX) Awards celebrate the people and companies creating the most exciting tech, creative and digital marketing innovations in New England. Imarc was named the winner of the 'Selfie Marketing' category, which recognizes innovative self-promotional marketing done in-house. This year, more than 120 senior leaders from Boston businesses judged entries for the 33 MITX award categories.

The winning project consisted of a marketing campaign, website redesign and rebrand to support the companys transition from a web design shop to a full-service digital agency, as well as its major expansion in office space, increased in-house staff and additional service offerings.

The campaign kicked off by establishing a marketing presence; Imarc generated buzz and demonstrated thought-leadership in the digital space through content marketing, active social media marketing and email campaigns.

With a solid marketing foundation in place, the company then launched a redesigned logo, maintaining its same essence, but making it feel more modern, digital, confident and authentic to Imarc. Imarc updated its color palette to reflect its brand personality, transitioned to a new typeface that was bold, modern and clean.

Lastly, Imarc translated this all onto our website in a total redesign. It streamlined the sites IA, incorporated case studies to tell the story of its work, enhanced its approach page to better showcase its services and took a fine-tooth comb throughout to ensure everything from the copywriting, to the structure of each page was optimized to generate leads.

It was a huge undertaking to achieve this all on top of client work, which is what makes this win so exciting. We dedicated ourselves to constant innovation and relentless improvement, CEO Nick Grant explains.

To be not only nominated with some of the nations most talented agencies and firms, but to actually win, is the ultimate honor.

About Imarc

Imarc is an adaptive, full-service digital agency with a strong focus on web, mobile and custom application solutions. Since 1997, the agencys team of experienced engineers, UX engineers, designers, strategists and business and marketing experts has been helping over 300 clients do business better. The award-winning, 28-person agency with offices on both coasts has sustained steady growth since its inception and is proud of its many long-term client relationships across different industries. Today Imarc continues to be a premier digital agency that attracts top talent and creates smart solutions for forward-thinking brands. For more information, please visit http://www.imarc.com

About MITX

Inspire. Connect. Provoke.

For the restless companies that comprise the Massachusetts technology and innovation eco-system, MITX is the ultimate resource: inspiring members with progressive thinking, meaningful connections and provocative conversation. Celebrating 20 years of connecting tech and innovation professionals in New England, MITX is a dynamic community of more than 7,500 thought leaders and collaborators in search of insight, education and opportunity. MITX is headquartered in Boston, MA. For more information, visit http://www.mitx.org/.
"I'm excited to be part of this important educational event that helps women design and create their best possible future", says Jeff Hoffman, Founder, Priceline, UBid and Hollywood film producer. .

The Womens Venture Fund announces TakeFLIGHT: Enterprising Womens Summit on June 11, 2016, in New York City. This is the only event in the city where women entrepreneurs can meet investors and vie for funding for their firms, as well as work through real life business challenges in small group settings, led by experienced business leaders.

The investor headliner is Jeff Hoffman, co-founder of Priceline and UBid, Principal of ColorJar and Hollywood film producer, bringing a commitment to women entrepreneurs to the table. "I'm excited to be part of this important educational event that helps women design and create their best possible future," says Jeff.

Were especially excited about this years Summit because it is a rare occasion for our clients to meet with investors specifically looking to fund women-owned firms, said Maria Otero, WVFs President and Founder. Weve partnered with five investors with diverse industry interests, allowing us to match participants with funders in their space.

The other investors for the Summit are:



Cynthia Ringo, Senior Partner, DBL Partners

Kira Makagon, EVP Innovation, RingCentral

Bruce H. Lipnick, Founder and CEO, Asset Alliance Corp.

Twyla Garrett, Founder & CEO, Investment Management Enterprises

We urge anyone interested in applying to any of the three pitching sessions to do so by June 1st to allow time to prepare for what could be a life-changing opportunity.

Choosing from more than a dozen workshop sessions, attendees will meet with successful entrepreneurs who are experts in digital marketing, business development and sales, as well as financial management. I'm thrilled to be speaking at the WVFs Enterprising Women Summit. As a serial entrepreneur and advisor, I feel it's crucial to provide female entrepreneurs a community of support, mentorship and tools to help them build their businesses and navigate the funding world, says Shalini Vadhera, Summit speaker and Founder & CEO, Power Beauty Living.

Enterprising business owners will come away from the conference with practical and innovative solutions that can be directly applied to their business ventures.

Having access to the experience and intelligence of these business leaders is like having your own advisory board. Im thrilled to be a part of this exciting experience! says seasoned entrepreneur and executive consultant Audrey Siegel.

For press passes: Contact Jessie McNair: Jessie.mcnair(at)wvf-ny(dot)org.

For more information on the Summit, go to http://womensventurefund.org/takeflight/.

About the Womens Venture Fund

Founded in 1994, The Womens Venture Fund is a nonprofit organization that helps women to establish thriving businesses in urban communities. The organization has served more than 18,000 firms, helping to launch more than 3,200 new small businesses through a range of services including business training, funding and advisory services. As a certified Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), WVF has administered loans to nearly 2,000 women entrepreneurs in NYC. To learn more about WVF, visit: http://www.womensventurefund.org.

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The Auto Demand Index registered a sharp decline in May, falling 15 points from last month to a score of 91. This marks the second straight month in which the study has recorded a drop in the Index. Meanwhile, the ADIs 3-month moving average also fell for the second month in a row, indicating a continued deceleration in momentum for vehicle purchase intent among American consumers. In addition, the share of Americans who plan to purchase or lease a new vehicle within the next six months declined three points from April, to 15%.

TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence developed the Auto Demand Index, or ADI, as a way to measure the intent of consumers to buy or lease a new vehicle within the next six months. Raghavan Mayur, president of TechnoMetrica, explained that the ADI, which is conducted monthly, is based on the response to a key question posed to more than 900 adult Americans: How likely is it that you will buy or lease a new vehicle within the next 6 months?

The weakening in purchase intent is further demonstrated as we measure the Index against the long and short term tracking rates. Mays ADI score of 91 is ten points below the 12-month moving average of 101, and trails the 6-month moving average (105) by 14 points. Thus, analysts at TechnoMetrica anticipate that new vehicle sales will decrease significantly in the coming months.

A number of factors are contributing to the decline in the share of Americans who plan to acquire a new vehicle in the near future. For instance, in April, the cost of living in America rose at its highest rate in three years, according to a recent report from the Labor Department. As the price of gasoline continues to rise, climbing 8.1% in April, and the cost of rent and medical care grows, consumers seem to be exercising caution in their spending habits. As a result, at least for the short term, Americans are less likely to purchase higher priced items, such as automobiles. In addition, as they observe the slow growth in the U.S. economy, there is increased concern among Americans over the future state of the overall economy.

The ongoing presidential campaign season is also having an influence on Americans spending plans. The prospect of electing a new president tends to create a sense of unease and uncertainty among consumers, who may be concerned about the impact a new presidents policies could potentially have on the national economy.

With the economy growing at a slow rate, the stock market still under pressure, and gas prices continuing to climb at a steady pace, there is a rising concern among consumers regarding the future outlook of the American economy. These anxieties are encouraging consumers to reassess their purchasing plans, especially regarding more expensive goods and services. Thus, we expect that new vehicle sales will decelerate over the coming months, said Raghavan Mayur, president of TechnoMetrica.

Along with gaining insight into consumers vehicle purchasing plans through the Auto Demand Index, TechnoMetrica also measures consumer confidence regarding economic conditions in the country by producing the monthly Investors Business Daily/TIPP Economic Optimism Index. In May, the Index gained 2.4 points, or 5.2%, from the previous month, registering a reading of 48.7. However, Americans continue to be divided regarding the state of the overall economy, as half of consumers assert that the U.S. economy has not been improving, while 47% say that it is improving.

The Auto Demand Index survey also inquires into various other aspects of consumers vehicle shopping plans, such as which brands prospective buyers are most likely to acquire. This month, Ford maintained its position as the most preferred brand among consumers who are planning to acquire a new vehicle, with a share of 15%. Chevrolet, chosen by 13% of likely buyers, moved into second place in May, overtaking Toyota, which captured a 12% share of consumers. Meanwhile, nearly one in ten prospective buyers (9%) are likely to acquire a Honda for their next vehicle purchase, a decline of two points from the previous month.

Regarding the types of vehicles consumers prefer, mid-size vehicles remain the most popular selection among likely buyers, as just over one in five respondents (21%) chose this vehicle type, a decline of two points from April. Small SUVs were named by 16% of likely buyers as their preferred vehicle type, a rate unchanged from last month. Similar shares of consumers (13%) identified compact and full-size vehicles as the type of vehicles that they would most likely purchase as their next vehicle. Rounding out the top five, pickup trucks were chosen by 12% of likely buyers, a gain of one-point from last month.

In terms of demographics, parents, male adult drivers, and Americans aged 25 to 44 showed the greatest increase in purchase intent this month. In each of the three segments, the ADI levels grew by six percentage points, to 151, 111, and 121, respectively. The most significant drop in purchase intent was shown among Americans residing in the Northeast, who displayed a 19-point decline from April, along with drivers aged 18 to 24, whose ADI score decreased by 17 points. Respondents living in suburban areas, and those aged 65 and over also reported sharp declines in intention to acquire a new vehicle.

Each month, TechnoMetrica uses Random Digit Dial telephone methodology to conduct live interviews with more than 900 respondents, using both landlines and cell phones. The margin of error for the survey is +/- 3.2 percentage points. In addition, recent statistical analysis has shown a strong correlation between the Auto Demand Index and actual U.S. vehicle sales. The correlation is 0.76.
The Lao Embassy in Hanoi gave Vietnam $257,000 to cope with the historic drought and saltwater intrusion on May 30.

Phomma Sitsena from the Lao Embassy said that it might not be a lot, but it showed how much the Lao government and people want to help Vietnam overcome this difficult time.

It is estimated that 420,000 families in southern provinces have suffered from severe drought and salinity for the last ten months. About 1.5 million people are lacking clean water and more than 400,000 hectares of crops have dried up and died.

The country has for the first time also called on the international community to support a $48.5 million program to overcome the most severe drought it has suffered in nearly a century.
Louise Wendy Pongracz, Esq.

Date: June 21, 2016, 1 p.m.  2:30 p.m.

Details: Willig, Williams & Davidson employee benefits attorney Louise Wendy Pongracz will present a Strafford live webinar on Negotiating and Drafting Pharmacy Benefit Manager Contracts for Self-Funded Plans.

Prescription drug expenses have increased more than any other healthcare category over the past 10 years. Pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) can help employers with self-funded health plans control rising prescription drug costs, but PBM contracts must be carefully negotiated and drafted to protect the interest of the plan sponsornot the PBM.

Counsel must thoroughly understand the complexities of prescription drug pricing and PBM contracting to control costs, avoid hidden fees and maximize prescription drug benefit performance. They must also ensure that prescription drug benefits comply with ERISA and ACA requirements.

Our panel will prepare employee benefits counsel to negotiate and draft PBM agreements for employee health plans.

To register, visit Straffords website.

A partner with Willig, Williams & Davidson, Pongracz focuses her practice on employee benefits, counseling and representing public and private-sector single and multi-employer funds in a comprehensive range of employee benefits issues.

About Willig, Williams & Davidson  Willig, Williams & Davidson is one of the largest and most respected union-side labor law firms in the United States. The firm has offices in Philadelphia, Media, Jenkintown and Harrisburg, Pa., as well as Haddonfield, N.J. and Chicago, Ill. Founded in 1979, Willig, Williams & Davidson focuses on representing labor unions, employee benefit funds and individual working people and their families on a variety of legal fronts, including national, regional and local contract negotiations; dispute resolution through mediation, arbitration and litigation; tax and benefit law compliance issues; discrimination and other employment matters; prepaid legal services for union members; and workers compensation matters in Philadelphia and beyond.
Real estate industry leader Jeanne R. Myerson, principal at The Belgrave Group in San Francisco, has been named chief executive officer for the Americas region of the Urban Land Institute (ULI), an interdisciplinary research and education institute dedicated to leadership in land use and creating thriving communities worldwide. Myerson, an active ULI San Francisco member, will join ULIs staff as Americas CEO on June 28, 2016.

The Americas CEO position, a new one for the institute, was created as part of ULIs global evolution initiative that is being implemented to enable ULI to more effectively serve its membership of 38,000-plus land use and real estate experts worldwide. The Americas region includes the United States, Canada and Latin America.

Myerson is joining the executive staff team headed by ULI Global CEO Patrick L. Phillips. As Americas CEO, she will work with the rest of the executive team and ULIs volunteer leadership, including Global Chairman Randall K. Rowe and Americas Chairman Patricia R. Trish Healy to enhance the member value of ULIs many offerings, and to provide new opportunities for member engagement and leadership.

Jeannes strong combination of leadership skills, institutional knowledge and industry expertise will serve ULI well as it continues to expand its reach and influence, Rowe said. We are confident that she will improve the ULI experience for our members in the Americas by finding new ways to deliver member value, and, through our members, to continue positioning ULI as the most impactful authority on land use and the creation of sustainable, thriving communities.

Jeanne has a proven track record of taking complicated matrix-driven situations and simplifying them in a way that creates long-term value, Healy said. We are very pleased to have attracted someone of her leadership caliber, with both private-sector board and CEO experience, and who, as an active member, is committed to the fulfillment of ULIs mission.

Myerson will provide executive leadership and strategic direction in the areas of regional programs and services, member networks (including ULIs product councils and district councils), industry outreach, and new partnerships. This includes oversight of management, fiscal goals and long-range strategies for the Americas in accordance with ULIs worldwide mission, vision, and business plan.

Myerson has a long history of involvement with ULI, participating for years in the institutes product council program as a member of the Urban Development and Mixed-Use Council and the Industrial and Office Park Development Council. She has also served as a volunteer for UrbanPlan, ULIs highly popular urban development course for high school and undergraduate students.

I am deeply honored to have been chosen to head the Americas region. As a long-time member, I fully understand the value and potential that this organization brings to its members. I look forward to tapping my three decades in commercial real estate and harnessing the unparalleled passion and commitment of ULIs members to develop new ways to enhance that value proposition, Myerson said.

We are delighted to have Jeanne coming on board, Phillips said. She is bringing to ULI decades of experience as a thoughtful, innovative leader who shares our commitment to improving peoples lives though better communities. Jeanne can help us build the next generation of ULI, making it even more responsive, productive and influential in the years ahead.

The Belgrave Group, founded by Myerson in 2015, is an independent consulting firm specializing in family-owned company governance; generational transitions; investment company business plans; and capitalization strategies. From 1997 to 2014, Myerson served as president and CEO of The Swig Company, a private real estate investment firm in San Francisco, transforming it into a best-in-class company while growing the companys portfolio value twentyfold.

Prior to her service at Swig, Myerson held senior executive positions at Bailard Biehl & Kaiser, where she managed a private real estate investment trust; at NeXT Computer Inc., where she was recruited by company owner Steve Jobs to oversee the leasing, planning, management and operations of the companys facilities worldwide; and at Metropolitan Life Real Estate Investments, where she managed all aspects of real estate investment and finance.

Myerson was recognized in 2009 by the San Francisco Business Times as the Bay Areas Most Admired Private Company CEO; and she subsequently was a recipient of the SF BizTimess Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business and Forever Influential awards. She was inducted into the Women of Influence in Real Estate Hall of Fame in 2011, and into the Real Estate Forums Hall of Fame in 2014.

She is serving, or has served, on several corporate boards, including the Berkshire Group and BRE Properties, Inc.; on advisory boards for Mosaic Real Estate Credit, LLC; Build, Inc., and Presidio Bank; and on several nonprofit and industry organization boards, including Build Public (a San Francisco nonprofit dedicated to creative placemaking); SPUR (a nonprofit focused on urban planning issues in the Bay Area); the Fisher Center for Real Estate; Homeless Prenatal Program in San Francisco; and San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.

About the Urban Land Institute

The Urban Land Institute is a nonprofit education and research institute supported by its members. Its mission is to provide leadership in the responsible use of land and in creating and sustaining thriving communities worldwide. Established in 1936, the institute has more than 38,000 members worldwide representing all aspects of land use and development disciplines. For more information, please visit uli.org or follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

ULI would like to acknowledge Korn Ferry, a global authority on finding leadership and talent, for its role in securing Jeanne Myerson as the CEO of the institutes Americas region.
ADCS Clinics (ADCS) announced it has completed the acquisition of Cambio Dermatology; a dermatology practice owned by Andrea Cambio M.D. with office locations in Bokeelia and Cape Coral, Florida.

Andrea Lynn Cambio, MD, a Diplomate of the American Board of Dermatology, is board certified in Dermatology and Dermatologic Surgery. Dr. Cambio is licensed in the state of Florida. She has extensive training and experience in all aspects of adult and pediatric dermatology, skin cancer, laser, dermatologic surgery and cosmetic dermatology.

Dr. Cambio is a graduate of New York University, where she received her Bachelor of Arts in Biology and Psychology. She received her Doctor of Medicine Degree with a distinction in melanoma research from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Cambio completed a Pediatric Internship at New York University Medical Center and a Dermatology Residency at Albert Einstein College of Medicine where she was the Chief Resident in her third year. After finishing her residency, Dr. Cambio has practiced in New York City. She has recently relocated to and currently practices in Southwest Florida.

Dr. Cambio is affiliated with some of the most prestigious medical societies in the nation including the American Academy of Dermatology where she is a Fellow member and has served as a member of their Young Physicians Committee, Public Awareness Committee and Eczema.Net Workgroup. Dr. Cambio has recently been named one of Americas Top Dermatologists as well as one of Americas Top Physicians. Her career has spanned clinical work, research, product development, teaching, supervision of physicians in training, volunteering, and health care management. She has been a presenter at multiple academic conferences and has been published in the dermatologic literature.

Dr. Cambio frequently volunteers her time to visit schools and teach students the importance of skin care and sun protection. She has also been invited to judge the Miss Florida USA and Miss Florida Teen USA pageants. For her outstanding volunteer efforts in the field of dermatology, she has been granted membership in the American Academy of Dermatologys Leadership Circle for Volunteerism and has received The Presidents Volunteer Service Award.

Dr. Cambio has a special interest in educating the public about dermatology. She is a participant in The American Academy of Dermatologys SKIN- Skin Knowledge and Information Network. SKIN is the Academys initiative to educate the public on why and when they should visit a dermatologist and motivate them to do so. As a result, Dr. Cambio has been quoted in national magazines, books and various other news publications. She has also been interviewed on many television and radio shows across the nation. She has recently been interviewed on 20/20, and featured in national publications, which include The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Fortune, Elle, Glamour, Parents and Child magazines.

Dr. Matt Leavitt, Founder and CEO of ADCS, said, We are thrilled to have the talents of Dr. Cambio and her team part as a part of ADCS. They have a great following in the area and dedicated and committed to the care of their patients.

This acquisition expands our presence as we continue to grow the Southwest Florida market to better serve patients. said Dave Morell, President of ADCS.

ADCS, founded in 1989 by Dr. Matt Leavitt, is a dermatology-focused practice with over 148 clinics in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia and Wyoming providing clinical, cosmetic, surgical and pathology services. ADCS also provides billing and coding management services for almost 90 third-party dermatology practices across the nation under the Ameriderm trade name.

For more information, contact: Dave Morell, President of ADCS, 407.875.2080 ext. 1244
SIUE School of Business Interim Dean Tim Schoenecker. We need to focus on progressing with the Schools strategic plan including enrollment growth, building our faculty resources, and maintaining our momentum in development and alumni relations

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Interim Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Denise Cobb today named Timothy Schoenecker, PhD, as interim dean of the School of Business. Schoenecker has agreed to serve for a period of two years to accommodate other leadership changes within the University and retains the option to be a candidate for the permanent position. The appointment is contingent upon SIU Board of Trustees approval.

An associate professor of management and marketing in the School, Schoenecker takes the leadership reins Friday, July 1 from John Navin, PhD, who resigned to assume the same duties at Ohio Northern University. Navin has led the SIUE School of Business since 2013.

Dr. Schoeneckers experience will be vitally important for the School of Business and the University during this interim period, Cobb said. His collaborative approach will assist the School as it works to address the fiscal challenges and achieve its goals. The interim dean will also work with the leadership team, faculty and staff to continue preparations for the upcoming AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) accreditation review.

Dr. Schoenecker is ready to build the momentum the School has established in strengthening external relations and innovating within the curriculum. His varied experiences and trusted leadership will bring important stability to the School during this period.

Schoenecker will work closely with the Schools current administrators, the Office of the Provost, faculty and staff to meet the Schools needs. I am honored to serve as interim dean of the School of Business and hope that my prior experience in the deans suite helps to make this a smooth transition, he said. I hope that the last six years in the classroom, plus my recent service on the FPC (faculty personnel committee) and as a facilitator of the University Congress, brings a balanced perspective to the position.

We need to ensure the Schools continuity of operations, and maintaining accreditation is the highest priority, Schoenecker said. We need to focus on progressing with the Schools strategic plan including enrollment growth, building our faculty resources, and maintaining our momentum in development and alumni relations.

Schoenecker previously served as interim dean for the School in 2007 and 2008. He returned to full-time faculty duties in fall 2008 after 18 months of productive leadership. Prior to that role, he served as associate dean for academic affairs for more than four years. He has provided leadership at the University level as chair of the University Planning and Budget Council and, most recently, as chair of the steering committee for the chancellors ad hoc University Congress.

Schoenecker joined the SIUE faculty in fall 1992 in the Department of Management and Marketing. His teaching interests are in the areas of strategic management and entrepreneurship. His research interests are primarily in the areas of corporate governance and top management teams. Prior to being named associate dean, he served as a consultant for both large and small businesses in the St. Louis area.

SIUEs School of Business and the accountancy programs are accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International, representing the highest standard of achievement for business schools worldwide. The Princeton Review lists SIUE as one of the top 295 business schools in the U.S. for the 10th-consecutive year. Undergraduate and graduate degrees are offered in accounting, computer management and information systems, economics, finance, management and marketing. More than 20,000 alumni have earned degrees from the SIUE School of Business. For more information about the School of Business, visit siue.edu/business.
BESLERs Transfer DRG Revenue Recovery Service identifies patients transferred to post-acute care for which Medicares payment, upon retrospective review, was less than the transferring hospital was entitled to receive, and re-files affected claims to Medicare, recovering otherwise-lost revenue.

Were very proud of the fact that our Transfer DRG Revenue Recovery Service is so well regarded among our customers, said Jonathan Besler, President and CEO of BESLER Consulting. The results of HFMAs thorough Peer Review process confirm the value that our clients see in the service. Our revenue cycle experts have continuously enhanced our service while keeping the focus squarely on compliance.

HFMAs Peer Review process provides healthcare financial managers with an objective, third-party evaluation of business solutions used in the healthcare workplace. The rigorous, 11-step process includes a Peer Review panel review comprising current customers, prospects who have not made a purchase, and industry experts. The Peer Review status of the healthcare business solution and its performance claims are based on effectiveness, quality and usability, price, value, and customer and technical support.

Were pleased to have BESLER Consulting renew their HFMA Peer Reviewed designation, said HFMA President and CEO Joseph J. Fifer, FHFMA, CPA. The HFMA Peer Review process assures our members, through a rigorous evaluation, that the reviewed healthcare business solution meets an objective, third-party assessment of overall effectiveness, quality, and value.

About HFMA

With more than 40,000 members, the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) is the nations premier membership organization for healthcare finance leaders. HFMA builds and supports coalitions with other healthcare associations and industry groups to achieve consensus on solutions for the challenges the U.S. healthcare system faces today. Working with a broad cross-section of stakeholders, HFMA identifies gaps throughout the healthcare delivery system and bridges them through the establishment and sharing of knowledge and best practices. We help healthcare stakeholders achieve optimal results by creating and providing education, analysis, and practical tools and solutions. Our mission is to lead the financial management of health care. hfma.org

About BESLER Consulting

For over 25 years, BESLER has helped hospitals enhance and protect their Medicare revenue. BESLERs deep domain experience in revenue cycle, reimbursement, compliance and software development has resulted in more than $2 billion of additional revenue for our clients. For more information, visit besler.com.
This partnership is a natural fit as it will combine the expertise of both companies and give public employers a smart new plan option to consider.

A third party administrator (TPA) specializing in self-funded plans for companies of all sizes, Cypress Benefit Administrators has partnered with WEA Trust to offer a custom product designed for public employer groups.

The Wisconsin-based organizations will leverage Cypresss knowledge in building health benefit plans that integrate cost containment solutions with WEA Trusts experience as the leading insurer of public employers across the state.

We respect the work WEA Trust does on behalf of so many public employers in Wisconsin, and have seen the interest many of these groups are showing with regard to self-funding, said Tom Doney, president and CEO of Cypress. This partnership is a natural fit as it will combine the expertise of both companies and give public employers a smart new plan option to consider.

The Cypress team has observed a rise in the number of public employers moving to self-funding in the last few years and says many groups are having success with the model. It considers WEA Trust to be an ideal business partner because of the organizations 35+ years of working with schools, municipalities and other public employers, and the broad network of Wisconsin providers it brings to the table.

Along with controlling benefit costs, one of Cypresss main goals is to help employers customize health plans that are unique to their specific work population, Doney said. Together with WEA Trust, we will be able to achieve this for more public employer groups here in our home state.

Jon Klett, WEA Trusts vice president of sales, marketing and product development, added, The demand is definitely there for this type of self-funding solution, and we are excited to partner with Cypress to add it to our existing offerings.

Cypress and WEA Trust are planning to roll out the self-funding product to the market on September 1.

About Cypress Benefit Administrators

A privately held company headquartered in Appleton, Wis., Cypress Benefit Administrators has been pioneering the way toward cost containment in self-funded health benefits since 2000. The third party administrator (TPA) is the countrys first to bring claims administration, consumer driven health plans and proven cost control measures together into one package for companies ranging from 50 employees to thousands of employees. It serves employer-clients across the U.S. with additional locations in Portland and Salem, Ore., Omaha, Neb. and Denver, Col. For more information on Cypress and its customized employee benefits, visit http://www.cypressbenefit.com.

About WEA Trust

The WEA Trust provides group health insurance and administrative services to public employers throughout Wisconsin. The not-for-profit WEA Trust was created in 1970 to insure Wisconsin school district employees. Today, the WEA Trust offers its top-rated service and quality benefits to all state, county and municipal groups. For more information about WEA Trust, visit http://www.weatrust.com.
Mark Bernard, CEO, St. Joseph Medical Center The health information exchange gives us an opportunity to enhance our commitment to quality by having a more complete view of our patients medical histories when they arrive.

St. Joseph Medical Center (SJMC) announced that it is live in Greater Houston Healthconnects (Healthconnect) regional health information exchange, which enables physicians at SJMCs two hospital campuses, downtown and in the Heights, to access prior medical records for their patients from other participating organizations in the exchange. SJMCs membership in the health information exchange underscores the hospitals commitment to patient safety and excellent patient outcomes.

Interoperability of patient records will also further SJMCs partnerships with area clinics and health centers, contributing to enhanced continuity of care for their mutual patients. SJMC receives numerous referrals and transfers from community partners in any given week and patients often arrive without care summaries from their previous provider. By utilizing Healthconnects community health record, which includes data from all the networks participants, physicians at SJMC will be able to pick up relevant clinical information pertinent to the patients visit. Information available to providers includes prior diagnoses, medications, procedures, lab results, imaging reports and discharge summaries.

Nick Bonvino, CEO for Healthconnect, highlighted a specific use case of care coordination. Long-time Healthconnect participant Legacy Community Health (LCH) refers numerous obstetrical patients to SJMC each month for delivery. The two organizations are now collaborating on better transitions of care, leveraging information from each setting. SJMC obstetricians have LCH prenatal PHI when patients present in the ED, and LCH physicians gain immediate feedback about the health outcomes of the mother and baby, including statistics such as birth weight.

SJMCs CEO Mark Bernard shared the importance of access to a patients longitudinal health record, St. Joseph works to maintain a tradition of quality patient care, serving Houstonians for over 125 years. The health information exchange gives us an opportunity to enhance our commitment to quality by having a more complete view of our patients medical histories when they arrive. This is most critical when patients come to us through the emergency room under duress. Some might not remember to share everything about the medications theyre on or chronic conditions they may have. Healthconnect will help us to better identify potential complications or mitigating factors in their care, which is critical to their safety.

St. Joseph Medical Center is the second hospital within the IASIS Healthcare system to go live in the 23 county health information exchange. Its sister organization, The Medical Center of Southeast Texas, in Port Arthur, has been contributing to the exchange since November 2014. The Healthconnect network includes 51% of all hospital beds in the region and 39% of area physicians.
Over the next few months, browsers will stop trusting these certs  theyll still work, but users will not be given the visual indications of security theyre used to, and may eventually receive warnings.

Future Hosting, a leading provider of VPS and dedicated server hosting, has advised eCommerce merchants and site owners to use SSL / TLS certificates signed using the SHA2 hashing algorithm. The warning comes in light of recent announcements by Microsoft (as reported in Ars Technica on May 4, 2016) and other browser makers that they will no longer consider SHA1 signed certificates sufficient for identity validation.

Identity validation is an important function of SSL / TLS certificates used to secure online communication. Certificate Authorities are tasked with validating the identity of certificate applicants and signing a hash of certificates with their private key. Browsers are able to verify the hash and the signature, which was considered sufficient to validate the identity of the certificate and its domain.

"Its quite unlikely that an attacker could generate a hash collision for an SHA1 hash, but out of an abundance of caution, browser makers have decided that SHA1-signed certificates are not reliable, said Maulesh Patel, VP of Operations of Future Hosting, Over the next few months, browsers will stop trusting these certs  theyll still work, but users will not be given the visual indications of security theyre used to, and may eventually receive warnings.

In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that the hashing algorithm often used digitally sign certificates is not sufficiently secure. Identity validation depends on the extremely low probability that a third-party could generate a hash matching that of a signed certificate. It has been demonstrated that with modern computing technology, the chances of such a hash collision are high enough to reduce confidence in the validity of certificates.

Future Hosting advises eCommerce merchants and site owners to have certificates signed using the SHA1 hash algorithm regenerated, and to ensure that any future certificates are signed using the more secure SHA2 algorithm.

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About Future Hosting, LLC

Founded in 2001, Future Hosting is a privately held leading Internet solutions provider specializing in managed hosting, including Dedicated Servers, Virtual Private Servers, and Hybrid Virtual Private Servers. The company has built a strong reputation for its high-quality service, innovative pricing models, and 3-hour Service Level Agreement. Future Hosting is based in Southfield, Michigan. For more information, visit http://www.futurehosting.com
Parenting Journey, a non-profit organization providing strength-based programs for parents, was the recipient of funds and talents from the Bright Horizons Foundation for Children to update its child care space. Hosting over 750 hundred children each year while their parents attend classes, the rooms have received fresh paint, updated wall murals, new flooring, and a host of games, furnishings and activities for children age 6 months to 13 years old.

We are extremely fortunate to have the longstanding support of Bright Horizons and the Bright Horizons Foundation for Children. Seven years ago they created our child care space and just when it needed some freshening, they returned in full force making it a space that children dont want to leave, and parents enjoy bringing their children to, stated Maury Peterson, Executive Director, Parenting Journey. While the focus of our work is with the parents, we couldnt achieve such positive outcomes without a supervised safe, nurturing, and fun place for the children while their parents are in their group. Our child care programming is key to parents success.

In 2009, the Bright Horizons Client Relations team, in partnership with the Bright Horizons Foundation for Children, took on the project of developing the child care space for Parenting Journey. Funds were designated and Bright Horizons staff volunteered their time in memory of Sonia Belcher, a beloved colleague. This initial connection between the two organizations has flourished, with Parenting Journey clients annually benefiting from hand knitted hats and mittens provided by the Bright Horizons Stitch in Time Knitting Club.

Bright Horizons is committed to supporting families through strong partnerships and nurturing each and every childs unique qualities and potential, said Bright Horizons CEO David Lissy. With our Home Office Staff from Watertown volunteering to refurbish the Bright Space at the Parenting Journey in Somerville, we see those core values in action as our employees create a warm and enriching environment that will make a difference in the lives of families and children in need. By transforming a room into a Bright Space, we can use our knowledge to create a place where children can play, learn, and have fun.

Yvonne Lynch, Vice President of Client Relations at Bright Horizons added, It is with great pride that the staff from Bright Horizons Home Office were able to work together to refresh the Bright Space we created more than seven years ago at Parenting Journey. This project culminated a large collaborative effort across departments and geographies, which included partners from Bright Horizons Growth Team, EdAssist Rugged Maniacs and Bright Horizons Broomfield. We are honored to be able to continue making an impact on the lives of the children and families served daily by Parenting Journey.

More than 50 Bright Horizons employees designed, painted, and refurbished the infant space, toddler and pre-school room, the tween room and kitchen in which children receive a healthy meal.

About Parenting Journey

Parenting Journey, a nonprofit agency headquartered in Somerville, MA, offers powerful programs that help parents build safer, stronger families and trains professionals nationwide to implement its high-impact approach. More than 1,700 facilitators have received training and 52,000 parents raising almost 151,000 children have benefited from Parenting Journeys unique curriculum. Parenting Journey programs have been replicated in nearly 500 locations throughout Greater Boston, New York, Florida, New Hampshire, and Washington, D.C. To learn more about the Parenting Journey, please visit our website http://www.parentingjourney.org.

Contact:

Maury Peterson

Executive Director

Parenting Journey

(617) 628-8815

mpeterson(at)parentingjourney(dot)org

http://www.parentingjourney.org
Fertility Solutions, a New England fertility center led by award-winning specialists, has partnered with EMD Seronos Compassionate Care Program to provide financial discounts on fertility medications to U.S. military veterans. Fertility Solutions is the only fertility clinic in Massachusetts participating in the Compassionate Care Program, which provides veterans with a 25%-75% discount on medications associated with in vitro fertilization (IVF) and other fertility treatments.

Fertility Solutions Dr. Ania Kowalik is EMD Seronos designated contact for the Compassionate Care Program in Massachusetts. In under two years, the program has helped over 70 veterans obtain medication(s) needed for IVF/ART services, including a Fertility Solutions patient who was able to receive the appropriate discounts to cover the cost of IVF medications.

Building on this commitment to affordable fertility treatment for U.S. military veterans, Fertility Solutions is proud to offer a 10% discount on its IVF Military Advantage Plan beginning on Memorial Day, May 30th 2016. Fertility Solutions 10% discount on its already low-priced IVF Military Advantage concludes on Labor Day (September 5, 2016), and can be applied to services for military veterans and active duty members that are not covered by Tricare or USFHP.

Fertility Solutions is honored to provide financial support to U.S. military veterans during a time in which IVF coverage is not yet currently provided by the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs (VA). The practice continues to advocate by supporting the Military Construction and Veterans Affair appropriations bills amendment which aims to overturn the ban on VA coverage for IVF for veterans.

About Fertility Solutions

Fertility Solutions is a patient-centered practice that provides a full spectrum of infertility diagnosis and treatment. The practices board certified fertility specialists will work closely with patients to gain an understanding of their situation and present alternatives that fit each lifestyle and budget. For more information and/or media inquiries, please contact Maryanne Gaffney at maryanne(dot)gaffney(at)yourfertilitysolutions(dot)com.
Vietnam's rice output is likely to fall this year for the first time since 2005 following the worst drought in 90 years, but the decline will be limited as farmers expand their plantations for the current and final crops, a government official said.

The Mekong Delta's winter-spring output fell 10.2 percent from last year, but total production could fall by just 1.5 percent to 44.5 million tons this year, said Tran Cong Dinh, deputy head of the Agriculture Ministry's Crops Department.

"Overall the annual paddy output will only be short by 700,000 tonnes," Dinh told Reuters on the sidelines of an agriculture conference last Friday.

Severe drought and salt water intrusion linked to the El Nino weather pattern in Vietnam's southern Mekong Delta food basket have destroyed fruit, rice and sugar crops in the world's third-largest rice exporter.

Vietnam harvests three crops of rice each year, of which the winter-spring crop is the biggest and mostly used for export.

The country, which produced a record 45.21 million tons of paddy last year, exports around 30 percent of its output, mainly to China, the Philippines and Indonesia. Production last fell in 2005, also due to drought.

Salination has delayed planting of the summer-autumn crop, and Dinh cautioned that planting of the third crop could be threatened by seasonal flooding on the Mekong River.

A farmer burns his dried-up rice on a paddy field stricken by drought in Soc Trang Province in the Mekong Delta. Photo by Reuters/Kham

Weather forecasters have warned of the possibility of a La Nina weather event, the counterpart of El Nino, which could bring intense rains in the second half of 2016.

"Planting will have to be within the dyke system to protect the crop," Dinh said.

Rice traders said the delay means harvest times will vary in the Delta, which comprises 12 provinces and Can Tho City.

"The harvest will not peak at the same time so prices won't decline much," said a trader at a foreign firm in Ho Chi Minh City.

Vietnam's benchmark five percent broken rice eased this week to $370-$380 a ton, free on board basis, from $375-$380/ton last week and a five-month high of $390 on March 25.

Vietnam's rice exports this year will dip 4.45 percent from 2015 to 6.44 million tonnes, partly due to the drought in the Delta, an analyst said.
Image credit: Flickr/Robert Cross I am thankful that this program, which holds a special place in the hearts of may Coloradans, was able to find a new and worthy home with Natural Capitalism Solutions.

The Climate Trust today announced that the administration of the Colorado Carbon Fund (CCF) program has been transferred to Colorado-based NGO, Natural Capitalism Solutions (NCS).

The CCF, founded in 2008 by the Colorado Energy Office (then Governors Energy Office), was the first voluntary, state-based program in the country designed to help individuals and businesses offset their greenhouse gas emissions. Over the lifetime of the program, the money raised from these tax-deductible carbon offset purchases has been directed to carbon reduction projects developed locally in Colorado.

The CCF initially partnered with The Climate Trust (The Trust)a national carbon market leaderto help select projects and provide expertise to accelerate long-lasting, innovative climate solutions. In 2012, The Trust took the lead in launching the fund into a separate, stand-alone program administered from their headquarters in Portland, Oregon; with a local office in Denver for the first year to support. Having on-the-ground representation enabled direct interaction with stakeholders at public events, and with our nine-member Advisory Committee.

As The Trust began to shift to a new climate finance business model, the change in focus necessitated finding a new home for the CCF. The decision to transition the program to new leadership was made late last year, with a new management search spearheaded by CCF Advisory Committee member Katherine Hamilton of Kate Hamilton LLC, and Ben Apple of Environmental Commodities Corporation.

The Trust felt that the CCF should have on-the-ground, in-state representation, and selected NCS as the new Colorado-based home for the program due to the organizations strong leadership in sustainability and climate mitigation, working with both private and public sectors.

The Climate Trust has a long history with the Colorado Carbon Fund, and we are proud of what weve been able to accomplish with the generous contributions of Colorado citizens and businesses throughout our tenure, said Sheldon Zakreski, Director of Carbon Compliance for The Climate Trust. I am thankful that this program, which holds a special place in the hearts of may Coloradans, was able to find a new and worthy home with Natural Capitalism Solutions.

We are delighted to take stewardship of the Colorado Carbon Fund and look forward to building on the successes achieved by the Colorado Energy Office and The Climate Trust over the last eight years, said Hunter Lovins, President and Founder of Natural Capitalism Solutions. This transition will allow us to figure out next steps for this iconic Colorado institution and enable it to become the tool Colorado needs to begin implementing the worlds goal of fighting climate disruption.

I have had the pleasure of contributing to the CCF over the last few years as a donor, and as part of the CCFs Advisory Committee, said Katherine Hamilton, Colorado Carbon Fund Advisory Committee. The Colorado Carbon Fund is a unique state-wide program connecting citizens who are aware of their individual impact on our climate with local greenhouse gas emissions reduction projects. Each time I see a car with an advancing clean energy license plate, I get encouraged knowing the driver has considered the climate impact of their vehicle.

Since its inception, over 1,000 individuals and 75 Colorado organizations have reduced their emissions through the program, and more than 39,000 certified carbon offsets have been retired on behalf of program donors.

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The Colorado Carbon Fund (CCF) helps individuals, business owners and event planners measure,

reduce, and offset their carbon emissions. The CCF is the first and only statewide voluntary carbon

reduction program in the U.S., focusing its support on greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction projects in

Colorado that produce permanent, verifiable carbon credits. For more information, please visit

http://www.coloradocarbonfund.org

Building upon a legacy of innovation and leadership in the carbon market, The Climate Trust mobilizes conservation finance to maximize environmental returns. We value air, water and soil through the development, purchase and sale of qualied osets and a relentless investment in people and projects with environmental purpose | http://www.climatetrust.org | @climatetrust | facebook.com/TheClimateTrust

Natural Capitalism Solutions is a nonprofit organization with a mission to help companies, communities and countries implement more regenerative practices profitably. In partnership with leading thinkers and groups, Natural Capitalism Solutions creates innovative, practical tools and implementation strategies for companies, communities and countries | http://www.natcapsolutions.org | @natcapsolutions | facebook.com/natcapsolutions
We have assembled an outstanding group of individuals to discuss issues ranging from equal pay, compliance and Title IX /sexual assaults, to topical issues including race, identity, culture and Black Lives Matter.

The American Association for Access, Equity and Diversity (AAAED), an organization of equal opportunity, diversity and affirmative action professionals, announced its 42nd National Conference and Annual Meeting themed "Bridging the Opportunity Gap: Business, Education and Government." The conference will take place on June 8  10, 2016, with two days of pre-conference workshops preceding. AAAED will also hold an Awards Reception on Capitol Hill on Thursday, June 9th. The AAAED 42nd National Conference and Annual meeting is open to the press.

The annual meeting will be held at the Sheraton Tysons Hotel, 8661 Leesburg Pike, Vienna, Virginia. The awards reception will take place on Capitol Hill, Thursday, June 9th in Room B-338 of the Rayburn House Office Building, from 4:30 pm to 6:30 pm. "We are pleased to meet once again to discuss issues related to the strategies and challenges of promoting access, equity and diversity in the corporate and government sectors and in academic institutions, said AAAED President Marshall Rose. We have assembled an outstanding group of individuals to discuss issues ranging from equal pay, compliance and Title IX /sexual assaults, to topical issues including race, identity, culture and Black Lives Matter, added Rosemary Cox, AAAED Conference Chair.

Among the agency representatives speaking at the conference are EEOC Chair Jenny Yang, EEOC General Counsel David Lopez, and OFCCP/DOL Chief of Staff Claudia Gordon. Industry representatives include Nikki Alphonse of Northrup Grumman and Malika Saada Saar of Google. Thought leaders and activists include AAAED Distinguished Scholar William B. Harvey, Dr. Tuajuanda C. Jordan, President, St. Mary's College of Maryland; and Breana Ross, Vice President, United States Student Association. Civil rights activist and Professor Rachel Dolezal will speak about Race, Culture and Identity on June 8th.

Among the rich assemblage of pre-conference workshops is an eight hour training on Title IX, a refresher course for Federal EEO investigators and counselors, an intensive course for experienced Affirmative action practitioners, and a workshop on the Supreme Courts review of the Fisher affirmative action case. A New Professionals Academy will also be offered for those entering the EEO/AA profession. During the conference there are fifteen workshops on issues ranging from LGBTQ  Treating Everyone Equally, to Unconscious Bias in the Workplace. Diversity leaders in private industry will discuss Building a Strategic Approach to Compliance Including Proactive Outreach and Linkages.

On Capitol Hill, AAAED will honor congressional icons Representatives G.K. Butterfield, Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus; James Clyburn (D-SC); and Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) as well as other outstanding leaders and companies in EEO, diversity and affirmative action. Dr. Walter J. Leonard, the architect of the Harvard diversity plan, will receive an honorary Arthur A. Fletcher Lifetime Achievement Award, posthumously. Dr. Havidan Rodriguez, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, will be the recipient of the Cesar Estrada Chavez Award. Northrup Grumman will be honored with the Roosevelt Thomas Champion of Diversity Award and Wright State University will be given the Edward M. Kennedy Community Service Award.

For more information, visit the AAAED conference website at http://www.aaaedconference.org. Visit http://www.aaaed.org for more information about the association.

Founded in 1974 as the American Association for Affirmative Action (AAAA), AAAED is a national not-for-profit association of professionals working in the areas of equal opportunity, compliance and diversity. AAAED has more than 40 years of leadership in providing professional training to members, enabling them to be more successful and productive in their careers. It also promotes understanding and advocacy of affirmative action and other equal opportunity laws to enhance the tenets of access, inclusion and equality in employment, economic and educational opportunities.
Satcom Direct (SD) first distribution partner to activate Inmarsats Jet ConneX service for business aviation customers We are proud to be the first to make Jet ConneX available. This is an unprecedented opportunity for Jet ConneX-ready aircraft operators to take advantage of the fastest data speeds available to business aviation, said David Greenhill, President.

Jet ConneX is the high-speed broadband service for business aviation that operates over Inmarsats new Global Xpress (GX) constellation. Now available to customers, it delivers a new standard for satellite communications, supporting high data rate applications in flight, including streaming videos and holding video calls. The service is initially available on new aircraft manufactured by Jet ConneX-ready OEM partners.

Satcom Direct (SD) was the first to prove Jet ConneX services over the entire GX network. Now, not only can it provision and activate Jet ConneX aboard new aircraft, its proprietary solutions enhance the Ka-band technology and optimize the service to deliver unmatched performance in the air. SD proprietary technologies manage and maximize bandwidth, improve voice call quality, enable use of personal devices, and more  providing a better Jet ConneX experience for SD customers than is available with other providers. And, all customers receive SDs 24/7 world-class support.

We are proud to be the first to make Jet ConneX available to customers. This is an unprecedented opportunity for Jet ConneX-ready aircraft operators to take advantage of the fastest data speeds available to business aviation, said David Greenhill, President of SD.

We congratulate Satcom Direct on this exciting milestone. Jet ConneX is transforming in-flight connectivity for the business aviation industry, offering a reliable, high-speed and global service with Committed Information Rates (CIRs) in all coverage areas, which is an important differentiator in the market, said Kurt Weidemeyer, Inmarsat VP Business Aviation.

SD is also an authorized GX value added reseller for U.S. government aviation and enterprise markets.

About Satcom Direct: Satcom Direct (SD) provides global connectivity solutions for business and general aviation, military, government, and heads of state aircraft, as well as operations in areas with connectivity limitations such as remote locations, large scale events, and disaster recovery. SD is a technology innovator. Since 1997, its teams have worked to advance the technology of connectivity, making SD the first in the marketplace to deliver numerous advancements and capabilities. The company is a premier Inmarsat Distribution Partner (including Jet ConneX), Iridium Service Partner, ViaSat Yonder's preferred reseller, and the Exclusive Service Provider for SmartSky Networks.

The SD world headquarters and primary operations center is located in Melbourne, Florida, with additional office locations in the United States, Canada, UK, UAE, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Australia, Russia, Brazil, and South Africa. For more information regarding SD, visit http://www.satcomdirect.com, e-mail sales(at)satcomdirect(dot)com, or call U.S. +1.321.777.3000 or UK +44.1252.554.460.
Formation Data Systems (Formation), a company revolutionizing enterprise storage, today announced that CEO Mark Lewis will speak at the 2016 Cloud Computing Expo on June 7 in New York, NY. At the conference, Formation will also conduct demonstrations of FormationOne Dynamic Storage Platform (FormationOne), the companys hyperscale dynamic storage platform at booth #229.

Presenting alongside leading industry experts, Mark will discuss how software-defined storage (SDS) infrastructures can be deployed to accelerate enterprise modernization, transforming storage from monolithic silos to an elastic pool of petabyte-scale resources that deliver the agility and economics of public cloud with the security and control of private data centers. Out-of-control data growth is a challenge faced by both mid-size and large enterprises across all industries. This unprecedented data growth is increasing as more organizations seek to mobilize and modernize their applications, putting enormous stress on IT infrastructure and enterprise economics. Requirements to deploy modern, cloud-native applications simultaneously with traditional client/server applications are almost impossible to achieve with hardware-centric enterprise infrastructure. Compute and network infrastructure are fast moving down a software-defined path, but storage has been a laggard until recent innovations including FormationOne has changed this problem. Illustrating use cases for dynamic SDS integration, Mark will showcase how organizations can readily scale up to meet these new enterprise IT demands for agile, economical, flexible and reliable storage solutions.

Formation will also exhibit at the three day exhibition, offering demonstrations of its flagship FormationOne storage platform to attendees. The FormationOne platform offers the ideal combination of private cloud control and public cloud scale to transform enterprise infrastructure and solve the data challenges businesses face today. In an extension of the companys highly successful See-a-Demo-Get-a-Goat, in which Formation has partnered with OxFam America, Formation will donate a goat for every demonstration given at the event. To date, the company has donated over 75 goats to families and children in impoverished countries.

Speaker session

Session title: Accelerating Transformation Projects with Dynamic, Software-Defined Storage

Speaker: Mark Lewis, CEO Formation Data Systems

When: June 7, 2016

Time: 11.00am  11.35am

Where: Room 1A12 (Track 3 - Mobility & Security)

Formation Exhibit

When: June 7  June 9, 2016

Booth #: 229

RELATED LINKS



Visit our press room and leadership page

Follow Formation on our blog, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook

CEO Mark Lewis Twitter

--- Ends ---

For more information, please contact John Vu at Eastwick  FDS(at)eastwick(dot)com | 415-820-4484

About Formation Data Systems

Formation Data Systems' mission is to help IT organizations realize the transformative benefits of modern storage technology. Formation has developed the revolutionary FormationOne Dynamic Storage Platform that combines the agility, flexibility and simplicity of public cloud web-scale approaches with the control, security and customization capabilities of private datacenter storage. FormationOne has been built for Enterprise IT, SaaS application providers, and service providers, seeking ways to transform the agility and economics of their storage and data management environment. The platform is available to Enterprises and Service Providers worldwide. Go to formationds.com for more information.
New World Medical Network, a growing boutique domestic medical travel platform which has offices on Long Island, announces plans to partner with self-insured Long Island-based Unions and Municipalities and other NY Metro-based funds. The platform allows organizations to save an average of 50% off select low- to moderate-risk procedures as compared to the cost in the New York Metro Area while the employee receives quality care, travel-for-two and a bonus upon return-to-work as an incentive for going out of their way.

Unions and Municipalities in our Country are at a difficult crossroads; they are struggling to survive because of the high cost of benefits. It doesnt have to be that way. New World can easily impact organizations, especially within our immediate footprint, and we will be aggressive in doing so. We know the significant difference we can make and theres no downside. Theres no change in the healthcare plan and this platform doesnt cost the Union anything to get started so why wouldnt they add it? Its a big win for everyone involved at a time when saving healthcare dollars has become essential to survival in todays economy, elaborated President and CEO, Cathy Nenninger.

Ms. Nenninger continued, We have a dedicated Union and Municipality sales director, Wayne T. Rogers, who can set-up the contract quickly so we can roll-out the platform and start saving immediately. Theres no need for open enrollment so theres no need to wait.

New World Medical Tourism LLC (New World), is run by experienced healthcare and insurance professionals and caters to the self-insured marketplace - TPAs, companies, municipalities, and unions - with its one-cost, all-inclusive approach to non-emergent medical procedures and surgeries called "One Price Healthcare. New World is also known by its trademarked tagline "Great Care. Less Cost. New World." New World Network consists of high quality, accredited medical facilities within the United States often saving organizations an average of 50% off U.S. costs. The program attaches to an existing health plan, achieved with a simple amendment to the plan document; there is no need for Open Enrollment and the program can be implemented at any time. Labor or Municipality officials interested in the potential partnership can reach New World at (800) 475-PATIENT (7284) ext. 703 or via email here.
With this information, companies can build and adapt these best practices into their own strategies.

Results in the 12th Annual Energy Utility Benchmark Report on Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems were announced on May 31 by IVR Doctors. The 2016 Report rates 100 energy utility automated telephone systems in the U.S. and Canada.



Gold Stethoscope recognition was awarded to winners in 12 categories, including Top Overall Company; Top Electric, Gas, and Combination Utility; and Top Canadian Utility, as well as to 14 companies whose automated telephone system is well balanced across all rating categories.

What distinguishes this report from others is its simultaneous views of an automated phone system from two perspectives: the callers experience and a companys experience managing it. Our clients prove that success in both areas is not mutually exclusive, said Peter Brandt, IVR Doctors co-founder.

The Report identifies automated telephone systems that successfully balance company objectives and customer preferences in three key rating categories: functionality, usability, and aesthetics, the major drivers of customer satisfaction and system utilization.

With this information, companies can build and adapt these best practices into their own strategies, said Mark Camack, IVR Doctors co-founder. The Report also highlights common design mistakes and demonstrates clearly how those errors can have a negative impact on a company and its customers experience.

The 100 companies evaluated in the 2016 Report were rated using standards which the IVR Doctors can apply to any other company wishing to be included in the Benchmark.

The 2016 Report is available online at http://ivrdoctors.com. As an additional benefit, Report buyers receive a customized teleconference with the IVR Doctors, targeted specifically to their companys automated system menus.

2016 GOLD STETHOSCOPE AWARD WINNERS

CATEGORY / COMPANY

Top Rated IVR System - Overall

SoCal Gas (Los Angeles, CA)



Top U.S. Combination Utility

LG&E (Louisville, KY)

Top U.S. Electric Company

Pacific Power / Rocky Mountain Power (Portland, OR / Salt Lake City, UT )

Top U.S. Gas Company

SoCal Gas (Los Angeles, CA)

Top Municipal Utility

JEA (Jacksonville, FL)

Top Canadian Utility

Hydro One (Toronto, Ontario)

Top Canadian Electric Company

Hydro One (Toronto, Ontario)

Top "Touchtone-only" system

Pacific Power / Rocky Mountain Power (Portland, OR / Salt Lake City, UT )

Top "Press or Say" system

SoCal Gas (Los Angeles, CA)

Tops in Functionality

SoCal Gas (Los Angeles, CA)

Tops in Usability

JEA (Jacksonville, FL)

Tops in Aesthetics

Ameren Illinois (Collinsville, IL)

Ameren Missouri (St. Louis, MO)

Special Recognition as the Most Improved IVR 2015-2016:

Rappahannock Electric Cooperative (Fredericksburg, VA)

Twelve 2016 Gold Stethoscope Award Winners for Balanced company performance can be found at: http://www.ivrdoctors.com/#!2015-benchmark-balanced/c1gtf.

The IVR Doctors, with over 40 years of market research, usability consulting, marketing and call center management experience, specialize in automated phone system diagnostics and optimization. Their practice, with an energy utility specialty, is not limited to a single industry and covers companies large and small. Visit http://ivrdoctors.com.

Contact:

Peter Brandt | peter(at)ivrdoctors(dot)com | (843) 849-7856

Mark Camack | mark(at)ivrdoctors(dot)com | (503) 449-5940

# #
The company was honored among a global field of top Microsoft partners for demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementation of customer solutions based on Microsoft technology.

We are proud and thrilled to receive this recognition of the immense value we bring to Microsoft and to our mutual customers and partners, said Dan Langille, director of business development for QUADROtech. Each and every person here at QUADROtech played a vital role in our phenomenal success in Microsofts FY16, and this honor is the cumulative result of our commitment to being great with Microsoft.

Awards were presented in several categories, with winners chosen from a set of more than 2,500 entrants from 119 countries worldwide. QUADROtech was recognized for providing outstanding solutions and services in Messaging Partner of the Year.

The Messaging Partner of the Year Award recognizes a partner with proven expertise from on-premises to the cloud in planning, deployment, and management of Microsoft Exchange while helping customers lower IT costs, boost user productivity, and better manage risk with anywhere access to communications. Successful entries will discuss how partners are driving upgrades from legacy Exchange or migrations from competitive platforms to Exchange Server 2013 or Exchange Online, supported by quantifiable results and customer anecdotes. Entries specifically highlighting deployments of advanced Exchange workloads (archiving, security, and voicemail) are strongly encouraged.

We are honored to recognize QUADROtech Solutions as this years Finalist of the 2016 Microsoft Messaging Partner of the Year award, said Gavriella Schuster, general manager, Worldwide Partner Group, Microsoft Corp. QUADROtech is a prime example of the excellent talent we see in our Microsoft partner community to deliver innovative and transformative solutions to our mutual customers.

The Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards recognize Microsoft partners that have developed and delivered exceptional Microsoft-based solutions during the past year.

About QUADROtech

QUADROtech (http://quadro.tech) is the only provider of integrated tools for managing email archive, mailbox and PST file migrations. Its technology is a key component in email infrastructure changes, enterprise desktop refresh projects, rollout of latest versions of Windows, and the adoption of Microsoft Exchange 2016, Office 365 and Enterprise Vault. QUADROtechs staff of industry experts and its worldwide network of partners help customers avoid the costliest, time-consuming and risky aspects of migration projects.
Qorus Software We are honored to recognize Qorus Software as a finalist in the 2016 Microsoft Modern Marketing Partner of the Year Award.

Qorus Software today announced that it has been named a finalist in the 2016 Microsoft Modern Marketing Partner of the Year Award. The company was honored among a global field of top Microsoft partners for demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementation of customer solutions based on Microsoft technology.

Being named a finalist for this award is a huge honor for our business, says Heather Thompson, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Qorus. We have had great success working with Smart Partner Microsoft, sharing knowledge with, and learning from, their thought leaders.

Awards were presented in several categories, with winners chosen from a set of more than 2,500 entrants from 119 countries worldwide. Qorus Software was recognized for providing outstanding solutions and services in Modern Marketing.

The Modern Marketing Partner of the Year Award recognizes a partner who is using modern/digital marketing practices to acquire, convert and retain customers. The winning partner will be able to articulate how modern marketing practices have helped to grow their business in terms of revenue and profitability.

We are honored to recognize Qorus Software as a runner up in the 2016 Microsoft Modern Marketing Partner of the Year Award, said Gavriella Schuster, general manager, Worldwide Partner Group, Microsoft Corp. Qorus is a prime example of the excellent talent we see in our Microsoft partner community to deliver innovative and transformative solutions to our mutual customers.

The Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards recognize Microsoft partners that have developed and delivered exceptional Microsoft-based solutions during the past year.

ABOUT QORUS

Qorus Software is a global provider of proposal management and document automation solutions that accelerate the sales process.

Qorus works closely with Microsoft to enhance document productivity across the Office platform. Their software is incredibly powerful but highly intuitive and very easy to use. Even the most untechnical of users can quickly create accurate, personalized and compliant documents.

Our clients include law firms and organizations that want to streamline their bid, sales and content management processes.

Qorus has offices in Seattle, London and Cape Town.

Business critical documents are at the heart of your success and so is Qorus.

Visit http://www.qorusdocs.com

For additional information:

Taryn Netterville

TNetterville(at)qorusdocs(dot)com

Product or service names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
Today, the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) unveiled a new book, Make, Learn, Succeed: Building a Culture of Creativity in Your School. Written by Mark Gura, author of Getting Started with Lego Robotics: A Guide for K-12 Educators, this book tackles the often elusive phenomenon of student creativity, bringing it into focus and showing why and how it should be encouraged in school. Through research and discussion, and by engaging in conversations with other creativity-minded educators, Gura shows that creativity can be developed and that, thanks to the variety of technology resources available, doing so is not only possible, but practical and effective.

Make, Learn, Succeed explores the concept of creativity, from an examination of the creative process to the different types of creativity. The book looks at the conditions necessary for creativityincluding the physical and cultural environmentand the advantages of using technology for creative expression, sharing, collaboration and feedback. To guide educators along a path of infusing creativity, the book outlines numerous instructional approaches, such as gaming, digital storytelling, event-based activities and robotics. Sample activities, subject-specific applications and an annotated resources section provide more supplies for the creativity toolbox.

Gura has been an educator for more than three decades. The former director of instructional technology of the New York City Department of Education, he began his career in elementary and middle school classrooms in Harlem. More recently, he has taught graduate education courses at Fordham University, Touro College and New York Institute of Technology. He has written extensively on education for the New York Daily News, Converge, and a variety of other education magazines and has published numerous books on education, including as the author of Getting Started with LEGO Robotics (ISTE, 2011) and the editor of Teaching Literacy in the Digital Age (ISTE, 2014).

Make, Learn, Succeed: Building a Culture of Creativity in Your School

By Mark Gura

ISBN: 9781564843807

ISTE Member Price: $35.96 Nonmember Price: $39.95

About ISTE

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) is the premier nonprofit organization serving educators and education leaders committed to empowering connected learners in a connected world. ISTE serves more than 100,000 education stakeholders throughout the world.

Innovative offerings include the ISTE Conference & Expo the worlds most comprehensive ed tech event  as well as the widely adopted ISTE Standards for learning, teaching and leading in the digital age. The organizations robust suite of professional learning resources features online courses, consulting services for schools and districts, books, and peer-reviewed journals and publications. For more information, visit iste.org. Connect with ISTE via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Representatives of CBL & Associates Properties, Inc. attend MAXI Awards in Las Vegas on Sunday, May 22, 2016. "I am proud of the innovative and creative work that our marketing team continues to produce to enhance the customer experience and for it to be recognized among our peers is quite an honor." Stephen Lebovitz, President & CEO, CBL & Associates Properties

The International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) announced the winners of the 2016 U.S. MAXI Awards, highlighting the retail real estate industries most innovative marketing events, programs and technologies that added value to shopping centers across the country. ICSC honored the winners on Sunday, May 22, 2016, at an awards ceremony during RECon, the global real estate convention in Las Vegas.

The MAXI Awards are a tremendous opportunity to showcase the work of CBLs talented marketing professionals, said Stephen Lebovitz, president and CEO of CBL & Associates Properties, Inc. I am proud of the innovative and creative work that our marketing team continues to produce to enhance the customer experience and for it to be recognized among our peers is quite an honor.

CBL & Associates Properties, Inc. had a total of eight finalists for consideration, the most of any shopping center owner and won the most awards as well, bringing home three gold and four silver.

CBL won gold for programs at CoolSprings Galleria in Nashville (Franklin), TN, Fayette Mall in Lexington, KY, and a joint-center entry at Volusia Mall, Pavilion at Port Orange and Hammock Landing in the Daytona Beach, FL market. MAXI Silver was awarded to programs at Hamilton Place in Chattanooga, TN, Monroeville Mall in Pittsburgh (Monroeville), PA, a joint-center entry for Chesterfield Mall, West County Center, South County Center, Mid Rivers, and Northpark Mall in the St. Louis market as well as a CBL corporate marketing entry. In addition, CBL was also awarded the ICSC Foundations Community Support Award for the Southern Region.

For a complete list of CBL award winners and entry descriptions please visit cblproperties.com.

About ICSC

Founded in 1957, ICSC is the global trade association of the shopping center industry. Its more than 70,000 members in over 100 countries include shopping center owners, developers, managers, investors, retailers, brokers, academics, and public officials. The shopping center industry is essential to economic development and opportunity. They are a significant job creator, driver of GDP, and critical revenue source for the communities they serve through the generation of sales taxes and the payment of property taxes. These taxes fund important municipal services like firefighters, police officers, school services, and infrastructure like roadways and parks. Shopping centers arent only fiscal engines however; they are integral to the social fabric of their communities by providing a central place to congregate with friends and family, discuss community matters, and participate in and encourage philanthropic endeavors. For more information about ICSC visit http://www.icsc.org and for the latest news from ICSC and the industry go to http://www.thecenterofshopping.com.

About CBL & Associates Properties, Inc.

Headquartered in Chattanooga, TN, CBL is one of the largest and most active owners and developers of malls and shopping centers in the United States. CBL owns, holds interests in or manages 147 properties, including 92 regional malls/open-air centers. The properties are located in 31 states and total 85.7 million square feet including 8.0 million square feet of non-owned shopping centers managed for third parties. Additional information can be found at cblproperties.com.

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A court in Ho Chi Minh City yesterday sentenced an Australian man to life in prison for attempting to smuggle 3.5 kilograms of heroin to Sydney.

Nathan Andrew James, 34, was arrested at Tan Son Nhat Airport in October 2013 as he checked in for a flight to Sydney. Customs officers detected the drugs hidden in his luggage.

In Australia, James owed a Vietnamese-Australian only known as Tim some money but could not repay his debt. Tim promised to clear the debt and sponsor a trip for Tim and his family to visit Vietnam on the provison that he carried two suitcases back to Sydney.

Nathan James seen in court. Photo by VnExpress/ T.M

In October 2013, James and his family travelled to Phan Thiet and then Ho Chi Minh City. One night, Tim hired taxis to take James around the city. They changed taxis many times and then picked up the suitcases.

James was facing the death penalty but the court was lenient due to his history of restricted cognitive capability.

In Vietnam, people found in possession of more than 600 grams of heroin or more than 2.5 kilograms of methamphetamine face the death penalty. The death penalty is also applied to those who produce or sell 100 grams of heroin or 300 grams of other illegal narcotics.

His wife and children were unaware of the deal and returned to Australia several days after his arrest.

Police said there was not enough evidence to convict Tim.
EagleView Technology Corporation (EagleView), a leading technology provider of aerial imagery, data analytics and GIS solutions, today announced that Bill Bunker has been named Chief Executive Officer, succeeding Chris Barrow effective June 8, 2016. Additionally, Rishi Daga, EVP of Commercial Sales, has been named President of the company, effective immediately.

Bunker comes to EagleView from ClarityHealth, where he served as Chief Executive Officer since 2012. Prior to ClarityHealth, he spent over 15 years in a variety of senior leadership positions with particular expertise in operations, product management and marketing at Vertafore, MesageGate, Onyx Software and GeoWorks Corporation. Bunker received a B.A. from Dartmouth College and an M.B.A from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.

I am eager to join the EagleView team in its next phase of continued growth and innovation, said Bill Bunker, EagleViews newly appointed CEO. EagleView is widely regarded as the market leader in the aerial imagery space and property data solutions, and I am looking forward to being a part of the continued success of the company.

The entire EagleView team is excited that Bill is coming on board as CEO, and were grateful for the important contributions of Chris Barrow, not only leading EagleView to the market-leading position it has today but also assisting with this leadership transition, said Rishi Daga, EagleViews new President. EagleView is poised to continue its strong growth as we strive to bring our customers the highest quality products in the most innovative ways possible.

We are excited to work with Bill and Rishi to realize the great potential of EagleViews innovative imagery and data solutions, said Robert F. Smith, Chairman of the Board of EagleView Technologies and CEO of Vista Equity Partners. Bill has deep experience leading innovative software and data organizations, dealing with the insurance industry, and driving product innovation and excellence to meet customer needs. Rishi has demonstrated great leadership driving the dramatic growth in EagleViews commercial solutions. We look forward to partnering with Bill, Rishi and the entire leadership team.

About EagleView

EagleView Technology Corporation, through its two wholly owned subsidiaries, EagleView Technologies, Inc. and Pictometry International Corp., is the unparalleled provider of aerial imagery, data analytics and GIS solutions serving the commercial, government and public utility sectors. The companys patented image capture processes and 3-D modeling algorithms coupled with property-centric analytic tools empower end-user workflows with scalable, efficient and highly accurate answer sets in support of property claims, risk management, construction, emergency response, assessment, corridor mapping and more. For more information contact (866) 659-8439 or visit http://www.eagleview.com or http://www.pictometry.com.

About Vista Equity Partners

Vista, a U.S.-based private equity firm with offices in Austin, Chicago and San Francisco, with more than $24 billion in cumulative capital commitments, currently invests in software, data and technology-based organizations led by world-class management teams with long-term perspective. Vista is a value-added investor, contributing professional expertise and multi-level support towards companies realizing their full potential. Vistas investment approach is anchored by a sizable long-term capital base, experience in structuring technology-oriented transactions, and proven management techniques that yield flexibility and opportunity in private equity investing. For more information, please visit http://www.vistaequitypartners.com.
Filomeno & Company, P.C., has been providing Certified Public Accounting and Business Advisory services to the Connecticut area for five decades. Fifty years of continued success and commitment to the community has positioned Filomeno & Company as a leading provider of world class assurance, tax, wealth management and consulting expertise for individuals, families and businesses in the region, serving more than 1,000 clients.

Filomeno & Company services clients in a variety of industries, including construction & real estate, healthcare, manufacturing, professional service, retail and technology. The firm was founded in West Hartford in 1966 by the late Joseph Filomeno, and has been owned and operated by the Filomeno family for two generations. Filomeno & Company is now led by Filomenos son, Thomas Filomeno, and Principals Tina Faggaini, Director of Operations; Mark Piatkowski, CPA; Judith E. Saunders, CPA and George M. Thomson, CPA/CVA.

We would like to thank our clients and dedicated team members for the successes that Filomeno & Company has had over the years, Thomas Filomeno, CPA, President of Filomeno & Company, said. This milestone is a testament to our mission to passionately serve our clients, our community, our firm and each other.

Throughout its 50-year tenure, Filomeno & Company has built a reputation as an industry leader and is a proud member of the McGladrey Alliance, a premier affiliation of independent accounting and consulting firms in the United States, with more than 75 members in 38 states, the Cayman Islands and Puerto Rico. As a member of the McGladrey Alliance, Filomeno & Company provides clients with a trusted local relationship combined with limitless resources to address every business need from local to national to international. Filomeno & Company boasts two office locations - its main office in West Hartford and satellite location in West Haven.

In addition to its commitment to clients and the community, Filomeno & Company puts a premium on its culture and strives to be the employer of choice by ensuring that every employees contributions are valued and celebrated.

Filomeno & Company has won industry recognition as a Business Champion, by the MetroHartford Alliance and the Hartford Business Journal for its revenue growth, innovation, workforce development and sustainability. The firm has also been named a Corporate Champion by Nutmeg Big Brothers Big Sisters for its ongoing commitment to helping children in need reach their full potential.

Filomeno & Company has been a pillar in this community for the last 50 years, and its contributions to this City and Region are why we continue to successfully compete for jobs, capital and talent, said Oz Griebel, President and CEO, MetroHartford Alliance. It is an honor to have Filomeno as a valued partner of the Alliance, and I wish them well on another 50 years and more of growth and success.

To commemorate the 50 years of industry knowledge, client dedication and community service, Filomeno & Company will be performing 50 Acts of Kindness throughout the region. The initiative is designed to rally Filomeno & Company team members to commit acts of kindness  large or small  throughout the community. To date, Filomeno & Company has done everything from donating non-perishable food items to those in need to sending Thank You notes to United States military members to purchasing 50 coffees from a local coffeehouse chain for its next 50 customers. As of April 1, the firm has proudly supported the following organizations  through its donation of time and resources  during its 50 Acts of Kindness campaign:



American Heart Association

A Million Thanks

Beth El Center in Milford

Bridge Family Center in West Hartford

Church Street Eats

Connecticut Humane Society

Connecticut Society of CPAs (CTCPA) Pajama Program

St. Brigid's School in West Hartford

The Simon Foundation, Inc.

Farmington UNICO

Foundation for the Advancement of Catholic Schools

Vietnam Veterans of America

West Haven Emergency Assistance Taskforce

West Hartford Food Pantry

Wholesome Wave

To follow Filomeno & Companys 50 Acts of Kindness campaign, Like them on Facebook at http://tinyurl.com/gs7qpqd.

For more information on Filomeno & Company, visit http://www.filomeno.com.

About Filomeno & Company

Filomeno & Company is a proactive business advisory firm offering a wide range of services including: accounting & auditing, business advisory, business valuations, corporate tax, individual tax or strategic tax and fraud prevention. Located in West Hartford, CT, the companys mission is: To passionately serve our clients, our community, our firm and each other. For more information, contact Filomeno & Company at 860.561.0020 or visit http://www.filomeno.com.
The new members of Cambridge Engineered Solutions Outside Sales Force will go on a "Heavy Metal Tour" visiting 50 customers in 20 states in the company's Heavy Metal RV. In an age of high-tech, low-touch business, the Cambridge Heavy Metal Tour turns the tables and is a high-touch, customer-centric calling card. -- Larry Windsor, Executive Director of Sales & Business Development

Cambridge Engineered Solutions, the worlds largest manufacturer of metal conveyor belts, has tripled the size of its outside sales force by hiring six technical managers and promoting two company veterans who will work in select regional and industry markets throughout the United States. The belt manufacturer has also added an inside sales manager at its Maryland headquarters.

The new outside sales team members will hit the road June 6 and embark on a three-month, 20-state road trip in Cambridges signature Heavy Metal RV to visit to dozens of distributors, food processors and industry equipment manufacturers.

Cambridge has been a category leader in precision metal conveyor belt design, installation and manufacturing for more than 100 years, said Tracy L. Tyler, President and CEO. Building on the success of our most profitable year, we are proud to expand our team to better serve existing and new customers in our core industries and territories.

Hired in the first quarter, the new sales managers add tremendous subject expertise and experience to the Cambridge outside sales force that has expanded to 10 employees, according to Tyler.

The new technical sales managers are: Joseph DuBord, High Temp/U.S. and Canada; Matt Farrar, Bakery/West of the Mississippi; Sam Jodka, Food and Dairy/East; Jim Law, Bakery/East; Darren McCune, Protein/South East; Ty Spainhour, Protein/South Central.

Charlie Hennigar has been promoted to outside sales and will focus on OEMs and Cambridge veteran Eva Winther will concentrate on the filtration market in the U.S. and Canada.

Over the next three months, our new technical experts will visit companies in the Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, and Midwest, said Larry Windsor, Executive Director of Sales and Business Development. In an age of high-tech, low-touch business, the Cambridge Heavy Metal Tour turns the tables and is a high-touch, customer-centric calling card.

Heavy Metal  a play on Cambridges iconic stainless steel products -- has traveled to 17 states since it debuted in October 2014. During each visit, company representatives showcase new products, conduct free workshops, perform complimentary equipment evaluations, and serve breakfast or lunch to plant employees from the mobile showroom

New Employees

Chris Daly

Based at Cambridge headquarters, Chris has a background in B2B sales. He was raised on Marylands Eastern Shore and graduated from Salisbury University with a business degree. He joined Cambridge in March and looks forward to sharpening his knowledge and putting it to use for the food processing industry.

Joseph (Joe) DuBord

A lifetime resident of St. Paul, Minnesota, Joe was hired in March as a high-temperature manufacturing specialist. For almost two decades, hes worked in wholesale distribution sales in the market. Joe looks forward to bringing his considerable experience in metallurgy to Cambridge.

Matthew (Matt) Farrar

Matt brings extensive outside sales and management to Cambridge. He joined the team in March and is focused on helping baking companies in the western region recognize the health, safety and cost benefits of metal belts. Matt lives in Fort Smith, Arkansas and graduated from the University of Central Arkansas.

Sam Jodka

After 10 years in the metal industry, Sam was drawn to Cambridges reputation for outstanding customer service and round-the-clock technical support. A 2001 graduate of Wittenberg University with a BA in Economics and East Asian Studies, he will represent food processing and dairy markets.

Jim Law

New Jersey resident and manager Jim Law brings a background in manufacturing partnerships, IT and document technology to his role as Cambridges new manager for Baking/East. Law studied business administration and international business at Stockton College.

Darren McKune

With 15 years in outside sales across multiple industries, Darren joined Cambridge in April and is focused on nurturing existing partnerships and cultivating new customers in the protein market. A resident of Suwanee, Georgia, he earned his B.B.A. and M.S. from Georgia State University.

Ty Spainhour

Arkansas-based Ty Spainhour joined Cambridge in January following a decade at Precision Metal Works. A former Special Forces Engineer for the U.S. Army, the experienced veteran was attracted to Cambridges comprehensive and consolidated custom solutions approach to simplify the end users experience.

About Cambridge Engineered Solutions

A division of Cambridge International, Cambridge is the world's largest metal conveyor belt manufacturer and a global leader in filtration screens. For more than a century, Cambridge has developed dynamic solutions, revolutionizing industry automation and plant operations. With more than 15 exclusive product lines and over 50 patents, our team of dedicated engineers and experts continually devise new methods to make lines run smoother, faster and handle more product weight. For information visit http://www.cambridge-es.com.

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Having worked on a number of transactions in each of the leading industries, we were not at all surprised to see manufacturing and software and technology deals at the top of the list in terms of volume of closed transactions.

Manufacturing was the most active industry for closing deals valued at $75 million or less in the first quarter of 2016, according to a new survey released by CMF Associates, private equitys preferred operating partner for finance and financial leadership.

The survey also found that more than 80% of M&A firm respondents focusing in the lower middle market closed at least one deal in the first quarter, and manufacturing deals were followed closely by deals in software and technology, business services and distribution and wholesale.

The findings are the result of a newly launched survey series by CMF. Known as the Down Low Report, the survey will provide quarterly updates on M&A activities and trends in the extreme lower middle market, or deals with an enterprise value of $75 million or less. CMF has a network of more than 3,000 contacts at 1,200 middle market M&A firms, and quarterly survey results will be based on responses to a brief questionnaire sent to these contacts.

Our aim is to capture more relevant data on extreme lower middle market M&A activity and provide a real-time barometer to those working in this market segment, said Dan Mahoney, Director, CMF. We are very pleased to see that the results of this ingnagural survey coincide with what we are seeing in the broader M&A market. Having worked on a number of transactions in each of the leading industries, we were not at all surprised to see manufacturing and software and technology deals at the top of the list in terms of volume of closed transactions.

Results by Industry Segment

While more than 80% of respondents reported closing at least one transaction in the first quarter of 2016 more than 15% reported closing three or more. The top trending industries closing transactions include:

1. Manufacturing  18.9%

2. Business Services 18.9%

3. Consumer/Retail, Food & Beverage  10.8%

4. Software and Technology 9.5%

5. Distribution / Wholesalers  8.1%

6. Healthcare  6.8%

7. Telecom  5.4%

8. Aero /Def, Construction  5.4%

All other industries accounted for 8.1% of all closed transactions.

Top-Line Revenue, EBITDA and Multiples



From a top-line revenue standpoint, more than 37% of respondents said they completed transactions in the $5-10 million range, 16.4% reported $11-20 million, 17.9% reported $21-30 million, 7.5% reported $31-40 million, 6% reported $41-50 million and the remaining 15% reported more than $50 million.



In terms of EBITDA, more than 47% of respondents reported closing deals for companies generating between $3 million in EBITDA or less, and more than 70% of this group reported closing deals at $5 million in EBITDA or less.



Purchase price multiples followed a traditional bell curve, with a peak of 20% of closed transactions in the 6.1-7.0 x EBITDA (38.5% of all respondents reported multiples between 5.1-7.0 x EBITDA). Approximately 13.8% of deals reported closed in the 3.1  4.0 x EBITDA range and 15.4% closed in the 4.1-5.0 x EBITDA range.

There are some valuable takeaways, for sell side investment bankers, investors and service providers active in this smaller arena of M&A activity, Mahoney added. The EBITDA and free cash flow multiples also speak to the health of the markets, with investors willing to pay for quality assets, whether they are new standalone investments or tuck-in opportunities for a corporate holding or existing platform business backed by a private equity fund.



Strategic Buyers Most Active

Buyer types were heavily weighted toward strategic buyers at 39.4%, while new private equity platforms accounted for 30.3% and private equity-backed strategic (add-on) deals ranking third at 16.7%. Notably, no groups reported closing a deal with a foreign investor.



Geographically, the transactions were relatively evenly spread throughout the United States: Midwest (23.9%), West Coast (23.9%), Northeast (19.4%), Southeast (17.9%), and Mid-Atlantic (10.4%).

Survey Timing and Methodology



At the conclusion of the first quarter 2016, a brief questionnaire focusing on deal closing activity during the quarter was sent to CMFs network of 3,000 contacts at more than 1,200 sell-side investment banks and business brokers operating in the lower middle market (enterprise value of $75 million or less). The survey was open for approximately two weeks.



We believe the results are very positive and indicative of market expectations for business owners exploring the idea of a sale or sell-side advisors seeking to generate new business by having a stronger sense of the market below $75 million in enterprise value, Mahoney concluded.

About CMF Associates

CMF Associates, LLC, private equitys preferred operating partner for finance and financial leadership, delivers transaction- and transition-focused financial, operational, and human capital solutions to private equity backed portfolio companies. Headquartered in Philadelphia and with offices in Chicago, New York, and Vancouver, CMFs offering includes interim CFO, COO, and controllership services; M&A advisory including pre-transaction due diligence, carve out services and post- transaction integration; full-time executive search; and deal sourcing. To learn more, visit http://www.cmfassociates.com.

# # #

Contact:

Kimberly Kerr

CMF Associates, LLC

kkerr(at)cmfassociates(dot)com

215.940.4440
Journalists interested in sharpening their coverage of public companies can sign up for a free in-depth email course through the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism at Arizona State University.

The seven-day course, Introduction to Covering Financials, teaches reporters how to better cover the financial performance of public companies through detailed lessons on financial statements, accounting, information sources and more. Part of ASUs Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, the Reynolds Center has provided training to more than 22,000 journalists since 2003.

The course was developed by Clinical Associate Professor of Accountancy Steven Orpurt, who teaches corporate governance and sustainability and accounting at the W. P. Carey School of Business at ASU. It is based on his popular blog series on financials for journalists on the Reynolds Centers website at businessjournalism.org.

The purpose of the email course and related website articles is to help journalists become more knowledgeable consumers of financial statement disclosures, Orpurt said. Toward that purpose, concepts discussed include conservatism, non-GAAP disclosures, an understanding that the income statement measures wealth created, not cash created, and more.

Course registration is at http://bit.ly/financialscourse.

Those enrolled receive a daily email focused on a particular financial reporting topic with access to the Reynolds Center website for more information.

For reporters covering business, understanding company financials is among the most critical skills needed to unearth and pursue meaningful stories on the business beat, said Reynolds Center Assistant Director Elizabeth Mays. This email course is a great way for reporters to get introduced to concepts that can help them read and interpret companies financial statements better.

The Reynolds Centers mission is to help journalists improve business coverage through in-person and online training and its website, businessjournalism.org.

Introduction to Covering Financials is one of several initiatives by the Reynolds Center to help journalists better report on money. Other resources include a free, downloadable e-book, Guide to Business Beat Basics, a podcast, How to Cover Money, and a website with daily tips and resources for business journalists.

The Reynolds Center is funded by the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, a national philanthropic organization founded in 1954 by the late media entrepreneur for whom it is named. Headquartered in Las Vegas, it has committed more than $145 million nationwide through its journalism program.
Mount Sinai Health System holds the top spot on New York magazines annual "Best Doctors" issue with 297 Mount Sinai physicians, including those who serve at network affiliates, appearing in the May 30 issue of the magazine.

The 2016 issue featured a total of 1,300 physicians from the New York metropolitan region. There were 250 physicians on the list from The Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai Queens, Mount Sinai Beth Israel, Mount Sinai Beth Israel Brooklyn, New York Eye and Ear of Mount Sinai, Mount Sinai West, and Mount Sinai St. Lukes. There were 47 physicians from Mount Sinai affiliate hospitals.

We are very proud of our representation on this list and the extraordinary efforts of our faculty and staff to offer the best care to patients in this region and beyond, said Kenneth L. Davis, MD, President and CEO of the Mount Sinai Health System. This is a reflection of our deep commitment to deliver outstanding patient care and access to advanced approaches in medicine and research to the communities we serve.

Mount Sinai is distinguished not only by the number of physicians included in the annual list, but also by the range of specialties represented, including cardiac electrophysiology, cardiovascular disease, child and adolescent psychiatry, dermatology, gastroenterology, geriatric medicine, gynecologic oncology, neurology, neuroradiology, occupational medicine, orthopedic surgery, otolaryngology, pediatrics, psychiatry, rehabilitation medicine, surgery, and urology.

"The list is indicative of our ability to bring exemplary patient care to the community in a wide range of specialties and areas," said Dennis Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and President of Academic Affairs, Mount Sinai Health System. "The School provides for breakthrough research and collaboration that is critical to bringing the latest technologies and science to the patients and families we serve."

The 2016 list are based on a peer-review survey by Castle Connolly, a New York City research and information firm, that asks 12,000 medical professionals to nominate the physicians who, in their judgment, are the best in their field and related fields.

Castle Connolly tabulates the results, vets the nominee pool, and selects the top 10 percent of the regions physicians to be published in its annual guidebook, Top Doctors: New York Metro Area. For the past 19 years, Castle Connolly has been providing New York with a shorter version of this list for publication in the magazine.

About the Mount Sinai Health System

The Mount Sinai Health System is an integrated health system committed to providing distinguished care, conducting transformative research, and advancing biomedical education. Structured around seven hospital campuses and a single medical school, the Health System has an extensive ambulatory network and a range of inpatient and outpatient servicesfrom community-based facilities to tertiary and quaternary care.

The System includes approximately 7,000 primary and specialty care physicians; 12 joint-venture ambulatory surgery centers; more than 140 ambulatory practices throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida; and 31 affiliated community health centers. Physicians are affiliated with the renowned Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, which is ranked among the highest in the nation in National Institutes of Health funding per investigator. The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked as one of the nations top 10 hospitals in Geriatrics, Cardiology/Heart Surgery, and Gastroenterology, and is in the top 25 in five other specialties in the 2014-2015 Best Hospitals issue of U.S. News & World Report. Mount Sinais Kravis Childrens Hospital also is ranked in seven out of ten pediatric specialties by U.S. News & World Report. The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai is ranked 11th nationally for Ophthalmology, while Mount Sinai Beth Israel is ranked regionally.

For more information, visit http://www.mountsinai.org or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

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Global law firm Greenberg Traurig, LLPs Francoise Gilbert will be speaking at the Lexing Network Conference on Embracing a World With Robots, held June 1-June 3 at the Renaissance Yangtze Hotel in Shanghai, China.

Speaking Thursday, June 2, Gilbert will address the topic "Big Data and Robots: A View from the United States." During her presentation, Gilbert will examine the main privacy and cybersecurity-related legal issues that companies may face in their use of big data and in designing and developing robotic devices.

Gilbert, a shareholder in the firms Silicon Valley office, focuses her practice and research on U.S. and global data privacy and security in a wide variety of markets, including, among others, internet, cloud computing, big data, connected devices, sensors, artificial intelligence, and other emerging technologies. Her clients include public or multi-national entities, cloud service providers, big data analytics companies, connected device developers, B2C and B2B businesses, publishers, internet stores, insurance companies, financial institutions, manufacturers, service providers, trade associations, nonprofit organizations, software developers, and others.

About Greenberg Traurigs Emerging Technology Group

Greenberg Traurigs Emerging Technology Group is a multidisciplinary legal team focused on guiding emerging technology companies through all the stages of their development, from initial business formation through angel or venture capital financing to initial public offerings and mergers and acquisitions. Drawing on the firms broad platform, the group offers clients a streamlined approach to meeting their diverse legal needs  a single team that can scale up its services as clients businesses grow. The attorneys regularly advise clients on a host of pressing legal issues, from IP protection and software/IT matters through labor and employment, compensation, and tax issues.

About Greenberg Traurig, LLP

Greenberg Traurig, LLP is an international, multi-practice law firm with approximately 1,900 attorneys serving clients from 38 offices in the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. The firm is No. 1 on the 2015 Law360 Most Charitable Firms list, third largest in the U.S. on the 2015 Law360 400, Top 20 on the 2015 Am Law Global 100, and among the 2015 BTI Brand Elite. More information at: http://www.gtlaw.com.
Brahman Junior Show We're always excited to support Brahman Juniors and to head to the national Brahman Juniors show.

Moreno Ranches, known as a top Florida breeder of Brahman cattle at http://www.morenoranches.com/, is pleased to announce support and participation in the All American National Junior Show to be held July 4-9, 2016, in West Monroe, Louisiana. The show is a major event supporting young people and their involvement in the Brahman cattle industry; by participating, Moreno Ranches is showcasing its youth support.

We're always excited to support Brahman Juniors and to head to the national Brahman Juniors show, explained Kelvin Moreno, head of Moreno Ranches. This year's show is especially exciting as it has a full schedule of events, and we're excited to visit our friends selling Brahman cattle in Louisiana, and throughout the USA, to showcase the superior genetics of Moreno Ranch Brahman cattle from our Florida Ranch.

Persons interested in contacting Moreno Ranches are encouraged to reach out to the Ranch, in advance, as time will be scarce during the event. Information on Brahman Juniors at Moreno Ranches can be found at http://www.morenoranches.com/education/juniors/.

Roundup of Events at the 2016 Brahman Junior Show & Moreno Ranches

Moreno Ranches will be traveling to the Louisiana Brahman cattle show from the Ranch in Venus, Florida, an approximate distance of 900 miles. The national Brahman Junior Show starts on Independence Day with an AJBA Jr. Board Meeting; all cattle must be in place by 4 pm. Tuesday through Saturday will be the heart of the show, with Moreno Ranches showcasing some of their best cattle as well as reaching out to Brahman Juniors to share a passion for an amazing breed, resistant to insects and wonderful for the hot climate of the American South. Indeed, the temperament of Brahman cattle often encourages moms and dads to reach out to a Brahman cattle breeder for an animal for their son or daughter. It's an excellent breed for any Junior. Finally, the awards banquet will be held on Saturday, July 9, and Moreno Ranches will trek back to Florida with memories of an incredible participation at an incredible event.

Again, anyone interested in meeting with Moreno Ranches' staff at the Brahman Junior event are encouraged to reach out to the Ranch in advance.

About Moreno Ranches

Moreno Ranches is a top producer of Brahman cattle for sale. Customers come to the company for genetically superior Brahman bulls for sale and Brahman semen (seed stock) as well as Brahman embryos. The company produces both Brahman heifers and calves for sale, including for use as show cattle or to produce Brahman F1 hybrids. Visit the company's website to browse stock. The company is a trusted source of Brahman cattle whether a buyer is in Florida, Texas, or Louisiana - Latin America, or anywhere in the world.

Web. http://www.morenoranches.com/

Tel. 863-444-8745
We always look forward to AAJ conventions and seminars because they bring together the nations premier plaintiffs attorneys.

Counsel Financial is pleased to announce its Director of Business Development, Steve Mingle, will be speaking at the Day at the Races Seminar, a continuing legal education program that will be co-presented by the American Association for Justice (AAJ) and the Kentucky Justice Association (KJA) on June 3  4 in Louisville, Kentucky.

The two-day seminar features Greg Cusimano and David Wenner, the developers of the Jury Bias Model, who will address how decision-making biases can effect a jurys ability to fairly evaluate a plaintiffs case. The event will also include a presentation by Mr. Mingle of Counsel Financial on the different financing alternatives available to law firms with contingent fee practices, as well as opportunities for seminar participants to network and enjoy the races at Churchill Downshome of the Kentucky Derby, the oldest annual sporting event in the United States (since 1875).

Counsel Financial is a Platinum Sponsor of the Day at the Races Seminar and is exclusively endorsed by AAJ and KJA. With its vast knowledge of contingency fee practices, Counsel Financial is able to provide plaintiffs firms financing to address the unique challenges they face while trying to achieve justice for individuals. The company is proud to support AAJ and KJA because of each organizations dedication to serving trial attorneys.

We always look forward to AAJ conventions and seminars because they bring together the nations premier plaintiffs attorneys, which provides us the opportunity to not only network with new firms from across the country, but also to foster our existing client relationships, said Steve Mingle, Director of Business Development for the company. Counsel Financial will also attend AAJ 2016 Annual Convention, held this July in Los Angeles, California.

About Counsel Financial

Counsel Financial is the largest provider of working capital lines of credit to plaintiffs attorneys in the industry, having loaned over $1.5 billion exclusively to plaintiffs attorneys in its 15-year history. Counsel Financial sets the standard for innovation and flexibility in its loan offerings, structuring terms that are conducive to the unique demands of contingency-fee practices. Leveraging 200+ years of internal legal experience, Counsel Financial has financed the growth of firms in every area of plaintiffs litigation, including personal injury, mass torts, class action and labor and employment. The company is exclusively endorsed by six national and state trial organizations, including the American Association for Justice and The National Trial Lawyers.
Cubresa's NuPET PET scanner is placed into the bore of an MRI magnet, enabling simultaneous preclinical PET/MR molecular & functional imaging. A more precise understanding of the effect of certain therapies by using simultaneous PET/MRI advances the concept of personalized medicineoptimizing treatment for each individual.

Cubresa Inc., a medical imaging company that develops and markets molecular imaging systems, today announced that their compact PET scanner called NuPET for simultaneous preclinical PET (Positron Emission Tomography) and MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) has been selected by the University of Arizona (UA).

PET and MRI are complementary imaging methods for better understanding disease and testing novel treatments in small animal subjects. The University of Arizona will be the first institution in the United States to acquire this instrument.

Simultaneous PET and MRI acquisition is essential for the work that were doing, developing new contrast agents to detect biomarkers, says Dr. Marty Pagel, professor and director of cancer imaging, Department of Medical Imaging. A more precise understanding of the effect of certain therapies by using simultaneous PET/MRI advances the concept of personalized medicineoptimizing treatment for each individual.

Currently, the University of Arizona does not have small animal PET service on campus. This PET/MRI system will bring a new capability to UA research endeavors. The UA purchased the NuPET scanner in collaboration with the Department of Medical Imaging and the UA BIO5 Institute in order to fully exploit a unique MRI method and the synthesis of contrast agents that relies on patented technology from Pagels lab to measure a tumors acidity. Studies have shown that measuring a tumors pH factor could help doctors to monitor the effect of a variety of treatments on solid tumors and normal tissue, and could even predict the effectiveness of chemotherapies before the patient starts the medication.

Were very excited to know that the NuPET system will be empowering scientists to more accurately interrogate a tumors characteristics for the benefit of cancer research, says George Abe, CEO of Cubresa. Cancer is multifaceted. The Cubresa NuPET system provides researchers at the University of Arizona with the ability to monitor structural, functional and molecular changes at the same time under identical physiological conditions in order to help better understand the underlying disease and develop targeted therapies.

Faculty at the University of Arizona are primed with two research areas to begin work when the PET insert arrives. First, they have developed an MRI method that measures tumor acidosis. Tumors have high metabolism and generate a lot of lactic acid, a process known as aerobic glycolysis. PET is often used to track the start of aerobic glycolysis by detecting a radioactive form of glucose (fluoro-deoxyglucose, or FDG) that is rapidly transported into cancer cells. Pagel and colleagues plan to combine the existing MRI method with the FDG PET method to track both the start and end of aerobic glycolysis in tumors. This will improve the assessment of tumor biology, especially changes in tumor biology in response to therapies.

Second, researchers at the UA have developed a PET/MRI contrast agent that is detected with both PET and MRI. This hybrid chemical contrast agent will allow them to measure tumor acidosis very accurately. There are advantages to a "one agent injection" method vs. the injection of a cocktail of 2 agents for PET and MRI that are described above in the first project.

The University of Arizona has strong interests in translating their new methods to the clinic to improve the detection of tumors, and to assess early responses in tumors that are caused by chemotherapies. The UA also plans to obtain a clinical PET/MRI scanner in 2018, so researchers will be ideally suited for this clinical translation in about 18 months.

Cubresa will showcase the NuPET scanner in Booth 1148 at the SNMMI (Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging) 2016 Annual Meeting in San Diego, June 1114, 2016.

About Cubresa Inc.

Cubresa is a medical imaging company that develops and markets nuclear imaging systems that enable researchers at leading universities, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies to non-invasively visualize and measure biochemical processes at the molecular level. Applications for Cubresas products include preclinical drug development, disease research in oncology, neurology, and cardiology, as well as clinical diagnostics. Cubresa has operations in Boston, Massachusetts and Winnipeg, Manitoba. Visit http://www.cubresa.com for more information.

About the University of Arizona Health Sciences

The University of Arizona Health Sciences is the statewide leader in biomedical research and health professions training. The UA Health Sciences includes the UA Colleges of Medicine (Phoenix and Tucson), Nursing, Pharmacy and Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, with main campus locations in Tucson and the growing Phoenix Biomedical Campus in downtown Phoenix. From these vantage points, the UA Health Sciences reaches across the state of Arizona and the greater Southwest to provide cutting-edge health education, research, patient care and community outreach services. A major economic engine, the UA Health Sciences employs almost 5,000 people, has nearly 1,000 faculty members and garners more than $126 million in research grants and contracts annually. For more information: http://uahs.arizona.edu

About the University of Arizona Cancer Center

The University of Arizona Cancer Center is the only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center headquartered in Arizona. The UACC is supported by NCI Cancer Center Support Grant number CA023074. With primary locations at the University of Arizona in Tucson and at St. Josephs Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, the Cancer Center has more than a dozen research and education offices in Phoenix and throughout the state and 300 physician and scientist members work together to prevent and cure cancer. For more information: http://uacc.arizona.edu/.

About the UA Department of Medical Imaging

The University of Arizona Department of Medical Imaging is a national leader in innovation, cost-effective diagnostic and minimally invasive therapeutic technologies, applications and research. The department provides the latest radiology services, serves as a destination site for groundbreaking medical imaging research and educates the next generation of leaders in imaging science and its applications. For more information: http://medicalimaging.medicine.arizona.edu/

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The central city of Da Nang has decided to name a new public secondary school after Vietnam's Hoang Sa (Paracel) archipelago that is currently illegally occupied by China.

The school will open in early July and welcome new sixth-grade students as well as students from a neighboring school. Hoang Sa School will give priority to students from fishing families.

The name Hoang Sa will help educate young people about Vietnams territorial land and the countrys sovereignty over the islands.

China used force to take over Vietnams Hoang Sa Archipelago in January 1974. Da Nang established Hoang Sa District to manage the islands in 1982, but in reality, the district does not have any land or residents on the islands.

Da Nang has named several streets after Hoang Sa and Truong Sa, as well as islands within the two archipelagoes in the East Sea. A park named Bien Dong (East Sea) has also been built in the city.
I love what I do. I respect my clients, I respect my business and I always try to do my best to exceed my clients expectations

Like jewels in a crown, the multiple awards presented to Fayez Spa confirm what more than 2,000 clients already know  London is home to Ontarios leading day spa and one of Canadas few accredited 5 Star Spas!

The leadership and direction of visionary Fayez Tamba began with a unique concept to combine spa services with hair and beauty services and has resulted in creating a renowned wellness retreat destination for men and women. Tamba has orchestrated an exceptional client experience with high quality products in the hands of service professionals. Clients have come to expect the highest standards of excellence at Fayez Spa at 2224 Wharncliffe Road South  an 8.500 square foot oasis.

I love what I do. I respect my clients, I respect my business and I always try to do my best to exceed my clients expectations, says Tamba.

Respect begins with the staff of 45, some of whom have been with Fayez Spa for more than 25 years. Clients write glowing praises daily as their expectations have been exceeded, enjoyed in the tranquil environment that offers gentle relaxation at the skilled hands of experts and with soothing sounds of soft music.

Products are chosen for highest quality and efficacy. Skin care therapists, aestheticians, stylists and other service professionals are dedicated to bringing innovative services to London Ontario and take great pride in working with each client.

One of Canadas top Botox and Restylane treatment specialists joined the London Fayez Spa team, offering medical services and treatments requested by todays discerning client.

It is no wonder that London has voted Fayez Spa as Best of London the past five years in a row! Recently winning Consumer Choice Award for the fourth consecutive year, Fayez is also ranked among the top 10 Spas in Canada. Tamba was personally recognized as the only Canadian spa operator to receive an iSpa Innovate Award at the International Spa Associations Conference & Expo in 2013.

Fayez Spa is now encouraging companies that care about employee wellness to recognize, motivate and inspire them with a Fayez Spa retreat experience. From small groups to a group size of 40 guests, employees can de-stress and enjoy luxurious spa treatments. They will feel valued and be happier and healthier.

For over 30 years, Fayez Spa has been a gem in London Ontario and theres no end in sight. Open Monday to Saturday, the clients expectations are indeed, exceeded daily.

Owner: Fayez Tamba

Fayez Spa

2224 Wharncliffe Road South,

London, Ontario

519-652-2780

http://www.fayezspa.com
GWC Italia, formerly GWC Valves, is very pleased to announce that on May 17, 2016, they have entered into a Master Distributor Agreement for the US Market with AIV. They are an international distributor of high-quality valves and actuators, only selling through distribution. This agreement is relevant to their extensive line of Fully Welded Trunnion Ball Valves in sizes up to 56 of which AIV will carry a large inventory in Houston, Texas, with first stock order already entered into production in their new state of the art Italian plant.

The partnership formed creates a strategic alliance as well in which GWC Italia has appointed AIVs in house valve modification shop, Gulf Coast Modification, as their authorized service center. Now one of the largest industrial modification facilities in the nation, GCM has an ISO-based quality system that has been audited and approved by GWC Italia to perform these services. Its membership and involvement in the API, MSS and VMA/VRC ensure modifications are compliant with the latest industry standards.

All modifications are factory authorized and carry their full factory warranty. These key modifications such as pup and stem extensions for buried service are a key element that bring true added value and on time delivery. Not only does AIV have this ability but also with the large and comprehensive inventory of Bettis products and a full service automation facility on-site they can provide turn-key valve and actuation packages and same day deliveries as well  a unique value-added.

GWC is extremely pleased to say the least, about this new partnership stated Roberto Bartolena, Chairman of GWC Italia, who on July 2016 will celebrate his 50th year of activity in the valve industry. Mr. Bartolena is truly one of the pioneers as past founder of some of the most successful major Italian ball valve manufactures in the market today. Roberto ended by saying: AIV is one of the better suited partners in the US, to help us grow in the market and we know GWC Italia & AIV are a force to be reckoned with.

About GWC Italia S.p.A.

GWC Italia is headquartered in Milan, Italy where they design, manufacture and market valves with one of the most wide-ranging lines anyone can find on the market today. An Italian group and a US entrepreneurial management team, which was formerly known as GWC Valves, founded the company. The expertise from both groups combined offers a unique competitive advantage difficult to be mimicked by competitors.

They have a history of creating and handling successful valve companies over the past four decades. Italian manufactured valves will be complementary to the already existing GWC line comprising of various flow control packages in a variety of trims, alloys, sizes and pressure classes, configurations from general to severe applications.
InfraSteel Culvert Rehabilitation Loves New York State InfraSteels cost-effective and environmentally friendly culvert rehabilitation solutions.

InfraSteel participates in the New York State Association of Transportation Engineers 76th Annual Conference in Lake Placid and visits several InfraSteel projects in the Empire State. Cullom Walker presents a case study on the Indiana Department of Transportation's (INDOT) I-465 culvert rehabilitation project at the conference. The conference was held May 3-6 at the Lake Placid Conference Center. According to Walker, "InfraSteel used the conference to showcase the recently completed INDOT I-465 culvert rehabilitation project outside Indianapolis. I-465 is a heavily used interstate bypass carrying up to 150,000 vehicles per day. INDOT ruled out a complete culvert replacement because the effect of a road closure on the traveling public was deemed too high. After evaluating other culvert rehabilitation solutions, INDOT determined that the InfraSteel culvert rehabilitation system met all structural and environment requirements of the project." After the conference, Walker toured recently completed and approved InfraSteel projects in New York.

Walker adds, "Our first stop was at Cayuga Lake State Park near the historic town of Seneca Falls. Seneca Falls is famous for being the home of the Women's Suffrage Movement and the inspiration for Bedford Falls in the movie It's a Wonderful Life'. InfraSteel manufactured an 100 foot pedestrian crossing under Route 89 for the New York State Department of Transportation. The next stop was a project started this month under Route 31 near Lyons. The 88 foot arched InfraSteel culvert slip liner will repair the site without interrupting traffic and allow the hydraulic capacity of the culvert to be maintained. In White Plains, a project was started this month under Ridgeway Drive in a beautiful residential neighborhood. The existing rectangular shaped concrete structure has been in service longer than the city's records show. When completed, the original stream bed material will be added back to the floor of the InfraSteel liner." The life expectancy of the rehabilitated InfraSteel culverts visited are 50 to 100 years.

Walker is pleased to announce a new project has been scheduled for production for Jefferson County in New York. InfraSteel is providing a 168 inch wide X 120 inch tall steel arch slip liner to repair an old, stone bridge on County Road 156 just below the historic Burrville Cider Mill and scenic cascading waterfalls. Jefferson County is determined to maintain the look of the existing stone structure. Final InfraSteel drawings were signed on May 16 and delivery is scheduled for June. Jefferson County employees will perform the construction work.

Millions of culverts in the U.S. have already exceeded their design life. Although each culvert location is different due to its unique conditions, over time corrugated metal pipe culverts are attacked by abrasion and corrosion until failure.

For more information about InfraSteels cost-effective and environmentally friendly culvert rehabilitation solutions, contact Cullom Walker at (205) 613-0072 or visit the InfraSteel website at http://www.InfraSteel.com.
Lumeta With these key impediments to network visibility, they dont know what they are missing on their networks.

Lumeta Corporation, the leader in network situational awareness, today released the findings of a survey that targeted 5,000 U.S. IT executives responsible for network security and network management of large enterprise networks. The research revealed that, in terms of cybersecurity breach detection, there is a large disconnect between IT professionals needs and todays realities. The overwhelming majority (90%) of IT professionals indicated they want to detect cybersecurity incidents that lead to breaches of their network within a day, 7% said less than one week would be an acceptable timeframe, 3% said less than one month. However, industry data shows the average duration of a breach is more than six (6) months.

Over 60% of respondents believe they are notified of the presence of rogue assets or activity on their network within 10 minutes. Despite this view, industry breach data again tells a different story. According to the Mandiant 2015 Threat Report, only 31% of companies detected breaches on their own, using internal resources. Others learned they were compromised from a third party, such as a supplier, customer or law enforcement.

As industry data refutes some of the key statements made by respondents, I fear they may be falsely confident that their security program is adequately protecting their information assets, said Reggie Best, chief marketing officer of Lumeta.

The research further revealed that 63% are particularly concerned about threats emanating from mobile, virtual and cloud assets  assets intermittently present in the network. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of IT professionals have difficulty identifying cyber threats fast enough from those transitory assets.

Nearly one-half of respondents say there are key impediments to attaining network visibility: 48 percent said the lack of comprehensive security intelligence available across the network, while 49 percent of respondents cited their inability to monitor every device on the network, particularly mobile or cloud instances.

With these key impediments to network visibility, they dont know what they are missing on their networks. Its of little wonder that two-thirds of survey respondents are concerned that their companies are experiencing an undetected attack right now, continued Best. To combat malicious activity on their networks, organizations must incorporate capabilities to comprehensively understand all that is connected to their network, and have a real-time view of new assets as they join the network.

The Current Trends in Enterprise IT Network Security survey of U.S. IT executives was conducted by independent research firm LTM Research on behalf of Lumeta.

For more information, please visit: go.lumeta.com/visibility

About Lumeta

Lumetas network situational awareness platform is the authoritative source for enterprise network infrastructure and cybersecurity analytics. Available for both real-time monitoring and point-in-time auditing, Lumeta recursively indexes a network to identify and map every IP connected device, as well as uncover network segmentation violations and cybersecurity anomalies. For cybersecurity breach prevention and detection, threat intelligence is made actionable by utilizing the Lumeta platform to correlate a comprehensive index of IP address space against known threats. The foundational intelligence provided by Lumeta complements and optimizes existing network and security product investments by feeding them accurate, comprehensive network intelligence. Headquartered in Somerset, New Jersey, Lumeta has operations and clients throughout the world. More information is available at http://www.lumeta.com

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Lumeta, the Lumeta logo, IPsonar and the IPsonar logo are trademarks and service marks of the Lumeta Corporation. Other product and company names appearing in this document may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Prospero Online Speaker Portal We are excited to further enhance the capabilities of our industry-leading Prospero platform with our v5 release.

Viscira, a leading provider of digital marketing solutions and software products for the life sciences industry, today announced the release of Version 5.0 (v5) of its Prospero Online Speaker/Advisor Portal for life sciences clients. This industry-leading, secure, web-based software platform serves as a robust content management system and communication hub for pharmaceutical product speakers, allowing them to easily access all the resources and tools needed to make their peer-to-peer, educational presentations both effective and engaging.

A key component of Prospero is the Viscira Interactive Presentation Builder tool (or IPB), which provides users with the ability to create and save custom presentations, subject to medical and regulatory restrictions, through an intuitive, drag-and-drop interface. While the IPB has been available online through the portal, Viscira now offers clients an offline, stand-alone version as an optional platform feature.

With the offline IPB, users are now able to create custom presentations on their laptop or tablet devices with no Internet connection needed. These custom presentations are subject to the same business rules and slide logic as the online version. After a slide presentation is built, users can then conveniently present directly from the IPB without an Internet connection.

Once the user is back online, the custom presentation is automatically synched and saved to the Prospero portal for future use. Other usage metrics and analytics are also gathered for reporting purposes. The use of the offline IPB also enables pharma clients, including medical and regulatory groups, to proactively expire outdated presentation content on a users device.

We are excited to further enhance the capabilities of our industry-leading Prospero platform with our v5 release, explains Nat Fast, Vice President - Software Development of Viscira. With the addition of our offline IPB tool, we now offer users even greater convenience in building custom presentations wherever they are. We also provide regulatory teams with even greater control of content from a compliance perspective. Fast added, We continue to innovate to ensure that Prospero remains a leading platform in the industry.

The Prospero Online Speaker/Advisor Portal can be customized to meet companies specific workflow needs and business requirements on an enterprise-wide, therapeutic area or single product basis. To schedule a demonstration, please contact the company at 415-848-8010, or send an email to sales(at)viscira(dot)com.

The Prospero Online Speaker/Advisor Portal is just one of many digital solutions and software products the company offers, which range from Visciras 3D mechanism-of-action (MOA) animations to interactive medical case study programs to high-impact sales and educational applications for iPad and other mobile devices.

About Viscira

Viscira is dedicated to the design and development of digital marketing solutions and interactive software applications for the life sciences industry. Viscira provides a suite of programs that integrate best-in-class technology to deliver engaging and memorable content via various electronic channels. Viscira is part of the Sudler & Hennessey Group, a leading global healthcare communications network. For more information, please visit the companys website at http://www.viscira.com, or contact Nol Ashekian at (617) 429-0834.
xTablet T8650 Clearly staking a claim as the leader in 3D technology innovation for mobile tablets, MobileDemand is expanding beyond the core rugged tablet hardware market and into high value systems for enterprise applications.

MobileDemand, a leading rugged Windows tablet provider, has designed an innovative 8-inch rugged tablet with integrated 3D camera. The xTablet T8650 is engineered specifically for the mobile workforce, where productivity is key and on-the-go performance is a must. The xTablet T8650 revolutionizes how businesses can create photorealistic 3D models of their subject as well as near field automatic measurements.

The Intel RealSense 3D rear facing camera, integrated seamlessly in to the tablet, captures 3D scenery and objects, overlaying virtual information into a live image feed. Users can capture depth-based images for applications such as volume dimensioning, measurements, scene capture and much more. The camera has multiple image sensors allowing depth sensing to see the world in 3D much like humans do. Combined with software that MobileDemand is also developing, it allows systems to understand what is seen.

Clearly staking a claim as the leader in 3D technology innovation for mobile tablets, MobileDemand is expanding beyond the core rugged tablet hardware market and into high value systems for enterprise applications, says Matt Miller, MobileDemand President and Founder. Ten years ago in 2006, MobileDemand was the first to market with a barcode scanner integrated into a rugged tablet. Today, were first to market with a 3D camera integration in the xTablet T8650. 3D technologies will offer immense value for the transportation and logistics, package delivery, airline / travel, and construction industries.

Three dimensional data acquisition with mobile devices is in the infancy stage. MobileDemand is developing software to acquire measurements, dimensions, object recognition, and 3D e-scenes using advanced computer vision technology and algorithms. These interfaces can be feed 3D data, such as measurements, to existing end-user applications in a variety of industries.

The rugged tablet with 3D camera runs enterprise-ready Windows 10 Professional, an operating system that gets more work done in less time, and is partnered with an Intel Atom X5-Z8550 processor, 4GB of memory and 64GB of storage. Other unique features of the rugged tablet include a high performance 2D barcode imager, fingerprint reader, 4G LTE, GPS, dual color cameras, hot swappable batteries, vehicle mounting, and much more.

Accidents are bound to happen and the xTablet T8650 has built-in ruggedness to prevent damage to the device and to keep workers moving. For heavy duty applications both indoors and outdoors, the xTablet T8650 meets MIL-STD-810G standards with 4-foot drop survival and is IP65 sealed to withstand dust, rain and snow, allowing users to get the job done while protecting their financial investment.

As a truly groundbreaking and innovative device, the MobileDemand xTablet T8650 will be featured in Microsofts keynote speech at the 2016 COMPUTEX Expo in Taipei. COMPUTEX takes place from May 31 to June 4.

The xTablet T8650 will be available July 2016. For more information on the xTablet T8650 please contact MobileDemand by web at http://www.RuggedTabletPC.com or by phone at 319.363.4121.

About MobileDemand

With a broad family of devices to choose from, MobileDemand is your one-stop shop for powerful, all-weather Windows tablets and rugged Surface cases. xTablet ruggedized devices are the ideal tools for improving productivity and allowing mobile workers to make better business decisions at the point of interaction. They offer a high resolution, all-light readable touch screen, functionality of a full Microsoft Windows OS and the power of an Intel processor to deliver performance at a lower cost and enable greater efficiency and productivity in the field. Tablets start at only $595. Additional information about MobileDemand is available at http://www.RuggedTabletPC.com.
Comview, a premier provider of integrated fixed and mobile telecom expense management (TEM) solutions for the communications lifecycle, will be presenting a session on using TEM strategies to manage cloud usage at Avaya Engage being held June 5 - 9, 2016 at the Walt Disney World Swan & Dolphin Resort in Orlando, FL. Comview will also be exhibiting.

Avaya Engage is the new name for the International Avaya Users Group (IAUG) annual conference that has historically been known as Engage.

Gaining and maintaining control of cloud usage is a real and growing challenge for enterprises, stated John Perri, Comview Founder and CEO, However, there are many similarities between telecom and cloud usage, which is why were looking forward to sharing strategies for managing both with IAUG conference attendees.

Cloud Watching  TEM Strategies to Help You Manage Cloud Usage will take place on Sunday, June 5 from 4:15 to 5:15 p.m. at Avaya Engage. The educational session will focus on the challenges of cloud usage management, and share telecom expense management practices that can be used to keep company-wide cloud technology expenses in check.

Comview has been showcasing its switch-agnostic call accounting and fixed/mobile telecom expense management solutions at the IAUG conference for many years. The company will feature its latest advancements at this years event in booth 244.

About Comview Corporation

Comview provides fully integrated Telecom Expense Management (TEM), Mobility Management and Call Accounting solutions backed by industry-leading customer service. The companys cloud-based, unified software suite allows companies to easily manage all telecom usage and assets, throughout the communications lifecycle, from a single intuitive interface, including: Invoice Management, Wireless Management (with BYOD and MDM integration), Audit & Optimization, Call Accounting, IT Asset Management, Procurement and more. A managed service/BPO approach and customer for life philosophy provides customers with the highest level of service and support and sustainable ROI. Comviews services are used by major organizations throughout the U.S. and abroad. For additional information, visit Comview at http://www.comviewcorp.com.
Wine Squirrel has been put through dozens of rigorous tests with both white and red wine in order to engineer a beautifully designed, effective sealing mechanism and decanter for the job.

Wine Squirrel was created for those who enjoy a glass of good wine with dinner but cant justify drinking the entire bottle and risking a headache in the morning. The lead-free, crystal decanter has a patent-pending, sealing mechanism that seals out oxygen to prevent wine from being ruined. Wine Squirrel first hosted a campaign on Kickstarter with a goal of $30,000 and during its 30-day campaign, Wine Squirrel over-funded, raising a total of $112,285. Now, Wine Squirrel is hosting a campaign on Indiegogos InDemand platform to further establish funding.

Over six billion dollars of wine are wasted each year worldwide. This is because many people open a bottle of wine, only drink a couple of glasses and re-cork the bottle thinking the taste will stay. However, once wine is exposed to oxygen, a process called oxidation occurs, causing a loss in flavor. Wine Squirrel is an affordable and effective way to not only save wine from going bad, but save wine drinkers money by eliminating the need to toss out an opened bottle.

Wine Squirrel has been put through dozens of rigorous tests with both white and red wine in order to engineer a beautifully designed, effective sealing mechanism and decanter for the job, said Wine Squirrel Co-founder Tony Gonsalves. We have created the ideal solution and are happy to see, through our Kickstarter campaign, that people are genuinely enthusiastic about our product.

The sealing mechanism that makes Wine Squirrel so effective and unique is also extremely simple to use. First, pour an opened bottle of wine into the crystal decanter. Next, insert the seal into the decanter and push down until the seal touches the level of wine. To engage the seal, simply turn the knob at the top of the mechanism clockwise until it stops. The decanter can be placed upright or on its side without spilling a drop. When it comes time for another glass, turn the knob counterclockwise, remove the mechanism and pour.

Now that Wine Squirrel is live on Indiegogos InDemand platform, one Wine Squirrel decanter will be available for pre-order for $70. Two Wine Squirrel decanters can be pre-ordered for $130. To learn more about Wine Squirrel or to pre-order, visit bit.ly/WineSquirrelIndie.

ABOUT WINE SQUIRREL

Wine Squirrel is a product of Forever Products LLC, which is a family company founded by Tony Gonsalves and his brother, Maurice Gonsalves. Tony, a physicist based in Berkeley California, created the Wine Squirrel concept and developed it in conjunction with Clive Solari from the Sydney-based industrial design firm D3 Design. Maurice is an attorney and wine lover who gave up his job a year ago to focus on making Wine Squirrel a reality. For more information on Wine Squirrel, please visit http://www.winesquirreldecanter.com.
Ties that bind: Why U.S. lifting arms ban on Vietnam could be good for Russia

The U.S. has lifted its decades-long arms embargo on Vietnam, prompting some to say that Hanoi will gradually turn from a big buyer of Russian weapons into one of the leading importers of US-made military hardware, but experts doubt this will happen. In fact, Moscow could even benefit from Washington's decision.

Vietnam is the world's eight largest weapons importer; its defense budget ($4.4 billion in 2015) and military spending are increasing, according to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

"Thanks to its growing military budget and its strained relations with China, Vietnam has become a major Russian weapons buyer" in recent years, Richard Weitz wrote for the National Interest. In addition, Hanoi "has arguably been Russia's closest strategic partner in Southeast Asia," he added.

This trend, many agree, will likely remain intact.

"Russia has always been willing to get them whatever they required," Collin Koh of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore told Bloomberg. "Vietnam is not going to want to jeopardize that relationship."

Andrey Frolov, editor-in-chief of the Export Vooruzheny magazine, suggested that Obama's decision was more of a formality that will not really change anything. "I think that it has more to do with a legal basis that would make arms sales possible. I don't think that Vietnam will rush to buy US weapons tomorrow," he told the Vzglyad business newspaper.

Defense analyst Konstantin Sivkov offered a more detailed explanation. The expert pointed out that those countries who import weapons tend to either rely on a single supplier or buy from an array of partners. The latter need a more complex, costly and advanced system aimed at managing the armed forces.

For instance, if Vietnam decided to switch to U.S. planes, it would have to invest in additional training, equipment, funds, etc. "Vietnam is not a wealthy nation" that will hardly afford buying weapons in different countries, Sivkov noted. "They will likely maintain a more uniform and comprehendible procurement strategy."

The most likely scenario will see Hanoi buying several pieces of American equipment "to familiarize itself" with U.S.-made weapons and military hardware, but bulk deliveries, according to the analyst is out of the question.

It follows then that Russian arms suppliers have nothing to worry about. In fact, they could even turn the situation to their own advantage.

"We could benefit from [Obama's decision to lift the embargo]," Sivkov noted. "Perhaps, we could learn some of the features of US-made weapons this way That is if our policy is reasonable."
Vietnam is in talks with a Russian shipbuilder to purchase two more advanced Gepard-class frigates, the Vietnam News Agency reported.

As Vietnam aims to strengthen its naval muscle, the deal will expand its fleet to six frigates built at Russian shipyard Zelenodolsk.

The Russian shipyard launched the fourth Gepard-3.9 frigate destined for Vietnam last Thursday. The ceremony took place at the shipyard with the attendance of Vietnams Navy Commissioner.

The third frigate that Vietnam contracted the Zelenodolsk shipyard to build was put to sea late last month.

The third and fourth frigates will be delivered to Vietnam in August and September this year, Russian news agency TASS recently reported.

The third Gepard-3.9-class frigate will be delivered to the Vietnamese Navy this year. Project 11661 Gepard Class light frigates are developed and built for export. Photo by Zelenodolsk Shipyard

Vietnam's first two 2200-ton Gepard-class 3.9 frigates and missile escort vessels Dinh Tien Hoang (HQ-011) and Ly Thai To (HQ-012) were dispatched to Vietnam in 2011 and 2012.

The first pair of frigates are armed with missiles while the second pair are more anti-submarine oriented, according to the shipbuilder.

The Gepard-class are armed with a missile system, torpedoes and gun boats.

They are designed to perform search and rescue, track and destroy, and escort and patrol missions in territorial waters.
Vietnam is planning a $5.5 billion expansion of Hanois airport to double its capacity by 2030, the government news website reported late Monday.

The expansion will be located on an area of 720 hectares opposite the existing Noi Bai International Airport on the other side of the Vo Nguyen Giap Road. It will double the capacity of the current airport to 50 million passengers per year by 2030.

The expansion is urgent as Noi Bai is expected to face overload in the next few years, Lai Xuan Thanh, Director of the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV), said in the statement.

Vietnam's air passenger traffic grew 7.9 per cent last year to 20.7 million, while growth in the first five months of 2016 leaped 30.9 per cent to 17 million, government data showed.

Construction cost for the expansion amounts to $3.5 billion. The cost for site clearance, compensation and resettlement for residents affected by the project is estimated at $2 billion.

CAAV will work with the government of Hanoi on details of the scheme and will seek for approval from the central government, Thanh said.

The National Assembly in June last year approved a plan to build Long Thanh International Airport in the countrys south to reduce the overload at Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City. The new airport, which is expected to receive 100 million passengers by 2050, is estimated to cost more than $16 billion in three phases of construction.
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News

From Bulgaria

Bulgaria and Romania Construct a Back-up Gas Pipeline Under the Danube

In line with the Romanian legislation the association INSPET D (Leader) and the company HABAU PPS Pipeline Systems Srl (associated company) has been selected to be the Contractor

AUTHOR: publics.bg



 MyTudut, flickr.com



The Bulgarian TSO Bulgartransgaz and ransgaz (Romania) signed a contract with an association between the companies Habau and Inspet AD for the construction of back-up gas pipeline under the Danube river.

In the beginning of April 2016 the Bulgarian TSO Bulgartransgaz EAD and SNTGN Transgaz S.A. (Romania) signed a contract for the construction of the main gas pipeline of the Danube river undercrossing after a procedure conducted in line with the PPA by the Bulgarian company. In addition to the then signed contract on 30.05.2016 representatives of the management of the two TSOs signed as well a contract for the construction of a back-up gas pipeline of the crossing of the Danube river to interconnect the gas transmission systems of the two countries. In line with the Romanian legislation the association INSPET D (Leader) and the company HABAU PPS Pipeline Systems Srl (associated company) has been selected to be the Contractor.

The construction of the back-up gas pipeline of the interconnection Bulgaria  Romania is planned to be completed in 214 days as of the opening of the construction site on the Bulgarian and Romanian territory by the signing of the Protocol of Findings Standard Form 15 for the construction on the territory of the Republic of Bulgaria and protocol on the acceptance on the territory of Romania. The length of the crossing is 2.1 km, and the maximum capacity of the interconnection is 1.5 bcm per year, Bulgartransgaz informed on its website.
A bookstore gets crafty after alcohol sales are okd; a library bookstore takes off; a Utah town gets booked; and more.

Friends of the Library Opens Airport Bookstore in Chattanooga: In a national first, Chattanoogas Friends of the Library is opening an unmanned 750 sq. ft. airport store to support the local library. It will sell used books on an honor system.

Booked on 25th Opening in July: Marcy Taylor Rizzi is opening a 1,080 sq. ft. new and used bookstore in Ogden, Utah. In addition to carrying general books, it will also stock books for English, literature, and philosophy courses at Weber State University.

Books & Brews Reopens in Hurricane, W.Va.: After getting a beer and wine license for the bookstore, owner Pet Pelley spent 18 days remodeling to emphasize the Brews part of the stores name with the addition of craft beer and wine.

Grand Re-Opening of Swallows Nest in Quincy, Mich.: Barb and Bill Swallow moved their the used bookstore earlier this week into the space next door.

Oaklands Book Zoo Closes: The 500 sq. ft. mostly used bookstore closed late last week after 13 years. To be fair, owner Erik Lyngen said, our rent did not go up. But it was always too high for this kind of business.

Books on Broadway in Costa Mesa Closing: Despite an infusion of cash from investor Bob Williams last May and downsizing to less than 500 sq. ft., the bookstore is closing. Williams, Sharon Patch, and Fiora Schoonover are holding a closing party on June 11. Attendees are asked to bring food and a bag or box to collect books for charity.
Long-time bookseller Rhett Jackson, who opened the Happy Bookseller in Columbia, S.C., with his wife, Betty, in 1975, died at Summit Hills Skilled Nursing Facility in Spartanburg on May 26. He was 91.

Jackson was elected president of the American Booksellers Association and was one of the founding members of the American Booksellers for Free Expression. In 2006, he received the ABA Lifetime Achievement Award and the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Lifetime Achievement Award.

Jackson was known as a civil rights leader and devout Methodist and chaired the South Carolina Methodist Merger Conference (formed to merge black and white conferences). He was a member and later the chairman of the board of trustees of Claflin College and in 1977 was awarded a Doctor of Humane Letters there.

For more than 20 years, Jackson served on the South Carolina State Board of Pardons and Parole. He received numerous awards, including the Order of the Palmetto and Doctor of Humane Letter degrees from both Wiley College in Marshall, Tex., and Columbia College in Columbia, S.C. His papers are at the Thomas Cooper Library at the University of South Carolina.

Services will be held at 2 oclock on Saturday, June 4, at Trenholm Road United Methodist Church in Columbia, S.C., with a reception immediately following. Prior to the service a private burial will be held at the church for the family. Donations may be made to the Alston Wilkes Society, 3510 Medical Drive, Columbia, S.C. 29203 or to the Mission Program of Trenholm Road United Methodist Church, 3401 Trenholm Road, Columbia, S.C. 29204.
From July 1, containers will be weighed before they are loaded onto ships to comply with new regulations. Photo by Reuters

Containers in Vietnam must be precisely weighed before they are transported by ship from July 1 to comply with new international regulations.

The Ministry of Transport has said the new regulation aims to ensure safe shipping. The circular will take effect on July 1, 2016, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trades newspaper.

To comply with a new regulation issued by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) that stipulates all containers need to be weighed before shipping from June 1, 2016, the Ministry of Transport has localized this regulation and instructed the Vietnam Maritime Administration to update this content with a new circular.

Compliance with the IMO regulation on container weight is compulsory for companies involved in international maritime transport.

Deputy Minister of Transport Nguyen Van Cong said that the new circular will comply with the IMOs regulations and tighten the load capacity of containers leaving Vietnams ports to ensure safe shipping and infrastructure.

Vietnam first looked at controlling container weights in 2014 when the Ministry of Transport issued a regulation on container safety.
As chaos reigned in Springfield May 14, in the run-up to tonights scheduled midnight adjournment, a plan to restore order and democracy to Illinois government by giving it back to the people has cleared a giant hurdle.

Unfortunately, at least one rather significant roadblock remains between those in power in our state capital who pull the strings, and the people demanding change. The battle shifts to the courts after Illinois State Board of Elections staff completed a week-long look at a random sample of Independent Map Amendment petitions. It showed that the grassroots effort to take put legislative mapmaking in the hands of an independent commission easily passed the test, with well over the 290,216 signatures required by law to get on the November ballot. All the champions of good government, including here in the Quad-Cities, should savor this unprecedented victory.

The citizens of Illinois have signaled very clearly with their signatures that they want legislative redistricting reform on the November ballot, said Dennis FitzSimons, chair of Independent Maps. The statewide petition collection was a massive undertaking, and its success was made possible by the dedication of countless volunteers and field staff. The huge number of petition signatures is yet another sign of the strong statewide support for an independent, transparent, and impartial process for drawing state legislative maps.

The next battleground

The focus turns to fighting the lawsuit filed by entrenched political interests looking to deny citizens the chance to change the system, Mr.FitzSimons says. We will aggressively defend the constitutionality and fairness of the Independent Map Amendment, and we are determined to give voters that choice in November.

The lawsuit by the Peoples Map political action committee is the laughably misnamed groups second attempt to get the court to thwart voters will. It was successful in getting an earlier amendment declared unconstitutional.

Reformers have never been this close to the ballot before and thanks to some finetuning leaders have made in response to that 2014 opinion, they are confident the latest objections by these proxies for the House Speaker Michael Madigan will be rejected. Not that his name is anywhere to be found amid the lawsuits plaintiffs.

The man who has led his House to overwhelming Democrat majorities over four decades by engineering a system in which 97 percent of incumbents are reelected, wants us to believe he has nothing to do with the case.

Madigans fingerprints

You be the judge.

Consider that the lawyer for Peoples Map is general counsel for the state Democratic Party, which Speaker Madigan serves as chair. Or that you can set your election calendar by the sham votes his well-disciplined lawmakers orchestrate to approve constitutional mapmaking changes that have zero chance of ever getting on the ballot.

Then, there is Steve Browns denial that his boss, the speaker, is behind the suit. Theyre making it look like goody two-shoes reform, he said. We know better. If that doesnt raise the hackles of every voter, what will?

Mr. FitzSimons was spot on when he called the suit a struggle for power. It is Illinois politicians struggling to retain the power to manipulate elections versus citizens demanding reform. We knew this lawsuit would be the response to our submission of 570,000 petition signatures from Illinois voters, and we are ready to aggressively defend the constitutionality and fairness of the Independent Map Amendment.

If you havent joined the fight, please commit to doing so today. You can make a donation at transaxt.com/Donate/T4LFEC/SupportIndependentMaps/ or mail your check payable to Independent Maps, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 902, Chicago, IL 60611. And, of course, if the amendment survives this court fight, get ready to persuade your friends and neighbors to back it in November. Youll have plenty of ammunition.

Start with the politically driven dysfunction on full display in a paralyzed state government that cant or wont agree on one years spending plan even as a new fiscal year knocks on the door.
A puzzle with hundreds of pieces can take hours to put together. The task might become frustrating for some, but for Terri Reinartz, it led to peace, patience and a distraction from breast cancer.



Doing puzzles was a mental break, the Davenport resident said.



When she was growing up, her family often gathered around the dining-room table to put puzzles together. Today, her involvement with puzzles continues, but this time she's using them to help others. She gives puzzles to people undergoing cancer treatments with the hope that working on them will do for them what it did for her. Terri calls the gifts Healing Puzzles for Cancer Patience.

During her cancer experience, she said, people kept doing things for me, so I felt the need to do for someone else. I created photos that reflected my cancer experience, and then had them made into puzzles.

The puzzles are 10 inches by 16 inches and have 250 pieces. You can do them in a little over an hour, Terri said.



The first puzzle Terri shared was an image of the six scarves she wore after she lost her hair during her cancer treatment and a palm cross she carried during all of her treatments and appointments. The image symbolized what I had gone through, she said.



Since then, Terri has created a series of puzzles that are centered around butterflies. After someone mentioned they saw my puzzle in a waiting room at a local cancer center, I felt I needed to come up with more puzzles, she said. Butterflies symbolize hope and change. I have been changed by the whole cancer experience -- in a good way. It has to do with spirituality.



Terri, 61, is this years Honorary Survivor Chair for the 2016 Komen Quad Cities Race for the Cure. The race will begin at 8 a.m. on Saturday, June 11, at the iWireless Center in Moline. Since the inception of the race in 1990, more than $6 million has been raised locally for breast cancer education, health services and research.



A six-year breast cancer survivor, Terri was diagnosed during a routine mammogram in 2010. Her doctor advised her to have genomic testing done to study the genetics of the cancer itself, in order to help determine her risk of recurrence. The results indicated her risk to be mid-range for the cancer coming back. She was treated with a lumpectomy, chemotherapy and radiation.



Terri was 55 when she was diagnosed. I thought, 'Im healthy, younger, so why not fight it now and maybe I wont have to do it again?'" she said. Her message to all women is that early detection is key to survival.



Her surgeon informed her of the diagnosis while she was on a business trip in North Carolina. I wrote down the diagnosis and went into a fog, she said. I thought, 'How can this happen? Every year I have a mammogram, exam, and do what the doctors tell me to do.'"



Terri finished her treatments right before her daughters wedding, and returned to work within seven months of her diagnosis.



Mame Sage, of Bettendorf, nominated Terri for the Honorary Survivor Chair role. Terri is a woman who exudes strength, positivity, Christian beliefs, and warmth. She is ready to offer knowledge and support to anyone around her, especially a cancer survivor, she said.



Terris puzzles have opened my eyes to a new way of coping with cancer. The pieces of the puzzle connect to give a spiritual meaning to our journey.
Today is Tuesday, May 31, the 152nd day of 2016. There are 214 days left in the year.

1866 -- 150 years ago: Our fellow citizen Henry Farnum and family returned a few days ago after a lengthy visit in Europe.

1891 -- 125 years ago: A fire caused damage yesterday afternoon in a barn at the rear of Henry Darts Sons wholesale house.

1916 -- 100 years ago: W.J.H. Derry, elevator operator at the courthouse, was held prisoner in the machine for an hour this morning when it jammed.

1941 -- 75 years ago: Lloyd Schwiebert, Moline attorney, has been elected president of the Augustana College Alumni Association.

1966 -- 50 years ago: Rock Island Countys three largest taxpayers set a record today for their combined tax payment in the county with checks to County Treasurer Roy McGovern totaling $2,688,872.64. The payment covered 1965 personal and capital stock taxes in full and the first half of real estate taxes for 1965. The three companies are Iowa-Illinois Gas & Electric Co., Deere & Co. and International Harvester Co.

1991 -- 25 years ago: Johnny Carson, the silver-haired king of late-night television, often has been ambiguous about when hell step down as host of NBCs "Tonight Show." But no more. He said, "My last show is going to be May 22, 1992."
Submitted press release

The Institute of Noetic Sciences Quad Cities (IONS-QC) Community Group will meet on Thursday June 9, 6 p.m., at the Fairmount Branch of the Davenport Public Library, 3000 N. Fairmount St., Davenport. The program will be The Nature of Parallel Reality by Robert Dubiel. No reservations are required.

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Also attached to this e-mail is the poster and newsletter promoting this program and the IONSQC Newsletter for June 9. For information concerning this event, contact Christine at 563-332-7259 (H) or 563-332-1600 ext 104 (W).

Cell phone number is 563-505-1350

Website for IONS International: www.noetic.org

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All are welcome to attend this free event.
The citizens of Moline have the inalienable right to freedom to work, live in Rock Island County, rear a family, own property and are protected by men and women who serve in the police and fire departments.

This is the core of the Midwest and its people. The city has been blessed with beautiful natural wooded areas, some being 30-plus acres. One will find extensive areas of ravines and hillside where there are 200 year old trees, wild flowers such as Trillium, Dutchmans Britches, Jack in the Pulpit, Wild Ferns and Ginger flourishing. The list of vegetation is endless.

The wooded areas hold a base for healthy fauna and a positive ecosystem; transmitting carbon dioxide-CO2 into oxygen-O2. Our air becomes cleaner to breathe. Tree saplings continue to grow and natures cycle of life repeats itself year after year, providing destructive outside elements do not intervene.

One of the current outside elements is an over abundance of whitetail deer. When 14 deer have been seen from time to time in ones yard eating the shrubs, plants and landscaping as they linger, this is not a preferred or joyous sight. My house is a farmhouse and is 150 years old. Please do not suggest I move. I have lived here for 40 years.

When outside negative and nuisance elements come into our life we are forced to solve the problem. For example: To avoid the deadly Emerald Ash Bore we inoculate our Ash tree or remove the dead or dying tree so the Ash Bore will not spread to healthy trees. Fungus on our flowering cherry tree must be sprayed with an anti fungicide. Black miniscule deer ticks which cause Lyme disease on humans and animals must be addressed, and the list continues.

When the problem of a wild but increasingly domesticated animal (such as deer) take up residence within the city and on our property causing massive destruction to scores and scores of landscaping, plus plundering of the wooded areas near by; we go to our city leaders. In addition we seek outside professional sources for assistance to eliminate this nuisance.

According to Illinois state law, feeding the deer intentionally is highly illegal. This information was provided by Darryl Coates, Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

Moliners, this Deer Nuisance Permit is issued by the DNR (Division of Natural Resources) an Illinois state agency and it is a legal way to immediately address the deer population. This permit costs the citizens of Moline and the city nothing. These permits are almost impossible to obtain and are given in extreme cases.

Educated people are informed people. Those who live by using glittering generalities, negative and aggressive inaccurate comments about people and events do not hold acceptable behaviors.

Please take the time to assess this problem. Use reasoning and with the correct research we can rectify problems. Total understanding of issues is the key to successful coexistence.

Even though we have the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, lets use this freedom given to us by our founding forefathers to solve issues. We the people are hurt by gossip, irrational speech, embellished facts and hearsay which all breeds discontent.
Tomorrow, Commissioner for Energy, Kadri Simson, will represent the Commission at the Energy Council meeting in Luxembourg.
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Rated 4 out of 5 by 120 reviewers.

Rated 5 out of 5 by Matt in Boynton Very pleased with the shark rocket This is a very easy to use Vacuum, it is also very reliable. When a small piece of plastic cracked they replaced the piece immediately, no fee to me. It's not how they treat you when they want you to purchase something, it is HOW THEY TREAT YOU AND STAND BEHIND THEIR PRODUCT WITHOUT ANY CASH COMING THEIR WAY? OTHER THAN A NON PAID POSITIVE REVIEW OF THEIR VACUUM PRDUCTS AND THEIR SERVICE AFTER THE FACT? 01-07-17

Rated 5 out of 5 by birdysfriend super wow lets talk super villains....dog fur and dog fur/dust covered ceiling fans. i hate to clean and anytime i can find something that makes it easier i will go for it. i have a dyson cant complain but it is not for detail cleaning or dusting etc, its for vacuuming...didnt want anything cordless, please i need power. so when i saw the 'sharkie' i went for it. i am in love, i can hold this over my head and clean everything. i can use it on a step ladder to clean the ceiling corners (12ft ceilings) and a ceiling fan that swings from the top of the ceiling. how does dog fur get that high!! love my sharkie, i have even bought the big shark for my hard wood floors, using the tools on it is easier than using the dyson. ps: i am 60 years old w/some arthritis in my hands and i still have no problem toting or using this vacuum. 12-27-16

Rated 5 out of 5 by seriously19 Love My Shark Great vacuum. Great price. Great suction. I bought this about a year ago and have not had one issue or one regret. Fantastic 12-04-16

Rated 5 out of 5 by Monkee I returned it but............... I returned this because after I got it I received another kind as a gift, but I don't like the competitor one that I received (I won't tell my friend), so I am ordering this one because I respect the Shark name I have an upright and love it. I am so sorry I returned it!!!!! 10-27-16

Rated 5 out of 5 by LompocSky Quality Product This was a good buy. Every Shark product I have purchased has been of excellent quality. 10-23-16

Rated 4 out of 5 by Fluffy12 Great Auto Vac I purchased this vacuum particularly for the small accessories and for cleaning my car and am so happy I did. I was disappointed in the lack of suction power when I attached the small crevice tool so I removed the tool and did a good job in all of the small places (including vents) with the end of the small hose tool. You have to add a couple of connectors and the small hose to the main vacuum before you attach the small crevice tool, and with all of that attached, there's very little suction. The Motorized Pet Tool is, however, amazing (it attaches directly to the main vac). My auto interior is dark gray and my dog is white and the tool easily removed the hair (especially on the mats). I also vacuumed my small throw rugs in the house. I love the 'light' on the vac, that it is electric so didn't have to rush before the battery ran down, and I wasn' t feeding quarters to a bad vac! Did the whole job in 15 minutes in my own garage and the car is 'detailed' (cleaner than when I purchased it). I have a ball Dyson and a Bissell Feather Weight (both from QVC) for home use, and this Shark Rocket perfectly completes my vacuuming needs. Thanks QVC! 10-09-16

Rated 2 out of 5 by Nurse nancy Disappointed Shark puts out really great products, but this one was a disappointment! The suction, particularly with small diameter attachments was very weak. I also found the unit itself to be very cumbersome. Two black storage bags were included but could not find info as to what they were for. Larger bag definitely did not fit the vacuum itself, so I suppose it was for attachments. The attachments were well thought out, but just didn't work. 10-09-16

Rated 5 out of 5 by VAShopper757 Nifty little vac. I purchased this vac so that I would not have to haul my big vac around when cleaning, and I'm glad that I did. It is lightweight, easy to maneuver, and the attachments are quite efficient and easy to attach and remove. I was surprised and very pleased with the suction--it even cleaned out the tracks in my sliding patio door with ease. Not only does it take up so little storage space, but it also is quite an attractive appliance that I don't mind leaving out for others to see. I highly recommend this vac for anyone who wants to save time and money. It is well worth the purchase price. 10-05-16
The first vehicle to be completed is a Vario Bahn, 14 of which are being built at Stadler's plant in Pankow, Berlin. The 32m-long LRVs have three double doors and one single on each side of the five-section vehicle.

Stadler is also supplying a batch of 12 Tango tram-trains which it will manufacture at its factory in Altenrhein, Switzerland. These 39m-long vehicles will have a different suspension system from the Vario Bahn LRVs to allow comfortable operation at 100km/h.

Aarhus Letbanen is building a 12km light rail line with 17 stations through the city centre and a 98km tram-train service to Grenaa and Odder with 33 stops. The project is scheduled for completion by the middle of 2017.
While the sharing economy, as it is popularly known, is rapidly becoming a partisan issue on the federal level, Americans of all political leaningsand especially millennialslove these new services. This is the main finding of a new, first of its kind Pew Research Center poll that asked 4,787 Americans how the sharing economy, or Internet-enabled economy, affects their lives.

These serviceseverything from eBay, TaskRabbit, and Uber, to Airbnb, Rent the Runway, and GoFundMehave a common theme, as they are on-demand, shared, and collaborative. The proliferation of peer-to-peer online interaction has rapidly decreased the costs of finding goods and services, and review systems empower consumers and increase trust.

The online-economy service that is receiving the most attention from politicians is unquestionably Uber. While Washington Republicans cannot praise the company enough, their Democratic peers do not share this enthusiasm. Earlier this month, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said Uber is [fighting] against local rules designed to create a level playing field between themselves and their taxi competitors and relies on extremely low wages for drivers.

The Democratic candidates for president also have dim views of Uber. Bernie Sanders told Bloomberg, I am not a great fan of Uberyou can quote me on that. The main reason why he has serious problems with Uber is that it is unregulated. Hillary Clinton argues that Uber succeeds by misclassifying its drivers as independent contractors rather than employees. On these points, Pew finds that Americans views are the polar opposite. A solid 66 percent of people who use ridesharing think that Uber drivers are independent contractors, whereas only 23 percent see them as Uber employees. Outside Capitol Hill, Americans enjoy the flexible, individualized, and mobile work that the online economy embodies.

Americans know that their Uber drivers show up and appears happy to take them where they want to go. Uber and Lyft do not have problems attracting drivers or customers. Drivers are not oppressed, and many enjoy the option of part-time work that is otherwise not available. Half of Uber drivers drive for less than 10 hours a week and 80 percent of Lyft drivers work with the company for under 15 hours a week. Additionally, nearly 60 percent of ridesharing users believe that Uber should not have to follow outdated taxi regulations, compared with less than a third of users who say that the company should have to. This overwhelming sentiment against heavy-handed regulation was shared by respondents who identified as liberal or as Democrats.

Americans who use these services realize that there are two ways to, as Warren argued, level the playing field. One is to apply antiquated regulatory requirements to new technologies (as Austin, Texas recently did by requiring fingerprint background checks for ridesharing drivers). The far superior option is to embrace innovation by getting rid of pointless requirements that tend to protect established businesses rather than consumers (including taxi medallion systems that limit the supply of available cabs).

The growing Democratic opposition to Uber and the online economy as a whole is a losing political strategy. Potential young voters (ages 18 to 29) are nearly five times more likely to use ridesharing as are Americans who are at least 50 years old. Furthermore, only 18 percent of millennials have faith in government regulators to do what is best for the public. It takes a lot to get young people to vote, but if Washington politicians get between millennials and their Ubers, there will be major consequences in November.

This article originally appeared on Forbes

Jared Meyer is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and the author of the forthcoming monograph Uber-Positive: Why Americans Love the Sharing Economy. Follow him on Twitter here.

Interested in real economic insights? Want to stay ahead of the competition? Each weekday morning, e21 delivers a short email that includes e21 exclusive commentaries and the latest market news and updates from Washington. Sign up for the e21 Morning eBrief.
The World Bank has agreed to provide a $500 million seed capital loan with a seven-year repayment moratorium to kick-start Indian Railways' (IR) station redevelopment program, which will be financed through a combination of intergovernmental agreements and public-private partnerships.

IR has already signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with French National Railways (SNCF) concerning the redevelopment of Ambala and Ludhiana stations in the north, while talks for similar agreements are unde rway with potential partner railways from Australia, Belgium, Germany, and China.

Draft tender documents for the modernization of 400 category A1 and A stations were published on IRs website last month, and bids for the first group of stations will be submitted in June.

Over the past two years, IR has signed MoUs with railways in 14 countries, and several rounds of discussions have been held on station modernization strategies have been completed. The South Korean government has reportedly offered to invest $754.7 milliion in the redevelopment of New Delhi station.

Last year IR established the Station Development Corporation and recruited officials from two public sector bodies to manage activities.

As the program involves multi-departmental and multi-sectoral cooperation, the Indian government has decided to set up a new and independent body to undertake station redevelopment projects. This organization will not be headed by an IR official and will have representatives of all stakeholders in the execution and management of projects.

In recent months the World Bank has held several workshops and meetings on Indias station re-development potential, highlighting examples of successful station projects elsewhere in the world.
Against the backdrop of an increasingly assertive China and a highly-provocative North Korea, President Barack Obama attended the G-7 summit in Ise-Shima, followed by a personal trip to Hiroshima, where he was accompanied by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. In what was sure to be his last official trip to Japan, the visit was an opportunity for Obama to reinforce the substantial momentum that he and his Japanese counterparts have brought to the relationship over the past eight years.

At the same time, Washington and Tokyo have moved to actively shape and reinforce the values, norms, institutions, and regional order that have served to enable the Asia-Pacific to emerge as an engine of growth and bastion of freedom and democracy over the past nearly 40 years. Forecasting where the relationship will head after Obama leaves office requires understanding three key points.

First, while there has been outside criticism of Japan's security policies in recent years, this has mostly come from China, which insists that anything Japan does in the defense realm is inherently illegitimate and aimed at undoing the victories of the anti-fascist war. Despite this Chinese talking point, which has enjoyed widespread acceptance in some corners of the Western media, Japan is not re-militarizing, a phrase that is both inaccurate and misleading. Japan has had Self-Defense Forces for decades and, like all countries, retains the inherent right of individual and collective self-defense.

Moreover, while neighboring China's military budgets have ballooned by double-digits for more than two decades, Japan has largely maintained the one percent level of defense spending and the defensively-oriented military posture that it has had since the early 1990s. While North Korea proceeds with development of a diversified nuclear and ballistic missile complex, Japan has seen a growing share of its own defense spending go towards personnel costs and maintenance. As its communist and authoritarian neighbors increasingly seek the capacity to hold at risk the status quo powers of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States, Japan has not sought to field power projection capabilities. Instead, it has focused on layered missile defenses that would seek to frustrate any efforts to coerce it by using missiles and has only recently begun developing a small-scale amphibious force to defend or retake its remote islands if they were seized by an adversary.

Second, contrary to interpretations that unfairly and inaccurately characterize Japan as a free-rider or cheap-rider at the expense of the United States, the country in fact pays most of the costs of hosting U.S. forces and, as a consequence, it is cheaper for the United States to base out of Japan than it would be to bring U.S. forces home to facilities in the United States. Additionally, U.S. forces in Japan are integral to the defense of U.S. ally South Korea and would also be a critical part of any effort to defend Taiwan were China to attempt to attack or coerce its neighbor.

In support of a greater regional role, Japan has taken a number of steps that have made the alliance even more flexible and valuable in recent years, including establishing a National Security Council and passing a National Security Strategy. Tokyo has also articulated a vision of its role in the regional order premised on making proactive contributions to peace through efforts aimed at building partner capacity among regional states in Southeast Asia, including through the use of strategic official development assistance and liberalized rules permitting the export of defense articles.

Third, a number of critically important next steps remain to be taken. With China, Russia, and North Korea pressing ahead with efforts aimed at remaking the international order to their liking using coercion and military force, Japan will need to make additional reforms to its intelligence gathering, analysis, and dissemination apparatus; make further improvements to its space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities; procure additional missile defenses; invest more in resiliency and reconstitution capabilities for its airfields and naval installations; continue to work at improving jointness among its services and with its U.S. ally; refocus its defense industrial export drive in the wake of the failure to land a submarine export contract with close partner Australia; fully resource and execute its plans to shift assets and attention to the defense of the country's Southwest Island chain; and decide whether it needs its own offensive capabilities in order to enhance deterrence through an ability to punish those who might strike it.

It will also need to work to improve diplomatic ties with Seoul so it can conclude a bilateral military intelligence-sharing agreement with South Korea. And though Japan's defense budgets are unlikely to trend upwards dramatically, it will be important to sustain the Abe administration's commitment to continued measured growth in military spending to meet the country's defense needs, even as Tokyo seeks to squeeze further efficiencies out of its existing military capabilities.

Collectively, the reforms Japan has undertaken have enabled it to cooperate with the United States in new domains, giving it new capabilities to resist armed and paramilitary coercion and empowering it to play a more active role in shaping the regional Indo-Asia-Pacific security environment in ways that are stability-enhancing. Although the legacies of authoritarian militarist rule, wartime defeat, and occupation continue to shape substantial parts of Japan's national debate on defense affairs, a cohort of serious, patriotic, and most importantly, democratically-oriented Japanese politicians and thought-leaders from across the political spectrum are working to ensure that the country reshapes its policies in a direction that will keep the country safe and position it to further support and benefit from President Obama's rebalance to the Asia-Pacific.

In light of recent actions by Russia, North Korea, and China, Tokyo is sure to continue to emphasize the importance of the alliance in the years ahead. As one former leading Japanese ambassador has noted, the greatest source of anxiety for Tokyo today stems from calls by some in the United States to reduce or terminate the alliance system that has preserved the peace, enabled prosperity, and underwritten the spread of a rule of law-based liberal democratic order in the Asia-Pacific over the past several decades. If President Obama can find ways to further enhance U.S.-Japan security cooperation and deepen the two nations' commitments to each other and to the existing international order, his visit will make a lasting contribution to freedom, development, and global peace.

Scott W. Harold is the associate director of the RAND Center for Asia Pacific Policy, a political scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and a member of the Pardee RAND Graduate School faculty.

This commentary originally appeared on The Cipher Brief on May 31, 2016. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis.
In March, the terrorist group known as the Islamic State struck in the heart of Europe for the second time in six months. The attack in Brussels caught European security forces flat footed; even though there were indications that attackerswho were trained in Syriawere poised to strike.

The Islamic State's core in Iraq and Syria is now under intense pressure. It is time for the campaign against it to put increased attention on countering the group's pipeline for international terrorismthe fighters who might return to threaten their home countries. The group has generated a heightened terrorist threat to the West and to all the countries from which its members come due to its ability to vet and train the 30,000 or so foreign fighters who have traveled to Iraq and Syria, and to redeploy them to their home countries. The current threat might at least equal what al Qaida could muster at its peak.

Competing proposals from U.S. politicians to commit thousands of U.S. ground troops to Iraq and Syria, or to vigorously police and patrol Muslim communities in the West simply do not address the Islamic State's ability to infiltrate the group's trained foreign fighters back into their home countries. Targeting training camps in Islamic State territory, as well as monitoring and detecting the group's returnees from Syria, are increasingly needed to address this threat.

In an effort to inform Western policy and actions against the Islamic State, our research team recently released a multi-year study of one of the most comprehensive sets of the group's internal documents ever put togetherincluding memos, spreadsheets, and correspondence. Our analysis illuminated long-practiced Islamic State effort to administer its resources and territory. Its territorial control gives the group the flexibility to perpetuate terrorism both in the Middle East and worldwide while weathering the heavy battlefield losses it is now suffering in Iraq and Syria.

Our study suggests that, although necessary, targeting individual leaders will not be sufficient to defeat the Islamic State. The group has survived one-off personnel losses for years by institutionalizing its bureaucracy and decentralizing its decisionmaking to its mid-level leaders and field commanders. Rather, targeting the Islamic State's resourceslike manpowerwill be the key to defeating the group. Local forces and the U.S.-led coalition are already taking back territory, as well as targeting the group's financial resources, and the Obama administration has announced a line of effort against foreign fighters that focuses on countering extremism at home and building international cooperation to curb foreign fighter flows. But the highest levels of government should mobilize the U.S. interagency and the international coalition to develop a dedicated line of direct military and intelligence operations against Islamic State operatives....

The remainder of this commentary is available on nationalinterest.org.

Benjamin Bahney is a member of the adjunct staff, Patrick B. Johnston is a political scientist and Howard J. Shatz is a senior economist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation.

This commentary originally appeared on The National Interest on May 31, 2016. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis.
European online video multi-channel network (MCN) Zoomin TV has integrated its content catalogue with VSNs MediaBank in the first major agreement of the recently launched marketplace.





Presented at NATPE , MediaBank enables users to buy and sell audiovisual content, adding features like regional copyright management and coding or decoding into different formats.Zoomin TV will make MediaBank available for over 260 videos per month between one to three minutes in duration, as well as all the raw material. Through the deal, the MCN aims to empower its studio programmes and expand its digital presence around the world.We produce more than 400 global videos in 22 languages that are published in over 2,000 Premium sites and generate more than 2.2 billion views per month, said Zoomin TV publisher manager for Spain, Gracia Jimenez. For that we count on a network of more than 3,000 video journalists around the world that generates a unique and exclusive content.MediaBank was born to get producers to monetise their content safely, while buyers find easier to search and select content for their networks, said Carlos Gonzalez, sales manager, VSN, during the platforms presentation.
Millicom has launched the video-on-demand (VOD) and streaming platform Tigo Play in Paraguay, targeting on-the-go video consumption.





After premiering the service in Latin America by launching in Guatemala in April, Millicom has now introduced Tigo Play to Paraguay. The platform, which cannot be subscribed to as a stand-alone service, is offered for free for Tigo Star pay-TV subscribers. Tigo Play targets connected and mobile devices with a VOD catalogue and live programming from AXN, Cinemax Go, E! Now, Fox Play, Fox Play+, ESPN Play, HBO Go, History Play and Canal Sony.Millicoms LATAM strategy is to offer over-the-top (OTT) and mobile services to increase data consumption. Indeed, Tigo Plays launch in Paraguay arrives a month after the telco started offering 4G in the country.Costa Rica will be the next territory to welcome Tigo Play, but Millicom also plans to launch the VOD service in Bolivia, Colombia, El Salvador and Honduras.
Viacom has inked a renewed carriage deal with US cable MSO Cox Communications.



The agreement includes carriage of 22 Viacom channels, including SpongeBob SquarePants outlet Nickelodeon, MTV and Comedy Central, and premium network Epix. Cox subscribers will have access to an expanded selection of on-demand, full-length programming across all platforms, including television and mobile devices. The terms of the deal have not been announced.Cox has consistently been a leader in offering advanced features and services to their subscribers, and Viacom's networks are favourites among those audiences who consume programming on digital devices, whenever and wherever they choose, said Viacom executive chairman and CEO Philippe Dauman. Viacom and Cox have worked together for many years to provide industry-leading offerings, and are pleased to continue our strong relationship for many years to come.The news comes as the media giants leadership continues a throwdown battle for control of the company . But, trouble at the top hasnt hampered core business: Viacom signed a renewed carriage agreement with another major TV distributor, DISH Network, last month.
Shanghai Media Group (SMG) has confirmed a commitment with SPB TV for further co-operation in broadcasting Chinese content worldwide via the latters mobile TV application.





We are glad to continue our cooperation with SMG in order to provide our viewers with interesting content from China. This new signed agreement will allow us to provide not only live content, but VOD as well, and to do so worldwide via our applications, which are available to more than 53 million people, said SPB TV CEO general director Kirill Filippov.The agreement to broadcast SMGs VOD content worldwide comes a year after the companies agreed to transfer the rights for live broadcasting of its Dragon TV International channel to SPB TV. SPB TV started broadcasting content from China in 2013 with Xinhua information agencys TV channels CNC World Chinese and CNC English.Two years later SPB TV signed an agreement with CNTV, Chinese Internet-television (CCTV tele-holdings affiliate) for broadcasting its CCTV-4 (Chinese International), CCTV-9 Documentary, CCTV NEWS, CCTV Francais, CCTV Espanol, CCTV Russian and CCTV Arabian channels.
Art collector appeals against acquittal of prominent Russian art expert Basner

MOSCOW, May 31 (RAPSI)  St. Petersburg art collector Andrei Vasilyev has filed an appeal against acquittal of prominent Russian art expert Yelena Basner in a fraud case, RIA Novosti reported on Tuesday.

On May 17, the Dzerzhinsky District Court of St. Petersburg declared Basner not guilty to fraud. Basner was investigated over a painting, In restaurant, attributed to Boris Grigoryev, a well-known Russian artist of the first half of the 20th century. The painting, which was allegedly examined by Basner in 2009 and sold for $250,000, was proven to be a fake in 2011.

Basner, a former employee of the Bukowskis auction house as well as the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, was arrested on January 31, 2014. She was charged with large-scale fraud. On February 5, 2014, she was placed under house arrest. In January 2015, a court in St. Petersburg released Basner from house arrest.

According to investigators, in summer 2009 Mikhail Aranson, who is now wanted by police, in collaboration with unknown co-conspirators invited Basner to the criminal conspiracy of selling the fake painting. Investigators allege that Basner made up a sham story about the paintings history and found the buyer, a publisher Leonid Shumakov. He, convinced of the paintings authenticity, proposed his close friend, St. Petersburg art collector Andrei Vasilyev, to buy the painting.

Eventually, Vasilyev bought the fake painting for  180,000 (13.2 million rubles), whereas its real price was 12,000 rubles ( 163).

Prosecutors earlier asked the court to sentence Basner to 4 years in prison, impose a fine of 500,000 rubles ($7,600) on her and order to pay the collector 16.5 million rubles ($250,000) in compensation.
Convicted defendant in Moscow metro accident case pays damages to victims

MOSCOW, May 31 (RAPSI) - Anatoly Kruglov, employee of a repair contractor convicted in the case over Moscow metro crash that left 24 people dead, has partially paid the victims compensation for moral injury, RAPSI reported from the Moscow City Court on Tuesday.

The court is considering an appeal lodged against the sentence. Defense lawyer asked the court to attack to the case a receipt for partial repayment of compensation for moral harm to two injured persons. However, the lawyer did not disclose the compensatory amount.

Three metro cars derailed on a section between the Park Pobedy and Slavyansky Bulvar metro stations in the west on the city during peak commute hours on July 15, 2014.

Anatoly Kruglov, Deputy Chief of a subcontractor of the repair project, Alexei Trofimov, a senior executive in the Metro's repair department, the enterprise's track supervisor Valery Bashkatov and his assistant Yury Gordov have been found guilty of violation of traffic safety rules and underground operating rules that entailed death of two and more people.

Kruglov, Trofimov and Bashkatov were sentenced to 5 .5 years in prison each. Gordov was given a 6-year prison sentence.
Vital blood service for millions of Ethiopians will improve thanks to a new cooperative effort between the United States and Ethiopia.

Ethiopian Minister of Health Dr. Kesetebirhan Admasu and USAID Ethiopia Mission Director Dennis Weller led a groundbreaking ceremony in Addis Ababa on May4th, to kick off construction for the National Blood Transfusion Service Center. The new center will provide the Ministry of Health with additional capacity to receive donations, screen and process blood products, and distribute life-saving products to serve approximately 26 million Ethiopians.

The 5,300 square meter facility will house the administrative headquarters for blood transfusion services, providing a permanent home for offices, training, meetings, and document storage. One of the primary reasons for strengthening and expanding blood transfusion services in Ethiopia is to reduce the prevalence of HIV in the blood supply. The new center will enable the staff to properly screen blood for HIV and other infections after it is collected.

Speaking at the event, Mr. Weller said, A key reason for improving blood transfusion services in Ethiopia is to reduce the number of maternal deaths. Hemorrhaging continues to be one of the leading causes of maternal mortality in Ethiopia, and many of these deaths can be prevented through blood transfusions.

Mr. Weller commended the Ministry of Healths contributions to the many months of planning, design, and the beginning of the construction of the new National Blood Transfusion Service Center.

The capacity of this facility will enable the ministry to meet more than 25 percent of the World Health Organizations recommended annual blood collection goals for Ethiopia. Additionally, the center will oversee the distribution of blood products, which will expand access to blood transfusion services throughout rural and urban areas of Ethiopia.

The $5 million construction cost is funded by the U.S. Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR. USAID is expected to complete construction of the facility in two years.

The United States is proud to work with its long-time partner Ethiopia to help improve this a other health services for the people of Ethiopia.
Russian Constitutional Court rules to limit powers of Platon toll system operator

ST. PETERSBURG, May 31 (RAPSI, Mikhail Telekhov)  The Constitutional Court of Russia has found powers granted to the operator of Platon Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) system unconstitutional and has ordered to limit them, RAPSI reported from the courtroom on Tuesday.

According to official description of the Platon system, it was introduced to facilitate and process the collection of toll charges offsetting the damage caused to Russian Federal Highways by vehicles exceeding 12 tons of gross vehicle weight. All owners of such vehicles have to register in the system, install specialized equipment or fill in special route card. Failure to observe these rules shall entail administrative liability. All funds are transferred by the system operator to the federal budget, and go into the Federal road fund.

Several lawmakers found this system unjust and asked the Constitutional Court to make its judgement. They believe that such system is, in fact, a tax and should be regulated by the federal legislation instead of government ordinance.

The Constitutional Court has ruled that government may introduce additional tolls for those who exploit the federal roads more than others. The court ruled that such system is not a tax.

However, the Court has also ruled that excessive encumbrance of entrepreneurs brought by this system is unacceptable, noting that currently tolls collected by this system constitute the main financial costs for businessmen involved in overland cargo delivery.

The Court ruled that raising tolls over the limit set by the governmental ordinance is unacceptable.
McDonald's appeal against ruling in dispute with Moscow authorities dismissed

MOSCOW, May 31 (RAPSI)  The Ninth Commercial Court of Appeals has upheld a lower courts refusal to collect 51.8 million rubles ($784,000) from the Moscow Department of City Property in favor of Moscow - McDonald's for construction of a real estate object, according to court records.

The court therefore dismissed an appeal filed by the company against the ruling delivered by the Moscow Commercial Court on February 25.

According to McDonalds, the company had constructed a three-store extension for the building located at Bolshoy Nikolopeskovskiy per., 15 and paid the necessary costs on its own. The construction was carried out in accordance with the regulations established by the Moscow authorities. However, earlier the Moscow Commercial Court has ruled that property rights for the constructed real estate object should go to the city of Moscow.

The court ruled that the plaintiff had not constructed a new real estate object, but merely carried out renovation and reconstruction of an existing building and extended its size without proper documents. Also, according to the court, the plaintiff failed to provide any evidence of the costs it paid for the construction of the extension. The court dismissed the report on the market value of the real estate property as evidence in the case.

In January 2015, the Supreme Court of Russian Federation refused to revise rulings of lower courts dismissing the Moscow-McDonalds companys claim for property rights to some non-residential premises in Moscow.
British sanctions on Rosneft lawful - EU Court of Justice Advocate General

MOSCOW, May 31 (RAPSI)  Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union has presented an opinion proposing the court to confirm the lawfulness of actions the British authorities had undertaken with regard to sanctions against Russian Rosneft oil and gas company.

Yet in February 2015, the High Court of Justice of England and Wales referred a number of questions concerning a Rosneft lawsuit against Her Majestys Treasury, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, and the Financial Conduct Authority to the European Court of Justice in Luxemburg. Rosneft challenged the interpretation and implementation of sectoral sanctions the EU had imposed on Russia. In particular, the Russian corporation maintains that UK has too broadly defined the term financial assistance by including the processing of payments by banks and other financial institutions and prohibiting the issuing of, or other dealings with, Global Depositary Receipts in respect of shares which were issued before September 12, 2014, and raises the question of correct interpretation of the terms shale and waters deeper than 150 meters in EU documents.

In its turn, the High Court turned to the EU Court of Justice seeking its guidance with regard to the question if the EU Court has jurisdiction to give a preliminary ruling on the validity of EU legislation concerning sanctions and to the extent that it has jurisdiction, if it is contrary to the principles of legal certainty for Britain to impose criminal penalties for infringements on the sanctions, as well as the validity of interpretation of the EU restrictive measures in UK.

In the opinion presented to the EU Court of Justice on Tuesday, the Advocate General proposes that the court answer the questions as follows: the EU Court of Justice has jurisdiction to give its preliminary ruling on the validity of EU documents concerning restrictive measures and rule that there had been revealed nothing to affect the validity of EU decisions with regard to sanctions as implemented by the British authorities.

Last summer, the US banned the supply of offshore hydrocarbon production equipment to Russia, including for oil production in the Arctic. The European Union later banned their manufacturers from exporting oil industry technology and equipment to Russia, specifically for deep seabed mining, Arctic production and shale oil projects.

In October 2014, Rosneft lodged a separate application with the ECJ along with four other Russian companies, in which it contested the legality of sanctions under European law.
Russian billionaire asks court to oblige Yandex to delete information about him

Context Russian lower house approves fines for refusal to delete data on Internet

ST. PETERSBURG, May 31 (RAPSI, Mikhail Telekhov)  A court in St. Petersburg will review six lawsuits filed by Russian billionaire Yevgeny Prigozhin against Yandex seeking to delete information about him in accordance with the law, RAPSI learned in the court chancellery for civil cases on Tuesday.

The law on penalties for refusal of search engines to delete links to unreliable information sources at the request of individuals took effect on January 1, 2016.

This law obligates companies providing Internet search engine services to delete links to unlawful, unreliable and irrelevant information about a person from the search results if the person in question files a claim with the company.

However, this does not include information about the events related to criminal offenses with a valid statute of limitation, or information about the crimes for which sentences have not been overturned or served.

Under the bill, individuals would face fines of up to 50,000 rubles ($702) for groundless refusal to delete links. Corporations would pay fines ranging from 80,000 ($1,100) to 100,000 rubles ($1,400).

Such claim may be filed only for the search query that involves a persons surname, name and patronymic. This procedure is not applied to all search queries. The claim may be filed only by the person who is searched for, Yandex representatives told RAPSI.

According to defendants, Prigozhin asked them to delete links to information about him, but his claims were dismissed. We dismiss a lot of claims. We cant verify whether the information about a person is true or false, whether it violates law or not. We are not a court, Yandex representatives explained.

Prigozhin has filed six lawsuits against Yandex with the Kuybyshev District Court, correlating to each claim filed with Yandex. PR and advertisement department of the company Concord Catering, belonging to Prigozhin, refused to give comments.

Preliminary hearings will start on June 1.

Yevgeny Prigozhin is the owner of Concord Catering, Concord-M companies as well as Kupetz Eliseevs Food Hall and Museum of chocolate.

Last week tuple of two of Prigozhins automobiles were stopped by traffic police and the Federal Security Service for the use of state symbols and special sound signals. Protocols on administrative violations have been drawn up against the guard-drivers.
As we see a surge in inflation globally, it is now critical that everyone is aware of the implications this will have along every step of the insurance and reinsurance value chain.
U.S. Ambassador William Heidt and Cambodias Minister of Economy and Finance Aun Porn Moniroth recently launched an initiative to support Cambodias efforts to improve fiscal transparency and accountability in the management of its public finances.

The initiative, jointly developed by USAID and the U.S. Treasury Office of Technical Assistance, or OTA, will bring together experts from OTA and Cambodias Ministry of Economy and Finance, or MEF, to further the governments public financial management reform agenda.

The transparent and efficient management of a countrys financial resources is critical to long-term economic growth, noted Ambassador Heidt. The Ministry of Economy and Finance has made impressive progress raising its revenue collection from 15.6 percent of its GDP in 2011 to over 19 percent in 2013. This has given the Cambodian government significant additional resources to devote to social spending. This agreement will help the Ministry make additional progress in raising the efficiency of its budget resources.

As part of this agreement, OTA advisors will work with the MEF to improve the way public resources are allocated at the national and sub-national levels. This assistance will initially focus on supporting the Ministry of Health, a key counterpart ministry for USAID. The advisors will also assist the Budget Department of the MEF in expanding the program to other government ministries and sub-national government institutions.

We are looking forward to collaborating with the U.S. government on this important initiative, explained Minister Aun Porn Moniroth. As Cambodias economy grows, the efficient use of our precious national resources becomes more and more important.

The United States is proud to work with its partner Cambodia to promote and improve an important facet of good governance  transparent and accountable public finance.
Who would have thought that an issue too hard to explain in a sound bite would become the main axis along which the American presidential election is fought? Donald Trumps railings against China or Mexico shrewdly put a political face on that issue: globalization. Trump was smart enough to see what other politicians astoundingly missed: how the perception of globalization negatively affects the personal lives of many Americans.

Politics is the art of perception. Ed Koch, the late mayor of New York, once recalled, while campaigning on the Coney Island Boardwalk in Brooklyn, an elderly woman who approached him and implored that he make it like it was.

America today is richer than it has ever been and is in the healthiest economic condition of any major global economy, yet many Americans dont see it that way. Like Ed Kochs elderly constituent, they want it to be like it used to be. And globalization gets caught up in that used to be. Global economic growth is counterintuitive -- people view global economics as a zero-sum game. If another country has grown wealthier, then it stands to reason that your country is now poorer.

The facts, however, suggest the opposite. China has become significantly wealthier over the past 40 years, as we all know, but so has the United States. In 1980, the United States had a gross domestic product of $2.8 trillion, while Chinas was only $302 billion. By 2014 the U.S. economy had grown to $17.348 trillion, and the Chinese economy grew to $10.430 trillion. The U.S. economy, as we can see, grew at pace during that period. Of course, Chinas rate of growth during the same time was much quicker, but they had much more room to grow. China needed to build steel mills and highways, and electrify their rural areas. The United States did this a long time ago. The point is that the United States did not get poorer as China grew -- quite the opposite.

Compounding the illusion that global growth is a zero-sum game is the reality that some people have lost their jobs to globalization. But the operative word here is some. In the political game of perception, Donald Trump has managed, with his attacks on China, Japan, and Mexico, to make globalization the simplistic scapegoat for most of the job losses in American manufacturing. However, as reported by Bloomberg two years ago, this was not the case then, nor is it the case now.

The U.S. had become the second-most-competitive manufacturing location among the 25 largest manufacturing exporters worldwide. While that news is welcome, most of the lost U.S. manufacturing jobs in recent decades arent coming back. In 1970, more than a quarter of U.S. employees worked in manufacturing. By 2010, only one in 10 did.

The growth in imports from China had a role in that decline -- contributing, perhaps to as much as one-quarter of the employment drop-off from 1991 to 2007, according to an analysis by David Autor and his colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But the U.S. jobs slide began well before Chinas rise as a manufacturing power. And manufacturing employment is falling almost everywhere, including in China. The phenomenon is driven by technology.

Take for example all the people that used to make cameras and film in upstate New York; does anyone buy a Brownie camera or film anymore? Or look at companies that used to print newspapers and books that are now facing severe competition from e-readers. And then there is the U.S. automobile industry. In 2015 the United States manufactured 12,000,000 vehicles, double the quantity of the early 1950s, when there were no imports. Yet those 2015 production numbers were achieved with the same number of workers as in 1953, approximately 900,000. A key difference appears to be automation. In 2014, 58 percent of all industrial robots ordered in North America went to the automobile industry.

Rapidly declining employment in the coal industry is another example where technological change is the main factor, while climate change and now even China are being blamed. In a masterful but irrational readjustment of facts, Donald Trump once tweeted, The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.

The decline in employment in the coal industry is partly due to climate change, but the main culprit is innovation in energy production. Due to innovations in fracking, natural gas is not only now much more competitive for use as an energy source in manufacturing, it is also cleaner. Coal, like Kodaks old Brownie camera, is being innovated out of business.

In 1960, Harvard professor Theodore Levitt wrote an essay in the Harvard Business Review titled Marketing Myopia. In the essay, Levitt refers to the destruction of buggy whip industries due to the advent of the automobile. This analogy has now entered the economic lexicon. Although Professor Levitts point was that if the buggy whip industry was attuned to their market they would have understood and re-adjusted to change, in terms of the employees there was a benefit in that change that does not exist today. The buggy whip employees found better jobs relatively easily in the rapidly growing automobile industry. The same could be said throughout that period in American history, when millions left the farm for the cities because they were able to find better jobs in various forms of manufacturing with relative ease. Change was not frightening then, because new industrial jobs replaced the old occupations.

The difference today isnt globalization alone; it is that change for many people looks frightening and not positive. In the age of human capital, industrialized economies -- whether it's in the United States, Germany, Japan, or China -- will rely less and less on manufacturing. The agility needed to be able to go from factory work to the gig economy, or tech, or entrepreneurialism, or services, is much more difficult than it was to go from the buggy whip factory to the automobile factory. And instead of leading by proposing realistic ideas on how the government can help with that change, Trump is playing on the fear of change.
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2016 marks the centennial for the U.S. National Parks Foundation  to celebrate, Pendleton, Coleman, and other select outdoor brands have partnered with the organization to offer collections of unique & memorable items for use in the great outdoors. With summer planning in full fledge and outdoor excursions on the minds of many, now is the time to learn about these historic product offerings and to enjoy the thriving spirit provided by America's greatest resources.

Lets take a minute to look at some of the collectors gear being offered; Coleman will be featuring gear in tan and green, including a metal framed Nostalgia Lantern, a Steel Belted Cooler, and more. Pendeltons has a slew of collectors items (as well as their usual outerwear and outdoor clothing) available in the spirit of celebration ranging from blankets to teddy bears. with some items sporting colors representative to the bigger names in national parks such as the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone, theres plenty to choose from.

Now a little history; there are more than 400 National Park areas, totaling 84 million acres in the 50 US states, the district of Columbia, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, Guam, Siapan, and the Virgin Islands, but we had to start with one: Yellowstone. Yellowstone was established as a public park in 1872, however didnt really get any type of protection until the military stepped in as a temporary measure. Eventually as the the popularity and use of the public made parks increased as more sprang up, the need for an organization more specific to the maintenance and protection came and with the park ranger in 1905. It wasnt until 1916 when Woodrow Wilson signed the National Park Organic Act that the rangers were truly unified with the national parks under one centralized government agency.

With the continued preservation of the national forests turning 100 this year, celebrate by enjoying our national parks. Whether youre canoeing or fishing, a first timer or a seasoned camper, with brands like Coleman and Pendleton its never been easier to get into the woods. Learn more right here.
Nearly five years ago, a unified Libyan opposition force consisting of various factions and clans worked in unison to rid the country of Muammar Qadhafis brutal regime. But groups that had once fought together to defeat a common enemy spent the best part of the next five years embroiled in conflict. And the chaos and security vacuum gave rise to a new, ugly enemy-violent extremists, particularly Daesh.

The United States regards Libya as a keystone for access to the Sahel, the Maghreb, the Mediterranean, and Europe. To allow brutal, predatory and destructive terrorists like Daesh to gain a foothold there would pose a grave danger for the region and beyond.

Last December, Libyans representing a broad geographical and political base signed the Libya Political Agreement to form a Government of National Accord, known as the GNA. But efforts of a minority group of Eastern Hardliners in the House of Representatives have prevented the GNA from finalizing and swearing in a cabinet of ministers.

The GNA is the only entity that can unify the country and address the economic crisis and humanitarian suffering, said Secretary of State John Kerry at the Libya Ministerial Meeting in Vienna in mid-May.

The Libyan people want a government, the government is here, supported by the international community and ready to go to work. It is the only way to generate the unity and the cohesion that is required to defeat Daesh and other violent extremists who want to pull Libya backward into thuggery and violence, said Secretary Kerry.

Libya has an opportunity to be a safe country for its citizens, or it could be a safe haven for terrorists; trapped in division and chaos, and beset by personal, international and tribal rivalries, or, Mr. Kerry said, Libya could be a country with a functioning government, with an entrepreneurial economy, and a population that is both diverse and unified at the same time. The choices required to shape Libyas future are in the hands of its leaders.

If Libyas leaders do their part, the international community will support them. For the sake of Libyas future, said Secretary of State Kerry, we need to seize this moment.
John Godfrey Saxe's quote is as apropos today as it was a century and a half ago. Recent developments in the District seem promising, but as there's no conclusion yet  and given ongoing political shenanigans  one would be wise not to draw conclusions. RECOILweb

Shall Issue Movement Wins again in D.C.

Kel Whelan

The District of Columbia cannot parcel out constitutional rights to a select few of its choosing, plaintiffs attorney David Thompson said Tuesday. Thats not how the Constitution works in this country.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Leon recently granted a preliminary injunction that prevents Washington, D.C.s notoriously anti-gun regime from enforcing the good reason clause in their concealed-carry law. This advances the trend nationwide of courts ruling in favor of Shall Issue licensing vs. May Issue permits.

Currently, to receive one of the only-recently made legal D.C. concealed carry permits, an applicant must meet criminal backgrounding, personal history, age, mental health, and physical requirements. They must also complete a mandatory gun training and safety program, and submit to an in-person interview with a member of the Metropolitan Police Department. Even after all that, the permit may be issued only if the applicant can also prove to the Chief they have a special need for self-protection more than a member of the general community. (i.e., specific threats, previous attacks, employment that required transport of valuables, etc.).

The ruling now forbids the City from placing an unconstitutional burden on citizens' right to bear arms, and prevents the city from denying applicants who otherwise meet all other eligibility requirements.

This is the third swing at bat for this issue in D.C. It has been ruled unconstitutional twice now: It was first challenged and found unconstitutional in May of 2015, but was soon overturned by a different judge on an appeal based completely on the procedural error of the case being heard by the wrong judge, not on merit. Judge Leons recent action flips the ruling back, effectively making D.C. a Shall Issue jurisdiction.

The Tuesday ruling imposed a preliminary injunction  but pending further litigation. This is basically the same conclusion the first time this issue was heard by an earlier judge. However, District law, which is similar to those of May Issue states such as Maryland, New Jersey and New York, may still prevail, as some Federal appeals courts have said these state laws are constitutional. Further legislation is assumedly in the future for D.C. as their Attorney General,Karl A. Racine, said his office believes the city's law is constitutional and will ask Leon to put his ruling on hold while the city appeals.

Nationally, Shall Issue Licensing Stands To Continue Its Advance

In 1987, Floridians kicked off a wave of shall issue laws and lawsuits when their concealed carry laws were structured to take local politicians whims and cronyism out of the picture. This simple licensing system created a role model that many other states followed, eventually, leaving only California, Connecticut*, Delaware*, Hawaii,Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island as the remaining states where granting of permits is at the discretion and whim of local authorities that are not required to provide a substantive reason for a denial.

In these states, challenges are currently being undertaken against California, Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey and New York. At this time, the existing May Issue stances (where it is often near-impossible to actually get a carry permit) of these states have mostly been upheld. But California and Hawaii (which fall under the pending ruling of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals court in Peruta v. San Diego County) could be forced to become shall-issue states in regards to concealed carry permits. Hawaiis restrictions on gun carrying were essentially held unconstitutional in the Baker v. Kealoha (9th Cir. Mar. 20, 2014) case, but is somewhat tied to the above Appeals court decision and a probably (but slow) path to Shall Issue permitted carry.

*(Connecticut and Delaware, even though technically May Issue states, are generally regarded more as Shall because government policy or their courts direct that the issuing authorities approve applications that meet all non-discretionary criteria.)

You can find Judge Leon on Ballotpedia here.
Fascinating may be the best adjective to describe how a mere 2 percent of the population in the United States is responsible for producing the bulk of our nations food supply. For the most part it is because of this incredible food supply that U.S. citizens have become somewhat accustomed to the abundance of high quality, safe and wholesome foods.

Grocery bills today make up less than 10 percent of the average U.S. households disposable income, far less than what is spent in other parts of the world. Its been documented that many Americans will spend more on taxes in 2016 than they will collectively on food, clothing and housing. This is unlike generations gone by.

As good as our Agriculture engine has historically been at producing a safe and wholesome product for the consuming public, Agriculturists have done a horrible job of educating the general public about the wholesome, sustainable and environmentally friendly practices we employ in producing a safe food supply for the world.

Case in point is the misguided and misunderstood issue of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). A Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) food labeling law recently passed in Vermont and will impact foods across the nation. Advocates for the bill are calling for a similar nationwide labeling bill.

Such a state effort was brought forth and defeated in Nevada during the 2011 Nevada Legislative session. The bill was defeated with partial help from the Nevada Cattlemens Association and the Nevada Farm Bureau joint lobbying efforts. Food companies and agriculturists are concerned that on-pack labeling would mislead consumers, causing them to believe foods bearing a GMO label should be avoided even though theres no scientific justification warranting that belief.

The safety of GMOs is well-documented and supported by health and scientific authorities covering the globe including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Medical Association, European Food Safety Authority, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and World Health Organization.

The Colorado Corn Growers Association recently offered the following as talking point facts:

Each Genetically Modified (GM) seed variety takes on average $136 million and 13 years to bring to market because of the safety studies and regulatory approval processes necessary.

In response to what was described as an information gap at the time, Italian scientists in 2013 analyzed 1,783 studies around the world, spanning the previous decade, regarding the safety and environmental impacts of GMOs. They couldnt find a single credible example demonstrating that GMOs pose harm to humans or animals.

In 2015, a massive, peer-reviewed, food-safety study  involving 4 billion farm animals fed GM foods, and 4 billion animals fed non-GM foods  showed there were no differences in animal health, growth or fertility. No quantifiable traces of GM components were detected in milk, meat and eggs following the animals consumption of GM foods.

It appears to me that GMO dissenters are justifying the foods they like as non GMO, picking and choosing which foods they call a GMO product and which not. Take for example a succulent seedless watermelon. Most consider this food to be a GMO product. However, as pointed out by the National Watermelon Promotion Board, A seedless watermelon is a sterile hybrid which is created by crossing male pollen for a watermelon, containing 22 chromosomes per cell, with a female watermelon flower with 44 chromosomes per cell. When this seeded fruit matures, the small, white seed coats inside contain 33 chromosomes, rendering it sterile and incapable of producing seeds. This is similar to the mule, produced by naturally crossing a horse with a donkey. This process does not involve genetic modification.

So there you have it. Seedless watermelons are just regular watermelons, albeit a relatively younger relative of the traditional seeded watermelon. The seedless watermelon actually outsells its seeded peers by a significant margin.

My wife and I own and operate a custom beef Artificial Insemination (A.I.) business. We artificially inseminate thousands of cows annually for our customers, breeding their cows by A.I. to the most efficient and sought after sires in the world. Offspring of these inseminations add to the efficiency of our nations food supply and the eating satisfaction of the consuming public. Do you consider this method of genetic advancement to be termed GMO? If so, how do you view the tens of thousands of human conceptions to invitro or artificial inseminations? Do you see the possible hypocrisy here?

It is my hope that the reader of this letter to the editor will take the time to educate themselves on the scientific facts before buying into and supporting the anti GMO movement taking place across the nation. I encourage you to not support the political moves being proposed which may unduly hinder agricultures ability to feed the world. The U.S. House has passed a voluntary, national labeling bill that would supersede state laws, but it is stalled in the Senate. The agriculture community supports voluntary labeling and staunchly oppose mandatory GMO labeling.

The next time you enjoy a seedless watermelon or an ear of sweet corn, consider the political moves going on nationwide which, if successful, will hinder American Agriculturists from advancing their ability to feed a growing world population.
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For almost nine decades, the Elko Daily Free Press was owned by four generations of the Steninger family, who reported on and contributed to Elkos progress through most of the 20th century.

Eber Melvin and Corda Barrett Steninger moved to Elko County in 1902. E.M. had prior experience as a reporter and manager of a small paper near Chicago when he joined the Elko Free Press. Six years after original owner Charles Sproule retired, the Free Press board of directors appointed Steninger as editor and manager in 1910. He soon owned half the business with E.C. Riddell.

As editor, Eber supported Elkos incorporation and efforts to bring the water wells under city ownership. Corda worked in the office with accounts and clerical duties, and was a member of boards and commissions that established the library and the Main City Park. Eber and Corda retired in 1945 and sold their interests to their son, Eber Barrett, and reporter Chris Sheerin.

E.B. was born in Elko in 1906, and grew up in the newspaper business. He apprenticed as a printers devil before attending the School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno. Once becoming owners with Sheerin, E.B. managed the production side of the business with Sheerin as editor. E.B.s family included his wife, Violet Philips, and their children, Mel, Al and Linda.

Mel joined the Free Press as a delivery boy. He attended the University of Missouri and married Mae Gregory of Jiggs in 1952. Mel served in the U.S. Army for two years, then returned to the Free Press working as a reporter and advertising salesman. In 1968, he and Earl Frantzen became co-owners of the newspaper.

Apart from the Free Press, Mel was also involved in local real estate development, the founding of the Northeastern Nevada Historical Society and Museum and Great Basin College. He served on the Board of Regents and was a member of the Nevada Civil Air Patrol.

Like their father and grandfather before them, Mel and Maes sons Rex, Kim, and Dan, apprenticed in the print shop. In 1992, they purchased the Free Press from their parents, becoming the fourth generation of owners.

For the next seven years the brothers continued the family business until they sold the company to Liberty Publishing. The Elko Daily Free Press was later acquired by Lee Enterprises.
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Man shot at Redding RABA terminal

A 20-year-old Redding man was shot by motorists at the downtown RABA station on Monday afternoon, police said.

Police were called to the station at 1530 Yuba St. at about 1:30 p.m., but when they arrived, the victim was gone.

Officers later found that he was taken to Shasta Regional Medical Center for treatment for his wounds, police said.

Police contacted Tellivan Ray Jackson at the hospital emergency room. Jackson told investigators he was approached by subjects in a four-door sedan at the bus terminal. A verbal exchange ensued and shots were fired from vehicle at Jackson, police said.

Jackson was hit but his injuries were not life-threatening, police said.

Police have not found the subjects who fired the shots. Yuba Street was closed from the railroad tracks to California Street during the investigation.

Police ask anyone with information regarding this incident to contact the Redding Police Department at (530) 225-4200 or Secret Witness of Shasta County at (530) 243-2319 or www.scsecretwitness.com.

Man dies while swimming at lake

The man who died in Lake Shasta on Sunday evening has been identified as Michael Ramirez, 45, of Redding, the Shasta County Sheriff's Office said today.

Ramirez's body was found by the Sheriff's Dive Team at Manzanita Gulch in the Sacramento Arm of the lake around 8:40 p.m. Sunday after family members reported him missing earlier.

Family members told investigators that Ramirez had jumped into the water and had not surfaced for 10 to 15 minutes before they called for help around 6 p.m.

Ramirez and his party were floating in a cove approximately 100 feet from the shore, where the water was 40 to 45 feet deep.

There were no entanglements or outcroppings in the immediate area where Ramirez was recovered.

Ramirez's death was classified as a death unknown. The cause of death will be determined by the Coroner's Office, officials said. Investigators said they did not know if alcohol was involved in the incident.
Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight Black Butte Elementary School students play on the playground Wednesday around a cone covering a hole. Measure B on the upcoming ballot gives the voters a choice of a $4 million bond for improvements to the school.

SHARE Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight Black Butte Elementary School Superintendent Don Aust gives pizza to students who had perfect attendance Wednesday at the school. Measure B on the upcoming ballot gives the voters a choice of a $4 million bond for improvements to the school. Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight Third-grade teacher Lynn Haskins talks to her students Wednesday. Measure B on the upcoming ballot gives the voters a choice of a $4 million bond for improvements to the school. Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight Junction Elementary School kindergarten teacher Melisa Wood has lunch Friday in the teachers lounge whose ceiling had to be removed because of water damage. Measure A on the upcoming ballot gives the voters a choice of a $3.5 million bond for improvements to the Palo Cedro school. Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight Junction Elementary School students walk in between classes Friday. Measure A on the upcoming ballot gives the voters a choice of a $3.5 million bond for improvements to the Palo Cedro school.

By Alayna Shulman of the Redding Record Searchlight

Voters in the Black Butte and Junction elementary school districts have a very similar choice this election  whether to approve several million in bonds for repairs at the rural schools.

Black Butte's Measure B is for a $4 million bond that would cost certain Shingletown-area voters an estimated $30 per $100,000 of assessed property value every year. Similarly, Palo Cedro's Junction has Measure A, whose terms are the same, only for a $3.5 million bond instead.

The administrators of both schools say their antiquated campuses need upgrades not just for student safety, but for the small surrounding communities that use their facilities for all sorts of events.

"We've made this a real community center," Black Butte Principal and Superintendent Don Aust said. "It's not just about the kids, but about the whole community."

The schools have similar laundry lists for repairs. Black Butte has water damage from a leaky roof "in every single room," Aust said, and it badly needs upgrades to its plumbing system, which doesn't offer hot water in students' bathrooms. Spots of rotten wood, cracked asphalt and a leaking air conditioner also are due for upgrades, he said. In addition, the school is without a sound system and has single-paned windows, one of which recently broke, and needs outdoor lighting upgrades and some renovations to its gym, Aust said.

Over at Junction, Principal and Superintendent Rich Gifford said the Palo Cedro campus is also in need of a new roof, whose effects have left similar spots on classroom ceilings. Gifford said the Deschutes Road school also needs electrical upgrades, new locks, and even has parts that aren't compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. There's also rotting wood, a cracked black-court and plumbing problems, Gifford said.

"It's no longer just repairing and maintaining (needed)," Gifford said.

In both cases, administrators say current budgets don't even come close to covering all the repairs needed. Junction's most recent budget, from March, shows an ending balance of about $654,000, while Black Butte's coffers were at about $988,000.

Both school administrators say the bond costs could conceivably cover all the needed repairs, though it's also very possible they'd have to prioritize which projects are the most important, depending on what the estimates for those repairs end up being.

If Measure A doesn't end up passing, Gifford said he'll have to consider staffing changes to get the repairs done over time with existing money.

"We're running pretty lean right now (as it is)," he said.

If Measure B doesn't pass, Aust said major repairs would have to be postponed and could therefore end up costing more, while money that should be used on instruction will have to go to the safety upgrades that can't wait.

No arguments against either measure were submitted to the Shasta County Elections office. Both superintendents said they know of several people who had concerns about paying for school repairs during initial polling, but there's otherwise almost overwhelming support.

About two-thirds of local school bond elections in California passed from 1998 to 2008, according to Ballotpedia. Those who vote against them often do so because  while they technically live in district boundaries  they don't have a child at the school in question or don't otherwise feel an obligation to fund the school.

But Gifford noted that better-equipped schools can raise surrounding property values, so it's not just about whether one has a direct stake in the campus. "It improves the entire community," he said.

As with other school bonds in California, the money that would come through the local measures would be monitored by an oversight committee and couldn't be used on teacher salaries or taken by the state.
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About 400 people attended a Memorial Day ceremony at the Veterans Memorial Grove in front of the Redding Civic Auditorium on Monday morning.

The hour-long celebration included music, speeches, a gun salute, the playing of taps, a bagpipe salute and the presentation of memorial wreaths.

Its really close to my heart because I served in the military and I think it's really important to set aside a day to pay tribute to those who have died and sacrificed their life for us, said Celestina Traver, a U.S. Army veteran who coordinated the event for the Shasta County Veterans Affiliated Council.

After the celebration, those who attended were treated to a lunch in front of the Civic Auditorium.

Douglas Gross, 89, of Redding, an Army veteran, got emotional talking about the day as he enjoyed his lunch with family.

Its beyond words, Gross said of what Memorial Day means to him. I was proud to be in the service. In my mind, there is nothing like it, the comradery. I still miss it. I still get together with some of the people.

Vietnam veteran Patrick Carr, of Redding, was the keynote speaker. Carr talked about what the military has meant to his family.

Four of the Francis Carr family sons, my mom's two brothers, and Kennedy family cousins served in the military in WWII  two would not return home, Patrick Carr told the gathering. Letters home from Dad after his brothers were killed revealed his deep, abiding faith in God, which helped him endure and accept these tragedies.

Carr said Memorial Day is very personal to him and is an opportunity for everybody to reflect on the sacrifices that have been paid.

There also was an observance at Redding Memorial Park Monday morning. The 83rd annual observance featured music and prayers.

The largest Memorial Day observance is at 5:55 p.m. this evening at the Northern California Veterans Cemetery on Gas Point Road in Igo.
There's a certain smug quality about the California Democratic Party as it heads toward a primary election likely to produce more intra-party runoffs than ever before, possibly ranging right up to the ballot-topping race to succeed Barbara Boxer in the U.S. Senate.

But just because there may be as many as 30 runoffs pitting Democrat vs. Democrat this fall does not mean all is hunky-dory for this party, which before this spring's big registration rush to vote for Bernard Sanders for president had gained only about 75,000 registered adherents since 2012, despite California's significant population increases.

Yes, Democrats do enjoy a 17-point registration advantage over Republicans, one reason both major parties have considered this state "safe" for Democratic presidential candidates for two decades. But no, Democrats are not justified in crowing about it.

That's because mid-May figures from Democratic Secretary of State Alex Padilla, California's top election official, demonstrate that typically in recent years, when new voters register, they sign up as "no party preference (NPP)," refusing to identify with either party.

The rise in NPP registration from 21 percent of the total in 2012 to more than 24 percent today is completely unprecedented and represents an almost total rejection of both parties. Yes, Republicans have actually lost hundreds of thousands of their adherents to the NPP column, far more than Democrats have lost, but Democratic numbers are not growing much despite the party's expensive and labor-intensive outreach and registration efforts.

This could have great meaning in the primary, where polls show that in the minds of many likely voters, Hillary Clinton represents the traditional Democratic Party, while rival Sanders has become the latest emblem of change.

The last time she ran for president  in 2008  perceptions were similar, but NPP registration was far lower. So Mrs. Clinton won a big plurality in California that spring, enough to keep her going through months of losses to "hope-and-change" symbol Barack Obama in other states.

This time, California votes almost last, and as usual its vote will have only symbolic meaning. Since NPP voters can cast ballots in Democratic primaries, but not Republican ones, their impact will be felt far greater on the Democratic side.

Many of those NPP voters are young people only recently eligible to participate  the same kind of voters who gave energy and manpower to Obama's campaigns. They could create a stark generational split in the Democratic vote.

The trick for Democrats this fall will be getting those young NPP voters to turn out again in November.

Academic studies indicate that it's highly unlikely the new voters would go Republican in the fall, as very few voters switch parties during an election year, even if the candidate they liked in the primary has lost. But they might stay home unless Mrs. Clinton can motivate them in a way she has not so far.

So Democrats appear just as flummoxed by the NPP phenomenon as Republicans. Both parties sometimes react to the reluctance of youths to choose a party by reminding new voters of what happened many years ago.

Mrs. Clinton, for example, has difficulty comprehending that feminist appeals have not worked well with young women voters, who take for granted the status she helped win for them via her efforts in the 1970s and '80s, long before she became a national figure.

Younger voters, male and female, tell poll takers they are more interested in what they believe a Democrat might do for them in the next few years. This message from youth, both registered Democrats and those with no party preference, is one reason Mrs. Clinton this year has adopted a more strongly liberal tone than ever before. She strongly stresses immigration reform, increased wages and voting rights.

None of that is likely to change the pattern of new voters steering clear of all political parties. Which means Democrats can't be smug, any more than the shrinking GOP should be depressed. For the tide moving toward no party preference is not yet fully understood by either party, and if they make wrong moves, the errors could redound for years.

Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com.
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At a recent conference for The Association of California Water Agencies, I attended a seminar on headwaters health. What I discovered was highly alarming. Following several years of drought, two thirds of the trees in California's National Forests are dead or dying. The drought weakens or kills the trees, of course, but it also makes them increasingly susceptible to insect infestations and that seriously compound the issue.

The fires in Alberta, Canada this year should serve as harbingers of what we face this summer and in subsequent summers. The question is how and what to do to mitigate the threat. Obviously, these trees need to be removed but what do we do with all this dry waste material? To burn it in the open air would produce hundreds of millions of tons of greenhouse gases, thus exacerbating the global warming effects and wreaking further damage on the forests and the environment.

Wildfires are devastating to humans, wildlife and ecology. They also create significant damage to headwaters health with runoff into the streams and other waterways as well as sterilization of the ground from tremendous heat generated. As as a current member of the board of directors for the Clear Creek Water District and a native citizen of California, I am gravely concerned about this threat.

There is a solution and it's called biomass energy. This is a process whereby wood waste is burned to produce electricity. With biomass energy production, 98 percent of the greenhouse gases are mitigated. With forest fires, 100 percent of the greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere. There are Biomass Energy facilities in California. One of these is located in nearby Burney and is fed directly via conveyor belt by the Shasta Green Sawmill there. However, the state subsidies for biomass energy production have been halved from the levels once present between 1980 and 1990. Other forms of renewable energy such as wind and solar have diverted much of the funding. The result is that we now have six or seven facilities in operation and around 60 more that have ceased operation.

The Burney facility has a contract that will be up in October of this year. If they do not renew, Shasta Green has indicated that they will shut down their operation there. This would result in unemployment levels of 50 percent in that area.

In short, we have a big problem with multiple effects, none of which any of us want to see happen. I believe the solution is biomass energy production. This to me is a win-win solution; we avoid devastation to the environment, the forests, the headwaters, humans, and animals while providing jobs at the same time. I consider this a prudent investment in the future of our state and the well-being of its citizens. The U.S. Department of the Interior as well as CalFire recognize this and are promoting public/private investment or PPA's in order to achieve the desired goals. We have to move fast, though.

I urge you to write to your legislators both at the state level and the federal level and encourage them to act on this quickly. Our forests are now time bombs set to explode this summer. Action must be taken promptly to avoid catastrophic losses and damage that our children and grandchildren will still be living with after we are gone.

Mark Engel lives in Happy Valley.
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Everyone knows about the Bill of Rights, but how many of us know about the Second Bill of Rights?

There was a vision of the Four Freedoms  freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt called for an Economic Bill of Rights for all Americans in his State of the Union address in 1944. Evoking President Thomas Jefferson and President Abraham Lincoln, he contended, "In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident."

With the Great Depression over and the war almost won, FDR declared that we "have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence."

This Second Bill of Rights included every American has the right to a job, an adequate wage and decent living, a decent home, medical care, economic protection during sickness, accident, old age or unemployment, and a good education. We need to redeem that vision.

Congress did enact a GI Bill of Rights, a historic initiative that enabled 12 million veterans to radically transform themselves and their country for the better. And in years to come, their generation would not only make America richer and stronger, but would act anew to progressively realize the vision that Roosevelt had projected.

Another Roosevelt, President Theodore Roosevelt, did some serious business to big business 100 years ago. He was a Republican progressive and took on the vast interests of big corporations and big banks instead of siding with them and giving citizens and consumers the short end of the stick.

Today a progressive Republican might be an oxymoron. A hundred years ago, Teddy Roosevelt added protections against abusive labor practices, defended natural resources and reformed the business-captured U.S. Senate. He said, "To befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day."

Angela Merkel, the leader of Germany, had stated: "Whoever decides to dedicate their life to politics knows that earning money isn't the top priority."

Hillary Clinton takes money from oil lobbyists, from Wall Street, from private prisons and from insurance companies.

Her $225,000 Wall Street speeches are important. I would like to know what she said behind closed doors to the members of the industry that wrecked the American economy in 2007-2008, especially since she was generously compensated by them.

Bernie Sanders wants to address the powerful corporations with their tax havens and would like to tax Wall Street transactions to help finance college for everyone. A vote for Sanders in the upcoming California primary will show what kind of future we want for our children and grandchildren.

Ken Levens lives in Redding.
ELKO  Elko justice and municipal courts deal with all manner of crimes, ranging from felonies to misdemeanors. At Thursdays Justice of the Peace forum, candidates addressed topics such as substance abuse and domestic violence.

David Loreman, Will Lehmann, Andrew Mierins, Dennis Parker and Elias Goicoechea are seeking the newly created Department B seat in the primary election, for which early voting is underway.

Drug Diversion

A disappointing number of Elko County citizens are addicted to controlled substances and commit crimes associated with that addiction. Do you support diversionary programs that would allow a person to avoid a criminal conviction, if they successfully completed a drug treatment program, such as drug court? asked moderator Matt McCarty.

The three-part question further addressed how effective drug court programs are and whether the candidates support the creation of a misdemeanor drug court.

I think the specialty courts is something that I support, said Loreman.

Drug court, he said, is a specialty court program, and these programs are rigorous in the components of completion, which include frequent drug testing, court appearances and tight structured regimes of treatment.

Other alternatives are needed to think outside of the box as specialty courts can defer incarceration for non-violent offenders. This can aid in the seemingly high costs of imprisonment and overcrowding of these facilities, he said.

Loreman spoke of Elko drug courts, such as the ones run by Elko District Judge Al Kacin and Family Court Master Andrew Mierins, calling the successful completion of these programs life-changing.

The only way you can get somebody back into the community, functioning in a fashion that is lawful and legal, is to have them change their lives, he said, explaining jail creates a repetitious cycle.

Lehmann, a former city police captain, had a different opinion.

Law enforcement feels that the most effective thing about drug court is it gets new dopers to meet other dopers, so that they have a better networking system, Lehmann said.

He said part of that standpoint stems from a failure to admonish a defendant for failing to meet the requirements.

There seems to be no real punitive measures in place to deal with those people who choose not to be part of the program, said Lehmann.

He discussed the idea of having the offender pay for the treatment program to increase success.

Dennis Parker started a trend with this question in saying he did not have enough information to fully answer. On this subject, he said he could not answer the latter two parts of the question; as for the first section, he is in favor of a person rehabilitating themselves as the best way to get an individual off the street.

Mierins, who has been involved in various aspects of drug courts since he has lived in Elko County, said he has seen successes and failures but believes in drug court programs and the creation of a misdemeanor drug court.

He said there is a direct correlation between criminal activity and drug and alcohol abuse, and while some programs are more effective than others and failure can occur, there is substantial change and increased security within the community from the successes.

Goicoechea, a Nevada Highway Patrol trooper, said he would consider such a program in the justice court as long as it is fiscally responsible and not a burden to the taxpayers.

I believe that any program, if its presented properly . If we run 100 people through and can save 10 people and we can change their lives, its absolutely is a win situation, he said.

Domestic Violence

Parker passed on a question about mandatory penalties for domestic violence and what could be done differently to bring accountability to domestic violence offenders.

He said he wasnt familiar with the subject matter.

Goicoechea called it a multi-faceted arena and said he would research the penalties. As for accountability, he said the history of an offender should be assessed  even their education  to understand their reasons and try to work within the confines of where their aggressions or what their reason or rationale is.

Its a very difficult question and very difficult to give a straight answer, he said.

Both Loreman and Mierins delineated fines, jail sentences and counseling associated with domestic violence.

Mierins discussed two mechanisms to promote accountability: status hearings, requiring the defendant to appear in court and give an update on progress; and a community supervision program.

Loreman said the mandatory penalties are substantially the same as driving-under-the-influence penalties, with the third offense resulting in a felony within seven years.

We dont focus on a lot of things that are truly domestic violence, he said, when discussing a problem he has with related laws.

The district attorney does not have the option of reducing a domestic violence charge, said Loreman, turning to the possibility of another specialty court area as justice court handles the first two offenses.

Domestic violence is all about power and control, said Lehmann, who said the sentencing and cause must be addressed.
Small and medium enterprises have been struggling to raise bank credit even as they have been powering India's manufacturing growth in recent years.

A rather peculiar aspect of India's growth structure under the new Gross Domestic Product series has been the stellar performance of the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) in the manufacturing segment.

With the bigger manufacturing companies struggling over the past few years, it was these smaller companies that provided the much needed fillip to manufacturing growth.

The Reserve Bank of India's analysis of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs database confirms this.

Gross value added (GVA) by these companies grew at a staggering 17.3 and 16.2 per cent in 2013-14 and 2014-15, respectively, dwarfing the value addition by their larger counterparts who grew at a modest 10.1 and 12 per cent over the same period.

But what is troubling is that bank credit to MSMEs has slowed quite sharply over these past few years.

After growing at a robust 15.5 per cent in 2013-14, gross bank credit to MSMEs slowed down to 6.8 per cent in 2014-15, thereafter contracting by 3.6 in 2015-16.

As bank credit is considered to be a leading indicator of growth, does this contraction signal a reversal in the fortunes of the MSME sector and, in turn, that of the manufacturing sector?

Or are these companies relying on other sources of funds to fuel their growth?

The contraction in bank credit can be attributed to the sluggish macro-economic environment and the sharp rise in the non-performing assets of banks.

This has led to banks becoming even more cautious, as a consequence of which lending to MSME's has been curbed.

"In such a scenario of mounting losses and sluggish economic growth, loans to the MSME sector have dried up as they are more vulnerable to become NPAs" says Madan Sabnavis, Chief Economist at CARE. Thus, for these smaller companies even obtaining working capital loans for carrying out daily operations would be difficult.

Looking inwards

So how are these companies financing their operations?

One possible explanation could be that these smaller companies have been able to tap other sources of funding such as NBFC's, urban development banks and micro-finance companies.

But in the absence of reliable data on credit flows from these sources, it is difficult to know for sure.

Another explanation, perhaps a more likely one, is that these companies are increasingly retaining a larger portion of their profits to plough back into their business.

This trend is confirmed by RBI's analysis of the ministry of corporate affair's database which shows that retained profits of over 230,000 MSMEs grew at a staggering 14 per cent in 2014-15.

Analysts like Saikat Roy, at CARE, also believe that with bank credit to these companies slowing down, they are mostly relying on retained earnings to fuel their growth.

It is possible that this increase in retained earnings, which could have partly offset the decline in bank lending, helped finance their operations and drive growth in 2015-16.

While disaggregated data on GVA by the MSME sector and large companies is not available for 2015-16, it is likely that the MSME's continued their stellar performance aided by an increase in retained earnings.

This can be inferred from the fact that the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), which essentially tracks large companies, grew at a slower pace in 2015-16 as compared to 2014-15. IIP grew at 2.4 per cent in 2015-16 as compared to 2.8 per cent in 2014-15.

By comparison, GVA added by the entire manufacturing sector grew at 8.1 per cent at current prices in 2015-16.

Thus if the big companies were struggling then it is only logical that smaller companies would have pushed up growth.

But the question now is if bank credit continues to be sluggish then can these companies continue to rely on their own resources to fund their growth going forward?

As data on retained earnings for 2015-16 is not available, its difficult to know for sure.

But it is possible that as the price of raw materials fell sharply during 2015-16, profit growth would have edged further upwards.

This would have created space for these companies to retain an even larger share of profits to compensate for further declines in bank lending.

But with commodity prices firming up in 2016, earnings are likely take a hit in the absence of a significant boost to top line growth.

Thus it would be difficult for MSME's to rely on retained earnings going forward.
The withdrawal of offer letters is an indication that the company might have overestimated its future business after giving offer letters.

India's sixth largest software exporter L&T Infotech, a subsidiary of engineering giant Larsen & Toubro, has withdrawn offer letters to around 1,500 students in south India.

These students, mostly from the 2015 batches of various Tamil Nadu colleges, had been hired through campus placements and subsequent tests.



Some of these students have now started a fast near Chennai's Infotech City from Monday.

The withdrawal of offer letters is an indication that the company might have overestimated its future business after giving offer letters.



The company, though, cited the 'poor performance' of the students in a second online test conducted in March this year for withdrawing the offer letters.

According to K Seetharaman, secretary of Knowledge Professional Forum, L&T Infotech had, in 2014, decided to hire 5,000 people from 20-25 colleges across India.

An email sent to L&T did not elicit any response. But an insider said the company had given only the 'letter of intent' to hire and not appointment letters.

Of these, 500-600 were hired from Tamil Nadu to join from FY15 onwards.

For 18 months, the students were 'benched' by the company.



After several rounds of talks, the company held another online test in March this year.



"Almost 90 per cent of the 1,500 people who appeared for the test were not qualified and it clearly shows that the intention was not to hire them," he said.



This is the first time that an Indian information technology (IT) services company has asked recruits to appear for another round of test after campus selection.



Under placement rules, a student cannot approach a rival company after accepting an offer letter at a campus recruitment.



This clause blocked many candidates from approaching other companies.

The Forum was launched in 2000 to work on issues related to IT/IT-enabled services employees and their rights.



The Forum demanded that these 1,500 students be hired by the company immediately and compensation be given for the past 18 months as they have been waiting without salary for a long time.



They also demanded that campus recruitment be monitored by government agencies or institutes such as Anna University and there should be working councils in all infotech firms.

A placement officer from one of the colleges, where L&T Infotech recruited candidates, said the company wrongly assessed the manpower recruitment and recruited heavily.



Later, to cover its mistake, they conducted another test and disqualified many people.



"We made a couple of representations but they did not reply and nobody in the company wants to take ownership. Legally, they may be on the right wicket, but morally they aren't," said an Anna University official, who did not wish to be named.



L&T's Infotech had 19,479 employees as of March 2015, up from 17,627 in March 2014, according to its draft prospectus filed with the regulators.



The company hires far lower annually than its peers.

The withdrawal of letters comes in the backdrop of an unprecedented move by Flipkart.



The online retailer informed 10 IIM-Ahmedabad students that their joining dates had been deferred to December.



The decision was announced on May 20, three days before the candidates were to join.



Flipkart cited an organisational rejig for the deferment. The L&T stock closed flat at Rs 1,486 a share on the BSE on Monday.
'Our countrymen should be made aware of the need to be polite and friendly to our African guests.'

'They should know the dictum, athithi devo bhava, whether they are black or white,' says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan, who once served as India's high commissioner to Kenya.

IMAGE: Foreign Secretary Dr S Jaishankar met with African students in New Delhi on Monday, May 30, and assured them about their safety and well-being. Photograph: MEA/Flickr

An important annual event at the India House in Nairobi is a gathering of Kenyans who have studied in India. It is on those occasions that one realises how many Kenyan ministers and civil servants were educated in India.

They come in vast numbers to these events to acknowledge their debt of gratitude and to reminisce over their days in Delhi, Pune, Chennai and other cities in India. They have good memories of their teachers and class mates and the good time they had as scholars.

They also acknowledge how relevant their education in India has been to their present professions. They have no grievances, no bad memories about racial prejudices or unpleasant experiences.

In many African countries, political leaders and the elite have had exposure to Indian education and Indian life. Moreover, India has been in the forefront of the fight against racism and racial discrimination in Africa.

It was ironic, therefore, that African ambassadors were threatening to boycott Africa Day this year and Indians were being attacked on the streets of Congo.

The immediate provocation was the killing of a Congolese student, Masunda Kitada Oliver, in Delhi, presumably in an isolated incident of an altercation with three men over hailing an auto. But the way the incident has been projected as racist and reports that even African diplomats have been facing such racist attacks are a shock to most Indians.

An African envoy went to the extent of saying that 'racism and Afro-phobia' were major concerns for African students in India. He alleged that such events had also taken place in other Indian cities.

Indian-African tensions are not uncommon in East and Southern Africa and quite a few from both sides have been killed in squabbles and armed robberies. These tensions are on account of the disparity between the Africans and the Indians and the way the poor Africans are treated by the rich Indians. The Indians live in palatial homes and employ any number of Africans to take care of the household.

I knew of Indian homes where the Africans were employed even to offer pooja to Hindu gods. They remain poor in the midst of Indian luxury and pomp. Occasionally when tensions flare up, the Africans, who are accustomed to fighting and kill animals, do not hesitate to kill their masters.

But the issue is not race, it is poverty, envy and greed that drive Africans to take such measures against their Indian masters.

In India, African students are a privileged people, often on scholarships provided by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, and are mostly at good universities. Many of them have additional sources of income from their families and they live well. Many of them live outside the campuses and drive cars.

Trouble arises when they neglect their studies or engage in illegal activities like smuggling, drug trafficking etc. When action is taken against them by the authorities, they tend to attribute such actions to racial prejudice and hatred.

By and large, foreign students, including African students, are respected and cared for. In Kerala, foreign students are very few, but there have been no complaints from African students about any kind of prejudice.

Some Indians, however, tend to associate African students with violence and scams and they also tend to be prejudiced on account of their colour.

Amar Bose, the founder of the renowned audio equipment firm, himself of mixed blood, Indian and American, has said that he came to India to study, but he left in anguish because he saw in India the same racial discrimination against Africans as he experienced as a coloured boy in the United States.

In India, fairness of skin is at a premium and consequently, it is possible that the darker hues are considered inferior in some ways.

One evidence of this is the very small number of Indian settlers in Africa who get married to Africans. But it is unthinkable that such prejudices lead to violence and murder. The killing of a Congolese student could well have been for other reasons.

India has had considerable goodwill and influence in Africa, though the Americans and the Europeans have been the biggest investors in Africa. Inevitably, India's relations with African countries have undergone a change in recent decades on account of the competition for influence from the Japanese and Koreans and more recently, the Chinese.

India is not the preferred destination for African students as they do have more lucrative scholarships in other countries. The Indian technical cooperation programmes, with provision for local participation, are not attractive, compared to the more generous offers from China. Indian credit lines are often not fully utilised.

In October 2015, India hosted the biggest gathering of African countries, the India-Africa Forum Summit in Delhi to mark what Prime Minister Narendra Modi called 'a new era of India-Africa relations.' All the 54 African countries participated, as they did at a similar meet in Beijing. Evidently, the African leaders had begun to see the dangers of their over dependence on China and wanted to re-establish links with India.

India made pledges of trade and investment flows and set in motion a number of projects, but there has not been a change on the ground. India has initiated some maritime initiatives in the western Indian Ocean, specifically involving coastal African States and Prime Minister Modi's visit to some of the target countries is on the cards. But the demands of the Africans for fully developing their blue economy go much beyond India's means.

India needs to present an alternative to China in terms of investments, commodities, markets and diplomatic support. There has not been any headway in changing the rigid African position on an expansion of the UN Security Council. Africa's demand for two permanent seats on the Council is still one of the roadblocks.

Against this backdrop, the killing of an African student and the subsequent accusation that Africans in India were victims of racial prejudice have been most unfortunate.

In all likelihood, race may not have been an issue at all in the incident. Fortunately, the African envoys attended the Africa Day event after securing sufficient guarantees from the ministry of external affairs.

However, the African agony over the incident was poignantly expressed in a poem penned by Samuel Panyin Yalley, Ghana's high commissioner, on the occasion, giving a larger dimension to the incident, invoking the old anti-colonial sentiment of being in a cage for no fault of the African. He wrote:

Hear My Cry Oh! Africa

Deep in an unknown chilled cage I lie

Frozen with ice of pain and stained by

My hot African blood suddenly gone cold

Someone must tell me what did I do wrong?M

Prime Minister Modi may do well to express our regret over the incident during his forthcoming visit to Africa and reassure the Africans of their security in India.

The vast investments we have made in Africa right from the days of Mahatma Gandhi should not go waste on account of the thoughtless violence perpetrated on the Congolese student.

Our countrymen should also be made aware of the need to be polite and friendly to our African guests, even under provocation. They should know the dictum, athithi devo bhava, whether they are black or white.

The damage done to India's image by this incident can diminish only if such incidents do not recur.
IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

In diplomacy, a prime ministerial visit should be viewed as a rare event, not a routine one.

But Modi wants to do everything himself, says Rajeev Sharma.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision to visit Afghanistan on June 4 is inexplicable.

He had visited Afghanistan in December. Of course, a prime minister can visit a country as many times as he wants to. But the prime minister must know that he can't go everywhere and pay another visit to a neighbouring country as strategically important as Afghanistan just because a major project in Afghanistan, funded and built by India is ready to be operational.

Modi will visit Afghanistan for a few hours on June 4. He will travel to Herat province in western Afghanistan to inaugurate the Salma dam project, which is finally ready after missing several deadlines.

Everyone familiar with India's strategic affairs will appreciate the importance of the Salma dam project and appreciate that India is finally ready to deliver the finished project to the Afghans, a project that may win many friends in that land-locked country.

But Modi should realise that the success of foreign policy is not predicated on the number of visits an Indian prime minister undertakes to a country, no matter how sensitive and important that country is for Indian national interests.

After all, the Salma dam, constructed by the Indians at a budget of almost $275 million (about Rs 1,850 crore/Rs 18.50 billion) will produce only 42 MW electricity. By comparison, the peak daily power consumption in Delhi is over 5,000 MW.

Granted that for a country like Afghanistan, which has been ravaged by bloody internal strife and political instability for close to 40 years, 42 MW power is significant and crucial. But then the Indian prime minister is not required to visit Afghanistan for this purpose alone as it dilutes the significance of the visit.

Modi could have, and should have, entrusted this job to any of his Cabinet colleagues. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj would have been most ideal for the purpose and if she was unavailable on health grounds then the power minister or water resources minister could have done the honours.

Modi's decision to do it himself shows his penchant for indulging in event diplomacy.

Afghanistan is not a part of the Indian Union which presents the prime minister with a ribbon-cutting opportunity or where the prime minister stands to gain electorally and politically by inaugurating a developmental project.

It shows that Modi the politician does not want to let go any opportunity to visit a neighbouring country to make a song and dance about the dam project the construction of which was begun by the United Progressive Alliance government in right earnest a decade ago.

Moreover, Iran has always looked at the Salma dam project with suspicion as the Iranians somehow believe that the dam will reduce the river water flow into Iran.

In diplomacy, a prime ministerial visit should be viewed as a rare event, not a routine one, which should be taken recourse to only when other options like ministerial visits are not available.

But Modi has a different style of functioning. He wants to do everything himself.

From June 4, Modi will embark on a five-nation trip, the other countries being Qatar, Switzerland, the United States and Mexico in that order. He will visit a sixth nation in June when he travels to Uzbekistan to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit on June 21-22.

He could have easily kept this number to five by sending a Cabinet colleague to Herat. After all, he was in Afghanistan in December to inaugurate the Afghan parliament building, another construction project funded and handled by India.

Afghanistan will be the second South Asian country which Modi will visit twice. Nepal is the other one.

And look at the current state of India-Nepal relations! Nepal continues to poke a finger in India's eye even after Modi pampered it by paying two visits.

The moral of the story is simple. Prime ministerial visits to a country are not directly proportional to the state of bilateral relations.

Rajeev Sharma, an independent journalist and strategic analyst, tweets @Kishkindha
'Rich Indians don't give cash, they give gold. Why?'

'Because cash is spent by temples on prasad or doing some charitable work.'

'Gold remains intact with god,' says Aakar Patel.

Next year will mark the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, when one man's protest changed Christianity in Europe.

I was reminded of that by two stories published recently in India on the same day.

On May 25, in Andhra Pradesh, it was reported that the income of temples has grown by 27 per cent. Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu attributed this rise to 'growing sins.' He said, 'people are committing sins and to get rid of them they are going to temples and offering money.'

That same day, another story, from Udaipur, was published with the headline: 'A holy dip and Rs 11 is all it takes to be certified free of sins'.



The report said that priests at a Shiva temple in Rajasthan were offering a certificate for being paap-mukt, or sin-free, to those who paid Rs 11.



Of this money, a part would also ensure the dosh-nivaran, meaning the removal of future obstacles.

The explanation was that everyone sinned, even the innocent. One priest said that 'when people do farming, they inadvertently kill insects and other creatures, damage eggs of birds and reptiles. This fills them with guilt. They come here with a heavy heart, but go back relieved.'

The tradition of priests taking money on behalf of god is a universal phenomenon, and as I said, it was happening in Europe 500 years ago on a bigger scale.

The Roman Catholic church sold something called an 'indulgence'. An individual who paid money, usually a large sum, would have his punishment for his sins reduced in the afterlife.

The sale of indulgences was marketed widely and in 1517, the Pope sent a man to Germany to collect money. This was to be used for constructing the St Peter's church in the Vatican.

In protest against this, one German priest wrote a note accusing the Catholic church of corrupting the faith. He said the pope had no authority to do what he was doing, and he nailed his note to the door of his church.



The man's name was Martin Luther, and his act led to what is called the Protestant Reformation. This movement split Christianity and because of it today many European nations are no longer Catholic.

In India, just like in the Europe of Luther's time, religion is transactional. We offer money to temples in exchange for blessings. The rich Indians do not give cash, they give gold. Why?

Because cash is spent by temples on prasad or doing some charitable work. Gold remains intact with god.

In June 2009, then Karnataka minister G Janardhan Reddy gave a crown of gold and diamonds worth Rs 45 crore (Rs 450 million) to the temple at Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh.

According to the temple's website, Tirupati got 3,200 kg silver and 2.4 kg of diamonds in just one year. It gets over 1,000 kilos of gold a year on average. The temple encourages this and in 2011, those who gifted a kilo of gold, worth over Rs 28 lakh (Rs 2.8 million), got 'VIP darshan' (which means cutting the queue) of the idol. Today, the temple offers a range of privileges against large sums of money, starting at Rs 1 crore (Rs 10 million). The list can be seen at http://www.tirumala.org/Privileges.aspx

This information will not surprise many Indians, because we understand that religion in this part has always been transactional.

I went to Kashi a couple of months ago and everything had a price in this, the most ancient city of Hinduism.

People were charged money for seating space during aarti. Foreigners were charged large sums to hold the strings which made the bells ring at the Dasashwamedh Ghat during the evening aarti.

In every place, pilgrims were treated like customers. And, this is important, the pilgrims did not seem to mind it.

Since this is the culture, we should not be surprised that very little charity happens in India for real causes outside of religion. But we should perhaps not despair too much.

Giving money, particularly as philanthropy, meaning large donations from businessmen, is also a relatively recent phenomenon in the West. Till well into the 19th century, almost no organised philanthropy was happening there.



Rich businessmen would pay a fixed sum to the church. This sum, called a tithe, was sometimes around 10 per cent of income.

In 1889, the industrialist Andrew Carnegie wrote a work called The Gospel of Wealth, in which he argued that the rich were obliged to distribute their wealth to the poor. He said it was disgraceful for someone to die rich.

Many were influenced by Carnegie and today it has become the tradition in the West for the extremely wealthy to give their riches away before they die. People like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are not rare.

And it is not just the super rich who do this. The average Dutch individual makes monthly contributions to seven charities. What about here in India? We all know the answer to that.

Till this changes in India, and we stop seeing religion as transactional and for selfish reasons, the reformation that transformed Europe will not happen here.



We can only hope it doesn't take another 500 years.

Aakar Patel is Executive Director, Amnesty International India. The views expressed here are his own.

You can read his earlier columns here.
Congress president defends Robert Vadra, says charges against him are a part of Centres bid for a Congress-free India.

The Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party were on Tuesday engaged in a political slugfest over charges that Robert Vadra may have bought a benami property in London with his mother-in-law and Congress president Sonia Gandhi attacking the government and dismissing the charges as false.

Perhaps coming out in open defence of her son-in-law for the first time, she also dared the government to order an impartial probe if there is something so that truth will come out. She said everyday false allegations were made as part of a conspiracy as part of the Modi governments bid to make the country Congress-free.

The BJP hit back at Gandhi saying her defence of Vadra has exposed the farce that he was merely a private person and mocked her demand for a probe saying the party has earlier dubbed such inquiries as vendetta.

In a related fall-out of the controversy, Congress spokesperson Poona Shehzad Poonawalla on Tuesday wrote to the Central Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement Directorate demanding a probe into the alleged links between a BJP leader Siddarth Nath Singh and an alleged arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari. According to news reports, Bhandari is said to have facilitated the purchase of the London property for Vadra.

Poonawalla claimed that call data records of Bhandari showed that Singh had made 450 calls to Bhandari within a short span of time.

Singh shot back saying he had no financial dealings with Bhandari except knowing him socially and offered to face any probe in the matter. He did not know Bhandari was an arms dealer till the raids on him, he added.

The war of words erupted following news reports on Tuesday on the basis of purported papers seized by the IT department during searches last month on the arms dealers premises. The raids had led to a trail of emails allegedly between Vadra and his assistant on the one hand and the dealers aide on the other regarding the purchase of a London house for approximately Rs 19 crore which was subsequently said to have been sold.

Vadras legal firm has denied that he owned the London property directly or indirectly. It also denied that Vadra had any business ties with the arms dealer or his aide.

Asked about news reports on Vadra, Gandhi shot back, This is a conspiracy for Congress-free country. What is the meaning of Congress-free India. Everyday they make new excuses. They level false charges. If there is something, then there should be an impartial probe. Everything will become clear, she said.

At the AICC briefing, Congress leader Anand Sharma derided Singhs description of relationship with Bhandari as social and attacked the governments dirty tricks department accusing it of selective leaks to damage the party.

Alleging that the Prime Ministers Office was involved in such tactics, Sharma said all this was an attempt to divert peoples attention from failures including a total collapse of the economy.

On the BJP side, its media department in-charge Shrikant Sharma said, The Congress chiefs comments have exposed the farce that Vadra is merely a private person. It has established that he is the Gandhi family and Gandhi family is him.

Party MP Kirit Somaiya said the links between Vadra and Bhandari were nothing but suspicious.

Siddarth Nath Singh, who faced a barrage of questions from the media on his friendship with Bhandari, said he knew him for many years because both their children went to the same school and the relationship and calls were social in nature.

I didnt know that he is an arms dealer. My children and his children went to the same school. Till the raids (at Bhandaris place) I did not know about him (as an arms dealer). I came to know about it from the media and since then there has been no calls. Neither he called nor did I call him up, he said.

He dismissed reports that he had made 450 calls. Not even 100 or 50 calls. Much less than that, he said adding the last call was made two or three months ago.

Asked if he had any financial dealings with Bhandari, Singh said, absolutely not.

I am open to any investigation. I welcome it. But Congress has refused to answer charges (on Vadra) and it is an attempt to divert from the issue of Vadra buying a property in London, he said.
The Sino-Indian deadlock over a United Nations ban on Jaish-e- Mohammed chief Masood Azhar and others may end if India resubmits its application focussing on evidence against him than attempting to censure Pakistan, Bharatiya Janata Party MP Subramanian Swamy on Tuesday said after talks with Chinese officials.

My impression is that India can expect cooperation from China on the issue of declaring Masood Azhar, leader of JeM, as terrorist who should face trial in India, if India in the UN concentrated more on him than seeking to censure Pakistan as a sponsor of terror, Swamy said.

Swamy, who is on a pilgrimage to Kailash-Manasarovar in Tibet, said he is visiting China in an individual capacity as an old friend but with the knowledge of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other senior ministers of his cabinet.

The BJP leader said as a tactical move it would (be) prudent (to) resubmit the complaint in UN which was blocked after China put a technical hold.

Based on what I learnt here, I will be very surprised if China continues to obstruct once it is limited to hard evidence, said Swamy after meeting Wang Guo Qing, director of the foreign affairs committee of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Committee, and Wu Hailong, president of the Chinese Peoples Institute of Foreign Affairs.

He said the application submitted by India in UN was more Pakistan-centric than Azhar. I think for the limited purpose it was submitted which was to get UN sanctions, the report should be resubmitted, he said.

I assume the Chinese would find it difficult to say no, once the report is limited to hard evidence. In fact it would (be a) good idea if there is pre-UN trilateral consultation between India, China and Pakistan, he said.

China, which previously blocked Indias attempts to get a UN ban on Mumbai terror attack mastermind and Lashkar-e-Tayiba commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, also put a hold on listing of Azhar as global terrorist for his role in the Pathankot attack.

The issue has cast a shadow on bilateral ties as India has expressed disappointment over Chinas actions while the two countries are seeking a way out to end the impasse.

The issue also figured in the just concluded visit of President Pranab Mukherjee.

Swamy suggested India, China and Pakistan trilateral talks to address the issues of cross border terrorism.

He said Prime Minister Modi is working hard to resume dialogue with Pakistan, but the problem is that we can only talk to the constitutional authority in Pakistan which is the prime minister, who do not seem to have a final word. The army seems to have veto along with the ISI and Mullahs.

China being a friend of Pakistan can help peace in South Asia by encouraging the constitutional authorities to assert their authority. If China convenes a tripartite meeting on India-China-Pakistan on issue of terrorism because terrorism from Pakistan is no longer a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan any more. It is also trilateral issue as terrorists from Pakistan also go to (Muslim-majority) Xinjiang, he said.

Swamy claimed that China also recognises that terror emanates from Pakistans soil even though it do not admit openly because of its friendship.

You can say I am confident that our government would welcome such a trilateral meeting on terrorism because terrorists from Pakistan are going to both India and China. My expectation our government will welcome, he said.

I intend to urge the PM to consider this as an initiative when he comes here for G20 meeting, Swamy said.

Modi is expected to attend the G20 meet scheduled to be held in the Chinese city of Hangzhou in September.

Asked if China is open to such a proposal, he said, I think China will find it very hard to refuse such a proposal from India based on my conversations here.

In my opinion China is already an observer country in SAARC. So they have a legitimate role to play in helping SAARC solving it problems. Now the problem of terrorism not only affects India, they are not going to be umpires but also affected parties. India and China are affected parties from terror based in Pakistan, he said.

We should be able to get Pakistan to comply to many things if we have trilateral meeting. They will find it very difficult to say no China, he said.

Swamy, accompanied by Indian Charge daffaires Bala Bhaskar, on Monday visited the China Tibetology Research Centre here which has no links with India despite collaboration with 22 other countries.

This is first time an Indian official delegation has been invited to the centre which focusses on research on Tibet, Swamy said and proposed collaboration between the centre and Indian Council of Cultural Research.

On Tuesday he met Chinese Vice Finance Minister Shi Yaobin and discussed Indias concerns over rapidly increasing trade imbalance between the two countries which touched about $48 billion last year.

Swamy proposed cross border economic cooperation and people-to-people contacts in Tibet besides a chair on Hindu religion in Tibetan university and chair on Mahayana Buddhism in an Indian university.

He also welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinpings proposal to allow more Indian pilgrims to Kailash-Manasarovar through the new Sikkim route which was opened last year.

The proposal to allow more than the previously agreed 250 people was conveyed by Xi during his meeting Mukherjee.

China has organised Kailash yatra for about 35 years without interruption despite problems in the bilateral ties, he said.
The test flight is a victory for public sector undertaking Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, which has strongly backed the Hindustan Turbo Trainer-40 project, defying a skeptical Indian Air Force. Ajai Shukla reports.

On Tuesday morning, in a milestone in indigenous aircraft development, India's home-grown basic trainer aircraft, the Hindustan Turbo Trainer-40, made its first flight.

Last week, the HTT-40 completed high-speed taxi trials, in which it accelerated to take-off speed, and even lifted its nose slightly off the runway, checking all its systems for actual flight. Next, the pilots will go through a full take-off, and then carry out basic flying manoeuvres before landing the aircraft.

If this goes off well, it will be a victory for public sector undertaking Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, which has strongly backed the HTT-40 project, defying a skeptical Indian Air Force.

The IAF had blocked funding for the HTT-40, telling the defence ministry the aircraft would be too expensive, too heavy and would not meet the air force's needs. HAL continued anyway, allocating more than Rs 350 crore of company funds.

The IAF was backing a Swiss trainer, the Pilatus PC-7 Mark II, importing 75 for Swiss Francs 557 million (Rs 3,770 crore at current rates), in a controversial deal signed in May 2012. Those aircraft have already joined the IAF fleet.

But the IAF needs another 106 basic trainers, and wanted the Swiss aircraft, not the Indian one.

In July 2013, then IAF chief Air Chief Marshal N A K Browne wrote personally to then defence minister, A K Antony, requesting the HTT-40 project be closed and 106 more aircraft be imported from Switzerland.

As Business Standard reported, Browne's letter to Antony was based on incorrect figures and procedures were violated to favour Pilatus. That was validated last year, when Business Standard reported a defence ministry internal noting that concluded Pilatus might not have been the lowest bidder.

Since 2015, indigenisation-friendly Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar has goaded the IAF into accepting the HTT-40 and setting up an "integrated project management team" to oversee the project.

To meet the IAF's training needs while the HTT-40 is flight tested and brought into production -- which could take two years -- 38 more PC-7 Mark II trainers are being bought. The remaining gap of 68 trainers would be filled by the HTT-40.

HAL projects it will build the first two HTT-40 trainers in 2018, eight in 2019, and reach its capacity of 20 per year from 2020.

HAL hopes to build 200 HTT-40s, exporting a "weaponised" version to countries like Afghanistan, Myanmar, and some African customers.

HAL chief T Suvarna Raju told Business Standard the HTT-40 would be developed into a capable ground-attack aircraft, ideal for countries that cannot afford expensive fighters or air bases with long runways. HAL hopes to price the HTT-40 at about Rs 40 crore per aircraft, one-fifth the cost of a basic light fighter.

Stringent Swiss end-user restrictions prohibit weaponising the PC-7 Mark II.

The HTT-40, like the PC-7 Mark II, is a propeller-driven, turbo-prop aircraft for "Stage-1" training of rookie pilots. After 80 hours of basic training, pilots shift to "Stage-2" training on the HAL-built Kiran Mark II jet trainer.

Next comes "Stage-3" training on the Hawk advanced jet trainer, which HAL builds under licence from BAE Systems.

The HTT-40 features a pressurised cockpit, "zero-zero" ejection seats, and a state-of-the-art cockpit display with "in-flight simulation" that permits an instructor in the rear cockpit to electronically simulate various system failures, training the rookie pilot in the front seat in handling emergencies.

HAL says that 55 of the trainer's 95 systems have been designed and built in India. Another 35 systems will be built in India with transferred technology, including the aircraft's Honeywell TPE-331-12B engine.

This high degree of indigenisation would make it easy to support the HTT-40 through its service life.
Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah on Tuesday had a meal with a Dalit family in Jogiyapur village in Sevapuri assembly segment in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency.

Shah, who was on his way to Allahabad to address a farmers' rally, took a brief halt at Jogiyapur village and had lunch with the family of Girjaprasad Bind and Ikbal Bind, who belong to the Dalit community, Sanjay Bharadwaj, BJP media-in-charge said.

The BJP chief sat on the ground with the family members and shared the meal with them, he said.

Shah was given a warm welcome on his arrival in the city by party workers.

Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav hit out at the BJP leader, stating that the latter had lunch with the Dalit family with an eye on the UP assembly polls.
IMAGE: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, MoS VK Singh and Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar arrive for a meeting with a group of African students, in New Delhi on Tuesday. Photograph: Vijay Kumar Joshi/ PTI Photo



Ratcheting up efforts to contain the damage over attacks on African nationals, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj today announced a slew of steps including a country-wide sensitisation campaign even as she asserted that the killing of a Congolese youth was not a "racial crime".

Swaraj, who along with her junior Minister V K Singh, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and other senior officials, met a group of African envoys and students also asserted that

India, which is the land of Gandhi and Buddha and fought consistently against racial discrimination, can never have a racist mindset.

The African delegation, comprising the ambassador of Eritrea, who is also the Dean of the African Diplomatic Corps, the Acting High Commissioner of Nigeria, who is the Chair of the African Union's Student Committee, and the head of the Association of African Students in India among others, raised concerns over safety and security of the community.

On her part, Swaraj assured the team that the government was working on a "major strategy" under which an institutional mechanism will be put in place to address their concerns and that Singh and other MEA officials will hold meetings with the African community in all major metros where they reside.

Terming the killing of Masonda Ketada Oliver as "barbaric", Swaraj, however, said, "it is not a case of racial crime."

The government was committed to a fast-track trial in the killing of Oliver and "harshest possible punishment" for the culprits, she assured the African delegation.

"All criminal acts should not be construed as racial attacks. As the CCTV footage of the incident in question showed, this was an act committed by goons who also thrashed the Indian bystanders who had attempted to intervene to save Oliver. The Delhi police immediately swung into action after the unfortunate incident," she said.

She further emphasised that the attacks were not "premeditated acts against a particular community" and rather were spontaneous attacks perpetrated by anti-social and criminal elements.

"India is the land of Gandhi and Buddha. We have fought consistently against racial discrimination. Mahatma Gandhi himself championed the cause of fighting against this evil. We can never have a racist mindset," she said, adding, "Nevertheless, it is incumbent upon us to prevent such attacks and we are determined to do so."

Swaraj said India will continue to remain a country where African community will always "feel welcome", assuring them that an institutional mechanism would be put in place in the next 10-15 days to ensure that incidents of assaults do not recur in future.

She said the recent incidents were not only very unfortunate, but also "very painful".

"As a mother, I can understand the pain of a mother who loses a son on foreign soil. It would be a traumatic experience.

"India's historical relations with Africa rest on the foundation of brotherhood and solidarity and we should not allow such incidents to deflect from our historical friendship and close development partnership with Africa," she said.

Swaraj said the MEA ministry will be carrying out a sensitisation campaign across the country as such incidents are bad for the image of the country.

"The MoS will hold meetings with the African community in all major metros where they reside. He will be accompanied by Secretary (Economic Relations) and police commissioners of these cities," Swaraj said.

The External Affairs minister further said an advisory will also be issued to the states to sensitise people in the areas where there is a "big number of African nationals".

"India will continue to remain a country where they will always feel welcome," she said.

Earlier, a group of African students called off a planned protest against attacks against the community following government's assurance. This was Swaraj's first official engagement in the ministry after being discharged from AIIMS on May 15 where she was admitted for three weeks due to pneumonia.

During the meeting she also thanked the African students for calling off their protest at Jantar Mantar today following assurances by the ministry. She also appreciated the participation of African envoys at the India-hosted Africa Day celebration last week.
After more than twenty years of doing politics full-time, Im pretty jaded. Little surprises me. But the level of dishonesty  indeed, outright lying  by some Nevada Republican legislators about the largest tax hike in state history they voted for last year is absolutely breathtaking.

Among the worst offenders are Sen. Michael Roberson and Assembly-critters John Hambrick, Paul Anderson, P.K. ONeill, Derek Armstrong, Stephen Silberkraus, David Gardner, James Oscarson and Erv Nelson.

These double-talking, fork-tongued, two-faced politicians are derisively referred to as RINOs: Republicans In Name Only. But heres the thing 

Had these Republicans campaigned honestly on a platform that education was under-funded and, if elected, they would raise taxes to dump more money into our failed public schools, they would have had a mandate from voters to do so.

But they didnt.

Instead, they campaigned as fiscal conservatives. They said government had to live within its means, just like Nevada families. They said we needed to root out waste, fraud and abuse. They said we needed to set spending priorities.

They said, paraphrasing Ronald Reagan, that the problem was government spending too much, not the people being taxed too little.

And voters bought it. Hook. Line. And sinker.

In fact, voters in 2014 rewarded Republicans total and absolute control of every statewide elected office, as well as majorities in both houses of the Legislature for the first time since the Depression. And what did they do with it?

Instead of cutting spending, rooting out waste, fraud and abuse, and forcing government to live within its means as they promised, they betrayed the voters and shoved a $1.4 billion tax hike down our collective throats!

But thats not the worst part. The worst part is that those same tax-hiking Republicans are now running for re-election and hiding their vote like a pirates stolen booty.

A lie of omission is still a lie.

Look, if that vote to jack up taxes through the roof was supposedly such an honorable vote that provided critically-needed funding for the children, as every good liberal says, then why not run ON it instead of running AWAY from it?

Because they know that if theyd campaigned in favor of raising taxes they wouldnt have been elected in 2014. And if they campaign now on having proudly raised taxes, they wont get re-elected in 2016. So they lied to get into office and are now lying again to stay in office.

Its despicable. If a businessman misled consumers like this hed be thrown in jail. Alas, all voters can do is vote these snake-oil rascals out of office.

As Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott of the Starship Enterprise famously put it: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Lets not get fooled again.
Three arrests have been made after 18 women became victims of their sexual assault at a music festival in Germany.

Three Pakistani men, who were seeking asylum in the western city of Darmstadt in Germany, have been arrested after the women filed complaints that they had been improperly touched, fondled and groped during the festival.

The incident had similarities to the attacks in Cologne on December 31 - when a number of young women were targeted in the concourse of the citys main railway station.

Cops said they were probing whether the men had also robbed the women during the four-day open air music festival.

Initially, three women had filed charges, leading to the arrests of the three men, Pakistani asylum seekers aged 28 to 31, and another 15 women have come forward since.

Germany and the world reeled following reports that as many as 1,000 women had been sexually assaulted -- groped, robbed, intimidated and separated from their friends -- at Colognes central train station on New Years Eve.

Many of the perpetrators, it was alleged, appeared to be of North African or Arab descent, following which public support in Germany for asylum-seekers dropped, with some criticising German Chancellor Angela Merkel for lifting asylum restrictions for Syrian refugees last summer -- a decision that led to the arrival of 1.1 million migrants and asylum seekers in 2015.

Image: Protests erupted after as many as 1,000 women were sexually assaulted at Colognes central train station on New Years Eve by perpetrators appearing to be of Arab descent. Photograph: Reuters
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday underwent an open-heart surgery at a British hospital which his party said was successful, the Premiers second cardiac procedure in five years.

Sharif had gone to London on May 22 for a regular medical checkup but was diagnosed with a heart complication by doctors who suggested surgery.

The 66-year-old Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) leader was recovering after the operation at Princess Grace Hospital in London and was expected to be conscious in a few hours.

The operation was successful and we are now just waiting for him to recover and wake up in a couple of hours, a PML-N UK spokesperson said.

Sharifs daughter Maryam Nawaz had earlier given updates on the surgery on social media.

By the Grace of Almighty, surgery progressing fine. Will take another couple of hours or so. Prayers doing miracles... Grafting of vessels started an hour ago (sic), she said on Twitter.

PMs surgery started at 8 am UK time. Spoke to him earlier, he was in high spirits. I entrusted him to Allah, Maryam said in an earlier tweet.

The need for the surgery arose after the Premier went through a cardiac procedure called Atrial Fibrillation Ablation in 2011, during which certain complications occurred resulting in perforation of heart, Maryam had told the media.

After some recent symptoms, a team of cardiologists and cardiac surgeons carried out some scans and tests, following which they decided to go for an open-heart surgery, she said.

Sharif will stay in the hospital for at least a week. He will return after being allowed by the doctors.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani were among several world leaders who wished Sharif ahead of the surgery.

However, Sharif only spoke to Prime Minister Narendra Modi before the surgery, the Pakistan Foreign Office said in Islamabad.

PM Nawaz Sharif telephoned PM Modi and expressed gratitude for Mr Modis best wishes for his upcoming operation and speedy recovery, Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria said.
A super-rich village in Switzerland, one of the wealthiest in Europe, has chosen to pay a fine of 200,000 pounds (Rs 1.96 crore) instead of accepting 10 refugees under the country's newly imposed quota system.

Residents in the picturesque Oberwil-Lieli village, which has 300 millionaires in a population of 22,000, voted 'no' in a referendum over whether to accept the refugees.

The vote has resulted in a division in the town and led to people slamming residents for being "racist". But Andreas Glarner, the mayor of the village, denied that they were being racist by refusing the refugees.

"We were not to be told if the 10 were from Syria or if they are economic migrants from other countries. Yes, the refugees from Syria have to be helped and they are better served by being helped in the camps nearer their home," said Glarner.

"Money could be sent to help them, but if we are housing them here it sends out the wrong message. Others will come and risk their lives crossing the ocean and paying people smugglers to bring them," he was quoted as saying by metro.co.uk.

Glarner added that the language barrier would also be an issue. "They are not likely to be able to speak the language and if some of the refugees have children they will have to go into the local school where they will need special focus," he said.

The Swiss government had recently announced a quota system to take in about 50,000 asylum seekers. The plan was to distribute the refugees across the country's 26 counties according to the quota system.

According to International Organisation for Migration and United Nations high commissioner for Refugees, around one million refugees arrived in Europe until 21 December 2015, three to four times more than in 2014.
Disclaimer

This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.
Egypt: Head of press syndicate detained in unprecedented crackdown on media freedom

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 30 May 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Egypt: Head of press syndicate detained in unprecedented crackdown on media freedom, 30 May 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/574d32614.html [accessed 25 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

The arrest today of the head of the Egyptian Press Syndicate and two colleagues is an alarming setback for freedom of expression and the most brazen attack on the media the country witnessed in decades, said Amnesty International.

Yahia Galash, head of Press Syndicate and senior board members Khaled Elbalshy and Gamal Abd el-Reheem were summoned for questioning on 29 May by the public prosecution. After 13 hours of questioning, the three men were charged with 'harbouring suspects against whom an arrest warrant has been issued' and 'publishing false news, which threatens public peace, related to their arrest'. The prosecution ordered that the three men be put in custody, with bail set at 10,000 Egyptian pounds (USD$1,123), which they have refused to pay.

"The arrest of key media figures at the Press Syndicate signals a dangerous escalation of the Egyptian authorities' draconian clampdown on freedom of expression and demonstrates the extreme measures the authorities are prepared to take in order to tighten their iron grip on power," said Magdalena Mughrabi, interim Deputy Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Amnesty International.

Successive Egyptian governments have attempted to control the media and impose restrictions on journalists but on 1 May up to 40 heavily armed members of the National Security agency stormed the Press Syndicate for the first time since it was established in 1941. They attacked journalists, beating security guards and detained two journalists Amro Badr and Mahmoud Al-Saqqa. They are being held in Tora prison and have been charged with forming an illegal group with the aim of overthrowing the government, inciting protests and publishing false news, and belonging to the April 6 Movement, a leading youth group that was instrumental in organizing protests in 2011.

Days later on 4 May, thousands of journalists gathered outside the Syndicate to make a series of demands, including calling for the dismissal of Minister of Interior Magdy Abdel Ghaffar, the release of detained and imprisoned journalists, as well as demanding further measures to strengthen the protection of journalists.

"By prosecuting senior members of the Press Syndicate the authorities are clearly attempting to punish them for speaking out against the government and to send a strong message to intimidate all journalists into silence. The authorities must immediately order their release and drop the charges against them," said Magdalena Mughrabi.

Under Egyptian law, permission from the Public Prosecutor is required in order to search the Press Syndicate premises and any search must be carried out in the presence of the head of the Syndicate or other senior management.

"The storming of the Press Syndicate earlier this month was unprecedented. It is the most brazen attack on the media the country has seen in decades. The Egyptian authorities appear to be prepared to breach their own laws in their chilling attempt to crush all signs of dissent," said Magdalena Mughrabi.

"The authorities must also drop charges against the two journalists who were detained at the Press Syndicate and investigate the circumstances of the raid."

At least 20 journalists are currently behind bars in Egypt imprisoned carrying out their legitimate journalistic work, according to the Egyptian Press Syndicate.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Bahrain: Opposition leader jailed for nine years over peaceful speeches

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 30 May 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Bahrain: Opposition leader jailed for nine years over peaceful speeches, 30 May 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/574d32b34.html [accessed 25 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

In a shocking attack on the right to freedom of expression Bahrain's authorities today upheld the conviction of opposition leader Sheikh 'Ali Salman and increased his prison sentence from four to nine years for giving speeches in which he criticized the government, said Amnesty International.

"Sheikh 'Ali Salman's conviction is clearly politically motivated and is designed to send a message to others that even legitimate and peaceful demands for reform will not go unpunished. He is a prisoner of conscience and should never have been put on trial in the first place. He must be immediately and unconditionally released," said James Lynch, Deputy Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Amnesty International.

Sheikh 'Ali Salman, who is the Secretary General of the main opposition party al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, was originally sentenced on 16 June 2015 after an unfair trial to four years in prison on charges including "publicly insulting the Interior Ministry" and "publicly inciting others to disobey the law". The charges relate to speeches he made in 2012 and 2014.

His appeal had been pending for eight months before finally being rejected today at the Court of Appeal in the capital Manama.

In September 2015, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention called on the Bahraini authorities to release him immediately and grant him adequate compensation.

In recent years, Bahrain has tightened its grip on freedom of expression with multiple arrests and harassment of opposition politicians and activists.

Ebrahim Sharif, former Secretary General of the National Democratic Action Society (Wa'ad) was imprisoned for one year on 24 February for calling for reform in a speech. Fadhel Abbas Mahdi Mohamed, former Secretary General of The Unitary National Democratic Assemblage (al-Wahdawi party) continues to appeal against a five-year sentence handed down to him after an unfair trial in June 2015 for a statement made by his political party condemning the Saudi Arabia-led airstrikes in Yemen.

"With three prominent opposition politicians behind bars, the authorities have made clear that criticism will not be tolerated in Bahrain today and anyone who dares to challenge them is at risk," said James Lynch.

Amnesty International considers Sheikh 'Ali Salman, Ebrahim Sharif and Fadhel Abbas Mahdi Mohamed to be prisoners of conscience imprisoned solely for peacefully expressing their views.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Inside the European fusion reactor laboratory known as Jet, on the outskirts of Oxford. JET

By 2050, Europe intends to run on clean, limitless energy, relegating fossil fuel to history, and the way it plans to do this is through nuclear fusion.

Atomic energy has always been controversial, and concerns about its risks have increased following the Fukushima disaster in 2011. But nuclear fusion is now being promoted as a much safer alternative, and one that generates far less radioactive waste.

Scientists believe it is possible to build a reactor capable of generating these kinds of temperatures that would be able to produce 10 times more energy than we consume

The difference between fission, the process used until now to generate nuclear power, and fusion, is that instead of splitting the atom, fusion melds them together, which produces less radioactive waste. Furthermore, say some scientists, when the right atoms are chosen, the procedure may produce no waste at all.

Fusion is what powers the Sun and the stars and makes life on Earth possible. In order to reproduce this process on earth, we need temperatures of around 150 million C  10 times as intense as the suns core.

Now scientists believe it is possible to build a reactor capable of generating these kinds of temperatures that would be able to produce 10 times more energy than we consume, thereby solving the worlds energy problems.

Turning the theory into reality is one of the biggest challenges currently facing mankind. To do that, test facilities to carry out experiments are required such as ITER, under construction in the south of France. But the EUs roadmap also includes building an International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility (IFMIF), or particle accelerator, a joint European/Japanese project to test materials.

Over the last year Granada, in Andalusia, has been in the running to be the site of the IFMIF. The bid, however, involves Andalusias regional government working with the central government to come up with a proposal. And according to Spanish scientists, the current impasse following inconclusive elections in December, which are to be repeated on June 26, has seen little progress.

We have no clear idea what is happening between the central government and the regional government, says Angel Ibarra, a scientist from the Centre of Research into Energy, Environment and Technology (Ciemat) and one of the team tasked with designing the new facility.

According to Spanish scientists, the current impasse following inconclusive elections in December has seen little progress

But the European Union is not about to wait for Spain. With a budget of hundreds of millions of euros, they want this facility built and actively testing by 2022 as planned, says Ibarra.

Neither the ITER facility nor the IFMIF would ever generate electricity. Instead, they would be the precursors to a future reactor to be built towards the end of the 2030s, which in turn will precede commercial reactors. The EUs goal is to be producing electricity from fusion by 2050 and for that to happen, we needed to be getting started on the reactors design now, says Ibarra.

The cost of this facility is around 360 million, but if Spains bid is successful, it would create 360 directly related posts along with a further 12,000 indirect jobs. Estimates suggest the economic benefits would amount to 900 million, and though its lifespan as a test facility would be just 10 years, there is potential for it to be adapted and used in 2050 as a commercial plant.

This particle accelerator would be the most powerful the world, more powerful than the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), says Ibarra, referring to the European Organization for Nuclear Researchs particle collider, which is carved into a Swiss mountainside, and is the largest, most complex experimental facility ever built, but the IFMIF would produce a much greater number of particles. It would also be the biggest scientific facility ever built in Spain, as well as a strategic base for the European Union.

It would be difficult to find a more worthwhile project, says Javier Diaz of Granada University and a member of the team preparing Spains bid. We need action from both the regional government and the Ministry. Without this commitment, the message were sending is very ambiguous, he says.

If Spains bid is successful, it would create 360 directly related posts along with a further 12,000 indirect jobs

The other main European contender is Poland, which may beat Spain in presenting a proposal, despite lagging in fusion technology. Poland hasn't got a final proposal together, but it is being more active than we are, says Joaquin Sanchez, a member of Ciemats fusion team. In Spain, there are so many people involved that nobody knows exactly who is holding things up.

Other countries showing an interest include Croatia, while Japan, already hosting one of the test facilities, will be another contender if no European country comes forward with a viable proposal.

After Japan, Spain is the most qualified, says Sanchez, explaining that the country contributes as much as Italy and France to IFMIF and that Spanish companies have played a major role in the development of fusion. As far as the ITER facility in France is concerned, Spain is in the top three for technological contracts.

But Sanchez says Spain risks losing its advantage. If another candidate begins to move quickly, were lost, he says. The deadline for deciding where to build the project is the end of the year although that's still not down in writing, he says.

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The Spanish government has expressed its interest in hosting the facility via a letter from the Secretary of State for Research and Development, which is ultimately dependent on the Treasury. The plan would be to finance at least 50% of the facility by drawing on European regional development funds, plus 20% from the regional government of Andalusia.

The regional government and the central government last met on April 26. Both parties have expressed interest in the project but they haven't hammered out a final proposal or even arranged a date for a follow-up meeting.

English version by Heather Galloway.
Hissene Habre verdict: Landmark decision brings justice for tens of thousands of victims

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 31 May 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Hissene Habre verdict: Landmark decision brings justice for tens of thousands of victims, 31 May 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/574d33c84.html [accessed 25 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Today's judgment convicting former Chadian president Hissene Habre marks a significant moment for international justice and a huge relief for the tens of thousands of victims who have waited for this day for over 25 years, said Amnesty International.

Following a trial which began in July last year, the Extraordinary African Chambers (EAC) in Dakar sentenced Hissene Habre to life imprisonment after he was found guilty of crimes against humanity, war crimes and torture committed in Chad between 1982 and 1990. He was found to have personally committed rapes.

"This verdict is a victory for those victims who fought tirelessly to ensure Hissene Habre could not get away with crimes under international law. It demonstrates that when there is enough political will states can work together effectively to end impunity in even the most entrenched situations," said Gaetan Mootoo, Amnesty International West Africa researcher.

"It is moments like these that other victims around the world can draw on in darker times when justice appears beyond reach. It will nourish them with hope and give them strength to fight for what is right. This landmark decision should also provide impetus to the African Union or individual African states to replicate such efforts to deliver justice to victims in other countries in the continent."

The trial against Hissene Habre opened in Senegal on 20 July 2015, and 69 victims, 23 witnesses and 10 expert witnesses testified during the proceedings. Among other evidence, the Prosecution relied upon research reports from Amnesty International's from the 1980s.

A former Amnesty International staff member also testified during the trial as an expert witness. Two of the victims who filed the case against Hissene Habre have died in the meantime. Their children and relatives will now see that justice is done.

The case sets a new benchmark for efforts to end impunity in Africa, as it is the first universal jurisdiction case on the continent, and the first time a former African leader has been prosecuted for crimes under international law before a court in another African country.

Trust Fund for all victims

Hissene Habre has a right to appeal the conviction and sufficient resources must be allocated to the Extraordinary African Chambers so that it completes the case, fully and effectively. The EAC is also due to hold reparations hearings and is mandated to establish a Trust Fund for all victims, whether or not they participated in the proceedings.

The EAC should set up the Trust Fund without delay. It should be provided with resources and other support, including from the African Union (AU).

Efforts to address impunity for crimes committed in Chad must also not end here.

"Pressure must continue to be placed on Chad and potentially other states to investigate and prosecute others accused of committing serious human rights violations between 1982 and 1990, including crimes of sexual and gender-based violence, in fair trials without recourse to the death penalty. In particular, Chad should investigate mass killings that were committed in September 1984 in the south of the country," said Gaetan Mootoo.

Background

Amnesty International has been campaigning since the 1970s in favor of victims of human rights violations in Chad. The organization advocated that perpetrators of human rights violations committed during the Habre regime should be brought to justice.

Despite major political barriers, victims working with civil society groups led an unyielding national, regional and global campaign which led to the establishment in August 2012 of the Extraordinary African Chambers (EAC).

Chad's National Commission of Enquiry estimated that 40,000 people may have died at the hands of Chad's security forces between 1982 and 1990. Government forces committed torture, arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances throughout this period. More than 50,000 letters and cards of Amnesty International's members were found in the archives of the Chadian Directorate of Documentation and Security.

While welcoming this landmark decision in the Habre case, Amnesty International expressed concern about several instances of non-cooperation by Chad and the lack of response by the African Union to these incidents, as well as about protection concerns in relation to some witnesses and lawyers. Since the trial opened, Amnesty International has advocated that the proceedings be held in accordance with international fair trial standards.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
The long road to justice for Chad's Hissene Habre

Publisher Amnesty International Author Salil Shetty Publication Date 30 May 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, The long road to justice for Chad's Hissene Habre, 30 May 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/574d34314.html [accessed 25 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

"From the depths of my cell, from the depths of that madness, I swore to fight for justice if I ever got out alive," former detainee Souleymane Guengueng told the special criminal court last year. Today he and thousands of other victims are celebrating after the life sentence handed down by the Extraordinary African Chambers (EAC) in Dakar against the former Chadian President, Hissene Habre for crimes against humanity, war crimes and torture.

Guengueng, imprisoned for two-and-a-half years in the late 1980s, was one of the lucky ones. An estimated 40,000 people are thought to have perished at the hands of Chad's security forces between 1982 and 1990.

"I saw my friends and fellow inmates die from hunger, die from despair, die from torture and die from sickness," Guengueng recalled in his testimony.

Yet from that furnace of horror something remarkable has been forged.

For more than two decades, despite threats, intimidation and major political set-backs, victims together with civil society groups worked tirelessly to make this day possible.

A coalition of human rights organizations and victims groups in Chad has spent decades gathering testimony from victims and their families to build the case against Hissene Habre. National and regional campaigns were set up supported by international organizations such as Amnesty International that helped document human rights violations committed in Chad since the 1980s.

Attempts to prosecute or extradite the former president to Belgium were repeatedly thwarted as were efforts to force Senegal to prosecute him. But victims groups and campaigners battled on and in 2012, the African Union supported Senegal in finally clearing the path to justice.

A new law was passed in December 2012 allowing for the creation of the Extraordinary African Chambers in Dakar. Habre, then aged 70, was arrested six months later and on 20 July 2015 he appeared for the first time in the court room.

Over the following months the charges contained in the 187 page long indictment against Hissene Habre were tested in court. These included crimes against humanity, torture and war crimes. Harrowing experiences were re-lived by 69 former victims. They described shocking violations suffered at the hands of Chad's security forces.

Much has been made of this landmark case from an international justice perspective. This is, after all, the first universal jurisdiction case on the continent, and the first time a former African leader has been prosecuted for crimes under international law before a court in another African country. This case gives new impetus for the African Union or individual African states to address entrenched impunity in other countries on the continent.

But, for me the significance of this case goes further and is much more personal. It demonstrates that victims of human rights abuses, no matter how hopeless their situation, can still have a voice and the ability to achieve justice. It demonstrates that the work of campaigners and human rights defenders, no matter how long and challenging, really matters. And it demonstrates that heads of state, military commanders and others who are suspected of committing human rights violations around the globe can no longer expect to evade the net of international justice for ever. Safe havens are no longer safe for those suspected of committing war crimes, crimes against humanity or other crimes under international law.

After the fall of Hissene Habre's administration, more than 50,000 letters and postcards from Amnesty International members calling for the release of detainees were found at the main security headquarters in the Chadian capital N'Djamena. A quarter of a century on, many of those named in those letters will not be here to see the verdict. They and thousands of others died in the 1980's. For the survivors however, and for all who believe in human rights and the rule of law, today's verdict is deeply significant.

It is moments like these that we can draw on in darker times. They are the things that nourish us with hope and give us strength to stand up for what is right. Today's verdict will give renewed energy in the fight against impunity for crimes committed during Habre's administration which will continue until all those responsible for crimes under international law are brought to justice.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Cote d'Ivoire: Simone Gbagbo Trial Begins

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 30 May 2016 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Cote d'Ivoire: Simone Gbagbo Trial Begins, 30 May 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/574d356b4.html [accessed 25 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

The upcoming trial in Cote d'Ivoire of the former Ivorian first lady Simone Gbagbo for crimes against humanity could be a pivotal moment for justice. However, for the trial to be meaningful to victims, it must be credible, fair, and followed by other trials that target high-level rights abusers from both sides of the 2010-2011 post-election crisis.

Human rights groups acting on behalf of victims have refused to participate in Simone Gbagbo's trial, scheduled to begin on May 31, 2016. They have cited an incomplete investigation into her role in abuses and breaches of Cote d'Ivoire's criminal procedure in the preparations for the trial.

"Simone Gbagbo's trial  the first in Cote d'Ivoire for crimes against humanity should be an opportunity for victims of pro-Gbagbo forces to learn the truth about her alleged role in abuses," said Jim Wormington, West Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. "But unless the trial is credible and fair, the hopes of victims will be short-lived."

The post-election crisis stemmed from the refusal of then-president Laurent Gbagbo to cede power to the current president, Alassane Ouattara, following the November 2010 presidential elections. Gbagbo's refusal to accept the election outcome was followed by violence and eventually a resumption of armed conflict. Between December 2010 and May 2011, at least 3,000 civilians were killed and more than 150 women were raped, with serious human rights violations committed by both sides.

Simone Gbagbo will be tried by Cote d'Ivoire's highest criminal court (Cour d'Assises) for crimes against humanity and war crimes. The prosecution alleges that during the post-election crisis she participated in a "crisis committee" consisting of leaders from her husband's political party and key government ministers that planned and organized abuses against Ouattara supporters to maintain her husband in power at all costs.

Simone Gbagbo, who has been in custody in Cote d'Ivoire since April 2011, has also been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity during the post-election crisis. The ICC trial of her husband, former president Laurent Gbagbo, began January 28, 2016 in The Hague.

Cote d'Ivoire has so far refused to transfer Simone Gbagbo to the ICC. ICC judges in December 2014 and May 2015 rejected the government's request for Ivorian courts to retain jurisdiction over Simone Gbagbo's case, concluding that at the time the investigation into her role in human rights crimes had not made sufficient progress. These decisions mean that Cote d'Ivoire remains obligated to surrender Simone Gbagbo to The Hague.

The Ivorian government's position remains that since national courts will try Simone Gbagbo for the same crimes that she has been charged with at the ICC, her case should remain in Cote d'Ivoire. Indeed, in April 2015 President Ouattara said that all future trials related to the post-election crisis would occur in national courts.

Several Ivorian officials told Human Rights Watch that the upcoming trial will demonstrate to the ICC that Simone Gbagbo can be fairly tried in Ivorian courts. However, the International Federation for Human Rights (Federation Internationale des Ligues des Droits de l'Homme, FIDH) and two prominent Ivorian human rights groups, who are representing victims of the post-election crisis in national proceedings, have decided not to participate in the trial. In a public statement, FIDH said it had grave concerns that the investigation against Simone Gbagbo had been completed prematurely, and would not give victims a full picture of the role allegedly played by Simone Gbagbo in the abuses of the post-election crisis.

This is the second trial in Cote d'Ivoire for Simone Gbagbo. She was convicted in March 2015 for offenses against the state during the post-election crisis and sentenced to 20 years in prison. A key criticism of those proceedings was the lack of evidence presented linking her and other political leaders to violence by their supporters. Although Gbagbo will now stand trial for her role in human rights abuses, the principal challenge for the prosecution will be identifying evidence to tie her to the killings, rape, and other abuses by pro-Gbagbo forces.

The beginning of the trial comes amid ostensible progress in investigations for crimes committed during the post-election crisis, including the indictment of several high-level commanders from pro-Ouattara forces by Cote d'Ivoire's Special Investigative and Examination Cell.

However, the government has not yet enacted several vital legal reforms scheduled to be carried out during President Ouattara's first term in office, which ended in November 2015. Urgently needed reforms include a system to protect witnesses from reprisals and amendments to the criminal procedure code to require judges to provide reasons for their decisions and grant defendants a right of appeal.

Some commentators also allege that Simone Gbagbo's trial is a sign that President Ouattara's government ultimately intends to prosecute only crimes by pro-Gbagbo forces. President Ouattara has rejected this criticism, and said after his October reelection that: "Justice must be equal for all. We need to avoid impunity."

To turn this rhetoric into reality, the Ivorian government should maintain support for impartial and independent investigations into crimes committed during the 2010-2011 conflict, and ensure that prosecutors and investigating judges are given the time and resources they need to finish their investigations. Courts should ensure that the right of victims to participate in the proceedings are respected.

"Five years after the post-election crisis, Cote d'Ivoire is entering a critical phase in the fight against impunity," Wormington said. "The government should support the Ivorian judiciary's efforts to complete investigations and conduct credible trials against those responsible for crimes from both sides."

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Chad's Ex-Dictator Convicted of Atrocities

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 30 May 2016 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Chad's Ex-Dictator Convicted of Atrocities, 30 May 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/574d35e74.html [accessed 25 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

The conviction of Hissene Habre, the former president of Chad, for serious international crimes, is a vindication of the decades-long campaign waged by his victims, Human Rights Watch said today. Habre was convicted of torture, war crimes and crimes against humanity, including having raped a woman himself, by the Extraordinary African Chambers in the Senegalese court system and sentenced to life in prison on May 30, 2016.

"This is an enormous victory for Hissene Habre's victims, who for 25 years never gave up fighting to bring him to justice" said Reed Brody, counsel at Human Rights Watch who has worked with the survivors since 1999. "This conviction is a wake-up call to tyrants everywhere that if they engage in atrocities they will never be out of the reach of their victims."

The trial against Habre, who ruled Chad from 1982 to 1990, began on July 20, 2015. Habre does not recognize the chambers' authority and sat silently throughout the trial.

A summary of the decision was read out in court by chief judge Gberdao Gustave Kam of Burkina Faso, who shared the bench with two senior Senegalese judges. The prosecutor had requested a life sentence.

The written decision will be distributed at a later date. Human Rights Watch has prepared an unofficial summary from notes taken in court.

Habre fled to Senegal in 1990 after being deposed by the current Chadian president, Idriss Deby Itno. Although Habre was first arrested and indicted in Senegal in 2000, it took a long campaign by his victims before the Extraordinary African Chambers were inaugurated by Senegal and the African Union in February 2013 to prosecute international crimes committed in Chad during Habre's rule.

"I have been waiting for this day since I walked out of prison more than 25 years ago," said Souleymane Guengueng, who nearly died of mistreatment and disease in Habre's prisons, and later founded the Association of Victims of Crimes of the Regime of Hissene Habre (AVCRHH). "Today I feel ten times bigger than Hissene Habre."

Habre's trial is the first in the world in which the courts of one country prosecuted the former ruler of another for alleged human rights crimes. Ninety-three witnesses testified at the trial, the majority travelling from Chad to be there. Survivors presented powerful testimony about torture, rape, sexual slavery, mass executions, and the destruction of entire villages.

Notably, the court convicted Habre of sexual crimes, including rape and the sexual slavery of women to serve his army.

The court also found Habre guilty of having raped Khadidja Hassan Zidane on four occasions. The court found Hassan's testimony credible and supported by an account she gave at the time. It is the first time that an ex-dictator is found personally guilty of rape by an international court.

"Found guilty of sex crimes, including his rape of one woman, Hissene Habre's conviction signals that no leader is above the law, and that no woman or girl is below it" said Reed Brody.

The chambers will hold a second set of hearings in June or July on damages for the civil parties and other victims.

It appears possible that Habre's court-appointed lawyers could lodge an appeal without Habre's consent. If an appeal is lodged, an Extraordinary African Appeals Chamber will be constituted to hear the appeal later this year.

Habre's trial underscored the importance of universal jurisdiction, Human Rights Watch said. That principle under international law allows national courts to prosecute the most serious crimes even when committed abroad, by a foreigner, and against foreign victims.

In March 2015, a court in Chad convicted 20 top security agents of Habre's government on torture and murder charges.

Habre's one-party rule was marked by widespread atrocities, including waves of ethnic cleansing. Files of Habre's political police, the Direction de la Documentation et de la Securite (DDS), which were recovered by Human Rights Watch in 2001, reveal the names of 1,208 people who were killed or died in detention, and 12,321 victims of human rights violations.

The United States and France viewed Habre as a bulwark against Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, and so supported him throughout his rule despite clear evidence of his abuses against his own people. Under President Ronald Reagan, the US gave covert CIA paramilitary support to help Habre take power.

Habre was first indicted in Senegal in 2000, but after political interference, the country's courts said that he could not be tried there, so his victims filed a case in Belgium. In September 2005, after four years of investigation, a Belgian judge indicted Habre and Belgium requested his extradition. Senegal refused to send Habre to Belgium, and spent the next three years stalling on a request from the African Union (AU) to prosecute Habre. Belgium then filed a case against Senegal at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). On July 20, 2012, that court ordered Senegal to prosecute Habre "without further delay" or to extradite him.

After Macky Sall's election as president of Senegal in April 2012, Senegal and the AU agreed on a plan to create the Extraordinary African Chambers to conduct the trial within the Senegalese judicial system

The chambers indicted Habre in July 2013 and placed him in pretrial custody. After a 19-month investigation, judges of the chambers found that there was sufficient evidence for Habre to face trial.

After Habre's lawyers, following his instructions, failed to appear at the opening of the trial in July 2015, the court appointed three Senegalese lawyers to defend him and adjourned for 45 days so they could prepare. The first day back, on September 7, Habre was brought in to the court against his will, kicking and screaming. After that, he was taken into the courtroom for each session before the doors to the public opened.

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Sudan: Hundreds Deported to Likely Abuse

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 30 May 2016 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Sudan: Hundreds Deported to Likely Abuse, 30 May 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/574d36374.html [accessed 25 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

The Sudanese authorities deported at least 442 Eritreans, including six registered refugees, to Eritrea in May 2016, Human Rights Watch said today. Sudan denied the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) access to identify those who wanted to claim asylum and also denied the agency access to 64 Ethiopians still in detention who risk deportation.

"Sudan is arresting and forcing Eritreans back into the hands of a repressive government without allowing refugees to seek protection," said Gerry Simpson, senior refugee researcher and advocate at Human Rights Watch. "Sudan should be working with the UN refugee agency to protect these people, not send them back to face abuse."

Eritrea, ruled by an extremely repressive government, requires all citizens under 50 to serve in national or military service indefinitely, often years longer than the 18 months authorized by law. Anyone of draft age leaving the country without permission is perceived to be a deserter, risking imprisonment in often inhumane conditions, as well as forced labor and torture. UNHCR considers the punishment so severe and disproportionate that it constitutes persecution and a basis on which to grant refugee status.

For years, Ethiopia's extensive restrictions on free speech and political rights, as well as intermittent crackdowns on protest movements, have caused citizens to flee arbitrary detention, torture and politically motivated prosecutions. Since November, security forces have killed hundreds of students and others during protests throughout Oromia state. Thousands of people are believed to have fled into neighboring countries, including Sudan, because of abuses associated with the crackdown.

International law forbids countries from deporting asylum seekers without first allowing them to apply for asylum and considering their cases. This right applies regardless of how asylum seekers enter a country or how long they have been in a country before claiming asylum. International law also prohibits the deportation, return, or forced expulsion of anyone to a place where they face a real risk to their life, or of torture or ill-treatment.

According to UNHCR, on May 6 the Sudanese authorities arrested 377 people in the Sudanese border town of Dongola as they tried to cross to Libya. Among them were the 313 Eritreans, including six who had already registered as refugees in Sudan, and 64 Ethiopians, none of whom were registered refugees. All were tried and convicted of "illegal entry" into Sudan. Sudan deported the Eritreans, including 14 children, on May 22, and continues to detain the Ethiopians.

A credible source said UNHCR asked the Sudanese authorities for access to the group, but that the request was denied.

Sudanese authorities are entitled to arrest and question Eritreans and other foreign nationals not registered as asylum seekers or who do not have other legal status in Sudan, Human Rights Watch said. However, Sudan is obliged to allow Eritreans and others to lodge asylum claims in Sudan at any time, even if they have already been in the country for some time, and to fairly review those claims.

UNHCR also confirmed that a few days earlier, the Sudanese authorities deported 129 Eritreans to their country. Other sources told Human Rights Watch the group was deported on May 17. A well-known Eritrean activist in Sweden told Human Rights Watch that on May 7, an Eritrean man contacted her and said that his sister and about 130 other Eritreans who had left Eritrea on May 3 had been intercepted and imprisoned by Sudanese security.

The man said that after his sister stopped calling him, he called the Eritrean Embassy in Sudan on May 17 and was told that the Sudanese authorities had deported the group to Eritrea that morning. The man's mother also told her son and the activist that her daughter and an unspecified number of other people had been deported from Sudan and detained in a rehabilitation prison in the Eritrean border town of Tesseney.

In May and June, 2014, Sudan deported at least 104 Eritreans to Eritrea without first giving UNHCR access to the group, drawing condemnation from UNHCR. And between May and late July 2011, and again in October 2011, Sudan deported more than 300 Eritreans back to Eritrea without allowing them to claim asylum, also drawing the UN refugee agency's condemnation.

No international agencies are able to monitor the treatment of Eritreans deported to Eritrea or Ethiopia.

According to UN and other sources, throughout 2015 and 2016 between 3,000 and 4,000 Eritreans fled their country each month and claimed asylum in Ethiopia's and Sudan's refugee camps, where all but a very small number of refugees are required to live. However, the camp population remained more or less static during that time, indicating that the same number had left the camps.

Thousands of Eritreans use smugglers every year to travel from Eritrea through Ethiopia and Sudan to Libya and Egypt, from where many then try to reach the European Union by boat. Human Rights Watch has documented that thousands were kidnapped and tortured for ransom in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula between 2010 and 2013, in some cases with the collusion of Sudanese and Egyptian security officials.

The EU is in the early stages of working with Sudan and other African countries to tighten their border controls, tackle refugee and migrant smuggling, and improve the lives of potential migrants in those countries. Sudan has said it welcomed the effort, though Human Rights Watch expressed concern about whether Sudan will respect the rights of refugees. Sudan's security forces have been responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur and other conflict areas and are known for arbitrary detentions, ill-treatment, and torture of detainees.

"If Sudan wants to market itself as a refugee-rights-respecting nation, it's going about it the wrong way," Simpson said. "Eritreans, Ethiopians and others who want protection must be allowed full access to fair asylum procedures."

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Afghanistan's failed promises to help people displaced by war

Publisher IRIN Author Jared Ferrie Publication Date 31 May 2016 Cite as IRIN, Afghanistan's failed promises to help people displaced by war, 31 May 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/574d3eb44.html [accessed 25 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Afghanistan has failed to live up to a 2014 pledge to care for people displaced by conflict within its borders, according to a report released today, even as the number of displaced has doubled to 1.2 million over the past two years.

In its 2014 National Policy on Internally Displaced Persons, Afghanistan's government promised to provide IDPs with access to basic living standards including food, water, shelter, and healthcare. Yet, researchers with Amnesty International found that many IDPs are living "on the brink of survival".

"Even an animal would not live in this hut, but we have to," said Mastan, a 50-year-old woman quoted in the report. "I would prefer to be in prison rather than in this place. At least in prison I would not have to worry about food and shelter."

The policy was supposed to ensure that IDPs could either: return to their homes; be integrated into the communities where they had settled; or be offered the opportunity to resettle elsewhere in the country. But the researchers found that little has been done to implement the agreement, while IDPs have been forcibly and violently evicted from some sites.

Meher Khuda Sabar of the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation admitted that implementation of the policy is "too slow", which he blamed on poor coordination between ministries. He explained that the MoRR's role is to liaise with relevant ministries, as well as between the provincial and central governments, which are all responsible for different aspects of the policy.

"For example, access to education or health is not responsibility of MoRR; every organ and ministry has their own role," he told IRIN. "Every province should bring their plan for MoRR, then MoRR will implement that."

And also

Another reason for the failure, said Amnesty, is that "the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation, charged with coordinating the policy's implementation, is badly under-resourced and has been beset by corruption allegations for years".

A report last year by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, which is tasked by US Congress to track American aid to the country, found that officials at MoRR had misappropriated funds and horribly mismanaged a land allocation programme.

At the time of the SIGAR report, Minister of Refugees and Repatriation Sayed Hussain Alimi Balkhi told IRIN that his government had "started to fight against corruption" within the ministry.

"It remains to be seen what effects the new anti-corruption efforts will have," Amnesty said. "However, the years of alleged endemic corruption raises serious questions about the ministry's ability to effectively lead the implementation of the IDP Policy."

Amnesty International The only water pump in the Minaret camp for displaced people, which is in the middle of the Afghan city of Herat

More fighting, more IDPs

The national IDP policy was also undermined by an uptick in fighting over the past few years, which has displaced record numbers of people.

A recent report by the UN's emergency aid coordination body, OCHA, found that an average of 1,000 Afghans have fled their homes each day this year due to conflict. With 118,000 people displaced in Afghanistan so far in 2016, the country is on track for another record year.

The number of IDPs rose 40 percent from 2014 to 2015, according to OCHA, and aid groups are having a hard time reaching many who are trapped in remote and insecure locations.

The conflict between the Afghan government and militant groups including the Taliban and the so-called Islamic State shows no signs of abating. In fact, indications are that it's getting worse.

"As international troops have left the country, Afghan security forces are leading the fight against anti-government groups like the Taliban, who are arguably at their strongest since their ouster in 2001," Amnesty said.

Data from the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan shows the growing impact on civilians. At least 11,002 civilians were killed or injured last year: a four percent increase over the previous year, and a shocking 21 percent jump from 2013.

In the face of a growing displacement crisis, Amnesty has called on the Afghanistan government to honour the promises it made in the 2014 national IDP policy. But the rights group also says Afghanistan cannot do it alone, and it urged the international community to provide support.

As the world has been gripped by other humanitarian crises, that support has not yet materialised. Even though the UN downgraded its humanitarian appeal for Afghanistan for 2016 to $393 million, less than a quarter of that has been funded so far.
Jordan detains Syrian refugees in Village 5 "jail"

Publisher IRIN Author Bethan Staton Publication Date 27 May 2016 Cite as IRIN, Jordan detains Syrian refugees in Village 5 "jail", 27 May 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/574d3fb54.html [accessed 25 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Rana spent more than five months at the Jordanian border with Syria, with very little in the way of food, water, medical care or shelter. She eventually made it into Jordan, but for the past 20 days the 15-year-old has been trapped, alongside thousands of others, inside what is euphemistically known as "Village 5", a fenced-off compound within the UN-run Azraq camp, some 80 kilometres east of Amman.

Her home is one of several thousand metal shelters, laid out in a regimented grid of dusty dirt tracks behind 10-foot high barbed-wire fencing. With almost nothing to occupy her time, Rana spends her days queuing for food rations, carrying pumped water around, and trying, often without success, to escape the heat.

Like all of the approximately 12,700 Syrian refugees living here, she's prevented from leaving by the fence and, beyond that, desert.

At a young age, Rana is caught at one of the darkest points of the Syrian refugee crisis, a place no one in the aid system much wants to talk about.

IRIN gained rare access and spoke to a few of the refugees, but aid agencies that work inside the camp were wary of speaking on record about the place. Despite repeated requests, UNHCR, the UN's agency for refugees, refused to even comment on Village 5, which it runs along with the rest of Azraq.

Abeer lives in Village 5 too, and is dealing with the fallout from her own flight from Syria. She's paid a minimal wage for her work at a makeshift education centre, having nabbed one of a handful of sought-after "paid volunteering" opportunities in Village 5. Back home, she was a teacher; her colleagues now include young people who worked as engineers or were studying at university to become pharmacists.

"We can't go out. I can't see my family; my family can't come to see me," the 24-year-old, who has close relatives in a city close to Amman, tells IRIN. "We are in a fenced area. It's like a jail."

Bethan Staton/IRIN Barbed-wire topped fence surrounds the whole of Village 5

No going back to the berm

Rana is happy to be here, but then she has travelled from far worse.

"Things are very good," she says, smiling. "There are no problems. We have a caravan. There's water and food. Everything is available."

That's a major change from where she came from  a no man's land just south of Jordan's border with Syria, a raised sand barrier known as "the berm", where some 60,000 Syrians are now massed.

When the violence in Syria began in 2011, hundreds of thousands sought safe haven in Jordan. At first, most went to Zaatari camp, which at its height in 2013 sheltered more than 150,000 refugees. Many have since left for the country's cities and towns. Others have sought refuge in Europe, and others still have returned to Syria, leaving Zaatari's current population at just under 80,000.

In mid-2013, Jordan quietly closed its western borders. This meant all Syrians trying to make it to Jordan, including those from Aleppo and from areas in the northeast controlled by so-called Islamic State (the group began its offensive on Deir Ezzor in April 2014), began to head for the east and the berm.

By mid-2014, the eastern crossings were closed off too, leaving all those attempting to enter Jordan stranded on the berm. And they kept coming. In April of last year there were an estimated 2,500 Syrians hoping to gain entry, and the number has exponentially climbed since then.

Jordan, which hosts more than 650,000 registered Syrian refugees, considers the newcomers a security concern  in January King Abdullah said that members of IS were known to be at the berm.

The fears are based both on the chaos of the berm and where Syrians have come from to get there  Aleppo, Homs, Deir Ezzor, and areas in the northeast that are either controlled by IS or necessitate a journey through territory it controls.

Humanitarians have complained about a lack of access to the berm and riots have been reported.

Rana describes life there as "horrible". "There were gangs controlling everything. There wasn't even any bread."

Allowed in, but only to "Village 5"

Azraq was opened in April 2014, a carefully planned corrective for the failures and overcrowding at Zaatari, designed as a system of villages to foster a sense of community.

In March, under increasing international pressure and following reports of desperate conditions at the berm, the Kingdom began allowing a trickle of 200-300 Syrians in on an almost daily basis. All were sent to Azraq, and into Village 5. Refugees living there are unable to leave, save those with special medical needs, and a few  mostly particularly vulnerable people or those with family elsewhere in the camp  who have been located to other villages. The presence of Jordanian intelligence agents is no secret to aid workers, or, presumably, residents.

Brigadier General Mohammad al-Mawajdeh, director of civil and military affairs for the Jordanian military, told IRIN that new arrivals are vetted both at the border and at a secondary centre inside Jordan before they are sent to a "dedicated area of Azraq camp".

"They are being observed, and from time to time they transfer some of them to other 'villages' inside the camp," he said.

Bethan Staton/IRIN Children walk on the roads that cut through cabins in the village

Detaining refugees for a long period of time was never part of the plan, and with the arrival of around 17,000 people in Azraq since 9 March, the camp-within-a-camp is now at full capacity.

At a meeting in Azraq last week, Jordanian authorities announced that 500 Syrians would be crossing the border each day, all of them sent to Azraq despite warnings by aid agencies that only a few thousand more can be accommodated there.

Al-Mawajdeh confirmed that the new Syrian refugees will be sent to Azraq "for the time being", and added that, even though an increased number are entering Jordan, the population trapped at the border continues to grow.

Model village?

With Village 5 now full, the remaining Syrian refugees from the berm are already being housed in other parts of the camp, many in large caravans where more than 100 people sleep. These areas are also fenced off.

Solutions for the latest arrivals are still being discussed, but it's likely they'll eventually be housed in another new Azraq "village" that's currently uninhabited. It appears the new area could fill much faster than it can be prepared, and with refugees that Jordan wants contained.

"The UNHCR are trying to figure out what to do with the situation," Stephen Allen, field coordinator at UNICEF, told IRIN.

Even if shelter can be ready, the basics of survival  water infrastructure, toilets, a clinic  take much longer to set up. Electricity is out of the question: Azraq has been standing for two years and it's still off the grid. At present, it can hold around 50,000 people, although its projected capacity is 100,000, including blocks that don't exist yet.

Life in limbo

Every day, the communal areas of Village 5 swell with people. Men squat in lines in the limited shade, clutching papers, and crowds of hundreds gather on the muddy dirt near administrative buildings.

Some are searching for a way out, seeking contact with family members elsewhere in the camp or Jordan. Others queue for food rations, or supplies like blankets or diapers, at a distribution centre that opened this week. It's not uncommon for residents to queue from 9am until midday for bread and still leave empty handed. Minutes from camp organisation meetings indicate that recent distributions have been troubled by unruly crowds.

At Village 5's "supermarket", a small metal shelter with barred windows, Afaf is among those waiting for sustenance.

A grandmother who arrived at the camp one week ago, she says she isn't able to secure enough food to sustain her family. She's here with seven others, including four children, and clutches boldly-printed food vouchers in a plastic folder.

"We can't really cook," she says. "By the end of the day, it's just a cup of tea here, a bit of bread there. It's very difficult."

There's a proper supermarket in Azraq  but these refugees aren't allowed out to shop there.

"The young men don't have anything to do: they're trapped," she continues. "They want to get out. They want to work to support their families."

What facilities are there?

Village 5's medical clinic is just a tent, but health needs are severe: chronic illness left untreated during long months at the border, trauma from war, and diseases born from the harsh conditions of the camp. The clinic is equipped to respond to common issues like severe mental health problems and diarrhoea, but for the mother seeking a hearing aid for her child, left deaf by aerial bombings, less help is provided.

Camp activities, education and psychosocial support have also been gradually introduced to Village 5 despite the tight restrictions on movement and activity. Speaking on condition of anonymity, some aid workers told IRIN they have been forbidden from having more than cursory conversations with the refugees in Village 5.

A white tent at the edge of a rocky, barren playing field serves as a school, floored with scruffy mats and with plastic windows covered in a film of sand. There's no furniture or equipment save for a square metre on the floor where pens, paper and craft materials are arranged. Kids sit on the floor, rising to shout a welcome in unison to any visitors that walk in.

Bethan Staton/IRIN Tents serve as a venue for psychosocial activities and informal schooling in Village 5

With a small team, Abeer provides a space for play, in the hope of helping the children process the trauma they've experienced. But the centre is desperate for resources, and pupils have already used up most of the craft materials they've been given.

Though teachers and children speak highly of the abilities of young people in the camp, this is a difficult place to thrive. Teenagers introduce their friends as talented in writing or music. One of Abeer's pupils, she says, is gifted in embroidery. But the centre simply can't provide the facilities for young people to develop their skills.

"Of course, they have psychological issues," Abeer explains. "They've experienced a lot. There's so much in their heads and they're very emotional. Sometimes, when they hear a song or are singing, you can see the memories."

The refugees are frustrated and struggling to deal with their containment, but for many the overwhelming feeling is one of relief.

"It's so much better here," Rana says, waiting for an appointment at the dusty, hot clinic. "We're safe."
"Where is NATO now?"

Publisher IRIN Author Tom Westcott Publication Date 30 May 2016 Cite as IRIN, "Where is NATO now?", 30 May 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/574d40be4.html [accessed 25 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Glowering across a table in a Tripoli cafe, 28-year-old Mohamed* has no kind words for Western leaders or any of Libya's three governments.

"In 2011, NATO said it intervened in Libya to protect the human rights of civilians," the young man, one of an estimated 50,000 people to have fled the coastal town of Sirte in the last fortnight alone, told IRIN.

"We lost even our most basic human rights under the (so-called) Islamic State," said Mohamed. "And Libya's three governments have given us no support at all. So where is NATO now?"

After the fall of Muammar Gaddafi (the ruler went into hiding in August 2011 and was killed in October), political factions and militias fought to control Libya and its resources, eventually forming two rival governments. One, backed by a group of militias mostly from Misrata and Tripoli known as the Libya Dawn, is based in Tripoli, Gaddafi's former capital on the far northwestern coast. The other has its seat on the far northeastern coast, in Tobruk and Beida, and supports the army chief Major General Khalifa Haftar.

IS took advantage of the chaos to take nearly 200 kilometres of coastline, starting at Sirte, Gaddafi's hometown and one-time fiefdom, which it seized in February 2015. Estimates of how much support the group has in Libya vary.

In late March, the UN brokered a "unity government", which now sits in Tripoli. Some Tripoli forces have lent it limited support, but some of the Tripoli government and the separate leadership in Tobruk reject its authority entirely.

As NATO mulls what role to play now, the rival governments have launched an assault on IS in Sirte. Civilians flee, if they can.

Year of fear

Mohamed said at least 300 people have been executed in Sirte since IS took over a year ago. IRIN couldn't confirm this figure, but Human Rights Watch has documented at least 49 unlawful executions in the town.

The situation Mohamed describes before he left Sirte earlier this month is macabre. "They kill people every day, whether they announce those killings or not. Even children are forced to watch public executions, and everybody sees the bodies they hang up on scaffolding at the entrance to the town.

"There is a place on the town's outskirts where IS throw a lot of bodies in a big pile, and families with missing relatives go there to look through the corpses trying to find them."

Thousands of residents, in particular those threatened by IS or who formerly held government or military positions, had already fled Sirte during the past year, even before this recent, much larger exodus.

And it is not the only part of Libya in turmoil. Much of the country has descended into almost complete lawlessness  although there are pockets of order installed by militias and local leaders. Human trafficking is rife as thousands attempt to cross from Libya's northern coastline to Italy. The European Union and NATO have committed to help Libya by patrolling the Mediterranean, but stopped short, so far, of any further intervention.

The battle for Sirte

The new "unity government" has been supporting an assault on Sirte from the west, led by troops from Libya's third city of Misrata. After the armed forces operating under the Tobruk government announced an offensive to liberate Sirte from the east earlier this month, much of the remaining population decided to leave.

Siraj*, a member of a crisis committee formed by Sirte residents who fled last year to help newly displaced families in Tripoli and other towns in western Libya, estimated that only 15 percent of the town's original population (around 150,000, according to a 2006 census) remain in the town.

He said that vehicles leaving Sirte have to face five-hour queues at IS checkpoints, where militants empty cars of food, cooking gas, petrol and even soft furnishings. Those residents allowed to leave are only permitted to take clothes, those who made it out told IRIN. Others, including families of suspected dissidents and a few former IS loyalists who have grown disenchanted with the group's strict ideology, have been forbidden from leaving and made to return to their homes in Sirte.

With roads leading from IS territory to the east and the west sealed off by rival government forces, most families had to flee through the desert, navigating landmines locals who have left said had been laid extensively by IS.

Nowhere to go

Mohamed's six-person family now lives with distant relatives, crammed into one room in Tripoli. They are amongst the luckier ones.

The sheer numbers flowing out of Sirte have overwhelmed small towns with already overstretched resources. Most have struggled to find support or even a place to stay.

"Many families who fled to nearby towns like Bani Walid are now living in schools, which don't have adequate facilities such as enough toilets or showers," said Siraj. "And many people are in urgent need of mattresses and blankets because they left literally with nothing."

Families from Sirte arrive in Tripoli every day, but space is in short supply as even unfinished buildings and construction sites are already full of people displaced from other Libyan towns.

Helene Caux/UNHCR Waves of mass displacement began with the 2011 uprising against Gaddafi

Ongoing fighting across the country has already displaced more than 417,000 Libyans, by the International Organisation for Migration's latest count. Siraj hopes more people displaced from other Libyan town will be able to return home soon, freeing up much-needed space in the capital and elsewhere for those fleeing from IS territories.

"Most families who have fled can't afford the high rents in Tripoli, and some have already been left with no choice but to go back to the Sirte [area]," he explained.

Three governments, little help

The fact that there are two separate and uncoordinated operations against IS in Sirte by rival armed forces that have been locked in civil conflict for two years is an obvious cause for concern.

"If the rival armies clash with each other around Sirte, the only people to benefit will be IS, who will just get stronger," said Mohamed.

Another displaced Sirte resident, former policeman Hamed, 28, criticised the various governments for failing to protect civilians as IS spread, and for failing to support those forcibly displaced.

"We have received no help from any of the governments," he said. "The threat of IS is being used by the political players in Libya and, meanwhile, the victims are ordinary Libyans. We have lost all faith and hope in Libyan governments and now we expect nothing."

Salah Abdulkareem Efemhah, a member of the eastern-based parliament who represents one district partially occupied by IS, said he hoped its military wing would liberate Sirte swiftly.

He told IRIN that the prime minister of the eastern-based government, Abdullah al-Thinni, had pledged almost $4 million in support for families fleeing IS territory.

Some material support has already been given to those who fled east, Efemhah said, explaining that ongoing fighting made it impossible for aid to be delivered from the east to families in western Libya, such as those in Bani Walid, between Sirte and Tripoli.

Forgotten by everyone

The only aid to reach IDPs in Bani Walid so far has been food, mattresses and hygiene kits distributed by local branches of the Libyan Red Crescent.

Claudio Colantoni, country director for International Medical Corps, one of the most active NGOs working in Libya, said that, while the organisation continued to help"chronic numbers" of IDPs, particularly in Tripoli and Misrata, its scope was limited.

"We have no logistical capacity to work in Sirte or the surrounding areas and we are very restricted by money," he said.

"Libya is no longer one of the main recipients for international aid because its unstable security environment and the lack of any political settlement continues to keep the main donors away."

Ahmed, a former security official from Bin Jawad, IS's easternmost town, said the need for international help in Libya had never been greater.

"When the international community came to kill Gaddafi in 2011, they said it was to protect civilians but now civilians are in grave danger every day and no one wants to help," he said.

"Innocent people are being executed in town squares, some as young as 15 years old, but it feels as if the world, as well as our own people, have forgotten about us."

* Names used are not their real names
Pedro Sanchez shows his campaign proposals. Javier Lizon (EFE)

The central governments ongoing conflict with Catalonia could be resolved through a political pact that would insert new wording in the Spanish Constitution to reflect the regions singularity and to improve its self-government.

In this hypothetical scenario, approval of the new constitutional text would be followed by a reformed regional charter (the Estatut) setting out clear powers for Catalonia.

The sincerity and courage demonstrated by Pedro Sanchez makes him noble

Miquel Iceta, head of Catalan Socialists

The proposal has been made by Socialist Party (PSOE) leader Pedro Sanchez, who is up against opinion polls suggesting that he might drop to third place at the repeat election of June 26, after coming in second at the inconclusive vote on December 20. Spain has been in the hands of a Popular Party (PP) caretaker government since then.

The issue of Catalan independence has been a headache for all national parties for years. While the PP, which won the most votes in December but fell short of an overall majority, openly opposes any moves toward greater sovereignty, the Socialists have long sought to find a third way that will grant the region greater powers without granting outright independence.

Sincerity and courage

The Catalan branch of the PSOE has hailed Sanchezs latest suggestion, praising his courage.

The sincerity and courage demonstrated by Pedro Sanchez makes him noble, said Miquel Iceta, leader of the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC).

But other branches of the party are not so keen on the idea. The Andalusian Socialists are waiting to hear the details of the proposal, but have already expressed their rejection of any deal that grants some regions special privileges over others.

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Sanchezs proposals for Catalonia are part of a larger 18-page document called Compromisos para un si al Gobierno del cambio (or Pledges for Yes to a Government of Change). But his ideas for the region were not included in the Socialist electoral program that the partys federal committee ratified two weeks ago.

Within the framework of constitutional reform, and consequently approved by all Spaniards, a political pact will be reached with Catalonia which, while respecting the implications of the principle of equality, still recognizes its singularity and improves its self-government, reads the paragraph on Catalonia.

Essentially, the initiative represents a bilateral deal between the Spanish state and the Catalan government. Socialist leaders noted that constitutional reform requires a nationwide referendum. After that would come the political negotiations to apply those changes to the Catalan regional charter. Ultimately, Catalans would vote on their new Estatut.

An ongoing conflict

Catalonia held regional elections in September 2015. The poll, which nationalist leaders leaders cast as a proxy vote on independence, was won by pro-sovereignty forces in terms of seats, although they represented under 50% of the popular vote.

A small secessionist group called CUP, whose votes became essential to the formation of a new government, pushed a radical motion through the regional parliament, triggering fears of an immediate breakaway from Spain. The thrust of that initiative has since fizzled out, but the question of what to do with Catalonia remains a thorny issue for all candidates hoping to become the next prime minister of Spain.

English version by Susana Urra.
A Latam flight landing in Brasilia. EVARISTO SA (AFP)

More information Latam suspende todos sus vuelos a Venezuela

Latam Airlines Group, the South American company that was created after a merger between Chiles Lan and Brazils Tam airlines, announced on Monday that it will suspend all flights to Venezuela temporarily and indefinitely. Latam is the first airline in the region to make this decision. Panamas Copa and the Colombian firm Avianca are still operating flights to and from Caracas, although they have reduced frequency and capacity while they fight to repatriate millions of dollars in revenue held in Venezuela in bolivars because of the governments strict currency-exchange controls.

Latam did not, however, cite these monetary restrictions as its motive for interrupting services. Instead, the company said the decision was due to the complex macroeconomic scenario in the region, adding that the companies of the Latam group consider Venezuela to be a relevant market and will work to reestablish operations as soon as global conditions permit.

The company said the decision was due to the complex macroeconomic scenario in the region,

The announcement will be immediately effective for all flights between Sao Paulo and Caracas, while other destinations, such as Lima and Santiago de Chile, will see services extended until late July.

The news comes just days after the German airline Lufthansa announced that it will suspend flights to Venezuela. Air Canada, Alitalia and Tiara Air from Aruba have also canceled operations in Venezuela, as the country grows more isolated week by week.

Tight currency controls established by former President Hugo Chavez in 2003 require international companies to obtain a special permit from a specific government agency in order to exchange their earnings in bolivars and repatriate profits. The process, always mired in slow-moving bureaucracy and glitches, began to break down in 2012, the year Venezuelas coffers began to run dry.

International companies need a permit to exchange their earnings in bolivars and repatriate profits

Since then, the government has only allowed partial exchanges, and even then it opted for a selective default with the airline sector. The Geneva-based International Air Transport Association (IATA) says Venezuela owes international airlines $3.7 billion. Despite several rounds of negotiations, the companies were unable to reach an agreement with the Maduro administration.

AITA said in February that demand for tickets to and from Venezuela fell by 35% between 2014 and 2015, and it predicted a 50% drop in 2016, a trend caused by a deep economic crisis that makes it difficult for Venezuelans to travel, leading airlines to reduce capacity.

Conviasa, Venezuelas last flag carrier, was founded in 2004 with a small fleet that included one wide-bodied aircraft and about 20 short-haul jet airliners. The now-defunct company was plagued by poor management but there are still a few small and privately operated planes with ancient equipment around.

English version by Dyane Jean Francois.
UNHCR concerned about fighting in northern Syria affecting thousands of vulnerable civilians

Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Publication Date 30 May 2016 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UNHCR concerned about fighting in northern Syria affecting thousands of vulnerable civilians, 30 May 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/574d52094.html [accessed 25 October 2022]

UNHCR is deeply concerned about the plight of some 165,000 displaced persons reportedly massing near the Syrian town of Azaz in northern Syria.

People have started to flee due to heavy fighting in northern Aleppo. Fleeing civilians are being caught in cross-fire and are facing challenges to access medical services, food, water and safety.

For the purpose of emergency preparedness, UNHCR has immediately alerted Turkish authorities of developments in northern Syria.

UNHCR calls for the protection of basic rights and the physical security of this population based on international humanitarian law, international refugee law and human rights law as well as safe passage and protection.
Freedom in the World 2016 - West Bank

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 24 May 2016 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2016 - West Bank, 24 May 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/574d829324.html [accessed 25 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Freedom Status: Not Free

Aggregate Score: 30

Freedom Rating: 5.5

Political Rights: 6

Civil Liberties: 5

OVERVIEW

In 2015, the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank continued to operate without an electoral mandate or a functioning legislature. Negotiations aimed at repairing its rift with the Hamas regime in Gaza, which dated to 2007, led to an agreement in 2014. However, the terms by which the unified PA government would take control in Gaza had yet to be implemented at the end of 2015.

Meanwhile, Israeli-Palestinian peace talks remained frozen after they broke off in 2014, fueling frustration across the territories and setting the stage for an outbreak of violence in the last third of 2015.

The unrest was triggered in part by rumors that Israel planned to change the rules governing prayer at the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif complex, which the Israeli authorities strongly denied. Palestinians perpetrated dozens of stabbings and other attacks against Israeli civilians and security personnel, while Israeli police and soldiers cracked down severely on all forms of protest, drawing accusations of excessive force. Militant Israeli settlers contributed to the violence with attacks on Palestinian civilians.

POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES

Political Rights: 6 / 40

A. Electoral Process: 2 / 12

Most Palestinian residents of the West Bank are citizens of the PA, a quasi-sovereign entity created by the 1993 Oslo Accords. Jewish settlers in the West Bank are Israeli citizens.

The PA president is elected to four-year terms. The prime minister is nominated by the president and requires the support of the unicameral, 132-seat Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), which also serves four-year terms. Voting in the West Bank during the 2005 presidential and 2006 PLC elections was deemed largely free and fair by international observers. Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas won the presidency with 62 percent of the vote, but Hamas led the PLC balloting with 74 seats, leaving Fatah with 45. The two factions formed a unity government headed by Prime Minister Ismail Haniya of Hamas.

After the 2007 schism left Hamas in control of the Gaza Strip, Abbas appointed a new cabinet in the West Bank  with Salam Fayyad as prime minister  that lacked the PLC's approval. In 2008, PA security forces arrested hundreds of Hamas members and supporters. The rift, combined with Israel's detention of many Palestinian lawmakers, prevented the PLC from functioning, and its term expired in 2010.

The Fatah-led Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) indefinitely extended Abbas's presidential term after his electoral mandate expired in 2009. Abbas issued a law permitting the Fatah-affiliated minister of local government to dissolve municipal councils, leading to the replacement of nearly all Hamas-affiliated municipal officials in the West Bank with Fatah loyalists. Elections were held for more than 90 municipalities in 2012 amid some accusations of unfairness, with Hamas and Islamic Jihad boycotting. Only half of eligible Palestinians registered to participate, and only 54 percent of those registered actually voted. Fatah won 40 percent of the seats at stake; others were taken by independents, including many former Fatah members.

In 2013, Abbas appointed Rami Hamdallah to replace Fayyad as prime minister. Hamdallah retained his post in the unity cabinet with Hamas that was announced in 2014, but efforts to put the agreement into practice made little progress in 2015. In August, Abbas and some of his allies resigned from the PLO's Executive Committee in an attempt to trigger new internal elections through a meeting of the organization's rarely convened, 800-member Palestinian National Council. Some observers alleged that Abbas's move was designed to purge his critics from the Executive Committee. A vote scheduled for September 2015 was indefinitely postponed amid internal opposition to the maneuver.

B. Political Pluralism and Participation: 5 / 16

The PA and Israeli forces in the West Bank have largely suppressed Hamas since 2007. PA security forces alone detained roughly 150 Hamas members in March and July 2015, although the PA denied that the arrests were political in nature and said they were related to security. A number of smaller Palestinian parties continue to operate, including through membership in the PLO. Despite the unity government deal concluded in 2014, relations between Fatah and Hamas and their respective supporters remain poor.

After Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967, which has not been recognized internationally, Arab residents were issued Israeli identity cards and given the option of obtaining Israeli citizenship, though most have rejected this option. Non-Israeli citizens can vote in municipal and PA elections, but are subject to restrictions imposed by the Israeli municipality. In the 2006 PLC elections, Israel barred Hamas from campaigning in the city. Israeli authorities can strip noncitizens of their Jerusalem residency if they fail to meet various conditions demonstrating that the city remains their "center of life."

C. Functioning of Government: 2 / 12

The 2007 schism left the West Bank PA with a cabinet that lacked the support of the legislature, and the expiration of the presidential and parliamentary terms in 2009 and 2010 further undermined the government's legitimacy. The PA's ability to implement policy decisions is limited in practice by direct Israeli control over much of the West Bank.

Abbas has overseen some improvements on corruption, and Fayyad was credited with significantly reducing corruption at the higher levels of the PA. Nevertheless, a local nongovernmental organization (NGO), the Coalition for Accountability and Integrity (AMAN), continued to detail endemic corruption in its reports during 2015, noting a decline in transparency in the PA's budget.

The PA put forward an anticorruption strategy for 2015-18, promising to strengthen legislation and improve the effectiveness of the relevant agencies, but critics argued that such measures would not be sufficient as long as the political and structural roots of the problem remained unaddressed.

Discretionary Political Rights Question B: -3 / 0

Construction of Jewish settlements and related land seizures in the West Bank continued in 2015. Meanwhile, according to partial data from the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, Israeli authorities demolished at least 118 Palestinian housing units in the West Bank (not including East Jerusalem) during the year due to lack of building permits or as a form of punishment, leaving over 400 people homeless. In East Jerusalem, the number of housing units demolished was at least 28, and at least 29 people were left homeless.

Civil Liberties: 24 / 60 (-1)

D. Freedom of Expression and Belief: 9 / 16

The media are not free in the West Bank. Under a 1995 PA press law, journalists may be fined and jailed, and newspapers closed, for publishing "secret information" on PA security forces or news that might harm national unity or incite violence. Media outlets are routinely pressured to provide favorable coverage of the PA and Fatah. Journalists who criticize the PA or Fatah face arbitrary arrests, threats, and physical abuse. Reporters are also subject to administrative detention by Israeli forces. Since 2007, both the PA and Israeli forces have regularly suppressed Hamas-affiliated media outlets in the West Bank.

The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) reported 116 press freedom violations  including physical assaults  by Palestinian forces in the West Bank in 2015, a 29 percent increase from the previous year. According to the same report, Israeli authorities were responsible for 407 violations in both the West Bank and Gaza. Journalists were repeatedly obstructed, attacked, and injured by security forces while attempting to cover protests in the West Bank.

The PA Basic Law declares Islam to be the official religion of Palestine and states that "respect and sanctity of all other heavenly religions (Judaism and Christianity) shall be maintained." Blasphemy against Islam is a criminal offense. Synagogues are occasionally attacked by Palestinian militants. Some Palestinian Christians have experienced intimidation and harassment by radical Islamist groups and PA officials.

Israel generally recognizes freedom of religion in the West Bank. However, attacks on religious sites by radical Jewish settlers, including vandalism of churches and mosques, have increased in recent years. Citing security concerns, Israel occasionally imposes age restrictions on Muslim men seeking to pray at the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif compound in Jerusalem. Authorities barred men under age 50 for a period in late 2015 amid clashes over increased visits to the site by Jews. However, individuals are generally able to access religious sites.

The PA has authority over Palestinian education. Israeli military closures, curfews, and the security barrier separating most of the West Bank from Israel restrict access to academic institutions, particularly those located between Israel and the barrier. Schools have sometimes been damaged during military actions, and student travel between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip has been limited.

Israeli academic institutions in the West Bank increasingly face international and domestic boycotts. Primary and secondary education in West Bank settlements is administered by Israel, though religious schools have significant discretion over curriculums. According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, East Jerusalem's schools are badly underfunded compared with schools in West Jerusalem.

Private discussion is relatively open and free, though both Israeli and PA security forces are known to monitor online activity and arrest individuals for alleged incitement or criticism of the Palestinian authorities.

E. Associational and Organizational Rights: 5 / 12 (-1)

The PA requires permits for demonstrations, and those held to protest against PA policies are generally dispersed. Israel's Military Order 101 requires a permit for all "political" demonstrations of more than 10 people; demonstrations are routinely broken up with force, occasionally resulting in fatalities. Such clashes increased in 2015, as Israeli forces sought to restrict and disperse frequent and sometimes violent demonstrations, declaring some protest areas to be closed military zones.

A broad range of Palestinian nongovernmental organizations operate freely in the West Bank. Since 2007, however, many Hamas-affiliated groups have been shut down for political reasons. Activists and others who criticize the PA leadership can face harassment and abuse by security services.

Workers may establish unions without government authorization, but labor protections in general are poorly enforced. Palestinian workers seeking to strike must submit to arbitration by the PA Labor Ministry, and various other rules make it difficult to mount a legal strike. Palestinian workers in Jerusalem are subject to Israeli labor law.

F. Rule of Law: 5 / 16

The PA judicial system is partly independent. West Bank laws derive from Ottoman, British Mandate, Jordanian, Israeli, and PA legislation, as well as Israeli military orders. The High Judicial Council oversees most legal proceedings. Israel's Supreme Court hears petitions from non-Israeli residents of the West Bank regarding home demolitions, land confiscations, road closures, and military tactics. Decisions in favor of Palestinian petitioners, while rare, have increased in recent years. Most applications regarding the security barrier have been rejected, but the Israeli Supreme Court has repeatedly ordered changes to its route after hearing petitions.

The PA also has a military court system that lacks almost all due process, including the right to appeal sentences, and can impose the death penalty. No executions have been carried out since 2005, however. The PA military courts handle cases on a range of security offenses, on collaborating with Israel, and on drug trafficking. Human rights groups regularly document allegations of arbitrary detention and torture, and PA security officers are rarely punished for such abuses. The Independent Commission for Human Rights, the Palestinian human rights ombudsman, received dozens of torture complaints from the West Bank in 2015.

Palestinians accused of security offenses by Israel are tried in Israeli military courts, which grant some due process protections but limit rights to counsel, bail, and appeal. According to B'Tselem, at the end of 2015 there were 5,723 Palestinian security detainees and prisoners from the West Bank held in Israeli prisons.

Most convictions in Israeli military courts are based on confessions, sometimes obtained through coercion. Israel's Supreme Court banned torture in a 1999 ruling, but physical coercion is considered permissible when the prisoner is believed to have vital information about impending attacks. Human rights groups criticize Israeli interrogation methods, which allegedly include some forms of physical abuse, isolation, sleep deprivation, psychological pressure, and threats of violence against detainees and their relatives.

According to Defense for Children International (DCI) Palestine, 422 Palestinian children (aged 12-17) from the occupied territories were being held in Israeli military detention as of December 2015 (up from 152 a year earlier), including 116 aged 12 to 15 (up from 10 a year earlier). Most Palestinian child detainees are serving sentences of less than a year for throwing stones or other projectiles at Israeli forces in the West Bank, handed down by a special court for minors; acquittals on such charges are very rare. DCI Palestine reports that most of these children are taken from their homes in the middle of the night, interrogated without a parent or lawyer, and subjected to threats as well as physical and verbal abuse. East Jerusalem Palestinian minors are tried in Israeli civilian juvenile courts.

The number of Palestinians in Israeli custody increased considerably in the fall of 2015, amid the broader escalation in violent demonstrations, related clashes with Israeli forces, and a series of Palestinian stabbing, vehicular, and shooting attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians. According to B'Tselem, Israeli security forces killed a total of 117 Palestinians in the West Bank in 2015, compared with 46 in 2014 and 27 in 2013. Another nine were killed by Israeli civilians. Palestinian attackers killed 16 Israeli civilians and three Israeli security personnel. Human rights groups accused Israeli soldiers of using deadly force against some Palestinian attackers when they did not pose a lethal threat.

Militant Jewish settlers escalated attacks on Palestinian individuals and property in 2015 as part of their "price tag" campaign, launched as a response to Israeli policies aimed at limiting settlement. Most perpetrators of such activity enjoy impunity. A 2015 report by the Israeli human rights watchdog Yesh Din revealed that of 260 cases of vandalism to Palestinian-owned fruit trees investigated by Israeli police from 2005 to August 2015, only six led to indictments, and none led to convictions. The report found that Israeli police had an 85 percent failure rate overall in investigating what it called ideologically motivated crimes by Israeli civilians against Palestinians, and only 75 indictments have been served over the past decade. Among the year's most high-profile acts of violence was a July arson attack in which suspected Jewish extremists firebombed a Palestinian home in the village of Duma, killing three people, including an 18-month-old child. By year's end Israeli authorities had arrested a number of suspects in that case and in some related attacks on Palestinians or their property.

Israeli soldiers accused of harassing or assaulting Palestinian civilians are subject to Israeli military law, though convictions, which are rare, typically result in light sentences. A December 2015 report by Yesh Din showed that of 229 investigations of suspected crimes by Israeli soldiers against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza in 2014, only eight resulted in indictments, mostly for minor offenses.

Although LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people in the West Bank do not face prosecution for same-sex activity, they are reportedly subject to harassment and abuse by PA authorities and members of society.

G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights: 5 / 16

Checkpoints and roadblocks continue to hamper freedom of movement, stunt trade, and restrict Palestinian access to jobs, hospitals, and schools. The United Nations reported at the end of 2015 that 91 new obstacles had been deployed by Israeli security forces since October, adding to 452 already in place. Most were unmanned obstructions designed to divert Palestinian traffic to routes controlled by staffed checkpoints.

Israel's West Bank security barrier, which the International Court of Justice declared illegal in 2004, has meant that 150 Palestinian communities on the eastern side need special permits to access their land in the "seam zone" between the barrier and the pre-1967 border, or Green Line. Some 11,000 Palestinians currently live in this zone.

Palestinian women are underrepresented in most professions and encounter discrimination in employment, though they have full access to universities. Palestinian laws and societal norms, derived in part from Sharia (Islamic law), disadvantage women in marriage, divorce, and inheritance. For Christians, personal status issues are governed by ecclesiastical courts. Rape and domestic abuse remain underreported and frequently go unpunished, as authorities are allegedly reluctant to pursue such cases. An increase in the number of so-called honor killings has been reported in recent years.

The PA has no law focused on combating trafficking in persons. Some Palestinians  both children and adults  reportedly work in exploitative conditions in Israeli settlements, where the PA has no jurisdiction. Israeli labor laws are rarely applied to protect such workers.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights Reserved
Freedom in the World 2016 - Israel

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 24 May 2016 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2016 - Israel, 24 May 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/574d829715.html [accessed 25 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Freedom Status: Free

Aggregate Score: 80

Freedom Rating: 1.5

Political Rights: 1

Civil Liberties: 2

Quick Facts

Population: 8,375,384

Capital: Jerusalem

GDP/Capita: $37,031.70

Press Freedom Status: Partly Free

Net Freedom Status: N/A

OVERVIEW

Early elections in March 2015 did little to change the balance of political power, despite suggestions in preelection polling that the center-left opposition bloc would prevail over the governing right-wing coalition. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyau's Likud party remained the largest single grouping with 30 seats, followed by the opposition Zionist Union, led by Isaac Herzog, with 24 seats.

The security situation deteriorated in the last third of the year amid a wave of stabbing, vehicular, and shooting attacks on Israeli civilians and security personnel across Israel and the West Bank. The attacks were typically carried out by individual Palestinians at security posts and other locations, and Israelis responded with deadly force. There were also frequent clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli soldiers and police, resulting in additional casualties. More than 20 Israelis and over 100 Palestinians were killed in the violence, though the majority of incidents took place in the West Bank. Israeli-Palestinian peace talks remained moribund in 2015.

POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES

Political Rights: 36 / 40

A. Electoral Process: 12 / 12

A largely ceremonial president is elected by the 120-seat parliament, the Knesset, for one seven-year term. In 2014, Reuven Rivlin of Likud was elected to replace outgoing president Shimon Peres, receiving 63 votes in a runoff against Meir Sheetrit of the centrist Hatnuah party.

The prime minister is usually the leader of the largest faction in the Knesset, members of which are elected by party-list proportional representation for four-year terms. A low electoral threshold to win representation has led to unstable coalitions, though the threshold was raised in 2014 from 2 to 3.25 percent. Among other changes adopted in the same legislation, the no-confidence procedure was altered so that opponents hoping to oust a sitting government must simultaneously vote in a new one.

Israeli elections are free and fair. In the March 2015 Knesset elections, Netanyahu's Likud party led with 30 seats, followed by the center-left Zionist Union with 24. The Joint List  a coalition of parties representing Arab citizens of Israel, who often identify as Palestinians  earned 13 seats; the centrist Yesh Atid (There Is a Future), 11; Kulanu, also centrist, 10; Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home), 8; the ultra-Orthodox parties Shas and United Torah Judaism, 7 and 6, respectively; the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu, 6; and the left-wing Meretz party, 5. In May, after lengthy negotiations, Netanyahu formed a new coalition government made up of Likud, Kulanu, Jewish Home, Shas, and United Torah Judaism.

B. Political Pluralism and Participation: 14 / 16

Israel hosts a diverse and competitive multiparty system. However, parties or candidates that deny Israel's Jewish character, oppose democracy, or incite racism are prohibited.

Palestinian citizens of Israel enjoy equal rights in principle, as enshrined in Israel's Basic Law, but face some discrimination in practice, both legally and informally. The Joint List's representation in the Knesset falls short of Palestinians' roughly one-fifth share of Israel's population, though some Palestinian citizens of Israel vote or run as candidates for other parties. No Arab party has ever been formally included in a governing coalition, and Arabs generally do not serve in senior positions in government. Although Israeli identity cards issued since 2005 have not classified residents by ethnicity, Jewish Israelis can often be identified by the inclusion of their Hebrew birth date. Calls to impose a loyalty oath have alienated Israel's Palestinians, though such proposals have been rejected to date.

After Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967, which has not been recognized internationally, Arab residents were issued Israeli identity cards and given the option of obtaining Israeli citizenship, though most declined for political reasons. These noncitizens can vote in municipal as well as Palestinian Authority elections, and remain eligible to apply for Israeli citizenship. However, Israeli law strips noncitizens of their Jerusalem residency if they are away for more than three months.

A 2003 law, renewed in 2013, denies citizenship and residency status to Palestinian residents of the West Bank or Gaza Strip who are married to Israeli citizens. While the measure was criticized as blatantly discriminatory, supporters cited evidence that a significant share of past suicide bombers had acquired Israeli identity cards via family reunification. A 2011 law allows the courts to revoke the citizenship of any Israeli convicted of spying, treason, or aiding the enemy.

Under the 1948 Law of Return, Jewish immigrants and their immediate families are granted Israeli citizenship and residence rights; other immigrants must apply for these rights.

C. Functioning of Government: 10 / 12

Corruption scandals in recent years have implicated several senior officials. The most prominent example is that of Ehud Olmert, who resigned as prime minister in 2008 amid graft allegations. He was preparing to begin an 18-month prison sentence for bribery at the end of 2015 after the Supreme Court in December reduced his original 2014 sentence of six years. In May, Olmert was sentenced to eight months in prison for fraud and breach of trust in a separate case involving cash he accepted from an American businessman, Morris Talansky; an appeal on that matter was pending at year's end.

The relative frequency of high-level corruption investigations is coupled with a strong societal intolerance for graft. Israel was ranked 32 out of 168 countries and territories surveyed in Transparency International's 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index.

Civil Liberties: 44 / 60

D. Freedom of Expression and Belief: 12 / 16

The Israeli media are vibrant and free to criticize government policy. However, the diversity and editorial independence of both print and broadcast media have been threatened in recent years by financial difficulties in the industry. All Israeli newspapers are privately owned, though ownership is concentrated among a small number of companies, some of which display a clear partisan bias. Internet access is widespread and unrestricted. The Israel Broadcasting Authority operates public radio and television services, and commercial broadcasts are widely available. Most Israelis subscribe to cable or satellite television. While the scope of permissible reporting is generally broad, print articles on security matters are subject to a military censor. The Government Press Office has occasionally withheld press cards from journalists, especially Palestinians, to restrict them from entering Israel, citing security considerations.

Legislation passed in 2011 requires the state to fine or withdraw funds from local authorities and other state-funded groups that hold events commemorating the 1948 displacement of Palestinians, known as Al-Nakba (The Catastrophe); that support armed resistance or "racism" against Israel; or that desecrate national symbols. Also in 2011, the Knesset passed the Boycott Law, which exposes Israeli individuals and groups to civil lawsuits if they advocate an economic, cultural, or academic boycott of the State of Israel or West Bank settlements. In April 2015, the High Court of Justice largely upheld the law, but struck down a provision allowing plaintiffs to bring cases without proving that they suffered financial damage from a boycott.

While Israel defines itself as a Jewish state, freedom of religion is largely respected. Christian, Muslim, and Baha'i communities have jurisdiction over their own members in matters of marriage, divorce, and burial. The Orthodox establishment governs personal status matters among Jews, drawing objections from many non-Orthodox and secular Israelis, though in 2012 a non-Orthodox rabbi won the right to receive state funding. In a milestone case in 2011, an Israeli Jew won the right to an identity card that excluded his Hebrew birth date. Nevertheless, in 2013 the Supreme Court ruled against an appeal that would have allowed individuals to declare their ethnic "nationality" in Israel's population registry to be "Israeli" rather than "Jewish."

Ultra-Orthodox Jews, or Haredim, were exempt from compulsory military service under the 2002 Tal Law, which expired in 2012 after the High Court of Justice ruled it unconstitutional. In 2014, the Knesset enacted a law to formally end the exemption, setting the goal of enlisting 5,200 Haredim per year by mid-2017. However, legislation adopted in November 2015 effectively postponed enforcement of the 2014 measure until 2023.

Although the law protects the religious sites of non-Jewish minorities, they face discrimination in the allocation of state resources, and a number of Christian and Muslim sites were attacked or vandalized in 2015, particularly during the broader increase in violence in the last third of the year. In September, the government agreed to increase funding for private Christian schools in Israel for the 2015-16 school year and reexamine their legal status and future funding after the schools, representing 33,000 students, carried out a month-long strike over their unequal treatment by the state. Citing security concerns, Israeli authorities have set limits on Muslim worshippers' access to the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem with increasing frequency in recent years. Clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police in the area in late 2015 were driven partly by rumors that Israel was planning to change the existing rules and allow Jews to pray in the Muslim compound, which the government strongly denied.

Primary and secondary education is universal, though divided into multiple public school systems (state, state-religious, Haredi, and Arab, the last of which uses the common curriculum but provides instruction in Arabic). School quality and per capita funding is generally lower in mostly non-Jewish communities. Israel's universities have long been centers for dissent and are open to all students based on merit, though security-related restrictions on movement limit access for West Bank and Gaza residents in practice.

Palestinians in Israel faced increased societal and other pressure in response to their remarks during a 2014 Israeli military campaign against Hamas militants in Gaza, Operation Protective Edge. Dozens were reportedly fired or disciplined by employers for views expressed on social media and elsewhere, dampening the country's generally open and free private discussion. Tensions persisted in 2015, particularly during the violence later in the year.

E. Associational and Organizational Rights: 10 / 12

Israel has an active civil society, and demonstrations are widely permitted and typically peaceful, though groups committed to the destruction of Israel are banned from demonstrating. In July 2015, a Haredi man  who had recently completed a prison term for a similar crime in 2005  stabbed six people at an annual LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) pride march in Jerusalem, killing one. Some Haredi community members complained of police profiling at checkpoints during subsequent demonstrations in support of the victim. Separately, between April and June, a series of antidiscrimination protests by Israelis of Ethiopian origin blocked roads and triggered clashes with police, leading to allegations of excessive force. The protests were sparked by a video of police beating an Ethiopian Israeli soldier.

A law that took effect in 2012 requires nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to submit financial reports four times a year on support received from foreign government sources. In December 2015, the cabinet approved the "Transparency Bill," also known as the "NGO Bill," meaning it would be taken up by the Knesset in 2016. The measure would require NGOs that receive more than half of their funding from foreign governments to disclose this fact publicly and in any written or oral communications with elected officials, and to wear a special badge when meeting in the Knesset.

In November, the government outlawed the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, along with its affiliated charitable and social-service organizations, on the grounds that it incited violence and had links to Hamas.

Workers may join unions and have the right to strike and bargain collectively. Most of the workforce either belongs to Histadrut, the national labor federation, or is covered by its social programs and bargaining agreements.

F. Rule of Law: 11 / 16

The judiciary is independent and regularly rules against the government. The Supreme Court hears direct petitions from citizens and Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the state generally adheres to court rulings.

The Emergency Powers (Detention) Law of 1979 provides for administrative detention without trial for renewable six-month terms. According to the human rights group B'Tselem, there were 584 Palestinians in administrative detention in Israel Prison Service facilities at the end of 2015, an increase of more than 100 from the previous year, with a sharp rise beginning in October. Such detention rarely lasts for more than two years. Under criminal law, individuals suspected of security offenses can be held for up to 96 hours without judicial review under certain circumstances, compared with a maximum of 48 hours in other cases, and be denied access to an attorney for up to 21 days. Israel's High Court of Justice banned torture in a 1999 ruling, but said physical coercion might be permissible during interrogations in cases involving an imminent threat. Human rights organizations accuse the authorities of continuing to use some forms of physical abuse and other measures such as isolation, sleep deprivation, psychological threats and pressure, painful binding, and humiliation.

Hunger strikes by Palestinian detainees have become increasingly common. In August 2015, the High Court of Justice froze the administrative detention order of an Islamic Jihad member after finding that his 66-day hunger strike had caused him brain damage. He was released from a hospital in September, then returned to administrative detention until he finished his second six-month term in November.

According to Defence for Children International (DCI) Palestine, 422 Palestinian children (aged 12-17) from the occupied territories were being held in Israeli military detention as of December 2015 (up from 152 a year earlier), including 116 aged 12 to 15 (up from 10 a year earlier). Although Israeli law prohibits children younger than 12 from being detained, some occasionally are. Most Palestinian child detainees are serving sentences of several weeks or months  handed down by a special military court for minors created in 2009  for throwing stones or other projectiles at Israeli troops in the West Bank; acquittals on such charges are very rare. East Jerusalem Palestinian minors are tried in Israeli civilian juvenile courts.

The authorities took a number of steps to crack down on violent protests in 2015. In July, the Knesset passed legislation imposing harsher sentences for stone-throwing offenses under Israeli criminal law, with penalties of up to 20 years in prison for adults who throw objects at a vehicle with intent to harm the occupants. In September, the government authorized police to fire small-caliber bullets at stone throwers if a third party's life is threatened, not just when the officer's own life is in danger. In November, the Knesset approved three-year minimum prison sentences for stone-throwing offenses in Israel, as well as the suspension of social benefits for the parents of juvenile offenders. Meanwhile, human rights groups in late 2015 accused police of using deadly force against some perpetrators of stabbing and vehicular attacks when they did not pose a lethal threat.

In addition to the attacks by Palestinians on the ground during the year, Israeli civilians  particularly those living near border areas  faced occasional rocket and artillery fire from war-torn Syria and the Gaza Strip. However, the rate of fire was far lower than during the major Israel-Hamas conflicts of 2008-09, 2012, and 2014.

About 93 percent of the land in Israel is publicly owned, including some 12.5 percent owned by the Jewish National Fund (JNF-KKL). In 2005, the Supreme Court and attorney general ruled against the JNF-KKL's marketing property only to Jews, while the Knesset made several unsuccessful attempts to override those rulings. In practice, the JNF-KKL continues its Jewish-only land-leasing policy, partly as a result of a land-swap arrangement with the Israel Land Authority. In 2014 the Supreme Court upheld 2011 legislation that allows Jewish communities of up to 400 residents in the Negev and Galilee to exclude prospective residents based on "social suitability," meaning they could effectively bar non-Jews and other marginalized groups.

Palestinian citizens of Israel face de facto discrimination in education, social services, and access to housing and related permits. Aside from the Druze minority, Palestinian citizens of Israel are exempted from military conscription, though they may volunteer. Those who do not serve are ineligible for the associated benefits, including scholarships and housing loans. Many of Israel's roughly 200,000 Bedouin citizens live in towns and villages not recognized by the state. Those in unrecognized villages cannot claim social services, are in some cases off the electricity grid, and have no official land rights, and the government routinely demolishes their unlicensed structures. A lack of bomb shelters puts them at additional risk from Gaza-based rocket fire.

Israelis of Ethiopian origin, numbering around 120,000, suffer from some discrimination and lag behind the general population economically despite government integration efforts. In June 2015, following demonstrations against police mistreatment of the Ethiopian minority, a joint committee of police and community representatives recommended a series of reforms to address the problem.

Israel has sought to block asylum seekers and migrants from Africa by erecting a fence along its border with Egypt. Individuals who enter the country irregularly, including asylum seekers, can be detained for up to a year under an August 2015 Supreme Court ruling, down from 20 months under the previous rules. Asylum applications, when fully processed, are nearly always rejected. Of some 60,000 African asylum seekers who have entered since 2005, mostly from Sudan and Eritrea, more than 10,000 have left under pressure, agreeing to be repatriated or deported to a third country such as Uganda or Rwanda.

G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights: 11 / 16

Security measures can sometimes present obstacles to freedom of movement, though military checkpoints are restricted to the West Bank. By law, all citizens must carry identification cards. Informal local rules that prevent driving on the Sabbath and Jewish holidays can also hamper free movement.

Women have achieved substantial parity at almost all levels of Israeli society. However, Palestinian women and religious Jewish women face some discrimination. Many ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities enforce gender separation. In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled against gender-segregated buses. Nevertheless, many women still sit at the rear of buses on certain lines, and there are occasionally violent Haredi attacks on buses where the practice is not observed, along with attacks against women and girls deemed to be dressed immodestly. Since religious courts oversee marriage rules, marriages between Jews and non-Jews are not recognized by the state unless conducted abroad, nor are marriages involving a Muslim woman and a non-Muslim man. A law passed in 2010 permits nonreligious civil unions, but they are restricted to cases where the individuals have no religion, and they are seldom used. Two more comprehensive bills were rejected by the Knesset in 2015.

Israel has recognized same-sex marriages conducted abroad since 2006, and a Tel Aviv family court granted the first same-sex divorce in 2012. Nonbiological parents in same-sex partnerships are eligible for guardianship rights, and openly gay Israelis are permitted to serve in the military. The Israel Prison Service permits same-sex conjugal visits. Israel remains a destination for human-trafficking victims, and African migrants and asylum seekers residing in the country are especially vulnerable to forced labor and sex trafficking. The government works actively to combat trafficking and protect victims, though the U.S. State Department's Trafficking in Persons Report describes the penalties imposed by courts as inadequate.

Israel's roughly 75,000 legal foreign workers are formally protected from exploitation by employers, but these guarantees are poorly enforced. About 15,000 foreigners work in the country illegally, according to official data. Histadrut has opened membership to foreign workers and called on employers to grant them equal rights.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights Reserved
Freedom in the World 2016 - Colombia

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 24 May 2016 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2016 - Colombia, 24 May 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/574d829a9.html [accessed 25 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Freedom Status: Partly Free

Aggregate Score: 63

Freedom Rating: 3.5

Political Rights: 3

Civil Liberties: 4

Quick Facts

Population: 48,218,000

Capital: Bogota

GDP/Capita: $7,903.90

Press Freedom Status: Partly Free

Net Freedom Status: Partly Free

OVERVIEW

The peace process between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) dominated the political environment in 2015. For much of the year, the peace talks appeared to be on a downward trajectory, and progress on the most sensitive issue  accountability for crimes committed during Colombia's five decades of armed conflict  appeared stagnant. The talks reached a nadir following a FARC attack in April that killed 10 soldiers and prompted a government offensive that included extensive bombardment of FARC camps. In response to public pressure, the two sides agreed to accelerate the pace of the talks in July, and in late September, the framework of a transitional justice agreement was announced, with details added in December. The agreement called for a tribunal to investigate and prosecute crimes, with leniency given to the majority of participants, conditional on truthful testimony. Punitive provisions range from no more than eight years of "alternative penalties" (as opposed to imprisonment) for serious crimes with cooperation, and 20 years without; the leniency does not extend to those who committed war crimes or crimes against humanity. The agreement is intended to apply to guerrillas, state actors, and private citizens.

Reactions were not universally welcoming: the political right denounced the accord as amnesty for the guerrillas, while Human Rights Watch and some other watchdogs expressed apprehension about its terms as well. Nonetheless, most hailed the agreement as signifying a point of no return in the talks, and polls registered a significant rise in public optimism about the peace process, though a small majority remained skeptical about the overall prospects of successfully reaching a final accord. In October, the government and FARC also agreed on a plan to investigate the more than 50,000 disappearances recorded in association with the conflict, and in December, Congress passed a law detailing the terms of a national referendum on the accord. However, disagreement remained on several key issues, including the terms of disarmament and mechanisms for implementing the agreement.

Regional elections held in October offered mixed results for the governing coalition led by President Juan Manuel Santos while weakening his predecessor and chief opponent, Senator Alvaro Uribe.

POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES

Political Rights: 29 / 40

A. Electoral Process: 10 / 12

The president is directly elected to a four-year term. As part of a series of constitutional amendments in 2015 known as the Balance of Power reform, immediate presidential reelection was eliminated. Congress is composed of the Senate and the Chamber of Representatives, with all seats up for election every four years. The nation at large selects 100 Senate members using a closed-list system; indigenous communities choose two additional members. The Chamber of Representatives consists of 166 members elected by closed-list proportional representation in multimember districts.

The 2014 legislative and presidential elections were relatively peaceful, although the former was plagued by accusations of fraud, vote buying, and connections with criminals. President Santos's main allies, the Liberal Party, the Social National Unity Party (U Party), and Radical Change, won a substantial majority in the Chamber of Representatives, taking 92 seats. In the Senate, however, the coalition won only 47 seats. Uribe's Democratic Center took the second-most Senate seats with 20, and also claimed 19 seats in the Chamber of Representatives, making it the primary opposition force.

President Santos won the second round of the 2014 election with 51 percent of the vote against Oscar Ivan Zuluaga, who had won the first round with 29 percent to Santos's 26 percent. The balloting was considered relatively free and fair; the most dramatic scandal involved allegations that Andres Sepulveda, arrested in May 2014 and later sentenced to ten years' imprisonment on charges of cyberespionage, had shared illegally intercepted intelligence with Uribe and members of the Zuluaga campaign.

The 2015 regional elections fortified parties allied with the government, which won gubernatorial races in 23 of the 32 departments. In the most closely followed race, independent former mayor Enrique Penalosa won the seat again in Bogota, ending 12 years of rule by the left-wing Democratic Pole. The polls were characterized by accusations of improper influence by illegal groups, irregularities in voter registration, and insufficient candidate vetting by the major parties. There were also at least 20 politically connected murders, though this represented a significant decline in comparison with the 2011 elections.

The nine members of the National Electoral Council  elected by Congress for four-year terms based on party nominations  oversee the conduct of the country's elections, including the financing of political campaigns and the counting of votes.

B. Political Pluralism and Participation: 11 / 16

The traditional Liberal-Conservative partisan duopoly in Congress has been supplanted in recent years by a newer party system that is still evolving. The new system is comprised of the traditional parties  which are often characterized by factionalism  as well as regional movements, ideological groups from both the right and the left, and technocratic or issue-oriented parties. Santos's centrist National Unity coalition, which enjoyed dominance in both chambers during his first term, continued to maintain the loose support of a significant majority of legislators following the 2014 elections, despite the vocal and cohesive presence of the Uribe-led right.

In 2015, FARC and criminal gangs subjected several government officials to threats, harassment, and violence, in some cases fatal; some local officials resigned because of threats. Police forces and the National Protection Unit, a body under the Ministry of Interior, provided protection to hundreds of public officials during the year.

While general progress remains slow, the government has undertaken a series of steps to incorporate indigenous and Afro-Colombian voices into national political debates in recent years, including training programs to increase Afro-Colombian communities' capacity for governance and awareness of their broader political rights.

C. Functioning of Government: 8 / 12

Corruption occurs at multiple levels of public administration. Graft scandals have emerged in recent years within an array of federal government agencies. The "parapolitics" scandal, which linked scores of politicians to illegal paramilitary groups, resulted in the investigation, arrest, or conviction of more than 90 legislators by the close of the 2006-10 Congress.

Part of the responsibility for combating corruption rests with the inspector general, who is charged with monitoring the actions of elected officials. Current inspector general Alejandro Ordonez has removed multiple mayors and bureaucratic officials from office or suspended their right to stand for election. His dismissal of Gustavo Petro from his post as mayor of Bogota in 2013 generated a backlash, and Petro returned to office in 2014 to serve out his term. Numerous officials from the Uribe administration have been convicted of corruption, trading favors, and spying on political opponents. In 2014, the magazine Semana published an article alleging corruption involving several senior members of the military, including contracting irregularities and significant kickbacks on government contracts. Colombia was ranked 83 out of 168 countries and territories surveyed in Transparency International's 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index.

Public access to government information is generally available for a reasonable fee, though some lower level officials have reportedly required bribes to expedite access. Congress maintains an online platform on which legislators can voluntarily publish financial disclosures.

Civil Liberties: 34 / 60

D. Freedom of Expression and Belief: 12 / 16

The constitution guarantees freedom of expression, and opposition views are commonly expressed in the media. However, journalists face intimidation, kidnapping, and violence both in the course of reporting and as retaliation for their work. Nonetheless, dozens of journalists have been murdered since the mid-1990s, many of whom were targeted for reporting on drug trafficking and corruption. Most of the cases remain unsolved, and although violence has declined in recent years, a local media watchdog recorded at least 144 threats and other abuses against the press in 2015. Three journalists  Luis Carlos Peralta, Edgar Quintero, and Flor Alba Nunez  were murdered in 2015; all of them had previously experienced problems with local officials and criminals because of their reporting. Although the government has prosecuted several notorious cases of murdered journalists in recent years, convictions have been made in fewer than 15 percent of killings since 1977.

Self-censorship is common, and slander and defamation remain criminal offenses. The government does not restrict access to the internet, nor does it censor websites. Twitter and other social-media platforms have become important arenas for political discourse.

The constitution provides for freedom of religion, and the government generally respects this right in practice. The authorities also uphold academic freedom. University debates are often vigorous, though armed groups maintain a presence on many campuses to generate political support and intimidate opponents.

Human rights groups have criticized the government's use of civilian informants to gather information about suspected criminal and terrorist activities, warning that the practice threatens civil liberties, including the right to privacy.

E. Associational and Organizational Rights: 5 / 12

Although provided for in the constitution, freedoms of assembly and association are restricted in practice by violence. During a demonstration in the department of Cauca in March 2015, police reportedly burned protestors' tents and used teargas against them.

The government provides extensive protection to hundreds of threatened human rights workers, but trust in the service varies widely. Scores of activists have been murdered in recent years, mostly by the criminal organizations that have succeeded paramilitary groups following a government-backed demobilization process in 2005. Although the Santos administration has reiterated its respect for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), violations against activists have continued and even increased in some areas. Land rights and victims' rights campaigners in particular are threatened by former paramilitaries seeking to silence criticism of assets acquired during the conflict. According to the We Are Defenders group, 34 human rights activists were murdered in the first half of 2015, largely at the hands of paramilitary successor groups.

Workers are allowed to form and join trade unions, bargain collectively, and strike, and antiunion discrimination is prohibited. Over the past two decades, Colombia's illegal armed groups have killed more than 2,600 labor union activists and leaders. Killings have declined substantially from their peak in the early 2000s, but still occur with regularity. Although a special prosecutorial unit has substantially increased prosecutions for such assassinations since 2007, few investigations have targeted those who ordered the killings.

F. Rule of Law: 7 / 16

The justice system remains compromised by corruption and extortion, although the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court have demonstrated independence from the executive in recent years. In 2015, however, the Constitutional Court's reputation was severely damaged by allegations that its president had solicited a $200,000 bribe to rule in favor of an oil company. During the year, legislators pressed ahead with the country's ongoing balance of power reforms, a series of far-reaching legislative changes that aim, among other things, to increase judicial accountability by creating a new oversight body that would conduct trials for abuses by members of the high courts.

Many soldiers operate with limited civilian oversight, though the government has in recent years increased human rights training and investigated a greater number of violations by military personnel. Collaboration between security forces and illegal armed groups has declined since the 2005 paramilitary demobilization, but rights groups report official toleration of paramilitary successor groups in some regions. Primary responsibility for combating these groups rests with the police, who lack the resources of the military, are frequently accused of colluding with criminals, and are largely absent from many rural areas where the groups are active. Nevertheless, many of the groups' key leaders have been killed or arrested in recent years, as have several of Colombia's most wanted drug traffickers.

The systematic killing of civilians to fraudulently inflate guerrilla death tolls has declined substantially since a 2008 scandal over the practice led to the firing of dozens of senior army officers. More than 2,000 people may have been killed for such reasons. As of mid-2015, more than 900 soldiers had been convicted for these crimes, and thousands of security personnel remained under investigation at year's end. However, rights groups have claimed that high-ranking officers largely escape punishment, and the military continued to lobby for the inclusion of these crimes under the transitional justice umbrella.

Civil-military relations were a source of significant tension in 2015, largely due to the perception that a significant portion of the armed forces opposes the peace process. Jurisdiction and punishment for human rights violations are particularly sensitive issues. Convictions of high-ranking officers for forced disappearances prompted the passage of a 2012 constitutional amendment that expanded the jurisdiction of the military justice system, resulting in domestic and international outcry. In October 2013, the Constitutional Court struck down the amendment on the basis of procedural errors; while a similar bill was passed in April 2015, many of the most controversial provisions were omitted.

While violence has subsided since the early 2000s and homicides declined to their lowest level in decades in 2015, some areas, particularly resource-rich zones and drug-trafficking corridors, remain highly insecure. Following a series of military setbacks between 2008 and 2011, the FARC reorganized and focused on new tactics, including multiple attacks carried out by small units. The group maintained a unilateral ceasefire for much of 2015, making it one of the most peaceful years in Colombia in decades, though attacks skyrocketed when the ceasefire was breached between May and July. Guerrillas and paramilitary successor groups regularly extort payments from business owners and engage in forced recruitment, including of minors. The use of landmines in the internal conflict has added to casualties among both civilians and the military.

Impunity for crime in general is rampant, with convictions achieved in only 10 percent of murders. Most massacres during the conflict have gone unpunished. However, in November 2015, the attorney general announced an investigation into a 1997 massacre in the Antioquia department that will include scrutiny of the actions of Uribe, who was the region's governor at the time.

Afro-Colombians, who account for approximately 25 percent of the population, make up the largest segment of Colombia's more than five million displaced people, and 80 percent of Afro-Colombians fall below the poverty line. Areas with concentrated Afro-Colombian populations continue to suffer from abuses by the FARC and security forces.

Colombia is home to more than 1.7 million indigenous inhabitants. Most live on more than 34 million hectares granted to them by the government, often in resource-rich, strategic regions that are increasingly contested by various armed groups. Indigenous people have been targets from all sides in the country's various conflicts. In October 2015, the Constitutional Court upheld the validity of a decree issued by the government in 2014 that satisfies a commitment to increased autonomy for indigenous territories.

LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people suffer societal discrimination and abuse, as well as high levels of impunity for crimes committed against them. Local NGOs have reported cases of police abuse of persons due to their sexual orientation or gender identity, and contend that victims rarely pursue legal action out of fear of retaliation. Dozens of suspected homicides of LGBT individuals were under investigation in 2015. Members of the transgender community have experienced difficulties changing their gender designations on national identity documents and have been denied medical care when health care providers have refused to accept their government identification cards.

G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights: 10 / 16

Freedom of movement, choice of residence, and property rights are restricted by violence, particularly for vulnerable minority groups. Travel in rural areas is further limited by illegal checkpoints operated by criminal and guerrilla groups. Progress remains uneven on the implementation of the landmark 2011 Victims and Land Law, which recognized the legitimacy of claims by victims of conflict-related abuses, including those committed by government forces. While affected citizens continue receiving compensation, the legal process for land restitution is heavily backlogged, and the resettlement of those who were displaced during the conflict continues to move slowly.

Sexual harassment, gender-based violence, and the trafficking of women for sexual exploitation remain major concerns. Thousands of rapes have occurred as part of the conflict, generally with impunity. The country has restrictive abortion laws, though a 2006 Constitutional Court ruling allowed abortion in cases of rape or incest or to protect the life of the mother. In June 2015, Congress adopted legislation specifically criminalizing femicide, the killing of a woman because of her gender or gender identity or as part of a campaign of violence. The law prescribes imprisonment of up to 50 years in prison for the crime.

Same-sex marriage remains a controversial issue, with a series of judicial and administrative decisions in 2013 allowing and then annulling same-sex unions. In November 2015, the Constitutional Court legalized adoptions by same-sex couples.

Child labor, the recruitment of children by illegal armed groups, and related sexual abuse are serious problems in Colombia. A 2011 free trade agreement with the United States and a subsequent Labor Action Plan called for enhanced investigation of abusive labor practices and rights violations, but progress remains deficient in several areas.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights Reserved
Freedom in the World 2016 - Bangladesh

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 24 May 2016 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2016 - Bangladesh, 24 May 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/574d829b11.html [accessed 25 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Freedom Status: Partly Free

Aggregate Score: 49

Freedom Rating: 4.0

Political Rights: 4

Civil Liberties: 4

Trend Arrow: 

Quick Facts

Population: 160,411,000

Capital: Dhaka

GDP/Capita: $1,092.70

Press Freedom Status: Not Free

Net Freedom Status: Partly Free

Trend Arrow:

Bangladesh received a downward trend arrow due to a series of high-profile murders by Islamist militants, increasing restrictions on critical journalists, and censorship of media content.

OVERVIEW

Bangladesh continued to experience political and social unrest in 2015 as the ruling Awami League (AL) consolidated power, resisted calls for fresh elections, and clamped down on dissent. The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) engaged in street action but found its operations hampered by the harassment of key party officials as well as by mass preventive detentions of party activists. The Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) party faced similar restrictive moves from the authorities in addition to ongoing proceedings against its leaders by the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), which was formed to try war crimes and other atrocities committed during the 1971 war of independence. Several high-ranking JI members were executed during the year as a result of ICT rulings.

Harassment of outspoken civil society groups and opposition media continued to escalate, and the killing of four secular bloggers and a publisher by Islamist militant groups marked a sharp deterioration in the space for freedom of expression. Attacks against religious minorities by nonstate actors also escalated at the end of the year.

POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES

Political Rights: 21 / 40

A. Electoral Process: 7 / 12

Members of the unicameral National Parliament and the largely ceremonial president serve for five years. The National Parliament is composed of 350 members, 300 of whom are directly elected. Political parties elect a total of 50 female members based on their share of elected seats. The president is elected by the legislature.

In the 2014 national elections, the BNP and 17 allied parties boycotted the vote to protest what they said were unfair circumstances. This left the majority of elected seats (153) uncontested, ensuring an AL victory. The AL won 234 parliamentary seats, the Jatiya Party (JP) won 34, and independents and minority parties captured the remainder. Western monitoring groups declined to send election observers and criticized the conditions under which the polls were held. The elections were also marred by extensive violence  Human Rights Watch termed them the bloodiest since the country's independence  and intimidation by a range of political parties. As a result, voter turnout was low at 22 percent, compared with 87 percent in 2008. A number of attacks specifically targeted members of the country's Hindu and Christian minority groups, affecting around 700 people.

B. Political Pluralism and Participation: 9 / 16

Bangladesh has a strong two-party system in which power alternates regularly between political coalitions led by the AL and BNP. Following a series of parliamentary boycotts in 2013, the BNP boycotted the 2014 elections and continued to engage in street action in 2015 with the aim of forcing a change in government. The JI party was banned from taking part in the 2014 elections because of its overtly Islamist charter; the constitution bans religiously based political parties. A monthlong series of mass opposition protests, hartals (strikes), and transport blockades in early 2015 left more than 60 dead and dozens of others injured; more than 10,000 opposition activists were temporarily detained, and BNP leader Khaleda Zia was confined to the party headquarters for more than a month. The human rights group Odhikar registered more than 197 deaths and more than 8,300 people injured as a result of inter- or intraparty clashes during the year.

Ruling party harassment of the opposition BNP and JI parties remained widespread in 2015. Many BNP party leaders were imprisoned, under house arrest, living in hiding or exile, or facing serious legal charges that could bar them from office. An arrest warrant for Zia was issued in February, and legal proceedings against her continued throughout the year. Members of the JI faced ongoing waves of arrests. In September, security forces arrested 13 JI members on suspicion of fomenting discord in the garment sector by detonating homemade explosives. Meanwhile, authorities continued to implement death sentences ordered by the ICT against JI leaders; among others, Muhammad Kamaruzzaman was executed in April, and Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid and Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury in November.

Religious minorities remain underrepresented in politics and state agencies, though the AL government has appointed several members of such groups to leadership positions.

C. Functioning of Government: 5 / 12

Endemic corruption and criminality, weak rule of law, limited bureaucratic transparency, and political polarization have long undermined government accountability. Moreover, regular opposition boycotts of the National Parliament have significantly hampered the legislature's role in providing thorough scrutiny of government policies, budgets, and proposed legislation.

Bangladesh was ranked 139 out of 168 countries and territories surveyed by Transparency International's 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index. Under the AL government, anticorruption efforts have been weakened by politicized enforcement and subversion of the judicial process. In particular, the Anticorruption Commission (ACC) has become ineffective and subject to overt political interference. The ACC law was amended in 2013 to remove its authority to bring cases against officials without permission from the government. The government continues to bring or pursue corruption cases against the BNP; proceedings against Zia, among others, were ongoing in 2015.

The 2009 Right to Information Act mandates public access to all information held by public bodies and overrides secrecy legislation. Although it has been unevenly implemented, journalists and civil society activists have had some success in using it to obtain information from local governing authorities.

Civil Liberties: 28 / 60 (-1)

D. Freedom of Expression and Belief: 7 / 16 (-1)

Bangladesh's media environment became less lively in 2015 amid expanding legal and regulatory restrictions and increasing harassment of and physical attacks against reporters and bloggers. In February, the news show Frontline was suspended, allegedly because its host refused to defer to editorial guidance from the authorities. Contempt of court rulings are increasingly issued against journalists and other independent voices; in August, the Supreme Court upheld a contempt of court ruling against two editors of the Bengali daily Janakantha. Several dozen civil society activists who criticized the 2014 contempt ruling against British journalist David Bergman were also charged with contempt in 2015; most of the defendants apologized in order to avoid conviction. The 2014 National Broadcasting Policy allows for restrictions on coverage that is critical of the government or security forces or that is determined to threaten national security.

Violence against members of the media became markedly worse in 2015. Four avowedly secular or atheist bloggers and a publisher were murdered during the year, and several others were seriously injured. Islamist militant groups such as the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) and Ansar al-Islam were linked to the killings; although several ABT members were arrested in August, the government's response to the killings was criticized as insufficient and as a contributor to the diminishing space for free expression in the country. Dozens of bloggers remain on an Islamist "hit list," and some have fled or gone into hiding due to threats. In December, eight individuals, including the head of ABT, were convicted on charges related to the 2013 murder of blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider. Among those convicted, two students were sentenced to death.

Censorship of digital content, including blocks on YouTube, Facebook, and high-profile Bengali blogs, has become increasingly common. During the political unrest in January, access to online messaging services such as WhatsApp was barred; key social media sites were also blocked for weeks near the end of the year. The Information and Communication Technology Act was used to arrest and charge a number of individuals for exercising freedom of expression online; Mohon Kumar Mondol, director of the nongovernmental organization (NGO) LEDARS, was charged in September for posting criticism on Facebook about the hajj, the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Various forms of artistic expression, including books and films, are occasionally banned or censored.

A 2011 constitutional amendment reaffirmed the secular nature of the state while also confirming Islam as the official religion; the Supreme Court rejected a challenge against provisions for the latter in September 2015. Although religious minorities have the right to worship freely, they face societal discrimination as well as harassment and legal repercussions for proselytizing. Minority groups and their houses of worship are occasionally the targets of violent attacks. Members of the Ahmadiyya sect are considered heretical by some Muslims, and despite state protection, they have encountered violence, boycotts, and demands that the state declare them non-Muslims. They are also occasionally denied permission to hold religious events. A number of attacks against religious minorities took place in late 2015, targeting Hindu, Christian, Ahmadiyya, and Shiite Muslim individuals and houses of worship.

While authorities largely respect academic freedom, research on sensitive political and religious topics is reportedly discouraged. Political polarization at many universities, including occasional clashes involving the armed student wings of the three main parties, inhibits education and access to services. Open private discussion of sensitive religious and political issues is restrained by fear of harassment.

E. Associational and Organizational Rights: 6 / 12

The constitution provides for the rights of assembly and association, but the government regularly bans gatherings of more than five people. Nevertheless, many demonstrations took place in 2015. Authorities sometimes try to prevent rallies by arresting party activists, and protesters are frequently injured and occasionally killed during clashes in which police use excessive force.

Many NGOs operate in Bangladesh. While most are able to function without onerous restrictions, the use of foreign funds must be cleared by the NGO Affairs Bureau, which can also approve or reject individual projects. Groups that are seen as overly critical of the government, particularly on issues concerning human rights, are regularly denied permission for proposed projects and have been subject to escalating harassment and surveillance. Leading human rights NGO Odhikar continued to experience significant harassment in 2015, including judicial action, blocks on funding, surveillance, and interference in public activities.

Formation of labor unions became easier in 2015 due to legislative reforms. However, union leaders who attempted to organize or unionize workers continued to face dismissal or serious intimidation, including physical attacks. Organizations that advocate for labor rights, such as the Bangladesh Center for Workers' Solidarity, have also faced increased harassment over the past several years. Worker grievances fuel unrest at factories, particularly in the rapidly expanding garment industry, where strikes and protests against low wages and unsafe working conditions are common.

F. Rule of Law: 6 / 16

Politicization of the judiciary remains an issue despite a 1999 Supreme Court directive ordering the separation of the judiciary from the executive. Political authorities have continued to make appointments to the higher judiciary, in some cases demonstrating an overt political bias. Harassment of witnesses and the dismissal of cases following political pressure are also of increasing concern. A 2014 constitutional amendment grants the legislature the power to impeach judges on the grounds of "incapability or misconduct."

The court system is prone to corruption and severely backlogged, with an estimated 2.3 million pending cases. Pretrial detention is often lengthy, and many defendants lack counsel. The indigent have little access to justice through the courts. Prison conditions are extremely poor, severe overcrowding is common, and juveniles are often incarcerated with adults. Suspects are routinely subject to arbitrary arrest and detention, demands for bribes, and physical abuse by police. Torture is often used to extract confessions and intimidate political detainees. The rate of custodial deaths has remained high; law enforcement agencies reportedly perpetrated 185 extrajudicial killings in 2015. More than 64 abductions and enforced disappearances were recorded during the year, a significant increase from 2014. Criminal cases against ruling party activists are regularly withdrawn on the grounds of "political consideration," undermining the judicial process and entrenching a culture of impunity.

The 1974 Special Powers Act permits arbitrary detention without charge, and the criminal procedure code allows detention without a warrant. A 2009 counterterrorism law includes a broad definition of terrorism and generally does not meet international standards.

Revisions to the 1973 International War Crimes Tribunal Act and the current tribunal's procedural rules were intended to help meet international standards on issues such as victim and witness protection, the presumption of innocence, defendant access to counsel, and the right to bail. However, concerns have been raised regarding political interference, due process shortcomings, and inadequate protection for witnesses and defense lawyers in ICT trials.

Violence by Islamist political parties and other pressure groups has increased in the past several years, and terrorist attacks by Islamist militant groups have escalated recently; the South Asia Terrorism Portal counted 25 civilian and security-personnel fatalities related to Islamist extremism in 2015.

Members of ethnic and religious minority groups face some discrimination under law as well as harassment and violations of their rights in practice. Indigenous people in the Chittagong Hill Tracts remain subject to physical attacks, property destruction, and land grabs by Bengali settlers and occasional abuses by security forces. In 2015, authorities announced that both foreign and domestic organizations and individuals would be banned from engaging in unsupervised talks with indigenous groups; some restrictions were lifted in response to a widely negative reaction by NGOs and the public. Indigenous leaders often criticize the national government for failing to implement provisions of the 1997 peace accord.

Roughly 270,000 ethnic Rohingyas who fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar beginning in the 1990s are subject to substantial harassment; the vast majority do not have official refugee status and suffer from a complete lack of access to health care, employment, and education. The government has attempted to discourage a more recent influx of refugees by further marginalizing the Rohingya community and undermining the work of international organizations providing humanitarian aid.

A criminal ban on same-sex sexual acts is rarely enforced, but societal discrimination remains the norm, and dozens of attacks on LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) individuals are reported every year. Transgender people face persecution. Although since 2013 they can be legally classified as a "third gender" if they desire, people registered as such have no inheritance rights under Sharia (Islamic law) provisions governing personal status matters in Bangladesh.

G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights: 9 / 16

The ability to move within the country is relatively unrestricted, as is foreign travel. Property rights are unevenly enforced, and the ability to engage freely in private economic activity is somewhat constrained. Corruption and bribery, inadequate infrastructure, and official bureaucratic and regulatory hurdles hinder business activities throughout the country. State involvement and interference in the economy is considerable.

The 2011 Vested Properties Return Act allows Hindus to reclaim land that the government or other individuals seized, but it has been unevenly implemented. Tribal minorities have little control over land decisions affecting them, and Bengali-speaking settlers continue to illegally encroach on tribal lands in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. A commission set up in 2009 to allocate land to indigenous tribes has suffered from delays.

Under the personal status laws affecting communities of all religions, women have fewer marriage, divorce, and inheritance rights than men. In rural areas, religious leaders sometimes impose flogging and other extrajudicial punishments on women accused of violating strict moral codes despite Supreme Court orders calling for an end to such practices. Women also face discrimination in social services and employment.

Rape, acid throwing, and other forms of violence against women occur regularly despite laws offering some level of protection. A law requiring rape victims to file police reports and obtain medical certificates within 24 hours of the crime in order to press charges prevents most cases from reaching the courts. Police also accept bribes to quash rape cases and rarely enforce existing laws protecting women. Giving or receiving dowry is a criminal offense, but coercive requests remain a problem. Odhikar noted an increase in dowry-related violence against women in 2015 compared with earlier years, with 209 cases recorded. A high rate of early marriage persists, with 65 percent of girls married by age 18. Despite a stated government commitment in 2014 to abolish the practice by 2041, a proposal to lower the officially permissible age of marriage from 18 to 16 was still under consideration in 2015.

Bangladesh remains both a major supplier of and transit point for trafficking victims, with tens of thousands of people trafficked each year. Women and children are trafficked both overseas and within the country for the purposes of domestic servitude and sexual exploitation, while men are trafficked primarily for labor abroad. A comprehensive 2013 antitrafficking law provides protection to victims and increased penalties for traffickers. However, training for law enforcement remains inadequate, as does regulation of enterprises such as labor recruitment agencies. The issue received fresh attention in May 2015 after traffickers abandoned thousands of Rohingya migrants at sea. An ensuing campaign against smuggling led to the arrest of dozens, including an alleged kingpin, in September.

Following the 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse, in which more than 1,100 workers were killed, increased inspections and safeguards instigated by Western apparel companies led to the closure of around 200 of a total of 4,500 factories, according to industry representatives. However, working conditions remain extremely unsafe, and comprehensive reforms of the system are hampered by the fact that a growing number of factory owners are also legislators or influential businesspeople. In May 2015, murder charges were filed against 41 people for their alleged involvement in the Rana Plaza collapse.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights Reserved
Squatters protesting the eviction in Gracia. Massimiliano Minocri (EL PAIS)

More information Barcelona bank squatters take aim at property owner

The city of Barcelona was considering purchasing an occupied bank at the heart of weeklong clashes between squatters and the police, but has ruled it out because of the exorbitant price.

The councilor for the fashionable district of Gracia, where the Banc Expropriat squat (The Expropriated Bank) is located, said that the owner has asked for 500,000.

Instead, Eloi Badia is suggesting that grassroots entities might be interested in acquiring the premises with the goal of preserving it as a community center.

We cannot afford an escalation of these incidents, and its important for all the parties to keep talking

Gracia councilor Eloi Badia

There could be a citizen initiative to capitalize on the acquisition, with the City playing the role of guarantor; we need to think of new formulas when faced with complex conflicts, said the councilor.

Ever since regional police evicted the squatters on June 23 on a court order, the neighborhood has been witness to several clashes between riot officers and protesters, who vandalized street furniture and hurled objects  including bleach  at the police.

We cannot afford an escalation of these incidents, and its important for all the parties to keep talking, said Badia on Tuesday.

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To complicate matters further, the mayors third deputy, Laia Ortiz, said early on Tuesday that if the owner offers the city a reasonable price, then acquisition might be the solution. This immediately attracted criticism from the opposition over the idea of using taxpayers money to solve the crisis.

So far, city officials have done little to end the confrontation, claiming that it is a dispute between private parties  the owner of the premises and the squatters, who refuse to let the city act as mediator.

Mayor Ada Colau, herself a former anti-eviction activist, has been accused by the opposition of being soft on the protestors. However, it recently emerged that the previous nationalist administration of Xavier Trias had been secretly paying the rent and utilities for the squatters since January 2015, to the tune of to around 65,000 a year. Catalan elections were held in September of that year, and Trias did not want to risk an explosion of street violence similar to the one that erupted following the failed eviction of another squatter center, Can Vies.

To the squatters, The Expropriated Bank is a perfect example of the nefarious effects of the real estate bust in Spain. It was originally a branch of the regional savings bank Caixa Tarragona, which was later acquired by the larger Catalunya Caixa. This lender, which was bailed out with public money, then sold the premises to Antarctic Vintage, a company owned by a businessman named Manuel Bravo Solano, who says he paid 500,000 for the property himself.

English version by Susana Urra.
See what to expect in coming months along I-69 Finish Line corridor

As the leaves begin to fall and air temperatures begin to cool, the 2022 road construction season will soon slow down.
Carole J. Carrell

BAIRD  Carole J. Carrell, 80, passed away Friday, May 27, 2016. A memorial service will be held at 10 a.m., Saturday, June 4, 2016, at Homestead Nursing Home in Baird. Services are under the direction of Parker Funeral Home of Baird.

Maria Galvan

SWEETWATER  Maria Galvan, 76, passed away Saturday, May 28, 2016. Services are pending with McCoy Funeral Home in Sweetwater.

Doyle Albert Lee

STAMFORD  Doyle Albert Lee, 85, passed away Sunday, May 29, 2016. Graveside service is at Fairview Cemetery at the Tuxedo community, under the direction of Kinney-Underwood Funeral Home at 10 a.m., Tuesday, May 31, 2016. The family will receive visitors from 6 to 7 p.m., Monday, May 30, 2016, at the funeral home. Online condolences may be given at www.kinneyunderwoodfuneralhome.com

Dorothy Marie Walker

ABILENE  Dorothy Marie Walker, 66, passed away Saturday, May 28, 2016. Funeral services are pending with the Elliott-Hamil Funeral Home, 5701 Highway 277 South, Abilene.
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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

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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

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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".

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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

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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

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Washington state's Republican Party just defied the stampede toward 'unity.' Meeting over the weekend, they awarded 40 of the state's 41 delegates to Ted Cruz. Washington's Republicans have refused to be sheep.

The past few days have featured hectoring demands of Never Trump people to 'get over it.' These have come not just from the more bullying precincts of Trump fandom, as in 'Get on the Trump train or get run over,' but also from party regulars and officeholders suggesting that failure to endorse Donald Trump now is a kind of stubborn self-indulgence. 'While you sit out, Hillary gets elected,' huffed one of my critics, for example.

Yes, if there is a binary choice (not completely clear as of this writing) between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, it is possible that voters in swing states who decline to support Trump may be assisting Clinton. This is not a secret. Some Never Trump voters may have to live with that miserable outcome rather than violate their consciences by voting for an authoritarian ignoramus.

The genuflection to party loyalty that has spread like a rash in the past two weeks has more of the quality of a salute than a clear evaluation of the stakes. Some of Trump's supporters are exulting at recent polls showing a slight Trump lead, while scorning those who advised as recently as a few weeks ago that a Trump nomination could lead the Republican Party to a Barry Goldwater-type debacle. But one of the points the Never Trump people have always stressed is that there are two equally painful possible outcomes of a Trump nomination: He loses or he wins.

The Democrats remain the majority party in presidential contests, having won five of the past six popular votes. They begin with an average 247 to 196 Electoral College advantage. That said, Hillary Clinton may well be the only major political figure in the country who could lose a general election to Trump. In fact, as two political scientists argue in The New York Times, Bernie Sanders' support seems to come chiefly not from socialist young people but from 'disaffected white men.' If white men turn out in droves for Trump in the general, it might affect the outcome. On the third hand, an analysis by Political Machination suggests that while Trump did bring out some new voters in the primaries, the newly minted Trump Republicans were too few in the states examined to make up the 2012 Mitt Romney deficit.

The Never Trump commitment is not a matter of being excessively fastidious or too good for this world. Recognizing the imperfection of politics and of life is part of being a grown-up.

Both Clinton and Trump would do damage to the nation. Both have demonstrated low character, an embrace of appalling policies (in some cases, the same policies!) and a capacity for dishonesty that rocks the Richter scale. But he is arguably even more dangerous than she. Both will abuse power and pursue execrable ends, but ...

If Clinton is president, a united Republican Party will oppose her. Assuming Republican control of the House, she will not be able to pass a single piece of liberal legislation. She may attempt  as she has promised on the campaign trail  to rule by executive order, in the manner of Barack Obama. If she does, there will be pushback by Republicans. Just this month, a federal judge ruled in favor of the House of Representatives in its suit against Obama's use of executive orders in the implementation of Obamacare. If she nominates terrible judges to the federal courts, a Republican Senate (assuming Republicans hold the Senate) could decline to confirm. If she attempts to reprise or even exceed the many arrogations of power Obama has attempted, Republicans will block her as best they can. It will be ugly, and Republicans will not always be successful.

If Donald Trump is president, by contrast, there will be no united opposition among Republicans. As we've seen in the past few weeks, the urge to bend the knee is very strong. How much more intense will it be if he sits in the Oval Office? Republicans will actively assist President Trump in undermining conservatism. From entitlements to trade to NATO to nuclear proliferation to universal health care to abortion, President Trump will get a free hand. He thus has it within his power to sabotage the whole conservative enterprise.

So, remaining Never Trump is not disloyal; it's the only way to safeguard conservative principles.

Mona Charen is a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
In the 71 years since the nuclear bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, no sitting president had visited the now thriving city. But the site of the first atomic attack in history has not lacked for American presidents.

Richard Nixon visited in 1964, in between his two presidential runs. And Jimmy Carter visited in 1984, after his presidency. Yet the absence of an actual White House occupant came to an end with the visit by President Obama.

Obama will not apologize for the civilian casualties of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, estimated in the hundreds of thousands. Nor should he. The bombings, as horrific as they were, saved the lives of millions of civilians and soldiers who surely would have died had the United States gone ahead with an invasion of Japan. Many of those lives were Japanese.

The two attacks did not initiate a new era of nuclear warfare. And they took place in the context of a war, initiated by Japan, that had already grown into a grim effort to destroy Japan's will to fight on. Casualties from conventional bombing raids over the spring and summer of 1945 far exceeded those from the two atomic bombs.

While there is no need to apologize, nor is there much justification for sitting presidents to avoid the topic.

In Hiroshima, Obama had a unique platform from which to speak of America's goals and to remind the world of the role it played in defeating tyranny and rebuilding in its wake.

He was to promote the idea of a world free of nuclear weapons. This is unlikely to produce any practical policies, as President Reagan found in the 1980s, when he tried a similar approach. But Obama is right to be broadly aspirational.

He had the opportunity to present an America that, while not apologetic, is empathetic. Far older feuds that continue to inspire hatred and violence around the world would benefit from the example of reconciliation and friendship between Japan and the United States.

There is something appealing about the world's only true superpower  one with a global Navy, sophisticated nuclear arsenal and deep involvements from the Middle East to the Korean Peninsula  showing a bit of humanity.

One doesn't find this in China, whose foreign policy interests are focused on its mercantile policies, acquiring natural resources and grabbing strategic outposts.

One doesn't find it in Russia, whose foreign adventurism is deployed to distract its citizenry from the fact that their economy is underperforming and that their freedoms are being eroded.

And one doesn't find it much in Europe, which is too focused on its internal problems to have much impact beyond its shores.

Much of Asia is eager for closer ties with the United States thanks to China throwing its weight around and North Korea behaving in its normal belligerent fashion. The Philippines has invited the Navy back to Subic Bay, two decades after expelling it. Vietnam asked for, and received, permission to buy U.S. arms. And multiple other countries are forming alliances among themselves and with the United States.

Obama is right to forge closer ties in the region. But this is more than just a marriage of convenience, and one of the best ways to do this is to emphasize how America makes friends with its former enemies.

USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff.
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Two men, who defaced statue of Aliyev, detained in Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan: Happy Slaves' Day Drugs charges used as pretext for detaining men who vandalised a public monument. By Samira Ahmedbeyli Experts say that the arrest and ill treatment of two activists who defaced a statue of former president Heydar Aliyev has highlighted a growing cult of personality in an increasingly repressive Azerbaijan. Bayram Mamedov and Giyasaddin Ibrahim, members of the pro-democracy NIDA youth movement, were detained in Baku on May 10 on drug possession charges. Hours earlier, the two men had painted Fuck the System in English and Congratulations on Slaves Day in Azeri on the monument before posting photos of the graffiti on social media. May 10, the birthday of the former president and father of current leader Ilham Aliyev, has been celebrated every year since 2004 as the Festival of Flowers. However, a play on words means that it is popularly known as Slaves Day. Gul in Azeri means flower, while qul means slave. Prosecutions with the apparent intent of smearing activists reputations are common in Azerbaijan. Financial misdemeanours are often used as a pretext. The ministry of interior said that a search of Mamedov and Ibrahims flats on May 10 had led to the discovery of two kilogrammes of heroin. A Baku district court sent the men to four months of pretrial detention, which was appealed by their lawyer, Elchin Sadigov. But the appeal was rejected on May 20, after which Mamedov went on hunger strike. The activists could face up to 12 years in prison if found guilty The authorities of Azerbaijan have created a national cult and punish all those who touch on it, NIDA board member Ulvi Hasanli told IWPR. The political situation in Azerbaijan, he continued, meant that people do not have the possibility to express their protest the traditional way. Therefore it is necessary to use such non-standard forms of protests. Hundreds of thousands of people viewed the mens social media post and tens of thousands shared it, he claimed. That is why the regime reacted so aggressively and hysterically, Hasanli concluded. Fariz Namazli, a lawyer, said that the activists were accused of drug trafficking because defacing a monument is not a punishable criminal act. The monument of Heydar Aliyev is not counted as a cultural heritage. This is an ordinary monument and has no particular importance for the countrys population, he told IWPR, adding that it was also not damaged beyond repair. The paint was just washed off and that was it. At most, one can speak about an administrative offence. Sadigov used his Facebook page to publish a statement by Mamedov in which he described his mistreatment. Three men in civilian clothes forcibly pushed me into a car, a white jeep, and took me to the 12th police department, brought me to the chiefs office, where there were eight people in civilian clothes, Mamedov wrote. They started to beat me with their hands, fists and kicks. They asked me for what purpose I had photographed the monument. The men then continued to hit him. Mamedov and Ibrahim were subsequently moved to a different location, where they were also tortured. Mamedov said his hands and feet were handcuffed and he was severely beaten. Police officers threatened to rape him with truncheons and demanded they admit to the charge of drug trafficking. He was knocked out by blows to his head and only regained consciousness when doused with water. Then I was taken to a general and said that if I lay flowers at the monument, give an interview to [state TV station] AzTV, apologise at the monument, they will let me go. When I refused, I was taken away and beaten again, Mamedov wrote. The ministry of interiors spokesman Ehsan Zahidov rejected these claims, the Azerbaijan News Network reported. But Yadigar Sadigov, the deputy chairman of the opposition Musavat Party and a former political prisoner said it was clear that the drugs charges had been an act of vengeance. A case of a personality cult is obvious, he said. In spite of several changes in power, the team of Heydar Aliyev, which widely developed the personality cult in the country, remains. The regime's character does not change, he told IWPR. CRACKDOWN ON CIVIL SOCIETY Some Azeris said that the authorities response to the vandalism was even harsher than in Soviet times. One Baku resident, 44-year-old Sultan Gasimov, recalled how a classmate of his disfigured a bust of Lenin and as a result was expelled from the Communist Partys youth organisation Komsomol. The boy was also reprimanded and his parents had to buy a new statue. That was all the punishment, Gasimov said. But now the situation is much more complicated, since a personality cult was built around the father of the current president. Everything against this cult is perceived as a personal insult and is punished very severely. Heydar Aliyevs image is ubiquitous in Azerbaijan, and no expense is spared on the annual Flower Festival. Cities are lavishly decorated with flowers and concerts held in public squares. Every year, they hold an incomprehensible flowers day or slaves day on the birthday of a long-dead president. They are spending a lot of money, when the majority of the people live in poverty, Baku resident Isa Yusifov told IWPR. The events cost is not known, but various official statements give a general idea. In 2007, the mayors office indicated that 15 million US dollars had been spent on the holiday. In 2009 Gular Ahamdova, a former deputy from the New Azerbaijan Party, also said that the event had cost 14 to 15 million dollars. According to the Baku mayors office, 150 tonnes of flowers were imported just for the citys festival in 2013 and 116 tonnes in 2014 However, the festival was cancelled this year due to the four-day-war around Nagorny Karabakh in early April. May 10 was the 40th day of mourning for the dozens of soldiers and civilians killed, which was marked in accordance with Muslim tradition. Yusifov said the authorities had been afraid there might be protests this year because of the war dead, which is why the holiday was cancelled. These kids expressed their protest against the inscription on the statue. If you did an anonymous survey among the population, you would not find a single person who disagreed with what they wrote. But not everyone is as brave as these guys, Yusifov said. Amnesty International has condemned the arrests and urged the authorities to conduct an impartial investigation into the allegations and maltreatment. Sports for Rights, a coalition of international NGOs, has called on the Azerbaijani government to release the activists as well as jailed journalists ahead of the Formula One European Grand Prix race to be held in Baku on June 1719. The leadership of Formula 1 has a crucial opportunity to press the Azerbaijani government to make concrete steps to improve its human rights record ahead of the Baku Grand Prix, said Jane Buchanan, vice president of Human Rights Watch for Europe and Central Asia. In March, Azerbaijan released over a dozen political prisoners ahead of a visit to the United States by Aliyev. After releasing 24 political and religious prisoners, Azerbaijani authorities seem eager to fill the empty cells with more freedom defenders, said Robert Herman, vice president for emergency assistance programs and multilateral advocacy at Freedom House. None of Azerbaijans repressive laws have been repealed. Democratic countries should demand that Azerbaijan respect fundamental freedoms and permit civil society to operate freely. Samira Ahmedbeyli is IWPRs editor for Azerbaijan. Institute for War and Peace Reporting, GLOBAL VOICES, CRS 815 (24 May 16, Azerbaijan)
Chinese workers stand below a live video image of Chinese President Xi Jinping during the opening session of the National People's Congress in Beijing, March 5, 2016.

As China's economy struggles, officials are turning increasingly to anonymous statements on policy differences in a sign that political tensions are rising while economic growth falls.

On May 9, the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) leading paper People's Daily carried a lengthy front-page interview with an unnamed "authoritative person," outlining the government's policies on debt risks, economic pressures, restructuring and reforms.

In one of the most widely quoted excerpts, the anonymous official warned that rising debt levels "can trigger a systemic financial crisis, cause negative economic growth and even eat up people's savingsand that's fatal."

"Big stimulus will only result in bubbles, which is a must-learn lesson," said the authoritative person in a translation by Bloomberg News.

As Bloomberg noted, this was the third economic commentary by the unidentified authority during President Xi Jinping's time in office with previous policy pronouncements in January and last May.

But the latest interview on economic policies may be more than one in an occasional series, since it follows an extraordinary open letter from unnamed "loyal party members" in March, calling for Xi's resignation and citing "consideration for your personal safety and that of your family."

The letter posted on the Canyu (Participation) and Wujie (Watching News) websites at the start of China's annual legislative sessions blasted Xi for his "excessive concentration of power" and criticized his economic program.

Xi's direct involvement in policy development had led to stock market instability and losses for "hundreds of thousands of ordinary people," the critics charged.

"Supply-side reforms" and production capacity cuts had forced layoffs at state-owned enterprises (SOEs), while his "belt and road" trade plans had reduced foreign exchange reserves and brought the economy "to the verge of collapse," they said.

Exposing cracks

Whether justified or not, the anonymous broadsides have exposed cracks in the government's facade of unanimity on economic policies as it battles to keep growth from further declines.

While the secret CPC members blame Xi for weakening gross domestic product growth, which slipped to 6.7 percent in the first quarter, the "authoritative person" appears to be blaming Xi's underlings for issuing rosy assessments and running up debts after first-quarter bank lending jumped 25 percent.

China's economic performance "cannot be described ... (as) a 'good start'," the authority argued, citing a term used repeatedly by officials and the state-controlled press.

The country's recovery will be L-shaped, or slow, "not U- shaped and absolutely not V-shaped," the person said, adding that "it is neither possible nor necessary to force economic growth by levering up."

Analysts have been divided on whether the remarks reflect the collective views of top party and government officials or those of a single leader like Xi or Premier Li Keqiang.

"Yes, the 'authoritative person' was Li," wrote South China Morning Post commentator Shirley Yam, noting the pointed denial that the first-quarter GDP was a "good start" to growth for the year.

Yam called it "a resounding slap in the face" for Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli who used the words in March to describe his expectations for the first quarter.

But the words were repeated in April by a spokesman for the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the top economic planning agency, and used again in the official first-quarter press release from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

On April 29, a statement by the Politburo of the party's Central Committee also described "a good start to the year" following a meeting chaired by Xi, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

An anonymous persona?

It seems possible that Xi may have spoken through an anonymous persona to push back against official optimism after the loan surge failed to produce quick results. But there is also uncertainty about who the "authoritative person" really is and what it means for political conflict over policy.

Some analysts shied away from attributing the critique to any single figure.

"It should be understood as a consensus view reached at the senior level, rather than an individual point of view," said Han Meng, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Institute of Economics, quoted by Bloomberg News.

The mask of anonymity may keep Xi's detractors guessing about how much internal support he has for an economic policy that may be slow to produce positive results.

"Putting it in the paper as from an authoritative spokesman is an attempt to show that it isn't just Xi speaking. It's the collective leadership of the party, giving you the lowdown on what's what," said David Bachman, a professor of international studies at University of Washington in Seattle.

After the reference to "personal safety" by the "loyal party members," Xi may see the ambiguity of anonymity as preferable on several counts for some of his stronger statements.

"The slowing of the economy is creating real tension," said Bachman in an interview. "No one has a good answer for what to do about it."

"Xi has tried so hard to centralize decision making under his auspices that he has become the obvious person to blame for whatever problems there might be, even though he's trying to deflect some of that back onto Li Keqiang and some of the others," he said.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal may have added to the anonymous sniping over the economy with a report claiming that the People's Bank of China (PBOC) has secretly abandoned a policy reform announced last August for setting daily exchange rates based on market forces.

The report, based on minutes of PBOC meetings with unnamed economists and bankers, said the daily exchange rate "is now back under tight government control."

On Friday, the PBOC posted a statement on its Weibo social media account, denying the report as "fabricated" and misleading. A spokeswoman for The Wall Street Journal said the paper stood behind the story, Reuters reported.

Shifting into a higher gear

The anonymous back-and-forth may only be getting started as the government prepares to shift its overcapacity-cutting policy into a higher gear.

If the government follows through on Xi's plans to restrict lending to deeply-indebted SOEs and "zombie companies," job losses and loan defaults are likely to rise far above current levels.

So far, officials have downplayed the employment impacts and have only repeated forecasts of 1.8 million job cuts in the coal and steel industries, although many other sectors are suffering with similar overcapacity.

On May 18, a meeting of the cabinet-level State Council chaired by Premier Li decided that 345 state-owned "zombie companies ... will be reorganized or left to the market within three years," Xinhua said.

The government has tried to minimize reactions to plans for factory shutdowns by talking in terms of "supply-side reforms."

But resistance from SOEs, local officials and the unnamed party members is likely to rise as the reforms unfold, particularly if economic growth continues to fall.

Xi appears to be bracing for more internal conflict. One week after the anonymous interview, Xi called for "unswerving efforts" from "local authorities and various departments" to advance supply-side reforms, according to Xinhua.

On May 3, People's Daily also reprinted a speech that Xi gave in January at a plenary session of the corruption- fighting Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), warning against internal dissent.

Xi said that "some officials have been forming cabals and cliques to covertly defy the CPC Central Committee's decisions and policies." They "risk compromising the political security of the Party and the country," he said.
Hasmik Poghosyan: I want to digest

Minister of Culture doesnt want to express her opinion on new statues of Yerevan, I want to digest; we will speak about them later. The Minister doesnt recall a case when the statue was approved by the society at once, It is a creation in stone, it has some difficulties for perception and naturally we cannot immediately speak about positive and negative sides of a statue. During the time people dont get used to, but begin to understand the sculpture, says Hasmik Poghosyan, bringing her own example. She started to like one of the statues in Yerevan over time, For example, I like the statue of Arno Babajanyan, in the past I could not say the same, now I can say I like it. Hasmik Poghosyan doesnt deny that there are statues in Yerevan, which still havent been approved. Though, she doesnt want to name them, I will not list as it is meaningless to say and offend the relatives, but there are such statues, which we still havent got used to. The Minister doesnt agree that the money intended for statues should be directed to army building, Everything has its place, we are a developing country, we cannot stay behind. Today Hasmik Poghosyan has been taking part in the ceremony of awarding title of the YSU Doctor to Spanish writer Gonzalo Guarch. Guarch is the author of three books, which tell about the Armenian Genocide. His works have been of great importance in the process of the Armenian Genocide recognition.
This official photo shows members parliament raising their hands during a meeting at the National Assembly building in Phnom Penh, April 4, 2016.

The political standoff in Cambodia intensified this week with Prime Minister Hun Sens Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP) taking steps to jail opposition party leader Kem Sokha and supporters of the embattled leader attempting to prevent his arrest.

On Tuesday Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) members and supporters rallied in front of the party headquarters in an effort to protect CNRP Vice President Kem Sokha, who has been staying at CNRPs headquarters for six days after heavily armed police attempted to arrest the lawmaker.

The CNRP supporters looked prepared for a long vigil as some of them brought money, fresh drinking water, noodles, rice, bread, folding beds, and hammocks to the party headquarters in Phnom Penh. About a hundred people gathered there during the night and around 200 others during the day.

There were no outward signs of a police presence on Tuesday, but that doesnt mean the undercover agents for the government werent in attendance.

Monday was a different story as hundreds of police armed with electric batons and tear-gas guns temporarily blocked the road near the CNRP headquarters as some of the partys lawmakers attempted to deliver a petition to King Norodom Sihamoni seeking his intervention in the tense political drama.

CNRP lawmakers have been collecting petitions signed with Cambodians' thumbprints urging the king to press the Hun Sen government to release human rights activists, respect parliamentary immunity, and stop harassing Kem Sokha and the CNRP.

Authorities eventually decided to open the barbed-wire barricade on Monday and allow the CRNP motorcade to pass.

Kem Sokha has been staying in the CNRPs headquarters with his subordinates and his family. In the room he uses, he sometimes sleeps on a sofa and sometimes on a folding bed, as do his supporters. While his speech is normal, and he does not express any fear when he talks, he seems worried about his impending arrest, sources said.

He still remains incommunicado, however.

CNRP Parliamentarian Yem Ponhearith, told RFA that Kem Sokha doesnt need to come out to meet with the public, saying the partys lawmakers can deal with the public.

Hun Sens government has repeatedly attempted to get Kem Sokha to testify in court as prosecutors pursue cases related to allegations that the lawmaker had an affair with a young hairdresser. The allegations emerged in March when recordings of telephone conversations between the two were leaked online.

Hun Sen raises his hand

After a three-minute long meeting of the National Assembly on Monday, 68 CPP lawmakers unanimously voted to allow the court to continue to prosecute the Kem Sokha case. The CNRP boycotted the meeting.

The vote allows the government to pursue Kem Sokha without lifting his legislative immunity as the legislature has done in the past when the CPP controlled more than two-thirds of the legislature.

With the vote, the National Assembly uses an exception written into the Cambodian constitution that allows a lawmaker's arrest for flagrant offenses. By refusing to answer a court summons in a case related to the affair, the vote means the legislature deemed the offense a flagrant one.

During the session National Assembly President Heng Samrin read a statement asking lawmakers to allow the court to prosecute Kem Sokha.

I would like the assembly to examine and adopt [a request] allowing the court to continue its procedures over Kem Sokha's case, please raise your hands," he said. Hun Sen was among those who raised his hand.

Also on Monday, the European Union condemned the dangerous political escalation that is gripping the country as the Hun Sen government pursues members of the opposition party on various cases in the run-up to elections in 2017 and 2018.

Phnom Penh has also arrested four members of the human rights group ADHOC and an election official on charges related to the Kem Sokha affair.

A warrant for the arrest of a United Nations worker has also been issued on a charge related to the Kem Sokha case. So far, two complaints have been filed related to Kem Sokhas alleged affair with Khom Chandaraty. Kem Sokha has refused to appear in court in a defamation lawsuit related to the scandal.

Dangerous escalation

EU Heads of Mission in Phnom Penh deeply regret the dangerous political escalation of recent days and call for a halt to the judicial harassment of the acting leader of the opposition and representatives of civil society organizations, the local EUs Cambodia delegation wrote in a statement.

We urge the Cambodian authorities to resume as soon as possible a peaceful and constructive dialogue with the opposition, which we see as a prerequisite for the legitimacy of the forthcoming elections.

Am Sam Ath, an investigator with the human rights group Licadho, told RFA that the EU believes that Cambodia is going backwards politically.

I think the EU has an important role to play in order to bring the political and human rights situation in Cambodia back to normal, he said.

Council of Ministers spokesman Phay Siphan told RFA that the EUs sentiments are misplaced.

The statement pertains to a political situation, and it seeks to protect a person who violated the law and human rights and showed a lack of morality, he said. The statement doesnt reflect what the government has done so far to improve the rule of law.

CNRP President Sam Rainsy has been staying in France or traveling since an arrest warrant was issued for him in November over a 2008 defamation case, and he was removed from his office and stripped of his parliamentary immunity. After Sam Rainsy left the country, the CNRP named Kem Sokha its acting president.

The conflict with Kem Sokha is just one of the legal cases the government or the ruling CPP has brought against opposition party members.

Human rights workers say the entire scandal is a bald attempt by the ruling party to crack down on its political opponents and silence its critics ahead of the elections. Hun Sen has ruled the country for 31 years.

Reported by Leng Maly and San Sel for RFA's Khmer Service. Translated by Sarada Taing. Written in English by Brooks Boliek.


Police in the Chinese capital have placed under close surveillance relatives of those who died or were maimed in the military crackdown on student-led protests in Tiananmen Square ahead of its politically sensitive 27th anniversary.



Ding Zilin, who founded the Tiananmen Mothers group after her 17-year-old son Jiang Jielan died in the massacre, is currently under close police surveillance at her home in Beijing, with communications with the outside world cut off, group spokeswoman You Weijie told RFA.



Calls to Ding's phone rang unanswered on Tuesday.



You, 61, whose husband died from gunshot wounds sustained in the crackdown, said the authorities seem keen to prevent the victims' relatives from speaking to foreign media organizations.



"Every year, they visit us just before the June 4 anniversary," she said. "The police drive us over to [the Wan'an Cemetery to make offerings] because they're afraid that we'll give interviews to journalists."



"It has been 27 years, and a lot of the parents of those who died won't now live to see the victims rehabilitated," You said.



She called on the ruling Chinese Communist Party, which has styled the weeks of student-led pro-democracy protests a "counterrevolutionary rebellion," to begin a dialogue with the victims' families.



She said she fears many of the group's members will end their lives full of anger and grief at the use of People's Liberation Army (PLA) tanks and machine guns to kill unarmed civilians, starting on the night of June 3, 1989.



Ding's husband Jiang Peikun, a former linguistics professor at Beijing's Renmin University, died of a heart attack at the age of 82 at the family home in the eastern city of Wuxi last September.



'Visited by police'



Beijing-based Wang Debang, a veteran of the 1989 student movement, said he had also been "visited" by state security police.



"They came a couple of days ago for their ritual visit to find out what I was thinking, and whether I planned any activities," Wang said.



"I told them that my ideas haven't changed in 27 years, and that I will spend my whole life fighting for democracy and human rights to become a reality in China," he said.



Wang called on the government to reappraise the official verdict on the student movement, which was sparked by memorial gatherings on Tiananmen Square after the death of much-loved former premier Hu Yaobang.



The protesting students, who put up a "Goddess of Democracy" statue in front of the portrait of late supreme leader Mao Zedong, were joined by hundreds of thousands of labor unions and community groups, as well as ordinary citizens who traveled from across the country to join the movement.



Hu's successor Zhao Ziyang visited the Square, where he famously apologized for "coming too late," before being removed from office for "mishandling" the biggest challenge to Communist Party power in decades.



A highly critical editorial in the People's Daily on April 26 was the first indication of the approach favored by then supreme leader Deng Xiaoping.



The number of people who died when PLA tanks advanced down Chang'an Avenue to clear Beijing of thousands of people encamped on Tiananmen Square remains a mystery.



Beijing authorities once put the death toll at "nearly 300," but the central government has never issued an official toll or list of names, in spite of repeated calls by the Tiananmen Mothers.



Reported by Xin Lin for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Wen Yuqing for the Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.




Jiang Yefei in police custody after his arrest in Thailand, Oct. 28, 2015.

Two Chinese asylum seekers who were sent back by the Thai authorities at China's request in spite of being granted political refugee status by the United Nations are now at risk of torture, rights groups have warned.

Sichuan-based rights activist Jiang Yefei and Henan activist Dong Guangping were handed over by Thai police to Chinese authorities on Nov. 13, in a move that drew strong criticism from the United Nations.

They were sent back to China just days ahead of their planned resettlement as refugees, after last-minute talks broke down, rights groups said.

Both men had been previously been persecuted for their rights activism, and were awaiting resettlement in Canada. Their repatriation drew strong criticism from U.N. officials.

Dong is currently being held at the Chongqing No. 2 Detention Center, his lawyer revealed in a recent interview with RFA.

"We don't yet know what he is charged with, because the family have yet to receive any formal notification of arrest or charges," Dong's lawyer Chang Boyang told RFA.

"But I have learned through certain channels that [Dong] is currently in the Chongqing No. 2 Detention Center," Chang said, adding that the two men are believed to be in the same location.

An official who answered the phone at the detention center last week declined to confirm the report, however.

"We can't answer your questions here," the official said. But repeated calls to the Chongqing municipal police department rang unanswered during office hours on May 26.

According to the Chinese rights website Weiquanwang, Jiang Yefei, a native of Sichuan's provincial capital Chengdu, is also being held in Chongqing, a southwestern megacity that reports directly to the central government in Beijing.

The Chongqing municipal police department issued a notification dated May 14 showing that Jiang is being detained on suspicion of "incitement to subvert state power" and "organizing the smuggling of persons across a national boundary," Weiquanwang said.

"He was sent back to ... the place where he had left China in the first place," the group said.

"There were last minute negotiations between the Chinese consulate, the Thai authorities and high-ranking officials at the UNHCR, but they were unfortunately unable to save him."

London-based rights group Amnesty International said it now fears for the personal safety of both men.

"Jiang Yefei and Dong Guangping are at risk of torture and other ill-treatment and unfair trial," the group said in a statement on its website.

"The two were recognized as refugees by the UNs Refugee Agency, but were forcibly returned to China from Thailand in violation of international law," it said.

Fears for safety

Dong Guangpings family and lawyer have still received no formal notification from the authorities about his whereabouts, or the charges against him

When the Thai government forcibly returned them to China on Nov. 13, they had already been accepted for rapid resettlement in a third country, and were scheduled to depart on Nov. 18, Amnesty said.

Jiang's wife Chu Ling and Dong's wife Gu Shuhua and daughter Dong Xuerui arrived in Canada safely several days after the repatriation.

Jiang and Dong appeared on state-run CCTV news confessing to human trafficking on Nov. 26.

"After viewing the footage, their families raised the allegation that both men may have been subjected to torture or other ill-treatment," Amnesty said.

"They found that the two mens facial expressions and tone of voice were suspiciously different from usual, and showed signs of pain and stress," it said, calling on its members to write to the Chinese government in protest.

Reported by Hai Nan for RFA's Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
Limited-edition bottles of liquor commemorating the bloody military crackdown on the student-led democracy movement of 1989.

Authorities in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan have detained two people who tried to sell and promote limited-edition bottles of liquor commemorating the bloody military crackdown on the student-led democracy movement of 1989.

Teahouse proprietor Fu Hailu and poet Ma Qing were taken away by police in the provincial capital Chengdu after they brought out the alcohol, which bore the words "June 4, 1989" and a cartoon of a man in front of an advancing column of tanks on the label. The label also says "Never forget, never give up."

The label says that the "baijiu" spirit has matured for 27 years, the length of time since People's Liberation Army (PLA) troops put an end to weeks of student protests on Tiananmen Square, using tanks and machine guns on largely unarmed civilians.

Fu, 30, is now being held under criminal detention on suspicion of "incitement to subvert state power," while Ma was brought back to her home to attend a police search in handcuffs, before being taken away again, according to posts by supporters on Twitter.

Fu was taken away from a teahouse he has just opened in Chengdu on May 28, and police in his home district of Chenghua later issued a formal notification of criminal detention. He is being held in the Chengdu Detention Center, Hong Kong's Ming Pao newspaper reported.

"The police didn't give me an explanation. They didn't say that it was to do with the [commemorative bottles of] spirit, or whether it was something else," Fu's wife Liu Tianyan told RFA.

"It had stuff printed on the label that was to do with June 4, 1989, but I saw that online; he never mentioned it to me," she said.

"If it is about the spirits, I have my doubts that this amounts to incitement to subvert state power," Liu added.

According to the Ming Pao, the drink had been designed for private circulation among groups of friends on social media, rather than for public sale.

It said Ma hadn't been involved in producing the bottles, but had used her WeChat social media account to promote them.

The detentions came as China implements nationwide security measures aimed at preventing any public memorials linked to the June 4 crackdown, which was styled a "counterrevolutionary rebellion" by the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

High-profile figures, including the relatives of those who died, have been told to leave town under police supervision, or placed under tight surveillance ahead of the politically sensitive anniversary.

Retired Shandong University professor and veteran democracy activist Sun Wenguang said the detentions in Chengdu reflect suppression of dissenting voices across the whole country.

"Governments around the country are getting the paranoid jitters, because it's nearly the anniversary of June 4," Sun told RFA.

"I am on the 21st floor, and the authorities have stationed police officers round the clock outside the door of my apartment," he said.

"They are sleeping in the corridor, round the clock."

Souls of the dead

Beijing-based rights activist Hu Jia said the alcohol would have been popular among those who have called repeatedly for a reappraisal of the official view on the student-led protests.

"I don't even drink, but I would have wanted to buy one of these bottles very much indeed," Hu said. "I would have taken it to make offerings to the souls of the dead on Tiananmen Square."

"Nothing could be more apt."

Earlier this month, in the northern city of Zhengzhou, rights activist Yu Shiwen began refusing food in protest against his prolonged pretrial detention, his wife and lawyer told RFA.

Yu, who was detained during an event marking the 25th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre two years ago, is charged with "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble," but his case has been subjected to prolonged and repeated delays.

"They are acting in breach of the Criminal Procedure Law," Yu's wife Chen Wei told RFA in a recent interview. "His case doesn't fit under any of the exceptions [allowing pretrial detention to be extended]."

Hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Hong Kong on Sunday to mark the massacre, prompting minor scuffles with police as they approached Beijing's Central Liaison Office in the former British colony.

Lee Cheuk-yan, who heads the organizing Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China group, played down a split with student unions in the city, who will hold their first separate candlelight vigil on June 4 since the memorial gatherings began.

"I don't see this as a conflict with the younger generation, because everyone sees the dictatorship of the central government as oppressive to the people of Hong Kong," Lee told reporters.

"If that's the case, they we should be able to work together to end one-party rule, to change China, and to build democracy, shouldn't we?" he said.

"I believe that there is a consensus on this issue."

Reported by Gao Shan and Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Wen Yuqing, Wong Si-lam and Hai Nan for the Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
Amid unconfirmed reports that she has been sexually abused in detention, authorities are preventing a defense attorney from seeing a legal assistant jailed during last year's nationwide police operation targeting human rights lawyers, RFA has learned.

Zhao Wei, also known by her nickname Kaola, was working as an assistant to top Beijing rights lawyer Li Heping at the time of her detention that started when several employees of the Fengrui law firm were detained on the night of July 9, 2015.

Zhao is being held in the police-run Tianjin No. 1 Detention Center on suspicion of "incitement to subvert state power.

Lawyer Ren Quanping, who has been hired by Zhao's family but has been denied official recognition as her attorney, told RFA he had only heard unconfirmed reports about his client's treatment.

"I have been hearing reports from different sources that the detention center guards were heard boasting about how many female inmates they had 'fun' with," Ren told RFA. "Zhao Wei's name was mentioned."

He said he plans to travel once more to the Tianjin detention center to request a meeting, which officials have already refused.

"We will request a meeting and see if we can confirm this story, and find out the truth," Ren said.

'Pretty messed up'

But he added: "I have heard that detention centers are pretty messed up, and this sort of thing happens a lot ... to varying degrees. It's very widespread."

Zhao's husband You Minglei said he believes she has been mistreated to some degree while in detention, but he doesn't know the circumstances.

"She has definitely suffered some form of physical humiliation, because she's been in there for nearly a year now," You said. "It's hard to figure out when this happened, though."

"I have seen rumors that she was raped on WeChat, but I can't be sure that this happened, or how serious this physical humiliation was."

"There is very little we can do right now. All we know is which detention center she's in," he said. "Neither the lawyer I hired, nor the one her mother hired, have been allowed in to meet with Zhao Wei."

You said he plans to travel to Tianjin next week to try to find out more from detention center staff.

Authorities appointed attorney Dong Yananto represent Zhao. Dong declined to comment on her situation when contacted by RFA

'Nothing to say'

"I'm sorry, but I really have nothing to say," Dong said, when asked to confirm online reports that Zhao had been subjected to sexual assault while in police custody.

Repeated calls to the Tianjin No. 1 Detention Center rang unanswered during office hours on Monday.

China has detained, questioned or otherwise placed restrictions on at least 319 lawyers, law firm staff, human right activists and family members since the July 9 crackdown began, according to a Hong Kong-based rights group.

At least 23 have been criminally detained or formally arrested on subversion, state security or public order charges, while others have been banned from leaving the country, or placed under house arrest or other forms of surveillance, the Chinese Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group said on its website.

Dozens of Chinese lawyers have issued a strongly worded attack on the ruling Chinese Communist Party for refusing to allow the detained lawyers access to attorneys hired by their families.

"They have no way of accessing normal legal assistance," the statement said. "Whenever lawyers hired by their relatives present themselves at the detention centers in Tianjin and request a meeting with their clients, they are refused."

'Many rumors'

Rights lawyer Yu Wensheng, who signed the statement, said there are "many rumors" circulating that the inmates arrested in the legal crackdown have been mistreated while they are being held in Tianjin's No. 1 and No. 2 Detention Centers.

"We need to confirm these rumors, and to do that we have to allow these detained lawyers the legal assistance to which they are entitled," he said. "That's why we released this statement."

Another lawyer who signed the statement, Liu Shuqing, said it is against the law for the authorities to allocate a defense lawyer when the family has already hired one.

"This is in breach of the Criminal Procedure Law, as well as basic principles of justice," Liu said.

Reported by Xin Lin and Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Wong Si-lam for the Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi has been appointed to chair a government-formed committee to work towards peace and development in western Myanmars impoverished and war-torn Rakhine state, a high-ranking government official said Monday.

The Central Committee for Implementation of Peace and Development in Rakhine State consists of 27 officials, including all government cabinet members as well as Rakhine state government representatives, said Win Myat Aye, head of the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement and member of the committee.

President Htin Kyaw issued a signed statement establishing the committee and appointing Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmars de facto leader, as chairwoman, he said.

Zaw Htay, spokesman of the state counselors office, said the committee members will make an inspection trip to Rakhine very soon, but did not mention specific dates or indicate whether Aung San Suu Kyi will be part of the delegation.

The Union government has a policy of working together with state and regional governments to serve the development needs of the people, especially in less developed and poor states such as Rakhine and Chin, said Win Myat Aye.

Now weve started with Rakhine state, he said. The purpose is so we can achieve more stability and more development.

Each of the committee members will focus on their respective fields of responsibilities such as education, transportation, social issues and health care, he said.



The Rohingya issue

The committee will also work on the resettlement of internally displaced persons, social development, and the coordination of the activities of United Nations agencies and international nongovernmental organizations, according to a report by the online journal The Irrawaddy.

The National League for Democracy (NLD) government will form similar committees for other states and regions, Win Myat Aye said.

Aung San Suu Kyi called a meeting in the administrative capital Naypyidaw on Friday with Rakhine Chief Minister Nyi Pu and various national government ministers to discuss stability and development in the state and a controversial citizenship verification process for internally displaced persons (IDP) that has reportedly resumed this month, The Irrawaddy report said.

The verification process concerns the 120,000 stateless Rohingya Muslims who currently live in IDP camps as a result of the violence that erupted between them and local Buddhists in 2012.

The government views the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, although many have lived in Rakhine for generations.

During a meeting last week with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Aung San Suu Kyi, who is also Myanmars foreign minister, said the government is working for a solution that will allow the Rohingya to live peacefully and securely outside the camps.

Arakan Army clashes

The state has also been wracked by hostilities between the Myanmar military and Arakan Army (AA), an armed ethnic group, in its northern townships. The clashes have forced thousands of residents to flee their homes during the past several months.

The AA has so far been excluded from negotiations among the government, national military and various armed ethnic groups who are trying to end civil wars and forge peace in the country.

The situation has been further complicated by tensions between the ruling NLD, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, and the local Arakan National Party (ANP), which represents the interests of the predominantly Buddhist, ethnic Rakhine majority living in the state and in Yangon region.

Earlier this year, the NLD appointed Nyi Pu, one of its own lawmakers, as the states chief minister. The ANP, however, argued for having a state leader from their party because it had won 23 of 47 state parliament seats in national elections last November, but failed to gain a majority in the Rakhine state legislature because a quarter of seats automatically went to military representatives.

Reported by Kyaw Thu for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Kyaw Min Htun. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
The number of Afghans forced to flee conflict and relocate inside their own country has more than doubled in the past three years, to 1.2 million people, according to Amnesty International.

The London-based rights group says in its latest report that the figures, when combined with the 2.6 million Afghans living as refugees abroad, means that "almost every family in Afghanistan has experienced being driven from their homes at some point" over the past 40 years.

The report, My Children Will Die This Winter: Afghanistan's Broken Promise To The Displaced, found that internally displaced people (IDPs) in Afghanistan suffer from a lack of suitable shelter, severe food and water shortages, almost nonexistent health care, and virtually no opportunities for education or employment.

"While the world's attention seems to have moved on from Afghanistan, we risk forgetting the plight of those left behind by the conflict," Champa Patel, South Asia director at Amnesty International, said ahead of the report's publication.

The last several years have seen an increasingly unstable security situation in Afghanistan, especially after international troops departed at the end of 2014. The departure left Afghan security forces in charge of fighting a resurgent Taliban.

Many of the civilians caught up in the ensuing violence have fled, often settling in displacement camps within their own country.

Speaking about 2016 alone, Amnesty South Asia researcher Olof Blomqvist says that "we're talking about almost 1,000 people every day."

WATCH: 'We're Here Out Of Desperation' -- An Afghan IDP's Tale

Ministry 'Incompetent, Corrupt'

The report is based on interviews with more than 100 displaced individuals in camps and settlements in Herat, Kabul, and Mazar-e Sharif.

It says that the situation in IDP camps is nothing short of desperate, and it has been worsening since the beginning of the year because of the influx of displaced people.

"It's really people who have been forced away from their homes by one horrific situation that have ended up in another situation that is just as horrific because there is no one there to protect them or to protect their human rights or to provide enough aid as they need," Blomqvist says.

Amnesty notes that the plight of displaced Afghans has worsened despite pledges by successive Afghan governments to remedy the situation and the development of a new policy to deal with displaced persons.

The Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation is singled out for criticism, with Amnesty saying the body has been confronted with accusations ranging from widespread corruption to sheer incompetence.

"It needs resources and it needs quality personnel, it needs expertise to implement the policy, but because of its history of very serious corruption allegations many people, both in the Afghan government and among international actors, are quite hesitant actually to provide these resources to the ministry," Blomqvist tells RFE/RL.

'Poorest Of The Poor'

Besides living in mud huts or tarpaulin tents, with no water or sanitation, many displaced persons are under threat of forced eviction.

"They [IDPs] face pretty frequent harassment from both the government and private actors -- the so-called land mafia -- who usually are a mix of certain local strongmen and warlords," Blomqvist says.

In one incident, two people were killed last year in a protest when armed men came to bulldoze the Chaman-e Babrak IDP camp in Kabul. No investigation was carried out and no one has been held to account.

Amid a rise in anti-immigration stances in Europe amid an ongoing refugee crisis, some have pointed to the fact that Afghans, unlike Syrians or Iraqis, come from a country that was "pacified" by Western troops and aid.

However, Amnesty's Blomqvist warns that this is "a very dangerous narrative being propagated in the West, in all NATO countries, that the Afghan war has been a success, that NATO and international troops are leaving behind a peaceful, well-functioning country, which, obviously, couldn't be further from the truth."

He warns that, in the short term, "most likely we're going to see the conflict expanding."

Amnesty's report concludes that key international players have to do more to "ensure that the human rights of those displaced are met, and lend more weight, expertise, and resources to the implementation of [Afghanistan's] IDP policy."

Blomqvist also says that, unlike many Afghan migrants abroad, internally displaced persons in Afghanistan "don't have the means to pack up and leave the country, they don't have the means to pay smugglers to take them somewhere else, but [they're] really like the poorest of the poor and the most vulnerable of the most vulnerable."
Taliban militants have killed at least 13 people and are holding more than 30 hostage after an ambush on a highway in northern Afghanistan.

Afghan officials said four buses were stopped by militants early on May 31 in the Aliabad district of Kunduz Province.

The militants took 185 passengers hostage initially and killed 13 of them, all civilians, but freed the rest, provincial press officer Hejratullah Akabari told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan.

Locals say that 18 hostages were killed brutally by Taliban militants and the bodies of five them thrown in a river.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying they were targeting security officials.

Taliban forces regularly stop passenger vehicles to search for members of the Afghan government, security forces, and international organizations, and the number of such incidents appears to be growing.

Kunduz is one of the most embattled provinces in northern Afghanistan. Kunduz city, the capital of the province, briefly fell to the Taliban last year.

With reporting by AFP and dpa
A man who complained to Russian President Vladimir Putin about official corruption in Chechnya has offered apologies to the region's leader, Ramzan Kadyrov.

In a televised statement on May 30, Ramazan Dzhalaldinov said he was "mistaken" and asked Kadyrov to forgive him for his previous statements, adding that he had never received any threats and was not hiding.

Dzhalaldinov, 56, an ethnic Avar from the village of Kenkhi in Chechnya, posted a video on the Internet on April 14 in which he appealed to Putin to intervene and stop local government officials who, he claimed, were extorting bribes from residents.

He later told RFE/RL that he had to flee Chechnya for the neighboring Russian region of Daghestan, fearing for his safety.

He also said that his house was burned down by unknown masked individuals after he fled Chechnya.

Human rights activists have accused Kadyrov of encouraging or condoning extrajudicial collective punishment -- including the torching of homes of insurgents' families -- in the past.
A prominent Tatar journalist says she was warned by Crimean prosecutors over "extremist" views for writing about the plight of Tatar children whose parents were arrested.

Lilia Budzhurova, deputy director of the Crimean Tatar channel ATR and a contributor to AFP, posted the warning from the Russia-annexed peninsula's authorities on Facebook on May 31.

Budzhurova spoke out against the increasing arrests of Crimean Tatars and wrote an appeal for children of the detained.

"Soon Crimean Tatars will be caught in the streets, on public transport, and at the markets. We're less than a step away from being forced to wear a yellow band on our sleeves, to differentiate us," she wrote on Facebook in April.

She wrote last week that 18 Tatars had been jailed.

"Most of those now in prison have children who are minors," she said, proposing the creation of a fund to support them.

Crimean Tatars are a Muslim minority on the Black Sea peninsula, a Turkic people who were deported by Russia during the Stalin era.

Most opposed the controversial vote in March 2014 for annexation by Russia. Moscow has overseen the crackdown on Crimean Tatar leaders since then.

Based on reporting by AFP and CrimeaSOS.com
ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- Police in Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty, have detained opposition activists who planned to hold a rally to challenge next month's early presidential election.

Bibigul Imanghalieva, a member of the unregistered Algha, Qazaqstan (Kazakhstan, Forward) party, told RFE/RL by phone that she and several of her colleagues were detained for several hours early in the morning in different parts of the city before they could hold the demonstration, which was to fall on October 25, Republic Day, which commemorates Kazakhstan's declaration of state sovereignty in 1990.

According to Imanghalieva, leading activists, Aset Abishev, Aidar Syzdyqov, and Qanatkhan Amrenov, were among those detained. She added that she and other activists were released three hours later.

Imanghalieva says she and other members of the unregistered party had officially filed a request with the Almaty city administration last week asking for permission to hold a rally on October 25.

Other activists told RFE/RL that the chairwoman of an independent group of election observers, Arailym Nazarova, was also detained by police. Her mobile phone has been switched off since the morning of October 25.

In the capital, Astana, police cordoned off a square near Zhengis (Victory) Avenue where activists had planned to gather, not allowing anyone to enter the site. At least two activists were detained there.

Opposition activist Amangeldy Zhakhin said on Facebook on October 25 that police did not allow him to leave the village of Shortandy on October 25 as they tried to prevent his trip to Astana, the capital, where he planned to organize a rally to question the election, scheduled for November 20, at which incumbent President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev will face off against five relatively unknown candidates.

Activists in the cities of Aqsai, Pavlodar, and Oskemen also said they were blocked from travelling to Astana to take part in a rally.

Toqaev, who has tried to position himself as a reformer, called the early presidential election on September 1 while also proposing to change the presidential term to seven years from five years. Under the new system, future presidents will be barred from seeking more than one term.

Critics say Toqaev's initiatives have been mainly cosmetic and do not change the nature of the autocratic system in a country that has been plagued for years by rampant corruption and nepotism.

Toqaev's predecessor, Nursultan Nazarbaev, who had run the tightly controlled former Soviet republic with an iron fist for almost three decades, chose Toqaev as his successor when he stepped down in 2019.

Though he was no longer president, Nazarbaev retained sweeping powers as the head of the Security Council. He also enjoyed substantial powers by holding the title of elbasy or leader of the nation.

Many citizens, however, remained upset by the oppression felt during Nazarbaev's reign.

Those feelings came to a head in January when unprecedented anti-government nationwide protests started over a fuel price hike, and then exploded into countrywide deadly unrest over perceived corruption under the Nazarbaev regime and the cronyism that allowed his family and close friends to enrich themselves while ordinary citizens failed to share in the oil-rich Central Asian nation's wealth.

Toqaev subsequently stripped Nazarbaev of his Security Council role, taking it over himself. Since then, several of Nazarbaevs relatives and allies have been pushed out of their positions or resigned. Some have been arrested on corruption charges.

In June, a Toqaev-initiated referendum removed Nazarbaev's name from the constitution and annulled his status as elbasy.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker says his planned trip to Russia next month is intended to maintain dialogue rather than signal a rethinking of European sanctions.

Juncker accepted Moscow's invitation to attend the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on June 16, in what will be the first visit to Russia by a top European Union official since Moscow annexed Ukraine's Crimea region in 2014.

The visit occurs just weeks before the EU's 28 members must decide whether to extend sanctions imposed on Russia because of its aggression in Ukraine.

"We will not see a weakening of European positions," Juncker told reporters in Luxembourg on May 31. "We will extend the sanctions against Russia and we will make it clear that we don't agree with the actions of Russia in Ukraine and Crimea in any way."

But Juncker stressed that in speaking at the forum and meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin there, he wants to keep dialogue going despite Russia's increasingly tense relations with the West.

"I find it important that at least in economic questions, we try to get closer together," he said.

His remarks were echoed by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on May 31, who told a conference in Berlin that the West must "defend our positions if our principles are violated, but at the same time we must exert effort towards detente and search for a dialogue."

Despite having imposed economic sanctions aimed at stifling development of Russia's most important economic sectors -- energy, finance, and defense -- the EU does not want to see an economic implosion in Russia, Steinmeier said.

"Nobody is interested in seeing Russia collapse economically," he said. "This would not contribute to security in Europe."

The Kremlin said it welcomed Juncker's visit, but cautioned against expecting warmer ties.

"I would not be too optimistic and spot the signs of a breakthrough anywhere," Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Mutual sanctions and loss of trust would be "impossible to get rid of overnight."

"The most positive element to this trip is that it shows a readiness and a desire for dialogue aimed at getting consensus on those issues where we still have strong disagreements," he said.

European Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas said Juncker would "use this opportunity to convey to the Russian leadership, as well as the wider audience, the EU's perspective regarding the current state of the EU-Russian relations."

Juncker in the past has called for a "practical relationship" with Moscow, and is not considered a strong backer of sanctions.

Some European officials were critical of his decision to visit Russia.

"A visit by an official of this level always carries a symbolic value. I don't see any reasons why we would need to symbolically demonstrate to Russia that we're seeking contact," Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius told Reuters.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, TASS, and dpa
A new report on global slavery ranks Uzbekistan and Pakistan among the five worst offenders in terms of the number of people forced into modern slavery.



With its forced labor in the cotton fields, Uzbekistan also was estimated to be the worlds second-worst country when ranked by the prevalence of slavery in proportion to the population.

The findings are contained in the 2016 Global Slavery Index, which was released on May 31 by an Australia-based nongovernmental organization called the Walk Free Foundation.

Around the world, the report says, there are now almost 46 million people who are enslaved.

Andrew Forrest, the chairman and co-founder of the Walk Free Foundation, told RFE/RL on May 31 that the 2016 estimate is more than 10 million higher than the findings from his organizations 2014 research.

Forrest said he thinks slavery is increasing in the world and that it will probably get worse before it gets better and then is finally eliminated.

The definition of modern slavery includes people who are trapped in forced labor, human trafficking, debt bondage, sex trafficking, forced marriage, and other slavelike exploitation.

The studys leading author, University of Hull professor Kevin Bales, says slavery can be defined as a relationship in which one person is controlled by another through violence, the threat of violence, or psychological coercion, has lost free will and free movement, is exploited economically, and is paid nothing beyond subsistence."

He says modern-day slavery takes various forms and achieves certain ends but its outcome is always exploitative in nature: appropriation of labor for productive activities resulting in economic gain.

The report says Uzbekistan ranks near the top of the shame list for modern slavery because the government in Tashkent uses one of the worlds largest state-sponsored systems of forced labor to harvest cotton.



Uzbekistans government denies that forced labor is an official policy. It claims its citizens volunteer out of civic responsibility and take part in a form of traditional voluntary labor called khashar.

But Forrest notes that employees of local administrations, teachers, factory workers, state firms, and doctors are forced to leave their jobs every autumn for weeks at a time to pick cotton with little or no additional compensation.

Those who refuse to take part are threatened with punishment and dismissal from their state-sector jobs, he said.

That, unfortunately, defines itself as modern slavery, Forrest said.

The central leadership of the government [in Uzbekistan] is able to distribute those profits [from the cotton industry] as they see fit, he said. The people who made the profits, which is the people who plant the cotton and harvest the cotton, have no say in the distribution of that income. They are just there to do the governments bidding, to make that revenue. And they see none of it.

The Global Slavery Index says that authoritarian President Islam Karimovs government, under pressure from international monitoring organizations, has begun to take steps to improve the situation.



But it says reports from the 2015 cotton harvest in the Central Asian country estimate that more than 1 million people were forced to work.



Only North Korea has a higher proportion of its population forced into modern slavery than Uzbekistan, the report says.



It says North Korea tops the list because of its extensive system of prison labor camps, and because many North Korean women are subjected to forced marriage and commercial sexual exploitation in China.

In absolute terms, the report said countries with the most people forced into slavery are India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Uzbekistan.

Forrest explained that Pakistan is high on the list because of the widespread practice of forced marriage and child marriage.

Across Pakistan, wherever you have child marriages or you have marriages by force, it defines itself as modern slavery because those young girls have no say whatsoever in what is happening to them, he said.

They are absolutely under the control of someone else, Forrest said. They have no choice and they can never leave under their own free will. That, of course, meets the definition of slavery.

The report listed North Korea and Iran as the two countries that were taking the least action to reduce modern slavery.



Governments that were praised for their efforts to combat modern slavery and forced labor include Croatia, Georgia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Moldova, Albania, and Serbia.



The 2016 Global Slavery Index includes a measure on state-sanctioned forced labor as a way of rating how governments respond to slavery.



It says state-sanctioned forced labor is where the government forces the population, or segments of it, to work under the threat of penalty, and for which the person or population has not offered himself voluntarily.



It said the countries that have systematically forced their population into labor include Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Belarus, China, Eritrea, North Korea, Russia, and Vietnam.

With reporting by Reuters
Iran is calling on the United States to do more to assure European banks that they can do business with Iran.

"It seems that there is a psychological barrier," Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in Finlands capital, Helsinki, on May 31. "Some European countries, even European banks, continue to be concerned about retribution by the United States.

Crippling economic sanctions against Iran were lifted in January as part of last year's nuclear agreement between Tehran and world powers, under which the Islamic republic curbed its nuclear program.

But Iran is struggling to access financing from abroad, as many banks fear breaking the remaining U.S. restrictions.

Meeting with European banking representatives in London earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said non-U.S. banks wont be penalized for conducting legitimate business with Iran.

Zarif, who was in Poland on May 29-30, also plans to travel to Sweden and Latvia as part of his European tour.

Based on reporting by Reuters and AP
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) has condemned the "outrageous" flogging of up to 35 young men and women in Iran last week after they were caught holding a graduation party together in Qazvin, north of Tehran.

According to official Iranian media, the students were arrested on May 26, interrogated and sentenced to 99 lashes each.

The UNHCR noted in a statement on May 31 that flogging is prohibited under international human rights law.

In its statement, the UNHCR said for Iranian authorities "to have meted out this cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment -- which could amount to torture -- is completely disproportionate and abhorrent."

The UNHCR said it was not an isolated incident.

It noted 17 mine workers were reportedly flogged in Western Azerbaijan Province in Iran earlier this month for protesting the dismissal of 350 workers at a gold mine.

The UNHCR said a woman was publicly flogged in April for having sexual relations outside marriage.
Iraqi military officers say pro-government forces battling their way into Fallujah have repelled a counterattack by Islamic State (IS) militants in the citys south.

The officers said the four-hour attack started at dawn on May 31 in the Nuaimiya area, where Iraqi troops began their assault on the city itself the previous day.

Lieutenant General Abdelwahab al-Saadi, the overall commander of the Fallujah operation, said around 100 IS fighters took part in the attack and that 75 of them were killed.

He did not give a figure for casualties on the government side.

Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis said the Fallujah offensive was "tough."

"The past two days have shown" that the IS group "intends to put up a fight for it," he said.

Fallujah, 65 kilometers west of Baghdad, has been under IS control for over two years and is the last major city in western Iraq still under control of the Sunni extremist group.

The militants still control patches of territory in the country's north and east as well as the country's second-largest city, Mosul.

Based on reporting by AP and AFP
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said President Vladimir Putin's planned trip to China will give powerful new impetus to ties between the two nations.

Speaking at a press conference in Moscow on May 31, Lavrov described expanding ties with China as Russia's top foreign policy priority.

Lavrov said the two nations share opposition to a unipolar world, a veiled reference to perceived U.S. global domination.

He added that Moscow and Beijing oppose "double standards" as well as attempts at "diktat and blackmail" in global affairs.

Amid strained relations with the West over the Ukrainian crisis, the Kremlin is eager to bolster ties with Beijing to soften the impact of Western sanctions.

Putin is set to visit China in June on a trip intended to further boost cooperation in the energy sphere and other areas.

Based on reporting by TASS and AP
Saudi Arabia has accused Iran of sewing "sedition" in Iraq and demanded that Tehran "stop intervening" in its neighbor's affairs.

"If Iran wants stability in Iraq, it has to stop intervening and withdraw," Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said on May 30.

"Sedition and division in Iraq are the results of sectarian policies that developed out of Iran's policies in Iraq," he said. "Iran should respect the principle of good neighborly relations, to focus on its internal situation,and not intervene in the affairs of other countries in the region, mainly Iraq."

His comments come as thousands of Iraqi Shi'ite militiamen, soldiers, and police, backed by Iran, are battling to retake Fallujah from the Islamic State militant group.

Iran says its military advisers are in Iraq at Baghdad's request to help Iraqi forces. It has repeatedly rejected Saudi criticisms of its role in Iraq, instead accusing its regional rival of supporting extremism.

Saudi Arabia and Iran severed diplomatic ties earlier this year after Iranian protesters ransacked Saudi diplomatic offices there to protest the execution of a prominent Saudi Shi'ite cleric.

Based on reporting by AP and AFP
At least one person was killed and two injured after part of an apartment block collapsed in Russia.

Officials in the Siberian city of Mezhdurechensk said on May 31 that an unknown number of people might remain under the debris.

Rescue teams are working at the site.

Dozens of residents of the damaged apartment block were evacuated.

According to the authorities in Kemerovo Oblast, the incident might have been caused by reconstruction work inside a shop located on the building's first floor.

Local police launched investigations into "violation of safety regulations during construction and reconstruction works."

Mezhdurechensk is a city of more than 100,000 residents located in coal-rich Kemerovo Oblast in Russia's Southwestern Siberia.

Based on reporting by TASS and Interfax
Russia has denied its planes had conducted air strikes overnight against the Syrian rebel-held city of Idlib, which the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said had killed 23 people.

"Russian planes did not carry out any combat missions, to say nothing of any air strikes, in the province of Idlib," Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a statement on May 31.

The observatory had earlier said the air strikes targeted a number of positions in the city, one of them next to a hospital. Seven children were among the dead, observatory head Rami Abdulrahman said.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry said the strikes had killed more than 60 civilians and complained in a statement about what it said were the "indefensible" crimes of the Russian and Syrian governments.

Konashenkov called the observatory's allegations "a horror story" and said such pronouncements should be regarded with greater skepticism.

Idlib is a stronghold of rebel groups including the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front.

The Russian Air Force deployed to Syria last year to support President Bashar al-Assad in the war with rebels seeking to end his rule.

Based on reporting by Reuters and AFP
ON MY MIND

A warning from Vadim Troyan, the first deputy head of Ukraine's National Police, that the Kremlin has deployed a team of mobsters to destabilize Ukraine merits checking out. But it's certainly plausible. Russia has used its nationalized mafias to carry out many of the unsavory tasks it wants taken care of without Kremlin fingerprints: arms smuggling to the Donbas, assassinations, raising off-the-books cash for black ops. So why not use them to destabilize Ukraine? With the Minsk peace process stuck in neutral and the war in the Donbas becoming a frozen conflict, Moscow will have fewer and fewer options to pressure Kyiv's pro-Western rulers. But one place they do have influence is in the criminal world -- so why wouldn't they open a gangster front in the hybrid war?

IN THE NEWS

Nadia Savchenko has been sworn in as a member of the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament.

Police have opened a criminal case for "hooliganism" in connection with a deadly shoot-out at Moscow's largest cemetery.

Sevastopol, the capital of Russian-annexed Crimea, has made Vladimir Putin an honorary "citizen."

The death toll is rising from suspected Russian air strikes in the rebel-held Syrian city of Idlib.

Tatar journalist Lilia Budzhurova says she was warned by Crimean prosecutors over "extremist" views for writing about the plight of Tatar children whose parents were arrested.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says NATO will increase its military presence on the alliance's eastern flank.

Russia's envoy to NATO has warned that the Black Sea will never become "NATO's lake."

Russia says it will spend more than $16 billion on arms.

WHAT I'M READING

The Criminal Front In The Hybrid War

In a piece published on zn.ua, Vadim Troyan, the first deputy head of Ukraines National Police, accuses Moscow of opening "a criminal front" in Ukraine by deploying gangsters to destabilize the country. Troyan's warning came after the Ukrainian parliament failed to pass a law making it easier to prosecute top organized-crime figures.

The Sanctions Debate

In his column in Slon.ru, foreign-affairs analyst Vladimir Frolov tries to separate the signals from the noise in the run-up to the EU's sanctions decision.

Der Spiegel is reporting that the German government has developed a plan behind the scenes to reduce sanctions on Russia step-by-step.

Russia's Media Wars

Writing in Global Voices, Kevin Rothrock looks at how a Russian newspaper is warning its readers not to watch television.

In a column this week, Moskovsky Komsomolets Editor in Chief Pavel Gusev unloads on the Kremlin's favorite television propagandist Dmitry Kisselyov.

Jessikka Aro Vs. The Trolls

The New York Times has picked up on the story of Jessikka Aro, the Finnish journalist who has been the target of a coordinated campaign of harassment and character assassination by Russian trolls.

Russia-Europe 2030

Fredrik Wesslau and Andrew Wilson of the European Council on Foreign Relations have a new report out, Russia 2030: A Story Of Great Power Dreams And Small Victorious Wars, that projects what Russia's relations with Europe will look like in 14 years.

Here's their opener: "Russia will colonize the Moon in 2030. Cosmonauts will build a lunar base with a solar power station and a science lab, using long-range research rovers to explore the Moons surface, and a satellite will orbit above, according to the Russian space agency.1 Back on Earth, its anyones guess what Russia will be up to in 2030. President Vladimir Putin, who turns 78 that year, may be long gone; or he may be starting his fourth consecutive term as president, having amended the constitution to do away with term limits. There will be five million fewer Russians than today. The economy will be larger, though not much. But what will Russias position be on the international stage?"

Read the rest here.

Inertia Vs. Inertia

Vedomosti sums up the conflict between Russia and the West in an editorial titled The Inertia Of Containment Vs. The Inertia Of Confrontation.

"Russia's foreign policy is a thing unto in itself. In principle, we're for peace, but we're also ready to criticize any peace proposal. And we promise an asymmetrical response to any action that seems hostile."

Perestroika In Reverse

In a piece in Intersection magazine, Perestroika Undone, journalist Vadim Shtepa unpacks Mikhail Gorbachev's support for Vladimir Putin's forceful annexation of Crimea.

"In his day, Gorbachev tried to create a contractual state and establish equal, agreement-based relations with other countries," Shtepa writes. "The current paradox is that by defending the stance of the Kremlin, the initiator of perestroika is himself in favor of the violation of international agreements. However, it is not only his own inner conflict, but a dilemma for all of Russian society."

Mobsters Online

Sergei Mikhailov, the reputed founder of the Solntsevo organized-crime group, has taken advantage of Russia's "right to be forgotten" law.

Customs Crusader

Reuters has a feature on Yulia Marushevska, the 26-year-old Ukrainian activist who has taken on the impossible task of reforming Odesa's notoriously corrupt customs service.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says he wants to normalize relations with Russia but doesnt understand what kind of a "first step" Moscow was expecting from Ankara.

Speaking to journalists on May 31, Erdogan said Russia had sacrificed its relations with Turkey due to what he described as a "pilot error."

The comments come after Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Ankara should take the first step to mend the damaged ties between the two countries, which soured after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane over the Turkish-Syrian border in November.

Ankara refuses to apologize for the incident, saying the aircraft had strayed into Turkish airspace, which Moscow denies.

Russia has imposed sanctions on Turkey and trade between the two countries plummeted.

Based on reporting by Reuters, Anadolu, and TASS
Turkey has warned Germany against the adoption of a parliamentary resolution recognizing the massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as "genocide."

The German lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, is set to vote this week on the resolution.

The adoption of the text would harm the diplomatic, economic, political, commercial, and military ties between the two countries, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters on May 31.

The World War I-era mass slaughter and deportation of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks is considered by many historians and several nations as genocide.

Turkey objects, saying that Armenians died in much smaller numbers and because of civil strife rather than a planned Ottoman government effort to annihilate the Christian minority.

The vote comes at a sensitive time for relations between Turkey and Germany. Bonn and the European Union need Ankara to honor an agreement to stem the past year's massive migration of refugees through Turkey to the EU.

Moreover, Germany has a large ethnic Turkish population of about 3 million, which has come out against the measure.

"Germany must be careful concerning its relations with Turkey," Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said.

"I do not think that the German parliament will destroy this relationship for the sake of two or three politicians" who put the resolution before the legislature.

Based on reporting by AP and AFP
The United States says two of its service members were injured over the weekend, one each in Iraq and Syria.

Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis said on May 31 that the two soldiers were not on the front lines, they were not engaged in active combat, but they were hit in both cases by indirect fire" -- a term that typically refers to rocket or artillery fire.

Davis added that the soldiers were carrying out advise-and-assist duties.

He said the incident in Iraq took place near the northern city of Irbil, while the injury in Syria was north of the Islamic State (IS) stronghold of Raqqa.

The United States has authorized some 4,000 troops in Iraq and 300 in Syria to help in the fight against the IS extremist group, which seized swathes of the two countries territories in 2014.

Based on reporting by Reuters and AFP
Ukrainian military aviator Nadia Savchenko, who spent two years in Russian custody before her release in a prisoner swap last week, has been sworn in as a lawmaker and used her first appearance in parliament to urge the return of "prisoners of the Kremlin."

The 35-year-old former battalion member has been greeted as a war hero and appears intent on keeping the country focused on the fight against Russia-backed separatists as she tries to parlay her popularity into political muscle.

"I am back, and I won't let you forget," she told fellow deputies in Ukraine's unicameral legislature on May 31, before adding references to EuroMaidan unrest that ousted a pro-Russian president two years ago and the ongoing conflict in a region of eastern Ukraine known as Donbas.

"I won't let you, who sit in these chairs in the Verkhovna Rada, forget those guys who died at the Maidan and who currently are dying in the Donbas."

Savchenko vowed to make it her priority to fight for the release of other Ukrainians held in Russia, whom Ukraine describes as political prisoners.

She then removed a poster with her image on it from the rostrum, where it had been hanging for months as Kyiv sought to secure her release. In its place, Savchenko hung a banner depicting several other people who remain in Russian custody.

"You absolutely have to pull out every single prisoner," Savchneko said, describing what she called "prisoners of the Kremlin." "No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten."

She added, "The people of Ukraine will not allow us to occupy these seats if we betray them."

Moscow says it is not a party to the two years of conflict that has followed its invasion and unrecognized annexation of Crimea, but Kyiv and NATO cite overwhelming evidence that Russia has provided troops, heavy weaponry, and other support to separatists in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.

Savchenko had left the Ukrainian Army and was serving in a volunteer battalion in eastern Ukraine when she says she was captured by Russia-backed fighters in June 2014 and smuggled across the border.

A Russian court in March sentenced her to 22 years in prison for her alleged role in the deaths of two Russian journalists in the conflict zone, a charge she rejects.

Her ordeal lasted 708 days -- stretches of which she spent on hunger strike -- and was marked by repeated acts of defiance against the Kremlin and Russian courts.

She returned last week to Ukraine after she was pardoned by Russian President Vladimir Putin in exchange for two Russians who were convicted in April on terrorism charges for fighting alongside separatists and sentenced to lengthy prison terms.

Savchenko's custody and trial have been condemned by Kyiv and Western governments critical of Moscow's actions in Ukraine.

The Kremlin has portrayed her release as a humanitarian gesture, but it came just weeks before the European Union decides whether to extend sanctions against Russia.

More than 9,300 people have died in the fighting in eastern Ukraine.

Political Player

Ukraine's president and other major political players currently suffer from abysmal popularity ratings that some observers attribute to chronic corruption and nepotism, ongoing economic woes due in part to the fighting in the east, and a lack of political courage.

Their dilemma has left a leadership vacuum that some people suggest Savchenko could fill.

Savchenko is a member of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's party, which in February left Ukraine's governing coalition and in whose ranks she sat on her first appearance as a legislator.

At one point, she scolded her fellow deputies, suggesting that there is a perception in Ukraine that "legislators are like lazy schoolchildren who neglect their work."

On May 27, she said she would be willing serve her country in any capacity, including as president "if you want me."

With reporting by RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, Reuters, AP, AFP, and dpa
19 Models of the Altyr fashion theater, dressed in Khakas national costumes, climb over a wooden fence during a photo session, as part of the rehearsal for the Tun-Pairam traditional holiday (The Holiday of the First Milk) celebration at a museum preserve outside the village of Kazanovka near Abakan in the Republic of Khakassia, Russia. (Reuters/Ilya Naymushin )
Henrico police are looking for a man who robbed a Walgreens store at gunpoint over the weekend.

According to police, the man pulled out a handgun and demanded money from a clerk about 1:30 a.m. Saturday at the store in the 4800 block of South Laburnum Avenue. The clerk complied, and the suspect left the store in the direction of Allenshaw Drive.

The suspect is described as black; 35 to 40 years old; between 6 feet and 6 feet, 2 inches tall; and weighing 250 to 300 pounds. He was wearing a white t-shirt, gray hat and black shorts.
Vandals did at least $20,000 worth of damage at a Spotsylvania County construction site over the weekend, police said.

Sheriff's spokesman Jeff Pearce said the incident took place at 6150 Plank Road, where a convenience store is under construction.

Pearce said someone got onto the site and got an excavator started. The machine was used to badly damage two trailers on the site and knock a large hole in the side of the newly constructed store. A tractor door was also damaged, Pearce said.

Pearce said police found a witness who saw three juveniles running from the area Saturday around 9 p.m. Police were contacted Monday morning after a construction foreman visited the site and saw the damage.
Barack Obama is the first sitting president to visit Hiroshima. He rose to the occasion.

Obama did not apologize for the atomic bombs that ended World War II. He spoke of humanitys universal aspirations instead. He cited the promise embedded in the Declaration of Independence and referred to shared ideals of peace. His statement echoed remarks made by Gen. Douglas MacArthur during the 1945 surrender ceremonies on the deck of the Missouri in Tokyo Bay:

Men since the beginning of time have sought peace.... Military alliances, balances of power, leagues of nations, all in turn failed, leaving the only path to be by way of the crucible of war. We have had our last chance. If we do not now devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door. The problem basically is theological and involves a spiritual recrudescence and improvement of human character that will synchronize with our almost matchless advances in science, art, literature and all material and cultural development of the past 2,000 years. It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.

On Friday, Obama said:

Why do we come to this place, to Hiroshima? We come to ponder the terrible forces unleashed in the not-so-distant past. We come to mourn the dead...their souls speak to us and ask us to look inward. To take stock of who we are and what we might become.

And:

The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of an atom requires a moral revolution as well. That is why we come to this place.
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A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
Optical Cable Corp. of Roanoke has earned the 2016 Chancellors Award for Leadership in Philanthropy for its support of Virginias Community Colleges. The company and President and CEO Neil Wilkin were nominated for the award by Virginia Western Community College. The award was given at luncheon ceremony at the Country Club of Virginia on April 19.

Hosted by the Virginia Foundation for Community College Education, the 11th annual event honors leading philanthropists from each of Virginias 23 community colleges as well as the statewide foundation. This years class of distinguished philanthropy leaders has contributed a combined total of more than $11 million to Virginias Community Colleges.

Optical Cable Corp. began investing in Virginia Western Community Colleges Community College Access Program in 2013 for students from Roanoke County. In 2014, it established the Optical Cable Corporation Endowed Scholarship to continue its support in perpetuity.

CCAP, serving the Colleges entire service district, encourages local high school students to successfully complete high school, apply to and graduate college with a degree or certificate, and be prepared to transfer to a four-year institution or directly enter the workforce. Administered by the Virginia Western Community College Educational Foundation, the needs-based program covers the cost of tuition for two years at Virginia Western for students who meet program guidelines. More than 1,300 students have benefited from CCAP funding since program inception in 2009.

Headquartered in Roanoke, Optical Cable Corp. is a pioneer in the design and production of fiber optic cables. Today, OCC is internationally recognized as a leader in engineering and manufacturing a complete line of top-tier cabling and connectivity solutions, including products and solutions suitable for the most demanding applications.

Wilkins support of Virginia Western has been clearly demonstrated in his energetic and dedicated commitment to the Virginia Western Community College Educational Foundation. He has been a member of the Foundations Board of Directors for seven years, serving on its Executive Committee as Treasurer since 2009. Mr. Wilkin has accepted the responsibilities of vice chairman of the board for 2016.

Submitted by Josh Meyer
Joan Falkenstein Brenner, 73, of Roanoke, Va., passed away on Monday, May 30, 2016, after courageously battling declining health in recent months.Joan was born in Roanoke on August 20, 1942, to the late Sidney and Reba Krinsky Falkenstein of blessed memory, and was a graduate of Jefferson High School. Joan was also preceded in death by her beloved husband of 50 years, Bruce Brenner z'l, whom she married on December 24, 1962.Surviving are her dear brother, David Falkenstein (Sandy) of Hampton Roads; three beloved sons, Jay Brenner (Danielle) of Virginia Beach, Neal Brenner (Karol) of Roanoke, and Scott Brenner (Stephanie Viviano) of Scottsdale, Ariz.; six cherished grandchildren, Arin, Brandon, Chadd, Sydney, Anya, and Cameron; and countless other dear family members and friends.Family came first for Joan, and she was the definition of "the woman behind the man," raising three sons while actively helping Bruce run the family business, Cycle Systems, Inc. A lifelong member of Beth Israel Synagogue and Temple Emanuel, she will be fondly remembered for her indefatigable commitment to the Roanoke Jewish community and the tenets of Judaism. Whether she was welcoming new members, preparing meals, or serving the Beth Israel Sisterhood, she was happy to lead and help whenever and however necessary. Her strong sense of civic responsibility wasn't limited to her own religious community. She volunteered for Planned Parenthood, the American Heart Association, served on the boards of Carilion Children's Hospital and the JDRF, and charitably supported Virginia Western, The Taubman Art Museum, and CHIPS of Roanoke, just to name a few.Joan was a multidimensional woman who stayed busy, curious, and sharp-minded with all of her hobbies and interests, indulging her talent as a self-taught gourmet chef, while enjoying her book club, investment club, walks on the Roanoke Greenway, her love of opera and world travel, including trips to Europe, Asia, India, Africa, and the Middle East. It speaks to her love of people and travel that she had rented a place in Paris to spend time with friends when she became ill earlier this year. With a smile, her friends and loved ones will remember her adventurous, generous life force.The funeral will be held at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, June 1, 2016, in the Beth Israel Synagogue, 920 Franklin Road, Roanoke, VA 24016. Interment services will follow at the kever in the Beth Israel Cemetery located at 2900 Orange Avenue NE in Roanoke. Rabbi Chana Leslie Glaser will officiate. Family members and pallbearers are asked to be in attendance at the Shul by 2:30 p.m. Mincha / Minyan will begin promptly at 7:30 p.m. at The Fairfax (Joan's residence) at 2123 Yellow Mountain Road, Roanoke, VA 24014. Second night's Mincha / Minyan will be observed at the residence of Neal and Karol Brenner. Friends may call from 6 p.m. until the Mincha / Minyan begins, promptly, at 7:30 p.m.In lieu of flowers, the family kindly requests that donations be made to the Roanoke Jewish Federation, P.O. Box 1074, Roanoke, VA 24005-1074, the Carilion Children's Patient Care Fund, or a charity of your choice. Online condolences may be expressed at www.johnmoakey.com.The Brenner Family is being served by the John M. Oakey & Son Funeral Home in Salem. "May the ALMIGHTY comfort the family amongst the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem."
ORGANISERS of the successful first Ted Hughes Poetry Festival have annouced that it will return to his former home town next month.

The Yorkshire legend is being celebrated in Mexborough a weekend of events in his name from June 24 to 26, including one set to feature an appearance by the legendary poets daughter.

News of the 2016 festival follows a successful inaugural event last year which attracted guests from across the country.

Dominic Somers, creative producer of the Ted Hughes Festival said: We are thrilled to have got funding from the Arts Council, Right Up Our Street and Dearne Valley Landscape Partnership to put on this festival to Mexborough for the second year.

We already have a stellar cast of artists taking part in events throughout the festival.

The Three Ians  McMillan, Clayton and Parks  will start proceedings on the Friday night with a mixture of poetry, story and humour.

A real coup for this year is the Saturday night, which will see a reading by acclaimed poet and artist Frieda Hughes  Frieda is of course, Ted Hughes daughter.

Activities will take place in and around Ted Hughes's old grammar school where he was inspired to write his first poems.

Hughes, whose early years were spent in South Yorkshire, including seven years in Mexborough, held the post of British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.

It was at Mexborough Grammar School that Hughes came under the spell of two charismatic teachers, Pauline Mayne and John Fisher, who introduced him to the poetry that would form his taste and shape his own work - Eliot, Lawrence, Hopkins, Donne, Shelley - and of course, Hughes beloved Shakespeare.

The festival will include a range of other performances and activities including award winning and acclaimed poets Helen Mort, Greg Leadbetter, Vidyan Ravithiran, Cathy Galvin who will give readings and Greg and Vidyan will participate with Ed Reiss and Steve Ely in a roundtable discussion, Politics and Ted Hughes.

Dominic added: There is so much going on throughout the festival, Id advise people to take a look at the website and see which events suit them.

There will also be poetry-related public engagement activities on Mexborough High street and the launch of an anthology of writing from the festival-sponsored Write on Mexborough! creative writing group.

Tickets are bookable now at www.tedhughesproject.org.
Venus Jewel has partnered up with Jewelers for Children (JFC) to raise awareness and funds for the charity during the JCK show in Las Vegas.

An Indian manufacturer and a globally renowned supplier of polished diamonds, Venus will launch an online challenge at the Show, to communicate its website capabilities to the U. S. market.

On behalf of every person who takes the Venus Jewel online challenge at booth # B53017 during the show, a donation will be made to support JFCs fundraising needs. The more retailers, jewellery manufacturers and industry members take the challenge the more money is raised for Jewelers for Children!

Commenting on the initiative, Rajesh Shah, Partner - Venus Jewel said, We are happy to support JFCs mission which is also something that we hold very close to our family values and corporate philosophy; to provide and support children, the real future of every country. Though we are a global organisation, we wanted to do something locally in the United States which will have a large impact for a very well worthy cause which we found in the JFC. Our family has focused on CSR activities in India and now with this great charity, we are thrilled to be working closely with a group that really makes a difference in the US and internationally.

We are honoured that Venus Jewel has chosen to partner with Jewelers for Children as they showcase their company and website capabilities to the U.S. retail market, said David Rocha, JFC executive director. Their focus on social responsibility and history of supporting causes is clearly tied in with our mission and their support will help us to reach even more children in the year ahead.



Aruna Gaitonde, Editor-in-Chief of Asian Bureau, Rough Polished




The United Nations Security Council has terminated an arms embargo against diamond rich Liberia, according to a press release from the United Nations. The UNSC encourages Liberias government to establish a necessary framework to combat the illicit trafficking of arms and ammunition.

Todays lifting by the Security Council of the remaining arms embargo on non-State actors further signals the significant progress made by Liberia and the sub-region in maintaining stability, says a statement issued by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moons spokesperson.

Liberia, located on the West African coast, is rich in minerals and precious metals, including diamonds. The countrys civil war, which took place between 1989 and 2003, raised serious allegations over the trade of conflict diamonds from neighboring Sierra Leone to finance the regimes war against rebel factions.

In 2001, the UN imposed sanctions on the Liberian diamond trade, though the ban was lifted in 2007, and the country was accepted as a member of the Kimberley Process.




Editors Pick

German sports sneaker and apparel maker Adidas AG announced Tuesday that it terminated its partnership with American rapper Kanye West, who now goes by the name Ye, with immediate effect, citing his recent offensive behaviour. Adidas expects the decision to result in a short-term negative impact of up to 250 million euros on its fiscal 2022 net income due to the high seasonality.

Automaker General Motors Co. on Tuesday reaffirmed its fiscal 2022 earnings guidance amid ongoing strong demand after reporting higher third-quarter earnings above market estimates. Revenues for the quarter climbed from last year, but missed analysts' view. In pre-market activity on the NYSE, GM shares were gaining around 5.2 percent to trade at $37.59.

German sports sneaker and apparel maker Adidas AG plans to end its partnership with Kanye West citing recent offensive behaviour from the American rapper, Bloomberg News reported citing people familiar with the matter. Following the news, Adidas shares were losing around 4 percent in the morning trading in Germany.
Japanese auto production declined on weak foreign demand in April, data published by the Japan Automobile Manufactures Association showed Tuesday.

Auto production decreased 9.7 percent from last year to 643,901 units in April after recovering a month ago. Exports slid 2.8 percent after two months of upturn.

Meanwhile, motorcycle production grew 12.6 percent to 40,521 unit in April, marking the third consecutive increase. Motorcycle exports advanced 14.8 percent.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Economic News

What parts of the world are seeing the best (and worst) economic performances lately? Click here to check out our Econ Scorecard and find out! See up-to-the-moment rankings for the best and worst performers in GDP, unemployment rate, inflation and much more.
Great Plains Energy Inc. (GXP), the parent company of KCP&L, announced Tuesday a definitive agreement to acquire Westar Energy, Inc. (WR) in a combined cash and stock deal with an enterprise value of approximately $12.2 billion. This includes total equity value of approximately $8.6 billion in total stock and cash consideration and the assumption of approximately $3.6 billion debt.

Under the transaction terms, Westar shareholders will receive $60 per share of total consideration for each share of Westar common stock, consisting of $51.00 in cash and $9.00 in Great Plains Energy common stock. This is subject to a 7.5 percent collar based upon the Great Plains Energy common stock price at the time of the closing of the transaction.

Great Plains Energy expects the acquisition will be neutral to earnings-per-share in the first full calendar year of operations and significantly accretive thereafter. The long-term earnings growth target of the combined company is expected to grow to six to eight percentbetter than either company on a standalone basis.

Upon closing of the deal, Westar will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Great Plains Energy.

Once the transaction is complete, Great Plains Energy will have more than 1.5 million customers in Kansas and Missouri, nearly 13,000 megawatts of generation capacity, almost 10,000 miles of transmission lines and over 51,000 miles of distribution lines.

Currently, Great Plains Energy and Westar jointly own and operate the Wolf Creek Nuclear Generating Station, as well as the La Cygne and Jeffrey power plants.

The companies anticipate closing in the spring of 2017. In the coming months, the companies will work together to develop a robust integration plan.

Upon completion of the transaction, Terry Bassham, chairman and chief executive officer of Great Plains Energy, will be chairman and chief executive officer of the combined company.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
E-Commerce China Dangdang Inc. (DANG), a -to-consumer e-commerce company in China, announced Tuesday that it has agreed to be acquired by parent Dangdang Holding Company Limited for cash consideration of $1.34 per common share or $6.70 per American depositary share.

The transaction values the Company at approximately $556 million on a fully diluted basis.

It was on May 28 that the company entered into a definitive Agreement and Plan of Merger with Dangdang Holding and its unit Dangdang Merger Company Limited.

Th price represents a premium of 2.9% over the Company's closing price of $6.51 per ADS on July 8, 2015, the last trading day prior to its July 9 announcement that it had received a "going-private" proposal.

Immediately following the consummation of the merger, Parent Dangdang Holding will be beneficially owned by Peggy Yu Yu, chairwoman of the board of directors of the Company, Guoqing Li, director and chief executive officer of the Company,, and certain other members of the management.

The Company's board of directors approved the Merger Agreement and the merger, and resolved to recommend that the Company's shareholders vote to authorize and approve the Merger Agreement and the merger.

The merger, which is currently expected to close during the second half of 2016, is subject to various closing conditions.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Gannett Co., Inc. (GCI), which has offered to acquire Tribune Publishing Co. (TPUB), on Tuesday urged Tribune stockholders to "WITHHOLD" votes in connection with the Tribune 2016 Annual Meeting of Stockholders to be held June 2.

Gannett encouraged Tribune stockholders to send a clear message to the Tribune Board to engage constructively with Gannett regarding its $15.00 per share all-cash premium offer to acquire Tribune.

Gannett said it will review whether to proceed with its acquisition offer taking into account the results of the "WITHHOLD" vote and the latest Tribune actions, including its response to Gannett's offer.

Gannett's revised offer represents a premium of 99% to the $7.52 closing price of Tribune's common stock on April 22, the last trading day before Gannett publicly announced its initial offer for Tribune. The $15.00 per share offer also represents a 76% premium to the $8.50 share price at which Tribune recently issued common stock to an entity controlled Michael Ferro.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Crude oil futures held near $50 a barrel Tuesday morning as OPEC prepared for a pivotal meeting in Vienna.

It will be the first meeting presided by the new Saudi oil minister.

A weaker U.S. dollar helped crude oil inch a bit higher after the Memorial Day holiday.

Supply interruptions in Nigeria and Libya also supported oil prices.

WTI light sweet crude oil was up 0.3 percent at $49.50 a barrel. Prices are up sharply in May, touching a 7-month peak early last week.

In addition to Thursday's OPEC meeting, traders are also looking ahead to a crucial U.S. jobs report on Friday.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Market Analysis
Early signals point to a lackluster session for Canadian stocks Tuesday morning amid flat commodities and disappointing GDP figures.

The loonie turned lower after Statistics Canada said the Canadian grew at a slower than expected annual pace of 2.4 percent in the first quarter.

Economists expected the report to show the economy grew 2.9 percent for the quarter.

The S&P/TSX Composite Index was down 18.56 points, or 0.13 percent, to 14,086.67 in the previous session. Still, its been a great month for stocks, with Canada's main index up sharply along with crude oil prices.

Crude oil futures held near $50 a barrel Tuesday morning as OPEC prepared for a pivotal meeting in Vienna.

In corporate news, Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS.TO) second quarter profit fell 12% from a year earlier due to a restructuring charge. The bank also had to set aside more cash for bad energy loans.

However, stripping out charges, Scotiabank said profit was C$1.48 a share, beating market estimates.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Market Analysis
Shares of Allergan plc (AGN) rose in early trades Tuesday after billionaire investor Carl Icahn said he recently acquired a "large position" in the Botox maker and was very supportive of CEO Brent Saunders.

Icahn did not disclose details of the stake he acquired in Allergan, but expressed confidence in Saunders' ability to enhance value for all Allergan shareholders.

Icahn was instrumental in bringing Saunders on board as the new CEO of Forest Laboratories a few years ago. Forest Labs was acquired by Actavis, which was subsequently acquired by Allergan for $70.5 billion in cash and stock in 2015, resulting in massive gains for Forest shareholders.

"While we at that time disposed of our position in Forest, we still have always maintained great respect for Brent. We have every confidence in Brent's ability to enhance value for all Allergan shareholders," Icahn said in a statement on his website.

In April, drug maker Pfizer Inc. (PFE) that its $160 billion merger deal with Allergan was terminated by mutual agreement of the two companies. The company's decision comes after new rules were announced by the U.S. Treasury to curb corporate tax inversions.

Allergan, which is run from New Jersey but has a legal domicile in Dublin, last year agreed to merge with Pfizer in a deal that would have given New York-based Pfizer a foreign address and a lower tax rate.

However, Icahn was against the Pfizer-Allergan deal and had urged the U.S. Congress to stop tax inversions. He noted that the planned exodus of U.S. companies out of the country was extremely dangerous as it would cause the loss of thousands of jobs, as well as hundreds of billions of dollars of future tax revenue and investment in the U.S.

AGN is trading at $238.85, up $2.91 or 1.23 percent on a volume of 1.87 million shares.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Aggression, hirelings continue to breach truce

ANA'A, May 30 (Saba) - The Saudi aggression and its hirelings continued to breach the UN-backed ceasefire in several provinces during the past 24 hours, a security official said Monday.



The army and popular committees repulsed an attempt of the Riyadh' hirelings to advance towards al-Saq area in Usailan district of Shabwa province, the official added.



He said the Riyadh's hirelings pounded different areas in Nehm district of Sana'a province with artillery shells and katyusha rockets, adding that they targeted Bani Bareq and Wadi Melh with medium weapons in the same district.



Meanwhile, the Saudi warplanes launched three raids on Hareb-Nehm area, two others on Mabda'a, one raid on al-Dhabua'a and another on al-Hawl in Nehm of Sana'a province, the official said.



The war jets also waged 11 sorties on Harf Sufyan in Amran province, one raid on Abbas in Hajjah province and another one on al-Jar area in Hajjah.



Moreover, the hostile fighter jets targeted a store of the Yemeni Economic Cooperation (YECO) in al-Marawe'a district of Hodeida province.



The Riyadh's hirelings in Taiz province bombed al-Amri Mount and Dhubab coastal city in Taiz province and targeted al-Jawi area in al-Waze'yah district with medium weapons, according to the military official.



He pointed out that the army and popular committees repulsed an attempt of mercenaries to advance towards Tha'abat and Jabal Habashi mount areas.



The Riyadh's hirelings in Jawf province continued to target al-Moton district with missile and artillery bombardment, the official said.



He added that a top leader of the hirelings in Jawf was killed in the military clashes in al-Gail district.



The Saudi war jets waged an air raid on Shadha border district in Sa'ada province.



The warplanes' overflights continued in the skies of several provinces, including the Capital, Taiz, Mareb, Jawf, Amran, Sana'a and Sa'ada .



HA/BA

Saba

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Kansas coach Bill Self is still looking for a big man to emerge

Hawk Zone
Dear Editor,

I want to say congratulations to the new Doctors on the front page of your newspaper yesterday. I was fortunate to have been received into the Samoa National Hospital in Motootua by one of the above mentioned new Doctors earlier this year, due to an unforeseen accident.

And yes, I was impressed with the professionalism shown to me and the family by the Doctor and staff.

I came away with the thoughts spinning in my mind asking why do people in Samoa complain about the service from the National Hospital?

I might be one of a few people to admit I was satisfied with the service provided to me at Motootua Hospital, while I was a patient for a few hours.

My only beef was, with the cashier window, who informed me that they dont have a printer to reprint my lost receipt.

I managed to catch a flight out of Samoa the same evening and so far have recovered completely from the accident. Sincere thanks to the staff at Samoa National Hospital Motootua and all the best wishes to the newly appointed Doctors.

Utumap L.
Dear Editor,

Published one day last week in Samoa Observer under the heading, Tui Atua reconcile with Lufilufi, I made an exuberant defection of the fact promoting a title which is so irrelevant to Lufilufi instead of Taala, being one of the six Orators herein as Selelimalelei, Feesago, Magele, Taala, Tomanogi, and of course Poloai plus Tainau and Tupai.

With all due respect to Samoa Observer as a media organisation for my oversight; and without malice to Lufilufi and Leafa title, kindly accept my very humble apology.

Since then, I had abated a chording foray from respective Lufilufi villagers pounding me to rescind; and of course I deservedly take it on the chin as humanely as many other humans who have made mistakes rather practicing the culture of denial and improvising the code of silence.

Now I can sleep well making me feel so so better owning up to my mistakes!!!

Respectively yours sincerely,

Tofaeono Misatauveve

Joseph Hollywood

Siumu




French Polynesia President, Tagaloa Edouard Fritch, is back in the country to attend Samoas 54th Independence Celebrations.

At the airport to welcome Tagaloa was the Minister of Justice and Courts Administration, Faaolesa Katopau Ainuu.

The French Polynesia President who was recently in Samoa for the official launch of the Sheraton Samoa Aggie Greys Hotel expressed his aspirations to work closely with Polynesian countries in the Pacific like Samoa by taking the lead to engage the islands in joint regional beneficial projects.

As the host country for the Polynesian Leaders Group meeting in July, I am prepared to table several regional projects that will benefit Polynesian countries such as Tahiti, Niue and Samoa, said Tagaloa.

Of particular interest are flight connections among the islands which have been screaming for attention.

It needs to be improved because it represents connecting Polynesian countries with large metropolitan centers that will increase tourism volumes and trading capacities.

Senior government officials from Paris will also be attending the event in July and that will be the right opportunity for Paris to listen, learn and understand the Polynesians wishes.

Minister Faaolesa welcomed the idea.

Air services are vital for Polynesian countries and this is an excellent opportunity to showcase what we have to offer.

Improving international air services is one of our governments ultimate goals to achieve better, more reliable and cheaper airfares for our people and to attract more tourists to visit our islands.

Any partnership is welcomed by government because it will provide the much-needed tourism resolve that our country needs.

Tagaloa along with Governor of American Samoa, Lolo Moliga and the Titular Head of Tokelau, Aliki Faipule Afega Gaualofa are the three VIP guests attending this years Independence Celebrations.
God has guided Samoa throughout its 54 years of political independence.

Last night the countrys leaders came together for a thanksgiving service to acknowledge that guidance and provision for Samoas 180,000 people, prior to the country celebrating its independence at Tuanaimato this morning.

The thanksgiving service was held at the Methodist Church in Matafele.

The Head of State, His Highness Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Efi and Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi were among a host of leaders at the event.

They were joined by VIP guests that included American Samoa Governor, Lolo Moliga, President of Tahiti, Tagaloa Edouard Fritch, government officials and members of the diplomatic corps.

The Chairman of the National Council of Churches, Rev. Kasiano Leaupepe led the service.

Other pastors from different church denominations also played a part in offering prayers.

In his message, Rev. Leaupepe said that Samoa has come a long way and reminded that God does discriminate between people. He urged the nation not to waver in their commitment to God, reminding that commitment to the church is showing the love of God.

Rev. Leaupepe also talked about the N.C.C. and their decision not to march this year.

He said since the venue has changed for the celebration it was best for the pastors not to march in Tuanaimato in case someone gets hurt there.

We will wait until we return the celebration to Mulinuu.

The Minister of Health, Tuitama Dr. Leao Tuitama thanked the guests for making time to attend the event. He also acknowledged the support of the church leaders and their prayers.

The official celebration kicks off at Tuanaimato this morning.
Minister of Finance, Sili Epa Tuiotis maiden budget of $894 million tabled in Parliament yesterday promises responsibility and fairness.

In the absence of Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi who was attending a meeting in Papua New Guinea yesterday, the new Minister of Finance laid down the law in terms of how the countrys finances will look in the next 12 months.

A budget has to do many things, Sili told Parliament.It has to ensure that the Government has the resources it needs year by year to provide the services and infrastructure our people need.

It has to ask everyone in the community to pay their fair share in contributing to the revenue that is needed, and it has to ensure that the benefits of government- provided services are likewise shared equitably.

But it also has to contribute to building a strong foundation for the future. This wont happen if the budget is not responsible. Government cannot tax its way to future prosperity, nor can it spend its way to prosperity with money it does not have or cannot afford.

According to the Minister of Finance, the budget can be summed up as responsible; fair and visionary.

This budget is responsible. It recognizes that we have work to do to consolidate our public finances, and keeping expenditure under control is a key feature, he said.

It is fair. The Government has maintained a strong focus on education and health, ensuring that we continue to provide the best possible access to quality essential services across our nation.

It is visionary because it plans for the future, The Government is determined to continue to build the enabling environment needed to support sustainable economic growth. That is why the theme of the next Strategy for the Development of Samoa will be Accelerating Sustainable Development and Creating Opportunities for All. This budget contributes through its commitment to sound and responsible economic and financial management.

Education is a key part of the way forward and the Minister has allocated $91.2million for the sector.

A sum of $71.7million from education will go towards the Ministrys normal operations inclusive of the third and final phase of the reclassification of the Teachers Salary.

Compared to 2015/2016 budget, theres been an increase of $12.2million where the sector was only given a $79.07million.

Next on the priority list is the Health sector with a slice of $86.8million representing 17.6% of total expenditure programs.

From that amount $70.7million grant is provided for the national health services hospital operations.

The allocated fund is an additional $7.5million compared to the previous budget.

According to the Minister of Finance, the increase from the budget is attributed to an estimated 47.3percent rise in development programs and infrastructure projects that will commence in 2016/2017.

Moving on to Infrastructure, $28.2million is set aside for the Ministry of Works, Transport and Infrastructure.

It includes $11.3million grant to the E.P.C. for VAGST payments and community service obligations.

From the $28.2milion an estimate of $13million grant will go towards the Samoa Water Authority to meet community service obligations and support key investment under the European Union budget support.

Another $18.3million is for the Lands and Transport Authority to support its operation.

According to the budget statement, $8.1million has been allocated to the telecommunications sector comprising $4.87million for the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology and $3.2million funding for the Office of the Regulator.

The Ministry of Agriculture on the other hand gets $13.3milion  a drop of $0.3million from last years budget.

As for the Trade, Commerce and Manufacturing, $6.8million will assist the Ministry of Commerce and its operation and only $9million for the Samoa Tourism Authority.

Another $450,000 is put aside to support the Small Business Enterprise Center and $200,000 for general support to the private sector.

A provision of $14.8million tala has been provided to cover unforeseen expenditures that may arise during the course of the next fiscal year.

In conclusion, the Minister said the budget continues the work of recent years and sets our course for the years ahead.

It recognises what the government needs to do now, and in the years ahead, he said.

But it also recognises what the government should not try to do. We need to continue to build strong partnership between government, the private sector, and the wider community as well as with our development partners whose support is essential and for which we are gratefulit is a budget which reaffirms the governments commitment to building for the future.

Deputy Leader of the Tautua Samoa, AeauPeniaminaLeavaiseeta commends the Minister for his budget.

Aeau said he trusts in the Ministers pros and cons highlighted in the budget.

Im confident with his budget that he can answer any questions that we have and would not be brushed aside, said the Veteran M.P.

Im looking at a positive prospective for this parliamentary term and its a positive start. But there are a lot of questions that needs to be answered and I can say that the Minister can give us a satisfying answer.

Parliament has been adjourned until 22nd June.
About $13 million in bitcoins will be auctioned in Sydney in June after Australian police confiscated the digital currency as proceeds of crime, an official said Tuesday.

Ernst & Young was running the process, which is only the second such bitcoin auction in the world after the U.S. Marshals Service sold 144,000 bitcoins over a two-year period that had been confiscated from Ross Ulbricht, who founded the online drug bazaar Silk Road, the accountancy firm's transaction partner Adam Nikitins said.

Bidders can register until June 7 for the 24,518 bitcoins on offer. The 48-hour sealed auction will take place from June 20.

Based on Tuesday's bitcoin price of $533.80, the cryptocurrency is valued at almost $13.1 million.

Nikitins expects strong interest in the auction since the bitcoin price has become less volatile after the U.S. auctions. Ernst & Young has received expressions of interest from the United States, Europe and Australia, he said.

"Over the last few months, the price of bitcoins has been steadily rising and the volatility has gone out of it," said Nikitins, adding that was expected to lead to greater interest.

Nikitins would not say who the bitcoins were confiscated from, but said registered bidders would be told.

The Victoria state government has confirmed that is had seized about 24,500 bitcoins in late 2013 from a Melbourne drug dealer.

Richard Pollard, 32, was sentenced in the Melbourne County Court in October to 11 years in prison after pleading guilty to drug trafficking on the Silk Road website.

Ulbricht, 32, was sentenced in the U.S. District Court in May last year to life in prison after he was convicted of charges accusing him of operating the website for nearly three years from 2011 until his 2013 arrest.

Like the U.S. auction, the Australian bitcoins will be mostly sold in lots of 2,000. One lot will contain 2,518.

Bitcoin is a digital currency that allows people to buy goods and services and exchange money without involving banks, credit card issuers or other third parties. The coins are created by users who "mine" them by lending computing power to verify other users' transactions, receiving bitcoins in exchange.

Bitcoins also can be bought and sold on exchanges with U.S. dollars and other currencies. Their value has fluctuated over time. At its height in late 2013, a single bitcoin was valued above $1,100.

-AP
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Hereford, AZ -- (SBWIRE) -- 05/31/2016 -- The American Southwest has a lot to offer  the Painted Desert, the Petrified Forest, and  of course  the Grand Canyon. While there are too many wonders to list here, one that truly stands out  not just in this country, but around the world as well  is when the heavy summer rains usher in the "Arizona Monsoon Madness". Here the majesty of nature holds nothing back as a "second spring" flourishes in Arizona's mountains and deserts with lush green vegetation. This summer, the lovely Casa de San Pedro teams up with Naturalist Journeys to offer an unforgettable experience for both bird and nature lovers alike.



With booking options for July, August, and September, visitors are invited to come to Arizona to see up to 14 species of hummingbirds, hear grassland sparrows singing on territory, and spot breeding birds of Mexican affinity just outside their door. While enjoying a comfortable stay at the delightful Casa de San Pedro Bed & Breakfast, both seasoned naturalists as well as those who are simply looking for some adventure in the great outdoors can view varied and plentiful birds, butterflies, and dragonflies with experienced local guides who offer their own expertise and sense of adventure.



The area surrounding Casa de San Pedro offers cool, shaded canyons cloaked in oaks while mixed conifers bid guests to enjoy mid-day hikes as early mornings and evenings are generally set aside for exploring desert and grassland terrain. Additional adventures transpire in the lush canyons of the Huachuca Mountains in search of Mexican Spotted Owl, Red-faced and other warblers, butterflies, dragonflies, and more. In the surrounding Sky Island foothills, there is promise of hummingbirds galore at both public and private feeding stations.



In addition to the amazing tours and wonders nature holds in store, the five-day package offered by Casa de San Pedro and Naturalist Journeys includes accommodations at the Bed & Breakfast which include two special dinners, a bottle of Arizona wine, tour planning for guests' free days, and  of course  guided birding. The dates are flexible and discounts are available! For more information or to book now, contact Casa de San Pedro at 888-257-2050 or visit naturalistjourneys.com.



About Casa de San Pedro

Casa de San Pedro was built in 1996 and designed as a premiere lodging destination for birders. Casa de San Pedro is a perfect getaway for relaxing, hiking, and bird-watching. The inn features a central courtyard with fountain and flowers surrounded by flying birds and butterflies. The inn is perfect as a retreat locale for management planning teams, professional groups, clubs, organizations, and reunions. They provide opportunities to read, complete a diary, plan hikes, meet other guests, and gather tips on local hikes.



www.bedandbirds.com

(888) 257-2050
Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 05/31/2016 -- Essential oils are raw materials obtained from botanic sources. They are used widely in the fragrance and flavor industries. Essential oils and oleoresins include various products that are primarily used as fragrances and flavors. Essential oils, in particular, find use as food supplements and medicines to endorse good health. Besides these, essential oils are also used as feedstock in the chemicals industry.



Global Essential Oils and Oleoresins Market: Key Segments



The global market for essential oils and oleoresins is broadly classified on the basis of application, product type, and nations. In terms of product type, the market for essential oils is segmented into peppermint, lavender, sandalwood, bergamot, tea tree, rosemary, ylang-ylang, and chamomile. Among all the aforementioned segments, the lavender segment is likely to hold the maximum share in the market during the forecast period.



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On the basis of type of oleoresins, the market for essential oils is segmented into vanilla, turmeric, herbs, cinnamon, chilies, pepper, ginger, clove, and garlic. Of these, chilies are expected to dominate the market over the forecast period. In terms of application, the market is segmented into beverages, savory, confectionary, and nutraceuticals. Among these, the beverage segment dominates the market at present and is projected to contribute the highest revenue in the forthcoming years.



Nations exhibiting most lucrative prospects for the global essential oils and oleoresins market include India, ASEAN, Australia, New Zealand, and Greater China, and rest of Asia Pacific. Among these nations India has emerged as the largest market for essential oils and oleoresins, followed by China as more affluent people live in India compared to other nations.



Global Essential Oils and Oleoresins Market: Region-wise Outlook



The market for essential oils and oleoresins in Asia Pacific is poised to grow at a robust pace in the coming years as consumers in the region increasingly prefer natural ingredients such as chilies and pepper. Among all emerging nations in Asia Pacific, India accounts for the largest share in the market, trailed by China. Consumers in emerging countries have become more conscious about their health. This is expected to positively influence the market's growth trajectory in Asia Pacific. Besides this, the market in New Zealand is also expected to witness consistent growth in the coming years due to the increasing number of health conscious consumers in the country.



Global Essential Oils and Oleoresins Market: Key Trends and Opportunities



The global market for essential oils and oleoresins is poised to surge exponentially in the forthcoming years. Major drivers propelling the growth of essential oils and oleoresins market are the increasing health consciousness among consumers, the rising consumer preferences for natural ingredients in fragrance, beauty products, medicines, and food. However, the rising prices of products with high quality are expected to hamper the growth of the market to an extent in the near future.



Global Essential Oils and Oleoresins Market: Vendor Landscape



Some of the most prominent players operating in the market include Natures S.A, Alchem International Ltd, Indena S.P.A, Kancor Ingredients Ltd., Frutarom Industries Inc, Chr. Hansen A/S, Symrise A.G, and Biomax Life Sciences Limited, among others. Enterprises operating in the global market for essential oils and oleoresins are looking forward to increase their investment in product innovation in order to expand their operations to newer markets. In addition to this, these companies are also adopting various pricing strategies to gain competitive edge in the market.



The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.



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Market size

Current trends/opportunities/challenges

Competitive landscape

Technological breakthroughs

Value chain and stakeholder analysis



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Latin America (Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Chile, and others)

Western Europe (Germany, U.K., France, Spain, Italy, Nordic countries, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg)

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Middle East and Africa (GCC, Southern Africa, North Africa)



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A dystopian future, a society with humans that are redesigned beyond their biology, is an idea being proposed by transhumanism. People have been challenging the limitations of the human condition, but with the improvements and developments of modern technology and science, what seems like an absolute limit is able to overcome.

According to its proponents, the advances in robotics, genetics, artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, nanothechnology and neuropsychology are giving more chances of radical breakthroughs that will allow the humans to redesign the imperfect human product that has been passed on by evolution, Washington Post reported.

However, a dystopian future is also being thought of, particularly its impact, in well-known fictional portrayal like Marvel's superhero T.V. series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as well as the acclaimed science fiction series Orphan Black, with "transhumanist" being used as another term for mad scientist. The idea of humans taking changing the evolution is strongly related to those who appear to be the antagonist.

The libertarian element that is so notable among transhumanists makes them think that there is a responsibility that must be exercised by individuals who make choices on how to change children or themselves. Based on popular culture perception, the transhumanists promises are being made by imperfect human beings to imperfect human beings. Because of this, the consequences of their decisions will potentially have a wider reach compared to what they expect. This means that the significant powers that the transhumanists promises can be possibly used in ways that is going to sustain them more terribly, according to Washington Post.

In a deeper sense, the bad ending is the similar future that transhumanists desire. If only the humans are equally defective as what transhumanists make out, the rational future is definitely the future to be wished for, with the hope of seeing the humans replaced by something much better, as roboticist Hans Moravec expected alien to humanity.

Dystopian future and the fears revealed by the pop culture meets in such a way that would make everyone think.
Mark Zuckerberg, founder and chief executive officer of Facebook, will connect live with three astronauts onboard the International Space Station (ISS) on June 1 at 12:55 p.m. EDT. The event, which will see a live Earth-to-space call will reportedly be broadcast in real time on NASA's Facebook page.

Zuckerberg will be speaking to three of the astronauts who are a part of the current six member ISS crew on Expedition 47, namely Jeffrey (Jeff) Williams, Timothy (Tim) Kopra from NASA and Tim Peake from the European Space Agency. The questions addressed to the astronauts will be chosen from a list on NASA's Facebook page. You can ask a question, apart from watching the call, at http://www.facebook.com/nasa. The live video call session will go on for a duration of 20 minutes.

NASA's social media channels are popular with millions of people, and quite a bit of the interesting posts seen on them are courtesy of the crew members on ISS. NASA's main Twitter account, has more than 16 million followers. Recently, the space agency's Snapchat page was taken over by Tim Kopra to show what it feels like to live on the station. Apart from these, the organization also uses NASA TV to live-stream space events and interviews for viewing by earthlings.

In addition, to all the social media activity, there has been a lot going on aboard the ISS in the past few days. On Saturday May 28, the BEAM expandable space habitat attached to the station was finally inflated and pressurized successfully, following a failed first attempt. The expansion process was broadcast live by NASA. The ISS is the planet's leading space laboratory and provides a platform for technology development and carrying out space research, to take mankind a step closer to successful futuristic space missions and explorations beyond the low orbit area of Earth.
California Governor Jerry Brown has signed an emergency legislation allowing a man with HIV to receive part of his husband's liver who is also HIV-positive before the surgery becomes too dangerous.

On Friday, May 27, Governor Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill1408, a new legislation that protects ensures the protection of surgeons who transplant organs from HIV-positive donors to HIV-positive patients from being punished by the state's medical board.

According to a report by Medical Daily, President Barack Obama's HOPE Act technically turned the federal ban on this procedure around in 2013, but there has been a delay in the uptake. The National Institute of Health allegedly needed time to "properly iron out the act's guidelines," so until the present time in California, doctors were considered criminals and even go through jail time if they ignored HIV transplantation and donation, Tech Times reported.

The ban was actually because HIV/AIDS was once considered a deadly disease doctors knew so little about. The virus had also been transmitted in in "a number of patients with solid-organ transplants," Dr. Peter Stock, of the University of California, San Francisco, told NPR. Other doctors were also scared that the immunosuppressive drugs given to transplant patients would cause more harm to the patients' immune systems already compromised by the disease.

Just recently, Stock came across a wall when he was preparing a patient who was HIV-positive to have a partial liver transplant. The donor also tested positive for HIV but is healthy enough to give a part of his liver. This happened when the procedure was still not legalized in the state of California.

In a letter Stock wrote to the legislators, he expressed how concerned he is for the patients who are in the situation because their health is failing. He also said that he is concerned that by the time the Legislature acts on legalizing the procedure, the patients would not be able to receive a transplant due to deterioration or unavailability of a donor.

The Senate Bill 1408 can "save a life this month. "We now have the green light and we can start doing transplants using HIV-positive donors. Next week, we will start screening the list. We have a few people we know about who are anxious to move forward," said Stock.

Surgeons at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore went through a similar ordeal in March when they approved to conduct the first HIV-positive organ transplant in the United States, Dr. Dorry Segev, an associate professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins, told NPR that the patients, either HIV-positive or negative will benefit from the ban being reversed when it comes to organ transplant waiting list.

"Imagine now we take hundreds or maybe thousands of people off of the list, then everybody behind them moves forward," he said. "So people with HIV are benefited directly and everybody else on the list is benefitted indirectly. And we're all very excited to get started."

Among the 120,892 people in dire need of an organ to save their lives, 77,830 are active waiting list candidates (at the time of writing), according to The Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN). And someone new is added to that list every 10 minutes with HIV-positive people bearing a greater burden of kidney and liver failure.
China is gearing up to send its lunar probe, called Chang'e 5, to the Moon where it will collect samples and subsequently reach back the Earth in the second half of 2017. The upcoming lunar mission will reportedly see explorations of the Moon's north and south poles.

The Chang'e 5 lunar probe will the first of its kind by China to land on the surface of Earth's natural satellite. According to the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND), the probe will mark the third phase of China's lunar exploration mission. The first phase of China's mission to Moon started with the launch of the Chang'e 1 satellite into the orbit of the moon in 2007. Consequently, a second phase followed which saw a probe on the surface of the Moon in 2013.

The lunar probe by China is going to be a significant one because the shadowed craters of the Moon supposedly contain water ice caused by comet bombardment, and the water not only gives the satellite a habitable angle, but it can also be refined into oxygen and hydrogen. The lunar surface, could therefore, be turned to a pit stop as a refueling point for spacecraft traveling to outer space, such as for the Mars mission. However, at this point it is not known if the Chang'e 5 is going to return with samples of lunar ice.

Incidentally, in 2003 China became the third country in the world to launch a human to space, after Russia and the US as per reports. China is a supporter of space exploration, and plans were revealed in Beijing recently to launch a Mars rover sometime in 2020. Apart from these developments, the country also launched the next generation of carrier rockets, namely Long March 5 and 7, along with new space labs and satellites in 2016.
Do you know how your mobile phone can save you from the danger of an earthquake?

Scientists UC Berkeley's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences have worked together in creating a mobile application that crowdsources information related to earthquake. This application has a role to play to warn other about expected movements and shakes.

The new app called MyShake requires minimal power and can even run in the background. This was intended by the developers so the app can record any kind of sharing anytime of the day.

Richard Allen, the leader of the team who developed the app, already presented the app along with ShakeAlert, an early warning system for the West Coast of the United States. The presentation coincided with the annual meeting of the Japan Geoscience Union that was held also with the American Geophysical Union in Chiba, Japan.

It was initially released in February, and since then it recorded at least 170,000 individual downloads from different parts of the world. It was also recorded that around 11,000 phone have been providing data to the system.

During the past months, the network, through this mobile app, already recorded shakes in Mexico, Argentina, Nepal, Chile, Morocco, Taiwan, New Zealand, Japan, and some areas in North America. Interestingly, it also recorded the induced earthquakes in Oklahoma. The movements recorded range from magnitude 2.5 to 7.8.

The developers at UC Berkeley are hoping that more people would download and use the mobile app to provide more comprehensive pooling of information. Bugs also had to be worked out, the developers added. UC Berkeley-based seismologists have plans to "use the data to warn people miles from ground zero that sharing is rumbling their way," according to a post in the project's web page.

For those who prefer other languages, the app will soon be available in Spanish and Chinese to reach more people around the globe.

More details about the mobile app complete with Japanese subtitles can be accessed in this link.
A guide to future living has been envisioned by NASA as shown in a retrofuturist artwork featuring the unusual heights of Don Davis and Rick Guidice. Both were contracted by the space agency in 1975 to demonstrate the possible space colonies.

The guide to future living designs originated from the idea of a team at the NASA Ames Research Center led by Princeton professor Gerard O'Neill. They were given grants by the space agency to conduct a 10-week study about the off-world structures. O'Neill, along with researchers, architects, scientists and engineers examined if his concepts were feasible, which eventually drew up three ideas to introduce to NASA - the Toroidal Colony, the Cylindrical Colony and the Bernal Sphere.

Each colony used centrifugal force to produce artificial gravity, shown in the circular designs and enormous solar arrays to power the rotation. Inside the verdant landscapes is a pleasant living in Modernist homes. The Bauhaus structures, on the other hand, appeared among forests and lakes; somewhere else, terracotta patios and whitewashed villas brought Ionian appeal to the cold vacuum of space.

The Cylindrical Colony had the largest concept, with the potential to accommodate a million people at a time. They were all like the Earth, but turned inside out. According to reports, O'Neil assumed that with the proper technological developments, construction will begin in 1990. But mankind's progress of the space programs must have disappointed O'Neill, who passed away in 1992, according to M2Now

After 40 years, the designs of O'Neill continue to interest and inspire several derivatives like the Cooper Station, a satellite featured in the film "Interstellar" which is the concised version of the Cylinder Colony that was eventually named "O'Neill Cylinder".

O'Neill's concept of the guide to future living through the illustration of his colonies may take centuries more before it can ever be constructed in space. Right now, the images of what could have been will linger on everyone's mind, including the thought of the possibility of things that may come.
As countries around the world fear the security of flights leaving their airport, more and more officials are turning to Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport in Israel to understand what the world's most secure airport does differently.

According to CNN, the airport is considered to be one of the safest in the world. It has layers of security, however, only a number is seen by the millions of passengers who pass through every year.

In reports, it was determined that there has never been a flight that left the airport that has ever been hijacked. There has also not been a terrorist attack at the airport since 1972, when members of the Japanese Red Army killed 16 people and wounded dozens in a shooting rampage.

Ksbw.com also reported that the security starts in the Airport Security Operations Center which is located near the airport. The small space is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It monitors every flight within the Israeli airspace which transit flights and nearby aircraft. Every flight, passenger, and each member of the flight crew are checked even before arriving in Israeli airspace. There has never been a moment without pressure. If ever there is an aircraft that went off-course, or a flight without a proper security clearance is immediately flagged.

The manager of the operations center for Israel's Ministry of Transportation, Dvir Rubinshtein, said that they flag and checks at least 10 planes a day.

Ben Guiron is Israel's only major international airport. If ever the airport closes, this would effectively cut off all of Israel from the air. "There is, every day, a situation where we have such concerns [about a flight]," said Rubinshtein, "and we check that and verify that everything is security cleared."

Next month, Ben Gurion airport is set to host visitors from 40 different countries to discuss airport security, officials say. The interest in Israeli airport security has grown after the attacks in Brussels, the crash of MetroJet Flight 9268, and now EgyptAir Flight 804.

The airport is a small airport which can handle 20% of the passengers of London's Heathrow International Airport and 15% of Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, which just signed a cooperation agreement with Ben Guiron.

Some of the security measures employed at the airport are not scalable to larger hubs, but "some fundamental principles and some best practices can be deployed in other parts of the world," said aviation security expert Shalom Dolev. "It's not a copy and paste because it's not a situation where one size fits all."

Critics have accused both Israel and the United States of racial profiling as part of their aviation security procedures. Dolev said that their kind of security is one they call, risk-based security. Palestinians and Arabs passing through Ben Gurion say they are more likely to be stopped, searched, and questioned. . Last year, Israel's High Court of Justice refused to ban racial profiling in a case brought by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. The court did leave the door open for the group to file a case in the future.

Security expert Dolev says the Israeli tactics are risk-based security and don't amount to "profiling."
A recent discovery has revealed why Antarctica is not affected as much by global warming as its North Pole cousin, the Arctic, is. The reason reportedly comes down to the deep and cold North Atlantic Ocean currents, which subdue the effects of global warming and slow the pace of sea levels rise in Antarctica.

The team of scientists, who conducted the study, suggested that the icy insulation of Antarctica may actually last for the next few centuries before any effect of global warming and the consequent melting of ice sheets starts to show. The news comes as a refreshing delight, especially in the wake of constant threats of rising sea levels, for those inhabiting low lying regions. However, according to reports by the UN Climate science panel, there will be a one meter sea level rise by the end of this century.

If East Antarctica starts to melt in the same pace and manner as the Greenland ice sheet, there will be a global catastrophe that will have a devastating effect on mankind as a whole, and not only those settled along coastlines. It should however be noted, as per reports, that West Antarctica's ice sheets are warming faster compared to the rest of the continent, but it is still nowhere near threatening levels. Incidentally, the white continent is covered by an approximate four kilometers sheath of ice.

The enormous ice sheets of Antarctica as well as the ocean and wind currents that envelop the continent act as allies that create a buffer zone around it, which in tandem with the reflective sea ice protects the landmass from warming. Furthermore, deep ocean currents of the North Atlantic act like a conveyor belt that carry icy water from the Arctic which further holds Antarctica together.

"With rising carbon dioxide you would expect more warming at both poles, but we only see it at one of the poles, so something else must be going on. The Southern Ocean is unique because its bringing water up from several thousand meters," said Kyle Armour, lead researcher and study author from Seattle's University of Washington. "It is really deep, old water that's coming up to the surface, all around the continent. You have a lot of water coming to the surface, and that water hasn't seen the atmosphere for hundreds of years".

For now, according to the researchers, it will take quite a while before heat trapping greenhouse gases can adversely affect the Southern Ocean. Furthermore, the continuous up-welling waters of the North Atlantic take such a long duration to circulate that they apparently last rose up to meet the air above in the pre-industrial era, more than two hundred years ago.
There are more than one thousand universities in the country and it is no small feat to be one among the Top 30. The ICFAI Foundation for Hi...
The company signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Hills Education Group (HEG) to venture into education and training, local reports said.

The joint venture combines Tanjung Offshores business expertise and HEGs vast education experience to form a dynamic and strategic partnership.

This joint venture marks a very exciting time for Tanjung Offshore, group ceo Rahmandin Md Shamsudin was quoted as saying in a press release.

We are making good, on our promise to diversify and this education initiative will lead Tanjung Offshore to new, profitable areas to expand our portfolio that will see better returns to shareholders and employees.

Tanjung Offshore has previously said it plans to diversify while remaining focused on oil and gas, The group is also gearing up to enter the property construction, development and maintenance arena whilst exploring opportunities in education, aerospace and transport.

Shipbuilding and oil and gas services companies diversifying into non-core sectors have generally had a poor track record in generating good returns from the diversification.
Palfinger signed an agreement on Monday to acquire 100% of Herkules Harding Holding from Norwegian private equity fund Herkules. The acquisition price was not revealed, and the deal is expected to close in the next few weeks after expected regulatory approvals.

In our product portfolio we were missing the lifeboats and were looking for improvements in our service network. In our business, the need for professional services and trainings will be a key success factor in the future, commented Karl Oberreiter, md of Palfinger.

Styrk Bekkenes, ceo of Harding said: Our combined range of products and services will be unique in todays marine industry. We will stand stronger together and see huge advantages for both the equipment and service side of our business.

The acquisition of Harding will almost double Palfingers marine business to over EUR300m a year and 20% of its overall revenues. Harding will 800 employees to Palfinger Marine bringing its total staff to 1,800.

The deal is also seen as reducing Palfinger Marines dependence on the oil price.

Experiencing a certain dependency from the oil price drop, we are actively working on our strategy and taking other segment more into our focus. We profit from a strong offshore wind market, where we are one of the market leaders in nacelle, platform and substation cranes, said Oberreiter.
ASIA

Afghanistan

Expected Council Action

In June, the Council will hold its quarterly debate on Afghanistan, during which it will consider the Secretary-Generals 90-day report on the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). Nicholas Haysom, the outgoing Secretary-Generals Special Representative in Afghanistan and head of UNAMA, is expected to brief.

UNAMAs mandate expires on 17 March 2017.

Key Recent Developments

The insurgency continues to take a heavy toll on the population and Afghan security forces. The Talibans increased activity and military gains in the countryas well as activity by Al-Qaida and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in various areas in the easthave been met with resistance by Afghan security forces with the assistance of NATO. In April, the Taliban announced its annual spring offensive, vowing large-scale attacks against government strongholds to oust the government from power. Reacting to one such attack targeting civilians, Council members issued a press statement on 19 April, condemning a terrorist attack in Kabul by the Taliban that claimed at least 28 lives and injured more than 300 people.

The 9,800-strong US military presence assisting Afghan security forces is currently scheduled to be reduced to 5,500 by the end of the year. However, the commander of NATO and US forces in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, is expected to make a recommendation to US President Barack Obama in the near future as to whether current troop levels should be maintained beyond 2016. The US is the main troop contributor to the NATO mission in Afghanistan, which numbers roughly 13,000 troops.

Reconciliation efforts have made little progress. The Taliban has so far been reluctant to engage in talks with the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG), which consists of Afghan, Chinese, Pakistani and US officials.

On 21 May, a US drone strike in Baluchistan province, Pakistan, killed Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, the leader of the Taliban. US President Barack Obama said in a statement that Mansour rejected efforts by the Afghan government to seriously engage in peace talks and that the Taliban should enter the reconciliation talks. Pakistan, which apparently was informed of the attack only after the fact, issued a statement on 22 May denouncing the attack as a violation of the countrys sovereignty.

While reconciliation efforts with the Taliban have stalled, the government reached an agreement on 18 May with insurgent leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, head of the Hezb-i-Islami militant group. The group was at the height of its power before the Taliban took over the country in 1997 but has been less active in recent years. The proposed agreement would reportedly grant Hekmatyar and his group amnesty for past offences (the group is accused of numerous human rights abuses) and the release of specified Hezb-i-Islami prisoners. In addition, the government would pledge to make efforts to remove Hekmatyar from international sanctions list. Hekmatyar has been listed on the 1267/1989 Al-Qaida sanctions list since 20 February 2003.

The Council held its last quarterly debate on Afghanistan on 15 March. Briefing the Council, Haysom, who will soon take on the role of the Secretary-Generals Special Envoy for Sudan and South Sudan, said bluntly that it would be an achievement for the Afghan national unity government not to collapse in 2016. He said the main challenges facing the Afghan leadership include an intensifying insurgency, poor economic growth and high unemployment, an increasingly divided political environment and the need to make progress towards sustainable peace. He emphasised the vital importance of securing continued international support for Afghanistan, including at the upcoming July NATO summit in Warsaw and the ministerial conference on Afghanistan in Brussels in October. At the Warsaw summit, NATO is expected to reaffirm its commitment to Afghanistan; donors are expected to make financial commitments to the country at the Brussels conference. As Afghanistan relies on external funding for 69 percent of its expenditures, Haysom said that a drop in international support would have a devastating effect on the countrys economy. Finally, Haysom noted that in 2015 more than 11,000 Afghan civilians, a quarter of whom were children, were killed or injured in the continuing fighting with insurgents.

During the debate, the Council adopted resolution 2274, renewing the mandate of UNAMA until 17 March 2017. UNAMAs tasks continue to be, among other things, to focus on providing good offices, promote peace and reconciliation, monitor and promote human rights and the protection of civilians and promote good governance.

The resolution expresses support for Afghanistan in its fight against terrorism and violent extremism and welcomes the governments cooperation with partners in the region to fight extremists, criminal groups and other armed groups. (These new elements mirror parts of the 2015 General Assembly resolution on Afghanistan.) On the initiative of New Zealand, the resolution also strongly condemns the flow of small arms, light weapons and improvised explosive device (IED) components to the Taliban and encourages states to share information, develop partnerships and create national strategies and capacities to counter IEDs.

Sanctions-Related Developments

The 1988 Taliban Sanctions Committee met on 20 April, focusing on counter-narcotics efforts. Afghanistans deputy minister of the interior, Baz Mohammed Ahmadi, addressed the Committee, as did the Committees Monitoring Team, which discussed the efforts of the Combined Maritime Force in the Arabian Sea (consisting of the forces of 26 NATO states and Thailand) to track narcotic flows from Afghanistan.

Human Rights-Related Developments

The special rapporteur on summary executions, Christof Heyns, and the special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Juan Mendez, released a joint statement on 10 May, condemning the execution on 8 May of six alleged members of illegal armed groups in Afghanistan for serious crimes and crimes against civilians. The executions were the first to take place in Afghanistan since February 2015, breaking the unofficial moratorium implemented by the government. They were carried out despite the absence of fair-trial guarantees and the continued practice of torture to obtain confessions, the statement said. The statement also expressed a concern shared with UNAMA that executions will not contribute to peace in Afghanistan, and strongly urged the government of Afghanistan to return to a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty.

Key Issues

The key issue for the Council is how to address the deteriorating security situation, its negative impact on the countrys stability and the toll the conflict is taking on the civilian population.

A related issue is whether it is possible to generate momentum for reconciliation efforts, given the ongoing heavy fighting between the insurgency and government forces.

The links between drug production and trafficking and the insurgency is an ongoing issue.

Options

The Council could adopt a resolution or presidential statement that:

deplores the high number of civilian casualties and demands that all sides avoid killing and injuring civilians, recalling that targeting civilians is a war crime;

encourages efforts by the international community to support reconciliation in Afghanistan; and

emphasises the importance of development assistance in promoting Afghanistans stability.

The Council may also decide to visit Afghanistan to show its support for anti-insurgency, reconciliation and anti-corruption efforts, and to learn how it can further assist efforts on the ground.

Council Dynamics

There is widespread concern among Council members about the extreme fragility of the security environment and the toll that the conflict continues to take on civilians. These issues will likely be a major focus of several members interventions during the June UNAMA debate.

Several Council members also recognise that the upcoming Warsaw NATO summit and Brussels conference are pivotal in continuing international support for Afghanistan. During the last debate, China, New Zealand and the UK emphasised the need for the government to tackle corruption and to ensure that aid assists the country in developing a viable and self-sustaining government.

There is also broad emphasis in the Council on the importance of the reconciliation process in bringing stability to Afghanistan. Members realise the difficulty of promoting reconciliation at the present time, in a context in which the Taliban has stepped up its violence and demonstrated little interest in negotiations. At the same time, they see no alternative for achieving peace in the country.

Several Council members, in particular France and Russia, and more recently, also Egypt, have regularly raised concerns about the connection between drug production and trafficking and the insurgency.

During the 15 March briefing, Japan suggested a Council visiting mission to Afghanistan. (Japan is a key donor to Afghanistan, most recently focusing on the enhancement of Afghanistans security forces through capacity-building programs and providing the salaries of the Afghan National Police.) Council members have held preliminary talks for making such a visit, which will face logistical and security-related difficulties, in July.

Spain is the penholder on Afghanistan, while New Zealand is the chair of the 1988 Sanctions Committee.

UN DOCUMENTS ON AFGHANISTAN

This was a resolution renewing the mandate of UNAMA for one year. This was the report of the Secretary-General on the situation in Afghanistan and its implications for international peace and security. This was the quarterly debate on Afghanistan. Council members condemned a terrorist attack in Kabul by the Taliban that claimed at least 28 lives and injured more than 300 people.
AFRICA

Democratic Republic of the Congo

Expected Council Action

In June, the Security Council is expected to renew the 1533 Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) sanctions regime and the mandate of the Group of Experts assisting the DRC Sanctions Committee, both of which expire at the end of June.

The annual report of the Group will be presented to the Council by the Chair of the Committee, Ambassador Amr Abdellatif Aboulatta (Egypt).

The mandate of the UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) expires on 31 March 2017.

Key Recent Developments

On the political front, the presidential elections scheduled for November continue to be a deeply divisive issue in the DRC, given the absence of an agreed electoral calendar or a budget for the elections. The DRCs electoral commission warned in January that it would take at least 13 months to conduct a census to update the voter register ahead of the vote, pushing any presidential election into 2017. Many fear that President Joseph Kabila intends to stay in power after the second of his constitutionally-mandated two terms expires at the end of 2016, and that the impractically dense electoral calendar and consequent delays are part of a strategy dubbed by rivals as slippage. While Kabila has not commented publicly on his political future, the governments official line is that Kabila will abide by the constitution. In any event, as preparations for elections are at a standstill, it seems less likely that presidential elections can or will be held on time.

Tensions are also high regarding the ability of opposition parties to participate in political activities leading up to the elections. Special Representative of the Secretary-General and head of MONUSCO Maman Sambo Sidikou and others have warned that the political polarisation has heightened tensions and contributed to an atmosphere of increased harassment and human rights violations, mostly against opposition members, civil society representatives and journalists.

On 4 May, DRC Justice Minister Alexis Mwamba announced a probe into the conduct of presidential candidate Moise Katumbi, accusing him of recruiting US mercenaries as part of his security detail. The former governor of Katanga province and a wealthy businessman, Katumbi resigned in September 2015 and left Kabilas party after accusing him of attempting to delay the presidential elections.

Katumbi appeared before the Lubumbashi court a total of three times between 9 and 14 May accompanied by supporters, both outside and within the court room. DRC police dispersed those outside the courtroom with tear gas. Katumbi denied the accusations made against him. (Apparently, Katumbi wrote a letter to MONUSCO requesting protection the day after announcing his candidacy, but MONUSCO leadership decided it could not get involved with a candidate in this way.)

More tensions arose when the DRC Constitutional Court decided on 11 May that the constitution permits the president to remain in office until the installation of the newly-elected president. The decision could allow Kabila to retain his position beyond the end of 2016. Opposition leaders view the decision as unconstitutional and continue to maintain that Kabila lacks authority to remain in power beyond his current term.

On 17 May, reports in the media suggested that leaders from the G7 opposition coalition (a group of seven opposition groups in the DRC) visited the US in an attempt to persuade the Obama Administration and members of Congress to impose sanctions on Kabila to force him to abide by the constitution and hold the presidential elections as scheduled. Deputy spokesperson of the US department of state, Mark Toner, said on 22 May that the US is reviewing the possibility of imposing sanctions.

While attention is focused on the political situation, rebel groups continue to spread violence in eastern DRC. The operations of the Forces Armees de la Republique Democratique du Congo (FARDC) against the Force Democratiques de Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR) continue, though questions regarding their effectiveness remain. According to the annual report of the Group of Experts assisting the DRC Sanctions Committee, the operation has disrupted FDLR channels of financing and more than 1,000 FDLR fighters have surrendered. However, the FARDCs use of local militias to engage the FDLR means that the civilians are still affected by armed groups, even in areas vacated by the FDLR. During a routine police check in Goma, the FDLR chief of staff, Leopard Mujyambare, was arrested. He has been transferred to Kinshasa, where authorities will decide whether to try him or extradite him to Rwanda.

The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamist Ugandan group, continues to wreak havoc in North Kivu. On 4 May, suspected ADF members killed 17 civilians in North Kivus Beni territory. Nine other civilians were killed in an ADF attack on three villages on 6 May, according to local authorities.

Sanctions-Related Developments

The 1533 DRC Sanctions Committee was briefed by Sidikou and Sebastian Fasanello, chief of MONUSCOs Joint Mission Analysis Centre, on 1 March on MONUSCOs arms embargo-monitoring mandate. Paul Heslop, chief of the UN Mine Action Service Programme Planning and Management Section, briefed on issues of weapons management in the DRC.

On 13 May, the Group of Experts briefed the Committee on their annual report. Though the report is yet to be made public, media reports suggest that Rwanda continues to provide training, financing and logistical support for Burundian rebels seeking to overthrow Burundis President Pierre Nkurunziza, who won a controversial third term in June 2015. Rwanda has repeatedly denied such accusations. The DRC and Burundi have sent letters to the Council in the past calling for action against Rwanda for assisting Burundian rebels operating in the DRC.

Media reports also suggest that the Group states that FARDC Brigadier General Muhindo Akili Mundos, commander of the FARDC offensive against the ADF between August 2014 and June 2015, financed and equipped ADF elements with weapons, ammunition and FARDC uniforms. Mundos denies the accusations. Apparently the Group added that other FARDC officers serving in the area have also been cooperating with ADF elements. The Groups report also discusses violations of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) sanctions regimes. The DPRK has supplied the FARDC and Congolese police with pistols, which are also available on the black market in Kinshasa, and sent 30 instructors to provide training for the presidential guard and special forces. The DRC denies these reports. While much attention was given to these issues in the media, the report apparently focuses more on the illegal trade in natural resources, and particularly gold. The funding of rebel groups through illicit trade has been documented for several years by the Group and continues to be a focus for their reports. In the current report, attention is also given to the role of criminal networks in illicit trade, which endangers the security and livelihood of civilians in the DRC where the minerals are extracted. Specifically, it seems that illicit gold from the DRC has found its way to markets in Burundi, Uganda and Dubai. Another element apparently raised in the report concerns what is known about the ADF. The report suggests that while the ADF is known as an anti-Ugandan Islamist group, over time its structure has changed and it has incorporated local DRC groups in its ranks, changing its structure, organisation and goals. Thus, in reality, there is much unknown regarding the affiliation of local groups with the ADF and the connection between various rebel groups in Beni with the ADF.

Key Issues

The key issue for the Council in June is renewing the sanctions regime and the mandate of the Group of Experts.

A serious concern is the political tension surrounding the electoral calendar and Kabilas possible attempt to remain in power.

The continued violence of rebel groups still suffered by the population in North Kivu remains a serious threat to peace and security.

Wider regional stability in the Great Lakes region and its relation to the DRC are also matters of concern.

Options

The Council will adopt a resolution renewing the sanctions regime and the mandate of the Group. In addition, the resolution could:

condemn human rights abuses related to the pre-election developments and urge the government to ensure that free, fair and credible elections are held as soon as possible;

urge the Secretary-General to appoint a mediator to help facilitate a DRC national dialogue and support the work of AU Special Envoy Edem Kodjo to facilitate such dialogue;

call on all political actors to abide by the constitution and its term limits;

call on opposition parties to enter immediately into a national dialogue in order to reach consensus on an electoral calendar and hold elections on time or as soon as possible thereafter; and

call on neighbouring states to cease assistance to rebel groups operating in the region.

The Council (or a representative group of Council members) may also consider visiting the country during the electoral period to take stock of the situation and deliver a strong political message to interlocutors.

Council Dynamics

While Council members all share concerns over the political tensions surrounding the issue of elections and related human rights abuses, they are split in their attitudes towards the approach to be taken by the Council on the issue. As with divisions regarding Nkurunzizas third term in Burundi, some view this issue mainly as an internal constitutional matter that should be dealt with through local institutions and regulations such as the Constitutional Court. Other states have a more negative view of actions that seemed to have been taken to override the constitutional order, which may erode the relatively calm security situation in western DRC and result in violence between the government and its opposition. These countries note that the unfolding political situation in the DRC is part of a wider regional trend of leaders unwilling to relinquish power.

France is the penholder on the DRC and Ambassador Amr Abdellatif Aboulatta (Egypt) chairs the 1533 DRC Sanctions Committee

UN DOCUMENTS ON THE DRC

This was a resolution renewing the mandate of MONUSCO for a year. This was a resolution renewing the DRC sanctions regime and the mandate of the Group of Experts. The Council stressed the importance of neutralising armed groups in the DRC and concern that joint operations between the Congolese army and the Force Intervention Brigade in cooperation with the whole of MONUSCO had yet to resume. This was the report of the Secretary-General on the implementation of the Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework for the DRC. This was the report of the Secretary-General on MONUSO. This was a briefing on the Secretary-Generals MONUSCO report.

Other Relevant Facts

Special Representative of the Secretary-General

Maman Sambo Sidikou (Niger)

MONUSCO Force Commander

Lieutenant General Derick Mbuyiselo Mgwebi (South Africa)

MONUSCO Size, Composition and Cost of Mission

Strength as of 31 March 2016: 16,936 troops (including 456 military observers and 1,245 police), 816 international civilian personnel, 2,654 local civilian staff and 399 UN volunteers.

Approved budget (1 July 2015-30 June 2016): $1.33 billion

Mission duration: July 2010 to present
SECURITY COUNCIL AND WIDER UN STRUCTURE

International Criminal Tribunals

Expected Council Action

In June, the Council will hold its semi-annual debate on the ad hoc international criminal tribunals. The presidents and prosecutors of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the Residual Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals are expected to brief. No outcome is anticipated.

The Informal Working Group on International Tribunals may meet with the presidents and prosecutors prior to the debate.

Key Recent Developments

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)

The ICTR officially closed on 31 December 2015 after delivering its final judgment on appeal on 14 December 2015. During its two decades, the ICTR sentenced 61 people to terms of up to life imprisonment, acquitted 14 and referred ten others to national jurisdictions. The Council issued a press statement on 31 December, acknowledging the ICTRs substantial contribution and calling upon all states to cooperate with the Residual Mechanism now responsible for the arrest and prosecution of the eight remaining ICTR-indicted fugitives.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)

The Council adopted a resolution on 22 December 2015, extending the terms of 17 ICTY judges and the prosecutor for varying lengths of time not beyond 31 December 2016, with Russia abstaining. The resolution reiterated continued concern over repeated delays in the conclusion of the ICTYs work, which the Council had requested in a 2010 resolution be completed by 31 December 2014. In this regard, the resolution called for the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) to carry out an evaluation of the methods and work of the ICTY in implementing its completion strategy. The report, covering 2010-2015, offered a mixed assessment. It found that the ICTY has adequately developed the structures, mechanisms and operational activities to implement the completion strategy and has been somewhat effective in planning and carrying out its case work. The report said the Court had introduced notable measures to expedite judicial activitiesbut evidence to demonstrate it is working in the most efficient manner from 2010-2015 is weak, and there is inadequate accountability for the conduct of judges. In addition, voluntary separation, not downsizing, posed a major challenge to the timely completion of judicial activities. The report made four recommendations to the ICTY: monitor progress toward internal benchmarks; ensure that planning and monitoring mechanisms are tracking efficiency results; develop a code of conduct and disciplinary mechanism for judges; and develop a centralised information system on staff separations and an improved human resources analysis.

At press time, the ICTY had concluded proceedings against 151 of the 161 persons indicted, with two trial cases, involving two individuals, and two appeal cases, involving eight individuals, ongoing. Judgement in one of the appeal cases is expected by the end of June, and completion of the remaining cases is expected in November 2017. On 24 March, the ICTY convicted Radovan Karadzic, the former President of Republika Srpska and Supreme Commander of its armed forces, of genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war. He was sentenced to 40 years imprisonment. Karadzic is currently appealing the judgement. On 31 March, the ICTY acquitted Vojislav Seselj, President of the Serbian Radical Party and a former member of the Assembly of the Republic of Serbia, of all charges. The Office of the Prosecutor has appealed the decision. In both cases, appeal proceedings fall under the jurisdiction of the Residual Mechanism.

The Residual Mechanism

The Residual Mechanism, established in 2010, is mandated by the Council to carry out certain essential functions of the ICTY and ICTR after completion of their respective mandates, including tracking and prosecuting remaining fugitives and conducting appeals proceedings. The Council emphasised, in its 22 December 2015 resolution, that the Mechanism was established to be a small, temporary and efficient structure. The resolution also noted the conclusion of the Councils initial review of the progress of the Mechanism and requested the Mechanism to take into account certain views and recommendations to further enhance its efficiency and effective and transparent management, including more focused completion projections, disciplined adherence to those projections and further reduction of costs.

On 25 February, Council members were briefed under any other business on the Secretary-Generals nomination of ICTY prosecutor Serge Brammertz (Belgium) as prosecutor of the Residual Mechanism after some countries expressed opposition. On 29 February, the Council adopted a resolution appointing Brammertz until 30 June 2018. Angola, Egypt, Senegal and Russia abstained. In their explanation of vote, Angola, Egypt and Senegal expressed their view that the replacement of prosecutor Hassan Jallow (The Gambia) with Brammertz resulted in a lack of equitable geographical distribution among the Mechanisms leadership. Russia abstained because, since Brammertz will also remain the ICTY prosecutor, it was concerned about the reproduction and continuation in the Mechanism of the significant flaws that were characteristic of the ICTY. Effective 1 March, Judge Theodor Meron (US) was re-appointed by the Secretary-General as president of the Mechanism until 30 June 2018.

The presidents and prosecutors of the ICTY, ICTR and Residual Mechanism last briefed the Council on 9 December 2015.

Key Issues

The main issue is the continuing review by the Informal Working Group on International Tribunals of the completion strategy of the ICTY as well as following the work of the Residual Mechanism.

Options

The Council will likely hold the debate without taking further action.

Council Dynamics

Delays in the ICTYs completion of its activities have been a source of some tension in the Council. According to the relevant Council resolutions, the ICTY was expected to complete its caseload in 2010 or, failing that, by the end of 2014. Currently, the ICTY expects completion in late 2017. The most recent resolution, adopted in December 2015, extended ICTY judges and the prosecutors terms to no later than 31 December 2016. As it did in previous years, Russia abstained, commenting that the situation regarding the tribunals exit strategy had not improved and that costly trial delays continued. Russia is also critical of the ICTYs jurisprudence, arguing that it has not done justice on behalf of Serbian victims of the Yugoslav conflict. As no requests for extending judges terms are expected in June, these differences should not have practical effect until the end of the year when further extension requests will be made.

Council members, including Russia, have so far generally assessed the Residual Mechanism positively with the caveat that it must continue to fulfil its mandate expeditiously and cost-effectively. While Angola, Egypt and Senegal abstained from the resolution appointing Brammertz as prosecutor, this was related mainly to the resulting decrease in African representation at key UN posts, and not to the work of the Residual Mechanism itself. Similarly, Russias abstention was motivated by its dissatisfaction with the ICTY and not with the Mechanism directly.

During the debate, Council members will likely focus on the ICTYs completion strategy, including the OIOSs evaluation report and the handover of activities to the Residual Mechanism. The eight remaining ICTR-indicted fugitives and the relocation of persons released or acquitted by the ICTR may also be discussed.

Uruguay is the penholder and chair of the Informal Working Group on International Tribunals.

UN Documents on International Criminal Tribunals

This resolution appointed Serge Brammertz as the prosecutor of the Mechanism with effect from 1 March until 30 June 2018. The Council extended 17 ICTY judges terms and the ICTY prosecutors term for up to a year, with Russia abstaining. The Council adopted resolution 2269 appointing Serge Brammertz as the prosecutor of the Mechanism with effect from 1 March until 30 June 2018. This was the semi-annual debate on the ICTY and ICTR. This was a press statement that marked the ICTRs closure. This was the Residual Mechanisms assessment report. This was the ICTYs assessment report. This was the OIOS evaluation report on the ICTY.
AFRICA

Libya

Expected Council Action

In June, the Council is expected to renew the mandate of the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) which expires on 15 June. UNSMIL head Martin Kobler will brief on recent political developments and the Secretary-Generals latest report.

The Council also expects a briefing by the chair of the 1970 Libya Sanctions Committee, Ambassador Ramlan Ibrahim (Malaysia).

The mandate of the Sanctions Committees Panel of Experts expires on 31 July 2017.

Key Recent Developments

Despite the arrival of seven of the nine members of the Presidency Council of the Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli on 30 March and the relatively calm security situation in the capital, the Presidency Council has failed to secure the endorsement of the GNA by the Tobruk-based House of Representatives. According to the Libyan Political Agreement, the House has to conduct a formal vote on the composition of the proposed GNA and amend the Constitutional Declaration. (UNSMIL continues its efforts to bring on board boycotting members of the Presidency Council Ali Al-Qatrani and Omar Al-Aswad.)

House members have been repeatedly prevented by its president, Aguila Saleh, from holding a vote on a list of GNA candidates, submitted on 15 February by the Presidency Council. A majority of House members declared on 21 April their intention to convene in a different location to endorse the GNA while reiterating reservations about article 8 of the Agreement regarding the transfer of military power. To date, the vote has not taken place, nor has the House convened outside Tobruk. On 13 May, the US imposed sanctions on Saleh for repeatedly blocking votes by the House needed to support Libyas political transition.

Although the Presidency Council has taken control of several ministries, the Tripoli-based National Salvation Government continues to reject peacefully transferring authority. Members of the General National Congress voted to amend the Constitutional Declaration and reconstituted themselves as the State Councila consultative institution provided for by the Agreementbut questions remain regarding the legality of this move.

The security situation continues to be critical, particularly in the east. In Benghazi, General Khalifa Haftar launched a new military offensive with the stated objective of evicting the Shura Council and its allies from the city, taking over some neighbourhoods. UNSMIL recorded a high number of civilian casualties in Benghazi as a result of attacks by the different parties and their failure to allow safe and voluntary evacuation of civilians. The situation in Tripoli is largely calm, despite episodes of violence among rival militias. The Presidency Council is currently protected in Tripoli by Libyan army and police units under the command of the Temporary Security Committee and by armed groups that are nominally subordinate to the Ministry of Interior.

The presence of terrorist groups continues to be a threat to Libya and the region. Despite losses sustained in Sabratha and Derna, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) still controls a 250-kilometre stretch of the coastal area around Sirte in central Libya. A 3 March report by the Monitoring Team of the 1267/1989/2253 ISIL (Daesh)/Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee highlighted the substantial risk that ISIL could attempt to raise funds by looting the cultural heritage of Libya and said awareness of this risk should be raised.

According to the 16 May Secretary-Generals report, there has been a steady in-country presence since 30 March of UNSMIL staff focused primarily on supporting the Presidency Council and its Temporary Security Committee. However, UNSMIL has not been able to re-establish its Tripoli office and permanently redeploy staff on the ground. The deployment of a sizeable armed UN security teama guard unitis a precondition for the permanent return to Tripoli of the mission.

The International Organization for Migration recorded 631 deaths on the Mediterranean routes to Europe in April alone. According to OCHA, the number of internally displaced persons across Libya has reached 417,000, in addition to 100,000 refugees and 135,000 migrants. The Humanitarian Response Plan for Libya continues to be severely underfunded.

Sanctions-Related Developments

On 31 March, the Council adopted resolution 2278, extending until 31 July 2017 the mandate of the Panel of Experts assisting the 1970 Libya Sanctions Committee and the measures addressing the illicit exports of crude oil from Libya. The resolution contained language affirming the Councils readiness to consider changes to the sanctions regime (namely the assets freeze and the arms embargo) at the request of the GNA when appropriate.

At the request of Libyas ambassador to the UN, Ibrahim Dabbashi, the 1970 Libya Sanctions Committee on 27 April approved the designation of an Indian-flagged tanker carrying crude oil illegally exported from eastern Libya in defiance of the measures under resolution 2278 of 31 March. On 12 May this entry was deleted from the sanctions list following the return of the crude oil to Libya.

After a ministerial meeting aimed at garnering support for Libyas Presidency Council held in Vienna on 16 May, the participant governments and international organisations (a group of the main stakeholders, including the five permanent Council members) issued a joint communique supporting the Presidency Councils intention to submit arms embargo exemption requests to the Committee to combat ISIL in Libya. On 23 May, the Council of the EU extended the mandate of EUNAVFOR MED Operation Sophia to build the capacity of the Libyan coastguard and Navy and to support the implementation of the arms embargo on the high seas.

Key Issues

The overarching issues are how to ensure the broad acceptance of the Agreement, including its endorsement by the House; how to bring on board those unwilling to sign it; and how to change the behaviour of spoilers actively undermining the political process or to isolate them.

A key issue is ensuring that military actors commit to implementing the ceasefire and other security arrangements provided for in the Agreement. Stopping violations of international humanitarian law by the parties is a related issue.

The growing threat in Libya of terrorist groups with regional reach is an urgent issue.

Options

Options for Council members on Libya include:

adopting a resolution extending UNSMILs mandate for six months as recommended by the Secretary-General, with the view to renewing the mandate once a GNA is in place, emphasising the role that UNSMIL will continue to play in broadening support for the Agreement;

visiting Libya or the region or both to hold discussions with the parties, including spoilers, and regional stakeholders to generate momentum for the endorsement of the GNA, and to discuss with Libyan stakeholders the Councils support for Libya and the sanctions in place; and

considering imposing sanctions on spoilers, including member states identified as violating the sanctions regime.

Council and Wider Dynamics

Council members generally support UNSMILs mediation efforts and have repeatedly stated that there can be no military solution to the crisis in Libya. There is also a feeling of urgency among Council members given the growing threat of ISIL in Libya. Some Council members emphasise the importance of a formal endorsement of the GNA by the House as per the political agreement. However, other Council members are already interacting bilaterally with the Presidency Council of the GNA as the legitimate government of Libya. This dynamic has been reflected recently in how to refer to the GNA and its Presidency Council in the negotiations on resolutions 2273 and 2278, of 15 and 31 March respectively, and in a 1 April press statement.

In May, EU Council members started negotiating a draft resolution that would authorise Operation Sophia to interdict ships on the high seas off the coast of Libya to ensure strict implementation of the arms embargo. In the past it has been difficult to negotiate resolutions authorising the interception of vessels on the high seas or in the territorial waters of a third country, whether in the context of fighting human trafficking, the implementation of sanctions or counter-piracy measures.

On a separate note, even though it is expected that Operation Sophia will eventually operate in the territorial waters of Libya, this is contingent upon an invitation by the government.

The UK is the penholder on Libya.

UN DOCUMENTS ON LIBYA

The Council renewed the sanctions regime for a year. This was a resolution renewing UNSMIL until 15 June 2016. This was the most recent report on Libya. This was a letter from Libyan Ambassador Ibrahim O. Dabbashi calling for the Council to explicitly allow the reinvestment of assets frozen under sanctions in order to protect their value. This press statement deplored the maritime tragedy that resulted in up to 500 deaths. This press statement encouraged the Presidency Council to immediately begin its work in Tripoli to broaden the basis of its support. This was the final report of the Panel of Experts on Libya. This letter transmitted the recommendations of the Monitoring Team on measures that could be taken to strengthen monitoring of global implementation of resolutions 2199 and 2178.
AFRICA

Mali

Expected Council Action

In June, the Council is expected to renew the mandate of the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA). The Council also expects to receive a briefing from the Special Representative and head of MINUSMA, Mahamat Saleh Annadif, followed by consultations.

MINUSMAs mandate expires on 30 June.

Key Recent Developments

Despite some progress in the implementation of the Agreement for Peace and Reconciliation in Mali, key challenges remain one year after its signing. The legal framework for the decentralisation process continues to develop. Following the establishment of two new regions in JanuaryTaoudenni and Menakathe National Assembly adopted a law on 31 March modifying the territorial municipalities code. Along with other decisions, this process is expected to provide for the implementation of the transitional local and regional administrations in the north (which will be composed of representatives of the government and of the coalitions of armed groups). On 5 May, the constitutional court upheld the 31 March law, which had been challenged by opposition parties and it was promulgated on 10 May. However, the implementation of this legal framework, its acceptance by the opposition and the provision of basic services in the north remain challenging. The coalitions of armed groups had until then expressed the need to see advances on the decentralisation process by the government before moving ahead on the security provisions of the agreementsuch as cantonment, the deployment of joint patrols and the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of armed combatants (DDR)which were considered prerequisites by the government.

Briefing the Council on 5 April, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Herve Ladsous said that despite the creation of new committees on integration and DDR and advances in the establishment of pre-cantonment sites, progress regarding the security forces remains too slow. Following advances on the decentralisation process, at the 18 May meeting of the Commission Technique de Securitea follow-up mechanism to the agreement chaired by MINUSMA and focused on security-related issuesarmed groups committed themselves to engage in confidence-building measures such as the deployment of joint patrols.

Efforts to advance on national reconciliation continue to drag. A peace forum, which was expected to convene representatives of armed groups and the government in Kidal, ended up hosting only representatives of the Coordination des Mouvements de lAzawad coalition of armed groups. The work of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, which was first established in January 2014, has until now mostly focused on discussions over its commissioners, budgetary issues and internal structure instead of the substance of its work. A national reconciliation conference provided for in the peace agreement is one of the outstanding issues in its implementation.

Terrorism in Mali continues to be a threat to the stability of the country and the region. The mission continues to be a target: more than 60 MINUSMA peacekeepers have now died as a result of malicious acts against the mission since its establishment in 2013. In his 5 April briefing, Ladsous emphasised how each day that passes without the peace agreement being implemented is a day gained for extremist and terrorist groups, which are betting on the failure of the peace process in Mali. On 18 May, five Chadian peacekeepers were killed and three were seriously injured in an attack by unidentified assailants in the Kidal region. That day, in a previously scheduled meeting, MINUSMAs force commander, Major General Michael Lollesgaard, briefed Council members on the importance of improving intelligence and situational awareness so as to ensure informed decision-making in a context with asymmetric threats. He particularly highlighted the added value of the All-Source-Information-Fusion-Unit established within MINUSMA, giving the mission an unprecedented capacity to gather and process actionable information on threats to civilians and UN personnel. Kidnappings have also been a serious security concern. In a recent development, three ICRC staff members who had been kidnapped on 16 April by the terrorist group Ansar Eddine were released on 22 April.

Insecurity is also fed by existing tensions, including intercommunal conflicts that continue to increase, especially in the areas of Gao and Mopti. MINUSMA has also been the target of popular discontent. On 18 April demonstrators clashed with MINUSMA forces at the Kidal airport. The violence resulted in the deaths of two demonstrators. An internal investigation concluded that there was no evidence to ascertain whether the deaths were as a result of MINUSMAs actions. A second investigation is expected to take place.

Since March, the Department for Peacekeeping Operations has been leading a strategic review of MINUSMA. The review is expected to provide guidance on such issues as prioritisation of the missions good offices mandate, increasing the troop ceiling and whether to change the posture of the mission and its force layout. In a meeting with Council members during their March visit to Bamako, Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop elaborated on the need for MINUSMA to prepare its exit strategy. Diop proposed establishing benchmarks to assess performance and provide for an exit for the mission once commonly agreed objectives have been attained. During a 16 May luncheon of Council members with the Secretary-General, some discussion took place about the early conclusions of the strategic review, including the need to increase the missions military personnel, the importance of enabling the extension of state authority in the north and implementing measures to bridge the current capacity gaps within the mission.

Key Issues

An overarching issue is the slow implementation of the agreement and the lack of progress in such areas as confidence-building measures, reconciliation and return of basic services to the north. Ensuring that cantonment and DDR take place within a broader context of security sector reform and accountability for human rights violations is an important issue.

Addressing the grievances and frustrations of different communities that are not seeing the impact of the peace dividends in their daily lives, including youth at risk of being recruited by violent groups, is a related issue.

The limited mobility of MINUSMA and its insufficient capacities and resources to fulfil its mandate in the current context are also key issues.

The marked increase in terrorist attacks and their reach, the deliberate targeting of MINUSMA and the safety concerns of troop- and police-contributing countries are further key issues for the Council to address.

Options

In the resolution renewing MINUSMAs mandate the Council could:

prioritise the tasks that can be achieved during the mandate cycle;

increase the troop ceiling;

adapt the forces layout to address the increasing reach of terrorist groups and widespread banditry in places like Mopti in central Mali;

call on troop- and police-contributing countries and, more widely, member states to supply key capacities that the mission is lacking, including armoured personnel carriers;

call on the parties to act in good faith and with the spirit of compromise in the discussions regarding the implementation of the agreement and threaten to impose sanctions on spoilers;

reiterate the Councils support of MINUSMAs good offices mandate to encourage and support the full implementation of the peace agreement; and

request the Monitoring Team of the 1267/1989/2253 Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Daesh)/Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee to report on ways to curb the magnitude of the terrorist threat in Mali, including from non-listed groups such as the Macina Liberation Front.

Council and Wider Dynamics

Council members remain united in support of accelerating the implementation of the agreement. As a result of their visiting mission in March, Council members might be amenable to the recommendations of the MINUSMA strategic review regarding the need to match and adapt MINUSMAs mandate to the needs currently identified on the ground. It remains unclear, however, how these recommendations might be perceived, given some Council members concern at rising peacekeeping costs and in light of the governments call for a mission exit strategy. Despite calls by Malian stakeholders for a more robust mandate for the mission, Council members seem to be of the opinion that the mandate is already exceptionally robust and that the mission cannot engage in counter-terrorism activities.

Council members continue to be worried about attacks targeting MINUSMA in northern Mali. MINUSMAs exceptionally high number of fatalities and casualties has led to an increasing divide between the troop contributors willing to deploy their forces in the most dangerous territory and other, more risk-averse contributors.

France is the penholder on Mali.

UN DOCUMENTS ON MALI

This was a resolution renewing MINUSMA. This was a briefing on the latest MINUSMA report. This press statement condemned the 18 May terrorist attack on a MINUSMA convoy that killed five Chadian peacekeepers and injured three others.
THEMATIC ISSUES

Protection of Civilians

Expected Council Action

In June, the Council will hold a ministerial-level open debate on the protection of civilians in the context of peacekeeping operations. Jean-Marc Ayrault, the French minister of foreign affairs and international development, will preside. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, President Faustin-Archange Touadera of the Central African Republic and ICRC President Peter Maurer (via video teleconference) are expected to address the Council. At press time, no immediate Council outcome was anticipated.

Key Recent Developments

In mid-May, the Secretary-General issued his most recent report on the protection of civilians in armed conflict. Covering the 2015 calendar year, the report paints a grim picture of the current needs of civilians in armed conflict, noting that humanitarian needs are at their highest level ever and that more than 60 million people have been displaced by conflict. It describes the patterns of violence against civilians in several country-specific cases, including Afghanistan, Nigeria, Libya, Iraq, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen, among others. In the report, the Secretary-General outlines several priorities with regard to the protection of civilians, including strengthening compliance with international law, promoting accountability for violations, enhancing efforts to protect civilians from explosive weapons in densely populated areas, improving humanitarian access and strengthening collective efforts to address displacement.

With regard to peace operations, the Secretary-General specifically references the observation in the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO) report and in his own follow-on report that the protection of civilians has military, police and civilian elements. He says that he directed the deployment of dedicated senior protection-of-civilians advisors in all missions with explicit protection mandates, with a direct reporting line to the Head of Mission, to advise on the development of protection-of-civilians strategies and coordinate implementation. The Secretary-General further highlights the importance of community engagement in promoting the protection of civilians, noting the usefulness of community alert networks and community liaison assistants in understanding perceptions of threat at the community level, including how communities seek to reduce risk and how peace operations can address them. He further underscores the need for peacekeepers to act when civilians are under threat.

On 19 January, the Security Council held an open debate on the protection of civilians, which was intended to focus on themes underscored in the Secretary-Generals June 2015 report on the protection of civilians, as well as the HIPPO report and the Secretary-Generals report on the implementation of the HIPPO recommendations. Briefers included Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson, ICRC Vice-President Christine Beerli and Oxfam Senior Humanitarian Policy Advisor Eveline Rooijmans. Statements were made by 64 member states and two regional organisations.

Eliasson said that peacekeeping operations must respond quickly and with determination when civilians are threatened. Beerli underscored the need for parties in conflict situations to uphold international humanitarian law. Roojimans said that troop- and police-contributing countries must fully subscribe to and implement their mandate and be willing and allowed to act, and use force if need be, in the face of threats to civilians.

The Council held a briefing on health care in armed conflict on 3 May. The briefers included UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon; Peter Maurer, the president of the ICRC; and Joanne Liu, the president of Medecins Sans Frontieres. During the debate, the Council adopted resolution 2286, which emphasises the unacceptability of violations of international humanitarian law arising from attacks against medical and humanitarian workers exclusively engaged in medical duties in conflict situations.

Key Issues

Key issues for the Council with regard to this debate include the following:

how to ensure that protection of civilians mandates provide sufficient clarity and guidance to peacekeeping missions;

how to ensure that there is adequate discussion among the Secretariat, the troop-contributing countries and the Council in the design and implementation of protection mandates;

how to improve the Councils monitoring of the implementation of protection mandates;

how to ensure that the Council can quickly adapt to changing circumstances by, for example, ensuring that mandates are reconfigured accordingly when there is a heightened threat to civilians in environments in which UN peace operations are employed;

how to ensure that non-military protection toolsincluding political engagement, human rights monitoring and advocacy and rule-of-law developmentare adequately integrated into relevant mandates; and

how to protect civilians in contexts in which the armed forces of the host government are responsible for attacking civilians.

Options

One option is for the Council to adopt a resolution or presidential statement that:

urges troop- and police-contributing countries to ensure that their personnel have requisite pre-deployment training in protection issues and that they are not restricted by additional caveats beyond any explicitly accepted by the Secretariat before deployment;

requests the development of a common system to record civilian casualties to strengthen efforts to monitor and report violations of international human rights and humanitarian law; and

condemns the use of explosive weapons in populated locations.

Another option would be to consider using the informal expert group on the protection of civilians to monitor the implementation of protection mandates and make suggestions on adapting these mandates as necessary. Currently, the expert group meets prior to mandate renewals, but it could also meet on a less predictable basis, as dictated by evolving conditions in country-specific situations in which the protection environment deteriorates.

Council and Wider Dynamics

Council members are acutely aware of the devastating impact that armed conflict has had on civilians in recent years. As a result, they realise that more needs to be done to translate advances at the normative level into effective country-specific strategies. However, there are divisions among members regarding the Councils approach to protecting civilians. These differences have hindered the Councils ability to protect civilians in South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and other crises. They also affected the negotiations on the 25 November 2015 presidential statement when a permanent member expressed reservations about the revised Aide Memoire, referring in particular to language in the document on small arms, the ICC and sanctions.

While there is widespread appreciation that the protection of civilians is a holistic concept with military, police and civilian elements, there are different views among Council members and troop- and police-contributing countries regarding the appropriate use of force. Some tend to emphasise the importance of upholding the long-standing principles of peacekeeping, which include the use of force only for self-defence or in defence of the mandate, as well as host country consent and impartiality. Others, while espousing these principles, tend to have a more flexible interpretation of protection of civilians mandates, emphasising that the use of force is required to protect civilians when they are under attack or threatened with attack.

The UK is the penholder on the protection of civilians.

UN Documents on the Protection of Civilians



This condemned attacks on health care workers and facilities in armed conflict. This underscored the importance of sustained cooperation among the Council, the Secretariat and troop- and police-contributing countries on peacekeeping. This was a presidential statement on the protection of civilians. The Council took note of the recommendations of the HIPPO report and the Secretary-Generals implementation report. This was the 12th report on the protection of civilians. This was the Secretary-Generals 11th report on the protection of civilians in armed conflict. This was a briefing on the protection of health care in armed conflict. Uruguay, which held the presidency for the month, prepared a concept paper in preparation for this open debate on protection of civilians, highlighting themes underscored in the Secretary-Generals most recent report on the protection of civilians, as well as the report of the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations and the Secretary-Generals report on the implementation of the High-Level Panels recommendations. Briefers included Deputy-Secretary-General Jan Eliasson, ICRC Vice-President Christine Beerli and Oxfam Senior Humanitarian Policy Advisor Eveline Rooijmans. Statements were made by 64 member states and two regional organisations.
THE SECURITY COUNCIL

Security Council Elections 2016

Expected General Assembly Action

On 28 June, the General Assembly is scheduled to elect five states to two-year terms on the Security Council beginning on 1 January 2017. (Please see our 3 June Research Report: Security Council Elections 2016 for more detailed information.)

Background

The five seats available for election in 2016 will be distributed as follows:

one seat for the African Group, currently held by Angola;

one seat for the Group of Asia and the Pacific Small Island Developing States (Asia-Pacific Group), currently held by Malaysia;

one seat for the Group of Latin American and Caribbean States (GRULAC), currently held by Venezuela; and

two seats for the Western European and Others Group (WEOG), currently held by New Zealand and Spain.

(The Eastern European Group seat comes up for election every other year and is held by Ukraine through 2017.)

At press time, the elections for the African and GRULAC regional groups were running unopposed, with one candidate put forward by each regional groupEthiopia and Bolivia, respectively. Both countries have previously served on the Council on two occasions.

Races for the Asia-Pacific Group and WEOG seats are being contested this year. Kazakhstan and Thailand are competing for one seat within the Asia-Pacific Group, while Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden are competing for two WEOG seats. With the exception of Kazakhstan, all candidates have served on the Council in the past: Thailand on one occasion, Italy on six, the Netherlands on five and Sweden on three.

The table below shows the number of seats available per region in the 2016 election, the declared candidates and their prior terms on the Council.

Region Seats Available in the 2016 Election States Running and Previous Terms on the Council African 1 Ethiopia (1967-1968 and 1989-1990) Asia Pacific 1 Kazakhstan (none); Thailand (1985-1986) Latin America and Caribbean States 1 Bolivia (1964-1965 and 1978-1979) Western Europe and Other 2 Italy (1959-1960, 1971-1972, 1975-1976, 1987-1988, 1995-1996 and 2007-2008); The Netherlands (1946, 1951-1952, 1965-1966, 1983-1984 and 1999-2000) Sweden (1957-1958, 1975-1976 and 1997-1998)

Voting Procedures

A country must obtain the votes of two-thirds of the member states present and voting at the General Assembly session in order to secure a seat on the Council, regardless of whether the election is contested. This means that 129 positive votes are required to win a seat if all 193 UN member states are present.

Elections to the Council, as with other principal organs of the UN, require formal balloting, even if candidates have been endorsed by their regional group and are running unopposed. In theory, it is possible, although unlikely, that a country running unopposed might not garner the requisite votes of those present in the General Assembly in the first round of voting. Such a country may then be challenged in subsequent rounds by a new candidate and ultimately not obtain a seat.

This will be the first time that elections will be held in June. In previous years, elections were held in October; however, as a result of concerns that elected members did not have enough time to prepare for their terms, the General Assembly decided to hold the elections about six months before new members assume their responsibilities. Resolution 68/307 of 18 September 2014 decided that this would start during the 70th session of the General Assembly.

Potential Council Dynamics in 2017

Existing divisions within the Council over issues such as Ukraine, Syria and Israel/Palestine are likely to remain regardless of the arrival of five new elected members. While it is difficult to assess how Council dynamics in 2017 will develop, especially without knowing the full composition of the new membership, the interests of current candidates provide some perspective on a few general patterns that might emerge.

Some of the candidates could be expected to have a strong national interest in the conflicts in their region that are on the Councils agenda. Ethiopia shares borders with three countriesSomalia, Sudan and South Sudanthat are on the Councils agenda and is likely to devote significant attention to these issues. Given its geographical location, Kazakhstan would be likely to have a particular interest in developments in its region, including Afghanistan, Iran and possibly frozen conflicts in the North Caucasus. Given its historical ties to Libya and its exposure to the migration crisis, Italy would be likely to devote particular attention to that country.

Regarding thematic issues, several candidatesincluding Italy and Ethiopiahave stated their interest in efforts to counter terrorism and transnational organised crime. Given its focus in promoting the international legal order, the Netherlands would be interested in advancing cooperation between the UN and international courts and tribunals. The Netherlands could also pursue its interest in reviving efforts to establish accountability for the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, in which many Dutch citizens were killed. As a result of its experience, Kazakhstan would be likely to seek a role in non-proliferation issues. Thailand has also expressed interest in non-proliferation, as well as in women and peace and security. Considering its emphasis and experience regarding UN peacebuilding, Sweden would be likely to make this a priority.

All of the candidates contribute troops to UN peacekeeping missions. Ethiopia is currently the single largest troop contributor to UN peacekeeping operations, with 8,311 military and police deployed as of 31 March, while Italy is the largest troop contributor among EU and NATO members, with 1,128 military and police personnel currently deployed. Also as of 31 March, the Netherlands had 514 deployed peacekeepers in five missions; Sweden had 272 peacekeepers deployed in seven missions; Thailand had 33 peacekeepers deployed in four missions; Bolivia had 21 peacekeepers deployed in six missions; and Kazakhstan had six peacekeepers deployed in two missions.

Next year, there could be an increase in the number of elected members that are keen to further advance conflict prevention and peacebuilding measures. In addition, all candidates for 2017 have emphasised various aspects of sustainable development and its interconnectedness with peace and security. This could create friction with some Council members that advocate narrowing the Councils agenda to issues that predominantly involve situations of armed conflict.

Additionally, the majority of the candidates seem to have a strong desire to improve the transparency and inclusiveness of the Councils work. The commitment to transparency is also understandable for countries in campaign mode as most candidates have pledged to listen to interested stakeholders that are not seated on the Council and to take their perspectives into account. One candidate, Sweden, is a member of the Accountability, Coherence and Transparency Group (ACT), an initiative launched in May 2013 by a group of member states that focuses on the Councils working methods, in particular those that enhance non-members interaction with the Council. (ACT member New Zealand is leaving the Council at the end of this year. Uruguay, also a member of ACT, will remain on the Council in 2017. The goals of ACT also resonate with other Council members that are not members of the group but are nonetheless committed to enhancing the accountability, effectiveness and legitimacy of the Council.)

Some elected members of the class of 2016 have been particularly active in drafting resolutions. Two departing membersNew Zealand and Spain, along with Egypt, which will remain on the Council in 2017led on outcomes on the humanitarian situation in Syria. In a departure from current practice of most outcomes being drafted by one of the P3 (France, UK and US), these countries, along with Uruguay and Japan, took the initiative to draft and negotiate what became resolution 2286 on health care in armed conflict. In addition, Spain has been the penholder on Afghanistan as well as on non-proliferation and weapons of mass destruction, while another outgoing memberMalaysiatook a lead on children and armed conflict. It remains to be seen whether incoming Council members will take the initiative to draft Council outcomes and further challenge the existing penholder arrangements.

Among the departing Council members are the chairs of six of the 14 existing sanctions committees. Over the past two years, there has been a general trend toward increased transparency in the work of sanctions committees, including public briefings by the chair, engagement with regional actors and several field visits. Given the significance of the chairs personal engagement and how it impacts the work of sanctions committees, it is unclear to what extent the trend toward increased transparency and outreach will continue.
Status Update

South Sudan

On 4 May, Council members issued a press statement welcoming the formation of the transitional government of national unity (SC/12350). The statement further underscored the importance of the transitional government in implementing the August 2015 peace agreement. At press time, members were negotiating a resolution to renew the mandate of the 2206 South Sudan sanctions regime.

DPRK

On 4 May, the chair of the 1718 DPRK Sanctions Committee, Ambassador Roman Oyarzun (Spain), briefed Council members in consultations on the work of the Committee. There was also a discussion about the press statement proposed by the US on 29 April in response to the DPRKs failed missile launches on 27 and 28 April, which has so far been blocked by Russia. It seems Russia reiterated its opposition to the press statement. On 25 May, the Committee agreed on a template intended to help member states on a voluntary basis to prepare the national implementation reports requested by the Council in resolution 2270 by 30 May. The template will be circulated to all member states and will also be posted on the Committees website.

Counter-Terrorism

On 4 May, the Council was briefed by the chairs of its counter-terrorism-related committees: Ambassador Gerard van Bohemen (New Zealand), chair of the 1267/1989/2253 Al-Qaida/ISIL Sanctions Committee; Ambassador Amr Abdellatif Aboulatta (Egypt), chair of the 1373 Counter-Terrorism Committee; and Ambassador Roman Oyarzun (Spain), chair of the 1540 Committee, which focuses on the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (S/PV.7686). On 11 May, the Council held an open debate focusing on countering the narratives and ideologies of terrorism (S/PV.7690). The meeting was an initiative of Egypt, which circulated a concept note ahead of the debate (S/2016/416). Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson, Secretary-General of Al-Azhar Islamic Research Academy Mohi El-Din Afifi, and Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of Microsoft Steven A. Crown briefed. At the meetingwhich was chaired by Egypts Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukrythe Council adopted a presidential statement (S/PRST/2016/6).

Bosnia and Herzegovina

On 5 May, the Council held its semi-annual debate on Bosnia and Herzegovina (S/PV.7688). High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina Valentin Inzko presented his offices latest report (S/2016/395).

Israel/Palestine

On 6 May, Egypt, together with Angola, Malaysia, Senegal and Venezuela, held an Arria-formula meeting on the protection of the Palestinian civilian population in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which was open to all member states. On 25 May, Special Coordinator Niklolay Mladenov briefed the Council during the regular monthly meeting on the Middle East, which was followed by consultations (S/PV.7697).

Iraq

On 6 May, Special Representative Jan Kubis presented the Secretary-Generals reports on UNAMI (S/2016/396) and on Iraq/Kuwait missing persons and property (S/2016/372) to the Council (S/PV.7689). He reported on Iraqs deepening political crisis and challenges to Prime Minister Haider al-Abadis reform efforts; the financial crisis resulting from corruption, plunging oil prices and the high cost of fighting ISIL; and the deteriorating humanitarian situation with needs expected to increase in 2016 in the context of counter-ISIL operations. Separately, on 12 May, Council members issued a press statement condemning the ISIL terrorist attacks in Baghdad (SC/12361).

Sudan/South Sudan

The Council adopted resolution 2287 on 12 May, renewing the mandate of UNISFA until 15 November (S/PV.7691). Council members were briefed in consultations the same day via video teleconference by Haile Menkerios, Special Representative to the AU, on Sudan/South Sudan issues.

Haiti

On 12 May, at the request of the US, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Herve Ladsous briefed Council members in consultations on the electoral crisis in Haiti. In a press statement issued the following day, Council members expressed their deep disappointment that Haitian leaders had failed to meet the election deadlines agreed on 5 February and called on them to ensure the prompt return to constitutional order (SC/12364). The statement also welcomed Ladsouss planned field visit to Haiti (expected in June) to convey Council members sense of urgency and to assess the role of MINUSTAH and options for its future reconfiguration.

Lebanon

On 13 May, Special Envoy Terje Rd-Larsen briefed Council members on the latest report on the implementation of resolution 1559 on the disarmament of militias and the extension of government control over Lebanese territory (S/2016/366). On 24 May, which marked two years of a vacancy in the presidency, members of the Council issued a press statement that underscored their deepest concern over the vacancy and expressed their intention to continue following related developments with a particular sense of urgency (SC/12371).

Boko Haram

On 13 May, the Council adopted a presidential statement (S/PRST/2016/7) welcoming Nigerian President Muhammadu Buharis initiative to convene a high-level Regional Security Summit to evaluate the regional response to Boko Haram (S/PV.7692). It stated that Boko Haram continues to undermine peace and security in West and Central Africa and expressed alarm at its linkages with ISIL. The statement further highlighted the humanitarian crisis in the Lake Chad Basin region created by the conflict.

Liberia

On 13 May, Ambassador Volodymyr Yelchenko (Ukraine), chair of the 1521 Liberia Sanctions Committee, briefed Council members in consultations on the committees activities and the final report of the Panel of Experts (S/2016/348). On 25 May, the Council adopted resolution 2288 that terminated the Liberia sanctions regime, including remaining arms measures, the mandate of the Panel of Experts and the 1521 Sanctions Committee.

Guinea-Bissau

On 13 May, Council members issued elements to the press following President Jose Mario Vazs decision to dismiss the government of Carlos Correia. Council members called for leaders to resume dialogue to bring political stability; urged international interlocutors to continue their efforts to resolve the ongoing political impasse; and reaffirmed the importance of the continued non-interference of the defence and security forces in the political situation. There was a further expression of their commitment to monitor the ongoing situation and readiness to take all necessary measures to overcome the current situation.

Kosovo

On 16 May, Special Representative Zahir Tanin presented the most recent UNMIK report (S/2016/407) to the Council (S/PV.7693). Tanin conveyed that while UNMIK no longer administered the territory, it remained an important bridge between the Security Council and the people of Kosovo and the wider region. He also said that the recent inauguration of the new president of Kosovo and the general elections in Serbia provide an opportunity to move beyond a time marked by infighting.

Council Visiting Mission

From 17-22 May Council members undertook a visiting mission to Somalia, Kenya and Egypt after agreeing on the terms of reference for the mission (S/2016/456). On 19 May, Council members had meetings in Mogadishu with officials from the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia, the UN Support Office for Somalia, the AU Mission in Somalia, Somalias president and other political leaders and civil society. The following day, they had discussions in Nairobi with Kenyas president and other Kenyan officials, focusing on AMISOM and the refugee situation in Kenya in light of the governments recent announcement that it would close down all refugee camps. They also met with UN entities involved in the humanitarian response in Somalia. Council members spent the last day of the mission on 21 May in Cairo, where they had a consultative meeting with the League of Arab States, the first ever of its kind, focusing on the Israel/Palestine peace process, Somalia, Libya and issues related to refugees, immigrants and internally displaced persons, and also saw the foreign minister of Egypt. On 25 May, the Council held a briefing on the visiting mission (S/PV.7696).

Peace Operations

On 18 May, Council members held an informal interactive dialogue with heads of military components of UN peace operations. The topics discussed included information and intelligence (Maj Gen Lollesgaard, MINUSMA), protection of civilians (Lt Gen Yohannes Gebremeskel Tesfamariam, UNMISS), use of technology (Lt Gen Derick Mbuyiselo Mgwebi, MONUSCO) and sexual exploitation and abuse (Lt Gen Balla Keita, MINUSCA).

Somalia

On 23 May, Council members issued a press statement that welcomed the electoral process set out in the decree issued by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud on 22 May 2016, which they noted should enable necessary technical preparation and implementation without further delay (SC/12369). On 27 May, the Council adopted resolution 2289 authorising a short technical rollover of AMISOM until 8 July. This short rollover will allow Council members time to assess the results of their 17-22 May Somalia-focused visiting mission to the Horn of Africa and the possible implications for the AMISOM mandate.

UN-AU Cooperation on Peace and Security

On 23 May, members of the Security Council and members of the AU Peace and Security Council held their tenth joint annual consultative meeting in New York. The formal section of the meeting focused on Somalia and Burundi, while an informal discussion took a strategic look at their partnership, as well as the impact on their cooperation resulting from the three 2015 UN peace and security review processes. At press time, a joint communique was still being negotiated. On 24 May, the Council held an open debate on UN-AU cooperation: Chapter VIII application and the future of the African Peace and Security Architecture (S/PV.7694). AU Commissioner for Peace and Security Smail Chergui, newly-appointed Chair of the Peacebuilding Commission Ambassador Macharia Kamau (Kenya), Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Herve Ladsous, and the head of the UN Office to the AU, Haile Menkerios, briefed the Council. Egypt circulated a concept note (S/2016/428) ahead of the open debate at which a presidential statement was adopted (S/PRST/2016/8).

Secretary-General Selection Process

On 25 May, Council members met under any other business regarding the next steps for the Security Council in the Secretary-General selection process. They discussed a number of issues, including whether to meet with candidates nominated for the position and the timing of the start of the straw polls.

Sahel

On 26 May, the Council held a briefing on challenges in the Sahel, which focused on the impact of climate change and desertification to peace and security in this region. Mohammed Ibn Chambas, the head of UNOWAS briefed via video teleconference. Other briefers included Monique Barbut, Executive Secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertifcation; Jean-Paul Laborde, Executive Director of CTED; and Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, Coordinator of the Association for Indigenous Women and Peoples of Chad.

EU-UN Cooperation

On 27 May, Council members held their annual informal meeting with members of the EU Political and Security Committee to discuss issues of mutual interest related to counter-terrorism, Libya and Syria.
AFRICA

Sudan (Darfur)

Expected Council Action

In June, the Council will hold a briefing, followed by consultations, on the AU/UN Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID). Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Herve Ladsous is expected to provide the briefing. The Council needs to renew the mandate of UNAMID, which expires on 30 June. Also during the month, ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda is expected to provide the semi-annual briefing to the Council on the Courts work on Darfur. It further seems that Council members will meet with the AUs Open-ended Ministerial Committee of Ministers of Foreign Affairs on the ICC. The ICCs case against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir will probably be raised in this meeting.

Key Recent Developments

A referendum on the administrative status of Darfur was conducted between 11 and 13 April to determine whether the Darfur region would remain as five administrative units (i.e. North Darfur, South Darfur, East Darfur, West Darfur and Central Darfur) or become one administrative unit. On 24 April, the Darfur Referendum Commission announced the results, reporting that almost 98 percent of the participants chose the status quo (i.e. five states). Analysts have maintained that the Sudanese government prefers the status quo, as this enables it to continue to exert greater control over an administratively divided region. Opposition forces argued against holding the referendum, expressing concerns that ongoing fighting and displacement in the region would make participation difficult for many potential voters. The Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), one of the key Darfur rebel groups that boycotted the vote, refused to accept the results and called the poll fraudulent.

The 11th meeting of the Implementation Follow-up Commission of the Doha Document for Peace in Darfur (DDPD) was convened on 9 May in Khartoum. During the meeting, Joint AU-UN Special Representative for Darfur Martin Ihoeghian Uhomoibhi underscored the negative humanitarian impact of this years fighting in Darfurs Jebel Marra region. Deputy Prime Minister of Qatar Ahmad bin Abdullah Al Mahmoud, who heads the Follow-up Commission, urged the movements that have not signed the DDPD to join the peace process. He said that inter-communal violence and the spread of arms remain obstacles to peace in Darfur.

The humanitarian crisis in South Sudan has continued to spill over into Sudan. Since late January, more than 55,500 refugees from South Sudan have fled to Sudans East Darfur, South Darfur and West Kordofan states mainly due to conflict and reported food shortages in [South Sudans] Northern Bahr el Ghazal and Warrap states, according to OCHA. From the start of the civil war in South Sudan on 15 December 2013 through 31 March, more than 224,000 refugees have fled to Sudan from South Sudan.

Five civilians were killed and several others were wounded on 10 May when armed nomads opened fire near a site for internally displaced persons in Sortony, North Darfur. Marta Ruedas, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan, said that the incident occurred after a reported rise in tensions between displaced and armed tribesman over cattle raiding. On 12 May, the violence was condemned in a joint statement issued by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and AU Commission Chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

On 13 May, the Council received a note from the Secretariat regarding customs clearances for supply containers at Port Sudan to be shipped to UNAMID. While the note was confidential, it apparently said that customs clearances for several containers of food and equipment continued to be held up by Sudanese authorities.

On 19 May, Sudanese State Minister of Foreign Affairs Kamal Ismail reiterated his governments position that UNAMID should withdraw from Darfur, claiming that the situation there was stable.

On 22 May, the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT) in Sudan announced that the Sudanese government had decided not to renew the work permit of OCHA Head of Office Ivo Freijsen, which expires on 6 June. According to a HCT press statement, The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has provided no official explanation in writing for this decision, although Sudans Humanitarian Affairs Commission reportedly said that Freijsen had a negative attitude towards the Sudanese government and Sudanese Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour complained about Freijsens reporting on the humanitarian situation in Darfur.

In February, Erastus Mwecha, the AU Commissions Deputy Chairperson, sent a letter regarding the ICC to Ambassador Rafael Ramirez (Venezuela) in his capacity as President of the UN Security Council for that month. In the letter, Mwecha referred to decisions of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the AU that requested the suspension of ICC proceedings against President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan and urged the Council to withdraw its referral of Sudan to the Court.

On 12 May, President Bashir attended the inauguration of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni in Kampala. Uganda, a state party to the ICC, was obligated under the Rome Statute to arrest Bashir, who has been indicted by the court on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. During his inaugural address, however, Museveni disavowed his countrys support for the court, referring to the ICC as a bunch of useless people.

Sanctions-Related Developments

On 3 May, Ambassador Ramirez, chair of the 1591 Sudan Sanctions Committee, briefed Council members in consultations on the work of the Committee. During the meeting, it was noted that, because of holds by Russia on the final report of the 2015 Sudan Sanctions Committee Panel of Experts and on the proposed slate of candidates for the 2016 Panel, the 2015 report had yet to be released and the Panel of Experts had yet to be appointed for this year.

Human Rights-Related Developments

The independent expert on the situation of human rights in Sudan, Aristide Nononsi, released a statement on 29 April, after his second mission to the country from 14 to 28 April, that urged the Sudanese government to enable a conducive environment for a free and inclusive national dialogue by respecting the basic fundamental rights of Sudanese people, including the rights to freedoms of expression and association and of the press. The statement expressed concern about a number of human rights problems in the country, such as arbitrary arrests, detention and ill-treatment of human rights defenders and political activists by security forces, including the National Intelligence and Security Service; ongoing censorship of newspapers; and increased restrictions on journalists. The statement also recalled that, in the preceding weeks, Sudanese government authorities had prevented four Sudanese human rights defenders from attending the pre-briefing session of the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva.

Key Issues

The underlying issue for the Council is the continuing instability of the security and humanitarian environment in Darfur, with no progress on the political front.

An ongoing key issue is the limited level of cooperation that Sudan accords to the mission. Delays in issuing visas to mission staff and in providing customs clearances, as well as restrictions on the movement of UNAMID peacekeepers, have been a hindrance to UNAMIDs operations in recent months. As reflected by Foreign Minister Ismails recent statement, the government of Sudan has been outspoken in its calls to expedite the development of an exit strategy for UNAMID.

Another important issue is the continuing impasse in the Council with regard to the ICCs work in Darfur and whether the Council can develop a strategy to overcome this stalemate.



Options

The most likely option is for the Council to renew the mandate of UNAMID for an additional year. In doing so, the Council could:

underscore the need for the government of Sudan to enhance cooperation with the mission, including by issuing visas to UNAMID personnel and providing customs clearances for food and supplies destined for the mission in a more expeditious manner;

reiterate that the exit strategy for UNAMID is conditioned on the missions achievement of benchmarks (i.e. an inclusive peace process, the protection of civilians, unhindered humanitarian access and the prevention or mitigation of community conflict) and the governments cooperation with UNAMID; and

call on the three mediation tracks (the UNAMID Joint Special Representative, the AUHIP and the UN Special Envoy for Sudan and South Sudan) to coordinate their efforts to pursue a holistic strategy regarding the conflicts in Sudan.

The Council could also consider establishing a co-penholder system on Darfur, whereby the current penholder, the UK, shares the pen with an African member of the Council, thus heightening African engagement on this issue in the Council and possibly bringing a fresh perspective to the matter.

Regarding the ICC, the Council could hold an informal interactive dialogue meeting with the Office of the Prosecutor to constructively discuss next steps.



Council Dynamics

There have been different views among Council members on the UNAMID exit strategy that could resurface during the negotiations on this years mandate renewal. During last years negotiations on the UNAMID resolution, members such as France, the UK and the US underscored the conditionality of the exit strategy for UNAMID, noting that it must be firmly linked to significant progress on the missions benchmarks. Other members, including Angola and Russia, preferred not to emphasise the conditionality of the exit strategy.

Given the ongoing stalemate in the peace talks, some members continue to suggest that rebel groups in Darfur should be targeted for sanctions by the Council. Russia reiterated this position during consultations on the 1591 Sanctions Committees work on 3 May. Similarly, at the same meeting, Egypt reportedly expressed the view that the Sudan Liberation Army-Abdul Wahid faction, which has engaged in heavy fighting with government forces in the Jebel Marra region this year, should be designated for sanctions.

Regarding the work of the ICC on Darfur, sharp divisions remain among Council members. Eight members of the Council are state parties to the Rome Statute (France, Japan, New Zealand, Senegal, Spain, the UK, Uruguay and Venezuela), although Venezuela shares the AU position that the Courts work has been politicised. Seven countries (Angola, China, Egypt, Malaysia, Russia, Ukraine and the US) are not state parties; however, the US has been supportive of the Courts work in Darfur.

The UK is the penholder on Darfur.

UN Documents on Darfur

This was a resolution renewing the mandate of UNAMID for an additional year. This was the UNAMID report. This was a briefing on UNAMID.
MIDDLE EAST

Syria

Expected Council Action

In June, Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura is expected to brief Council members on the intra-Syrian political process that, at press time, was facing serious challenges due to the unravelling cessation of hostilities and the ongoing lack of humanitarian access.

Council members will also receive their regular monthly briefings on the humanitarian and chemical weapons tracks.

Key Recent Developments

On 3 May, the Security Council adopted resolution 2286 condemning attacks on health care workers and facilities and demanding compliance with international humanitarian law. While the resolution was not country-specific, many Council members viewed it as relevant to Syria in light of ongoing attacks against medical facilities there, in particular the airstrike targeting a hospital in rebel-held Aleppo in late April and the shelling of a maternity ward in government-held Aleppo in early May.

On 4 May, Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman and Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Stephen OBrien briefed the Council on the escalation of hostilities around Aleppo. Government forces, supported by Russian air power and the Lebanese Shia militia Hezbollah, were targeting armed rebel groups, ostensibly fighting in coordination with Al Nusra Front, which is not a party to the cessation of hostilities.

In early May, Russia and the US declared so-called regimes of calm, or local and temporary truces, to try and shore up the failing cessation of hostilities in Aleppo as well as in government-controlled Latakia and rebel-held Eastern Ghouta outside of Damascus. On 9 May, Russia and the US, in their capacity as co-chairs of the International Syria Support Groups (ISSG) ceasefire task force, issued a joint statement that they would intensify efforts to implement a nationwide cessation of hostilities, enhance efforts to promote humanitarian assistance, and redouble efforts to reach a political solution. The statement also committed to delineating areas controlled by Al Nusra Front and by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), to ensure a common understanding of which areas were afforded protection by the cessation of hostilities and which areas were nota task originally set out in resolution 2268 in February, but with unclear results, as any such agreement between Russia and the US on delineation has not been shared with others.

The situation on the ground over the course of May did not provide any evidence that commitments in the 9 May statement were being observed. The Syrian regime pressed on with two key objectives: to encircle Aleppo and break rebel control of areas around Damascus. There were escalating government airstrikes in Aleppo, including targeting the last road into rebel-held parts of the city. Outside of Damascus, airstrikes had allowed government forces to advance into rebel-held areas in Eastern Ghouta by 19 May.

On 12 May, despite having received clearance from government authorities, a UN aid convoy was denied access to government-besieged Darraya, a suburb of Damascus that had not received aid since 2012. The convoy was refused entry by the 4th Division of the Syrian Army, controlled by President Bashar al-Assads brother Maher, because it included medical and nutritional supplies, with the government arguing it had only approved vaccines, school supplies and baby formula. After the convoy turned back, government forces launched a mortar attack at the area where civilians had gathered to receive the aid, reportedly killing a father and his son and injuring five others.

Following the aborted aid delivery, media reports indicated that rebel fighters feared an imminent assault on Darraya, citing the deployment of increased numbers of government troops and equipment near the town. A government offensive over the weekend of 21-22 May was repelled. The rebel Free Syrian Army, on behalf of 40 armed opposition groups, announced on 22 May that they would no longer abide by the cessation of hostilities unless Syrian forces ceased attacks on Aleppo and around Damascus.

On 23 May, US Secretary of State John Kerry spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, urging him to use his influence to halt Syrian government attacks on Aleppo and the suburbs of Damascus. At press time, Russia had called for another regime of calm to be extended to the Damascus suburbs of Darraya and Eastern Ghouta and had said its military would hold off on strikes for a limited period of time to allow rebel groups to withdraw from Al-Nusra Front positions.

Meanwhile, in mid-May, Al Nusra Front, in coordination with rebel groups and other extremist groups, seized Khan Touman, a village south of Aleppo. There were also reports of insurgents killing and abducting civilians when they advanced into the government-controlled Alawite village of Al Zara. Attacks by ISIS on 23 May killed 160 people in the government-controlled towns of Jableh and Tartous.

At press time, the situation in Syria was grim, with the cessation of hostilities on the cusp of falling apart, leaving the political process in limbo. At the end of the last round of intra-Syrian talks in late April, de Mistura said that the parties had agreed on the need for a transition but remained far apart on how to achieve it. The government proposed a national unity government, but explicitly rejected the oppositions position to form a transitional governing body with full executive powers (in line with the June 2012 Geneva Communique), and insisted that Assads presidency was not subject to negotiation.

Indeed, there were no political talks held in May, though the ISSG met on 17 May, resulting in yet another statement reaffirming the need for a full cessation of hostilities and humanitarian access. The statement welcomed the new Russian-US Coordination Cell in Geneva that was set up to investigate, respond to and mitigate the effects of the violations of the cessation of hostilities. Regarding aerial bombardment, the statement recalled the Syrian governments March commitment not to arbitrarily use weapons, presumably in reference to strikes against civilian targets. The statement added that if a party was persistently non-compliant it could then be excluded from the cessation of hostilities, but the approval process to determine such exclusion as described was arduous and opaque. On humanitarian issues, the statement said that if the UN continues to be denied access to besieged areas after 1 June, then the World Food Programme should deliver humanitarian aid via air bridges and air drops, as it does in ISIL-controlled Deir ez-Zor. Finally, the statement underscored that, as per resolution 2254, 1 August remained the deadline for the parties to reach an agreement on a framework for a genuine political transition and welcomed the Special Envoys 27 April Mediators Summary.

Unlike in past statements, the ISSG could not reach agreement on when talks might resume. However, by welcoming the Mediators Summary, the ISSG signaled agreement that the basis for the next round of talks would include issues such as the powers of the presidency in a transitional government, security sector reform, constitutional issues, justice sector reform and issues related to UN-supervised elections. The opposition umbrella group, the High Negotiations Committee (HNC), has reiterated the need for a full cessation of hostilities and the delivery of humanitarian aid before they would return to talks. At press time, de Mistura was scheduled to brief Council members on 26 May and was expected to echo the need for substantially less violence and substantially more aid, and reiterate that, despite agreement on an agenda for the talks, without appropriate conditions the credibility of any future talks would be in jeopardy.

Regarding the humanitarian situation, OCHA head OBrien was expected to brief Council members on 27 May and report that ongoing indiscriminate attacks, the slow-down in aid delivery, the continued removal of medical supplies from convoys by government forces and the lack of access to government-besieged suburbs of Damascus, particularly Darraya, continued to undermine independent humanitarian action.

On chemical weapons, Acting UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Kim Won-soo briefed Council members on 5 May.

Sanctions-Related Developments

On 20 April, the 1267/1989/2253 Al-Qaida/ISIL Sanctions Committee added five individuals to its list (SC/12332). Separately in late April, Russia requested that Ahrar al-Sham and Jaish al-Islam be added to Al-Qaida/ISIL sanctions list. But the request was blocked in early May as consensus among all 15 Council members could not be reached.

Key Issue

The essential issue for the Council, entering the sixth year of a war that has exacted a death toll of 470,000 and displaced half of the Syrian population, including 4.84 million refugees, is to exert effective leadership in supporting a cessation of hostilities and efforts to reach a political solution.

Options

The ISSG and resolutions 2254 and 2268 have identified roles for the Council in the event that talks in 2016 produce concrete results towards a national ceasefire and a parallel political process, including elections. In the near term, however, Council options are limited as the day-to-day oversight of resolutions 2254 and 2268 has been outsourced to the ISSG broadly, and Russia and the US in particular.

Council Dynamics

Many Council members are of the view that the governments recent offensives, particularly around Aleppo and the suburbs of Damascus, confirm the regimes preference for prolonged armed conflict over a negotiated settlement. There is also a broad recognition that if fighting in Syria cannot be controlled then it will be difficult for UN mediation between the government and the opposition to resume with any chance of success.

There is a palpable sense of frustration among many elected members over spending time and energy deciding questions of meeting formats and arguing over press statements rather than grappling with the substantial issues at hand. Two draft press statements in May were blocked by Russia: one on attacks against hospitals in Aleppo, and another addressing an attack against a camp for internally displaced persons near the Turkish border. Finally, on 12 May, Council members were able to agree on a press statement that generically expressed outrage at attacks directed towards civilians and civilian objects, but did not detail specific incidents. The day-to-day oversight of forging a political solution to the Syrian crisis has been outsourced to the ISSG broadly, and specifically to P5 members Russia and the US, and has left very little space for the Council to bring new thinking or energy to help resolve the situation.

Russia and the US have invested a great deal of political capital in the Geneva talks and still seem to be on the path of engagement. However, some Council members are concerned that the contours of any deal the parties might be pressured to accept will be so far removed from the spirit and intent of the June 2012 Geneva Communique that it will be destined to fail. Some are also of the view that the Russian-US cooperation on Syria has reached its limits, resulting in familiar divisions reoccurring in New York in the Security Council. Russias request to add Ahrar al-Sham and Jaish al-Islam to the Al-Qaida/ISIL sanctions list was blocked by the P3 and Ukraine. Both Ahrar al-Sham and Jaish al-Islam are parties to the cessation of hostilities and listing them would, de facto, broaden the range of legitimate targets for government offensives, since groups sanctioned by the UN Security Council are not included in the cessation of hostilities.

Tensions have also re-emerged on the chemical weapons track, where the P3 and many other Council members have blocked China and Russias draft resolution that would expand the mandate of the UN-OPCW Joint Investigative Mechanisms (JIM)the body mandated to determine responsibility for the use of chemical weapons in Syriato also monitor and investigate the use of chemical weapons by non-state actors more widely. While all Council members agree this is a serious issue, the P3 and many other members believe it is a broad threat that should not be tied to the mandate of the JIM, which is a mechanism specific to Syria with limited capacity.

Most outcomes on Syria are agreed between Russia and the US prior to agreement by the Council. Egypt, New Zealand and Spain lead on humanitarian issues.

UN DOCUMENTS

Endorsed the cessation of hostilities and called for the resumption of political talks. This was the first resolution focused exclusively on a political solution to the Syrian crisis. It was adopted unanimously. This was a briefing was a briefing on humanatarian situation. This was a briefing on the situation in Aleppo. This was a press statement that condemned the ISIL attacks in Jableh and Tartous as well as indiscriminate attacks by all parties, called for the resumption of talks and expressed support for Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura. This was a statement that expressed outrage at attacks against civilians and civilian objects. This was the joint statement of Russia and the US that reconfirmed their commitment to Syrias cessation of hostilities. This was a report on humanitarian situation. This was a report on chemical weapons.

OTHER RELEVANT FACTS

ISSG Members: Australia, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Iran, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Lebanon, Netherlands, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Turkey, UAE, UK, and the US and the Arab League, EU, OIC and the UN
UNDOF (Golan Heights)

Expected Council Action

In June, the Council is expected to extend for six months the mandate of the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), which expires on 30 June. A representative of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations will brief Council members in consultations on the UNDOF report, due on 13 June.

UNDOF was established in 1974 to monitor the ceasefire between Israel and Syria.

Key Recent Developments

Due to the spillover of the Syrian civil war into UNDOFs area of operations, most UNDOF peacekeepers relocated from the Bravo (Syrian) side to the Alpha (Israeli) side of the ceasefire line in September 2014. The majority of personnel remain based on the Alpha (Israeli) side, resulting in restricted mission mobility and operational capacity. Some peacekeepers remain on the Syrian side at Mt. Hermon. Mt. Hermon is strategically important to Israel, which could feel compelled to man the position itself if there were no UNDOF security presence there. This would be an especially difficult challenge to regional security and the 1974 disengagement agreement.

The March 2016 UNDOF report detailed a somewhat calmer situation since January in the northern sector of UNDOFs area of operations because of a local truce between the Syrian government and armed opposition groups. The forthcoming UNDOF report is expected to state that this truce is holding, resulting in less fighting, albeit with sporadic exchanges of fire. In the southern sector there are ongoing clashes between government forces and armed opposition groups, and also fighting between rebel groups, particularly Al Nusra Front and the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade.

The civil war in Syria continues to adversely affect UNDOFs ability to function. Despite lower levels of violence in certain areas of UNDOFs area of operations, the overall security situation is not yet conducive to UNDOFs return to the Bravo (Syrian) side. The situation in the Golan increases the possibility of escalating tensions not only between Israel and Syria but also between Israel and Lebanon because of the overt presence in the Golan of Hezbollahthe Tehran-backed Lebanese Shia militia fighting on the side of the Syrian regime.

On 10 May, Israel struck a weapons convoy in Syria near the Lebanese border. Israel has a neutral policy vis-a-vis the Syrian crisis except to interdict weapons shipments via Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel neither confirms nor denies specific incidents of striking Hezbollah targets in Syria, but in December 2015 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a rare public admission, said, We [Israel] occasionally carry out operations in Syria to prevent that country from becoming a front against us.

Since Russia commenced airstrikes in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad in September 2015, Israel and Russia have made arrangements to avoid clashes of their respective forces operating in Syrian airspace. Media reports indicate that Russia has fired on Israeli military aircraft on at least two occasions, without specifying dates, locations or whether Israeli aircraft had been hit. Neither country has confirmed these allegations, but Netanyahu met Russian President Vladimir Putin on 21 April to seek enhanced coordination to avoid unnecessary confrontations.

On 26 April, the Department of Political Affairs briefed Council members on the Golan Heights under any other business. Egypt, on behalf of the Arab League, requested the briefing following remarks by Netanyahu that the Golan Heights would remain forever under Israeli sovereignty. Netanyahus remarks were a response to the inclusion of the return of the Golan Heights to Syria as a point of commonality between the parties at the intra-Syrian political talks facilitated by the UN in Geneva. Israel captured the Golan Heights in the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed it illegally in 1981. Under international law, the Golan Heights is considered an occupied territory. In elements to the press, Council members stressed that the status of the Golan Heights remains unchanged.

On 13 May, Mustafa Badreddinea Hezbollah commander believed to be directing the groups Syria operationswas killed in Damascus. Badreddine was one of the four people being tried in absentia by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon for the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Hezbollah said Badreddine was killed near the Damascus airport in artillery shelling by Sunni rebel groups. At least one Hezbollah official suggested Israel might be responsible. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there had been no shelling near the airport at the time of the blast that killed Badreddine. Israel declined to comment.

Key Issues

Considering the security situation in the Golan, the full return of UNDOF to the Syrian side seems unlikely in the foreseeable future, significantly constraining the missions ability to carry out its monitoring tasks. In this respect, an issue for the Council is whether Israel should be asked to allow UNDOF more mobility for its patrolling tasks on the Israeli side of the ceasefire line, especially access to hilltops for enhanced observation. There is also the issue of whether UNDOF may use new technologies, such as unmanned, unarmed aerial vehicles or satellite imagery, to carry out observation tasks. The use of such technology would require permission from both Israel and Syria, which neither party has yet granted.

The other primary concern for the Council remains the ceasefire violations. The presence of Syrian armed forces and heavy weapons in the area of separation monitored by UNDOF, Syrian airstrikes, Israeli airstrikes and artillery fire over the ceasefire line are all violations of the disengagement agreement. No military forces other than those of UNDOF are allowed in the area of separation.

Options

UNDOF was established as a Syria-based mission. How it operates is subject to the disengagement agreement, and any changes require agreement by Israel and Syria, which is unlikely to be forthcoming.

In the resolution renewing the UNDOF mandate, the Council could:

reiterate the need for all parties to exercise restraint;

urge Israel and Syria to allow the use of new technologies so UNDOF could better fulfil its observation tasks;

urge Israel and Syria to allow the use of enhanced equipment to better enable UNDOFs force protection capabilities;

urge Israel and Syria to agree to establish more UNDOF crossing points between the Alpha and Bravo sides, since the Quneitra crossing was lost to rebel groups in September 2014; and

urge Israel to allow UNDOF to establish more temporary observation posts on the Alpha side, given the missions limited mobility there.

Council and Wider Dynamics

Israel and Syria value UNDOFs presence and want to see the return of the mission to the Bravo side. However, the security situation is not conducive to the missions full redeployment back to the Syrian side of the ceasefire line.

Council members are concerned about armed clashes in the area of operations and about the tension between Israel and Syria along the armistice line, which has been exacerbated by the presence of Hezbollah.

The Council has generally agreed that UNDOF contributes to stability in the region in the absence of a peace agreement between Israel and Syria. However, its liaison function is particularly important now in order to avoid further negative security implications for the region.

Since June 2012, Russia and the US have been the co-penholders on resolutions renewing UNDOF.

UN Documents

This resolution renewed UNDOF for six months. This was the report of the Secretary-General on UNDOF.
UNOCA/LRA

Expected Council Action

In June, the Security Council will be briefed by Abdoulaye Bathily, Special Representative and head of the UN Regional Office for Central Africa (UNOCA), on the Secretary-Generals report on UNOCA and the implementation of the UN regional strategy to combat the Lords Resistance Army (LRA).

The mandate of UNOCA expires on 31 August 2018.

Key Recent Developments

Although the LRA is no longer at its height of activity, the start of 2016 saw an increase in activity attributed to the group, particularly in the south-eastern part of the Central African Republic (CAR). According to a report issued by the NGOs Invisible Children and Resolve, the LRA abducted 296 people in the CAR and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in the first quarter of this year, reportedly the most in any three-month period since the third quarter of 2010.

Also in the CAR, the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the CAR (MINUSCA) has reported that several villages in Bria region have been abandoned since LRA attacks increased at the end of December 2015.

On 18 April, Council members issued a press statement condemning the killing of a MINUSCA peacekeeper. According to a statement by the Secretary-General, the incident occurred when a MINUSCA patrol was dispatched to Rafai in response to an attack on the nearby village of Agoumar by alleged elements of the LRA.

According to the UN Joint Human Rights Office in the DRC (UNJHRO), LRA combatants were responsible for at least 38 cases of human rights violations in the DRC during the month of April. UNJHRO noted that these figures are particularly worrying given that in March no violations by LRA combatants were documented.

Tension has been mounting in the Republic of Congo (ROC) since President Denis Sassou Nguessos re-election on 20 March, extending further his rule of 18 consecutive years (and 32 years in total). The runner-up, Guy-Brice Kolelas, conceded defeat, saying he wanted to avoid further violence, but he and other candidates maintain the polling was rigged. Opposition parties led protests against the referendum of October 2015 that allowed Sassou Nguesso to change the constitution and run again. Security forces killed at least 18 people during opposition demonstrations against the referendum changes.

After relative calm, 17 people were killed on 4 April in fighting between government forces and armed assailants in a neighbourhood called the Pool, an opposition stronghold in Brazzaville. The government issued an arrest warrant for Frederic Bintsamou for assassination and illegal possession of weapons in connection with the fighting. Bintsamou, leader of the Ninjas (a former rebel group active in the 1997-1999 civil war and a 2002 insurgency against Sassou Nguesso) and the father of Kolelas, has denied involvement in the attack. Recent media reports suggest that the authorities have been in contact with Bintsamou, who is still at large, through interlocutors close to him, to resolve the crisis.

During his monthly luncheon with Council members on 17 May, the Secretary-General brought to the attention of members the situation in the ROC, to encourage discreet contacts with the ROC government to calm the situation. One Council member recognised that UNOCA could play a role by talking to political actors in the ROC and the region as part of this effort.

The Secretary-General telephoned Sassou Nguesso the following day, stressing the need for political dialogue to foster national unity following the recent elections and for allowing humanitarian actors to have access to the areas concerned.

In a statement on 13 April, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein cited reports of mass arrests and torture in detention, as well as killing and displacement. He added, however, that these reports had been difficult to verify, given the lack of access to the Pool area by independent actors.

Another regional threat is that of piracy. Based on a report by the organisation Oceans Beyond Piracy, the Washington Post reported that due to the fall in oil prices, pirate kidnappings of seamen in the Gulf of Guinea have become more common. A total of 15 kidnappings were reported in 2015, while 2016 has already seen an equal number of kidnappings for ransom.

In a presidential statement adopted on 25 April, the Council encouraged both UNOCA and the UN Office for West Africa and the Sahel to continue to assist regional efforts to tackle piracy in the Gulf.

Bathily last briefed the Council on 8 December 2015. Jackson Tuwei, Special Envoy of the AU for the Lords Resistance Army, also addressed the Council via video teleconference from Nairobi.

Sanctions-Related Developments

After years of activity in the region, the 2127 CAR Sanctions Committee on 7 March added the LRA and its leader, Joseph Kony, to the CAR sanctions list at the request of France, the UK and the US.

Key Issues

A key issue for the Council will be to get an updated analysis regarding implementation and effectiveness of the UNs regional anti-LRA strategy and the wider impact of the LRA on the region.

Monitoring instability and potential deterioration in other areas in the region is a major concern for the Council.

Options

As in the past, an option for the Council is to issue a presidential or press statement that:

expresses support for UNOCA and encourages member states to contribute more resources toward anti-LRA efforts and regional cooperation, especially in light of the turmoil in countries in the region;

commends the LRA-affected states for their cooperation and encourages further cooperation to overcome the LRA threat once and for all;

expresses concern over reports of LRA cooperation with rebel groups in the CAR and over the increasing threat of the Islamist group Boko Haram to the region; and

expresses support for UNOCAs efforts in addressing the increasing political and security challenges in Central Africa.

On the ROC, the Council may consider putting the issue on its agenda and closely monitoring the situation.

Council Dynamics

Council members are largely in agreement on LRA-related issues. Council members have also been supportive of UNOCAs continued shift to focus its efforts on the region as a whole, rather than on the LRA as its main objective.

The request for regular reporting from UNOCA in the presidential statement of 11 June 2015 reflected the view of several Council members that in the absence of particular developments or new concerns, adopting a semi-annual presidential statement on UNOCA is not very productive. At the same time, several Council members insisted that regular reporting by UNOCA continue.

Thus, while Council members maintain interest in LRA activities and other sub-regional developments, the Council will be less likely to adopt an outcome document following next months briefing without a new and specific issue to address. Members are likely to follow events in the ROC, but at this time it does not seem as though the Council will take up the issue.

UN DOCUMENTS ON UNOCA/LRA

This was a presidential statement expressing concern at the grave security situation in parts of Central Africa, in particular the ongoing crisis in the CAR and its regional impact, the continuing threat of the LRA and the terrorist activities of Boko Haram. This was the report of the Secretary-General on the situation in Central Africa and the activities of UNOCA. was an exchange of letters between the Secretary-General and the Security Council in which the mandate of UNOCA was renewed until 31 August 2018. This was an exchange of letters between the Secretary-General and the Security Council in which the mandate of UNOCA was renewed until 31 August 2018. This was a briefing on UNOCA and the Secretary-Generals report. This was a press release announcing the addition of the LRA and Joseph Kony to the CAR sanctions list.
ASIA

UNRCCA (Central Asia)

Expected Council Action

In June, the Special Representative and head of the UN Regional Centre for Preventive Diplomacy for Central Asia (UNRCCA), Petko Draganov, is due to brief Council members in consultations on the work of the centre.

Key Recent Developments

In the period since his last briefing to the Council on 4 February, Draganov visited Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan. He was in Kyrgyzstan from 22 to 24 March, where he met the president, Almazbek Atambaev, the speaker of parliament, Asylbek Jeenbekov, and the foreign minister, Erlan Abdyldaev, as well as civil society representatives. Discussions focused on elections, judicial reform, and human rights and inter-ethnic relations, in addition to regional challenges that UNRCCA is mandated to deal with, such as terrorism, religious extremism, management of natural resources and border-related issues. Draganov praised Kyrgyzstans efforts aimed at democratic development, notably the recently held parliamentary elections, while stressing the need to further promote and protect human rights. (The OESC electoral observer mission for the 5 October 2015 parliamentary elections concluded that they were competitive and provided voters with a wide range of choice and were unique in the region. Local elections will be held later this year while presidential elections are scheduled for 2017.)

During his visit to Afghanistan, which took place from 19 to 21 April, Draganov had meetings with the deputy foreign minister, Hekmat Khalil Karzai, senior officials from the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan and the UN Office for Drugs and Crime, as well as ambassadors from Central Asia and other key countries. Discussions focused on current developments in Afghanistan and the region, regional cooperation and the engagement of Central Asian countries in the stabilisation of Afghanistan. Joint efforts to counter security threats and support human development were also discussed.

The main event hosted by UNRCCA during the period was a regional seminar held on 29-31 March, in Almaty, Kazakhstan, entitled Recognizing and Responding to Radicalization that Can Lead to Violent Extremism and Terrorism in Central Asia. The seminar, which was co-organised with the UN Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force (CTITF), aimed to support implementation of the joint plan of action for Central Asia under the UN global counter-terrorism strategy. It aimed to help participants gain a better understanding of the causes of radicalisation and develop strategies to more effectively prevent and combat this growing threat.

UNRCCA also hosted a regular meeting in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, on 25 April of the mini-Dublin group, an informal coordination group of like-minded countries focused on the fight against illicit drugs. The meeting was attended by representatives of Turkmenistan law enforcement agencies, embassies and international organisations based in Ashgabat. Participants shared information about their activities related to the fight against illicit drugs in order to better coordinate their efforts.

In other developments, there was heightened tension between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan over a disputed border area between the two countries. On 18 March, according to news reports, two Uzbek armored personnel carriers and some 40 soldiers suddenly appeared near the area, prompting Kyrgyzstan to send two of its own armored personnel carriers and a similar number of troops the following day. Kyrgyz officials said the deployment by Uzbekistan was a violation of bilateral agreements between Bishkek and Tashkent not to militarise a tense situation along their common border. The standoff ended on 26 March with the two sides pulling back. The majority of the 1,314-kilometer-long Uzbek-Kyrgyz border is still undefined, and conflicts on and near border crossings in recent years have often been violent and led to civilian casualties.

Key Issues

Key issues include the rising threat of terrorism and extremism, ongoing tensions linked to border-related disputes, trans-boundary water management and drug trafficking. The regional impact of the situation in Afghanistan also remains a key issue, with recent reports of increased fighting along the Turkmen-Afghan border and Tajikistan taking steps to bolster its forces along the Afghan border due to the deteriorating security situation in northern Afghanistan.

With regard to UNRCCA, a key issue is whether UNRCCAs role as a tool for preventive diplomacy could be further developed.

Options

One option for Council members is to issue a press statement, as they have done in the past, reaffirming the importance of conflict prevention, expressing support for UNRCCAs activities in the region and reiterating other key elements from previous statements, such as highlighting the centres role relating to regional trans-boundary water management, counter-terrorism, drug trafficking and regional engagement with Afghanistan.

Another option is to change the format of the briefing from a closed to an open meeting, perhaps followed by consultations, as is the case for the semi-annual briefings by the UN Office for West Africa and the UN Regional Office for Central Africa.

Council Dynamics

Since the establishment of UNRCCA in 2007, the semi-annual briefings on its work have normally been welcomed by Council members in a press statement commending the important role played by the centre as a conflict prevention tool, with Russia as the penholder. Following the last two briefings, however, in September 2015 and February 2016, Council members were unable to agree on a statement although they are generally supportive of the centre and agree that it plays a useful role.

It seems that in both cases the lack of consensus was mostly due to the fact that Russia proposed new language relating to UNRCCAs cooperation with regional organisations. While recent statements simply encouraged increased cooperation and coordination between the Central Asian countries, UNRCCA and relevant regional organizations to strengthen the regions capacity to overcome challenges to peace, stability and sustainable development, Russia proposed adding specific references in this context to the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), OSCE and the EU. This was unacceptable to some other members, however, in particular France, the UK and the US, who saw it as an attempt by Russia to gain greater legitimacy through the UN for organisations they perceive as tools for spreading Russian influence in the region, notably CIS, CSTO and SCO. They, therefore, asked Russia to instead use agreed language from previous statements referring to cooperation with regional organisations more generally. Other members, however, were more flexible. At press time, it was unclear whether Russia intended to propose a press statement following the briefing in June.

UN Documents

was the most recent press statement on UNRCCA. was a letter from the Council President to the Secretary-General taking note of his intention to establish UNRCCA. was a letter from the Secretary-General to the Council concerning the establishment of UNRCCA.
THEMATIC ISSUES

Women, Peace and Security

Expected Council Action

In early June, the Secretary-General and Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict Zainab Bangura will brief the Council on the annual report on conflict-related sexual violence. At press time, no outcome was planned.

In addition, Maria Grazia Giammarinaro, the Human Rights Councils Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children, will address the Council. Fatima Ahmed, who heads the organisation Zenab Women in Development in Sudan, will be the civil society briefer on behalf of the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security.

Key Recent Developments

The Secretary-Generals 2015 report emphasises that conflict resolution and counter-terrorism strategies cannot be separated from efforts to protect and empower women and girls. Conflict-related sexual violence occurs in situations where there is also systemic gender-based discrimination, such as the exclusion of women from political life, economic marginalisation and discriminatory systems of both formal and informal law. Furthermore, survivors of sexual violence often face double victimisation through intimidation against reporting, including accusations of adultery, honour, or morality crimes, as a result of reporting to unresponsive or predatory security officials, faced with reporting to the national forces that perpetrated the sexual violence or through forced marriage to the perpetrator as a form of traditional settlement. The report also underlines the Councils recognition of sexual violence as a tactic of war in resolution 1820 and as a tactic of terrorism in resolution 2242.

The report focuses on sexual violence in the contexts of: violent extremism and terrorism; state forces or government-aligned militias participating in targeted sexual assaults based on actual or perceived political affiliation; and lax command and control with impunity for the perpetrators compounded by victims lack of confidence in the justice sector.

The report details how sexual violence is used to achieve tactical objectives, such as terrorising communities into compliance, mass displacement of populations from strategic areas and, in the case of Boko Haram and ISIL, generating revenue through trafficking, slave trade and ransoms. The report also highlights the vulnerability of displaced or refugee women and girls to sexual exploitation, such as human trafficking, early marriage and forced marriage.

The focus on trafficking and the slave trade is deepened in this years report with analysis of how the commodification of women and girls has become part of the political economy of war, in both the recruitment of fighters and financing of ongoing conflict. This phenomenon was initially addressed by the Council in a December 2015 briefing and adoption of a presidential statement.

This is the first year that the conflict-related sexual violence report is inclusive of sexual exploitation and abuse perpetrated by UN peacekeepers. In the past, it has been argued that this was a conduct and discipline issue and therefore outside the mandate of the Office of the Special Representative. However, the inclusion of this issue in the 2015 report is a result of what is now considered an essential response to the serious allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse in the Central African Republic (CAR) by MINUSCA personnel and French parallel forces, as well as an overall environment in the CAR that has resulted in women and girls being extremely vulnerable to ever-increasing incidents of human trafficking, sexual violence and transactional sex. While this issue has received public attention because of the prevalence of sexual exploitation and abuse in the CAR, it is a pervasive issue in many peace operations involving both civilian and military staff.

In other developments, the 2242 Informal Experts Group on women, peace and security discussed many of the issues raised by the 2015 conflict-related sexual violence report in its February meeting on Mali and its April meeting on Iraq, and is likely to do so in its forthcoming June meeting on the CAR.

The Secretary-Generals Report

The report provides information in three categories:

Sexual violence in conflict-affected settings: Afghanistan, the CAR, Colombia, the DRC, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Myanmar, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan/Darfur, Syria and Yemen; Sexual violence in post-conflict situations: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cote dIvoire, Nepal and Sri Lanka; and Other situations of concern: Burundi and Nigeria.

In 2015, Burundi was added to the report as a new situation while Liberia was removed.

Since 2012, these reports have also included an annex listing parties credibly suspected of committing or being responsible for rape and other forms of sexual violence in situations of armed conflict on the Councils agenda. Other than the addition of Sudan to the 2015 annex, the mix of parties remained relatively unchanged with Boko Haram and other state and non-state actors listed in the CAR, Cote dIvoire, DRC, Iraq, Mali, Somalia, South Sudan and Syria.

Key Issues

A key issue for the open debate will be how to deal with extremist groups such as Boko Haram and ISIL, which do not operate in just one country, are difficult to approach and are unlikely to respond to the usual forms of pressure. Another issue will be how to deal with state actors who have also not responded to the usual forms of pressure, such as Burundi, Sudan and Syria.

Related issues include:

ensuring the women, peace and security agenda is integrated into the Councils thematic work on counter-terrorism and country-specific situations where these groups operate;

ensuring that counterinsurgency efforts against extremist groups do not exacerbate the vulnerabilities that women and girls face, such as in Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia and Syria; and

not losing sight of the fact that in many situations where sexual violence occurs, governments are a primary driver of conflict in their own territory, such as in Syria and Sudan.

A continuing issue is the reluctance of Council members to use sanctions to pressure many of the groups listed in the Secretary-Generals annex, in particular to address trafficking in relation to sexual violence.

A further issue is the reluctance of the Council to give due consideration to UN-identified risk factors of sexual violence as an early warning indicator that could enable the Council to better fulfil its conflict prevention role, as in the case with Burundi.

Other issues are how the Council can encourage the UN system and member states:

to better implement the zero-tolerance policy on sexual exploitation and abuse in UN peace operations; and

to develop and implement a gender-sensitive humanitarian response to the needs of displaced women and girls.

Options

An option for the Council regarding perpetrators includes directing relevant sanctions committeesincluding the 1267/1989/2253 Al-Qaida and ISIL Sanctions Committeeto engage with the Special Representative and consider whether parties in the annex should be subject to existing sanctions or whether designation criteria should be expanded to include sexual violence and human trafficking. Another option is ensuring the inclusion of gender expertise in expert groups that report to relevant Security Council sanctions committees.

Options for the Council to integrate sexual violence concerns into its country-specific workespecially when renewing or establishing peace operationsinclude:

ensuring that a gender lens is applied in processes devoted to disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration, security sector reform and justice reform;

ensuring the deployment of gender expertise in missions, both gender advisers and womens protection advisers; and

calling for the inclusion of sexual violence concerns in mediation and peace processes, particularly in the context of security arrangements and transitional justice mechanisms.

Options for the Council on sexual exploitation and abuse include:

adopting a statement or resolution that endorses the Secretary-Generals recommendation to not allow national forces listed in the annex of the conflict-related sexual violence report to be police or troop contributors to UN peace operations; and

continuing to publicly support the Secretary-General if there is a decision to repatriate a particular military unit or formed police unit of a contingent when there is credible evidence of widespread or systemic sexual exploitation and abuse by that unit, as endorsed in resolution 2272.

Council Dynamics

Between 2013 and 2015, the Council did not adopt a resolution on women, peace and security, leaving dynamics on this issue largely untested for two years. However, familiar divisions quickly re-emerged during negotiations of resolution 2242 in October 2015, particularly around operational language related to the convening of an informal expert group of Council members on women, peace and security; improving how this thematic agenda is incorporated into the Councils sanctions regimes; language describing an improved gender architecture in the UN system; and how the women, peace and security agenda should be integrated into strategies to counter violent extremism and terrorism.

In subsequent negotiations on Council outcomes on human trafficking and sexual exploitation and abuse, similar issues emerged with China and Russia, and in some instances Egypt. They resisted many elements that they interpreted as an expansion of the women, peace and security agenda or perceived as infringing on state sovereignty or the competencies of other parts of the UN system.

At press time, Council members were negotiating a presidential statement on womens role in conflict prevention in Africa, largely based on previously agreed language. Nevertheless, negotiations were difficult, in particular in relation to early warning indicators that could enhance the Councils conflict prevention role, strengthening linkages between the women, peace and security and counter-terrorism agendas, and language regarding gender perspectives in mediation and peace operations.

The UK is the penholder on women, peace and security in the Council. The US is the penholder on sexual violence issues. Spain and the UK co-chair the 2242 Informal Experts Group on women, peace and security.

UN Documents

The was a resolution that addressed womens roles in countering violent extremism and terrorism, improving the Councils own working methods in relation to women, peace and security and taking up gender recommendations made by the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations and the Global Study. This was the resolution on women, peace and security, in particular expressing the Councils willingness to incorporate a gender perspective into peacekeeping missions, calling on all parties to protect women and girls from gender-based violence and to put an end to impunity for such crimes. This was a presidential statement on trafficking in persons in situations of conflict, with a particular focus on ISIS and the impact on women and children. This was a briefing on the trafficking of persons in situations of conflict, with a particular focus on ISIS. This was the annual open debate on women, peace and security. This was the annual open debate on women and peace and security. This was a briefing by Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict Zainab Bangura ahead of the annual open debate on the annual report on conflict-related sexual violence. This was the annual report on conflict-related sexual violence for 2015. This was the annual report on women, peace and security that included recommendations from the Global Study on implementation of resolution 1325.
MIDDLE EAST

Yemen

Expected Council Action

In June, the Secretary-Generals Special Envoy for Yemen, Ismael Ould Cheikh Ahmed, is expected to brief the Council.

Key Recent Developments

Yemen has seen a lull in fighting over the last two months amidst ongoing peace talks being held in Kuwait, which at press time had entered their fifth week. In the lead-up to the new round, Yemen President Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi dismissed Vice President and Prime Minister Khaled Bahah on 3 April. In his place, Hadi named General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar as Vice President and Ahmed bin Dagher as Prime Minister. Bahah decried the move as unconstitutional on the grounds that the government must be approved by the parliament.

On 10 April, a cessation of hostilities commenced in advance of the new round of peace talks between the Yemen government and Houthi rebels and their allies in the General Peoples Congress (GPC). However, talks did not start as scheduled on 18 April. The Houthi and GPC delegation remained in Sanaa, citing heavy fighting and airstrikes by the Saudi Arabia-led coalition. Following assurances from Kuwait and Oman that the cessation of hostilities would be respected, the Houthi/GPC delegation arrived in Kuwait on 21 April. That evening the opening ceremony for the new round was held.

The talks have been focused around five areaswithdrawal of militias and armed groups, handover of heavy weapons to the state, interim security arrangements, restoration of state institutions and the resumption of inclusive political dialogue, and how to deal with prisoners and detaineeswith three working groups created to address these issues. Separately, a De-escalation and Coordination Committee has been constituted and is made up of representatives from both sides to address reported violations of the cessation of hostilities. On 15 May, the Special Envoy said that an agreement had been reached in principle to free half of all prisoners and detainees before the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in the first week of June. Fundamental differences between the sides seem to exist over transitional governing arrangements and the timing of armed groups withdrawals and disarmament.

The government twice suspended its participation in the talks. First, it suspended its participation from 1 to 4 May, claiming the Houthis violated the cessation of hostilities by seizing a base in Amran governorate from a military unit that had remained neutral in the conflict. It did so a second time on 17 May. At a news conference on 18 May, Foreign Minister Abdul-Malik al-Mekhlafi said that the decision to suspend the governments participation was due to the Houthis unwillingness to recognise the legitimacy of President Hadi, and he objected to the groups seeking a power-sharing arrangement. We will not return until we get a letter from them that commits them to the U.N. Security Council resolutions, the Gulf [Cooperation Council] initiative and the outcome of the [national] dialogue, Al-Mekhlafi said. The issue of legitimacy is not subject to discussion.

According to a UN press release, during a 21 May meeting with the Amir of Qatar Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani and Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon in Doha, Hadi confirmed that the government delegation would return to the talks as requested by the Amir and the Secretary-General.

During the cessation of hostilities, the Saudi-led coalition and Yemen government turned their attention to Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Yemeni and coalition forces took back the port city of Mukalla in Hadramawt governorate, which AQAP had held since April 2015, shortly after the start of the Saudi-led intervention. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has since taken responsibility for several deadly attacks in Mukalla. ISIL attacks killed 15 Yemeni soldiers on 12 May. On 15 May, at least 31 people were killed when an ISIL suicide bomber attacked police recruits queuing up outside a police station in Mukalla. On 23 May, ISIL suicide bombers killed at least 40 army recruits at a base in Aden, which has suffered from insecurity since Yemen government and coalition forces took back the city from the Houthis last July.

Yemen continues to endure a severe humanitarian crisis. According to OCHA Operations Director John Ging, speaking at a 17 May press conference following a recent trip to Yemen, 10 million people require basic healthcare support and 7.6 million are severely food insecure, a classification that is one step below a famine situation. Moreover, the $1.8 million humanitarian response plan for Yemen was only 16 percent funded. The cessation of hostilities and the de-escalation of fighting have had the positive effect of stemming civilian casualties.

On 2 May, the UN Verification and Inspection Mechanism (UNVIM) finally became operational. Efforts to create the UNVIM had been underway since June 2015 in order to improve commercial goods imports to Yemen, such as food and fuel. These had significantly declined, due in large part to restrictions on shipping imposed by the Saudi-led coalition, which it says were meant to enforce the arms embargo established in resolution 2216 against the Houthis and forces loyal to former President Ali Abudallah Saleh. The UNVIM has responsibility for reviewing the manifests of commercial ships and approving shipments within 48 hours to proceed to Yemeni ports not under the governments control or flagging a cargo for inspection.

A worrying development for the Yemen economy and the populations ability to purchase essential goods was the sudden devaluation of Yemens currency in mid-May. The government announced that the Central Bank was close to depleting all of its reserves. Ensuring the Central Banks continued functioning and reactivating the Social Welfare Fund has been one of the considerations in peace talks.

The Council reacted to ongoing developments in the political process by adopting a presidential statement on 25 April, welcoming the start of peace talks in Kuwait. The Council called on the parties to develop a roadmap for implementing interim security arrangements, withdrawals, the handover of heavy weapons, restoring state institutions and resuming political dialogue. In a 24 May letter, the Secretary-General sent the Council a plan on how the Special Envoys Office could further support the parties, as requested in the April statement. The Secretary-General proposed significantly expanding the office in order to provide greater support to the negotiations, the De-escalation and Coordination Committee and the implementation of any agreements emerging from peace talks such as disarmament or other security sector issues. On 25 May, Ould Cheikh Ahmed briefed Council members in consultations, providing an update on the talks in order for them to further consider the Secretary-Generals proposals. In a 26 May letter to the Secretary-General, the Council took note of his proposals for the Special Envoys Office. OCHA head Stephen OBrien briefed on the humanitarian situation via video-teleconference in consultations on 27 May.

Key Issues

Advancing peace talks, including in such areas as transitional governing arrangements and withdrawals and disarmament, and how the Council can support this process remain key issues.

A related issue is how to address the increasing perception of the obstructionist role of Hadi towards the talks. Hadi was elected in 2012 on a single candidate ballot to initially serve a two-year term as transitional president, and could probably not be part of a new consensus government.

Addressing Yemens humanitarian crisis continues to be critical. Ensuring the UNVIMs effectiveness is a related issue.

The threat posed by AQAP and ISIL amidst the security vacuum created by the war remains a key concern.

Options

One option is for the Council to monitor developments in peace talks and adopt an outcome supporting new agreements emerging from the talks.

If current political initiatives do not produce results, the humanitarian situation does not improve, or if heavy fighting resumes, then the Council could return to its consideration of a humanitarian resolution. Elements for a resolution were proposed by New Zealand in the beginning of March, and such a resolution could, inter alia, call on all parties to allow unhindered humanitarian access and ensure the safety of humanitarian personnel, urge parties to cooperate fully with the UNVIM and demand that they adhere to international human rights and international humanitarian law, including taking all precautions to avoid civilian casualties.

An option for the 2140 Yemen Sanctions Committee is to seek regular briefings from OCHA on the operations of the UNVIM to monitor its proper functioning.

Council and Wider Dynamics

Council members agree that the conflict can only be solved through political negotiations. They also share concerns over the humanitarian crisis and the need for the parties to do more to uphold international humanitarian law and protect civilians. The close relations of many members, particularly the P3 and Egypt, with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries has restrained the Councils ability over the past year to address these issues more forcefully. In general, since adopting resolution 2216, the Council has relied on the Special Envoys mediation efforts, with members hoping for progress on a political process that the Council can then support. Members agreed to put on hold consideration of a politically sensitive humanitarian resolution (opposed by Saudi Arabia) as prospects emerged to organise new talks.

During the current round of talks, the Group of 18 Ambassadors to Yemen, which includes the P5 and Council members Egypt and Japan as well as Gulf countries, has been united on the need for the two sides to remain in the negotiations. Kuwait, as host of the talks, has been playing a particularly active role in pressuring the parties to remain engaged.

During the most recent consultations with the Special Envoy, members supported the Secretary-Generals proposals to expand the Office of the Special Envoy, as formally conveyed in a 26 May letter to Secretary-General.

UN DOCUMENTS ON YEMEN

This resolution renewed the Yemen sanctions measures until 26 February 2017, and the mandate of the Panel of Experts until 27 March 2017. This resolution demanded the Houthis to withdraw from all seized areas and to relinquish all seized arms, and established an arms embargo on the Houthis and forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. This presidential statement welcomed the launch of peace talks that started on 21 April 2016 in Kuwait and requested the Secretary-General to provide a plan on how the Special Envoys office can further support the Yemeni parties. This was a letter from the Secretary-General to the Council outlining his plan to strengthen the Office of the Special Envoy. This was the Council letter taking note of the Secretary-Generals proposals to strengthen the Special Envoys Office in support of the Yemeni parties and peace process. This was a briefing on Yemen by Special Envoy Ismael Ould Cheikh Ahmed and deputy head of OCHA Kyung-wha Kang.
Press Release

May 31, 2016 SPONSORSHIP SPEECH OF SENATOR AQUILINO "KOKO" PIMENTEL III ON THE REPORT OF THE JOINT COMMITTEE AND RESOLUTION

OF BOTH HOUSES NO. 1 APPROVING THE REPORT OF THE JOINT COMMITTEE, DECLARING THE RESULTS OF THE NATIONAL ELECTIONS HELD ON MAY 9, 2016, FOR THE OFFICES OF PRESIDENT AND VICE PRESIDENT, AND PROCLAIMING THE DULY ELECTED PRESIDENT AND VICE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES Mr. Senate President and Mr. Speaker of the House, as co-Chairperson of the Joint Committee together with Congressman Neptali "Boyet" Gonzales II that served as the National Board of Canvassers, I respectfully submit for consideration by this august Chamber in Joint Public Session the Report of the Joint Committee on the Canvass of Votes for the President and Vice President; as well as the Resolution of Both Houses No. 1 approving the Report of the Joint Committee, declaring the results of the National Elections held on May 9, 2016, for the Offices of President and Vice President, and proclaiming the duly elected President and Vice President of the Republic of the Philippines. For the efficient and expeditious canvassing of 167 Certificates of Canvass (CoCs) at record speed of three (3) days, I would like to thank the following: My co-Chairman from the House of Representatives, Congressman Neptali M. Gonzales II and the Members and Alternates of the Senate and House Panels, namely: On the part of the Senate: Sen. Juan Edgardo Angara;

Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile;

Sen. Teofisto Guingona III;

Sen. Sergio Osmena;

Sen. Ralph Recto;

Sen. Vicente Sotto III; and

Senators Cynthia Villar and Joseph Victor "JV" Ejercito as alternates. On the part of the House of Representatives: Rep. Neptali Gonzales II, Chairman;

Rep. Elpidio Barzaga, Jr.;

Rep. Silvestre Bello III;

Rep. Fredenil Castro;

Rep. Romero Federico Quimbo;

Rep. Rufus Rodriguez;

Rep. Reynaldo Umali; and

Representatives Ronaldo Zamora, Rolando Andaya, Ibarra Gutierrez, and Oscar Rodriguez as alternates. Senate Secretary Oscar G. Yabes and Secretary General of the House of Representatives Marilyn Barua-Yap, the staff of the Joint Secretariat, the lawyers of the candidates, and the following Commission on Elections (Comelec) officials: 1. Hon. Christian Robert S. Lim,

Commissioner Chairman of the Steering Committee and Head of the Project Monitoring Office 2. Hon. Arthur D. Lim,

Commissioner Chairman of the Office of Overseas Voting 3. Atty. Jose M. Tolentino Jr.,

Executive Director 4. Atty. Bartolome J. Sinocruz Jr.

Deputy Executive Director for Operations 5. Atty. Teofisto E. Elnas Jr.

Director for Election and Barangay Affairs Department 6. Atty. Consuelo B. Diola

Secretary of the Commission 7. Atty. Divine Blas Perez

Office of Overseas Voting 8. Atty. Dino Maglasang

Office of Overseas Voting 9. Acting Director Maria Juana S. Valeza

Office of Overseas Voting 10. Mr. Alvin C. Genota

Information Technology Officer/NBOC-CCS Operator We also have to thank the Chairpersons from the Board of Canvassers for Laguna, Ilocos Sur, Davao del Norte, Antique, Iloilo City, Lanao del Sur, and Northern Samar, for travelling all the way from their respective provinces and cities to attend the canvassing in order to explain what occurred in their respective jurisdictions. Also, we have to thank the distinguished members of both chambers, for their cooperation and great help, and lastly, we thank Senate President Franklin M. Drilon and House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte, Jr. for entrusting to us, the members of the Joint Committee, this important and significant task of canvassing the votes for President and Vice President. After the approval of the Rules of the Joint Public Session of Congress for the Canvassing of the Votes for the Presidential and Vice Presidential Candidates in the May 9, 2106 Elections on May 24, 2016, and thereafter the constitution of the Joint Committee with the designation of its Chairmen, Members, and Alternates for both Senate and House panels in accordance with Rule VI, Section 9 of the Rules, your Joint Committee began its work on the very next day, May 25, 2016. In accordance with the Rules, we proceeded to consider first the electronically transmitted Certificates of Canvass (CoC) in the order that they arrived in the Consolidation and Canvassing System (CCS). There were one hundred twenty three (123) CoCs received in the CCS. Pursuant to the Rules, the electronically transmitted CoCs were generated and printed from the CCS and these were compared with the CoCs physically delivered to the Senate. If there was no discrepancy between the votes for President and Vice-President for any candidate in the electronically transmitted CoC and in the physically delivered CoC, the electronically transmitted CoC was admitted to the canvass. First Day (May 25, 2016) On the first day of canvassing, the Joint Committee considered forty-eight (48) CoCs from twenty-three (23) provinces, fifteen (15) cities, one (1) district, and nine (9) countries. The very first CoC to be considered came from Davao del Sur and when the CCS was opened, it was discovered that there were five (5) electronically transmitted CoCs. However, four (4) of the five (5) CoCs generated from the CCS were identical to one another and the votes for President and Vice President therein matched the number of votes in the physically delivered CoC. Only the first electronically transmitted CoC had figures different from the rest of the CoCs and the numbers contained therein were significantly less than the figures in the other electronically transmitted CoCs. It appeared that the figures contained in the first electronically transmitted CoC came from the pre-logic and accuracy tests (pre-LAT), which had been conducted before voting occurred on May 9, 2016. After the lawyers were given the opportunity to make observations and objections, and none of them expressed opposition to the canvass of any one of the electronically transmitted CoCs, which matched the physically delivered CoC, the second electronically transmitted CoC for Davao del Sur was admitted to the canvass. For overseas absentee voting, two (2) countries, namely Malaysia and the Kingdom of Bahrain, had electronically transmitted CoCs from the CCS but no corresponding CoCs physically delivered to us. There was actually a special diplomatic electoral pouch delivered from the Kingdom of Bahrain but when the package was opened, it was discovered to contain only a Vote Counting Machine (VCM) and ballots in a plastic box but no CoC. Nevertheless, because of the lack of objection or opposition from the lawyers of the candidates, and seeing nothing to alarm us, the electronically transmitted CoCs for Malaysia and the Kingdom of Bahrain were admitted to the canvass. At the end of the first day, forty-five (45) CoCs were admitted to the canvass from twenty (20) provinces, fifteen (15) cities, one (1) district and nine (9) countries. Canvassing of three (3) CoCs from Laguna, Ilocos Sur, and Davao del Norte were suspended because there were discrepancies between the multiple copies of the electronically transmitted CoCs and the physically delivered CoCs as to the number of votes for President and Vice President. The Chairpersons of the Provincial Boards of Canvassers of these provinces were summoned through the Comelec to come to the Plenary Hall of the House of Representatives the next day to explain the discrepancies. The Comelec was also directed to give an explanation as to the reasons for the delay in the physical delivery of the CoCs from Malaysia and the Kingdom of Bahrain. Second Day (May 26, 2016) On the second day, the Joint Committee considered seventy-three (73) CoCs from fifty-five (55) provinces, nine (9) cities, and eight (8) countries. The Joint Committee resumed consideration of the suspended CoCs from the provinces of Laguna, Ilocos Sur, and Davao del Norte. The CoCs for these provinces were included in the canvass after the explanations given by the Chairpersons of the Board of Canvassers; Atty. Gloria Ramos Petallo for Laguna, Atty. Rhodora Arrocena for Ilocos Sur, and Atty. Jennifer Ponpon-Ancla for Davao del Norte. Their explanations were accepted. For Laguna, it was the manually prepared and physically delivered CoC which was admitted to the canvass after it had been established that the electronically transmitted CoC for Laguna included the pre-LAT results for the municipality of Rizal and that the provincial CoC with the corrected results could no longer be transmitted to Congress' CCS after the CCS assigned to the province no longer functioned. For Ilocos Sur, the electronically transmitted CoC which included the correct results for the municipality of San Ildefonso signed by Atty. Arrocena, which matched the correct physically delivered CoC was canvassed. For Davao del Norte, the electronically transmitted CoC which included the correct results for the municipality of Asuncion signed by Atty. Ancla which matched the physically delivered CoC was canvassed. There were two (2) electronically transmitted CoCs and two (2) physically delivered CoCs for the province of Bohol. The initial electronically transmitted and physically delivered CoCs included the votes of the municipality of Baclayon with the pre-LAT results. Thus, the subsequent electronically transmitted CoC with the correct results for the municipality of Baclayon, which matched the subsequently physically delivered CoC with the correct results for Baclayon was admitted to the canvass. For the province of Southern Leyte, the first one of the three (3) electronically transmitted CoCs did not match the votes in the physically delivered CoCs for President and Vice President. This was due to the fact that the initial electronic transmissions of the CoCs for these provinces included the pre-LAT results of the municipalities of Hinundayan and Silgo. Since the two (2) subsequent electronically transmitted CoCs matched the physically delivered CoC for Southern Leyte, the second electronically transmitted CoC was the one included in the canvass. For Nueva Ecija, there were three (3) electronically transmitted CoCs and two (2) physically delivered CoCs. The initial electronically transmitted CoC and physically delivered CoCs included the pre-LAT results for the municipality of Llanera. Thus, the subsequent electronically transmitted CoC for Nueva Ecija with the correct results for the municipality of Llanera, which matched the subsequent delivered CoC with correct results for Llanera, was admitted to the canvass. At the end of the second day, sixty-nine (69) CoCs had been admitted to the canvass for the day, which came from fifty four (54) provinces, eight (8) cities, and six (6) countries. There were two (2) CoCs from the People's Republic of China, one electronically transmitted with a corresponding physically delivered CoC and a manually prepared and tabulated CoC which reflected the voting in Taiwan which was not able to have automated elections. Canvassing of four (4) CoCs from Antique, Iloilo City, Kuwait, and Canada were suspended. The canvassing of CoCs from Kuwait and Canada was suspended because only electronically transmitted CoCs were available for them since the special diplomatic pouches, which were supposed to contain the CoCs have not yet been delivered to the Senate. Canvassing of the CoC from Antique was suspended because there was a discrepancy between the electronically transmitted CoC and the physically delivered CoC as to the number of votes for President and Vice President. The canvassing of the CoC from Iloilo City was suspended because the CoC could not be located inside the ballot box that was physically delivered to the Senate. The Chairpersons of the Provincial Boards of Canvassers of Antique and Iloilo City were summoned by the Joint Committee through the Comelec to come to the Plenary Hall of the House of Representatives the next day to give their explanations. The Comelec was required by the Joint Committee to give a written explanation as to the reason/s for the delay in the delivery of the CoCs from Kuwait and Canada to the Senate. The Chairpersons of the Provincial Board of Canvassers for Lanao del Sur and Northern Samar were also summoned by the Joint Committee, through the Comelec, in anticipation of problems that may be encountered in the canvass of these two (2) areas based on the report given by the Comelec. By the end of the second day, the Joint Committee had cumulatively canvassed a total of one hundred fourteen (114) CoCs. Third Day (May 27, 2016) On the third day, the Joint Committee canvassed fifty-three (53) CoCs from seven (7) provinces, one (1) city, one (1) from local absentee voting, one (1) from detainee voting, and forty-three (43) countries. The Joint Committee resumed consideration of the suspended CoCs from the province of Antique, from Kuwait, and the City of Iloilo. For Antique, the Chairman of the Provincial Board of Canvassers, Atty. Jessie B. Suarez, explained that the figures in the physically delivered CoC were higher than the figures in the electronically transmitted CoC because the former contained the votes of two (2) clustered precincts in the municipalities of Anini-y and San Remigio which conducted special elections on May 16, 2016 and for the reason of the special elections was the shortage of official ballots for said precincts on May 9, 2016. After the explanation and there being no objection or opposition from the counsels of the candidates, the manually prepared and physically delivered CoC from Antique was admitted to the canvass. The CoC from Kuwait was canvassed after it was manifested that the special diplomatic electoral pouch from Kuwait had been delivered earlier by the representative of the Comelec and it was compared and found to match the electronically transmitted CoC from the CCS. The CoC for Iloilo City was immediately canvassed after the Chairman of the City Board of Canvassers, Atty. Joemar Alizar Betita, was able to locate the physically delivered CoC among the documents contained in the ballot box for Iloilo City and it was shown that the figures in the said CoC matched those of its counterpart electronically transmitted CoC. For the province of Lanao del Sur, the figures contained in the electronically transmitted CoC matched the figures in the physically delivered CoC. However, there was a notation in the physically delivered CoC that the canvass for the clustered precinct in Masiu were not included in the canvass. Atty. Roberto dela Pena, Chairperson of the PBOC was summoned and he explained that 279 ballots in one precinct in Masiu were not accepted by the VCM which had broken down and as such, the canvass of the municipality of Masiu was incomplete. He further manifested that the 279 ballots as well as the VCM are now in the gymnasium of the provincial capitol of Lanao del Sur. After the explanation of Atty. Dela Pena, the electronically transmitted CoC for Lanao del Sur, which matched the physically delivered CoC was admitted to the canvass. After all the electronically transmitted CoCs were canvassed with the exception of CoCs from Canada and Northern Samar, which were temporarily suspended pending the arrival of the pouch from Canada and the Chairperson of the PBOC of Northern Samar, the Joint Committee considered the canvass of forty three (43) physically delivered CoCs without corresponding electronically transmitted CoCs. Of these 43 CoCs, forty-two (42) were manually prepared and one (1) was electronically prepared but by force of circumstances, only physically delivered and not electronically transmitted. Two (2) manually prepared CoCs from local absentee voting and detainee voting came in two (2) ballot boxes. The remaining manually prepared CoCs came in special diplomatic electoral pouches of various shapes and sizes from different countries. Upon opening of the manually prepared CoCs, the Joint Committee considered whether the votes in words and in figures matched and whether or not the CoCs were complete and/or had erasures or alterations. If the votes in words and in figures in any CoC matched, and it was complete and had no erasures or questionable alterations the CoC was deemed in order and admitted to the canvass. When the special diplomatic pouch from Austria was opened, it did not contain a CoC, hence, the canvass was suspended. The representative from the Comelec's Office on Overseas Voting, Atty. Maria Juana Valeza, was summoned and requested to give an explanation about the delay in the delivery of the special diplomatic pouch for Canada and the non-inclusion of the CoC in the pouch delivered to the Senate from Austria. Atty. Valeza stated that based on information given her, the CoCs and supporting documents from Canada were only shipped from Canada on May 26, 2016 and would probably arrive in the Philippines in three (3) to five (5) days. However, she had in her possession a certified true copy of the COC from Canada, which the Comelec received through electronic mail or e-mail. Inasmuch as the votes in the electronically transmitted CoC for Canada matched the votes in the certified true copy of the CoC brought by Atty. Valeza, the CoC for Canada was admitted to the canvass. As to the CoC for Austria, Atty. Valeza also manifested that she had with her a certified true copy of the CoC from Austria, which the Comelec had received by electronic mail. During the discussion, it was established that electronic mail is an acceptable means by which the Comelec could receive CoCs and supporting documents relating to votes from overseas absentee voting under Republic Act No. 9189. After the manually prepared CoC of Austria was examined and found to be in order, it was admitted to the canvass. Finally, the electronically transmitted CoC for Northern Samar was compared to its corresponding physically delivered CoC. Although the figures in both CoCs matched, there were handwritten numbers with plus and equal signs in the physically delivered CoC. The Joint Committee took note of a Comelec En Banc resolution, which provided that the votes of one (1) clustered precinct in the municipality of San Francisco Lope de Vega, which had held special elections on May 16, 2016 should be manually added to the votes in the physically delivered CoC. Given the circumstances, the physically delivered CoC for Northern Samar with the manually added votes for one (1) clustered precinct in the municipality of San Francisco Lope de Vega was admitted to the canvass. The matter of the so-called undervotes which counsel of Senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos, Jr., candidate for Vice-President, orally manifested several times during the three (3) days of canvassing was then discussed. It was manifested by Congressman Rufus Rodriguez that a similar matter had been discussed during the canvassing for votes for President and Vice-President in 2010 but the so-called "undervotes" were then called null votes and represented undervotes, overvotes, mis-shades, and no votes recorded as non-votes. At that time, then Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile ruled that such null votes are beyond the jurisdiction of Congress as the National Board of Canvassers for President and Vice President and is properly the subject of an election protest. Thus, Congressman Rodriguez suggested that the Joint Committee follow the precedent established in 2010 and not consider anymore the manifestation about the so-called undervotes. By the end of the third day, the Joint Committee had cumulatively canvassed a total of one hundred sixty seven (167) CoCs, which included the CoCs from eighty-one (81) provinces, twenty-four (24) cities, one (1) district, one (1) local absentee voting, one (1) detainee voting, and fifty-eight (58) countries with one country producing two (2) CoCs and that is China. Of the 167 CoCs canvassed, one hundred (120) CoCs were electronically transmitted through the CCS, forty-six (46) CoCs were manually prepared and physically delivered, and one (1) CoC was electronically tabulated and canvassed but physically delivered because it could not electronically transmitted through the CCS, and that came from Israel. Compared to the canvassing done in 2010, which took a total of nine (9) working days, this time our Joint Committee did the work in ONLY three (3) days, the shortest period of canvassing of votes for President and Vice-President in Philippine history. Thus, we are ready to recommend to the Joint Session today, May 30, 2016, the proclamation of the winning candidates for President and Vice President. The results of the national canvass for the positions of President and Vice President are as follows: For President: 1. Rodrigo R. Duterte - 16,601,997; 2. Manuel A. Roxas III - 9,978,175; 3. Mary Grace Natividad S. Poe - 9,100,991; 4. Jejomar C. Binay - 5,416,140; 5. Miriam P. Defensor-Santiago - 1,455,532; and 6. Roy V. Seneres - 25,779. For Vice President: 1. Maria Leonor G. Robredo - 14,418,817; 2. Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. - 14,155,344; 3. Alan Peter S. Cayetano - 5,903,379; 4. Francis Joseph G. Escudero - 4,931,962; 5. Antonio F. Trillanes IV - 868,501; and 6. Gregorio B. Honasan II - 788,881. The results of the canvass show that RODRIGO "RODY" ROA DUTERTE and MARIA LEONOR "LENI" G. ROBREDO obtained the highest number of votes for President and Vice President, respectively. In view of the foregoing, the Joint Committee recommends that Congress, as the National Board of Canvassers, approves the Report of the Joint Committee and the Resolution of Both Houses of Congress No. 1 declaring the results of the National Elections held on May 9, 2016 for the Office of President and Vice President and proclaiming RODRIGO ROA DUTERTE as the duly elected President and MARIA LEONOR G. ROBREDO as the duly elected Vice President of the Republic of the Philippines.
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More than 1,000 veterans and visitors, including Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, crowded onto the green lawn of the San Francisco National Cemetery at the Presidio on Monday morning to mark the citys 148th Memorial Day observance.

It was a warm, sunny day at the annual event that is billed as one of the largest celebrations of its kind in the nation.

The memorial service is dedicated to our heroes, the ones who didnt make it back, said Nestor Tom, a Vietnam War veteran and member of the ceremonys planning committee.

The event started at 10:30 a.m. with the 191st Army Band leading a parade the short distance from the Presidio Officers Club to the cemetery, where smiling, hugging and sometimes teary-eyed veterans and community members were seated among rows of white tombstones marking the graves of those who had fought for their country.

The formal ceremony began at 11 a.m. with an artillery salute and ran for about 90 minutes.

Special salutes

This years ceremony paid special tribute to veterans of the Korean War, the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War and the 150th anniversary of the creation of the Armys six all-African American units, nicknamed the Buffalo Soldiers.

Wallace Levin, a county veterans service official, led the ceremony and recognized the new Korean War Memorial that will open in the Presidio in August to honor the service and sacrifice of the members of the armed forces who served in the war.

More than 2,000 service members from the Korean War alone were buried in the cemetery, along with roughly 450 members of the Buffalo Soldiers, Levin said.

Were here today for one purpose: to honor and remember the 1 million Americans who gave their lives for their country, Levin said.

The cemetery is a National Historic Landmark and dates back to the 1846 war with Mexico. More than 35,000 veterans and their family members are buried there.

The events featured speaker, retired judge and Korean War veteran Quentin Kopp, saluted the new Korean War Memorial, which is expected to be dedicated this summer at the Presidio. Kopp is president of the Korean War Memorial Foundation.

Kopp, a former San Francisco supervisor and state senator, commended the large crowd present for the ceremony, calling it a direct refutation to the idea that the public has a short memory. He said the new memorial would be one way to keep alive the memory of those who served the country in the Korean War.

Let us resolve to never forget them, Kopp said.

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San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and several supervisors were at the ceremony to pay their respects and talk about the services the city has offered veterans in the past year, including housing in the Presidio and other neighborhoods.

Sanders led a group of veterans into the cemetery but did not make a speech. Officials said the Vermont senator wanted to pay his respects and not turn the service into a political event.

Democracy is not free

Fifty scouts from San Francisco Boy Scout Troop 15 were at the cemetery, handing out flowers to passersby wishing to honor the fallen soldiers buried in the surrounding cemetery.

Ken Chin, the troops scout master, said he got the boys involved to teach them a valuable lesson about the importance of the day.

We want to remind the kids that democracy is not free, Chin said. We always have to defend our country, and thats an important concept for future generations to understand.

Kevin Schultz is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kschultz@sfchronicle.com Twitter: KevinEdSchultz
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Oaklands new motto, Love Life, sprang from good intentions: to glue the city together and counter its reputation as a murder capital.

Instead, it spurred a bitter fight at City Hall, where backers embrace the motto as a soulful tribute to a 16-year-old black homicide victim but others see it as bad branding. Still others say it was imposed by a small group before the broader community could engage in a conversation.

The motto won approval in a 5-3 vote by the City Council on April 5, and it will soon appear on signs and promotional materials throughout Oakland. But while it is meant to elicit good feelings, the debate over its adoption exposed Oaklands racial divide and identity crisis.

In the midst of an economic boom, the city is rapidly becoming gentrified, and its African American population is dwindling. Mayor Libby Schaaf, a homegrown politician who is affluent and white  and not a fan of Love Life  has tried to reimagine Oakland as a technology hub and rolled out her own catchphrases, such as techquity, to describe the city.

The new city motto pays tribute to LoEshe Adanma Lacy, whose first name means Love Life in a Nigerian language. LoEshe was shot to death in 1997 as she sat in a car near MyClymonds High School.

Who gets to brand our city

And while the slogans chief backer, Council President Lynette Gibson McElhaney, who is African American, says Love Life has become a rallying cry for residents whove lost faith in the city, Schaaf and others say that message will be lost on the unassuming passerby.

Love Life without context or story could mean many things  some not at all appropriate as our city's motto, Schaaf wrote in an email to the council, urging them not to adopt the phrase.

Citing advice shed received from the consulting firm Bloomberg Associates, Schaaf said the motto reinforces the very crime issue that its leaders are trying to combat. She pointed out that Love Life could subject the city to trademark lawsuits, because the slogan is already used by several organizations  including antiabortion groups.

Her email prompted jeers at the April 5 public hearing when Councilman Larry Reid, who is black and supported the motto, read it from the dais.

Paul Chinn/The Chronicle

It brings up the issue of who gets to brand our city, and what is our city named for, McElhaney said a week later. Why does Bloomberg get to say what Oakland is?

Love Life arrived with plenty of fanfare. As the public hearing commenced, children from Oaklands Young Gifted and Black ensemble performed a rap song in the well of the chambers. McElhaney waved a blown-up photograph of Torian Hughes, a slain 17-year-old whom she helped raise and considered a grandson. LoEshes father, actor and comedian Donald Lacy, presented a slideshow featuring photographs of his daughter.

Lacy addressed the council pointedly: We can make an example to the world, he said, if five of you will let God touch your heart and do the right thing.

The discussion that followed was at points tearful and quickly devolved into personal attacks.

handout/courtesy of Donald Lacy

I had a lot of people say to me that I cannot vote no on this issue because Im white, said Councilwoman Annie Campbell Washington, who was among the dissenting minority, along with Dan Kalb and Abel Guillen.

Campbell Washington said she was disappointed that an argument over a slogan had come down to a race issue.

But there was little way to divorce race from a phrase thats so entwined with Oaklands identity  and with who gets to lay claim on the city.

Lacy drew the Love Life catchphrase from a foundation hed formed to honor LoEshe.

15-year history of motto

Remembered for her wide smile and bubbly personality, LoEshe was sitting in the backseat of a 1975 Dodge van parked across the street from McClymonds High School when four masked gunmen ran up and sprayed the car with bullets, which police say were probably intended for the driver.

On the night she was killed, I was supposed to do a set at the Improv Comedy Club in Los Angeles, Lacy recalled, a week after the council approved his motto. I walked into the club and my pager went off  it was a 911 page from her mother.

He was devastated.

My career pretty much died a brutal, instant death, he said.

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He first pitched the Love Life slogan in 2000, persuading the City Council to pass a resolution proclaiming Love Life Week. His childhood friend Dwain Butler revived the cause a decade later, showing up at council meetings and urging officials to paint Love Life on all Oakland signs.

Butler recently found an audience with McElhaney. She and Councilwoman Desley Brooks used a special rule to push Love Life to the April 5 meeting, over protest from other council members who asked that the issue be studied further.

To not support Love Life was to show a lack of empathy, Reid and Brooks argued.

I would hope that we would not hide behind process in terms of hearing the communitys concern to lift up love and to lift up life, McElhaney said at the meeting.

Reid told his colleagues that if theyd ever gone out to a homicide scene on the streets of Oakland, theyd support the motto.

I think if you were looking at young people with a yellow canvas over their bodies, their families sitting there for an hour and a half or two hours waiting for the morgue to come by, you would not vote against this, he said.

Since the vote, McElhaney said shes heard positive feedback from Oakland residents of all races  including two white women she ran into at a nail salon on Piedmont Avenue.

Changing signage

In the coming months, Schaaf and other officials will incorporate Love Life into Oaklands marketing. A crop of new signs will cost $21,000, according to a staff report from the city administrator. It will cost $4,600 to put stickers on existing signs.

McElhaney is elated, pondering various ways to convey the message.

How about, Welcome to Oakland  the town that loves life? she offered, a week after the meeting. Or, Welcome to Oakland  the Love Life city?

The council president sighed wistfully. I just really like being known as a city of love, she said.

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan
Housing the homeless will initially cost San Francisco a lot more money as people get the medical care they didnt have on the streets. However, within a few years the higher costs will begin coming down on every front  emergency care visits, behavioral health services, welfare and food stamps  though how far they will fall remains to be seen.

Those are some of the conclusions suggested by a report from the citys budget and legislative analyst being released Tuesday.

The report tracked the cost of providing services to 1,818 homeless adults from 2007-08 to 2014-15 who entered supportive housing between 2010 and 2012. The study analyzed the amount of money the city spent on services for them before they entered supportive housing and in the years after.

It found that after the adults entered housing, the cost of services increased dramatically as they took advantage of medical care they hadnt sought before. For example, there was a 199 percent increase in the costs of emergency care, from $11.3 million to $33.9 million, and an 85 percent increase in the cost for behavioral health services, from $3.1 million to $5.8 million.

After that initial spike, however, the costs declined every year thereafter. The total cost of emergency services dropped to $14 million by 2014-15. The same is true for behavioral health services, which dropped to $3.3 million in 2014-15.

The study did not analyze the costs beyond 2015, but Supervisor Mark Farrell, who requested the report, said the statistics indicate the cost of services will continue to decline every year the people are housed.

It is incredibly expensive for the city of San Francisco to treat our homeless population on the streets, Farrell said. And, first and foremost for their own health, but also for the financial health of our city, it is in the best interest of everyone to get them in some form of housing or services.

The citys homeless problem has become one of the most visible and contentious issues at City Hall. Mayor Ed Lee recently launched a Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing with an annual $160 million budget and nearly 200 employees.

Yet there are competing theories for how the city should invest its resources.

Supervisor David Campos has introduced legislation to require the city to open at least six innovative long-term homeless shelters, known as Navigation Centers. But Lee and some moderate supervisors, including Farrell, oppose the legislation. They believe the city should dedicate its money to opening permanent supportive housing.

The budget and legislative analysts report makes it clear that caring for people even after they are housed isnt cheap.

The citys total services cost  not including housing  was 11 percent higher in 2014-15 compared with 2007-08, before the group of homeless people studied were housed, the report found. The costs shifted the longer people were housed, from emergency care to routine primary care.

Budget and Legislative Analyst Severin Campbell, who helped write the report, said the costs rose because more people were served and they were getting more services. In other words, more people were going to the doctor, getting therapy and accessing public benefits like food stamps.

Our takeaway was that overall the city is going to incur costs, but it was a better form of costs, and what people were getting was a better form of care, Campbell said.

The report doesnt look at the costs accrued by agencies like Public Works and police in dealing with the citys homeless population. The agencies expend a lot of money and manpower breaking down tent camps and cleaning streets.

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Bevan Dufty, Mayor Ed Lees former point person on the citys homeless policy, said the major unanswered question is how much those agencies save by moving homeless people into housing.

This (report) is only one view of the costs, because a lot of the money the city is spending is through street cleaning, courts and police, Dufty said.

Beyond the costs, the report analyzed what percentage of people stayed in supportive housing. Seven percent of the 1,818 homeless adults tracked in the study died. Of those who are still living, roughly half stayed in the housing and half left.

The report doesnt look at the reasons why they left, but Dufty said if residents dont pay rent  usually around 30 to 50 percent of their income  they are forced to leave.

We have strayed far from the citys goal of housing first. Evicting people who are not violent from supportive housing undermines the citys commitment, Dufty said.

Sam Dodge, deputy director of the new Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, said the report provides an important assessment of the costs associated with housing homeless people. But he said looking at the money alone also doesnt tell the whole story.

If we want to follow that economic logic, then the most cost effective thing would be for people to die on the street. And thats not what we want to do, Dodge said. The reason we want to house people is because its not OK to have people living on the streets.

Emily Green is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: egreen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: emilytgreen
Relentlessly upbeat Christine Falvey called last week to say she is leaving her job as spokeswoman for Mayor Ed Lee.

I came here for what was supposed to be a one-year deal, she said, and it turned out to be five years.

Falvey and Lee go way back, all the way to 2003 when Lee was head of the Department of Public Works and appointed her communications director. At the time, The Chronicle was running a feature called Chronicle Watch, which pointed out urban problems in the city and ran a photo of the city official who was responsible for fixing it.

My job was to keep his picture out of Chron Watch, Falvey said.

When Lee was named interim mayor, he asked Falvey to move with him. At the time, Lee said he wouldnt run for mayor, but eventually a grassroots Run Ed, Run campaign sprung up.

Reporters were asking him, Are you going to run? Are you? she said. And I always hoped he would say yes because I knew hed do a good job.

Lee ran, and won, in 2011 and had barely taken office when he became embroiled in controversy. He suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi and charged him with official misconduct when Mirkarimi pleaded guilty to false imprisonment of his wife after charges that he inflicted a bruise on her arm.

The hearing on Mirkarimis suspension became a major story, and Falvey was suddenly dealing with the national media.

That was intense, she said. There was a white-hot spotlight on the mayor. There were literally reporters chasing him down the street with TV cameras.

Falvey says shes taking some time to be home with her husband and two children but predicts shell be back in City Hall at some point. She will be replaced by Deirdre Hussey, a former managing editor at the Examiner and former spokeswoman for Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom. Were predicting that the feisty Hussey will be quite a change for the mayors communications staff.

Data, what a concept: As everyone knows, smash-and-grab thefts are a huge problem in San Francisco. According to end-of-year records from the Police Department, larceny theft from vehicles was up 21 percent in 2015, compared with the previous year.

Although the break-in burglars are still difficult to catch because the crime happens so quickly, the department has begun to use statistics to curb some of the incidents.

As Taraval Station Capt. Denise Flaherty wrote in her community bulletin, her officers are using data from the Crime Analysis Unit, which showed that car burglars keep regular business hours like everyone else.

The data, she said, highlight high-crime areas as well as time of day and day of the week these crimes were occurring. Members of the Patrol Bureau Task Force were dispatched to those areas at the appointed times.

The result? Flaherty says in March her district reported 154 incidents. In April that decreased to 111. And in the first 15 days of May, the agency recorded just 33.

Encouraging, but the bad guys arent stupid. Now, officers say, the smash and grabbers have started to recognize the undercover cars the cops use. Changes will have to be made to their appearance because, as a Taraval officer said, Weve only got so many cars.

Unusual politics as usual: The Jane Kim versus Scott Wiener face-off for state Senate is definitely the race all the local political wonks are watching. Wiener has the early lead in most polls, but Kim is countering with TV ads showing her practicing martial arts and a YouTube video that calls out Wiener for accepting money from Chevron and big landlords.

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Scott Wiener, it says, the corporate candidate.

Wiener denies hes gotten any donations from Chevron.

But why spend the money now, when the June 7 election is only the primary? Kim and Wiener are virtually certain to be the two candidates in the November election.

Insiders say Kim needs to make a reasonable showing in the primary to confirm her viability as a candidate. So while Wiener is holding fire, shes buying TV time because if the primary results are lopsided in his favor, it makes her bid look unlikely.

The smart money is still on Wiener, who has name recognition in his District Eight, which is always a high-turnout district. Wiener is also a famously hardworking campaigner who will leave no hand unshaken.

Hes so driven that one supporter says he worries that Wiener doesnt have time for a personal life.

Sometimes I think the only reason he goes to yoga class is to meet potential voters, he said.

C.W. Nevius is a San Francisco columnist. His columns appear Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Email: cwnevius@sfchronicle.com Twitter: cwnevius
Most ticket holders who pass through the grand doors of the War Memorial Opera House are confident that the performance they are about to see will take their breath away. They are almost never wrong: Attend a show at random and chances are youll hear music so flawless that it sounds utterly effortless.

The experience is different for the musicians in the pit. Patti Niemi, a percussionist in the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, is listening for the kinks in the music  the late note, the botched pause, the accidental extra sound that unglues the harmony of the orchestra. She can hear those mistakes as clearly as the cymbals shes smashing together.

When the performance is over, it wont be long before Niemi is back in a small room, practicing scales and arpeggios, determined to create the perfect sound.

In her new memoir, Sticking It Out (ECW Press; $24.95), Niemi explains that anxiety has always been a silent partner in her musical career. As a child in Rochester, N.Y., she remembers freezing up during class when she was called on to name a musical instrument. As a teenager, at the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan, she lived out a personal nightmare when a conductor called her out in front of her bandmates for a small error.

Interlochen gave Niemi her first glimpse of the rigidly hierarchical world of classical music. Teenagers regularly auditioned for different chairs in the camp orchestra, which meant that every musician had an unofficial numerical rank that became either their badge of pride or shame.

The number was in your head, but you were very aware of it, Niemi said. You cant get much starker than that.

Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle

Tested at Juilliard

When Niemi was accepted to Juilliard in 1983, she stepped into an institution that made no pretense of coddling students. There were no student dorms, academic classes were a joke, practice spaces were scarce, and there were few administrative resources for students to turn to if they were flailing.

There was no nurturing to be done, Niemi said. They didnt hold your hand at all.

That was just fine by Niemi. Despite her anxiety, she appreciated the trial by fire. Without the pressure, how could the school screen out the students who were halfhearted? The ones who couldnt cut it?

This isnt to say that Niemis experience at Juilliard was like a musical version of The Hunger Games. She befriended other students, and when they found the time, they drank beer and behaved like normal college kids. But recreation and fun had a limit; practicing music didnt.

It was pretty much just practice as much as humanly possible, Niemi said. Nothing else mattered nearly as much.

The school demanded perfection from students, and this eventually placed Niemi in a horrible situation. One of her instructors, a longtime teacher at Juilliard she identifies in her book as Richard, began to aggressively sexually harass her. There were no clear-cut channels for reporting this kind of gross misbehavior, and whats more, even if there were, Niemi wasnt sure she could afford to complain.

He could continue to teach me, he could perhaps recommend me for auditions, write a letter of recommendation for certain things  or not, Niemi explained. Even 30 years later, I can look back and say, Would I do something differently? and I still dont know.

Richards inappropriate actions stirred up Niemis anxiety, which was getting worse as she began auditioning for professional orchestras. To cope with her stress, Niemi started taking a beta-blocker called Inderal, which left her body feeling dull but her mind sharp and focused.

Vital training in Miami

In 1988, Niemi won a spot with the New World Symphony  a rare training orchestra that had been created by wunderkind director Michael Tilson Thomas.

Nobody had ever been able to succeed in putting together a training orchestra, Niemi said. It took someone with Michaels vision to make it happen  he had the passion for it.

The symphony housed its young musicians in the Art Deco Plymouth Hotel  a shabby, pink and baby blue roach trap in Miami Beach. This was before the citys South Beach revitalization: Niemis neighbors were drug dealers, prostitutes and cat hoarders. At one point, a dismembered body was found in the Dumpster next door.

Niemi beams as she talks about Miami. For a middle-class teenager from upstate New York, it was a wonderful adventure. The symphony performed with stars such as Gloria Estefan and traveled around the world putting on shows. But above all, it gave Niemi the resources to pursue perfectionism in her music.

We were paid enough to not have to get day jobs somewhere, so our job was to practice, play in the orchestra and get better, Niemi said. What a gift!

Niemi built up confidence in New World, but she still dreaded auditions. After being rejected from two major companies, she made it to the final round of auditions for the Boston Symphony before being passed over again. Niemi, who had practiced 12 hours a day for weeks, was crushed.

The amount of work I had put into that audition was staggering, Niemi said. I didnt feel like it was possible to work any harder for an audition.

But Niemi has an enviable attitude toward failure. Even as she went on Prozac to deal with depression, she felt compelled to continue auditioning. Its a feature of her personality that extends to all her passion projects, including her memoir, which was rejected 75 times before a publisher accepted it.

Im crushed for about one minute, then Id say, What are they telling me? Niemi said. If you view it that way, youre looking at rejection for clues on how to do better.

Never wholly at ease

In 1992, Niemi won a coveted position in the San Francisco Opera Orchestra  an organization she will probably play with for the rest of her professional life. But as a perfectionist, shes never wholly at ease. Niemis anxiety is still a nagging voice in her head, and shes made peace with the fact that no amount of accolades or praise can soften its tone.

The best thing for me to remember is that being a perfectionist doesnt mean youre perfect, because then it might be worth it, Niemi said. It just means that youre a little crazier and a lot more anxious, and you dont live up to your own expectations.

Eli Wolfe is a Bay Area freelance writer.
An unknown assailant broke into an FBI agents vehicle in San Francisco, stealing a gun along with the agents badge, city police officials said.

The FBI agent reported that his vehicle had been broken into around 12:30 p.m. Sunday at the corner of Hayes and Pierce streets in Alamo Square, just 1 blocks away from the citys famous Painted Ladies, said Officer Carlos Manfredi, a spokesman for the San Francisco Police Department.
Gov. Jerry Brown did the right thing last year when he signed SB319, a measure designed to reduce the overmedication of Californias foster children. The new law gave public health nurses more responsibility to oversee the health of children who are prescribed psychotropic drugs, which have potentially severe health effects.

Unfortunately, the governor forgot to include the funding.

Its an understandable oversight for our famously frugal governor. But its a problem that needs to be corrected in this years budget negotiations between him and the Legislature. The budget request is a relatively small amount  just $1.6 million  and it would come with triple that much in matching federal funds.

The total  more than $6 million  would allow California to hire 42 additional public health nurses to properly monitor the health of the states most vulnerable children.

At the moment, its impossible for the nurses to carry the load. The states recommended caseload for these nurses is 180 to 200 students. Currently, many of them are responsible for 300 or even 400. Some counties are already struggling to fulfill their requirements under state law.

The likeliest losers in this scenario are the states foster children.

For a variety of reasons, including the incidence of trauma theyve suffered, foster children are far more likely than other children to be prescribed psychotropic medications.

Over the past 10 years, California has spent more than $226 million on these drugs for foster children. But these medications come with serious potential side effects, including increased incidence of diabetes, heart disease, obesity and long-term disabilities. These incredible difficulties are why youth advocates pushed so hard for the passage of bills like SB319. If California is determined to give the states children  our children  such serious medication, we owe it to them to monitor its effect on their health.

Thats why it was wise to give public health nurses these responsibilities.

Whats not wise is burdening the nurses until they can no longer fulfill their duties.

The state Senate added the request to the state budget, but the Assembly didnt bring it up for a vote. Now it falls to a conference committee to decide what happens to the $1.6 million request.

Two of San Franciscos Democratic legislators will play key roles in deciding the fate of the request in that committee. State Sen. Mark Leno, who is already a staunch advocate, is one of them. The other is Assemblyman Phil Ting, who has the opportunity to prove himself.

Legislative leaders  Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon and Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon  are also crucial to ensuring that this funding remains in the budget.

Then its up to the governor, who has made his concerns about budget spending clear. Brown expressed concern this month about a drop in expected tax revenue, noting that managing Californias budget is like riding a tiger.

Brown has done an admirable job of holding the line against new spending. But its wrong for the state to deny an existing program the money it needs to function, especially when theres a federal match that would triple our investment.
Fifty-two years ago, I received my undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley. The fee for a semesters study was $76.50. Since then, Californias economy has paced the nation. The state has served as a font of creativity and innovation. As I have seen in my own business, Levi Strauss & Co., and in other companies throughout the state, graduates of the UC system have played a large part in Californias prosperity. Today, the need for a highly educated and motivated workforce is even greater than it was in the early 1960s. But the challenges facing my alma mater, the entire UC system, and public research universities across the nation have increased.

States must leverage funds from the federal government and philanthropies in support of public research universities. But given their need for knowledge workers, businesses must also partner with universities, in research and commercializing concepts developed by professors and students. Businesses should also support scholarships and endow positions for faculty to supplement campus resources and ensure much-needed talent for their own enterprises.

Why this need? The cost of a public university education has risen rapidly, especially in the last decade, the result of higher-education funding cutbacks by state legislatures nationwide. Public universities have responded by tightening their belts and raising tuition. Remember my $76.50 semesters tuition bill?

Today, a semester at UC Berkeley costs a Californian $8,185 and for an out-of-state student it is $20,539. Tuition and fees for an in-state student are less than one-third the cost at an equivalent private university.

To remain competitive in an interconnected global economy, we depend upon our public universities to educate the employees who will underpin the vitality of American business. Public universities educate roughly 75 percent of the nations college students; in California alone, the 10 campuses of the UC system combined educate 251,700 undergraduates and graduate students annually.

Many public research universities lead the way in opening up opportunities for talented lower-income students. Of UC undergraduates:

40 percent receive federal Pell Grants. (These grants are awarded to students with family incomes of $50,000 or less. Most go to students with family incomes of $20,000 or less.)

42 percent are the first members of their families to attend college. In the latest New York Times College Access Index, six UC campuses were ranked in the top seven nationally for economic diversity and social mobility. UC Berkeley and UCLA each enroll more Pell Grant recipients than all the Ivy League schools combined.

For businesses to serve a diverse consumer base, we require the insights of well-educated members of these segments of our population. Public universities provide a means of meeting this need. Because of Californias robust financial aid system, close to one-half of students graduate with no debt at all. Those who do have an average debt of just under $20,000. Business leaders appreciate efficiency, and in terms of return on investment, public research universities deliver a high-quality product at an unbeatable value.

With our support, public research universities can remain engines of economic growth. For example, the East Bay Economic Development Alliance honored UC Berkeley for its leadership in powering Bay Area innovation and entrepreneurship. The reason for the recognition? More than 2,600 firms worldwide are Berkeley spin-offs  more than half of them in the Bay Area  and these companies have created more than 540,000 jobs and generated global revenue of more than $317 billion, according to a 2014 Bay Area Economic Institute study.

Given the competing demands on state budgets, states are unlikely to restore former levels of funding for public higher education. But businesses and (as demonstrated by this example from UC Berkeley) our economy have benefited enormously from the talented graduates and research of public research universities. We have a major stake in the success of these institutions. For us to continue to thrive as a nation, businesses  even if out of self-interest  must actively support our public research universities.

Robert D. Haas is the chairman emeritus of Levi Strauss & Co., where he was chief executive officer from 1984 to 1999. He served on the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Lincoln Project, which recommends ways to strengthen public universities at http://bit.ly/1UaDjli.
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Climbing spring temperatures are here to stay through the week, with some inland areas like Livermore, Concord and Morgan Hill expected to see near-100-degree weather by Friday or Saturday, forecasters said.

The warm trend will bring temperatures in the low to mid-70s in San Francisco all week, said Bob Benjamin, a forecaster with the National Weather Service.
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SACRAMENTO  California Gov. Jerry Brown said Tuesday he will vote for Hillary Clinton in the states upcoming primary, explaining that she has the best chance of thwarting the dangerous candidacy of Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

Brown had previously been cagey about whether he would endorse the former secretary of state over her Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders, who in recent days has been campaigning around the Bay Area leading up to Californias June 7 primary.

I have decided to cast my vote for Hillary Clinton because I believe this is the only path forward to win the presidency and stop the dangerous candidacy of Donald Trump, Brown wrote in an open letter to Democratic and independent voters posted on his website.

Brown praised Sanders, saying he was deeply impressed by the Vermont senators performance and focus on fighting income inequality.

He has driven home the message that the top 1 percent has unfairly captured way too much of Americas wealth, leaving the majority of people far behind, Brown wrote. In 1992, I attempted a similar campaign.

Brown lost his bid in 1992 for the partys nomination to Clintons husband, Bill, in a race that touched off a heated political rivalry.

The two launched well-publicized jabs at each other over the years, including when Brown joked at a gubernatorial campaign event in 2010 about Bill Clintons affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Brown apologized for the comments, and Bill Clinton went on to endorse him for governor.

Brown, who also ran for president in 1976 and 1980, argued Tuesday that the political math is in Hillary Clintons favor and that her election is necessary to take down Trump.

The Republican nominee, Donald Trump, has called climate change a hoax and said he will tear up the Paris Climate Agreement, Brown said. He has promised to deport millions of immigrants and ominously suggested that other countries may need the nuclear bomb. He has also pledged to pack the Supreme Court with only those who please the extreme right.

Brown applauded Clintons skills as a legislator, saying of the former New York senator, she knows how to get things done and will be ready to lead the country on her first day in office.

Brown had previously dodged questions about whom he would support in the primary, while saying he planned to used his power as a superdelegate at the national convention to vote for whomever he favored, regardless of the Democratic Partys endorsement. But the four-term governor said Tuesday that he could no longer keep silent.

The stakes couldnt be higher, Brown wrote. Our country faces an existential threat from climate change and the spread of nuclear weapons. A new cold war is on the horizon. This is no time for Democrats to keep fighting each other.

Next January, he said, I want to be sure that it is Hillary Clinton who takes the oath of office, not Donald Trump.

Trump is scheduled to hold a rally Wednesday evening in Sacramento.

Sanders continues to stump around the Bay Area after a surprise visit to Oracle Arena on Monday night for Game 7 of the NBAs Western Conference finals, in which the Golden State Warriors finished off the Oklahoma City Thunder. Sanders, who is set to hold rallies in Palo Alto and Davis on Wednesday, has pledged to stay in the race despite Clintons delegate lead.

That road could become tougher. A new statewide poll released Tuesday found Clinton with a 13-percentage-point lead, 51 to 38 percent, over Sanders in next weeks primary. Thats very different from last weeks Public Policy Institute of California survey of likely voters, which showed Clinton barely ahead of Sanders, 46 to 44 percent.

The new Golden State Poll, released by Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution, was based on a survey of 1,700 California adults taken between May 4 and May 16. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.47 percent.

San Francisco Chronicle staff writer John Wildermuth contributed to this story.

Evan Sernoffsky and Melody Gutierrez are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com, mgutierrez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: EvanSernoffsky @MelodyGutierrez
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Last year, global efforts on climate change focused on Paris, where representatives from 195 countries hammered out a landmark agreement to limit warming.

This week, the diplomatic scrum shifts to San Francisco.

Energy ministers from the worlds largest economies  including the United States, China, India, Japan, Germany and Saudi Arabia  will converge on Union Square to discuss how to meet the Paris accords lofty goals. They will also meet with clean-tech entrepreneurs, many from Silicon Valley, whose products could help.

No major agreements on the scale of Paris are expected at the Clean Energy Ministerial and related events, which run from Tuesday to Friday. Instead, delegates will pursue the sometimes unglamorous work of finding and sharing ways to keep the planet from warming more than 2 degrees Celsius.

I am very confident we are getting our act together as a state, as a country, as a world, said Tom Steyer, a climate activist and former hedge fund manager who is scheduled to speak at the event. But we have a very important job in front of us.  Are we done? Absolutely not.

The conference comes at a time of immense promise and uncertainty.

Last years accord fueled hopes that governments worldwide would finally unite to rein in warming. And yet last week, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, vowed to pull out of the agreement if elected. Delegates to the ministerial will surely be aware of his promise.

Its going to be really important to be clear that we are very, very serious about moving forward on this, said U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. Every country in this group has elections  almost every country  and that can change. But the fundamentals are that the public, including our public, is more and more expressing the view that climate change is real and needs to be addressed.

The ministerial has been held once a year, in different countries, since 2010, bringing together government officials to discuss the transition to a clean-energy future. But for this years event, organizers chose the Bay Area, due to its emergence as the center of Americas clean-tech industry. Energy ministers will tour such companies as Tesla Motors and receive an update from Google on self-driving cars.

This event really helps put ourselves on the map as what wed like to be, which is the global headquarters of the clean-energy revolution, said John Grubb, chief operating officer of the Bay Area Council, a business-oriented public policy group that helped organize the weeks activities.

The event, based at the Westin St. Francis Hotel, includes several parallel tracks, each with its own purpose.

While the ministerial focuses on rolling out clean technologies already available, delegates will also take part in meetings of the Mission Innovation effort launched by President Obama last year. Mission Innovation member countries pledge to double their spending on clean energy research and development over five years, hoping to find emission-cutting technologies.

Private financiers who have pledged to pour their own money into clean energy research will attend as well. Steyer, Bill Gates and other members of the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, which formed last year, will meet with energy ministers and entrepreneurs.

In Union Square, 95 clean-tech companies from 18 countries  making everything from efficient cooling systems to lightweight, 3-D-printed cars  will showcase their wares under an immense tent that will be open to the public (with a $10 cover charge at the door). The entrepreneurs there will also get face time with the energy ministers themselves, such as Piyush Goyal, the Indian governments point man on power and new energy technologies.

This is a big deal, said Danny Kennedy, managing director of the California Clean Energy Fund, which helped organize the Startups & Solutions Showcase. This is the guy whos going to bring hundreds of millions of people electricity, and they want to do it with cleaner sources.

Gov. Jerry Brown, meanwhile, will sign an agreement on Wednesday with West Coast governors and mayors from both the United States and Canada to coordinate climate change efforts across the region. Brown has aggressively pushed the idea of subnational action on global warming, courting city, state and provincial officials worldwide to sign his Under 2 MOU for reining in emissions.

And on Tuesday, Stanford University will host a symposium highlighting the role of women in decarbonizing the global economy.

Like Steyer, other participants view the current moment in global climate action with both concern and hope.

We have technology today, at scale, deployable today and tomorrow, that can do it and get us off dirty energy, Kennedy said. We now have to do it. We need the political will.

David R. Baker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dbaker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: DavidBakerSF
StemCells Inc., a Newark biotechnology firm, said Tuesday that it plans to shut down its operations following the failure of a clinical trial for a stem cell treatment for spinal cord injuries.

While patients participating in the trial showed some benefit from the treatment, the results did not justify continuing the study given the amount of money the company has on hand, StemCells said.

We are extremely disappointed with the results of our Pathway Study, which we had hoped to be the first clinical program involving cellular transplantation to meaningfully improve motor function in patients with chronic spinal cord injury, Dr. Ian Massey, the companys president and CEO, said in a statement.

StemCells, which was founded in 1988, has about 50 employees. The company did not disclose a timeline for winding down its operations.

While federal regulators have yet to approve any stem cell therapies, analysts say StemCells failure is more a combination of market forces and timing rather than a reflection on the promise of the field.

Jason Kolbert, senior managing director with the Maxim Group and head of health care research, said he was surprised by the companys decision to shut down, but noted that its a tough market for small biotech firms that lack a partner.

Its not doom and gloom for stem cells, but its pretty gloomy for microcap biotech companies. People arent so quick to invest in these, said Kolbert, who also heads the firms health care research group.

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the state stem cell agency, was an earlier supporter of StemCells. In 2012, the agency, which was created by voters in 2004 with $3 billion in bond funding, awarded the company $20 million for research into stem-cell treatment for Alzheimers disease.

After about $9 million, both sides agreed it wasnt going the way we wanted to go so we terminated the contract, said Kevin McCormack, spokesman for the agency. He said the funding ended in November 2014.

McCormack called StemCells decision to cease operating disappointing, but he remains encouraged by the field.

Its always disappointing when a company like this thats pioneering important work fails, he said. The work they were doing in Alzheimers and spinal cord injuries, theres a huge need for that globally.

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine has 16 projects in human clinical trials for spinal cord injuries, sickle cell anemia, HIV/AIDS, cancer and other conditions, he said.

StemCells was co-founded by Dr. Irv Weissman, a well-known Stanford researcher. Given the collective strength of past data with these cells, we sincerely hope others will pick up the many questions we have about the variability of results seen in the Pathway Study, Weissman said in a statement.

The company said it had cash and cash equivalents of about $5.5 million, but couldnt guarantee that its stockholders would receive any of that. The companys stock fell more than 80 percent Tuesday, closing at 57 cents per share.

Victoria Colliver is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: vcolliver@sfchronicle.com Twitter @vcolliver
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn said he has taken a large position in Allergan, backing Chief Executive Officer Brent Saunders in what the Irish drugmaker said it doesnt believe will be an activist role.

In 2013, Icahn helped place Saunders in the top spot at Forest Laboratories  which less than a year later was bought by whats now Allergan. Icahn said hes very supportive of Saunders, who eventually joined Allergan and helped orchestrate a planned $160 billion acquisition by Pfizer. That deal fell apart after U.S. tax rules were proposed that would have decreased the benefit of the acquisition.

A representative for Icahn wasnt immediately available to comment on the size of the investment. The activist investor often takes stakes in companies to agitate for changes in strategy or management.

In a statement Tuesday, Icahn said he backs Saunderss leadership.

We have every confidence in Brents ability to enhance value for all Allergan shareholders, he said. He did not express interest in pushing for any sort of change at Allergan  at least not yet.

Allegans big seller is Botox. It also makes drugs to treat Alzheimers disease, cystic fibrosis and other conditions.

After the collapse of the Pfizer deal, Allergan is at a crossroads. The drugmaker is in the process of selling its generics business to Teva Pharmaceutical Industries for about $40 billion, a deal that, last week, Saunders reiterated should close within the first half of this year. With the cash from that transaction, Allergan will pay down some debt, buy back shares, and gain the ability to do more mergers.

Saunders has more recently backed away from the idea of doing the type of large-scale deals hes been famous for, saying that he is very comfortable with Allergans organic growth potential.

Allergan shares gained 23 cents to close at $236.

Allergan has no reason to believe that this investment was made for purposes of influencing the actions of management or control of the company, the company said.

Icahn has been a frequent investor in the drug industry. At Forest, he fought for five years with CEO Howard Solomon, who had run the company for more than three decades and had planned to possibly hand over control to his son. Icahn managed to get a foothold on the board, eventually triumphing over Solomon to name Saunders to lead the drugmaker. Less than a year later, Forest had a $25 billion deal with Allergan, then called Actavis.

Icahn has also invested in Biogen, along with Amylin Pharmaceuticals and others.

Drew Armstrong is a Bloomberg writer. Email: darmstrong17@bloomberg.net.
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A 39-year-old man was critically wounded after being stabbed by two suspects who tried to use a portable toilet in his parking lot in San Franciscos Tenderloin, police said.

The victim, who was not identified, denied a man and woman from using the toilet in the parking lot at Eddy and Taylor streets around 1:30 p.m. Sunday. Rather than moving on, the couple attacked the man, stabbing him multiple time in the torso, police said.
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A San Rafael man was arrested Sunday in connection with the Marin County trail attack that killed one Novato High School student and left another in critical condition.

Elmer Fernando Machado-Rivera, 20, was booked into Marin County Jail on suspicion of being an accessory after the fact in the Novato homicide.

Marin County sheriffs officials worked with San Rafael police to arrest Machado-Rivera after executing a search warrant as a part of the investigation into the homicide, said Lt. Doug Pittman, spokesman for Marin County Sheriffs Office.

Machado-Rivera was not the third suspect in the shootings that officials have been on the hunt for since Thursday, Pittman said. That search is continuing.

Sheriffs detectives continue to work tirelessly through (the) holiday weekend in pursuit of (the) third Novato murder suspect, officials said on the Marin County sheriffs Twitter account.

Officials did not release any additional details regarding the latest arrest or the investigation.

Two of the three suspects in the attack, both 17, were arrested Thursday afternoon in SWAT team raids on residences in Novato.

Officials revealed Friday that the three suspects in Wednesdays attack and the two victims were all students at Novato High School.

The slain victim was identified as Edwin Josue Ramirez Guerra, 17.

Novato Police Department officials also said Friday they were investigating the possibility that a sexual assault involving two Novato High School students that occurred near campus one week earlier was related to the attack.

The deadly stabbing and shooting occurred Wednesday afternoon at a waterfall site in an isolated canyon about three-quarters of a mile down a hiking trail that leads from a country club community along Fairway Drive in Novato.

The surviving victim, who was shot in the left side of his chest and stabbed, first reported the incident to police at 4:50 p.m. after walking about a third of a mile from the waterfall to gain mobile phone reception near the end of Fairway Drive, Pittman said.

The wounded teenager was in stable condition and expected to survive. Officials have released no update on the victims condition.

The second victim, also male, was found with gunshot wounds and died as emergency responders were preparing to airlift him to a hospital.

The upscale neighborhood where the attack occurred, near the Marin Country Club, is typically a quiet area, residents said, with the hiking trail to the waterfall frequented by dog walkers and hikers.

Pittman said the incident appeared to be isolated, with no broader risk to the public.

Kevin Schultz is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kschultz@sfchronicle.com Twitter: KevinEdSchultz
A woman who became hostile at a Sebastopol cemetery when she couldnt find a relatives grave repeatedly punched and kicked a 60-year-old stranger without provocation and made a racist remark, an attack that ended when she was subdued by three war veterans, police said.

The assault happened about 9:30 a.m. Monday, just as members of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars group finished placing 150 flags along a driveway at Sebastopol Memorial Lawn on Bodega Avenue, which they do every Memorial Day, officials said.

Witnesses and the female victim told police that the suspect made a racist comment about the victims manner of speech before pummeling her with blows to her head.

Three veterans, ages 60 to 80, heard the commotion, said Sebastopol police Officer Joe Furry. One of them tackled the woman, who continued to punch and kick the victim from the ground, Furry said. The other two veterans separated the woman from their comrade before she walked away.

I was just desperately trying to pry her hand away from the other womans hair, said Jerry Lites, 72, a Vietnam War veteran and one of the three who pried off the suspect. She was still kicking her in the legs and face. We had to hold her down to keep her away.

The three men stood between the two women as the suspect got up from the ground, Lites said. A young girl, who appeared to be the suspects daughter, witnessed the attack and was distraught, he added.

One of the veterans flagged down Furry, but the woman had already fled. Using her license plate number  which a witness had spotted before she drove away  as well as the last name from her family members grave site, police tracked down 36-year-old Holly Mae Lewis at her Santa Rosa home, officials said.

Lewis was booked at the Sonoma County Jail on suspicion of assault and committing a hate crime with violence. Her bail was set at $30,000.

Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kveklerov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: kveklerov
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With middle school graduation and summer vacation just days away, eighth-graders at San Franciscos Childrens Day School should have been thinking about swimming pools and sleeping in.

Instead, on Tuesday, their minds were on gun control, mental illness and mass incarceration as they grilled one of the most powerful women in American politics about congressional inaction and the future of the country.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, was happy to answer the students questions, saying they were so deep, so thoughtful, so concerned that she had to remind herself they are graduating from eighth grade, not high school.

The visit to the Mission neighborhood private school capped the students yearlong civics project about gun control, which included producing a newspaper, a website and a 1,000-signature petition delivered to Pelosis local office supporting a range of legislation, including requiring background checks for gun purchases across the nation.

Your activism is really very, very important, and I thank you, the House minority leader told the students. The future is yours, you are the future. You have to take an interest in it.

The class teacher, Terry Ashkinos, said the visit offered students an important lesson: Speaking to power is a real thing.

The students were also very interested in what Pelosi thought of presumed GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, and the former speaker of the House was happy to oblige.

Views on Trump

Its hard to know what he stands for because hell say, Well, this is what Im saying now, but when I become the nominee, when I become president, Ill maybe change my mind about things, she said, adding she has no doubt Hillary Clinton will defeat him.

Outside the classroom, which the school had named after her, Pelosi was more direct about her thoughts on Trump.

My view on him is he knows he shouldnt be president, she said. Its like every day he is saying, Save me from myself. Like saying theres no drought in California.

She paused to shake her head. Hes smart, she continued. He knows better than anyone he shouldnt be president.

Gun control

Pelosi said she hopes the next president faces far less obstructionism, with a Congress willing to vote on key issues, including gun control.

That would be a nice change, said eighth-grader Sasha Hunt.

The students researched the pros and cons of stronger gun control and decided to support not only universal background checks and a ban on assault rifles but also a prohibition on handguns, Hunt said.

The kids studied the intense politics surrounding the issue, specifically why Congress is being so childish and not doing anything about this and turning a blind eye, the 13-year-old added. That is frustrating to me.

The students chose the topic after reading about the mass shootings at an Oregon community college in October and at a public health training conference and holiday party in San Bernardino in December.

Anybody could shoot up a school, Hunt said. It really says no one is safe, and Congress isnt making anyone safer.

Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: jilltucker
There are a lot of weird things out there on the internet. This is definitely one of them.

A dancing troupe called Boogie Storm, which first captivated Simon Cowell and television-viewing audiences in the U.K. on "Britain's Got Talent" earlier this month, has just emerged to perform again on the talent show, and if it's possible, the routine this time around got even weirder (and better).
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Less than a month after Blondie's Pizza was forced to temporarily shutter by the San Francisco Department of Public Health, the slice house at 63 Powell Street has closed for good.

The storefront, plagued in recent weeks by a "severe cockroach infestation," briefly reopened after a couple days of cleaning, only to quickly close again. As of this writing, "For Lease" signs now hang in the window of both the pizza restaurant and the next door former storefront of Rasputin's Music, a sister establishment run by the same owner.
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A cell phone recovered from the dead kidnapper of missing teen Pearl Pinson provided fresh clues in the ongoing search for the Vallejo student, officials said Tuesday.

But so far, theres been no sign of the 15-year-old, who disappeared last Wednesday after a witness described seeing the bleeding girl being dragged, screaming, from a Vallejo footbridge.

Deputies with the Solano County Sheriffs Office on Tuesday released a picture of a backpack resembling the one Pearl was wearing when she was abducted, hoping anyone who sees a similar pack will alert authorities.

More than 65 searchers combed the Willow Creek area of Jenner over the weekend after authorities found a clue in the phone of her suspected abductor, 19-year-old Fernando Castro, who was killed Thursday in a shootout with deputies in Santa Barbara County.

Crews have also been searching the Glen Cove coastline in Vallejo and Highway 37 from Vallejo to Sonoma County, including the Skaggs Island area, said Christine Castillo, a spokeswoman with the Solano County Sheriffs Office.

At the same time, searchers were poring through the open field and stream around the footbridge that crosses Interstate 780 in Vallejo from Homes Acres Avenue to Taylor Avenue, where a witness reported an armed man took Pearl against her will.

That witness reported hearing a gunshot after running to call 911, Castillo said. A pool of blood was visible on the walkway when investigators got to the scene.

Officials said Castro and Pearl were acquaintances, but that she was taken against her will.

There were no formal searches for the girl on Tuesday, but investigators were continuing to track down leads and were asking Bay Area businesses to check their surveillance cameras for signs of Castros gold Saturn, which could have passed by from 9 a.m. last Wednesday to 9:15 a.m. the following day.

The Saturn was picked up on traffic cameras going westbound on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge at 9:13 a.m. Thursday before continuing along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and then south on Highway 101 over the Golden Gate bridge.

Castro led authorities on a high-speed chase in Santa Barbara County after his vehicle description was put out in an Amber Alert. The chase ended in a trailer park in Solvang where Castro died in a shootout with deputies, officials said.

Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: EvanSernoffsky
Prof. Dr. Nguyen Van Huyen (1908-1975) was a historian, ethnologist and culture researcher. He was the Minister of Education for 29 years. The Museum not only helps visitors understand the life and career of the Minister, but also reflects the sharp changes the nation has taken from the 19th to the beginning of the 21st century.

Statues of Minister of Education Nguyen Van Huyen and his wife Vi Kim Ngoc

Minister of Education Nguyen Van Huyen (in 1963) had made great contribution

to the national education during the struggles against the French and the US.

Displays at the museum

Former Director of Vietnam Museum of Ethnology Nguyen Van Huy, youngest son of Minister Nguyen Van Huyen,

shared stories about the objects and documents with visitors.

A watch with President Ho Chi Minhs image, presented by Prime Minister Pham Van Dong

Documents on the Oriental civilization during his study in France in 1929 - 1934

News on Paris - Midi on March 23rd, 1934

A camera used on field trips in the beginning of the 20th century by the ethnologist.

Documents on folklore (1937-1938)

President Ho Chi Minhs letter to Minister of Education Nguyen Van Huyen
VFF President Nguyen Thien Nhan receives assistance from the Lao Government and people. (Photo: VGP)

Envoy Phomma Sitsena from the Lao Embassy in Vietnam said that the amount of money showed the affection of the Lao Government and people towards the Vietnamese victims of natural disasters. I hope that the money will help provide initial support for natural disaster affected people to stabilise their lives, he said.

During the receiving ceremony, Politburo member and President of the Vietnam Fatherland Front (VFF) Nguyen Thien Nhan expressed his respect over the assistance by the Lao Government and people for Vietnamese people who are facing difficulties due to drought and salt intrusion, adding that the deed once again confirmed the solidarity in the special relationship between Vietnam and Laos.

According to Mr. Nhan, the Vietnamese Government is making efforts to direct ministries and localities to support the lives of affected people. In addition, the VFF will organise donations to support those who are affected by drought and salt intrusion. Over the past days, the VFF has assisted the most disadvantaged 40,000 households with water containers and water filtering devices. Together with this, the VFF has also given support to fishermen who are affected by massive fish die-off by giving medical insurance cards, books and clothes for their children.

Mr. Nhan affirmed that the money would be used wisely and practically. Accordingly, the most seriously affected localities and disadvantaged affected people will be the first to receive the assistance from the Lao Government and people.

Preliminary statistics show that 420,000 families have been affected by drought and salt intrusion over the past 10 months, presenting a loss of some VND6.4 trillion. Besides, over 1.5 million residents are facing water shortages in both daily use and agricultural production./.
The course, which is being held from May 31st to June 17th, will be the first course in Vietnam to focus on up skilling law enforcement managers and leaders on the specific areas of online child sexual exploitation, child trafficking for sexual exploitation, and sexual exploitation of children in travel and tourism.

ARLEMP is a long-term partnership between the Vietnams Ministry of Public Security through the General Department of Police (GDP), the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and RMIT International University in Vietnam. Originating in 2005, ARLEMP has become a flag-ship program for emerging Police managers and leaders in the region. Over 750 police have graduated from the course since its inception and are working together to combat transnational crimes in our region.

tin_2_aus3105-17_29_47_924.jpg









Photos: Australian Embassy to Hanoi

This ARLEMP welcomes a new partnership with the National Police of the Netherlands (NPN). Similar to the AFP, the NPN are committed to promoting cooperation between police agencies, searching for the best practises, supporting information exchange and working together to combat transnational crime.

Combating child exploitation features high on the global law enforcement agenda. Close cooperation with Southeast Asian countries is essential in tackling this cross-border issue. ARLEMP is an excellent instrument to practice what we preach, said NPN Chief Constable Frans Heeres.

According to Mr Layton Pike, Minister and Deputy Head of Mission from the Embassy of Australia in Vietnam, only through the establishment and maintenance of mutually beneficial partnerships, built on high levels of cooperation, collaboration, communication and importantly trust, nations can realistically challenge those that engage in crime to harm our societies and our children.

Child sexual exploitation is an outrage to any community regardless as to where it occurs, particularly as children are the future of our countries.

Along with policies and action plans delivered by the Government, it is up to all of us as global partners in law enforcement to work with our communities to eradicate this heinous crime collaboratively.

Australian Federal Police Manager of victim based crime, Commander Glen McEwen, said, One of the most serious transnational crime threats in the Asia-Pacific region is child sexual exploitation, both via online exploitation through the production, access and distribution of child exploitation material and through abuse perpetrated by traveling child sex offenders.

ARLEMP 40 attracted participants from Australia, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, the Netherlands, Timor-Leste and Vietnam./.
Hillary Clinton has secured the endorsement of the political arm of the Natural Resources Defense Council  one of the nations leading environmental organizations  in her White House bid, marking the first presidential endorsement in the 46-year-old groups history, The Chronicle has learned.

Not only does the organization back Clintons Democratic candidacy, but it fears what presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump would do to the environment should he be elected.

Hillary Clinton is an environmental champion with the passion, experience and savvy to build on President Obamas environmental legacy, said Rhea Suh, president of the NRDC Action Fund.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, has recently outlined a disastrous and frankly nonsensical environmental agenda  suggesting that he would tear up the Paris climate agreement, and that there is no drought in California, Suh said. His plan for his first 100 days would take us back 100 years, and America cannot afford to indulge his climate conspiracy theories.

Patricia Bauman, chair of the action funds board, said, Hillary Clinton is all that stands between us and Donald Trumps radical proposals to reverse decades of environmental progress.

The NRDC Action Fund scheduled its endorsement announcement for 9 a.m. PDT Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

Environmental groups are splitting on their endorsements thus far. Last summer, Friends of Earth Action endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who is seeking the Democratic endorsement for president. It praised him for being unafraid to take a stand on controversial issues such as the Keystone XL pipeline. At that time, Clinton had not yet announced her opposition to the pipeline, while Sanders had.

One of Sanders key supporters is Bill McKibben, an international expert on climate change who is co-founder of 350.org. Last week, Sanders named McKibben as one of his five appointees to the committee that will help craft the Democratic Party platform.

In November, the League of Conservation Voters Action Fund endorsed Clinton  its earliest-ever endorsement  and praised her strong environmental record. The Sierra Club has yet to endorse a candidate. It typically does so after the party chooses nominees.

Joe Garofoli is the San Francisco Chronicles senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: joegarofoli
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In less than a week, the Golden State Warriors have gone from being left for dead to becoming NBA Finals favorites, according to Las Vegas casinos. Just a couple of days before the Finals opening game on Thursday night, June 2, the Warriors are -210 at the Mirage to win the series, meaning youd need to wager $210 to win $100. The Cleveland Cavaliers are +175 to win the championship, meaning a successful $100 bet on the team would yield $175, said Mirage sports book manager Jeff Stoneback.

The way they won Game 7, the public perception is, Theyre back, he said. Theyre playing their ball again.

The Cavaliers have had a stellar postseason, including four-game sweeps in their first two series. The team did lose two games in Toronto in the Eastern Conference finals, which may have raised their odds because it will be tougher for Cleveland to play in Oakland than it was in Toronto, Stoneback said.

They may have been exposed a bit on the road, he said. If they look like that in Toronto, whats going to happen at Golden State? Its a lot tougher in Oakland.

Stoneback noted that the Warriors caught a lot of breaks last year, when they defeated Cleveland in the Finals. Cavaliers stars Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love were injured last year, while this year Cleveland is healthy and rested.

Jay Kornegay, vice president of race and sports for the Westgate Las Vegas, said the Warriors-Cavs series is already highly wagered because its so compelling, featuring the NBAs top two stars in Stephen Curry and LeBron James.

Golden State is favored by 6 points for Thursdays Game 1 at Oracle Arena.

Because of the Warriors so-called struggles or tests that they have gone through in the Western Conference playoffs, its made the Finals more competitive and compelling than we thought maybe six weeks ago, Kornegay said.

Its been a demanding playoffs for the Warriors compared to the Cavs, and thats evened things up a bit, he added.

Golden State is coming off a grueling seven-game series, but has the advantage of hosting the Finals first two games. The Cavaliers have had a lot of rest, and I believe theyre highly motivated after losing to the Warriors last year, Kornegay continued. Not that the Warriors arent, but the Cavs seem to have that eye-of-the-tiger mentality now.

The two key points are that the Cavs are rested and healthy, while the Warriors were pushed to their limits, Kornegay said.

The Warriors have had a much tougher time  their legs might not be as strong as Clevelands right now  and Curry, despite scoring 36 (in Game 7), we know hes not 100 percent healthy. How much is that going to take out of their performance in the Finals?

Michael Shapiro (www.michaelshapiro.net) is author of A Sense of Place. Twitter: shapirowrites
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Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders visit to Oakland came with the joyous strains of gospel music, loud cheers in a variety of languages, and a sea of blue posters splashed with the presidential candidates name.

Not to mention a little shout-out to the hometown fans.

After meeting with actor Danny Glover and San Francisco Supervisor Jane Kim at the Allen Temple Baptist Church in East Oakland early Monday afternoon, Sanders fired up the crowd at a downtown Oakland rally when he donned a yellow Warriors cap.

Do I have the right hat? Sanders asked to laughter. When he finished speaking, he took off for the Oracle Arena to catch the second half of the Warriors Game 7 victory.

But there was plenty of serious talk from Sanders with Californias high-stakes Democratic presidential primary just a week away.

When we began this campaign, the pundits had determined in their never-failing wisdom that our campaign was going to be a fringe campaign, he told the enthusiastic crowd in Frank Ogawa Plaza, outside Oakland City Hall. They didnt think we would go very far. Well, a year has come and gone, and here we are.

Thousands of people, many dressed in blue T-shirts and hats printed with Feel the Bern, turned out for the hour-long downtown rally. The line to get into the event wrapped around six city blocks.

Issues relevant to Oakland

Oakland was the presidential hopefuls latest stop in a grueling series of high-profile rallies across the state. From the pulpit and the podium, Sanders spoke about unemployment, the cost of living and the countrys dependence on jails.

His cries for a political revolution against what he calls corrupt politics sparked cheers and applause at both locales, from churchgoers crammed into the choir pews to young people ringed around City Hall. Sanders discussed issues geared toward Oakland: incarceration rates, police shootings and the need for universal health care.

Sanders talked about poverty rates across the nation, noting that while 22 percent of youth are poor, the rate is higher for minority communities.

It might be a little bit smart to be investing in jobs and education for those young people instead of jails, Sanders said. Every person in this room and country should be profoundly humiliated by the fact that we have more people in jail in America than any other country on Earth.

Emmy Dissett, 34, of West Oakland waved a poster in the air and cheered.

I love that he is here, she said, grinning. He is an amazing guy. Hes in a $99 suit and is so relatable. Other politicians havent given much attention to Oakland. He cares about all of us: the women, the minorities, the young people.

Sanders California rallies have drawn thousands of enthusiastic supporters, helping tighten the primary race between him and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. A poll last week by the Public Policy Institute of California found Clinton with a narrowing 46 to 44 percent lead over Sanders.

With Clinton holding a solid lead in pledged and unpledged delegates, California is a must-win state for Sanders if he is to convince delegates at the July national convention in Philadelphia that he is the partys best hope of beating Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee. A growing number of independent voters could decide the final result, the poll showed.

He is going to bring change

At the church, Sanders fielded questions about police shootings, an issue at the forefront in the Bay Area, especially since San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr was forced to resign in May after an officer shot an apparently unarmed black woman near the Bayview district. Police departments across the country need to provide more diversity and training in de-escalating tense confrontations, Sanders said.

What kind of country are we when mothers are afraid to let their kids go out and play? he said. We do not have the culture which says that lethal force, shooting somebody, is the last response, not a first response. Too often the response is killing someone rather than coming up with other ways of dealing with the problem.

Some residents were impressed that Sanders even came to their community, said Annette Haugabook, 56, of Oakland, who sat near a wall of stained glass windows waiting for the senator to arrive.

I am in support of Sanders because he is going to bring change, she said. The fact that he would come to East Oakland means a lot to me because a lot of candidates wont. You have to come to my community so I know youre serious about change.

Community often ignored

Clinton also has paid visits to Oakland in recent weeks, including for a roundtable on urban issues at a Jack London Square restaurant last week.

East Oakland is often neglected in the scope of national politics, said Aidah Rasheed of Oakland, 31, a Muslim woman who said she tries to support other religious communities.

Not a lot of politicians are interested in talking to people from this community, she said. I am praying people will come out and support his campaign because he is trying to change the land we live in and the way we deal with politics.

Sanders said his grassroots efforts would infuse energy into the election process and could get him to the White House.

We are trying to run a campaign here in California that, to the best of my knowledge, is unprecedented, Sanders said. We have worked at 23 rallies all over the state. I believe we have an excellent chance to win here in California and to win big.
Even though Sen. Bernie Sanders supported the Affordable Care Act, he said Tuesday during a campaign stop in Emeryville that it didnt go far enough in transforming the nations health care, leaving in place a system that is the most wasteful, dysfunctional system in the world.

We need radical transformation of the American health care system, Sanders said Tuesday at a hotel conference room packed with dozens of members of National Nurses United, one of his biggest and most vocal union endorsers, wearing red shirts.

Sanders is calling for more wholesale systematic change than his Democratic primary opponent Hillary Clinton, who wants to improve the current system, or presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, who wants to eliminate the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, but hasnt proposed a replacement.

Sanders wants a single-payer health care system that would cover everyone, including what he estimated to be 28 million people who still dont have health coverage and many others who are underinsured or cant afford to buy the medicines theyre prescribed.

He believes that a single-payer plan not only would cut billions in administrative costs, but also would help bring down the high cost of prescription drugs, which he blamed on greedy pharmaceutical companies that care more about giving their departing executives lucrative golden parachute compensation packages.

I think (the current health care law) made significant improvements, but clearly it has not gone far enough, Sanders said. How can we be satisfied when 28 million people in this country dont have health insurance?

Major obstacles

But even if he were to win the presidency, Sanders plan faces major obstacles. One is political, where Republicans hold both houses of Congress and are very unlikely to lose control of the House. Congressional Republicans have tried, and failed, several dozen times to repeal the Affordable Care Act, so it would seem they have no appetite for what many would consider a deeper offense to allowing the free market to shape health care coverage.

Asked during an interview Monday with The Chronicle how he would overcome Republican opposition and give them some reason to support his single-payer plan, Sanders pointed to the thousands waiting to hear him.

Take a look outside the window  theres 10,000 people out there, Sanders said as he stood inside Oakland City Hall on Monday, before a rally at Frank Ogawa Plaza. What we need are the American people, from coast to coast, to stand up in large numbers and fight back and demand that their government listen to them rather than wealthy campaign contributors.

Theyre not stupid

Republicans arent stupid, he continued. Theyre very conservative, but theyre not stupid. They understand that when people become engaged in the political process, when the 10,000 people out there say, We know whats going on. You have got to do the right thing and provide health care to all people, as is the case in every other major country on Earth, that they will respond.

Then there are financial challenges of Sanders proposals. A May analysis of Sanders health care plan by the Urban Institute found that while his proposal would cover the uninsured, it doesnt increase taxes (mostly on wealthy Americans) enough to cover the costs. The study found that while federal expenditures would increase by $32 trillion between 2017 and 2026, the increased revenue he proposes to cover these expenses would raise only $15.3 trillion. Thus, the proposed taxes are much too low to fully finance his health plan, the studys authors said.

Sanders campaign officials and supporters have pushed back on that study and others critical of his plan.

On Tuesday, Sanders ripped pharmaceutical companies for giving golden parachutes to departing executives and for pulling in billions in profits last year. When he singled out several executives, including former Pfizer CEO Hank McKinnell, who got a $188 million severance package when he stepped down in 2006, someone in the audience said, Thats criminal.

Downplays endorsements

Sanders agreed, saying, It really is criminal.

Sanders campaign officials downplayed California Gov. Jerry Browns endorsement of Clinton on Tuesday as well as news that the NRDC Action Fund, the political arm of the Natural Resources Defense Council, is backing the former secretary of state.

The grassroots campaign already has won contests in 20 states where Bernie won despite establishment politicians, campaign spokesman Michael Briggs said Tuesday. Bernie has growing support in California, and a win here will give him a big boost and the momentum that will carry him into the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicles senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: joegarofoli
TVER, Russia  Anastasia Bubeyeva shows a screenshot on her computer of a picture of a toothpaste tube with the words: Squeeze Russia out of yourself! For sharing this picture on a social media site with his 12 friends, her husband was sentenced this month to more than two years in prison.

As the Kremlin claims unequivocal support among Russians for its policies both at home and abroad, a crackdown is under way against ordinary social media users who post things that run against the official narrative. Here the Kremlins interests coincide with those of investigators, who are anxious to report high conviction rates for extremism. The Kremlin didnt immediately comment on the issue.

At least 54 people were sent to prison for hate speech last year, most of them for sharing and posting things online, which is almost five times as many as five years ago, according to the Moscow-based Sova group, which studies human rights, nationalism and xenophobia in Russia. The overall number of convictions for hate speech in Russia increased to 233 last year from 92 in 2010.

A 2002 Russian law defines extremism as activities that aim to undermine the nations security or constitutional order, or glorify terrorism or racism, as well as calling for others to do so. The vagueness of the phrasing and the scope of offenses that fall under the extremism clause allow for the prosecution of a wide range of people, from those who set up an extremist cell or display Nazi symbols to anyone who writes something online that could be deemed a danger to the state. In the end, its up to the court to decide whether a social media post poses a danger to the nation or not.

In February 2014, when Ukraine was in the middle of a pro-European revolution, President Vladimir Putin signed a bill tightening penalties for non-violent extremist crimes such as hate speech. In July of that year, three months after Russia had annexed the Crimean Peninsula, he signed a bill making calls to destroy Russias territorial integrity a criminal offense punishable by up to five years in prison. The new amendment makes the denial of Russias claims on Crimea an even greater offense if the statement is made in the press or online, even on a private social media account.

Many of the shares that led to the recent rash of convictions were of things critical of Russias involvement in Ukraine.

Several months after his arrest, Bubeyev pleaded guilty to inciting hatred toward Russians and was sentenced to a year in prison. His offense was sharing articles, photos and videos from Ukrainian nationalist groups, including those of the volunteer Azov battalion fighting Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Among them was an article about the graves of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine and a video describing Russia as a fascist aggressor and showing Russian tanks purportedly crossing into Ukraine.

Less than two weeks after the verdict, Bubeyev was charged again. This time, he was accused of calling for acts of extremism and actions undermining Russias territorial integrity. He had shared the picture of a toothpaste tube and also an article under the headline Crimea is Ukraine by a controversial blogger.
GENEVA  The treacherous Mediterranean Sea crossing from Libya to Italy has claimed the lives of more than 1,030 refugees in the past week, mostly as barely seaworthy smuggling boats foundered and sank despite calm seas and sunny skies, a migration agency said Tuesday, citing new accounts from survivors.

The staggering death toll foreshadows more disasters ahead in the next few months as the region gears up for its traditional summer-fall spike in human trafficking as the weather improves and the seas grow warmer. Aid officials said it also suggests that Libyan smuggling gangs are using even riskier tactics than before to profit from the torrent of those desperate to reach the safety or economic promise of Europe.

Making matters worse, the jaw-dropping tally is only from capsizings or shipwrecks that are known to authorities, who readily admit they simply do not know how many people are being cheated by smugglers, jammed into obviously unsuitable vessels and swallowed up by the vast waters of the southern Mediterranean.

Two Eritreans  among the hundreds of shipwreck survivors brought to Italian ports  were haunted by the fact that so many women and children had been on their capsized boat and did not survive. They said they could still hear the cries of the children.

I started to cry when I saw the situation and when I found the ship without an engine. There were many women and children, said 21-year-old Filmon Selomon, who plunged into the sea to save himself. Water was coming in from everywhere, top, bottom.

The children were crying and the women, said Habtom Tekle, a 27-year-old Eritrean. At this point I only tried to pray. Everybody was trying to take the water out of boat.

U.N. refugee spokesman William Spindler told reporters at a news conference in Geneva that this year is already proving to be particularly deadly on the Mediterranean, with some 2,510 lives lost compared with 1,855 in the same time span a year ago.

The International Organization for Migration, citing what could be a record weekly death toll on the Mediterranean by its count, said Tuesday that 62 people were confirmed dead and another 971 were missing and presumed dead in nine separate deadly emergencies since May 25 on the Libya-to-Italy sea route.

The U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday it had tallied at least 880 deaths on the Mediterranean over the last week. Spindler noted such estimates are an inexact science, and said his agencys figures tend to be conservative.

Last week marks only the second time since January 2014 that 1,000 deaths or more on that route have been tallied in a single month  let alone a single week, said IOM spokesman Joel Millman. The only other time was in April last year, with 1,244 dead.
WARSAW Polands justice minister on Tuesday revived an effort to have filmmaker Roman Polanski extradited to the U.S., where he is wanted in a nearly 40-year-old case involving sex with a minor.

Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobros office said he asked Polands Supreme Court to annul a ruling in October by a court in Krakow which found that Polish law forbids Polanskis extradition. In November, prosecutors said they found no grounds to challenge the decision.

Ziobro took office late last year, after the ruling, as part of a new conservative government. The minister, who is also the countrys chief prosecutor, argues that celebrity status is shielding Oscar-winning director Polanski in Poland, where he grew up and which he often visits.

The Krakow courts decision was at odds with a Polish-U.S. extradition agreement, Ziobros office argued in a statement. It said that, according to the extradition agreement, the defendant should be handed over to the United States.

The director pleaded guilty in 1977 to one count of unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl during a photo shoot in Los Angeles. In a deal with the judge, he served 42 days in prison, but then fled the U.S. fearing the judge would have him imprisoned again for much longer.

The U.S. has been seeking to bring Polanski back and put him before a court.

Last year, the Krakow judge ruling on the case found that Polanski served his punishment in confinement in the U.S., and later for 10 months  partly under house arrest  in Switzerland in 2009-10 when the U.S. unsuccessfully sought his extradition there.

He argued that U.S. judges and prosecutors in the case violated legal procedures, broke the plea bargain in 1977, denied Polanski the right to proper defense and appeared biased.

Jan Olszewski, Polanskis lawyer in Krakow, where the filmmaker has an apartment, said he had contacted the director about Ziobros decision, which we had been expecting.

Polanski won an Academy Award for best director for his 2002 film The Pianist, which he filmed in Warsaw, and was nominated for his 1970s movies Chinatown and Tess.
KABUL  The Taliban attacked several buses on a road in northern Afghanistan on Tuesday morning, forcing passengers to disembark and killing nine people and abducting at least 35, officials said.

According to Mahmood Danish, the governors spokesman, the assault in the volatile, northern Kunduz province took place in Aliabad district as the buses were traveling from the capital, Kabul, northeast to Takhar and Badakhshan provinces. It wasnt immediately clear where the nine were killed, he said.

There is still no report on the fate of the remaining hostages with the Taliban, Danish said.

Hayatullah Quareshi, the Aliabad district chief, said the attackers were wearing Afghan army uniforms. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, both Quareshi and Danish blamed the Taliban, who are increasingly active in the area and have been behind mass abductions last year across Afghanistan.

The Taliban have a presence in different districts in Kunduz and usually target Afghan security forces in their attacks. Last year, they briefly overran the city and the provincial capital, also called Kunduz, and held it for a few days until Afghan forces, helped by U.S. air strikes pushed them out.

Meanwhile, in the eastern Ghazni province, a bomb blast killed a civilian and wounded 12, including a local policeman, said Asadullah Shujayee, the deputy provincial police chief. He said the bomb was attached to a bicycle and detonated by remote control. No one claimed responsibility for that assault.

Also Tuesday, the Taliban launched attacks in southern Helmand province on the several districts and on the outskirt of the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, said Karim Atal, the head of the provincial council.

Atal said both sides suffered casualties but that there are no definite numbers. He appealed on the Kabul authorities for help.

If the central government doesnt come up with a strong security plan, we will witness of the citys fall to Taliban, said Atal.

These latest incidents follow a string of coordinated Taliban attacks on police checkpoints in the increasingly volatile southern province of Helmand. On Monday, the Talbian killed 12 policemen, wounded seven officers while seven others went missing, presumably abducted by the Taliban. The attacks, which took place in the provinces Gereshk district, were launched Sunday night and lasted for many hours, said Hismatullah Daulatzai, head of police for the greater Helmand zone.

The 15-year insurgency has intensified across the south as the Taliban concentrate their war on Helmand, Kandahar and Uruzgan provinces. Many of the attacks target police checkpoints, with Taliban fighters stealing weapons, ammunition and vehicles  and often abducting Afghan forces.

The fight in the southern, opium-poppy-producing region is led by Mullah Yaqoub, the son of the one-eyed founder and late leader of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammad Omar.
The New Zealand dollar rose to a week high against the British pound, which slumped as new polling data raised concern about a potential British exit from the European Union.

The kiwi touched 47.70 British pence, and was trading at 46.66 pence at 8am in Wellington, from 45.83 pence at 5pm yesterday. The local currency advanced to 67.60 US cents from 67.27 cents yesterday.

The British pound is sensitive to signals on whether voters are likely to choose to stay or exit the European Union in an upcoming referendum on the so-called 'Brexit' on June 23, with many economists saying the country would benefit from remaining within the regional group. The latest telephone poll by ICM showed 45 percent supported leaving the EU, compared with 42 percent who favoured remaining, whilst 13 percent were undecided.

"GBP was the largest mover overnight, falling as polls showed gains for the Leave campaign," ANZ Bank New Zealand senior economist Sharon Zollner and senior foreign exchange strategist Sam Tuck said in a note. "Clearly it is too soon to write-off risks of Brexit."

ANZ expects the kiwi to trade between 45.80 British pence and 47.20 pence today.

In New Zealand today, first-quarter terms of trade data and Quotable Value house statistics for May are due for release.

Elsewhere, China publishes manufacturing activity data for May, while Australia releases first-quarter gross domestic product statistics. Tonight, the focus will be on the fortnightly GlobalDairyTrade auction to see if prices for New Zealand's largest export commodity continue to edge up.

The New Zealand dollar gained to 93.51 Australian cents from 92.79 cents yesterday, increased to 60.74 euro cents from 60.41 cents, advanced to 4.4479 yuan from 4.4278 yuan and edged up to 74.85 yen from 74.77 yen. The trade-weighted index rose to 73.02 from 72.57 yesterday.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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Interview with Tara VanFlower of Lycia

November 2015



QRD  Quiet Moments was predominantly a solely Mike VanPortfleet. What is the biggest benefit of having collaborators for A Line That Connects ?



Tara  I think the benefit is having another take on something. Its interesting seeing how different people contribute. I was really excited to have other vocalists involved, especially working with Sera, who I am a big fan of.



QRD  You recorded the album sending files back & forth across the internet. Was the collaboration fundamentally different from when you lived in the same city or actually pretty similar?



Tara  Similar in a lot of ways. You still have to wait for the other person to do their part, which really wasnt much different. The change from Cold is that we all lived together & got to stew in our anger & frustration under the same roof. HAHAHHA



QRD  For me the biggest surprise on A Line That Connects was David Galas singing lead on a couple of tracks. Was there ever debate of Mike or Tara singing those tracks or them being used on a David Galas solo record?



Tara  No. Those were Daves songs.



QRD  Did you record songs in blocked away sessions of time or just a little bit here & there as time permitted?



Tara  Since all of us have very full & busy lives we worked whenever we could. There are no blocks of time anymore. Mike & I work when Dirk isnt home or was napping, which is rare. Mike would take days off of work so he could record while Dirk was in school. I know Dave took time off as well. Besides that, we all basically work when we should otherwise be asleep.



QRD  Are Acid & Sound Forge still your main recording softwares?



Tara  That is still what Mike uses, yes.



QRD  Youve always self-recorded & self-produced. Looking back, is there any era of the band you wish youd worked with others on?



Tara  This doesnt relate to me much for the most part, but I feel like Mike would say no. Hes most content when he has 100% control. I think there are absolutely releases he wishes hed taken a stronger hand with, but theres nothing we can do about that now.



QRD  In the 1990s it seemed you had a lot of praise from the goth community, but lately you seem to have more praise from the metal community. Do you think thats from a change in those communities or the ways labels are marketing the band or something different altogether?



Tara  I think part of it is working with new people who dont choose to define us based on a genre. You know that was one of our main frustrations. Being told, you are this because these people like you is one of the most bullshit things you can do to anyone. Numerous times Ive had people tell me, I heard of Lycia, but never listened because I thought you were a goth band. We experienced this numerous times on tour as well. I think theres so much beautiful dark themed music out there that theres no point in trying to label it. I love this! I love where Lycia is right now. Were allowed to just be & that invites people of all sorts to feel open to listening. I think the age of the band has now given us a certain freedom we were not afforded in the 90s. I love where we are right now.



QRD  What do you think were the biggest challenges for indie bands in the 1990s versus today?



Tara  Hmmm. I think you stood a better chance of making a living in the 90s versus now. But now you can take more charge over your own career & your own path without the reliance on others. I honestly just dont know where the hell the music industry really is right now. There are aspects of it that are great as far as self expression & control are concerned, but I really dont see how anyone can make a living unless they tour nonstop & offer unique merchandise. Oh, or rape their fanbase with online panhandling. But I wont get into that.



QRD  I know youve said if there were to be a live Lycia, it would be when Dirk is ready to front the band. What wisdom would you impart on him to make his relationship with music less frustrating than your own?



Tara  Hell, I dont know. Do it solely for the love & never set your mind on it being your career? Play live nonstop. Never second-guess yourself. Do what YOU want & dont back down for anyone. Be careful who you associate yourself with. Dont give up any aspect of control. HAVE FUN. & dont make shitty, disposable music.



QRD  Do you think its important to have a band member that is good at social networking to be a successful band today?



Tara  Yes. Or at least someone on your team somewhere who is.



QRD  You let your website expire, which I assume makes Facebook your main web presence. What do you think are the advantages & disadvantages to a social media site being your main web presence?



Tara  I never go to a bands website. The first place I look is Facebook, YouTube, etc. I think its easier to find people on social media & it gives the band direct access in a quicker manner. Its just easier in my opinion. & its free.



QRD  I read an interview where it was said Lycia really came into its own when it started influencing itself rather than being influenced by other bands. What do you mean by that & when did it happen?



Tara  Mike said that, & while I cant speak directly for him, Ive had enough conversations with him on this topic to give a little bit of insight. Basically, when he first started working with others in bands everyone wanted to sound like <insert band>. Once Mike decided he wanted to sound like what he was creating on his own, thats when the Lycia sound formed & everything else faded away.



QRD  Will there be future solo releases & side projects moving forward or is everything from here on going to be part of Lycia?



Tara  I honestly have no idea. Mike has no desire to work on music at the moment. Im not sure what David is up to. & I have no goal to work on music outside of a few side projects Ive got on the burner & whatever Im asked to do for Lycia going forward.



QRD  Anything else?



Tara  We want to say a heartfelt thank you to you for the years of friendship & support. We also want to thank EVERYONE who has supported us through the years. Our goal now is to have all our releases sell out so its not sitting on a shelf somewhere costing someone else money. So please visit Silber, Handmade Birds, Magic Bullet, Projekt, & HelloMerch. Also, go read my books. Theyre cheap. Also, Justice League Forever.








Label Owner Interview with Manuel V of Records Ad Nauseum

April 2016



Name: Manuel V

Label: Records Ad Nauseam

City: Hollywood, Ca USA

Artists Roster: Egrets On Ergot, Gitane Demone, MRK, Hyenaz, Steven Leyba, Kool Skull, Terminal A, Charles Manson, M/A/N/O/S, LoveyDove, Conjuror, loopool, Kitty Empire, Paul Roessler, Youthquake, Chiildren, BCGs, Jeff McDonald, Human Toys etc

Website: https://recordsadnauseam.bandcamp.com



QRD  When & why did you start your label?



Manuel  There was a transcendental fire in my teeth & I needed to release the beast. Wait.., actually I started the label on 08/08/08 at my girlfriends moms wedding in Long Beach. Thats when I got the idea to start doing something productive so I wouldnt be looked at like a bum or whatever.



QRD  How many releases have you put out?



Manuel  Right now we are up to 45 releases.



QRD  How many releases would you like to do a year?



Manuel  A good amount. Maybe like 1500 a year?



QRD  What are the fun &/or rewarding parts about running a label?



Manuel  Hanging out at the shows, working on art, meeting fun new people, working with artists you admire.



QRD  How do you feel labels are more & less useful to artists now than they were five years ago?



Manuel  Im not too sure about that. Besides providing a network & support for bands, anyone can survive without one.



QRD  How have your motivations for having a label changed over time?



Manuel  They havent at all. Its all been self-illusionary & it still is.



QRD  What do you feel is the biggest waste of your time running the label?



Manuel  Getting calls & emails. I dont actualize that kind of communication. Come see me in person at my shop!



QRD  What are some labels you admire or feel a kinship to?



Manuel  Original Sound, The Steve Priest Fan Club, Fatima Records, Thrash 44, TOPY, Slash, Bored to Death, Gasatanka, Hollow Wood World, 4AD, Ono Music, Vengeance Records, Osmosis, Brother Records, Mark Records. Theres a ton more but those were the first in my head.



QRD  What other work experiences prepared you to have a label?



Manuel  Astral Projection has made me aware of my surroundings & musical landscapes. Working at Western Bagel has helped with the label, but it wasnt stable so I left.



QRD  What makes your label special & unique?



Manuel  All of the bands have our periods at the same time of the month.



QRD  How has your physical location effected your label?



Manuel  Well... we are in the heart of Hollywood right off of Sunset & Highland. That has been an advantage. We run it out of Glitter Death, a rock n roll shop/art gallery started by Rio Warner & myself.



QRD  Do you enjoy music as much now as you used to & how has running a label effected how you listen to/hear music?



Manuel  I enjoy it more now. When I was little I never put music on myself because I was embarrassed to turn the radio on. But there was always lots of good music around me. As there is now!



QRD  How do you find out about new artists for your label?



Manuel  Me, Luka Fisher, & Rio Warner.



QRD  How do most fans find out about your label?



Manuel  Stickers, posters, word of mouth. The internet hasnt helped much.



QRD  Whats been your biggest selling release & why do you think it was?



Manuel  The biggest selling was the Terminal A EP & Charles Manson LP. I think they sold well because The T & A boys are young goth teen idols who work really hard. Like Black Flag style work ethic. & Charles Manson because hes got a worldwide built in fan base.



QRD  What release that youve done was the most important & special to you personally?



Manuel  Probably the Wayne Newton 7 I put out. Cause Wayne would show up at my place at like 3am asking for cash advances & I would give him like $20 at a time.



QRD  What are some things that make you want to work with a band?



Manuel  I only like to party with the bands. Once it becomes work I start running down Sunset Blvd half naked & shoeless.



QRD  What is the thing all releases on your label have in common?



Manuel  They dont have barcodes.



QRD  How involved are you with a band for acting as a producer as far as hearing demo ideas or selecting tracks to be on a release or mixing & mastering?



Manuel  It depends on the band. Sometimes I will overlook the entire project, shooting bands, producing the tracks or sometimes they present the whole package already done. Either way is really fun. Some times I have released stuff without hearing it, from having confidence in the band & what they do. Which is the most exciting experience for me. If I dont like a track it doesnt bother me because someone else probably will.



QRD  How involved do you like to be in the artwork design for a release?



Manuel  I enjoy being involved if they dont have any art direction. If they do I back the fuck off! Working on art with bands is one of the most rewarding parts of the experience.



QRD  If a band breaks up between the recording of a release & the release date, how does that effect what you do?



Manuel  That is the worst... yes. Its harder to sell a record for a band who broke up during the pressing. But if the musics strong it will stand the test of time & eventually sell out in 15-20 years. These days I can tell if a band isnt serious, so I dont get emotionally invested.



QRD  What do you wish bands on your label would do?



Manuel  Continue being other people I mean themselves!



QRD  Whats a record youd like to put out that youll never be able to?



Manuel  I dont think like that. I used to until I changed my mind & started releasing a bunch of my musical heroes music.



QRD  If you really like a band, but arent sure you could sell many copies of their record; what do you do?



Manuel  Put it out ASAP!



QRD  Do you have written contracts with your bands or handshake deals?



Manuel  Its mostly been all milkshakes so far. But I think were doing contracts soon cause its coming down fast.



QRD  How important is it to you to have touring acts on your roster & what do you do to encourage it?



Manuel  If we see a band we like & want to work with them, we ask. It has nothing to do with anything else.



QRD  How do you maintain contact with your fanbase?



Manuel  Telekinesis & ESP helped us build a legion of screaming faceless fans who picked up the signal. Its awesome.



QRD  Do you have intern & street team programs & if so, how do they operate?



Manuel  Theyre nice, but they have been largely unavailable, or was it I who was unavailable? I dont remember.



QRD  How big of a staff do you have & how big of one do you need?



Manuel  The staff is just 3 for now. Me, the honorable Rio Warner, who is a celeb fashion designer, & Luka Fisher, the jack off of all trades art major from the CIA. It couldnt be done without them.



QRD  Do you sell merchandise other than the music (t-shirts, etc.)?



Manuel  Umm used power tools, porno DVDs, creatine. For the label its just records, CDs, zines, & t-shirts.



QRD  Ideally, would you release your own material?



Manuel  Yeah, I have. Its been mostly out of necessity though. I dont think its weird or self-yanking though.



QRD  What do you do to try to build a sense of community within your roster?



Manuel  Well, I try introducing them to each other. Sometimes it works.



QRD  How often do you look at your return on investment & adjust your business model?



Manuel  Oh shit.



QRD  Do you worry about search engine optimization & website traffic?



Manuel  No but I would like to! If anybody is into that crap hit me up.



QRD  Do you think the return of vinyl & cassettes is a fad?



Manuel  No. In the underground circles I run in, its always been there. I have 20 gallon black garbage bags filled with cassettes from back when they werent trendy! Oh yeah, I guess they are a fad.



QRD  Is it important to have physical releases over digital ones or does it not matter?



Manuel  No. Even though I dont own digital music I feel its important to everyone else, so its essential.



QRD  What do you think of ultra-limited runs of releases (less than 100 discs)?



Manuel  Those are my favorite things to collect! They are very special entities.



QRD  What do you do about people distributing your music without financial compensation (piracy & file trading)?



Manuel  File trading I dont care personally, but bootlegging a disc would be a problem Im sure. Good thing Im not there yet.



QRD  Whats something you see other labels do that you think of as borderline unethical?



Manuel  Bootlegging awesome records under different names they dont have the rights to. I have some holy grail million dollar recordings from one of the biggest bands of all time that I can fund my entire life on; but I refuse, because its not worth losing my dignity over money, caca money.



QRD  What changes in things would cause you to stop your label?



Manuel  If I completely lost interest I would scrap it in a heartbeat, but I dont see that happening. Or if all my friends & family died in a world catastrophe & I was the only one left I wouldnt do it just for me.



QRD  What would you suggest to someone starting a label today?



Manuel  Start with small handmade runs. My first 10 releases were limited numbered nonsense between 1-200 copies, in other words dont press 500 LPS for your first release. You wont sell em! Also, if youre in it for the money, quit now.



QRD  Why do you think labels are still important to artists?



Manuel  Labels create a home base & scene for bands they might not otherwise have. Its a support system.



QRD  In 20 years what do you think/hope your label will be known/remembered for?



Manuel  Well be remembered for being the label that got bought out by Atlantic Records for 100 million dollars.








TOKYO: Eyeing investments from Asia's second-biggest economy, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said his visit to Japan is aimed at taking India growth story forward with investors so as to make them invest in a host of sectors, including infrastructure.

"We already have over a thousand Japanese companies which have invested in India. (Japanese) Prime Minister (Shinzo) Abe seeks to double it and therefore, I would be meeting individually as well as collectively a large number of investors," said Jaitley, who arrived here yesterday on a 6-day tour.

Apart from investors, the minister will meet Abe and other Japanese government officials.

"The whole idea is to take the India story forward with them," said Jaitley, who attended 'The Future of Asia' conference here today. He did not speak at the conference.

Stating that there are investors and companies that are keen to participate in the growth of Indian infrastructure, he said the SoftBank group is looking at one of the biggest investments in solar energy.

"They have made considerable headway already. They have identified the location and probably (it) will be one of the largest investments in those areas," he said.

Jaitley had met SoftBank Chief Executive Masayoshi Son here yesterday.

"I think similarly there are other Japanese investors who are open to the idea of having individual projects," he said. "We are open to the idea of them joining the India Infrastructure Investment Fund (NIIF) and this Indian flexibility provides them with more than one opportunity."

NIIF is being set up with a corpus of Rs 40,000 crore, partly funded by private investors, to finance infrastructure projects, including stalled ones.

The government and public sector entities will hold 49 per cent, with the rest offered to multilateral development banks, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds and other organisations.

NIIF will then buy shares in existing infrastructure lenders such as Rural Electrification Corporation and Power Finance Corporation, which will provide debt to selected projects.

While NIIF will have a quasi-sovereign status, external asset management companies will be in-charge of treasury operations. Boosting infrastructure investment by 1 per cent of GDP could add 3.4 million jobs.

Asked if Japanese investors have identified any project, Jaitley said, "Well, many of them have. For instance, SoftBank itself in Andhra Pradesh has identified the solar power project and there are many others who have identified and are talking and looking beyond solar power now.

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BENGALURU: The mobile market is always growing exponentially with new manufacturers stepping their foot in and the others adding new and exciting features to the already favorite models of theirs. Asus is no different and has launched three models of mobile phones namely, ZenFone 3, ZenFone 3 Max, and ZenFone 3 Deluxe to its product lineup. The launch was held at the companys Zenvolution event at Humble House in Taipei as reported by gadgets.ndtv.com.

The new series of smartphones are said to be the most impressive looking key products from the company to date. The phones are aggressively priced, meanwhile offering all the new features to get ahead in the market competition.

ZenFone 3

The newly revamped ZenFone 3 has a metal body with diamond cut edges and is the successor of the Asus Zenfone 2. The 5.5 inch smartphone comes with a Super IPS, capacitive touch screen display with 401 ppi of pixels density  along with three different carriers including GSM (2G), HSPA (3G) and LTE (4G). The company offers AsusZen User Interface with the phone providing two variants with respect to the memory units. There is one with 3 GB of LPDDR3 RAM on board with 32 GB of internal memory and the other has 4GB of RAM and a 64 GB of internal memory. The Phone is mechanized by a 64bit Octacore 2.0 GHz processor coupled with the Qualcomm MSM8953 Snapdragon 625 motherboard with an Adreno 506 GPU. The phone comes with an on-removable Li-Ion 3000 mAh battery. The mobile device will be priced around 15,999 INR according to smartphoneandprice.com

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NEW DELHI: Microsoft chief Satya Nadella on Monday met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other ministers to discuss issues pertaining to the IT sector and enhancing partnership for initiatives like Digital India.



The India-born CEO, who is on his third visit to his home country since taking over as Microsoft head in February 2014, met Minister of Communications and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha as well as many industry leaders and developers in New Delhi.



"Discussed various issues pertaining to the IT sector with @Microsoft CEO @satyanadella @MicrosoftIndia," Modi tweeted after the meeting.



Details of the discussions were, however, not disclosed.



Nadella's visit comes close on the heels of Apple CEO Tim Cook's four-day tour of India. During his visit, Cook had met Modi as well as business leaders like ICICI MD and CEO Chanda Kochhar, Tata Group Chairman Cyrus Mistry and Bharti Airtel Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal.



Both Nadella and Cook have offered support to various government's initiatives like Digital India and Startup India.



Earlier in the day, Nadella discussed with Prasad how Microsoft's contribution to the government's Digital India initiative can be enhanced.



"CEO @Microsoft @satyanadella met me today. Discussed enhancing cooperation with Microsoft towards @_DigitalIndia," the minister said in a tweet after the meeting.



According to sources, the meeting revolved around open source policy, engagement of Microsoft for linking Skype and Aadhaar and enhanced cooperation for cloud services in the government sector.



The Hyderabad-born Nadella also attended a meeting with industry executives organised by industry body CII.



The session was attended by leaders like Intel V-P Sales and Marketing and South Asia MD Debjani Ghosh, IL&FS Chairman Ravi Parthasarathy, Wipro President and COO Bhanumurthy BM and NIIT CEO Rahul Patwardhan.



Nadella had visited India, which is among one of the largest R&D bases for the company, in December last year. He had visited Mumbai and incubation centre T-Hub in Hyderabad.

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Our Government Saved " border="0" height="11" src="file:///C:/Users/Narendra/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image001.jpg" width="10" />36,000 Crore Leakages: Modi
NEW DELHI: India and the US are likely to sign two key agreements in July that would exempt prominent Indian citizens from immigration checks in America and pave the way for exchange of information on terrorists on a real time basis.

The two pacts on Global Entry a US Customs andBorder Protection programme that permits speedy clearance for pre-approved, low-risk travellers upon arrival in America and the Homeland Security Presidential Directive-6 (HSPD-6), which allows access to information on terrorists are expected to be signed during the Homeland Security Dialogue.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh will lead the Indian delegation at US-India Homeland Security Dialogue to be held in Washington in July, while the US team would be headed by Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Charles Johnson.

The US has been pressing for India's inclusion in the Global Entry so that high dignitaries like former Presidents, former Prime Ministers, former Union Ministers, film stars, top industrialists and frequent flyers could visit America without any hassle, a senior government official said.

Initially, the names of around 2,000 prominent Indians could figure in the coveted list, which would be expanded gradually after proper background checks of each individual.

Individuals included in the list enter the US through automatic kiosks at select airports. At airports, programme members proceed to Global Entry kiosks, present their machine-readable passport, place their fingerprints on the scanner for fingerprint verification and complete a customs declaration.

The kiosk issues the traveller a transaction receipt and directs the traveller to baggage claim and the exit.

Two important conditions for inclusion of an individual in the Global Entry programme are that he or she should not have any criminal record or be in anyway connected with a money laundering case.

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Source: PTI
NEW YORK: Citing 'Make in India' and 'Start Up India' campaigns for boosting manufacturing and employment, tech giant Cisco's Chairman John Chambers has said the next US President should take a cue from Prime Minister NarendraModi and outline the plan for growth of the American economy.



Weighing in on the 2016 US presidential race, Chambers said Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump could be the next US President going by the "current momentum".



He, however, said the next US President, irrespective of the political party, should outline his plans for growing America's economy, leveraging technology and creating jobs just as Modi is doing in India.



"The real key issue is I think the next President should be the person who outlines what Prime Minister Modi is going to do when he comes here in the first week of June," Chambers said at the Bloomberg Breakaway Summit here on May 25.



He said Modi, who will address the US Congress during his June 7-8 visit, is "going to talk about a digital India, about growing its economy not 6-7 per cent a year, which will be the fastest in the world, but at 10 or 11 per cent."



Chambers said the Prime Minister will also talk about a "digital manufacturing India, a digital start up India" as well as about re-doing regulation and creating a million jobs per month.



Modi will also focus on his government's plan to providing cheap and fast broadband to every citizen in India and to change healthcare and education in the country, he said.



"That is what the national debate should be about. Both parties should win by saying here is how you change your country. We have let America down, we got to change so we are addressing the symptoms here as opposed to the underlying issues," he said.



Chambers added that the person he would like to see lead America as its next President, regardless of political party, should be one who has a plan and focus to "fix America" and grow the economy so that the average American sees a 10-15 per cent pay raise over the next decade.

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The Skidmore Board of Trustees annually honors a member who has given sacrificially of wisdom, time, and talent with its Denis B. Kemball-Cook Award. Receiving the award in May was Linda G. Toohey, who is stepping down as chair of the board. The award citation praised her generosity, dedication, and leadership skills.



Linda G. Toohey recieves Kemball-Cook Award.

Toohey represents Skidmores close ties with its surrounding community, as she was executive vice president of the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce from 1980 until 2005. Her roles at the chamber included vice president of the Leadership Saratoga program, which she founded in 1985. Earlier she was president and publisher of the daily Saratogian newspaper.

Toohey has served on Skidmores board since 2001 and became chair in 2012, helping streamline committee structure, enhancing board communication with an electronic portal, and focusing attention on key collegewide issues from student access and campus sustainability to diversity and inclusion.

W. Scott McGraw will replace Toohey as chair in 2017.
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Idlib is under the control of the newly resurrected Army of Conquest coalition, which is dominated by ultraconservative insurgent groups and rebel factions. Al-Qaida's Syrian affiliate, the Nusra Front, leads the coalition. The Nusra Front is considered a terrorist group by the U.S. and U.N. and has been excluded from previous cease-fire agreements between government forces and rebels.
Students and staff were evacuated from Calwell Primary School on Tuesday after fire broke out in an air conditioner.

Firefighters were alerted to the fire in a classroom at the Downard Street school by an automatic alarm and a triple-0 call shortly before midday, an ACT Emergency Service Agency spokesperson said.

Crews extinguished the small fire and conducted ventilation throughout the school to clear the smoke.

The entire school was evacuated as a precaution however some staff and students were able to return shortly before 12.40pm.
It's been dubbed the dead heart of Canberra, but a new grants program hopes to reinvigorate Civic as a cultural and artistic hotspot.

In the City Canberra  an advocacy group financially supported by more than 600 CBD businesses  will launch a grants program on Wednesday worth up to $340,000 to entice artistic, musical, cultural and awareness events and pop-ups into the centre of Canberra.

Michael Liu is coordinating a program to enliven the city with $340,000 of community grants. Credit:Rohan Thomson

While NewActon and Braddon continue to enjoy hipster status, the city centre is battling to draw a crowd. The grants encourage anyone to realise a project in the city: young, old, professional, amateur, individual or groups.

Small ideas can apply for public grants of up to $2000, grants for the best popular ideas can be up to $10,000, and professional grants up to $50,000.
Crust Pizza has settled an unfair dismissal case launched by a delivery driver who was sacked after complaining about his underpayment to management.

Allegations of worker exploitation in Crust Pizza's ACT stores first came to light in September last year, when it was reported some staff were being paid cash in hand below-award rates.

Simon Cole has settled with Crust after claiming he was underpaid nearly $9 an hour by the Kingston franchise. Credit:Matthew Raggatt

United Voice, the union representing Crust's workers, fears the problems are widespread, and is calling for legal changes to make management legally responsible for failing to pay staff a proper wage.

Earlier this year, another Crust driver, Simon Cole, came forward.
When it comes to Australians' social media habits, there is one clear winner. And it's not our time or attention, which are increasingly corralled by various platforms.

More than half of people say Facebook is their favourite site, strides ahead of other platforms. About 95 per cent of Australians have an account, and use Facebook on average 12.5 hours a week, up 4 hours on last year.

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg said the network hopes to cut down on the response time between when someone reports a violent video and when Facebook can take the video down. Credit:AP

The average number of times Australians look at Facebook is steady at 32 times a week, but the amount of minutes spent there each time has increased from 17 to 24.

These numbers come from the 2016 Sensis Social Media Report. Sensis surveyed 81 businesses and 50 consumers in the ACT, a relatively small sample size.
The Greens have called on the ACT government to provide emergency funding to prevent the closure of a community legal service helping protect Canberra's environment.

The federal government cut funding from the Environmental Defenders Office in 2014, threatening its ability to advocate and provide legal advice on the environment to the Canberra community.

Greens MLA Shane Rattenbury, right, has called for the ACT government to step in to save the Environmental Defenders Office. Credit:Jay Cronan

The EDO was forced to rely on temporary donations and grants to stay afloat, but has now warned it is in an unsustainable position and will close within months if new funding is not provided.

The office has turned to the ACT Government for help ahead of next week's budget, saying it only needs a minimum of $130,000 a year to continue operating.
A Canberra man accused of selling illicit drugs to an undercover police officer has admitted his crime the day his ACT Supreme Court trial was to begin.

Matthew James Massey, 40, was arrested as part of a cross-border operation by ACT and NSW police targeting illegal drug supply in January 2013.

Matthew Massey in 2001.

It's alleged Massey had contact with an undercover police officer during the course of the operation and sold the officer two clip-seal bags containing methylamphetamine.

Massey initially denied the allegations and claimed during a court appearance in April the Canberra-based operation had deliberately targeted him.
What if your DNA held the key to finding a cure for any illness?

It may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but Canberrans could soon see their genes used to tailor personalised treatments for a range of diseases.

Manager of ACRF biomolecular resource facility Stephanie Palmer. The ACT government will invest $7.3 million in new gene technology in this year's budget. Credit:Elesa Kurtz

The ACT government will spend $7.3 million on new gene technology which could open the door to drug therapies that can be adapted to individual patients based on their genetics and medical conditions.

Canberra Clinical Genomics director Professor Matthew Cook from ANU said the new centre would make a real difference to patients' lives.
Dummy spits can be costly as the board of Air New Zealand no doubt learnt when Virgin Australia announced it had bagged a new deep-pocketed strategic partner through a share placement.

Virgin's new partner, Chinese-owned HNA Group, has taken a 13 per cent stake at 30 a share, raising $159 million, diluting Air New Zealand's shareholding from 25.9 per cent to 22.5 per cent.

The dilution is significant as it comes weeks after Air New Zealand put a "for sale sign" on its Virgin shareholding, which it bought at an average entry price of more than 40 a share.

How much further its stake will be diluted will depend on the size and timing of Virgin's much-anticipated capital raising, which could raise up to $1 billion.
Inner-city apartment prices could be affected by a wave of new properties coming onto the market at the same time as some off-the-plan buyers struggle to settle on their purchases, Standard & Poor's says.

The credit ratings agency has highlighted fears of an oversupply of apartments in Melbourne and Brisbane especially, alongside "settlement risk", caused by tougher bank lending rules.

Despite the commentary, which comes after the Reserve Bank warned about the risks to bank loans of property developers building apartments, S&P said it did not expect an increase in home loan defaults.

Reserve Bank figures, published on Tuesday, also showed further slowing in housing credit growth in the year to April, led by weaker growth in lending to investors.
Recently, the federal government completed an inquiry into how we regulate the financial system. One of the inquiry's proposals was that we need a board of oversight over ASIC  the consumer protection regulator  and APRA  the bank regulator.

That proposal was eventually dropped, doubtless with some push-back from the regulators. In fact, creating a Financial Regulator Assessment Board was the inquiry's only recommendation that the Abbott government rejected.

Because of ASIC's staggeringly poor performance, and all the recent banking and insurance scandals, there's now a call for more than a board of oversight, there are calls for a royal commission. So that worked out well.

All the while a blowtorch has been held against ASIC, and for reasons that are both good, and that keep coming. But APRA has escaped scrutiny, when in fact it may be the unsung villain of the piece. Allow me to explain.
IATA's annual conference  which kicks off in Dublin on Wednesday, is the airline industry's answer to Woodstock. But the love-in will be missing its Casanova, Virgin boss John Borghetti.

Barely months after Air New Zealand (AIZ) boss, Christopher Luxon, and chairman, Tony Carter, publicly announced plans to dump the airline's Virgin stake  in what will be a costly divorce  Borghetti would have claimed conference bragging rights with a new sugar daddy, China's HNA Group.

Who needs a profitable airline when you've got a boss with Borghetti's pulling power.

Mind you, the $159 million dowry would do plenty to answer concerns about Virgin's stretched balance sheet as well as giving the airline a red carpet to the fastest growing travel market.
In this photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, shakes hands with staff members at the control room of China Central Television (CCTV) in Beijing in February. Credit:AP China Daily's deputy editor-in-chief Kang Bing said Fairfax Media's presence in both Australia and New Zealand "means the influence of China Daily will be spread to cover the two most important countries in Oceania", adding that China's "soft power could drive the wheel of its friendship with Australia and New Zealand", according to quotes carried by the Chinese newspaper. Sky News signed a memorandum of understanding with the online arm of the People's Daily, the Communist Party's flagship newspaper, with a view to sharing video and online news content, mostly around business and economy stories. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, left, and Chinese President Xi Jinping shake hands before their meeting in Beijing in April. Credit:Andrew Meares The official Xinhua news agency also sealed an agreement enabling "greater information exchange" with the University of Technology Sydney's Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI), helmed by former foreign minister Bob Carr.

An ACRI spokesperson said the immediate areas of cooperation would involve expanding journalists' tours of China and securing more "specialist visitors" from China for the institute's events. Bob Carr with Chinese official Zhu Weiqun (also standing next to the scroll) and "living buddha" Tudeng Kezhu (wearing a robe). Credit:People's Daily Individually, the deals offer compelling commercial opportunities. But viewed collectively, they underline the coordinated nature in which China's propaganda arms are seeking to influence how the Communist Party is portrayed overseas  the potential pitfalls of which were highlighted when the Australian Broadcasting Corporation was caught self-censoring news reports on its Australia Plus website. John Fitzgerald, a leading China expert at Swinburne University, questioned DFAT's role in inviting and hosting China's chief propagandist and "all the Communist Party and [DFAT] palaver" surrounding the announcements. Workers applaud as Chinese President Xi Jinping talks with staff at the People's Daily in February. Credit:Xinhua/AP

It was "frankly alarming", he said, if it amounted to an endorsement which "officially welcomed foreign political party propaganda placements in Australian media". "High-level bilateral visits are a key avenue for promoting understanding and cooperation between Australia and China," a DFAT spokesperson said. "Australia is an open society with a free press and media organisations make their own decisions, and their readers exercise their judgement about material that is published." Beijing's push for increasing soft power is particularly pronounced in Africa, Latin America and parts of the Asia Pacific region where countries are increasingly reliant on Chinese trade and investment. And Beijing - long frustrated by the dominance of American and Western media - is making up for lost time in trying to achieve a level of global soft power and influence commensurate with its economic and political heft. Wanning Sun, a professor at the University of Technology Sydney who tracks Chinese and diaspora media, says Beijing has become increasingly flexible and adept at finding ways to push its content in different countries, "whether it's a liberal democratic country or a former communist bloc [one]". "The Chinese propaganda [push] has been quite aggressive and quite concerted and they have a lot of money to spend," she said. "They're not worried about budgets and they're leaving no stones unturned."

Professor Sun said China was mainly motivated by a "strong sense of injustice, because they have felt for decades the West has represented China in a very unfair and biased kind of way". "They are actually motivated by a historical memory of being invaded by the Western imperialists and they see this current situation as a continuation of the Western imperialistic discourse over China." Media freedoms in mainland China have long been among the worst in the world  the country is ranked 176th out of 180 countries surveyed by the Reporters Without Borders' Press Freedom Index, but have tightened further since Xi Jinping's February edict. "Naturally we are very attuned to any issues that may well be perceived or real and  editorial integrity, that's the key for us," said Angelos Frangopoulos, chief executive of Australian News Channel, parent company of Sky News Australia. Mr Frangopoulos said Sky already had existing understandings with state broadcaster CCTV and Shanghai Media Group.
Australia's first-quarter gross domestic product growth looks set to come in slightly higher than expected on Wednesday, following a surprisingly strong contribution from net exports.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday that exports of goods and services slipped 1 per cent in the first three months of the year, while imports dropped 4 per cent.

Economy well afloat. Net exports contributed much more than expected to GDP. Credit:Fairfax Media

This left the trade surplus up 60 per cent at $12.6 billion, which will translate to a 1.1 percentage point contribution to GDP, the ABS said.

Economists had expected net exports to contribute 0.7 percentage points.
A cleaner who was sacked because he had a cup of coffee on the job has won an unfair dismissal case in the Fair Work Commission.

In deciding the dismissal was unfair, Fair Work Commission vice president Adam Hatcher quoted the modern philosopher Alain de Botton: "Office civilisation could not be feasible without the hard take-offs and landings effected by coffee and alcohol."

The part-time cleaner sought the "take-off" of a cup of coffee in a Sydney office block shortly before his evening shift started.

"However, far from uplifting him, that cup of coffee was the direct cause of his rapid descent into summary dismissal two days later," Mr Hatcher said.
When I read about the recent attack on a Medecins Sans Frontieres-supported hospital in Aleppo, Syria, that resulted in 14 people being killed, including the city's last remaining paediatrician, my heart sank.

It immediately conjured up visions of the horror that had enveloped me in MSF's Kunduz Trauma Centre eight months earlier; being ripped from sleep by the eardrum-rupturing first explosion; my thudding heart, my shaking hands, dry retching while helplessly staring into the terrified eyes of my friend who was bleeding to death in front of me.

It reminded me of my overwhelming grief as another and another and another of my friends, colleagues, patients were confirmed dead, while I tried to focus on saving the lives of countless others brutally injured - limbs ripped off, shrapnel rocketed through their bodies, pressure injuries to the eyes, ears, lungs.

I had seen them just two hours earlier and my reassurances to them that the hospital was the safest place was replaced with the horror of knowing that my intensive care patients, incapacitated, were burning to death in their beds.
If they did search journalists' metadata in pursuit of their sources, the AFP investigators would first have to have obtained "journalist information warrants" under Division 4(C) of the recently amended Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act.

The problem isn't even that the Feds almost certainly used metadata searches  either the metadata of suspected leakers inside NBN Co, or the metadata of the journalists at News, the ABC and Fairfax who published stories based on the leaks  to identify the suspected middlemen who were the targets of the raids.

Even Labor now accepts, I think, that the AFP was doing its own thing, in pursuit of a complaint by NBN Co.

The problem with the raids by the Australian Federal Police in pursuit of whoever has been leaking documents about the national broadband network is not that the Turnbull government ordered them in the middle of an election campaign.

That's something they wouldn't have had to do before last year. But then, the warrants aren't much of a safeguard, because we don't know whether they were asked for or granted. We're not allowed to know. In the Kafkaesque world the politicians of both major parties have allowed Australia to become, anyone who tells us can go to prison for two years.

But the real problem with the raids is worse. Though no one seems to have noticed it, the AFP is trying to use very old laws to pursue not just the suspected leaker, but the recipients of the leaked documents.

A redacted version of the search warrant that authorised the police raids in Melbourne was posted over a week ago by the ABC's Media Watch program. Yet, so far as I'm aware, no one has pointed out what a truly alarming document it is.

The warrant justifies the searches on the grounds that two separate offences might have been committed. The first is that "in an as yet unidentified place an as yet unidentified Commonwealth officer communicated documents relating to the National Broadband Network to [redacted name] contrary to subsection 70(1) of the Crimes Act".

Now section 70 is short, and notorious: it makes it an offence, punishable by two years' imprisonment, for a "Commonwealth officer" to communicate any information that he or she comes by in the course of their duties to anyone who is not authorised to receive it.
Sure, Queensland's population is still growing, but more slowly than the national average. The expansion is due to the breeding capacity of the Cane Toads and an influx of Chinese, Indian and New Zealander immigrants.

The immigration is helping offset the growing exodus of Queenslanders to better states.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics says that in 2014 a total of 41,000 men and 37,400 women fled Queensland out of the state's population of 4.72 million. That's a 1.66 per cent runaway rate, or about one in 60 Cane Toads who want to leave Queensland. In the same year 47,000 men and 43,600 women left NSW out of the state's population of 7.5 million. That's a mere 1.21 per cent runaway rate, or about one in 80 Cockroaches who flee. Put another way, if you think living in NSW is bad enough to make you move interstate, remember that a far greater share of people living in Queensland are also looking to escape.

When you take the number of people moving from a state away from those arriving from other states, you get net interstate migration, or NIM. Queensland's NIM was 37,000 in 2002. Now it's just 5600  only a few hundred more than the NIM for NSW. Among young people the rush out of Queensland is more pronounced, with the state losing more 20-somethings than it gains each year.

So the young-adult population of Queensland is on balance running away from the Maroons  like my wife did on our fateful wedding day in 1989.
Another day, another crushing legal defeat for Big Tobacco. Last week the British High Court rejected its attempts to block plain packaging with a devastating judgment about an industry "which facilitates and furthers, quite deliberately, a health epidemic". That follows a catalogue of losses for the industry over plain packaging in Australian and international courts, following countless other legal defeats around the world.

The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, a global treaty ratified by 180 countries, formally commits governments to protecting their public health policies from tobacco industry interference. The EU Health Commissioner recently compared tobacco deaths with those from terrorism. Now AXA, one of the world's biggest insurers, has joined other institutions in announcing that it will get rid of all tobacco investments. This truly is a pariah industry.

The bad news is that tobacco still causes 6 million deaths each year around the world. Tobacco companies still promote their products wherever they can, and ferociously oppose measures that reduce smoking. Progress has been far too slow since 1950, when we learned that smoking kills.

But the good news is that Big Tobacco is losing battle after battle in the political arena, in the law courts, and in the court of public opinion. You can pay any amount for lawyers, lobbyists and spin doctors, but ultimately if you knowingly sell and promote a lethal product the tide will turn.
When a group of local Moreland residents and I decided in early February to organise a local community rally against racism, we didn't expect the media storm the event generated.

We were motivated by an alarming increase in racism, the federal government's brutal treatment of refugees, its plans to close several hundred Aboriginal communities and vilification of Muslim and African communities, in particular.

The three key issues were: stopping the forced closure of Aboriginal communities, letting the refugees in and closing the camps on Manus Island and Nauru, and saying "no" to Islamophobia.

More than 60 organisations endorsed the Moreland Says No to Racism rally, planned to be a peaceful community rally.
"I remember five to 10 years ago, you did have the fear that there was a limited amount of creative work and so people would hold on to it and guard their clients furiously, and I think that's definitely changing," Scully says.

Although it may seem commercial suicide to start broadcasting fees among competitors in a freelance-heavy industry, Vivid Ideas curator Jess Scully says open discussion will help to engender a stronger, collaborative network.

This and other tough questions will be tackled in Make Nice, a three-day conference that aims to highlight the unspoken challenges for women working in the creative industries  starting with pricing and pay rates.

"We do need to have a space to have these sorts of conversations and need to understand that actually there is a huge market for creative work and it's only growing. We just need to figure out how we can work together to expand that market."

Make Nice is the brainchild of designer and UTS tutor Ngaio Parr and artist and Brisbane Powerhouse curator Alexandra Winters. The pair have invited international speakers, who will be backed by roundtable discussions on topics such as pricing, contracts, client management, workflow and managing staff for an audience of 150 women in the creative industries.

"The main purpose is to create a more supportive network among creative women in Australia and we hope that there will be a trickle-down effect from that, [for] people to be more confident to ask for what they want in their workplaces, for people to able to collaborate with other women, and therefore everyone rising up," Parr says.

Scully describes Make Nice as "a very warm group therapy session". The speakers, who will be present across the three days, are women with a proven record in overcoming some of the hurdles the event aims to put under the spotlight.

LA-based photographer Elizabeth Weinberg is one of the conference's keynote speakers, alongside French designer Leslie David and US set designer Adi Goodrich. Weinberg most recently shot Iggy Pop and Eagles of Death Metal's Josh Homme for The New York Times, and has captured many celebrity faces including Matt Damon, Ruby Rose, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.
Stephen Rice's lawyer has attacked the Nine Network's "egregious" and "diabolical" dismissal of the 60 Minutes producer, calling Rice a "scapegoat" in light of the child-snatching fiasco.

Top workplace lawyer John Laxon said Nine had failed their duty of care to Rice as the 58-year-old continues to face criminal charges in the Lebanese legal system for his involvement in April's failed child recovery operation in Beirut.

Mr Laxon confirmed he and Rice were currently considering a legal course of action.
"We all thought James [May] and Richard [Hammond] would carry on, and that's what I wanted to happen as a fan," Evans adds. "I just wanted our show to carry on. The bizarre thing was when I watched the last show, or what became the last show, which none of us knew, nor did they when they were making it, it was so sad. It was like a patient that didn't know it was dying or hadn't been told." Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond have named their new Amazon Prime show The Grand Tour. That episode aired in June 2015. Some time later Evans got a call from the then director of television at the BBC, Mark Linsey, asking him if he was open to a conversation about Top Gear. "I had really genuinely ruled myself out because everybody else was putting their hats in the ring and getting busy," he says. "That was distasteful in my opinion, and disrespectful of how hard [everyone had worked on] the program in the first place." When the BBC confirmed to Evans the series, as everyone knew it, had been cancelled, he "was absolutely completely up for making it".

"I was in shock for about two or three weeks afterwards, and I was just trying to come to terms with what I had said yes to and what that meant in my life and my career and what people would think of me." The focus then became exploring the show's philosophy, with a view to rebuilding it. "What it was, how it came about, why I liked it, why it was any good, where it was at the moment, what did that mean, what could we take with us, what couldn't we take with us ... and then putting together a production team," Evans says. "All the press wanted to know about was, who's going to be the next James, who's going to be the next Richard, are you Jeremy? We pretty much got a comprehensive team within I would say six weeks. Signed everybody up, took them out to the pub, got to know each other, which is fun." Evans sees the new series as a chance to wipe the slate clean, not just about Clarkson and the scandals that plagued him, but about the structure of the show's format. " I do see it as a blank canvas and as a very exciting prospect," he says. "I have no issues with any lingering anything, I honestly couldn't be more excited."

The recipe of Top Gear has always been something of a case of 11 secret herbs and spices, an uncertain blend of passion, qualification, derring do, madness and joy. Evans says, first and foremost, he is a fan of cars. "I have been since I can remember thinking a thought," he says. "And I love to make television programs. Those are the first two things." Requirements of the gig? "You need to love motorcars and you need to want to make great television programs for the sake of making them," he says. "It's [also] really useful if you don't have to do the job, [that] it's not a stepping stone in your career, and it's not a stepping stone in my career. "I'm doing this show because I really really want to," he adds. "It puts me in a very healthy situation, doesn't it? It doesn't compromise me. It means I can make my own decisions. It means if I succeed, it'll be because of the decisions I've made, and if I fail, it's because of the decisions I've made. Not because of decisions that were forced upon me." The Clarkson-May-Hammond iteration of the series, Evans says, was "in many ways a lot of little films", using the studio-based banter to frame segments that were like classic caper movies, such as the show's memorable London-to-Verbier race. (That episode won the series its International Emmy Award.) "It's a lot to do with screenplay," Evans says. "The new Top Gear, the last 12 years, is very screenplay-based as opposed to script based. Although Jeremy was a brilliant wordsmith, it's about those moving pictures."

Evans attempted to deconstruct the series  "I sat down and I thought about why I like it, why my kids like it, why my wife likes it, and why the world likes it," he says  and he came up with three key words: movement, jeopardy and judgement. "I know movement sounds ironic because it's a car show, but so seldom is it just people talking," he says. "It's nearly always moving and maybe there should always be movement involved. And when you add jeopardy, you have conflict and resolution, and when you have conflict and resolution, from a viewer's point of view, you get judgement. When people are watching they love to judge. "The reason a lot of kids love the show is they watch it with their mates or their brothers and they always want to be right. And if you go to any playground, there's kids going, 'well, you think this but I think that, and I'm right'. Top Gear is that from the beginning." Plus, he adds, if you watch The Great Escape or The Italian Job, "it's basically those films. So if we sort of stick with that and throw a few other twists and go for revolution, I think we should be OK." WHAT Top Gear
Australia installed almost 1 gigawatt of new solar capacity last year but was easily eclipsed by cloudy nations such as the United Kingdom, which installed about four times as much, according to the REN21 Global Status report on renewable energy.

Investment in new renewable energy and energy efficiency programs rose to a record $US286 billion ($396 billion) even as prices for most technologies, such as solar and wind energy, fell. Growth also came despite falling prices for rival fuel sources, such as coal and oil.

"Renewables are now cost-competitive with fossil fuels in many markets and are established around the world as mainstream sources of energy," Arthouros Zervos, chairman of REN21, said in the report.

Globally solar PV capacity added 50 gigawatts to reach 227 GW of capacity. New wind power capacity rose even more, adding 63 GW of new capacity to reach 433 GW.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has prevailed in a potentially-destabilising battle over Senate preselections in NSW after the Liberal Party factions agreed to ensure the political survival of conservative minister Concetta Fierravanti-Wells.

The Minister for International Development and the Pacific will be all but guaranteed another term in the Senate at a special meeting of the Liberal state executive in Sydney on Tuesday evening.

Phone calls were still being made on Tuesday but senior factional figures told Fairfax Media that Mr Turnbull's direction to place ministers in winnable positions on the ballot paper had prevailed over a push to dump Senator Fierravanti-Wells in favour of Hollie Hughes, a former staffer to retiring Liberal Bill Heffernan.
Malcolm Turnbull is a more sought-after dinner companion, but if your car is broken down in a bus lane, Bill Shorten's your man. Those are the findings of a somewhat unorthodox poll that asked Australians which political leader they would prefer in a variety of social situations.

While the resounding response was "don't know", there were some clear winners in a handful of categories. The Prime Minister - a self-made multi-millionaire and former businessman - was vastly preferred as a dispenser of investment advice, 53 to 11 per cent. Twice as many voters trusted him to give their children advice about the future.

Mr Turnbull was also a more popular dinner guest, 38 to 22 per cent, and was marginally more trusted to cook a nice meal. Disturbingly for Mr Shorten, who as a union leader oversaw many employment agreements for low-paid workers, respondents also preferred the PM to negotiate their next pay rise.
A record number of Australians look set to skip election day voting on July 2, with experts predicting as many as a third of voters could cast early ballots or postal votes.

And with so many voters making early decisions, parties have had to change the way they campaign, making announcements and splashing out on advertising long before the polling day climax.

At the 2013 federal election, 26 per cent of eligible voters cast their ballot at early polling locations - more than double the number of early voters 10 years earlier.
Australia's relationship with the United States would "withstand" a Donald Trump presidency, Labor's foreign spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek says, despite opposition leader Bill Shorten labelling the presumptive Republican nominee's views "barking mad".

In an interview with ABC's 7.30 program on Tuesday, Ms Plibersek was repeatedly pushed by host Leigh Sales on whether Mr Shorten's comments would diminish the Australia-US alliance should both Labor and Mr Trump be victorious in the impending elections in both countries.

Defending her leader's strident comments, Ms Plibersek said they were no different to when former Prime Minister John Howard said al-Qaeda would cheer the election of Barack Obama.

"That didn't affect our relationship: we continue to have a very close relationship with the United States, including increasing the inter-relationship during the Obama presidency."
Australia's education funding model is so dysfunctional that simply pumping billions of extra dollars into the system will not reverse the widening class divide between our schools, a new report has found.

Mid-range private school students are on track to receive approximately $1000 more federal and state government funding than comparable average government school students by 2020, based on nationwide funding trends from 2009 to 2014, according to a provocative new report by Centre for Policy Development.

The first two years of the Gonski funding started to flow in some states from 2014.
That said, it is ridiculous when either side (Coalition presently) acts like there is no alternative to the US-Australia alliance other than 'all the way.' Shorten is absolutely right to flag Australia's concerns about what Trump would mean for the region but he could have done so with a little more elegance. In other politics news: Barnaby Joyce outed what many widely believe in the Coalition - that Tony Abbott's whole half-baked 'mea culpa' schtick is really him setting up a comeback. Peta Credlin, Mr Abbott's former chief of staff, appeared on Sky News in her capacity as a commentator and said the notion was "horsesh**t." Then came this quote: "Honestly, Barnaby, get back on the wombat trail - please leave this alone." Quite the insight into the reasons for Mr Abbott's downfall in the first place if these comments are anything like the orders given to cabinet ministers behind closed doors as the PM's chief of staff.

3. 60 Minutes case getting uglier by the day 60 Minutes presenter Tara Brown and former producer Stephen Rice on their return to Sydney. Credit:Daniel Munoz How the Nine Network was able to dodge very valid questions about whether it paid for the child abduction plot when the crew were in jail, and even claim through their Lebanese lawyer that they only paid for Sally Faulkner's story is looking increasingly ludicrous, with the Daily Telegraph reporting on emails in which senior figures at Nine openly discussed the payment for Adam Whittington. The emails also show the senior figures at Nine were absolutely aware of the harebrained scheme to snatch the Faulkner-Elamine children off the streets in Beirut. Nine for weeks hid behind the excuse that the crew were in jail. They even refused to comment when we obtained the bank record showing they paid money into Whittington's account.

Now they use the same excuse and say they will not comment because they are being taken to court by the producer who was made to take the fall for the disastrous saga - Stephen Rice. Imagine the leniency 60 Minutes would give a politician using these same excuses. 4. PwC tears up the dress code PricewaterhouseCoopers in Australia has torn up its dress code for good. Sue Horlin from PwC denies the move is linked to the London case in which a receptionist was sent home for asking to wear flats instead of heels but told the Financial Review "I don't mind the timing." 5. Andrew Forrest leads anti-slavery efforts

A very Australian affair at The Shard in London on Tuesday morning, local-time. With Russell Crowe as MC, Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest launched the 2016 Global Slavery Index which is prepared by his NGO Walk Free. The report makes for sobering reading and Australia is far from immune from the global slavery problem or incapable of helping combat the problem. A report from The Sydney Morning Herald's Rachel Browne here and an explainer from me here.

6. Adele rips into snap-happy fan I've got to admit I'm a shocker at this even though I know I should just put the phone down and use my eyes. But I did love Adele's take-down of this fan trying to video her concert. (Please don't let the irony that this is being filmed by another fan with another camera escape you!) One of the more interesting trends I've noticed in the last few years are the number of bars, music concerts and so-on where taking photos or even bringing in a phone is forbidden. I guess with some, it's not enough to be told.
Most people don't think about their super until they hit their late 40s or early 50s.

Anyone who has not taken a close look at super for a long time will be surprised by how many investment options their funds offer them.

SunSuper screen grab

Advances in technology are allowing funds to offer a much wider range of investments.

As I wrote about last week, many super funds are taking advantage of advances in share-trading platform technology to allow members to invest directly in Australian shares at very low brokerage costs.
Australia's most powerful universities have fallen into line over university admissions standards, recommending wholesale changes in the wake of a Fairfax Media investigation that brought the sector's integrity into question.

In January, confidential data revealed that up to 60 per cent of students at some universities were being admitted below the advertised minimum requirements, forcing the federal government to direct the Higher Education Standards Panel to examine transparency in the sector.

On Tuesday, the Group of Eight universities endorsed the recommendation of the panel chair, the former secretary of Prime Minister and Cabinet Peter Shergold, to publish the lowest, median and maximum Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank for every university degree.
Major public service departments are more likely to launch radical innovations than private sector businesses, according a landmark University of Melbourne study.

The study of 8000 people across 5000 workplaces is the first comprehensive study of business leadership since the Karpin Report in 1995, which called for an overhaul of management strategy.

Public sector leaders are at least twice as likely as private sector leaders to have earned a post-graduate qualification.

The Centre for Workplace Leadership report, released this week, found public sector leaders more likely to report incremental and large-scale innovations than private sector colleagues.
It wasn't the first time she escaped death  as a younger woman she fell off a train on the Cronulla line, as a girl she fell out of a moving car, and another time she narrowly missed being run over by a truck.

"I lay there for a little while longer and I thought if I pulled myself up on the toilet, but when I got to the toilet I couldn't even reach it," said Ms Ross. "I knew my arm was bleeding and my leg and I just gave up for quite a while."

Trish Ross was unable to get up. Stuck on the cold bathroom floor where she had fallen after becoming violently sick, the Caringbah woman in her late 80s had a bleeding arm and leg, and was convinced she was about to die alone.

But this time she thought that was it: "When I say I thought I was going to die, I really did. I remember one time I just got off my side and lay back and I thought this is it, nobody's going to find me," Ms Ross said. "I was just lying there hopelessly frightened, in pain."

When the phone rang, she knew it was the Red Cross ringing to see if she was OK.

"I thought, 'Oh my god, it's Red Cross'. By this time I was really crying and praying and the phone rang the third time and I knew it was Red Cross and it was the best sound I'd ever heard in my life." A Red Cross volunteer then called her neighbour who came over to check on her.

As temperatures plummet, the Red Cross is launching its annual Doing it Tough appeal on June 1. Its new data shows thousands of lonely Australians like Ms Ross are at risk of serious illness or injury and need help this winter.

"At a time when it is dark, it is cold, it is harder to get out, and for those who are already lonely, winter makes it even tougher," said Judy Slatyer, the new CEO of the Australian Red Cross.
More than a day after Blue Mountains photographer Cindy Waldron was dragged underwater by a crocodile, tributes have flowed for the "outstanding woman" and "darling girl" she was.

In a cruel irony, Ms Waldron was on a trip in far north Queensland to celebrate the end of the cancer treatment being undertaken by childhood friend Leeann Mitchell, when a late-night swim in crocodile-infested waters led to her presumed death.

The search for Ms Waldron continues after she went missing at Thornton Beach, north of the Daintree River, about 10.30pm on Sunday.

Originally from New Zealand, Ms Waldron, 46, had reportedly lived in Australia for 26 years, where she lived in Lithgow and worked as a photographer based in the Blue Mountains suburb of Leura.
A staff member on one of Sydney's most controversial councils had home renovations worth thousands of dollars paid for by a sitting councillor, whose apartment block he approved despite allegations it was poorly constructed and its roof later blew off, a public inquiry has been told.

Top Auburn council planner Glenn Francis also handed councillors coloured pencils and invited them to redraw the city's zoning protocols, the inquiry heard, with another councillor benefiting from the proposed changes.

The inquiry into the political home of Salim Mehajer is being overseen by Sydney silk Richard Beasley.

Council assisting the inquiry Paul Bolster said the inquiry would examine several controversial zoning decisions, disappearing council files, why "not one but two" fires struck a property connected to Mr Mehajer's family and "extraordinary largesse" shown to Mr Mehajer in a controversial deal involving a council car park.
The state government's council amalgamation agenda is set to come under more scrutiny after Strathfield Council elected to push on with its case against the Minister for Local Government, Paul Toole, saying "serious matters" had emerged from documents produced by the NSW government.

Earlier, the government had agreed to settle the case after conceding a flaw in the report by the Department of Local Government delegate on Strathfield, Burwood and Canada Bay Councils. The minister described it as a "legal technicality".

The case has been stood over until Wednesday morning by Justice Tim Moore of the Land and Environment Court to allow the parties to draw up their arguments about what he said were "serious matters".
Several NSW Police officers have been savaged in court for allegedly grabbing the breasts and neck of an anti-Reclaim Australia protester, then covering their actions up by deleting evidence, making up a false charge against her, lying under oath and attacking her in court.

Simone Renae White, 41, a social worker, attended Martin Place last July for a counter rally to the Reclaim Australia demonstration.

She was arrested by Senior Constable John Wasko who alleged Ms White had assaulted him in the execution of his duty.

He said that, as a line of police were shepherding a line of protesters through Martin Place, Ms White turned back at him with her elbow up.
A hair found on the wrist band of a mysterious watch could help police solve the 23-year-old murder of a doting Sydney father and butcher.

It was 1993, a month before Christmas, when police prised open the boot of a red Holden Calais in the city's north-west after residents complained about a vile smell in the area.

The body of Graham Bourke, a 44-year-old butcher by trade, was found inside.

He had been shot once in the back of the head and his throat was cut. His large frame was squeezed in the boot of his own car and left to rot about one kilometre from his Hornsby home.
Shocked friends of a 17-year-old schoolgirl who died when the car she was driving flipped and crashed in Sydney's west overnight have spoken of their devastation following the loss of their "beautiful friend".

Residents reported hearing a series of loud bangs on the street before they rushed outside to find a Toyota Corolla had rolled and landed in the front yard of a house near the intersection of Belloc Close and Vidal Street in Wetherill Park just before 8pm on Monday.

Behind the wheel of the crumpled car was Rhonda Audisho, 17, understood to have been a year 12 student who also worked in a nearby McDonald's restaurant.

Two other passengers in the car, a 14-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl, were able to climb free from the wreckage.
A Year 6 teacher accused of indecently assaulting a 12-year-old girl numerous times last year at her Sydney school has appeared in court.

The 49-year-old man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, allegedly assaulted the girl and incited her to commit acts of indecency at the western Sydney school in 2015.

In court documents, police allege the man was the child's Year 6 teacher when at least some of the offences occurred.

He is also accused of procuring the child for sex.

Police charged the man with a string of offences after computers and storage devices were seized from his southwest Sydney home on Thursday.
Forthright north Queensland MP Bob Katter has called for croc shooting safaris and hit out at a fellow member of parliament in response to a likely fatal crocodile attack.

The comments came after Leichhardt MP Warren Entsch blamed "human stupidity" for the attack, which was presumed to have killed New South Wales woman Cindy Waldron, 46.

On Monday morning, as police and SES scoured Thornton Beach in the Daintree National Park for any sign of the woman's body, Mr Entsch warned against using the incident to start a reactive debate about crocodile management.

Mr Katter seemed to rise to the challenge later that night, reigniting his calls for crocodile culls in far north Queensland.
Detective Inspector Damien Hansen. Credit:Tony Moore Thirty years ago it was just bush. Today it is one of Brisbane's largest industrial estates. And about 500 metres from Wacol towards Brisbane the twin "Sharron Phillips" signs stand either side of the Ipswich Motorway, the way signs have for almost 30 years. Sharron Phillips disappeared from near here at Wacol in 1986. Credit:Tony Moore The Wacol Army Barracks on the righthand side as you drive towards Brisbane is no longer there.

Ms Phillips walked to the army barracks unsuccessfully asking soldiers for help the night of May 8, 1986. Police are searching the 100 cubic metres of soil inside this drain at Carole Park, which has been removed in the past week. Credit:Tony Moore They said no, and she presumably walked off. Then she went missing. Ms Phillips' sister Donna Anderson (nee Phillips) on Tuesday night said she had mixed views about the police search for her sister's body on Cobalt Street at Carole Park. Sharron Phillips vanished without a trace in May 1986.

She said police had this information four years ago. "I don't really know what to think," Sharron's older sister said on Monday night. "Yes, I'm happy that they are doing something. I'm happy that they are doing something," she said. Ms Anderson said she was not optimistic about the search. "I told the police that I've heard that story before," she said.

"It could be true and it would be great to know that it wasn't Dad." The three older Phillips siblings on May 19 told Fairfax Media for the first time they wanted police to check their father's alibi that he had driven to collect "one of his trucks at Gilgandra" the night Sharron disappeared. They were reluctant to question their father and their other siblings have angrily denied their allegations. Bob Phillips died in August 2015 and denied he had any involvement in Sharron's disappearance. He and his family in the late 1980s into the mid-1990s organised a massive public campaign to find Sharron. Ms Anderson said she still believed there was merit in searching the block of land at Riverview next to her parent's home, if the Carole Park search is unsuccessful.

"I just can't understand why police can't check that bushland beside Mum and Dad's place," Ms Anderson said. "They wouldn't have to excavate that, from what I understand from modern technology, or even using dogs," she said. "It still feels that they are not going on any information that we have given to them. "I would have thought that other block would have been easier and then they could have ruled out Dad, which would have been nice. That would have been nice, for us." Detective Inspector Damian Hansen said police they did not have enough specific information to search the land at Riverview next to St Peter Claver College.
It's taken another reminder from the independent MP who gave the Palaszczuk Government the numbers they needed to lead, the glare of yet another spotlight on political donations and almost 18 months.

But the Government is finally ready to move forward on its commitment to hold a royal commission style inquiry into political donations. Or so it says.

Speaker of the House Peter Wellington has written to the premier about the donations inquiry. Credit:Bradley Kanaris

Labor promised the inquiry, looking into whether there was any link between government decisions and donations, as part of its commitments while wooing Peter Wellington for his support to form government.

Mr Wellington took the pressure off with the change of government, saying that the change over meant the inquiry he had been calling for was no longer needed urgently. Still needed, but not immediately.
An older couple has escaped serious injury as a fire ripped through a home on the bayside south of Brisbane, believed to be started by an electric blanket.

The whole Victoria Point house was ablaze about 3am on the first day of winter when firefighters arrived, with the roof partially collapsing due to the damage.

Firefighters put out a blaze at a Victoria Point home. Credit:Nine News

Paramedics treated a man with minor burns to his hands and legs and a woman suffering shock. Both were taken stable to the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital.

Queensland Fire and Emergency Services Brisbane duty operations manager Inspector Brett Finnis told police the couple noticed a fault in the blanket about 11.30pm.
Mr Walker: Well ladies and gentlemen today we've seen the extraordinary circumstance of a nine month police investigation following a referral to an independent lawyer, following a three month investigation by that lawyer and that investigation into a key person in Queensland's political process, Mr Williams, who effectively holds the balance of power as a member in a tight parliament in this government. And after nine months of police investigation, three months of independent legal investigation we're simply told nothing to see here, we don't intend to take any further action. I don't think that's good enough from a government which has committed to transparency. Annastacia Palaszczuk, before the last election, signed in her own hand the commitment to the Fitzgerald Principles.

And the fourth of those was that in relation to any controversial decision of the government an adequate explanation would be given to the people of Queensland. Well that hasn't happened and if this government is truly transparent about what it does, truly committed for that open government about which it speaks it would explain to the people of Queensland why this investigation took so long, why it was necessary after nine months to independently refer it to a lawyer, and why after twelve months, simple, nothing is going to happen. Reporter: Wait, are you saying that ... Mr Walker:

So the other things that I should say that needs to be explained is why in all of this process, this lengthy twelve month investigation we hear today from Mr Williams that he was never questioned by the police. I find that alarming. I can't believe that in a twelve month investigation with serious allegations against a member of parliament, that Member of Parliament wasn't even asked to respond to those allegations. There's something strange about this. The people of Queensland deserve to know much more than they've been told and that the Premier, the Attorney General, the Commissioner of Police, somebody, should be explaining to the people of Queensland why it is that this has come to an end after such a lengthy protracted investigation.

Reporter: Are you saying that the  yeah  that the government has instigated the police to do a cover up? Mr Walker: What I'm saying is that this government is committed to transparency Reporter:

Yeah, but you're saying that the police have covered it up? Mr Walker: And It deserves, it deserves to tell the Queensland people better than simply nothing more is going to happen. Reporter: But that's the police side of things it's not up to the government to release details of a police investigation.

That never happens. Mr Walker: It's up to the government to release a better explanation to the people of Queensland as why, as to why this has come to a grinding halt. It is simply not good enough. Reporter:

So should the government just intervene ... Reporters: Inaudible Mr Walker: Now that we know, as Mr Williams has told, Mr Williams has told us, Mr Williams has told us, Mr Williams has told us that he hasn't been interviewed by the police.

How can that be a proper investigation of this serious set of allegations? The government simply owes the people of Queensland a better explanation. They can't leave it, they can't leave it where it is. Reporter: You want the government to intervene in a police investigation?

Do you understand the notion of the separation of powers? Mr Walker: The government owe the people of the Queensland a better explanation. Reporter: Why?

Mr Walker: Because, they commit to transparency, they have committed to saying that every controversial decision made by this government will be explained. Reporter: It's not a decision made by the government, it's a police decision. Mr Walker:

It's a decision made by this government to take no further action in this matter. Reporter: No it's not, it was the police. Mr Walker: Based on the advice that they've been given.

Reporter: No, it was Reporter: What further action could they take if the police say there is no prospect or a prosecution? What more action can the government take?

Mr Walker: It's up to the government to explain why they'll take no action and what they know about this incident Reporter: Well what kind of action do you want them to take? Mr Walker:

There has been a nine-month police investigation, there's been a referral to an independent lawyer and it's not good enough simply to leave that on the basis that saying we're not going to take any further action. Reporter: But you could say the same thing with what happened with Doctor Levy. Mr Walker: Look, there have been plenty of cases before in which the Labor Party have been very happy to table the legal advice that they've received.

Reporter: But they haven't received advice, it's not the party. Mr Walker: In the failure to retry Sir Joh Bjelke- Petersen they tabled that advice. When they decided to prosecute Senior-Sergeant Hurley and they received independent advice from Sir Lawrence Street they tabled that.

They have found themselves quite willing and quite able to give people a better explanation of their decision, than they have in this case. Reporter: Mr Walker, you have said, that you find it very strange that this man was never interviewed by police and you say that something has gone on here, are you saying that this is a police cover up or that police didn't do their jobs right? Mr Walker: I am saying that the government owes the people of Queensland an explanation as to exactly what has happened.

There has been a nine-month police investigation; it hasn't just been dismissed overnight. There's been a nine-month police investigation, there was then for some reason a referral to an independent lawyer, and that's not being explained to us as to why that was necessary, and then that lawyer's given an opinion and we don't know what that is. And we know that at the bottom of all that, that Mr Williams hasn't even been interviewed. I find that extraordinary, when there was a lurid series of allegations against him in the press over a period of time that no one, not the Attorney-General, not the Premier, not the Commissioner of police said don't think someone should ask Mr Williams about this. Reporter:

Are you questioning police judgement? Mr Walker: I'm questioning why the government isn't giving people ... Reporter: Do you understand that this was a police decision?

Mr Walker: I'm questioning why the government isn't giving us a better explanation of what has going on here. Reporter: But it's not the government's investigation, that's where we're all confused, the government did not instigate this investigation, it was a police investigation that went to DPP who then referred it to the independent barrister and that is all independent of government, so you're either alleging that the government should have interfered and, you know, got more answers or that the government did interfere and stop it. Mr Walker:

I'm suggesting that the government owes Queenslanders a better explanation of what has happened Reporter: Why? It's a police investigation Mr Walker: Well, they need to explain the nature of that.

Reporter: But it's a police investigation. Mr Walker: They cannot simply leave up in the air the fact that after nine months of police investigation and three months of an independent legal investigation there's nothing to see here. Reporter:

It's not their investigation though, so why is the government responsible for a police investigation? Mr Walker: Because the police are part of the executive arm of government, the executive arm of government deserves to explain to the people of Queensland what's gone on here? Reporter: But no, that's not how the separation of power works. The government, if they interfered with a police investigation ...

Mr Walker: I'm not suggesting that they interfere with a police investigation. Reporter: But that's why we're all confused now, because you're saying that the government owes us an explanation but it wasn't a government-commissioned inquiry, it was a police investigation. Mr Walker:

I understand that it was a police investigation. The government owes us an explanation as to what has gone on and why after nine months ... Reporter: But why? Mr Walker: Because they've committed to transparency in these matters, they committed to transparency as to these sorts of decisions.

Reporter: But this isn't a controversial decision though that they were involved in. Mr Walker: But this is a controversial decision. They deserve and they are at their required to explain to the people of Queensland why it is that this investigation took so long  Reporter:

But they can't. It is not their investigation. You could say the same about the Levy investigation, you could say the same about the Flegg investigation, you could say the same about the Yandina Five investigation, you could say the same thing about drug investigations that go on for two years  do we table all of those - that this is what happened? Mr Walker: This is a significant political issue and the government has a duty to explain to people, the process put in place and why it has led to no outcome after 12 months, with no questions being asked of Mr Williams  Reporter: But that is all police. Why aren't you talking to Ian Stewart about this.

Mr Walker: This is what the Government needs to say, they need to explain the process, as to what happened, why after nine months it went nowhere, other than an independent lawyer...so there is a nine month investigation, a three month legal process and the only outcome to that we know is nothing further will happen. Reporter: Why do you think the police shouldn't answer these questions? Mr Walker:

This is a political matter and I am calling on the Premier and the Attorney-General ... Reporter: But aren't you innocent until proven guilty? It is a police matter. Reporter: Why aren't you concerned that Ian Stewart isn't standing up and explaining why ...

Mr Walker: That is up to the government to determine how they explain it to people Reporter: But why? Mr Walker:

My questions to the Premier and the Attorney-General are to explain what processes happened and why we have come to this conclusion. Reporter: Was this press conference your idea? Reporter: Are you worried that this press conference and line of talk could perhaps harm your credibility as a future Attorney-General?

Mr Walker: I put quite simply there has been a 12-month investigation here, which has led to no outcome. The people of Queensland deserve a better explanation than that. A nine-month police investigation then referred for three months to another lawyer, no explanations to why and no questions to Mr Williams. Reporter: Do you think the government interfered with the investigation? Mr Walker:

I don't know if the government interfered with the investigation. Reporter: But do you think, is that what you are alleging? Mr Walker: I am not alleging that, I am saying the government deserves to explain the process and why we've got to this point.

Reporter: So are politicians then, every politician is held to a higher standard then, than what the public is  in terms of how police investigate things. Mr Walker: This is a higher profile case than most Reporter:

So there is no confidentiality in high profile cases? Mr Walker: I'm not ... saying anything about confidentiality, I am saying the government owes the people of Queensland an explanation. Reporter: A police investigation is confidential.

Mr Walker: The government owes the people of Queensland an explanation about this outcome. Reporter: But it is not their investigation. That is where we are really confused. We don't mean any disrespect, it is just very confusing why the government owes us an explanation over a police investigation. Mr Walker:

Because Mr Williams is part of their team in parliament, he's a key to them retaining their majority, this is a significant political issue and they need to explain how this political has occurred. Reporter: When LNP members were investigated during the Newman years, the Premier stood up and said it is a police investigation, we will obey by the dictates of the police investigation and nothing was said until the end of the police investigation  if there were no charges, the matter was closed, as happens for everyone, if there were, there was further action. So why does the government then, have to explain why police and the DPP have decided not to charge somebody. Mr Walker: Because this is a high profile case and it is one which the government which has signed up to the transparency 

Reporter: So they need to then go to the DPP and say give us your case files, so we can release it? Mr Walker: They can get whatever information they need to get, but they need to explain to the people of Queensland, what the process has been and why after 12 months it has ended up in this position. Reporter:

So that is the same when the CCC investigates, you know, things like Campbell Newman's property interests and his family interests, all of that should have been tabled publicly as well  the intricacies of the investigation? Mr Walker: My comments are in relation to this investigation Reporter: But that was another high profile investigation

Mr Walker: Well in relation to this high profile investigation, there has been nine months police investigation, there has been three months of an independent lawyer, there has been no questioning of Mr Williams  I think that demands an explanation. Reporter: From the government. Mr Walker:

Correct. Reporter: Will you also be writing to Ian Stewart asking him why they didn't take that extra step of interviewing Rick Williams over his part in this, will you also be asking him to explain that? Mr Walker: We haven't made a decision with what we may do with Commissioner Stewart, at the moment, we are asking the government to explain what has gone on here.

Reporter: Can you understand the confusion  you are asking the government to explain the results of a police investigation  do you understand that a police investigation is separate to the government? Mr Walker: Correct. I am asking the government to explain the process, and the process was a nine-month police investigation, a three month referral to an independent lawyer, during which time was Mr Williams himself asked anything. So he said this morning. Reporter:

So what don't you understand about that process? Mr Walker: I want to understand how that process is a proper one to lead to a conclusion that no further action should be taken  particularly if Mr Williams not being questioned. Reporter: But that is a police process. You can understand how people may get the implication that you may be casting doubt on the police investigation and the government's involvement in the police investigation.

Mr Walker: I am simply asking the government to explain, how it is after nine months of a police investigation, three months referral to an independent lawyer and no questioning of Mr Williams, we've come up with nothing to see here. Reporter: Because maybe there is no evidence? That is what the police investigation would have found. Mr Walker:

Well, people in this instance have signed statutory declarations, there needs to be an explanation of how we got to this point. Reporter: So he's guilty? Mr Walker: There needs to be an explanation of how we got to this point.

Reporter: So because it is a high profile case, and you think he is guilty, because of the statutory declarations, and the police investigation and the investigation of the evidence has found we can't take this to trial, we should explain that. But only because it is a high profile case. Mr Walker: It is a high profile case, there has been a lengthy investigation, there has been no questioning of the person at the centre of it, that deserves an explanation from the people at the centre of it. Reporter:

From the police or the government? Mr Walker: From the government. Reporter: Because the government should have dictated to the police how to do their investigation?

Mr Walker: I'm not saying that at all. Reporter: But you are, because you are saying ... Mr Walker:

I am saying that the government needs to explain the situation to the people of Queensland. Reporter: So you would be happy for police to turn over, what? Witness statements, all the evidence they have gathered in a confidential investigation to the government. That would be extraordinary Mr Walker: The government can find whatever it way it wants to tell the people of Queensland. I am simply saying that the people of Queensland ...

Reporter: So you want a large amount of witness statements, but then you want the government to decide which are released and which aren't? Mr Walker: I want the government to explain how we have to a situation that after nine months of a police investigation, a referral for some reason, to an independent lawyer and no questioning of Mr Williams, we simply come up with no result. Reporter:

Can you explain the separation of powers? Mr Walker: I can explain the separation of powers  the separation of powers, there is the legislator, there is the executive and the judiciary and they all operate separately from each other. Reporter: So you have said the police are part of the executive, so therefore 

Mr Walker: That's right. Reporter: So the executive should be able to tell them what to do? Mr Walker:

I am not suggesting that the executive tell the police what to do Multiple reporters: But you are. You are. Mr Walker: I am suggesting that the government explain to the people of Queensland how this process has ended up, as it has to today.

Reporter: Which is the government telling the police what to do. That is literally is what you are telling them to do. Mr Walker: I am not saying the government tell the police what to do. Reporter:

But how else do you get what you want? Mr Walker: The government needs to explain how the process has got us to this point where we are. Reporter: But the government left the process to the police.

Mr Walker: There has been a nine-month investigation ... Reporter: Yup, and investigations take as long as they take. Mr Walker:

There has been a separate referral to an independent lawyer. Reporter: Which is also not the government's doing. Mr Walker: The government needs to explain this process and how we got to this to the people of Queensland.

Reporter: Did you make the same call to action when Billy Gordon's case was finalised? Mr Walker: I don't think in the case of Billy Gordon there was the second referral to an independent lawyer. Reporter:

There was Mr Walker: There was simply a police investigation in that case. Reporter: And they referred it on. For an independent view.

Mr Walker: I don't know the situation with Mr Gordon's case. Reporter: But shouldn't the government then in theory, explained that case as well. Mr Walker:

The government needs to, if it is signed up to the transparency that it claims to be signed up to. It needs to be able to explain this process to the people of Queensland. Reporter: But the constitution and the law explains these processes. Mr Walker: The government needs to explain to the people of Queensland how we got to this outcome with this process.

Reporter: Which is the government then telling the police what to do. Do you see the circular argument that we are now in?

Mr Walker: No, I don't see it as the government telling the police what to do. Reporter:

How is it not  if the police make a decision and then the police refer it on and then it gets independently reviewed, the government is separate from that, yes? Mr Walker: Correct. Reporter: So, how now, does the government have to explain what has been done, if they are separate from that process, why does the government now have to explain that investigation

Mr Walker: Because the people of Queensland have seen this  they have seen a nine-month police investigation, a three-month legal investigation, 12 months, during which Mr Williams hasn't been questioned. That needs an explanation. Reporter: How does the government explain that without breaching the separation of powers? Mr Walker:

That is for the government to determine. Reporter: You are the one calling for it. Mr Walker: They can explain to the people of Queensland how we got to this point.

Reporter: Do you accept if the government does what you are suggesting today, that it is breaching the separation of powers. Mr Walker: No I don't. Reporter:

Why not? Mr Walker: Because the government can make such investigations and make an explanation that doesn't breach the separation of powers. Reporter: So you want someone from the government level, the Premier or the AG, to go to the investigating officers and ask them what happened?

Mr Walker: It is up to them as to how they ... Reporter: No  you are the one prosecuting the case, so I want you to explain what you mean. Do you want the government, be it the AG or the Premier, to go to the investigating police and ask them why they didn't proceed with the prosecution? Mr Walker:

I am wanting the government to take such advice as it needs to get a better explanation to the people of Queensland. I think we might be going around in circles here. Reporter: Just one more  Rick Williams said he believed it might be the Opposition this whole time, pushing this, leaking stuff to the media, to pick off Members. What do you think about that? Mr Walker: I am not aware of any such campaign happening and I am sure it didn't.
By contrast the increase in the tax discount from 5 per cent to 16 per cent over the next 10 years, for small businesses not operated through a company, delivers a real tax saving for the owners of those businesses.

The cut in the company tax rate does however benefit small businesses owners wanting to reinvest the maximum amount of after tax profits to build their business.

Despite what many people think, a cut in the company tax rate does not result in a tax cut for the owners of companies. Where shareholders withdraw accumulated profits as dividends they pay tax on the amount withdrawn, which is grossed up by the tax paid by the company.

The coalition's 2016 federal budget policy of reducing the tax paid to 27.5 per cent, for small business entity companies with a turnover of less than $10 million from July 1, 2016, was welcome news for the small business community.

Q. My partner and I own a business operated through a company and we are the only two shareholders. When we get to the end of financial year are we allowed to take a dividend, or can it be paid any time? Also can the company pre-pay the tax on it? For example for a $10,000 dividend can it pay the tax and then we get a tax-free dividend that won't affect our earnings?

A. The shareholders of a company are able to declare and take dividends whenever they want, they don't have to wait until the end of a financial year. Where shareholders of a company take out money as loans rather than dividends, and they do not put in place a repayment plan for those loans, the amounts taken can be treated as unfranked dividend and tax is paid by the shareholders at their applicable marginal tax rate.

When a business operated through a company produces a net profit, and pays tax at the applicable company tax rate, the tax paid is added to a franking account for the company. When a dividend is declared and paid by a company, and it has a positive franking account balance, it is classed as a fully-franked dividend.

In your case if the profit of $10,000 had tax paid of $3000 by your company, after paying the tax, the franking account for your company increases by $3000. If you declared and paid a dividend of $7000 the dividends are not tax free, instead the fully-franked dividend of $3500 must be included on each of your personal tax returns.

In addition to showing the fully-franked dividend of $3500 you must also include $1500 of franking credits included in the dividend, resulting in you paying tax on $5000. If each of you pays tax at the 34.5 per cent marginal tax rate tax payable on the dividend is $1725 and, after taking account of the $1500 franking credit, you would pay an extra $225 of income tax on the dividend received.
The Liberal Party has sought to whip up anti-sky rail sentiment along the Frankston line into a protest vote against Bill Shorten on July 2, via a neighbourhood letterbox drop that urges voters to "Tell Labor No Sky Rail".

The leaflets, distributed on Monday, urge voters to punish Labor by putting the party last on election day, because of its "plan to build high-rise rail in your neighbourhood".

The Liberal Party has launched a scare campaign against the level crossing removals along the Frankston line. Credit:Paul Jeffers

The "high-rise rail" in question is the Andrews government's plan to remove 11 level crossings on the Frankston line, although the government has said nothing yet about whether or not the project will include elevated rail.

Level crossing removals are a state project, however, the Liberals' scare campaign indicates they believe there is enough angst about elevated rail to cost Labor votes in the federal sandbelt seats of Isaacs and Dunkley.
An internationally-renowned graffiti artist who travelled to Australia to vandalise Melbourne trains and buildings has been jailed for six months.

Jim Clay Harper, 31, also faces six months' at the notorious Rikers Island in New York for outstanding graffiti offences in the US when he is deported after finishing his jail stint here.

Wearing prison greens, Harper appeared in the dock during his appearance at Melbourne Magistrates Court on Tuesday.

Harper was arrested by police after a witness tried to stop him and and an unidentified man pasting stickers onto shops in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, on May 4.
Career criminal Christopher Binse wants his current jail term cut amid concerns he faces years of solitary confinement in prison at a time when his mental health is worsening.

Binse, known as "Badness" and notorious for his history of armed robberies and for a 44-hour siege at his Keilor East home, is currently serving an 18-year jail term that was imposed two years ago for offending in the first half of 2012, which included robbing two Armaguard officers of $235,000 and the siege, during which he fired shots at an armed police vehicle.

He is also awaiting sentence for a string of hold-ups between 1988 and 1991, which netted him about $390,000.

Binse, 47, has already spent about 30 of the past 33 years in some form of custody, including a stint in Pentridge's H Division as a teenager.
This is a moment of great shame for Australia's ailing union movement and for one of this country's most significant companies.

Australia largest private sector union, the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA), has been caught out.

The ruse? Trading off the penalty rates and casual loadings of vulnerable, low paid workers in exchange, in many cases, for barely a handful of coins in extra hourly pay.
Edinburgh: When Scotland voted in an independence referendum in September 2014, nationalist leaders pitched it as a once-in-a-generation chance to break a three-century-old bond.

But less than two years after Scots opted to remain in the United Kingdom, the spectre of secession again looms over the lush green expanse of the British isles. The trigger this time is another referendum with existential impact: next month's vote on whether to leave the European Union.

If Britain chooses to ditch the EU despite a vote to stay from the Euro-friendly Scots, nationalist leaders here say they will revive the push for an independent nation in order to keep Scotland inside Europe. And they think that the second time around, they would win.
Kidd grew up in Louisville, Kentucky., and was raised by a single mother, LaCreis Kidd, who her daughter says conducted cancer research at the University of Louisville. Her mother holds graduate degrees from John Hopkins University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, her daughter wrote. Throughout elementary, middle and high school, Kidd's talent for the subject showed. She was accepted into the highly-competitive Thacher School, a private boarding high school in California where she promptly earned the nickname "The Science Girl." The teachers loved her and lavished her with praise, Kidd wrote, using her homework as an example for other students. When she was a sophomore, her chemistry teachers announced before 240 classmates that Kidd had garnered the highest score in a national chemistry competition. These accolades only fuelled Kidd's drive to succeed, and it culminated in her Ivy League university acceptance.

"The ultimate climax was when I got into Columbia," Kidd wrote. "Because it's such a prestigious school, it made me feel like I had proven to myself, and everyone around me, that I made it." When she got on campus, she decided, naturally, that she would study science. But things didn't go smoothly. The day she moved in was her birthday. "I felt really alienated and alone and didn't find the Columbia students very welcoming," Kidd wrote. "During my freshman year, I quickly went from star student to slacker." In contrast to the tight-knit community at Thacher, Kidd said, "at Columbia I was lucky if a teacher talked to me." The lack of close connections with her teachers discouraged her from taking an interest in school.

"Even though I was wired to be a good student," Kidd said, "I didn't feel inspired. I got through the year, getting B's and C's, but I didn't care. I was just happy the summer arrived." Upon her return to classes in September, Kidd signed up for computer science classes and "hated every minute of it." One morning in April, she woke up and realised she needed to make a change and "started plotting [her] escape." Weeks before her exams, Kidd stopped going to class altogether. She saved money from her on-campus job, which paid $US14 ($19) an hour, and sold many of her possessions on Facebook. She found an affordable room in Williamsburg in Brooklyn and quietly moved out without her roommates being any the wiser. She gave her new phone number to a few friends before she left, but she didn't tell them where she was going, and she didn't answer when they called. She wanted to make sense of her situation without external influences, Kidd said.

She described a spiral of isolation: "I was constantly worrying, and the more they tried to contact me, the more I didn't feel ready to tell them. The longer I ignored them, the worse it got. "When Mother's Day arrived, I felt guilty for not calling my mom, but I still couldn't bring myself to do it. I couldn't face her yet. "I never turned on the TV and stayed immersed in my own world. I had only seen the missing-person fliers online."

If Kidd had been on Facebook, she would have seen the flurry of posts from friends, relatives and classmates under the hashtag #FindingNayla. Many noted that she wasn't the type to neglect her academics. Kidd's disappearance ended after "three big cops" showed up at her new apartment. When she was reunited with her mother at the police station, LaCreis Kidd was reassuring. "You don't have to explain anything," she told her only child. "An investigator told me you might be stripping. Even if you're a stripper, you're gonna be the best stripper out there." Kidd wrote that she has no plans to return to school. Instead, she wants to make music and work on her writing and modelling careers. "I always told myself I needed to find gratification through academia, but now I want to find it on my own through the arts," she wrote. "I finally broke down because I was living a life I thought I should be living instead of living the life I want."

The New York Post simultaneously published a statement from Kidd's mother. The pair usually spoke at least a couple of times a month, LaCreis Kidd said, so when her daughter went missing, she feared the worst. "When I was finally re-united with Nayla, it was a bit awkward," Kidd wrote. "How could she just cut me off like that?. . .I'm not angry, but I'm still recovering from such a traumatic experience." When Kidd was found, a police official told the New York Daily News, "Basically, she just wanted to get away from it all." Multiple news outlets reported that Kidd was attending Columbia on a full scholarship. In a recent story, The Washington Post's Nick Anderson chronicled the burdens facing lower-income students in the Ivy League. Despite having their tuition paid for, many are nonetheless stymied by high costs of living, and feel socially alienated from their wealthy peers.
Speaking to German reporters in the de facto capital of Tibet's exiled government, the Dalai Lama apparently said that "too many" refugees are seeking asylum in Europe.

"Europe, for example Germany, cannot become an Arab country," he said with a laugh, according to AFP, which quoted from an interview the spiritual leader gave to Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a German newspaper. "Germany is Germany. There are so many that in practice it becomes difficult."

It was an unexpected extension of sympathy for a sentiment that has found fertile ground mostly among nationalist groups. The Dalai Lama, who often speaks of humanity's need to acknowledge its "oneness," is a refugee himself. After Tibetans rose up against Chinese limitations on their autonomy in 1959, the current (and 14th) Dalai Lama led tens of thousands of his followers to India, where they and their descendants have lived since. An estimated 120,000 Tibetans live in India, and those born in the country can vote.

"From a moral point of view, too, I think that the refugees should only be admitted temporarily," the Dalai Lama said.
Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest's philanthropic NGO Walk Free has just released its fourth annual survey measuring slavery across the world. Mr Forrest was first struck by the issue when his daughter Grace raised the issue of human trafficking with him. From there he had a conversation with Microsoft founder Bill Gates who told him that one of the best ways to start tackling the issue would be to measure it. He said without data you can't begin to find solutions. Mr Forrest also discovered forced labour was being used in the supply chains for his company Fortescue Metals. He said he is not proud of this but "absolutely pleased" he was able to discover it and stop south Indian workers from making widgets for next to nothing. Fortescue Metals chairman Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest. Credit:Bohdan Warchomij So what did this survey find?

It has found 45.8 million people live in slavery across 167 countries. More than half - or 58 per cent - of those live in India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan. But on a proportion of the population basis, North Korea comes out the worst with 4.4 per cent of its population in slavery. 46 million. That's double the size of Australia's population! Yep. Professor Kevin Bales from the Wilberforce Institute says if slavery were a country it would have the population roughly the size of Canada.

"But economically it would be a very small country, about $150 billion which is what the United Nations thinks is generated by the criminal economy of slavery," Professor Bales says. "That's about the GDP of Angola, a poor place. So if slavery were a country it would be a small, poor country," he says. What's more, he estimates it would be the third largest emitter of carbon emissions behind China and India - primarily because of illegal deforestation. He wrote a book about it after noticing the places he visited where slavery was prevalent, so too was environmental destruction. So where does Australia sit in the scheme of things?

Australia ranks equal 52nd or last place on the table alongside other developed nations like the United Kingdom, France, United States, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand and Norway. So it's not an issue at home? Not so fast. 4,300 people in Australia are estimated to be in modern slavery. You can read more here about what sorts of industries are affected. The other way this affects Australia is through the goods we buy everyday much of which are made in countries considered slavery hotspots. So what can I do about it?

Andrew Forrest believes individual consumers have a huge ability to help tackle the problem. "If they just go shopping they can exercise this vote every day, where any Australian can just ask the question 'where was this shirt made or where is this food from? Can you tell me that there was no forced labour which made this shirt or food?'" "Now if they can't answer that question, there's a stony silence and that message is going to be communicated straight to the chief executive or the supply manager eventually up to people like me saying my customers are getting worried about my supply chain." Isn't this a bigger responsibility for business? Yes. Andrew Forrest says CEOs of big name brands have told him they deliberately turn a blind eye to the issue.

"These are not household names, not necessarily Australian, and they've looked me straight in the eye and said I will not look for slavery in case I find it." Mr Forrest said he thinks the best way for governments to deal with the issue is to create an environment where business leaders can out themselves and be "celebrated" in the media for actively searching for it and then stamping it out. "It is very much carrot not stick," he says. "The modern slavery bill in the UK does have punitive measures in it unless of course you don't report," he says. What is the Australian government doing on this issue? Australia is trying to use the Bali Process, an international forum of 48 countries that focuses on human trafficking and people smuggling to combat the issue. The Global Slavery Index gives Australia a triple-B rating in 2016.
Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee in the upcoming US presidential election, has faced an unusual amount of criticism from foreign leaders - in large part because of his combative tone and unorthodox policy suggestions. This week, however, he found an unlikely international voice of support - in North Korean state media.

State outlet DPRK Today published an editorial on Tuesday that called the business mogul a "wise politician" and said he could be good for North Korea. "There are many positive aspects to Trump's 'inflammatory policies,'" the author of the article wrote, according to a translation from NK News. "Trump said he will not get involved in the war between the South and the North, isn't this fortunate from North Korea's perspective?"

The author of the editorial also dismissed Hillary Clinton, Trump's likely Democrat rival in the presidential race, calling her "dull" and warning that she hopes to use the "Iranian model to resolve nuclear issues on the Korean Peninsula."

It's an unusual change in tone for North Korean state media, which has largely avoided talking about the US election directly. The article claims to have been written by a guest contributor - Han Yong Mook, who is introduced as a Chinese North Korea scholar - but the fact that it was published by a notoriously patriotic outlet may well suggest that the ideas contained within it are likely to hold serious sway within Pyongyang.
Jakarta, Indonesia: Indonesia's navy said on Monday it fired shots at a Chinese trawler when it refused to stop fishing in Indonesian waters, and then seized the vessel and its eight crewmembers.

An Indonesian frigate intercepted the trawler on Friday near the Natuna islands in Indonesia's exclusive economic zone, which overlaps with the southernmost reaches of the South China Sea, said navy western fleet command spokesman Major Budi Amin.

Amin said the frigate fired shots which hit the stern of the fishing vessel, Gui Bei Yu-27088, after it ignored repeated warnings to stop. He said no one was injured.

"This arrest was made to show the world that Indonesia will take firm action against ships that violate our territory," Amin said. He said Indonesia followed standard international procedures in dealing with foreign ships entering its territory, including providing warnings with flags, voices and warning shots.
PHILIPSBURG :--- Saban native Theodore Johnson, author and civil law notary, shall be presenting his book A Lee Chip: a dictionary & study of Saban English on Wednesday June 1st, 2016 at the Philipsburg Jubilee Library from 6pm to 8pm, along with Ms. Caroline Myrick, a linguist of the North Carolina State University, with Saban roots, who contributed 2 chapters in the book on grammatical aspects of Saban English and its pronunciation.

The title of the book A Lee Chip refers to a little morsel of something on the island of Saba, St. Maartens Dutch Caribbean sister.

A book celebrating over 2500 local words and phrases that makes Saba unique; now a compilation of more than 16 years work by Theodore R. Johnson.

It includes a dictionary that marks the first comprehensive, historical record of the Saban vocabulary.

Providing a preservation of language as a written source of reference and also a time capsule for the history and traditional linguistic historical culture of Saba.

This book is hoped to be an inspiration for other islands, including St. Maarten, to preserve their local English dialects/creoles before it is too late.

Theodore R. Johnson is married and is the father of three children, was born on Saba January 1975.

He completed a double masters degree in law in Leiden, the Netherlands. After working in the Netherlands in the civil law notary field,

he returned to the Caribbean and is currently residing and working on our sister island Aruba. This is his first book published.

The book launching ceremony and book signing will take place on June 1st, 2016, at the library at time 6pm sharp until 8 pm.
Cayman Finance is delighted to announce the signing of a new Memorandum of Understanding with the Cayman Islands Government, which serves to enhance the already close working relationship that Caymans financial services industry has with Government.

Taking place at a recent Cayman Finance Members briefing event, the signing of this new MoU marks another milestone for Caymans financial services industry and was the highlight of an important meeting which also provided an update for members on the Anti-Corruption Summit held in London and hosted by British Prime Minister David Cameron, which was attended by the Premier, the Hon. Alden McLaughlin; and the Minister of Financial Services, Wayne Panton.

Also central to the briefing was an update on London media and industry activities that were attended by Cayman Finance CEO Jude Scott and members of Governments delegation, including minister Panton, during the same week as the summit.

The first MoU between Cayman Finance and the Ministry was signed in 2013, and at that time, both parties underscored the importance of implementing such an agreement and the benefits that would be derived from it. At the first signing, Minister Panton said that it was important for industry and Government to speak with one voice. Furthering that point with this latest signing, Minister Panton said:

Our signing of the new MoU with Cayman Finance is significant because it marks the importance we all place on the private and public sectors working together to enhance, support and protect the industry. It speaks volumes about the unity with which we approach the issues facing our industry today.

Mr Scott confirmed this perspective, stating: The new Memorandum of Understanding between Cayman Finance and the Cayman Islands Government has been developed to further strengthen our already close working relationship. It augments Governments support for Cayman Finance and enhances the relationship with regard to the joint marketing of the jurisdiction, facilitating industry consultations and tackling international initiatives. The MoU also provides the Ministry with a seat on the Cayman Finance Board.

During the briefing event, Cayman Finance Members were provided updates on the crucial topic of Caymans Beneficial Ownership regime. Attendees were also given the opportunity for direct dialogue during a Q&A session, during which time members could ask questions directly to Mr Scott and Mr Panton.

For further information on Cayman Finance, please visit www.caymanfinance.ky.

# # #

Photo Caption: Minister of Financial Services, Wayne Panton and Cayman Finance CEO, Jude Scott at the signing of new Memorandum of Understanding between Cayman Finance and the Cayman Islands Government.

About Cayman Finance:

Cayman Finances mission is to protect, promote, develop and grow the Cayman Islands financial services industry through cooperation and engagement with domestic and international political leaders, regulators, organisations and media; to promote the integrity and transparency of the Industry by legislative and regulatory enactment and to encourage the sustainable growth of the Industry through excellence, innovation and balance.
PHILIPSBURG:--- National Institute of Arts in collaboration with St.Dominic High school, Charlotte Brookson Academy for the Performance Arts and The St.Maarten Academy are holding a huge Flea market / Family Fun Day on the grounds of the John Larmonie Center on Saturday June 4th from 10am to 2pm.

The flea market / Fun Day is part of a series of fundraising events that have been scheduled to assist the students who are embarking on a pioneering excursion to Jamaica to be part of the first set of St.Maarten student who have chosen to sit the Dance CXC.

The students will travel on July 2 to Jamaica and will attend the Edna Manley College for visual and the Performing Arts for an intensive 4 weeks summer program being immersed in interdisciplinary art education at one of the Caribbean most prestigious Tertiary Institution.

Directors Arlene Halley and Clara Reyes of NIA, who have been instrumental in organizing this event, will be travelling with some 30 students and teachers, for the culturally rich and academically intensive trip to Jamaica.

More fundraising events are scheduled including a Dog Wash Day on Sunday June 5th at the Sandys Pet Paradise in Cay-Hill from 10 to 2pm. Person interested helping the students with Fundraising, can do so by donating household items, materials, clothing, jewelry and nicks knacks that are in good shape to be sold at the flea market. All proceeds go toward the expenses of the travelling team.

Vendors who wish to be a part of the flea market can rent a table for the day for $10. For more information on how you can donate or be a part of the Flea Market, Please contact NIA at 1-721-543-0600
PHILIPSBURG:--- The St. Maarten Tzu Chi Foundation honoured mothers, shared useful information on the power of using naturally made enzymes and gave an insight into the work the Foundation has done over the past year, while giving thanks, during a triple celebration held at the Philipsburg Cultural and Community Centre on Sunday, May 15.

A total of 29 of the Foundations volunteers participated in the annual event, which attracted close to 50 guests.

The triple celebration was held to mark Tzu Chis 50th anniversary; observe Mothers Day and Buddha Day. Tzu Chi is a Buddhist compassion relief organisation that embraces all faiths.

The event opened with video highlights of various aspects of Tzu Chi including the Tzu Chi Spirit, The Road in the name of Love and a special message from United States President Barack Obama on the occasion of the Tzu Chi anniversary. Tzu Chi also gave an insight into the many projects and initiatives it has done over the past year in St. Maarten as well as the work done internationally.

This part of the event was followed by the honouring of five Tzu Chi volunteers, who are mothers. The special ceremony called Mother's Day "Kneeling Lamb," gave children a chance to express their compassion and gratitude to mothers by washing their feet.

The interaction and sharing of Tzu Chi Commissioner Sandra Cheung, who co-hosted the programme with volunteer Roger Yee-Fong, was enlightening and received continued enthusiastic responses from the audience that included representatives of American University of the Caribbean (AUC) School of Medicine, former First Lady Angela Richards-Huggins and Consul to the Dominican Republic in St. Maarten Myra Provence

Richards-Huggins and Provence shared their sentiments about the ceremony as well as their experiences with the foundation during the event. Their sharing had been inspiring and was warmly received by the audience.

Active volunteer Margaret Steeman delivered an enlightening and informative presentation about how easy it was to make and use Garbage Enzyme to ward off mosquitoes and for general home cleaning purposes. Members of the audience were presented with their own sample of the enzymes for their personal use.

Tzu Chi hopes more persons in the community make their own enzymes using everyday products that are disposed of.

Tzu Chi volunteers and guests also got a chance to give thanks during the ceremonial Buddhas Day part of the event.

The ceremony ended with a sumptuous selection of vegetarian delicacies and drinks being shared with guests, many of whom shared positive sentiments about the event.

Mrs. Gumbs, one of the guests said the programme had been touching. She said during the public offering, she was moved to tears.

AUC official Dr. Golden Jackson said the programme had been uplifting and she was happy to have attended.

Another guest, Mrs. Fung, said she and her family members who attended the event, were grateful for being given an opportunity to attend and were so touched that the entire family signed up committing to help the non-profit foundation, execute its work in the community, by being monthly donors.

Steeman said the celebration gave volunteers and the public a deeper insight into Tzu Chi and its work around the world. She said St. Maarten is blessed that it has been spared devastating disasters that some countries unfortunately experience, but is lucky to have an organisation like Tzu Chi in its midst.

Tzu Chi Commissioner Sandra Cheung thanked all the volunteers for their efforts in making the event a success, all attendees for gracing the event with their presence and everyone else who in one way or another supported the event. The most important thing to learn is the spirit of great love, she said.
Woman Sent to Hospital No Official Confirmation

Officials have shut down 3 miles of Corona Del Mar State Beach in Orange County, after a young woman was bitten by an animal on her upper torso and shoulder.The woman was rushed to an OC hospital, with injuries consistent with a shark attack.

She had been swimming about 100 yards off Newport Beach, when she was apparently attacked or bitten. Witnesses say she was bleeding heavily.

Authorities don't know if it was a shark attack, as opposed to some other animal or some other cause. Nevertheless, County Lifeguards closed the 3 mile long State Beach, crowded with Memorial weekend beachgoers this afternoon.

"There was a bunch of helicopters and surf boats," said Hope Warrick. "When they told us to get out of the water, we all got out of the water really quickly," said Ben Haight who was on the beach at the time.

"The animal was big and gray, we assumed it was a shark," said beachgoes Elizabeth Warrick, who believes she saw a shark or other large gray fish.

Helicopters and boats have searched the area, but did not see any sharks. "We will keep the beach closed until we are sure there is no threat to the public", said a Rob Williams, a Newport Beach police officer. Authorities will re-evaluate their decision Monday morning.

As the summer beach season opens in the United States, at least one expert is predicting an increase in shark attacks around the world this year that will surpass last year's record number.

A dead shark washed up near Newport Beach in February.

"We should have more bites this year than last," George Burgess, director of the International Shark Attack File at the University of Florida, said in an interview shortly before the Memorial Day holiday weekend that signals the unofficial start of America's summer vacation - and beach - season.

In 2015, there were 98 shark attacks, including six fatalities, according to Burgess.

Why the increased bloodshed? Shark populations are slowly recovering from historic lows in the 1990s, the world's human population has grown and rising temperatures are leading more people to go swimming, Burgess said.

Still, the university notes that fatal shark attacks, while undeniably graphic, are so infrequent that beachgoers face a higher risk of being killed by sand collapsing as the result of over achieving sand castle builders.
Inevitable Result of the Culture Wars?

As Americans across the U.S. begin Memorial Day weekend, vandals defaced veteran memorials in California, Kentucky, and Virginia.

ABC News reports:

Memorials to veterans in a Los Angeles neighborhood and a town in Kentucky, as well as a Civil War veterans cemetery in Virginia, were damaged as the nation prepares to mark Memorial Day.

A Vietnam War memorial in the Venice area of Los Angeles has been extensively defaced by graffiti. The vandalism occurred sometime during the past week, KCAL/KCBS-TV (http://cbsloc.al/1RAa3mg) reported. The homespun memorial painted on a block-long wall on Pacific Avenue lists the names of American service members missing in action or otherwise unaccounted for in Southeast Asia.

News of the vandalism came as another veterans-related memorial was reported damaged in Henderson, Kentucky. Police say a Memorial Day cross display there that honors the names of 5,000 veterans of conflicts dating back to the Revolutionary War has been damaged by a driver who plowed through the crosses early Saturday.

In Virginia, the Petersburg National Battlefield has apparently has been looted, the National Park Service said. Numerous excavations were found at the Civil War battlefield last week, Jeffrey Olson, and agency spokesman, said in a news release Friday. Petersburg National Battlefield is a 2,700-acre park marks where more than 1,000 Union and Confederate soldiers died fighting during the Siege of Petersburg 151 years ago.

In Los Angeles' Venice neighborhood, the wall for missing veterans has been tagged previously, but the latest vandalism covers the bottom half of the memorial for much of its length.

The vandalism of the Venice, California memorial appears to be a large graffiti "tag" that covers much of the memorial and is described as "desecration."

CBS Los Angeles reports:

Stewart Oscars welled up as he looked at the vandalized mural located on Pacific Avenue near Sunset Court. It was covered in graffiti from end to end.

Closeup of graffiti

"This knocked me out. So sickening. Just sadness...think of all these people. They're gone," Oscars said. "I remember the Vietnam war and how friends went to war, and bodies came back. Somehow, it has to be taught that this is not a good idea. This is actually stupid."

The memorial was dedicated to service members who were listed as missing in action during the Vietnam War.

George Francisco is the Vice President of the Venice Chamber of Commerce. He also runs a nonprofit called Veterans Foundation Incorporated.

"It's a desecration. I mean it's very simple. There's no sort of other way around it. It isn't graffiti," Francisco said.
Continued profitable growth  half-year results and solid order backlog confirm ISRAs annual forecast

.

Revenue plus of approx. 10% to 53.3 million euros (Q2-YTD-14/15: 48.7 million euros)

EBT growth of 14% to 10.3 million euros (Q2-YTD-14/15: 9.1 million euros)

Strong margin level to total output continues:

[list]

EBITDA margin at 28% (Q2-YTD-14/15: 26%); plus 18%

EBIT margin at 18% (Q2-YTD-14/15: 17%); plus 13%

EBT margin at 18% (Q2-YTD-14/15: 17%); plus 14%

Gross margin again at high level of 61% to total output (Q2-YTD-14/15: 61%)

Operational cash flow increases to 13.9 million euros (Q2-YTD-14/15: 7.3 million euros)

Net debt reduced by 5.7 million euros

Strong order entry results in repeated high backlog of over 85 million euros gross (PY: 65 million euros gross)

Outlook for FY 2015/2016 confirmed: Continued profitable growth in the lower double-digit per-centage range with at least stable margins

[/list]

ISRA VISION AG (ISIN: DE 0005488100), one of the world?s top companies for industrial image processing (Machine Vision) as well as globally leading in surface inspection of web materials and 3D machine vision applications, successfully continues the positive development of the first quarter also in the second quarter of the 2015/2016 financial year and concludes the first six months with double-digit growth in revenues and EBT. While group revenues increase by approx. 10 percent to 53.3 million euros (Q2-YTD-14/15: 48.7 million euros) compared to the first six months of the previous year, the EBT (Earnings Before Taxes) rises disproportionately by 14 percent to 10.3 million euros (Q2-YTD-14/15: 9.1 million euros). At the same time, the operational cash flow increases to 13.9 million euros in the first six months of the financial year (Q2-YTD-14/15: 7.3 million euros), the net debt (short-term and long-term liabilities minus cash and equivalents) was reduced by 5.7 million euros. With strong order entries and the resulting, continuously high order backlog of over 85 million euros gross (PY: 65 million euros gross), ISRA starts dynamically into the second half of the year.

The first half-year results again show ISRA?s sustainable course of business. In line with the forecasted double-digit growth rates for the financial year, group revenues for the half-year increase to 53.3 million euros (Q2-YTD-14/15: 48.7 million euros). The strong margin level of the previous quarters was also confirmed, with a further improvement in important earnings margins. Compared to the same period of the previous year, the EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) increases by 18 percent to 16.3 million euros (Q2-YTD-14/15: 13.8 million euros), resulting in an EBITDA margin growth of two percentage points to 28 percent to total output (Q2-YTD-14/15: 26%). EBIT (Earnings Before Interest and Taxes) rises by 13 percent to 10.6 million euros compared to the first six months of the previous year (Q2-YTD-14/15: 9.4 million euros), which corresponds to an EBIT margin of 18 percent to total output (Q2-YTD-14/15: 17%). The EBT (Earnings Before Taxes) grows by 14 percent to 10.3 million euros (Q2-YTD-14/15: 9.1 million euros) resulting in a margin increase by one percentage point to 18 percent (Q2-YTD-14/15: 17%). With 61 percent (Q2-YTD-14/15: 61%), the gross margin (total output minus cost of material and labor of production) again reaches a high level.

The half-year balance sheet reflects the increased order entries and the high order backlog of over 85 million euros gross (PY: 65 million euros gross). Inventories climb disproportionately to 33.4 million euros (September 30, 2015: 30.7 million euros). Trade receivables were reduced to 79.4 million euros (September 30, 2015: 86.8 million euros). The net debt (short-term and long-term liabilities minus cash and equivalents) was decreased by 5.7 million euros to 29.2 million euros (September 30, 2015: 34.9 million euros) after repayment of financial liabilities in the amount of 10.3 million euros and a dividend distribution of 1.8 million euros. The net cash flow in total amounts to -4.6 million euros

(Q2-YTD-14/15: -1.3 million euros). Given the strong increase in equity ratio to 61 percent (September 30, 2015: 56%) and the available credit lines, ISRA is equipped with solid capital resources for future growth. The earnings per share (EPS) after taxes improve by 18 percent to 1.66 euro (Q2-YTD-14/15: 1.41 euro).

In the first six months of the 2015/2016 financial year, the course of business in the regions showed an overall positive dynamic. In Asia, the demand continues at a high level. ISRA also records continued high order entries from Europe. On the American markets, the order situation develops positively, particularly driven by orders from the US. For further development of the South American markets, the company is examining new expansion opportunities in neighboring countries next to the location in Brazil. The initial setup of sales for the growth market in Mexico was advanced in a targeted way at the new location in Queretaro. Similarly, new potentials in the Near East will be developed with the re-established market activities in Iran with the new location in Tehran and a local sales team.

In both company segments ? Surface Vision and Industrial Automation ? the order entries in the first six months of the 2015/2016 financial year show a positive development. In the Industrial Automation segment, ISRA serves customers from the international automotive industry ? including a high range of globally operating German premium car manufacturers ? as well as other industry leading companies with systems for efficient automation. The revenues of the Industrial Automation segment rise by 23 percent compared to the same period of the previous year to 11.8 million euros (Q2-YTD-14/15: 9.6 million euros), while EBIT grows by 26 percent to 2.3 million euros (Q2-YTD-14/15: 1.8 million euros). With modular applications for the networked production in the automotive industry and the extension of regional sales structures, ISRA plans to further develop the segment. The concept for a new product series was already presented at the ?Hannover Messe? at the end of April.

In the second quarter, the Surface Vision segment contributes to ISRA?s high order backlog with double-digit growth rates in order entries and continues the positive outlook of the first quarter also for the full half-year. Revenues grow by 6 percent to 41.5 million euros (Q2-YTD-14/15: 39.1 million euros) compared to the period of the previous year. With 8.3 million euros (Q2-YTD-14/15: 7.6 million euros), the EBIT of the segment is 10 percent higher than in the same quarter of the previous year and thereby reaches a margin of 18 percent. The plastics business continues to profit strongly from the expansion of the application portfolio to a variety of new materials, which also enables the use in high-end products, such as battery film or carbon-fiber-reinforced plastics (CFRP). The business with customers from the glass industry continues to be driven by quality assurance solutions for float-glass production as well as the comprehensive product portfolio for the inspection of display glass. The order entries for the inspection of solar wafers, cells and modules also increased strongly, similar to the first three months of the financial year, particularly in China and other Asian countries. The positive order situation for printing inspection solutions continues with a double-digit growth and also profits from the most recent portfolio extensions which are being presented to an international audience at the worlds largest industry trade fair for print media, DRUPA. New inspection solutions for metal surfaces, accompanied by targeted measures in marketing and sales, strengthen the activities in the metal industry. In the paper unit, the company concentrates, next to several sales-generating measures, also on fast-growing market segments, such as the packaging industry. With modular high-end systems for the inspection of security paper, the company examines new sales potential in high security printing. The wafer inspection area remains to stay at the center of the development of the business; the expansion of the application portfolio with existing ISRA technologies thereby marks the strategic focus. Furthermore, service performance remains to be one of the management?s priorities. Its expansion is continuously being advanced on a global level to gradually increase the double-digit revenue contribution.

Besides organic growth, acquisitions are an important part of ISRAs strategy. Of particular interest are target companies that are expected to meaningfully expand the technology and product portfolio, to increase the market shares, to develop new markets as well as to offer an efficient integration. Management is constantly examining new acquisition objects and plans to organize the coordination of the activities in a central management position. ISRA plans to expand the management team in the short term to purposefully accompany the further external growth in the context of future planning.

The profitable first half-year 2015/2016 again confirms ISRAs planning consistency and underscores the forecast for the current financial year. The positive result of the first six months in a globally challenging economic background prove the strategy of the company to grow sustainably and robust with an innovative and broadly diversified application portfolio. With an order backlog of over 85 million euros gross (PY: 65 million euros gross), the company start into the second half of the financial year 2015/2016. Management assumes that the current economic framework conditions will continue unchanged and expects further profitable revenue growth in the lower double-digit percentage range as in previous years. In terms of profit, the planning anticipates a further increase of the margins, while at least maintaining the current high level. ISRAs strategy continues to be directed to grow diversified across industries and regions  while at the same time optimizing cash flow and profitability  to the medium-term revenue goal of 150 million euros.

Further information is available at www.isravision.com.

ISRA VISION AG, together with its subsidiaries, is worldwide leading in surface inspection of web materials. Furthermore, it is one of the globally leading providers of machine vision programs, specialising in the area of 3D machine vision, in particular for 3D robot vision.

The core competence of the company is the ISRA-BrainWARE, an innovative software for intelligent machine vision systems. Here, the scientific know-how from the fields of optics, lighting technology, surveying technology, physics, image processing and classification algorithms and a complex system design are combined. Machine vision is a key technology for visualising systems that imitate the human eye. Todays ISRA applications focus primarily on the automation of production and quality assurance of goods and products supplied to large, future-oriented markets such as energy, healthcare, food, mobility and information. The customers mainly include renowned global players from the respective sectors. With more than 25 locations worldwide, ISRA offers customer proximity everywhere and ensures optimum service and support.

In the past seventeen years, ISRA has shown profitable growth with an annual average increase in sales of approx. 25 percent. Currently the company employs approx. 700 people worldwide.

Further information are available at www.isravision.com.
SpeedCast to Provide TT&C/CSM Services for Four SES Satellites in the Asia Pacific/IOR Region

Houston, May 31, 2016  SpeedCast International Limited (ASX: SDA), a leading global satellite communications and network service provider, today announced that SES, a leading global satellite operator, and SpeedCast have signed a multi-year service agreement for Telemetry, Tracking and Command (TT&C) and Carrier Spectrum Monitoring (CSM) services for four of its satellites in the AsiaPac/IOR region.

Under the service agreement, SpeedCast will provide 247 TT&C/ CSM and gateway services for SESs satellite, SES-9, in addition to providing TT&C/CSM services to their NSS-6, NSS-9 and NSS-12 satellites from SpeedCasts teleport facilities in Bayswater, Western Australia and the Mawson Lakes/Salisbury facilities in South Australia. A team of engineers with 15+ years of experience in TT&C/CSM will provide onsite support. SpeedCast will provide SES with a full range of advanced facilities and security systems tailored to meet the requirements of customers operating classified networks, including military level services. The support team at SpeedCast will provide SES with round-the-clock services, combined with highly redundant power and connectivity, through which SpeedCast is able to fully support the uptime and response requirements specified by SES.

SES has always been a key supplier to SpeedCast and is now developing into an important customer as well, said Pierre-Jean Beylier, CEO of SpeedCast. This two-way partnership is what we envision when dealing with key satellite operators. We understand the increasing demand of service requirements from operators like SES, and we have therefore invested heavily in our facilities. For example, we specifically set up an 11meter Ku-band antenna and other required infrastructure to support the new SES-9 satellite in the region.

We have been working with SpeedCast service for many years. Over the years, SpeedCast has been able to exceed our up-time and response requirements. We are confident that SpeedCast will provide the same outstanding services to us in coming years, said Matthew Prange, Vice President, Strategic Teleport Partners & Services Delivery at SES.
Information Builders WebFOCUS Business Intelligence and Analytics Platform Available on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace

NEW YORK, NY  (Marketwired)  05/31/16  Information Builders, a leader in (BI) and analytics, information integrity, and integration solutions, today announced that its WebFOCUS BI and analytics platform is now available on Microsoft Azure.

.@infobldrs WebFOCUS #BI & #analytics platform now available on @Microsoft @AzureMktPlace. More on the benefits:

Information Builders WebFOCUS, a BI platform that delivers rich, consumable, interactive information to a wide range of end users, is now available on the Azure cloud platform

Information Builders WebFOCUS Business User Edition, the self-service tools edition designed for up to 100 business users and analysts to create, consume and share analytical content, will be available on Azure as of June 8

WebFOCUS enables self-service BI for all users both inside and outside an organization and is in three editions: the Business User Edition, the Application Edition, and the Enterprise Edition

Availability of WebFOCUS on Azure allows more organizations of any size or type to quickly and easily access enterprise-level BI

Information Builders customers and partners can easily implement WebFOCUS in a highly accessible and highly scalable Azure cloud platform environment

Organizations dealing with big data, highly complex data, and data that must be rapidly scaled can use WebFOCUS on Azure for their data analytics needs

The Microsoft Azure Marketplace offers Information Builders partners and resellers new opportunity to satisfy demand for analytics in the cloud suitable for organizations of any size or type, and use Information Builders tools to seamlessly obtain insight and value from their data

Information Builders and Microsoft Azure offer companies of any size the ability to access enterprise-grade BI in only a few short steps, and bring the power of the Microsoft Azure cloud to organizations and resellers engaging with organizations on the latest in BI capabilities from Information Builders. Information Builders WebFOCUS is designed to allow organizations to handle the complexity and variety of structured and unstructured data to transform it into business value. We are excited to offer two editions of the WebFOCUS platform on Microsofts Azure.

As more organizations deal with large and complex data, Information Builders WebFOCUS BI and analytics offering, and its capabilities to incorporate the platform into the Microsoft Azure public cloud environment, bring more choice for our mutual customers. WebFOCUS in the Azure cloud environment helps organizations analyze their data and deploy it to more users, with the hyper-scale benefits of high availability and reliability of Azure.

Information Builders provides solutions for business intelligence (BI), analytics, data integration, and data quality that help drive performance improvements, innovation, and value. Through one set of powerful products, we enable organizations to serve everyone  analysts, non-technical users, even partners, customers, and citizens  with better data and analytics. Our dedication to customer success is unmatched with thousands of organizations relying on us as their trusted partner. Founded in 1975, Information Builders is headquartered in New York, NY, with global offices, and remains one of the largest independent, privately held companies in the industry. Visit us at , follow us on Twitter at , like us on , and visit our page.

Kathleen Moran

Information Builders

(917) 339-6313

Lillian Dunlap

LEWIS

(781) 761-4500
Metalogixs Adam Levithan Featured Speaker at SPTechCon Boston, the SharePoint Technology Conference

WASHINGTON, DC  (Marketwired)  05/31/16  , the premier provider of unified software to migrate, manage and secure content across enterprise collaboration platforms, today announced that during the month of June 2016, it will showcase its line-up of Microsoft SharePoint, Exchange, OneDrive and Office 365 software solutions at industry events around the world.

In addition, with four classes and tutorials predicted to be SPTechCons most popular by the events producers, Metalogixs Adam Levithan, Director of Product Management, will present a series of classes and tutorials on topics ranging from migrating to SharePoint 2016 to navigating the hybrid cloud/Office 365/SharePoint dilemma (arrive early  these may be standing room only).

Metalogixs June 2016 Events Calendar:

June 27-30, 2016

Sheraton Boston Hotel (Boston, MA)

#401

Metalogixs Adam Levithan, Director of Product Management, to present the following classes and tutorials:

(Presented with , Practice Director, SharePoint Advisory Services, Portal Solutions, June 27, 9:00 a.m.  12:15 p.m.)

SharePoint migrations rarely turn out as planned. They are risky and oftentimes take longer than scheduled. Over the last 10 years of migrating from SharePoint 2003, 2007, 2010 to the latest versions of SharePoint/Office 365, a consistent theme has been witnessed: organizations underestimate the complexity and level of effort required for a successful migration. This tutorial is intended for those planning a migration and/or engaging a vendor to assist. It will offer the precautions that should be taken to avoid the slippery slope experienced in far too many SharePoint migrations.

(June 28, 11:30 a.m.  12:45 p.m.)

SharePoint 2016 is here and one thing we know for certain is this: SharePoint 2016 is designed to take advantage of Office 365. The dilemma that IT Pros face now is, where does my content belong? In Azure, Office 365 or staying on-premises? There are many practical, technical and regulatory inputs that drive hybrid decisions. This session will examine a real-life scenario where an organization divided content across Office 365/SharePoint 2013 workloads and how SharePoint 2016s search, profile and team sites could be used. Whether a business stakeholder, power user or an IT Pro, this session will review both key considerations and technology that apply to setting up a hybrid Azure, SharePoint 2016/ Office 365 environment.

(Presented with , June 28, 4:00 p.m.  5:15 p.m.)

Upgrade, hybrid, migrate, experiences and investments are all key words surrounding the release of SharePoint Server 2016. There were several moments of doubt surrounding this release; but Born from the Cloud means something to Microsoft, not to mention how users now look at not only the available features but the evolving roadmap of SharePoint. Intended for decision makers, developers, IT Pros, and power users, this session will discuss how SharePoint 2016 is creating a paradigm shift as big as Office 365. During this session it will be proposed what can be lost, what can be gained, and strategies to decide whether or not SharePoint Server 2016 is the right choice.

(June 29, 2:15 p.m.  3:30 p.m.)

Its a plain fact that Fortune 500 organizations have decided to move large amounts to content to SharePoint Online. Theyve designed either a full or cloud hybrid experience, but sometimes their technological plans are constrained by business requirements. In this session, a case study will be presented highlighting an example of where business needs forced a greatly compacted migration project timeline for the technological team. The planning, methodologies and follow-up required to perform high-velocity SharePoint Online Migrations will be detailed.

During the month of June, Metalogix will be participating at SharePoint Saturday events across the U.S. and Europe. SharePoint Saturday is an educational, informative and lively day filled with sessions from respected SharePoint professionals and MVPs, covering a wide variety of SharePoint-oriented topics.

Silicon Valley, Mountain View, CA (June 11):

Atlanta, GA (June 11):

April  July, 2016

Asia Pacific, Europe and North America

Each full day event will provide attendees with the opportunity to engage with local SharePoint and Office 365 MVPs to learn more about how to improve business productivity, increase security and enhance operational efficiency within business organizations. Ample time will also be allotted for networking (and participating in raffles).

.@Microsoft pros > > Hone Skills, Network & Learn New Best Practices with @Metalogix in June #FutureofSharePoint

is the premier provider of unified management software to migrate, manage and secure content across enterprise collaboration platforms. Over 20,000 clients trust Metalogix to optimize the availability, performance, and security of their content across the collaboration lifecycle. For more information visit us at or call us at +1 202.609.9100.

Metalogix is a registered trademark of Metalogix, Inc. All other trademarks used are the property of the respective trademark owners.

Sabrina Sanchez

The Ventana Group

(925) 785-3014

Nicole Gorman

The Ventana Group

(508) 397-0131
Imperialism  May 31, 2016  Patrick Bond

On May 12, Brazils democratic government, led by the Workers Party (PT), was the victim of a coup. What will the other BRICS countries (Russia, India, China, and South Africa) do? Will they stand by as the reactionaries who took power in Brasilia pivot closer to Western powers, glad to warm Dilma Rousseffs seat at the BRICS summit in Goa, India in five months time? Or take a stronger line, following the lead of Latin American progressive countries (Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua and El Salvador)?

Here in South Africa, few expect Jacob Zumas African National Congress (ANC) government to react constructively on the international stage. Making waves isnt likely at a time when Standard & Poors and Fitch are on a South Africa visit, deciding whether to downgrade the countrys credit rating to junk status, as happened in Brazil late last year.

This is a shame because the last two weeks have offered excellent opportunities for diplomatic rebellion: revelations have emerged implicating the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in assisting the apartheid states 1962 arrest and twenty-seven-year imprisonment of Nelson Mandela. This isnt exactly surprising; the State Department did keep Mandela on its terrorist watch list until 2008.

Following these revelations ANC spokesperson Zizi Kodwa charged that the CIA never stopped operating here. It is still happening now  the CIA is still collaborating with those who want regime change.

BRICS and Empire

South Africas chief foreign policy spokesperson Clayson Monyela responded to Kodwas accusation with assurances that South Africas relations with the United States are strong, theyre warm, and cordial. But Kodwas cry of imperialism, in light of the Brazilian coup, has struck a nerve. Indeed, the argument that Rousseffs ouster demonstrates that the purportedly anti-imperialist BRICS are under sustained attack by U.S. empire is being repeated in a number of corners. Commentators like Eric Draitser, Pepe Escobar, Paul Craig Roberts and Hugo Turner, along with officials from Venezuela and Cuba, all make this claim.

A founder of Brazils heroic Movement of Landless Workers (MST), Joao Pedro Stedile, was asked by Il Manifesto about why a group of deputies from right-wing organizations went to Washington before the last elections. He replied, Temer will arrange his government in order to allow the U.S. to control our economy through their companies Brazil is part of the BRICS, and another goal is that it can reject the South-South alliance.

Another version of this anti-imperialist framing was heard

at the South African Black Consciousness movements Black First Land First launch conference on May 13:

Brazil and South Africa are seen by the Western imperialist forces as the weak link in the BRICS chain. The strategy of imperialism is to get rid of presidents who support the BRICS process. Imperialism works with internal opposition parties to effect regime change.

The eloquent South African commentator Siphamandla Zondi, who directs the Institute for Global Dialogue (one of South Africas main foreign policy institutes), also shares this view. Zondi defends the BRICS project and disputes the argument put forth by myself and others that the BRICS actually serve a sub-imperialist role in the global economy  that they are fully complicit in reproducing inequality both within their own countries and between others in the Global South. In a challenge posted on Facebook he called for observers to recognize that imperialism has, in the modern age, taken on racism, crude capitalism and patriarchy as its forms.

No to the Coup, No to Imperialism

Rousseff is of course the victim of a coup. I hope the Brazilian people will rise up against the illegitimate interim government. But whether the

coup was a product of imperialism, as Zondi and many others argue, requires a bit more circumspection.

As WikiLeaks cables revealed, Temer was a mole

for the U.S. State Department a decade ago, playing what Washington considered to be an incompetent, ideology-free role as a political opportunist.

Indeed, we witnessed a similar problem here in South Africa, with the countrys then lead spy, Moe Shaik, offering the same sort of tell-all function  before becoming a key liaison to the BRICS New Development Bank.

But as concrete evidence of a U.S.-led coup in Brazil this fact seems insufficient. Moreover, Rousseff herself denied the role of imperialism a week after the impeachment, during a Russia Today interview: I dont believe external interference is a primary or a secondary reason for whats happening now in Brazil. Its not. The grave situation we see now has developed without any such interference.

She repeated this when pressed by the interviewer, so it was crystal clear that she blames the old oligarchs for her downfall. This point was reinforced by subsequent revelations about the coup plotters local motivations, to avoid their own prosecution for corruption.

Moreover, the interweaving of racism, patriarchy, and global capitalism is also not as straightforward as it once was. When Obamas allies hit the Honduran government in 2009, for example, it was a black man and a woman (Hillary Clinton) in Washington who gave

international credence to the local capitalist elites coup against a progressive democrat.

Similar concerns about Obamas role on the African continent have also been expressed  appropriate considering the Africa Commands agenda. But the role of the BRICS countries shouldnt be downplayed in these geopolitical power plays.

The United States is made more dangerous by the sub-imperialist geopolitical functions that Deputy Sheriff Zuma regularly accepts,

such as endorsing NATOs bombing of Libya which led to regime change in 2011, supporting Israel even during its periodic mass murder of Gaza civilians, happily hosting U.S.-South African military exercises, and even bragging openly that the South Africa army will serve as Obamas boots on the ground.

This isnt to say that crude imperialism has faded away. Looking just at the 20092012 years when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, Washingtons Blog writer Eric Zuesse summarizes

repeated U.S. incursions in Honduras, Haiti, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine (and one might add Paraguay too).

Yet, despite this impressive list of imperialist interventions, U.S. regime change maneuvers in the rest of the black world, as Zondi phrases it, are not that common. They are not needed at the moment, especially in Africa, where the local leadership is already supine when it comes to Washingtons agenda.

Neoliberal Multilateralism

Simply put, racism, crude capitalism and patriarchy associated with twentieth-century U.S. imperialism have been largely replaced by Obamas neoliberal multilateralism  a style of governance that the BRICS have bought into, not opposed. This isnt something to celebrate. Multilateral neoliberalism leaves the BRICS countries far less able to pursue any positive South-South interventions.

Indeed, Rousseffs ouster demonstrates this clearly and the incoming Temer regime is likely to pursue a desperate course to re-establish its

global position. The westward drift announced

last week by Temers foreign minister, Jose Serra, plus Brasilias renewed neoliberal agenda on the home front, suggest this will be the case.

But while its obvious that Serra is going to become much more active as a sub-imperial ally of the United States than was Rousseff, Rousseff also did little of substance on the foreign policy front aside from occasional anti-Yankee rhetoric (such as when she learned

from Edward Snowden that Obama had bugged her phone and email).

As the thoughtful (and generally pro-BRICS) commentator Oliver Stuenkel recently lamented:

Rousseff failed to articulate anything resembling a foreign policy doctrine, and Brazils foreign policy since 2011 was shaped, above all, by the Presidents mind-boggling indifference to all things international and foreign policy makers incapacity to convince Rousseff that foreign policy could be used to promote the governments domestic goals  as both [former Brazilian presidents] Lula and Fernando Henrique Cardoso so skilfully showed.

Serra, on the other hand, has promised that:

Priority will be given to the relationship with new partners in Asia, particularly China, this great economic phenomenon of the twenty-first century, and India. We will be equally committed to modernizing the bilateral exchange with Africa, the big neighbour on the other side of the Atlantic We will also take advantage of the opportunities offered by inter-regional fora with other developing countries, such as the BRICS, to accelerate commercial exchanges, investments and sharing of experiences.

Sub-Imperialism

Many who see Brazil as the victim of imperialism also hold the corresponding view that Brazil, along with the other BRICS countries, plays a progressive role on the global stage. Zondi articulated

this viewpoint concisely in a recent piece for the Cape Times :

The [BRICS] platform has become the most powerful platform for the pursuit of global reform  Brazil has been a crucial voice in global debates about the reform of global governance, including the IMF and World Bank, and about fair and just outcomes for the developing world in world trade negotiations  Brazil has spoken out on the agenda of decent work, food sovereignty, a greater Western contribution to the global response on climate change, ecological justice and the end to ecological imperialism. Brazil has also been an advocate of the responsibility to protect. We may miss this now. Brazil is an important part of the effort today to shift global power from the former colonial powers and their diaspora in North America to all regions of the world. It is a key partner in South-South co-operation.

Many South Africans are impressed with the BRICS, but the reality of Brazils global maneuvering is much less rosy. In the most important multilateral settings, BRICS elites have worked against the interests of the worlds majority and against the environment.

Consider Brazils actions in the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Since 2010 it has been working to reconfigure voting power (voice) in the institution. It has successfully increased its vote by 23 per cent (with China also up 37 per cent, India up 11 per cent and Russia up 8 per cent). Yet the U.S. still wont give up its veto power  it is the only country with more than 15 per cent required  and the BRICS total vote is now just 14.7 per cent.

Worse, the restructuring deal that made this rise possible was detrimental to African countries: Nigeria just lost 41 per cent of its voting power, along with Libya (39 per cent), Morocco (27 per cent), Gabon (26 per cent), Algeria (26 per cent), Namibia (26 per cent) and even South Africa (21 per cent). From this perspective BRICs versus Africa seems a more apt way to describe Brazils role in reform of global governance at the IMF.

Brazils maneuvers at other global governance institutions  including the World Trade Organization (WTO) which is currently headed up by Brazilian Roberto Azevedo  are equally damaging.

According to the ordinarily pro-BRICS NGO Third World Network (TWN), Brazil conspired with the United States and the European Union at the WTO to [ensure] that India did not get the language it proposed to maintain vital food subsidies, which in coming years will lead tens of millions of Indian peasants to suffer. As TWNs Chakravarthi Raghavan put it, on the eve of Nairobi, Brazil unilaterally abandoned the G20 alliance to join the U.S. and EU, in trying to act against China and India, not to mention against the worlds poor.

Of course, Brazils behavior is not unique. China and Russia persistently block efforts by Brazil, India, and South Africa to permanently join the Security Council. The point is simply that intra-BRICS solidarity, let alone broader South-South solidarity, is hard to find in reality.

The issue of Brazils role in battling the global environmental crisis also deserves greater scrutiny. In 2009 Lula supported  alongside the United States, India, China, and South Africa  the Copenhagen Accord, which voided the Kyoto Protocols binding emissions-cut premise, contained utterly unambitious emissions targets, and also wrecked the UN process that year.

Moreover, Rousseff was a booster of the pro-corporate Green Economy gambit at the Rio Earth Summit in 2012 that was (semi-successfully) rejected by most of the Global South. She is also a proud signatory to the 2015 Paris

UN climate deal, a deal which assures catastrophic global warming and also now legally prevents climate victims in the Global South from suing the Global North for its climate debt.

Brazil has also combined forces with the EU  against Bolivia  to open the same carbon trading loopholes that undermined the last global climate deal, according to Oscar Reyes of the Institute for Policy Studies. He notes that the Paris Agreement explicitly allows countries to count emissions reductions made in other countries as part of their own domestic targets, referring to these by the euphemism internationally transferred mitigation outcomes.

Finally, the claim that Brazil has also been an advocate of the responsibility to protect simply doesnt hold water. Consider

Haiti and the right to protect role countries like Brazil are tasked with carrying out. As Brazil expert Mark Weisbrot of the

Center for Economic and Policy Research explains,

The UN occupation of Haiti is really a U.S. occupation  it is no more a multilateral force than George W Bushs coalition of the willing that invaded Iraq. And it is hardly more legitimate, either: it was sent there in 2004 after a U.S.-led effort toppled Haitis democratically elected government. Far from providing security for Haitians in the aftermath of the coup, [the UN mission in Haiti] stood by while thousands of Haitians who had supported the elected government were killed, and officials of the constitutional government jailed.

Despite Brazils UN-designated right to protect responsibilities it has done nothing to expose or oppose these crimes of occupation which include the rape and sexual abuse of Haitian children by UN soldiers. The Haiti experience, according to Weisbrot (a PT sympathizer), eviscerates Brazils potential for moral leadership in the world.

Meanwhile back in Johannesburg, lefty-sounding rhetoric from the ANCs Luthuli House is nothing more than politicians blowing dust into the air.

When ANC leaders call the courageous South African public protector Thuli Madonsela a CIA agent, or declare that the Mandela Washington Fellowship program of the U.S. Embassy is training kids for regime change, they show off anti-imperialist feathers. But in reality, Washington has no beef with Pretoria. The ANC has always excelled at talking left while walking right.

U.S. empire is real and oppressive, but it shouldnt prevent a clear and critical appraisal of the BRICS countries true role in the world. Especially if we want to forge alliances to change the world, not merely shift around the Titanics first-class deck chairs. 
The May 16 Zone 3 Public Safety Council meeting began with a Mt. Washington resident complaining about vandalism in Grandview Park.

He said youngsters try to break newly planted trees and set the port-a-johns on fire, among other destructive acts.

There are cameras in the park, so images of the vandals are expected.

Another attendee said in Bon Air, young thieves are not breaking into cars to steal valuables as the vehicles are left unlocked. Thieves merely open the doors and take what they want as residents are leaving items visible and not locking doors.

Descriptions of the thieves were turned into the police.

In response to the thefts, Zone 3 police Commander Karen Dixon said she will have directed patrols in the area.

City council President Bruce Kraus said he first met police Officer Christine Luffey 15 years ago when she came to a meeting to inform residents of how to avoid having their cars broken into.

Officer Luffey said then, as now, to lock doors and leave no visible items.

The commander said robbers see young women exiting cars without purses on East Carson St. on weekends, and assume the purses are in the car, and break in. But they could have small purses with them, or none at all, she said.

A Mt. Washington resident said she will put a big push on neighbors to call 911 because people do not want to get involved.

Commander Dixon said the 911 center staffing includes civilians who take reports, like about thefts. When someone calls 911, they will be asked if they are okay with completing reports over the telephone.

Officer Luffey and Liz Style, of the citys Dept. of Public Safety, agreed to work on a public service announcement on the city channel about avoiding break-ins.

In her brief update, Ms. Style said National Night Out will be held on Tuesday, Aug. 2.

To register a block watch or other group, and for more information, visit: http://pittsburghpa.gov/publicsafety/nno/nno-registration. Public safety materials may be requested.

A family-friendly kick-off for the event is scheduled for July 26 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Market Square, downtown.

She called the April 20 city-wide public safety meeting very successful. There were about 200 attendees.

The next city-wide public safety meeting will be on Oct. 19 at a site to be determined.

An attendee said he is working with a group to get more cameras in District 2.

Mr. Kraus said the most important aspect of cameras is the chain of command of the evidence. If corrupted, it will be useless in prosecuting.

In other news, a Mt. Washington resident complained about drug activity on Grandview Ave. She said a man will park his car elsewhere, get into another car, and drive around the block. The occupants then go behind the library and onto the sidewalk. This occurs in mid-afternoon.

The June 6 meeting of the Carrick/Overbrook Block Watch will feature CPR demonstrations through the Citizen CPR Training program, presented by the citys EMS in conjunction with UPMC.

The meeting begins at 7 p.m. in Concord Elementary School.

An attendee said he has witnessed drug dealing at a house on his street. He wrote down a license plate number although the drug dealers change cars and plates.

At the beginning of the month business is booming, he said.

Mr. Kraus said Governor Wolf and state officials are aware of the drug problem statewide.

Were not alone in trying to deal with this opiate epidemic, he said.

He said while society has discussed the war on drugs for a long time, we need to understand the addict and what drives him.

Mr. Kraus said he had minor surgery once, and was sent home with opiates, or prescription drugs, at every turn.

A Carrick resident said there are youngsters who know their job this summer will be running drugs. She said with nothing to do, the youngsters become more vulnerable to illegal activities.

Mr. Kraus said the Peduto Administration is working to hire youngsters for summer work. Last year, more than 1,000 were employed, with more sought this summer.

Im a big fan of summer youth employment, he said.

Ms. Style said it is also important to make youngsters aware of the summer activities offered by the city parks and recreation centers. Libraries, also, provide summer activities and programs.

On the topic of libraries, Mr. Kraus reported the Carnegie Library of Pittsburghs Knoxville branch will reopen next month. It has been closed for $3.5 million in renovations since last June.

It is absolutely spectacular, he said.

The plan is to next move onto the Carrick branch, he said, followed by Mt. Washington.

On another topic, an attendee said a lack of vocational training in this area is a problem. She said people interested in these careers fall through the cracks.

Ms. Style said the school districts high schools Career and Technical Education (CTE) program help students explore careers that match their interests, and provide the education and assistance to help them succeed.

Mr. Kraus said the carpenters building on the Parkway West is a training facility.

In news of other programs, an attendee said the Citizens Police Academy is very helpful, and shows you a lot you never knew.

Ms. Style said the citys Promised Beginnings initiative is designed to promote kindergarten readiness with parents.

It also aims to keep parents involved with the school process the entire school year.

She said some parents are being ordered by the court to attend the series of workshops.
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In the annals of spaceflight history, only a handful of Russian and American space travelers have experienced single-person orbital flight. But a recent three-month student competition has led to some creative interiors for a single-person spacecraft.

Genesis Engineering Solutions (GES) in Lanham, Maryland sponsored the engineering design contest as a way to integrate student creativity into the development of their Single-Person Spacecraft (SPS) concept. According to GES, the SPS includes an inner pressure vessel for shirtsleeve (normal clothing) operations and an outer unpressurized cylinder for micrometeoroid, orbital debris and impact protection.

Subsystems are packaged in the space between and in the overhead crown leaving the interior open for control, displays and other outfitting. An SPS astronaut will have rapid access to the work site to repair the aging International Space Station  or to an asteroid for sample collection, for example. [Related: NASA Funds Interstellar Flight System, 7 Other Wild Ideas]

Creature comforts and stay-alive tech

GES's Single-Person Spaceship contest involved students from engineering, industrial design, human factors, and space architecture.

They were encouraged to develop creative internal designs using only existing technologies. Furthermore, they had to provide controls for flying the SPS and operating robotic arms all while floating in zero-gravity.

The interior had to include displays and controls, warning lights and alarms, pilot restraints, creature comforts, and other accoutrements one might find in an automobile here on Earth.

Students with the WHISPS team at the Florida Institute of Technology dreamed up this Single-Person Spaceship concept for the Genesis Engineering Solutions contest. The concept spotlights usability testing using a full-scale mock up. (Image credit: Florida Institute of Technology)

Student designs, cash prizes

Two prizes were awarded: a $2,500 Grand Prize and one $1,500 Superior Design Prize.

The Grand Prize was awarded to The WHISPS Team from Florida Institute of Technology (FIT) whose submission addressed the challenges of working in the extreme environment of space and balanced new unproven technology in space like touch pads with old-school analog knobs. The WHISPS Team, including Ondrej Doule, Joseph Torkaman, De Vere  Michael Kiss, Kareim Elbaz, and Azeez Batcha from the Florida Institute of Technology (FIT) School of Human-Centered Design, Innovation, and Art.

The Superior Design prize was awarded to Brett Montoya and Canaan Martin from the University of Houston (UH). Their entry paid careful attention to ensuring a common viewpoint across the anthropometric scale and augmented control using a clear canopy.

The two-student team of Brett Montoya and Canaan Martin at the University of Houston dreamed up this concept of a Single-Person Spacecraft for the Genesis Engineering Solutions contest. (Image credit: Brett Montoya/Canaan Martin)

"We didn't know what to expect and now we have an excess of great ideas to choose from," Robert Rashford, GES President & CEO, said in a press statement.

The winners of the SPS internal design competition were selected by a panel of experienced space experts. In addition to GES personnel, jurors included a former NASA Astronaut, NASA human factors engineers, and specialists in robotics.

Genesis Engineering Solutions has supported NASA projects since 1993, including the servicing missions to the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope.

Leonard David is author of "Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet," to be published by National Geographic this October. The book is a companion to the National Geographic Channel six-part series coming in November. A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Story published on Space.com.
If you or your local astronomy club have ever thought about conducting a "star party," allow me to offer some tips. I have been involved in scores of such sessions, spanning nearly a half-century, so let me also share a few examples of what you might expect to encounter.

Astronomy is considered the oldest of the sciences. So amateur astronomy may very well be the oldest of the scientific hobbies. I've frequently had the chance to help others learn the hobby. On occasion, a scoutmaster might ask me give his or her troop a tour of the night sky. I also help with organized events in which the general public is invited (through the local media) to peer skyward through different telescopes. I enjoy these kind of gatherings even more than spending time under the stars alone.

So read on to see my tips on how to throw a star party. [Best Telescopes for Beginners]

Pick a good site

Even if you live in an urban area, try to find a location that offers as wide a view of the sky as possible, free from obstructions such as tall buildings.

There is, however, another problem that affects observers all across the world: light pollution. Extra lighting is causing an astronomical dilemma that affects even the most amateur of stargazers. Light pollution can be traced to excessive or misdirected outdoor lighting. Sadly, in many large metropolitan areas, it is becoming increasingly difficult to trace out even a simple star pattern like the Big Dipper. As such, it might be necessary for you to travel to a darker location to see the stars. You might have to travel only 15 or 20 minutes, or perhaps as much as an hour or two.

If you're interested in how you can reduce extra nighttime lighting in your own town and backyard, you or your astronomy group might consider joining the International Dark Sky Association (IDA). Founded in 1988, IDA gathers and disseminates light-pollution information and solutions. Indeed, the association has played a pivotal role in turning the tide in the war against light pollution. For more information, go to the IDA Website at http://darksky.org/.

Invite people to arrive at your selected site before it gets dark. In a way, this is like coming to the theater before a play or movie begins, taking your seat and controlling the rush in great anticipation for the expected script. You soon will soon be able to see a wide variety of objects such as the moon and the five naked-eye planets, not to mention star clusters, galaxies and the passage of artificial satellites (the biggest and brightest being the International Space Station). Just about any clear night provides an invitation to go outside and see what's up.

Some nights, however, will offer up a special attraction: a meteor shower, a comet, a beautiful conjunction between the moon and a bright star or planet, or even an eclipse of the moon. And if nature is really in a show-off mood, perhaps you'll get an unexpected display of the northern lights (also known as the aurora borealis).

How many did you say?

If you're planning for a large gathering, with several telescopes or more, try promoting the event through your local newspaper or radio station. (Make sure you have an alternate night set up in case of cloudy weather.)

Try to estimate in advance just how many people are likely to show up, but be careful. I still wince when I think back to 1986, when two astronomy groups on Long Island combined their efforts and announced through newspapers, radio and television that they planned to hose a "Halley Watch" to view Halleys Comet at iconic Jones Beach. About a dozen telescopes were set up, and the expectation was that at most a few hundred people might show up. It was January, after all. In reality, the crowd turned out to be something like 40,000, Nassau County police later estimated! [The Best Night-Sky Events of 2016: What to Watch for This Year]

Use just your eyes at first

Naked-eye astronomy is also especially rewarding if you're observing with children, who no doubt will pepper you with questions about the various stars and constellations. In his classic autobiography "Starlight Nights," (Harper & Row, 1965) Leslie Peltier once noted:

"Learning the stars is a pure delight, and there are many pleasant ways to do it. No true stargazer will fail to become familiar with the constellations, and fortunate is he whose introduction to the skies comes to him through nature's eyes alone and not through any telescope. So few of those who use the eyepiece first ever get to really know the stars."

So, as darkness is falling and before your telescope (or telescopes) have been fully set up, first spend some time under the stars with just your eyes. Get your audience acquainted with the brighter stars and constellations. Some folks will no doubt bring flashlights with them, so you might want to have some red cellophane or red plastic to distribute to your visitors. Covering the flashlights with a red filter will keep everyone's eyes dark-adapted (white light, by contrast, will shrink the pupils of your eyes). Use a rubber band or scotch-tape to affix the red material across the front of the flashlight lens.

Next comes your telescope

Then, after you point out the more prominent sky objects, you can direct your audience to look at a particular object through your telescope. And if there are other telescopes set up, all the better! In an organized stargazing affair, you're likely to overhear remarks coming out of the darkness like: "What are those funny bumps in the middle of the moon's craters?" and "I can't believe those are the rings of Saturn!"

If participants at your gathering own their own telescopes, but experience problems, they're in the right place. There is no better setting than to a star party to get assistance and helpful suggestions with your telescope. Besides, there is also the camaraderie of spending time with other people from different walks of life who all share the same love for the nighttime sky. One of the best parts of a public observing session is helping someone who has a scope but doesn't know how to use it. When the gear is finally set up properly, the look on the owner's face after first light is priceless.

What one person lacks in telescope skills is made up by another. One person might know the sky well and can suggest targets, while another can help with the setup, and so on. The stars offer solitude, to be sure, but two people observing together will, synergistically, often accomplish more than two people observing independently could do. In almost all cases, two heads (or more) really are better than one!

What to use for a pointer

If you plan on pointing out stars and constellations at a star party, using your index finger in the dark is simply not going to cut it, especially if you have a large group of people surrounding you. If you've ever visited a planetarium, no doubt the lecturer used an electronic pointer to project an arrow onto the planetarium dome and point out the stars. But is there a way to do that in the real sky?

There's no "dome" outside to project anything against, of course, but you can point toward objects. One popular device is the laser pointer. There is a class of lasers, IIIa, which by law must be less than 5 milliwatts (of measured optical output, not electrical input). These lasers will work to help you point out night sky objects. The best options can cost around $60 (opens in new tab).

Please note that these laser pointers should be handled responsibly. It is legal to operate the devices the U.S. provided you don't try anything dumb, like shining one at an aircraft in flight. Pilots exposed to a laser during final approach to the runway can experience retinal burns at distances of up to 14 meters (50 feet), as well as flash-blindness, afterimages or glare problems at up to 350 m (nearly a quarter mile). Even at a range of 3 kilometers (2 miles), a laser pointer can still interfere with a pilot's vision badly enough to prompt an aborted landing.

If you are caught pointing a laser pointer at an aircraft, depending on what state you live in, you can face a fine in the hundreds of dollars for a first offense.



A second offense might land you in jail. In 2005, a New Jersey man faced the possibility of a 20-year prison sentence after he shined a green laser at a commercial jet and then at a police helicopter dispatched to search for him. Initially, the man blamed his 7-year-old daughter, then confessed that he was pointing out the stars to her. He eventually received a reduced sentence of two years' probation.

You can avoid such a scenario for yourself by never shining a laser pointer toward any person, aircraft or moving vehicle, and do not aim a laser pointer skyward if you see or hear an aircraft at any time flying overhead. Also, do not use a laser pointer if you are within 3 miles (2 km) of an airport. Otherwise, you can use a laser pointer to give guided tours of the night sky, so long as you use common sense!

If you prefer to avoid using a laser pointer, you can opt for a device that was commonly used before the "laser era" took hold, namely a flashlight. A three-cell flashlight is quite adequate for casting a noticeable light beam into the sky. I personally like the larger, five-cell flashlight, which is usually equipped with a bright xenon bulb. You can adjust the width to a rather narrow beam, which will serve as an excellent pointer to whatever object you're viewing.

Final suggestions

If you have a telescope and don't already belong to an amateur astronomical organization, local or national, you ought to join one. Do this not only to make new friends and swap ideas, but also to get help and advice if you need it, and stay posted on developments in your particular interest in astronomy. By far the largest national organization of amateur astronomers is the Astronomical League (AL) (https://www.astroleague.org/al/general/society.html). Its member clubs hold annual and regional conventions at which amateurs talk shop and exchange useful ideas. The AL is composed of scores of local amateur astronomical clubs and groups, totaling thousands of individuals.

And lastly, perhaps you might like to bring along some music to listen to while you're out under the stars.

One of my fondest memories goes back more than 40 years ago when I was watching the Perseid meteor shower with my family on a balmy summer night from my Bronx backyard. My grandmother brought her portable radio and tuned in a local station that ran an overnight program of classical instrumental music called "Music 'til Dawn." That musical accompaniment in the background, plus the view we all had of the sky on a startlingly clear night, combined with the occasional streak of a "shooting star," made for night I will always remember.

If you're planning to throw your own star party soon, good luck and clear skies!

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, the Farmer's Almanac and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, N.Y.

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
The Port Columbus International Airport in Ohio is being renamed for Mercury astronaut John Glenn.

The United States' second international airport to be named for a NASA astronaut honors the first American to orbit the Earth.

Ohio lawmakers on Wednesday (May 25) voted to rename the Port Columbus International Airport for astronaut John Glenn. The last surviving member of the original Mercury 7 pilots, Glenn became the first U.S. space explorer to circle the planet on Feb. 20, 1962.

"I believe it is only fitting to rename the [airport] after John Glenn for his countless contributions to space exploration and to Ohio's rich aviation history," said the Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, Clifford Rosenberger, in a statement. "There is no doubt that he is an American hero, and I'm honored that we are taking steps to further secure his legacy here in our great state." [Photos: John Glenn, First American in Orbit]

The name, the John Glenn Columbus International Airport, will take effect after Ohio Governor John Kasich signs the bill into law.

Glenn, now 94, was born in 1921 in Cambridge, Ohio, and earned his Bachelor of Science degree in engineering at Muskingum College in New Concord, his hometown. After serving in the Marine Corps and making history on board NASA's Friendship 7 orbital mission, he was elected to the U.S. Senate, representing Ohio as a Democrat from 1974 until 1999.

In October 1998, Glenn returned to orbit aboard the space shuttle Discovery, setting a record as the oldest person to fly into space at age 77.

Over the course of his two spaceflights, separated by 36 years, Glenn logged 9 days off Earth and completed 138 orbits  three aboard his Mercury capsule and 135 on the space shuttle.

The Columbus airport's renaming is the latest honor for the astronaut in his home state.

In 1999, NASA renamed its Cleveland facility the John H. Glenn Research Center, and since 2006, the public policy and management school (now college) at The Ohio State University has borne his name.

Senator John Glenn Highway runs along Interstate 480 in Cleveland across from the NASA research center and the Colonel Glenn Highway runs by Dayton's Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. A high school with his name stands in New Concord and, until it was demolished last year, John Glenn Elementary stood in Seven Hills.

Beyond Ohio, the U.S. Navy christened the mobile landing platform USNS John Glenn in 2014.

The newly-renamed Port Columbus airport was opened in 1929 as a stop on the first transcontinental air/rail service from New York to the West coast. Jet airline service began at the airport in 1961. Four years later, the airport gained its international status with the opening of a U.S. Customs facility.

The nation's first international airport to bear an astronaut's name, the Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport in Texas, was renamed for the final commander of the space shuttle Columbia in 2003.

Other U.S. air fields named for astronauts include: Virgil I. Grissom Municipal Airport in Bedford, Indiana; Michael J. Smith Field in Beaufort, North Carolina; the Neil Armstrong Airport in Wapakoneta, Ohio and Astronaut Kent Rominger Airport in Del Norte, Colorado.

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King Tut was buried with a dagger made of an iron that literally came from space, says a new study into the composition of the iron blade from the sarcophagus of the boy king.

Using non-invasive, portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometry, a team of Italian and Egyptian researchers confirmed that the iron of the dagger placed on the right thigh of King Tut's mummified body a has meteoric origin.

The team, which include researchers from Milan Polytechnic, Pisa University and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, detailed their results in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science.

RELATED: Weird Facts About King Tut and His Mummy

The weapon, now on display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, was described in 1925 by Howard Carter, who three years before had discovered the treasure-packed tomb, as "a highly ornamented gold dagger with crystal knob."

Made of non-rusted, homogeneous metal, the finely manufactured blade features a decorated gold handle. It is completed by a gold sheath garnished with a floral lily motif on one side and with a feathers pattern on the other side, terminating with a jackal's head.

WATCH VIDEO: What Are the Odds a Meteorite Will Hit You

Now dramatic technological improvements have allowed the researchers to determine the composition of the blade.

"Meteoric iron is clearly indicated by the presence of a high percentages of nickel," main author Daniela Comelli, at the department of Physics of Milan Polytechnic, told Discovery News.

Indeed, iron meteorites are mostly made of iron and nickel, with minor quantities of cobalt, phosphorus , sulfur and carbon.

While artifacts produced with iron ore quarrying display 4 percent of nickel at most, the iron blade of King Tut's dagger was found to contain nearly 11 percent of nickel.

RELATED: Tut's Funeral: Burying the Boy King

Further confirmation of the blade's meteoric origin came from cobalt traces.

"The nickel and cobalt ratio in the dagger blade is consistent with that of iron meteorites that have preserved the primitive chondritic ratio during planetary differentiation in the early solar system," Comelli said.

Comelli and colleagues also investigated the possible source of the iron blade.

"We took into consideration all meteorites found within an area of 2,000 km in radius centered in the Red Sea, and we ended up with 20 iron meteorites," Comelli said.

"Only one, named Kharga, turned out to have nickel and cobalt contents which are possibly consistent with the composition of the blade," she added.

The meteorite fragment was found in 2000 on a limestone plateau at Mersa Matruh, a seaport some 150 miles west of Alexandria.

RELATED: Who Else May Be in King Tut's Tomb?

The study shows the ancient Egyptians attributed great value to meteoritic iron for the production of precious objects, possibly perceiving those chunks of iron falling from the sky as a divine message.

The most ancient Egyptian iron artifacts, nine small beads excavated from a cemetery along the west bank of the Nile tomb in Gerzeh and dated about 3200 BC, are also made from meteoritic iron hammered into thin sheets.

"It would be very interesting to analyze more pre-Iron Age artifacts, such as other iron objects found in King Tut's tomb. We could gain precious insights into metal working technologies in ancient Egypt and the Mediterranean," Comelli said.

She noted that the high quality of King Tut's dagger blade shows that iron smithing was successful already in the 14th century B.C.

The dagger blade is not the only celestial object found in the boy king's tomb. His pectoral, or necklace, features an amulet scarab which is not "greenish-yellow chalcedony," as Carter had noted, but Libyan desert silica glass.

The glass was produced by the impact on the sand of a meteorite or comet. Such natural glass exists only in the remote and inhospitable Great Sand Sea of Egypt  the Western Desert. In order to produce the scarab, the ancient Egyptians would have had to trek across 500 desert miles.

Originally published on Discovery News.
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Washington (U.S.A) ), May 31, 2016 (SPS) - The United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization, the Committee of 24, will hold a regional seminar, Tuesday, in Managua (Nicaragua) to examine the situation of non-self-governing territories, including Western Sahara.

The ultimate goal of this three-day meeting is to accelerate the implementation of the third international decade for the eradication of colonialism (2011-2020) proclaimed in 2011 by the UN General Assembly.

The theme of the seminar will be the commitments and actions for decolonization in the Non-Self-Governing Territories.

The Committee of 24 will examine the situation of the 17 non-self-governing, taking into account the latest developments, and will evaluate the support brought to the UN system before submitting its conclusions and recommendations to the committees substantive session scheduled for June.

The president of the Special Committee, Rafael Darao Ramarez Carreao, from Venezuela, will chair this seminar which includes the participation of members of the UN regional groups, representatives of UN member States and those of non-self-governing territories, the civil society and Non-governmental organizations.

Despite the progress made in the fight against colonialism, there still remain 17 non-self-governing countries, where nearly two million people live. The UN continues its efforts to promote accession to self-determination or the independence of these territories.SPS

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The latest sales figures, put together by the Livestock Auctioneers Association (LAA), paint a positive picture for marts in England and Wales.

There were 3,947,000 store and breeding stock sold at auction last year, a rise of 241,000 compared to 2014 and the highest number for 10 years.

In total, overall throughput numbers remained relatively steady at 11,496,000  a drop of just 37,000 on 2014 (less than 1%).

Chris Dodds, Executive Secretary of the LAA, said the national figures painted a positive picture  especially at a time when the agricultural sector faced a number of challenges  that showed support for livestock markets remained strong among the farming community.

In total nearly 11.5m head of livestock were sold through LAA members during 2015, he said. This figure has been achieved at a time when national flock and herd numbers are declining and despite the many challenges that auction marts face.

Numbers sold have held up very well, highlighting the crucial importance of livestock markets to British farmers and a strong and vibrant red meat sector.

The livestock that were sold through auction marts last year will have experienced modern handling facilities that were staffed by well-trained drovers, they will have been sold by auctioneers who have the best interests of their farmers at heart and they will have been purchased by people who could stand around the ring and buy exactly what they wanted.

According to the sales figures the number of store and breeding sheep rose by 225,000 in 2015 to 2,912,000, while levels of store cattle increased by 6,000 to 692,000 over the same period.

Levels of prime slaughter sheep remained relatively steady, with 5,399,000 sold in 2015, compared to 5,469,000 the year before, while levels of prime slaughter cattle dropped by 48,000 in 2015 to 198,000.
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STAMFORD  The opioid overdoses that have shaken many communities will continue to increase unless more federal funds are earmarked for addiction treatment, officials said Tuesday.

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4, met in Stamford Tuesday with community leaders from across the region to drum up support for emergency funding that would help Connecticut towns battling an alarming rise in overdoses caused by heroin and prescription painkillers.

My office is spending a lot of time on this issue right now, Murphy told the gathering at the Stamford Government Center. Some of the laws are backward and byzantine, but you also need more beds and resources to take on the scope of this problem.

The spike in heroin and opioid deaths has been a growing national problem. There were 729 people who died from drug overdoses  including 415 that involved heroin  in Connecticut last year. There were 308 fatal heroin overdoses in 2014, according to data from the state Office of the Medical Examiner.

Stamford  the states third-largest city  has fared better than most communities, with only one heroin death reported last year.

Dont think this is a demographically distinct or a socioeconomically distinct issue, Himes said. I represent probably the most affluent area in Connecticut, and of the 17 towns and cities I represent, I dont think one of them hasnt had a fatality.

The U.S. Senate in March rejected a $600 million appropriation for emergency funds to combat the rise of heroin and opioid abuse, Murphy said. Meanwhile, he said, $4 billion was authorized for Ebola, which has killed fewer than a dozen people in the United States.

The senator recommends changing a law that caps the number of patients doctors are able to treat for addiction with prescribed medications.

Murphy also wants to increase the number of inpatient beds available to addicts in recovery by amending a law that prohibits Medicaid dollars from being spent on that kind of long-term care.

These laws, he said, contribute to why overdose deaths statewide are on track to double in 2016.

Stamford and Fairfield Countys numbers arent as bad as they are in Waterbury, he said. But if we do nothing at the federal level, just give it time. The numbers will get as bad here as they are in Waterbury and New London.

Experts trace the heroin epidemic to a rise in painkiller abuse, which often starts with a doctors prescription and ends with heroin  a drug far cheaper and easier to get than painkillers.

Hospitals and doctors know how to treat around addiction, but they dont know how to treat addiction, said Al Mathis, CEO of Liberation Programs, a treatment center based in Norwalk.

People are under the misunderstanding that Narcan and detox are treatments for addiction, and they simply are not, said Mathis, referring to the overdose reversal drug used by many police departments.

The few dollars that come to the state from the federal government hits folks who have organizations with no training in treating people for addiction, he said. And with this disaster were in, agencies like mine have gotten no new resources.

Forum guests spoke in favor of education, and noted how hard it can be to bring drug education to schools that are mostly concerned with academics.

The stigma is still entrenched, said Nick Despoelberch, a drug counselor in Darien and at Pivot Ministries in Bridgeport. Theres a fear that we dont want our community associated with that dirty heroin word.

eskalka@scni.com
STAMFORD  Police are searching for clues in what they said were unrelated shootings over Memorial Day weekend that left two teens with gunshot wounds and another person injured.

The first shots were fired early Saturday outside La Quinta Inn and Suites on Harvard Avenue, police said.

While Stamford officers were responding to reports of gunfire at the hotel, officials said a 16-year-old from the West Side arrived at Stamford Hospital with a bullet wound in his shoulder.

Capt. Richard Conklin said the teen was uncooperative and provided little information to police.

He stated he was in the parking lot and an unknown male was shooting at the group for no reason, Conklin said.

Later that day, around 9 p.m., a 19-year-old from the West Side showed up at Stamford Hospital with bullet wounds in his shoulder and stomach, injuries police described as serious but not life-threatening. Police said the teen was shot at the hotel and had gone home afterward to sleep.

He was under the influence of alcohol so heavily that he didnt realize he had been shot twice, Conklin said. The victim said he was in no shape to remember what happened.

Police are reviewing hotel security footage they hope will help them identify the person who witnesses say fired four shots.

Police said the group involved in the shooting started the night inside the hotel drinking and using drugs before managers kicked them out.

This hotel shooting is very troubling, Conklin said, adding that the teenager who waited nearly a day to go to the hospital could have bled out.

The shooting follows a spate of gun violence on the citys West Side, where eight shootings have occurred and three people have been seriously hurt since March 25. Police believe some of the violence is related to rival groups from Connecticut Avenue and Spruce Street.

The second Memorial Day weekend shooting happened early Monday on Ranson Street in the citys Cove neighborhood, police said.

One person was injured after a car sprayed bullets at a multi-family home where residents were sleeping.

Police said the car drove by and shot at the house at around 3 a.m., sending broken window glass through the home and cutting one person.

The house had been struck numerous times from the street, Conklin said. It was a very dangerous situation.

Although residents were asleep when the gunfire erupted, police said that a birthday party had taken place there earlier and they are investigating whether the two events are related.

Forensic experts were also examining the shell casings the shooter left behind.

eskalka@scni.com
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It was a busy Memorial Day weekend for Connecticut state troopers who handed out more than 4,111 tickets.

Trooper Kelly Grant said the 4,111 citations were for such violations as hazardous/unsafe lane change, following too closely, and using a cellphone while driving.
J ohn Menzies has signed a deal to provide ground handling at all airports across Oman, home to one of the Middle Easts fastest-growing airlines, Oman Air.

The deal, which should become a joint venture by the final quarter of this year, will employ 2500 people and handle more than 50,000 aricraft turnarounds a year.

Oman Air, formed in 1993, is a luxury airline with plans to grow from its present fleet of 40 aircraft to 70 by 2020. It operates out of Muscat Airport which is completing a major new building project. Menzies Aviation has annual revenues of more than 700 million, operating in 146 airports and 31 countries.

Forsyth Black, Menzies Aviations president and managing director, said: Were very excited by the opportunity to work with Oman Air. This venture represents real progress against our strategy by securing a hub location and by expanding in emerging markets.

There is a great tradition of co-operation between British and Omani partners; we hope to add this new joint venture to that list.

Menzies shares rose 2.5p to 505.5p.
V olkswagen has signalled that the worst of the pain from its emissions cheating scandal was behind it, reporting better-than-expected first-quarter profits.

The carmaker behind the VW, Audi and Porsche brands said that operating profits rose 3.4% to 3.4 billion (2.6 billion) thanks to currency swings on the 16.2 billion it set aside to cover the cost of what it called the diesel issue.

That aside, operating profits decreased slightly to 3.1 billion but were still at the high end of analysts forecasts. But sales fell 3.4% to 51 billion and pre-tax profit plunged 19.3% to 3.2 billion. Its shares, listed in Frankfurt, slipped 3% to 133.80.

Nevertheless, chief executive Matthias Muller said he was satisfied overall with the start we have made to what will undoubtedly be a demanding fiscal year 2016.

He added: In the first quarter, we once again managed to limit the economic effects of the diesel issue and achieve respectable results under difficult conditions.

The result follows a record annual loss of 5.5 billion in 2015 largely because of the provisions it made to deal with the repercussions over the emissions controversy.

Volkswagen last September admitted to using devices that masked the true level of emissions of nitrogen oxide from diesel engines during testing. It has since agreed a deal with the US Department of Justice to buy back or fix about 500,000 diesel cars affected by the scandal.

Volkswagen is also under scrutiny from authorities worldwide and has seen its offices in South Korea and France raided by the authorities.

TODO: define component type brightcove

Rebounding demand in China and growth in the high-margin European market have helped keep sales going and offset the reputational damage related to the affair. Profits at Skoda, Seat and Porsche were up, but declined for Volkswagen cars and Bentley.

Volkswagen reiterated its outlook for the full-year, expecting sales down by up to 5% because of economic conditions, particularly in South America and Russia, exchange-rate fluctuations and the backdrop of the emissions scandal.
H aving a pint is about to get political as JD Wetherspoon is printing 200,000 beer mats backing founder Tim Martin's wish for Britain to leave the European Union.

By the end of today punters in all of Wetherspoons 920-plus branches in the UK will get a message that compares Remain supporting body the International Monetary Fund to scandal-hit FIFA.

As well as asking Is the governance of the IMF better than FIFAs?, the note, addressed to IMF chief Christine Lagarde, draws attention to her upcoming trial over her role in a 400 million (304.8 million) payout made to businessman Bernard Tapie in 2008.

It also mentions the resignation in disgrace of her predecessor Dominique Strauss-Kahn and questions the IMFs stewardship of the Greek debt crisis.

Questions: One side of Wetherspoon's Brexit beer mat / JD Wetherspoon

Martin, who previously warned that the European Union is bad for our business, said: Corporate governance at the IMF is clearly out of control and Christine Lagarde would have been obliged to resign at any normal Plc or institution until the matters in question were resolved.

EU debate - Sadiq and Cameron team up for 'remain campaign'

The UK public have been asked to rely on her comments by both George Osborne and David Cameron in the forthcoming referendum and she must now answer the questions on the beer mats and others that the public may have.

Christine Lagardes intergrity and her bona fides as a national advisor, as well as that of the IMF, are a legitimate and important concern.
I was born as the Second World War ended, so I could not reasonably have expected that more than 70 years later young Britons would view the beaches and great cities of Europe as natural holiday or work destinations, or that German, French and English would be openly spoken in cafes and bars among colleagues and friends without fear.

No longer do we kill each other with muskets and sabres or tanks and bombers.

Instead, and almost always imperfectly, we struggle in the conference rooms of Brussels and Strasbourg with paper (lots of paper), pens and computers to fashion a Europe that will continue to ensure peace and improve the wellbeing of its citizens.

I have participated in such meetings, and progress can sometimes only painfully be achieved.

The Europe that is being built in this way at times may seem to be making the progress of Monsieur Hulot  three steps forward and one back  but is that not better than the alternative of bloody warfare?

Some speak today as though the European Union is a finished project but it is far from being so. Anyone reading the history of recent centuries will know that national or, as in Germany and Italy, regional loyalties and characteristics remain strong and that there will always be a struggle for influence.

However imperfect, I prefer that struggle to be conducted by people who meet each other and argue rather than fight.

I cannot conceive of Britain not having the opportunity to influence the evolution of Europe

I cannot conceive of Britain not having the opportunity to influence the evolution of Europe.

We should be influencing, as far as we are able, the process and substance of decision-taking to reflect the best characteristics of the people who make up Europe.

We should be arguing for a Europe that resembles a Venn diagram where, for example, some areas overlap, representing the pooling of currencies or common immigration or taxation policies, but some do not.

I hope that all areas continue to overlap in developing a true single market for goods and services  particularly important for Britain as an exporter of financial services  an area of activity that would be particularly damaged by a decision to leave the EU.

One size will never fit all but there are substantial areas where pooling of interests can make us all stronger, safer and more prosperous. With this geometry there would be room to accommodate many differences between nations and make easier further accession.

I want this to be a compassionate Europe, where we can be proud to support its values of tolerance and understanding, the celebration of differences and the creation of opportunity.

Can anyone doubt that Britain has the capacity to be a major influence for the realisation of such a vision?

I want my grandchildren to grow up to be outward- looking, co-operative and yet proud of their heritage.

I do not believe they would be better citizens by turning inwards, defining themselves as not European, and focused only on their own selfish interests.

I want them to share a positive vision of how Europe can act as a strong influence in the world between other major powers.

I also want them to have better economic prospects and to have the opportunity to participate in open, liberalised markets where entrepreneurship is valued and wealth-creation celebrated, and where they can freely experience other cultures.

I want my grandchildren to understand the benefits of healthy competition and freedom to make economic choices.

This is not about whether Britains economy will grow by half a per cent or one or two per cent less if we leave the EU, important though that is.

I have no doubt growth would be slower, employment damaged and our currency weaker if Britain were to leave, but it is the risk of protectionism and narrow nationalism which is more serious than short-term changes in growth rates.

I am also clear that in the European divorce proposed by some, however optimistically the process of leaving were to begin, the rest of Europe would be obliged to seek recompense for the damage  political and economic  we would have done. Local electorates will demand nothing less.

Driving division in an already dangerous world is unlikely to improve our safety

Driving division in an already dangerous world is unlikely to improve our safety.

Vague concepts of sovereignty do not create jobs, encourage enterprise or develop new markets.

Perhaps it meant something more to people centuries ago, when monarchs were backed by a preparedness to resort quickly to force of arms. In todays interconnected world it is a far less meaningful concept.

After the referendum is over, and I believe and hope Britain will decide to remain a member of the European Union, it is important that the peace is won too.

This will need a resetting of Britains relationship with our neighbours and the articulation of a positive vision for a new and more responsive Europe that recognises the anxieties of its citizens and provides leadership through consent.

It also needs, through projects such as Capital Markets Union, to help create the small enterprises that will drive growth.

TODO: define component type apester

We are today still in the early chapters of this stage of Europes evolution and they are far from perfectly formed.

Although there will be setbacks we should continue to want to influence the writing of the next chapters.

After the Second World War the business vote was abolished for most of the UK.

As a consequence I am not in favour of businesses (or indeed their leaders) telling the electorate how to vote.

I am startled, however, by how many people want to know my views given my experience as current chairman of the London Stock Exchange Group, Sage Group and LifeSight Ltd and previously of Smiths Group, Amersham, the London Metal Exchange, Royal Mail and TNS.

None of these would perform better if Britain left the EU or, as some suggest, the European Single Market.

This is not just a calibration in terms of profit but in terms of employment as well.
T he mid 1930s were a pretty scary time in Europe. The National Socialists had come to power under Adolf Hitler in Germany and fascist parties were on the rise across the continent. Here in Britain, Sir Oswald Mosleys British Union of Fascists wanted to emulate this political success, and they were steadily growing in popularity.

On October 4, 1936, Mosley led a march of 7,000 fascists through east London, which was then home to a large Jewish community. Mosley hoped that this would encourage more people to join him and turn working-class Londoners against their neighbours.

What happened next is the stuff of legend.

Instead of cheering on the fascists, more than 300,000 east Londoners left their homes, took to the streets and fought to prevent Mosley from marching through their neighbourhood.

The key battleground was Cable Street, and as one eyewitness recalled: People were throwing rubbish out of windows  manure, rotten vegetables. Women were emptying chamber pots over bobbies.

There was real violence meted out against the fascists, too, with chair legs and broken furniture used as weapons.

Eventually, the police told Mosley to turn back  the march had been stopped, and a decisive blow had been struck against fascism in Britain.

This event has come to be known as the Battle of Cable Street, and its part of our citys folklore because of the way Londoners spontaneously rose up to fight for the greater good.

Almost exactly 15 years ago in Limehouse, just around the corner from Cable Street, another group of Londoners got together, this time to discuss family life in the capital.

This was no government initiative, it was a bottom-up movement of churches, mosques and other institutions, brought together by the tireless community organisers at London Citizens.

These organisations had been talking to parents in east London, and it was clear that working families were struggling financially, despite often working two or more minimum-wage jobs, and had little time to spend with their children.

So began the Living Wage Campaign in 2001, dedicated to alleviating poverty by ensuring that workers received a higher wage.

It was a quintessentially London movement  born of the streets, impatient for change but not dependent on government to act.

Instead of calling for legislation, the Living Wage Campaign signed up employers one by one, until momentum began to build.

A key milestone happened in 2003, when London Citizens helped one of HSBCs cleaners confront the banks chairman at the companys annual meeting, and request a living wage.

HSBC agreed, and today thousands of businesses across London have signed up as Living Wage employers (including my own company Second Home), which has put over 200 million into the pockets of the lowest paid, and made a real difference to family life. These two historic moments in East London  the Battle of Cable Street and the founding of the Living Wage Campaign  tell us so much about the abiding social conscience of our city.

Its this commitment to fairness and tolerance that makes London the greatest metropolis in the world  and these social movements have come from the grassroots.

Its up to all of us to continue that great tradition today. Weve certainly got big shoes to fill.
If you happened to pass through Victoria station this morning, you may have noticed that the photogenic qualities of your fellow commuters has improved somewhat. This is not the result of a new Southeastern rail initiative to street-cast its passengers, or the results of a special super-elixir being pumped into the water mains of SE15. Its because Dior is in town.

On what is a momentous day for Londons fashion-rich history, the Parisian house, which shows its ready-to-wear offering in the French capitals salubrious Musee Rodin, has chosen Blenheim Palace as the venue for its latest show. This means a star-studded 24 hours, a major occasion with numerous pre and post parties  and nowhere more so than in gritty old Victoria, where earlier today high-profile, high-cheekboned types and fashion purveyors embarked on a journey to Blenheim, in Oxfordshire, via the Orient Express.

For Dior, which has previously chosen a navy yard in Brooklyn and the clifftops of Cannes as a backdrop for its cruise  or pre-spring  collections, the decision to involve London was no whimsical notion but the fruits of a long-term love affair between our city and Pariss most revered export.

It is also a means of marking the arrival of the House of Dior  a new luxury superstore which opens on New Bond Street on Friday. Set across four floors and designed with input from architect Peter Marino, the store brings together Diors womenswear offering along with fine jewellery and watches, homeware, Dior Baby and kids.

In an exciting first for the UK, a Dior Homme boutique offering Sur Mesure (made to measure) also awaits customers on the ground floor. The boutique  a Dior wonderland  is drenched in variations of Dior grey and includes artworks by Marc Quinn and Tony Cragg. It is also set to serve as a haven for Diors high-paying clients, thanks to a host of spellbinding VIP spaces.

For real fans of the House, of course, Diors love affair with the capital runs a lot deeper than bricks and mortar. After all, this isnt the first time Dior has rolled into town. Or to Blenheim Palace, in fact, because following a show at The Savoy in 1947, Christian Dior chose the Duke of Marlboroughs estate for a showcase attended by Princess Margaret in 1954.

Having fallen hard for our capital at the age of 21, Monsieur Dior was a self-confessed anglophile who found beauty in England. When an English woman is pretty she is prettier than a woman of any other nationality, wrote the designer in his memoirs.

Oh, monsieur: Princess Margaret and Christian Dior at Blenheim Palace in 1954 (Rex Features ) / Rex Features

Dior, who died in 1957, also enjoyed a lifelong passion for British fry-ups and saw charm in our countryside. His ability to create clothes that oozed with modernity  a true rarity at that time  also ensured that he forged a host of friendships with some of the most iconic Londoners in history. Notably, Queen Elizabeth, Margot Fonteyn, Vivien Leigh and Wallis Simpson, a woman so dedicated to Dior she had her initials embroidered on every pair of its shoes she owned.

Not to mention Princess Diana, who would become a major supporter of the brand and a lifelong ambassador of the iconic Lady Dior handbag.

Clockwise from top left,: Sunglasses, 539; Diorama bag 2,700; Dior bracelet, 590, available at the House of Dior 160 New Bond Street

In 2016 Dior is a different proposition, not just because it is without a creative director  the house is yet to announce a replacement for former incumbent Raf Simons  but because it has swapped actual royalty for fashion royalty. Witness Erin OConnor, Stella Tennant and Kate Moss.

Of course its essence remains unchanged. Just as Dior was a visionary and a pioneer for modernity  so much so that the use of his name was banned by British Vogue following the launch of the New Look  the house continues to blend cutting-edge art with the classically beautiful.

Dior at Paris Fashion Week AW16 1 /29 Dior at Paris Fashion Week AW16 Dior Models walk the AW16 runway Francois Guillot/AFP/Getty Dior Kendall Jenner walks the AW16 runway AP Photo/Francois Mori Dior The Christian Dior show space Patrick Kovarik/AFP/Getty Dior A model walks the AW16 runway Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Dior A model walks the AW16 runway Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Dior A model walks the AW16 runway Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Dior Kendall Jenner walks the AW16 runway Francois Guillot/AFP/Getty Dior A model walks the AW16 runway Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Dior A model walks the AW16 runway Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Dior Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Dior A model walks the AW16 runway Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Dior A model walks the AW16 runway Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Dior A model walks the AW16 runway Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Dior A model walks the AW16 runway Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Dior A model walks the AW16 runway Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Dior A model walks the AW16 runway Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Dior A model walks the AW16 runway Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Dior A model walks the AW16 runway Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Dior A model walks the AW16 runway Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Dior A model walks the AW16 runway Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Dior Rosamund Pike AFP/Getty Images Dior Jessica Alba Patrick Kovarik/AFP/Getty

Among the most interesting results of this is an accessory range designed in collaboration with London sculptor Marc Quinn  one of his famous eyes hangs on the top floor of the new store  and a limited-edition range of red, white and blue pieces designed to celebrate this new chapter for the brand. The love affair continues.

@standardfashion
If you're under the age of 35 and female, theres a high chance that youve got more than two holes in your ears. And Im not just talking lobes. The current trend grabbing Londoners by the lug-holes involves a high pain threshold as a penchant for multi-piercings means that talk of whether to get your daith or your tragus (see Google) pierced next has become as commonplace as deciding between the smashed avo or eggs Benedict.

This obsession may have something to do with the fact that things have come a long way since the days when getting pierced involved sitting in the window of Claires Accessories while an over-eager 17-year-old lunged at you with a piercing gun.

Robinson Pelham  the jeweller behind the earrings worn by Kate Middleton on her wedding day  routinely holds piercing parties at its store in Elystan Street for Chelseas well-heeled types, while cult New York piercer Maria Tash  the woman responsible for punching holes in everyone from Julianne Moore to Beyonce (see the Formation music video)  has hosted wildly successful piercing pop-ups at Josh Woods Holland Park Atelier and at Liberty. Now that you can get your rook (again, google it) bejewelled with your morning blow-dry, its little wonder the fashion pack is so on point.

With 13 piercings, I am no stranger to this multi-pierced moment. Except my holes werent punched in a chic SW1 pop-up or in an iconic department store. The year was 2003 and my haunt of choice was a dodgy tattoo parlour in Norfolk run by a middle-aged man called Joe who bore inkings on his face and a beard that reached his navel.

Between the ages of 14 and 17 I frequented that studio almost as much as I did maths classes  possibly more. This glamorous location was the birthplace of all my piercings, with the exception of the six holes in my lobes  the first two of which were created in the branch of Claires at Manchesters Arndale centre. The other four were the result of a DIY job conducted in my living room with the help of an ice cube, half an apple and a safety pin.

As youll have no doubt gathered, this was an act of pure teenage rebellion. But in case you need convincing, I point you to the time I tried my safety-pin trick  minus the ice cube  on at least four of my closest friends during one very memorable school camping trip. And then there was the time, to the dismay of my entire family, that I armed with fake ID  took my 14-year-old cousin to get her belly button pierced.

Of course, just as I have grown up, so too have the options for passionate piercers. Gone are the stainless steel barbells; in are dainty, diamond adornments.

Mismatched earrings are also proving popular, with many brands latching on to the rise in demand for single earrings. Veteran British jeweller Dinny Hall has launched The Singles Bar in its Kings Road, Islington and Westbourne Grove stores, offering pretty studs and fine hoops sold separately for a more individual touch. Astley Clarke is also set to celebrate the multi-pierced approach next month with the launch of its most iconic gemstone charms recrafted in single studs designed to be worn stacked up the ear. The rise in popularity of mismatched and single -stud earrings is phenomenal, says founder Bec Astley Clarke MBE. From what was a non-existent category for us three months ago now accounts for almost 50 per cent of all of our online earring sales and it is only continuing to grow.

Best mismatched earrings - in pictures 1 /6 Best mismatched earrings - in pictures Blade runner Zelle mini-stake dip-dye earrings, 230, Katie Rowland katie-rowland.com Noughts and crosses Topaz and rose-gold-plated XO earrings, 220, Aamaya by Priyanka matchesfashion.com Hip to be square Drop cube earrings, 8, ASOS asos.com Bobby dazzler 18ct gold multi-stone earrings, 1,750, Holly Dyment net-a-porter.com Zig and zag 18ct gold and rhodium-plated mix-n-match Patti earrings, 225, Uribe studiouribe.co.uk

London-based jeweller Matthew Calvin is also becoming a go-to name for those on the hunt for modern, minimalist designs, while Dutch brand Ivy & Liv  available in the UK via jewellery e-boutique Otiumberg  is making a name for itself as a mix-and-match earring specialist.

Even the high street is getting in on the action, as this week Topshop welcomes a pop-up from cool Brooklyn-based jewellery brand Catbird, renowned for its alternative approach to fine jewellery.

Thankfully, pain is not necessarily a pre-requisite for those who wish to embrace this trend. A well-placed cuff or four  try London-based Astrid & Miyu  scattered along the outer ear can have the same impact, minus the ear-ache. Or try a so-called ear jacket by Maya Magal, which features jewels that hang down behind the ear, to add detail to a single lobe piercing.

Of course theres no substitute for the real thing. How many can you hack? As for me, Im done.
T he owner of a contemporary art gallery in Mayfairs Cork Street has promised to breathe new life into the famous district after rising rents and major building developments forced several established businesses out.

The street has been a hub of Londons art scene for more than a century but fears over its future have been raised. Some dealers have cited planned developments, complete with multi-million-pound flats, as the driving force for the businesses choosing to leave.

Among those are Alan Cristeas contemporary gallery, which will leave for Pall Mall later this year after almost two decades. Fears over Cork Streets fate prompted a celebrity-backed campaign in 2012, with supporters including actor Bill Nighy and retail guru Mary Portas.

Joseph Nahmad, a member of the well-known family of international art dealers, has taken over his brothers gallery at 2 Cork Street to launch Nahmad Projects and said he is hopeful for the streets future.

Its first show, opening on June 10, sees 30 artists take over the space for a day each with a brief to create radical new work.

Mr Nahmad, 27, said the street was losing its traditional image. He said: Cork Street has changed, mainly because of all the galleries that had to leave, but this will make the street more vibrant.

I want to bring a bit of youth to Cork Street and show we can give the street a new life. This will hopefully help revive the energy of the place.

Our aim is to radically look towards the future, to invite young artists to bring life to our space with thought-provoking projects, to raise essential questions about art and bring a sense of fun in a gallery environment. I think visitors will experience something completely new here.

10 exhibitions not to miss in 2016 1 /10 10 exhibitions not to miss in 2016 Women: New Portraits from Annie Leibovitz

Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, January 16 - February 7

This exhibition will update the collaboration between Leibovitz and Susan Sontag that first emerged more than 15 years ago. A series of extraordinary photographs taken by the incomparable Annie Leibovitz looks at the role of women in the world today.

ubs.com Annie Lebovitz, from WOMEN: New Portraits Visions of our Solar System

Natural History Museum, January 22 - May 15

Dramatic photographs from Michael Benson are paired with an original score from Brian Eno in an exploration of our solar system, showing it in all its stunning glory.

nhm.ac.uk NASA SDO/GSFC/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures/Natural History Museum Electronic Superhighway

Whitechapel Gallery, January 29  May 15

More than 100 artworks feature in this exploration of how the computers and the internet have impacted artists over the last 50 or so years. Work comes from the likes of Cory Arcangel, Jeremy Bailey, James Bridle and Constant Dullaart.

whitechapelgallery.org Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Surface Tension (1992) Courtesy the artist and Carroll/Fletcher, London. Installation photograph by Maxime Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse

Royal Academy of Arts, January 30 - April 20

From the 1860s to the 1920s, gardens served as a heavy influence on artists across the world, especially in the Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and Avant-Garde movements. This exhibition will detail how, with a stunning collection of works from the likes of Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, Pissarro, Manet, Sargent, Kandinsky, Van Gogh, Matisse, Klimt and Klee.

royalacademy.org.uk Claude Monet, Water Lilies, 1914-15/Royal Academy Vogue 100 - A Century of Style

National Portrait Gallery, February 11  May 22

Iconic magazine Vogue will be showcasing the best of its British publication in this exhibition, which promises to be little short of stunning. It's part of Vogue's centenary celebrations. It will feature 280 prints from the Conde Nast archive, revealing the extent of the magazine's substantial influence on fashion, taste, and culture at large.

npg.org.uk Vogue/Vogue 100/National Portrait Gallery The Clangers, Bagpuss & Co

The V&A Museum of Childhood, March 19 - October 9

Oliver Postgate's voice and Peter Firmin's puppets, which include Bagpuss, The Clangers and Ivor the Engine had a dramatic hand in shaping the childhood of millions of children in Britain and across the world. This display will tell the story of the puppets, of Smallfilms and Four Corners books, and of how Postgate and Firmin developed their signature stop-animation process.

vam.ac.uk Smallfilms & Four Corners books/V&A Museum of Childhood Exhibitionism: The Rolling Stones

Saatchi Gallery, April 5 - September 4

The Saatchi Gallery will be taken over by never-before-seen Stones memorabilia, rare instruments, iconic costumes, album artwork and even the band's personal diaries. This exhibition will reveal their story from 60s blues band to the world's greatest rock n' roll band.

saatchigallery.com Stones Archive/Gerry Images This Is A Voice

Wellcome Collection, April 14  July 31

An exhibition for the ears: This Is A Voice explores how voices work, how we emotions are carried in our tone, pitch and rhythm of speech, and looks at non-verbal forms of communication, too. Paintings, manuscripts and illustrations compliment an acoustic journey featuring work from artists and vocalists including Joan La Barbara, Marcus Coates, Matthew Herbert and Imogen Stidworthy.

wellcomecollection.org Enrico David, courtesy Michael Werner Gallery, New York and London Undressed: A brief history of underwear

The V&A, April 16  March 12 2017

Worth going to for the pun-tastic title alone, this exhibition explores all things lingerie, from its practical use to its place in the world of high fashion and, of course, how its developed and shaped our attitudes towards sensuality and sexuality.

vam.ac.uk Photographer Sebastian Faena, Model Eniko Mihalik Painters Painting: Van Dyck to Freud

National Gallery, June 22 - September 4

Ever wondered what painters hang on their walls? On display here will be works owned by the likes of Lucian Freud, Matisse, Degas, Lawrence, Reynolds, and Van Dyck. It will explore why painters were interested in the work of others, and their reasons for building a collection, from personal interest to artistic inspiration. It should be a fascinating insight into what made some of our greatest artists tick.

nationalgallery.org.uk Detail from Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Italian Woman, about 1870

Among the artists involved are Anna Fafaliou, who will sleep on the gallerys floor and encourage visitors to do the same, and an Italian group called Sista Collective who will fill up the space with 1,000 of 1p coins.

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I f youre young, female, clever and attractive  and considering a career in the City  you might want to read Playing FTSE first, a lurid sex-in-the-City bankbuster by ex-analyst, Victoria Vita Pease.

Its a novel about a young female graduate trainee who joins an investment bank and rises spectacularly up the greasy pole only to lose her moral compass and fall for the wrong men for all the wrong reasons.

I always thought this was an amusing story to write even though all the literary agents said its not topical enough because people dont like the City any more, says Pease, who wrote the book under a pseudonym while taking a career break to raise her three children.

After the manuscript was rejected by agents, Pease, 41, who took the six-month Faber Academy writing course last year, decided to publish it herself. Her no-holds-barred account of being catcalled, hit on by married men, working punishingly long hours and snorting cocaine with colleagues, all for the sake of the job, is labelled as fiction  so how much of it is true?

Pease began her career as a 23-year-old graduate trainee at Kleinwort Benson before being headhunted by Merrill Lynch. I write about the trading floor and how if youre one woman to 10 guys, you get hit on a lot. I certainly was, says Pease, who in her grey lace-trimmed DFV dress and cream Louboutins, exudes intelligence and beauty in equal measure. It was, she says, a price worth paying.

I was one of the first women to get in on a level playing field with men, and the opportunities offered were the same. In fact, if you were attractive, clever and hardworking you got more attention and could get promoted above a man, she says. The trick was not to abuse it by sleeping around.

It was a very male-driven environment, but I as I grew up with five brothers and went to a boys boarding school [Charterhouse] I didnt mind. As a woman you have to be robust and not take offence. Most of it was harmless, especially if it was a single male colleague. But then youd get the married ones; I didnt want to go there.

As is evident from the soaraway success of dating websites such as Ashley Madison, illicit affairs in the City are rife. Especially on the trading floor. These guys are just full of testosterone. Theyre having to make quick decisions, thinking at a million miles an hour and taking risks. One small mistake and they can lose the firm hundreds of thousands of pounds. So yes, theyre the kind of men who like instant gratification. There was a lot of alcohol and boozy lunches and drugs. I had a number of colleagues who were taking coke but I didnt really know about it.

Pease was working every day from 7am until 11pm and at weekends. She had no life outside work let alone a relationship  and within a year was earning 150,000. Thats huge money for a 24-year-old. It was during a bubble and there was a lot of money floating around. But you have to realise these years dont last. Theres no loyalty and you can get kicked out in two seconds.

How did it all affect her? If you work those long hours and make a lot of money youre not dependent on anyone, so you get this elevated sense of Oh, I can do this all by myself. Some people may think you become too hard or bitchy. But if youve got the temperament and enjoy the job, go for it.

In the novel, Peases alter-ego falls into an abusive, relationship with a sexually sadistic older man because, she says: I wanted a character who you might find at the extreme end of the banking spectrum, whos used to success and everything falling at his feet.

But Pease is no E L James, and while the sex may be gratuitous, its neither porny nor graphic. A sex scene, for example, begins: All concerns evaporated; he filled her every pore. The pain, the yearning, melting incoherently into one. He was a beast, bruising her inside and out, and her body was no longer hers. It responded enthusiastically. Another involving a younger man raping the protagonist while an older man looks on was inspired, she says, by a surprisingly high number of her City girlfriends who had experienced something similar. I wont spoil the plot but think Jilly Cooper ventures into the Square Mile.

10 books every feminist should read 1 /14 10 books every feminist should read Click through to discover 10 essential books for the feminist reader... Shutterstock / Vadim Georgiev 1. The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood Set in the near future, Canadian author Margaret Atwoods dystopian novel follows the story of Offred, a young handmaid to a powerful commander, who is a lynchpin in a totalitarian Christian theocracy which has overthrown the United States government. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. What unfolds is a story of female subjugation at the hands of a male dictatorship, and the desperate hope of a young woman who clings to the memories of her former life and identity. As unpleasant as it is brilliant, this cruel and bone-chilling story will stay with your for the rest of your life - not just because its terrifying, but because its terrifyingly possible. 2. Why We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Adapted from her much-viewed TEDx talk of the same name, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichies 49-page call to arms asks the question what does feminism mean today? Drawing on her own experiences, she aims her literary harpoon at discrimination, and the institutional behaviors that marginalize women around the world. So important, is her essay, that every 16-year-old in Sweden will receive a copy to read as part of a new government initiative.



My own definition of a feminist is a man or a woman who says, Yes, theres a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it, we must do better, writes Adichie in the essay. All of us, women and men, must do better. 3. How To Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran Britains funniest feminists memoir helps women who are too knackered and confused to work out if they are a womens rights advocate (i.e the vast majority of us) to easily figure it all out. Less a glossy manifesto on womens rights a more an honest attempt to decode what it means to be female, this book is a great read for anyone whos intimidated or confused by the shifting parameters that define feminism. While no stone is left unturned - from bikini waxing and plastic surgery to objectification and Katie Price - the crux of the books argument essentially boils down to this quote:



Put your hand in your pants.

a) Do you have a vagina? and

b) Do you want to be in charge of it?



If you said 'yes' to both, then congratulations! You're a feminist." 4. Men Explain Things To Me by Rebecca Solnit Ever had something mansplained to you? Then youll want to know about this book. Rebecca Solnit's essay 'Men Explain Things to Me' is credited with kickstarting the term - radically addressing the issues that a patriarchal culture may not deem as issues at all. Exploring everything from rape culture to the nuclear family, Solnits prose reminds us of the basic right we all should have to a voice and an opinion. 5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker This Pulitzer-winning novel is set in Georgia in the 1930s and looks at the racism and sexism facing Celie, our heroine, as a black woman at the time. Raped repeatedly by the man she calls 'father', she has two children taken away from her, is separated from her beloved sister Nettie and is trapped into an ugly marriage. But then she meets the glamorous Shug Avery - a woman who has taken charge of her own destiny. A violent and explicit insight into the issues facing African-American women in the US, this book is a surprisingly uplifting and comforting reminder that strength can be found even in the most tragic conditions. 6. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay In these witty and intelligent essays, Roxane Gay takes us through the journey of the evolution of modern woman - from the writers own experience with growing up to the wider popular culture influences that subtly define what it means to be a woman in todays society. Bad Feminist should sit on every informed readers bookshelf - a sharp, biting and hilarious look at the ways in which our consumption shapes the person who we are. 7. Uglies by Scott Westerfeld This young adult novel is a brilliant starting point for teenagers who are interested in the topic of feminism. It is set in a future dystopian world in which everyone is turned "Pretty" by extreme cosmetic surgery upon reaching age 16. We meet our heroine Tally Youngblood, who rebels against society's enforced conformity, after her newfound friends Shay and David show her the downsides to becoming a "Pretty". This is a brilliant read for any young reader, or indeed fully fledged adult, who is beginning to question the meaning of beauty, identity and individuality in the age of vanity and social media. 8. The Second Sex by Simone De Beauvoir No feminist should go without reading French existentialist Simone de Beauvoir's ground breaking study of women. Perhaps the most extensive and enduring feminist book, The Second Sex is at once a work of anthropology and sociology, of biology and psychoanalysis - a book that will make you question the worth of the woman in 2016 just as much as it did upon its release in 1949. 9. The Female Eunuch - Germaine Greer When Germaine Greer penned the Female Eunuch in the early 1970s, a woman's role in society was still set by male expectations. While women were expected to work and be educated, they were still paid less than men for the same men, and were encouraged to marry and become housewives. The Female Eunuch called on women to reject their traditional roles in the home, and explore ways to break out of the mould that society had imposed on them. It also encouraged women to question the power of traditional authority figures and to explore their own sexuality. 10. The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin The American dream suburb of Stepford, Connecticut, has perfect houses, perfect lives, and perfect wives. This satirical thriller concerns Joanna Eberhart, a photographer and young mother who begins to suspect that the frighteningly submissive housewives in her new idyllic neighborhood may be robots created by their husbands. At once a psychological nightmare and a terrifying commentary on a media-driven society that values the pursuit of youth and beauty at all costs, The Stepford Wives will make you rethink the societal pressure to settle down, get a husband and have it all.

While its no surprise that Pease met her husband Richard at work, it does stretch credulity that her maiden name was also Pease. I was introduced to him as a joke. She was born in Brazil  her father was an economics professor and her mother a housewife. Richard Pease, who recently set up Crux Asset Management, comes from a Quaker banking family. One of his sisters is Nichola Pease, a former CEO of J O Hambro who is married to hedgie Crispin Odey  theyre known as the finance worlds Posh and Becks.

His other sister, Carolyn, is married to ex-Barclays CEO John Varley. What do they all talk about at Christmas? She laughs and pauses. Not about the City. Although when Richard was starting his new business he obviously asked Crispin and Nichola for advice whether or not he should do it. But with me, we talk about the kids or whatever.

The mantelpiece and shelves of their Kensington des res, where weve met for the interview, are clustered with photographs. They have two sons and a daughter who are four, five and six, and her husband has two older sons, 12 and 14, from his first marriage.

Pease has already started writing the sequel to Playing FTSE, about a career woman facing the dilemma of starting a family. I decided to stop for a while and have children. Yes, my career has suffered. But thats the choice I took and theres no question of me staying at home for the rest of my life. Some of my friends have carried on working and are knackered but theyve got to understand they have the power to make a choice too, so dont moan about it, she says in an even tone.

Women in the generation before mine didnt have the opportunity to work in the City but look how far weve come  and for the next generation itll be even easier because were paving the way, she says. Were so used to having it all and being on a level playing field, but when it comes to making the choice of stepping out to have children, thats much harder because were not used to it.

Playing FTSE by Penelope Jacobs, published by SilverWood at 10, is out in paperback on June 6
F rom rooftop bars to Michelin-starred street food, here are eight off-the-beaten track things to add to your Hong Kong to-do list.

The rooftop bar: Fu Lu Shou

This Soho rooftop bar has no signage whatsoever and even once you find the entrance - at 31 Hollywood Road - you won't be able to get in. Unless that is, you know the code to the gate. We'd love to tell you what it is but it changes every Tuesday, so ring ahead to ask for that weeks combination. Once through the grotty entrance and tiny lift up to the top floor, youll enter a small bar come restaurant, with outdoor area and mah-jong tiled bar set around an open kitchen. This is the perfect spot to start an evening with a drink and a snack - check out the spicy 'John San' cocktail and the giant Big Arsed Dim Sum.

Find it: 7/F 31 Hollywood Road Central; +852 2336 8812; facebook.com/FuLuShouHK

The cocktail bar: Mrs Pound

This fun, slightly kitsch cocktail bar and restaurant is hidden behind what looks like a traditional Chinese stamp shop. Find the correct stamp in the window display, press it down and the door will slide open. Inside its all bright lights, hot pink booth seating, neon signs and vintage movie posters. The fun vibe continues to the food and drink menus: check out the lethal #POUNDIT house shots (Fireball Cinnamon Whiksey and Pound syrup), Avocado Fries, Rendang Poutine, and Sriracha Street Corn.

Find it: 6 Pound Ln, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong; +852 3426 3949; mrspound.com

Mrs Pound

The street food: Hop Yik Tai

Despite getting a Michelin star in the 2016 guides dedicated street food section, Hop Yik Tais location in the working class neighbourhood of Sham Shui Po keeps it off the tourist trail. Look for the line of locals who queue up for its cheong fun, freshly made cylindrical rice rolls glistening with a thin layer of lard and covered in sesame paste, soy sauce and toasted sesame seeds. Its quick, delicious, and costs no more that 1.

Find it: 121 Kweilin Street, Sham Shui Po, Hong Kong

The food court: Nam Long Shan Cooked Food Centre

Despite its small size, not many tourists venture down to the southern areas of Hong Kong Island. However its well worth taking the 10 minute bus ride from Causeway Bay to Wong Chuk Hang to visit the Nam Long Shan Cooked Food Centre. Easily mistaken for a car park at first, head inside to find two floors of food vendors serving mostly Chinese and Thai food to a local crowd. The Thai restaurants in particular are well worth seeking out; head for Pattaya on the second floor and tuck in to some seriously spicy som tam, green curry and pork larb salad.

Find it: 1 Nam Long Shan Rd, Hong Kong; +852 2553 3730

The view from East hotel

The view: IFC 55th Floor Observation Area

For a skyscraper's eye view of the city, the 55th floor of the giant IFC tower is a hidden gem. It's open to the public (just bring photo ID), free to access, and has prime views of the city through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows. For those interested in money (beyond the interest of just having lots of it), there's also an exhibition on the history of Hong Kong banking and a library stacked with books and magazines. Even without the views, this is a nice quiet pitstop away from the bustle of the city below.

Find it; 55/F, Two IFC, Central, Hong Kong; +852 2878 1111

The sunset venue: Sugar

Hong Kong has plenty of highrise rooftop bars with impressive views of the city, but to escape the crowds, head to Sugar perched atop East hotel in the relatively quiet eastern district of Taikoo Shing. Sugar has some of the best views in town, a decent cocktail list, and, you should have no problem bagging a front row seat. Time your visit for early evening and watch the sun set behind the skyscrapers of Central before the skies darken and the buildings twinkle with lights.

Find it: 29 Tai Koo Shing Rd, Quarry Bay, Hong Kong; +852 3968 3968; sugar-hongkong.com

Tai Long Wan beach

The beach: Tai Long Wan

Hong Kong has some decent city beaches which are easy to get to but if you make the effort to reach the beautiful remote beach of Tai Long Wan on a weekday you may well have the crystal clear waters all to yourself. You can get there via several buses and a hike but its much more fun to arrive by boat - there's no official service that goes there but you can negotiate a private hire from any of Hong Kong's piers. Trust us, you'll be glad you did.

The walk: The Morning Trail

A visit to The Peak on the classic Peak Tram is top of most 'Must See' in Hong Kong lists. As a result, both the tram and peak itself are thronging with tourists, which takes the shine off the views somewhat. Instead, get up early one day and walk the Morning Trail, a delightful old Victorian promenade circling the top of Hong Kong island, which offers the views without the crowds. Starting on Hatton Road in the mid-levels area the walk winds along bamboo-lined paths, past pretty old cottages on Lugard Road, through Lung Fu Shan County Park and finishes up with spectacular views over the island and Victoria Harbour.

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F rom misty mountains to crashing waterfalls, the Landscape Photographer of the Year Award is renowned for gathering pictures of some of the most amazing scenery in Britain.

The competition, which is now in its tenth year, is asking for photographers of all ages and abilities to submit their best pictures of the British landscape.

Highlights from last years competition include a striking shot of the Pont Fawr and River Conwy in Wales and a freightliner coal train running over the Ribblehead Viaduct in North Yorkshire.

Dorset-based photographer Andy Farrer took the 2015 title with a stunning shot of the Jurassic Coast under snow.

Think you can do better? The competition is currently open to everyone, with a special class for those younger than 17, and each entrant can submit 25 photographs across four categories.

The winner will take home a prize fund of 10,000 and, as in previous years, an exhibition of shortlisted and winning entries will also premiere in the capital in late autumn.

Previous locations for the annual showcase have included the National Theatre and London Waterloo Station.

Shortlisted entrants will also be published in stunning coffee-table book Landscape Photographer of the Year: Collection 10.

Enter here: take-a-view.co.uk

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A convicted sex offender who groomed and sexually assaulted 14-year-old girl has been jailed.

Gary Cawthorne, of Greenhithe, Kent, previously admitted using the alias of Lee Mason to contact a vulnerable teenager from London to promise her a job.

Cawthorne, 53, was already a registered sex offender after being convicted of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl in October 2012.

But he proceeded to meet the 14-year-old on several occasions and sexually assaulted her.

His contact with the teenager only came to light after the girls friend found messages on her mobile phone from Lee.

The friend contacted Cawthorne using another name to ask for a job and Lee asked for a photo of her.

After sending a facial shot, the friend was then asked for a photograph of her body, which she did not send.

The girl told her parents and they contacted her school, which then notified the police.

Lee Mason was identified as Cawthorne through the phone number he had used to contact both the teenagers and he was arrested in March this year.

He pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual assault on a child under 16 years of age, one count of grooming and one count of a breach of a Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO) at Southwark Crown Court on May 3.

Cawthorne was today jailed for a total of four years and five months, was subjected to a SHPO for life and will be made to sign the sex offenders register indefinitely.

Detective Constable Tony Foran, from the Met's Sexual Offences, Exploitation and Child Abuse Command, said: "Cawthorne is a known sex offender and is a danger to children - he has now been jailed for his offences.

"He pursued the 14-year-old girl by phone and in person. Then he sexually assaulted her.

"The victim's friend became suspicious of his contact and thanks to her brave actions she was able to flag up his activities to her parents who then alerted the authorities."
A prison librarian used sophisticated software to mask his identity as he searched the dark web for a handgun and bullets, the Old Bailey heard.

Dwain Osborne, 26, ordered a Glock 19mm pistol and 100 rounds of ammunition to be delivered to his home in Penge, which he was using as a base for a drug-dealing operation.

He had downloaded the Tor internet browser that enabled him to search anonymously on the dark web on sites including Black Market Reloaded, where weapons and drugs are sold.

However, the dealer who offered to sell him the gun and ammunition was a US agent and his home was raided by National Crime Agency officers in October last year.

Osborne, who earned 22,000 a year as a librarian at HMP Brixton, was released on bail and in a second raid on his home in February this year, 10 wraps of cocaine weighing 3.75g, a further 13.8g of cocaine, scales and 735 in cash were found.

Prosecutor Tom Forster said Osborne claimed the drugs were for personal use, but his browsing history revealed searches including how to buy a kilo of cocaine in Peru.

His iPhone and linked laptop both had uploaded a software programme called Tor browser, which allows someone using it to browse the internet anonymously, so they can use the dark web and protect their identity while doing so, said Mr Forster. All tending to suggest a committed interest in cocaine and large amounts of it.

He said officers had found a memory card with details of over 1,000 prisoners in the prison system, although a charge of illegally accessing computer files was dropped.

Osborne claimed the extent of his supply of class A drugs was buying them for a friend. However, Judge Gerald Gordon said on Friday: Im satisfied the defendant did benefit commercially, at the very least to the extent necessary to fund his own habit. Its likely it was more than that.

Osborne admitted attempted possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life, attempted possession of ammunition with intent to endanger life, attempted purchase of a firearm, attempted purchase of ammunition, possession of false identity documents, possession of class B drugs and possession of class A drugs with intent to supply.

He faces a lengthy prison term and was remanded in custody until he is sentenced on June 17.
A royal dress designer attacked an air stewardess when she was ordered off a flight to Dubai for being too drunk, a court heard.

Leena Romu, 63, struck Virgin airways worker Lisa OKeefe on the back after a foul-mouthed tirade in First Class as she boarded the flight at Heathrow Airport.

The Finnish-born designer, who specialises in wedding dresses and evening ball gowns, has worked with fashion icons including Vivienne Westwood and Anthony Price, and is credited on hit films including the Harry Potter franchise and The Dark Knight.

She counts the Royal Family, actress Joan Collins and the band Duran Duran among her list of clients.

Romu was noticeably unsteady on her feet as she boarded the flight, on December 20 last year, clutching bottles of Duty Free alcohol.

Really hurt: Lisa OKeefe needed six sessions of physiotherapy after the attack / Tony Palmer/Square Mile News

Bhavin Patel, prosecuting, told Ealing magistrates court the flight crew immediately smelled alcohol on her breath and asked her to step off the plane.

But Romu argued back, saying: What do you mean? and What are you trying to say?

She stumbled into the bulkhead of the aircraft, was unsteady on her feet and the Upper Class passengers behind her told me they thought she had been drinking, Ms OKeefe told the court.

She was asking one passenger where her seat was and nearly fell into the ladys lap. The father of a young boy was asking her to refrain from using foul language.

However Romu, from Acton, responded by yelling: Shut up. Its your f***ing fault as she was ordered off the plane.

She was shouting in my ear that she was going to sue Virgin and me, and I got a shove, slap between my shoulder blades, said Ms OKeefe.

It felt like the heel of the hand between my shoulder blades and she said: I didnt hit you, I pushed you.

Two hours into the flight I said to my colleagues: I think shes really hurt me and after going to sleep I couldnt move my neck.

Ms OKeefe added that she needed six sessions with a physio as a result of the attack.

Romu was ordered to pay a 105 fine, 300 costs and a 20 victim surcharge after being convicted on Friday of assault following a short trial.

She had denied the charge, and told police after her arrest that she accidentally stumbled into Ms OKeefe because she has three pins in her hip which make her unsteady.
A man was killed and two teenagers injured, one critically, in a series of stabbings across London over the Bank Holiday weekend.

A 37-year-old man died after being attacked in an alleyway just yards from bars and clubs in Camden High Street in the early hours of Sunday.

In two further separate incidents a 16-year-old was left critically injured after being attacked by a gang in Deptford and an 18-year-old was seriously hurt after being stabbed in the stomach in Homerton High Street.

Mayor Sadiq Khan was expected to raise the issue of knife crime in London at a meeting with Met commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe today.

He told the Standard: My thoughts are with the latest victims and their families of this dreadful crime. It is vital that we work with young Londoners through schools and youth clubs to prevent them from carrying knives and joining gangs.

We also need intelligence-led stop and search alongside neighbourhood policing, whilst communities must feel confident about working with the police.

He said he had already spoken to the Commissioner about this issue and he had agreed it was a priority.

His comments come after the Met released statistics last week showing they were called to 9,000 knife-related crimes in the past 12 months - an average of 25 a day.

Twelve teenagers were stabbed to death and 291 people left with serious injuries in the same period with some 1,623 victims of all victims being under the age of 25. A total of 866 were teenagers.

The figures emerged in a new anti-knife campaign launched by the Mets police cadets which included a hard-hitting video entitled Choose a life, not a knife.

The film included interviews with Ian Levy, the father of 16-year-old schoolboy Robert Levy who was stabbed to death trying to stop a fight in Hackney in 2004, and Thomas Konig, a doctor with Londons Air Ambulance service.

Dr Konig, who is also a trauma and vascular surgeon in the British Army, described how 30 per cent of all incidents they attended were due to knife crime.

He said: We are seeing people being stabbed in the heart almost every week. We have had to up our game and we have to do open heart surgery on the streets of London to try and save peoples lives. That is hand to hand combat, that belongs in war, that does not belong on the streets of London.

The murder hunt was launched in Camden after a man was found with fatal knife wounds in an alleyway near Greenland Street at 3.45am on Sunday.

Police told neighbours the victim was chased down the alleyway by his attackers before he collapsed yards from a bar. He was rushed to hospital but died an hour later. His family have been told.

Detective Inspector Craig Bradley appealed to people who were in the High Street or near the Tube station to contact them.

He said: The area has a busy nightlife and I am certain that there are people who are yet to speak with officers.

Police are also trying to trace bus and taxi drivers who were in the area.

The 16-year-old was left fighting for life after being attacked by a knife-wielding gang in Payne Street, Deptford, shortly after midnight on Saturday.

He was said to have been ambushed by a mob of four to six teenagers who left him lying in the road with multiple injuries before the group escaped in a red hatchback.

The 18-year-old was rushed to hospital after he was stabbed in the stomach at 5.40pm yesterday in Homerton High Street. His condition is described as serious but stable.

Anyone with information on the murder should call 0208 345 3715 or ring Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
P olice have launched an appeal to track down a man after a teenager was sexually assaulted on board a train from King's Cross.

The 16-year-old girl was travelling on the 11.38pm train on Friday, May 6 from Kings Cross St Pancras station to St Albans City.

The teenager sat opposite a man, who made what police described as "inappropriate physical contact" with her during the train journey.

The man then left the train at St Albans City station.

Officers believe the man pictured may have information that could help the investigation.

Anyone with information about the incident or who recognises the man is asked to phone 0800 40 50 40, quoting 177 of 31/05.
P olice are trying to stop a Lithuanian festival going ahead in a London park after claims violence broke out among 1,000 "extremely drunk" people at last year's event.

Officers say children were put in danger as drunk men fell onto picnic blankets while scrapping at the Didziosios Jonines UK event last June.

Women and children were apparently forced to dive out of the way to avoid injury, according to a police report submitted to Redbridge council.

In one case, police say a father had a tooth knocked out after being punched in the face for trying to push a way a drunken man who almost fell on his child while scuffling.

In another incident, a man was arrested for assault after allegedly lunging at a female police officer and kissing her on the cheek.

Up to 1,000 extremely drunk people were then left roaming Hainault Forest Country Park after the event ended, with some of them rowdy and aggressive.

The festival celebrates midsummer, or St Johns Day, which is traditionally marked with music and dancing in Lithuania.

It attracted about 6,000 people last year despite being blighted by torrential rain, with closer to 10,000 expected if it goes ahead again on Saturday June 25 as planned.

However, organisers We Can FFeel (sic) are facing opposition from police after submitting a licensing application to Redbridge council.

Police say they have no faith in the organisers after the problems last year and are calling for the event to blocked altogether.

In the police report to the council, PC Karolis Puidokas said: There were a high proportion of families with children at the event as anticipated and the drunkenness was a danger to them.

About 6,000 people attended last year but the event was marred by drink-fuelled violence, police say

There were pockets of drunken disorder where adult males fighting were falling onto picnic blankets and women and children were relocating to avoid injury.

At the conclusion of the event, the last 500-1000 people to leave were predominantly extremely drunk. Most were good natured but there were some rowdy and aggressive elements to the crowd.

"Police are objecting to the event as we have no faith in the organisers adhering to their licence conditions. This has the potential to have serious consequences for public safety."

The Standard has contacted We Can FFeel for a response.
T his is the moment an axe wielding driver confronted a knifeman in broad daylight on an east London street.

The two men openly brandished the weapons this afternoon in what a witness suspected was a road rage incident.

In shocking scenes, a man who was travelling alone in a blue hatchback, had jumped out of his car waving an axe.

The backseat passenger from the car in front had leapt out of his vehicle brandishing a knife with a large pink blade.

The men faced off against each other in the middle of the street for several minutes before driving off.

The aggression started in broad daylight just before 1pm today in West Road in Stratford.

The axeman brandishes his weapon in the middle of the street / Mitchell Gunn/Getty Images

Photographer Mitchell Gunn said he heard a confrontation outside his window and was astonished when he looked out to see two men walking towards each other brandishing the weapons.

Mr Gunn told the Standard he did not see how the aggression started, but heard shouting and saw the men advance towards each other bearing their weapons.

He had his camera to hand as he had been working on some pictures, and managed to capture the moment the axe-wielding man advanced towards the man from the green car, who was armed with a pink knife.

He said: "Being an ex-military policeman I always keep my eye out to make sure there's no suspicious characters around.

"I was downstairs and heard a noise like an argument.

"I saw a man brandishing an axe, walking towards another guy.

Police said they were called but found no trace of a disturbance / Mitchell Gunn/Getty Images

"As soon as I saw the axe, I picked my camera up and fired off a few frames."

Mr Gunn said he did not see the initial confrontation, but said he had a suspicion it may have been caused by an argument between the drivers.

Talking about the junction on West Road, he said: "You often have minor little altercations there."

"People turn at the last minute because it's hidden by the car park along the road.

"I don't think they knew each other, you don't often wave knives and axes at your friends."

Mr Gunn, 48, added: "It's not the kind of thing I want to see in my street.

"It really gets my back up, I took the pictures for evidence."

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "Police were called on Tuesday, 31 May at 12:51 hours to West Road junction with Portway, E15 to a report of a disturbance involving people armed with weapons."

"Officers attended and found no trace of a disturbance.

"No persons were found to be injured at the location."
P upils as young as 13 reportedly watched a stripper perform in an end-of-term stunt at the Duchess of Cambridges former school.

Sixth form students at 30,000-a-year Marlborough College in Wiltshire are said to have smuggled in the tattooed dancer dressed in a sailor suit.

The stripper is then claimed to have performed in the schools central courtyard during the day on which students traditionally play pranks on their last day before exams.

The stripper, named only as Ross, told the newspaper: "I didn't know I would be performing at a school until I got there. I was told it was going to be for a girl's birthday.

"At the end of the day it was just a prank, and I didn't take all my clothes off."

The co-educational school charges boarding fees of nearly 35,000 a year and former pupils include the Duchess of Cambridge and Samantha Cameron, the wife of Prime Minister David Cameron.

A spokesman said: This was an inappropriate prank that was not condoned by the school.

Child psychologist Dr Linda Papadopoulos told the Sun: "Something a 17-year-old might find funny could have a very different impact on a younger child.

Exposing them to this, particularly in a school environment which should be safe, is not good by any standards.
B ritains most expensive train journey per mile is breaking its own record by raising fares.

The Heathrow Express is increasing peak time single fares by nearly nine per cent.

A standard one-way ticket Paddington station to Heathrow has gone up from 22 to 24, and a business class ticket fare has gone up to 32 from 30.

But off-peak return fares on the high-speed rail service will soon be reduced from 36 to 25.

A Heathrow Express spokeswoman said it is hoped that the fare increased will reduce congestion by encouraging people to travel at off-peak times.

Heathrow Express director Fraser Brown said: "Heathrow Express is the quickest way to get from central London to Heathrow and is well regarded by passengers who score it highly for customer satisfaction.

"It is an increasingly popular way to get to the airport and these changes will continue to protect the great service we give our passengers."

The Heathrow Connect service, which also runs services from Paddington, offers single fares of 10.20, and the Underground fare for the same distance during peak times is 5.10.

Last year, Heathrow Express was forced to drop its every 15 minutes slogan when a customer rightly pointed out that the frequency falls to once every half hour later in the day.
H eavy rain, thunderstorms and strong winds are set to batter London this week, forecasters have said.

The Met Office issued weather warnings for rain today as forecasters predicted thick cloud over London for much of the week.

A spokesman said: "A band of rain, heavy and thundery in places, will spread westwards from the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Storm warning: Forecasters said they expect 'severe' storms (File picture: Twitter/@nibl83)

"There is the risk that rain will turn torrential in places, with frequent lightning."

Forecasters also warned there is a risk of flash flooding in places.

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Later in the week, conditions are expected to remain gloomy with outbreaks of rain and cool winds.

Temperatures are expected to peak at about 16C, but northerly gusts of winds are likely to make that feel cooler.

The Met Office said "warm or very warm" conditions will then take over in the south-east later in June.

It comes after Londoners enjoyed warm and bright conditions for much of the Bank Holiday weekend.
P olice are hunting a man who allegedly punched an innocent bystander in the head aboard a train in south London.

Detectives released a CCTV image of a man they wish to speak to in connection with the incident between Thornton Heath and Wandsworth Common.

A man was walking through the train around 9pm on April 23 when he was subjected to threatening and abusive language by another passenger, police said.

A member of the public and an off-duty police officer confronted the male, who then subjected the pair to further abuse.

When the man could not be calmed, another member of the public trying to intervene was verbally abused and punched in the head.

The suspect then left the train at Clapham Junction.

Investigating officer PC Andy Thompson said: This man was a particularly aggressive individual who senselessly attacked an innocent member of the public. It was an entirely unprovoked beating and it is important that this person is identified.

Thankfully no one was seriously injured however I am determined to identify the person responsible.

Anyone with information should call police on 0800 40 50 40, text 61016, or call Crimestoppers anonymously 0800 555 111.
O ne of Princess Diana's most iconic dresses will go under the hammer in London next month, when it is expected to fetch up to 100,000.

The sequinned sea-green evening gown was one of the Princess of Wales' wardrobe staples during the 1980s, and was worn by her to film premieres, state visits, and charity events.

The stunning evening gown is due to be sold by Kerry Taylor Auctions in Bermondsey on June 14 as part of the Passion for Fashion auction, which features haute couture and historic dress as well as Royal memorabilia.

The glamorous dress has been also listed on online marketplace thesaleroom.com ahead of the auction, giving bidders around the world the chance to compete to own a piece of Royal history.

The glitzy gown was designed for Princess Diana to wear during the state visit to Austria in 1986 by Catherine Walker, and it is estimated to sell for between 80,000 and 100,000.

Iconic: the dress was the only fully-sequinned gown in Princess Diana's 1980s wardrobe (Thesaleroom.com ) / Thesaleroom.com

The sparkling dress, which was the only completely sequined gown in Diana's 1980s wardrobe, formed part of a large group order from Catherine Walker, which the Princess put in about a month before the state visit.

Princess Diana trusted her designer so much that on this occasion she didn't even ask to see provisional sketches but just asked her to select and make the dresses on her behalf.

Princess Diana wore the stunning dress with a diamond and emerald choker necklace, which she had been given as a wedding present by H.M. The Queen Mother.

After debuting the dress at the Vienna Burgtheater in 1986, she was also photographed in it at a charity ball at Osterley House to raise funds for the British Paraplegic Society, and on the red carpet to the 1993 film premiere of 'Biggles'.

Piece of history: the dress is expected to fetch up to 100,000 / Thesaleroom.com

The show-stopping outfit is one of two pieces of the Princess' wardrobe that are up for sale at the auction.

The second, a tartan wool daytime ensemble by the Emanuels, was worn by Diana in Venice in 1985 when she accompanied Prince Charleson an official visit to Italy.

Princess Diana - In pictures 1 /80 Princess Diana - In pictures Diana, Princess of Wales kissing Prince Charles of Wales on the balcony of Buckingham Palace following their wedding in 1981 PA Diana, Princess of Wales with Prince Charles of Wales on holiday at Balmoral in 1981 PA Family album picture of Lady Diana Spencer (Diana, Princess of Wales) with Souffle, a Shetland pony, at her mother's home in Scotland during the summer of 1974 PA Lady Diana Spencer (Diana, Princess of Wales) with her brother Charles, Lord Alhorp (Earl Spencer) in 1968 PA Lady Diana Spencer (Diana, Princess of Wales) in her pram at Park House, Sandringham, Norfolk in 1963 PA Archive/PA Images Lady Diana Spencer (Diana, Princess of Wales) from the family album, during a summer holiday in 1970 at Itchenor, West Sussex PA Lady Diana Spencer (Diana, Princess of Wales) leaving her flat in 1980 Neville Marriner/Associated Newspapers Lady Diana Spencer (Diana, Princess of Wales), the 19-year-old fiancee to the leaves her flat at Coleherne Court, Earl's Court in 1980 Getty Images Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer (Diana, Princess of Wales) announce their engagement at Buckingham Palace in 1981 Sipa Press/Rex Lady Diana Spencer (Diana, Princess of Wales) arrives at St. Paul's Cathedral in London with her father, Earl Spencer, for her wedding to the Prince of Wales in 1981 PA Archive/PA Images Diana, Princess of Wales with Prince Charles of Wales at their wedding at St Paul Cathedral in 1981 AFP/Getty Images The Prince and Princess of Wales at the High Altar in front of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, during their wedding at St Paul's Cathedral in 1981 PA Diana, Princess of Wales in her bridal gown at Buckingham Palace after her marriage to Prince Charles at St. Paul's Cathedral PA Diana, Princess of Wales with Prince Charles of Wales on the balcony of Buckingham Palace following their wedding in 1981 PA The Prince and Princess of Wales in a carriage after their wedding at St Paul's Cathedral in 1981 PA Diana, Princess of Wales meeting the crowds during a royal tour of Wales in 1981 Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wales smiling as she prepares to embrace a woman in the crowd, on the streets of Carmarthen, Wales in 1981 Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Diana, Princess of Wales and Prince Charles leave the Lindo Wing at St Mary's with Prince William on 21 June 1982 PA Diana, Princess of Wales and Prince Charles leave the Lindo Wing at St Mary's with Prince Harry on 17 September 1984 Getty Images Diana, Princess of Waleswith Pope John Paul II during a private audience at the Vatican on 25 April 1985 Reuters Diana, Princess of Wales attends a 1985 private wedding at Foulsham in Norfolk James Gray/Daily Mail Diana, Princess of Wales at a gala dinner at the 40th Cannes film festival on the French riviera in 1987 AFP/Getty Images Prince Harry at 5 years old, joins his brother Prince William at 7 years old on his first day at the Wetherby School, Notting Hill, London in 1989 PA The Princess of Wales wears a blue Catherine Walker gown to a charity ball at Osterley House, Middlesex, May 1989 Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images Britain's Prince Charles and Diana Princess of Wales watch Indonesian tribal dancers in Yogyakarta in 1989 AFP/Getty Images The Prince and Princess of Wales with sons Prince William, right, and Prince Harry prepare for a cycling trip in Tresco during their holiday in the Scilly Isles in 1989 PA Diana, Princess of Wales at the 1989 wedding of Joanna Leshallas and Edward Berry in Cranbrook, Kent Rex Features Former First Lady Barbara Bush and Diana, Princess of Wales at the White House, Washington DC in 1990 AFP/Getty Images Lady Diana, Princess of Wales (1961 - 1997) laughs with American performer Liza Minnelli at a party following the charity film premiere of "Stepping Out", at the Langham Hilton Hotel, London on 20 September 1991 Dave Benett Diana, Princess of Wales leaving the first anti-AIDS bookshop in Paris in 1992 AFP/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wales, arrives at the Lille Congress Hall on 15 November 1992 for the opening of Paul McCartney's oratorio "Liverpool" AFP/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wale visits the great pyramid of Giza near Cairo in 1992 AFP/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wales meets Manuel Leseneo in 1992, a homeless Spanish youth at the London Connection Centre for the Homeless, near Trafalgar Square Reuters Diana, Princess of Wales with her mother Frances Shand Kydd attending hte Wimbledon Men;s Singles Final in 1993 PA Diana, Princess of Wales delivers a powerful speech calling for a public partnership ro solve homelessness in 1993 Evening Standard Diana, Princess of Wales with Princes William and Harry on the Loggers Leap ride at Thorpe Park in 1993 Daily Mail Diana, Princess of Wales at Alton Towers Theme Park in 1994 Rex Diana, Princess of Wales enjoying the waters of Indian Castle Beach while on vacation at Nevis with her sons William and Harry in 1993 AFP/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wales atends a charity dinner at the Serpentine Gallery in 1994 Rex Features Diana, Princess of Wales in 1994 Dave Benett Diana, Princess of Wales, Prince Harry, Prince William and Prince Charles gather for the commemorations of VJ Day on 19 August 1995 in London AFP/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wales departs her London health club in 1995 AFP/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wales is interviewed by the BBC's Martin Bashir in the current affairs program, Panorama on 20 November 1995 AFP/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wales laughs during a speech by Henry Kissinger at the 41st annual United Cerebral Palsy Awards Gala In 1995 Prince William signs the traditional Entrance Book watched by his parents, the Prince and Princess of Wales, and younger brother, Prince Harry, at Eton College. St James's Palace in 1995 PA Diana, Princess of Wales and Jemima Khan sttend a variety show on 22 February 1996 in Lahore. AFP/Getty Images A windswept Diana, Princess of Wales leaves her London health club after her morning workout in 1996 AFP/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wales arriving at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute Dinner Dance, Sydney in 1996 Getty Images Diana Princess of Wales arrive's at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York for the Costume Institute Ball in 1996 AFP/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wales, posing for a photograph in 1997 with some French SFOR soldiers at Sarajevo airport before her flight to London. AFP/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wales during the meeting with Ana Paula dos Santos, wife of Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, 13 January 1997 in Luanda AFP/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997 with Malic Bradoric from Bosnia and Zarko Beric a Serb from Bosnia, who both lost legs to landmines Reuters Diana, Princess of Wales, touring a minefield wearing body armour during her visit to Angola in 1997 PA UN Special Envoy to Angola Alioune Beye and Diana, Princess of Wales during a 1997 campaign against land mines in Angola AFP/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wales, a key volunteer of the British Red Cross Landmine Campaign listens to speaker Ken Rutherford in 1997, who was injured by a land mine in Somalia at ceremonies at Red Cross headquarters in Washington DC AFP/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wales attends English National Ballet's Swan Lake in 1997 Dave Benett Diana, Princess of Wales waits for a jet-ski ride on the property of her friend Mohammad Al-Fayed in Saint Tropez, French Riviera in 1997 AFP/Getty Images Diana, Princess of Wales attends the London premiere of 'In Love and War' at the Odeon Leicester Square on 12 February 1997 Dave Benett Diana, Princess of Wales, listening as she attends an engagement at a British Red Cross mission to highlight the evil of land mines in Luanda, 1997 AFP/Getty Images Diana, the Princess of Wales after arriving on 17 June 1997 at the Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington to attend a gala dinner for landmine victims AFP/Getty Images

And, moving from one type of Royalty to another, Madonnas Jean Paul Gaulter iconic lame bodice will also go under the hammer at the auction.

The ensemble that the pop queen wore for her 'Blond Ambition' tour in 1990 in expected to reach between 25,000 and 35,000 when it is sold together with an autographed photograph of Madonna wearing the outfit on tour.

Pop Royalty: Madonna's iconic Jean Paul Gaultier outfit is also up for sale (Thesaleroom.com ) / Thesaleroom.com

Also up for grabs is Bjork's Alexander McQueen 'Kimono' dress, which she wore on the cover of her 1997 'Homogenic' album, and was hand-made in London by the McQueen studio.

The dress is expected to fetch between 15,000 and 25,000.

Album cover: Bjork's Alexander McQueen 'Kimono' dress worn will go under the hammer (Thesaleroom.com ) / Thesaleroom.com

Kerry Taylor, of Kerry Taylor Auctions said: I have been an auctioneer for over thirty years, and I can honestly say that this is quite simply one of the most extraordinary fashion auctions ever to take place anywhere. It includes everything from rare and historic royal pieces, to cutting-edge contemporary fashion from the collection of Bjork.

"The two Princess Diana pieces we have in this auction, although similar in colour, couldnt be more different. The sea-green sequined evening gown by Catherine Walker, 1986 is full-on Hollywood glamour, and by far one of the more show-stopping, sultry pieces from her 1980s wardrobe.

Full-on Hollywood glamour: the dress was designed by Catherine Walker / Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images

"In stark contrast, the tartan wool day ensemble by the Emanuels is warm, practical and lady-like. She wore it in Venice when she accompanied Prince Charles for an official visit to Italy in 1985. The press at the time unkindly likened it to a horse-blanket.

"Despite its more practical appearance, it is still very desirable and rare as examples of the Princesss daywear, which does not often come onto the open market.
A pensioner who was struck by a bus in Oxford Street has died in hospital.

The 73-year-old woman sustained serious head injuries in the collision, which happened just before 5pm last Tuesday, May 24, near Bond Street Underground station.

The woman was rushed to hospital for treatment, but died from her injuries on Saturday.

The driver of the route 73 bus stopped at the scene and has been assisting officers with their enquiries.

Detectives from the Serious Collision Investigation Unit are carrying out enquiries into the circumstances of the incident.

The woman's next of kin has been informed and an inquest into her death has been opened and adjourned.

The woman was injured just 24 hours after an 83-year-old man was also hit by a bus in the busy shopping street.

The man was left fighting for his life after he was struck by a number 159 near the junction with New Bond Street - just 100 yards from where the woman was injured.

Police today said his injuries are no longer life-threatening and he is now in a stable condition.

Detectives from the Serious Collision Investigation Unit at Merton Traffic Garage are continuing their enquiries into the circumstances of the fatal collision.

Anyone who witnessed the incident who has not already contacted police are asked to contact collision investigators on 020 8543 5157.
B oris Johnson's flagship plan to help hard-up renters was unrealistic and unachievable, according to papers released by Sadiq Khan today.

Data also published by the new Mayor shows that Mr Johnsons plan to persuade 100,000 landlords to commit to higher standards attracted just 1,800 over four years. The former Tory Mayors proposal was so unrealistic it put City Halls reputation at risk, officials warned.

Mr Khan said: Most landlords do a good and decent job, but weve got to stop those rogue landlords who are exploiting renters. Ive got plans to take them on, but its very disappointing that little or no progress was made under the previous Mayor.

It seems Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel and ignored repeated warnings from officials that his plans were not working.

The London Rental Standard (LRS) initiative was announced by Mr Johnson four years ago to raise the number of accredited landlords to 100,000 by 2016. It inherited about 13,300 landlords from previous schemes but as of March this year had only attracted a further 1,845.

In February 2013 officials warned that the 100,000 target was clearly unrealistic and unachievable.

In October 2012 a briefing warned the Mayor: We simply dont have the resources to proactively enforce the LRS, which leaves us with an unacceptable reputational risk.

In May the same year a briefing sent to the Mayor warned it would take more than 50 years to accredit a sufficient number of landlords.

Mr Johnsons team wanted the LRS to be an instantly recognisable feature of Londons lettings industry, helping Londoners pick between those who signed up and those who failed to.

A spokesman for Mr Johnson said: Once again Mr Khan isnt being straight. He knows all this data is already in the public domain and he knows City Hall has no statutory powers in this area. Thats precisely why Boris Johnson launched the groundbreaking London Rental Standard, a scheme thats seen 137,000 properties and 300 agents accredited.

Mr Khan needs to stop sniping and start doing.
I taly and Spain are plotting to hijack 1,000 jobs from London if Britons vote to leave the European Union on June 23, it was claimed today.

They have lobbied in Brussels for EU regulators currently based in London to be relocated to Rome or Madrid if Britain chooses to quit.

Cabinet minister Justine Greening said the jobs at two agencies and a third due to open shortly were being threatened.

The European Medicines Agency, which employs 890 people, and the European Banking Authority, which has 146 staff, have their headquarters in the British capital. A London-based section of a third body, a new Unified Patent Court serving the EU, is due to start operations in the year ahead. Judges are currently being recruited to serve with it.

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The agencies not only employ professionals directly, but attract satellite firms such as specialist lawyers and lobbyists.

Ms Greening, the International Development Secretary and MP for Putney, said it was more evidence that voting to leave would risk jobs and livelihoods.

One example here in London are the hundreds of jobs in important EU organisations like the European Medicines Agency and European Banking Authority that would be threatened if we left, she told the Standard.

However, the warning was dismissed by Vote Leave, which said far more jobs would be created in London if Britain leaves the EU.

EU Referendum: latest polls - May 31

The European Medicines Agency, based in London since 1995, is responsible for the safety of medicines sold across the single market. Seven in 10 of its staff are women. Denmark and Sweden have reportedly also expressed interest in hosting the organisation if Britain leaves.

The European Banking Authority, based at Canary Wharf, was set up in 2011 after the banking crisis and is developing a single rulebook to prevent future disasters.
The 'Tatler Tory' campaign chief accused of bullying a young activist before he killed himself pursued a vendetta against Conservative colleagues that "verged on criminal", an inquest heard.

Elliott Johnson, 21, lay down in front of a train weeks after complaining about Mark Clarke, accusing him of bullying him and threatening to destroy his career.

Elliott said Clarke, who led the Conservative's RoadTrip2015 campaign and denies any wrongdoing, threatened to "squash" him "like an ant" in a pub row over a photo.

Paul Abbott, Elliott's boss at the Conservative Way Forward pressure group, said Clarke had a personal animosity towards him which grew into a "vendetta" against his organisation and volunteer activists.

"Clarke's dislike of me had become embittered and entrenched - a friend warned me Clarke was on the warpath, trying to attack me through his contacts there", he told Ampthill Coroners Court.

"All my spare time was consumed with Clarke's attacks and people asking me to help them."

He said RoadTrip activists were defecting to CWF "to get away from" Clarke, saying of his alleged behaviour: "I described a lot of that I think as verging on criminal."

Elliott died on September 15 last year on the tracks near Sandy, in Bedfordshire, weeks after a confrontation with Clarke in the Marquis of Granby pub in Westminster that led to a formal complaint of bullying.

The Nottingham University graduate lost his full time post at CWF following the confrontation, but Mr Abbott said this was motivated by financial difficulties of the organisation rather than as a reaction to the bullying complaint.

Mark Clarke threatened to destroy the political and journalistic career of Elliott Johnson, the inquest heard

Mr Abbott told the inquest: "Although Elliott has become the focus because of what happened, there were many other people complaining who were volunteers on Conservative Way Forward."

He said one woman who complained about Clarke's behaviour had a nervous breakdown at the time Elliott died.

Mr Abbott said he was in contact with Elliott, who was worried his enemies would "knife me until the end of the earth" and "CCHQ won't care about me personally".

He added that he knew Clarke was putting pressure on Elliott to withdraw his complaint to Tory bosses.

In his complaint, Elliott said Clarke had "gone ballistic", pinning him to a bar stool and threatening to destroy his political and journalistic career in anger at the use of a photo online.

"I was genuinely fearful he would start to attack me if I said anything wrong", he said.

"He began to get even more irate with me, and said he would sue me for breach of copy-write for stealing his photo."

Elliott said Clarke threatened to "destroy my career in journalism and the Conservatives" by exposing him on the front page of national newspapers.

"He then began to turn very sinister - said he had sued hundreds of people and I always win", he continued.

Elliott claimed Clarke said he "squashes them like ants when they are small and young and this is what I'm going to do to you."

Elliott had researched suicide methods online, and left three notes behind at his flat in Tooting, addressed to his parents, "friends and allies" and "bullies and betrayers".

To his friends, he wrote: "I've failed you" with "sorry" on the back.

In the one to bullies and betrayers, he said: "I could write a hate message but actions speak louder than words. I was never one for words anyway. I think this should be on your mind."

In a long note to his parents, which ends with 16 kisses, Elliott apologises and says: "I've failed with money, I've failed in work, I've failed to give you a chance with children, and I've failed in politics."

He also wrote: "I have also been involved in a huge political issue.

"I have been bullied by Mark Clarke and betrayed by Andre Walker. I had to wrongly turn my back on my friends. Now all my political bridges are burnt.

"Where can I even go from here? Even if I had done the right thing in my heart first and not been caught up in the fake idea of a rightwing movement.

"But that is that. I am sorry it has come to this."

As Heather Williams QC questioned Mr Abbott on behalf of Elliott's family, coroner Tom Osborne twice accused her of going beyond the scope of the inquest.

"I'm not going to let this degenerate into a trial of Mark Clarke", he said. "I don't see how this is assisting me with my inquiry at all."

The hearing continues.

For confidential support on mental health call the Samaritans on 116 123, email jo@samaritans.org or attend a local Samaritans branch.
O ne of Britains leading plastic surgeons who faced claims a students nose had collapsed following a botched operation has been cleared of negligence.

Shailesh Vadodaria was accused of damaging the nose of Mijin Zahir, 27, when she went under the knife to give her face perfect symmetry in July 2010. .

She claimed her nose had been left with a kink in it and the surgeon had weakened internal cartilage, leading to the right side collapsing.

Mrs Zahir sued for 100,000 in damages, but following a High Court hearing Mr Justice Garnham dismissed the claim saying she has not established that there was negligence in the conduct of the surgery.

Mr Vadodaria, of Rickmansworth, has clinics in Harley Street and Edinburgh, and has gained a reputation as one of the UKs leading cosmetic surgeons through magazines and TV appearances.
T he Queen is the latest cover star of Vanity Fair Magazine.

Her majesty appears with her four beloved pet corgis on the front of the summer issue of the publication.

The portrait was shot by acclaimed photographer Annie Leibovitz. to mark the Queens 90th birthday celebrations.

The most moving, important thing about this shoot is that these were all her ideas, Leibovitz told the magazine.

Taken at Windsor Castle, the Queen sits in front of a rose bush with corgis Holly (held) and, from left, Willow, Vulcan, and Candy.

The Queen on the front of Vanity Fair ahead of her 90th birthday / Annie Leibovitz/Vanity Fair

It is the second time the Queen has posed for Leibovitz after appearing on the front of the magazine's June 2007 edition.

In August 2014 Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge appeared on the cover along with Prince George after the royal baby's first birthday.

Kate has also appeared on her own, alongside the caption 'Kate the Great', as her elegant sense of style won her fans in 2012.

And Princess Diana was pictured on the front of the iconic magazine in 1985 alongside the prophetic headline 'The Mouse That Roared'.

The Queen's appearance in the magazine comes as the Duke of Edinburgh is said to have been left "very frustrated" at not being able to attend commemorations marking the Battle of Jutland because of a "minor ailment".

Prince Philip, who turns 95 next week, is understood to have no plans to cancel any other forthcoming engagements, and has not attended hospital.

Queen Elizabeth II's 90th Birthday Celebrations at Home Park, Windsor 1 /22 Queen Elizabeth II's 90th Birthday Celebrations at Home Park, Windsor Scenes from the marriage of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh are shown during the final night of The Queen's 90th Birthday Celebrations at the Royal Windsor Horseshow Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge along with Queen Elizabeth II during the final night of the Queen's 90th Birthday Celebrations at Windsor Chris Jackson/Getty Images Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly present the televised celebration of the Queen's 90th birthday in the grounds of Windsor Castle in Berkshire Andrew Matthews/PA Australian singer Kylie Minogue performs for The Queen during the final night of The Queen's 90th Birthday Celebrations at the Royal Windsor Horseshow Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images Gary Barlow performs during the televised celebration of the Queen's 90th birthday in the grounds of Windsor Castle in Berkshire Andrew Matthews/PA The Royal Cavalry of Oman perform for The Queen during the final night of The Queen's 90th Birthday Celebrations at the Royal Windsor Horseshow Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images A pantomime horse and corgi perform for The Queen during the final night of The Queen's 90th Birthday Celebrations at the Royal Windsor Horseshow Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images James Blunt performs during Queen Elizabeth II's 90th Birthday Celebrations at Home Park, Windsor Ben A. Pruchnie/Getty Images Italian singer Andrea Bocelli performs for The Queen during the final night of The Queen's 90th Birthday Celebrations at the Royal Windsor Horseshow Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images Dame Shirley Bassey and Declan Donnelly on the final night of Queen Elizabeth II's 90th Birthday Celebrations at Windsor Getty Images Queen Elizabeth II is greeted by Prince Charles, Prince of Wales as she arrives for the final night of her 90th Birthday Celebrations at Windsor Chris Jackson/l/Getty Images Queen Elizabeth laughs as she attends the final night of her 90th Birthday Celebrations at Windsor Chris Jackson/l/Getty Images Imelda Staunton performs during the televised celebration of the Queen's 90th birthday in the grounds of Windsor Castle in Berkshire PA Dame Helen Mirren performs during Queen Elizabeth II's 90th Birthday Celebrations at Home Park, Windsor Ben A. Pruchnie/Getty Images Katherine Jenkins performs during Queen Elizabeth II's 90th Birthday Celebrations at Home Park, Windsor Getty Images Prince Charles, Prince of Wales greets Dame Shirley Bassey on the final night of Queen Elizabeth II's 90th Birthday Celebrations Chris Jackson/Getty Images Beverley Knight performs during Queen Elizabeth II's 90th Birthday Celebrations at Home Park, Windsor Ben A. Pruchnie/Getty Images

The setback comes just over a week away from a busy run of royal festivities marking the Queens official 90th birthday when the Duke is due to join the royal family at a service of thanksgiving at St Pauls Cathedral, Trooping the Colour and a street party on The Mall.

Queen's 90th birthday at Windsor

The Battle of Jutland was the biggest naval engagement of World War One, and its centenary is being marked by commemorative events.

A service at St Magnus Cathedral in Orkney paid tribute to the 8,648 sailors who died during the battle, with a service of remembrance held on board HMS Duncan at Jutland Bank, the site of the battle.

The battle was fought near the coast of Denmark on 31 May and 1 June 1916 and involved about 250 ships.

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It saw the Royal Navys Grand Fleet, based at Scapa Flow in Orkney, clash with the German High Seas Fleet.

Prime Minister David Cameron and German President Joachim Gauck attended the service at St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall, along with the Princess Royal and her husband Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence, representing the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

Vanity Fair is on sale this Friday June 3.
T V sitcom writer and animal rights activist Carla Lane has died in a Merseyside nursing home at the age of 87.

Ms Lane who created hit 1980s Liverpool sitcom Bread, also wrote Butterflies and co-wrote The Liver Birds.

Bread, which focused on the extended Boswell family, was on TV screens for seven series between 1986 and 1991.

Liverpudlian Ms Lane, who was born Romana Barrack, also ran an animal sanctuary in Sussex where she cared for about 1000 animals, until she was forced to give it up in 2009.

She was awarded an OBE in 1989, but returned it in protest after a CBE was awarded to the managing director of Huntingdon Life Sciences, a contract animal testing laboratory.

Ms Lane was a lifelong vegetarian, and one of her closest friends was the late Linda McCartney, a fellow animal rights campaigner.

Ms McCartney, along with then husband Paul was once a neighbour to Ms Lane.

Hundreds have taken to Twitter to pay tribute to the comedy writer.

Piers Morgan wrote: "RIP Carla Lane, who made us all laugh."

While Twitter user Janet Borland said: "#RIP Carla Lane writer of so many comedies I grew up watching, Liver Birds, Bread & my favourite Butterflies."
A group of asylum seekers sexually assaulted women at a music concert in the German city of Darmstadt, said police.

Three Pakistani men are already under arrest after 18 women filed complaints that they had been improperly touched, fondled and groped during the festival in the city of Darmstadt. Police have said the number of complainants could rise.

Between two and three more men were still being sought by police as victims received counselling and authorities tried to dampen rising tensions against migrants.

All the complainants said they were surrounded by their tormentors before being touched and fondled improperly at the annual free Schlossgrabenfestes music festival.

The three arrested men are aged between 28 and 31 and are Pakistanis seeking asylum in Germany. All have been charged with sexual crimes as the hunt continues for their accomplices.

Media reports said that at least 15 more women are expected to come forward to file criminal complaints after they were groped at the festival on sunday where around 100,000 people were in the crowds over the four-day event.

The attacks mirror those in Cologne on New Years Eve - when large groups of men sexually attacked hundreds of young women.
T he husband of a vegan university lecturer who died while attempting to climb Everest says he blames himself for his wife's death.

Robert Gropel broke down in tears as he described the events leading up to the tragedy when his wife was apparently minutes from the summit.

Dr Gropel chose to continue climbing when Maria Strydom, 34, decided she was not well enough to complete the summit bid on May 20.

Mrs Strydom was climbing the mountain to prove that 'vegans can do anything'.

Speaking to Australias Channel Seven, Dr Gropel said: Because Im her husband its my job to protect my wife and get her home and its just natural for me to blame myself.

I didnt want to separate from her, I wanted her to keep going. I also understood that she was very exhausted."

Dr Strydom told her husband to continue to the summit and that she would wait for him in camp.

After reaching the peak of the mountain, Dr Gropel returned to find his wife unwell and she died the next day after collapsing two hours from their campsite.

Dr Strydoms body has been recovered from the 8,848 metre mountain and was taken to Kathmandu on Friday.

Dr Gropel added that even when he had reached the top of the mountain he missed his wife.

He added: When I made it to the summit of Everest it wasnt special for me because I didnt have her there.

"I just ran up and down and it didn't mean anything to me because we do everything together and everything else we did together was much more special."
A group of neo-Nazis brandishing sausages stormed a vegan cafe and started eating and throwing meat at staff.

More than a dozen meat-wielding men allegedly barged into the Kiwi cafe in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi and carried out the act of "anti-vegan aggression" on Sunday.

The cafe - which had been hosting a film screening - said the group came in laughing loudly before they pulled out some grilled meat, sausages, fish and started eating them and throwing them at us.

The incident then escalated into a violent brawl on the street as staff and patrons tried to eject the intimidating attackers, the cafe said.

In a post on Facebook, the cafe said: We started to push these people out of cafe, already by force, as the absurd of situation started to pass all boundaries.

Hearing shouts, locals from neighbouring houses came out Then the fight started on the street.

It added: This people were neo-Nazis, who support fascist ideas.

The cafe said it was also targeted because it is frequented by people with alternative lifestyles and members of the LGBT community.

Staff claimed they were also abused by members of the public who got involved  with one supporter of the cafe being lashed in the face with a walking stick by a local.

The writer of the Facebook post said they called the police but the men had fled by the time officers arrived.

They alleged police were then aggressive and blamed them for the attack when they finally got there.

However, the cafe has been inundated with messages of support from across the globe after posting an appeal on Facebook.

One poster, Briana Connor, said: I am so sorry this happened! Such an aggressive and absurd move by carnivores.

Peace and love to you. Keep on working for equality, justice and harmony. Much love and respect from the US.

Roman Key said: Stay strong! Vegan solidarity from California.

However, some users were less sympathetic, with Ogan Kitapci writing: "If you keep on bugging people forcing to convert them to veganism you get a backlash like this."
N orth Korean state media has given its backing to US presidential hopeful Donald Trump, hailing him as a wise politician and far-sighted candidate.

In an editorial in official media outlet DPRK Today, Chinese North Korean scholar Han Yong-mook wrote: There are many positive aspects to Trumps inflammatory policies.

Trump said he will not get involved in the war between the South and the North, isnt this fortunate from North Korea perspective?

The editorial also welcomed Trumps proposal to hold direct talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, suggesting he could help implement the regimes Yankee go home policy.

It referenced a speech by the Republican candidate in March, in which he suggested he would withdraw US military forces from South Korea if the country did not increase spending on defence.

Yes do it, now  Who knew that the slogan Yankee Go Home would come true like this? The day when the Yankee Go Home slogan becomes real would be the day of Korean Unification, the article said.

The editorial also urged US voters to reject Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton, dismissing her as "dull".

It said: The president that US citizens must vote for is not that dull Hillary  who claimed to adapt the Iranian model to resolve nuclear issues on the Korean Peninsula  but Trump, who spoke of holding direct conversation with North Korea.

North Korean leader: Kim Jong-un / KCNA / Reuters

Experts have said that although the editorial did not come from the government in Pyongyang directly, it would be an accurate reflection of the views of the leadership.

This is very striking, Aidan Foster-Carter of the University of Leeds told North Korean News.

Admittedly it is not exactly Pyongyang speaking, or at least not the DPRK government in an official capacity. But it is certainly Pyongyang flying a kite, or testing the waters.

For the rest of us, this is a timely reminder  if it were needed  of just how completely Trump plans to tear up established US policy in the region.

The regime in North Korea has stated that it aims to improve relations with its neighbour, and leaders are willing to resume inter-Korean military talks.

However, South Korean leaders in Seoul have declined Pyongyangs approach.
T he body of a 15-year-old girl was found hanging from a tree after she was gang-raped and murdered, according to reports.

The teenager was allegedly kidnapped and raped by three men before being strangled to death in Uttar Pradesh, India, according to NDTV.

Police believe she was hung from the tree to make her death look like suicide.

Two men have been arrested and a manhunt is under way to find a third.

The case is one of a spate of horrific attacks that have sparked renewed outrage over the countrys problem with violence against women.

It happened just a month after the body of another teenage girl, aged 16, was found hanging from a tree after she was gang-raped by three men in Andhra Pradesh.

The latest victim went missing on Friday and her body was found on Saturday.

Her father alleged the three suspects had tried to kidnap her earlier in the week but police failed to act.

Four police officers have reportedly been suspended from duty as a result.
A teenage boy was found hiding in the cargo hold of an Emirates plane at Dubai airport after it arrived from China.

The Dubai-based airline said on Tuesday the stowaway was found on Flight EK303 from Shanghai on Friday.

The flight in question is usually served by its largest aircraft, the double-decker Airbus A380, and lasts for more than eight hours.

The teenager, whose condition is currently unknown, is thought to be a 16-year-old named Xu, Chinas official Xinhua News Agency said.

The agency reported the youngster wanted to make the journey because he had allegedly heard that beggars in Dubai could earn hundreds of thousands of yuan annually.

Xinhua reported that the Chinese consulate had sent staff to the airport to learn more about the situation.

A translator appointed by prosecutors said the teen jumped over a fence at the Shanghai airport and climbed into the cargo hold while a security guard looked away, the agency said.

An Emirates spokesman said in a statement: We are cooperating fully with authorities in Dubai and as this is a police matter we are unable to comment further at this time.

Additional reporting by agencies.
C ompanies should be allowed to ban staff from wearing Islamic headscarves if they prohibit other religious and political symbols, a European Court of Justice (ECJ) official has said.

Juliane Kokott, an advocate to the ECJ, made the comments on Tuesday after a court in Belgium sought clarification in a case in which a woman claims she was dismissed from her job for wearing a headscarf.

The woman was working as a receptionist for Belgian company G4S Secure Solutions, which has a general ban on wearing visible religious or political symbols, when she was dismissed.

The Belgian court asked the ECJ whether forbidding the headscarf violated an EU law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of religion.

Giving her opinion, Ms Kokott wrote: While an employee cannot 'leave' his sex, skin colour, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age or disability 'at the door' upon entering his employer's premises, he may be expected to moderate the exercise of his religion in the workplace.

The advocate general's findings are not binding but the EU court typically follows the adviser's recommendation.

A ruling from the European Court of Justice is expected later this year and the Belgian court will rule on the matter shortly after.

The Islamic headscarf is a contentious issue in some European countries, particularly in France which attaches importance to the separation of state and religious institutions.

There are already some headscarf bans in schools and public institutions in France and Belgium. However, Germany's top court last year struck down a ban on teachers wearing headscarves in schools.
P olice have reportedly revealed they have no plans to launch an investigation into abuse claims against Johnny Depp as it emerged that Amber Heard didnt mention being hit with the actors iPhone in a row at their home.

Officers called to the couples Los Angeles home were reported to have found no evidence of any injuries and left.

Heard, 31, never hinted that the Pirates of the Caribbean star laid a finger on her and she has not filed a criminal complaint, according to the website TMZ.

Officers who went to the couples Los Angeles home did not see any bruises on the actresss face, according to a Los Angeles Police Department source quoted on TMZ.

We dont know how she obtained that, said an officer, referring to as mark on Heards face she alleged Depp caused by hitting her with his iPhone. There was no evidence of any crime.

LAPD Officer Drake Madison confirmed police responded to a domestic incident radio call last Saturday from Depps home on Broadway in Los Angeles but he said there is no on-going investigation, according to the website.

The person reporting the crime did not insist on a report and no report was warranted. A crime did not occur so the officers left the scene and left a business card.

He added that if there had been any signs of abuse, the officers would have investigated. Depp wasnt at home when police arrived.

Johnny Depp accused of assault

Heard told a very different story in a letter to a Los Angeles judge requesting an order to keep Depp 100 yards away from her.

Her lawyer claimed in the document that Depp violently attacked and threatened Amber on Saturday May 21 in their LA penthouse apartment.

There are several witnesses to this particular incident, and there are photographs depicting the property damage Johnny caused, as well as the physical injuries he inflicted on Amber, according to the letter.

Amber Heard leaves the Superior Court of Los Angeles in Los Angeles on Friday / Reuters

The lawyer claimed that although Amber has been attacked and remained in fear for her safety, given the notoriety of both parties and the high likelihood of press harassment, Amber would prefer to settle the matter out of court.

Hollywoods ugliest split took a new twist yesterday when Heards lawyer Peter Sample denied the actress was trying to blackmail Depp.

Sample hit back at claims by one of Depps friends, comedian Doug Stanhope, that Heard was manipulative. He insisted the actor would not harm his wife and claimed Depp told him he was worried Heard would lie about him publicly.

Sample branded the claims outrageous and said it has no basis in reality and is nothing but the typical celebrity muckraking for profit. He is demanding a retraction from the comic.
R onnie Wood has become a father again at the age of 68 as his wife Sally has given birth to twins.

The couple, who married back in 2012, are thought to have welcomed their new arrivals on Monday night.

According to The Sun, theatre producer Sally, 38, was rushed to hospital in London where she gave birth to baby girls.

During the day on Monday, the Rolling Stone posted a tweet to tell fans that he was still waiting on the arrival of his little ones.

A week earlier, Wood wrote on Twitter that he was excited about becoming a father again.

I'm getting excited about the arrival of my twin girls sometime in the next few weeks, his post read.

Back in December, the rock star revealed that he was expecting his fifth and sixth children and his first with wife Sally.

A spokesperson for the star said: Sally and Ronnie Wood are delighted to announce that they are expecting twins in June 2016.

Needless to say, they are thrilled and overjoyed with the wonderful news.

The pair, who had known each other for nearly a decade, tied the knot back in 2012 after a six month romance.

The Rolling Stones, in pictures 1 /6 The Rolling Stones, in pictures Keith Richards in the Joshua Tree National Park, 1968 The original line-up of the band, pictured in 1968 Hell-raisers: the original Rolling Stones, featuring Brian Jones, far right MIck Jagger with Anita Pallenberg in 1968, on the set of Performance Keith Richards enjoys the fresh air A young Mick Jagger

Wood is already father to 39-year-old Jesse with first wife Krissy Findlay, who is married to Fearne Cotton.

He has also fathered two children, Leah, 36, and Tyrone, 30 with ex-wife Jo Wood, before they divorced in 2008.

The rocker adopted Jos son Jamie, now 41, when they married in 1985.


As a reporter you never know what story you will suddenly have to cover. In our area a surprise assignment is usually a traffic accident or something of the sort. Sometimes its our digital editor saying she needs me to go somewhere near Morrill for a fire. I never found it.

Though on Thursday evening around 4 p.m. I got an e-mail about a story that I just would have never expected. It said Shia LaBeouf was in Kimball, Nebraska, hitching a ride with a few locals. I jumped at the chance to do the story. I am not a die hard Shia LaBeouf fan, however, I am only a year older than him. So I grew up watching him during his early days of Even Stevens and his breakout lead role in Holes. I followed his career as he took on bigger movies like Disturbia and his eventual rise into the Transformer series.

I never had anything against him. I usually enjoyed his acting. So I can say that I was excited by the prospect of actually talking to him briefly on the phone about his current journey. LaBeouf has had an interesting last few years. He was accused of plagiarism, he retired briefly from acting, he did a live web stream of himself watching his own movies and he held a live ask me anything when he sat on an elevator with friends and invited the public to talk to him. He even called and apologized to a guy who got beat up just for looking like LaBeouf. Seriously. That happened.

Through all that though I still enjoyed him in Lawless and looked forward to his role in Fury. Still somewhat of a fan. I can only imagine the toll the limelight can take on a person. He was doing some stranger things but nothing that made me look past his acting abilities.

With that, it really didnt surprise me when I found out about his newest adventure and the thing that lead him to Kimball. His #takemeanywhere initiative. It is an art project commissioned by the contemporary art museum in Boulder, Colorado as well as Vice Magazine. Basically from May 23 until June 23, Shia can be found by using his Twitter coordinates. Then anyone can go pick him up and literally Take him anywhere. And at the end of that month, well, no one really knows. Its art, guys.

So on Thursday we found out that he was in a van of a few friends from Kimball and they were taking the actor to Omaha. The girl I got in contact with was incredibly gracious and nice and allowed me to call and get a quick interview with her about the experience and the trip. She was more than helpful.

Then I decided to take my opportunity to ask LaBeouf a few questions, too. I mean he is on a trip with complete strangers, he has to be a pretty cool guy, right? Well, thats when things got weird. When I asked the young lady if I could ask him a few quick questions as well, he responded that he would only answer them through her.

I just thought, Huh. Thats kind of weird.

So I called and again was able to speak with numerous people in the van. All of whom were generally excited to be on this once-in-a-lifetime trip. However, with every question I asked there was an air of arrogance in the background as LaBeouf spouted off single word answers or scoffed at the occasional question. Then, after talking to a few people in the van, I had one final question for LaBeouf for my story.

I asked him, So, Shia, what inspired you to do this trip?

I know. How offensive. How rude. How completely unacceptable. His response matched his annoyance, as he suddenly announced, No more questions.

At the time ,we spoke they were just past Cozad. Cozad is 230.8 miles from Omaha or roughly 3 hours and 15 minutes via I-80. Here he was in a car for that long, yet suddenly had no more time to answer that one question.

That was it. My time with Shia was over after a single question. Apparently he is not a fan of the media. It became apparent that the idea of any type of media wanting to speak to him was out of the question. While I understand he has to deal with the paparazzi and the media all the time, I just wished for one moment he would have realized I wasnt with the National Enquirer. I wasnt out to write some scathing piece. I am a small town reporter who is a normal guy with a wife and a son. I am a movie buff, and a bit of a nerd. I was out to say hi to an actor whose work I had admired but instead I was relegated to just the media.

I have had many chance encounters with celebrities in my lifetime. I have met Kevin Smith on two separate occasions, Kirsten Dunst, Judd Apatow, Adrian Grenier, New Found Glory, the Swon Brothers, and a slew of UFC fighters and personnel. Every one of those encounters was a positive one. All gracious and kind and willing to talk and chat with someone who enjoyed their art. So it was a bit of a shock that LaBeouf was a bit more of the Hollywood stereotype, which I had started to believe didnt exist.

So am I going to vow to never watch a LaBeouf movie ever again? Of course not. Did this one encounter set me on a whole new path in life? Not even remotely. All it did was remind me that no matter what stage we are at in life whether its penniless or famous remember that people you interact with on a daily basis are just people and we all deserve a little respect and decency.

Perhaps I will have another chance to talk with LaBeouf again some day. Perhaps he will even read this column and want to chat afterwards. Probably not. I am happy for those in the van that got to see a different side of him. I am glad he was gracious and kind with those giving him a ride. I wish I could have had the same experience with him. As of now though, if you could #takemeanywhere it probably wouldnt be on a trip with him.
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Tuesday, 31 May 2016 10:00:19 (GMT+3) | Shanghai

China s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has announced that in April this year coal shipments by Chinese railways amounted to 140 million mt, down 10.4 percent year on year.





In the January-April period of the current year, coal shipments by Chinese railways totaled 620 million mt, also decreasing by 10.4 percent year on year.
Tuesday, 31 May 2016 16:40:36 (GMT+3) | Istanbul

Italian plantmaker Danieli has announced that it will supply a new cold mill complex to Turkish steelmaker Yildiz Demir Celiks facilities in Kocaeli, northwestern Turkey

Danieli stated that the cold mill complex will include a continuous pickling line, a vertical hot dip galvanizing line, a bell annealing furnaces and a tandem mill. The new continuous pickling line will produce 1.5 million mt per year of pickled, cold rolled, galvanized and annealed, and skin-passed coils, starting from incoming hot rolled coils.

The plant will come on stream gradually in 2017, starting with the bell annealing furnaces and ending with the continuous pickling line coupled with the tandem mill.
According to the data provided by the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association (JAMA), in April this year Japanese automobile production (including passenger cars, trucks and buses) totaled 643,901 units, decreasing by 69,339 units or 9.7 percent compared to the same month of 2015.

Domestic automobile sales in April of the current year in Japan stood at 324,748 vehicles, up 1.6 percent as compared with the same month last year. In the meantime, the country's automobile exports in April amounted to 369,131 units, down by 10,776 units or 2.8 percent year on year.
Tuesday, 31 May 2016 11:28:29 (GMT+3) | Istanbul

The Malaysian government has announced that it has initiated a safeguard investigation regarding imports of wire rod and deformed bar in coils upon the complaint lodged by the Malaysia Steel Association (MSA).

In its complaint, the MSA alleged that imports of the mentioned products increased by 35.98 percent from 786,608 mt for the period from October 1, 2012 to September 30, 2013 to 1.07 million mt for the period from October 1, 2013 to September 30, 2014 and continued to increase by 23.07 percent to 1.32 million mt for the period from October 1, 2014 to September 30, 2015. According to the MSA, the increased imports have caused serious injury to the domestic market.

The goods under investigation are currently classified under Harmonized System Code Numbers 7213.10.000, 7213.91.000 and 7227.91.000.
Tuesday, 31 May 2016 12:24:46 (GMT+3) | Istanbul

According to the provisional foreign trade statistics compiled by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK) and the Turkish Undersecretariat of Customs, in April this year Turkey 's foreign trade deficit decreased by 16.3 percent to $4.2 billion compared to April 2015. In the first four months of this year, Turkey 's foreign trade deficit decreased by 19.7 percent year on year to $16.29 billion.

In April, Turkey 's iron and steel exports ranked ninth among the country's products with the highest export value, totaling $421.58 million, decreasing by 33.4 percent year on year. Meanwhile, in the given month the value of exports of articles of iron or steel, which ranked eighth among the products with the highest export value, fell by 12.4 percent year on year, amounting to $433.9 million.
Tuesday, 31 May 2016 14:02:20 (GMT+3) | Istanbul

According to market sources, Indian hot rolled coil ( HRC ) offers to Turkey are at $465-475/mt CFR.
Justice Minister Raluca Pruna on Tuesday submitted to the Supreme Council of Magistrates (CSM) a recommendation for Ioana Bogdana Albani to become deputy chief prosecutor with the Department for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) for a three-year term in office.

Pruna says in a press statement that Albani meets the seniority criteria required under Article 54 (1) of Law 303/2004 on the status of judges and prosecutors, namely at least 10 years as prosecutor.

"The minister's recommendation is supported by the result of the Mrs Prosecutor at DIICOT, where she has been working ever since the directorate's inception, as well as professional experience and integrity criteria," reads the statement.

On May 19, Romania's Prosecutor General Augustin Lazar delegated Ioana Albani as DIICOT deputy chief prosecutor for a six-month tenure.

Agerpres
President Klaus Iohannis on Tuesday sent a message on the occasion of the Military Reservist Day, highlighting that the Army has become a true ambassador of Romania in the world and thus the premises for our country's integration in the Euro-Atlantic and European structures were created.

"We are celebrating today the Military Reservist Day, on which occasion we pay tribute to you, those who chose to serve the country under the flag and defend it unconditionally, placing the Romanian nation's interests above all. As Romania's President I am sending you the entire appreciation which the Romanian people have for you, for the devotion, professionalism and spirit of sacrifice which you, reserve and retired military, have proven along your professional career. You are the ones who watched over the security and defence of the country, contributing to the reconstruction and development of the Romanian state. Most of all, you have been the creators of the new military institution - a modern and professional institution. The Army has thus become a true ambassador of Romania in the world and the premises of our country's integration in the Euro-Atlantic and European structures were created," Iohannis said.

According to the message sent to AGERPRES on Tuesday, the President pointed out that through the military's participation in a significant number of foreign missions, together with allies or partners, they contributed to keeping peace and stability all over the world.

"Both in the actions in the theaters of operations in Afghanistan, Iraq or Western Balkans, and in the missions in Africa and Asia, under the UN, NATO or EU aegis, you have constantly proven professionalism and dedication, fighting and defending our universal values. These outstanding achievements of you and your comrades who are still active have created a positive image for Romania abroad, as a responsible partner, as a credible ally, capable of constantly adapting to the challenges to the regional and global security environment," the message also reads.

The head of the Romanian state also noted the example provided by the reservists to the young generations of active servicemen.

"I know that many of you who switched from active duty to reserves before term continue to get involved in the life of the communities you are part of, in educating the young generation in the spirit of patriotism. The personal example of responsibility and devotion, experience and preparation, is for the young generation of active servicemen a reference worthy following. I believe that the constant concern for ensuring decent life conditions for the reserve or retired military, including by adapting the legislation, must be proof of the state's respect and appreciation for you," Iohannis added.

He voiced his appreciation for everything that the reservists or retired achieved along their career.

"For the manner in which you understood how to serve your country, for the devotion, courage and abnegation you have proven, on my own and on behalf of all Romanians, I am thanking you! On this anniversary day, I am voicing my full appreciation for everything you have done in your career, for everything you are doing now and I am sending all those in reserve or retired my sincere wishes of good health, achievements in all areas, together with your loved ones! Many happy returns of the day!," Iohannis concluded.

Agerpres
Great Plains Energy Inc, the parent of regulated power utility Kansas City Power & Light, will buy rival Westar Energy Inc. for $8.6 billion in cash and stock as it looks to gain scale to better compete in a challenging market.

Westar shareholders will receive a total of $60 per share, representing a premium of 13.4 percent to the stock's Friday close, the companies said Tuesday.

The deal comes at a time when U.S. utilities are struggling with falling demand for electricity in both open and regulated markets due to increased energy efficiency and a weak economy.

Great Plains Energy and Westar said the enterprise value of the deal is about $12.2 billion, including about $3.6 billion in Westar's debt.

The transaction will increase Great Plains Energy's customer base to more than 1.5 million in Kansas and Missouri, with nearly 13,000 megawatts of generation capacity.

Great Plains Energy has secured about $8 billion of committed debt financing from Goldman Sachs.

Goldman Sachs & Co. is Great Plains Energy's financial adviser for the deal and Bracewell LLP is its legal adviser.

Guggenheim Securities LLC is Westar's financial adviser and Baker Botts LLP is its legal counsel.
Vista Ramen, the new restaurant from former Blood & Sand executive chef Chris Bork and the Mud House owners Casey and Jeremy Miller, opened this weekend at 2609 Cherokee Street, just west of South Jefferson Avenue in Benton Park West.

Ramen is the focus of Vista's menu, but you won't find such traditional broths as tonkotsu, shoyu or shio. Instead, Bork tells Off the Menu, We decided to make up our own broth, taking notes from the classic stuff.

So for the signature Vista Ramen (served with pork belly, scallion, egg and nori), Bork has built the broth from a dashi base with chicken bones, ham hock, pig's feet, ginger and, to balance out the richness of the meat, Granny Smith apple. There's also a vegetable broth and a spicy shrimp broth. Bork describes all three broths as not super heavy.

The menu also features selections of small plates, side dishes and desserts. Some of these draw from various Asian cuisines: Korean-style fried chicken, a riff on the northern Thai sausage sai oua, basil-lemongrass ice cream. Others, like chilled English peas with a buttermilk granita, don't.

Of the menu as a whole, Bork says, This is the food I like to cook. It's the food I like to eat on my day off.

Vista is the latest entry in St. Louis' boomlet of ramen restaurants over the past year. The ramen rush includes Ramen Tei in west county, Nami Ramen in Clayton and Nudo House, which Qui Tran of Mai Lee plans to open this summer in Creve Coeur.

In addition, two recently opened restaurants with broader menus of Japanese fare  Robata in Maplewood and Midtown Sushi in midtown  both serve several different kinds of ramen.

Vista is open from 5-10 p.m. Monday through Thursday and from 5-11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. The phone number is 314-797-8250.

The restaurant seats only 34, but it's using the Nowait app, which lets diners put themselves in line before they arrive.
Questions about zoo safety for animals and visitors have been raised after a gorilla was shot and killed at the Cincinnati Zoo on Saturday when a 3-year-old boy fell into its exhibit.

A spokeswoman for the St. Louis Zoo said the zoo would not comment on the Cincinnati incident or offer any interviews regarding the zoos safety.

Zoos are inspected regularly by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which has accredited the St. Louis Zoo through September 2019.

St. Louis Zoo officials have previously said staff members go through regular training to prevent and deal with potential animal escapes. They perform three or four emergency drills a year. Some of the drills involve firearms teams if dangerous animals reach public areas or their habitats are broached.

In March 2008, a 5-year-girl fell over a wooden fence into the former sun bear exhibit at the zoo, suffering a cut on her head but not encountering the bears. The bears were separated from the girl by an 8-foot-deep moat, a low-current electric wire and a concrete wall, zoo officials said at the time.

In March 1989, a pack of five or six dogs got into the zoo under a fence and killed seven springboks in their habitat in the early morning. Springboks are a type of gazelle from South Africa.

Incidents of escaped animals at the zoo in Forest Park:

November 2007  A 40-pound cheetah, Zuri, escaped its Rivers Edge yard before being shot with a tranquilizer dart and captured half an hour later. More fencing was added to the enclosure. The cheetah had gotten about 30 feet from the exhibit, and visitors were evacuated from Rivers Edge. Cheetahs are generally considered docile and not aggressive toward people unless provoked.

August 2003  A cheetah named Halala scaled a 10-foot wall and escaped the yard to flee a male cheetah. She was lured back into the enclosure by zoo staff within 20 minutes. The fence was heightened and bushes were cut back.

April 2000  Another cheetah named Akili cleared a moat to escape a pursuing male cheetah. She perched on the wall of the moat but didnt clear a fence separating the cheetahs from the public. The moat was deepened after the incident, and zoo staff strung electrified wires across the habitat to deliver a mild shock.

August 1970  A venomous cobra was discovered missing in the Reptile House. After a 40-day hunt, the cobra was found alive in a crawl space in a staff area of the Reptile House.

July 1970  A baby sea lion climbed out of its pool overnight and waddled across Hampton Avenue. The next day, the sea lion was found near maintenance sheds in Forest Park.

Date unknown  A chimpanzee from the zoos former chimp show kicked open a double-locked cage door and wandered onto the zoo grounds. A zoo director shot the chimpanzee with a tranquilizer dart.

Various  Penguins jumping over the Plexiglas in the Penguin and Puffin Coast, mostly to the delight of visitors.
When Sam Dotson was selected as the police chief who would lead the city of St. Louis from having a department run by a state commission to one under the control of local politicians, this is what he had to say:

Police officers should be able to do their jobs without looking over their shoulder because of political interference, Dotson told a news conference at police headquarters. And my job now is to prevent that from happening.

Apparently, the police chief, nearly four years into the job, doesnt believe the same sentiment applies to other elements of the criminal justice system, particularly judges.

This weekend, as political pressure built over a spate of high profile violence in the city, and in particular a downtown carjacking and slaying on Washington Avenue, Dotson turned to his blog to point the finger not at himself, but at judges.

When you combine a runaway gun culture with a lack of judicial accountability, it seems like anything is possible, Dotson wrote. And it must be, since our criminal justice system just keeps on breaking records for dangerous absurdity. Every time I think, okay, this particular piece of nonsense has got to be rock bottom, the sheer madness of our criminal justice system jumps up to surprise me once again by taking things down to an even lower low.

Then, after recounting the case of the arrest of a suspected gang member on a weapons charge whom the judge sent home with an ankle bracelet, the chief came to this conclusion:

1. Guns are ridiculously easy to get. Buy, borrow or steal  theyre everywhere. Even a suspect under indictment for Unlawful Use of a Weapon who is dragging around a jailhouse ankle bracelet can build himself a lethal arsenal in no time flat.

2. Judges are accountable to virtually no one. They make the decisions and we get stuck living with the consequences. And no matter how bad those decisions turn out to be, they hold on to their jobs and their power.

Dotson had me at guns.

Like the chief, and Mayor Francis Slay, and Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce and most reasonable people, I believe that our states politicians have given up on common-sense gun regulation to the point that it has made the city of St. Louis more dangerous. The citys Big Three hit on a reasonable idea when they asked the judges of the 22nd Circuit to create a special gun docket to track gun crimes and have most of them handled by a couple of judges who would specialize in that area.

But the judges balked. So did the state Legislature.

So now, with the citys temperature rising over downtown crime, and some of the fingers pointing at the only chief the city has ever had in the era of local control, Dotson has decided to lash out at the judges.

Its not the first time hes used judges as his punching bag. As he told me in an interview, This is the same message that Ive given for the past two years.

True enough. But its a move that lacks a certain gravitas, especially for a politically astute chief who has his eyes on the mayors office. Citing anecdotal cases that have little relation to the specific downtown crimes that have drawn attention might make for good blogging, but it wont solve the citys crime problems. The chief also got the details wrong, according to court records, citing one, small bail on a misdemeanor charge while neglecting to point out the suspect also faced a second, larger bail, on the gun crime. But most important, its just plain inaccurate to say that judges are unaccountable.

In the 22nd Circuit, judges are appointed through a nonpartisan merit selection process known as the Missouri Plan. They apply and make a panel approved by a commission in a public process. The governor then chooses the judge from that panel of three. And once selected, judges must run for retention at regular intervals.

So, yes, if you dont like the bails being set or sentences handed out by St. Louis judges, you the voter, can vote them out. And before you vote you can go to the website yourmissourijudges.org and see how a panel of professionals rates the judges. In November, 10 judges in the 22nd Circuit will be on the ballot, including the ones that Dotson criticized in his blog post. Fact is, St. Louis offers as much or more public accountability for judges than for its nonelected police chief.

But thats not really the point.

In pointing to select cases to accuse city judges of being weak on crime, Dotson misses the forest for the trees. According to the state Department of Corrections, the city of St. Louis has the highest incarceration rate in the state. St. Louis County is 89th. The city also has one of the highest felony sentencing rates in the state at 14th-highest among 114 counties. Again, St. Louis County has one of the lowest. While much of that is due to the citys population and concentrated crime, its judges most certainly play a role.

Its easy to understand Dotsons frustration. Worried business owners and civic leaders such as Missy Kelley, CEO of Downtown Inc., demand something be done every time there is a crime spike downtown. But our leaders seem to be better at pointing fingers than grasping hands to work together on problems.

In January, the mayor appointed a new crime commission to help execute the comprehensive crime-fighting plan he announced during the last crime-spike brouhaha. That commission has met a handful of times. Kelley is on the commission. Dotson has sent a representative to the meetings.

Perhaps the commission should give the public an update. You know, for the sake of accountability.
ST. LOUIS  A man was hit in the leg during a shootout with carjackers near Busch Stadium that left a robber critically wounded Monday night, police said.

The victim, 27, told police he was inside his parked vehicle in the 900 block of Spruce Street about 10:30 p.m. when a man approached and announced a robbery. The victim got out of his vehicle and the robber got in, but the victim had a gun and shot five times at the robber, police said.

The carjacker crashed the vehicle. Television footage from the scene showed the windows of the mans pickup had been shattered.

Two people in a nearby Mitsubishi were described by police as other suspects in the carjacking, and someone began firing shots at the carjacking victim from the car, police said. He returned fire, hitting the Mitsubishi, then ran into a nearby business for help, police said. He had been shot in the leg at some point, police said. He was taken to a hospital, treated and released.

Meanwhile, the two people in the Mitsubishi  a man and a woman, according to authorities  put the injured carjacker in the car and drove to a hospital, police said.

The carjacker was in critical and unstable condition, police said. One of his alleged accomplices, a 27-year-old man, was arrested at the hospital. The other, a 21-year-old woman, went to police Tuesday, gave a statement and was released, said Pat Conroy, her attorney.

Conroy said the woman was a sister of the wounded suspect and was not involved in the alleged carjacking.

Authorities found a gun believed to belong to the injured carjacker, police said. They also recovered the victims firearm.

The carjacking happened in front of Flying Saucer, a popular pub on Spruce Street, about a block west of Busch Stadium, and days after city officials pledged a crackdown on downtown St. Louis crime in the wake of a fatal carjacking on Washington Avenue.

Mayor Francis Slay on Friday said the downtown area would see more officers and strict enforcement of even the lowest level offenses.

Whatever we are doing, we need to do more, Slay said. We are going to step up security dramatically.

Slay said the more includes strong enforcement of all city laws and ordinances, including crackdowns on loud noise, speeding motorcycles, public urination, and littering.

Slays comments come after the murder May 22 of 21-year-old Brandi Hill on Washington Avenue, and a spate of other crimes in the heart of the city. Surveillance video last week showed a gunman firing shots at a man who apparently refused to give him cash during a robbery near Old Post Office Plaza, a renovated space near two downtown luxury hotels. No one was hurt.
ST. LOUIS  In a second self-described "rant" on social media over the weekend, St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson railed against the halfway house in downtown St. Louis and the low bail for a suspect who police say got $4,000 from Gateway Metro Federal Credit Union.

Dotson zeroed in on two recent heists to bolster his argument that St. Louis judges appear more lenient than judges elsewhere.

One robbery happened in St. Peters, and the suspect in that case is being held in the St. Charles County Jail in lieu of $500,000 bail. St. Charles County Circuit Judge Jon Cunningham set the bond amount and refused to allow the man to post anything less.

The second crime happened in St. Louis city. St. Louis Associate Circuit Judge Theresa C. Burke set the bond amount at $25,000 for a theft charge but has allowed him to post 10 percent cash. The suspect remains in custody. Burke declined, through a spokesman, to comment Tuesday. The spokesman, Thom Gross, said Missouri Supreme Court rules bar judges from commenting on cases in the media.

"What message does this send to criminals?" Dotson asks. "If you commit a crime and are caught in other parts of the region, there are REAL CONSEQUENCES. If you commit a crime and get caught in the City of St. Louis, well"

Dotson wrote his comments on Monday in a blog post titled "A Sane Rant for a Crazy System: Part II." In part one, published earlier in the day Monday, Dotson sharply criticized city judges who he argues are too lenient on defendants charged with gun crimes.

"When you combine a runaway gun culture with a lack of judicial accountability," he wrote, "it seems like anything is possible."

The crimes mentioned in his second blog were similar in that both men walked into a bank and showed the teller a note but didn't show a weapon. In the St. Peters case, Austin A'trell Reed was charged with robbery of a Bank of America facility last Thursday outside Mid Rivers Mall. Police say he implied he had a weapon and may have tried to rob a bank in St. Louis earlier in the day.

In St. Louis, Timothy Krausman was charged with theft from the Gateway Metro Federal Credit Union at 909 Chestnut Street downtown. Court documents say he got more than $4,000 after handing a teller a note telling her to fill a bag with money. Charges don't say he implied he had a weapon, and he was charged with the lesser crime after he was arrested leaving Lumiere Place casino.

Reed is from Glen Carbon. Krausman resides at the halfway house near downtown, at 1621 North First Street.

"Yep, you got it right," Dotson wrote, "even if you are already on parole and living in a state-run halfway house, your bail is less."

Court observers say bail is meant to ensure that someone will show up in court to face charges, not as a punitive measure. In addition, the theft charge Krausman faces is a lesser crime than robbery. It is punishable by up to seven years in prison, while the robbery charge Reed faces is punishable by up to life in prison. Dotson's blog did not mention that.

Krausman pleaded guilty in 2008 of promoting child pornography and possession of child pornography in Taney County. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison. After Krausman's release from prison in 2015, he was sent to a halfway house in Kansas City. Dotson said Krausman stayed there until the K.C. business community lobbied the state to have that halfway house converted into a minimum-security prison with no "in and out" privileges.

The halfway house in St. Louis is now the only such facility in the state. People housed there can sign out each day, on a pass to search for a job, for instance. The Missouri Department of Corrections says it has no plans to close the facility, despite critics who say it concentrates too many high-risk parolees in one place.

Dotson wrote that he's not saying the judge in St. Charles County was correct and the city of St. Louis judge is wrong in those bail amounts. "But if the perception is that crimes committed in the City of St. Louis dont carry the same consequences as those in other parts of the region and you are a criminal, why not take a chance in the City? That has to change."

Dotson ended his blog post with this: "P.S. While I was sitting at my desk writing this blog, yet another resident of 1621 North 1st Street was just arrested for suspicion of breaking into a vehicle Downtown near the City Museum. Kansas City had a halfway house just like this one until that community rallied and told the state no more. St. Louis, it's time for us to say enough is enough and end this crime factory."

.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been updated to reflect that the St. Louis suspect was charged with a less serious crime, theft, than the St. Peters suspect, who faces a robbery charge.
The gunman was identified as Orlando Harris, 19, a recent graduate of the school. One survivor heard him say he was 'tired of everybody' in the school and that his gun jammed at one point.
ST. LOUIS  Mayor Francis Slay signed a bill on Tuesday that would allow authorities to track the distribution of prescription drugs.

The bill, spearheaded by Alderman Lyda Krewson, is tied to a similar program now in force in St. Louis County.

County Executive Steve Stenger stood by as Slay signed the bill.

"Quite simply, the drug monitoring programs that the City of St. Louis and St. Louis County have established will save lives," Stenger said. "We look forward to working together on this important step to protect the publics health and safety."

The city's health department would work with the county's health department to have "one program for monitoring the prescribing and dispensing of all Schedule II, III, and IV controlled substances."

The county passed similar legislation in March.

The program is essentially a database where pharmacies and other drug providers report prescriptions on a daily basis. It helps authorities and providers track patients who might be getting multiple prescriptions.

Slay tweeted that the regional effort is "a necessary and very useful start, but still just a start."

The city and county acted alone. Missouri is the only state that lacks a drug tracking program to keep tabs on opioid users and dealers who "doctor shop" to build up OxyContin and other prescription painkillers. Various bills filed in the state legislature have failed to gain traction.
Three years ago, St. Louis Universitys law school found itself in crisis at the exact time it was trying to pull off a major relocation to a new building downtown.

Then-university President Lawrence Biondi was openly feuding with Dean Annette Clark. Her anger at being left out of big decisions, including the law school move, led to her abrupt resignation a month before the relocation.

The plan to replace her on an interim basis with brash personal injury attorney Tom Keefe lasted just six months before he quit after provoking an uproar on campus over a series of comments even he described as politically incorrect.

On top of those personnel issues, there was uncertainty over whether the move made sense financially and how it might affect students. Not to mention the move came as law schools around the country were starting to see significant declines in the number of students pursuing legal degrees.

Among American Bar Association-approved schools, law school enrollment dropped to 119,775 students in 2014 from a historic high of 147,525 in 2010.

Three years after moving downtown, people in the know say SLUs law school is a different institution than the one formerly housed on the Midtown campus.

It has quietly reduced staff and bought out faculty members as the number of students has declined to 502 in 2015 from 954 in 2010.

But unlike other higher education institutions where a similar loss of students would almost certainly spell disaster, people inside and outside of SLUs law school say that, at worst, the school has stabilized itself.

At best, its trajectory is pointing upward.

We wont ever be as big as we were 10 years ago, the law schools dean, Michael Wolff, acknowledged last week. But I think were in a good position. Were poised for growth.

Like many other private institutions not subject to state Sunshine laws, SLU and its law school usually dont discuss subjects such as budget projections and staffing cutbacks.

But in an interview last week, Wolff said the law school had lost a handful of clerical staffers in the last several months and six or seven instructors through attrition and retirements. Roughly five faculty have left after accepting buyouts, he said.

The buyouts were voluntary, and we offered a generous severance, Wolff said, adding that the law school helped some employees find new jobs.

Wolff is also leaving. He announced in April that he is stepping down from his position after 30 years at the university. He has not given a date for his exit as a 13-member committee searches for his replacement.

In an effort to chart the future of the law school, SLU recently hired the consulting firm Alix Partners to compile potential changes to the law schools operations. At least some of the recent staffing moves followed.

Both the law school and Alix partners agreed to keep the report confidential.

In an email obtained by the Post-Dispatch, Wolff told faculty and staff the report would be made available for viewing only through appointments coordinated by his executive assistant, Bridgette Thomas.

The report will remain with her, and she will provide it for viewing in the seating area in front of her desk. Persons viewing the report may not remove the report from the seating area, copy it, take notes from, or photograph it, Wolff wrote.

Prior to viewing the report, each person will be required to sign a confidentiality/nondisclosure document and give it back to Bridgette, the email continued. The signed document is consistent with the contractual agreement between the Alix Partners and the university.

Wolff called the report a crucial fresh set of eyes to assess the law school. He called the subsequent reorganization of the institution necessary as part of a process to right-size itself.

This was necessary for the growth of the school, he said. We depend a lot on alumni donations. If were perceived to be too big, donors arent interested in contributing. They want you to be right-sized. They dont want to think they are propping something up that is too big.

Experts agree that as recently as 10 years ago, law schools were oversaturated with students and produced too many graduates for the jobs available.

The downturn followed shortly after, with fewer students applying.

SLU law school spokeswoman Jessica Ciccone says that in response, law schools are competing for a smaller pool of students, and consequently are offering more scholarship money to the students who apply.

SLU law professor Sidney Watson was a part of the faculty group that helped with the consulting and reorganization.

Finding the right balance of students, and then offering them enough financial support to finish, is a noble strategy, she said.

Its what the Jesuits would do, she said.

Several others pointed out that the market is shifting in favor of students.

This is the perfect time to go to law school, SLU law professor John Ammann said. There are fewer people applying and there is more scholarship money available.
ST. LOUIS  A veterans' service organization founded by Missouri gubernatorial candidate Eric Greitens is among the groups that has received funds raised by Donald Trump, according to a list released during an angry news conference by the New York billionaire Tuesday.

A Greitens' supporter on Tuesday waved off any concerns that the group created by the ex-Navy SEAL  whose gubernatorial campaign has been largely based on military principles of service and sacrifice  is accepting money from a man who began his presidential campaign last year by disparaging U.S. prisoners of war.

The $75,000 donation to Greitens' group is part of $5.6 million in donations that Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, said he has doled out to more than 40 veterans' organizations.

Trump released the list of organizations during a New York news conference in which he bashed journalists who had questioned why much of the $6 million that Trump claimed to have raised in Iowa in January apparently hadn't been dispersed.

The $5.6 million accounted for by the Trump campaign Tuesday includes a $1 million gift from Trump himself.

The conflict between Trump and media outlets, particularly the Washington Post, stemmed from reports that the money hadn't earlier been released as the campaign had claimed, and that Trump and his spokespeople had offered varied and sometimes conflicting information about it.

For example, Trump announced months ago that he'd contributed $1 million personally to the fund drive. In reality, he didn't actually take the first steps to arrange that donation until last week, after weeks of questions by reporters about it.

The issue has fueled a familiar firestorm of criticism from Trump toward reporters on Twitter, at his confrontational press conference Tuesday, and in interviews. Here's a summary from news site The Week:

On Monday night [May 23], Trump called the home of James Kallstrom, chairman of the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, and pledged $1 million, according to Kallstrom's wife. When [Washington Post reporter David A.] Fahernthold asked Trump over the phone on Tuesday why it took him four months to follow through on his pledge, Trump said, "You have a lot of vetting to do." Fahrenthold suggested that perhaps Trump had only taken action because reporters were asking him about his pledge, and Trump shot back: "You know, you're a nasty guy. You're really a nasty guy. I gave out millions of dollars that I had no obligation to do."

Tuesday's news conference was similarly confrontational. Here is the New York Times' account:

In a heated, 40-minute appearance in the lobby of Trump Tower in Manhattan, Mr. Trump dismissed a CNN reporter as a real beauty and an ABC reporter as a sleaze, and said that if he was elected president, the American public could expect a similar dynamic in the White House briefing room.

Yes, it is, he said. It is going to be like this.

Greitens is among four candidates seeking Missouri's Republican gubernatorial nomination in the state's Aug. 2 primaries, along with businessman John Brunner, former Missouri House Speaker Catherine Hanaway and Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder.

Greitens, a former Navy SEAL and combat veteran, founded The Mission Continues to help other returning vets to served their communities. Like most (but not all) prominent Missouri Republicans, Greitens has said he will support Trump.

Among the first of Trump's many controversial comments since jumping into the presidential race last summer was his contention, last July, that U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, who was imprisoned by the North Vietnamese for more than five years and tortured after his Navy plane was shot down, wasn't a war hero.

I like people that werent captured, said Trump  whose own experiences during the Vietnam War years were somewhat different than McCain's.

John Lamping, a former Missouri state senator who is supporting Greitens and working with the campaign, said there's no hesitance about accepting Trump's support despite Greitens' own war record, which includes a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart.

"Trump has been all over the map when it comes to veterans, and that was early on" in the campaign, said Lamping. "I don't think it's a problem at all."

This post has been updated to clarify that John Lamping is a supporter working with the Greitens campaign, but not an official spokesperson.
UPDATED at 6:15 p.m. with information from public-safety officials.

CAHOKIA  The residents of a nursing home were evacuated about 4:30 p.m. Tuesday after fire broke out in one or two patient rooms, officials said.

Two or three of the 104 people evacuated were taken to hospitals for injuries that were not considered life-threatening.

The fire occurred at the Cahokia Nursing and Rehab Center, off Illinois 157 at 2 Annable Circle. Cahokia Volunteer Fire Department Chief Stephen Robbins said there was heavy smoke in about three-fourths of the center when firefighters arrived.

After the evacuation, many of the patients rested in shade outside the building on beds and in wheelchairs. Employees gave them water bottles from shopping carts.

Michael Gilbert, emergency medical services coordinator at Memorial Hospital Belleville, said paramedics worked to find new lodging for the residents, as they were concerned about potential heat exhaustion.

The cause of the fire was unknown as of Tuesday evening.
I can assure you the only thing Spire cares about is profits over people. Their executives sat in silence and stared at us as we told them if they raised their rates again, people would suffer.
Can we be assured that the plant will not pollute our land or water supply so that we are not discovering something decades later like so many areas in Missouri?
LONDON MARKET CLOSE: FTSE 250 steals show; pound keeps lid on FTSE 100

Tuesday, October 25, 2022 - 17:20

London's FTSE 100 edged lower on Tuesday, as a stronger pound put paid to the blue-chip index's hopes of replicating the climbs delivered by its European peers.

The pound jumped to $1.1464 at the London equities close Tuesday, from $1.1295 on Monday, as new UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak restored some investor confidence in UK finances.

The FTSE 100 index closed down 0.51 of a point at 7,013.48 on Tuesday. A stronger pound acts as a drag to the international earner-heavy index.

In European equities on Tuesday, the CAC 40 in Paris ended up 1.9%, while the DAX 40 in Frankfurt ended 0.9% higher.

There was an eye-popping climb for the more domestic-focused FTSE 250 in London, however.

The FTSE 250 ended up 494.08 points, or 2.9%, at 17,831.63. The AIM All-Share closed up 11.89 points, or 1.5%, at 799.44.

The Cboe UK 100 ended down 0.1% at 700.90, the Cboe UK 250 closed up 2.8% at 15,222.68, and the Cboe Small Companies ended up 0.2% at 12,269.51.

Sunak pledged to fix the "mistakes" of Liz Truss's leadership as he made his first speech as PM.

Sunak said Truss was "not wrong" to want to drive up growth but added that "some mistakes were made."

He vowed to place "economic stability and confidence at the heart of this government's agenda", after the financial chaos triggered by Truss.

In the FTSE 100, Segro finished 2.1% higher on Tuesday as UBS raised the British property investor and developer to 'buy' from 'neutral'.

At the bottom of the blue-chip index was HSBC, falling 4.2%, as it reported a decline in profit and revenue in the third quarter of 2022.

In the three months to September 30, HSBC reported pretax profit of $3.15 billion, down 42% from $5.40 billion a year before. Revenue decreased by 3.2% to $11.62 billion from $12.01 billion.

HSBC explained that its third quarter results included a $2.4 billion impairment, following the reclassification of its retail banking operations in France to held-for-sale, as well as a net charge for expected credit losses and other credit impairment charges.

Whitbread fell 0.8% despite swinging to an interim profit and return to dividends as the hotel sector recovered from Covid-19.

In the first half ended September 1, the Bedfordshire-based owner of the Premier Inn chain said revenue more than doubled year-on-year to 1.35 billion from 661.6 million.

Whitbread swung to a pretax profit of 307.4 million, compared to a loss of 19.3 million a year before. Compared to the same period of financial 2020, pretax profit was 40% higher than 219.9 million.

"The strong recovery in UK accommodation sales continued during the first half, and while Food & Beverage sales remained challenging and 5% behind pre-pandemic levels," Whitbread said.

In the FTSE 250, Urban Logistics added 1.5%, but was up over 10% earlier in the day.

The UK logistics real estate investor said trading in its first half was strong, as demand strengthened and vacancies fell.

"Lettings have been strong across the portfolio, as we see a robust occupational market with high demand and low vacancies. In particular, we're very pleased that our new development at Blenheim Park has let so quickly, with the final unit expected to be let shortly, and providing an expected 6.6% yield on cost across the project," said Chief Executive Richard Moffitt.

Elsewhere in London, Made.com plunged 93% as it said talks with possible suitors fell through, with the sofa seller now edging precariously closer to collapse.

"Following further discussion, those parties have all now confirmed to the company that they are unable to meet the necessary timetable. As a result, those discussions have been terminated and the company is no longer in receipt of funding proposals or possible offers for the issued and to be issued share capital of the company," Made said.

Made.com is also mulling whether a suspension of trading of its shares is "appropriate".

The euro stood at $0.9963 at the European equities close Tuesday, higher against $0.9877 at the same time on Monday.

Against the yen, the dollar was trading at JP147.77 late Tuesday, lower compared to JP148.82 late Monday.

Stocks in New York were firmly in the green at the London equities close, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 0.9%, the S&P 500 index up 1.3%, and the Nasdaq Composite up 2.0%.

US equities received a boost from well-received updates from the likes of soft drinks maker Coca-Cola and courier UPS, with both firms posting rises in third quarter revenue and net income.

Coca-Cola shares were 1.3% higher, UPS was up 1.9%.

Brent oil was quoted at $91.91 a barrel at the London equities close Tuesday, up from $90.88 late Monday.

Gold was quoted at $1,655.96 an ounce at the London equities close Tuesday, sharply higher against $1,648.76 at the close on Monday.

In Wednesday's UK corporate calendar, Barclays will publish its third-quarter results and Bloomsbury Publishing posts its half-year results.

In the economic calendar, there's a services PPI reading from Japan overnight before the Bank of Canada make an interest rate decision at 1500 BST.

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
See all our Week 9 Iowa high school football photos

All of our images from Friday night's Iowa high school football games, Week 9 of the 2022 season.
The development could be built alongside the M40 at Gaydon.

PLANS for the first phase of a massive and controversial housing scheme in South Warwickshire were given approval last week  and there was an immediate call for the decision to be declared null and void.

Opponents of the project to build a 3,000-home new town at Gaydon and Lighthorne Heath (GLH) said that vital information had been withheld from members of Stratford-on-Avon District Councils east area planning committee before they gave the go-ahead for the first 2,000 homes to be built.

FORSE, the campaign group fighting the GLH proposals, said that councillors were not told that Jaguar Land Rover (JLR)  a vital cog in the UK economy  had sought a meeting before a decision was taken by the planning committee because of the companys concerns about highways issues.

In a letter to Stratford District Council and Warwickshire County Council  reported exclusively in the Herald - Gerald Eve, consultants for JLR, had requested a meeting between the car giant the two councils and the developers to discuss the firms worries in advance of the vital planning committee on Tuesday last week. There is no indication that such a meeting has taken place.

Cllr Laura Steele, chairman of FORSE, said the group would be asking the monitoring officer of Stratford District Council to declare the decision null and void on the grounds that the councillors making the decision had been misled.

Cllr Chris Saint (Cons, Shipston North), the leader of the district council, said: "I repeat my earlier assertion that Gerald Eve were responding to a new transport assessment, published on 11th April in a timely manner.

" I have re-read their letter and nowhere is there a request to meet before the planning committee meeting. There was a request for JLR to be kept in the loop. This will happen at a series of future meetings."

However, the letter from Gerald Eve states: Jaguar Land Rover again formally requests to be consulted in relation to the revised plans concerning the proposals for the B4100 and the entrances and exits on this road.

"Jaguar Land Rover would also want the opportunity to comment on any draft Section 278 Agreement, associated plans and draft planning conditions in advance of the Council [SDC] formally determining the planning application.

The letter concludes: As set out in this letter, Jaguar Land Rover has a range of concerns and therefore we request a meeting with the applicant, Stratford District Council, Warwickshire County Council Highways and Warwick District Council to discuss the above matters.

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for Warwickshire County Council said: "Warwickshire County Council, Stratford on Avon District Council and Jaguar Land Rover meet on a regular basis and we will continue to work together to achieve the investment and jobs at the Gaydon site.

"The comments about the treatment of the B4100 contained in the letter dated 5th May have been accommodated into the planning conditions to be attached to the residential development."
Panasonic and NewTek Announce Integration of Panasonic AW-HE130 and AW-HE40 Series PTZ Cameras with NewTek's NDI Technology

NEWARK, NJ ( )

Panasonic and NewTek have successfully integrated Panasonic AW-HE130 and AW-HE40 series PTZ cameras with NewTeks open Network Device Interface (NDI) technology to stream H.264 video over IP to NDI-compatible systems and devices. When added and configured as production inputs using NewTek Connect Pro software, the AW-HE130 and AW-HE40 cameras become recognizable on the LAN as NDI video sources.

With a growing number of products from top manufacturers already utilizing NewTeks bi-directional NDI technology enabling IP interoperability, the implementation of NDI and compatibility with NewTek Connect Pro allows AW-HE130 and AW-HE40 series PTZ cameras to be integrated seamlessly with new and existing SDI and IP-based technologies, including video mixers, graphics systems, capture cards and other production devices, as part of an interconnected production workflow.

At NAB 2015, Panasonic showed direct streaming connectivity and camera control with NewTeks TriCaster multi-camera video production systems. During NAB 2016, work began to enhance these capabilities with the advantages of NDI and NewTek Connect Pro software. With this integration, Panasonic PTZ cameras will not only stream video to and receive control commands from TriCaster, they will be recognized by other compatible systems and devices as NDI nodes, enabling access to their video feeds across the network and throughout facilities for production use.

Panasonic has been a leader, taking advantage of the flexibility of IP connectivity for years, and we have seen NewTek pushing the envelope during that time as well: our PTZ camera systems have been using IP for camera control, and now feature IP streaming out as well as PoE+ power, drastically simplifying installation, says Michael Bergeron, Panasonic Senior Business Development Manager. We were fortunate to begin work with NewTek last year, showing PTZ streaming directly to TriCaster, and this year IP innovation is a main theme for us. Weve launched new streaming cameras, our new P2Cast Streaming Server, and at NAB 2016, we showed a broadcast VoIP gateway prototype streaming 4K across the Central Hall. We are thrilled that our IP streaming cameras could work with NewTek so quickly: we can use NDI right out of the gate by utilizing the NewTek Connect Pro as a bridge.

"The use of IP video promises to fundamentally change the way that we interact and work with video throughout the entire process from acquisition to delivery, said Michael Kornet, executive vice president of Business Development for NewTek. Both Panasonic and NewTek are leaders in this space and by working together using NewTek NDI and NewTek Connect Pro software, we are truly excited to create an affordable broadcast camera IP solution immediately available for customers with multi-camera production workflows."

NewTeks NDI is now available as a royalty free software developer kit (SDK) for any company looking to establish IP workflows within its organization, or in production tools and systems they manufacture.

For more information on NDI, visit ndi.newtek.com.

For more information about Panasonic professional video products, visit www.panasonic.com/broadcast or contact Panasonic at 877-803-8492.

About Panasonic Corporation of North America

Panasonic Corporation of North America provides a broad line of digital and other electronics products and solutions for consumer, business and industrial use. The company is the principal North American subsidiary of Osaka, Japan-based Panasonic Corporation and the hub of Panasonics U.S. branding, marketing, sales, service and R&D operations. In Interbrands 2014 annual Best Global Green Brands report, Panasonic ranked number five overall and the top electronics brand in the report. As part of continuing sustainability efforts, Panasonic Corporation of North America relocated its headquarters to a new facility, adjacent to Newark Penn Station in Newark, NJ. It is the first newly constructed office tower in Newark to earn both LEED Platinum and Gold certifications from the U.S. Green Building Council.
Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE: BABA) today announced that it has agreed to a US$2 billion purchase of Alibaba Group shares from SoftBank Group. The company intends to fund the transaction with cash-on-hand.

Further to the US$2 billion share purchase, members of the Alibaba Partnership, acting collectively, will enter into an agreement with SoftBank Group to acquire an additional US$400 million of Alibaba shares at the same price per share as the purchase by Alibaba Group.

These transactions have been agreed in conjunction with SoftBank Groups launch of US$5 billion in principal amount of mandatory exchangeable trust securities (METS) that are exchangeable into Alibaba shares in three years. All of the transactions announced today were initiated by SoftBank Group in order to generate proceeds that will be used to increase SoftBanks liquidity cushion, improve its leverage ratio and enable flexible and prudent financial management for SoftBank. This transaction will be SoftBank Groups first sale of Alibaba stock since its initial investment in 2000. As of March 31, 2016, SoftBank Group held 32% of Alibaba Groups total outstanding shares, and assuming all of the proposed transactions as described in SoftBanks press release are completed, SoftBanks shareholding in Alibaba Group would be reduced to 28%.

Under the leadership of Masayoshi Son, SoftBank has been a highly valued, long-time partner of Alibaba for more than 16 years, and we look forward to continuing our strong partnership together, said Jack Ma, Executive Chairman of Alibaba Group. As SoftBank looks to strengthen its own balance sheet, Alibaba determined that it was the best use of our capital to re-invest in our own business through an efficient buyback of a large number of shares in our own company that is accretive to our stockholders.

Alibaba Groups management will host a conference call to discuss these transactions at 6:30 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time on Wednesday, June 1, 2016 (6:30 a.m. Hong Kong Time on Thursday, June 2, 2016).
E-Commerce China Dangdang Inc. (NYSE: DANG) announced that on May 28, 2016, it entered into a definitive Agreement and Plan of Merger (the "Merger Agreement") with Dangdang Holding Company Limited ("Parent") and Dangdang Merger Company Limited ("Merger Sub"), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Parent.

Pursuant to the Merger Agreement, Parent will acquire the Company for cash consideration of US$1.34 per Class A common share or Class B common share of the Company (each, a "Share") or US$6.70 per American depositary share of the Company ("ADS"), each ADS representing five Class A Shares of the Company, in a transaction valuing the Company at approximately US$556 million on a fully diluted basis. This amount represents a premium of 2.9% over the Company's closing price of US$6.51 per ADS on July 8, 2015, the last trading day prior to July 9, 2015, the date that the Company announced it had received a "going-private" proposal, and a premium of 10.49% and 7.32% to the volume-weighted average closing price of the Company's ADSs during the 20 and 30 trading days prior to the date of this press release, respectively.

Immediately following the consummation of the merger, Parent will be beneficially owned by Ms. Peggy Yu Yu, chairwoman of the board of directors of the Company ("Ms. Yu"), Mr. Guoqing Li, director and chief executive officer of the Company ("Mr. Li", and together with Ms. Yu and certain of their affiliates, the "Buyer Group"), and certain other members of the management of the Company who have elected to roll over certain Shares beneficially owned by them, including Mr. Danqian Yao, senior vice president of the Company ("Mr. Yao"), Mr. Lijun Chen, vice president of the Company ("Mr. Chen"), and Mr. Min Kan, vice president of the Company ("Mr. Kan", and together with the Buyer Group, Mr. Yao and Mr. Chen, the "Rollover Shareholders").

As of the date of the Merger Agreement, the Rollover Shareholders beneficially owned in the aggregate approximately 33% of the outstanding Shares, representing approximately 83% of the total voting power of the outstanding Shares (without taking into account any outstanding options granted pursuant to the Company's share incentive plans).

Subject to the terms and conditions of the Merger Agreement, at the effective time of the merger, Merger Sub will merge with and into the Company, with the Company continuing as the surviving company and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Parent, and each of the Shares (including Shares represented by ADSs) issued and outstanding immediately prior to the effective time of the merger will be canceled and cease to exist in exchange for the right to receive US$1.34 per Share or US$6.70 per ADS, in each case, in cash, without interest, except for (i) certain Shares (including Shares represented by ADSs) beneficially owned by the Rollover Shareholders, (ii) Shares held by Parent, the Company or any of their subsidiaries, (iii) Shares (including Shares represented by ADSs) held by the depositary of the Company's ADS program and reserved for future issuance pursuant to the Company's share incentive plans, and (iv) Shares owned by holders who have validly exercised and not effectively withdrawn or lost their rights to dissent from the merger pursuant to Section 238 of the Companies Law of the Cayman Islands, which Shares will be canceled at the effective time of the merger for the right to receive the fair value of such Shares determined in accordance with the provisions of Section 238 of the Companies Law of the Cayman Islands. If completed, the merger will result in the Company becoming a privately-held company and its ADSs will no longer be listed on The New York Stock Exchange.

The Company's board of directors, acting upon the unanimous recommendation of the special committee formed by the board of directors (the "Special Committee"), approved the Merger Agreement and the merger, and resolved to recommend that the Company's shareholders vote to authorize and approve the Merger Agreement and the merger. The Special Committee, which is composed solely of independent directors of the Company who are unaffiliated with Parent, Merger Sub or any member of the Buyer Group or management of the Company, exclusively negotiated the terms of the Merger Agreement with the Buyer Group with the assistance of its independent financial and legal advisors.

The merger, which is currently expected to close during the second half of 2016, is subject to various closing conditions, including a condition that the Merger Agreement be authorized and approved by an affirmative vote of shareholders representing at least two-thirds of the Shares present and voting in person or by proxy as a single class at an extraordinary general meeting of the Company's shareholders.

Concurrently with the execution of the Merger Agreement, members of the Buyer Group entered into a support agreement, pursuant to which members of the Buyer Group have agreed to vote all the Shares and ADSs beneficially owned by them in favor of the authorization and approval of the Merger Agreement and the merger. As of the date of this press release, the Buyer Group beneficially owns Shares representing approximately 83% of the total voting power of the outstanding Shares (without taking into account any outstanding options granted pursuant to the Company's share incentive plans).

The Buyer Group intends to fund the merger through a combination of (i) rollover financing from the Rollover Shareholders of 136,477,925 Shares (including Shares represented by ADSs), (ii) the proceeds from a committed loan facility in an amount of up to US$164 million arranged by Bank of China Limited, Shanghai Pudong Development Zone Sub-Branch, pursuant to a debt commitment letter, and (iii) available cash of the Company and its subsidiaries.

The Company and certain other participants in the transactions will prepare and file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") a Schedule 13E-3 transaction statement, which will include a proxy statement of the Company. The Schedule 13E-3 will include a description of the Merger Agreement and contain other important information about the merger, the Company and the other participants in the merger.

Duff & Phelps (Duff & Phelps, LLC and Duff & Phelps Securities, LLC) is serving as the financial advisor to the Special Committee, Shearman & Sterling LLP is serving as U.S. legal counsel to the Special Committee, and Maples and Calder is serving as Cayman Islands legal counsel to the Special Committee.

China Renaissance Partners is serving as the financial advisor to the Buyer Group, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom is serving as U.S. legal counsel to the Buyer Group, and Walkers is serving as Cayman Islands legal counsel to the Buyer Group.

Additional Information about the Merger

The Company will furnish to the SEC a report on Form 6-K regarding the proposed transactions described in this announcement, which will include as an exhibit thereto the Merger Agreement. All parties desiring details regarding the transactions contemplated by the Merger Agreement, including the merger, are urged to review these documents, which will be available at the SEC's website (http://www.sec.gov).

In connection with the proposed merger, the Company will prepare and mail a proxy statement that will include a copy of the Merger Agreement to its shareholders. In addition, certain participants in the proposed merger will prepare and mail to the Company's shareholders a Schedule 13E-3 transaction statement that will include the Company's proxy statement. These documents will be filed with or furnished to the SEC. INVESTORS AND SHAREHOLDERS ARE URGED TO READ CAREFULLY AND IN THEIR ENTIRETY THESE MATERIALS AND OTHER MATERIALS FILED WITH OR FURNISHED TO THE SEC WHEN THEY BECOME AVAILABLE, AS THEY WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THE COMPANY, THE PROPOSED MERGER AND RELATED MATTERS. In addition to receiving the proxy statement and Schedule 13E-3 transaction statement by mail, shareholders also will be able to obtain these documents, as well as other filings containing information about the Company, the proposed merger and related matters, without charge, from the SEC's website (http://www.sec.gov) or at the SEC's public reference room at 100 F Street, NE, Room 1580, Washington, D.C. 20549.

The Company and certain of its directors, executive officers and other members of management and employees may, under SEC rules, be deemed to be "participants" in the solicitation of proxies from its shareholders with respect to the proposed merger. Information regarding the persons or entities who may be considered "participants" in the solicitation of proxies will be set forth in the proxy statement and Schedule 13E-3 transaction statement relating to the proposed merger when it is filed with the SEC. Additional information regarding the interests of such potential participants will be included in the proxy statement and Schedule 13E-3 transaction statement and the other relevant documents filed with the SEC when they become available.

This announcement is neither a solicitation of proxy, an offer to purchase nor a solicitation of an offer to sell any securities and it is not a substitute for any proxy statement or other materials that may be filed with or furnished to the SEC should the proposed merger proceed.
General Cable Corporation (NYSE: BGC) announced that it has completed the sale of its North American automotive ignition wire business to Standard Motor Products, Inc. (NYSE: SMP) for cash consideration of approximately $71 million, subject to customary post-closing adjustments. Proceeds will be used to reduce outstanding borrowings.
Great Plains Energy Incorporated (NYSE: GXP), the parent company of KCP&L, and Westar Energy, Inc. (NYSE: WR), today announced a definitive agreement for Great Plains Energy to acquire Westar in a combined cash and stock transaction with an enterprise value of approximately $12.2 billion, including total equity value of approximately $8.6 billion. Upon closing, Westar will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Great Plains Energy.

Once the transaction is complete, Great Plains Energy will have more than 1.5 million customers in Kansas and Missouri, nearly 13,000 megawatts of generation capacity, almost 10,000 miles of transmission lines and over 51,000 miles of distribution lines. In addition, more than 45 percent of the combined utilitys retail customer demand can be met with emission-free energy.

Westar and KCP&L are trusted neighbors and have worked together for generations in Kansas. The combination of our two companies is the best fit for meeting our regions energy needs, said Terry Bassham, chairman and chief executive officer of Great Plains Energy and KCP&L. This is an important transaction for Kansas and our entire region. By combining our two companies, we are keeping ownership local and management responsive to regulators, customers and regional needs, while enhancing our ability to build long-term value for shareholders.

Currently, Great Plains Energy and Westar jointly own and operate the Wolf Creek Nuclear Generating Station, as well as the La Cygne and Jeffrey power plants. With the addition of Westars generation fleet, Great Plains Energy will have a more diverse and sustainable generation portfolio. This will provide increased flexibility to mitigate the potential customer impacts from future carbon regulation. In addition, among investor-owned utilities in the United States, the combined company will have one of the largest portfolios of wind generation in the country.

This is an important day for Westar, our customers, employees, shareholders, the communities we support and for the state of Kansas, said Mark Ruelle, president and chief executive officer of Westar. Our commitment to reliability, customer satisfaction, safety and sustainability is consistent with Great Plains Energys values, which makes them our ideal partner. Were eager to join the Great Plains Energy team, and excited about this new chapter that combines the unique strengths of our respective organizations to form an even stronger company for our state.

Great Plains Energy has an established track record of successful integration with adjacent electric utilities. In 2008, Great Plains Energy completed its acquisition of Aquila, an electric utility serving customers in adjacent areas of Missouri. That successful acquisition has delivered  and continues to deliver  significant savings for customers, which exceeded initial expectations and was reviewed and approved by both the Missouri Public Service Commission and the Kansas Corporation Commission.

The utility industry is facing rising customer expectations, increasing environmental standards and emerging cyber security threats. These factors, coupled with slower demand growth for electricity, are driving our costs and customer rates higher. Our acquisition of Westar will create operational efficiencies and future cost savings that will benefit all involved  customers, shareholders, employees and the communities we serve. These savings also will help reduce future rate increase requests, said Bassham. Combining our two companies will result in cost savings and operational benefits for our more than 900,000 Kansas and 600,000 Missouri customers.

Transaction terms and financing profile

Under the terms of the agreement, which was unanimously approved by the boards of directors for both companies, Westar shareholders will receive $60.00 per share of total consideration for each share of Westar common stock, consisting of $51.00 in cash and $9.00 in Great Plains Energy common stock, subject to a 7.5 percent collar based upon the Great Plains Energy common stock price at the time of the closing of the transaction, with the exchange ratio for the stock consideration ranging between 0.2709 to 0.3148 shares of Great Plains Energy common stock for each Westar share of common stock, representing a consideration mix of 85 percent cash and 15 percent stock.

The transaction enterprise value is expected to be approximately $12.2 billion, inclusive of approximately $8.6 billion in total stock and cash consideration to be received by Westars shareholders and the assumption of approximately $3.6 billion in Westars debt. Great Plains Energy has secured approximately $8.0 billion of committed debt financing from Goldman Sachs Bank USA and Goldman Sachs Lending Partners LLC in connection with the transaction for the full cash portion of the transaction consideration. Great Plains Energy has also secured a $750 million mandatorily preferred convertible equity commitment from the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS), to be funded at the closing of the transaction. Great Plains Energy plans to issue long-term financing consisting of a combination of equity, equity-linked securities and debt prior to closing of the transaction. This financing mix will allow Great Plains Energy to maintain its solid, investment grade credit ratings.

Great Plains Energy expects savings generated from combining the two companies to be consistent with recent comparable transactions, and its own recent experience. Great Plains Energy expects the acquisition will be neutral to earnings-per-share in the first full calendar year of operations and significantly accretive thereafter. The long-term earnings growth target of the combined company is expected to grow to six to eight percentbetter than either company on a standalone basis.

Leadership and headquarters

Upon completion of the transaction, Bassham will be chairman and chief executive officer of the combined company. Ruelle will remain in his current role with Westar until the closing of the transaction. In addition, Great Plains Energy will add one director from the Westar Board of Directors to the Great Plains Energy Board of Directors.

We understand the importance of Westar to the communities it serves and the meaningful contributions it makes as a major employer in Kansas, said Bassham. We are committed to maintaining the operating headquarters for our Kansas service territory in downtown Topeka. We also know that Westar has a reputation as a strong supporter of community and charitable initiatives. We will continue this legacy and are committed to maintaining a strong presence in all of the communities Westar serves.

Sustainability

Customers today expect their utility providers to identify and advance energy efficiency options that give them greater control and choice. The combined company will have a greater, more diverse portfolio of energy solutions that give customers the opportunities to better manage their individual energy needs. In addition, Great Plains Energy operates the nations largest utility-owned electric vehicle charging network, which can be expanded to benefit Westars customers.

Regulatory Approval

The companies anticipate making the required regulatory filings with the Kansas Corporation Commission and other regulatory entities during June and July of 2016. In addition, Great Plains Energy and Westar will seek shareholder approvals later this year. The transaction is subject to approvals from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The transaction also is subject to the notification, clearance and reporting requirements under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act by the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice. The companies anticipate closing in the spring of 2017. In the coming months, the companies will work together to develop a robust integration plan.

Advisors

Goldman, Sachs & Co. served as the exclusive financial advisor and Bracewell LLP served as legal advisor to Great Plains Energy. Guggenheim Securities, LLC served as the sole financial advisor and Baker Botts LLP served as legal advisor to Westar Energy.

Analyst Conference Call/Webcast

Great Plains Energy and Westar will host a financial community conference call to provide additional information on Tuesday, May 31, 2016, at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time/9:00 a.m. Central Daylight Time to discuss the Great Plains Energy and Westar transaction.

A live audio webcast of the conference call and presentation slides will be available on the investor relations page of Great Plains Energys website at www.greatplainsenergy.com. The webcast will be accessible only in a listen-only mode.

The conference call may be accessible by dialing (888) 353-7071 (U.S./Canada) or (724) 498-4416 (international) five to ten minutes prior to the scheduled start time. The passcode is 23802311.

A replay and transcript of the call will be available on or before Wednesday, June 1, 2016, by accessing the investor relations section of the companys website. A telephonic replay of the conference call will also be available on or before Wednesday, June 1, 2016, through June 7, 2016, by dialing (855) 859-2056 (U.S./Canada) or (404) 537-3406 (international). The passcode is 23802311.
MGM Resorts International (NYSE: MGM) and MGM Growth Properties LLC (NYSE: MGP) announced that MGM Resorts has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Boyd Gaming Corporation's ("Boyd Gaming") (NYSE: BYD) 50 percent interest in Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa ("Borgata") in Atlantic City, New Jersey for consideration of $900 million. Further, MGM Resorts and MGP have entered into a definitive agreement whereby, following the completion of the acquisition of Boyd Gaming's interest, MGP will acquire Borgata's real property from MGM Resorts and lease back the real property to a subsidiary of MGM Resorts, after which a subsidiary of MGM Resorts will operate Borgata (together, the "Transactions").

MGM Resorts will pay approximately $600 million for Boyd Gaming's 50 percent interest, subject to customary working capital adjustments, after consideration of Borgata's outstanding debt of approximately $600 million, which MGM Resorts will assume and refinance. For the last twelve months ended March 31, 2016, Borgata reported $812 million in net revenues and $212 million in Adjusted EBITDA.

"Borgata is the premier resort in Atlantic City and a great addition to our growing presence in the Northeast," said Jim Murren, Chairman and CEO of MGM Resorts International. "While the market continues to experience challenges, Borgata has outperformed and differentiated itself as the undisputed leader in the city. Our decade-long partnership with Boyd Gaming has been a great one, and Borgata's talented employee base will complement and strengthen our more than 60,000-member worldwide MGM Resorts team. We are excited about the opportunity to bring our market-leading loyalty program, M life Rewards, to the resort and integrate our operations, to position Borgata for further growth."

Subsequent to the purchase of Boyd Gaming's 50 percent stake in Borgata, MGM Resorts and MGP have agreed that MGM Resorts will sell all of Borgata's real property to MGP for total consideration of approximately $1.175 billion.

"We are excited to add Borgata to the MGP portfolio, further diversifying our geographic presence. With this transaction, we are executing on our core growth strategy in prudently building a portfolio of high-quality assets with market leading competitive positions," said James Stewart, CEO of MGM Growth Properties. "We expect the transaction to result in high single digit percentage accretion to AFFO per share, and pro forma net leverage will remain similar to our current levels."

MGP expects to fund the acquisition of the Borgata real property and the assumption of related debt with a combination of existing cash on hand, borrowings under its senior secured revolving credit facility, and the issuance of operating partnership units to a subsidiary of MGM Resorts, based upon MGP's closing price of $23.03 as of May 27, 2016.

Borgata will be added to the existing Master Lease between MGM Resorts and MGP, and the initial rent payment to MGP will increase by $100 million. Consistent with the Master Lease terms, 90 percent of this rent will be fixed and contractually grow at 2 percent per year until 2022.

"The Transactions provide numerous benefits to MGM Resorts and creates significant value for our shareholders," said Dan D'Arrigo, Executive Vice President and CFO of MGM Resorts International. "We expect MGM Resorts to remain net leverage-neutral, as we fully consolidate Borgata's cash flows into the MGM Resorts portfolio. Looking ahead, we believe the impact of the Transactions remain consistent with our focus on further deleveraging the balance sheet."

Concluded Mr. Murren, "We are pleased to demonstrate the ability for MGM Resorts and MGM Growth Properties to transact on an accretive basis to both parties and look forward to continue working collaboratively in the future."

The conflicts committee of the MGP Board of Directors engaged PJT Partners as its financial advisor to give an opinion on the fairness from a financial point of view to MGP of the total consideration paid in the transaction by MGP.

The Transactions are expected to close in the third quarter of 2016, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.
MGT Capital Investments, Inc. (NYSE: MGT) provided a commentary from the Company's proposed Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, John McAfee.

On Sunday afternoon May 29th, Mr. McAfee, conceded the Libertarian Party nomination for President of the United States to former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson. Throughout his nearly yearlong campaign, Mr. McAfee continually highlighted issues of privacy, security and cyber threats that confront people across the globe. He provoked dialog on the technology people welcome into their homes, vehicles and pockets to provide convenience and enrichment, but also open a gateway for major threats to privacy and security.

As a successful entrepreneur and cybersecurity pioneer, Mr. McAfee is best known for creating the McAfee anti-virus software suite which has been installed on over a billion computers worldwide since its introduction. He is also credited with being an early developer of instant messaging with his company Tribal Voice.

"So many problems in the world can be easily fixed with common sense and a good grasp of the technology that people use daily, as long as we monitor the vulnerabilities caused by these same technologies. I see my upcoming new role as CEO of an exciting new cybersecurity company as paramount to that mission," Mr. McAfee said at the Libertarian National Convention in Orlando, Florida.

"As Chief Executive of MGT, I will lead a team to aggressively develop technology platforms, software, hardware and components designed to protect people and their freedoms. Under the technical leadership of the Company's proposed Chief Technology Officer, Eric 'Eijah' Anderson, we will be laser focused on bringing these technologies to market."

"It is my life's work," McAfee concluded. "I fully expect that we will leave an even greater and longer lasting impact than the company I created in the 1980's."

As previously announced, MGT has executed asset purchase agreements to acquire certain technology and assets from D-Vasive Inc., a provider of leading edge anti-spy software, and Demonsaw LLC, a provider of a secure and anonymous file sharing software platform. In conjunction with the anticipated acquisitions, the Company also announced the proposed appointment of John McAfee as Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer upon closing of the transactions. Further, MGT Capital also intends to change its corporate name to John McAfee Global Technologies, Inc. Closing is contingent on customary conditions including approval by MGT's stockholders.
Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe walks to offer a flower for Japan's unidentified war dead, during a ceremony at Chidorigafuchi National Cemetery in Tokyo, Japan May 30, 2016. REUTERS/Issei Kato - RTX2ERPF

By Kiyoshi Takenaka

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is expected to announce a delay to next year's proposed sales tax hike to prevent a blow to the economy, when he speaks to members of the media on Wednesday.

The press engagement comes days after the prime minister pitched the proposed delay to fellow members of the ruling party and. The prime minister's office said Abe will hold a press conference at 5 a.m. ET on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, the country's lower house of parliament defeated a no-confidence motion against Abe's cabinet, submitted by opposition parties to criticize the "Abenomics" economic policies and other plans before a July upper house election.

Opposition parties argue Abe's decision to postpone for 2-1/2 years a rise in the nation's sales tax to 10 percent - scheduled for April 2017 - is an admission his efforts to reboot the stale economy have not only failed but also increased inequality.

"Prime Minister Abe, it is an unshakable fact that, because of your grave failure in economic policy, you have been unable to create an environment in which the sale tax can be raised," opposition Democratic Party leader Katsuya Okada said in parliament.

"People's lives were destroyed, and inequality and poverty are spreading."

The opposition parties also criticized security legislation enacted last year that they say violates Japan's pacifist constitution. The legal changes clear the way for Japan's military to fight overseas in defence of a friendly country.

The no-confidence motion was handily rejected by Abe's ruling coalition, which has a two-thirds "super" majority in the house.

Abe first delayed the sales tax rise and called a snap election for the lower house in December 2014, and speculation had simmered that he would do so again in tandem with the scheduled July election for the upper chamber.

Top ruling Liberal Democratic Party officials had warned that the mere submission of a no-confidence motion could prompt Abe to call a snap election, but a senior ruling party official said on Monday he believed the prime minister had no such plan.

Abe told ruling party officials on Monday that he plans to postpone next year's sales tax hike to avoid hurting the economy's fragile recovery.

Consumption has yet to recover after Japan fell into recession when Abe raised the sales tax to 8 percent from 5 percent in April 2014 in an effort to curb government debt.

Abe's support rates rose to just over 55 percent after he hosted a Group of Seven summit last week and accompanied U.S. President Barack Obama on a historic visit to Hiroshima.

(Writing by Linda Sieg; Editing by Sam Holmes)
Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump jokes about how difficult he says it is for him to listen to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's voice, as he holds a rally with supporters in Fresno, California, U.S. May 27, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan

By Emily Stephenson and Marty Graham

SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - Donald Trump brought his message of walls and deportations to the doorstep of Americas busiest border crossing on Friday as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee greeted supporters in San Diego, amid one of the largest counter-protests organized against him.

The scene inside the San Diego Convention Center during Trump's speech was relatively placid, while outside demonstrators opposed to his controversy-ridden White House bid marched and chanted, carrying signs criticizing his rhetoric against illegal immigration.

Waving U.S. and Mexican flags, more than 1,000 people turned out for anti-trump rallies in San Diego, a city on the U.S.-Mexico border whose San Ysidro port of entry sees nearly 300,000 people a day cross legally between the countries.

San Diego is considered a binational city by many who live and work on opposite sides of the border, and about a third of the city's population is Latino.

During Trump's speech on Friday, some protesters outside the convention center scaled a barrier and lobbed water bottles at police. One man was pulled off the wall and arrested as others were surrounded by fellow protesters and backed away from the confrontation.

After the convention center emptied, clusters of Trump supporters and anti-Trump demonstrators began to mix in the streets, many exchanging shouted epithets and some throwing water bottles at one another.

Police in riot gear declared the gathering an unlawful assembly and ordered the crowd to disperse, herding the crowd out of the city's hotel and restaurant-filled Gaslamp Quarter.

San Diego police said on Twitter that 35 arrests were made during the protest. No property damage or injuries were reported, police said.

"Fantastic job on handling the thugs who tried to disrupt our very peaceful and well attended rally," Trump tweeted to police afterwards.

Trump has weathered months of blowback from all ends of the political spectrum for his immigration policy, which calls for the building of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and deporting the nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants who reside in the United States.

Critics have said his plan is needlessly cruel and impossible to implement. At Trump's campaign stops, attendees often chant "build the wall."

While Trump is running unopposed in the June 7 California Republican primary, his stance on border control and deportation seems unlikely to resonate with the electorate at large in a state where political fallout from a Republican-backed crackdown on illegal immigrants 20 years ago cost the party dearly.

Friday was not the first time Trump has been greeted by civil unrest in California, which is home to the largest Latino population in the country. Late last month, a visit to the California Republican convention set off days of protests in the area, leading to several arrests.

WAITING FOR "FIRST PLACE FINISHER"

Shortly before taking the stage in San Diego, Trump issued a statement ruling out a one-on-one debate with second-place Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders, who was also in California, killing off a potentially high-ratings television spectacle.

The suggested debate, an idea first raised during a talk show appearance by the New York billionaire, would have sidelined likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton but given Sanders a huge platform ahead of California Democratic primary.

A day after saying he would welcome a Sanders debate, Trump called the idea "inappropriate," declaring that he should only face the Democrats' final choice.

"I will wait to debate the first-place finisher in the Democratic Party, probably Crooked Hillary Clinton," Trump said in a statement.

Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, expressed disappointment on Friday, and sought to goad Trump into reconsidering.

"Well, Mr. Trump, what are you afraid of?" he said in a video clip posted on ABC News' Twitter account.

Trump suggested broadcast networks were unwilling to go along with his demand that at least $10 million raised from the encounter be donated to charity.

Id love to debate Bernie, he told a rally in Fresno, California. But the networks want to keep the money for themselves.

Sanders is trailing Clinton in the race to secure their partys nomination, but opinion polls show he is slicing into her lead in California.

Clinton has shown no interest in debating Sanders before the California primary, which will be part of a final slate of nominating contests. It is possible she will clinch the nomination by winning New Jersey earlier that day, making the outcome in California superfluous.

The former U.S. secretary of state has said she is looking forward to debating Trump later this year ahead of the Nov. 8 general election.

Clinton leads Trump by 4 percentage points in the most recent Reuters/Ipsos poll. Democrats nationally remain evenly split between Clinton and Sanders.

(Additional reporting by Alana Wise in Washington and Chris Kahn in New York, Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Writing by James Oliphant; Editing by Alistair Bell and Leslie Adler)
(Updated - May 31, 2016 12:41 PM EDT)

Jose Cuervo is said to target a potential $1 billion IPO in the third quarter, according to Bloomberg . The company is said to be working with Morgan Stanley, Banco Santander SA, and JPMorgan on the offering.

UPDATE - Reports first landed in March that Cuervo had approached banks.

Cuervo's offering will mainly be new capital, but may also have a secondary component, which means existing owners could also sell stakes.

The offering size could have a floor of $500 million, sources said, though Cuervo's plans haven't been finalized yet.
CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/30/16 -- Formation Fluid Management Inc. (TSX VENTURE: FFM) ("Formation Fluid", "FFM" or the "Company") announces its financial results for the three and nine months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015.

THREE AND NINE MONTH RESULTS - FISCAL 2016

KEY TAKEAWAYS

-- On April 11, 2016 the company initiated a strategic review process. This process is underway with Canaccord Genuity as financial advisor; -- The Company has received a non-binding letter of intent from Robix. This is a positive sign of interest in FFM. The strategic review process will continue and the special committee will evaluate all strategic alternatives; -- First tranche of a private placement was closed May 20, 2016. This will provide the resources for the company to evaluate all alternatives through the strategic alternative process; -- Decline of oil and gas prices have affected activity levels in the petroleum industry resulting in significantly decreased earnings and cash flow for the industry and in turn the company. -- FFM continues to actively market our services in Western Canada and recently into the United States with marketing partners.

FINANCIAL SUMMARY

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Three months ended Nine months ended March 31, March 31, ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2016 2015 2016 2015 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Revenues $8,000 $NIL $161,395 $1,154,480 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- EBITDA (1) ($395,147) ($589,749) ($1,285,021) ($620,403) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Diluted per share (1) ($0.01) ($0.01) ($0.02) ($0.01) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- EBITDA as % of revenues (1) (4939%) N/A (796%) (54%) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Funds from operations (1) ($395,147) ($589,749) ($1,280,805) ($620,403) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Diluted per share (1) ($0.01) ($0.01) ($0.02) ($0.01) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Net earnings (loss) ($540,228) ($701,706) ($1,697,568) ($1,157,218) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Basic per share ($0.01) ($0.01) ($0.03) ($0.02) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Diluted per share ($0.01) ($0.01) ($0.03) ($0.02) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Equipment additions; net cash $NIL $349,954 $142,491 $1,603,989 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Weighted average shares outstanding: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Basic 52,026,421 51,137,291 52,026,421 51,131,856 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Diluted 62,287,510 62,148,380 62,287,510 61,993,488 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- As at March 31, -------------------------------------------------- 2016 2015 -------------------------------------------------- Working capital ($1,762,528) $597,892 -------------------------------------------------- Total assets $5,435,348 $6,275,469 -------------------------------------------------- Loans excluding current $215,480 $430,885 portion -------------------------------------------------- Total shareholders' $3,166,180 $5,269,433 equity --------------------------------------------------

(1) Refer to Non-GAAP discussion below.

Business Outlook

The Company has initiated a strategic alternative process and anticipates a successful result due to the following factors:

-- Engagement of Canaccord Genuity Corp. as exclusive financial advisor; -- Receipt of a Letter of Intent from Robix Environmental Technologies Inc.; -- The Company's intention is to continue the strategic alternative process and evaluate every alternative. We are encouraged by the initial interest and look forward to a robust process; -- Marketing efforts in Western Canada continue to generate interest in FFM's Hydro Cycle. When activity levels in the oil industry resume FFM believes that water for oil and gas as well as industrial use will be a scarce resource and lead to significant interest in cleaning produced and frac flow back water; and, -- The Company has entered into a marketing arrangement to target specific states in the USA, there has been a positive response and interest in FFM's services;

The Company has seen a slower growth rate than previously anticipated due to the following factors:

-- Decline of oil and gas prices have affected activity levels in the petroleum industry. During the past year oil prices have ranged from a high of approximately US$65/bbl to a low of US$29/bbl. This volatility has resulted in significantly decreased earnings and cash flow for the industry. -- As result of decreased earnings and cash flow oil and gas companies have delayed and cancelled both capital and operating projects; and, -- Oil and gas companies are refocusing their efforts on ways to cuts costs and save money. This has been detrimental to the Company in the short term as projects have been delayed. The Company believes that in the long term this focus on costs will be to our benefit. Our Hydro-Cycle system can save oil companies in excess of 50% on their water management program. The silver lining of the industry down turn is that companies now have the time and the incentive to look at cost saving technologies like our Hydro-Cycle system.

Financial Results

During the three months ended March 31, 2016, the Company generated $8,000 (2015: $NIL) in revenue from water remediation services and incurred field expenses of $9,247 (2015: $NIL) resulting in negative gross margin of $1,247 (2015: NIL) or negative 16% (2015: NIL), and net loss of $540,228, $0.01 basic and diluted loss per share (2015: net loss of $701,706; $0.01 basic and diluted loss per share). EBITDA for the three months ended March 31, 2016 was negative $395,147 (2015: negative $589,749). Field expenses consist of the direct costs associated with providing the water remediation services generating the Company's revenues.

During the nine months ended March 31, 2016, the Company generated $161,395 (2015: $1,154,480) in revenue from water remediation services and incurred field expenses of $176,172 (2015: $400,739) resulting in negative gross margin of $14,777 (2015: positive $753,741) or negative 9% (2015: positive 65%), and net loss of $1,697,568, $0.03 basic and diluted loss per share (2015: net loss of $1,157,218; $0.02 basic and diluted loss per share). EBITDA for the nine months ended March 31, 2016 was negative $1,285,021 (2015: negative $620,403). Field expenses consist of the direct costs associated with providing the water remediation services generating the Company's revenues.

In the nine months ended March 31, 2016 the Company used cash in operations of $576,300 (2015: negative $52,963). The Company used net cash of $142,491 during the first nine months ended March 31, 2016 for capital expenditures (2015: $1,603,989). The capital expenditures were incurred to complete construction of additional water processing plants to meet expected customer demand.

The Company's financing activities in the nine months ended March 31, 2016 generated cash of net $560,843 from the receipt of two related party loans totalling $700,000 less repayments on bank loan payable of $139,157 corresponding to a long term bank loan agreement for the construction of capital equipment. During the nine months ended March 31, 2015 the Company generated cash of $614,327 from the long term bank loan agreement and the exercise of stock options in the amount of $90,000. Total cash outflows exceeded total cash inflows during the period ended March 31, 2016 by $351,232. During the period ended March 31, 2015, total cash outflows exceeded total cash inflows by $1,042,625.

At March 31, 2016, the Company had cash of $6,713 and negative working capital of $1,762,528, (June 30, 2015: cash of $357,945, negative working capital of $248,960). Shareholders' equity at March 31, 2016 was $3,166,180 (June 30, 2015: $4,795,640).

This financial information has been prepared on a going concern basis, with the assumption that the Company will be able to realize its assets and discharge its liabilities in the normal course of business. In assessing whether or not there are material uncertainties that may lend doubt as to the ability of the Company to continue as a going concern, management takes into account all available information about the future, which is at least but not limited to twelve months from the end of the reporting period. Management is aware of the material uncertainties that could cast significant doubt upon the Company's ability to continue as a going concern. The Company has negative cash flows from operations of $576,300 and a net loss and comprehensive loss of $1,697,568 for the nine months ended March 31, 2016, and negative working capital of $1,762,528 at March 31, 2016. As a result, the Company will need to raise additional financing within the next twelve months in order to meet its liabilities as they come due and to continue with its business activities.

The Company's full financial statements and management discussion and analysis are available online at SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Non-GAAP Measures

The Company uses certain performance measures throughout this document that are not recognizable under International Financial Reporting Standards ("IFRS"). These performance measures include EBITDA, EBITDA per share, funds from operations and funds from operations per share. Management believes that these measures provide supplemental financial information that is useful in the evaluation of the Company's operations and are commonly used by other oil and natural gas service companies.

Investors should be cautioned, however, that these measures should not be construed as alternatives to measures determined in accordance with IFRS as an indicator of Formation Fluid's performance. The Company's method of calculating these measures may differ from that of other organizations, and accordingly, these may not be comparable. Per share amounts are calculated using the treasury stock method whereby deemed proceeds on the exercise of the share options are used to reacquire common shares at an average share price. The calculations of per share amounts on a dilutive basis do not include anti-dilutive options.

EBITDA

EBITDA, defined as earnings before interest, taxes, share-based compensation, depreciation and amortization, is not a financial measure that is recognized under GAAP. Investors should be cautioned that EBITDA should not be construed as an alternative measure to net earnings determined in accordance with GAAP.

The following is a reconciliation of net earnings to EBITDA:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Three months ended Nine months ended March 31, March 31, ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2016 2015 2016 2015 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Net earnings (loss) ($797,761) ($701,706) ($1,697,568) ($1,157,218) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Add: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Depreciation and amortization 132,940 51,366 341,206 164,990 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Stock-based compensation 15,715 62,662 68,108 371,505 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Provision for income taxes - - - - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Interest expense, net (3,575) (2,071) 3,233 320 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- EBITDA as reported ($395,147) ($589,749) ($1,285,021) ($620,403) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Funds from Operations

Funds from operations is defined as cash flows generated from operating activities before changes in non- cash working capital. Investors should be cautioned that this financial measure should not be construed as an alternative measure to cash flows from operating activities determined in accordance with IFRS.

The following is a reconciliation of cash flows from operating activities to funds from operations:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Three months ended Nine months ended March 31, March 31, ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2016 2015 2016 2015 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cash flows from ($34,250) ($612,580) ($576,300) ($52,963) operating activities ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Add: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Changes in non-cash (357,322) (24,902) (707,738) (567,760) working capital ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Provision for income - - - - taxes ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Interest expense, net (3,575) (2,071) 3,233 320 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Funds from operations ($395,147) ($589,749) ($1,280,805) ($620,403) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Subsequent Events

Previously the Company had announced on November 26, 2015 that it had entered into a non-binding letter of intent with an arm's length industry participant (the "Proposed Transaction Party") and had advanced a secured non-convertible loan in the amount of $250,000 to a wholly owned subsidiary of the Proposed Transaction Party whereby the loan was evidenced by a promissory note with interest to be accrued at a rate of 10% per annum, payable in arrears at maturity (due on May 10, 2016) and secured by a general security agreement on certain water right assets of the Proposed Transaction Party. Subsequent to March 31, 2016, the Company has learned that the Proposed Transaction Party has filed for Chapter 11 and began the bankruptcy process which could lead to the promissory note and any accrued interest receivable being impaired.

On April 11, 2016, the Company announced that its board of directors had initiated a strategic review process to identify, examine and consider a range of strategic alternatives available to the Company with a view to maximizing shareholder value. This process could result in a sale of the Company, a sale of a material portion of the Company's assets, a merger, business combination or a corporate reorganization, equity financing, among other alternatives. This process is continuing alongside the LOI that has been received from Robix.

On May 5, 2016, the Company announced its plan to complete a non-brokered private placement of up to 11,000,000 units (the "Units") at a price of $0.06 per Unit for total gross proceeds to the Company of up to $660,000 (the "Offering"). Each Unit will consist of one common share (a "Common Share") in the capital of the Company and one-half of one warrant to purchase a Common Share (a "Warrant"). Each whole Warrant will entitle the holder to purchase one Common Share at an exercise price of $0.12 for a period of 24 months from the closing of the Offering. The proceeds of the Offering will be used for general working capital purposes.

On May 20, 2016, the Company announced that it had closed the first tranche of its non-brokered private placement (the "Offering") previously announced on May 5, 2016. The Company issued 7,033,366 units (the "Units") at a price of $0.06 per Unit for total gross proceeds to the Company of $422,002. In connection with the Offering, a cash commission was paid to Leede Jones Gable Inc., Richardson GMP Ltd and Wolverton Securities Ltd. in connection with certain subscriptions.

On May 26, 2016, the Company announced that it had received an unsolicited bid and has entered into a non-binding Letter of Intent ("LOI") with respect to a proposed business combination with Robix Environmental Technologies, Inc. ("Robix").The purpose of the LOI is to reflect the desire of both parties to effect a business combination pursuant to which Robix will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of the Company through a share exchange, amalgamation, plan of arrangement or such other comparable form of transaction as determined by Robix and the Company following a review of all relevant tax, corporate and securities law considerations and a due diligence review (the "Transaction"). Pursuant to the Transaction and subject to adjustment prior to the execution of a definitive agreement setting out in more detail the proposed terms of the Transaction (a "Definitive Agreement"), each outstanding Robix common share will be exchanged for one common share of the combined entity existing after completion of the Transaction (the "Resulting Issuer") and every two outstanding of the Company's common shares will be exchanged for one common share of the Resulting Issuer. Upon completion of the Transaction, it is anticipated that the Resulting Issuer will be listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange.

About Formation Fluids

Formation Fluid Management has developed a three stage waste water treatment plant (Hydro-Cycle) that uses a proprietary process to clean waste water. Each plant is mobile and can process up to 1000 m3 of water per day. This system treats water to meet or exceed CCME Guidelines (Canadian Environmental Quality Guidelines), resulting in reusable water that can be used for: Boilers, Frac Water, Water Floods, and Drilling Operations. Formation Fluids has identified commercial applications for the Hydro-Cycle system within the oil and gas industry. The waste water treatment system has a primary use to reduce producers costs of dealing with produced water. The system also satisfies the need to reuse and recycle an increasing valuable resource. For more information, please visit: www.formationfluid.com or contact Investor Relations at 403 348-5077.

On behalf of the Board of Directors.

Ken Rose, Chief Executive Officer

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT ON FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION

Certain statements contained in this news release, including references to the Company's receipt of applicable approvals, may constitute forward-looking information under applicable Canadian securities legislation. These statements relate to future events and are prospective in nature. All statements other than statements of historical fact may constitute forward-looking statements or contain forward-looking information. Forward-looking statements are often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "may", "will", "project", "predict", "potential", "plan", "continue", "estimate", "expect", "targeting", "intend", "could", "might", "seek", "anticipate", "should", "believe" or variations thereof. Forward- looking information may relate to management's future outlook and anticipated events or results and may include statements or information regarding the future plans or prospects of the Company. 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 statements. The Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements contained in this news release are reasonable, but no assurance can be given that they will prove to be correct. Actual results and future events may differ materially from those anticipated and accordingly forward-looking statements should not be unduly relied upon. Forward-looking statements contained in this document speak only as of the date of this news release. Except as required by applicable law, the Company disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking information.

Contacts: Formation Fluid Management Inc. Investor Inquiries: 1 (403) 348-5077 E-mail inquiries: [email protected]

Source: Formation Fluid Management Inc.
OTTAWA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 05/30/16 -- Department of Justice Canada

A well-functioning justice system is one that serves all Canadians, protects the vulnerable, and builds a safer and better Canada. It is especially important to include the voices of those most affected by the justice system - victims and survivors.

Today, the Honourable Jody Wilson-Raybould, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, launched Victims and Survivors of Crime Week that is taking place from May 29 to June 4, 2016.

The theme for Victims and Survivors of Crime Week is "The Power of Our Voices." The goal is to raise awareness about the issues facing victims and survivors of crime and the services and laws in place to help them and their families. It is also about acknowledging the dedicated work of service providers who assist victims and survivors of crime and their families.

This year, the Government of Canada has provided over $1.2 million in funding to 182 Victims and Survivors of Crime Week projects and events located in every province and territory. A federal symposium will be held in the National Capital Region on Friday, June 3, 2016, where Minister Wilson-Raybould will deliver remarks. Victims and Survivors of Crime Week evolved out of the annual National Victims of Crime Awareness Week. Survivors of crime are now included in the name of the week to acknowledge the many individuals who, having been victims of crime, have overcome their victimization and identify themselves more as survivors.

Quotes

"Across Canada, countless dedicated professionals and volunteers provide meaningful support to victims, survivors and their families by advocating for them and delivering effective and efficient services. Through funding and collaboration with organizations that provide victim services, the Government of Canada is helping to ensure the voices of these victims and survivors are heard."

The Honourable Jody Wilson-Raybould, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada

Related Products

Backgrounder: Victims and Survivors of Crime Week 2016

Associated Links

www.victimsweek.gc.ca

Follow Department of Justice Canada on Twitter (@JusticeCanadaEn), join us on Facebook or visit our YouTube channel.

Backgrounder

Victims and Survivors of Crime Week 2016

About Victims and Survivors of Crime Week

Victims and Survivors of Crime Week takes place from May 29, 2016 to June 4, 2016. The Week is an annual outreach initiative of the Government of Canada. The goal of Victims and Survivors of Crime Week is to raise awareness about the issues facing victims and survivors of crime, as well as the services, assistance and laws in place to help victims, survivors and their families. Victims and Survivors of Crime Week is also a time to acknowledge the work of service providers and their dedication to assisting victims and survivors of crime and their families.

Theme for 2016

The theme for the 2016 week is The Power of Our Voices. This theme recognizes that:

-- Many victims and survivors are looking to move beyond their victimization and use the power of their voices to create positive change. While all victims of crime define their experience differently, their victimization does not need to define them. -- Throughout Canada, countless dedicated professionals and volunteers use the power of their voices to create a better experience for victims and survivors of crime by advocating for them and delivering effective and efficient services. -- Service providers and criminal justice professionals give information and meaningful support to victims, survivors and their families at the community, provincial, territorial and federal levels. Through funding and collaboration with organizations that provide victim services, the Government of Canada is helping to ensure that victims and survivors are heard. -- Over the past three decades, Canada has made significant advances towards ensuring that victims are treated with courtesy, compassion and respect while navigating the criminal justice system. By working together, all levels of government are recognizing the power of victims' and survivors' voices and making sure those voices are given the attention they deserve.

Victims and Survivors of Crime Week Projects

The Government of Canada, through the Department of Justice Canada's Victims Fund, provides funding of up to $10,000 per organization to host events that support the goals of Victims and Survivors of Crime Week. This year, more than $1.2 million in funding was provided to 182 Victims and Survivors of Crime Week events and projects across Canada that include activities such as workshops, public events and training sessions for professionals. Examples of events and activities that are organized during Victims and Survivors of Crime Week include:

-- Workshops and information sessions about violence against women and intimate partner violence and the services available in the rural communities near St. Anthony, Newfoundland and Labrador, Elsipogtog First Nation and Woodstock, New Brunswick. -- Workshops that feature the use of traditional practices, such as Indigenous storytelling and healing, with child victims in St. Catharines, Ontario, and an Indigenous grieving and releasing ceremony in Winnipeg, Manitoba, to honour the victims of crime and support their families, their loved ones and service providers. -- Public awareness events in Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, and Whitehorse, Yukon, about the issues facing victims and survivors of crime and the services, assistance and laws in place to help them. -- Training for victims' service professionals in the Northwest Territories on assisting women who have experienced family violence, and a workshop for service providers in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, on responding to crisis.

The complete list of funded projects and events is available on the Victims Week Map of Events at http://www.victimsweek.gc.ca/map-carte/events-evene.aspx

For more information about Victims and Survivors of Crime Week, including videos and testimonials, resources and information about past symposia, please visit www.victimsweek.gc.ca.

Contacts: Media Relations Department of Justice 613-957-4207

Source: Department of Justice Canada
LAVAL, Quebec, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Inc. (NYSE: VRX) (TSX: VRX) ("Valeant" or the "Company") today announced that it plans to host a conference call and live webcast on June 7, 2016 to discuss first quarter 2016 financial results.

Conference Call Details:

Date June 7, 2016 Time 8:00 a.m. ET Webcast http://ir.valeant.com/events-and-presentations Participant Event Dial-in (877) 876-8393 (North America) (973) 200-3961 (International) Participant Passcode 88949054 Replay Dial-in (855) 859-2056 (North America) (404) 537-3406 (International) Replay Passcode 88949054 (Replay available until 06/15/2016)

The Company also provided an update on regulatory matters. In response to an application made by the Company in connection with the Company's previously announced delay in filing its interim financial statements for the quarter ended March 31, 2016 (together with the required associated filings, the "Canadian Required Filings") with Canadian securities regulators until after the May 15, 2016 filing deadline, the Autorite des marches financiers (the company's principal securities regulator in Canada) issued a customary management cease trade order ("MCTO") on May 17, 2016 relating to the trading in securities of the Company by the Company's CEO and CFO and each other member of the Company's board of directors. Keeping with common practice, an MCTO relating to a director of the Company who is resident in Ontario was issued by the Ontario Securities Commission on that same date. The MCTOs do not affect the ability of other shareholders to trade in the securities of the Company.

In connection with the issuance of the MCTOs, and in accordance with its obligation to provide bi-weekly updates under the alternative information guidelines set out in National Policy 12-203 Cease Trade Orders for Continuous Disclosure Defaults, the Company confirms that it has fulfilled its stated intentions regarding compliance with such alternative information guidelines and that, except as previously disclosed, there have been no material changes to the information relating to the Company's delay in making the Canadian Required Filings or its other required filings under applicable Canadian securities laws or otherwise concerning the affairs of the Company.

About Valeant

Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Inc. (NYSE/TSX: VRX) is a multinational specialty pharmaceutical company that develops, manufactures and markets a broad range of pharmaceutical products primarily in the areas of dermatology, gastrointestinal disorders, eye health, neurology and branded generics. More information about Valeant can be found at www.valeant.com.

Forward-looking Statements

This press release may contain forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, statements regarding Valeant's financial reporting and future prospects. Forward-looking statements may generally be identified by the use of the words "anticipates," "expects," "intends," "plans," "should," "could," "would," "may," "will," "believes," "estimates," "potential," "target," or "continue" and variations or similar expressions. These statements are based upon the current expectations and beliefs of management and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties discussed in the Company's most recent annual or quarterly report and detailed from time to time in Valeant's other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Canadian Securities Administrators, which factors are incorporated herein by reference. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any of these forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof. Valeant undertakes no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this press release or to reflect actual outcomes, unless required by law.

Contact Information:

Laurie W. Little[email protected]orElif McDonald[email protected]514-856-3855 877-281-6642 (toll free)

Media:Renee SotoorChris Kittredge/Jared LevySard Verbinnen & Co.212-687-8080

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20101025/LA87217LOGO

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/valeant-pharmaceuticals-to-hold-conference-call-on-june-7-2016-300277236.html

SOURCE Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Inc.
Billionaire activist-investor Carl Icahn gives an interview on FOX Business Network's Neil Cavuto show in New York February 11, 2014. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

(Reuters) - Billionaire investor Carl Icahn said on Tuesday he had acquired a "large position" in Botox-maker Allergan Plc (NYSE: AGN) and that he was very supportive of Chief Executive Officer Brent Saunders.

Shares of Allergan rose 0.8 percent to $237.85 in mid-morning trading.

Icahn, who did not disclose details of the stake, said in a statement on his website that he was confident in Saunders' ability to enhance value for all Allergan shareholders. (http://bit.ly/1UatnIM)

Allergan has "no reason to believe that this investment was made for purposes of influencing the actions of management or control of the company," spokesman Mark Marmur said in an emailed statement.

Saunders has come close to Icahn before. Saunders became CEO of Allergan after it was bought by Actavis, where he had been CEO, and then changed its name. Saunders had moved into the top spot at Actavis from the CEO job at Forest Labs, which Actavis acquired.

Icahn had a Forest Labs stake and was agitating for change when the company's long-time management ceded control and Saunders took the CEO job in 2013. Icahn said he sold the Forest position when the company changed hands.

Allergan is near to closing the sale of its generic business to Teva Pharmaceutical Industries (NYSE: TEVA). Once that happens, Saunders has said the company will be able to make acquisitions of more than $1 billion. Allergan needs to pay off more debt before it will make even bigger deals, he has said.

The move comes a few months after Allergan's plans to be bought by Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) fell apart. In that so-called "inversion" deal, Pfizer would have moved its headquarter to Dublin, where Allergan is based, in order to lower the taxes it pays in the United States.

Icahn, who launched a $150 million political action committee advocating tax reform to eliminate such deals, had said the Pfizer-Allergan tie-up would result in the loss of the country's 10th largest company to Ireland.

The government effectively blocked that deal by issuing new tax rules that made it less favorable.

(Reporting by Caroline Humer in New York and Amrutha Penumudi in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Alan Crosby)
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) - Four civilians were killed and 19 people were wounded by an explosion in the town of Silopi in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast on Monday, security sources said.

Five of the wounded were members of the security forces, the sources said. Silopi, like many towns across the southeast, has been scorched by violence since the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) abandoned its 2-1/2-year ceasefire with the government last year.

(Reporting by Seyhmus Cakan and Ayla Jean Yackley; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Andrew Roche)
Philippine presidential candidate and Davao city mayor Rodrigo 'Digong' Duterte raised his arm by a supporter during a "Miting de Avance" (last political campaign rally) before the national elections at Rizal park in metro Manila, Philippines May 7, 2016

By Neil Jerome Morales

DAVAO CITY, Philippines (Reuters) - Philippines President-elect Rodrigo Duterte said on Tuesday his country would not rely on long-term security ally the United States, signaling greater independence from Washington in dealing with China and the disputed South China Sea.

The Philippines has traditionally been one of Washington's staunchest supporters in its standoff with Beijing over the South China Sea, a vital trade route where China has built artificial islands, airstrips and other military facilities.

Duterte, the tough-talking mayor of Davao City who swept to victory in a May 9 election, has backed multilateral talks to settle rows over the South China Sea that would include the United States, Japan and Australia as well as claimant nations.

He has also called on China, which claims most of the sea, to respect the 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone granted to coastal states under international law.

Asked by reporters if he would push for bilateral talks with China, Duterte replied: "We have this pact with the West, but I want everybody to know that we will be charting a course of our own.

"It will not be dependent on America. And it will be a line that is not intended to please anybody but the Filipino interest."

Asked about Duterte's comments at a State Department briefing, Daniel Russel, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, said the United States had "no problem whatsoever" with bilateral talks among the South China Sea claimants.

Russel noted that some disputes in the South China Sea were by their nature multilateral and could not be resolved on a bilateral basis, but added "those that can, we're all for it."Duterte made his comments as he was unveiling his cabinet line-up a day after a joint session of Congress declared him the election winner. He formally takes over as president on June 30.

Key ministerial appointments went mainly to conventional choices, a decision likely to allay nerves among foreign and domestic investors about a lurch away from reforms that have generated robust economic growth.

They also may point to a bid to resolve differences over the South China Sea.

The Philippines, Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia and Taiwan have overlapping claims to waters rich in oil and gas and through which trillions of dollars' worth of trade pass each year.

Duterte's pick for foreign secretary, Perfecto Yasay, has sounded a conciliatory note.

"I don't think that there is another way of resolving this dispute except talking to each other," Yasay told reporters this week. "We certainly would like to make sure that we are able to resume bilateral talks because these are necessary."

NOT SO CLEAR CUT

Muddying the picture somewhat was the choice of Nicanor Faeldon, a former marine who led a coup bid about a decade ago, as head of the customs bureau, the country's second-largest agency in terms of revenue.

In December, Faeldon took a group of Filipino protesters to a disputed island in the South China Sea that is held by the Philippines, triggering an angry response from Beijing.

Before Duterte's election, the Philippines also took the dispute to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, although China does not recognize the case. A ruling is expected in the coming weeks.

"I am waiting for the arbitration," Duterte said of the process, when asked about investment prospects with China.

"It will impact on us in so many fronts ... I would like to wait for this, then, with the advice of the cabinet, I might be able to proceed. But you know, I am not ready to go to war. It will just result in a massacre."

Duterte, 71, named a former school classmate, Carlos Dominguez, as finance minister, and an economics professor, Ernesto Pernia, as economic planning minister.

"I can assure you they are all men of integrity and honesty," Duterte said in Davao, where he was mayor for more than two decades before being elected president.

Dominguez, who was mining and farm minister in two previous governments, hails from a wealthy family that has interests in real estate and hotels, while the U.S.-educated Pernia is a former lead economist for the Asian Development Bank.

"We are very excited about this cabinet," said Perry Pe, president of the Management Association of the Philippines. "They will hit the ground running from the first day."

Duterte's defiance of political tradition has drawn comparisons with U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

His "man-of-the-people" demeanor tapped into voters' disappointment at the ruling elite's failure to tackle poverty and inequality despite average economic growth of more than 6 percent under President Benigno Aquino.

Duterte condones execution-style killings of criminals, shudders at the thought of wearing a tie or socks, and has vowed not to work until after noon when he becomes president.

Some cabinet positions have yet to be announced, and two of the 21 jobs confirmed so far are women. When a female journalist asked a question at the briefing, Duterte wolf-whistled.

(Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales Additional reporting by Manuel Mogato and Karen Lema in Manila; Writing by Mike Collett-White; Editing by Ian Geoghegan and James Dalgleish)
By Ruma Paul

DHAKA (Reuters) - Six men were sentenced to death in Bangladesh on Tuesday for killing eight people during a bank robbery in Dhaka last year that police blamed on Islamist militants, the public prosecutor said.

Although no group claimed responsibility for the robbery, police blame two outlawed groups, Ansarullah Bangla Team and Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, which have been active in a recent surge of Islamist militant violence in Bangladesh.

Since early last year, almost 30 people have been killed in militant attacks, some of which were claimed by Islamic State and al Qaeda. The government denies either network has a presence in Bangladesh, blaming home-grown groups instead.

Public Prosecutor Khandaker Abdul Mannan said the defendants had confessed to being members of Ansarullah Bangla Team and Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen during the trial.

"They committed a heinous crime. They killed innocent people," Mannan told reporters outside the court after the sentencing.

The men were sentenced to death by hanging. One suspect was still on the run, Mannan said. Another man was sentenced to life imprisonment and two others were handed three-year jail terms. Two more were acquitted.

The gang set off crude bombs as it fled a branch of state-run Bangladesh Commerce Bank on the outskirts of Dhaka, the capital, with takings of 700,000 taka ($8,900). They had killed the manager to get the key to the vault.

Of the nine people killed, one was a robber who was chased and beaten to death by customers and bystanders.

Defense lawyer Faruq Ahmed said his clients would appeal the verdict and that they had been denied justice.

"The video footage of the robbery was not produced before the court," he said.

The authorities blame Ansarullah Bangla Team for a series of attacks since February last year in which five atheist bloggers, a publisher and two gay rights activists were hacked to death.

The hardline Islamist groups want to impose strict Islamic law on Bangladesh, whose population of 160 million are mostly moderate Muslims.

The government has launched a security crackdown that has seen dozens arrested. At least five Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen members, including the alleged mastermind of the robbery, have been killed in shootouts since November, according to the police.

Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen has laid low since six of its leaders were hanged in 2007 for attacks that included 500 bombs exploding almost simultaneously on a single day in 2005, some in Dhaka.

(Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Raissa Kasolowsky)
Sunni politician Ashraf Rifi shows his ink-stained finger after casting his ballot at a polling station during Tripoli's municipal elections, Lebanon, May 29, 2016. REUTERS/Stringer

By Tom Perry and Laila Bassam

BEIRUT (Reuters) - A hawkish Lebanese Sunni politician has won local elections in the second largest city of Tripoli in a result that marks a blow to long-established Sunni leaders and risks reviving tensions among rival sectarian groups there.

The municipal elections under way nationwide for a month have been seen as an important indicator of sentiment in Lebanon, where a political crisis has twice forced the postponement of parliamentary elections that should have been held in 2013.

A list backed by emerging Sunni politician Ashraf Rifi won a majority of seats on the council elected in Tripoli on Sunday, defeating an alliance backed by Sunni leaders including former prime ministers Saad al-Hariri and Najib Mikati.

Preliminary results indicated that none of the 24 seats on the council were won by members of the Christian or Alawite communities which were both represented in the outgoing council.

One analyst described the result as a sign of growing hardline sentiment in the mostly Sunni city that is a historic bastion of Sunni Islamist groups.

A Christian MP from Tripoli resigned in response to the result. In a statement, Robert Fadel said the outcome had marginalized "more than one fundamental component" of the council and called for a review of the election law so that "it doesn't unintentionally turn into a source of strife".

Rifi is a former police chief who resigned as justice minister this year in protest at what he described as the dominant role occupied by Hezbollah, a heavily armed Shi'ite group backed by Iran.

Analysts say he was seeking to stake out a position as an uncompromising Sunni rival to Hariri by quitting the government.

Rifi, who comes from Tripoli, has heaped criticism on Hariri, son of the late statesman Rafik al-Hariri, for nominating a Hezbollah ally to fill the vacant presidency.

Speaking at a televised news conference on Monday, Rifi said Hariri's decision to back Maronite politician Suleiman Franjieh for that post had been unacceptable to his constituents in northern Lebanon.

ANALYST SEES GROWING EXTREMISM

Rifi said his Sunni rivals had failed to grasp a shifting mood in the region as Sunni power Saudi Arabia takes a tougher position against Shi'ite Iran. They had also failed to grasp the weakness of the Syrian government, he said.

Both Tehran and Damascus are allies of Hezbollah.

"Nobody knew that the Sunni mood in Lebanon would no longer accept surrender or complacency. It wants its right as citizens," Rifi told Reuters.

He also called for coexistence in the city, adding that his list included Christian and Alawite candidates who had not appeared to win, though the counting was not over.

The turnout appeared low, with initial indications of just over a fifth of voters taking part, according to activists working with the campaigns. Estimates for the number of seats won by Rifi's list ranged from 16 to 22.

Tripoli has been a focal point of instability linked to the Syria conflict since it began in 2011.

Sunni Islamists waged an armed insurrection with the army in Tripoli in 2014, and fighting has also erupted in the city between members of the Sunni and Alawite communities. The last major violence was a suicide bomb attack in January, 2015.

Nabil Boumonsef, a political commentator with An-Nahar newspaper, said: "It is certain that Ashraf Rifi won under the slogan of extremism. The interesting thing is that a democratic process has resulted in the new slogan of extremism in Tripoli.

Writing on Twitter, Hariri called for cooperation for the sake of Tripoli. "We confirm respect for the democratic will of the people of Tripoli who have picked their new municipal council," he said.

(Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan (R) and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are pictured during the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, Turkey, May 23, 2016. REUTERS/Ozan Kose

By Tulay Karadeniz and Noah Barkin

ANKARA/BERLIN (Reuters) - Turkey's president warned Germany on Tuesday that its plans to declare the 1915 mass killing of Armenians a genocide would damage bilateral ties, raising new concerns about an EU-Turkey migrant deal championed by Chancellor Angela Merkel.

German lawmakers are expected to approve a symbolic resolution on Thursday that labels the killings of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman forces "genocide", a description that Turkey strongly rejects.

The vote had been scheduled to take place over a year ago, on the 100th anniversary of the massacre, but Merkel's allies in parliament pushed it back repeatedly out of concern that it could hurt relations with Ankara.

Now they have run out of time and may be wishing they had let the vote take place sooner.

The opposition Greens have pushed the resolution onto the agenda at an extremely awkward time for Merkel, the driving force behind an agreement between the EU and Ankara that has helped slash the number of illegal migrants entering Europe.

The deal has eased political pressure on Merkel at home. But it has been under a cloud since its strongest proponent in the Turkish government, Ahmet Davutoglu, was pushed out as prime minister this month. Since then, President Tayyip Erdogan has questioned aspects of the agreement and some of his allies have even threatened to unleash a new wave of refugees on Europe.

In comments to reporters before he left for an official visit to Africa, Erdogan lashed out at those who he said were trying to "deceive" Germany over the 1915 events, without accusing anyone in particular.

"If Germany is to be deceived by this, then bilateral diplomatic, economic, trade, political, and military ties - we are both NATO countries - will be damaged," he said.

The comments came after he spoke to Merkel by telephone to express his concern about the resolution. Sources in both capitals said Erdogan had initiated the call.

GERMAN HISTORY

The resolution, which is formally supported by Merkel's conservative bloc, the center-left Social Democrats and the Greens, uses the word "genocide" in the headline and text.

"The fate of the Armenians is exemplary in the history of mass exterminations, ethnic cleansing, deportations and yes, genocide, which marked the 20th century in such a terrible way," it reads.

The resolution also touches on the "inglorious" role of the German Empire, a military ally of the Ottomans, because it did nothing to stop the massacre.

Turkey argues that the there was no organized campaign to wipe out the Armenians, who are Christian, and no evidence of any such orders from the Ottoman authorities.

Cem Oezdemir, a leader of the Greens with Turkish roots, told Reuters he had experienced weeks of personal attacks from Turkish nationalists on social media and via email because of his role in championing the resolution.

"It wasn't our goal to hold this vote now," Oezdemir said. "But the timing is not that important. The Bundestag is doing this because this is also a part of German history. The Ottoman and German empires were essentially brothers in arms."

The vote coincides with deepening public scepticism in Germany toward Turkey and Erdogan in particular. Critics accuse Merkel of going soft on Ankara over human rights because of her desire to stem the flow of migrants.

Last month she drew fire for allowing German prosecutors to look into charges against a comedian who mocked Erdogan in a crude poem. The comedian, Jan Boehmermann, has accused Merkel of serving him "up for tea to a highly strung despot".

Merkel and other top ministers are expected to vote for the resolution, although some, including Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, have questioned the wisdom of it in public.

Some officials fear it could stir tensions with the roughly 3 million people of Turkish origin who live in Germany.

Last year, German President Joachim Gauck condemned the killings of Armenians as "genocide" in a speech to mark the 100th anniversary of the massacres. Germany had previously avoided using the term in connection with the massacre.

(This version of the story was refiled to insert Erdogan's full name in paragraph 6.)

(Reporting by Tulay Karadeniz, Ece Toksabay and Seda Sezar in Ankara and Istanbul and Noah Barkin in Berlin; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Alison Williams)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two U.S. service members were injured over the weekend, one each in Iraq and Syria, a Pentagon spokesman said on Tuesday.

"They were not on the front lines, they were not engaged in active combat, but they were hit in both cases by indirect fire and suffered injuries," Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said.

The United States has authorized 4,087 troops in Iraq and 300 in Syria.

Since December, Iraqi forces trained by the U.S. military and backed by coalition air strikes have taken back territory from Islamic State, which seized swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter told reporters in Huachuca, Arizona, that the injuries were a result of combat.

"Yes of course ... these people were in harms way as part of the campaign plan execution to defeat ISIL," Carter said in response to a question.

Davis did not say to which branch of the military the injured belonged, but said they were carrying out advise and assist duties.

He said the incident in Iraq took place in the north, near Erbil, while the injury in Syria was north of Raqqa, Islamic State's de facto capital.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali; Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Alan Crosby and Leslie Adler)


UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20549

FORM 8-K

CURRENT REPORT

Pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of

the Securities Exchange Act of 1934

Date of Report (Date of earliest event reported): May 24, 2016

COLONY BANKCORP, INC.

(Exact name of Registrant as Specified in Charter)

Georgia 000-12436 58-1492391 (State or Other Jurisdiction

of Incorporation) (Commission

File Number) (I.R.S. Employer

Identification No.)

115 South Grant Street, Fitzgerald, Georgia 317501

(Address of Principal Executive Offices)

(229) 426-6000

Registrants telephone number, including area code

NOT APPLICABLE

(Former name or former address, if changed since last report)

Check the appropriate box below if the Form 8-K filing is intended to simultaneously satisfy the filing obligation of the registrant under any of the following provisions:

 Written communications pursuant to Rule 425 under the Securities Act (17 CFR 230.425)

 Soliciting material pursuant to Rule 14a-12 under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14a-12)

 Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 14d-2(b) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14d-2(b))

 Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 13e-4(c) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.13e-4(c))

Item 5.02 Departure of Directors or Certain Officers; Election of Directors; Appointment of Certain Officers; Compensatory Arrangements of Certain Officers

On May 24, 2016, Colony Bankcorp, Inc. (the  Company ) announced the promotion of Mr. J. Stan Cook to Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Company and the Companys wholly owned subsidiary, Colony Bank (the  Bank ), effective immediately. Prior to his promotion, Mr. Cook served as the Banks Director of Operations.

Mr. Cook, 54, joined the Company on July 23, 2012 as a member of the Banks senior management team. He was charged with improving the Banks operation and information technology systems and preparing the Bank to operate in compliance with the Dodd Frank Act. Prior to that time, Mr. Cook served as the Chief Regional Executive of Atlantic Southern Bank, which he joined in 2006. In this capacity, he oversaw the development of the Banks Mid-South market and was responsible for the Banks retail management, operations, compliance, information technology, and building management. Mr. Cook earned his BBA in Finance from Georgia Southern University in 1984 and his MBA from Georgia College and State University in 1991. He also is a 1996 graduate of the LSU Graduate School of Banking.

Mr. Cook will not be entering into an employment agreement with the Company. In connection with his promotion to Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Company and the Bank, Mr. Cook will receive a base salary of $158,000 per year. Mr. Cook will also be eligible to participate in any other compensation and benefits programs that are available to the Companys executive officers. Mr. Cook previously entered into a Retention Agreement with the Company, effective as of March 27, 2015 (the  Retention Agreement ), pursuant to which Mr. Cook is entitled to:

 a retention bonus equal to 0.75 times his base salary, payable in a single lump sum within thirty days following a change in control of the Company that occurs prior to March 27, 2018, provided that he remains employed by the Bank on the date of the change in control; provided, however, that if his employment is terminated by the Bank without cause (as such term is defined in the Retention Agreement) within the ninety-day period immediately preceding the change in control, then he will remain eligible to receive the change in control bonus in the event of a change in control; and





 a post-closing retention bonus equal to 0.75 times his base salary, payable in a single lump sum within thirty days following the successful core data processing conversion of the Bank in connection with the change in control, provided that he is employed by the Bank on such date; provided, however, that if his employment is terminated by the Bank without cause (as such term is defined in the Retention Agreement) within the ninety-day period immediately preceding the change in control or between the date of the change in control and the conversion of the Bank, then he will remain eligible to receive the post-closing retention bonus.

The Retention Agreement will remain in effect pursuant to the terms specified therein.

No family relationships exist between Mr. Cook and any of the Companys directors or executive officers. There are no arrangements between Mr. Cook and any other person pursuant to which Mr. Cook was selected as an officer, nor are there any transactions to which the Company is or was a participant and in which Mr. Cook has a material interest subject to disclosure under Item 404(a) of Regulation S-K.

Item 9.01 Financial Statements and Exhibits.

(d) Exhibits

None



SIGNATURES

In accordance with the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, the Company duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned hereunto duly authorized.
Emergency services are at the scene of a truck crash in a driveway in Northcote.

A delivery truck carrying LPG canisters smashed through a fence and got stuck in a driveway after attempting a tight turn.

The crash happened in Howard Rd, Northcote, on Auckland's North Shore, about 9.30am on Tuesday.

Fire Service spokeswoman Dallas Ramsay said the Contact Energy truck was carrying 37 cylinders of gas.

Felicity Reid The truck was left hanging over the edge of a driveway after the driver attempted a tight turn.

It ploughed through a retaining wall, but there was no gas leak.

Neighbour Jim Richardson said the truck was suspended over the edge of a driveway.

"It's knocked the fence down. The front of the truck has gone over and the cab and front axel have been suspended on the edge of the drop.

"The driver's tried to turn around, I don't know what he's done. It's down a right of way, so getting a crane down is going to be part of the problem. It's pretty well wedged there."

Neighbour Murray Hood said he heard the crash and when he went to inspect he saw the truck "hanging between" two properties.

"It's driven from one driveway then got stuck in the neighbouring property."

Ramsay said the Fire Service and police had called for heavy haulage to come and clear the truck and safely transfer the gas bottles.

Quin Webster, the senior station officer at the Takapuna Fire Station, said the driver had been taken to hospital with minor injuries.

He was unsure if the driver had been in the truck at the time.

Gas delivery drivers normally used a trolley to transport bottles down driveways, rather than trying to manoeuvre a vehicle, Webster said.

The Fire Service had used a winch to prevent the truck from rolling any further.

"It's going to be a challenging removal ... It's going to be a long process, I suspect."

Firefighters would talk with police, haulage and power company workers to figure out the best option for removing the truck.

A Contact spokesman said staff were on site to ensure the safe removal of the gas bottles and vehicle.

"We will also be working with residents to assess property damage."
Jiaxin Tu appeared at the High Court at Auckland on Tuesday.

A man accused of murdering a sleeping teenager with a hammer did so because of jealousies over the victim's girlfriend, the High Court at Auckland has heard.

The trial of Jiaxin Tu began at the High Court at Auckland on Tuesday with an opening address from Crown prosecutor Kirsten Lummis.

Tu has pleaded not guilty to the murder of 19-year-old Shane Hawe-Wilson, who was killed at a Panmure home in the early hours of July 1 last year.

SUPPLIED Shane Hawe-Wilson died at his Panmure flat.

The Crown told jurors that the motive for the killing was Hawe-Wilson's girlfriend, who Tu had been obsessed with for many years.

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The court heard Tu had developed an unhealthy obsession with the girl, who had moved next door to his family's home in 2010.

She was just 12 years old at the time, while he was in his 30s.

As she grew older the pair developed a close friendship. Tu would buy the girl, now a teenager, cigarettes and alcohol and shower her with money.

Lummis said Tu was so infatuated with the teen that he allegedly tried to hire a hitman to kill her boyfriend at the time.

"The Crown case was that Mr Tu was so keen to have her to himself that he took steps to hire a hit man, something we think doesn't happen here in New Zealand and only happens in movies," Lummis told the jury.

The two families noticed the relationship between the pair and there was conjecture over whether the pair had become sexually intimate or not, Lummis said.

Text messages would later show the girl had "begged" Tu to visit her and for him to give her money and alcohol in return for sexual favours, the court heard.

By May 2015 authorities had become aware of the fact Tu suffered from mental health issues, as well as his relationship with the teen.

He was given a non-association order to prevent him from contacting her.

The girl later left her family after they disapproved of a relationship she had developed with her cousin, Shane Hawe-Wilson.

The pair moved into a flat in Jellicoe Rd, Panmure, with another friend.

Tu was offered a bed there after also moving out of his family home - a situation Lummis called "a recipe for disaster".

Animosity between Tu and Hawe-Wilson grew and Tu ended up offering about $5000 to Hawe-Wilson in return for his going back to his native Whanganui.

That would pave the way for Tu to have Hawe-Wilson's girlfriend to himself, Lummis said.

The two men drew up a contract but over the days before Hawe-Wilson's death, the occupants of the house had several drinking sessions which led to physical arguments between the four flatmates, the court heard.

The arguing came to a head in the early hours of July 1.

At about 2am Tu left the house for a walk, and spotting two policeman doing a patrol, he told them he'd been kidnapped and tortured.

Police, aware of his mental health issues, told him to make a report to the police station in the morning.

Returning to the Jellicoe Rd home afterward, Tu was said to have searched through kitchen cupboards until he found a wooden builder's hammer.

He then crept into the room where the teenager he was infatuated with was sleeping with Hawe-Wilson.

"He stood over the sleeping couple and administered two, if not three, blows to Mr Hawe-Wilson's head," Lummis said.

The blows were so forceful pieces of Hawe-Wilson's skull were found embedded into his brain, she said.

"He didn't stand a chance. His wounds were fatal. His death was so sudden he didn't wake. In fact, he barely moved."

Despite this, Hawe-Wilson's girlfriend didn't wake until hours later, about 7am, when Tu again crept into the room and got into bed with a lifeless Hawe-Wilson and the teenage girl.

Tu attempted to undress her but the teenager woke up and chased him out of the room. Then she noticed the blood, Lummis said.

Emergency services arrived and Tu told police he had "no alternative but to end Mr Hawe-Wilson's life to save his own", Lummis said.

Tu's defence lawyer Peter Tomlinson said his client accepted he had killed Hawe-Wilson, but had only done it because he was clinically insane at the time.

"The issue is not who caused the death of the deceased, it's not about how it happened, it's really about why," Tomlinson said.

"There's no dispute the defendant caused the death of Mr Hawe-Wilson. What the defendant does say to you is that at the time he caused that death, he was so mentally impaired he was incapable of knowing that what he did was morally wrong."

However, Lummis said the evidence would show Tu was not clinically insane at the time of the killing.

"He knew what he was doing and he knew it was wrong."
Cindy Waldron's family and friends have paid tribute to the "gentle, caring person" with the "bright beautiful smile", who is feared dead in a crocodile attack.

Waldron, 46, was swimming with her friend Leeann Mitchell, 47, in a beach in Northern Queensland's Daintree when she was snatched by the reptile.

Mitchell told searchers Waldron screamed out "A croc has got me."

Mitchell then ran over to try and wrestle Waldron away from the croc, but failed.

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Wendy Sheard, who met Waldron in 2005 when they both lived in the Blue Mountains suburb of Leura, said everyone was stunned and in disbelief over what had happened.

"I don't think she had a mean bone in her body. She wasn't a careless person, she was fun and full of life. She made a mistake and it ended her life in such a horrific way. She had so many friends, and people loved her because she loved people," Sheard said.

Waldron had just bought a dream house in Lithgow, and was planning on setting up a studio in it, she said.

"She was a young woman who had finally managed to buy her own home and was beginning to live her dream life. I had never seen her so happy."

Sheard had visited her last Thursday for a "cuppa".

"I can't begin to tell you how stunned and shattered we all are. I still cannot believe that it's true. I feel that if I just go around to her house I will find her there enjoying life."

Cindy's parents Pat and Heather, told NZME they were still coming to terms with the death of their daughter.

Their other daughter Anna-Lee Annett had flown up from Wellington, and they were trying to get flights to Queensland.

So far the earliest flights they can find is on Thursday.

"There's nothing we can do as such but we need to be there on the ground to show that we are there, that we care. Our darling girl is gone," Pat said.

"We are pretty upset. Everybody knows about it. It's everywhere."

The Tauranga community had been incredible in a show of support, he said.

"Our house was filled with people yesterday but we were too stunned to think 'what's our next move'."

Pat said Mitchell had managed to contact Cindy's former boyfriend to tell the Waldron family what had happened.

Mitchell's brother Rob made a statement on behalf of his sister and family. "All we will say, as a family, is that our thoughts are with Cindy's family and we are rallying in support of Leeann, who is still in hospital and traumatised. She has good friends in Australia for support and we are working out what to do at this point."

Meanwhile friends are paying tribute to Cindy Waldron.

Photos of Waldron and her friends flooded social media.

Christine Killinger said "RIP you beautiful soul--- you will be sorely missed. This tragedy is incomprehensible."

Phillippa Helming shared a photo of herself in the Blue Mountains Waldron had taken "...she told me how she'd terrify brides by taking them up there. But they'd always end up with such great shots. I just can't believe it."

Kayo Yakoya posted a link to a story on Waldron with the comment "It is her... Cindy Waldron... Why?"

Like so many others I will miss you and your beautiful smile for ever. So blessed to have known you my friend. RIP <3, friend Karin Pearson posted.

Darling Cindy Waldron, how missed you will be..."I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere near, just round the corner..." another friend Megan R Williams wrote, accompanied by a photo of a passage on death.

Antonella Fellini replied "It is so very,very heartbreaking! I saw the picture she sent of the Daintree. A beautiful picture and then the next minute she was gone. It's amazing how fragile life is!! I cannot begin to imagine the pain all those that knew and loved her must be in right now. I am sorry for all your loss. Megan R William what you posted was beautiful."

Annie Metcalfe posted a picture with the statement "Remembering the fabulous times we spent with our gorgeous friend...Cindy Waldron."
The Government has said it will not sign up to an international prison transfer scheme.

A Kiwi man locked up in a one of Japan's largest jails is pleading with the Government to bring him home.

Owen George, 30, was arrested at Narita International Airport in 2011 after a suitcase, which belonged to him and his partner, was found to contain 2.2 kilograms of methamphetamine.

Speaking from Fuchu prison, he asked the Government to sign up to an international prison transfer scheme that would make it possible to serve the remainder of his nine-year sentence at home.

New Zealand is the only one of 34 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) not to have signed a deal allowing its citizens to be transferred home to serve their sentences.

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"We are so out of step with the international community on this, how could it even warrant debating? It is a must have," he said.

"It is an Orwellian nightmare here, oppressive and austere. Personal freedom does not exist."

He said he was not looking for public sympathy, but was hopeful the Government would consider signing up to the agreement.

Being transferred back to New Zealand would mean he would be able to see his family, and young child.

"The pain of being so far away from loved ones never diminishes. I carry it constantly. I wake up with it, I lunch with it, go to bed with it. It is my sole companion.

"Apart from when I am at work, I spend the remainder of my life locked in a cell by myself. No-one to talk to, or see for days on end. I have two showers per seven days ... Punishment always looms. Give me Mt Eden any day."

Justice Minister Amy Adams said New Zealand had not, and would not, sign up to an agreement because of the financial implications.

"This would involve diverting scarce public resources from domestic priorities to repatriate New Zealanders who, knowing the risks, have broken the law of another country."

Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade figures, supplied under the Official Information Act, show that in February this year there were 81 New Zealanders registered in foreign jails.
After 28 years, Anna Reed is stepping down from her dream job.

Reed, 72, will retire from her role as New Zealand Prostitutes' Collective regional co-ordinator on June 2.

"It's time for different energy to come in, young blood. And I'm really looking forward to getting up at 9am," she said.

"Someone will bring in their own style . . . I just hope that they have a lot of love in their heart because that's important."

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For the last 28 years, Reed had supported sex workers in Christchurch and across New Zealand.

HAANA HOWARD Anna Reed and Christchurch Central MP Tim Barnett outside Parliament in 2000 after the announcement of a members bill aimed at decriminalising prostitution.

"We've given sex workers human rights and it's very gratifying when they use them."

The most "euphoric" moment of her career came with the passing of the Prostitution Reform Act in June 2003, which decriminalised prostitution in New Zealand.

"I will never ever forget that. It took a lot of people."

"At the time there were some very loud voices . . . saying prostitutes are predators.

"We [Prostitutes Collective] were considered pretty radical when we emerged in the late 80s. Now we're boringly mainstream."

Her fascination for the industry struck at a young age. She would scour the court pages of the Evening Post in Wellington and question why women were going to jail for procuring.

Then she discovered Amsterdam's red light district during a stint living in Europe.

"I stood in front of one of those window girls and I had an absolute epiphany. I thought 'I want to do that'. Not sit in the window, but 'I know what you're doing and I would enjoy it'."

In 1978, at age 35 and with two children, Reed returned to Christchurch and became a sex worker.

DAVID HALLETT/FAIRFAX NZ Anna Reed speaks to media outside the High Court in Christchurch in 2006 after the sentencing of Jule Patrick Burns for the murder of sex worker Suzie Sutherland.

"I borrowed clothes because all I had in those days were gumboots."

For 23 years, she worked in massage parlours, where "appalling practises were commonplace".

"Workers had no rights whatsoever and some of the bosses shouldn't have been running businesses that involved women at all.

"These things in the sex industry did not sit well with me at all . . . I've always been passionate about rights. I think it's inherent somewhere in my genes, because my father was a Polish Jew. So I know a little bit about persecution and discrimination. I know it in my bones.

Managing the Collective had been the "dream job" when it emerged, although finding an office for NZPC was difficult.

"There was this assumption that there would be all these people with fish net stockings hanging around trying to entice people into the doorway. People's imaginations go wild.

"I've never seen anything wrong with consensual adult sex, from day one."

For Reed, the nature of today's sex work still baffled her.

"People come in here to buy their supplies and they're on the phone booking in a client, describing themselves, their services and prices. Still, I look at them in awe. Once upon a time we were not allowed to say anything . . . it could be very incriminating to yourself if you said anything on the phone because the police pretended to be clients."

ALDEN WILLIAMS/FAIRFAX NZ "I've never seen anything wrong with consensual adult sex," sex worker advocate Anna Reed says.

A strong relationship now existed between police and NZPC in Christchurch, which Reed was proud of. She said it followed the murder of Suzie Sutherland in 2005.

"They've treated people in the sex industry very compassionately. Not that they shouldn't. It strikes me as being something quite remarkable, having had the history that we had.

"It's for the benefit of our people that we're all working on preventative measures."

Reed was the first to acknowledge she had enjoyed a "unique experience" when it came to sex work, which was not applicable to all.

"I think that's why it was easy for me to become a public figure if need be and talk to various groups and individuals."

Framed photos of three Christchurch sex workers, murdered during Reed's career, sat on her desk. She had been involved with their families as a volunteer for Victim Support.

"I see them every day. They look at me every day."

She did not expect to have to frame another, in her final weeks with NZPC.

"What has happened . . . with Renee [Duckmanton] has really taken its toll on all of us really. I take violence against sex workers very, very personally."

Although attitudes toward sex workers had changed, there was still "a long way to go", she said.

"I would just like to see more tolerance and acceptance."

If she could have her time in the sex worker industry again, Reed would specialise in working with people with disabilities.

"Because I used to see the people a lot of other people didn't want to see. I see a need for a specialist service there. It's recognising the rights and needs of all people."
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The Supreme Court of Ukraine has argued that the formation of the National Commission for Energy, Housing and Utilities Services Regulation by the Ukrainian president is unconstitutional. The court filed relevant application to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine.

"The Supreme Court believes that when Ukraine was presidential-parliamentary republic, this was the prerogative of the president. But in February 2014 the Constitution implying the parliamentary presidential form of government was restored, so this is not the duty of the Ukrainian president anymore," Chief Justice Yaroslav Romaniuk said at a briefing in Kyiv on Monday.

Judge of the administrative chamber of the Supreme Court of Ukraine Oleh Kryvenda said that the Supreme Court on May 30 decided to ask the Constitutional Court of Ukraine if the law on natural monpolies, law on electricity, law on the state regulation in the utilities area, law on drinking water and water supplies, presidential decree of August 27, 2014 on the National Commission for Energy, Housing and Utilities Services Regulation, presidential decree of September 10, 2014 on the approval of the resolution on the National Commission for Energy, Housing and Utilities Services Regulation are in line with the Constitution of Ukraine.
Once again the populist are making attempts by using different methods to disrupt the negotiations between Ukraine and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with the aim of exacerbating the socio-political situation in the country. Their latest effort is the publication of a so-called "text of Memorandum with the IMF," Ukraine's Finance Ministry has said.

"A final text of the Memorandum does not exist. Negotiations on the final text of the Memorandum are still in process Finally approved and translated into Ukrainian language, text of Memorandum will be published by the Ministry of Finance on the official web-site of the ministry after signing of the Memorandum which is expected within this month," the ministry said.

The ministry said all communication between the government of Ukraine and the IMF is conducted in English.

Any interpretations of the so-called "text of Memorandum" which was been published in the Internet are not true and regarded as speculation (particularly with regard to retirement age, abolishment of the moratorium on sale of land), the ministry said.

"The government has conducted constructive negotiations with the IMF on key areas and made every effort to comprehensively protect the interests of citizens of Ukraine," the ministry said.

"The government is focused on changes that will improve the economic situation and provide citizens with the opportunity to receive respectable salaries, pensions, and public services. And the IMF is a reliable partner of Ukraine," the statement says.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman also said there is no final text of the memorandum with the IMF.
Ukraine hopes to have a breakthrough in its dialog with the United States and purchase parts for promising aerospace equipment. U.S. Honeywell in 2017 could start shipping military components to Ukraine's aerospace sector, Head of the State Space Agency of Ukraine (SSAU) Liubomyr Sabadosh has said.

Commenting on the results of his working visit to the United States held on May 23 through May 27, he said at a press conference on Monday in Kyiv that talks about U.S. assistance to compensate for the stoppage of cooperation with Russia in military space programs was launched by Ukraine and the United States in 2015.

Sabadosh said that during the talks with Honeywell as part of this visit, the purchase of parts for promising Ukrainian aerospace equipment by Ukraine was discussed.

"Honeywell has an opportunity of shipping components for space device manufacture," he said.

"Today we agreed to draft documents about military components we want to buy in the Untied States, replete with explanations about what products would be made, how they will be used and for what purposes," he said.

Ukraine stopped exporting military equipment to Russia in 2014.
A former Waikato woman with family in Tauranga is feared dead after being attacked by a crocodile in Australia.

Cindy Waldron was swimming with friend Leeann Mitchell at Thornton Beach, Daintree, North Queensland, about 10pm on Sunday when she screamed a croc has got me.
Councillors are being asked to adopt the Civic Space Options Programme Business Case, which recommends building a new Civic Administration building on Willow Street.

If decided, councillors will then seek to make changes to the Long Term Plan 2015-2025 subject to public consultation.
Tauranga Judge Louis Bidois has been recognised for his work in the Rangatahi Court.

Louis is one of eight judges who has received the Australasia Institute of Judicial Administration award for excellence in judicial administration for the pioneering work in the Nga Kooti Rangatahi/Rangatahi Court.

Courts and Justice Minister Amy Adams congratulates the judges and Ministry of Justice, in particular the Chief District Court Judge and Principal Youth Court Judge, and Youth Court Judge Heemi Taumaunu - who established the first Rangatahi Court in Gisborne back in 2008.

This award recognises the significant collaboration between courts and communities to help young New Zealanders turn their lives around.

Amy says the initiative is also gaining international recognition. Initial research suggests in the following year, participants committed 14 per cent fewer offences and were 11 per cent less likely to commit new offences.

The Courts are part of a suite of initiatives reducing offending by young Maori since 2009. In 2015, 1000 fewer Maori aged 12 to 16 appeared in the Youth Court compared to 2009  a reduction of 47 per cent.

The Rangatahi Courts address offending by young Maori by involving communities in the youth justice process and encouraging strong cultural links. The Court creates an environment where young people are supported by their whanau, kuia and kaumatua, to take ownership of their offending.

Young Maori and their whanau engage with the justice system, and draw upon the support of the marae, iwi, whanau and hapu to address the needs of the young person.

Rangatahi Courts are now widely accepted within New Zealands justice sector and by the Maori community, as a legitimate response by our courts in addressing some of the fundamental issues underlying offending by Maori youth in our country, and I congratulate the judiciary for this achievement, says Amy.

I also want to acknowledge the commitment of kaumatua and community leaders, and other supporters who are working together to make a difference in the lives of young people, their communities, and future generations.

Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration director Professor Greg Reinhardt presented the award to all eight Judges who established and lead the 14 marae-based Rangatahi and two Pasifika Courts: National Rangatahi Court Liaison Judge Heemi Taumaunu, Judge Louis Bidois, Judge Denise Clark, Judge Francis Eivers, Judge Greg Hikaka, Judge Alayne Wills, Judge Eddie Paul and Judge Ida Malosi. Kaumatua representing each marae will also be honoured for their support and contribution to the Courts.

The Judges who received their awards yesterday in Auckland, were nominated for the award by Chief District Court Jan-Marie Doogue and Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft.

They wanted to recognise the tireless personal and professional efforts of the eight Judges in developing the genuine and enduring relationships with Maori communities required to sustain such an initiative.

Chief Judge Doogue and Judge Becroft say this is an honour warranting celebration.

We can all feel proud that those who developed this uniquely New Zealand way of delivering justice into the heart of our communities have been honoured.

These Judges have taken courageous and significant steps on behalf of their own people to develop this innovative and culturally appropriate response to Maori and Pasifika youth offending.

There are five Rangatahi Courts in the Auckland region, plus courts in Gisborne, New Plymouth, Hamilton, Whakatane, Rotorua, Huntly, Tauranga, Taupo and Christchurch. The Two Pasifika courts are in Avondale and Mangere in Auckland.
The Police Media Centre says cordons were put in place in the Coastlands area to assist Police.

The man was stopped at one of the cordons and taken into custody.

Source: New Zealand Police.
The average asking price for a New Zealand house hit an all-time high with stock at an all-time low for May 2016, in a market which is heavily favouring sellers.

Real-time market statistics released by Realestate.co.nz show the May national average asking price reached $570,971, up 7.2 per cent from the same time the previous year.
Joy is the Owners first yacht, and a custom-built 70 metre with Feadship was an ambitious move as Jan-Bart Verkuyl, Director of Feadship, told the owner.Most people usually buy one or more pre-owned yachts before they embark on a new build but youre such an ambitious person that you decided to create something genuinely different from scratch.

You challenged us to make something totally unique which solely reflects the use that you have in mind  and the result is amazing. As the youngest owner weve ever created a Feadship for, the Joy project reflects the energy and enthusiasm of the next generation of clients who are coming to Feadship.

Joy is also a serious statement of intent by Bannenberg & Rowell as the London-based studio showcases its exterior expertise for the first time since the death of Jon Bannenberg in 2002.

The flow between the interior and exterior spaces and the generous wide walkways are without precedent on a motor yacht of this size, while fascinating concave shapes in the superstructure give Joy a design language and identity all of her own.

Joy was an incredibly complicated boat to build with so many shapes and lines, added Jan-Bart. We are very grateful to the fairing gods at Feadship and all the other craftsmen who have showcased their skills on such a unique boat.

In another debut, Joy features a contemporary classic interior by Studio Indigo. The London designers who facilitated a holistic design that makes it easy to extend the interior spaces by opening glass doors on to the main, owner and bridge decks aft.

Studio Indigo has worked amazingly hard to produce such a gorgeous design with an incredible focus on detail, said the owner in his speech. Im also delighted with Bannenberg & Rowells sleek and progressive profile that reflects my desire to go forward into the future. And I am grateful to Burgess for guiding us through the build process, which has been a genuinely enjoyable experience.

As he spoke, the owner reflected on a recent visit he made to Central Park in New York. When I saw the statue of Columbus it reminded me of how much joy this explorer felt when he first saw land. Today is my moment of joy as something I have long dreamt about has come to light. Im incredibly happy and sincerely grateful to Feadship and all the other team members who made this happen.

The owner concluded his launch speech with a special message for his two children which everyone at Feadship can heartily agree with: I hope that you will return here one day to build a 170-metre Feadship, and I look forward to being a part of the ceremony on that day!
Naftogaz Ukrainy owes $600 million for gas supplied to southeastern Ukraine, Alexander Medvedev, deputy CEO of Russia's Gazprom, told reporters.

"We present general bills for gas supplied. They aren't currently taking [the bills]. Not separate bills for Luhansk and Donetsk - there's one, general bill. Gas is supplied under one contract only. There are no separate contracts to supply Luhansk and Donetsk," Medvedev said.

"If you consider one region or another to be your own territory, and then refuse to pay for the gas that the citizens of your country have used on the territory, what then do we have? Are you saying this isn't part of Ukraine? We have a single contract to supply gas to Ukraine, including the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, where Ukrainian citizens live, where Ukrainian enterprises work, where Ukrainian pensioners, teachers, doctors live," he said.
Marianne Elizabeth, Jesper Sander Pedersen and Joanna Styles. :: S. H.

Fuengirola. The work of two Costa journalists was rewarded last week by the Costa Press Club with the Communicator 2015 award, re-branded for this edition of the annual prize as the Jack Nusbaum Memorial Communicator award as a tribute to the original promoter of the award and founder member of the club, who passed away in February last year.

Joanna Styles was presented with the award for her Guide to Malaga travel app ( www.guidetomalaga.com ) while Marianne Elizabeth won for her website East of Malaga ( www.eastofmalaga.net ).

The presentation of the awards, which recognise excellence in journalism, took place during the May meeting of the Costa Press Club and was celebrated at the popular Vegetalia restaurant in Fuengirola. The president, Jesper Sander Pedersen, congratulating the winners of the 2015 award, told those present that the nomination process for 2016 will be announced towards the end of the year. The award is open to all professionals with strong links to the Costa del Sol.

The Costa Press Club is an independent association for foreign media professionals. The association holds regular dinner meetings with guest speakers, as well as debates on topical issues related to the media and Spanish society in general.
Hungary's low-cost airline Wizz Air from August 2, 2016 will launch flights from Kyiv to Poland's Gdansk.

The airline's press service reported that it will service the flights twice a week on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Tickets can be bought on the airline's website at the price starting from UAH 559 (one way ticket, including all duties).

The airline said that the new flight would strengthen business relations between Ukraine and Poland and will stimulate the development of tourism.

Today Wizz Air offers flights on 10 routes from Kyiv to six countries.

Wizz Air's fleet consisted of 68 Airbus A320 aircraft and two A321 aircraft based at 25 bases throughout Central and Eastern Europe. Wizz Air's shares are listed on the London Stock Exchange.
Syracuse, N.Y. - Artisans are restoring the Hotel Syracuse's famous Grand Ballroom and its skyscape ceiling to their 1924 glory.

Employees of John Tiedemann Inc., a company in Arlington, N.J., that specializes in painting and decorating churches and historic buildings, have recreated the skyscape scene in the 10th floor ballroom based on historic photos and research.

When the hotel opened in 1924, the ballroom's ceiling was painted to resemble a sky with clouds. The idea was to create the impression that the ceiling was open to the sky.

At some point decades ago  no one knows exactly when  the ceiling was covered with acoustic tiles and painted white.

The tiles are still there, but the hotel's new owner, Ed Riley, had workers plaster over them. The ceiling was then painted blue and "air-brushed" with white clouds.

That's not the only change that has been made in the ballroom to restore it to the way it looked when the hotel opened in 1924 at South Warren and East Onondaga streets.

The room's walls also had been painted white over the years, giving the room a bright but somewhat washed-out look. By peeling off layers of paint, workers were able to determine that the room was originally light and dark shades of gold, Riley said.

Tiedemann employees are now repainting walls to match the original colors. Between the "sky" ceiling and the new paint job on the walls, the room is much more colorful than it had been in recent decades.

Workers also have painted the room's plaster columns a faux marble to match their original paint scheme. The room, for many decades a popular place for wedding receptions and large business meetings, also has new windows and will be getting new curtains.

Once the Grand Lady of Central New York hotels, the Hotel Syracuse went bankrupt in 2004 and closed. Riley bought the property in 2014 and is conducting a $70 million renovation.

He plans to reopen the hotel in July as the Marriott Syracuse Downtown, with 261 fully modern rooms and meticulously restored lobby and ballrooms.

The Grand Ballroom is one of the last rooms in the hotel to be restored, and it's receiving special attention.

"This whole floor is really the showcase of the building," Riley said. "This has the views. They're amazing, something you don't normally see in a ballroom."

Contact Rick Moriarty anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 315-470-3148
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The former P&C warehouse off State Fair Blvd. in Lakeland.

(David Lassman | dlassman@syracuse.com)

SYRACUSE, N.Y. - Five hundred former P&C grocery distribution workers in Syracuse are receiving lower pension benefits because of a plot hatched between two companies, according to a federal lawsuit.

Penn Traffic and the company that bought it in 2008, C&S Wholesale Grocers, used the plot to get out of paying $58 million to the workers' pension fund, the lawsuit said.

Lawyers for the New York State Teamsters Conference Pension and Retirement Fund say they have the internal documents to prove it.

Lawyers for C&S deny the allegations.

Here's how the plot worked, according to the lawsuit:

In 2008, Penn Traffic sold its warehouse distribution division to C&S, including its contracts, customer lists, equipment, files and intellectual property, the lawsuit said. But it did not buy the 500 unionized workers, who stayed with Penn Traffic, the lawsuit said. The sole purpose was to avoid paying the full $63 million it was required to pay when it dropped out of the pension fund.

Penn Traffic went into bankruptcy in 2009 and paid $5 million to the fund, but was discharged from paying the rest.

"Why on earth would Penn Traffic keep these 500 people as employees at all if they're not going to be in the distribution business going forward?" asked Stephen Saxon, a lawyer for the pension fund.

In a normal transaction, C&S would've bought the workers too, he said. Instead, Penn Traffic leased the workers to C&S.

The fund is suing C&S, the company that bought the now-defunct Penn Traffic's warehouse distribution division in Syracuse for $43 million in 2008. The pension fund's trying to recover the $58 million.



John Bulgaro, trustee of the NY State Teamsters Conference Pension and Retirement Fund

Lawyers for the fund could not give an estimate of how much less the former Penn Traffic workers are receiving in their monthly pensions than they would be getting if the company had paid the remaining $58 million.



In 2006, two C&S executives -- Gregory Young and Myles de Cunha -- became Penn Traffic executives after the purchase, as did "several other" former C&S executives, the suit said. Another C&S executive started a financial investment company that Penn Traffic hired, the suit said.

Penn Traffic had a conflict in its negotiations with C&S because those executives had greater loyalties to C&S than they did to the laid-off workers, the lawsuit said.

Michael Scalzo, trustee of the NY State Teamsters Conference Pension and Retirement Fund

Before Penn Traffic filed for bankruptcy, six of the executives split up $1 million in bonuses, court papers said.

After Penn Traffic's bankruptcy, C&S closed the Syracuse warehouse and laid off its workers in 2010 in favor of using C&S's own facilities to distribute goods to stores, the lawsuit said.

"Somebody did not pay their fair share to their employees, the money that was counted on for their pensions," said John Bulgaro, a member of the pension fund's board of trustees. "They circumvented the process."

The fund's lawyers cited 400,000 pages of documents they retrieved from two of Penn Traffic's computer servers. A bankruptcy court ordered the release of the servers, but barred the lawyers from disclosing them publicly, said Vincent DeBella, a lawyer for the pension fund.

The documents include emails and other correspondence that corroborate the pension fund's claim, he said.

Lawyers for C&S said in court papers that it was an innocent bystander that had nothing to do with employing the 500 workers and therefore was not obligated to pay the $58 million that Penn Traffic could not, the lawyers said.

"Penn Traffic is the entity that signed the collective bargaining agreements with Teamsters Local 317 and bore the obligation to contribute to the fund," C&S's lawyers wrote in court papers.

They said there was a complete separation between the two companies.

But the pension fund's lawsuit cites the multiple executives who moved from C&S to Penn Traffic as proof they were working together to avoid the big pension payment.

The C&S lawyers did not respond to a request for an interview.

The lawsuit claims that Tops Markets, which bought the P&C stores, was also part of the plot to avoid the $58 million payment. The pension fund did not sue Tops.

Lawyer for the pension fund and C&S are scheduled to appear in federal court in Syracuse in August to argue C&S's request to have a judge throw out the lawsuit.

If C&S has to pay the $58 million, the pension fund would invest the money so the fund would grow, fund officials said.

"What that means is, more money will go into the pockets of the pensioners," Saxon said.

The laid-off workers do receive pension benefits, but less than they would if C&S or Penn Traffic had paid the full amount they owed, fund officials said.

The pension fund has 35,000 members across the state. If the $58 million remains unpaid, all of those members would be affected, DeBella said.

Contact John O'Brien anytime | email | Twitter | 315-470-2187
Michael Jace

Actor Michael Jace listens during closing arguments during his trial at Los Angeles County Superior in Los Angeles Friday, May 27, 2016.

(Nick Ut | The Associated Press)

Former "The Shield" star Michael Jace has been found guilty of murdering his wife.

The Associated Press reports Jace was convicted Tuesday of second-degree murder after jurors deliberated for less than three hours over the course of two days. The 2014 shooting death of his wife, April Jace, was witnessed by their two young sons.

Jace, 53, did not testify but reportedly admitted shooting his wife when he called 911 himself. He later told detectives that he planned to use the gun, owned by April's father, to kill himself but instead wanted to shoot her in the leg so she would feel pain.

Deputy District Attorney Tannaz Mokayef told jurors the actor was waiting for his wife, who wanted a divorce, and he shot her in the back. He also allegedly taunted her before shooting each of her legs.

Jace's lawyers argued the act wasn't premeditated, seeking a voluntary manslaughter conviction.

The actor is best known for playing LAPD officer Julien Lowe on the FX television series "The Shield." He also appeared in TV's "Southland" and films like "Forrest Gump," "Boogie Nights" and "Planet of the Apes."

Sentencing is scheduled for June 10. Jace faces up to 40 years to life in prison.
Ukraine is planning to extend its uranium contract with Russia in 2016, Oleksandr Rybchuk, General Director of Atomprojectengineering, Energoatom's subdivision in Ukraine, said at the Atomexpo 2016 forum.

Ukraine buys 60,000 SWUs (separate work units) each year, he said. "There are plans to extend the contract this year. There are plans for supplies from the International Uranium Enrichment Center in 2016," he said.
Syracuse Haulers accident.JPG

Syracuse Haulers in DeWitt, where an industrial accident claimed the life of a worker.

(Samantha House | shouse@syracuse.com)

DEWITT, N.Y. -- Authorities have identified the employee who was killed last week in an industrial accident at a waste removal company.

DeWitt police said Joseph Correia, 58, of Syracuse, was working at Syracuse Haulers Waste Removal, 6223 Thompson Road, DeWitt, around 7:45 a.m. Wednesday when he suffered a critical head injury, police said.

East Syracuse firefighters and EAVES Ambulance responded. Correia was rushed to Upstate University Hospital where he died a short time later.

Police would not say what happened to Correia, but the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration said an employee was struck by a piece of equipment.

Initial police scanner reports said a dumpster had fallen on a man; police declined to comment on those reports.

OSHA is continuing to investigate the circumstances of the accident.

OSHA records show no prior fatalities or serious accidents at Syracuse Haulers.

Following inspections in March and June 2015, however, OSHA cited Syracuse Haulers for five violations, three of which were later dropped. The company paid and $2,800 fine and corrected the problems, OSHA said.
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New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo gives a statement at Upstate University Hospital on Monday, May 30, 2016 after visiting a corrections officer who was seriously injured by an explosive device at his home in Floyd. The 52-year-old officer is being treated in the burn unit of Upstate University Hospital.

(Michael Greenlar | mgreenlar@syracuse.com)

FLOYD, N.Y. -- The children of a state corrections officer described the explosion that badly injured their father as sounding "like a gunshot" that has left them scared and traumatized, the officer's ex-wife told the New York Daily News.

The newspaper identified Alan Dobransky, 52, as the corrections officer who was injured in a blast Sunday morning outside his home in Floyd. Dobransky lives on Old Floyd Road in Floyd and he's a corrections officer at the Marcy Correctional Facility, according to public records.

Dobransky picked up a packaged cardboard box left at his home near his mailbox that exploded, leaving him in critical condition with burns to his arms and chest, officials have said.

He was conscious but still in critical condition at the intensive care unit Tuesday afternoon, Oneida County Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy John Owens told Syracuse.com.

Dobransky's ex-wife, Kimberly Deraway, told the Daily News that the her ex-husband never mentioned a possible grudge held by an inmate in over 10 years of marriage. Local and state officials have not said whether they believe Dobransky was targeted.

The investigation - including into the type of explosive used -- is ongoing, officials said.

Deraway picked up the couple's kids, a 10-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy, shortly after the explosion, the newspaper reported.

Owens said he's unsure if the kids might have just as easily picked up the package containing the explosives.

Dobransky's fellow corrections officers have started a GoFundMe page to help raise funds for his medical care. It had reached more than $3,000 toward its $15,000 target Tuesday afternoon.

Owens said he's never seen an attack like this in his history as a deputy.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo changed his plans this holiday weekend to visit Dobransky and his family at the hospital.

"The state of New York has no tolerance for any violence of this sort," the governor wrote in a press release, "and I have ordered a full investigation to find those responsible for this horrific incident."

Local, state and federal agencies, including the FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, are helping with the investigation. Owens said each agency is playing a "huge role" in determining who was behind the attack.

"I never thought we'd see this happen in this area," he said. "We're just trying to bring some closure to this."
MORAVIA, N.Y. -- Cayuga County sheriff's deputies arrested two teens accused of stealing from as many of 30 vehicles in a "spree of larcenies" last weekend in the Village of Moravia, according to a news release from that office.

The teens, age 14 and 16, are accused of stealing from nlocked vehicles, deputies said. Deputies recovered many of the items, much of which have not been claimed.

The teens face charges including grand larceny and petit larceny. The items, stolen beginning the evening of May 21 into the morning hours of May 22, were of varying value, police said.

The sheriff's office asks that those who may have had items stolen to contact deputy Brian Myers at (315) 294-8132.

The teens' names were not released. Their cases will be handled in family court and the village court.
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Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick is trying to overturn a judge's decision to quash his subpoena for Syracuse City Hall records. Fitzpatrick says he is investigating Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner and some of her political allies.

(Tim Knauss)

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- The decision over who wins a subpoena battle between Syracuse City Hall and the Onondaga County district attorney has been handed to a new judge. The judge formerly in charge took himself off the case two months after it began.

Oneida County Court Judge Barry Donalty has been assigned to hear new arguments over whether Syracuse city lawyers can be forced to comply with a subpoena for internal documents from the DA, according to several sources familiar with the closed-door proceedings.

Donalty took the case after Oswego County Court Judge Walter Hafner Jr., who is hearing cases in Onondaga County, recused himself, sources said. Hafner took himself off the case after holding at least two hearings and issuing two lengthy rulings over the past 10 weeks.

The handoff means a new judge will evaluate District Attorney William Fitzpatrick's request for access to the city hall documents. Fitzpatrick has asked for a reconsideration of Hafner's ruling of April 26, which denied access to the documents and referred to Fitzpatrick's endeavor as a "fishing expedition.''

Fitzpatrick issued a subpoena March 9 for internal city hall emails and other documents related to the preparation of affidavits filed in the city's recent lawsuit against COR Development Co., according to documents previously obtained by Syracuse.com.

Lawyers for the city have sought to quash the subpoena, arguing the documents are protected by attorney-client privilege.

Hafner agreed with the city in an April 26 decision, denying Fitzpatrick access to the documents. At some point after that, he recused himself from the case.

Judges are not required to give a reason for disqualifying themselves from hearing cases. Hafner did not give a reason, according to sources familiar with the case.

James Makowiec, deputy chief clerk for state Supreme Court, declined to provide any information about the case, including what judge is in charge.

"It's not public,'' Makowiec said.

Because the court proceeding concerns subpoenas from a secret grand jury, Hafner sealed the records and conducted the hearings behind closed doors. Officials are generally prohibited from disclosing information related to grand jury proceedings, under state law.

Hafner declined comment through a representative. Fitzpatrick said he did not request a recusal and could not provide any information about it. Gerald Neri, special counsel to District Administrative Judge James Tormey, said he could not comment because of the grand jury proceeding. Donalty did not return a call seeking comment.

Donalty has been an Oneida County judge since 1994, serving as supervising county court judge since 2000. He announced he would retire at the end of this year, having reached the mandatory judicial retirement age of 70.

Donalty served as Oneida County district attorney from 1982 to 1993.

Contact Tim Knauss anytime | email | Twitter | 315-470-3023
Coyotes

Wildlife, like this coyote, would be threatened by proposed state legislation allowing "live cable restraint" traps.

(Photo by JP Bonnelly, courtesy of Humane Society of the United States. )

Brian Shapiro is New York state director of The Humane Society of the United States.

By Brian Shapiro

In New York state, we've been blessed with an abundant diversity of natural wildlife to interact with, enjoy and marvel at. Our parks, trails and even suburban backyards serve as sanctuaries filled with a vibrant collection of some of the planet's most wonderful creatures. Gov. Andrew Cuomo agrees, stating "The protection and improvement of our natural environment is more than just an investment in the quality of life for all our citizens; it benefits local economies in all corners of the state."

However, there's troubling legislation in Albany this session, posing a significant threat to wildlife and even our beloved family pets. Despite banning inhumane snare traps many decades ago, the state Legislature is considering an ill-conceived bill (A9462a/S2953c) that would legalize their widespread use. If passed, snares will be set in nearly every county in the state. This has gone mostly unnoticed by state residents, county officials and most lawmakers.

By shrewdly relabeling these devices as "live cable restraints," proponents use false semantics in an attempt to convince the public that these are not the grisly devices the word "snare" implies. They most certainly are. When an animal steps into the snare, a loop of thin, metal aircraft cable closes around the neck, tightening as the animal frantically struggles to escape and loosening only when the animal loses consciousness or collapses from exhaustion. Once the animal rallies, this terrible cycle repeats. The animal will often thrash around, causing deep lacerations in its neck or even a sordid death by hanging or suffocation should the lock become jammed.

Trapped animals can suffer for hours or even days since state trapping regulations only require that snares be checked once every 24 hours, or up to 48 hours in some parts of the state. A trapper may use any means to kill a snared animal -- including bludgeoning, drowning and suffocation. If the trapper releases the animal or it escapes, the result may be prolonged suffering from injuries sustained while ensnared or even starvation, due to a compromised state and reduced ability to forage for food. Licensed wildlife rehabilitators, including many in Onondaga County, have seen the devastating effects that snare traps inflict upon wildlife.

It's not far-fetched to compare these snares to land mines, known for causing incalculable harm to "non-target" victims. Snares are inexpensive, lightweight devices set in high numbers and often forgotten. They will capture any animal of the right height with the misfortune of passing through them. Endangered species, eagles, owls, bobcats and even family pets can and will be caught.

This legislation also transfers authority over the use of snares from duly elected legislators to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, a regulatory agency not directly accountable to the voting public.

During my tenure as the executive director of an Upstate animal shelter, and former chair of the Ulster County Environmental Committee, I've witnessed the pain and damage that trapping inflicts upon wildlife and companion animals. Should this bill pass, we'll see exponential suffering as a result of our natural landscape being littered with these neck snare devices, not to mention an increased burden placed on wildlife rehabilitators and shelters that will have to care for the inevitable influx of injured animals.

There is no justification to pass this bill and it's a misnomer to refer to these wire cables as being a "humane" snare. There is no such thing. Our elected officials did the right thing last year when they soundly defeated this bill in the state assembly and they should definitely do so again this session.
Andrew Cuomo

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo participates in a Staten Island Heroin Task Force meeting in New York, Wednesday, May 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

(AP)

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Sixty percent of New Yorkers think Gov. Andrew Cuomo is an ethical public official, but most would prefer electing someone else in two years, according to the first major poll since the governor's office was subpoenaed as part of a corruption probe.

The Siena College poll released Tuesday found that Cuomo's favorability and job performance ratings were virtually unchanged from a Siena poll conducted four weeks ago, with 54 percent having a favorable opinion of him and 58 percent saying he's done a fair or poor job.

Across the state, 49 percent of New Yorkers said they'd prefer to elect someone else as governor in two years, with 42 percent saying they'd re-elect Cuomo and 9 percent undecided. In Upstate New York, 61 percent said they'd prefer someone else.

"While recent news stories have highlighted corruption investigations surrounding individuals close to the governor and programs under control of the Executive branch of government, voters' views of Cuomo's job performance and how they feel about him have barely moved in the last four weeks," said Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg.

The poll of 825 registered New York voters, conducted May 22-26, has a margin of error of +- 3.9 percent.

It was Siena's first poll about Cuomo and state government since Cuomo's office was served with subpoenas April 29 by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who is investigating possible fraud and conflicts of interest in Cuomo's Upstate economic development projects.

Bharara, who won convictions against former state Senate leader Dean Skelos and former Assembly leader Sheldon Silver, has sought records about Cuomo's former deputy secretary Joseph Percoco, lobbyist Todd Howe, who is another longtime Cuomo acquantance, and contracts issued by SUNY Polytechnic Institute.

Despite his high-profile convictions, Bharara is an unknown to two-thirds of New Yorkers and 51 percent said they trust the state attorney general more than anyone else to investigate public corruption in state government.

But 91 percent of the New Yorkers polled said corruption in state government is a very serious or serious problem, with 60 percent saying it is very serious. the highest percentage ever in Siena's polls.

A nearly unanimous 96 percent of New Yorkers say passing new anti-corruption laws before the legislative session ends June 16 is important or very important. State lawmakers have passed no new ethics laws this year.

Other highlights of the poll:

Fifty-two percent would vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton to be the next president, 31 percent for Republican Donald Trump, with the remaining 17 percent split almost evenly between won't vote, vote for someone else, and undecided.

Fifty-one percent have an unfavorable opinion of Clinton, while 68 percent have an unfavorable opinion of Trump. Clinton's unfavorable mark tied for the worst she's ever done in a Siena poll.

By an overwhelming 70 percent to 19 percent margin, New Yorkers favor legislation that would allow ridesharing companies like Uber to operate in their area. Currently, ridesharing or ridebooking companies can only operate legally in New York City.

Forty-five percent oppose legislation that would allow daily fantasy sports companies, like DraftKing, to legally operate in New York. Thirty-seven percent support it.

Two-thirds of New Yorkers think corruption is a very serious or somewhat serious problem among state legislators from their region. In Upstate New York, only 52 percent think that's the case.

Contact Mike McAndrew anytime | email | Twitter | 315-470-3016
SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher

SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher meets with the Syracuse Media Group editorial board Friday Feb. 27, 2015.

(David Lassman | dlassman@syracuse.com)

ALBANY, N.Y. -- Nancy Zimpher, chancellor of the State University of New York higher education system, will step down after seven years.

Zimpher, the state's first female chancellor, announced the upcoming school year would be her final year as leader of the largest public university system in the country in a press release Tuesday.

Her last day on the job will be June 30, 2017. In a letter to employees, she said she was stepping down now to give the SUNY Board of Trustees ample time to find a successor.

Zimpher turns 70 in October, according to the New York Times. In an interview with the Times, Zimpher said she would not be retiring. There's no word yet on on her plans after that, but she told the Times she would continue to be involved in education.

Zimpher's most recent initiative, TeachNY, has been working with State Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia to tackle the state's teacher shortage through a campaign to promote the profession, and changes to teacher preparation in New York.

In the news release, SUNY officials championed Zimpher's tenure as chancellor. During her seven years, she has emphasized a unified SUNY system. She has led drives to increase the number of students completing college with a degree and the number of applied, hands-on learning opportunities for students.

Zimpher said she would continue this work, along with NYSUNY 2020, a grant program to spur economic development by using the resources of New York's public colleges.

Reporter Julie McMahon covers Syracuse University and Syracuse city schools. She can be reached anytime: Email | Twitter | 315-412-1992
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Syracuse University faculty and students Tuesday protested the construction of a pedestrian walkway as workers broke ground on the University Place Promenade.

About 45 members of the SU community gathered on University Place in front of the Hall of Languages holding signs that read "Is this a school or a resort?" and "Shared governance, not top-down." The group then delivered petitions protesting the construction project to administrators at Crouse-Hinds Hall.

Protesters have been fighting against the construction of a promenade in recent weeks, citing a lack of transparency in the roll-out of the project and flaws in its concept.

A major construction project at Syracuse University will turn a large portion of University Place into a promenade with outdoor furniture, heated sidewalks and free wifi. A group of students, faculty and staff protested the estimated $6 million project Tuesday, May 31, 2016, as construction got underway. Lauren Long | llong@syracuse.com

The promenade, which is estimated to cost up to $6 million, is part of a campus-wide "framework," a collection of construction projects designed to connect the university and update it for the 21st century.

Faculty, alumni and students have criticized the timing of the project and questioned how the university can afford what they say is a lavish walkway during a time of what Chancellor Kent Syverud has called "fiscal discipline."

In the last year, a report provided a bleak financial outlook of the university. Months later, 254 employee took buyouts offered by SU.

Since community members have spoken out against the promenade, the university has held additional feedback sessions on the construction. Officials say they began soliciting feedback 18 months ago.

Kevin Quinn, Vice President of Public Affairs, accepted the community petitions on behalf of Syverud. He spoke briefly with the group of protestors.

The recent criticisms have been taken into consideration, Quinn said, but the construction project will move forward. He said some changes have been made to the plan as a result of the feedback.

Tuesday protesters acted as "tour guides" along the approximately 1250-foot promenade construction site. The group moved as one unit foot-by-foot along University Place.

The "tour guides" spelled out how much each foot of construction was "worth" by naming other services and staff and faculty positions that could be funded using dollars spent on the promenade:

Eileen Schell, associate professor of writing and rhetoric in the College of Arts & Sciences, said that aside from the symbols of what the university could be spending its money on, the protest was organized to address the issue of "shared governance" over the university.

Schell is a 20-year member of the faculty who has been active within University Senate, a body made up of elected members of the staff and faculty.

She said the senate used to stand for dialogue between administrators of the university and its employees and students. The handling of the promenade, she said, was top down instead of inclusive.

"Who's listening to these critiques?" she said. "How many times do we have to ask? I would like Chancellor Syverud to hear our voices. We will be back."

Quinn, spokesman for the university, promised the protesters that the administration would respond to their concerns this week.

He also said the university will release the full "Campus Framework" document, including more details and reasoning for the project. Quinn said the framework would be released "very soon" this month.

"It's a college, it's a university -- we understand that people aren't going to appreciate the benefits of every project and everything we do, either before it's done or after it's done." Quinn said. "We appreciate the feedback."

Reporter Julie McMahon covers Syracuse University and Syracuse city schools. She can be reached anytime: Email | Twitter | 315-412-1992
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Naomi, front and her sister, Olivia, play with sparklers before the Fourth of July fireworks display at Emerson Park in Auburn, N.Y., Friday, July 3, 2015.

( Kevin Rivoli | krivoli@syracuse.com)

New York state allows sparklers and other small ground fireworks to be sold and used in counties that approved a local version of a new state law.

What you need to know for 2016:

How: The state passed a law in 2014 that allows fireworks leading up to the 4th of July and New Year's Eve - but only in counties that also pass a local law to allow it. (See list below.)

Examples of fireworks legal in New York state.

What kind of fireworks are legal?

Sparkling fountains (cylindrical and cone)

Sparklers on wooden sticks, but not metal

Smoking devices

Snakes

Confetti-filled party poppers

Paper-wrapped snappers

Examples of fireworks not legal in New York state.

What kind of fireworks are not legal?

Bottle rockets and other fireworks that fly, such as ...

Firecrackers

Bottle rockets

Roman candles

Spinners

Other aerial devices

It is not legal to set off fireworks in counties that did not approve the new law even if you bought them in a county that allows fireworks, according to Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

Who: You must be 18.

Why: The point of the new law is to stop people from buying fireworks in other states. Many New Yorkers head south to buy fireworks legally just across the border in Pennsylvania.

When: The sale of sparklers is legal from June 1 to July 5 at permanent and specialty retailers certified by the state. Temporary stands or tents can sell them from June 20 to July 5. (Sparklers can also be sold around New Year's Eve, from December 26 to January 1.)

Where: Sparklers are legal this year in the following counties, according to the New York State Police. No fireworks are legal in New York City.

2016: NY counties that allow sparklers

County Effective date Albany County 05/24/2016 Allegany County 05/08/2015 Cattaraugus County 04/10/2015 Cayuga County 3/22/2016 Chautauqua County 6/20/2016 Chemung County 03/31/2015 Clinton County 06/08/2015 Cortland County 06/10/2015 Dutchess County 05/18/2015 Essex County 03/09/2015 Franklin County 05/19/2015 Fulton County 04/24/2015 Greene County 06/03/2015 Herkimer County 04/10/2015 Jefferson County 07/03/2015 Lewis County 05/15/2015 Livingston County 06/03/2015 Madison County 04/20/2015 Montgomery County 05/18/2015 Niagara County 05/12/2015 Ontario County 06/03/2015 Orange County 04/10/2015 Putnam County 05/06/2015 Rensselaer County 05/19/2015 Rockland County 09/30/2015 Saratoga County 04/06/2015 Schenectady County 06/02/2015 Schoharie County 10/29/2015 Schuyler County 04/21/2015 St. Lawrence County 06/10/2015 Steuben County 06/03/2015 Sullivan County 06/01/2015 Tioga County 08/17/2015 Ulster County 05/27/2015 Warren County 04/29/2015 Washington County 03/31/2015 Wayne County 05/27/2015 Yates County 04/20/2015

Source: New York State Police

Contact Michelle Breidenbach anytime: Email | Twitter | 315-470-3186.
Ukraine's Ambassador to Germany Andriy Melnyk following negotiations with Head of the German Federal Criminal Office Holger Munch has stated Germany sees no obstacles to the introduction of a visa-free regime with Ukraine.

"Chief of the German Federal Criminal Office Munch said he did not see any obstacles to a visa-free regime for Ukraine," Melnyk wrote on his Twitter page.

First Vice Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada Iryna Gerashchenko fears the European Union could link the term of providing Ukraine with a visa-free regime with the adoption of a special mechanism for its suspension due to the migration crisis in the EU or disorders.
A New York City man is facing manslaughter charges after he allegedly killed his wife's would-be rapist by beating the man to death with a tire iron.

Police responded to a call at an apartment in the Bronx on Monday night, WPIX-TV reported. Nenegale Diallo, 51, was inside her apartment when career criminal Earl Nash, 43, forced his way in and attempted to rape her.

Diallo said she offered him money, but Nash responded, "I don't want money, I'm going to rape you," according to the NY Post. She said he ripped her clothes off and struck her multiple times with a chair, but she screamed and managed to fight him off.

Mamadou Diallo, seen on a phone in a screenshot from a WPIX-TV report.

Diallo was left naked in the hallway. She called her husband, Mamadou Diallo, 61, who was outside the apartment at the time.

Mamadou quickly took the elevator to his floor, and spotted Nash in the hallway.

"I see my husband, I say, 'That's him! Don't let him out!" Nenegale told the NY Daily News.

Surveillance footage from the building shows Mamadou attacking Nash with a tire iron inside the elevator for two minutes. Nash reportedly fought back with a belt.

Police found Nash with severe head and body trauma when they arrived. He was taken to Lincoln Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Mamadou was arrested and charged with manslaughter, but he claims it was "self defense," because Nash "threatened my wife," according to the Daily News.

Nenegale suffered contusions to her forehead, multiple bruises and a large scar on her back during the attack, according to the couple's son, Ibrahim Diallo.

"I don't care what they say. I'm glad he was there," Ibrahim told WPIX-TV.

Nash had 19 prior arrests, and was released from prison last year after serving a nine-year sentence for drug possession and bribery. Other arrests include arson, robbery and assault. In one 2003 case, he was accused of kidnapping a teen girl and holding her for two days. During that time, he allegedly stabbed, beat and sexually abused her.

Watch the WPIX-TV video report below.
Great Sacandaga Lake

A view of an inlet at Great Sacandaga Lake from Broadalbin, N.Y.

(Google Maps screenshot)

New York State Police announced Monday that an Upstate N.Y. man was arrested and charged with boating while intoxicated over the Memorial Day Weekend.

David T. Kluska, of Amsterdam, was accused of BWI on Saturday after State Police Marine Patrols observed him operating a boat recklessly near Scout Island on the Great Sacandaga Lake in the town of Broadalbin. Troopers said Kluska was found to be intoxicated during a vessel stop, assisted by NYS Environmental Conservation Officers.

According to a press release, Kluska was processed at the State Police barrack in Mayfield and released to a third party. He's scheduled to appear in the Broadalbin Town Court at a later date.

Officials did not release further details, but a social media user named Dave Kluska commented on the Fulton County Area News' Facebook page:

"I was out for under an hr after a long day/week of work. I had a couple people on the bow trying to plane the boat out which was the reckless driving, and i was arrested for refusing to do their tests," Kluska wrote. "They asked me to step on their boat, when they asked me to do a sobriety test i stated i shouldn't have to, so they told me to put my hands behind my back and to the station we went. Good group of officers tho."

According to the state boaters' guide (PDF), no one may operate a vessel on New York waters while impaired or intoxicated by alcohol or drugs. A blood alcohol level of 0.08 or higher is considered legally intoxicated.

If a boater is stopped on suspicion of impaired operation and refuses to voluntarily submit to a breath test, operator privileges may be immediate suspended, pending a hearing.

Penalties for boating while intoxicated include heavy fines, imprisonment and the suspension of operator privileges.
Former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle

Chris Kyle at his home in Dallas in March 2012.

(Brandon Thibodeaux | The New York Times)

Celebrated Navy SEAL Chris Kyle is under fire for possibly distorting his service record in his best-selling autobiography "American Sniper."

Media outlets jumped on the report, first published last week by The Intercept, that showed Kyle "embellished" his medal count in the book.

"All told, I would end my career as a SEAL with two Silver Stars and five Bronze [Stars], all for valor," Kyle asserted in the book. That number was repeated in Clint Eastwood's blockbuster movie of the same name, which grossed $547 million worldwide.

According to previously classified documents obtained by The Intercept, however, Kyle only received one Silver Star and three Bronze Stars. Additionally, according to Kyle's evaluation and discharge records (form DD-214), he was warned by Navy officials to correct the mistake before publishing the book, but chose not to.

The Hollywood Reporter notes that despite claims by The Intercept and other outlets that Kyle "willfully lied" about his record, there are possible explanations for the discrepancy.

Kyle's DD-214 paperwork, which he signed, lists two Silver Stars and six Bronze Stars, one more than his original claim. The DD-214 is supposed to be an official service record, but a Navy spokesperson told The Intercept that personnel files and official awards records are "authoritative sources for verifying entitlement to decorations and awards," possibly suggesting that the DD-214 could contain inaccuracies.

Furthermore, Navy officials said that the Navy is investigating the discrepancy, but has not explicitly stated that the DD-214 is incorrect. It is possible that it is correct, or that Kyle had no reason to believe that it wasn't correct.

Navy officials also told The Navy Times that it's possible Kyle received medals for classified operations, which would not have been included in The Intercept's Freedom of Information Act request.

Finally, Kyle was awarded a Silver Star in 2004 that was later downgraded to a Bronze Star. THR notes that it's possible he was mistakenly counting the original Silver Star among his medals.

The documents also showed praise for Kyle's performance, and other details of his heroics that had previously been classified.

Kyle was killed by a former Marine in 2013, four years after he was discharged from the Navy. He has been called the most lethal sniper in U.S. history, with a total of 155 to 160 confirmed kills, according to Courthouse News.

The news about the possible discrepancies broke ahead of Memorial Day, prompting some supporters, including Texas Gov. Rick Perry, to accuse The Intercept and other "snakes" in the media of anti-military sentiment and liberal bias.

"I am calling on people of conscience to join me in calling for the retraction and deletion of the offending article and reprimand of the Navy personnel who have fed this misperception with their lackadaisical handling of the original information request," Perry wrote in an article for Fox News.

Perry also blamed President Barack Obama, saying, "Perhaps it's a byproduct of nearly eight years of an arch-liberal in the Oval Office combined with an American population increasingly disconnected from the men and women who serve in the military."
Authorities are searching for a 7-year-old boy in the woods of northern Japan after his parents left him alone in the wilderness as punishment

The boy, Yamato Tanooka, has been missing since Saturday, according to The Japan Times. About 130 rescuers and police officers were searching a mountainous area in Nanae on Japan's northernmost island.

The child's parents originally told police the boy got lost while the family was picking wild vegetables in the area, the Times said.

The father eventually told investigators that he and the boy's mother left him alone on the way home from a park to discipline him.

The parents told police the boy had been scolded earlier for throwing stones at cars on a nearby road, according to the Times.

They returned a few moments after they had left the child, but the boy had vanished, according to NBC News.

The father apparently could not bring himself to tell police what actually happened when he first called for help, NBC said.

"I want to apologize to my son, also for causing trouble for so many people," he said, according to NBC. "I'm just filled with the feeling hoping that he comes back safely."

The area where the parents left the boy is home to bears, according to NBC. The region has also been hit by heavy rain and temperatures in the 40s in recent days, news reports said.

Police are also investigating whether the parents should be charged with a crime, according to the Times.

Contact Kevin Tampone anytime: Email | Twitter | Google + | 315-454-2112
Ukrainian army observes 21 attacks on its positions in Donbas

The Ukrainian army positions came under 21 attacks, including those by use of mortars, in Donbas on Monday, the press center of the army operation staff said on Facebook.

It said Ukrainian positions near Verkhniotoretske, Novobakhmutivka, Krasnohorivka and Opytne were shelled by 120mm mortars.

Small arms, various types of grenade launchers and 82mm mortars attacked Ukrainian servicemen stationed near Avdiyivka and Nevelske.

Ukrainian strongholds near Krasnohorivka, Novotroitske and Talakivka were attacked by use of small arms, large-caliber machineguns and automatic grenade launchers, and sniper fire was observed in the Krasnohorivka area.

Infantry combat vehicle weapons and 82mm mortars shelled Ukrainian positions near Zaitseve. Ukrainian positions near Stanytsia Luhanska were attacked by use of large-caliber machineguns, various types of grenade launchers and infantry combat vehicle weapons "despite the presence of an OSCE post in that area," the report said.

Ukrainian servicemen seized a modern infantry flamethrower in a clash with a sabotage-reconnaissance group, it said.
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Recap: Crist, DeSantis spar over COVID, abortion in Fort Pierce

As the sun set on the Sunrise City on Oct. 24, the party was just getting started at the Sunrise Theatre, where Charlie Crist and Ron DeSantis dueled.
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By Scott Travis, Sun-Sentinel

The free ride soon could end for students who receive Bright Futures scholarships.

About 160,000 students receive the popular scholarships, which the Legislature created in 1997 to reward top students who stay in Florida for college. The scholarship traditionally has paid either 100 percent or 75 percent of tuition and fees at Florida public universities, depending on a student's academic credentials. But state laws passed last year and legislation this year likely will change that.

Last year, the Legislature gave universities permission to impose a technology fee in fall 2009 of up to 5 percent of tuition. Another law passed last year allows five universities to charge "differential tuition," a rate higher than the state-set tuition. The Legislature this year likely will extend that authority to all universities.

But Bright Futures won't pay differential tuition or the technology fee.

Legislators say these changes are necessary to preserve Bright Futures, while providing more money to universities.

"Our universities are starving," said state Sen. Jeremy Ring, D-Parkland. "If we want to be competitive nationwide, we've got to have differential tuition. ... If we keep doing [Bright Futures] the way we've been doing, it will crash eventually."

But that's little consolation to some students and parents who find it difficult to plan for college.

"It's going to hurt a lot of people," said Alyssa Fenstermaker, 17, a senior at Olympic Heights High School, west of Boca Raton. "The economy is so bad, but people still want to go to college. A reduction in Bright Futures is going to make that harder."

If this year's differential tuition bill passes, the value of the Florida Academic Scholars Award, traditionally a 100 percent scholarship, could drop to 70 percent in five years, a Sun Sentinel analysis shows.

That award is for students with a 3.5 weighted GPA who also meet other academic requirements.

The value of the Medallion Scholars award, or the 75 percent scholarship, could drop to 52 percent. That award is for students who have a 3.0 GPA.

By 2016, a top award would cover 56 percent of tuition and fees, while the second-level award would cover 42 percent, the analysis predicts. That's assuming FAU, in this case, imposes the full tuition increases.

The law would allow total tuition to increase up to 15 percent a year, until Florida's average tuition meets the national average, likely in 2016, according to the analysis.

The analysis uses tuition and fee data from Florida Atlantic University, which does not yet charge differential tuition. It assumes that FAU raises tuition by the allowable 15 percent a year; that FAU's regular fees increase an average of 4 percent a year; and that FAU charges the state-approved 5 percent technology fee.

Ken Jessell, FAU vice president for finance, said this is a possible scenario, although FAU, or any other institution, can choose not to increase tuition or fees.

According to the analysis, an FAU student with a full Bright Futures scholarship would pay $388 in new tuition and fees next year, or 9 percent of the total cost, if FAU charges the full differential tuition and technology fee.

But the out-of-pocket costs would grow every year - to $704 in 2010; $1,081 the next year, and $1,528 the year after that. By 2016, an Academic Scholar might have to pay $4,269, or 44 percent of the anticipated $9,712 tuition and fees.

A student with a Medallion award, now worth 75 percent of tuition and fees, paid $945 at FAU this year, but by 2016, that could skyrocket to $5,629.

Students and parents who bought Florida Prepaid contracts before July 1, 2007, are exempt from differential tuition. Anyone who bought a plan after that can buy a supplemental plan.

Florida has traditionally been known for its rock-bottom tuition, about $3,600 to $4,000 a year at state schools. The national average is about $6,600, according to the College Board. Florida tuition has remained low, in part, because big increases would make Bright Futures expensive and unsustainable. But universities complained that they didn't have enough money to operate and hire faculty.

Karen Fooks, financial aid director at the University of Florida, said she thinks Bright Futures is set up improperly. It would make more sense, she said, to make it a dollar value, such as $3,500 for Academic Scholars and $2,500 for Medallions. The state then could decide year to year whether to raise it.

"Now when families find out that fees aren't being paid through Bright Futures, they feel like they've been misled," she said.

BRIGHT FUTURES QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

What is Bright Futures?

It is a Florida Lottery-funded scholarship that rewards students for their academic achievements in high school by providing money to attend college in the state. There are two award levels.

How much does Bright Futures pay?

The Florida Academic Scholars award pays 100 percent of tuition and some fees to students attending a public university in Florida. The Florida Medallion Scholars Award pays 75 percent of tuition and some fees for a public university, or 100 percent cost of attending a community college. Last year, the Legislature gave universities authority to charge a technology fee of up to 5 percent of tuition, starting in fall 2009, which Bright Futures does not cover.

The Legislature last year also authorized five universities to charge a "differential tuition" fee, which is above the normal state rate and also not covered by Bright Futures. All 11 universities likely will have that authority this year. There are no proposed changes for community college scholarships.

What are the qualifications?

Students must be residents of Florida and U.S. citizens. For the Academic Scholars award, a student must have a 3.5 weighted GPA; 15 credits of specific college preparatory classes, including two credits of a foreign language; 75 hours of community service; and a 1270 on the SAT or 28 on the ACT. For the Medallion award, students must have a 3.0 weighted GPA; 15 credits of specific college preparatory classes, including two credits of a foreign language; and a 970 SAT or 20 ACT score. There is no community service requirement for the Medallions award.

Can I use a Bright Futures award for a private college?

Yes, students attending private colleges can apply the value of their scholarship toward the cost of attending a private college or university in Florida.

Can I use Bright Futures to attend a school out of state?

No, but if you attend college out of state and transfer to a Florida college or university within three years of receiving your award, you can have it reinstated.

What if I have a prepaid plan?

You will still get the full value of Bright Futures and can use scholarship money for any expenses that your prepaid plan doesn't cover. Bright Futures will send you a check for any award money that is not needed for tuition and fees.

Are there any other changes proposed for Bright Futures?

Not yet. Some state officials and legislators believe the program is not sustainable in the long term and are suggesting capping the money. Some state officials have suggested raising the standards for qualifying or reducing the award amounts.

Would any changes to Bright Futures affect my prepaid tuition or college savings plans?

Not directly. Students still would receive the full value of their plans but might have less money to supplement the plans if Bright Futures awards are reduced or become more difficult to receive.

Where can I get more information?

Go to www.floridastudentfinancialaid.org and click on "State grants, scholarships and applications." Then click on "Florida Bright Futures Scholarship Program." You can also e-mail the Department of Education's Office of Student Financial Assistance at osfa@fldoe.org or call toll free 888-827-2004. For information about the prepaid tuition plan, visit www.florida529plans.com
MP Serhiy Leschenko and the editor-in-chief of the Ukrainska Pravda online edition Sevgil Musayeva-Borovik have released the archives of the shadow costs of the Party of Regions and politicians during second half of 2012.

Leschenko said they received the documents a few months ago. There are a total of 22 pages of text there that relate to the "second set of books" of the Party of Regions [led by disgraced former President Viktor Yanukovych who fled to Russia in February 2014] for the second half of 2012.

According to him, the books mainly contain statements about the illegal financing of Our Ukraine (Nasha Ukraina) party and the Communist Party of Ukraine.

Musayeva-Borovik stated the documents do not mention the Radical Party of Oleh Liashko and Svoboda, whose representatives said earlier that false information would be published in mass media about their role in funding the Party of Regions.

According to the released documents, a total of $66 million was spent for the maintenance of the parties in the second half of 2012. Musayeva-Borovik said the annual "shadow" expenditure of the Regions Party could exceed $100 million.

Leschenko said funds were spent on political corruption, bribing government officials (including members of the Central Election Commission, CEC). He said the Party of Regions was illegally promoted by mass media with funds taken from the national budget of Ukraine and through illegal transactions.
Kyla Morgan, 24, 1800 block of 20th Avenue, Vero Beach; possession of a controlled substance (buprenorphine) without a prescription; possession of cocaine.

Charles Stokes, 29, 4800 block of 33rd Avenue, Vero Beach; warrant for possession of cocaine.

Mindy Bannon, 44, no street address, Vero Beach; warrant for violation of probation, possession of oxycodone.

Arthur Harris, 73, 1100 block of 11th Street, Vero Beach; battery on an officer; resisting arrest with violence.

Kyle Howells, 21, Pembroke Pines; introduction of contraband into a detention facility.

Terrence Wilson, 38, West Palm Beach; hindering communication to 911; false imprisonment.

Patrick Jeremy, 35, 100 block of Stoney Point Drive, Sebastian; warrant for violation of probation, burglary of a dwelling, grand theft, giving false information to a secondary metals recycler.

Brandon Derival, 24, Palm Bay; carrying a concealed firearm.

William Howle, 19, 500 block of Brookedge Terrace, Sebastian; aggravated battery/domestic violence.

Javon Williams, 28, 300 block of 15th Lane, Vero Beach; battery by strangulation.

Jerome Johnson, 59, 2400 block of 42nd Place, Vero Beach; child abuse; aggravated assault.

Ralph Williamson, 42, Statesboro, Georgia; warrants for grand theft auto, driving while license suspended, habitual offender, fleeing/eluding, lights and siren, normal speed.

Kevin Juarez, 18, 1100 block of 9th Square, Vero Beach; leaving the scene of an accident with injuries.

Kathleen Colon, 56, 5600 block of 37th Street, Vero Beach; warrants for failure to redeliver leased property, grand theft, depositing with intent to defraud, worthless checks.

James Plaisir, 37, 2300 block of 3rd Street, Vero Beach; warrant for correct/amended violation of probation, DUI with minor in car, leaving scene of accident with property damage.

Jessica Ferrucci, 23, 1800 block of Sixty Oaks Lane, Vero Beach; possession of a controlled substance (suboxone).

Gerardo Ramos, 21, 200 block of Hialeah Avenue, Fort Pierce; auto burglary.

Carlton Jones, 44, 4800 block of 29th Avenue, Vero Beach; warrants for battery on an officer, robbery purse/sudden snatching.

Carl Colimon, 29; no street address; grand theft auto.
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Sarah Brumley, 37, 2900 block of Southeast Banyan Street, Palm City; aggravated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill (domestic violence).

Quinten Burnopp, 29, 1600 block of Northwest River Trail, Stuart; possession of child pornography.

Lisa Chamberlain, 43, West Palm Beach; possession of a controlled substance (hydrocodone).

Eileen Cuevas, 35, 700 block of Southeast Church Street, Stuart; warrant for failure to appear, grand theft.

William Cutts, 48, Hamton, Georgia; out-of-state warrant, Newton County, violation of probation, fugitive from justice, theft.

James Edwards, 35, 10000 block of Southeast Jupiter Narrows Drive, Hobe Sound; aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Pablo Mendoza, 34, 2600 block of Southeast Milky Way, Stuart; battery by strangulation.

Amanda Schaal, 24, 900 block of Northeast Banyan Tree Drive, Jensen Beach; exploitation of an elderly/disabled adult; fraudulent use of a credit card; grand theft.

Quintin Hall, 31, Fort Lauderdale; warrant for petty theft.

Brandon Falzon, 23, 900 block of Northwest Fresco Way, Jensen Beach; warrants for sale of codeine syrup within 1,000 feet of a school, sale of alprazolam within 1,000 feet of a school, possession of promethazine VC with codein, possession of alprazolam.

Krystal Taylor, 32, Royal Palm Beach; grand theft.

Kristen Parker, 36, 3800 block of Northeast Indian River Drive, Jensen Beach; aggravated battery (domestic).

Stanley Rider, 43, 3000 block of Indian Street, Stuart; warrant for failure of sex offender to report to Department of Motor Vehicles, failure of sexual offender to give notification of intent to change residence. Arrested in St. Lucie County.

David Emmons, 31, 1700 block of North 23rd Terrace, Jensen Beach; robbery  no firearm or weapon. Arrested in St. Lucie County.

Lashonda Smith, 44, 2000 block of Southeast New York Street, Port St. Lucie; fleeing/attempting to elude an officer. Arrested in Martin County.
Martin County Sheriff's Office personnel searches for remains of Tricia Todd at Hungryland Wildlife and Environmental Area on Friday, May 27, 2016, in southern Martin County. (POOL PHOTO Lannis Waters, Palm Beach Post)

By Nicole Wiesenthal of TCPalm

MARTIN COUNTY  Sheriff's deputies plan to resume their search for evidence in the slaying of Tricia Todd Wednesday in the Hungryland preserve, after sonar detected an object underwater detectives said could be a saw used to dismember her body.

Todd disappeared April 26, and about a month later, on May 24, deputies arrested and charged her former husband, Steven Williams, 30, with second-degree murder and child neglect after he confessed to killing her. Detectives said they believe the couple's 2-year-old daughter, Faith, witnessed the killing. Williams, who lives in North Carolina, was renting a house in the area while visiting.

Sheriff William Snyder said volunteers used a sonar Tuesday in the area of the Hungryland Wildlife and Environmental Area where Todd's partial remains were found, and detectives believe the sonar picked up the saw used to dismember Todd.

"What we think from the crime scene is that he used some kind of battery-operated cutting tool," Snyder said, "so it could be a chain saw or a circular saw, and we think that the likelihood is that implement went into that canal because there was no chain saw in the car he used."

The object a volunteer picked up with the sonar device was consistent with the size and shape of what deputies were looking for, Snyder said.

The Martin County Sheriff's Office will be taking small boats onto the canal and looking for it starting at 8 a.m. Wednesday.

EVIDENCE SO FAR

On Friday, deputies found a hole filled with water that Snyder said he suspects Williams originally was going to use to bury Todd's remains.

"It was closer to the water source," Snyder said. "It looked like he dug it, and it filled with water."

Deputies also found body tissue around the burial site, Snyder said, and they believe the tissue had overflowed from the container her remains were found in. Deputies also investigated fire pits search dogs alerted them to, but Snyder said the fire had reduced everything to ashes.

Deputies have been looking through Williams' records to get a clear picture of where and when he might have bought any items associated with the slaying and the crime scene.

Williams led deputies to an area on May 26 where they discovered a large plastic container filled with acid and what looked like a portion of Todd's lower torso.

Detectives are trying to figure out whether Todd's remains could have dissolved over time.

"We're going to try to reconstruct as much as possible," Snyder said.

Snyder also asks that volunteers stay away from the crime scene in the park.

"We're not looking for remains," Snyder said. "We know what the evidence is, and we ask people to respect the site and stay away."

PLEA DEAL STATUS

After speaking with Todd's family, state attorneys negotiated a plea for the second-degree murder charge with Williams, for 35 years in prison if he led deputies to the location of Todd's remains. Second-degree murder means the killing was not preplanned.

But Snyder said the evidence found Tuesday indicates the murder was premeditated, and prosecutors on the case are evaluating the facts to determine whether they can argue Williams violated the terms of the plea deal.

"(Williams) knew exactly what he was going to do," Snyder said.

Chief Assistant State Attorney Tom Bakkedahl said prosecutors cannot set aside or dispose of the plea, despite the recent evidence.

Instead, they are looking at evidence to see whether Williams complied with the terms of the plea deal which specifically states "Williams must lead law enforcement to the location of the body/remains of Tricia Todd Williams."

We're going to see if he complied with that specific admission, Bakkedahl said.

"If he didn't, the parties are lawfully allowed to argue any sentence up to a life in prison," he said.

Bakkedahl said they're not sure what evidence they'll be using because the investigation is ongoing.

"The facts will take us to where the facts take us," Bakkedahl said.

MORE COVERAGE
Kimberly Hughes, 26, Fort Lauderdale; driving while license suspended, third or subsequent offense.

Anastasia Hart, 18, West Park; passing a forged/altered instrument; fraud  obtain a controlled substance.

Donald Young, 27, 3600 block of Southwest Haines Street, Port St. Lucie; property damage  criminal mischief.

Jaime Saucedo, 39, 1900 block of Colonial Road, Fort Pierce; possession of cocaine; driving while license suspended, third or subsequent offense; out-of-county warrant, Hamilton County, violation of probation, transmit contraband to a prison.

Sean Powell, 27, 400 block of College Park Road, Port St. Lucie; assault on an officer; fleeing/eluding officer at high speed.

Jamelle Maultsby, 19, Greenacres; possession of marijuana over 20 grams.

Grace Spencer, 61, 1700 block of Southwest Via Rossa, Port St. Lucie; warrant for worthless check.

Alane Gorman-Taylor, 40, 3300 block of Twin Lakes Terrace, Fort Pierce; driving while license suspended, habitual offender.

Edelyn Hall, 25, 100 block of Southeast Crosspoint Drive, Port St. Lucie; driving while license suspended, third or subsequent offense.

Ahmad Nicholson, 32, Clemmons, North Carolina; warrant for resisting officer with violence, battery on an officer, DUI impairment, driving with license suspended.

Sami Elias, 58, Lexington, Kentucky; warrant for organized fraud.

Joceyln Prescott, 36, 500 block of Southwest Ryan Avenue, Port St. Lucie; possession of a controlled substance (amphetamine) without a prescription; possession of a controlled substance (opana) without a prescription; possession of a controlled substance (alprazolam) without a prescription; possession of a controlled substance (gabapentin) without a prescription; possession of a controlled substance (oxymorphone) without a prescription; possession of a controlled substance (amitriptyline) without a prescription.

Robert Van Dyke, 49, 4000 block of North Alternate A1A, Fort Pierce; possession of cocaine.

Cassandra Gunter, 29, 1100 block of Ibis Avenue, Fort Pierce; larceny/grand theft.

Christine Richert, 52, 5500 block of Spruce Drive, Fort Pierce; warrant for false statement for public aid.

Christopher Lentz, 45, Cleveland, Ohio; out-of-county warrants, Indian River County, organized fraud, fraudulent use of a credit card, forgery.

Herbert Blanco, 52, 800 block of Southeast Quiescent Lane, Port St. Lucie; warrant for violation of probation, domestic battery/strangulation.

Stanley Rider, 43, 3000 block of Indian Street, Stuart; warrants for failure of sex offender to report to Department of Motor Vehicles, failure of sexual offender to give notification of intent to change residence, exposure of sexual organs.

Jamkirea Williams, 23, 2400 block of Atlantis Avenue, Fort Pierce; warrant for inciting a riot.

Michael Ellis, 34, 3000 block of Southwest Segovia Street, Port St. Lucie; warrants for giving false information to a pawnbroker, dealing in stolen property.

Aaron Delicat, 22, 500 block of North Sixth Street, Fort Pierce; possession of cocaine, aggravated assault.

Scott Charite, 22, 1300 block of Southwest Kapok Avenue, Port St. Lucie; warrants for burglary, assault, criminal mischief.

Keyon Mcgriff, 23, 500 block of Mayflower Lane, Fort Pierce; resisting an officer  fleeing/eluding an officer with lights/siren active; driving while license suspended, habitual offender.

Ryan Berg, 22, 500 block of Southeast Nome Drive, Port St. Lucie; possession with intent to sell, manufacture or deliver cocaine; possession with intent to sell, manufacture or deliver a hallucinogen (promethazine hydrochloride); possession of marijuana over 20 grams; possession with intent to sell, manufacture or deliver marijuana.

James Mannings, 42, 1700 block of 14th Avenue, Vero Beach; smuggling contraband into a detention facility.

Deshawn Norwood, 28, 2900 block of Dunbar Street, Fort Pierce; driving while license suspended, habitual offender.

Ladiante Smith, 25, 700 block of Northeast Eastlake Street, Port St. Lucie; aggravated battery  offender knew/should have known victim was pregnant.

Randy Rittenour, 34, 5200 block of East Portofino Landings Boulevard, Fort Pierce; warrants for grand theft, uttering a forged bill, check or draft, possession of a counterfeit payment instrument.

Jongelene Adams, 46, Fleming Island; out-of-county warrant, Martin County, failure to appear, worthless check.

Donald Haskins, 18, 2000 block of Sunrise Boulevard, Fort Pierce; warrant for contributing to the delinquency or dependency of a child by inducement, child abuse  intentional act.

Stephen Stewart, 37, Pompano Beach; driving while license suspended, third or subsequent violation.

Michael Rich, 29, 400 block of Southeast Tranquilla Avenue, Port St. Lucie; driving while license suspended, third or subsequent offense.

David Meek, 25, West Palm Beach; warrant for court order to revoke bond, resisting an officer with violence, battery on an officer.

Shelby Linton, 39, Hollywood; warrant for battery on a security officer.

David Emmons, 31, 1700 block of North 23rd Terrace, Jensen Beach; robbery  no firearm or weapon.

Dusten Lytle, 34, 54000 block of Northwest Moorhen Trail, Port St. Lucie; re-admit, possession of cocaine.

Gerardo Ramos, 21, 200 block of Hialeah Avenue, Fort Pierce; auto burglary. Arrested in Indian River County.

James Mannings, 42, 1700 block of 14th Avenue, Vero Beach; smuggling contraband into a detention facility. Arrested in St. Lucie County.
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By now, we hope you follow Treasure Coast Newspapers and TCPalm on Snapchat.

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This weekend, #TCPalmSocial's Ginny Beagan will be on Snapchat early Saturday morning covering the release of sea turtles at Disney's Vero Beach Resort.

The 2016 Tour de Turtles' migration marathon begins following the release of the remaining sponsored sea turtles at Disneys Vero Beach Resort on Saturday and at the Barrier Island Center in Melbourne Beach on Sunday. This year, scientists will follow 14 sea turtles to find out more about their habits at sea and identify migratory patterns that may hold the key to their survival.

Since the launch of Tour de Turtles in 2008, the Sea Turtle Conservancy has released more than 100 sea turtles from nesting sites in Florida, Costa Rica, Panama, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Mexico and the West Indies.

On Saturday night, Beagan will be snapping The Pure Led Zeppelin Experience at The Sunrise Theatre in Fort Pierce.

The band will take the audience back to the 1970s with a tribute to the legendary heavy metal/psychedelic band, including a throwback laser light show.

The tribute band stars local favorite Michael "Spaz" McGoorty, the frontman for the former SWS band, an institution of the Treasure Coast music scene for decades.
Algae Tuesday, May 31, 2016 at Shepard Park in Stuart. (MOLLY BARTELS/TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS)

By Tyler Treadway of TCPalm

What could be worse than "The Lost Summer" of 2013?

For the St. Lucie River  as well as anyone who recreates on it or depends on it for a livelihood  it could be the summer of 2016. That's because:

Blue-green algae showed up a month earlier than it did in 2013.

Lake Okeechobee discharges started four months earlier.

Discharges already are at 88 percent of the 2013's total.

The lake elevation is a foot higher than it was on June 1 of 2013.

During "The Lost Summer," discharges started May 28 and totaled 136.1 billion gallons for the year. This year, they started Jan. 20 and totaled more than 120 billion gallons by Tuesday.

The corps wants the lake elevation to be 12 feet 6 inches each June 1 so it can take on rain from the summer wet season, plus whatever tropical storms and hurricanes cross the Florida peninsula. Tuesday, the lake was at 14 feet, 4 3/4 inches: nearly 2 feet too high. At the start of the 2013 rainy season, it was 13 feet, 3 3/4 inches: less than a foot too high.

And in 2013, blue-green algae blooms didn't start showing up in the river until late June. Now blooms appear to be spreading from the river's South Fork, close to the point where lake water enters the estuary, slightly up the North Fork and down the main channel of the St. Lucie River, past downtown Stuart and toward the Evans Crary Bridge separating Stuart and Sewall's Point.

Taking samples

A team from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's Fort Pierce office was scheduled to collect algae samples from the river Tuesday, said Kalina Warren, who heads the agency's water monitoring program. "If they confirm that it's a blue-green algae bloom, they're prepared to take samples and send them to our state lab."

Warren did not know any details about how many samples the team would take and from where.

The Florida Department of Health in Martin County staff Tuesday decided to post signs at five sites around the river warning people to avoid contact with any algae bloom. Signs already exited at Port Mayaca, where water leaves the lake bound for the river, and Leighton Park on the South Fork in Palm City. Water at the latter site also is contaminated with high levels of enteric bacteria, a signal of human or animal fecal matter.

A "For Sale" sign also was posted in front of Tackle For Less, a bait shop steps away from the Old Roosevelt Bridge across the river.

"This past weekend, Thursday through Memorial Day on Monday, I had less than $1,500 in sales," said owner Tim Kenney. "It's been like that since the discharges started in January."

Kenney applied for an interest-free "bridge" loan the state offered as part of Gov. Rick Scott declaring Martin and St. Lucie counties a disaster area because of the discharges.

"They offered me up to $25,000 with no interest to be paid back in full in six months," Kenney said. "To do that, I'd have to save more than $4,000 a month. How can I do that when I've lost about $10,000 since January?"

Another "Lost Summer" could have a domino effect on local businesses, said Joe Catrambone, president and CEO of the Stuart/Martin County Chamber of Commerce.

"First it's gong to hurt the bait shops, the marinas and the kayak and paddleboard renters," Catrambone said. "But it can affect our restaurants, stores and gas stations and hotels. We know a lot of people come here from down in Miami-Dade, Broward and even Palm Beach counties during the summer, our off-season. But who wants to paddleboard in that stuff?

Blooming algae

Over the weekend, algae blooms were confined mostly to the South Fork of the St. Lucie, closer to the St. Lucie Lock and Dam, where lake water is being dumped into the estuary at a rate of about a billion gallons a day.

Monday, a bloom was reported along the Riverwalk in downtown Stuart, and Tuesday a bloom was seen farther downstream at Hogg's Cove, where the river makes a sharp turn south toward the Evans Crary Bridge.

"There's a big sheen of green here," Stuart resident Charlie Parks said about 10:30 a.m. Tuesday from a dock behind a home in northern Sewall's Point. "It's moving down the river; you can see the strands of it moving with the outgoing tide. It's horrible."

Parks said the algae extended from the shore "a couple of hundred feet out into the river."

A bloom also was reported at Lighthouse Point in Palm City, where the North Fork and South Fork of the St. Lucie River converge to form the river's main channel.

"There's a big batch of blue-green algae here and a couple of pods of fish on the surface of the water struggling to breathe," Neil Goetz of Palm City said Tuesday while on his morning walk on Beach Way Avenue in Palm City.

Toxins in blue-green algae, also known as cyanobacteria, can cause nausea and vomiting if ingested, and rash or hay fever symptoms if touched or inhaled. Drinking water with the toxins can cause long-term liver disease.

Blue-green algae samples taken from Lake Okeechobee tested positive for dangerous levels of toxins. So far, samples taken from the South Fork have had low toxicity or none at all.

REPORT SIGHTINGS

Florida Department of Environmental Protection: 772-467-5572

Reporter Tyler Treadway: 772-221-4219

MORE INFORMATION

What causes blue-green algae bloom?

Lake Okeechobe discharges
Greenscapes employees Francisco Tum, left, and Jaimie Garcia, prepare to fertilize lawns in Naples on July 5, 2012. (NAPLES DAILY NEWS FILE PHOTO)

By Tyler Treadway of TCPalm

Put the fertilizer in the garage and leave it there until fall.

From June 1 through Sept. 30, Treasure Coast counties, cities and towns along the lagoon have laws banning the use of fertilizer with nitrogen and/or phosphorous.

The laws are designed to keep the nutrients from running off lawns and into the St. Lucie River and Indian River Lagoon after the frequent heavy rains in South Florida summers. Combined with long, sunny summer days, excess nutrients can feed algae blooms that shade and kill sea grasses, as well as marine animals that depend on sea grass beds.

The laws' specifics vary among the Treasure Coast's municipalities.

OTHER LAWS

Besides the summer bans, most have year-round requirements:

No fertilizing within 10 feet of any pond, stream, watercourse, lake, canal or wetland.

No fertilizing with phosphorus without a verified soil or plant tissue deficiency.

Fertilizers with nitrogen must contain at least 50 percent slow-release nitrogen.

No fertilizing during watches or warnings for floods, tropical storms and hurricanes.

Some laws are stricter. Sewall's Point, for example, extends the fertilizer ban through Nov. 30; and Martin County extends the waterway setback from 10 to 25 feet.

DON'T WORRY

Your grass, and even palms and shrubs, will do just fine under the new lagoon-friendly restrictions, according to a study by Tim Broschat of the University of Florida extension service in Davie.

If you absolutely feel the need to fertilize during summer, most local laws allow you to use a fertilizer with no nitrogen and phosphorus. To find one, look for three telling numbers on the bag and pick one such as "0-0-16." The first number is the percentage of nitrogen, the second phosphorus and the third potassium.

Or go with organic fertilizers (i.e. manure), which might contain nitrogen and phosphorus but are exempt from summertime bans.

Rainy season is bug and weed season, too. Fertilizer ordinances don't cover insecticides and herbicides, but those chemicals can contribute to sea grass die-off and, at high concentrations, harm fish and marine mammals if they wash into the lagoon. Use them judiciously and follow label instructions.
Ten years ago, taxpayers shelled out nearly $300 million to lure the Sanford Burnham biotechnology complex to Orlando.

Today, the research facility is planning on bolting.

If this seems like bad news to you, you're not a politician.

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and others are trying to spin this departure so hard, they look like Maytag machines.

Buddy says it's fine that Burnham's leaving. Buddy says our money was well-spent. Buddy says the research facility's departure is a logical progression, especially if the University of Florida takes over some of the operations.

By the time Buddy's done talking, you start to think that Burnham's departure is one of the best things that ever happened to Orlando. The only thing better might've been if they stiffed us sooner ... and spit on us on the way out of town.

None of this should be a surprise. It's what often happens when politicians try to lure companies with taxpayer money. The companies leave.

It's why I've long compared the incentives game to prostitution. If you have to court someone with cash, you can't be surprised when they're gone in the morning.

There are lots of reasons why the incentives game stinks, including the way some companies get subsidies and others don't.

But the main reason it stinks is that it doesn't work.

Florida and Orlando have been trying to pimp their way to a better economy for decades. And we have failed.

We are still a low-wage juggernaut that believes our best chance to attract high-wage employers is with stacks of cash.

We're like potbellied Johns who refuse to do the hard work to make ourselves more attractive. Instead, we keep paying for whatever quick score we can get.

Orange County has gotten so addicted to handouts, it offers incentives for below-average-wage jobs. A deal last fall covered jobs with salaries low enough to qualify for housing subsidies.

No wonder Central Florida has the lowest-paying median wage of any major metro in America  50th out of 50, according to 2015 stats from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Some people are mad about Burnham. Well, if you're ticked about a one-time giveaway of $300 million to attract high-wage jobs, you should be livid about how the county spends nearly that much money  every single year  to subside low-wage ones.

I'm talking about the county's hotel taxes  $230 million a year dedicated solely to growing the tourism sector.

So we spend billions subsidizing low-wage industries, try to make up for it by throwing more tax dollars at higher ones ... and then wonder why our economy is stuck in neutral.

The definition of insanity comes to mind.

The truth is: You can't buy your way to prosperity. You have to do the hard work.

You have to invest in making your community a place where stable, high-wage employers want to come. That means better primary schools, better-regarded universities, better transportation, culture, recreation and more.

This isn't rocket science. In 2007, the Orlando Sentinel wrote a piece quoting biotech experts who were dubious about Orlando's incentives deal for Burnham, stressing that you can't grow a biomedical economy based on tax handouts and cheap housing. Wealthy intellectuals  and the businesses they spawn  care about having an educated workforce, other high-wage jobs and good schools that start at decent hours and offer a full array of sports, arts and electives for their children.

Venture capital is also key. We've written about this for years. Orlando and Florida lag in private investment  which is the way business growth should work; with private financiers funding private investments and yielding private profits.

In some regards, I don't blame Mayor Dyer, former Orange County Mayor Rich Crotty and former Gov. Jeb Bush for dreaming big with Burnham (now Sanford Burnham Prebys). I suppose that, if you're determined to blow hundreds of millions of dollars in handouts, I'd rather it be for scientists at a nonprofit research center than housekeepers and front-desk clerks at hotels. (Though, in true Florida-style, the not-so-secret side of the Burnham deal was about prompting nearby land development.)

But the better way would be for leaders to wean themselves from their addiction to corporate handouts and do the hard work to make the region more inherently attractive to high-wage employers.

You can't pimp your way to a better economy. And Burnham is simply the latest proof of that.

Scott Maxwell is a columnist for the Orlando Sentinel. Email: smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com
Qualcomm has announced at COMPUTEX 2016 that its subsidiary, Qualcomm is extending its flagship QCA401x connectivity solutions with a new product. The new QCA4012 chip brings dual band Wi-Fi, enhanced security, low power, and a small size at a price point that best supports the development of connected devices. Qualcomm Technologies also announced the expansion of the QCA401x software ecosystem to include support for HomeKit, Google Weave and AllJoyn, as well as new cloud providers.

Premier Wi-Fi Connectivity Solution for the IoT

The introduction of the QCA4012 brings dual-band Wi-Fi connectivity to complement the existing QCA4010 single-band solution, making the new chip well-suited for applications in interference-sensitive environments. It also offers increased computing performance, memory and advanced features while minimizing size, cost and power consumption. The QCA4012 integrates low-power Wi-Fi and a fully featured micro-control unit (MCU) in a single-chip solution that combines design flexibility and rich development capabilities with a comprehensive set of hardware interfaces. Detailed features include:

Dual Band capable of supporting both 2.4GHz and 5GHz for more robust Wi-Fi connections, with antenna diversity for extended range coverage

capable of supporting both 2.4GHz and 5GHz for more robust Wi-Fi connections, with antenna diversity for extended range coverage Full MCU capability with 1.5MB on-chip RAM for future upgradability of features and bug fixes, which is critical for applications with long life cycles

with for future upgradability of features and bug fixes, which is critical for applications with long life cycles Enhanced security with secure boot, over-the-air (OTA) secure software update, anti-rollback, one-time-programmable (OTP) memory and on-chip crypto engine for application-level security

with secure boot, over-the-air (OTA) secure software update, anti-rollback, one-time-programmable (OTP) memory and on-chip crypto engine for application-level security Rich interfaces including UART, HS-UART, I2C, I2S, up to 42 GPIOs, PWMs, ADCs, SPI/SDIO to directly interconnect to sensors, actuators, display, lighting and audio components

including UART, HS-UART, I2C, I2S, up to 42 GPIOs, PWMs, ADCs, SPI/SDIO to directly interconnect to sensors, actuators, display, lighting and audio components Low power Wi-Fi to support energy efficient applications

to support energy efficient applications Pin-compatible part to support I-temp

Software Ecosystem Support for Wi-Fi Solutions

The QCA401x solutions now also feature pre-integrated software support for Apples HomeKit and Googles Weave in addition to the AllSeen Alliances AllJoyn software framework. This is designed to help address fragmentation in the IoT, by allowing products to connect across different brands and communication platforms. QCA401x helps achieve interoperability between products in the home, making them easier and more secure to use, key benefits to driving wide adoption of smart devices.

In addition, Qualcomm Technologies is providing developers with technical tools and community enablement to help them develop new and innovative solutions for the IoT and accelerate commercialization. Based on the QCA401x software development kit, cloud service providers such as Ayla, Exosite and IOTA Labs have developed solutions that include cloud agents, API interfaces and other tools to support integration with IoT clouds.

Furthermore, Silex and various other ODMs are working on hardware platforms based on QCA4012. Silex, Lite-on, WNC and WISOL also continue to work with the single-band QCA4010 introduced last year.

Aylas IoT agent support of the QCA401x means that anyone creating connected products using the Qualcomm Technologies IoT processor can connect directly to the Ayla IoT cloud, said Bill Podrasky, vice president of business development, Ayla Networks. This collaboration between Qualcomm Technologies and Ayla further simplifies and reduces costs while accelerating time to market for manufacturers creating connected things, including smaller-scale IoT products, such as wearables.

We are pleased to join forces with Qualcomm Technologies as a IoT cloud partner at Computex 2016 for the QCA401x product family, said Hans Rempel, chief executive officer, Exosite. Exosites reliable, secure and scalable IoT platform and business transformation services help companies add connectivity to new and legacy products and bring them to market quickly.

IOTA Labs has developed cutting edge IoT solutions integrating Qualcomm Technologies latest products with the IOTA Labs platform, said Amit Singh, director and co-founder, IOTA Labs. IOTA Labss leading edge IoT platform and experience acts as an accelerator for clients to transform their offerings into leading smarter products and services with a lower cost of ownership.

Silex is very excited about launching the SX-ULPGN, a QCA401x based cost-effective, ultra-low power MCU + Wi-Fi pre-certified (FCC/IC/CE) module ideal for IoT/IoE applications, said Keith Sugawara, vice president of business development, Silex America. Using SX-ULPGNs hostless mode, device manufacturers can develop complete IoT/IoE solutions with Wi-Fi connectivity without an external MCU at a cost effective price point. Using our UART AT command option, they can quickly add a serial-to-Wi-Fi converter for existing MCU based designs without porting any host driver.

@Technuter.com News Service
Ukrainian parliamentarian Nadia Savchenko, in her first speech at the Verkhovna Rada, called on other MPs not to forget those who were killed defending the country in previous years and those who are still being held in captivity.

"No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten," Savchenko said in Ukraine's parliament.

She also reminded Ukrainian MPs of their responsibility before the country's people.

"The people of Ukraine will not allow us to sit in these chairs if we betray them," she said.

At the end of her speech, Savchenko sang Ukraine's national anthem, with other parliamentarians present at the session hall joining in.

Following her speech, Savchenko removed a long-time banner with her portrait and a call for her release from the parliamentary tribune and replaced it with a banner with portraits of Ukrainians "being held" in the Russian Federation.

"I am removing my portrait from the tribune and replacing it with a portrait with the faces of the guys who will be looking into your eyes... We have no right not to pull out every single one of them," she said.

Savchenko came to the parliamentary hall on Tuesday morning carrying a Ukrainian flag on her left shoulder and a Crimean Tatar flag in her hands.

Verkhovna Rada Speaker Andriy Parubiy then opened the session and invited Savchenko to the rostrum.

On May 25, Savchenko, sentenced to 22 years in prison by a Russian court for murder, was exchanged for Russian citizens Yevgeny Yerofeyev and Alexander Alexandrov, convicted in Ukraine. The swap was judicially executed through the pardoning of Savchenko by the Russian president and the pardoning of Yerofeyev and Alexandrov by the Ukrainian president.
Newgen Software has partnered with Microsoft to launch NEMF  an enterprise grade mobile capture application for all mobility devices running Windows. The app offers key features to its customers including geo-location, image capture, editing, playback and sharing abilities, along with background task management options. As part of the partnership, Microsoft and Newgen Software will also sell their software and hardware solutions in both the domestic and international markets across business verticals.

In addition, NEMFs capabilities provide opportunities for customers to make use of Newgen Softwares popular desktop Business Process Management (BPM) and Enterprise Content Management (ECM) tools like OmniFlow and OmniDocs, across all Windows-based mobile devices including Windows Phone and Tablets.

NEMFs capabilities address the increasing mobility and real-time servicing demands of customers primarily from the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) sector. Newgens BFSI customers have deployed the companys mobile based solutions for multiple applications such as account opening, retail loan, credit cards, customer service, and collection processes.

While announcing NEMFs availability, Diwakar Nigam, MD & CEO, Newgen Software said,Newgens enterprise mobility solutions have ushered in a new era of world class customer oriented solutions for banking and other related sectors. We pride ourselves in building products which drive incremental business value for our customers and esteemed partners like Microsoft. This partnership with Microsoft has been conceived to enhance ease of access to some of our industry leading tools for millions of on-the-go executives and their customers.

Commenting on the partnership, Harish Vaidyanathan, Director  ISV business, Microsoft India said Modern business requirements are creating scenarios where mobility of the workforce is central to the growth and productivity of the organization. Solutions like NEMF by Newgen will help end users be more productive on-the-go and impact organizational growth positively.Microsoft is committed to help businesses collaborate, communicate and connect better in the mobile-first, cloud-first era and this partnership with Newgen Software is another step in this direction.

Through its partnership with Microsoft, Newgen aims to bolster these offerings by integrating them with Azure  Microsofts Cloud infrastructure platform. Newgen is amongst the first companies in India adopt, test and now deploy their products on Microsoft Azure.

@Technuter.com News Service
Shrinking chips and increasing their efficiency seems to be a recurring theme at this year's Computex. Yesterday, ARM revealed two new products that are more energy efficient and smaller (in the case of the CPU) than previous designs; now, Qualcomm has unveiled the Snapdragon Wear 1100 processor, a low-power SoC for wearables that has a much smaller surface area than Qualcomm's previous chips.

The company said the Snapdragon Wear 1100 is for "targeted purpose" wearables, meaning it's aimed at devices that don't require a huge amount of power, such as smartwatches for children and older people, fitness trackers, and wearable accessories.

The new processor, which measures just 55 square millimeters, has an integrated LTE/3G modem, a power saving mode, and supports Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. It also features Qualcomm's iZat location tracking technology, which uses Wi-Fi and cellular networks, satellites, and cloud-based assistance servers to quickly and accurately pinpoint a person's position. iZat also has the ability to support applications that utilize geo-fencing for safety monitoring.

"You'll always know where your seven-year-old daughter is -- she can always call you. And if she leaves school when she's not supposed to, you'll know where she is," said Pankaj Kedia, head of Qualcomm's smart watches division.

Qualcomm's last chip for wearables - the Wear 2100 that was announced in February - is itself a smaller and more efficient version of the earlier Snapdragon 400 SoC. The 2100 is larger than the Wear 1100, is meant for "general purpose wearables," and can run a number of operating systems such as Android Wear, whereas the latest chip is limited to Linux and RTOS.

It may not be as powerful as Qualcomm's last wearable processor, but the Wear 1100 is cheaper to produce, 30 percent smaller, and much less power-hungry - it can run LTE on standby for a week without being recharged.

The Snapdragon Wear 1100 is commercially available and now shipping to customers. Products containing the chip should start appearing in the second half of the year.

For more on Wearables, check out The Best Smartwatches of 2016.
It's only been a few hours since Intel's monstrously powerful and terrifyingly expensive 10-core i7-6950X was announced, and now we've just learned that boutique computer manufacturer Digital Storm's Aura all-in-one PC will be one of the first machines to feature the Extreme Edition CPU.

The Aura will also support Nvidia's GTX 1080 graphics card, which, when paired with the new EE chip and that curved, 34-inch ultra-wide 3,440 x 1,440 screen, will produce a dream machine that'll make you the envy of PC gamers everywhere.

The caveat is, of course, the price. The base model costs $1999 (without the keyboard and mouse) and features a Skylake i5-6500 3.2GHz CPU, a Gigabyte Z170N - Gaming 5 motherboard, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB 7200 HDD, and an Nvidia GTX 960 GPU.

If you want a more beefy configuration, the Core i7-6700K with a GTX 1080 Founders Edition combo will set you back around $3127. The option to add in one of the new Broadwell-E chips isn't available yet, but once you factor in the i7-6950X's $1723 price and the cost of an X99 motherboard, you start getting an idea of what the top-spec AiO will cost.

Luckily, Digital Storm says that Aura was designed with off-the-shelf components. So if you need to compromise on some pieces of hardware because of budget restrictions, you can always upgrade them yourself at a later date.

All-in-one PCs have come a long way in recent years. Maingear revealed the similar Alpha 34 AiO at this year's CES, which can accommodate an Intel Xeon E5 v3 processor with up to 18 cores and 45MB of cache.

You can configure and pre-order the Aura right now from Digital Storm's website.
The shooting and death of Harambe, the lowland gorilla, at the Cincinnati Zoo after a four-year-old child got into his enclosure has sparked outrage. The zoo keepers maintain they made the right decision to shoot the 400-pound ape, rather than risk losing the boy. But a video of the incident is causing some to believe that the gentle giant was actually being protective of the child.

Animal experts and gorilla behaviorists weigh in on the discussion.

The Right Call

The director of Cincinnati Zoo, Thane Maynard, stands by the decision of his employees to immediately put down Harambe in order to rescue the boy. But many feel the decision was made more to protect the zoo from legal liabilities.

Maynard has explained that using a tranquilizer was not a safe option at that point because it would have taken up to 10 minutes to take effect on such a large adult, male gorilla. In addition, onlookers, as well as the child in the enclosure, were reportedly making the situation more tense by screaming.

According to reports, zoo staff were able to call two female gorillas away from the enclosure using a coded whistle. Harambe, however, did not respond to the call.

Some believe that the exit of his family from the enclosure might have added to his confusion even more.

A few other zoo directors agree that the difficult decision was the right one.

Greg Tarry, associate director of Canadas Accredited Zoos and Aquariums, said that based on the fact that it took zoo keepers about 10 minutes to try to coax Harambe into leaving the child to no avail, it was clear that he was not going to do so at all. In the absence of an alternative, they had to think fast and use the only solution available to them quickly.

If you think about the role of a silverback gorilla, their role is to protect their females and to protect their territory. When this totally unknown drops right into the middle of their territory, Im sure that he didnt know what to do, Tarry said.

Animal expert and TV host, Jeff Corwin, also agrees that a tranquilizer may not have acted quick enough to get the boy out of harm's way.

"Depending on what the medication is, it can take upward to 10 to 15 minutes. It may take multiple shots," he told CNN, echoing the sentiments of Maynard.

Sharon Redrobe, chief executive of the Twycross Zoo in England, also feels that the Cincinnati zoo staff had no other choice.

The fact they left the situation for 10 minutes before firing the final shot shows they would have tried everything they could to get the male gorilla to enter the inside enclosure away from the boy, she said in an interview with Mirror.

A Needless Tragedy

Still, other experts feel that the boy was in no real harm and cooler minds may have been able to save both lives.

Animal behavior expert Gisela Kaplan, of University of New England, said that a gorilla would be intelligent enough not to perceive a small child as a threat to his territory or family.

If he was going to attack he wouldve warned him first. The first thing they do is charge and beat their chests and as far as I know that didnt happen, she said to news.com in Australia.

However, Kaplan adds that she was not on the scene and may not know of other factors that may have contributed to the decision to shoot to kill Harambe.

She does warn that the dominant male's death will have a devastating effect on his family and that they may not recover from it easily. In her opinion, if the zoo keepers had a better relationship with their animals, they would have had one keeper who would be close enough for the group to trust when they give a command and to calm the situation.

Likewise, the very vocal animal rights group, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), also feels that excessive force was used. In a statement, it pointed out that other people have fallen into enclosures in the past and killing the animal has never happened before.

Who can forget gorilla Binti Jua, who gently picked up an unconscious boy who had fallen into her enclosure and cradled him in her arms before carefully handing him over to Brookfield Zoo keepers? the group said.

"An Old Man Can Cry"

Harambe's death is particularly tragic for Jerry Stones, the 74-year-old zoo keeper who was like Harambe's adoptive father.

"I raised him from a baby, he was a sweet cute little guy. He grew up to be a beautiful male. He was very intelligent. Very, very intelligent," said Stones.

Other mourners gathered at the zoo on Memorial Day to hold a vigil for the critically endangered silverback gorilla.

Even Maynard has expressed gratitude for those who have left flowers for Harambe and says that they will remember him as "handsome and smart" according to tweets from WCPO.

Maynard expresses gratitude to visitors who have placed flowers, notes on statue near gorilla exhibit in tribute to #Harambe.  WCPO (@WCPO) 30 May 2016

Cincinnati Zoo has reopened but the Gorilla World exhibit will remain closed indefinitely as officials pledge to investigate the decisions that were made and the barriers they had in place around Harambe and his family's enclosure. They explained this is the first time they have experienced a breach at Gorilla World in 38 years.

Meanwhile, the four-year-old has reportedly been released from the Cincinnati Hospital Medical Center on Saturday evening.



Harambe turned 17 years old on May 27  the day before he was shot.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Environmental consultant Gary Kittleson is on a mission to count the number of frogs at a California marshland. It wouldn't be too much of a task if only he was looking for just any other species.

However, the ones he needs are the California red-legged frogs (Rana draytonii), which can only be found by listening closely to their low croaks in a sea of high-pitched calls from other frogs.

Kittleson was hired by the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County to find out just how many of the red-legged frogs are still left in the Watsonville Slough. This marshland used to be filled with the creatures, but their numbers have dwindled because of over-hunting and habitat loss as a result of human activity in the area. The frogs are now a threatened species.

According to Kittleson, his preferred method to count the red-legged frogs is by listening to the noises that they make. He said that the calls that these frogs make have a lower pitch compared with other species.

He has become so adept at keeping an ear out for the frogs' calls that he can recognize them even while doing something else.

To help make Kittleson's task a lot easier, the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County has teamed up with tech company Conservation Metrics in order to develop an algorithm that could identify the calls of the red-legged frogs.

Through the use of song meters placed around the marshland, Conservation Metrics can collect recordings of various animal sounds and load them into a computer for analysis. The algorithm will run through the recordings and pinpoint which ones are from red-legged frogs. Kittleson will then verify the calls.

Matthew McKown, chief executive of Conservation Metrics, said that tasks such as those normally undertaken by an entire team of scientists can now be carried out by a single person through the help of their algorithm.

"Our whole point is to make conservation better, so we are trying to make it as cheap as possible," he said.

McKown explained that scientists are now using computer programs more extensively to analyze data as part of their studies on threatened animals and their habitats.

He said that equipment such as cameras, satellites and acoustic sensors will soon be used in different parts of the world to monitor the activity of these animals.

Photo: Greg Schechter | Flickr

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Sony wants to bring once again its PlayStation E3 Experience 2016 in movie theaters. This time around, it will be showing the presentation live to more than 85 cinemas in various parts of the United States, Canada and Latin America.

The company reveals this big news to PlayStation fans in a blogpost published on May 30.

"In 2014, we had this crazy idea to partner with Fathom Events and broadcast our E3 Press Conference LIVE to some theaters North America, not knowing if this was something people would even be interested in attending," reads the post. "Two years later, and we've had to more than double our seating capacity to accommodate everybody!"

The event will be livestreamed on June 13 starting at 6:00 p.m. PST.

Fans might be delighted to know that those who will be watching the live telecast of Sony's E3 briefing will receive a few PlayStation loots, such as a PlayStation Collectible Card and a Coca-Cola E3 Experience cup. Additionally, the firm will also dish out some digital items, which it will announce at a later date.

How About The Tickets

Sony says tickets will be given away at no cost. These can be grabbed via PlayStation.com/E3Experience beginning May 31 at 10:00 a.m. PST.

As soon as tickets run out in a specific location, the company will take the names down from the waitlist. It promises to have seats reserved for those who are listed.

If you wish to check out the complete list of participating cinemas, head over to the PlayStation Blog. If you happen to be from Latin America, you may get the details as to how you can get a ticket and what the participating cinemas are via PlayStation.Blog Latin America.

In any case, it would be interesting for curious gamers to see the upcoming products from Sony on the big screen.

In related E3 2016 news, Tech Times earlier reported that Microsoft could lift the veils off its highly anticipated Xbox TV during the said event.

The Redmond-based company is believed to reveal "at least two streaming devices at E3," including the Xbox TV, which will have the capacity to stream videos to users' television.

Do you have a plan to attend the PlayStation E3 Experience in cinemas near you? Let us know what's in your mind.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Australia is set to auction confiscated bitcoins worth approximately $11 million, auction organizer Ernst & Young (EY) confirmed on May 30.

The company was tasked to facilitate the international sale of about 24,518 bitcoins amounting to about A$16 million. Such sale is the first of its kind in Australia and the second one outside of the United States, after the U.S. Marshall Services performed several in 2015.

The bitcoins are considered proceeds of crime and EY was asked to work in behalf of a client whose identity remains unknown.

The transaction will be held via a sealed bid auction, which will run for two days. It will start on June 20 at 12:01 a.m. AEST and will close on June 21 at 11:59 p.m. AEST.

Participants are allowed to submit bids on 11 lots of 2,000 bitcoins and a single lot of about 2,518 bitcoins. They may have the option to bid on one or numerous lots.

Bitcoin Market

"Interest in this technology continues to grow," says EY's Adam Nikitins. He explains that since 2012, transactions involving bitcoins have quadrupled and groups are seeing more uses and windows of opportunities for this technology.

Nikitins says he expects the upcoming auction to be participated mostly by people coming in from Europe and North America. However, with the increasing popularity of the technology, this would surely be an international affair.

Nikitins also pointed to the likely participation of such people as digital asset managers, investments banks and hedge funds who have had experiences working with bitcoins.

As each lot of bitcoin is priced at more than A$1 million (approximately more than $720,000), EY is targeting high-end investors who see value in this rising digital asset.

Bitcoins: What Are They?

Bitcoin is a digital payment system used in Internet transactions. The technology is manipulated by its users and has no middleman or central authority manning the transactions.

In August 2014, U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued an advisory that warned consumers about the risks entailed in such virtual currencies.

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Lionhead Studios officially closed back in April, with rumors circulating that Microsoft decided to shut it down instead of sell Lionhead to interested buyers. Supposedly, Microsoft did not want to give up licensing rights for the popular video game franchise Fable.

While Lionhead is not going to be revived, a group of developers from the fallen studio has teamed up to give rise to another Fable game.

To be named Fable Fortune, the new game will be a Fable-themed digital card game similar to Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft and will also be free to play. The title had been in development for a period of 18 months before Microsoft shut down Lionhead Studios.

The new company made up of ex-Lionhead employees who will be developing Fable Fortune is named Flaming Fowl Studios. The studio was co-founded by Marcus Lynn, Craig Oman and Mike West, and Microsoft said that it will support its continued usage of the Fable license.

While it has secured Microsoft's approval in continuing the Fable franchise, Flaming Fowl will be taking the project to Kickstarter as it has no publisher behind the project. The crowdfunding campaign will launch on May 31 at 10:00 a.m. ET, with the team looking to raise at least 250,000 (about $367,000) over four weeks.

Given the popularity of Fable and the trend of digital card games spawned by Hearthstone, the campaign seems like a sure thing. The question is how much in funding the project will draw, and what stretch goals will be reached during the campaign.

Fable Fortune, as a digital card game, will feature quests more commonly found in role-playing games. Similar to previous Fable games, players will be making decisions that will have them turn to either good or evil, with Flaming Fowl also planning to add an online co-op mode, the ability to level up cards, a campaign mode and additional player vs. player modes.

The game is expected to release in early 2017.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking can school us on anything related to black holes.

He has written about the secrets of the universe, stars, time and space, among many others.

But there is one thing he admits he cannot understand or explain: the rise of presumptive Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Just recently, Hawking was asked by ITV's Good Morning Britain to explain the popular appeal of the billionaire tycoon.

"I can't," says Hawking. "He's a demagogue who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator."

That isn't the only thing Hawking talked about during the interview, however. He also ventured into politics, urging British voters to support the remain campaign in the European Union referendum.

He says it's not just for the sake of the economy and security, but for the sake of science as well. In March, Hawking described the notion of Brexit as a "disaster" for science.

"Gone are the days when we could stand on our own, against the world," Hawking said during the interview.

He believes that Britain should be part of a bigger group of nations for security and trade.

What's more, just the mere possibility of leaving the EU has already resulted in a fall in the pound, he says. Markets judge that it will ruin Britain's economy.

Additionally, Hawking talked about one of the major concerns of many: immigration.

Hawking says there are two clear reasons why we should stay in. One, that it promotes the mobility of people. He says students from the EU can come to Britain to study, or vice versa.

He says it is important that at the current level of research, the exchange of students allows skills to transfer and spread more quickly. It will bring new people with a diverse range of ideas, all from different backgrounds.

The second reason is financial, he says. Being in the EU will be beneficial as the European Research Council gives large grants to institutions in the United Kingdom. The goal is to foster and promote exchanges.

Hawking was once a physics professor at University of Cambridge. He was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 1963 and was given only two years to live.

Hawking went on to write the book "A Brief History of Time." He is a bestselling author and one of the most instantly recognized scientists.

Photo: Lwp Kommunikacio | Flickr

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Ukraine seeks to hold negotiations on cooperation with U.S. Boeing Corporation under the Sea Launch program in the course of the first launch of the Antares launch vehicle after its modernization scheduled for July from the Wallops Flight Facility (Virginia, the United States), Head of the State Space Agency of Ukraine (SSAU) Liubomyr Sabadosh has said.

Commenting on the results of his working visit to the United States on May 23-27, he said at a press conference in Kyiv that he failed to meet with Boeing representatives, but he received a signal that the negotiations on Sea Launch would be organized in July.

Sabadosh said that Boeing has not yet formed the final position for the project.

"I know that the interest of investors to continue the project exists. Negotiations are underway," he said, adding that representatives of investors visited Ukraine and Pivdenmash (Dnipropetrovsk) to discuss the possibility of making Zenit launch vehicle under the Sea Launch project in Ukraine.

The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in September 2015 satisfied a claim filed by Boeing against RSC Energia of Russia and Pivdenne Design Bureau, saying the partners breached their contract obligations by not reimbursing Boeing for Sea Launch expenses.

The shareholders of the Sea Launch consortium, which was created in 1995 to carry out commercial satellite launch from the sea launch site in the Pacific Ocean, were Boeing with 40%, RSC Energia with 25%, Ukrainian-based Pivdenne Design Bureau and state-run enterprise Pivdenmash with a combined share of 15% and the Anglo-Norwegian Engineering and Construction vaerner Group with 20%.

After reorganization in 2010, a total of 95% of shares are now owned by Energia Overseas Limited (EOL), a 'granddaughter' of RSC Energia, while a 3% stake belongs to U.S. Boeing, 2% to Norwegian Aker Solutions. The headquarters of Sea Launch AG are in Nyon (Switzerland).
An analysis of ancient crops has suggested that Madagascar inhabitants may have Asian origins. The study provided new clues to the mysteries of Madagascar's colonization.

Past genetic studies already confirmed the Madagascar inhabitants' ancestral link to Polynesians and Malaysians. However, archeologists have failed to find evidence for the group's early presence in Madagascar until now.

A team of international researchers analyzed the preserved remains of ancient plants obtained using a process called flotation. This process utilizes water and sieves to separate the residues from the sediment.

The team used the remains found at 18 ancient settlement sites in coastal eastern Africa, Madagascar and the Comoros. This enabled the team to identify 2,443 individual crop remnants under a microscope.

"What was amazing to us was the stark contrast that emerged between the crops on the Eastern African coast versus those on Madagascar, and the more we looked, the starker the contrast became," said lead author Alison Crowther from The University of Queensland.

African crops such as pearl millet, baobab and sorghum dominated the ones found on the eastern African coast as well as the nearest islands to Madagascar. These crops had been existing on the areas for several centuries when farmers traveled through the continent.

The Madagascar excavation sites yielded remnants of Asian crops such as mung bean, Asian cotton and Asian rice. The African crops found here bordered from very few to none.

In the course of their investigation, they created a robust theory that the Asian crops reached Madagascar from the islands of Southeast Asia.

According to senior author Nicole Boivin from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, findings showed that Southeast Asians brought the Asian crops to Madagascar, planted them and survived on them.

The findings also suggested that the early Southeast Asians colonized the nearby Comoros islands. The ancient crop analysis found on these islands also yielded dominance of Asian crops.

Boivin added the research did not only reveal  for the first time  the Austronesians' first archeological remnant on Madagascar, but its signature also seemed to go beyond the island.

The study findings provided archeologists with new data they can use to create the history of Madagascar's colonization process using material insights. The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.

Photo: Giorgio Minguzzi | Flickr

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Consumer advocates are calling for tougher regulations on button batteries to protect children who might end up swallowing them.

In Australia, two children have died when they accidentally swallowed the small round batteries.

Choice, a consumer group in Australia, has teamed with The Parenthood and Kidsafe Queensland. They are urging the Federal Government to come up with sterner safety standards for all consumer products that come with button batteries, such as bathroom scales and kiddie toys.

According to Tom Godfrey, the spokesman for Choice, as part of stricter measures, all button battery-powered products should come with a screwed-on compartment to keep the battery in place and prevent it from falling out.

"We'd also like to see the button batteries sold in child-proof packaging. In Australia at the moment button batteries aren't required to be sold in child-proof packaging," added Godfrey who added that these dangerous products are easily accessible to small children.

Currently, only the toys meant for children below three years of age come with secure compartments for button batteries. This suggests that a great number of everyday button battery-powered items still pose dangers to children across Australia due to the lack of mandatory requirements.

According to Dr. John Curotta from The Children's Hospital at Westmead, the symptoms of button battery ingestion are similar to the symptoms of other medical conditions. These include difficulty in swallowing and sore throat. This suggests that many people end up not getting the emergency treatment needed.

"It gets stuck somewhere between your voice box and your stomach. The saliva sits around the battery and, even if the battery is no longer usable, it still has a lot of residual charge," said Curotta who added that the lethal damage can take place in just a few hours.

Curotta stressed that it's not just the toys carrying button batteries that are the problem. Other items around the house can also be powered by these small batteries.

If a child accidentally swallows one, go to a hospital emergency room immediately. It is vital that parents do not try to make the child spit out the battery by vomiting. Moreover, do not let the child drink or eat before taking the young victim to the hospital.

Photo: James Bowe | Flickr

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Caltech recently filed a legal complaint against Apple and Broadcom, accusing the companies of illegally making use of its proprietary Wi-Fi patents.

The case shows that four of the university's patents were used by Apple in its manufacturing process.

In the lawsuit, Caltech points out that Apple deployed the patents in almost every product since the iPhone 5, and it was aware that it infringes intellectual property rights while doing so.

Caltech says that one of the purposes of the lawsuit is to stop sales of the products and recover damages.

Apple was asked to comment but did not release any official statement.

The patents in question are essential to the harmonious functioning of 802.11n and 802.11ac Wi-Fi, the most recent standards in the field. The plaintiff states that its patents "allow for faster data transmissions." What is more, the tech makes it easy for a manufacturer to simplify the hardware required for high-speed Wi-Fi.

According to MacRumors' report, the patents went live between 2006 and 2012.

Apple is not the only defendant in the case.

Broadcom, the company that supplies iPhones, MacBooks and other Apple devices with Wi-Fi chips, is also part of the legal issue.

While smaller tech companies sometimes push lawsuits in order to boost their finances off old patents, universities tend to do so out of principle and with solid evidence backing their case. When it comes to damages, the organization simply says that it wants to receive "adequate" compensation. Caltech refused to mention a specific value money-wise.

Last year, Apple was called in court by the University of Wisconsin-Madison in a tech patent infringement regarding CPU performance.

The jury concluded that the A7, A8 and A8X processors used in in the iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and some of the iPad variants made use of unlicensed technology. As the said technology was patented by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, Apple was found guilty.

The iPhone manufacturer was forced to pay damages of $234 million to the university. It can be said that Apple got off easily, as the maximum amount of damages that Apple could have paid was a whopping $862 million.

Caltech's suit may or may not have something to do with the disappearance of Apple's Time Capsule and AirPort Extreme routers from the shelves.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
NewsBytes Launches News Bot On Facebook Messenger | TechTree.com

Created by IIT, IIM and Ivy League alumni, NewsBytes launched its automated bot on Facebook Messenger. The beta version of their cross-platform bot is a part of Facebook's Messenger program revealed at F8 conference. It is known to be India's first news bot.

In its one year of existence, NewsBytes, by Elysium Labs Private Limited, with around 40,000 downloads on Play Store, has seen a spectacular growth so far. It is one of the highest rated news apps in India. Its primary focus is to reduce information overload in everyday news consumption. Its engine along with human curators picks up the most significant news events of the day, summaries them and creates the contextual timeline around them.

Available globally, in English, the bot lets users read latest news along with its timeline, search across the content and subscribe to the daily news digest. The readability is enhanced by the card-like view, further supported by appropriate images.One can decide to read just the headlines or the entire story behind that particular news item.

Going forward, the company aims to distribute its unique content across platforms like Facebook Messenger, Slack, Telegram etc. thereby reducing the app download friction of the youth of the country. Instead of changing the online behaviour of the users, Co-founder Sumedh Chaudhry said that NewsBytes targets to become a platform agnostic news company. In a mobile first country like India, he feels this is certainly the step in the right direction.

Facebook follows a very stringent policy and rejects one out of every three bots submitted to it. Romesh Khaddar, CTO said that the trick is to follow all the guidelines issued by Facebook and think out-of- the-box to give the best user experience in the limited options provided by Facebook and then keep adding features to it. In their case, one can essentially receive all the news without typing even one word.

The app is available for download on Play Store.

TAGS: Mobile App, Google Play Store
Yu Yunicorn Launched At INR 12,999 | TechTree.com

Rahul Sharma has finally launched the much awaited flagship smartphone by Micromax subsidiary YU, the Yunicorn.

During the launch event, Rahul Sharma revealed that the Yunicorn will be featuring a new operating system known as 'Android On Steroids - AOS' which comes with a new design language, enhanced consumer experience, a lot of other great features and with no bloatwares.

Rahul also expresses that the AOS was developed by a specialized team sitting in Bangalore.

Speaking about AOS, it is pretty much close to stock Android with a few minor tweaks such as monochrome, integrated search bar, and quick music toggles. Having said that, monochrome is a mode than can actually save your battery.

Also the smartphone comes with cloud storage, probably to tackle the Nextbit Robin smartphone which recently entered India.

Another new feature that comes with the Yu Yunicorn is the new version of Around You - the 2.0v which brings a whole new wallet which supports all other wallets. Also, this makes booking cabs a lot easier, and Rahul claims that you can actually book cabs and seek medical help without installing any third-party apps.

On the technical end, the smartphone comes with a 5.5 inch Full HD display with contrast of 1000:1 and less bezel which actually makes it more comfortable to hold in your hand.

Rahul Sharma also said that the Yunicorm will be powered by 64 bit Helio P10 processor which is claimed to support carrier aggregation.

The smartphone comes with a whopping 4 GB of RAM which Rahul claims to be more powerful than most of your laptops. It comes with a 32 GB internal storage which can be extended upto 128 GB.

Speaking about the security of the device, Yunicorn comes with one of the fastest finger print scanner in the market, according to Rahul Sharma.

On the camera department, it comes with a 13 MP rear sensor and 5 MP front shooter which is pretty much similar to most of the smartphones.

The Yu Yunicorn will be available in rush silver, graphite and a limited special edition rush gold color schemes with brush aluminium metal design, along with a magnesium and manganese combination which helps in better aging of your smartphones, said Rahul Sharma.

The Yu Yunicorn comes with DTS Audio and is claimed to last for atleast 4 full days on a moderate usage with around 500 hours of standby time.

The smartphone is available on Flipkart for just INR 12,999 for the first time and then the price will be INR 14,999. Registrations for the first flash sale starts May 31, 2 PM onwards.

TAGS: Yu Yunicorn
Digital India To Be Publicized Through Government Vans | TechTree.com

In order to spread the Digital India programme, the government will be rolling out vans to reach out to people in interior districts of the country.

To start with, Minister of Communications and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad will flag off 14 vans of Digital India Outreach Campaign. These vans will be equipped with audio-visual facilities, internet connectivity and other material to inform citizens in the rural parts of the country about the governments plan to improve connectivity.

In the first phase of the outreach campaign, which will run till July, 16 vans will cover 34 districts of nine states  Haryana, Rajasthan, Punjab, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Kerala, and Andhra Pradesh. The full campaign will run from till March 31, 2017 covering 657 districts of the country, the official informed, adding that a total of 66 vans will be used for this.

The objective of this campaign is to create awareness about Digital India programme and its major initiatives through various Point of Presence (PoP) like DeGS, Digi Sewa kendras (CSCs), Panchayats, Schools, Colleges and Haats, and increase uptake of citizen-centric services," a senior government official told.

The government hopes that the campaign will reach 10 lakh citizens and see a growth of up to 1.5 lakhs in the user base of MyGov, Digital Locker, Aadhaar and other digital services. The government has been putting a lot of effort on The Digital India Programme and sooner or later then will succeed in doing so.

TAGS: Digital India
Messages Altered on Electronic Road Signs in Dallas To Tell Drivers: Donald Trump Is A Shape-Shifting Lizard!!

During the Memorial Day weekend, the messages on three electronic road signs in Dallas were tampered to deliver a vaguely political message to drivers. The Trump sign greeted drivers headed west on Interstate 30, as they approached the Cockrell Hill Road exit.

The portable signs, which typically display messages like Exit Closed or Lanes Shift Ahead to direct motorists about construction or other temporary changes to the flow of traffic, read Bernie for President and Donald Trump Is a Shape-Shifting Lizard during the morning commute Tuesday.

On I-30 in Dallas..

"Donald Trump is a shaping shifting lizard!" pic.twitter.com/MqVFjVxJvK  Chad Potts (@Chad_Potts) May 31, 2016

Texas officials told that they thought the signs were turned off and locked before the holiday weekend, but apparently that was not the case. Workers with TxDOT began turning the signs off shortly before 6 a.m.

Another sign said: Work is canceled. Go back home.

During the course of the Memorial Day weekend, the electronic sign was changed twice first to Party Hardy Yall and later to the message about Trump.

It has been removed, a Texas DOT spokesman told the local CBS affiliate after the first message was posted. And the contractor has taken steps to secure the sign.

According to TxDOT spokesman Ryan LaFontaine, who is concerned about the hackers boldness, the signs cannot be altered remotely and must be changed manually at the control panels.

You have to actually be there, he said. Power it up and get in there and break the password.

Similar situations have been reported across the country, with those responsible gaining access to the electronic signs control panel and changing the message it displays.

Any sort of tampering with that sort of stuff is a third-degree felony and its punishable. Were talking prison time, LaFontaine said. Its not something thats taken lightly be any means.

The TxDOT spokesman told NBC, Due to safety concerns, we strongly discourage people from stopping in work zones to create situations such as this.
Teenaged hacker who hacked Microsoft and US Army is looking to crowdfund a $500,000 Ferrari for himself, has collected $175 so far

Dylan Wheeler, the 20 year-old from Perth, Australia is accused of hacking into who allegedly hacked into Microsoft, Valve and US Army websites. After evading the Australian law enforcement agencies for 3 long years, Wheeler fled to Czech Republic where he is living since December, 2015.

It seems Wheeler is suffering from anxiety and feels that owning a $500,000 Ferrari may be the only cure for it. However, Wheeler is not exactly that rich, more so, since he is a fugitive from law in Australia.

From a different perspective, 20 year-old Wheeler appears to be thumbing his nose at authorities, asking for donors to contribute to a new Ferrari.

I need a Ferrari because of my anxiety, my doctor has said because of the FBI and police raids I am unable to function properly without a Ferrari, he writes on the crowdfunding page. However, while he admitted all jokes aside that he was planning to use any money raised to buy himself a new car for his 21st, he said he has been through a lot. My panic disorder is worsening and ultimately Id just love to even if we dont reach the goal, fund a reasonably nice new car, he said.

However his efforts have not borne any fruit so far as he has managed to collect only $175 so far out of the $500,000 crowdfunding goal.

Wheeler, was only 17, when he and his hacking group allegedly hacked and stole at least $US100 million ($A108.2 million) worth of software and data from Microsoft, Valve and the US Army. He was under police radar following a joint international investigation into five suspected hackers, most of them US-based.

Facing a possible prison sentence of ten years, Wheeler fled the country almost after three years later. Currently, residing in the Czech Republic, Mr. Wheeler told 7.30, I left Australia because my case went on for about two to three years and it was getting nowhere.

Maybe you can understand Wheelers anxiety and help him overcome it by pledging some $$$ on his crowdfunding website!
Default password helped British teen hack into North Koreas Facebook clone StarCon

It was recently revealed that North Korea has its own version of Facebook social media website, apparently installed by the state-run Internet service provider. However, this clone set up in North Korea has already been hacked.

While North Korea is known for its strict censorship of the internet with most citizens unable to access the web, the website appears to be hosted from within North Korea, according to an internet analysis company that traced the sites DNS to the notoriously isolated country, reports Motherboard. Star is the name of the Internet service provider in North Korea.

The website, StarCon, appears to have been named after the countrys Internet service provider and is modelled on the famous social network. But in its North Korean avatar, it is known as Best Koreas Social Network. Like Facebook, this website allows people from any part of the world to register with it after uploading their profile picture. It also allows users to post messages and upload videos and share them with their friends.

The site, which was first spotted by Doug Madory at Dyn Research, a company that monitors internet use and access around the world, is available at www.starcon.net.kp. Madory says that the sites DNS resolves to North Koreas Domain Name System, the servers that convert domain names to IP addresses. DNS is often referred to as the address book of the internet.

While its not known who set up the site, it is running PHP Dolphin, a do-it-yourself social network application that advertises to allow anyone to create their own social network.

It seems like its brand new, Madory told Motherboard. Very few websites resolve to the North Korean address space, and this one does.

According to a report published by Motherboard, the Facebook clone didnt deviate much from its original, or from the color themes and feel to the navigation and user experience.

Madory says he doesnt know who set the website up, but if you click around it for a while, youll see that its a pretty faithful clone of Facebook, complete with a newsfeed, likes, and messaging service. The site is functionalI friended Madory and sent several messages back and forth, posted on his wall, and uploaded a profile picture. Right now, there are only a handful of test accounts on the site.

Motherboard says that its possible that the site could only be a test-site.

To speculate a bit, its possible that North Korea is testing a social network that it will eventually make available only within the countrys closely monitored intranet, which allows access to several government websites. Such a move wouldnt be unprecedented for a communist governmentCuba has its own Facebook clone that only works within the country.

However, it was not long before an imitation account of Kim Jung-un appeared on the site. Not long after it emerged on Friday the site existed, it was quickly hacked.

What is interesting to note that every posting and message immediately shows up as 30 minutes old, presumably because the Dolphin software doesnt recognize North Koreas recently created time zone, which is 30 minutes off most of the rest of the world.

Scottish teenager Andrew McKean told Motherboard that he was successfully able to log into the websites backend by simply using admin and password as the login details. This gave the 18-year-old complete control on this website along with the power to delete and suspend users, modify the name of the website, censor certain words and also control the upcoming ads. Not just this, it also gave him the authority to see everyones emails.
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.
Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak has announced the creation of the instructors' school of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, where instructors will be trained by specialists from NATO countries.

"Ukrainian instructors should undergo the appropriate training with the NATO instructors and then they will train Ukrainian soldiers. We must provide good conditions for our instructors so that they would be able to work at a high level. We have planned the formation of appropriate infrastructure where normal conditions will be provided for our instructors," Poltorak said during his working visit to Lviv region, the press service of the Defense Ministry informed on Monday.

Poltorak said budgetary and investors' money would be used for the school construction.

The minister also shared his plans with media on improvement of training facilities and infrastructure of the training ranges of the Ukrainian army.

"Currently, we are holding talks with foreign colleagues providing us assistance and consultations, financial assistance. I hope this summer, after the Warsaw Summit with the Ukrainian president, our partners will provide us the assistance to improve facilities and resources," Poltorak said.
"Any unfriendly action by Western countries will receive a timely and adequate response in the future," the Russian diplomacy stressed. | Read More
Shelling of the urban-style settlement of Stanytsia Luhanska has cut off power supplies to around 30,000 households, and reports on injuries and destruction have not been received so far.

Automatic and anti-tank grenade launchers, large-caliber machine guns and small arms were being fired at Stanytsia Luhanska for more than three hours on May 30, the Luhansk region's Kyiv-appointed military-state administration said on its Facebook page on Tuesday.

"As a result, power lines were damaged in many places, and 30,000 households are still without electricity. A low-pressure gas main was also damaged, but specialists managed to fix it by morning. Information on injuries and destruction has not been received so far," it said.

Banned 120mm mortars were also fired at Ukrainian military positions near the village of Novotoshkivka in Popasna district, it said.

"UN Assistant Secretary General Ivan Simonovic is currently in Luhansk region. He will visit Stanytsia Luhanska today. He will have an opportunity to see the aftermath of the strikes for himself. It is indicative that this shelling took place the day before the next round of the Minsk agreements," head of the Luhansk region's military-state administration Yuriy Harbuz said.
Workers load bags of groceries onto a tuk-tuk at the Klong Thoei market in Bangkok. Photographer: Dario Pignatelli/Bloomberg

Japanese investment in Southeast Asia continues to grow, owing to the regions potential and low labor costs, amid simmering tensions that reduce the appeal of China for some Japanese businesses.

For a third straight year, in 2015 the amount of foreign direct investment from Japan to the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations exceeded such investment in China and Hong Kong, according to figures compiled by the Japan External Trade Organization.

The pace has been accelerating -- the outstanding amount of Japanese investment to Asean nations almost tripled from five years ago to 20.1 trillion yen ($180.9 billion) at the end of last year, according to Bank of Japan data.

Japanese investment growth to China slowed after protests there intensified in 2012 following a territorial dispute over islands in the East China Sea, prompting Japanese companies to diversify investment risks.

With Japans economic growth anemic and the nations population aging and declining, companies have been searching for growth opportunities elsewhere in Asia.

Asean markets are attractive from the Japanese perspective, said Ma Tieying, an economist at DBS Group Holdings in Singapore. Many economies have great potential to grow, thanks to relatively low per-capita incomes and a young population profile.

The openness of markets in the region along with labor costs that are lower than in China also is attracting Japanese investment, he said.

Of manufacturers responding to a 2015 survey on investment intentions, about 48 percent said they intended to strengthen or expand businesses in China, versus 73 percent in 2011.

The poll by the Japan Bank for International Cooperation found that about 56 percent of the companies want to expand investment in the five key nations of Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. The other five members of Asean are Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.
U.S. ambassador will work in Ukraine for at least a couple more months

U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt will work in Kyiv for at least a couple more months.

"I cannot say how long I will stay in Ukraine, I can promise that in the next two months I will definitely still be in Ukraine," Pyatt said, addressing to U.S. Peace Corps volunteers at the ceremony of oath in Ukraine.

U.S. President Barack Obama intends to appoint Marie Yovanovitch new Ambassador to Ukraine, the press service of the White House stated.

In turn, the president put forward the incumbent head of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, for the post of U.S. Ambassador to Greece.

Yovanovitch now holds the post of Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs. Earlier she held the post of Deputy Chief of Mission of the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine (2001-2004).
Minister of Transportation Dinh La Thang asked the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) on Friday to establish punishments for air carriers for delays or cancellations of flights.



Thang strongly criticized CAAV for a huge rise in flight delays and cancellations in the first half of this year.



According to CAAV statistics, between January and June, more than 20 percent of the total 74,000 domestic flights were delayed, an increase of 5.2 percentage point year-on-year.



During the same period, 3.2 percent of the flights were canceled, an increase of 0.5 percentage point annually.



VietJet Air had the highest rate of delayed flights with 40.4 percent; VASCO reported the lowest rate with 10.2 percent.



The CAAV blamed the delays on technical problems, weather, staff and passenger problems, a lack of accommodation at airports, congested air traffic and commercial factors.

Flight delay/cancellation rate of Vietnam's airlines in first half of 2014




Dried-up rice is seen on a paddy field stricken by drought in Soc Trang province in Mekong Delta in Vietnam March 30, 2016.

Vietnam's rice paddy output will likely fall this year for the first time since 2005 following the worst drought in 90 years, but the decline will be limited as farmers expand planting in the current and final crops, a government official said.

The Delta's winter-spring output fell 10.2 percent on last year, but total production could fall just 1.5 percent to 44.5 million tonnes, said Tran Cong Dinh, deputy head of the Agriculture Ministry's Crops Department.

"So overall the annual paddy output will only be short by 700,000 tonnes," Dinh told Reuters on the sidelines of an agriculture conference last Friday.

A farmer burns his dried-up rice on a paddy field stricken by drought in Soc Trang province in Mekong Delta in Vietnam March 30, 2016.
A two-month-old baby girl has returned to her family hours after being kidnapped by a teenager on Sunday morning. Photo credit: VietNamNet.

Police in Lao Cai on Sunday arrested a teenage girl while she was leaving the northern town with a two-month-old baby she had allegedly kidnapped earlier.

Nguyen Thi Dung, 16, was caught on a bus heading to the nearby Sa Pa, police said, adding that the baby girl was immediately returned to her family.

The babys grandmother told police that Dung entered her house that morning, started a conversation, and kindly asked to hold the baby for a while.

The grandmother was taking care of the little girl when her parents were out for work.

She said the baby is so cute, the grandmother said. When I was not paying close attention, she had left our house with my grandchild.

The grandmother said she had never met the girl before.

Dung, a 10th grader from Nam Dinh Province, told police she was visiting Lao Cai Provice and staying with her boyfriend in a rented room.

She said that she only intended to take the baby with her for a short trip to Sa Pa, and would later return the baby to her family.

Police said they are looking for the boyfriend, who has disappeared.
A man smokes under a "no smoking" sign at the Ho Chi Minh City Children's Hospital No. 2. Photo: Nguyen Mi

Experts say Vietnam should raise its tax on tobacco beyond the Ministry of Finance's modest plan in order to curb smoking and raise much-needed funds.

Pham Thi Hoang Anh, director of the NGO HealthBridge Vietnam, said the special consumption tax on tobacco in Vietnam has been maintained at 65 percent since 2008.

The ministry plan would raise it by 75 percent in 2015 and 85 percent in 2018.

The managing agencies can increase the price of gasoline and electricity at any time even though these are essential products for production and daily life. But increasing the tax on tobacco has been too difficult, she said at a conference on the issue in Hanoi on September 13. Vietnam has a golden chance to increase its tobacco tax. If this chance is missed for two or three years, it will seriously affect the young people."

Nguyen Tuan Lam of WHO Vietnam said lawmakers should raise the tobacco tax by 105 percent in 2015 and 145 percent in 2018 to achieve its national target of reducing smoking from 47.4 percent to 39 percent of the male population.

According to the WHO, smoking falls by five percent when tobacco prices go up by 10 percent due to tax increase.

Phan Thi Hai, spokeswoman for Vietnam's Steering Committee on Smoking and Health, said smoking has caused significant damage to the economy.

Vietnamese smokers spent VND45 trillion (US$2.12 billion) on tobacco and the treatment for related diseases in 2012 -- that's triple the revenue Vietnam took in from tobacco sales that same year.

At the conference, experts said a minor tax increase won't have the expected effect due to increasing per capita incomes.

Under the increases proposed by the finance ministry in the draft amendments to the Law on Special Consumption Tax, increasing tobacco taxes to 75 and 85 percent in 2015 and 2018 respectively will increase state revenue on tobacco by VND2.9 trillion (some $137 million) in 2016 and VND7.7 trillion (nearly $364 million) in 2018.

With higher increases proposed by the experts, revenues would rise by VND9 trillion ($425 million) in 2016 and VND24 trillion ($1.14 billion) in 2018.

Meanwhile, under the finance ministry plan, retail cigarette prices are expected to increase 2.9 percent in 2016 and 2.8 percent in 2019, while per capita income increases by 4.8 percent annually.

To reduce sales and smoking, tax increases have to outpace per capita income gains, Hai said.
A court in central Vietnam on Tuesday sentenced a man to death for murdering his wife, whom he accused of cheating him, and her alleged boyfriend last year.

Tran Dinh Thinh, 30, was found guilty of killing his wife Quach Thi Thom on Aug. 19, 2015, and Tran Van Lai a day later, according to the People's Court of Quang Tri Province.

Thinh told investigators he found out about Thom's affair with Lai, who was married, when they lived in Quang Tri.

Thinh forgave his wife and the couple moved south to Binh Duong Province in August 2015.

He said on Aug. 19, when they stayed in a hotel, he found a text message that Thom had sent Lai, which read, "If Thinh leaves me, will you go with me?"

He lost control and stabbed Thom to death. He then left her body in the hotel room and traveled by air more than 1,100 km back to Quang Tri, where he murdered Lai in the latter's house at 8 p.m. on Aug. 20.
Police in the central province of Quang Tri on Monday rescued an 8-year-old boy kidnapped by an employee of his father.

The father Le Van Thiet reported to local police on Monday morning that Nguyen Van Dau, a carpenter working at his workshop, had abducted his son demanding a ransom of VND38.5 million (US$1,720).

Police started looking for the suspect and after two hours they caught him on a motorbike with the boy sitting behind.

The boy had not been harmed, police said.

Dau, who has worked for the family since 2006, told police that he and Thiet had recently been fighting over money issues.

Further investigations are ongoing.
Nguyen Xuan Duc booked a flight with Jetstar Pacific to travel from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi one morning earlier this month.

He received a message from the carrier the night before notifying that the flight would be delayed until the afternoon.

Since he could not find any other options, he had to accept the delay, which meant canceling some of his business plans.

He received no compensation because, technically, he was informed by the airline.

Travelers in Vietnam have long come to terms with the fact that flight delays and cancellations can happen daily.

But with the problem showing no sign of getting better, many are now demanding that at least carriers compensate them fairly for all the expenses incurred and the opportunities missed. Some even hope that substantial compensations may eventually scare airlines into improving on-time performance.

Currently the numbers do not make any local carriers look good.

Statistics from the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam listed 639 delays and cancellations, or 13.4 percent of all flights, between April 11 and May 17.

Jetstar Pacific topped the list with 19 percent of flights delayed and 2 percent canceled, followed by Vietjet Air with a 17 percent delay rate. Flag carrier Vietnam Airlines delayed 275 or 11 percent of its flights.

The Civil Aviation Administration cited bad planning as a major cause.

Vietnam now requires airlines to pay up to VND400,000 (US$18) a passenger for delays of domestic flights and $150 for international flights.

Those figures are higher than the compensation rates before July last year. But many passengers say that carriers should pay more.

Huong Tran, a Vietnam Airlines passenger affected by a three-day delay in January, said she and other passengers had to go through the check-in process three times, one each day, as the carrier was not even sure when it could give them another flight from Paris to Hanoi.

After the third time, Tran said, she had no energy left to drag her luggage back to the hotel again. I just stayed at the airport and waited for 18 hours.

The support she received through the whole ordeal with a loss of stress and frustration was six $17 meals and $223 in cash.

Such amount was little compared to European rules which require EU-based carriers to pay passengers up to 600 euros, or nearly $670, each for delays of more than three hours.

Nguyen Thien Tong, a respected aviation expert in Vietnam, said the compensation rates for delays and cancellations are now too low.

Its not enough to cover the passengers cost for travel, accommodation and meals during the wait, as well as their missing opportunities.

Tong said local carriers could totally set their schedule better to save customers from delays and cancellations.

He said the carriers now cram more flights into their daily schedule than they can actually operate, which means they have to cancel some flights in the last hours or minutes and combine flights with many empty seats, usually from three flights into two.

The compensation needs to be high enough to force the carriers to stick to their schedule.
The Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam is discussing with Hanoi authorities and relevant agencies the construction of a new airport to ease overloading at Noi Bai.

The agency's director Lai Xuan Thanh said the Noi Bai 2 Airport project will be developed on an area of 720 hectares (1,780 acres) near the current airport. Site clearance will cost about $2 billion and construction nearly $3.5 billion.

Thanh said his agency will call for private investment.

With a capacity of 25 million passengers, the current Noi Bai Airport will become more strained in the coming years considering the projected annual passenger growth of 22 percent.

"Building another airport is an emergency issue, he said.

Noi Bai served 63 million passengers in the first four months, up 31 percent from the same period last year. Several airlines have announced plans to expand their fleets to meet the growing air travel demand.

Strong growth in the aviation sector recently has created huge pressure on airports, Thanh said.

The Civil Aviation Authority said it will submit the plan to the central government after consulting relevant agencies.

Vietnam is also developing a massive airport in the southern province of Dong Nai, near Ho Chi Minh City.
Chinese President Xi Jinping goes down the stage after a speech on the opening ceremony of CICA, at Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing on 28 April, 2016. Photo: Reuters/Kenzaburo Fukuhara/Pool

China hopes to get relations with the Philippines back on track, President Xi Jinping has told new Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, after ties were affected by an increasingly bitter spat over territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Xi sent a message to Duterte late on Monday congratulating him on his formal election victory, and said the two countries had a long history of friendly exchanges and a deep traditional friendship, China's Foreign Ministry said.

"The friendly, stable and healthy development of Sino-Philippine relations accords with the basic interests of both countries and both peoples," Xi was quoted as saying in the ministry statement.

Both countries had the responsibility to deepen cooperation, he said.

"(I) hope both sides can work hard to push Sino-Philippine relations back onto a healthy development track," Xi said.

China and the Philippines are locked in a territorial dispute in the South China Sea, a strategic waterway through which $5 trillion worth of ship-borne trade passes every year. Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims.

Tension between the Philippines and China has risen as an international tribunal in the Hague prepares to deliver a ruling in the next few months in a case lodged by Manila in 2013.

The Philippines is seeking a clarification of United Nations maritime laws that could undermine China's claims to 90 percent of the South China Sea. China has rejected the court's authority.
Islamic State militants fought back vigorously overnight and parried an onslaught by the Iraqi army on a southern district of the city of Falluja, the group's bastion near Baghdad, officers said on Tuesday.

An aid official warned of a "human catastrophe" unfolding in the city, with residents unable to escape.

Soldiers from the elite Rapid Response Team stopped their advance overnight about 500 meters (yards) from the al-Shuhada district, the southeastern part of city's main built-up area, an army commander and a police officer said.

``Our forces came under heavy fire, they are well dug in trenches and tunnels,'' said the commander speaking in Camp Tariq, the rear army base south of Falluja, 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad.

A staff member of Falluja's main hospital said they received reports of 32 civilians killed on Monday. Medical sources had reported that the death toll in the city stood at about 50, 30 civilians and 20 militants, during the first week the offensive which started on May 23.

Falluja has been under siege for more than six months. Foreign aid organization are not present in the city, but are providing help to those who manage to exit and reach refugee camps.

The latest offensive is causing alarm among these organizations as more than 50,000 civilians remain trapped with limited access to water, food and health care.

"Human catastrophe"

A human catastrophe is unfolding in Fallujah. Families are caught in the crossfire with no safe way out, said Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, one of the organizations helping families displaced form the city.

For nine days we have heard of only one single family managing to escape from inside the town,'' he said in a statement on Tuesday. `Warring parties must guarantee civilians safe exit now, before its too late and more lives are lost.

Falluja is the second-largest Iraqi city still under control of the militants, after Mosul, their de facto capital in the north that had a pre-war population of about 2 million.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the assault on Falluja on May 22 after a spate of bombings that killed more than 150 people in one week in Baghdad, the worst death toll so far this year. A series of bombings claimed by Islamic State also hit Baghdad on Monday, killing over 20 people.

Falluja has been a bastion of the Sunni insurgency that fought both the U.S. occupation of Iraq and the Shi'ite-led Baghdad government that took over after the fall of dictator Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, in 2003.

It was the first city to fall under Islamic State control, in January 2014.

It would be the third major city in Iraq recaptured by the government after Saddam's home town Tikrit and Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's vast western Anbar province.

Falluja is also in Anbar, located between Ramadi and Baghdad. Capturing it would give the government control of the major population centers of the Euphrates River valley west of the capital for the first time in more than two years.
Almost UAH 200 million belonging to former finance minister of Ukraine Yuriy Kolobov has been arrested at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office (PGO).

"The investigation judge of the Pechersky district court in Kyiv upheld the position of Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office that funds belonging to Kolobov have been arrested. A total of UAH 199.4 million in hryvnia equivalent has been arrested," the PGO reported on Tuesday.

Investigators established during an investigation into a criminal case where Kolobov is suspected of embezzling budget funds in an especially large amount: the former minister placed the funds on accounts opened at Fidobank in the name of his mother V.Shults. The information was passed on to the court.

On May 30, 2016, Kyiv's appeal court confirmed that the funds accumulated on the bank accounts (of individuals) can be arrested.
ActewAGL chief executive Michael Costello has denied being pressured to complain about former Brumbies chief executive Michael Jones. Mr Jones has alleged that former Labor deputy chief minister David Lamont contacted Mr Costello and ActewAGL sponsorship manager Paul Walshe in February asking them to contact the Brumbies board members to complain about Mr Jones. Fight continues: Former Brumbies chief executive Michael Jones. Credit:Elesa Kurtz Mr Jones outlined the allegations in an amended statement of claim filed in the ACT Supreme Court as part of his case against the University of Canberra, its vice-chancellor, Stephen Parker, the UC union, rugby great Joe Roff, and Mr Lamont. Mr Jones is alleging the five defendants pressured the Brumbies board to stand him down for blowing the whistle on financial irregularities with the sale of the club's former Griffith headquarters, and its subsequent move to Bruce.

On Tuesday, Mr Costello and Mr Walshe described the claims as "completely false". "Mr Lamont never contacted either of us in February, or at any other time, in relation to speaking with Brumbies board members to complain about Mr Jones," the pair said in a statement. "The claims made by Mr Jones are simply not true." The Brumbies board stood Mr Jones down in March following an explosive interview on ABC Radio in which he let fly at his critics in and out of the club. He swiftly took the matter to court and used the ACT's whistleblower protections in an attempt to save his job. Mr Jones argued the Brumbies were disciplining him for making disclosures over the sale of land in Griffith.
Just when the aviation industry was watching for Virgin Australia boss John Borghetti to fall on his sword, the tenacious operator has found himself a new ally, a fresh airline partner and a $159 million wad of cash.

Borghetti's deal with China's biggest airline group, HNA, has, at the same time, poked his existing partner-turned nemesis, Air New Zealand, in the eye.

But more importantly, Virgin's new partner has opened up the airline to the fastest-growing international market, China. Virgin will start flying to China next year and will secure new aircraft through HNA's aircraft leasing business.

Virgin, like other airlines and even Flight Centre, had been under earnings pressure having been hit by sluggish demand leading to an international air fare war. But Virgin has been under more pressure thanks in part to its inability to cash in fully on the weak oil price.
People's deputy Nadia Savchenko, who started working in the Verkhovna Rada on Tuesday, said that the work in the Ukrainian parliament did not cause her any difficulties.

"The first impression is that the work is like that of at a market," Savchenko told reporters at the parliament, describing her impressions from the first day of work in the Verkhovna Rada.

Savchenko also said that the members of parliament remind her of "lazy schoolchildren."

"Probably, because I saw them on television, I got the impression that I had worked here for a long time. I found my way around. I am not afraid of it. It would be more difficult for me to appear before people now, but here, with them, I am not afraid, and it is not difficult at all," she said.
InterOil Corp has won external support in its row with its founder and former boss, Phil Mulacek, with an advisor to institutional investors calling on them to reject his efforts to gain board control.

The statement, by proxy advisor ISS, comes as InterOil, which is the subject of a $US2.2 billion takeover offer by Oil Search, is itself ramping up its criticism of Mr Mulacek.

InterOil founder and former boss Phil Mulacek, who is seeking to have his nominees appointed to the board.

InterOil shareholders are to vote on June 14 on a proposal by Mr Mulacek to put several of his nominees on the board, which would see control in effect shift to him. As a result, the meeting is seen as signalling shareholder views towards the Oil Search offer.

Oil Search recently offered 8.05 of its shares for each share held in InterOil, along with a so-called "contingent value right", which will give InterOil shareholders access to any increase in oil and gas reserves of the Elk-Antelope field in Papua New Guinea that is to form the basis of a proposed new export gas project.
Receivers behind the sale of Pankaj and Radhika Oswals' interest in Burrup Fertilisers ran a "flawed" process and were in effect puppets for the ANZ Bank, a court has heard.

The receivers, from PPB Advisory, are being sued by the Oswals over allegedly selling their 65 per cent stake in the West Australian fertiliser giant on the cheap at the behest of ANZ Bank.

Pankaj Oswal (left) and his wife Radhika (right) and daughter leave court in Melbourne. Credit:AAP

The billionaire entrepreneur and his socialite wife allege they are owed between $1.5 billion and $2.5 billion over the sale of their interests in Burrup Fertilisers.
Up to 1.8 million low-paid workers will learn how much their incomes will climb when the national workplace tribunal unveils Australia's new minimum wage on Tuesday afternoon.

Just weeks out from the federal election, the Fair Work Commission will hand down the highly anticipated ruling to determine how much the existing minimum wage  $656 a week, or $17.29 an hour  will increase for the next 12 months.

In 2015, a 2.5 per cent boost to minimum wage translates to an increase of $16 a week.
In what many people will regard as a welcome display of independence and autonomy, the Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment this week queried the legitimacy of the government's public consultations over a proposed development along the Murrumbidgee river corridor.

Kate Auty said that in the absence of environmental studies, the government's rush to consult risked raising expectations that "the development [at West Tuggeranong] will proceed regardless of the outcomes". She warned, moreover, that there had be a careful balance between conservation and development, and that the only way to achieve this was by "thorough rigorous initial assessments" and a strategy embracing ecological values.

It was only in March that the Barr government announced plans to build a new suburb (likely to be called Thompson) on a 167-hectare parcel of land straddling the eastern bank of the Murrumbidgee. Adding weight to Ms Auty's comments was the news that the government has begun a second round of consultation after the first indicated strong opposition.

Similar concerns have been voiced about another development on the Murrumbidgee at West Belconnen, downstream from the proposed Tuggeranong venture. This joint venture between the Land Development Agency and a private developer, Riverview Projects (ACT) envisions three suburbs within the ACT and a new settlement over the border in the Yass Valley. Like the Thompson development, the West Belconnen/Parkwood proposal will require assessments of its likely impact on at least three "matters of national environmental significance".
In October, 2009, my cavalry troop was preparing to shut down a remote outpost in Afghanistan when we were assaulted by more than 300 Taliban-led insurgents. In violation of the most basic principles of warfare, our base, Combat Outpost Keating, had been built in a valley surrounded by three mountains. It is almost impossible to hold and defend your ground when the enemy is free to shoot from above while observing every move you make.

Within the first hour of the attack, the insurgents had breached our wire, driving most of Keating's 50 US guardians into our final defensive formation inside a cluster of three hard-shelled buildings, known as the Alamo position.

US troops who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq received training for war, but virtually no support to deal with the horrors they faced. Credit:US Army

It was then that five enlisted men volunteered to join me in a counterattack meant to drive the enemy back beyond the wire, rescue missing comrades and retrieve the bodies of our dead.

During the next several hours, we achieved these goals. But by the time the battle was over, we'd lost eight men. Three days later, we were evacuated, and the outpost was levelled by a series of American Hellfire missiles.
As the US election narrows to a race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the chorus of voices asserting that the brash billionaire will never be president has gone quiet. Less than a year ago it seemed impossible that the "non-candidate" hotel magnate and real estate developer, who bills himself as the bad boy of politics and who has roundly trashed his Republican Party on the hustings, would fight off 16 contenders to secure the 1237 delegates needed to clinch the Republican presidential nomination. Now he's negotiating with the party for the hundreds of millions more campaign dollars it will take to put him in the White House in November. A Trump presidency must now be rated as a realistic possibility. It takes a billion dollars to run for US president. From now, much of the money is likely to be spent on convincing voters nervous about his apparent xenophobia, misogyny and racism that Trump is not as nasty as he seems. In the process of making him respectable, we are likely to hear a lot more about protecting American jobs than building a wall to keep Mexicans out. But Trump is unlikely to wear the veneer of respectability for long. His "up yours", convention-defying persona has got him this far. Why would he change it? On the campaign trail he has abandoned basic civility, condoned violence and made a political virtue of the blustering about-face. He has displayed an astonishing disregard for the facts, even for a politician. All could prove disastrous should he ever sit in the oval office. So could the alarming disdain for principles of transparency and accountability shown by his refusal to release his tax records.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is under pressure to release his tax returns. Credit:AP For four decades US presidential nominees have voluntarily released their tax returns. The Democratic front-runner Clinton and her rival Bernie Sanders have both released theirs. Trump has said he is being audited by the Internal Revenue Service and wants to wait until the review is finished before releasing them. When pressed by reporters he's also said his tax returns are "none of your business", that people will learn nothing from them, that he'd like to release them before the election and hopefully will, and it's no big deal anyway: "Before 1976, people didn't do it. It used to be a secret thing." Trump's predecessor, the 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, argues the lack of disclosure is "disqualifying" for a modern-day presidential nominee, especially one who has not been subject to public scrutiny in public service or the military. But releasing the returns is voluntary so it is a moral disqualification, not a legal one. Trump's tax records would shine more light not only on his financial situation but on his character. Failing to release them leaves open the inference that they contain, as Romney says, a "bombshell of unusual size". Without seeing the returns, the American people have no way of verifying some of Trump's grandiose claims, such as that he is a generous benefactor to various causes, especially war veterans. He often boasts of his wealth in the campaign. It is a proxy for his success as a businessman which, it is implied, augurs well for success as president. His aides noted that the form for his disclosures to the Federal Electoral Commission was "not designed for a man of Mr Trump's massive wealth".
There is no one who would wish for a cyclone, but the monster storm that ravaged Fiji this year may well have spared Australia's Great Barrier Reef from catastrophe. Such is the delicate balance in the ecosystem, in the days after Tropical Cyclone Winston struck Fiji in February, a tropical deluge subsequently swept across Queensland. The rains lowered ocean temperatures at the reef, likely saving southern corals from widespread bleaching. But the vagaries of nature offer small comfort: the Great Barrier Reef is under incredible stress, and this is compounded by a Coalition government that has willfully obstructed attempts to recognise the scale of the problem. The coral bleaching that has hit the Great Barrier Reef this year is the worst recorded. Credit:XL Catlin Seaview Survey More than a third of the coral in the central and northern regions of the reef has died this year, a casualty of an El Nino-driven spike in water temperature exacerbated by global warming. Like a forest after a cruel bushfire, the sight of coral stripped of life and colour is devastating and the consequences will be far reaching. This is the third major bleaching of the coral on the reef in 20 years, and the worst recorded. Scientists describe the damage as a "huge wake-up call," but one that should hardly be required. It has long been clear the Great Barrier Reef is at risk from human activity. The run-off from coastal farms and towns brings pollution and excessive nutrients into the sensitive waters. Shipping can also pose a danger, unless carefully managed.

But climate change poses the greatest threat to the health of the reef, not only the marine life it sustains but the economic benefit as a major tourist drawcard. It is yet another reason Australia is obliged to be at the forefront of international efforts to tackle and ultimately reverse the trend of global warming. The Coalition has regrettably sought to respond with finicky argument rather than pointed action. It emerged last week that Australia had successfully intervened in the drafting of a United Nations report on the risk of climate change to world heritage sites to remove all mention of the Great Barrier Reef. The government also spent more than $400,000 on overseas trips by Environment Minister Greg Hunt and senior public servants to lobby against an "in danger" listing for the reef. The Coalition is suffering under a misguided notion that to draw attention to the plight of the reef will turn people away. "Recent experience in Australia had shown that negative commentary about the status of world heritage properties impacted on tourism," the government wrote in order to stave off inclusion of the reef in the UN report.The argument is difficult to fathom, for tourism will be lost entirely should the bleaching continue to befall the coral. The damage apparent to this Australian natural treasure should spur an urgent election debate about the environment. Labor leader Bill Shorten has pledged $377million to fund research and management of the Great Barrier Reef, and this is a welcome beginning. But treating the symptoms of global warming is not enough. A system of carbon trading is essential to manage climate change, and Australia must revisit this vexed policy challenge that was willfully and destructively abandoned under Tony Abbott. It is disappointing that Malcolm Turnbull, who has a clear grasp of the risks, has allowed political expediency in an appeal to the arch-conservative wing of the Coalition to trump his concern for the environment.
If crocodile attacks were even an occasional occurrence in Brisbane, the Gold Coast or the Sunshine Coast, there would be no debate about culling them. We would just do it. That's because public safety would demand it.

Because attacks like the one on Monday take place in north Queensland, however, crocodiles remain a protected species.

It says something about the double standards of politicians in the south-east corner that we willingly expose our northern cousins to risks we wouldn't accept down here.

Let me be clear, a cull of large crocodiles is not only desirable, but necessary. Get Crocodile Dundee out of retirement, I say, and get him up there.
Australia cruised through the 2008 global financial crisis on the back of a massive minerals boom. China could not get enough of its iron ore. The lucky country, rich enough to be a laid-back country, proved its good fortune once again. After agriculture and wool came coal and ore. Meltdowns were for losers.

In the United States, there is the affectation of industriousness. People like to make it appear they work all the time. In Australia, as the environmentalist Tim Flannery observed, there is the affectation of effortlessness. People are determined to make it appear they are not working too hard. Sometimes that is the case.

Tony Abbott: a precursor to Donald Trump? Credit:Daniel Hurst

But some of the angst endemic to the developed world, with its lost manufacturing jobs and squeezed opportunities, has seeped of late into the irreverent Australian psyche. The minerals bonanza and commodities frenzy are over. Jobs in services are beginning to follow manufacturing offshore.

For many young Australians the only way to get into the stratospheric Sydney housing market, inflated by rule-of-law-seeking Chinese buyers, is to wait for parents to die. Unemployment is not high, but underemployment is. Australia is America's ally in an increasingly Chinese neighborhood; that could be problematic. The next big thing is unclear.
The Abbott and Turnbull governments have not held back on this soft target - since the last election more than $11 billion has been slashed from the assistance Australia had promised to developing nations over the five years from 2013. No other significant area of Commonwealth expenditure has been harder hit.

As Australia hacked away at foreign aid spending, many other wealthy nations were doing the opposite, despite their own budget pressures. A report released by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in April said 22 donor nations increased their aid spending last year, largely in response to the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean region. Australia and Portugal were the world's biggest foreign aid cutters in proportional terms.

The Coalition's approach to foreign aid is in striking contrast to their conservative counterparts in Britain. Even though the UK budget was hit hard by the global financial crisis, David Cameron's government has lifted foreign aid spending to 0.7 per cent of gross national income. It has pledged not to "balance the books on the backs of the world's poorest people." Now the political party in Britain with a position closest to Australia's aid policy is the far-right, anti-immigration UKIP which wants aid to be cut to 0.2 per cent of Britain's gross national income. That's similar to Australia's aid-to-income ratio of 0.22 per cent.

The Treasurer, Scott Morrison, has previously voiced strong support for foreign aid and called for more spending on it during his maiden speech to Parliament in 2008. Speaking at the National Press Club a day after last month's budget, Mr Morrison said it "grieves" him to preside over Australia's least generous foreign aid spending.
The report about a bomb planted on an airplane of the Hungarian low-cost airline Wizz Air at the Kyiv Zhuliany International Airport was a joke of one of the passengers of the aircraft.

"Today, on May 31, during flight W67305 of the Wizz Air airline from Kyiv to Memmingen one of the passengers told the crew that he had an explosive device. The aircraft crew reacted according to the established operating procedures, the aircraft was returned to the apron, and a full inspection of the aircraft and the baggage was held. The passenger was handed over to police and later taken into custody, he said that his statement was a joke," the airline's press service reported.

At present, the National Police is probing the incident.
Spencer Howson has increased his audience share, confirming his position as the undisputed king of Brisbane radio.

Howson's audience grew by 0.5 points giving him a massive 15.1 point audience share in the breakfast radio market.

612 ABC's Spencer Howson has tightened his grip on the breakfast slot.

His nearest competitor, ARN's 97.3, also grew their audience share by 0.5, ensuring the gap didn't grow, but Howson still remains 1.1 points clear.

Triple M, which had a large leap in the last survey and looked to be tapping on Nova's window for the No.3 position, dropped 0.5 points and Nova is now 1.2 points clear at 11.3 points despite dipping slightly in this survey.
"Changing the definition of marriage to entrench motherless and fatherlessness in public policy and teaching our kids their gender is fluid should be opposed," he wrote.

In a blog post , ACL director Lyle Shelton invoked the rise of Nazi Germany before arguing that Labor leader Bill Shorten's support for Safe Schools reflected "a failure of those of us who know better".

The Australian Christian Lobby has compared same-sex marriage and the Safe Schools program to the Holocaust, dubbing them all "unthinkable things" that happened because societies lacked strong moral guardians.

"The cowardice and weakness of Australia's 'gatekeepers' is causing unthinkable things to happen, just as unthinkable things happened in Germany in the 1930s."

Australian Christian Lobby director Lyle Shelton attends a National Press Club debate in Canberra in July. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Mr Shelton began the post by declaring he loved to read obituaries in The Economist, specifically one published last week on the late German-born historian Fritz Stern. According to the obituary, Stern argued the rise of Adolf Hitler owed less to the Fuhrer's personality cult and more to the failure of Germany's 'gatekeepers' to oppose him.

The ACL leader then blamed Australia's own 'gatekeepers', or conservative elites, for failing to halt the advance of marriage equality or transgender acceptance.

"That Labor leader Bill Shorten can promise during an election to fund the so-called 'Safe Schools' program which teaches children as young as four that 'only you can know if you are a boy or a girl - no one can tell you' and there be so little push back is a failure of those of us who know better," Mr Shelton wrote.
Labor infrastructure spokesman Anthony Albanese has dismissed suggestions of a rift between him and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, saying they have "exactly the same view" on the WestConnex infrastructure project, and denying he was given a "clip across the ear" for recent comments.

The Sydney motorway's future was thrown into doubt by a commitment from the former Labor leadership contender that, if he was infrastructure minister after the election, "there will not be $1 from the federal Labor government" made available for it.

On the same page? Opposition Leader Bill Shorten and Shadow Infrastructure and Transport Minister Anthony Albanese. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Amid ongoing local anger over the project, Mr Albanese has stood by the remark and has now sought to clarify what he meant and insist the project can still go ahead.
Labor deputy leader Tanya Plibersek has lashed the Greens' foreign policy, deriding it as "the search for righteous indignation and the embrace of false binaries".

Ms Plibersek, who is also the shadow foreign affairs minister, is one of a cohort of Labor MPs facing a challenge to their seats from the Greens.

Addressing the Lowy Institute in Sydney on Tuesday, she savaged the Greens' hostility to the US alliance as well as its opposition to the military campaign to degrade and destroy Islamic State in the Middle East.
Tourism and engineering bodies have called for more details about federal Labor's plan to use $1 billion out of a pot of funding for northern Australian infrastructure to boost tourism.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten will on Tuesday announce a pledge to fund cheap loans to the tourism sector across northern Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

Highlighting natural beauty such as the Great Barrier Reef will be a key focus of the plan. Credit:Tourism Australia

Both Tourism Queensland and Engineers Australia cautiously welcomed the billion-dollar commitment, to come out of the government's existing $5 billion Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, but called for more information.

"We welcome any announcement that will fund economic infrastructure and support the economy in northern Australia," EA Queensland general manager Ian McEwan said.
Only 15 per cent of Australians are using financial apps or web-based tools, according to research by industry super fund-owned bank ME. But those who do swear by them.

With all this money being directed from our handsets, it's no surprise apps touting financial convenience are mushrooming. There are apps for micro-budgeting, stockmarket and portfolio investment as well as personal accounting. On the web there are credit scoring firms offering to rate your creditworthiness as well as a host of new "robo-advice" online outlets.

Already consumer spending through mobile devices closely matches web spending. Australians this year are forecast to spend $17 billion through their mobiles and tablets and $18 billion through PCs. By 2020, it will be more than double PC spending, according to banking research firm Forrester Research.

Our mobile devices are becoming the go-to instruments of convenient commerce, offering something that consumers are only just beginning to come to terms with  a world of instantaneous self-wealth management.

ME found nine out of 10 users of personal apps say they would continue to use the apps or tools, or use them more frequently than 12 months ago. The most popular ways to use apps were to pay bills on time (41 per cent), stick to a budget (30 per cent), reach a savings goal (28 per cent), reduce debt (24 per cent) and buy property (24 per cent).

App makers talk a lot about convenience, but they are also about killing competition. Just about all of them want to be one-stop shops. For the big banks, that means directing as many customers back to their own services as possible. For independent app-makers, it's about making themselves the financial end game.

Forrester's principal analyst Tim Sheedy agrees that the big four's bank apps are always self-serving: "They're mostly about driving outcomes that will always be driven back to the bank," he says. All the same, they are also offering some exciting innovations. In February ANZ released its tap-and-go payments app for Android phones that syncs with ATMs, allowing customers to withdraw up to $100 in cash. Likewise, CBA Cardless Cash now lets customers withdraw up to $500 cash a day without a card, using a simple code generated by the bank to the phone. "If your daughter is stranded without money somewhere, you simply send the code to her mobile and she can access the ATM whether she's a customer or not," explains Sheedy.

The largest space for independent apps is self-budgeting. The most popular is Pocketbook, which categorises spending on anything from groceries to clothing. Budget apps are all linked into bank accounts and credit cards so as to offer a real-time view of your spending. Other apps include Splitwise, Good Budget, Expensify and ASIC's TrackMySPEND and companion app TrackMyGOALS.

One of the most popular features of TrackMySPEND is its unique "psychological" buttons, which separate "wants" from "needs". "If I buy a tub of Ben and Jerry's ice-cream, it asks whether this is a need or a want," says accounting software expert Sholto MacPherson of Digital First. "You decide what kind of spending it is. It really has taught me to think properly about money."
A battle over a faulty headset has escalated from a minor workplace incident to a compensation case before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal of Australia.

When the Department of Human Services installed a new telephone system in 2013, a public servant claimed the headset caused her hearing loss and unbearable pain.

A public servant has lost a compensation bid after blaming a faulty headset for injury. Credit:istock

"Heads up my phone is so bad that is not even word for it," she wrote to her team leader after using the headset.

She was told to "get off the phone" but complained of tinnitus symptoms keeping her awake at night. Despite the injury, she continued to work.
The Labor MP at the centre of a months-long investigation into allegations of serious forgery and harassment says he was never interviewed by police as he accuses the LNP of being behind a campaign to discredit him.

The Opposition on Tuesday morning reiterated calls for Queensland police to release their report finding insufficient evidence to back claims involving Mr Williams.

Queensland police won't pursue Labor MP Rick Williams over forgery and harassment allegations.

The claims, made by Mr Williams' former employee Bruce McLean, accused the rookie MP of trying to hire someone to have his ex-wife's boyfriend "done over", sexually harassing a teenager and business impropriety.

They were referred to police in the middle of last year and the investigation was completed on Monday.
Police have charged a 76-year-old man with shooting a younger man at a house in Mitcham.

Detectives are still piecing together what happened, but have confirmed the men knew each other. A sawn-off .22 rifle has been confiscated by police.

The house where the shooting occurred. Credit:Pat Mitchell / 3AW

The victim, in his 30s, is in a serious but stable condition.

A woman in her 40s who was renting a room at the house is believed to have witnessed the shooting. She is believed to have known the younger and older man, but none of the three are related, police say.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin will pay a working visit to Germany on June 1-2, to discuss relevant aspects of Ukrainian-German bilateral interaction, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said.

Special significance will be given to Germany's support for granting Ukrainian citizens visa-free travel to EU countries.

The parties will also consider the implementation of the Minsk Agreements and a political settlement in eastern Ukraine, the Foreign Ministry said.
Victoria might be called the Education State, but its schools are far from perfect.

Some are screaming out for students, while others are so dangerously overcrowded they have drawn up rosters to determine when students can use the playground.

There are 545 Catholic diocesan schools in NSW, accounting for 230,000 students. Credit:Michele Mossop

There are families who drive for kilometres to access a quality education, while others are shunning their local schools leading to a phenomenon known as "white flight".

Infrastructure Victoria has outlined a number of possible solutions in a major report which will pave the way for the next 30 years.
An international graffiti fugitive and an Australian tagger slipped the net of police waiting at Melbourne Airport to arrest them on Monday night, instead flying from Brisbane to Hong Kong to extend a seemingly never-ending "spraycation".

From 2011, Danielle Bremner travelled the globe with her partner, Jim Clay Harper, after the pair fled the US while on probation for graffiti-related offences. They painted as Utah and Ether and were dubbed the Bonnie and Clyde of world graffiti.

But Harper was jailed for six months on Tuesday, his sojourn having come to an end in a headlock on Brunswick Street when Luke*, a single father from Fitzroy, confronted him about defacing shops.

Ms Bremner and an Australian graffitist, who tags as Nokier and was with Harper the day he was arrested, were tracked across the country for almost four weeks by the Victoria Police transit safety divisional response unit. When the pair checked in online for a flight due to arrive in Melbourne on Monday, police were waiting at the airport.
The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union and six of its officials have been fined more than $21,200 for illegally blockading a Perth airport expansion site in late 2013.

The union organised a protest at the site of the $80 million project on October 22, 2013 over what it said was more than $150,000 in unpaid wages involving 46 workers.

The union organised a protest at the site over what it said was more than $150,000 in unpaid wages.

About 100 protesters and CFMEU officials blocked 150 other employees from accessing the site for three and a half hours, and threatened the airport and head contractors, Leighton Holdings-owned Broad Construction, with returning to disrupt the site the next day until the workers were paid.

Concealed Interiors, a wall and ceiling company which had been subcontracted by Broad Construction, was the employer responsible for the unpaid wages, with some workers owed $10,000.
Gold Stealing Detection Unit officers have charged a 27-year-old Carramar man with stealing more than $75,000 worth of coins and gold bars from The Perth Mint.

"It will be alleged that during the man's short employment at The Perth Mint, a number of coins and gold bars, valued at in excess of $75,000, were identified as missing," WA Police spokeswoman Ros Weatherall said.

The investigation continues.

The man, who was employed at the Mint as a contractor, was arrested after an investigation in which police and the Mint worked together.

He has been charged with stealing as a servant, with further charges expected to be laid in regards to other alleged offences.
There are almost twice as many suicides as there are road fatalities in the federal electorate of Canning, which includes Mandurah, Pinjarra and the Peel region, new research has revealed.

The figures, released by mental health consulting firm ConNetica, showed there were 90 suicides in Canning between 2009 and 2012, compared to 54 road deaths.

The number of suicides equates to almost one a fortnight.

"What we see in electorates like Canning, is the impact of economic change," ConNetica director and professor John Mendoza said.
"Youth violence is a complex social issue and we need a whole community response to help reduce the incidence." Since July 2010 statistics reveal more than 50 homicide-related child charge, which encompasses murder, attempted murder, manslaughter and driving occasioning death. Relationship Australia executive director for youth programs Michael Sheehan said the increasing availability of alcohol to youths, coupled with changes to the family structure, were fuelling youth violence. "Changing family structures, parents working longer hours  it means teenagers are bored and there's less supervision meaning they're more likely to get into trouble and mix with the wrong people," he said. His comments follow four boys being convicted of manslaughter in 2014-15 [financial year], including a 15-year-old Bunbury child who killed his newborn son during a hospital visit, and three teenagers who fatally bashed another boy, Quinn De Campe, in December 2013 after luring him into bushland to sell him cannabis.

More recently, a 12-year-old boy, in December, was convicted of unlawful wounding after he confessed to drinking alcohol with friends in Perth's CBD and smashing a glass bottle over a man's head who had just been "clotheslined" off his motorcycle by rope strung across the road. He received a juvenile conditional release order after spending three months in custody awaiting his sentencing. But it's not just high profile cases coming through Perth Children's Court. In December last year, 120 children were being held in Banksia Hill Detention Centre, 25 convicted of offences against another person, 22 for robbery and extortion and 39 for break-ins and theft. A further 975 sentenced youths were being managed within the community at the same time.

Around 10 per cent of the 15,340 charges against children in the 2014-15 financial year were violence-related. Mr Sheehan, however, criticised WA's criminal justice system, saying it was too heavily weighted to reactive responses to youth crime, rather than prevention and early intervention. "They might be referred to a drug and alcohol counsellor on a community based order and that's obviously helpful but if they're still in an environment where their parents drink or they've still got access to alcohol or peer pressure, it's still not the solution," he said. Peel youth services family support counsellor Tanya Langford agreed, claiming many parents struggled to deal with violent children and that government support for them was limited. "The problem is that if the police go to the home and there's youth violence and they don't report it and they don't tell the parents to report it  it doesn't even get to the courts and that's what's happening," Ms Langford said.

"This mum I've just been talking to, she called the police [on her violent son] and they've told her she needs to leave the home, she needs to go and give the kid some time to cool off. "Or another option police sometimes use - they can do a removal order for the young person only if there is an alternative accommodation option available for up to 72 hours, but there's often no one who will take them." Ms Langford said if more resources were not pumped into addressing the reasons children acted violently, the pattern would continue down to the next generation. "We have to realise for these young kids, if they are using violence to get what they want, they are developing that passive behaviour so then there's a really high likelihood that when they move into relationships with partners, they are going to be our future generation of domestic violence perpetrators," she said. "Kids are exposed to so much more aggression and violence now in games and on TV... and tied in with that we've got so many more single parent families, so mums are trying to raise boys that don't have good male role models in their lives."

Ms Langford believed a solution to the problem would be to initiate court-ordered intervention programs that violent children must attend, before it gets to the point where they are charged with an offence and go through the court system. She said the limited invention programs currently available for families often struggled to maintain child participation, as they were not compulsory. Department of Child Protection director general Emma White said although the department did not keep statistics on violent children, it worked with families and young people to provide early intervention strategies and prevent risks from escalating. "Responding to youth criminal and anti-social behaviour requires a multi-agency approach, and strong partnerships are in place between the Department, the Department of Education, Department of Health, Department of Corrective Services and the Western Australian Police to target services toward youth who are considered most at risk," she said. "The department funds a range of services to assist families where youth criminal and anti-social behaviour may present including family counselling, parent-teen conflict and specialist family and domestic violence services."
Ms Phillips revealed earlier this year that she had been sexually assaulted as a 19-year-old.

Jess Phillips, the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, declared that Twitter was "dead", after she was subjected to around 5000 Twitter notifications of people discussing whether or not they would sexually assault her.

A British politician has revealed she received more than 600 rape threats in one night after launching a campaign against sexist online bullying.

The MP, who has played a leading role in launching the 'Reclaim the internet' campaign, said that the "ringleaders" of the abuse should face either civil or criminal action.

Jess Phillips says the ringleaders should face either civil or criminal action. Credit:Facebook: Jess Phillips

Speaking about the recent abuse, the Labour MP told the BBC: "I could never block them - you would need someone employed full time to block the amount of people who have been in touch with me over the weekend.

"It's not a solution just to block and ignore them in my case. The only solution in stopping me seeing it is if I stop going on Twitter which is a very real possibility."

Ms Phillips added: "Until Twitter makes this sort of thing stop happening and stops accepting that this sort of dogpiling and mass bullying can happen, their business model is totally flawed. People who don't like this feral side of the internet are just going to walk away."
The trial began in July 2015, but victims and survivors have been pursuing the case against their former leader for more than 15 years. Over 90 witnesses testified. Souleymane Guengueng, a former prisoner and victim, arrives at court to testify in the trial of former Chad dictator Hissene Habre in Dakar last year. Credit:AP Judge Gberdao Gustave Kam, speaking for the panel, said evidence showed Habre was directly responsible, having given the orders for imprisonment and torture, and having also committed some of the crimes himself. Habre has 15 days to appeal, and his lawyer, Mounir Ballal, said he will do so. "We are surprised by the verdict, especially the severity of the verdict," he said.

US Secretary of State John Kerry welcomed the conviction, calling it "a landmark in the global fight against impunity for atrocities". He also said it was "an opportunity for the United States to reflect on, and learn from, our own connection with past events in Chad". The US and France were supporters of Habre when he was in power. Reed Brody, a lawyer for Human Rights Watch who has been involved in the case, said it was "a huge victory for his Chadian victims, without whose tenacity this trial never would have happened". "This verdict sends a powerful message that the days when tyrants could brutalise their people, pillage their treasury and escape abroad to a life of luxury are coming to an end," Brody said. "Habre's conviction signals that no leader is above the law, and that no woman or girl is below it ... This is the first time in history that a former head of state has been convicted in an international trial of personally committing rape," he said.

The accusations of rape came out during witness testimony at the trial. Clement Abaifouta, president of the Association of Victims of the Crimes of the Hissene Habre Regime and a former prisoner who was forced to bury dead prisoners, called it a "consecration of justice here in Africa". "There must not be any more leaders like Hissene Habre in Africa or elsewhere. Because in fact, the elected leaders are there to represent people, to be for the people, not to kill the people, violate the people or steal from the country. So I must say, here in Africa and elsewhere, never again," he said. Habre, who has lived a life of luxury in Senegal's capital of Dakar since fleeing Chad in 1990, had called the trial politically motivated. He refused legal representation, but the court appointed him Senegalese lawyers. He and his supporters disrupted proceedings several times with shouting and singing.

Chad's current government, led by President Idriss Deby, who served as Habre's military adviser before pushing him from power, supported the trial. Habre's son, Bechir, had harsh words for Deby before the verdict. "Someone dies every day in Chad. There is a man responsible, Idriss Deby. He must respond. He is responsible for this," Bechir Habre said, gesturing to the group of victims. Over the years, many of those who had been jailed by Habre's government or lost family members campaigned for his prosecution. Habre was first indicted by a Senegalese judge in 2000, but legal twists and turns over a decade saw the case go to Belgium and then finally back to Senegal after unwavering pursuit by the survivors. The International Criminal Court, based in The Hague, cannot prosecute crimes committed before it was established in 2002.
Erbil: Two Yazidi women have been rescued from Islamic State captivity in Fallujah by Iraqi forces during an ongoing offensive to retake the militant stronghold, a representative of the minority said on Tuesday.

Vian Dakhil, a Yazidi member of the Iraqi parliament, thanked the army for rescuing the two women on Monday in a post on her official Twitter account. "My prayers for saving the rest," she wrote.

More than 5000 Yazidis, mostly women and children, were captured and enslaved by the militants when they overran the Sinjar area in northwestern Iraq in the summer of 2014, purging the minority they consider to be devil worshippers.
Donbas will not agree to the deployment of international forces; besides, this is not envisaged by the Minsk agreements, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

"This is not envisaged by the Minsk agreements. Donbas will never agree to that, and the Minsk agreements demand that every settlement step be coordinated with Donbas," Lavrov said in a live program answering questions from Komsomolskaya Pravda readers.

"The security issue has suddenly become a top priority of President Poroshenko, not just a ceasefire, but the provision of security by some kind of international forces throughout the territory of Donbas," the minister said.
The mystery of what happened to an Australian backpacker missing in Brazil has deepened, with revelations he checked into an apartment in the beachside neighbourhood of Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro.

Rye Hunt, 25, is believed to have left Galeao International Airport in the Brazilian capital after a fight with his friend nearly two weeks ago.

Mr Hunt had left his laptop, backpack, camera and other items in the apartment, but he had not returned, his family said.
Kandahar: Taliban militants overran several checkpoints in southern Helmand province and killed at least 25 policemen over the past two days, officials said, in the first major assaults in the province since the insurgents named a new leader last week.

While the Taliban made major inroads in Helmand last year, the violence had seemed relatively contained in recent months, after broad changes by the Afghan Army there and a new influx of US troops and advisers. But fighting has once again intensified, with an increased tempo of attacks in the districts of Nad Ali, Gereshk, Sangin and Marja, as well as in Babaji, a suburb of the provincial capital Lashkar Gah.

Senior Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Manan Niazi in Herat province on Friday. Credit:AP

British soldiers fought in Helmand from 2001 until the last combat troops were withdrawn in late 2014, with more than 450 British lives lost. Since the withdrawal of international troops, the Taliban has been consolidating its hold on the province.
Washington: Strange man that Mr Trump. Miffed that Fox News would not agree to his primary season debate demands, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee instead staged an event to raise millions for veterans groups  and now he's seriously miffed [again!] that reporters have kept tabs on how much money was raised, whether it had been distributed and to which groups.

So on Tuesday, Trump scheduled a press conference and as is his wont, he proceeded to use the assembled hacks as a punching bag, mewling and puking at the news media's temerity to ask questions about the fate of millions that a candidate for high office said he'd distribute  but seemingly had not done so.

In training to be the petulant president, Trump spent most of the 40-minute press event complaining about how hurt he had been by the new treatment of his little fundraiser and taking specific aim at the hapless man from ABC News  Tom Llamas.
3rd Annual International Auto Show at Iron Gate Motor Condos







Naperville, IL; A variety of exotic, luxury and classic automobiles will be on display at *Iron Gate Motor Condos* for the *3rdAnnual International Auto Show, weather permitting.* The event, to be held on* Sunday, June 12, 2016,* from *10 AM to 2 PM* at *2212 Ferry Road, Naperville, IL*, will provide a day of escape from medical treatment for children served by the Cal's Angels charity.

Iron Gate Motor Condos will present to car owners 20 awards in a selection of classes and divisions by origin of country from Italy, Germany, United States, France, and the UK. The first 100 vehicle entries will receive a Commemorative Dash Plaque. Registration is free to all participants and attendees. Food and beverages will be available for purchase.

*Please Note: Parking is limited; grass and gravel surface spaces available on a first-come basis.*

Pediatric patients associated with the Cal's Angels program will be in attendance to experience the beauty of these exotic and luxury automobiles from the front seat. Each child will have the opportunity to ride-along and participate in a scavenger hunt, hosted by the Ultimate Road Rally [ADD HYPERLINK HERE] Team. The hunt, which brings together these young patients with Road Rally participants, will culminate with each child being presented with an age-appropriate gift. Iron Gate Motor Condos owners and supporters can also provide a supervised photo of the children with the respective automobile. Any donations made to Cal's Angels are welcomed.

*About Cal's Angels*

Cal's Angles is a pediatric cancer foundation granting wishes, raising awareness, and funding research to help kids fighting cancer. Tom and Stacey Sutter, who lost their son Cal, to leukemia, founded the non-profit in 2007. Cal's compassion for putting other's before himself inspired his parents to start the foundation, helping kids battling cancer and providing financial assistance to their families. For more information or to make a donation visit www.calsangels.org. <http://www.calsangels.org/>

*About Iron Gate Motor Condos*

*Iron Gate Motor Condos in Naperville is the Chicago's first, exclusive residence for classic, collector or exotic vehicles. Located just north of the intersection of I-88 and Rt. 59 on Ferry Road in Naperville, the Iron Gate facility offers owners a highly secure, controlled environment and the camaraderie of fellow garage owners, frequent car shows and timely events. For further information, please visit * www.irongatemotorcondos.com.
Mazda3 Global Production Reaches Five Million Units







HIROSHIMA, Japan, May, 31 2016; Mazda Motor Corporation has announced that the total production volume of the Mazda3 (known as Mazda Axela in Japan) reached five million units at the end of April 2016. It is the second Mazda to reach five million units of production, following the Mazda Familia.(1) The Mazda3 sets a new record for Mazda by achieving the milestone figure in only twelve years and ten months since production of the model commenced in June 2003.

The Mazda3 is a core model for Mazda, accounting for approximately one third of the company's annual sales volume. It is manufactured at the Hofu Plant in Japan, Changan Mazda Automobile Co., Ltd., in China, AutoAlliance (Thailand) and Mazda de Mexico Vehicle Operation in Mexico. It is also assembled in Malaysia and Vietnam.

Since the first generation, Mazda has consistently worked to exceed expectations with the Mazda3, refining its dynamic design and responsive and enjoyable driving performance. Currently in its third generation, the Mazda3 was fully redesigned in 2013, adopting SKYACTIV TECHNOLOGY and KODO-Soul of Motion design to join Mazda's new-generation lineup. Critically acclaimed around the globe, the model won Canadian Car of the Year's Best New Small Car in 2013 and the international Red Dot Design Award in 2014. It was named a Top 3 Finalist for World Car of the Year and World Design Car of the Year in 2014.

Moving forward, Mazda will continue to develop products which offer all customers driving pleasure and outstanding environmental and safety performance. The company aims to enrich people's lives and become a brand connected to its customers by a special bond.

(1) Does not include Familia vans and trucks.

About Mazda

Mazda Motor Corporation started manufacturing tools in 1929 and soon branched out into production of trucks for commercial use. In the early 1960s, Mazda launched its first passenger car models and began developing rotary engines. Still headquartered in Hiroshima in western Japan, Mazda today ranks as one of Japan's leading automakers, and exports cars to the United States and Europe for over 30 years. For more information, please visit www.mazda.com
What To Do If You Didnt Make The Shortlist For The First Batch Of New Ford GTs And Cant Afford An Original GT40







LONDON - May 31, 2016: There is rightly great excitement around Fords fabulous-looking new GT and the companys return to Le Mans 50 years after the first of its four victories there. However, with 6,506 applicants chasing just 500 initial examples at c.300,000 each, many would-be owners are going to be disappointed. And with original GT40s each now valued in the millions, it would seem all Ford supercars are beyond the reach of everyone but the super-rich. Well not quite, thanks to Le Mans Coupes Ltd who can readily supply one of the stunning Superformance GT40 evocations for the eminently more affordable price of 102,500 plus VAT.

These versions are so accurate that 70 percent of the components are interchangeable with their original counterparts, they come complete with P/2000 Series chassis numbers recognized by the Shelby American World Registry. Each example is painstakingly hand-built by Hi-Tech Automotive in ultra-modern 270,000 sq ft premises in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. They are offered in MKI and MKII form and with left or righthand drive. The many options include a choice of powerplants from 5.6 to 7.0 litres (ie 430 to 560bhp), central or sill-mounted gearchange, and ZF RBT or Quaife transaxle. Depending on the choice of engine, Superformance GT40s can sprint from rest to 60mph in just 3.7 seconds and accelerate on to a top speed of over 205mph.

Commented Le Mans Coupes Managing Director, Nigel Hulme: Interest in the GT40 has grown steadily since the models 50th anniversary celebration of two years ago, and has inevitably been further heightened by the launch of the new GT and Fords exciting decision to give it its Le Mans debut exactly 50 years after first beating Ferrari there.

Further details of the Superformance GT40, plus the Shelby Daytona Cobra Coupe CSX9000 Series and Superformance Cobra MKIII that are also available from Le Mans Coupes Ltd, are available at www.superformanceuk.com, or by calling 01342 712774/07836 742725
Volvo Group Under Renewed Scrutiny Ahead of High-Level Iranian Visit to Sweden







NEW YORK - May 31, 2016: As Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif leads a business delegation to Sweden on Wednesday, a group of leading diplomats and lawmakers are stepping up pressure on the Volvo Group and other Swedish companies, warning them of the risks of doing business with Iran.

"It is a dangerous scenario: While the Iranian regime pushes ahead with its ballistic missile program, the Volvo Group - whose heavy trucks have reportedly been used to transport Iranian missiles and other heavy weaponry - is increasing its business with the regime," said United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) Chairman Senator Joseph I. Lieberman and CEO Ambassador Mark D. Wallace.

UANI is in the midst of a global education and awareness campaign focused on the corporate risks of doing business with Iran. In addition to the Volvo Group, UANI has recently raised concerns with the ABB Group, Sandvik Materials Technology, Verisec AB, and Pomegranate Investment.

UANI successfully pressured the Volvo Group to end its Iran business in 2013 after photographic evidence apparently showed the regime had used Volvo equipment and technology to transport Iranian missiles. Volvo owns iconic American truck maker Mack and has received nearly $200 million in U.S. Federal Government contracts since 2000, 90% of which came from the U.S. Department of Defense. Last year, however, Volvo reportedly resumed its Iran business.

"Severe business risks exist for companies thinking about investing with the Ayatollah, including doing business with the wide array of front companies tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a terrorist organization sanctioned by the United States and the international community," said Lieberman and Wallace.

As part of its campaign to highlight the dangers of business with the Iranian regime, UANI has identified a matrix of 10 key risk categories businesses and sovereign states face should they pursue deals with Tehran.

Click here to read UANI's letter to the Volvo Group.

Media interested in speaking with Ambassador Wallace or Senator Lieberman, please contact: press@uani.com.

About UANI

UANI is an independent, not-for-profit, non-partisan, advocacy group founded in 2008 by Ambassador Mark D. Wallace, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, former CIA Director Jim Woolsey and Middle East Expert Ambassador Dennis Ross, that seeks to heighten awareness of the danger the Iranian regime poses to the world.
Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada has appealed to the French Senate, urging not to lift anti-Russian sanctions over Ukraine.

Respective resolution No. 4731 was supported by 227 MPs on Tuesday, an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reported.

"Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada calls on the Senate of the French Republic to prevent the adoption of a decision which could be perceived by Russia as the weakening of the European Union's united position on the unacceptability and condemnation of illegal actions by Moscow on the international arena, as well as could undermine the French Republic's efforts aimed at a peaceful settlement of the Ukrainian situation," the Ukrainian lawmakers said in their appeal.

In addition, the Ukrainian parliament asks the French Senate to strongly condemn Russia's violation of the fundamental norms and principles of international law by way of committing violent actions in Ukrainian territory.

The Verkhovna Rada also calls on the French Parliament to fully be conducive to exerting further pressure on the Russian Federation as a country that violates a number of international treaties and conventions until that state finally returns to the international legal field.
On Thursday, June 2, at 10.30, the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency's press centre will host a press conference entitled "Constitution Is Not a Pig in a Poke. Why Amendments to the Fundamental Law Regarding Judicial System Need to Be Improved." On June 2, the Verkhovna Rada may consider and finally adopt the changes to the Constitution in the part relating to the judicial system. Participants will include Executive Director of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union Arkadiy Buschenko; Chair of the Board of the Center for Civil Liberties Oleksandr Matviychuk; Chair of the Information Center for Human Rights Tetiana Pechonchyk (8/5a Reitarska Street). Admission requires press accreditation. More details by phone: (067) 445 9543, tp@humanrights.org.ua
That one of Hollywoods most famous and most powerful actorsthe longtime subject of the worlds swooning crushesis being accused of allegedly beating his It Girl actress wife is the kind of juicy, salacious, shocking-if-true story that tabloids and media organizations thrive on.

Even juicier, apparently, is the shocking-if-true story that the wife is making it all up.

Its a confusing narrative thats playing out in the headline-dominating media saga of the pending Amber Heard and Johnny Depp divorce.

Heard claims that Depp had physically abused her throughout the course of their one-year marriage, including specific and graphic details of the alleged abuse that were made public when Heard filed a request for a domestic violence restraining order. She had a black eye she says Depp inflicted when she arrived at court to file the paperwork.

In the wake of those claims going public and that photo going viral, there has been some shock and awe. A lot of skepticism. Many conspiracy theories that Heard is inventing the history of abuse in order to extort more money in the divorce. An aggressive smear campaign launched by Depps friends and family to discredit Heard and her character. And a media culture that is bizarrely hospitableoccasionally even complicitin this campaign.

On Monday, after a long weekend of accusations that Heard is making the entire thing up, Heards legal team has been forced to file a statement to both police and the media in response to what the team says are vicious false and malicious allegations.

The statement reads, according to The Wrap: Johnnys team has forced Amber to give a statement to the LAPD to set the record straight as to the true facts, as she cannot continue to leave herself open to the vicious false and malicious allegations that have infected the media. Amber has suffered through years of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of Johnny.

The record that needed to be set straight, specifically, is in reference to a statement from the Los Angeles Police Department that was released shortly after Heards accusations set fire to the internet, in which a police spokesman said that the department had investigated a domestic abuse claim Heard made on May 21, but found no proof of the crime.

In Heards request for a restraining order, she submitted photo evidence of a black eye she said she received after Depp had hurled an iPhone at her face on that day, May 21. Video footage of Heard leaving the courthouse last week after filing the paperwork revealed lingering bruising.

Yet the police spokesman said that after responding to a 911 call on May 21, Heard did not insist on a police report. There was no evidence of any crime, the spokesman said. A crime did not occur so the officers left the scene and left a business card.

The LAPDs statement, coupled with a photo with friends that Heard had posted on her Instagram later that weekend that did not appear to reveal a bruised face (but did have her hair draped to cover half her face), led to a spate of media coverage and social media conversation insinuating that Heard was not telling the truth about Depp allegedly assaulting her. Its a suspicion that became even louder after the revelation that the couple had no prenup, and that Heard is seeking spousal support from his $440 million fortune.

Being suspicious of a woman who alleges that she is a victim of domestic violence is perhaps one of our cultures most grotesque instincts.

No one has been convicted of anything, and the conflation between accused and convicted that poisons modern media coverage is an irredeemable issue. Evidence is only surfacing; these are allegations. But perhaps the kneejerk reaction when a woman shows up to court with a bruise on her face shouldnt be shes lying.

Now Heards legal team is speaking out against these attempts to discredit her. Part of the statement references the reason she did not insist on a police report the night of May 21. She wanted to keep the details out of the presspossibly to prevent the exact thing that is happening right now.

Also, according to The Wrap, the statement acknowledges the reality that many victims of domestic violence, for several, all valid reasons, choose not to file police reports. In reality, Amber acted no differently than many victims of domestic violence, who think first of the harm that might come to the abuser, rather than the abuse they have already suffered.

And while there are anonymously sourced reports from those close to Heard that the actress is startled and aghast at the campaign to discredit her allegedly launched by Depps teamincluding a report in Page Six sourcing someone who says its all an attempt to save Depps careerHeards team pointedly addressed what they call the actors attempt to attack her character:

We took the high road. Unfortunately, Johnnys team immediately went to the press and began viciously attacking Ambers character. Amber is simply a victim of domestic violence, and none of her actions are motivated by money. Amber is a brave and financially independent woman who is showing the courage of her convictions by doing the right thing against Johnnys relentless army of lawyers and surrogates.

That army of surrogates include Depps ex-wife, Lori Anne Alison, who has defended her ex-husband as a soft person who never laid a hand on her during their marriage from 1983-85. (Which would therefore mean that 33 years later he wouldnt behave differently with someone else?)

It includes, most visibly, comedian Doug Stanhope, who penned a lengthy, free-wheeling essay for The Wrap in which he accused Heard of manipulating his friend, Depp, throughout their marriage. He wrote that Heard, in telling Depp that she was leaving him, was threatening to lie about him publicly in any and every possible duplicitous way if he didnt agree to her terms.

Director Terry Gillam, who has worked with Depp in the past, tweeted Stanhopes essay with the note, Like many of Johnny Depps friends, Im discovering that Amber is a better actress than I thought.

Stanhope admitted early in his essay that he is dismayed that Depp is being portrayed as guilty without due process after being accused of a crime. Its similar, one might say to the character assassination and rampant suspicion, again without due process, that is being lobbed at Heard.

The difference is that only one of these parties is the one claiming to have been abused over the course of a 15-month marriage. Only one showed up to court with a bruise on her face.

Its problematica word that is used too often in online culture to label any news story that tends to offendthat a media organization would participate in the witch-hunt skepticism that Stanhopes essay lent pitchforks to when it was published. Heards team said, It is highly offensive and disturbing that you would choose to publish it in the first place.

But its not just The Wrap. TMZs aggressive coverage also pursues tenuous leads aimed at discrediting.

Theres the ear-witnesses who say shes a liar, and that Heard was screaming at Depp during an argument as a badly executed attempted setup. Context-free photos of Heard smiling over the weekend were posted on the news site after a legal meeting. Nice to know you can meet your lawyer and come out happy, TMZs (tasteless) caption reads. (All women who allege domestic abuse are condemned to a future of never smiling.)

The site has also questioned the legitimacy of her claim that Depp threw a cell phone at her face because she did not tell cops about the incident.

Theres also the questionable way other media organizations are characterizing the controversy when writing about the two actors.

In a box-office summary reporting the dismal earnings for Depps weekend release Alice Through the Looking Glass, The Hollywood Reporter writes, In a public relations nightmare for Johnny Depp, Alice Through the Looking Glass hits theaters just as the actors wife, Amber Heard, is granted a restraining order after alleging Depp previously assaulted her.

Perhaps ruling that a womans domestic abuse allegations is a public relations nightmare for the accused is not the most sensitive way of covering.

Theres a tenet in our country that says youre innocent until proven guilty. That is true in the case of Johnny Depp as well, as critics of a spate of media coverage that has vilified Depp in the face of these allegations have made abundantly clear. The actor has not been convicted of domestic abuse, but the allegations against him are alarming.

They are alarming and they are being filed in an official, documented capacity. It is those official reports that people are reacting toincluding, and rightfully, reports that originally seemed to contradict Heards claims.

But theres also a thing in our country called victim-shaming, and it seems to be our instinct.

Kudos to tenacious reporters eager and willing to get down to the truth of allegations that could be damage the reputation of a public figure. (Again, innocent until proven guilty.) Its rare and important to remember that accusations should not be taken on face value. But there is still a misogynistic ickinessan institutionalized one, evento the way we react to news like this: Whats her motive? How will she profit from this? What if shes lying?

Both sides of the cointhe crucifying of Depp based on allegations and not conviction, and the victim-shaming discrediting of Heardare undeniably a byproduct of our current trial-by-media culture. Facts blur with rumors, inklings, and deep-seeded fan beliefs. Judgments are made immediately, passionately, and unequivocally.

At The Daily Beast, weve written about how domestic abuse allegations and even convictions have no negative effect on an actors career in Hollywood. The accusations against Depp were the catalyst for the piece, which took a strong stance in reaction to the nature of the accusations and the lack of response the industryin our view, inexcusablyhas to them.

Based on the way the current Amber Heard and Johnny Depp saga is being covered and reported, it may not just be Hollywood that has an institutionalized issue when it comes to claims of domestic violence. Its the media enablers as well.
CALABAR, Nigeria  Every time the Nigerian military raids Boko Haram hideouts in northeast Nigeria, soldiers report intriguing stockpiles quite apart from the predictable guns, bombs, and machetes. Often these include magical amulets and trinkets, and, frequently, quantities of Viagra and similar sex-enhancing pharmaceuticals.

There is a reason for the obsession with erectile function, and it is common to most of the extreme jihadist movements, especially those, like Boko Haram, that have pledged allegiance to the so-called caliphate that claims the name Islamic State: the promise of sex is a great recruiting tool, and sexual prowess is deemed to have mystical powers.

Thus in Iraq, ISIS has a record of enslaving women and girls deemed non-believers, then handing them over to the not-so-tender ministrations of men with years of pent-up frustrations. In Nigeria, Boko Haram has made the kidnapping of young women, like the girls taken from Chibok school two years ago, almost a trademark of its movement. Such practices, from the jihadist point of view, have a couple of benefits. They sow terror at the same time they attract young men to jihadist ranks.

But we have to be careful here. The jihadists enemies are forever claiming they are sex-mad monsters more interested in concubines than the Quran.

When the military captured their bases and training camps, they never found Quran or other Islamic books, Nigerian army spokesman Sani Usman said in a statement released last September after a number of camps were raided. What they found were ammunition, local charms, condoms and all sort of drugs including sex enhancing ones in their enclaves.

In fact, independent analysts confirm this general picture. The talismans, according to a non-military source, are not in the least Islamic, and they have a special purpose: When the girls arent scared of dying even with a gun pointed at them, the militants use local charms to hypnotize and lure them, said Yusuf Mohammed, a respected Arabic scholar and community organizer in the northeastern town of Maiduguri who also assists the citys main vigilante group, the Civilian Joint Task Force, in intelligence gathering. And because they sleep with so many girls in a day, they are forced to depend on sex enhancing drugs so as to last long in the act, and a condom when they suspect a woman has sexually transmitted disease.

Figures certainly seem to show that Boko Haram militants have a huge appetite for sex. A report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs released early this year estimates more than 2,000 girls have been abducted since the jihadist group began its uprising in the northeast over six years ago. Other estimates put the number at 7,000, with the presumption that many if not all of them are used as sex slaves.

A number of these girls have become pregnant in captivity and some have contracted sexually transmitted diseases. Many have been raped repeatedly and relentlessly.

Asabe Aliyu was about 23 years of age when she was abducted in 2014 by Boko Haram militants from Delsak, a village near Chibok in the northeast. The mother of four children was taken to the jihadists stronghold in the remote Sambisa forest where she was sexually assaulted day after day by different men and forced into marrying one of the militants.

They turned me into a sex machine. They took turns to sleep with me, she told Daily Times, a Nigerian newspaper. Now I am pregnant and I cannot identify the father.

A number of other girls have told stories of how they were raped and violated almost on a daily basis by the same unit of militants in Sambisa forest. Some of the victims are as young as 8.

Some victims have said the militants usually discuss among themselves the number of girls theyll sleep with in a day, said Yusuf Mohammed, who has interviewed and counseled a number of Boko Haram victims in Maiduguri. The aim is so that theyll be able to impregnate as many girls as possible and bear children who will continue in the jihad.

Last year, Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima, told reporters that the urge to bear kids is driven by Boko Harams superstitious believe that their children will take after their cause.

These people have a certain spiritual conviction that any child they father will grow to inherit their ideology whether they live with the children or not, Shettima said. The sect leaders make very conscious effort to impregnate the women.

To fulfill this macho obligation, jihadists turn to performance enhancing medications. The army announced as recently as Friday that it recovered sex enhancing drugs such as Viagra from some militants as they tried to flee Sambisa forest on Thursday.

Viagra and similar drugs used to treat erectile dysfunction work only with sexual stimulation and do not increase the desire for sex. But the fact that they could maintain an erection for up to five hours (a health hazard warned against on the package) is what Boko Haram militants find so appealing.

A victim of Boko Harams sexual violence once told me that the jihadists love to boast among themselves about their sexual stamina, and that they bet on who will last the longest in having sex.

Anyone who has sex for the longest hours wins whatever bet has been placed, she said. They take whichever girl they want and they can have sex for hours.

In March, the government of Borno state, announced the closure of cattle markets in the capital city because agents working for Boko Haram sold cattle stolen by jihadists from neighboring villages in these markets and used the proceeds to buy food and drugs for the militants.

Local vigilantes and security officials have identified sex enhancing drugs as the medicines these agents most commonly buy from retail pharmaceutical stores.

About five people were arrested by the military and they confessed to buying these drugs for the militants, Yusuf Mohammed said. They use proceeds from the stolen cattle they sell to buy these medicines.

With the number of girls Boko Haram has abducted, it is clear what the jihadists intend to achieve: to punish as many girls as possible through rape, and father as many children as they can by impregnating them.

The more girls they kidnap, the more sex enhancing drugs theyll need, Yusuf Mohammed said. These militants just want sex with every girl in their custody.
YANGON, Myanmar  When she talks about imprisoned Rohingya Muslims, her people, her pretty face changes; her eyes darken, her straight-backed posture grows tense, and her voice grows louder: The government now deny that we even exist, she says.

A walking symbol for discriminated minorities, Wai Wai Nu believes that the only way to convince her countrys newly elected government to include all ethnic minorities in the democratic process is by mobilizing, and pushing.

She says she is ready to turn into a monk for that, to live without any personal life, devoting herself only to one goal: to end the disaster for one of the most discriminated-against groups on the planet, to win freedom for more than 200,000 internally displaced people living in ghettos and camps surrounded by police checkpoints in Rakhine state.

Nationalism, inequality, injustice rolled over the young womans own life, like a tank. Burmas military regime believed that Wai Wai did not deserve freedom because she was the child of a Rohingya politician. For that one crime only, she spent her youth from 18 to 25 in notorious Insein Prison in Rangoon (now Yangon, Myanmar).

When a Rangoon court sentenced her father, former elected member of Parliament Kyaw Minm, to 47 years in prison, Wai Wai was a first-year student at a law school. Two months later, she, her mother, her sister, and brother were each convicted to 17 years in prison. I could tolerate the food, all the prison conditions that we lived in, except for the fact that I could not continue my education, Wai Wai told The Daily Beast.

At least she was not alone; she talked with other incarcerated teenage girls. Some of her prison mates, despairing and hopeless, turned to drugs and prostitution. That was when Wai Wai decided to become a womens rights defender and mobilize the women of Myanmar to a fight for justice.

After eight years in prison, Wai Wai Nu and her Womens Peace Network Arakan had trained more than 500 students, mostly women, to understand the true meaning of words like justice and human rights.

When Wai Wai and her father visited an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp for Rohingya a few months ago, she saw thousands of teenagers living without hope. She told them what she was able to do when she got free, and to have strong hopes for the time of freedom coming for them.

Today some of Wai Wais friends on Facebook call her their Rohingya Princess. She did not like the nickname. Strict as a soldier at war, deeply devoted to her struggle, she shook her head: I am not a princess, I do not know how to free minorities right now, but I know one thing: that is my dream, I want to be a good human being and bring people justice.

In prison, Wai Wai admired two politicians, the most famous Burmese woman, Aung San Suu Kyi, also a political dissident, who was living under home arrest in Rangoon at the time, and the American politician, then a senator, Barack Obama.

I thought, if Obama wins the elections, he will change not only the United States, he would change the entire world, Wai Wai remembered. Last year the young Myanmar dissident had a chance to have dinner with the American president at the White House and personally give a push to the U.S. in Myanmar.

Wai Wai smiled at the memory: I was the only foreigner at the table, the other eight young people were American; it was totally cool, when instead of letting me introduce myself, the president told everybody my story, Wai Wai said, but then frowned: I might have disappointed the president by saying that his policy toward Burma is not a success story, for as long as we see the continuation of human rights violations throughout the country, especially the atrocities in Rakhine state, Wai Wai said.

From early morning to late at night, seven days a week, Wai Wai Nu works on pulling together divisions of young activists, relying especially on the strength and courage of young women like her.

One recent Saturday began at 9 a.m., teaching English to a group of 10 students at her office. Blackouts, which happen in Rangoon every few hours, did not stop the class. In Burma, where an average family of five members live on $200 a month, blackouts are not the worst hardship.

My life changed, when I met Wai Wai Nu and came to her training classes, says 18-year-old Pyae Sone Soe. She became my sister and teacher, my inspiration; she taught me about my citizens rights.

After Wai Wais morning lectures, she rushed to a panel discussion for Rohingya activists, and at 11 a.m. Wai Wai, dressed in a black jacket and a longyi, a traditional long skirt, was speaking into a microphone at a long conference table.

We should not be satisfied, she said. We should involve more women in the peace process, demand that the government fulfill their international obligations, create mechanisms to stop violations against women, come up with a plan to have up to 30 percent of women on state positions.

The next speaker at this conference on Developing Strategies for Advancing Womens Rights in Myanmar was another beautiful and thoughtful leader, 24-year-old Thinzar Shunn Lei Yee, who stressed the need for legal and administrative reforms.

As with many young female activists in todays Myanmar, Thinsar and Wai Way both wanted to be as courageous and strong as Aung San Suu Kyi, and maybe one day come to replace her. Myanmars women, civic and human rights defenders, are mobilizing in a powerful movement, says David Mathieson, the senior researcher on Myanmar in the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch. Wai Wai is one of the brightest of them. She could definitely be a brilliant politician.

The Rohingya Muslim minority has experienced years of discrimination by Burmese nationalists. At least 140,000 of them were forced into temporary camps in 2012, when a violent ethnic conflict broke out between Muslims and the Buddhist majority in the state of Rakhine.

It would not be accurate to say that Rohingya IDPs live in a concentration camp, but it is true that they cannot walk out and freely go to a hospital, for instance; for serious medical help they would need official escort, Mathieson explained.

Wai Wai realized that her role model, 70-year-old Aung San Suu Kyi, the woman now in power, had a burden of reforms, ethnic conflicts, a legacy of military rule, a crisis in IDP camps, and other grave problems to deal with. But she still believed that the leader of the new government would do more and sooner for the Rohingya.

Theres a certain irony in the fact that Wai Wai has met Obama, but not her other hero. If only Wai Wai could one day meet with Aung San Suu Kyi, she knows what she would say: I think I would tell her that her vision for our country turning democratic will only be a success when everyone has a chance to participate in the process, everyone should have opportunity to have access to the process, Wai Wai told The Daily Beast. Rohingya should have equal rights, tooshe might already know this, but I would like to remind her.
He has written the history of time, wrestled with the infinities of space and unlocked the mysteries of black holes.

However, even Stephen Hawking cant explain Donald Trump.

Asked during an interview on British TV why Trump was meeting with such success in the American Presidential race, Hawking replied, I cant. Hes a demagogue who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

Hawking, 74, who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 1963 and given two years to live, is unable to speak without assistance and uses a computerized voice box. Each word he uses is spelt out a letter at a time.

Hawking has a history of being unafraid to voice his opinion on political issues, and in the interview he also waded into the debate on whether the U.K. should leave the European Union in the forthcoming referendum on the issue.

The 74-year old scientist told Good Morning Britain: Gone are the days when we could stand on our own, against the world. We need to be part of a larger group of nations, both for our security and our trade. The possibility of our leaving the EU has already led to a sharp fall in the pound, because the markets judge that it will damage our economy.

There are two obvious reasons why we should stay in. The first is that it promotes the mobility of people. Students can come here from EU countries to study, and our students can go to other EU universities. More importantly, at the level of research, the exchange of people enables skills to transfer more quickly, and brings new people with different ideas, derived from their different backgrounds, he said.

Hawkings remarks about Donald Trump are likely to be remembered alongside his remarks about Zayn Malik of One Direction.

My advice to any heartbroken young girl is to pay close attention to the study of theoretical physics, because one day there may well be proof of multiple universes, he said in response to a question about Zayn leaving the band at the Sydney Opera House last year.

It would not be beyond the realms of possibility that somewhere outside of our own universe lies another different universe  and in that universe, Zayn is still in One Direction.

He was also asked in the interview if Eddie Redmayne's portrayal of him in the film had boosted his female fan base.

He replied: "I had many fans before Eddie Redmayne played me."
Over 28,600 people died due to opioid overdoses nationwide in 2014, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data that was released this month. Thats quadruple the number of opioid deaths from the year 2000.

There is an antidote. Its called Narcan, a drug that blocks the effects of drugs like heroin immediately after an overdose. Its saved countless lives in states like New Hampshire, where opioid overdoses are up 73.5 percent year over year, and 2,800 doses were administered in the state from January to August alone.

The makers of the drug know this, and they are starting to make victimsand statespay.

The auto-inject version of the drug that used to cost $575 for two doses now costs $3,750, according to Politico. The generic, Naloxone, isnt much better: pre-crisis, the drug cost $1.84 per dose. Now, the drug costs 17 times that.

The FDA cant do anything about it. It officially has no legal authority to investigate or control the prices charged for marketed drugs, which is why it couldnt penalize noted, proud price gouger Martin Shkreli for a vital drug that treats toxoplasmosis.

But there is a way to stop price gouging on a drug that now saves thousands of lives a year during Americas burgeoning opiate epidemic: Demand answers from the drug companies, threaten to sue the hell out of them, and force them to pay for it.

Thats what Attorney General Maura Healey did in Massachusetts. After hearing countless complaints from first responders about the sudden surge in the price of the drug, she started investigating companies like California-based Amphastar Pharmaceuticals in April.

By August, the same company that doubled the price of its drug for no real reason agreed to pay the state $325,000 in a settlement. All of that money goes into a trust fund for bulk purchasing of the drug, which saves 25 percent off each vial.

Its an inelegant solution, and it doesnt fix the price gouging immediately. But its working, and the pharma companies are quite literally paying for it.

In a state where 11,000 naloxone doses were administered and 1,200 people died of opiate overdoses in 2014 alone, its the best Healey could do in three months without a law to help further.

Opiates now take more lives in our state than car accidents and guns combined, so we have been working hard to make Narcan more accessible to all those who want it, Healey told The Daily Beast.

This bulk purchasing fund has helped us address dramatic price increases that have made the drug very expensive for first responders who need to administer this life-saving tool to overdose victims.

Now, according to the Attorney Generals office, the price of naloxone is down to $20 per dose from $44 last year.

It worked in Massachusetts, but it may not work everywhere.

In Maine, where heroin deaths rose 31 percent in 2015, the states Governor Paul LePage simply does not want to help addicts.

Naloxone does not truly save lives. It merely extends them, he wrote in a press release after vetoing a bill that would increase access to Narcan in late April. Creating a situation where an addict has a heroin needle in one hand and a shot of naloxone in the other produces a sense of normalcy and security around heroin use that serves only to perpetuate the cycle of addiction.

Last week, he cited an apocryphal story of an unnamed Portland-area teenager who overdosed and was revived three different times in a week with three Narcan shots. There are no records of this ever occurring, according to Maine police reports.

Such obstructionism has pushed local media to both excoriate LePage and demand the states AG to take a similar posture to Healey, citing her plans immediate success.

But the state is now seeking bipartisan efforts to override its governors empathy-free style of leadership. Republican Senator Susan Collins demanded an explanation for the cost increase in letters to all five companies that make Naloxone. Democratic Congresswoman Chellie Pingree said that Congress should take action to stop it soon.

I think that the pharmaceutical manufacturers take advantage of people in need. The idea that this has been around since 1971 and the prices have gone up 17 times recently now because of high demand, she told Maine Public Radio. Its got to be about greed.

Until she drafts a bill, the only proven way to stop that corporate greed is to sue it out of them.
ROME  Sara Di Pietrantonios Toyota Ayga was still smoldering at the side of the road shortly before 5 a.m. when her mother, Concetta Raccuia, arrived at the street in western Rome where the car had been set on fire early Sunday morning.

Di Pietrantonio, 22, had sent her mother a text around 3:30 a.m. to say she was on her way home. When she hadnt arrived an hour later and didnt respond to calls to her cellphone, Raccuia became worried. She was getting ready to go out and find her daughter when the police called to say the car registered in her name was found burning on the side of the road near where they lived. When she arrived at the scene, she walked up and down the road calling her daughters name until the light beam from her cellphone caught another plume of smoke and a patch of burnt grass behind a bush some 500 meters from the torched vehicle. It was her daughter Saras burning body. The skin on her face had been scorched. Her long blonde hair was singed and her blouse was unbuttoned.

It took police another 24 hours to arrest the culprit, Di Pietrantonios 27-year-old ex-boyfriend, Vincenzo Paduano, who allegedly confessed to the heinous murder on Monday.

According to Monica Monteleone, the chief prosecutor in the case, Paduano said he burned his former girlfriend to death because he could not bear that the relationship was over.

Di Pietrantonio is the 55th femicide or extreme domestic violence victim so far this year. Femicides are defined as women who are murdered by a spouse, boyfriend, or son. In 2015, there were 128 femicide victims in Italy; in 2014 there were 136. The figure breaks down to one femicide every two days.

Police suspected femicide almost immediately after learning that Di Pietrantonio had told friends that her ex-boyfriend had become increasingly obsessed and jealous in the 20 days since they broke up. But initially, he seemed to have an ironclad alibi working as a night watchman when she was killed so they briefly checked out her new boyfriend, who she had seen before texting her mom.

But police cleared the new boyfriend and focused on Paduano, who eventually confessed to leaving his guard post and stalking his former girlfriend.

According to police documents, Paduano waited for Di Pietrantonio outside her new boyfriends house and followed her along the dark street she took home. Then he forced her car off the road and confronted her, first by trying to kiss her, and then by trying to force her to perform fellatio on him. When none of that worked, he told police, he poured alcohol over her head and over the car and used his cigarette lighter to set the car on fire. When Di Pietrantonio tried to escape, he chased her down the road and set her on fire, then watched as she burned alive.

According to police, at least two cars passed by the arguing couple while Di Pietrantonio was apparently trying to escape her ex-boyfriends forced embrace. Neither car stopped, but the motorists were identified on CCTV tape and tracked down for questioning. Both drivers told police that they saw the burning car and the couple down the road in an animated state. One driver told police that Paduanos pants were undone but that he, the driver, didnt want to get involved because he thought it was a simple argument and that he hadnt made a connection between the burning car and the arguing couple. The other said he saw the girl waving but he didnt realize she was asking for help and that he was scared to stop. No one called the police.

The ambivalence about getting involved, even when a woman is waving her arms for help in a domestic dispute, underscores the problem: femicide is still rampant in Italy because society still accepts domestic violence, says Barbara Spinelli, a human rights lawyer and leading expert on the phenomenon of femicide in Europe who teaches seminars on the topic to lawyers, social workers, police officers, and teachers across Europe.

A case in point is how underreported the news that Hollywood star Johnny Depp was accused of serial abuse against his wife. The scandal barely raised an eyebrow in Italy, where most people consider domestic violence a private matter. In fact, only a tiny percentage of the 6.8 million women who are known to have been abused at least once in their lives have even called for help because they either dont know who to call or they assume no one will help them, according to a report by Italys Equal Opportunity Ministry.

Patriarchal stereotypes are still deeply rooted, Spinelli told The Daily Beast. There is a clear lack of political will to prevent violence against women and to protect women from violence, as it looks impossible to create an efficient national mechanism. There is only rhetoric.

Spinelli cites a new law that passed in 2013 that was meant to put a national action plan on violence against women in place, but which has failed to help so far. Femicide and violence against women is still widespread, she says, citing an appalling lack of shelters for women who feel threatened and want to leave a violent situation.

Any progress in the battle against domestic violence is, of course, too late for Di Pietrantonio, whose life could have clearly been saved if one of the passersby had the courage to stop and help. But, as is often the case, the heinous death has sparked outrage in the country and prompted the chief prosecutor to call for action. I invite the girls to confide in friends and relatives when they are victims of persecution, Monteleone said at a press conference calling for a stop to domestic violence. We must not stand still when there is someone who claims to love you but doesnt. Let this death not be in vain.
LONDON  Jesse Eisenberg is one of the most successful artists of his generation: an actor, playwright, author and humorist, his credits include Hollywood blockbusters, a book of short stories, pieces in The New Yorker and now a play in Londons West End.

And yet, he often seems so uncomfortable.

He became a household name after starring as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, where his intense, introspective, whip-smart character crackled with nervous energy as well as a powerful streak of ambition.

Many of those traits have resurfaced in subsequent roles ranging from supervillan Lex Luthor in Batman v Superman to a narcissistic Manhattan millennial called Ben in his latest play The Spoils, which opens in London next week after a successful run Off-Broadway.

Its become the conventional wisdom that Eisenberg is playing a sort of exaggerated, amped-up version of himself in all of these parts, but when you spend time with him in person you soon see that its the other way around.

On screen or stage, he seems to be toning down the nervous tics, the scattergun self-deprecating thoughts and the unparalleled talking speed.

Oh, interesting. Yes, I mean, I dont drink coffee because I think if I did, any acting I would do would be totally inaccessible and any movie I was in would be 20 minutes long because I speak quickly. Yes, I guess so, he told The Daily Beast.

As hes speaking, his fingers adjust buttons and tug at his jeans, his eyes dart around the room. Mostly theyre cast down and to his left, flicking up every now and again to catch your eye and make sure youre following his stream of thoughts.

Its like Woody Allen on speed.

Were sitting in a grand room at the Savoy hotel in Central London to discuss The Spoils, a play that he wrote and stars in alongside Kunal Nayyar (Rajesh Koothrappali, The Big Bang Theory) and Alfie Allen (Theon Greyjoy, Game of Thrones).

When we meet the show is due to open in a matter of days, and the cast is deep in rehearsals and then previews. It doesnt sound as though Eisenberg is entirely enjoying the process.

We rehearse all day and then I go home and, you know, panic, he said. We did, lets say, 80 shows in New York and the 80th show was as nerve-wracking and difficult as the first showin some ways even more because you thought, well the other shoe hasnt dropped yet, so to speak, so its obviously going to happen here.

This is just the nature of my mind mixed with live theatre. But thats also what makes it really exciting; you know, I discovered that I do my best when Im worried about something. This is not a very healthy way to live necessarily, but its a nice rubric for me to know when Im doing something thats worthwhile; that means I get worried about it, it means Im scared, it means I dont feel like Ive perfected it yet.

It also means it must be hard to relax.

Eisenberg suffered from anxiety as a child, struggling to get through elementary school until he discovered acting, which gave him a more structured way to interact with other children.

Hed moved to New Jersey from Queens with his dad, a college professor, and his mom, who was a clown at childrens birthday parties. One of his two sisters was a child star who appeared in a series of TV movies and Pepsi commercials in the 1990s.

The intense anxiety has relented to some extent although he still suffers from OCD, and occasionally insomnia, which cant help the grueling regime of filming, writing, and publicity tours.

So, is he happy?

Well, thats, like, a weird kind of momentary abstract idea, he said, pulling at the sleeves of his plaid shirt. But thats not my goal. I mean, you know, I dont know, that doesnt seem like the goal. I mean, I dont know. I dont know No, probably not, I guess.

He seemed surprised by where that sentence had ended up.

I come from a family of kind of brooding thinkers, not swimmers my parents are great parents and good people but the goal was not to be the happiest person; the goal was to be kind of productive and to think and to consider and to be empathetic to others and to try to make the world better in some small way, to give back. It was never to just be happy. I guess my family would view happiness as somehow hedonistic, he said. Yes, I dont think we are able to make the distinction between hedonism and happiness like healthy people are allowed to make.

Eisenbergs character, Ben, in his third play The Spoils isnt very healthy either. Just like the parts he wrote for himself in two previous scripts, hes a narcissist, whose anxiety and lack of confidence leads him to lash out at weaker characters.

In an early scene, Ben is seen asserting his superiority over his roommate, Kalyan (Nayyar), who has recently moved to the country. The world is not fair, he says. Oh, you know that youre from Nepal.

When Kalyan looks crestfallen, Ben tries to make amends. I cant keep driving forward if I think Ive hit an animal, he says.

Nayyar explained that his character was being bullied because of Bens insecurities. Its a guy who likes to mess with people because hes angry, hes depressed and hes manipulative. And thats how he likes to lord his control over the character that I play, he told The Daily Beast.

The sitcom star, and one of the highest paid actors on TV, wasnt buying the oft-cited theory that Eisenberg is giving audiences a glimpse of his true character in these roles. Jesse is a wonderful smart and kind person. All the good qualities of Ben come from Jesse and all the bad qualities are made up in his head, he said.

Eisenberg himself gave a more nuanced explanation. My character is the part of me that maybe I feel most ashamed of, which is the part that I never express; its the recessive part of me, the kind of angry, you know, bullying bigot. I dont actually have any of these feelings, but I can kind of induce them or imagine what it must be like to have them, he said.

Hes not always so serious. Hes a good laugh to work with, hes good fun, said another cast member, Kate Brayben, who won the best actress in a musical award at the Olivier awards last year. And hes a giggler as wellam I allowed to say that?

The giggling never takes place on stage, she assures us.

He's also warm and sincere while sitting down to talk to us. Plenty of actors hate, or at least resent, the promotional interview tours that go hand-in-hand with their huge pay packets. Not Eisenberg.

"Its the easiest part. Are you kidding? I mean, listen, we just did the run-through of the play and every time I do this play truthfully it feels like Im getting an organ harvested. Its just the most taxing, you know, emotionally draining experience," he said. "And then to come and just talk about the play? This is like asking the guy who breaks rocks if he can describe to you what breaking rocks is like and then asking him if that description was tough."

From Lex Luther to Ben and maybe even Zuckerberg, Eisenberg admits that he does prefer playing bad guys. He says he can see the goodor at least the struggle in anyoneeven Donald Trump.

Im not really in a position in my life where people are really horrible to me. Im a kind of recognizable movie actor so just by virtue of that people seem to be kind of nicer to me, he said. Maybe because I dont have that feeling of being oppressed in some way, maybe thats why I dont see people who are seen as oppressors as pure evil, becauseIm not a victim.

Not anymore. Eisenberg is a long way from a timid school kid in New Jersey, but you still dont have to spend too long in his company to see flashes of that lost little boy.
Keen royalists (and readers of the Daily Beast) will have seen some of the pictures before, but still it is a treat to learn that Queen Elizabeth II has become Vanity Fairs oldest solo cover girl on record at the age of 90 (seizing that title off 65-year-old Caitlyn Jenner).

The Queen sat for a series of portraits by Annie Leibovitz, Vanity Fairs contributing photographer, at Windsor Castle in April to mark her 90th birthday.

Some images from the resulting portfolio, including the memorable shot of her great granddaughter Mia Tindall holding her handbag in a family tableau, have already been published.

In that snap, Mia proudly holds up her great-grannys 1,000 Launer handbag in a moment, which one person who was there described as totally unscripted.

The moment with Mia was completely spontaneous, it was not staged at all. She just picked up her great-grannys handbag and that was it, a source told the Daily Mail, Taking pictures of children is like herding cats but for that split second, it just worked. Annie has children of her own and knows her stuff.

In another picture released earlier and included in the portfolio, the Queen is shown on the stone steps at the East Terrace of the castles private grounds, with her four dogstwo corgis and two dorgis, the crossbreed the Queen accidentally engineered when one of her corgis mated with a dachshund that belonged to her sister, Princess Margaret.

The queen once said: My corgis are family.

However two photosincluding the cover in which she is also accompanied by her dogsare exclusive to Vanity Fair.

Michael Joseph Gross has written a piece about her corgis for the magazine.

Of particular delight is an image of the Queen and Prince Philip relaxing like any other old married couple in Windsor Castles informal oak drawing room.

The most moving, important thing about this shoot is that these were all her ideas, says Leibovitz, in remarks on the VF website.

She wanted to be photographed with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren; her husband, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh; her daughter, Anne, the Princess Royal; and her corgis. I was told how relaxed she was at Windsor, and it was really true. You get the sense of how at peace she is with herself, and very much enthralled with her family.

The cover shows the Queen holding corgi Holly and, from left, Willow, Vulcan, and Candy (the latter two beasts are both dorgis).

The Summer issue of Vanity Fair is out on Thursday.
The close working relationship between NASA and the Russian space agency centered around the International Space Station (ISS) since the 1990s is now looking precarious as the United States faces a dilemma over whether to continue to business with a public sector controlled by Russia's military-industrial complex.

At issue is whether the sale of Russian-made rocket engines for NASA launch vehicles undermines the reason that U.S. sanctions were imposed on two Russian officials for their role in Moscows invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014: Dmitry Rogozin, a deputy prime minister in charge of Russias defense industry known as the countrys space czar, and Sergei Chemezov, the head of Rostec, a vast state-owned defense and technology holding company.

Billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars are set to be spent by the United States for these rocket engines.

Rogozin has explicitly referred to it as free money that will flow directly into Russias military-industrial complexthis, at a time when Russian-made weaponry and materiel are being used in an ongoing dirty war in Ukraine, and Russian warplanes continue to bomb CIA-backed rebels in Syria.

Its pretty fucked up, says Charles Davidson, executive director of the Kleptocracy Initiative, a new graft-monitoring project based at the conservative Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. It should be a scandal, not just a controversy.

Russias state-controlled NPO Energomash has contracts worth over $2 billion dollars to supply two major U.S. aerospace companies, United Launch Alliance (ULA) and Orbital ATK, with rocket engines.

The deal with ULA, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing, dates back to the late 1990s, providing RD-180 engines for the U.S. firms Atlas V launchers. The Orbital ATK agreement for eight RD-181 engines for Antares rockets was concluded in March this year.

These engines are essential components of the rockets: the first stages that get the craft off the ground. After this stage has burnt up all of its fuel and is discarded, both the Atlas V and Antares rockets continue the ascent powered by U.S.-made engines.

The problem is that after last years restructuring of the Russian space industry, Rogozin, Chemezov and Rostec, are all directly involved in this transaction. The U.S. Treasury Department insists that the deal in no way violates existing sanctions because entities arguably controlled by sanctioned individuals are not automatically subject to sanctions themselves. A senior Obama administration official told The Daily Beast, "We have no information to indicate that the rocket engine purchases are prohibited by U.S. sanctions."Even still, the optics of the deal, and the foreign policy implications it raises, are awkward since, if Rogozin is to be believed, American public money is now pouring into the very Kremlin war machine that precipitated American economic penalties on Russia in the first place.

Prior to the restructuring, Roscosmos, the Federal Space Agency, had overseen a relatively loose conglomeration of manufacturers, some private and some partially owned by the statethe descendants of the old Soviet-era design bureaus. But following several high profile failures, notably the July 2013 explosion of a Proton rocket, the Russian state moved to put tighter reins on the space industry, with Rogozin accusing space firms of operating too much in their own interests.

A new state corporation under the Roscosmos banner was formed by presidential order in July 2015, with the older RSA Roscomos dissolved on December 8.

Under President Vladimir Putins decree control of all assets belonging to the firms that had made up the old Russian space agency, including NPO Energomash, were now to be transferred to the state corporation.

Rogozin, who was one of the first seven individuals placed on the U.S. sanctions list in March 2014, became Roscosmos chairman. When the restructuring was proposed in 2013, he noted that the move would effectively combine civilian and defense capabilities.

When it comes to U.S. sanctions, Rogozin has alternated between issuing acidic threats and professing himself unbothered. After analyzing the sanctions against our space industry, I suggest the U.S. delivers its astronauts to the ISS [International Space Station] with a trampoline, he said in April 2014, after the U.S. Treasury made its first designation.

A few months later, he told the Russian state-owned TASS news agency that a new cold war with America neednt necessarily impinge on Russias defense modernization plans. We need the most modern engines that produce more thrust. In order to design them, we need free money. This is why we are prepared to sell them  taking the sanctions very pragmatically.

As for Sergei Chemezov, he has been a friend of Putins since their days together in East Germany, where he was said to be Putins mentor in the KGB. He formerly served in the Russian Presidential Administration and was put on the board of directors of Roscosmos when the new state company was formed.

According to a U.S. official speaking on background, Chemezov is the most influential member of Roscosmos supervisory board. Rostec, the company he heads, controls two-thirds of Russias defense sector, employing 900,000 people, of 1.2 percent of the total Russian workforce. It was added to the Treasurys sanctions list in September 2014.

Chemezov has also been a beneficiary of the Russian corporate practice known as raiding. As Ron Wahid explained at DefenseOne, last year the Russian government handed control of FundServisBank, a major bank, to Novikombank, one of Rostecs subsidiaries. The twist is that FundServisBank insists it never had any financial problems, Wahid wrote. The end result is that the bank now serves as the personal stash for Putin and friends space loot.

Thus U.S. dealings with Roscosmos should also fall under the axe of sanctions. Or so one would think.

Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Brian McKeon raised the question with John Smith, acting director of the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the body that administers and enforces U.S. Treasury Department sanctions. In a letter dated March 1, Smith responded that OFAC sanctions only come into automatic effect if sanctioned individuals own a 50 percent or greater interest in the given entity. While Smith did say that Rogozin and Chemezovs control over Roscosmos could be a potential basis for such a designation, the OFAC has yet to make an affirmative determination to designate those entities.

Sen. John McCain has been an outspoken critic of buying engines from Roscosmos-controlled entities. Our reliance on Russian rocket engines manufactured by a company controlled by Putin cronies continues to subsidize the corrupt Russian military-industrial base, McCain told The Daily Beast. This is unacceptable at a time when Russia continues to occupy Crimea, destabilize Ukraine, menace our NATO allies, send weapons to Iran, violate the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and bomb U.S.-backed forces in Syria fighting the murderous Assad regime.

As a solution, McCain has proposed offsetting 50 percent of the budget allocated for building a new U.S. launch system to be used to end Americas dependency on Russian engines. (McCain included this as a provision in his National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017.) For the time being, the senator says, SpaceX Falcon 9 and ULA Delta IV, both of which have American-made engines but which are currently more expensive than Russias RD-180 and RD-181, can be used for national security space launches until the industry grows more competitive.

In April 2014, SpaceX actually filed suit against the U.S. government, claiming that, even before the Roscomos restructure, the U.S. Air Force had entered into an unlawful contract with ULA because the space and defense industries were known to be led by the sanctioned Rogozin and the contract deferred meaningful free competition for years to come, costing taxpayer billions of dollars. (SpaceX and the government reached a compromise in January 2015 and the suit was dropped.)

Further underpinning the contradictions of international relations is the fact that the Orbital ATK Antares rockets not only require Russian RD-181 engines, but their first stage cores are designed and built by Yuzhnoye SDO  in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine.

Reluctance to tackle this issue head-on may be due to the greater political significance of another deal between Roscosmos and Western partners.

NASA has depended entirely upon Russias Soyuz spacecraft to transport astronauts to and from the ISS since the retirement of the U.S. space shuttle fleet in 2011, costing nearly $80 million for every seat on the Russian flights.

Last August, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden informed members of Congress (PDF) that, due to their continued reductions in the presidents funding requests for the agencys Commercial Crew Program over the past several years, NASA had been forced to extend the contract with Roscosmos through 2019, providing the state corporation with around $490 million.

But on May 24, in a sign that this financial pressure may be easing, both the U.S. and Russian space agencies announced that there are no plans to renew NASAs Soyuz contract after 2018.

TASS cited William Gerstenmaier, NASAs associate administrator for human exploration and operations, saying that his agency will not extend the contract as two U.S. firmsBoeing and SpaceXare due to begin test launches of their own manned spacecraft next year.

Sergei Saveliev, deputy chief of the Russias state-run Roscosmos corporation, confirmed to TASS that his agency had no plans to renew the contracts.

At the same time, Gerstenmaier added that American astronauts would continue to fly aboard Soyuz spaceships as their Russian counterparts would, in return, be able to travel on NASA flights to the ISS, free of charge.

But while Gerstenmaiers comments held the door open for further cooperation on the ISS, he has said as recently as December 2015 that NASA was redirecting its priorities towards longer-range ventures.

The added political pressure of sanctions may well spell the end for the post-Soviet era of collaboration in space between Russia and the United States.

Ukraine-related sanctions on Russia dont just affect the U.S. space industry, but NASAs European counterpart ESA, which began a 340 million joint venture with Roscosmos in 2005, under which the Russians supply Soyuz rocket parts which are then assembled and launched from the ESA center in French Guyana.

Both Rogozin and Chemezov are on the EU sanctions list, too.

This article has been updated since publication.
Possible arrival of Ryanair to Ukraine should not discriminate against other carriers - expert

KYIV. May 31 (Interfax-Ukraine)  The issue of the arrival of a large low-cost airline in Europe  Ryanair  to Ukraine depends on several factors and it should be accompanied by equal conditions for the whole aviation market, President of Ukraine International Airlines (UIA, Kyiv) Yuriy Miroshnikov has said.

"Sooner of later Ryanair will arrive and the issue is whether Ukrainian infrastructure is ready for its arrival. The observation of the no discrimination principle is in play. We can guess on what conditions Ryanair would come. We roughly know their practice in other European countries. We believe this practice should be open for any carriers, including for UIA. If this happens everything will be fine. But discrimination in favor of Ryanair would be wrong," he said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Monday.

As reported, Ryanair is holding talks with Lviv on flights to the city.

"I dont think that we will discuss flights to Odesa. Ukraine today can be considered only as an additional route to our key markets. They are Italy, Spain, Britain, Ireland and Germany where there are many popular routes closer than Ukraine. Broadly speaking, our business model is that each additional flight increases our production cost per passenger and we expect returns on investments. There is demand in Ukraine for flights to many countries. These are mostly flights to the east and north where Ryanair does not have the right to fly," Ryanair Chief Commercial Officer David O'Brien said in an interview with Forbes Ukraine.

UIA was founded in 1992. It is the largest Ukrainian airline. Its base airport is Boryspil airport. UIA's fleet consists of 31 aircraft: 27 medium-haul and four long-haul aircraft.

According to the National Commission for Securities and the Stock Market of Ukraine, Cypriot Ontobet Promotions Limited held 15.91% in UIA. Another 74.16% belonged to Capital Investment Project LLC (Kyiv).

Capital Investment Project LLC belonged to Investment Projects Management LLC, the owner of which has been Ontobet Promotions Limited since June 2012.

One of the ultimate beneficiaries of UIA is businessman Ihor Kolomoisky.
Donald Trump says he loves the vets, but he cant stop lying to themand the rest of us.

The mogul repeatedly misled the public Tuesday while trying to quiet concerns about whether he had raised the promised millions for veterans charities. Sure, he listed $5.6 million he had allocated to veterans groups during the hour-long, rabbling press conference, but thats $400,000 short of what he said was raised in Januarydespite his claim that more is still coming in.

There was an initial surge of donations after Trumps January fundraiser for veterans charities, accounting for less than half the pledged amount.

In recent weeks, under increasing media scrutiny, Trump has apparently boosted that figure to the $5.6 million he listed on Tuesday. The Daily Beast reached out to each of the 20 new charities Trump listed, of the 15 that responded, all confirmed they had received the amounts announced at the press conference. One additional organization, Project for Patriots, has not yet received non-profit status approval from the IRS.

Many of the charities The Daily Beast reached out to said they had received checks within the last week or two weekscoinciding with a May 24 Washington Post story questioning whether he had distributed the promised $6 million. An Associated Press survey of the veterans groups yielded more than two-dozen responsesabout half of them reported checks dated May 24 or beyond.

There were several problems with Trumps explanations as to why it took so long to account for the alleged $6 millionbut the most dubious claim by far was that he didnt want to take personal credit for helping the veterans that he claims to love so much.

I wanted to keep it private, if we could, I wanted to keep it private, because I dont think its anybodys business if I want to send money to the vets, Trump said, despite the fact he raised the money at a flashy, broadcasted event as a cover for declining to attend a Fox News debate.

There is no shortage of cases in which Trump flaunted the money he raised for vets. Over and over again, he used veterans as political pawns during the heat of the Republican presidential primary process.

Before the Iowa caucuses, he held a rally in Iowa in which he presented an oversized check to local charity Partners for Patriots. And just prior to the New Hampshire primary, Trump presented another novelty check to Al Baldasaro, one of his veteran co-chairs and a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives.

This faux-humility is also undercut by Trumps own Twitter account, which has repeatedly played up the $6 million he supposedly raised in Januarynever mind that he hasnt reached this figure, even today.

Trump also claimed that he sent checks to veterans charities without even telling them who it was fromapparently to bolster his claim that he wasnt interested in credit for the fundraising.

They received $100,000 in the mail. They didnt even know what it was for, it was from me, Trump told reporters Tuesday.

One organization, Bostons Wounded Vet Run, posted the letter that accompanied his donation. The letter is on Trump Organization letterhead, and is signed personally by the businessman himself.

Other organizations have reported receiving similar letters: Liberty House, a small New Hampshire veterans charity, told The Daily Beast it received money from the Stewart J. Rahr Foundation, along with a letter saying that the donation should be credited to Trump. Rahr, a party-boy billionaire, has been responsible for a substantial portion of the Trump-credit charitable contributions

The message from within the Trump camp for much of the last four months had been: we dont know where the money is, and frankly we dont care.

Baldasaro, who stood to the right of Trump during Tuesdays press conference and is a prominent veterans adviser for the campaign, told The Daily Beast last month that he didnt know where the pledged $6 million for vets had gone, and he wasnt all that interested in finding out.

I could ask, but its not high on my priority list, Baldasaro told The Daily Beast then.

Among the 20 new charities Trump listed at his press conference on Tuesday, many of them received money within the last week or week and a half, after the press began ratcheting up pressure again on whether Trump had raised the $6 million he promised he had, and where it had gone.

Those contacted by The Daily Beast said they were all grateful for the donation, and as a nonpartisan charity were willing to take money from anyone who wanted to help veterans.

Where we do stand is proudly alongside our men and women in uniform, particularly those who have made deep sacrifices on behalf of this country, that have resulted in catastrophic wounds. Anything we can do to support them, we will do, said Megan Lombardo, director of development at Achilles International, a group which received two $100,000 checks from the Trump Foundation, one in late February and another one last week.

Her response typified the reaction of veterans charities which received money from Trump: that they were apolitical.

Trump, who has flaunted his giving at political rallies, cant say the same.
AMSTERDAM  June 1945: The dead walk along in endless rows, wrote Elie Dasberg, a Dutch Jew who survived Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and returned here to what had been, before the Holocaust, his home. From the demolished houses their faces stare. There is no square, no street without memories. Because the endless row keeps traveling along.

But the ordeal was not over. The few Dutch Jews who survived the vast bureaucratic horror of the Germans final solutionthe banality of evil described by Hannah Arendtfound added to their injuries an insult by the Dutch bureaucracy.

Amsterdams city administration fined Holocaust survivors for being late paying the rent on the land their houses were built on, the so-called leasehold payment. The city administrators were unmoved by the fact those who came back did so from the concentration camps and the city fathers chose to ignore the fact that Nazi opportunists were living in many of the properties.

In an attempt to make amends, Amsterdams city council this month pledged 10 million ($11.13 million) to the Jewish community. Some of the money reportedly will go to the new National Holocaust Museum of the Netherlands.

The record of this affront to basic decency only recently came to light. Just after the war ended in 1945, Jewish Holocaust survivors had written heartbreaking letters to the city of Amsterdam, but those somehow went missing. Then 270 turned up in the citys archives only three years ago. In the letters, Amsterdam Jews who survived the concentration camps or returned from hiding, arguedpleadedagainst administrative fines for being late on their leasehold payments.

You will have noticed that I still exist and work, albeit not as a doctor and not in Amsterdam, where my house was pillaged and is lived in by others, Dr. J. Schrijver wrote to a friend in the Amsterdam city council. Because of my 2 1/2 year forced stay in concentration camps I have, of course, not been able to pay my leasehold payments. I have to rebuild my existence and have to, relieved of all property and income, pay taxes and mortgage interest due. Because of these circumstances it is quite impossible for me to pay the owed amount.

During the German occupation of the Netherlands from 1940 to 1945, the Jewish population was robbed of its houses, bank accounts and other possessions. Homes often were sold to Nazi war buyers. After they saw the odds of winning turn against them, these new owners mostly left their bills unpaid.

The fact that Dutch Jewish physician J. Schrijver and others were picked up by collaborationist bounty hunters and shipped off in cattle wagons to various concentration camps may not come as a surprise. After all, 75 percent of the estimated 150,000 Jewish people in the Netherlands at the beginning of the war did not survive. But the fact that, when he finally was back in Amsterdam, the city decided to charge him fines for failing to pay his leasehold struck many Dutch today as, to put it mildly, a little insensitive.

In an effort to restore the historic damage the caused by the city government, Amsterdams current mayor, Eberhard Van der Laan, announced the leasehold fines case was to be researched and no stone left unturned to set things right.

Where did it really go wrong? World War II historian Hinke Piersma asked herself. She and Jeroen Kemperman were the two specialists assigned the task of reconstructing what had happened.

According to Piersma, what on the surface appears to be cruel policy targeting Holocaust survivors turned out to be a classic case of blind bureaucracy.

Right after the war, the Dutch government decided that all anti-Jewish laws implemented during the German occupation were to be abolished.

It was meant to give back their rights to people who suffered through the war, Piersma told The Daily Beast. Jewish people for instance, had lost their bank accounts, their houses and everything in it. That needed restoration.

But in post-war Amsterdam the city did everything it could to distance itself ideologically from the German occupation, and the city council did not want to feel responsible for what it saw as the fault of the German occupier.

In making any sort of distinction among citizens it felt as though the new administration would do what the Germans had done. In post-war Amsterdam everyone had to be equal and thus be treated as such.

Unfortunately the implication was that Jewish home owners were again responsible for the unpaid taxes on their houses. Piersma says, The leasehold taxes were part of that.

The city hoped people would sort it out among themselves and introduced procedures to facilitate that: What to do if there is still someone living in your house, or what to do with the upkeep of the house, the bills due etc. Amsterdam justified its policy by pointing to the new laws.

But, says Piersma, There is no justification for the fines. We felt we needed to dig deeper. We wanted to know to what extent Amsterdam diverged from other Dutch cities.

What the historians found was painful and sobering. As far as weve been able to establish, Amsterdam was the only city [in the Netherlands] in which fines were added to the outstanding bills. Piersma says.

To this day cities have lawyers to advise on difficult issues. This case was no different, and the lawyer advising Amsterdam in 1947 argued against exacting fines. But the city council decided not to heed his advice. The imposition of the fines was purely local policy.

Immediately after the occupation ended in 1945, the letters of complaint started pouring in. And then they [the city council] decided in all their wisdom, in 1947, to deduct 50 percent from the fine.

Significantly, the bureaucrats who had worked under German occupation were still in place after the war ended. Most notable among them was a Mr. De Graaff, still responsible for all the cases involving leasehold bills.

He had been directing the city council department dealing with the taxes since 1926.

De Graaff thought he had to do right by everyone in the city of Amsterdam, Piersma says. That was his focus. And the individual was completely subservient to his idea of the common good.

Dont forget: Amsterdam, at that time was dead poor, said Piersma. De Graaff represented what was, she says, the epitome of bureaucracy as described by German sociologist Max Weber in the late 19th century.

According to Weber a bureaucracy was more reliable than any other form of organization, because it was devoid of subjective, unreliable emotions.

A civil servant is neutral, not swept away by emotions. Piersma says. You can see in him an evil genius, but De Graaff, and others like him, felt they couldnt make exceptions because that would be an almost lethal sin.

The fining of Holocaust survivors may not have been orchestrated as an evil ploy, but just the same it touches on the organizational evil so often seen in the Nazi regime.

And today, as Europe and the Netherlands face the challenge of a massive migrant influx, among other social problems, one has to ask: Have things changed fundamentally since 1947? Has the bureaucratic mentality in the Netherlands become more humane, more empathetic?

Our awareness of the devastation of the Dutch Jewish community in the Second World War may have grown, and with it our horror at the rigidity of the post-war regulation. But are we really more understanding about human suffering and its consequences?

Piersma hesitates. I wonder how much has changed since then if it is any easier to tread outside the rules for us now, she says. It is often said that with what we know today, we look differently at the past, but that suggests an evolution in empathy. Personally, I have my doubts. Maybe, possibly, we are a little better equipped to deal with exceptions.
Kyiv, 31 May 2016. The corporate restructuring of Roshen that preceded placement of Petro Poroshenkos stake in the business into trust has been effected in compliance with Ukrainian law,  according to the conclusions of international law firm Baker & McKenzie. According to Baker & McKenzie, no cash transfers abroad took place as part of the restructuring and transfer of Roshen into trust. The restructuring did not envisage any cross-border cash transfers  reads the Baker & McKenzie memorandum. Shares of non-Ukrainian companies were purchased by exchanging the  Shares and the Ukrainian corporate rights. Baker & McKenzie also concluded that no license of the National Bank of Ukraine or the Ministry of Economy was required to enable P. Poroshenkos Fund to acquire shares in a Cypriot company and to contribute a stake in a Ukrainian company to the share capital of the Cypriot one. No authorization, approval, license or registration of a governmental authority in Ukraine needed to be obtained to enable the Fund to enter into or perform the Cypriot Subscription Agreement, - Baker & McKenzie concluded. The conclusions of the international law firm refute the earlier disseminated misleading information regarding the transfer of approx. EUR 4 million as a consideration for the shares in a Cypriot company by P. Poroshenkos Fund. In response to certain mass medias groundless allegations of violation of Ukrainian law, Petro Poroshenkos counsels approached the independent international law firm with a request to examine the Poroshenko Funds transactions related to the restructuring of Roshen. Baker & McKenzie lawyers have been provided with exhaustive documents with respect to the transactions in question. Baker & McKenzie is a leading international law firm founded in 1949 in the U.S. The firm has offices in 47 countries. Baker & McKenzie was the first international law firm to open an office in Ukraine in 1992.
Jura whiskys first crowd sourced packaging

A new limited edition expression of Jura single malt whisky was created to mark the distillerys annual island whisky festival. The flavours within this Tastival 2016 bottling were the inspiration for Juras first crowd sourced packaging, chosen by the whiskys social media followers.

Jura Tastival, which took place on May 25-26, celebrates new ways to enjoy whisky and the introduction of this years festival edition with a triple sherry cask finish was no exception.

To complement its sweet and intense flavour, Jura asked four artists from across the world to create a unique illustrated packaging design based upon their interpretations of the Tastival 2016 bottling, which is 51% ABV, non-chill filtered.

Following heated competition, where fans voted for their favourite design online, Jura can now reveal that its first ever crowd sourced packaging is based on the artwork created by German artist Florian Schommer.

The intricate design incorporates Florians personal tasting notes for the whisky, including apple, represented by branches, notes of vanilla, captured in delicate white flowers and a colour scheme based on an aromatic blend of maple syrup and roasted hazelnut.

Other artists who competed to win the Tastival packaging contract included French illustrator Yo Az, UK based Claire Scully and Karin Ohlsson from Sweden. Their colourful array of designs can still be viewed on Juras Facebook page.

The limited edition bottling is the last Tastival expression to be overseen by Jura distillery manager, Willie Cochrane, who announced his retirement last week. He hands over the reins to Graham Logan, a former Jura Mash/Stillman who has worked at his side for over two decades.

Willie Cochrane says: Every limited edition is special, but this ones particularly close to my heart as it commemorates my last Jura Tastival, which has been a highlight on my calendar for the past ten years. It wouldnt be Tastival without something a bit different to inspire new perspectives on whisky, and Im sure Florian Schommers wonderful illustrations will do just that!

Graham Logan adds: We always aim to push boundaries with our Tastival bottlings and the triple sherry finish on this new expression is a perfect example of the creativity and craftsmanship I want to continue to encourage in my role as distillery manager.

Jura Tastival 2016 will be available online and in shops globally (excluding US) RRP 85 from today, 30 May 2016.

30 May 2016 - Felicity Murray The Drinks Report, editor
A Brenham teenager was killed Sunday after a tree fell on him while he helped a church group clean up debris left by last weeks deadly flooding, according to a report from KWHI radio.

The teens name and age had not been confirmed by authorities by late Sunday.

The Brenham-based radio station reported the teen was in the 2300 block of Progress Drive when the limb  which was suspended by a guy wire from a power pole  fell on him.

A range of 18 to 22 inches of rain was dumped on Washington County in less than 24 hours Thursday and Friday, prompting creeks to quickly expand into mini-rivers.

The flooding already claimed the lives of four people in Washington County on Thursday and Friday, including Navasota resident Darren Charles Mitchell, College Station resident Pyarali Rajebhi Umatiya, Brenham resident Jimmy Wayne Schaeffer - all three of whom were in vehicles when the flash-floods hit, and Lela Holland who was in her Washington, Texas mobile home when the water rose inside her residence.

Though two tornadoes were confirmed in nearby Navasota and one in Bryan on Thursday, no injuries were reported in either city. Widespread damage, however, was reported in several east Bryan neighborhoods where four houses were destroyed and a 153 were damaged. In Navasota, two homes and a commercial metal building roof were ripped off in an even stronger tornado, which developed over a less populated area.

Washington and Clay

High winds uprooted many old trees and shredded others, making some roads not passable until crews were able to remove the downed limbs. Electricity was out for more than 1,000 Washington County residents until Sunday, when officials said roughly crews working around the clock had fixed all but just under 180 households. Utility crews cant access the impacted power stations because of flooding, so have to wait for the water to recede, officials said.

Many streets remain flooded throughout the region and emergency crews were keeping an eye on Lake Somerville where water cascaded over the spillway into Yegua Creek, sending water into a few dozen homes in Somerville.

Officials in Washington County were asking residents and business owners to make certain to report storm damage with county officials so that names, location and damage can be documented. The number is 979-337-7272.

Meanwhile, Faith Mission, 310 East Almo St., has been established as place for anyone needing clothing, food or housing because of the storm.

The Clay community, which has less than 200 residents, continued to be surrounded by flood waters, though first-responders were able over the weekend to bring supplies in. Officials said no one is in danger in the Burleson County community, but the roadways out of the area arent yet safe to drive on.

Bryans assessment

In Bryan, police continued late Sunday to provide a heavy presence in the storm-damaged areas in Wheeler Ridge, but officials are asking for the publics help to call police if they see suspicious activity. Bryans non-emergency number is 979-361-3888; those with an emergency should call 911.

Bryan public works

 Citywide bulk debris and brush pickup has been suspended this week, so workers can concentrate on the storm-damaged area. Debris may be placed at the curb in Wheeler Ridge and it will be picked up between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. The street order in which public works will pick up debris will be decided based upon need. For information on street selections and dates of pick-up, go to www.bryantx.gov/wheeler-ridge.

 On-street parking is not permitted in Wheeler Ridge until clean-up is complete.

Bryan Texas Utilities

Power has been restored to all the homes in Wheeler Ridge that have been deemed safe to turn back on utilities. The homes that have not been reconnected need a certified electrician to come out and do some work before BTU reconnects service. Once thats done, call BTU dispatch at 979-822-3777.

Reporting the damage

City officials are asking those who have not notified anyone about flooding at a residence or business to contact a city inspector so he or she can do a property assessment to the exterior of building. Officials can be reached by calling 979-209-5000 or online at https://weblink.bryantx.gov/Forms/BkrER or www.bryantx.gov.

Waiving fees for building

Bryan officials said they will waive fees associated with reconstruction tied to Thursdays tornado. Most structures, officials said, require a permit, including building a fence thats over 6 feet tall. To learn whether you need a permit, go to https://www.bryantx.gov/permits or call the city.
A passenger prepares to board a flight of Hainan Airlines in Haikou, Hainan province. [Photo/Xinhua]

CANBERRA, May 31 -- Virgin Australia, Australia's second-largest airline, announced on Tuesday a 13-percent share of its company has been sold to Chinese firm HNA Aviation Group, in an attempt to force its way into the growing Chinese travel market.

The deal, initially worth up to 115 million U.S. dollars, will include a clause to increase HNA's share in the airline to 19.99 percent over time, and would allow the coordination of timetables, code-sharing agreement and frequent flyer programs with HNA's major airlines including Hainan Airlines and Tianjin Airlines.

The agreement opens the door for Virgin to begin flights to China amid the growing demand on direct travel routes between Australian and Chinese major cities.

Virgin Australia chief executive officer John Borghetti said creating an agreement with HNA was common sense for Virgin, as China was Australia's fastest growing inbound travel market, with the number of Chinese visitors to Australia set to double to two million annually by 2025.

"The alliance will see us leverage the opportunities offered by China as well as the synergies of HNA's comprehensive aviation supply chain," Borghetti said on Tuesday.

"(Virgin Australia will) look to introduce direct flights between Australia and China and co-operate on commercial functions including code-sharing, frequent flyer programs, lounge access and promotion of tourism and business travel."

HNA Aviation flies more than 77 million passengers annually, with more than 700 routes between 200 destinations on offer.

The news comes as Virgin continues to battle with a second straight full-year loss, the airline earlier this month announces a reduction of 5 percent of its domestic capacity in order to keep the airline in the black.

The eventual 20 percent stake in the airline would one day replace the 26 percent stake which Air New Zealand currently holds in the airline, after Air New Zealand announced it would sell down, or exit completely, its stake in the Australian airline.
Economic integration imposes human and ecological monoculture

Europe is home to a great variety of cultures, languages and customs. The economic union is based on an economic model that is eroding this diversity, which was born of human adaptation to different climates and ecological realities. A fabric consisting of mutually enriching and different cultural traditions is being replaced by the uniform culture of consumerist 'individualism'.

Previously, the many borders, currencies, and differing regulations made trade difficult for big business, while the diversity of languages and traditions put limits on mass marketing. None of these were obstacles to businesses operating within their own countries - in fact, the borders and cultural diversity helped protect the markets of domestic producers from the predations of mobile capital, helping to ensure their survival.

But for big corporations and financial institutions, diversity is an impediment, whereas monoculture - in all aspects of life, from seeds, fast food and clothing, to architecture - is 'efficient'. For them, a single Europe-wide market of 500 million people was an essential step to further growth: their growth.

Meeting that goal required a single currency, 'harmonized' regulations, the elimination of borders, and centralised management of the European economy.

The EU economy increases pollution and CO 2 emissions

The global economic model promoted in the EU increases pollution and fossil fuel use in a multitude of ways.

First of all, economic policies are responsible for a concentration of jobs in ever-larger high-rise urban centres. When people move into urban areas, net resource and energy consumption tends to rise, massively increasing CO 2 emissions and toxic pollution.

emissions and toxic pollution. Secondly, the EU subsidies system not only wipes out family farms but paves the way for agribusinesses that destroy soils and ecosystems, or employ cruel factory farming methods.

Thirdly, investments in infrastructure and fossil fuel subsidies help to prop up the energy-intensive system of mass production for mass consumption. Moreover, most energy subsidies tend to support highly centralised power systems, rather than more decentralised renewable energy.

Even worse is 'redundant trade': in a typical year, Britain exports millions of litres of milk and thousand of tonnes of wheat and lamb, while importing nearly identical amounts. The cod caught off the coast of Scotland is shipped 5,000 miles to be turned into fillets in China, then shipped back again.

This kind of wasteful trade - which greatly overshadows the efforts of well-meaning individuals to reduce their personal carbon footprints - actually benefits no one but massive corporations. And it is not efficiency but a wide range of subsidies and ignored costs that make it all possible.

National governments stripped of political power

At the same time as governments subsidise big business, they must pay from their depleted treasuries to retrain displaced workers, to mend the unraveling social fabric, and to clean up the despoiled environments left behind by deregulated, mobile corporations.

Forced to go hat-in-hand to banks, countries can easily find themselves on a downward spiral, with interest payments consuming an increasing proportion of national output. It's no wonder that so many governments today are struggling to stay afloat, while global corporations and banks are flush with cash.

This has left nation-states increasingly powerless to deliver what people need. They have lost the power to protect their citizens from the impacts of international capital and financial speculation. As a result, many people have lost confidence in governments and democracy itself. They feel disenfranchised and angered by the escalation of inequality-driven by international market forces and rootless, profit-hungry corporations, with the full complicity of the EU.

This is a dangerous situation, ripe for exploitation by extremist forces, including those of atavism and of outright fascism.

European government is not the answer

Many idealists see the EU as a political bloc that has raised environmental and human rights standards continentally and globally, and acted as a buffer to the US. There is much truth in this. And to greatly strengthen pan-European collaboration with the aim of solving our global ecological and human rights problems is clearly highly desirable.

However, this type of collaboration does not need to - ought not to be allowed to - erode the rights of smaller nation states to run their own affairs under clearly negotiated agreements of environmental protection. We hold that the relatively high standards in the EU have been a consequence of the integrity of the democracies in many of the constituent countries, not a consequence of creating a single market that benefits big business.

We would also argue that to assess the overall contribution by the EU to global environment and human rights affairs we must not look exclusively at the relatively benign EU policies in these areas themselves but also at the consequences for ecological justice of EU policies in trade and military policy.

In fact, the main impetus behind the European Economic Union was the desire of big business to compete with the US. And to a great extent, what we have today is a nascent United States of Europe, competing with the US about market shares but also working closely together with the US in preserving the hegemony of the global North over the global South.

European democracy? If only ...



Meanwhile, within the EU, the public has very little power and ability to affect decisions. There is no common public sphere where European citizens can get together to, muster democratic control of the European economy and the administrative power concentrated in Brussels.

The European Parliament is weak, and, more importantly, elections to it work mostly on a national-level basis. There are no real European political parties and movements. Thus the situation is even worse than it is at the national level: for at least at the national level there is a public, a citizenry, a demos, a press, a political debate.

It might appear that the solution is to remove power from national governments and give it to a democratically-controlled European government. There is something completely understandable about this impulse. After all, there is a real need for international co-operation around the political and ecological crises gripping our planet.

But scaling up government means increasing the distance between civic society and their representatives. It would be a step backward to to create a 'European democracy', a federal superstate of Europe. Such a government would be virtually incapable of responding to the diverse needs of half a billion people.

Democratic institutions need to operate at a level that is comprehensible and accessible to people: at a human scale. We must take seriously the possibility that global democracy - people's urge to care for the globe and for all its citizens - can only be real if most functions are local and people's dependence on global trade and institutions is limited.

When presented by continent- and global-level problems caused by businesses and untrammelled markets, let's increase international collaboration with the goal of scaling down businesses and markets. This form of collaboration is fundamentally different from scaling up government. It points in the opposite direction!

The following point is then at the heart of the very challenging position we find ourselves in: there is a profound mismatch between politics at the national level, and economics at the international level. Many well-intentioned 'progressive' / green / 'Left' people and organisations across the continent believe the best response to this problem is to create a true (rather than a merely de facto) European government. Yet this is likely to merely amplify the control already exerted by corporations over the European economy.

The answer, instead, is to decentralise the European economy. This will enable us to shape economic activity to reduce waste and resource consumption while providing meaningful livelihoods and restoring the environment,. Through decentralisation and relocalisation we reassert democratic control over our own destinies.

The way forward: localisation

There is an alternative to undermining our own people in order to enrich foreign corporations and banks. It's called 'localisation' and it involves moving away from ever more specialised production for export, towards prioritising diversified production to meet people's genuine needs; away from centralised, corporate control, towards more decentralised, local and national economies.

This means encouraging greater regional self-reliance, and using our taxes, subsidies and regulations to support enterprises embedded in society, rather than transnational monopolies.

A shift away from the global towards the local is the most strategic way to tackle our escalating social and ecological crises. Localisation shortens the distance between producers and consumers by encouraging diversified production for domestic needs, instead of specialised production for export.

Localisation does not mean eliminating international trade, or reducing all economic activity to a village level. It's about shifting the power from transnational corporations to democratically accountable entities, including nation states. At the same time we need to build up regional and local self-reliance. It's about reclaiming power over our lives while simultaneously shrinking our ecological footprint.

Localisation - the benefits



In contrast with the make-believe of derivatives and debt-based money, localisation is founded in real productivity for genuine human needs, with respect for the rich diversity of cultures and ecosystems worldwide.

By shortening the distance between production and consumption, localisation minimises transport, packaging, and processing - thereby cutting down on waste, pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions. This simultaneously increases resilience, which will be needed to cope with the inevitable crises coming our way.

Localised economies rely more on human labour and creativity and less on energy-intensive technological systems. This increases the number of jobs while reducing the use of natural resources.

By spreading economic and political power among millions of individuals and small businesses rather than a handful of corporate monopolies, localisation provides the potential for revitalising the democratic process. Political power is no longer some distant impersonal force, but is instead rooted in community.

As the scale and pace of economic activity are reduced, anonymity gives way to face-to-face relationships, and to a closer connection to Nature. This in turn leads to a more secure sense of personal and cultural identity.

Localisation is a remarkable solution-multiplier - but it should not be mistaken for a complete panacea. It offers no guarantee for peace and ecological wellbeing. Going local needs to be pursued in full awareness of the need for environmental and human rights protection that goes beyond local, regional and national borders. It's a prerequisite, a necessity in order to build the accountable structures we need that respect and renew diversity.

Localisation, or decentralisation, was central to the thinking of the people's movements in the Nordic countries that have resisted full integration into the EU. In Norway, the economic and political elites twice tried to achieve EU-membership and were defeated, thanks to the campaigns for democracy and global responsibility for environment and justice.

In Denmark and Sweden, membership in the Eurozone has been rejected in several referenda after historic grassroots campaigns. In Iceland, the popular support for EU membership has always been weak. The first application for membership in the EU was submitted in 2009 but suspended in 2013 when the pro-membership government lost elections.

Think before you vote!

We are facing huge crises: the frightening spectre of climate change; the threat of nuclear annihilation; the enormous problems of hypermobility and large-scale migration ...

These are all consequences of a fixation on growth and technological 'progress'. The leadership in both Brexit and Remain are committed to promising more 'economic growth' to the millions of people who are struggling to hold on to a job, struggling to keep a roof over their heads.

The 'growth' that is being discussed is actually supporting excessive global trade and global businesses and banks. The very same process is handing over more wealth and power to the 1%, to the detriment of the 99%. And this type of growth demands ever-more energy for global infrastructures, including bigger airports, ports and super-highways.

So we have a system that destroys livelihoods while driving up CO 2 emissions and other forms of pollution. More and more people, including Nobel laureate economists, are questioning this path.

There are some who would believe that collaboration at the pan-European level could facilitate a path to genuine economic decentralisation. Others are convinced that we can best take those steps to localise if we first leave the EU. Others still don't favour either of these paths. We are not trying to tell the reader how (or even whether) to vote; we are asking you to help us shed light on and bring sanity to this volatile situation.

Whichever way you vote, please reject the glaringly stupid rhetoric in the media. Speak out, let your voice be heard for ecological and economic sanity, for a fundamental turnaround.

Helena Norberg-Hodge is a pioneer of the worldwide localisation movement, and recipient of the Goi Peace prize and the 'Alternative Nobel Prize'. Director of Local Futures, she is the producer of the award-winning The Economics of Happiness and author of Ancient Futures.

Rupert Read is Chair of Green House and stood in the East of England for MEP in 2014 and in Cambridge for MP for the Green Party in 2015.

Thomas Wallgren founded the campaign Yes to the World - No the the EU before the Finnish referendum on EU-membership in 1994. He is a member of the advisory board of Corporate Europe Observatory and of the city council in Helsinki for the social democrats.
LOUISVILLE, Ky.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who learned an early lesson about the value of patience and persistence during a childhood bout with polio, has some advice for Republicans alarmed about the prospect of having presidential candidate Donald Trump at the top of the ticket and in the White House.

Relax.

'Some people have said our nominee is too controversial and that will cause you problems,' McConnell acknowledged in an interview about his memoir, The Long Game, being published Tuesday by Sentinel. 'But by the way, the Democratic nominee is pretty controversial, too. The negatives on both these candidates at the moment are stunningly high.' By Election Day, he says dryly, 'It'll be interesting to see whose negatives are the highest.'

Just two years ago, at age 72, McConnell reached the goal of a lifetime  Senate majority leader  when Republicans regained control and with it more power to frustrate President Obama's ambitions and set a political agenda of their own. While non-partisan analysts say Democrats have an easier path to win the Senate in November, McConnell says there is a 50-50 chance the GOP can maintain its majority despite an uphill political landscape and unpredictable presidential nominee.

He's urging GOP candidates worried that Trump's provocative views will hurt their prospects to run campaigns focused on their individual accomplishments for their particular states. He tells them they should feel free to point out issues on which they disagree with Trump, as he has done on a proposed temporary ban on Muslim immigrants (he's against it) and the release of a presidential candidate's tax returns (he says it's become expected).

Even so, McConnell matter-of-factly endorsed Trump when it was clear the real-estate mogul would win the nomination, a stark contrast to the continuing deliberations by House Speaker Paul Ryan. McConnell sees no political percentage in Republicans trying to disassociate themselves from the presumptive nominee by saying they won't vote for him.

'I think that would be a mistake,' McConnell says, 'because, obviously, you would like the people who are voting for your candidate for president to vote for you.' He reassures Republicans nervous about whether their nominee's ideology and temperament that a President Trump 'would be fine.'

And even as the presidential nominee, Trump won't redefine the Republican Party, McConnell says. In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Trump predicted he would transform the GOP into a 'worker's party' over the next five to 10 years.

'My view is that Trump will not change the Republican Party,' McConnell says, describing it as 'America's right-of-center party.' 'If he brings in new followers, that's great, and well worth the effort, but he will not change the Republican Party.'

McConnell isn't a man given to panic. Indeed, he is so practiced at looking impassive that his facial expressions only occasionally betray emotion. He delivers slashing criticism of Obama and Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid without raising his voice or speeding his cadence. He embraces the tactical advantages of being boring, especially when reporters are probing for conflict. In his memoir, he recalls when a staffer told then-president George W. Bush that the Kentucky senator was particularly excited about winning a vote.

'Really?' Bush replied. 'How can you tell?'

In short, McConnell is the opposite of a gregarious pol in the mold of Teddy Kennedy, beloved by voters and colleagues, or of figures such as Trump or Democrat Bernie Sanders who draw huge crowds to exuberant rallies.

Yet McConnell has managed to become the longest-serving senator in Kentucky history and a leader who has forged a disparate Republican caucus into a nearly united force on battles from opposing the Affordable Care Act to blocking the Supreme Court confirmation of Merrick Garland. He has been the scourge of both Tea Party-inspired conservatives and the Obama White House.

In short, he has been a master of the long game.

Polio's mark

'My first memory in life was my last visit to Warm Springs,' McConnell says.

Just 4 years old, McConnell and his mother had spent the previous two years traveling the 60 miles from Five Points, Ala., to Warm Springs, the small Georgia town that drew polio victims for treatment. President Franklin Roosevelt had been a frequent visitor, seeking relief in the mineral springs from his own battle with the disease. Once, his mother told him, she held the toddler up so he could glimpse the president as he drove by.

The news for McConnell in 1946 was life-changing. 'Nurses told my mother that I was going to be OK,' he recalls. 'They thought I could walk without a limp and without a brace. And we stopped in a shoe store on the way home and bought a pair of low-top saddle Oxford shoes, which was sort of a symbol that I was going to be a normal little boy.'

The disease had only a limited lasting impact on him physically, on his left quadriceps. His left thigh is narrower than his right, and damage to the muscle makes it difficult for him to walk down stairs.

The impact on his persona may have been greater. He marvels at his mother's perseverance in following doctors' orders that her son, 2 years old when he contracted polio, perform painful stretching exercises and avoid walking altogether until they said the time was right.

'Can you imagine keeping a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old off their feet?' he says. 'She did it for two years, like a drill sergeant. And that tenacity, that lesson (is) that if you just keep working on something and (are) not defeated by the inevitable speed bumps that we all hit in life, that you can probably get where you're headed.'

Patience, persistence and a willingness to accept small steps toward a larger goal are traits that apply to his chosen career, he says. 'The Senate rewards that sort of thing,' he says. 'The Senate is not the sort of place where instant gratification, I should say, is very likely.'

That attitude has put him at odds with the Senate Conservatives Fund and other Tea Party-inspired groups that have targeted some Republican senators as insufficiently conservative in favor of more combative challengers. McConnell blasts former South Carolina senator Jim DeMint, who founded the group, as a hypocrite who would be 'almost submissive' in meetings with his colleagues only to emerge to bash them to reporters.

'It's important to remember the basic principle that winners make policy and losers go home,' McConnell says, saying he prefers to work 'in the field of the achievable.' He blames the nomination of 'unelectable' conservatives for costing Republicans three Senate seats in 2010  in Colorado, Delaware and Nevada -- and two more in 2012, in Indiana and Missouri.

In 2014, McConnell himself became a target, challenged for re-nomination by conservative businessman Matt Bevin, now Kentucky's governor. In his memoir, McConnell reveals for the first time that he seriously considered not running for a sixth term for fear that his 'dismal' approval ratings would mean Democrats could gain the seat. He attributes his decision to run to a childhood lesson when his father forced him to confront a neighborhood bully with the Dickensian name of Dicky McGrew.

'I beat him up and I bent his glasses and we never had another problem,' McConnell recalls. 'During this period, when I was wondering the best way to react to being hit from the right as being an Obama enabler and obviously being a target on the left ... I just remembered that I beat Dicky up and I can beat these guys.'

McConnell dispatched Bevin in the primary and Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes in the general election. Republicans overall gained nine Senate seats and with it the control they had lost eight years earlier, making McConnell majority leader. At last.

'Professor' Obama

McConnell is sitting in the archives of the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville, his alma mater. He and his wife, former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, live in a modest brick duplex in the Highlands neighborhood just a 10-minute drive away. On display at the center is the 'I Like Ike' button McConnell wore on his shirt collar for his fifth-grade photo and memorabilia from campaigns starting with the student-council elections at duPont Manual High School  where he won the presidency in an upset, by the way.

His 278-page memoir offers a glimpse into McConnell's personal story and settles some scores.

His portrait of Obama is scathing, at one point sarcastically referring to him as 'Professor' Obama. He argues that the president's arrogance and refusal to negotiate cost him compromises that might have been achievable with Republicans during the final two years of his tenure, including on overhauling the tax code and addressing the long-term sustainability of entitlement programs.

'Look, the president is a very smart guy,' McConnell says. 'I know he knows what he's talking about and I know he knows what he thinks. What I would prefer not to listen to is for him to characterize my views to me in my presence, because I know what I think.' In private meetings, he writes, Obama often launches into 'a theatrically earnest re-litigation of what you've missed about his brilliance.'

McConnell also questions Obama's decision to visit Hiroshima Friday during his Asian tour.

'It looked a little bit like an apology, and believe me there's nothing to apologize for,' McConnell says. His father, just back from fighting in Europe during World War II, had received orders to deploy to the Pacific when President Truman ordered atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, prompting the Japanese to surrender. 'I can tell you that the decision to drop the bomb was really popular in our house and all across America.'

(For his part, Obama seems no more favorably inclined toward McConnell. At the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2013, the president joked, 'Some folks still don't think I spend enough time with Congress. 'Why don't you get a drink with Mitch McConnell?' they ask. Really?,' he said to laughter. 'Why don't you get a drink with Mitch McConnell?')

In his memoir, McConnell also depicts Reid, his Democratic counterpart, as 'a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality' who can be thoughtful in person but turns 'bombastic and unreasonable' in front of a microphone.

Surprisingly, another senator with whom McConnell often has tangled doesn't appear in the book: Ted Cruz of Texas. The conservative Republican and presidential hopeful has been a burr in McConnell's side, once calling him a liar on the Senate floor.

'The Washington Post gave him three Pinocchios for calling me a liar,' McConnell says, noting the judgment of the newspaper's fact-checking column. He says Cruz isn't mentioned in his memoir because he's 'not a significant part of my story.'

Does that mean Cruz isn't a significant part of the Senate? 'I would say he has maybe one follower on a good day.'

And Trump?

McConnell has some advice for Trump when it comes to choosing a running mate, urging him to pick 'somebody who is extremely knowledgeable about both Congress and sort of the way things work.' But he says he has no problem envisioning working with Trump in the White House.

'Our nominee brags about, I think correctly, as somebody who's transactional, somebody who, as he puts it, makes deals. Well, that's what you have to do in order to function legislatively, so I'm not worried about it at all. I think he'd be fine,' he says, dismissing concerns by some Republicans about his ideology and persona. He notes that the framework of the Constitution 'constrains all of us, members of Congress and the president as well.'

'I want to win the election, and I have to say Donald Trump has done a good job so far of winning elections,' McConnell says. 'I hope he can win one more.'
BEIJING, May 31 -- Wealthy young Chinese want personalized and unique luxury experiences when traveling, with digital services throughout their trip, according to a new report.

These rich kids, aged 18 to 36 with average personal wealth over 38 million yuan (5.78 million U.S. dollars), prefer interactive guest services on smart devices over traditional service, and expect this technology to record their personal preferences, according to surveys of 525 respondents by Marriott International and the Hurun Research Institute.

Their report showed that wealthy youngsters also research trips online. WeChat emerged as the primary source of travel information, obtained from official WeChat accounts and those of friends and professional travel advisors. Third-party apps are also important information channels and popular platforms include Ctrip, Qunar and Tuniu.

Last year, Japan was the respondents' top destination for shopping, France was their popular destination in Europe, and Australia was the top destination for leisure.

China's young luxury travelers want a wider choice of novel tours. They are interested in adventure travel, polar exploration and road trips taking them further afield to destinations including Africa and the Middle East, the report showed.
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OWENSBORO, Ky. (AP)  Kentucky State Police and the Civil Air Patrol are searching in Western Kentucky for a missing plane.

A police statement says pilot Robert C. Dalzall Jr. left the Owensboro Regional Airport on Monday morning and landed at Falls of Rough in Grayson County about 35 minutes later. The statement says he departed later from the Falls of Rough, but never returned to the Owensboro airport.

Kentucky State Police say his last cellphone activity showed him within 5 miles of the Falls of Rough airport. Police are asking those near Falls of Rough to keep an eye out.

Police say the 70-year-old Dalzall of Owensboro was flying a 2012 Green Aero Criquet Bogota fixed wing plane with a tail number of N429BB.
How letters brought this Burlington quilter to the love of her life

Its a story where a man and woman fall in love against a background of world shaking events, overcome obstacles, and then settle down to a life of happy-ever-after. But it is not fiction. It is the 
NORWALKAs it turns out, education doesnt end with school.

Norwalk Community College offers a College for Kids summer program from June 27 to August 5 for grades one through 12. Subjects range from Lego science to chess, cooking to babysitting training.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy on Tuesday finally gave up - for this year - on legislation that would raise the age that youngsters are considered adults in the state criminal-justice system.

Instead, Malloy has agreed to a compromise that would bring to debate a provision aimed at making it easier for poor people to post bail pending trial for non-violent misdemeanors.

After weeks of attempting to persuade the Democrat-dominated House and Senate to accept the two-pronged judicial reforms he called Second Chance Society 2.0, Malloy issued a statement Tuesday announcing that when the House meets Thursday in special session, raising the age will not be part of the bill.

This weekend, I spoke with Democratic caucus leadership, and together we have agreed to pursue a compromise, Malloy said. That agreement would focus on passing the bail reform components of the original bill. On a typical day there are approximately 350 prisoners in our states jails who are charged only with a non-violent misdemeanor, but who are too poor to post even a small bond. The vast majority of these defendants will spend a month or two waiting for their cases to be resolved in court and will then be released directly from court. It just doesnt make sense.

Last week, Malloy in a Capitol news conference on the issue stressed that one defendant held in pretrial was behind bars because he didnt have $90 to make bail. Later that same day, Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano, R-North Haven, suggested that the bail reforms become a separate bill and that the so-called raise the age aspect get dropped.

I am very pleased that the governor agrees with me, Fasano said Tuesday, stressing that raise-the-age part was unpalatable and didnt have enough support. It was bad policy that raised serious questions about public safety and justice. As I suggested last week, the governors raise the age proposal needed to be removed from this bill entirely. I now look forward to seeing revised language from the governor that deals solely with reforming bail for non-violent, misdemeanor, non-selling drug offenses. I hope to see a bill that addresses the problems facing these low level victimless offenses. I also hope the bill addresses our concerns, including but not limited to ensuring that we remain firm when it comes to violent offenders and predators, as well as making sure a history of failing to appear in court will be taken into account when determining bond.

The issue was a tough one for many-rank-and-file Democratic lawmakers who in an election year were reluctant to give Republican opponents an opening to charge they are soft on crime by raising the age that juveniles are prosecuted as adults. Back in 2012, the General Assembly approved a multi-year phase-in raising the age from 16 to a defendants 18th birthday, amid growing evidence that younger brains cannot process the possible ramifications for impulsive behaviors, including criminal acts.

Under the provision, aimed at reducing the facial disparity in state prisons along with the cycle of school-to-prisons for so many young urban men, the age teens would be treated as adults would rise from a defendants 18th birthday, over the next couple of years to 20 on July 1, 2019.

This compromise, focusing on the bail component, is critical to this years budget, which is currently sitting on my desk for signature, Malloy said. If we are able to reform our bail system in Connecticut, we will allow the closure of another Connecticut prison - a closure that both Democrats and Republicans have agreed should happen.

House Democrats, with an 87-64 majority, will discuss the proposal in closed-door caucus Thursday prior to their session, which includes a bill on school construction that are among the final pieces of legislation needed to put the pending budget into action on July 1.

"While this announced change to the proposed legislation may amount to its only chance for passage, House Republicans have yet to see any details, said House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, R-Derby. Apparently, the changes were worked out with Democratic leadership. We all believe in the concept of a 'second chance' for offenders but House Republicans are not prepared to support any legislation that compromises public safety.''

kdixon@ctpost.com;
NORWALK  On Tuesday the Board of Education will be discussing potential employees to fill four elementary school positions.

The 6 p.m. meeting will be conducted in executive session, so it is unavailable to the public.
Again it has been proved drinking is a starter of trouble.

Lian is a 32 year old returnee with a masters degree. On June 6, 2015, Lian returned to his home after drinking with his friends. He was so drunk that he first got into a fight with security and then he went to the wrong floor where a real tragedy occurred.

Lian lives in the room 1404 on the 14th floor. On a night that he was drunk, Lian went to the 10th floor and mistook room 1004 as his home. When he tried to open the door by jamming his key into the keyhole, the owner of the house surnamed Jiang was awakened and came to the door to check. Tragically, drunk Lian thought Jiang was a thief who broke into his home and started to beat him very hard. After Jiang passed out, Lian went inside Jiangs home and fell asleep until the police came and arrested him.

Jiang was beyond rescue after he got sent to the hospital. Lian was sentenced to 10 years in prison with a 500,000 yuan fine. Though it was an incident of occasionality, the court still found Lian guilty of the crime for intentionally injuring another which resulted in death.
Visiting Hiroshima is not a presidential duty, but rather an opportunity for the president of the United States to visit and make peace with the tragic pain that they inflicted on the innocent people of Japan.

Using extensive and unnecessary nuclear bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not wipe out thousands of Japanese soldiers but damaged the lives of generations of people who were not involved in war efforts. Those people became casualties to a much bigger cause.
CENTRAL CITY  Jimmie Jackson remembers visiting his great-grandfathers grave as a child. But Monday, he visited the grave with more knowledge and pride for who his great-grandfather was: Nebraskan Buffalo Soldier Benjamin Jackson.

Its been 71 years since Benjamin Jackson died, but his grave now has military markings. About 100 people, including more than 10 family members, gathered for a ceremony at Central City Cemetery Monday to honor Jackson and the aquiring of the markings. Full military rites were performed.

Jackson served as a private in Company M of the 9th Calvary Regiment. He was a veteran of the Indian Wars, serving in the Army from 1881 t0 1886, according to military documents. Buffalo Soldiers were African-American soldiers serving in the Indian Wars. Legends say the term derives from the soldiers having curly hair, like buffalo, and from their fierceness and willingness to serve.

In the southwest corner of the cemetery, attendees stood near the perimeter of Jacksons grave with clasped hands in respect for the soldier.

If it werent for Jimmie Jackson and Bill Bolte at the Merrick County Historical Society, Jacksons grave may still be unmarked. Bolte, president of the society, discovered Jacksons unmarked headstone while doing research for another project. Jimmie Jackson was the person who signed the Societys application for a military headstone, making it possible.

I was actually really surprised, Jimmie said when he first heard about the application. He said lots of emotion and thoughts overcame him that day.

Jimmie said he felt proud to have Jackson as family and to honor him with the ceremony and military markings that hes so long deserved.

Back in those times, to get recognition of African-Americans was unheard of, Jimmie said.

Jacksons history inspired many as word spread throughout the family.

Kazmere Nicholson, of Omaha, is Jacksons great-great-nephew. Like some other family members, Nicholson said he didnt know much about Jackson before. But now that he knows, he said he feels proud.

I find it inspiring in a way, Nicholson said. To know that your ancestor accomplished so much.

Holly Wilson, of Omaha, is one of Jacksons great-great-granddaughters. Upon learning more about Jackson and her family history, she said, I ws very honored to find out he was a Buffalo Soldier.

Because of family members passing away when she was young, she never got to hear their stories about her family history.

This is very humbling to know that somebody in my bloodline is in history, Wilson said.

Others attended to be a part of the rare historical event.

Johnny Johnson, of Omaha, said he was intruiged that a Buffalo Soldier was being recognized in Nebraska. Johnson said hes always liked the Buffalo Soldiers and has read up on their history.

About hearing of the ceremony, Johnson said he thought, Woah, I got to go up there.

Ida Washington, of Lincoln, was Jacksons granddaughter. She said she was proud and happy that there was a ceremony for Jackson.

It means that there was respect for him, and that makes me proud, Washington said.
The village of Glen Carbon Board of Trustees unanimously approved to designate 10 historical local landmarks.

Diane Rasplica Jones, chair of the Historical Museum Commission, requested the board approve the local landmarks at the last meeting of the trustees.

Last fall the commission began the process of selecting the properties for local landmark status and 10 were selected for this honorary designation, she said. On May 2 the required public hearing was held to gather public testimony on this matter.

The 10 sites are: the Bluff Garage and Bluff Saloon, located at the top of the hill on Main Street; the properties at 180, and 184 S. Main, also known as the Kirchner Conreaux Building and the Samuel Tessler Building; the Glen Carbon Cemetery and the WWI Statue Memorial located within the Cemetery; the Judy/Nix Cemetery, located on Route 157; the Bethel Meeting House Marker, located at the entrance of Lakewood Subdivision; and the Glen Carbon Covered Bridge.

Mayor Rob Jackstadt thanked commission members Jones, Joan Foster, Carol Dappert, Ron Hicks, Larry Jones, Judy Crnkovich, Paige Maag and Jennifer Stedlin.

This commission is made up of unpaid volunteers who put in a lot of time and effort, not just at meetings but also working at the museum and dealing with the stresses of figuring things out, he said. Id like to thank them for all the hard work they do.

Trustee Ross Breckenridge echoed the mayors sentiments.

Thank you for what you do for the village, without you we wouldnt hear or learn about whats been going on in the past, he said. Every hour and every second you put in on these projects is greatly appreciated.

Jones said much of the work accomplished could not be done without Museum Coordinator Linda Sinco.

Last August when I addressed the village, the Heritage Museum was closed without a coordinator. In November, Linda came on board as coordinator and she has done her due diligence and studied the history of Glen Carbon thoroughly, she said.

I believe that in a round of Glen Carbon Jeopardy, Linda would be a worthy opponent for anyone.

Jones also informed the trustees of other issues and projects the commission is undertaking.

She explained that while doing the landmarks research, the commission recognized that the WWI statue was in need of repairs. She said plans are underway to have the repairs to the statue made and have the project completed by fall.

She also reported that Sinco and the commission have begun process of getting the Old Fire House/Village Hall added to the National Registry of Historic Places with the Department of Interior.

This is not an easy task and takes many months. Such a designation is an honor and another source of great pride for the village, Jones said. Linda has been notified that the building has been approved by the Illinois Historical Preservation Association and the application is now being moved to the Department of Interior for review.

National Historic Landmarks are nationally significant historic places designated by the Secretary of the Interior because they possess exceptional value or quality in illustrating or interpreting the heritage of the United State.

Today, just over 2,500 historic places bear the national distinction.
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Linkedin Ni Nyoman Wira (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31, 2016

Abah Andris, the drummer of Bandung-based metal band Burgerkill, has decided to leave the band. The band and its members, Vicky, Ebenz, Ramdan and Agung, have posted an official statement on Facebook.

Having gone through a good process and discussion with the members of the band, we hereby announce that our drummer, Abah Andris, is no longer with Burgerkill, wrote the band. We respectfully understand his decision and we hope that he will not change one of the things that we like most, that is having him as an inspiring friend."

In an interview with music website Riotic Records, Abah explains that his departure from the band is not because of Cowboy From Hell (CFH), his clothing store. If focusing on CFH was my reason for leaving (the band), I would have done it sooner. Stirring the curiosity of his fans, he adds, I will let you guess why I left the band.

(Read also: 'Metal Hammer' honors Indonesian Burgerkill, veteran bands)

Abah Andris' leaving will not stop Burgerkill from making a new album. In their official statement, the band also announced their plan to record a new album at the end of the year. It is an album portraying our love for the music we have played for more than two decades, as well as a dedication to those who have made contributions to the band, they said.

Drummer Abah Andris officially joined Burgerkill in 2000, although he had been close to the band before that. On Burgerkills third album, "Beyond Coma and Despair" (2006), Abah performed as both drummer and bassist. Together with the band, he also performed at metal music festival Wacken Open Air in Germany, and at Bloodstock Open Air in the UK in 2015. (asw)
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, May 30 2016

Activists and religious leaders demanded on Sunday that President Joko Jokowi Widodo end the division among his aides over the events surrounding the 1965 communist purge, which they said could jeopardize the efforts to resolve past human rights violations.

Rights activist Usman Hamid said that Jokowi had to solidify the government regarding the 1965 issue before continuing to resolve other cases that had been investigated by the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM).

Jokowi must show that he is a true leader of the nation by either reprimanding or removing any of his ministers who do not support the governments pledge to address past human rights violations, Usman said during a discussion on the 1965 tragedy.

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Linkedin Rizki Dwianda Rildo (The Jakarta Post) Seattle, Washington  Mon, May 30 2016

Crowdfunding has been touted as a revolutionary way to connect ordinary individuals with the innovative projects they support. Arguably, it could spur innovation and encourage the next generation of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to unleash their entrepreneurial spirit.

Even nowadays, it is possible for retail investors to become venture capitalists and, probably, own shares in the next giant tech company. Credit goes to the new method of raising capital online in exchange for equity ownership in, mostly, start-ups, the equity-based crowdfunding, or equity crowdfunding.

However, this unique method of raising money might face some challenges in Indonesia. First, Crowdfund Insider, the leading news website about crowdfunding, claims that Indonesians have trust issues with money transactions carried out over the internet. Second, there is a lack of crowdfunding education among retail investors.

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Linkedin Farida Susanty (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, May 30 2016

Recent airport ground-handling foul-ups involving major low-cost carriers Lion Air and Indonesia AirAsia (IAA) continue to cause controversy with lawmakers blaming the government for its failure to prevent the errors, which saw arriving international passengers mistakenly transferred to domestic terminals.



On May 10, mismanagement resulted in a Lion Air bus driver mistakenly delivering 40 passengers newly arrived from Singapore to a domestic terminal at Jakartas Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.



A week later, a similar incident took place at Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali, this time involving IAA, the local arm of Malaysian budget carrier AirAsia Berhad.



A Transportation Ministry investigation, concluded last week, found that Lion Air and IAA employed a third-party company to handle their ground-handling management in Soekarno-Hatta and Ngurah Rai, respectively.



The airlines, however, failed to ensure that their partner companies provided services according to common standard operating procedures (SOPs). According to the investigation, Lion Air, for example, failed to make sure that its SOPs were understood by employees of its ground-handling service provider, PT Sari Indah.



Meanwhile, in the IAA case, the ground-handling company the airline worked with, PO Dahlia Indah, did not have the required permit to operate vehicles in the airport compound, the investigation revealed.



While the government put the blame on the two airlines, lawmakers also deemed the authorities partly responsible for the incidents.



Speaking at a hearing with Transportation Ministry officials and Lion Air and IAA executives on Friday evening, Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) lawmaker Rendy M. Affandy, a member of House of Representatives Commission V overseeing infrastructure and transportation affairs said the government should be in charge of developing and monitoring the airlines, in line with the 2009 Aviation Law.



The control and monitoring aspect, the norms and the standardization, are the governments responsibility. But we dont hear the government accepting blame in these cases, he said.



National Awakening Party (PKB) lawmaker Cucun Ahmad Syamsurijal, meanwhile, said the ministry should provide ground-handling services instead of handing the matter to each airline, as was the current practice. Where was the ministrys airport authority when the incidents happened? Cucun asked.



The incidents have also sparked a national debate on airport security, as foreign nationals from the US and New Zealand were reported to have skipped immigration checks at Soekarno-Hatta and Ngurah Rai as a result of the errors.



In the Lion Air case, the incident also triggered a heated exchange between the Transportation Ministry and the countrys biggest low-cost airline, which has been in the public spotlight following frequent flight delays.



Immediately after the Soekarno-Hatta incident, the ministry announced it would suspend Lion Airs and IAAs ground-handling permits on May 25 if the investigation into the incident was not complete by then.



Lion Air subsequently fought back by reporting the ministrys director general for air transportation, Suprasetyo, to the National Police for abuse of power, accusing the official of imposing sanctions before the conclusion of an official investigation.



The government subsequently backed down and did not impose the suspensions, stating that the investigation had been finished with recommendations for the airlines.



Golkar Party lawmaker Hamka B. Kady lambasted the move, stating that the government should not cave under pressure. Dont let regulations be overruled by corporations. A little pressure and you back off from imposing sanctions, he said.



Suprasetyo, meanwhile, defended the governments move, saying that the ministry had replaced Soekarno-Hatta authority head and several other officials following the incident.

The government has guidance for the airlines to draft their standard operating procedures according to their own respective company conditions, he said.



Owned by businessman-cum-politician Rusdi Kirana, who serves as a member of the Presidential Advisory Board (Wantimpres), Lion Air operates 2,142 weekly flights on 93 routes, allowing it to reach almost every corner of the archipelago.

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A so-called "Duty-free" shop in Australia. (Photo/Xinhua)

The number of Chinese tourists traveling to Australia has been climbing over the past few years. For the 12 months of 2015, 1 million Chinese tourists visited Australia making for a new record high. Shopping overseas has become a new trend for Chinese tourists.

However, instead of going to big shopping malls in Australia, Chinese tourists can be mostly spotted in small "duty-free" stores especially opened for them.

"Duty-free" shop targeting at Chinese tourists even labels products in Chinese. (Photo/Xinhua)

After investigation, journalists found that tourist agencies in Melbourne and along the Gold Coast had built chains of interest with local stores. Tourist agencies are in charge of inducing Chinese tourists into specific stores they have cooperations with, and work to stop them from comparing products prices with other shops.

An insider has disclosed that some of the shops would even tailor their prices according to the consumption capability of Chinese tourists. Australian products like lanolin cream and fish oil in these shops usually price several times more expensive than the same products in other regular stores; woolen goods like snow boots that are being sold in these duty-free stores were actually made in China yet labeled as Made in Australia to fool the Chinese customers.

A so-called "Duty-free" shop is completly empty at ordinary times. (Photo/Xinhua)

A Chinese lawyer in Australia suggests to Chinese tourists to report about referral selling to the Fair Trade Association of the local state after they experience unpleasant and unfair shopping experiences so that these fallacious trading behaviors can be eventually prevented.
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Linkedin Stefani Ribka (The Jakarta Post)  Mon, May 30 2016

In response to public complaints triggered by two-week blackout in Nias Island, North Sumatra, last month, state electricity operator PLN will offer customers from the remote island a discount scheme for their electricity bill to compensate for economic losses resulting from the incident.



Located in the Indian Ocean, 140 kilometers west of the North Sumatran coast, Nias struggles amid a long-term electricity crisis. PLN data suggests that almost 50 percent of the 319 villages in the province of North Sumatra yet to be connected to the electricity network are located in Nias Island.



The situation exacerbated from April 1 to April 13 when over 80,000 homes in the island went dark due to the ceased operation of the two 10-megawatt (MW) capacity power plants (PLTD) in Moawo and Idanoi, which PLN rent from genset provider PT American Power Rental (APR) Energy.



It was later revealed that APR Energy had elected to suspend the power supply as PLN had failed to settle Rp 90 billion (US$6.6 million) in payments owing for the formers services in other regions. Immediately after the blackouts, PLN reportedly paid APR energy Rp 50 billion toward the debt.



The electricity supply was eventually restored, but the blackouts had caused considerable financial loss among locals. Fishermen, for example, could not go out to the sea as the ice factory had been forced to temporarily cease operations, fishmongers also suffered losses triggered by the absence of ice blocks.



High schools students, meanwhile, were unable to prepare sufficiently for their national finals examination on April 4 to April 7. The blackouts also reportedly disrupted local peoples access to clean water.



PLN Sumatra regional business director Amir Rosidin confirmed that the company was preparing a discount for its Nias customers.



About the discount, [we] planned to provide it in May. It should have granted by now, well double check with our [Nias] unit, Amir told The Jakarta Post last week.



PLN, Amir said, was offering the discount in accordance with the government policy that obliges the firm to compensate customers every time it serves below a certain service standard.



Energy and Mineral Resources Ministrys director general for electricity, Jarman, said based on such a regulation, PLN should compensate customers by offering a 20 percent discount on the electricity bill should a customer experience less than minimum service standard.



In the Nias case, PLN must give discounts, he said.



Amir, however, said that the late payment to APR Energy had been caused by its ongoing review on the latters performance.



APR Energy, the company claimed, frequently breached contracts by running generators below the stated capacity set out in the terms of contract.



In 2014, APR Energy ran only 75 percent of the promised capacity while in 2015 it ran only 22 percent, Amir said.



Thats why we are conducting an external audit on its performance [before paying the bill], he said.



Earlier this month, APR Energy spread leaflets around Nias, informing residents of its decision to exit the island due to PLNs unsettled debt.



PLN has not settled its bill with us. It did not respect our contract but it keeps collecting money from Nias residents for electricity, APR Energy CEO John Campion said on the statement.



Thus, we cannot continue the operation in Nias Island  or wherever in Indonesia. At the end of May, well permanently close down our 20 MW diesel-based power generators (gensets) in Nias.



Home to 700,000 people, Nias, which consists of five regions, needs a 24 MW power supply during peak hours.



In anticipation of APR Energys exit, PLN has set up and is operating 21.5-MW gensets in Idanoi and Teluk Dalam.



By Sunday, our gensets will be able to supply 26 MW of electricity. It will increase to 29 MW by next month, Amir said.



In a public statement, APR Energy, which has been working with PLN since 2013, offered to sell its gen-sets to PLN prior to leaving.



They [APR Energy] havent given us any specifics yet. We need to know the condition of the machines first, Amir said.



JP/ Stefani Ribka

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Linkedin Danial Albakri (The Star/ANN) Petaling Jaya, Malaysia  Tue, May 31, 2016

Almost 46 million across the world are trapped in modern slavery, with 129,000 people in Malaysia enslaved, a study shows.

According to the Global Slavery Index 2016, published by the Walk Free Foundation, there are 28% more people enslaved than previously estimated, with 45.8 million reported last year, compared with 35.8 million in 2014.

The report found that approximately 129,000 individuals, or 0.4% of Malaysias population are still trapped in modern slavery.

In the context of Southeast Asia, Malaysia has the fifth highest prevalence of slavery in terms of percentage, placing it behind Cambodia, Myanmar, Brunei and Thailand.

Thai and Burmese fishing boat workers sit behind bars inside a cell at the compound of a fishing company in Benjina, Indonesia, Nov. 22, 2014.(AP/Dita Alangkara)

According to the report, there were cases of forced labor and exploitation within certain industries.

However, in the context of the absolute number of people trapped in modern slavery, Malaysia ranks 50th, far behind countries like Indonesia, with 736,100 people, and Myanmar, with 515,100 people.

The 2016 index once again found that the Asia Pacific region contained two-thirds of the people in slavery in the world, reflecting the fact that the region provides low-skilled labor for global supply chains producing food, garments and technology.

Globally, India remains the country with the highest absolute number of people trapped in slavery, with 18.4 million slaves among its population of 1.3 billion people.

India is followed by China (3.39 million), Pakistan (2.13 million), Bangladesh (1.53 million) and Uzbekistan (1.23 million), and together, these five countries account for almost 58% of the worlds enslaved, or 26.6 million people.

North Korea had the highest incidence of modern slavery with 4.37% of its population enslaved, making up one in every 20 people.

Andrew Forrest, the chairman and founder of the Walk Free Foundation, said that besides governments and civil society, it was businesses that played a key role in eradicating slavery.

Leaders of the worlds major economies must bring the power of business to this issue, by requiring a focus on supply chain transparency, he said in the report released on Tuesday.

The 2016 index was based on over 42,000 interviews by pollster Gallup in 25 countries in 53 languages.

Two fishing trawlers load slave-caught fish onto the Silver Sea 2 (center), a refrigerated cargo ship belonging to the Thai-owned Silver Sea Fishery Co., off the coast of Papua New Guinea, July 14, 2015.(AP/DigitalGlobe/-)

Modern slavery existed in all 167 countries covered by the index with people being enslaved through human trafficking, forced labor, debt bondage, forced or servile marriage or commercial sexual exploitation.
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31 2016

A few days after the central government ratified a regulation in lieu of a law (Perppu) permitting chemical castration or the death sentence for rapists, another gang rape of a 14-year-old girl has occurred in Tanjung Duren, West Jakarta.

It was 1 a.m. on Sunday when the victim went to visit her boyfriend, Sugeng, who was apparently not at his place. A suspect in the case, Bewok, followed by seven other suspects, took her to a nearby embankment. It was later reported that four of the suspects allegedly took turns to rape her.

After the incident, the girl met an ojek driver (motorcycle taxi) and told him what had happened to her. She was then escorted to the West Jakarta Police office to file a report.

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Linkedin Wahyu Susilo and Indriaswati Dyah Saptaningrum (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31 2016

Last Wednesday President Joko Jokowi Widodo announced a controversial regulation in lieu of law, citing the many recent reports involving the rape and murder of children. The controversy stems from the addition of heavier penalties for the aforementioned crimes which include, among others, a life sentence, chemical castration and even the death penalty in particular cases. The death penalty has been outlined for cases where the crime has led to severe damage or death, or if the perpetrators were family members and or guardians of the victims.

The regulation is criticized for lacking a comprehensive perspective regarding sexual violence targeting children and also for strengthening the death penalty regime.

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Linkedin Fedina S. Sundaryani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31, 2016

Financial authorities have downplayed the rising numbers of bad loans across many economic sectors, claiming that they are unlikely to affect the stability of the financial system.

Bad loans, or non-performing loans (NPL), are on the rise, as revealed by the latest banking statistics.

They amounted to Rp 113.08 trillion (US$8.26 billion) by the end of the first quarter, an annual increase of 27.9 percent, and left the NPL ratio at 2.8 percent.

The staggering rise was reported in the provision of accommodations, food and drink as the bad loans jumped by almost 100 percent.

Several other sectors suffered from the negative trend as well. While the processing sectors NPLs surged 61.9 percent year-onyear (yoy), transportations NPLs climbed 26.7 percent yoy.

Many attribute the increase to late debt repayments as companies struggle to make ends meet while the domestic and global economies remain weak.

As reported before, the domestic economy grew slower than expected in the first quarter at 4.92 percent. It slowed from the previous 5.01 percent in the last quarter of 2015.

The slow economic growth, in addition to the persistently sluggish commodity prices, have led to slow performances of corporations and weakening purchasing power, both of which contributed to the increase of NPLs.

Despite that fact, BI Governor Agus Martowardojo said that the higher NPL had not affected the countrys overall economy and was unlikely to do so in the future.

He pointed to the banking industrys capital adequacy ratio (CAR)  an important indicator of capital strength  and said it was still at 21.8 percent in March, higher than the current minimum CAR requirement of 8 percent.

Agus argued that the ratio indicated that the banking sector was still strong enough to face credit, market, or liquidity risks.

In general, the country is financially stable, even though we can see that the NPL has risen slightly, whether at banks or at non-banking financial institutions, he said on Monday.

However, the central bank will still keep a close watch on the NPL. BI deputy governor Erwin Rijanto said that credit quality of 31 large banks could worsen further if not monitored thoroughly.

For example, Bank Mandiri, the nations largest lender in terms of assets, reported a gross NPL rate of 2.89 percent in March this year, rising quite significantly from 1.81 percent a year ago.

It was then forced to set aside a higher loan loss provision, an expense reserved for defaulted loans, which ate away at its profitability. In the end, its net profits dropped 26 percent on an annual basis to Rp 3.8 trillion in the January to March period.

Meanwhile, the Financial Services Authority (OJK) is not worried about the rising bad loans either. The OJK does not consider the current level as alarming because the latest ratio is still below the 5 percent threshold.

OJK deputy commissioner of banking supervision Boedi Armanto said that regular monitoring by the Financial System Stability Committee (KSSK)  consisting of the OJK, BI, the Finance Ministry and the Deposit Insurance Corporation (LPS)  would help authorities contain any possible risks stemming from the NPL.

It is mandatory for us to meet every three months. We discuss all issues to prevent disruptions to our economy, he said.

The OJK has high hopes that credit demands and disbursements will increase in the second quarter, which will help offset the NPL rise.

Significant hikes in non-performing loans(Source/Financial Services Authority)
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Linkedin Nethy Dharma Somba (The Jakarta Post) Jayapura, Papua  Tue, May 31, 2016

Children from broken homes in Jayapura, Papua, can realize the future they dream of if they receive proper attention from all parties, including churches.

They dont chose to be born into a broken home. It is the economic hardship faced by their families that robs them of their future, the Papua Seventh Day Advent Churchs director of child services, Heronia Humbora Loupatty, said in Jayapura on Sunday.

Heronia said her chuch had yet to carry out a survey on children from broken homes in Jayapura. However, she added that the problem could be clearly seen in certain public places, such as the former location of the Ampera Market, that the number of children from broken homes in the city was quite high.

These children are widely known as aibon children because many of them habitually sniff aibon glue, which they say gives them a good sensation, said Heronia.

She said the children were prone to various forms of violence, such as rape, child trafficking, domestic violence and many others.

The Seventh Day Advent Church is calling on all parties to stop violence against children because they are the future of the church and the next generation of this nation, said Heronia.

Meanwhile, a women and children expert in Papua, Betshie Pesiwarissa, said one of the major causes of sexual violence against women and children was the easy access to pornographic websites.

All people now have gadgets through which they can easily access porn movies. If they dont watch them via gadgets, they can get them via Internet cafes. Thus, porn movies, which can trigger sexual violence, are very easily accessed by adults and children, said Betshie.

Betshie, who is also the director of the Womens Legal Aid Foundation (LBH APIK), hopes that the government will block porn sites to minimize childrens access to the videos. (ebf)
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Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31, 2016

The National Commission on Violence against Women (Komnas Perempuan) has expressed its opposition to the use of chemical castration against sexual offenders, saying it is ineffective in preventing crime.

Chemical castration is an additional punishment for those declared guilty of committing sexual violence against children, as stipulated in a recently issued regulation in lieu of law (Perppu) on sexual violence against children.

Komnas Perempuan commissioner Sri Nurherwati said rapists often reoffended because they could avoid prosecution, as many victims were reluctant to report their crimes to the police due to the feeling of shame and social stigma.

The main challenge to eliminate sexual violence is to fight the impunity of perpetrators, said Sri at a recent discussion.

Castration may scare the perpetrators. However, it may have no deterrent effect on them, because they can find ways to commit their action without leaving enough evidence, she added.

Komnas Perempuan stressed the need for the state to improve criminal procedural law to support police investigators in collecting evidence on cases of sexual violence.

Besides being ineffective, chemical castration was also costly for the state, because the substance needed to be injected once every three months, Sri added.

Therefore, Komnas Perempuan demanded that the House of Representatives immediately deliberate and pass the bill on the eradication of sexual violence, so that the country would have better regulations to fight what President Joko Jokowi Widodo called an extraordinary crime.

The law is expected to simplify the process of reporting sexual abuse to the police to makes sure criminals face justice, Sri said, adding that the law was also expected to pay serious attention to the fate of the victims, including the requirement for the state to provide counseling and rehabilitation to heal their trauma.

Sri also criticized a commonly held view in society that blamed victims, arguing that women should cover their bodies to avoid such crimes.

She pointed to the case of YY, a victim of gang rape in Bengkulu, who wore a hijab and uniform when the crime happened, similarly to EF, who became a victim of gang rape in Tangerang. If the general public is still concerned with the womens attire, the perpetrators will have reason to justify their wrongdoing, Sri said.

The most important thing was for the public to stop looking at women as sexual objects. Also, any form of discrimination against women should be eliminated to prevent sexual violence in the future, she said.(bbn)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31, 2016

Cigarette street vendors say the governments plan to require cigarette producers to produce only plain packaging for all cigarettes sold in the country will not reduce cigarette consumption, especially among young people who often smoke as a part of their lifestyle.

The Health Ministry is pushing the plan in the hope of reducing the attractiveness of tobacco products. Under the plan all packages would have a uniform color with no brand logos.

The idea is in line with the World Health Organizations (WHO) World No Tobacco Day campaign to limit misleading packaging and labeling.

Maybe consumers wont know which one is their favorite pack of cigarettes [because of the plain packaging], but we sellers know. We could just tell them, said Muhamad Halimi, 43, a cigarette kiosk owner in Permata Hijau, South Jakarta, on Tuesday.

The vendors say the regulation will be as ineffective as previous ones, such as the placement of pictorial warnings on cigarette packages and the increase in tobacco excise by an average of 11.19 percent that come in on Jan. 1.

Jono, another kiosk owner in Cikini, Central Jakarta, said her cigarette sales had increased after the hike in prices. She also said the graphic warnings on the packages had had almost no effect on consumers.

The pictorial warnings have not delivered a big impact. At most, a few consumers have started to be picky about the cigarette pack they buy. They prefer the least scary picture, which is the one that shows a man smoking with skull-shaped smoke coming from his mouth, Jono added.

Indonesians spent at least Rp 330 trillion (US$24.3 billion) last year to finance their smoking habits. Data from the 2014 Global Youth Tobacco Survey reveal that 20.3 percent of Indonesian teenagers between 13 and 15 years of age are smokers. The same survey shows that 62.7 percent of the surveyed teenagers are exposed to cigarette advertising on television or in movies.

Both Halimi and Jono said that lots of teenagers, with an average age of 10 to 13 years old, had come to their kiosks to buy cigarettes.

Usually, I ask them, Who are you buying for? Then, some of them say that it's for their fathers or older brothers. But after they leave, I often see them smoking, said Halimi.

Diah Saminarsih, the health ministers special adviser for partnerships and sustainable development goals (SDGs), said that people tended to pick up bad health habits when they had limited control of their own lives. During a discussion in Jakarta on Tuesday, she cited the words of Michael Gideon Marmot, professor of epidemiology and public health at University College London:

So, the poorer you are, the more careless you are about your own health."

In December 2012, Australia became the first country to fully implement a plain packaging policy. Meanwhile, in 2015, the UK and France passed laws to implement the regulation from May 2016. (vps/bbn)
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Linkedin Indra Budiari (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31 2016

Four years ago Dita Agustina thought she would not be able to return to school, her family having just been evicted from their house in Tangerang.

Hope was starting to fade away along with her books, school bag and stationery that were destroyed during the eviction. But then she learned about Rumah Belajar Anak Langit, a learning community for low-income families in Tangerang.

Dita was then in her final year of junior high school and hoped to one day become a teacher to teach others of the importance of education.

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Linkedin Corry Elyda (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31, 2016

The Jakarta State Administrative Court has met demands of fishermen and activists grouped in the Jakarta Bay Rescuers Coalition by invalidating the construction permit for Islet G, one of the artificial islets created in the controversial land reclamation project.

In the hearing on Tuesday, Presiding judge Adhi Budi Sulistyo ordered the developer of Islet G, Agung Podomoro Land subsidiary PT Muara Wisesa Samudra, to halt the reclamation work.

"We also order the defendant to retract the permit for the islet, which was issued in December 2014 to PT Muara Wisesa Samudra," he said, referring to Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama as the defendant.

Explaining the ruling by the panel of judges, Adhi said the issuance process had not been participatory and that the project did not relate to public needs and disturbed the livelihood of local fishermen.

The reclamation project has drawn protest from many parties, especially fishermen living near the Jakarta Bay. The project became a national issue due to its connection with a bribery case involving city council members and businessmen. (yan)
Some 2,000 students at a primary school in Chengdu, southwest Chinas Sichuan province have been relocated after dozens of students began to develop symptoms including nosebleed, vomit and dizziness, which are suspected to be due to pollution on campus.

Hundreds of students allegedly began to develop illness after they moved to the new campus of primary school affiliated to Chenghua district institute of education sciences in Chengdu, China Youth Daily (CYD) reported, citing the estimates of parents.

Several parents contacted by the newspaper claimed their first- or second-graders suffered from dizziness and nosebleeds. Some also had erythema on their bodies or had red and swollen eyes. Some were even diagnosed with kidney or liver problems.

The doctor said there is something wrong with my kids lymphatic system and it may because of environmental issue during redecoration, Xu Qiang, one of the parents, was quoted as saying.

Ye Shuwen, deputy chief of the education bureau in Chenghua district, told CYD some 40 out of 98 students absent from class asked for a sick leave on Monday.

However, countering an online post claiming that the schools new playground had an acrid smell, Ye stressed that the new campus has gone through a third-party environmental impact assessment which read qualified.

The students were relocated to their old campus on Monday. Ye said the relocation decision is made to guarantee students health, but it is yet to confirm the illness is related to the newly-revamped campus.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31, 2016

PT Muara Wisesa Samudera (MWS), the developer of Islet G in the Jakarta Bay, plans to appeal a court ruling ordering Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama to revoke the construction permit for the artificial island.

MWS lawyer Ibnu Akhyat said on Tuesday that the Jakarta Administrative Court ruling came as a shock and added to legal uncertainty that was already harming the investment climate in the country.

We believe the Jakarta administration shares our view that developing Jakarta to become a better global city requires the support of all stakeholders, including the investor, Ibnu was quoted as saying by kompas.com on Tuesday.

Deputy Governor Djarot saifuil HIdayat made a similar statement, saying that the city administration would also appeal a court ruling.

Jakarta Gubernatorial Decree No. 2,238 of 2014 on the reclamation permit for Islet G issued to MWS, a subsidiary of PT Agung Podomoro Land, should be revoked because the process had ignored the aspiration of fishermen, whose livelihoods were affected by the land reclamation, according to the ruling.

The Indonesian Traditional Fishermens Union (KNTI) had submitted a complaint to the Jakarta Administrative Court on Sept. 15, 2015, demanding the court stop the construction of Islet G. The fishermen argued that the reclamation violated a number of regulations and had reduced their income.

The reclamation project came into the spotlight when Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) investigators arrested Mohamad Sanusi, a city councilor, for allegedly accepting a bribe from PT Agung Podomoro Land in relation to a reclamation bill being deliberated by the City Council.

The bribery case was allegedly related to efforts by the developer to change a particular figure in the bill from 15 percent to 5 percent.

We are disappointed about the courts decision, but we respect it, said Ibnu. (bbn)
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Linkedin Nataliya Vasilyeva (Associated Press) Tver, Russia  Tue, May 31, 2016

Anastasia Bubeyeva shows a screenshot on her computer of a picture of a toothpaste tube with the words: "Squeeze Russia out of yourself!" For sharing this picture on a social media site with his 12 friends, her husband was sentenced this month to more than two years in prison.

As the Kremlin claims unequivocal support among Russians for its policies both at home and abroad, a crackdown is underway against ordinary social media users who post things that run against the official narrative. Here the Kremlin's interests coincide with those of investigators, who are anxious to report high conviction rates for extremism. The Kremlin didn't immediately comment on the issue.

At least 54 people were sent to prison for hate speech last year, most of them for sharing and posting things online, which is almost five times as many as five years ago, according to the Moscow-based Sova group, which studies human rights, nationalism and xenophobia in Russia. The overall number of convictions for hate speech in Russia increased to 233 last year from 92 in 2010.

A 2002 Russian law defines extremism as activities that aim to undermine the nation's security or constitutional order, or glorify terrorism or racism, as well as calling for others to do so. The vagueness of the phrasing and the scope of offenses that fall under the extremism clause allow for the prosecution of a wide range of people, from those who set up an extremist cell or display Nazi symbols to anyone who writes something online that could be deemed a danger to the state. In the end, it's up to the court to decide whether a social media post poses a danger to the nation or not.

In February 2014, when Ukraine was in the middle of a pro-European revolution, President Vladimir Putin signed a bill tightening penalties for non-violent extremist crimes such as hate speech. In July of that year, three months after Russia had annexed the Crimean Peninsula, he signed a bill making calls "to destroy" Russia's territorial integrity a criminal offense punishable by up to five years in prison. The new amendment makes the denial of Russia's claims on Crimea an even greater offense if the statement is made in the press or online, even on a private social media account.

Many of the shares that led to the recent rash of convictions were of things critical of Russia's involvement in Ukraine.

This was true of the articles and images shared by Bubeyeva's husband, a 40-year-old electrician from Tver, a sleepy provincial capital halfway between Moscow and St. Petersburg.

"Andrei Bubeyev thinks that he was charged as an example so that other ordinary citizens would be discouraged from expressing their opinion," said his lawyer, Svetlana Sidorkina.

Bubeyev spent a lot of time online, sharing links to various articles on his VKontakte page and engaging in political debates on local news websites, his wife says.

In spring 2015, he left town to work on a rural construction site. After investigators couldn't get through to him on the phone, they put him on a wanted list as an extremism suspect. When Bubeyev stopped by to visit his wife and young son at their country cottage, a SWAT team stormed in and arrested him.

His wife now lives alone with their 4-year-old son in a sparsely furnished apartment on the ground floor of a drab Soviet-era apartment block. After her husband was arrested, Anastasia Bubeyeva, 23, dropped out of medical school because she couldn't find affordable day care for her child, who still wears an eye patch for an injury he suffered when he bumped his head during the raid.

Several months after his arrest, Bubeyev pleaded guilty to inciting hatred toward Russians and was sentenced to a year in prison. His offense was sharing articles, photos and videos from Ukrainian nationalist groups, including those of the volunteer Azov battalion fighting Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Among them was an article about the graves of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine and a video describing Russia as a "fascist aggressor" and showing Russian tanks purportedly crossing into Ukraine.

Less than two weeks after the verdict, Bubeyev was charged again. This time, he was accused of calling for "acts of extremism" and "actions undermining Russia's territorial integrity." He had shared the picture of a toothpaste tube and also an article under the headline "Crimea is Ukraine" by a controversial blogger, who is in jail now, calling for military aggression against Russia.

"He was interested in politics, read the news, shared things, but he did it for himself. It was like collecting newspaper clippings," his wife said. "His page wasn't popular  he only had 12 friends. He couldn't have aimed to coerce anyone into anything."

The new charges were soon followed by a damning report on local television station Tverskoi Prospekt. The program showed an anonymous blogger complaining about social media users who voiced their support for Ukrainian troops and were "ready to back a coup in Russia and take up arms and kill people as the Nazis did." The television report claimed that the blogger's complaint had prompted the prosecution of the electrician.

On May 6, Bubeyev was convicted and sentenced to two years and three months in prison.

Also this month, a court in the Caspian Sea city of Astrakhan sentenced a man to two years in prison for his social media posts urging Ukrainians to fight "Putin's occupying forces."

In December, a court in Siberia sentenced a man to five years in prison for "inciting hatred" toward residents of eastern Ukraine in his video posts. In October, a court in southern Russia sent a political activist to prison for two years for an unsanctioned picket and posts on social media criticizing Putin and calling for southern Russia to join Ukraine.

The articles, photos and videos that landed Bubeyev in prison were posted on his page on VKontakte, Russia's most popular social media network with 270 million accounts.

VKontakte founder Pavel Durov sold the site and fled Russia in 2014, claiming that he had come under presser from the security services for VKontakte to disclose personal data of the users of a group linked to a protest movement in Ukraine. The company is now controlled by the media holding of Kremlin-friendly billionaire Alisher Usmanov.

Alexander Verkhovsky, director of the Sova group, says roughly half of the convictions of hate speech online are about posts on VKontakte, which he said might be because its administration might be easier for the Russian police to deal with than that of foreign-owned social media.

Bubeyev's defense claimed that the privacy settlings on his account made the articles he shared available only to him and his 12 friends. Sidorkina, his lawyer, said she has no explanation for how the security services found his posts unless they received the credentials to his account from VKontakte.

VKontakte declined to comment when contacted by The Associated Press.

Russia faced a surge of racially motivated attacks against Central Asian migrant workers in the 2000s, but the crime rates dropped drastically after dozens of neo-Nazis got lengthy prison sentences for extremism.

Rights activists and lawyers who have worked on extremism cases say the drop in violent hate crimes sent police and investigators scrambling to prosecute people for non-violent offenses to show a solid record of tackling extremism.

The Moscow-based Center for Economic and Political Reform said in a 23-page report on extremism law released this month that most convictions for this type of crime resulted in fines or a few days in custody, with the aim of boosting the crime statistics.

But as tensions with neighboring Ukraine heated up, courts across Russia began to hand out more and more prison sentences for hate speech, the report said.

Many of the hate speech convictions do deal with dubious content, but the severity of the punishment doesn't seem to correspond to the level of public danger posed, said Verkhovsky of Sova.

"These cases are very arbitrary because they are lots more people out there who have done the same thing. Such enforcement of the law does not address or combat radical activities," he said. "No one knows where the red line is: It's like roulette."
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Linkedin Tama Salim (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31, 2016

Out of respect for Muslims in the country who are expected to start observing the holy month of Ramadhan next week, a number of foreign embassies in Jakarta have moved forward the dates for the celebration of their national days.

The British and Russian embassies are expected to hold their national holiday celebrations this week, while the US embassy staged a very early Fourth of July celebration last week.

For British embassies across the world, changing the date for celebrating their national day, the Queens Birthday, is never a problem as they are given a certain level of flexibility in choosing the most appropriate date, a spokesperson from the embassy said.

Embassy staff who observe the Ramadhan fasting ritual are also given flexible work options, said James Mortimer, the embassys head of media and communications.

In Jakarta we felt that holding it on the date chosen would be most appropriate, as it is close to the official celebrations in the UK, which take place on Saturday, and it was before Ramadhan, which would allow more people to attend, Mortimer told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

The British Ambassador to Indonesia, Moazzam Malik, is one of many Muslims at the embassy who will observe the fast.

The Queens Birthday celebration in Jakarta has been moved to Wednesday, a few days before the official date observed by the Commonwealth, on a Saturday in June, as require by UK customs.

Queen Elizabeth II, the current British monarch, celebrated her real 90th birthday on April 21, more than 63 years since she assumed the Royal crown.

Meanwhile, the Russian Embassy will also celebrate its national day on Wednesday, moving it forward from June 12, a date that falls in the second week of Ramadhan.

Russia also decided to bring forward the celebration for a more practical reason.

In Ramadhan it will be very difficult to get people [together because] everyone will be gone  as you know, there will be no people in Jakarta, Russian Embassy spokesman Nikolay Karapetyan said, referring to the annual exodus of Muslims to their hometowns.

The Russian national holiday has been celebrated annually on June 12 since 1992, commemorating the adoption of the declaration of state sovereignty of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR).

Meanwhile, US Ambassador to Indonesia Robert Blake decided to hold the celebration of this years Fourth of July in late May to avoid clashing with the month of fasting.

It is mainly out of respect for Ramadhan, and were one in 18 or 19 countries or more that have moved their July 4 celebrations around because of the holy month of Ramadhan, the US Embassys press attache for Indonesia, John Johnson, told the Post.

Coincidentally, it will be ambassador Blakes last Ramadhan in Indonesia, as he is set to return to the US in July to conclude his duty in the country.

Before leaving, Blake is scheduled to attend a number of iftar (breaking-of-the-fast) meals throughout the month, Johnson said.

In Indonesia, iftar meals are a popular social event during Ramadhan.

This years celebration is particularly meaningful to me as it will also be my last as a representative of the US government, ambassador Blake said in his remarks during the nations 240th independence day celebrations last week.
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post)  Tue, May 31 2016

What can the people of Sidoarjo in East Java, who have been displaced by a mudflow disaster, and the whole nation expect from the state to ensure their rights are protected and that a similar tragedy to that which struck 10 years ago will not reoccur?

The statement of Sidoarjo Regent Saiful Ilah, who called on the victims to forget the calamity and start their life anew, is discouraging. It will be another disaster for those who have been made to suffer if the regents view is representative of that of policymakers.

The Lapindo mudflow has buried our villages. The state has forgotten to help us rebuild our lives. Our voices will not die down, reads the headstone of a tomb laid on the mudflow area to mark the tragedy.

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Linkedin Margareth S. Aritonang and Ina Parlina (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31 2016

The Golkar Party announced the new composition of its executive board on Monday, under the chairmanship of Setya Novanto, though it may still be reshuffled to accommodate opposing camps within the party.

A shake up of the executive board was needed to smoothen reconciliation efforts as the party heads toward contesting in the regional elections.

A complete yet not settled executive board was announced on Monday consisting of 247 figures that will be responsible for ensuring Golkars headquarters run effectively. The board will also prepare the party for the upcoming local elections and the 2019 legislative and presidential elections.

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Linkedin Erika Anindita Dewi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31, 2016

The Golkar Party has planned to implement several political strategies following its "reposition", as it is now part of the governments coalition, a party executive has said.

Golkar executive chairman Nurdin Halid said the partys central executive board (DPP) would take control of political maneuvering by getting its organization in line and directing each of its factions to support the government.

"Before our repositioning, we criticized the government from the outside, but now, we must do it from the inside," Nurdin told a press conference at Golkar headquarters in Slipi, West Jakarta, on Monday.

The senior politician ensured that no Golkar politician would scorn the government for the next three years.

Nurdin went on to say the Golkar Party would support President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo and Vice President Jusuf Kalla's program Nawa Cita (the President's nine priorities), which aimed to accelerate infrastructure development and enable high economic growth for the country.

He further said Jokowis program was in line with Golkar's vision of the nation being a welfare state by 2045.

"It [the infrastructure development] is not merely aimed at easing transportation but more to strengthen the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia [NKRI]," said Nurdin.

Golkar chairman Setya Novanto said in a press conference that the partys new central executive board, which was announced on Monday, had its first 100-day program to complete.

He said the new board, called the Golkar Party's Work Acceleration central executive board, was set to hold its first work meeting on Wednesday. During the meeting, all board members would discuss not only its first 100-day program but also its one-year and three-year programs because the board only had a three-year tenure until 2019.

Previously, Golkar showed its allegiance to the Jokowi-Kalla administration earlier this year, at its national leaders' meeting (Rapimnas) in January.

Having had a comfortable 32-year position as the ruling party during the Soeharto era, Golkar shifted to the opposition coalition in 2014. Under the leadership of the party's former chairman Aburizal Bakrie, Golkar joined the Gerindra Party, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), the National Mandate Party (PAN), and the Crescent Star Party (PKB) in the Red-and-White Coalition (KMP). (ebf)
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Linkedin Farida Susanty (The Jakarta Post) Kuta, Bali  Tue, May 31 2016

The government is keeping hope alive on joining the International Civil Aviation Organizations (ICAO) council, despite a recent string of incidents in the country.



The Transportation Ministry hoped to obtain more support by gathering fellow officials from 31 developing countries in Kuta, Bali, on Monday.



The gathering was expected to generate commitments from the countries to vote for Indonesia during the next member selection round for the ICAO council.



The upcoming selection will be held from September to October at the organizations headquarters in Montreal, Canada.



Indonesia failed to secure a seat during the last four consecutive elections, with the most recent opportunity taking place in 2013. At the time, the country only secured 97 votes  from 191 member countries  with a minimum of 125 votes required to win a seat.



At present, the council is made up of 36 countries, including China and the US. Two of Indonesias Southeast Asian neighbors are onboard as well, namely Malaysia and Singapore.



Transportation Minister Ignasius Jonan said he was optimistic that Indonesia would get the support it needed this year, at least from three-quarters of the countries that attended the Bali gathering.



He insisted that Indonesia was fit to serve on the ICAOs council, citing its significant airline and passenger figures in Southeast Asia.



Data from the ministry shows that almost 1,150 aircraft operate in the archipelago, transporting nearly 100 million passengers every year.



We want to be able to formulate global aviation policies [by joining the council], Jonan said on the sidelines of the event. One policy the country is targeting focuses on biofuel use.



The gathering is not the only effort Indonesia has made to gain support. It has disbursed US$150,000 to the ICAO for its training program in African countries, the second such payment for the program.



Jonan brushed off concerns that recent aviation incidents would affect Indonesias chances, saying the government had imposed sanctions on the airlines in question.



The countrys largest low-cost carrier, Lion Air, for example, was been involved in two separate incidents in May alone. In one incident, Lion pilots went on strike, causing significant delays at several airports.



In another incident, it mistakenly transported 40 international passengers to a domestic terminal, allowing them to bypass immigration checks.



The terminal mix-up was followed by a similar incident involving Indonesia AirAsia.



Both carriers have since pledged to review and improve their services after being temporarily spared from the ministrys sanctions.



What would be bad is if an airline made a mistake and we did not slap them with a sanction. [...] In the past, my predecessors didnt have the courage to punish [airlines]. I have the courage to punish, he said.



Meanwhile, the Suriname civil aviation safety authoritys acting director Brian de Souza said the country had pledged to support Indonesias quest for a seat on the council.



I think its important. We, developing nations, should make our voices heard, he said, adding that he would help to rally support for Indonesia from countries in North and South America.

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Linkedin Anggi M. Lubis (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31 2016

After 21 court hearings, the trial court of Pulau Penang in Malaysia on Monday sentenced to death Indonesian migrant worker Rita Krisdianti who was caught at a Malaysian airport carrying 4 kilograms of illicit drugs in 2013.

Rita, a native of Ponorogo, East Java, worked as a housemaid in Hong Kong from January to April in 2013. She was on her way home in July when she was apprehended by Malaysian airport authorities after they found 4 kilograms of methamphetamine in her bag.

Rita claims she was unaware the drugs were in her bag and that the bag belonged to another Indonesian housemaid who had arranged her journey from Hong Kong to Penang through Bangkok and New Delhi.

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Linkedin Marguerite Afra Sapiie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31, 2016

The government has insisted bilateral relations between Indonesia and China has returned to normal following the capture of a Chinese vessel and arrest of its crew for allegedly fishing illegally in Natuna, Riau Islands.

Coordinating Political, Legal, and Security Affairs Minister Luhut Panjaitan said both countries had resolved the latest dispute, which began from the arrest of eight crew members of a Chinese vessel on Friday evening by the Indonesian Navy in Natuna waters.

Luhut claimed the arrest was part of normal duties customarily conducted by Indonesian authorities in response to any violation committed by foreign parties in Indonesia's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), on the northwest coast of Kalimantan.

"It's just business as usual. If a violation occurs, we will detain and legally process the perpetrators. If they have to be released, then they will be," Luhut said on Monday.

Beijing authorities have reportedly lodged a stern complaint to Jakarta following the seizure, as Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying insisted that the country's Gua Bei Yu boat was operating legally.

The dispute has occurred amid heightening tension in the South China Sea, where China and several Southeast Asian countries have overlapping territorial claims in the waters. Indonesia has not yet played any role as a claimant state.

Indonesia has objected to China's inclusion of parts of the Indonesian-governed Natuna Islands within the "nine-dash line", a map border Beijing uses to show its territorial claim of the South China Sea. China has said it does not dispute Indonesia's sovereignty over the Natuna Islands, however.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Arrmanatha Nasir said the ministry would inform Chinese Embassy officials about their consular rights to the eight detained crewmen, in accordance with the ministry's responsibility.

"[The seizure] is merely a duty of our security officials in taking action against foreign vessels suspected of poaching illegally," Arrmanatha said.

He asserted that the arrest would happen not only to Chinese fishermen, but also to any foreign citizens who carried out illegal activities in Indonesia's waters. (ebf)
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Linkedin Kartono Mohamad (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31 2016

Tobacco farming in Indonesia is mostly a family endeavor. Most farmers cultivate small plots of land; either they own their own land, rent it or are tenants of a large land owner. There are only a few large-scale tobacco plantations and most are owned by the state. Those small farmers cannot afford to hire help, so they involve family members in everything from land tilling, planting, leave picking and drying, to packaging. This explains why child labor is quite common in tobacco farming in Indonesia. The children work before going to school, often very early in the morning when tobacco leaves are still wet with dew, and in late afternoon after school.

Tobacco farming usually involves chemical fertilizer or de-fertilizer like MH30, as well as a lot of pesticides as tobacco plants are very vulnerable to many kinds of plant pests. MH30 is used to stop tobacco plants from producing flowers, encouraging it to produce more leaves instead.

But in Indonesia farmers do not often use this fertilizer, choosing to manually check and pluck any budding flowers very early in the morning.

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A 16-year-old man from southwest Chinas Sichuan Province has been handed over to prosecutors in Dubai after smuggling himself into the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in hope of becoming rich by begging in the financial hub of the Middle East.

The young man surnamed Xu was caught by local police at the Dubai International Airport after flying nine hours and 30 minutes in the cargo compartment of an Emirates A380 airliner from Shanghai, the Chengdu Economic Daily (CED) reported Tuesday.

Xu jumped over fences and sneaked into the airliners cargo compartment late May 25 before it took off on 12:05 a.m. on May 26 in Shanghai, according to the airlines China office.

Local lawyers and an interpreter by the name of Mian Jinlong said Xu could be deported back to China and may be blacklisted from entering Dubai in the future, CED reported.

According to Mian, Xu said he decided to go to Dubai because he learned that the annual income of beggars in Dubai could be up to tens of thousands dollars. Xu also admitted his knowledge of the illegality of smuggling oneself, but he heard prisoners were well-treated behind bars.

It is the first case to see self-smuggling committed by someone of such young age to Dubai, Mian noted.

Posts claiming that beggars in Dubai could earn 9,000 dirham ($2,450) every day went viral online recently and many netizens joked that they would quit their jobs and beg in Dubai.

I hope that Chinese citizens will not follow such rumors  The UAE has strict laws banning begging, violators of which will be punished in accordance with the law, Ma Xuliang, consul general at the Consulate-General of China in Dubai, told CED.
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Linkedin Ina Parlina (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31 2016

Against a backdrop of apparent disagreements between the government and lawmakers on the amendment of the Regional Elections (Pilkada) Law, the government insisted on Monday that the revision accommodate a number of last years Constitutional Court rulings.



House of Representatives Commission II overseeing home affairs is set on Tuesday to decide on bringing the bill to a House plenary session scheduled for Thursday, as 101 areas across the country will hold simultaneous regional elections in February 2017.



The governments decision, which was made following instructions from President Joko Jokowi Widodos during a limited Cabinet meeting on Monday, includes a plan to not raise requirements for independent candidates and to stick to its previous proposal regarding the minimum threshold for a political party to endorse a candidate in a local election.



The government maintained its stance that independent candidates must be backed by 6.5 to 10 percent of the final voter list (DPT), as stipulated in the current Pilkada Law, and that political parties could name candidates in local elections if they garnered 20 to 25 percent of seats on the relevant local legislative council.



In principle, the government does not want to endorse something that will be against the Constitutional Court rulings, Home Minister Tjahjo Kumolo said after the meeting.



In a ruling issued last September, the Constitutional Court ordered that the minimum amount of support for independent candidates be based on each regions DPT, instead of its population, lowering the actual number of supporters required.



Therefore, independent candidates must be backed by 6.5 to 10 percent of the DPT, as stipulated in the current law.



Lawmakers previously opposed the Constitutional Court and instead sought to set a higher bar for the support required by independent candidates, of 10 to 15 percent or even 15 to 20 percent of the DPT, in response to the governments proposal to raise the minimum threshold for political parties to endorse candidates in local elections.



The current law allows a political party to nominate a candidate to run in a local election if the party has won a minimum of 5 percent of the popular vote in the previous poll. The government proposed raising the bar to between 20 and 25 percent, but the House wants it to be between 15 and 20 percent.



Last month, the House claimed that the government had agreed to lower the polling benchmark for candidates from political parties.



General Elections Commission (KPU) chairman Husni Kamil Manik, who was also present at Mondays Cabinet meeting, said just before the session that his office wanted to see more relaxed rules for independent candidates than the existing 6.5 to 7 percent requirement.



The government also decided to include a requirement for lawmakers and local legislative members, along with police officers and Indonesian Military (TNI) personnel, to quit their jobs if the KPU verified their nominations as election candidates, as stipulated in the Constitutional Court rulings.

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Linkedin Marguerite Afra Sapiie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31, 2016

The government says it will draft a recommendation on the settlement of the 1965 communist purge, combining input resulting from a government-sponsored national symposium in April and a civil coalition-initiated national symposium, which will be held in June.

A committee comprising retired Army generals, Pancasila-based organizations and Islamic groups will hold a two-day national symposium entitled "Securing Pancasila from the Threat of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and Other Ideologies" in Jakarta on June 1 and 2.

The event aims to give a perspective different from that of the recent 1965 National Symposium entitled "Dissecting the 1965 Tragedy". In Aprils symposium, survivors, government officials, academics, human rights activists and other groups came together to seek national reconciliation for victims of the political turmoil, which has been said to have claimed more than 500,000 lives.

Coordinating Political Legal, and Security Affairs Minister Luhut Pandjaitan said the government would wait for input from the upcoming national symposium, from which it would get another perspective to include in the recommendation.

"We expect to get input from participants of the [June] symposium too. We will combine those two versions and see which one of suggestions delivered is most suitable to be implemented," Luhut told journalists on Monday.

Luhut further said the organizing of the two symposiums was not aimed at finding which parties were wrong or right or to pinpoint which parties were left or right wing. It was all a matter of humanity, he explained.

Luhut said the government wanted to settle the 1965 issue once and for all so that it would not be a burden for the next generation. All future actions would be taken in accordance with prevailing laws, which ban communism, he added.

Retired Army general Kiki Syahnakri, chairman of the June symposium, said the upcoming symposium aimed to protect younger generations from the threat of communist ideology and a re-emergence of the Indonesia Communist Party (PKI), which would hamper Pancasila and stop the country from moving forward.

"We want to use an ideological approach. If all [parties] acknowledge Pancasila as our principle, hopefully there will be a compromise," Kiki said.

He further said the historical approach was not the proper way to address the 1965 tragedy because it involved many versions and would confuse people. Therefore, national reconciliation should be balanced and not based on partial claims.

Kiki said the symposiums committee had invited representatives of human rights groups and other figures, such as representatives of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) and Indonesian Human Rights Watch (Imparsial), April symposium chairman Agus Widjojo, 1965/1966 Murder Victims Research Foundation (YPKP) head Bedjo Untung and as survivors and witnesses of atrocities perpetrated in 1965, to attend the event.

The committee has said it is against a plan to exhume the mass graves of 1965 victims across Indonesia, saying it would be dangerous because it could trigger social unrest.

Luhut said the government was considering whether the government would exhume mass graves located mostly in Central Java, based on YPKP findings.

"I have said this over and over: I don't believe 400,000 people were killed [in 1965]," Luhut said.

The minister further said he would not attend the national symposium in June even though he had been officially invited. He said Defense Minister Ryamizar Ryacudu would attend the event instead. (ebf)
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31 2016

An ojek (motorcycle-taxi) driver from the GoJek ride-sharing company suffered severe injuries and lost Rp 30 million (US$2,190) after he was stabbed and robbed by two men in Depok, West Java, on Sunday.

The victim, identified as Latif Anwar, had just dropped off a passenger in the afternoon when two men riding a motorcycle approached him. The two men stabbed the victim in the stomach, took Rp 30 million cash that the victim was carrying in a bag and escaped.

Latif, despite his stab wound, tried to run after the perpetrators but his wound stopped him. He fell down not far from the scene. The money was reportedly intended to be used to finance Latifs wedding ceremony.

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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31 2016

Herdi Gustian, 30, a TV journalist from the RTV private television station, was found dead at his rented home in Medan Satria, Bekasi, West Java, on Monday.

His neighbors smelled a suspicious odor at 10 a.m. The home owner, Haji Yasin, forced open the door and found Herdi lying naked in a bathroom, tribunnews.com reported.

Witnesses Yopi and Ahmad Husen reported the case to Medan Satria Police.

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Linkedin thejakartapost.com (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31, 2016

Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama has affirmed his intention to team up with city civil servant Heru Budi Hartono for next years election, dispelling rumors about Heru retracting his bid to run for the deputy governor post.

The rumors were circulating at City Hall on Monday and were only reinforced when Ahok responded to journalists questions on Monday by saying, Maybe, Pak Heru wants to make way for Pak Djarot [to become deputy gubernatorial candidate].

He was referring to Deputy Governor Djarot Saiful HIdayat, a member of the Indonesian Democratic party of Struggle (PDI-P), who initially had been put forward by his party as Ahoks running mate, before Ahok decided to run as an independent.

But on Tuesday, Ahok confirmed that Heru remained his partner.

I have asked him. He said he had not withdrawn [from his commitment], Ahok clarified, saying that Heru had become the subject of attacks from political rivals against both Ahok and Heru.

He (Heru) told me that politics was burdensome for him, because we are attacked from various directions, said Ahok, adding that his partner had told him that that situation caused him sleepless nights.

Ahok said he had explained to Heru that both of them were trying to carry out a change of mindset that was certainly not easy. I told him, as long as the mental revolution is not accomplished, we will face difficulties.

Meanwhile, political support group Teman Ahok (Friends of Ahok) said its volunteers had collected more than 900,000 photocopies of identity cards of Jakarta voters. That is more than enough for Ahok and Heru to run in the election without party backing, as regulations require prospective candidates to gather at least 532,000 IDs from Jakarta voters to run as independent candidates. (bbn)
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Linkedin Dandy Koswaraputra (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31, 2016

Indonesian police and military troops arrested hundreds of Papuan would-be protestors on Monday to prevent them rallying for the release of political prisoners and for the support of Asian, Caribbean and Pacific states for self-determination in West Papua.

More than 300 Papuan people were arrested while we prepared to rally for self-determination for the Papuan nation, National Committee for West Papua (KNPB) chairman Victor Yeimo told The Jakarta Post.

Victor said a total of 336 demonstrators were arrested across several cities, including 60 people in the highland town of Wamena and 76 others in the Northern Sulawesi city of Manado. Police also arrested 200 protesters in Sentani near the Papuan capital of Jayapura.

The arrested activists were among thousands of demonstrators who have attended a series rallies under the banner of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua, he said.

"What we are doing is protected by law and by human rights rules," Victor asserted.

The demonstrations voiced support for the Papuan liberation movement and its bid to gain full membership in the Melanesian Spearhead Group.

Police confirmed the arrests, saying that the aim was to control the activists movements and for the sake of security and stability.

Police are also said to have also arrested 38 KNPB members in Wamena district who were preparing for the rally.

Yes, thats correct. We arrested them in the middle of a meeting about tomorrows action, Wamena Police chief Sr Adj. Commissioner Yan Piet Reba said.

Yan said the KNPB members, who had planned to hold a demonstration, would be interrogated before being released if necessary.

Human Rights Watch researcher Andreas Harsono has said security forces repeatedly fail to distinguish between violent acts and peaceful expression of political views.

The government has denounced flag-raising events and other peaceful expressions of pro-independence sentiment in Papua as treasonous, he said.

"Heavy-handed responses to peaceful activities have resulted in numerous human rights violations," he said.

In the past eight years, Andreas added, Human Rights Watch had documented dozens of cases in which police, military and intelligence personnel and prison guards had used unnecessary or excessive force when dealing with Papuans exercising their right to peaceful assembly and association.
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Linkedin Ina Parlina (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31 2016

With several days remaining before the beginning of the Ramadhan fasting month, the governments plan to import 10,000 tons of beef will be unlikely to immediately stabilize prices because of a number of technical reasons, including delays in shipping and the weakening of the rupiah.

Beef prices are currently hovering at more than Rp 110,000 (US$8) per kilogram, much higher than the governments estimate of Rp 80,000.



The price of the commodity, an important source of protein for Indonesian households, is expected to rise during Ramadhan and the subsequent Idul Fitri holiday, when the demand for the product usually soars.



Ramadhan and Idul Fitri are two major Islamic religious events in Indonesia, the worlds largest Muslim-majority country.



This year, Ramadhan will start early next month, while Idul Fitri is expected to begin on July 6.



Last week, Coordinating Economic Minister Darmin Nasution said that the government would soon import 10,000 tons of beef in an effort to fulfil the rising demand and maintain prices.



We have assigned state-owned firm Berdikari to manage the importation with the aim of lowering the price to between Rp 80,000 and Rp 85,000 per kg. The quota is 10,000 tons and it will arrive before the fasting month [in June], he said.



Such an effort, however, will hardly make the price go down at a quick pace, University of Indonesia economist I Kadek Dian Sutrisna Artha said.



Sutrisna said that beef prices will still go up during the upcoming Ramadhan as both traders and consumers are expecting to buy and sell the product at high prices, just like in previous years.



The government, therefore, should educate the public regarding this issue, Sutrisna said, adding that the current weakening of the rupiah would also keep the price of imported beef high.



Under the weakening of the rupiah and the lack of publicity by the government, I predict that the import policy will not really help in stabilizing the price during Ramadhan and Idul Fitri, he told The Jakarta Post on Monday.



Sutrisna said the governments target to lower the price down to Rp 80,000 in Ramadhan and Idul Fitri from the normal Rp 113,000 was not realistic.



The price during Ramadhan and Idul Fitri shouldnt be lower than the price during normal times. So the governments target to lower the price is not realistic, he said.



Separately, Indonesian Beef Producer and Lot Feeder Association (Apfindo) executive director Joni Liano said he fully supported the governments decision to import beef since the current beef stocks were insufficient to meet the local demand.



Joni said, referring to the Agriculture Ministrys data, that the country needed about 169,000 tons of beef during Ramadhan and Idul Fitri, while the stocks of local beef were only at about 113,000 tons.



Importing beef is inevitable because of the shortage of beef, he said.



Agriculture Minister Amran Sulaiman said Monday that his ministry would team up with the Office of the Coordinating Economic Minister and the Trade Ministry to come up with solutions to maintain the prices of various food commodities, including beef, corn and shallots, during Ramadhan and Idul Fitri.



Last week, Minister Darmin also said the government planned to import 2,500 tons of shallots in the next few weeks during harvest season to stabilize the price of the commodity, a basic ingredient in many Indonesian dishes, during Ramadhan and Idul Fitri.



Well see the harvest probably in the next two or three weeks, Darmin told journalists on Tuesday. (vny)

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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31, 2016

thejakartapost.com

President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo met with Norwegian Foreign Minister Brge Brende on Tuesday to discuss the strengthening of bilateral ties between the two countries, including by cooperating together in several sectors such as the environment and the fisheries.

Brende's first trip to Indonesia was meant to increase cooperation between Indonesia and Norway, Foreign Affairs Minister Retno LP Marsudi said on Tuesday.

Indonesia and Norway had previously cooperated in the Redd+ program since 2010, which aimed to lower greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation. The arrangement had three stages: namely preparation, transformation and implementation. Indonesia and Norway are currently shifting from the first to the second phase, Retno said.

"The President has ordered the acceleration of the implementation as well as the strengthening of cooperation between the Environment and Forestry Ministry and the Peatland Restoration Agency," she said in a press statement.

Moreover, Retno said Maritime and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti had also visited Norway in August last year where she signed agreements to eradicate illegal fishing and to promote fish cultivation and sustainable fish management.

Brende had expressed Norway's intention to increase trade and investment ties with Indonesia, Retno said, adding that Norway had invested US$1.2 billion in pension funds in Indonesia.

Furthermore, the meeting also explored other areas of cooperation between the two countries, such as in hydro power as almost 100 percent of Norway's energy comes from hydroelectric dams and the European country has made several investment in the sector, she added. (rin)
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Linkedin Anggi M. Lubis (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31 2016

Indonesia and Norway are embracing stronger bilateral relations with the visit of the Scandinavian countrys foreign minister to Jakarta. The two countries have not only agreed to enhance economic and environment cooperation but also to resume dialogue on human rights.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi welcomed her Norwegian counterpart Borge Brende for his first ministerial visit to Jakarta. The two opened the 12th Indonesia-Norway Human Rights Dialogue, a discussion that has been pending for four years, before conducting the second Joint Commission for Bilateral Cooperation (JCBC).

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Linkedin Fadli (The Jakarta Post) Batam, Riau Islands  Tue, May 31, 2016

Indonesia will not formally protest to Chinese authorities over a recent incident in Natuna, Riau Islands, during which a Chinese coast guard vessel was found to have escorted the MV Gui Bei Yu 27088, a Chinese-flagged boat allegedly fishing illegally in Indonesian waters, a senior military officer has said.

The Indonesian Navys Western Fleet (Armabar) commander Rear Admiral Achmad Taufiqoerrahman said based on the results of the Navys assessment on its arrest of the Gui Bei Yu 27088, there was no violation suspected to have been committed by the Chinese coast guard vessel in Natuna, although it was in proximity of where the fishing vessel was intercepted by the Navys sea patrol.

We will not file a protest against China because the Chinese coast guard vessel at the location, we think, didnt commit any violations. So, theres no need to take such an action [protest], said Taufiq, while mentioning the Navy was continuing its investigation into the incident.

As reported earlier, Indonesian war vessel the KRI Oswald Siahaan-354 managed to stop the Gui Bei Yu 27088, which attempted to flee arrest, by firing shots at the vessel. The Chinese fishing boat was fleeing from Natuna waters after it was found to have illegally fished in Indonesian territory. The Gui Bei Yu ignored several warning shots previously fired by the KRI Oswald Siahaan because of the presence of a Chinese coast guard, which purportedly was protecting the fishing vessel.

Tanjung Pinang Region IV naval base commander Commodore S.Irawan said the Navys success in capturing the Chinese fishing boat could not be separated from the bravery of Indonesian Navy personnel, who pursued the fishing vessel even though the latter was protected by the Chinese coast guard.

Previously, several warning shots using small calibre munitions we fired to the right and left sides of the boat were ignored by its crew. They didnt care and continued trying to flee because a large Chinese coast guard vessel was present, which gave them protection, said Irawan.

But because of our personnels bravery and the fact that the KRI Oswald Siahaan 354 is a large vessel [comparable] to the Chinese coast guard vessel, we eventually managed to stop the boat and arrest its crew, he went on.

Irawan said the incident occurred on Friday evening when the Chinese fishing vessel, carrying eight crew members, was illegally fishing in Natuna waters. Their illegal practice was uncovered by the KRI Oswald Siahaan 354, which was on a routine patrol of the waters.

Based on the order of the Armabar commander, the KRI Oswald Siahaan got authority to fire at the Chinese fishing boat to try and stop it, said Irawan.

He further said the Chinese boat and its eight crew members arrived at the Indonesian Navy headquarters in Ranai, Natuna, on Saturday, to be investigated for alleged illegal fishing and territorial violations.

From our temporary investigation, it was known that the boats crew intentionally destroyed their vessel in attempt to avoid our arrest, said Irawan.

The KRI Oswald Siahaan 354 is a frigate equipped with missiles. It is 113 meters long and 12 meters wide. This large destroyer is assigned to carry out sea patrols in Natuna waters, which are prone to illegal fishing by foreign vessels.

Natuna is approximately 550 kilometers northeast of Batam Island, and it borders with the South China Sea. (ebf)
CHENGDU, May 31 (Xinhua) -- Meihin, a Japanese-born panda, delivered her first cub Monday at Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Center in southwest China, it was announced Tuesday.

The female cub weighs 135 grams and is healthy, according to the center.

Meihin was born in Wakayama, Japan, in 2008 and returned to China with her twin brother, Eihin, in 2013.

Their mother, Rauhin, who was born in 2000 in Wakayama, was the first Japanese-born panda to have a cub.

China has collaborative panda breeding programs with Japan, the United Statesand European countries. The programs intend to increase global understanding of the endangered species.

Cubs born to pandas that are "on loan" from China must be returned to China after they reach sexual maturity or when the cooperative agreement ends.
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Linkedin Dylan Amirio (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31 2016

Companies and organizations must be able to first identify all cyberattack patterns in an attempt to develop a reliable protection system for their internet-based operations, an executive from a leading cybersecurity systems company suggested.



Speaking to reporters in Jakarta on Monday, Palo Alto Networks senior manager for the marketing of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system and Industrial Control System (ICS) products, Delfin Rodillas, said that security alone is not enough as something grander is needed to protect users from harmful emails and URLs.



Most data security servers in Indonesia, however, are not yet able to identify threats at the level they should, Rodillas said.



If we are able to identify the core of these methods, then we are able to prevent attacks and block harmful users straight from the core before they even achieve the impact that they want, said the executive of the California-based company.



ICS are command and control networks and systems designed to support industrial processes. The largest subgroup of ICS are SCADA systems, which allow users to monitor and control a plant or equipment in industries such as telecommunications, water and waste control, energy, oil and gas refining and transportation.



Rodillas said that most of the attacks or scams that came through the internet revolve around only 25 signature techniques that hackers and attackers re-use constantly.



One attack can, for example, have the signature of 10,000 users but in reality, theyre carried out through one method or several strung together and its always the same, he said.



The company explained further that security systems in Indonesia should focus on trying to prevent threats from springing up instead of just detecting them when they attack because after preventing an attack it is possible for the user to develop plans to restore their systems back to normal.



So far, several players in Indonesias banking and government sectors have expressed interest in Palo Alto Networks data security systems after the company expanded into Indonesia in 2014.



Rodillas also noted that to strengthen data security systems in Indonesia, the issue must be made a national one that would be able to catch the eye of both industry and government players and also foster collaboration between tech experts and regulators.



You cant just put up a firewall anymore. Hackers are getting better at bypassing that. What is needed are protection systems that can stop attacks even at that advanced level, he said.



Indonesia does not necessarily need to develop its own cybersecurity framework as it is able to leverage global standards such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) framework for use in its own systems.



Indonesia has one of the highest malware infection rates in Asia, with such an attack 50 percent more likely to occur here than to its neighbors. Cybersecurity breaches have cost the country up to Rp 33.29 billion (US$2.4 million).



Also, digital experts have been continuously encouraging businesses and institutions to adopt a culture of awareness and vigilance when it comes to digital security as more businesses are going digital.



The response would be too slow if we just relegate the security businesses to the authorities. Everybody, from bosses to employees, are responsible for keeping their data safe, Indonesia Cyber Security Forum (ICSF) chairman Ardi Sutedja said earlier this month.

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Linkedin Agnes Anya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31 2016

Jojo Hardjono paused upon learning that Tangerang vehicle license plates, which previously began with the letter B, would change to using the letter A following the Tangerang Polices shift from the Jakarta Polices authority to the Banten Police.

As a vehicle owner, I am confused about the policy. It was already settled with B plates. Why should it become A now? the 35-year-old Tangerang resident said on Monday, adding that he had just found out about the new rule.

The regulation will definitely affect several things, including buying and selling cars, he added.

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Linkedin thejakartapost.com (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31, 2016

National Police chief Gen. Badrodin Haiti has officially inaugurated Insp. Gen. Ari Dono Sukmanto as the new chief of the National Police's Criminal Investigation Department (Bareskrim) on Tuesday, who is praised as an experienced investigator.

Ari, who previously served as the deputy chief of the department, takes the head position vacated by Comr. Gen Anang Iskandar who retired this month.

"He served as the deputy chief of criminal investigations. He is a two-star general who graduated from the police academy in 1985 and has vast experience in the investigation division," National Police spokesperson Brig. Gen. Agus Rianto said on Monday as quoted by Antara news agency.

Throughout his career in the police force, Ari served as a criminal investigations director of West Java Police and Yogyakarta Police. He was also appointed as a core investigator for certain crimes at Bareskrim in 2009.

Badrodin expected Ari's appointment would bring improvement to the department's performance.

"He must also be responsive and sensitive in every law enforcement operation especially those that have the public's attention. Law enforcement must be used for justice only, not for other interests," Badrodin said after the inauguration on Tuesday at the National Police's headquarters.

Badrodin also swore in several other police officers receiving promotions in Tuesday's inauguration event. They included Insp. Gen Sabar Rahardjo as high-ranking police officer at the police's human resources staff department as he is entering retirement, Inps. Gen. Jodie Rooseto as the National Police's Human Resources Department chief, Insp. Gen. Bambang Waskito as West Java Police chief, Brig. Gen. Arief Sulistyanto as the National Police chief's expert staff of management, Brig. Gen Musyafak as West Kalimantan Police, Brig. Gen Yazid Fanani as Jambi Police chief and Brig. Gen Lukman Wahyu as West Sulawesi Police chief. (rin)
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Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31, 2016

Real estate investment trustees (REITs) investors need to be extra-patient waiting for the tax incentives promised in the fifth economic stimulus package, as they must first wait for regional governments to cut building and land acquisition taxes (BPHTB).

Bobby Hamzar Rafinus, assistant to the coordinating economic minister for fiscal and monetary policy, said that Jakarta's administration was the only regional administration that had effectively cut BPHTB to 1 percent.

"It's not an easy measure to deliver, because that is their source of income. Currently, the government is designing incentives that will drive regional administrations to cut BPHTB," he said on Monday in Jakarta.

In Indonesia, REITs are formed with a collective investment contract (KIK) through a special purposed vehicle (SPV) in which the KIK holds 99.99 percent of shares. The SPV will then buy property from its previous owner (originator).

When the asset is transferred from originator to SPV, the government used to charge two taxes, a 5 percent income tax for the originator and the BPHTB for the SPV. The BPHTB is paid to the regional administration with maximum fee of 5 percent.

In the fifth economic policy package, the government pledged to cut that income tax from 5 percent to just 0.5 percent and cut the BPHTB from 5 percent to 1 percent. The income tax has effectively been cut, while the BPHTB is waiting for approval from regional administrations.

The cut in income tax and BPHTB, to 0.5 percent and 1 percent respectively, would give Indonesia an advantage over Singapore  where the combined taxes are currently at 3 percent, Bobby said.

At the same time, the REITs investors were now free from double taxation. Previously, the return of assets managed by SPVs were subject to tax, as were the dividends distributed from SPV to KIK investors. In total, 15 percent tax was imposed on REITs' profits.

"After the economic package was issued, REITs were considered the owners of SPVs, thus the 15 percent dividend tax was erased. However, the SPVs must register themselves as low-risk taxable employers before enjoying the incentive," said tax office spokesman Waskito.

And, he continued, the dividend payout ratio from the SPVs had to be at least 90 percent. Additionally, at least 50 percent of the REITs investments had to be in real assets, with paper investments forming less than 30 percent, and cash or cash-equivalent investments making up equal to or less than 20 percent.

Head of research at the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) Poltak Hotradero said, "REITs actually provide a great benefit for regional administrations in boosting infrastructure development. Let's say for the new airport in Kulon Progo, Yogyakarta. If the commercial area is securitized with REITs, they would raise a large amount of capital to build other infrastructure." (ags)
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Linkedin Dewanti A. Wardhani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31 2016

Regions have joined President Joko Jokowi Widodos call to cut red tape in order to attract more foreign investment.



Palembang Mayor Harnojoyo couldnt be happier. His city was announced on Monday as the municipality with the most integrated investment service (PTSP) by the Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM).



Weve cut a number of unnecessary procedures to streamline the licensing process. Cutting red tape and providing better services is important for Palembang because there are many businesses that support the growth of our city, Harnojoyo said.



So far it has set a limit of seven days for the processing of 52 different permit documents at its city-level PTSP in an attempt to improve ease of doing business.



The city also provides an investment map for potential investors to give them a greater understanding of the investment environment.



Mondays award winners were chosen based on a number of criteria such as a transparent standard operating procedure, innovation by local administrations and incentives for businesses.



They were the first accolades of their kind since Jokowi inaugurated the PTSP in January 2015. The investment service is regulated by Presidential Regulation (Perpres) No. 97/2014.



On many occasions, Jokowi has made simpler business processes a top priority during his tenure.



The goal is to make Indonesia more competitive in the region, thus attracting domestic and foreign investors.



The massive eradication of unnecessary business permits is expected to boost Indonesias rank on the World Banks Ease of Doing Business list to 40th place this year, from 109th place a year ago.



Four of Indonesias Southeast Asian neighbors fared better in 2015, with Singapore coming in first position, Malaysia at 18th, Thailand at 49th and Vietnam at 90th.



Meanwhile, the BKPM reports that integrated service offices have been established in 34 provinces, 385 regencies, 98 municipalities, five free trade zones and ports (KPBPB) and four special economy zones (KEK).



As many 31 other regencies and four KEK are yet to adopt a PTSP.



Tatik Rumiyati, head of the Demak PTSP in Central Java, said the unit had overhauled its system for catering to businesses. It was currently seeking, he said, to generate higher investments to develop the regencys tourism potential.



However, she acknowledged that the office still faced difficulties adjusting to the new online system, which it considered a totally new concept. Many applicants still go through manual services for now.



We understand that time is money. This is what weve heard from businesses. Therefore, weve started to develop an online system for applicants that we will launch soon, Tatik told The Jakarta Post.



Contacted separately, Korean Chamber of Commerce (Kocham) representative CK Song said that local governments were already paying more attention to improving the business climate by establishing the PTSP.



However, more time and progress is still needed for their services to reach a satisfactory level, Song said.



Still many investors are looking for more sourcing and investments in Vietnam. A global competitive edge should always be considered an overall boost for Indonesia, in that it is a great country for doing business, he wrote in a text message.

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

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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31 2016

Ideological tensions may heat up as some retired Army generals have organized an anti-communist symposium for Wednesday in response to an event in April when participants discussed the deadly 1965 purge and possible reconciliation.

At least 300 retired generals and members of mass organizations will gather at the event called Protecting Pancasila from Threats of the Indonesian Communist Party [PKI] and Other Ideologies on Wednesday and Thursday.

The outcomes from the April symposium have run counter to what we expected as a way to shed light for national reconciliation, symposium coordinator Kiki Syahnakri told a press conference on Monday.

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Linkedin Safrin La Batu (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31, 2016

Politics is generally considered a serious business, and political movements in this country are traditionally organized by party elites.

But in Jakarta, young people, fed up with political transactions among elites, have decided to take part in a political movement.

Thousands of people, mostly youths, attended a two-day event called the Teman Ahok Fair held at the Gudang Sarinah building in Pancoran, South Jakarta, which wrapped up on Sunday.

Enthusiasm could be seen in the faces of the youths although they had to pay between Rp 25,000 and Rp 35,000 for a ticket to take part in the event organized by Teman Ahok (Friends of Ahok), a group that supports Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama in his attempt to run as an independent candidate in next years gubernatorial election.

Various presentations and shows were held during the fair, including performances by popular acts like Project Pop, Sore and Mocca.

We believe this kind of movement is needed in the city. This is our style of bringing about change, Teman Ahok spokesperson Amalia Ayuningtyas told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

The group has not announced the number of visitors at the event or how much money was raised for the incumbents campaign.

Teman Ahok, founded in June last year, has been successful in its attempt to collect identity card photocopies from Jakarta residents who support his independent campaign. To run without party backing, a candidate in Jakarta needs to secure at least 532,000 ID copies, according to election regulations. The group has set itself a target of one million ID cards, and it already had more than 900,000 as of Monday.

Aside from generating popular support for its governor of choice, the group is also raising funds to support Ahoks campaign. It sells merchandise, such as pins and Tshirts bearing the picture of Ahok, and organizes various events. So far, the group claims to have raised Rp 797.37 million.

The involvement of young people in political movements was a sign that Indonesias democracy was moving in the right direction, and that trend needed to be maintained in the future, said Paramadina University political analyst Hendri Satrio.

This is good for our politics. Such a movement emerges because young people want to see change in this country, Hendri said.

The movement is a positive result of the freedom of the press.

There are no statistics to show how far the young peoples movement has influenced voters so far. But the movement has become so organized that political parties, including the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) are beginning to feel threatened, prompting them to join forces and rally behind one candidate in a bid to stop Ahok in the election.

The parties attempt to unite reflects their common fear of the rising popularity of independent candidates and the weakening power of parties, or deparpolisasi.

Teman Ahok is not the first movement by young people in Jakarta. A popular campaign driven largely by young people also supported current President Joko Jokowi Widodo, with his then-running mate Ahok, in Jakartas 2012 gubernatorial election.

Jokowi, the mayor of Surakarta in Central Java at the time, was considered a humble, down-to-earth figure who kept close to ordinary people despite his political ascent and became popular for impromptu visits to local communities to hear peoples complaints. In a demonstration of their support, many young people started to wear red plaid shirts with their sleeves rolled up, a style popularized by Jokowi and Ahok.

The Jokowi-Ahok duo, although supported by young people, ran with the endorsement of the PDI-P and the Gerindra Party in 2012.

A similar movement to that of Teman Ahok also supported Faisal Basri and Biem Benyamin, who ran as independent candidates in 2012. While the support for the duo was not as massive as that generated by Teman Ahok, it was a grassroots movement that included many young people and mobilized political support outside the established party system.
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Linkedin Li Xueying (The Straits Times/ANN) Taipei  Tue, May 31, 2016

Taiwan is putting some flesh on the bones of President Tsai Ing-wen's New Southbound Policy - key to her determination to wean the island's economy off China.

The push to strengthen links with Southeast Asia and India will take the form of not just traditional investments and trade, but also what James Huang terms a "people-centric" economic strategy.

Specifically, this would include wooing students and tourists from the region, the former foreign minister now in charge of the agency spearheading the policy told Taiwan's media. Underscoring the importance given to the agency, it is housed under the Presidential Office and will be supported by a new think-tank.

China is Taiwan's largest trading partner, with two-way trade valued at around US$130 billion, almost double that of the island's trade with ASEAN, amounting to US$79 billion last year. Taiwan's trade with India is even less - at US$6 billion in 2014.

The Education Ministry is submitting a report to the legislature, outlining plans to promote exchanges in learning and "innovative teaching" between higher education institutes in Taiwan and Southeast Asia, reported the Central News Agency.

For instance, it intends to provide more scholarships and internship programs to attract non-Chinese students. Currently, there are about 5,000 students from Southeast Asia, India, New Zealand and Australia, a quarter of all overseas students in Taiwan. Chinese students number around 10,000.

Separately, there will be a drive to diversify the sources of tourists to Taiwan. A visa-waiver scheme for Southeast Asians is on the cards. So are plans to attract more Muslim visitors, such as by making hotels friendlier to their needs, including by providing halal food. Malaysians, Indonesians and Filipinos now make up the majority of the 200,000 Muslim tourists annually.

Tourism is a key driver of Taiwan's services sector, largely propelled by the four million Chinese tourists who visit annually. But since the January 16 presidential and legislative polls, which saw Tsai and her pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party romp to victory, China has tightened the tap on the flow of its tourists to the island, forcing Taiwan to look elsewhere.

Meanwhile, attracting more Southeast Asian students to study - and eventually work - in Taiwan may reap long-term dividends, with Taiwan companies targeting the ASEAN market even as the Chinese economy slows.

National Development Council Deputy Minister Kao Shien-quey tells The Straits Times: "These students will become the front-liners in our companies' efforts to move into Southeast Asia."

They will help Taiwan counter a key challenge, a lack of knowledge about the region, she says. "We know little about Southeast Asia and have not done much in-depth research into it."

There remains skepticism in Taiwan as to the extent the New Southbound Policy can succeed.

Tour agency owner Arthur Li, who says bookings by Chinese tourists have dropped by between 30 and 50 per cent since January, reckons the low-hanging fruit in Southeast Asia have already been plucked. Many Singaporeans and Malaysians visit Taiwan.

"But I don't think other countries, such as Thailand, Indonesia or Vietnam, will be interested in coming because Taiwan is relatively more expensive.

"Also, due to the differences in culture and history, will they be interested in our tourist spots, such as the National Palace Museum?"

Acknowledging these issues, Kao says there are many kinks to iron out for the policy to succeed.

"The main thing is to regain autonomy of our economy and not over-rely on one market.

"There are many areas we need to look at for that to happen. But at this point, we need to signal our change in policy."
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Linkedin Intan Tanjung (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31, 2016

Passengers wanting to explore Iran and Mauritius can now rejoice since Air Asia has just opened new routes to the destinations, offering attractive prices.

Known as the island with the topaz shoreline and sitting in the Indian Ocean near the southeast coast of the African continent, Mauritius and its amazing beaches including Belle Mare Beach will soon be accessible via a direct Air Asia X flight from Kuala Lumpur, starting October 4.

The flights will carry 377 passengers in economy class and 12 in premium class and are scheduled to depart three times a week, on Tuesday, Friday and Sunday, departing Kuala Lumpur at 10.25 a.m. and arriving in Mauritius at 1.25 p.m. local time. The return flights are scheduled to depart Mauritius at 2.55 a.m. and arrive at 2.20 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. The one-way flight takes about 7 hours.

The airline is attracting travelers with promotional fares that must be booked between May 26 and June 5.

Aside from Mauritius, the Malaysian carrier will also fly to Irans capital, Tehran, with its inaugural flight departing on June 21. The route will connect Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok to Tehran, and as with Mauritius, Air Asia will run the service three times per week.

Air Asia is not a first-timer in Tehran, as the route was first introduced in 2010. However, the route was suspended in 2012 due to Irans challenging economic and business conditions as a result of sanctions applied by the US, according to Business Traveller. Sanctions to Iran were lifted earlier this year.

The recent lifting of sanctions opens up exciting new prospects for Iran as a tourist destination, said Benyamin Ismail, AirAsia X CEO. (asw)
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Linkedin Intan Tanjung (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, May 31, 2016

Bali is blessed with gorgeous beaches, a beautiful landscape and an exotic culture, but the island is still perceived by some as an expensive tourist destination. While it is true that most places require you to dig deep into your pockets, there is plenty to enjoy at no cost in Bali, and thats good news. Here is the list of our favorite and often-forgotten six free things to do in Bali.

Walk on the beach

Most Bali beaches are free  though you may be charged a small parking fee if you come by car. You can walk along the long Kuta Beach from the airport to the Seminyak area, or on the black sandy beaches in Canggu, like Echo Beach or Parenenan Beach. Another completely free beach to visit is Nusa Dua Beach in the BTDC area. From there you can walk all the way to Tanjung Benoa.

Get wet at Water Blow

There is nothing more fun than having the waves splash at you. Water Blow is a natural phenomenon, where the strong surf pushes through a narrow gap, creating a big splash on the reef cliff. This exciting spectacle can be experienced at Nusa Dua Beach and never fails to awe visitors.

If you prefer to stay dry, you can simply admire the beautiful setting of the reef, or jog along the surrounding beachside track. From November to March, you can also surf in the sea in front of the Grand Hyatt hotel for free, if you bring your own surfboard (or if your budget allows, you can always rent one).

Walk up Ubuds Love Hill or on the Campuhan ridge

Ubuds Love Hill is famous for its picturesque setting, easy tracks and a sacred temple called Pura Bukit Lebah. Most visitors here are teenagers who come in pairs and engaged couples wanting to take engagement photos.

The hill track is about 2 kilometers from the towns main road, Jl. Sanggingan, to the village of Bangkiang Sidem. You can extend your walk if you pass the village and return to Ubud through the jungle.

Kuta walking tour

Hear more best-kept secrets about local life, Balinese culture, sacred places and the islands history on the Kuta walking tour. For two hours, Dewa Putu Sugara guides tourists, tells stories and shares important information about the surrounding areas. The tour starts at the Kuta Tourist Information Center at 9am, passes through the surrounding neighborhoods and ends at the same place it began.

For more information, call the Indonesian Tourist Information Center in Kuta at 0361-766183.

Join a turtle release

To protect the sea turtle, the Kuta Beach Sea Turtle Conservation group keeps the animals eggs in a hatchery. Once the turtles hatch, the organization invites the public, especially children, to witness the release of baby sea turtles on Kuta Beach.

To find the place, walk on the beach towards Discovery Mall and you will not miss the giant turtle statue on your left. Follow the groups activities on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/baliseaturtlesociety to get accurate information about release times.

More information at www.baliseaturtle.org

Watch colorful festivals

Bali has several annual festivals, and they're not only free to visit, but you can also learn about the local culture. The Bali Art Festival (Pekan Kesenian Bali) with traditional performances from all Bali districts is held in June every year in Denpasar. Aside from the Bali Art Festival, there is the Bali Kite Festival, which is usually held in July or August in Sanur, depending on favorable wind conditions. (asw)
Talks in Beijing also expected to consider Korean nuclear issue

Beijing will pressure Washington over maritime issues during the upcoming annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue, as the United States' increasing military presence in the South China Sea is among China's major concerns, officials told China Daily.

China will bring up topics related to its major concerns, including the Taiwan question, Tibet and maritime security, and it will respond to the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue, which the US is expected to raise, two sources familiar with the matters said on condition of anonymity.

The two countries have differing pursuits on major issues at the strategic level. However, the two still have many common interests, they said.

Whether it is on the South China Sea issue or on the Korean Peninsula issue, the two countries have a shared security goal to maintain regional stability, they said.

Beijing announced on Monday that the annual dialogue will take place in Beijing on June 6 and 7.

China hopes to "properly tackle differences" alongside the US, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said.

The dialogue, which started in 2009, has become the highest-level, regular bilateral communication channel for the world's two largest economies to compare notes on key issues concerning diplomacy, security and economy.

Observers noted that the eighth dialogue will be the last to be co-chaired by President Barack Obama's administration.

On the economic track, Na- than Sheets, US undersecretary of the Treasury for international affairs, reaffirmed on May 24 the Obama administration's commitment to reaching a bilateral investment treaty agreement before Obama's presidency ends.

Sources also said that China will urge the US to provide a level playing field for Chinese investment.

China's investment in the US in the first quarter of this year is expected to be more than double that of the first quarter of last year, according to the National Committee on United States-China Relations, based in New York.

Ruan Zongze, vice-president of the China Institute of International Studies, said the South China Sea issue will be brought to the table because it has affected the two-way ties, and the US has been "undermining regional stability" while "rebalancing to Asia" in the past two years.
The second China-Russia SEMs Forum is held in Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi on Monday, May 30, 2016. [Photo: China.com]

Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli and his Russian counterpart Arkady Dvorkovich agreed on Monday to enhance cooperation on energy and between small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The agreement came as the two vice prime ministers co-chaired the 13th meeting of the China-Russia Energy Cooperation Committee and attended the second China-Russia SEMs Forum in Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi.

During the energy meeting, Zhang spoke highly of the steady development of comprehensive strategic partnership of collaboration between China and Russia under the guidance of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

He called for both sides' concerted efforts to make preparations in the field of energy for the upcoming meetings between Xi and Putin.

Zhang said the energy cooperation between China and Russia have expanded and deepened with smooth development on energy trade and substantial progress on strategic major energy projects since the 12th meeting of the energy cooperation committee was held in Beijing in November last year.

He encouraged both countries to consolidate confidence, further expand areas and models of cooperation so as to jointly build strategic ties of cooperation on energy that benefit both countries and peoples.

Echoing Zhang's remarks, Dvorkovich said the comprehensive strategic partnership of collaboration between Russia and China has entered into a new stage.

Both countries support each other on key issues concerning sovereignty, security and territorial integrity, said Dvorkovich, adding that this is in line with both sides' fundamental interests and development and Russia is satisfied with it.

The deputy prime minister said Russia is ready to work with China to forge ahead bilateral energy cooperation with more outcomes.

The two sides had an in-depth exchange of views on cooperation in the fields of natural gas, oil, coal, electricity, nuclear energy, technical equipment and renewable energy, reaching broad consensus.

After the meeting, Zhang and Dvorkovich signed the protocol of the meeting.

Energy cooperation is a core part of China-Russia cooperation. According to statistics released by China's General Administration of Customs, in spite of a sharp decline in overall bilateral trade in 2015, Russia came as the second largest oil supplier to China last year with a volume of 42.43 million metric tons, up 28 percent compared with 2014, when China overtook Germany as Russia's top crude oil consumer.

In his address to the SMEs forum, Zhang hailed the important role the SMEs have played in boosting economic growth and improvement of livelihood.

Calling SMEs "the driving force" of substantial cooperation between the two countries, Zhang said the cooperation among them enjoys a broad prospect and potential.

He called on both sides to promote the steady growth and structure optimization of bilateral trade, create new engines for economic innovation and new areas of cooperation through cooperation among SMEs.

Zhang said the Chinese economy has entered into a phase of "new normal," but it is highly resilient and has much potential and ample space to grow.

Chinese economic fundamentals remain favorable for long-term growth, he added.

China will stick to the reform and opening up policy so as to create a fairer, more transparent, stable and expectable environment for companies from all countries, Zhang said, welcoming Russian companies to invest in China.

Dvorkovich, in his address, encouraged enterprises from both countries to take the opportunities of synergizing China's Silk Road Economic Belt initiative with the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union to seek new economic growth points in areas of energy, aviation, telecommunication, ship building, high-speed train, transportation, agriculture and cooperation in neighboring regions.

He promised that Russia will step up to lift barriers in the fields including policy access, intellectual property protection and taxation in the hope of creating better condition for both countries' companies.

Also on Monday, Zhang met with Gazprom Chairman Alexey Miller.
During his recent visit to Vietnam and Japan, U.S. President Barack Obama has been advocating the Asia-Pacific Rebalance strategy, drawing wide attention from the international community. Some western media even applaud this kind of strategy, claiming that the U.S. is capable of building stronger alliance ties with countries that are Chinas concerns.

The Asia-Pacific Rebalance strategy is a top priority in the foreign policy of the Obama administration. From the content, the strategy includes three aspects, which were thoroughly highlighted in Obamas trip this time.

First of all, is the increased military presence of the U.S. in the Asia-Pacific region and its strengthened engagement in regional security affairs. During Obamas visit to Vietnam, both sides issued a joint statement, pledging to step up cooperation in security, defense, and other areas.

The U.S. government has fully lifted its embargo on sales of lethal arms to Vietnam, and promised to help improve Vietnams maritime ability. The Return of U.S. Forces to Cam Ranh Bay is among the key topics of discussion between the U.S. and Vietnam.

Secondly, is the seeking of influence and control over economic order in the Asia-Pacific region. The Tran-Pacific Partnership (TPP), with Vietnam and Japan on board, has become a crucial stepping point for the U.S. Obama administration which has raved about the benefits that the TPP will bring to economic growth and the boosting of employment in Vietnam and has vowed to offer technical support as well as capability-building assistance to the Southeast Asian country, in a bid to persuade the Vietnamese side to approve and fully carry out this so-called high-standard agreement as soon as possible.

Thirdly, is the promotion in the regards of communication and coordination abilities between the U.S. and Asia-Pacific countries. The U.S. is committed to consolidate alliance ties with Japan and other traditional allies. Per the request of Japan, Obama visited Hiroshima, making him the first active U.S. president to do so. Such a move is clearly intended to bring closer together the U.S.-Japan alliance.

In the meantime, the U.S. is also developing partnerships with regional countries in order to build a relationship network. The U.S. and Vietnam have made it clear that the two countries will strengthen political and diplomatic bonds and intends to launch 2+2 meetings between both Foreign Ministers and Defense Ministers, so as to further enrich the comprehensive partnership.

Obamas trip to Japan and Vietnam this time is obviously centered on the Asia-Pacific strategy with multiple agendas. Through clearly intending to restrain China, the U.S. may not get what it wishes for.

In terms of military deployment, more frequent military presence of U.S. troops, especially its reckless behavior in the South China Sea, has triggered tension and concerns among regional countries.

As for economic cooperation, several media have pointed out that the implementation of the TPP could let more Vietnam-made commodities, such as shoes, flood into the U.S. market, which will bring about concerns from domestic interest groups and cause dissatisfaction within the government.

On the other hand, TPP membership will not convince Vietnam to relinquish other options. In fact, Vietnam has joined the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) as well as the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

Obamas visit to Hiroshima has also drawn controversy from U.S. allies, for example, South Korea. Due to its diverse foreign policies, Vietnam will not easily choose sides between major countries, let alone be tied to the U.S. chariot.

The Asia-Pacific Rebalance strategy has been through a rough ride. The reason for this is that the strategy is ultimately based on the exclusiveness of Americas own interests, instead of inclusiveness. It goes against the trend of in-depth development of economic globalization and the epoch tide of peace and development. Unjust and with little support, how can such a strategy be realized?

(The author is the Deputy Director of the Department for International and Strategic Studies at the China Institute of International Studies.)

This article was edited and translated from Source: People's Daily
(File photo)

According to the Children Air Travel Report released recently by Chinas major online tourism service platform Ctrip, in 2016, the younger age trend of outbound tourists has further expanded and more parents are taking two children for trips overseas instead of one due to the two-child policy.

The number of children in outbound tourism has undergone an 82 percent growth in the first quarter. The flight tickets data show that Chinese children have traveled to 132 countries and regions.

The report shows that as more and more children travel by air, the younger age trend of child travelers keeps developing. In the first quarter of 2015, children under 6 accounted for 48 percent of all the children travelers; while in the first quarter of 2016, the figure has grown to 51 percent.

Post-70s and post-80s Chinese parents believe that travel is an important form of education and should begin from an early age. Now, more and more Chinese children travel abroad at a young age.

According to the report, Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan are frequently visited by young tourists. The top 10 favorite outbound tourist destinations for children are Hong Kong, Taipei, Bangkok, Singapore, Phuket Island, Seoul, Tokyo, Osaka, Chiengmai and Macao.
You'd think with modern technology we would have found a way to translate almost any word in any language with little to no confusion - but it seems some words simply cannot be put into English.

Translations services company Morningside Translations has produced a list of 50 words that need to be left in their own language. Translations services company Morningside Translations has produced a list of 50 words that need to be left in their own language.

Some of the words are beautiful, whilst others conjure up images that bring to mind a specific place or a certain people. See fika (Swedish), for example - "gathering together to talk and take a break from everyday routines; either at a cafe or at home, often for hours on end" - or the extremely Germanic extrawurst, otherwise known as a person who slows things down by being fussy.

Check out the full list below:

Forelsket

(Norwegian) -

The indescribable euphoria experienced as you begin to fall in love.

Tsundoku

(Japanese) - Leaving a book unread after buying it.

Palegg

(Norwegian) - Anything and everything you can put on a slice of bread.

Wabi-Sabi

(Japanese) - Finding beauty in imperfections.

Trepverter

(Yiddish) - A witty comeback you think of only when its too late to use.

Komorebi

(Japanese) - The sunlight that filters through the leaves of the trees.

Fika

(Swedish) - Gathering together to talk and take a break from everyday routines; either at a cafe or at home, often for hours on end.

Saudade

(Portuguese) - The feeling of longing for something or someone that you love and which is lost.

Kilig

(Tagalog) - The feeling of butterflies in your stomach, usually when something romantic takes place.

Commuovere

(Italian) - Often taken to mean heartwarming, but directly refers to a story that moved you to tears.

Luftmensch

(Yiddish) - Refers to someone who is a bit of a dreamer; literally, an air person.

Tretar

(Swedish) - A second refill or threefill of coffee.

Extrawurst

(German) - Used to call someone who is slowing things down by being fussy.

Hiraeth

(Welsh) - A particular type of longing for the homeland or the romanticized past.

Mokita

(Kivila) - The truth everyone knows but agrees not to talk about.

Dapjeongneo

(Korean) - When somebody has already decided the answer they want to hear after asking a question, and are waiting for you to say that exact answer.

Waldeinsamkeit -

(German) The feeling of solitude, being alone in the woods, and a connectedness to nature.

Depaysement -

(French) The feeling that comes from not being in ones home country; being a foreigner.

Iktsuarpok

(Inuit) - The feeling of anticipation that leads you to keep looking outside to see if anyone is coming.

Jayus

(Indonesian) - An unfunny joke told so poorly that one cannot help but laugh.

Mamihlapinatapai

(Yagan) - The wordless, meaningful look shared by two people who both desire to initiate something, but are both reluctant to do so.

Verschlimmbessern

(German) - To make something worse when trying to improve it.

Schadenfreude

(German) - The feeling of joy or pleasure when one sees another fail or suffer misfortune.

Fernweh

(German) - Feeling homesick for a place you have never been to.

Tingo

(Pascuense) - To gradually steal all the possessions out of a neighbors house by borrowing and not returning.

Pochemuchka

(Russian) - A person who asks too many questions.

Gokotta

(Swedish) - To wake up early in the morning with the purpose of going outside to hear the first birds sing.

Bakku-shan

(Japanese) - A beautiful girl  as long as shes being looked at from behind.

Shlimazl

(Yiddish) - A chronically unlucky person.

Hanyauku

(Rukwangali) - The act of walking on tiptoes across warm sand.

Prozvonit

(Czech) - To call someones cell phone only to have it ring once so that the other person has to call back, allowing the caller to not spend money on minutes.

Iktsuarpok

(Inuit) - The frustration of waiting for someone to turn up.

Utepils

(Norwegian) - To sit outside on a sunny day and enjoy a beer.

Culaccino

(Italian) - The mark left on a table by a moist glass.

Age-otori

(Japanese) - To look worse after a haircut.

Toska

(Russian) - A sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without a specific cause; a longing with nothing to long for.

Tartle

(Scottish) - The act of hesitating while introducing someone because youve forgotten their name.

Gezellig

(Dutch) - Means cozy, quaint or nice, but can also represent time spent with loved ones and general togetherness.

Torschlusspanik

(German) - The fear of diminishing opportunities as one ages.

Cafune

(Brazilian/Portueguese) - The act of tenderly running ones fingers through someones hair.

Hygge

(Danish) - Means creating a warm atmosphere and enjoying the good things in life with good people.

Lappel du vide

(French) - Literally translated to the call of the void; contextually used to describe the instinctive urge to jump from high places.

Duende

(Spanish) - The mysterious power that a work of art has to deeply move a person.

Yaaburnee

(Arabic) - A declaration of ones hope that theyll die before another person because of how unbearable it would be to live without them.

Sobremesa

(Spanish) - After-lunch conversation around the table.

Abbiocco

(Italian) - Drowsiness from eating a big meal.

Otsukaresama

(Japan) - Means youre tired. and is used to let someone know that you appreciate their hard work.

Schnapsidee

(German) - An ingenious plan one hatches while drunk.

Itadakimasu

(Japan) Meaning - I will have this used to show gratitude for the food and the person who prepared it.

Goya

(Urdu) - The suspension of disbelief that can occur, often through good storytelling.

Razbliuto

(Russian) - A feeling a person has for someone he or she once loved but no longer feels the same way about.
Graduates are faced with

fewer job vacancies and lower pay, a new report shows.

Jobs site Adzuna discovered there was an 8% fall in the number of graduate jobs available in April this year compared with the same month a year ago, down to 12,850.

Oxford is apparently one of the best cities to be a graduate looking for a job (Andrew Matthews/PA)

Entry level salaries have also dropped, reaching an average of 23,309 - a 30-month low.

In regards to the best cities for graduate employment, Cambridge and Oxford were ranked the best, but Guildford, Reading, Exeter and Winchester scored highly for general vacancies.

The worst places for jobseekers were said to be Sunderland, Hull, Middlesbrough and Belfast, with around three candidates per vacancy.

Graduates might need more luck this summer (Chris Ison/PA)

Doug Monro, co-founder of Adzuna, said: In university libraries across the UK, students are filling in the job forms and crossing their fingers, but they might need more than luck this summer. Graduate vacancies are falling and new joiners are facing one of the toughest job markets in recent times.

Many graduates may feel like its a rough deal right now. Graduate pay has fallen drastically from 2013 levels, and talks of rising tuition fee hikes next year will only add to this feeling.

Unfortunately, fewer roles does inevitably mean more competition to find a first job, but graduates may have the upper hand in the long term. Many of these schemes contain a long-term investment in development and fast-tracking to managerial positions.
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A college in East Chinas Jiangsu Provinces recent purchase of an Airbus 320 jet airliner at a price over 12 million yuan ($1.8 million) has triggered widespread online debate, as some questioned whether or not the million-dollar purchase was necessary.

The Jiangsu College of Engineering and Technology (JCET) received their A320 at Xingdong Airport in Nantong, Jiangsu on May 14, as the college  which opened an aviation department in 2013  pledged to build an aviation training base in Nantong that would offer theory education, skill training as well as product research and development, China Youth Daily reported Monday.

However, doubts followed as many netizens questioned if the extravagant purchase could effectively serve for the training, or if the money has been well-spent and has fully and properly utilized.

The plane could help meet the practical training demand for our aviation department. Why is it not acceptable? Wang Yi, president of JCET, told the newspaper, adding that such kinds of million-dollar funds are common in other colleges.

Wang explained that most aviation majors have purchased Boeing 747s and few has used A320s. Hence the latest purchase could help seize the market.

The A320 is a main model in the East China fleet and there is so far no certified institutes offering specific training for the model, according to China Youth Daily.
By May 26, 2016, seven provinces or municipalities, including Shandong, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Jiangsu, have already increased their minimum wage standards for 2016, cnweekly.cn reported. In 2015, more than 28 provinces have boosted their salary standards, far exceeding standards seen in 2014.

Shanghai, with the minimum monthly salary of 2,190 yuan ($332.9), currently ranks top in the country. Tianjin and Guangdong, which rank second and third place respectively, are 240 yuan and 295 yuan behind Shanghai. Qinghai province offers the lowest minimum wage, 1,270 yuan per month.

The high salary standards can be attributed to Shanghais economic aggregate. With a total GDP volume of almost 2.49 trillion yuan in 2015, which is 0.2 trillion more than that of Beijing, Shanghai offers 470 more yuan in wages than the capital city; as for the Chongqing municipality, whose GDP aggregate was 1.57 trillion yuan in 2015, the minimum wage for local residents is 690 yuan less than what Shanghai people enjoy per month in 2016.

However, compared with Tianjin municipality, Shanghais minimum monthly salary is only 240 yuan higher, which is not much considering Tianjins GDP aggregate is 0.84 trillion yuan less than Shanghai.

Whats worth noticing is that there is a 920 yuan gap in minimum wage between Shanghai and that found in the northwestern Qinghai province, whose total GDP volume was 0.24 trillion yuan in 2015, next to last nationwide.

When adjusting minimum wage standards, local governments should take not only economic growth, as well as price hikes, employment and many other factors into account, said Su Hainan, deputy head of the China Association for Labor Studies.

The local government should avoid competing with neighboring regions, yet guarantee sufficient living standards for low-income laborers while refraining from imposing too much pressure on enterprises, Su added.

Most regions adjust their salary standards once a year, while some only once biannually. Tianjin, Jiangsu, and Shanghai for instance, basically adjust their wage standards annually, while Chongqing and Qinghai have maintained a biannual rate of adjustment.

On the other hand, it has been three years since northeast Liaoning province last increased its minimum wage standard, the longest interval without change seen in all provinces.

Statistics from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security show that the average annual growth rate for minimum wage in China has been 13.1 percent in the past five years. According to cnweekly.cn, so far only 13 provinces have reached that level, accounting for 1/3 of all provinces. In 2016, only Liaoning and Chongqing surpassed the average line with 17.7 percent and 20 percent respective growth rates.

The drop in wage increase is related to the underperformance of enterprises. Regions should adjust the rate of increase in accordance with their own conditions, Su told cnweekly.cn.

Given current downward pressure on the Chinese economy, enterprises also face challenges in profit growth, therefore the government should strike a balance amongst several factors, such as price hikes and labor cost, Su advised.
Authorities prevail in Tiger Temple cat-and-mouse game

KANCHANABURI: Wildlife officials prevailed in a day-long cat-and-mouse game with intransigent monks over custody of 137 tigers, winning a court order to allow them to enter the monastery and finally leave with three of the animals.

animals

By Bangkok Post

Tuesday 31 May 2016, 09:13AM

A tiger is sedated as officials start moving tigers from the controversial Tiger Temple. Photo: Krit Phromsaka Na Sakolnakorn

Yesterday morning (May 30), authorities from the National Park, Wildlife and Plant Conservation Department and police arrived at Wat Pa Luangta Bua Yannasampanno, better known as the Tiger Temple, for the high-profile transfer of the tigers to two wildlife-breeding centres in Ratchaburi province, only to find the gates locked.

Resistance had been expected after authorities announced on Saturday (May 28) they would start moving the big cats that remained following two transfers of five each to the Pa Khao Son and Khao Prathap Chang centres in January and February.

Adisorn Nuchdamrong, deputy director-general of the wildlife department, tried to negotiate with Col Supittapong Pakcharung, chairman of the Wat Pa Luangta Bua Yannasampanno Foundation, which oversees the tiger zoo, but failed, with Col Supittapong threatening legal action against anyone who trespassed.

Mr Adisorn then sent an official to obtain a Kanchanaburi Court order allowing authorities to search both the temple and the foundation, then remove the animals. The warrant was approved shortly before noon.

We have a court warrant this time, unlike previous times, when we only asked for the temples cooperation, which did not work, Mr Adisorn told Reuters.

International pressure concerning illegal wildlife trafficking is also part of why were acting now.

Despite the order, the removal process dragged. Reports on Twitter from wildlife NGO representatives who were present accused the monks of intentionally trying to thwart the operation by feeding the animals before they could be sedated  which poses safety risks to the animals  and even releasing several of the big cats in an enclosed canyon so they would be harder to catch.

By the end of the day, authorities managed to cage only three of the tigers and take them away. Officials, however, vowed to confiscate and remove more tigers today (May 31).

Mr Adisorn told him if the temple did not allow the transfers, it would be charged with intentionally possessing protected wildlife without permission under the 1992 Wildlife Conservation and Protection Act, an offence with a penalty of not more than four years in jail or a fine of not more than B40,000, or both.

The Tiger Temple has been accused of being involved in the illegal wildlife trade for more than a decade. It has been the focus of inquiries since three of its 147 captive tigers reportedly disappeared in late 2014. However, police investigations have made little progress and wildlife protection officials have conceded that the case is very sensitive.

Wildlife activists have accused the temples monks of illegally breeding tigers, while some visitors have said the animals can appear drugged. The temple denies the accusations.

Wildlife and animal welfare activists have long petitioned the Central Administrative Court to withdraw the zoo permit issued to the temple and the department informed the foundation about the planned relocation of the remaining tigers in advance.

Luangta Chan, the abbot of the temple and chairman of the foundation, recently notified the department that the foundation had already filed a suit with the Central Administrative Court against moves to relocate the tigers.

The foundation had asked the department to await the courts ruling before taking further steps to move the tigers from the temple.

But Mr Adisorn yesterday claimed that the court had yet to accept the petition for consideration and the department has to perform its duty as guardian of the animals.

Besides, the tigers belong to the state and we cant let the temple or the foundation use them for its own benefit, Mr Adisorn said.

The department had prepared four teams of veterinarians and another reserve team for the mission. It planned to transport at least 20 big cats a day and expected the task to be completed in seven days, barring any obstruction. But given the resistance yesterday, the mission would take longer that that, said Mr Adisorn.

The Tiger Temple is estimated to generate about B100 million a year from tourists who visit by the busload to pet and feed tiger cubs, walk tigers on leashes and take selfies with the animals, according to a National Geographic magazine report in January this year.

All of the tigers at the temple are supposed to have microchips implanted in them. However, it was revealed last year that the microchips had been cut out of three adult males that disappeared in December 2014.

The temples longtime veterinarian, Somchai Visasmongkolchai, made the revelation after resigning his post and turning over the microchips to officials of the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation.

Read original story here.
Benz driver turned monk acknowledges crash charges

AYUTTHAYA: A business tycoon turned monk appeared in full robes at Ayutthaya Provincial Court yesterday (May 30) to acknowledge charges that he killed two postgraduate students in a high-speed collision in March.

accidentsdeathhomicidepolicereligiontransport

By Bangkok Post

Tuesday 31 May 2016, 09:28AM

Janepob Veeraporn, left, arrives at the Ayutthaya provincial court with his uncle Charoen Kaewyodla. Photo: Sunthorn Pongpao

Janepob Veeraporn, 37, arrived with his attorney and uncle to hear the eight charges public prosecutors pressed against him. They encompass reckless driving causing death, speeding, drink-driving, driving under the influence of drugs, driving while unfit to do so, driving without regard for safety, defying orders of traffic officers, and defying orders of officers under the Criminal Code.

After the two-hour court session, Janepobs uncle, Charoen Kaewyodla, said the newly-minted monk would not speak to reporters after putting down B250,000 as bail.

Mr Charoen said they would consult with lawyers on which charges Janepob would accept. The court ordered the defendant and relatives of the dead to appear again on July 5.

Janepob entered the monkhood on May 8, originally for just 16 days. However, on May 22 he extended his ordination indefinitely as he claimed it calmed his mind and allowed him to make merit for the dead, the uncle said.

The businessman is practising Buddhism at a forest temple in Nakhon Ratchasima province, but would be ready to follow instructions from a senior monk on whether he should remain a monk during the trial, Mr Charoen said.

Janepob repented and was ready to take full responsibility, submit to justice and adhere to the courts wishes, he said.

The accident happened on outbound Phahon Yothin Highway in Bang Pa-in district of Ayutthaya on March 13 when his Mercedes-Benz CSL coupe slammed into the back of a Ford Fiesta carrying Kritsana Thaworn, 32, and Thanthaphat Horsaengchai, 34. An investigation showed he was travelling at 215-257 kilometres while highway speed limits range only from 90-120km/h.

The victims died in the fiery wreck while the Mercedes overturned and remained in relatively good condition. Janepob, a luxury car dealer and shareholder in many other businesses, sustained only a knee injury.

Public prosecutors also claimed he had a mental disorder and proposed to the court that he be sent to a medical institution.

Read original story here.
Chiang Mai driver lands car in Phuket sea

PHUKET: A woman driving a car from Chiang Mai had a lucky escape from injury in Phuket when she missed a road ending at Bang Tao and ended up with her car stuck in the sand on the beach late last night (May 30).

tourismtransportaccidents

By Tanyaluk Sakoot

Tuesday 31 May 2016, 06:04PM

The driver was unharmed and the car recovered from the surf this morning. Photo: Phuket Lifeguard Service

The driver was unharmed and the car recovered from the surf this morning. Photo: Phuket Lifeguard Service

The driver was unharmed and the car recovered from the surf this morning. Photo: Phuket Lifeguard Service

The driver was unharmed and the car recovered from the surf this morning. Photo: Phuket Lifeguard Service

Wirut Chuansaman, head lifeguard at Bang Tao Beach, found the car in the surf after he arrived to start his patrols at about 8:30am today.

When I arrived to start work, I saw a white car stuck on the beach about 700 meters from the lifeguard station, he told The Phuket News.

The driver was already out of the car. I had a short talk with her. She was not hurt. I didnt get her name, but the car had Chiang Mai license plates, he said.

The woman explained that late last night she drove onto the new road near the canal used by longtail boats, but she didnt see the end of the road and accidentally ended up driving onto the beach, Mr Wirut explained.

The car was stuck there. She wasnt hurt and could get out of the car as the tide had not come in yet at that time, he said.

Yet the tide was rising, and the woman called her insurance provider, which quickly organised assistance to arrive and pull the car out of the surf shortly after 9am today.

Col Somchai Sanprasert, Chief of the Cheng Talay Police, told The Phuket News that he was informed of the accident at about midnight last night.

The duty officer said he had passed police contact information to the owner of car in order to arrange to have the car safely recovered, but we didnt get a call back from her, he said.
Deputy PM says abbot broker bid a mistake

BANGKOK: Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam has warned the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) against appealing to the acting supreme patriarch and Sangha Supreme Council (SSC) to help investigators meet embattled abbot Phra Dhammajayo, saying it could stir up more conflict.

crimereligionpolice

By Bangkok Post

Tuesday 31 May 2016, 08:51AM

Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam has strongly criticised negotiation plans by the Department of Special Investigations (DSI) to arrest the Dhammakaya sects leader Phra Dhammajayo. (Post Today graphic)

Phra Dhammajayo, abbot of Wat Phra Dhammakaya, is wanted on an arrest warrant approved by the Criminal Court on charges of laundering money and receiving stolen property worth B1.2 billion in connection with the B12-billion Klongchan Credit Union Cooperative embezzlement case.

The abbot has cited illness as the reason for being unable to turn himself in to DSI officials to acknowledge charges against him. He is believed to be staying in the temple.

Mr Wissanu said yesterday (May 30) that acting Supreme Patriarch Somdet Phra Maha Ratchamangalacharn should not deal with all kinds of petitions. Instead, it is the ecclesiastical provincial governor, who supervises Phra Dhammajayo, who must handle the issue.

To approach the acting supreme patriarch immediately would be a misstep, he said.

The acting Supreme Patriarch, the abbot of Wat Pak Nam Phasi Charoen, is said to have a close relationship with Phra Dhammajayo, whom he mentored at his ordination in 1969.

Mr Wissanu said if there is an attempt to ask the acting supreme patriarch to liaise between investigators and Phra Dhammajayo, it should be done behind closed doors.

If the acting supreme patriarch cannot [step in to help] or avoid doing it, people will turn to attack Wat Pak Nam Phasi Charoen instead of Wat Phra Dhammakaya, he said.

Mr Wissanu also disagreed with the approach of asking the SSC to mediate.

If the SSCs role fails to satisfy the public, the body would be blamed, Mr Wissanu said.

Why do we keep creating one crisis after another?

Meanwhile, Justice Minister Paiboon Koomchaya has attempted to quash rumours the National Council for Peace and Order is demanding B2 billion to end the lawsuit involving Phra Dhammajayo.

Gen Paiboon said the DSI was not targeting anyone in particular in this embezzlement case and if Phra Dhammajayo maintains his innocence, he must fight the case under the due process of justice.

DSI chief Paisit Wongmuang, responding to calls for DSI officials to enter the temple and arrest Phra Dhammajayo without seeking a search warrant, said it is important to follow legal steps carefully to prevent future problems.

He said the problem can be settled peacefully if it is done through the clergy governing process.

The DSI said a police helicopter might be deployed to conduct an aerial survey of the temple.

Also yesterday, Police spokesman Krisana Pattanacharoen confirmed police have agreed to the DSIs request for police reinforcements should the DSI need them to arrest the abbot. He said it is up to the DSI to decide if the abbot will be served with the arrest warrant inside the temple.

The DSI has asked to use the Border Patrol Police Region 1 in Pathum Thani to assemble officers and deploy the helicopter in the arrest operation.

Read original story here.
Guesthouse CCTV leaves no clue of Phuket hotel room intruder

PHUKET: Patong Police are struggling for clues in their search for a man who reportedly broke into a Ukrainian womans room at a guesthouse on Nanai 2 Rd on Sunday (May 29) and stole her iPhone whilst she was resting on the bed.

patongtourismcrimepolice

By The Phuket News

Tuesday 31 May 2016, 01:19PM

Police are struggling to find any clues in tracking down the guesthouse intruder. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

A check of the CCTV footage at the Good Dreams Guesthouse failed to provide any clues, Patong Police Deputy Superintendent Lt Col Anukul Nookaid told The Phuket News today (May 31).

Police will now turn to CCTV coverage from the surrounding area in the hope that it will show them possible routes the man took to and from the guesthouse and also so they can gain a better description of the suspect, he added.

The incident, reported by 29-year-old Ukrainian Alexandra Robonova*, allegedly took place at 3:30pm. In her statement to police, Ms Robonova said that she had left the door to her room unlocked and was resting on the bed when a man let himself in. She shouted for help, which caused the man to flee, with her iPhone, she said.

As we were unable to find any CCTV footage of the suspect at the guesthouse, we will now check CCTV from around the area in the hope that it will show us possible routes the man took to and from the guesthouse, and also give us some description of him and his getaway vehicle, Col Anukul said.

We know that after leaving the victims room he forced open a locked door to make his escape, the glass on the door was broken. We also know he got away with a vehicle that was parked next to the hotel, he said.

This is the second hotel-room break-in to have taken place in a week whilst guests have been staying in their room.

On Friday (May 27), Chinese tourist Bolin Lou, 27, alleged that a man broke into her room at Point Yamu in Pah Khlok whilst she and her boyfriend were asleep.

Ms Lou told police that after dinner, while she and her boyfriend were sleeping, she felt a hand on her neck. She said the suspect tried to strangle her so she called for help which woke up Mr Wu. The suspect then fled via the balcony.

Ms Lou suffered a minor injury to her neck as a result of the incident. (See story here.)

Of note, the Good Dreams Guesthouse in Patong, where Ms Robonova was staying, is the same guesthouse where a Finnish teenager allegedly jumped from the roof to her death after having a fallout with her boyfriend. (See story here.)

* Name provided by the police in Thai.
Rawai luxury condos for rent

Friday 28 October 2016, 04:39PM

JFTB Real Estate Phuket: luxury 1 and 2 bedroom condos for rent in Rawai available for holiday or long term rental. An oasis style of life in Phuket with hotel facilities and professional hospitality management. Apartments are beautifully decorated and fully furnished with access to all the facilities, including 2 pools, fitness, library, sauna, gardens
Phuket officials vow action to clean up west-coast dump sites

PHUKET: Complaints by local residents have spurred officers at the Cherng Talay Tambon Administration Organisation (OrBorTor) to take action to clear up piles of garbage dumped by the side of the road in the west-coast neighbourhood.

pollutionlandenvironmenttourism

By Nattapong Hongtong

Tuesday 31 May 2016, 08:49AM

The piles of trash dumped on land beside Soi Bang Tao 2 have been growing.

The piles of trash dumped on land beside Soi Bang Tao 2 have been growing.

The piles of trash dumped on land beside Soi Bang Tao 2 have been growing.

The piles of trash dumped on land beside Soi Bang Tao 2 have been growing.

The piles of trash dumped on land beside Soi Bang Tao 2 have been growing.

The piles of trash dumped on land beside Soi Bang Tao 2 have been growing.

The piles of rubbish dumped along Soi Bang Tao 2, which leads to Bang Tao Beach, have only grown larger in recent months, one local resident told The Phuket News.

This covers an of about 50 yards (about 45 metres) towards the beach, but there is much much more. Theres even a lamppost that has been taken down and simply left there, he said.

Nuttapol Tugdee of the Cherng Talay OrBorTor told The Phuket News yesterday (May 30) that the OrBorTor was aware of the growing problem.

The land is question is privately owned, and the owner has the right to allow concrete rubble to be dumped on the land, but these piles of rubbish also include regular household waste and plastic bags, he said.

Hence, we will issue a formal warning instructing the landowner to remove the trash, he added.

Mr Nuttapol said he saw little excuse for garbage being dumped at the site. All people have to do is leave their rubbish outside their house each night and a garbage truck will come by and collect it, he said.

Meanwhile, The Phuket News has also received complaints about the poor condition of the road itself.

The road is in real need of repair and the lighting at night is very poor, one reader told The Phuket News.

This road is used extensively by tourists staying in the beach hotels on Bang Tao beach visiting Tesco-Lotus and the night market on Mondays and Thursdays. Its a real death trap as cars swerve to avoid the potholes and its only a matter of time before there is an accident and/or casualties, he added.

Regarding the poor condition of the road, Mr Nuttapol said, We werent aware of that, but we will look into it and if need be we will present a formal request for the budget to repair the road.
Phuket security guard arrested for burglary and assault

PHUKET: A security guard employed by a resort in Pah Khlok was arrested today (May 31) for attacking a Chinese woman in her bed whilst her boyfriend was asleep beside her last Friday morning (May 27).

crimetourismpolice

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Tuesday 31 May 2016, 04:25PM

Ammorn Tohkani, 24, was arrested in his home town of Bajoh in Narathiwat province. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

The man, a security guard at Point Yamu, told to police that he broke into the room to steal the guests mobile phones and that he did not want to sexual harass or hurt the woman.

The incident was reported to police last Friday by 27-year-old Bolin Lou who said she and her boyfriend had checked in to the resort on Thursday evening (May 26) and locked the door before they went out for dinner.

After dinner, while they were sleeping, she felt a hand on her neck. She said a man tried to strangle her so she called for help which woke up her boyfriend. This caused the suspect to flee via the balcony. (See story here.)

Col Sompong Tiparphakul the new chief of Thalang Police held a press conference today to announce the arrest of 24-years-old Ammorn Tohkani who was arrested on a warrant issued on Sunday (May 29) by Phuket Provincial Court for burglary at night and assault.

Ammorn was arrested in his home town of Bajoh in Narathiwat province where he sought refuge after the incident.

Col Sompong said, Mr Ammorn admitted that he sneaked into the guests room with the intention of stealing their mobile phones. However, he denied that he wanted to harass or rape the woman. He said he got into a fight with the victim who woke up and shouted for help when she realised his was in the room.

He fled the room without any valuables and quickly left the resort on his motorbike because he was scared. He then left the motorbike at a convenience store near Heroines Monument before taking a bus back to his home town, he said.

Ammorns mother Roberzhae Tokani told police in a statement that her son had called her on Friday morning and told her he was coming home because he had been in a fight with his supervisor.

After the incident I ordered an investigation team to find the suspect as soon as possible because this case involved foreigners and affects our tourism image, Col Sompong said.

We suspected that the guard on duty that night must have been be responsible for the incident so we questioned staff about it. We learned that part as part of his duties, Ammorn checked the electrical system in the area close the guests room between 4am-5:30am.

We also learned that after the incident he missed his morning roll call, turned off his mobile phone and removed all his belongings from his room. We were sure then that we had the right man and asked the court for an arrest warrant, Col Sompong concluded.

Point Yamu General Manager Andy Kunz was unavailable to comment when The Phuket News attempted to him this afternoon.
Standover tactics win reprieve in Phuket sea gypsy land dispute

PHUKET: Phuket Governor Chamroen Tipayapongtada has assured angry sea gypsies in Rawai that he has again asked Baron World Trade Co Ltd to have its workers stand down at the disputed land site in the village in the hope of preventing further violence.

landpropertyconstructioncultureviolencepolice

By The Phuket News

Tuesday 31 May 2016, 07:30PM

Sea gypsies in Rawai have vowed not to allow Baron World Trade workers to recover their backhoe unless they also remove large boulders placed at the site. Photo: PR Dept

Sea gypsies in Rawai have vowed not to allow Baron World Trade workers to recover their backhoe unless they also remove large boulders placed at the site. Photo: PR Dept

Governor Chamroens call for clemency came yesterday after 200 sea gypsies gathered at the site after hearing rumours that Baron World Trade workers were to return to work yesterday morning (May 30).

We heard a rumour that the company will send more workers and bring more backhoes into the area, so villagers gathered at the site to monitor the situation, said Niran Yongpan, a spokesman for the sea gypsies.

In the morning, there were 200 of us at the site, but now we have left a group of only 10 to 20 people to work in shifts to keep an eye on them if they decide to show up, he said.

Tensions flared last Wednesday (May 25) when more than 200 sea gypsy villagers confronted 50 workers who arrived with a backhoe and began moving boulders into place to block access to the sea gypsies sacred Balai shrine, which sits on part of the disputed land.

The confrontation escalated into clashes, with workers and sea gypsies throwing rocks at each other for 30 minutes. The rock fight stopped when Chalong Police arrived with more than 50 officials. (See story here.)

Following the rock fight, Chalong Police Chief Col Nopadon Thiraprawat said that more than 200 officers from the Chalong Police and the Phuket Provincial Police were on standby to respond to any reports of another confrontation breaking out between the two parties.

However, Mr Niran yesterday warned: If they come back for the backhoe that they left behind, they must remove the boulders out of the area too, otherwise not we wont let them have the backhoe back.

Meanwhile, Governor Chamroen confirmed that he has sent a formal request asking Baron World Trade to stop work in the area until the issue is resolved in order to avoid any further conflict.

What we can do for sea gypsies now is to prevent any violent conflict from happening between the villagers and workers from the land developer, he said.

At this time, all we can do is follow the law since both the company and the villagers claim to have rights to the land in dispute, he added.

In February, Gov Chamroen explained that his office was still waiting for the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security to respond to an official request to buy 19 rai in dispute for B253 million. (See story here.)

He has yet to clarify whether or not he has received a response to that request.

Meanwhile, following the clashes last Wednesday (May 25), National Human Rights Commissioner Gen Surin Pikulthong announced that a National Human Rights committee was still investigating the Chanote land deed used by Baron World Trade Co Ltd to claim land within the sea gypsy village where the Balai shrine is located. (See story here.)

When they have concluded their investigation, the National Human Rights committee will forward its findings directly to the Prime Ministers Office for review, he said.
Noem campaign accuses Smith campaign of campaign finance violation

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In this family handout photo taken on Sept. 25, 2010 and provided by Anastasia Bubeyeva, her husband Andrei Bubeyev looks on at the Volga river in Tver, Russia. Bubeyev is one of dozens of rank-and-file social media users who have been sentenced to time in prison for online hate speech. (Anastasia Bubeyeva/ Family Handout photo via AP)
South Korean protesters shout slogans during a rally denouncing the United States, South Korean and Japanese governments' missile policies on North Korea in front of the Defense Ministry in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. A North Korean missile launch likely failed on Tuesday, according to South Korea's military, the latest in a string of high-profile failures that somewhat tempers recent worries that Pyongyang was pushing quickly toward its goal of a nuclear-tipped missile that can reach America's mainland. The signs read " Oppose the deployment of THAAD, Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense, and U.S. missile defense system." (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
Verizon workers picket outside one of the company's facilities Wednesday, April 13, 2016, in Boston. Members of the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers went on strike Wednesday morning on the East Coast. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
The police probing the Dadri lynching incident on Tuesday downplayed the impact of a forensic report that said the meat found on the victim's house was indeed beef and not mutton as previously suspected.

In September last year, a Hindu mob of around 100 people dragged out 52-year-old Mohammad Akhlaq from his house in Bisada village in Uttar Pradesh's Dadri and lynched him over rumours that he stored beef.

In an initial report then, a local government veterinarian said the flesh looked like mutton and not beef. However, on Tuesday a forensic lab in Mathura confirmed that the meat was from a cow or its progeny.

Eating beef is not illegal in Uttar Pradesh, where Dadri is located, although the slaughter of cows is banned.

We are investigating the case of Akhlaqs murder and not cow slaughter. Sending the meat to forensic test was to establish the motive behind the incident, police official was quoted as saying in a report.

The murder triggered clashes between Hindus and Muslims in the town, and extra police were deployed to keep the peace.

"Dadri police said mutton, now you are saying it is beef. This is all politics," said Akhlaq's brother Jaan Mohammad was quoted in another report.

Madhukar Jaitely, a lawmaker of the state's ruling Samajwadi Party said: "Our stand remains the same. The government's job is to crack down on law and order violations and that is what we are doing. Someone was lynched and we will ensure that justice is one to the person."
In the light of latest "benami" property charges against businessman Robert Vadra, Congress party President Sonia Gandhi slammed the Modi government accusing it of making false allegations.

The allegations against Vadra made by the BJP is part of a conspiracy to further their agenda of Congress-mukt Bharat, Sonia told the media persons when she was asked about the latest controversy involving her son-in-law. READ:Robert Vadra, BJP leaders under scanner for links with arms dealer

Vadra is married to Sonia's daughter Priyanka Gandhi.

Sonia also demanded an investigation into the allegations. She also took on the Modi government for celebrating second anniversary of the BJP-led NDA government at a time when farmers are dying.

Modi should remember that he is Prime Minister, not a monarch, she said.

The probe agencies have begun an inquiry into an alleged "benami" property owned by Vadra in London.

An English news channel reported that last month's raid at 18 premises of controversial defence dealer Sanjay Bhandari has unearthed documents that indicates that he brought a "benami" or proxy-owned property in London for Vadra. The news channel has also cited a series of emails that were exchanged between them in connection with the purchase and sale of a home at Bryanston Square.

The legal firm that represents Vadra, meanwhile, has denied all allegations. It said that Vadra had no business dealings with Bhandari directly or indirectly. And he also had no knowledge of his involvement in defence deals.

The documents recovered from Bhandari also names some other prominent personalities in the country, according to reports.
Businessman Robert Vadra in the spotlight for all wrong reasons. He has come under the scanner for his alleged links with controversial arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari.

Last month, the income tax conducted raids at Bhandari's properties as part of an ongoing investigation against him. The email conversations that were found during the search reportedly indicated that Bhandari had brought a "benami" or proxy-owned property in London for Vadra.

Based on the initial findings, the government has ordered a fresh investigation into Vadra.

The probe agencies have found email exchanges between Bhandari and Vadra in connection with a London home that is located at 12 Ellerton House, Bryanston Square.

According to the NDTV, Vadra and his executive assistant sent several emails discussing payments and renovations for a London home at Bryanston Square bought for 19 lakh GBP (Rs 19 crores) in October 2009 and sold in June 2010.

The emails were addressed to Bhandari's relative Sumit Chadda, who is based in London.

Vadra's lawyers, meanwhile, has denied allegations saying that Vadra was not involved with Bhandari in any kind of financial transaction.

A news report, meanwhile, in Outlook has claimed that Bhandari's emails and call records also had names of other prominent persons in the country, including BJP leader Siddharth Nath Singh and former Delhi Chief Minister Shiela Dixit.

Both have admitted that they knew Bhandari. But both have expressed ignorance about Bhandari's controversial business deals.

The report further claimed that another BJP leader and a journalist with an English newspaper based in Delhi were also under the scanner.

Bhandari founded Offset India Solutions (OIS) in 2008 and grabbed the attention of probe agencies of financial crimes after his company turned into a multi-crore venture in a very short span. According to reports, he is now part of an investigation for financial violations in connection with 35 shell companies between 2009 and 2014.
President Reuven Rivlin on Sunday evening 21 Iyar was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Hebrew University at a convocation ceremony held at the Universitys Mt. Scopus campus in Jerusalem.

The President addressed the event and said, I am excited and honored to stand here today, in the amphitheater of the Hebrew University, on Mount Scopus, in Jerusalem, my city, my homeland, and be counted as a member of this esteemed group of honorary doctorate recipients. For many years, Hebrew University was a real home for me. As a child, I remember my father  may he rest in peace  Professor Yosef Yoel Rivlin, was a member of the Oriental Studies Faculty in the nascent university. When I grew up and had completed my military service, I acquired my law degree from Hebrew University, the President said and added, The University was my Alma Mater, a maternal institution, and also, by virtue of my fathers work, a paternal institution. Many years have gone by and today the Hebrew University is a beacon of Israeli excellence whose light radiates to all corners of the globe.

The President added, Through the uncompromising pursuit of the truth and the deepening of knowledge, the university is an essential component, a strategic component, of the national strength of the State of Israel. Without that uncompromising commitment for the truth, it is doubtful whether we would have reached the achievements we have reached. Academia rightfully demands academic freedom in order for it to achieve its goal, but the commitment to truth also demands responsibility. The great lovers of truth need to stand as a bulwark, and not favor any person or authority.

The President spoke of the importance of academia in the bringing together of the different communities in Israel, and said, The search for truth cannot be taken for granted. It requires education, sacrifice, internal strength and integrity. Within a polarized Israeli society, with separate education systems, academia is the educational place whereby first meetings occur between the four Israeli tribes; secular, chareidim, religious, Arab. This is the reason why academia has such an essential role in shaping the future of Israeli society. I especially admire the Hebrew University, which takes care to view the value within the composition of society  and in particular the growth of the chareidi public and Arab society in Israel  as an opportunity to enrich academic excellence, and not as a threat to excellence. I thank the Hebrew University and its directors, for taking the lead in building a joint and equal Israel, for which we yearn today, from within the academic world, and for looking at society as a whole. We still have a lot of shared work ahead of us in promoting this topic, where the challenges of Israeli society converge with the love of truth.

The President concluded by commenting on the current political events and said The truth is vital for our soundness as a society and nation, but no less essential is trust. Despite the political pitfalls, striving to expand the government is correct and justified. Even if it there are objections, the last elections show that the Israeli public has made its choice. I hope and believe that the government will act cautiously, responsibly, and with consideration for the benefit of all the citizens of Israel. A national ethical vision, a public consciousness to serve, striving to realize the public interest, and above all an internal and public truth; these are the conditions without which the public may lose confidence not only in its elected officials, but in democracy itself. The public trust is our truth, and it is to them that we must be devoted.

Also addressing the event was President of the Hebrew University, Menachem Ben Sasson.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem/Photo: Amos Ben-Gershom, GPO)
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31

By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend:

The China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), China's largest oil and gas producer and supplier, is interested in participating in wide-range projects of the Azerbaijani state oil company SOCAR, the CNPC Board Member and Assistant President Wang Shihong said at a meeting with SOCAR's President Rovnag Abdullayev.

Shihong said China is closely observing the sustainable development of Azerbaijan's economy, said the SOCAR website May 31.

"Various funds and export-import banks of China show great interest in Azerbaijan, especially in the energy sector," said Shihong.

During the meeting, SOCAR held a presentation of the Oil & Gas Processing and Petrochemical Complex (OGPC) project for the Chinese side.

SOCAR is the state oil company of Azerbaijan involved in exploring oil and gas fields, producing, processing, and transporting oil, gas, and gas condensate, marketing oil, as well as oil and chemical products in domestic and international markets, and supplying natural gas to the industry and the public in Azerbaijan.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov
Security officials on Monday morning 22 Iyar intercepted a shipment of drone motors in parcels that were supposed to be sent to Gaza via the Erez Crossing.

The detection of the motors, which were presumably headed for terrorists, joins the growing list of failed smuggling attempts in recent weeks. The motors are intended to be attached to drones which can then be activated for surveillance purposes, thereby serving the interests of terrorists.

A number of days ago YWN-ISRAEL reported a shipment containing components for the manufacture of rockets were intercepted, also heading for Gaza-based terrorists.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Three Arab terrorists are in custody, suspected of perpetrating the stabbing attack near the Armon HaNatziv Promenade in Yerushalayim about ten days ago. The news of their arrests was cleared for publication by authorities on Monday 22 Iyar.

Two senior citizens in their 80s were wounded, including a Holocaust survivor. Mrs. Marina Fuchs, 86, told the press that after being attacked they asked Arab sanitation workers for assistance but they ignored them and left despite the fact the women were bleeding for their wounds.

The suspects in custody, 16 and 17-years-old, were apprehended about ten days after the attack. They are residents of Jabil Mukhaber, which borders Armon HaNatziv. They were taken into custody along with a third suspect, who helped in the planning of the attack. The third suspect did not take part in the attack, fearing his home would be razed as a result of his actions.

Bchasdei Hashem they were apprehended when they were for they confessed to planning a second attack after their successful first attack. The suspects will be arraigned in the Jerusalem District Court.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
As part of a business seminar led by the Israeli Commercial office in Bucharest, the Romanian water corporation Raja Constanta signed a cooperation agreement with Jerusalems water utility Hagihon and Israeli water management company Utilis.

According to the agreement with Hagihon, professional bilateral delegations will travel to both countries and Hagihon will help the Romanian company, Raja Constanta, to prepare for various challenges  above all the reduction of water loss. Utilis will help Raja Constanta identify underground leaks by using its specialized satellite technology.

The seminar was held in Constanza, along the shores of the Black Sea, and marks the peak of a process that lasted for six months. As part of this process, the Israeli Commercial office in Bucharest worked jointly with Israel NewTech at the Division for Foreign Investment and Industrial Cooperation at the Ministry of Economy and Industry and the Israel Export Institute to identify the technologies relevant for the needs of the Romanian water utility, including treatment of drinking water, identifying and managing leaks, energy conservation, increasing the companys efficiency and more. A delegation from the Romanian company visited Israel in the beginning of April and met with a large number of companies as well as as the water utility corporations Mey Shikma (which operates in the Israeli municipalities of Beit Dagan, Azor, Or Yehuda and Holon) and Hagihon (Jerusalem).

As a result of the visit, nine companies specializing in novel technologies for water treatment, leak discovery and prevention, sewage, valves and advanced equipment were invited to the seminar. Apart from the hosting company, twelve other Romanian water utility operators attended, jointly responsible for handling the water needs of half the Romanian population (some 8 million people), as well as private Romanian companies in the water industry.

The Israeli Ministry of Economy and Industrys Trade Representative in Romania, Commercial Attache, Mr. Matan Safran, said: About half of Romanias population is not connected to central drinking water and sewage treatment networks. As a result, the EU has earmarked 4 billion for the issue through 2020.

400 million was budgeted to Raja Constanta alone, Romanias leading water utility operator. In light of the demands and Rajas key role, the Israeli trade mission initiated contact and began a process that culminated in this event. Exposing Israeli water technologies to the Romanian market through this company is the entry point to a market with unlimited potential. The massive presence of major local players at the event will help leverage, I believe, the Israeli companies technologies for other water utility operators as well. Signing an agreement of cooperation with Hagihon will create a permanent bridge for sharing information, knowledge and technology between both countries. I would like to congratulate Hagihon for their strategic overview and dedicated approach to this process. I am certain that we can help more Israeli companies enter the Romanian market, which is in need of new technologies, and embrace Israeli technology and know-how.

Adi Yefet, Head of the Water Sector at Israel NewTech, said: This agreement in Romania is one of many such endeavors conducted across the world with the cooperation of the ministrys trade missions and the Israel Export Institute. This event is very impressive in light of the needs, potential and funds Romania receives from the EU in the field of water management.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
On Tuesday 23 Iyar, Yad Vashem will hold a ceremony posthumously honoring Apostolos and Maria Voliotis from Greece as Righteous Among the Nations. Irena Steinfeldt, Director of the Righteous Among the Nations Department, will present Apostolos Voliotis, grandson of Apostolos and Maria, with the medal and certificate of honor on behalf of his grandparents. The event will take place in the presence of Ambassador of Greece to Israel H.E. Mr. Spyridon Lampridis.

A memorial ceremony in the Hall of Remembrance will be held at 11:00AM followed by the awarding of the medal and certificate in the Auditorium at Yad Vashem. The events will be conducted in Hebrew and Greek.

The Rescue Story

The Hakim family lived in Volos, a coastal city in Thessaly, central Greece.

Eliahu Hakim and his brother Leon were traveling salesmen, and became friendly with a non-Jewish grocer Voliotis who lived in the village of Lechonia. With the occupation of the southern part of Greece by the Germans in September 1943, the situation for the Jews became dangerous and the Hakim family were forced to leave their home. On 30 September, the German commander of the Volos province approached Rabbi Moshe (Moissis) Pessah and demanded that he hand over a list with the names of all of the Jews of Volos. Rabbi Pessah turned to Archbishop Ioakim Alexopoulos (recognized as Righteous Among the Nations in October 1997) for assistance, and at the same time warned the community against the pending danger. Eliahu Hakim found a horse and buggy, and together with his family  his wife Anna, children Yulia-Levana, Abraham, David and Moshe, and his brother Leon  managed to flee the town to the Pillion Mountains.

When they arrived in Lechonia, the family immediately sought out their grocer friend Voliotis, who made contact with his brother Apostolos from the nearby village of Karabas. Apostolos Voliotis welcomed the Hakim family and arranged a hiding place in his packinghouse, which was located on the outskirts of the village. The Jewish refugees stayed there for more than a year, under the careful watch of Apostolos and his wife Maria. Conditions were difficult; they lived mainly off the fruits from a local orchard and leafy greens and fungi that Apostolos taught them to forage from the nearby forest. Once a week, Anna and Leon would go into the village to stock up on a few groceries and other necessities. Eliahu suffered from a stomach ulcer that caused him great pain, and was unable to leave the hideout.

The Germans carried out regular searches of the area in an effort to catch partisans and Jews, among others, often together with the assistance of local Greek collaborators. During these searches, the Hakim family would hide in caves in the area. After the war, Levana Shalish recalled that during one of these raids they were spotted by the Germans; Apostolos Voliotis maintained his composure and claimed that they were his workers, and the Germans left them alone.

When the Germans set up an outpost in the monastery overlooking Apostolos Voliotiss packinghouse, the Hakim family relocated to a small cabin concealed by trees. During that time, other relatives of the Hakim family moved into the first hiding place, but were caught a short time later. In light of the growing threat, the family decided to leave the village and go deeper into the mountains. They wandered from one village to another in search of shelter and food, somehow surviving until liberation.

After the war, the family returned to their home in Volos. In 1946, they decided to leave Greece and came to Eretz Israel aboard the illegal immigrant ship Henrietta Szold.

On 10 March 2015, Apostolos and Maria Voliotis were recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Authorities say one of the FBIs 10 Most Wanted Fugitives has been captured on the border with Mexico, a man wanted in the death of his pregnant girlfriend.

Bureau spokeswoman Laura Eimiller says in a news release Monday that border agents took Philip Patrick Policarpio into custody at a San Diego port of entry Sunday as he crossed into the U.S. from Tijuana.

Policarpio is accused of fleeing Los Angeles after shooting and killing his live-in girlfriend, Lauren Olguin, in April. The FBI says they got into an argument at a friends home. He was on parole for a 2001 conviction for assault with a firearm and other violations.

Authorities had added Policarpio to the most-wanted list earlier this month. No other information was immediately released.

(AP)
The following is via OnlySimchas.com:

A Jewish man in his 20s was beaten up and seriously injured in London Monday evening after listing a laptop for sale on a website. But instead of getting money from the man who came to buy the item, he was attacked and was then taken to a hospital.

The man listed a laptop for sale on Gumtree.com, and he was contacted by a person who was interested in buying it. The two men set up a place where and when to meet. After showing the man the laptop the buyer told the Jewish man that he should follow him to his car where he has money to pay him. When he arrived near the so-called buyers car, he was jumped by the buyer and his two friends. They beat him up, stole the laptop as well as his cell phone and fled.

The man was treated by Hatzalah and transferred to a nearby hospital where he was being treated for swelling to his lips and injuries to his head, a spokesman for London shomrim said.

(Source: OnlySimchas.com)
 A minor who lives in the Israeli Arab Municipality of Um el-Fahm was arrested after police searched his home and found four pipe bombs and Karl Gustav automatic weapon.

 Nine persons were injured in an accident involving a bus and private vehicles at Beit Jubrin Junction in the south. They were transported to Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon. None of the injuries are described as serious.

 The Hamas regime in Gaza this morning executed three persons convicted of murder. Two were hanged and one brought before a firing squad.

 A 70-year-old man was moderately injured when his vehicle flipped on Route 412 traveling from Rehovot to Nes Tziona. He was transported to Assaf HaRofeh Hospital.

 MK Amir Peretz told Kol Chai Radio there is not a chance in the world that the Machane Tzioni party will join the coalition government.

 Siren testing was conducted in the W. Galil this morning.

 Someone jumped into the tracks and run over by a train at Tel Avivs Haganah station in an apparent suicide.

 A 60-year-old worker was gravely injured in a work accident in the Nirlat factory in Nir Ohz. He was flown by chopper to the trauma unit in Soroka Hospital in Beersheva in critical condition.

 A 30-year-old worker sustained moderate injuries in an elevator shaft injury in Yad Vashem. He was transported to the trauma unit of Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital.

 Rock-throwing reported on the Gush Etzion-Hebron Hwy in the el-Aroub area. BH no injuries.

 Opposition leader Yitzchak Herzog calls the makeup of the current coalition right-wing extremist.

 IDF fired at two boats outside permitted fishing area in S. Gaza. One man was wounded by the gunfire, transported to Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon, where he is listed in light-to-moderate condition.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Congressional Republicans are starting to declare victory in their bid to keep President Obama from fulfilling his campaign promise to shut down the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and move prisoners to the United States.

But instead of celebrating, they are scrambling to keep the specter of closing Guantanamo from rising again under a new administration in 2017.

Republicans are proposing changes to the Senate defense policy bill to prevent the Pentagon from even thinking about an alternative facility in the U.S. They want to prohibit the Pentagon from spending any money on such plans, require officials to publicize detainee transfers to third countries and push the administration to start replenishing the ranks of the facility with detained Islamic State fighters.

Practically speaking, the clock has run out for the president, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said this month, attributing his confidence to discussions with Pentagon officials. Roberts has long been concerned the Obama administration might try to house detainees at the Army base at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

President Obamas got nobody to blame but himself when it comes to Gitmo, said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., whose home state holds another potential facility for transferred detainees. Hes swung and missed. . .he just doesnt have the courage to tell the left something they dont want to hear.

Obama has been pressing for the closure of Guantanamo Bay prison camp since before he became president, but his efforts to make good on that pledge have been stymied by congressional resistance.

Part of the effort to shut down the facility, which was set up in 2002 to hold suspected terrorists, has focused on transferring detainees to third-party countries. Guantanamo held almost 700 prisoners at its peak in 2003, and 174 in late 2010; at last count in March, there were 91 detainees at the facility, 37 of whom have been slated for transfers to third countries the administration hopes to complete this summer.

But shuttering Guantanamo also depends on transferring a core group of detainees to a facility in the U.S. Thats where problems remain, as lawmakers have put up legal and financial roadblocks, arguing that Obama has not produced a satisfactory plan to make that happen.

The president has pledged repeatedly to work with Congress to find a secure location in the United States to hold remaining detainees, as he said in February when he sent Congress a plan to close the facility that Republican lawmakers rejected. It is clear the president is also frustrated by the slow pace of progress.

I dont want to pass this problem on to the next president, whoever it is, he said during the same remarks.

Some congressional Republicans have expressed concerns that Obama might try to go around Congress and build a detention facility by executive order, despite the legal prohibitions.

But while Republicans now seem to believe they are in the clear for the rest of Obamas tenure, they are taking no chances on what comes next.

For those staunchly opposed to closing Guantanamo, a handful of proposed Gitmo-related amendments to the defense policy bill are insurance against Obama leaving the door open to emptying the facility for the next president.

The defense bill is one of the few must-pass policy measures Congress is likely to vote on this election year. The House has already passed its version; the Senate is likely to vote on its bill next month.

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., for instance, has introduced language to require Congress to publicize planned detainee transfers to third countries at least 21 days before they happen. Sens. James Lankford, R-Okla., and Mark Kirk, R-Ill., want to cut foreign aid to recipient countries that cant keep track of the detainees they have received.

Sens. Steve Daines, R-Mont., and Cory Gardner, R-Colo., whose state is also on the short list of potential facilities that could receive Guantanmo detainees, are also gathering support for a measure to send captured Islamic State fighters to Guantanamo in order to capitalize on our intelligence-gathering tools.

Republicans are not just concerned about last-minute moves by Obama to shutter Guantanamo, but the stance of whoever is elected president in November.

While Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump has pledged to keep the facility open, Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders have expressed support for Obamas plan to shutter it.

Because the presidents still the president of the United States, he can still work on ways to make something else happen, said Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., who has also campaigned hard against bringing Gitmo detainees to the mainland.

Scott doesnt even fully trust that Trump wouldnt try to close or weaken the facility, despite his campaign promises to the contrary. He pointed out that even former George W. Bush  who oversaw the establishment of the facility  eventually wanted to close Guantanamo, too.

Each of the last seven years, Congress has passed laws barring the administration from using funds to build a facility to house detainees in the United States or to transfer detainees to such a facility.

Those measures have kept the administration from taking any measurable strides toward shuttering Guantanamo, though the Pentagon official in charge of such a potential operation, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work, said this month that the limited time left to try lifting congressional restrictions and winning approval of funds to execute closure. . .make the urgency of action greater.

Work made those comments in response to Roberts saying this month that he had been assured by Pentagon officials, including Work, that Congress had successfully run out the clock on Obama.

Republicans were openly frustrated with the paucity of detail in the administrations plan when they did submit it in February. There has been no attempt to commission another plan this year.

(c) 2016, The Washington Post  Karoun Demirjian
Former cabinet minister and MK Binyamin Ben-Eliezer is rejecting the plea bargain agreement offered in his fraud trial, apparently due to the stiff fine included in the deal. Charges against the former cabinet minister include breach of trust, bribery, money laundering and fraud. If found guilty, he faces imprisonment but if he signs the plea bargain agreement, he would be spared jail as the state is willing to drop the charges of bribery and money laundering, the more serious charges against him, taking his difficult medical condition into consideration. However, he would have to pay a steep fine, close to NIS 10 million, Channel 10 News reported.

Ben-Eliezer is on dialysis and has other medical issues, leading the state to show leniency against him. He was indicted in December 2015 and his health has taken a sharp turn for the worse since. However, the report adds that Ben-Eliezer is unwilling to accept the stiff fine that is part of the plea bargain agreement. It remains to be seen if the state will offer him a better deal.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Rabbi Eliezer Berland was supposed to board a plane for Israel earlier this week but due to technical issues, he did not board the plane. Rabbi Berland was supposed to be on a 1:00 AM flight to Israel but the Justice Minister did not sign the extradition papers so authorities could not hand him over to the Israeli team responsible for bringing him home. A number of chassidim and his attorney were on the plane, waiting for Rabbi Berland to arrive but he did not.

In the Shuvu Banim kehilla in Yerushalayim they expect Rabbi Bedrland will arrive on the next El Al flight from Johannesburg, this Thursday, 25 Iyar.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31

By Anakhanum Idayatova - Trend:

The visit to the South Caucasus region was very useful, particularly in that it became possible to meet and hear directly from the presidents of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia regarding the challenges the three countries are facing, OSCE Parliamentary Assembly's Special Representative on the South Caucasus Kristian Vigenin said in an exclusive interview with Trend May 31.

Vigenin was on a visit to the South Caucasus region May 23-27.

The leaders of the South Caucasus have great responsibility to set direction and tone in cooperation with the OSCE PA, particularly when talking about security challenges in the region, he said.

"In Armenia and Azerbaijan, I had extensive discussions with the presidents of the countries, as well as with officials and parliamentarians particularly on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict," Vigenin said. "We explored options for parliamentary support to the official [OSCE] Minsk Group format discussions, and I am hopeful that more exchanges and communication can take place in the future."



Vigenin added that based on his conversations in Baku [May 27] and Yerevan [May 23-24], he plans to prepare some more concrete proposals on co-operation that he will discuss with MPs from both Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Speaking about the Vienna meeting of the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia, Vigenin said that this meeting was an important step.

A meeting was held in Vienna May 16 with participation of President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan, and the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs.

Vigenin went on to add that the agreements that were reached, both on finalizing an OSCE investigative mechanism and expanding the OSCE presence in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone, are useful.

He said that these agreements can serve to limit the clashes taking place and stop the terrible human costs that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is having.

"I call on both presidents, when they next meet, to build on these positive steps and to resume negotiations on a comprehensive settlement," he said. "As special representative for the OSCE PA, I will continue to work for support at the parliamentary level for a peaceful resolution to 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.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Anahanum
It did not take long for Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman to announce his support for the so-called two state solution, the establishment of the State of Palestine alongside Israel. Shortly following his taking the oath of office, Lieberman made his policy announcement in a joint media event with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

The Prime Minister spoke first and Lieberman expressed his agreement with every single word to the surprise of many. He also praised the initiative of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi calling his peace-making efforts very positive.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Experts predict more will come as 25-year-old 'spot' cameras come to the end of their life

Permanent average speed checks are now carried out on 263 miles of the UK's roads - more than double the coverage back in 2013, new research has revealed.

The rise affects drivers north of the border most, with sections of the 100-mile-long A9 running through the spine of Scotland regulated by a smattering of average speed cameras installed in 2014.

Experts have suggested British drivers should expect to see more of them in the near future, with older 'spot' cameras coming to the end of their life and average speed cameras being more cost-effective.

Law of averages: Average speed camera checks cover a total of 263 miles of UK roads in varying lengths, from a quarter of a mile on Tower Bridge to parts of a 100 mile stretch of the A9 in Scotland

The data collected by the RAC Foundation only looked at permanent average speed cameras - temporary cameras, like those monitoring sections of motorway with roadworks, were not included in the research.

And of the 2,300 miles of motorway and 4,300 miles of trunk A-roads in the UK, 263 miles are now enforced by a total of 50 fixed average checks split into 79 subsections.

The distance covered by these average speed cameras in 2013 was 127 miles - meaning more than 130 miles of cameras have been installed since then.

The A9 between Perth and Inverness is the most average-speed-camera governed section of UK tarmac, with 29 miles of motorway being monitored along with some single-carriageway sections that link them.

Transport Scotland, which spent 3m installing the average speed checks, said an average of eight people a year were killed on the A9 before the scheme, with the figure dropping to six in the first full year after the cameras were erected.

The longest stretch of average checks in England are 12 miles of the A614 in Nottinghamshire, which had previously seen 289 road deaths and injuries in the five year period before the cameras were installed.

One of the smallest average speed camera zones is in the capital, with a quart-mile portion over Tower Bridge overseen by them.

Along with reduced road casualty stats, the rise in the number of average speed cameras has been attributed to the public's more favourable perception of them over 'spot' cameras, which are seen as cashcows for the government.

Average speed camera checks on the A14 in Cambridgeshire

However, experts have suggested cost could also have a major impact, especially with older speed cameras soon needing to be replaced.

Richard Owen from Road Safety Analytics said the cost of introducing the cameras had fallen in recent years, making the devices more appealing for authorities.

Average speed cameras cost approximately 100,000 per mile, compared with about 1.5m per mile in the early 2000s, he told the BBC.

'Some of the old fixed speed cameras have been around for 25 years and they are based on 35mm film,' he added.

'They are coming to the end of their life so as they are replaced, they're sometimes getting replaced with average speed camera systems.'

Earlier this year, the House of Commons' Transport Committee recommended increasing the number of average speed cameras on British roads as they're 'generally better received by motorists than traditional fixed speed cameras'.

Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, said: 'Unsurprisingly, the indications are that compliance with the speed limit through stretches of road managed by average speed cameras is high, but the acid test is whether accident and casualty rates have also fallen. That is what the next part of this research project should tell us.

'Rightly or wrongly many motorists perceive the current 'spot' speed cameras to be more about raising revenue for the Treasury than saving lives, but average speed cameras have greater potential to bring drivers on side.
Volkswagen has revealed slump in profits for the first quarter of the year as the German carmaker continues to pay the price for its global emissions-test cheating scandal.

Revenues declined 3 per cent, and the group's pre-tax profits of 3.2 billion (2.4 billion) for January to March this year was 19 per cent down on the same period in 2015 which preceded the scandal.

It was last autumn when VW was found to have fitted defeat devices to its cars to pass emissions regulations in the US and Europe.

The manufacturer's chief executive, Matthias Mueller, was adamant in insisting the decline was a 'respectable' result, with operating profits edging 3.4 per cent higher to 3.4 billion (2.6 billion).

Emission-cheating effect: Volkswagen is feeling the effects of last year's emissions-test cheating revelations, posting a 19 per cent decline in pre-tax profits in the first quarter of 2016

Speaking in an official VW Group statement, Mueller - who took over the reigns following Martin Winterkorn's resignation in September 2015 just days after news of the scandal emerged - said: 'In light of the wide range of challenges we are currently facing, we are satisfied overall with the start we have made to what will undoubtedly be a demanding fiscal year 2016.

'We once again managed to limit the economic effects of the diesel issue and achieve respectable results under difficult conditions.'

And the difficult conditions Meuller speaks of are expected to get expensive for the market-dominating car giant.

Volkswagen faces heavy costs for recalls and fixes to cars with engine-control software that evaded emissions tests with the company already earmarking 12.7 billion to cover repairs and other costs for 11 million cars sold with the software globally.

Despite this, the group's operating profits rose thanks in part to 300 million (229 million) of currency gains on provisions put by to pay for its diesel emissions scandal.

The confirmation of first-quarter results also revealed plummeting sales, most notably in Russia and Brazil due to economic woes, with revenues down 35 per cent and 17 per cent respectively.

Earnings slipped for its Audi brand too, dropping to 1.3 billion (99 million) from 1.4 billion (1.1 billion) a year earlier,

Shares in the VW Group fell 1.7 per cent on Tuesday morning in response to the financial statement released by the carmaker

But according to investment experts, the profit drop was not as severe as first predicted.

Nicholas Hyett, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown said: 'Despite the negative headlines Volkswagen have delivered a surprisingly positive start to the year, posting operating profit significantly ahead of analyst expectations and slightly ahead of last year.

'However, with VW shares down 1.7 per cent this morning, positive financials may not be enough to keep investors happy at the moment.

'Thats not entirely unsurprising since the company has not emerged unscathed from the emissions scandal. Investors will be disappointed by the performance of Volkswagen branded passenger cars which, after delivering 514m in operating profits last year, managed just 73m this time round.'

Not feeling the affect quite so much was Porsche.

The luxury car brand owned by the VW Group delivered a 14 per cent rise in underlying operating profits to 895 million (683 million).

'The strong performance from Porsche will be a welcome relief though and the positive returns from Skoda and Sest in particular suggests that the groups other brands may have escaped the emissions contagion,' Hyett added.
Diminutive property developer Guy Dellal faces an appointment with MPs, keen to grill him on the 35million Wonga-style loan he provided thrice-bankrupt Dominic Chappell during his purchase of BHS. Bald-headed Dellal, 57, father of saucy underwear model Alice, has form in providing support to friends in need. He was said to have comforted Texan model Jerry Hall following her 1998 split from Mick Jagger. He also allowed troubled crooner Michael Jackson to roost at his Hampshire estate, where the eccentric star spent restful days assisting with the vacuum cleaning.

BHS loan: Guy Dellal faces grilling over Wonga-style loan he provided bankrupt Dominic Chappell (pictured)

Exuberant, medallion-wearing property tycoon Robert Tchenguiz is said to be squiring surgically enhanced reality TV barbie doll Chloe Sims, 33, after the pair were recently seen canoodling on the Cote dAzur. Despite his coltish ways, Iranian-born Robbie, 55, remains on commendably amicable terms with his American wife, elegant blonde Heather Bird, from whom he split four years ago. The pair still co-habit in Tchenguizs sprawling 50m Kensington mansion which once housed the Royal College of Organists. Separate bedrooms? Separate wings, chortles a friend.

Apropos the Riviera, goatish ex-Renault boss, silver-haired Flavio Briatore, 66, flaunted an ill-judged Captain Birdseye beard attending the weekends Monaco Grand Prix. But Im told there was an absence of financial high-rollers at this years rain-splattered event. Certainly no sign on the grid of the Principalitys celebrated resident, Sir Philip Green, due to appear before MPs in a fortnight over the BHS fiasco. Keeping his noggin down?

Daylesfords diamond-clad founder Carole Bamford, wife of JCB digger tycoon Sir Anthony, will be delighted that her racehorse, Wings Of Desire, is favourite for this weeks Investec Derby. But she will have been less thrilled at coughing up a 75,000 supplementary fee to reinstate the horse in the race after her trainer, towering Cambridge economics graduate John Gosden, withdrew him in March. Wonder how that decision went down with the formidable Lady B, 70, or Lady Barracuda as shes known in some quarters?
Industry experts are outraged by Government attempts to beg Tata Steel to keep its UK steelworks with a secret package of sweeteners worth hundreds of millions of pounds as well as ripping up pension laws.

As disclosed by the Mail last week, the Prime Minister had personally intervened to offer the Tata board a number of inducements, including cheaper energy costs, finance and help with R&D to persuade the Indian owners to not sell.

Begging and bribing Tata is futile. Its clear they dont want to stay and build the business. This is political expediency rather than an attempt to help save and modernise the UK steel industry, said one source close to the situation.

Sweeteners: Experts say this is political expediency rather than an attempt to help save and modernise the UK steel industry

Industrialists are even more shocked that the secret documents also showed that Business Secretary Sajid Javid told the Tata board of the Governments preference for a bid  the potential joint offer from Wilbur Ross, the US steel turnaround tycoon, and Endless, a Leeds-based private equity fund.

Another leading steel expert said: What makes matters worse is that the business secretary appears to be backing foreign owners again. There are several British-backed bidders who would grow the steel business on a sustainable basis rather than making cuts. Why isnt the Government backing British efforts to keep the business going?
When you think about starting a small business, chances are it's usually a shop, or a restaurant, or a new product or service, probably offered online. Very few people decide to open their own school.

But when headteacher Anita Griggs saw the premises of what will become Falkner Boys pre-preparatory school, she knew she had to seize the opportunity.

The building was a former electrical college and had a D1 licence, meaning it could be turned into a school without planning permission - perfect for her to open a boys school to complement her family's existing institution for girls.

Young minds: Two pupils arrive for their lessons at Falkner House prep school in South Kensington, London

Anita's family, who have run 5,560 per term Falkner House girls preparatory school in South Kensington, London, for more than 60 years, immediately turned to prestigious banking institution Coutts to ask for a loan.

She says: 'The timing was unbelievably tight. We first saw the building in November but we knew we would have to exchange contracts before Christmas. Because the timing was so tight we couldn't go out and hold a beauty parade of banks, so we called Coutts and asked if they would be interested.

'We had to be brave and risk that the parents would bridge us and lend to us until we had secured the loan from Coutts. In reality, we secured the loan on the existing building, while we also put in a significant amount from the wider family.'

The family managed to quickly raise the 10million needed to start the new school, with around 50 per cent of their own funds and 50 per cent from the Coutts bank loan.

They say they will build up the reputation of the new school gradually.

'We are prepared to invest for the long term, to build up the pupil numbers slowly and we do not expect to make a profit from the new school in the short term. Eventually, clearly we will repay the loan but the whole point for us is to give children an amazing education - a financial return is a secondary consideration.'

The site of Falkner House Boys School in Earls Court is only 10 minutes away from the girls school in South Kensington and will be the first independent boys pre-prep school to open in 15 years. At the moment, they are busily renovating the premises ahead of the school's opening in September 2017.

While the girls school goes up to 11 years of age, the boys school will stop at age seven. If it reaches full capacity, there will be around 130 pupils, including a co-educational nursery, reception, year-one, -two and -three classes.

Family business: Anita Griggs (l) and daughter Eleanor Dixon (r) who will be the headteacher of the new school

Education is certainly in Anita Griggs' blood. The existing Falkner House was founded in 1954 by Anita's mother Flavia Nunes, whom she describes as 'the ultimate unconscious feminist'.

Flavia's husband also opened an accompanying boys school but it was was sold in 1974 after his death.

Today, the existing Falkner House is one of the top private preparatory schools in London. Many of the pupils go on to prestigious secondary schools, such as of St Paul's Girls' and Cheltenham Ladies College.

The cape and jellybag are an important part of Falkner House life

Anita is the current headmistress of Falkner House, and will become the principal of both the boys and girls school.

Meanwhile, her daughter Eleanor Dixon will become the headteacher of the boys school, and her other daughter, Flavia Rogers, will help her mother at the girls school.

The fees are a not inconsiderable 5560 per term for reception and above, and 2780 at nursery, but Anita maintains that the bespoke education offered by her schools means they represent value for money.

'Today we see the threat being from improving state schools and the lack of affordability of the private sector, but this does not change what we do  instead it makes us ever more determined to provide an exceptional service that makes sure the high cost still delivers good value.'

Competition around private prep-schools in London is notoriously cutthroat, and Anita says they will have to wait and see how parents react to the new boys school on the block.

But she says it has already received a 'significant level of interest' from parents and will now be assessing prospective pupils ahead of its opening in September 2017. She is excited about the challenges ahead.

'We are doing this because we are passionate about education - there are many easier ways to make money than opening a school. We believe we can give these 130 boys a fantastic education and that they will have the most amazing time, but the choice ultimately will be with the consumer.
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31

By Seba Aghayeva - Trend:

Another meeting on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict can be held in June 2016 in order to achieve significant progress for changing the status quo, Azerbaijan's Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said May 31 speaking at the North Atlantic Council.

Azerbaijan's internationally recognized borders have been violated for over 20 years already, 20 percent of the country's territory is under occupation and over a million Azerbaijanis were subjected to ethnic cleansing, said the minister.

Mammadyarov noted that the status quo, which is based on the fact of occupation, remains the main source of tension.

"The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs and the international community consider the status quo unreliable, inconsistent and unacceptable," he said. "In order to change the status quo, it is necessary to put an end to the occupation, the Armenian armed forces should withdraw from Azerbaijan's occupied lands."

Talking about Armenia's threatening Azerbaijan with "dirty bomb", Armenia's non-fulfillment of the international commitments on non-proliferation of the weapons of mass destruction, Mammadyarov said that Yerevan continues its policy aimed at disrupting the negotiation process.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Asebaa
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31

Trend:

After Azerbaijan's gaining independence, ensuring the freedom of expression and media, creation of independent media outlets has always been in the limelight of the state as one of the main directions of creating a civil society and democratization process, said Ali Hasanov, the Azerbaijani president's aide for public and political affairs.

He made the remarks addressing the roundtable discussions on the joint project of the European Union and the Council of Europe on "Freedom of expression and freedom of media" in Baku May 31.

Hasanov said that Azerbaijan's 1995 constitution reflects the relevant norms, adding that the censorship was abolished in the country in 1998 in accordance with the decree of the National Leader Heydar Aliyev.

The top official pointed out that the legislative framework was improved and brought in line with the international standards in order to ensure the freedom of media.

The media palette has been fully formed in Azerbaijan, according to Hasanov.

"Azerbaijan's law ensures everyone's right to freely search, receive and spread information," the top official added.

Hasanov pointed out that Azerbaijan closely cooperates with the OSCE and the Council of Europe in developing the democratic norms and building a civil society.

The joint project of the European Union and the Council of Europe on "Freedom of expression and freedom of media" holds a special place, he said, adding that the draft laws "On defamation" were worked out as an initiative in 2005, 2011 and 2013.

Hasanov said that a one-time financial aid was allocated to editorial offices of newspapers and news agencies and measures were taken to strengthen the social protection of journalists in accordance with the orders and decrees of Azerbaijan's president.

The "Concept for State support for the development of media in Azerbaijan" was worked out in 2008 at the initiative of Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev and the State Fund for Support of Mass Media Development under the President of Azerbaijan was created in 2009, said the president's aide.

The top official recalled that in 2009, Azerbaijan's president said it is inexpedient to hold the media criminally liable for the journalistic activities and defamation cases.

Meanwhile, removing the relevant articles from the Criminal Code deprives the citizens who are not involved in journalistic activities of the opportunity to protect their rights, honor and dignity, said the top official.

"Those articles still remain in the legislation of the majority of the EU member states, including the leading countries," said Hasanov. "When coming to their non-application, there is a similar situation in Azerbaijan as well."

The top official pointed out that on Dec.27, 2011, Azerbaijan's president approved the National Program for Action to Raise Effectiveness of the Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms in Azerbaijan and that program included a paragraph on adopting the law "On defamation".

The Press Council of Azerbaijan declared 2010 the Year of Defamation in Azerbaijan, journalism organizations put forward various initiatives regarding the law "On defamation" and draft laws were worked out with OSCE's support and submitted to Azerbaijan's parliament, he added.

"Although in 2013, Azerbaijan worked out a relevant draft law and submitted to the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe for examination, it became impossible to adopt the law due to the disagreements on a number of issues," said Hasanov.

Adoption of the law "On defamation" in Azerbaijan is not a finished issue, he said, adding that consistent work was carried out on this project.
Details added (first version posted on 11:12)

Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31

Trend:

After Azerbaijan's gaining independence, ensuring the freedom of expression and media, creation of independent media outlets has always been in the limelight of the state as one of the main directions of creating a civil society and democratization process, said Ali Hasanov, the Azerbaijani president's aide for public and political affairs.

He made the remarks addressing the roundtable discussions on the joint project of the European Union and the Council of Europe on "Freedom of expression and freedom of media" in Baku May 31.

Hasanov said that Azerbaijan's 1995 constitution reflects the relevant norms, adding that the censorship was abolished in the country in 1998 in accordance with the decree of the National Leader Heydar Aliyev.

The top official pointed out that the legislative framework was improved and brought in line with the international standards in order to ensure the freedom of media.

The media palette has been fully formed in Azerbaijan, according to Hasanov.

"Azerbaijan's law ensures everyone's right to freely search, receive and spread information," the top official added.

Hasanov pointed out that Azerbaijan closely cooperates with the OSCE and the Council of Europe in developing the democratic norms and building a civil society.

The joint project of the European Union and the Council of Europe on "Freedom of expression and freedom of media" holds a special place, he said, adding that the draft laws "On defamation" were worked out as an initiative in 2005, 2011 and 2013.

Hasanov said that a one-time financial aid was allocated to editorial offices of newspapers and news agencies and measures were taken to strengthen the social protection of journalists in accordance with the orders and decrees of Azerbaijan's president.

The "Concept for State support for the development of media in Azerbaijan" was worked out in 2008 at the initiative of Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev and the State Fund for Support of Mass Media Development under the President of Azerbaijan was created in 2009, said the president's aide.

The top official recalled that in 2009, Azerbaijan's president said it is inexpedient to hold the media criminally liable for the journalistic activities and defamation cases.

Meanwhile, removing the relevant articles from the Criminal Code deprives the citizens who are not involved in journalistic activities of the opportunity to protect their rights, honor and dignity, said the top official.

"Those articles still remain in the legislation of the majority of the EU member states, including the leading countries," said Hasanov. "When coming to their non-application, there is a similar situation in Azerbaijan as well."

The top official pointed out that on Dec.27, 2011, Azerbaijan's president approved the National Program for Action to Raise Effectiveness of the Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms in Azerbaijan and that program included a paragraph on adopting the law "On defamation".

The Press Council of Azerbaijan declared 2010 the Year of Defamation in Azerbaijan, journalism organizations put forward various initiatives regarding the law "On defamation" and draft laws were worked out with OSCE's support and submitted to Azerbaijan's parliament, he added.

"Although in 2013, Azerbaijan worked out a relevant draft law and submitted to the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe for examination, it became impossible to adopt the law due to the disagreements on a number of issues," said Hasanov.

Adoption of the law "On defamation" in Azerbaijan is not a finished issue, he said, adding that consistent work was carried out on this project.
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31

Trend:

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has received credentials of the newly-appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Carole Mary Crofts.

The ambassador reviewed the guard of honor, and then handed her credentials to the head of state. President Ilham Aliyev then had a conversation with the ambassador.

Pointing to the broad agenda of the bilateral relations between the two countries, the head of state expressed hope that Crofts would contribute to strengthening these ties.

Ambassador Crofts said her country had maintained cooperation with Azerbaijan for more than 20 years. Noting that BP was the largest investor in Azerbaijan, the ambassador highlighted prospects for Azerbaijan-UK cooperation. She said she visited Baku and regions of the country, adding that she was impressed by hospitality of the Azerbaijani people and the country`s unique beauty. She added that she was amazed by Baku, which she described as an international city.

The head of state said that visiting Azerbaijani regions was a good opportunity for getting familiarized with the country.

They also discussed the ongoing settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
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By Madina Toure

The city Department of Sanitation has placed city trash receptacles at the Prince Street triangle under the Adopt A Basket program after forcing the Greater Flushing Chamber of Commerce to remove trash bins donated by an area company to address the trash problem.

Crown Container Company installed the industrial-strength bins and agreed to empty them daily as a free community service to address the proliferation of trash at the intersection on Prince Street and 37th Avenue in downtown Flushing.

But after the Sanitation Department met with Councilman Peter Koo (D-Flushing), the chamber was forced to remove them. The trash bins each cost more than $600.

Simon Gershon, president of the Greater Flushing Chamber of Commerce, reached the agreement Monday with Ignazio Terranova, who was representing the Sanitation commissioner, which was announced at a news conference at the triangle.

Gershon said the problem was solved thanks to the Flushing Chambers persistent advocacy, City Councilman Peter Koos (D-Flushing) exceptional ability to influence the city bureaucracy and the Downtown Flushing Transit Hub Business Improvement Districts operational expertise.

Work is not finished, however. Business owners will continue to monitor the area and the Chamber will continue to advocate on their behalf, Gershon said. We are grateful to Mr. Terranova and the Department of Sanitation for following through on their commitments, and appreciate the time and attention they have paid to our neighborhood.

For several months, the Flushing Chamber had been working to address the garbage problem at the Prince Street Triangle after business owners in the area complained about receiving fines from city inspectors due to the trash accumulating at the intersection and blowing in front of adjacent storefronts.

Another member of the Flushing Chamber, GW Printing, designed and printed the colorful labels asking people to Keep Flushing Beautiful in English and Chinese.

The Sanitation Department had issued an ultimatum May 16 that forced Crown Container to remove the donated bins from the triangle. David Antonacci, Crown Containers owner, said the company was willing to help keep Flushing clean however possible.

The New York City Department of Sanitation has assured the community that they will take care of the situation, so at this time we have removed our pails in order to let Sanitation do their job and help us keep Flushing clean, Antonacci said.
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By Madina Toure

As people throughout the country celebrated Memorial Day weekend, the borough started the holiday season with a series of shootings and a collision.

At 11:10 p.m. Sunday, a 21-year-old was shot in the chest and a 27-year-old was shot in his right calf at 91-66 110th St. in Richmond Hill, according to a police spokesman.

Witnesses said there was a dispute and that a man dressed in black fired two shots and fled northbound and that as he was fleeing, additional gunshots could be heard, the spokesman said.

The 21-year-old man was in critical but stable condition, while the other victim was expected to survive his injuries, the official said.

At about 10:40 p.m., police received numerous 911 calls about shots fired at a large block party at 154-02 118th Ave. in Jamaica, according to the police spokesman.

A 29-year-old woman, a 33-year-old woman and a 36-year-old man were shot during the party, the spokesman said.

The victims were taken to Jamaica Hospital by EMS and the detectives were interviewing them, the spokesman continued.

The 29-year-old woman observed a light-skinned man wearing a white T-shirt and jeans coming from 155th Street and shooting with a black pistol, the spokesman added.

She ran to try to escape the gunfire but ended up receiving a grazed wound to the right buttocks, the official said.

Three unoccupied vehicles were also struck by the gunfire, the spokesman said, noting that the investigation was ongoing.

Just 53 minutes earlier, another shooting occurred in Jamaica Houses at 89-00 Van Wyck Expressway, the police spokesman said.

At 9:55 p.m., a man walked into a hospital emergency room with a gunshot wound to the side, the spokesman said.

He was dropped off at the hospital at the front entrance and was taken into surgery to be treated for a gunshot wound that entered his lower right back, the spokesman continued.

His condition was stable, the spokesman added.

The victim was uncooperative with police, giving multiple inconsistent statements and the investigation was ongoing, the official said.

At 2:17 p.m., officers responded to a call of a vehicle accident in the area of 34th Avenue and 91st Street, according to the police.

Upon arrival, officers determined that the first vehicle, a 2005 Toyota Corolla, driven by an 86-year-old man with an 83-year-old female front passenger identified as Jackson Heights resident Amy Huang, was traveling westbound on 34th Avenue approaching the intersection of 91st Street, police said.

At that time, it struck a second vehicle, an unoccupied 2016 Chevrolet parked on the north side of the roadway, police continued.

The collision forced the Chevrolet onto the sidewalk where it then collided with scaffolding before coming to a rest.

EMS responded and took both the Toyota Corollas driver and Huang to Elmhurst General Hospital, officials said.

The driver was treated for lacerations to his arm and Huang was pronounced dead at 4:28 p.m. after sustaining serious head and body trauma, police said.

The police spokesman said the first vehicle had the green light.

No arrests have been made and the investigation was ongoing, the spokesman said.

At about 2:05 a.m., an unidentified man jumped in between train cars from a moving southbound F train approximately 400 feet from the Sutphin Boulevard station heading toward the Briarwood station, according to the police spokesman.

He was pronounced dead at the scene at 2:52 a.m. by EMS, the spokesman said.

The case remained open to the 107th Precincts Detective Squad as the victim remained unidentified at this time, the official said.

On Saturday, a motorcyclist allegedly opened fire on a car driven by his ex-girlfriends boyfriend while the ex-girlfriend and her 18-month-old baby were inside the car, the police spokesman said.

At about 10:55 p.m., officers responded to a call of a man shot on the eastbound Long Island Expressway in the vicinity of Exit 21, the spokesman said.

They found a 25-year-old man with three gunshot wounds to his left arm and he was taken to New York Presbyterian Queens, where he was listed as being in stable condition, the spokesman continued.

The man, along with his girlfriend, a 25-year-old woman and her 18-month-old baby, were approached by the womans ex-boyfriend at 37th Avenue in Jackson Heights, the official said.

Her ex-boyfriend exchanged words with her boyfriend and verbally threatened him, prompting the woman and her boyfriend to leave, the spokesman said.

When they got onto the Long Island Expressway, they observed her ex-boyfriend following them on a motorcycle, the spokesman continued.

He allegedly fired at her boyfriends vehicle with a .40 caliber firearm, which then struck the motorcycle, the spokesman added.

The motorcycle was recovered but the firearm was not recovered and no one was in custody, he said.
Mushcup's Brian Steff takes his turn in 'My Favorite Guitar'

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Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31

By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend:

A delegation headed by Azerbaijani Minister of Energy Natig Aliyev will participate in the fourth meeting of the Azerbaijan-Italia intergovernmental commission on economic issues and business forum, to be held in Rome on June 13, says a message published on the website of the Azerbaijani energy ministry.

According to the message, Italian ambassador to Azerbaijan Giampaolo Cutillo visited the ministry of energy to discuss the preparation of the Azerbaijani delegation's visit.

"The current state of economic relations between the two countries and prospects of expanding the cooperation will be discussed at a meeting of the intergovernmental commission," the message said. "A protocol is planned to be signed following the meeting. The Azerbaijan-Italia business forum will be also held."

Italy is one of Azerbaijan's main trade partners.

According to the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee, Italy ranked first in the list of Azerbaijan's foreign trade partners with a trade turnover of $462.44 million in the first quarter of 2016, that is, 12.82 percent of the country's total volume of trade operations.

The goods worth $368 million were exported to Italy in January-March 2016, that is, 20.67 percent of a total volume of Azerbaijani export.
Rain makes small dent in drought, more on the way

It wasn't enough to end a drought, but a couple of days of rain in Wichita Falls kept the numbers from getting worse.
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How do you deal with "allies" who stab you in the back on security as they claim they are helping?

Pakistan received bipartisan U.S. backing for decades as it sheltered the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. Saudi Arabia's citizens and nonprofits still fund jihadis.

Or a Turkish government that is endangering U.S. and European security due to the political ambitions of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The blinders have finally come off with regard to the first two "frenemies." When a U.S. drone strike killed the top Taliban leader on Pakistani soil last weekend, President Barack Obama was sending Pakistan's leaders a message: Washington has lost patience with their support for the Taliban (not to mention Osama bin Laden).

And Congress is squeezing Riyadh to come clean on any Saudi officials who helped 9/11 hijackers. Now for a reality check on Turkey.

In fighting the Islamic State group, Erdogan has played a double game.

Once the model moderate Muslim democrat, Erdogan grows increasingly Islamist and antidemocratic. After initiating promising peace talks with Turkey's Kurdish PKK rebels, he has restarted a bloody civil war with the Kurds for domestic political reasons. That undermines his democracy and harms the fight against Islamic State group terrorists.

Erdogan is now seeking to crush his political opponents. He engineered a parliamentary vote lifting immunity from dozens of parliamentary deputies who face criminal charges  mostly for speaking out against repression.

This aims to destroy Turkey's third-largest political party, the Kurdish People's Democratic Party, or HDP. Avowedly secular and pluralist, the HDP attracted many non-Kurds. Its growing strength had prevented Erdogan from obtaining votes to transform a ceremonial presidency into an all-powerful post.

"This is not just a matter of the Kurds, it is a matter of destroying democracy totally," says Mehmet Yuksel, the HDP spokesman in Washington. "Erdogan is trying to get absolute power."

The Turkish leader has played a clever international game, positioning himself as an essential NATO ally  which distracts attention from his domestic actions. Yet Erdogan is double dealing on the refugee issue  and on the fight against the Islamic State group as well.

First, the refugees. The European Union, desperate to block new waves of Syrian refugees, agreed to pay Erdogan billions of dollars and grant Turks visa wavers. In return, Turkey has agreed to take back large numbers of refugees from Greece and block new ones.

However, Erdogan isn't likely to meet the EU's human-rights conditions for the visa waiver, which will probably doom the accord. Moreover, if the visa waiver does go through, Erdogan's crackdown on Turkish Kurds is likely to drive tens of thousands of them to emigrate, legally, into Europe.

Huge numbers of Kurdish civilians are being driven out of Turkey's southeast by draconian military sweeps that reportedly include massacres  notably in the town of Cizre.

Thus Erdogan's game will cost Europe dearly.

When it comes to U.S. security interests, Erdogan is also dissembling. While claiming to play a major anti-Islamic State group role, Turkey long let foreign fighters cross its border into Syria to join the jihadis. It also let Islamic State group cadres cross back into Turkey for medical treatment or a break from the fighting. Due to this open-border policy, the jihadi group was also able to establish a network of supporters inside Turkey.

At the same time, Ankara is interfering with U.S. strategy to roll back the Islamic State group inside Syria. Since restarting the war with its own Kurds, Erdogan hotly opposes U.S. air support and training for Syrian Kurdish fighters who are the most effective force in fighting the Islamic State group. The Turks have even shelled Syrian Kurdish troops and civilians.

Fortunately, the Obama administration hasn't let Turkish protests dissuade it from helping the Syrian Kurds. However, Erdogan's obsession with crushing the Kurds  at home and in Syria  undercuts any coherent coalition strategy for defeating the Islamic State. It also thwarts any coalition effort to devise a workable strategy to end the Syrian civil war.

So it's long past time for the White House and E.U. leaders to warn Erdogan that he is endangering Western security. His policies have created so many external enemies for Turkey that he can't afford a complete break with his NATO allies. That gives the allies leverage.

Having signaled Pakistan and the Saudis that we're on to their tricks, it's time to do the same with Erdogan, and soon.

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Readers may write to her at: Philadelphia Inquirer, P.O. Box 8263, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101, or by email at trubin@phillynews.com.
Before "Dirty Harry," there were the spaghetti westerns, before that, there was "Rawhide," before that... nobody actually knew who Clint Eastwood was. But photographer Earl Leaf had a knack for discovering stars ahead of their time  his 1950 photo shoot with Marilyn Monroe, for example.

Leaf's classic portrait session of Eastwood posing, mostly shirtless, around his home in Los Angeles is 60 years old now this year as the actor himself has turns 86 this week.
EY Azerbaijan sponsors British Business Group (BBG) monthly meeting and presented the 3rd Robin Bennett award for a significant contribution to Azerbaijan-UK business relations. The event was held at the Four Seasons Hotel Baku on Wednesday, 25 May 2016.

"Robin did a lot to promote British business in Azerbaijan. He was a founding member of the BBG and the first Chairman of the group. We set up this award in honor of Robin and to recognize individuals who make a significant contribution to Azerbaijani-UK relations. The nominations are made by BBG members and the BBG Committee selects the winner," Turgay Teymurov, EY Baku Partner and a member of the BBG Committee, told EY.

John Patterson OBE, the winner of the first award in May 2014, shared his thoughts: "I was delighted in my capacity as Chairman of the British Business Group to present the Robin Bennett Award for 2016 to Howard Lyn of Rapid Solutions. His contribution to Azerbaijani-British relations has been fantastic, not just within his company but also from his activities within the Anglo-Azerbaijani Society, the European Azerbaijan Society, as well as the British Business Group."

About BBG

The British Business Group has been operating in Azerbaijan for 20 years. It provides a vehicle through which new business people can meet other members of the professional community who are familiar with the workings of Azerbaijan, for information and advice on how business is carried out in the country. It's a chance for valuable networking, and also for companies to present themselves and raise their profile.

The group does this by holding monthly meetings, usually on the last Wednesday of each month. Sometimes it is attended by a visiting UK government minister or similar guest.

About EY

EY is a global leader in assurance, tax, transaction and advisory services. The insights and quality services we deliver help build trust and confidence in the capital markets and economies around the world. We develop outstanding leaders who team to deliver on our promises to all of our stakeholders. In doing so, we play a critical role in building a better working world for our people, for our clients and for our communities.

EY works together with companies across the CIS and assists them in realizing their business goals. 4,500 professionals work at 20 CIS offices (in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Kazan, Krasnodar, Rostov-on-Don, Togliatti, Vladivostok, Almaty, Astana, Bishkek, Baku, Kyiv, Tashkent, Tbilisi, Minsk, and other locations).

EY refers to the global organization, and may refer to one or more, of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients. For more information about our organization, please visit ey.com.

EY in Azerbaijan

EY made a major commitment to the development of Azerbaijan and the region by opening the office in Baku 22 years ago. Today, in addition to being the leading audit and consulting firm in Azerbaijan, we are the leading firm in the region. As a result of our experience and competence, we have been able to assist both domestic and international companies as well as state-owned entities to develop and manage the challenges of the international economy.

There are currently 180 people working in our Baku office that serve our clients in Azerbaijan. EY's strength in the Caspian Region and the firm's commitment of resources are important to the entities operating in the region. It means that as we grow, EY will continue to demonstrate a tradition of hiring and training local professionals to be leaders in our practice.
Visitors to the houses on display at this year's Parade of Homes will be greeted by exteriors made with a mix of materials, elaborate outdoor areas and an increase in first-floor master suites.

The first two weekends in June mark the 16th annual parade, a showcase of the best local builders have to offer. The parade is sponsored by the Capital Region Builders & Remodelers Association, which has donated more than $100,000 in proceeds from the event over 10 years to the American Cancer Society and the Center for Disability Services.
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Travelers who had braced for long lines and long waits were instead moving through most U.S. airports fairly quickly Monday, as the busy Memorial Day travel weekend drew to a close.

"Honestly it wasn't too bad," said Kendra Morehead of Wooster, Ohio, who flew from Detroit to Denver for a conference. "I got to the airport an hour and a half early, but security only took like 15 minutes."

She added, "I heard a lot of stories about security being understaffed, but everything seemed fine."

However, the airlines weren't ready to say "mission accomplished" yet, as it's just the beginning of the busy summer travel season.

"Things have been going pretty well so far this weekend and we are working hard to make sure that we have no repeat of what we saw in Chicago," said American Airlines spokesman Ross Feinstein, referring to Chicago O'Hare International Airport, which had some of the worst screening problems in recent weeks.

The airline continues to talk daily with the Transportation Security Administration to coordinate, Feinstein said.

The TSA began deploying extra canine teams to the busiest airports months ago. The dogs can screen large groups of passengers for explosives, eliminating the need to remove shoes and laptops, TSA spokesman Mike England said last week.

At John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, travelers arriving from major cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Miami said their security lines had been short.

Not everyone had a smooth trip, however. Bob Dunlap of Milford, Mich., expected to wait an hour to get through a security line that snaked from the Denver airport's cavernous security plaza all the way back to baggage claim.

He had tried to expedite his screening by arriving three hours early and checking his baggage. "What can you do?" he said with a shrug. "I've never been in a line like this for security, ever."

California's Sacramento International Airport was crowded but about normal for a holiday travel day, according to an airport dispatcher.

An early morning photo posted on Twitter showed a line into the airport stretching all the way back to a parking garage. The dispatcher said that was taken during the airport's busiest part of the day and the line had shrunk by late morning.

At JFK, where a computer outage caused massive check-in delays on Sunday, officials and passengers said things were much better Monday for most travelers.

But not for everyone.

Bibi Ali, a banker from Queens, said she arrived extra early, fearing she might miss her flight because of security lines. "I was there early and it was one hour waiting in line" she said. "The flight is not bad, just the line, it's hectic."
Mayfield

A State Police Marine Patrol arrested a boater on Great Sacandaga Lake on Saturday and charged him with boating while intoxicated. David T. Kluska of Amsterdam was arrested after officers saw him driving recklessly near Scout Island in the town of Broadalbin. Kluska was stopped and arrested in Mayfield. He is to appear in Broadalbin Town Court. NYS Environmental Conservation Officers assisted in the arrest.
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Albany

Pam Tobin's sister called her in Colonie at 5:20 a.m. Sunday with breaking news from the Middle East. Tobin's brother-in-law, Hani Mulki, had been appointed prime minister of Jordan.

"It's well-deserved," Tobin said Sunday evening. "My brother-in-law is very honest, loyal."

Mulki, a 1979 Ph.D graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, was appointed to the top post Sunday by Jordan's King Abdullah following the resignation of Abdullah Ensour. Reuters characterized Hani as a "caretaker prime minister" who will organize parliamentary elections by October after Abdullah dissolved parliament as it nears the end of its four-year term.

Mulki served as Jordan's ambassador to Egypt, a permanent representative at the Arab League, a senator and as an official involved in water, energy, supplies, industry and foreign affairs as part of past governments, The Jordan Times reported.

Mulki's father, Fawzi, served as prime minister under Jordan's King Hussein.

"This is like a lifetime achievement that (Hani has) been working toward," Tobin said. "He has always strived for everything for the country and the people there."

Al Jazeera reported that Husam Abdallat, a former senior government aide at the office of the prime minister, that Mulki will likely be given the job of trying to start new negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis.

"Mulki will be working to bring Palestinians and Israelis to the negotiation table and work to bring a final solution to the Palestinian cause, which most likely be at the expense of the Palestinian people," he said, according to the report.

Mulki's ties to the Capital Region are both familial and academic.

Mulki received his master's degree in mechanical engineering and Ph.D from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, graduating in December 1979. It was in January of 1977 while in Troy that he met his future wife, Sheila, Tobin's sister, who at the time worked in the RPI registrar's office.

Their son, Fawzi, also attended RPI for his bachelor's and master's degrees, graduating in 2003. He went on to obtain a Ph.D in informatics from the University of Albany in 2009.

mhamilton@timesunion.com  518-454-5449  @matt_hamilton10
It is one of Houston's signature stories: The cute little boy who lived nearly his whole life inside a series of sterile plastic bubbles, waiting for a cure for his fatal immune disease that, tragically, never came.

David Vetter - he was identified only as David at the time - was "the boy in the bubble," the Texas Medical Center's most famous patient from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s. As a captivated public watched, he grew up isolated from germs and human touch before dying, at age 12, after the failure of an experimental bone marrow transplant.

"David's life was a compelling human interest story that tugged at hearts year after year," said James Jones, a former University of Houston historian writing a book on the boy. "Over time, people around the world came to care deeply about his well-being, admiring his courage and pluck and hoping against hope science would find a cure for the mysterious disease that kept him incarcerated and denied a normal childhood."

He left a legacy of medical advances and vexing ethical questions.

More Information BUBBLE BOY, a timeline 1968: The first immunodeficient patients are successfully treated with bone marrow transplants from donors whose tissue matched perfectly. 1971: David Phillip Vetter is born at Texas Children's in a germ-free environment and placed in a sterile plastic bubble. His sister's bone marrow is not a perfect match. 1977: NASA constructs a spacesuit to give David more freedom. He uses it a few times to explore the hospital and the family house but never really adjusts to it. 1983: David undergoes an experimental bone marrow transplant with imperfectly matched tissue from his sister. 1984: David becomes sick from a form of lymph cancer and dies. Source: Chronicle files See More Collapse

It is little wonder, given the astonishing spectacle that was David's life. From infancy on, he could be touched only by neophene gloves sticking through the walls of his NASA-designed bubbles. Everything he touched had to be sterilized with peracetic acid and placed inside steel capsules inserted through a system of air locks. His mother was able to kiss him for the first time only when he came out of the bubble to die.

No child had ever been reared in such a cocoon. No child likely ever will again.

The cause of David's isolation was an inherited condition called severe combined immunodeficiency in which patients lack the white blood cells that fight infection, meaning any germ is a potential killer. It afflicts 40 to 80 babies every year in the United States and is fatal without treatment. In September 1971, when David was born, there was no treatment.

In effect, David became a living experiment. At the time, his story was depicted as one of technological triumph and valiant effort that gave his family and him 12 years together. Since then, many ethicists have argued it was hubris, a classic example of doctors promising more than medicine could deliver, creating an unacceptable quality of life that took a toll on his emotional well-being.

The medical legacy is less open to debate. David contributed enormously to a better understanding of clinical immunology, doctors say, an understanding that has resulted in better treatment for many diseases involving the immune system.

"His life, however short or restricted, helped scientists learn more about primary immunodeficiencies so that they could help other infants with SCID," Carol Ann Demaret, David's mother, wrote in a 2014 account of the ordeal. "That's given our family enormous comfort over the years and helped us manage our great sorrow."

The Vetters knew there was a good chance David would have the disease, which plagues only boys. Doctors told the couple there was a 50/50 chance any future son would have the condition after it claimed the Vetters' first son in infancy a year earlier. The Vetters, Catholics, opted to go ahead with the pregnancy, buoyed by hope their daughter's blood would match well enough for a bone marrow transplant, a newly developing technology.

David was delivered by cesarean section in a sterile operating room at Texas Children's Hospital, then whisked into his first sealed bubble, intended as a stopgap measure until either his immune system matured on its own or a transplant.

Dr. Mary Ann South, a pediatric immunologist and one of David's medical team, told the Chronicle in 2009 that "the Vetters were the only parents who asked if we could protect their boy. We'd treated seven or eight children with the disease and all of them died; nothing worked, and they never lived long enough for us to learn about the disease. "

But his sister's blood didn't match, and David's immune system never kicked in. The wait for a cure dragged on for years, his protective bubbles growing in size along with him.

All the while, David's public persona charmed the public. He loved "Star Wars" films and the Houston Oilers. He was a straight-A student taught by telephone. He was well-behaved and handsome, with large, expressive eyes and a shock of dark hair. Behind the scenes, it was often a different story, the older David got. A psychologist who worked with him described the rage he sometimes exhibited at the terrible hand fate dealt him. At one point, he complained he "had been put into a cage and treated like a wild animal."

In late 1983, as David began losing hope he would ever leave the bubble, doctors told the Vetters of a promising new bone marrow transplant technique using less than perfect matches. They could use his sister's blood.

The transplant seemed to work well initially. But in January 1984, David began showing signs of illness, a fever from what turned out to be an undetected Epstein-Barr virus in the donor marrow. Fifteen days after he was removed from the bubble for treatment, he died of a form of lymph cancer caused by the virus. It was the lead story on network news' outlets around the world.

A year later, Texas Children's chaplain criticized David's treatment in the Journal of the American Medical Association. He called the boy "the first true laboratory life ... a guinea pig (who) happened to be human." Many ethicists today share the view.

"David's poignant and tragic story is a reminder that doctors must not lose sight of the overall effects on the patient in the name of saving life," said Bruce Jennings, a senior adviser at the Hastings Center who writes frequently about end-of-life issues.

Still, there's no denying the advances that David's experience brought. Dr. William Shearer, a Baylor College of Medicine pediatric immunologist and David's doctor in later years, noted he provided one of the first proofs viruses can cause cancer and that his DNA helped identify the gene that causes immune deficiencies, leading to a test for his condition in newborns.

Today, bone marrow transplants, even imperfectly matched ones, work 90 percent of the time if performed within three months of birth.

If anything seems certain, it is that David will not be easily forgotten. He has been celebrated in movies, music and sculpture. A center at Texas Children's and a school and street in The Woodlands bear his name. And as historian Jones notes, the term bubble has become an enduring part of the language, shorthand for both the dangers of isolation and the thing some parents wish they could put their children in to keep them out of harm's way.

The best epitaph may be David's gravestone: "He never touched the world," it reads. "But the world was touched by him."
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31

Trend:

Six people, earlier arrested under the fraud case over the International Bank of Azerbaijan, have been released, the lawyer Vugar Babayev told Trend May 31.

Among them are the director of the City Developer LLC Ratmir Bekirov, director of the Inter Glass JSC Fariz Muradov, and Jamal Hasanov, a director at a company included in the General Construction group of companies.

All three were accused of not repaying their loan debts to the International Bank of Azerbaijan.

The preventive measure in the form of arrest with respect to all three persons has been canceled and a preventive measure in the form of transfer under police surveillance has been chosen.

Former director of the Dubai branch of the International Bank of Azerbaijan Adil Huseynov, CEO of the Riyad-Farm Agil Guliyev, and chairman of the board of Mingachevir Izolit OJSC Mehman Mehdiyev were also released.

A preventive measure in the form of transfer under police surveillance was also chosen with regard to them.

Earlier, former senior officers of the International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA) and the entrepreneurs who have taken big loans from the bank and have not repaid them, were arrested.

The arrested are the former director of the IBA central office Ilgar Abdullayev, former director of the IBA transport office Kanan Orujov, the director of the IBA Dubai branch Adil Huseynov, Director General of the Inter Security Ltd. Ibrahim Huseynov, Chairman of the Supervisory Board at Azerinshaatservis Ltd. Arif Hasanov, Deputy Director of Trek Invest JSC Ali Alishov, who is the founder of the Azerinshaatservis Ltd., Director of the Inter Glass JSC Fariz Muradov and several others.

A criminal case was filed against IBA under article 178 (fraud) and other articles of the Criminal Code.

The former IBA head Jahangir Hajiyev was also arrested.
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Albany

If you want to annoy a New Englander, blather on about how "quaint" the region is.

Yes, many small New England towns are cute and charming. But the region's character is formed as much by the hard-bitten little cities that pepper its landscape, the places that tourists rarely visit.

Rutland, Vt., is not quaint. It is rarely charming. It has seen better days.

More Information Contact Chris Churchill at 518-454-5442 or email cchurchill@timesunion.com See More Collapse

But the city, 50 miles northeast of Glens Falls, is embarking on an unusual path to revitalization. It is welcoming refugees from war-ravaged Syria.

You probably remember the anti-Muslim fear and loathing that especially besmirched the nation's character last fall, especially that portion of the country occupied by Republican presidential candidates, of which there were then many.

You may remember the tough-guy bluster from bullies such as Chris Christie, who declared that even refugees under the age of 5 should be turned from our borders.

Toddlers, don't you know, can be oh-so dangerous.

You certainly also know that a certain presidential candidate took the bigotry a step further, declaring that the country should bar not only Syrians, but all Muslim entrants.

That candidate, a carnival barker who has somehow emerged as the presumptive GOP nominee, continues to double down on that stupidity, even though I'm convinced he knows better.

But let's ignore the politics of fear and hate for a moment, because this is a happy story. This is about a community that is welcoming people in need.

"I'm convinced this is going to succeed," said Christopher Louras, the mayor of Rutland. "We have an extremely supportive and compassionate community that will embrace them."

Assuming the State Department approves the plan, as expected, 100 Syrian refugees will come to Rutland over the course of a year, beginning in October. That's about one family every other week, Louras said.

That's small potatoes for the Capital Region, where 500 refugees are resettled annually. In fact, the first refugees from the crisis in Syria began arriving here within the past two weeks.

But Rutland is a bit different. The city has just 17,000 residents and, like much of New England, is extraordinarily homogenous. Rutland's last immigration wave came generations ago, Louras said.

And that's a problem, the mayor believes, because the city needs the economic energy that immigrants bring. It also has major employers that are hungry to hire but struggle to find workers.

"There isn't a growing and vibrant city in the country that hasn't embraced new Americans," Louras said.

The vitality that immigrants bring is obvious if you spend time along streets such as Central Avenue in Albany, where there's a polyglot stew of ethnic eateries and stores. Studies often show that immigrants launch businesses at significantly higher rates than native-born Americans.

In the Capital Region, 70 percent of adult refugees are working within a year of their arrival, according to the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants  an extraordinary statistic, given the language barriers they often face. The perception that refugees or other immigrants arrive for public assistance just isn't accurate.

"There are towns around the country that are begging for refugees because they are good for the economy," said Jill Peckenpaugh, director of the Albany office of the USCRI, a nonprofit that helps refugees resettle.

In Rutland, a pro-refugee Facebook group has 1,100 members, including many who are eager to help the new arrivals. But it would be wrong to say every resident has embraced Louras' plan.

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Worries about refugees, especially those from the Muslim world, are mostly about understandable concerns about terrorism. Yet refugees are the most thoroughly vetted of all newcomers to the country.

"The fears are based around a misunderstanding of the facts," Louras said. "I'm convinced that having a Syrian refugee population will not put this community at risk at all."

Now might be a good time to mention that while mayor is officially a nonpartisan position in Rutland, Louras was a Republican when he served in the Vermont legislature.

He strongly identifies with the party and its better values. But not with its current nominee.

"I totally disagree with everything Donald Trump stands for," Louras said.

It's possible that Rutland's refugee plan could be cut short if Trump is elected and goes through with his disgraceful plan to bar Muslims.

But again, this is a happy story. Rutland's move is about tolerance and a willingness to embrace new arrivals. Those are American values  or at least they were.

Make America great again?

Rutland is doing its part.

cchurchill@timesunion.com  518-454-5442  @chris_churchill
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Bethlehem

Ginny and Gerry Winn packed up their Delmar home a year ago, sold off their model trains and began a new adventure next to a lighthouse in Maine.

"Our life has gotten so exciting," said Ginny Winn, 84.

Waves crash on the rocks in front of their home. They often invite strangers gawking at the lighthouse to come inside for a visit and maybe a meal.

"Yesterday, I must have had five different families here coming off the rocks," Winn said.

Gerry Winn, 86, is a retired Delmar dentist and was featured in the Times Union last year when he tried to find a home buyer willing to buy his 30 Partridge Road home along with his massive train collection displayed in a room above the three-car garage.

The article found its way to a train auctioneer in Pittsburgh who runs the website Ambrose Bauer Trains.

"He knew we wanted to sell the house with the trains, but he said in all the years it has only happened two times so the odds aren't very good," Gerry Winn said.

Bauer laid out his credentials and offered to auction the trains.

"Time was of the essence and we had to get out of that place," Gerry Winn said. He agreed to consign the trains to Bauer.

The Winn's 11-year-old grandson, Walton Winn of Berne, crawled under the sprawling train table and helped his grandparents pack up.

"There was twice as much stuff under the table that I didn't even know about," Ginny Winn said.

The auctioneer flew two people up from Pittsburgh and they hauled away the trains in a rented truck. Gerry Winn gets an occasional check as the trains are auctioned off.

He kept a few too. Winn held on to his first train, his bicentennial trains, the train accessories he built and the train given to him by the mother of one of his patients who died in Vietnam.

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"There are a few others that my wife doesn't even know about now," he said.

The couple belonged to Loudonville Community Church but have adopted York Street Baptist near their new home. "I've never been a Baptist before," Ginny Winn said. "They are just this really great bunch of people that have caught on to the idea of what Christianity is all about."

The Winns are missionaries who never leave home. They welcome the lighthouse visitors with friendliness and cheer, and they talk for hours.

"We don't say 'Come to our church,'" Ginny Winn said. "We try to introduce them to Jesus and we figure he will lead them where they want to go."

It is, she said, the most exciting time of their lives.

ccrowley@timesunion.com  518-454-5348  @townstu  http://facebook.com/cathleenFcrowley
It is decision time for Gov. Andrew Cuomo on two potentially disastrous projects that could call the Capital Region home.

An oil heating facility at the Port of Albany, and the Pilgrim Pipeline, both serve one purpose: moving crude oil through our communities and off to the global market as quickly as possible. The weight of these two proposals cannot be ignored, as the pipeline and the port are part of a grand scheme we can easily call "Oilbany." Simply put, approval would stake the state capital's role as a global oil shipping hub for years to come.

There are many reasons Cuomo should reject both, not the least of which is that either would compromise his climate and clean energy goals.

The governor's plan to generate half of our electricity from clean renewables by 2030, and end all fossil fuel use by 2050, has garnered global attention. Indeed, these goals are a game-changing undertaking. With federal politicians like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump and even Capital Region native Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Willsboro, acting to block or undo progress in curbing greenhouse gas emissions, fulfilling the commitments of the Paris Climate Accords rests increasingly with state governments.

Expanding fossil fuel infrastructure cannot occur.

Here's some history: Two and a half years ago, Global Partners LLC's plan to develop the oil heating facility at the port came to light. Lax oversight at the time by the state Department of Environmental Conservation resulted in the issuance of a faulty permit based on the idea that enabling a tremendous increase in the transshipment and consumption of the world's most dangerous crude wouldn't carry a negative environmental or health impact.

But one year ago, the DEC announced a course correction. However, it never followed through, industry sued, and courts say a decision must be made by mid-June.

Although it has recently softened, crude oil train traffic has increased more than 4,000 percent since 2009, even without the Port of Albany facility or Pilgrim Pipeline. Meanwhile, the real world effects of oil consumption are piling up.

According to the American Lung Association's 2016 "State of the Air" report, 25 million Americans live with impaired lung function  conditions exacerbated by air pollution (in New York, 34 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from the transportation sector, and another 21 percent come from power producers).

The economic costs are also growing; extreme weather events can result in the loss of life and cost billions in damages, but the hurt is felt in even less obvious ways. New York's ski industry, for instance, supports 13,000 employees and attracts more than 3 million visitors annually; increasingly unpredictable weather patterns place livelihoods dependent on that revenue at risk.

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By the way, the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies says there is a 99 percent chance that 2016 will unseat 2015 as the hottest year on record.

In the last year, Cuomo and his team have undertaken a thorough vetting of both projects. Just as they did with their decision to ban fracking, they are following the science, reviewing the data and better understand the consequences of these proposals as a result.

Additionally, there is new leadership at the DEC. Soon after acting Commissioner Basil Seggos was nominated, DEC was added to co-lead status on review of the Pilgrim Pipeline, meaning the project must undergo assessments on climate impacts, how environmental justice communities are affected, as well as wetlands protections and other considerations.

These are welcome developments. Big Oil is an industry that does not like being told "no." But the facts are that the Pilgrim Pipeline and port oil heating facility will hurt our climate, emit harmful pollutants into our air, pollute our water and place lives at risk. Cuomo can build on his legacy by keeping his climate and clean energy promises. That requires the rejection of both proposals.
Since 1997, when New York's STAR exemption was put into place, homeowners paying some of the highest school taxes in the nation have enjoyed some real savings.

According to the state Department of Taxation and Finance, 2.4 million homeowners have participated, with an average household savings of $700 annually. After those who handle local property tax bills and those who pay those bills got past a few start-up bumps, it has worked pretty well. New homeowners apply once and from then on the savings is simply subtracted from annual school tax bills.

So why mess with it?

First-time homeowners and people who sell their homes and buy another now have to register with the state for their exemption. But instead of seeing the savings reflected in their annual tax bills, they will have to wait until the fall to get a rebate from the state.

More Information STAR EXEMPTION: The basic exemption reduces by $30,000 a home's assessed value for the purposes of calculating school taxes. Enroll by visiting www.tax.ny.gov or by calling 518-457-2036. To comment: tuletters@timesunion.com or at http://blog.timesunion.com/opinion See More Collapse

While there is no change to the amount of the STAR credit eligible homeowners receive, it means the state gets to hold onto these newer enrollees' money a bit longer. Those who are receiving a STAR exemption now and who purchased their current home prior to May 1, 2014, don't have to do anything to keep receiving the deduction in their local school tax bill.

State officials argue the change will save about $180 million per year by stopping abuses in the program by people who wrongly take the deduction on more than one home, or who exceed income requirements.

Abuses have indeed been documented. Donald Trump, the billionaire presumptive GOP presidential nominee, erroneously received a $300 STAR rebate for his Fifth Avenue Trump Tower penthouse for several years. Homeowners whose annual income is above $500,000 are ineligible for the rebate. Trump's campaign blamed it on a blunder by New York City's Department of Finance.

In 2013, the Times Union revealed that state Sen. Cathy Young, R-Cattaraugus County, was receiving the exemption for homes in both Olean and in North Greenbush  again, attributed to a tax accounting error.

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The change, which over time will affect more and more taxpayers as homes change hands, has confused many taxpayers and even some local assessors to the point some state lawmakers want it repealed. Assemblyman Will Barclay, R-Oswego County, calls it burdensome, and notes it will mean newer homeowners will be left waiting for the state rebate checks when their local school taxes are due.

The confusion alone will result in some eligible homeowners losing out.

The state should crack down on abuses, but there are better ways to do it. For example, it could develop a program to compare databases with local assessors and catch duplicative exemptions without delaying payments to new homeowners.

This strikes us as solution in search of a problem. We have to wonder if the real motive here is to remind taxpayers where this tax break comes from by sending them a check. If the goal is to promote some elected officials, inconveniencing overburdened taxpayers seems like a bad way to do it.
Kudos to the Albany County Legislature for passing local law C to raise the legal purchase age of tobacco to 21. I hope Albany County Executive Daniel P. McCoy will agree that it's a law that can reduce youth smoking and ultimately save lives. The Institute of Medicine and a myriad of health-promoting organizations as well as a majority of Albany County residents support it.

I know that not everyone agrees. Some opponents, like columnist Chris Churchill in his column "Lawmakers should just butt out," April 28, object that if a person is old enough to join the military then he or she is old enough to purchase tobacco. I say we let our military members speak for themselves.
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31

Trend:

The State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ) sold $40 million to three banks through an auction held by the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA), SOFAZ said May 31.

Meanwhile, CBA acquired $10 million at the auction.

SOFAZ will continue selling foreign currency through auctions in 2016. The foreign currency is sold as part of SOFAZ's transfers to the Azerbaijani state budget, which are envisaged to stand at 7.615 billion Azerbaijani manats in 2016.

SOFAZ was established in 1999 with assets of $271 million.
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Arsanis to Present at the Jefferies 2016 Healthcare Conference

Arsanis, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing targeted monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) for pre-emptive and post-infection treatment of serious infectious diseases, today announced that its chief executive officer, Rene Russo, PharmD, BCPS, will present a company overview at the Jefferies 2016 Healthcare Conference in New York City.

The presentation will take place on Tuesday, June 7, 2016, at 11:00 a.m. EDT.

About Arsanis, Inc.

Arsanis is a clinical-stage company leading the development of targeted monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) for pre-emptive and post-infection treatment of serious infectious diseases. The company's current programs address pathogenic processes selectively, rather than aiming to broadly liminate bacteria, potentially allowing Arsanis to address critical infections without contributing to the problem of antibiotic resistance. The company is building a broad product pipeline addressing the most important Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacterial pathogens threatening hospitalized and high-risk patients. Its lead therapeutic candidate, ASN100, is aimed at the prevention and treatment of serious Staphylococcus aureus infections and entered a Phase I clinical trial in the fall in 2015, with a Phase II study anticipated to begin in 2016.







Arsanis is a U.S. company headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, with European research and preclinical development operations headquartered in Vienna, Austria (Arsanis Biosciences GmbH).

For more information, please visit the Arsanis website at www.arsanis.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160531005430/en/
[May 31, 2016] Culpeper, Virginia, Chooses ERP Solution from Tyler Technologies

Tyler Technologies (News - Alert), Inc. (NYSE: TYL) has signed an agreement with the town of Culpeper, Virginia, for Tyler's Munis enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. The agreement includes software licensing, implementation, project management and support. The town utilized the existing National Joint Powers Alliance (NJPA) contract in procuring Munis. Culpeper officials decided to replace their current financial system with Munis because it provides comprehensive ERP applications, including financial, payroll and human resources management, as well as utility and tax billing. Munis will help the town streamline workflows by leveraging Munis' integrated financial and utility management applicatins to create more efficient processes.



The town of Culpeper will benefit from Tyler's evergreen perpetual licensing approach that provides regular and significant, yet manageable, software enhancements without an additional relicensing fee, ensuring all systems are using the latest technology. Located about 60 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., the town of Culpeper has approximately 17,000 residents and is the county seat of Culpeper County.

About Tyler Technologies, Inc. Tyler Technologies (NYSE: TYL) is a leading provider of end-to-end information management solutions and services for local governments. Tyler partners with clients to empower the public sector - cities, counties, schools and other government entities - to become more efficient, more accessible and more responsive to the needs of citizens. Tyler's client base includes more than 14,000 local government offices in all 50 states, Canada, the Caribbean, the United Kingdom and other international locations. Forbes has named Tyler one of "America's Best Small Companies" eight times and the company has been included six times on the Barron's 400 Index, a measure of the most promising companies in America. More information about Tyler Technologies, headquartered in Plano, Texas, can be found at www.tylertech.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160531005069/en/

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[May 30, 2016] Siemens Building Technology & ZNV Technology Sign Data Center Strategic Cooperation Agreement

SHANGHAI, May 30, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- ZNV Technology (ZNV) and Siemens Building Technologies (Tianjin)Ltd. (Siemens) have announced a strategic partnership in the data center industry (IDC), and have signed a strategic cooperation agreement to conduct joint research and promote more intelligent, safe, reliable, efficient and green IDC technology, products and solutions. The companies' complementary advantages will allow them to form a good ecological chain and help both sides better enhance their brands' influence and expand market share. The world has entered into an era of information explosion. The size and reach of IDCs and server rooms is increasing on a massive scale, generating calls for a unified, efficient, safe, reliable management system for data centers. Siemens and ZNV aim to create high-efficiency and professional IDC products and solutions to better solve the problems of operation and maintenance of IDC and smart buildings. Siemens AG is a global technology powerhouse that is active in more than 200 countries, focusing on the areas of electrification, automation and digitalization. One of the world's largest producers of energy-efficient and resource-saving technologies, Siemens has leading positions in offshore wind turbine construction, gas and steam turbines for power generation, power transmission solutions, infrastructure solutions, automation, drive and software solutions, as well as medical imaging equipment and laboratory diagnostics. ZNV, a global leading comprehensive security and monitoring system solution provider, has shown great strength in providing security energy-saving and productivity improvement solutions to their customers. ZNV has thoroughly customized more than 20 integrated monitoring solutions for industrial customers i the telecommunication, government, electric power, transportation and education sectors, among others. Customized for data centers, they've launched their 2nd generation "Comprehensive solutions for smart data centers", which brings tremendous value. Through this cooperation with Siemens they aim to optimize both parties' technical and market advantages to expand market share.



At a press conference to mark the signing of the agreement, vice president of Siemens (China) Co., Ltd., general manager of Shanghai Branch, Wang Weiguo, and chairman and CEO of ZNV Technology, Zhu Jincheng (Robert Zhu), both expressed full confidence in this cooperation, and briefly described their future prospects. The two parties will not be limited to collaboration on specific projects, but will also cooperate on technical innovation. Mr. Zhu said, "This agreement a milestone in our partnership; it will further boost both parties' capabilities to compete in the market, and will drive us to further cooperation in research and development." Siemens Building Technology

Siemens Building Technologies is the world leader in the market for safe and secure, energy-efficient and environment-friendly buildings and infrastructures. As technology partner, service provider, system integrator and product vendor, Building Technologies has offerings for safety and security as well as building automation, heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) and energy management. www.siemens.com.cn/buildingtechnologies ZNV Technology As a global leading comprehensive security and monitoring system solution provider, ZNV (the former monitoring product line of ZTE) has provided services for guaranteeing the healthy operation of communication networks since 1995 and been independently operating since 2005. Headquartered in Shenzhen Hi-Tech Industrial Park, ZNV has R&D centers in Shenzhen, Nanjing and Hangzhou. Their marketing service network covers 31 provinces in China and over 70 countries and regions at abroad, providing high-quality products and services for global customers. ZNV pays great attention to product development and innovation, and has been appraised and selected as a state-level high-tech enterprise. Equipped with a professional IDC R&D team, the company can closely follow the market's requirements for technologies and quickly respond to the customized needs of its IDC customers. In October 2015, the company released the 2rd generation of its "Comprehensive solutions for smart data centers", which brings tremendous value to the world by lowering operating cost, ensuring safety and standardizing management procedures. www.znv.com.cn/index.html To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/siemens-building-technology--znv-technology-sign-data-center-strategic-cooperation-agreement-300276721.html SOURCE ZNV Technology

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[May 31, 2016] Chillers Market (Type & End-Use Industry) 2021 Growth Driven by Plastics Industry Segment

PUNE, India, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The global chillers market size is estimated to reach $10.84 billion by 2021 at a CAGR of 4.24% while regionally, Asia-Pacific is leading the growth of chillers market due to increasing cooling needs in industrial applications and growing food and healthcare industries. Complete report on global chillers market spread across 168 pages, profiling 12 companies and supported with 79 tables and 73 figures is now available at http://www.marketreportshub.com/chillers-industry-research-marketsandmarkets.html . With the rising per capita income, the standard of living is also increasing, which further translates to the rising demand for comfort and leisure products. Cooling products such as refrigerators and air conditioners are among these key products. The growing food and healthcare industry is the driving force for the cooling equipment market. Factors such as increasing population and rising consumption of frozen food are also contributing significantly to the increase in the refrigeration equipment market. Chillers are used in various end-use industries such as plastics, chemicals & petrochemicals, food & beverages, rubber, medical & pharmaceutical, and others. In 2015, the plastics segment accounted for the largest market share among all the applications, in terms of value, followed by chemicals & petrochemicals, food & beverages, and rubber industries. Among all the applications, chemicals & petrochemicals is estimated to register the highest CAGR between 2016 and 2021 in terms of value. In 2015, Asia-Pacific is estimated to account for the largest market share, in terms of value, and is estimated to remain the market leader during the forecast period. High industrial growth resulted in an increased demand for chillers in different industrial applications such as in the chemicals & petrochemicals and food & beverages industries. This growth is further supported by the growing medical & pharmaceutical industry in Asia-Pacific due to the increased governmental investments in the healthcaresector. China accounted for the largest market share in this region due to the increased demand for chemicals in the last 2-3 years. Other emerging economies, such as India and Brazil, are the markets which are projected to grow rapidly.



The key companies profiled in this market research report are Daikin Industries Ltd. (Japan), Johnson Controls (U.S.), Trane Inc. (Ireland), Carrier Corporation (U.S.), Smardt Chiller Group (Canada), Thermax Inc. (U.S.), and Climaveneta S.p.A. (Italy). Ask for the discount before order a copy of Chillers Market by Type (Screw, Scroll, Centrifugal, Absorption, and Reciprocating), by End-Use Industry (Plastics, Chemicals & Petrochemicals, Medical & Pharmaceutical, Rubber, Food & Beverage, and Others), and by Region - Global Forecast to 2021 research report at http://www.marketreportshub.com/purchase?rpid=3928 . To determine the market size of various segments and sub-segments of the PIM market, extensive secondary research is done. In the process of determining and verifying, the market size for several segments and sub segments gathered through secondary research, extensive primary interviews were conducted with key people. In Tier 1 (33%), Tier 2 (60%) and Tier 3 (7%) companies were contacted for primary interviews. The interviews were conducted with various key people such as C-level Executives (56%), Directors Level (33%) and others (11%) from various key organizations operating in the global chillers market. The primary interviews were conducted worldwide covering regions such as North America - 13%, Europe - 47%, Asia-Pacific - 20%, the Middle East & Africa- 13%, and Latin America- 7%.

On a related note, another research on Air Conditioning Market Global Trend and Forecast to 2020 says, the air conditioning market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 6.69% from 2015 to 2020 to reach USD 24.28 Billion by 2020. Asia-Pacific is the largest market, by value, for automotive air conditioning. Growing customer expectation for better cooling is one of the major factors. Companies like Denso Corporation (Japan), Hanon Systems (South Korea), Keihin Corporation (Japan), MAHLE GmBH (Germany), and Calsonic Kansei Corporation (Japan) have been profiled in this 186 pages research report available at http://www.marketreportshub.com/air-conditioning-marketsandmarkets.html . Explore more reports on Materials & Chemicals market at http://www.marketreportshub.com/categories/materials-chemicals. About Us: Market Reports Hub is your one-stop online shop for syndicated industry research reports on multiple categories and their sub-sectors. We bring to you to the latest in market research across multiple industries and geographies from leading research publishers across the globe. Connect with Us: G+ / Google Plus: https://plus.google.com/110654518968238222746/about Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarketReportHub Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Marketreportshub/679736978808693 RSS / Feeds:http://www.marketreportshub.com/rss.xml Contact:

Ritesh Tiwari

UNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZ

Magarpatta city, Hadapsar

Pune - 411013

Maharashtra, India.

Tel: +1-888-391-5441

[email protected]

SOURCE Market Reports Hub

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[May 31, 2016] Paygoo Selects Wirecard as Their Prepaid Card Issuer

MUNICH, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Paygoo launches Reloadable MasterCard

Exclusive partnership with Reitan Convenience to offer outstanding distribution network Wirecard Card Solutions Ltd, a Wirecard Group company, is the card issuer of Norwegian-based prepaid programme manager Paygoo. Paygoo have recently launched their first prepaid reloadable MasterCard following the previous launch of their MasterCard Gift Card programme earlier this year. The cards can be purchased and loaded throughout Reitan Convenience, one of Europe's largest convenience store chains including the retail brands 7-Eleven, Shell and Narvesan, offering instant issue at extensive point-of-sale outlets as well as online. Paygoo's rapidly expanding portfolio already includes the MasterCard gift card programme sold through Reitan Convenience stores in Norway and Sweden and offering consumers a gift card product which can be used at over 35 million merchants worldwide instore or online through the MasterCard acceptance network, making it the perfect gift card for any occasion. The Paygoo gift cards are also available to the corporate market as a reward or incentive mechanism for their employees or third parties. The new Paygoo Reload MasterCard targets foreign workers and the unbanked and has initially launched successfully in Norway. An imminent launch in Sweden will soon follow to secure wide reach and adoption across the Nordics. "We are delighted to establish a partnership with Wirecard which we are sure will support our growth ambitions in the Nordic prepaid market. For Paygoo it was important to choose an issuer with outstanding experience and knowledge, combined with a mind-set characterized by innovation and creativity," said CEO of Paygoo,Per Erik Nygaard.



Wirecard Card Solutions is a specialist for prepaid card issuance. The UK-based Company is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and operates under its Electronic Money license with permissions to issue cards throughout the SEPA region. Wirecard Card Solutions accompanies its clients throughout all stages of their business development and offers a vast array of products, services and experience needed to take a new a prepaid card programme to market. Brian Lawlor, Director of Sales and Business Development at Wirecard Card Solutions said, "We're delighted to be working with the highly experienced team at Paygoo. With Paygoo's exclusive distribution channels, this product has fantastic reach within the Nordic region. This programme further cements Wirecard's position as one of the leading prepaid issuers in Europe."

About Wirecard: Wirecard AG is a global technology group that supports companies in accepting electronic payments from all sales channels. As a leading independent supplier, the Wirecard Group offers outsourcing and white label solutions for electronic payments. A global platform bundles international payment acceptances and methods with supplementary fraud prevention solutions. With regard to issuing own payment instruments in the form of cards or mobile payment solutions, the Wirecard Group provides companies with an end-to-end infrastructure, including the requisite licences for card and account products. Wirecard AG is listed on the Frankfurt Securities Exchange (TecDAX, ISIN DE0007472060, WDI). For further information about Wirecard, please visit http://www.wirecard.com or follow us on Twitter @wirecard. About Wirecard Card Solutions: Wirecard Card Solutions Ltd (WDCS), a subsidiary of Wirecard AG, is a multi-award winning issuer of prepaid cards and products in Europe. WDCS is an FCA regulated Electronic Money institution specialising in BIN Sponsorship and is a principal member of both MasterCard International and Visa Europe. WDCS issues plastic and digital prepaid products for many of the biggest and most innovative programmes in the European marketplace. http://www.wirecard-cardsolutions.co.uk. About Paygoo: Paygoo has grown rapidly to be the preferred supplier of gift cards and payment cards across the Nordics. They believe in creating great user experiences with a vision to offer the best in user experience and innovation. Formerly the Spendon (Sparebank) gift card product, Paygoo was first launched recently. The reloadable and gift card products are available through the Reitan and Blackhawk networks. Wirecard media contact: Wirecard AG

Jana Tilz

Tel.: +49-(0)89-4424-1363

E-Mail: [email protected] Wirecard Card Solutions Limited

Annelleise Miles

Tel.: +44-191-277-5472

E-Mail: [email protected] Paygoo media contact: Per Erik Nygaard

Tel.: +47-480-73-171

E-Mail: [email protected]



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[May 31, 2016] CommunicAsia2016, EnterpriseIT2016 and BroadcastAsia2016 Open Today With A View of A Digital Future

SINGAPORE, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Robots, virtual reality, drones, and smart devices -- these are the innovations fueled by digital transformation that will pave the way for Asia Pacific's future. With digitisation and smart technologies enhancing productivity, these innovations form the heart of CommunicAsia2016, EnterpriseIT2016 and BroadcastAsia2016, which open today and run to 3 June 2016, at Marina Bay Sands, Singapore. From taxi bookings and travel lodging to courier arrangements, digital transformation, which includes integration, is at the heart of businesses' and consumers' lives today. On the back of digitalisation, bringing together the movers and shakers in the world of information and communications technology (ICT) and media, the event will gather about 1,800 exhibitors and 34 international pavilions from 53 countries and regions, bringing innovations critical for digital transformation in the region. "Disruptive models from businesses like Uber and Netflix -- who are speakers at this year's events -- have propelled organisations' into innovating and reinventing themselves to stay ahead in a digitally transformed world. The programme for CommunicAsia2016, EnterpriseIT2016 and BroadcastAsia2016 presents participants with cutting-edge technology from robotics, Internet of Things (IoT) manifestations, virtual reality (VR) and more, alongside topical, forward-thinking conversations led by industry thought leaders," said Lindy Wee, Chief Executive, Singapore Exhibition Services. Gabriel Lim, CE-designate of the IMDA and Co-Managing Director of IDA said, "We are moving into an exciting digital future, marked by connectivity and creativity, which will bring about exciting possibilities for Singapore. The new IMDA will help Singapore seize these opportunities, by implementing the Infocomm Media 2025 masterplan, and creating a vibrant and globally competitive ICM sector here. CommunicAsia and BroadcastAsia are important shows that bring different parts of the ICM ecosystem together, creating platforms for individuals and companies to take the ICM sector to new frontiers. We look forward to working with our international partners and industry stakeholders to create a brighter future for us all." CommunicAsia2016 and EnterpriseIT2016: Powering digital transformation Smart technology paves the way towards a smarter and more simplified digital lifestyle, producing countless opportunities that transform how people live, learn, work and play. Extending conversations from smart technology to smart city development, for the first time, this year's programme will feature the Asia ICT Innovation Forum, held in strategic partnership with Huawei. Happening today, the forum features speakers from the World Economic Forum, Singapore's Smart Nation Programme Office, Huawei, Facebook and BT and more. Participants will be immersed in presentations and discussions on technology's impact to Asia Pacific's digital economy, how businesses can make global digital inclusion a reality, and the value of Big Data analytics in today's digital era. In addition to macroeconomic discussions, also new this year is the invitation-only CIO Forum, organised in partnership with the CIO Academy Asia, on 1 June. Speakers from IDA, The Farrer Park Company (Asia's first integrated hub for healthcare & wellness), Tetra Pak and Agile Development, will provide CIOs and CTOs with the how-tos and pitfalls to avoid in delivering digital transformation for organisations. Today's sharing economy, with disruptive app-based business models entering the Asia Pacific market, has raised discussions and a drive for new ideas. Giving participants the platform to gain insights, network and spark ideas for innovation, IdeasCollider, a mini-conference held in collaboration with The Innovators Institute on 2 June 2016, will feature speakers from Galen Growth Asia, Padang & Co, Samsung Asia, SAP Innovation Center Network and more. IoT and connected devices continue to be of interest to businesses and consumers in the region. Bringing to life the latest IoT innovations, NXT@CommunicAsia2016 showcases products and solutions that can make enterprises, cities and consumers smarter, greener, and more efficient. Visitors will get to see the "Double", a first of its kind surveillance robot for home use by OTSAW, and the Birloki system, an urban street connector and space activator aimed at boosting city environmental spaces by Nerei, among many others. Beyond "NXT", other showfloor highlights include ST Electronics's launch of its Next-Gen Connected Bus Stop. The system leverages on smart sensors and smart phones to capture and analyse wide-ranging data including the number of passengers at bus stops, bus loads and traffic conditions to provide timely and useful bus information for commuters. Operators can optimise operational efficiency and resource utilisation, as well as maintain high quality of services to commuters. In addition, ST Electronics is signing a Memorandum of Understanding at its booth today with US-based Motorola Solutions, to co-create innovative technologies for advanced secured communications in public safety, national security and enterprise sectors across the region. Over at the Huawei booth is a series of innovative solutions developed to help accelerate digital economic development, ensure a nation's safety and security, enrich an individual's lifestyle and most importantly, build an ICT infrastructure for a Better Connected World. Asia's largest gathering of satellite players at SatComm2016 As the cornerstone of the world's ICT system, satellite communications continue to play an important role in enabling and promoting digitisation. 2016 sees the largest gathering of satellite players from the region, with participation from Inmarsat, Intelsat, MEASAT, Singtel and more. The exhibitors will be showcasing the latest innovations from HTS monetisation and deployment models, to methods of customisation of spot beams and frequency reuse. BroadcastAsia2016 unveils content from core to beyond boundaries Content consumption has experienced an incredible shift with the influx of new content creation methods and delivery strategies. With broadcasters and content providers across Asia battle for viewers and look for innovative ways to monetise their content, BroadcastAsia2016 will bring together top industry service providers to showcase an entire ecosystem of the latest end-to-end solutions needed to stay ahead of the curve. On spotlight are new innovations from first time exhibitors such as CISCO, Dell, Tata Communications, Level3 Communications and Hyku. For instance, Dell is showcasing how content experiences can be rejuvenated with the latest in 360 degree VR capabilities, and Hyku, social TV application with patented second-screen sync technology designed to better connect and engaged hyper-connected consumers of today. Consumer expectations in the region increasingly present new challenges to provide more convenient and reliable access to content. Building on the success of its debut last year, the popular TV Everywhere! Zone returns with an emphasis on OTT and multiscreen solutions and explore the entire value chain of non-linear broadcasting. In addition to the TV Everywhere! Zone, attendees can explore other themed zones, including the Cinematography/Film/Production Technology Zone -- where exhibitors are demonstrating the latest motion picture production tools and software capabilities -- and the Post Production Hub where industry experts will share their knowledge and experience using technology showcased at BroadcastAsia2016. Oscar nominated, multi Grammy-nominated producer of soundtracks, classical and jazz recordings and former Senior Vice President of Sony BMG Masterworks, Christopher Craker will be a part of the lineup at the Post Production Hub, as well as award winning sound designer and composer of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, The Hobbit, King Kong, Dave Whitehead.







Media Enquiries: June Seah / Patricia Yee

Singapore Exhibition Services

Tel: +65 9852 6756 / +65 9382 7452 Email: [email protected] / [email protected] Alana O' Grady / Ang Fangying FleishmanHillard Singapore Tel: +65 9721 1674 / +65 9170 4059 Email: [email protected] / [email protected]



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[May 31, 2016] Suvidhaa Infoserve to Facilitate Cash Loading of MobiKwik Wallet

MUMBAI, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- - Move to Facilitate eCommerce Transactions Without use of Debit/Credit Card or Netbanking. Cash can be Deposited at any of the 90,000+ Suvidhaa Outlets Across India, to Recharge Mobikwik Wallet - Upon Recharge, the Wallet can be Used Immediately for Online Transactions Across 75000+ Merchants Accepting Mobikwik - Bypassing the Credit/Debit Card and Netbanking Barrier Will Attract new Users to the Indian eCommerce Industry Suvidhaa Infoserve, a leader in the digital payments and remittances industry with 35 million unique customers, has entered into a tie-up with MobiKwik, India's largest independent mobile payments network that connects 30 million users with over 75,000 retailers. The tie-up will enable customers of MobiKwik to recharge their mobile wallets from any of the 90,000+ Suvidhaa outlet across the country by depositing cash. This will overcome the barrier of recharging the wallet via credit/debit card or netbanking. This partnership assumes a great significance as it brings into the fold of mobile eCommerce to even those customers who are yet unbanked or uncarded i.e., do not own debit cards or credit cards. Further, even those customers who are unwilling to opt for card payment or netbanking and are not confident about sharing their bank details due to security reasons, can now make cash payments through Suvidhaa outlets for cash loading in their MobiKwik m-wallets after downloading the app on their phones and registering themselves. Through the mobile wallet (m-wallet) app, a registered customer can put money in his virtual wallet account with MobiKwik for paying for various e-services such as utility bill payments, recharges, instant money transfers, movie ticket booking, gifting, etc. On the tie-up, b>Paresh Rajde, Chairman, Suvidhaa Infoserve, said, "Despite the fact that more than 600 million people in India own debit or credit cards, over 90% of our population still do not transact online. Our partnership with MobiKwik is yet another attempt to bridge this gap by offering various payment services to both evolved and non-evolved customers with the assurance of instant, safe and secure transactions."



Upasana Taku, Founder, MobiKwik, added, "We are excited to partner with Suvidhaa Infoserve to extend our value-based offerings to the masses in India, who do not have a debit card, credit card or netbanking service. Every Indian will now be able to go cashless in their daily purchases, be it buying groceries, booking train or bus tickets, transfering money to their friends or relatives, availing short term credit and shopping & eat out with the utmost ease." Customers can download the MobiKwik application (app) from Google Play store, Windows store or Apple store or from http://www.mobikwik.com. After registering themselves by using their mobile number and email id, they will just need to walk into any nearest Suvidhaa store and get cash deposited in their MobiKwik wallet. Customers can then use their MobiKwik wallet across 8,000 merchants for daily shopping, also book train/bus tickets online, pay at Big Bazaar, Dominos, Big Basket, Sagar Ratna, Archies and Jabong among others.

About MobiKwik: MobiKwik is India's largest independent mobile payments network, connecting 30 million users with 75,000+ retailers. Founded in 2009 by Bipin Preet Singh and Upasana Taku, the company has raised three rounds of funding from Sequoia Capital, American Express, Tree Line Asia, MediaTek, GMO Payment Gateway and Cisco Investments. MobiKwik aspires to be the largest source of digital transactions in India. One of the leading digital payments platforms for online and offline merchants, MobiKwik is powering payments for IRCTC, Uber, Meru Cabs, Big Bazaar, OYO Rooms, Zomato, PVR, Archies, WHSmith India, BookMyShow, Grofers, Big Basket, Domino's, Burger King, Pizza Hut, eBay, ShopClues, Myntra, Jabong, Pepperfry, Barista, Food Panda, nearbuy, Van Heusen, Allen Solly, Louis Phillips, GoDaddy, MakeMyTrip, Cleartrip, and Yatra. About Suvidhaa: Suvidhaa is a leading payments company that offers financial services such as remittances, interoperable open loop prepaid cards besides a large suite of value-added services such as ticketing (rail/air/bus), utility bill payments, mobile/DTH/data recharges, insurance premium payments, corporate cash collection and mobile-based merchant acquiring services. These services are offered through Suvidhaa's over 90,000 small retail touchpoints in over 9500 PIN Code locations across India. Over 300 service providers ride on Suvidhaa's robust S-Commerce platform to reach their last mile. Suvidhaa has now forayed into micro credit with its unique and first-of-its-kind nano credit program targeted towards its 35mn unique customers. Suvidhaa was promoted by Mr. Paresh Rajde in 2007 and was angel funded by Mr. Shapoorji Pallonji Mistry. Media Contact:

Mahadevan Thevar

[email protected]

+91-9967352037

Prose Consulting





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Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31

Trend:

BP's regional president for Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey Gordon Birrell sent a congratulatory letter to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on the occasion of the country's national holiday - Republic Day.

"It is my great pleasure to extend to you and the people of Azerbaijan my warmest congratulations on the occasion of the national holiday - the Republic Day," said Birrell in his letter.

He also noted that BP attaches great importance to the consistent expansion of BP-Azerbaijani cooperation and calls for its further fruitful development.

"I express my firm belief in the strengthening of friendly relations between BP and the government of Azerbaijan," said Birrell.

"I would like to take this opportunity to wish happiness and prosperity to the people of Azerbaijan," he added.
[May 31, 2016] DocuSign Appoints New Exec to Accelerate Growth Across Northern Europe

LONDON, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- On the heels of announcing 125% year over year customer growth with a global trust network that's grown to more than 225,000 companies and more than 85 million users in 188 countries, DocuSign, Inc. (DocuSign) announced the appointment of Helen Sutton as VP of Enterprise Sales for Northern Europe. With more than 20 years of experience, Sutton will help accelerate growth and adoption of the company's Digital Transaction Management (DTM) platform and eSignature solution among enterprise customers in the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the Nordics. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151102/283113LOGO Sutton will build on the success of the DocuSign EMEA team in helping businesses across Europe achieve their digital transformations. Sutton will work closely with DocuSign's strategic partners, including Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP and others, to help organizations go digital for faster speed to results, dramatic ROI, increased security and compliance, and enhanced customer experiences. "I know from first-hand experience how DocuSign impacts the way people work and the effectiveness of a business by empowering anyone to transact business whenever, wherever convenient," commented Sutton. "In my previous role as a DocuSign customer, DocuSign saved me huge amounts of time, allowing me to sign documents on the move while extending my teams opportunity to close business up until the very last second of the quarter  at the convenience of our customers, even late at night and on weekends. It's thrilling to now be bringing the power of DocuSign to my customers."



"Helen's appointment is a clear sign of our plans to continue our rapid growth in a region that we see as crucial to maintaining this momentum," stated Neil Hudspith, President of Worldwide Field Operations, at DocuSign. "We have strong strategic partnerships and deep technology integrations with the companies that our enterprise customers already use in their businesses every day. Helen's experience and proven track record in the enterprise software industry will help us continue the rapid expansion of the DocuSign Global Trust Network of customers, developers and partners." Sutton joins DocuSign following her role as Managing Director of the UK and Ireland at Unit 4. She has more than 20 years of experience leading enterprise software sales in both the public and private sectors. Previously, Sutton spent twelve years at SAP in various leadership roles where, in her last 2 years, she grew global software licences by 20 percent for customers in the Financial Services, Public, Consumer and Resources sectors.

Individuals interested in learning more about DocuSign may visit https://www.docusign.co.uk/ , or register to attend the company's annual customer, developer and partner conference, DocuSign MOMENTUM'16, to be held on 6-7 June in London at the InterContinental at the O2 in Canary Wharf. For more information including the event agenda, visit https://momentum.docusign.com/london/en. To register, visit https://www.eiseverywhere.com/ereg/newreg.php?eventid=161237. Contact:

Michael Creane/Mitch Lowes/Sara Chandran

[email protected]

About DocuSign, Inc.

DocuSign is changing how business gets done by empowering anyone to send, sign and manage documents anytime, anywhere, on any device with trust and confidence. DocuSign and Go to keep life and business moving forward. For more information, visit www.docusign.com, call +1-877-720-2040, or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Copyright 2003-2016. DocuSign, Inc. is the owner of DOCUSIGN(R) and all of its other marks (www.docusign.com/IP). All other marks appearing herein are the property of their respective owners.

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[May 31, 2016] Giving Back to the World Is Good for Business, Says Sir Richard Branson

MELBOURNE, Australia, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- If you want to succeed in business, there is an increasing need to consider what you have to give back to the world, according to serial entrepreneur and business legend Sir Richard Branson. He believes people are tired of seeing businesses simply focus on making profits and want to spend their money with companies that make the world a better place. Sir Richard Branson was in Australia to launch the Global Corporate Challenge (GCC) -- a 100-day corporate wellbeing experience focused on improving employee health and productivity. The event has just kicked off with almost 400,000 participants from more than 1,500 organisations in 185 countries expected to participate in 2016. It is the first year the event has taken place since GCC joined the Virgin Pulse family in February this year. Virgin Pulse is the leading provider of software solutions designed to engage employees in improving their wellbeing, build workplace culture, and drive productivity across organisations around the world. Sir Richard Branson said, "I'm excited to be in Australia for the launch of the 2016 GCC. It's my strong belief that business owners have enormous power to do good and this event has been founded on a desire to change people's lives for the better." "Bringing the GCC into the Virgin Pulse family is part of our broader vision to create healthier, more productive workforces. We have already collectively changed the lives of more than 5million people and together, we aim to improve the lives of millions more." GCC CEO Tom Sermon said the GCC's mission was unabashedly about changing lives and said its growth and expansion were proof that socially responsible goals were good for business. "The GCC has grown year-on-year since inception and this year's event is our biggest in history," he said. "We have always been very ambitious about reaching as many people as possible with this concept and by joining forces with Virgin Pulse, we've massively expanded our potential to do that. Over the past 12 years, the GCC has been rolled out in 185 countries worldwide."



"We are absolutely thrilled that together with Virgin Pulse and Sir Richard Branson, we have the opportunity to change the lives of an unprecedented number of people and expand at a pace and scale that we previously could only have dreamed about." Founder and President of GCC Glenn Riseley said, the secret to the programme's success was not only the positive outcomes but the fact that it's incredibly entertaining to do.

"The GCC was always intended to be about taking people on a journey to better health and wellbeing in a way that's so fun and engaging, they don't even notice it's good for them," he said. "We knew early on that you can't bore people into making life changes, it has to be enjoyable so we've really focused on that. We've helped over 2 million people change their lives for the better over the past 12 years and we are looking forward to seeing that number grow dramatically in the years to come." "It's an incredibly rewarding feeling coming to work every day knowing that what we do is going to help people live longer, healthier and happier lives." The GCC features a 100-Day virtual journey as part of a 12-month programme. A second challenge will be held in September for those who missed the May event. For further information, please contact a media representative in your region:

Australia, New Zealand & Asia: Contact Emma Nguyen at [email protected] or +61 3 9536 8160 USA/Canada: Contact Natalie Austin at [email protected] or +1 917 291 2746. UK: Contact Emily Sowden at [email protected] or +44 (0)845 873 9304 or Charlotte Church at [email protected] or +44 (0)3304 30 30 30. Europe: Contact Vicky Kummer at [email protected] or +41 79 932 10 58. ABOUT GCC AND VIRGIN PULSE

GCC, founded in Melbourne Australia in 2004, brings a wealth of global expertise in delivering a culturally relevant programme, which measurably improves the health, engagement and performance of employees around the world. During GCC's evidence-based and scientifically proven 100-Day global journey, participants from thousands of the world's most respected companies engage in friendly competition designed to improve employee engagement, health, productivity and corporate culture. Virgin Pulse, part of Sir Richard Branson's famed Virgin Group, replenishes employees with tools that help them build better habits. Through its award-winning platform, the company helps employees thrive at work and across all aspects of life. The Virgin Pulse platform is purpose-built to deliver a personalised, consumer-grade user experience designed to promote health, productivity, and culture across organisations and employees. With more than 30 years of experience between them, Virgin Pulse and GCC have collectively empowered more than 5 million employees across 6,500 organisations to change their lives, and counting. Find out more at: www.gettheworldmoving.com

www.virginpulse.com Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160527/372913

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160527/372914LOGO

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[May 31, 2016] Creme de la Creme of Business in Hong Kong: COO of iTutorGroup to speak at RISE

SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Hundreds of top CEOs are drawn this week to Hong Kong to attend RISE and Converge, two of the most prestigious conferences of the tech scene in Asia. Over 7,000 RISE attendees are joined by the world's business leaders, major global media and hundreds of investors to meet over the course of four days between May 31  June 3, 2016. For those interested, follow #RISEConf, @WebSummitHQ, @iTutorGroup. RISE is where the corporate world meets with the best global startup scene players whereas Converge is a unique convention for span id="spanHghlt9f71">a selected group of CEOs, investors and innovators to assess how the tech revolution is unfolding in Asia.



What happens at RISE: RISE introduces speakers such as Bob Greifeld , CEO of Nasdaq, Arthur Shen , COO of iTutorGroup or Zach Nelson , CEO of NetSuite who will speak on topics such as the Internet of Things, On-Demand Economy, Big Data and others.

, CEO of Nasdaq, or , CEO of NetSuite who will speak on topics such as Internet of Things, On-Demand Economy, Big Data and others. RISE is a very refreshing, dynamic event that excels in bringing true innovators in the same room. Arthur Shen , COO of iTutorGroup, describes how big data changes online education. "The most effective way to achieve high students' performance outcomes is through personalized and individualized learning. The reason behind our success is our live learning system that is built on big data analytics and a rigorous feedback mechanism that allows us to constantly improve our services based on our customers' feedback resulting in high efficacy and results for our customers."

Online education space has been booming globally for several consecutive years and therefore it is no surprise that iTutorGroup, key player in education space, joins this forum to share its strategic roadmap for growth and confirm its position in the market. While RISE brings masses to Hong Kong, Converge attracts the creme de la creme of business. Converge officially kicks off on June 2 with a day trip to Shenzhen, the Silicon Valley of China, which is when attendees meet with some of the most innovative Chinese companies. About iTutorGroup With more than 5,000 teaching consultants in 60 countries around the world, iTutorGroup is the largest online education platform that provides real-time interactive language training and easy access to experts on-demand through tens of millions of classes annually. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160528/373217 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/creme-de-la-creme-of-business-in-hong-kong-coo-of-itutorgroup-to-speak-at-rise-300276495.html SOURCE iTutorGroup

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[May 31, 2016] OptoLyzer CAN FD Tool Solution Now Available from K2L

KARLSRUHE, Germany, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- K2L GmbH & Co. KG today announced the new OptoLyzer CAN FD tool solution which combines the OptoLyzer MOCCA FD hardware interface with the feature-rich OptoLyzer Studio software. The combination of these two offerings provides a flexible solution that can be applied to different phases of the automotive and engine control unit (ECU) development cycle. It is designed to aid in all stages of development including prototyping, simulation, implementation, analysis and verification. These offerings from K2L help reduce complexity, cost and time for designers, testers and system integrators. The OptoLyzer MOCCA FD and OptoLyzer Studio Software are designed to work for CAN FD, CAN and LIN network development. The OptoLyzer MOCCA FD is a high-performance automotive bus interface. It offers two interfaces that can be configured either as CAN FD, high-speed CAN or single- wire CAN, four high-speed CAN interfaces and six LIN interfaces. K2L's hardware component employs the Microchip MCP2561/2FD CAN FD transceiver. The OptoLyzer Studio software includes a feature-rich graphical user interface that can be used to easily access the OptoLyzer MOCCA FD hardware. The OptoLyzer Studio is an easy-to-use software tool that allows device configurations, like baud rates and bit timing, to be changed easily. In addition, the trace view neatly displays the traffic on the attached buses and the behavior of signals can be observed in a graph view during online measurements. "With the combination of the OptoLyzer MOCCA FD hardware interface and the OptoLyzer Studio software, our automotive customers have one development solution at hand that allows them to efficiently work on CAN FD, CAN and LIN use cases over the entire design process," said Matthias Karcher, senior manager at K2L. "We are proud to offer this solution to our customers and are confident that it will meet their needs." For more information, visit: http://k2l.de/products/hardware Pricing and Availability

The OptoLyzer MOCCA FD is available today from K2L, and is priced at $2,590. The OptoLyzer Studio Foundation CL is available today and priced at $1,290. For additional information, visit the K2L Web site at http://k2l.de/products/solutions/optolyzer-studio Resources

A High-res image of the OptoLyzer MOCCA FD development tool is available by emailing [email protected]. About K2L

K2L GmbH & Co. KG is a provider of development tools for devices that enable data communication over leading-edge automotive networks, such as CANFD, CAN, FlexRay, LIN and MOST technology. K2L's experienced and knowledgeable team provides a wide variety of solutions to fully support the standard V-model software development process used in the design of automotive electronic control units (ECUs). K2L can assist with all phases of the design process, including rapid prototyping, embedded device development, ready-to-run test solutions and highly productive test environments. To further assist with product development, K2L offers software components, engineering services, training modules and workshops, and technical support. For more information, visit the K2L Web site at http://www.k2l.de. Note: OptoLyzer, and MOST are registered trademarks of Microchip Technology Incorporated in the U.S.A. and other countries. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective companies. Tags / Keywords: CAN FD, automotive, networks, tool, hardware, software, CAN, LIN







Editorial Contact: Reader Inquiries: Matthias Karcher +49 721 62537 0 +49 721 625 37 133 [email protected] [email protected] http://www.k2l.de/company/contact

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/optolyzer-can-fd-tool-solution-now-available-from-k2l-300276327.html SOURCE K2L GmbH & Co. KG

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[May 31, 2016] Live.me Reaches Top App Store Charts as Influential Celebrities Join the Streaming Community

LOS ANGELES, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Live.me, the dominant live streaming app making waves with content creators and their fans, today announced it reached the top chart positions last week on both Apple's App Store and Google Play. Over the Memorial Day weekend, Live.me attracted the talents of Amanda Cerny and Anthony Quintal (aka Lohanthony), two internet megastars with a combined social reach of 20 million fans. Their presence on the rapidly growing platform did not go unnoticed, as viewers tuned in to connect with the stars in real-time. Cerny, most popular on Vine and Snapchat, launched her #CernyChallenge, introducing viewers to her incredible workout routine. Meanwhile, Quintal, aka Lohanthony, who boasts 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube, took to the platform for a more traditional Q&A with his fans. Cerny and Quintal are just the latest celebrities to appear on the rapidly growing app. Earlier in May, YouTube Prankster, Roman Atwood also introduced his Live.me channel to his 9 million YouTube subscribers, inviting them to join him n a recent trip to China as he toured the Great Wall and Forbidden City.



One of Live.me's key product benefits is the ability for any broadcaster to earn virtual gifts from their viewers which can then be redeemed for cash or rewards. As viewers give gifts, they climb the rankings to become top fans for each broadcaster.

"We set out to develop an app that focuses on the two things creators and fans care about the most--self-expression and meaningful connections," said Head of Influencer Marketing & Partnerships for Cheetah Mobile, Khudor Annous. "The response from the creator community and their fans has been amazing and we're looking forward to rolling out new features in the coming weeks."

Live.me is currently available on iPhone and Android in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and other select countries. About Live.me Live.me is a leading live broadcasting app designed to serve as the go-to destination for a new wave of mobile content creators. The app has become a home for creators of all formats and interests to create their own community outside of other social media platforms, while earning virtual goods that can be exchanged for prizes, rewards, and cash. Live.me also produces content for the community, acting as a tastemaker for today's consumers through regularly scheduled programming. Whether the moments are extraordinary or ordinary, Live.me helps people connect and become part of a larger story together. http://streamlive.me Press contact Tyler Hayes

[email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/liveme-reaches-top-app-store-charts-as-influential-celebrities-join-the-streaming-community-300276750.html SOURCE Live.me

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[May 31, 2016] Thyristor Market to Grow at 7.16% CAGR Driven by Demand From Electric Vehicles and APAC to 2020

PUNE, India, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the 2016 thyristor market report, the aging power infrastructure in developing nations needs upgrading to incorporate technological advances in the transmission and distribution (T&D) of electricity. Rising global population and urbanization have resulted in increased demand for electricity, especially in developing nations. Thyristors are used in the inverters to convert electricity to drive an AC appliance. Also, the establishment of offshore wind farms will drive the global thyristor market during the forecast period because of their ability to generate more energy using fewer turbines. Complete report on thyristor market spread across 59 pages, analyzing 4 major companies and providing 35 data exhibits now available at http://www.sandlerresearch.org/global-thyristor-market-2016-2020.html . The analysts forecast global thyristor market to grow at a CAGR of 7.16% during the period 2016-2020. Many developed and developing countries have announced investments in smart grids due to aging power infrastructure. Smart grids employ modern electronic systems for advanced T&D of power through the grid. The growing demand for a low carbon emission power system has led to the growth of renewable energy such as wind, solar, geothermal, and hydropower. This rise in demand will drive the thyristor market during the forecast period. Power grids in countries such as the US and China are facing infrastructure-related challenges in their day-to-day operations. With an increase in population and rapid technological advances in the electronics industry (particularly in consumer electronics and industrial electronics), the rate of power consumption has increased. This consequently necessitates an increase in the construction of power grids APAC is expected to record the fastest growth during 2016-2020. Thyristor market accounted for close to USD 1.09 billion in revenue in 2015 and is expected to reach USD 1.6 billion (44.21% of the market's total revenue) in revenues by 2020. The following companies are the key players in te global thyristor market: ABB, Infineon Technologies, Mitsubishi Electric, and ON Semiconductor. Other prominent vendors in the market are: Fairchild Semiconductor, Hitachi, Semikron International, STMicroelectronics, and Toshiba. Order a copy of Global Thyristor Market 2016-2020 report @ http://www.sandlerresearch.org/purchase?rname=55334 .



Offshore wind resources generate more energy by using fewer turbines than traditional electricity grids. More than 91% of the world's offshore wind power generation capacity is installed in northern Europe, in the North Sea, Baltic and Irish Seas, and the English Channel. Offshore wind is an essential component of Europe's binding target to source 20% of its final energy consumption from renewables by 2020. Global Thyristor Market 2016-2020 has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market. The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global thyristor market for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report considers revenue generated from the following applications of thyristors: Industrial electronics, Consumer electronics, and Communications and Automotive electronics.

Another related report is Global DC Drives Market 2015-2019, the analysts forecast global DC drives market to grow at a CAGR of 9.33% over the period 2014-2019. The global DC drives market is negatively affected by the growing trend of manufacturers in industries such as F&B, power, automotive, metal processing and textiles industries replacing DC motors with more efficient AC motors. Globally, the market for AC motors is six to seven times larger than the market for DC motors. The growth of more affordable AC technology and the rising use of inverters in industries have prompted end-users to replace their existing DC systems with AC systems. Browse complete report @ http://www.sandlerresearch.org/global-dc-drives-market-2015-2019.html . Explore other new reports on Semiconductor & Electronics Market @ http://www.sandlerresearch.org/market-research/semiconductor-electronics . About Us: SandlerResearch.org is your go-to source for all market research needs. Our database includes thousands of market research reports from over multiple leading global publishers & in-depth market research studies of over several 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/106598308303011242341/posts Twitter: https://twitter.com/SandlerResearch Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sandler-Research/524957830948790 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCQLoqvZE2Py7AxNeNlBXoA Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/SandlerResearch/ Contact:

Ritesh Tiwari

UNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZ

Magarpatta city, Hadapsar

Pune - 411013

Maharashtra, India.

+1 888 391 5441

[email protected]



SOURCE Sandler Research

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[May 31, 2016] TURN Wins David V Goliath Victory Against AT&T, Keeps Customers Connected

SACRAMENTO, Calif., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Millions of Californians who depend on copper landlines for reliable phone and Internet connections and superior 911 capabilities can breath a sigh of relief today. AT&T sponsored AB 2395 (Low) has been defeated for the time being and held in suspense by the Assembly Appropriations Committee. The bill would have stripped away the few remaining consumer protections California's landline customers have, includng the requirement to provide service in remote rural areas. The Communications Workers of America (CWA) joined TURN in spearheading opposition to AB 2395 due to urgent concerns about consumers being left without dependable service, especially in emergency situations.



"AT&T often gets its way in Sacramento, where it is one of the top spenders on lobbying and political donations," said TURN executive director Mark Toney. "This time, the public outcry was so loud it could not be ignored." Toney said thousands of TURN members had contacted their representatives to urge rejection of the bill. In addition, rural counties, consumer groups, seniors, emergency personnel and workers had all been united in opposition. "Customers still want the choice of copper, and for now they'll be able to keep that," said Toney. "If AT&T wants to take copper away, it should invest in improving the reliability of alternative services, rather than in lobbying to eliminate consumer protections."

Contact: [email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160411/353473LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/turn-wins-david-v-goliath-victory-against-att-keeps-customers-connected-300276727.html SOURCE TURN

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[May 31, 2016] EC Technology Launches Upgraded Version of its hot-selling 3-port 20W USB Faster Wall Charger with Auto IC

Richardson, Texas, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- EC Technology, a supplier of consumer electronic products of high quality, is launching a star product -- EC [email protected] 3-port 20 Watt USB Fast Charger with Auto IC. There is no need to worry about plugging devices into the wrong port because the new 3-port USB Fast Charger can detect the current input of your devices automatically and detect the most suitable output. The company has improved its original hot-selling design on several aspects, including: Higher output of 20 watt s through 3 ports. You can simultaneously charge one tablet and two smartphones, even two tablets and an iPad Air all with high-speed.

through 3 ports. You can charge one tablet and two smartphones, even two tablets and iPad Air all with high-speed. Certified and confirmed by ROHS, CE, and FCC. You can be assured that you are safe. It will automatically power off once the battery is charg ed to 100% capacity so as to prolong batter y life.

to 100% capacity so as to prolong batter life. Multiple Protection: The textured high-grade flame-retardant plastic shell combined with over-charged, over-discharged, over-voltage, over-current and short-circuit protection protect the charger from damage.

Size: 2.2 x 1.8 x 1.0 in, 2.4oz, suitable for traveling.

It can detect the current output for your devices intelligently and give your devices the most suitable charging speed. The maximum charging speed is up to 2.4A per port. Esther Ng, CEO of EC Technology remarked upon the release, We are glad that our charger product is gaining popularity among customers. The engineers and staff at EC Technology have taken one step further to make the product more user-friendly. We considered all ideas from our customers to improve the original design. We'd love to release more and more hot-selling products that will be as popular among consumers all over the world."



About EC Technology LLC Headquartered in Richardson, Texas, with branches and subsidiaries in other parts of the world including mainland China, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and Germany, EC Technology LLC strives to offer the latest consumer electronic products and accessories with fashionable designs and premium quality to more and more consumers around the world, making their life easier and more efficient. The company values the needs of global clients and the marketplace by upgrading the existing products and improving customer experience. The commitment to customers is well-recognized by the 12-month comprehensive warranty for every product and the dedicated marketing and the after-sales service support provided to customers worldwide. For more information, please visit the company's website at www.iectechnology.com

Follow EC on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, Tumblr. Relevant websites: Official website: http://www.iectechnology.com/

On Amazon US store: http://amzn.to/2517e8t

On Amazon UK store: http://amzn.to/1NuXFsL

On Amazon DE store: http://amzn.to/2517oN7 Media Contact: Rita

+86-755-3660-0226

[email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ec-technology-launches-upgraded-version-of-its-hot-selling-3-port-20w-usb-faster-wall-charger-with-auto-ic-300276765.html SOURCE EC Technology LLC

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[May 31, 2016] Best New Technology in Simulation-Driven Design: Altair HyperWorks 14.0 Releases Latest Free Student Edition

TROY, Mich., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Altair recently released the latest HyperWorks 14.0 Student Edition, making it the most comprehensive computer-aided engineering (CAE) suite available to aspiring structural and mechanical engineers. Altair HyperWorks is the most comprehensive, open architecture CAE simulation platform in the industry, offering the best technologies to design and optimize high performance, weight efficient and innovative products. HyperWorks includes best-in-class modeling, linear and nonlinear analyses, structural and system-level optimization, fluid and multi-body dynamics simulation, electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) and antenna placement, multiphysics analysis, model-based development, and data management solutions. The free HyperWorks 14.0 Student Edition brings all these features directly to students around the world and can be easily installed on any PC or laptop. The Student Edition is based on HyperWorks Desktop, an integrated user environment for modeling and visualization. It can be used to pre-and post-process finite element and multi-body dynamics simulations as well as to manage and visualize simulation results and test data. The latest release of Altair's HyperWorks Student Edition includes several new products, feature enhancements and updated functionalities  just like the regular HyperWorks version. Key highlights of the latest release are:

FEKO, the best-in-class software for electromagnetic simulation related to antenna design and placement, electromagnetic compatibility, radar cross-section, and other applications is now part of the Student Edition. An integration with HyperStudy has been added for advanced optimization.

OptiStruct's capabilities hae been elevated to include more nonlinear analyses, new contact and optimization algorithms, and numerous improvements in solution speed. A breakthrough solution for the design and optimization of lattice structures has been developed to support additive manufacturing.

MotionSolve now provides improved 3D rigid-to-rigid contact and advanced co-simulation capabilities.

Extended limitations for model calculation.



Matthias Goelke , Director, Academic Markets at Altair. "Its several solution methods with true hybridization will help students to receive efficient results for a wide range of problems. I'm also extremely happy about the extension of model limitation to 100,000 nodes for finite element solvers, since it will offer students more freedom to really work with the software. The students of today are the engineers of tomorrow and Altair always strives to support the education of future professionals with freely available software solutions and a broad range of support, including training, events, our moderated online forum, a learning library with videos, tutorials, a dedicated Learning & Certification Program and much more." The license file of HyperWorks 14 Student Edition is valid for one year and supports multiple CAD formats as well as the import and export of HyperWorks Solver data.

The software is free of charge and available via the Altair Academic Website. Extensive learning resources designed especially for students may be found in the Altair Learning Library. In addition, Altair provides students on-demand interactive support through the moderated Academic Support Forum and an extensive Learning & Certification Program. About Altair

Altair is focused on the development and broad application of simulation technology to synthesize and optimize designs, processes and decisions for improved business performance. Privately held with more than 2,600 employees, Altair is headquartered in Troy, Michigan, USA and operates more than 45 offices throughout 22 countries. Today, Altair serves more than 5,000 corporate clients across broad industry segments. To learn more, please visit www.altair.com. Media Contacts

Altair Corporate/North America

Biba A. Bedi

+1-757-224-0548 x 406

[email protected] Altair Europe, the Middle East and Africa

Evelyn Gebhardt

+49-6421-9684351

[email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/best-new-technology-in-simulation-driven-design-altair-hyperworks-140-releases-latest-free-student-edition-300276625.html SOURCE Altair

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[May 31, 2016] Lockheed Martin Selected to Continue Technical Support to Maintain and Enhance Micro-EARTS Air Traffic Control Automation Program

GAITHERSBURG, Md., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) was recently selected to continue technical support of the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA's) Microprocessor-En Route Automated Radar Tracking System (Micro-EARTS). This system receives and integrates air traffic data from multiple surveillance sources and displays the information for use in air traffic control. Micro-EARTS is currently installed in four FAA facilities at Alaska, Guam, Puerto Rico, Hawaii and at the FAA Academy and the William J. Hughes Technical Center. With more than 20 years of operative proficiency for the National Airspace System, the Micro-EARTS program is an easily adapted and scalable system. This platform, used in large consolidated facilities as well as small configurations, provides common air traffic control functionality to all Micro-EARTS sites with a standar software and hardware model. Under this new five-year contract valued at $28.3 million, Lockheed Martin will continue to support the FAA in the analysis, design, development and testing of air traffic control functionalities for Micro-EARTS within this program.



"In conjunction with the FAA, Lockheed Martin developed and deployed Micro-EARTS and continues to provide development and maintenance support," said Paul Engola, vice president of transportation and financial solutions at Lockheed Martin Information Systems & Global Solutions. "We value our more than 60-year partnership with FAA to enhance efficiency and safety through air traffic control automation. We look forward to providing life-cycle support services that ensure Micro-EARTS is a superior automation system for years to come as it serves its important sites and integrates with FAA's NextGen capabilities." For additional information, visit our website: www.lockheedmartin.com .

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. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110419/PH85737LOGO-b To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lockheed-martin-selected-to-continue-technical-support-to-maintain-and-enhance-micro-earts-air-traffic-control-automation-program-300276373.html SOURCE Lockheed Martin

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Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31

By Emil Ilgar - Trend:

The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) signed a contract with Iran Oil Ministry to manufacture an ultra centrifuge for oil research projects, Shana reported.

This type of centrifuge works with high-performance speeds of up to 50-100 thousand revolutions per minute (RPM) to separate particles.

The report didn't give futher details about the ultra centrifuge, but currently Iran produces centrifuges with 20,000 RPM and preparing to produce new ones with 50-80 thousand RPM, Ali Akbar Salehi the head of AEOI said on May 31, Fars reported.

Iran unveiled 12 new nuclear achievements on April 7, including the ultra and zonal centrifuges.

Centrifuge, mostly known as a machine for enriching uranium, is used also in other spheres, especially in research projects. Ultra centrifuges are used in biological and biochemical spheres.
[May 31, 2016] Frank D'Angelo's Sicilian Vampire, starts playing on Video-On-Demand June 1st

TORONTO, May 31st, 2016 /CNW/ - After a successful run in theatres, the feature film Sicilian Vampire, will be available in worldwide distribution on Video-On-Demand starting June 1st on all major video platforms. Sicilian Vampire has been one of the most anticipated Frank D'Angelo films of the year, and one of the most talked about films on the film festival circuit. Now, people who missed it in theatres will have the opportunity to see it in their own homes at the time of their choosing. Written, directed and produced by Frank D'Angelo, Sicilian Vampire stars such outstanding actors such as James Caan, Daryl Hannah, Paul Sorvino, Robert Loggia, Armand Assante, Robert Davi, Michael Pare, Eric Roberts, Daniel Baldwin, Tony Nardi and Frank D'Angelo. Equal parts Goodfellas and Dusk till Dawn, Sicilian Vampire tells the story of reputed mobster Sonny Trafficante who was hoping to get away to the family hunting lodge for a little rest and relaxation and create some memories. Instead, what he gets is a night he will never forget in a story which takes movie lovers on a whirlwind journey of action, suspense and drama that can only come from the mind of Frank D'Angelo.



"Not everyone can possibly get to a movie theatre to see a film so we welcome this new opportunity to showcase Sicilian Vampire to the world with an amazing star-studded cast, and the thrill-a-minute exciting story." Frank D'Angelo has written, produced, directed and acted in four feature films in the last three years and has now completed his fifth film The Red Maple Leaf. One of his most ambitious projects to date, The Red Maple Leaf is dedicated to Robert Loggia and Doris Roberts as it was the last film that the two great actors starred in along with other Oscar-winning and nominated actors Martin Landau, James Caan, Mira Sorvino, Kris Kristofferson, Paul Sorvino, Laurie Fortier, Frank D'Angelo and many others. D'Angelo's earlier films include No Deposit (a story about a family man, who falls from grace through a series of downward spiraling events beyond his control), The Big Fat Stone (a story of a homeless man who, simply by being at the right place at the right time, gets a chance at a new life), and Frank's first film, Real Gangsters (the story of the Lo Giacomo family, one of the most successful crime syndicates in New York City), are currently in worldwide release through Video-On-Demand networks.

The success of the films has spurred a national Canadian concert tour for Frank D'Angelo and his 15-piece band in which he performs songs from the soundtracks of his movies which he wrote and scored. Tour dates and venues are available at http://frankdangelo.ca/events. Frank D'Angelo is a screen writer, director, actor, musician and Canadian talk show host. As a performer, he knew there was a big void in Canada for Canadians to promote their talents and so he created The Being Frank Show, a nationally broadcast late night talk/variety show. It has boasted guests and show business luminaries such as Al Pacino, Paul Newman, Tony Bennett, Graham Greene, Bill Fichtner, Kim Coates, Estella Warren, Bai Ling, Reggae Rapper Snow, Pavlo, Dan Hill, Ian Thomas, Murray McLauchlan, Missi Pyle, Kevin Hearn of The Barenaked Ladies and many, many more. The Being Frank Show has just completed taping its 6th season. SOURCE In Your Ear Productions Ltd.

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[May 31, 2016] Sikorsky Successfully Completes DARPA ALIAS Phase 1 Competition with Autonomous Flight

STRATFORD, Conn., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) Company, has successfully demonstrated a 30-mile autonomous flight using a Sikorsky S-76 commercial helicopter to complete Phase 1 of an $8 million award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)'s Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS) program. Sikorsky's ALIAS system directed the rotorcraft flight demonstration from Sikorsky's Stratford, Connecticut, facility to Robertson Airport in Plainville, Connecticut, utilizing autonomous technology capabilities. This flight highlighted the ability for an operator to plan and execute every phase of an autonomous mission with a tablet device. During the demonstration, a ground station crew located at the flight initiation field monitored the progress of the ALIAS-enabled Sikorsky Autonomy Research Aircraft (SARA), an S-76 commercial helicopter. A video of the demonstration is available online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLZEpy6Gf-k. The objective of DARPA's ALIAS program is to develop and insert new levels of automaion into existing military and commercial aircraft to enable those aircraft to operate with reduced onboard crew. ALIAS seeks to leverage advances in autonomy that reduce pilot workload, augment mission performance, and improve aircraft safety and reliability.



Sikorsky utilized its Matrix Technology introduced in 2013 to develop, test and field hardware and software systems that significantly improve optionally piloted and piloted vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft. Sikorsky has installed MATRIX on both SARA and a BLACK HAWK helicopter. "With the advances we've made, the capability for safe, unobtrusive optionally piloted flight is here," said Mark Miller, Vice President of Engineering & Technology at Sikorsky. "ALIAS is expanding the role of optionally piloted helicopters for early entry into established aircraft programs. It has the capability of not only reducing aircrew size, but also changing the type and length of training required for safe operation."

With work on ALIAS Phase 1 complete, Sikorsky has begun Phase 2 of the program. DARPA awarded Sikorsky a $9.8 million modification for the competition's second phase, which focuses on continued maturation of the initial ALIAS system with additional flight tests, enhancements to the human interface and transition to additional aircraft to demonstrate ALIAS portability.

"The current environment limits the creation of new, optionally piloted platforms. What Sikorsky and DARPA are demonstrating is the successful and affordable integration of advanced technology onto existing legacy aircraft to not only set the stage for autonomous operations down the road, but also to immediately improve aircraft performance, reduce maintenance costs, and increase crew and passenger safety," said Chris Van Buiten, Vice President of Sikorsky Innovations, the technology research group for the Engineering & Technology organization. "We are delighted to be working with DARPA on this transformational program," Van Buiten added. 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. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20141118/159313LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sikorsky-successfully-completes-darpa-alias-phase-1-competition-with-autonomous-flight-300277081.html SOURCE Lockheed Martin

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[May 31, 2016] Specialty Online Retailer Rue La La Selects InterTrade's Product Catalogue Solution for Enhanced Supply Chain Collaboration with its Trading Partners

LAVAL, QC, May 31, 2016 /CNW Telbec/ - InterTrade Systems Inc., an industry leader in supply chain collaboration covering both EDI VAN and catalogue solutions, announced today that US online retailer Rue La La (www.ruelala.com) has selected InterTrade as its exclusive product catalogue solution provider. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160530/373401LOGO) InterTrade's catalogue solution, ecCatalogue, will serve as the platform for Rue La La to synchronize and integrate critical product information from its suppliers & trading partners. Through InterTrade's product catalogue solution, Rue La La will automate the collection of detailed product information from all of its suppliers in one single location. Critical product data includes GTIN/UPC codes, descriptions and dimensions, as well as rich content like product images. This solution plays an important role for online retailers like Rue La La to reduce their go-to-market cycle, from merchandise planning to the publication of richer product descriptions on their online storefronts. With InterTrade's product catalogue, Rue La La looks to unlock new efficiencies in its overall procurement and increase its speed to market. "We are thrilled to welcome Rue La La and their vendors to the InterTrade ecCatalogue", said Tony D'Angelo, InterTrade's Sales & Marketing Vice President. "Our team of specialists is excited to roll out this project and work closely with Rue La La and their vendors to streamline their supply chain operations." Lisa Rhodes, Chief Merchandising Officer, Rue La La affirms, ''we are pleased that we can now intrduce our brand partners to an efficient electronic catalog that will replace the current time consuming process."



''With each new client relationship, we make sure to listen to their retail supply chain challenges'', adds Andreanne Simon, InterTrade's General Manager. ''Our objective at InterTrade is to continuously improve our services to provide solutions that respond to the evolving needs of our clients and add tangible value to their operations. With this in mind, we look forward to collaborating with Rue La La and supporting their growth.'' About InterTrade Systems

Since its creation in 1996, InterTrade Systems has established itself as a partner of choice for companies, large and small, seeking to address their supply chain challenges and associated EDI needs. As a Tier-1 EDI VAN and Catalogue solutions provider, InterTrade is recognized for its strong expertise in EDI networking solutions as well as its product data synchronization (catalogues) offering. Its experienced team caters to thousands of clients, with top marquee international companies. InterTrade became an even stronger player in the market in 2010 by joining Mediagrif Interactive Technologies Inc. (TSX: MDF). Find more information about InterTrade at www.intertrade.com or by calling 1-800-873-7803. LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/company/15970

Twitter profile: @InterTradeSys About Mediagrif Interactive Technologies Mediagrif Interactive Technologies Inc. (TSX: MDF) is a Canadian leader in information technology, owner of several recognized web and mobile platforms including InterTrade, Jobboom, LesPAC, Reseau Contact, MERX, Carrus and BidNet. Mediagrif's e-commerce solutions are used by millions of consumers and businesses in North America and around the world. Mediagrif has offices in Canada, the United States and China. For more information, please visit us at www.mediagrif.com or call 1-877-677-9088. About Rue La La

Rue La La strives to be the most engaging off-price, online style destination connecting world-class brands with the next generation shopper. Each day, Rue La La Members discover the most desired men's, women's and children's apparel and accessories; home decor and accents; and exclusive destinations and experiences. Rue La La's engaging approach to retail has brought theatre and excitement to online shopping, creating a captivating e-commerce destination that strategically supports its brand partners and inspires its Members daily. Rue La La is ranked #11 on Internet Retailer's 2014 Mobile 500 List and was recognized as the 2012 Mobile Merchandiser of the Year by Mobile Commerce Daily. Visit us at www.ruelala.com. SOURCE InterTrade Systems Inc.

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[May 31, 2016] Workiva Leads XBRL US Data Quality Committee That Reduced Errors by 64 Percent

AMES, Iowa, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Workiva (NYSE:WK), creator of the Wdesk cloud-based productivity platform for enterprises, leads the XBRL US Data Quality Committee (DQC), which today announced that filers using its validation rules significantly reduced errors in their data covered by the rules and submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the first quarter of 2016 as compared to the first quarter of 2015. Overall, public companies that used the DQC rules reduced errors by 64 percent. Large accelerated filers saw a 70 percent drop in the number of errors, while smaller companies saw a 60 percent decrease in errors. The DQC develops guidance and rules that are designed to improve the usability of XBRL data submitted to the SEC. "We are pleased with the early success of the DQC, and we expect a further decrease in the number of errors in the data covered by the Committee's rules as more public companies comply," said Mike Starr, Vice President for Governmental and Regulatory Affairs for Workiva, who chairs the DQC. "Our Wdesk platform is certified for incorporating the DQC's initial set of validation ules, which automates compliance for our customers," said Marty Vanderploeg, President and COO of Workiva. "Our customers accounted for more than 50 percent of the XBRL facts filed with the SEC in the first quarter of 2016. We want to help them be confident that their filings are complete and accurate before submitting them to the SEC."



The DQC, which approved its first set of validation rules last November, expects to release its second set of rules in June for public exposure and comment. Wdesk plans to incorporate each new set of rules as the DQC approves them for final release. About Workiva

Workiva (NYSE:WK) created Wdesk, a cloud-based productivity platform for enterprises to collect, link, report and analyze business data with control and accountability. Thousands of organizations, including over 65 percent of the Fortune 500, use Wdesk. The platform's proprietary word processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications are integrated and built upon a data management engine, offering synchronized data, controlled collaboration, granular permissions and a full audit trail. Wdesk helps mitigate enterprise risk, improve productivity and give users confidence to make decisions with real-time data. Workiva employs more than 1,200 people with offices in 16 cities. The company is headquartered in Ames, Iowa. For more information, visit workiva.com.

Claim not confirmed by FORTUNE or Time Inc. FORTUNE 500 is a registered trademark of Time Inc. and is used under license. FORTUNE and Time Inc. are not affiliated with, and do not endorse products or services of, Workiva Inc. Contact:

Kevin McCarthy

Workiva Inc.

(515) 663-4471

[email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150213/175372LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/workiva-leads-xbrl-us-data-quality-committee-that-reduced-errors-by-64-percent-300277203.html SOURCE Workiva Inc.

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Powerball numbers for Monday, Oct. 24, 2022

Here are the winning Powerball numbers and results for the lottery jackpot drawing on Monday, Oct. 24, 2022.
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31

By Emil Ilgar - Trend:

Iran has unveiled the volume of current oil export to Greece.

Iran sends very large crude carriers (VLCC) to Greece every month, Mohsen Qamsari, the international affairs director at the National Iranian Oil Company, told Mehr news agency on May 31.

He said that Greece is responsible for paying the cost of crude shipping.

Qamsari added that Hellenic Petroleum purchases 60,00 0 barrels per day (b/d) of Iranian crude.

Before sanctions, imposed on Iran in mid-2012, Greece was importing 120,000 b/d of Iranian oil. Sanctions on Iran was eliminated in mid-January 2016.

Hellenic Petroleum is estimated to have a debt of 500 to 600 million euros to National Iranian Oil Company for the oil purchased before the nuclear-related sanctions were imposed on Iran.

The EU stopped to oil import from Iran in 2012, but Iranian officials say the country resumed oil export to EU.

Before sanctions, EU was importing 800,000 b/d of Iranian oil.
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In the three-and-a-half years following the release of his debut album, 2012s Little Bear, Melbourne based songwriter David James Young  who performs under the moniker of nothing rhymes with david  is back with his sophomore album Things Work Out For People Like You.

During the production of Things Work Out For People Like You, David went through the ringer big time. He wrote an entire album, scrapped nearly all of it, quit playing shows (twice) and contemplated putting away his upside-down guitar for good.

Across the course of 2014 and 2015, David found his footing and regained his confidence. Even still, he also found out the hard way that in life, there are winners and there are losers.

This is where his second album comes into the picture, in which the title says more than years of struggle ever could: Things Work Out for People Like You. Described by David as a day in the life of a loser, the album collates 10 songs that detail both the fantastical and the all-too-real.

Thankfully he didnt throw everything out the window, because Things Work Out For People Like You has quickly made its mark as one the most exciting local LPs to come out in 2016.

To celebrate its release David has penned a track by tarck accompaniment to the LP which you can check out below along with the stream, give it a listen and if you like what youre hearing be sure to visit Davids Facebook page.

Bones Sloane

This song was originally in double drop-D standard  ie. DADGBD  but during the recording process, my producer Kai suggested trying an open D major tuning.

It ended up working a lot better  theres just something about that tuning thats so interesting, and it worked particularly well with my guitar. Theres a big Lemuria influence on this song  I picked the 6/8 time signature after listening to their song Wise People, and the use of vocal layering is one very much inspired by the way Sheena Ozzella and Alex Kerns voices go together.

As for the title, its named after Courtney Barnetts bass player  a deadset legend in his own right. Its not about him.

Numb Chomsky

Theres a famous story of Keith Richards having Satisfaction come to him in a dream. While Im no Keef, and this song aint no Satisfaction, I had a similar experience. I really wanted to write a country song after seeing Austin Lucas live, and one Sunday afternoon after a nap, I woke up with two things: An A-minor chord and the phrase You wont survive.

Its a bitter song, but arent all country songs in their own way? This was really filled out with the assistance of two mates of mine  Dave Muratore and Koby Geddes. Dave plays drums in one of my favourite bands, mowgli, and also plays guitar in the band Stockley. Here, he played mandolin and really brought the folk-country vibes.

The rock & roll swagger is courtesy of Kobys exceptional lead guitar. He plays in Dividers and Bagster, and he knows his way around a bloody fretboard. Was very happy with how this turned out  my ten-gallon hat goes off to both of them.

Majority Report

Song #537 about how and why David doesnt fit in. Partially inspired by Tom Cruise, The League, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Dan Mangan, All Our Exes Live in Texas, Facebook, The Magic Numbers and David Bazan (in fact, the first line of the song is directly lifted from his song Hard to Be).

Its a song that took about five years to live and maybe a day to write. My brother sings on this song. Hes in a rock band called Jacob who you should definitely check out.

Get Title, Change Slightly

In the spirit of The Smith Street Bands Get High, See Mice and Get High, See No-One, as well as Lincoln Le Fevres Get Drunk, See Bands, Jen Buxtons Get Drunk, Text Linc and Luca Brasis Get Sad, See Mates.

Its about the friends that Ive made through music, particularly interstate. Kai plays slide guitar on this song, using a custom made four-string guitar that was shaped out of a cigar box. Its fantastic.

Sex, God and Katy Perry

This stems from my love of power-pop, from Cheap Trick to Cheap Girls and back again. I wanted something straight-forward and with a solid rock energy. I dont play an acoustic on this, which is one of the only songs I have which doesnt have acoustic guitar on the recording.

Its made up of a few different songs that I was working, a bit of a Voltron operation in which I got to blend some half-formed songs and make a complete one. Also a funny bit of trivia: I wanted the bass to follow the chord progression of Rebellion (Lies) by Arcade Fire, and I legitimately send back a version so that Kai copied it note for note. So its a direct and intentional rip-off of Rebellion (Lies). Suck it, Delta!

Song of the Square Peg (99% Scene Free)

This song has a bracket and is the only song that directly references a song lyric in its title thanks to Mark Gibbons, a friend of mine who uploaded a video of me playing the song in Canberra and gave it the wrong title.

Still, Im used to it by now. It reminds me of Stay (I Missed You) by Lisa Loeb  and I fucking love that song. As for the song itself, Ill say this much: It took me 10 minutes to write and I think people enjoy it a load more than the songs I spent ages on. Maybe I should just stop overthinking.

Babies Hate Black Sabbath

I have Aspergers, which is a form of Autism. I have often found it difficult to communicate with completely-new people and cannot hold eye contact. For some reason, all of that goes away when I meet little kids  really little, anyway, under five.

It could just be the fact Im a dumb, gentle giant, but sometimes kids get me better than adults ever will. Ive shared a few stories about meeting kids like that and having them completely light up my entire day.

Sure, theres a few that find me terrifying  I am, after all, the largest living thing that they have seen up to that point in their lives. I always fondly remember any little one that has brought me joy.

This is a love letter to the ones Ive met through shows that were quite literally all-ages, as well as to the parents and step-parents that have made these kids who they are today.

Carrie Fishers Dog

Nick van Breda is a Sydney-born, New York-based songwriter who is one half of the band Pinch Hitter and also used to play in Staying At Home and Lights Out. This guy forgets better songs than I have ever thought of  literally, in this instance.

I took an old unreleased song that he had long since kicked to the curb and reworked it for this album. He gave me the choice to name it whatever I wanted, so I went onto Twitter and the first thing I saw was a picture of what the song is named after.

Zombie by The Cranberries by Andrew Jackson Jihad by Nothing Rhymes with David

The band formerly known as Andrew Jackson Jihad (now AJJ) have a song called Zombie by The Cranberries by Andrew Jackson Jihad that has nothing to do with Zombie by The Cranberries. This song has nothing to do with either song. I just thought it was funny.

I wrote the lyrics when I was about 17 years old after watching The Science of Sleep. I forgot about them until I was cleaning out some drawers and found them scribbled down on a piece of paper. The guitar is some Nick Drake-wannabe stuff that I was trying out in order to try and stretch myself as a guitar player. Im still not very good, but at least it sounds pretty.

Half Those Songs Were About You

I told myself that I had to stop writing about my last relationship. So this is the last song I wrote about my last relationship. The organ-drone keys are a nice touch. Funeral-esque. Fitting.
You may have heard some rumblings about dissatisfaction brewing amongst the publishers and authors of Australia. Something about copyright and intellectual property and Tim Winton is very upset. Well, they have reason to be upset, and so do you.

A Music News Australia reports, the governments Productivity Commission has issued a draft report on their inquiry into Intellectual Property in Australia. Its a convoluted and honestly exhausting read, but the Cliffs Notes are certainly worrying.

The recommendations highlighted in the report are potentially devastating for all creative industries, not just publishing. Bands and musicians have just as much reason to be concerned, particularly when copyright is such a crucial revenue source.

The most perturbing aspect of the commissions report is its recommendation that the term for copyright in Australia be shortened from 70 years after a creators death to 15-to-25 years after the content has been created.

Since many musicians rely on royalties from their copyrighted material, the ramifications of such a recommendation becoming official policy are obvious. Music makers would essentially be stripped of their rights to their own work within 15 years.

Music Australia is currently drafting a response to the report, citing other recommendations such as not pursuing action against consumers who circumvent geoblocking technology and the issue of fair use as also being cause for concern.

The report is recommending fair dealing be replaced with fair use, they write. This is another contested issue  the task will be to strike a balance that encourages innovation by rights users, while also properly remunerating rights owners, without undue complexity.

[include_post id=477172]

There are recommendations in the report that would drastically change intellectual property arrangements, which are not backed by sound evidence. This brings into question the motivations behind this approach, and the potential for adverse impacts.

Music Australia is urging any interested parties to make submissions to the Productivity Commission by 3rd June via the Productivity Commission website. The commissions final report is due to be released in August, following the Federal Election.

According to the Canberra Times, the 15-to-25-year time period was agreed upon by the commission after ABS figures showed three-quarters of original literary works were retired after a year, with the commercial life of a book ranging between 1.4 and five years.

But such a conclusion completely ignores other creative industries that rely on copyright as its lifeblood, particularly music, which is becoming more and more dependent on syncs and other intellectual property matters to sustain itself.
If you dont remember WAH-WAH, theyre basically the coolest merch makers in Australia. Their speciality is daggy-style dad sweaters that are actually happen to be incredibly cool.

In particular, they have a range of jumpers inspired by some great Australian bands, including King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, The Meanies, and Oz punk legends The Hard Ons.

More recent additions to their range include a Dinosaur Jr sweater and now, a special edition Silverchair Frogstomp sweater to celebrate 21 years since the release of the album.

WAH-WAH is taking a trip down memory lane! Can you believe it has been 21 years since three unassuming young teens from the Newcastle suburb of Merewether released their debut album Frogstomp? they write.

Happy 21st Birthday! Heres a knitted merino wool jumper to celebrate! We will be taking pre-orders till the 5th of June, so get in quick! In the words of Silverchair themselves (almost), Fat boy, (dont) wait till tomorrow.

Admittedly, the jumpers are a little pricey at $240 each, but just think of them as haute couture band merch. You can visit the WAH-WAH website and pre-order your own Frogstomp sweater here.
If youve been following the local news over the past few days, youre well aware that former Australian Idol host James Mathison has announced his intention to challenge former Prime Minister of Australia Tony Abbott for the seat of Warringah.

The TV presenter and now independent political candidate is confident he can beat the veteran politician by attacking him from the left flank, campaigning on issues such as marriage equality and childcare, where Abbott was famously lacking during his tenure as PM.

Hes already managed to gain quite a bit of traction online and the sentiment seems to be equal parts people who would ironically vote for the former host of Australian Idol and those who genuinely support Mathison and his political platform.

Of course, that platform is still a little unclear at this point. Sure, we love James because hes a familiar face, seems to genuinely care about people (unlike Abbott), and posts Rage Against the Machine lyrics on Facebook, but what are his specific policies?

Well, hes about to clear all of that up. Mathison will appear on triple js Hack at 5.30pm today to discuss his policies, his plans, and whether this is all just a publicity stunt with host Tom Tilley. Make sure you tune in.
One of our smarter TKC blog denizens says this: "This is the only way KCP&L can grow anymore, by snatching up other utilities. I don't think they wanted to be surrounded by Ameren on both sides. Pretty soon it will be on huge Midwestern utility trying to buy all the politicos to keep out competition. They will need a 15% rate increase just to pay for all the lawyers needed to make the merger happen!" Read more: Great Plains Energy to Buy Westar Energy for $8.6 Billion
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31

Trend:

Russian gas company Gazprom will hold talks with Azerbaijan in June on the possible supply of the Russian gas to the country, TASS news agency reported citing Alexander Medvedev, deputy chairman of Gazprom's Management Committee.

"The Azerbaijani side is interested in this issue. We will hold a meeting soon, possibly even during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, and define the Azerbaijani side's need [in gas]," he added.

Medvedev also said there is a need in Azerbaijan to buy the Russian gas.
AS WE START THIS SUMMER OF POLITICKING, NOTICE SOME STRIDENT HILLARY SUPPORTERS ATTACKING ALL THE MALE DEMOCRATIC PARTY HOPEFULS IN A DESTRUCTIVE POWER PLAY THAT THREATENS TO ERASE IMPORTANT GAINS IN THE MISSOURI GENERAL ASSEMBLY!!!

TKC EXCLUSIVE: NOW CRYSTAL AND HER "GIRL POWER COVEN" HAVE TARGETED THE COMMITTEE FOR COUNTY PROGRESS WITH A FAUX SUPPORT FOR INEXPERIENCED FEMALE CANDIDATES!!! THE 'GIRL POWER' RHETORIC IS MEAN-SPIRITED AND PRETTY MUCH CALLS ANYBODY WHO DOESN'T SUPPORT THEIR LADY DRINKING BUDDIES A MISOGYNIST!!!

It seems the Kansas City "girl power" and mindless Red State support for Hillary threatens more Democratic party contenders than anybody else.To wit . . .Again, it's worth repeating that this divisive and expensive strategy was designed by Jackson County Legislative Chair who hopes to fracture the otherwise united KCMO Democrats with a gender debate that's lost on everyone outside of the Midtown Kansas City bar districts.But it gets worse . . .That's right, in some Kansas City Democratic Party circles . . . Failure to support Hillary and a slate of unproven local party babes is akin to a hate crime.Right now there are just a few locals who are outraged by this Kansas City "girl power political bullying" and would rather judge candidates on their merits. But what's important for this blog community is that our cadre of critics, skeptics and d-bags are often mentioned in this local chatter crafted by a failed lady politico who burned just about every bridge she had for a shaky gig at the courthouse.You decide . . .
Oman government has signed a vital agreement for an operation system for the different municipal and water services across the sultanate, said a report.



The three-phase project comes in a bid to meet the requirements of the e-government and provide quality efficient integrated services, reported Oman Observer, citing a senior minister.



The first phase involves the e-municipal and water licences, while the second will cover the installation of the operation system for the different municipal and water services alongside customer services, mobile and PDA applications, stated Ahmed bin Abdullah Ak Shuhi, Minister of Regional Municipalities and Water Resources, who signed the agreement.



The third package is related to providing maintenance and technical support for the devices and systems.



While the first and second package will be implemented within 12 months, the third package will be implemented in three years starting from the operation and the activation of the municipal and water services to customers, he added.
JustProperty.com, a leading UAE property portal and a member of JRD Group, has launched two new bi-lingual portals for Bahrain and Jordan as part of its regional expansion strategy.



A forerunner among Middle East real estate portals, JustProperty.com acheived an impressive growth trajectory over the last six months, making its debut in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, said a senior company official.



The objective of our entry into Bahrain and Jordan is two-fold. We are committed to offering advanced and contemporary property search tools to property seekers, sellers and investors in these countries; ultimately with the long-term view of contributing to the growth and evolution of local property markets, remarked Alex Nicholas, the chief executive and founding partner of JRD Group.



The groups accelerated expansion plan this year remains on-track as the portal aims to increase its presence in key growth markets in the region, stated Nicholas.



"We are passionate about the people we serve and these new portals will bring us closer to our end-users, agencies and developers in Bahrain and Jordan. Our local presence is key to keeping us in tune with user needs so that we can continuously innovate new ways for people to effectively find that perfect home or office," he added.



According to Nicholas, technology is the backbone across all the groups portals and is a defining factor when it comes to user experience.



"Prospective tenants and investors uniformly find our property listings authentic and rich-in-detail. Thats because we encourage and ensure that real estate professionals who use our proprietary software PropSpace only publish listings that meet our rigorous quality standards," he noted.



In Nicholas view, these countries offer compelling growth prospects and lack a distinct leader in terms of the online property search market, making them attractive locations to launch in.



Both portals, he said, have received an excellent response since going live.



Weve received an overwhelming response from the community and were looking forward to building on this momentum over the course of this year, he added.



In the coming months, JRD Group aims to launch several more property portals across the Mena region, leveraging its pioneering and technologically advanced offering to new markets.-TradeArabia News Service
The National Shipping Company of Saudi Arabia (Bahri) has further expanded its global footprint with the appointment of Cantabrian Integrated Logistic Services (CILS) as its general agent in Spain.



The move will help Bahri consolidate its presence in Europe and assume an even higher profile within the global shipping industry, said a statement from the company.



More than 140 representatives of the Spanish industry recently visited the Naval Museum in Madrid to attend the official presentation of Bahri. The event was organised by CILS with the support of the Association of Public Administration Contractor Companies (Aesmide), it said.



Ibrahim Al Omar, CEO of Bahri, said: From a small shipping firm operating multipurpose vessels, our company has grown to become one of the biggest shipping conglomerates in the world and today occupies a preeminent position in the global shipping industry.



The appointment of a general agent in Spain represents an important next step in our growth, and is in line with our strategy to more aggressively tap emerging opportunities in key international markets, he said.



Matthew Luckhurst, line director of Bahri was on hand to introduce the Saudi shipping company to all participants. Alongside Spanish business and industry leaders, the event was attended by senior officials from the kingdoms Ministry of Defence and the Saudi Embassy in Spain, as well as representatives of the various branches of the Spanish Armed Forces and the Ministry of Defence, said the statement.



Ahmed Al Ghaith, president for general cargo, Bahri, said: Our companys vision focuses on connecting economies, sharing prosperity and maintaining our long tradition of excellence by continuously delivering high-quality logistics services.



Our business ambition is firmly anchored in its corporate values and in responsible business strategies, and we make sure that we apply best practices consistently and build strategic relationships of mutual benefit with various stakeholders, he said.



Our operational guidelines are based on providing effective customer support and delivering a superior, reliable service, while maintaining our excellent safety record, he added.  TradeArabia News Service


Headline changed, details added (first version posted on 13:37)

Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31

Trend:

Russian gas company Gazprom will hold talks with Azerbaijan in June on the possible supply of the Russian gas to the country, TASS news agency reported citing Alexander Medvedev, deputy chairman of Gazprom's Management Committee.

"The Azerbaijani side is interested in this issue. We will hold a meeting soon, possibly even during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, and define the Azerbaijani side's need [in gas]," he added.

Medvedev also said there is a need in Azerbaijan to buy the Russian gas.
A total of three memoranda of understanding (MoU) were signed by the UAE and South Korea for cooperation in different sectors at the 5th UAE-Korea Economic Joint Committee which concluded yesterday (May 30) in Abu Dhabi, UAE.



The two-day event focused on enhancing economic cooperation in sectors such as high technology, innovation, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), industry and tourism of mutual importance to the economic policies and plans of the UAE and South Korea, said a statement.



The first deal covers a Knowledge Sharing Programme (KSP) on SME and Innovation between the UAE Ministry of Economy and the South Korean Ministry of Strategy and Finance, while the second involves the secondment of IT experts from the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) to the UAE Ministry of Economy in line with the latters programme for industrial property. The third is a joint development agreement (JDA) on seawater desalination between Korea Agency for Infrastructure Technology Advancement (KAIA) and Masdar, it added.



Eng Sultan bin Saeed Al Mansouri, UAE Minister of Economy, led the UAE delegation, while the team from South Korea were headed by Ilho Yoo, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Strategy and Finance, it said.



This years session included a preparatory technical meeting held under the supervision of Eng Mohammed Bin Abdul Aziz Al Shehhi, undersecretary of the UAE Ministry of Economic for Economic Affairs, and Hoe Jeong Kim, director general for International Economic Affairs at the South Korean Ministry of Strategy and Finance, it stated.



A total of eight roundtable sessions were conducted to establish frameworks for cooperation between the two countries, said the statement.



The UAE delegation also included other officials from the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Development, the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment, the Ministry of Health, the General Civil Aviation Authority, the Federal Transport Authority, Masdar, and other federal and local government agencies and chambers, it added.



Al Mansouri highlighted the UAEs outstanding economic achievements as well, saying that the countrys non-oil foreign trade stood at Dh1.6 trillion ($435.5 billion) in 2014 inclusive of the countrys free zone activities, and that it is the third largest re-export centre in the world.



He also invited the various South Korean economic sectors to benefit from the UAEs attractive trade and investment environment in order to initiate an advanced phase of partnership between their respective private sectors and business communities, it said.



The meetings agenda included several topics for reviewing the progress made in implementing the recommendations agreed upon during the fourth session of the Joint UAE - Korean Economic Committee in 2014. Participants discussed ways to strengthen cooperation in various key sectors, including clean and renewable energy, infrastructure, industry, intellectual property rights, innovation and SMEs, finance and public services, healthcare and medical service, education and cultural exchange, and tourism, it stated.  TradeArabia News Service
Fashion Apparel, a garments company, has opened its new $20 million production unit on a 200,000-sq-ft plot at Omans Salalah Free Zone, a report said.



Fashion Apparel currently employs 460 employees and plans to export around 12 million pieces of garments a year. When it achieves its full capacity in the next six months, the company will employ more than 2,000 workers, of which 500 will be Omanis, added the Oman Daily Observer report.



Meanwhile, two new companies  Darvesh and Tara Jewels Ltd -- will set up their base in the free zone with an investment of $10 million and $3 million, respectively. Infrastructure construction activities will take place immediately in order to start operations as early as 2018, it said.



Tara, a gems and jewellery company, is likely to start its trading activities soon by bringing goods from its factories in India after getting the financial set up in place.



Darvesh, a company which offers services and products like cold storage, dry stores, offices, loading dock levellers and loading/unloading integrated services, is hoping to start full operation sometime in 2018.



A deal was also signed between Oman Gulf Logistics and Salalah Free Zone to set up logistics facilities on a 100,000-sq-m plot, added the report.


Lithuania is keen to invest in Iran's liquefied natural gas projects (LNG), the Islamic Republics Deputy Oil Minister for International Affairs Amir Hossein Zamani-Nia was quoted as saying in an Iran Daily report.



The announcement was made after Zamani-Nia met with Lithuania's Deputy Energy Minister Aleksandras Spruogis in Tehran, the report said, citing Tasnim News Agency.



Spruogis is holding talks with senior Iranian officials on oil and gas cooperation, the report said.



Tehran will consider Lithuania's offer, Zamani-Nia said, adding that cooperation in the fields of shale oil and shale gas were also among other proposals put forward by Lithuania.
The Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition (ATCE) of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) will take place in Dubai in September.



This will be the first time the event is held in the Middle East in its 92-year history.



The event will take place under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, from September 26 to 28, at the Dubai World Trade Centre.



Among the exciting new features at this years ATCE are two plenary sessions, in which industry leaders will explore the conference theme E&P 2.0Transforming and Shaping the Future. Six interactive panel sessions will offer a chance to hear from internation and national oil companies and service providers on topical industry issues including talent management, improving efficiency, project management, collaboration and innovation.



The conference also will offer 13 special sessions, a mixture of technical and strategic in nature, which will address challenges, opportunities, innovative and emerging technologies from around the world.



There will be also be a technical programme of the highest calibre. Over 2,000 papers were submitted for this years event, of which 540 will be presented in 58 technical sessions, covering all phases of oil and gas exploration and production.



Khalid Zainalabedin, manager, Saudi Aramco and ATCE 2016 programme committee chair, said: ATCE 2016 is honoured to receive the support of HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum as the event comes to the Middle East for the first time. SPE is privileged to receive support from the key leaders of the industry, and we promise our members and attendees an exceptional experience through the exciting new high-level sessions and the exclusive activities at ATCE in September.



ATCE is expecting more than 10,000 attendees, who will also have the opportunity to visit a world-class exhibition with more than 250 exhibitors showcasing state-of-the-art technologies. - TradeArabia News Service
When Opec holds its half-yearly meetings, what time the ministers arrive in Vienna, how they speak and which hotel they stay in - anything will be analysed in an attempt to predict its policies.



So it was seen as a sign that new Saudi Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih takes Opec seriously when he turned up in the Austrian capital on Monday, three days before the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries' (Opec) upcoming discussions.



But Al-Falih will have little opportunity to see fellow ministers ahead of Thursday's meeting. Many of them, including those from Iran and Venezuela, won't show up in Vienna until midday or even late on Wednesday.



Opec last decided to change output in December 2008, when it cut supply amid slowing demand due to a global financial crisis. By contrast, between 1998 and 2008, Opec made 27 changes to output.



For decades, Saudi Arabia, Vienna-based Opec's largest producer and de facto leader, had a preferred range for oil prices and, if unhappy, would try to orchestrate a group-wide production cut or increase.



But a technology-driven spike in non-Opec output such as that of US shale and growing fuel efficiency led Riyadh to conclude that the era of fast oil growth might be ending.



In the past two years, Riyadh has stuck to a strategy of fighting for market share, thinking that pumping more oil now at low prices is better than producing less in the future.



"We think continuity will carry the day at the June Opec meeting in Vienna. The only real uncertainty is how divisive the meeting will be and how much discord will be put on public display," said Helima Croft, head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets.



FIGHT FOR SHARE



Unlike his predecessor, Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi, Al-Falih has a much larger portfolio overseeing energy, industry, mining, atomic power and renewables.



On Tuesday, Al-Falih visited Opec headquarters to meet Secretary-General Abdullah al-Badri, staying for 90 minutes in a clear display that despite being a busy man, he has time for the producer group.



Oil prices have recovered to around $50 per barrel in recent weeks from their lowest in a decade of $27 per barrel in January - but are still far below the $115 seen in June 2014.



Prices crashed after Saudi Arabia increased production to an all-time high to fight for market share with higher-cost producers, including US shale firms.



The drop in prices also badly hurt fellow Opec members, with production declining from Nigeria to Venezuela.



Iraq and Iran, however, kept pushing production higher as Baghdad sees recent investments by oil majors pay off and Tehran regains market share after the lifting of some Western sanctions in January.



Al-Falih's ultimate boss, Saudi Deputy Crown Price Mohammad bin Salman, has said Saudi Arabia may raise production further if other members don't restrain their output increases.  Reuters
The UAE-based retail major Lulu Group marked its retail push into Indonesia with the opening of its first hypermarket in the country in capital Jakarta.



The group has already announced plans to invest $500 million and set up 10 hypermarkets in the next three years in the country, as part of its expansion.



The first Lulu hypermarket of the country was officially inaugurated by Joko Widodo, the President of Indonesia in the presence of Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, Governor of Jakarta; Thomas Trikasih Lembong, Indonesian Trade Minister; Ahmed Abdullah Al Mussali Al Awadi, UAE Ambassador to Indonesia; Husin Bagis, Indonesian Ambassador to UAE; and other ministers and dignitaries.



Located in the Cakung sub district of East Jakarta with an area of over 200,000 sq ft., the new hypermarket is designed with customer convenience in mind and provides a one-stop shopping destination for the residents of the city.



With an initial investment of $300 million in the first phase, we plan to open 10 hypermarkets by end-2017 and a central logistics and warehousing facility in Jakarta. These projects are likely to generate more than 5,000 job opportunities for Indonesians, said Yusuf Ali M A, chairman, Lulu Group.



We also plan to set up contract farming to ensure continuous supply of high quality products and to support the Indonesian agriculture sector, he added.



During the official visit to UAE last year, President Widodo had visited Lulu hypermarket in Abu Dhabi and expressed keen desire to have Lulu in Indonesia. He was especially impressed by the high standards of operations, quality of products and service and also the wide variety of products available in Lulu.



The Lulu Group currently operates 126 stores across the GCC, Egypt and India and employs more than 38,000 people from different nationalities. It is also one of the largest retail chains in the Middle East. - TradeArabia News Service


San Francisco is known to be a world-class bustling city where tourists can go for a romantic weekend getaway or even a week-long family vacation. While Stockton is a place where travelers made their stop for a meal on a drive to the mountains.

But, the recent annual ranking of best summer destinations for 2016 that was unleashed by the consumer finance site WalletHub, Stockton ranked No. 23, while San Francisco got the No. 46 spot.

As a further matter, Stockton, a city in California, is famous for crime, drugs and gangs. Stockton has been on the lists of the most dangerous, most distressed and most miserable cities in the United States, SF Gate reported.

The City by the Bay may have difficulties as well, but San Francisco has made up for all its shortcomings. As it offers the tourists the illustrious Golden Gate Bridge spanning the bay, the cable cars running over roller-coaster hills and the very bright and strong colored hydrangeas blooming along Lombard Street.

However, Stockton residents talked with pride that their waterfront, food scene and steady stream of events would tender the tourists in the city, as reported by CBS Sacramento.

"There is, actually, like, a surprising amount to do in Stockton," stated by Stockton resident Christian Alexander. And Shaquoya Jones, who is also a Stockton resident, said, "It's actually way better here and a lot cheaper than San Francisco."

The main factor that Stockton earned its high ranking was the city's affordability. As WalletHub based the rankings of the cities on expense, weather, number of attractions and accessibility, according to Business Journal.

Stockton also drew tourists' attention through the city's minor league ballpark, the historic Bob Hope Theatre and the Haggin Museum.

In addition, aside from Stockton and San Francisco - Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Anaheim were among the top summer destinations in California.

See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31

By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend:

Fifteen percent of the total number of participants of the 23rd international exhibition and conference Caspian Oil & Gas 2016 and the VI Caspian International Power and Alternative Energy Exhibition will participate for the first time in these exhibitions, said Farid Mammadov, executive director of Iteca Caspian LLC.

He made the remarks May 31 at a press conference dedicated to the opening of the exhibitions in Baku on June 1.

"This year, 240 companies from 30 countries of the world, including Azerbaijan, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Kazakhstan, China, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and others, will participate in the Caspian Oil & Gas exhibition," said Mammadov. "Two national stands - German and Italian - will be presented."

Companies from the UK, Portugal, Romania, the US and others are among the first-time participants, he noted.

Every year, Caspian Oil & Gas exhibition brings together distinguished guests, who attend the opening ceremony of the event. Thus, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Diplomacy of the US Department of State Robin Dunnigan, UK Prime Minister's Trade Envoy for Iraq Emma Harriet Nicholson, Georgia's First Deputy Energy Minister Mariam Valishvili, high-ranking representatives of such companies as Uzbekneftegaz, Gazprom, Gazpromneft-Sakhalin, BP, Statoil and others are among the VIP guests of the Caspian Oil & Gas 2016.

Companies will represent a wide range of equipment, services and innovative technologies in the areas of oil production and transportation of energy resources, ensuring the storage of oil and gas systems, platforms and floating drilling rigs, laying of pipes and providing protection systems for pipelines, services.

The conference, dedicated to the exhibition, will be attended by nearly 400 delegates from more than 30 countries of the world. More than 40 speakers (leading experts, representatives of government bodies, heads of major oil and gas companies from around the world) will deliver their presentations on key issues of the production, management and transportation of energy resources in the conditions of low oil prices.

Azerbaijan's Energy Minister Natig Aliyev will take part in the plenary session titled "The role of Azerbaijan in ensuring energy supplies to Europe".

President of Azerbaijan's state oil company SOCAR Rovnag Abdullayev, BP's regional president for Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey Gordon Birrell, Chief Executive Officer of Snam S.p.A. Marco Alvera and Chief Executive Officer of Nobel Upstream Jeremy Huck will also deliver their presentations at the conference.

Edited by SI

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov
When Donald Trump first announced his plan to run for American president, many thought it was a good joke. Now that he seems to be leading the race, Trump is the one who's laughing.

The GOP frontrunner is the strongest presidential candidate among registered Republican voters, and regardless of the age group, gender, ethnicity and education.

Travelers Today researched on top five states that support Trump's race according to policy polls held last year.

The top 5 states are the following:

1) New Hampshire

2) New York

3) South Carolina

4) North Carolina

5) West Virginia

According to a Public Policy Polling poll last August 15, 2015, Donald Trump dominated in two cities. These are New Hampshire and New York, where both states gave Trump more than 35 percent of the votes if the election were to happen that day. He has maintained that range of votes ever since.

According to December 2015 data provided to "New York Time" "UpShot" by Civis Analytics, a Democratic data firm, best states of Trump are West Virginia and New York, followed by North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisana, South Carolina and Tennessee.

Even though he is leading, well-known people are openly opposing his win. Lately, physicist Stephen Hawking is shocked by Donald Trump's popularity. Hawking told ITV's "Good Morning Britain" that he is baffled of the GOP frontrunner's success. The physicist brands Trump as a "demagogue who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator."

Stephen King signed a petition against Trump. John Legend twitted Trump as racist. Sarah Silverman called Trump as Drumpf on Twitter. Jack Black said he would choose rapper Kanye West over Trump. Susan Sarandon said Trunk is a "drunk uncle at a wedding". Chelsea Handler twitted a naked picture of her with caption on her body, "Trump is a butt hole". John Oliver made clear in a 20-minute "Last Week Tonight" segment his disapproval of Trump.

See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018
Walt Disney Co. has announced that it was planning to file a lawsuit against intellectual property issues on Dalian Wanda Group Co. in China. Word has it the China-based theme park has copied the appearance of certain Disney characters without permission.

Wanda has allegedly had some characters dressed as Snow White, Captain America, and also stuffed animals that resembled Kung Fu Panda, as reported by Bloomberg News.

Walt Disney Co. released a statement in an email on Monday to address the issue at hand. Bloomberg News raised questions to Walt Disney in relation to Wanda's intellectual property rights violation.

Walt Disney's statement was follows, as reported in Bloomberg News:

"We vigorously protect our intellectual property and will take action to address infringement. Our characters and stories have delighted generations, these illegal and substandard imitations unfortunately disappoint all who expect more."

Billionaire, Wang Jianlin opened the Wanda City park in Nanchang on Saturday. This theme park is one of Wang's projects he hoped he could use to outcompete Disney as a global tourism company.

Wanda, though, said in a statement the Disney characters in the China-based theme park appeared in the premises of the stores of Wanda Mall. The statement indicated these characters did not spoke for the entire Wanda theme park itself.

The Wanda Cultural Tourism City covers a theme park, a movie center, an aquarium, hotels and retail stores. According to Wanda, the Chinese theme park should have 10 million people each year.

Wang, though, made his prediction the Disney park in Shanghai that is slated to open soon would not fare good in the Chinese city. The billionaire stated that the absence of innovation in the management of intellectual properties and characters would be the likely failure of Disney's business in Shanghai, as reported in Los Angeles Times.

A Disney theme park in Shanghai is scheduled to open on June 16, according to Cnbc.com.

See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31

Trend:

On May 27, 2016, XI National contest on Enterpreunial. Action. Us. - Enactus international program kicked off.

In the two-day Nar-supported competition 14 projects were presented by 14 teams.

Enactus team of Public Administration Academy, which won the national finals, gained a right to represent Azerbaijan at the world finals in Toronto (Canada) September 27-29.



Winner of Enactus program is determined on the basis of innovative approach, social effects of projects, protection of environmental standards, observance of business ethics, financial management, speech ability and other criteria. The program has been established as a platform to hold business negotiations in the field of business and education for youth.

Main purpose of national competitions on Enactus program is to propagate youth entrepreneurship, idea of free enterprise among students, development of organizational and management skills as well as team spirit.

It is noteworthy that as a part of social responsibility policy, Nar continues to support science and education projects, aimed at development of youth. Therefore, Nar pays special attention to hold knowledge competitions in the country.

For further information about Nar's social responsibility strategy, visit nar.az website.
60 years ago we got the Monsanto House of the Future; now we have the Office of the Future.

Last year we showed the renderings of the 3D printed building proposed for Dubai, which was to be the worlds first fully functional 3D printed building; Now it is built and it is not dubious at all. In fact, it is quite the thing.

 Dubai Media Office

Crown Prince of Dubai His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum was there for the opening and said:

We announce today the opening of the first 3D-printed office in the world, after less than one month of launching Dubai 3D printing strategy which showcases a modern model of construction. This is an experience we present to the world on utilizing future technology in people lives.

WinSun/Screen capture

The building uses Chinese company WinSuns tilt-up technology, where the floor, walls and ceiling are all printed on their side in 2D layer by layer, then tilted vertically. It's a really clever system, although it probably is limited to single story buildings. When WinSun has done multi-storey structures, they have not done the tilting up and have instead dropped or poured floors on the walls. But it's perfect for this kind of use. Ideally, the printer would be located at the job site in Dubai, but in this case it was built in WinSuns factory in China. The modules were cut in half so that they could be shipped more easily and reassembled on site.

 Dubai Media Office

According to Architect Magazine, The approximately 2,600-square-foot, single-story, multi-building campus was designed by Gensler for the United Arab Emirates National Committee as the headquarters for the Dubai Future Foundation (DFF).

This paves the way for a future where 3D printing can help resolve pressing environmental and urbanization issues, and it allows us to deliver highly customized spaces for our clients in a much shorter time frame, Gensler principal Richard Hammond said in a statement. Gensler worked with structural engineering firm Thornton Tomasetti and mechanical engineering firm Syska Hennessy to realize the design.

According to the press release,



A 3D-printer measuring 20-feet high, 120-feet long and 40-feet wide was used to print the building that featured an automated robotic arm to implement printing process. The method cut the labour cost by more than 50 per cent compared to conventional buildings of similar size. As a fact, one staff was required to monitor the function of the printer, a group of seven people to install the building components on site and a team of 10 electricians and specialists to take care of the mechanical and electrical engineering.

 Monsanto house of the future

In look and feel, and even in the colours, it reminds me of the Monsanto House of the Future that inspired me as a child. I find this pretty inspiring too; WinSun is really on to something with its technology, which lets them print out floors, walls and ceilings all at once. We are going to see a lot more of this.

 Dubai Media Office
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, May 31

By Huseyn Hasanov - Trend:

It is planned to hold an international exhibition "The textile industry of the country on the way to a new stage of development" in Ashgabat on June 4-5, 2016, said the message from the event's organizers, Turkmenistan's Ministry of Textile Industry and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry May 31.

Cotton fiber, cotton yarn and fabrics, knitwear, a wide range of denim garments, silk fiber and yarn, panne, the national fabric "keteni" and unique handmade silk carpets will be presented on the stands of domestic companies, said the message.

The textile industry holds an important place in Turkmenistan's economy. Turkmenistan traditionally grows cotton which is a basis for ensuring the development of the textile industry.

The major part of the products is exported to the US, Canada, Germany, UK, Russia, Italy, Turkey, China and Ukraine.

It is planned to collect 1.05 million tons of cotton from an area of 545 hectares in Turkmenistan in 2016.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, May 31

By Huseyn Hasanov - Trend:

Turkmenistan's Turkmenbashi Complex of Oil Refineries (TCOR) is increasing the volumes of oil refining and building up production of new types of oil products, the Ministry of Oil and Gas said in a message May 31.

Currently, more than 10 million tons of hydrocarbons are refined per year at the TCOR.

The TCOR includes two refineries - one in the city of Turkmenbashi and the other one in the city of Seydi.

The refined oil is exported to Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Georgia, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates and Switzerland.

Turkmenistan plans to increase the capacity of its oil refining industry to 20 million tons of oil by 2020, to 22 million tons by 2025, and to 30 million tons by 2030.

Currently, the country produces nearly 10 million tons of oil per year and the major part of this volume is refined locally.
PK Jaiswar

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, May 30

The city police is on a high alert as the anniversary of the Operation Blue Star anniversary is approaching. The police has geared up to thwart any untoward incident during the anniversary, which falls on June 6.

As many as 10 companies of paramilitary forces, besides Punjab Armed Police and team of commandos, have been summoned for making elaborate security arrangements in the city.

It is evident to mention here that Sikh radical group Dal Khalsa has given a call of Amritsar Bandh on June 6 to protest the Operation Blue Star launched in 1984 by the Army to flush out militant groups headed by the then Damdami Taksal chief Jarnail Singh Bhindrawala.

The organisation will also take out a Genocide Remembrance Parade on June 3, which will pass through various streets and bazaars. The army had launched the operation in 1984 on this day.

Meanwhile, Sikh Youth Federation Bhindranwala has announced to oppose present Akal Takht Jathedar Giani Gurbachan Singh during his address from the Sikh temporal seat on June 6.

Police Commissioner Amar Singh Chahal has been holding meetings with senior officials and SHOs of all police stations to chalk out elaborate security plans. He has reportedly asked the SHOs to prepare a list of sensitive areas in their jurisdiction. He has also been holding meeting with the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) authorities for security arrangements around the Golden Temple.

Last year unpleasant scenes were witnessed on the premises of Darbar Sahib when a group of youths had entered into a clash with employees of the SGPC task, who tried to restrain them from raising pro Khalistan slogans. Five persons were injured in the clash at that time.

Paramilitary forces have been deployed at key points of the city. Police teams have been asked to keep a close eye on every entry and exit point of the city for checking the entrance of anti-social elements.

Chahal said elaborate security arrangements would be at place in view of Operation Blue Star anniversary. He said nobody would be allowed to forcibly close business establishments and create law and order problem. In case anybody indulged in such activities the law would take its own course, he added.
Sandeep Dikshit

SALVATORE GIRONE, an Italian marine under trial for killing two Kerala fishermen, has gone back home. This entire episode reflects poorly on the UPA government and holds important lessons in governance and diplomacy for the Modi dispensation.

The Italian marines case demonstrates how Indias cause and interests have been hurt by the Hindutva familys reflexive hostility to any imagery associated with the UPA chairperson, Sonia Gandhis Italian origins. When the two Italian marines shot and killed the local fishermen four years ago, the Sonia Gandhi-led UPA was in power at the Centre and Oommen Chandy of the Congress was the Chief Minister of Kerala. For the BJP, trying to dislodge the UPA from the Centre and attempting a political breakthrough in Kerala, this was an opportunity gift-wrapped twice over. The Congress avoided a principled stand because it feared being outshouted by the BJP. The Chandy government dismissed the Italian claims to first ascertain if the crime took place in international waters, and, then, the marines were inveigled into stepping onshore for talks, and declared arrested.

The marines were no glorified guards posted on a merchant ship to deter piracy. They belonged to the highly decorated San Marino Regiment. Their arrest and the slow pace of determining which court should prosecute them became a Sarabjit-type cause celebre in Italy. An Italian Prime Minister was shown the door because, among other promises, he could not bring home the two marines. And then the chickens began coming home to roost. A miffed Italy retaliated by opposing Indias carefully prepared case for membership of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR).

By this time, the UPA had been voted out: the same BJP which had kept itself in vigorous opposition to any UPA move to accommodate Italys views has quietly allowed the Italian to return in order not to affect Narendra Modis upcoming visit to the US. South Block can now inform the Americans that with Italy expected to drop its opposition, Indias membership of the MTCR is a matter of time.

While it is well known that Italy sank Indias quest for MTCR membership, what is not so well known is that the marine saga has virtually halted military aviation cooperation with the US. Because India is not an MTCR member, US aviation giant Lockheed Martin has tarried on its obligation of transferring sophisticated technologies along with its legendary Hercules heavy lift planes. There is a chicken-and-egg ring to the entire rigmarole. And, till the US company fulfils its obligation of providing wind tunnel testing facilities, India will be unable to place repeat orders for fear of being upbraided by Indian auditors.

A bad penny has a way of turning up. The single act of trying to embarrass Sonia Gandhi by taking a hard-line position on the Italian marine case during its days in opposition has now come back to haunt the BJP in power. India is beginning to feel the pinch in its coveted technology transfer plan for high flying, long endurance drones under DTTI, a programme designed to address the Indian grievance about unwillingness of US companies to transfer high technology.

Now that the Italian marine has gone home, Italy should be willing to reconsider its opposition to Indias membership to the MTCR. But the second major takeaway from the Italian marines episode is not about good old common sense trumping symbolic antagonism. It is about how helpful a friendly judiciary can be. It was the apex court that quietly assisted the government in finding a way out of a blind alley that the Italian marines case had become. The Supreme Courts move to take the case under its wings solved a number of procedural issues. Then its quick assent to a special court facilitated the developments that allowed the marine to go home, and, everybody could heave a sigh of relief.

Still we remained enamoured of our partisan ways. Despite wasting two years in its quest for accessing high technology and quicker defence cooperation with the US, the lessons are being ignored. In the AgustaWestland scandal, a broad-sweep witch-hunt may begin to hinder tender-based buying of defence equipment. Inquisitors on social media, in tandem with nightly interrogators on TV channels, have widened their reach to tar everyone associated with the selection process.

We are becoming the victims of our own self-devised kangaroo court attitudes. Commonsensical alterations in the Agusta helicopter design have been dissected to detect ulterior motives. The vehement passion to find a Sonia-Italy link has spawned microscopic examination of the decision to substitute a cheaper ramp for step ladders, include medical evacuation and anti-collision systems in the choppers and lowering the ceiling of four trailing choppers is now forcing the Defence Ministry bureaucrats to adopt a safety-first approach. Officials examining ongoing defence equipment purchases are taking Modis assurance to back all their good faith judgments with a pinch of salt. Rather than spread the net too wide, the spotlight needs to be squarely on the money trail.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikars knee-jerk reaction of banning deals with all Finmeccanica companies carries echoes of AK Antonys ban order on all group companies of an Israeli company that had also faced corruption charges. As the BJP at that time rightly noted, Antonys blanket ban hurt Indias naval modernisation more than the middlemen. Parrikars order banning all dealings with the Italian companys associated companies have sunk an order for heavy performance torpedoes. Indias newest lot of submarines may now have to sail for some years without this potent weapon. This is a strange way to cleanse the Augean stables, and even stranger way of strengthening national defence.

Statesmanship in governance fares badly when decision-makers bank on old prejudices and populist calls for retribution. The hard-line on Italian marines made it hard for Modi to explain to Washington the drying up of orders to US companies during his tenure. The Prime Minister now needs to address the blanket banning of deals with all Finmeccanica companies and the hunt in the Agusta haystack for imagined deviations from tender norms. Such super-righteousness takes the focus away on the money trail, and becomes an impediment to good faith decisions.
Tribune news Service

New Delhi, May 30

Ambassador of Japan to India Kenji Hiramatsu called on Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today at the Delhi Secretariat. The two discussed mutual cooperation on infrastructure projects. The meeting was also attended by Public Works Department Minister Satyendar Jain and Delhi Dialogue Commission Vice-Chairman Ashish Khetan.

During the 30-minute meeting, the two leaders discussed the common grounds between Delhi and Japan and how the two can benefit each other.

Delhi Government's project of dedicated elevated bus corridors to ease traffic congestion was discussed in the meeting. Other areas that came up during the discussion were transportation, water, sewage system, earthquake-resistant buildings, etc.

The Chief Minister told the visiting Ambassador that a delegation of the Delhi Government will visit him for further discussions and to look into more areas of cooperation.
Tribune News Service

New Delhi/Mumbai, May 31

Sixteen persons, including two officers, Lt Col RS Pawar and Maj K Manoj, were killed in a massive fire that broke out at the Central Ammunition Depot in Pulgaon (Wardha) near Nagpur in Maharashtra at 1.30 am today. The fire led to multiple explosions.

Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) Lt Gen Ranbir Singh said besides the two Army officers, an Army jawan and 13 civilian firefighters had died in the fire that started in a shed that held highly sensitive ammunition."

Two officers, nine Army jawans and six fire fighting personnel were hospitalised even as the Army had rushed its own teams of medical specialists from Pune, the DGMO said. The depot stores artillery ammunition, which is deadly. Small arms and mortars are also stored there.

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Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag rushed to Pulgaon for spot assessment of the damage caused by the explosions. Even as the fire at Pulgaon is under control, cooling operations will continue till tomorrow.

Meanwhile, district officials in Maharashtra said more than 1,000 people living in villages in the vicinity of the ammunition depot had been evacuated. The people will be allowed to return to their homes after the defence authorities complete the cooling operations, a district official said. The military authorities anticipate secondary explosions. Reports said the ammunition stored here includes those for rifles used by Army personnel and missiles such as the BrahMos.

Parrikar was in Pune where residents of localities around another ammunition depot at Pimpri-Chinchwad were demanding that they be allowed to construct houses in part of the sanitised area around the facility.

In May last year, the Comptroller and Auditor General in its report titled Ammunition Management in Army had pointed out the risks. It said the depots were functioning with risk of fire accident as the fire fighting equipments were not held as per requirement/authorisation.

The movement of ammunition within various echelons in the Army suffered from inadequacies such as delays in issue of ammunition, non-accounting of ammunition by depots, transportation of ammunition by other than specified explosive vans, it had said, adding that even banned ammunition was lying around in the depots.
Tribune News Service



New Delhi, May 31



In a major tragedy, 16 people, including two Army officers, were killed when a massive fire broke out at the Central Ammunition Depot in Pulgaon (Wardha), near Nagpur, in Maharashtra around 1.30 am on Tuesday. The fire was followed by multiple explosions.

An inquiry has been ordered into the incident.

The fire started in one of the explosives stores. A Defence spokesperson said there were 16 fatalities, including two officers, Lt Col RS Pawar and Maj K Manoj. The other dead were an Army jawan and 13 civilian firefighters.

As many as 25 people have been admitted to a hospital ICU.



The fire has been brought under control, but not before extensive damage. However, secondary explosions are still feared and precautionary measures are being taken.



The depot stores artillery ammunition, which is deadly. Small arms and mortars are also stored there.



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Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag left for Pulgaon to make a spot assessment of the damage caused by the explosions.



Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said, It is an unfortunate incident. We have suffered a huge loss of lives and property. I have directed district officials to help whatever help they can. We are providing whatever assistance and resourcesprimarily medical assistancerequired.

I pray that those who are injured recover quickly. I have asked Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar to visit the spot and take stock of the situation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said.

Parrikar said there was no sabotage involved in the fire at the central ammunition depot at Pulgaon in the district but the exact cause would be known only after inquiry.

"We are not ruling out any possibility but there is no sabotage as such," he told reporters here.

Fire was contained with timely help from all the concerned persons and only a complete inquiry will reveal its cause, Parrikar said.

It is too early to speculate about the cause, he added.

Parrikar, who visited the injured personnel at the Datta Meghe Medical College and Hospital at Sawangi Meghe in the district, said 130 tonnes of anti-tank mines were destroyed in the fire.

Parrikar, accompanied by the Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag, spent more than half an hour meeting the injured personnel at the hospital.

Director General of Military Operations, Lt Gen Ranbir Singh, said the fire started in a shed that held highly sensitive ammunition and was restricted to that shed only.

He said that among the dead were an Army jawan and 13 civilian firefighters, and not the DSC jawans as reported earlier.



The injured have been admitted to the multispecialty hospital at Wardha and a team of Army doctors has been sent from Pune. He refused to answer a question on the monetary loss caused by the fire.

Villagers woken by loud noise

The intensity of blasts at the ammunition depot in Pulgaon was so high that it shook houses and left tiled roofs shattered.

The window panes and tiled-roofs of houses in the villages were shattered and the residents felt as if they were being rattled by an earthquake and many ran out in panic.

They said they saw flames raging at the site of the mishap with smoke billowing to the skies.

Pravin Savarkar, who along with his wife and aged mother ran to safety, told PTI that the intensity of the fire and blast was such that utensils in their house were thrown off the shelves.

Some of the villagers, particularly the elderly residents, calmed others as they could guess what was happening as similar incidents had taken place at the depot earlier also.

Today's was the third major incident in the Central Ammunition Depot in Pulgaon, one of Asia's biggest ammunition storehouses.

Similar incidents had also occurred in 1989 and 1995, but no loss of life was reported though ammunition worth crores of rupees were then destroyed.

The fire at the ammunition depot, situated between hillocks on either side, came as a shock to the residents of Agargaon, Pipri, Nachangaon and Magejhari villages.

Magejhari is the closest village to the depot with a population of 1,500 people, Nachangaon has about 2,500 residents, Agargan - 3,500 and Pipri has a population of 800.

A youth, who lives in the depot quarters, said as soon as the fire occurred, most of the villagers ran out of their houses and spent time till dawn in great anxiety. (With inputs from agencies)
New Delhi, May 31

Vice Admiral Sunil Lanba took charge as the new Chief of the Naval Staff on Tuesday, as his predecessor Admiral RK Dhowan retired from service.

I am sure under his leadership, the Indian Navy will execute every task, Dhowan said.

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Addressing the personnel on parade yesterday, Vice Admiral Lanba complimented the personnel of the command, who notwithstanding the constrains of the service, had worked with synergy and teamwork in ensuring that ships, submarines and aircraft were maintained in a high state of combat readiness at all times.

In keeping with the fragile maritime environment of the region, he said there was a need to be ever vigilant in all quarters and all fronts, adding that he had no doubt that fire power from units of fleet, flotillas and squadrons could be delivered appropriately should the need arise.

Pointing towards the International Fleet Review held recently at Visakhapatnam, Vice Admiral Lanba said presence of 50 countries in the review clearly indicated the growing stature of the country in the region.

He added that many countries had expressed the desire to cooperate and exercise with the Indian Navy, which was indicative of professionalism, training and sound culture displayed by the service.

He also urged for change and apprised the personnel on the steps taken by WNC in addressing the long standing issue of shortage of married accommodation.

Born on July 17, 1957, Vice Admiral Sunil Lanba was commissioned on January 1, 1978 into the Executive Branch of Indian Navy.

During his long and distinguished service spanning nearly 38 years, he has served in a variety of Command, operational and staff appointments.

Vice Admiral Lanba's Sea Command includes commanding the minesweeper INS Kakinada, frigate INS Himgiri and Executive Officer of INS Viraat, the aircraft carrier.

Before taking over as FOC-in-C, Western Naval Command, he was FOC-in-C, Southern Naval Command, Vice Chief of the Naval Staff and Commandant, National Defence College.

Vice Admiral Lanba is a qualified specialist in navigation and direction course.

He attended the course at the Royal College of Defence Studies in UK.

Vice Admiral Lanba, who is a recipient of Param Vishist Seva Medal and Ati Vishist Seva Medal, is married to Reena Lanba and the couple has a son and two daughters.  ANI
Simran Sodhi

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 31

India today continued its efforts to contain the negative publicity spilling out from the recent attacks on the African community here. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, in her first public interaction since her illness, today met a delegation of African students and assured them of their safety.

She also made it a point to state that all criminal acts should not be construed as racial attacks.

The minister said the CCTV footage clearly shows that Indian citizens who were present at spot, tried their best to save Masunda Oliver. Oliver is the Congolese national who was killed in the capital recently.

The government has come under increasing pressure to control these attacks against the African community here at a time when India is looking to engage with the African continent on the global stage.

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Vice-President Hamid Ansari is currently on a visit to Morocco in Indias first high-level visits to the continent. Swaraj, after her meeting with the delegation of African students, also outlined the governments approach in dealing with the situation. She said soon after the incident came to light, the Ministry of External Affairs reached out to the African diplomatic community and the African student community.

A sensitisation campaign will be carried out, according to the press release issued by the MEA. Swaraj also referred to India being the land of Buddha and Gandhi.
Tashkent, Uzbekistan, May 31

By Demir Azizov- Trend:

Uzbekistan has issued information about the main directions of anti-drug policy and its implementation in the country in 2015 as an official document of the 70th session of the UN General Assembly at the headquarters of the UN in New York, Jahon news agency at the Uzbek foreign ministry reported.

Uzbekistan continued effective work on ensuring implementation of international commitments within the framework of the legal basis of bilateral and multilateral cooperation in the field of drug control, according to the document issued in six UN official languages.

In 2015, Uzbek law enforcement bodies concentrated efforts on the need to prevent drug trafficking, paying special attention to the overlapping of channels of receipt of drugs in trafficking both within the country and transit through its territory, as well as the sustainable elimination of organized criminal groups.

As a result of organizational and preventive measures, over the last year the law enforcement bodies of Uzbekistan revealed 6648 facts of crimes in this direction.

In order to effectively solve the tasks set for the elimination of drug trafficking, the detection and suppression of illegal cultivation of narcotic plants and the prevention of offenses related to illicit drug trafficking, the competent authorities of Uzbekistan with the participation of representatives of local authorities and the public conducted a two-stage integrated large-scale operation "Black poppy - 2015". In the course of it, 2687 drug-related crimes were revealed and 621 kilograms of drugs seized.

In order to counter new types of psychoactive substances, the country has developed preventive measures and proposals. The headquarters of the representatives of the competent authorities have been established on the basis of the National Information Analytical Center on Drug Control.

In particular, the resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Uzbekistan "On improving the procedure of import, export and transit of narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances and precursors through the territory of Uzbekistan and control over their trafficking" approved the updated list of narcotic substances, the circulation of which is prohibited in the republic. This list has also been supplemented with 80 items of new types of synthetic drugs.

The official document circulated by the UN stated that the analysis of the data demonstrates the positive development of the drug situation in Uzbekistan. The rates of primary drug addiction, the number of patients at the dispensary went down; a decline has been continued in the number of drug addicts who take drugs by injection.

In 2015, narcologists read 6947 lectures, held 2338 seminars, carried out 632 publications in the media.

In order to ensure continuity and coordinated activities of state and public organizations, conducting organizational-legal and practical measures aimed at effective prevention, detection and suppression of illicit trafficking in narcotic substances, Uzbekistan has prepared the draft of a program for 2016-2020.
Beijing, May 31

The Sino-Indian deadlock over a UN ban on JeM chief Masood Azhar and others may end if India resubmits its application focussing on evidence against him than attempting to "censure" Pakistan, BJP MP Subramanian Swamy today said here after talks with Chinese officials.

"My impression is that India can expect cooperation from China on the issue of declaring Masood Azhar, leader of Jaish-e-Muhammad, as terrorist who should face trial in India, if India in the UN concentrated more on him than seeking to censure Pakistan as a sponsor of terror," he said.

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Swamy, who is here on a pilgrimage to Kailash-Mansarovar in Tibet, said he is visiting China in an individual capacity as an "old friend" but with the knowledge of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other senior ministers of his cabinet. The BJP leader said "as a tactical move it would (be) prudent (to) resubmit the complaint in UN which was blocked after China put a technical hold." "Based on what I learnt here, I will be very surprised if China continues to obstruct once it is limited to hard evidence," said Swamy after meeting Wang Guo Qing, Director of the foreign affairs committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Committee, and Wu Hailong, President of the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs (CPIFA).

He said the application submitted by India in UN was more Pakistan-centric than Azhar. China, which previously blocked India's attempts to get a UN ban on Mumbai terror attack mastermind and LeT commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, also put on hold listing of Azhar as global terrorist for his role in the Pathankot attack.  PTI
Beijing, May 31

The Sino-Indian deadlock over a UN ban on JeM chief Masood Azhar and others may end if India resubmits its application focusing on evidence against him than attempting to censure Pakistan, BJP MP Subramanian Swamy on Tuesday said here after talks with Chinese officials.

My impression is that India can expect cooperation from China on the issue of declaring Masood Azhar, leader of Jaish-e-Muhammad, as terrorist who should face trial in India, if India in the UN concentrated more on him than seeking to censure Pakistan as a sponsor of terror, Swamy told PTI.

Swamy, who is here on a pilgrimage to Kailash-Mansarovar in Tibet, said he was visiting China in an individual capacity as an old friend but with the knowledge of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other senior ministers of his cabinet.

The BJP leader said as a tactical move it would (be) prudent (to) resubmit the complaint in UN which was blocked after China put a technical hold.

Based on what I learnt here, I will be very surprised if China continues to obstruct once it is limited to hard evidence, said Swamy after meeting Wang Guo Qing, Director of the foreign affairs committee of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Committee, and Wu Hailong, President of the Chinese Peoples Institute of Foreign Affairs (CPIFA).

He said the application submitted by India in UN was more Pakistan-centric than Azhar. I think for the limited purpose it was submitted which was to get UN sanctions, the report should be resubmitted, he said.

I assume the Chinese would find it difficult to say no, once the report is limited to hard evidence. In fact it would (be a) good idea if there is pre-UN trilateral consultation between India, China and Pakistan, he said.

China, which previously blocked Indias attempts to get a UN ban on Mumbai terror attack mastermind and LeT commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, also put a hold on listing of Azhar as global terrorist for his role in the Pathankot attack.

The issue has cast a shadow on bilateral ties as India has expressed disappointment over Chinas actions while the two countries are seeking a way out to end the impasse.

The issue also figured in the just concluded visit of President Pranab Mukherjee.

Swamy suggested India, China and Pakistan trilateral talks to address the issues of cross border terrorism.

He said Prime Minister Modi is working hard to resume dialogue with Pakistan, but the problem is that we can only talk to the constitutional authority in Pakistan which is the Prime Minister, who do not seem to have a final word. The army seems to have veto along with the ISI and Mullahs. China being a friend of Pakistan can help peace in South Asia by encouraging the constitutional authorities to assert their authority. If China convenes a tripartite meeting on India-China-Pakistan on issue of terrorism because terrorism from Pakistan is no longer a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan any more. It is also trilateral issue as terrorists from Pakistan also go to (Muslim-majority) Xinjiang, he said.  PTI
New Delhi, May 31

The National Green Tribunal today said that there was no plan to extend the ban on diesel vehicles prevailing in the national capital and Kerala to other cities across the country.

The clarification came from the green panel which said that as of now it was not planning to extend such ban and it would first examine the data received from different states on pollution levels in various cities.

The tribunal also directed all the secretaries concerned of all states to submit an affidavit within three weeks stating two most polluted cities within their territory, total population and vehicle density in each district.

"We are not banning any vehicles. We have asked state governments to submit a report on the pollution levels in various cities. Let that data come and then we will hear different parties and decide accordingly," a bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar said.

The observation came after Additional Solicitor General Pinky Anand, appearing for Ministry of Heavy Industries, asked the bench not to extend to other cities the ban on registration of vehicles beyond 2000 cc.

The ASG said about 8 per cent FDI under "Make in India" has come from the automobile industry and the sector generates employment opportunities and any restriction on it would have an adverse effect on the momentum of its growth.

Senior advocate A M Singhvi, appearing for Society of Indian Automobile Manufactures, opposed the idea of extending diesel ban to other metros and said diesel was not the only source of pollution.

"Sources of pollution are other than diesel vehicles as well. Other sources like dust and burning also contribute to the air pollution," Singhvi said.

To this the bench said, "In any case we have already said there are primarily three sources of pollution, burning of waste and other materials, dust emission from other sources and vehicular pollution.

"That is why we want every state to react. We want every state to give response on each aspect. Let that data come to us and then we will hear the matter in detail," the bench said.

The tribunal had earlier taken the state governments to task for not taking a clear stand on pollution and vehicle density in major cities in their jurisdiction and directed them to produce the information failing which bailable warrants will be issued against chief secretaries.

The green panel had directed Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, West Bengal and Karnataka to apprise it about cities which have worst ambient air quality, total number of vehicles along with their bifurcation (diesel/petrol) and the total population in each city.

The tribunal had also rapped Central Pollution Control Board for submitting "half-baked" data on the population and vehicle density in major cities across the country. The CPCB report had indicated that ambient air quality in most of the cities was beyond permissible standards.

Noting that the air quality in metropolises was in violation to the prescribed standards, the tribunal had directed the apex pollution monitoring body to file comprehensive data on the population and vehicle density in major cities across the country.

It had taken note of air pollution in Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Patna, Lucknow, Allahabad, Kanpur, Varanasi, Nagpur, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Amritsar and Pune and directed states to file a comprehensive affidavit stating the steps taken by them for prevention and control of air pollution.

The tribunal, which was restrained by the Supreme Court from dealing with matters on air pollution in Delhi, had earlier expanded the ambit of hearing by seeking responses on worsening air quality in metropolises like Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai.

On December 18 last year, the tribunal had refused to vacate its order banning registration of new diesel-run vehicles, saying it won't interfere with the Supreme Court order which has taken a similar stand.

In contrast to the prior NGT order banning registration of all diesel vehicles, the Supreme Court on December 16 exempted small ones and specified that the diesel-run SUVs and cars having engine capacity beyond 2000 cc would not be registered in Delhi and National Capital Region.  PTI
ON Saturday night, at India Gate, we had quite a bit of song and dance. It was the modern equivalent of old-fashioned melas. For the show, many Bollywood personalities, including the ubiquitous Amitabh Bachchan, were roped in to entertain the audiences. And, of course, no prize for guessing that the evening was telecast live right into our homes. We have now come to expect such choreographed evenings as normal, because of the Modi sarkars penchant for event-management.

There is a bit of democratic dilemma at work. It has been a conventional democratic assumption that the citizens are intelligent and enlightened enough to make a correct judgment about a governments performance. And, that there is no need for any government to beat its own drums. At best, the government and its senior leaders were obliged to explain the policies to audience at home and abroad. Otherwise, there was no need for the public leaders to become salesmen.

All over the world, the political class has increasingly become enamoured of the advertisers tricks and tropes. In India, it is Arun Nehru who has been credited with the dubious distinction of being the first to rope in professional advertising hands to makes a sales pitch on behalf of the Congress party in the 1984 Lok Sabha election. The same bag of tricks did not work for the Congress in the 1989 election.

In 2004, the BJP political managers thought that the country needed to be told that India was shining. The only problem was that vast segments of the Indian population did not feel the warmth of the sunshine. After 2004, the UPA managers drew dramatically different conclusions: no need to tom-tom the governments performance. All that the government needed to do was to present an annual report card to the nation.

After 2014, the Modi crowd has come to subscribe to the wisdom that a different lesson is needed to be learnt: the government and its leaders must be sold incessantly. Some wisecrack has remarked that Modi is the first prime minister of India to travel always with his own klieg lights.

So, selling of the leaders and their achievements has become a high priority. In case anyone has any doubt, the advertising bosses gently nudge the mood. An occasion can always be invented  first hundred days, first six months, first year, second year, etc. Everyone colludes in this massive sleight-of-hand exercise because everyone stands to gain  the leaders vanity is satisfied, the advertisers get business, the media get the revenue  at the taxpayers expense. All this could be a harmless, even if wasteful, exercise. If a political dispensation needs ageing film stars to showcase its achievements, then surely the citizens can also be relied upon to see through the con game. And, they do.

POOR Mr KP Singh, the Director-General of Police in Haryana. He is being hauled over the coals for extolling the virtues of self-defence. I think the Jat agitation and the botched-up Prakash Singh inquiry have unhinged the police force in Haryana. It would appear that the citizens are being invited to an officially-sponsored civil war.

Perhaps, KP Singh finds himself in the wrong country. Had he made his formulation in America, the all-powerful Gun Lobby would have adopted him as its brand ambassador.

READING Christophe Jaffrelots new book, Pakistan at the Crossroads  Domestic Dynamics and External Pressures, reconfirmed my vague but persistent feeling that we in India do not make enough effort to understand our neighbour. Christopher Jaffrelot, a distinguished South Asia scholar, has put together this collection of insightful essays, bringing out complexities that bedevil Pakistan and which do not lend themselves to easy sorting out, either by India or any other external power.

We in India have always taken a complacent but righteously superior view of Pakistan. Our internal politics, since 1947, has never been able to pretend that Pakistan does not exist. We have fought two formal wars  1965 and 1971  and an undeclared war in Kargil. We have had periods of peace  or, stabs at peacemaking  Shimla (1972), Agra (2002), Islamabad (2004), and the recent Lahore stopover. And, we have had our experiences of intense frustrations and a sense of strategic helplessness.

On the other hand, we have politicians, including those who are in power today in New Delhi, who have made a career out of anti-Pakistan rhetoric and posturing. This political faction has now spawned a bevy of loudmouth strategic experts  including many retired generals and television anchors  who think that Pakistan needs to be  and, can be  spanked whenever we want to.

Against this rather over-simplistic view, Jaffrelot suggests a nuanced understanding of Pakistan and its various stakeholders, especially the complicated relationship between the civilians and the military. Instead of presenting the democratic and the military as two antagonistic players, Jaffrelot argues that both constitute an establishment. And this establishment is glued together by class interests, by a desire of personal enrichment; there is a discernible convergence of political and military grandees.

And while the seemingly unrestricted flourishing of jihadi groups in Pakistan seems to baffle us, Jaffrelot offers a sensible explanation: the Islamist groups derive their support from many resentments (mainly against the Americans), but these also provide a platform for venting anger against the Pakistani establishments institutionalised thievery. It is pointed out that indeed the expansion of some of the most militant groups is due not only to the support of Al Qaeda but also to the social agenda of rather plebeian movements. This dimension is totally absent from the Indian discourse on these groups.

Jeffrelot and his co-authors leave the reader in no doubt that the entire Pakistani establishment is committed to a long-term goal of undermining Indias overall national cohesion as well as its regional and international position. That, of course, has been fairly clearly understood by successive governments in New Delhi. Yet there is no escape for those presiding over New Delhi from having to engage with Pakistan, because India is no more than Pakistan able to impose its will on its neighbor.

The books sums up the very narrow strategic and political space available to New Delhi where successive governments have encountered only frustration as they attempted to move the relationship further. In a sobering passage, those of us who are forever itching to teach Pakistan a lesson, are reminded that the cost for Pakistan may be real and eventually significant but never decisive. And, in recent days, we are told that the overall dynamic of the relationship is increasingly in Pakistans hands

This is a book every sangh parivar hothead should read.

AFTER the controversy last week over how unsafe it was to eat the white bread being sold in the market, I heard from my naturopathy consultant, Dr Harmohan Dhawan. He reminded me that when I first met him six months ago, he had advised to avoid all products made out of white flour. And, now because the Centre for Science and Environment had found it, there was a hue and cry.

Dr Dhawan raises an important point: if he and his colleagues with absolutely no resources after seven years of extensive research had discovered the harmful effects of these products, why could not the food regulators make a similar discovery?

For good effect, he enclosed a pamphlet that he had written seven years ago, warning against maida products. And he insists that the so-called whole wheat bread available in the market was nothing more than maida with some colour added.

I think people like Dr Dhawan and his colleague Dr Sheenu Aggarwal have their task cut out: of making people aware of how to eat healthily (that too without having to spend too much). Of course, they would find themselves entrenched against multi-national food companies that have millions of dollars available for advertising and manufacturing a taste for their doubtful products.

However, I am sure the good Dr Dhawan would have no objection to a cup of coffee?

kaffeeklatsch@tribuneindia.com
Kuala Lumpur, May 31

Half a century after they died, the bodies of 32 Australian soldiers and their dependents, many of whom were killed in the Vietnam War, were returned home from Malaysia today.

In a sombre ceremony, their flag-draped coffins were loaded onto Australian airforce planes by a military guard of honour as a bugle sounded the Last Post.

Australia sent more than 60,000 troops to fight in the Vietnam War and 521 were killed. Soldiers were buried in the nearest Commonwealth cemetery unless their families could pay for repatriation to Australia.

"As a soldier, I am proud that the remains can be brought closer to their loved ones," said Abdullah Sani Mohamed, the Army Museum Director, who oversees Terendak Military Cemetery in Malaysia, where the Australians were buried.

He said 21 of the deceased were Australian soldiers killed in Vietnam, three had been killed in the fight against communist insurgents in Malaysia, and eight others were family members.

In 1966, Australia changed the repatriation policy so that all fallen soldiers would be taken home.

Last year, the government offered to pay for the repatriation of any soldiers buried overseas prior to the policy change, with 33 families accepting the offer.

Another body will be repatriated from Kranji Cemetery in Singapore, the Australian government said in a statement.  AFP
Ankara, May 31

A former Miss Turkey was handed a 14-month suspended prison sentence on Tuesday for insulting President Tayyip Erdogan through a poem she shared on Instagram, the latest of at least a dozen Turks to face such a sentence.

An Istanbul court found model Merve Buyuksarac, 27, guilty of insulting a public official but suspended the sentence on condition she does not repeat the act for the next five years, local media said.

Insulting the president is a crime punishable by up to four years in jail in Turkey. The law was used infrequently until Erdogan won the presidency in August 2014, since which time prosecutors have opened more than 1,800 cases for insulting him, including against cartoonists, journalists and teenagers.

Prosecutors are also pursuing a case against a German comedian who mocked Erdogan on German television.

Buyuksarac, who was crowned Miss Turkey in 2006, was briefly detained last year for sharing the poem on Instagram in 2014. It was called "the Master's Poem" and referred to a high-level Turkish corruption scandal in 2014.  Reuters
Moscow, May 31

Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko, who spent two years in Russian custody before she was released last week, was sworn in as a lawmaker in the national parliament today.

Savchenko was elected a lawmaker in 2014 while she was in custody. She told fellow lawmakers in the Rada, the parliament in Kiev, that she would it make her priority to fight for the release of other Ukrainians held in Russia. Ukraine describes them as political prisoners.

"You absolutely have to pull out every single prisoner," the 35-year old said before singing the national anthem.

Savchenko had resigned from the army and was serving in a volunteer Ukrainian battalion in eastern Ukraine when she was captured by Russia-backed separatists in June 2014.

She was put on trial and convicted in March of involvement in the killing of two Russian journalists in eastern Ukraine, a charge that she has rejected.

Savchenko returned to Ukraine last week to a hero's welcome after she was pardoned by Russian President Vladimir Putin as part of a prisoner swap.

At the end of her speech, Savchenko took down a poster with her picture from the rostrum, where it has been for months. She replaced it with one depicting several other people and calling for the release of "prisoners of the Kremlin."

Savchenko is a member of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's party, which in February left Ukraine's governing coalition.  AP
London: Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday underwent an open-heart surgery at a British hospital which, his party said, was "successful", the Premier's second cardiac procedure in five years. Sharif had gone to London on May 22 for a regular medical check-up but was diagnosed with a heart complication by doctors at Princess Grace Hospital, who suggested surgery. Sharif's daughter Maryam tweeted after the operation: "Surgery successful by the grace of Almighty. The Prime Minister is off the pump now. Will be shifted to ICU in the next 60 mins or so." pti

Village prefers 200,000 fine than 10 refugees

London: A super-rich village in Switzerland, one of the wealthiest in Europe, has chosen to pay a fine of 200,000 pounds instead of accepting 10 refugees under the country's newly imposed quota system. Residents in the picturesque Oberwil-Lieli village with 300 millionaires in a population of 22,000, voted 'no' in a referendum. The vote has resulted in a division in the town and led to people slamming residents for being "racist". But Andreas Glarner, village mayor, denied they were being racist: "Language barrier would be an issue." Switzerland had recently announced to take in about 50,000 refugees, to be distributed in the countrys 26 counties. pti

NASA spots giant coronal hole on Sun

Washington: NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory has spotted a giant dark area on the upper half of the Sun known as a coronal hole. Coronal holes are areas on the Sun where the solar magnetic field extends up and out into interplanetary space, sending solar material speeding out in a high-speed stream of solar wind. Scientists study these fast solar wind streams because they sometimes interact with Earth's magnetic field, creating what is called a geomagnetic storm, which can expose satellites to radiation and interfere with communications signals. pti
Kabul, May 31

Taliban militants killed at least 17 people after abducting over 200 bus passengers in the early hours of Tuesday in the northern Kunduz province of Afghanistan.

Local government officials, quoted by Khaama Press, confirmed that the Taliban killed at least 12 of the abducted passengers.

However, a security official said the militants have killed at least 17 of the passengers after kidnapping them from the Kunduz-Takhar highway.

The Taliban insurgents kidnapped at least 185 passengers after setting up a check post on the highway around 2 am. The insurgents kidnapped the passengers from four buses, three vans and three cars and took them away, the security officials said.

However, the majority of the passengers were released after they were interrogated but at least 17 of them were killed. The officials also added that at least 18 of the passengers were still in the custody of the Taliban insurgents and efforts were underway for their safe release.

Under the new leadership of Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban have vowed that there will be no peace talks with the Afghan government. IANS




Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31



By Khalid Kazimov - Trend:



Members of an Iranian business delegation have attended several meetings with Finish companies in Helsinki to discuss ways for the expansion of trade ties.



The sides discussed cooperation in the various fields of industry, mining, energy, tourism, banking and investment, agriculture and food, ICT as well as health, IRNA news agency reported.



The meetings took place during Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif's

ongoing European tour.



Zarif who currently is in Helsinki has already visited Poland on the first leg of his tour to the north of Europe which kicked off May 29. Sweden and Latvia will be the next destinations of Iranian foreign minister during his tour.



Iran exported $298,000 worth of products to Finland in 2014 and imported 24.6 million worth of products from the European nation.



Carpets fruit, furniture and glasses were among the main products Iran exported to Finland.



In turn, Iran imported machinery equipment, nuclear reactors, boilers, electronic equipment, pharmaceutical products, paper and wood from Finland.
ANKARA, May 31

Turkey said on Tuesday that heavy air strikes reported to have been carried out by Russian jets on a hospital and a mosque in Syria's rebel-held city of Idlib had killed more than 60 civilians and injured around 200 people.

In an e-mailed statement, the Turkish foreign ministry called on the international community to act swiftly against what it called the "indefensible" crimes of the Russian and Syrian administration.  Reuters
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31

By Khalid Kazimov - Trend:

German and Turkish investors will build about 20 hotels in Iran, an Iranian vice-president said.

Iranian Vice-President and the head of the Cultural Heritage Organization Massoud Soltanifar has said that Iran has recently inked deals with investors from Germany and Turkey to enhance the country's tourism infrastructure, Mehr news agency reported.

Massoud Soltanifar said that according to a memorandum of understanding (MoU) inked on May 29 with Germans, they will construct about 15 hotels in the country.

Over the past month, another MoU on building about five hotels in Iran was signed with Turkish investors.

Iran plans to attract 20 million tourists per year to generate $30 billion in revenue by 2025.

The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) has suggested that Iran's international tourism revenues in 2013 amounted to $1.294 million.

Meanwhile, the World Bank (WB) reported that 4.96 million tourists arrived in Iran in 2014. The WB statistics indicates 1.175 billion inbound tourists across the globe in 2014 with an expenditure of $1.426 trillion.
The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliances annual International Roadcheck is set to take place June 7-9 across North America.

Law enforcement officers in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico will inspect large trucks and buses as part of the three-day enforcement event. The event is designed to spotlight the important role of driver and truck safety inspections in reducing roadway tragedies.

This years Roadcheck will place a special emphasis on tire safety.

Over the 72-hour period, 10,000 federal, state, provincial, territorial, and local inspectors at thousands of locations in North America will conduct commercial vehicle and driver inspections. Officials will primarily conduct the North American Standard Level 1 Inspection, which is a 37-step procedure that includes both driver and vehicle.

The inspection will go over items like the braking system, coupling devices, exhaust system, frame, fuel system, lights, safe loading, steering mechanism, drive line, suspension, tires, van and open-top trailer bodies, wheels and rims, windshield wipers, and emergency exits on buses.

Last years Roadcheck hosted more than 69,000 inspections and emphasized cargo securement. Of the 44,989 Level 1 inspections, only 3.6% of drivers and 21.6% of vehicles received out-of-service violations.

A news conference and safety inspections conducted by the Maryland State Police will kick off the event at the West Friendship weigh station and inspection facility on Interstate 70, west of Baltimore, Md.
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31

By Umid Niayesh - Trend:

Iranian president Hassan Rouhani emphasized the right of Iranian ethnic groups for mother tongue education.

Addressing a gathering of people in the northwestern city of Mahabad on May 31, Rouhani said that all Iranian ethnic groups should be able to teach their mother tongue, the state-run IRINN TV reported.

He further said that the administration is "negotiating" with the education ministry for implementation of the article 15 of Iran's constitution.

The mentioned article says that the "Official language (of Iran)... is Persian...[and]... the use of regional and tribal languages in the press and mass media, as well as for teaching their literature at schools, is allowed in addition to Persian."

Rouhani further said that Iran's ethnic diversity and mother tongue of the ethnic groups in the country should be respected.

He further said that centers were established in Tabriz and Ardabil cities (Capital city of Iran's East Azerbaijan and Ardabil provinces) as well as Kurdistan province, in this regard.

Rouhani's presidential campaign promises to protect ethnic minority rights have not yet matched his economic successes and achievements.

So far, Rouhani has not succeeded to realize his presidential campaign promises regarding teaching the ethnic mother languages of Iranians (Azerbaijani, Kurdish, Arabic, etc.).

The issue of establishment of the Academy of Azerbaijani language and literature in Tabriz that was also among Rouhani's promises during his campaign also remains unresolved.
Jim Bridenstine is a man of his word. He faces unrelenting pressure from the political elite in Washington, yet he has never wavered in his commitment to the First District or our country," Coburn said in a news release. "His courageous voting record is proof that he cares more about the long term health of our nation than his own political career. That kind of moral courage is rare in Washington today. I am proud of the work he does on our behalf and thankful for the sacrifices that he and his family make to serve. I wholeheartedly endorse Jim Bridenstine.
Meanwhile... the Movement for Social Justice is questioning if the lights from the deyas lit
A new series created by Robert Kirkman is a bit of a TV event.

The Walking Dead creator is revered by fans of the hit series, for having given life to the undead now approaching its 7th season.

Another comic turned series Outcast now arrives, built around the world of exorcism. It centres on Kyle Barnes (Patrick Fugit) a young man seeking answers to his conflicted childhood.

He returns to the small West Virginian town of Rome which is also where Reverend Anderson (Philip Glenister) resides. In the first episode the Reverend confronts Joshua, a young boy possessed by a demon after a plea from his mother.

The boy (Gabriel Bateman) is eerily disturbing, capable of extraordinary strength, violence and devious insight. This Reverend, who is no poster child for religion, has his work cut out.

Kyle Barnes, whose unkempt, unshaven appearance sees him getting about in t-shirt and what looks like pyjama pants, is drawn to the unholy battle.

I came because. I dont really know, Barnes tells Rev. Anderson.

While its not entirely clear what he is searching for, we are privy to various flashbacks that tell us he is the son of a mother possessed. What he endured physically and emotionally has scarred him, but also given him unique experience.

When he meets the boy -or whatever beast is living inside- the episode reaches its crescendo. At this point actors and special effects kick it up a notch and Outcast delivers what we expect of the horror genre.

Much of the episode works to establish the two leads, both as individuals and as a duo. In this regard it rises and falls between character work and horror scenes. I get the sense Kirkman is more keen to lay the foundations of interesting characters than a sugar-hit of scaring us.

Supporting characters include Wrenn Schmidt as child psychologist and adoptive sister Megan, Kate Lyn Shiel as Kyles ex Allison and the wonderful character actor Reg. E. Cathey as Police Chief Giles.

Directed by Adam Wingard, Outcast exercises, or possibly exorcises, plenty of potential.

Outcast premieres 8:30pm Saturday on FX.
Media reports this week have been catching up to the news that the idea for the Sally Faulkner 60 Minutes story was earlier rejected by Inside Story.

Now executive producer of Inside Story Hamish Thomson has also left Nine after 22 years, The Australian reports.

Last month TV Tonight reported the fate of Inside Story was looking grim with staff departures (all of which is unrelated to current headlines) as well as reporting Inside Story rejected the Sally Faulkner story before 60 Minutes became involved.

The Daily Telegraph has now published excerpts of emails from 60 Minutes executive producer Kirsty Thomson and former producer Stephen Rice.

They claim logistics had been planned by Inside Story for the classic Kids Arent Coming Home After Holiday story.

Stage one surveillance is 3-5 days watching the family routine and planning the raid they note.

Had Inside Story proceeded it could potentially have enveloped Nine power couple, host Leila McKinnon and former CEO David Gyngell. Thankfully that bullet was dodged.

This week Stephen Rice contracted lawyer John Laxon to represent him to challenge his dismissal from Nine.
Photo by Ryan K. Morris / National Science and Technology Medals Foundation

In a special White House ceremony on May 19, President Barack Obama awarded medals to the latest honorees of the National Medal of Science and National Medal of Technology and Innovation.

Included in this group was Rakesh Jain, who earned his masters and doctoral degrees in chemical engineering in 1974 and 1976 from the University of Delaware. Jain, who is now director of the Edwin L. Steele Laboratory for Tumor Biology in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital, received the National Medal of Science.

The National Medal of Science was created by statute in 1959 and is administered for the White House by the National Science Foundation.

The Medal of Science is the nations highest honor for achievement and leadership in advancing the fields of science and technology. It is awarded to individuals in science and engineering who have made outstanding and important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social sciences, biology, chemistry, engineering, mathematics and physics.

Science and technology are fundamental to solving some of our nations biggest challenges, said Obama in a White House press release. The knowledge produced by these Americans today will carry our countrys legacy of innovation forward and continue to help countless others around the world. Their work is a testament to American ingenuity.

Jain has dedicated his career to studying the microenvironment of cancerous tumors in the laboratory and in human trials. He is known for his ability to combine knowledge from the fields of engineering, biology and medicine to reveal mechanisms of resistance to drug delivery and efficacy for his innovative approaches to overcome this resistance and for taking his approaches from bench to bedside and back.

Jain is most celebrated for proposing and validating the hypothesis that normalizing the tumor vasculature can improve the treatment outcome and survival of cancer patients. This concept also offers opportunities to improve treatment of vascular disorders that afflict some 500 million people worldwide.

I feel very grateful for my family and mentors who introduced me to this area of research, says Jain. I also feel enormously grateful to the hundreds of patients who participated in more than 25 clinical trials that our laboratory has collaborated in, and who have made it possible for future patients to benefit from their efforts. Lastly, I am extremely grateful for research grants from the federal agencies and private foundations as well as philanthropic support, especially from the Cook and Steele families.

This is one of many accolades that Jain has received in his distinguished career, including election to all three branches of the National Academies: the National Academy of Science, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine).
Photo by Wenbo Fan

University of Delaware professors and students are partnering with Old Swedes Foundation in Wilmington to assist in determining the best way to manage storm water runoff, preserve its historical record, artifacts and buildings, and explore ways to transform the National Historic Landmark into a gathering space for the surrounding community.

Students in Anna Wiks Advanced Landscape Design Course worked this semester to design landscape architecture plans for the site, which dates to the late 17th century.

One of the primary issues identified for this site was the need for improved storm water management. In the cemetery, there are areas that are washed out, graves that are collapsed because of water, and a lack of vegetation as a result of erosion and aging tree roots. Rebecca Wilson, the executive director of the Old Swedes Foundation, really wanted to get some solutions in place for these issues, said Wik, assistant professor of landscape design in the Department of Plant and Soil Sciences (PLSC) in UDs College of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

The students ideas for addressing these issues and transforming the space were on display at the annual SpringFest event on April 17, celebrating the rich historical heritage of Wilmingtons 7th Street Peninsula, which includes Old Swedes Historic Site, Fort Christina Park, the Kalmar Nyckel Shipyard and the Copeland Maritime Center. Students set up posters of their work and collected surveys to find out what people in the neighborhood, parishioners and others at the event were looking for in the space.

With that feedback, the students selected a specific area they wanted to focus on for their final project and came up with more detailed plans for that area, which were displayed on Tuesday, May 24, at a public presentation held at the Old Swedes Historic Site.

Student solutions

Hunter Perry, a senior majoring in landscape horticulture and design, said the class visited sites around Wilmington to get a sense of the different issues affecting the urban environment. Understanding the challenges and opportunities present in Wilmington helped the students come up with new ideas for the Old Swedes site.

His poster showed plantings right against the church and large beds of ground cover, such as perennial flowers and annual plantings, that would look attractive as well as manage storm water.

Right now, storm water is just running along the existing surface, and theres not much to catch it. I used a number of planting barriers that will allow water to infiltrate and potentially alleviate some of the issues caused by the run off. These plantings could put the water to use and cut down on a significant number of the problems, said Perry.

Perry said that a great learning experience with the project was being realistic in his plans.

The foundation has a budget, and obviously isnt going to be able to put in Belgian block pathways that are a half million dollars. They also dont want to remove all of the existing trees; many of them are attractive and have historical interest, so I elected to keep all the trees and do minimal site impact, said Perry.

Another portion of the project was the assessment of existing trees and creation of a conceptual tree succession plan. Tara Trammell, the John Bartram Assistant Professor of Urban Forestry in the plant and soil sciences department, helped the landscape design students measure and record data about the existing trees and gave them tips on preparing a succession plan.

Olivia Kirkpatrick, a sophomore majoring in landscape horticulture and design, said the class researched the history of the site and let that inform what they were doing as they came up with their conceptual designs.

Kirkpatrick said she believes the biggest issue facing the site, other than the physical issues with runoff, is improving its ability to serve the surrounding community.

In my design, one of the things I added was a larger entryway so that when people are looking in, it seems more inviting, said Kirkpatrick, who enjoyed the semester long focus of the project because it allowed her and her classmates time to explore a topic that interested them.

Youll always find something that interests you and you want to pursue it, but with a lot of shorter term projects, you dont have that opportunity. With this, we started broad and then we were zeroing in. Having the whole semester to do that research to focus on is just incredible, said Kirkpatrick.

Old Swedes Foundation

Wilson, executive director of the Old Swedes Historic Site and Foundation, said that the foundation was thrilled to be able to partner with UD on the project.

They have some wonderful designs. I wish we could afford to do everything that theyre all saying but well at least start with the things that we have to have for the water issues, and theyre coming up with some really good ideas. Ive always enjoyed working with students and I like the relationship that I have with the University of Delaware. It helps them but it helps me too, said Wilson.

Wilson said that there is the possibility to incorporate bits and pieces of the students ideas and was pleased with the designs to improve the amphitheater.

Its not being utilized as much as we would like but were planning to do more with it. The city offers some concerts there in the summer. Wed like to do a whole outdoor concert series in the fall with different musicians for the community and we also have a labyrinth out there, so a lot of people come and walk that, said Wilson.

Project origins

The project came about when Wik met with Lu Ann De Cunzo, chair and professor in the Department of Anthropology, at a 2015 Summer Faculty Institute session where faculty members from diverse backgrounds were paired to come up with projects that would incorporate their work.

De Cunzo had worked in the spring of 2015 at the Old Swedes site doing an archaeological investigation for the group.

When the church realized they were having serious drainage problems, they decided they would probably have to install an underground drainage system right outside the foundation of the church but they didnt know if there were any archaeological remains from earlier in the history of the church, or if there were burials that went right up to the church walls, so we decided to do a course here, said De Cunzo.

With the 15 students in her Introduction to Archaeological Field Methods class, De Cunzo tested four locations around the church where they were having problems with water penetration. When they did a ground penetrating radar survey to try to see below the bricks, there were several places that showed graves going right up to the walls of the church.

We tested one area where it showed graves and one area where it didnt, and we found graveshafts in both locations, said De Cunzo, who added that they were careful to stop excavation before reaching any human remains. They wanted to give the foundation information that would help them plan to preserve the church but also preserve the landscape and the burial ground.

Based on the information we found, Annas class is trying to provide some design solutions that would not further damage the archaeological record or the cultural landscape of the burial ground, so its looking at the whole property as an artifact and not just the building itself, said De Cunzo.

Ana Ambriz, a junior double majoring in Latin American studies and anthropology, worked on the project with De Cunzo and said that during the dig, they uncovered artifacts from the Lenape Native Americans.

We thought since its a Swedish settlement, we were going to find Swedish artifacts. Turns out, we didnt just find Swedish artifacts, we actually found a lot of Lenape artifacts in addition to pipe stems and tea cups, said Ambriz.

Using characteristics and category technique checkpoints, the earliest artifact that they found could date back to 12,000 B.C., a fact that Ambriz thought was particularly interesting.

I remember the best part was coming home and being like, I found this artifact thats from 12,000 B.C. It was awesome, said Ambriz.
The militants launched 21 attacks on ATO troops in eastern Ukraine over the past day.

This is reported by the ATO Headquarters press center.

"The situation in ATO area remains tense. The enemy shelled the strongholds of Ukrainian defenders 21 times in last day," the report reads.

As noted, the Russian mercenaries used 120mm mortars to fire at Ukrainian positions near Verkhniotoretske (22km north-east of Donetsk), Novobakhmutivka (22km north of Donetsk), Krasnohorivka (29 km west of Donetsk), Opytne (11.5km north-west of Donetsk). Ukrainian servicemen near Avdiyivka (18km north of Donetsk) came under small arms, grenade launcher and 82mm mortar fire.

In addition, the strongholds near Krasnohorivka and Novotroitske (32km south of Donetsk) were shelled from small arms, heavy machine guns and automatic grenade launchers.

Despite the OSCE post near Stanytsia Luhanska (16km north-east of Luhansk), the enemy shelled Ukrainian positions located there, using heavy machine guns, grenade launchers of various systems and infantry combat vehicles.

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U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt is shocked by escalation of the situation in Donbas, which has occurred in recent days.

The Ambassador said this to journalists at the Kyiv Institute of Postgraduate Education after the oath ceremony of US Peace Corps volunteers in Ukraine on Tuesday, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"We are shocked by the escalation happening in eastern Ukraine in recent days. We have seen how Russian-led separatists shot down an OSCEs unmanned aerial vehicle. And we have seen in the OSCE report that the separatists are moving along the contact line in columns in order to carry out raids and attacks," he said.

Ambassador Pyatt noted that US President Barack Obama had stated at the G7 summit that the violence must be stopped.

"It is in Russias power to stop this violence," the US Ambassador to Ukraine added.

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Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31

By Fatih Karimov - Trend:

If not for Iran, the "Islamic State" (IS, aka ISIL or ISIS) terrorist group would capture Iraqi capital city of Baghdad as well as Arbil city, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani said.

Addressing a gathering of people in the northwestern city of Mahabad on May 31, Rouhani said that the Islamic Republic not only defends its territory but also helps all "oppressed" people in the region, the state-run IRINN TV reported.

While Arbil city in Iraq was on verge of falling, Iran's military and political forces including army, Basij and IRGC as well as the government saved the city, Rouhani said.

The Islamic Republic also responded to Syrian people request for help while the terrorist groups including the IS and Al-Nusra Front were fighting to capture Damascus, he added.

The Iranian president further said that those who are seeding terrorism and killing innocent people in Iraq and Syria have no relation with Islam, Quran and humanity.

Iranian officials in various occasions have underlined that the Islamic Republic has saved Iraq and Syria of a terrorist government nightmare.

Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force recently said that the Islamic Republic played a great role in Iraq's standing against the IS and has contributed to the formation of public mobilizations in the country.

Iran will take action as much as needed and requested by Iraqi officials, he added.

Soleimani, earlier said Iran has helped the Syrian government to stand against the terrorist groups, adding the Islamic Republic is definitely the winner on all the frontlines in the region.

The Islamic Republic views the Syrian regime as its main strategic ally in the region, as well as a part of the "axis of resistance" against Israel. Tehran has always expressed support for the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Western countries accuse Iran of running military operations in Syria, but Tehran denies those accusations. Iranian officials have repeatedly stressed that they only provide military consultations to the Syrian forces.
The militants together with the Russian military have killed about 10,000 Ukrainians, another 20,000 were injured within two years since the start of the anti-terrorist operation in eastern Ukraine, First Deputy Secretary of NSDC of Ukraine Mykhailo Koval told a meeting of the Interparliamentary Assembly of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania and the Sejm and Senate of Poland, Ukrinform reports.

"For more than 2 years our country has been the target of the Russian aggression. During this time, the militants and their Russian masters have killed 10,000 Ukrainians, over 20,000 have been injured," said Koval.

In addition, the official said that about two million citizens of Ukraine were forced to temporarily leave their homes. However, he reminded the international partners that Russia continues to wage "hybrid warfare" today in Ukraine. Moreover, Russia continues to implement its plans for destroying Ukrainian independence and return of our country to "its geostrategic orbit."

tl
U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt plans to serve in Ukraine for at least two more months before his successor, Marie Yovanovitch, begins her work, the Ambassador told reporters at the Kyiv Institute of Postgraduate Education during a sworn in ceremony for Peace Corps volunteers in Ukraine on Tuesday, Ukrinform reports.

"I cannot say how long I will remain in Ukraine, but I can promise that I will definitely be in Ukraine over the next two months. I look forward to meeting some of you in your Ukrainian homes, when I have time to travel throughout Ukraine," the American diplomat said. tl
If Ukraine submits bid for membership in NATO, the Alliance will have to consider it, in accordance with existing procedures. Nobody can block this process.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said this while delivering his speech at the University of Warsaw on Tuesday, an Ukrinform correspondent reports from Poland.

"Nobody has the right to interfere in or to veto this process. It is a very important principle. Each country, including Ukraine, has the sovereign right to choose its own path ... If Ukraine submits bid, it will be considered," Stoltenberg said.

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Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31



By Khalid Kazimov - Trend:



Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Ali Akbar Salehi has prevented shipping Iran's heavy water to the US.



Salehi said that he has made the decision following a US court ruling on the confiscation of $2 billion of Iran's assets, Fars news agency reported.



The official further explained that the decision came as the Islamic Republic is concerned over the seizure of assets.



The US government in April completed an $8.6 million deal to buy 32 tons of heavy water from Iran. However, 251 American lawmakers May 25 voted for a bill that would prohibit such purchases next year. The measure is yet to be approved by the US Senate.



On Apr. 20, a US court ruled that $2 billion of Iranian assets in a US bank account had to be turned over to the families of the American victims of a 1983 bombing in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, and other attacks blamed on Iran.
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31



By Khalid Kazimov - Trend:



Iranians and Russians are working together to produce stable isotopes, Iran's atomic chief said.



Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Ali Akbar Salehi has said that his organization has paved the groundwork for producing isotopes, Fars news agency reported.



According to Salehi Iran will upgrade its IR1 centrifuges in order to make them capable of producing stable isotopes.



He made the remarks on the sidelines of a meeting for inking a deal with Iran's Research Institute of Petroleum Industry.
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31

By Khalid Kazimov - Trend:

A number of European countries are interested in purchasing 20 tons of heavy water from Iran, says Ali Akbar Salehi, the Iranian atomic chief.

Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), said his organization is capable of producing 20 tons of heavy water per year, Mehr news agency reported May 31.

He further described the heavy water as a strategic commodity.

The US government in April completed an $8.6 million deal to buy 32 tons of heavy water from Iran. However, 251 American lawmakers voted May 25 for a bill that would prohibit such purchases the next year. The measure is yet to be approved by the US Senate.

Meanwhile, Tehran and Moscow are eyeing a deal for exporting 40 tons of Iran's surplus heavy water to Russia.


Those who aspire for a degree in business more often than not face this dilemma: Will taking on some $28,400 in student debt, contribute to higher earning for a lifetime?

Economists claim a college degree usually does the trick. In fact, a 2015 research from PayScale divulged that students do not have to go to a university that cost them an arm and a leg to get a considerable return. But that's not all, the research indicate it's better to opt for a state school instead, Time reported.

According to a list published by Business Insider, the 25 best colleges where the most students opt for a degree in business include:

25 - George Washington University

24 - College of William and Mary

23 - University of Wisconsin at Madison

22 - Claremont McKenna College

21 - Pennsylvania State University

20 - Washington and Lee University

19 - Purdue University

18 - Villanova University

17 - Boston University

16 - Lehigh University

15 - Babson College

14 - University of Texas at Austin

13 - Wake Forest University

12 - Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

11 - Boston College

10 - University of Southern California

9 - Emory University

8 - Northeastern University

7 - New York University

6 - University of Virginia

5 - Washington University in St. Louis

4 - Georgia Institute of Technology

3 - University of Notre Dame

2 - Georgetown University

1 - University of Pennsylvania

UPenn encompasses the Wharton School of Business, which happens to be world's first collegiate business school. It originally was placed at No. 9 in the online publication's list of best colleges, however jumped up to No. 1 spot as a result of the impressive figures that indicated 21% students studied business/marketing.

Similarly, Georgetown University jumped 10 spots to grab the No. 2 spot on the list, as 22% of its overall students major in business/Marketing at the university's McDonough School of Business.
To increase the market of applied research, 26 universities in Chile along with 11 representatives and 12 science laboratories will establish technology transfer hubs.

The alliances are fully supported by CORFO in terms of financial development with total fund up to $19 million. According to the spokesperson, this attempt helps to create more enterprises and file new patents, contracts as well as license.

The three hubs are: Andes Pacific Technology Access, HubTec, and Know Hub.

Each hub serves research market purposes including managing intellectual property and putting the findings to best practices. These hubs are expected to open new markets according to the innovation needs, nationally and internationally, UC Davis Chile reported.

HubTec, receives financial support that will be used by as many as 17 institutions including UC Davis Chile. As for the Know Hub, the University of Chile will lead 15 institutions including University of Los Lagos.

Claudina Uribe from UFRO explains the benefit of getting involved in HubTec project for the university. She claimed that this new hub will enable scientists at small scale institutions to transfer applied science technologies that could not be done alone due to lack of funds. Speaking to the University World News, Uribe believes that these hubs will connect research and development centers to industrial markets.

Similar to Uribe's statement, CORFO spokesperson, Eduardo Bitran, explains that the reason to establish the hubs is because each university is not able to conduct world class research with limited funds and accesses. At first, there were doubts whether universities could unite to create better paths for all research centers in Chile. With these hubs, researchers and their studies are more marketable in national and global stages, Economia Y Negocios reported.

The impact on business in Chile

Bitran further explains that the hubs will be able to push dynamic entrepreneurship to global spotlight and generate better business future in Chile as there are more capitals, reliable R&D centers and access to the international markets.
US District Judge Gonzales Curiel released the order to unseal the documents related to the Trump University lawsuit. The decision to release the documents was done on the same day that Donald Trump heavily criticized Curiel for his involvement in the case during a rally in San Diego. Trump apparently called Curiel a "hater" and also brought up the latter's Hispanic roots.

Donald Trump's Trump University Class-Action Lawsuit

The Trump University is a real estate school sued for reported fraudulent misrepresentation of the institution. The lawsuit comes from several of the thousands of students who paid more than $30,000 for seminars have believe they have been duped to learning about Trump's real estate techniques and strategies, Rueters reported. Curiel signed the order to release the documents on Friday, the same day that Trump spoke at a rally in San Diego.

I have a judge in the Trump University civil case, Gonzalo Curiel (San Diego), who is very unfair. An Obama pick. Totally biased-hates Trump  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2016



Trump fired words at Curiel for being a "hater" and his being appointed by President Barack Obama, and later on dismissed his authority because of his Hispanic heritage. Curiel explains that the release of the documents is "routine." Furthermore, the files have already been published by Politico, Inquisitr noted. District Judge Curiel is an American citizen born in East Chicago, Indiana and got his law degree from Indiana University School of Law.

Donald Trump in Hot Water?

Trump is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee for the upcoming US elections this November 8. Curiel fires back at Trump by saying that Trump University should be transparent to the public given Trump's presidential aspirations, New York Daily News shared. However, the trial date for the Trump University lawsuit is scheduled in the same election month and it is possible that Trump won't be able to handle the lawsuit before then.

Do you think the lawsuit against Trump University will affect Trump's presidential bid? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
Oberlin College student activists are suffering academically. They are joined by Ohio activists who are still protesting over the suspicious deaths of Tamir Rice, Michael Brown and several other men of color. This time, however, Oberlin activists are working together to push the petition to ban their failing midterm grades in the wake of their intense liberal activism.

Failed Petition to Ban Failing Grades at Oberlin College

An article published last year shed light on the happenings at Oberlin College in Ohio. Student activists are allegedly getting in trouble academically because they spend too much time attending the protests of the suspicious killings of black males at the hands of the police, The New Yorker wrote.

In light with this, the Oberlin student activists circulated a petition to ban failing grades. While the petition received more than 1,300 signatures; it did not change the mind of the Oberlin College administration, Teen Vogue shared.

A student said that some teaching staff at Oberlin College were understanding, Fox News reported.

While the professors told their students that they can talk to them instead of taking the midterm exams, they weren't very easy to locate on the campus.



Failing Grade Petition Went Viral

Media outlets caught wind of the petition to ban failing grades and it was reported online. There were mixed reactions regarding the idea of banning failing grades from higher education, International Business Times noted. Some believe that it is detrimental to the institution for students to insist the replacement of failing grades because college and university professors will no longer be needed. Furthermore, online commenters joined in the fray and debated how the lack of failing grades would shape how universities and colleges in the US will work.

Do you believe in banning failing grades in colleges and universities in the US in light of activism? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif described Iran's economic move growing, and said that investment in Iran is safe and secure, Irna reported.



He made the remarks in the Finnish capital on Tuesday afternoon in an economic-commercial meeting of Iran-Finland by participation of 60 Iranian economic activists as well as a group of Finnish businessmen.



'Some say Iran is a powerful country in the region. We are strong, because we depend on our people and we formed security from inside,' the Iranian foreign minister added.



Zarif also said that Iran has young and educated manpower, which is an important and noticeable factor for investors.



He said that banking problems will be removed soon, adding, 'We are confident that all investors are interested to invest in Iran.'



At the end of the meeting, Zarif and accompanying delegation departed Finland for Sweden.
May 31 2016

South Ayrshire Council has given the go-ahead to a significant extension of Ayr which promises to deliver 750 homes, a supermarket, primary school, office space and community hub over the next 30 years on farmland at Corton.Detailed planning consent has been given to LXB retail properties and The Harris Partnership to press ahead with a Sainsburys supermarket and car park as well as a pedestrian link bridge over the A77.In their design statement for the business units The Harris Partnership said: The overall design of the external elevations seeks to provide a simple crisp and uncluttered building that gives a contemporary feel to the south side of the Corton development. This is further enhanced through the use of high quality robust materials within key elevations.The public space elevation and main elevation to the rear have been designed to present a clear distinction between itself and the landmark buildings that flank it. A restricted palette of quality materials including crisp white render and composite timber cladding provide a welcoming and attractive frontage to the development.Infrastructure works associated with the supermarket will open up the remainder of the site to additional housing.
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Chief of Armenian Defense Ministry's armament department, General Mels Chilingaryan, as well colonels Mher Papyan and Armen Margaryan were arrested May 30, the Aravot newspaper reported citing Sona Truzyan, advisor to the chairman of Armenia's Investigative Committee.

Truzyan said the arrests were part of two separate criminal cases, including accepting low quality supplies and purchasing goods at inflated prices.

Another military man from the department of armament, Colonel Davit Abrahamyan was earlier charged with abuse of power.
Israel is ready to discuss the Arab Peace Initiative to reach a settlement of the conflict with Palestine, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

The proposal, aimed at ending the Arab-Israeli conflict, was adopted by the Arab League in 2002. The Arab nations pledged to normalize relations with Israel after the country withdraws from the territories occupied in 1967.

"The Arab Peace Initiative includes positive elements that can revive constructive negotiations with the Palestinians. We are ready to discuss the adjustments to the initiative with the Arab countries, so that it reflects the dramatic changes that have occurred in the region since 2002, but maintained the agreed goal of the 'two-state solution," Netanyahu told the parliament on Monday.

The prime minister reiterated his appreciation of the Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi call for joining efforts to renew the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Palestinians seek diplomatic recognition of their independent state on the territories of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, partially occupied by Israel, and the Gaza Strip.
Tehran and Kiev discussed ways to strengthen cooperation in the oil and gas sector May 30 during the visit of the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin to Iran, Sputnik news agency reported citing a source in Iran's Ministry of Petroleum.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry reported May 29 that Iran and Ukraine agreed to promote bilateral cooperation in all areas. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin visited Iran on May 29-30, where he met with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif and President Hassan Rouhani, as well as other officials.

The sides discussed ways to transport gas to Ukraine, cooperation in storing gas, as well as creation of a joint company specializing in in the field of oil and gas industry, according to the source.

"The countries have created a joint committee to discuss these issues in the nearest future, to reach consensus on issues brought up during the Ukrainian delegation's visit," the source added.
SHARE Hogrefe

By Marjorie Hernandez of the Ventura County Star

Defense attorneys for a Camarillo man facing a murder charge in the DUI death of a deputy in 2014 have filed a motion to dismiss the case because of alleged "outrageous" conduct by the District Attorney and Ventura County Sheriff's offices.

Authorities said Kevin Hogrefe, 26, was under the influence and driving a vehicle that hit and killed Deputy Yevhen "Eugene" Kostiuchenko, 41, on Oct. 28, 2014, as the officer walked back to his patrol car after an unrelated traffic stop on the shoulder of Highway 101 near Lewis Road in Camarillo.

A grand jury indicted Hogrefe in December 2014 on charges of second-degree murder and felony fleeing the scene of an accident involving death. According to court records, Hogrefe's blood-alcohol level about two hours after the crash was 0.23 percent. The legal limit is 0.08 percent.

Hogrefe could receive a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted.

In a 48-page motion, Senior Public Defender Justin Tuttle outlined various instances of alleged misconduct by prosecutors and law enforcement officials. Tuttle has said Hogrefe cannot get a fair trial in the county because of close ties between law enforcement and Kostiuchenko's family.

Tuttle said Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean has been quoted in news reports indicating Kostiuchenko was "family." Tuttle said the Kostiuchenko family and law enforcement receive preferential treatment during various court hearings.

"At each and every court hearing, there is the appearance that the Sheriff's Department, District Attorney's Office and Kostiuchenko family supporters get special and disparate treatment not afforded to either Mr. Hogrefe or his attorney and even other members of the public," Tuttle wrote.

In a brief filed May 13, Senior Deputy District Attorney Rebecca Day wrote Tuttle misquoted that article. She added Tuttle's tactics are only meant to delay the case.

"It appears the defense counsel takes advantage of every opportunity to misrepresent the facts both on the record and in writing," Day wrote. "Defense counsel has stated his intent to delay the trial of this matter and has indicated that he will do so by whatever means necessary, including taking writs on decisions of denial of his motions, if necessary, in order to effectuate a stay of proceedings."

During Hogrefe's last appearance on May 18, Ventura County Superior Court Judge Matthew Guasco ruled in favor of a defense motion to continue the trial to Sept. 7. Both sides, however, are scheduled to appear Aug. 8 where the defense's change-of-venue motion will be discussed.

In his motion to dismiss the case, Tuttle also said deputies, including various court bailiffs, wore purple pins with the insignia "YK 137" until about October 2015. That pin indicates Kostiuchenko's initials and badge number.

Day said in a declaration that most of the hearings have occurred in crowded courtrooms, and said deputies were not "flanking" the courtroom as Tuttle claimed. She said some of the deputies who are present at the hearings were assigned to work in the courtroom.

"Statements by counsel and implication that all of the uniformed officers are in the courtroom for our case are a misrepresentation of the facts," Day said.

When the Hogrefe family received death treats, Tuttle said the District Attorney's Office did nothing to investigate or forward it to another agency.

Day wrote in a declaration that "no such death threats have ever been reported to the police."

In his motion, Tuttle also said the District Attorney's office hired Spencer Vogel, a former employee with the Public Defender's Office who had worked on the Hogrefe case. Tuttle said Vogel attended defense team strategy meetings and had "unfettered access" to all internal memos, work product, computer files, etc.

"The D.A., before hiring Mr. Vogel, did not contact the Public Defender's office and make an inquiry about any potential conflicts," Tuttle wrote in his motion. "Not only is this a conflict of interest to be addressed in separate pleadings, but also outrageous government conduct in support of this motion."

Tuttle also said sheriff's officials allowed a reporter from The Star to meet with Hogrefe at the county Main Jail before he was able to visit his client on the day of his arraignment.

Day has said Tuttle is using various motions to further delay the trial.

"The People have concerns and responsibilities, namely to the family of the victim and to the witnesses in this case," Day wrote. "Over 18 months have passed since the victim's wife and family learned of his violent death. The trauma of awaiting justice in a court of law has become equally stressful as the family members daily relive the shock of details and events surrounding this violent event."

Both sides are also scheduled to appear before Guasco on Tuesday for motions.
ROB VARELA/THE STAR Members of the California Historical Group re-enact the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima during the 51st Annual "Lest We Forget" Memorial Day service at Conejo Mountain Funeral Home in Camarillo on Monday.

SHARE ROB VARELA/THE STAR Members of the Legion Riders carry a casket during the "Fallen Hero" procession at Conejo Mountain Funeral Home. Conejo Mountain presented the 51st Annual "Lest We Forget" Memorial Day service Monday in Camarillo. ROB VARELA/THE STAR Air Force Master Sgt. Rodel Ramirez, representing the Air Force Sergeants Association, and his son Johann, wait to place a wreath during Memorial Day services at Conejo Mountain Funeral Home in Camarillo on Monday. ROB VARELA/THE STAR Maryanne Allen places a wreath to honor Native American Indian Warriors of Peace on Monday at Conejo Mountain Funeral Home in Camarillo. ROB VARELA/THE STAR Air Force veteran Doug Hardie, of Newbury Park, plays taps during Memorial Day services on Monday at Conejo Mountain Funeral Home in Camarillo.

By Alicia Doyle, Special to The Star

A re-enactment of the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima in 1945 was the highlight of the 51st annual "Lest We Forget" Memorial Day service at Conejo Mountain Funeral Home in Camarillo.

The photo won the Pulitzer Prize, Tom Weaver, a military historian, told the crowd of about 800 people.

The original photo, however, depicted a group of Marines who raised a flag from the USS Missoula, he said.

"The secretary of the Navythought the flag was too important and historical to be left up there and wanted it for his office at the Pentagon," said Weaver, of Ventura, the event's keynote speaker. "Orders were sent to the beach commander to remove the battle flag and replace it with another one."

The flag was replaced with an American flag that measured 96 inches by 56 inches.

"It became the image of victoryand represents victory and the freedom we are living today," Weaver said.

Monday's event was about honoring all the nation's fallen heroes, said Joe Ortiz, a Vietnam veteran and master of ceremonies.

"Take a moment to remember our distinguished Vietnam veterans," Ortiz said. "We're in the middle of celebrating more than 50 years of that particular war, so please remember them."

The service featured patriotic music by the Camarillo Community Band, and a presentation by sailors from the U.S. Naval Base Ventura County ceremonial color guard. A vintage aircraft flyover was presented by the Commemorative Air Force Southern California Wing, and the Gold Coast Pipe Band played "Scotland the Brave."

Monday also featured a memorial wreath tribute. Loved ones of deceased military members were invited to display a wreath in honor of the fallen.

"The spirit of military service in Ventura County is extraordinarily strong," said U.S. Rep. Julia Brownley, D-Westlake Village. "Our fallen heroes today must be remembered and must be honored  not just on Memorial Day but every single day."

Memorial Day is a time to reconnect with our history and core values by honoring those who gave their lives for the ideals that we cherish, said Assemblywoman Jacqui Irwin, D-Thousand Oaks.

"More than a million American service members have died in warsthis nation has fought," Irwin said. "Each person who died was a loved one  each death was a loss to our community and the nation. Let us never forget."

Thousands of families spend Memorial Day enjoying barbecues and picnics, said Mike Morgan, mayor of Camarillo.

"But it's important that we do not forget the reason why this is one of the nation's most solemn occasions," Morgan said. "It's a day of remembrance for those who died in the service of our nation. Our forefathers pledged their lives, their homes and their honor to create this nation and many paid the ultimate price to maintain this pledge."

Richard Camacho, a Marine who served in Vietnam and earned a Purple Heart for being wounded in combat, stressed the importance of not using the word "happy."

"Don't say 'Happy Memorial Day' because it's not happy," said Camacho, of Camarillo. "It's not a day for barbecues. It's a day to remember."

"Today is about memorializing the dead veterans from the past from other wars," said Glenn Mossembekker, of Camarillo, a Vietnam veteran who served in the Army. "When I went through Vietnam, at that time nobody liked war, nobody liked the veterans. So it's gone through a complete reversal and we really appreciate that."
SHARE CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Ventura County Fire Department

By Alysson Aredas, alysson.aredas@vcstar.com

Emergency crews responded to a fishing vessel that had run aground at Channel Islands Harbor early Tuesday morning, officials said.

Ventura County Fire Department spokesman Capt. Mike Lindbery said that the incident was reported just after 1 a.m. Tuesday on Hollywood Beach north of the Channel Islands Harbor entrance. A 30-foot fishing vessel ran aground and wound up stuck on a sandbar, Lindbery said.

Crews from the Ventura County Fire Department, Oxnard Fire Department and Channel Islands Harbor Patrol used the incoming tide and small waves to get the boat facing back out towards the sea. The entire process took about 15 minutes, Lindbery said.

No injuries were reported and the boat was towed back to the harbor.
SHARE LEFT: First lady Nancy Reagan's wedding ring has been placed on permanent display at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley. A new exhibit called "Mourning Nancy Reagan" opened Saturday. ABOVE: Reagan Library curator supervisor Randal C.W. Swan and museum technician Meredith Nichter work on a display that will hold flowers left at the museum after Nancy Reagan died in March. An exhibit called "Mourning Nancy Reagan" opened Saturday. JOE LUMAYA/SPECIAL TO THE STAR Reagan Library curator supervisor Randal C.W. Swan and museum technician Meredith Nichter work on a display work on a display that will hold flowers left at the museum after Nancy Reagan died in March. An exhibit called "Mourning Nancy Reagan" opened Saturday at the library in Simi Valley. JOE LUMAYA/SPECIAL TO THE STAR The "Mourning Nancy Reagan" exhibit includes stuffed animals and the flag that flew at half-mast on the USS Ronald Reagan after Nancy Reagan's death in March. The exhibit opened Saturday at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley.

By Mike Harris of the Ventura County Star

Three months after former first lady Nancy Reagan's death, a memorial exhibit has opened at her late husband's presidential library in Simi Valley.

"When Mrs. Reagan passed away, unless you were able to come up to the library and pay your respects when she lay in repose or you were invited to the funeral, not very many people were able to be a part of her goodbye," said library spokeswoman Melissa Giller. "So we've created this special exhibit to allow people to come up and get a sense of what that week was like."

"Mourning Nancy Reagan," which opened Saturday and runs through July 5, draws upon the public outpouring of sympathy for her, Giller said.

The former first lady died March 6 at age 94 of congestive heart failure at her Bel-Air home. President Ronald Reagan died in 2004 at age 93.

The exhibit includes video and photographic highlights of services at the Reagan Presidential Library and Museum the week of her death.

It also features handwritten condolence messages from the funeral, including those of first ladies Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton and Rosalynn Carter, tribute letters from around the world, an American flag flown over the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan on the day of her death, and more.

Visitors will also be able to see Nancy Reagan's wedding ring, which the library acquired after her death. It is not part of the memorial exhibit, but has been added to the museum as a permanent display.

The Reagan Library, 40 Presidential Drive, is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.

General admission to the Nancy Reagan exhibit is $29. Admission is $26 for seniors 62 and over, $19 for ages 11-17, $16 for ages 3-10 and free for children 2 and under. Tickets include admission to the rest of the museum, including the Air Force One Pavilion, and another special exhibit, "Vatican Splendors: A Journey Through Faith and Art," which closes Aug. 28.

Tickets can be bought in advance through the library's website at http://www.reaganlibrary.com/tickets.
JOSEPH A. GARCIA/THE STAR Ventura Police Chief Ken Corney, along with the California Police Chiefs Association, of which he is president, are opposed to the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, a statewide ballot measure to control, regulate and tax adult use of marijuana that appears headed to the November ballot.

SHARE JOSEPH A. GARCIA/THE STAR Ventura Police Chief Ken Corney, along with the California Police Chiefs Association, of which he is president, are opposed to the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, a statewide ballot measure to control, regulate and tax adult use of marijuana that appears headed to the November ballot.

By John Scheibe of the Ventura County Star

As president of the California Police Chiefs Association, Ventura police Chief Ken Corney has garnered a lot of media attention for the group's and his own opposition to a November ballot measure that seeks to legalize recreational marijuana use in California.

Their objections to the measure, known as the Adult Use of Marijuana 2016, include its allowing those with "serious drug felonies to have a license to run a marijuana shop," said Corney during a recent interview at his Ventura office.

"These are people who have already demonstrated poor judgment in this area," Corney said of convicted drug felons.

Corney also cited numerous studies showing an increase in emergency room use by those intoxicated by marijuana in Colorado since the drug became legal there. He also cited a recent traffic safety study completed by the American Automobile Association. The study showed fatal crashes involving motorists who recently used marijuana doubled in Washington after the state legalized marijuana in late 2012. The study found the percentage of motorists involved in fatal crashes went from 8 to 17 percent from 2013 to 2014.

"Communities need to understand that this isn't about the legalization of a green, leafy substance that people pass around at concerts," said Corney, referring in part to the marijuana used decades ago. He said the percentage of THC, the psychoactive component in marijuana, is now more than 95 percent in edibles, oils, and other products containing cannabis, "far more than what existed back in the 1970s for example."

The group has launched a campaign called Public Safety First  Against the Legalization of Marijuana in California.

Corney has been president of the association since March 16. As president, he serves as the group's spokesman on numerous issues, including the marijuana initiative.

Corney said he personally also strongly agrees with the association's opposition to the marijuana initiative. Raised in Texas, Corney has spent his entire law enforcement career with the Ventura Police Department. This year will mark his 30th anniversary with the department.

Backers of the measure, including California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Facebook President Sean Parker, recently announced that they had gathered some 600,000 signatures from registered voters, substantially more than the 365,000 they need to qualify the measure for the ballot.

Newsom and other supporters say the 62-page initiative will make it harder for those under 21 years old to obtain pot and easier for police to crack down on illicit sales.

California became the first U.S. state to vote on legalizing marijuana in 1972. Proposition 19 failed, with 66.5 percent of voters turning it down.

Nearly a quarter of a century later, California led the way in making medical marijuana legal in 1996.

The November measure allows for possession of an ounce of marijuana as well as cultivation of six marijuana plants for those over age 21.

The measure would also create what Newsom and other supporters said would be the nation's strictest product quality and tracking system for either medical or recreational marijuana, with separate licenses required for growers, transporters and distributors.

Dale Gieringer, director of California's chapter NORML, National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, worries that a combination of taxes combined with other regulatory costs, could "encourage an underground market," for marijuana.

"This is something that could happen if you tax it too much," Gieringer said, noting state and local taxes on legal pot in some areas of California could easily exceed 35 percent.

Nevertheless, Gieringer supports the measure.

"It's not perfect," he said, "but it's definitely a step in the right direction."

NORML supports the legalization of nonmedical marijuana in the United States.

California voters defeated a 2010 marijuana legalization measure. But a recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found that 55 percent of likely California voters now support full legalization.

In addition to the California Police Chiefs Association, the November measure is opposed by The California Hospital Association and the California Teamsters.

Corney said the measure is backed by big corporations, including those in the tobacco industry.

"They clearly want a very big part of the marijuana industry," Corney said, noting that Colorado now has more marijuana distributors "than Starbucks outlets there."

"This measure will have a significant negative effect on the quality of life for communities across California," he said.

Corney also worries about how law enforcement officers are going to enforce laws that prohibit motorists from driving while intoxicated, noting that unlike alcohol, there is no scientifically recognized test to administer to drivers suspected of being under the influence of marijuana.

Such a test "may come in five or more years, but it's not here yet."

As to his newfound role as spokesman of the police chiefs association, Corney said "it's a big challenge that represents an opportunity to sustain the quality of life and safety in California's communities."

The Associated Press contributed to this story.


Saturday night at Marquee Nightclub in The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, Madonna hosted her Official Rebel Heart Tour After Party (Pictured: Madonna on Red Carpet  Photo credit: Denise Truscello / WireImage).

Photo credit: Denise Truscello / WireImage.

Upon arriving the superstar took to the stage where she danced with DJ Lunice and gave a shoutout to the crowd sending the packed nightclub into a frenzy.

Photo credit: Denise Truscello / WireImage.

Madonna and her Rebel Heart Tour dancers then took over The Library inside Marquee where they danced and relaxed post show.

Photo credit: Denise Truscello / WireImage.

Photo credit: Denise Truscello / WireImage.
Join Nove Italianos Executive Chef Geno Bernardo, for his intimate cooking class at noon on Saturday, Oct. 2 and experience a Taste of Nove.

The class will feature savory fall favorites designed to take guests on a culinary adventure with a delectable four course meal.

At the class, cooking enthusiasts will receive insider tips on how to prepare signature Italian dishes from Chef Geno. The class will finish with everyone sitting down to try each course paired with wine. The cost of each cooking class is $75 per person. Space is limited. For reservations, please call 702.942.6856.

COURSE 1

Sicilian onion soup

Italian version of a classic French dish made with salt cod

COURSE 2

Ricotta Gnudi

Ricotta dumplings

COURSE 3

European Branizo

European sea bass

COURSE 4

Lamb chop Scottadito

Grilled lamb chop served with salsa verde and spinach

Nove Italiano is open Sunday through Thursday from 5:30 p.m.  10:30 p.m. and Fridays and Saturdays from 5:30 p.m.  11 p.m. For additional information, please visit www.novelasvegas.com or call 702.942.6800.


Blush Boutique Nightclub kicked off another great weekend with the pre-party for Tony Hawks Stand Up For Skateparks fundraiser at Wynn Las Vegas (click here for story and photos!). Pictured above: Tony Hawk at Blush  Photo credit: Bryan Steffy.

Photo credit: Bryan Steffy.

Hawk arrived at the venue at about 10:15 with numerous professional skateboarders and snowboarders including Olympic gold medalist Shaun White, Bucky Lasek and Andy MacDonald. The group hung out on the Blush patio until Midnight, when White decided to head over to Surrender Nightclub at Encore. White and entourage were escorted to a VIP bungalow where he drank a couple glasses of wine.

Photo credit: Bryan Steffy.

Actress Eva LaRue from CSI Miami also started her evening out at Blush. She was in town with old friends from high school and the group drank vodka with mixers while dancing at their VIP table. LaRue and friend then headed over to Surrender Nightclub to catch DJ Steve Aokis set.

Photo credit: Bryan Steffy.

Also at Surrender to see Aoki was DJ Z-Trip and Michael Phelps. Phelps stopped by the venue just after 2 am and drank Fiji water with poker pro Antonio Esfandiari. The duo headed out shortly before 3 am to play poker.

Photo credit: Bryan Steffy.

Photo credit: Bryan Steffy.
The United States is calling on North Korea to restrain from further ballistic missile tests that destabilize the Asia Pacific region, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters on Tuesday, Sputnik reported.



Earlier on Tuesday, the Pentagon confirmed that it detected a failed intermediate range ballistic missile launch by Pyongyang.

"The United States and the rest of the international community calls on North Korea to refrain from actions, including this failed missile test, that further raise tensions in the region," Earnest said.

Tensions over North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs escalated after Pyongyang said on January 6 that it had successfully carried out a hydrogen bomb test and put a satellite into orbit on February 7, violating UN Security Council resolutions and triggering condemnation from the international community in both cases.




By the South-East Asia IPR SME Helpdesk

Vietnam now operates a diverse, modernized economic structure, with manufacturing, information technology, and high-tech industries forming a large, fast-growing part of its national economy. It is also the third-largest oil producer in south-east Asia.

Vietnams key exports to the EU include footwear, textiles and clothing, coffee, rice, seafood, and furniture, totaling approximately EUR 22 billion each year. EU exports to Vietnam primarily consist of high tech products such as electrical machinery and equipment, aircraft, vehicles, and pharmaceutical products, totaling approximately EUR 5.8 billion annually. Vietnam and the EU launched negotiations on a Free trade Agreement (FTA) in 2012 which are ongoing.

Vietnam has made a concerted effort to bring its national legislation into line with international IPR standards in recent years. Accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2007, and its compliance with the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), signified a marked improvement to IP protection in the country.

Vietnam is also a member of the following international conventions regulating IP matters:

The Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property

The Madrid Agreement concerning the international Registration of Marks

Protocol Relating to the Madrid Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Marks

Rome Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organizations

The Patent Cooperation Treaty

International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants

Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights

The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works

As a result, Vietnams IP legislation is now considered to be relatively comprehensive, covering most aspects of protection of IP in accordance with international standards. Enforcement mechanisms are still relatively underdeveloped however and much work remains to be done to strengthen deterrent measures and raise awareness amongst Vietnamese consumers.

Customs in Vietnam

Vietnamese customs laws prohibit the import of goods which infringe IP rights registered within Vietnam. To this end, customs authorities have the power to impose fines and confiscate infringing goods which have been stopped at the border. Customs authorities can also arrange for criminal proceedings to be brought against infringers for cases involving copyright or trade mark infringement. So far these powers extend only to imports and as such, customs authorities have no power to check and hold infringing products being exported (as in China for example).

Using customs controls to block counterfeits

Registration with customs authorities in Vietnam is not a mandatory requirement, however it is often advisable to add yourself to their database as doing so will enable customs officers to recognize counterfeit versions of your products, and improve the chances of suspect shipments being stopped at the border. Furthermore, if shipments are known to be en-route, rights holders can work with customs to ensure they are detained before being released onto the market (this would of course entail significant investigative work on the rights holders behalf however).

In theory, all IPRs can be registered with the Vietnamese customs authority, in practice however, only trade marks, geographical indications, and copyrights and related rights are picked up. This is perhaps due to the relative inexperience of customs officials with more complex forms of IP such as invention patents and industrial designs.

In order to register with customs, a customs recordal must be filed with the General Department of Customs in Vietnamese, containing the following documents:

Certified copies of your IP certificates of registration, e.g. a trade mark registration certificate

Documents relevant to the goods you wish to register with customs, including; a list of authorised importers/exporters, mode of import/export of genuine goods, descriptions of how to distinguish genuine goods from infringing copies, documents on the origin of genuine goods, and pictures of genuine goods.

A notarised and legalised power of attorney, where the application is filed by a local IP agent

Any supporting documents, e.g. information on estimated times and location of import and export, expert opinions on known infringing goods, any sanctioning decisions made by enforcement agencies in previous cases of infringement of the goods you are registering, where applicable.

Confirmation is usually given by the customs office within 20 days of application.

Once registered, IPRs remain in the database for one year, extendable for a further year upon request. After this 2 year period the rights must be filed anew to continue monitoring operations.

For more information on customs control and IP enforcement in Vietnam be sure to read our Vietnam IP Country Factsheet or get in touch with our experts for free, tailored advice.



About Us The South-East Asia IPR SME Helpdesk, co-funded by the European Commissions Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry under the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme, supports European Union (EU) small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to both protect and enforce their Intellectual Property (IP) rights in or relating to South-East Asia, through the provision of free information and services. These take the form of jargon-free, first-line, confidential advice on intellectual property and related issues, plus training, materials and online resources. 

Annual Audit and Compliance in ASEAN

For the first issue of our ASEAN Briefing Magazine, we look at the different audit and compliance regulations of five of the main economies in ASEAN. We firstly focus on the accounting standards, filing processes, and requirements for Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. We then provide similar information on Singapore, and offer a closer examination of the city-states generous audit exemptions for small-and-medium sized enterprises.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership and its Impact on Asian Markets

The United States backed Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) includes six Asian economies  Australia, Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam, while Indonesia has expressed a keen willingness to join. However, the agreements potential impact will affect many others, not least of all China. In this issue of Asia Briefing magazine, we examine where the TPP agreement stands right now, look at the potential impact of the participating nations, as well as examine how it will affect Asian economies that have not been included.

An Introduction to Tax Treaties Throughout Asia

In this issue of Asia Briefing Magazine, we take a look at the various types of trade and tax treaties that exist between Asian nations. These include bilateral investment treaties, double tax treaties and free trade agreements  all of which directly affect businesses operating in Asia.
A sedated tiger is stretchered as officials start moving tigers from Thailand's controversial Tiger Temple in Kanchanaburi province. (Photo source: Reuters)

KANCHANABURI, Thailand: Wildlife authorities in Thailand on Monday raided a Buddhist temple where tigers are kept, taking away three of the animals and vowing to confiscate scores more in response to global pressure over wildlife trafficking.

The Buddhist temple in Kanchanaburi province west of Bangkok has more than 100 tigers and has become a tourist destination where visitors take selfies with tigers and bottle-feed their cubs.

The temple promotes itself as a wildlife sanctuary, but in recent years it has been investigated for suspected links to wildlife trafficking and animal abuse.

Wildlife activists have accused the temple's monks of illegally breeding tigers, while some visitors have said the animals can appear drugged. The temple denies the accusations.

Wildlife officials use a tunnel of cages to capture a tiger and remove it from an enclosure in a temple in western Thailand on May 30, 2016 (AFP/Christophe Archambault)

Animals rights groups also accuse the temple of complicity in the black-market animal trade, making tens of thousands of dollars by selling off older cats for use in Chinese medicine in a hugely lucrative trade. The temple has also always denied those allegations.

However last year one of the temple vets turned whistleblower, handing the authorities three microchips he said were inside a trio of tigers who had disappeared. It has never been fully established what happened to those tigers.

TUG-OF-WAR SINCE 2001

Monday's raid was the latest move by authorities in a tug-of-war since 2001 to bring the tigers under state control.

A sedated tiger is seen in a cage as officials start moving tigers from Thailand's controversial Tiger Temple in Kanchanaburi province. (photo source Reuters)

It was also hampered by the monks who run the temple.

"The temple allowed tourists to come in...and they are feeding tigers while performing shows, which means the veterinarians cannot put them to sleep before relocation," an officer from the National Park, Wildlife and Plant Conservation told AFP, requesting anonymity.

Adisorn Nuchdamrong, deputy director-general of the Department of National Parks, said the team had been able to confiscate the tigers thanks to a warrant obtained a few hours before the operation.

"We have a court warrant this time, unlike previous times, when we only asked for the temple's cooperation, which did not work," Adisorn told Reuters. "International pressure concerning illegal wildlife trafficking is also part of why we're acting now."

A sedated tiger is stretchered as officials start moving tigers from Thailand's controversial Tiger Temple in Kanchanaburi province. (Photo source Reuters)

Officials from the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation said they planned to confiscate and remove more tigers from the temple on Tuesday and send them to a state-owned sanctuary.

Previous attempts to inspect the tigers have largely been blocked by the temple's abbots but in January and February wildlife officials removed 10 of the tigers.

Thailand has long been a hub for the illicit trafficking of wildlife and forest products, including ivory. Exotic birds, mammals and reptiles, some of them endangered species, can often be found on sale in markets.

Officials prepare weapons with a sedation as they start moving tigers from Thailand's controversial Tiger Temple in Kanchanaburi province. (Photo source Reuters)

The government introduced new animal welfare laws in 2015 aimed at curbing animal abuse, but activists accuse authorities of not enforcing the legislation properly.

(Additional reporting by Juarawee Kittisilpa; Writing by Amy Sawitta Lefevre; Editing by Robert Birsel)
What attracts holiday-makers most to the site is a 7-km long beach, its diverse mangrove forest and reasonable prices.



Dang Van Cuong, a tourist from Ly Nhan district, the northern province of Ha Nam, said the site offers bathing, fresh air, entertainment and cheap seafood.



According to To Manh Bien, deputy head of the sites management board, local restaurants have committed to observing business regulations and serving clean food with clear origins.



Tourists have been encouraged to report those providing unhygienic food to the management board, he said.



Teams in charge of collecting garbage have been established across the site with local students participating during weekends.



To ensure safety for tourists, the management board has advised them to use lifebuoys and bath in safe zones, Bien said, adding that the Tien Hai district Peoples Committee has handed over a motorboat to the management board and organised training courses for rescue forces.



Con Vanh is located in the Tien Hai Wetland Nature Reserve and was recognised as a Ramsar site in 1995.



Together with the Xuan Thuy National Park in Nam Dinh province, the Tien Hai Nature Reserve in Thai Binh province plays a significant role in preserving national and international biodiversity.



The sites form two core areas in the Red River Delta Biosphere Reserve  which spreads over Ninh Binh, Nam Dinh and Thai Binh provinces, and was recognised by UNESCO as a world biosphere reserve in 2004.
In the first phase, the company invested in 30 production lines made by Austrian company Theysohn to triple the plants capacity to 50,000 tonnes of products per year. As such, DAG will become the biggest Vietnamese producer of plastic profile in terms of capacity.

DAG hopes that with this project its going to become the biggest in terms of market share in Vietnam in plastic profile, gaining the market back from plastic profile imported from China.

DAG is one of the first Vietnamese companies to produce plastic profile, which it considers its focus, besides DAGs smart windows, mica sheets and PP sheets. In 2013 DAG issued VND53.5 billion ($2.4 million) worth of convertible bonds, VND 40 billion ($1.8 million) of which to Japan South East Asia Growth Fund L.P, and VND13.5 billion ($605,000) of which to joint venture Shide Vietnam. The company used the bond sales proceeds to increase its profile production capacity to 2.5 times as much. In 2015 it signed the agreement to distribute uPVC plastic trims of the Shide Profile brand.

DAG targets to reach annual revenue of VND3 trillion ($135 million) in five years.

In 2015 the company issued 20.9 million shares to the public to mobilise capital for expansion. Its also looking for a foreign strategic investor. At end-2015, Japanese company RISA Partners Inc., which focuses on investment in real estate, expressed interest in becoming a strategic investor in DAG. In March of this year, through Saigon Securities Inc., DAG met with seven funds namely Dragon Capital, Vietnam Holding, Vietfund Management, Korea Investment, Thien Viet Asset Management, Manulife Asset Management on possible cooperation. It has also worked with Japanese fund DBJ and Japanese building material company Sankyo Tateyama, which is planning to help DAG in product development and introduce Japanese technology in the company.

In the second quarter of 2016 DAG started the project to build the 56-hectare VND40 billion ($1.8 million) Water Resources University in Pho Hien, Hung Yen. The project is going to be finished in June 2016.
In line with the theme, Together We Grow Communities, VSIPs CSR Weekend reflects the companys efforts over the past 20 years to bring stakeholders together to make a meaningful difference for communities across Vietnam.

At this occasion, provincial authorities, its shareholders Sembcorp Development and Becamex, as well as tenants and employees from VSIP pledged their collective and continued effort to address distinct needs across a number of locations in Vietnam.

In the southern province of Binh Duong, VSIP started building new public restrooms, and renovate school facilities for Tan Phuoc Khanh A Primary School and Tan Binh Primary School. In the northern province of Bac Ninh, they organised educational talks on road safety for students and donate helmets to 200 students from Dai Dong Primary School.

At the same time, they organised a walkathon to encourage blood donation to Haiphong Centre for Blood Transfusion and Hematology in the northern port city of Haiphong, as well as numerous other activities in Quang Ngai, Hai Duong, and Nghe An provinces.

To celebrate VSIPs 20th year in Vietnam, we bring together VSIPs partners and employees, provincial authorities, and tenants from various locations to address the unique needs of the communities around us. As we grow, we want to ensure that communities grow with us, said Nguyen Phu Thinh, general director of VSIP.

Over the last 20 years, more than 430 companies and their employees have joined hands with VSIP to engage in initiatives promoting sustainability. The event reflects the strong relationship and joint commitment between Singapore and Vietnam to empower local communities and the Vietnamese economy.
HCM Stock Exchange (HoSE) adds live trading of foreign investors on its electronic transaction board on May 30. - Photo cafef.vn

Now, investors will not have to wait until the end of the session to see the volume of foreigners net selling and buying, as before.

According to local investors, the live reporting will allow the board to be used as a consulting tool before making purchasing decisions, and it also helps the market become more transparent.

It could further help to reduce risks taken by local investors, who often repeat foreign decisions in trading.
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

The police have blocked the access to Gezi Park in Turkey's Istanbul city, the Milliyet newspaper reported May 31.

The step was taken on the occasion of the third anniversary of the protest action in Gezi Park and due to the possibility of new protest actions.

The protests which took place in Turkey in late May 2013 lasted for nearly three weeks. The country's authorities believed that they were of anti-government nature.

Turkish oppositional parties accused the police of using excessive force against the protestors.

Throughout three weeks, 2.5 million people took part in the protest actions in 79 provinces of Turkey, according to the country's Interior Ministry.

Around 4,000 people were injured as a result of the riots in Turkey, while 4.900 people were detained by the police.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Last year the city welcomed 4.6 million foreign visitors, accounting for a full 50 per cent of the number coming to Viet Nam, who spent VND94.6 trillion, or 30 per cent of national tourism revenues.- Photo vietnamtourism.gov.vn

"We spent a lot of effort and time to carefully prepare for festivals and improve service quality and are very glad to see good results," Truong Hien Hoa, director of the city Tourism Promotion Centre, was quoted as saying to Thoi bao Kinh te Viet Nam (Viet Nam Economic Times).

Tourism activities have been accelerated this year with the holding of the Ao dai Festival and Southern Colour Festival.

According to the city tourism department, 1.38 million international visitors came to the city in the first quarter and spent VND25.8 trillion (US$1.15 billion), 12 and 9 per cent higher than in the same period last year, respectively.

They came predominantly from South Korea, Japan and the US, but also included a lot of overseas Vietnamese, thanks to the Lunar New Year that fell in that period.

The number of visitors arriving by ship increased by 80 per cent to 9,000.

Last year the city welcomed 4.6 million foreign visitors, accounting for a full 50 per cent of the number coming to Viet Nam, who spent VND94.6 trillion, or 30 per cent of national tourism revenues.

"The city's share of tourism has decreased because tourism development always accompanies investment in new attractions," Hoa added.

He said the city lacks such new attractions, mentioning several major delayed ones like a safari in Cu Chi District, the Vietnamese History and Culture Park in District 9 and the Bach Dang Culture Park in District 1.

However, the city has been launching some new services, including a boat tour on the Nhieu Loc  Thi Nghe canal.

A successful tourism model needs time to become known and popular, Hoa said.

"We should make each local resident a tourism ambassador."

In the first quarter 2.46 million foreign tourists arrived in Viet Nam, an increase of nearly 20 per cent year-on-year, while domestic visitors numbered 18.7 million.

The sector's total revenues rose 21.2 per cent to VND109 trillion.

The number of mainland Chinese visitors increased by 66 per cent, while it was 30 per cent for South Korea, 160 per cent for Hong Kong, 15 per cent for Taiwan, and 12 per cent for Japan.
Licensed in September 2006, the project was initiated by Taiwanese steel giant Tycoons with a total investment of more than $556 million. The investor committed to completing the construction within 36 months.

E-United Group joined the project later by acquiring a 90 per cent stake. The two Taiwanese enterprises raised the registered investment amount to $3 billion in 2008 and then $4.5 billion in 2010, while simultaneously increasing the factorys manufacturing capacity to seven million tonnes per year, five million tonnes higher than the initial capacity.

At the beginning of 2012, Japanese steelmaker JFE Group signed a memorandum of understanding with E-United Group to conduct a feasibility study on the project.

However, after two years of studies, the Japanese enterprise decided to withdraw from the steel project, leading to E-United Groups proposal to reduce the investment amount to $2 billion. However, the local authorities refused the proposal due to their suspicion about the projects feasibility.

In June 2015, the management board of Dung Quat Economic Zone asked Guang Lian Steel Viet Nam Co., Ltd. to prove its capability to continue implementing the steel project. The management warned the company to revoke its investment certificate unless the company proves its solid financial background before the end of June 2015.

The decision came after multiple delays in the investment process and the companys failure to arrange the required capital.

As a result, in mid-2015, Tycoons out of the blue called a halt to the project due to difficulties in its finances and product consumption. Thus, the management board of Dung Quat Economic Zone proposed the prime minister to revoke the investment certificate.

In December 2015, the management board carried out an inspection of the project, while simultaneously requesting the investors to voluntarily liquidate the projects assets.

In March 2016, the two investors submitted a document to the authority, committing to restarting the project with the total capital of $2.2 billion and an output of five million tonnes per year. The investors also committed to completing the construction within 42 months.

However, after numerous delays, the local authorities have grown distrustful of the investors as well as the very feasibility of the project.

Since its ground-breaking ceremony in 2007, the investors have put in about $42 million in constructing some work facilities, such as house blocks for workers, walls, and installing pile driving equipment.
Demand for new residential properties in the low- and middle-income housing segment could reach 5.1million units over the next 10 years. - Photo tienphong.vn

Demographics driving growth

The boom will be fuelled in large part by urbanisation and a growing middle class that is benefitting from Vietnam's sustained economic growth. GDP is forecast to expand by as much as 6.7 per cent this year, according to the Asian Development Bank.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Construction expects the level of urbanisation in Viet Nam to rise from 33 per cent in 2014 to 45 per cent by 2020, with city dwellers predicted to be younger and earn more than previous generations, further driving changes in construction and home ownership.

While Viet Nam's property market, much like its population, is still very young, this demography and the relatively low level of home ownership presents opportunities for investors, according to Steven Chu, CEO of Nam Long Investment Corporation.

"Great investment potential exists with 30 per cent home ownership in Viet Nam," Chu told OBG. "Companies investing in the residential real estate market will see high returns from consumers, particularly among the younger generation."

Much of the demand that exists stems from buyers who are able to access loans and mortgages, according to Marc Townsend, managing director of property consultancy CBRE Vietnam, a considerable shift from 2008, when the mortgage market was non-existent.

"There is now more supply from before, considering that take-up and projects are becoming fundamentally larger than in previous cycles," he told OBG.

Property demand

A rise in the number of new real estate companies registered in Viet Nam highlights the market's strong potential.

Registrations were up 146per cent year-on-year in the first quarter, with 596 new companies with combined capital of VND45.5 trillion (US$2.04 billion), as per figures from the Ministry of Planning and Investment.

The surge in demand has served as an incentive for local companies to focus their operations domestically, according to Ee Soon Hean, general director of Japan's Nippon Paint, one of the largest paint manufacturers in the region.

"From 2012 to 2014, several Vietnamese conglomerates and contractors were eyeing markets in Myanmar and Cambodia," he told OBG. "With the rise in demand in the construction and real estate sectors, these companies have decided to focus on the Vietnamese market."

Demand for new residential properties in the low- and middle-income housing segment could reach 5.1million units over the next 10 years, Do Duc Duy, deputy minister of construction, told local media earlier this month.

Metro to track growth

Stakeholders expect the development of accompanying transport infrastructure to further underpin the pace of urban construction.

An extensive network of rail links from districts to the city centres of Ha Noi and HCM City is central to the development of urban areas and the construction industry, according to Le Viet Hai, chairman and CEO of construction firm Hoa Binh Corporation.

The smooth delivery of large-scale infrastructure projects and road developments should also help ease traffic congestion.

However, with different international companies commissioned to build separate segments of the Hanoi urban railway, some disruptions have delayed the project's rollout, which developers fear could weaken demand for residential properties in suburbs and satellite districts.

"The most important thing is finishing the entire metro system, something that I hope the government will push for," Hai told OBG. "Similar to other Asian countries, the real estate business will develop alongside the metro line."

Slower delivery of transport infrastructure projects also affects the commercial segments, according Alex Crane, general manager of global corporate real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield.

"The delay of metro lines hinders companies from preparing a clear, long-term corporate real estate strategy," Crane told OBG. "With clearer insight into the delivery of infrastructure projects, it would be an easier consideration for large multinationals to base their operations outside of the city centres and closer to industrial and business clusters or port infrastructure, for example."

"The metro network is also a key component in establishing a competitive, centralised retail zone," he added.

Credit regulation

As the sector expands, Vietnamese regulators are taking steps to temper the accompanying increase in credit to real estate businesses.

After averaging growth of 14-15 per cent per annum between 2012 and 2014, real estate lending expanded by 18 per cent last year to VND360 trillion ($16.1bn).

Citing concerns that the property market could overheat, the State Bank of Viet Nam (SBV) is considering a proposal to impose restrictions on bank lending to the property market, which could take effect next year.

The SBV may require banks to use no more than 40 per cent of short-term deposits for medium- to long-term loans, down from the current 60 per cent. The bank is also contemplating increasing the risk weight of loans to the real estate sector from 150 per cent to 250 per cent.

Although the move is aimed at strengthening the banking system and reducing risk, it could reduce available funds for mortgages and real estate transactions, which could have negative carry-through effects on the construction industry.

Industry stakeholders have urged the SBV to reconsider the move.


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Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

Israel is close to normalization of relations with Turkey, said Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Turkish Milliyet newspaper reported citing the Israeli Haaretz newspaper.

He noted that the normalization of relations is in the interests of both Turkey and Israel.

Earlier, Ibrahim Kalin, spokesperson for Turkey's presidential administration said that the talks on normalizing the relations between Turkey and Israel continue.

He noted that the parties have achieved serious results during the talks.

The removal of the Gaza Strip's blockade by Israel is one of the important issues, according to Kalin.

After the deterioration of relations between Russia and Turkey, some Turkish media outlets reported that Turkey and Israel will resume the previous relations.

Earlier, Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu confirmed that Turkey and Israel had private talks.

Relations between Israel and Turkey deteriorated after the Freedom Flotilla incident in 2010, when a convoy of six ships, including one under Turkey's flag, tried to approach the Gaza Strip with humanitarian aid and activists on board. The flotilla was blocked and stormed by Israeli forces, with eight Turkish citizens being killed.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Israel should apologize for the Freedom Flotilla incident, pay compensation to the families of those killed and end the blockade of the Gaza Strip.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Parliament on Monday voted unanimously to allow the Phnom Penh Municipal Court to continue to proceed with a case against opposition deputy leader Kem Sokha despite a boycott from the Cambodia National Rescue Party.

The vote by all 68 sitting Cambodian Peoples Party lawmakers came as opposition MPs left parliament to receive a petition from CNRP supporters requesting King Norodom Sihamoni step in to mediate between the two rival parties.

The opposition supporters, however, were blocked from reaching their goal by police, but eventually managed to deliver the petition following some minor scuffles. Activists reported some arrests, but all were subsequently released.

Heng Samrin, National Assembly president, said following the vote that parliament has provided approval for the authorities to continue the procedure on the case of Kem Sokha, lawmaker from Kampong Cham province, without elaborating.

After the CPP-dominated parliament approved the motion, Son Chhay, chief opposition whip, said the vote was a violation of the constitution.

When [the CPP] voted it was illegal and against the supreme law of the nation, the constitutionit was a serious violation, he said.

He added that ruling party had shown it did not respect article 80 of the constitution, which guarantees immunity from prosecution for sitting lawmakers such as Kem Sokha, unless there is evidence of a flagrant crime having been committed.

However, extracts from a letter written by the court prosecutor and sent to Heng Samrin last week explain that Sokhas refusal to attend court twice after being subpoenaed was an offense under the countrys criminal code and punishable by up to six months in prison and a fine.

Ly Sophanna, a court spokesman, declined to comment on the case.

Gen. Khieu Sopheak, Ministry of Interior spokesman, called on opposition supporters to end their protests as the case against Sokha was not harmful to the nation.

Its a tiny problem, he added, declining to comment on why protesters were eventually allowed to proceed to the Royal Palace to hand over their petition after being blocked for much of the day.
The United States and European Union have expressed concern over the deteriorating political situation in Cambodia following weeks of tension between the ruling Cambodian Peoples Party and opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party.

Last week, the U.S. Embassy said it was deeply worried by the deployment off paramilitary forces to the CNRP headquarters during a march by opposition supporters.

The statement was followed on Monday by an E.U. released which echoed the sentiment of the U.S., saying it regretted the dangerous political escalationand urge the Cambodian authorities to resume as soon as possible a peaceful and constructive dialogue with the opposition.

Armed police attempted to arrest Kem Sokha last Thursday while his car was traveling on a busy road in the capital, but he was not in the car. Security forces later appeared at the party headquarters to try again without success.

Ruling party spokesman Sok Eysan said that there had been no formal approach from the CNRP to request talks and that renewed dialogue was unlikely in the near future.

Prime Minister Hun Sen is due to visit Malaysia in the coming days, while Interior Minister Sar Kheng is on a tour of the provinces, he said. So there is no time.

Eang Chhay Eang, a CNRP lawmaker, said the partys working group stood ready to hold talks, adding that Kem Sokha was now staying at the party headquarters, fearing arrest.

He is staying here. Now, we dont know when they [police] will arrest him... in here, we received the citizens and let them observe every day, he said.

The E.U. statement on Monday also called for an end to the harassment of civil society representatives. Four local rights workers and an election official were arrested in early May and soon after they were held on bribery charges.

Eysan said that all discussion of the possibility of the cases against Kem Sokha and the civil society members were off the table in any potential talks in the future.

He added that it was only a matter of time before Kem Sokha was apprehended.

Nobody intimidated him. When the day for the arrest comes, they will go to arrest [him] because this [arrest] was approved by parliament. So, its now in the stage of the judiciarys power, he said.

Kem Sokha is being investigated for allegedly procuring the services of a prostitute, a minor offense under Cambodias criminal code. He is also the subject of two defamation cases related to the prostitution charge.

He has failed to attend two court hearings in recent weeks, an offense that carries a penalty of up to six months in prison and a fine.

The party leader, Sam Rainsy, remains in self-imposed exile since an arrest warrant was issued over years-old defamation ruling that would see him jailed for two years upon his return.

Since the arrest of the rights workers and election official in early May, protesters have gathered on Mondays dressed in black to call for their release.

At least 16 other opposition members and supporters have been jailed since the two parties in late 2014 agreed to work together in parliament under a so-called culture of dialogue, ending about a year of parliamentary boycotts and street protests that were often met with violence.
Yatta Lahai and Fatama Alieu  two 30-year-old women in Sierra Leone  are waiting to have surgery that will restore their self-respect.

Both women have fistula, a condition caused by prolonged obstructed labor that leaves a woman unable to control her urine, feces or both.

Lahai says she lost her husband and the rest of her family because of the condition. Alieu says she avoids going out in public because of the embarrassment.

The women are now under the care of the West Africa Fistula Foundation (WAFF) in the city of Bo. The foundation is a safe haven for women, providing food and housing as well as fistula repair surgery.

Lahai and Alieu need what is called a urinary diversion, in which doctors essentially create a new bladder. However, the surgery requires general anesthesia  something WAFF and most other health facilities in Sierra Leone cannot provide, due to frequent power cuts and a lack of oxygen tanks.

A U.S.-based tech company, Gradian Health Systems, thinks it has found a way around the problem.

Gradian manufactures and sells the Universal Anesthesia Machine, called a UAM, and has sold the device to 23 developing countries.

Several already are in use in Sierra Leone.

Machines benefits

Lina Sayed is the vice president of market strategy for Gradian. She says the machine is useful because, in an emergency, it can operate without electricity or an outside source of oxygen.

"When the electricity goes out, [the machine] pulls into draw over mode. Draw over mode is an old technology which has been built into our machine. It pulls in room air, which is 21 percent oxygen, and you mix it with the anesthetic agent and you can actually ventilate the patient and get him through surgery if you lose oxygen and electricity," Sayed said.

Sayed says the UAM's monitor has a battery backup, so doctors can measure the amount of oxygen that goes into the patient.

Dr. Augustine Mannah works at WAFF in Bo, one of the places Gradian is looking to install a machine. Mannah said he currently uses ketamine or a spinal block to perform surgeries. Being able to use general anesthetic would be beneficial, he says.

"Definitely, it will help us because we really need to have the patient relaxed," he said. "They are not supposed to be fighting, but sometimes with ketamine that can happen, with spinal it can happen, but once we can intubate the patient, then we can ensure we can concentrate on the surgery."

Machines downside

The UAM is expensive. Each device can cost up to $23,000.

But Gradian will install more UAM's in government hospitals around Sierra Leone, and train staff to use them. Currently, 15 UAMs have already been installed across the country."

One of the challenges is maintaining the UAMs, says Dr. Michael Koroma, an anesthesiologist with the Ministry of Health and Sanitation who works at a local hospital in Freetown that has a UAM.

"If you have locally trained staff to maintain the function of machines and to repair the machines when there are faults, then I think it's an advantage to the country," Koroma said.

Lahai and Alieu hope WAFF can get the money needed to install the machine. Then, perhaps, they can restart their lives, and walk proudly again.
Four Bangladeshi workers held on suspicion of planning attacks linked to the Islamic State group in their own country were convicted of financing terrorism by a court in Singapore on Tuesday.

Prosecutors said the men, who pleaded guilty, had raised money to buy firearms to launch attacks in Bangladesh. They will be sentenced on June 21 and face a maximum sentence of 10 years in jail and a fine of 500,000 Singapore dollars ($362,260).

Two other workers have pleaded not guilty. Their trial dates have not been set.

The men have been detained since April under Singapore's Internal Security Act, which allows for detention without trial in cases where public safety is threatened.

The Ministry of Home Affairs has said the group's suspected leader, Rahman Mizanur, possessed guides on making weapons and bombs, as well as radical material from the Islamic State group and al-Qaida that he used to recruit the others.

Rahman, 31, arrived at Singapore's State Court on Tuesday with his arms and legs shackled, surrounded by a heavy police guard. He pleaded guilty and was convicted of two charges of financing terrorism, by inviting group members to contribute funds and handling the money to facilitate plans.

Deputy public prosecutor Nicholas Khoo said Rahman told the group that money was needed to purchase food, arms and weapons like knives and pistols.

Everyone at the meetings agreed that they will contribute part of their salary, he said. Police charge sheets said that they had contributed to, held or dealt with money for the alleged plans, with amounts ranging from 60 to 1,360 Singapore dollars.

Two other Bangladeshi men who were detained in April have not been charged and will be dealt with separately, officials said.

In January, Singapore said it had arrested and deported 26 Bangladeshi construction workers for forming a religious study group that spread the ideologies of al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.
Russia has its famed troll factories  shadowy organizations quietly supported by the Kremlin to flood Internet comment sections with vitriolic anti-U.S. posts intended to provoke the worst sorts of responses.

Iran may boast of its halal Internet, a giant nationwide web only for those inside Iran supposedly being built to keep out unclean or anti-Islamic content, as well as critical comments about the government.

But when it comes to altering or censoring the web, the worldwide leader by far is China. For decades, Beijing has celebrated what it calls the Golden Shield, what the rest of the world has come to know as the Great Firewall of China.

But the Great Firewall is only one-half of Chinas efforts to alter whats seen online by its citizens. For years, its been rumored the government has been paying an army of volunteers to post bogus comments and posts on Chinese websites.

It even has a name: the 50 Cent Party, so-named for the approximate fee volunteers get for fake posts. Now, a new study conducted by researchers at Harvard University not only confirms the existence of the 50 Cent Party, but reveals its much larger than anyone previously imagined.

Changing the subject

What everybody thought they were writing about, all these 50 Cent Party people, was all wrong, says professor Gary King, Director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University and study co-author.

The theory was that the 50 Cent Party people would just argue with you if you said something bad about the government. It turns out that's completely wrong, King said. They don't argue with anybody. What they do is distract. Their posts are about cheer-leading for the government.

King and his colleagues spent several years analyzing the patterns of millions of posts on Chinese websites, cross-referencing comments, user IDs and other factors. The report concluded that over 440 million social media posts every year can be traced back to the 50 Cent Party; often in predictable ways.

The posts don't appear just randomly all the time, King told VOA. What happens is they appear in bursts and directed for specific purposes. And when they use it, they marshal them at particular times in a very big, very sophisticated operation with military-like precision.

Moreover, King says the posts have a singular purpose: namely, short-circuiting any discussion that might lead to protests or unrest, and diverting attention to something else.

Think of the last time you had a real good argument, King said. About the single worst way to end it is coming up with the best possible counter argument. A much better way is to say Hey, let's go get ice cream or Look at big shiny thing out the window.

Just change the subject; that's the logic the Chinese government follows. They say, Hey, let's change the subject. And big bursts of activity, at very specific times, they change the subject.

A lost generation

Of course I really hate these 50 Cent Party members, says Chinese journalist and activist Su Yutong, now living in Germany. But what I really hate is the ones that hire them  the Chinese government and the Ministry of Propaganda.

Su had long heard rumors of such activity, and came face-to-face with it while working with student volunteers at a Beijing-based NGO.

We found out one of them was using the volunteer position to gather information of our projects, she told VOA. So I had a long chat with him, and he was very moved and disclosed some secrets to me, of his 50 Cent Party activities.

He told me that he was paid by the Chinese government to do this; he was paid 800 yuan per month, so thats quite a handsome sum for some students, especially those that are from impoverished areas and families," she said. If they refuse to do this, they may not be able to graduate from college. If they were very active, posting bogus posts on the Internet, they may even gain credit points from their professors.

Su cites the recent election of Tsai Ing-Wen as President of Taiwan as an example of how Beijing can unleash the 50 Cent Party for propaganda purposes.

The Chinese government allowed a large number of 50 Cent Party members  around 10,000  to go online to post on social media (comments) bad mouthing and vilifying Tsai and democracy. Usually the Chinese government has this Great Firewall, and its hard for people to go on the Internet uncensored. But they let these 50 Cent Party members go through to post comments attacking her.

The flood of critical comments did not go unnoticed in Taiwan. In response, Tsai Ing-Wen simply posted Welcome to the free world.

Su worries that the millions of 50 Cent Party members forced into concocting phony posts is creating what she calls a lost generation.

Its very worrying, such a large number of young people who work as 50 Cent Party members. Theyre confused and lost about basic values. This is really bad as a whole for Chinese society, because they obviously know what theyre doing is wrong, and theyre learning how to lie, Su said.

Harvards Gary King says the activities of the 50 Cent Party suggests a great deal about what the current regime sees as its greatest threat.

They only care about talk of protest or some collective action, because that's the thing that could create instability as they call it or potentially get them thrown out of power, King said.

So that's why they use these 50 Cent Party posts to distract from any kind of collective action activity. Any kind of crowd formation. Anybody that has the ability to move crowds outside the government  thats who they're concerned about.
Civilian casualties are beginning to mount as the battle for the Islamic State-held city of Fallujah intensifies.

"A human catastrophe is unfolding in Fallujah. Families are caught in the crossfire with no safe way out," said Jan Egeland of the Norwegian Refugee Council.

Iraqi forces have launched an offensive aimed at retaking the city.

At least 20,000 children are trapped inside the city, according to a statement released by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). The organization has urged all parties to ensure the safety of these children who risk being recruited as child soldiers.

"Children face the risk of forced recruitment into the fighting, strict procedures for security screening and separation from their families," the statement warned.

Civilian casualties



The U. N. refugee agency has received reports of civilians being killed in heavy shelling or buried alive under the rubble of their homes.

"There are also reports of several hundred families being used as human shields" by Islamic State militants, said UNHCR spokesman William Spindler.

Some 625 families have managed to escape the fighting since last week.

Iraqi forces are separating out and screening the men, out of concern about the loyalties of those who are leaving the city after living under IS rule for more than two years.

"Approximately 500 men and boys over 12 years old are held for security screening which can take five to seven days," Spindler said.

VOA spoke to one refugee, who went by the name Ayad, about the process.

"They interviewed me, the Hashd al-Shaabi and the Iraqi army," he said, referring to the umbrella group of Shi'ite militias that work in parallel with the Iraqi military.

"They said if we find your name in our data base, we will kill you. If you are in the clear, you can live with us in peace," Ayad said, speaking through a translator in a phone interview.

Hashd al-Shaabi has taken an important role in the fight against IS, and some see the pro-Iran militias as better trained than the Iraqi army.

Shi'ite fighters



But others are worried that a strong Shi'ite presence in the war against IS  whose strongholds are in predominantly Sunni areas  will only further aggravate the deep sectarian divisions that already exist in the country.

Many Sunnis in Baghdad say they live in fear of the Shi'ite militias, and human rights organizations have flagged abuses by the militias in the past.

Lawmaker and former National Security Advisor Mowaffaq al-Rubaie defended the Hashd's role in the fight against IS.

"I believe the Hashd al-Shaabi should have, and is having, a pivotal role in the liberation of our occupied territories," Rubaie told VOA.

"The Hashd al-Shaabi fight the Daesh in a guerrilla war style, not a traditional style, not like the Iraqi army," Rubaie said, using a local name for IS.

"But the Iraqi army, the federal police and even the counterterrorism [forces], they fight in a traditional way. That is why the destruction is huge," he said, referring to the fight to take Ramadi, which destroyed 80 percent of the city.

Iran's growing influence



The presence of the pro-Iranian Shi'ite militias also feeds into concerns over Iran's growing power in the region.



Iranian General Qassim Suleimani visited the Fallujah front over the weekend, raising the hackles of Sunni leaders in Baghdad.

Fallujah is a traditionally Sunni stronghold.

Kareem Nouri, spokesman for the Hashd al-Shaabi, defended the presence of Iranian advisors.

We have American security advisors sitting in the Green Zone and we have Iranian security advisors are on the front line helping us, but only with advice. Nothing else. The Iranian advisers are more helpful than the Americans," Nouri told VOA.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Tuesday he raised $5.6 million for military veterans groups, attacking the news media for questioning whether he actually made the donations.

Trump told reporters the money includes $1 million out of his own pocket. He said it was sent to more than 40 private groups that help U.S. military veterans.

Trump has been saying since January that he raised $6 million for veterans groups, even skipping a January Republican presidential debate in Iowa to hold a fundraiser instead. But until Tuesday, Trump had provided almost no details on who, if anyone, actually got the money.

He lashed out at the media after some reporters badgered him and his campaign for more information.

"The press should be ashamed of itself," Trump said. "You make me look bad. I think the media in many cases is made up of not very good people. I don't want the credit, but I shouldn't be lambasted."

But some veterans are angry at Trump, calling his generosity phony and accusing him of using their problems to buy votes.

The likely Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, told CNN television Tuesday that while she is glad Trump gave money to veterans, he should not get much credit.

"It took a reporter to shame him into actually making his contribution," she said, without identifying whom she was talking about.

She also denied Trump's accusation that she has done nothing to help veterans. Clinton said she has worked to extend benefits for veterans and has also made personal contributions.
The number of Afghans who have fled violence and remain trapped in their own country has doubled over the past three years, says a new report by Amnesty International.

A staggering 1.2 million people are internally displaced in Afghanistan, showing a dramatic increase from some 500,000 in 2013, says the report in an attempt to cast a fresh light on the countrys forgotten victims of war. It comes amid fears of an escalation in the Taliban-led insurgent attacks this year.

Even after fleeing their homes to seek safety, increasing numbers of Afghans are languishing in appalling conditions in their own country, and fighting for their survival with no end in sight, warned Amnestys South Asia Director Champa Patel.

Afghans already form one of the worlds largest refugee populations, with an estimated 2.6 million of them living in neighboring Pakistan and Iran, according to the U.N. refugee agency.

While the worlds attention seems to have moved on from Afghanistan, we risk forgetting the plight of those left behind by the conflict, said Patel.

Despite the promises made by successive Afghan governments, internally displaced people (IDPs) in Afghanistan continue to lack adequate shelter, food, water, health care, and opportunities to pursue education and employment, according to Amnesty Internationals findings.

The research found the situation facing IDPs has dramatically worsened over the past years, with less aid and essentials, such as food, available,

It blamed alleged corruption, a lack of capacity in the Afghan government and fading international interest for a lack of implementation of a new national IDP Policy launched in 2014.

Instead, the report says, forced evictions by both the government and private sectors is a daily threat to the IDPs.

WATCH: Amnesty Report Calls for More Aid for Afghan Refugees

The Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation, charged with coordinating the Policys implementation, is badly under-resourced and has been beset by corruption allegations for years, it added.

Most of the internally displaced population lacks basic health care facilities, and education for IDP children has been interrupted since they were forced to leave their homes.

They have lost the traditional sources of their livelihoods, and only have few opportunities for informal work, creating circumstances where women are excluded, and children are being exploited and not educated, said Patel.

Amnesty International has called on the Afghan authorities and international community to immediately ensure that the most urgent needs of those displaced are met.

Afghanistan and the world must act now to end the countrys displacement crisis, before it is too late, Patel warned.

The Afghan government has not yet commented on Amnesty's report.
Gaza's Hamas rulers executed three Palestinians separately convicted of murders at dawn Tuesday without the necessary approval of the Palestinian president.

"To achieve public deterrence and block crime, the relevant authorities implemented at dawn on Tuesday execution rulings against three convicted of horrifying murders," the general prosecutor's office in Gaza said in a statement.

The three were executed after all appeal efforts, including a final opportunity for the victims' families to pardon them, were exhausted.

According to Palestinian law, all executions must be approved by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. Despite this law and the urging of international and local organizations to not execute the three men, the prosecutor general proceeded - a move that is sure to further solidify divisions among Palestinians.

The execution marks the first time Hamas has exercised the death penalty since 2014, when a unified government was implemented in Gaza and the West Bank.
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

Germany shouldn't sacrifice relations with Turkey for the 1915 events, President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, the TRT Haber news channel reported May 31.

He said there has never been genocide in the history of Turkey.

Erdogan added that he discussed the issue with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel May 31.

Earlier, it was reported that the German parliament plans to adopt a resolution recognizing the 1915 events as "genocide of Armenians".

Armenia and the Armenian lobby claim that Turkey's predecessor, the Ottoman Empire, committed the so-called genocide against Armenians living in Anatolia in 1915.

While strengthening the propaganda of "genocide" in the world, Armenians achieved its recognition by parliaments of some countries.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
U.S. Internet giants reached an agreement with the European Union Tuesday on ways to tackle instances of online hate speech within 24 hours.



Some of the world's biggest social media firms, Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft, have committed to quickly and efficiently act to combat the use of social media by terrorists to spread hatred against anyone over issues of race, color, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin.



The companies platforms and services have often been used by terrorist organizations to convey messages and entice hatred against certain individuals or groups, and recruit supporters around the world.



Under terms of a code of conduct agreed to with the EU's executive arm, the firms have pledged to establish internal procedures and staff training to guarantee that a majority of illegal content is assessed and, where necessary, removed within 24 hours.
In Ivory Coast, the wife of former President Laurent Gbagbo goes on trial Tuesday. Simone Gbagbo, also known as the Iron Lady, is accused of crimes against humanity, prisoners of war, and the civilian population for her alleged role in that countrys 2010 post-election violence that killed more than 3,000 people.

She already has been handed a 20 year jail sentence for "attacking state authority."

Her husband, former President Laurent Gbagbo and his former youth minister Charles Ble Goude, are currently on trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, for their alleged roles in the 2010 post-election violence aimed at keeping the former president in office after he lost the election to current president Alassane Ouattara.

Meanwhile, human rights groups acting as plaintiffs in Mrs. Gbagbos trial Monday, withdrew from the case, saying their lawyers had not had access to all stages of the procedures.

Boubacar Kone, interim spokesman of the Ivorian Popular Front Party, said Mrs. Gbagbo is not guilty of any crime, and the case against her is political and judicial harassment.

Obviously this is seen as a total harassment. It is both political and judicial harassment. Mr. Gbagbo is being tried in The Hague; his wife is also being harassed here as well as his own son, but the facts are not there. Mrs. Gbagbo is not guilty of whatever crime shes being charged with. This is why I say it is just harassment, pure harassment, he said.

President Ouattara announced in February that he was no longer going to send any more Ivoirians to the ICC because he said Ivory Coast now has an operational justice system.

But Kone said President Ouattara is trying to neutralize mounting international demands for some of his supporters to also be prosecuted by the ICC.

"My understanding is that Ouattara doesnt want reconciliation and that he is just simply trying to protect his own people from being prosecuted by the ICC because people around the world have been critical about the ICC being unfair because they are investigating only one side of the conflict, Kone said.

Kone said Gbagbo cannot get justice.

The trial is definitely and absolutely unfair in the sense that even the judges are under terrible pressure to do everything that is being said, and they are not reading the law. In criminal law, the facts must be easily verifiable, but Mrs. Gbagbo is not guilty of anything shes charged with, he said.

Kone said Gbagbo could never have committed the acts for which she is being charged.

Kone said he and others will be at the court to support Gbagbo.
Despite the recent escalation in violence between Israelis and Palestinians, and the fact that representatives of these two parties are not even scheduled to attend the French-brokered resumption of talks aimed at ending the conflict, there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon with the swearing in Monday of ultranationalist Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who said he supports a two-state solution.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry did not give up hope for a lasting agreement to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after the peace talks process he brokered fell apart in April of 2014. He held tight to his vision of two states for two peoples, living side by side in peace and security, even as some called it a "fool's errand" and the two principal parties involved refused to speak to one another.



There now is a small opening, with Israels hawkish Lieberman saying he supports two states for two peoples. And the top U.S. diplomat appears as determined as ever, despite the dwindling months remaining in the current administration, as he prepares to attend a ministerial meeting Friday in Paris, where the resumption of talks aimed at ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the focus.

Indirect Talks



The French-led initiative, aimed at helping to move beyond the current stalemate, will include ministers and delegates from the so-called Middle East Quartet (the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations), and the Arab League. There is no scheduled participation, however, from representatives of either Israel or the Palestinians.

While direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians seem unlikely anytime soon, Kerry said recently in the end, the parties have to negotiate, adding what we are seeking to do is help encourage the parties to be able to see a way forward so that they can understand that peace is indeed a possibility.

Experts have cautioned, though, that the chances of a genuine open-minded discussion are dim.

I think June 3rd could produce something in terms of moving the process forward, regional expert Natan Sachs from the Brookings Institution told VOA. "Theres a lot of will, especially among the powers  the U.S. and now France  to get something going. They might get Israel to acquiesce somewhat to this kind of idea, but a major breakthrough, a major movement in the peace process - that remains quite low.

Sach noted that the Israelis rejected the idea of an international conference because it was viewed as one that is intent on imposing a solution upon them.

Pave the Way

The gathering of ministers, without Israelis or Palestinians attending, is planned to pave the way for an international conference to set new parameters for negotiating a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Were never going to abandon efforts to bring about a two-state solution. We said we support direct talks, obviously, but not for the sake of talking, only when both sides are ready to come and talk real issues, said State Department spokesman Mark Toner recently in a briefing.

In an earlier statement, the Middle East Quartet expressed serious concern about current trends on the ground, including continued acts of violence against civilians, ongoing settlement activity, and the high rate of demolitions of Palestinian structures.

They are dangerously imperiling the viability of a two-state solution, said the statement.

Separately, Kerry will meet with French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault to discuss issues including combating Islamic State terrorists.



After Paris, Kerry will travel to Mongolia and China. He will meet with senior government officials, host a town hall with young leaders, and attend a traditional Mongolian cultural festival.

In Beijing, the top U.S. diplomat will discuss a wide range of bilateral, regional, and global issues with his Chinese counterpart during the eighth round of the high-level U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue.
For OPEC watchers, every little detail matters. When the oil producer group holds its half-yearly meetings, what time the ministers arrive in Vienna, how they speak and which hotel they stay in  anything will be analyzed in an attempt to predict its policies.

So it was seen as a sign that new Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih takes OPEC seriously when he turned up in the Austrian capital on Monday, three days before the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries' upcoming discussions.

But Falih will have little opportunity to see fellow ministers ahead of Thursday's meeting. Many of them, including those from Iran and Venezuela, won't show up in Vienna until midday or even late on Wednesday.

For veteran OPEC watcher Gary Ross, founder of New York-based consultancy PIRA, that signals expectations should be low as far as OPEC policy is concerned.

"These guys are not exactly getting along these days," Ross said. "OPEC is becoming far less important. We are entering an era when market management will be non-existent".

OPEC last decided to change output in December 2008, when it cut supply amid slowing demand due to a global financial crisis. By contrast, between 1998 and 2008, OPEC made 27 changes to output.

For decades, Saudi Arabia, Vienna-based OPEC's largest producer and de facto leader, had a preferred range for oil prices and, if unhappy, would try to orchestrate a group-wide production cut or increase.

But a technology-driven spike in non-OPEC output such as that of U.S. shale and growing fuel efficiency led Riyadh to conclude that the era of fast oil growth might be ending.

In the past two years, Riyadh has stuck to a strategy of fighting for market share, thinking that pumping more oil now at low prices is better than producing less in the future.

"We think continuity will carry the day at the June OPEC meeting in Vienna. The only real uncertainty is how divisive the meeting will be and how much discord will be put on public display," said Helima Croft, head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets.

Fight for share

Unlike his predecessor, Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi, Falih has a much larger portfolio overseeing energy, industry, mining, atomic power and renewables.

On Tuesday, Falih visited OPEC headquarters to meet Secretary-General Abdullah al-Badri, staying for 90 minutes in a clear display that despite being a busy man, he has time for the producer group.

"There are times when you need OPEC and when you don't. You only need OPEC when you have major oversupply and OPEC doesn't want prices to crash any further," Ross said.

Oil prices have recovered to around $50 per barrel in recent weeks from their lowest in a decade of $27 per barrel in January  but are still far below the $115 seen in June 2014.

Prices crashed after Saudi Arabia increased production to an all-time high to fight for market share with higher-cost producers, including U.S. shale firms.

The drop in prices also badly hurt fellow OPEC members, with production declining from Nigeria to Venezuela.

Iraq and Iran, however, kept pushing production higher as Baghdad sees recent investments by oil majors pay off and Tehran regains market share after the lifting of some Western sanctions in January.

Falih's ultimate boss, Saudi Deputy Crown Price Mohammad bin Salman, has said Saudi Arabia may raise production further if other members don't restrain their output increases.

"As long as Mohammed bin Salman is in charge, I don't think anything reasonable [OPEC action] can happen. This policy has hurt not only the exporting countries, but companies and the industry," a non-Gulf delegate said.
Police in southern Nigeria say seven people were killed late Monday in a clash between officers and protesters calling for the restoration of the former breakaway nation of Biafra.



The police chief of Delta State, Usman Bala Alkali told a reporter for VOAs Hausa Service that the sides exchanged fire after police tried to stop the marchers from crossing a major bridge spanning the Niger River and connecting the two cities of Asaba and Onitsha.



The protesters had no permit for the activities, Alkali said, and some of them were armed.



He said a pregnant woman and two police officers were among those killed.



Pro-Biafra protesters also marched Tuesday in parts of the five southeastern states that are predominantly Igbo-speaking people.



Biafran separatists declared independence from Nigeria in May 1967 but the movement faltered after a two and a half year war with the Nigerian military.



The Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign state of Biafra is one of the major groups spearheading a drive to re-establish the country.



Protests have increased since the Nnamdi Kanu, leader of a similar group, the Indigenous People of Biafra, was arrested by Nigerian authorities.

Lamido Abubakar Sokoto contributed to this report.
Mary was 16 when she was trafficked from her home in southern Nigeria to northwest Italy where she was forced to work as a prostitute on the streets of Turin.

She told the Thomson Reuters Foundation her story by phone from Nigeria's southern Edo state.

"I came from a polygamous home where I was one of 12 children. My mother was the first wife and worked as a petty trader while my father sat by the roadside, doing nothing.

"I was 16 years old when a woman approached my mother and said she could help take me abroad to work. I didn't want to go. I had just finished secondary school and wanted to continue my education, although my family could not afford it.

"My family kept trying to persuade me to accept the offer, referring to other girls who had gone abroad to work and had built homes for their families. This led to several quarrels, and they became aggressive, with my brother threatening me.

"Eventually, I agreed to go, but I had no idea what I was in for.

"Before I left, I was taken to a native doctor's shrine, and told to bite the neck of a chicken to add its blood to a concoction made with my hair and fingernails, and my underwear.

"I was then made to take an oath invoking madness and then death upon myself if I refused to pay whatever I owed my madam when I eventually got to Italy and began working."

Debt and Juju

"I first arrived in Germany, where a man picked me up and drove me to a house in Turin [in Italy], where I slept in a room with more than a dozen other girls.

"As a girl left the house, she noticed that I was on my period and told me I was lucky. She said being on your period meant that you would not have to go through a pregnancy test and a forced abortion if they found out that you were pregnant.

"My madam asked me to join the girl to work, and I asked: 'What kind of work?' The girl told me that we were working in prostitution.

"Reluctant to go, I stood on the corner of the street, away from where potential customers might see me. When my madam found out, she beat me with the handle of a mop."

"I was given a target income to meet each week, and if I did not meet this, whatever I had earned would not be counted, and I would have to start all over again to pay off what I owed.

"Whenever I complained about this, I was beaten. My parents were also threatened. I was told that if I didn't behave, my parents would be taken out onto the streets and made to suffer."

Self-hatred

"After three years of working as a prostitute, I was arrested on my way to work. I met dozens of Nigerian girls at the [police] station who had also been arrested. We were eventually repatriated to Nigeria. There were more than 100 of us on the same flight."

"I returned to Nigeria with nothing. My parents didn't know what I had been doing until I came back and told them. They were disappointed as their expectations had been cut short. I tried hard not to hate them. I already hated myself."

"I began looking for a way to go back to Italy  it seemed better than doing nothing, being scorned by my family and being constantly reminded that I had been deported back to Nigeria. Around this time, a friend introduced me to the Girls' Power Initiative in Benin [the capital of Edo state]. Counseling was the first thing they did. If it wasn't for them, I would have been re-trafficked."

"The same woman who had taken me to Italy soon approached my family again and offered to take me back. She visited my home about five different times to try and persuade them. Now I help other victims of trafficking, and use my own experiences to dissuade others from going to Italy to work."

"Many girls today, unlike me, know exactly what they are in for when they agree to go to Italy to work. They say: 'Is it not prostitution? No problem  I will go.'

"But they do not understand the trauma they will face."
Pakistan said the body of Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike more than a week ago, has been handed over to his relatives for burial.

Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan told reporters in Islamabad Tuesday the action came after DNA tests confirmed the man killed in the May 21 attack was Mansoor.

Khan said the body was released to Mansoor's relatives after fulfilling legal requirements and they have taken it back to Afghanistan.

On Sunday, Pakistani officials revealed that Mansoors DNA matched the samples taken from a close family member who had crossed the Afghan border to receive the body.

The Taliban chief was returning from Iran and traveling through the Pakistani province of Baluchistan when a drone targeted the vehicle in which he was traveling. The Pakistani driver was also killed.

Minister Khan said authorities have also arrested all the officials who allegedly facilitated Mansoor in acquiring a Pakistani national identity card and travel documents, enabling him to undertake journeys within and outside Pakistan.

U.S. President Barack Obama defended the drone strike, saying Mansoor was plotting deadly attacks on U.S soldiers and their Afghan partners and was blocking efforts aimed at seeking a negotiated settlement of the conflict in Afghanistan.

The Taliban has since appointed Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada as its new chief.
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif underwent open heart surgery in a London hospital on Tuesday, his second cardiac procedure in five years, his daughter said.

Sharif's surgery comes as his government prepares to present its annual budget on Friday. It also remains under pressure over allegations of corruption linked to the so-called Panama Papers.

Sharif "was in high spirits" when he went into the operating room at about 8:00 a.m. (0700 GMT), his daughter, Maryam, said on her Twitter account. She did not say how long the surgery was expected to take.

The operation was for a "perforation of the heart", a complication from a 2011 procedure, Maryam said in a Twitter post last week.

Sharif, 66, was prime minister for two terms in the 1990s before being overthrown in a 1999 military coup. After years in exile, he returned to Pakistan in 2007 and led his party to a victory in a 2013 election.

Sharif has been accompanied to London by his brother, Shahbaz Sharif, who is chief minister of Punjab province, and several other family members and aides.

He has travelled to London for medical treatment several times over the past year.

On Monday, Sharif telephoned his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, thanking him for his wishes for a quick recovery, the Pakistani Foreign Office said in a statement.

Sharif made a bid to improve ties with old rival India a main policy in his 2013 election campaign, though progress has been slow.

Sharif has been overseeing state affairs in the days leading up to the surgery, and on Monday addressed an economic meeting, signing off on budget proposals that include a target of 5.7 percent growth in the year beginning in July.

Pakistan missed its gross domestic product growth target of 5.5 percent for the year ending in June, hitting only 4.7 percent.
A NATO summit set for Warsaw in July comes at a critical time as the alliance deals with Russian assertiveness and the threat of terrorism amid other challenges, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday.

Stoltenberg was speaking following talks with Poland's Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz, who said that a bigger NATO presence in Eastern Europe would mean a greater sense of security for Poland.



They were discussing preparations for the July 8-9 summit, which is to decide how many additional NATO troops will be deployed on the eastern flank, and where exactly. Concerned over Russia's actions, Poland has been seeking a significant, permanent NATO presence on its territory and the region.



Stoltenberg said the summit comes amid a more assertive Russia, intimidating its neighbors, and changing borders by force, violence in North Africa and the Middle East and terrorism, cyberattacks and ballistic missile proliferation.



He said NATO is responding by implementing the biggest reinforcement of our collective defense since the end of the Cold War.



In Moscow, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Meshkov said Russia will take measures in response to an increased NATO military presence close to its borders, but did not give details.



We have to ensure the security of our state, Russia's TASS agency reported Meshkov as saying.



NATO's enhanced presence already includes a significant increase in the number of troops ready for quick reaction, speeding up decision-making and holding a greater number of major international military exercises, like Anaconda-16, which will involve some 30,000 troops in Poland in June.
Saudi Arabia says it has intercepted a ballistic missile launched from Yemen on Monday night.

The missile was destroyed in mid-air without causing any casualties, according to the Saudi state news agency SPA. This is the second missile Saudi Arabia has intercepted from Yemen just this month.

The Saudi-led coalition, which supports Yemeni president Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, has said that this attack may force them to reconsider a cease-fire which paved the way for UN-lead peace talks in Kuwait in April.

Yemen's Houthi rebels have controlled the capital, Sana'a, since seizing it in September 2014. Six months later, they marched south in an offensive that led to their capture of the port city of Aden, and sent President Hadi fleeing to Saudi Arabia.

Hadi and his government have since returned to Aden, aided by a yearlong bombing campaign by a Saudi-led coalition that helped push back the Houthis. The conflict has left more than 6,400 people dead and millions of people in need of humanitarian aid.
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

Turkey intends to develop relations with Russia, President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, the TRT Haber news channel reported May 31.

Erdogan said Turkey stands for normalization of relations with Russia.

He also expressed hope that the crisis in relations between the two countries will soon be resolved.

Earlier, Numan Kurtulmus, Turkish deputy prime minister, said Turkey and Russia need each other.

Kurtulmus said the Turkey-Russia relations have been developing in many fields [before the incident with the downed Russian Su-24 bomber].

"As earlier, Turkey claims that when the Russian Su-24 bomber was shot down, Ankara had no idea whose bomber it was," Kurtulmus said.

He also expressed hope that Ankara and Moscow will be able to resolve their differences in relations through dialogue.

Relations between Russia and Turkey deteriorated after Turkish Air Force shot down a Russian Su-24 bomber on Nov. 24, 2015. Turkey said the bomber entered its airspace, while Russia denied its warplane flying into the Turkish skies.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Saudi Arabian national television has aired a video showing a family therapist teaching men how to beat their wives "correctly."

In the tutorial, Khaled Al-Shaqby says he is "aware that this issue is a thorny one, which contains many hazards." But he adds: "Allah willing, we will cross this bridge safely."

The video aired in Saudi Arabia earlier this year, then was translated and released in the U.S. by the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute.

Al-Shaqby points out that men should not resort to violence as a first option, but should "discipline their wives first" before using violence. While admitting that some men use rods, sticks or sharp objects to beat their wives in order to discipline them, he advises against it. He suggests using a twig or a handkerchief to hit the wife, merely as a symbol to express their anger at the disobedience.

Human rights groups and women's organizations are outraged by the video, which comes after a draft proposal by Pakistan's Council of Islamic Ideology that husbands be allowed to beat their wives, as long as they do it "lightly."

Council chairman Muhammad Kahn Sherani said, "If you want her to mend her ways, you should first advise her.  If she refuses, stop talking to her  stop sharing a bed with her, and if things do not change, get a bit strict."

A "bit strict," he clarified, would include "[hitting] her with light things like a handkerchief, a hat or a turban, but do not hit her on the face or private parts."

The council's draft proposal has met with a furious response in Pakistan, including calls for it to be disbanded.

A Pakistani photographer has launched #TryBeatingMeLightly, a photo series showcasing Pakistani women's reactions to the proposal. Some of those include:

#TryBeatingMeLightly, I'll become the destruction you will never foresee.

#TryBeatingMeLightly, I'm the sun. Touch me and I will burn you like hell fire. I am light, you will try, but you can never stop me. You can never contain me. I am the kind of woman they name hurricanes after. I dare you, #TryBeatingMeLightly

#TryBeatingMeLightly, and you'll regret it for the rest of your miserable life.

The Council of Islamic Ideology advises Pakistans government and lawmakers on Islamic issues. Its proposals are recommendations, and not legally enforced.
A group of university biologists surveying a remote island in the Bahamas have stumbled upon a new and possibly extremely rare new snake species.

The slithery addition to the Boidae (boa) family is described in this week's edition of the journal Breviora.

Its Latin name is Chilabothrus argentum, argentum being Latin for 'silver.' Graham Reynolds says it's a beautiful new species of Silver Boa and he told VOA that "finding a new boa is extremely rare, especially in a well-studied region like the Caribbean."

The University of North Carolina biologist also told VOA the snake is likely to be highly endangered and efforts are already being made to ensure its survival in the wild.

New species evolved in isolation

"As soon as we saw the first specimen," Reynolds says, "we knew it was something different- we just didn't know how different."

His team, which included biologists from Harvard, Massachusetts, and Puerto Rico, was instantly struck by "the coloration, body shape, head shape, and body size [which] were all different-looking than the hundreds of other boas of the other species we have seen."

The proof came when genetic tests came back from a Harvard lab, confirming that the silver boa was in fact a different species that - just like Darwin's Finches on the Galapagos islands - had been evolving in isolation for several million years.

An island of snake catchers

But the snakes aren't alone on the island. It's also full of non-native feral cats, and Reynolds told VOA he's "confident" they're eating his new species.

Right now his team is doing more research, "trying to document the presence of cats using camera traps and identify ways to remove them from the island."

Reynolds and his team are also providing data to the Bahamas National Trust in the hopes that they can quickly establish a conservation program.

This new boa is just one of the hundreds, perhaps thousands of new species that are discovered every year.
Ahmed Mohamed Ali dropped out of school to support his family by working when he was 10 years old. Over the years, he became a well-known tailor in his hometown of Balad, Somalia, but he never gave up on his dream of getting an education.

Over the years, he made attempts to go back to school but the economic situation in Somalia forced him to continue working as a tailor.

Four years ago, Ahmed finally got his chance, and this week at the age of 61, the father of four was one of several thousand students who sat for their high school exams.

People were surprised. They told me to give up because of my age, but I said you are never too old to learn, he told VOA Somali.

Education 'is a light'

Ahmed said he always knew he had to get back to learning at some point.

Education improves people, its a light, and I thought it will be my guide in life for me and my family.

Ahmed Saney, as he is popularly known, says he now wants to go to university and become a medical doctor. In 61 years, he has never yet left Bal'ad, except on a few occasions when he visited the capital, Mogadishu, just 30 kilometers south.

His success has made him a social media sensation. After his sudden rise, the towns administration offered him support. He says he received pledges for help with the cost of a university education.

Ahmed is from a traditional paternal society where boys get more access to education than girls. His older son, Mohamed, graduated from high school but, because of a lack of job opportunities and better education, he migrated to South Africa where he was killed four years ago following an attack on Somali shops in Johannesburg. Ahmed believes the incident was related to xenophobic attacks against Somalis and other immigrants.

Three of his four living children, the daughters, have not been to school and have since married, leaving him to go to school with his youngest child, a son, who is in grade 6.

Inspiration to classmates

Ahmed has been receiving compliments all week from the community. Even his classmates, who doubted and made fun of him him early on because of his age, now find him inspiring.

Some of my classmates said to me they will try to bring their fathers back into schools, Ahmed said.

Despite the uncertainty over security and dim job opportunities, as many as 45,000 students have been taking their middle and high school exams.

In Mogadishu and the south central regions of the country, government officials say nearly 20,000 students are taking their exams. Officials have praised law enforcement for tightening security at examination centers in south central Somalia following alleged Al-Shabab threats against the students.

Al-Shabab regards the national curriculum as un-Islamic and a form of western influence.

We applaud the orderly, spirited and the hard work shown by everybody and the students, said Mogadishu Mayor Yusuf Hussein Jimale.

In Puntland, authorities say more than 11,000 students reported to take their exams.

Somaliland, which seceded from the rest of Somalia and is more stable, recorded 25,000 students taking exams.

Many of the young generation, who are almost 70 percent unemployed, opt to leave the country and often take dangerous sea travels that cost many their lives. Last month, more than 200 young men from Somaliland died in the Mediterranean Sea after their boat capsized.

Last week, Somali authorities in the central regions and Puntland arrested 150 young men  most of them between the ages of 15 and 20  who were suspected of attempting to leave the country as part of the human smuggling network.
In 1966, New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy made a historic visit to apartheid South Africa and gave what many scholars consider the best speech of his life.

Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice he sends forth a ripple of hope. And crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance, he told a crowd at the University of Cape Town.

Half a century later, on the anniversary of his visit, these words still resonate. Thats why Kennedys daughter, Kerry, a human-rights activist, is in South Africa this week, retracing her fathers steps along with a delegation of Kennedy family members.

To hear some analysts and politicians talk, South Africa is on a long, slow decline. The president is mired in scandal after scandal, the South African rand has tumbled in value, violent crime remains high, politicians have had actual scuffles in parliament not once, but twice this month.

But against this background, Kerry Kennedy says shes optimistic. After all, she says, her father delivered his hopeful, defiant words in a very different South Africa. In 1966, the nation seemed concretely locked into the racist apartheid system. The powerful speeches he delivered over his four-day visit raised hopes that apartheid might one day end.

Change from below

Kennedy says that in her experience, change doesnt come from above.

All those changes took place not because governments wanted them to; governments tried to stop them, she said this week at Johannesburgs University of the Witwatersrand. And not because militaries wanted them to; militaries tried to stop them. And not because huge multinational corporations wanted them to; multinational corporations tried to stop them, including South Africa. All those changes took place because small groups of determined people harnessed the dream of freedom and made it come true. Thats what creates change.

During his trip to South Africa, Robert Kennedy met with an anti-apartheid icon, Chief Albert Lutuli. The controversial and logistically difficult step captured media attention both in South Africa and in the U.S., which in turn increased American awareness of the plight of black South Africans under apartheid.

Kennedy's trip, linked as it was to his quest for civil rights in the U.S., also underscored the similarities between racist laws in both countries.

He made us feel it was still worthwhile

Black South African media at the time noted the impact of Kennedys words. One black journalist wrote: He made us feel, more than ever, that it was still worthwhile, despite our great difficulties, for us to fight for the things that we believed in; that justice, freedom and equality for all men are things we should strive for, so that our children should have a better life."



Johannesburg mayoral candidate Herman Mashaba said this week that he sees that same optimistic, grassroots spirit in the people of the city today.

Ive seen a city that is falling apart at the seams, one that is constantly being re-stitched together by people who refuse to give up, he said this week, announcing his candidacy. It is these people that keep me going, people who despite having been given up on by the government, refuse to give up on themselves.

That glimmer of hope is something that Robert F. Kennedy himself touched on in his final speech of the 1966 tour, delivered at the University of the Witwatersrand, in words that still ring true today:

So tomorrow's South Africa will be different from today's  just as tomorrow's America will be different from the country I left these few short days ago, he said. Our choice is not whether change will come, but whether we can guide that change in the service of our ideals and toward a social order shaped to the needs of all our people.

"In the long run we can master change not through force or fear, but only through the free work of an understanding mind  through an openness to new knowledge and fresh outlooks which can only strengthen the most fragile and the most powerful human gifts  the gift of reason, Kennedy said.
Sudanese authorities deported at least 442 Eritreans, including six registered refugees, in May of 2016, a Human Rights Watch report said Monday.

"Sudan is arresting and forcing Eritreans back into the hands of a repressive government without allowing refugees to seek protection," said Gerry Simpson, senior refugee researcher and advocate at Human Rights Watch. "Sudan should be working with the UN refugee agency to protect these people, not send them back to face abuse."

International law says asylum seekers must be granted the right to apply for asylum and have their cases considered before deportation. It also forbids countries from deporting asylum seekers to anywhere where they face a real threat of torture, ill-treatment, or risk to their life.

The United Nationals High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has been repeatedly denied access to groups of asylum seekers in Sudan facing deportation.

Eritrea's government mandates that all citizens under the age of 50 must serve in the military indefinitely. Fleeing the country is considered desertion, punishable by forced labor, and inhumane conditions including possible torture in prison, according to Human Rights Watch.

"UNHCR considers the punishment so severe and disproportionate that it constitutes persecution and a basis on which to grant refugee status," the report said.

The EU has begun working with Sudan and other African nations to better secure their borders and prevent migrant smuggling. Though Sudan has said it welcomes the effort, Human Rights Watch is skeptical that it will respect refugee rights.
The world's longest and deepest rail tunnel, running under the Swiss Alps, will be inaugurated Wednesday.

The 57-kilometer-long Gotthard Base Tunnel (GBT) will connect northern and southern Europe and shorten travel time for many rail routes. It overtakes Japan's Seikan tunnel, which measures 53.9 kilometers, as the longest rail tunnel in the world.



German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi will join Swiss authorities for a ceremonial first run through the tunnel on Wednesday. Full service will begin in December.



The tunnel runs between Erstfeld in central Switzerland's Uri canton and Bodio in the southern Ticino region. Railway trains traveling at speeds up to 200 kilometers per hour will cut the journey between Zurich and Milan by roughly an hour, to two hours and 40 minutes.



The Swiss federal railway service estimates passenger traffic along the route will increase from 9,000 people a day to 15,000 by 2020.



The tunnel was built in 17 years by 2,400 workers, at a cost of over $12 billion. The massive rig used to bore through the mountains, measured at 410 meters long, removed 28 million tons of rock.



The GBT is part of a network of upgraded alpine links that Swiss voters approved in a referendum in 1992. The environment-friendly project includes three big railway tunnels: the first one opened in 2007, the highly anticipated Gotthard Tunnel and a third tunnel due to open by 2020.



Basel-born Swiss engineer Carl Eduard Gruner proposed a new rail tunnel below the Gotthard Pass in 1947, in a technical paper called "Journey through the Gotthard Base Tunnel in the year 2000."
Suspected Russian airstrikes pounded the rebel-held Syrian city of Idlib killing at least 50 people and leaving dozens more injured and trapped under rubble.

Military jets carried out the bombardment in the early hours of Tuesday striking civilian areas near a hospital and a mosque.

At least five children were among those killed, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Russia's Defense Ministry has denied carrying out any strikes on the city.

"Russia aviation hasn't performed any combat tasks, moreover [it] hasn't conducted any airstrikes in the province of Idlib," military spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a statement.

Idlib, a provincial capital, is held by the al-Qaida affiliated al-Nusra front which is not signatory to the Russia- and U.S.-brokered cease-fire that went into effect in February.

Moscow has been carrying out an air campaign in support of its Syrian allies since September 2015.
Afghan officials said Tuesday that the Taliban took dozens of people hostage near the northern city of Kunduz.

The insurgents apparently set up a check-point in a pre-dawn action on the main road near the provincial capital and stopped buses and vehicles heading to Kunduz from the national capital, Kabul.

A regional police commander, Sher Aziz Kamawal, told VOA that the insurgents seized at least 52 passengers and killed 17 of them. Residents saw bodies of the slain passengers floating in the nearby Chardara river.

A Taliban spokeman, Zabihullah Mujahid, claimed responsibility, saying it has captured "26 army and police who were wearing civilian outfits and traveling in private cars. He said six hostages were killed because they tried to escape, adding the raid was planned after the Taliban had received credible intelligence information from its sources the passengers traveling in private cares were actually members of Afghan security forces.

Regional police commander Kamawal did not rule out the possibility that there were some security forces among the hostages.

Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah in a Twitter post condemned the violence. "What Taliban did today is more of an act of wild animals than just a war crime against the innocent Afghan civilians." he said. Abdullah added that the Afghan government will not longer wait for peace talks with the Taliban and "will avenge the blood of our people in the soonest time."

The Taliban had briefly overrun Kunduz last September.

Afghan forces recaptured the strategically important city days later with the U.S. air support. But residents say retreating insurgents setup hideouts in surrounding districts and have since conducted guerrilla attacks occasionally.

Deadly fight rages in Helmand

Meanwhile, intense clashes between Afghan forces and Taliban rebels are continuing in three districts of southern Helmand province.

The fighting in Nadali, Gereshk and Marjah began Saturday when the Islamist insurgency staged a string of coordinated attacks. Local police commanders have confirmed killing of more than 50 Afghan forces, while dozens more were wounded.

The Taliban also is said to have seized territory and the fighting has reached the provincial capital, Lashkargah.

On Tuesday, provincial governor Hayatullah Hayat undertook an inspection of the city and said reports of its collapse are misplaced.

He confirmed only 40 casualties among Afghan forces and said at least 50 rebels have been killed while another 70 were wounded in the fighting.

The governor said fresh Afghan forces have also arrived in the conflict zone and a counter-offensive is being planned.

Helmand, where several districts are under the control of the insurgency, is the largest Afghan province and a poppy-growing hub.

The Taliban has intensified insurgent activities after its new leader, Mullah Hibatullah Akhnduzada took charge following the killing of his predecessor, Mullah Mansoor, in the May 21 U.S. drone strike in neighboring Pakistan.

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Mohammad Yousafi, claims its fighters have killed more than 100 Afghan forces, including several commanders since the fighting began.

He says insurgents have captured nearly two dozen security posts and two large military bases in the area.

The insurgent group often exaggerates its battlefield advances.
U.S.-backed Kurdish-led forces have expanded their operations west of Syrias Euphrates River, crossing a Turkish red line and angering mainstream Sunni Arab rebels.

The move is making a tangled fight in northern Syria messier and more chaotic by the hour and could drive some Sunni Arabs into the arms of the Islamic State terror group, political activists are warning.

The main anti-Assad rebel political opposition, the Syrian National Coalition, is now demanding guarantees from the international community that Sunni Arabs will be allowed to return to villages seized from the jihadist IS group by the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is dominated by Kurdish People's Protection Units, or YPG.

Rights groups accused the YPG last year of forcibly evicting Arabs and Turkmen and demolishing whole villages seized from IS  allegations the Syrian Kurds strongly deny.

The SDF

The SDF, which includes some small Sunni Arab armed groups and Syriac and Turkmen community defense forces, is shunned by most anti-Assad rebel groups, who fear  as the Turks do - that the Kurds are intent on establishing their own state along the border with Turkey.

That ambition has seen the Kurds collaborate at various times in the six-year-long Syria conflict with diverse groups - including, rebels claim, with the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and the Russians. A European diplomat told VOA he suspects YPG forces have been receiving arms supplies from the Russians.

On Monday, SDF forces mounted ground operations in three villages to the east of the town of Manbij, 30 kilometers west of the Euphrates and to the northeast of the city of Aleppo. Within hours, SDF units were fighting IS in parts of the city, say local activists. Before the Syria conflict erupted, the town of 100,000 had an ethnically diverse population of Arabs, Kurds and Circassians.

The SDF also seized from IS two villages on the western bank of the Euphrates  al-Sandaliyah and al-Haloulah  with the help of more than a dozen U.S. airstrikes.

Kurdish Peoples Protection Units

The YPG has not commented on the operations, imposing a gag order on its various social media outlets.

The YPG, however, lashed out at anti-Assad rebel groups in an escalating war of words with the Arab rebel groups, warning of severe retaliation for attacks on a Kurdish district in the city of Aleppo. Groups linked to the Syrian National Coalition have not stopped attacks on Aleppos Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood, the YPG said in a statement.

The YPG said it had accepted in the last few days hundreds of Sunni Arab civilians fleeing an IS offensive on towns north of Aleppo city, yet Kurdish neighborhoods have repeatedly come under fire including missile attacks on the Kurdish Afrin canton on the border with Turkey. In their attacks, civilians have lost their lives and our fighters have been martyred, the Kurdish militia said.

On its official Twitter feed, the YPG threatened it would respond to this hostile attitude.

In February, the Kurdish militia and rebel groups fought over several towns and villages in the northern Aleppo countryside as a blistering Russian-backed Assad regime offensive was under way, raising the almost unprecedented spectacle of U.S.-supported groups battling each other.

As sectarian tensions flare in northern Syria, the Syrian National Coalition, which is officially recognized by the West as the main opposition to Assad, has been trading angry words with the YPG, accusing Syrian Kurds of exploiting the fight against IS to achieve their own goals  away from the common goals of the Syrian people.

The Syrian Coalition urged the U.S.-led international coalition to publicly give guarantees that clearly ensure the right of all refugees and internally displaced persons in Syria to return to their towns and villages.

The SNC stressed no military or security presence, other than the local population and the free police force, should be imposed on the areas which will be liberated from IS.

Implications of SDF expansion

The expansion of SDF ground operations west of the Euphrates could endanger the campaign to liberate Raqqa from IS. Anti-jihadist activists in the collective Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently are now dubbing the U.S.-supported SDF offensive north of Raqqa, the de facto IS capital in Syria, a so-called liberation. They label the YPG a fanatical nationalist militia.

Last week, former U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, now an analyst with the Washington-based Middle East Institute, told a U.S. Senate panel that some Sunni Arabs fear the YPG more than IS.

In some cases, Syrian refugees flee it and don't go toward the Kurdish areas - they run away from them and into Islamic State territory, Ford told a Senate hearing.

Last Thursday, Ankara urged European countries not to allow the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD, which controls the YPG, to open political offices in their capitals, saying it would encourage Kurdish separatism in both Syria and Turkey.

In recent weeks, Turkish officials have proposed a joint military operation against jihadists inside Syria with the Americans and other allied troops. But they have made it clear the offer only involves joint efforts to support non-Kurdish rebel forces in the so-called Manbij pocket aimed at driving out IS fighters from the Aleppo countryside, from where the jihadists have launched rocket attacks on Turkish towns.

U.S. officials say the Turks have not offered any operational details for their proposal.

A European diplomat based in Istanbul told VOA Western officials see the repeated and highly public offer of a joint military operation in northern Syria as grandstanding by Ankara, designed more for domestic Turkish political consumption and not one amounting to a realistic offer.

The Turks will continue to retaliate for IS shelling along the border but they wont launch any major ground offensive south of the border, he said.

Despite Turkish and mainstream rebel objections to U-S. support for the SDF, there are no signs that Washington is re-thinking its anti-IS strategy in Syria. U.S. officials say while they are sensitive to Ankaras concerns about Syrian Kurdish political ambitions, they have little choice but to back the YPG as the Kurdish militia has proven to be an effective partner in the fight against IS.
The Ennahda party's sleek Tunis headquarters is a cool oasis for the stream of visitors coming to pay calls and seek favors on a recent steamy morning.

The visitors are settled into comfortable couches and handed large cups of cappuccino as they wait. Foreigners are greeted in fluent French or English by staff who spent years in exile.

Since Tunisias revolution five years ago, the moderate Islamist party has been on a roller-coaster ride, soaring from pre-revolutionary lows as political pariah to, at least briefly, the pinnacle of power.

Now Ennahda  whose name means renaissance in Arabic  appears to be starting a new chapter in its history, as it moves to separate its political and religious activities.

Overwhelmingly endorsed at a party conference in last week, party members describe the split as a pragmatic response to the political and economic challenges facing Tunisia today.

It means that Ennahda is a civic party with an Islamic background - but it is like any other political political party in a democratic country, says Ennahdas external affairs chief Rafik Abdessalem, an ex-foreign minister and the son-in-law of party leader Rachid Ghannouchi. It will allow us to respond better to the demands of the people, in terms of quality of life, jobs for the young, better health and education."

Mixed opinions

Not everyone agrees. In a country deeply divided over the role of political Islam and fearful of mounting extremism, opinions are mixed about Ennahdas latest metamorphosis.

Some observers greet the change cautiously, waiting to see how it will pan out in practical terms. Sharper critics dismiss it as mere rhetoric, while Ennahda hardliners consider it a betrayal of the partys religious identity.

Theres no such thing as Islam light, says 55-year-old taxi driver Samir Sassi.

Supporters say Ennahdas rebranding affirms the party as a purely Tunisian product, putting distance from Egypts Muslim Brotherhood, from which it once drew support and inspiration.

Some draw references instead to parties like Germanys Christian Democrats, inspired but not ruled by their religious heritage.

Yes, there is something you can call Muslim democracy, says Ennahda lawmaker Sayida Ounissi, who believes Ennahdas model is exportable, and were keen to prove it.

Some analysts believe the move will help Ennahda broaden its membership, even if it loses more conservative supporters.

I see this as mainly about messaging, Tunisian specialist Monica Marks told The Financial Times. They dont want to be lumped into the same category as al-Qaida and Boko Haram. They want to be more like the Christian Democratic Party in Germany, or the AKP in its early version in Turkey.

Political survivor

If nothing else, the move reinforces Ennahda's reputation as an adept political survivor since its founding in 1981. Under former Tunisian president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the party was barred from politics and senior members were sent to prison or exile.

They returned in the weeks following Tunisias 2011 revolution, going on to win the countrys first democratic elections.

While in power, Ennahda was criticized for failing to turn around the ailing economy and fight mounting extremism and insecurity. Unlike Egypts Muslim Brotherhood, it fell by the ballot in 2014.

Ennahda has since rebounded to become a key member in a governing coalition with its secular rival Nidaa Tounes. And with the secularists divided by infighting, it has recently emerged as the largest block in parliament.

Tunisian trade leader Wided Bouchamaoui, one of last years Nobel Peace laureates, says she hoped Ennahda will deliver on its latest promise.

We need to separate between religion and politics, she adds. We need to be like other countries, but also be proud about our religion.

College freshman Ahlem Ferjani dismisses Ennahdas rebranding as superficial.

Theyre really backwards, she says. They dont look to the future.

Other Tunisians, worried about the countrys battered economy and pessimistic about the future, are more interested in results.

These days, I go to the cafe, I do my errands, I go home, says unemployed 65-year-old Gazi Belrejeb.

For me, it makes no difference it its Ennahda or Nidaa Tounes, he adds. I want a party that can make the economy work.
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31

Trend:

A progress is being observed in the restoration of relations between Turkey and Israel, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a press conference, the TRT Haber news channel reported May 31.

Relations between Israel and Turkey deteriorated after the Freedom Flotilla incident in 2010, when a convoy of six ships, including one flying the Turkish flag, tried to approach the Gaza Strip with humanitarian aid and activists on board. The flotilla was blocked and stormed by Israeli forces, with eight Turkish citizens being killed.

Erdogan said at the time that Israel should apologize for the Freedom Flotilla incident, pay compensation to the families of those killed and end the blockade of the Gaza Strip.

"We wanted apologies for normalization of the relations, and we got them," Erdogan said. "Payment of the compensation is also coming to an end. The third condition was lifting the blockade of the Gaza Strip. Palestine is facing problems with electricity and water supply. We have made several proposals to eliminate them. The events are developing in a positive way. If we can resolve these issues, Turkey will build schools, hospitals [there]."

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Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
The U.N. refugee agency is voicing concern at the rising death toll among refugees and migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea, especially along the route from Libya to Italy.

More than 200,000 refugees and migrants have crossed the Mediterranean Sea in the first six months of this year. The U.N. refugee agency reports some 2,510 lives have been lost so far compared to 1,825 in the same period last year, making this a particularly deadly year.

While nearly two-thirds have reached Europe traveling from Turkey to Greece, the UNHCR says the North Africa-Italy route is dramatically more dangerous. It says the vast majoritymore than 2,100 peoplehave died along this route this year.

This past week has been particularly deadly. A series of shipwrecks on the Mediterranean reportedly have claimed at least 880 lives. The UNHCR considers this estimate to be conservative.

UNHCR spokesman, William Spindler, says boats leaving from Libya are terribly overcrowded, putting peoples lives at risk. He says smugglers are reportedly increasing the number of people on board ship to maximize income before the start of the holy month of Ramadan in the coming week.

Smugglers are packing people on boats that are barely seaworthy and that in many cases are not meant to make the crossing. So, what happens is that as soon as they depart from the shore, they call for rescue and then the rescue services come and rescue themIn fact, it is a race against time to get there before these boat sink. On some occasions, they get there too late.

Passengers are believed to be paying smugglers up to $2,000 to travel from Libya to Italy. The UNHCR says Nigerians and Gambians constitute the main nationalities on this route, although increasingly more are coming from Somalia and Eritrea.

It says not many Syrians, Afghans or Iraqis are shifting from the Turkey-Greece route to the Central Mediterranean one from North Africa to Italy.
The U.S. embassy in Beijing is taking a break from publicly engaging Chinese people through social media, after its latest online diplomacy effort was shut down earlier this month without explanation.

In a statement emailed to VOA Sunday, the embassy's Beijing press office said: "we do not have any specific plans to announce at this time" for new social media outreach in China.

In the last outreach attempt, four Beijing-based U.S. diplomats partnered with Chinese question-and-answer website Zhihu in late April to answer web users' questions about life in the United States.

A cached version of the "Discover America" webpage shows that it got 1 million views before being deleted May 17. That same day, China's Communist Youth League went on social media to say some Chinese web users were unhappy with the U.S. diplomats for trying to make America look good in the battle for Chinese public opinion.

US concern

The U.S. embassy expressed disappointment with the shutdown of the Q&A session, and said it relayed that message to Chinese authorities. It told VOA: "We look forward to opportunities to engage in genuine dialogues about issues and ideas of interest to Chinese and American people."

Beijing has declined to comment directly on the U.S. complaint. But China's state-run Global Times news site published an editorial May 25 that appeared to send a mixed message. The editorial said it is unnecessary for Chinese internet regulators to be "overly nervous" about every word coming from the United States. It also warned the U.S. embassy not to let its diplomats become "overly active" in trying to influence Chinese opinion.

In an interview for VOA's China 360 podcast, Foreign Policy magazine senior editor David Wertime said it is not clear what the U.S. diplomats can do on social media because China has not codified its position into law.

Lack of clarity

He said the legal uncertainty benefits China's government "because it ensures a degree of self-censorship that in some cases goes beyond what authorities might actually require."

Wertime said he thinks someone at Zhihu may have deleted the U.S. embassy's Q&A page as an act of self-censorship.

"One thing I can say for certain is that there is a good deal of anxiety in some private internet companies about precisely what is OK and what is not," he said. "Clearly an organization like Zhihu would not want to imperil, or do anything that it felt would imperil, its ability to continue to exist as a site."

U.S. social networking giant Facebook has not appeared to show any anxiety about U.S.-based Chinese diplomats using its platform to communicate with Americans. Those diplomats administer a Facebook page for the Chinese consulate in San Francisco.

Engaging Americans online

In some of its latest posts, the Chinese consulate's Facebook page shared photos of Chinese Ambassador to Washington Cui Tiankai hosting a musical event in honor of U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor. It also posted a political message saying China's "historical rights" in the South China Sea are undeniable."

Wertime said he is not aware of the U.S. government expressing any concern about the Chinese diplomats' Facebook postings.

"Obviously we have much more robust free speech protections here in the United States  protections which extend to non-citizens," Wertime said. "And we have different values that animate our legal regime here. So it is not surprising that foreign diplomats would get more leeway in the United States than they would in China."

China's embassy in Washington did not respond to questions from VOA about the goals of its diplomats' social media outreach.

Beijing has not only been putting its diplomats on Facebook. Chinese state-run news outlets have been using Facebook to great effect. Four of those outlets  People's Daily, China Xinhua News, China Daily and Global Times  have 33 million Facebook followers combined.

Differing standards

Wertime said those Chinese news sites have been enjoying an American culture for tolerance and free speech that does not exist in China.

"And some people have pointed out this discrepancy and have suggested that we should not be allowing such a degree of latitude to Chinese governmental organs operating in the United States," Wertime said.

China does not provide such freedoms to U.S. media, blocking their news sites when they post content deemed sensitive by Beijing. But Wertime said Chinese leaders do not appear to be too worried about U.S. perceptions of a double standard.

"I think what [China's leaders] are more concerned about is maintaining control and stability," Wertime said. "And what they might say in response to the criticism is, 'yes we do have two sets of standards: you have your laws in the United States, we have our laws in China, and you have got to obey our laws when you are operating in China.' I think the problem there is that it is unclear exactly what it means to obey the rules and regulations in China, because they are so strategically ambiguous."
Lodoe Gyatso, a former political prisoner from Sog County, Tibetan Autonomous Region who was released three years ago was reportedly re-arrested during the midnight of May 14 in Lhasa.

According to Dharamsala, India based Tibetan MP Ngawang Tharpa, 55 year old Gyatso, who had previously served 21 years in prison had been living mostly in Lhasa since his release in May 2013.

The details of his latest arrest is not known at the moment, but Mr. Tharpa believes it is for a political reason since Chinese police have often arrested suspects with sensitive political background in the night.
China and Africa are "good brothers" and China respects all people regardless of race, the government said on Monday after a detergent maker apologized for an advert showing a black man bundled into a washing machine that many called racist.

In the television advertisement for Qiaobi laundry detergent, a black man wolf-whistles at a Chinese woman, who beckons him over. She then stuffs a packet of detergent in his mouth and shoves him head-first into a washing machine.

A moment later, the woman opens the lid and a fair-skinned Asian man pops out.

State media reported the ad had first appeared in April but went viral after being posted on YouTube last week, where it racked up millions of views within a few days. Some Chinese and foreign internet users condemned it as racist.

"We express our sincere apologies and sincerely hope that the many internet users and the media will not read too much into this," Shanghai Leishang Cosmetics, the company that owns the Qiaobi brand, said in a statement at the weekend.



The company deleted an online version of the ad in response to the outcry, the state-backed Global Times reported, citing an interview with the firm. However, versions of it could still be seen on Chinese and foreign video platforms, including YouTube, on Monday.



A company representative declined further comment on Monday. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the ad was an isolated commercial act that had not prompted any diplomatic complaints and hoped people would not hype it up.



"Everyone can see that we are consistent in equality towards, and mutually respect, all countries, no matter their ethnicity or race. In fact, we are good brothers with African countries," Hua told a daily news briefing.



It is unclear if the black actor in the ad is from Africa. Public discussion of racial discrimination is unusual in China, which is dominated by the ethnic Han majority but is also home to dozens of minority groups as well as a growing influx of foreign residents, including Africans.



"Even though the people who shot the ad may not have realized it, it really is racist," one user on the microblogging platform Weibo wrote. "Those who planned the ad strategy should really have read up first."



Government officials often insist that China enjoys largely harmonious ethnic relations, though tension has led to violence, particularly in its western regions of Tibet and Xinjiang, which have large minority populations.



The Global Times, a popular tabloid known for a nationalistic bent, said in an editorial Western media coverage was "too extreme" and China had no problems with discrimination.



"There have been many evils during the development of the West in this era, and racism is one of them," the paper said. "China's social process hasn't been the same experience, so using the same yardstick to measure China's performance will lead to results that are inevitably absurd."
Five Zimbabwean opposition parties have agreed to form a coalition that will attempt to unseat President Robert Mugabes Zanu PF party in the 2018 general elections.

Police summon Patson Dzamara, brother of political activist Itai Dzamara, who was allegedly abducted by state security agents, 15 months ago. Police want to question him about leaked photos showing a masked person with hands tied to the back said to be images of his brother whose organization, Occupy Africa Unity Square, wants President Robert Mugabe to step down for allegedly failing to properly run Zimbabwe.

And this evening we will be talking with one of the female prisoners pardoned last week by President Robert Mugabe

Stay tuned for these stories and more coming up on Studio 7 at 7:30 pm on 9-0-9 Medium Wave and on the 4-9-3-0, 5-9-4-0 and 1-5-4-6-0 shortwave frequencies. We also broadcast on www.channelzim.net. Please check us out on Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter.

This evening on Livetalk our hosts of the connection Ntungamili Nkomo and Tatenda Gumbo will be talking with listeners about child pregnancies. Participate by sending your messages on our WhatsApp number 001 202 465 0318. The number again 001 202 465 0318. You can also post comments on this Facebook wall or send us your number so we can call you back. Please note that we are livestreaming on all Studio 7 Facebook pages. Stay tuned!!!!!
The Zimbabwe National Army has denied any involvement in the disappearance of journalist-cum-human-rights-activist Itai Dzamara.

This follows allegations made by Itais brother, Dr. Patson Dzamara, who claimed yesterday that he believed that the military intelligence was responsible for the missing activist.

He told journalists that incontestable evidence was availed to us and I dare Mr. Mugabe (President Robert Mugabe) and his surrogates to prove me wrong. They cant, because this is the truth. They thought they would get away with this evil deed as usual, but not this time around.

"They passed the wrong button. I cannot at this juncture state my brothers fate in the hands of these gangsters but I can categorically inform you that Itai Dzamara was abducted by the military intelligence under the direct instruction and supervision of Zanu-PF.

But in response to these allegations, Zimbabwe National Army director of Public Relations Lieutenant Colonel Alphios Makotore denied the allegation.

In a statement Makotore said: The Zimbabwe National Army totally denies any involvement in the disappearance of Itai Dzamara. The claims by Itai Dzamaras brother Patson are totally false and a figment of his own imaginations.

He added, The Army Intelligence does not take orders from any political party. Patsons claims are just meant to seek media attention and mislead members of the public.

Police spokesperson Senior Assistant Commissioner Charity Charamba told VOA Studio 7 yesterday that the police had no comment since Dzamara did not mention that they were involved or invite them to his press conference.

Meanwhile, detectives from the Law and Order section have asked Dr. Dzamara to visit their offices in connection with claims that the family has information about Itais abductors.

Dr. Dzamaras lawyer, Charles kwaramba, said he would only be able to take him to the police Wednesday morning since he was too busy Tuesday.

Mr. Dzamara called me and informed that the police wanted to interview him. I wasnt available because I spent the whole day in court with other cases, but in the afternoon I also communicated with the police. They called me and said Mr. Dzamara also wanted me to be there, Kwaramba said.

Kwaramba said his client is willing to cooperate with the police, adding that he has no reason whatsoever to withhold any information or to avoid interacting with them.
Roman Catholic Vicar-General, Kennedy Muguti, says political will is required to ensure that new policy measures to revive the economy announced by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) are successful.

Muguti said depositors and captains of industry are skeptical about the new measures that will lead to the introduction of bond notes as they have lost confidence in the governments economic policies.

In remarks at a discussion organized by the Catholic Bishops Social Communications Commission on whether Zimbabwe could be better off without the U.S currency, Muguti said the interventions by the central bank should have been done after consultations with all stakeholders.

The RBZ announced a raft of measures to revive the economy which include among other issues, daily cash withdrawal limits, the introduction of bond notes and use of plastic money.

But depositors and industry have come out strongly against the measures in particular the introduction of bond notes. Muguti said they have all the reasons to be skeptical about these new measures.

While the government is making frantic efforts, including you (RBZ governor) to dismiss the fears by the depositors and investors, the situation on the ground shows that the people have lost trust and confidence in the economic policies you are coming up with, Muguti said.

He said the peoples fears are reasonable given the past experiences where many of them are poorer today as a result of government policies.

Many are in their poverty state today because they did not recover from that back stab that they experienced and today when you ask them just continue to look forward, no they will look backward because they know that somebody can come back from the back and stab them again. So, this is the reason why people are very careful and also this is the reason why people are saying I would rather go and take out may $500 and keep it with me, he said.

But Barclays Zimbabwe managing director, George Guvamatanga, said the interventions by the central bank are welcome given the indiscipline by depositors banks and other players.

He said if not properly applied as was happening in Zimbabwe the U.S dollar could be harmful to the economy.

Guvamatanga said putting daily withdrawal limits at $1,000 per day was unrealistic given that the average monthly salary in Zimbabwe was $374.

I actually think that a weekly withdrawal limit of $500 will be adequate for day to day transacting, said Guvamatanga.

Guvamatanga admitted that the cost of using plastic money and Real Time Gross Settlement or RTGS was too high.

He urged fellow bankers to revise their charges to encourage the banking public to use plastic money and RTGS.

He added that Zimbabwe over-opened its economy when it dollarized in 2009 by allowing everyone to use foreign currency even for local services.

Guvamatanga said in light of the rampant abuse of the U.S dollar, the RBZs new policy measures are welcome.

We need to find a means of transacting, a means of payment which doesnt get abused. The U.S dollar as a means for local transactions has been abused and there is absolutely no way as an economy we can sustain it, Guvamatanga said.

RBZ governor, John Mangudya, said it was good that some bankers supported his measures and would consider their proposals to lower the daily withdrawal limits and charges.

Despite the $1,000 daily withdrawal limits banks have set limits at between $200 and $400 due to the cash crunch.

Guvamatanga suggested a weekly $500 withdrawal limit.
Zimbabwes continuing economic crisis is making it difficult for most ordinary Zimbabweans to access formal health care, with many finding no option but to seek alternative services.

A traditional healer at Bulawayos Makokoba Market, listens attentively as a middle-aged man describes his ailment to him. The man (who cannot be named for reasons of patient confidentiality) reveals that he is suffering from a sexually transmitted infection. He is one of many Zimbabweans who are reverting to consulting traditional healers.

The Makokoba Market, in one of Bulawayos oldest high density suburbs of Makokoba, is home to informal craftspeople, traders, as well as traditional healers.

Dr. Rudo Gumbo, a physician at a government hospital who was speaking in her individual capacity, acknowledged that the unrelenting economic crisis is not only having a negative impact on the countrys health system, but is also affecting ordinary people as it is making it increasingly difficult for them to afford health care.

Dr. Gumbo says many locals are now being compelled to either pin their hopes on faith-healing in churches or consult traditional healers.

A traditional healer at the Makokoba Market, who only chose to be identified as Msipa, said some locals consult him and his colleagues for a wide range of ailments, which include diabetes, hypertension, cancer and sexually transmitted infections.

These days it is difficult for us to get clients because many people are now finding refuge in the churches. You can get one customer in one day or may be lucky to get up to five of them  God is good and he is generous, so, Im assured of getting at least one customer per day. People come to us complaining of various ailments like sexually transmitted infections, and we are able to help them.

Another traditional healer, who only identified himself as Jamela, echoed Msipas sentiments, adding that a number of people who consult him and his colleagues do it in a rather clandestine manner, as they are ashamed of the stigma associated with seeking medical help from traditional healers.

Id say that most of the younger generations now see themselves as church people who have nothing to do with traditional healers. But when things get really tough and they fail to find help in church, they are sometimes told to go back to their roots and get help from us traditional healers. We have nothing against church people because they also help in their own way.

There are some who make people pay and there are others who dont ask for any money. So you will find that there are many who want to be secretive when they come to consult us because they are ashamed to be seen openly doing so. But there are older people who consult us openly because they know that we are rooted in our culture and we are able to assist in many cases.

The 78 year-old Jamela disputes the notion that traditional medicine is steeped in mystery and also denies that the efficacy of traditional medicine is doubtful, as a result of not being properly packaged, with the dosages often lacking precise measurement.

The Zimbabwe National Traditional Healers Association is a body that was registered in the late 1990s with some of its objectives being to formalize the work of traditional healers and enable them to complement the formal health sector. In spite of such a move, traditional medicine remains looked down upon.

But another traditional healer, Mike Ncube, says black Zimbabweans should not be ashamed of traditional healers as they are a reflection of the peoples culture and identity.

She adds that traditional healers are experts in the field and some types of western medicine are derived from the herbs that the local healers use.

You can find that in some instances when you go the hospital and you fail to be cured, some people who are honest can tell you that you can be assisted by traditional healers. We are appealing to people to remember their roots; they should believe that we as traditional healers are able to help them in some cases. For instance you could come to me suffering from cancer and then I give you some herbs. After a week I should be able to see some improvement. I should constantly monitor how you are doing so that I can change the medication if need be. We are able to help and I am asking people to remember who they are.

Dr. Gumbo says both traditional and faith healing have risks as some unscrupulous individuals often lie to desperate people claiming to be able to cure diseases that they are known to be incurable.

Although this may be true, many hard-pressed Zimbabweans will continue to see the services of both traditional and faith healers as a viable alternative to the formal health system which is beyond their reach.
China reportedly plans to deploy nuclear-armed submarines to the Pacific amid tensions with the U.S. (Photo : Getty Images)

China is risking inciting an arms race with the United States as Beijing reportedly announced the deployment of nuclear-armed submarines to the Pacific, something other reports considered highly unlikely.



Last week, The Guardian reported how China revealed its plans on releasing an underwater vessel that carries nuclear-powered missiles in the Pacific Ocean.



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The report said that China claims to be "left with no choice" but to deploy the submarine due to the recent expansion of the U.S.'s weapon systems that "undermined Beijing's existing deterrent force."



However, Forbes noted that there are several other reports that prove such move to be highly unlikely at the moment because China still lacks the capability to execute it.



China's Nuke-armed Submarine



The Guardian report citing Chinese military officials states that the country will be utilizing a submarine with nuclear missiles in the Pacific Ocean to keep U.S. weapons in check.



Apparently, the outlet's Chinese sources did not comment on the timing of the patrol and only explained that they had to make the move, insisting that the move was inevitable.



They reportedly pinpointed the Western country's plans to deploy the THAAD anti-ballistic system in South Korea that was supposedly to be used only to prevent any more test fires from North Korea, but could possibly threaten the neighboring mainland China as well.



Citing some analysts, The Guardian said that Beijing's plans could only be seen as a threat to the U.S. by the Americans, but the Chinese see it as a "modest" way to maintain deterrence.



"Chinese strategic analysts, unlike their western counterparts, have so far adopted a surprisingly relaxed view of nuclear threats, while some of their U.S. counterparts are inclined toward envisioning worst-case scenarios," Middlebury Institute of International Studies' East Asia Non Proliferation Programme Director Jeffrey Lewis explained.



Lewis noted that this grave misunderstanding between the two nations at a very tense time could be "dangerous."



China's True Capability



While The Guardian appears to be convinced that China could really deploy an underwater vessel with a weapon of mass destruction, there are still some who see it to be far from possible, saying that the country's submarine capabilities have been grossly exaggerated.



"It seems that various news media reports and official statements continue to exaggerate or preempt the operational capability of the Chinese submarine force," the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) said in a report.



Forbes believes that the timing of the submarine nuclear missile revelation had been questionably on point, considering that it was made just as U.S. President Barack Obama visited Vietnam, which is one of the small neighbors China is "bullying" in the form of territorial disputes.






[More info]

Based on its magnitude, the fault that was active during the quake ruptured along a surface of approx. 200 km(=77 sqare miles) as a first-order estimate. The length of the rupture zone thus was probably around 24 km (15 mi).Aftershocks typically occur during the weeks and months following the quake at or near the same fault, at distances of up to approx. two times the length of the rupture zone.The often broadly linear arrangement of aftershock epicenters encompasses the rupture zone of the main shock (check on the map below to verify).
For all of The Mindy Projects silly turns and strange inconsistencies, it has a way of making me feel like were really following the life of Mindy Lahiri. The show has managed to avoid simply shipping characters off, never to be seen or heard from again. Perhaps Im reading too much into this, but it feels like the people who make this show really like each other. Even when story lines or real-life choices dictate that their characters move on, theyll happily return once in a while for cameo appearances.

Peter is the best example of this dynamic: He got married and moved to Texas, but he visits, calls, and in the case of this weeks episode, forces Mindy to make good on a drunken promise to visit him in Austin. Mindy drops Leo off to stay with Danny for the five days shell be gone, and at the door she encounters a hot woman who is obviously dating Danny. This throws her for a loop, of course, but shes got a plane to catch.

Once shes in Texas, Mindy complains to Peter about the difficulty shes having finding one single, sane, rich, hot cunnilingus addict. But shes obviously more upset by Danny being with someone new. (They even posted Facebook photos of them kissing on top of a Ferris wheel!) And so Mindy is determined to make the most of her trip: I guess I can Under the Tuscan Sun a handsome ranch hand.

Peter, meanwhile, is living a typically repressive life in his real McMansion, as Mindy describes it. Lauren has declared them vegan and wont let him sit in the formal living room. TV is banned. But it is a very nice place. As Lauren says, It used to belong to a forward on the Spurs until he was caught on camera throwing his wife in the trash. At dinner, the cracks in Peter and Laurens picturesque life begin to emerge: It seems Peter has been telling Lauren all about the drama gripping his co-workers Meredith and Derek, which sounds an awful lot like Greys Anatomy. Mindy lets that go for the moment.

Lauren shows Mindy to her guest room, which shell share with Martin the chuckwalla. Lauren says she wants to hang out with Mindy and get to know her more, but Mindy soon figures outs what she really wants. Shes worried Peter is having an affair, and she wants Mindy to find out why hes been acting so strange.

Mindy agrees, but is momentarily diverted when she spots Diego, the hot guy working in the yard. Her new mission  particularly after looking at Dannys Facebook page full of photos with the new woman  is to seduce the pool boy. Alas, her first mistake is calling him the pool boy to his face. This coupled with falling into the pool while eating a Popsicle and wearing a Garfield T-shirt does not a seduction make. He runs off in a huff, clearly insulted. Mindy complains to Rosa, the nanny: I am soaked in agua and I was negged sexually. Rosas not impressed. In fact, shes mad that Mindy left the Popsicles out to melt, so she sends her to the store for new ones, plus the Hot Pockets that Mr. Peter likes.

Lo and behold, Mr. Peter is at the store, too, relaxing in the TV department! (It seems to be one of those suburban Super Targets or something, where they have every possible thing for sale in one location.) He explains to Mindy that he had a medical job, but he started calling in sick to stay home with his stepson, Henry, until pretty soon I had sent them my fake obituary. Since then, hed been hanging out a few hours a day at the store until he could go home and hang with the kid. And naturally, hed been filling in the blanks of his day using Greys Anatomy plot lines because Lauren doesnt watch TV. Last week she tried to get us into Dennys funeral, he says.

When the two of them head home, Lauren is waiting  and shes mad. It seems Diego quit as their water designer because of Mindys pool boy insult. He is no mere pool boy! He won a MacArthur Genius Grant for a hot tub in Santa Fe! Luckily, he agrees to come to dinner to accept Mindys apology. Please, she begs him. Complete their grotto. He accepts, but things soon unravel in a different way when Lauren starts asking Peter about Meredith and Derek. Diego, a self-described huge Shonda head, spills the beans that Peters just stealing Greys plot lines.

After Diego and Mindy leave so Lauren and Peter can fight, they end up driving around and bonding over their exes and their kids. Soon enough, though, Peter calls Mindy and asks for her help in talking to Lauren. Lauren has locked herself in the bathroom and wont talk to him anymore. When Mindy returns, shes surprisingly effective: Her mom senses click into gear and she realizes Lauren is upset about more than the grotto. Lauren is pregnant!

With Lauren and Peter reconciled, Mindy heads downstairs to say good-bye to Diego. He invites her to spend the night with him, but she realizes she should hang out with Peter and Lauren. Instead, Mindy mentions that he should come stay with her in New York sometime soon. If I ever visit you in New York, he says, We probably wouldnt leave your apartment.

Holy shit, Mindy says after he leaves. That shit was hot. Have we ever heard Mindy swear before? If this was the first time, it was totally worth it.
Shanghai Disneyland opens on June 16. (Photo : Getty Images)

The first-ever Disneyland in China appears to be doing well amid the countrys economic slowdown as nearly a million Chinese visit surrounding public areas way ahead of the parks official opening on June 16.



Bloomberg sees a possible triple in tourism industry profit thanks to Mickey Mouse and Co. after the Chinese government projected a 42-percent jump of investment in 2015.



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According to the report, Chinese President Xi Jinping approved of the entry of the internationally popular theme park, emphasizing the importance of tourism to the country, especially during the economic slowdown.



Before Opening Shanghai Disneyland



So much positive reaction welcomed Walt Disney Co.'s theme park to the mainland, something that is proven by a "B+" rating given by The Street.



"We rate DISNEY (WALT) CO as a Buy with a ratings score of B+," the report dated Jan. 13 stated. "This is driven by some important positives, which we believe should have a greater impact than any weaknesses, and should give investors a better performance opportunity than most stocks we cover."



The outlet also quoted Disney's CEO Robert A. Iger's description of the plan, which will merge the Chinese culture with the traditional Disney magic.



"The resort reflects Disney's legendary storytelling along with China's rich culture, and showcases some of the most creative and innovative experiences we've ever created," he said. "We're looking forward to showing it to the world and sharing it with the people of China for generations to come."



The South China Morning Post said that the trial run held six weeks prior to the official opening of the theme park was "hit by lengthy queues," another proof of the positive feedback to the tourism project.



Visitor Projection



In the Bloomberg report, Shanghai-based China Market Research director Shaun Rein forecasts a continued consumer patronage for Disneyland "as long as it's big enough and good enough."



"The Chinese consumer is spending more and more," he said. "Every person with a kid or grandkid in China is going to go to Shanghai Disney as long as it's big enough and good enough."



However, he also said that Walt Disney Co. may have underestimated the demand considering that there are 330 million people living just three hours from the park's site.



So far, China and Disney have already spent a hefty amount for travel commodities.



Travelers by air increased to as much as 45 percent in 2015 compared to four years earlier, leading to Boeing's prediction of China's demand for more planes that costs as much as $1 trillion.



In the land, Premier Li Keqiang sees the rail spending to be a way of killing "several birds with one stone" by cushioning the economy in the short-term and enhancing long-term efficiency.






Happy Memorial Day, boos! I slept in, ate my weight in fried food, drank rose, called a bunch of friends  yeah, I agree with you. How is any of this relevant to Memorial Day? How is this an appropriate way to honor soldiers who died while serving? Its not, but part of being American is using national holidays to live your most gluttonous and slothlike life. And I succeeded!

Anyway, this weeks episode of The Real Housewives of Dallas is a total snoozefest. Its about Stephanies husband, Travis, and his dumb-ass birthday (who cares?), Zuri, who is Cary and Marks daughter, and her birthday (I didnt even know Cary and Mark had a kid!), and LeeAnne making amends with people when we know damn well shell mess things up next week. (Lol. Why bother, Lee?) None of these things were particularly compelling, so I gave negative damns the whole time I watched. Maybe Im being harsh, so lets discuss everything that went down. Cool?

We open with Stephanie and Travis discussing his birthday. Given the history of his birthday, this is a really stressful task: He likes things over the top, which is why she once rented a 50,000-square-foot house in Mexico and flew all his friends out  zzzz. Sorry, but how is this hard?! Stephanie doesnt work, she uses her husbands money to pay for everything, she probably sent three emails telling people when to show up, and then checked Airbnb to secure a house, which takes about five minutes. I love Stephanie, but planning an unnecessarily extravagant birthday party is not something Im going to feel bad about.

Just when I couldnt roll my eyes hard enough, Travis is like, I want you to jump out of a cake. And then he spends the rest of the episode talking about how much he wants that cake wish. WE HEARD YOUR ASS THE FIRST TIME, TRAVIS. Also, having a woman jump out of a cake for you feels very Singin in the Rain, and Travis is no Gene Kelly. He is basic AF, so he should just be happy that hes getting more than a $35 iTunes gift card. Look, Im not saying you shouldnt request stuff for your birthday, but they agreed that she was going to surprise him with something nice and then hes like, How about I have my assistant Courtney go with you and shell make sure you do things right, like ask how much renting a venue costs.

Seriously, Stephanie is not an idiot. The first rule of renting a venue space is asking how much it costs to rent that venue space. I hate how condescending Travis is to her. He acts like shes constantly screwing things up, which shes really not. Oy. Also? Maybe dont marry someone who talks down to you all the time. Cool? Cool.

Anyway, Stephanie brings both Courtney and Brandi to a swanky-looking restaurant, where they decide on a theme: The Great Gatsby. Everybody likes it! Brandi makes a joke about how they should make a fake letter of commendation from President Obama to give to Travis. Courtney and Stephanie hate it! Which makes sense. Who wants to be pranked on their birthday? Not I! Then Steph drops the bomb that she wants to invite LeeAnne to the birthday party, so Brandi and Lee need to clear the air. #Awkward.

Next up, we catch up with Mark and Cary. They have a daughter named Zuri, who is turning 3 years old. I did not know this. Did you know this? Mark wants to buy Zuri an obscene number of gifts. Knowing what I know about him, I assumed he would do this. Later, we get to meet Zuri  and she is so cute! AWW! I l love this! Then we join Rick and LeeAnne, who are talking over lunch. Wait, scratch that. LeeAnne is doing most of the talking and bae gets a few words in. She will be the keynote speaker at the Grace Project, which is cool, and shes going to share her life experience and talk about how she was molested as a child. Oof. So awful. As much as I hate on LeeAnne, I love that shes brave enough to share her story to help others.

Its the day of the keynote speech and LeeAnne knocks it out of the park. Stephanie is there to witness it, and I think this makes their relationship a lot stronger. Steph is moved. She sees LeeAnne as more than just a drama queen. We follow Stephanie back home with her family. Once dinner is over, she confronts Travis about micromanaging her and he explains its because his mom did the same with him. Okay, thats understandable, but he needs to work on it because it clearly bothers Stephanie. Shes on the verge of tears from trying to be perfect all the time. Yikes. Its like a Lifetime movie up in here.

Since LeeAnne is coming to the birthday party, Brandi decides to call her to hash things out. The phone call is pretty much like this:

It is full of awkward pauses, but they eventually work it out and agree to meet for lunch. Dun, dun, dun! They show up, sit down, talk it out civilly, and clear the air. Cut to me like:

Did they forget they were on a Real Housewives show? Did they think they were on Oprahs SuperSoul Sunday mess? Brandi and LeeAnne, Im not here for yall to be acting sensibly. Im here for yall to be so ignorant that your family decides to change their family crest to: I Dont Know Those Dumb Heauxes. Brandi and LeeAnne, you have screwed this up. Dont let it happen again.

A bunch of boring stuff happens after that: Brandi and Stephanie go dress-shopping and talk about the end of the LeeAnne drama, then Cary and Mark keep discussing how Carys wedding dress happens to be jazzy enough to fit within the Gatsby theme, so shes going to wear it. OUCH! This episode is full of dead air, yall. Moving on.

Its the night of Traviss birthday party. AND NOTHING INTERESTING HAPPENS! Everyone arrives and oohs and aahs over their dresses. Brandi and LeeAnne get along like gangbusters. Brandi announces that she wants to do a girls trip for her, Stephanies, and Carys birthdays  and LeeAnne is invited, of course. Cary looks stunned, mainly because she cant move her face because of all the Botox. But thats it! It looks like well have to wait until this road trip to Austin for any juicy drama.

We close with Travis and Stephanie at home. She surprises him by coming out of a cake. He gets a giant boner. Roll credits. What the hell did we just watch, yall?! I want my money and time back.

All righty, what did you think of tonights episode? Am I being too harsh? Did you also think it was boring?
Psylocke (Olivia Munn) and Storm (Alexandra Shipp). Photo: Alan Markfield/Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

If theres one thing you can count on with this summers superhero movies, its that the villain will have a truly convoluted plan that makes no sense. In that respect, Oscar Isaacs titular villain in X-Men: Apocalypse is no different than, say, Lex Luthor in Batman v Superman: I couldnt make heads or tails of Apocalypses no-nukes/wait-lets-destroy-several-cities-anyway scheme, though at least it gives us one delicious moment  where Apocalypse places his hand on a TV set and murmurs Learrrrrrning  that I hope will be mortifyingly spliced into Oscar Isaacs lifetime-achievement montages for decades to come.

The best way to make sense of the plot, I found, is to simply forget about its nuclear stakes: At its heart, this is a movie where the X-Men race to stop Oscar Isaac as he travels the globe giving people makeovers. Im serious! For at least two-thirds of the movie, Apocalypse labors to recruit his Four Horsemen, largely ineffectual mutants like Angel and Psylocke who will stand at his side, battle the X-Men, and allow Apocalypse to give them haircuts. The film is basically two-and-a-half hours of Apocalypse being like, Let me unlock your mutant potential and maybe zhuzh up your look, and it suggests that like Cher from Clueless, all this supervillain truly wants is a project.

But are Apocalypses makeovers more successful than his plot to defeat an embarrassed Jennifer Lawrence? Lets go over all the before-and-afters to get a sense of what this blue-skinned telekinetic seamstress can do for you.

Photo: Twentieth Century Fox

APOCALYPSE

First, we should start with the man himself. The movie does not make the wisest choice by introducing our antagonist as a sexy, shirtless normal person: Before youve even had enough time to say, I thought Oscar Isaac would have a hairier chest, he is magically swathed in colored latex and given a truly egregious butt-chin prosthetic that makes him look like a less realistic Mac Tonight. Im not sure what all those head-cords and dread-braids are supposed to be for or why you would want to transform the beautiful and shirtless Oscar Isaac into 1990s one-hit wonder Jane Child, but Apocalypses uniform does little to improve the look: This costume features the first of several shoulder pieces so insane that even Joan Collins would request to take it down a notch. Apocalypse, the style battle begins at home. Pull your look together before you start queer-eyeing Olivia Munn, okay?

Photo: Twentieth Century Fox

ANGEL

Later in the movie, Apocalypse heads to Berlin to recruit Angel, a frequently shirtless fighter who resembles an unkempt Spike from Buffy. Apocalypse gives our winged wonder a very popular gay undercut that Im willing to cosign for, but Im less high on his decision to replace Angels feathered wings with metal machinery: Now he just looks like an AIDS/LifeCycle biker who you glued to the Iron Throne. Surprisingly, this is one of Apocalypses most difficult makeovers to pull off. At one point, Magneto is able to excuse himself to take a long-distance telekinetic call from the good guys, because Apocalypse is still busy hand-crafting the new pec armor that will complete Angels transformation from a Sean Cody cage fighter into White Falcon. Im not positive it was time well-spent.

Photo: Twentieth Century Fox

PSYLOCKE

I couldnt find a still image of Psylockes first look, where she skulks in the shadows before joining Apocalypses team of Harajuku Girls, but no matter: Weve got plenty to discuss about Apocalypses decision to strap her into an armored bathing suit, give her lowlights the color of Pop Rocks, and top off her look with an uncomfortably situated tit-window serving BoobsForQueens.com realness. This is the outfit Psylocke chooses to wear to a concentration camp, which is less shoah and more shonde. A regular American Gladiator at Auschwitz, Psylocke pulls focus even when she is just standing there listlessly, which is what she does for 90 percent of her screen time.

Photo: Twentieth Century Fox

STORM

Credit where credit is due: This is one of Apocalypses best makeovers. A white mohawk makes anyone look more arresting, as Stripe from Gremlins can attest, and Storms streamlined uniform comes complete with a cape, which is a great accessory to have when your superpower is New York weather. Magneto makes an elaborate case to Storm about why this morally ambiguous mutant ought to follow him; really, all he needed to promise was a better fill light and I think she would have been in.

Photo: Twentieth Century Fox

MAGNETO

What you think of Magnetos new look really depends on how much you appreciate Michael Fassbender as a scruffy, normcore lumberjack. Im fairly sure that if Magneto had Instagrammed the selfie on the left, his brand-new superpower would be inspiring horny teens to comment daddy and ram me with metal please ilu; once Apocalypse gets ahold of him, though, hes larded in layers, with body armor that looks like a Transformers stomach. Can someone explain to me that weird middle part, where it looks like you could latch a finger in and unzip it? Im afraid Apocalypse never met an extraneous detail he didnt like; Id advise him and his posse to observe Coco Chanels maxim about taking off one thing before leaving the house, but when youre wearing 8,000 things I dont know if it would make any difference. Apocalypse, Im not sure what to think about your mutant style guide. Lets just be happy you were defeated before the 1990s-set sequel, because the world isnt ready for your take on acid wash.
China Sees First-ever Monorail Train Powered by Magnetic Motors as Solution to Traffic and Air Pollution

China is pursuing the building of a maglev-powered monorail train to solve its air pollution and traffic problems. (Photo : Getty Images)

China has just finished testing a newly developed monorail train powered by permanent magnet synchronous motors as the country pursues its goal to get rid of two major problems: traffic jams and air pollution.



A subsidiary of the country's biggest train manufacturer China Railway Rolling Stock Corp., the CRRC Qingdao Sifang Co. had successfully tested China's first-ever monorail train that runs on magnetic power on Sunday, China Daily reported.



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According to the outlet, this marks a significant milestone for the transport industry in the country as the government continues to look for alternative public transportation vehicles to promote less use of private cars, thereby eradicating traffic gridlocks and alleviating air pollution at the same time.



The Maglev Train



According to the train's chief designer Zhong Yuanmu, the magnetic levitation technology that runs CRRC's monorail train not only is efficient in terms of transporting people from one place to another, but it is also an effective alternative to traditional trains since it saves 10 percent of energy.



Aside from that, the train also produces much less noise compared to its ancestors since it runs smoothly at a regulated speed.



"The train will produce even less noise than a car, even as it goes [at] speeds of 70 km/h," Zhong said.



In terms of safety measures, Zhong said that the train has a state-of-the-art fire prevention system that has sprinklers that automatically turn on in case of fire.



So far, the technology has been tested in the transport industry by only a handful of countries including China.



Solution to Traffic and Pollution



According to CRIEnglish, the Chinese government is planning to pursue this project even if a number of countries who have tried the technology have scrapped the idea due to high development costs.



The outlet said that the authorities see the potential of the maglev monorail train as a possible solution for both the nightmarish traffic jams and the life-threatening air pollution in China.



Aside from the train, China is also considering pursuing an innovative new commuter transport called the "straddling bus," which is primarily designed to beat traffic jams.



According to The Guardian, the so-called Transit Explore Bus or TEB, which was introduced during a technology expo in Beijing, is designed to glide above cars stranded in traffic.



Many were impressed at the idea, especially after the project's chief engineer Song Youzhou explained that the bus is energy-efficient and environment-friendly.



However, a blogger in Greater Washington said it would be better if China removed the traffic congestions instead of building a run-around to actually solve its traffic problem.






The beginning of Chris and Crystal Griders love story has become the emblem for their fledgling vineyard south of Eddy.

The couple shared their first kiss in a hackberry tree on land owned by Crystal Griders family. The trees silhouette now stands as the logo for the Griders Kissing Tree Vineyards, which they started in 2014.

Now, after two years of successful wine sales at festivals and the Waco Downtown Farmers Market, the couple are ready to share their wares with a broader audience.

They will hold a grand opening for the Kissing Tree Vineyards Tasting Room on June 11-12 in a historic building on West Third Street in Eddy.

The event will run from noon to 8 p.m. June 11 and noon to 5 p.m. June 12. There will be live music and light hors doeuvres. Each attendee also will receive a wine glass.

Kissing Tree produces seven wines, including a popular cider, with more recipes to be revealed in the upcoming year.

Our cider, we cant bottle it fast enough, Crystal Grider said.

The Griders met on the first day of high school in band class, for which they had both signed up to play saxophone. Crystal helped Chris learn the first few notes on his instrument.

I didnt know you were supposed to know how to play before you got there, Chris Grider said. I stayed in band the whole time because we were sitting next to each other.

Their love for wine came later while living in San Antonio, when they learned about the fermenting process on their frequent trips to the Hill Country.

Providing community

Crystal Grider said they fell in love with how wine provides community, and they began experimenting with home brews hoping to one day plant vines on her familys land.

The couple moved to Dallas to attend Dallas Baptist University and stumbled into jobs working for a local winery.

The pair eventually became teachers but never lost their desire to start their own vineyard.

Some successful real estate investments allowed the couple to shorten their timeline for getting started.

Our dream was always to come back out to her grandmothers land and retire there and start a winery, Chris Grider said. Why wait to retire? Lets do this now.

It also wasnt their plan to have a tasting room so soon, Crystal Grider said.

The opportunity kind of arose for us because generally when you plant a vineyard, you have to wait awhile for the vineyard to become established and pretty, she said.

Finding a suitable building near Interstate 35 allowed them to forgo a building project and open sooner.

Dividable sections

The tasting room is the combination of three storefronts and a patio. Each section can be divided by doors and rented out individually for special events.

They plan to host live music regularly, sell cigars and transform a portion of the building into an art gallery.

Chris Grider said he hopes the new tasting room will attract travelers coming to and from the Hill Country.

I want this to be the gateway to the Hill Country, he said.

-----

Kissing Tree Vineyards Tasting Room grand opening

When: Noon to 8 p.m. June 11 and noon to 5 p.m. June 12

Where: 109 W. Third St. in Eddy

More information: Visit kissingtreevineyards.com or call 214-862-7446
Lets say Donald Trump manages to romp his way to the White House in November. The New Yorkers Adam Gopnik paints a dire picture of what will follow: If Trump came to power, there is a decent chance that the American experiment would be over. This is not a hyperbolic prediction; it is not a hysterical prediction; it is simply a candid reading of what history tells us happens in countries with leaders like Trump.

Gopnik goes on to assure us that Countries dont really recover from being taken over by unstable authoritarian nationalists of any political bent, left or right  not by Perons or Castros or Putins or Francos or Lenins or fill in the blanks. The nation may survive, but the wound to hope and order will never fully heal.

I dont think I can be accused of being a Trump apologist; Ive written a lot of words about the man, few of them kind. Nonetheless, I find Gopniks essay to be, well, a bit hyperbolic.

Take the notion that countries dont recover from unstable authoritarian nationalists. It sounds true, because it seems as if it ought to be. But Gopnik fails to marshal much evidence.

The countries he names had big institutional problems before the dictators arrived and big problems afterward, so its hard to say that the one caused the other. History  even of large, prosperous nations  is littered with unstable authoritarian nationalists, or their smaller-scale equivalent. Precious few are the countries that have not, at one time or other, been ruled by fiercely tribal autocrats with weak administrative skills and size-12 egos jammed uncomfortably into size-4 souls. If your country ever had a monarchy, you can look down the list of kings and pick out your own candidates.

Maybe Gopnik refers only to modern countries? Or perhaps he means that countries require some sort of hard reset after a dictatorship, or that the wounds take a long time to heal? But some countries seem to have transitioned to democracy all right without a hard reset, and saying these things take time to recover from weakens Gopniks statement to the trivial argument that history has consequences.

Moreover, the modern times restriction makes it hard to generalize simply because there just arent that many modern democracies around, or enough years of history to study from them. Even then, it seems like a stretch to say that a place like Chile has never recovered from a loathsome dictatorship. Chile had a largely peaceful transition back to democracy in the late 1980s, as did South Korea around the same time. Im sure that psychic scars linger, but are they really worse than, say, the psychic scars of our own Civil War which involved, let us not forget, a certain amount of liberty-taking with constitutional rights?

And that assumes that Trump, having taken power, would turn into a Peron or a Lenin, and not, say, just a bad president. Leave aside for now the argument over whether he has genuinely scary-dictator instincts (I see worrying signs that he does, but this is unprovable until he tries to do scary-dictator things rather than just bray about them).

There are two stages to becoming a scary autocrat. First, you have to get into a position to seize power. The most traditional routes are the military (a task for which Donald Trumps bone spurs left him tragically disqualified) or winning elected office to abolish or corrupt the electoral process. The former route has its risks, but once youve safely arrived in the presidential palace, its pretty easy to dispense with democracy since you have all the guns. The latter route means you need the rest of government, including all the folks with guns, to go along with you.

This certainly does happen, even in countries that have been practicing democracies for a while. But its by no means a given. Franklin D. Roosevelt took a certain amount of constitutional liberty with his wackier notions, and when the courts pushed back, he hit on the scary idea of basically throwing out some Supreme Court justices and replacing them with others who would rubber-stamp his policies. (The phrasing was nicer than that, but this was the basic idea, and just the sort of first step that dictators like to take toward cementing themselves as Autocrat for Life). FDRs own party rebelled, but the Supreme Court began cooperating, too.

There were also civil liberties violations under FDR, notably the internment of the West Coast Japanese population. But while these were appalling abuses, and a stain on the national honor, they are within the (unfortunately) normal range of government behavior in your ordinary, middling-decent democracy of the era.

So the question is not just whether Trump wants to be a dictator, but what the other branches of government will do if he tries to actually become one. I dont just mean Congress and the courts; I mean will the bureaucrats of the civil service follow his orders and will the people with guns agree to go out and arrest his enemies?

Theres clearly a portion of the electorate that thrills to the more authoritarian and violent parts of his message, and presumably some of those folks are in the military and the civil service. But Im still fairly confident that the FBI is not, say, going to start tapping journalists phones to find out if theyre making fun of President Trumps comb-over, or disappearing the ones who do.

I worry more about Silvio Berlusconi-style corruption and abuse of regulatory agencies, an impulsive foreign policy that could lead us into open conflict with a nuclear-armed power and executive-power overreach. I also worry about simple incompetence, given how uninterested Trump seems to be in policy. All-out dictatorship is pretty low on the list, because American institutions do not seem weak enough to allow it.

That doesnt mean they never will be. The less people identify with the nation, and the more they identify with some tribe within it, the easier it is to get your faction to make total war on the opposition. But I dont think were quite ripe for the plucking by some would-be autocrat. If Trumps presidency leads into dictatorship, it is more likely to be as the harbinger of doom than the bringer of it.

Megan McArdle is a Bloomberg View columnist writing on economics, business and public policy.
If a Pulitzer Prize were awarded for anti-Trump journalism, the Tribs own editorial board would be among the hundreds of contenders. But of all the hate speech printed by national and local newspapers, a recent column by the Washington Posts Jennifer Rubin would surely be a finalist.

To her list of people who allegedly have problems with Trump  women, Hispanics, African Americans, college-educated voters and the chunk of the GOP that voted for other candidates  she adds American Jewish voters. As a Jewish woman, Rubin wasnt likely to vote for Trump anyway. By her own admission, American Jews usually vote overwhelmingly Democratic. Who knew?

But as one of the Posts token conservative columnists, she apparently was compelled to justify her intended vote against the Republican nominee.

Rubin levels some rather inflammatory charges, poorly supported by over-generalizations, that Trump himself and many of his followers are racist white nationalists and/or anti-Semites. She partly bases this claim on a few flimsy anecdotes about Trumps discriminatory or provocative history and the widespread approval of his anti-immigration position. Her column is the perfect example of confirmation bias, hers and the newspapers.

An unbiased look at recent history would confirm that conservative Republicans and evangelical Christians are among the most ardent American supporters of the lone Jewish state of Israel. (Democratic administrations, not so much.) They are certainly not the Trump constituency Rubin fantasizes about. A very large percentage of those Israel supporters will vote for Trump despite any misgivings. Most who cant will stay home rather than voting Democratic.

There will, of course, be some bigots among those who vote for Trump as well as for his opponent. The most virulent anti-Semitic and anti-Israel sentiment in America today is found on college campuses among liberal white students, professors and Muslim students. Also, there are politically radical American Jewish groups that vehemently oppose Israels domestic and foreign policies. Those students, professors and political groups are Democrats to the core. They will vote 100 percent Democratic, those who can hold their noses while voting for Hillary, the nominee, instead of their beloved Bernie.

Rubin, the Post and the Trib might be more credible if they admitted to their own petty biases against Trump.

Sammy McLarty of Waco is a retired veterans benefits claims examiner.
A screengrab of the Qiaobi commercial that went viral last week. (Photo : Weibo)

The Chinese firm responsible for a controversial detergent ad featuring a black man turning into a light-skinned Asian man in a washing machine has apologized after the commercial went viral online.



Shanghai-based Leishang Cosmetics issued a statement on its Weibo account on Saturday night, saying it "had no intention to discriminate against people of color," adding that the company strongly condemned and rejected racism.



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The commercial for Qiaobi laundry detergent shows a black man whistling and winking at a young Chinese woman, who calls him over, puts a detergent into his mouth and cramming him head-first into a washing machine. Moments later, a light-skinned Asian man emerges from the machine, with the women grinning in apparent satisfaction.



The commercial was posted on YouTube, drawing criticism from Western media and commentators who said the video serves as an example of Chinese prejudices.



"We express regret for the controversy caused by the advert's contents, [and we] absolutely will not pass the buck," Leishang Cosmetics said in its statement. "We've terminated the placement of the controversial advert and deleted some online video links. [We] hope that Internet users who are exaggerating the issue and the media will no longer disseminate them."



The statement added: "Due to the spread of the advert and overdrawn public opinion, harm has been done to people of African descent. We apologize and sincerely hope that the large number of Internet users and the media do not read too much into the content."



The apology appears to be a change of heart for the company, whose spokesman told the state-owned Global Times newspaper earlier this weekend that the "foreign media might be too sensitive about the ad."



Several members of the public said the company was wrong to claim the criticism as exaggerated.



"According to what standards have you come to the conclusion that public opinion had been 'overdrawn'? What do you even mean by 'overdrawn'?" the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post cited a Chinese netizen as saying.



Other Internet users have also accused Leishang Cosmetics of plagiarism, saving the advert is similar to another commercial aired in Italy years ago. It showed a skinny white man turning into a fit black man, with the slogan "colored is better," according to the Post.



"It is not only racist, but also completely plagiarized," said one commenter. "It has really made our countrymen lose face."


Jobseekers troop to a job fair held in Tianjin University. (Photo : Reuters)

A record high of 7.65 million students in China are set to graduate from college this year, dubbed as "the toughest graduation season," as they are expected to contend with lower starting salaries and a more competitive job market.



The Global Times reported on Thursday, May 26, that college graduates have the average starting salary of only 4,765 yuan ($726.2) this year, a drop from 4,793 yuan in 2015, according to career platform zhaopin.com.



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Some migrant workers, who sometimes earn 8,000 yuan a month working in a construction site, received even higher than the starting salary of new graduates.



Data from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MOHRSS) show that compared to last year, the number of graduates has increased by 160,000 this year.



Although the employment rates of graduates are usually posted by Chinese colleges, media have criticized the data, which they said have been manipulated to improve the image of college administrations.



The employment of college graduates is therefore a cause for concern since low employment rate may lead to potential social problems in the future, the report said.



During Premier Li Keqiang's visit to the MOHRSS on May 6, he urged that greater support must be given to college graduates and migrant workers to prevent widespread unemployment.



This came at a time when China is restructuring its economy and some industries such as steel and coal are reducing capacity as part of the supply-side reform, which resulted in the layoff or relocation of about 1.8 million workers.



"Graduates are facing greater pressure finding jobs this year," Peng Jianfeng, a professor at the School of Labor and Human Resources of the Renmin University of China, said. "A greater number of students are graduating, but the economic downturn has stunted the number of jobs available."



In the first quarter, online job offers grew only 4 percent, lower than the 19-percent growth in the same period last year, according to zhaopin.com data.



But instead of taking up higher degrees, more graduates chose to work, with 75.6 percent of them opting to find jobs this year, higher than 71.2 percent last year, the same data showed.



The zhaopin survey also revealed that despite the government call for entrepreneurship, only a few graduates are willing to start their own business, with only 3.1 percent, lower than 6.3 percent last year.



In the past years, China's working-age population, those aged 16 to 59, has been on the decline, dropping from 4.87 million to 911 million in 2015, compared with a decline of 3.7 million in 2014, the government data showed. However, it did not mean that college graduates will find jobs easier.



Peng advised college graduates to adapt and change their job expectations.



"A good job does not necessarily mean one in state-owned firms or government, or a white-collar one," Peng said. "Starting an online business or becoming a freelancer could also be a good option after graduation."



Experts, however, said that the overall job market is performing well despite a decline in the manufacturing sector. Su Hainan, an expert at China Association for Labor Studies, told the Global Times that the services sector will stabilize the labor market this year.



The Chinese government said in March that it is aiming to create 10 million urban jobs in 2016 and keep the unemployment rate below 4.5 percent.



Su said that for three consecutive years, there has been more than 13 million new urban jobs and the economic growth is sufficient to generate that many jobs.


For people living in Tacheng, singing and dancing to the music of the accordion is an indispensable part of life.



The accordion is akin to a symbol of the city, and out of every 10 people there will be two or three who can play the accordion.



The Tacheng Accordion Museum, which opened in December, is the only accordion museum in Xinjiang and the only one of its kind in the country. So far, the collection includes 330 accordions from 10 countries, such as China, Russia, Germany, Italy and Ukraine, and the oldest is 103 years old.



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The museum was set up by Dawran Dosanhan with the support of local government. He started to set up the museum in 2014 after spending six years collecting accordions from around the world.



The 45-year-old Kazak is an accordion enthusiast who fell in love with the instrument when he was 9 years old.



He was taking part in a wedding at a neighbor's home, and a guest began to play the accordion. Suddenly he was attracted by the beautiful music and couldn't help touching the instrument during the break. Excitement filled him and he wanted to have his own accordion.



While Dosanhan's family was not very rich, two years later his father bought him an accordion after squeezing the money out from from daily expenses.



At first, he taught himself by listening to music from the loudspeaker at school and from TV, and then he was admitted by a music class at Tacheng Normal School and began a systematic study of the accordion.



The six years' experience of collecting accordions is not a smooth way and one thing impresses him the most occurred in Kazakhstan.



In 2014, when he was collecting accordions in Kazakhstan, he met a 92-year-old Russian who had 22 accordions made in Germany during the Second World War. He wanted to purchase these accordions but the old man refused. When Dosanhan explained to him that he wanted to open a museum in China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region to showcase accordions from each period in history, to help people learn more about the instruments, the man happily agreed.



As Dosanhan removed these accordions, the man couldn't help shedding tears while touching the instruments affectionately, as if he was saying goodbye to his children.



This deeply touched Dosanhan, and every time he stands in the exhibition hall of the museum, he can't help recalling these memories and feels a responsibility to share and spread accordion culture.



Credit: China Daily


In the ad for the Chinese detergent company, Qiaobi, a woman places a black man inside the washing machine that later emerged as a light-skinned Asian man. (Photo : YouTube/ Qiaobi)

A black man that turned out to be a fair-looking Asian man in a detergent ad has drew racist criticisms from the international media. The Chinese detergent company has apologized, but claimed that the foreign media is too sensitive for fueling the controversy.



In the ad made for Qiaobi laundry detergent, a black man was forcefully placed inside the washing machine and later came out as a light-skinned Asian man. The ad posted on YouTube has been viewed more than 17,000 times since it was published.



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The Chinese detergent company has issued a public apology since the internet users and media outlets circulated reports of accusing the former of ethnic discrimination. The report was passed by American media and now has drawn attention among the United States, the United Kingdom and other parts of the world.



"We have no intentions to discriminate against people of color... Ethnic discrimination is something we strongly reject and condemn," the Chinese detergent company wrote on its official blog.



"We express regret over the controversy the ad has created and do not intend to shirk responsibility," the company continued. "We have already stopped the ad's circulation and have canceled several online streaming links. We hope that internet users and the media will cease sharing the video."



The Chinese detergent company has not stopped the ads online streaming, in fact it can still be accessed on YouTube. In the same letter of apology, the company said that they were sincerely sorry for hurting people of African descent.



They also requested the internet users and the media not to overanalyze the situation. The Chinese detergent company blamed the foreign media for playing a part of the outrage because their reports reportedly generated public interest.



A huge proportion of Africans are living in China and most of them can be found in Southern Guangdong province. Most of them face discrimination from the locals due to the stigma against dark skin.



Apart from labeling the ad as blatantly racist, it appeared to be copied from an Italian commercial released a few years ago, according to Quartz. The ad drew more ire in the social media with people requesting the ad to be taken down because it had no originality.



It was not the first time for China to face international scrutiny from the media. In December, the promotional poster for "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" stirred controversy after the character portrayed by John Boyega,who is black was marginalized.



Check out the ad made for the Chinese detergent company that drew racial criticisms from the foreign media:






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The Descartes Systems Group Inc. provides cloud-based logistics and supply chain management business process solutions that focuses on enhancing the productivity, performance, and security of logistics-intensive businesses worldwide. Its Logistics Technology platform offers a range of modular, cloud-based, and interoperable web and wireless logistics management applications, which unites a community of logistics-focused parties, allowing them to transact business. The company provides a suite of solutions that include routing, mobile and telematics; transportation management and e-commerce enablement; customs and regulatory compliance; trade data; global logistics network services; and broker and forwarder enterprise systems. It offers its customers to use its modular, software-as-a-service, and data solutions to route, schedule, track, and measure delivery resources; plan, allocate, and execute shipments; rate, audit, and pay transportation invoices; access and analyze global trade data; research and perform trade tariff and duty calculations; file customs and security documents for imports and exports; and various other logistics processes. The company also provides cloud-based ecommerce warehouse management solutions; consulting, implementation, and training services; and maintenance and support services. It primarily focuses on serving transportation providers, logistics service providers, and distribution-intensive companies, as well as manufacturers, retailers, distributors, and mobile business service providers. The company was incorporated in 1981 and is headquartered in Waterloo, Canada.
Apple iPhone (Photo : Twitter )

Apple is facing a lawsuit filed by California Institute of Technology (Caltech) based on its claim that the tech giant violated multiple WiFi patents. The private university is also suing chipmaker Broadcom. Caltech argues that most Apple devices since the iPhone 5 series, including iPhones, iPads, Macs and Apple Watches use Broadcom chips with Caltech decoding/decoding technology.



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Caltech filed the suit on May 26, Thursday over four patents that were issued between 2006 and 2012.



The technology in the Apple smartphones, tablets, laptops, and smartwatches boosts data flow. Caltech is seeking damages and a hardware ban.



The wireless technology is important for the 802.11n and 802.11ac Wi-Fi standards, which are the latest ones, according to Engadget. They are important for Apple and Broadcom.



Broadcom is the main target of the lawsuit because it manufactures the chips used in the various devices. However, the educational institute argues that Apple is involved because it makes up about 14 percent of the chipmaker's revenue.



Caltech does not have a history of being a "patent troll." Therefore, it is likely the company has a valid case and is not just making moot claims in order to earn a quick profit.



This is not the first time that Apple has had legal trouble that involved university patents. Last year a jury decided that Apple should be required to pay $324 million in damages to the University of Wisconsin-Madison over a patent for boosting processor performance.



In related news, Huawei filed a lawsuit against Samsung on May 25, Wednesday, according to Reuters. The Chinese company claimed in its intellectual property (IP) case that Samsung violated smartphone patents.



Huawei has filed suits in the United States and China. It argues that Samsung illegally used fourth-generation (4G) cellular technology, operating systems, and user interface (UI) software in its phones.



Ding Jianxing is president of Huawei's Intellectual Property Rights Department. He said in a statement Huawei hopes Samsung will stop using its patents without the required licenses.



Meanwhile, Samsung told Reuters it will take the right actions to defend its business interests.



In the past, Chinese smartphone makers have often been accused of patent infringement. Last year Xiaomi had to stop handset sales in India after a complaint from Ericsson.



Here's a video on UW's lawsuit against Apple:






SFL Corporation Ltd., a maritime and offshore asset owning and chartering company, engages in the ownership, operation, and chartering out of vessels and offshore related assets on medium and long-term charters. The company is also involved in the charter, purchase, and sale of assets. In addition, it operates in various sectors of the maritime, and shipping and offshore industries, including oil, chemical, oil product, container, and car transportation, as well as dry bulk shipments and drilling rigs. As of December 31, 2021, the company owned six crude oil tankers, 15 dry bulk carriers, 35 container vessels, two car carriers, one jack-up drilling rig, one ultra-deepwater drilling unit, two chemical tankers, and four oil product tankers. It primarily operates in Bermuda, Cyprus, Liberia, Norway, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the Marshall Islands. The company was formerly known as Ship Finance International Limited and changed its name to SFL Corporation Ltd. in September 2019. SFL Corporation Ltd. was incorporated in 2003 and is based in Hamilton, Bermuda.
Collingwood's chances of reviving their season have taken a major hit, with key players set to miss the several weeks due to injury.

Young gun Darcy Moore, in-form forward Alex Fasolo and tough onballer Taylor Adams all look likely to miss at least a month after being injured in Sunday's loss to the Western Bulldogs, which left the Magpies with no fit players on the bench for much of the last quarter.

Bad news: Darcy Moore is set for surgery. Credit:Getty Images

Moore had surgery on Monday after scans confirmed he had fractured his collarbone.

He's expected to be out for the medium term, which will likely sideline him for at least a month, after a plate was inserted in his collarbone yesterday.
Perhaps the closest Australia has come is Clive Palmer. Both men are bombastic, rich, populist, self-made gatecrashers of the political system. Neither is an economic conservative, demanding free markets and small government. On the contrary, both are classic populists - market interventionists and big spenders. The main differences? Palmer lacked Trump's racism and misogyny. And Trump was much better known before entering politics. Palmer had big initial success. His party won 5.5 per cent of the vote at its first election, a record debut. He had a big say in the balance of power in the Senate. Yet while Trump enjoys ever-increasing success in his march to the White House, Palmer is political road kill after less than one term. Why does a similar character thrive in the US while his Australian counterpart fails? There are three chief reasons that Australia has not produced a Trump, according to an eminent expert on the two systems, Simon Jackman, Australian born but a citizen of both countries. After 28 years in the US, most of it as a professor at Stanford, he returned to Australia this year to become chief executive of the US Studies Centre and a professor of political science at the University of Sydney.

The first reason: It's easier for an outsider to crash the American system, says Jackman. "US political parties are open to being taken over. The system of primaries in the US was an explicit reaction to too much control in the hands of party insiders." Just as Barack Obama gate-crashed the Democratic Party to take the nomination from Hillary Clinton, so has Trump waged a hostile takeover of the Republicans and defeated establishment darlings like Jeb Bush. Palmer, on the other hand, didn't try to take over the Liberals  he started his own party and had to build from scratch. The second reason is that voting is optional in the US. "In Australia," says Jackman, where voting is mandatory, "the centre is where an election is decided  you are not overly reliant on the base". In other words, an extreme candidate can succeed in the US because he or she can appeal to an American fringe to win a party nomination, before needing to worry about the political centre in a general election. In Australia, mandatory voting means that the general election is all-important. The emphasis on the centre is a heavy ballast that keeps the system on an even keel.

Third, Australia just doesn't have the same degree of damage. "Say what you want about Australia," says Jackman, "but we haven't had the wage stagnation over 30 years for the middle class. "We are just in a different place  Australia didn't have a massive crash in housing prices and a very slow recovery, it didn't suffer as badly from the global financial crisis, public debt is high but it's nowhere near US levels, and there just isn't the widespread disenchantment with national politics and national institutions." He also points out the strong theme of race politics that permeates US politics: "It's the anxiety of the white middle class. It's about the whites' role in the economy and it's also cultural. Whites are going to be in a minority by mid-century and it's an immense source of anxiety." Trump's core support is among white working and middle class people whose education ended at high school. "I love the poorly educated," he once rejoiced. Australia's welfare system works better, Australia's minimum wage is much higher, the level of public goods is far more generous and the tax system is more redistributive.

These elements have combined to contain the blowout in inequality that has become grotesque in the US. In other words, despite its many problems and imperfections, Australia works better for most people. Australians have less to be angry about. It's not as ripe for candidates offering to smash the place up. Does this mean that Australia will never produce an extreme, destructive and polarising leader like Trump? Professor Ian McAllister of ANU says that Australians are not as angry and disenchanted as many Europeans or Americans, but that doesn't mean we're not heading in the same direction. He points out that, in regular ANU polls that allow respondents an open-ended choice of their greatest issues of concern, rather than being limited to choose from a list, a new phenomenon appeared around 2009-10: "We noticed that in the Kevin Rudd-Julia Gillard-Greens years that people started saying 'good governance' was an issue  they'd never said that before. "I thought it would go away, but it hasn't. It's remained, and it's the third most commonly mentioned concern among voters."
A man has been charged over an alleged attack on a cat that had just given birth to a litter of kittens, leaving it paralysed, in the state's Hunter region earlier this month.

It will be alleged a boy saw a man swinging a cat by her tail and hitting her against a trailer on May 6.

Princess the cat was left paralysed after the alleged attack. Credit:Sawyers Gully Animal Rscue

Police said the boy called out to the man before alerting his mother.

The boy and his mother believed the cat, which had just given birth to a litter of kittens, had died. They then found the animal, who suffered a broken spine and legs, had returned to her kittens the next day.
Canberra politicians have been slugging taxpayers thousands of dollars simply for driving across town to their Parliament House offices.

MPs and senators who live within 30 kilometres of Parliament House can claim $86 a day, before tax, for turning up to work at Capital Hill when the Parliament is sitting or to attend committee meetings.

ACT Liberal Senator Zed Seselja has been paid about $10,200 to commute. Credit:Jamila Toderas

But the 221 interstate parliamentarians remain well ahead, able to claim $270 per night to cover their accommodation in the capital.

One Canberra Labor MP and a senator are refusing to claim the allowance, with Fairfax media told ACT Senator Katy Gallagher and Canberra MP Gai Brodtmann do not think it is appropriate to claim money for going to the workplace when it's a short drive from their homes.
Qualcomm demonstrates the Snapdragon Wear 2100, not the Snapdragon Wear 1100, on a smartwatch (Photo : YouTube / ARM)

Qualcomm just announced their new Snapdragon Wear 1100 chips for the next generation of smartwatches and other wearable tech devices that can also be used with Internet of Things products.



The chip designer has recently unveiled their new line of Snapdragon Wear chips at the recent Computex event in Taiwan. Qualcomm said that they will be used not only for smartwatches but other wearable tech as well such as fitness trackers and smart headsets.



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Smartwatches and wearable tech devices are just starting to grow into a much larger market. The Apple Watch did not gain too much traction to spark a revolution and the expensive price of the Samsung Gear S2 can scare off any potential customer who is conscious about their budget.



Qualcomm Senior Director of Smart Wearables Pankaj Kedia told VentureBeat that the Snapdragon Wear 1100 chip is specially designed for those wearables with targeted purpose. In addition, the targeted wearable tech are better at doing one designated task as opposed to smartwatches that only have general prposes.



"IoT is a large space for us. When we think of smart bodies, wearables is part of that space. There's a lot of excitement in this part of the industry," said Kedia.



Qualcomm's new Snapdragon Wear 1100 chip can last up to a whole week even with the LTE on standby. It would also have a Power Save Mode, Engadget has learned.



One common problem among all smartwatches is that the battery drains too fast. This is due to the fact that they only have small batteries that power them up.



The Snapdragon Wear 1100 chip will also feature location tracking with the company's own "iZat" tech which uses hardware-based security, GNSS tracking and cell towers. The device powered by the chip can switch between using 3G or LTE modes too.



Qualcomm said that their chips are already being used in over a hundred wearables. The number could continue to increase as the trend goes on.



The Snapdragon Wear 1100 chip would certainly add in a potential game changer in terms of its power efficiency. Qualcomm is looking to connect their chips with more than smartwatches as IoT products continue to increase.






Tony Abbott's former chief of staff Peta Credlin has rubbished claims her old boss wants his job back, labelling deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce's comments "horse s--t".

The Nationals leader, a political ally of Mr Abbott, on Tuesday said he believed the former PM still harboured leadership ambitions but would realise a comeback wasn't possible.

"He will want to, but he'll realise he can't," Mr Joyce told AAP. "To say that he doesn't have a desire is ridiculous - to say that he can't overcome that desire by the reality that's just not going to happen [is another]."

But Ms Credlin, who worked closely with Mr Abbott for six years in opposition and in government, said that assessment was incorrect and reiterated that the Abbott years were "over".
Online therapy is well on the way to complementing more traditional forms of psychological treatment. Trials of a new e-treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) reveal that it is at least three times more effective than medication.

A group-based treatment for hoarding disorder has also proved effective and is now being converted into an online resource for treating the affliction.

A judge ordered the former primary school teacher be released immediately. Credit:Louise Kennerley

Acclaimed OCD expert Professor Mike Kyrios, the director of the Australian National University Research School of Psychology, unveiled the study findings in a public lecture on Monday.

"Hoarding and OCD are treatable, even though some people seem to think they are not," Professor Kyrios said. "We have been developing online treatments that are very, very effective."
Beirut: Rescue workers have pulled children and other victims from the rubble of two hospitals in the Syrian rebel-held city of Idlib, after the heaviest bombardment since a ceasefire in February.

The attacks began on Monday night and, witnesses said, they appeared to be airstrikes conducted by Syrian government forces or their Russian allies. Rescue workers and anti-government activists said that more than 20 people had been killed, with the toll likely to rise, and dozens more injured.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry said the strikes had killed more than 60 civilians and complained in a statement about what it said were the "indefensible" crimes of the Russian and Syrian governments. It gave no indication how it arrived at the higher toll.
Camp Tariq, Iraq: Elite Iraqi special forces have begun their push into Fallujah, expecting to encounter the stiffest resistance yet in the campaign to free territory from the Islamic State group.

The city 65km west of Baghdad has been under militant control longer than any other part of Iraq, and IS fighters have had more than two years to dig in. Networks of tunnels like those found in other IS-held territory have already been discovered in its northeastern outskirts.

The Iraqi troops, also known as the counterterrorism forces, are leading the assault on Fallujah, slowly moving up from the southern edge in a column of armoured Humvees.

Their advance is expected to be slow because tens of thousands of civilians remain trapped in Fallujah and hidden bombs are believed to have been left throughout the city, according to special forces commanders at the scene. They expect fierce resistance from the jihadis, who have nowhere to run.
The speaker of Egypt's parliament Ali Abdel-Aal has caused a row after accusing independent research centres of trying to disrupt the country's institutions

In a statement on Sunday, the speaker of Egypt's parliament Ali Abdel-Aal dismissed claims that he has a private Facebook account.

"The speaker of Egypt's parliament Ali Abdel-Aal dismisses claims that he has a private Facebook or Twitter account and that what has been published by some media outlets in this respect is completely unfounded," a statement by the parliament's secretariat-general said on Sunday.

The statement added that the "speaker of Egypt's parliament has by no means any relation with what was published on these "fake accounts" and that they are not official in nature and only express the opinion of those who created them."

The statement also urged media outlets to seek accuracy and credibility when it comes to publishing news about Egypt's House of Representatives.

"Those who fail to adhere to accuracy could face legal action and they should be well aware of this," the statement said.

Abdel-Aal, who is currently attending a conference for Mediterranean parliaments in Morocco, also opened a front against what he called "anti-national research centres."

In a plenary session on 22 May, Abdel-Aal accused "some centres" of leading an orderly campaign aimed at disrupting the performance of Egypt's parliament and other state institutions. 

"These centres organise training courses for MPs to teach them how to disrupt Egypt's legislative authority and demolish other state institutions," said Abdel-Al, adding that "they are part of an orderly foreign campaign against Egypt's parliament and they receive assistance from some at home to disrupt the state's constitutional institutions."

Abdel-Aal charged that "some MPs have joined training courses in these research centres without having adequate information about their poisonous intentions."

"I am not trying to raise doubts on the national loyalty of any of the MPs, but I just want to warn them that these centres handle information that pose a big threat to national security and urge MPs to reject the state budget for political interests and is based on incorrect dates," Abdel-Aal said.

Abdel-Aal warned that MPs who take part in these courses would be referred to the ethics committee.

"I do not want to silence criticism of the state budget and the government's monetary policy in parliament, but I warn MPs who might use "incorrect information" about the monetary policy to disrupt the state's institutions," Abdel-Al said.

Abdel-Aal said he has "a complete dossier" about the research centres which organise training courses that target the country's national security.

"The house's secretariat-general will announce the complete list of these centres in due time," said Abdel-Al, explaining that parliament's special training centres will give MPs all the courses necessary to help them review the budget and analyse its items.

Parliament's secretariat-general announced that a large number of MPs attended a two-day training workshop on "the state budget and balance sheet."

"A number of high-profile economists like Osman Mohamed Osman, a former minister of planning, gave lectures to a significant number of MPs on 25 and 26 May on how to make a critical review of the state budget and balance sheet," parliament's secretariat-general said.

Abdel-Aal's attack against "research centres" has caused mixed reactions among MPs.

Taher Abu Zeid, an independent MP and a former minister of sports, said "he agrees with Abdel-Aal that some MPs have joined "well-paid" courses from some research centres and it is highly dangerous that these centres use "incorrect information" and urge MPs to reject the state budget for political reasons."

Abu Zeid cited Abdel-Al as telling him that "some foreign centres have invited a number of MPs to travel abroad and take courses that imperil Egypt's national security and that he would not forgive this."

By contrast, Haitham Al-Hariri, a leftist MP, told a TV channel that "Abdel-Aal's accusations should be completely rejected."

"Before the speaker opens fire on any MPs, he should first announce the names of "the anti-Egypt centres and the names of MPs who received training in these centres," said Hariri.

Al-Hariri said a leftist parliamentary group known by the name of the 25-30 Group has submitted an official request to Abdel-Al, asking him to disclose the names of "the anti-Egypt centres and the MPs who received training in there."

Some MPs, who asked not to be identified, told Ahram Online that "when Abdel-Al was speaking about "research centres" he was meaning Al-Ahram's Centre for Political and Strategic Centres (ACPSS) which organised some training courses for MPs in the Red Sea resort of Ain Al-Sokhna two weeks ago.

MPs also disclosed that Abdel-Aal was up in arms "because one of the professors in these courses was leftist economist Abdel-Khaleq Farouk who accused Egypt's new state budget of being biased against the poor."

In a quick reaction to Abdel-Aal's accusations, Diaa Rashwan, the director of the Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, told reporters this week that ACPSS is one of the world's high-profile independent research centres.

"Training courses are a basic part of ACPSS's activity and we just help new MPs on how to review the budget, but never to disrupt state institutions," Rashwan said.

"I want to make it clear that ACPSS is one of Egypt's state authorities and can never participate in any activity that seeks to disrupt these authorities," Rashwan.

Rashwan admitted that ACPSS invited some European and British professors to give training courses to MPs in the area of monetary policy in the Red Sea resort of Ain Sokhna.

"Some 25 MPs received training in Sokhna, and they were given lectures on how to read the budget and analyse its items in a neutral way," said Rashwan, disclosing that "Abdel-Aal himself received training courses in Al-Ahram Centre before he became the speaker of Egypt's parliament."

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A bus passenger was travelling with bundles of notes concealed in his luggage and on his body. He was bound for Santiago (Chile), and then onwards to Mendoza (Argentina).

Iquique, Tuesday 24 May 2016  Inspectors from the Iquique Regional Customs Directorate intercepted a consignment of counterfeit bank notes with a face value equivalent to several million pesos and intended for entry to the Chilean and Argentine markets. The seizure involved 401,000 US dollars and 37,400 euro, produced using high-quality paper and bearing very similar seals to the genuine articles.

The case was recorded at Quillagua Customs outpost, 212 kilometres south of Iquique, when inspectors X-rayed the luggage of a group of passengers and detected abnormalities in the density of a wheeled suitcase.

When examining its content, inspectors discovered a false bottom containing hundreds of bank notes. In parallel, the owner of this suitcase was hiding more cash inside his jacket as well as on his body, held in place by a pair of tights, making a total of 740 banknotes of 50 euro apiece, 1,480 banknotes of 50 dollars apiece and 3,270 banknotes of 100 dollars apiece.

The paper money was analysed and initially found to be counterfeit, although many of the banknotes displayed great craftsmanship and even comprised seals which are extremely difficult to copy. On this basis, Customs officers immediately informed the public prosecutor in Pozo Almonte and the accused was handed over to the police, along with the banknotes and evidence.

It was then decided by the judge that the defendant should remain in custody during the 60 days of investigation and that experts from the crime laboratory should analyse the banknotes.
In partnership with the World Customs Organization (WCO), ITMO University (St. Petersburg, Russia) organized and hosted the i-Customs Conference, which is an international Youth Conference, on 20-21 May 2016 in St. Petersburg.

The Conference consisted of presentations by students from around the world of their research papers on Customs related subjects. A jury of experts, including the Head of the WCO Research Unit, selected several papers as the best of the conference and recommended them for presentation at the annual WCO PICARD Conference, which will be held in Manila, Philippines 27-29 September 2016.

WCO Secretary General Kunio Mikuriya gave a video introductory address in which he congratulated the students for their diligent work and expressed the sentiment that they are the future of the Customs world.
The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) and Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) came together for a joint WCO Valuation Train-the-Trainers event held at the WCO Regional Training Centre in Gwagwalada, Abuja, Nigeria from 23 to 27 May.

Both Nigeria and Ghana have terminated contracts with private sector inspection contracts and their Customs services have taken on responsibility for the core functions of valuation and classification. In relation to this, the WCO has provided assistance to both countries in recent years and this event was arranged in response to similar requests from both Ghana and Nigeria for assistance in strengthening their national valuation trainer pools.

The workshop, which was kindly funded by the Korea Customs Service fund, consisted of sessions on key technical valuation questions, practical aspects of valuation control and trainer skills. A lead facilitator from the WCO Secretariat was assisted by two co-facilitators; one each from NCS and GRA. The 12 participants (six each from NCS and GRA) were given opportunities to deliver presentations to the group in order to gain experience and practice new skills.

Background : In June 2013, the WCO, together with the Customs administrations of the WCA Region, produced the Niamey Declaration. The Declaration calls upon Governments, Customs administrations and the WCO to act upon a series of recommendations designed to provide a smooth transition of core Customs functions from the inspection companies to the Customs administrations. The WCO is providing support to a number of countries in the West and Central Africa Region which are undergoing this transition.
Austrian police commandos have arrested a suspected neo-Nazi who allegedly threatened to massacre asylum-seekers, recovering several weapons and ammunition at his home, police said Sunday.

The 20-year-old "repeatedly told friends that he wanted to 'shoot dead all asylum-seekers with his shotgun' at a refugee centre", police in Upper Austria state said in a statement.

The man also used neo-Nazi language and sent a friend two text messages that included "National Socialist ideology," police said.

In a raid on his home in the Linz-Land district on Thursday, police also found wartime Nazi memorabilia. Elite "Cobra" commandos arrested him near his home in the early hours on Friday.

Austria last year received some 90,000 asylum requests, the second highest per capita in the European Union, and saw around 10 times that number pass through towards Germany and Scandinavia.

The influx has boosted the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe) -- which says it rejects all violence -- but Austria has largely been spared the attacks against refugees seen in neighbouring Germany.

Last Sunday a man with neo-Nazi links opened fire with a Kalashnikov assault rifle at a concert in Vorarlberg state in western Austria, killing two people and injuring 12 before shooting himself.

Police said the man, who until 2013 was active in the local skinhead scene, had several assault convictions and was banned from owning weapons, had had an argument with his girlfriend shortly beforehand.

On Friday evening some 1,500 motorbikes -- the concert was organised by local biker gang "The Lords" -- drove in a huge convoy past the venue in memory of those killed and against violence.

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A number of houses belonging to Christians were set on fire and a woman was dragged in the streets naked in a sectarian attack in a Minya governorate village last week

Egyptian president Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi on Monday told a Christian victim of recent sectarian attacks in Minya governorate "not to be angered" by what happened to her, adding that those responsible would be held accountable for their actions.

For the first time since the attack last week, El-Sisi spoke publicly about the incident in which several houses belonging to Christians were burned and a woman dragged naked in public.

"When I address my speech to this woman, I dont say this [Christian] Egyptian because we are all one," El-Sisi said during a speech to inaugurate a new housing development in Cairo. "I call on this woman not to be angered by what happened," the president added.

"We are all Egyptians who are equal in rights and duties. It is not appropriate that what happened be repeated. Whoever commits an offense will be held accountable," El-Sisi said.

A group of 300 people carrying various types of weapons attacked on 20 May seven houses owned by Christians, burgling some of them and torching others.

The sectarian attack in the village of El-Karm followed a rumour that a Muslim woman and a Christian man were involved in an affair, according to a statement from the Coptic Church on the day of the attack.

The statement also added that the woman attacked and stripped naked was the mother of the man accused of having the affair.

The incident was first reported on social media and by activists several days ago.

The Christian man who was the subject of the rumours has been forced to leave the village after receiving threats.

During the inauguration ceremony on Monday, El-Sisi, along with a number of officials including Prime Minister Sherif Ismail, handed over 1200 residential units -- marking the first two phases of the project -- to families who previously lived in informal settlements.

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By West Kentucky Star Staff May. 30, 2016 | 09:38 PM | MCCRACKEN COUNTY, KY

A 14-year-old boy was injured Monday when his motorcycle was struck by a vehicle in McCracken County.

According to the McCracken County Sheriff's Office, the accident happened around 5:15 pm in the 7000 block of Metropolis Lake Road. Thirty-eight-year-old Adam Davis, of Benton, told deputies he saw two children standing near the road in a driveway to his right and began to slow his vehicle before passing.

Just prior to passing the children, Davis said he saw a small motorcycle exiting the woods to his left and enter the roadway. Davis attempted to avoid striking the motorcycle, but could not.

The motorcycle was being operated by 14-year-old Andrew Oswald, of West Paducah. Deputies said Oswald had been on a dirt trail just off the roadway and attempted to cross Metropolis Lake Road, when he pulled into the path of Davis' vehicle.

Oswald was ejected from the motorcycle. Police said he was not wearing a helmet at the time of the collision. Oswald was taken to Baptist Health Paducah for treatment of his injuries.
McCracken County the first to lift burn ban
By The Associated Press

By The Associated Press May. 31, 2016 | 04:13 AM | LOUISVILLE, KY

A Western Kentucky University student home for summer break has been struck at random by gunfire that broke out after a party near the University of Louisville campus.

News outlets report 19-year-old Eriaun Warrick was upgraded to serious condition from critical condition early Monday.

Warrick was shot in the mouth early Sunday, with the bullet becoming lodged in her upper back.

Warrick's friend Sasha Snardon tells the Courier-Journal that she was leaving the party with Warrick when they came across a large group of people outside, some of whom then began fighting.

Warrick's friends say they heard at least 20 to 30 shots fired.

Louisville police have not released any information about what may have prompted the shooting. As of Monday, no arrests had been made.
Three board members of Egypt's press syndicate were released on Monday after their EGP 10,000 bail was paid anonymously against their will, as the prosecution decided that they will stand trial on Saturday.

Syndicate head Yehia Kalash, its Secretary-General Gamal Abdel-Reheem and undersecretary Khaled El-Balshy refused to pay bail as the law does not require that bail be paid on one of the charges; spreading false news.

They also refused to pay bail after the prosecution rejected a request by Kalash to task a judge with looking into the case, a statement by the Journalists Syndicate read.

The syndicate issued a statement following an urgent meeting held late Monday denouncing the anonymous payment of the bail, saying a call for an urgent general assembly will be considered.

Kalash, Abdel-Reheem and El-Balshy were questioned late Sunday in Cairo's Kasr El-Nil Police Station where they spent the night after refusing the pay the bail.

The trio are facing charges of spreading false news by publishing that over 40 policemen stormed the syndicate early this month to arrest two journalists, an incident that has left the Journalists Syndicate and the interior ministry at loggerheads.

The prosecution is also charging them with sheltering fugitives; journalists Mahmoud El-Sakka and Amr Badr.

El-Sakka and Badr were arrested on 1 May in an unprecedented move where police stormed the syndicate headquarters in Cairo, syndicate board member Karem Mahmoud told Ahram Online.

The prosecution, according to Mahmoud, said only a handful of policemen entered the syndicate's headquarters in downtown Cairo. Both El-Sakka and Badr were also wanted for spreading false news.

The two journalists, who run the progressive 25 January news portal, were among many ordered arrested ahead of the 25 April protests against the Egyptian-Saudi Red Sea island maritime border agreement in April.

Correction: Ahram Online had reported that the prosecution ordered Kalash's detention. The prosecution had ordered Kalash to pay bail, which he refused, and he is being held at Kasr El-Nil Police Station until the prosecution decides further on the matter.

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The head of Egypt's Press Syndicate and two board members were referred on Monday to court on charges of harbouring fugitives and spreading false news

Egypt's Journalists Syndicate cannot be broken and whoever bets on this will lose in the end, the chairman of the syndicate Yehia Kalash said on Monday, following a decision by prosecution to refer him and two other board members to court.

Kalash, Gamal Abdel-Reheem, the syndicate's secretary-general and Khaled El-Balshy, the syndicate's undersecretary, were released late on Monday night after their EGP 10,000 bail was paid anonymously against their will.

The prosecution has charged the three with harbouring fugitives and spreading false news on police arrest of two wanted journalists.

Their trial is set to begin Saturday.

The three board members refused to pay the bail in protest against the entire investigation.

"We declined to pay the bail, not because we are seeking pride, but for the sake of defending the rights of and protecting all journalists," Kalash said following his release.

Egyptian law allows third parties to post bail for defendants, though they have to sign release documents themselves.

"I don't know until now who paid the bill but we didn't sign any release papers," Kalash said.

The three board members are accused of illegally harbouring journalists Mahmoud El-Sakka and Amr Badr, who were wanted on criminal charges, in the syndicate's headquarters in downtown Cairo.

El Sakka and Badr, who run the progressive 25 January news portal, took refuge in late April in the union's headquarters for one day, seeking legal help from the syndicate's board to fight charges of spreading false news related to the controversial Egyptian-Saudi Red Sea island maritime border agreement.

On 1 May, in an unprecedented move, security forces stormed the syndicate headquarters in Cairo.

The syndicate says that over 40 policemen stormed the building to arrest both El Sakka and Badr, an incident that has left the Journalists Syndicate and the interior ministry at loggerheads for weeks.

Kalash insisted that the syndicate was assaulted and that the "assailants dont want to confess to what they did."

"We will continue defending the rights of the journalists," Kalash said.

"We are not in a fight with any institution because we are fighting terrorism and sectarianism. We have martyrs everyday."

"It's hard to break us because we stand for an honourable cause," Kalash added.

Meanwhile, the Journalists Syndicate issued a statement late on Monday denouncing the anonymous payment of the bail, and said it is studying a call for an emergency general assembly to defend its rights.

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Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 31/05/2016 (2338 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MONTREAL  The Trudeau government is sending strange signals to foreign investors by taking so long to decide on whether to help aerospace giant Bombardier Inc., former Quebec premier Jean Charest said Tuesday.

Bombardier (TSX:BBD.B) asked for financial assistance from the federal government last December, prompting Charest to say he doesnt understand why Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet seem to be hesitating.

He said every national government in the world supports its aeronautical industry  thats the norm, not the exception.

Secondly, its a very important signal to give, Charest told The Canadian Press.

Because if the national government doesnt support its industry, then outside the country, investors ask themselves, whats wrong? whats the issue.'

Charest, who joined law firm McCarthy Tetrault not long after leaving politics in 2012, said Bombardier would have received a response quickly if the company were based in a country like France that strongly supports its aerospace industry.

Time is becoming a factor and I think its time the federal government, on this specific issue, makes a decision and that it be part of what needs to be done to support Bombardier, he said.

The Quebec government has already pledged more than $1 billion to help Bombardiers struggling CSeries project. The company is reportedly seeking a similar sum from Ottawa.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 31/05/2016 (2338 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CALGARY  In the high stakes world of high-tech oilfield services, low oil and gas prices are hitting Calgarys two largest publicly traded players, Pason Systems (TSX:PSI) and Computer Modelling Group (TSX:CMG), in vastly different ways.

Pason, which builds and rents sensitive instrumentation systems attached to most of the drilling rigs in North America, has eliminated 350 employees  or about 38 per cent of its staff  over the past 12 months to cope with severe cutbacks in drilling activity.

In contrast, Computer Modelling, a reservoir simulation software manufacturer, added three staff over the past year to take its Calgary total to 172. Its worldwide workforce climbed by seven employees to 212.

In this Friday, April 12, 2013 file photo, drilling rigs dot the landscape near Calumet, Okla.In the high stakes world of high-technology oilfield services, low oil and gas prices are hitting Calgary's two largest publicly traded players, Pason Systems (TSX:PSI) and Computer Modelling Group (TSX:CMG), in vastly different ways. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP/Sue Ogrocki, File

The industry is in the deepest crisis in generations, Pason CEO Marcel Kessler said during a recent conference call. Despite the recent recovery in oil prices, we expect conditions to worsen for Pason in the next few quarters.

The companys revenue fell by 54 per cent in the first quarter of 2016 to $46 million. Pason also registered a net loss of $10.8 million compared to a gain of $14.2 million a year earlier.

At CMG, revenue slipped to $19 million from $20.4 million in the quarter ended March 31, and it registered smaller but still positive net income of $3.9 million, down from $7.9 million a year earlier.

CMG CEO Kenneth Dedeluk did not respond to a request for comment but the company indicated in its most recent news release that its actually doing more business because of low commodity prices.

The corporations clients are oil and gas companies and it might, therefore, be assumed that its financial results are significantly impacted by commodity prices, it stated.

The corporation has, in fact, experienced growth in software license revenues during depressed oil price markets which confirms its belief that software licence sales are influenced more by the utility of the software as opposed to the prevailing commodity price.

Mike Mazar, an analyst for BMO Capital Markets who covers both companies, said both are considered top performers in the realm of oilfield services technology.

The difference really is that Pason is directly related to drilling activity, there are no contracts for its services. So, if the rig goes down, Pason stops getting paid that day, he said.

CMG is not like that. They have long-term contracts on about 80 per cent of their revenue so if, to pick a name, Crescent Point (TSX:CPG), decides to stop drilling tomorrow, they still pay Computer Modelling, regardless. Pason is a great company, too, but CMGs revenue model is different.

CMG has become more valuable to oil and gas explorers as commodity prices tumbled over the past two years, Mazar said, because its software allows companies through 3-D animation to visualize the underground resource and plan the best exploitation method before drilling actually starts. Drilling and completing a single oil or natural gas well can cost millions of dollars.

You may actually ramp up your modelling efforts in a low-price environment because theres less room for error, he said. Its the last thing you want to cut back on.

Mazar said Pasons unique technology has allowed it to capture about 75 per cent of industry market share in North America. The company puts it differently, noting its electronic drilling recorders are installed on 99 per cent of all active drilling rigs in Canada and 54 per cent in the United States.

Unfortunately, the active rig count in Canada is 43, down from 98 a year ago, while in the United States its 404, down from 875, according to recently released Baker Hughes figures.

Schlumberger, the Paris-based oilfield services giant, is the only significant global competitor for CMG, Mazar said. CMG licenses its software to more than 500 oil and gas companies, consulting firms and research institutions in 60 countries and has offices in Houston, London, Dubai, Bogota and Kuala Lumpur. It also offers training and consulting services.

Both Pason and CMG have lost investor favour as oil and gas prices have fallen over the past two years.

Pasons shares have tumbled from more than $35 in August 2014 to a current level of about $17, giving it a market worth of $1.4 billion. CMG shares peaked at more than $15 each two years ago and now trade for around $10 each for a market capitalization of $805 million.



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Nineteen human rights organizations denounced Monday the detainment of and charges leveled against the head of the journalists syndicate Yehia Kalash and two union board members, calling the government's actions against the journalists the "worst" and "most dangerous" in the history of press freedom.



The statement, issued late Monday, was realeased shortly after Kalash, Gamal Abdel-Reheem, the syndicate's secretary-general, and Khaled El-Balshy, the syndicate's undersecretary , were released after their EGP 10,000 bail was paid anonymously against their will.



Prosecutors have referred the trio to court on charges of spreading false news and harboring fugitives.

"The charges that the union head, secretary general, and under-secretary are facing do not comply with the 2014 constitution [in regards to] preventive detention or bail; as for charges of sheltering fugitives: this is in fact an absurd charge and is an act of professionalism by the board members," the statement read.

The organisations which signed the statement include Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, the Arab Organization for Penal Reform, Journalists Against Torture Observatory, the Land Center for Human Rights, and the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies.



The statement added that human rights organizations believe that the detention of the three union board members will mark a new level of confrontation between Egyptian authorities and the journalists syndicate.



Charges of spreading false news stem from a 1 May incident in which the interior ministry raided the downtown Cairo press syndicate to arrest two journalists, Mahmoud El-Sakka and Amr Badr, who were staging a sit-in in the union's headquarters in protest of warrants issued for their arrest.



The incident has left the Journalists Syndicate and the interior ministry at odds for weeks.

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A Winnipeg company wants to build a fish-processing plant near St. Laurent that would create more than 100 new jobs and help revive the commercial fishing industry on Lake Manitoba.

Although the proposal by CDF Community Development First has been in the planning and discussion stages for years, it has taken on new life with the recent election of a new provincial government.

The Progressive Conservatives promised during the election campaign that if elected, they would allow commercial fishermen to sell their catch to buyers other than the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corp. (FFMC). Under the current federal single-desk marketing system, the FFMC buys, processes, markets and exports most of the fish caught in the province.

supplied A proposed fish-processing plant in St. Laurent would be a boon to Lake Manitoba fishers, allowing them to sell fish they cant sell now.

CDF chief marketing officer Terry Szydlik said the firm has already sent an information package to Cathy Cox, the provinces new minister of sustainable development. Now its waiting to hear if the Pallister government will seek federal approval for Manitoba to opt out of the single-desk system.

Were just basically waiting for that to happen, Szydlik said, adding the company has a business plan, has financing lined up, has selected a site, and has the support of the Rural Municipality of St. Laurent and the Lake Manitoba Commercial Fishermen Association.

We have everything in place, ready to go. Its just a matter of the act opening because we wont be able to sell any fish without the act opening.

He said Manitoba wouldnt be setting a precedent, since Saskatchewan and northern Ontario have already opted out of the single-desk system. He also noted the CDF plant would buy mainly rough fish, which is the term used to describe less desirable species the FFMC doesnt take  things such as mullet and carp. Fishermen would still continue to sell the more desirable species, such as pickerel (walleye) and perch, to the FFMC.

We want to work with the FFMC as much as possible. If they want to take that other stuff (the more desirable species), well take the rest, he added.

The Department of Sustainable Development said in an email its working with commercial fishers, recreational anglers and others, to develop a strategy to ensure the long-term sustainability of Manitobas commercial fisheries.

As part of this process, staff will engage in a discussion with commercial fishers about how best to market Manitobas fish, it added. The potential for a fish plant can be part of this discussion.

A spokesperson for the RM of St. Laurent could not be reached for comment. However, the fishers association chairman, Allan Gaudry, confirmed it is keen to see the CDF project proceed.

Gaudry said not only would the CDF plant buy the fish that Lake Manitoba fishermen catch in their nets but the FFMC wont take, it would accept them in the round, or whole.

I think it willrevitalize thefishing industry. It has been slowly dying here on Lake Manitoba.It would make a huge comeback Allan Gaudry, chairman, Lake Manitoba Commercial Fishermen Association

That would be so helpful for fishers. They could spend more time fishing, instead of dressing fish, he added.

He estimated having someone to buy the fish that now gets tossed back into the lake would boost the yearly income of Lake Manitoba fishermen by at least 50 per cent, and help attract more people back into the industry. He said there are only about 100 licensed fishermen working on Lake Manitoba, compared with 459 in the early 1990s.

I think it will revitalize the fishing industry. It has been slowly dying here on Lake Manitoba. It would make a huge comeback.

Szydlik said if CDF gets the go-ahead, it would take 18 to 24 months to build the new plant and train the first batch of employees. Production would be ramped up gradually, and within five years of construction getting underway, the plant would have more than 100 employees and would process about 100 million pounds of fish per year, he added.

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Porter Airlines first foray into Winnipeg has been a success but it remains to be seen whether it will add the Manitoba capital to its schedule.

To service the many delegates attending the Liberal convention in town over the weekend as well as some leisure travellers, the Toronto-based airline flew one round trip each between Winnipeg and Toronto, and Winnipeg and Ottawa on Thursday, and two inbound flights from Toronto on Sunday with outbound flights to Toronto and Ottawa.

Our flights were effectively sold out, said Brad Cicero, Porters director of communications and public affairs. Its a good result and were pleased with that. Its what we were hoping for when we set the flights up.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Flight attendant Patricia Marzec waves as the Porter flight bound for Toronto leaves Winnipeg Sunday. The company offered flights out of Winnipeg during the Liberal convention this week but has no immediate plans to add Winnipeg to its regular flight schedule.

Porter operates a fleet of mid-sized planes out of Billy Bishop Airport on Toronto Island.

Cicero said it was also helpful to fly planes into Richardson International for the first time.

In the long term, we hope to be serving Winnipeg but we cant say that will be happening at a specific point at this stage, he said.

Barry Rempel, president and CEO of the Winnipeg Airports Authority, said by all accounts, passengers were pleased with Porters service.

We have been pleased to work with the Porter Airlines team and they have expressed their appreciation for our efforts to see their flights so seamlessly incorporated into our operations, he said.

Porter has a unique positioning in the Canadian aviation market and we remain hopeful that they will see the opportunity Winnipeg presents for them to be a long term player in this market.

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ST. JOHNS, N.L.  There are too many science, technology and risk-assessment gaps to green-light fracking in western Newfoundland, says a panel that studied the contentious oil-extraction process.

In a report released Tuesday, it recommends the province continue its freeze on fracking applications until major questions are answered.

The science, the studies that have been done, have been somewhat limited  certainly limited compared to what wed expect to have done in order to plan this kind of operation, said Ray Gosine, an engineering professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland who led the government-appointed panel.

A couple walk along a boardwalk on their way to Western Brook Pond in Gros Morne, N.L., on August 14, 2007. A panel that studied hydraulic fracturing in western Newfoundland says there are too many unknown risks and data gaps to green-light fracking. The government-appointed panel recommends in a report today that the province continue its freeze on fracking applications until risks and benefits are better understood. Those steps include creating a buffer zone around Gros Morne National Park and assessing potential health and environmental risks. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward

There are a number of gaps and deficiencies that are significant, he said in an interview. These must be addressed before we feel that conditions could reasonably exist that would allow hydraulic fracturing operations to proceed responsibly.

Natural Resources Minister Siobhan Coady said in a statement that the province is studying the findings.

In the meantime, the current policy to not accept applications for hydraulic fracturing will not be changing. Any future decisions regarding the hydraulic fracturing industry will be based on scientific evidence, and most importantly, on a social license from the Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who may be affected.

Its believed Newfoundlands west coast has deep shale formations that hold oil, unlike more shallow coal bed gas deposits in parts of the U.S. and western Canada.

The province has not approved hydraulic fracturing  or fracking  for oil and gas by pumping water, nitrogen, sand and chemical additives at high pressure to split shale rock formations. Its a process supporters say has been safely used for decades.

Critics blame fracking for groundwater contamination, air pollution and increased earthquakes.

Newfoundland and Labrador blocked any related applications in 2013, pending a review, after a proposal to frack for oil near Gros Morne National Park touched off intense public debate.

There are concerns that industrial activity around Gros Morne National Park could threaten its designation as a UNESCO world heritage site or could negatively impact the enclave communities around the park that have developed a tourism industry based largely on Gros Morne, says the panels report.

An appropriate buffer zone around Gros Morne National Park must be established.

Steps that should be taken before fracking is allowed should also include assessing potential health effects, greenhouse gas emissions and a modern seismic study of the Green Point Shale south of Gros Morne, says the report.

On Friday, Canada was once again urged in a draft decision by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee to act on its 2014 call for a buffer zone around the parks famous cliffs, fjords and hiking trails.

Simon Jansen of the Newfoundland and Labrador Fracking Awareness Network said there are better, renewable energy options.

It confirms all the uncertainties that we have been pointing out, he said of the review panel.

So many people have created a living around sustainable tourism. Even if fracking can be done in whatever shape or form, is this a good fit for the existing lifestyle with respect to fisheries and tourism?

The report offers a graduated series of several other recommendations when and if the province lifts its current pause on fracking. They include studying how wastewater would be handled, and the extent of existing rural fire and emergency services.

Risks must be identified, assessed and effectively managed, it says. The public must have confidence that an industry will be managed and regulated in a manner that protects the health of people and the environment, and that advances the interests of the communities most affected by development.

Paul Barnes, Atlantic Canada manager for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, said the report offers a balanced way forward.

It represents a prudent approach to shale development on the west coast here based on responsible, fact-based information.

Barnes believes theres economic potential for fracking  if public confidence is bolstered with those answers.

The Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board says theres no activity off the provinces west coast at this time. There are five exploration licences in western Newfoundland, but none adjacent to Gros Morne.

The panel offered a hypothetical illustrative scenario of hydraulic fracturing for the Green Point Shale, including 480 production wells to be drilled over six years from about 35 onshore well pads near the coast around Port au Port Bay. It concluded truck traffic would soar and that such a project to produce oil for export wouldnt be fiscally attractive for the province below a price of about US$85 a barrel.

Moreover, estimated yearly revenues of $84 million to $136 million would not be a game-changer with respect to the fiscal position of Newfoundland and Labrador, says the report.

Brent crude prices have crashed since 2014, recently trading at just under US$50 a barrel.

New Brunswick announced last week it has no plans to lift its moratorium on hydraulic fracturing. A related commission report last February recommended several conditions  including a single independent regulator  to allow a shale gas industry to grow in the province.

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TORONTO  Border officials say theyve seized a cache of gun parts and police equipment at Torontos Pearson International Airport that was destined for Iraq.

The Canada Border Services Agency says the discovery of the arms stemmed from an incident in February, when officers at the Rainbow Bridge border crossing in Niagara Falls, Ont., identified a man who was the subject of an intelligence lookout.

During an interview with the man, officers discovered an airline waybill indicating an export of auto parts to Iraq.

The CBSA says further investigation revealed documentation and photos that caused officers to suspect gun parts were in fact involved in the export shipment, which was located at the Toronto airports cargo facility.

Officers at the Rainbow Bridge immediately contacted their counterparts at the Toronto airport, who tracked down the shipment at a cargo services warehouse.

A CBSA spokeswoman said the seizure was only announced Tuesday because the agency had to wait for confirmation from Global Affairs that the arms were in violation of United Nations Iraq Regulations.

The interaction at the Rainbow Bridge and then the colleagues at the bridge contacting colleagues at Pearson, that was all very quick, said Antonella Digirolamo. What we do at ports of entry across Canada is we help with the administration of export legislation, but we had to defer to our colleagues at Global Affairs Canada.

The cargo shipment  which has since been turned over to the RCMP  was found to contain numerous handgun and rifle parts, police badges, badge holders and tactical jackets destined for Iraq.

Digirolamo said the man whose interview sparked the seizure was allowed to withdraw his application to enter Canada at the Rainbow Bridge and return to the U.S.
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OTTAWA  The new Liberal government is blowing too much money on pricey office renovations, including hundreds of thousands of dollars spent by the minister of infrastructure, Conservatives charged Tuesday.

Alberta Tory MP Blaine Calkins says the Liberals cant seem to help themselves when it comes to spending.

The show stopper is the minister of infrastructure and communities, who spent $835,000 on renovations and paintings, Calkins said during question period.

Infrastructure Minister Amarjeet Sohi says he essentially had to set up an entirely new department, with space for his staff, a deputy minister and public servants.

Our commitments require a dedicated minister, a dedicated ministry and a dedicated DM in order to deliver on the expectations of Canadians, Sohi responded.

That meant a new office and new staff.

That is where the expenditures have occurred.

Outside the Commons, he said his ministry started out sharing space in another department, then moved to vacant space in another building.

Its a basic office, like any other office that you have for ministers and the staff, he said.

We had to follow Treasury Board guidelines, added Kate Monfette, the ministers director of communications. There are no paintings, however, she added.

Calkins said new ministers have been blowing money on other things, including $20,000 for furniture and TVs for Environment Minister Catherine McKenna and $27 for a towel rack for another minister.

Do the Liberals really think it is okay to spend $1 million on TVs and towel racks? he asked.

Calkins also went after Finance Minister Bill Morneau over the cost of a recent trip.

He travelled to New York with three staff members, all with round-trip tickets costing $4,000 each, Calkins said.

When will the minister realize the money he is burning through is not his own trust fund, and start reining in his reckless spending habits?

Morneau said he wants people to know whats going on in Canada.

I believe it is important to go abroad to talk to investors, people who might invest in our country, to let them know what we are doing here, he said.

Other records tabled in Parliament this week also covered the cost of Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus March trip to Washington.

The Conservatives have decried the size of Trudeaus entourage, which included ministers, his mother and his in-laws.

The documents put the estimated total cost of the March 9-11 government visit to Washington at $257,219.42.

The tally includes 134 separate charges for travel, accommodation and meals from ministers and officials that come to $111,376.13.

The overall figure also includes administrative costs, courier services, gifts and translation services.

The documents say no invoices were processed for meals and incidentals for the prime minister, his wife and close associates at the time of the accounting. In addition, they say accommodations were provided by the host government for Trudeau and his immediate party.

In a note outlining the costs, the government says the Canadian delegation took important steps to revitalize the Canada-U.S. relationship, engaging the Americans on issues including climate change, environment and energy, international security, counter-terrorism, border co-operation and trade.
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OTTAWA  With just one week to go, the federal government acknowledged publicly for the first time Monday that it may not be able to meet the Supreme Courts June 6 deadline for passing a law to govern medically assisted death.

Health Minister Jane Philpott said the government now risks missing next weeks court-imposed deadline  the first time a Liberal cabinet minister has admitted what to many observers now seems patently obvious.

Members of Parliament voted later Monday on an array of amendments to the governments controversial assisted-death bill, known as C-14, though all proposed changes were rejected.

Minister of Health Jane Philpott responds to a question during Question Period in the House of Commons, Monday, May 30, 2016 in Ottawa. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

The bill cleared report stage by a vote of 192 to 129 and its third and final reading in the Commons is expected on Tuesday.

We are at risk of not meeting the June 6 deadline, said Philpott, noting that the bill would establish a clear legislative framework for both patients and their health care providers.

Having said that, it is my hope that we can see this piece of legislation put into effect at the very soonest possible date.

On Monday, Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin said any public consternation over physician-assisted dying ought not be attributed to a lack of awareness about the issue.

The court initiated what was to be a process and Parliament has to play its role in that process, McLachlin said during a question-and-answer session at the University of Calgary. Thats where we are now.

In February 2015, the high court recognized the right of consenting adults enduring intolerable physical or mental suffering to end their lives with a doctors help.

The top court suspended its decision for a year to allow for Parliament and provincial legislatures to respond, if they chose, with a bill consistent with the constitutional parameters it set out.

In January, the court agreed to allow four additional months to the federal government to produce a new law, but with an exemption for anyone who wished to ask a judge to end his or her life earlier.

The result was C-14  a bill that has touched off a deafening chorus of disappointment from a multitude of constitutional experts, medical professionals and human-rights advocates, including the Canadian Bar Association.

According to the legislation, in order to be eligible for a medically assisted death, a person must be someone who is suffering intolerably and for whom a natural death is reasonably foreseeable.

They must also be a consenting adult, at least 18 years old, with a serious and incurable disease, illness or disability, and be in an advanced state of irreversible decline.

Critics have noted that not even Kay Carter  the 89-year-old B.C. woman at the centre of the case that gave rise to the Supreme Court decision  would have qualified for an assisted death under the proposed law.

It has proven unpopular with the opposition benches, too, and that dissatisfaction was evident again during Mondays question period.

Even if this bill is passed  it will be tied up in legal challenges for years to come, said NDP justice critic Murray Rankin.

Costly, exhausting court battles for suffering Canadians who just want to see their legal rights vindicated  why wont this government do the right thing and work with us to get the bill right the first time?

Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould said the government has a responsibility to create a legal framework that allows access to doctor-assisted death while striking a balance between personal autonomy and protecting the vulnerable.

As legislators, we need to answer the 36 million people that live in this country in terms of putting in place a regime, Wilson-Raybould said.

I am confident that this is the best approach for Canada in terms of medical assistance in dying right now and it is the first step.

The Liberals argue their bill must be passed in order to avoid a legal vacuum after June 6, although experts insist that medical regulators in every province have the guidelines necessary to allow doctors to help suffering patients.

The bill has even opened fissures within Liberal ranks.

At the partys convention in Winnipeg this weekend, former prime minister Paul Martin and former interim leader Bob Rae stressed its more important to get the law right than to meet the deadline.

Once the bill clears the Commons, it will then need to be approved by the Senate, where a number of senators have questioned its constitutionality, while others have proposed a number of substantive amendments.

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OTTAWA  Anthony Lake was in a Syrian hospital a few months ago watching surgery being performed on a sniper victim, whose age he could not determine because of the severity of the injuries.

Lake, the executive director of the United Nations Childrens Fund, watched the doctors pluck pieces of the patients jawbone out of his shattered face using what he called old instruments in a setting he described as sort of an operating room.

Lake was shown the anaesthetic that was being used. Its best-before date was several years ago.

Senator Romeo Dallaire speaks about torture in Syria during a news conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

Its an outrage, the head of UNICEF said Tuesday in an exclusive interview with The Canadian Press by telephone from his New York City office.

Badly, in a word, is how Lake described the way things are currently going in Syria.

That sense of outrage echoed on Parliament Hill on Tuesday, when retired Canadian general and former senator Romeo Dallaire said the Rwandan genocide is being repeated right now in Syria and the world isnt doing enough to stop it.

Dallaire was part of a delegation that displayed some of the 55,000 forensic photos that depict atrocities committed against civilians in Syrian prisons by the regime of President Bashar Assad. The photos were smuggled out of Syria and depict torture on men, women and children.

Through pictures, through scenes, we hope to bring to the attention of parliamentarians and Canadians the true suffering of human beings that are caught in the middle of this maelstrom that we are fiddling with, instead of trying to reconcile, Dallaire said Tuesday.

Lake, meanwhile, painted a vivid portrait of what he saw first-hand in Syria on his most recent trip there. Prior to entering the hospital, he visited a school, where he saw marginal progress over his previous visit to it  the children who he had seen studying underground to avoid snipers had moved up a floor.

Still, he was forced to ask himself: Who the hell would shoot children through the window of a school?

Dallaire said the world needs to strike a peace agreement with teeth to end the five-year-old Syrian civil war, which has displaced millions and left hundreds of thousands dead.

He commanded the failed UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda and has since campaigned tirelessly for conflict prevention as a senator and now as a senior fellow of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies.

Dallaire said he has personally witnessed a repeat of the recruitment of child soldiers to the Syria conflict in refugee camps in Jordan, a phenomenon of the 1994 Rwandan genocide that left hundreds of thousands dead.

When a society uses children as cannon fodder for a desperate cause like that, it is a disgrace to humanity and we are part of letting that disgrace perpetuate itself.

Naomi Kikoler, deputy director of Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide in Washington, said the smuggled photos show the degree of human suffering that is currently taking place, in real time, in Syria.

Our hope in doing so is to try to do for the Syrian people what was not done for the Jews during the Second World War, which is to shed a light on their suffering and urge that others take action to prevent and protect these communities from the crimes that are happening.

Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, lauded Canada for taking in Syrian refugees, but called on the government to push for creative solutions to end the torture and air bombardment of civilians.

I truly believe this is the never-again moment of our lifetime.

Moustafa said dozens were killed and many others were injured in another bombing of a hospital earlier this week.

Lake saw evidence of a similar atrocity on his recent trip to Syria. After he left the school and made his way to hospital where he saw the emergency surgery, he surveyed the surrounding area as he stepped out of his car.

He could see no sign of damage around the hospital, although the building itself had been bombed.

So, Lake concluded, it was clear it had been targeted.
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QUEBEC  Milk farmers from all over Quebec began travelling to Ottawa by tractor on Monday in a protest aimed at getting the federal government to enforce existing rules governing supply management in their industry.

Dairy farmers say they are losing tens of thousands of dollars a year because federal inspectors allegedly arent doing their jobs.

The milk farmers are planning to hold a rally on Parliament Hill on Thursday to show their discontent.

Dairy cows are pictured at the Kooyman family dairy farm in Chilliwack, B.C., Tuesday, June, 10, 2014. Milk farmers from all over Quebec are set to head to Ottawa by tractor later today.The producers are demanding supply management in the dairy industry be maintained.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward

Their specific complaint is that a U.S. protein  known as diafiltered milk  is being used in Canadian cheese products.

Canadas supply management system guarantees milk farmers a price and a demand for their products.

The laws also impose a heavy tariff on milk products entering from the United States.

Cheese sold in Canada must include a minimum percentage of actual milk.

Canadian cheese companies, however, are using the diafiltered milk  which passes the border without tariff through a loophole  to fulfil milk quotas in their products.

The milk farmers say Ottawa should be doing a better job inspecting cheese products in Canada to ensure they arent using diafiltered milk illegally.

They also say they were promised financial compensation from Conservative and Liberal governments in exchange for signing Trans-Pacific and European trade agreements but that they have not received anything as of yet.
Egypt's ministry of foreign affairs announced Tuesday that it was opening an investigation into claims that an Egyptian official insulted Sub-Saharan Africans by describing them as "dogs and slaves" during a United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) meeting held in Nairobi last week.

The ministry rejected what it described as attempts to cast doubt on Egypt's commitment to Africa and its defence of African causes.

"Under any circumstances, it is unacceptable to generalise and present weak accusations to the Egyptian state and the Egyptian people doubting their belonging to Africa and the ability of Egypt to present [on behalf of] African interests," an official statement foreign ministry statement read.

The statement added that the ministry "denies completely that such statements came from Egyptian representatives during the African group meeting at UNAE."

Egyptian foreign ministry's statement comes after the head of the African Diplomatic Corps Technical Committee Yvonne Khamati presented a memo on 29 May demanding that Egypt be banned from representing Africa in any official capacity after the head of the Egyptian delegation reportedly referred to Sub-Saharan Africans as "dogs and slaves" during the UNEA meeting.

According to Khamati, the Egyptian official allegedly used the epithet during consultation talks between Egypt, Morocco and other African delegations over a failed resolution to determine the enviromental impact of latest Israeli incursion into the Palestinian Gaza Strip, a resolution which Egypt endorsed.

During the meeting, Khatami told Kenyan Capital FM News on Sunday some members of the Kenyan delegation, who had previously served in Arab speaking countries and understood the language, were able to pick up on the epithet dogs and slaves" reportedly used by the the Egyptian official who was upset with certain African delegations.

Khamati also demanded that Egypt resign as chairman of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN), and that Egypt should no longer be allowed to negotiate on behalf of Africa.

In response to Khamati's demands, the Egyptian foreign ministry asked the Egyptian embassy in Kenya to send a memo to the African Ambassadors' Council in Nairobi expressing Cairo's dismay and accusing Khamati of overstepping her authority.

The Egyptian delegation at the UNEA meeting was headed by Ambassador Hisham Shaeer, the assistant foreign minister for environment affairs and sustainable development.

Environmental minister Khaled Fahmy has denied allegations that he was involved in the incident, stating that he did not travel to Nairobi for the meetings.

Khamati's memo went viral on social media in Egypt on Monday.

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Close to a dozen people gathered around a River Heights dinner table Monday night in a continuing effort to stop the construction of a cell tower in the middle of their neighbourhood.

The group met at Rachel Larkins home on Niagara Street, which is near to the MTS switching station where the service provider wants to build a cell tower.

Earlier this year, 19 River Heights homeowners were notified MTS planned to erect the cell tower on a property in the residential neighbourhood near Grosvenor Avenue and Niagara Street already occupied by a relay station.

SUPPLIED This photo illustration provided by MTS shows the proposed cell tower in a residential area at Niagara Street and Grosvenor Avenue.

From esthetics to devaluing property to health concerns, area residents spoke out Monday about what the tower could do to the neighbourhood.

EMF sensitivity is a real thing, so thats people with memory and sleep disorders, cognitive disorders, Larkins said. People have that with Wi-Fi and thats the emission thats supposed to come off this tower.

Larkins said, according to building plans, MTS plans to construct the tower right outside her kitchen window, but is circulating an artists rendition that makes the tower appear to be on top of the building. She said she didnt want to sit on her deck in summer and stare up at the large industrial-looking structure attached to the building beside her property.

I bought River Heights. I wanted River Heights. I didnt buy what was going to be in my neighbours yard.

Abigail Mickelthwate thinks the group may have found one way MTS is going against the system to build the tower.

The MTS-proposed tower goes against Winnipegs antenna policy recommendations that were actually adopted by the city council on May 27, 2015, Mickelthwate said.

For this location, the city recommends 180 feet. MTS wants to put the cell tower eight to 10 feet from a residential home.

The policy adopted by council last spring states the city prefers new antenna systems be built outside of residential areas, with some exceptions. It also discourages tower construction directly in front of doors, windows, balconies or in front of residential properties.

Chris Rempel, who lives across the street from the MTS switching station, said its not fair that MTS doesnt have to follow bylaws that he and his neighbours have to abide by when they build things on their properties.

We wanted to do an addition or renovation on our house, Rempel said. I had to have permission from each of my adjacent neighbours. If one of those neighbours said, no, I dont think thats going to look good, then the project is off. Its done.

While all the residents at the house meeting were opposed to the current plan for the tower, they all agreed that cell service needs to be improved in River Heights.

We do need better cellphone service out here, Mickelthwate said. We all acknowledge that. However, we would like them to find a commercially zoned property.

The residents plan to voice their concerns at a public meeting MTS is holding Wednesday at 6 p.m. at the Corydon Community Centres River Heights location.

Last Wednesday, River Heights residents expressed their unhappiness with the proposed tower at a town hall held by Liberal MP Jim Carr (Winnipeg South Centre) at the Rady Centre.

Company spokesman Jeremy Sawatzky said in an email last week that MTS is committed to open and transparent communications with our customers. With the usage and popularity of wireless devices continuing to grow, our customers increasingly expect strong indoor and outdoor cellular coverage. That means, from time to time, we need to upgrade our services.

Along with holding the open house, Sawatzky said the company notified all property owners, the local Land Use Authority, the Winnipeg Airports Authority, Industry Canada, local community associations and all local government representatives about this proposal and will continue to consult with them as we move forward.

bailey.hildebrand@freepress.mb.ca
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City hall will postpone ordering 30 new transit buses in hopes there will be federal funds to help with the purchase.

Coun. Janice Lukes, chairwoman of the public works committee, said Ottawa has yet to publish how municipalities can access new funds set aside for transit-related projects, adding she wants to delay the purchase of the new buses until those rules are clear.

Instead of spending $16 million (on the new buses), maybe we can leverage some federal money and spend less, Lukes said following a meeting of the public works committee Tuesday morning. We need to better understand the federal funding program and see if there is a fit  why wouldnt we do that if there is an opportunity to save the city some money?

PHIL HOSSACK / FREE PRESS FILES The committee will reconsider the purchase request for new buses at its June 28 meeting.

Transit officials came to city hall Tuesday, seeking the committees approval to purchase 30, low-floor, 40-foot buses. The price tag is $16 million plus applicable taxes. The order would see the buses delivered sometime in 2017, replacing older vehicles that will be taken off the road.

Transit director Dave Wardrop said delaying the purchase order by 30 days will not alter transit operations.

The committee will reconsider the purchase request at its June 28 meeting.

Its not going to impact operations  its trying to stretch our dollar as far as we can, Lukes said.

Wardrop told the committee that Winnipeg can expect to be eligible for about $80 million in new federal funding set aside for transit initiatives. While details are sketchy, he said, the new money can only be used for capital projects  not operating expenses  and eligible projects must be completed by March 2018.

Wardrop said he wasnt sure if the new funds could be used to offset any of the costs of Phase 2 of the Southwest Transitway corridor and Pembina underpass projects. Ottawa is already contributing $140 million towards the projects $587.3 million budget.

Construction on the transitway is expected to start later this summer. Its scheduled to be completed in late 2019 and go into operation by early 2020.

Wardrop said its possible portions of the transitway project could be eligible for funding but he said municipalities are waiting for details from Ottawa.

Federal infrastructure minister Amarjeet Sohi will be in Winnipeg on Thursday, meeting with Mayor Brian Bowman and leaders from 20 of the countrys largest cities. Municipal leaders are hoping Sohi will release more details on the funding program at that time.

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca
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OTTAWA  Newspapers still have avid readership and most are still profitable, but the federal government can help ensure the longevity of locally produced news with long-overdue updates to the way the country regulates and taxes the industry, Winnipeg Free Press publisher Bob Cox told a House of Commons committee Tuesday.

Cox, speaking as the president of the Canadian Newspapers Association, told MPs on the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage Canadas laws and regulations have not kept pace with changes in the media industry, including the explosion of digital media and competition from online companies such as Facebook, Google, Buzzfeed and Vice.

We have a set of rules for what media looked like in the 1980s, not 2016, he said.

He also said he wanted to dispel some of the myths about the dying newspaper industry, noting four in five Canadians still read a newspaper weekly, and most local papers are still making a profit, albeit a much smaller one than years past. But, he said, falling ad rates and falling ad buys are hurting the industry and he believes Ottawa can do something to help.

That includes choosing to advertise in newspapers itself, as Cox noted the federal government spent $20 million advertising in newspapers two decades ago, but in 2014-15, it spent $357,000. That same year, Ottawa spent $13.9 million advertising on the Internet, most of that money going to foreign companies.

Why is the federal government sending millions to Silicon Valley instead of supporting Canadian media? Cox asked.

Cox also asked for Ottawa to consider no longer allowing Canadian companies to claim as a business expense any money spent on advertising with foreign-owned media companies. Cox noted the money flowing to these companies leaves Canada and doesnt come back.

For the most part, these companies spend nothing to do journalism in our towns and cities or provide support to community groups, he said.

He said this isnt about saving any individual newspaper company and is about a fear we do not end up with media dominated by foreign companies with few Canadian operations, an environment in which perhaps the only media that can continue doing serious public interest journalism is the publicly subsidized CBC.

The CBC is valuable, but in digital areas the government-funded broadcaster competes with private newspaper companies, said Cox.

In Great Britain, the government has insisted the BBC co-operate with, rather than compete, with local papers, said Cox. No such policy discussion has taken place in Canada.

Cox also said Ottawa can provide tax credits for Canadian-owned digital enterprises that provide public-interest journalism, or offering tax relief to media companies so they can reinvest in their companies and pay down debt to remain viable.

He also asked for an update to copyright laws to protect original work. In short, Cox said, once media companies produce a story and post it online, its there for anyone else to use and profit from.

Saint Boniface-Saint vital Liberal MP Dan Vandal, one of two Manitoba MPs sitting on the committee, said Cox was more positive about the news industry than some previous witnesses. Earlier this month, Postmedia CEO Paul Godfrey presented a bleak portrait of the industry, calling it ugly and warning that without government subsidies, it could easily die.

Vandal said the committee is ultimately looking to ensure Canadians have access to local news and while he wouldnt pass judgment on any of Coxs suggestions, he said at least Cox was offering some options.

I like the fact they were proposing solutions and certainly we will consider them, he said.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca
Opinion

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In May, retired Gen. Rick Hillier, former chief of defence staff for the Canadian Armed Forces, wrote an op-ed for the National Post, timed for V Day in Europe. He was contrasting the reverence Canadians have for the veterans of the world wars, and the way Canadians treat veterans of Afghanistan. Canadians honour our fallen soldiers with great respect and fervour. Where we fail, however, is in honouring the soldiers who came home alive but forever changed, he wrote.

The man has a point. Many of us dutifully wear our poppies in November. Some of us even attend a Remembrance Day service. But how do we support our current servicemen and women and their families in a tangible way?

That was, in part, the inspiration for True Patriot Love, a national fundraising organization that supports military members, veterans, and their families. Since it was founded in 2009, the organization has committed $15.1 million to military programs and organizations across Canada which, in turn, deliver support programming in four main areas: mental health and well-being, family health and support, physical health and rehabilitation, and research and innovation.

MIKAELA MacKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES retired Gen. Rick Hillier will be in Winnipeg on Wednesday night to emcee the inaugural True Patriot Love Winnipeg Tribute Dinner.

Hillier will be in Winnipeg on Wednesday night to emcee the inaugural True Patriot Love Winnipeg Tribute Dinner (the bulk of the organizations fundraising has come from the annual True Patriot Love Toronto Tribute Dinner). Hillier tells me that around 900 Winnipeggers are expected for dinner on Wednesday night, and the response has been incredible.

Because thats the thing: its not that Canadians dont want to support families who are dealing with the myriad challenges associated with life in the military. Its that many of them didnt know how. In the United States, theres something like 40,000 charitable or non-profit foundations dedicated to supporting soldiers, sailors, airmen, airwomen and their families. In Britain, theres something like 10,000. In Canada, theres just a handful, Hillier says. Already Canadians were responding to the accounts of valour and sacrifice and service of men and women around the world, and there was a little bit of frustration: people wanted to directly assist and they couldnt do that. True Patriot Love provides a vehicle to do that.

Its not fervent nationalism or anything negative, he adds. Its just Canadians believe in certain things, and one of the things the vast majority believe in is that people in uniform, who serve our nation and do so much and ask so little, deserve our support.

Mental health is one of True Patriot Loves top fundraising priorities. Wednesday nights dinner comes a week after the alarming findings from a University of Manitoba study were posted to the Canadian Medical Association Journal website: members of the Canadian Armed Forces are more likely to contemplate suicide than civilians. The Globe and Mail reported in January that one in 10 Canadian vets who served in Afghanistan were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. The 2014 Canadian Forces Mental Health Survey found that one in three Canadian Armed Forces members were afraid that asking for mental health assistance would negatively impact their careers.

Mental health is one of those issues people keep trying to put in a dark corner, Hillier says. He acknowledges that the stigma remains stubbornly attached, but the culture is moving in the right direction. The fact we even name and talk about PTSD these days is a step forward. He thinks back on his own career and the stresses put on soldiers. It was very much, Hey, if you couldnt carry them, you werent an appropriate soldier and therefore you should get out.'

He recalls a time when divorce was a comment on your efficacy as a soldier. For example, if you couldnt run your family  if your family broke up, back in the day, this was your responsibility. If you couldnt lead your family, then you certainly couldnt lead troops and your career as a leader was effectively finished. And yet, we had no support for our families.

Family support is another main focus of True Patriot Loves fundraising efforts. Its a broad term, family support, that covers everything from family counselling on separation anxiety and education about PTSD to finding a family doctor. Veteran transition is also a fundraising priority, with money going to programs that help vets with everything from job training to re-integration into civilian life.

For Hilliers part, he believes that Canada needs to take a comprehensive look at how it treats its vets. We should do it from a greedy perspective. The generations of tomorrow and the day after will serve in the Armed Forces, which we will need them to do, based on how we treat the veterans of today.

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @JenZoratti
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Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen said Monday he will ask appropropriate authorities to investigate potentially illegal distribution of an alternative cancer treatment that interim NDP leader Flor Marcelino is sharing from her legislature office.

It could mean a formal complaint to Health Canada about Marcelinos distributing, for free, the dried leaves of the guyabano fruit plant.

Health Canada has said there is no scientific evidence that the leaves treat cancer, and they can have harmful side effects. There are also strict controls on importing guyabano and selling or giving it away.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS NDP Interim Leader Flor Marcelino.

Well refer to the appropriate authority to look at it potentially referring this to Health Canada, Goertzen said in an interview. Im not the appropriate authority, but he said hes having officials look into it.

Late Monday afternoon, Marcelino issued a statement by email in which she said she made a mistake having repeated claims about guyabanos potential to help those suffering from cancer, and would not be sharing the dried leaves from the office of the leader of the opposition.

Marcelino said in her statement that she recalls only one time that someone picked up guyabano leaves from her legislature office.

Goertzen said he is uneasy about the health implications of Marcelino giving away guyabano, and also about her using her legislature office to distribute the leaves.

I am concerned with members of the legislature using their offices for any inappropriate purpose, Goertzen said. As legislators, were setting the bar as high as possiible.

Marcelino declined to make herself available to reporters on Monday. NDP communications director Denise MacDonald said Marcelino was busy with preparation for Tuesdays budget, and no one else in the party would comment.

Meanwhile, Health Canada officials said Monday they were aware of a Winnipeg Free Press story published Saturday about Marcelinos promotion of the purported cancer treatment, and would respond within a couple of days.

In an email sent previously to a Free Press reporter, Marcelino said she has shared from her legislative office for the past three years the leaves, which she says have positive benefits for people with cancer. She brings the dried leaves back from the Philippines, and asks others to also bring back the leaves when they visit the Philippines.

Both Health Canada and CancerCare Manitoba told the Free Press last week that not only is there no medical evidence that guyabano  also known as graviola, soursop or annona muricata  is an effective treatment for cancer, there are potentially dangerous side effects in ingesting its leaves.

Ottawa requires approvals and permits to bring guyabano leaves into Canada and to sell or give it away, and has regulations requiring that it be promoted only for authorized uses.

In an earlier email to a Free Press reporter proposing a story on guyabano, Marcelino wrote: I have been sharing guyabano leaves (no charge) to family, friends, acquaintances and even complete strangers after hearing that it has healed several folks I know of cancer, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

I know of two people now who are still around after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Actually there are many cases in the Philippines that I have heard of being cured by the leaves. One whom I know very well had breast cancer, she wrote.

However, NDP staff said Marcelino has been too busy the past two weeks to grant an interview. MacDonald said Marcelino tried unsuccessfully to phone a reporter Friday night when the story was first published online.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca
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Although hes only been minister of finance for four weeks, Cameron Friesen said he will identify several government cost-savings in his first budget on Tuesday afternoon.

We have found savings in some departments. You will be able to see some of those numbers tomorrow, he said following question period in the legislature on Monday.

Friesen allowed that his first financial blueprint will be restricted somewhat by the fact that he is introducing it two full months into the fiscal year. The former Selinger government opted not to produce a budget before the April 19 election, opting instead to release an economic and fiscal outlook in early March.

BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Finance minister Cameron Friesen.

The minister said once the government has been in office for a year, it will be in a better position to put its stamp on the provinces fiscal affairs.

At that time well have had ministers in their portfolios for a longer time. They will have been working with their senior staff and their stakeholders, the MLA for Morden-Winkler said. That will create other opportunities.

Nevertheless, Friesen said that the Pallister government will be able to show real progress in Tuesdays budget.

It will demonstrate where were going. It will line up language with real actions. And were looking forward to giving Manitobans a better sense of where we will go in the short term, medium term and long term, he said.

Friesen would not get into specifics on what tax or program changes may be signalled in the budget. Or when the government might be in a position to balance the books.

I dont want to give everything away right now, he said.

But he said the government would be conservative in its revenue and spending projections, and he suggested it would allow for unforeseen events.

The difference (between the former NDP government and the PCs) is we are actually planning to hit the targets that weve set out, and that means bringing spending back in line with revenue growth. You must tie these things together.

However, asked whether the budget would contain the usual deficit/surplus projections for the coming three or four years, Friesen would only say that the focus of Tuesdays document would be on the current fiscal year.

What were committed to do is to bring real numbers and real projections as soon as we can so that Manitobans will understand where were going, he said. We plan to be open. We plan to be transparent. Tomorrows focus will primarily be on what we can present in (20)16-17.

NDP finance critic James Allum said he believes Tuesdays offering will be a status quo budget.

He expects the Progressive Conservative finance minister to deliver on some of his more marginal tax cut commitments. He said his party will be watching for hidden cuts that could affect front-line services.

Were looking for serious commitments on publicly funded child care. I dont think were going to see that tomorrow, but time will tell, Allum said.

On Monday, Pat Wege, executive director of the Manitoba Child Care Association, said her organization is looking for the budget to include a robust announcement on child care that addresses the critical provincewide shortage of spaces and guarantees stable funding for child care centres.

Meanwhile, the Manitoba Chambers of Commerce urged the finance minister Monday to outline a path to get the provincial finances in order while at the same time focus on growing Manitobas economy.

Friesen is expected to begin delivering his budget speech in the legislature between 2:30 and 3 p.m. The Free Press will immediately have highlights on its website.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca
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Two of Canadas political movers and shakers will visit the Winnipeg Free Press News Cafe this week and you are invited to attend.

Assembly of First Nations national chief Perry Bellegarde will appear at the cafe on Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. while Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi will be there on Thursday at 12:15 p.m.

Bellegarde, who was elected as AFN national chief on Dec. 10, 2014, is in Winnipeg to speak at the Moving Forward Safer Futures  an inclusive dialogue among police, policy makers, and Canadas Aboriginal Peoples conference in Winnipeg hosted on Tuesday and Wednesday by The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.

CANADIAN PRESS FILES Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi.

Nenshi first made national headlines in Calgarys 2010 municipal election when he became the first visible minority mayor of a Canadian municipality with a population of at least 100,000 and the first Muslim mayor of a large North American city.

Re-elected in 2013 with 74 per cent of the vote, Nenshi is in Winnipeg to participate in the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) conference called The Heart of Canada, being held Thursday through Sunday at the RBC Convention Centre in Winnipeg.

Bellegarde is also participating in the four-day FCM conference.

More than 1,500 municipal leaders will be in Winnipeg for the FCM, Canadas largest municipal-federal conference, which will focus on municipalities as nation-builders.
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She is confined to a wheelchair, with no movement from the neck down. She is nearly blind, and her hearing is rapidly disappearing as well. Her biggest fear right now is choking to death while attempting to swallow.

Death is approaching, but on its own agonizing terms. But that all changed Monday when the Manitoba woman who is suffering from progressive multiple sclerosis won the right for a doctor-assisted suicide.

I am struck by her suffering and how intolerable her suffering is to her, said Manitoba Associate Chief Justice Shane Perlmutter.

Ruth Bonneville / Winnipeg Free Press

Lawyers for the woman  identified in court documents as Patient No. 3  appeared in court to apply for the constitutional exemption required following a 2015 Supreme Court decision. It is the third such case in as many months to be heard in Winnipeg.

A court-ordered ban prevents personal details, including her name, age and the community she lives in, from being published.

Her condition is critical. It is also permanent and irreversible, said lawyer Allison Fenske in explaining how the functionally quadriplegic woman met the criteria set out by the countrys highest court for a procedure that is otherwise still illegal. That is expected to soon change as new legislation is coming from the federal Liberal government.

She doesnt want to lose the complete ability to see, hear or speak. Her condition is in a state of progressive decline. Shes turning to the courts because she cant afford to wait for Parliament. She says she is tired of suffering and has had enough, said Fenske.

The woman has been debating the issue for a couple years and had even contemplated going overseas to Switzerland to have it done, as other Canadians have in the past, court was told. Her husband has also been consulted and agrees his wife is of sound mind to make a personal decision, free from any pressure or outside influences. She wrote in an affidavit that she is completely at peace with her decision.

There was no opposition to the womans application. Perlmutter has now signed the paperwork which gives her the right to choose a physician-assisted death. No timeline has been set for the procedure.

Last month, a Manitoba woman suffering from Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) made a similar application. Court heard the woman began stumbling and falling in 2012 and was diagnosed with ALS in the fall of 2013. She initially required the use of a cane, but is now wheelchair-bound and has limited movement of her extremities. She can only eat pureed food, has had several choking episodes and fears losing the ability to speak.

Queens Bench Justice Shawn Greenberg approved the bid following a brief recess.

The applicants words convey palpable suffering, Greenberg said. She has gone from a strong, independent woman to someone who requires her daily needs attended to by others.

In March, an unidentified patient suffering from two 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.

Several days later, lawyers confirmed the patient had died peacefully.

These applications come on the heels of the Supreme Court ruling in 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 law on physician-assisted death but, until that happens, Canadians can apply to the courts for a legal exemption.

Draft legislation for Bill C-14 was introduced in April but has not yet passed.

www.mikeoncrime.com
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Premier Brian Pallister has publicly disclosed in the legislature his shares in two Costa Rican companies.

A statement from spokeswoman Olivia Baldwin-Valainis called Pallisters disclosure part of a move toward more openness and transparency in government.

The premier has set an improved tone from the top, by making a level of voluntary disclosure that goes beyond current reporting requirements, she said.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Premier Brian Pallister disclosed his interests in two Costa Rican companies Monday.

Pallister said in his disclosure he released the information in the name of openness and transparency, but the Opposition NDP is labelling the move the actions of someone who got caught.

It proves that it is the opposite of openness and transparency  to come up with something after the fact, after you been caught. To now suggest that you are doing this voluntarily and somehow meeting your obligations  it just doesnt sound right, said Andrew Swan, the NDPs justice critic.

Every MLA had until 5 p.m. Monday to disclose their assets and interests in conflict-of-interest forms submitted to the legislature.

With only 30 minutes left to spare, Pallisters team submitted his statement  with an extra page tacked on the back labelled Additional Voluntary Disclosure.

The following are not subject to declaration and disclosure as per advice received from the Conflict of Interest Commissioner, it stated. However for purposes of greater openness and transparency, I confirm the following additional assets.

On that page, Pallister disclosed his shares in two companies, Finca Deneter Doca SA and a numbered company  both of which the Costa Rica Star reported in April that Pallister used to purchase property and vehicles in Costa Rica, which is a common practice of foreign nationals. The rest of the form included previously disclosed properties he owns in Manitoba, along with corporate shares in Pallister Insurance Agency and Pallister Investments 22 Ltd.

Pallisters shares in the companies revealed by the Costa Rica Star drew criticism from Swan during question period earlier this month. Swan questioned why Pallisters previous disclosures had never listed those shares.

The Conflict of Interest Act is pretty clear, it says that at the start of every legislative session, every MLA must submit a declaration including shares of any corporation, any corporation in the world, Swan said.

He came in on the last day it was due and in the last minute it was due and now wants to say it was voluntarily disclosing shares, that he previously had chose not disclose at all.

According to the Conflict of Interest Act, within 15 days of becoming an MLA, members must submit a statement disclosing assets and interests. This includes the name of every corporation, and every subsidiary of every corporation in which the member holds a beneficial interest in five per cent or more or holds a share warrant or purchase option in respect of five per cent or more.

Swan said it is now up to Manitobans to decide if they believe Pallister is in compliance with the act. He said any Manitoban  himself included  can file a court application to a Court of Queens Bench judge, saying that Pallister has failed to follow the act. If the judge agrees, the penalty could be a fine, suspension or even being forced to vacate a seat, according to Swan.

It (the disclosure) is not in compliance with the laws of Manitoba, Swan said of the voluntary disclosure. He had a obligation to do something and he didnt do it and this may be the best face he is now trying to put on.

kristin.annable@freepress.mb.ca
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Indigenous women will continue to go missing and become homicide victims if governments dont address the root causes for why they become vulnerable, a police chief told a Winnipeg conference Tuesday.

Saskatoon Police Chief Clive Weighill, president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, said if problems like poverty and homelessness are not solved, indigenous women will continue to end up in vulnerable situations.

We have to get to the root causes, Weighill said at the beginning of a two-day conference hosted by the CACP. It is being held at the Fairmont Hotel.

SEAN KILPATRICK / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES Clive Weighill of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.

If we dont, we will continue to have missing and murdered women and we will be always investigating.

Weighill compared what should be the federal governments inquiry goals into 1,200 missing and murdered indigenous women to what it would be looking for if there had been that many plane crashes.

The government of Canada would figure out whats causing all these planes to crash, he said.

Theyd be checking, are they getting proper funding? They would look at what the heck is really causing this issue.

The two-day closed door conference in Winnipeg is entitled Moving Forward Safer Futures and has brought together police, policymakers and indigenous people.

Its goals are to understand the factors putting indigenous people at risk, create co-operation and collaboration, and reduce the risk by developing evidence-informed strategies.

Winnipeg Police Service deputy chief David Thorne said his force has already set up what it calls the alliance to address issues like this.

Thorne said the advisory board includes representatives of health, business and indigenous organizations.

The representatives include Winnipeg Regional Health Authority chief medical officer Brock Wright, True North Sports & Entertainments Mark Chipman, and Damon Johnston, president of the Aboriginal Council of Winnipeg.

Historically we have used a law enforcement solution to address a health problem, Thorne said.

We used to barge right into a situation figuring we knew everything and we knew the solutions. But we dont. Policing has changed. Our big lesson is this needs to be done by the community.

We believe a collaborative effort is required.

Lennard Busch, chief of the File Hills First Nation Police Service in Saskatchewan, said he is looking forward to the dialogue at the conference and hoping for solutions.

There are deep-rooted historical issues, Busch said.

We need open and honest dialogue. Policing has to put itself under the microscope. I think the whole criminal justice system has to.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca
Egypt is set to receive its first Mistral-class Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD) warship from France on Thursday, Al-Ahram newspaper reported.

The paper reported Tuesday that the inauguration of the Mistral, which will raise the Egyptian flag and sail from France's Toulouse to Egypt, will be attended by Egyptian defense minister Sedki Sobhi and his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian.

The LHD warship is set to be named after the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel-Nasser.

Earlier this month, 170 Egyptian crewmen sailed in a week-long training operation to familiarize themselves with ship.

According to AFP, another Mistral helicopter carrier, named after the late Egyptian President Anwar El-Sadat, will be delivered in September.

The contract for the two Mistral carriers, which was finalized in September last year, was valued at 950 million euros.

France now tops the list of countries to have signed military supply agreements with Egypt during the term of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi after a May arrangement that witnessed the signing of a series of bilateral military cooperation deals. 

Earlier in May, Cairo finalised the purchase of a military reconnaissance and monitoring satellite.

Last year Egypt successfully concluded contracts for 24 Rafale fighter planes of which seven have been delivered.

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Opinion

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Its been a long, twisting, traffic-ticket-littered road for WiseupWinnipegs Todd Dube and Chris Sweryda, our version of Batman-and Robin in the battle for traffic enforcement justice.

Starting from the day eight years ago when Dube was tagged with a red-light ticket going 80 km/h in a 80 km/h zone, after being caught by photo radar in the so-called dilemma zone. Thats the stretch of road that starts when the green light turns amber and the driver has to make a quick decision.

Stop or go.

JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS WiseupWinnipeg leaders Todd Dube, left, and Chris Sweryda holding signs on the roadside in Winnipeg.

In Dubes case the amber light  and hence the dilemma zone  only lasted four seconds. He still argues that a four-second amber  that he says he overshot by a tenth-of-a second  wasnt enough time at that rate of posted speed. Over the years, the citys so-called static four-second amber-light length for all speeds and all intersections would become one of Wiseups biggest targets for change.

For some observers, Dube, a 52-year-old father of two and marketing company owner, and Sweryda, a 29-year-old University of Manitoba sociology major, have been seen less as crusaders and more as crackpots.

Heres the misnomer we have to address, Dube said Sunday when I sat with both Batman and Robin as a pair of chirping budgies swooped through the living room of his country home south of the city. The media, five or six years later, still characterize us as a group about the right to speed, or right to run red lights. Anti-traffic-police, anti -ticketing. Its the farthest thing from the truth. Were talking about enforcement abuses which are unique to Winnipeg.

Dube says he knows that sounds unbelievable.

It sounds like a conspiratorial thing. It just isnt.

Actually, their damning, deeply disturbing, if somewhat dated, hour-long power-point presentation does make the case for a conspiracy by the city traffic engineering department and the police service to create intersections and roadways where traffic ticket revenue can be maximized.

In other words, its like speed traps. But red-light traps, and even turning-lane traps.

The city takes the position that they dont tell the police where to enforce, Dube explains, and the police take the position that they dont tell the city how to sign. A very convenient and profitable disconnect. And so it goes on  for decades.

Thats not how it works in at least one other Canadian city, says Sweryda. He spoke recently with a traffic sergeant in Halifax.

They sit down with the city engineers every month and say, we noticed abnormal numbers of speeding here. Can you put an extra sign up? Or this sign is crooked, can you fix this? Here in Winnipeg they say, well, were not traffic engineers, were not qualified to tell the city where signs are missing.

Wiseups presentation  complete with charts, statistics, traffic tickets exhibits and photos  makes a strong case that the city has ignored engineering deficiencies as a way of maximizing traffic enforcement profits and topping up the police budget by millions of dollars. And at the expense of unwitting motorists.

True or not, gradually  one small victory at a time  Wiseup and its core group of what Dube says is 5,000 Facebook followers, are not only being listened to by both national and local media, theyre beginning to earn a little respect. Maybe even a lot. Whats happening Tuesday, for instance, could be a major breakthrough.

Dube and Sweryda are scheduled to meet privately with two city hall leaders who could make a difference. If, that is, the citys Chief Operating Officer Michael Jack and Public Works Committee chair and deputy mayor Janice Lukes do more than politely watch and listen to the powerful power-point presentation.

As it happened, it was one of those aforementioned small victories that brought Lukes and Jack to the table on Tuesday.

Last month, there was a media account about a reduce-to-30 road sign that had been missing for three months from a school zone on Panet Road. Using information elicited from a Freedom of Information request, Dube claims that the location was the No. 1 ranked school zone for volume of speeding tickets. The day after that story appeared, the missing sign went up. According to Dube, a reporter subsequently asked Lukes when the city was finally planning to meet with WUW.

It was following that, Dube said, that we received the meeting request.

I want to believe that the two civic leaders will not only learn something, but do something, after they watch the WiseupWinnipeg presentation. That public safety and doing the right thing will win out over the pressing need to pad the police budget. Or at least do something about the dangerously short ambers at high-speed intersections. Anyway, now its the citys top bureaucrat and the deputy mayor who are in the dilemma zone. But, alas, somehow I cant picture them applying the brakes.

Not in our own Gotham by the Red Light.

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 31/05/2016 (2338 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opportunity seized or opportunity lost? This is perhaps the fundamental question that Budget 2016 will answer.

Expectations are high for Finance Minister Cameron Friesens first budget today, aided by the new governments pronouncement that within its first term, Manitoba shall become Canadas most improved province. Given the magnitude of Manitobas fiscal dilemma  now pegged at slightly over $1 billion  the room for improvement is indeed vast.

Much ado will be made by many, myself included, as to the tone and direction carved out by the new governments first foray into Manitobas finances. Yet, for the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce, our expectations for Budget 2016 havent changed materially from those previous.

What has changed is an expectation that the new government will heed the repeated mistakes of the past and embrace the opportunity to lay a solid financial foundation characterized by responsibility, empowerment and innovation. In doing so, Budget 2016 has the real potential to transcend from mere line-item accounting to the beginning of a revitalized Manitoba that inspires, excites and attracts people and prosperity.

Manitobas books must return to black if we are to create individual and investor confidence that Manitoba is a solid proposition for long-term commitment. However, it is unrealistic to expect a return to balanced budgets overnight. Manitobas financial quagmire was years in the making and will take years to rectify.

What is realistic is the expectation of a firm commitment, timeline and action plan. To that end, Budget 2016 must demonstrate that the annual ritual of runaway deficits that defined the last decade has ended, and Manitobans can now confidently expect real and substantial annual reductions in the deficit.

This call to action on fiscal responsibility is neither ideology nor austerity, which has become the new buzzword designed to fan the fires of fear. Since when is living within your means an ideology? My parents just called it life.

Budget 2016 should also set the stage for the introduction of a three-year budget cycle to promote longer-term planning and results orientation through more stable and predictable funding for departments. The Council of the European Unions multi-annual financial framework (MFF) enables member countries to undertake spending commitments over multiple years, ensuring both budgetary discipline and flexibility against evolving pressures. As part of the 2014-20 MFF, a number of performance improvements were introduced to enable enhanced budget management for results.

The new governments pledge to reduce the PST to seven per cent should prompt a wider consideration and treatment of Manitobas tax regime. Eighteen years have passed since Manitoba last conducted a comprehensive review of our tax system through the Manitoba Lower Tax Commission.

Friesen, through Budget 2016, can do more than play around the fringes. The announcement of a public commission to press reset on Manitobas tax matrix, to ensure it is relevant, competitive and fair for all, is needed.

In the interim, Budget 2016 should move immediately to modernize Manitobas basic personal income tax exemption to match the federal exemption, and institute indexation for all income tax brackets to encourage, rather than penalize, Manitobans for personal growth.

Efficiency is absolutely a key factor for success. Claims that the provincial government is efficient already belie the fact that efficiency isnt a destination, but a process of continual pursuit.

The time for a reinvention of our public services has never been stronger, and Budget 2016 must trumpet its arrival. Our public services require a modern innovation mandate, the hallmarks of which include results-based programming with service goals and standards; resource flexibility and budgeting agility for more experimentation; redesigned government department structures built around forging multi-disciplinary teams; and co-designed and co-delivered services that engage the private, not-for-profit and other community stakeholders.

There is one area for which the business community has exceedingly high expectations in Budget 2016 and beyond.

According to the 2015 state of the business community survey, sponsored by the chamber and World Trade Centre Winnipeg, almost 60 per cent of respondents indicated that the former NDP government had stopped listening to the needs and concerns of local business.

For the first time in a long time, we now look forward to an open mind and attentive ear on Broadway, one that weighs the needs and aspirations of all Manitobans equally.

Ultimately, successful budgets go beyond balancing the books, creating a competitive climate and providing vital public services. They generate optimism, inspire confidence and prompt people to action. Thats the opportunity for Budget 2016.

Loren Remillard is the executive vice-president of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce.
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 31/05/2016 (2338 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As the sensational criminal prosecutions against Canadas sullied senators continue to crumble, taxpayers may well be asking: what was the point? After all, as the case against Sen. Mike Duffy illustrated, the expense-claim rules by which the red chamber played have always been patently vague. Self-servingly so, it seems.

There is no tab, as yet, for the failed prosecutions, or for the repeat audits that were commissioned into both the expenses filed by senators and the rules themselves. Most pointedly, the rules about claiming housing expenses for a second residence  what exactly qualifies as a primary residence?  were designed to confuse. This is why Sen. Duffy was able to defeat in April, handily but at noticeable personal suffering, 33 charges relating to his housing, personal and travel expenses, including alleged offences of bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

On the heels of that judicial decision, the Crown announced it was dropping its case against retired senator Mac Harb, and the RCMP signalled it is not proceeding with fraud and breach of trust charges against Sen. Pam Wallin. The case against Mr. Harb was particularly curious, dating back a decade. The RCMP said he had purchased a house that was uninhabitable just beyond 100 kilometres from Ottawa, precisely to qualify for the $24,000 annual living subsidy. In the later years, investigators said, Mr. Harb owned a mere 0.01 per cent of the property.

Former senator Mac Harb

Mr. Harb had repaid $231,000 in expenses claimed, following audits that outlined his transgressions. After a review by auditor general Michael Ferguson, the RCMP took up the files of 30 senators identified as wrongly claiming travel and housing expenses. Reportedly, 24 of those senators, including five from Manitoba, have been told no charges will be laid. Some had repaid disputed expenses.

The RCMP has said that pursuing the cases against Mr. Harb, Sen. Duffy and Sen. Patrick Brazeau alone cost $1 million. No word yet on the fate of the Brazeau breach of trust and fraud charges  put off to 2017 while the senator recovers from an attempted suicide  but they, too, may well fail.

The Senate, meanwhile, has tightened up on the wording of what kind of charges senators can claim. Specifically, a principal residence in the province or territory represented now must be confirmed with proof of permanent residency. That might be done by a drivers licence or a provincial health card, for example. Its a step in the right direction, but proving a senator actually spends any time in that home will be tough. The next Mac Harb could still make the case for the living subsidy by owning a hovel without a working toilet just more than an hour away.

Its been a sordid, expensive lesson. The case against Mr. Duffy, from Day 1, seemed specious  particularly the most serious charge of bribery because the evidence indicated the $90,000 cheque that Nigel Wright, former chief of staff to prime minister Stephen Harper, cut him to repay the expenses was never the senators idea. But a prosecution was a way to show the Canadian taxpayer, ostensibly, that no one was above the law; that probity and Parliament were not mutually exclusive terms.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says part of the fix lies in reworking the Senate appointments so that Canadians become senators based on merit, not party affiliation. Thats a weak stand-in for clear, enforceable rules of conduct and money management  the Senate itself cannot rely, it has been shown, on good judgment and integrity. Canadians should not have to rely on a lot of scandal, sound and fury to shame some senators into reimbursing for expenses any ordinary taxpayer could see were just plain wrong. Senators, now, should ask the auditor general what he thinks about their attempt to redefine the meaning of principal residence and claimable expenses.
Winona

Friday

11:45 a.m.  A wallet was reported missing from a vehicle parked on the 1450 block of West Service Drive.

1:11 p.m.  Rodney Dale Seitz, 55, Claermont, Iowa, was cited for shoplifting at Fleet Farm.

4:38 p.m.  A vehicle parked on the 600 block of East Wabasha Street was vandalized.

5:43 p.m.  Kristine Elizabeth Sovell, 21, Utica, Minn., was cited for theft of services after she failed to pay $10 of a $25 charge.

6:07 p.m. Charges of felony theft were referred against McKennah Christine Spiten, 19, Minnesota City, after she was accused to taking about $18,000 in cash and merchandise from JC Penney over the course of several months while she was employed there.

11:23 p.m  Charges of fifth-degree possession of a controlled substance, possession of a small amount of marijuana, and possession of drug paraphernalia were referred against Blake William Rogge, 23, Winona, following a traffic stop near West Broadway and High streets.

Saturday

4:08 p.m.  A mirror was taken from a vehicle parked on the 500 block of Center Street.

10:47 p.m.  Dominic Joseph Stanley, 18, Winona, was cited for possession of a small amount of marijuana on the 1700 block of West Wabasha Street.

11:39 p.m.  Charges of third-degree drunken driving were referred against Cassandra Lee Caola, 20, Winona, following a traffic stop near West Fifth and Johnson streets. Her blood-alcohol level was .19.

11:44 p.m.  Charges of fifth-degree possession of a controlled substance (marijuana wax) and no proof of insurance were referred against Cole Anthony Wilhite, 20, Winona, following a traffic stop near East Third and Lafayette streets.

Sunday

4:39 a.m.  Charges of second-degree drunken driving were referred against Amanda Jean Sattler, 28, Winona, following a traffic stop near Broadway and South Baker Street. Her blood-alcohol level was .19. She was convicted of drunken driving in 2013.

Monday

2:47 a.m  A GPS unit valued at $200 was reported missing from a vehicle parked on the 250 block of Walnut Street.

11:48 a.m.  An iPad Mini and Windows laptop computer were reported missing from a residence on the 250 block of Chatfield Street.

12:07 p.m.  An individual involved in a verbal dispute over who had right-of-way on a road in Woodlawn Cemetery damaged the mirror on the other individuals vehicle and left the scene.

1:05 p.m.  An 18-year-old Goodview woman was injured by her vehicles airbag following a collision at Olmstead and Mill streets. No citations were issued.

3:34 p.m.  Paul Anthony Clark, 25, Winona, was cited for giving a false name to a police officer following an incident at a residence on the 450 block of Sioux Street.

6:12 p.m  A counterfeit $20 bill was passed at Fifth Street Liquor.

6:29 p.m  Charges of domestic assault (causing fear) were referred against Jonathan Joe Light, 30, Winona, following an incident at a residence on the 1700 block of Kraemer Drive.

Tuesday

12:02 a.m  Colette Valen Penic, 20, Winona, was cited for underage drinking near West Wabasha and Winona streets.

12:50 a.m.  Charges of fifth-degree possession of a controlled substance and possession of a small amount of marijuana were referred against Bjorn Lance Deppa, 21, Winona, following a traffic stop near East Broadway and Laird streets.

2:15 a.m.  A passenger grabbed the car keys from a cab driver and fled. The keys were later recovered.

Winona County

Friday

6:43 p.m  Charges of violating a harassment restraining order and driving after revocation were referred against Mario Maurice Butler, 26, La Crosse, following an incident in the parking lot at Peterbilt near Hwy. 43 and Interstate 90.

Saturday

1:20 a.m.  Charges of third-degree drunken driving were referred against Abdullah Hanad M. Alqahtani, 29, Rochester, following a traffic stop on I-90 east of the Winona exit. His blood-alcohol level was .17.

Sunday

10:07 p.m.  A residence in Homer was broken into and multiple items, including foreign currency, jewelery and medications were reported missing.

Monday

4:58 a.m.  Charges of third degree drunken driving were referred against Tre Michael Klungvedt, 18, Winona, after he and his vehicle were found in a ditch on County Road 23 near White Tail Drive. His blood-alcohol level was .16.

8:10 a.m.  Charges of third-degree drunken driving were referred against Patricia Kay Chitwood, 40, Reedsburg, Wis., following a traffic stop near Hwy. 61 and 44th Ave. in Goodview. Her blood-alcohol level was .23.

5:34 p.m.  A wood carving of a tiki man and a sundial, valued at $500, were reported missing from the lawn of a residence on KC Drive.

10:19 p.m.  Charges of first-degree burglary, fourth-degree burglary, and fifth-degree assault were referred against Michelle Danelle Kanz, 49, Winona, after she entered a Homer area residence to seek out, confront and fight with another woman.
Under the unrelenting sun, 216 white crosses were lined up in precisely perfect rows at Memorial Park  not unlike the people they represented once stood while wearing the U.S. uniform.

Each cross honored a Winona military member who died in active duty from World War I to the Afghanistan and Iraqi conflict, waiting for a Boy Scout to place a wreath on it as the name was called at the Winona Memorial Day ceremony Monday at Veterans Memorial Park.

Community members gathered to honor fallen service people at the ceremony that consisted of Winona Middle School student speakers, the Winona Municipal Band, veteran speakers and three separate smaller ceremonies to honor the lives lost by the veterans of foreign wars, sailors and Marines lost and finally, all Winona service members lost in active duty. There were also two black crosses at the roll call, paying tribute to prisoners of war.

As the band played, veterans stood when they heard their branchs anthem, surrounded by the crowds appreciative applause.

Air force veteran and mayor of Goodview Steve Baumgart was at the ceremony Monday to not only pay tribute to those who died but to promote the tradition of the ceremony for future generations.

It was honoring those that served and those that didnt get back, Baumgart said. (Its) really important, I think, to pass this on down.

For Baumgart, the morning was a perfect example of how he feels about the U.S. as a veteran and a citizen.

Ive been in 22 countries, Baumgart said. And this is, in my opinion, the best country.

Navy veteran Fred Orlowske gave the Memorial Day address, dedicating it to the first African-American Navy pilot, Ensign Jesse L. Brown, who died in Korea in 1950.

Though he never saw active duty himself, Orlowske used his speech to tell other soldiers stories, some he even saw himself. Among the many stories he told, he remembered soldiers lost at sea, those who lost their lives at the hands of mass shooters and even the K-9 companions who sacrificed their short lives for the U.S.

Can you imagine the anguish of a mother, Orlowske said in his speech, the hollow pains a father feels.

Honoring the life of a military friend he lost at the U.S. Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, Orlowske became choked up, his voice getting softer.

The ceremony concluded with the smaller tributes around Memorial Park, starting with the veterans of foreign wars, then the lakefront ceremony and ending with the roll call before the wreaths. Each tribute contained small readings, flowers and plenty of tears shed for loved one being honored.

Each cross was finally given its wreath, a small tribute to a hefty sacrifice.
The illusion that people are to blame for their own poverty goes back centuries in our culture.

If youre poor, many Americans think, its your own fault. Its a sign of your own moral failing.

I dont personally believe that, though.

In The Wealth of Nations, the foundational work of modern capitalism, Adam Smith extolled the virtues of working hard and being thrifty with money. That wasnt just the way to get rich, he reasoned  it was morally righteous.

Sociologist Max Weber took the idea further in describing what he called the Protestant work ethic.

To Puritans who believed that one was either predestined for heaven or for hell, Weber wrote, working hard and accumulating wealth was a sign of Gods blessing. Those who got rich, the Puritans thought, must have been chosen by God for heaven; those who were poor were damned.

Even major American philanthropists have subscribed to this idea.

John D. Rockefeller, a religious Baptist, thought his extraordinary wealth was evidence from God of his righteousness. Fortunately, he took this as a sign that he should use his money for good. He gave it to universities and medical research centers, and his descendants used it for great art museums, national parks and more.

But Rockefeller also believed that the poor were often deserving of their fate. If theyd just worked harder, or budgeted their money wisely, then they wouldnt be poor.

Plenty of Americans agree. Sadly, thats often not the case.

The first factor determining ones wealth as an adult is an accident of birth. If youre born to wealthy parents, youll go to better schools and get better health care. Your odds of success as an adult are higher.

If, on other hand, youre born to poor parents who must work multiple jobs instead of staying home to care for you  or who cant afford healthy food, medical care, or a house in a good school district  your chances of earning your way into the middle class as an adult plummet.

In fact, if your parents income is in the bottom 20 percent, theres a 40 percent chance youll be stuck in that low-income bracket for your entire life. Thanks to racism, that figure rises to 50 percent for black people born into poverty.

Indeed, racial disparities crop up even at the bottom of the ladder.

Due to historic racism and discrimination, data from the Economic Policy Institute shows, low-income white families tend to be wealthier than black families making the same income. Furthermore, whites are more likely to have friends and family who can help them out of a financial bind.

Finally, thanks to decades of discriminatory housing and lending practices, black families are more likely to live in poorer neighborhoods. That impacts the quality of the schools they attend, among many other things.

So why cant a hardworking family get ahead? For one thing, its expensive to be poor.

Try finding an affordable place to live. You need to have enough cash on hand to pay a deposit. Many apartments require you to prove your income is 2.5 times the cost of the rent.

Public assistance programs only help the most destitute, and often dont provide enough even then.

For the disabled, the situation is worse. In theory, Social Security provides for those with disabilities. In reality, getting approved for disability payments is costly (in both medical and legal fees) and difficult. Once you get approved, disability payments are low, condemning you to poverty for life.

In short, there are many reasons why poor Americans are poor. It doesnt help that our society thinks its their own fault.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban arrived in Cairo on Tuesday for a three-day visit to promote bilateral relations and economic ties with Egypt, state news agency MENA reported.

Orban, along with a delegation of top government officials and business executives, was received by Egyptian PM Sherif Ismail at Cairo International Airport late on Tuesday.

The visit is aimed at "promoting cooperation with Egypt in all fields," MENA said.

During the talks, a number of trade deals between the two countries are expected to be signed.

A Hungarian-Egyptian business summit meeting is also planned to look at a multitude of prospective projects.

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Two local teachers will head to Japan this month, hoping to return with an answer to this question: Why do schools with strong arts programs produce students who excel in reading and math?

Baraboo High School art teachers Megan Watson and Amy Beattie will split their two-week trip between Osaka and Tokyo. Theyll take classes in the Japanese arts of manga, pottery and calligraphy to transform BHS art curriculum and expose students to new disciplines.

Theyll also visit schools to see what role the importance of art has in Japans strong school system.

Itll be really fascinating, I think, Watson said.

Theres a lot we can learn from school systems that have been around a lot longer than ours, Beattie said.

Their trip is being paid for by Fund for Teachers, an organization that has sent 6,300 teachers to 141 countries in the past 13 years through grants totaling $23.5 million. The Baraboo teachers were awarded $8,000.

The duo spent half a year working on their application. They got the good news in April. We are very excited. Very nervous, but very excited, Watson said.

They got an education in grant writing while preparing their application, and now theyre learning the challenges of international travel. Booking flights and enrolling in courses has been challenging, as neither teacher speaks Japanese. They depart June 11.

Were frantically trying to arrange everything, Watson said.

Things wont get any less hectic once they arrive in Japan. Theyll spend four days in Osaka touring high schools, interviewing teachers and students, and attending a traditional Japanese puppet theater. During their five days in Toyko, theyll interview art museum curators and take classes in calligraphy, glass cutting, pottery, printmaking and manga. Were going to be crazy, running around to all these classes, Watson said.

Upon their return, the teachers plan to offer courses in those media for the community. Theyll incorporate those disciplines into their curriculum, too. Everything we learn, we want to be able to share with the school, the community, the staff, Beattie said.

The teachers-turned-students also hope to learn how strong arts programs help produce high-achieving students. In a presentation to the Baraboo School Board about their trip they said, Japan is internationally known for students strong in reading and math and they have a strong emphasis in arts education. Is there a correlation here? We think there is and we aim to shed light on it.
Hills Wiring is celebrating a century of solving problems.

The key to the West Baraboo business recent growth has been identifying cost savings for clients, owner Doug Hill said. Hills team can design and build custom electrical systems in-house, right down to the control panel.

Its doing more of the solving of problems for people, he said.

The business will celebrate its centennial with a party Thursday. A hundred years is a milestone, Hill said. We just thought wed toot our horn a little bit.

He represents the third generation of Hills in the business. In 1916 his grandfather Max F. Hill opened Hill Electric Co. in Baraboo. His three sons entered the business in the 1940s, working there until their father retired in 1956.

The boys decided then to divide the business, with Max Jr. forming Hill's Wiring and Woodworking, William forming Hill and Peterson Electric, and Cal keeping the downtown store, selling appliances and light fixtures.

Doug Hill started working with his father, Max Jr., in 1965 as an electrical apprentice. Doug Hill bought into the business in 1979 and took over when Max Hill Jr. retired in 1985. Today he co-owns the business with longtime employees Jack Vogel and Wade Valley.

A rebounding construction market has allowed Hills to grow to more than 30 employees in recent years. Major recent projects in Baraboo have included the Don Larson Superstore, the Al. Ringling Theatre and Synergy Metalworks. Weve been busy enough to build up another 10 (employees) over the past three to four years, Hill said. Were just adding more and more skilled people.

The December 2009 purchase of Kuehn Electric in Waunakee helped the business move into the Madison area. Major clients have included Ryder in Beaver Dam and Madison Kipp Corp. in Sun Prairie.

The business was the 2013 Best of Waunakee winner in the electrician category, awarded by the Waunakee Tribune. In 2010 it won a Projects of Distinction Award from ABC of Wisconsin for its work on the Fresh Madison Market. Closer to its original home, Hills Wiring won the Baraboo Area Chamber of Commerces Community Service Award in 2012.

A key factor in the firms success has been its ability to design and build systems in-house -- and to do it quickly. That saves clients time and money. They dont want to wait a year for architects plans, Hill said.

Over the years, the company has expanded its expertise and service into industrial and institutional work, data and communications, cabling, energy efficient lighting and computer-aided design.

What hasnt changed in 100 years is a commitment to quality control and attentive service, Hill said. You pride yourself on doing good service work, he said. Just take care of them.
This is the last thing Hillary Clinton needed. Two weeks before the final contests of the 2016 Democratic primary, and just 78 delegates shy of wrapping up the nomination, she wakes up to find herself once again bogged down by the email scandal that just wont go away.

But this time its not Donald Trump piling on, its the State Departments own inspector general, who issued a highly critical report of Clintons by now well-known exclusive use of a private server for her emails while secretary of state. In so doing, concludes the report, contradicting what Clinton has asserted many times, she indeed violated long-standing State Department rules. Not only that, she never sought permission to use her own private server, and would not have received permission if she had. And, in another violation of department rules, she failed to turn over copies of her emails upon leaving office. The report also chides her for refusing to meet with State Department lawyers conducting the internal investigation.

Suddenly the issue that seemed to fade for a while is back with a vengeance. And this is still not the last shoe to drop. An ongoing FBI investigation into whether Secretary Clinton committed a federal crime by bypassing the official State Department computer system is still underway. Several Clinton staffers already have been interviewed and Clinton herself may be summoned to testify. Meanwhile, a judge has ordered former top aides Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin to testify in a civil case brought against Clintons email practices by the right-wing legal group Judicial Watch, and says he may call on Secretary Clinton as well.

No doubt, for Clinton, resurgence of the email controversy is a serious problem. It dominates the news. It buries her message. It forces her to play defense. It raises the issue of trust. It casts a shadow of scandal over the entire campaign that will dog her through Nov. 8. And, even with zero evidence of wrong-doing, it plays right into the hands of Donald Trumps characterization of Crooked Hillary.

The tragedy is that none of this had to happen. As Clinton herself acknowledges, she made a big mistake in setting up a private server in the first place. What was she thinking? Once discovered, she made the further mistake of insisting she did it only to avoid the inconvenience of carrying around two cellphones (which almost every Washington big shot does anyway). And then she compounded her problems by dripping out her emails a few thousand at a time, instead of just dumping the whole 50,000 pages in reporters laps and making them sort through them.

Trump and his fellow Clinton haters immediately pounced on the inspector general report, claiming it disqualifies her from running for president. But not so fast. A more careful reading shows just the opposite. In several respects, the State Department report actually absolves Clinton, rather than condemning her.

The inspector general finds: She was not the first secretary of state to use a private server. So did Colin Powell. Nor did she create the problem. She was just the latest to deal with the State Departments longstanding, systemic weaknesses with records that go well beyond the tenure of any one secretary of state. And, most significantly, the report concludes that, while Clinton did break existing department rules, she did nothing illegal  which will come as a huge disappointment to all those who were banking on Secretary Clintons indictment as their sole hope for winning the White House. Its not going to happen.

In other words, while Hillarys setting up her own personal email server was dumb, it was not illegal. She broke the rules, but she did not break the law. She has already released 30,000 emails, and not one bombshell was found in any one of them. Plus, this so-called scandal has now dragged on for almost a year with no smoking gun.

Bottom line: It sounds a lot worse than it is. Gertrude Stein was talking about Oakland, California, when she famously observed: Theres no there, there. She could have been talking about the Hillary email scandal.
JUNEAU  Dodge County will become the first county in Wisconsin to have mandatory electronic filing (eFiling) of certain court records starting tomorrow.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court adopted a new rule March 17 that will result in the implementation of mandatory eFiling statewide. The rule will take effect July 1 with the mandatory eFiling being phased in according to a schedule set by the director of state courts until the system has been fully implemented.

According to Clerk of Courts Lynn Hron, Dodge County was selected to be the pilot county for mandatory eFiling. Attorneys and high-volume filing agents will be required to eFile cases and documents in civil, family, paternity and small claims cases. Hron explained that a high-volume agent is someone who appears on behalf of an entity, filing 10 or more actions in a year in a county.

Hron said, This will not affect the pro-se users of the court system. The public can eFile if they choose but they are not required to.

Interested parties should refer to the Wisconsin Court System website, www.wicourts.gov, for information.

Currently Dodge County, along with 52 other counties, has a voluntary eFiling program. The mandatory system will replace that voluntary program. The Consolidated Court Automation Programs will implement and maintain the eFiling system.

Hron said that it was a great honor to be selected as the pilot county for the mandatory system.

The fact that they believe that Dodge County is not just technologically advanced enough to do it, but that the staff and the judiciary are advanced enough to be able to do it is a great honor, she said.

The eFiling allows attorneys and parties to file cases and documents at any time electronically, 24 hours a day. It also provides them with the ability to have instant access to their case file documents without having to go to the courthouse to view the case.

Hron explained that it is an efficient alternative to filing paper documents and benefits users of the court system and judicial staff.

She said, We have been scanning in our office for several years and we have already been able to not fill a couple of positions after retirements because of it.

The eFiling program should not be confused with e-mail. The court system does not accept filings by e-mail.

An electronic filing fee will be required to eFile, but the fee will be waived for government units.

Currently the program does not include criminal filings, but Hron said the court hopes to include all types of cases into the mandatory eFiling in the future.
Robert Neuman

Robert Bob R. Neuman, 91, formerly of Beaver Dam, passed away on Wednesday, May 25, 2016.

Bob was born Dec. 9, 1924, at The Lutheran Hospital in Beaver Dam, the son of Leonard and Norma (Jones) Neuman. He graduated from Beaver Dam High School, and proudly served his country in the U.S. Marines. During his two and one half years of service, he was stationed in the South Pacific, Guam and Iwo Jima. Bob worked as a sales representative for Mercury Marine for more than 30 years. In his free time, he enjoyed hunting, fishing and traveling.

Bob is survived by his three sons, Clark Allen (Leanne) of Louisville, Richard Robert (Sherry) of Greenville, Indiana, and Thomas Kirk of Louisville; six grandchildren; six great-grandchildren; the mother of his children, Janet Woodill; his good friend, Pat Davis of Beaver Dam; other relatives and friends.

He was preceded in death by his parents and other relatives.

A memorial gathering will be held on Sunday, June 5, from 10 to 11 a.m. at Cornerstone Funeral & Cremation Services, 135 Keller Blvd., Beaver Dam, followed by a graveside service at Oakwood Cemetery, Beaver Dam, with military honors provided by John E. Miller American Legion Post 146. A luncheon will follow back at Cornerstone.

Cornerstone Funeral & Cremation Services in Beaver Dam is honored to be serving the family. Send private online condolences or sign the familys guest book at www.cstonefs.com.
Kenneth Larsen

Kenneth G. Ken Larsen, 66, Escondido, California, formerly of Cambria, passed away Thursday, May 19, 2016, at the Palomar Medical Center in Escondido.

Ken was born Oct. 1, 1949, in Royal Oaks, Michigan, and grew up in Michigan, South Dakota, and Cambria, Wis. He graduated from Cambria High School in 1967, where he was very active in sports. He served our country in the U.S. Army, with a one-year tour of duty in Vietnam in 1970 and 1971.

After his military service, he returned to Wisconsin and worked in the area as an electrician. In 1977, he moved to San Diego, California, and worked a number of years for National Steel and Shipbuilding Co. (NASSCO) as an electrician for the defense department, working on naval ships. He also lived in Vista, Calif., where he began a 15-year career as a CAD draftsman for Quantum Batteries and then KW Microwave, both in Carlsbad, California. In 2003, he moved to Escondido, and turned his passion to restoring a 1965 Olds 442. Many Friday evenings were spent enjoying cruise night on Grand Avenue in Escondido.

He was also an avid NASCAR fan and attended a number of races in Phoenix, Ariz., Las Vegas, Nev., and Fontana, Calif., with friends and family. In 2014, he crossed an item off of his bucket list, when he successfully completed a five-minute drive at the NASCAR Racing Experience at the Fontana track. He attained a top speed of 140 mph during that run.

Ken is survived by his son, Darrell (Megan) Hughes, Madison; sister, Linda (Robert) Grams, Princeton; brother, John (Jenelle) Larsen, Newcastle, Wyoming; grandchildren, Carson and Calista Hughes; niece, Lisa (Forrest) Pike, Wautoma; nephews, Scott (Delynn) Grams, Beaver Dam and David Larsen, Sioux Falls, S.D.; and numerous friends in California and Wisconsin.

He was preceded in death by his parents, Robert and Edith Larsen.

Per his wishes, cremation has taken place and inurnment will take place in fall at the Black Hills National Cemetery near Sturgis, S.D., with full military honors.

A gathering of family and friends will take place on Sunday, July 10 from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Dave and Linda Hughes barn at W1441 Vaughn Road, Cambria.
Minnesota author Terri Evert Karsten will be discussing her award-winning historical fiction novel A Mistake of Consequence at 7 p.m. on June 30 at the monthly gathering of Books & Beer at the Black Kettle, 139 N. Ludington St., Columbus.

Born in San Francisco, Karsten has migrated eastward and now lives in a 100-year-old house in Winona, Minnesota. And avid fan of all things historical, she divides her free time between writing books, baking bread and chasing the outdoor life. Its no surprise that A Mistake of Consequence has been named a Book Readers Appreciation Group (B.R.A.G.) Medallion Honoree.

The novel begins in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1754. Callie Beaton is nearly 20, single, and determined not to marry anyone her grandfather deems worthy. But after her impulsive flight from yet another unwanted suitor leads her to the pier one rainy evening, Callie is mistaken for someone else and dragged aboard a ship. Trapped in a dark hold and at the mercy of strangers, Callie has no idea the ship is headed for a bustling port city across the ocean in America. Wracked with seasickness, unable to convince the ships captain she is not who he thinks she is, and with only one tattered dress to her name, Callie somehow survives the horrid journey, arriving in colonial Philadelphia penniless, nameless and alone in a strange place. Two men offer her help: Ethan Asher, a handsome gentleman with a hidden past, and Davy McRae, a charming ship captain with a dangerous secret. Neither seems trustworthy, but when tragedy strikes, Callie is caught in the middle and must choose one of them to help her if she is to save herself and her newfound friends from disaster.

A Mistake of Consequence is not Karstens first book. She has previously authored two non-fiction books: "From Brick to Bread: Building a Backyard Oven," a step-by-step guide to help amateur do-it-yourself enthusiasts build and use a wood-fired oven, and Snags and Sawyers: 200 Miles Down the Arkansas River, which follows her father and his two friend on an epic canoe trip in 1949. Her additional publishing credits include pieces for "Highlights for Children," "The Winona Daily News" and "An Encyclopedia of Women's History." Her short stories have also appeared in anthologies such as "Easy Nickels" and "Rattlesnake Valley Sampler."

The monthly Books & Beer gathering engages local and regional authors with readers in the community in a fun, casual setting. All interested readers in the area are welcome to attend. Copies of A Mistake of Consequence are available for $15 at The Black Kettle or from any online book retailer. In addition to the June 30 event, upcoming featured authors include Lucy Hannas The Cherry Harvest on July 28, Maureen Holtzs The Last Resort on Sept. 1, and Kelly Dinardos Gilded Lili on Sept. 29. More information can be found on the groups Facebook page Books and Beer Columbus.
Rebecca Tervonen never expected an afternoon drive with her daughter would turn into a potential life-saving situation.

Tervonen, a correctional sergeant with the New Lisbon Correctional Institution, was recently honored with a Lifesaving Award from the Wisconsin Department of Corrections for helping a motorist along Interstate 90/94 after her vehicle and trailer rolled over multiple times. Tervonen and another passerby pushed the vehicle on its side and stayed with the driver until emergency responders arrived on the scene.

After watching the vehicle flip over, Tervonen stopped to help. She didnt believe she would earn an award for her kind act, but shes honored and humbled to receive the recognition.

I wasnt expecting to even be nominated, Tervonen said. I was just doing what any person would have done when you see something bad happen to somebody else.

Tervonen and her daughter, traveling west along the interstate, were heading back to Mauston after shopping in Baraboo. They reached exit 84 near the Rocky Arbor State Park near Wisconsin Dells when her daughter shouted for her mom, who was driving, to watch out.

It was something I had probably never seen before in my life, Tervonen said. This lady ahead of us had this small, compact trailer and it started to break loose. She tried to go for the exit and hit the gravel and started to roll and its that part of the interstate where its cut out of the rocks so when she rolled, it threw her truck into the air and it hit the rocks and tipped her trailer almost completely upside down.

Tervonen stopped immediately and ran down the highway yelling to see if the driver would respond. When no one did, Tervonen and other bystanders helped push the truck on its side. They propped the truck up and eventually found the driver pinned in the middle of the front end of the car. To get to the driver, Tervonen tried to peel back part of a window that had shattered, cutting her hand. She grabbed a towel from a trucker to stop the bleeding and kept working on getting to the driver.

Tervonen realized another potential danger when she saw fuel leaking out of a punctured gas tank. Fortunately, a police officer, along with emergency personnel, arrived on the scene shortly after. Tervonen and another Good Samaritan stayed for awhile to retrieve several of the drivers family photos that had flew out of the truck when the accident occurred.

Some of these photos had gotten tossed over the rocks and all over the ground so this other woman and I picked them up and placed them in a box. We wanted to recover everything because these were family photos she would never get back, Tervonen said. We gave our statements to police and then I wanted to get out of the way to allow emergency personnel to do what they needed to do.

After returning home, Tervonen posted a notification on Facebook talking about one of the wildest afternoons she had experienced. A friend, whose husband works for the Wisconsin Dells Fire Department, wrote to Tervonen on Facebook saying the injured driver was going to survive.

I wanted to stay to make sure she was okay, but I also wanted to make sure I was out of the way so she could be extracted from the vehicle, Tervonen said.

After receiving the Lifesaving Award, Tervonen was honored at the state capitol in Madison by DOC Secretary Jon Litscher.

I am extremely proud of our employees, Litscher said in a press release. The individuals recognized exemplify the very best of the Department of Corrections  employees who were placed in difficult situations and took action to protect or preserve life.

Tervonen has worked in corrections for 13 years, serving in various departments. Brian Marten, an officer with the New Lisbon Correctional Institution, was also recognized with a Lifesaver Award. Marten declined to be interviewed for this story.

It is pretty nice to be recognized because we have kind of a thankless job, Tervonen said. Its nice to see us get this recognition outside our daily job duties.
Fresh & Frozen Seafood and the Bayou Restaurant Beer & Wine Bar, a popular Mauston area destination for seafood for 20 years, is under new ownership and management.

While management promises to not change much, co-managers Jacob and Alicia Stamper, plans to add some Texas flare to the menu. The couple, from the Lone Star State, moved to Juneau County and has spent the past month being trained by former owners Doug and Donna Case.

The Case family owned the restaurant, bar and seafood store for 20 years and moved the business to its current location, at N6828 Highway 58, 16 years ago. The Cases sold the business to Necedah residents Glenn Povkovich and Kellie Martin a few months ago.

Ive always wanted to own a restaurant and bar and Ive worked in the industry off and on for the past several years, Jacob Stamper said. Out of the blue, Glenn and Kellie heard about this place and we were kind of going through some issues in Texas and were possibly going to have to move out of our house. Glenn called and said he had an opportunity to buy this restaurant and asked if I wanted to run it.

With another full-time career, Povkovich didnt have the time to run the day-to-day operations, so he gave Stamper the opportunity hes always wanted. The Stampers, parents of a 1-year-old daughter, have learned a lot in the past month and believe theyre ready to take the business into a new era.

Eventually Ill start buying into the business and it will all be family-owned, Stamper said.

The Stampers lived in Kemper, Texas, a small town about 45 minutes north of Austin. The Stampers havent experienced a freezing Wisconsin winter yet, but theyre actually looking forward to snow and cooler temperatures.

Last summer we had 80 days in a row of 100 degree temperatures in central Texas so Im looking forward to a winter for a change, Stamper said. So far everything is going good here.

The Stampers arent planning any significant changes to the established menu. But, they will be offering a Texas smokehouse barbeque with brisket, beer butt chicken, pulled pork and sausage, with all the fixings, on Saturday nights. The restaurant will also have a Saturday night special beginning at 4 p.m.

On Wednesday-Saturday, the restaurant is open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., serving lunch and dinner. The stores hours are the same as the restaurants, but the store will only be open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sunday. On Thursdays the bar is offering $2 domestic beers.

From everyone weve heard from, there really isnt any place in the area that does Saturday night smokehouse barbeque, Stamper said. We were going to be doing it months down the road, but a lot of people have been asking for it so weve pushed it up.

The seafood store offers everything from alligator to walleye, shipped from companies along the Gulf Shore. The store also sells local products, such as steaks from Wisconsin River Meats.

I think we might make some slight changes in the years to come, but (the Cases) have a client base established and we want to keep that, Stamper said. We want to slowly, but surely add some things and bring some new people in. I think we have the seafood market established here so well stick to that for now.

For more information on Fresh & Frozen Seafood and the Bayou Restaurant Beer & Wine Bar, call 608-847-3474.
Egypt's environment minister said Tuesday that he did not attend a United Nations environment assembly in Kenya where an Egyptian official allegedly called sub-Saharan Africans "slaves and dogs."

Yvonne Khamati, Kenyan chairwoman of the Africa Diplomatic Corp Technical Committee, sent a letter dated 29 May to the dean of the Africa Diplomatic Corps to protest the alleged insults made by an Egyptian diplomat during the closing session.

Environment minister Khaled Fahmy said that neither he nor an Egyptian support delegation attended the session where the incident allegedly took place.

He said in a statement late Tuesday that he commissioned Uganda's environment minister to represent him during all assembly meetings as he had other commitments in Cairo.

He added that a two-member Egyptian environment support team taking part in the assembly had already flown to Cairo one day before that meeting took place.

The minister's remarks were in response to Khamati's criticism, where she named the minister and the Egyptian delegation, as well as local media reports that he or other ministry officials made the controversial comments.

The Egyptian delegation at the UNEA meeting was headed by an assistant foreign minister for environmental affairs.

In her letter, Khamati slammed the Egyptian diplomat's "uncivilised, undiplomatic, irresponsible, degrading and insulting behaviour." She asked for an apology and said that Egypt should be stopped from representing Africa in any leadership position.

In response, Egyptian foreign minister Sameh Shoukry has ordered an investigation into the alleged incident, though he called the accusations "flimsy."

His ministry also directed the Egyptian embassy in Nairobi to send a "strongly worded" memo to the Council of African Ambassadors in the Kenyan capital to express Cairo's rejection and indignation at the "excesses" committed by Khamati in her letter on Egypt.

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Memorial Day services in Portage honored fallen soldiers in ways transcending the ages and backgrounds of participants  a key factor to those tracking the improvement in Americas treatment of veterans.

Boy Scout Troop 70 and local Cub Scouts teamed with area veterans Saturday to help place American flags at gravesites in Oak Grove, Silver Lake and St. Marys cemeteries. More than 1,500 flags were placed in the Portage cemeteries as well as in cemeteries in surrounding townships, local American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars member Dennis Pionke estimated.

Its just amazing to see how many people at the cemeteries had given their life or service to their country, said Pionke, a Vietnam veteran and Portage resident for 40 years. Participants, he added, look at every headstone to see if they require a flag.

Its a core value of scouting: duty to God, duty to country, said Troop 70 Scoutmaster Matt Schlinkert. Boy Scouts, Schlinkert added, also participated in services Monday morning led by WauBun Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) at Fort Winnebago Cemetery. Scouts there led participants in the Pledge of Allegiance and raised and lowered the American flag.

They listen to the speeches, and they understand you cant take freedom for granted. It has a price, Schlinkert said. We always keep Memorial Day weekend free because theres so much work to do.

Local veterans like Pionke and Portage American Legion Post 47 Adjutant Norm Bednarek agreed one of the best ways to honor veterans is for everyone to team up and correct past mistakes.

When I was in the military during Vietnam era, Bednarek said, youd get booed, hissed at and spit on. Now if people know youre a veteran they thank you for your service  and it means an awful lot.

I think theres more openness and realizing how important it is to our freedoms and the sacrifice theyve put out there to protect our country, added Bednarek, who along with Pionke and other Portage Veterans Honor Guard members led the Memorial Day Parade on Monday.

Room for improvement, Bednarek said, involves improving medical treatment and other benefits for veterans, some of which remain under threat. The American Legion, for example, has been fighting for more federal funding for Department of Veterans Affairs and fighting against the slashing of veterans disability compensation.

We like our local control, and we want our local veterans offices available to all veterans, Bednarek said. Finding jobs for veterans in America has improved in recent years, he added, as more and more employers are taking pride in hiring veterans.

Treatment improves

When Pionke, a Ripon native, returned home from Vietnam in 1969 it was a pretty rough time for servicemen, he said. Noting his participation in a recent Badger Honor Flight in which Pionke accompanied Korean War veteran Lester Borders to view the war memorials in Washington D.C., Pionke said Americas treatment of veterans today is 100 percent improved.

Right now were spending the time and honoring the time people have served, Pionke said. To support all our veterans, our KIAs (Killed in Action) our POWs (Prisoners of War) that weve lost, its just a tribute to the people who have fallen. I think so many people should be appreciative of the things theyve done.

WauBun chapter of DAR Regent Sherry Bornick helped to organize the ceremony at Fort Winnebago Cemetery, noting such services speak to DARs primary goals of patriotic education and historic preservation. Services held at the cemetery, she said, trace back to when it was found unattended in 1922.

I think back then they got paid $2 a month for cleaning it up, said Bornick, a Cambria native and member of DAR for about 50 years. Both Cambria and Portage, she said, have rich histories of veterans serving their country. Wreaths were placed Monday at two Revolutionary War gravesites in the cemetery: soldiers Cooper Pixley and Alexander Porter.

William Austin of the Nathanial Ames chapter of Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) noted in the ceremony that to be a member of SAR or DAR, you need to be able to trace your descendants back to the Revolutionary War. Austin shared information about his first family patriot, William Anson Floyd, who after the war would become a delegate in the First and Second Continental Congress.

I have 14 (descendants) who fought in that war, said Austin. And William Floyd happens to be a signer of the Declaration of Independence, so I hold him in higher esteem.

Austin, a Vietnam veteran, said he was aware of poor treatment of veterans returning from Vietnam, though he personally did not experience it when he returned home to the Milwaukee area.

I think its better. Theres more patriotism, Austin said of todays treatment of veterans.

Long lineage

Nancy Burns, a Green Lake resident and DAR member for 15 years, said her lineage goes all the way back to the King Philips War, thus marking service in every war in America.

My grandfather was in World War I, my father was in World War II and my husband is a Vietnam veteran, Burns said. Im very proud of their service and commitment to their nation.

Improvement in treatment for veterans, Burns said, should start by addressing the VA patient overload in areas like Phoenix, where so many veterans go to retire.

Sue Cowan of the Fay-Robinson DAR in Reedsburg said her nephew works as a nurse for the VA hospital in Madison and can speak to a lack of staffing there.

But where does the money come from? Cowan asked. We need to get them services, especially those who cant take care of themselves.

Cowan said she has seen encouraging developments regarding veterans treatment in the form of medical care, vehicle assistance, food delivery, job placement and programs that help veterans improve or build their homes. I agree theyre treated better now. Im hoping that was the lesson learned from Vietnam returnees. I remember what those guys  and gals, the nurses who came back  went through.

I think as people get older and they influence their children correctly, there is respect for our veterans and what they did for our freedoms. But we do need to do it all year long. If you know or see a veteran you need to say welcome home and thank you for your service.
PARDEEVILLE  For their last journey together, Pardeeville High School Principal Jason LeMay took the schools class of 2016 down a rabbit hole.

LeMay  who will soon leave the high school to become the principal at Altoona High School in west-central Wisconsin  is, by background, an English teacher, prone to view the world through great literature.

And the literature he chose for his fifth and final Pardeeville High School graduation was Alices Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, which included a conversation between Alice and the Cheshire Cat about direction.

When Alice asks the cat where she should go next, the cat replies, That depends a great deal on where you want to go.

After the graduates had left the gym  for congratulatory hugs and lots of photos, in the high school parking lot  LeMay reflected on where hes going.

If theres one aspect of Pardeeville High School that he hopes hell find in Altoona, he said, its the willingness to try new things, and to go with my crazy ideas  such as this years implementation of a technical education program.

The class salutatorian, Blake Edward Shada, expressed a similar theme in his address to his classmates.

Pardeeville High School is a community-based school, he said.

We have left our imprint, he said, and we will indubitably leave our mark on this community in the decades to come.

Valedictorian Daniel James Walton told a story that was familiar to many students, about a king who divided his treasure among three different servants  two of whom invested the treasure and helped it grow, while the other buried the treasure and let it stagnate.

What will you do with what you have been given? he asked. How will you use your talents and your gifts?

Superintendent Gus Knitt stressed the importance of setting goals that are specific, measurable and attainable.

Nearly all of the 56 graduates had a specific goal listed in the graduation program  employment, education, military service, and occasionally a specific career.

Jacob Theodore Clauss, for example, decorated his mortarboard with illustrations of a goal that hes already well on his way to attaining.

He plans, he said, to go to Madison College to be trained as a firefighter and emergency responder. But hes already a volunteer firefighter for the Pardeeville Fire Department.

Yes, he wanted to be a firefighter as a child.

I love it, he said. Theyre a really great group of guys.

Thats pretty much what LeMay had to say about the class of 2016.

Its bittersweet, he said. Its exciting to see these kids graduate, but sad that I wont be around for the graduating classes in the coming years.
The village of Prairie du Sac has asked the Wisconsin Public Service Commission to approve a 30 percent rate increase for water users.

Village administrator Alan Wildman said the increase will have limited impact on residential users. He said an average user with consumption of about 4,500 gallons each month will see an increase in the water bill from $25.35 to $32.09, or 27 percent overall.

The village petitioned the state in October for an increase of $183,378 in revenues for the water utility to cover infrastructure improvements and losses sustained in February 2014 when a frigid winter caused pipes to freeze and residents were ordered to run their water constantly to prevent additional freezing.

Wildman said the village borrowed more than $127,000 from its electrical utility to fund the cost of replacing a number of water mains and older, galvanized piping that is in the process of being updated with copper piping. Those older pipes have started to corrode and fail.

Part of the rate case is to be able to pay back that loan, Wildman said. We didnt charge anyone for that extra water. The utility had to absorb the costs of that water and the expenses related to the thawing services of the pipes that did freeze. Those were the unplanned operational expenses were recovering from.

A public hearing by phone is scheduled for 11 a.m. June 16 at the Prairie du Sac Village Hall.

Residents do not have to be present at the hearing to comment on the rate increase request.

Comments can be submitted online at www.psc.wi.gov" href="http://www.psc.wi.gov" target="_blank">www.psc.wi.gov, in the Public Comments section on the side menu. On the next page select the File a comment link that appears for docket number 4830-WR-106. The deadline for comments is June 15.

Residents also can attend the June 16 hearing to comment.

Comments can be submitted by regular mail by June 15, and addressed to Docket 4830-WR-106 Comments, Public Service Commission, P.O. Box 7854, Madison, WI 53707-7854.

The hearing also will be webcast online at www.psc.wi.gov under the PSC Live Broadcast link.
The Sauk County Aging and Disability Resource Center is encouraging area seniors to make vegetables part of their daily menu by offering them $25 worth of produce at county-wide farmers market stands.

The Senior Farmers Market Nutrition program is a U.S. Department of Agriculture-funded subsidy for Sauk County residents who are over the age of 60 and have an annual income of $21,978 or less for individuals, and $29,637 or less for couples.

For Native Americans, the subsidy is available to those over 55.

The $25 check can be used at any farmers market in the county.

There are five distribution dates for the checks around the county in Spring Green, Wisconsin Dells, Sauk City, Reedsburg and Baraboo.

Jennifer Kamrowski of the ADRC of Eagle Country, which serves, Sauk, Richland, Crawford and Juneau counties, said those selected areas of the county will hold one distribution day for the checks.

The easiest way to get them is to come to the distribution dates and they can fill out the forms there or send a proxy for them, Kamrowski said. The proxy will have to have a signed note from the recipient, and fill out the application with the persons birth date, address and phone number.

Sauk Prairie Farmers Market manager Sue Dohm said the checks are accepted at the Famers Market each Saturday morning in the yard of the J. S. Tripp Heritage Museum on Water Street in Prairie du Sac. She said its a good way for seniors to round out their nutritional requirements with fruits and vegetables grown locally.

In addition, the proceeds from the Farmers Market are donated to the Sauk Prairie Community Food Pantry.
Marvin Platt kept things moving in Wisconsin Dells.

Whether it was an Original Wisconsin Duck that he drove to town from some far-flung place across the U.S., a Dells tour boat that he helped move into place for a summers tourist season at Dells Boat Tours or an automobile that needed to be pulled from a local ditch or a snow bank, Platt was the man to call and always got the job done.

Platt and his father Martin, in their roles for the towing company of choice in Wisconsin Dells for the better part of the 20th century, moved everything you could imagine, recalled Jerry Wolfram, one of Marv Platts sons-in-law.

Platt passed away peacefully Saturday at the Sauk County Health Care Center in Reedsburg, and he was being remembered fondly this week throughout the community, including at Monday mornings annual Memorial Day photograph of the Kilbourn Volunteer Fire Department  of which he was a long-time active and honorary member.

Wolfram, Dells-Delton fire inspector and himself a former active and current honorary member of the department, is one of those with countless fond memories of Platt.

He was a true Christian  he helped many people in the Dells, Wolfram told the Dells Events Tuesday morning. Whatever the definition of a true Christian is, thats him.

Platts help around town usually came in the form of the local towing service, Platts Garage, for which he worked after serving as a mechanic in the U.S. military at the end of World War II until starting his own towing and repair business, Marvs Towing and Repair, in 1984.

Platt catalogued the stranded and wrecked vehicles he towed, according to Wolfram, and apparently remembered each rescue job in great detail.

He lost his eyesight pretty much over the last few years, but you could describe a photo of a car being pulled out of a marsh in 1950 and he would know who was driving the car, what year the car was, how it went into the ditch and how he got it out, and whether they had to call the coroner, Wolfram said. He went into great detail in his stories, and it was amazing.

One of Platts most famous tales regarded the amphibious vehicles that he helped rescue from post-war obscurity, in the process helping to launch a 71-year-old Wisconsin Dells tourism tradition that has been copied around the world.

That vehicle was known officially as the U.S. Armys DUKW, but it became famous after the war as the Wisconsin Duck.

Original Ducks founder Melvin Flath first sent Platt across the land both to retrieve and broker the purchase of most of the attractions early fleet, after the vehicles were retired at the end of the war. Platt spent most of the summer of 1949 driving 64 DUKWs from their location in Springfield, Illinois.

Platt also became a part-time Wisconsin Ducks driver and tour guide  for which he was honored, along with hundreds of other Duck drivers last summer during the 70th anniversary celebration for the Original Wisconsin Ducks  and once admitted to the Dells Events that he performed that latter job with a flourish.

I added a bunch of stuff to the tried and true tour facts, he said in a 2014 interview.

Platts local heroics  and his ability to spin wondrous tales about them  apparently were not limited to the vehicular-rescuing variety. He claimed to have saved the Kilbourn Bridge  twice.

Platt and his father were called on to visit the original bridges construction site at 4 a.m. one morning to remove some pesky concrete that could have slowed construction had it hardened prematurely, and then when the bridge was being widened several years later the younger Platt used his tow truck to free a couple of stuck cement mixers that were needed immediately at the site.

I saved both bridges, Platt said, with a laugh.

Funeral services for Platt will be held at noon Friday at Trinity Lutheran Church in the Dells. Burial will be at Spring Grove Cemetery, with military rites provided by the Harold B. Larkin American Legion Post 187, to which Platt belonged. Visitation at the church is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. on Friday at the church.
From tragedy to triumph

A confluence of happenstance, luck, skill and science allowed vet to get embryos from a beloved show Guernsey after having to euthanize her.
Observers in Cairo anticipated, early on, that Israel would snub the French initiative calling for an international conference to resume the Middle East peace process.

There are only two occasions in which Tel Aviv concluded a peace agreement with the Arabs in Camp David and Wadi Araba neither of which took the form of an international conference.

Indeed, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls would hear Netanyahus rejection of the French initiative first hand before leaving Israel.

In fact, Egypt was the starting point for the new drive to revive the peace process.

Speaking from Assiut on 18 May, President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi alluded to an opportunity for peace with Israel, or a warmer peace as he put it, although he did not mention details regarding possible procedures.

Following that speech, observers in Cairo held that there was a move towards a regional solution as the alternative, referring to the possibility of reviving the Arab Initiative that Saudi Arabia had proposed and that was adopted by the Arab League summit in Beirut in 2002.

In the 14 years since then, that initiative has remained frozen, with no additions or amendments made to adapt it to current regional circumstances. Nevertheless, the observers believed that concrete signs pointed in the direction. Above all, Riyadh has effectively replaced Egypt in a portion of the security annex of the Camp David Accords, due to the transfer of sovereignty of the Tiran and Sanafir islands. As a result, Riyadh will be dealing with Israel on matters related to regional security arrangements and the Palestinian question.

Sobhi Asila, editor-in-chief of Mukhtarat Israeliya (Israeli Selections) published by Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, believes that any attempt to cool down the region at present must grapple with the most fiercely burning issues. This is impossible without resolving the Palestinian question as an inroad to the cooling process.

Asila added that this was precisely what President El-Sisi meant in his speech in Assiut, in which he urged sincere efforts to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, since the Palestinian cause is the central issue in the region. He also noted that, as the president indicated in that speech, Cairo is prepared to resume its historic role in this drive.

On the possibility of Riyadh entering the field alongside Cairo in this question, Asila observed that Saudi Arabia has always played an auxiliary role as like other regional powers in general it recognised Egypts authentic role with regard to the Palestinian question, in view of Cairos ability to handle the many details and challenges involved, since it is in constant contact with this question in all its diverse dimensions.

For this reason, when the French initiative was proposed, it was expected that Egypt would be the first Arab country to become involved. However, it took a long time about two years before any concrete action was taken. The EU did not pick up on it, as the French had desired. Nor did the US and there was no readiness on the part of Israel. Accordingly, it received little attention in Cairo or Riyadh, while the other course was maturing in a parallel direction.

Said Okasha, an expert on the subject, discussed the French initiative and the parallel course in an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly.

The French initiative had no future at all. For it to be put into motion, all parties concerned would have to accept it. This did not happen, and for a logical reason: the initiative was proposed without first consulting with Israel," Okasha said.

"In addition, [the French initiative] was formulated along the lines of Geneva negotiations or the ideas that were conceived in the 1970s, whereas Israel prefers to make bilateral agreements, as occurred in Camp David and Wadi Araba. Israel does not want to be stripped of the advantages it gained through the bilateral agreements. Finally, Israel felt that the French initiative was couched in the framework of an ultimatum to the effect that if Israel rejects the French initiative, France would recognise the Palestinian state unilaterally. Israel does not negotiate under pressure, Okasha added.

On the other hand, the alternative was still there.

The Arab Initiative may form the groundwork for the coming stage, Okasha said. Political developments inside Israel suggest this, as do developments on the Arab side, especially with respect to Saudi Arabia, which authored the Arab Initiative.

In this context, Okasha believes that Egypt is astute in the way it handles Israel.

It doesnt impose initiatives or pressure in that direction. But it is in favour of reviving the Arab Initiative with some modifications, towards which end the initiative may be brought up in the forthcoming Arab summit in Mauritania.

Jack Khouri, an Arab- Israeli political analyst at Haaretz newspaper, told the Weekly by phone that the French have not given up on their initiative, even though their chances of bringing Netanyahu on board are very slim.

Khouri added that he has also heard from the Palestinian side remarks to the effect that the French, on their own, will never be able to get the Palestinian-Israeli ball rolling. The Americans are needed for this.

Accordingly, talk in Israel has also moved in the direction of a regional solution or a bilateral one with Arab support and brokered by Cairo and Riyadh, at a time when the US is preoccupied with the election season.

True, some expect Obama will make one last push for an American initiative before he leaves office, but there would be nothing to compel Obamas successor to follow through, especially if the next president turns out to be Donald Trump.

Still, there have been no concrete ideas on this matter in Israel. At the same time, the political situation in Israel is confused, even if Netanyahu holds the upper hand, as the centre and left are in disarray and offer no real alternative.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu and Herzog appeared poised to take advantage of the opening El-Sisi made possible in order to create a new coalition that could steer the peace process issue.

However, Netanyahu proved he is not interested in a solution. He wants a lasting peace process, not a lasting peace.

*This report was first published in Ahram Weekly

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The United Nations special envoy to Libya said on Tuesday the country would not be able to defeat Islamic State militants unless the various military and militia strands joined forces against the group.

The December unity deal was meant to end the divide between rival governments in the capital Tripoli and the east who have vied for control over the country and its oil resources since 2014. The competing factions helped oust Muammar Gaddafi five years ago.

But in a 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.

Speaking alongside side French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, Martin Kobler, the envoy, said a united command structure was needed under control of Fayaz Seraj, the head of the U.N.-backed Government of National Accord (GNA), which arrived in Tripoli in late March and is still trying to establish its authority.

"One point must be very clear. The fight against Daesh must first be a Libyan fight and a united fight," Kobler, said referring to the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

"Nobody acting alone will succeed that's why it's important that all security actors in the west and east unite their forces. There must be a joint command structure and joint army under the general command of the council (GNA)."

Ayrault, whose country has sent special forces to help certain groups fight Islamic State in the North African state, said the priority was to incorporate General Khalifa Haftar, who heads up troops in the east, with militias in the west.

Haftar on May 20 said it would be "unthinkable" for eastern Libyan forces to join the GNA until militias aligned to it had been disbanded.

"I encourage the government (GNA) to do everything to have contacts with the east and they re doing it," said Kobler, who added he would like to hold talks with Haftar. "But the east is refusing for the moment. It takes two to tango."

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A US soldier deployed in Syria to advise rebel groups fighting the Islamic State group was wounded over the weekend, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

US military spokesman Jeff Davis said the soldier was wounded by "indirect fire" -- a term that typically refers to rocket or artillery fire -- north of Raqa, the jihadists' de facto capital.

He was "not on the front line," Davis said.

Davis said it is the first American casualty in Syria that he is aware of since US military advisory deployed there at the end of last year.

The United States has sent more than 200 special forces personnel to northeastern Syria to advise and assist rebel groups fighting the Islamic State group.

American soldiers are focusing on aiding the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a coalition dominated by the Kurdish militia YPG.

Fighting is currently raging in northern Raqa eight days after the start of an SDF offensive, with support from air strikes by a US-led international coalition.

Another US soldier was injured last weekend in northern Iraq near the city of Erbil, also by indirect fire, Davis said.

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Islamic State militant group on Tuesday urged Muslims to destroy their satellite TV sets to prevent hostile channels "destroying their beliefs and polluting their ethics".

The ultra-hardline Sunni group issued its call as military pressure increased against it with offensives targeting its strongholds in Raqqa, Syria, and in Falluja, west of Baghdad.

"The enemies of Islam are waging a media war on the Islamic State that is no less dangerous than the military campaign," the group said in a video on its official Telegram account.

It did not say whether it would try to enforce its appeal in the territory under its control in Syria and Iraq.

It singled out religious channels funded by Saudi Arabia and also showed the logos of al-Jazeera and Orient TV, a channel close to the Syrian opposition, as well as the Egyptian religious channel al-Nas.

The video ended with a scene showing people stamping on satellite dishes to destroy them.

Islamic State group declared a caliphate over the territory of Syria and Iraq in 2014.

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The number of people internally displaced by war in Afghanistan has doubled since 2012 to 1.2 million, Amnesty International said Tuesday, citing government neglect and a lack of international attention.

In its report entitled "My children will die this winter: Afghanistan's broken promise to the displaced", the rights group warned that a lack of basic services had pushed many of those uprooted from their homes to the brink of survival.

"While the world's attention seems to have moved on from Afghanistan, we risk forgetting the plight of those left behind by the conflict," Champa Patel, Amnesty's South Asia director, said in a statement.

"Even after fleeing their homes to seek safety, increasing numbers of Afghans are languishing in appalling conditions in their own country, and fighting for their survival with no end in sight."

Civilians are increasingly caught in the crosshairs of Afghanistan's worsening conflict as the Taliban step up their annual spring offensive, launched last month against the Western-backed Kabul government.

As of April 2016 a "staggering" 1.2 million people had been displaced internally, the report said. In 2012 the number stood at almost 500,000.

Amnesty reported deplorable conditions in Afghan camps for internally displaced people, with a lack of food, water and healthcare.

"Even an animal would not live in this hut, but we have to," it quoted Mastan, a 50-year-old woman living in a camp in Herat, as saying.

"I would prefer to be in prison rather than in this place: at least in prison I would not have to worry about food and shelter."

Farzana, another woman in a camp in Kabul, said: "When you can't put food on the table for your children, it is worse than being hit with a gun."

Amnesty implored the international community and the Afghan government to do more to address the desperate situation.

"All parties that have been involved in Afghanistan over the past 15 years have a responsibility to come together and make sure that the very people the international community set out to help are not abandoned to an even more precarious fate," said Patel.

"Afghanistan and the world must act now to end the country's displacement crisis, before it is too late."

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Atucha 2 receives full operating licence

31 May 2016

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Argentina's nuclear regulator has issued a licence to Nucleoelectrica Argentina SA (NASA) for the commercial operation of the second unit of the Atucha nuclear power plant. The 745 MWe pressurized heavy water reactor has been operating on a conditional licence.

Atucha 2 (Image: NASA)

In December 2015, the Autoridad Regulatoria Nuclear (ARN) granted NASA a conditional operating licence for Atucha 2 - also known as the President Nestor Kirchner nuclear power plant. At that time, it set a deadline of 29 May 2016 for the operator to meet all the conditions for a full licence to be issued.

On 26 May, following the completion of a program of testing, training and other actions, ARN granted a full operating licence to NASA.

A ceremony was held at ARN's headquarters in Buenos Aires the following day to mark the award of the licence. The ceremony was attended by representatives from ARN, NASA, the ministry of energy and mining, the National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA) and fuel fabrication company CONUAR.

In a statement, ARN noted the issuance of the licence marks a milestone for Argentina as no new nuclear reactor has been put into operation since 1983 and all relevant players in the licensing process for Atucha 2 are Argentinean.

ARN chairman Nestor Masriera said, "The important thing is that we have completed the licensing process by putting this plant into full operation and have granted an operating licence under well-documented conditions, with the confidence of having on the table all the safety requirements that meet our regulatory standards and international standards."

Atucha 2 - located in the city of Lima, Zarate, 115km from Buenos Aires - was ordered in 1979. It was a Siemens design, a larger version of unit 1, and construction started in 1981 by a joint venture of CNEA and Siemens-KWU. However, work proceeded slowly due to lack of funds and was suspended in 1994 with the plant 81% complete.

In 1994, NASA was set up to take over the nuclear power plants from CNEA and oversee construction of Atucha 2. In 2003, plans for completing Atucha 2 were presented to the government. The government announced a $3.5 billion strategic plan in August 2006 for the country's nuclear power sector, including completion of Atucha 2. The unit was effectively completed in September 2011. First criticality was achieved early in June 2014, and grid connection was later that month, with full power in February 2015.

Together with Atucha 1 and the reactor at Embalse it establishes Argentina's total nuclear generating capacity at around 1627 MWe. The Carem small reactor project should add a further 27 MWe by 2018. The country's next two reactors are likely to be built by China National Nuclear Corporation.

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

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According to Cluttons, office rents in Dubai's prime free zones held firm during the first quarter of 2016, as occupancy levels remained high in core areas such as Dubai International Financial Centre, Dubai Media City and Dubai Knowledge Village.Cluttons'report shows that inquiries for free-zone space from international corporates also remains strong. The bulk of activity is concentrated in the 3,000 sq. ft to 7,000 sq. ft bracket, with 75% of all Cluttons' requirements coming for free-zone space.Murray Strang, Cluttons' Head of Investment and Agency UAE tells World Property Journal, "We have seen strong pre-leasing activity in further phases of Dubai Design District and One Central and expect that free-zones will remain the key centres of all occupier activity both in the short and long term. It is our view that free-zones can help to transform Dubai into a global commercial hub, with the possibility of Dubai becoming a city-wide free-zone in the future; a move which would help drive the evolution of the office market."Cluttons' research shows that headline rents in Dubai Economic Department licensed areas and strata ownership dominated markets have registered declines throughout Q1 2016. During the same period, average prime office rents outside of the primary free zones dipped to AED 230 psf, reflecting an 8% decline on Q4 2015 and perhaps more significantly, the first downward adjustment in 18 months. Secondary rents dipped by AED 10 psf to AED 110 psf, while rents for office space in more tertiary locations decreased by AED 5 psf to AED 60 psf over the same period.With reports of redundancies in some of the city's core business segments, such as finance and banking, Cluttons latest research indicates there is now a growing trickle of space returning to the market, which is further suppressing rental value growth rates as the supply-demand equilibrium moves further out of kilter.Strang continued, "The vast majority of landlords have been slow to react to the diminishing level of requirements; however, there is a growing minority responding to the evolving conditions. We have noted instances in Business Bay and JLT, where non-strata landlords are beginning to extend rent-free periods to as long as six months for long term leases, including at One JLT where interest has been much stronger than in other stock in the same area."According to Cluttons' report, in addition to rent reductions of up to 20% in a few extreme cases, landlords in some submarkets have begun to offer contributions to utility bills and fit out costs through gross rents. Some landlords are also accepting shorter lease terms or tenant break clauses and offering to cover tenant's agency fees in some cases in an effort to drive down void periods.Faisal Durrani, Head of Research at Cluttons said, "The current weakness in some submarkets of Dubai's office market is expected to persist, with further rental declines likely as we move into the summer months. Following a period of relative stability, we are increasingly noting instances of negotiated rent reductions, materializing at the same time as a growing number of lease incentives offered by landlords."This is symptomatic of a market entering a tougher period, particularly as more macro-economic factors weigh down on the level of occupier requirements. It is challenging to put an exact figure on the level of rent falls given the wide range of submarkets and individual micro-demand drivers, but falls of up to 10% on average cannot be ruled out this year. In parallel, lease incentives, which still remain the exception, rather than the norm, are something we expect to increase across the market as voids are sustained."
Singapore's State Court says four Bangladeshi workers held on suspicion of planning attacks linked to the Islamic State group in their own country have been convicted of financing terrorism.

Authorities said the men, who pleaded guilty, had raised money to buy firearms to launch attacks in Bangladesh. They will be sentenced on June 21 and face a maximum sentence of 10 years in jail and a fine of 500,000 Singapore dollars ($362,260).

Two other workers have pleaded not guilty. Their trial dates have not been set.

The men have been detained since April under Singapore's Internal Security Act, which allows for detention without trial in cases where public safety is threatened.

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A young man wanted to make a point about racism in the United States, but his plan backfired when he was exposed for a liar by police. 20-year-old Khalil Cavil of Texas was working at the Saltgrass Steak House in Odessa when he claimed he was discriminated against because of his Muslim name. Cavil took
The United Nations once more on Tuesday urged North Korea to cease provocative actions after its latest attempted missile launch.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon considers that UN resolutions barring Pyongyang from developing missile technology and sanctions "should be fully applied," said UN spokesman Stephan Dujarric.

North Korea "should cease provocative actions," he added.

South Korea's defense ministry said Pyongyang had failed to launch a missile on Tuesday, the latest in a series of attempts.

In April the North failed three times to test-fire a Musudan, which has an estimated range of anywhere between 2,500 and 4,000 kilometers (1,550 to 2,500 miles).

South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted official sources as saying Tuesday's missile may have exploded on its mobile launcher.

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Jorg Baberowski, a professor of history at Berlins Humboldt University, is emerging ever more openly as a right-wing ideologue. Previously he gained notoriety for his relativization of Nazi crimes, his defence of Hitler apologist Ernst Nolte, and for publicly agitating against accepting refugees. Now he is urging the creation of a strong, authoritarian state.

At the recent Phil.Cologne conference he asserted that men in Germany were helpless in the face of violence from migrants because they were no longer able to fight. This had supposedly been seen on New Years Eve in Cologne, when, he said, men had not defended women from alleged assaults. We see that men in Germany no longer have any idea how to deal with violence, Baberowski was quoted as saying by DPA.

But his own alternative to the law of the jungle is a strong, authoritarian state that overrides constitutional procedures and democratic rights such as the presumption of innocence. These people should have been immediately sent to prison, then they would have learnt a lesson for life, he declared.

In April, during a discussion on violence and religion, Baberowski spoke out at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences against concerning oneself with the perpetrators means of justification, i.e., with the reasons for violence. He rejected social policy aimed at prevention in favour of a better equipping of the state to enable it to maintain its monopoly on force. The large amounts of money thrown away on social programmes to civilise people could just as well be tossed away, he said, summarising his reactionary position.

It is no accident that Baberowski is now intervening in the debate over events on New Years Eve in Cologne. That incident was deliberately inflated by the media to whip up sentiments against refugees, who at the time enjoyed a broad wave of sympathy from the population.

Although more than four months have passed since the events, none of the 11 men charged in relation to the incident have been found guilty of sexual assault. Many of the assertions about excessive violence vanished into thin air during the investigations. There is no evidence that anything more happened in Cologne than the pick-pocketing and verbal abuse that are unfortunately a common feature of such major events.

Despite this, at Phil.Cologne Baberowski added another legend to the many already in existence about the New Years Eve events. Without a shred of evidence, he proclaimed that the cause of the violence was the situation in refugee camps. There, the state was absent and small groups of men took over command. When these groups arrived on the cathedral square on New Years Eve, they also viewed this as a law-free zone.

Does the Humboldt professor really believe his listeners do not follow the news? At least since the abuse of refugees in the Burbach camp in North Rhine-Westphalia and at Berlins Lageso (state office for health and social care), it has been well known that a law-free zone exists in the camps for the state and the private security contractors hired by it, but not for refugees, who are bullied, abused and repressed.

In addition, the contrasting of men in Germany, who have forgotten how to fight, and criminal, violent foreigners is a racist cliche that has nothing to do with reality.

Baberowski knows that the number of attacks on refugee camps exploded last year. According to official figures, they rose to 1,031, i.e., five times as many as in the previous year. But he downplayed these figures. In an interview with the television channel 3Sat, he said, I think that given the problems we currently have in Germany with immigration this is relatively harmless.

The increase in criminality among foreigners, which the statistics also show, is almost exclusively linked to violations of the law concerning aliens, such as illegal entry or breaches of the right to reside, i.e., criminal offences which can only be committed by foreign nationals. With the refugees last year, violence did not come to Germany, but poverty, remarked Christian Pfeiffer, a former director of the criminology research institute in Lower Saxony.

Baberowski, a professor of Eastern European history from Humboldt University, is now regularly referred to in the right-wing press as a violence researcher. But his public utterances have nothing to do with research or scholarship. As soon as one begins to critically examine and investigate them, they turn out to be groundless. Baberowski is not spreading scientific knowledge, but ideological prejudices previously associated with the most extreme right-wing circles.

In his blinkered view of violence and society, as he explained it in his last book Zones of Violence, there is either the law of the jungle or the authoritarian state. There is no place for democratic structures.

This is based on a notion of humanity widely associated with conservative and anti-democratic circles during the Weimar Republic. Accordingly human beings are not capable of reason or regulating themselves or society, but are rather irredeemable predators who must be confined and suppressed.

No order is conceivable which is not based on hierarchy and social inequality, because opportunities and abilities are unequally distributed, states Baberowski in the book. This order must then be defended by state power against resistance.

With the same theory of violence, Baberowski justifies brutal wars. In the Elinger Zeitung he declared last November that the principle of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth had to be implemented against terrorists. Prior to that, in a discussion at the German Historical Museum, he recommended taking hostages, burning down villages and hanging up people and spreading fear and terror, to defeat terrorists.

Baberowskis latest statements are in line with this. Over the past two years, the Humboldt University professor has been elevated to the position of a leading spokesman for a new right-wing movement in Germany, which applauds militarism, cultivates nationalism and racism and propagandises for the strengthening of the state apparatus. Attacks on the weakest members of society are combined with a deep hatred of the working class and any social opposition. The authoritarian state is the guarantor of order.

This development confirms the correctness of the offensive undertaken by the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) and Partei fur Soziale Gleichheit (PSG) at Humboldt University against Baberowskis right-wing positions. In a series of meetings and articles, the IYSSE demonstrated how Baberowski relativized the crimes of National Socialism and defended the Nazi apologist Ernst Nolte. Hitler was no psychopath, and he wasnt vicious, Baberowski declared in a February 2014 edition of Der Spiegel.

The book Scholarship or War Propaganda documented this controversy and demonstrated how these revisions of history were connected with the return of German militarism and growing social inequality. In order to wage new wars, a new narrative was required, a falsification of history that conceals and justifies the crimes of German imperialism, the foreword stated.

The IYSSEs critique of Baberowski provoked denunciations from the media. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) editor Jurgen Kaube railed against the IYSSE under the headline Mobbing: Trotskyist Style. Friederike Haupt, in the same newspaper, linked the criticism of Baberowski and of his colleague Herfried Munkler with bomb threats and death threats. Similar articles appeared in Der Spiegel, the Suddeutsche Zeitung and several other publications.

The Institute of Historical Study and the Humboldt Universitys management accused the IYSSE in public statements of defamation and character assassination. Baberowski himself excluded critical students from his events, banned them from speaking and called for legal measures against them.

There can now be no doubt that Jorg Baberowski is a right-wing ideologue. His standpoints are so explicitly xenophobic and authoritarian that they have been taken up and sharply criticised in some newspapers.

Baberowski makes it appear as though violence could have prevented the New Years Eve events, and as if women desired brawler-escorts as protectors, wrote Focus. The Kolner Stadtanzeiger pointed to several acts of violence and assaults that contradicted the professors theses. A wave of outrage directed at Baberowski broke out on Twitter and the Kolner Express referred to the fact that the professor had already spoken out to relativize Hitler in 2014.
Bitter divisions within the ruling Conservatives over Europe reached breaking point over the weekend. A number of leading Tory euro-sceptics supporting the campaign to leave the EU in the June 23 referendum on UK membership made unprecedented attacks on Prime Minister David Cameron.

On Sunday, MP Nadine Dorries, speaking to ITVs Peston on Sunday, said she wanted Cameron to step down as party leader as he lied profoundly during the referendum campaign. This was really at the heart of why Conservative MPs have been so angered. There are many issues about which David Cameron has told outright lies and the trust because of that has gone in both him and [Chancellor] George Osborne.

Under Tory rules, in order to trigger a no confidence vote in a party leader, 50 MPs have to write letters to the chairman of the Conservative Partys backbench 1922 committee. Dorries declared, My letters already in. If the Remain camp wins by a large majority, lets say 60:40, then David Cameron might just survive. But if Remain win by a narrow majority or if Leaveas I certainly hope, I thinkwill win, hes toast within days.

Dorries was backed by another backbench MP, Andrew Bridgen, who told BBCs Radio 5 Live, Whether he wins or loses this referendum, David Cameron is probably finished as party leader. If the country votes to leave the EU, he shouldand probably willchoose to resign.

Cameron had infuriated Conservative colleagues so much that if the result is a vote for Remain, he will almost certainly face a vote of no confidence.

Bridgen had not yet sent a letter to the 1922 Committee but warned, There will easily be 50 MPs who will write letters  We will have to have a new leader and he or she will need to go to the country to get a fresh mandate and a bigger majority. We could be looking at a general election before  the autumn.

On Monday, Bill Cash, chair of parliaments European Scrutiny committee, said in an interview with the euro-sceptic Daily Telegraph that the Remain campaign have been engaged in monumentally misleading propaganda before warning they only had a very, very short time in which to correct all this.

He added, I am certainly considering it [a letter to the 1922 Committee]  My

powerful warning to them is get your act together, make sure that you put voters first and the country first.

Sir Gerald Howarth, a former defence minister under Cameron, said, Either they [Remain] change the tone of their campaign to recognise the profound and deep-seated patriotism that we feel or they will reap the whirlwind.

The Sun cited an unnamed Tory MP who said Camerons opponents wanted to stab the PM [prime minister] in the front so they can see the expression on his face.

A letter was issued to Cameron by Cabinet Minister Michael Gove and former London Mayor Boris Johnson, both leadership contenders, stressing that the prime minister had failed to meet his manifesto commitment to reduce net migration to the UK. Gisela Stuart, the Labour MP and co-chairman of the official Vote Leave campaign, also signed. This was in reference to last weeks figures showing net migration to Britain stood at 330,000 last year.

Seeking to whip up hysteria among the most anti-immigrant layers within the parliamentary party and wider Tory base, the letter stated, Last year 270,000 people came to this country from the EU. Net migration overall was 184,000. That means we are adding a population the size of Oxford to the UK every year just from EU migration. This puts particular strain on public services.

Last week, the Leave campaign acknowledged that the remainder of their campaign would be exclusively centred on the issue of immigration. The letter underscored this, reading, We are particularly concerned about the impact of free movement in the future on public services. Increases in school class sizes and National Health Service waiting lists would be inevitable if we dont tackle free movement of EU citizens coming from Southern Europe to escape unemployment and austerity.

A Leave vote was necessary in order to ensure that the public can vote for those who determine Britains immigration policy.

While those who have openly called for the removal of Cameron are confined to a few backbenchers, the party is split almost down the middle. According to the Daily Mail, [O]ne MP said he believed at least 20 letters had been sent to the Tory 1922 backbench committee calling for a no-confidence vote in the Prime Minister.

Almost half the parliamentary party are committed to the Leave campaign. Of 330 Tory MPs, 142 have declared for Leave, while a majority, 172, support Remain. Sixteen MPs have not yet declared. To remove Cameron, assuming 50 MPs signed a letter for a vote of confidence, it would take 165 MPs to oppose him remaining leader. However, as one senior well-placed Tory MP said to the Times, with a vote of confidence in Cameron, The intention would be to wound and in so doing to hasten his exit.

With the referendum only three weeks away, several Tory supporting newspapers expressed opposition to efforts to remove Cameron that could lead to new elections. On Sunday, the Telegraph in an editorial, Conservatives should focus on the referendum campaign, not plot against David Cameron, commented, The Conservative capacity for self-harm over the issue of Europe should never be underestimated. Describing the anti-EU faction, it stated, Many of those who seem keen to see the Prime Minister depart were hostile to his leadership long before the referendum.

The Times, owned by billionaire oligarch Rupert Murdoch, headlined a front-page article, I dare you to depose me, Cameron tells rebels.

The piece reported, Cameron is to reject demands from Tory rebels that he should set a date for his departure from No 10. Summing up the crisis it noted, The partys civil war threatens to effectively put his leadership on the ballot paper on June 23.

Murdochs Sun tabloid, said that Sunday was supposed to be the day that the Leave campaign rammed home their vital message on immigration. Instead a series of bizarre outbursts by egomaniac Tory backbenchers blew the Out camp off course yesterday and allowed the story to become one of Conservative Party splits.

It continued, The Brexit camp needs to focus on confronting the scare stories and falsehoods of the Remainers and not be distracted from holding the PMs feet to the fire over what EU membership means for Britains out-of-control immigration numbers.

On Monday, Cameron and the opposition Labour Party closed ranks. The Tories are reliant on Labour and its trade union backers to deliver the votes of millions of their members and supporters for Remain. Cameron spoke alongside Sadiq Khan, Labours newly elected Mayor of London. Remain has brought together this extraordinary coalition Labour, Liberal, Conservative, Green, business, trade union, NGOall together knowing this is the right answer, he said.

Remain are in no way a progressive force in comparison with Leave. They represent the dominant sections of the ruling elite who view membership of the EU as in the best interests of British capital. Khan said the economic case for remaining was crystal clear, while stressing, There is a patriotic case as well. Cameron and Khan launched a five-point guarantee card, pledging Remain would secure full access to the EUs single market, protect workers rights, keep the European Arrest Warrant system, keep a special status in Europe for the UK, and ensure stability.
The California primary on June 7 is the last major vote before the conventions for Democrats and Republicans in July. The Republican campaign is effectively decided by the withdrawal of every candidate but Donald Trump. However, the latest polls put the Democratic contenders Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders tied for the state. If Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, fails to win the state it would intensify the crisis of her campaign, which has also been hit by the deepening scandal over her use of a private email server while Secretary of State.

At stake next week are the 475 delegates from California, 126 from New Jersey and 113 combined from New Mexico, Montana, South Dakota and North Dakota. The very last primary contest will be in Washington, DC on June 14. Sanders is expected to win the smaller four states, while Clinton is favored to take New Jersey. A poll by Public Policy Priorities last week showed the California race in a dead heat, with Clintons lead over Sanders within the margin of error.

Because these states assign delegates proportionally, neither candidate can gain enough delegates to significantly shift the current standings. Clinton leads Sanders in pledged delegates (those elected at state primaries) 1,769 to 1,499, but she leads 541 to 43 in party appointed super-delegates who are free to change their vote through the convention.

If Sanders wins California he will pull somewhat closer to Clinton in pledged delegates, but more importantly it will have demonstrated Clintons deep unpopularity. If she becomes the Democratic candidate she will be the second most unpopular candidate for either party since those statistics have been measured. A full 55 percent of Americans view her unfavorably. The only candidate less popular is Donald Trump.

If Clinton only wins New Jersey on June 7, she will have lost 16 of the last 23 states to Sanders, the worst showing of any victorious candidate, presuming that she become the nominee.

Clinton has been backed by several leading California Democrats, particularly senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, while Governor Jerry Brown has remained neutral.

Feinstein has effectively called on Sanders to drop out of the race, saying, He ought to be able to read the signposts as well as anybody else, and if he did that, he would know that its all but over. She said the nation would be better off if he were to consider putting his campaign in the very real perspective that its in.

For her part, Boxer played a central role in the provocation around the Nevada caucus, where state Democrats called in Sheriffs deputies to shut down the state Democratic convention to preserve a Clinton victory. Boxer claimed that Sanders supporters reacted violently: It was a scary situation. It was frightening. I was on the stage. People were six feet away from me. If I didnt have a lot of security, I dont know what would have happened.

Initial claims of chairs being thrown, arrests and violent action by Sanders supporters were later proven false. Sanders has since defended Boxer, praising her role on the Senate environmental committee.

California is dominated by the Democratic Party, which controls nearly every state office. A failure by the preferred candidate of the party apparatus would be a major blow, particularly given the deep unpopularity of Clinton nationally.

The role of the Sanders campaign is to convince workers and youth that they should place their hopes in the same Democratic Party that has overseen the massive social cuts and an immense growth in inequality under Obama. I think that Democrats do well when the voter turnout is high, said Sanders in an interview at the beginning of the month on NPRs Morning Edition. Republicans lose when the voter turnout is high. So Im going to do everything I can to stimulate political discourse in this countryget young people, working people involved in the political process.

In recent days he has emphasized his commitment to backing Clinton if she is nominated.

Voters in the California Democratic Party primaries have to be registered as Democrats. Between mid-March and mid-May, according to California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, there was an increase of 220,000 voters who registered as Democrats, bringing the state total up to 7.7 million. In comparison, there were only 70,000 additional registrations for the Republican Party, for a total of 4.8 million.

Sanders has been recognized for his service by some of the same Democratic officials who want him to drop out of the race.

Bernies entry in the race I think was very helpful, because he was able to communicate to the young people who were longing to hear their grievances addressed, Sen. Boxer said in an interview with SiriusXMs Julie Mason. He connected with a whole group of voters who dont ordinarily vote.

While supporting his efforts to bring in voters for the party establishment, leading Democrats are concerned with his plan to fight the nomination through to the convention. They are afraid that the social layers he mobilizes with the slogan of political revolution against the billionaire class, are not going to follow his lead in endorsing a Clinton candidacy.

The support for Sanders in California is a reflection of the same social crisis that has been motivating his supporters throughout the country. The cost of living has skyrocketed in the state, while wages have declined since the 2008 crash. Median home prices in the state are over double the national average, and rental prices are 50 percent higher. A third of California families struggle every month to meet basic needs, according to a report by United Ways of California. The Democratic administration of Governor Brown has slashed pensions, cut education funding and forced through concessions contracts on public employees.

Under these conditions, leading Democrats are worried that a contested convention will get out of hand. In the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the Democratic mayor unleashed police to violently disperse antiwar protesters and the party is concerned that Sanders will not be able to line his supporters up behind the nominee and they will need to publicly do that again.

It worries me a great deal, Feinstein told CNNs Manu Raju about Sanders plan to contest the convention. You know, I dont want to go back to the 68 convention, because I worry about what it does to the electorate as a wholeand [Sanders] should, too.
An article last week in the British-based Guardian reported that the Chinese military is poised to send submarines armed with nuclear missiles into the Pacific Ocean for the first time, arguing that new US weapons systems have so undermined Beijings existing deterrent force that it has been left with no alternative.

While the timing is uncertain, the move ups the ante in an intensifying nuclear arms race between the US and China that heightens the risk of war. Since coming to office, the Obama administration has engaged in a military build-up and strengthening of alliances throughout Asia in preparation for war with China. It has committed more than $1 trillion over 30 years to the upgrading and expansion of the US nuclear arsenal and delivery systems.

The Chinese regime has responded by taking measures to maintain its ability to launch a reprisal in the event of a US nuclear attack on its military apparatus, cities and leadership. The decision to send nuclear-armed nuclear submarines (SSBNs) on patrol in the Pacific Ocean is the latest step in Beijings efforts to protect its relatively small nuclear forceestimated at 260 warheads, as compared to 7,000 for the US.

According to the Guardian, Chinese military officials insist that such patrols are inevitable following the announcement by the US and South Korea in March to deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-ballistic missile system to the Korean Peninsula. While Washingtons pretext is the supposed threat posed by North Korea, the THAAD deployment is part of the US anti-missile system build-up in North East Asia aimed against China.

There is nothing defensive about the Pentagons anti-ballistic missile installations, which are an integral component of its strategy for fighting a nuclear war against China. Unlike Beijing, Washington has never renounced a nuclear first strikethat is, being the first side in a war to unleash nuclear weapons. The Pentagons plan is to seek to obliterate the entire Chinese nuclear arsenal in a first strike, rendering China incapable of retaliating. The relatively small number of THAAD interceptors could not counter a Chinese first strike and only have significance as the means of destroying stray Chinese missiles that escaped the initial American onslaught.

In other words, the US is no longer seeking to maintain a balance of terrorthe strategy known during the Cold War as Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)but is aiming to achieve nuclear primacy, which means the use of nuclear weapons to render a rival completely defenceless against further attacks.

An article in the prestigious US-based Foreign Affairs magazine a decade ago entitled The Rise of US Nuclear Primacy provoked furious denials by the Pentagon and the White House. Nevertheless, behind a phony campaign of championing nuclear disarmament, the US has been striving to achieve nuclear primacy over any potential rivalespecially Russia and China.

The article focussed primarily on Russia, which has a far more extensive and sophisticated nuclear force. Nevertheless, its analysis of Chinese nuclear capabilities goes a long way to explaining Chinas moves to ensure that its nuclear weapons would not be completely wiped out in a US attack. It stated:

Chinas nuclear arsenal is even more vulnerable to a US attack [than Russias]. A US first strike could succeed whether it was launched as a surprise or in the midst of a crisis during a Chinese alert. China has a limited strategic nuclear arsenal. The Peoples Liberation Army currently possesses no modern SSBNs or long-range bombers. Its naval arm used to have two ballistic missile submarines, but one sank, and the other, which had such poor capabilities that it never left Chinese waters, is no longer operational.

Chinas medium-range bomber force is similarly unimpressive: the bombers are obsolete and vulnerable to attack. According to unclassified US government assessments, Chinas entire intercontinental nuclear arsenal consists of 18 stationary single-warhead ICBMs. These are not ready to launch on warning: their warheads are kept in storage and the missiles themselves are unfueled. (Chinas ICBMs use liquid fuel, which corrodes the missiles after 24 hours. Fuelling them is estimated to take two hours.) The lack of an advanced early warning system adds to the vulnerability of the ICBMs. It appears that China would have no warning at all of a US submarine-launched missile attack or a strike using hundreds of stealthy nuclear-armed cruise missiles.

Over the past decade, the Chinese military has taken strenuous steps to remedy these major deficiencies. It has built solid-fuel missiles, constructed four Jin-class nuclear ballistic missile submarines, reportedly developed a mobile rail-mounted missile, improved its early warning systems and taken other counter measures. However, Chinas arsenal remains small and vulnerable and many of the technologies are generations behind those of the United States.

Wu Riqiang, a Chinese academic from Renmin University in Beijing, told the Guardian that Chinas Jin or Type 094 nuclear submarines were too noisy and easily located by US attack subs, and would never get to the mid-Pacific to enable them to hit continental America. My argument is that because of the high noise level of the Type 094 and Chinas lack of experience of running a SSBN fleet, China cannot and should not put 094 in deterrent patrol in the near future, he said.

The concern in the Pentagon about Chinas nuclear submarines is one of the real reasons behind its freedom of navigation provocations in the South China Sea. The US is determined to maintain its free access to these waters, which are directly adjacent to Hainan Island, where the Chinese submarine fleet is based. The Pentagon is determined to be able to track the movements of Chinas nuclear submarines and thus have the ability to destroy them before they reach the open waters of the Pacific.

US nuclear supremacy poses difficult dilemmas for the Chinese leadership, which up until now has been reluctant to relinquish tight control over its nuclear arsenal, and has therefore stored warheads and missiles separately. By arming nuclear submarines, warheads and missiles would be stored on board, posing the question: would the commander be authorised to launch in the event of a US decapitation strike on the Chinese leadership in Beijing?

While the Chinese nuclear posture is largely defensive, the scramble to build a nuclear arsenal is nevertheless reactionary and dangerous. The Chinese leadership defends the interests of a tiny super-rich oligarchy and is organically incapable of making any appeal to workers in the United States or internationally. Its whipping up of Chinese nationalism and militarism further divides the international working class, the only social force capable of halting the slide toward a nuclear holocaust.

The nuclear arms race is compounding the increasingly volatile and unpredictable situation in Asia. As American academic Jeffrey Lewis, from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, told the Guardian: The law of unintended consequences is in danger of taking the upper hand. The two sides may thus be stumbling blindly into severe crisis, instability and growing competition by China with respect to strategic forces. A competition between unevenly matched forces is inherently unstable.

In its own cautious way, Lewiss comment is another warning of the rising risks of a nuclear war.
Donald Trump went on the offensive against the US media Tuesday, slamming coverage of $6 million he claimed to raise for veterans, branding the political press "dishonest" and one journalist "a sleaze."

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee, who has a thin skin when it comes to perceived slights in the media, slammed the press for questioning his claim to have raised $6 million on one night in Iowa in January.

The former reality TV star annihilated 16 rivals in the race to sew up the Republican nomination for the White House, and is trailing Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton by just a few percentage points in recent polls.

Last January, he skipped a Republican debate hosted by Fox News in a row over the television channel's perceived bias and instead hosted a fundraising event for veterans' charities.

Trump said Tuesday that he had raised $5.6 million, of which every penny had been donated to veteran charities, and that he expected additional donations to tip the figure over the $6 million mark.

But the real estate tycoon said the media coverage seemed intent on finding fault in actions he said were entirely altruistic.

"The press should be ashamed," he said. "I have never received such bad publicity for doing such a good job," Trump hectored.

"I think the political press is among the most dishonest people that I have ever met," he added, before pointing to Tom Llamas, who covers the Republican race for ABC News.

"You're a sleaze because you know the facts and you know the facts well."

Llamas took to twitter in response. "Trump just called me a 'sleaze.' Should be an interesting week," he wrote.

The candidate called Bill Kristol, editor of neoconservative magazine "The Weekly Standard" and a fierce critic of the Republican nominee "a loser."

"I've won some and I've lost some, but one thing I've always tried not to be is a roaring jackass," wrote Kristol on Twitter in response.

Trump batted aside questions on whether he needed a thicker skin to run for the presidency.

"I think it's bothersome," he insisted. "I have given a lot of money... and I think when the press portrays it differently, the press is being very dishonest, so I don't like that."

Al Baldasaro, a retired Marine and Republican representative in New Hampshire's state house of representatives, leapt to Trump's defense dressed in a suit and Trump campaign trucker hat.

"I think the liberal media, and I have been dealing with you a long time, need to get your head out of your butt, focus on the real issues," he said.

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Under Narendra Modi and his two-year-old Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, India is rapidly being transformed into a frontline state in US imperialisms military-strategic offensive against China.

Building on the global strategic partnership that the previous Congress Party-led government forged with Washington, the BJP regime has integrated India ever more completely into the Obama administrations Pivot to Asiathat is, its drive to strategically isolate, encircle and prepare to wage war on China. New Delhi regularly parrots Washingtons provocative stance on the South China Sea dispute; has dramatically expanded bi-lateral and tri-lateral military-strategic cooperation with the US principal imperialist allies in the Indo-Pacific, Japan and Australia; and is joining forces with the Pentagon to co-develop advanced weapons systems.

Until last month, Indias principal Stalinist party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), had said little about the BJP governments eager embrace of Washington and the grave danger it poses to the workers and toilers of South Asia and the world.

However, the April 12 announcement that the Modi government has agreed in principle to allowing the Pentagon to use Indian military bases and ports for refueling, rest, and resupply (including the forward positioning of materials), prompted the CPM Politburo to issue a statement, No bases for US Armed Forces. The statement denounced the soon to be finalized Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) and two related agreements that Washington is pressing New Delhi to sign, saying they will convert India into a full-fledged military ally of the Unites States and urged all political parties and patriotic citizens to uphold the strategic autonomy of the country. Soon after, the CPMs former general secretary, Prakash Karat, elaborated on the partys stance in an article titled Logistics Agreement: Surrender to US, Betrayal of Sovereignty.

The CPMs opposition to the LEMOA is a sham and a political trap that is being perpetrated by a party that for decades has functioned as an integral part of the Indian political establishment.

The CPM has itself supported and facilitated the Indian bourgeoisies pursuit of an ever closer partnership with US imperialism.

In so far as it opposes the LEMOA and a formal military-security alliance with Washington, it does so from the standpoint of the national interests of the Indian bourgeoisie, not the class interests of the Indian and international working class and the struggle against world imperialism.

As with the BJPs promotion of communalism and imposition of socially incendiary pro-market reforms, the Stalinists are invoking the LEMOA as a pretext for advocating the ever more complete subordination of the working class to the Indian bourgeoisie, its parties, and state.

The CPM systematically covers up the immense dangers arising from USs imperialisms reckless drive for global hegemony. It claims that the US can be constrained and peace secured by promoting a mutli-polar world, i.e. by workers placing their faith in the rival ruling elites of the other imperialist and great powers, including the venal and rapacious Indian bourgeoisie.

The Stalinists role in facilitating an Indo-US partnership

Over the past quarter century, the CPM and its Left Front have played a pivotal rule in suppressing working class opposition to the bourgeoisies drive to make India a cheap labor haven for world capital. They have sustained in office a succession of right-wing Indian governments, most of them Congress Party-led, while implementing what they themselves characterize as pro-investor policies in West Bengal and the other states where they have formed the government.

Similarly, they have aided and abetted the Indian bourgeoisies pursuit of ever closer ties with Washington. To mention only some of the most salient developments: The Stalinists propped up the Narasimha Rao Congress Party government of the early 1990s that initiated both the turn to neo-liberal restructuring and to Washington. In 2001 they joined with the rest of the Indian elite in welcoming the US invasion of Afghanistan and only withdrew their support for the US occupation years later, long after the US had gone on to rape Iraq.

For four years, from May 2004 through June 2008, the CPM and its Left Front were far and away the most important coalition partner of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, although the Stalinists declined an offer of cabinet positions, because they calculated that they could better contain working class opposition by supporting the government from the outside. When in quick succession in June-July 2005, India signed a 10-year Defense Framework Agreement with Washington that paved the way for a vast expansion of Indo-US military ties and Indian President Manmohan Singh and US President George W. Bush announced an Indo-US global partnership, the Stalinists uttered a few mealy-mouthed criticisms, but continued to prop up the government.

Only in July 2008, did they withdraw their support for the UPA government. Or, to put it more accurately, only in July 2008 did the Congress decide its alliance with the Stalinists had served its purpose and effectively kick them out of the government by concluding a nuclear accord with the US over their oft-repeated objections.

Much of the CPM leadership wanted to fudge their opposition to the nuclear accordwhich was touted in both Washington and New Delhi as proof of the strength and viability of the burgeoning Indo-US strategic allianceand continue to support the Congress-led government. Last year the current CPM General Secretary, Sitaram Yechury, recanted the CPMs decision to withdraw support for the Congress-led UPA over the nuclear deal, claiming that the issue was too divorced from the life of ordinary Indians for the masses to understand. This was not the issue (to withdraw support), Yechury told the Press Trust of India. We could not make it a peoples issue  like price rise.

Yechurys comments only underscore the hollow character of the Stalinists occasional rhetorical tirades against imperialism. For them, opposition to imperialism is not a bedrock principle, but a tactical pose.

The reality is in 2008, in India as around the world, there was mass opposition to the crimes of US imperialism in Afghanistan and Iraq. An exposure of the US plans to harness India to its strategic agenda, pointing to both the immediate pressure it was exerting on New Delhi to support its bullying of Iran and its longer term plans to confront China, would have galvanized working people. But the Stalinists would not and could not mount such a political campaign. To do so would have required biting the hand that feeds them. It would have required exposing the great power ambitions of the Indian bourgeoisie and negated the efforts of the West Bengal and other CPM-led governments to woo US and other western investment.

Phony anti-imperialism and support for Indias great-power ambitions

Today, the CPMs opposition to the LEMOA is no less two-faced. While they claim to oppose the basing agreement, the Stalinists are in electoral alliances with a host of parties that support it. Moreover, they have repeatedly made clear that their public pronouncements opposing a formal Indo-US military alliance will not stand in the way of their continuing to work with parties committed to Indias further integration into the US strategic agenda. So well known is the pro-Washington tilt of the cabal of regionalist and casteist parties with whom the Stalinists have allied time and again over the past three decades and whom they continue to promote as democratic and secular allies of the working class, Karat was obliged to make reference to it in his article. It is an unfortunate fact, writes Karat, these parties have little awareness about the serious consequences of  such (a) military and strategic alliance with the US. They need to wake up.

In a country that was under British rule less than seven decades ago and where the struggle for self-rule has been incorporated into the ruling elites nationalist ideology, the Stalinists still find it useful to occasionally make references to imperialism. However, the term figures neither in the CPM Politburo statement nor in Karats article.

This omission only serves to underline that the Stalinists are addressing their appeals to oppose the LEMOA not to the working class, but to the bourgeois political establishment and especially its traditional party of government, the Congress Party.

For the Stalinists, every crime of the BJP government has become a fresh argument for chaining the working class to the Congress. In the name of defending democracy, the CPM forged its first-ever explicit electoral alliance with the Congress for the just concluded West Bengal state elections and there is now open discussion about the possibility of forming a national alliance with the party that did most of the heavy lifting in both implementing the Indian bourgeoisies neo-liberal agenda and forging its alliance with Washington.

As part of the preparation for still closer cooperation with the Congress, an article in the April 17 Peoples Democracy praised the previous Congress-led government for consciously following non-antagonism towards Chinathis of a government that forged a global strategic partnership with US imperialism in 2005 knowing full well that Washingtons aim was to harness New Delhi to its drive to thwart Chinas rise.

In calling on all political parties and patriotic citizens to uphold Indias national sovereignty and strategic autonomy the CPM is advancing an alternate foreign policy strategy for the Indian bourgeoisie as it pursues its drive to make India a rival cheap labor supply-chain hub to China and a world power. By eschewing a formal military alliance with the US, the Indian bourgeoisie can preserve greater freedom of action on the world stage, or so goes the Stalinists argument.

The CPM, it must be emphasized, has supported the rapid expansion of Indias military initiated by the first BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition government and continued by every subsequent government. This expansion is critical to the ambitions of the Indian bourgeoisie to establish itself as the hegemon of South Asia, a dominant force in the Indian Ocean, and a world power. It has also been strongly supported by Washington, including through numerous weapons deals, as it corresponds with the Pentagons plans to build up India as a military-strategic counterweight and rival to China.

Since 2005, Indias military budget has tripled from US $17 billion to US $51 billion, even as governments have systematically slashed the countrys meager social expenditure. And all the while the CPM has demonstrated its consent, by voicing no opposition to Indias military buildup, let alone mounting any campaign to expose the predatory ambitions of the Indian bourgeoisie.

The Stalinists have a long history of supporting New Delhis foreign intrigues. In1987, the CPM and its allies backed the Indian military intervention in the Sri Lankan civil war to disarm the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and uphold the crumbling Colombo government. More recently, the Stalinists welcomed the coming to power of Maithripala Sirisena as Sri Lankas president as the result of a US-led, Indian-supported regime-change operation against Mahinda Rajapakse, whom they deemed too close to Beijing.

At times the Stalinists have themselves played an active role in these intrigues. In 2008 CPM General Secretary Yechury served as a quasi-official emissary of the Indian government, repeatedly meeting with Maoist leaders in Nepal in an ultimately successful bid to convince them to abandon their insurgency and help stabilize capitalist rule in the Himalayan state.

In theoretical terms the CPM Stalinists seek to justify their support for the Indian state by claiming that it is progressive as it is the incarnation of the mass anti-imperialist struggle that convulsed South Asia in the first half of the 20th century.

This is a travesty. The Indian state and the nation-state system in South Asia as a whole are the product of the suppression of the anti-imperialist upsurge. Fearing the emergence of the working class as an independent force, Gandhi, Nehru and the bourgeois Congress made a deal with the British to take over the colonial state apparatus and partition the subcontinent into a Hindu India and a Muslim Pakistan.

The reactionary, communalized geopolitical conflict between India and Pakistan to which Partition gave rise has served as a means for imperialism to continue to dominate the region. Today, as a result of the US drive to harness India to its anti-China strategy and the Indian bourgeoisies reckless attempt to get a leg up by serving as Washingtons satraps, the Indo-Pakistan conflict is becoming increasingly entangled with the conflict between US imperialism and China adding to each an explosive new dimension.

Updating Lenin and downplaying the war danger

Rather than alerting the working class and toilers to the acute dangers arising from the US war drive and the Indian bourgeoisies strategic partnership with Washington, the Stalinists systematically downplay them.

Under conditions where the US is courting confrontation in the South China Sea and has publicly revealed plans for a massive bombardment of China from the sea and sky (Air-Sea Battle) and to blockade China by seizing Indian Ocean choke-points, Karat in his article studiously avoids any mention of imperialism or of war. According to this CPM Politburo member and former party general secretary, the US aim, including in pressing India to join it, Japan and Australia in a NATO-style alliance, is to contain China. The LEMOA, declares Karat, is a security and military alliance which serves the US goal to contain China.

In reality, Washingtons goal is to subjugate China, which it considers an unacceptable threat to its global dominance, through a reckless strategy of escalating diplomatic, economic, and military pressure. This includes patronizing ethnic-nationalist separatist movements within China, as underscored by the democracy in China conference held in Dharmasala in late April at which US government representatives rubbed shoulders with Tibetan and Uighur separatists. The logic of this offensive, as the Pentagons own war plans frankly state, is all-out war on China, including with nuclear weapons.

US imperialisms turn to militarism is an attempt to offset the dramatic erosion of its economic dominance, which had underpinned the post-World War II restabilization of world capitalism.

Even as it has pursued confrontation with China, the Obama administration has made Russia the target of a similar campaign of military pressure and threats, and expanded the US war in the Middle East, the worlds most important oil exporting region.

The other imperialist powers are following suit. Japan and Germany are rapidly rearming and have moved to eliminate all remaining political and constitutional restrictions on their waging overseas wars.

The CPM is almost completely silent on these developments, which demonstrate the criminality of its claims that imperialism can be constrained through the promotion of a multi-polar order, including supporting the Indian bourgeoisies push for a larger role in international institutions like the UN.

In a 2011 lecture, Marxism in the 21st Century: Alternative to Neoliberal Capitalism and Imperialism, Karat rejected Lenins analysis that, absent socialist revolution, world war is the inevitable consequence of imperialism, of the struggle of rival nationally-based capitalist cliques for markets and resources. Claiming Lenin needs to be updated, Karat said, The way things have changed since Lenins time can be seen in the development of international finance capital, which, while originating in the advanced capitalist nations is no longer national in its form. Rivalries between imperialist nation states have subdued under the hegemony of international finance capital.

In fact, the qualitative deepening of the integration of the world economy over the past four decades has enormously intensified the fundamental contradictions of world capitalismbetween the nation-state system and global economy and between private ownership and socialized production.

Far from globalization attenuating inter-imperialist and great-power rivalry, it is giving rise to a resurgence of imperialist violence that threatens humanity with an even more horrific conflagration than the two imperialist world wars of the last century.

Speaking at the International Committee of the Fourth Internationals online rally on the occasion of May Day 2016, Wije Dias, general secretary of the Socialist Equality Party of Sri Lanka, urged the workers and toilers of the Indian subcontinent to assume, alongside their class brethren around the world, a frontline role in the struggle against imperialist war.

A key element in the struggle to develop a revolutionary opposition to imperialist war is the exposure of the Stalinist CPM as a prop of the Indian bourgeoisie, which is itself an agency of world imperialism, and the most vociferous opponent of the independent political mobilization of the working class
As Barack Obama became the first US president to visit Hiroshima last Friday, Korean survivors of the 1945 atomic bombing of the city, who have long felt neglected by Japan, the US and South Korea, raised their concerns about the trip.

Obama offered no apology for the US decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasakiterrible war crimes that killed an estimated 220,000 people in the immediate explosions. The US did not drop the bombs to speed up the end of World War II, but to send a message to the world, especially the former Soviet Union, that it would not hesitate to use such weapons again to maintain its global hegemony.

While no official investigation has been conducted by South Korea or Japan, an estimated 50,000 Koreans were killed in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts, with an additional 20,000 suffering from the after-effects. There are 2,580 registered Korean survivors still alive today. Many returned to their home country, although others continue to live in Japan.

Many of the Koreans in the two cities had been mobilised as slave labor. Approximately 70 percent of the victims came from Hapcheon County, South Gyeongsang Province. The survivors, as well as their children, suffered the effects of radiation exposure, discrimination and poverty. Little has been done to address their needs as the South Korean government justified the bombings as a necessity and avoided any criticism of the US. The Hapcheon Welfare Center for Atomic Bomb Victims, opened in 1996, is the only group home for survivors in South Korea.

The South Korean government obfuscates the role of US imperialism, then and now. A Foreign Ministry official told Yonhap News Agency on May 11 after the announcement of Obamas plans: We understand that it was arranged under President Obamas vision for peace and safety through a world free of nuclear weapons. In reality, Obamas refusal to offer an apology is a sign that the US is prepared to use nuclear weapons again in new wars.

Anger among Korean survivors toward Japan, the US and South Korea is still widespread. Many fear that Obamas visit will mark a definitive end to the issue, leaving victims without their demands met and with their needs ignored.

The (South Korean) National Assembly and government are rotten to the core, said survivor Kim Do-sik, 81, who lives at the group home in Hapcheon. Tens of thousands of Koreans were either killed when the atomic bomb hit or were beggared and barely returned to Korea alive. But for the past 70 years, the government has neither asked the US and Japan for an apology nor asked for compensation.

Others were concerned that Obamas visit will be used by the right-wing Japanese government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to continue its campaign to deny Japanese war crimes, such as the Rape of Nanjing and the use of comfort womenyoung women exploited as sex slaves by the Japanese military during World War II.

In a letter to Obama, the Association of Korean Atomic Bomb Victims stated: We hope that your visit to Hiroshima will not be used to further the Abe governments intention of portraying Japan merely as a victim. Successive Japanese governments have used the American war crimes to justify their own atrocities.

The South Korean governments decision to ignore the survivors ultimately covers up Washingtons criminal role in the Pacific War with Japan. The United States was not an innocent bystander, dragged into the conflict by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The US fought the war to establish its hegemony over the Asia-Pacific region, which included the establishment of the South Korean police-state.

At the same time, the South Korean bourgeoisie regularly exploits the issue of the comfort women to whip up anti-Japanese sentiment to distract the public from declining economic conditions and attacks on democratic rights. Japanese war crimes in general are blamed on an evil and foreign force bent on destroying the Korean way of life. In reality, all the crimes during that period, including the dropping of the atomic bombs, were the responsibility of the ruling classes of the two imperialist powersJapan and the United States.

On the Korean Peninsula, the US and its allies fought a brutal war, destroying the lives of millions, to protect the South Korean dictatorship and maintain its foothold from which to threaten the former Soviet Union and China. The South Korean state continues to play a large role in Washingtons pivot to Asia, which is aimed at militarily encircling and preparing for war against China.

South Koreas refusal to acknowledge Korean atomic bomb victims is also bound up with the role of Korean collaborators in Japans colonial rule. They make up a significant portion of the South Korean ruling class and include the father of current President Park Geun-hye, the brutal dictator Park Chung-hee, who controlled South Korea from 1961 to 1979. Park served as a lieutenant in Japans Kwantung army, which was tasked with hunting down Korean partisans fighting the Japanese.
On Thursday, May 19 nearly 5,000 New York area Macys employees, including those at the historic Herald Square store in Manhattan, voted to go on strike on June 15, when the current contract extension under which they are working runs out. Their contract officially expired on May 1.

The main issues are health care, pay, and work schedules according to a statement released by Local 1-S of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). The company is reportedly seeking to cut retirement benefits and to exclude certain job categories from coverage under the new contract.

One Macys sales employee who spoke with a WSWS reporter at the Herald Square store stated that the company is proposing to shift the cleaning of the store after hours to her department in order to reduce its cleaning staff.

For its part, a Macys spokesperson commented that, Calls to strike by the union are an expected and standard part of the negotiation process." This cynical statement speaks to the choreographed collaboration between the trade unions and employers in seeking to impose concessions on workers.

On the day after the vote, RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum stated, The company cannot afford to undermine its workforce at a time when it faces greater competition from online retailers like Amazon. This statement seeks to obscure the reality that, at a time when the economic crisis which erupted in 2008 continues to worsen around the world, corporations across the board, from auto to aerospace to telecommunications to retail, want to wrest concession after concession from their workers. The statement is also intended to present a false image to workers that the union is fighting for their interests.

The pattern of betrayals by the unions, including the RWDSU, is clear.

In June 2011, a strike at Macys in New York was averted at the last minute as the union agreed to a contract with scant wage increases which did not keep pace with the rapid rise in the cost of living in the already expensive metropolitan area. At the time, the agreement was hailed by the union president as a solid contract. The last time Macys workers in New York went on strike was in 1972.

Macys workers in San Francisco went on strike in 2004 but the union called off the strike after only one day. Several picketers were arrested for blocking the front door to the Macys in Union Square.

In recent years, retail businesses have been suffering substantial declines in revenue as workers purchasing power continues to contract. These companies are coming under tremendous pressure from Wall Street investors to savagely attack workers jobs, wages and benefits.

This trend is accelerating, with a number of companies either announcing large-scale store closings or going out of business altogether. This is resulting in mass layoffs and a drive to squeeze ever greater profits from the remaining employees under the threat that they could lose their jobs.

As is typical in the retail industry, the pay for Macys New York employees is abysmal, especially given the extraordinarily high cost of living in city. According to the website Glassdoor, the average hourly wages of a range of sales associate titles at Macys stores in the New York City area are approximately $9.00 per hour and benefits are limited. This is after the RWDSUs 2011 solid contract.

Despite this, the business and corporate elites continue to reap lavish rewards. Last year, Macys chief executive, Terry Lundgren, received total compensation of $11.7 million, including $1.6 million in base salary and a range of perks.

Under these circumstances, it is a pernicious lie for union heads to claim that isolated struggles can defend, let alone advance workers interests. Workers can place absolutely no confidence in their union leadership, which will do everything in its power to impose another concessions-laden contract as quickly as possible, as is now being done by the CWA and IBEW in the Verizon strike.

There is a resurgence of the class struggle around the world, but at every turn unions and political leaders are attempting to suppress this development. Workers must break free from these organizations, form their own rank-and-file workplace committees and fight for a socialist program that unites workers internationally in a common struggle against the capitalist system.
We came, we saw, he died, exclaimed Hillary Clinton to a television reporter on October 20, 2011. The then-secretary of state was cackling in uncontrollable glee after being shown a gruesome video of the torture and murder of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Nearly five years later, Clinton is the Democratic presidential frontrunner, and the dying continues: in Libya, Syria, Iraq and in the Mediterranean Sea.

With estimates of up to 900 refugees drowning in the Mediterranean, the past week has been the deadliest thus far this year.

Over 8,000 refugees have died attempting to make the dangerous crossing of the Mediterranean to Europe since 2014, the vast majority of them having begun their fatal voyages from the coast of Libya.

Neither Clinton nor her rivals in the race for the US presidency, Democrat Bernie Sanders, the self-described democratic socialist, and Republican Donald Trump, have said a word about this ongoing massacre in the Mediterranean.

There is every reason why it should be a prominent issue in the US election, however.

First and foremost, Washington, the two major capitalist parties and Clinton personally have played decisive roles in unleashing the mayhem that has driven tens of millions from their homes in a desperate flight for their lives.

The toll inflicted by a quarter century of US military interventions, proxy wars and regime-change operations is nothing short of staggering. Every country subjected to these acts of aggression today contributes decisively to the worst global refugee crisis since the Second World War.

In Iraq, the target of the illegal war of aggression in 2003, the deaths inflicted by US intervention total well over a million. The systematic destruction of physical and social infrastructure, together with the pursuit of a deliberate policy of divide and rule led to the bitter sectarian divisions, spawned the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) along with the ongoing civil war that threatens to produce new and terrible massacres in already blood-soaked cities like Fallujah and Mosul.

In Afghanistan, the number directly killed by the US-led war is conservatively estimated at over 100,000, while the continuing conflict has exacerbated the effects of poverty, malnutrition, poor sanitation, lack of access to health care, and environmental degradation, leading to premature deaths of many more, as one recent study found. At least 3 million are now refugees.

In Syria, the war for regime change orchestrated by Washington and its principal regional allies has killed well over a quarter of a million, with more than half of the population displaced and some 4 million living as refugees in four countries alone: Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq. ISIS and similar Al Qaeda-linked Islamist militias have served as proxy forces for the regime-change operation, inflicting terror on the people of Syria, Iraq and beyond.

Also swelling the refugee tide are Africans from countries like Nigeria and Somalia, where US Special Operations troops and drone strikes are being employed in a further extension of the global war on terror.

And Libya itself, where the ill-fated boats embark overcrowded with refugees seeking to reach Europe, remains economically and socially shattered and enmeshed in bloody civil war as a result of the 2011 US-NATO war to topple the government of Muammar Gaddafi. Nearly five years after this war, it has three governments, one of them set up recently with Western support in order to sanctify another military intervention. None of them exert control over a sizable part of the country. The disastrous effects of the criminal war of 2011 are now being invoked by Washington and its NATO allies to justify a further intervention, with US and British Special Forces commandoes already on the ground.

Hillary Clinton was a leading advocate of the US intervention in Libya, just as she was in Syria. In both cases, wars of imperialist plunder and for the imposition of Washingtons hegemony over strategic areas of the globe were promoted under the filthy and hypocritical banner of human rights.

On the phony pretext of protecting Libyan and Syrian civilians, hundreds of thousands have been butchered and millions driven from their homes.

Washingtons human rights propaganda was echoed by a whole coterie of pseudo-left organizations around the globe, from the International Socialist Organization in the US to the New Anti-Capitalist Party in France and the Left Party in Germany. Some went so far as to proclaim these CIA-organized operations as revolutions in their attempt to secure a broader constituency among the privileged layers of the middle class. They too bear criminal responsibility for the present real humanitarian crisis.

None of these historic crimes of US imperialism are the subject of debate in the ongoing US elections, just as a veil of silence has been imposed over the preparations for far greater bloodbaths, leading inexorably toward a Third World War. Once the ballots are cast, it is certain that the global eruption of American militarism will accelerate rapidly.

Moreover, outside of Trumps fascistic and asinine calls to build a wall, there has been no real debate about refugees, which is a vital issue in the US as in Europe. Just as Fortress Europe anti-refugee policies and the whipping up of xenophobia and anti-immigrant chauvinism have contributed to the horrific death toll in the Mediterranean, policies pursued in the US have led to similar results. While the European Unions sealing off of the so-called Balkan route for refugees has diverted them to the far more perilous Mediterranean, the crackdown on the US-Mexican border has sent those attempting to enter the US into more and more dangerous areas of the desert where many die of exposure.

Again, this is a policy embraced by both major capitalist parties, from the presumptive Republican nominee Trump to the real walls erected by Obama and the support by Hillary Clinton for the deportation of child refugees from Central America.

The defense of refugees and immigrants is inseparable from the struggle against war. No section of the ruling establishments in Europe or America has any interest in doing either. A halt to continuing and escalating bloodbaths, including the tragedy unfolding in the Mediterranean, requires the building of a new independent mass movement of the international working class based upon a socialist program and a revolutionary strategy to put an end to capitalism.
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four

May 12 to 14 marks the 90th anniversary of the coup by Jozef Pisudski in Poland with which the Polish bourgeoisie tried to save its rule from the threat of socialist revolution. Today, he is being idealized by large sections of the Polish bourgeoisie and the US imperialist elite.

In large measure, this is bound up with the increasing popularity of his conception of the Intermarium, a pro-imperialist alliance of right-wing nationalist regimes throughout Eastern Europe that was primarily directed against the Soviet Union. The resurgent interest in the Intermarium has been bound up with the increasing drive toward a new world war, which, as the ICFI stated in its resolution Socialism and the Fight Against War, has been accompanied by a revival of geopolitics among the ideologists of imperialism.

This series reviews the history of the Intermarium, the main basis of which emerged in the period leading up to World War I, as a bourgeois nationalist antipode to the United Socialist States of Europe that were proposed by Leon Trotsky.

Pisudski and the Intermarium before the October Revolution

The Latin term Intermarium signifies land between the seas and is used to refer to an anti-Russian alliance of the states between the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea and the Adriatic Sea. Historically, this region largely coincides with the territory once controlled by the Polish nobility in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which existed from 1569 to 1791, before those territories were partitioned between the Russian Empire, the German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The main conception of the Intermarium was formulated by the Polish general and dictator Jozef Pisudski. Throughout the 20th century, its fate has been closely bound up with the development of the Russian Revolution.

The main basis for the Intermarium was formulated as early as 1904 within the context of the Russo-Japanese War and on the eve of the First Russian Revolution of 1905 by Pisudski, who was at that point a leading member of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS).

The PPS had been founded in 1892 on the basis of a platform blending elements of Marxism with Polish nationalism. The main goal of the PPS was the achievement of national independence from the Russian Empire. In this struggle, the party regarded the non-Russian nationalities in the Tsarist Empire as its main allies. Rejecting any closer association with Russian social democracy and dismissing the possibility of a working class revolution against the tsarist regime, the PPS maintained its closest ties in Russia with the Social Revolutionaries (SRs). Like the SRs, the PPS was oriented toward layers of the petty bourgeoisie and supported terrorism, rather than the mobilization of the working class. Above all, the PPS had a strong nationalist orientation and was ferociously anti-Russian.

In 1893, the Social Democratic Party of Poland (SDKP) was formed by Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Jogiches and Julian Marchlewski, largely in opposition to the social patriotic platform of the PPS. In 1897, the SDKP merged with the Lithuanian Workers Union to form the Social Democratic Party of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL). Engaged in an uninterrupted ideological struggle against the PPS, the SDKPiL sought the closest possible relations with the Russian Social Democrats, although the leadership of the SDKPiL differed sharply with the position of the Bolsheviks on the national question, rejecting the slogan of national self-determination.

When the Russo-Japanese War broke out in 1904, the two largest socialist parties of Poland were deeply divided over what policy to pursue. While the SDKPiL organized, together with the Jewish Labour Bund, anti-war demonstrations on May 1, 1904 in opposition to the imperialist war, the PPS pursued a fervently pro-Japanese line. In the hope of winning the support of the Japanese government for the creation of a Polish nation-state and the destruction of the Tsarist Empire, the PPS sent Jozef Pisudski to Tokyo. In his memorandum to the Japanese Foreign Ministry, he suggested utilizing the national tensions within Russia to destroy the Tsarist Empire. He wrote:

This strength of Poland and its importance for a part of the nations in the Russian state give us the courage to set the political goal of destroying the Russian state into its component parts and [granting] independence to the countries that were placed by force in the [Russian] Empire. We consider this to be not only the fulfilment of our Fatherlands cultural aspirations for an independent existence, but also a guarantee of this existence, since Russia, deprived of its conquests, will be weakened to such an extent that it will cease to be a threatening and dangerous neighbour. [1]

The Japanese government rejected the proposal in favor of another war strategy, but Pisudski stuck to his conception and developed it further in several publications after the defeat of the revolution of 1905. During the revolution of 1905, Pisudski led the Military Organization, which he had formed on behalf of the PPS, in order to prepare the armed insurrection against Russian rule that the PPS was planning.

The outbreak of a general strike in Russia in January 1905 and the subsequent violent confrontations between the Russian working class and the tsarist autocracy took the PPS leadership wholly by surprise and prompted a shift to the left within its rank and file and sections of the leadership. While Pisudskis Military Organization was engaged in bloody battles with the tsarist troops, much of the PPS supported the general strikes in support of the Russian workers that the SDKPiL and the Bund had called for.

During the Russian Revolution, a significant amount of the strike action took place in Poland and the country was brought to the brink of a civil war. After the bloody defeat of the revolution, the PPS split into a left and right wing. After the formal expulsion of the Military Organization from the PPS, Pisudski himself soon left the organization. In 1908, he founded the Union of Active Resistance. It incorporated the Military Organization and was designed to prepare the cadres for a future bourgeois government and the armed forces of a Polish nation-state.

The First World War found the Polish elites, the landlords, remnants of the aristocracy and the still relatively weak bourgeoisie, divided. Almost 100 years after the last partition of the country in 1815, the local elites of the partitioning zones of Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Tsarist Empire supported their respective partitioning power in the war. Pisudski, who had maintained relations with the Austro-Hungarian General Staff for several years, quickly started to form the so-called Legions in Galicia.

While Pisudski and his co-fighters had pinned all their hopes on Austro-Hungary and its relatively liberal nationality policy in fighting for a Polish nation state, neither Germany, Austro-Hungarys ally in the war, nor the Habsburg monarchy itself had any intention of supporting an independent Polish nation state. For months, Vienna and Berlin engaged in vicious quarrels over who was to get what part of the territories.

The October Revolution, in which the Russian proletariat seized political power under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party under Lenin and Trotsky, radically changed the entire situation in Europe and was the single most significant event for the further development of Poland in the 20th century. The Bolshevik government soon declared that the Polish people had the right to decide about their future and the Russian troops were withdrawn from the formerly Russian parts of Poland.

While the Prussian and Austro-Hungarian governments increasingly descended into bitter infighting about who would get what part of the remaining Polish territories, German soldiers began to desert and withdraw from Poland. Inspired by the events in Russia, revolution broke out in Germany in November 1918, forcing the government to end the war and withdraw its remaining troops from what are now Poland and the Baltic States. It is under these conditions that the Entente powers, the United States, Britain and France, decided that a Polish nation state was in the best interest of European capitalism and the struggle against Soviet Russia.

The western borders of the Second Polish Republic were sealed by the Entente powers with the Treaty of Versailles of June 28, 1919, which ended the state of war between the Allies (France, Great Britain and the United States) and the defeated Germany. While not all demands of the Polish delegation were fulfilled, the Warsaw government was given control over much of Silesia and gained access, although not exclusive, to the harbour of Gdansk. The settlement of the western borders was motivated to a large extent by the desire to curb the economic might of the defeated Germany and thus prevent a quick recovery of the German economy. The eastern borders, by contrast, were to be fought out only in the war the Pisudski regime was soon to wage against Soviet Russia.

The Polish-Soviet War

Historically, the Intermarium federation emerged as the counter-project of the Polish bourgeoisie to Trotskys United Socialist States of Europe. In opposition to the federation of socialist workers states to unify the continent on a socialist basis, Pisudski formulated a federative framework for the unification of bourgeois nationalist forces in East Central Europe. For the Polish bourgeoisie, which presided over one of the oldest and largest capitalist economies in the region, it was also to provide the framework for satisfying its aspirations as the leading regional power in Eastern Europe and achieve territorial expansion at the expense of Ukraine, Lithuania and what is now the Czech Republic.

However, the social and economic impotence of the Eastern European bourgeoisie, which had proven itself incapable of completing the bourgeois revolution and was faced with the socialist threat of the working class almost as soon as it was born, made this project completely reliant on the benevolence of the imperialist powers, above all the United States.

Indeed, as the coming decades would show, the prospects of the Intermarium, an idea that never left the minds of Polands leading bourgeois politicians and strategists, rose and fell with the strategy of world imperialism against the Soviet Union and, since 1991, the Russian Federation.

The first time the Polish bourgeoisie attempted, unsuccessfully, to create a federation along the lines Pisudski envisioned was in the Polish-Soviet war of 1920. It is also in this period that the reactionary content of the Intermarium conception, which had been propagated as a vehicle for the achievement of the national and emancipation aspirations of the peoples oppressed by the tsarist regime, was revealed. In his attempt to realize it, Pisudski based himself on extreme anti-communism and the mobilization of right-wing, nationalist forces in Ukraine that were as hostile to their native working class and peasant population as they were toward Soviet Russia.

Despite repeated attempts by the Bolshevik leadership to end the military conflict, the Polish-Soviet war, which had been dragging on during 1919 with numerous skirmishes and battles over individual cities, eventually escalated with Polands invasion of the Ukraine in the spring of 1920.

Throughout the war, Pisudski tried to pursue his aim of establishing an anti-communist federation of nationalist governments in Eastern Europe that were to be united by their common hostility toward Soviet Russia. However, this effort largely failed. The Lithuanian bourgeoisie was hostile to a project in which it had to subordinate itself to the Polish elites and agree to a Polish-controlled Wilno (Vilnius in Lithuanian; the city, now the capital of Lithuania, was contested for centuries and during the Civil War itself between the Polish and the Lithuanian elites). The Estonian bourgeoisie was equally unenthusiastic. The only real backing Pisudski received in the region was from the Finnish government. Polands most important imperialist allies, France and Great Britain, did not support Pisudskis plans either at that point.

After having knocked on literally every door in Eastern Europe, including that of the former tsarist general and Russian chauvinist Denikin, for whom hardly any political thought was more alien than an independent Poland, Pisudski eventually ended up with the Ukrainian nationalist leader Symon Petliura, who, in the words of one historian, could boast the least vigor and the weakest following of all the factions active in the civil war in Ukraine. [2] Petliuras army, which had largely been recruited on an anti-Polish platform from nationalists in western Ukraine, now passed into Polish service.

While the Warsaw Agreement with Petliura of April 21, 1920, was in part the outcome of the lack of any alternative for either side in their struggle against the Bolsheviks, the territories now comprising the Ukraine occupied a strategic position in Pisudskis plans for a federation. As one historian pointed out:

With Ukraine, Pisudskis Border Federation had a real chance of prosperity and survival. Poland, as chief sponsor, could command a network of trade and commerce stretching from Finland to the Near East. Poland might recover the glory of her medieval past when, or so the story goes, as arbiter of a realm vaster than the Holy Roman Empire, she ruled over Cossacks and Tartars and drove the cringing princes of Muscovy to their lair. Without the Ukraine, the Border States would be so many barbs on an Allied fence. [3]

However, the Red Army succeeded relatively quickly in reconquering Ukraine due in no small part to the anti-Semitic pogroms committed by Petliuras armies and a general lack of support for his Peoples Republic within the Ukrainian population. The subsequent decision, supported by Lenin but taken against the advice of many Polish Bolsheviks and Leon Trotsky, to not wait for further developments but proceed with an advance of the Red Army into Poland in order to foster the outbreak of social revolution resulted in a military and political disaster for Soviet Russia. In August 1920, Pisudskis armed forces successfully defended Warsaw. A few weeks later, the Red army was defeated by Pisudskis army. In April 1921, the Bolshevik government signed the Peace Treaty of Riga that defined the eastern borders of inter-war Poland.

To be continued

Notes:

1. Edmund Charaszkiewicz: Referat o zagadnieniu prometejskim (12 luty, 1940) [Paper on the Promethean Question], in: Charaszkiewicz, Edmund, Andrzej Grzywacz, Marcin Kwiecien, and Grzegorz Mazur: Zbior Dokumentow Ppk. Edmunda Charaszkiewicza [Collection of Documents of Lieutenant Colonel Edmund Charaszkiewicz], Fundacja CDCN, 2000, p. 56. Translation by this author.

2. Norman Davies: White Eagle, Red Star. The Polish-Soviet War 1919-1920 and theMiracle on the Vistula, Pimlico 2003, p. 101.

3. Ibid., p. 102.
The Partei fur Soziale Gleichheit (Socialist Equality Party, PSG), the German section of the Fourth International, is standing seven candidates in Septembers Berlin state elections. The PSGs election campaign is centred on a revolutionary socialist perspective in opposition to war and militarism. Readers eligible to vote can sign here to support the PSGs participation in the election.

The following are the PSG candidates:

Ulrich Rippert, 65, is chairman of the PSG and its leading candidate for the elections to the House of Representatives (Berlin state legislature). Rippert is a founding member of the League of Socialist Workers (BSA)the forerunner of the PSGand has been active in the Trotskyist movement for 47 years. He is a member of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site and has stood as a candidate in several Bundestag (parliamentary) and European elections. Rippert has two daughters and lives in Tempelhof, where he is standing as a constituency candidate.

Christoph Vandreier, 35, is deputy chairman of the PSG and works on the editorial board of the World Socialist Web Site in Germany. He writes on political developments in Southeast Europe and issues of science. He joined the Trotskyist movement at a young age and leads the work of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) in Germany. Vandreier worked for several years as a psychologist in Berlins substance abuse service and has conducted research in this field. He lives in Schoneberg and is standing as a candidate in the Tempelhof-Schoneberg 2 constituency. You can follow Vandreier on Twitter or Facebook.

Endrik Bastian, 52, is a nurse and a member of the PSGs National Committee. He grew up in East Germany, joining the Trotskyist movement a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and now leads the partys work in the Berlin region. He has represented the PSG several times as a candidate in federal elections. Bastian has three children and lives in Berlin, where he is standing as a candidate in the Mitte 5 constituency.

Markus Klein, 42, works in social welfare and is a member of the PSG National Committee. He joined the Trotskyist movement in 1999 and writes regularly for the World Socialist Web Site with a focus on Central and Eastern Europe. Klein has a son and lives in Friedrichshain, where he is the PSG candidate in the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg 5 constituency.

Peter Hartmann, 66, worked for over 40 years as a foreman in the printing industry. As a regional sales manager for a subsidiary of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG and Goss International, he lived in Asia for two decades. Today he is retired, has four grown children and lives in Tempelhof. He grew up in the Ruhr in the years after World War II. Searching for the causes of the catastrophic war, he became a founding member of the BSA. Hartmann writes for the World Socialist Web Site on economics and industry. He is a candidate in the Mitte 6 constituency.

Andreas Niklaus, 55, has worked for Berlin Regional Transport (BVG) for 25 years, currently as a bus driver. From 1996 to 1998 he was a workers representative on the Staff Council, and campaigned against privatisation, which was being supported by the unions. He has fought against speed-ups, worsening rights for sick colleagues and other attacks on workers rights. Niklaus lives in Wedding, where he is standing as a candidate. He has two children.

Jessica Pluntke, 35, studied art history and German. She grew up as a child in East Berlin, was politicised by the turmoil following the fall of the Berlin Wall, and campaigned against the imposition of tuition fees as a student. After several years of active participation in the International Youth and Students for Social Equality, she joined the PSG in 2015. She is married, with two sons, and works freelance in learning and as a lecturer in language training.
The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) candidates for the July 2 Australian federal elections campaigned in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne last weekend in opposition to the US-led preparations for war against China.

In each area, workers, students and young people voiced hostility to the billions allocated to the military and expressed interest in the SEPs fight to build a global anti-war movement of the working class.

In Melbourne, Will Fulgenzi, the SEPs candidate for the seat of Wills, which spans the citys inner northwest, spoke with Alex, a university student majoring in writing and editing. Alex condemned the commitment of $195 billion by the Liberal-National government, backed by Labor, for new military acquisitions over the next decade. They keep on complaining about budget deficits, he commented. They say, No, we cant afford schools, we cant afford infrastructure. But we can afford to pay for a military? It doesnt make sense.

Alex was concerned about mounting tensions between China and the US. I think its getting really close to something in the South China Sea, he said. It cant hold out for much longer... Things will come to a head. It really worries me because I dont know what it would be like after a war.

What is the future for young people? I dont feel like I have a voice anymore. Many of my friends are leaving Australia. Weve been shut out of housing, weve been shut out of education. Most of us are incredibly dissatisfied and depressed. I feel like were being set up to be exploited even more than we currently are.

Stephan, a 16-year-old high school student, told Fulgenzi: If we go to war with China it would be World War III. What were seeing with the production of war materials, and sending them overseas, is encouraging war. There should be an internationally unified world.

Stephan said the massive military spending was completely stupid. The education system is falling apart. More kids are failing. Its really hard to get a part-time job for a young person. But instead of building schools, they want to build rockets and nuclear weapons.

In Sydney, the SEPs candidate for Grayndler in the citys inner west, Oscar Grenfell, campaigned against the drive to war at a rally called to protest various decisions by the New South Wales (NSW) state Liberal-National government.

Several thousand people participated, voicing their opposition to the social consequences of the WestConnex motorway development, new police powers, the oppression of Aborigines and coal seam gas exploration. The aim of the organisers, however, was to promote the lie that Labor and the Greens offer an alternative and that complex social issues can be resolved through limited protest actions.

Jennifer, a retired public sector worker, told Grenfell the military spending was outrageous. She added: They are privatising everything. Most kids cant spell or read now because they are bringing in private companies who are rorting the system. They are closing womens shelters and spending money on war. We need to look after our own citizens and not be helping other powers fight their wars.

Jennifer denounced so-called anti-terrorism laws, including recent legislation in NSW directed against protests and industrial action. It started in the US with the Patriot law. As soon as they introduced it, the police could take anyone for any amount of time. Now theyve sneaked in these laws here... I think the revolution has started. New Zealand has stood up, with 35,000 people protesting against the TPP [Trans Pacific Partnership], and there have been mass protests in France, Peru, Malaysia, and Japan.

Jennifer hoped that Bernie Sanders would be elected US president and then close the Pine Gap military base in Central Australia. When Grenfell pointed out that Sanders supported the Pentagons drone strikes in Pakistan and the Middle East, which are coordinated through Pine Gap, Jennifer said she would read the World Socialist Web Site and find out more.

Phil, a 20-year-old studying teaching, said the military spending was really quite scary. Why are they doing that? They are not investing in infrastructure, for example in renewable energy. Its like theyre preparing for the future, where there is going to be conflict over resources, instead of an attempt to salvage what we already have. I hear more and more about how America is sending troops to this region to create a ring around China.

Phil told Grenfell the SEPs campaign is very important because it is giving voice to people who dont have one. The major parties just talk about a handful of issues that they have brought into the mainstream to cover up more important things.

His friend, Zak, a 17-year-old of Muslim background, completing his secondary education in Newcastle, spoke out against the demonisation of Muslim youth. The media has created a stereotype. Muslims are doing it hard. Ive heard that theres a law that you can get locked-up for life on suspicion of terrorism and I know people who are doing time just on suspicion. Its very sad. Asked about the wars in the Middle East, Zak declared he was anti-war.

Gabriela Zabala, the SEPs candidate for Blaxland in Sydneys southwest, campaigned in Fairfield and Bankstown, working-class suburbs with large Middle Eastern populations that have been targeted for dubious anti-terror raids and media vilification.

Wesam, originally from Iraq, commented: I am worried about the poor people. They are being killed everywhere, especially in the Middle East. Its like a business between the big powers. Most of the people in the Middle East think something negative of the USthey are looking after themselves in the Middle East.

Ayub, a refugee, said: Pakistan is like in a condition of war. Thats why I escaped. America is responsible, not only in Pakistan, but in Asia and the Middle East. Its a global problem. He condemned the persecution of asylum seekers, commenting: I came as a refugee. But now refugees are not given a good chance. Now they are caged in Nauru and Papua New Guinea.

Dina, who is unemployed and training at a college in Bankstown, told Zabala she wanted someone to help find jobs for the people like us who havent finished education. I was educated in my country but not here. I was a primary teacher. Im from Syria, my husband is from Iraq. I used to live in Kuwait and I was there during the first Gulf War against Iraq. It was horrible.

Dina spoke out against the US regime-change operation in Syria: I have sisters who went to Dubai because they cant live in Syria anymore. War in the Middle East is destroying the area. Why did America protect ISIS? America wants the war to be continued because it sells weapons and gets oil.

In Brisbane, the SEPs candidates for the Senate in Queensland, Mike Head and Erin Cooke, campaigned in Goodna, a working-class suburb with high unemployment and poverty rates after decades of cuts to basic industries.

Sherri, said she feared that military conscription would be reintroduced. Ive got three sons, two of which would be gone if we ever drafted again... Why are we going to fight, for oil? Its not our war, she said.

Sherri was surprised to hear that US Marines were rotating through Darwin. I know the US military comes here and do their war games and train our troops, but I dont see why America should have any military bases here. Its so much easier for them to sit back and hit buttons and give orders, and put us at risk. Its all about money. No rational human being wants any form of war. Everybody wants to be left alone in peace, with their families.

Sherri commented: I am being forced to live by capitalism because I dont know how to get rid of it In a perfect world, the downtrodden would get together and say, enough is enough. Stop raising our taxes! Stop giving tax breaks to people who earn over $100,000 a year! Stop letting all the multimillion-dollar companies get all the tax breaks!

Daniel, a welder, said soldiers were being programmed for war. I have brothers and cousins in the military, he said. They are being told that other countries are inferior. They are being told they will get deployed within 1218 months, unless they are a retard. A lot of them come back damaged from the fighting. I know an ex-SAS sniper who cant be in crowds.

Daniel commented: America is painting a target on us, preparing for something. Its a capitalist world and everyones after a bit of wealth. Theres even a big race between Russia and America to control the polar caps to get the mineral wealth.

After a discussion on how the 1917 Russian Revolution brought an end to World War I, Daniel said: I dont like capitalism. Its only designed to keep the rich, rich and the poor, poor. Its got to stop somewhere. Its all about a handful of people.

To contact the SEP and get involved, visit our website or Facebook page.

Authorised by James Cogan, Shop 6, 212 South Terrace, Bankstown Plaza, Bankstown, NSW 2200
This is the second in a two-part series. Part 1 is available here.

Spiked-Online has much in common with the Charlie Hebdo magazine in France, which similarly justifies its anti-Islamic provocations as the defence of Western, secularist and enlightenment values.

Indeed, in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks at the beginning of 2015, it called for a Fight for the right to be offensive, in memory of the journalists at Charlie Hebdo.

The basis for the shared line of Spiked and Charlie Hebdo lies in their common origins and their social milieu. Like the pseudo-lefts who today espouse identity politics, both these journals emerged from middle class layers that in an earlier period identified themselves as anti-capitalist and even revolutionary.

As late as 2012, Brendan ONeill still claimed to stand on the left, while Frank Furedi, the theoretical guru behind Spiked, sometimes calls himself a libertarian Marxist, unless this is impolitic and then he becomes a libertarian humanist.

The tendency that gave rise to Spiked-Online was formerly known as the Revolutionary Communist Tendency from 1976, until it changed its name to the Revolutionary Communist Party in 1981.

The RCP was the product of a series of unprincipled splits and expulsions beginning with an undeclared and politically diffuse faction in Tony Cliffs state-capitalist International Socialist group, now the Socialist Workers Party.

The faction, beginning in 1971, was called the Revolutionary Opposition, and arose around the figure of Roy Tearse. It lacked any distinct programme or theory, so much so that when it was expelled by Cliff at the end of 1973 a discussion was initiated to determine its independent existence during which the grouping split apart.

Behind Tearse a group called the Discussion Group formed, eventually dissolving into the Labour Party. David Yaffe, an academic at Sussex University, emerged as the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG), formed in 1974 and made up of students. It adapted wholesale to Stalinism and bourgeois nationalism, denouncing the working class as the beneficiaries of imperialism.

A short time after the formation of the RCG, Furedi began to criticise its line and he and a group of students around him were summarily expelled in 1976forming the Revolutionary Communist Tendency (RCT). In 1981 the RCT renamed itself the Revolutionary Communist Party.

The RCP published a journal called The Next Step, in which it declared that the working-class is a collection of groups which are all part of the revolutionary project ... During the 1980s and into the 1990s it took an increasingly right-wing line, boasting that it was tackling the taboos of the left. In the midst of the yearlong miners strike in Britain starting in 1984, the RCP raised the demand for a national ballot as supposedly necessary to provide the strike with democratic legitimacy. This was the main demand raised by opponents of the strike and provided the basis for the formation of the scab Union of Democratic Mineworkers. It was raised when hundreds of thousands of miners were already locked in a bitter struggle against the British state and the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher and would have meant calling it off.

In the 1990s, in response to the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy, the RCP developed many of the concepts that underwrite the politics of Spiked-Online. In 1990, in its magazine Living Marxism, Furedi expounded the RCPs new political line in an article, Midnight in the Century. The liquidation of the Soviet Union and the disavowal of national-reformist programmes by social democracy were cited as proof that socialism was dead.

The article typified the pervasive atmosphere of renunciationism among a layer of the middle-class worldwide that was lurching to the right, repudiating any past association with working class and left politics as they sought to integrate themselves into the state apparatus, academia and the trade unions.

The experience of Stalinism, its collapse and the defeats of Labourism and its variants in the West had served to entirely discredit socialism and Marxism and render capitalism the only possible form of social organisation. For the first time this century there is no real sense of a working-class movement with a distinctive political identity anywhere in the world, Furedi declared. [T]he left, as a force that represents something in society, no longer exists.

The article declared that not all was lost, as long as those seeking change recognise the irrelevance of old-fashioned left-wing ideas, which make little sense today. ...

There was nothing original in Furedis article, which rehashed the worn-out cry of a petty bourgeois done playing at revolution. Having long ago rejected Leon Trotskys revolutionary opposition to Stalinism and social democracy, these layers were especially hostile to any need to work over the history of the 20th century.

Furedi went on to state explicitly, It is not possible to somehow rescue or revive progressive ideas from the past and reimpose them on the present. It is not possible to turn the clock back and defend the Enlightenment or return to Marxism. Karl Marxs programme for revolution, formulated upon the experience of mass working class struggles, cannot simply be projected on to a situation where even the scope for individual subjectivity is so circumscribed.

This became the ideological rationale for the RCPs embrace of capitalism, which displayed in microcosm the process taking place among the entire pseudo-left. Furedi declared that the RCPs missions was to promote confident individualism without any social constraints against a culture of limits or culture of low expectationsThatcherite nostrums that would become the bread and butter of Spiked and its affiliates. In an echo of Ayn Rand, the aim was to advance the actualisation of the individual against society.

The main problem facing mankind was that the bourgeoisie had lost confidence in their own historical mission, due to the undermining of their intellectual foundations in the struggle against the left. In doing so, they had created a world of conservatism and risk-aversion. This rendered any criticism of capitalism reactionary because complaints about the destructive anarchy of the capitalist market can only strengthen the cynical conviction that everything is beyond our control.

To counter the spread of conformity, Living Marxism embarked on campaigns against gun control, the banning of tobacco advertisements, the banning of child pornography and, most prominently, opposition to concerns at the effects of global warming.

Under the auspices of opposing victim culture and the culture of safety, Living Marxism argued that the least regard should be given to the views of those who have suffered as a result of corporate activity because they were obstructions to progress and freedom and their views would contribute to moral panic.

In 1997 the Living Marxism name was scrapped and replaced with LM. An editorial declared, The spirit of LM is to go against the grain: to oppose all censorship, bans and codes of conduct; to stand up for social and scientific experimentation; to insist that we have the right to live as autonomous adults who take responsibility for our own affairs.

The RCP was officially dissolved in March 1998 in an article by Hume calling LM a magazine that promotes an agenda very different to that of the old left and declaring Marxism to be irrelevant because there was no possibility of a politics based on the working class.

LM published an article by Ron Arnold, the executive vice president of the Centre for the Defence of Free Enterprise, calling for the destruction and eradication of the environmental movement as part of Furedis vision of a regroupment transcending left and right of all those who believe human beings should play for high stakes.

LM organised events with sponsorship from large corporate interests, including the Adam Smith Institute and FOREST, the front group funded by the tobacco industry.

The LM magazine came to end in 2000, after Britains Independent Television News (ITN) sued it for libel and was replaced by Spiked-Online. It has continued providing the same platform for the right-wing, corporate front-groups and think tanks such as the Hudson Institute and Centre for Global Food Issues. It has also received sponsorship from the telecommunication industry such as BT and Orange, and the Mobile Operators Association to host debates to downplay concerns of the impact of mobile phones on health and the environment.

Alongside Spiked also emerged the openly pro-corporate Institute of Ideas, headed by Claire Fox, which hosts the Battle of Ideas and is heavily focused on organising events on behalf of corporate sponsors. Alongside these are a host of other corporate lobbying groups, particularly around bio-technology interests, which have been established by individuals from within the RCP tendency and students of Furedi from the University of Kent. The various organisations receive corporate sponsorship ranging from pharmaceutical giants such as Pfizer, energy corporations such as Exxon and a host of others.

Furedi, a professor of Sociology at the University of Kent, was named in 2004 by the British Sociological Association as the most prolific of UK sociologists. He has released a series of books while contributing articles to the Wall Street Journal in defence of the infamous agrochemical company Monsanto and producing a pamphlet for the Centre for Policy Studies, a thinktank established by Thatcher.

The most infamous product of the Spiked stable was Channel 4s Against Nature, aired in the late 1990s. Starring Furedi, it denounced environmentalists as Nazis, supposedly responsible for deaths in third world countries. Complaints were lodged against the programme for its distortion and misrepresentation through the editing of interviews. After an investigation Channel 4 issued an on-air apology.

The show featured other LM members, portrayed as independent experts, as well as contributors from the far right. Its director, Martin Durkin, was also identified as a former RCP member. He went on to produce another pro-corporate documentary for the GM-food industry and another anti-environmentalist programme, The Great Global Warming Swindle, and a documentary on UKIP, Nigel Farage: Who are you?

An online blog by Miles King revealed that the climate change adviser to UKIP, known for its stance of climate change denial, is Ben Pileanother figure associated with the Living Marxism magazine, a regular contributor to Spiked-Online and a speaker at events of the Institute of Ideas.

This is a tendency that, through the individuals that compose it, is well connected with the right wing. Both Hume and ONeill wrote for publications of billionaire oligarch Rupert MurdochHume writing for The Times and The Sun and ONeill for The Australian. ONeill also contributes articles to The Spectator and The American Conservative. The self-proclaimed defender of enlightenment thought has opposed the legalisation of same-sex marriage and labelled opposition to Pope Benedict XVIs visit to the UK as intolerant fearmongering. He is connected with the Australian free-market think tank, the Centre for Independent Studies, and was a keynote speaker for the pro-Israeli advocacy organisation StandWithUs. The organisation enjoys close ties with Israels Ministry of Foreign Affairs and receives a growing budget, standing over $9 million, which goes towards funding student activities on campuses and, in particular, organising opposition to the BDS movement.

In the hands of Spiked, invocations of free speech are transformed into a justification for attacking broader democratic rightsabove all genuine, vocal opposition to anti-democratic and reactionary forces and ideas. In its manifesto for free speech, Spiked demands there must be no mob pressure on people to conform to modern orthodoxies. One such example of mob pressure cited by Spiked is the protests against the French National Front leader Marine Le Pen to the Oxford Union debating society in 2015.

Spiked complained that those wanting to listen to Le Pen were besieged by a violent mob, with Tom Slater describing the protests as illiberal and partronising. Le Pen was to speak on Western values.

Spikeds opposition to identity politics is from the right, insofar as the latter employs the language of anti-imperialism and selectively points to some of the historic crimes committed against the colonial peoples. Theirs is an attempt to rehabilitate the ideas of the far right, to promote the supposedly civilising mission of imperialism and thereby to turn universities into centres of corporate and state interests.

In 2004, Spiked chided the massive protests against the Iraq War of the previous year, describing the term imperialism as one of the zombie categories of the old left. Sloganeering against imperialism was regressive as it expressed moral revulsion at the mundane world of politics and contributed to an anti-development mood. The main problem, according to Spiked , was the retreat from leadership and responsibility amongst the elite.

For all their differences, Spiked and its nominal opponents in the identity politics crowd represent different variants of right-wing bourgeois politics. The combined result is to prevent a genuine independent discussion among students and youth around the fundamental issues they face of austerity, including its impact on education, war and the assault on democratic rights. The defence of free speech can only be conducted on the basis of a socialist political programme oriented to the working class and in opposition to capitalism. This is the programme of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality.

Concluded
Latin America

Strike by petroleum workers in southern Argentina against workforce cuts

Workers for the state petroleum firm YPF in Argentinas Chubut and Santa Cruz provinces struck at midnight May 28. The strike, called by two regional unions, has affected 40 percent of YPFs production. The unions had rejected a government dictate to participate in obligatory conciliation, or arbitration.

The unions blamed YPF for dropping teams and the reduction of activity, resulting in the loss of hundreds of jobs. They denounced the call for arbitration, which doesnt do enough and is a permanent provocation. In Santa Cruz, YPF has plans to lay off 14 teams, which include seven workers from Chubut, according to the unions.

Jorge Avila, secretary general of the Private Petroleum and Gas Syndicate of Chubut, spoke of an erosion that they want to do, company by company, operator by operator. He added that, despite being called to dialogue by the national government, its intention was always to reduce the number of workers in order to return to activity with more man hours.

However, Avila said that union reps would return to salary talks with the CEOPE petroleum industry association on May 31 and continue negotiating, but we arent going to mix things.

Argentine municipal workers strike over work clothes, categorization

Municipal employees in the town of Palma Sola in Argentinas northwestern Jujuy province remain on an indefinite strike they began May 16. The workers, members of the Municipal Employees and Workers Syndicate (SEOM), walked off the job after repeated attempts to get the authorities to provide them with appropriate clothing for their jobs and to regularize the categorization of workers.

SEOM delegate Odilon Mendoza told El Tribuno that he had already delivered a note to the mayor, giving him a deadline to respond. The workers had held a strike and protest last November over the same issues to no avail. Mendoza said that the mayor has yet to talk to SEOM and the employees adduce that it is a total lack of respect towards the workers.

Honduran health workers call strike over salaries

On May 27, the Tegucigalpa affiliate of the Honduras Medical Syndicate (Sitramedhys) announced a strike for May 30 to protest the failure of the government to comply with a salary adjustment that it had previously promised. Sitramedhys local president Miguel Mejia told reporters that the union would hold progressive assemblies to inform its members about the response of the government to its demands.

Mejia denounced the present administration of president Juan Orlando Hernandez, saying that he was not serious and had unilaterally broken off dialog with the health workers.

Since last June, Sitramedhys has been asking for a raise and the current authorities committed themselves in an informal manner to give a raise of 200 lempiras [US$8.87] for each worker, something that looks absurd to us, he said.

Recently a study was produced for us and at the minimum theyd have to increase [salaries] by 5,000 lempiras [US$221]; nonetheless we are soliciting an intermediate amount and it could be deferred.

Mexican teachers protest firings of colleagues

Teachers in Zacatecas, the capital of the central Mexican state of the same name, occupied a number of tollbooths along major expressways on the morning of May 27. Later, the teachers marched to the Historic Centers Enrique Estrada Park.

The occupations and marches were organized by the Democratic Teachers Movement of Zacatecas (MDMZ) and were part of national protest actions against education reforms spearheaded by president Enrique Pena Nieto. The primary demand of the MDMZ mobilization was the rehiring of 26 teachers who had been dismissed from their jobs.

MDMZ Secretary General Victor Hugo Montoya Gomez explained that at the national level, the day has as its purpose the demand for a dialog with the authorities and the reinstatement of dismissed teachers at the national level, reported ntrzacatecas.com.

Montoya Gomez told reporters that in other states, the citizenry has been participating with the professors, carrying out mobilizations with more impact, but admitted that participation by teachers in Zacatecas, being honest, has been diminishing.

The United States

Faculty in three-day strike at Washington state college

Faculty at Green River College campuses in Auburn, Washington walked off the job May 23 on a three-day strike to protest the slashing of 11 programs and the job cuts that will accompany them. The administration says the new cuts will save $1.2 million toward an operating budget deficit of $4.5 million.

Members of United Faculty, angered by the decision that was conveyed to them in an email, voted unanimously for strike action three days earlier. Starting in 2013, the union has voted on three occasions for no confidence in the colleges president Eileen Ely and demanded her resignation. Students have solidarized with teachers through demonstrations and the packing of board meetings.

Green River College, like other community and technical schools, faces decreased funding which according to management could amount to $1.5 million. The union claims that the latest round of cuts was a form of retaliation for the militant opposition by teachers. The union wants the school to use a portion of its reserve funding to maintain jobs and programs.

In addition, the union is offering to collaborate with the administration in coming up with cuts. Whatever budget challenges this college faces they may be met together through authentic transparency and collaboration and without the permanent damage created by program cuts, said union president Jaeney Hoene.

Construction workers strike over wages in Quad Cities

Some 300 building construction laborers walked off the job in Quad Cities May 23 after talks between representatives of contractors and Laborers Local 309. Associated General Contractors, which represents some 70 companies in the Quad Cities of Davenport, Bettendorf, Rock Island and Moline, which border on the states of Illinois and Iowa, say the negotiations broke down over wages and has rejected the unions call for a mediator.

Local 309 is requesting a 3.6 percent raise compared to contracts settled with carpenters, iron workers and brick layers that settled for less than 3 percent. The strike has affected some 40 projects including construction sites at John Deere Harvester in East Moline and the 3M plant in Cordova, Illinois.

Canada

Canadian postal workers facing job action

Negotiations for 50,000 postal workers have reportedly reached an impasse as the deadline of July 2 approaches, at which time they could either go on strike or, more likely, be locked out by Canada Post.

The Crown corporation has notified a number of major customers of a possible work stoppage while the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), which represents mail carriers and other postal workers, is fighting a raft of concession demands by management attacking pensions, benefits and job security.

Union negotiators allege that Canada Post is seeking a confrontation to coincide with a federal task force that is assessing door-to-door delivery and the very future of the postal service throughout the month of July.
Kenya is to send Somali refugees in the world's largest camp back to their war-torn country or third nations by November, the interior minister said Tuesday.

The sprawling Dadaab camp on the Kenya-Somalia border hosts some 350,000 refugees, the vast majority of whom fled Somalia's more than two-decade long conflict.

Kenya said earlier this month it would shut down the camp, and set up a team to explore how it could be achieved.

"I want to inform the world that the decision to close Dadaab camp is final," Interior Minister Joseph Ole Nkaissery said after receiving the team's report.

"We hope to close the camp latest by November this year."

Nkaissery said the report would be shared with the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.

"On our side, we will prepare security and ensure it is done in the most humane way," he added, noting the report was "very clear on the timelines" to ensure refugees left.

"But this is a UNHCR exercise, we are just there to help them to get the refugees back."

Charities and the UN have voiced dismay at the closure plan, while rights groups have warned that forcibly repatriating refugees would break international law.

Experts had cast doubt on whether a move to close the camp would be legal.

"It would cause a huge humanitarian crisis, plus sending Somali refugees back would mean violating international conventions," Anne Hammerstad of the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent in England and an expert on refugee issues told AFP earlier this month.

Nairobi has also bemoaned the high cost of maintaining Dadaab, even though the international community, via the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), covers most costs.

Earlier this month, the UNHCR voiced "profound concern" over any move to shut Dadaab, while hailing Kenya's "extraordinary role over the years in hosting refugees." The country is currently home to some 600,000 refugees.

Victor Nyamori, Amnesty International's refugee affairs officer in Kenya, said earlier this month that he was "totally opposed" to the closure but agreed that "in a sense, we agree with Kenya, the international community does not do its part".

Kenya's plan to close the camp was revealed ahead of an international humanitarian summit in Istanbul, as well as before a visit to Kenya by the head of the UN refugee agency and the expiry in September of a 2013 deal on Somali refugees between Nairobi, Mogadishu and the UNHCR.

Analysts said it was a means for Kenya to put the issue back on the international agenda at a time when attention is focused on the migrant crisis in Europe.

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6 years, 4 months ago by Jim Dewey

U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill, of Missouri, Tuesday released a report detailing seven decades of mistreatment and bureaucratic indifference by the Pentagon and U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs toward servicemen who were intentionally exposed to chemical weapons during World War II.

During a teleconference with reporters - Senator McCaskill said her office began an investigation into the mustard gas tests after learning about them through media reports.

McCaskill says as many as 60 thousand soldiers were exposed to mustard agents during World War 2 and 4 thousand received high level doses of the gas.

That included Arla Harrell who McCaskill says is the last surviving Missourian to have been a victim of the experiments.

Of the thousands of veterans who have applied for V A assistance since 2005 - 90 percent have been rejected because of the nearly impossible burden of proof put on them.

McCaskill is introducing legislation that will lessen those requirements.

She says there are only about 400 of these veterans still living, and they deserve to have their stories believed by the VA.
US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter departed Tuesday for an Asian security summit in Singapore, where Beijing's military expansion across the South China Sea likely will once again dominate discussions.

Regional neighbors are fretting over what they see as China's expansionism as it rushes to exert sovereignty over the waterway, a major global shipping route believed to be home to large oil and gas reserves.

China is using dredgers and other tools to convert low-lying ocean features and sandy blips into military bases.

A Pentagon report this month said China has added more than 3,200 acres (1,300 hectares) of land to the seven features it occupies in the Spratly Islands archipelago.

The so-called Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual meeting in Singapore, will see defense ministers, military chiefs and defense experts from the Asia-Pacific region and beyond discuss regional security issues.

Aside from the South China Sea, delegates are expected to focus on the growing threat of Islamic terrorism in the region and North Korea's nuclear program.

Since becoming President Barack Obama's fourth Pentagon chief in February 2015, Carter has taken a forceful tone on Beijing's South China Sea construction.

He criticized the drive at last year's Shangri-La meeting and on Friday, Carter said China risks creating a "Great Wall of self-isolation."

"Countries across the region -- allies, partners and the unaligned -- are voicing concerns publicly and privately at the highest levels," Carter said.

The United States has conducted several "freedom of navigation" operations where it pointedly ignores China's claims of sovereign exclusion zones around the islands by closely flying or sailing past.

Carter's trip will see him first visit an Army base in Arizona.

He had also considered meeting his Japanese counterpart Gen Nakatani during a visit to Japan, but the two decided to meet in Singapore instead, a US defense official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The official said the meeting would have been too politically sensitive, given the furor surrounding the arrest of a former US Marine on Okinawa in connection to the death of a 20-year-old woman who had been missing since late April.

A series of crimes including rapes, assaults and hit-and-run accidents by US military personnel, dependents and civilians have long sparked local protests on the crowded island.

Carter and Obama were quick to condemn the crime and offer "regret."

Carter "made the decision to not visit Japan on this trip given that he and Minister Nakatani are already planning to meet in Singapore as well as other scheduling concerns," Pentagon spokesman Commander Gary Ross said.

While in Singapore, Carter will be joined by senior US military leaders, including Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson and the commander of US Pacific Command, Admiral Harry Harris.

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL)--A change.org petition is making the rounds among FAMU students and graduates urging university leaders to keep Elmira Mangum as president of the school.

The petition claims recent changes made to the Florida Board of Governors would allow state leaders to remove Mangum from the position.

It says FAMU has faced instability since the departure of the former president Frederick Humphries, who stepped down as president back in 2001.

The petition has more than 520 signatures, with a goal of 1,000. It was started one week ago.

If the petitioners reach their goal, they will deliver the petition to the acting chair of the FAMU trustees, state representatives, and the media.
TALLAHASSEE, FL (WTXL) - The attorney for the man accused of killing FSU Professor Dan Markel says his client will plead not guilty to the charges made against him.

Sigfredo Garcia was arrested on May 25; charged with murder in the first degree and possession of cocaine, according to the Broward County Sheriff's Office.

Tallahassee Police said they would not release any other details in the Dan Markel investigation, or Garcia's arrest. Documents related to the case were sealed by a judge, according to TPD. They did say Garcia's arrest was related to the Dan Markel case.

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Timeline of Details in Dan Markel Murder Investigation

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Markel was shot while sitting in his driveway in 2014, and died from his injuries at the hospital.

"My client is absolutely maintaining his innocence, he will be pleading not guilty. He is denying any involvement with this murder there in Tallahassee, and I would just ask everyone there please withhold judgment, to follow the law, and presume his innocence. He has maintained his innocence and I am hopeful that once all of the evidence comes out everyone will see he is certainly not guilty of these charges," said Ft. Lauderdale Attorney Jim Lewis, regarding Garcia.

On Friday, the courts declined to take a case for Garcia's accused possession of cocaine at the time his murder arrest. This is expected to speed up the extradition process which Garcia's attorney says will take place in the next few days.

"Absolutely he is maintaining his innocence in this particular case, and that is exactly what we are going with, that he had absolutely nothing to do with this very unfortunate homicide there in Tallahassee, and we will get our day in court," said Lewis.
On 31 May 1934, Egyptians heard the famous line 'This Is Cairo' from the National Radio for the first time

The 31st of May marks the 82nd anniversary of the launch of the Egyptian National Radio Broadcasting Station.

On that day in 1934, the voice of radio presenter Ahmed Salem proudly announced the commencement of 'This is Cairo.'

Prior to the formation of the national radio station, Cairo had its own short-waved, private broadcasting centres with limited emission range, which could be heard in limited areas.

The national radio touched the lives of artists back in the day, giving great exposure on a national level to young shining singing stars including Fathia Ahmed and Oum Kalthoum.

Before radio, music was mainly confined to theatres, private parties and cafes.

Some 80 years later, despite all available technological gadgets, radio is still the most enchanting of all for millions as the one media realm that still gives you room for imagination.

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Poland launched a fresh bid Tuesday to extradite Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski to the United States to face sentencing over a 1977 case of statutory rape.



Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro announced he has appealed to the Supreme Court to overturn an October ruling that Polanski should not face extradition, saying no-one should be above the law.



"He is accused of a terrible crime against a child, the rape of a child," Ziobro, who is also prosecutor general, told Polish public radio.



"Were he a teacher, a doctor, a plumber or a painter, I'm sure any country would have extradited him to the United States long ago."



The announcement appears to be part of what the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) government, which took office after October elections, touts as a moral revolution in strongly Catholic Poland.



Polanski is still wanted by the United States for sentencing over the 1977 statutory rape of Samantha Gailey after a photo shoot in Los Angeles.



He was arrested after Gailey, now Geimer, accused him of forcing her to have sex after drugging her.



She was 13 at the time. Polanski was 43.



He pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a minor, or statutory rape, avoiding a trial, but then fled the country fearing a hefty sentence.

Jerzy Stachowicz, a lawyer for the 82-year French-Polish director, told AFP that Ziobro's decision was not a surprise.



"We were expecting this. Ziobro had previously announced he was going to do this," he said.



He also confirmed that "Polanski is currently not in Poland", without disclosing his current whereabouts.



Ziobro's move is an attempt to reverse an October ruling by a court in the southern city of Krakow which ruled that Polanski should not be sent to the United States, a decision prosecutors agreed was "justified".



"Had Poland accepted the US extradition request, it would have violated the rights of Mr Polanski and at the same time the European Convention on Human Rights," judge Dariusz Mazur said at the time.



The Krakow court was fiercely critical of the original US investigation into the film-maker's case, saying the US judges and prosecutors had flouted "the rules of a fair trial".



And one of his lawyers at the time said the decision "ends the legal proceedings" against Polanski.



The Polish Supreme Court can either uphold the decision not to extradite Polanski or send the case back to a lower court.

Fearing arrest, Polanski declined to travel to Hollywood in 2003 to receive an Oscar for best director for his harrowing Holocaust-drama, "The Pianist" -- one of his eight Academy Awards.



He currently lives in France with his wife, actress Emmanuelle Seigner, but often visits Poland where his family has roots.



Ziobro said he wanted to "avoid double standards" that would afford the director special treatment.



"Everyone is equal before the law," he said, accusing "social elites and part of the liberal media" of supporting Polanski.



"Does this mean that an eminent artist is free to rape or commit other vile crimes, while a simple Kowalski (the Polish equivalent of Smith) must be severely punished?"



Born in Paris in 1933 to Polish Jewish parents, Polanski's family was torn apart by the Holocaust after returning to live in Poland before World War II.



He was eight when the Nazis arrested his parents in Krakow's Jewish ghetto -- sending them to concentration camps from which his mother never returned -- and forcing him into years of wandering with other children.



He survived and went on to win acclaim in Hollywood for his 1962 feature debut in Poland, "Knife in the Water", an erotic thriller about a couple inviting a switchblade-toting hitchhiker onto their yacht.



He arrived in Hollywood in 1968 to shoot his first big international hit, "Rosemary's Baby".



Tragedy shattered Polanski's life again the following year when his heavily-pregnant wife, the model and actress Sharon Tate, and four friends were brutally slaughtered in the director's mansion by cult leader Charles Manson and his followers.

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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An elementary school in the Gaza city neighborhood of Zeitun put on a show in which pupils were dressed as armed Islamic Jihad fighters, with camouflage uniforms, helmets and play guns last weekend.

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The play took place in an auditorium as teachers looked on and encourage the children onstage. The audience - probably their families -were watching in the audience.

During the play children enacted placing a bomb under an IDF tank and blowing it up, shooting mortar fire at an IDF outpost, and the simulation of a raid on an outpost with the killing of an Israeli soldier  also played by one of the schoolchildren. One of the kids was even wearing a real Go Pro camera to film the "raid."

Children enacting war in Gaza play

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Children firing a pretend mortar in a play in Gaza

Performances and displays of a military purpose take place mainly at end-of-the-school year events in some schools in the Gaza Strip and this has been documented in the past. However, such a show, accompanied by advanced pyrotechnics and with cruel actions like killing carried out by children in elementary school, has not been not documented until now.

Children with a fake drone in a play in Gaza

One of those watching the show and took part in the ceremony was Khadar Habib, a senior member of Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip. Habib spoke to the audience while the children were standing behind him. In his speech he thanked the school authorities and, ironically said that the children of Gaza dreamed to live, play, dance and sing like the other children of the world.
Prosecutors on Monday referred the head of Egypt's journalists union and two board members to trial after they were formally charged with spreading false news and harboring journalists wanted by authorities.

A statement by the Cairo prosecution office said their trial would begin on Saturday.

The three were questioned for hours by prosecutors Sunday night. On Monday, they refused to post bail of 10,000 pounds ($1,000) each and were detained at a police station in central Cairo, Khaled el-Balshy, one of the board members facing prosecution, and defense lawyer Sayed Abu Zeid told The Associated Press.
Gaza's Hamas rulers have executed three Palestinians convicted of murder without the required approval of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The Interior Ministry says the executions took place Tuesday at the central prison after the victims' families rejected the possibility of a last-minute pardon.

It's the first time Hamas applies death penalty since a unified government was installed in the West Bank and Gaza after an agreement with Abbas' Fatah party in 2014. Hamas remained the de facto authority, preventing the government from extending control over Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held out the prospect on Monday of reviving a 2002 Arab peace initiative that offers Israel diplomatic recognition from Arab countries in return for a statehood deal with the Palestinians.

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Netanyahu's comments were a formal response to a speech last week by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who promised Israel warmer ties if it accepted efforts to resume peace talks.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Photo: Gil Yohanan)

"The Arab peace initiative includes positive elements that can help revive constructive negotiations with the Palestinians," Netanyahu said, echoing comments he made a year ago to Israeli reporters.

"We are willing to negotiate with the Arab states on revisions to that initiative so that it reflects the dramatic changes in the region since 2002 but maintains the agreed goal of two states for two peoples," he added.

His comments were also made in English during a speech that was mostly in Hebrew.

Netanyahu spoke moments after Avigdor Lieberman was sworn in as Israel's new defense minister and Israel's fragile right-wing coalition gained support in parliament.

Netanyahu appeared to indicate that the new far-right defense minister's inclusion in the government did not spell an end to peace efforts with the Palestinians.

Speaking after Netanyahu, Lieberman added to the discussion of the Arab Peace Initiative: "President Sissis speech was very important; it creates a genuine opportunity that obligates us to pick up the gauntlet. I certainly agree that there are some very positive elements in the Arab Peace Initiative that will enable us to conduct serious dialogue with our neighbors in the region." He also said he supports the two-state solution: "I agree with two states for two people...I was very supportive of the Bar-Ilan speech," referring to Netanyahu's 2009 speech, in which he expressed support for the two-state solution.

Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman (Photo: EPA)

The original Arab plan offered full recognition of Israel but only if it gave up all land acquired in the 1967 Middle East war and agreed to a "just solution" for Palestinian refugees.

But in 2013, after the initiative's terms were softened to include possible land swaps between Israel and the Palestinians, Netanyahu signaled a readiness to consider it.

Israel has demanded tighter security measures from the Palestinians and a crackdown on militants who have attacked or threaten the safety of Israeli citizens.

France is set to host a peace conference of to revive peace efforts on June 3 with the participation of ministers from the Middle East Quartet - the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations - the Arab League, the UN Security Council and about 20 countries.

Neither Israel nor the Palestinians have been invited.
NEW DELHI- A fire broke out at a massive ammunitions depot in western India early Tuesday, and local news reports said at least 17 army personnel were killed in the blaze.

The fire at the Pulgaon ammunitions depot started before dawn, said an official at the local police station, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media.

Defense Ministry spokesman Nitin Wakanker would only confirm that a fire had broken out at the ammunitions depot. He said details would be released after they emerged from the site.
A few hours after reaching a compromise on the makeup of the new cabinet, Education Minister Naftali Bennett (Habayit Hayehudi) announced his support for an initiative to create term limits on the prime minister position on Monday.

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Bennett said this in response to a round table discussion question asked by Merav Michaeli (Zionist Union), saying it is a "welcomed step."

Naftali Bennett and Benjamin Netanyahu (Photo: Yair Sagi, Alex Kolomoisky)

"They say that power corrupts, and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. This conclusion was reached in the US, and they limited the president to a maximum of two terms," the education minister said, continuing "with Obama, we are seeing during his second term that he is wildly trying to push through his agenda on issues such as Cuba, Iran, healthcare reform, and more."

Bennett then added that "I view this initiative as something positive, but we have to do things with a forward looking perspective, and not from a backwards looking one. Meaning, it's not fair to go and bring this issue to someone in the middle of their term, but we will bring it to the parliamentary group. We will discuss this initiative in the coming days, and as long as this doesn't turn into a partisan issue, I think that it will be welcomed."

Zionist Union Minister Merav Michaeli (Photo: Yaron Brenner)

He then highlighted to MK Michaeli, the MK who initially put forth the term limits draft bill in December of 2014, that "the fact of the matter is that this bill doesn't say 'this is specifically against Netanyahu and has no connection to his policies' is good  you're not coming and turning this bill into something personal. Overall, I think that this bill is on the right path."

MK Michaeli's initiative is to limit the prime minister to only two terms in office.
MADRID- Spanish police arrested a man from Pakistan in Barcelona on Tuesday accused of promoting Islamist militancy via social media, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

The man had been promoting the actions of various groups operating in the conflict zones of Syria and Iraq, especially Islamic State, the ministry said.

Including Tuesday's arrests, Spain has detained 24 people so far this year with suspected links to Islamist militancy.
KUNDUZ- Gunmen in Afghanistan killed nine bus passengers and kidnapped 170 on Tuesday outside the northern city of Kunduz in an attack blamed on Taliban insurgents, a provincial official said.

The attackers stopped three buses on a road and ordered the passengers out, shot dead nine of them and kidnapped the rest, said Massoum Hashemi, deputy police chief of Kunduz.

Government forces later freed most of the abducted passengers in a rescue operation.
Israel is planning for a long period of instability a political vacuum on the border with Syria in the Golan Heights.

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Therefore, the IDF has expanded and created units in the Northern Command which deal specifically with maintaining contact with local residents on the Syrian side of the border. The Liaison to Residents of the Syrian Golan unit was founded by the Northern Command under this framework.

The new unit will coordinate humanitarian assistance to people in the area and transfers of wounded civilians from Syria to Israeli hospitals. Over 2,000 injured Syrians have been treated in Israeli hospitals since the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War. Besides logistics personnel, the unit is also comprised of medical professionals, humanitarian workers, and civilian officials.

This isn't a new idea and was done before  this was how the IDF built a relationship with the residents of southern Lebanon in 1976. What started as humanitarian aid shipments through the "good fence" on the Lebanese border eventually became regular contact under the IDF Lebanon Liaison Unit's framework.

Israeli tanks on the border with Syria (Photo: EPA)

By the time Israel withdrew from south Lebanon in 2000, the unit had already grown into a full division under the command of a brigadier general who also commanded forces from the South Lebanese Army (SLA), and was responsible for the wellbeing of the local residents in the area.



Despite the civil war raging in Syria, the contacts which Israel has made and maintained on the Syrian side of the border have enabled the border region to remain quiet. A factor in preventing the spillover of fighting into Israel has been the humanitarian aid which Israel has been providing to the residents of the area, including residents of Quneitra, the largest city on the Syrian side of the border.

It has become clear that the moderate rebels, including those from the Free Syrian Army (FSA), have benefitted from Israeli humanitarian assistance. There is further evidence to suggest that these groups sometimes collaborate with Islamist groups such as Jabhat a-Nusra. Despite the fact that Israel denies any connection to Jabhat a-Nusra, it seems that aid still reaches them, and has kept the al-Qaida affiliated group from launching attacks against Israel.

Syria

The principal actors against Israel in the Golan Heights are Hezbollah and the Iranians, who seem to be acting without the knowledge of the authorities in Damascus. However, the Syrian group which poses the most danger to Israel is ISIS affiliated Liwa Shuhada al-Yarmouk, comprised primarily of Syrians from villages in the southern Golan on the Syrian side, and who have threatened to attack Israel with chemical weapons in the past.

A high ranking IDF official said that Israel has no intention of creating a similar framework to what it had in Lebanon in the 1970's and 1980's. Never-the-less, as has happened in the past, sometimes the reality on the ground determines how deeply involved Israel gets. South Lebanon began as a humanitarian mission, and quickly devolved into military assistance. It began with secret training of a few units and small scale weapons transfers, and eventually became overt involvement, with heavy weaponry being given to the SLA, and thousands of SLA fighters being trained in Israel. There is no mechanism keeping this from happening again in the Golan.
This is the moment that you can achieve great success and prevent the greatest danger which we have never faced before, said Zionist Union Chairman Isaac Herzog to Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon on Monday.

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Therefore, I extend my hand to you, Moshe Kahlon, added Herzog in a statement at a factional meeting in the Knesset. I know how much you care and how good your intentions were. You are the only person who can make this ethical decision. Do not hesitate. This is your moment of truth.

Herzog further stated, In this government, there is one person who can determine its fate and our fate. And (There is) one person who was elected for his humility and uprightness. There are moments when a leader needs to place himself above personal considerations and dare to pay the heaviest price for his inner truth.

Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon and Zionist Union Chairman Isaac Herzog (Photo: Amit Sagi, Gil Yohanan)

Herzog also issued a scathing critique of the prime minister: This is a historic day. This is a day in which the elected prime minister is making room for the heads of the most extreme parties who will now be in control of him. Mr. Netanyahu, you are no longer the prime minister, but rather the secretary of the Naftali-Lieberman-Smotrich government. You decide nothing, you determine nothing, and you manage nothing. You are a puppet, a scarecrow, and a captive.

Two weeks ago, you proposed changing the face of the nation and leading a historic diplomatic process to me. I was prepared to sacrifice my political career to change the reality and spare the pain and tears of hundreds of families who dont know their bitter fate, but at the moment of truth, you got scared. You are strong in terms of slogans and weak in terms of leadership. Some say that you are magical; there is something to that. Everything good that you touch vanishes. Hope has vanished. The vision has vanished. Ya'alon has vanished. Saar has vanished. Gabai has vanished. Now you are fading and the extreme right (is gaining power). This is the first time in history that the magic has made itself vanish, Herzog stated.

Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid also spoke about the recent political developments in a factional meeting: I have one question for the prime minister and his ministers: When will you deal with the concerns of the state? There are only 24 hours in a day. I look at our politics and it is only busy with itselfwith appointments, confidantes, and useless ego wars. Everyone sets ultimatums for each other. (And everyone) is becoming arrogant and nothing happens in the end.

Lapid added, Look at the last week. The defense minister resigned and the minister for environmental protection resigned. There is more spin that says Labor will enter and then more spin that it wontEverything is a game entrenched in old and ugly politics. I am asking you, when will they work for us?
BEIRUT- Civilians fleeing an Islamic State offensive in northwestern Syria have been prevented by Syrian Kurdish authorities from entering areas under their control in response to rebel shelling of a Kurdish-held area of Aleppo, the United Nations said.

The civilians have been fleeing fighting between Syrian rebels and the Islamic State group that advanced into the opposition-held town of Marea at the weekend, a significant advance by the jihadists against Turkish-backed insurgents.

The United Nations has expressed concern about an estimated 8,000 Syrians trapped by fighting in northern Aleppo.
MOSCOW - Russia demands that Turkey withdraw its troops from Iraq, the RIA news agency quoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying on Tuesday.

"This (keeping troops in Iraq) is an absolutely unacceptable position," it cited Lavrov as saying. "In principle, I believe that what the Turks are doing deserves far greater public attention on the part of our Western partners.
Digging terror tunnels is indeed a criminal offense  at least, thats what one of the hundreds of pages in the proposed law to combat terrorism said.

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The proposed law was approved by the judiciary committee on Monday. The law, which is expected to be passed within the next week, is similar to the US Patriot Act, but is thought of as more modern and advanced.

Deputy Attorney General Raz Nori explained that the new law will give law enforcement better legal tools with which to deal with terror, and will also enable prosecution of terror support systems, such as charities which donate money to terrorists.

"This law will give law enforcement and security services further legal means with which to fight terrorism while at the same time protecting human rights," Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked added.

Hamas (Photo: EPA)

The proposed law states, amongst other things, that a direct call to carry out a terror attack will be a criminal offense, and will eliminate the need to determine whether or not the call will lead to an actual attack.

The law also calls for stricter penalties for those convicted of terrorism. It states, for instance, that the sentence for someone who commits a terror attack will be in jail for a minimum of seven years, and someone who carries out a chemical or biological weapons attack will be imprisoned for life. Life imprisonment is also the punishment for the head of a terror organization.

Anyone who trains terrorists will receive a minimum sentence of nine years, and anyone who tries to recruit people to terror will receive a minimum sentence of seven years.

Anyone who calls for or encourages terrorism, or assists terrorists in obtaining materiel will have a minimum sentence of five years. Meanwhile, the lightest sentence will be a minimum of three years for anyone convicted of publicly identifying with a terror organization.
Natan Meir responsed to the High Court's decision to demolish the home of the terrorist who murdered his wife Dafna by saying, "I've always trusted the army and once again I trust its judgment, which is that such a step can help prevent terrorism. Personally, I am involved in building and not destroying, therefore I have no further to address the issue."
Land of Israel Caucus chairmen MKs Yoav Kisch (Likud) and Bezalel Smotrich (Bayit Yehudi) launched its campaign Tuesday to extend Israel's sovereignty over the settlement, Ma'ale Adumim

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A survey conducted for the lobby, which is in effect a settlers' lobby in the Knesset, revealed that 76 percent of Israelis believe that it is not reasonable to leave Ma'ale Adumim without an established political and legal status. 77 per cent of respondents said that since politicians from the right and the left agree that in any eventual peace agreement with the Palestinians Ma'ale Adumim will be under Israeli sovereignty, it is possible to apply sovereignty over the city without an agreement.

Ma'ale Adumim (Photo: AP)

"Something transpired in Israel, the most nationalistic government has arisen since the founding of the state, and its role is to promote the national agenda on which we were elected," explained Smotrich. "This poll shows that Israel knows what is good for itself and that the great majority of its citizens supports Israeli sovereignty over Ma'ale Adumim. In the next Knesset session we will submit a bill to apply sovereignty and we will promote it."

Unlike East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, Ma'ale Adumim was not annexed by Israel, meaning that the GOC Central Command is considered to have sovereignty over it. The laws which are applied there bear an amalgamation of Ottoman, British, and Jordanian roots. Over the years, International law and some Israeli law has also been applied.

The annexation bill will, in effect, determine that Israeli law will apply to the settlement. This would mean, among other things, that Ma'ale Adumim would be subject to Israeli planning and building laws, which will permit building in the city to proceed without requiring the approval of the Minister of Defense nor that of the Civil Administration.

During the previous Knesset, Yariv Levin (Likud), currently Tourism Minister, submitted a series of bills for the application of Israeli sovereignty over parts of the West Bank, including Ma'ale Adumim. However, due to early elections, Levin's proposal never came to fruition. His proposal was supported by many currently serving as government ministers, including Ze'ev Elkin and Miri Regev. The question is how these ministers, including Levin, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, and Bayit Yehudi head Naftali Bennett, will react to the new bill on the matter.
Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who on Tuesday began his first day as defense minister after an inauguration ceremony in the Kirya (army headquarters) in Tel Aviv, delivered a statement the same afternoon in which he shared his views on the IDF and the country in general.

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Israel is the only country in the world with the concept of the army is the state which is not a cliche but the reality. Even today, most of the soldiers in battle are reserves, people who from day-to-day are civilians. That is why the job of the IDF...is a lot more significant than the work of other countries. He said.

Defense Minister Lieberman and Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot (Photo: Ariel Harmoni/Israeli Ministry of Defense

Lieberman also said that the IDF was of paramount importance not just for its military purpose but also for its influence on society Since the founding of the IDF, it has not only been the shield of Israel but also the melting pot of Israeli society and its civic duties are no less significant that its military duties. Therefore, I see the first task of the IDF to be the protection of national resilience.

Photo: Ariel Harmoni

This national resilience delineated by Lieberman by way of three core principles

First, we dont have the luxury of conducting a war out of choice. We are only able to conduct wars when there is no choice and we have to succeed in them, he continued. We also do not have the luxury of fighting wars of attrition. As a democracy, issues relating to war and peace must carry the will and support of the large majority of people and must not rely on a single vote in the Knesset.

Photo: Ariel Harmoni

The second principle, Lieberman said, related to national unity: When there is a conflict between the unity of the nation or unity of the land, unity of the people is of greater importance.

Lieberman then digressed from military matters in his third principle, focusing instead on equal opportunity in Israel. If I could translate this into something tangible, it would be by dramatically reducing the gap in the percentage of success in matriculation exams in high schools. The fact that the percentage of those passing their exams in Kiryat Malakhi stands at 49.85 per cent compared to in Ra'anana where it is 86.35 per cent is something which a healthy society cannot allow. There is a lot to be done on this issue, he declared.

Photo: Ariel Harmoni

Lieberman cited his own experiences to praise the opportunity in Israel for new immigrants and Israelis alike. The fact that I moved to Israel in 1978 without knowing the language, without having contacts here and without capital and I now sit here with the general staff as defense minister...proves that Israel is a land of opportunity without limits and that we are more American than America.

To conclude, I want to say that I intend to work here 24/7 and that I believe in powerful politics and powerful security.I thank my predecessor Moshe Yaalon about whom many times I have shared my opinion but who has many positives and has made outstanding contributions to Israels security. I intend to work with Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot and I am sure that, together we will protect the security of the Israels citizens.

Photo: Ariel Harmoni

Earlier in the day Lieberman telephoned Yaalon requesting a meeting with him in order to assist with a smooth transition of the portfolio. Yaalon said that he would meet with Lieberman and wished him success in his new post.

After Yaalon announced his resignation from politics he promised that if Leiberman requests a meeting with him he would oblige in a professional manner. Bidding farewell, he caled on his listners to Remember: The army must succeed but it must stay humane, also after battle or after operations or wa it must protect our values and stay humane. I trust you to continue to lead us to success.

After the conversation, Lieberman convened his first meeting as defense minister with Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot. Appearing in photos distributed by the defense ministry of the meeting with Eisenkot are open documents. Among other things, documents can been seen showing the number of people hit by terror attacks since the year 2000, and a command report dealing with in-depth discussions as well as a document on which Eisenkot had ironically written that he wanted to talk with Lieberman at their first meeting on " openness , transparency and mutual dialogue.

Photo: Motti Kimchi

The Yisrael Beytenu chairman clarified after he was sworn into the government on Monday evening that he supports a two-state solution: There was a lot of speculation about what was the policy of the government. I want to remind everyone that for many years I have spoken more than once about the same solution - two states for two peoples. I also think that I supported (Netanyahus) Bar Illan speech (in which he outlined his support for such a solution).

Egyptian President al-Sisis speech was extremely important and he created a real opportunity. We have an obligation to try and rise to the challenge, Lieberman said

During a joint declaration with the prime minister, Lieberman said: There are also positive elements in the Arab initiative which allow for a serious dialogue with all of the neighbors in the region.

For his part, Netanyahu also promised that the government will conduct prudent and responsible security policy and will not cease to search for the way to peace. Netanyahu also pointed out that he was obligated to achieve peace with our Palestinian neighbors and will all of our neighbors.

The Arab peace initiative includes positive elements which can help restore constructive negotiations with the Palestinians. We are ready to begin negotiations with Arab countries about the development of the initiative in a way that will reflect the dramatic changes that have occurred in the region since 2002 but will safeguard the goal of two states for two peoples. To this end we welcome the latest speech by Egyptian President al-Sisi and his suggestion to advance peace and security in the region.
Members of a movement known as the Awakening took to the street on Sunday in protest against governmental offices moving outside of the capital, blocking off the exit from Jerusalem.

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According to the law, The seat of the government of Israel is in Jerusalem. Nevertheless, around 60 governmental offices are currently located outside of the capital.

Moreover, Yedioth Ahronot discovered that Israels chief scientist, Avi Hasson intends to move his offices outside the capital while the Israel Broadcasting Authority returned with the intention of starting its new corporation activities there.

Jerusalem protest (Photo: Sharon Gabai)

The activists held placards bearing slogans such as stop the pull-out from Jerusalem, a reference to the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. While blocking the road they yelled chants of Capital city without the government is contempt for the state.

Awakening is a movement consisting predominantly of young individuals from Jerusalem who have made it their goal to promote Jerusalem as a Zionist, pluralistic and manufacturing city.

Chairman of the organization, Ofer Berkowitz who is also the deputy mayor of Jerusalem shared his thoughts on the matter. The government of Israel is withdrawing from Jerusalem. Government offices leaving the city is totally against every declaration of the prime minister and his ministers, he said. This government is harming Jerusalem, of all times, after one-and-a-half years of a security crisis.
Five police officers suspected of attacking an Arab worker outside a supermarket in Tel Aviv were investigated on Wednesday by the department for the investigation of police. Three others provided evidence. The outcome of the investigation is yet to be decided.
This has been a long time in the making, but in our continuing pursuit to bring only the best of firearms, 2nd Amendment and defence related news to our readers, we are very excited to announce the next step in our evolution as a company.

As of 2020, Minuteman Review is now the proud owner and operator of Your Defence News, a website with a long history of breaking huge news stories and investigative journalism.

We hope you are equally as excited as us.

This means that now the teams of Minuteman can combine with the firepower of Your Defence News to stay at the absolute forefront for our readers.

Keep an eye. Big things are coming soon. We couldn't be more excited.

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After seasonal conditions saw the WA regional markets perform poorly over the December 2015 quarter, the three months to March 2016 have been a different story with figures from the Real Estate Institute of Western Australia (REIWA) showing regional house, unit and land markets outperformed their metro counterparts.

Its really pleasing to see that regional WAs overall median price lifted 1.3 per cent over the quarter, and looking at houses, units and land individually, there was notable growth in all three areas, REIWA president Hayden Groves said.

In particular, units experienced the biggest quarterly growth in median price, lifting six per cent. This can mostly be attributed to the Mandurah-Murray region which saw its median unit price improve significantly to $390,000 over the quarter, from $320,000 in the December quarter 2015, Groves said.

Source: REIWA

In comparison, REIWAs figures for Perth over the March quarter show the metro market was much more subdued over the three-month period, with house and unit prices pulling back slightly when compared to figures from the December quarter.

In terms of house prices, Bunbury was regional WAs best performing sub-market over the quarter.

Bunbury in the states South West saw the biggest increase to its quarterly median house price in the March quarter, lifting 5.6 per cent to $395,000, Groves said.

Bunbury also saw an improvement in house sales activity over the quarter, with volumes increasing six per cent in the first three months of this year.

House prices also increased over the quarter in Northam, up 4.3% to $245,000, Albany Urban Area up 2.7% to $386,000, Kalgoorlie-Boulder up 2.6% to $340,000 and Mandurah-Murray region up 1.9% to $396,000.
The Global and United States Hydrobike Market Report has been published by QY Research recently. Hydrobike Market Analysis and Insights This report focuses on...
News

Provo, Utah - When BYU Computer Science Professor Kent Seamons explains email security, he often uses an analogy: Sending an email is more similar to sending a postcard than a letter in a sealed envelopeas the email transaction happens, other people may gain access to the information.

Encryption is usually the answer to protecting sensitive and personal information like medical records, PIN numbers, and social security numbers over email, but encryption can also be confusing and cumbersome for the novice user.

Thats why Seamons has spent the last decade researching to help find a balance between usability and security when it comes to technology.

You might be interested in security and want your email to be secure, but in a work setting your job is to send email and get work done, said Seamons. As a result, security gets brushed aside.

Seamons, in collaboration with Computer Science Professor Daniel Zappala, advised a group of students that were recently honored for their research at CHI (Computer Human Interaction) 2016, the top conference for Human-Computer Interaction. The group was directed by Ph.D. student Scott Ruoti, and included Jeff Andersen, Scott Heidbrink, Mark ONeil, Elham Vaziripour, and Justin Wu.

The group conducted a study asking 25 pairs of novice users to install and use several of the latest email encryption systems to exchange secure messages. Results showed a preference for email encryption systems that integrate well with the users existing email account rather than using a program that exists separately. Additionally, if the encryption system didnt provide some details about the process while it was encrypting, the users didnt fully trust that the program had done its job.

The study was the first of its kind to use pairs of novice users instead of a single novice user in a laboratory setting, which the group felt set them apart at CHI.

I was surprised at how much more effective the paired participant studies were than the single-user studies, said Ruoti, also the lead author of the study. As a study coordinator, it was clear how much more naturally participants acted when using our new methodology.

CHI selected the paper for an Honorable Mention Award, given to only the top 4 percent of all papers submitted to the conference.

Users most favorable encryption system in the study was Pwm, a program designed by Seamons and Zappalas group that integrates with existing Gmail accounts. Seamons plans to use the tool this Fall semester in his classes to send secure information, like grades, to his students while still complying with federal privacy laws.

Both Seamons and Ruoti admit they dont use encryption daily because theyre not always sending sensitive information and dont want to impose on the receiver to download the encryption software. But the research group hopes the progress theyre making on Pwm will soon make sending secure email easy enough for regular use.
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Washington, DC - On Thursday, June 2, the President will deliver the commencement address to the 2016 graduates of the United States Air Force Academy. The U.S. Air Force Academy is recognized for educating and training some of the nations most dedicated leaders, and the President looks forward to thanking them for their service.

The arrival and departure of Air Force One are open to pre-credentialed media but closed to the public. The Presidents remarks at the United States Air Force Academy are open to pre-credentialed media who have pre-registered with the Air Force Academy Public Affairs Office. Registration has closed for this event.

The Presidents remarks will be streamed live at: www.whitehouse.gov/live.
Iraqi security forces launched an operation Monday to retake the city of Fallujah from Islamic State extremists, storming the stronghold from various points, military leaders said.

VOA spoke by telephone to an Iraqi special forces soldier on the front line of the Fallujah battle.

"The Iraqi special forces and special operations are entering the city and clearing it block by block and then handing the cleared areas over to the Iraqi police, army and volunteers," he said, speaking through a translator.

Volunteers refers generally to the Hashd al Shaabi, an umbrella group of mostly Shi'ite militias.

"Step-by-step we are putting up the Iraqi flag ... there are a lot of dead, including Iraqi special forces and Iraqi special operations soldiers. They are dying by mortars and sticky bombs. The war is not face-to-face, it is by mortars, car bombs and snipers," the soldier said.

He also said many IS fighters have been killed, but some have been captured alive and are providing information.

 Civilians Trapped

As the battle started, there are concerns over the plight of civilians trapped inside the Islamic State held city.

"They [IS] have put bombs in the roads, they are using suicide bombers," said Muhamed, an Iraqi special forces soldier on the front line contacted by telephone, speaking on condition his full name not be used.
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West Lafayette, Indiana - The Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture and the Jacques Maritain Center at Notre Dame, in collaboration with the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization, are hosting a two-day colloquium on disability and mercy to take place in Rome, June 56, 2016. The colloquium will bring together theologians, scholars, historians, persons with disabilities, families, and intentional Christian communities for shared discussion about disability and the ways in which mercy, properly understood, requires friendship, communion, and a shared life with those who have disabilities.

"This conference is part of Notre Dame's contribution to the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy called by Pope Francis," said Center for Ethics and Culture director Carter Snead. "We are excited to bring together this diverse group of scholars, physicians, families, and lay associations to explore the particular challenges and blessings that disabilities present in the context of our shared pilgrimage. By hosting this conversation in collaboration with the Vatican, we look forward to experiencing together the mystery of God's abundant mercy in the context of the Jubilee Year."

"With this colloquium we hope to respond to Pope Francis' call for a greater reflection upon and expression of mercy as arising from mutual friendship," explained John O'Callaghan, director of the Jacques Maritain Center. "The pope has reminded us that just as there is no friendship from a distance, there is no mercy from a distance. At the heart of our concern is how we can better develop a culture of friendship with one another, including persons with disabilities, that allows us to see in one another the face of mercy, the image of God."

Participants in the colloquium include Prof. Lorenza Violini, Elizabeth Lev, Dr. Mary O'Callaghan, the Rev. McLean Cummings, Prof. Lisa Schiltz, and many others. It will also feature discussion with representatives from the L'Arche, Sant'Egidio, and Communion & Liberation communities. Following the colloquium, participants will take part in the official events of the Jubilee for the Sick and Persons with Disabilities (June 1012).
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Austin, Texas - It took nearly a half trillion tries before researchers at The University of Texas at Austin witnessed a rare event and perhaps solved an evolutionary puzzle about how introns, noncoding sequences of DNA located within genes, multiply in a genome. The results, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, address fundamental questions about the evolution of new species and could expand our understanding of gene expression and the causes of diseases such as cancer.

Until now, the only way researchers could track the evolution of introns was through phylogenetic analysis, which is examining the evolutionary relationships among sets of related organisms, says Scott Stevens, associate professor of molecular biosciences. Our work is the first experimental verification that shows how introns can be transposed into an organism.

For a long time, scientists have known that much of the DNA within any given organisms genome does not code for functional molecules or protein. However, recent research has found that these genetic sequences, misnamed junk DNA in the past, often do have functional significance.

These introns are no exception. Now known to play a role in gene expression, introns are the portion of gene sequences that are removed or spliced out of RNA before genes are translated into protein. When eukaryotes first diverged from bacteria, there was a massive invasion of introns into the genome. All living eukaryotes  from yeast to mammals  share this common ancestor, and whereas simple organisms such as yeast have eliminated most of their introns, organisms such as mammals have considerably expanded their intron inventory. Humans have more than 200,000 introns that take up about 40 percent of the genome.

In the current paper, Stevens and co-author Sujin Lee, a former graduate student in cellular and molecular biology at UT Austin, used a new reporter assay to directly detect the loss and gain of introns in budding yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae). The team tested nearly a half trillion yeast and found only two instances in which an intron was added to a new gene. The proposed mechanism for this addition is a reversal of a splicing reaction.

Normally, to make proteins, RNA is read from the instructions in DNA, and the introns are spliced out. But in these two instances, the cell allowed the spliced out introns to make it back into a different RNA and was recombined back into the genome, thus creating a permanent genetic change. These are called intron gains, and if these accumulate over time, they can contribute to the development of new species as well as human disease.

We showed in this project that introns continue to be gained, although infrequently at any point in time, says Stevens. But can introns drive evolution? If these sequences give organisms a selective advantage and become fixed in a population, others have shown that it can be a major factor in the creation of new species.

These evolutionary advances come at a cost, however, because diseases such as cancer correlate with the improper removal of introns from RNA. Stevens adds, We are continuing this work to further understand how this process impacts our genetic history, our future, and the prospects of curing disease.

The Department of Molecular Biosciences at The University of Texas at Austin funded this research. Screening was assisted by students in the Vertebrate Interactome Stream of the UT Freshman Research Initiative.
The Greek Coast Guard has pulled to safety 29 migrants afloat in a dinghy off the western island of Lefkada, as they headed to Italy.

Authorities say the rescue Sunday is the first involving migrants trying to cross from Greece to Italy since Athens closed its land border to the rest of Europe in March.

Two children were reported to be on the small boat, which was found adrift off Lefkada.
My sole motivation behind letting myself into that abominable prison house called school was the little white stick that my mother allowed me to grab and lick after the classes were over. I used to look with wishful eyes the attractive white box of ice cream walla who also had other varieties-the red tangy one that came in twenty five paisa, the slightly yellow one that came in fifty paisa and the expensive white creamy one that came in full one rupee. My mother had warned me against eating the orange one as she said it contained worms that came out if you sprinkled salt on it! So my childhood remained deprived of that one single taste that so often contented the appetite of my not-so-affluent friends. <BR><BR> When I went to college I read about globalisation, about the invasion of markets by foreign goods and of absolute wiping out of the local economy by organized production houses. But I could not understand these things till one day while crossing from near my school my eyes failed to spot that old ice cream walla whose presence had become such an inseparable part of the entire set up. It came as a rude shock to me that his place was now taken by three four colourful wheeled vans endorsing attractive logos and pictures of branded ice cream. <BR><BR> That changes are always for better or worse is like putting an emotion into plain black and white. I may have in my own personal way some attachment with the white stick ice cream or with the more expensive soapy, frothy softie of my school days but the accessibility, taste and variety that the present day ice cream industry is offering is no doubt incomparable. <BR><BR> Who would have thought barely a decade ago of eating ice creams made of real fresh fruits- a la Gelato Vittorio or a cool creamy liquid fried in hot boiling oil or what is called today the fried ice cream. <BR><BR> In India the ice cream industry took sometimes to catch the global cue because the country has an indigenous rich and well developed dessert market. What ice cream would stand in competition against Indian sweets? But no you cant say so just because you are born in the land of Kulfi. You will have the authority only when you taste Baked Alaska (an ice-cream sponge cake dish topped with meringue), Arctic roll (British dessert made of vanilla and flour), Adzuki (Japanese red bean ice cream) and Dondruma( a Turkish ice made of salep and mastic resin). <BR><BR> We Indians who generally go gaga over a handful of varieties that Baskin Robbins offers are unaware of the fact that the company actually makes 1000 flavours! What we get in India generally as branded ice cream is nothing but milk and corn flour seasoned with a few chemicals and packed in attractive cones, cups and cornettos. Our knowledge of Ice cream is so poor that we do not even know what cornetto is! Most of us think it is the name of an ice cream that Kwality offers. Update your dictionary- it is actually the registered name of an improved variety of waffle cone that does not become soggy and that was invented and patented by an Italian firm called Spica in 1960! <BR><BR> The world offers so much in shape of that delicate, cool, tender delight called ice cream that I being a lover of it feel choked with emotion at my own minisculeness and misfortune of not having tasted even a fraction of that tremendous, rich and inexhaustible treasure. What is thy life O mortal, my heart cries out, if thou hast not known the glories of the Australian Giant Sandwich Monster, the Manoco Bar, the Irish Scottish Sliders, the Argentine Helado, the Greek Kimaki and the Japanese Macha! <BR><BR> Sometimes I wonder whether there is an intricate connection between the survival of a race and its appetite for ice cream! Otherwise why would the Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese and the Persians survive the ravages of time and the Glorious Harappan civilization fade into oblivion? And let us be pragmatic and not blame some harmless ecology or innocent river for their decline. The reason I am sure was hidden in their food habits-they having failed to secure the divine blessings of the Gods. Yes, thats precisely what the ancient Greeks called ice cream! Imagine what foodies they must have been that nearly 4000 years ago they got for themselves ice houses constructed at the banks of Euphrates and as early as 5th century BC they began its marketing by selling ice cones mixed with fruit and honey. A honey flavoured cornetto.! <BR><BR> Roman emperor Nero (62 AD) was fond of fruit ice cream and hence sent his servants to fetch ice from mountains! The Falooda that we eat today is actually a Persian dish Faloodeh made from starch and has its origin around 400BC. The Chinese who claim to be the pioneers in almost everything -be it the first currency notes, the first stint with silk or the first to flood the markets of neighbours with cheap plastic goods-were not far behind in making ice cream too. They are credited to have invented a device that made quick ice using salt peter (no, it was not imported from Bihar, China had enough of it). <BR><BR> The unfortunate Charles I whom the world knows as an autocrat, a despot, a tyrant, an enemy of democracy and parliament was also a lover of ice cream! It is said that he made his chef keep the formula a secret so that it remained a royal prerogative. <BR><BR> Our great Mughals, we should not forget were the die hard lovers of food and all that is rich and luxurious in the modern Indian cuisine has a Mughal origin. So they too loved ice cream and they too enjoyed it in royal feasts and ceremonies. When they could get choicest fruits from Farghana and Samarquand and the best wines from Persia, why couldnt they send relays of horsemen to bring ice from Hindukush for their aromatic fruit sherbets? <BR><BR> But were sending horsemen to run and fetch ice or storing ice in underground icehouses near rivers, the only way of making ice creams in those days? Sadly, yes. And thats why the common man remained deprived of and unknown to its delectable taste. But lets thank Nancy Johnson of Philadelphia who first got the patent for a small hand run ice cream freezer. Gradually with the coming of electricity there also came a revolution in ice cream making. Thereafter Giant corporates like Howard Johnson, Dairy Queen, Baskin Robbins, Gelato Vittorio, Ben and Jerrys, Haagen Dazs and Carvel changed the concept of ice cream in the world. Soft serves, Sundaes and super premiums began to be offered by shops next door. <BR><BR> Thanks to globalisation, the world has really become a small place to live in. Today I can access any ice cream from the world over in my local confectionary shop. but among the confused tastes of multitudinous flavours I some how always try to find that one singular taste of the white stick ice-cream which trickled through my fingers and ran into my nursery uniformspoiling it but leaving an imprint on my memory which has failed to faint in all these years.
The Cincinnati Zoo is defending its controversial decision to shoot and kill an endangered male lowland gorilla after a 4-year-old boy fell into his enclosure Saturday, putting himself in serious danger.

The incident was captured on video and has outraged animal lovers around the world.

It shows the gorilla, named Harambe, dragging the boy through a shallow moat filled with water. Several times, Harambe looked to be gently touching the boy and stood him up on both feet as if he was trying to protect him.

But just as suddenly, he pulled the boy through the moat to a different part of the pen with the boy's head hitting the concrete. Harambe had control of the boy for at least 10 minutes before the zoo's Dangerous Animal Response Team shot him to death.

Many animal lovers say killing the huge 17-year-old primate was unnecessary. But zoo director Thane Maynard said Monday that officials believed they had no choice. With his pen surrounded by screaming and excited people, Maynard said, the gorilla was clearly agitated, disoriented and acting erratically.
Cincinnati: Amidst the furore and frenzy over social media and the cyber space as a whole over Harambe the gorilla's killing in Cincinnati Zoo, the zoo's director, Thane Maynard, came out to defend the actions of his staff.

For those who are unaware, A 17-year-old gorilla, a rare western lowland silverback, was shot and killed after a 4-year-old boy slipped between the rails down to the gorilla enclosure at Cincinnati Zoo. To protect the child, the zoo staff took the decision to kill the giant ape.

The parents of the child have been at the receiving end of all the hate that has been spewing over social media networks for neglecting their kid and being unable to take care of him, because of which, an innocent animal had to lose its life.

The anger of grieving people rose when certain reports claimed that Harambe was in fact, trying to protect the boy and not harm him as the zoo staff thought.

The boy was with Harambe for 10 minutes before the zoo authorities deemed the situation life-threatening. Maynard is now backing the zoo's decision of killing the gorilla.

He claims that, Harambe was a fully grown gorills who had the potential to crush a whole coconut with one hand, so there was no doubt that the boy was in danger.

When asked why they didn't resort to tranquilizers, Maynard said that the 420-pound gorilla would have become more agitated and the shots wouldn't have had an immediate effect on him, considering which, the threat that the boy faced, could have elevated.

According to a report by the Associated Press (AP), Maynard said an investigation indicates the boy climbed over a 3-foot-tall railing, then walked through an area of bushes about 4 feet deep before plunging some 15 feet into the moat. The boy was treated at a hospital and released that same day.

The director said the zoo remains safe for its some 1.6 million annual visitors, but a review is underway for possible improvements.

AP further reported that, in the days since, people have taken to social media to voice their outrage about the killing of a member of an endangered species. A Facebook page called Justice for Harambe was created along with online petitions and another page calling for a June 5 protest at the zoo.

Maynard said the zoo had received messages of support and condolences from around the world, including from other zoo directors and gorilla experts.

Gorilla World, the gorilla enclosure where the unfortunate incident took place, has remained closed ever since that day, however, Maynard says it might reopen by next weekend.
Chandigarh: The Prakash Singh committee probing the violence during the Jat agitation in Haryana in February this year submitted a report to High Court.

Shockingly, the report submitted by the committee confirmed the 'mass rape' incident during the Jat quota agitation.

'Reports that several women were dragged out of cars and raped in Haryanas Murthal on the night of February 22 during the Jat protest have been confirmed by owners of dhabas', a court was told on Monday, reports NDTV.

Senior lawyer Anupam Gupta, helping the Haryana High Court in the case, told NDTV that women, who were subjected to sexual assaults, later made their way inside a Murthal dhaba, where people helped them with clothes and blankets and helped them reach back their homes.

Gupta also stated that the dhaba owners had made their statement before an inquiry headed by retired police officer Prakash Singh. The inquiry was set up into alleged lapses by the administration and the police; it was submitted in court by the state government.

Prakash Singh, a former police chief of Uttar Pradesh, also said that some dhaba owners in Murthal confirmed the Murthal 'mass rape' incident.

Days after the nine-day Jat agitation, media reports claimed that the mass gang rapes took place on the night of February 22 and that up to 10 women were sexually assaulted by a group of nearly 40 hooligans during the Jat community`s agitation or reservation.

The women were allegedly pulled out of their cars, stripped and gang-raped in nearby fields. The victims later reached a nearby popular dhaba and sought help.

Earlier, visuals of torn women's clothing, including inner wear had surfaced from the alleged crime site in Murthal.

However, the rape reports were dismissed by the Haryana Police who claimed that women's inner wear could have fallen out from bags of the commuters who were stopped and chased away by the Jat protestors during the agitation.

The Haryana government and police, who earlier maintained that no gang rapes occurred near Murthal during the quota stir, later set up an all-women inquiry committee to probe the alleged gang rapes on women.
New Delhi: A group of African students in the national capital today called off a demonstration to protest the spate of assaults against the community after the government assured them of better security.

The students said they had a meeting with officials of the Ministry of External Affairs where they were assured of security and safety. The government officials also requested them not to go ahead with their planned protest at Jantar Mantar.

"There was a high-level meeting with the Permanent Secretary of Ministry of External Affairs yesterday. He listened to our grievances and has made commitments to ensure our safety in India.

Leaders of 15 African countries were also present during the meeting," the Association of African Students in India said in a statement.

It further said, "There was also a meeting with Delhi Police Commissioner and other senior officials where contact details of high level officials were shared with us and they promised us of better policing with respect to Africans".

"There was also a meeting with the African Ambassador body in which they advised us to take the path of diplomacy and hold the Indian government to their words....And also fast track justice for past cases. The parents of Congolese youth M K Olivier have also requested us to not take part in the protest," it said.

Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar had yesterday met a group of African students who raised their concerns over host of issues including better security in the wake of the killing of Congolese and cases of assaults against the community.

There has been a series of attacks on African nationals in the last few days including killing of the Congolese youth and assault on a 23-year-old Nigerian student in Hyderabad. Five persons have so far been arrested in connection with the attacks. GJS MPB


Oakland: At least four people on Monday rushed the stage as presidential candidate Bernie Sanders spoke at a rally in Oakland, where Secret Service agents swarmed around him and detain the protesters, CNN reported.

The people were quickly led away by several agents before they were able to reach the Democrat, whose speech was briefly interrupted by the disturbance, a video posted by CNN showed.

A Secret Service agent rushed to Sanders side, grabbed him and wrapped his arms around the presidential candidate during the ruckus.

"We don`t get intimated easily," said Sanders, who seemed unfazed by the situation, as he resumed his speech.

It is unclear how many people were detained and why they were protesting. At least four were seen on the CNN video being led away by agents, who lifted one man up by his feet and carried him away.

Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, is running far behind Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic nomination for the Nov. 8 presidential election.

In March, a man stormed the stage as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump spoke in Vandalia, Ohio before he was met by several agents.

(Reporting by Brendan O`Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Michael Perry)


Nagpur: A massive fire broke out at Central Ammunition Depot (CAD) in Pulgaon near Wardha killing 17 army personnel including two officers. CAD Pulgaon is India's biggest ammunition depot.

At least two officers and 15 Defence Security Corps (DSC) jawans are feared dead, the Army confirmed. The fire also injured 17 other DSC jawans.

While the cause of the fire is yet unknown, reports said that the fire broke out after an explosion at the depot in the early hours  around 1:30-2:00 am - on Tuesday.

Other reports suggest that explosions occurred after a shed at the ammunition dump caught fire.

The fire is said to have been brought under control even as nearby villages have been evacuated as a precautionary measure. Pulgaon is around 110 kms from Nagpur.

The injured have been shifted to hospitals at Wardha, 40 kms from Pulgaon.

The army top brass has ordered a probe into the mishap; Defence minister Manohar Parrikar and Army Chief Dalbir Singh Suhag will visit Pulgaon later today.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi condoled the loss of lives in the incident. "Pained by loss of lives caused by a fire at central ammunition depot in Pulgaon, Maharashtra. My thoughts are with the bereaved families. I pray that those who are injured recover quickly. Have asked RM Manohar Parrikar to visit the spot an take stock of the situation," Modi said.

Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis said, "Unfortunate incident. We have suffered a huge loss of lives and property. Have directed district officials to extend whatever help possible," he said, adding that the fire is now under control.
New Delhi: Better weather on Tuesday helped in the evacuation of pilgrims on the Nepalgunj-Simikot-Hilsa route of the annual Kailash Mansarovar Yatra, the government has said.

Citing the Indian embassy in Kathmandu, the external affairs ministry said ina statement that because of clear weather on Tuesday, 23 flights operated on the Nepalgunj-Simikot sector and 27 chopper flights operated on the Simikot-Hilsa sector.

First Secretary (Consular) Pranav Ganesh visited Hilsa today, the ministry statement said.

He met district civilian and police officers and saw logistics available at Simikot and Hilsa. While Simikot has accommodation available for around 400 persons, Hilsa has no facility for more than 150 or so, it stated.

While there is no pendency at Hilsa, at Simikot, there is normal flow of pilgrims to and from Hilsa.

If the weather remains clear, the situation would remain normal. But in case of weather deteriorating, backlog would build up again, the statement added.
New Delhi: Three key officers handling files in the Home Ministry related to the alleged fake encounter killing of Ishrat Jahan have deposed before an one-man inquiry committee probing the missing documents of the case.

The panel of BK Prasad, Additional Secretary in the Home Ministry, recorded the statements of retired IAS officer Deverakonda Diptivilasa and serving senior IAS officers Dhamendra Sharma and Rakesh Singh in the last few days.

All the three were handling the key Internal Security-I division in the Home Ministry as Joint Secretary in different periods.

While Diptivilasa is currently serving as non-official Director of public sector Corporation Bank, Sharma is at present with Delhi government. Singh is serving in Karnataka government.

Sources said Diptivilasa, Sharma and Singh explained their respective position and reportedly pleaded their ignorance about the missing documents related to the Ishrat Jahan case.

The inquiry panel has so far not been able to trace the missing files related to alleged fake encounter killing of Ishrat Jahan.

The one-member panel was constituted after Home Minister Rajnath Singh had disclosed in Parliament on March 10 that the files were missing.

Following an uproar in Parliament, the ministry had asked Prasad to inquire into the circumstances in which the files related to the case of Ishrat Jahan, who was killed in an alleged fake encounter in Gujarat in 2004, went missing.

The papers, which disappeared from the Home Ministry, include the copy of an affidavit vetted by the then Attorney General and submitted in the Gujarat High Court in 2009 and the draft of the second affidavit vetted by the AG on which changes were made.

Two letters written by the then Home Secretary G K Pillai to the then Attorney General late GE Vahanvati and the copy of the draft affidavit have also so far remained untraceable.

The panel has examined all officers who had handled the Ishrat Jahan related files in different periods.

However, the inquiry committee has not sought any explanation from the then Home Minister P Chidambaram and the then Union Home Secretary GK Pillai.

The first affidavit was filed on the basis of inputs from Maharashtra and Gujarat Police besides Intelligence Bureau where it was said the 19-year-old girl from Mumbai outskirts was an activist of terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba but it was ignored in the second affidavit, Home Ministry officials said.

The second affidavit, claimed to have been drafted by Chidambaram, said there was no conclusive evidence to prove that Ishrat was a terrorist, the officials said.

Pillai had claimed that as Home Minister, Chidambaram had recalled the file a month after the original affidavit, which described Ishrat and her slain aides as LeT operatives, was filed in the court.

Subsequently, Chidambaram had said Pillai is equally responsible for the change in the affidavit.

Ishrat, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were killed in the encounter with Gujarat Police on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004.

Gujarat Police had then said those killed in the encounters were LeT terrorists and came to Gujarat to assassinate the then Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
China saw its number of billionaires grow by 30 percent to 40 percent annually, but is still recording charitable donations at a small fraction of the rates seen in Europe and the United States.

A new report by the United Nations Development Program found that charitable donations are about 4 percent of those in the West.

The year 2015 saw 38 percent growth in the number of billionaires in China, according to a Forbes magazine study. Their net worth rose by $170 billion, reaching $830 billion in 2015. China is the world's second-biggest producer of billionaires after the United States.

One reason for the lack of donations is the lack of transparency in the functioning of charity organizations, and widely held suspicion about the use of funds raised for social welfare, Gu Qing, assistant country director for Poverty, Equity & Governance at UNDP's China office, told VOA.

"There have been some major scandals on the use of funds collected for charity. Also, there are few tax benefits to encourage donations," Gu said. An unclear legal and policy framework have added to the general reluctance to give.

 Give and Take

In China, charity donations by business people and companies are mostly give-and-take deals, said Oliver Rui, professor of finance at China Europe International Business School, or CEIBS.

"Donors often cut under-table deals for getting favors from local government bodies in return for donations," Rui said. "Most charity foundations are directly or indirectly affiliated with government agencies. People either stay away from them or cut deals."

There are some improvements, however. The UNDP report found there was a 60 percent increase in the past five years in the number of charity foundations, which stood at 4,211 in 2015. Analysts said this was not very significant in an economy which has grown at 8 to 10 percent in recent years.
New Delhi: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Minister of State VK Singh are expected to meet African students here on Tuesday to assure them of safety and security.

Meanwhile, a two-hour peaceful protest demonstration will take place at Jantar Mantar today by the Association of African Students in India (AASI) and Association For Community Research and Action (ACRA) with regard to the recent string of attacks on African students.

On Monday, a group of African students had held at the same venue, holding aloft placards that read 'Racism Ruins Lives', and demanded that the Indian government act swiftly to stop attacks on the community.

Also, President Pranab Mukherjee yesterday said that he was "pained" by the recent attacks on African students while Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and Delhi Police chief Alok Kumar Verma assured them that the government is committed to ensuring their safety even as an Ola driver was allegedly thrashed by a group of Africans after he refused to take more than four passengers in his cab.

In a related development, the family members of Congolese national Masonda Ketada Olivier, who who beaten to death on May 20 by some locals over a minor altercation, has arrived in the Indian capital to take back the mortal remains. A senior official of the Ministry of External Affairs was there at the airport to receive the kin.

Last morning, Jaishankar met a group of African students at the Jawaharlal Nehru Bhavan here and assured them of the safety and security of the community in India.

The spate of rising attacks on African nationals has caused outrage among the community, several thousands of who study in India. The African envoys had last week threatened to boycott the Africa Day event over the murder of Olivier.

The Indian government stepped in to assure them of the safety and security of their nationals after which the envoys attended the May 26 event.

On May 25, a Nigerian student in Hyderabad was allegedly beaten by an Indian over a parking dispute, while on May 28, four separate cases of alleged assault on Africans in the national capital were reported.
Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Tuesday described PDP's alliance with BJP and the common minimum programme between the two parties as a "challenge" but said it was necessary for bringing out the state from the "morass".

She told the Assembly that PDP had entered into an alliance with BJP to seek national reconciliation on political and economic challenges confronting the state amid her hopes that "leaders at the Centre have understood the ground realities in J&K and they want to improve the situation", including in the context of revocation of controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA).

Replying to a debate on the Motion of Thanks to Governor's Address, the PDP chief said that after the hung verdict in the 2014 Assembly polls, her party had received offers of alliance from National Conference and Congress but these were rejected as it would have proved to be a "disaster" for the state, like in 1987.

Describing PDP's alliance with BJP as a "challenge", she said the purpose of the tie-up was to catalyze reconciliation and confidence building within the state and across the Line of Control (LoC) to create an enabling environment for sustainable peace, all-round economic development and prosperity of J&K.

"I am here to fulfill the dream and vision of Mufti Sahab (her father and former Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad)... Our 'Agenda of Alliance' (between PDP and BJP) is a big challenge and if we fulfill it, implement if fully, I feel, we can take Jammu and Kashmir out from this morass," Mehbooba said.

"I assure this august House that we will continue to pursue implementation of this agenda with unflinching consistency to address the enormous challenges confronting J&K," she said.

She said the 'Agenda of Alliance' outlines a comprehensive roadmap for the coalition government and it would be implemented in letter and spirit to address the challenges confronting the state.

"I am confident that if we succeed in implementing the Agenda of Alliance, it will take care of most of the problems facing J&K, faced as it is with decades-old political uncertainty, economic deprivation, development deficit, unfulfilled aspirations and mounting unemployment," she said.

She said Sayeed had a vision that given the decisive mandate enjoyed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Centre would take "effective and realistic steps" to address the political, economic and administrative challenges confronting the state.

"Mufti Sahab's vision was not only to bring the people of various regions within the state closer to each other, but to bridge the trust deficit between J&K and the rest of the country and that is why he joined hands with BJP to carry through this enterprise of hope," she said.

"It is not about the BJP and PDP, it is about an inclusive government which will strive towards pulling J-K out of the morass," she added.
Mumbai: Maharashtra Revenue Minister Eknath Khadse, embroiled in a string of controversies, on Tuesday skipped the weekly meeting of the Cabinet and was seen moving in his native district Jalgaon in a beaconless car, fuelling speculation.

Khadse left for Jalgaon late last night and was in the Muktainagar Assembly constituency as per a scheduled event.

The senior BJP minister has for the last few days stayed away from media after allegations of impropriety in purchase of MIDC plot in Pune and alleged calls from fugitive don Dawood Ibrahim's residence to his mobile triggered a political storm in the state.

Meanwhile, the Cabinet meeting, chaired by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, decided to set up Employee's State Insurance (ESI) Corporation at state level by converting existing Scheme as per ESI Act 1948 amendments.

The central government will bear all the cost for the corporation for first three years and 90 per cent cost thereafter, Fadnavis said.

"This decision of setting up the corporation will benefit lakhs of workers enrolled with ESI and will get better health facilities," he said.

The Cabinet also sanctioned additional posts for both Trauma Care Centre at GMC Nagpur and Super Specialty Hospital at Nagpur.

The Cabinet also sanctioned 100 posts for Super Specialty Hospital envisaging a cost of Rs 7 crore per year and 147 posts for Trauma Centre with cost of Rs 4.48 crore per year.
Kabul: Sartaj Aziz, the Pakistani foreign affairs adviser has said that Kabul and Islamabad should not allow the use of their respective territories against each other. Aziz, during a meeting with Afghan Ambassador Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal, reportedly expressed serious concerns over the US drone strikes in its country, reports the Khaama Press.

The meeting between both diplomats followed days after the Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed in a US drone strike in Pakistan`s Balochistan province. Bilateral ties, the border situation the Afghan reconciliation process, and several matters of importance including the fate of Afghan peace process following the death of Mansour were reportedly also discussed between both sides.

Aziz`s remarks comes as the Afghan officials have long been critizing Pakistan for allowing the insurgent groups use its soil as a safe haven to plan and coordinate attacks in Afghanistan.The Taliban group and the notorious Haqqani terrorist network leadership councils are believed to be based in Pakistan.
Officials from Turkey and Israel are holding more meetings to normalize relations and two out of Ankara's three conditions for reviving ties have been met, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said on Monday.

Speaking to reporters after a Cabinet meeting, Kurtulmus said lifting Israel's embargo on the Gaza Strip was important for normalization. Israel has ruled out ending a sea and air blockade of the Palestinian territory.

It has also sought an official apology and compensation for the bereaved. The erstwhile allies have been at loggerheads since Israeli commandos stormed a Turkish ship in an aid flotilla to Gaza, killing 10 Turks.


Islamabad: The JF-17 multi-role combat aircraft is capable enough to meet Pakistan`s defence requirements, a top Pakistani minister said on Tuesday.

Federal Minister for Defence Production Rana Tanveer said Pakistan had a fleet of the state-of-the-art JF-17 Thunder aircraft which carried all specifications of any advanced fighter jet.

He said Pakistan was at the top among 10 countries having a fleet of the JF-17 lightweight, single-engine, multi-role combat aircraft, and added that the country`s defence was impregnable and had the capability to meet all challenges.

Tanveer said Pakistan was in contact with the US for delivery of F-16 aircraft, and in case the deal did not materialise, it would approach other countries for the purpose.

The federal minister went on to say that the country was in talks with Russia for acquiring MI-35 helicopters and expressed optimism that positive development will take place in upcoming months.

MI-35 is the upgraded version of the Russia-made MI-24 attack and transport helicopter. Several countries in the world, including India, are using the helicopter which is also called "flying tank" for its fighting capability.
Washington: The US space agency NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) have spotted two huge 'black holes' on the surface of the Sun.

The 'black holes' are called 'coronal holes' and the source of a high-speed wind of solar particles that streams off the Sun some three times faster than the slower wind elsewhere.

They are less dense and have lower temperature than the rest of the Sun's surface.

The solar winds produced from these holes can not only create geomagnetic storms on the Earth which can disturb communications in all forms but also affect astronauts' on deeper space mission like Mars in the near future.

One of the hole is the biggest seen in decades which is about "six-eight percent of the total solar surface".

Karen C Fox and Steele Hill of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center says,'While it is unclear what causes coronal holes, they correlate to areas on the Sun where magnetic fields soar up and away, without looping back down to the surface, as they do elsewhere'.

Coronal holes are low-density regions of the sun's atmosphere, known as the corona.

Because they contain little solar material, they have lower temperatures and thus appear much darker than their surroundings.

Coronal holes are visible in certain types of extreme ultraviolet light, which is typically invisible to our eyes.

"These 'coronal holes' are important to understanding the space environment around the Earth through which our technology and astronauts travel," NASA said in a statement.

(With IANS inputs)
Delhi: After the good showing in Assam Assembly elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is eyeing the state of Uttar Pradesh and has begun preparing for it.

The UP polls are scheduled to be held in 2017 and is crucial for the BJP in many ways.

As per a report in India Today, BJP chief Amit Shah is already busy chalking out his party's tactics. In order to get the caste mathematics right in the Hindi heartland, Keshav Prasad Maurya was roped in as party's state unit president with an eye on the backward vote bank.

This is said to be the first move of 'social engineering' the BJP is keen to get right in the state.

Moreover, BJP reportedly decided to send Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi to Rajya Sabha from Jharkhand and bring Shiv Pratap Shukla, a known Brahmin face of the party in UP, in his place because of caste equations.

In the past, in the last ten years, 80 to 90 percent of BJPs district chiefs in Uttar Pradesh have came from forward caste (Brahmin or Thakur). Now, in a sign of changing times, out of the latest list of 94 district presidents, 44 belong to backward or extremely backward castes, 29 are Brahmins, 10 Thakurs, nine Vaishyas and four Dalits, as per the website.

UP has 35 percent vote of Yadav, Jatav and Muslim combine.

For the BJP, remaining 65 percent of vote share is what they would be hoping to tap into and thus the move to strike a balance between backward and forward vote bank.

As per the report, the BJP is also planning to dent BSP's core vote bank.

In order to do that, it has targeted luring extremely backward castes and Amit Shah's rally of the Rajbhar community in Varanasi last year was aimed at that. Saffron party leaders have also reportedly suggested giving ten seats to Ashok Rajbhar's Bhartiya Samaj Party or persuade him to merge with the BJP.

To be noted is the fact that the BJP is already in alliance with the Apna Dal (it has a sizeable backward caste support).

Further, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, probably to target Buddhist voters, flagged off Brahm Chetna Yatra from Varanasi on April 24. Interestingly, he had at that time promised to build a Buddha statue, taller than the ones in Bamiyan in Afghanistan, if BJP came to power in UP.

On 26th May (the day NDA government completed two years in power) Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a mega rally in Saharanpur. It was seen as sounding the poll bugle by the BJP in UP.

And on May 31, Shah had a meal with a Dalit family in Jogiyapur village in Sevapuri Assembly segment in PM Modi's Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency. Shah, who was on his way to Allahabad to address a farmers' rally, took a brief halt at Jogiyapur village and had lunch with the family of Girjaprasad Bind and Ikbal Bind, who belong to the Dalit community, Sanjay Bharadwaj.

Meanwhile, UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav hit out at the BJP leader, stating that the Shah had lunch with the Dalit family with an eye on the UP Assembly polls, as per PTI.

However, BJP has still not finalised a CM candidate. India Today quoted sources as saying that Union Ministers Smriti Irani and Mahesh Sharma are the top runners but as per party insiders Shah and PM Modi are not keen on these two names.

On May 25, the Shah had said that the party had not decided if it would project a chief ministerial candidate for UP.

He had also said that the ruling Samajwadi Party would be the BJP's main rival.

"The Samajwadi Party is the main challenge in Uttar Pradesh as it has strong base and its cadre is also comparatively staunch," Shah had told a select group of journalists in the national capital.

Asked if the party had decided to replicate in Uttar Pradesh its model of projecting a CM as done in Assam, the BJP chief had said "we have not decided what to do," as per IANS.

Asked if the option was open, he had said, "Yes."

On the Ram temple issue, Shah had that it figures in the party's manifesto.

Following its debacle in Bihar Assembly polls last year, the BJP had projected a chief ministerial candidate in Assam and won the polls along with its allies.

(With Agency inputs)
Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav will today adopt a village in Shravasti District under the state nutrition mission.

The Samajwadi Party led state government has decided to launch an integrated scheme, for providing nutritious food to pregnant woman and malnourished children from June 20.

As per the scheme, cooked food and one fruit each would be provided to pregnant women and malnourished children. Pregnant women and kin of malnourished children in the age group of seven months to three years would be provided with consultation and the facility of regular weight check.

As per reports, 7,843 gram sabhas have been adopted under the mission so far.
Noida: In an incident of road rage, an Uber cab driver was allegedly stabbed to death in Noida after an argument with a motorist and three others on Sunday night, police said.

Gaurav Chauhan (23), a native of a village in Bulandshahr, was killed when he, along with his two cousins, was returning to Noida from Delhi after a marriage party.

Near HotelCrowne Plaza in Delhi's Mayur Vihar, another cab driver was trying to overtake, but Gaurav did not give way.

At around mid night, when they reached Noida near SSP office, Gaurav's vehicle was hit by the cab behind, which led to an argument between him and the other driver.

While Gaurav was arguing with the driver, three men came on motorbike and hit him with with sharp-edged object and also broke window panes of his cab.

Gaurav got critically injured and was taken to Bhardwaj hospital and referred to Kailash hospital, where the doctors declared him brought dead.

Gaurav's brother Satvir has lodged an FIR against unknown cab driver and three men on bike.

The Sector 20 police has launched a manhunt to trace the accused with the help of CCTV footage.
San Salvador: El Salvador released on Monday Raul Mijango, the mediator of a controversial gang truce who was arrested in early May, but the legal proceedings against him will continue, authorities said.

A judge in San Salvador ruled that Mijango, who is also a former congressman and a former guerrilla commander, must sign in at the court every 15 days and cannot have any contact with gang members.

Mijango was accused of bringing banned objects into prisons and of being an associate of gang members.

"The fight will continue and we will keep working for peace in the country. I remain dedicated to pursuing peace," Mijango told journalists as he left the police station where he had been detained.

The gang truce lasted from 2012 to 2014 and its breakdown has led to sharp levels of violence in the Central American country.

(Reporting by Nelson Renteria; Writing by Joanna Zuckerman Bernstein; Editing by Paul Tait)


Ryu Hyun-jin of the Los Angeles Dodgers is likely to see another delay in his return to the Dodgers mound as he is having a setback in his rehab assignments.

U.S. media reported on Monday that Ryu postponed his rehab assignment for the Oklahoma City Dodgers in a Triple-A game on Tuesday after feeling discomfort in his left shoulder.

Ryu reported shoulder pain a day after his assignment last Thursday, where he pitched a 145 km per hour fast fall, the fastest since the start of his rehab program.

Club officials were hoping to see Ryu return to the roster as soon as mid-June as the team is struggling to fill their fifth starter position. But repeated setbacks have made it unclear on Ryu's exact date of return.
Brasilia: The government of Brazil's interim president Michel Temer has taken a fresh hit when the anti-corruption minister resigned after a recording revealed him criticising a probe into graft at state oil giant Petrobras.

Fabiano Silveira was the second minister to exit in the span of a week from Temer's government, which has only been in power for 18 days following the suspension of Dilma Rousseff for an impeachment trial.

In audio released by Globo television last night, Silveira was heard talking to Senate President Renan Calheiros and Sergio Machado, the president of Petrobras subsidiary Transpetro, both of whom are being investigated in the embezzlement probe.

In the recording, Silveira was heard saying that the prosecution in the case was "lost" and gave advice to Machado on how to protect himself from the investigation. The recording was made in March when Silveira was serving on the National Council of Justice.

Brazilian media said Machado recorded the conversation, trading the information for leniency from prosecution.

The presidential palace's media office confirmed Silveira's resignation.

In his resignation letter, excerpts of which were published by Brazilian media, Silveira defended himself and said his remarks were "generic comments and simple opinion, amplified by the climate of political exasperation to which we all bear witness."

Yesterday, officials from the Transparency Ministry, created by Temer to fight rampant corruption in Brazil, staged protests to call for Silveira's ouster.

Corruption watchdog Transparency International also called for Silveira to step down.

His exit comes about one week after a main Temer ally, Romero Juca, was fired from his planning minister post after another leaked recording in which he apparently discussed using Rousseff's impeachment as a way to derail the Petrobras probe.

The probe, codenamed Operation Car Wash, has seen investigations and prosecutions opened against dozens of politicians and executives including Juca. Temer, who was vice president and took over from Rousseff after her suspension for an impeachment trial on May 12, is trying to push through economic reforms to pull Brazil out of deep recession.
Libya must unite against IS: UN envoy

Paris: The UN`s special envoy on Libya called Tuesday on all the country`s armed groups to unite against the Islamic State (IS) group.

"The fight against Daesh, which is the number one enemy, must be a Libyan fight and a united fight," said Martin Kobler, using an Arabic acronym for IS, after meeting French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault in Paris.

He said the rival administrations that have established themselves since the fall of long-time dictator Moamer Khadafi in 2011 should "unite their efforts" into a single army.

"A national Libyan army must be put in place," agreed Ayrault, while accepting that this was still "a long way off".

The IS group has built a stronghold in Sirte, a city 400 kilometres (250 miles) east of Tripoli.

Kobler and Ayrault reaffirmed their support for the UN-backed unity government set up in the capital two months ago.

The unity government has military assets and the backing of key economic institutions, but is vehemently opposed by a rival administration in the east, which controls several militias and parts of the national army loyal to controversial General Khalifa Haftar.
Beijing: A senior North Korean official arrived in Beijing on Tuesday for talks between his country and China, whose ties are formally close but have eroded recently because of the Norths nuclear weapons programme.

On Tuesday, North Korea tried unsuccessfully to fire an intermediate-range Musudan ballistic missile, the fourth failed attempt in two months, according to the Yonhap news agency in South Korea.

The visiting official, Ri Su-yong, a former foreign minister who was recently promoted to the Politburo, came to discuss the recent Workers' Party congress in Pyongyang, said a former senior Chinese official familiar with the visit as well as North Korea. The official declined to be identified given the sensitivity of the matter.

The Japanese news agency Kyodo reported that Ri arrived in Beijing on Tuesday morning and that his motorcade had made its way to the compound of the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, in the city centre.

The North Korean official appeared most likely to meet with senior Chinese Communist Party officials, leaving open the question of whether President Xi Jinping, who also serves as secretary general of the party, would agree to see him. In keeping with normal party courtesy, Xi sent Kim a congratulatory note after the Workers Party congress.

But the former Chinese official said he thought it unlikely that Xi would meet with the North Korean visitor.


Ankara: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday that no Muslim family should adopt birth control measures, stressing that his country`s population will grow

"I am saying this clearly, we will increase our posterity and reproduce generations. As for population planning or birth control, no Muslim family can engage in such a mentality," EFE news quoted Erdogan as saying.

Speaking to the Service for Youth and Education Foundation of Turkey, Erdogan emphasised, "we will follow the road that my God and dear Prophet (Mohammed) says."

The Turkish president has opposed abortion on several occasions, describing it as "murder".
Ankara: Turkey said on Tuesday that heavy air strikes reported to have been carried out by Russian jets on a hospital and a mosque in Syria`s rebel-held city of Idlib had killed more than 60 civilians and injured around 200 people.

In an e-mailed statement, the Turkish foreign ministry called on the international community to act swiftly against what it called the "indefensible" crimes of the Russian and Syrian administration.
Riyadh: Saudi Arabia intercepted a ballistic missile fired from Yemen on Monday night, the military coalition supporting the Yemeni government against rebels said.

It was the second missile launch from Yemen since UN-brokered peace talks began in Kuwait on April 21 between the Huthi Shiite rebels and the government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.

The Saudi-led Arab coalition in March last year began air strikes and other military aid in support of Yemeni forces resisting the Huthis who had seized much of the country and are backed by Saudi Arabia`s regional rival Iran.

Fighting has continued despite a ceasefire that paved the way for the talks in Kuwait.

The Huthi rebels are allied with elite troops loyal to Yemen`s former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The missile launches are designed to "sabotage efforts of the international community to make the peace negotiations a success," the Saudi-led coalition said in a statement.

Saudi Arabia has deployed Patriot missile batteries to counter tactical ballistic missiles which have been fired occasionally during the war.

The coalition warns that it could retaliate if such strikes continue.
Ankara: Six persons, including two police officers, were killed and 20 others were injured in two bomb attacks in Turkey's Sirnak province on Monday, local media reported.

In the first attack, the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants placed explosives under manhole cover and detonated it with remote control while a police vehicle was passing, killing four and injuring 19 people, Xinhua news agency reported.

Two police officers were killed and one other was injured in the second attack by the PKK members in Van province. The bomb was detonated with remote control targeting an armored police car.
Seoul: North Korea apparently failed with an attempted missile launch Tuesday, the latest in a series of setbacks for a ballistic weapons programme that aspires to threaten the US mainland.

South Korea`s defence ministry detected the dawn launch effort, which Japan condemned as an unacceptable and "provocative" act.

The ministry declined to speculate on the missile type, but military sources cited by local media said it was a powerful, medium-range "Musudan" that has already undergone three failed launches this year.

UN resolutions ban North Korea from any use of ballistic missile technology, although it regularly fires short-range missiles into the sea off its east coast.

Tuesday`s effort came with tensions still running high on the divided Korean peninsula following the North`s fourth nuclear test in January and long-range rocket launch a month later.

"We believe that it was a failure," said Jeon Ha-Gyu, spokesman for the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff

"As to why and how it failed, we are in the process of analysing that," Jeon told a press briefing.

"We are maintaining a strong defence posture with potential further provocations by the North in mind," he added. In April, the North failed three times to test fire a Musudan, which has an estimated range of anywhere between 2,500 and 4,000 kilometres (1,550 to 2,500 miles).

The lower range covers the whole of South Korea and Japan, while the upper range would include US military bases on Guam.

"North Korea`s repeated ballistic missile launches are serious, provocative acts against the international community, including Japan," Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida told a regular press briefing.

"We absolutely cannot accept this," Kishida said.

First unveiled as an indigenous missile at a military parade in Pyongyang in October 2010, the Musudan has never been successfully flight-tested.

The three failures in April were seen as an embarrassment for the Pyongyang leadership, coming ahead of a ruling party congress in May that was meant to celebrate the country`s achievements.

South Korea`s Yonhap news agency quoted official sources as saying Tuesday`s missile may have exploded on its mobile launcher.

"The explosion is presumed to have inflicted serious injuries on personnel in the immediate vicinity," Yonhap said.

During the party congress, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un personally extended an offer of military dialogue with the South aimed at easing tensions.

The proposal was repeated several times by the North`s military, but Seoul dismissed all the overtures as insincere "posturing" given Kim`s vow at the same congress to push ahead with the country`s nuclear weapons programme.

In recent months, North Korea has claimed a series of technical breakthroughs in developing what it sees as the ultimate goal of that programme -- an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to targets across the continental United States.

They included miniaturising a nuclear warhead to fit on a missile, developing a warhead that can withstand atmospheric re-entry, and building a solid-fuel missile engine.

It also hailed the successful test of an engine specifically designed for an ICBM that would "guarantee" an eventual nuclear strike on the US mainland.

Outside experts have treated a number of the claims with scepticism, while acknowledging that the North has made significant strides in upgrading its nuclear arsenal.
A total of 29,137 North Koreans had defected to South Korea as of March this year, 77 percent of them women. But not many have managed to make a success of their lives and integrate into the South.

The Database Center for North Korean Human Rights in a survey on 403 defectors in March found that 57.8 percent make less than W1 million a month, 29.7 percent W1-2 million and only 10 percent more than W2 million (US$1=W1,192).

Some 37.7 percent are living on welfare compared to only 2.6 percent of South Koreans.

The inability to achieve financial independence results in anxiety, and of the 20.8 percent of defectors who hope to return to the North one day, some 75 percent earn less than W1.5 million a month.

Sohn Kwang-joo at the Korea Hana Foundation, which helps defectors settle here, said defectors often say they hope to return to the North after reunification so they can teach other North Koreans what they have learned in the South.

"The 30,000 defectors will serve as bridges connecting North and South Koreans who have grown a long way apart," he added.

South Koreans must learn to live with 24 million North Koreans after reunification, and the defectors who are here already provide a test case for their ability or inability to do that.

That means "it is important to help North Korean defectors get on their feet here, so we need to look for better systemic support and teach them the necessary skills," he added.
Kunduz: The Taliban on Tuesday pulled passengers from several buses in northern Afghanistan, killed at least 16 of them and took dozens of others hostage, officials said.

"The Taliban shot dead 16 passengers," said Sayed Mahmood Danish, spokesman for the governor of Kunduz province, where the incident occurred. Police commander Shir Aziz Kamawal gave a slightly higher death toll of 17.
Beijing: A top North Korean official made an unexpected visit to China on Tuesday in an apparent attempt by Pyongyang to mend frayed ties with its powerful neighbour, Japanese media reported.

Beijing is North Korea`s largest trading partner and has been its key diplomatic protector for decades, but ties have been strained recently by Pyongyang`s internationally-condemned nuclear test program, with Beijing supporting UN sanctions against its isolated neighbour.

Ri Su Yong, vice chairman of the North`s ruling Workers` Party, arrived in Beijing to brief Chinese officials on a once-in-a-generation party congress held earlier this month, Kyodo news reported.

The lack of any official Chinese representation at the congress -- which cemented leader Kim Jong-Un`s grip on power -- was viewed as a sign of friction between the two traditional allies.

The visit came even as South Korea said Tuesday the North failed in what was believed to be an attempted launch of a powerful new medium-range missile.

UN resolutions ban North Korea from any use of ballistic missile technology, although it regularly fires short-range missiles into the sea off its east coast.

China`s official Xinhua news agency said Ri -- a former foreign minister -- would visit for three days as part of a delegation.

Ri is the highest-ranking North Korean official to visit China since last year when Kim Jong-Un`s close aide Choe Ryong Hae attended a military parade in Beijing to mark 70th anniversary of Japan`s defeat in World War II, Kyodo reported.

tjh/eb
YEREVAN, MAY 30, ARMENPRESS. On May 16 a meeting was held between the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Vienna with the initiative of the Foreign Ministers of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairing countries and with the participation of the US Secretary of State John Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and French Secretary of State for European Affairs Harlem Desir. Ceasefire maintenance mechanisms, as well as the expansion of the existence of the OSCE Minsk Group observers were discussed during the meeting. In this context, Jaromir Stetina, Czech military journalist, MEP, a member of the EU-Armenia and the EU-Azerbaijan parliamentary cooperation, as well as a member of the delegation of the EuroNest Parliamentary Assembly, gave an interview to Armenpress.

-Mr. Stetina, how would you assess this meeting, which part benefits from this in terms of diplomatic viewpoint?

-The meeting between the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan cannot bring any damage, however, I do not expect anything from this meeting, I simply can say that it was a positive step especially after the Azerbaijani attack in the northern part of the Nagorno Karabakh in early April. I think that the two sides can benefit from the meeting, I can say who will lose as a result of these negotiations: Russia will lose, and from the geopolitical view, of course, the escalation of the conflict is beneficial for it. I think its time to speak about the NKR recognition, since it is a sovereign country over 25 years and has all features like any other state. The first is the military: the Nagorno Karabakh won in the 90s war, and it cannot be taken by force as Aliyev wants. Another thing is the state of economy, and it can be seen that the Nagorno Karabakh achieved progress in the economic sector. And eventually, it has a strong political system, it has a Parliament which usually cannot be found in various democratic states. Thats why I think that such kind of talks may lead to the point that eventually the world will start to be interested in the issue of the recognition of the Karabakh as a sovereign country.

-Azerbaijan after the calls by the international community, came to the negotiation table, how you comment on this?

-I think that here Azerbaijans involvement in the Eastern Partnership plays a key role: Azerbaijans participation in this meeting was an attempt to improve its relations with the European countries.

-Do you believe that this meeting will somehow restrain Azerbaijan and will reduce the possibility of unleashing further aggression, especially when there were cases of ceasefire violations even after the meeting?

-When the Nagorno Karabakh solved the issue in the 90s, the OSCE Minsk Group in fact did nothing to solve the conflict, and from that time people of the Nagorno Karabakh understood that this organization will not support them and they went on their own way: they just bought Kalashnikov and won the war. They were just protecting themselves, and I think that the faith of the Nagorno Karabakh is to protect itself since it is hard to believe that dictator Aliyev will keep any promise.

-What do you think about the installation of monitoring mechanisms, how will it work and what result can be achieved from it?

-Every monitoring can only be useful over this issue, since if there will be gross ceasefire violations, as Azerbaijan did in early April, the presence of the witness will be necessary here. Of course, I think the installation of the monitoring mechanisms was a positive step, however, I fear to say what results it can bring, but I think it will remain within the stage of talks, and no document will be signed on it.

Syuzi Muradyan
YEREVAN, MAY 30, ARMENPRESS. The Foreign Ministry of Nagorno Karabakh has refuted the Azerbaijani absurd allegations which stated as if Islamic architectural monuments, which are located in the territory of NKR, are being used for military purposes.

The ministrys statement reads: The announcement of the Press Service Head of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, which stated as if the Islamic architectural monuments in the Nagorno Karabakh territory are being used for military purposes, is another unsubstantiated and false accusation among many others. Azerbaijan, which has great experience in using religious monuments for military purposes, an evidence of which is the transformation of the Cathedral of Christ the Holy Savior into an weapons depot in 1992, is once again trying to attribute its conduct to Nagorno Karabakh.

There are numerous undeniable evidences, which prove Azerbaijan is deliberately and continuously destroying structures of Armenian cultural heritage not only across the entire Azerbaijani territory, but also in the occupied Nagorno Karabakhi region of Shahumyan.

The most egregious act of vandalism is the destruction of a medieval Armenian cross-stone cemetery in Jugha (Julfa) Nakchijevan, and the construction of a shooting range on that very site in 2005.

Despite numerous international calls, the Azerbaijani side is not allowing international experts to visit the site of the cemetery until now, in order to avoid responsibility.

If indeed the Azerbaijani leadership is interested in researching historical and cultural monuments, and not just merely in political or propaganda goals, then we have the right to expect that the research works will start with visits to the occupied Shahumyan region of NKR and Nakhijevan.

Meanwhile, it is necessary to note that all architectural monuments across the Nagorno Karabakhi territory, regardless of origin, are enlisted in the history and culture list of NKR and are under state protection.

Nagorno Karabakh continuous to be open for international cooperation for protection and preservation of cultural and historic heritage, and expects the same open conduct from Azerbaijan.
YEREVAN, MAY 30, ARMENPRESS. Armtech conference, which this year is entitled Armenia: IT Forum, will be held in Silicon Valley Synopsys Mounatin View Campus on June 10. Forum aims to present and discuss the tendencies of the IT development in Armenia and its prospects in the international arena, to promote the international cooperation and involvement of investments, to contribute to the cooperation between the IT specialists.

Deputy Minister of Economy of Armenia Emil Tarasyan said the event is being held under the patronage of the Prime Minister, and with the participation of the IT community representatives from Armenia and the US. This years forum is exclusive in a sense that it will be devoted to the start-ups. 5 start-ups will participate in the conference, he stated. Minister said previously numerous agreements were signed within the framework of the Armtech. This year the organizers of the forum also plan to sign such memorandums which will lead to the implementation of new projects in Armenia.

Director of the Enterprise Incubator Foundation Bagrat Yengibaryan stated that two important issues will be discussed during the conference: progress of Armenian organizations in the world, especially in the US market, and the education issue, in particular, how to promote human resource development in Armenia. He highlighted that this year the conference is being held at Synopsys company, the representative of which is the largest IT company in Armenia. These year we have a number of foreign speakers in the conference who are representatives of the multinational organizations. They are not guests that come to know what happens in Armenia, what developments exist in Armenia and what are the challenges to develop the IT sector here, the director said. He also stated that a focus will be put on the development of the newly created companies, representatives of such companies will take part at the conference and will present their projects to the investors.

Chairman of the Union of Employers of Information and Communication Technologies Armen Baldryan mentioned that Armenia with such conference shows that it is ready to new reforms in the IT sector. We will present one of our initiatives at the conference which is the creation of the Technology University in Yerevan, he stated.

Chairman of the Union of Information Technology Enterprises Alexander Yesayan also welcomed this event. He informed that the Union also will concentrate on the issue of education and will present the project of engineering laboratory.

Executive Director of the Synopsys Armenia CJSC Hovik Musayelyan said the experience of Armtech shows that holding this conference in the Silicon Valley is justified. He stated that their company will present the project with physics and mathematics orientation which was launched in 5 high schools of Yerevan.
YEREVAN, MAY 30, ARMENPRESS. The jubilee summit dedicated to the 40th anniversary of European People's Party (EPP) has kicked off in Luxemburg. Neraly 700 guests representing different countries are present and nearly 100 journalists illustrate the event.

Armenpress reports President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan is in Luxemburg on a working visit where he participates in the EPPs summit.

EPP was established in 1976 which aims at creating democratic and transparent Europe.
YEREVAN, MAY 30, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan, who is on an official visit in Luxemburg, attended the jubilee summit of the European Peoples Party dedicated to its 40th anniversary chaired by the President of EPP Joseph Daul. Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council and the President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker, as well as heads of states and governments of the EU, EaP, and EPP member states attended the summit, who made congratulatory speeches on the occasion of EPPs anniversary.

As Armenpress was informed from the press service of Republic of Armenia Presidents Office, President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan also made a congratulatory speech on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the largest European political family. Mentioning that the party for years was and remains one of the key establishments to re-evaluate the European identity and to give impetus to its progress, Serzh Sargsyan stated that many political forces that are EPP member today also have a key role in the political developments in many European countries.

In his speech President Sargsyan made a special reference to the unforgettable contribution of late EPP President Wilfried Martens to the establishment and achievements of the party, as well as to his contribution and support for Armenia-Europe rapprochement process and for the membership of the Republican Party of Armenia and two other Armenian parties to the EPP.

The Armenian President highlighted inter-party partnership with the EPP from the perspective of spreading European political culture and reinforcement of European value system. The Armenian people, with its past and culture, goals and aspirations, is inseparable part of the European civilization, while the membership of Armenian parties to the EPP are the result of our common Christian heritage, as well as our joint commitments to fundamental freedoms and principles of democracy and human rights. In this context the membership of RPAs youth and womens organizations to respective EPP bodies is rather logical.

I also highly appreciate EPPs position on issues of concern for Armenia in different European institutions, as well as on parliamentary platforms.

EPP played a key role in the process of developing relations between Armenia and the European Union. These relations today have reached an important stage. The negotiations over a new legal framework document have already kicked off, which will reflect the nature of our relations and will outline new directions for mutually beneficial cooperation. I am sure that EPP will again stand with us on our way to bringing that document into life, the President of Armenia mentioned, expressing conviction that the EPP family under the skillful chairmanship of Daul will continue to implement its mission based on fundamental values.
YEREVAN, MAY 31, ARMENPRESS. An agreement on renewing sanctions against Russia when they run out on July 31 has become more difficult with growing opposition from some EU countries, Germany's foreign minister said on Thursday.

European Union economic sanctions against Russia were introduced for one year in July 2014 in response to its actions in Ukraine and twice extended in 2015.

"We are aware that resistance in the EU to extending the sanctions toward Russia has increased," Frank-Walter Steinmeier was quoted by Lithuania's BNS news agency saying in an interview.

"It will be more difficult than it was last year to find a common position on this issue."

Germany wants to keep the sanctions until the Minsk peace accords between Russia and Ukraine are implemented, Steinmeier said.

"One thing is for sure. We cannot ignore Russia's annexation of Crimea in violation of international law and the destabilization of Eastern Ukraine," he said.

The 28-strong EU needs unanimity to keep the sanctions in place and the bloc's unity has been increasingly tested on that.

Last week diplomats and officials told Reuters the EU was still on track to renew them, though an extension could be contested and only short-term.

Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Hungary and Bulgaria are among EU states skeptical that sanctions should be extended, diplomats said, facing off against Britain, Sweden, Poland and the Baltic states.

According to Steinmeier, no international conflict can be settled without the participation of Russia.
AirAsia is raising eyebrows by proposing to select Korean flight attendants through an online poll.

The Malaysian low-cost carrier on Monday said applicants should submit an audition video with a one-minute introduction and demonstration of an inflight announcement, which will then be posted online for people to vote on.

The bizarre move has been criticized for objectifying aspiring flight attendants, who are overwhelmingly women.

But an airline spokesman said the company is trying a different way of hiring and added that applicants' qualifications and abilities will be evaluated at the final stage.
Britain will vote in an in-out referendum on EU membership on June 23

The leaders of 50 of Europe's mightiest companies, from Shell and BP to Heineken and BMW, warned Tuesday that Britain will be weaker if its people vote to break away from the European Union.

Weeks away from the June 23 referendum in Britain, the corporate chiefs said the continent, already challenged by terrorism and migration, now faced a new "fork in the road".

"An unravelling of the single market and the rules governing 28 countries would reduce, not boost our prosperity," the members of the European Round Table of Industrialists said in a joint statement.

A united Europe benefits investment and job creation, they said.

"While respecting the decision of the people in the United Kingdom, we believe that a Europe without the UK would be weaker, just as the UK itself would be weaker outside Europe."

The Europe Union is the world's largest economy, accounting for 16 percent of world trade, which gives it "tremendous bargaining power" in striking trade deals, the company chiefs said.

Over the past 60 years, people and companies had benefited from greater wealth, security and quality of life because of the stronger ties between member states, they said.

The European Union must be improved, however the business chiefs said, stressing an urgent need to cooperate across borders on security against terrorism and to address the refugee crisis.

They pressed, too, for an integrated EU energy market, better education and skills training and the development of digital technology and innovation across the bloc.
(Reuters) - Billionaire investor Carl Icahn said on Tuesday he had acquired a "large position" in Botox-maker Allergan Plc and that he was very supportive of Chief Executive Officer Brent Saunders. Shares of Allergan rose 0.8 percent to $237.85 in mid-morning trading. Icahn, who did not disclose details of the stake, said in a statement on his website that he was confident in Saunders' ability to enhance value for all Allergan shareholders. (http://bit.ly/1UatnIM) Allergan has "no reason to believe that this investment was made for purposes of influencing the actions of management or control of the company," spokesman Mark Marmur said in an emailed statement. Saunders has come close to Icahn before. Saunders became CEO of Allergan after it was bought by Actavis, where he had been CEO, and then changed its name. Saunders had moved into the top spot at Actavis from the CEO job at Forest Labs, which Actavis acquired. Icahn had a Forest Labs stake and was agitating for change when the company's long-time management ceded control and Saunders took the CEO job in 2013. Icahn said he sold the Forest position when the company changed hands. Allergan is near to closing the sale of its generic business to Teva Pharmaceutical Industries . Once that happens, Saunders has said the company will be able to make acquisitions of more than $1 billion. Allergan needs to pay off more debt before it will make even bigger deals, he has said. The move comes a few months after Allergan's plans to be bought by Pfizer fell apart. In that so-called "inversion" deal, Pfizer would have moved its headquarter to Dublin, where Allergan is based, in order to lower the taxes it pays in the United States. Icahn, who launched a $150 million political action committee advocating tax reform to eliminate such deals, had said the Pfizer-Allergan tie-up would result in the loss of the country's 10th largest company to Ireland. The government effectively blocked that deal by issuing new tax rules that made it less favorable. (Reporting by Caroline Humer in New York and Amrutha Penumudi in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Alan Crosby)
TORONTO, ON --(Marketwired - May 31, 2016) - A new study estimates that the economic cost of lost potential health gains from delayed access to 14 new cancer medicines in Canada's public drug plans was worth up to $823 million annually.

The study estimated the number of potential patients impacted by provincial drug insurance coverage delays for a number of selected oncology drugs approved by Health Canada between 2010 and 2013 and the associated economic cost of these delays.

It found that over 25,000 patients were potentially negatively impacted by delayed access to the 14 oncology drugs indicated for the treatment of metastasized solid tumours in nine provinces at the end of March 2016.

Based on the improved patient survival rates demonstrated for the 14 drugs in randomized clinical trials and using three conservative estimates of the value of a life-year, the middle estimated cost of the delays was found to be almost $247 million, with lower and upper estimates of over $183 million and more than $823 million.

The study was authored by Dr. Nigel Rawson (Ph.D) and was published at Canadian Health Policy the online journal of Canadian Health Policy Institute (CHPI).

Rawson explained why the findings are important: "Most of the survival gains in the treatment of cancer are attributable to improved drug treatments. However, new drugs are only of value to patients if they can access them in a timely manner. The economic cost of the lost potential health gains from delays is enormous. This analysis has demonstrated the need for more timely reimbursement of effective oncology treatments in Canada."

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The article, Economic cost of delayed access to 14 new cancer medicines in Canada's public drug plans, is available online at: www.canadianhealthpolicy.com

About CHPI

Canadian Health Policy Institute (CHPI) is an independent think-tank dedicated to providing information and ideas for a better health system.
By Kylie MacLellan and Ben Hirschler ISE-SHIMA, Japan/LONDON (Reuters) - Britain told the G7 industrial powers on Friday to do more to fight killer superbugs as the United States reported the first case in the country of a patient with bacteria resistant to a last-resort antibiotic. U.S. scientists said the infection in a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman "heralds the emergence of truly pan-drug resistant bacteria" because it could not be controlled even by colistin, an antibiotic reserved for "nightmare" bugs. In Japan, British Prime Minister David Cameron said leading countries needed to tackle resistance by reducing the use of antibiotics and rewarding drug companies for developing new medicines. "In too many cases antibiotics have stopped working. That means people are dying of simple infections or conditions like TB (tuberculosis), tetanus, sepsis, infections that should not mean a death sentence," he told a news conference at a summit in Japan. "If we do nothing about this there will be a cumulative hit to the world economy of $100 trillion and it is potentially the end of modern medicine as we know it." A review commissioned by the British government and published last week said a reward of between $1 billion and $1.5 billion should be paid for any successful new antimicrobial medicine brought to market. If the problem is not brought under control, antimicrobial resistance could kill an extra 10 million people a year by 2050, the review warned. The U.S. case is a further wake-up call for the world, although it is not the first time that colistin resistance has appeared. Medics around were alarmed last year by the discovery in China of a new gene that makes bacteria highly resistant to the medicine. Since then, the deadly strain has also been detected in Europe and Canada. The development of colistin resistance is linked to the drug's widespread use in livestock and the European Medicines Agency on Thursday called for a 65 percent cut in the amount of the medicine used in farming. "The more we look at drug resistance, the more concerned we are," Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters in Washington. "The medicine cabinet is empty for some patients. It is the end of the road for antibiotics unless we act urgently." The problem is aggravated by drugmakers' reluctance to invest in developing new antibiotics, preferring to focus on more profitable disease areas, although recently there has been some increase in investment, prompted by the superbug threat. In January, 83 companies, including Pfizer , Merck & Co , Johnson & Johnson and GlaxoSmithKline , signed a declaration urging governments to support work on new antibiotics. (Reporting by Kylie MacLellan; Writing by Elizabeth Piper; Editing by Louise Ireland)
CAIRO (Reuters) - Hundreds of Muslims have set fire to homes of Christians in southern Egypt and stripped a 70-year-old woman naked after rumours her Christian son had an affair with a Muslim woman, the local church and witnesses said. The Christian man fled with his wife and children on May 19, said Ishak Ibrahim at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. His parents went to the police, fearing for their lives. The next day, around 300 Muslim men set fire to and looted their house in the southern province of Minya and stripped the mother naked out on the street. They also set fire to and looted six other houses, eyewitnesses told Reuters. "They burned the house and went in and dragged me out, threw me in front of the house and ripped my clothes. I was just as my mother gave birth to me and was screaming and crying," the woman, who requested anonymity, told Reuters. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi condemned the attack in a statement on Thursday and ordered authorities to bring those behind it to justice. He also ordered local authorities and the military to rebuild all damaged properties within a month at state expense. Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II called for calm and restraint in a statement on Thursday. He said he was pursuing the matter with Egyptian officials and that he had spoken to the woman and all those whose homes were attacked. The woman accuses three Muslim men of stripping her and dragging her in front of her house, her lawyer Ehab Ramzi told Reuters. Security sources said police arrested five men in connection with the incident and the public prosecutor had ordered their detention and the arrest of 18 others. Ten members of parliament put forward a motion to cross-examine Interior Minister Magdi Abdel Ghaffar over the incident. Orthodox Copts, who make up about 10 percent of Egypt's 90 million people, are the Middle East's biggest Christian community. They have long complained of discrimination under successive Egyptian leaders. (Reporting by Mohamed Abdellah and Ahmed Aboulenein; Additional reporting by Ali Abdelaty; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon returned to New York on Monday after a Korea trip that set tongues wagging due to the coy hints he dropped about his presidential ambitions when he leaves the UN. After a meeting with reporters on Jeju Island last Wednesday, Ban met with veteran politician Kim Jong-pil on Saturday. The following day, Ban he sat down with officials in Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province, a traditional stronghold of the Saenuri Party, suggesting he will run for the conservatives.

Ban still has seven months left in his UN tenure, but already his politically charged moves are stirring up controversy both at home and abroad. That is a bad idea. Western media have been highly critical of Ban since the start of his term at the UN, and they are having a field day now. He has often been accused of cronyism, and his political maneuvering in Korea is unlikely to dispel that taint. Even at UN briefings Ban is now being asked about his presidential ambitions.

Once his tenure at the UN ends, Ban is of course free to campaign all he likes. But he must be sure not to give the impression that he is slacking off at the UN because his mind is elsewhere. He urgently needs to regain some distance from Korean politics, and his would-be backers here should help him do that.

The UN secretary-general faces enormous challenges posed by the terror group Islamic State or ISIS, escalating violence in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa, and a civil war in Yemen. The conflict between Russia and the Ukraine also requires every bit of attention he can give it. The Paris Convention on Climate Change signed last year, perhaps his most notable achievement, requires thorough follow-up work. Ban has asked people here to let him bring his tenure at the UN to a fine finish. Only then can both Korea and the international community be proud of him.

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By Bill Berkrot NEW YORK (Reuters) - Drugmakers are renewing efforts to develop medicines to fight emerging antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but creating new classes of drugs on the scale needed is unlikely to happen without new financial incentives to make the effort worth the investment, companies and industry experts said. American military researchers on Thursday announced the first U.S. case of a patient with an infection found to be resistant to the antibiotic colistin, the drug often held in reserve for when all else fails. That put a spotlight on the urgent need for new medicines that can combat what health officials have called "nightmare bacteria." Drugmakers on Friday acknowledged that in the absence of a new way of compensating them, it simply does not make economic sense to pour serious resources into work on new antibiotics. "The return on investment based on the current commercial model is not really commensurate with the amount of effort you have to put into it," said David Payne, who heads GlaxoSmithKline PLC's antibiotics drug group. Other pharmaceutical companies expressed a similar sentiment. In January, some 80 drugmakers and diagnostics companies, including Pfizer Inc , Merck & Co , Johnson & Johnson and Glaxo, signed a declaration calling for cooperation among governments and companies to create incentives to revitalize research and development of new antibiotics. It proposed a new business model in which profit would not be linked to higher sales. For example, governments and health organizations could offer lump-sum rewards for development of a successful new antibiotic. A British government panel suggested this month that drug companies be offered up to $1.5 billion for successful development of a new antibiotic. In the United States alone, antibiotic-resistant bacteria causes 2 million serious infections and 23,000 deaths annually, according to U.S. health officials. Unrestrained overuse of current antibiotics by doctors and hospitals, often when they are not needed, and widespread antibiotic use in food livestock have contributed to the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. But in recent years, major drugmakers have poured most of their research dollars into highly profitable medicines to fight cancer, rare diseases and hepatitis C. These drugs not only command high prices, they also are typically used far longer than antibiotics. And the companies, which have come under intense criticism in recent months for continually raising prices on popular drugs, say it costs about as much to develop a new antibiotic as it does to bring to market new cancer drugs that can command more than $100,000 a year per patient. "Drug companies can't make an economic case for investing in superbug drugs," said Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. Gordon said governments and foundations need to get more involved in research and funding to spearhead efforts to combat the problem. To critics who argue that U.S. companies have enormous cash reserves that could be used to address a public health crisis, drugmakers say they have a fiduciary duty to shareholders to maximize profits. ON THE R&D FRONT LINES One reason companies are calling for alternative compensation is that aggressive sales and use of new antibiotics could help create ever more dangerous bacteria that develop resistance to the new medicines. Glaxo and Merck are among the large pharmaceutical companies developing new antibiotics they hope can beat back resistant bugs, while Pfizer is working on vaccines aimed at reducing the need for their use. Industry experts said small, lesser-known companies with promising approaches to tackling resistant superbugs included: Entasis Therapeutics, an AstraZeneca PLC spinoff, Tetraphase Pharmaceuticals Inc ; and Achaogen Inc . "We believe plazomicin, our lead drug in late-stage development, has the potential to play an important role in treating this dreaded superbug," Achaogen Chief Executive Kenneth Hillan said. Allan Coukell, an antibiotics expert at the Pew Charitable Trusts nonprofit research and policy organization, said what is needed is a wave of new drugs based on new chemistry or that work in new ways. "Most of what's being developed are variations on drugs that we've had for decades," Coukell said. Pew has outlined what its calls a scientific roadmap to create a body of work around new drug discovery that companies and academic researchers could draw upon to help jumpstart the process of finding new antibiotics. Glaxo said its experimental antibiotic gepotidacin, in midstage testing, belongs to an entirely new class of antibacterials. "Based on that, we're predicting it would work against infections that could be caused by bacteria that are resistant to available antibiotics," Payne said. Other companies with late-stage studies underway for antibiotics include: Cempra Inc , whose drug was recently validated in a Japanese trial; Medicines Co ; and Paratek Pharmaceuticals Inc . J&J is also putting money into battling antibiotic resistance. "If there is a bright side, it is that the world policymakers and health leaders have focused on this issue like never before," Coukell said. "But we've got a long way to go." (Reporting by Bill Berkrot, Caroline Humer and Ransdell Pierson in New York and Natalie Grover and Amrutha Penumundi in Bangaluru; Editing by Eric Effron and Will Dunham)
By Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani and Kieran Guilbert ABUJA/DAKAR (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A promising student who dreamed of going to university, Mary was 16 when a woman approached her mother at their home and offered to take the Nigerian teenager to Italy to find work. Pushed to go by her family who hoped she would lift them out of poverty, Mary ended up being trafficked into prostitution. Her voice faltering, Mary described three years of being forced to sell her body, beatings, threats at gunpoint and being made to watch as a 14-year-old virgin was raped with a carrot before being sent on to the streets of Turin in northwest Italy. After being arrested by Italian police, Mary was repatriated to Nigeria's southern Edo state in 2001, but she was rejected by her family and left feeling like a failure. "I returned with nothing," Mary, now 35, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation from Benin city in Edo. "I hated myself." While Mary's ordeal ended 15 years ago, a soaring number of Nigerian girls like her are being trafficked to Europe - mainly Italy - and forced to sell sex by gangs taking advantage of the chaos caused by the migrant crisis, anti-slavery activists say. Thousands of women and girls are lured to Europe each year with the promise of work, then trapped by huge debts and bound to their traffickers by a religious ritual - the curse of juju. "The victims are getting younger as girls, mainly those in rural areas, are more likely to focus on the positive stories of those who made it to Europe and didn't end up in prostitution," said Katharine Bryant of the Walk Free Foundation rights group. She spoke ahead of the launch of the third Global Slavery Index, which found Nigeria has the world's eighth highest number of slaves - 875,500 - and is a key source country for women trafficked to Europe and sold into sex work. BOUND BY JUJU More than nine in 10 of the Nigerian women trafficked to Europe come from Edo, a predominantly Christian state with a population of about 3 million, according to the United Nations. While Edo is not among the country's poorest states, its history of migration to Italy has fuelled locals' hopes of easy money in Europe - leaving people vulnerable to traffickers, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) says. Before going to Europe, women and girls must sign a contract with traffickers to finance their move, racking up debts of up to $100,000. They then must seal the pact with a juju ritual. "I was taken to a native doctor's shrine, and told to bite the neck of a chicken to add its blood to a concoction made with bits of my hair and fingernails, and my underwear," Mary said. This belief in black magic means victims fear they or their family may fall ill or die if they do not pay off their debts. Most of the women and girls know they will have to sell sex but are pressured by their families and deceived by traffickers, said Nigeria's anti-human trafficking agency (NAPTIP). Many have no idea they will live under the control of older "madams" and be forced to work for several years to clear their debts, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Madams, who make up almost half of traffickers in Nigeria, are mostly former victims who target others in order to escape prostitution - perpetuating a cycle of exploitation, the UNODC said in its latest global report on human trafficking. MIGRANT CRISIS Traffickers and gangs in Nigeria are now exploiting Europe's migration crisis - moving girls to lawless Libya, before crossing the Mediterranean to Italy on flimsy, overloaded boats, said Bryant from the Walk Free Foundation. More than 5,600 Nigerian women and girls arrived in Italy by sea last year, up from 1,200 in 2014, and at least four in five were trafficked into sex work, the IOM said. At least 1,250 Nigerian women have landed in Italy this year, up from 373 for the same period in 2015, IOM data shows. Traffickers also take victims to Europe by plane, using forged documents and flying via other West African countries to avoid suspicion, said Mikael Jensen of the UNODC. British airports such as Gatwick are increasingly used as entry points by Nigerian trafficking gangs with forged documents, Spanish police said earlier this year. "Many traffickers are careful with their goods, they don't want to risk them on a dangerous sea crossing," Jensen said. About 3,770 migrants and refugees died in 2015 crossing the Mediterranean, making it the deadliest year on record for those fleeing conflict and poverty, according to the IOM. RE-TRAFFICKED Human trafficking by Nigerian organised crime gangs is one of the greatest challenges facing police forces across Europe, according to the EU's law enforcement agency Europol. A lack of coordination between European states and Nigeria is allowing traffickers to act with impunity, said Kevin Hyland, who was appointed Britain's first anti-slavery chief in 2014. "There has been some progress, but it's been a piecemeal plan, and responsive rather than proactive," Hyland said. Nigerian anti-trafficking official Arinze Orakwe said more European nations should criminalise the purchase of sex to curb the number of Nigerians trafficked into prostitution in Europe. "If nobody is buying, nobody will sell," said the official at NAPTIP, which has rescued some 1,340 victims in Nigeria over the past year, and works with NGOs to support them. The Women Trafficking and Child Labour Eradication Foundation (WOTCLEF) clothes and feeds victims, provides counselling and attempts to reunite them with their families. "But sometimes families are hostile, and not interested in getting them back," said WOTCLEF coordinator Veronica Umaru. Disillusioned by her parents' disappointment at her return home, Mary hoped to go back to Italy before being resocferred to Girls' Power Initiative, a Nigerian NGO that housed her, trained her to run a business and encouraged her to help other victims. Yet Mary says many former victims have been re-trafficked to Italy, and fears not enough is being done to stop traffickers or persuade women and girls not to go abroad and into prostitution. "Girls today, unlike me, know exactly what they are in for when they agree to go to Italy to work," Mary says tearfully. "But they do not understand the trauma they will face." (Reporting by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani and Kieran Guilbert, writing By Kieran Guilbert, editing by Alisa Tang. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)
The Port Columbus International Airport in Ohio is being renamed for Mercury astronaut John Glenn. (Columbus Regional Airport Authority/NASA/collectSPACE.com)

The United States' second international airport to be named for a NASA astronaut honors the first American to orbit the Earth.

Ohio lawmakers on Wednesday (May 25) voted to rename the Port Columbus International Airport for astronaut John Glenn. The last surviving member of the original Mercury 7 pilots, Glenn became the first U.S. space explorer to circle the planet on Feb. 20, 1962.

"I believe it is only fitting to rename the [airport] after John Glenn for his countless contributions to space exploration and to Ohio's rich aviation history," said the Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, Clifford Rosenberger, in a statement. "There is no doubt that he is an American hero, and I'm honored that we are taking steps to further secure his legacy here in our great state." [Photos: John Glenn, First American in Orbit]

The name, the John Glenn Columbus International Airport, will take effect after Ohio Governor John Kasich signs the bill into law.

Glenn, now 94, was born in 1921 in Cambridge, Ohio, and earned his Bachelor of Science degree in engineering at Muskingum College in New Concord, his hometown. After serving in the Marine Corps and making history on board NASA's Friendship 7 orbital mission, he was elected to the U.S. Senate, representing Ohio as a Democrat from 1974 until 1999.

In October 1998, Glenn returned to orbit aboard the space shuttle Discovery, setting a record as the oldest person to fly into space at age 77.

Over the course of his two spaceflights, separated by 36 years, Glenn logged 9 days off Earth and completed 138 orbits  three aboard his Mercury capsule and 135 on the space shuttle.

The Columbus airport's renaming is the latest honor for the astronaut in his home state.

In 1999, NASA renamed its Cleveland facility the John H. Glenn Research Center, and since 2006, the public policy and management school (now college) at The Ohio State University has borne his name.

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Senator John Glenn Highway runs along Interstate 480 in Cleveland across from the NASA research center and the Colonel Glenn Highway runs by Dayton's Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. A high school with his name stands in New Concord and, until it was demolished last year, John Glenn Elementary stood in Seven Hills.

Beyond Ohio, the U.S. Navy christened the mobile landing platform USNS John Glenn in 2014.

The newly-renamed Port Columbus airport was opened in 1929 as a stop on the first transcontinental air/rail service from New York to the West coast. Jet airline service began at the airport in 1961. Four years later, the airport gained its international status with the opening of a U.S. Customs facility.

The nation's first international airport to bear an astronaut's name, the Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport in Texas, was renamed for the final commander of the space shuttle Columbia in 2003.

Other U.S. air fields named for astronauts include: Virgil I. Grissom Municipal Airport in Bedford, Indiana; Michael J. Smith Field in Beaufort, North Carolina; the Neil Armstrong Airport in Wapakoneta, Ohio and Astronaut Kent Rominger Airport in Del Norte, Colorado.

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Poland is to appeal against a court's decision not to extradite film-maker Roman Polanski to the United States over a 1977 child sex conviction, the country's justice minister said.

The Oscar-winning director served 42 days in jail as part of a plea bargain after admitting having sex with a 13-year-old girl during a photo shoot in Los Angeles.

The case has continued for nearly four decades, with some demanding harsh punishment and others saying the extradition efforts should be dropped.

After serving time in prison, Polanski fled the following year to Britain and then to France, believing the judge hearing his case could overrule the deal and put him in jail for much longer.

Samantha Geimer, the victim in the case, has made clear she believes Polanski's long exile has been punishment enough.

The US requested Polanski's extradition from Poland after he made a high-profile appearance in the capital Warsaw in 2014.

The Rosemary's Baby director lives in Paris but also has an apartment in the southern Polish city of Krakow.

A Polish court rejected the extradition request in October, and the prosecutor's office at first said it would not appeal against the ruling.

But since then, Poland's new staunchly conservative government has merged the posts of justice minister and prosecutor general, giving it more direct control over prosecutions.

Zbigniew Ziobro, who has assumed the newly merged post, has been critical of the court's decision not to extradite Polanski, claiming the director's celebrity status had helped him escape justice.

Mr Ziobro told state news agency PAP: "I've decided to file to the supreme court an appeal over the ruling ... in which the ... court decided not to extradite Mr Polanski to the US in a situation when he's accused of and wanted for ... a rape of a child.

"If he was just a regular guy, a teacher, doctor, plumber, decorator, then I'm sure he'd have been deported from any country to the US a long time ago."

Speaking to broadcaster TVN24, Polanski's lawyer Jan Olszewski said that given what Mr Ziobro's has said in the past, the decision was "not surprising".

He said: "I guarantee that if there were no factual arguments on our side, Polanski's (celebrity) status itself would not protect him from extradition."
A judge ruled Tuesday that a man accused of stabbing soldiers at a Toronto military recruitment centre is unfit to stand trial  just hours after the RCMP laid terrorism charges in the case.

Ayanle Hassan Ali, a 27-year-old born in Montreal, allegedly stabbed several soldiers inside the recruitment centre, sending two to hospital. Nobody was killed in the attack.

The lawyer representing Ali sent a statement to The Canadian Press saying the ruling was handed down following a two-month psychiatric evaluation.

Maureen Addie said her client was found to be "unfit to stand trial due to the ongoing psychotic symptoms of a major mental illness."

Judge Riun Shandler of the Ontario Court of Justice has ordered Ali to undergo 60 days of treatment in a bid to improve his condition and leave him able to stand trial.

If so, Ali faces a raft of charges, including the terrorism counts laid against him on Tuesday. Ali also faces nine criminal charges in connection with the March stabbing.

According to Toronto police Chief Mark Saunders, a man walked past a master corporal stationed at the door of the Joseph Shepard Building at 4900 Yonge St., just north of Sheppard Avenue, on the afternoon of March 14. The man then stabbed the master corporal when he tried to stop him.

Authorities said the attacker then stabbed a second military member who tried to apprehend him.

Attempts to slash a uniformed female Canadian Forces member were unsuccessful, Saunders said a day after the attack.

The two who were stabbed were treated in hospital and released. Their injuries weren't life threatening.

RCMP charges come months after attack

On Tuesday, RCMP said they have charged Ali with three counts of attempted murder, two counts of committing assault causing bodily harm, three counts of committing assault using a weapon, and one count of carrying a weapon dangerous to the public, for the benefit of a terrorist group.

RCMP Const. Annie Delisle confirmed that the Mounties have laid nine separate charges against Ali.

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Delisle said the charges are in addition to the ones laid on March 15 by Toronto police:

- Three counts of attempted murder.

- Two counts of aggravated assault.

- Three counts of assault with a weapon.

- One count of carrying a weapon dangerous to the public.

"Terrorism-related charges require a significant investigation, which can be time consuming," assistant commissioner Jennifer Strachan, commanding officer of RCMP "O" Division, said in the release. "I would like to highlight the efforts of our INSET here in Ontario which worked diligently to obtain the evidence required for these charges."

INSET teams are made up of representatives from multiple law-enforcement agencies that investigate national security threats.

Clarification : An earlier version of this story suggested RCMP laid a single terror charge against Ayanle Hassan Ali, based on information from a release. In fact, RCMP clarified to CBC that nine separate terror charges have been laid against Ali.(May 31, 2016 11:17 AM)
By Valerie Volcovici and Emily Stephenson BISMARCK, N.D. (Reuters) - Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, promised on Thursday to roll back some of America's most ambitious environmental policies, actions that he said would revive the ailing U.S. oil and coal industries and bolster national security. Among the proposals, Trump said he would pull the United States out of the U.N. global climate accord, approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada and rescind measures by President Barack Obama to cut U.S. emissions and protect waterways from industrial pollution. "Any regulation that's outdated, unnecessary, bad for workers or contrary to the national interest will be scrapped and scrapped completely," Trump told about 7,700 people at the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference in Bismarck, the capital of oil-rich North Dakota. "We're going to do all this while taking proper regard for rational environmental concerns." It was Trump's first speech detailing the energy policies he would advance if elected president. He received loud applause from the crowd of oil executives. The comments painted a stark contrast between the New York billionaire and his Democratic rivals for the White House, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, who advocate a sharp turn away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy technologies to combat climate change. Trump slammed both rivals in his speech, saying their policies would kill jobs and force the United States "to be begging for oil again" from Middle East producers. "It's not going to happen. Not with me," he said. Trump's comments drew quick criticism from environmental advocates, who called his proposals "frightening." "Trumps energy policies would accelerate climate change, protect corporate polluters who profit from poisoning our air and water, and block the transition to clean energy that is necessary to strengthen our economy and protect our climate and health," said Tom Steyer, a billionaire environmental activist. But industry executives cheered the stance. "Its simple. If Trump wins, oil field workers will be happy. If Clinton wins, oil workers will be unhappy," said Derrick Alexander, an operations manager at oilfield services firm Integrated Productions Services. Trump hit Clinton hard in his speech, saying the former secretary of state would be more aggressive than Obama on regulations. He repeated several times Clintons March comments that her policies would put coal miners out of work. "Hillary Clinton's agenda is job destruction," Trump said. CANCEL PARIS Trump said slashing regulation would help the United States achieve energy independence and reduce America's reliance on Middle Eastern producers. "Imagine a world in which oil cartels will no longer use energy as a weapon," he said. The United States currently produces about 55 percent of the oil it uses, with another quarter of the total coming from Canada and Mexico, and less than 20 percent coming from OPEC, according to U.S. Energy Department statistics. Trump's advisers, including U.S. Representative Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, have said they suggested Trump examine the role of OPEC in the global oil price slump since 2014, which has contributed to the demise of a handful of smaller U.S. oil companies. Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members have declined to cut production to support prices. Until Thursday, Trump had been short on details of his energy policy. He has said he believes global warming is a hoax, that his administration would revive the U.S. coal industry, and that he supports hydraulic fracturing - an environmentally controversial drilling technique that has triggered a boom in U.S. production. Earlier this month, he told Reuters in an interview that he would renegotiate "at a minimum" the U.N. global climate accord agreed by 195 countries in Paris last December, saying he viewed the deal as bad for U.S. business. He took that a step further in North Dakota. "We're going to cancel the Paris climate agreement," he said. Trump also promised he would invite Canadian pipeline company TransCanada to reapply to build the Keystone XL pipeline into the United States, reversing a decision by Obama to block the project over environmental concerns. "I want it built, but I want a piece of the profits," Trump said. "That's how we're going to make our country rich again." Trump's pledge briefly sent TransCanada's shares 29 Canadian cents higher to C$54.13 on the Toronto Stock Exchange, but the stock quickly leveled back off and close up 2 Canadian cents at C$53.86. In response to Trump's promise that he would seek more profits from the pipeline, TransCanada spokesman James Millar noted the project would create jobs, offer major contracts to U.S. suppliers and provide tens of millions in taxes for state coffers. "The pipeline will benefit American workers longer term as the companies they work for have signed contracts to ship and refine oil through Keystone XL," Millar said in an email. (Additional reporting by Julie Gordon in Vancouver; Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Andrew Hay and Tiffany Wu)
By Ransdell Pierson and Bill Berkrot (Reuters) - U.S. health officials on Thursday reported the first case in the country of a patient with an infection resistant to a last-resort antibiotic, and expressed grave concern that the superbug could pose serious danger for routine infections if it spreads. "We risk being in a post-antibiotic world," said Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, referring to the urinary tract infection of a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman who had not traveled within the prior five months. Frieden, speaking at a National Press Club luncheon in Washington, D.C., said the bacteria was resistant to colistin, an antibiotic that is reserved for use against "nightmare bacteria." The infection was reported Thursday in a study appearing in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology. It said the superbug itself had first been infected with a tiny piece of DNA called a plasmid, which passed along a gene called mcr-1 that confers resistance to colistin. "(This) heralds the emergence of truly pan-drug resistant bacteria," said the study, which was conducted by the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. "To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of mcr-1 in the USA." The patient visited a clinic on April 26 with symptoms of a urinary tract infection, according to the study, which did not describe her current condition. Authors of the study could not immediately be reached for comment. The study said continued surveillance to determine the true frequency of the gene in the United States is critical. "It is dangerous and we would assume it can be spread quickly, even in a hospital environment if it is not well contained," said Dr. Gail Cassell, a microbiologist and senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School. But she said the potential speed of its spread will not be known until more is learned about how the Pennsylvania patient was infected, and how present the colistin-resistant superbug is in the United States and globally. "MEDICINE CABINET IS EMPTY FOR SOME" In the United States, antibiotic resistance has been blamed for at least 2 million illnesses and 23,000 deaths annually. The mcr-1 gene was found last year in people and pigs in China, raising alarm. The potential for the superbug to spread from animals to people is a major concern, Cassell said. For now, Cassell said people can best protect themselves from it and from other bacteria resistant to antibiotics by thoroughly washing their hands, washing fruits and vegetables thoroughly and preparing foods appropriately. Experts have warned since the 1990s that especially bad superbugs could be on the horizon, but few drugmakers have attempted to develop drugs against them. Frieden said the need for new antibiotics is one of the more urgent health problems, as bugs become more and more resistant to current treatments. "The more we look at drug resistance, the more concerned we are," Frieden added. "The medicine cabinet is empty for some patients. It is the end of the road for antibiotics unless we act urgently." Overprescribing of antibiotics by physicians and in hospitals and their extensive use in food livestock have contributed to the crisis. More than half of all hospitalized patients will get an antibiotic at some point during their stay. But studies have shown that 30 percent to 50 percent of antibiotics prescribed in hospitals are unnecessary or incorrect, contributing to antibiotic resistance. Many drugmakers have been reluctant to spend the money needed to develop new antibiotics, preferring to use their resources on medicines for cancer and rare diseases that command very high prices and lead to much larger profits. In January, dozens of drugmakers and diagnostic companies, including Pfizer , Merck & Co , Johnson & Johnson and GlaxoSmithKline , signed a declaration calling for new incentives from governments to support investment in development of medicines to fight drug-resistant superbugs. (This story corrects headline, first and third paragraphs to show bacteria is resistant to last-resort antibiotic colistin, not all antibiotics) (Reporting by Ransdell Pierson; Additional reporting by Bill Berkrot; Editing by Bernard Orr)
Latvian English

The Company was established in 1900 and operates under the current name since 1970. Due to SPI Group internal reorganization the major shareholder of Latvijas balzams AS from October 2014 is Amber Beverage Group SIA, which owns 89.99% of the Companys equity capital.

Latvijas balzams AS is the largest producer of alcoholic beverages in the Baltic States with a range of more than 100 different products. Our production is exported to more than 160 export markets as mediated by Stoli Group, and to 42 markets via the Company`s direct export route.

The Company`s Activity in the first quarter of 2016

The unaudited turnover of the Company in the first quarter of 2016 was 16.8 million Euros, which is 8.5% more than in the first quarter of 2015. The turnover growth has been achieved by launching new products, establishing collaboration with new partners and a solid teamwork.

The unaudited profit for the reporting period reached 1.2 million euro that represents 12% decrease versus the first quarter of 2015 that caused by decrease of sales in the most profitable markets, as well as development of a platform for future growth in other export markets by investing in advertising and sales promo activities for Latvijas balzams AS branded products.

Latvijas balzams AS is the leading producer of alcoholic beverages in Latvia, as well as one of the largest local taxpayers. During the first quarter of 2016, Latvijas balzams AS paid 13.1 million euro to the state budget, including excise tax, amounting to 9.9 million euro.

Future prospects

As Latvijas Balsamss outlook for the year ahead is one of caution as the impact of the situation in Russia, with the price of oil coupled with the slow down in China and the uncertainty around the EU is expected to dampen growth in 2016.

The Company will continue its purposeful focus on the achievement of objectives in both domestic and export markets. Our priorities will continue to be to focus on our domestic business, on building our international brands, and on implementation of effective production strategy to increase the Company`s competitiveness.

AS Latvijas balzams

Chairman of the Board Intars Geidans

May 30, 2016.
DENVER, May 31, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Jammin Java Corp. (d/b/a Marley Coffee) (OTCQB:JAMN) ("Marley Coffee", "we", "us" and the "Company"), the sustainably grown, ethically farmed and artisan-roasted premium coffee company has issued the following letter to its shareholders in connection with a summary of its preliminary unaudited anticipated financial results for the three months ended April 30, 2016, as described below.



Preliminary Anticipated Financial Highlights for the Three Months Ended April 30, 2016:

Financial Highlights

20 Consecutive Quarters of Revenue Growth - We anticipate gross revenues of approximately $3.08 million for the quarter ended April 30, 2016, an increase of 12.6% compared to the same period last year. We had forecasted a larger first quarter growth this year, however we saw softness in green coffee sales as some of our customers had already purchased surplus Jamaica Blue Mountain (JBM) green coffee in previous periods. Last year at this time, the Company generated $336,000 in JBM green sales, whereas it generated almost no money in JBM green sales this quarter. Where we saw significant growth is in our core business, which is domestic grocery coffee sales, where we saw 55% year-over-year growth for the quarter ended April 30, 2016, compared to 2015. We expect continued significant growth in this area and international sales.

- We anticipate gross revenues of approximately $3.08 million for the quarter ended April 30, 2016, an increase of 12.6% compared to the same period last year. We had forecasted a larger first quarter growth this year, however we saw softness in green coffee sales as some of our customers had already purchased surplus Jamaica Blue Mountain (JBM) green coffee in previous periods. Last year at this time, the Company generated $336,000 in JBM green sales, whereas it generated almost no money in JBM green sales this quarter. Where we saw significant growth is in our core business, which is domestic grocery coffee sales, where we saw 55% year-over-year growth for the quarter ended April 30, 2016, compared to 2015. We expect continued significant growth in this area and international sales. Improved Gross Profits and Margins - The Company continues to focus on improving its gross project margins even more so than its top line growth and anticipates gross profits for the first quarter to come in at $941K, which is an 18% increase from the year priors period. We plan to continue to scale our business, improve our supply chain and get more accounts to switch to a direct distribution model, which we believe should lead to even stronger gains in our gross margins. Gross profits as a percentage of sales are expected to be 34.5% for the quarter ended April 30, 2016 compared to 30.9% for the quarter ended April 30, 2015.

The Company continues to focus on improving its gross project margins even more so than its top line growth and anticipates gross profits for the first quarter to come in at $941K, which is an 18% increase from the year priors period. We plan to continue to scale our business, improve our supply chain and get more accounts to switch to a direct distribution model, which we believe should lead to even stronger gains in our gross margins. Gross profits as a percentage of sales are expected to be 34.5% for the quarter ended April 30, 2016 compared to 30.9% for the quarter ended April 30, 2015. Operational Efficiency  We continue to take significant strides to make our operations more efficient. Total anticipated operating expenses for the three months ended April 30, 2016 are expected to be $1.73 million compared to $2 million for the three months ended April 30, 2015, which represents a decrease of $252K or 12.7% from the previous period. Cash compensation, which is compensation stripped of stock options, stock payments and stock bonuses is expected to be 51% lower year-over-year. Net loss for the three months ended April 30, 2016 is expected to be $1.2 million compared to a net loss of $1.2 million for the three months ended April 30, 2015.

We continue to take significant strides to make our operations more efficient. Total anticipated operating expenses for the three months ended April 30, 2016 are expected to be $1.73 million compared to $2 million for the three months ended April 30, 2015, which represents a decrease of $252K or 12.7% from the previous period. Cash compensation, which is compensation stripped of stock options, stock payments and stock bonuses is expected to be 51% lower year-over-year. Net loss for the three months ended April 30, 2016 is expected to be $1.2 million compared to a net loss of $1.2 million for the three months ended April 30, 2015. Water Wise Coffee Initiative  Were very proud of the work that has been done to date with Water Wise Coffee in conjunction with our key partners Mother Parkers Tea & Coffee. We continue to commit $0.01 per EcoCup capsule sold to the program. Here are some highlights to share this quarter. Forty-nine wet mills are now part of the Water Wise program and no longer discharge waste water or coffee pulp into rivers. Water Wise is now working on most rivers in the Aleta Wendo and Chuko Districts of Ethiopia. The majority of supported wet mills are located on the two largest rivers, the Kola and Malebo Rivers, with other wet mills on the Jigesa, Raro, Bisandima and Chicho Rivers. Pulp Management: Water Wise estimates around 2,400 metric tons of compost will be produced by the operating Water Wise wet mills this year, which will create enough nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium-rich organic fertilizer to feed approximately 500 acres of coffee to provide direct help to farmers. Water Meters and Water Use: Water Wise is helping farmers measure water levels, some for the first time ever, and in 2016 plans to install 25 more water meters at wet mills. Water Wise is replacing old equipment like disc pulpers with eco pulpers to bring water usage levels down. Sustainability Training: All cooperative wet mills and the majority of private wet mills have now received the full sustainability standards training, highlighting issues such as minimum wage, child labor and encouraging womens participation in the cooperative.

Were very proud of the work that has been done to date with Water Wise Coffee in conjunction with our key partners Mother Parkers Tea & Coffee. We continue to commit $0.01 per EcoCup capsule sold to the program. Here are some highlights to share this quarter.

Business Highlights

Increased Grocery Distribution  We are seeing some major wins in gaining new distribution and adding items across the U.S. conventional grocery market, in particular with Albertsons Safeway banners. Recently, we brought on both Albertsons and Safeway banners to the 200+ stores in the Phoenix division and added additional items in the Southern Divisions. Weve been in meetings with almost all other divisions and hope to see gains across the board moving forward. Weve also seen tremendous year-over-year improvements in velocity rates at other key accounts across the country such as Kroger and H-E-B.

 We are seeing some major wins in gaining new distribution and adding items across the U.S. conventional grocery market, in particular with Albertsons Safeway banners. Recently, we brought on both Albertsons and Safeway banners to the 200+ stores in the Phoenix division and added additional items in the Southern Divisions. Weve been in meetings with almost all other divisions and hope to see gains across the board moving forward. Weve also seen tremendous year-over-year improvements in velocity rates at other key accounts across the country such as Kroger and H-E-B. International  Our international partners are continuing to grow the brand in their markets. We have seen excellent growth in Canada, Chile, South Korea and Europe and have recently expanded to Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay. We are working with potential partners to establish new markets.

 Our international partners are continuing to grow the brand in their markets. We have seen excellent growth in Canada, Chile, South Korea and Europe and have recently expanded to Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay. We are working with potential partners to establish new markets. Nespresso Compatibles - We believe we will be ready to launch our Nespresso compatible espresso capsules by the third quarter of this fiscal year. This should significantly help our at-home businesses in Asia and Europe. The capsules should be available online and at specialty stores in the U.S. by the fourth quarter.

- We believe we will be ready to launch our Nespresso compatible espresso capsules by the third quarter of this fiscal year. This should significantly help our at-home businesses in Asia and Europe. The capsules should be available online and at specialty stores in the U.S. by the fourth quarter. New Channels  The Company has recently brought on a set of new brokers to help it develop and get into new channels that can start complementing its U.S. grocery business. We believe that specialized brokers are a great additional sales force. Weve hired a broker to help gain the military commissary business. Weve brought on two sets of specialized brokers to help with strategically securing placements at various club chains. Weve engaged another broker to specifically work on getting Marley Coffee into the gifting and gift basket market. The same brokers are also specialized in the pharmacy and drugstore chain market, for which were currently developing a strategy.

Other Business

Former Officer/Director Settlement  One of our key objectives over the last year has been to clear up investor uncertainty. As previously reported, effective on May 19, 2016, the Companys former officer and director, Shane Whittle, entered into a Settlement Agreement with the Company. Pursuant to the Settlement Agreement as it relates to the Company, Mr. Whittle agreed to cancel and terminate options he held to purchase 2 million shares of the Companys common stock for $1.00 of total consideration, has agreed to release and waive any rights to any past due or future due payments owed by the Company under a separate settlement agreement, and agreed to provide a general release from all claims, liability and obligations. Separate from, but as an agreed upon term of the Settlement Agreement, Marley Coffee, LLC has also agreed to cancel 2 million shares of common stock of the Company held by such entity, which cancellation the Company anticipates effecting shortly.

 One of our key objectives over the last year has been to clear up investor uncertainty. As previously reported, effective on May 19, 2016, the Companys former officer and director, Shane Whittle, entered into a Settlement Agreement with the Company. Pursuant to the Settlement Agreement as it relates to the Company, Mr. Whittle agreed to cancel and terminate options he held to purchase 2 million shares of the Companys common stock for $1.00 of total consideration, has agreed to release and waive any rights to any past due or future due payments owed by the Company under a separate settlement agreement, and agreed to provide a general release from all claims, liability and obligations. Separate from, but as an agreed upon term of the Settlement Agreement, Marley Coffee, LLC has also agreed to cancel 2 million shares of common stock of the Company held by such entity, which cancellation the Company anticipates effecting shortly. SEC Lawsuit - As reported in the Form 10-K the Company has reached a settlement in principle with the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle the claims made by the Commission, which has not yet been formally approved or accepted by the Commission to date, and may not be approved or accepted. Additionally, we reiterate that as of today, the only negative impact we have seen on the Company from the SEC lawsuit has been on the Companys share price. To our knowledge, no customers have dropped Marley Coffee from their shelves due to this investigation, no partners have disengaged with the Company, and the Company is still seeing revenue growth in the marketplace. On April 20, 2016, the Company entered into a settlement agreement and release with one of its officer and director insurance providers, pursuant to which among other things, the provider agreed to buy out the Companys officer and director liability insurance policy for the period from March 15, 2011 to March 15, 2012 for $400,000.

- As reported in the Form 10-K the Company has reached a settlement in principle with the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle the claims made by the Commission, which has not yet been formally approved or accepted by the Commission to date, and may not be approved or accepted. Additionally, we reiterate that as of today, the only negative impact we have seen on the Company from the SEC lawsuit has been on the Companys share price. To our knowledge, no customers have dropped Marley Coffee from their shelves due to this investigation, no partners have disengaged with the Company, and the Company is still seeing revenue growth in the marketplace. On April 20, 2016, the Company entered into a settlement agreement and release with one of its officer and director insurance providers, pursuant to which among other things, the provider agreed to buy out the Companys officer and director liability insurance policy for the period from March 15, 2011 to March 15, 2012 for $400,000. Future Financing  Moving forward, the Company plans to raise additional significant financing which would be used to pay off existing convertible debt notes (though we cannot guarantee that such funding will be available, or if available, will be on favorable terms).

I am very proud of how this quarter turned out despite some of the distractions and our undercapitalization, said Brent Toevs, CEO of the Company, who continued, This company is guided by Rohan Marleys visionary leadership, and the herculean effort of the staff that we have today. We believe weve set the right framework with our business plan, and our accounts and our sales force to grow our business in a meaningful way this year with or without an investment in the company. However, if were able to settle our pending lawsuit with the SEC (an albatross thats been hanging around our necks for the past several quarters), we believe the sky is the limit. Our main objective, alongside with continuing to grow the company, is to secure a significant investment to clean up our balance sheet and provide working capital to really expand our base here in the states, as well as look out and grow towards the rest of the globe.



About Jammin Java Corp., d/b/a Marley Coffee

Jammin Java Corp., d/b/a Marley Coffee is a U.S.-based company that provides premium, artisan roasted coffee to the grocery, retail, online, service, hospitality, office coffee service and big box store industry. Under its exclusive licensing agreement with Fifty-Six Hope Road Music Limited, the Company continues to develop its coffee lines under the Marley Coffee brand. The Company is a fully reporting company quoted on the OTCQB market under the symbol "JAMN." For additional information, follow Marley Coffee on Facebook, Twitter and visit MarleyCoffee.com or visit the Investor Relations section at Investor.MarleyCoffee.com.

Marley Coffee brands have no affiliation with Nespresso.

Preliminary Anticipated Financial Results

The financial information included in this press release, including the preliminary anticipated results of operations for the quarter ended April 30, 2016, are unaudited, remain subject to review and audit by the Companys independent auditors, and while such financial information represents the Companys good faith estimates of its results of operations for the items presented herein, such results of operations as subsequently reviewed by the Companys independent auditors and filed in the Companys Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended April 30, 2016, may ultimately be materially different (either more or less favorable) than those presented in this press release. Readers should keep in mind that the anticipated results and other matters disclosed above have not been reviewed or audited, are not final and are subject to adjustment prior to the filing of the Companys Form 10-Q. The Companys financial statements have historically been subject to numerous adjustments and changes between such time as they are preliminarily prepared (which preliminary information is provided in this press release for the quarter ended April 30, 2016) and the date the review or audit of such financial statements is finalized by the Companys independent auditor and there is no reason to believe that the preliminary information provided herein will not similarly be subject to significant revisions or adjustments prior to the reviewed financials for such period being approved and released by our independent auditors. Readers are encouraged to read and review the Companys Annual Report Form 10-K for the year ended January 31, 2016 and the Companys Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q for the periods ended April 30, 2015, July 31, 2015 and October 31, 2015 (including, but not limited to the sections entitled Risk Factors, Managements Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations and Financial Statements and Supplementary Data included therein), as well as the Companys upcoming Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended April 30, 2016, once filed, for more information on the Company, risks affecting the Company, its results of operations and financial condition.

Forward-Looking Statements

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, as amended (the "Acts"). In particular, the words "believe," "may," "could," "should," "expect," "anticipate," "estimate," "project," "propose," "plan," "intend," and similar conditional words and expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements and are subject to the safe harbor created by these Acts. Any statements made in this news release about an action, event or development, are forward-looking statements. Such statements are based upon assumptions that in the future may prove not to have been accurate and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. Such statements are subject to a number of assumptions, risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the control of the Company. These risks and others are included from time to time in documents we file with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including but not limited to, our Form 10-Ks, Form 10-Qs and Form 8-Ks. Other unknown or unpredictable factors also could have material adverse effects on our future results. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that its forward-looking statements will prove to be correct. Investors are cautioned that any forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected. The forward-looking statements herein are made as of the date hereof. Actual results may differ from anticipated results sometimes materially, and reported results should not be considered an indication of future performance. The Company takes no obligation to update or correct its own forward-looking statements, except as required by law or those prepared by third parties that are not paid by the Company. The Company's SEC filings are available at http://www.sec.gov.
English Finnish

Nokia Corporation

Stock Exchange Release

May 31, 2016 at 15:00 (CET +1)

Nokia completes the acquisition of Withings

Espoo, Finland - Nokia today announced that it has closed the acquisition of Withings S.A. earlier than had been expected. Through this acquisition, originally announced on April 26, 2016, Nokia Technologies has established a new Digital Health business unit led by Cedric Hutchings, formerly CEO of Withings, who reports to Ramzi Haidamus, president of Nokia Technologies.

The Digital Health business unit combines the talented employees from Withings and experts from the preventive health and patient care teams in Nokia Technologies. The new business unit builds on the pioneering work of Withings, offering a family of award-winning digital health products designed to fit seamlessly into people's lives, empowering them to make smarter decisions about the health and wellbeing of themselves and their families. The product line includes activity trackers, smart body analyzer scales, thermometers, blood pressure monitors, home and baby monitors and more, built on a sophisticated digital health platform. Together, under Cedric's leadership, the Digital Health team will continue to design smarter products for healthy living.

"This is the beginning of an exciting new chapter in the history of Nokia Technologies as we extend our product portfolio to include a series of powerful digital health technologies," said Ramzi Haidamus, president, Nokia Technologies. "The Nokia brand is synonymous with innovation, connectivity and consumer technology and the acquisition of Withings puts us in a perfect position to capitalize on the huge opportunity in the health space. We're excited to welcome the Withings team to the Nokia family."

On June 9, Nokia Technologies will be hosting an invitation only event in San Francisco to share its vision for digital health and showcase its products, coinciding with the opening of its San Francisco office, in the heart of the Bay Area.

About Nokia Technologies

Nokia Technologies is Nokia's advanced technology and licensing business. Formed in 2014, TECH builds upon our solid foundation of industry-leading licensing and technology R&D capabilities. By focusing on Digital Health, Digital Media, Brand Licensing and Patent Licensing, TECH is expanding the human possibilities of the ever-evolving world of technology. In 2015, Nokia Technologies launched OZO, the world's first virtual reality (VR) camera designed for professionals.

About Nokia

Nokia is a global leader in the technologies that connect people and things. Powered by the innovation of Nokia Bell Labs and Nokia Technologies, the company is at the forefront of creating and licensing the technologies that are increasingly at the heart of our connected lives.

With state-of-the-art software, hardware and services for any type of network, Nokia is uniquely positioned to help communication service providers, governments, and large enterprises deliver on the promise of 5G, the Cloud and the Internet of Things. www.nokia.com

Media Enquiries:

Nokia

Communications

Tel. +358 (0) 10 448 4900

Email: press.services@nokia.com



Investor Enquiries:

Nokia Investor Relations

Tel. +358 4080 3 4080

Email: investor.relations@nokia.com



RISKS AND FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

It should be noted that Nokia and its businesses are exposed to various risks and uncertainties and certain statements herein that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, those regarding: A) expectations, plans or benefits related to our strategies and growth management; B) expectations, plans or benefits related to future performance of our businesses; C) expectations regarding market developments, general economic conditions and structural changes; D) expectations and targets regarding financial performance, results, operating expenses, taxes, cost savings and competitiveness, as well as results of operations including targeted synergies and those related to market share, prices, net sales, income and margins; E) expectations regarding restructurings, investments, uses of proceeds from transactions, acquisitions and divestments and our ability to achieve the financial and operational targets set in connection with any such restructurings, investments, divestments and acquisitions; and F) statements preceded by or including "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "foresee," "sees," "target," "estimate," "designed," "aim," "plans," "intends," "focus," "continue," "project," "should," "will" or similar expressions. These statements are based on the management's best assumptions and beliefs in light of the information currently available to it. Because they involve risks and uncertainties, actual results may differ materially from the results that we currently expect. Factors, including risks and uncertainties, that could cause such differences include, but are not limited to: 1) our ability to execute our strategy, sustain or improve the operational and financial performance of our business or correctly identify or successfully pursue business opportunities or growth; 2) our dependence on general economic and market conditions and other developments in the economies where we operate; 3) our dependence on the development of the industries in which we operate, including the Digital Health and Telecommunications industries; 4) our exposure to regulatory, political or other developments in various countries or regions, including emerging markets and the associated risks in relation to healthcare, tax matters and exchange controls, among others; 5) our ability to effectively and profitably compete and invest in new competitive high-quality products, services, upgrades and technologies and bring them to market in a timely manner; 6) Nokia Technologies' ability to maintain and establish new sources of patent licensing income and IPR-related revenues, particularly in the smartphone market; 7) our dependence on IPR technologies, including those that we have developed and those that are licensed to us, and the risk of associated IPR-related legal claims, licensing costs and restrictions on use; 8) our exposure to direct and indirect regulation, including healthcare related regulation, economic or trade policies, and the reliability of our governance, internal controls and compliance processes to prevent regulatory penalties; 9) our reliance on third-party solutions for data storage and the distribution of products and services, which expose us to risks relating to security, regulation and cybersecurity breaches; 10) Nokia Technologies' ability to generate net sales and profitability through licensing of the Nokia brand, the development and sales of products and services, as well as other business ventures which may not materialize as planned; 11) our ability to retain, motivate, develop and recruit appropriately skilled employees; 12) our ability to manage our manufacturing, service creation, delivery, logistics and supply chain processes, and the risk related to our geographically concentrated production sites; 13) the impact of unfavorable outcome of litigation, arbitration, agreement-related disputes or allegations of product liability associated with our businesses; 14) inefficiencies, breaches, malfunctions or disruptions of information technology systems; 15) our ability to achieve targeted benefits from or successfully implement planned transactions, as well as the liabilities related thereto; 16) our ability to manage and improve our financial and operating performance, cost savings, competitiveness and synergy benefits after the acquisition of Alcatel Lucent; and 17) unexpected liabilities with respect to pension plans, insurance matters and employees, as well as the risk factors specified on pages 69 to 87 of our annual report on Form 20-F filed on April 1, 2016 under "Operating and financial review and prospects-Risk factors", as well as in Nokia's other filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Other unknown or unpredictable factors or underlying assumptions subsequently proven to be incorrect could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. We do not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except to the extent legally required.
Tampa, FL, May 31, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Tampa-based DAS Health, the largest national reseller of Aprima Medical Software and leading provider of patient-centric health IT and management services, has announced its fourth acquisition in eight months. The latest acquisition, Falcon Healthcare Systems, a Las Vegas, Nevada-based provider of managed IT services, revenue cycle management, Practice Management, and EHR technologies, will strengthen DAS Healths portfolio of offerings to physician practices nationwide. Most notably, the addition of Falcon Health Systems includes a first-in-class Technology / Managed Services solution team.

As the healthcare industry continues to rapidly change, it is our goal to help clinicians focus on what matters most: their patients, said David Schlaifer, President and CEO of DAS Health. With the addition of the Falcon Healthcare Systems founders and employees, we are further enhancing our service lines and our team to do just that.

The alignment of our companies core values makes this an exciting opportunity, added Falcon Healthcare Systems founder and CEO Russell Suzuki, who joins DAS Health as Vice President of Information Services. Our shared commitment to excellence and integrity above all else gives us an incredible opportunity to serve our clients and their patients.

DAS Health will maintain its headquarters in Tampa and continue operations in its Charlotte and Phoenix regional offices, and will add a regional office in Las Vegas as a result of the acquisition, further growing its geographic footprint.





###

About DAS Health

DAS Health is a leading provider of Health IT and management solutions and a trusted consultant to many physician groups, hospitals and healthcare systems across North America. For more than a decade, DAS Health has been bridging the gap between regulatory compliance, business goals and personal service, empowering our clients to deliver more patient-centric care, protect their earnings and increase profitability.

DAS Health seeks to improve the healthcare experience by delivering superior solutions, including: Health IT product development; IT managed services, hosting and hardware support; systems integrations, technology interfaces and data analytics; certified Practice Management & EHR technologies; complete RCM billing solutions; regulatory and business process consulting, and more  for nearly 1500 providers, 6000 users, and servicing more than 5 million patients.

Its suite of products offered include the assessURhealth and DocsINK digital application platforms, Aprima Medical Software, and FaxitMD solutions, among others.

DAS Health (f/k/a Doctors Administrative Solutions) has been recognized for the past four years as one of the top Healthcare companies on the Inc. 500|5000 list of fastest growing privately held companies in the country, among other awards and recognitions.

*Aprima and DocsINK are registered trademarks of their respective companies.
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Hello, everyone, and welcome to our regular therapy session. I'm back from a week of vacation (taking time off: what a concept!) and ready for the next phase of this grueling and bizarre presidential campaign. On the GOP side, it's all about Trump, of course. My column today judges that he had a bad week, capped by his underwhelming spectacle at Rolling Thunder and his evening Twitter-tantrum over Bill Kristol's taunting "heads-up" about an independent conservative candidate poised to enter the race. Today, Trump claimed that he did, indeed, give money to veterans' groups, as he had promised; he spent most of his news conference blasting the media, which is kind of rich considering all the free air time he gets. Meanwhile, in the Democratic race, next week's California primary looms as Clinton's chance to demonstrate her strength and Sanders's opportunity to pull one last upset. Not that any result will chance the basic math, of course. The real question is how much leverage Sanders will have at the convention -- and might it even be enough to get him a place on the ticket. Let's get started.
DAVAO CITY  President-elect Rodrigo Duterte stayed true to his word that he would skip his proclamation as the 16th president of the country at the House of Representatives yesterday, preferring instead to perform his usual duties as mayor of this city.

He is doing his chores as mayor of Davao, said Bong Go, Dutertes long-time executive assistant, in a text message.

There are still a lot of documents for signature, Go added.

But sources said Duterte watched on TV the entire proceedings of the proclamation declaring the results of the May 9 elections for president and vice president.

On Saturday, Duterte said he would not attend his proclamation despite calls by some of his supporters to do so.

I am not attending any proclamation. I have never attended any proclamation in my life, Duterte said.

In all of my political aspirations, I won. I said maybe God would want me to taste defeat but it never happened.

Duterte, who governed this city with an iron fist for 22 years, said his lawyers would represent him during the proclamation rites, adding he would fly to Manila on June 30, his inauguration day.

If the flight is delayed, then there would be no inauguration, he said in jest during a press conference last week.

Duterte won by a landslide with more than 16.6 million votes, making him the first Philippine president from Mindanao.

He has been undefeated in all his political forays and even made history as having gotten the most votes in the history of the countrys presidential elections.

He promised to hold another press conference today, a day after his proclamation as president.

Meeting with Cabinet

Meanwhile, the president-elect will meet members of his Cabinet here for the first time.

Hes meeting with them tomorrow afternoon, Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano, who was Dutertes vice presidential runningmate, told reporters yesterday.

Story continues

He said he did not know if former budget secretary Benjamin Diokno has accepted the newly elected presidents offer to head the budget department again.

If he shows up tomorrow, that means he has accepted it, he said.

Diokno and former national treasurer Leonor Briones are among Dutertes newest appointees. They served in the Estrada administration. Briones was offered the education portfolio.

For his part, justice secretary-designate Vitaliano Aguirre II said he expects Duterte to announce more officials today.

I think he will make more announcements. That could be the reason why we were asked to go there, Cayetano said.

He said among the appointees he would like the president-elect to name is the new director of the National Bureau of Investigation.

Asked if he knows whether a Cabinet post would be offered to vice president-elect Leni Robredo, Aguirre said he did not know.

Duterte has told reporters that giving Robredo a Cabinet job has not crossed his mind yet.

He said in appointing his officials, he is giving priority to those who helped him win and to whom he owes a debt of gratitude.

During the election campaign, he said would be glad to appoint Robredo as assistant president.  With Jess Diaz
By Maher Nazeh and Saif Hameed CAMP TARIQ, Iraq (Reuters) - Islamic State fighters halted an Iraqi army assault on the city of Falluja with a counter-attack at its southern gates on Tuesday, while the United Nations warned of peril for civilians trapped in the city and used by militants as human shields. The Iraqi army's assault on Falluja has begun what is expected to be one of the biggest battles ever fought against Islamic State, with the government backed by world powers including the United States and Iran, and determined to win back the first major Iraqi city that fell to the group in 2014. A week after Baghdad announced the start of the assault, its troops advanced in large numbers into the city limits for the first time on Monday, pouring into rural territory on its southern outskirts but stopping short of the main built-up area. Baghdad describes the assault to retake the city as a potential turning point in its U.S.-backed campaign to defeat the ultra-hardline Sunni Muslim militants who rule a self-proclaimed caliphate across much of Iraq and Syria. Falluja, where U.S. troops fought the biggest battles of their own 2003-2011 occupation against Islamic State's precursors, is the militants' closest bastion to Baghdad, believed to be the base from which they have waged a campaign of suicide bombings on the capital less than an hour's drive away. Retaking it would give the government control of the main population centres in the fertile Euphrates River valley west of the capital for the first time in more than two years. But the assault is also a test of the army's ability to capture territory while protecting civilians. Although most of Falluja's population is believed to have fled during six months of siege, 50,000 people are still thought to be trapped inside with limited access to food, water or healthcare. "HUMAN CATASTROPHE UNFOLDING" A human catastrophe is unfolding in Falluja. Families are caught in the crossfire with no safe way out, said Jan Egeland, Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, one of the organisations helping families displaced form the city. Warring parties must guarantee civilians safe exit now, before its too late and more lives are lost, he said. The United Nations said there were reports that the militants were using several hundred families as human shields in the city centre, a tactic they have employed in other locations in Iraq. It said 3,700 people had managed to escape the city in the past week. "Most people able to get out come from the outskirts of Falluja. For some time militants have been controlling movements, we know civilians have been prevented from fleeing," said Ariane Rummery, spokeswoman for UN refugee agency UNHCR. "There are also reports from people who left in recent days that they are being required to move with ISIL within Falluja," she said, using an acronym for Islamic State, also known as ISIS or Daesh. Soldiers from Iraq's elite Rapid Response Team stopped their advance overnight about 500 meters (yards) from the al-Shuhada district, the southeastern part of city's main built-up area, an army commander and a police officer said. MILITANTS DUG IN "Our forces came under heavy fire, they are well dug in trenches and tunnels," said the commander speaking in Camp Tariq, the rear army base south of Falluja, 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad. Reuters journalists in the area could hear explosions from artillery shelling and air strikes from a U.S.-led coalition supporting the Iraqi forces. A staff member of Falluja's main hospital said it received reports of 32 civilians killed on Monday. Medical sources had reported that the death toll in the city stood at about 50 -- 30 civilians and 20 militants -- during the first week of the offensive which had yet to involve street fighting. Foreign aid organisations are not present in Falluja but are providing help in camps to those who manage to exit. Falluja is the second-largest Iraqi city still under control of the militants, after Mosul, their de facto capital in the north that had a pre-war population of about 2 million. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the assault on Falluja on May 22 after a spate of bombings that killed more than 150 people in one week in Baghdad, the worst death toll so far this year. A series of bombings claimed by Islamic State also hit Baghdad on Monday, killing more than 20 people. In Washington, U.S. officials said the Falluja operation would take time to complete, without giving a timetable. "The Falluja offensive is tough ... They have faced a lot of heavy fighting in the past couple of days, machine gun fire, artillery fire, not to mention the constant threat of IEDs," Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said on Tuesday. POLITICAL PRESSURE ON ABADI The worsening security situation in the capital has added to political pressure on Abadi, a member of Iraq's Shi'ite majority who is trying to hold a ruling coalition together in the face of public protests against an entrenched political class. He has called for politicians to set aside their differences and rally behind the army during the Falluja offensive. Shi'ite militia groups backed by Iran are also taking part in the offensive against Islamic State, but are holding back from participating in the main assault on Falluja to avoid inflaming sectarian tension. Reuters journalists saw hundreds of Shi'ite militia fighters rallying at one location near Saqlawiya, a village north of Fallluja still under IS control. The United States is leading a coalition conducting air strikes in support of the Iraqi government offensive, and says it is having success in rolling back Islamic State. In neighbouring Syria, U.S. forces have also aided mainly Kurdish fighters who have seized territory from the militants, as has the Russian-backed government of President Bashar al-Assad. Falluja has been a bastion of the Sunni insurgency that fought both the U.S. occupation of Iraq and the Shi'ite-led Baghdad government that took over after the fall of dictator Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, in 2003. It would be the third major city in Iraq recaptured by the government after Saddam's home town Tikrit and Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's vast western Anbar province, which also includes Falluja. (Reporting by Maher Nazeh and Saif Hameed near Falluja; Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Idrees Ali and Timothy Gardner in Washington.; Writing by Maher Chmaytelli and Peter Graff, editing by Peter Millership and Alan Crosby)
PARIS (Reuters) - The United Nations special envoy to Libya said on Tuesday the country would not be able to defeat Islamic State militants unless the various military and militia strands joined forces against the group. The December unity deal was meant to end the divide between rival governments in the capital Tripoli and the east who have vied for control over the country and its oil resources since 2014. The competing factions helped oust Muammar Gaddafi five years ago. But in a 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. Speaking alongside side French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, Martin Kobler, the envoy, said a united command structure was needed under control of Fayaz Seraj, the head of the U.N.-backed Government of National Accord (GNA), which arrived in Tripoli in late March and is still trying to establish its authority. "One point must be very clear. The fight against Daesh must first be a Libyan fight and a united fight," Kobler, said referring to the Arabic acronym for Islamic State. "Nobody acting alone will succeed that's why it's important that all security actors in the west and east unite their forces. There must be a joint command structure and joint army under the general command of the council (GNA)." Ayrault, whose country has sent special forces to help certain groups fight Islamic State in the North African state, said the priority was to incorporate General Khalifa Haftar, who heads up troops in the east, with militias in the west. Haftar on May 20 said it would be "unthinkable" for eastern Libyan forces to join the GNA until militias aligned to it had been disbanded. "I encourage the government (GNA) to do everything to have contacts with the east and they re doing it," said Kobler, who added he would like to hold talks with Haftar. "But the east is refusing for the moment. It takes two to tango." (Reporting By John Irish Editing by Jeremy Gaunt.)
By Colin Packham SYDNEY (Reuters) - Mass coral bleaching has destroyed at least 35 percent of the northern and central Great Barrier Reef, Australian scientists said on Monday, a major blow to the World Heritage Site that attracts about A$5 billion ($3.59 billion) in tourism each year. Australian scientists said the coral mortality figure will likely rise as some of the remaining 65 percent of coral in the northern and central reefs fails to recover from bleaching. The report casts a shadow over the long-term prospects of the Great Barrier Reef against a backdrop of climate change and scientists said UNESCO may reconsider its decision not to put the World Heritage Site on its endangered list. "Australia argued that the world heritage values were in tact because of the northern region and now of course it has taken a huge hit," said Professor Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in Queensland state. UNESCO's World Heritage Committee last May stopped short of placing the Great Barrier Reef on an "in danger" list, but the ruling raised concern about its future. Australian scientists said in March that just seven percent of the Great Barrier Reef had avoided any damage as a result of bleaching, and they held grave fears particularly for coral on the northern reef. After further aerial surveys and dives to access the damage across 84 reefs in the region, Australian scientists said the impact of the bleaching is more severe than expected. "This year is the third time in 18 years that the Great Barrier Reef has experienced mass bleaching due to global warming, and the current event is much more extreme than we've measured before," said Hughes. The findings would have been worse had Cyclone Winston, which hit the reef in January, not bought cooler conditions across the central and southern reefs, the scientists said. Bleaching occurs when the water is too warm, forcing coral to expel living algae and causing it to calcify and turn white. Mildly bleached coral can recover if the temperature drops, otherwise it may die. Although the impact has been exacerbated by one of the strongest El Nino weather systems in nearly 20 years, which raised sea temperatures in the western Pacific, scientists believe climate change is the underlying cause. The bleaching survey findings come just days after Australia's Department of Environment confirmed it omitted its contribution to a U.N. report examining the impact of climate change on world heritage sites over concerns it could create "confusion" and have a negative impact on tourism. Australia is one of the largest carbon emitters per capita because of its reliance on coal-fired power plants for electricity. Climate scientists argue that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere traps heat radiating from Earth, creating global warming. ($1 = 1.3928 Australian dollars) (Reporting by Colin Packham; Editing by Andrew Bolton and Michael Perry)
By Brad Brooks RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Rio de Janeiro police are investigating allegations that more than 30 men and boys raped a 16-year-old girl, officials said on Friday, as outrage spread in the host city for the Olympics and reverberated across the country. The reported assault was discovered after one of the suspects posted to Twitter a video of the nude, semi-conscious youth, with a few men brazenly insulting the girl, showing their faces, and one man heard saying, "more than 30 impregnated her!" The Twitter account where the video was posted has since been suspended. Police said the girl told them more than 30 men had assaulted her, but they could not yet confirm how many took part in the alleged rape, as they are still investigating. "There are all the indications that this rape did in fact happen, but we still have to investigate further before we can absolutely confirm it," said Fernando Veloso, head of Rio's civil police department, at a press conference on Friday. Veloso said police have identified four suspects so far in the assault that apparently took place last Saturday in a western Rio slum - but have yet to make any arrests, saying further investigation is required. Hashtags on Twitter such as #EstuproNaoECulpaDaVitima - Portuguese for "rape is not the victim's fault" - blasting the reported crime were among the top global trends. Many Facebook users in Brazil, including suspended President Dilma Rousseff, the nation's first woman leader, changed their profile photos to the Venus female gender symbol with words calling for an end to a "culture of rape." Brazil's interim President Michel Temer wrote on his Twitter account that he "vehemently repudiates" the alleged rape, and added that "it is absurd that in the 21st century we have to live with barbaric crimes like this." Temer appointed a new government this month when Rousseff was suspended to face trial in the Senate for allegedly breaking budget rules. He came under intense criticism for excluding women and black Brazilians from his cabinet - something not seen in decades. Temer said his justice minister would meet on Tuesday with the public security chiefs who oversee policing in Brazilian states to discuss how better to combat violence against women. The interim president also said he would form a special department within the federal police focused on crimes against women, which would help to coordinate action and share information among the individual state security departments. When Temer served as head of public safety for Sao Paulo state the early 1990s, he created the first police division in Brazil devoted to combating crimes against women, an idea that has since spread throughout the country. RIO RESIDENTS SHOCKED The cruelty of the alleged assault is the latest bleak chapter for Brazil and Rio. The Olympic Games in August were meant to showcase a nation that had become a global power. Instead, they will take place as Rousseff faces an impeachment trial, the economy suffers its worst recession since the 1930s, an outbreak of the Zika virus prompts health concerns and a massive corruption scandal at state-run oil company Petrobras infuriates Brazilians. In Rio, a city that has long dealt with serious violence often involving minors, the brutal nature of the allegations shook citizens. Marta and Leticia Festes, a mother and daughter heading to work and university in the Rio neighbourhood of Copacabana, criticized a culture of sexism in Brazil. They said the slow and disorderly justice system lacked teeth and allowed for impunity. "Some men think that they can get away with these things, especially in poor neighbourhoods where the police are never around," said Marta, 43, who works as a maid. Her 20-year-old daughter, in her third year of studying computer science, said stricter and swifter justice was needed. "Those guys, if they even catch them, might serve a little jail time and then they'll all be free again," she said. "But the victim's life has been ruined." (Additional reporting by Paulo Prada; Editing by Frances Kerry)
The human gut is a complex and amazing system, and the more we learn about it, the more amazed we are. It turns out
Data Analytics & Reporting

Maine Adopts State-Level Data Platform

The Maine Department of Education has selected a partner to provide a state level student information and reporting system (SSIRS).

Following a competitive bidding process, the department chose the Synergy Education Platform from Edupoint Educational Systems "to aggregate data from all school administrative units (SAUs), using Ed-Fi to collect data on Maine's 180,000 students for state and federal reporting mandated by the state's Department of Education," according to a news release.

The solution will offer a central database connecting SAUs with the state's student data collection process in an effort to improve reporting functionality and the quality and access of student data. Districts without a local data system will be able to input data to the platform using any supported browser. "Student demographics, enrollment, health, assessment, CTE and special education data will be submitted by SAUs through the securely hosted Synergy State solution, where query and reporting tools will allow the state to access, display, and analyze data in real time," according to a news release.

As a result of the partnership, SAUs will also be able to license the synergy platform at pre-negotiated rates and without a bid process.

"Maine's student data represents one of the cornerstones for the Department of Education as we try to make informed decisions on improving educational results," said Brian Snow Maine's education data manager, in a prepared statement. "The Synergy product promises better control of the quality of information collected, which can then ensure better decisions."
Policy

Report: Where's the 'Computer Science' in STEM?

Schools should be doing a lot more to promote the study of computer science as a discipline. At the high school level, only about a quarter of schools have CS classes, and many of those focus on computer use or coding rather than CS principles. At the college level enrollment in such courses is often restricted to those in the major or bloated with extra fees.

According to the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, a non-profit science and technology think tank, while there's a certain "groundswell of interest" in CS in the United States, it's still not enough to address the high demand for skilled workers among employers.

In a new report, "The Case for Improving U.S. Computer Science Education," the foundation pointed out that "the most important STEM field for a modern economy" not only lacks its own initial in STEM but has the fewest number of high school students taking its classes. Skills in CS don't exist just in IT professions, but in all segments, according to the foundation.

On the secondary school front, the report stated, CS is still considered "secondary" to the "biology-chemistry-physics framework" that has dominated high school science education since the 1890s. In fact, while the percentage of students taking a class in chemistry rose from 49 percent to 70 percent from 1990 to 2009, CS actually lost ground, "sinking" from 25 percent of students in 1990 to 19 percent in 2009.

Currently, only around a quarter of high schools offer CS, and those tend to be concentrated in affluent schools, the report noted. Just 18 percent of schools accredited to offer Advanced Placement exams offer the CS AP exam.

The report said that only half of states count computer science as a math or science credit rather than an elective, and the majority of states (29 in total) lack CS teacher certification programs.

The gender "disparity" for AP exams also is at its largest in CS; 22 percent of students who take the AP exam in computer science are female. Less than a tenth of students who take the AP CS exam are Hispanic, and less than four percent are black.

At the university level, while this country "boasts" strong CS programs that "draw students from across the globe," schools still aren't keeping up with demand, wrote authors Adams Nager and Robert Atkinson. They cited two main reasons for this. First, as with most STEM-focused degrees, the costs for delivering CS courses is higher than for classes in liberal arts or social sciences programs. Second, fast response to growing need in new fields faces internal resistance.

To address growing appetite and the lack of "head room" in CS courses, the report stated, the institutions respond by limiting enrollment through restrictions, higher admission standards, charging a premium for CS classes or imposing introductory "weed-out" courses designed to keep students out of the major. The result is a cycle of "artificial constraints" that "disproportionally" affect women and under-represented minorities.

The authors offered several recommendations for federal and state policymakers to leverage the on-going momentum that currently exists in the realm of CS instruction in order to address existing gaps in high schools:

Allow CS to count as credit in math or science requirements in high school;

Teach CS in all high schools;

Push to reform the curriculum in existing technology classes to focus on the core concepts of CS in primary and secondary schools;

Increase the number of qualified CS teachers by providing resources to train and recruit; and

Double the number of STEM-focused public charter high schools.

At the university level, the report suggested:

Creation of incentives for universities to expand their offerings in CS through grants from the National Science Foundation;

Providing more funding to offset the higher costs of training CS majors; and

Prioritizing the retention of students interested in majoring, minoring or taking courses in the field.

"Despite the growing use of computers and software in every facet of our economy, computer science education is just beginning to gain traction in American school systems. It should be an urgent priority to make much greater progress," said Nager, an ITIF economic policy analyst, in a prepared statement.

"Graduates with skills in computer science are an incredibly valuable resource for the U.S. economy," added Atkinson, the foundation's president. "It is not enough to rely on the 'market' to determine the number of workers with computer science skills, if for no other reason than because key educational institutions do not adequately respond to market signals. It is incumbent on states and the federal government to require or incentivize educational institutions to further develop their ability to train a broader group of students in computer science. Expanding computer science education should be considered an essential component of U.S. innovation and economic growth policy."

The complete report is openly available on the foundation website.
- The head of the Egyptian delegation to the UNEA-2 conference reportedly referred to Africans from the Sub-Sahara part of the continent as "dogs and slaves

- This happened as he was speaking to his delegation, after an apparent misunderstanding over a resolution that was not adopted, during the Assembly held at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) headquaters in Nairobi

- The incident has elicited fury and criticism among many, especially Africans from the Sub-Saharan region

Reports of the dramatic showdown that happened as the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-2) came to a close last Friday May 27, 2016 have come to light.

Egypts Minister for Environment and President of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) is said to have referred to Africans from Sub-Saharan Africa as dogs and slaves during debate.

READ ALSO: Kenya and Somalias vicious fight attracts global attention

The unfortunate incident came to light after Chair of the Africa Diplomatic Corps (ADC) technical committee Yvonne Khamati wrote to the Dean of the Africa Diplomatic Corps Amb. Kelebert Nkomani requesting that Egypt be banned from representing the continent in any official capacity until it apologises for its ministers utterances.

Khamati in a photo during the conference with principal secretaries in the Ministry of Environment, Margaret Mwakima (left) and Charles Sunkuli. Photo: @dr_mwakima/Twitter

She explained in a tweet that other African delegates who understand Arabic confronted the minister over the utterances.

The memo was also copied to the Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed and the Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Monica Juma.

A photo of the memo dated May 29, showing Khamati's recommendations following the incident.

The event, which has elicited fury among a number of Africans, was described in the memo as Egypt's "undiplomatic, irresponsible, uncivilised and insulting behaviour".

The memo did not spell out the name of the accused, though Egypt's Minister of Environment Khaled Fahmy appears in the UNEP website as the AMCEN president.

READ ALSO: UN Secretary General discusses with Ruto the CORD demos and 2017 polls

The weeklong UNEA-2 conference saw 25 resolutions passed by 120 governments addressing environmental issues such as poaching as well as air and water pollution.

Source: TUKO.co.ke
- President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto met opposition leaders at State House, Nairobi

- CORD leader Raila Odinga was accompanied by his co-principal Moses Wentangula; Kalonzo Musyoka is out of the country

- Details of the meeting are yet to be made public but they were expected to discuss electoral reforms that the opposition chiefs have been pushing for

President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto have seemingly given in to demands for national dialogue by Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) leaders.

The two Jubilee leaders held a meeting with CORD co-principals Raila Odinga and Moses Wetangula at State House, Nairobi, after a state luncheon in honour of South Korea's President Park Geun-hye.

Details of the brief meeting are yet to be made public but one thing stood out from the encounter; the leaders were visibly excited to meet.

Raila Odinga and Uhuru Kenyatta at State House Nairobi as they welcome South Korea president Park Geun-Hye.

The third CORD co-principal, Kalonzo Musyoka, missed the meeting as he is out of the country.

READ ALSO: How Kibaki and Raila picked the current IEBC commissioners

The meeting came just a day after Raila told the Kenyan business community that demonstrations against the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) would resume on Monday, June 6.

Raila told Kenya Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA) that the anti-IEBC demonstrations would go on as the government had failed to initiate national dialogue even after CORD suspended the protests.

The KEPSA members held the meeting with Raila at his Capitol Hill office just days after having a similar one with Uhuru at State House.

From Left: Interior CS Joseph Nkaiserry, Raila ODinga, Aden Duale and Moses Wetangula at a meal table at State House when the opposition chiefs had gone to meet the president and his deputy.

Uhuru, on Thursday, May 26, urged the private sector members to hold a meeting with the opposition to make them understand that the anti-IEBC demonstrations were negatively affecting the future of the country.

READ ALSO: CORD responds to polices request to change venue for Madaraka Day rally

He said the opposition should not engage in acts that disrupted business activities supportive of the development agenda.

The president told KEPSA that he was ready to engage with the opposition on issues where the constitution vests power in him.

He had however pointed out that the law did not allow him to interfere with the running of IEBC.

Jubilee MPs were willing to engage their counterparts in the opposition on the issues of the polls body within confines of the constitution, he added.

Uhuru shakes hands with Moses Wetangula at State House Nairobi when him and Raila arrived to meet the president.

CORD leaders had earlier expressed concerns that the ruling coalition was not committed to dialogue.

Their allies, Narc Kenya leader Martha Karua and Kanu Secretary General Nick Salat, had also showed support the anti-IEBC demonstrations until the current commissioners leave office.

Uhuru and Ruto had, on Monday, May 9, met about 50 lawmakers to discuss Jubilee's stand on electoral reforms.

The leaders were said to have resolved to have a national conversation as proposed by the Raila-led opposition.

However, the MPs said the talks were not to involve the removal of IEBC commissioners from office.

Uhuru was apparently told not to meet Raila, if the former prime minister wanted to talk about the fate of IEBC commissioners.

READ ALSO: Cord leader Raila explains how Uhuru invited him to State House

Source: TUKO.co.ke
(Reuters) - Amicus Therapeutics Inc (FOLD.O) said on Tuesday the European Commission approved the use of migalastat, its experimental treatment for Fabry disease, an inherited disease that creates pain and burning in the hands and feet.

The European Medicines Agency had recommended approving migalastat in April. The Cranbury, New Jersey-based company is still seeking approval from U.S. regulators.

Fabry disease is a potentially fatal disorder that affects about 1 in 40,000 to 60,000 men and occurs less frequently in women. It is caused by the build-up of fat-like substances, most notably in the kidneys, due to the deficiency or lack of an enzyme that metabolises these lipids.

The accumulation damages cells and can lead to kidney failure, heart attacks and strokes. It is currently treated with metoclopramide.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last fall asked Amicus for more comprehensive analysis of its trial data and the company put off submitting a new marketing application for the treatment.

(Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru and Caroline Humer in New York; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Jeffrey Benkoe)
(Repeats with no changes to text)

By Susan Taylor

MONTREAL, May 31 (Reuters) - An Australian mining veteran who made investors billions with a shrewd bet on coal in Mozambique is aiming for another big score with Canadian iron ore, even as a global gush of new supply threatens to depress already slumping prices.

Champion Iron Chief Executive Michael O'Keeffe is laying the groundwork to restart Bloom Lake mine in northern Quebec's metals-rich Labrador Trough.

Champion bought Bloom Lake last year for only C$10.5 million ($8.04 million) after Cliffs Natural Resources (NYSE: CLF - news) , which paid $4.9 billion for it in 2011, put the unprofitable mine into creditor protection.

Champion will have its work cut out. The spot iron ore price is sputtering at $51 a tonne, down from an all-time high of about $190 in 2011, as an already oversupplied market absorbs ore from new mega-mines.

Best known for turning Riversdale Mining from a coal explorer in Mozambique with a market cap of A$7 million ($5 million) into a producer that Rio Tinto (LSE: RIO.L - news) acquired for nearly A$4 billion in 2011, O'Keeffe says he's "measured and controlled" - anything but a gambler.

"I pride myself on being able to pick the bottom," he said in an interview with Reuters.

Rio, however, wrote off its investment in Riversdale a few years later and fired its CEO over the failed venture.

O'Keeffe, who moved his family to Montreal, doesn't see the market recovering quickly. That gives Champion the time to develop mine and processing plans, he said, that will reduce costs and boost annual production to 7.5 million tonnes from 6 million tonnes.

Pilot studies have already shown new processing equipment could help boost recovery rates to 80 percent from about 70 percent when the mine last operated, he added.

The timing and pace of any restart will likely be decided at year-end, he said, a call that boils down to costs.

NOT TIME FOR NEW MINES

There are few companies anywhere making concrete plans to start producing iron ore.

Story continues

"Now (NYSE: DNOW - news) is not the time to start new mines. Now is the time to work what is already up harder," said Nev Power, chief executive of Fortescue Metals (Dusseldorf: FVJ.DU - news) , the world's No. 4 producer.

The "Big Three" - Rio, BHP Billiton (NYSE: BBL - news) and Vale - have been slashing costs to squeeze out higher-cost rivals.

Separately, Australia's 55-million-tonne Roy Hill mine, combined with Vale's development of a 90-million-tonne expansion, S11D, in Brazil, may add more than 10 percent to the global sea-borne iron ore supply, said Clarksons Platou Securities analyst Jeremy Sussman.

"In order to balance the market, we'll need to see high-cost production come offline. And that's going to be painful," he said.

Iron ore from the remote Labrador Trough gets a premium for its high 66 percent concentration, versus the 62 percent standard, but is disadvantaged by its distance from the Chinese market.

Australia's government forecasts a price of $55 per tonne next year, so "what we have to then ensure, is that our costs of delivering to China are below $55," O'Keeffe said.

That's far from Bloom Lake's 2014 cash production cost of $81 and the largest miners' current cost of about $30 a tonne.

"They're going to have their hands full," said Clarksons' Sussman, noting that Bloom Lake was in the top quartile for costs.

O'Keeffe said company spending has been cut "significantly" and the mine is now free from costly rail and port access agreements. It (Other OTC: ITGL - news) could also benefit from planned government investments in that infrastructure.

Sandy Chim, the chief executive of neighboring miner Century Iron, said O'Keeffe is "brave" to bet on an uncertain market.

"It is courageous to put it forward," Chim said. "I like to see people take the first move in a particular area that we're in. It would be good to have somebody being a catalyst."

($1 = 1.3066 Canadian dollars)

($1 = 1.3922 Australian dollars) (With (Other OTC: WWTH - news) additional reporting by Jim Regan in Sydney; Editing by Paul Simao)
The logo of SOCAR Energy Switzerland is seen on a filling station in Bern, Switzerland May 9, 2016. REUTERS/Ruben Sprich/Files

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - ONGC Videsh (OVL) is set to make a foray into oil trading and has signed an initial pact with the trading arm of Azerbaijan's state energy company SOCAR, a source privy to the agreement said.

OVL, the overseas acquisition arm of India's biggest explorer Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC.NS), plans to initially sell its share of oil from the large Azeri, Chirag and Guneshli (ACG) group of fields in Azerbaijan through the new venture, the source said.

"At a later stage, OVL will look at opportunities to market its oil from other assets through the planned trading company with SOCAR," the source added.

OVL, which has stakes in oil and gas assets in 16 countries including Russia, Sudan and Brazil, produced about 178,400 barrels per day of oil and gas equivalent in the fiscal year to March 31, 2016.

Currently, Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd (MRPL.NS), a subsidiary of ONGC, trade oil produced by assets of OVL.

(Reporting by Nidhi Verma; Editing by Malini Menon)
By Kylie MacLellan ISE-SHIMA, Japan (Reuters) - A British exit from the European Union would be a serious risk to global economic growth, Group of Seven leaders said in a summit declaration on Friday, as Prime Minister David Cameron urged voters to "listen to our friends" on the impact of Brexit. Brexit was not formally on the agenda at the two-day summit in Japan and despite both German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande saying the issue had not been discussed, Cameron said "one or two people" had raised it. "A UK exit from the EU would reverse the trend towards greater global trade and investment, and the jobs they create, and is a further serious risk to growth," G7 leaders said, in the only reference to the vote in a 32-page declaration. Brexit was listed alongside geopolitical conflicts, terrorism and refugee flows as a potential shock of a "non-economic origin". The G7 statement follows comments from the International Monetary Fund that there were no economic positives to Britain leaving the EU, while the Bank of England has said the economy would slow sharply, and possibly even enter a brief recession. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has also warned that British voters risk paying a "Brexit tax" equivalent to a month's salary by 2020 if they leave the EU. Last week, G7 finance leaders united in wishing Britain stayed in the EU at a June 23 referendum, but acknowledged they could do little more than hope. "We should listen to our friends, we should listen to people who want us to do well, who wish well of us in the world. When you are faced by a difficult decision, it is often a good thing to listen to what your friends think," Cameron told reporters at a news conference after the summit. Merkel said although leaders had not discussed the issue, there was a consensus that they wanted the country to stay in, while Hollande said Brexit would be bad news. "It is not for us to say what the British people should be doing," he told reporters. "Economically, it would be bad news, bad news for the United Kingdom, as well as the world, not just Europe. That would trigger capital transfers as well as the relocation of some activities that would not be for the benefit if the United Kingdom or even for Europe." Opinion polls have given conflicting steers on which way the vote might go, with telephone polls suggesting "In" is comfortably ahead while online polls suggest a tight race that "Out" could win. Betting odds heavily favour an "In" vote. Cameron said Britain could "find our way whatever the British people choose", but warned leaving the bloc would hurt the country's economic future and complicate trade deals with countries such as Japan. He also rejected a description by a former aide this week that he secretly supported a vote for Brexit. "I have never been a closet Brexiteer," he said. "I am absolutely passionate about getting the right result, getting this reform in Europe and remaining part of it. It's in Britain's interests and that's what it is all about." (Additional reporting by Andreas Rinke; Editing by Nick Macfie)
China pavilion presents 'Daily Tao'

From:chinadaily.com.cn | 2016-05-31 11:17

An architecture project in Chengdu is one of the highlights at the ongoing Venice biennale. [Photo/Xinhua]

How to serve people better is a central message of the China pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, which opened to the public on Saturday.

The Venice Architecture Biennale is directed this year by Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena, known for his pioneering social housing projects in Latin America.

It is themed "Reporting from the front" to show the complexity and diversity of the challenges currently faced by architecture. The event is held every two years in Venice.

Liang Jingyu, the curator of China's national pavilion, says he joined hands with a team of architects and designers to tackle the issue of the "ignored front" of modernization, namely the "dignity, welfare and equality" of all citizens.

Called Daily Design, Daily Tao, the pavilion has more than 10 projects reproducing the traditional values and way of life lost in today's globalized world, Chinese Vice-Minister of Culture Yang Zhijin said at the pavilion's opening.

In fact, the exhibition is about things and designs that satisfy people not by introducing a new future to replace the past, but by polishing the past and integrating it into daily lives, contradictory to modern architecture that focuses on futuristic and spectacular projects, says Yang.

Another Chinese pavilion in Venice called Across Chinese Cities - China House Vision explores the future of living by taking the "house" as a prism for rethinking of the larger systems of production that traverse it, from environmental and energy consumption to mobility and distribution.

The project, Italian curator Beatrice Leanza explains, involved a team of China-based architects including Liang, to address the wider cultural and historic implications affecting architecture practice in today's China.

Five thematic clusters, one of which features a project dedicated to the 2016 Across Chinese Cities guest city Chengdu, present to visitors installations integrating research data, visual and material archives.

The Venice Architecture Biennale is a major event, and China is among the participating countries.

The ongoing 15th edition includes 65 national participants.
By Robin Emmott BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union stepped up its sanctions on North Korea on Friday with near-blanket trade and travel bans after Pyongyang's latest nuclear test and rocket launch, a move going beyond new U.N. Security Council sanctions. Pyongyang is also banned from selling any oil-related or luxury goods to the European Union, while EU nations cannot invest in the country's mining, refining and chemical industries. "Considering that the actions of (North Korea) constitute a grave threat to international peace and security in the region and beyond, the EU decided to further expand its restrictive measures," the Council said. North Korea's latest nuclear test was on Jan. 6. On Feb. 7, it launched a rocket that the United States said used banned ballistic missile technology. Pyongyang said it was a peaceful satellite launch. The EU measures, which diplomats say are designed to show solidarity with major EU trade partners South Korea and Japan, come on top of asset freezes and travel bans for another 16 North Koreans agreed earlier this year. That puts 66 people and 42 companies under the EU sanctions regime. EU foreign ministers have reinforced their sanctions several times in recent years to include asset freezes and bans on financing and the delivery of banknotes. EU countries cannot export arms or metals used in ballistic missile systems and are banned from selling gold, diamonds and luxury goods to North Korea. Joint ventures are outlawed. However, the impact of the new measures is likely to be limited as trade between the European Union and North Korea fell to just 34 million euros in 2014 from more than 300 million euros a decade ago. Germany and Sweden are also reluctant to totally isolate North Korea. They have maintained diplomatic ties in Pyongyang since the 1970s, providing humanitarian aid to North Koreans. (Reporting by Robin Emmott; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
By Douglas Busvine and Rupam Jain NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Toshiba Corp's <6502.T> Westinghouse Electric will relocate a planned project to build six nuclear reactors in India, said officials, bringing the first deal stemming from a U.S.-India civil nuclear accord struck over a decade ago closer to reality. The six AP-1000 reactors would be built in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, after the original site proposed for the multi-billion-dollar project, in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state of Gujarat, faced local opposition. The breakthrough comes ahead of a June 7-8 visit by Modi to Washington, where he will be hosted by President Barack Obama for a final summit before the U.S. presidential election in November, and will address both houses of Congress. U.S. lawmakers ratified the civil nuclear accord three years after it was struck in 2005, as part of an attempt to deepen the strategic relationship with India, but have expressed growing dismay over its failure to yield follow-on deals for U.S.-based reactor makers like Westinghouse. One obstacle was bringing India's liability rules into line with international norms, which require the costs of an accident to be channeled to the operator rather than the maker of a nuclear power station. But, following the announcement of a "breakthrough understanding" on nuclear cooperation during Obama's visit to India in January 2015, this issue has been resolved to the satisfaction of the U.S. government and it is down to commercial partners to agree a deal. Analysts say resolving the land issue is a crucial step, but complex issues remain, including project financing and reaching a civil nuclear pact with Japan, where Westinghouse parent Toshiba is based. "Some time before the end of the calendar year they may be able to close," said Ashley Tellis, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who was a negotiator for the George W. Bush administration in the U.S.-India nuclear talks. India wants to dramatically increase its nuclear capacity to 63,000 MW by 2032 to meet growing demand and restrict its reliance on fossil fuels, and has struck a series of accords with other countries to help meet that goal. Russia's Rosatom operates two reactors at Kudankulam, in Tamil Nadu, while France's EDF signed a preliminary deal with the state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) [NPCIL.UL] in January to build six reactors at Jaitapur, Maharashtra. EAST COAST Indian federal and state officials confirmed that NPCIL, which would operate the plants, had made a down payment on 2,000 acres (800 hectares) of land in the eastern coastal district of Srikakulam. "The land acquisition was stuck for over a decade, but now it's coming to a conclusion," Ajay Jain, energy secretary of Andhra Pradesh, told Reuters, adding the purchase would close this year. "Construction can begin in 2017." Ninety percent of local farmers had agreed to sell their land, they were being well compensated and no court cases were pending, Jain added. Two sources, requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, confirmed that the site was being acquired for Westinghouse, which plans to build six AP-1000 pressurized water reactors, each with a design capacity of around 1,100 megawatts. Westinghouse did not respond to requests for comment, while senior executives at NPCIL were not available. Westinghouse CEO Danny Roderick told Reuters earlier this year that an Indian reactor deal was close, but negotiators missed a deadline to wrap it up before Obama hosted a nuclear security summit in Washington in April. FRUIT FARMERS Westinghouse was originally offered a site at Mithi Virdi in Gujarat, on India's west coast, but encountered opposition from local fruit farmers. A nuclear joint venture between General Electric Co and Hitachi <6501.T> meanwhile showed no interest in India's offer of land for a plant in Andhra Pradesh, opening that option to Westinghouse. Andhra Pradesh has had more success in acquiring land for development than some rival states, acquiring tracts of land for a new state capital by offering farmers future plots developed for commercial or residential buildings, as well as cash, in compensation. The state is also proposing its own land law to speed up acquisitions after Modi's efforts to get a new law through parliament failed soon after he rose to power two years ago. (Additional reporting by Tommy Wilkes; Writing by Douglas Busvine; Editing by Mike Collett-White)
By Michel Rose PARIS (Reuters) - French Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron launched what he called a "Great March" on Saturday, a door-to-door campaign across France to collect voters' grievances ahead of 2017 presidential elections, in a new sign of his political ambitions. The 38-year-old former investment banker has kept the country guessing about the true nature of his "En Marche" (Forward) party and refuses to confirm or deny whether he will run for president a year from now. But the initiative by one of the Socialist government's most popular ministers will fuel speculation that he is eying the Elysee as the ratings of his president, Francois Hollande, fall. Some 60 teams of 10-40 volunteers will knock on voters' doors in about 50 cities across France, asking questions such as "What do you think doesn't work in France?", a spokeswoman for "En Marche" party told Reuters. Macron unveiled his movement in April, saying he wants it to be neither of the left nor the right. He said it had so far been joined by 50,000 people. The former Rothschild partner aims to garner about 100,000 complaints and proposals by the end of the summer to establish what he calls a "diagnosis" for the country - something that would look very much like a manifesto. "Our goal is to give a voice to the voiceless, to draw up the portrait of an invisible France, the one you don't see in political parties," Macron said in a video message posted on Facebook. Macron has won fans among France's EU partners through his enthusiasm for pro-business reforms in which he has sought to "unblock" heavily regulated sectors of the economy and to tackle the rigidity of the French labor market. "The problem in France is not that politics is only for the rich," "En Marche" told supporters this month in an email seen by Reuters. "The problem is that politics is only for those already in place." Macron is far more popular in France than Hollande who will decide by the end of this year whether to be the main candidate for the left and who looks unlikely to make the decisive second-round run-off. But Macron is not an elected lawmaker and does not have an established political machine behind him, meaning he cannot count on public funding like parties with elected officials. "But let's not be naive, changing politics to transform society requires organization. And that costs money," the email said, urging members to make donations. Almost 400,000 euros had been raised so far, it said. Macron told Les Echos this week some 2,000 donors had already made contributions to "En Marche", which are capped at 7,500 euros ($8,300) per person per year under French law. (Writing by Maya Nikolaeva; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
By Renee Maltezou ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece has told its European and International Monetary Fund creditors it cannot implement some of the extra changes sought in exchange for fresh bailout loans, three sources close to the talks said on Monday. The disagreement could further delay the disbursement of the bailout funds which Athens badly needs to pay off IMF loans in June, bonds of the European Central Bank maturing in July and increasing state arrears. Last week, after months of negotiations, Greece and its lenders concluded a key bailout review, opening the way for debt relief that Greece has long desired. The lenders also gave the green light for the disbursement of 10.3 billion euros in tranches, on condition that Athens amends some recent laws concerning pensions, privatisations and freeing up the sale of bad loans. But in a letter sent to the lenders last week, Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos said some of the additional demands could not be fulfilled, the sources said. The finance ministry had no immediate comment and it was not immediately clear whether the release of the funds was at risk. According to one of the sources, some of them were related to bad loans and to pension reforms. "We cannot make any substantial changes. But we will proceed with the technical amendments discussed. Some of them are in the right direction," a government official told Reuters. "GREAT INJUSTICE" Greek newspaper Ta Nea said the letter had been sent to EU Commissioner Pierre Moscovici, the ECB's Benoit Coeure and the IMF's Poul Thomsen. In Brussels, an EU official confirmed that the two sides were still "working to finalise the measures" required after Athens raised its latest concerns. The Ta Nea newspaper said specific areas of disagreement also included the privatisation of the country's grid operator ADMIE and freezing the wages of essential services such as the coastguard and police. During a parliamentary debate last week, the government replaced the relevant reference on the essential services with a sentence saying it had until the end of year to find alternatives measures. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said a wage freeze "would have been a great injustice for men and women in the army, police and coastguard who work 24/7 helping a country that is struggling with an unprecedented refugee crisis to stand on its feet". To qualify for the rescue funds, Greece has so far approved pension reforms, tax hikes, the establishment of a privatisation fund and a contingency mechanism for spending cuts to be activated if it seems set to miss fiscal targets. The measures have tested the left-led coalition government, which has a narrow parliamentary majority with 153 of the 300 lawmakers. One lawmaker has resigned from Tsipras's Syriza party in protest over the measures. (Additional reporting by Francesco Guarascio in Brussels; Editing by Gareth Jones)
By Manoj Kumar and Mayank Bhardwaj NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India plans legislation to close a regulatory loophole that has made it possible for fraudsters to dupe millions of savers, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi strives to bring the rural poor into the mainstream banking system. Unscrupulous operators have bilked savers of billions of dollars by running pyramid schemes or promoting questionable investments in everything from tree plantations to farming emus, a flightless bird. The most notorious has been Sahara, whose founder Subrata Roy was jailed in 2014 after failing to comply with a Supreme Court order to repay money raised under deposit plans later ruled illegal. The court has asked Sahara to return $5.4 billion to investors in those banned plans. "Our aim is to take steps so that there are no more scams like Sahara in future," said Nishikant Dubey, a member of parliament's standing committee on finance from Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Parliament could consider a bill in July that would replace weak rules that now govern credit cooperatives operating in more than one state. These are now overseen by just 10 staff at the Agriculture Ministry. The officials lack the resources to monitor such savings groups and, one told Reuters on condition of anonymity, have faced pressure to turn a blind eye from politicians who personally profit from them. MIND THE LOOPHOLE India does not have a unified regulatory regime to counter Ponzi, or pyramid, schemes whose operators typically grab new deposits to meet their promise of guaranteed returns to existing savers. Such schemes can snowball but are doomed to eventual collapse when they run out of new savers. Federal investigators are probing cases in which 60 million savers have lost some $10 billion. The lack of sanctions means that kingpins behind failed deposit schemes are rarely punished. Roy has not been convicted of any crime over his Sahara empire; he was jailed two years ago for contempt by the Supreme Court and recently freed on parole after his mother died. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) does have the power to freeze operations at, and investigate, suspected fraud at collective investment schemes that raise over 1 billion rupees ($15 million) and fall under its purview. But, say lawmakers, stronger sanctions are needed to protect poor people who often save tiny sums for a rainy day. India's 1.3 billion people live on an average income of $3.60 a day in 2011 dollars, the World Bank estimates. "The looseness in implementation of state acts, including looseness at the SEBI end, has helped fraud operators to loot the people," said Kirit Somaiya, president of the Investors' Grievances Forum and another lawmaker from Modi's ruling party. Asked to respond, SEBI said in an emailed statement that it had passed interim orders against 273 entities over the past three years, directing them not to collect money or sell property, for a range of violations. It issued final orders against another 144 entities to refund money to investors with the promised returns. The government expects to win opposition support for the reform, yet some politicians and a lobby group representing credit cooperatives oppose it saying it could cause job losses. FEELING EMPOWERED The Banning of Unregulated Deposit Schemes and Protection of Depositors' Interests Bill, based on Britain's Financial Services Act, would create a committee to decide on whether deposit schemes should be investigated. This would comprise senior officials from departments such as the home and finance ministries, the Reserve Bank of India, SEBI and the Central Bureau of Investigation, India's top crime-fighting agency. It would create special state courts to handle fraud cases, and foresees jail terms of up to five years and stiff fines for duping savers. Repeat offenders would face up to 10 years in jail. If approved, the bill would bar about 1,400 societies that have collected over $30 billion from taking deposits, said a senior official at the farm ministry. Tougher regulation would back up a drive by Modi to ensure that India's poor have access to regulated banking services. Under the Modi-backed People's Wealth Scheme, 218 million new accounts have been opened. These are being linked to a national identity card scheme so that account holders can receive welfare benefits directly, to buy cooking gas or for work under a rural jobs scheme, reducing systemic fraud. Lawyer Rakesh Nangia said the reform would create a stronger framework less prone to manipulation, and positive knock-on effects for investment and growth by channelling savings into the formal economy. "This is important for Prime Minister Modi's financial inclusion plan," said Nangia, a managing partner at Nangia & Co, a Delhi-based law firm. "It would help the economy if the money was put in the mainstream banking system." ($1 = 67.3100 Indian rupees) (Additional reporting by Suchitra Mohanty in NEW DELHI, Jatindra Dash in BHUBANESWAR and Abhirup Roy in MUMBAI; Editing by Douglas Busvine and Mike Collett-White)
Living in the past

From:chinadaily.com.cn | 2016-05-31 11:17

A Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) huanghuali table on show at the International Antiques Fair, hosted by William Chak's company. Photos provided to China Daily

In a typically inspiring story, William Chak has evolved from an apprentice to a connoisseur. Lin Qi reports.

Antique collector and dealer William Chak has a hectic schedule of traveling between Hong Kong, where he lives, and the mainland that connects him with a growing base of buyers.

A few weeks ago, the 58-year-old also made trips to auction previews in cities like Xiamen in East China's Fujian province, and Shanghai, to advise local collectors.

The annual International Antiques Fair, organized by his outfit, Chak's Company Ltd, an antique gallery and advisory firm, is being held through May 31 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center, gathering dozens of antique galleries and auction houses worldwide. Launched in 2005, the fair features Oriental art, mostly Chinese antiques.

As an associated project of the annual Le French May Arts Festival, this year's International Antiques Fair includes classical and decorative European art catering to Asian buyers.

Chak will be back in Beijing at the weekend to deliver a lecture on Tang Ying, a ceramic artist of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) who oversaw official kilns.

Chak became a television personality in 2006, when he appeared as a regular guest for about six years in Tianxia Shoucang (the world of collecting), the high-rated weekly show on Beijing Satellite Television. He sat on a judging panel with experts from academic institutions who examined the authenticity and evaluated antiques brought by common people.

His cheerful face and easy explanations of art made him popular with viewers, helping him to reach out to an increasing population of collectors on the mainland. His Sina Weibo account has more than 420,000 followers, and he replies to people who post photos of recently purchased wares or family heirlooms discovered in their storerooms.

A ruby-ground falangcai double-lotus bowl that Chak purchased at Sotheby's in 2013.

A middle school dropout, Chak has accumulated a wealth of knowledge on antique appraisal through the years, evolving from an apprentice to a connoisseur.

Chak's earliest memories about antiques are those of his father selling his own collections to support the family, after his textile business failed.

It was not until Chak worked at an antique store in 1973 that he became interested in ceramics. He cleaned more than 20 porcelain pieces a dayhis major duty at the storefor nine years.

Chak's intelligence and industrious spirit persuaded his boss and store owner Wong Ying-ho to teach him how to tell one ware from another.

In 1988, Chak and his wife, Priscilla Lau, opened their own gallery, Chak's. Sensitive to the emerging mainland art market in the late 1990s, he turned his eyes in that direction.

To improve his knowledge, Chak then sat in on classes of ceramic courses at the School of Archaeology and Museology, Peking University, from 1999 to 2004.

"So, when a black-glazed ceramic bowl was placed before me, I could discern if it was a genuine Song Dynasty product and how much it would sell for," he tells China Daily.

"Before (attending the courses), I had been totally ignorant. There was so much information I didn't know and wanted to know: Why the Song people made the bowl in black, how thin or thick the glaze was applied, why the bowl would feature oil paint-like patterns ..."

A blue-and-white porcelain vase, dating to the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), offered by Chak's at this year's antiques fair.

To attend the classes, he flew from Hong Kong to Beijing once a week. He took the first flight of the day, rushed directly from the airport to the classes, and took the evening flight back. After he returned home at midnight, he reviewed the course with the aid of a recorder because he couldn't follow the teachers' Mandarin accents at the time.

Through the classes, he formed close connections with researchers at the school, which enabled him to follow them to archaeological excavations and field studies in the years afterward. The extensive trips across the country widely opened his eyes to the varieties of ancient Chinese ceramics.

"Maybe I'm an expert, but the more I learn about the history and culture behind these ceramics, the more I feel I know little and should dig further."

Combining practical experience with academic learning is something that he often suggests to people whether they are serious collectors or buyers for investment purposes. He also advises buyers to focus on specific areas of collecting that best suit one's personality, lifestyle and financial status.

"It's impossible for a private collector to be well versed in all categories of antiquesthis is the job of museums," he says. "It surely takes time for one, at first very passionate but lost, to mature and gradually build up a collecting hierarchy of his or her own."

A responsible dealer not only profits from his clients' consignments, but befriends them, studies antiques with them and helps them find their direction in the world of collecting, he says.

Although he now spends more time in the mainland where the market is booming, Chak remains optimistic about the role of Hong Kong as an Asian art hub.

"Antique collecting emerged in Hong Kong in the 1970s. The past decades have seen the rise of Hong Kong art collectors to international prominence, not only because they have formed a stable collective but also because their tastes have become diversified.

"The openness of Hong Kong has attracted international auctioneers, and (due to this) local dealers like me are able to learn a lot of about the art market and widen our vision."

Contact the writer at linqi@chinadaily.com.cn

For William Chak, collecting antiques is a process of studying. The more you learn, the more you may feel how little you know, he says.
Iraqi forces have entered Fallujah under coalition air cover as a new phase begins to win back one of Islamic State's key cities.

Troops backed by artillery and tanks went into the city from three directions, commanders told the AFP news agency.

"Iraqi forces entered Fallujah under air cover from the international coalition, the Iraqi air force and army aviation and supported by artillery and tanks," Lieutenant General Abdelwahab al Saadi told AFP.

"Counter-terrorism service (CTS) forces, the Anbar police and the Iraqi army, at around 4am (0100 GMT), started moving into Fallujah from three directions."

The commander said troops were meeting "resistance" from IS fighters.

CTS spokesman Sabah al Noman said forces had managed to "break into" Fallujah.

:: Special Report - Battling Against Islamic State's Guerrilla Tactics

Despite many people having fled the city, located about 40 miles west of Baghdad, 50,000 are still believed to be trapped there.

Some 500 to 1,000 IS troops are estimated to be in control, with reported incidents of them using civilians as human shields and killing people attempting to flee.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al Abadi used a televised speech to parliament on Sunday to urge residents to either stay inside or leave the embattled city.

The army, backed by an Iranian-backed Shia militia, began the push to take back Fallujah on 23 May by tightening its grip on the surrounding rural area.

Fallujah was the first Iraqi city to be captured by Islamic State. Along with Mosul, it is one of two major urban areas held by IS.

The terror group took control in January 2014, six months before announcing a self-proclaimed caliphate in areas of Iraq and Syria.

The city had a population of more than 320,000 in 2010 but this has dwindled, with the remaining residents hemmed in by the fighting, and enduring food and medicine shortages.

The Norwegian Refugee Council has said it is helping around 3,000 people who have escaped Fallujah over the last week, describing them as "totally exhausted, afraid and hungry".

Story continues

But aid workers fear they could be overwhelmed as forces push further into the city.

"Our resources in the camps are now very strained and with many more expected to flee we might not be able to provide enough drinking water for everyone," said Nasr Muflahi, the Norwegian Refugee Council's Iraq director.

"We expect bigger waves of displacement the fiercer the fighting gets."
Iraqi forces have entered Fallujah form three directions as they start a new phase of their plan to win back one of Islamic State's key cities.

The fighting around the city, which lies around 40 miles west of the capital Baghdad, has led to a fresh exodus of fleeing civilians amid concern for an estimated 50,000 people, who remain trapped.

The troop build up has now been completed ahead of a planned final push into the city centre.

:: Battling Against Islamic State's Guerrilla Tactics

It comes as the army sought to tighten its grip on the region, having claimed to have already recaptured 80% of the territory around Fallujah.

In response, IS attacked the town of Heet, around 85 miles west of Baghdad, which was recaptured by the army just last month.

However, the military said the assault had been "thwarted", with coalition aircraft targeting the militant forces.

The jihadists also launched an offensive in northern Syria against the towns of Marea and Azaz.

Iraq commanders have declined to comment on troop numbers or the timing of the expected assault on Fallujah.

But soldier Ali al Shimmari said: "I'm totally ready for it.

"I phoned my family in the morning and asked them to pray for me to get back safe to them," he added.

"I'm determined to end Daesh."

Nasr Muflahi, Iraq director of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said: "We are receiving hundreds of displaced Iraqis from the outskirts of Fallujah who are totally exhausted, afraid and hungry."

Fallujah saw some of the heaviest fighting of the 2003-2011 US-led military invasion.

In January, 2014, it was also the first Iraqi city to fall to IS - six months before the extremists swept across northern and western Iraq and declared a caliphate.
By Sumio Ito and Leika Kihara TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's prime minister pitched a plan to delay next year's sales tax hike to fellow ruling party members on Monday, some of whom expressed concerns that such a move would signal a failure of his policies to reflate the economy out of stagnation. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met several senior lawmakers to convey his intention to postpone the tax hike - among them, Masahiko Komura, vice president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. The proposal would mean a two-and-a-half year delay from April 2017 when the hikes were scheduled to take effect. While some within his party have expressed reservations about the move, Abe is not expected to face any major opposition to the proposal as his party executives are likely to present a united front ahead of the upper house election in the summer. "The premier's determination to postpone the tax increase seems to be very strong," Komura told reporters after the meeting with Abe. Komura's comments confirm what sources had told Reuters on Sunday as Abe looks to avoid dealing a blow to a fragile economic recovery, with the announcement on the tax decision expected ahead of an upper house election expected in July. Sadakazu Tanigaki, secretary general of the ruling LDP, told reporters on Monday there was no major opposition to Abe's proposal to delay the tax hike in a meeting of the party's executives held late afternoon. Finance Minister Taro Aso had on Sunday voiced opposition, saying that Abe should dissolve the lower house of parliament and call a snap election if he were to postpone the tax hike. And in a separate meeting with Abe on Monday, Natsuo Yamaguchi, head of the Komeito party, LDP's junior coalition partner, declined to sign off on the plan, saying only that he would discuss the matter with his party members. Speculation has centered on the possibility Abe would call a snap election for the lower house in a bid to secure a mandate to postpone the tax increase. This comes amid a surge in his approval ratings following the G7 summit and U.S. President Barack Obama's historic visit to Hiroshima last week. However, Toshihiro Nikai, another senior LDP official who met Abe on Monday, said the premier did not appear to have any immediate plans to call a snap election. Expectations the government will delay the tax hike helped push Japan's Nikkei stock index <.N225> to a one-month high. CONSUMPTION REMAINS WEAK Despite some voices of dissent from within his own party, Abe is expected to formally announce the tax hike delay by the end of the current session of parliament on Wednesday. The prime minister is also expected to order an extra budget to boost stimulus measures, just two months into the fiscal year and on the heels of a supplementary budget to fund rebuilding efforts after the recent earthquakes in southern Japan. Consumption has yet to recover after Japan fell into recession when Abe raised the sales tax to 8 percent from 5 percent in April 2014 in an effort to curb government debt. Data released on Monday showed retail sales fell in April for the second consecutive month, bolstering the argument that next year's tax hike should be postponed. Fiscal hawks like Aso have argued the tax hike is critical to rein in Japan's huge public debt and cover ballooning social welfare costs of its fast-ageing population. Abe has long said he would proceed with a plan to raise the tax rate to 10 percent next April unless Japan faced a crisis on the magnitude of the 2008 Lehman Brothers collapse. (Additional reporting by Kaori Kaneko, Linda Sieg and Stanley White; Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Sam Holmes)
By Suleiman Al-Khalidi AMMAN (Reuters) - Jordan's King Abdullah appointed veteran politician Hani Mulqi as caretaker prime minister on Sunday after dissolving parliament as its four-year term nears its end, and charged him with organising new elections by October. The king accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour before appointing Mulqi by royal decree. Mulki has held senior government posts in successive administrations. Under the constitution, the election must now be held within four months. "The kingdom faces grave economic difficulties due to the volatile situation in this region, which has had an adverse impact on growth levels," Abdullah said in a letter appointing Mulki. "Therefore we have to take exceptional and innovative measures that help us overcome these challenges and obstacles." Jordan is struggling to cope with at least 1.2 million Syrian refugees who have fled the conflict in their country. The king also told Mulki he hoped the election would pave the way for a prime minister emerging from a parliamentary majority rather than one handpicked by the monarch, a main plank of the reformist agenda of a mix of Islamist and tribal figures. Jordan traditionally votes according to tribal and family allegiances but parliament amended the electoral laws in March in a move government sources and political analysts say will lead to more candidates from political parties vying for votes. The analysts say the tribal lawmakers who dominated the last parliament had tried to resist changes which might undermine their influence, under a system that still favours sparsely populated tribal areas which benefit most from state patronage. MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD Jordan's main political opposition comes from the Muslim Brotherhood movement but it faces increasing legal curbs on its activities, leaving mostly pro-monarchy parties and some independent Islamists and politicians to compete in these elections, the political analysts say. The Brotherhood, wants sweeping political reforms but stops short of demanding the overthrow of the monarchy in Jordan. Its political arm in Jordan, the Islamic Action Front, represents many disenfranchised Jordanians of Palestinian origin, who are in the majority in the population of seven million and live mostly in urban areas. Analysts say it could be difficult for the Brotherhood, which has operated legally in Jordan for decades, to participate in the election after the authorities closed many of its offices and encouraged a splinter group to legally challenge the main movement's licence to operate. Western diplomats and independent politicians say the absence of the group, which has strong grassroots support in urban centres, could undermine the legitimacy of the election. Western donors have pushed Jordan's authorities to widen political representation to stem radicalisation among alienated and unemployed young people in poor overcrowded areas. Hundreds of them have already joined jihadists in Syria and Iraq. (Reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi; Editing by Gareth Jones)
Rowling has surprise for Chinese fans

From:chinadaily.com.cn | 2016-05-31 12:15

A file photo of J.K. Rowling [Photo/Chinanews.com]

J.K. Rowling, the creator of "Harry Potter," has a mysterious surprise for Chinese Potter fans as the film series will be shown during the 19th annual Shanghai International Film Festival in June.

The eight installments of the "Harry Potter" series will be screened during the Shanghai film festival, announced the organizers last weekend. It was also revealed that J.K. Rowling, the writer of the book series as well as the script writer and producer for the film series, will present a big surprise to Chinese fans.

The mystery can only be solved at the Shanghai theaters in June.

It is unknown if the surprise is linked to "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them," the first installment of a film trilogy written by J. K. Rowling directed by David Yates, a spin-off of the Harry Potter film series to be released on Nov 18, 2016, or the two-part London West End stage play "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child," which is set to open on July 30, 2016.

The 19th Shanghai International Film Festival will be held from June 11 to 19, 2016. In addition to the Pixar selection, there will also be several special screening selections this year, including Tribute to Masters, Classic 007 Films Screening, Oscar Film Panorama, Jackie Chan Action Movie Week, New Works of Renowned Japanese Directors, Korean Films, Retrospective of Recent Works of Woody Allen, 4K Restored Classic Film Panorama and others.

Ticket sales will start at 8:00 am on June 4.

Related:

'Harry Potter' author explores North American magic in new writing

Harry Potter author apologizes for character's death
By Mitra Taj HUEPETUHE, Peru (Reuters) - In this wildcat gold mining town in the Peruvian Amazon, the boom is over. A government crackdown on illegal mines at the end of a decade-long gold rush has shuttered restaurants, quieted the town's muddied streets and slowed the flow of migrants from poor Andean towns seeking the jungle's riches. But the residents of Huepetuhe, whose town square is dominated by a golden statue of a muscular miner, see a shimmer of hope in presidential election front-runner Keiko Fujimori's promise to decriminalize the makeshift mines at the heart of the region's economy. Fujimori says she will repeal laws aimed at protecting the environment that ban the use of dredges and heavy machinery by miners in rivers and wetlands. She is also offering miners cheap credit and tax exemptions while they form tax-paying businesses. The pledge is part of Fujimori's strategy of locking in support from key groups by promising specific reforms, helping give her a lead of more than 5 percentage points over rival Pedro Pablo Kuczynski ahead of the run-off election on Sunday. "I'm going to vote for Keiko, but only because of that proposal," said Ronald Vizarreta, a 29-year old clerk who buys gold directly from miners on a muddy road between Huepetuhe and the ravine where the work. Vizarreta said he has long opposed Fujimori and the right-wing populist movement she has steered since her father and authoritarian former president Alberto Fujimori was imprisoned for crimes committed during his 1990-2000 government. But unless Fujimori wins, Vizarreta said, corrupt police will continue to hunt for bribes in Huepetuhe backed by a raft of government controls, from fuel rations to bans on mercury. "Everything is illegal now." Wildcat miners in Huepetuhe and other towns in the remote rainforest region of Madre de Dios said President Ollanta Humala betrayed them by lumping them together with the hardened criminals who now control a flourishing black market for gold instead of folding them into the legal economy as promised. Authorities have blown up machinery in dozens of raids on illegal mining camps and seized more than a tonne of suspicious gold from export companies during Humala's term. "No one ever came to teach us how to mine sustainably," said Luis Elsin, a 26-year-old miner who migrated to Huepetuhe when he was 16. In 2014, police destroyed Elsin's $2,000 investment in two motors that helped him pump river beds for flecks of gold. Elsin said he now loses one day a week lining up at multiple fuelling stations to evade the region's 10-gallon-per-person daily cap on gasoline purchases. He also plans to vote for Fujimori on Sunday. 'PERSECUTED' Humala aggressively courted wildcat miners at the last election in 2011, helping him narrowly defeat Fujimori during her first presidential bid. She took the lesson to heart. "Today they're persecuted, they're under investigation, and unfortunately at times they can't even buy their most essential tool - dynamite," Fujimori said recently, flanked by representatives of Peru's more than 400,000 small-scale miners. She called Humala's bid to formalise wildcat miners a failure. Of more than 70,000 who signed up in the government's programme, less than 1,000 now run legal operations - and none in the region of Madre de Dios. But environmentalists say Fujimori's proposal gives a free pass to miners who have already destroyed 100,000 hectares (247,105 acres) of rainforest and polluted Amazonian rivers with so much mercury that local fish are no longer safe to eat. Despite the crackdown, miners continued to expand deeper into nature and indigenous reserves, and regularly threaten and attack park rangers, said Victor Hugo Macedo, an official in Madre de Dios with Peru's park system. "What we don't want is this, what's happening in Madre de Dios," Kuczynski told Fujimori at a presidential debate as he held up an aerial photo of rainforest pocked with illegal mining pits. "That's going to happen in multiples if you follow through with what you say." Kuczynski, a 77-year-old former prime minister and Wall Street investor, has proposed creating a state-controlled bank to offer wildcat miners a competitive price for their ore if they can show they adhere to environmental and labour standards. Fujimori denies she will let miners expand unfettered in the Amazon and promised new legislation within 100 days if she becomes president. But she has said little about how she plans to safeguard the environment. She promised new technologies to curb the use of mercury, widely used to separate flecks of gold from dirt and rock, and an "aggressive reforestation" programme for Madre de Dios. Her adviser Jose Carlos Ramirez said it would involve timber and agricultural concessions on degraded land. Easing restrictions on wildcatters would likely boost gold production from Peru, the world's sixth biggest supplier. In the first three months of 2016, wildcat miners in Madre de Dios produced an estimated 5.5 tonnes of gold, nearly as much as output from Peru's biggest legal mine, Yanacocha, according to data from the energy and mines ministry. But a lack of clarity on what is in store after Humala's term ends on July 28 worries Swiss refiner Metalor Technologies SA. "It's unacceptable, in our view, for a new government to start from scratch," said Metalor's attorney Jose Camino. "If we don't know exactly where the gold comes from, we're not going to buy from Peru." (Reporting By Mitra Taj; Editing by Kieran Murray)
We can help you make sense of the agribusiness industry, extending from chemicals and fertilizers used as inputs into agriculture, to the commodities, food and by-products that are an output to farming, with policy and regulation applied at every step of the value chain.
Miles Davis / Various ArtistsMiles Ahead (motion picture soundtrack)Sony Legacy2016It's hard to imagine why the world would ever need yet anothercompilation. We're talking about a catalogue big enough to fill its own library and eclectic enough to give you whiplash for the ears if you skim through it too fast. If you start comparing albums even a year or two apart, you're often looking at completely different things. Any release that crosses such disparate eras (and there are plenty that have tried) can only be a mixed success at best. Then again, this particular one isn't really trying to do that job. It accompanies Don Cheadle's biopic Miles Ahead and presents the artist's original tracks alongside a few he inspired. Nothing can really hope to live up to the press blurb's claim of "a perfect primer on Davis' career for the new fan"; arguably there's no such thing anyway. This is one more semi-coherent career-spanning hodgepodge, albeit one that (like the movie) was obviously made with love.True, if every popcorn flick and mediocre rom-com out there demands a soundtrack, then music from a film about Miles deserves more attention than most. All the same, anyone who's enough of a fan to watch it is already past any need for a primer. At the very least they must know the seminal "So What" and find it redundant here. It's preceded bywhat else?the title song from the original Miles Ahead (Columbia, 1957), which actually provides an opener very out of place compared to what follows. It's interesting to hear a younger Davis dashing off some uncharacteristically fast and busy trumpet solos, but most of this collection is a far cry from the days of those classical-tingedcollaborations indeed.The disc takes a detour with Davis's great 1960s quintet and touches on his first flirtations with electric instruments, before skimming through his wildly adventurous '70s phase and making one brief nod to the later career just after his temporary retirement of 1975-81. To Cheadle's credit, he generally avoids the most obvious touchstones in favor of examining some deeper cuts: a funked-up "Duran" outtake, bite-sized snippets from the fusion grooves of "Go Ahead John" and "Black Satin," and a partial slice of the heavily African "Prelude." All are solid in and of themselves, though it really doesn't help that almost every piece is an edit or excerpt. The selections inevitably end up feeling cherry-picked from one big cherry orchard. The whole thing can only work as a kind of shorthand; fine if you can associate it with memories of the movie or know the full albums, but not nearly so successful standing on its own.The mix also suffers from that other perennial flaw of so many soundtracks: the main body of music is interspersed with sound bites from the film itself (Cheadle's impersonation being impressively raspy) along with unrelated bits of the score from a different source. Robert Glaser's original contributions capably evoke the feel of the acoustic mid-'60s quintet workouts or the low- key electric dreaminess of In a Silent Way (Columbia, 1969), which only begs the question of whether more actual Davis pieces might not have done the job even better."What's Wrong with That?" answers its own question: for the moment, nothing. It provides an authentic line to the source material by bringing in legendary bandmatesandfor a spirited jam with Glasper, Cheadle,and. It's a successful little jaunt mainly because it lets everyone forget the baggage of the film and the Davis name and just have some fun for a few minutes. It's almost a shame the rest of Miles Ahead inevitably can't. Once Pharoahe Monch starts rapping over the closing-credits track of "Gone 2015," we're brought back to reality and reminded of the embarrassing nadir of Doo-Bop (Warner Bros., 1992), about which the less said the better. It's one more sudden jarring shift before the end, but an appropriate sendoff for a patchwork that's already scattered, contradictory, disjointed and yet vividly fascinatingand come to think of it, nothing else would have properly suited the man himself.Miles DavisLive in Tokyo 1975Hi-Hat2015For those who prefer that electric phase in all its murk and madness, another tape from the vaults could be just the ticket instead. Live in Tokyo 1975 comes from a short time before Davis's retirementa point when the music was at its funkiest and angriest, when he would slap a wah-wah effect on any instrument in sight and no amount of electric fuzz was too much. This one was recorded for a radio broadcast ten days before the famous concerts that produced Agharta (Columbia, 1975) and Pangaea (Columbia, 1976) and is similarly not recommended for the faint of heart.This septet was well into the "deep African thing, a deep African-American groove, with a lot of emphasis on drums and rhythm" as Miles later described it, weaving earthy percussion and juiced-up rock into 80 minutes of primordial voodoo trance. By this point he had the band running as a well-oiled machine, able to direct dynamic arrangements, segues and stop-on-a-dime changes all in the moment. They spin out one dense churning groove after another, whether trading solos around loose structural frameworks or sometimes getting (again borrowing the Chief's words) "a lot of intricate shit ... working off this one chord." He picks and chooses spots to dart in with a simple trumpet line or the odd stray note, then punches at the organ as if trying to exorcise his osteoarthritis pain by sheer force of sound amid the haze of medication and drugs.The ghost ofis alive and well in the wailing ofand Reggie Lucas, while the drum/percussion team lays down a series of staggered rhythms thick enough that you'd need a machete to wade through. There isn't really a set list so much as a contiguous series of song sketches to explore. "Maiysha" starts out cool and airy before turning into some kind of tropical-themed nightmare; "Ife" skips the modulating bass line of the studio version and explores the more abstract sections instead, blending light flute with menacing organ before giving everyone some free space to blow.The Tokyo show is a close sibling to those abovementioned albums and Dark Magus (Columbia, 1977), but of course each one has its own character. Live in Tokyo 1975 is perhaps more tight and lean, not quite as off-the-wall crazy as Pangaea or as loud and crowded as Dark Magusthought not terribly far off eitherand a most welcome complement for those of us who find this phase endlessly fresh all these decades later. After Gil Evans died, Davis always insisted his late friend hadn't truly gone away, not least because you could hear how much he'd affected the music of others. Vastly different as they are, both these releases still tell us the same thing about Miles Davis: he's not only still around someplace, he's still waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.Tracks and PersonnelMiles AheadTracks: Miles Ahead; dialogue; So What; Taylor Made; Dialogue; Solea (excerpt); Seven Steps to Heaven (edit); Dialogue; Nefertiti (edit); Frelon Brun; Dialogue; Duran take 6 (edit); Dialogue; Go Ahead John part IIc; Black Satin (edit); Dialogue; Prelude #II; Dialogue; Junior's Jam; Francessence; Back Seat Betty (excerpt); Dialogue; What's Wrong with That?; Gone 2015.Personnel: Miles Davis: trumpet, organ (with various personnel); Robert Glasper: electric piano; Don Cheadle: trumpet; Taylor Eigsti: piano; Marcus Stricklnad: saxophone; Keyon Harrold: trumpet; Kendrick Scott: drums; Burniss Earl Travis: bass; Vicente Archer: bass; E.J. Strickland: drums; Elena Pinderhughes: flute; Herbie Hancock: piano; Wayne Shorter: saxophone; Esperanza Spalding: bass; Antonio Sanchez: drums; Gary Clark Jr.: guitar; Pharoahe Monch: vocals.Live in Tokyo 1975Tracks: CD1: Prelude & Funk; Maiysha; Ife; CD2: Mtume; Turnaroundphrase; Tune in 5; Untitled.Personnel: Miles Davis: trumpet, organ; Sonny Fortune: alto saxophone, soprano saxophone, flute; Reggie Lucas: guitar; Pete Cosey: guitar, synthesizer, percussion; Michael Henderson: bass; Al Foster: drums; James "Mtume" Forman: percussion.
There has been a significant increase in the number of GP-led transactions reviewed by LPs over the past 12 months, according to a study by Capstone Partners focused on GP-led Secondaries.
As most of you know, ASUS is a Taiwan-based company, much like HTC. This company is very well-known in the PC world, as ASUS manufactures laptops which are being sold all over the world. The company is also manufacturing smartphones, and theyve managed to surprise quite a few people when they introduce the ZenFone 2 line back during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 2015. The company has released several ZenFone 2 variants, all of which were fueled by Intels mobile chips, and the highest-end variant sported 4GB of RAM. That might not seem that groundbreaking at the moment considering we have tons of 4GB RAM devices out in the market, but it was back then, especially considering the fact that the ZenFone 2 (ZE551ML) was the first smartphone to sport 4GB of RAM.

That being said, ASUS has introduced quite a few ZenFone 2 variants throughout 2015, and has managed to sell 20.5 million smartphones in general last year, most of which were ZenFone 2 devices. Back in January, the company set a sales goal of 30 million for 2016, and have adjusted that to 25 million back in February. Now, many people expected that the companys ZenFone 3 flagship will land back in January during CES, but that didnt happen, and its May already. Well, the company has confirmed (via a teaser) recently that the ZenFone 3 is coming on May 30th, the device(s) will be announced in Taiwan during Computex 2016 it seems. Now, weve seen tons of leaks and rumors when it comes to the ZenFone 3, so lets see if we can guess what will happen on May 30th, shall we.

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Now, according to a recent report, ASUS actually plans to announce three ZenFone 3 devices during Computex 2016, the ZenFone 3, ZenFone 3 Deluxe and ZenFone 3 Max. Now, lets talk about the ZenFone 3 first, shall we. According to the latest AnTuTu benchmark info, this device is going to sport a 5.5-inch fullHD (1920 x 1080) display, 4GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. Qualcomms Snapdragon 820 64-bit quad-core processor will fuel this smartphone, and the Adreno 530 GPU will be included for graphics rendering. The 23-megapixel snapper has also been mentioned on AnTuTu, and one of ASUS teasers also suggested that the 23-megapixel snapper will be included here, and were probably looking at the same Sony sensor used in the Xperia Z5 line of devices. The 8-megapixel shooter will be placed up front, and Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow will come pre-installed on the ZenFone 3, with ASUS ZenUI user interface.

Moving on to the Deluxe variant of the device. As some of you know, the ZenFone 2 Deluxe model was introduced back in August 2015, and the only difference between that handset and the regular ZenFone 2 was the storage count (and higher SoC clock speed). The Deluxe variant arrived in 128GB and 256GB of storage variants, while the original capped off on 64GB. So, the ZenFone 3 Deluxe might sport the same specs as the regular variant, but it might ship with more storage on the inside, as the recent GFXBench listing suggested. Now, it is possible this device will differentiate in more areas, but well see.

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Next in line is the ZenFone 3 Max. Now, do keep in mind that the company did not introduce the ZenFone 2 Max variant, but has opted for the ZenFone Max naming. That device was introduced back in August last year, and it was basically a mid-range device with specifications which were quite different to the original. This is not all that surprising considering this is a ZenFone Max handset, not the ZenFone 2 Max smartphone. That being said, the ZenFone 3 Max might sport similar specs to the ZenFone 3, but a much beefier battery on the inside. The ZenFone Max ships with a 5,000mAh unit on the inside, which means that the ZenFone 3 might also pack such a battery, if not bigger. Keep in mind that were only guessing here, we still havent seen the ZenFone 3 Max specs anywhere, and are relying on logic in this case, which is based on the companys previous ZenFone models.

What about the design? Well, the alleged ZenFone 3 and ZenFone 3 Deluxe actually surfaced last month, and based on those renders, the ZenFone 3 devices will sport a sleek-looking metallic body. They will be very thin as well, and the camera might protrude on the back every so slightly. The power / lock and volume rocker buttons will be placed on the right side of this phone, and the SIM card tray will probably be placed on the left-hand side. Based on those renders, the ZenFone 3 phones will ship with either three capacitive buttons below the display, or a physical home button, depending on which phone are we talking about. We dont know how much sense this makes, it is more likely that all devices will sport capacitive or on-screen buttons, but well see. Now, as far as pricing goes, we really dont have any info thus far, and its kind of hard to guess, mainly because the leaked specs were high-end, and its predecessor had solid specs and great price. So, if we have to guess, wed say that the ZenFone 3 devices will be significantly more affordable than the competition, but also more expensive than the ZenFone 2 devices at launch. Having all this in mind, tune in on May 30th in order to see what ASUS has to offer.
The Scripps National Spelling Bee has recently ended and for the third year running, has joint winners: eleven year old Nihar Janga (the youngest champion) and thirteen year old Jairam Hathwar were declared joint winners after a grueling contest, after the toughest ever Spelling Bee. For 2016 and after two years of joint winners, Scripps changes meant the two finalists had to get through three times as many words as in previous years. Both contestants misspelled two words to tie as joint champions.

In a celebration of the conclusion of the Spelling Bee, Google has released Americas most searched for words to spell ordered by State. However, whereas the two contestants successfully spelled words such as Kjeldahl, juamave, groenedael and zindiq, it turns out that the most searched for words to spell correctly are considerably more mundane. Instead, in four states desert and cancelled were the most popular searched for terms. Three states searched for pneumonia, vacuum and gray. However, whilst these are the more popular terms, as we dig deeper into the data we have some surprises. These include Utah and Arkansas preoccupation with spelling the word leprechaun, a mythological type of fairy from Irish folklore. The State of Massachusetts most popular searched for word to spell correctly is Massachusetts whereas in Ohio, the most searched for word is banana. If you study the map, youll also see that on first impression, Alaska appears to be wrongly labelled as Hawaii. Actually, no: for the State of Alaska, people most often search for the correct spelling of Hawaii! Perhaps dreaming of sunnier climates. For Florida, the most searched for term is tomorrow, although it is difficult to draw any sort of meaningful conclusion from this. It is also difficult to know what to make of West Virginias giraffe too.

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People familiar with Google will appreciate that the search engine can correct many spelling mistakes as a matter of course, and this data has not been released: this could make for interesting reading, especially as the data presented above simply reflects what people know they cannot spell rather than what they are actually misspelling.
Google has been in the news a lot more than usual over the last few weeks due to the developer conference, Google I/O, which took place last week. However, the last two weeks has also seen Google headlines of a very negative nature. These were based around an ongoing court battle with Oracle over the use of Java. To cut to the chase, that battle is now over and the ruling is in and Google has been found innocent of the charges with the jury deciding that the use of java by Google was one which was of fair use.

In fact, if there was ever a doubt, it seems that there was not with the jury as reports are confirming that the jury unanimously agreed on the verdict. Which should prove to be of additional reassurance to those over at Google and those who make use of similar tools under a fair use policy. However, this is unlikely to be the end of the issue as it seems Oracle has already decided they will be appealing the verdict. With Dorian Daley, Oracles General Counsel stating We strongly believe that Google developed Android by illegally copying core Java technology to rush into the mobile device market. And further adding, Oracle brought this lawsuit to put a stop to Googles illegal behavior. We believe there are numerous grounds for appeal. Of course, with Google already having been vindicated in a court of law, it is likely to provide difficult for Oracle to have the verdict overturned. Although, that notion is unlikely to stop them from trying.

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While this was primarily being seen as a battle of copyright against the principle of fair use, the repercussions of this particular case were extremely big. It has been widely reported that Oracle was seeking damages to the tune of $9 billion from what Oracle determined as their fair share of the profits Google has made from Android, due to the operating system allegedly making use of the relevant Java APIs. However, Google had defended their position by stating that they did not use the APIs as is, but instead used an adapted version of them and under the principle of fair use. So while this was very high-profile court case, it was also one which had some very high-profile damages attached, if Google had been found in breach of copyright law.
As to be expected, a number of Android TV announcements have been coming through at Google I/O 2016. However, one of the big ones was the introduction of what will be a new Android TV-powered device from Xiaomi. This is the Xiaomi Mi Box. An Android TV product which will look to directly compete with the likes of the Nexus Player, the NVIDIA SHIELD and the Razer Forge TV. Xiaomi has already confirmed that the Mi Box will be heading to the U.S. first, although pricing and availability has yet to be disclosed. However when we did meet up with Xiaomi at I/O, they did make it clear that the Mi Box will not be priced any higher than $199, which does place it in NVIDIA SHIELD territory.

In terms of the specs, the Xiaomi Mi Box will come equipped with 2GB RAM, 8GB internal storage and is powered by a quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor, with a Mali 450 taking care of the graphics. There are no means of additional storage on offer via microSD, although the Mi Box is equipped with a USB port and can connect to additional USB storage solutions. This is a 4K-supported device and so the Mi Box will be compatible with 4K streamed or played content, as well as offering support for High Dynamic Range (HDR) which is expected to be included with Android N, when it is released for Android TV. In terms of Audio, enhancements include support for both Dolby Digital Plus and DTS Surround Sound. While on the operating system front, Xiaomi has confirmed that the Mi Box will come running on Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) at launch and will receive Android N as an OTA update once it is released. Which does lead to the suggestion that the Mi Box will become available sometime in Q3.

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Xiaomi also did confirm that as well as the main unit, the Mi Box will come packaged with its own remote control which operates over Bluetooth and does offer voice-control functionality. There is also a Mi Game Controller which will be available, although this is sold as a separate purchase. Again, placing it in direct competition with the SHIELD if it is sold at or around $200. During our time with the Xiaomi Mi Box, one of the immediately noticeable aspects is its size, which although square does feel somewhat size-comparable to the Nexus Player. In terms of the actual interface, much of what looks to be on offer is stock Android TV, with very few, if any major tweaking from Xiaomi. We were also able to take a closer look at the Bluetooth remote control and Mi Game Controller as well. On the controller front, the Mi Game controller, does look to be very similar to the Nexus Players Gamepad and the SHIELD Controller, while the remote control is a little larger in size than both the Nexus Player remote and the SHIELD Remote. One point to note, is that it does come with dedicated volume buttons, unlike the Nexus Player remote (which has no volume control) or the SHIELD Remote (which makes use of a volume slider). You can check out a full selection of images of the Mi Box, Bluetooth remote and Mi Game Controller in the galleries below.

Xiaomi Mi Box

Mi Box Bluetooth Remote Control

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Mi Game Controller
The first day of the Google I/O conference is nearing a close, but there is still plenty to see and learn. While a lot of the excitement today revolves around things like Googles newly announced apps, Allo and Duo, as well as the Google Home smart speaker and Google Assistant, there are other things that arent new which have a presence there. Project Loon, for example, was on site, and weve been able to get some hands-on time with it.

If youre unaware of Project Loon, its Googles initiative to bring internet connectivity to underdeveloped and emerging countries which may not have access to internet already, or just dont have it available in a majority of locations within the region. Google began testing Project Loon in places like Sri Lanka back in the beginning of February, although this was not the first place where test balloons were sent up into the air, as pilot tests began in June of 2013. Towards the end of January this year, India gave the go-ahead for Google to start Project Loon in the country as well. More than just emerging nations, Googles visions is to eventually to be able to deliver internet via these hot air balloons to every single person on the planet. Of course, a goal like that is a lofty one to be sure, and Google will have to start small with testing before they can branch out and really take things to a global level.

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This is a mission which Google has set forth to achieve and Google rarely gives up on its projects, especially one that seems so important as this one. More than two-thirds of the Worlds regions have no internet connection at all, which is a big reason why Google set out to deliver it via hot air balloons. While Project Loon looks like it may be floating close to earth, it actually ends up in the stratosphere, following along with the wind around the regions where its been deployed. Each balloons electronics are powered by an array of solar panels that are affixed to the sides, which you can see in the image below. As it stands right now, Project Loon balloons are traveling around regions that are situated on the southern hemsphere, and as Google continues to expand the places where the test pilot is launched, the goal is to create a ring around the entire southern hemisphere for a continuous internet connection. Pretty neat huh?
Xiaomi has introduced quite a few devices this year, including their Mi 5 flagship smartphone. This device was announced back in February during the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, and it has been available in only a couple of regions thus far. The device has been on sale in China for a long time now, but it has been available through flash sales only considering Xiaomis production capacity did not allow them to offer the device through the open sale model. Well, the company made some adjustments and has managed to change that, read on.

Xiaomis internal letter surfaced recently, and it stated that the companys CEO, Lei Jun, is taking over supervision over the companys supply chain. The company was able to manufacture 700,000 Xiaomi Mi 5 devices until quite recently. A recent report claims that the company is now able to produce 1.2 million Mi 5 devices per month thanks to Inventec, a manufacturing company which jumped in to boost Xiaomis setup and thus sales. Well, it seems like those reports were spot on, the company today officially announced that they will start selling the Mi 5 through the open sale model on June 1st. The Xiaomi Mi 5 will be available (both standard and high variants) both in India and China, the consumers in India will be able to purchase the device starting at 10am (local time) through the companys official website (mi.com). Xiaomis consumers in China, on the other hand, will be able to grab the phone through the companys website as well, but also through a number of retailers like Jingdong Mall (JD.com), Suning and Lynx. Keep in mind that the 3D ceramic variant of the phone will not be available just yet, they will be available through flash sales though.

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The Xiaomi Mi 5 features a 5.15-inch fullHD (1920 x 1080) display, 3GB of RAM and 32GB / 64GB of non-expandable internal storage. The 4GB RAM (+128GB storage) variant of the device is called Mi 5 Pro, and it will not be available for open sale just yet it seems. This smartphone is fueled by the Snapdragon 820 SoC, and it ships with a 3,000mAh battery. The 16-megapixel 4-axis OIS camera is placed on the back of the Mi 5, and a 4-megapixel shooter (2um pixel size, f/2.0 aperture) is placed up front. Android 6.0 Marshmallow comes pre-installed on this phone, and on top of it, youll find Xiaomis MIUI OS. If youd like to take a look at a more detailed spec sheet, click here.
Oracle vs. Google, one of the biggest and most controversial cases in the history of the tech world, has finally ended. For now, Googles wallet and the future of open source are safe. It should be mentioned, of course, that this will not, by any means, be the first time that this same fight has fallen into the hands of a jury. Since 2010, Oracle has been trying time and time again to drag Google through court over their use of 37 APIs pulled from Java in the commercial smash hit that is Android. For this most recent incarnation of the landmark case, which thankfully will not cause a massive string of lawsuits and threats of lawsuits that reshapes or outright upends the software development industry, the craziness is pretty much over. Make no mistake; this case was absolutely insane and, for some, may have even proven difficult to follow. For those who want a quick and dirty recap of the biggest and craziest highlights, read on.

In 2009, Oracle bought up Sun, creator of the Java programming language. The worlds most popular language was in use for commercial products by tons of entities, but nobody seemed to be doing better because of Java than Google. Oracle tried to get them to buy a license, Google did not comply, and the rest is history. After the first set of trials, Google won because courts determined that an API could not be copyrighted. An appeals court overturning that decision is what lands us where we are today. A massive amount of Java-based code was the cornerstone of Android, but functioned hand in hand with Googles own code to make it all work together, as clarified by one of the lead programmers for Android. This tied in to allegations that Google had tried to scrub a good number of Java-related terms from Androids codebase. Andy Rubin also hit the stand for additional code and open-source licensing clarification. Grilled to an objection-eliciting degree by Oracles lawyer, he seemingly infuriated her by keeping utterly cool. At one point, Oracle referenced Harry Potter  they said that what Google did amounted to making small alterations, but leaving the chapter titles and topic sentences in there.

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Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz took her moment on the stand and explained that Oracle did not buy Sun simply to sue Google for Java, but mostly to keep it away from IBM, who they were scared would well, do exactly what Oracle did, actually. Licensing deals abounded, but Googles unwillingness to play ball landed them in court. It should be noted that, at one point, there was talk within Google of licensing Java from Sun, but they ended up seeing no need to license out a free and open source programming language, according to Eric Schmidt. Suns former CEO did make an appearance, and said that Google was using Java in the same ways as many others and Sun would have had no issue with it. Catz also told an interesting story; she ran into Googles head lawyer at a Bat Mitzvah She was told by him that Google was special, to which she replied, Thou shalt not steal. Google also wound up bringing in an expert computer scientist from a university before it was all said and done, who helped to prove how little Java code was actually in Android. A good number of high-profile names from Google took the stand, including Larry Page and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Oracle also pointed to a figure of over $40 billion, saying it was Googles Android revenue. Larry Page disputed this, saying it was revenue from all over the ecosystem, for manufacturers and developers as well as Google.

Arguments also cropped up involving 9 lines of code that were allegedly copied due to a former Sun employee joining the Android project, a failed phone OS from Oracle, and the nature of the hamburger in fast food and its relation to APIs. The fairly crazy landmark case may have ended in Googles favor for now, but its unlikely to end here. No matter what the jury chooses, neither side has really been vindicated from the future possibility of the case going through an appeals court and popping up again.
In the west, Meizu may not be the most popular Chinese manufacturer, but they definitely put out some great products. Typically when you think of a Chinese manufacturer, the names that come to mind are Xiaomi, ZTE, Huawei and Lenovo (Moto now too). Meizu has been around for quite a while, actually, but really only started to see growth in the past year or so. In 2014, the company sold 4.4 million smartphones. Now in 2015 that number rose to about 20 million. Making for a pretty impressive year-over-year increase. And they arent done. In 2016, they have announced the Meizu M3 Note which is a somewhat mid-range device with a very low-end price. Then theres the Meizu PRO 6, which is what we are here to talk about today.

When the Meizu PRO 6 was announced last month, many enthusiasts saw it as a step down from the PRO 5 that the company announced in 2015. They swapped out an Exynos chip for MediaTeks Helio X25, they also dropped the screen size and battery, but kept the same camera. This leads many of us wondering, is the Meizu PRO 6 worth the money? Well lets find out in our review of the Meizu PRO 6.

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Specs

Inside the Meizu PRO 6, we have the MediaTek Helio X25 processor, which is a deca-core processor. Thats a dual-core 2.5GHz Cortex-A72, combined with a quad-core 2GHz Cortex-A53 and a quad-core 1.4GHz Cortex-A53 set of cores, which make up for what looks like a powerful processor on paper. We also have the Mali-T880 GPU inside. Thats combined with 4GB of RAM and either 32GB or 64GB of storage. It is not expandable, so youre stuck with the included storage. Powering all of that is a 2560mAh battery.

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The display on the PRO 6 is pretty respectable. Its a 5.2-inch 19201080 resolution Super AMOLED display. Which brings it to about 423 pixels per inch. Its running on Android 6.0 Marshmallow, along with Meizus own UI known as Flyme v5.2. Camera-wise, we have a 21MP f/2.2 sensor around back with phase detection and laser auto-focus. But what is unique about this camera is the ten-LED flash, which is a dual-tone flash. The front has a 5MP f/2.0 camera that is capable of 1080p video.

Lastly, the bands supported by the Meizu PRO 6 are listed below.

GSM 850/900/1800/1900

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HSDPA 850/900/1900/2100

LTE Band 1 (2100), 3 (1800), 7 (2600), 38 (2600), 39 (1900), 40 (2300), and 41 (2500)

In the box

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Surprisingly, the packaging for the Meizu PRO 6 was quite interesting. Typically the box for most smartphones is cardboard. However the PRO 6 had a plastic box, which is a bit more durable and made for a unique experience, to say the least. Inside we of course have the Meizu PRO 6 along with a USB Type-A to Type-C cable and a wall adapter (our model came with the EU adapter since it is the worldwide model and not the Chinese model). There is also a SIM ejection tool and a bunch of paperwork telling you how to use the phone, use the SIM card tray and much more.

Display

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Just looking at the spec sheet, youd expect this display to be amazing. Its a 5.2-inch 1080p Super AMOLED display. And it is amazing. Since its a smaller display, the PPI is still fairly high, coming in at 423. Like many other Super AMOLED displays, the PRO 6s display can get very dim. This is especially good for using the phone at night. On the flip side, though, it can also get very bright. Making it perfect for using outdoors in direct sunlight. Meizu does also allow you to adjust the display. So there are four different display modes available which include Adaptive Mode, Standard Mode, Photo Mode and Colorful mode. Additionally, the display mode will automatically optimize the display color range, saturation, and sharpness. This way you get the best-looking display possible, no matter the environment you are in. Some people like warmer displays, some like cooler ones. Meizu also gives you the option to adjust that to your preference. During my time with the Meizu PRO 6, I kept it at the default setting, as I found that worked the best for me. Much like the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, the PRO 6 also has an Eye-Protection Mode. What this does is it protects your eyes from harmful blue lights for long-time use. This is especially important if you like to read at night, or in the dark.

As mentioned the display does get very bright, and it doesnt seem to affect the battery all that much. We also have to remember that this display isnt using as many pixels as say the Samsung Galaxy S7 or even the Xiaomi Mi 5. So battery wont take that much of a hit, with the brightness being all the way turned up. Colors are very vivid here on the PRO 6. Weve been using all sorts of very colorful wallpapers on this smartphone, and they all look incredible. Of course, this is a Super AMOLED display, so thats expected.

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This is a high-end smartphone from Meizu, so there shouldnt be any issues with the digitizer, and there definitely arent any here. Weve been using the PRO 6 for almost two weeks and havent had a single issue with the digitizer inside the phone. You dont need to press the screen hard, either to get it to work.

However, this is a pressure sensitive display. So we do have mPress here. Although I have to say the branding here is pretty inconsistent. Some places its called Force Touch, others its 3D Press and then its also called mPress. It does work a whole lot like the Force Touch on the iPhone, where you can press harder on different apps and even pictures in the Gallery to see them without opening them up. Its a cool feature, but its not one we used terribly often.

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Hardware and Build

As soon as you lay your eyes on the Meizu PRO 6, youll realize that it looks a whole lot like another smartphone. A smartphone from a certain company in Cupertino, California. Yes were talking about Apple. Its hard to deny that the Meizu PRO 6 doesnt look like the iPhone 6S, but thats not necessarily a bad thing. Sure, OEMs should have their own unique design. But the design here isnt bad at all. In fact, Id say they took the iPhone design and made it better. Just look at the antenna lines on the back. They are still there, and will be until a company figures out a way to get rid of them (without painting the metal on the backside). But they are more minimal, and I quite like them actually. Theres also less bezel on the front of the PRO 6, compared to the iPhone, especially on the left and right sides. So does it look like an iPhone? Yes. Is that a bad thing? Not really.

The Meizu PRO 6 is made of metal and glass which makes for a great feeling smartphone in the hand. My only real issue with the PRO 6, as far as how it feels in the hand, is that its a bit tall. It would be nice to have it a few millimeters wider and a few millimeters shorter. The bottom of the PRO 6 is quite busy, we have our 3.5mm headphone jack on the left side, next to a microphone port, with the USB Type-C port in the middle and a speaker on the right side. Theres just one speaker here. So Meizu didnt do like HTC and use the earpiece as a speaker as well. Its great that Meizu kept with USB Type-C (after all the PRO 5 had Type-C too), and its great to see it going more mainstream. USB Type-C is a great port to use because it truly is universal.

The front of the device is pretty minimal really. Theres a home button at the bottom of the display, and at the top we have the earpiece, your cluster of sensors (like the proximity sensor) and then the front-facing camera. Now the chin and forehead are a bit bigger than wed like, but we arent engineers, so were not sure how much they could cut it down, really. Its a nice clean front, on the gold model we have here (a white front). Itll likely look even cleaner with the black front, since the proximity sensor and front-facing camera will blend in with the black bezel a bit more.

Lately, weve seen many smartphones going the way of using the SIM card tray for a microSD card slot and SIM card slot. Meizu has actually done this with a few of their smartphones. But thats not the case here with the PRO 6. Were looking at a dual nano SIM card slot. It blends in pretty well on the left side, but you can still tell there is a SIM card slot there.

Fingerprint Scanner

Meizu was one of the first to put fingerprint sensors on their smartphones (not the first though), and a few years later, the PRO 6s fingerprint sensor is pretty darn good. Meizu uses a home button on the front, which is the only button youll use to interact with the device. The home button is a fingerprint scanner, but it is also your back button. And of course getting to recents is just a gesture away. Its a unique way to do things in their Flyme UI, and I actually like it. It doesnt even take that long to get used to it, which is also nice.

Onto the important part of any fingerprint sensor, and that is, how well does it work? Its lightning quick, and for the most part, it does recognize my fingerprint every time I attempt to unlock the device. There are a few times that it has issues scanning my finger, but Id say around 98 times out of 100, its spot on. The sensor is a bit smaller than the one on the LG G5, and even the Samsung Galaxy S7, which likely contributes to the very rare times it doesnt recognize your fingerprint.

As mentioned already, the PRO 6 does have Android 6.0 inside. What this means for fingerprint sensors is that they are a whole lot more useful. There are a handful of apps that I use that support Androids Fingerprint API. Apps like LastPass, PayPal, Bank of America and a few others. LastPass is especially useful for having fingerprint support, since it is a password manager. And on the PRO 6, you are able to login with your fingerprint. Making the fingerprint sensor just that more useful. So instead of just using the fingerprint sensor to unlock your device, you can also use it to login to your apps, and even authorize purchases on Google Play.

Performance and Memory

This is one of the areas where many felt that the PRO 6 was a downgrade from the PRO 5. Meizu swapped out the Exynos 7420 that is in the PRO 5, and replaced it with the MediaTek Helio X25 deca-core processor. Not to be clear, MediaTeks processors arent bad, its quite the contrary actually. However the new Exynos 8890 is a better processor than the Helio X25 which is what most people were hoping Meizu was going to use this time around. Having said that, the Helio X25 is a deca-core processor, and the Meizu PRO 6 is being marketed as the first deca-core smartphone. Its a quad-core 1.4GHz processor, quad-core 2.0GHz and a dual-core 2.5GHz processor all wrapped into one. Currently the Helio X20 and X25 are the only deca-core processors available (or announced). In theory, the lightweight tasks will keep the quad-core 1.4GHz cluster going, and the other six cores quiet, while tasks like checking Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc will use the middle cluster of 2.0GHz cores and then high-end stuff like gaming will use the 2.5GHz cluster.

Now how does this work in real life? Well it works quite well. A popular topic among SoCs lately has been heat. With the Snapdragon 810 being so warm, as well as the Snapdragon 808. The Helio X25 stays quite cool. Weve played all sorts of games on the PRO 6, and it never got too terribly hot. According to System Monitor, which weve had installed the entire time weve been using the phone, the temperature never went higher than 96 degrees. Which is actually really good. So while it stays nice and cool, does the performance suffer? Not really. Well save the hardcore numbers for the benchmark section below, but in day-to-day tasks, the Helio X25 performed about as well as the Snapdragon 820 in the LG G5  which is my daily driver and was used side-by-side with the PRO 6.

When playing games, the Helio X25 definitely is up to the task. With 4GB of RAM, the Meizu PRO 6 does not have any trouble playing games at all. In fact, it may be one of the best smartphones for playing mobile games. Partially due to it having a lower-resolution display  which translates to more battery life and more power for the processor to use for graphics and such.

Multi-tasking is not an issue here. With 4GB of RAM, youd expect it to be smooth sailing. Unlike Samsung, Meizu does not continually close apps quickly when they are left in memory. We have not needed to clear our recent apps during our review period, not even once. On top of that, we have not needed to reboot the PRO 6 because of performance issues. We see that with many devices, even flagships destined for the US like the Galaxy S7 and HTC 10. This means that performance on the Meizu Pro 6 is definitely top notch.

Benchmarks

We ran AnTuTu, 3DMark and GeekBench on the Meizu PRO 6, which you can see those results down below. It wasnt quite as good as what you would get out of a Snapdragon 820 or Exynos 8890-powered smartphone. But they were still quite respectable.

Sound & Speakers

We already talked briefly about the speaker found on the PRO 6 here. Its not an amazing speaker, but it does perform quite well. As long as you dont put your fingers over the speaker holes. Theres no system-wide equalizer available here, but there are a few other features available in the Settings. Which includes the ability to have the ringer, or alarm fade in. Its a nice touch, although most people probably wont care anyways.

Listening to music and/or watching videos on the PRO 6 is a great experience. Obviously its not going to rival the likes of the HTC 10, considering it does have just one speaker while the HTC 10 does have two of them. But the speaker isnt too shabby at all. As we alluded to already, the only issue weve had is covering up the speaker with a finger or two, particularly when playing games. Otherwise, theres really no complaints here when it comes to the sound.

Phone Calls and Network

As usual, we have been using the Meizu PRO 6 on the T-Mobile network for almost two weeks now. While most of the phones we use from China have just EDGE connectivity in the US, the PRO 6 does support HSPA+. Although it does only support the 1900MHz band on T-Mobile. This means that you will likely be on 3G or EDGE while indoors, but can probably get HSPA+ when outside. Having said that, the speeds we saw when connected to HSPA+ were about what youd normally see. Our tests showed around 10-15Mbps download and around 1-2Mbps upload. Thats about normal for T-Mobiles HSPA+ network in this area.

We did make some calls with the Meizu PRO 6 and those on the other end sounded nice and clear. On the flip side, those we called said that we sounded clear as well. Theres no HD Voice support here, seeing as this isnt a T-Mobile branded smartphone. Theres also no VoLTE support (for one it doesnt support LTE, and two only T-Mobile branded smartphones can use their VoLTE right now). We didnt experience any dropped calls either. Which is always a good sign.

Battery life

For the first few days, battery life was pretty rocky. With the battery draining pretty fast, and quite often, standby was pretty bad. However, it seems to be getting better each and every day. Unfortunately, we dont have any way to show you screen-on time during a specific battery cycle, due to Meizus software. You can see the screen-on time for a 3-hour, 6-hour or 12-hour time period, however. But we did run PCMark on the PRO 6, and it got some pretty good results. Better than some smartphones weve tested, but not the best. Out of the last few phones weve reviewed, the Huawei P9 sported a result of 4 hours and 17 minutes, with the Leagoo Shark 1 at 8 hours and 22 minutes and the HTC 10 at 7 hours and 50 minutes. The PRO 6 managed to squeak past the HTC 10 with a pretty impressive 7 hours and 58 minutes. Its impressive due to the size of the battery  a 2560mAh battery in here. Although this shows you one of the big advantages of using an FHD display over a QHD display.

In typical use, the PRO 6 did last about a full day. In fact, a lot of the time it would go through the full day and have around 50% left at the end of the day  of course, that depends on what kind of day we had and what we did with the phone. All in all the battery was pretty impressive.

Meizu has a few tricks up its sleeve, though, with power consumption. In the Security app theres a section for Power. Here you can see the estimated time left on the battery  this is based on how you have been using the phone. You can also decide if you want to turn on Low Power Mode, Super Mode or Customize Mode. All of the options in those modes are customizable too. In settings, you can also determine when you want the phone to go into power-saving mode. Which I have set for 15%. You can also schedule when you want low power on. I have it set for when Im asleep, around 12-midnight to about 7am. This will extend standby, but youre also asleep so you dont really need your notifications right away. They can wait until just before you wake up. This also keeps your phone from waking you up if someone sends you a message in the middle of the night.

Software

As mentioned already, the Meizu PRO 6 does run on Android 6.0 Marshmallow, along with their own OS on top. Which is known as Flyme and we have version 5.2 on our PRO 6 here. This is a slightly updated version from what shipped on the PRO 5 last year. Although Flyme 5 saw the biggest improvements. After using Flyme OS for a few weeks, we can say that it is one of the better UI overlays available on Android. But its not without its own flaws. The biggest flaw that weve seen is in notifications. With Gmail, Flyme shows the subject and the sender of the email in black. This makes the notification almost impossible to read, given the background of the notification shade. Meizu isnt the only one that does this either, as Huawei does the same thing with EMUI. Its an annoyance, and should be something simple that Meizu can fix in an OTA.

Meizu also likes to take some settings out of the settings app and put it in their Security app. For instance, Data Usage would be in the main settings app on just about every other smartphone. But with Meizu smartphones, its in the security app. Although Meizu does give you more granular control over data usage. You can see how much data you used today, this month and when your billing cycle is over. Battery settings are also in the security app and not the settings app. Again you get more controls for the battery in this app, including the ability to use low-power mode, super mode, and a few others. This also shows you the estimated time remaining. Something that, again, the main settings app should show, but it doesnt.

Dont get us wrong, the Security app here in Flyme OS is pretty good. Meizu allows you to quickly optimize your phone by clearing RAM, cache, and apps that are using too much energy. This can make a fairly big change in your battery life. You can also clean out your phone. This will scan your phone and find junk files, redundant APKs, cache and even apps that you havent used in a while. A good tool for anyone that may be running out of space on their smartphone. With this, you can also choose which apps are whitelisted, and also have the phone auto clean at certain intervals. We have it set to once a week at 9pm. The Security app also has a way for you to manage permissions, harassment blocking (blocking messages and calls from specific people), and a built-in anti-virus.

When it comes to the home screen, theres no app drawer. So all of your apps are right there on the home screen for you to use. For a lot of people, rearranging these apps and folders can be a pretty daunting task. Meizu has built-in a way for you to rearrange multiple apps at the same time. Making it much, much easier to set up your home screen the way you want. Widgets are also available, should you want to use one. Just pinch in on one of the home screens, and youll see that option.

The notification shade is rather nice looking, the background is blurred based on what is showing behind it. And you do have a few quick settings in there, with more available if you swipe down again  including a brightness slider. These are not customizable. Unfortunate, but its tough to complain about these quick settings because all of the ones you would want are right there. You have WiFi, Network data, Bluetooth, sound, Airplane Mode, rotation, Location Info, Brightness, Flashlight, SmartTouch and DND (Do Not Disturb). Our only issue with the notification shade is the issue with Gmail and it doesnt appear to happen with other apps  although we didnt test other email apps.

SmartTouch, which we mentioned already, is a pretty nifty feature on the Meizu PRO 6. Its not brand new with the PRO 6 either, as it has been on other smartphones from Meizu. Essentially, its a dot that can be moved around on the screen to perform different tasks. Tapping on SmartTouch will go back, Slide Up takes you to the home screen, Slide Down opens the notifications, swiping left or right will take you between apps that are open on the device. These are all customizable (Settings > Accessibility > SmartTouch) and there is also a double tap gesture, which is not set by default. Now we didnt use SmartTouch that often on the PRO 6, but it does work quite well. If for some reason your home button isnt working, or you dont want to use it, this is a great alternative.

Theres another app that is pretty popular on the Meizu PRO 6 and that is Toolbox. This houses a few pretty useful features like the Flashlight, Mirror, Compass, Level, Ruler and Magnifier. The Flashlight uses the LED flash on the back, all ten of them. You can choose the temperature and brightness, or use it as a SOS. The mirror is pretty self-explanatory, it basically uses your front-facing camera so that you have a mirror in your pocket. Now the ruler might be my favorite feature in this app. Its something simple, but definitely useful. All of these can be made into home screen shortcuts as well. Making it easier to access them quickly.

Flyme OS may not be our favorite overlay, but it is one of the better ones weve seen lately. As we always say, this is Android, so if you dont like the launcher here, just head to the Play Store and pick one up. This is why we dont get too bent out of shape over the lack of an app drawer  that and its a really popular feature in Asia, where this phone will be sold primarily.

Camera

The camera is something I was really excited to try out on the Meizu PRO 6. We expected it to be one of the better cameras weve used out of China lately, and it is. Its a 21-megapixel Sony sensor on the back, which is actually the same sensor as what we had on the Meizu PRO 5 last year. It does also have phase and laser auto-focus (located in the black area inside the ring of LED flashes), so it can focus in pretty quickly, no matter what lighting condition you may be in. With the LED flash ring on the back of the PRO 6, we were really interested to see how the PRO 6 faired with all this extra light. We took a few night shots with the flash set at different settings, which you can see in the Flickr gallery below. It didnt make a huge difference, and unless youre a photographer, you probably wont notice.

The experience you have when actually trying to take a picture is arguably just as important as the pictures that come from the smartphone youre using. Meizu did a great job with the camera app here. Its somewhat simple but still jam-packed with features, and they are all in the places youd expect. So on the row on the left or the top, depending on what orientation you are holding the phone in, you see the Settings gear, along with the camera flip button, a film button (something popular on smartphones in 2016), timer and flash. Across from that is your gallery shortcut, shutter button in the middle and the bottom houses all of the different modes included in the Meizu PRO 6. Speaking of modes, we have 9 here. Auto, Manual, Video, Beauty, Panorama, Light Field, Slow-mo, Macro, and GIF. All of which youll find in the Flickr album below.

So how do the pictures look? Pretty darn good. I say this with every review of a phone with a great camera, but it wont replace your DSLR. Its tough to find a smartphone camera that will. But the PRO 6 camera will allow you to leave your DSLR at home more often. The colors are pretty accurate in this camera. Unlike Samsungs cameras where the pictures are pretty saturated, the colors look natural in just about every shot. The PRO 6 isnt fantastic at catching movement, but it could do worse (you can see an example in the AMC Theaters picture). When it comes to Zoom, I was actually pretty surprised. The Meizu PRO 6 handled full zoom pretty well. There is a picture in the gallery of a couple of geese, that was completely zoomed in, without any editing. Could it have been better? Of course. But it could have been far worse, and weve seen far worse before.

The Good

Build Quality

Fingerprint Sensor + Android 6.0 Fingerprint API

Full HD Display

Camera with ten LED Flash

Battery Life

The Bad

Storage

Too similar to the iPhone

Not available in North America

Small Battery

Final Thoughts

By now, youve read almost 4500 words about the Meizu PRO 6. So you probably have a good enough idea of what I think about this phone. I really like the Meizu PRO 6. Its one of my favorite smartphones to come out this year. I was a bit disappointed with the specs at first  particularly that battery  but Meizu proved to have done a great job at optimizing their software to work well with a smaller battery. There are a few issues with Flyme OS, ones that have been around for quite some time, and hopefully, they get those fixed but they arent deal breakers in our opinion.

The Meizu PRO 6 is not a cheap smartphone when compared to others coming from China. But when compared to other flagships, its pretty cheap. The 32GB model  which is what we have  will set you back around 2499, which converts to about $390 USD. The 64GB model is going to be about 2799, and that converts to about $430 USD. You can pick up the Meizu PRO 6 if you dont live in China, by hitting the GearBest link below. Its a bit more expensive, but thats usually the case when buying Chinese phones outside of China (due to taxes, manufacturing price changes, etc).

Should you buy the Meizu PRO 6? To be honest, I cant think of a reason not to buy it. If youre looking for a cheap, but high-end smartphone then its a great choice. But if you dont like the design or think it looks too much like an iPhone, just hang tight for a bit. Another beautiful thing about Android is that the next big thing is always just a few days away.
Sony is a brand  muckh like LG and Samsung  thats known for far more than just their smartphones, but in the case of Sony their smartphones arent what youd think about the Japanese firm first. Instead, people think of the PlayStation, great digital cameras as well as TVs when they think of Sony. Not one to give up however, the Japanese firm continues to launch smartphones under the Xperia moniker, and the Xperia X and Xperia XA  both announced during Marchs Mobile World Congress  recently launched around the world. Today however, Sony is announcing a more budget-friendly handset, the Xperia E5.

Like other Xperia E smartphones that have gone before it, the Xperia E is powered by a MediaTek processor, this time the quad-core, 4G-capable MT6735, backed up by 1.5GB of RAM. Its a 5.0-inch 1280 x 720 device with 16GB of onboard storage, with a microSD card slot that Sony says will support up to 200GB of storage. Right off the bat its clear that the Xperia E5 wasnt designed to win any awards or anything, but with a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera as well as 5.0-megapixel front-facing camera, its got a lot of what people have come to expect from Sony devices, but likely at a much lower pricepoint. The Xperia E range has been available for a good few years now, and theyve proven popular in parts of Europe as well as India, a market where Sony is particularly strong, even in the face of Samsungs dominance.

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Something that Sony is hoping will help set their latest budget device aside from the pack is some added software. The new Smart Cleaner feature will work away in the background to make sure that there are no apps or games taking up unwanted storage and such. This might sound like the sort of feature that is unnecessary on todays high-end phones, on budget devices, the extra little boost in performance will be more than welcome to those on a budget. The Xperia E5 will be available towards the end of June this year and will hit Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America first.
While Canadian smartphone users consume more data and make more calls and texts than ever before, wireless carriers are now beginning to feel the heat. According to the J.D. Power 2016 Canadian Wireless Network Quality Study, the total incidences or issues faced by consumers while consuming data or using apps and browsers on their handsets have sharply increased compared to last years figures. However, the average number of incidents on areas like calls and texts have remained stable since last year. On an average, data-consuming activities like video chatting, location sharing and mobile payments have risen from 14%, 10% and 14% respectively in 2015 to 18%, 14% and 19% respectively this year. With increasingly capable smartphones and fast 4G services available, consumers are using wireless data with increasing regularity and pace, a phenomenon to which wireless carriers are struggling to adapt.

Among Canadian wireless carriers, incidents are calculated on the basis of problems per 100 (PP100) which implies that lesser the count, the better is the nature of service provided. From last year to this year, overall network problems have risen from 9PP100 to 10PP100 which has let to data problems worsening from 14PP100 to 15PP100. At the same time, increased use of websites has also contributed to the problem. While those visiting 5-9 websites in the last 48 hours experienced 13 data PP100, those visiting 10 to 14 websites in the same period suffered 17 data PP100. The storage capacity and processing power of new devices provides consumers with an abundance of available apps prompting a rapidly rising consumption of data. This is placing a great deal of stress on network performance. Despite carrier infrastructure upgrades and claims of faster speeds, consumer perception is compromised when they experience disruptions and delays, said Adrian Chung, director at J.D. Power. The study also found that those with unlimited data in their SIM contracts suffered more incidents compared to those who had limited data and that consumers who have suffered higher network problems have indicated that they will definitely switch carriers compared to those who didnt face as many incidents.

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Paradoxically, the Canadian Commissioner For Complaints For Telecommunications Services (CCTS) revealed in March that overall customer complaints had gone down from 5,468 in 2015 to 4,562 in 2016. Among such complaints, billing issues took the top spot followed by local and long distance telephone issues, wireless services and internet access. In a study conducted by J.D. Power last year, it came to light that wireless prices rose by 4-8% overall compared to the previous year, making Canada one of the most expensive countries in the category. The study found that wireless services offered by traditional carriers like Bell, TELUS and Rogers cost far more than those offered by new entrants like WIND Mobile, Mobilicity and Videotron. Given that large carriers have to make huge investments in infrastructure in order to cope with the increasing demand, they are probably not as inclined to reduce costs of their services compared to start-up carriers who can lease existing lines at current rates.
In the United States and elsewhere, the debate rages on as to the ethical implications of strong device encryption, especially when it comes to smartphones. An encrypted device can be difficult, if not impossible for anybody to break into, even law enforcement or the device manufacturer. Most smartphones these days have the ability to completely encrypt their contents, and many apps offer end to end encryption, or the ability to send encrypted data that will only unlock for the target party, who will send a similar package back. When a smartphone is used in a crime, however, such as the infamous iPhone involved in the San Bernardino tragedy and the ensuing backdoor debate, the question of whether everybody should have access to encryption becomes a bit of a moral and legal gray area.

When the FBI got a third partys help and broke into the iPhone in question, it wasnt until they had already been involved in a lengthy, high-profile court case with Apple that had just about everybody choosing sides. Essentially, it was the tech world versus the government. The highly divisive case was in vogue for a number of months before seemingly fading away in the wake of the FBI getting what they needed from the infamous device. While the battle at hand in the encryption war had been won by the powers that be, the war itself was still on. The public, for the most part, became much more aware of the concept and importance of encryption and personal security. Lawmakers, however, saw waning support for the creation of laws concerning encryption.

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The fight over encryption, as it were, is only one battle in a long and ongoing series of clashes. For a good while, the government has been able to use technology to observe citizens. With the signing of the Patriot Act after the September 11 attacks, the conflict came to an ugly head, with both sides going to irrational extremes; while everyday citizens had their data compromised and were frisked, probed and otherwise invaded, people began to indulge paranoid tendencies bordering on outright delusional. Many concepts that are still fought over today rose to prominence during this time, such as chemtrails, observation through computers and phones, and even some people saying that the government was working to engineer the collapse of the American populace. To call it chaos would be a bit of an understatement. When former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked national secrets concerning public surveillance and gained worldwide fame and notoriety for it, the conflict grew to a fervor again, though not quite to the level inspired by the Patriot Act. A third spike, as you likely know if youre reading this, occurred with the San Bernardino tragedies sparking the inclusion of encryption into the debate.

After the original fervor waned, however, many prominent government figures who had chosen sides withdrew their support or pulled out of the conflict altogether. Some of the public speculated that these figures had a hard time picking a side and originally chose because they felt pressured, while others may have said that they only made such choices in the first place to garner public support from one camp or another. The overarching, indisputable fact, however, was that these government figures were no longer fighting over whether a law against encryption in some form should be enacted.

Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein had drafted up a possible bill earlier in the year, but it was revealed recently that it will not be introduced. This comes after Burr had stated on numerous occasions that some sort of legislation on the matter was inevitable. Despite everything that had happened with Apple, the White House simply wouldnt bite on any legislation concerning encryption; presumably, this was due to the impending election. Efforts by the Justice Department to get laws enacted to help bring to light those who chose to go black, or cut off surveillance, had been shot down repeatedly in the past, sometimes due to insufficient substantial evidence of a reason to sign the law and sometimes due to concerns over whether the law in question would adhere to the Constitution, the core of American law and a guideline for basic rights, a line that lawmakers arent supposed to cross. Some, like Senator Lindsey Graham, initially supported legislation, but performed a quick 180 after talking to people in both camps and learning the facts. A bill introduced by Senator Mark Warner is meant to study the issue and come to a conclusion of some sort on whether legislation is needed, but for now, the encrypted phone you may be reading this on is safe.
The idea of Google Home is futuristic and pretty great, but still very much cut and dry. In essence, its meant to be a smart home hub that can power your IoT devices, communicate with just about every gadget you own, act as a speaker, take commands, and use Googles advanced artificial intelligence, machine learning and neural networking technologies to serve you in ways you may not think of. In essence, its the ultimate form of Google Now, brought into your home and powered by Googles new Assistant. Google Home looks set to take the smart home control hub niche to a whole new level with the help of Googles advanced technologies. There are a few issues, however, and one is that we dont know much about Google Home just yet, and this makes it difficult to gauge consumer interest and how well it may compete in the marketplace.

There are a lot of important things about Google Home that are still unknown. For starters, as a speaker, how will it perform? For the purposes of this article, well be comparing Google Home to the Amazon Echo because, quite frankly, everybody else will do the same. Theres no way around it; Amazons Echo home hub is currently the leader and poster child for a fairly sparse market. If you ask enough people, youll be sure to encounter at least a few who even think that the Echo is the only such product out there. Thus, Google Home will have to compete with the Echo to earn its place in the market. In order to be viable, it will need to be able to project sound throughout the home and boast extremely high quality audio for listening to media and doing things like making calls. On the flip side of that same token, we know nothing about how the microphones will be set up, which is a crucial element of such a product. The Amazon Echo, for example, boasts an array of advanced microphones that are arranged just so, allowing users to speak to the Echo unit when the house is noisy or when theyre in another room or even another part of the house entirely, mostly through multiple directional microphones tuned to pick up human voices. If Google Home cant replicate this feat, its basically already dead in the water, unless separate nodes for each room will be available on launch. These factors, of course, only affect the core audio experience; there are still a number of factors to consider that havent been revealed yet.

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Another big factor in Google Homes market performance will be the price. To compare it again to Amazon Echo, the poster child of the market, the price for a main unit is $200, with a somewhat scaled-back model running $99. While some assumptions could be made if we knew more about the hardware, we only have the roughest of rough ideas at the moment. Without knowing the price, we dont know if it will be able to appeal to consumers on the kind of scale needed to defeat the Echo and kickstart competition in the space. While pricing higher than the Echo would be acceptable with the right features, all we know about the feature set at the moment is that A.I. will be front and center. Another factor to consider is the release date and the market climate around that time. Right now, the release date for Google Home is unknown; not even any hints or leaks are present to help with predictions. While other products may hit the market, theres no telling if theyll be able to make a dent in the Echos market share. If nothing else comes out and Amazon Echo stays on top, Google will have a bit of an issue; the longer they let the Echo stay at the top of the heap, the harder it will be to dethrone.

The last big factor to consider that we know nothing about is just how well the system works. Assistant was demonstrated at Google I/O, but has yet to see much, if any, real-life testing. Not only do we not know how well the predictive A.I. will work, we dont know how fast Google Home will react when a user gives it a command. This, however, is an area where at least one assumption can be made; thanks to Assistant and a focus on the A.I. and command-based software, its safe to say that Google Home will do its job at least as well as Google Now on your smartphone. Go ahead, fire it up with OK Google and give it a random command. Search for something, play some music, or just try to make small talk to see how it reacts. Depending on your phones hardware, the delay may be significant or less than a second. This is an older system than Assistant, running on hardware that was not custom-made for it, with less A.I. backing. If Google Home is tailored to Assistant, itd be no shocker to see a command getting a reaction the instant a user stops talking. For now, however, we dont know for sure. All of these factors combine to make Google Home quite the enigma, for now. Predicting its performance, both in the market and at doing its job, is next to impossible for now.
The smartphone industry is finding it difficult to differentiate products. Today, it is difficult to buy a poor smartphone for the money: the less expensive devices are not as good as the larger devices, but for the majority of people they are very much good enough. Flagship devices typically share a common set of weaknesses  usually battery life and optical zoom  but are otherwise powerful, fluid devices with great screens, cameras and connectivity. Manufacturers are differentiating their products from the competition through trying to find the latest feature that will become tomorrows must have, or through applying new software features. Sometimes, a feature that a given manufacturer includes in a device was thought of  or at least patented  elsewhere. This is when a company should license the particular technology and its one reason why companies often fall foul of patent licensing lawsuits.

Earlier this week, Huawei sued Samsung for patent infringement. Samsung has subsequently countersued. Huaweis original lawsuit cites eleven technologies from either the mobile network or smartphone arenas. These include a means of increasing the download speed of a device and various patents relating to LTE networking. On the face of it, we might suppose that Samsungs download booster feature, which combines LTE and Wi-Fi networks in order to maximise how quickly a file downloads, is one of the culprits. Huawei cites that it has tried to come to reasonable and fair terms with Samsung but has failed to do so. But there is another suggestion as to what the underlying reason for Huaweis lawsuit against Samsung is all about: it is about flexing its technology muscles. Shortly after the original lawsuit was unveiled, a Samsung spokesperson said: The company will thoroughly review a counter-suit and actively take appropriate action. Samsung have also said that they should also discover the real intention of Huawei.

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Within the industry, sources cite that one reason for Huawei to start the case is to gain access to Samsungs core technologies via a cross-licensing deal. This would be how Huawei settles the disputes with Samsung: the Chinese network and smartphone manufacturer has already signed cross-licensing deals with Apple, Ericsson, Qualcomm, Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent. Huaweis US-based vice president for external affairs, William Plummer, alluded as such: Our very strong preference is to resolve disputes on licensing through negotiations. Of course, negotiations usually make much more sense thatn using a court as they are cheaper and less public.

The other aspect of the lawsuit is it will raise the image of the Chinese telecommunications sector. Yes; the top five smartphone retailers changed for 2015 with the Chinese manufacturers making great progress. However, selling the devices is one thing, but designing them is another. When the announcement of Huawei filing against Samsung reached the media, many observers were surprised at this. What? The Chinese? Suing Samsung?

Huawai is gunning to become a leading manufacturer of smartphones over the world  if not already. In the last eighteen months weve seen something of a charm offensive. Weve seen the new Huawei Watch, a collaboration with Google to produce the Nexus 6P smartphone, a number of successful Huawei and Honor-branded device launches, and Huaweis semiconductor division, HiSilicon, launched the new ARM Cortex-A72 powered chipset, the Kirin 950. Huawei invested some 15 percent of 2015s annual sales into research in development and applied for almost 4,000 patents. Huaweis intent is clear: sell more smartphones.
This week, Microsoft announced that they were cutting another 1,850 jobs and about 1,350 of those were coming from Finland. Where Nokia originated, which Microsoft bought in 2013 (with the deal closing in April 2014). Microsoft bought the smartphone business from Nokia (not to be confused with the Nokia that bought Alcatel-Lucent last year). Microsoft hasnt said that they are pulling out of the mobile industry, but when you continually cut jobs in that area, its tough to stay in business. They did say that they would be continuing to make smartphones for business customers. As those are the customers that have shown interest in their smartphones. This acquisition of Nokia is likely going to be one of the more costly acquisitions that Microsoft has ever done. Its right up there with the Sprint/Nextel acquisition, as far as questionable acquisitions go.

So where did it all go wrong for Microsoft? Well it was a number of mistakes that Microsoft made through the years with Windows Mobile or Windows Phone. In 2011, Nokia ditched Symbian and turned to Microsofts mobile platform, making smartphones exclusively using their mobile OS. That was probably a big mistake for Nokia in the long run, as they ended up losing money each quarter, and nabbing a pretty small market share all the way up until 2013 when Microsoft bought them. Nokia, undoubtedly, makes some amazing smartphones. In fact, weve seen many people getting excited about Nokia making Android smartphones in the near future. But limiting their resources to just Windows Mobile was not a good idea, especially seeing as they were the smallest ecosystem, behind Android, iOS and BlackBerry.

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A big issue that Microsoft has had with their mobile OS for years, is the fact that they dont have enough apps. There are a number of apps that are not available on Windows Mobile. Its often times the most common complaint from Microsoft users. Now Microsoft has done a few things to help court some app and game developers over to their platform, but nothing has really worked for them. Largely due to their market share. Since the second quarter of 2012, Windows Phone has not seen their market share go above 5%. And for many app developers, thats not enough users to justify spending time developing apps for those users to use. While Windows Phone did get some apps, they often werent updated often, or at all. When compared to their siblings on iOS and Android.

Then theres the fact that Microsoft didnt push OEMs to use Windows Phone in lower-end smartphones. In 2014, Microsoft was actually giving away Windows Phone to device makers to use in their upcoming smartphones. But that didnt seem to do much for making Windows Phone a bit more popular. For the most part, the only company making smartphones running on Windows Phone was Nokia. Seeing as HTC and Samsung had turned to focusing on Android, as that was where the majority of their users were. If Microsoft had pushed OEMs to put Windows Phone into everything, they could have made quite the impact.

While the low-end smartphone area is not one that any mobile operating system really wants to dominate, solely, it is one that could have helped boost Windows Phone. Especially seeing how popular these low-end smartphones are in emerging markets like Brazil, India, and Indonesia. This could have opened up Microsofts partners eyes, and persuaded them into making smartphones running on Windows 10 Mobile when that launched in 2014. Microsoft has said that they arent giving up on Windows 10 Mobile right now. But they are shifting focus from doing consumer and business smartphones, to just business smartphones. Targeted at enterprise customers. HP actually announced a 6-inch phablet at Mobile World Congress in February that runs on Windows 10 Mobile. This is a 6-inch smartphone powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, with 4GB of RAM, along with a 4150mAh battery and IP67 water resistance. Definitely an impressive smartphone. But with Microsoft focusing on enterprise customers now, itll be interesting to see if this smartphone ever actually makes it to store shelves.
Xiaomi is, first and foremost, a smartphone manufacturer. This company doesnt like to be categorized in such a manner though, mainly because they manufacture all sorts of tech gadgets, and some software as well, not to mention that Xiaomi became an MVNO last year. Xiaomi has managed to sell 70 million smartphones in China, and even though they missed their sales goal, they still managed to remain at the very top of the food chain in China, despite the fact Huawei was right behind Xiaomi back then. Now, on a global scale, Xiaomi cant go head-to-head with Huawei just yet considering their sales are quite focused mainly on Asia, primarily China and India.

That being said, Xiaomi has introduced quite a few devices this year, including their Mi 5 flagship smartphone, the Mi Max phablet, the Redmi Note 3 smartphone, and a number of other gadgets, like the Mi Drone. The Mi Drone is Xiaomis first take on a drone, and a direct competitor to DJIs drones. The Mi Drone is a sleek-looking drone capable of shooting 1080p or 4K video (depending on the variant you opt to purchase), which you control via a remote controller which comes with a stand for your smartphone. All of this works through Xiaomis Mi Home application, and the Mi Drone comes equipped with all sorts of interesting features. This Drone can follow you around automatically, it can land and take off on its own, etc. The Mi Drone basically has all the features that youll find in much more expensive products, but it costs way less.

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The 1080p Mi Drone model costs $380, while youll need to part with 2,999 Yuan ($456) in order to grab the 4K variant. Now, in comparison, DJIs Phantom 3 drone costs $800, so even the higher-end variant of the Mi Drone is almost half its price. Now, this drone might be interesting, and theres no doubt many people will purchase it, but considering its limited availability, its hard to expect it will impact the companys profits all that much. Xiaomis revenue was almost flat last year when the company failed to meet their sales target and sell at least 80 million smartphones (100 million was their initial goal). Now, in addition to 70 million sold smartphones, Xiaomi also managed to earn $564 million in services revenue last year, and that includes software, media and ads. It is also worth mentioning that the Xiaomi Mi Band fitness tracker (which is made in cooperating with Huawei), is yet another one Xiaomi-branded device which turned out to be a success. It took Mi Band only four months in order to become the second highest selling wearable during Q1 2015.

Having that in mind, Xiaomi was valued at $45 billion a while back, and in order to justify that valuation, they really need to step up their game. The Mi Drone might end up being a great product which is incredibly cheap (compared to the competition), but Xiaomi really needs to step up their game in two ways. First, the company needs to expand their production capacity, fast. Let me give you an example, Xiaomi is currently able to manufacture 700,000 Mi 5 units per month (they have reportedly increased that to 1,2 million recently), while Oppo currently pushes out 2 million Oppo R9 units. Oppo has managed to outsell Xiaomi in China in the first quarter of this year, and so did Huawei.

This actually brings us to the second point here, Xiaomi really, really needs to expand the availability of their products. Xiaomi is currently most active in China and India, and even though they sell their products in a number of countries outside of Asia (like Brazil for example), very few of their devices are available in such countries, and theyre not making enough of an impact, especially compared to Huawei which is active in a ton of countries all over the world. So, Xiaomi is basically forced to host flash sales in their home country due to high demand, which is a reason they need to increase production capacity. On top of all this, Chinese smartphone market has slowed down considerably, which is why Chinese companies have started expanding their reach, and Xiaomi needs to do that fast. Devices like the Mi Drone are great to have in your lineup, but thats not a way to considerably increase revenue, thats for sure.

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Quite a few companies invested in Xiaomi thus far, and in order for the company to justify those investments and their valuation, they really need to step out of their comfort zone. Xiaomi definitely can do it, and pretty much everyone knows that theyre only being careful, but it will sure going to be interesting to see if they can succeed in other markets, like Europe and the U.S.
Google held their annual developer conference last week and there were a number of new announcements that came through including the confirmation of a number of new incoming Android TV devices like the Xiaomi Mi Box. That is as well as a number of apps which will be gaining support for the platform too. Whether you already own an Android TV device, or are starting to consider picking one up, there are a number of staple apps you should install. Some offer improved functionality, while others lead the way in performance. Either way, they are the must-have apps for Android TV.

ES File Explorer

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For Android TV users of any level, ES File Explorer is an app you should have installed on your system. At the more superficial level, this is the most Android TV-optimized file manager app, while at a more advanced level, this one offers a number of advanced features like the ability to easily transfer files from another Android device that also has ES File Explorer installed. Great tool app for Android TV

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Netflix

This one will come as no surprise as this is one of the most popular video content apps out there. With Android TV designed for the TV, there are few apps which are so naturally Android TV-ready as the likes of Netflix. You do need a Netflix subscription of course, but otherwise, another must-have app.

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Kodi

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Another app which any advanced Android TV owner will tell you to download is Kodi. And they are right. Kodi is a great all-round app and offers a nice way to view or play all kinds of content including your videos, pictures, audio and so on. For the more advanced users, Kodi has some neat tricks up its sleeves too.

Google Drive

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Now this app is not exactly ready for Android TV and as such, you cannot just head over to the Google Play Store and download it. In spite of being a Google App, it has yet to gain official support for the platform. However, you can sideload it to your Android TV by using an app like ES File Explorer. If you have an Android TV device which has a dedicated storage option, like the NVIDIA SHIELD, then you can place a copy of the app on an SD card and sideload it that way. Once installed, the user interface is not the most friendly (after all, it is not yet fully optimized) but it will provide you with easy access to all your Drive contents.

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Sideload Launcher

If you do do sideload Google Drive (or any app for that matter) then you will want an app like Sideload Launcher. When you sideload an app, as it is not yet optimized for Android TV, there is no icon on the main menu (leanback launcher)  this app will fix that exact issue.

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Sling TV

If you are someone who is seriously considering cutting the cord, then Sling TV is likely going to be the first step in weaning yourself off traditional subscription TV packages. Sling TV is a no contract option which for a fixed monthly sum will provide you with a selection of live channels. Great options for those who want to take that first step to going cable-free.

Spotify

Interestingly, in spite of Spotify being one of the most popular music streaming apps on the market, it had yet to be optimized and released for Android TV. That has now changed though thanks to the newly released Spotify app. If you are a Spotify subscriber (and even if you are not), this one will be worth downloading.

The Weather Network

One of the best aspects of Android TV is how universal it is. While you can consume audio and video content, it can also act as an information portal, just like your smartphone. And for that reason apps like The Weather Network are great additions to your Android TV app catalog.

Twitch

Now this app is more for those who have picked up the NVIDIA SHIELD than any other Android TV device as it does seem perfectly optimized for the SHIELD, due to the SHIELDs high-emphasis on gaming. However, whatever device you do own, Twitch is a great app to watch others game.

YouTube

If Twitch is the YouTube of the gaming world, then it should take little explaining as to why you should have YouTube installed on your Android TV. This is by far one of the most useful Android TV apps for new and existing owners alike, although, chances are you do already have it installed.
Nearly $1 billion of European Union funds were given out to fraudulent claimants last year, with the biggest concentrations of suspected false claims in Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary, data from EU investigators shows.

In an annual report published on Tuesday, the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) concluded that 888 million euros were probably disbursed to dishonest claimants in 2015, a slight decline from 901 million the previous year.

It amounts to some 0.6% of a budget that concentrates spending on subsidies to farmers and poor regions.

Among examples of probes into nearly 1,400 fraud allegations was a 1.3-million euro payment to modernise a vegetable chilling plant in Bulgaria, the EU's poorest state. When investigators looked into it, they found the equipment supplier and the factory owner were the same person, who had inflated the price.

Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary saw the biggest concentrations of fraud on the EU in 2015.

In another type of scam, importers of solar panels from China cheated EU authorities of penal import duty by using fake documents changing their provenance.

Cheating and error is endemic in public spending programmes. The British government estimates its welfare system, 50 percent bigger than the EU budget, also loses some 0.7% to fraud.

But fraud on the European Union's 141-billion euro budget is a sensitive issue for an EU under pressure from voters sceptical of Brussels. Britain, a major contributor to the budget, holds a referendum next month on quitting the 28-nation bloc altogether.

OLAF's director-general, Giovanni Kessler, said he did not believe there was widespread corruption, however, and that a sharp increase in fraud detected after 2013 showed his agency was making its mark in encouraging people to report concerns.

Last year, 187 million euros were recovered through judicial action in member states and returned to Brussels, a drop of 10 percent from 2014. Kessler backs the creation of a prosecutors office for the EU which could have greater powers than OLAF to investigate. Governments have resisted that idea, however.

Some EU officials complain that national authorities can lack zeal in pursuing those who defraud the EU budget and in general can be careless about handing out EU funds correctly.

Only about half of OLAF's recommendations for prosecutions have led to indictments by national prosecutors in recent years. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie

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Modified On May 31, 2016 12:05 PM By CarDekho

So you have narrowed down on your choice of used car? Great! It's time now to make payment and zip off in your dream car. But what if you have trouble arranging money upfront? Perhaps, you are still concerned about the used car being completely free of defects. What if it breaks down or develops others issues such as a flat tyre  something that's inevitable and can occur any time. Don't worry, help is at hand. At CarDekho, you get a host of services that help you get around these problems and ensure a tension-free used car buying and ownership experience. These include:

Used car loan Used car certification and warranty Roadside assistance

Used Car Loan

Taking a used car loan becomes imperative if an all-cash purchase is not feasible. When you buy through CarDekho, we guide you not just in making the right used car choice, but also in finding you the best loan. Here's what all you can count us on as your trusted advisor:

Compare quotes from multiple banks: We have as many as seven major banks partnering with us to offer you the best interest rates for your purchase. Choose the one that suits you best.

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Opting for a certified used car from CarDekho ensures a virtually fault-free purchase. That's because we have a dedicated CarDekho Trustmark channel that undertakes as many as 217 multi-point checks before giving a clean sheet to a used car. The checks are extensive and conducted by qualified technical personnel. Physical inspection aside, we also do checks to ensure that the car has a clean, accident-free record. To find a certified used car, you can either go online and search for a TrustMark car in your vicinity or head to a used car dealership and look for the 'CarDekho TrustMark' sticker on the car.

Once you have satisfied yourself of having picked a reliable, certified used car, it's essential to get a warranty to avoid unnecessary expenses in case a defect occurs. You can choose from two packages  the first covers only engine and transmission while the other is a comprehensive coverage. With CarDekhos warranty, heres what all you stand to gain:

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Includes an in-depth report of all the 217 checks done in the car along with details of the vehicles standard features Minimum time-lag assistance: to keep you from waiting too long

to keep you from waiting too long Goodwill claims: Often, the warranty cover is extended to parts not covered as well, as a goodwill gesture to our customers.

Road Side Assistance (RSA)

Tyre puncture, mechanical failure, dead battery, heating problems and other issues often come without any warnings. Whats worse is when you are caught in such situations in the night or at a place without any repair shop nearby. This is where CarDekho's Road Side Assistance (RSA) comes to your rescue. Our services are tailor-made to your comfort and include Indias first 24X7 concierge support. Check out the 10 RSA services on offer:

1. Assistance on the go: Feel free to avail this service anytime of the day (24X7) for on-the-spot assistance and repair. Our team of trained representatives will assist you in case of a breakdown.

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All of the additional services mentioned above are aimed at making your buying and ownership experience a smooth, hassle-free affair. It is in our interest to ensure that your money is spent on a used car that runs trouble-free but if it doesnt, you can always rely on us and know that we are around to take care of the problem.
Modified On Jan 24, 2018 12:23 PM By Arun for Volkswagen Ameo

Volkswagen first tested waters in the Indian market with the Touareg and the Beetle way back in 2007. Over time, the German automaker has attempted to appeal to the masses with the Polo and the Vento. While the hatchback was a direct fit for the Indian market from VW's international line-up, the Vento was developed for emerging markets such as India, Brazil and Russia. Produced at the automaker's facility in Chakan, Pune, Volkswagen has exported over one lakh Made in India Ventos.

Now, Volkswagen has another trick up its sleeve. Say hello to the Ameo -- a car developed in India and most importantly, for India. Based on the same platform as the Polo, it will slot in between the hatch and the Vento. Pre-launch bookings are already underway and the car gets a cool mobile app as well. In case you are planning on buying one, check this variant-wise feature breakdown. Here's a quick recap of what you need to know to make that decision a bit more concrete.

What does it look like?

Like a Polo with a stubby boot. Right up to the C-pillar, the design is identical to the hatchback. The boot is integrated into the overall profile neatly, and it does not look like a last minute hack job. It is only when you view the Ameo dead-on from the rear that it looks slightly awkward. Our favourite elements of the design have to be the understated front profile and the clean silhouette.

How's it on the inside?

Identical to the Polo. Of course, there are minor additions that can easily be skipped if one isn't paying attention. The layout of the dashboard and the centre console remains identical. Like the hatch, the sedan too gets the lovely flat-bottom steering wheel, steering mounted controls and automatic climate control. Other goodies such as a touchscreen audio system, chilled glovebox, rain-sensing wipers, cruise control are also on offer.

Space at the rear bench is slightly better compared to the hatchback. The wheelbase is identical to the Polo, however, the rear seats seem to have better knee room. As a bonus, the Ameo also gets rear AC vents. Boot space is rated at 330-litres.

What's under the hood?

One can choose between a petrol or a diesel motor. A 5-speed manual transmission is standard on either engine, and one can opt for the slick-shifting 7-speed automatic gearbox with the diesel engine. Notably, the Ameo is the only car in its class to feature a dual clutch automatic gearbox. Other diesel-automatics, such as the Zest and the Swift Dzire, employ an automated manual transmission (AMT).

The Ameo will share engines with the hatchback, and feature the 1.2-litre MPi petrol and the 1.5-litre diesel engine. The petrol engine is good for 75PS / 110Nm whereas the diesel churns out 90PS / 230Nm. We expect mileage to be in the vicinity of 16kmpl and 20kmpl respectively.

What about safety?

Just like the Polo and the Vento, the Ameo will get dual-airbags as standard fitment across trim levels. The VW siblings are amongst the safest cars you can buy under 10 lakh rupees. In fact, the Vento TSi scored full five-stars in the NCAP crash test.

Is it any better than its rivals?

The Ameo will go head on against the Maruti Suzuki Swift Dzire, the Hyundai Xcent, the Honda Amaze, the Tata Zest and the Ford Figo Aspire. Volkswagen is the last entrant to this segment and it has ensured it doesn't enter the war with half an arsenal. Like we mentioned earlier, features such as cruise control, touchscreen audio system with MirrorLink, and rain-sensing wipers are unique to the Ameo in its class. Also, if the Polo and Vento are anything to go by, we expect this one to be good to drive, with sorted dynamics as well. Check a detailed spec comparison here.

What about price?

The Ameo is expected to slot in between the Polo and the Vento. Therefore, we expect prices for the base petrol variant to start at Rs 6 lakh. The diesel variant may carry a premium of a lakh over the equivalent petrol-powered trim.

So, why should I buy one? Also, what should I be wary of?

If you are on the lookout for a well-built, well-equipped compact sedan, the Ameo fits the bill well. The core USPs of the Ameo are build quality, equipment list and on-road manners. If these score high on your must-have checklist while buying a car, head to the VW showroom.

You need to be wary of the after sales service and the maintenance costs. VWs service network isn't as strong as Maruti or Hyundai, or even Honda for that matter, and spares are slightly on the expensive side.

Does the Ameo have what it takes to ruffle feathers of established players in the segment? We think, yes. We will be driving the Ameo in a couple of weeks, stay tuned for an in-depth review, coming soon! Meanwhile, here are our first impressions of the compact sedan.
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Urban Meyer made recruiting the state of Michigan a priority the second he took over at Ohio State, and the Buckeyes have made tremendous headway there the previous four years.

Ohio State has the chance to keep momentum going Thursday when four-star defensive end Corey Malone-Hatcher of St. Joseph announces his college decision during a ceremony at 3:30 p.m. at his high school.

Malone-Hatcher, a 6-foot-3, 246-pound prospect, posted a graphic on his public Twitter account that revealed his decision day and his top 10 schools: Michigan, Michigan State, Alabama, Ohio State, Tennessee, UCLA, Wisconsin, Notre Dame, Oklahoma and Penn State.

Rated the No. 16 weakside defensive end in the 2017 recruiting class in the 247Sports composite rankings, Malone-Hatcher is considered a heavy Michigan favorite. According to his recruiting profile, his other three favorites are Ohio State, Notre Dame and Alabama.

Ohio State has a verbal commitment from four-star outside linebacker Antjuan Simmons of Ann Arbor (Mich.) Pioneer in its 2017 recruiting class. That commitment is significant because you can see Michigan's campus from the front door of Simmons' high school.

If Simmons signs with Ohio State, that will be four straight Ohio State recruiting classes Meyer has inked with a prospect from Michigan.
NAFCU urges credit union representatives to visit with lawmakers this week while they are working in their home districts and states to discuss top industry issues, including data security and regulatory relief.

To set up meetings with lawmakers during in-district and -state work periods, NAFCU members can contact NAFCU Director of Political Affairs Dan OBrien at dobrien@nafcu.org.

NAFCU is pushing Congress on several issues of importance to credit unions, including data security and regulatory relief. Last week, NAFCU engaged in a week-long campaign, Stop the Data Breaches, to promote passage of the NAFCU-backed Data Security Act (H.R. 2205/S.961). The association is still encouraging credit unions to take action through its Grassroots Action Center to contact their members of Congress and urge them to support the legislation.

Coming up Sept. 18-21, credit union representatives will have the opportunity to meet one-on-one with their lawmakers during NAFCUs Congressional Caucus to discuss these issues and others in Washington. Registration is open.
We need to come to terms that the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem and coral reef ecosystems globally as we know them, are facing extinction. It is a climate emergency. The reef is our canary in a coalmine and it is now dying from the greenhouse gases we have released.

Early surveys of the Great Barrier Reef showed that 93 percent of reefs were affected by coral bleaching. Scientists have been undertaking extensive aerial and underwater surveys since then to refine these initial survey results. Scientists from the Coral Reef Centre of Excellence are now reporting that over 35 percent of coral north of Cairns in the northern and central regions are now dead or dying.

The impact of coral bleaching changes dramatically from north to south along the 2300km length of the Reef.

We found on average, that 35% of the corals are now dead or dying on 84 reefs that we surveyed along the northern and central sections of the Great Barrier Reef, between Townsville and Papua New Guinea, says Professor Terry Hughes, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University (JCU).

Some reefs are in much better shape, especially from Cairns southwards, where the average mortality is estimated at only 5%. This year is the third time in 18 years that the Great Barrier Reef has experienced mass bleaching due to global warming, and the current event is much more extreme than weve measured before."

These three events have all occurred while global temperatures have risen by just 1 degree C above the pre-industrial period. Were rapidly running out of time to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. concluded Terry Hughes.

Coral bleaching is caused when abnormal environmental conditions such as much warmer waters occurrs for a lengthy period. Warmer waters cause the coral polyps to expel their symbiotic tiny photosynthetic algae, called zooxanthellae. It is this algae that creates the vivid colours of the coral. Once the zooxanthellae is gone, the coral takes on a white or bleached appearance. The coral polyps can survive if the abnormal conditions don't last too long and the conditions allow the zooxanthellae to recolonise.

Surveys of the southern region reefs show that more than 95 percent of the corals have survived. They are expected to regain their normal colours in coming months. But the bleaching is likely to slow down their reproduction and growth rates.

It is critically important now to bolster the resilience of the Reef, and to maximise its natural capacity to recover, says Professor John Pandolfi from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at The University of Queensland.

But the reef is no longer as resilient as it once was, and its struggling to cope with three bleaching events in just 18 years. Many coastal reefs in particular are now severely degraded, he said.

Watch a short interview with Professor John Pandolfi tweeted by ABC News 24:

The Reef has suffered serious bleachings in 1998, 2002 and 2016. Coral reefs can take 10 to 15 years to recover from bleaching events. But with global temperatures increasing with climate change and more frequent marine heatwaves expected, coral reef ecosystems face a bleak future.

Recent research on this year's bleaching identify the main cause as increased warmth of waters by climate change and not primaruly El Nino. The study says that events of this scale may occurr on a yearly basis by the mid 2030s.

Most of the focus has been on the destruction and coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef, but the coral bleaching event has been global. The effects have also been felt in Western Australia, particularly on the Kimberley Coast.

In Western Australia, bleaching and mortality is also extensive and patchy, says Dr. Verena Schoepf from The University of Western Australia. On the Kimberley coast where I work, up to 80% of the corals are severely bleached, and at least 15% have died already."

The latest research from James Cook University shows that the Federal government needs to commit to $1 billion a year for 10 years to reduce water pollution, which would give the reef a chance to survive the impacts of climate change. In a study by Jon Brodie and Richard G. Pearson titled Ecosystem health of the Great Barrier Reef: Time for effective management action based on evidence they outline that many parts of the Great Barrier Reef are in bad shape and continuing to decline - with the main causes being pollutant runoff from agricultural and urban land, climate change impacts, and the effects of fishing.

It may seem like a lot of money, but we know that amount would be effective and its small by comparison to the economic worth of the GBR  which is around $20 billion per year, said Mr Brodie.

If we want to provide resilience against the current climate impacts, water management needs to be greatly improved, both in terms of money made available and a cohesive strategy, by 2025, said Mr Brodie.

Poor water quality is believed to be an important factor in Crown of Thorns outbreaks. The Scientists believe the next Crown of Thorns starfish (CoTS) wave of outbreaks is most likely to occur around 2025. The combination of climate change induced marine heatwaves and outbreaks of the Crown of Thorns starfish could lead to disaster and permanent loss of the coral said Brodie.

The researchers argue that more attention needs to be paid to the entire ecosystem and not just the portion managed by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. This would mean expanding the Great Barrier Reef management area to explicitly include, as well as the World Heritage Area, an area from the Torres Strait to Hervey Bay, and the Great Barrier Reef catchment inland. We need to be managing the ecological Great Barrier Reef, not just the jurisdictional one, said Mr Brodie.

Last chance election to save the reef warn scientists

Brodie argues that this election cycle is probably the last chance for politicians to put forward their plans of action on water quality and climate change to avoid permanent damage to the Great Barrier Reef.

It takes time for change to happen and we need to start fast. If something is not done in this election cycle then we may not see good coral again within our childrens lifetime.

Brodie is not alone for saying this is a last chance for the reef election. Imogen Zethoven for the the Australian Marine Conservation Society issued a statement saying AMCS and its 200,000 supporters call on Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to urgently release a strong climate policy during the election campaign, that is linked to the vulnerability of the Great Barrier Reef,

Scientists call this the last chance election for the Reef, yet there appears to be no sense of urgency about the plight of our Reef from the PM. If the Federal Government cant get serious about protecting the Reef after seeing this devastation unfold over recent weeks, when will it take action?"

She quoted Sir David Attenborough on the grave danger facing the reef: The twin perils brought by climate change  an increase in the temperature of the ocean and in its acidity  threaten its very existence.

According to Zethoven Bureau of Meteorology records showing that the Reef recorded its highest average sea surface temperatures for February, March and April since records began in 1900. And that as of late May, Reef waters are still warmer than average for this time of year.

The Coalition must release a climate policy that makes a credible contribution to delivering a healthy future for our natural wonder. The alternative is we risk losing the Reef, the $6 billion tourism industry and the 69,000 jobs that rely on it. The Federal government took action to ban sea dumping in the Great Barrier Reef. Now its time for the government to step up and deal comprehensively with the systemic issues threatening its very existence: climate change and farm pollution.

It must lift the bar or the next generation will lose the Reef, Imogen Zethoven warned in the statement.

Politicians biding to Save the Reef

Last week we saw a UNESCO report published on world heritage sites threatened and the impact on tourism. The Australian Government directed that all mentions of threats to Australia's world heritage sites be deleted. There are extraordinary details in this with the Department of the Environment saying it was done without informing the Environment Minister Greg Hunt. Equally disturbing was the fact that UNESCO acquiesced in this scientific censorship. Read more at Australian Government censors UNESCO report on Great Barrier Reef #ReefGate.

On Sunday evening climate change became an important component of the leaders debate between Bill Shorten and Malcolm Turnbull, although the impact of climate change on the reef and what can be done to ameliorate the impacts wasn't brought up in any detail.

On Monday, 30th May, Bill Shorten flew to Cairns where he committed an extra $380 million to protect the Great Barrier Reef. "This reef needs our protection and it needs it now."

The Labor Party, if elected on July 2nd, commits to investment in environmental management, science and research, and reef management with a $500 million fund for 5 years. "If we do not act, it is in serious risk of being irreparably damaged. If we don not act, our children will rightly ask 'Why didn't we'. This is not a problem that I am inclined to pass on to future generations."

But Shorten's promise falls far short of the $1 billion a year for 10 years that scientists say is needed.

Bill Shorten on the Great Barrier Reef tweeted by ABC News 24:

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, for the Coalition, then outlined the money set aside for funding in the budget to help save the Great Barrier Reef.

"The reef and the health of the reef is a great passion of mine and my government." said the Prime Minister.

Turnbull was Minister for the Environment with responsibility for the Great Barrier Reef in the final term of the Howard Government to the 2007 election.

"We have increased funding for protection of the reef in the last budget and $200 million from the emissions reduction fund...has been spent on buying carbon offsets from farmers in the catchments that lead into the reef. It is important that we continue to invest and that land management practices do not see more nutrients going into the reef."

The Emissions Reduction Fund pays polluters not to pollute and some projects are funded which may have happened anyway. It spends big for just 7 per cent emissions reduction to meet the low 2030 target. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's promise also falls far short of the $1 billion a year for 10 years that scientists say is needed. Watch on this tweet by ABC News 24:

A third announcement, by Greens Leader Senator Richard Di Natale, advocated for the necessity for a moratorium on new coal mines, "You can't be taken seriously on saving the Great Barrier Reef when you remain committed to opening up new coal mines which will sign the death warrant for the Great Barrier Reef."

Di Natale articulated that the major parties should not be taken seriously when they are taking fossil fuel donations, opening up new coal mines and slashing the renewable energy target. "Those are the critical things that need to happen if we are to take action on reversing the damage that has been done to the Great Barrier Reef"

No promise of money, but certainly a greater articulation of the problem, but Di Natale fails to grasp the enormity of the challenge facing Saving the reef with climate change. Watch on this tweet by ABC News 24:

While these political announcements are important, they are essentially platitudes to lull us into a false sense of security.

The funding pitifully falls short of the scientific estimate of what is, at the minimum, required for short term action. It is like applying band-aids to a body under massive trauma and stress with gaping wounds.

The political announcements vastly under estimate the effort now required to Save the Reef, if it can be saved, from the impacts of climate change.

Great Barrier Reef faces bleak future

Warmer sea surface temperatures threaten coral reefs. 2C is too hot[/caption]I have been reading some of the scientific papers and reports on marine science and climate change for over a decade. The fate of the Great Barrier Reef is bleak given the current temperature projections and lack of action in reducing emissions. Our politicians have ignored the best advice of scientists repeatedly over the last decade.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull should be well aware of the scientific basis of the climate change threat to the Great Barrier Reef: he was the Environment Minister from January 2007 to the defeat of the Howard Government in the November 24, 2007 election. That year in October fifty Australian marine scientists issued a strong warning in a Consensus declaration on Coral Reef Futures calling for immediate and substantive reduction targets in human produced greenhouse emissions.

To be blunt, I think we are on a deathwatch for coral reef ecosystems and the Great Barrier Reef. This has been clear for several years for anyone who has closely followed marine and coral reef science. Individual coral species more resilient may survive, and deep water corals may be more protected, but shallow water corals are gone. It is only a matter of time, a few decades.

This will have a huge knock-on impact. Eliminating coral reef habitats will lead to the extinction of about 10 to 20 percent of marine biodiversity on a global level. Half a billion people are directly reliant in some way on seafood for protein most of which is dependent on the diversity of coral reef ecosystems.

We are already experiencing global average temperatures of 1 degree Celsius this year. So far under the Paris Agreement country Nationally Determined Contributions would limit warming to between 2.7C and 3.5C, and that is if all the conditional plans are implemented.

But it gets worse. If we could stop all CO2 emissions now, the temperature would have a one-off rise by about 0.5C to 0.7C for about a decade from the reduction in aerosols, before stabilizing down, according to Professor David Karoly from the University of Melbourne.

It is what NASA scientist James Hansen has labelled as the Faustian bargain. While greenhouse gases from coal and other fossil fuels being burnt cause the greenhouse effect and increase global warming temperatures, the particulates and aerosols injected into the atmosphere also add a cooling effect. When we stop burning coal, we also stop the cooling impact of the aerosols, and so get a temporary boost in temperatures, while the accumulated CO2 will continue to maintain elevated temperatures for hundreds of years.

Marine Scientists have warned in research (K. Frieler et al 2013) that we cannot exceed 1.5C and maintain more than about 10 percent of coral species surviving. I wrote about this in 2012: Global Warming imperils coral reefs: 2 degrees warming is too hot say scientists

Here is Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg at Copenhagen COP15 in 2009 on the threat to the Great Barrier Reef, with the warning we needed to limit warming to 350ppm or 1.5C.

It's the ocean that is the main repository of heat, where 93 percent of the radiative warming happens. Even if we stabilise atmospheric temperatures quickly, the much larger ocean mass will not cool quickly: there is too much inertial mass.

The other factor is the impact of ocean acidification: the oceans are a carbon sink soaking up CO2 from the atmosphere but increasing the ocean acidity which impacts on marine creatures that extract Calcium Carbonate to build their shells - this includes corals. Coral calcification has decreased by about 14 per cent since 1990 (a tipping Point), is accelerating, and coral growth is projected to hit zero around about 2050, according to Dr Glenn Death. Oceans will continue to be a carbon sink soaking up CO2 even with zero emissions, but corals simply won't be able to grow in such acidic conditions.

I haven't seen any research or proposals for large scale reduction of ocean acidification. It may be impossible to do at the scale required.

Coral reefs really face a wicked problem. If we had started 20 years ago there was probably a good chance for ecosystem survival, but with the double whammy of ocean warming plus acidification, plus the addition of human industrial, agricultural and fishing impacts, the future looks very bleak.

Marine scientists have been jumping up and down for 10 years or more about the risks, but largely ignored by the politicians. It makes me very angry.

The implications for reef systems of 1.5C decarbonisation pathways

It is worth reading the latest Climate Council Reef report published early May 2016. Good scientific analysis, except it is fuzzy about possible decarbonisation pathways and the global average temperature trend and the effort required to mitigate these impacts.

With greatest respect to Will Steffen, Lesley Hughes and Dr Martin Rice, the Climate Council report doesn't really look at the feasibility of the lower 1.5C pathways, they just advocate them. It is where their analysis largely falls down, I think, in being overly optimistic.

I attended a seminar in April 2016 with Joeri Rogelj, a (world) expert on 1.5C decarbonisation pathways. Most scientists have focussed on 2C pathways, but when Paris included the 1.5C target there were very few people who had looked closely at these lower pathways. Joeri was one. This was my writeup of the seminar: Is #1o5C #ParisAgreement temperature pathway possible?. When you add this information to the research on the impact on ocean temperature and acidification on coral reefs it looks very bleak.

At present we are tracking at 2.7C to 3.5C if all the nationally determined commitments (NDCs) submitted to the UNFCCC Paris Agreement are implemented. At these temperatures extinction of coral reef ecosystems is almost certainly guaranteed. There is a stocktake and review mechanism as part of the Paris Agreement to increase these commitments over time to meet the 1.5C or 'well below 2C' targets, but this will not start before 2023.

Even with an emergency mobilisation ALL 1.5C pathways (Rogerlj) involve temperature overshoot this century: that is, global average temperatures will rise above 1.5C for many years before coming down by the end of the century. All these scenarios include the necessity for large scale negative emissions, when this technology is still to be invented at the scale required.

So that means bleaching temperatures from perhaps 2030 every second or third year for up to 50 years, plus the increasing impact of ocean acidification reducing calciferous growth of corals.

I am not alone in articulating this terribly sad conclusion. David Spratt from Climate Code Red also asks: After record, mind-numbing coral bleaching, what would it take to "Save the Reef"?. It is clear there are no easy answers.

At this stage nothing short of a climate emergency mobilisation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and transition to 100 per cent renewables is necessary, and still we may not succeed in saving the Great Barrier Reef. But it's our best shot.

Philip Sutton from Melbourne has also asked similar questions and come up with a similar answer: we need a climate emergency mobilisation to transition from fossil fuels to renewables.

In an article just published at Climatesafety.net (Our approach to climate and reef campaigning is a dead parrot) Sutton articulates that we need to do all of the following and at extreme speed for a chance to save the worlds coral ecosystems and our Great Barrier Reef. We have to:

"Stop investing in all new fossil fuel supply (ie. thermal coal, unconventional gas plus coking coal, conventional gas, and oil) and any other technologies that result in net greenhouse gas emissions.

"Shut down all current uses of coal, oil and gas and any other technologies that result in net greenhouse gas emissions.

"Create the necessary capacity to safely draw down all the excess CO2 in the air. This is a massive task  like reversing the work of the coal, oil and gas industries over the last 100 years  and it will take a great many decades and, under all estimates that are currently considered realistic, could take hundreds of years.

"Provide immediate Earth-cooling to protect aggregate food production and biodiversity and to prevent the crossing of key Earth system tipping points like the liberation of the stupendously large carbon stores in the Arctic and the ten metres or more of sea rise due to the loss of large slabs of the the ice sheets in Greenland, the West Antarctic and even parts of the East Antarctic  until natural cooling kicks in strongly enough to prevent these tipping points. This initial fast cooling can only be delivered by solar reflection methods.

It is Sutton's last point on an initial fast cooling that can only be delivered by solar reflection methods, that is controversial. This is solar radiation management (SRM) geo-engineering.

The most cost effective method of solar radiation management is sulfate particle injection into the stratosphere, to mimic volcanic aerosol injection, resulting in atmospheric cooling for one to two years at a time.

But solar radiation management comes with unintended consequences of changing rainfall distribution causing droughts and floods, affecting streamflow and agriculture in hard to predict ways. And when we stop the solar radiation management we will get a temperature bounce back to the original temperature trend. I looked at solar radiation management geo-engineering in a January 2014 post: Climate Geo-engineering study on sulphate injection shows Hydrological disruption to rain and severe drought.

We might save the reef, only to cause dislocation to our agricultural systems, increasing food insecurity, and altering extreme weather impacts in unforseen ways that will impact on human populations.

Implementing solar radiation management would also be difficult: as the effects are international, it would involve major international negotiation to proceed.

So whatever we should do for coral reef ecosystems we should do. But the hard reality is, it is probably palliative care at this stage that will play out over the next 20-30 years.

The pronouncements of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten and Greens Leader Richard Di Natale fall far short of what is required. The 'Jobs and growth' political slogan is meaningless when you consider the enormous social and economic harm climate change is already inflicting on our ways of living, and our sites of enormous natural beauty.

The first requirement is that we collectively face the truth with the threat of extinction of coral reef ecosystems and the Great Barrier Reef by climate change. The second is that we realise this is now a climate emergency that will impact our lives and future generations and natural ecosystems, and requires an emergency mobilisation by government and society.
Rodrigo Dutertes authoritarian neoliberalism isnt the answer to poverty and political abuse in the Philippines.



Rodrigo Dutertes election as president of the Philippines made global news. Its not hard to see why. Described as an outsider and a maverick, Duterte is a charismatic enigma.Hes known for his profanity-laden speeches, misogynistic jokes, and promises to give the police a free hand to murder suspects. But he also proclaims himself to be a socialist and the first leftist president of the Philippines.What does his success represent? Is his rise really anything like the change that he promises? And what does it mean for the Philippine left?Oligarchy in the PhilippinesTo understand Dutertes success, we have to look past his self-styled image as the leader of a popular uprising. Instead, we must place him in the context of Philippine economics and politics.The Philippine economy depends on profit from rents and the relative weakness of the state. The Philippines underdeveloped industrial base and impoverished agricultural sector mean that rent is a major source of wealth.Capitalists compete with each other to gain influence in the state apparatus, or even capture parts of it, to control markets and gain access to resources. Together, rent-seeking and competition for control of the state produces structural corruption which, in turn, produces institutionalized impunity.Philippine capitalism is controlled by a ruling class Alfred W. McCoy has described as an oligarchy made up of a cluster of families, knitted together by ties of blood and marriage, who combine political power and economic assets to direct the nations destiny.A small number of these families, who started in in agriculture, have dominated the Philippine oligarchy since the colonial period.When Spain opened Manila to trade in the second half of the nineteenth century, it produced a capitalist agricultural sector focused on international markets.Spain attempted to build a centralized bureaucracy to control the elite Filipino families, but it failed miserably, instead provoking a rebellion that ended after the United States took power.The United States introduced a degree of local autonomy into the countrys regions and elections, allowing the landed elite to secure their political dominance. As McCoy writes, US policies created a new class of provincial politicians and a national legislature that opened state resources for privatization by established and emerging families.Patron-client relationships became the backbone of Philippine politics: vertical connections ran from wealthy, landed politicians to less influential families in urban areas and then further down to the villages. Political parties became clusters of upper-class families and their clients, traditionally centered in Manila.The Marcos dictatorship upset this arrangement. The United States supported Marcos because it thought a stronger, more centralized state would absorb nationalist challenges to its hegemony and ensure that the Philippines remained a stable pillar of US imperialism in Southeast Asia.But this attempt at a passive revolution largely failed because of the ruling cliques predatory nature: they privatized the Philippine state to an unprecedented degree, further alienating the populace in the process.After Marcos was overthrown in 1986, the Philippines reverted back to the oligarchic democracy described above, but with a few important differences. The Marcos interlude broke the previous existing two-party system, and new players rose to the top. A range of parties flourished.But just as before, these parties did not fight for a coherent political platform: instead, they organized networks of patrons and clients.Since the nineties, this system has not been fundamentally threatened, but the governments it has produced have often been unstable, challenged from below and riven by internal rivalries.Meanwhile, a growing population and the state apparatus have significantly altered the traditional patron-client relationships. Increased use of violence and more dispersed forms of clientelism now supplement the paternalist patron-client relationships.The line between politicians personal property and public funds is thin as they need to distribute government jobs and contracts or to buy votes to win support. The farther one gets from Manila, the more blatant these practices become.All of this makes successful electoral campaigns exceedingly expensive: a politicians affiliation with tycoons and wealthy families is more important than platform substance. The kingmaking families might have haciendero roots but have branched out in finance, mining, construction, and other branches of the economy.Exacerbating this situation, Philippine campaign-financing laws do not put limits on personal or corporate campaign donations and politicians do not have to reveal their backers until after the election.The popular classes arent ignored in campaign spectacles: politicians reach them with outright vote-buying, gifts, bribes, and campaign sorties filled with spectacle, but little substance. What is promised is almost never delivered: in this campaign, every candidate said they would end contractual labor, though the chances of them going against the interests of the oligarchy in this way are slim.The Humble ServantDutertes political career has flourished because of the oligarchy. He is related to the Durano and Almendras families, who have been prominent political figures in Dutertes birth region, Cebu, for decades.The Dutertes themselves, writes Michael Cullinane in An Anarchy of Families, had long been a significant political family in Danao, a city in Cebu province. Dutertes father, Vicente G. Duterte, was an attorney, mayor of Danao, and, after succeeding Alejandro Almendras, governor of Davao province from 1959 to 1965. This is where his son would build his political base.After the 1986 People Power Revolution brought down Marcos, Rodrigo Duterte became vice mayor of Davao City. He ran for mayor two years later and held the position for ten years.Almendras, by then a seasoned politician and logging magnate, as well as former Marcos cronies like Manuel Garcia, Elias Lopez, and Ricardo Limso supported Dutertes first steps into politics.When Duterte reached the three-term limit for mayor, he became a member of the House of Representatives. He returned as mayor of Davao City three years later. He reached the limit again in 2010, so he became vice mayor, trading positions with his daughter, Sara Duterte-Carpio, who became mayor in his place.In Davao City, Duterte cultivated his image as a humble servant of the people. But pre-election revelations about his personal wealth should surprise no one.When it came out that Duterte has an undeclared bank account worth over $4 million, he waved it away, saying it was from gifts from his wealthy friends. What wealth he did declare has shown remarkable growth: for the last nineteen years, it grew an average of 132.6 percent annually.We should understand Duterte as a larger-than-usual version of the strongman, a not-unusual figure in Philippine politics. Political scientist Patricio Abinaless work on Mindanao describes the strongman as a regional representative of more powerful, Manila-based actors. Strongmen amass power through clientelist networks, control over vital enterprises and, most important of all, a monopoly of the means of coercion and violence.In this analysis, Rodrigo Duterte is an outsider in Manila, the representative of a less powerful, more provincial layer of the Philippine elite. Some of his allies, like proposed minister of finance Carlos Sonny Dominguez, also come from Mindanao-based clans or studied together with Duterte.But after the elections, other establishment parties and turncoats from the incumbent government quickly joined Dutertes coalition, anxious to preserve their access to power and public resources.Leftist trappings aside, this is the clearest way to understand Duterte: a regional boss who managed to strike it big by winning the presidency, pushing aside a sector of the traditional high elite. The most significant change his election promises is that Manilas elite has been partially replaced by another, more provincial segment of the countrys oligarchy.Money and MurderDutertes camp managed to win by harnessing a wave of anger and dissatisfaction dispersed over different social classes.He could not have won without his base in Davao City. Davao City is relatively thinly populated, with 1.45 million residents occupying 2,444 square kilometers. It is a commercial hub and by far the most important city on Mindanao, the second-largest island of the Philippine archipelago. Mindanaos economy is mainly agricultural, and it remains on the periphery of Philippine social and political life.Now heralded as an example of good governance, in the mid-1980s Davao City was a battlefield.The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing, the New Peoples Army (NPA), were at the height of their power. The NPA was testing urban warfare tactics in Davao, trying to develop methods to bring their rural guerrilla war into the cities.But by the time Duterte became mayor, CPP influence in Davao City had collapsed. The government used an anticommunist militia, Alsa Masa (Risen Masses), made up of former army and police personnel, local thugs, and defectors from the NPA and supported by military commanders and local businessmen, to keep them out. They succeeded in getting rid of not only the underground left and the guerrillas, but also the legal, aboveground left groups.Alsa Masa was primarily active under Dutertes predecessor, but according to a 1988 report by Erik Guyot of the Institute of Current World Affairs, Duterte supported the anticommunist vigilantes. He supposedly gave them money and declared, the peace and order situation has greatly improved with the advent of the Alsa Masa.Today, Davao City is called the safest city in Southeast Asia, and Dutertes perceived success in fighting crime there was central to his presidential campaign.But his tough stance on crime is a euphemism: under his mayorship, a death squad nicknamed the Davao Death Squad or DDS murdered hundreds of people and became a fixture of the city. Just like Alsa Masa, the DDS is made up of former NPA fighters and local toughs, operating under the protection and with the cooperation of local authorities.According to a Human Rights Watch report, local activists say death-squad killings of alleged drug dealers, petty criminals, and street children in Davao City started sometime in the mid-1990s.The report cites the Coalition Against Summary Execution (CASE) and the Tambayan Center for the Care of Abused Children (Tambayan) who claim the number of death-squad killings in Davao City increased dramatically in the second half of the 2000s  seemingly in response to increasing crime rates as the city grew.CASE documented 814 death-squad killings in Davao City between 1998 and early 2009. The victims were members of the urban poor, mostly suspects in petty street crimes like drug use, small-scale drug dealing, or cell phone theft.Duterte has denied DDSs existence, but made it clear he supports the extrajudicial killing of suspected criminals. He has even boasted of the number of people he has supposedly killed himself.The murders have not been unpopular. They are seen by many as a practical response to an ineffective judicial system and corrupt law enforcement. This belief is shared by many on the Philippine right more generally, who support police violence, including summary executions, as a solution to crime.Beyond Davao, Duterte enjoys national popularity as a crime-buster. Many working-class Filipinos believe crime is spiraling out of control, an impression fed by the medias sensational focus on particularly gruesome cases. But according to a poll by Social Weather Stations, Duterte voters come disproportionately from the wealthier layers of the population, who are attracted to his promise to eradicate street crime.They are willing to accept increased state violence and to ignore the fact that Davao Citys safety is mostly fictional  based on manipulated statistics and without consideration of the citys most vulnerable residents  in the hope that Duterte will repeat his reported success on a national scale.To many of his admirers, Duterte is a like a patriarchal figure who protects  but also punishes  his inferiors. His strongman persona appeals to those conservatives who believe that the only thing wrong with the existing rules is their enforcement.His supporters complain that Filipinos lack discipline and look to him to impose respect for order on the population at large. His proposals to implement a nationwide curfew, to ban smoking in the street, and to limit the sale of alcohol all fit this sensibility.The fact that so many wealthy Filipinos support Duterte may be surprising. After all, it was elites that benefited most from the Aquino government. He implemented the kind of policies that have broad support in the more affluent parts of Philippine society, declared fighting corruption a priority, and succeeded according to neoliberal measures.Philippine GDP grew by record numbers during his presidential term. By local standards, the Aquino government was exceptionally stable, facing serious threats neither from the popular classes nor from other oligarchic factions.But affluent Filipinos supported Duterte in the election, rejecting Mar Roxas, the incumbent governments candidate.How did the Aquino governments credibility break down so much so that Duterte could sweep the elections? One answer is that Aquinos relative successes bred impatience, which was exacerbated as he came to be seen as a less and less effective leader.This is not to say that the popular classes did not support Duterte. Philippine sociologist and political activist Walden Bello cites Dutertes railing against corruption and poverty, his obvious disdain for the rich  the conos as he called them  and above all, his coming across as one of you guys that acted as a magnet to workers, urban poor, peasants, and the lower middle class.The Aquino governments successes mainly benefited the wealthy, and the government came across as arrogant and out of touch when it ignored the popular classes criticism.Roxas was plagued by similar weaknesses. As scion of one of the countrys most prestigious families (he is the grandson of Manuel Roxas, first president of the independent Philippine republic), he was too closely associated with the government and appeared too much like the career politician and privileged son of the high elite that he is to appeal to the dissatisfied electorate.In a debate with Roxas, Duterte played up his ordinary-guy persona by making fun of the privileged policy wonk.He said he would end the conflict between the Philippines and China over parts of the South China Sea (or West Philippine Sea) by personally planting a Philippine flag on the disputed atolls. Seeing his opponents stunned reaction, Duterte added he would get there on a jet ski.This outsider flair has always played for him. Support for Duterte is especially strong in his home region of Mindanao because his proposals directly address their grievances with Manila and seem to offer an end to decades of unrest.His proposals for a more decentralized and federal system of government respond directly to those who feel neglected and exploited by what they call imperial Manila. Further, he supports autonomy for Muslim Filipinos.The Muslim rebels in Mindanao renounced their original goal of secession long ago and now demand autonomy. Dutertes opposition to military operations against them shows that he is more sympathetic to their complaints than traditional Manila oligarchs.Finally, he promises to reopen peace talks with the CPP. NPA activity is largely concentrated in Mindanao and, after decades of armed struggle, many residents see that the government cannot make the insurgency disappear by simply pouring in more soldiers. But members of the high elite  who see the Maoist insurgency as the work of evil ideologues manipulating ignorant peasant folk  still believe that godless Communism needs to be crushed.People believe Duterte can make peace with the Maoists because he developed good personal relationships with them in the eighties. Despite his association with former Marcos cronies, his political allies back then included Leoncio Jun Evasco Jr, a former CPP leader, and the late Erasto Nonoy Librado, secretary general of Kilusang Mayo Uno-Mindanao, the trade union movement associated with the pro-CPP national-democratic milieu.He developed a live-and-let-live relationship with the guerrillas by not supporting military operations against NPA operations concentrated in the regions bordering Davao.The legal national-democratic organizations have been relatively soft in their criticism of Duterte, treating him instead as a kind of ally. Much of the critical research on the DDS does not come from the national-democratic human rights groups but from more broad left-liberal ones.Duterte manages to balance the countrys far right and the Maoists. Since 2001, he has endorsed parties from the national-democratic bloc while also voicing his admiration for Ferdinand Marcos and calling for his burial in the cemetery for national heroes.Many of Dutertes supposed contradictions make more sense once he is put in his regional context. He can be a Filipino nationalist while supporting a decentralized government, calling for Muslim autonomy, and promoting peace with the CPP.His strange combination of machismo, misogyny, and support for gay marriage makes sense when you understand the long tradition of a visible, but strongly delineated and non-threatening, homosexuality in Mindanao.Mix-and-Match ElectionsDuterte declared himself a socialist and the first leftist president of the Philippines  but there is little reason to believe this is anything more than demagogy. The policies of his presidency seem to be more of the same.Barely confirmed as the winner, Duterte made it clear that he intends to follow the main lines of Aquinos economic policies. Capital has responded favorably: a few days after the election, Bloomberg reported that Duterte is reinvigorating financial markets in the Philippines with his transformation into a business-friendly leader.His initial economic statements, as well as the suggested names for his cabinet (mostly establishment figures, many of whom were part of previous administrations), drew praise from the financial giant JPMorgan, which declared that financial markets will welcome the explicit commitment of the incoming administration in keeping the current macro-economic policies.In fact, it seems that Duterte will liberalize the Philippine economy even more than Aquino or Roxas would. He wants to remove the constitutional limit on foreign ownership of firms in the Philippines, to organize more Special Economic Zones, and to lower corporate taxes.The Left, mostly unable to gain a foothold in an electoral field dominated by clientelism and corruption, has not been able to successfully oppose this.After the fall of the Marcos dictatorship, the national democrats organized the Partido ng Bayan (Peoples Party), but after two disappointing elections, the party practically dissolved itself. The situation has not improved much in the intervening years.In 2010, two well-known national-democratic candidates, Satur Ocampo and Liza Maza, ran for Senate, but they did not finish among the winning twelve candidates.Maza came in twenty-fifth with 3.6 million votes, while Ocampo received 3.3 million votes to finish in twenty-sixth place. The only national-democratic senatorial candidate in 2016, Neri Colmenares, gathered almost 6.5 million votes, but came in twentieth, failing to win a seat.The Philippine left has had more success in the so-called party-list elections. Fifty-seven seats in the House of Representatives (20 percent of the total) are set aside for party lists, which are supposed to represent geographically dispersed and marginalized groups who would otherwise not be represented. Filipinos can vote for one of the party-lists in addition to specific candidates.The first party-list elections took place in 1998 and saw the Philippine lefts return to Congress. Several socialist and social-democratic groups, such as Sanlakas and Akbayan, managed to win seats.The national democrats returned to electoral politics in 2001 with the organization of Bayan Muna (Nation First). Since then, they have overtaken other leftist forces in the party-list elections and organized a variety of lists targeting different sectors.But the Left is struggling here as well. The predatory elite have discovered that the system can be used to access government resources and have organized their own party lists.In fact, several of the most electorally successful lists have little to do with the marginalized groups they supposedly represent. Instead, businessmen, former high-ranking government officials, and members of political families use them to get elected.One way the Left has tried to overcome the hurdles put up by the oligarchs is through alliances with established bourgeois parties. But these alliances require the Left to make sweeping political concessions.This was the road chosen by Akbayan, which was originally created as an alliance between different socialist and social-democratic groups. It has been one of the more successful left-wing electoral formations.But in 2010, it allied with Benigno Aquino and his Liberal Party. During the Aquino government, Akbayan moved closer and closer to the government, committing itself to the 2016 government candidate  no matter who it would be.Akbayans alliance seems to have paid off, at least for Ana Theresia Hontiveros, its senatorial candidate. After toning down her leftist profile and becoming almost indistinguishable from a liberal reformist, she finally made it to the wining twelve. But Akbayan itself fell from fifth (in 2013) to thirteenth in this years party-list elections.Dissatisfied with his partys unconditional support for Aquino and his Liberal Party, Akbayans best-known representative, Walden Bello, resigned his congressional seat in 2015. Commenting on his partys poor performance this year, Bello said; I dont want to rub it in at this point but since Ive been asked, I think the loss of over two hundred thousand votes from 2013 and then slipping from fifth to thirteenth [was probably due to the partys] identification with the Liberal Party . . . Results for the national-democratic Bayan Muna were also disappointing. The party got its start in 2001 with the support of then-president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The CPP apparently was able to secure support from the Macapagal-Arroyo clan that helped Bayan Muna receive the most number of votes for the Party List and the maximum of possible seats, writes Dominique Caouette in his 2004 study of the CPP. But this year Bayan Muna fell to fourteenth place (from third in 2013).The national-democratic bloc regularly makes alliances with bourgeois politicians founded on basis of written political agreements. But nobody really expects the politicians to uphold these documents.What matters is the transactional nature of the agreement: the national democrats provide their grassroots supporters votes in exchange for campaign resources and publicity. The alliances do win congressional seats, but do little to build an independent socialist movement because it links the Left to their senior partners.It has also led to unexpected alliances, such as in 2010, when national-democratic candidates shared the platform with Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr, the proud son of the late dictator who was then running (successfully, as it turned out) for Senate.This year, however, there was an interesting experiment that could offer another way forward. After resigning his seat, Walden Bello ran as an independent. Although he still considers himself an Akbayan member, the party did not support his campaign.Bello also refused money from the oligarchs, turned down support from religious leaders, and did not form alliances with the established parties. Instead, the campaign relied on the support of social movements and progressive groups.The number of votes Bello gathered was small: just over one million. But Bellos independent candidacy and progressive platform can become a first step toward something bigger.As always, the underground layers of the national-democratic movement, the CPP itself, and its diplomatic front, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) did not officially endorse any candidate, calling for revolution, not elections.But one prominent Maoist had some nice things to say about Duterte. Jose Maria Sison, the founding chair of the CPP and still the main ideologue of Philippine Maoism, declared in pre-election interviews that a Duterte presidency would be the best option for national unity. He also expressed optimism about the reforms the new government could bring. In a first for Philippine presidential campaigns, Sison and Duterte talked (via Skype) a few weeks before the elections.Makabayan, the aboveground political alliance of national democrats, declared its support for presidential candidate Grace Poe. But media reports claim that part of their movement did support Duterte.Peter Tiu Lavina, a Duterte spokesperson, criticized the national-democratic support for Poe, claiming that at least their units in Mindanao which were more grounded did not go with the selfish, myopic and opportunist posturing of its national higher organs.CPP units gave Dutertes image as a peace-builder another boost by handing over prisoners of war to him personally while his election campaign was in full swing. Duterte claims Sison, who has been living in the Netherlands in exile for the last few decades, looks forward to coming home once peace negotiations are reopened. Duterte has also offered the CPP several cabinet positions, an offer Sison welcomed as magnanimous.Luis Jalandoni of the NDFP said the proposal is a big step towards unity and will remove the shackles of oppression and exploitation. The NDFP even suggested Duterte could be the Philippines Hugo Chavez.But Dutertes proposals put the CPP in a difficult position. After years of cultivating ties with the CPP units in Mindanao, he has sympathy among them. If they refuse his request for support, Duterte could try to drive a wedge between the Mindanao units and the party leadership.But if the CPP accepts his offer, they risk ending up as apologists for a bourgeois government. Sisons suggestion that the proposed cabinet positions go to qualified patriots, who are not necessarily CPP members, would put some distance between the party and the government.Dutertes plan to reopen peace negotiations poses similar dilemmas. The CPP has always insisted that armed revolution is the only way to solve the countrys problems and claims their guerrilla army is on the verge of escalating to a new, higher level.The new government however wants the Maoists to give up arms. Refusing the offer to negotiate would cost the CPP support, but they need more mass support to force the government to make meaningful concessions.It is telling that Duterte offered posts in social affairs to the national democrats while leaving the real core of state power, such as finance and the military, in the hands of establishment representatives.It is perhaps still too early to tell what kind of revolution Duterte will bring to the Philippines. One thing that seems certain is that citizens can expect experiments with draconian law-and-order policies. Duterte has said he wants to reintroduce the death penalty  by hanging.His history in Davao City shows he does not care for suspects civil rights. The poorest, most vulnerable parts of society will pay the highest price for this. Police violence is already rampant. Now the cops have a president who thinks they should be able to act without consequences.The situation may seem bleak from the outside. A Duterte presidency will not tackle the impunity, poverty, and inequality that plague the country. Only a strong left can do this. The Philippines already has a relatively powerful left, but it is dispersed over a large number of political groups, movements, and social organizations.Translating this social weight into political representation is difficult, as the recent election results proved. But the building of an independent, socialist left is long overdue, and there are many committed activists who can make it a reality.Alex de Jong is editor of the socialist journal Grenzeloos and an activist in the Netherlands.
Beverly Hills, CA The owners of a French bakery in California have been ordered to pay more than $15 million to settle allegations of abuse of workers, including failure to pay The owners of a French bakery in California have been ordered to pay more than $15 million to settle allegations of abuse of workers, including failure to pay overtime , human trafficking and retaliation. LAmande French Bakery, with locations in Beverly Hills and Torrance before it closed, was accused of trafficking workers from the Philippines to California, paying them well below minimum wage, and subjecting them to terrible living conditions. In 2014, the bakerys owners were ordered by the California Labor Commissioners Office to pay almost $250,000 to workers for wage violations.

The employee lawsuit was filed by 11 Filipino workers, who were brought to California on E-2 visas, with promises that they would earn double the pay in California that they earned at home. E-2 visas are used to authorize foreign nationals who invest in US businesses to bring foreign workers to the United States for up to five years. But workers brought in on an E-2 visa must have specialized skills that are considered essential to the business, or they must perform executive or supervisory roles within the business.The plaintiffs were allegedly promised work as skilled bakery chefs and managers, but instead were put in menial work and told they would owe the bakery owners $11,000 if they did not continue in their employment. Some workers were paid as little as $2 per hour for painting, cleaning and landscaping before the bakery opened, making it almost impossible for them to make the $11,000 they would need to pay their employer. They also reportedly slept for months on the floor of their employers home.When the bakery opened, the workers endured 13-hour workdays, seven days a week, and were not given time off for illness or injury. Their hours were compensated at around $3 and hour and allegedly did not include overtime pay.When the Workers complained about the long hours, illegally low pay, and intolerable conditions, Ana [owner of the bakery] threatened to collect on the Workers $11,000 debt, an amount that the Workers had no means to repay, the lawsuit argues. When the California Labor Commissioners Office found out about working conditions at the bakery and started an investigation, the bakerys owners allegedly harassed and threatened the Workers to hide the wage and hour violations.On May 2, US District Judge Fernando Olguin granted a default judgment against the owners of the bakery - Analiza Moitinho de Almeida and her husband Goncalo - awarding the workers more than $15 million. Among that, according to(5/9/16), was more than $3.7 million in compensatory damages for trafficking, more than $3.7 million in punitive damages for trafficking, and more than $1 million in damages for wage and hour violations. The defendants have reportedly said they did not violate any laws and did not mistreat their workers.
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-UK detectives storm Nigeria to gather more evidence against embattled Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke

- The UK investigators visit to Nigeria is part of the build-up to the trial of the ex-minister in London

- She will be returning to the court again in September

Diezani-Alison-Madueke

Some investigators from the United Kingdom are currently in Nigeria to gather more evidence against embattled a former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, The Nation newspaper is reporting.

The UK investigators visit to Nigeria is part of the build-up to the trial of the ex-minister in London. Mrs Alison-Madueke and four others were arrested in London on October 2, 2015 by the National Crime Agency( NCA) but were released on conditional police bail, pending further investigation both in the UK and overseas.

READ ALSO: SHOCKER! You cant probe our campaign fund, APC chairman John Oyegun says

The ex-minister is under investigation in the UK over the missing $20billion oil cash, phoney crude oil lifting contracts, $115million poll bribery money, the $1.092b Malabu oil deal and the N5.2billion ($25m) oil cash paid by an Indian oil firm for an oil block

Recall that the UK team inspected the former ministers multi-billion naira mansion, her 600,000 exotic wrist watch and gold and diamond jewelry which have been confiscated.

Mrs Alison- Madueke has twice in six months appeared before a London court to answer charges regarding the 27,000 money laundering and bribery allegation made against her by the NCA.

She will be returning to the court again in September.

READ ALSO: Corruption: FG strikes harder, read what this government just did

With the outcome of the fact-finding mission of the UK team, I think so far, the investigation has reached a convenient bend for the prosecution of the ex-minister, an EFCC source who is familiar with the trip of the investigators was quoted.

According to the report, there were indications that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has also frozen Mrs Alison-Maduekes bank accounts in relation to her involvement in a $115m (N23, 299,705,000billion) 2015 poll bribery scandal.

It is too early to disclose the amounts involved in order not to prejudice investigation. We are discovering more on daily basis as some complicit banks are now cooperating. We are allowed by law to place suspicious accounts and assets under interim forfeiture until the court decides otherwise. We are collaborating with anti-graft agencies in other jurisdictions on her case, the course added.

Meanwhile, President Muhammadu Buhari recently inaugurated a National Prosecution Coordination Committee (NPCC) at the Presidential Villa, Abuja. The committee is to ensure effective prosecution of high criminal cases in the country.

Source: Legit.ng
There is no doubt Nigeria is a country with diverse tribes; these tribes have their own culture and do things that are exclusive to them. it is also possible for a tribe in Nigeria to say something and get people outside the tribe looking lost.

There are slangs and codes used while conversing; these slangs are mainly known by people who live in the country or people who show interest in learning them. As a result of the usage of these slangs, some of them have become so popular and are widely used by almost everybody in the country.

Pidgin is a language spoken by most Nigerians; it is the break-even language as most tribes are able to speak and understand it. Pidgin is also known as broken English because English is the basis of the language. Although, Warri people feel it is exclusive to them, people from other regions in the country also speak the language.

In major cities like Lagos, Abuja and Portharcourt, it is very rare for one to move round without speaking pidgin or hearing some pidgin slangs. Since we have given you a piece on some of the popular slangs used in Nigeria and what they mean, we would be checking out some of the pidgin slangs used in Nigeria and what they mean.

Find some of the pidgin slangs below:

1. Fall my hand

This is a popular slang in Nigeria. When the speaker says no go fall my hand, he or she means she does not want to be disappointed. Nigerians often use this phrase when conversing with one another.

2. I go change am for you

As funny as this pidgin slang sounds, it usually heard when the speaker is giving out words of warning. This is the speakers way of asking someone to be careful and not get him or her angry.

When you hear this phrase in Nigeria, do not think the speaker is talking about change; it could also be used in another context where the speaker is being lenient and is talking about replacing an object.

3. Pepper don red

This is another popular slangs Nigerian use while communicating. When this phrase is being used when talking about a person, it means the persons luck has changed and the person is richer.

4. Baff up

When Nigerians use this slang, they are talking about someone being nicely dressed. Baff up could be substituted for Kak up which means the same thing. When this pidgin slang is heard, the speaker is commending the dress sense of a person.

5. Bust my skeroo

When this pidgin slang is heard, the speaker is obviously a Warri person or someone affiliated to that part of the country. This means to blow ones mind. The speaker is obviously amazed or wowed by something.

READ ALSO: Tagalog curse words used by Pinoys on a daily basis

6. Yan

This means talk or gist. Sometimes the speaker could say wetin you dey yan? This means what are you talking about? It is a slang used by most Nigerians when pidgin is being spoken.

7. Crash

This is another popular pidgin slang used in Nigeria. Although the word itself is an English word, when it is being strung along with other pidgin words, it means to sleep. It is talking about the speakers tiredness and the need to rest or sleep.

8. You dey kolo

This means someone is crazy. This means whoever the speaker is referring to needs to have his or her head checked. It is a popular slang in Nigeria and people often use it while teasing themselves about a particular situation or thing.

9. Yanga or effizy

This slang means to be boisterous or pompous. It is quite possible for someone who does not understand pidgin or the slangs used in Nigeria to be completely lost while he or she is being analyzed with this language.

As a result of the popularity of this slang, a Nigerian who reside in his home country would understand this.

10. Fabu

Oh boy no dey give me that kind fabu. This sentence is warning someone off lying. Fabu means lie; and as used in the example above, it means the speaker is aware of the gist being fake and is expressing his or her disbelief.

11. Gbege

Gbege means trouble. It could be used along with some other words or said as is it is. it could be substituted with the word gobe which means the same thing. Nigerians often use it while conversing.

12. Demor

This means to show off; some Nigerians indeed like to pose or demor with things that do not belong to them. This means to act up and pretend to be something one is not.

13. The shenkiz dem jst dey matrix

The word shenkiz or cury is used to refer to ladies or girls. This pidgin slang as expressed above means the girls are tripping. The speaker must have identified a group of girls who are interested in him or something he has.

14. Jones

Do not mistake this word for the name of a person even though it is in reality. When this is used as slang, it is talking about someone or a group of people not being smart in a particular situation. Babe, you don jones. The speaker is talking about someone not seizing the opportunity where he or she ought to.

READ ALSO: 7 sets of guys that find it difficult to woo women

15. Shak up

This slang means to be drunk or to consume a large amount of alcohol. The word could also be substituted for the word shayo which means the same thing.

16. Jack

This slang is popularly used among students in Nigeria. It means to read.

17. Waka

Waka means to walk. Whatever follows this slang would now indicate how fast or slow the person being talked about is moving. When the word is being duplicated, it could mean aimless movement around the town.

18. All join

When you hear this pidgin slang, it is talking about a collective item or group of things. It means everything is included.

READ ALSO: 6 signs your woman would sleep around in marriage

19. Aproko

This is slang means to gossip. Anybody who is fond of talking about other peoples businesses and affairs is labelled as an aproko.

20. Sort

When this slang is being used while speaking pidgin it means to bribe someone. When police officers ask drivers to sort them while driving, they want to be bribed.

Source: Legit.ng
- Nigerian army justified the killing pro-Biafra supporters

- According to military spokesman, 5 members of IPOB were killed, 8 wounded while 9 were arrested

The Nigerian army has explained why the soldiers were forced to kill pro-Biafran activists on May 30, Monday, The Cable reports.

Sani Usman, armys spokesman, said in statement that the military shot protesters over unwarranted attack, breach of peace and creation of wide spread panic, tension and apprehension.

The Biafra group said that at least 30 protesters commemorating the 49th anniversary of the declaration of the defunct Biafra Republic by Odumegwu Ojukwu, were killed.

At the same time police said that five activists were shot dead while many others arrested.

READ ALSO: Shocking: Read what police IG Arase orders to do with pro-Biafran activists

Army spokesperson justified the action, adding that the security agents resorted to rules of engagement as a result of the violent attacks from the pro-Biafra supporters.

The statement reads in part: Due to the wide spread panic, tension and apprehension that generated from the activities of the MASSOB and IPOB members, security agencies which comprised of detachment of Nigerian Navy, Nigeria Police, Department of State Service, National Drug Law Enforcement Agency were compelled to intervene in consonance with constitutional provisions of aid to civil authority where and when such occasion demands, the statement read.

The overarching imperative to ensure a reign of peace, security and stability in this circumstance was most starring.

The nature of this attack involved brazen employment of various types of fire arms and all sorts of crude weapons, volatile cocktail such as acid and dynamites.

Instructively, troops of 82 division Nigerian army as the lead agency of the security agents had to invoke the extant Rules of Engagement (ROE) to resort to self defence, protection of the strategic Niger Bridge, prevent re-enforcement of the pro-Biafra members apparently surging ahead from the far side of the strategic Niger Bridge at Onitsha. All these efforts were in order to de-escalate the palpable tension as well as ward off the apparent threats to lives and property in the general area.

READ ALSO: MUST READ: Biafra attempts to break away from Nigeria 50 years ago (photos)

In the aftermath of the fire fight that ensued, many of own troops sustained varying degrees of injury. These injured troops are currently receiving treatment at own medical centre. Similarly, 5 members of MASSOB/IPOB were killed, 8 wounded while 9 were arrested for due legal actions.

On this day in 1967 the late General Ojukwu declared the Republic of Biafra, after suffering through years of suppression under Nigerias military government.

Source: Legit.ng
Tandem Coffee Roasters first shop in Portland, Maine, was opened in 2012. The charming space includes a roastery and just enough tables to give it a cozy feel. Two years later, Tandem opened a bakery and coffee shop across town. With their freshly-roasted beans, expertly-prepared espresso drinks and malted iced coffee, Tandem has made a name for itself in a small city where coffee is big.

Will Pratt, who owns Tandem with his wife Kathleen, discusses Tandems relationship-driven supply chain, vinyl records and the local coffee culture.

Paste: Whats important to Tandem from the perspective of buying beans?

Will Pratt: The coffee has to have a story. Most of our coffee comes through importers, but were starting to travel a little bit with them, too. The people that we work with have been doing it for a long time; theyre vetted, and we know their principles.

Ideally, wed like to have coffees from the same farms, from the same co-ops, year after year. It doesnt always work out that way, but that is what were striving for and building as many direct relationships as possible. Also, were looking for really clean, really sweet coffees. Those are the two most important things.

Paste: What origins are you particularly excited about right now?

WP: We just sent our production manager to Guatemala and Honduras and all of the coffees that she sourced while she was in Guatemala have just landed. She went to pretty much every farm that we are going to be serving. That always makes the biggest difference. Last year, we went to Ethiopia and bought coffees in February, and when they finally came in, it was like being there all over again.

Paste: When you meet the farmer youre working with, why is it so exciting?

WP: Thats hard to explain. You dont really think about it before you go, but when youre on a coffee farm, it makes your job all make sense. Even though you thought it made sense already. This is why we do this.

Its another amazing relationship. Youre just more excited about your job and more excited about your product.

Paste: Tell me about Tandems coffee and vinyl subscription. That sounds amazing.

WP: One of our friends that we met through croquet [at a party], owns an online record store. Theyre called KMA. Every other month they choose a record and then we choose a record. You get one bag of coffee and one record a month. Its definitely the thing were most excited about right now.

Paste: How do you see Tandem in relation to the coffee scene in Portland?

WP: As the cafe experience goes, were the only place that doesnt have wifi. Other than that, whats cool about Portland is that all of the big cafes roast their own coffee. Everyone knows a lot about the coffee that they serve. Its pretty awesome in that way, and there are a lot of us for being only 60,000 people in town.

Were all making each other try really hard, which is good for the town. I feel like as weve gotten better, everyone just keeps getting better.
BNP Paribas REIM Italy, on behalf of the Fondo Immobiliare - Comune di Milano I, has sold the property in Milan, Corso di Porta Romana 8/10, as part of the Fund assets disposal plan. The operation, which still has the condition precedent of the non-exercise of the right of pre-emption

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CBRE has released the findings of its latest Scotland Property Quarterly report, with statistics showing Glasgow and Edinburgh's office and industrial markets to be the strongest performers in the twelve months to the end of Q1 2016. Quarterly returns for Scottish commercial real estate fell to 1.2% in the first

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Kirkor Ajderhanyan was installed as the World President for FIABCI, the International Real Estate Federation, during an official ceremony at the 67th FIABCI World Congress, held in Panama City, May 21 - 26. Ajderhanyan is the owner of 107 Promenade International Real Estate in Nice, France, specializing in seafront properties

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Researchers have helped solve one of the enduring mysteries of the ancient world: why the inhabitants of Madagascar speak Malagasy, a language otherwise unique to Southeast Asia and the Pacific -- a region located at least 6,000 km away. An international research team has identified that ancient crop remains excavated from sites in Madagascar consist of Asian species like rice and mung beans. This is thought to be the first archaeological evidence that settlers from South Asia are likely to have colonised the island over a thousand years ago. The findings are published in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Genetic research has confirmed that the inhabitants of Madagascar do indeed share close ancestry with Malaysians, Polynesians, and other speakers of what is classed the Austronesian language family. To date, archaeological research has identified human settlements in Madagascar that belong to the first millennium. There are also findings suggesting that Madagascar may have been occupied by hunter-gatherers who probably arrived from Africa by the first or second millennium. Until now, however, archaeological evidence of the Austronesian colonisation has been missing.

The team were able to identify the species of nearly 2,500 ancient plant remains obtained from their excavations at 18 ancient settlement sites in Madagascar, on neighbouring islands and on the eastern African coast. They examined residues obtained from sediments in the archaeological layers, using a system of sieves and water. They looked at whether the earliest crops grown on the sites were African crops or were crops introduced to Africa from elsewhere. They found both types, but noted a distinct pattern, with African crops primarily concentrated on the mainland and the islands closest to the mainland. In Madagascar, in contrast, early subsistence focused on Asian crops. The data suggested an introduction of these crops, both to Madagascar and the neighbouring Comoros Islands, by the 8th and 10th century.

Senior author Dr Nicole Boivin, from the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford and Director of the Department of Archaeology at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, said: 'Southeast Asians clearly brought crops from their homeland and grew and subsisted on them when they reached Africa. This means that archaeologists can use crop remains as evidence to provide real material insights into the history of the island. There are a lot of things we still don't understand about Madagascar's past; it remains one of our big enigmas. But what is exciting is that we finally have a way of providing a window into the island's highly mysterious Southeast Asian settlement and distinguishing it from settlements by mainland Africans that we know also happened.'

The analyses also suggest that Southeast Asians colonised not only Madagascar but also the nearby islands of the Comoros, because again the crops that grew there were dominated by the same Asian species. By contrast, crops identified on the eastern African coast and near coastal islands like Mafia and Zanzibar were mainly African species like sorghum, pearl millet and baobab.

Commenting on the Southeast Asian influence in the Comoros, study lead author Dr Alison Crowther, from the University of Queensland, Australia, said: 'This took us by surprise. After all, people in the Comoros speak African languages and they don't look like they have Southeast Asian ancestry in the way that populations on Madagascar do. What was amazing to us was the stark contrast that emerged between the crops on the Eastern African coast and the offshore islands versus those on Madagascar, but also the Comoros.'

Dr Boivin added: 'When we started looking more closely into research that has been carried out on Comorian languages, we were able to find numerous esteemed linguists who had argued for the exact thing we seemed to seeing in the Comorian archaeological record: a settlement by people from Southeast Asia. So we've been able to not only to show for the first time an archaeological signature of Austronesians, we've also shown that it seems to extend beyond Madagascar. This is really exciting, and highlights how much we still have to learn about this fascinating migration.'
Scientists working in the Gulf of Mexico have found that contaminants from the massive 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill lingered in the subsurface water for months after oil on the surface had been swept up or dispersed. In a new study, they also detailed how remnants of the oil, black carbon from burning oil slicks and contaminants from drilling mud combined with microscopic algae and other marine debris to descend in a "dirty blizzard" to the seafloor.

The work, published May 30 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, confirms that contaminants found in the water column and on the seafloor were indeed from the Deepwater Horizon spill, and not from the many natural oil seeps in the Gulf. The initial dispersal of materials in the water made pollutants hard to detect, but the eventual accumulation of "marine snow" concentrated the toxins on the seabed, where they can enter the food web, possibly affecting fish and corals in deep waters.

The findings suggest that the ecological effects of oil spills could last longer than previously thought. The paper comes on the heels of the most recent spill, detected May 12. About 88,200 gallons of oil were released from an underwater pipeline operated by Shell about 90 miles off the coast of Louisiana, according to news reports. Much of the oil has been recovered, and there are as yet no reported impacts on wildlife. But scientists are just beginning to assess the effects.

"We knew oil pollutants can be carried downward by marine snow, but we didn't expect the pollutants to stay in the water for such a long time," said Beizhan Yan of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, an environmental chemist who is lead author of the study.

Some researchers have contended that contaminants found on the seafloor could be coming from natural oil seeps. But Yan and colleagues used various "fingerprinting" techniques to demonstrate that the hydrocarbons in the water were derived from crude oil of the kind leaking from the Deepwater Horizon site. The presence of barium and the distribution of olefin compounds, two key components in drilling mud, confirmed the contaminants were associated with the spill.

"It's kind of like a smoking gun for the source of the contaminants," Yan said.

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The study also sheds light on why these contaminants can stay so long--five months--in the water column. "The deposition of hydrocarbons was largely controlled by the particle sources, which are available sporadically," Yan said. "Hydrocarbons, especially high molecular weight ones, were adsorbed tightly to fine particles. These fine particles can linger in the water column for weeks." But a bloom of diatoms, microscopic marine plants, acted as a "dust bunny" to accumulate the particles and carry them below after the diatoms died, he said.

"Normally we don't think of oil as sinking," said co-author Uta Passow, a biological oceanographer at the Marine Science Institute at the University of California Santa Barbara. "People in the past have not really ever considered oil coming to the seafloor, especially very, very deep. We now know how the oil gets down there in large amounts and affects the communities that live there."

Though it's tough to measure exactly how much of the spilled oil winds up on the seafloor, Passow said it could be substantial. "I would argue it's probably more than 10 percent, probably even more than 15 percent," she said. That could add up to millions of gallons.

Other studies have documented how the oil and other contaminants dispersed, and have established that petroleum hydrocarbons from the spill have accumulated on the seafloor. Scientists also have known that phytoplankton, microscopic marine plants, play a role in delivering the oil to the seafloor. In the new study, the researchers describe how that happens.

The paper "provides a likely mechanism for the impact to deep sea corals discovered outside of the depth range and most likely flow path of the Deepwater plume of oil and gas that formed during the spill," said Chuck Fisher, a marine biologist at Penn State who was not involved in the study. Fisher's work documented damage to corals following the spill.

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Between April 20 and July 15, 2010, about 200 million gallons of crude oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico from a blown well beneath the Deepwater Horizon oil rig--the largest marine oil spill in U.S. history. Some of the oil was recovered, evaporated or was deliberately burned at the surface. Some washed ashore; still more was broken down by chemical dispersants and consumed by bacteria. But a large portion, perhaps a quarter, has been unaccounted for. Although the oil was undetectable in surface waters within a few weeks, the deeper environmental consequences were unclear because the mechanisms that transport petroleum hydrocarbons to the ocean floor were not well understood.

Yan and his colleagues used sediment traps to collect diatoms and other matter slowly sinking through the water and found contaminants clinging to the tiny particles, including black carbon left over from burning oil slicks, and barium and olefin, which are used in drilling mud. The researchers were "shocked" to find the barium Yan said, because it was assumed that the contaminant would settle quickly near application sites.

The team deployed a sediment trap roughly 4.5 miles from the capped well and captured sinking material from August 2010 to October 2011. According to the researchers, the black carbon continued to sink for two months after the oil fires were extinguished, while other contaminants, including barium, accumulated for at least five months.

"The traps collected this material months after everyone thought the leak was over," Passow said. "The material stays in the water much longer than people think." And because drilling mud and oil are present whenever drilling is going on, contaminants could be winding up on the bottom in other situations, as well, she said.

"Considering the widespread use of drilling mud at hundreds of ocean drilling sites around the world, the environmental implications of such an unexpectedly long residence time of barium in the water column is significant and worthy of further investigation," the paper's authors write.

The researchers found that the movement of contaminants from the water column to the seafloor was intensified during August and September 2010 by an exceptionally large bloom of diatoms. These phytoplankton produce a mucous, particularly when dying, that acts as a glue for other particles in the water. As this "marine snow" sank, it carried the contaminants from the oil spill to the seafloor.

It's unclear whether the oil itself played a role in precipitating the diatom bloom. A study earlier this year by another Lamont researcher, Ajit Subramaniam, found phytoplankton thriving above natural oil seeps in the Gulf. While the oil itself doesn't seem to help the phytoplankton, turbulence from the seeps brings nutrients up from the deep that do.

Subramaniam said that water management authorities increased discharge of the Mississippi River to push the Deepwater Horizon oil plume away from the shore, and that may have pushed nutrients out into the Gulf that could have fueled the diatom bloom.

"There were people out there measuring hydrocarbons," Subramaniam said. But they didn't find any in the water after the wellhead was capped, and "by August-September, the word on the street is the show's over, we can all go home." But the new study "shows they just weren't looking for the right things."

The study may prove helpful in planning future responses to spills, how to measure their impact, and how to contain damage to the environment and associated food systems and ensure food safety. Yan said the team is currently studying what happens to the oil seeping naturally in the Gulf through the Ecosystem Impacts of Oil and Gas Inputs to the Gulf project.
Research by Dr. Shernaz Bamji, from the University of British Columbia, uncovers the mechanism of action of an enzyme called DHHC9 in the normal development and function of neural networks in the brain. Mutations in DHHC9 have been identified in certain patients suffering from X-linked Intellectual Disability, however the specific role of DHHC9 was not known. Dr. Bamji's work shows this enzyme plays a vital role in promoting the growth and branching of the ends of neurons and also in maintaining the balance between excitatory and inhibitory signals being formed onto neurons (called excitatory and inhibitory synapses, respectively).

"To understand how genetic variants of DHHC9 identified in patients with X-linked Intellectual Disability, impact the development of neural circuits, we expressed them in neurons," says Shernaz Bamji. " We observed a severe reduction in the growth and branching of the neurons expressing these DHHC9 mutations. Moreover, there was a decrease in the number of inhibitory synapses being formed onto the neurons making the neurons more excitable. This is of great interest as a significant number of patients with X-linked Intellectual Disability are prone to seizures."

For proper brain development to occur, neurons must extend processes, branch, and make connections with other neurons. The Bamji laboratory has shown that a specific type of modification of neuronal proteins can impact all of the above processes and impact the proper development of the brain. This modification is called 'palmitoylation', and involves the addition of a small fatty acid called palmitate onto a protein. The palmitoylation of proteins can have profound effects on their location within the neuron, which in turn can significantly impact the proper development and function of the neuron. Protein palmitoylation is mediated by a family of 23 DHHC proteins. Genetic variations in 9 of the 23 DHHC proteins have been identified in patients with diseases of the nervous system including a number of neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders. This underscores the importance of this family of proteins in the development and functioning of the brain.

Recent research in the Bamji laboratory has investigated the localisation and function of one such protein, called DHHC9. Her work has shown that DHHC9 is present in both neurons that activate and those that inhibit other neurons, and that it affects an important signaling molecule, called Ras GTPase. Adding a palmitate to Ras enhances its trafficking to the cell membrane, where it plays an important role in regulating the growth and the branching out of neurons, and the density of synapses, or connections, it forms with other cells.

Previous work in the Bamji laboratory had shown the importance of cell adhesion proteins, such as cadherins, in regulating synaptic plasticity. They had shown that a family of proteins inside the cell called catenins regulate the activity of cadherins, and that catenins themselves are regulated by palmitoylation. Another palmitate transferring protein, called DHHC5, mediated the addition of palmitate to catenins.

"We believe that a better understanding of the function of DHHC proteins will lead to a better understanding of the normal functioning of the brain, and will help identify novel targets for therapies aimed at correcting disorders that affect synapse form or function, including many neurodegenerative and psychiatric diseases," concludes Shernaz Bamji.
A new study finds that implementing the United Nations targets for HIV testing and treatment would be an expensive but ultimately very cost-effective way to increase survival, reduce the number of children orphaned by HIV, and contain the global AIDS epidemic. That is the conclusion of researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), the University of Cape Town and the Yale School of Public Health, who estimated the likely impact of the so-called "90-90-90" program.

"Based on our findings, there is nothing overstated about the suggestion that 90-90-90 could lay the foundation for a healthier, more just and equitable world for future generations," says Rochelle P. Walensky, MD, MPH, of the MGH Division of Infectious Disease, who led the study that will appear in the May 31 online edition of Annals of Internal Medicine. "Yes it would be very expensive, but it would be worth every penny."

Launched in September 2014 by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the 90-90-90 program has three key objectives -- diagnosing 90 percent of HIV-infected persons worldwide; linking 90 percent of identified cases to antiretroviral therapy (ART); and achieving virologic suppression among 90 percent of ART recipients. The program's overall goal is achieving viral suppression -- reducing the viral load to an undetectable level -- among 73 percent of HIV-infected persons worldwide by 2020, a marked improvement from current estimates of 24 percent.

Critics have expressed concern that successful implementation of 90-90-90 would require unprecedented cash infusions from donor organizations such as the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the Global Fund, and the World Bank. Study co-author Linda-Gail Bekker, MD, PhD, of the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre and University of Cape Town in South Africa, notes, "Recent funding from these sources has been flat. Our goal for this study was to provide donors and partner countries with pragmatic estimates of what it will cost and what return they can expect by investing in 90-90-90."

The study used South African epidemiologic data and results from HIV screening and treatment programs to give a realistic picture of the likely impact of 90-90-90 in South Africa and compared it with the current pace of HIV detection and treatment over the next 5 and 10 years. Using a well-published computer simulation model developed by the research team, their analysis revealed that, over the next decade, the 90-90-90 strategy would avert more than 2 million new HIV infections, more than 2.4 million deaths and over 1.6 million orphans -- saving an additional 13 million patient-years of life compared with the current strategy.

Over the same period, the cost of the 90-90-90 effort would be $54 billion, a 42 percent increase over the costs of current scale-up activities that still suffer from challenges related to both linkage to care and treatment retention. But taken as a whole, the study found that investment in 90-90-90 would yield a cost-effectiveness ratio of $1,260 per year of life saved, well within what would be considered very cost effective for South Africa and a ratio similar to that of HIV treatment itself.

A. David Paltiel, MBA, PhD, professor of Public Health (Health Policy) at the Yale School of Public Health and senior author of the study, says, "We're convinced, based on the results of our analysis, that successful implementation of the 90-90-90 targets would effectively put an end to the AIDS epidemic worldwide,"

Publication of the study coincides with a June 8-10 United Nations meeting of world leaders, HIV program implementers, government representatives and other key stakeholders to solidify a plan to put an end to the global AIDS epidemic by 2030. "Implementation of 90-90-90 would represent a 'virtuous circle' of care -- leading to earlier HIV diagnosis, more rapid treatment initiation, longer survival for HIV-infected persons, and fewer new cases of HIV transmission," says Walensky, a professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. "The time to jump-start this worthy global undertaking is now."
Possible long-term consequences from a whiplash trauma can be effectively predicted if the injured persons are subdivided into different risk groups shortly after the car accident. This is shown by a Danish study that was presented at the Congress of the European Academy of Neurology in Copenhagen.

Chronic pain and other neurologic complaints often persist intractably many years after a car accident as consequences of a whiplash injury. Dividing injured individuals into risk groups shortly after the accident allows one to accurately predict which individuals are especially in danger of suffering from long-term effects from whiplash, physically as well as psychosocially. This was shown in a new study conducted by the Danish "Whiplash Study Group" and presented at the Second Congress of the European Academy of Neurology (EAN) in Copenhagen.

Risk group system suitable for long-term forecasts

Study author Dr M.K. Rasmussen from the University of Aarhus: "We developed a system years ago to divide patients into risk groups. As it now turns out, this system lets us not only predict whether or not the injured individuals will be able to work again after a year. It also allows us to estimate long-term effects." In this study a questionnaire was given to 326 individuals who had sustained a whiplash injury twelve to fourteen years earlier. It covered on-going pain, non-painful complaints, prescribed analgesics and non-medical treatment also in comparison to the time prior to the whiplash accident. In addition, sick leaves were recorded as was the subjective assessment of the patients regarding the ramifications of the accident. Prof Kasch, lead investigator of the Danish Whiplash Study Group: "It turned out that more than a decade after the fact the people most heavily affected were those who had been assigned to the highest risk groups shortly after the accident." Specifically, they suffered substantially more often from neck, head, shoulder and arm pain as well as low back pain. They also exhibited a number of non-painful neurologic symptoms more often. They required pain medication more frequently as well, from mild analgesics to strong opioids and suffered to a greater extent from posttraumatic stress symptoms.

Factors for division into risk groups

An accident patient has to undergo a clinical examination within four days after the accident in order to assign him or her to a risk group. The physicians assess the following factors: the type and nature of the pain, the type and number of non-painful complaints as well as neck mobility. If a patient has strong neck pain, headaches and is in a negative emotional state, these are important indicators for judging whether someone will be able to work again after a whiplash trauma. In the preceding studies, it was determined that fewer than 4 per cent of the patients in Risk Group 1 were still unable to work one year after the accident. In the highest-risk group Risk Group 7, this figure was nearly double as high at 7.68 per cent.
If pregnant women take antiepileptic drugs, the child can develop autistic traits. The administration of folic acid preparations appears to be a suitable means of preventing this serious side-effect. This finding is suggested by a Norwegian study presented at the Congress of the European Academy of Neurology in Copenhagen.

Having a sufficiently high level of folic acid is especially important for pregnant women who have to take antiepileptic drugs. Dr Marte Helene Bjrk from the University of Bergen in Norway had this to say on the subject at the Second Congress of the European Academy of Neurology (EAN) in Copenhagen: "Suitable nutritional supplements could substantially contribute to protecting the child from a possible side-effect of antiepileptic drugs, namely from autism."

Possible side-effect of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs): 12 out of 100 children with autistic traits

With her current study, Dr Bjrk was able to show that women with epilepsy with a lower concentration of folic acid during pregnancy have a higher risk of giving birth to a child with autistic traits if they take antiepileptic drugs. Possible autistic traits were examined in about 58,000 three-year-old children whose mothers are healthy or have epilepsy. Among the women with epilepsy, a distinction was also made between those who took antiepileptic drugs during their pregnancy and those who did not. In addition, the research team recorded possible folic acid intake during pregnancy and the level of folate concentration in blood plasma for women with epilepsy who continued taking their antiepileptic drugs during pregnancy.

Dr Bjrk: "The results clearly show how risky antiepileptic drugs can be for unborn children. Twelve percent of the children who were exposed to the effects of these drugs during pregnancy ended up exhibiting autistic traits -- a rate substantially higher than in the two other groups." In women with epilepsy who did not use medication, only about three percent of the children showed autistic traits whereas the rate for healthy mothers was about four percent. The expert went on to say this: "The good news is that the risk can be mitigated if the woman takes folic acid supplements." The data shows that women with epilepsy who took AEDs were affected more intensely than all others if they dispensed with taking folic acid supplements during early pregnancy: Their children developed autistic traits six times more often compared to women using antiepileptic drugs and taking folid acid supplements. This finding was arrived at after statistically factoring out of the comparison other risk factors such as epileptic seizures, depression, socioeconomic status or the concentration of antiepileptic drugs or cotinine in the blood of pregnant women. Dr Bjrk concluded by saying: "The lower the folate concentration in the plasma during pregnancy, the worse the children fared later at age three in the test to determine the degree of autistic traits (Social Communication Questionnaire, SCQ). For pregnant women with epilepsy, the early administration of folic acid preparations is therefore an absolute must."

Women with epilepsy should plan their pregnancy under the control of the treating neurologist. Although continuing antiepileptic drugs during pregnancy poses risks to the child, stopping antiepileptic drugs represents in most cases a higher health risk -- both for mother and child. Intense epileptic seizures can lead to oxygen deficiency, which can damage or kill the foetus. The mother is also at risk: Five per cent of fatalities during pregnancy are attributed to epilepsy.
Russian scientists have developed a technique that allows them to visualize defects on the surface of graphene. The technique may ultimately help scientists develop a better understanding of graphene's properties in order to find novel applications for this supermaterial.

The technique, developed by researchers at the Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry in a collaborative project, employs the metal palladium, which interacts with "carbon reactivity centres" found on graphene. Graphene is an incredibly strong one-atom-thick layer of carbon touted to be an excellent conductor of heat and electricity. Several types of defects on graphene surfaces are known to increase the reactivity of its carbon atoms: i.e. their ability to form chemical bonds. If researchers can locate these defects and manipulate them, they will be able to maximize the use of graphene's properties. For example, locating and removing defects is important for applications that require perfectly smooth graphene. In other applications, such as in catalysis and certain biomedical materials, some defects are actually beneficial because they allow the incorporation of additional elements, such as metals, into the graphene.

When the palladium complex Pd2(dba)3 is dissolved in chloroform, it forms a dark red solution under normal circumstances. But when graphene or another carbon material is added to the solution, the palladium is completely consumed. As a result, the solution turns from dark red to colourless.

Using advanced imaging techniques, the researchers found that the palladium clusters selectively attach to graphene's surface according to specific patterns, depending on how reactive the carbon centres are. Individual palladium particles settle onto point defects, local accumulations of particles are present on larger defects, and short chains outline linear defects.

These defects are normally invisible under an electron microscope. The palladium particles act like a contrast agent, allowing the spatial imaging of the chemical reactivity, and thus the defects, of graphene layers.

"Metal mapping of carbon materials provides unique insights and reveals hidden information about fascinating properties at the molecular level," says project leader Professor Valentine Ananikov.

The team's findings indicate that using palladium markers, more than 2,000 surface defects, or reactivity centres, on graphene can be individually located, per square micrometre of surface area. The researchers say that the unexpected capacity of graphene to accommodate so many reactivity centres challenges scientists to re-examine their understanding of the electronic and structural properties of carbon materials.

Now that the researchers have learned how to recognise and characterise the defects, their next step is to develop a technique to control them. Some defects possess a dynamic nature and have the ability to "migrate" over graphene's surface. If the researchers can control this migration, they will have a unique opportunity to form materials with customised properties. This is an outstanding direction for future studies, they say.
Monday, 30 May 2016 16:30:08 (GMT+3) | Brescia

SteelOrbis has learned that the Algerian government has lately blocked wire rod imports through a new fiscal law linked to import licenses, similar to the one used at the beginning of the current year for rebar, concrete and cars imports.





The new measure seems to be aimed at supporting Oran, Algeria -based producer Tosyali and at restricting imports by Algerian group Cevital which has been importing over 20,000 tons per month from the Piombino-based plant in Italy formerly owned by Lucchini.




Even Hulk Hogan needed help funding his lawsuit against Gawker.

Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel fronted the legal bills for the former pro wrestlers $140 million (U.S.) invasion-of-privacy lawsuit against the celebrity gossip site.

The case involved a sex video, gossip and revenge. But it has also brought the controversial practice of third-party litigation funding into the spotlight.

In Canada, litigation funding is quietly growing as court costs balloon beyond what many people and businesses are able to afford.

Bentham IMF recently became the first international commercial lawsuit funder to set up shop in Canada. Its aim is to builds an industry on helping guys smaller than Hulk take on deep-pocketed corporations  in exchange for a substantial slice of the settlement.

Hulk Hogans case against Gawker has sparked interest in how Bentham IMF, which opened on Bay Street in January, funds ordinary people that dont have money or celebrity power, said Naomi Loewith, the firms investment manager and legal counsel.

Even as a celebrity with a really strong claim, he needed help to advance litigation the way that he wanted toto hire top lawyers and to bring his claim to court, said the former litigator.

You could be a small business thats pulling in $10 or 15 million in revenue every year, but that doesnt mean you can afford to engage in a protracted battle with Walmart or Apple, or a really big well-funded company on the other side.

Bentham IMF Canada is reviewing applications for its first Canadian client  and has seen interest from a cash poor resource conglomerate and a bank, said Loewith.

The company, which has provided $1.6 billion (U.S.) in funding for some 175 cases worldwide, is very selective because of its business model. It receives anywhere from 20 to 40 per cent of a settlement if their client wins, but is out of pocket if they lose. It takes on only about five per cent of cases it reviews and among those, enjoys a 90 per cent success rate.

The company saw the opportunity to expand into Canada after a ruling last year suggested that once-reluctant judges are becoming more willing to accept third-party funding amid rising access to justice concerns.

The financing bridge has been commonly used in class action or personal injury lawsuits, where the funder believes they have a good chance of a big payoff if the suit is successful. And Novitas US, a firm that finances divorce announced in April its intentions to open in Canada this summer.

Legal experts are torn about whether third-party financing is a much-needed bridge to help level the playing field or whether it allows investors to treat the justice system as a game of dice.

Bentham could fill in a gap in the need for access for justice as litigation is out of reach for most small businesses, said Jasminka Kalajdzic, an associate professor in law at the University of Windsor, who has written a paper on third-party legal funding.

However, she warns that third-party funding poses ethical concerns related to a lender stirring up litigation that doesnt have any real merit.

That is not something that those of us who are interested in access to justice want to see our system turned into.

Loewith, meanwhile, dismisses criticism that third-party financing could lead to an increase in frivolous lawsuits.

If our business model was to invest in frivolous lawsuits, were not going to last very long.

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U.S. Internet giants Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc., Google and Microsoft Corp. pledged to tackle online hate speech in less than 24 hours as part of a joint commitment with the European Union to combat the use of social media by terrorists.

Beyond national laws that criminalize hate speech, there is a need to ensure such activity by Internet users is expeditiously reviewed by online intermediaries and social media platforms, upon receipt of a valid notification, in an appropriate time-frame, the companies and the European Commission said in a joint statement on Tuesday.

The code of conduct arrives as Europe comes to terms with the bloody attacks in Paris and Brussels by Daesh, also known as Islamic State, which has used the web and social media to spread its message of hate against its enemies. The companies said it remains a challenge to strike the right balance between freedom of expression and hate speech in the self-generated content on online platforms.

We remain committed to letting the Tweets flow, said Twitters head of public policy for Europe, Karen White, in the statement. However, there is a clear distinction between freedom of expression and conduct that incites violence and hate.

A French Jewish youth group, UEJF, sued Twitter, Facebook and Google in Paris this month over how they monitor hate speech on the web. In the course of about six weeks in April and May, members of French anti-discrimination groups flagged unambiguous hate speech that they said promoted racism, homophobia or anti-Semitism. More than 90 per cent of the posts pointed out to Twitter and YouTube remained online within 15 days on average following requests for removal, according to the study by UEJF, SOS Racisme and SOS Homophobie.

With a global community of 1.6 billion people we work hard to balance giving people the power to express themselves whilst ensuring we provide a respectful environment, said Monika Bickert, head of global policy management at Facebook, in the statement. Theres no place for hate speech on Facebook.

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The Canadian retail landscape is constantly changing, and Le Chateaus founder says success depends on adapting to meet customers wants.

There is a change in consumers habits especially in the new tech age, where people arent shopping in the mall. They are removed, Herschel Segal said in an interview just before speaking to young entrepreneurs at Futurpreneur Canadas conference on Tuesday.

Theyre not as interested in clothing as they were in 1960s and 1970s, or even the 1980s and 1990s, he said. They are spending on other things like travel and food.

And the clothing business is crowded with so many competitors  including many that are also struggling or closing altogether in recent years such as Laura, Mexx, Danier Leather, Smart Set and Jacob.

Segal has put millions of his own money to keep Le Chateau afloat, including a $15-million loan last June, which was on top of a $10-million injection earlier, as the company closes underperforming stores and renovates others.

It was necessary to get over the mistakes we made, he said, and the trend can get more exaggerated, so even though you are doing the right thing, it might not be fast enough.

We have to keep watching that, which translates into less stores, and less staff, he said.

Shares are now trading as a penny stock. As of Jan. 30, the company operated 211 stores including 65 fashion outlet stores, compared with 222 stores including 42 fashion outlet stores a year earlier.

In April, Le Chateau said it plans to close another 40 stores across Canada over the next three years as part of ongoing efforts to turn around its money-losing operations.

The chain lost $35.7 million or $1.19 per share for the 12 months ended Jan. 31. That compared with a loss of $38.7 million or $1.34 per share a year earlier.

Segal, who also co-founded specialty tea shop Davids Tea, noted there is little competition in the tea business. But in the clothing sector, there is too much.

He founded Le Chateau in 1959, quickly lost all his money, and then was forced to do something.

Segal credits a trip to Carnaby Street in London, England, with giving him inspiration.

Carnaby St., on the edge of Soho, was the centre for mod and hippie London, where local shops set fashion trends. British teens would flock to the area in hopes of catching a glimpse of the Beatles doing some clothes shopping.

By the end of the 1960s, Carnaby St. was a top tourist attraction, after Buckingham Palace.

It was not a business plan. It was not encouraged by the bank, he said.

Segal argued that the retail industry is divided between mass-produced lower-priced clothes like H&M and Zara, and high-end stores like Holt Renfrew, with little room in the middle.

It used to be very crowded in the middle. Now there will be very few, he said. We are always looking to survive. We are never going to be the cheapest in the product, nor will we give the service of a Holt Renfrew.

Le Chateau has been moving toward specializing on dresses for a night on the town, to formal events from proms to graduations.

We make 50 per cent of our dresses in Canada, so you can more turns, and you can respond more quickly to the market, he said.

Segal said the stores have added footwear, along with handbags and accessories.

That might mean we dont have gym clothing, and may mean mens wear wont belong in Chateau in the future. Well have to see.

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You have an urgent need for help from a large company. But no matter what you do to get through, you cant seem to get any action.

Calling in the media can help. Its hard to believe how quickly things change once companies are made more accountable for customer service.

Here are stories of timely turnarounds once the media get involved in a dispute.

Bell drags feet on billing errors

Melvin Germaine is the treasurer of Victoria Park United Church. He was frustrated when the telecom giant did not enter the right amount for its September bill.

The church paid its $114 Internet bill in full that month, but Bell posted a payment of only $5.

We sent them copies of our cancelled cheque and that was the amount deducted from our bank account, but Bell failed to correct its error, Germaine said.

We spoke to two customer service agents in the Caribbean, who promised it would be taken care of immediately. We are still being charged for their mistake.

When I forwarded Germaines email to media contact Jason Laszlo, Bell told him that it had made an error and had now fixed it.

I didnt quite believe them and waited for the bill to arrive. Amazingly, the problem has been corrected, he said. What a relief.

In another billing error, Frank Van Roessel opened an account with Crave TV as soon as it was available to non-Bell subscribers. When his credit card bill came in, he noticed he was billed twice.

Turns out I created two accounts when I misspelled my email address, he said. A customer service agent said she did not have the authority to refund the money. After calling a couple of other times and getting a runaround, I thought Id try you.

I know its only $9, but I was surprised that Bell didnt want to address the situation to my satisfaction. A bill credit was all that I was asking for.

Shortly afterward, Van Roessel told me his account had been credited. He was sure it wouldnt have happened had I not intervened.

Aeroplan wont help couple sit together on flight

Michelle Levy booked reward flights for her and her fiance last March. They were planning a trip to Hawaii for their honeymoon in July.

I accidentally left out an initial, she said. I booked it under his first name Bryan and it should have been S. Bryan, as on his passport.

They agreed to pay $90 to add the initial, but were upset that Aeroplan would not hold their flights while making the adjustment.

The couple was offered only two options. They could fly separately part of the way or they could cancel both flights and pay $90 each to book new flights with much worse timing.

Levy had been waiting two months for flights that fit with their wedding timing. Could I get Aeroplan to help?

Media contact Christa Poole agreed to help the soon to be newlyweds. Within a day, Aeroplan found a way to adjust the tickets while keeping the same flights.

Great Canadian Superstore ignores complaint

Michael Madesker bought a St. Hubert tourtiere (meat pie) and returned most of it after finding two dark human hairs inside. The service desk offered a partial refund (since he did not have a receipt) and told him to submit a claim to the manufacturer.

The assistant manager explained that they were responsible only for the quality of Presidents Choice products, he said. My protests that Great Canadian is an agent by selling the product resulted in his walking away from me.

I refused compensation and left the tourtiere behind me. A complaint slip placed in a box remains, more than a week later, unanswered.

Madesker wanted to know why a large grocery chain had ignored his written note for so long. He received an apology after I forwarded his complaint to Loblaws media contact Kevin Groh.

We certainly understand your disappointment in the service you received and sincerely hope you will give us the privilege of continuing to serve you as one of our valued customers, a customer care resolution specialist said.

Thank you for taking the time to bring this matter to our attention. In doing so, you have provided us a very valuable opportunity to improve our services.

Madesker insisted his complaint was not about money, but about lack of communication from antagonistic staff. He suggested that if Loblaws wanted to offer compensation, it should give the money to charity.

As a result of this unfortunate event, we are happy to donate $25 to the Toronto Stars Fresh Air Fund (which sends low-income children to summer camp), the customer care resolution specialist said.

eroseman@thestar.ca

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TOKYOAlthough hes behind one of the biggest fashion brands to come out of Japan, Issey Miyake detests being called a fashion designer. Maybe a designer, even a sculptor, but not that frivolous, trend-watching, conspicuous consumption known as fashion.

What he has pursued since he started in the 1970s is more timeless. His down-to-earth clothing is meant to celebrate the human body. And its anyones or everyones body  any race, build, size or age.

The work of Miyake Issey, at the National Art Center in Tokyo, is a moving journey through his creative mind. The show includes his signature pleats that transform usually crass polyester into chic. In another corner, mannequins are connected by a roll of fabric to highlight his A-POC, or a piece of cloth, series that began in 1998. A-POC uses computer technology in weaving to create apparel at the same time fabric is being produced.

Again and again, the exhibit drives home Miyakes basic concept of a single piece of cloth, be it draped, folded, cut or wrapped, but he does not see the exhibit as a retrospective, says Midori Kitamura, president of Miyake Design Studio and the exhibits producer.

He is always forward-looking, Kitamura said, wearing a black Miyake sweater top that can be cut at the collar and sleeves along perforated lines, and a miniskirt that ruffles like a flower at her hip. Trying to catch up with him is the story of my career.

One stark piece aptly called colombe, or dove, is rectangular, white monofilament fibre resembling soft plastic. It doesnt use a single stitch but snaps on in a brush stroke of a swirl.

Miyake has taken inspiration from a variety of cultures and societal motifs, as well as everyday items  plastic, rattan, washi paper, jute, horsehair, foil, yarn, batik, indigo dyes, wiring.

The exhibit starts with a row of figures donning his early but already powerful works. A jersey body-wear evokes tattooing with images of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, who died in 1970, the year it was created. His collaboration with Japanese painter Tadanori Yokoo depicts monkeys and foliage in vibrant psychedelic hues on a flowing robe.

Another poignant part of the exhibit highlights the pleated Olympic uniforms for various countries designed by Miyake. In 1992, he was commissioned to design the official uniform for Lithuania, which had just gained independence from the Soviet Union.

Miyake got Japanese material maker Toray to provide the fabric, Japanese sporting goods company Mizuno to handle the production and Polytex of Thailand to do the pleating. Ten more uniforms were created by Miyake in the 1990s, and another 10 for the current exhibit.

Issey Miyakes garments of his entire career have been displayed in the grand setting of the National Art Center, Tokyo, as innovative works of art, as they deserve to be, said John Carpenter, curator of Japanese art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, who saw the exhibit during a recent visit to Tokyo.

The imaginative exhibition design and abstract sculptured mannequins by Tokujin Yoshioka add another brilliant artistic dimension, Carpenter added, referring to the figures wearing the clothes at the exhibit that are artworks in themselves.

Over the years, Miyake has shown a knack for collaborating with people outside his genre, such as designer Yoshioka, furniture and interior designer Shiro Kuramata, photographer Irving Penn, choreographer and director Maurice Bejart, pottery maker Lucie Rie, Ballet Frankfurt and the gymnastics team of Aomori University in northern Japan.

Born in Hiroshima in 1938, Miyake was a star as soon as he hit the European runways. His brown top, which combined the Japanese sewn fabric called sashiko with raw silk knit, was splashed on the cover of the September 1973 issue of Elle magazine.

Miyake was also a pioneer in gender roles, asking feminist Fusae Ichikawa in the 1970s, when she was in her 80s, to be his model, sending the message that garments must be comfortable and express the natural beauty of real people.

Designing is like a living organism in that it pursues what matters for its well-being and continuity, Miyake writes in the book published for the exhibit. My works touchstone phrases are: Making Think, Making Things and Making Reality.

Miyakes approach so brings the spiritual to the mundane question of what to wear, one even wonders if it might free ones soul, bringing to mind the elements, like water, fire, air and the earth, at once futuristic high-tech and handmade primordial.

But Miyake avoids the trap of getting pretentious. One great look he approves of is the T-shirt and jeans. The exhibit includes his version of the gorgeously faded pair of jeans.

Benjamin Lee, a Tokyo-based photographer who has taken Miyakes portrait as well as those of writer Haruki Murakami and visual artist Yayoi Kusama, believes Miyake is a true innovator, creating art works with clothes. Yet he exuded warmth in person and they laughed together, Lee recalled.

I was left with the impression of meeting someone special, who understood people very well, and how fashion can make everyday living more interesting and comfortable, he said.

The work of Miyake Issey runs through June 13. His office says overseas exhibitions have not been decided.

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A rally took place to protest the privatization of Hydro One this morning outside the first annual shareholders meeting in Toronto.

Its absolutely economic fairytales, my friend, shouted Fred Hahn, the president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees Ontario.

About 100 activists and members of labour organizations were joined by Ontario New Democratic Party Leader Andrea Horwath outside the MaRS building on College St., where the meeting is being held.

Police were present as protestors carried placards calling for the immediate reversal of Hydro Ones privatization.

We want a public utility owned by the public for the people, said Katha Fortier, Ontario regional director for Unifor.

Online, #keephydropublic was trending.

Those opposed to the sale say its a one-time cash grab that will hurt consumers, who wont have a choice but to pay the prices set by the newly privatized company that holds a virtual monopoly on electricity in Ontario.

Its the Bay Street crowd here getting the low down on how they can squeeze more money out of regular citizens and by regular citizens, I mean everybody, said John Qubti, a member of the Citizens Coalition Against Privatization.

People are getting ripped off, he said, citing recent rate increases.

Protestors marched outside the downtown MaRS building where the meeting was being held. The outdoor rally ended a couple of hours later but some protestors made their way inside to continue their demonstration.

Tina Faibish, a self-described community volunteer and member of the Hydro One Not for Sale group, claimed Hydro One staff turned her away when she attempted to enter the meeting room and referred her to an overflow room where she could watch the meeting unfold on television screens instead.

There is a woman in a suit telling people they are overcapacity but as you can see the room is half empty, she claimed. They obviously have something to hide.

Hydro One spokesperson Tiziana Baccega Rosa said there may have been an unfortunate miscommunication but ultimately anyone who wanted to come in and ask a question got that opportunity.

Critics also say the sale will harm the provinces bottom line in the long run.

In a report submitted to the provincial legislature last October, Stephen LeClair, Ontarios recently appointed financial accountability officer, said it would hike the already massive provincial debt by slashing revenue.

Premier Kathleen Wynne announced her governments intention to sell 60 per cent of the provinces shares in Hydro One in the spring of 2015.

The Crown corporation distributes almost all of the electricity in Ontario, and is valued at upwards of $9 billion.

About $5 billion would be used to pay down provincial debt, with the rest going to fund transportation infrastructure.

In November, the province sold 18 million shares for about $1.66 billion on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The results from the morning meeting will be made available today after markets close.

With files from Toronto Star staff

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OTTAWAPrime Minister Justin Trudeau says the Liberals cautious bill to allow medical assistance in dying is the beginning of a conversation that could evolve in the courts, but should do so only after it becomes law.

The bill was one step closer to that point Tuesday evening after MPs voted 186-137 to send the bill to the Senate where it faces an uncertain fate. Among those who opposed it were four Liberals. There were 14 opposition MPs who voted to support the governments bill.

Canadians understand this is a big step in our society, said Trudeau, rejecting an NDP call to immediately refer Bill C-14 to the countrys top court to test its constitutionality. He insisted his governments bill strikes a responsible balance, then acknowledged he fully expects it will be tested by doctors and patients in the years to come.

We understand that this is the beginning of a conversation that will go on for the coming years as court cases, evidence, concerns, and doctors evolve in their thinking as we approach this.

However, this is a big step. It needs to be taken right, and that is exactly what Bill C-14 does, Trudeau replied.

Trudeaus statement foreseeing court challenges to the bill came prior to a key vote on third reading in the Commons. It now goes to the Senate, which had a committee pre-study the bill. That committee has already called for changes to the bill, which the Liberal government has already rejected.

Yet the idea the bill should be enacted and face inevitable court challenges comes also as a number of trial judges wrestling with assisted-dying applications across Canada flag how difficult those cases are for all involved, patients and the courts.

In one recent case, Ontario Superior Court Justice Clayton Conlan granted a mans wishes to die saying it was clear the patient, known as A.B., was experiencing enduring and intolerable suffering caused by his medical condition. Frankly, it was difficult for me to read the evidence, the judge wrote. The degree to which this medical condition has curtailed even the most basic activities of daily living for A.B. cannot be overstated.

Other judges have raised concerns about the governments interpretation of the Supreme Courts Carter vs. Canada ruling in February 2015, which last year struck down the Criminal Codes absolute ban on assisted suicide. The NDP says an Alberta Court of Appeal ruling clearly shows C-14s interpretation of who should be eligible for a physician assisted death is unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court extended the deadline to June 6 for Parliament to enact a law, otherwise its 2015 ruling stands as the guideline.

It said adults under a doctors care who are suffering intolerably from a grievous and irremediable condition have a constitutional right to medical assistance to hasten their death.

The Liberal bill restricts that to only those patients with a terminal or incurable illness whose death is reasonably foreseeable.

As the Trudeau government made a final push to move Bill C-14 out of the Commons and over to the Senate where it hopes it will pass by a June 6 deadline, the prime minister was grilled by the opposition seeking more time to study or change the bill. NDP Leader Tom Mulcair challenged Trudeau in the Commons prior to the third-reading vote.

How many court decisions will it take before the Liberals finally admit they have made mistakes? Why would the prime minister prefer that suffering Canadians spend years in court fighting for their rights instead of getting his new law right the first time?

He was incredulous at Trudeaus reply, saying, The beginning of a conversation? This is going right back to the Supreme Court, its a waste of time, and its hurting peoples lives, Mulcair said.

The Liberal government, however, says it is important to move quickly, and with only the Carter decision to go on, there would be too much uncertainty around who qualifies and who doesnt.

There wont be the ability to apply to a court for an individual exemption. There wont be the substantive safeguards in place that are articulated in Bill C-14. And therell be uncertainty for medical practitioners and uncertainty for patients in terms of access, Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould told reporters Tuesday.

Health Minister Jane Philpott said the bill has the support of professional bodies that represent health-care providers including the Canadian Medical Association, Canadian Nurses Association, Canadian Pharmacists Association, and HealthCareCan, which represents our nations hospitals and academic health sciences centres. But she did not refer to the opposition of the Federation of Medical Regulatory Authorities in Canada.

Philpott also cited an open letter from 36 organizations representing the vulnerable, including Canadian Association for Community Living, that supported the bill.

Each organization may have continued areas of interest in which they wish to seek clarifications or undertake work with my department or with provinces and territories so that they can properly work with their members on implementing assistance in dying, she said, calling it an iterative process and reminding MPs there will be parliamentary review of the law five years from now.

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Environmentalists are angry that a Russian rocket stage potentially carrying highly toxic chemicals is expected to splash down this weekend in a biodiversity hot spot in the Canadian Arctic.

The idea of dropping a missile full of toxic chemicals in the Arctic waters off Baffin Island is just as preposterous as drilling for oil there, Greenpeace Arctic campaigner Alex Speers-Roesch said Tuesday.

Dumping these chemicals from a ship would be a clear violation of international and Canadian law, and it is no more acceptable when it is dumped from the air.

A spokesman from the Canadian government was not immediately available.

An international aviation authority has issued a notice warning that debris from a Russian rocket launch is slated to fall Saturday into Baffin Bay. Thats outside Canadas territorial waters but inside an economic zone the country partially controls.

The space debris is a stage from a rocket set off under Russias Rokot program, a for-profit service that launches commercial satellites, said Michael Byers, a professor of international law and an Arctic expert at the University of British Columbia.

Byers said Russia is following the rules by informing aviation authorities of the launch and the splashdown. The stage is falling over a remote stretch of water between Greenland and the southern tip of Ellesmere Island.

He notes Rokot uses repurposed Cold-War-era intercontinental ballistic missiles to launch satellites. Those missiles, the SS-19, use hydrazine for fuel.

Hydrazine is known to be extremely toxic  so toxic that technicians working with it have to use pressurized haz-mat suits, Byers said.

The United States has very deliberately moved away from it because of the health and environment risk.

The U.S. last used hydrazine as a launch propellant in its Titan missile program which ended a decade ago.

The rocket stage is expected to come down in what is called the North Water Polynya, an 85,000-square-kilometre area of Arctic sea that naturally remains ice free year round.

The open water is a refuge for narwhal, beluga, walrus and bowhead whales. Its plankton-rich waters draw shoals of Arctic cod, providing food for an ecosystem that also supports seals, polar bears and millions of seabirds.

The polynya  the largest in the Arctic  is hunted by Inuit from Canada and Greenland. Its also connected through ocean currents to Lancaster Sound, where the Canadian government is considering creation of a marine protected area.

Byers said little is known about how hydrazine reacts in water, especially when it is cold and ice-choked. Nor is there any information on how much unused hydrazine the rocket stage is likely to hit the water with.

An American rocket stage that came down off the coast of Newfoundland in 2005 released more than two tonnes of a hydrazine-based fuel.

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Mitchell Cutler had just finished selling a THC-infused ointment to an arthritic woman  her medicine  when Toronto police showed up and charged him with possession for the purposes of trafficking.

If these charges do stick I guess my future is pretty much over, said the marijuana dispensary worker, who says he has never before been in trouble with police.

Cutler was at city hall Monday as part of a coalition of pot dispensaries urging the city to drop the charges laid by Toronto police during raids last Thursday.

Police and city municipal licensing officials targeted 43 locations last week, where 90 people were arrested. In all, 186 possession for the purpose of trafficking charges and 71 proceeds of crime charges were laid. Bylaw officers also laid 79 charges of zoning violations.

Even so, there was still pot being sold Monday in at least one storefront operation in Toronto.

Its been busy all weekend, said Erin Goodwin, one of the managers of Cannabis Culture on Queen St. W. near Bathurst St. A lot of people lost their access so were happy to provide.

Part of a Vancouver-based chain that will soon open another shop on Queen St. E. near Broadview Ave., Cannabis Culture says it asks buyers only for two pieces of identification to prove they are aged 19 or older.

The steady stream of customers that flowed Monday through the west-end location left with pot plants or oils in silver bags.

Mayor John Tory has committed political suicide with young people, said customer John Neely carrying a handmade sign stating: Fight crime not cannabis.

Speaking to reporters for the first time about the pot raids, the mayor defended police laying trafficking charges. Earlier this month, Tory sent a letter asking licensing staff to step up enforcement because so many bogus pot dispensaries had popped up across the city.

Lots of laws might be changed in the coming months, but until such time as the law is changed the police have an obligation, not just a choice, but they have an obligation to enforce the law, he said.

As for dispensaries that continue to operate, Tory said: All I can do is kind of throw my arms up a little bit and hope people would be responsible in the meantime.

Pot was on the agenda Monday at city hall, where the Toronto Board of Health unanimously endorsed a report by the Medical Officer of Health on the legalization and regulation of recreational cannabis. In it, Dr. David McKeown recommended the board urge the federal government to use a public-health approach when it moves to regulate and legalize pot in 2017.

The board also supported Councillor Joe Cressys motion urging the federal government to provide immediate guidance on the sale and possession of recreational marijuana pending forthcoming legalization.

Cities across the country are struggling, Cressy said.

Responding to the board of health, former city councillor now Liberal MP Adam Vaughan noted on Twitter that illegal operations are a local responsibility.

Immediate guidance? The laws the law, he wrote. Cities have the regulatory tools they need, police have the same laws theyve always had. Not doing anything was (Toronto)s choice.

With files from Jennifer Pagliaro

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More than two months since he allegedly attacked three members of the Canadian Forces at a Toronto recruitment centre, Ayanle Hassan Ali is now facing a slew of new terrorism-related charges, setting the stage for what could be a precedent-setting test of Canadas little-used terrorism legislation.

Ali, a 27-year-old Montreal native, yelled out Allah told me to come here and kill people in the midst of the alleged March 14 attack, according to Toronto police chief Mark Saunders.

The alleged declaration fueled speculation Ali may be the latest architect of a terrorist attack on Canadian soil, while comments from those close to Ali suggested he was mentally ill.

Two developments in the case Tuesday only deepened the opposing versions of Ali.

Following a psychiatric assessment, Ali was found unfit to stand trial due to the ongoing psychotic symptoms of a major mental illness, according to a statement from his lawyer, Maureen Addie.

He will now be treated with antipsychotic medications, with the goal of helping him become fit to stand trial. Another fitness assessment will be conducted and a follow-up hearing is scheduled for July.

The fitness ruling was made within hours of the RCMP announcing it had laid nine new charges against Ali, all allegedly committed for the benefit of, at the direction of or in association with a terrorist group.

The Mounties did not say what terrorist group, or what new evidence has been uncovered since the incident.

The new charges are: three counts of attempted murder, two counts of assault causing bodily harm, three counts of assault using a weapon, and one count of carrying a weapon.

The alleged offenses are a duplication of the nine charges already laid by Toronto police on March 15, one day after the attack, except with the terrorism enhancements. They have been laid under section 83.2 of the Criminal Code, legislation passed after the 9/11 attacks that specifically targets crimes involving terrorism.

If convicted of a crime with a terrorism enhancement, the penalty increases all the way up to life imprisonment. There is no mandatory minimum sentence.

There have been roughly 30 prosecutions using the legislation, including the infamous Toronto 18 case. Because of that, Canada is still creating precedents for conviction and penalties, says Christian Leuprecht, a professor of Political Science at the Royal Military College of Canada.

Alis trial is going to be an unusual case, Leuprecht said. Several of the prosecutions so far have involved, for instance, people travelling for the purpose of terrorism, but not necessarily acting or killing, he said.

We have very little precedent of prosecuting people in the country who have actually committed an offense that is a murder-type terrorism offense, he said.

The Crown is likely trying to set a precedent of how these kinds of cases are prosecuted, and what sort of penalties should be handed down, he said.

They are going to go, I think, for the absolute maximum that they can possibly justify under the charges, on the one hand as a deterrent on the other hand as a precedent, Leuprecht said.

Legal experts say the overlapping charges laid by the Toronto police and the Mounties will provide the Crown with a fall-back strategy.

The prosecution now gets two kicks at the can, said Kent Roach, a law professor at the University of Toronto and an expert in anti-terrorism law.

So if the jury or the judge has a reasonable doubt about whether hes doing this for a terrorist group, they could acquit him of the terrorist offenses but still potentially convict him of the ordinary crimes.

Roach speculated that the additional charges are an attempt to get an enhanced penalty because of the alleged terrorist nature of the incident.

He added that there could be some interesting questions the case raises, including if Ali was acting alone but in the name if a group unaware of his activity.

If he thinks hes doing it for the benefit of a group that knows nothing about him, he still may be guilty under 83.2, Roach said.

National security and terrorism expert Wesley Wark says the laying of new charges provides a hint about the strength of the case.

The Crown doesnt like to lose terrorism charges, so it doesnt lay terrorism charges lightly, particularly in context where they may have been fairly sure that they could secure a conviction under the previous charges, he said.

All of the charges against Ali stem from a March 14 attack at a Canadian Forces recruitment centre in Toronto. Ayanle is alleged to have walked alone into the office carrying a knife and attacking three members of the Canadian Forces: Ryan Kong, Jesus Castillo and Tracy Ann Gerhardt, causing minor injuries.

At a press conference the next day, Toronto chief Saunders said that, as Ali walked in to the building, he yelled: Allah told me to do this. Allah told me to come here and kill people. Moments later, he was subdued by army members.

Family sources told the Star in March that Ali, who has no previous convictions, had been struggling with both family and mental-health issues.

This has nothing, nothing to do with crazy terrorist organizations, Mariam Adam, a first cousin of Alis mother, told the Star in March.

A relative later said Ali belongs in a mental hospital, not a jail.

He was isolated. He didnt want to deal with anybody - not friends, not family, said Khadra Barkhadle, a cousin who said she has known Alis family for 25 years.

With files from Alyshah Hasham

Wendy Gillis can be reached at wgillis@thestar.ca

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An elderly man  possibly in his 60s  is dead after his vehicle hit a pole in the Silverthorn neighbourhood late Monday evening, according to Toronto Police and paramedics.

Police got a call about the accident at Ewart Ave. and Silverthorn Ave. around 5:30 p.m., saying initially that someone might have fallen out of their vehicle. Paramedics said that the man  the vehicles driver  ran himself over.

But Const. Clint Stibbe of Traffic Services said that its too early in the investigation to say exactly what happened over the course of the crash.

Ewart has been closed between Silverthorn and nearby Lacey Ave. while police investigate the crash.

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In the slums of Delhi, India more people have cellphones than clean drinking water, says Sushanta Mitra.

The York University-based mechanical engineer hopes to use those phones and a tiny blob of gel to change that, creating a water testing tool he calls a new paradigm for sanitation.

The Mobile Water Kit 2.0 allows anyone to test water for E. coli contamination using a syringe preloaded with a chemical compound. In less than an hour, results are processed on the spot. Testing had traditionally taken days.

Calling it tech for the masses, Mitra envisions local governments handing out the kits or seeing them stocked on corner store shelves.

An accompanying mobile app stores and broadcasts the results, alerting users if their local well is testing positive for E. coli and when the source has been treated. Storing that data in a centralized app can also track water quality, allowing for powerful public health tools like maps and databases, he said.

You cant really tell people not to drink water, you have to give them a solution, said Mitra, who runs a micro- and nano-scale transport lab at York.

Just over 840,000 people die every year from diarrheal diseases that could be prevented by improved water, sanitation and hygiene, according to a 2015 report from the World Health Organization.

Our goal is to really empower that bottom billion, so to speak, Mitra said. Its a Canadian innovation with a global impact.

To aid in that goal, the research team at Mitras lab teamed up with York Universitys commercialization branch to launch a company, Glacierclean Technologies Inc., aimed at taking the product to market.

We started in Petrie dishes, doing chemistry, Mitra said. Now it is time to move it to the marketplace.

A step-by-step look at how the detector works:

Step 1

Each syringe is preloaded with 0.1 millilitres of hydrogel, similar to the gels used on nicotine patches, but loaded with E. coli-detectors.

Step 1 a

With the first version, each chemical compound had to be individually added. Now they are all contained in the hydrogel, making the process simpler.

Step 2

The researchers grow the E. coli in the lab for testing purposes.

Step 2a

During field testing in Delhi, the researchers used whatever water was available.

Step 3

The gel turns different shades of pink depending on the level of E. coli. The intensity of the colour can determine ranges of bacterial density, which is recorded in an accompanying mobile app.

Step 3 a

Senior researcher Naga Siva Kumar Gunda, on the chair, has been helping to develop the testing technology since 2012, including field tests in Delhi, Mumbai, and Washington State.

Step 4

The mobile app broadcasts the results to other users and can store the information to build databases and maps.

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Standing in a darkened theatre on a sunny day, Harold Dougall turned from the bar and drew his imaginary bow.

Bing!

Almost 50 years after leaving the Huronia Regional Centre, the 67-year-old breaks from conversation to fire arrows at its image when its projected above the stage, his feelings as strong now as the unforgettable day he left.

It was a theatrical expression, but Dougall feels at home on stage, he said. Hes a toastmaster and a poet. And on this day, he is one of eight former residents performing the Recounting Huronia Cabaret at Torontos Buddies in Bad Times theatre.

In the making for about a year, the show is part of an ongoing project based at Wilfrid Laurier University that aims to give voice to the former residents, a vital opportunity for this group, said Kate Rossiter, the projects lead investigator.

It is a group that is so consistently left out of public discourse that you almost never hear these stories, she said. I think thats why people are shocked when they hear this stuff, because its not known histories.

Pat Seth, left, and Marie Slark, centre, talk about Slark's brother and his struggles at Huronia while they share the stage at Buddies in Bad Times.









Some of the histories on display in the cabaret include a tribute in song to survivors, an explanation of punishment by floor cleaning, and a sketch that casts former resident Carrie Ann Ford in the role of her tormentor.

The skit sees Ford on stage, screaming at her friend Pat Seth, playing the role of a young Ford.

Bug eyes, Ford hollers before forcing Seth onto the floor to dig worms, a popular punishment that required the children to lay face down on the floor with their hands clasped behind their backs.

It was like I was living in hell. Up there just brought back the flashes, Ford said after the show.

Ford, Dougall, and their fellow performers lived at the Orillia, Ont. institution, opened in 1876 as the Asylum for Idiots, during their childhoods.

Since its closure in 2009, former residents settled a class-action lawsuit alleging abuse and neglect against the province for $35 million.

Despite the subject matter, moments of levity did break out. In rehearsal, Seth collapsed into laughter as Ford berated her in character, the bonds of decades of friendship for a moment holding stronger than the deep-rooted memories.

Again in rehearsal, Antoinette Scharlebois, beaming after a last-minute request from her half-sister Marie Slark to join in an interpretive dance number, received gentle direction from Rossiter off-stage: Were keeping it serious.

I really enjoyed it, Scharlebois said after the show. The stories can be upsetting, she admitted. But I know its true.

Bev Houston found the show hard to watch, as her husband David told the story of his escape from the centre and her daughter, Jessie, 26, performed a song for her dad.

To actually see everybody up there, and say it to the world. Its hard. But Im glad they did, Houston said.

Some may associate cabaret with ribaldry, but Alex Tigchelaar, a cabaret artist and research assistant on the project, says it has always been primarily a space for marginalized groups to share their stories and carve out space in the public discourse.

It is a space for people who are outsiders. It has always been, said Tigchelaar, who founded and performs with The Scandelles burlesque group.

The form, often short sketches with few lines alongside musical and dance numbers, accommodates people with different abilities, she said.

Though this performance was limited to select friends, families, former residents, and advocates in the disability community, with another year of funding left for the project, Rossiter hopes to remount the performance for more audiences in the future.

For Slark, its imperative.

Even though its hard, we gotta share it, she said. So that the people in the community will be mindful and make sure that they dont do that to people with disabilities ever again.

Macabre memorabilia

Wilfrid Laurier University houses a collection of artifacts removed from Huronia after it closed in 2009. The items, including crib beds, wheelchairs, and sewing patterns for straight jackets, have never been publicly displayed before.

Nightgown

The residents often had to wear nightgowns as punishment. This one is in better condition and may have been worn by teachers, including one who is well-remembered for abusing the residents, sometimes sexually, said Kate Rossiter, the principal investigator on the Recounting Huronia project.

Staff uniform

The green and white striped uniform was the mark of a staff member. Former resident Barry Smith said he hopes former staff members still alive today tell their spouses what they did. Theyll leave them, he said.

Straight jacket

I just ignore it, former resident Harold Dougall said when he saw the straight jacket, a familiar sight. Most people cant do that.

Adult diaper

Continent residents were put in diapers when staff did not toilet them properly, Rossiter said. Antoinette Scharlebois remembers being made to sew the diapers and straight jackets. The clasps were the hardest part, she said.

Thermometer

This thermometer was used in an isolation room to ensure bathwater was intolerably cold. The memories of being held under icy water are so painful for Carrie Ann Ford, 66, that she cant take baths now.

Headphones

They look like a torture device, but these headphones likely had ear pads on them when they were in use, most likely for medical testing, Rossiter said.

Morgue sign

The morgue sign is a reminder that the threat of death was around, Rossiter said, adding some residents were made to clean in the morgue as punishment.

Headrest for autopsy

You dont see anybody, but you feel like somebodys touching your shoulder, said Barry Smith of site visits to the centres morgue these days.

MORE

Former residents feel walled out of Huronias future

Premier Kathleen Wynne, two other party leaders, apologize to Huronia survivors

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Residents on a quiet Scarborough street, some who have lived there for four decades, have received letters from the TTC warning them their houses might be expropriated to make room for the new subway extension.

Im not going, theyre going to kill me to take me out of here, Scott Cole said Monday, after receiving a letter on May 25 from the Toronto Transit Commission informing him that the bungalow hes lived in on Stanwell Dr. for 26 years might be subject to a Property Acquisition Process.

There has been no official approval of the subway alignment  running north-south under McCowan Rd., which the homes back onto  that would affect these homeowners, but theyre now convinced its a done deal.

The letter says this particular alignment will be presented at a public meeting Tuesday, the first in a series of meetings planned over the next three weeks. However, the letter, received by at least a dozen neighbours, says no decision has yet been made by council, and the recommendation has not even been seen by the City of Torontos executive committee.

Staff will report their recommendations for the Scarborough Subway Extension (including property impacts), the letter states, adding that the meeting date (is) still to be confirmed. The letter states that the TTC board will receive the recommendations July 11 and Toronto City Council on July 12, 13 and 14.

I love this place, said resident Vivek Bhatt. Ive been here 14 years. My kids grew up here.

Bhatt said he wont accept less than $2 million for his property from the city, but was adamant that he is only interested in expropriation as a last resort. I dont want to leave.

The letter states that the city will undertake property-value assessments to make sure fair offers are made to each owner.

He said that in his opinion, the process of selecting an alignment  despite the lack so far of public meetings or a council vote  has already been made. Obviously. Do you think they would do all this, send all this out, do all this planning, unless they already made their decision? he said, holding up the eight-page package he received.

He vowed to make sure local Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker, who has been staunchly pro-subway and sits on the TTC board, will not be re-elected in 2018. De Baeremaeker could not be reached for comment.

TTC spokesman Brad Ross said the agency sent less than 100 notices to homeowners in the potential path of the future line, alerting them that all or part of their land might need to be expropriated.

The final alignment for the heavily debated extension of the Bloor-Danforth line has yet to be confirmed, but its expected to run between Kennedy station and the Scarborough Town Centre. Council is scheduled to approve an alignment this year, with construction set to begin in 2018; the line wouldnt enter service until 2023.

The letter, shown to the Star by three residents, includes detailed satellite images of each specific property, with lines indicating where the subway tunnel will run and where the adjacent rights-of-way will be located.

Cole says his property is going to be turned into a parking lot, for all the trucks and equipment to build the subway, according to his letter.

Only six feet of his rear yard is needed for the project, according to the detailed map and drawings he received. He questions what will be done with the rest of the land being expropriated. Ross said its possible that not all of a required property will be needed  its unclear if only parts of properties might be expropriated in some cases.

In my opinion, theyre just going to sell all of this to big developers and make tens of millions of dollars, Cole said.

He said he was given one year to live after he was diagnosed with cancer 14 years ago, and is now ready for a much easier fight.

I dont want anything they could offer me, $2 million, $3 million. This is my home. Im staying, whether they like it or not.

With files from Ben Spurr and Jennifer Pagliaro

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The news from Israel is often bad: attacks on Jews by young Palestinians and reprisals by Israeli forces. Expanding settlements in the West Bank. Escalating fear and hostility. Plummeting prospects for peace.

But a group of dedicated educators is working to bring the two sides together  not at the bargaining table, but in the school room.

Were giving hope where leaders have failed, says Mohamad Marzouk, director of the community department for the bilingual and bicultural Hand in Hand schools.

Fear and mistrust develops over years when people are separated, he says. A kindergarten child goes to an Arabic or Hebrew school and never experiences the existence of children on the other side. This ignorance of the other creates mistrust and fear.

Marzouk and Rebecca Bardach, Hand in Hands director of resource development and strategy, are in Toronto on a speaking tour.

Hand in Hand is my Iron Dome against hatred, says Bardach, referring to Israels missile defence system. I cant change what is happening politically, or the minds of people who hate each other. But I believe we can overcome that sense of helplessness with understanding.

Hand in Hand, boasting some 1,320 Jewish and Arab Israeli students, and a lengthy waiting list, was founded in 1998 with one school in Jerusalem. It has now expanded to six, from Jaffa to the Galilee. Arab Israelis make up 20 per cent of Israels 8.5 million population and many identify as Palestinian Israelis.

The security wall between Israel and the Palestinian territories  Israels separation barrier  is physically and psychologically divisive, says Bardach. But the two separate language streams of the Israeli school system are a huge contributing factor to mutual misunderstanding between Jews and Arab Israelis.

Children arent growing up learning about differences, what we have in common and building common ground, she says. Parents must make a choice that cuts their children off from one or the other group.

Not so in Hand in Hand schools, where children are taught by Hebrew and Arabic-speaking teachers.

They partner with children who speak the other language, and study together. They also learn the missing links in mainstream curriculums  the others religion, culture, food, daily life and history. Elements that allow them to see their counterparts as fellow humans rather than enemies.

Outside the classroom they play together at sports, picnic together and celebrate each others holidays.

They and their parents have weathered nearly two decades of anger, violence, war and political outbursts in the world around them, including a 2014 firebombing of the Jerusalem school by Jewish extremists.

That brought even more support for Hand in Hand, from the media, thousands of demonstrators, Israels President Reuven Rivlin and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat.

The traumatic event shook parents and children. But they were helped through it by the schools tradition of unflinching dialogue on the events around them, however painful. It held true even in the past two years, when Jewish parents were afraid to drive on main roads for fear of being attacked, and Palestinian parents feared gangs of extremists who targeted Arabs for beatings.

The success of the Hand in Hand community has led to expansion, but on a shoestring. Its $9 million-a-year budget is financed by the Israeli government and private donations. Scholarships are available, but fees are $1,200 a year. Not easy to afford in Israel, Bardach admits.

Both she and Marzouk believe its worth the investment, and each has enrolled their own children.

From very different backgrounds, they are now campaigners for a common vision of inclusion and equality.

Marzouk, who grew up in an Arab farm village in Israel, went to a Jewish high school and was later involved in community relations and activism for social change.

Bardach, born in Berkeley, Ca., grew up in a left-wing Jewish family who helped to create a Jewish day school. After university she worked overseas for the UNHCR and other refugee agencies, and then settled in Israel.

Both see Jews and Arabs as people who are not just fated to live together, but as future partners: a vision that is increasingly difficult to sustain in the current divisive environment.

They believe there is no choice. Despair, says Bardach, is not an option.

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WASHINGTONWhen Lucas Rixon has to go to the bathroom, the guys know what to do.

They come with him, no questions asked.

Sometimes they enter the facilities too. Sometimes they stand sentry at the door. At Walmart or the mall or any other public place in Greenville, N.C., two or three straight cisgender teenagers turn into bodyguards for their transgender buddy.

Because theyre terrified for me, Rixon, 17, said over the phone. Theyre terrified for me, and Im terrified for myself.

He has felt particularly endangered since March. Thats when his trips to the toilet became the subject of a state uproar and then a national uproar.

Communities across America are suddenly in the grips of emotional battles over whether transgender people, especially students, should be allowed to use bathrooms that match their gender identity. Once a little-noticed sideshow to seismic fights over gay and lesbian rights, the bathroom wars have sprung to the fore as other disputes have faded and transgender advocates have become more visible and more vocal.

Social conservatives have lost clash after clash during the Obama era. In school bathrooms, they have found an issue on which they can win. At least temporarily.

Acceptance of transgender people lags far behind acceptance of gays and lesbians. Polls suggest a slight plurality of Americans, about 45 per cent, thinks people should be forced to use the bathroom corresponding to their sex on their birth certificate.

The Christian right found a model for victory last year in Houston. Seeking to repeal a city anti-discrimination law that prohibited discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity, conservatives ran a fear-mongering referendum campaign focused on the slogan no men in womens bathrooms. They prevailed handily.

Seeing opportunity, Republicans have this year pushed bathroom bills in more than 15 states. Rixons North Carolina is the only state to pass one so far.

After the city of Charlotte approved an anti-discrimination law, the state government approved a law to overturn that law  and to restrict public school students to the bathrooms and locker rooms matching their birth sex.

The law, known as House Bill 2, came as a shock to Rixon. Though he feared bathroom violence because of attacks on transgender people elsewhere, North Carolina had always seemed accepting to him. He has more friends now, he said, than he did before he came out as a boy early last year.

Uncomfortable with his body but uncertain what his problem was, he attempted suicide three times while presenting as a girl. Now he sees a happy future, ideally as an actor.

I tried to be one of the girls. I tried really hard. And nothing would work, he said. Im comfortable with who I am, and Im definitely not confused. This is not a phase.

Social conservatives continue to insist that nobody is truly transgender, that tens of thousands of teenagers like Rixon are just searching. Tanya Ditty, Georgia state director of the evangelical group Concerned Women for America, said discarding your birth sex is akin to erasing what a loving God has designed.

But Ditty, like others on her side, also claim that their stance on bathrooms is not about antipathy to transgender people. Nor, she said, do they think transgender people are going to hurt anyone.

The real issue is pedophiles, Ditty said  non-transgender men who will use the new rules to saunter unquestioned into bathrooms while masquerading as women.

Its the predators who will take advantage of this, and really its a huge risk factor, she said. I wouldnt want to be the casualty of a mandate (from Obama). Because you will have casualties: you are going to have people that will be attacked.

There have been a tiny number of cases, including one in Toronto, in which men have pretended to be transgender and then attacked women. But there does not appear to be any evidence at all that laws letting transgender people use the bathroom of their choice have contributed to even a single incident.

Far more dangerous, the evidence suggests, are laws forcing transgender people to walk into bathrooms that do not match how they look.

Transgender people are disproportionately likely to be harassed, assaulted and sexually assaulted, and their need to use public bathrooms has always been the source of stress and peril. The predators panic makes them feel even more vulnerable.

Now theyre hunting for us, said Paxtyn Thompson, 17, who founded the gay-straight alliance at his high school in small-town Indiana. Theyre like, Oh no, what if a trans person is in here? Theyre so worried about that that they probably cant even pee themselves.

The Obama administration issued a mid-May letter implicitly threatening to deny funding to school districts that dont let transgender students use bathrooms matching their gender identity. Eleven Republican-led states are now suing, arguing that the directive has no basis in law.

Thompson uses a single-person unisex bathroom at school. He thinks the controversy about his use of the toilet is the really weird product of fear and rumours and urban legends.

But he was chipper in discussing it. He believes the high-profile effort to make the lives of transgender people harder will actually help them in the end.

The transgender community hasnt been really big and in peoples faces since the Stonewall riots. So now its back in peoples faces again, he said. And theyre going to have to realize that this is reality, and there are people like this everywhere.

The key players

Alliance Defending Freedom: The Arizona-based Alliance is a deep-pocketed conservative Christian legal non-profit devoted to protecting religious freedom. Staunchly opposed to gay rights  president Alan Sears wrote a book called The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today  it has promoted model laws and school policies that would restrict transgender students to the bathroom of their sex at birth. Its suggested language has been adopted by legislators around the country.

Ted Cruz: Hoping he could scare Indiana evangelicals away from Donald Trump, the Texas senator repeatedly invoked the spectre of transgender bathroom predators during his last-gasp May campaigning. One of his attack ads began, Should a grown man pretending to be a woman be allowed to use the womens restroom? The same restroom used by your daughter? Cruz lost, but he brought the issue to wider national attention.

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory: McCrory, a Republican, has his own history of antipathy to LGBT rights; in 2005, he said Charlottes Pride event belongs in a hotel. In March, he signed the law that prohibited schools from accommodating transgender people in bathrooms  and prohibited cities from passing anti-discrimination laws to protect LGBT people at all. He has defended the law in the face of boycotts, saying he was forced into action by the pro-trans efforts of the left.

The Obama administration: President Barack Obama publicly opposed same-sex marriage until more than three years into his first term, but no president has done more for LGBT rights. Controversially deploying a civil rights law forbidding sex discrimination, his administration two weeks ago directed schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms matching their gender identity. The directive carried an implied threat: the loss of federal funding. Attorney General Loretta Lynch also launched a civil rights lawsuit challenging North Carolinas law, calling it state-sponsored discrimination.

LGBT advocates: Following a string of major victories on gay and lesbian rights, LGBT groups are having more trouble fighting transgender rights battles  in part because they have struggled to develop a winning strategy to combat their opponents successful use of bathroom-related fears. But groups like the Human Rights Campaign, led by gay activist Chad Griffin, carried the once-obscure bathrooms issue to Obamas attention with a highly orchestrated lobbying effort, the New York Times reported.

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BAGHDADIraqi forces started pushing into the city of Fallujah on Monday as a wave of bombings claimed by Daesh in and around Baghdad killed at least 24 people.

The advance is part of an offensive to rout militants from Fallujah and recapture the city, which has been held by Daesh, also known as ISIS or ISIL, for over two years. The offensive on Fallujah, backed by paramilitary troops and aerial support from the U.S.-led coalition, was first launched about a week ago.

The battle for the strategic city is likely to be a protracted one, with Iraqi forces advancing slowly to minimize civilian casualties. Tens of thousands of civilians are believed to be still inside the city, trapped by the fighting.

Meanwhile, the bombings by Daesh, which has been behind several recent deadly attacks in Baghdad and beyond, are seen as an attempt by the militants to distract the security forces attention from the front lines.

The deadliest of Mondays attacks took place in the northern, Shiite-dominated Shaab neighbourhood of Baghdad, where a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into a checkpoint next to a commercial area, killing eight civilians and three soldiers. The explosion also wounded up to 14 people, a police officer said.

Another suicide car bomber struck an outdoor market in the town of Tarmiyah, about 50 km north of Baghdad, killing seven civilians and three policemen, another police officer said, adding that 24 people were wounded in that bombing.

In Baghdads eastern Shiite Sadr City district, a bomb motorcycle went off at a market, killing three and wounding 10, police said. Medical officials confirmed casualty figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information.

In an online statement, Daesh claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying they targeted members of the Shiite militias and a government office. The Associated Press could not verify the authenticity of the statement, but it was posted on a militant website commonly used by extremists.

Since launching the Fallujah offensive and until Monday, Iraqi government troops have mostly been fighting Daesh in the outskirts of the city to tighten the siege ahead of a planned final push into its centre. By Sunday, the troops had recaptured 80 per cent of the territory around Fallujah, according to Iraqi Maj. Dhia Thamir.

At dawn on Monday, Iraqs elite counterterrorism forces started pushing into Fallujah from its southern edge, said Brig. Haider al-Obeidi. He described the clashes as fierce, with Daesh deploying snipers and releasing a volley of mortar rounds on the Iraqi forces.

Fallujah, which is about 65 km west of Baghdad, is one of the last major Daesh strongholds in western Iraq. The extremist group still controls territory in the countrys north and west, as well as Mosul, Iraqs second largest city.

In a televised speech Sunday to parliament, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi called on Fallujah residents to either leave the city or stay indoors. Government officials and aid groups estimate that more than 50,000 people remain inside the centre of the Sunni majority city.

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LUXEMBOURGA senior adviser to the European Court of Justice says a European Union business may legitimately prohibit an employee from wearing a Muslim headscarf on the job, provided the ban is based on a general company rule prohibiting visible political or religious symbols in the workplace, and not on prejudice against a particular religion.

Advocate General Juliane Kokott issued the opinion Tuesday after a Belgian court asked for clarification on what is prohibited by EU anti-discrimination laws.

In the Belgian case, Samira Achbita was fired as a receptionist by a security company after she insisted she should be allowed to work wearing an Islamic headscarf.

Achbita has lost her discrimination lawsuit in two Belgian courts and is now before the countrys Court of Cassation, which sought the EU courts opinion.

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ANKARA, TURKEYA court on Tuesday convicted a former Miss Turkey of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan through social media postings and sentenced her to a 14-month suspended sentence, amid deepening concerns that the country is swaying toward an increasingly authoritarian form of rule.

The court in Istanbul found 27-year-old model Merve Buyuksarac guilty of insulting a public official but immediately suspended the sentence on condition that she does not reoffend within the next five years.

An Istanbul prosecutor at one point asked for a sentence of one to two years in prison, according to UKs The Telegraph.

Her lawyer, Emre Telci, said he would file a formal objection to the verdict and appeal her case at the Strasbourg, France-based European Court of Justice.

Buyuksarac, who was crowned Miss Turkey in 2006, was briefly detained last year for sharing a satirical poem on her Instagram account in 2014. Prosecutors deemed it to be insulting to Erdogan, who was still prime minister at the time. She has denied insulting Erdogan.

Since becoming president in 2014, Erdogan has filed close to 2,000 defamation cases under a previously seldom-used law that bars insulting the president. Free speech advocates say the law is being used aggressively to silence and intimidate critics.

The trials have targeted journalists, academics and even schoolchildren. Coupled with a crackdown on opposition media and journalists, the trials have sounded alarms over the erosion of rights and freedoms in a country that was once seen as a model of Muslim democracy.

Erdogan caused an uproar last month, when on the basis of an archaic law that criminalizes insulting foreign heads of state, he went after a German comedian who mocked him in a profanity-packed poem.

These insult trials are being initiated in series, they are being filed automatically, Telci told The Associated Press by telephone after the verdict. Merve was prosecuted for sharing a posting that did not belong to her. My client has been convicted for words that do not belong to her.

Thousands of others also posted the poem, which is a satirical adaptation of the Turkish national anthem. It did not mention Erdogan by name, but alluded to a corruption scandal that allegedly involved his family.

Before the verdict was announced, Erdogans lawyer argued in court that Buyuksaracs Instagram post had gone beyond the limits of criticism and amounted to an attack on the Turkish leaders personal rights, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

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BRUSSELSFive-time Tour de France winner Eddy Merckx, considered by many the greatest cyclist of all time, will be charged Wednesday in a Belgian corruption case linked to irregular purchases of equipment by Brussels-area police and municipalities, a Brussels prosecutor said.

The prosecutor, who spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make public statements, said Merckx is accused of corruption and the use of false documents in the sale of 46 bicycles by his then-company Cycles Eddy Merckx to police in southern Brussels in 2006-07.

The contract, worth an estimated 15,000 euros ($16,700 U.S.), was allegedly obtained after a policeman furnished Merckx with inside information. Merckx allegedly rewarded the officer by selling him a carbon-fiber bicycle at a low price and giving a bicycle to the mans wife.

If found guilty of the charges against him, the prosecutor said, Merckx could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison. He said such a heavy sentence was unlikely for a person many Belgians consider their countrys greatest hero.

Twelve others, including two former high-ranking police officers, are also charged in the case.

What Merckx is accused of is really small potatoes compared to some of the others, the prosecutor said. Some of the irregular procurements involved Toyota vehicles and security cameras, according to published accounts.

Merckx, 70, could not immediately be reached for comment, but was quoted by the Belgian daily newspaper Derniere Heure as saying, I have nothing to say. Well see what happens.

After the criminal charges are confirmed by the Brussels prosecutors office, a panel of judges will decide whether the case should proceed to trial. The panel is expected to consider the case in early September, the prosecutor said.

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A wall of dust raced toward Lubbock, Texas, on Sunday, and the National Weather Service threw out a word of caution on its Facebook page. A haboob is rapidly approaching the Lubbock airport and may affect the city as well, the meteorologists wrote.

The use of the meteorological term haboob, a word with Arabic roots, didnt sit well with some residents.

Reader John Fullbright wrote:

Haboob!?! Im a Texan. Not a foreigner from Iraq or Afghanistan. They might have haboobs but around here in the Panhandle of TEXAS, we have Dust Storms. So would you mind stating it that way. Ill find another weather service.

Brenda Daffern added:

In Texas, nimrod, this is called a sandstorm. Weve had them for years! If you would like to move to the Middle East you can call this a haboob. While you reside here, call it a sandstorm. We Texans will appreciate you.

To be clear, the Weather Services use of haboob was entirely appropriate. It describes a situation in which a collapsing thunderstorm exhales a burst of wind. This burst of wind, or outflow, collects dust in the surrounding arid environment. The dust can grow into a towering dark cloud, the so-called haboob, that sweeps across the landscape, cutting visibility to near zero.

Haboobs are common in the desert Southwest and the Middle East, where the term originated.

Its also true that many weather and Earth science terms we use are derived from other languages  hurricane, tornado and derecho are all Spanish in origin, not to mention El Nino and La Nina. Theres also the Japanese term tsunami. In fact, there is very little in the English language that doesnt have roots somewhere else in the world.

At Weather Underground, meteorologist Bob Henson clarified the difference between haboobs, very localized phenomena, and dust storms and sand storms, which tend to cover more territory:

Extreme blowing dust episodes, or dust storms, typically cover a large area, as opposed to the narrow zone of a haboob. Sandstorms occur when sand grains are blown across the lowest few feet of the landscape, usually in true deserts rather than semi-arid regions.

The term haboob has been around for decades. As Henson notes, [H]aboob is hardly a new term in the meteorological literature. As noted by Maryland weathercaster and AGU blogger Dan Satterfield, a 1925 paper in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society was titled Haboobs.

Objections to the use of haboob are not unique to Texas. The New York Times wrote about an uproar over the term in Arizona in 2011, when Don Yonts of Gilbert, Arizona, told the Arizona Republic: I am insulted that local TV news crews are now calling this kind of storm a haboob. How do they think our soldiers feel coming back to Arizona and hearing some Middle Eastern term?

Of course, the actions of a few shouldnt colour all Texans and Arizonans as prejudiced. The Times quoted David Wilson of Goodyear, Arizona, who said: Lets not become so xenophobic that we forget to remember that we are citizens of the world, nor fail to recognize the contributions of all cultures to the richness of our language.

Meanwhile, on Facebook, a number of readers posted strongly worded retorts to those who posted complaints about the Weather Services use of the term in Lubbock:

Reader Trent Spencer said: I keep forgetting how ignorant the people of the Panhandle can be.

And Charles Russell added: To all of you people complaining about a word. Do you all realize how stupid yall look? I mean, the rest of the country and the world is laughing at yall ... [S]top getting offended over nothing. Its super annoying to the civilized world.

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WARSAW, POLANDPolands justice minister on Tuesday revived an effort to have filmmaker Roman Polanski extradited to the U.S., where he is wanted in a nearly 40-year-old case involving sex with a minor.

Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobros office said he asked Polands Supreme Court to annul a ruling in October by a court in Krakow which found that Polish law forbids Polanskis extradition. In November, prosecutors said they found no grounds to challenge the decision.

Ziobro took office late last year, after the ruling, as part of a new conservative government. The minister, who is also the countrys chief prosecutor, argues that celebrity status is shielding Oscar-winning director Polanski in Poland, where he grew up and which he often visits.

The Krakow courts decision was at odds with a Polish-U.S. extradition agreement, Ziobros office argued in a statement. It said that, according to the extradition agreement, the defendant should be handed over to the United States.

The director pleaded guilty in 1977 to one count of unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl during a photo shoot in Los Angeles. In a deal with the judge, he served 42 days in prison, but then fled the U.S. fearing the judge would have him imprisoned again for much longer.

The U.S. has been seeking to bring Polanski back and put him before a court.

Last year, the Krakow judge ruling on the case found that Polanski served his punishment in confinement in the U.S., and later for 10 months  partly under house arrest  in Switzerland in 2009-2010 when the U.S. unsuccessfully sought his extradition there.

He argued that U.S. judges and prosecutors in the case violated legal procedures, broke the plea bargain in 1977, denied Polanski the right to proper defence and appeared biased.

Jan Olszewski, Polanskis lawyer in Krakow, where the filmmaker has an apartment, told The Associated Press he had contacted the director about Ziobros decision, which we had been expecting.

The courts verdict stands and Mr. Polanski is a free man, he said. But I cannot exclude that this situation will affect his decisions as to visiting Poland.

Paris-born Polanski, 83, has Polish and French citizenship. He lives in Paris but often visits Poland, where he is popular and is preparing to make a film.

Polanskis artistic output is deeply admired in Poland, where he spent his World War II childhood and later went into filmmaking. His mother died at the Auschwitz death camp.

The filmmakers movements are restricted by an Interpol warrant in effect in 188 countries, but he has avoided extradition by travelling only between France, Poland and Switzerland, which in 2011 rejected a U.S. request to extradite Polanski. Ziobros move could now make Poland a risky destination for him.

Polanski won an Academy Award for best director for his 2002 film The Pianist, which he filmed in Warsaw, and was nominated for his 1970s movies Chinatown and Tess.

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BEIJING  A senior North Korean official arrived in Beijing on Tuesday for talks between his country and China, whose ties are formally close but have eroded recently because of the Norths nuclear weapons program.

North Koreas state-run Central News Agency reported early Wednesday that the official, Ri Su Yong, told the Chinese that it was the permanent policy of the North to try to expand its nuclear arsenal while striving to rebuild its economy.

Hours before Ris arrival, North Korea tried unsuccessfully to fire an intermediate-range Musudan ballistic missile, the fourth failed attempt in two months, according to the Yonhap news agency in South Korea.

Ri, a former foreign minister who was recently promoted to the Politburo, came to discuss the recent congress in Pyongyang of the Workers Party, said a former senior Chinese official familiar with the visit as well as with North Korea. The official declined to be identified given the sensitivity of the matter.

The Workers Party congress, in early May, sought to cement the power of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, with whom Ri is considered close. Ri was North Koreas ambassador to Switzerland at the time Kim attended a boarding school there, North Korea experts have said.

Ris remarks were made during a meeting with Song Tao, who heads the International Liaison Department of the Communist Party in Beijing.

The North Korean news agency said Ri had stressed that it was the Workers Partys principled stance to stick loyally to Kims policy, known as byungjin, as a permanent strategic line and use it as a base to defend peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the region.

Although the byungjin policy was hardly new, the meeting between Ri and Song was significant in that North Korea formally told China through a high-level governmental channel that it had no intention of giving up its nuclear weapons program.

The news agency quoted Song as saying that the Chinese Communist Party and government supported North Koreas pursuit of a path to development that suits its reality. It did not specify what Song said about the Norths nuclear weapons program.

Ris visit continued efforts by Kim to court China, the Norths main trading partner and benefactor, as the country feels the effects of U.N. sanctions.

Still, China has been frustrated enough by the Norths continued testing of nuclear weapons and launching of missiles that it agreed to the international sanctions in March, and Beijing seemed unlikely to offer substantial support to the North during Ris visit.

The visit left open whether President Xi Jinping, who also serves as secretary-general of the party, would agree to see him.

But the former Chinese official said he thought it unlikely that Xi would meet with the North Korean visitor.

Kim may have ordered Tuesdays missile test to coincide with Ris visit, as a way of signaling to the Chinese that he would continue to cause trouble if Beijing did not help North Korea, according to Evans J.R. Revere, a former senior State Department official in charge of North Korea affairs.

Such a tactic might not be advised given that China has shown increasing impatience with North Korea, Revere said. Even so, he added, Over the years, the North Koreans have shown themselves nothing if not skillful in manipulating the Chinese.

The attempted missile launch would almost certainly rule out an audience with Xi, said Cheng Xiaohe, associate professor of international relations at Renmin University.

China would seem without principle if he is allowed to meet with President Xi after they launched that missile, Cheng said.

Despite recent failures, there have been growing worries about North Koreas nuclear and missile activities this year, which include a nuclear test in January and a rocket launch in February that outsiders saw as a test of banned long-range missile technology.

I think they keep firing (Musudans) because theyve continuously failed in previous launches, said Lim Eul Chul, a North Korea expert at South Koreas Kyungnam University. Theyll continue to make efforts to upgrade (Musudans) capability to a level that can satisfy their leader.

South Korea has dismissed as propaganda repeated overtures by North Korea for talks, which some analysts see as an attempt by the North to win concessions from its rivals. South Koreas Foreign Ministry warned Tuesday that North Korea will face stronger sanctions if it doesnt stop provocations.

With files from The Associated Press

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Canadian content. Those are dirty words to some people. They dont like the idea of anyone telling them what they should watch or listen to in their free time. Let the market sort things out, they say. Good programs will live, no matter where theyre produced. Bad programs will die.

Now our federal government is planning to review Canadas communications policy, with Canadian content rules under the microscope.

And the chorus singing, Drop Canadian Content Rules is already deafening.

The present rules may need some freshening up, but killing all Canadian content regulations is a very bad idea.

Have a look at the top-rated TV programs in Canada. Results for the week ending on May 15 show that the top 16 were American. There wasnt a Canadian drama in the top 30.

Thats why Canadians know their Miranda rights, even though we dont have any. Its why we love Navy Seals instead of members of Joint Task Force 2. Its why we know that FBI agents are trained in Quantico, Virginia, but youll get a blank stare if you ask a neighbour where the RCMP does its training.

And thats happening even with Canadian content rules.

Its not alarmist to ask if there would be any television produced in Canada (besides news and sports), without content rules. The market says its usually cheaper to buy a foreign program.

Perhaps this is a good time to remember when this all started.

In 1970, the chairman of the Canadian Radio Television Commission (CRTC) said this: Canadian broadcasting should be Canadian and strive for excellence. This objective is so simple, that one feels a little bit uneasy when repeating it.

But it wasnt happening through natural forces.

So the Commission decided that all Canadian TV networks would have to devote 60 per cent of their time to Canadian programs.

More controversial were the rules for radio. Thirty per cent of the music played on Canadian stations would have to be Canadian. The howling began immediately.

The Encyclopedia of Radio reports, Throughout the 1970s, radio stations complained that a shortage of high-quality Canadian recordings limited their ability to reach these quotas while maintaining the interest of listeners. I remember dire warnings that all wed hear on the radio were songs by Anne Murray and Paul Anka. Owners said theyd lose millions of dollars.

In 1971, Sam the Record Man (Sam Sniderman), told the CBC, Radio stations say they dont want to be forced to play Canadian music. Well, they werent doing it before.

The result was what Margaret Daly of the Toronto Star called a mushrooming of talent. By the mid-1970s she said a viable recording industry had been created. Studios were popping up all over the country producing material that was as good as any in the United States.

Gordon Lightfoot, Neil Young, Diane Dufresne, the Guess Who, R. Dean Taylor  the list of Canadian musical success stories of the early 1970s is a long one. Since then, Canadian music has routinely been world-class. Its hard to argue it would have happened without Canadian content rules.

The music industry has no doubt on that score. Canadas top music prize is the Juno award. It is not named for the Roman goddess who was the wife of Jupiter, but after Pierre Juneau, who was the chairman of the CRTC when it created Canadian content rules. Imagine that. Rock n rollers, rappers, heavy metal artists, all competing for an award that carries the name of a civil servant.

Theres been an explosion of media platforms in recent times. It makes sense for the government to see if new policies are warranted. I pray though, that when all is said and done, that no matter how crowded the marketplace, and no matter how enthusiastically we embrace the brave new media world, something as important as Canadians seeing and hearing themselves wont be left to chance.

Mark Bulgutch is the former Senior Executive Producer of CBC News. He teaches journalism at Ryerson University. His book is Thats Why Im a Journalist.

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Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne found herself at the centre of a major political explosion in Alberta last week that left her unscathed but delivered a serious wound to Albertas official opposition.

Ontario premiers have a way of setting off volatile sparks among certain Albertans who have been holding a grudge ever since Ontario supported the long-gone and much-despised National Energy Program (NEP).

Alberta premier Rachel Notley is convinced that holding grudges isnt very productive especially when Alberta needs powerful provinces like Ontario to sign on to Albertas interprovincial pipeline projects. And theres no doubt Premier Kathleen Wynne would be a formidable ally.

So Notley invited Wynne to Alberta to highlight the two provinces common causes: fighting climate change while at the same time benefitting from oilsands development. According to Wynne there are 1,100 businesses in Ontario that depend on it.

Notley was beaming with delight as she held a joint news conference with Wynne.

She was still beaming when she introduced Wynne in the Legislature. But the official opposition  the Wildrose Party  was not impressed. Their leader, Brian Jean, and half of the Wildrosers remained in their seats as MLAs from all parties rose to their feet to welcome Wynne.

Then things got even nastier. Derek Fildebrandt, the Wildrose finance critic, used Question Period to deliver three screeching rants against Wynnes government as the premier sat in the gallery and watched.

At one point Fildebrandt taunted Notley by suggesting that Alberta was mistakenly following Ontarios lead into a green economy even though Ontario had the largest debt on the planet and was now receiving equalization payments.

The attack by the Wildrose left the NDP MLAs seething. But it also appalled other prominent Albertans.

The next day when Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi met with Wynne he offered her a public apology. Leaders of the Alberta Liberals and the Alberta Party denounced Wildroses antics. The president of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce said what happened in the Legislature yesterday is not my Alberta.

Calgary Herald columnist Don Braid called the Wildrose welcome an embarrassing Trumpism.

Soon after a Wildrose spokesman issued a statement expressing regret for the tone of Fildebrandts remarks but not for their substance.

When asked to respond at a news conference Wynne said the attack was nothing new for her: she was used to dealing with climate change deniers in the Ontario Legislature.

That could have been the end of the story. A two-day tempest in a teapot that fizzled out on Friday afternoon.

But later that day one of Fildebrandts constituents posted a supportive comment on his Facebook page that included: the truth about Mr. Wynne or whatever the hell she identifies as needs to be put out there for everyone to see

Fildebrandt quickly posted a reply: Proud of having constituents like you!

He subsequently apologized on Twitter by explaining he hadnt read the whole post before responding.

But it was too late.

Around midnight, Wildrose leader Brian Jean issued a statement in which he announced that Fildebrandt had been suspended from the Wildrose caucus because his comments on social media did not reflect the partys values.

Jean was no doubt shocked into action by the memory of a Wildrose candidate in the 2012 election who asserted that homosexuals will be condemned to a lake of fire after they die and was one of the key reasons Albertans decided Wildrose wasnt ready to govern.

Jean also happened to be attending the Conservative Party convention in Vancouver which was about to reverse its opposition to gay marriage.

The impetuous Fildebrandt was a Wildrose star. He is only 31-years-old and was seen by many party stalwarts as an eventual successor to Brian Jean. He was a prominent operative for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation before becoming a Wildrose MLA. Now he will have trouble being heard at all.

Its a safe bet that Rachel Notley never anticipated that chumming up to Kathleen Wynne and Ontario would lead to the crippling of her fiercest opposition.

But that is indeed what happened and the Wildrose Party has no one to blame but itself.

Gillian Steward is a Calgary writer and journalist, and former managing editor of the Calgary Herald. Her column appears every other week. gsteward@telus.net

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A great many Canadians face a barren prospect as they enter the autumn of life. Its a future thats all the more distressing because it neednt be this way.

Simply put, millions of people have failed to save enough for retirement. The impact of that shortfall could be blunted through concerted government action, but its not at all clear that a consensus will emerge on reforming the Canada Pension Plan.

Ottawa and the provinces have a fresh chance to move forward when finance ministers meet in Vancouver on June 20. They need to take bold action to strengthen the countrys pension system, sparing millions of future retirees from a traumatizing lifestyle adjustment.

To his credit, federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau says hes committed to getting a deal on pension reform by the end of this year. But he cant do it alone. Any major change to the CPP requires the support of Ottawa plus the backing of seven out of 10 provinces, representing two-thirds of Canadas population. And efforts at reform have repeatedly failed to win sufficient agreement.

The last time Morneau sat down to discuss pensions with his provincial and territorial counterparts, in December, all they could agree on was to hold more talks. Saskatchewan, British Columbia and Quebec have been reluctant to embrace a bold expansion of pension support, arguing that the economy cant sustain higher CPP costs.

Its a short-sighted concern. Gradually increasing pension contributions paid by workers and their employers neednt cause major disruption, yet it would very likely avoid considerable long-term anguish.

The maximum annual CPP payout last year was a modest $12,780. To make ends meet, retirees are supposed to enhance that with income from workplace pensions and private savings. But a changing economy has left far fewer people with access to a traditional workplace pension. And the rise of so-called precarious employment means many people, especially young workers, simply cant afford to set aside money for retirement.

The best way to avert the looming pension crisis it is to expand CPP benefits. Ontarios government, the labour movement and social activists, among others, are calling for a doubling of the maximum payout available under the plan.

This would mean hiking contributions from both workers and employers. Critics paint that as a drain on todays economy, but it makes more sense to regard it as an investment in the future.

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has taken the responsible step of setting up a supplementary provincial pension plan to substantially increase retirement benefits. Mandatory contributions to support the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan are to start on Jan. 1, 2018. A far better solution would be to expand the CPP and deliver nationwide pension reform.

Ottawa and the provinces could make that happen, starting with a clear signal in June that they will provide Canadian workers with a secure and sufficient retirement income.

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You can never have too many digital wallets.

And if most of them link to the same credit cards or bank accounts, so what? For the companies creating such products, from Apple (AAPL) Pay to Alphabet's (GOOG) Android Pay, Chase Pay and newcomer Wells Fargo Wallet, the important task now is establishing and protecting a niche in the market for a product consumers clearly want.

Banks are unwilling to let tech companies take the lead in an area that has traditionally been their domain, and executives figure there will be time later to figure out how to differentiate the products from each other and which companies and industries are best equipped for the job.

"We know mobile is key to the future of payments," Jim Smith, head of virtual channels at Wells Fargo (WFC) , said in a statement last week announcing the San Francisco bank's new product.

The numbers back him up, in multiple ways. Nearly 87% of the U.S. adult population carry a mobile phone, and 43% of users with a bank account made a mobile-banking transaction in the past 12 months, according to a Federal Reservereport in March.

Further, digital banking services are good for customer retention: Research from management consultant Bain & Co. showed visits to a U.S. bank branch are twice as likely to annoy customers as handling transactions on a mobile device.

Wells Fargo's service will be added to the mobile app for Android users later this summer, building on a digital base that CFO John Shrewsberry said grew 6% during the first quarter from a year earlier. The total includes 17.7 million active mobile users, he noted in April.

Despite introducing its own digital wallet, Wells Fargo will still work with payment options such as Android Pay, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Visa Checkout.

And since consumers often cite security concerns as a barrier to using mobile payment services, Wells Fargo made addressing those concerns a focus with its new product, which was developed in-house. Unauthorized purchases that are promptly reported will be reversed, and customers will have the same risk and fraud-detection systems as on their bank accounts, the company said.

By the end of 2016, more than 40% of its ATMs will be compatible with Wells Fargo Wallet, meaning customers won't have to carry a plastic debit card with them. JPMorgan Chase (JPM) , which launched Chase Pay last year, has introduced similar services.

"With mobile ubiquitous in today's world, innovation around mobile will continue to be a key area of focus," Steve Ellis, head of Well Fargo's innovation group, said in the statement.

Wells' digital wallet uses near-field communication, or NFC, similar to Apple Pay, so that the smartphone can interact with the credit card scanner at a merchant or an ATM.

JPMorgan's Chase Pay combines that with a quick-response, or QR, code, which is a barcode read by a scanner. The New York bank's mobile customer base grew 19% during the first quarter.

In the same period, Apple Pay expanded to China and Singapore. To date, more than 10 million "contactless-ready" locations can accept Apple Pay in different countries, including 2.5 million in the U.S. alone.

"Apple Pay is growing at a tremendous rate, with more than five times the transaction volume of a year ago and 1 million new users per week," CEO Tim Cook said on the company's first-quarter call.

Wells Fargo, Apple, Visa and Alphabet are holdings in Jim Cramer'sAction Alerts PLUS charitable trust portfolio. Want to be alerted before he buys or sells the stocks?Learn more now.
The Embassy has issued a second advisory in a week and assured assistance to reach border.
India dealt Apple (AAPL) a blow on Monday, rejecting the California tech giant's proposal to sell refurbished iPhones in that country. As millions of Americans fired up the barbecue to celebrate the official beginning of summer on Memorial Day, this U.S. company doesn't have much of an excuse to party. However, this setback doesn't make Apple any less of an excellent opportunity for long-term investors.

Two weeks ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook made his first four-day visit to the subcontinent to establish relationships with Indian companies and officials, as well as to promote the "Apple agenda."

Apple is a holding in Jim Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS Charitable Trust Portfolio. See how Cramer rates the stock here. Want to be alerted before Cramer buys or sells AAPL? Learn more now.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based firm's international focus has traditionally been on China. And in fact, the company had seen more success there than any other U.S.-based tech company. In fiscal 2015, Apple sold more than $59 billion worth of products n China. And revenue growth for what Apple refers to as its "Greater China" region -- encompassing Taiwan and Hong Kong as well as Mainland China -- remained at a steady 70% rate. This certainly had a positive effect on the company's stock price and the resulting gains for investors.

But things started to change in the last quarter. Global Apple sales declined for the first time in years. And in the Greater China region, sales fell by more than 26% year over year.

In addition, the Chinese government itself is posing increasing risks to Apple's business there. Apple and fellow U.S.-based tech companies Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Qualcomm, Alphabet, Oracle, and Intel have been labeled by the regime as eight "guardian warriors" whose efforts in China must be closely monitored and regulated in order to protect and promote homegrown companies such as Alibaba.

Cisco and Alphabet are holdings in Jim Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS Charitable Trust Portfolio. See how Cramer rates the stock here. Want to be alerted before Cramer buys or sells CSCO or GOOGL? Learn more now.

Apple has had to turn its gaze to other developing countries with growing and increasingly rich middle classes. Enter India.

During Cook's visit, the exec unveiled plans to open a headquarters in Bangalore, a city in India where many tech companies -- and workers -- are already located. The new center will foster the development of apps for Apple's iOS operating system. And in addition, Cook presented the Indian government with a scheme that would sell used and refurbished iPhones at a discount to Indian consumers.

Although India's middle class is steadily becoming more prosperous and with more cash in their wallets, the average Indian is unwilling to spend more than $150 on a cellphone. In comparison, new iPhones cost around $700 in India. Refurbished iPhones would provide the quality and branding of Apple but for just a fraction of the new-phone price.

But at a press conference today, the country's minister of commerce, Nirmala Sitharaman, announced that the government had rejected the bid.

"We are not in favor of any company selling used phones in [India], however certified they may be," she said.

However, all is not lost for Apple's hopes in India. Sitharaman's ministry is working with the government's finance wing to waive local-sourcing rules that are currently preventing Apple from opening stores in India. (Right now, a minimum of 30% of the goods Apple stores sell would need to be locally sourced.)

And we still can't rule out an improvement in sales in China. As CEO Cook has said, "We remain really optimistic about China."

Even if India doesn't become Apple's "next China," this is still an amazing company with loads of profit growth left in it. Apple has a largely cyclical business, and global sales are certain to pick up as soon as the company's next large innovation is unveiled.

And with tantalizing prospects such as a next-generation iPhone, a "smart speaker" to rival the popular Amazon Echo, and even an Apple Car in the hopper, "the next big thing" could be just around the corner.

Any dip in Apple share prices reflect an excellent time to load up on shares. This is an investment that will continue to make fortunes.

---

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This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned.
In what appears to be a vote of confidence in the future growth potential for Allergan (AGN) , Carl Icahn said Tuesday morning that he has recently purchased a 'sizable position' in the maker of Botox.

Shares of the Dublin, Ireland-based company added about 1.2% to $238.74 in Tuesday morning's trading session.

The activist investor indicated in the May 31 statement that he is highly supportive of Allergan CEO Brent Saunders, implying that his intentions probably don't include shaking up the management of the company as he has done in past campaigns. Terms of Icahn's investment in Allergan were not disclosed.

"We have tremendous respect for Carl Icahn as an investor, and while we have never recommended blindly piggy-backing on his investments, we do view the news as a modestly incremental positive, as it reinforces confidence not only in the company but in the leadership of Mr. Saunders," said TheStreet's founder Jim Cramer and research director Jack Mohr, whom as managers of the Action Alerts Plus Portfolio hold shares of Allergan.

The statement makes it pretty clear its not a 'kick out the management' type of thing, added Gabelli analyst Kevin Kedra Tuesday by phone.

"It appears now that [Icahn's] more on the passive side, though he's not known as a passive guy," Kedra said.

From an opportunistic sense, Kedra noted that the timing is logical for investors to look at the "life after Pfizer" value of the business, especially in light of the beaten up biotech market.

In April Allergan's $150 billion megadeal with Pfizer (PFE) fell apart as the U.S. Treasury unveiled new rules meant to prevent tax-driven deals known as inversions.

Icahn is more than familiar with Saunders, having played a role bringing him on as the new chief executive at Forest Laboratories a few years ago. Less than a year following Saunder's appointment at Forest, the company in February 2014 struck a deal to be acquired by Dublin-based generic drug company Activis (ACT) for $25 billion. Icahn at the time claimed credit for the fusion following his campaign at the New York target.

"We have every confidence in Brent's ability to enhance value for Allergan," Icahn noted in the Tuesday statement.

Icahn surely has some ideas about Allergan from a capital allocation perspective, however "some of the things from his playbook before might not work for Allergan," Kedra said, pointing to the investor's campaign at Biogen (BIIB) years ago.

The activist took on Biogen in 2007 and eventually succeeded in appointing two directors to the biotech company's board in 2009.

While Icahn has in the past favored share buyback programs for companies, a Dutch auction like that seen at Biogen during his involvement, where a company bids for existing shares, is probably not viable for Allergan given the challenges of such a mechanism for a Irish-domiciled company, noted Kedra. An open market share repurchase program is thus a more likely scenario.

In the near term, investors will likely remain fixated on the closing of Allergan's generics sale to Teva (TEVA) . The $40.5 billion deal is anticipated to close in June, according to financial media reports.

"Closing of the Teva deal will eliminate all types of uncertainty about what kind of flexibility they have going forward," Kedra said.

Saunders told attendees last week at the UBS Global Healthcare Conference that the company would be shifting its dealmaking strategy toward smaller-sized deals while moving to pay down its debt load following completion of the Teva deal.

Allergan and Biogen are holdings in Jim Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS Charitable Trust Portfolio. Want to be alerted before Cramer buys or sells AGN or BIIB? Learn more now.
Shares of Tesla (TSLA) have held up surprisingly well in the trading days since the company's announcement on May 18 that it would sell nearly $2 billion in new stock. The company's charismatic CEO, Elon Musk, will have a chance later Tuesday to further calm any nerves in the market when the electric carmaker holds its annual meeting.

Tesla's shareholder meeting will be held after trading hours Tuesday at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., and will be live streamed on the company's Web site. Following shareholder votes on official business including reelection of two directors, Musk will make a short presentation and then take questions both from the live audience and from members of a popular Tesla user Web site.

As UBS analyst Colin Langan noted on Bloomberg television this morning, "very little news" tends to come from the Tesla annual meeting. Still, plenty will be tuning in. And Musk is unlikely to miss an opportunity to talk up the company's prospects.

Analysts have warned that there are a lack of catalysts ahead of Tesla's introduction of its mass-market Model 3, scheduled for late 2017, and plenty of risk that target could be missed. Musk has set an ambitious schedule that he admitted might not be achievable, so investors will want to listen for any update on the Model 3 timetable or the CEO's current comfort level with his self-imposed deadlines.

The company raised $1.4 billion to fund capex spending to ramp up Model 3 production, but depending on the sales strength of other Tesla models in the quarters to come more cash could be needed. Musk, during the company's first-quarter earnings call, hinted at the eventual secondary offering, and company watchers will be curious if there are any comments about upcoming capital expenditures or the potential need for additional cash.

There is also likely to be some talk about Tesla's $5 billion Gigafactory, a 130-acre battery production site being built in the Nevada desert. Reports surfaced over the weekend that Tesla has begun sending invitations for a July 29 grand opening event, and the company is going to need the factory to be up and running soon if it is going to get the Model 3 out the door in a timely fashion and at or near the planned $35,000 price point.

More broadly, there have been a growing number of debates in the past year about whether companies ranging from LG in South Korea to Volkswagen in Germany are developing new battery techniques and propulsion technologies that could leap frog over Tesla's lithium-ion battery technology. Musk has dismissed rival technologies before, famously calling hydrogen fuel cells "fool cells." But with the company now fully invested in the Gigafactory and its lithium battery, any commentary on what is going on in Nevada and how Musk feels about Tesla's technologies would be good fodder for investors.
Biotech short-selling analyst Elliot Favus issued a new bear report on Relypsa (RLYP) Tuesday in which he uses a government drug-safety database to claim patients are being seriously harmed and killed by the company's newly launched hyperkalemia drug Veltassa.

Favus' charge against Relypsa is spurious because the database he relies on -- the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System, or FAERS -- consists of voluntarily reported and unconfirmed drug-safety data. The FDA, on its Web site, explicitly warns that adverse events listed in the FAERS cannot be conclusively linked to a drug because information is often incomplete.

"Veltassa has only been on the U.S. market for several months and the Veltassa FAERS database already contains a very large number of unique serious adverse event reports which fit into a clear pattern of death, heart failure, and gastrointestinal side effects," according to a copy of Favus' report obtained by TheStreet.

But none of the FAERS reports cited by Favus say Veltassa caused the reported adverse events or deaths. The reports contain no information on the medical background of the patients or the disease(s) they're diagnosed with. One report notes a patient taking as many as 18 different medications, of which Veltassa is just one.

Relypsa shares are up 3% to $18.56 in midday trading.

Veltassa is approved to treat hyperkalemia, a condition in which potassium levels in the blood become abnormally high, usually due to poorly functioning kidneys or as a side effect from medicines taken by people to manage heart failure and chronic kidney disease. Elevated potassium can cause abnormal heart rhythm and in worse cases, sudden death.

Favus is the sole proprietor of Favus Institutional Research, which publishes closely distributed, short-selling reports on biotech and drug stocks for hedge fund clients. Favus has been stridently negative on Relypsa since last year, in part because of his belief in the superiority of AstraZeneca's (AZN) competing hyperkalemia drug ZS-9.

Last Thursday, the FDA rejected ZS-9 -- a big setback for AstraZeneca but a positive development for Relypsa, which secured FDA approval for Veltassa last October and now has the commercial market to itself.

The rejection of ZS-9 was also a negative surprise for investors short Relypsa. More than 30% of Relypsa's tradable shares are sold short.

Favus is trying to bail out his clients.

Adam Feuerstein writes regularly for TheStreet. In keeping with company editorial policy, he doesn't own or short individual stocks, although he owns stock in TheStreet. He also doesn't invest in hedge funds or other private investment partnerships. Feuerstein appreciates your feedback; click here to send him an email.
Verizon landline and cable workers on the East Coast walked off the job last month after little progress in negotiations since their contract expired nearly eight months ago. (Jake Danna Stevens/AP)

Nearly 40,000 striking Verizon employees will return to work Wednesday after reaching a tentative contract agreement that includes 1,300 new call-center jobs and nearly 11 percent in raises over four years but also makes health-care plan changes to save the company money, the company and unions said Monday.

The pact, subject to approval by union members, stands to end one of the largest strikes in the United States in recent years. Workers and Verizon Communications had reached an agreement in principle Friday but hadnt released details or a date for the workers return. The strike began in mid-April.

The Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers unions, which both represent the strikers, called the deal a victory for American workers.

We are turning the tide from cutbacks against working people to building a stronger labor movement and strengthening the power of working Americans, Dennis G. Trainor, vice president of the unions District 1 in the Northeast, said in a statement. The IBEW said it protected American jobs amid concern about concern about work moving overseas.

New York-based Verizon said it was a good deal for workers, customers and the telecom giant alike.

This will allow our business to be more flexible and competitive, chief administrative officer Marc Reed said in a statement.

Union members will vote on the deal after returning to work.

Besides the raises and call-center jobs, the tentative agreement includes $1,250 in signing bonuses and health-care reimbursements for new workers, a 25 percent increase in the number of unionized crews maintaining Verizons utility poles in New York state, and three 1 percent increases in pensions, which Verizon had proposed to freeze, the CWA said. It also includes the first contract for wireless retail store workers, affecting 70.

The deal also entails changes that Verizon says will save significant money, such as adopting Medicare Advantage plans  private health insurance contracted with the government-sponsored Medicare program  rather than costlier insurance. The tentative agreement also increases flexibility to route customer service calls from one call center to another, the company said.

Installers, customer service employees, repairmen and other landline and cable workers in nine Eastern states and the District have worked without a contract since August. During the strike, other workers have stepped in, but there were some delays in installations of Verizons Fios fiber-optic service.

The unions said they were striking because Verizon wanted to freeze pensions, make layoffs easier and rely more on contract workers. Verizon said it had high health-care costs for its unionized workers, a group that has shrunk as Verizon sold off large chunks of its wireline unit and focused on its mobile business, which was not unionized. It also wanted the union workers, around one-fifth of its U.S. workforce, to agree to move to different regions when needed, which the union opposed.

The strike made its way into the presidential campaign. Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton visited strikers outside a Verizon store in midtown Manhattan, and rival Bernie Sanders cheered workers on a picket line in Brooklyn.

But the walkout was also complicated by allegations that strikers in Delaware intimidated and harassed non-union replacement workers. A judge said Thursday he felt the unions had a causal role but declined a Verizon request to hold them in contempt of a court order on permissible strike activities.
French police searched the Paris headquarters of U.S. fast-food giant McDonalds on May 18 on suspicion of aggravated tax fraud. (Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP/Getty Images)

French authorities recently raided the Paris headquarters of two U.S. corporate giants, Google and McDonalds. The European Commission is investigating tax deals that Amazon and Apple reached in Luxembourg and Ireland. And the commission has also accused the Netherlands of allowing Starbucks to avoid more than $30 million in taxes.

Across Europe, just how much  or little  U.S. multinational firms are paying in taxes is coming under intense scrutiny.

While the U.S. companies say they are paying what they owe, European authorities have argued that many firms have developed complex tax strategies to lower their tax bills, sometimes with the help of countries hungry for the jobs they can bring.

The battle playing out across Europe mimics, in many ways, a debate that has sparked populist anger in the United States: Are U.S. companies getting special treatment, or are they being unfairly targeted?

The fight, in essence, centers on the more than $2 trillion in overseas profits that U.S. corporations have refused to bring back to the United States, where they would face a hefty tax bill. U.S. lawmakers and regulators have lamented the practice but have had little success in pressing the corporations to bring the money home.

Now European tax authorities are also eyeing this money, international tax experts say. The profits have often been routed through low-tax European countries, potentially cheating others nations in which the companies operate, they argue.

The Americans, we havent been doing anything about this. In the meantime, the Europeans, facing serious austerity, they look at this [money] and say, Some of it belongs to us,  said Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, a University of Michigan law professor who specializes in corporate and international taxation.

It looks to me that they are going to tax it first, he said. What worries me is that we will lose the opportunity to collect some of that income, especially on the stuff that has been earned already.

If Europe is successful in increasing the amount U.S. companies pay in overseas taxes, that would lower the amount that could be collected in the United States, international tax experts say.

Many U.S. multinational corporations have established European headquarters in low-tax countries. Apple runs its European operations from Ireland, which has a 12.5 percent corporate tax rate. In 2005, Amazon set up its European operations in Luxembourg, which is known for striking generous tax arrangements. (Amazon.com founder Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

But with public spending in many European countries restrained after the financial crisis of 2008 and amid a growing global debate over wealth inequality, the practice is getting increasing scrutiny. (Most of the investigations revolve around the issue of transfer pricing, when one part of a large company sells goods or services to another part of the company.)

Late last year, Apple agreed to pay $350 million in back taxes to Italy to settle a dispute there, but some estimate the tech giant could owe the Irish government $8 billion to $19 billion for underpaid taxes depending on the outcome of a European Commission investigation.

Apple, which says it paid $13 billion in taxes last year, pointed to a 2014 statement in which it previously said it had not received special treatment from Ireland.

Through our investments in jobs and innovation and our contributions to economic growth in global markets, Apple has become what we believe is the largest taxpayer in the world. We pay taxes wherever we operate in accordance with the law, Cathy Kearney, Apples vice president of European operations, told the European Parliament in March.

McDonalds, which has nearly 8,000 restaurants in Europe, has acknowledged that French authorities searched its Paris headquarters on May 18. In a statement, the company said it complies with all tax laws, including payments of tax owed in each country in which it operates. The European Commission is also investigating the companys tax deals in Luxembourg.

A tax ruling that agrees to McDonalds paying no tax on their European royalties either in Luxembourg or in the US has to be looked at very carefully under EU state aid rules, Margrethe Vestager, in charge of the commissions competition policy, said in a statement. The purpose of Double Taxation treaties between countries is to avoid double taxation  not to justify double non-taxation.

Google has also become a flash point in the debate. The search giant, which is owned by the holding company Alphabet, has its European headquarters in Ireland.

In January, Google agreed to pay $185 million in back taxes to Britain. But the settlement has many critics, who say the company should have paid much more.

And it hasnt stopped other countries from coming after Google for back taxes.

Last week, French police raided Googles French headquarters, looking for evidence of aggravated tax fraud and organized money laundering, Frances financial prosecutors office said in its statement, according to the Associated Press.

At the center of the debate is the way in which the company counts profits eligible to be taxed in France, where the corporate tax rate is more than 30 percent. France is arguing that Google does more than it claims in the country, signing contracts rather than just advertising and research.

We comply with the tax law in France, as in every other country in which we operate. We are cooperating fully with the authorities in Paris to answer their questions, as always, a Google spokesman said in a statement.

Europes strong response has angered the Obama administration, which worries U.S. firms are being targeted for unfair treatment that could ultimately hurt American taxpayers.

These cases appear to be targeting U.S. companies disproportionately. The legal theory underlying its investigations logically should apply to all multinational firms, not just those based in the United States, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew wrote to Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, in a February letter.

A bipartisan group of senators  Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), head of the Senate Finance Committee, Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.)  have also weighed in on behalf of the U.S. multinationals.

We are disappointed that, to date, [European Commission] officials generally have dismissed our concerns and continue to insist they are not targeting U.S. companies, the senators wrote in a letter to Lew earlier this week. At the same time, their responses have actually shown our concerns are justified.
Part of the joy of romance (in real life and in fiction) is the fantasy of it  the glorious belief at the start of a relationship that there is such a thing as a perfect love story filled with wild passion and charming quirks, a time when your only worry is how you will survive your minutes apart. This month, three romances up the fantasy ante  adding celebrity heroes to the summer romance mix.

In 738 Days (Forge, $27.99), Stacey Kade turns a tale of trauma into a tale of love. Amanda Grace was abducted at the age of 15, chained in a dingy basement for 738 days  her only companion a poster of teen heartthrob Chase Henry (think Leonardo DiCaprio circa Titanic). Four years later, Amanda is returned to her childhood home, suffering from PTSD. Readers first see her curled up on the floor of her bedroom closet, working up the courage to go to her job at a supermarket. Meanwhile, Chases career is on the downswing, so much so that hes talked into a misguided publicity stunt  surprising Amanda (whod mentioned her fascination with him at a post-escape interview) at her workplace. The plan goes awry when Amanda has a flashback and flees. Chases apology turns into a lovely unexpected romance. Kade beautifully pivots the story away from Amandas past and focuses instead on the courage and strength shes found in her new life. Chases past, benign in comparison to Amandas, nonetheless holds powerful sway over his present. In sharing it, Kade reminds us that we are all broken in our own way, and that wounds, public and private, take time, patience and love to heal.

Historical romance author Julie Anne Long begins her first contemporary romance series with Hot in Hellcat Canyon (Avon; paperback, $7.99), the story of a small-town waitress and a movie star. This is romantic fantasy at its purest, a contemporary fairy tale complete with a down-on-her-luck divorced heroine (Britt) and a dashing, handsome hero (JT) who will do whatever it takes to win her. There is a particular joy in romance novels in which two wonderful people find each other, and a well-deserved happily ever after, and this one delivers on all levels. JT and Britt are clever and funny, and the book has all the hallmarks of Longs historical novels  charming secondary characters , delightful dialogue and a sigh-inducing ending. When a video of JT describing love as like the first time anyone anywhere saw a movie in color goes viral, even the most hardened of readers will find themselves sporting a silly grin.

Madeline Hunter offers another kind of celebrity hero with The Wicked Duke (Jove; paperback, $7.99). Lancelot Hemingford, the Duke of Aylesbury, is thought to have murdered his brother in order to secure title and fortune for himself. He has avoided the noose but is in miserable exile in the country. When Lance is offered the opportunity to exonerate himself and find his brothers killer, he takes it, despite the fact that it means marrying Marianne Radley, the niece of a neighbor. What ensues is a classic marriage of convenience made all the better by an intriguing twist: Marianne nobly volunteers to marry the potentially deadly Lance to save her cousin and the rest of her family, and vows to prove her new husbands guilt, too. Hunter is known for her brilliant, compelling heroines, and Marianne is one of her best. Eventually working together to clear Lances name, Marianne and the dark, brooding duke are an ideal match, and their discovery of mutual trust, passion and, finally, love makes The Wicked Duke an excellent read.

Sarah MacLean reviews romance monthly for The Washington Post and is the author, most recently, of The Rogue Not Taken.
Sex is troubled terrain for young women in America. Despite decades of feminist progress, for many girls today, sex is still more about servicing others than claiming their own desire. In such a context, the lucid, sensual stories of Anna Noyess debut collection  which explore young womens sexual awakening around coastal Maine  are likely to be received as tonic.

The 11 stories in Goodnight, Beautiful Women examine sexual initiation, sometimes consensual, sometimes not: A young mother recalls childhood incest and her own betrayal of a friend; two sisters, 10 and 15, sunbathe by a quarry and argue over the sexual attentions of a pedophilic neighbor; a college girl vacationing with her boyfriends parents finds herself pregnant; a grandmother recalls a lesbian affair 60 years before. Only one story is told from a male perspective, that of a father trying to figure out how to discuss a local rape with his 12-year-old daughter, as he grows uncomfortably aware of her developing body.

The opening story, Hibernation, sets the tone for the collection, in which danger and intimacy mix. A husband disappears one night, presumed drowned in a quarry. The young wife calls the sheriff, then prepares for his arrival with unsettling calm: It was difficult picking out appropriate clothing for a woman whod just lost her husband. She combed her hair until it sparked with static. Joni, who once cried over a Folgers Coffee commercial, hadnt cried yet. This frustrated her, like a sneeze that wouldnt come. The mystery of the husbands disappearance  Was it suicide? Did she kill him? Is he alive and stalking her?  becomes a story about the mystery of love and of mourning.

Noyess stories work by elision. Partial, elusive, inconclusive, they are like lit windows on trailers glimpsed from the road. One has a sense of peering in, fascinated but no less baffled than the characters.

[13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl: Stories of a life defined by weight]

Hers is a spare and disjunctive style. If the fiction of Stephen King and Alice Munro had a literary love child, it might look like this: luminous domestic moments married to a pervasive sense of threat. The snow hisses under our wheels, Noyes writes. Eyes flash from the ditches. Moms teeth make a stony sound as she grinds them in her sleep. Such distilled perceptions bring us close to the mystery of character  our own and others.

Noyes is a master of disturbing juxtapositions that interpolate childhood games with sexuality, suggesting something dangerous in both. My insides were a collection of happenings, says the young narrator in This Is Who She Was. The first, the cyst on my left ovary. I was eleven, sleeping over in a summer girls guest bedroom. I woke up at sunrise to a mouthful of spit, and stayed awake swallowing. That morning I went with her family to the Childrens Relay at the town pool. In the deep end, the lifeguard floated saltines on the surface of the water. We were meant to swim to the crackers before they dissolved, eat the pulpy mush, and race each other back to the shallows. At the finish line all cracker was to be swallowed; they would check our mouths. I threw up in the water. The gynecologists fingers were the first I had inside me, and then her jellied speculum.

Author Anna Noyes (Sean Hershey)

These stories are appealingly frank and astute about sex on the cusp of adulthood, when childhood informs desire. Metaphors of childrens toys and pets abound: Luke and I had sex once, in the outdoor shower. . . . The shower stall walls were made out of splintery compressed woodchips. It smelled the way my gerbils cage used to smell.

Noyes also insightfully portrays the ambivalent maturity of girls who have come of age sexually but are still just kids. Visiting her parents house for dinner, the protagonist of the final story, Homecoming, wishes she could send her fiance home and stay the night in my moms bed, eating Pop-Tarts and watching Special Victims Unit. Instead, she hugs her parents goodbye and drives the six minutes to our house in the woods, panicked with homesickness, like I was attending the worlds longest sleepover.

The cavalcade of trauma  drowning, rape, incest, cancer, suicide, burglary, pedophilia  can tip toward melodrama. But Noyess prose is admirably restrained, and the real drama remains that of character, the mystery we are to ourselves.

Psychologically astute as Noyes is, though, her portraits of sexual trespass, common to almost half the stories, sometimes ring false  as when rape begets desire or when a grown daughter recalls incest as a blossoming: Back then I didnt think too much about the times Dad touched me, except in a magical way, in which I thought the reason my body grew so curvy so early was because of his hands. Everyone could see, like hed watered me and I was a plant that grew overnight. But I didnt hate him. At such moments, Noyess stories recall fairy tales, with their vulnerable girls in the woods, reassuring readers that trespass may be welcomed, a fantasy fitting for a culture afraid to look more closely at the dark.

E.J. Levys debut story collection is Love, in Theory.


Roses Luxury has been one of the most acclaimed new restaurants to open in Washington in many years; will it now earn a Michelin star (or more)? (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

The Washington food scenes decade of dramatic transformation has brought us artisanal toast, $22 cocktails and numerous accolades. Now, the citys foodscape will be recognized by one of the worlds highest arbiters of culinary taste: the Michelin Guide.

Michelin announced Tuesday that it has already deployed its famously anonymous inspectors throughout Washington restaurants  news sure to strike fear in the hearts of chefs and servers  in anticipation of the citys first Michelin Guide, which will go on sale Oct. 13. Once it does, Washington will join the ranks of such culinary destinations as Paris, London and Tokyo. It will be only the fourth American city to be the subject of a current Michelin Guide, after New York, San Francisco and Chicago. (Michelin previously published guides in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, but it ceased evaluating both cities in 2010 for economic and geographical reasons, a Michelin spokesman said.)

D.C. was a logical choice. Its a very cosmopolitan city. It has a growing and thriving food scene, said Michael Ellis, international director for the Michelin Guides. Other criteria that contributed to the decision were the diversity of cuisines and the citys stature  which Ellis said makes it of interest to the Michelin group.

To local chefs and restaurateurs, the move is a vote of confidence that could spark even more growth.

Im delighted about it, said Ashok Bajaj, who owns Rasika, the Oval Room and other top-

rated fine-dining restaurants. I think it puts us on the map. The worldwide name recognition, I think it helps the city.



Owner Ashok Bajaj greets customers at Rasika in 2011. He is delighted at the news that Michelin will be publishing a guide to the Districts restaurants. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

The tire manufacturer introduced its guide in 1900 as a way to encourage people to take road trips (and wear down their Michelin tires). The company catalogued hotels, mechanics, gas stations and restaurants, introducing the star system in 1926. The guides cover 27 countries, and there are only nine individual city guides, with Washington, Shanghai and Seoul to come. Restaurants are evaluated for their creativity, personality, ingredient quality, value and consistency, among other factors, to determine their star rating.

Ellis said the District has been on his list of cities to expand into for several years, although he declined to say which other cities were considered. As for the L.A. and Las Vegas snubs, I do think that those cities remain very interesting, he said. Los Angeles and Las Vegas remain on our radar.

Michelins 2016 guide to France. (Michel Euler/AP)

Michelin inspectors, who are trained in France, have been surreptitiously dining in Washington restaurants since last fall. And restaurants in the city will be on high alert, because reviewers still have more eating to do  they will continue making visits throughout the summer, so the newest buzzed-about additions to the citys fine-dining scene, such as Aaron Silvermans Pineapple and Pearls and Eric Ziebolds Metier, still can be included.

Inspectors are kind of like undercover agents, Ellis said. Most are trained chefs. The bulk of the inspectors in the District have been Americans, although Ellis says he has flown in inspectors from around the world, too. To maintain their anonymity and objectivity, all of them pay for their meals and never eat at a restaurant more than once in the same year. For restaurants that are being considered for stars, Michelin sends multiple inspectors throughout the year to test a restaurants consistency and creativity.

Ellis says that the inspectors are conservative in their approach and can be reluctant to give stars to new restaurants from untested chefs. He would not say whether any restaurants in Washington have achieved the coveted three-star rating. Fewer than 120 restaurants in the world have that designation, and most of them are expensive and exclusive. Michelin also rates Bib Gourmands, or affordable restaurants.

What we dont want to do is have seesaw decisions where we give a star out and find out six months later that the wheels came off and its not up to quality, Ellis said.



Chef/owner Patrick OConnell at the Inn at Little Washington, which wont be eligible for a Michelin rating yet, because the companys guide to Washington will include only restaurants in the District proper. (Dixie D. Vereen/For The Washington Post)

Another group that wont be getting any stars this fall: suburban and rural restaurants. The first edition of the Washington guide will include only restaurants within the Districts borders. That means that one of the regions best fine-dining restaurants  the Inn at Little Washington in Washington, Va.  will be shut out for at least another year. Subsequent editions of the guide will expand to include the suburbs.

The closer we got a look at the D.C. metro area, we realized there was quite a bit to cover, Ellis said. As for the Inn, Ellis called it one of the great restaurants of the United States and said that we certainly look forward to incorporating chef Patrick OConnell in following years.

D.C. chefs greeted the news with surprise and enthusiasm.

Are you serious? That is crazy, said Silverman, the James Beard Award-winning chef of Roses Luxury. Chefs always talk about it. People ask me [when Michelin will come], and Im like, Maybe one day. 

Earning Michelin stars is something that a lot of people think about and dream about, Silverman said.

It was a Michelin-starred chef from France  Jean-Louis Palladin, who opened his eponymous restaurant at the Watergate Hotel in 1979  who is credited with kick-starting the Washington food scene. But even after the citys recent culinary renewal, theres still some wariness about where it stands from a national perspective. The Washington Posts food critic, Tom Sietsema, ended up including Washington in his ranking of Americas 10 best food cities, but he wrote that when he began the project, he wasnt sure whether the District would make it.



Mark Furstenberg, owner of Bread Furst in the Van Ness area of Northwest Washington, says the District is becoming a very, very good restaurant city. (April Greer/For The Washington Post)

Michelins recognition is certainly, in my opinion, not later than it should have been, said Mark Furstenberg, the Beard-nominated baker behind Bread Furst and a longtime Washington restaurateur. An article he wrote for The Post in 2013 argued that Washington was not a great food city, but he acknowledges that much has changed since then.

I think the Michelin recognition comes at a very good time, he said. Washington is poised to become a very, very good restaurant city, with lots of diversity that we didnt have before, including a number of young chefs doing wonderful things.

Palladin, who at 28 was the youngest chef to win two Michelin stars, died in 2001. If he were here to hear the news, He would be so amused, Furstenberg said. He would say, Theyre following me across the ocean. He really disapproved of them. Despite his accolades, Palladin had a contrarian streak, Furstenberg said.

For chefs who are awarded stars, the pressure to maintain them will be intense. European chefs who have feared losing stars have killed themselves. The death in December of Benoit Violier, the French-born chef of Switzerlands three-star Restaurant de lHotel de Ville, raised questions about the pressures that chefs with Michelin stars face.

But that wont happen here, where the competition is less cutthroat, Silverman said.

The D.C. chef community has a really good camaraderie, he said.

We [chefs] do a lot of social things together. Thats a style of Washington that is not common in the food business nationally, said Furstenberg, who attributes that gregariousness to Palladin, known for his big personality.



Jean-Louis Palladin, shown in his eponymous restaurant at the Watergate Hotel before it closed in 1996, earned two Michelin stars in France before coming to Washington. (Frank Johnston/The Washington Post)

Besides, while the Michelin Guide once stood as the singular global ranking of the worlds great restaurants, it is now surrounded by rivals  both from the Worlds 50 Best Restaurants, a list originated by the British magazine Restaurant that has, in some estimations, eclipsed Michelin, and from crowdsourced restaurant reviews from Yelp and TripAdvisor.

I dont think [Michelin] carries the same cachet as it does in Europe, Furstenberg said. Theyre never going to be the definitive guide to America as they have been in France.

But chefs are going to be hungry for those stars anyway. And when theyre handed out in October, it could have a big impact on current and future restaurants.

We dont pretend to transform a dining scene, Ellis said. But I think that chefs will up their game.

The change could be mostly in outsiders perception of Washington. For decades, the citys restaurants had a fusty reputation for catering to lobbyists and power brokers at a series of indistinguishable steakhouses  a reputation the city still fights . The Michelin guide is recognition that Washington is, at last, a fully formed food city. Restaurateurs hope that other cities  ahem, New York  will begin to think of us that way, too.

A lot of people have been working hard for five to 10 years, and whether or not they intended to change the scene, they have, Silverman said. Its the beginning of big things for Washington, D.C.
A tornado in Kansas last week moved more slowly than most twisters, giving residents in its path plenty of time to take shelter. (Tanner Colvin/Salina Journal via Associated Press)

Tornadoes are nothing unusual in Kansas. The state is in the middle of whats called Tornado Alley, an area of the south-central United States that has a high number of twisters, especially in late spring.

But one of the tornadoes that ripped through Kansas last week was unusual: It was on the ground for a long time, about 90 minutes. (Twisters usually disappear much more quickly.) You might think that such a storm would cause a huge amount of damage and take many lives. But a lengthy storm isnt always worse than a quick one. A closer look at what tornadoes are and why they can be so destructive helps explain.

What are tornadoes?

Tornadoes  and, on a larger scale, hurricanes  are the most efficient way to move air from one part of the atmosphere to another. Tornadoes usually form when moist, warm air from the Gulf of Mexico moves north to meet drier, cooler air from the Pacific Ocean or Canada.

Warm air rises, and cool air falls. When air masses collide, the atmosphere must come back into balance. Sometimes that restoration of balance produces a rotating column of air, or a tornado, with winds that can exceed 250 miles per hour. Sometimes no such column forms. Why the difference? The answer isnt fully known.

Usually a short story

The National Weather Services Storm Prediction Center says most tornadoes last less than 10 minutes and stay on the ground for about 3 miles.

Meteorologists inspect the destruction from the tornado north of Abilene, Kansas. There were no reports of serious injuries or deaths. (Tom Dorsey/Salina Journal via Associated Press)

Last Wednesdays storm covered about 23 miles between Abilene and Chapman, two cities in Kansas. And it was moving so slowly that it lasted an hour and a half.

Tornadoes are usually part of weather systems that form multiple storms  one with hail here, one with high winds there. Cold air flowing out of those other storms often chokes off a tornado, said Erik Rasmussen, a research scientist at the University of Oklahoma.

Rasmussen said long-lasting tornadoes are extraordinary.

Im sure less than 1 percent of tornadoes last 90 minutes or more. Theres probably only two or three a year, Rasmussen said. The United States sees an average of 1,200 tornadoes each year.

Last weeks twister was so isolated  120 miles from the nearest storm  that other storms never interrupted its air flow.

The things that end up destroying a tornado didnt happen, Rasmussen said.

Prepared and lucky

The twisters slow progress, at 15 miles per hour, turned out to be a good thing: Forecasters had time to tell people to get out of the storms way or take shelter.

The National Weather Service in Topeka, Kansas, warned Chapmans 1,400 residents at 8:06 p.m. Wednesday that the storm was four miles to the west. People in town had 16 minutes to get into basements or interior rooms.

We had outstanding early warning on this, said Paul Froelich, a fire chief in Dickinson County, which includes Chapman and Abilene. People knew well in advance of this storm.

About 20 homes were damaged or destroyed, but there were no reports of serious injuries or deaths, even though winds probably reached 180 miles per hour, scientists said.

Froelich admitted that luck played a role in the outcome. Neither Chapman nor Abilene took a direct hit. The storm reportedly passed within a few miles of each town.

Its amazing how this tornado missed those centers of population, Froelich said.

As a result, an extraordinary storm is unlikely to make the Tornado Alley record books.
At a news conference Tuesday about his fundraising on behalf of veterans groups, Donald Trump blamed reporters for not being sufficiently grateful for his charitable work. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters)

It all goes back to Spiro Agnew and his memorable diss of journalists, whom he called nattering nabobs of negativism.

Richard Nixons vice president, in uttering those words more than 45 years ago, kicked off a culture war in which politicians encouraged the public to blame the press for all the troubles afflicting the nation. (In the Nixon/Agnew era, those troubles included governmental corruption and coverup, and would lead to the presidents resignation.)

Theres never been a cease-fire in that culture war.

Donald Trump fired the latest blast on Tuesday. At a news conference about his fundraising on behalf of veterans groups, he blamed reporters for not being sufficiently grateful for his charitable work.

Instead, they kept asking pesky questions about exactly how and when  and whether  Trump had done as he claimed. As it turned out, he and his campaign had misrepresented some of what happened.

He complained that instead of saying Thank you very much, Mr. Trump, the press had the gall to criticize him.

In fact, what happened here doesnt fit the description of criticism; it has to do with asking tough and appropriate questions of a leading presidential candidate.

But Trump whined: You make me look very bad.

Many of Trumps statements are so ridiculous or offensive that they shouldnt, by rights, resonate with American citizens. Those citizens ought to want reporters to ask tough questions of the likely Republican nominee.

And yet, Trump probably will win points with some segments of the public, especially those who have little trust or confidence in journalists. And in some cases, that mistrust is for good reason.

Too much of the media has enabled Trump, given him endless publicity and failed to hold him accountable. No wonder hes not accustomed to this far more appropriately aggressive treatment, much of it from Washington Post reporters.

(Sometimes journalists are their own worst enemies. Its worth remembering that the author of nattering nabobs of negativism line was none other than William Safire. Even though he wasnt a journalist when he wrote those words, the former Nixon speechwriter later became a celebrated New York Times columnist.)

At this moment in American history, an angry and frustrated electorate wants someone to blame for the ills of the country.

Trump is trying to make sure they blame the messenger. So far, his strategy is working all too well.

For more by Margaret Sullivan visit wapo.st/sullivan


Ed Asner on the set of Bennies Gym, an indie sitcom pilot that filmed in Columbia, Md., last month, produced by three Montgomery County men who are new to show business. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

Ed Asner is not wearing any pants. He is standing in the back room of a former dollar store in Columbia, Md. Taped by the door is a handwritten note on a blue piece of paper: Eds dressing room. Asner is staring into a mirror at his 86-year-old face, which is bisected by a fake mustache. On his script is an unlit cigarette. Theres a small bowl of Werthers hard candy nearby.

Who am I? he mutters. What am I doing here?

The long answer involves Kansas City, the Army, Mary Tyler Moore, a shelf full of Emmys, rabble-rousing lefty activism, Elf and Up and then some free time in his twilight years. The short answer involves a dentist, a podiatrist and a former human-resources executive named Fred  all middle-aged Marylanders who decided to fulfill a pipe dream by creating a TV show about a frisky old fitness guru who runs an outdated gym in South Beach.

A costumer helps Asner into a mustard-colored velour tracksuit. Asner hums a few bars from the opera Carmen.

This is how you get ready to go into the bullring, he says, beginning to yawn and prowl like a lion awakened from slumber.

Putting ideas to paper

It started at the Starbucks on Westbard Avenue in Bethesda. The dentist, Neil Cohen, who had always wanted to make a sitcom, was a regular, and it was there that he met Fred Knowles, who had quit his HR job and was seeking a new purpose. Along with Steve Kominsky, the podiatrist, they developed something of a standing coffee date. Early-morning chatter eventually led to scriptwriting, and scriptwriting added a little thrill to their comfortable lives.

You gotta understand how amazing this is, Cohen, the dentist, says at their 6:30 a.m. Starbucks meeting the day before shooting starts. One day they say, Hey, lets go write it. We meet at 3 oclock in the afternoon on a Wednesday, and then we go to Steves office and have some stale food. Pickles, or something. For his patients. It went from there

to . . . 

The Emmys, Kominsky says with a tinge of sarcasm.



Costumer Jessica Wenger McPhaul dresses Asner, who flew into Maryland for a weeks work on a set that was once a Dollar Buys store. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

They formed Foot and Mouth Productions. They researched the art and science of TV writing. They went through 22 revisions of the pilot script and hired a local playwright to help them refine it. They titled the show Bennies Gym  and everything slowly fell into place, through a combination of luck and naivete.

Knowles, the HR guy, met a producer who knew a local director who knew a House of Cards casting director whose parents lived near someone who was friendly with Asner. Everyone along the way liked the script  which was irreverent and self-referential, like Taxi meets The Office meets Golden Girls  and it kept moving toward Asner.

The team began holding conference calls in Knowless Toyota in the Starbucks parking lot. Once Asner signed on, financing the pilot seemed like a cleaner bet. Five people, including Knowless wife and childhood best friend, put up the cash for the low-budget production.

They declined to divulge the cost other than to note it was a tiny fraction of the $2 million needed for the average studio comedy pilot. Asner received what could be described as modest fees, considering his fame, for both acting and executive producing (though a larger payday would come if the show is picked up).

It is money they are almost sure to lose, given the glut of TV-making these days: In 2007, fewer than 50 pilots were shot in the United States, according to filming permitter FilmL.A., while in 2013 there were 186. Everyones making television, so turning a pilot into a series remains a long shot, even as the number of content-hungry platforms expands to include the likes of Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and YouTube.



Neil Cohen looks in on Asner, seated in his dressing room, and makeup artist Skip Smith. Cohen, a dentist in Chevy Chase, had long dreamed of making a sitcom. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

And while TV production is not foreign to these parts  Veep shot in suburban Maryland until last year, and House of Cards films in Baltimore  the trio faces long odds, coming from so far outside the industry. Only a handful of scripted pilots were filmed in Maryland over the past five years, and those had the backing of outfits such as HBO and CBS.

This is very unusual for the area, says casting director Kimberly Skyrme, who works on House of Cards and helped get the script to Asner. Still, in 25 years, this was the most fun Ive had casting anything, because the script was so funny.

And the guys are okay with the likelihood of Bennies Gym going nowhere.

You have to have people who want to have fun on the journey, Knowles says of their endeavor. Television is not our business. We didnt have the pressure of performing, succeeding, failing.

Some of the crew was recruited from House of Cards. Cast auditions were held in Baltimore. The Maryland Film Office connected the team with Howard County, which leased them the old dollar store for a dollar. Then Asner boarded a plane to Maryland.

86, and still in the bullring

It went surprisingly well, Asner says of the first day of shooting. The dentist didnt get in the way.

As if on cue, Cohen pops his head into the dressing room, fresh from a Costco run. He is empty-handed.

You didnt bring me a goddamn thing, Asner growls with practiced Lou Grant-ness. I thought you were gonna buy me some coffee, some goddamn breakfast!

The walkie-talkies crackle with an order: Quiet on the set.

QUIET! Asner bellows, startling the high-school-age production assistants. Then: Wheres the john?



Asner has a fake mustache applied. The chance of steady work has a tremendous allure, he said. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

Asner and director Michael Skinner chat on the set. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

The set of Bennies Gym is the worlds tackiest and saddest fitness center. The walls are painted canary yellow and Pepto pink. The reception area looks like a tiki bar. One wall is lined with trophies that belong to the children of the creators. There are forlorn treadmills. There is a vintage Radarange microwave. Just outside the building, between a real hair salon and a real medical equipment store for those aging in place, a bank of lights approximates the Miami sun.

Knowles, unable to contain his glee, watches Asner emerge from his dressing room and parade through the set, flinging a chair from his path with the vigor of a 20-year-old.

Just a few years ago, Knowles was burned out from 25 years in corporate life. Who am I? he began to ask himself. What am I doing here? He quit his job and in two short years found himself the co-creator and co-writer of a single-camera TV pilot starring a television legend from his youth. The whole experience has inspired Knowles to write a book titled Whats Your Sitcom? Its about finding passion in ones work.

Sitcom, Knowles says, is really a metaphor.

Asner himself has some thoughts about work, and about why hes here in Columbia, Md., at age 86.

Whyd I take it? says the man who played Lou Grant for 12 years. I wasnt working. They offered me a weeks work. The chance of steady work has a tremendous allure.

Asner lives in Tarzana, Calif., with his daughter, her 11-year-old twins and boyfriend, four cats (China, Roast, Wheezy and Ringo), two lovebirds (Esther and Eve) and guinea pigs whose names he cannot remember. It is a menagerie he is happy to escape if the part is right. After 60 years of acting, theres a reason hes still heading into the bullring.

I always felt I couldnt be a great actor because I wasnt a drunk, or whatever, he says. I didnt have a Hamlet I needed to show you. Or a Lear.

He has a Bennie, though. Oh, does he have a Bennie.

The second day of shooting involves a face-off between Bennie and his nemesis, Woody Cockburn, played with grizzled hostility by Joe Estevez (Martin Sheens brother). Cockburn arrives at Bennies with a health-code inspector, intent on shutting down the gym.



Asner faces off with Joe Estevez, who plays Bennies nemesis. Between them are actors Amanda Forstrom, Tonye Patano, Sig Libowitz and Brooke Stacy Mills. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

The two aged macho men hiss and growl and circle each other.

Take 1: Whaddaya doing here, Cockburn? says Asner, a vision in velour, eyebrows twitching with contempt.

Take 2: Whaddaya doing here, Cock. Burn?

One more, soft and dangerous, says the director and co-writer Michael Skinner.

Take 3: Whaddaya doing here, Cock   an uncomfortable and hilarious pause   burn?

The crew stifles laughter. Asner is a pro, with or without a studio audience, with or without a guarantee that Bennies Gym will become a long-running and beloved network sitcom.

Sitcom is a metaphor, remember.

Cut, Skinner says.

Wheres the john? Asner says.
Donald Trump displays paperwork while defending his veterans fundraiser at a news conference in New York on Tuesday. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters)

In perhaps his most sustained attack on the news media, Donald Trump blasted reporters Tuesday for raising questions about his charitable efforts on behalf of veterans, calling them losers, unbelievably dishonest and sleazy.

Trump has repeatedly criticized the media during his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, but his morning news conference at Trump Tower in New York was unusually angry and personal. He singled out one journalist, Tom Llamas of ABC News, as a sleaze, and another, Jim Acosta of CNN, as a real beauty for his reporting on his campaign.

Trump was on the defensive because of questions about his fundraising for veterans organizations. He skipped a Republican debate before the Iowa caucuses in January to hold a televised event for veterans that he said raised $6 million.

But several media organizations, including The Washington Post, have reported discrepancies in the amount Trump said was raised and the actual contributions made. In the intervening months, Trumps campaign gave little information about how much was raised and which organizations would receive contributions.

Trump said Tuesday that the event brought in $5.6 million, and that incoming donations will push the final total over $6 million. The presumptive Republican nominee also has said he would personally give $1 million.

Trump has benefited from significant media attention during the presidential campaign and has given innumerable interviews. At the same time, he has been critical of the coverage of his campaign.

But it was the manner that Trump savaged the reporters who had assembled in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York on Tuesday that was extraordinary. He appeared to resent that reporters had dared to push his campaign for details about a fundraising effort that garnered enormous attention and goodwill to his presidential campaign.

I dont want the credit for raising the money, he said at one point. But I shouldnt be lambasted for it.

Asked by a reporter if he thought journalists were dishonest in seeking answers, Trump replied, Not all of you. Just many of you. . . . I think the political press is among the most dishonest people Ive met.

He was just getting started.

When asked by CNNs Acosta about handling the scrutiny that comes with being a leading presidential candidate, Trump bristled: I like scrutiny, he said, before adding derisively, Ive seen you on TV. Excuse me, youre a real beauty.

He responded to a question from Llamas by calling him the sleazy guy from ABC. Youre a sleaze because youre dishonest.

After another reporter asked if Trump would treat inquiries into his presidency with similar invective, the billionaire said, It is going to be like this. If the press writes false stories like this. . . . [If] we have to read probably libelous stories, and the people know the stories are false, Im going to attack the press. I find the press dishonest and the political press unbelievably dishonest.

The news conference was held almost concurrently with the unsealing of documents in a lawsuit over Trump University, a now defunct for-profit real-estate school that former students have accused of fraud. Trump has attacked the judge hearing the case, calling U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel a hater and noting that Curiel is, we believe, Mexican.

ABC defended Llamas in a statement, calling him one of the best journalists in the country. He is also one of the most respectful and respected.

Moments after the news conference, Llamas tweeted: Trump just called me a sleaze. Should be an interesting week.
These objects  a prayer card, a bus schedule, brochures  are some of the ephemera that Dan ODay of Alexandria, Va., found in use books he purchased at thrift stores and estate sales. (Dan ODay)

Who says curling up with a good book is a placid pastime, free from the controversy that dogs so much of modern life?

Well, me. But not anymore. I recently wrote about the bittersweet joy I experience whenever I transition from using the front flap of a hardcover dust jacket as a bookmark to using the back flap. Surely this is a universal feeling, I mused.

Apparently not. Youd think Id confessed to cleaning the grout in my shower with the Bayeaux Tapestry. A dust jacket, wrote Patrick Halperin of Alexandria, Va., is often a hardbacks most valuable part for resale purposes. I normally remove the dust cover before doing anything like read the book, he wrote.

[When it comes to getting lost in a hardcover, the bookmark marks the spot]

Others objected for practical reasons. I hate reading books with the dust jacket on, Barbara Elwell of Herndon, Va., wrote. The book slips up/down and the edges dont stay aligned. You have to grip hard to keep everything even. I use a bookmark  no turning down the corners.

Hilary Donovan of Arlington, Va., also has an aversion to dust jackets. My fingers hate them. I need the solid feel of a hardcover book, she wrote. She removes the covers and stacks them on her bottom bookshelf  and then hope that I can find the appropriate ones when its time to donate the books.

Steve Hoffman of Takoma Park, Md., finds dust jackets undependable. He writes, The flap has a way of not staying in place.

Steve favors bookmarks. And like many people I heard from, he has his own rituals when it comes to them. One little superstition I have is, whatever bookmark I start using with a book, I try to use that same bookmark all the way through, he wrote. So, for example, if I didnt have an actual bookmark handy and just grabbed one of those subscription cards that fell out of a magazine, Ill use that as the bookmark all the way through.

Cecily Nabors of Silver Spring, Md., chooses each bookmark with care, wanting its design to relate to the content of the book it nestles in.

For example, Im currently reading All the Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner and the American West by David Gessner, she wrote. The cover has photos of each author, plus a lovely one of mesas at sunset.

Cecily selected a bookmark from Zion National Park in Utah. The desert colors in the bookmark blend harmoniously with those in the book cover, and the bookmark makes me happy every time I open the book, she wrote.

When Dan ODay of Alexandria, Va., buys books at thrift stores and estate sales, he always thumbs through them to collect the ephemera previous readers have used to mark their places. Dan wrote: In addition to assorted business cards, shopping lists and newspaper clippings, Ive found an invitation to a librarians convention in Philadelphia from 1896, an early 1920s photo of a young girl holding a candle for some ritual, and a Christmas card to Mrs. Jessie Clark in Maryland mailed in 1913.

Of course, before marking your place in a book, you have to decide whether the book is worth reading. Readers have their own rituals for this, too.

Michele Keefe of Fairfax Station Va., says she follows the Nancy Pearl rule for readers 51 or older, whose creator is an American librarian, author and literary critic. Michele wrote: Her rule is this: Subtract your age from the number 100. If you are not engaged in a book after reading that number of pages, toss it aside and start anew. Never feel obligated to finish any book that you have started.

Jim Whalen from Rockville, Md., follows the rule too, and noted, At this rate when Im 100 years old, Ill be able to tell a book by its cover.

As for reading habits, Marcy Troy is always looking for books with a character who shares her last name. So far shes at five: Sgt. Frank Troy (Far From the Madding Crowd), Gavin Troy (the Midsomer Murder books), Dr. Troy (family doctor in Angelas Ashes), Agatha Troy (Inspector Alleyn mysteries) and Inspector Frederick Troy (John Lawtons WWII spy series).

Marcy, of Oakton, Va., wrote: If you know of any more, let me know!

Lynn Peterson Mobley of Great Falls, Va., said her guilty pleasure is a mystery series by the likes of Susan Hill, Elly Griffiths and Jim Kelly.

But I never begin in the middle or end of a series, she wrote. She starts at the first book, continuing on if it meets her fancy.

Authors flesh out their characters as they develop them, and their histories grow with each book, Lynn wrote. We get to know them as the writer does; turning to the newest book then becomes a return to a familiar world and old friends.

Life is infinite change, but a novel is a world under control. The author has done the work of focusing upon a small time and place to make it comfortingly understandable. Perhaps as a result, I tend to see life around me as a series of stories instead of random chaos, and am more tempted to stick around to read the last chapter.

Tomorrow: Another chapter on reading idiosyncrasies.

Twitter: @johnkelly

For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/johnkelly.
The D.C. Council, seen here in May debating the mayors homeless shelter plan, approved closing D.C. General on Tuesday and put the city on a collision course with Congress over city spending. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

The D.C. Council pressed forward Tuesday to declare fiscal independence from Congress, approving a $13.4 billion spending plan despite a vote by House Republicans last week warning District leaders against the action.

With the unanimous vote, the District is poised to implement a 2013 ballot measure approved by voters that empowers city leaders to spend local tax dollars without explicit congressional approval  acting more like an independent state than a federal territory controlled by Congress.

House Republicans last week passed a measure calling the move a violation of the Constitution and the authority it gives Congress to oversee the District. On the day of the vote, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said the current D.C. government needs to be reined in.

The council also approved a plan to close the citys dilapidated family homeless shelter at D.C. General Hospital and replace it with a network of seven smaller shelters to be constructed in neighborhoods across the city.

Despite months of heated arguments between the mayor and the council over details and continued criticism from residents, D.C. officials are moving ahead with the project, which is slated to cost almost a half-billion dollars over 25 years. It is the citys biggest effort yet to address a growing crisis of homeless families.

Speaking after the votes, D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson pursed his lips when asked about the escalating conflict with Congress. He said he thought the city would prevail in its fight with House Republicans, either because the Senate will decline to take up the House bill or because any potential legal challenge by House members would fail.

Im hopeful that the members of Congress will realize that they are actually hurting us, financially, said Mendelson (D), referring to the higher borrowing costs the District faces when it has to wait for Congress to approve its spending. Congress has tied up the Districts spending for 20 consecutive years by failing to pass a federal budget on time, he said.

We can do this ourselves, and we can do it better than them, Mendelson said.

It will mark the first time the city has opted against submitting its budget to the president for inclusion in the federal budget, like that of an executive branch agency. In the past, Congress has used the federal budget process to attach riders to the Districts spending plan that affect local laws. Among other changes, Congress has prevented the city from fully legalizing marijuana and from subsidizing abortions for low-income residents.

[Related: D.C. is declaring independence  from Congress]

Instead, the city will send its budget directly to Congress. Unless both houses and the president object within 30 legislative days, the budget will be considered approved and will take effect in October.

But the dispute with Congress is far from over. Last week, a House subcommittee attached a rider to a federal budget bill that would repeal the citys 2013 referendum on budget autonomy. Congress must pass a spending bill to keep the federal government running past Sept. 30.

The D.C. budget approved Tuesday continues the citys record spending on education and social services of the past five years and also directs a share of growing revenue back to taxpayers under a schedule of tax cuts approved two years ago.

New items in the District budget include a $1 million pilot program to give families at risk of falling into homelessness debit cards loaded with city funds to help them try to stay out of shelters.

The budget also includes a provision adopted by 42 states that says if city firefighters were healthy nonsmokers when they were hired and they later develop cancer, it can be categorized as job-related. The bill was passed five years ago, but then-Mayor Vincent C. Gray did not implement it, saying it would be too costly. Mendelson used data from other states to convince city financial officers that the cost would probably be lower than originally forecast.

In a letter about the budget to council members, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) did not object to the provision for firefighters but said the overall spending plan goes too far in cutting her proposals for public safety, sidewalk and alleyway improvements, and other projects, including cafeteria renovations at Shepherd Elementary School in her home ward.

The council approved a proposal Tuesday by her successor, council member Brandon T. Todd, to shift money from elsewhere, including $1 million for snow and trash trucks, to keep the project on track. The change came despite Bowsers warning in her letter that broken and substandard equipment could mean slow snow removal next year or even trash collections missed entirely.

[Related: D.C. put $24 million in snow removal costs on credit cards]

The budget also fully funds the new shelter system, including an estimated $105 million in construction and land purchases in the coming year.

At Bowsers request, the council moved its planned Ward 6 shelter to 850 Delaware Ave. SW, a city building now used as a community health clinic but that is in need of major repairs. A council plan to build on a parking lot over Interstate 395 would have taken too long to open the shelter in an expedited manner, Bowser said in another letter to the council last week.

The council also settled on situating a homeless shelter at 1700 Rhode Island Ave. NE, replacing Bowsers plan for one in a Ward 5 industrial area heavily criticized by homeless advocates.

The council also voted Tuesday to increase the size of another shelter on Idaho Avenue in upper Northwest.

Bowser, who hurled an expletive at Mendelson over changes to the plan two weeks ago, thanked him in a statement, saying that the debate is now behind us and the task is building shelters that we can all be proud of, and that reflect the best of who we are as a society.
Transgender teen Gavin Grimm stands on his front porch at his home in Gloucester, Va. on Aug. 25, 2015. Grimm sued the Gloucester County School Board after it passed a policy requiring students to use bathrooms in accordance with their biological sex. A federal appeals court ruled his suit could move forward in April and denied the school boards request to rehear the quest in late May. (Steve Helber/AP)

A federal appeals court that sided with a transgender teen in his lawsuit against a Virginia school board has denied the boards request to rehear the case before a full panel of judges.

The Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled in April that a lawsuit filed by transgender teen Gavin Grimm, who sued the Gloucester County School Board after it passed a policy banning him from the boys bathroom, could move forward.

The initial decision by a three-judge panel last month was the first time a federal appeals court had weighed in on the question of whether bathroom restrictions constitute a violation of Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination at schools that receive federal money. It is being closely watched nationwide as battles over the rights of transgender students head to court.

[Federal appeals court sides with transgender teen, says bathroom case can go forward]

The school board in May requested a rehearing of the case before a full panel of judges, known as an en banc hearing, arguing that the case warranted a second look because it has national implications.

Tuesday, the court denied the petition after no judge requested a poll to see whether a majority of his or her colleagues wanted to move forward.

Nonetheless, Judge Paul V. Niemeyer wrote a dissent, saying that he believes the case deserves to be reheard but declined to request a poll himself because he wants the case to move quickly to the U.S. Supreme Court. Niemeyer also dissented from the courts decision in April, saying that the courts holding overrules custom, culture and the very demands inherent in human nature for privacy and safety.

The case is set to head back to a federal court in Virginia, where a judge will reconsider it in light of the ruling from the appeals court, including whether Grimm should be permitted to use the restroom while the suit proceeds.

Joshua Block, the ACLU attorney representing Grimm, said he was pleased by the appeals courts decision because it could mean a swifter resolution for the high school student, who was assigned female at birth but identifies as a boy.

We hope this means it wont be much longer until hes finally able to use the restroom again, Block said.

An attorney for the school board did not return an immediate request for comment.
Judge Sylvania W. Woods Elementary School in Glenarden, Md., where police say a school volunteer made pornographic videos with children during school hours and on school grounds. (Mark Gail/For The Washington Post)

The Prince Georges County school system fails to provide many students and teachers with effective instruction on how to recognize and report sexual abuse of children, according to a report released Tuesday.

The reports findings point to a need for sweeping improvements to better protect students in the Maryland district after an elementary school volunteer was charged with child sex abuse and creating child pornography.

Police and prosecutors say Deonte Carraway, 22, directed at least 17 children as young as 9 to perform sex acts and video-

recorded them, with some of the offenses taking place at Judge Sylvania Woods Elementary during school hours.

A task force created to review district policies and procedures after Carraways arrest in February found that the school systems training on identifying sexual abuse of pupils does not detail characteristics of abuse, including behaviors adults use to groom and manipulate their victims.

The report also found that the district has no requirement that ensures consistent training across the system on student sexual-abuse issues for adults who work with students. In two training sessions attended by task force members, instructors giving guidance to school volunteers fell short.

School volunteer Deonte Carraway is charged with child pornography and child sex abuse in a number of incidents with students. (AP)

Currently there is no policy or administrative procedure detailing what the training should include, how the training is to be conducted, what accountability measures are in place to monitor who has been trained, or what protocols are in place to test the understanding of and compliance with the training, the report said.

Schools chief Kevin Maxwell, who created the task force, said the report was an important step of many toward making students safer. But Maxwell said he did not see its findings as evidence of a systemic problem.

The district has suffered problems, including those at Woods, Maxwell said, but I dont think when you look at the fact that we have over 20,000 employees on any given day that it speaks to the whole system of 20,000 people.

[For years, Prince Georges didnt strengthen sex-abuse policies.]

The report laid out numerous specific shortcomings.

Guidelines for reporting suspected abuse have been lacking clarity, according to the report, which also said that administrators should work with child protective services, police, prosecutors or other sex-abuse experts to improve training.

Employees, volunteers, and contractors are not fully comfortable and do not completely understand what types of disclosures and observations of abuse should be reported and so are hesitant to report, the report said. It also said that school system employees who deliver training, while well-intentioned, are not subject matter experts and may not be able to sufficiently respond to questions or concerns raised during training.

Prince Georges County Public Schools chief Kevin Maxwell, speaking in February about the child sex abuse investigation. (Mark Gail/For The Washington Post)

The report also said that bus drivers, vendors and contractors are not required to participate in formal training.

Although the report emphasized that it is the responsibility of adults to protect children, it addressed weaknesses in the curriculum used to teach students how to protect themselves against predators.

Such material for high school students is woefully outdated and frequently employs vague, unclear, or incorrect terminology, according to an expert who reviewed the curriculum for the task force.

The report did not specifically address what went wrong in the Carraway case. His case was not mentioned by name in the report, and the report did not answer questions about how the volunteer was able to have so much time alone with children during school hours.

The report, however, alluded to concerns prompted by the Carraway investigation.

The task force suggested updating school procedures to ban school employees from communicating with students through anonymous social-media channels and clarify the schools social media guidelines for students and employees.

Carraway admitted to distributing phones to some children to communicate with them through an anonymous messaging app and told the children they were part of a club, according to federal court papers.

The task force also made multiple suggestions about improving a procedure focused on volunteers in schools  which was last updated in 1998.

Volunteers should never be behind locked doors with students, should sign in and out, wear identification, undergo training on reporting child abuse, and not use student restrooms, the report said. The report also found that procedures for backgrounding and screening adults who work directly with students are sometimes unclear, occasionally contradictory, and not always aligned with current practices.

A comment from one parent in the report said the parent had volunteered in a classroom without a background check.

[Read the full report here.]

The task forces recommendations included the establishment of an office of monitoring, accountability and compliance that would report to Maxwell and assure fidelity on such issues as training and awareness of abuse reporting responsibilities.

The group also urged Maxwell to report publicly every year on systemwide safety efforts, update curriculum focused on child sexual abuse, and ensure that principals conduct safety assessments. System leaders and Principals bear the primary responsibility for creating a culture and climate of school safety, the report said.

Another recommendation suggested the school system create a universal precautions approach to the screening and training of employees, volunteers, vendors and contractors, with a searchable database that would allow for for rapid identification of red flags.

There is a severe lack of accountability at all levels, according to a comment submitted to the task force and included in the report. If employees arent informed of their duties and responsibilities as well as the consequences should they choose not to uphold those duties and responsibilities, some employees will take advantage of the system because they know there are no consequences for their actions.

[Prince Georges schools launch task force to review policies after child porn case in Glenarden]

The task force recommended that individual schools consider hosting meetings for all employees to discuss child sexual-abuse policies and procedures, and that there be similar sessions for parents, volunteers, contractors and others.

The report had particularly pointed observations about training, saying that the school system recently required all principals and school staff to undergo training in light of Carraways arrest, but that the task force found flaws in how the school system approached training overall.

The additional training we received due to the recent incident was not consistent throughout the county, according to a survey comment included in the report. Every building did something different.

But the report found that like in many other places, adults may be afraid to report suspected abuse for various reasons: Theyre worried that a report would mar someones personal and professional reputation if it turned out to be unfounded, or that children may be dishonest when disclosing alleged abuse and neglect.

Maxwell has instructed staff members to start implementing some of the task forces recommendations. We had a problem, and we know what we need to do better going forward.
BLOOD DONATIONS

BLOOD DRIVES Friday 8:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m., Loudoun Fire and Rescue, 801 Sycolin Rd., Leesburg, 800-733-2767; Saturday 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Ashburn Library, 43316 Hay Rd., Ashburn, 800-733-2767; June 11, 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Leesburg Public Safety Center, 65 Plaza St., Leesburg, 800-733-2767; June 17, 1:30-6 p.m. St. James Episcopal Church, 14 Cornwall St., Leesburg, 800-733-2767; June 28, 3-8 p.m. Loudoun Valley Community Center, 320 W. School St., Purcellville, 800-733-2767; June 21, 3-7 p.m. Rust Library, 380 Old Waterford Rd., Leesburg, 866-256-6372.

INOVA BLOOD DONOR CENTER Mondays noon-8 p.m., Tuesdays 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Fridays 6 a.m.-4 p.m. and Sundays noon-4 p.m. Dulles Town Center, 45745 Nokes Blvd., Sterling. 866-256-6372 or inova.org/donateblood.

FIRST AID

FIRST AID/ADULT, INFANT AND CHILD CPR/AED Fauquier Hospital Medical Office Building, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-316-3588. Call for schedule. Registration required.

HEARING

DISABILITY RESOURCE CENTER Technical assistance through the Virginia Department for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and presentations to businesses, civic groups and schools. Third Tuesdays 2-5 p.m., Workplace, 205 Keith St., Warrenton. Call for an appointment, 800-648-6324; TDD, 540-373-5890. Free.

FREE HEARING TESTS Age 18 and older. Mondays-Thursdays 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m., Blue Ridge Speech and Hearing Center, 19465 Deerfield Ave., Suite 201, Lansdowne. 703-858-7620. Registration required.

HEARING LOSS, TINNITUS AND MENIERES SYNDROME SUPPORT For all ages, including parents of children with hearing loss. First Fridays at 2 p.m., Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. 703-430-2906.

NORTHERN VIRGINIA RESOURCE CENTER FOR THE DEAF AND HARD OF HEARING Age 18 and older, second Tuesdays 10 a.m., Carver Center, 200 Willie Palmer Way, Purcellville. 571-258-3400.

HEARING LOSS OUTREACH Free referrals. Fourth Thursdays 10 a.m.-noon, Loudoun County Workforce Center, 102 Heritage Way, Leesburg; third Thursdays 10 a.m.-noon, Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. Free appointments: 703-430-2906 or nvrcloudoun@aol.com.

MENTAL HEALTH

COUNSELING FOR SEXUAL VIOLENCE SURVIVORS Provided by Loudoun Citizens for Social Justice. 703-771-9020.

CRISISLINK Suicide and crisis intervention. The organization provides community education, has a volunteer crisis response team and offers CareRing, a daily telephone outreach program for the elderly and disabled. 703-527-6016, volunteer@crisislink.org or crisislink.org.

PIEDMONT CHAPTER, NATIONAL ALLIANCE ON MENTAL ILLNESS Serves Fauquier, Orange, Madison and Rappahannock counties. Support group, education classes and events for people living with mental illness and their family members. First Wednesdays 7-9 p.m. Fauquier Hospital, 500 Hospital Dr., Sycamore Room A, Warrenton. 571-426-8213.

NORTHERN VIRGINIA CHAPTER, NATIONAL ALLIANCE ON MENTAL ILLNESS A support group, classes and programs for people living with mental illness and their family members. naminorthernvirginia.org.

PREGNANCY, PARENTING

ADOPTIVE FAMILY PRESERVATION Adoptive families discuss common experiences; registration required. Third Tuesdays 12:30-2 p.m. Ashburn Library, 43316 Hay Rd. Call 703-941-9008, Ext. 23, or email jmellerio@umfs.org.

BIRTHRIGHT OF LOUDOUN COUNTY Free pregnancy tests, baby clothing, transportation and support throughout pregnancy, 823 S. King St., Leesburg. 703-777-7272.

BOND BETWEEN US A nonprofit organization that offers support to birth parents when children have been placed for adoption. Fourth Tuesdays 7:30 p.m. Call for location. 703-771-7844.

BREAST-FEEDING SUPPORT Mondays 9:30-10:30 a.m., Fauquier Hospital Family Birthing Center, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-316-3588.

DAD SUPPORT New and expectant fathers share ideas. First Tuesdays 7 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Leesburg. 703-858-6360.

FOR THE CHILDRENS SAKE A group for separating or divorcing parents to share advice. Four-hour session weekly. Information : 703-391-8599 or fitsfoundation.org.

LA LECHE LEAGUE Mother-to-mother support and breast-feeding information. 10 a.m. second Wednesdays in Warrenton, 540-351-6103. Third Fridays 10:15-11:45 a.m., call for location, 703-444-7386. Second Fridays 10:15 a.m., Ashburn Library, 43316 Hay Rd., 703-431-3852; Thursdays 10 a.m.-noon, Panera Bread, 43670 Greenway Corp. Dr., Ashburn, email lllashburn@gmail.com. Third Fridays 10:15 a.m., Christ the Redeemer Church, 46833 Harry F. Byrd. Hwy., Sterling, 540-338-4637.

LOUDOUN FATHERHOOD PROGRAM Fathers discuss the joys and challenges of being a parent. Meets every other Saturday for two hours for four months; sponsored by Northern Virginia Family Service. 571-748-2796. Free.

LOUDOUN NURTURING PARENTING PROGRAM Positive parenting techniques; children attend with parents. Registration required. Call 703-771-3973, Ext. 27, or email nurturingprogram@lcsj.org . Free.

MOTHERNET/HEALTHY FAMILIES LOUDOUN Program links first-time parents with medical, social and educational resources to give children a socially and physically healthy start in life. Family support workers meet with participants in homes. English-Spanish translation provided. 703-444-4477, Ext. 217, or inmed.org .

NEW MOTHERS SUPPORT Wednesdays 9:30-11:30 a.m. Inova Loudoun Medical Pavilion, 224 Cornwall St., Leesburg, main entrance. Babies welcome. 703-858-6360.

YOUNG PARENT SERVICES Support for teenage parents. Loudoun County Department of Family Social Services, 52 Sycolin Rd., Leesburg. Call for times. 703-771-5375.

ONLINE CHILDBIRTH EDUCATION PROGRAM Inova Loudoun Hospitals Web-based program uses animation, videos and interactive activities to guide users through the basics of childbirth, breast-feeding and caring for newborns. 703-858-6360. thebirthinginn.org/classes.

PARENTING ALONE GROUP For parents of school-age children who have lost a spouse or partner to cancer. Second Tuesdays 5:30-6:30 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital, Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. 703-698-2536 or email jennifer.eckert@inova.org .

PREGNANCY AND CHILDBIRTH SUPPORT Childbirth Solutions Resource Center, 8393 W. Main St., Marshall. 571-344-0438.

SENIORS

EXERCISE EQUIPMENT Weights, treadmills, bikes and a cardio-glide. Instruction provided. Age 55 and older. Weekdays 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039. Free.

FITNESS FOR PEOPLE 55 AND OLDER Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays 1-1:45 p.m. Carver Center, 200 Willie Palmer Way, Purcellville. 571-258-3400. $36, 12-visit card.

EYE CARE LensCrafters staff members will clean glasses and make minor repairs. Second Wednesdays 1-2 p.m. Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. 703-430-2397. Free.

INOVA LOUDOUN MOBILE VAN Blood pressure checks. Second and fourth Tuesdays 9:30 a.m.-noon, Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling, 571-258-3280; first Wednesdays 9:30 a.m.-noon, Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039.

LAUGHING YOGA FOR SENIORS I mprove flexibility and balance. Thursdays 9:30-10 :30 a.m. Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039. Free.

LOUDOUN ADULT DAY CENTERS For seniors with physical limitations or memory loss, a safe and social environment, therapeutic activities, individualized care and respite for caregivers. Limited transportation. Sliding-scale fees. Weekdays in Leesburg, 7:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m., 703-771-5334; Purcellville, 571-258-3402; and Ashburn-Sterling, 571-258-3232.

SENIOR OUTREACH SERVICES Free and confidential assistance from an Area Agency on Aging case manager. Call for an appointment or sign up at the Senior Center at Cascades. First and third Wednesdays 11 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. 571-258-3280.

SENIOR OUTREACH SERVICES Free and confidential assistance from an Area Agency on Aging Elder case manager. Sign up in the Leesburg Senior Center lobby. Second and fourth Thursdays 11 a.m.-noon and 12:30-4:30 p.m. Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039. Free.

SENIOR OUTREACH SERVICES Free and confidential assistance from an Area Agency on Aging Elder case manager. Call for an appointment or sign up at the Carver Center. First and third Mondays, 12:30-5 p.m. Carver Center, 200 Willie Palmer Way, Purcellville. 703-737-8741. Free.

ZUMBA GOLD CLASS: For people 55 and older who are learning Zumba for the first time, or those who prefer a lower-impact version. The fitness program combines Latin and international music with dance.Thursdays 11 a.m. Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. 571-258-3280. $12.

TAI CHI Stretching and strengthening movements. Mondays 11 a.m. Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039. Free.

ZUMBA GOLD CLASS Age 55 and older. Wear rubber-soled shoes and comfortable clothing; bring water and a towel. Tuesdays 11 a.m., Tuesdays and Fridays at 1 p.m. Senior Center of Leesburg, 102 North St. NW, Leesburg. 703-737-8039. $24 per month.

SUPPORT GROUPS

AL-ANON SERVICE CENTER OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA A volunteer is available 24 hours with information for spouses, family members and friends of problem drinkers. 703-534-4357 or 877-339-8350. Mondays 8 p.m. Emmanuel Episcopal Church, 125 W. Washington St., Middleburg, 540-554-2747; Tuesdays 7:30 p.m. St. James Episcopal Church, 14 Cornwall St. NW, Leesburg, 877-339-8350; Fridays 8:30 p.m. Grace Episcopal Church, 6507 Main St., The Plains, 800-344-2666; Tuesdays 12:15 p.m. Warrenton Church of Christ, Route 29 N., 540-347-7448; Tuesdays 7 p.m. and Saturdays 8:30 p.m. Warrenton Presbyterian Church, 91 Main St., 800-344-2666.

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS Various meeting times and locations in Loudoun County. 800-208-8649 or 703-876-6166. nvintergroup.org.

ALZHEIMERS CAREGIVER SUPPORT For those who care for people with Alzheimers disease and other forms of dementia. Fourth Wednesdays 4-5:30 p.m. The Villa at Suffield Meadows, 6735 Suffield Lane, Warrenton. 540-316-3800.

ALZHEIMERS CAREGIVERS SUPPORT For those caring for people with Alzheimers disease and other forms of dementia. Second Mondays 7-8:30 p.m. Galilee United Methodist Church, 45425 Winding Rd., Sterling. 703-430-9229. galileeumc.org.

ALZHEIMERS CAREGIVER SUPPORT Emotional, educational and social support for family members and friends of people with the disease. Third Saturdays 10 a.m. Loudoun County Area Agency on Aging, 20145 Ashbrook Pl., Ashburn. Call 703-771-5407 or email lesley.katz@loudoun.gov.

ALZHEIMERS CAREGIVER SUPPORT GROUP Fourth Thursdays 3-4 p.m. Carver Center, 200 Willie Palmer Way, Purcellville. 540-903-6831 or alz.org.

ALZHEIMERS SUPPORT First Tuesdays 10-11 a.m. Spring Arbor Assisted Living, 237 Fairview St. NW, Leesburg. 540-338-6520.

ALZHEIMERS SUPPORT First Wednesdays 4 p.m. Leesburg Adult Day Center, 16501 Meadowview Ct., Leesburg. 703-771-5334.

TALK ABOUT CURING AUTISM A nonprofit organization educating and supporting families affected by autism. tacanow.org.

AUTOIMMUNE SUPPORT Last Thursdays 6:30-7:30 p.m. Jackson Building, 209 Gibson St., Leesburg. Email autoimmunesupport@hotmail.com .

BEREAVED PARENT SUPPORT One-on-one counseling is available. Spiritual Care Support Ministry Center, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814. scsm.tv.

BEREAVEMENT SUPPORT For those experiencing loss because of the death of a loved one. Age 18 and older. Third Mondays 1 p.m. Fauquier Hospital Chestnut Room, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. Sponsored by Capital Caring. 703-957-1800.

BREAST CANCER SUPPORT Fourth Tuesdays 7-8 p.m. Fauquier Hospital Tower, Chestnut Room, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-349-0588.

BREAST CANCER SUPPORT For those with new diagnoses or starting treatment. Register if attending for the first time. Fourth Mondays 5:30-6:30 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. 703-858-8857.

BREAST CANCER SUPPORT For those who have finished treatment, have had a recurrence or metastatic breast cancer. Register if attending for the first time. Fourth Mondays 6:30-8 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. 703-858-8857. Free.

BREAST CANCER SUPPORT ASSISTANCE FUND Loudoun County residents who have received a diagnosis or have undergone treatment in the past 12 months are eligible to apply for financial assistance. Areas included are wigs, bras, puffs and prostheses, mammograms and medical bills, food and help with utilities, rent or mortgage, and transportation costs. The Pink Assistance Fund has been established by the Loudoun Breast Health Network. lbhn.org.

CANCER SUPPORT Oncology nurses, social workers and spiritual-care providers offer education and support to patients, families and caregivers. Second Mondays 5:30-6:30 p.m. Fauquier Hospital Sycamore Room, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-316-2273.

CANCER SUPPORT Life with Cancer, for patients, family members and friends. Second Thursdays 7 p.m. Ashburn Presbyterian Church, Room 202, 20962 Ashburn Rd. 703-729-2012. ashburnpresbyterian.org.

CAREGIVER SUPPORT AND RESOURCE GROUP Wednesdays 10:30 a.m.-noon (no meeting first Wednesdays), Spiritual Care Support Ministry Center, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814. scsm.tv.

CARING FOR AGING PARENTS Support group. Confidential. Fourth Wednesdays 7:30 p.m., Family Focus Counseling Service, 20-B John Marshall St., Warrenton. 540-349-4537.

CHADD PARENTS SUPPORT For parents of children with ADD/ADHD. Fourth Sundays 3 p.m. KinderCare, 44051 Ashburn Village Shopping Plaza. chadd.nova loudoun@gmail.com .

CHRONIC ILLNESS SUPPORT Tuesdays 10:30-11:30 a.m. Spiritual Care Support Ministries, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814 or scsm.tv.

COFFEE AND CONVERSATION: Support for those discouraged because of illness, bereavement, caregiving or a loved one in the military. Thursdays 10 a.m.-noon. Spiritual Care Support Ministry Center, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814.

COMPASSIONATE FRIENDS For parents who have experienced the death of a child. First Wednesdays 7:30 p.m. St. James Episcopal Church, 14 Cornwall St. NW, Leesburg. 540-882-9707.

CREATING AND CONNECTING Two-hour art therapy and relaxation workshop for cancer patients. Every other month, 12:30-2:30 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. Call for dates. 703-858-8850.

DEPRESSION BIPOLAR SUPPORT ALLIANCE OF WESTERN LOUDOUN Saturdays 3 p.m. Purcellville Library, 220 E. Main St., Carruthers Room. Call 703-431-7160 or email kathy@dbsanca.org.

DROP-IN GRIEF SUPPORT For those coping with a death. Second and fourth Wednesdays 1-2 p.m. St. Davids Episcopal Church, 43600 Russell Branch Pkwy., Ashburn. Sponsored by Capital Caring. 703-597-1781.

FAMILIES OVERCOMING DRUG ADDICTION SUPPORT First and third Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. Fauquier Hospital Sycamore Room, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-316-9221 or email myfodafamily@gmail.com.

GAY, LESBIAN, BISEXUAL AND TRANSGENDER YOUTH AND PARENT SUPPORT A group in partnership with Metro DC PFLAG. Fourth Sundays 4-6 p.m. Unitarian Universalist Church, 22135 Davis Dr., Sterling. 703-328-6518.

GRIEFSHARE Open to anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one. Tuesdays from 7-8:30 p.m. Purcellville Baptist Church, 601 Yaxley Dr., Purcellville. Call 540-338-0918 or email caring@purbap.org. Workbook, $15.

GRIEFSHARE Nondenominational seminar and support group. Tuesdays 7:30-9 p.m., and Wednesdays, 1-2:30 p.m. Spiritual Care Support Ministry Center, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814. Free.

GRIEF SUPPORT Sponsored by Hospice Support of Fauquier County. Individual counseling available. First and third Thursdays 3:30-5 p.m. Hospice Support Office, 42 N. Fifth St., Warrenton. Registration required. Call 540-347-5922 or email hospicesupport@verizon.net.

GRIEF SUPPORT Wednesdays, 10:30 a.m.-noon, Spiritual Care Support Ministry Center, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814.

HOSPICE SUPPORT Free medical-equipment loan facility for Fauquier County residents. Especially needed are donations of wheelchairs, bedside commodes, rolling walkers, electric hospital beds, shower benches and chairs, adult diapers, lift chairs, Ensure and hospital bed mattresses. 540-347-5922.

LOOK GOOD, FEEL BETTER For women undergoing or emerging from cancer treatment. Every other month, 6:45 to 9 p.m., Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. Call for dates. 703-776-2820. Free.

LOUDOUN CHADD SUPPORT Led by Children and Adults With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Third Thursdays 7 p.m. Leesburg Town Hall, lower-level conference room, 25 W. Market St. 703-669-2445.

LOUDOUN INTERGROUP OF OVEREATERS ANONYMOUS Fellowship and support. For locations and times, call 571-420-2012. oa.org.

LYME DISEASE SUPPORT Fourth Sundays 2-4 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Conference Room A and B, Leesburg. Go to natcaplyme.org or email loudounlymeadvocates@gmail.com.

LYME DISEASE SUPPORT Third Thursdays 7 p.m. Warrenton Church of Christ, 6398 Lee Hwy. Access Road, Warrenton. 540-347-7265 or email lymeinfauquier@gmail.com.

LYME DISEASE SUPPORT First Tuesdays 7-8:30 p.m. Carver Center, 200 Willie Palmer Way, Purcellville. Email charphealy@yahoo.com.

MADD LOUDOUN VICTIM SUPPORT For those who have been affected by drunken driving. Third Wednesdays 7:30 p.m. 210 Wirt St., Leesburg. 540-338-6491.

MAN-TO-MAN CANCER SUPPORT Sponsored by Loudoun Cancer Care Center, for prostate cancer patients and their families. Second Tuesdays 6:30-8 p.m. Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. Call 703-858-8857 or email karen.archer@inova.org.

MENDED HEARTS Northern Virginia chapter, for heart surgery patients and families and friends of heart disease patients. Third Saturdays 11 a.m., Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Leesburg (Patient Information Lounge). 703-924-6244 or mendedhearts200.org.

MENOPAUSE SUPPORT Third Thursdays 6:30-9 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Leesburg (second floor, Patient Education Room). 703-858-8060.

MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS SUPPORT Saturdays 10:30 a.m. Fauquier Hospital Chestnut Room, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-349-2826.

MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS SUPPORT Last Sundays 2-4 p.m. Cascades Library, 21030 Whitfield Pl., Potomac Falls. 703-771-4256.

NAR-ANON FAMILY SUPPORT For those affected by loved ones with addiction. Meaningful Mondays, 7-8 p.m., Galilee United Methodist Church, 45425 Winding Rd., Sterling. 703-203-9792; Wisdom Wednesdays 7-8 p.m., St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church, 37730 St. Francis Ct., Purcellville, 703-606-7125; Serenity Thursdays, 7-8 p.m. Leesburg Presbyterian Church, 207 W. Market St., Leesburg, 703-606-7125.

PARKINSONS SUPPORT Open to anyone with Parkinson's disease, family members and caregivers. First Tuesdays 1:30-3 p.m. Call for Ashburn location. 571-442-8851.

POST-PARTUM SUPPORT Second and fourth Wednesdays 1-2:30 p.m. Inova Loudoun Cornwall Campus, 224 Cornwall St., Leesburg. 703-909-9877. Email lamckeough@gmail.com. Registration required.

REACH TO RECOVERY Home visit program for mastectomy and lumpectomy patients. Temporary prostheses, exercise instruction and encouragement. 703-938-5550.

RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS SUPPORT Friday 7 p.m. Fauquier Hospital Chestnut Room, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. Call 703-895-2167 to register.

SEXUAL ASSAULT AND INCEST SURVIVORS GROUP COUNSELING Services provided by Loudoun Citizens for Social Justice and the Loudoun Abused Womens Shelter are free and confidential. 703-771-9020.

SEXUAL ASSAULT SURVIVORS EMPOWERMENT SUPPORT Sponsored by Sexual Assault Victims Volunteer Initiative. Child care available with 48-hours notice. Mondays; call for times and locations. 540-349-7720.

SPIRITUAL SUPPORT GROUP For cancer patients, family members and friends. Third Tuesdays 6:30-8 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. 703-858-8850.

STROKE SURVIVORS AND CAREGIVERS SUPPORT Second Wednesdays 11 a.m.-noon, Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Leesburg, second floor, Patient Education Room. 703-858-6667 or robynthomson@inova.org .

SUICIDE COUNSELING Third Wednesdays 7-8:30 p.m. Leesburg Town Office, Conference Room 2, lower level, 25 W. Market St., Leesburg. 703-587-1618 or survivorsofsuicidelossleesburg@gmail.com.

WOMENS SUPPORT Sponsored by Services to Abused Families. Tuesdays 6:30-8 p.m. Confidential location. 540-825-8876.

WIDOW AND WIDOWER SUPPORT Third Mondays 11 a.m. Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039.

WOMENS CANCER SUPPORT Woman to Woman, first Wednesdays 6:30-8 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. Registration required. 703-858-8850.

MISCELLANEOUS

BLOOD PRESSURE CHECKS AND STROKE RISK ASSESSMENTS Tuesday 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital cafeteria alcove, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Leesburg. 703-858-6000. Free.

BRAIN TRAUMA SURVIVORS BROWN BAG LUNCH For survivors and caregivers, first Tuesdays, noon-1:30 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Leesburg, second-floor Patient Education Room. Call 703-737-3150 or email jberg@braininjurysvcs.org. Free.

CHILD DEVELOPMENTAL SCREENINGS For ages 2-5. Children may not be kindergarten-age-eligible. Sponsored by the Loudoun County public schools Child Find Center. 571-252 - 2180.

CHOLESTEROL SCREENINGS Weekdays 6 a.m.-8 p.m. Fauquier Health LIFE Center, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-316-2640. Registration required. $35.

EMERGENCY FOOD SUPPLIES Loudoun residents who are in need can receive a free three-day supply of groceries. Supplies are distributed Mondays through Saturdays by Loudoun Interfaith Relief. 703-777-5911. interfaithrelief.org.

FAUQUIER FREE WALK-IN MEDICAL CLINIC Patients must call Thursdays from 12:30 to 1 p.m. to register for the clinic, which begins at 5:30 p.m. Patients are also seen by appointment Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Fauquier and Rappahannock residents only. Bring proof of address for the first visit. Patients cannot have Medicaid, Medicare or private insurance. Information: 540-347-0394 Tuesdays or Thursdays, 9 a.m.-4 p.m.

FAUQUIER HOSPITAL BISTRO SENIOR SUPPER CLUB Nutritious meals and fellowship for people 55 and older. Tuesdays and Thursdays 4:30-6:30 p.m. Fauquier Hospital Bistro on the Hill, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-316-3588. $5.49.

GAMERS UNION FOR TEENS WITH ASPERGERS Youths 12 to 21 interact through gaming; their caregivers meet for networking. Second Tuesdays 6 p.m. Rust Library, 380 Old Waterford Rd., Leesburg. 703-777-0323. Free.

HEROES (Hometown Enabling Relationships, Opportunities and Empowerment through Support) is a program for military families. A trained volunteer provides support to military members and their families, from pre-deployment up to two years post-deployment. Assistance includes financial help, job placement, family care and mental-health services. heroescare.org or email caring@purbap.org .

LOUDOUN CARES INFORMATION AND REFERRAL HELPLINE Call for help in finding resources for county residents who are dealing with rent eviction, utility cut-offs, needed health care, employment and more. 703-669-4636.

MOTOR SKILL SCREENINGS Birth to 21 months. First Thursdays, Blue Ridge Speech and Hearing Center, 19465 Deerfield Ave., Suite 201, Lansdowne. Call for an appointment. 703-858-7620. Free.

NORTHERN VIRGINIA LONG-TERM CARE OMBUDSMAN Call for help in resolving complaints related to long-term-care facilities. 703-324-5861.

ROAD TO RECOVERY, for cancer patients who need rides to appointments. 410-781-6909. Email jen.burdette@cancer.org. Free.

SEVEN LOAVES FOOD PANTRY Individuals and families can receive a three-day supply of food, distributed Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays 10 a.m.-noon. 540-687-3489 or sevenloavesmiddleburg.org.

STROKE LECTURE A presentation by Edward Puccio, medical director of the Inova Loudoun Department of Emergency Medicine. Tuesday 2-3 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital patient education room, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Leesburg. 703-858-6000. Free.

TREE OF LIFE FOOD PANTRY Serving western Loudoun County. Food is delivered Wednesdays and Saturdays. 703-554-3595.

 Compiled by Sandy Mauck

TO SUBMIT AN ITEM

Email: ldliving@washpost.com

Fax: 703-777-8437

Mail: Health Calendar, The Washington Post, 104 Dry Mill Rd. SW, Suite 101, Leesburg, Va. 20175

Loudoun County and Fauquier County health calendar

Loudoun County and Fauquier County health calendar

Loudoun County and Fauquier County health calendar

Loudoun County and Fauquier County health calendar

Loudoun County and Fauquier County health calendar

Loudoun County and Fauquier County health calendar

Loudoun County and Fauquier County health calendar

Loudoun County and Fauquier County health calendar
A.V. Symington Aquatic Center open for season

Leesburgs A.V. Symington Aquatic Center at Ida Lee Park Recreation Center opened Saturday for the summer season. On Memorial Day weekend, the pool will be open from noon to 8 p.m.

Through June 14, the pool will be open Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 8 p.m. Beginning June 15, the aquatic center will be open daily from noon to 8 p.m., with town residents admitted at 11 a.m.

Admission passes can be purchased at the aquatic center at 60 Ida Lee Park, Leesburg.

For information on passes, special hours and daily admission rates, go to idalee.org.

Classic cars cruise into 30th annual show

The 30th annual Leesburg Classic Car Show, sponsored by the Northern Virginia Rods and Classic Car Club and the Leesburg Downtown Business Association, will be held Saturday from 5 to 10 p.m. at King and Market streets.

More than 200 classics, street rods, muscle cars and vehicles from model year 1989 and older will be on display, with owners on hand to answer questions. Trophies will be awarded for the Top 30 vehicles, Best of Show, Mayors Choice and Merchants Choice.

Donations of $3 per person are requested. All proceeds benefit the Auto Collision Repair Class and the Arts and Graphics Department at C.S. Monroe Technology Center. Money raised will fund scholarships, supplies and field trips for students.

Downtown streets will close at 4 p.m. for car-show staging. For information, go to novarodsnclassics.org.

Free document shredding; donate to help soldiers

The Leesburg Public Works Department will host free document shredding Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Heritage High School, 520 Evergreen Mill Rd. SE, Leesburg.

Residents (no businesses) may bring up to three boxes or bags of documents, each equivalent in size to a standard file storage box. If shredding vehicles fill, the event may close early. For a list of items accepted for shredding, go to leesburgva.gov/shredevents.

During the event, town employees will accept donations for a Project Frontlines care package to be sent to a U.S. military unit deployed overseas. Project Frontlines is a program of Adopt A US Soldier. The organization has requested donations of coffee mugs to make individual microwaveable birthday cakes. Other suggested items include coffee, hard candies, mints, nuts, protein bars, puzzle books, magazines and personal hygiene items. For a list of recommended donations, go to adoptaussoldier.org.

 Compiled by Sandy Mauck
Montgomery County Council members from left, Craig Rice, George Leventhal, Roger Berliner, Marc Elrich, Nancy Floreen, Tom Hucker, Sidney Katz, Nancy Navarro and Hans Riemer are sworn in at Richard Montgomery High School in 2014. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)

A majority of seats on the nine-member Montgomery County Council would change hands in 2018 if a proposed charter amendment for term limits is placed on the November ballot and approved by voters.

The proposition, authored by Republican activist Robin Ficker, limits council members and the county executive to three consecutive terms. County officials initially thought the amendment would directly affect four council members: Roger Berliner (D-Potomac-Bethesda) and Marc Elrich (D-At Large) are serving their third term, and Nancy Floreen (D-At Large), and George L. Leventhal (D-At Large) are serving their fourth.

But the amendment defines term as both a full term and a portion of one. It means that council member Nancy Navarro (D-Mid-County), first elected in May 2009 to fill the unexpired term of the late council member Don Praisner and then elected to two full terms, is also covered by the measure.

It was a little bit surprising that it was specific, Navarro said Tuesday.

If approved, the charter amendment would trigger the largest council turnover in many years.

Robin Ficker, a Montgomery County Republican activist, talks with people to try and get some of the 10,00 valid signatures he needs to place a term-limits proposal on the November ballot. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Two new members  Elrich and Berliner  were elected in 2006. Two others, Craig Rice (D-Upcounty) and Hans Riemer (D-At Large) won seats in 2010. In 2014, the most recent election, Tom Hucker (D-Eastern County) and Sidney Katz (D-Gaithersburg-Rockville) won open seats,

Prince Georges County is the only local government in the Washington metropolitan area with term limits; council members and the county executive are limited to two consecutive four-year terms. In 2014, voters narrowly rejected a ballot question that would have extended the limits to three terms.

Virginia limits its governor to four years, and Maryland, to eight years.

But the Prince Georges measure does not count partial terms against the legal limit. Former council member Will Campos (D), for example, won a special election to fill an unexpired term in 2004, then won reelection in 2006 and 2010.

Navarro said she plans to explore the legality of counting partial terms.

Its something I want to look into, she said.

Navarro said she would also keep my options open on the possibility of running for county executive. The other four potentially term-limited members  Leventhal, Berliner, Elrich and Floreen  are also said to be consideringthe race.

County Executive Isiah Leggett (D), who is serving his third term, is expected to retire after 2018.

In order to get the term-limits proposal on the ballot, Ficker must submit at least 10,000 valid signatures of registered voters to election officials by Aug. 1.

This is his third attempt to win approval for some form of term limits. A 2004 ballot proposition was defeated 52 percent to 48 percent. Four years earlier, it lost by 54 percent to 46 percent.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) on Tuesday got rid of 72 executive orders issued by seven of his predecessors  by signing an executive order of his own.

Hogan said the move to rescind dozens of actions taken by previous governors, including orders that created state panels to look at issues including homelessness, transportation and cancer research, is part of an ongoing effort to streamline the bureaucracy in Annapolis and throughout the state.

This removal of five decades of unnecessary and outdated gubernatorial directives demonstrates our continued commitment to modernize and streamline Maryland state government, including many antiquated and out-of-date regulations, Hogan said in a statement.

Matt Clark, a spokesman for Hogan, said more than half of the old orders dealt with commissions or work groups. None were still needed, he said, either because they were superceded by legislation; they created a commission or panel that had not met in years; or they focused on an issue now being addressed through other means.

Still, he said, the orders have stayed on the books.

Its part of a process of cleaning things up, Clark said.

Todd Eberly, a political science professor at St. Marys College of Maryland, said the order rescinding the directives appears to be largely symbolic, but it sends a message to the public from Hogan that Ive taken on wasteful spending or unnecessary programming and youre all the better for it.

Last year, Hogan established a reform commission to examine whether regulations are hindering the states ability to retain and attract businesses.

Last month, he announced the hiring of former Democratic state lawmaker Robert R. Neall to head the newly formed Office of Transformation and Renewal, which is charged with making state government more accountable and efficient.

[Hogan announces commission to review out-of-control regulations]

According to the directive Hogan announced Tuesday, the obsolete executive orders create confusion in state government and waste the resources of businesses and citizens who must determine their effect.

The oldest order Hogan rescinded was issued by Gov. Marvin Mandel (D) in 1970 to create the Science Advisory Council. The council has not met since 1996.

In 2007, Gov. Martin OMalley (D) created another group to allow Baltimore residents to have input into the Red Line light-rail project. The long-planned rail line was killed by Hogan last year.

A third order was signed by Gov. William Donald Schaefer (D) in 1987 to establish a state Child Day Care Coordinator. The position no longer exists.

Eberly said Hogans focus on reform makes sense, especially because the governor has had only moderate to middling success moving his legislative agenda through the majority-Democratic General Assembly.

Weve seen him repeatedly appear to say, What can I do on my own?  Eberly said. This is another example of that.
Jan Crouch, who with her husband, Paul Crouch, founded Trinity Broadcasting Network, a collection of low- and high-frequency stations that harnessed the novel power of satellite television to become the worlds largest religious network, died May 31. She was 78.

A son, Matthew Crouch, announced her death in a statement with other family members, writing, Jan Crouch, known around the world as Momma Jan, has gone home. Mrs. Crouch had been hospitalized last week with what her son Matthew described in a Facebook post as a life threatening stroke. The statement did not provide details of her death.

For 40 years, Momma Crouch and her husband, Papa Crouch, were the Gospel-spreading faces of TBN, as their evangelical Christian network is called. The duo did not invent modern televangelism  Pat Robertson launched the Christian Broadcasting Network more than a decade before TBNs start in 1973  but buoyed by emerging cable and satellite technologies, the couple were perhaps the most successful at expanding their global reach.

According to TBN, the Orange County, Calif.-based network now has more than 80 satellite channels and thousands of television and cable affiliates. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, the network airs commercial-free Christian programming. There are TBN cartoons and soap operas, Christian game shows and rock videos, health specials and a much subdued Saturday Night Live-style variety show. The network at one point aired a morning exercise program titled Get in Shape, in which a leotard-wearing host led routines while citing Bible verses.

The networks centerpiece has long been Praise the Lord, a two-hour daytime talk show hosted by Mrs. Crouch and her husband until his death in 2013.

Wearing enormous pink and platinum wigs that cascaded past her shoulders, Mrs. Crouch spoke of the Gospels power and the importance of prayer. This was proved to her at the age of 4, she once said, when her pet chicken wandered out into the street and was hit by a car but later brought back to life after she laid him on the kitchen table and prayed in the name of Jesus Christ.

She later recounted her nervousness on an airplane when an angel suddenly appeared on the wing of the plane, winking to her and signaling that everything would be all right.

Mrs. Crouch and her husbands sermons and stories were a hit with viewers, who tuned in and donated to the network in force. A 2004 Los Angeles Times investigation found that TBN earned more than $170 million a year in revenue, with two-thirds of the proceeds coming from viewers. Most of the donations were in amounts less than $50.

In the U.S. alone, the Times reported, TBN is watched by more than 5 million households each week, more than its three main competitors combined. Its signature offering, Praise the Lord, has as many prime-time viewers as Chris Matthews Hardball on MSNBC  remarkable for a faith network.

The networks finances were a frequent point of contention. In twice-yearly Praise-a-thon broadcasts, Mrs. Crouch and her husband encouraged viewers to take a step of faith and make donations regardless of their financial straits. The money, they said, was essential to keeping shows like Praise the Lord on the air.

Reports on the companys finances indicated otherwise. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the network recorded surpluses averaging nearly $60 million a year.

Indisputable, however, was the Crouches embrace of an extravagant lifestyle. The couple frequently traveled in a private jet and luxury cars, staying at more than two dozen homes in California, Texas, Tennessee and Ohio that were owned by TBN  including a pair of his-and-her mansions in Newport Beach, Calif.

The couple lived apart in recent years, and the family has been cleaved by a series of legal issues. In 2004, the Times reported that Paul Crouch paid a former male employee $425,000 to prevent him from publicizing an alleged sexual encounter. Crouch denied that anything sexual happened between them.

In a series of suits and countersuits that began in 2011, a granddaughter, Brittany Koper, alleged that TBN had misspent millions of dollars in tax-exempt company money; Mrs. Crouch and the network claimed that Koper had misspent company money herself. Another granddaughter, Carra Crouch, sued the company in 2012, alleging that she was raped by a TBN employee when she was 13 and that her family covered up the incident to protect the networks reputation.

Janice Wendell Bethany was born in New Brockton, Ala., on March 14, 1938. She grew up in Columbus, Ga., where her father was a minister in the Pentecostal denomination Assemblies of God.

She attended what was then called Evangel College, a Christian school in Springfield, Mo., where she met Paul Crouch, who was studying at a nearby Bible college. They married in 1957. Survivors include two sons, a sister, several grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

The Crouches managed and produced film and television projects for the Assemblies of God in Burbank, Calif., before striking out on their own in 1973, when Paul Crouch invested in a small station in Tustin, Calif.

Two years later, he was struck with a vision. In the den of the Crouches home in Newport Beach, a map of the United States seemed to be projected on the ceiling. A web of light slowly spread across the country.

I sat there transfixed by what I was seeing as I cried out to God to show me what all this meant, Paul Crouch wrote in his 2003 memoir, Hello World! As I waited upon the Lord, He spoke a ringing, resounding word to my spirit  Satellite! 

The word held true, and the explosion of satellite television stations in the late 1970s enabled Mrs. Crouch and her husband to expand worldwide.

In the last several years, Mrs. Crouch had focused on a side project: the Holy Land Experience theme park in Orlando, which aims to recreate the Jerusalem of Jesuss day.
A man who was shot by an off-duty D.C. police officer while allegedly stealing frozen crab legs from a grocery store in Northeast Washington on Sunday pointed what turned out to be a replica handgun at the officer, authorities said Tuesday.

The man, identified as Anthuan Phu Pham, 47, was charged with aggravated assault on a police officer and shoplifting. Authorities list no fixed address for Pham. Police and some court documents also spelled his first name Anhtuan.

The police report identifies the officer who fired his weapon as Theodore Dyson, a 26-year veteran.

[D.C. police officer shoots man in shoplifting case]

The shooting occurred about 6:30 a.m. in the Giant Food store in the 300 block of H Street NE, a few blocks from Union Station. Dyson, who was working a part-time security job for the store, was standing behind a cash register when, according to the report, he saw a man holding a bag that appeared to be concealing large items.

The arrest affidavit filed in D.C. Superior Court said the bag was leaking. Dyson asked the man to follow him to the back of the store, but the man refused and took out what appeared to be a black handgun, according to police. He then aimed the object at Dyson, who fired multiple times, according to the report. Police did not describe the replica gun further.

The injured Pham was taken to Medstar Washington Hospital Center. Police said his condition was listed as critical on Monday, but authorities had no update on Tuesday. Police said they retrieved the mans gun and the two bags of crab legs  worth a total $76.54.

The report does not say whether there were any customers in the store at the time.

Pham pleaded guilty in 2009 to attempted first-degree child sex abuse and served six years in prison, court records show. After his release, he was ordered to 10 years of supervision. His last known address, according to the D.C. list of registered sex offenders, was in Southeast Washington.
A split federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that police do not need a search warrant before obtaining cell tower location data that can trace the long-term movements of a suspects mobile phone, while conceding that law had come unmoored from societys notions of privacy.

The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, whose jurisdiction includes Virginia and Maryland, ruled 12 to 3 that police can obtain cell site location information  or CSLI  under decades-old rules that allow authorities to collect business or third party records with a court order, such as banking transactions or numbers dialed from a landline phone.

The Supreme Court may in the future limit, or even eliminate, the third-party doctrine. Congress may act to require a warrant for CSLI. But without a change in controlling law, we cannot conclude that the Government violated the Fourth Amendment in this case, Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote for the majority.

Motz said that arguments by two men convicted in armed robberies around Baltimore -- who believed search warrants should be required for their cell tower location data -- would conflict with established Supreme Court doctrine and recent rulings by federal appellate courts in Florida and Cincinnati, New Orleans and Philadelphia.

The Maryland defendants, Aaron Graham and Eric Jordan, argued that investigators gathering of seven months of phone records  including an average of 130 neighborhood location data points per day over 221 days  amounted to dragnet surveillance revealing patterns and details of their lives.

Police seeking the phone records were not required to show a judge probable cause that a crime had been committed, as needed for a search warrant.

Joined in dissent by judges Henry F. Floyd and Stephanie D. Thacker, Judge James A. Wynn criticized the extraordinary breadth of the majority decision, which he said markedly expanded third-party doctrine even as The Fourth Amendment, necessarily, is in retreat.

Wynn wrote that cell-site location data is different from other data because it is not voluntarily conveyed by phone users, who are likely unaware of it, unaware they are providing it or know which cell towers they are using.

While less precise than Global Positioning System satellite data, cell-tower data is generally collected whenever a cell-phone user texts, calls, checks email or seeks weather or other location-based information. Wireless providers log records from which tower a phone uses, revealing a persons location within a few feet or miles depending on the density of towers.

[Supreme Court limits police use of GPS tracking]

I suppose we can also expect no privacy in data transmitted by networked devices such as the Fitbit bracelet, which can track the steps you take in a day, calories burned, and minutes asleep or other devices that can track individuals, temperature, heart and breathing rates and blood hemoglobin levels, Wynn said in a footnote.

Tuesdays ruling overturned a split decision last August by a three-judge panel that found that accessing location information without a warrant for an extended period is unconstitutional because it allows law enforcement to trace a persons daily travels and activities across public and private spaces.

[Court considers when police need warrants to track suspects through cellphones]

Several civil liberties groups and privacy advocates joined the lawsuit, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Democracy and Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation and the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys.

Because months worth of cell phone location data can reveal extraordinarily private details of a persons life, the right way to protect peoples privacy interest in that information is to require a warrant, said Nathan Freed Wessler, a staff attorney with the ACLUs Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. The Fourth Circuits decision is not the last word on this issue. Other appellate courts will surely address these questions soon, and the Supreme Court may well need to weigh in.

U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein of Maryland said the opinion puts the 4th circuit in accord with all other federal circuits that have examined this issue, adding that authorities obtained cell-site information after showing a judge that it was relevant to a criminal investigation under the Stored Communications Act.
Travelers pass through the main security gate at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on May 27, during Memorial Day weekend. (Jeff Martin/AP)

Despite a few videos of long lines and some passenger complaints, the Transportation Security Administration said Tuesday that most of the lines at its airport checkpoints flowed smoothly as the traditional summer season began over Memorial Day weekend.

The average wait over the four-day weekend that began Thursday was less than 10 minutes in regular TSA security lines, the agency said, as 10.3 million passengers passed through the nations airports. The longest regular line came at Kansas City, Mo., on Thursday, when it took passengers 75 minutes to pass through security screening.

The majority of passengers who traveled over the Memorial Day holiday waited in line less than 30 minutes, said TSA spokesman David Castelveter.

Though one line at Chicagos OHare International took more than an hour, the TSA said the average waiting time at the nations seven largest airports was less than 10 minutes.

The TSA has come under unrelenting pressure from Congress, airlines and passengers at the outset of a summer when a near-record number of passengers say they plan to fly. The 740 million passengers expected to fly this year is a 97 million increase over the number who flew three years ago. Passenger volume over the long weekend was up 3.3 percent over last Memorial Day weekend, the TSA said.

Travelers pass through a TSA checkpoint at Chicagos O'Hare International Airport on Friday. (Kiichiro Sato/AP)

The TSA said 768 newly trained agents are expected to join the lines this month. If Congress follows through on a request to shuffle $28 million in TSA funds, 2,784 part-time workers can be shifted to full-time status. Elevating those workers to full time will enable TSA to screen about 82,000 more passengers each day, according to Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson.

Until those additional officers come on line, however, TSA Administrator Peter V. Neffenger has been scrambling to redirect resources to the airports facing the biggest backups. He also has enlisted the help of airport and airline workers to handle some non-security-related tasks normally done by TSA workers.

[American Airlines: Something needs to be done, and fast about TSA lines]

In Chicago, for example, he added eight bomb-sniffing dog teams and 58 officers and converted 160 agents from part to full time at OHare International Airport.

We greatly appreciate Neffengers responsiveness, said Lydia Beairsto of the Chicago Department of Aviation.

The big jump in anticipated passenger load, combined with TSA staffing shortages and procedural changes implemented by Neffenger, resulted in some passengers waiting for hours to clear screening in April and May.

United Airlines said it delayed 37 flights from OHare in a single day. American Airlines said that this year, security delays have caused 70,000 passengers and 40,000 checked bags to miss their flights.

[Neffenger takes another crack at explaining long airport security lines]

The data released Tuesday has been closely held by the TSA. Last month, Neffenger told a House committee that he received reports on airport wait times several times each day. But the TSA declined to release that information, leaving passengers to rely on a TSA-sponsored app that provides data entered by fellow passengers.
RICHMOND  Since narrowly losing the 2013 Virginia governors race to Terry McAuliffe, former attorney general Ken Cuccinelli II has dabbled in oyster farming, launched a gun-rights law firm, criss-crossed the country for Sen. Ted Cruz, championed conservative U.S. Senate candidates and mulled another bid for the Executive Mansion.

On Tuesday, he assumed yet another role: Washington watchdog.

Cuccinelli joined the conservative FreedomWorks Foundation as its general counsel, a job that involves helping state attorneys general around the country combat overreaching federal regulations  something his new boss refers to as the disturbing advance of the regulatory state.

As Virginias attorney general from 2010 to 2014, Cuccinelli was known for challenging federal authorities. His lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act landed minutes after President Obama signed it into law. But he said most attorneys general are too busy with their other responsibilities to keep an eye on potentially onerous regulations in the works in Washington.

[From the archives: Cuccinelli sues federal government to stop health-care reform law]

They just dont have the staff to watch this stuff, Cuccinelli said in an interview with The Washington Post. I was attorney general for the 12th most populous state. . . . No one was regularly available to keep a watch on the next  quote  great idea  quote  rolling out of Washington that we needed to be concerned about. We will provide a new set of eyes and ears and communicate with them as best we can, regardless of party.

FreedomWorks, which has its roots the tea party movement but also appeals to some libertarians and traditional Republicans, bills itself as an advocate for smaller government, lower taxes, free markets, personal liberty and the rule of law.

In his role, Ken will lead our new state attorneys general project, a groundbreaking effort through which we will provide grassroots support as states fight regulations forced upon them by unelected federal bureaucrats, Adam Brandon, the groups chief executive of FreedomWorks, said in a written statement.

In an interview, Brandon said Cuccinelli was a natural for the new project because of his record as Virginias attorney general.

He did ground-breaking work as an AG, Brandon said. He did things as an AG that I didnt even know AGs could do.

As attorney general, Cuccinelli waged high-profile battles against abortion, gay rights, a university climate scientist, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Affordable Care Act. A hero to conservatives and a villain to liberals, he lost a tight race for governor to McAuliffe (D), an equally polarizing figure with close personal and political ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Cuccinellis role at the foundation will ebb and flow depending on what is brewing in Washington, according to Brandon, who said the post defies easy characterization as full-time or part-time work.

He takes on the position a month after two pivotal developments. Cuccinelli ruled out a run for governor in 2017, something he had been publicly considering since fall. And Cruz, the Texas senator and Republican presidential hopeful for whom Cuccinelli had been stumping, dropped out of the race.

[Cuccinelli will not run for governor in 2017]

In preparation for the FreedomWorks role, Cuccinelli shut down his private law practice, which had focused on appellate and constitutional cases.

But he will continue to juggle several other roles. He will stay on as president of the Senate Conservatives Fund, where he has promoted conservative candidates for the chamber since June 2014. He also will stay involved with Virginia Self Defense Law, a firm he founded in 2014 with a handful of partners and an unusual pricing strategy. For a cheap monthly retainer, the lawyers defend law-abiding gun owners who face firearms charges stemming from acts of self defense.

[Cuccinelli, 3 others start Virginia Self Defense Law firm, defending gun rights]

And Cuccinelli said he will stay involved with the oyster farm he runs with a small group of friends on Tangier Island, in the Chesapeake Bay.

[Ken Cuccinellis post-politics endeavor: oyster farming]
NORTH KOREA

Missile test launch thought to have failed

A North Korean missile launch likely failed Tuesday, according to South Koreas military, the latest in a string of high-profile failures that temper somewhat recent worries that Pyongyang was pushing quickly toward its goal of a nuclear-tipped missile that could reach Americas mainland.

South Koreas Yonhap News Agency said in an unsourced report that the missile was a powerful mid-range Musudan, which, if true, would make this the fourth failure by the North to conduct a successful test launch of the new missile, which could potentially reach far-away U.S. military bases in Asia and the Pacific. Seoul defense officials could not immediately confirm the report.

The Souths Joint Chiefs of Staff said in statement that the North attempted to launch an unidentified missile early in the morning from the Wonsan area, but likely failed. The military is analyzing what happened and had no other details.

Despite recent failures, there has been growing outside worry over the Norths nuclear and missile activity this year, which included a nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket test in February that outsiders saw as a test of banned long-range missile technology.

In April, North Korea tried unsuccessfully to launch three suspected Musudan missiles, which have a potential range of about 2,180 miles, putting U.S. bases in Guam within distance.

 Associated Press

LIBYA

Pro-government forces target Islamic State

Libyan forces loyal to the U.N.-brokered unity government advanced Monday against two strongholds of the Islamic State, with several officials saying the troops had taken a town from the extremist group.

The forces entered Bin Jawad, about 100 miles from the central city of Sirte, the main Islamic State bastion in Libya. The units spokesman, Ali Alhassi, later said the troops had liberated the town.

Elsewhere, militiamen from the western city of Misurata  who are also loyal to the U.N.-backed government  were pushing toward Sirte.

Since 2014, Libya has been divided between two parliaments and governments, with each backed by militias and tribes.

After the United Nations brokered a political deal between factions from each camp at the end of last year, the new unity government has tried to consolidate its grip in the capital, Tripoli, but has faced resistance from various groups. The Islamic State has managed to exploit the turmoil, seizing territory.

 Associated Press

BRITAIN

Londons mayor joins push against Brexit

Londons new mayor has joined forces with Prime Minister David Cameron in the campaign to prevent Britains exit from the European Union.

The Labour Partys Sadiq Khan and Cameron, a Conservative, made an unusual campaign appearance together Monday just weeks after Khan won a bitterly fought election to become Londons first Muslim mayor.

Both made passionate pleas for voters to reject a British exit, or Brexit, in a June 23 referendum.

Khans appearance represented a break with Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has refused to make joint appearances with Cameron even though he agrees with the Conservative Party leader on the need to stay in the E.U.

Khan said he will work with the Conservative-led government when it is in Londoners interests. He said that the economic reasons to remain in the 28-nation E.U. bloc are clear and that there is an important patriotic case, as well.

This vote is about our values, it is about our character, it is about how we see our city and our country in the future, he said. The reason why London is the greatest city in the world  and it is  we have never taken an isolationist approach. We are open-minded, we are outward-looking.

 Associated Press

Egyptian court sentences 36 Islamists to life: An Egyptian court has convicted and sentenced 36 Islamist figures, including a top leader of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, to life imprisonment. The state-run Middle East News Agency said Mohammed Badie and the other defendants were sentenced on charges of inciting violence that led to the killing of three people in July 2013. The case goes back to the days after the militarys ouster of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi, a Brotherhood member.

Hong Kong activist beaten by police is sentenced to prison: A Hong Kong democracy activist whose beating by police was caught on video was sentenced to five weeks in prison on charges related to the confrontation. Local broadcaster RTHK said Ken Tsang was sentenced on charges of assaulting police and resisting arrest over an October 2014 incident at the height of protests against Chinas plans to restrict elections.

 From news services
THE AMERICAS

OAS chief moves against Venezuela

The head of the Organization of American States on Tuesday called for an emergency meeting of regional governments to evaluate Venezuelas respect for democracy, a move that could lead to the countrys suspension from the hemispheric body.

Luis Almagro said Venezuela had suffered grave alterations of democratic order and called for a vote on the matter in the coming weeks.

The socialist country could be suspended from the organization if two-thirds of its member states vote that Venezuelas leadership has gravely undermined democracy there.

Almagro has been feuding with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whose government denounced the measure.

Communications Minister Luis Jose Marcano lambasted Almagro on state television, calling him a puppet.

Maduro has accused Almagro of working with the opposition and the United States to undermine Venezuela.

Venezuelas opposition-controlled congress recently asked Almagro to exercise his right to call for a vote on whether the country had violated democratic principles.

Tensions have been building in the deeply polarized country as the economy continues to fall apart and the ruling party blocks the opposition from legislating and holding marches.

 Associated Press

ISRAEL

Ex-employee wins case against Netanyahu wife

A former employee of the wife of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has won a court case against her alleging mistreatment, Israeli media reported Tuesday.

The verdict is a new setback for Sara Netanyahu, who has been repeatedly accused of abusive behavior toward household staff.

Channel 2 TV and other outlets said Jerusalems labor court awarded Guy Eliyahu $30,000 in damages on Sunday. Eliyahu said Sara Netanyahu had behaved abusively toward him, yelling and making unreasonable demands.

Amit Hadad, a Netanyahu family attorney, said the allegations were false and disconnected from reality.

In February, another former employee won a case alleging that he was subjected to abusive language and insults by Sara Netanyahu.

Also Sunday, police reportedly recommended indicting Sara Netanyahu on suspicion of misusing state funds and excessive household spending.

 Associated Press

9 killed, 35 abducted in bus attack in Afghanistan: Militants attacked buses on a road in northern Afghanistan, forcing passengers to disembark and killing nine people and abducting at least 35, officials said. Mahmood Danish, a spokesman for the governor, said the assault in Kunduz province occurred as the buses were traveling from the capital, Kabul, to Takhar and Badakhshan provinces. One official said the attackers were in Afghan army uniforms. There was no claim of responsibility, but officials blamed the Taliban.

Girl dies during circumcision in Egypt: A 17-year-old girl died while undergoing circumcision in Egypt, prompting authorities to shut down the hospital and refer doctors for prosecution, a senior health official said. Female circumcision, a centuries-old practice thought to control womens sexuality, was criminalized in Egypt in 2008 but remains widespread. The Health Ministry official said Manar Moussa and her twin sister underwent the surgery in the city of Suez this weekend. The other girl survived, but Manar died of a suspected stroke while under anesthesia.

Suspect in Canada military stabbing faces terror charges: Police said a Canadian man accused of stabbing soldiers at a military recruitment center in Toronto and then saying he did it at the behest of Allah is facing nine terrorism charges. Ayanle Hassan Ali, 27, was already facing nine counts filed by Toronto police at the time of his March arrest, but the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said the terrorism charges are new.

American murder suspect on trial in Czech Republic: An American man charged with murder in the killing of four of his relatives has gone on trial in the Czech Republic. Prosecutors say Kevin Dahlgren fatally stabbed his cousin, her husband and their son, and later killed another son  probably using a stone. The killings occurred during a visit by Dahlgren to the Czech city of Brno in May 2013. Authorities say he apparently tried to burn three of the bodies. Dahlgren was extradited to the Czech Republic last year.

4 Bangladeshis convicted of terror financing in Singapore: Four Bangladeshi workers held on suspicion of planning attacks linked to the Islamic State group in their own country were convicted of financing terrorism by a Singapore court. Prosecutors said the men, who pleaded guilty, had raised money to buy firearms for attacks in Bangladesh. They are to be sentenced June 21 and face up to 10 years in jail and a fine of 500,000 Singapore dollars ($362,260).

 From news services
Ezekiel Emanuel, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, is vice provost for global initiatives and chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania.

The E. coli found infecting a Pennsylvania woman that is resistant to colistin  the antibiotic of last resort  signals that a superbug is inevitable. Circulating among the bacteria in humans are all the antibiotic-resistance genes necessary to create a superbug; they just need to come together in one bacterium. This nightmare scenario highlights two urgent needs: to slow the development of resistant bugs and to spur development of new antibiotics.

Why are we confronting a superbug?

This animated video from 2013 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention highlights the key points and graphics of the "Antibiotic Threats in the United States" report. (YouTube/CDC)

The prices of antibiotics are too low. Low prices reduce the barrier to prescribing antibiotics, while high patient demand fosters overprescribing. Consequently, an estimated 20 to 50 percent of antibiotics dispensed in hospitals and about a third of those prescribed in physicians offices are inappropriate or unnecessary. Overuse breeds resistance.

Simultaneously, low prices discourage the development of new antibiotics. Consider that almost all of the new anti-cancer drugs cost more than $100,000 per course of treatment. For instance, Ibrance does not cure breast cancer, prolongs life on average less than 10 months and costs nearly $120,000 per year.

By contrast, one of the latest antibiotics approved by the Food and Drug Administration, dalbavancin, is considered very expensive, at $4,500 to treat MRSA (methicillin- resistant Staphylococcus aureus). Meantime, any breakthrough drug developed to fight antibiotic-resistant infections would be used sparingly in order to avoid breeding resistance  further lowering its financial returns.

The consequence: Nearly 836 drugs or vaccines are being developed for cancer  82 drugs for breast cancer alone  compared with just 37 antibiotics in clinical development. Only 13 antibiotics are in Phase 3  the final phase of testing before being submitted to the FDA for approval. Of these, just three target the types of bacteria that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers an urgent public health threat.

Even without a superbug, the CDC estimates that more than 2 million people annually are infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria and more than 23,000 people die as a result.

Congress has tried to fix this problem, with limited success. In 2012, it passed the Generating Antibiotic Incentives Now (GAIN) Act, speeding FDA review and giving drug companies five additional years of patent exclusivity before facing competition from generics. GAIN encouraged some companies to continue antibiotics research and some investors to finance start-ups. Even with this added enticement, however, development is lagging.

Unless we shift course, superbugs will become a fact of life. Here is a four-pronged approach that might work:

First, every hospital must implement a drug stewardship program to reduce inappropriate antibiotic use. The CDC has developed requirements such as appointing one pharmacist responsible for overseeing antibiotic use and holding physicians accountable by tracking and reporting individual antibiotic prescribing and resistance patterns.

These programs reduce resistance while saving hospitals money. Unfortunately, they are voluntary. Medicare should require all hospitals to implement such policies and report results annually as a condition of participation and payment.

Second, to reduce inappropriate prescribing for colds, sore throats and other, mostly viral or self-limiting minor ailments, every antibiotic prescription should be electronically reviewed to be certain it meets national guidelines. With electronic health records and prescriptions, such checking is possible. It should be mandatory for makers of electronic health records and major pharmacies to develop such capabilities and for health systems and physicians to install them as part of their quality reporting requirements in Medicare programs.

Third, the government and industry should collaborate to fund pre-clinical research on antibiotics  in other words, studies of how drugs get into and fight infections. As the Pew Charitable Trusts has identified, there is a valley of ignorance on this basic science, particularly involving gram negative bacteria  like the E. coli  that are the most resistant and dangerous. This is not a current focus for drug companies or the National Institutes of Health, but it is essential to developing drugs to combat emerging infections.

Finally, we need financial prizes for researchers and companies who develop new antibiotics. History shows that prizes worked in generating novel ways of preserving food (Napoleon), naval navigation (Britain) and even predicting your movie preferences (Netflix). Instead of the market as currently configured  with drug prices paying for research  I propose an enormous prize, perhaps $2 billion, to anyone who secures FDA approval for a new antibiotic, plus $2 billion bonuses for developing a drug attacking one of the CDCs urgent threats or a new class of antibiotics.

These prizes should be funded collectively by the United States and other developed countries. The U.S. portion could be funded by a tiny tax on hospitals  two cents for every $10 in revenue would generate $2 billion a year. Furthermore, all participating countries could also agree to stewardship rules so that using the new antibiotics would minimize the development of resistance.

The cost sounds high, but the price of inaction is even higher. We need big changes  and big prizes  to save us from the tiny bacteria threatening us.
WHEN MEMBERS of Congress visit their districts over the Memorial Day recess, we hope they keep in mind a warning from Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Zika virus, for which there is no effective vaccine or therapy, can infect a person in a flash, he said during a visit to The Post on Thursday. You can get a mosquito bite and your life changes, he said. The virus is mild for most people but in pregnant women can lead to fetal neural defects, and the prospect that local transmission will soon begin in the United States is very real.

The Republican congressional leaders, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), have vowed to end gridlock on Capitol Hill. But in response to Zika, they have inexcusably dithered. President Obama asked for nearly $1.9 billion in emergency funding in February. When Congress failed to act quickly, the administration redirected existing funds in order to scale up an initial response. After much delay, the House and Senate passed widely divergent bills, neither entirely fulfilling the presidents request. The Senate made a serious start with what Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) calls a $1.1 billion down payment, with no offsets, which was supported by all Democrats and slightly fewer than half the Republicans. House Republicans wasted weeks and weeks quibbling over whether Mr. Obamas request was detailed enough, then approved a $622 million bill that would raid accounts for Ebola and other important work, such as emergency preparedness, and would last only through September. The House bill is woefully inadequate. Even more irresponsible was the GOP diversionary tactic to push through a bill to weaken the Clean Water Act under the guise of a Zika response. Congressional Republicans are playing games with a public-health emergency.

The enemy here is a formidable one. As Mr. Frieden told the National Press Club on May 26, the Aedes egypti mosquito that carries Zika is the cockroach of mosquitoes. It lives indoors and outdoors. It bites through the daytime and in the nighttime. Its eggs can last more than a year. They can hatch in a drop of water. . . . When they take a blood meal, they will often bite four or five people at once. So theyre capable of rapidly spreading the infection. There is no example of effective control of this mosquito in the modern era.

To fight an outbreak requires resources and time. Congress is undermining the effort on both counts. Vaccine development, now underway, is a long-term project; surveillance is a multi-year endeavor; creating rapid diagnostics is a major undertaking; mosquito control is fragmented in local governments, often uneven and urgent. Those on the front lines need to know  now  that programs to fight Zika will not start and stop. When members of the House and Senate return next week, they must immediately go to conference and pass emergency supplemental funding, along the lines of the Senate bill, to enable a determined and serious battle against the Zika virus. Scientists and public-health experts know what to do. Why are Republicans in Congress impeding their necessary work?
Whom are you going to believe, Donald Trump or your own lying eyes?

Trump is hoping the answer is Trump.

At an event in Fresno on Friday, the presumptive Republican nominee had the gall to declare that Californias severe four-year drought was a figment of voters imaginations.

Never mind the record-low levels of Sierra snowpack last year, which, through runoff, provide about a third of the water used by the states cities and farms. Never mind that snowpack conditions across California stand at 29 percent of their normal levels. Never mind that the last two years were Californias hottest on record.

Never mind that there were record numbers of acres claimed by wildfires and of tree deaths nationwide last year, in large part because of years of dry conditions out west.

Nope. Trump ignores all these obvious symptoms of severe drought. Instead, he blames the states entire water shortage on an environmental program to save a fish.

Note that Trump was not merely criticizing the governments response to a natural-resource scarcity (as have many on both left and right); he was claiming there was no scarcity to begin with.

Quoth Trump: There is no drought, further explaining that the water shortage is just a manufactured crisis created by a pro-environmentalist conspiracy.

This attack on empiricism is not exactly an unusual stance for the presumptive Republican nominee.

Just a few days earlier, Trump returned to another hobbyhorse of his: a claim that the unemployment data were doctored, too. Anyone who believes the Labor Departments headline unemployment rate of 5 percent is a dummy, Trump declared to the New York Post last week.

His was not the nuanced criticism some economists have made, that the headline unemployment number doesnt tell the whole story because it excludes two groups of workers: those who want jobs but have given up looking and those who want more hours but cant find them. If these additional groups of workers were factored in, they would indeed bump up the jobless rate by several percentage points.

We know this because the Labor Department actually reports those alternative measures of labor underutilization, too.

But Trump declares that even these numbers are fake.

The true unemployment rate, he claims, is quadruple what the government tells us, closer to 20 percent. The evidence, he told the New York Post, is not in any research or formal data collection hes done or seen, but merely the strong attendance at his own rallies.

As part of his war on data, Trump pledged to investigate these government-produced numbers, presumably also for signs that the Labor Department lackeys are cooking the books.

Its easy to mock Trump for denying reality. But in truth, he is hardly a pioneer in the postmodernist political effort to create parallel universes of facts.

For years the right-wing commentariat has deliberately dismantled public trust in major U.S. institutions, including government and the mainstream media. Media narratives are always skewed against conservative causes, they say, as are any standardized tools of policy analysis or fact-checking. (Meanwhile, major media organizations have doubled down on their self-proclaimed roles as impartial arbiters of truth, investing more resources in data-driven analysis and fact-checking operations ahead of this election.)

Conservative pundits have politicized some of the most apolitical subjects possible  math and science  through an array of arithmetically creative tax proposals and bogus attacks on climate change. Republican legislators have repeatedly cut funding for U.S. statistical agencies, upon which both policymakers and private businesses rely for objective information about the world around them.

The noble federal bean counters who tally up local temperatures, or census surveys on employment status, or data on consumer prices, are not political appointees; they are humble scientists, academic researchers and civil servants who serve in administrations of both major political parties. Yet they, too, have been vilified as mustache-twirling accomplices of a power-hungry, secret-Muslim, Kenyan-born Democratic despot.

Given these precedents, is it really so shocking that Trump has conjured up a few inches of imaginary rainfall?

Its certainly in his interest to smear any source of information (including looking out your own window) that isnt Donald J. Trump.

In discrediting any rival and possibly neutral arbiter of truth and accountability  that is, entitling himself to his own facts as well as his own opinions  Trump achieves two important objectives. First, he frees himself up to invent colorful problems, conspiracies and villains that only a President Trump can defeat.

And second, he robs the public of any independent means of assessing whether hes ever actually succeeded.
IDAEL FUMERO Valdes is not someone youd expect to see as an honored guest of the U.S. military. As chief of investigations for Cubas National Revolutionary Police, a part of the military-controlled Ministry of the Interior, he plays a key law enforcement role in a state where beating and arresting human rights activists is considered law enforcement. Yet there he was at a U.S. naval air base in Key West, Fla., on April 21, touring the facilities at the invitation of the U.S. military command for Latin America.

Accompanying Mr. Valdes were senior officials of the Cuban anti-drug agency and border guards, plus a diplomat. Separately, U.S. officials have attended a security conference outside the United States with a Cuban delegation headed by Gustavo Machin Gomez, who was expelled from a previous diplomatic post in the United States 14 years ago due to his involvement with a highly damaging Cuban espionage operation against the Defense Intelligence Agency. Apparently the White House has decided to let that bygone be a bygone.

Welcome to the brave new world of military-to-military contact with Cuba, the Obama administrations latest idea for engagement with that island nation. Direct communications between the two countries security forces have been going on for years, of course  in limited, operational contexts such as avoiding clashes around the Guantanamo Bay naval base and repatriating Cuban rafters plucked from the sea by the U.S. Coast Guard. Thats necessary and appropriate.

As the Key West visit suggests, however, the administration has a wider agenda in mind. For the first time, the United States accepted Cuban participation, alongside military officers from democracies, in this years Caribbean Nations Security Conference in Kingston, Jamaica. The deputy secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, visited Havana earlier this month to discuss law enforcement cooperation. At a conference on the benefits of expanded contacts Thursday sponsored by the American Security Project think tank, a retired Army colonel suggested that the United States could seek information from Cuban military intelligence about North Korea and other countries.

Latin American military and police crave the legitimacy that comes from ties with their U.S. counterparts. A great bipartisan achievement in U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America over the past three decades has been to condition military cooperation and assistance increasingly on respect for the rule of law and human rights  rather than turn a blind eye to military abuses in the name of either anti-communism or the war on drugs, as U.S. officials so often did in previous years.

Today, in a hemisphere where military dictatorship was once widespread, no generals rule. The exception is Cuba, where Gen. Raul Castros word is law. Normalizing military-to-military ties between the United States and Cuba, for the sake of fighting drugs or other common threats, would imply that civilian rule doesnt matter so much to us anymore  that Cubas military is morally equivalent to its hemispheric counterparts  when, in fact, it is deeply complicit in political repression and corruption.

Legislation pending in Congress would block full military-to-military normalization until Cuba democratizes. At a time when Cubas beleaguered civilian democracy activists need unequivocal U.S. moral support, the administration and outside supporters of its Cuba policy should not be eager for potentially compromising relationships with the Cuban peoples uniformed oppressors.
EVERYONE IS clear on the voter-ID games that have been played in Republican-controlled state legislatures in recent years. In the name of preventing ballot fraud  of which there is virtually no evidence  GOP lawmakers have enacted restrictive bills, whose purpose and effect are to disenfranchise a certain number of reliably Democratic-leaning citizens: African Americans, Latinos and low-income voters.

The most over-the-top example of voter suppression is legislation adopted in 2011 by Texas, which three federal courts have struck down. Zombie-like, it refuses to die, owing to the unembarrassed determination of Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republicans in Austin intent on resurrecting Jim Crow-style obstacles to the ballot by any means they can finagle through the judiciary.

Mr. Abbott and his ilk in other states are playing a short-term game, whose horizon  the November presidential election  is in plain sight. The longer-term game, as the white majority shrinks, may not turn out well for the Republicans. For now, however, significant numbers of black, Latino and other voters may be dissuaded from obtaining a voter ID, or even blocked from doing so in Texas or one of the other 16 states that have adopted restrictions that will apply in a presidential election for the first time this fall. Of those, 11 states are requiring specific and in some cases hard-to-obtain photo IDs.

A federal court in Texas found that more than 600,000 residents lack the particular forms of ID now required of voters there. A federal court in the District in 2012 found clear evidence that many working poor residents would be unable to procure or afford an ID deemed valid, and that disproportionate numbers of them would be black and Hispanic. The evidence Texas produced to demonstrate the contrary was unpersuasive, invalid, or both, the court said, in an opinion by a panel that included two judges appointed by Democratic presidents and one appointed by a Republican.

It remains unclear whether the Texas law will apply in the November elections, but the Supreme Court, apparently eager for clarity by then, instructed a federal appeals court in New Orleans to render its judgment by July 20.

Texas House lawmakers debated the voter ID law on March 23, 2011. House Democrats unsuccessfully fired off a half-dozen points of order challenging several provisions in the bill. The GOP-controlled state legislature voted to approve it. (The Texas Tribune)

In the meantime, the law remains in force, as does the scandal of employing legislative gimmickry to disenfranchise Americans. An estimated 11 percent of adults in this country have no government-issued photo identification cards. To procure one in Texas, the federal court found in 2012, would mean traveling up to 250 miles round-trip for many people  a particular burden for people living in poverty.

The Supreme Court left the door open to mischief by gutting the section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that requires states with a history of racial discrimination, including Texas, to submit changes in their voting laws to the Justice Department for approval. That was a green light to lawmakers in Austin and elsewhere, nearly all of them white Republicans, to impose rules tailor-made to impede minority voters. Having allowed such a disgrace, the Supreme Court needs to fix it.
What word comes to mind when you see the name Donald Trump? For some people, it might be anger, since he provokes it and stokes it. For others, it might be ignorance, since he knows so little and, like many unburdened by knowledge, is untroubled by facts. Some might say fear, since it would take some scary police tactics to push 11 million people over the border to Mexico. For me, none of those words suffices. I would say betrayal.

It is the word that comes to mind almost on a nightly basis when I see some Trump surrogate defend Trumps positions on one of the cable news shows. How can you? I want to ask. Do you believe that the government should apply a religious test to let people into this country? Christians? Yes. Jews? Sure. Buddhists, Hindus and Zoroastrians, step this way. Muslims, not so fast.

Do the people who support Trump realize that they are betraying not merely Muslims but the principles that the United States stands for? We dont apply religious tests to anything. In that way, we are different than some other countries. In that way, we are better.

It is the same with what Trump said about Mexicans being rapists. It was an ugly, bigoted thing to say  and, of course, wrong as hell. So when some Trump supporter breezes right by that statement on the way to whoopee support of restricted trade or allowing Japan and South Korea to get nuclear weapons, I feel betrayed. I can abide policy differences but I cannot abide indifference to bigotry. And neither should any of Trumps supporters.

I felt that same, awful feeling of betrayal when Trump mocked a physically disabled reporter for the New York Times. Did Trumps people notice? Did they care? Arent Americans supposed to stick up for one another?

Republican presidential contender Donald Trump said on Dec. 7 that he was in favor of a '"total and complete" shutdown of Muslims entering the United States. (C-SPAN)

How about the way he insulted John McCain? The man was tortured, and Trump belittled it. The man was in solitary for two years, and Trump belittled it. I thought Americans would never stand for that. This was John McCain, son of an admiral, grandson of an admiral, United States senator. How much redder can a mans blood be?

Donald Trump has taught me to fear my fellow American. I dont mean the occasional yahoo who turns a Trump rally into a hate fest. I mean the ones who do nothing. Who are silent. Who look the other way. If you had told me a year ago that a hateful brat would be the presidential nominee of a major political party, I would have scoffed. Someone who denigrated women? Not possible. Someone who insulted Mexicans? No way. Someone who mocked the physically disabled? Not in America. Not in my America.

When I see these Trump supporters on television  the commentators, the Politicians Puttanesca (a dish to poison the body politic)  I have to wonder where they would draw the line. The answer seems to be: nowhere. They want to win. They want to beat Hillary Clinton, a calling so imperative that sheer morality must give way. Muslims and Mexicans are merely collateral damage in a war that must be fought. What about blacks or Jews? Not yet.

Maybe the talking heads on TV would draw the line at some mild version of fascism, but would the American people do the same? Here, I must hesitate. The easy yes of yesteryear has given way to awful doubt. Trump could win. He could become president, commander in chief, ruler of the Justice Department and head of the IRS. In other words, the American people could elect someone who has not the slightest appreciation for the Constitution or American tradition. When Trump insisted that he could compel a military officer to obey an illegal order, I heard the echo of jackboots on cobblestone.

In America, no one is required to follow an illegal order. It does no good to argue that Trump is just doing a shtick, that he means little of what he says, that he is all swagger and bluff. Trouble is, his supporters do not see him that way. They take him at his word.

History nags. It admonishes. American exceptionalism is a phrase that refers to the past, not necessarily the future. Nothing is guaranteed. Id like to think that Americans really are exceptional, that we have an exceptional faith in democracy and the rule of law. I now have some doubt. I always knew who Trump was. Its the American people who have come as a surprise.

Read more from Richard Cohens archive.
Donald Trump speaks during a campaign stop at the Signature Flight Hangar at Port Columbus International Airport in Columbus, Ohio, on March 1. (John Minchillo/Associated Press)

Todd Stern was the U.S. special envoy for climate change from 2009 until April 2016.

Donald Trump vows that once in office, hes going to cancel the Paris climate agreement, which, he asserts, gives foreign bureaucrats control over how much energy we use right here in America.

Thats not especially surprising coming from Trump, who has said he is not a great believer in man-made climate change. But this particular promise caught my attention, since I led the U.S. negotiating team in Paris and in the seven years leading up to that agreement.

1 of 45 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Trump captures the nations attention on the campaign trail View Photos The Republican candidate continues to dominate the presidential contest. Caption Businessman Donald Trump officially became the Republican nominee at the partys convention in Cleveland. Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at Trump Doral golf course in Miami. Carlo Allegri/Reuters Wait 1 second to continue.

Lets take a look at Trumps position on the Paris Agreement, the first genuinely global, durable diplomatic response to the threat  and yes, its a real one  posed by climate change.

The bit about foreign bureaucrats controlling our energy use is ludicrous. Under the Paris Agreement, no foreigner, from bureaucrat to king, gains an iota of control over U.S. decisions about how much energy we use or, indeed, what our overall energy or climate policy is.

Rather, every country develops its own plan for reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. No country can tell another what it must do. This nationally determined structure was exactly what the United States advocated. And some 190 countries, including all the big ones, have submitted plans.

All countries are covered by a strong transparency system for regularly reporting and being reviewed on their emissions inventories and the progress they are making toward targets. But again, these targets are a matter for the countries themselves to determine.

Indeed, the Paris Agreement ought to be embraced not only by those who seek strong action on climate change but also by all those who traditionally opposed climate agreements because China and other emerging economies seemed to get off scot-free. Rather than excuse these less developed countries, the Paris Agreement adopts a flexible means of differentiating among countries, keyed to their capabilities.

But suppose Trump disagrees and wants to keep his promise to cancel the Paris Agreement. For starters, he couldnt do that even if he were foolish enough to try. Leaders of more than 190 nations endorsed the agreement. The United States has no power to cancel it. This isnt reality TV. You cant tell sovereign leaders around the world youre fired, and you cant tell them a multilateral agreement they just entered is canceled.

Of course Trump could, in theory, pull the United States out of the Paris regime, but that would be stunningly misguided. During the course of this century, climate change, with the impacts it produces  such as severe droughts and floods, extreme heat, massive wildfires, rising sea levels and super storms  has more capacity to disrupt life as we know it and to threaten both human welfare and national security than any other issue, save nuclear conflict.

Climate change is happening now, intensively, all over the world. Its getting worse. We cant hope to contain it without joint global action. The Paris Agreement is our vehicle for doing that. Trump would have us walk away? Really?

Further, if a President Trump were to stick to his wrongheaded notion that climate change is a hoax, and unilaterally withdraw from the Paris Agreement, he would also inflict severe diplomatic damage on the United States. U.S. standing in the world would plummet amid almost universal condemnation. Trump could pound his chest to his hearts content, but hed come out of this rash exercise a loser, with U.S. credibility and leverage in tatters.

Its time to take Trump seriously. He is effectively the Republican candidate for president. Dont make excuses for his words or assume he doesnt mean them. Were playing for keeps now.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton took part in the Memorial Day parade in Chappaqua, N.Y, on Monday. (Adrees Latif/Reuters)

With a week remaining before the California Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton picked up a pair of high-profile endorsements Tuesday  including one from the states iconic governor  while Bernie Sanders insisted that its still too soon to close ranks around the partys likely nominee.

California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) argued in an open letter to his states Democrats that Clinton represents the best chance to defeat the dangerous candidacy of Republican Donald Trump, saying this is no time for Democrats to keep fighting each other.

A major national environmental group, the NRDC Action Fund, also cited Trump in its decision to back Clinton, suggesting that it was time for liberal groups to rally around her. Trumps policies would take us back 100 years, the group said in a statement.

Sanders, who is maintaining an aggressive campaign schedule in California, meanwhile argued that he still has a shot to prevail and warned supporters that the media could skew election results by prematurely declaring Clinton the presumptive nominee next week.

He was referring to speculation that the media will give Clinton that moniker on Tuesday after the polls close in New Jersey, which should help deliver the remaining delegates she needs to clinch the nomination if superdelegates are factored in.

California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) argued in an open letter to his states Democrats that Hillary Clinton represents the best chance to defeat the dangerous candidacy of Republican Donald Trump. (Rich Pedroncelli/AP)

That will be hours before Californians finish voting. Sanders has long argued that the votes of superdelegates  party officials and other Democratic elites  shouldnt be counted until the partys convention, when their preferences become official.

At a rally in Santa Cruz, Calif., Sanders warned that the media is expected on Tuesday to declare the primary process is over, Secretary Clinton has won. His statement was met with boos.

That is factually incorrect. Its just not factually correct, the senator from Vermont said, predicting that he would win California and some other states on Tuesday and head into the convention with enough momentum to flip allegiances of superdelegates who previously announced support for Clinton.

Though Clintons campaign remains confident about her prospects for securing the nomination, it has taken several steps to avoid an embarrassing loss in California, including canceling an event in New Jersey on Thursday in order to head to the West Coast sooner.

During an interview Tuesday with MSNBC, Clinton did not give any hint of nerves over the outcome of Californias primary, however.

Im feeling very positive about my campaign in California, she said. We are working really hard.

Brown waited until a week before his states primary to issue what many perceived as a less-than-enthusiastic endorsement of Clinton.

Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks at a rally at Kaiser Permanente Arena on Tuesday in Santa Cruz, Calif., on Tuesday. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

I have decided to cast my vote for Hillary Clinton because I believe this is the only path forward to win the presidency and stop the dangerous candidacy of Donald Trump, Brown wrote. He spelled out his reasons, including Trumps opposition to global agreements on climate change, but did not urge Democrats to follow his lead.

The general election has already begun, Brown wrote. Hillary Clinton, with her long experience, especially as secretary of state, has a firm grasp of the issues and will be prepared to lead our country on Day One.

Clintons campaign emailed a copy of the letter to reporters without comment Tuesday.

Browns support follows decades of sometimes-acid criticism of both Hillary Clinton and former president Bill Clinton. One of the longest-running feuds in Democratic politics began when Brown ran against Bill Clinton in the Democratic primary in 1992 and won five states.

Sanders told a local TV reporter that he was not surprised that Clinton picked up another endorsement from a governor, given the Democratic establishment [is] supporting Hillary Clinton.

I like Governor Brown, Sanders told KCBS-TV. But people can make their own choices.

In its statement, the NRDC Action Fund, a political affiliate of the Natural Resources Defense Council, praised Clinton but said its first endorsement of a presidential candidate reflects a need for left-leaning groups to unite against Trump.

Rhea Suh, president of the NRDC Action Fund, specifically cited Trumps recent energy speech in North Dakota as one of the main rationales for the announcement.

Donald Trump . . . has recently outlined a disastrous and frankly nonsensical environmental agenda  suggesting that he would tear up the Paris climate agreement, and that there is no drought in California, Suh said. His plan for his first 100 days would take us back 100 years, and America cannot afford to indulge his climate conspiracy theories.

Sanders and some of his most loyal supporters also sought to advance the argument Tuesday that the media should hold off on declaring Clinton as the partys nominee next week. Neither candidate will have received the number of pledged delegates that he or she needs to become the Democratic nominee, Sanders said at a rally in Santa Cruz.

Heres whats really bad, said RoseAnn DeMoro, the executive director of the pro-Sanders union National Nurses United, after the candidate held an event in Emeryville, Calif., with its members. At 5 oclock, evidently, theres this plan for the media, if Clinton wins New Jersey, to say: This is over. Shes got it locked up. Thats a lie. Thats a lie.

Its a lie, a nurse in the audience said loudly.

DeMoro was referring to not-so-secret plans for media outlets, which have been keeping their own delegate counts, to mark the moment when Clinton wins the 2,383 delegates needed to clinch the nomination.

The Associated Presss count, the basis for many other media outlets, has Clinton at 2,312  1,769 won in primaries and 543 superdelegates. There are 12 delegates up for grabs in the U.S. Virgin Islands on June 4, and 67 more in Puerto Rico the next day. At her current pace, Clinton would hit the 2,383 target on June 7 at 8 p.m. Eastern time, when polls close in New Jersey and the states 142 delegates are parceled out. The polls will close in California three hours later.

So, the idea is that people in California  working people who are getting off work  would think its over, DeMoro said. And it wouldnt be over. Not only would it discourage Bernie voters, but all of the other progressive candidates down ballot would be disadvantaged, because voters would think its over.

John Wagner contributed to this report. Weigel reported from Santa Cruz and Emeryville.
Hillary Clinton is seen aboard the campaign bus in Cleveland on the third day of a bus tour through Pennsylvania and Ohio.

July 31, 2016 Hillary Clinton is seen aboard the campaign bus in Cleveland on the third day of a bus tour through Pennsylvania and Ohio. Melina Mara/The Washington Post

The former secretary of state, senator and first lady is the Democratic nominee for president.

The former secretary of state visits key states in her quest to become the Democratic nominee for president.

The former secretary of state visits key states in her quest to become the Democratic nominee for president.

Rallying hundreds of service workers who are struggling to get by, Hillary Clinton tried here last week to empathize with their frustrations and promised to deliver change.

A Clinton presidency, she vowed, would bring better-paying jobs, renovated schools, and repaired bridges and highways. Labor laws would toughen, student debt would decline, and health care would be more accessible. Then there was the most obvious change of all: Its about time that we had a woman running this country, exhorted Clintons introducer, actress Jamie Lee Curtis.

But not everyone at Clintons Southern California rally saw the Democratic presidential front-runner as a credible change agent. Agusein Garcia, a 47-year-old father of six who stocks grocery shelves for a living, shook his head as he watched her campaign.

Shes not going to change anything because shes part of the people in power, Garcia said. Shes not part of us. Its as simple as that.

That sentiment encapsulates one of Clintons biggest vulnerabilities in a general election against Republican Donald Trump that she otherwise is well positioned to win. Polls show that a large majority of voters believe that the country is going in the wrong direction and that the political system is dysfunctional. They are hungry for change  and they see Trump as most likely to deliver it.

Here's what a Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted May 16-19 said about the race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

In Mays Washington Post-ABC News poll, Clinton led Trump on a range of presidential attributes, including whose policies are most realistic and who has the better temperament and experience. But when voters were asked who would bring needed change to Washington, Trump trounced Clinton, 53 percent to 39 percent.

Donald Trump is the vote for change in this election, Republican strategist Fred Davis said. She simply cant be. Hes the future; shes the past. Hes exciting; shes same-ole, same-ole. . . . In todays climate, I think change overwhelms safe. Advantage Donald.

[The Clinton-Trump race shapes up as a contest of negatives]

Theres so much anger

At Clintons New York campaign headquarters, her advisers are grappling with how to convince swing voters that a former secretary of state, senator and first lady who owns a home in Washington, has cultivated deep ties to Wall Street and has played a starring role in the political scene for a quarter-century would usher in change.

Central to Clintons strategy for the fall campaign is to disqualify Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, as too dangerous and risky to be commander in chief. She began this effort in earnest over the past 10 days.

But in a campaign season shaped by voter fury, Clintons team and her Democratic allies believe that merely assailing Trump may not secure the White House for their candidate. Clinton must be seen as a credible leader for middle-class Americans exasperated by the gridlocked government and an economic system that they think has failed them.

Theres so much anger at the establishment, and its hard for her to divorce herself from that because shes been a fixture on the scene for so long, said David Axelrod, who was the chief strategist on President Obamas campaigns. It is important to speak to the sense of insecurity that is driving some Americans, but I think she has to do it in a way that is authentic.

Supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton cheer for her at a campaign rally May 24 in Riverside, Calif. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

This environment gave birth to the surprisingly successful insurgency of Bernie Sanders, who rocketed from near-obscurity to winning primaries in state after state. Though the senator from Vermont trails Clinton in the overall delegate count by a seemingly insurmountable margin, Sanders has been barnstorming California, which votes next week, in hopes of upsetting his rival in the most populous state and taking his case to the Democratic National Convention.

While Sanderss clarion call for a revolution draws thousands of liberals to his rallies, Clintons campaigning generates far more selective enthusiasm. Axelrod said her suite of proposals addresses peoples unrest  but she needs to project more empathy. He suggested she share anecdotes about her middle-class, Midwestern upbringing, for one.

Shes got a trove of policy to speak to various aspects of this insecurity, but the question is whether that is a substitute for a sense of genuine identification, Axelrod said.

Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster who advises the pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA Action, said his focus groups and other research show that Clintons positions against Citizens United, in support of a surtax on multimillionaires, and backing a crackdown on big banks and pharmaceutical companies resonate with voters.

Contrasting her with Trump, Garin said: Their approach to change is very different. Donald Trump is a blow-the-place-up kind of guy, and thats not who Hillary Clinton is or ever will be. At the end of the day, Trumps version of blowing the place up will become justifiably frightening to voters.

[Clinton thinks she knows how to take on Trump. Will it work?]

In an interview with The Post last week, Trump was asked what he thought Clinton could do to persuade the angry voters now backing him to cast their ballots for her in November.

I cant tell Hillary how to behave, Trump said. I cant think for Hillary. I have to think for myself.

Trump said that what the United States needs most is spirit and that only an outsider like himself could bring it. Our country needs a cheerleader, he said. Were down  and if we have her, were going to be out.

Wary of chaos

For Clintons supporters, part of her appeal is that she is measured and methodical  a change agent, yes, but a pragmatic figure, not a revolutionary one. Chelsea Nguyen, 52, a homemaker who attended a Clinton rally last week in Salinas, Calif., counts herself among those voters who want Washington to change  only she thinks Clinton should be the president to do it.

Just because people assume Hillary is part of the system doesnt mean she wont make changes, Nguyen said. I am frustrated. The middle class is shrinking, and I am the middle class. But it would be chaos to overthrow the system.

She went on: Its like if your house is leaking and you look up in the phone book for anybody to fix it except the plumber. It makes no sense. You cant just assume that the establishment cant change.

In Buena Park last Wednesday, Clintons rally at a union hall appeared choreographed to project energy and change. Jennifer Lopezs party anthem Lets Get Loud blared from the speakers. One of Clintons staffers, dressed in a suit and tie, distributed hand-painted signs to the people standing behind her lectern. He gave each of them a miniature American flag to wave. Then, standing in front of the people like a conductor before his orchestra, he surveyed the image as they, on his cue, practiced cheering with their props.

Soon afterward, Clinton strode out, and during 36 minutes of remarks she tried to demonstrate that she offered a better cure for peoples anxieties than Trump or Sanders did.

Do we have problems? Well, of course we have problems, Clinton said. If youve been alive longer than an hour, youve got a problem. I speak from experience. So what do Americans do? Do we either cower down and moan and groan about how bad things are?

Nooooo! the crowd cried out, booing.

Or do we make promises we cant keep and get people even more frustrated and angry? Clinton asked.

Nooooo!

Or do we roll up our sleeves and get to work?

Yesssss!

The assembled laborers roared with hearty approval. Yet there in the back was Garcia, the grocery store worker. He was not feeling it.

This  its like a cheerleading contest, he said. Does she know how much the average working person makes, even if the economy is getting better under Obama? I make $20 an hour, part time, and Ive been working for 27 years.

Did that mean Garcia would vote for Trump?

No, no, no, no, he said, laughing.

But Garcias kids have sold him on supporting Sanders in Californias primary next Tuesday. And if Clinton is the Democratic nominee, he said, he would consider a third-party candidate.

Shes been in power for so long already, Garcia said. We need a big change.

Scott Clement in Washington contributed to this report.
Ghulam Farooq Mubarez, 55, stands in front a house in Herat, Afghanistan, that was illegally built on land where he had plans to build his own family home. (Antonio Olivo/The Washington Post)

Amid the citys swirling winds, construction crews work steadily to create a new downtown strip that, someday, will include high-rise office towers and thousands of new homes.

Thats bad news for people like Nesar Ahmad Papalzai who have watched the rising property values in their city in western Afghanistan contribute to a chronic problem: land-grabbing.

The practice  in which acres of private and government land are illegally seized by local strongmen, corrupt officials and other opportunists  contributes to thousands of land disputes in Afghanistan. They in turn undermine President Ashraf Ghanis efforts to convince Afghans that their country is crawling toward civil stability.

During the last few years, Papalzai has helplessly watched a well-connected developer take over his two-acre farm and erect a building with four new shops.

Papalzai said the developer threatened to have him killed after he complained to local officials about the construction. After Papalzai sued the developer, a police commander threw him in jail for a month and warned him to stop, he said.

An Afghan woman wearing traditional dress walks along a street in Herat, Afghanistan, on Monday. (Jalil Rezayee/EPA)

It is my right; it is my property, insisted Papalzai, showing a document saying that he bought the land from an older brother in 1995. I would rather he take my life than my property.

While government forces fight Taliban insurgents daily across the country, smaller but equally bitter battles over land are thinning the ranks of Afghans who believe the government is on their side.

Its the biggest obstacle we have in helping people get on with their lives, said Nicholas Harcourt-Leftwich, head of Afghanistan programs for the Norwegian Refugee Council, a leading advocate for stronger land laws.

The disputes stem largely from Afghanistans ineffective system for land registration, which government officials are trying to fix with a sweeping effort to survey properties and clarify who owns what in large swaths of the country. Roughly 80 percent of Afghan property is not formally registered with an owner, according to the Afghanistan land authority, known as ARAZI.

Where claims on property do exist, the documents are often unreliable, international aid groups say. Or theyre simply ignored in an overburdened national court system where bribes and other forms of corruption are common.

When we investigate land grabbers, theyve already made fake documents of sales, said Brig. Gen. Abdul Ghayor Andarabi, head of major-crimes investigations for the Afghan Interior Ministry. It takes years for a case to be resolved.

Local strongmen tend to see the land around them as theirs for the taking. Debt collectors seize homes as payment, relatives squabble over land inheritances that were passed down by word of mouth, and new widows see their properties disappear with their husbands last breath.

With about $18.5 million from the World Bank, ARAZI is working to develop a formal system of land registration that would help prevent disputes.

Herat, a city of 15th-century minarets and tree-lined boulevards near the Iranian border, is a proving ground for the project. But it also demonstrates why it is so difficult to bring order to the country.

North and south of this city, rival Taliban factions are fighting for control. In Herat itself, kidnappers nab local businessmen or their children almost daily. Government officials are regular targets of shootings.

Local officials hope to make Herat an economic hub in the region through a master plan that, when complete, will accommodate 2 million people in what has been a city of 600,000.

The project, which would include 10,000 new homes for middle-class families and a central business district, isnt expected to be finished for 15 years.

But all that development comes at a cost, and poorer residents already feel its impact.

Papalzai, who guesses he is in his 60s, said he first noticed somebody building on his property about three years ago. He demanded that the developer stop, presenting the document proving his ownership, sealed with his smeared thumbprint.

He filed a legal complaint in 2014, bringing in the informal record of purchase and 12 witnesses who could attest to his ownership. But the witnesses, who were illiterate, didnt know the rules for providing testimony and were dismissed, according to Norwegian Refugee Council lawyers assisting Papalzai with his case. The judge ruled against him.

The dispute, which was appealed to a higher court and then sent back to the same local judge, remains unresolved. Meanwhile, the developer has erected walls around the farmland, apparently moving forward with plans for more buildings.

Two channels for decisions

Under Afghanistans legal system, land disputes are funneled through two channels: traditional shura inquests by local district leaders, and government courts.

If one side is powerful, the decision will go in his favor, Abdul Wadood Nazemi, a judge in Herat who oversees property deed registrations, said about the informal system. When a case comes to the court, it will be official and it will be enforced.

As part of the central governments effort to improve its system for property ownership, Herat courts are converting informal land records to more reliable legal documents.

Nazemi bristled at the suggestion that corruption is a problem in his court, but he noted that there are informal brokers in Herat who approach unsuspecting claimants with promises of success if they pay a fee. It happens, but outside the court, he said.

Juma Khan, an elder in a village outside Herat who serves on the areas shura council, said he wishes that were true.If we had an accountable government, that would be good, he said. We would be less busy.

He and other shura members expressed optimism about Herats construction boom, seeing it as positive for their grandchildren.

But the local leaders were disdainful of the ethnic Pashtuns and Hazara who have been arriving from war zones and creating new communities here.

Along the path of a new city boulevard being dug, about 1,900 mostly Pashtun families originally from the south live in an illegal mud-hut village known as the Shayidayee encampment. Built on government property, the site is now targeted for 6,500 new homes for local government employees.

Herat officials are working to relocate the displaced Pashtuns to a village created in the dusty mountain foothills about five miles away. But there are just 1,500 homes built for the Pashtuns there, leaving about 400 families without an option. Moreover, the land the government set aside for those homes is also claimed by villagers who have been in the foothills for decades.

On the citys outskirts, Ghulam Farooq Mubarez, 55, had plans to finally build the house  featuring a long, Iranian-style guest hall  that he and his wife dreamed about for their four children. He has owned his patch of land for 35 years.

The area has lately become a neighborhood of ethnic Hazaras displaced by war.

About two years ago, a group of those refugees built a house and road on a portion of the Mubarez property.

Mubarez sued the group and won earlier this year. But the residents have so far ignored the order  and even taken about $1,000 worth of construction materials that Mubarez had assembled to build his house.

Mubarez sued again, paying more legal fees. His wife urged him to forget about the land. She eventually grew exasperated and left him, taking their children.

Ive lost everything, said Mubarez, who now lives alone in a single room a few miles away, where he still nurtures plans to somehow win his fight.

Mohammad Sharif and Sayed Salahuddin contributed to this report.

Read more

Despite billions in U.S. funding, Afghan forces have a problem with boots

These are the 11,000 soldiers who might save Afghanistan

A wave of political defections spells new trouble for Afghanistan

Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
The head of Egypts journalists union, Yehia Qallash, and two of his deputies have been detained by authorities. (Amr Nabil/AP)

In Egypts latest crackdown on the press, authorities have detained leaders of the Egyptian journalists association and charged them with harboring fugitives and publishing false news.

The journalists union said the detention was unprecedented in its history, while local and international rights groups described it as a dangerous attack on freedom of expression.

Prosecutors questioned union head Yehia Qallash and deputies Khaled el-Balshy and Gamal Abdel Rahim for 12 hours on Sunday. The three have refused to post bail and have since been in detention. Their trial is set for Saturday.

[Egypts journalists mourn lack of press freedom]

The charges stem from a May 2 raid in which about 40 police personnel entered the unions premises and arrested journalists Mahmoud Sakka and Amr Badr, who had been sheltering there and were wanted for allegedly publishing false news and inciting protests.

The raid enraged the union leadership, which demanded an apology. Prosecutors maintain that the operation was legal.

Amr Imam, an attorney for the detained journalists, said the arrests specifically targeted Balshy, who has been vocal in criticizing a recent deal in which two Red Sea islands were handed over to Saudi Arabia.

The deal provoked rare public opposition in Egypt, sending thousands of protesters into the streets in a country where street demonstrations have been effectively outlawed. More than 150 people were jailed.

Amnesty International has described the arrests of Qallash and his deputies as an alarming setback for freedom of expression and the most brazen attack on the media that the country has witnessed in decades.

The local Association for the Freedom of Thought and Expression called it extremely dangerous and an attempt by the authorities to control free and independent journalism.

Earlier in May, President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi told a visiting U.S. delegation led by Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, that human rights and freedoms should not be viewed from a Western perspective, because of different challenges and domestic and regional conditions.

The Egyptian military overthrew an elected Islamist president in a popularly backed coup in 2013 and announced a war on terrorism. Since then, the government has criminalized demonstrations and jailed thousands of dissidents, including scores of artists, activists and intellectuals.

The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists said in a report published in December that Egypt is the worlds second-worst jailer of journalists after China.

Egyptian human rights lawyer Gamal Eid said the arrests are a sign of the regimes insecurity.

The rise of this kind of oppression indicates that the authorities are losing confidence in their grip, he said.

Read more:

Egypt island handover to Saudi Arabia enrages population

Egyptian writer caught up in governments expanding crackdown

Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Migrants try to jump in the water before their boat overturns off the Libyan coast on May 25. (Italian navy via AP/AP)

The number of people who have died this year trying to cross the central Mediterranean and reach Italian shores has doubled in the past week following a series of especially disastrous shipwrecks, aid organizations said Tuesday.

More than 1,000 people have perished in the past week while seeking passage from the coast of war-scarred Libya, about the same number who had died along the North Africa-to-Italy route earlier in 2016, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) gave a slightly lower figure for the week, recording 880 people drowned. But the refugee agency emphasized that its estimate was conservative.

Both groups figures significantly exceed the 700 people who were reported to have died during the past week as of Sunday.

The higher figures reflect more detailed information from survivors who were rescued at sea. The tolls make the past week one of the deadliest in the four years that people fleeing war, oppression and poverty have been streaming into Europe, bringing a crisis to the continents shores.

A Sea-Watch humanitarian organization crew member holds a drowned migrant baby, during a rescue operation off the coast of Libya on May 27. (Christian Buttner/Eikon Nord via AP)

The surging death toll marks an ominous turn as warmer seas traditionally draw ever-larger numbers of people to attempt the passage on rickety fishing boats that are ill-equipped for the task.

[Tensions grow between Europe and Turkey over migrant deal]

Smugglers are packing people on boats that are barely seaworthy and that in many cases are not meant to make the crossing, UNHCR spokesman William Spindler said at a briefing in Geneva.

But Spindler said it was shameful for European leaders to focus primarily on stopping smugglers while doing little to open up legal routes for those seeking sanctuary on the continent.

We need to crack down on smugglers. But simply doing that is not going to work if we dont offer people an alternative, Spindler said. The reason why so many people are taking to sea in these conditions is that they have no choice.

Spindler singled out for criticism a European Union plan to relocate 160,000 asylum seekers from Greece and Italy. Fewer than 2,000 have been resettled since the plan was launched late last year.

More people than that have drowned this year while attempting to make the sea crossing. Including deaths on the eastern Mediterranean route, from Turkey to Greece, the 2016 toll now stands at roughly 2,500  about 30 percent higher than it was at this time last year, according to the IOM.

The central Mediterranean route has been the most treacherous, by far. Spindler estimated the chance of dying along the journey from North Africa to Italy at 1 in 23.

Last year, the main route to Europe shifted from the central Mediterranean to the seas eastern edge as people began using rubber dinghies to cross in record numbers from the Turkish coast to the Greek islands. The far-shorter journey made for a relatively less treacherous crossing.

[Europe starts sending migrants back, defying outcry]

But Europe effectively shuttered that route this spring, blocking people from traveling deeper into Europe from Greece and beginning to deport new arrivals back to Turkey.

With those moves, the more dangerous central route has again become the most common.

However, there is little evidence that the same people who otherwise would have traveled via Greece are now trying to reach Italy. The eastern Mediterranean route has been dominated by Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans. The central route, by contrast, is populated largely by sub-Saharan Africans, especially Nigerians, Gambians and Somalis.

The total number of arrivals in Italy is about the same it was at this time last year.

The UNHCR said Tuesday that smuggler networks are sending people from sub-Saharan Africa through the continents interior to Libya. Once there, many are abused before being allowed to continue on their journeys. Some women have told us they were subject to sexual slavery in Libya, the group said.

The migrants are also forced aboard vessels that are conspicuously unsafe.

[The astonishing new numbers behind Europes refugee crisis]

In last weeks deadliest disaster at sea, the IOM reported that migrants balked at boarding a vessel that lacked an engine and had to be towed by another boat. When the engineless boat began to take on water Thursday, the captain of the towing boat then cut the tow line, the IOM reported, citing witness accounts. The second vessel continued to take on water and eventually capsized.

About 500 people drowned.

In another capsizing, this one on Friday, rescuers from the Italian navy and the German aid group Sea-Watch managed to pluck 135 people from the water. But at least 45 others died.

Among them was a baby who, according to a Sea-Watch rescuer who gave his name only as Martin, looked as if it were alive.

But when Martin looked closer, he noticed the shining, friendly but motionless eyes and the body that looked like a doll with its arms and tiny fingers stretched toward the sky.

Nobody in our boat talked, he recalled in an email. Only six hours ago, this baby had still been alive.

Martin said that most of the other drowned refugees were women; two of them appeared to have been pregnant.

The rescuer, a father who usually works as a music therapist in Germany and was volunteering with Sea-Watch, said of his reaction to recovering the baby's corpse, I wanted to scream, but I decided to sing instead, in order to calm myself and the baby which should never have died  and to give some kind of expression to this incomprehensible, heartbreaking moment.

Rick Noack contributed to this report.

Read more

Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Rescuers look for survivors at a site damaged after airstrikes on the Syrian rebel-held city of Idlib late Monday. (Khalil Ashawi/Reuters)

Intense airstrikes overnight Tuesday in rebel-held areas of northern Syria killed or wounded scores of people, most of them civilians, as an already fraying peace process wobbled on the verge of collapse.

Aid agencies and human rights monitors said as many as 50 people died when warplanes repeatedly struck buildings around the National Hospital in the capital of Idlib province. They said Russian warplanes were responsible, although that could not be independently confirmed.

The attack on the capital, also called Idlib, followed hundreds of airstrikes over the weekend in and around the city of Aleppo. Activists said those attacks also were carried out by Russian warplanes, as well as Syrian government aircraft.

The strikes are presenting a major challenge to the three-month-old cessation of hostilities in Syria negotiated by Russia and the United States, a truce that was reimposed last month after a previous near-collapse. The partial cease-fire was aimed primarily at reducing attacks on civilian areas, creating space for the delivery of humanitarian aid to besieged communities and building trust at peace negotiations in Geneva.

[How the Syrian revolt went so tragically wrong]

But little of the intended aid has made it through, the peace process has stalled, the oppositions chief negotiator has resigned, and airstrikes against civilian areas appear to be intensifying again.

Nothing significant has been achieved even on the humanitarian level, said Emile Hokayem of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. The problem is that the current diplomacy has revealed the limits of how far this can go.

According to aid agencies and monitors, as many as 50 people died and more than 250 were injured when three warplanes repeatedly struck residential buildings clustered around the National Hospital in Idlib for an hour starting about 10 p.m. Monday. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the toll at 23 but said it could rise because some people were still buried in the rubble.

[Syrias last Pentagon-trained rebel group is in peril]

The clustering of the attacks suggested that the hospital may have been a target, but it was not directly hit, said Hakan Bilgin, a spokesman for the French aid agency Doctors of the World, which supports the hospital with funding and supplies. Another hospital supported by the charity, in the province of Aleppo, also was damaged in one of the strikes, but there were no casualties, Bilgin said.

Russia did not comment on the strikes, but it had warned Friday that unless the United States responded positively to Moscows long-standing request to conduct joint airstrikes in Syria with the Russian air force, the fighting would escalate.

Idlib is located in an area controlled by an alliance of rebel groups that includes the al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra, a designated terrorist organization that is not covered by the cease-fire. However, the terms of the cessation-of-hostilities agreement specify that attacks on civilian targets such as hospitals and residential neighborhoods should stop.

Rescuers carry an injured woman on a stretcher at a site damaged after airstrikes on Idlib, Syria, late Monday. (Khalil Ashawi/Reuters)

[U.S.-Russia cooperation frays as truce crumbles]

The violence, in any case, has been gradually ticking up. Pro-government forces have recaptured areas of the eastern Damascus suburbs that have been under rebel control for nearly four years, and they have been pounding other rebel-held areas around the capital with airstrikes and barrel bombs.

The United Nations had set a June 1 deadline for the delivery of humanitarian aid to an estimated 1 million people, some of them on the verge of starvation in communities surrounded by government forces. But after months of negotiations with the government to secure access to the communities and with the deadline approaching, only 160,000 people have been reached, the United Nations said Monday.

There is still no date for the resumption of stalled peace talks in Geneva, and U.N. special envoy Staffan de Mistura has said he will not reconvene the talks until more progress is made on issues such as the delivery of aid and the suspension of airstrikes.

Read more

Airstrike destroys Syrian hospital amid fears of catastrophic turn in fighting

Humanitarian aid situation in Syria deteriorating, United Nations warns

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Members of Hamass military wing attend a rally in the north of Gaza on May 20. Hamas said it recently executed three men as a deterrent against rising crime in the beleaguered coastal region. (Mohammed Saber/EPA)

Gazas Islamist Hamas government executed three men convicted of murder Tuesday morning, highlighting its power struggle with the rival Palestinian faction Fatah and resuming a practice widely criticized by international human rights groups.

Hamas said the executions would serve as a deterrent against rising crime in the coastal enclave.

Human rights groups had attempted to stop the executions. But Hamas said the three men  two civilians and a militant  had been found guilty of terrifying crimes.

There were indications that as many as 10 more men might be executed ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins next week.

The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment, and its use always violates human rights, James Lynch, Amnesty Internationals deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement Tuesday.

The deep flaws in the Gaza Strips justice system, with repeated reports pointing to the widespread use of torture, make todays executions particularly egregious. The Hamas authorities must halt any further plans to carry out executions and immediately establish an official moratorium, he said.

Sari Bashi, from Human Rights Watch, said Hamas was using the death penalty as a deterrent instead of addressing the issues that have led to a rise in crime.

According to Hamas, the executions were carried out after all necessary legal procedures had been completed. The sentences were not, however, ratified by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, as is required by Palestinian law.

Abbas heads the rival Palestinian faction, Fatah. The two groups have not reconciled since Hamas ousted Fatahs forces from the Gaza Strip in 2007, and attempts to ratify a unity government have been ongoing since 2014.

Fatah spokesman Osama Qawasmi said executions without Abbass approval were a crime, a clear violation of the law and a deepening of the split.

Its a clear message that Hamas doesnt want national unity and it doesnt care about Palestinian law, he said, according to media reports.

Hamas officials said that authority for ratifying death sentences lies with the Palestinian Legislative Council in Gaza because presidential and parliamentary elections in all Palestinian territories have been postponed indefinitely and the Palestinian Authority had failed to assume most of its functions in the besieged coastal area.

The executions were carried out behind closed doors at the police headquarters in Gaza City, despite fears that they would take place in public. Only the victims relatives and officials were present. Two of the men were hanged, and the third was killed by firing squad.

According to human rights groups, as many as 60 people, accused of criminal activity or of working with Israel, have been executed in the Gaza Strip since 2007. During the 2014 summer conflict with Israel, Hamas executed 25 people for collaborating with Israel.

Read more:

Israel, Hamas and Egypt form unlikely alliance against Islamic State affiliate

Israel announces it destroyed a tunnel from Gaza into Israel

Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
For most of his career as a Cuban dissident leader, through his 2003 arrest and seven years as a political prisoner, Jose Daniel Ferrer was repeatedly pressed by the Cuban government to leave the country and not come back. He repeatedly refused.

It was only this spring  when Cuban officials offered a one-time chance to travel abroad and return to Cuba  that he took them up on it. As with many actions of the islands communist leadership, there was no explanation.

Ferrer, 45, does not believe it signals a change of heart or loosening of government restrictions on basic civil rights. If anything, he said, the dismal situation continues. Arrests of members of his organization, the Cuban Patriotic Union, and others have increased this year.

In meetings and speeches in the United States and in Europe over the next several weeks, Ferrer said in an interview Tuesday, he will urge the outside world to maintain and increase solidarity with those of us struggling for a free Cuba through peaceful means, even as business deals are made and tourism flourishes.

As more Americans and tourists continue to visit Cuba and show solidarity with the opposition, of course theyre welcomed by us, he said. But if they only go to speak with the regime and negotiate with the regime, it doesnt help us achieve freedom and democracy.

[Timeline: A difficult history between the United States and Cuba]

Ferrer chose his words carefully when asked if he shares the view of some here and in Cuba that the Obama administration should have demanded more of the government of President Raul Castro before normalizing relations between the two countries.

Finding the right formula is very complex, he said. That is true as much for the U.S. government as for the rest of the free world. Efforts to positively influence events in Cuba always run the risk that the regime is the one that wins.

The United States, Ferrer said, is the greatest ally of Cuban democracy . . . for the simple reason that its closest and has the greatest economic power.

Ferrer was among a group of about a dozen dissidents who met with President Obama during his visit to Havana this spring. In recent months, Jeffrey DeLaurentis, the top U.S. diplomat in Cuba, has twice invited Ferrer to talk about the Cuban reality and in particular how things are going in the east, where UNPACU, as Ferrers group is known by its Spanish acronym, is based in the city of Santiago.

[Obamas goal for Cuba trip: Become a source of support]

A tall, charismatic man with a deep voice, Ferrer is a new breed of Cuban dissident  using activism to show the population that they can overcome their fear of repression, and using a wide array of technology, including DVDs, an active website and social media, to spread information. UNPACU is the largest and arguably most effective such group on the island, with thousands of members.

We recruit and train a vanguard . . . to peacefully confront the regime and to send a message to both the government and the population that were not afraid, he said. Their marches and demonstrations frequently result in arrests and beatings by security forces, and Ferrer has been arrested countless times.

But if we only concentrate on that kind of action, he said, UNPACU would never number more than several hundred activists. Instead, it combines protest with social activism  feeding the poor, providing medicine to the sick, running activities for children and serving as a bridge for victims of injustice by broadcasting their treatment to the world.

Our goal is to continue growing the number of people in the streets and to continue to grow, he said.

One of 75 prominent dissidents arrested in 2003 during what is known as Cubas Black Spring, Ferrer was sentenced to 25 years for his work in gathering signatures for the Varela Project, a petition for a nationwide referendum on opening Cuba to greater political and civil freedoms.

One of the last to be released as part of a deal negotiated by the government of Spain and the Cuban Catholic church, he remains on probation and liable to be forced to complete his sentence at any time.

Despite the increase in short-term political arrests this year, Ferrer said he believes that the struggle is going to get easier once Raul Castro follows through on his pledge to step down in 2018.

The aging Castros  Raul and his brother Fidel, who ruled the island from the 1959 revolution until he stepped down in 2006  like Stalin in the Soviet Union and Hitler in Germany, have created a mentality that they are invincible, Ferrer said. The next person wont be able to do that.
The FBI wants to exempt its burgeoning national database of fingerprints and facial photos from a federal law that gives Americans the right to sue for government violations of the Privacy Act, such as refusing to tell a person if he or she is in the system.

The bureau also wants to shield its data storehouse from other Privacy Act rules, including one that lets people ensure that the information the government holds about them is accurate.

The proposed exemptions, published in May in the Federal Register, have stirred objections from an array of privacy and civil rights advocates. They say that such carve-outs remove a critical check on the use of the huge database in criminal investigations.

In particular, advocates are concerned about the bureaus deployment of still-developing facial-recognition technology to identify potential suspects. Such technology, they say, may have lower accuracy rates for black people, young people and women. And they worry that it could be misused to track protesters at political rallies.

[State photo-ID databases become troves for police]

The Privacy Act was enacted to ensure that individuals had an enforceable right to know the records that the government keeps about their activities, said a coalition of groups in a letter to the Justice Department, whose 45 signatories include the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, the National Immigration Law Center and the ride-hailing services Uber and Lyft. This is an extraordinarily broad proposal, and the system it affects is extraordinarily sensitive  particularly for the communities it may affect the most.

But the FBI and Justice Department say the reason they are seeking the exemptions is to ensure that ongoing investigations are not compromised by people learning they are the subjects of probes. They also say that another federal rule gives people the ability to obtain any criminal records they might have in the database. Moreover, the agencies say, only criminal mug shots are searched using facial-recognition technology. And it is used only to come up with leads, not to identify a suspect or verify an identity.

[Letter: Groups urge Justice Department to grant them more time to review exclusion]

And, they stress, the system is not used to track protesters at rallies.

The FBI and the Department of Justice take very seriously their strict compliance with the Constitution, federal law particularly the Privacy Act, and their own policies regarding the free exercise of constitutional rights, the two agencies said in an email to The Post.

The system, called Next Generation Identification (NGI), was launched in 2008. Today it holds more than 100 million fingerprints from criminal suspects and convicts  including tens of thousands of known or suspected terrorists, as well as people who have undergone background checks to become day-care workers, for instance. It also stores more than 45 million facial photos  criminal mug shots and civilian photos submitted as part of a visa application or hiring process.

NGI is the successor to the FBIs automated fingerprint database begun in 1999. NGI was created to give the bureau  and the 18,000 state, local and federal agencies it serves  a faster, more powerful capability to search a growing number of fingerprints and mug shots. Fingerprint-matching accuracy is now at 99.6 percent, officials said. Facial-recognition accuracy is at 85 percent, but mug shots are not searched for positive identification, the bureau says.

[Advances in image analysis empower law enforcement but worry privacy advocates]

Thomas E. Bush, a former assistant director of the FBIs Criminal Justice Information Services Division, which oversees NGI, said the system is critical to homeland security. The State Department, for instance, uses it to screen visa applicants. If youre only using name-based systems, a bad guys going to beat you. he said.

But the increased size, power and speed also has advocates worried that inaccuracies will go undetected or that deserving people might lose out on jobs and benefits.

The bureau has exempted its old fingerprint database from many of the same Privacy Act protections, but it is proposing they be extended into the NGI system and applied to photos and other biometrics.

According to figures supplied by the FBI, 43 percent of all federal arrests and 52 percent of all state arrests  or 51 percent of all arrests in NGI  lack final dispositions, such as whether a person has been convicted or even charged. Some of those people, the advocates say, might not be criminals, but the mere fact of having an arrest can disqualify them from a job.

The bureau notes that it has been working on improving disposition rates, but that it often takes years for a criminal case to be disposed of, whether through a conviction or dismissal. They also say that they are not applying the exemptions to fingerprints not held as part of criminal records.

Allowing criminal background checks to be run against records that do not indicate whether a person was ultimately found innocent or guilty is a remarkable violation of due process, said Alvaro Bedoya, executive director of Georgetown Universitys Center on Privacy and Technology.

[FBI prepares vast databases of biometrics]

Bedoya said that the federal rule cited by the FBI and Justice Department that enables a person to obtain his criminal record is less effective than the Privacy Act, which requires the federal government to respond promptly to citizens requests for corrections. The cited regulation leaves that job to the states and allows that process to go on indefinitely, he said.

The big concern is that the FBI is proposing to exempt NGI from any requirement that they update or correct data about somebody in the future, said Jennifer Lynch, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The coalition also is concerned that legal immigrants will have their fingerprints in the database, searched millions of times a year, along with other criminal and civilian prints. This violates the principle of equal treatment under the law, Bedoya said.

The group also pointed to 2012 research that found that facial-recognition technology has lower rates of accuracy for black people, women and young people.

[Study on face-recognition performance shows lower accuracy rates for black people]

Such shortcomings are compounded by the fact, the coalition says, that blacks and Latinos are arrested at disproportionately higher rates than whites, putting them at greater risk of being placed in a suspect pool.

But FBI officials said that any potential lead is drawn from a photo lineup of between two and 50 candidates and the result is reviewed by two technicians before it is provided to an investigator.

In response to civil rights and privacy concerns, the Justice Department has agreed to extend the public comment period from 30 to 60 days, through July 6.

Read more:

Why people like Edward Snowden say they will boycott Googles newest messaging app

FBI director urges police and civilians to see each other more clearly

Comey defends FBIs purchase of iPhone hacking tool
An Afghan family take a meal at their temporary home in a camp for internally displaced people in Kabul, Afghanistan. (Rahmat Gul/AP)

Amid daily battles between government forces and Taliban insurgents, the number of Afghans who have fled their homes to other parts of the country has doubled since 2013 to 1.2 million people, according to a report released Tuesday by Amnesty International.

With the fighting concentrated in the provinces where the Taliban is strong, most of the displaced have sought safety in Kabul and other cities, stretching local resources at a time when international funding is falling, the report said.

Underscoring the message of the report, Taliban fighters in Kunduz province pulled over several passenger buses and took 190 people hostage  killing 10 on the spot, execution-style, officials said Tuesday.

In the first four months of 2016 alone, 118,000 people fled their homes because of violence, according to the report.

Editorial: What true Afghan peace requires

An Afghan girl sleeps beneath a mosquito net at a camp for internally displaced people in Kabul. (Rahmat Gul/AP)

Combined with the thousands of Afghan refugees who have been forced to return to the country after fleeing to Europe, the mass migration is draining government resources, said Olof Blomqvist, an Amnesty International researcher focusing on South Asia.

Theres less food available, less job opportunities available, theres less aid available, he said.

The report, My Children Will Die This Winter, is part of a push by international aid groups to secure more funding during a North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit to be held in Brussels in October. The summit will address requests for $3 billion in additional aid for Afghanistan reconstruction through 2020.

Amnesty International and other international groups say the Afghan government is not equipped to help people fleeing those dangers.

Because of poor resources and some instances of corruption inside the countrys Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation, a 2014 Afghan law meant to provide land and other types of aid to the internally displaced has been largely ineffective, the report said.

Meanwhile, residents in illegal encampments in Kabul, Herat and other cities live without access to electricity, water and other basic resources.

There are negligible funds and limited understanding of how to best support internally displaced persons beyond the initial round of emergency assistance, said William Carter, of the Norwegian Refugee Council, which offers aid to the displaced in Afghanistan.

Residents in illegal encampments throughout Afghanistan often face eviction by government agencies or local strongmen who want to seize the land, Carter said.

In Kabul, several hundred displaced families from all over the country live in the Chaman-e-Babrak settlement on what used to be an athletic field.

Last year, men in military-style uniforms arrived with bulldozers and tore down the makeshift homes.

When the residents protested, the men and local police began firing on the residents, killing two people.

Raz Mohammad, 36, moved to Chaman-e-Babrak with his wife and their six children about seven years ago. The couple fled to Pakistan from their native Parwan province in central Afghanistan after the Taliban began its five-year reign in 1996. When they returned, there were no jobs in Parwan, so they made the trip to Kabul.

The makeshift village has no electricity or running water, Mohammad said, but it is now their home.

Our families are all living in those houses, he said. We dont have anywhere else to go.

antonio.olivo@washpost.com

Mohammad Sharif contributed to this report.

Read more

Top NATO commanders back keeping troops in Afghanistan

Refugees should be seen as an investment, not a burden

Norway doubles humanitarian aid to Afghanistan

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world
A Florida teenager has "a huge gash" on his leg after he suffered a shark attack on Sunday afternoon, officials said.



The 13-year-old boy was pulled from the water by other swimmers after he was bitten on the leg, according to the Neptune Beach Police Department. The bite marks were consistent with a 5 to 6 foot shark.



A witness told NBC station WLTV that a woman carried the boy out of the water.



"Someone [was] saying, 'Oh, my God, he got bit,'" the witness said. "All you see is just blood dripping and dripping out for about 50 feet and he had a huge gash in his lower leg."



The boy was taken to a local hospital where he is in stable condition.



The attack at Neptune Beach, east of Jacksonville, comes less than a week after an 11-year-old girl was bitten in Jacksonville. It's the third attack this month on the First Coast.



Also on Sunday, a three-mile stretch of Corona del Mar State Beach in Southern California was closed after a shark reportedly bit a woman.



Lifeguards found the woman about 150 yards offshore. They pulled her out and saw she had large bites on her upper torso and shoulder, NBC4 reports.



She was taken to a local hospital and she was conscious and breathing, police said.



Officials could not find the shark after the attack, but the water was evacuated and the beach will be closed for 24 hours. According to trauma personnel, the shark was a great white, reports CBSLA.com.



The beach was crowded with Memorial Day weekend beachgoers at the time of the probable attack.



Just two weeks ago, a two-foot nurse shark latched onto a woman's arm in Boca Raton and wouldn't let go. The 23-year-old victim ran out of the water with it still attached.



The number of shark attacks was at a worldwide high in 2015 with 98 unprovoked attacks. Florida reported 30 shark attacks in 2015  the most of any state in the U.S.



Shark expert Larry Cahoon tells PEOPLE that despite the onset of recent attacks, beachgoers shouldn't avoid the ocean.



"You have a higher chance of getting into a car accident driving to the beach than you do getting attacked by a shark when you get there," Larry Cahoon, professor of biology and marine biology at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, tells PEOPLE. "The fact is that sharks have millions of contact hours with humans on beaches every year, yet attacks are really rare. Just be smart."



When it comes to fending off a shark, Cahoon says punching it in the nose, gills or eyes won't do much good.



"A 10-foot bull shark will weigh close to 500 pounds and is essentially all muscle. What chance would anyone have?" says Cahoon. "You won't be thinking rationally even if you have the opportunity to punch it, so just focus on getting back to land. Swim to shore as fast as you can  shark that means to eat you will keep coming. Basically, don't swim alone in shark waters." "



Although Cahoon says there isn't much you can do once you're in the water, there are important precautions you can take to prevent an attack from happening in the first place.



"Sharks hear very well. They know you're swimming, they know where you are and they normally don't care," he says. "But the one thing that changes the dynamic is if sharks hear fish struggling when fishers are reeling them in."



That's the moment Cahoon says to stay out of the water.



"That's a dinner bell to them and they can get very interested in eating," he says. "That's when they're probably more likely to attack a human, either from mistaken identity of from being actually interested in eating something that's close by."



Cahoon adds: "If you're bleeding, get out of the water or you will quickly become their dinner."
The Wolf From Royal Vineyard Street, the last film completed by legendary Czech "New Wave" director Jan Nemec, who died at the age of 79 in March, will screen in the main competition lineup of the 51st edition of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in July, organizers said Tuesday in Prague.

The Czech Republic/Slovakia/France co-production, adapted from the eclectic helmer's own quasi-autobiographical short stories, is one of seven world premieres in the competition's lineup of 12 titles.

The film, which fest programmers say "defies categorization," is a "dejected comedy, an unsentimental reminiscence and a nonchalant settling of scores in punk regalia."

In 1967, Nemec was banned by Communist authorities after completing his third feature, Martyrs of Love. In 1974, he emigrated to the U.S., only returning home after the fall of Communism in 1989.

The competition also will feature Italian director Roberto Ando's new film The Confessions, the first since his international hit Viva la Liberta three years ago. The Italy/France co-production, screening as an international premiere, is a philosophical thriller featuring a charismatic monk (Toni Servillo) who is a guest at a meeting of G8 foreign ministers where a financier planning radical changes to the world economic order is murdered.

Read More: WWII Drama 'Anthropoid,' Starring Jamie Dornan, to Open Karlovy Vary Festival

Also in the competition: Romania's Catalin Mitulescu will bring By the Rails, a drama of an economic migrant who returns home to find not all is well with his family after his absence; Hungary's Szabolcs Hajdu will screen It's Not the Time of My Life, which tells the story of two families forced to share an apartment; and acclaimed Czech filmmaker Jan Hrebejk presents the world premiere of The Teacher, which centers on an elementary school teacher accused of using her young charges to manipulate their parents.

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Karlovy Vary organizers had announced last week that the world premiere of Sean Ellis' Anthropoid, which tells the real-life story of the wartime assassination of a top Nazi general in Prague, will open this year's event. Based on "Operation Anthropoid," in which British-trained Czech assassins were parachuted into Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia tasked with killing SS General Reinhard Heydrich, the pic stars Jamie Dornan (50 Shades of Grey) and Cillian Murphy.

In the festival's popular East of the West competition - which showcases projects from central and Eastern European directors, concentrating on first films - 10 of the 12 movies will be debuts, organizers said Tuesday.

The sidebar will open with Kill on Wheels, an action-packed black comedy by Hungary's Attila Till, and also includes films from Estonia's Triin Ruumet, who brings The Days That Confused, a drama of the early days of the Baltic countries' post-Soviet independence, and Georgia's Rusudan Glurjidze, who will screen post-war drama House of Others.

The documentary competition includes three world premieres: Close Relations by Russian director Vitaly Mansky, Czech film Normal Autistic Film by Miroslav Janek and FC Roma by Tomas Bojar and Rozalie. The lineup also includes Keith Maitland's Tower, a dramatic reconstruction of the first school massacre to be covered by television, in Austin, Texas, in 1966.

The festival is set to run July 1-9.

Read More: Karlovy Vary Festival Sets Otto Preminger Tribute
Thought the diamond-encrusted crocodile-skin Hermes handbag with white gold details was expensive? Think again. Just sold at auction for $300,000, the rare Himalaya Niloticus Crocodile Diamond Birkin 30 pales in comparison to nearly every Victorias Secret Fantasy Bra. And its practically affordable considered next to Marilyn Monroes iconic Happy Birthday, Mr. President dress, which sold for $1.27 million. Here, 10 fashion items that are more expensive than many mansions.



Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.


The U.S. News Short List, separate from our overall rankings, is a regular series that magnifies individual data points in hopes of providing students and parents a way to find which undergraduate or graduate programs excel or have room to grow in specific areas. Be sure to explore The Short List: College, The Short List: Grad School and The Short List: Online Programs to find data that matter to you in your college or grad school search.

Choosing a law school can be a tough decision, and an important one at that.

But students are more likely to accept an admissions offer from some J.D. programs than others.

Yale University, which ranks No. 1 in the 2017 Best Law Schools, topped the list of ranked institutions with the highest yield -- the percentage of accepted students who enrolled -- at 74.3 percent in fall 2015, according to data submitted to U.S. News in an annual survey.

[Ask these 10 questions before applying to law school.]

Harvard University, which ranked in a tie for No. 2 among top law schools, was third on the list with a yield of 60.4 percent. The school accepted 931 students -- more than any of the others where admitted students enroll at the highest rates.

Not all schools on the list were as highly ranked. Brigham Young University, where 68.8 percent of admitted students enrolled and which ranks No. 38, came second after Yale. The school, which is affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, offers discounted tuition to members of the church.

[Consider four factors to choose the right law school.]

Among all 195 ranked schools that submitted these data to U.S. News, the average yield was about 24.3 percent. In comparison, the average yield was much higher for the 10 schools on the list : 52.4 percent.

On the other end of the spectrum, Vanderbilt University and the Charleston School of Law had the lowest yields among law schools, at 11 percent and 10 percent, respectively.

Below is a list of the 10 law schools with the highest yield rates for the 2015-2016 school year. Unranked schools, which did not meet certain criteria required by U.S. News to be numerically ranked, were not considered for this report.

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* RNP denotes an institution that is ranked in the bottom one-fourth of all law schools. U.S. News calculates a rank for the school but has decided not to publish it.

Don't see your school in the top 10? Access the U.S. News Law School Compass to find enrollment data, complete rankings and much more. School officials can access historical data and rankings, including of peer institutions, via U.S. News Academic Insights.

U.S. News surveyed 205 schools for our 2015 survey of law programs. Schools self-reported myriad data regarding their academic programs and the makeup of their student body, among other areas, making U.S. News' data the most accurate and detailed collection of college facts and figures of its kind. While U.S. News uses much of this survey data to rank schools for our annual Best Law Schools rankings, the data can also be useful when examined on a smaller scale. U.S. News will now produce lists of data, separate from the overall rankings, meant to provide students and parents a means to find which schools excel, or have room to grow, in specific areas that are important to them. While the data come from the schools themselves, these lists are not related to, and have no influence over, U.S. News' rankings of Best Colleges, Best Graduate Schools or Best Online Programs. The enrollment data above are correct as of May 31, 2016.



Jordan Friedman is an online education editor at U.S. News. You can follow him on Twitter or email him at jfriedman@usnews.com.


As a young man, Chester Gryzbowski dreamed of attending Georgia Tech to study civil engineering, and it has finally become a reality for the 104-year-old World War II veteran.

Family, friends, and volunteers gathered Saturday at Chicago's Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Center, where Gryzbowski lives, to see him become an honorary freshman at Georgia Tech.

He was given a RAT Cap and T-book, which are typically given to freshman students enrolled in the university, while being recognized for his service and commitment to his country.

Read: Student's Georgia Tech Welcome Speech Goes Viral

On behalf of Georgia Tech, thank you for your service to our country, school's president Dr. G.P. "Bud" Peterson wrote in the letter, which was read at the veteran's celebration. I cant thank you enough for the sacrifices you have made to serve our country and our world.

Gryzbowski, who was born into a family of immigrants with several brothers and sisters, had long dreamed of attending Georgia Tech.

But his aspirations were put on hold due to World War II and the Great Depression. At 17, Gryzbowski joined the Civilian Conservation Corps, a public work relief program that operated between 1933 and 1942.

Despite being unable to attend formal classes, his love of engineering and math continued. He still keeps his beloved trigonometry book in his room at the Captain James Lovell Federal Health Care Center, where he now lives.

He proudly talks to visitors about trigonometry and how he taught himself these important math equations from books he has collected throughout his life, Stephanie Caccomo, public affairs specialist at the center, told InsideEdition.com.

After Gryzbowski moved to the health center, Congressman Bob Dold and Steve Rutledge, a volunteer, heard about his ambitions and immediately stepped into action.

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Read: 93-Year-Old World War II Vet Will Reunite With His Wartime Sweetheart After 7 Decades Apart

They teamed up with Georgia Tech to award Gryzbowski the special recognition, which included the letter and other items from the school.

His motto was to never give up and to never forget where you came from, Grybowskis daughter, Carol-Anne Touchberry, told InsideEditon.com.

According to Touchberry, Gryzbowski is one of the oldest living WWII veterans.

I was very proud of him," she said. "The whole family was proud of him. Our soldiers need to be validated, appreciated and honored. My father bears this honor.

Watch: World War II Vet Celebrates 90th Birthday By Skidiving Days After Brother Dies

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There are countless news reports detailing what King Charles III plans to do with Queen Elizabeths belongings and pets. But you should know theres a totally valid reason why hes getting rid of some of her racehorses. Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images This week, the royal family announced that King Charles will auction 14 of his mothers racehorses that were passed down to him. According to Hello! magazine, the animals will be sold at Tattersalls auction house in Newmarket. Per the outlet, this in
From Road & Track

From the 1987 July issue of Road & Track

Is Santa Claus German? Or Dutch? I can never remember. But this particular morning it looked as though he might be German, or at least have manifested his spirit in the hearts of a few German car enthusiasts.

I woke early and went to the window of my room in the Alte Muhle Hotel, a charming little country inn not far from Wolfsburg. I threw open the shutters and pulled down the sash, so to speak, and there in the parking lot was a collection of cars that had materialized overnight like a load of Christmas gifts. Never mind that it was early spring. They had arrived one by one during the evening and the wee hours.

A frost had settled on the cars, and they looked like ice sculptures of frozen motion, curves and lines to stop the heart-and the cars of passing motorists. Citizens on their way to work on the early shift were doing theatrical double-takes and slamming on their brakes for a better look at this remarkable collection of shapes.

And what shapes.

Gathered in the lot were the cars that Phil Hill and Paul Frere would be driving that morning for our World's Fastest Cars run at Volkswagen's Ehra-Lessien test track.

They were:

A pair of Porsche 959s in silver and white, looking for all the world like stratospheric vapor trails crystallized into metal. The white car was a lightweight stripped-down Sport model, and the silver one was the more luxuriously equipped Deluxe ver sion. Both were showcases of Porsche technology with variable-traction 4-wheel-drive, speed-sensitive ride height, 17-in. wheels and huge brakes with ABS, among other things. Paul Frere had driven the silver car to the hotel, and Porsche's Manfred Bantle, head of the 959 project, had arrived in the other.

Two Ferraris. A lithe GTO with the yellow prancing-horse shield proud on its front flanks and that solid chunk of flowing mass, the Testarossa. Both red. Once again, our friends Helmut Becker and Michael Gabel had come through. Herr Becker is a Ferrari enthusiast and the owner of Auto-Becker, a Dusseldorf company that sells 17 different lines of cars. He arranged our cars for the Le Mans portion of our "Ferrari Fantasy" story in August 1986, and this time he'd brought our Testarossa. The GTO had arrived from Berlin with Michael Gabel behind the wheel. He's vice president of the German Ferrari Owners Club and the man who lent us his Boxer for our first Fastest Cars story (September 1984). Herr Gabel had also brought along his Audi Quattro as a matter of curiosity, to see what it would do on the high banking.

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What else? A couple of Koenig Turbo Porsches, in wild and only slightly wild form. One car was a sort of jawbreaker purple color with wide rear flares and a stunningly red leather interior; the other a more subdued blue with 935-style front bodywork, a Ruf 5-speed gearbox and a 520-bhp engine built by Reinhold Schmirler and Pierie Ofzky at RS Tuning. The purple car was supplied by tuner Willy Koenig's Munich firm, and the blue car was Ofzky's personal transportation.



One Isdera Imperator 108i, looking in the morning mist like a 21st century monorail car that had traded its rail in on a set of wheels. This lovely gullwing creation, whose styling is based on the b+ b CW311, was brought by its designer and builder, Eberhard Schulz, from his small 12-man factory near Stuttgart. There are only eight of these cars in the world, with two more nearly completed. The Imperator is built with Porsche 928 suspension pieces, an AMG-built 390-bhp Mercedes 5.6-liter V-8 mated to a ZF 5-speed transaxle, a steel-tube space frame and fiberglass bodywork.

One AMG Hammer, the car R&T billed last year (December 1986) as "the hottest passenger sedan in history." It may have been the only sedan in the parking lot collection, but it was certainly in the right place, with 0-60-mph acceleration we'd last measured at 5.4 seconds and a quarter-mile time of 13.6 sec at 109.0 mph, top speed estimated at around 180 mph. We'd find out about that soon enough. This car started life as an M-B 300E, but tuner Hans-Werner Aufrecht (the A in AMG), who was born in Grossaspach (hence the G), installed a 5.6-liter Mercedes V-8 with 4-valve heads and cams designed by Erhard Melcher (M) then added aerodynamic body panels and suspension work and came up with a 4-door sedan that hunted Porsches on the autobahn.

A Lamborghini Countach, perhaps the most otherworldly shape of all, bristling with decks and planes and scoops like a deathship from outer space, still defining to many, after all these years, what an exotic car should look like. Our Countach, with its lovely V-12 and long row of Weber carburetors had been brought to us from the factory by a Sr Valentino and now sat in the parking lot vying with the two Ferraris in a silent contest of Italian redness.

A Ruf Twin-Turbo Porsche, painted a luminous canary hue and standing out from the other cars like a yellow raincoat on a dark and rainy day (which this one, from the look of the sky, was promising to be). This 911-based car was the work of Alois Ruf, the charming gentleman whose Munich firm had turned out the fastest car in our last World's Fastest story, with a top speed of 186 mph. Ruf is widely respected for the quality and reliability of his cars, so we were expecting good things from this latest yellow 3.4-liter, 470 bhp twin-turbo offering, which had been completed just in time for this test and had only dyno time and the mileage to our hotel on its engine. As an added bonus, Herr Ruf had brought along the car that won our last contest, driven by its present owner, Wolf Gregor, who told us he had 211,000 trouble-free miles on the odometer (he swaps engines every 50,000 kilometers and has his spare rebuilt by Ruf to keep it in top form).

We had breakfast at the Alte Muhle with all the owners, mechanics, drivers and their families and friends, rallied in the parking lot and drove off in the world's most exotic train for the nearby test track under a darkening sky. By the time we reached Ehra-Lessien it was pouring rain, and we took shelter in a large barn at the edge of an immense expanse of blacktop VW uses for testing. By mid-morning it cleared and began to dry, so we drove to the Schnellbahn. Paul Frere went out first in the Lamborghini to test the waters, literally.

Volkswagen's amazing Ehra-Lessien test track is 15.5 miles around, with a pair of high-banked turns joined by two 7.0- mile straightaways. There are photoelectric cells and large digital display boards on each straight, and they automatically flash the speed to the driver as he passes. The long straights are only a few hundred feet apart in the middle, so if you stand in the central infield, you have the pleasure of watching-and hearing-cars going by flat-out in both directions, just a short distance from where you're standing. Shock wave range.

The circuit is also only a few miles from the East German border, and we could hear not-too-distant artillery and automatic weapons fire, no doubt from war games of some kind. So when Paul came down the straight in the Lamborghini, I looked in the wrong place. I thought the sound was part of the military maneuvers and looked in the sky for a low-flying fighter. Instead, the Countach flew by in an absolutely spine-chilling scream of wind and engine noise and disappeared into its own roostertail of atomized rainwater. The automatic timing clock on the back straight registered 278.2 km/h on its large digital display: 173 mph.



Paul came in and said the track was drying out, so I climbed into the Lamborghini with him to go out for a few more laps of the circuit, while Phil circulated in one of the 959s.

So what's it like out there, on the Volkswagen Schnellbahn in a Lamborghini?

Well, you close the jackknife door, rest your feet on a bar that protects the fire extinguisher in the footwell and accelerate onto the track with a wonderful 12-cylinder ripping sound from the engine compartment. The doorsills are high, but the chocolate brown instrument panel is low beneath the steeply raked windshield, giving you a nice forward panorama of the track. The car feels wide, hunting a bit as it climbs past 200 km/h, wipers lifting slightly away from the windshield. Paul shifts with a firm, positive motion and as we head toward the first banking, the tach is just into the yellow at 7000 rpm with an indicated 300 km/h on the speedometer. Paul backs off and brakes slightly for the banking, climbs high into the top groove and the g-forces push you into the seat. Feels about like a 2-to 3g pullout at the bottom of a loop in a Citabria. Not a good time to scratch your head because your arm doesn't want to come off the armrest and you feel as if you're growing a fine pair of jowls.

The car sweeps down onto the back straight, and you immediately lose a few hundred pounds of ugly weight, watching lightpoles go by at Keystone Cop speed. Wind roar from the edges of the windows competes with engine scream to make you deaf (you'd want earplugs for a full day of this). Paul seems as relaxed as the car seems hyper, keeping it straight with small steering-wheel corrections and a light touch. Even at these speeds, the Volkswagen track is so long the straight seems to go on forever. We finally approach the digital display board and it flashes 281.0 at us. That's about 175 mph. Faster than I've ever gone on the ground.

We do a few more laps and then Paul slows down for the pits. At around 100 mph I feel as if I could get out and walk, it's so slow; and I start to unbuckle my seat belt. Paul brakes really hard, almost missing the pit road, and as we pull to a stop I work hard to wipe that stupid grin off my face. This is business.

For the rest of the day I alternated between rides with Phil and Paul, sampling all the cars-or almost all. Both Koenig cars developed mechanical trouble (broken fan belt and a blown base gasket) on their first or second laps, but not before the blue Koenig/RS car got in one lap at 201 mph, second fastest of the day. The Ferrari GTO also managed just one lap (179 mph) before its black box cut the spark to one bank of cylinders. " I feel honored," said the car's owner, Michael Gabel, smiling philosophically. "The same thing happens to Alboreto."



All the other cars ran beautifully, picking up speed as the track dried out and the air became less humid. I rode in both 959s, which had an amazing combination of low speed tractability combined with flat-out serenity on the track (at 198 mph in the sport version and 197 in the deluxe version), all the while making the most beautiful deep, smooth engine sounds 12 operatic tenor of the Testarossa. Being able to ride in this marvelously strong and stable-feeling car while the engine hovered at redline for minutes at a time, holding that single sustained note, was about as sublime a pleasure as can ever be expected from a car made by mortals.

The Isdera Imperator offered another kind of thrill with its raspy hot-rodded AMG/Mercedes V-8 reminding me most of a Camaro Trans-Am series racer I once rode in, a very race-car feeling GT with low amplitude vibration coming though the seat and frame and superb stability in the banking. It was the only car in which I felt we could have taken a much lower groove through the banking and drifted without worry onto the back straight. The AMG Hammer was another car that befuddled the senses; it was impossible to sit in that normal 4-door passenger car interior and watch the track go by at 183 mph and justify what you were seeing on the speedometer with what you were feeling about your surroundings. A triumph of horse power and suspension tuning over the laws of physics and aero dynamics. The Audi Quattro turned in a creditable 154 mph and Herr Gregor's Ruf, which won our 1984 contest, went 187 mph-just a tick faster than its past record of 186.2 mph.

But not until later in the afternoon did I get into the fastest car of all.

I buckled myself (with real racing belts) into the spartan interior of the Yellow Bird, which the Ruf people had taken to calling it; the Ruf Twin-Turbo. I held onto the built-in rollcage as Paul Frere accelerated onto the track, and I was absolutely astounded by the acceleration (no easy feat after a day in Ferraris, Lamborghinis, etc). At each gearshift the Ruf went slightly sideways, only to straighten for an explosive burst of speed to the next gear, more like what I imagined a top-fuel dragster to be than a perfectly driveable road car. As Paul hit 5th gear, we blasted past the first timing clock at 311.9 km/h-still accelerating from a standing start!



We flattened onto the banking and exploded onto the back straight with the tach at around 7000 and the speedometer showing 340. My God, I thought, these are Indy speeds. The yellow Ruf pegged its 350-km/h speedometer and howled past the clocks with 336.1 showing on the board: 209 mph. Paul looked over at me with a slightly manic grin and shouted over the earsplitting roar of the engine, "This is faster than I've ever gone in my life!"

Not the kind of thing you hear every day from a former Grand Prix driver and Le Mans winner who test drives every conceivable kind of car for a living.



Back in the pits, Alois Ruf opened the door and asked how fast we'd gone. Paul told him in German. A murmur of approval broke out in the crowd, along with applause. The teen-aged son of Michael Gabel looked in through the window at our instrument panel and exclaimed, "Mil Radio!"

More applause.

Later, with the track completely dry, the yellow car went even faster. On its last run of the afternoon, Phil Hill took photographer John Lamm out for a few laps and recorded a trap speed of 339.8 km/h, or 211 mph. That stood as the fastest speed of the day.

As we packed up to leave, Alois Ruf and his chief technician, Jo Huber, showed up at the track with a barrel of their favorite Bavarian beer. It began to rain again, so we drank in the shelter. The weather had cleared just long enough for us to go 25 mph faster than we'd gone in our 1984 outing.

But even more remarkable than that jump to the Ruf's 211-mph top speed was that Phil, Paul and Alois Ruf all agreed that the yellow car was undergeared. " We could make it go faster," Ruf said, "but there's not much purpose in a road car going very much faster than 300 kilometers per hour. But 300 kilo meters per hour is the magic speed in Europe. And in the U.S., 200 miles per hour is the important number, so we tried to go faster than that."

With change, I thought.

After Wolfsburg, we took the cars south through Germany to the Hockenheimring, where we used a portion of the long back straight for a drag strip. Here again, our pack of cars showed its amazing flexibility, proving that they could not only hit high speeds, but also motor around town and smoke through the quarter mile. The now-repaired Koenig/RS Turbo Porsche was quickest, with a time of 11.6 sec at 133.5 mph, and the RUF was just a tick away, running an 11.7-sec quarter mile at the same speed. The Porsche 959 Sport was the 0-60 champ, doing it in an incredible 3.6 sec, with the Ruf and Koenig/RS tied at 4.0. It was exciting to see the Ruf spin slightly sideways at each shift and the Porsche 959 light up all four tires as it leaped off the line and to hear the Koenig/RS's howling wheel- spin down the whole quarter mile.



Fascinating stuff. But for us Americans, as Ruf had correctly divined, nothing quite surpassed the magic of going 200 mph. And beyond. Mit Radio.
This spring selling season the housing market fared much better than it had in the past years. Despite a weak start amid equity market volatility and global concerns, the construction sector seems to have recovered on the back of strong housing fundamentals. Positives like an improving economy, rising wages, favorable job outlook and a tight supply situation raise optimism about the sectors performance for the rest of 2016.



This optimism is backed by the recently released housing data. New home sales soared in April  per data released on May 24 - way ahead of market expectations. Sales of new single-family homes rose 16.6%in April on the back of strong housing demand and traffic. Moreover, existing home sales rose for the second straight month in April, per data released by the National Association of Realtors on May 20. U.S. housing starts rose 6.6% from a revised March number to an annual rate of 1,172,000 in April, surpassing market expectations. The number of building permits  a gauge of future construction  rose 3.6% in April, according to data released on May 17.



And to top it all, Q1 performance across the broader construction sector was more or less better than expected. Most of the homebuilding companies, including Toll Brothers, Inc. TOL, PulteGroup, Inc. PHM, and KB Home KBH exceeded market expectations and remain optimistic that the growth momentum will sustain through the rest of the year.

This increase in home construction not only benefits homebuilders but also spurs demand for homebuilding materials, home decoration products and other related businesses. This, in turn, boosts the growth prospects of companies manufacturing these products like Vulcan Materials Co. VMC, Martin Marietta Materials, Inc. MLM, Masco Corp. MAS Headwaters Inc. HW and many others.



Stocks for Your Portfolio



With the housing sector gaining momentum, it makes sense to pick stocks from this space. Therefore, here we have picked three stocks from the wider construction sector based on a favorable Zacks Rank and an attractive VGM score.



In VGM, V stands for Value, G for Growth and M for Momentum and the score is a weighted combination of these three scores. Such a score allows you to eliminate the negative aspects of stocks and select winners. However, it is important to keep in mind that each Style Score will carry a different weight while arriving at a VGM score.



Installed Building Products, Inc. IBP operates as a residential insulation installer in the U.S.



Installed Building Products has a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) and a VGM Score of B. Its earnings estimate for the current year has risen 9.6% over the last 30 days. The company has gained about 20% over the month of May.



Installed Building Products reported strong first quarter 2016 results on May 5, beating market expectations for both earnings per share and revenue. The better-than-expected results in the first quarter of 2016 were driven by benefits derived from the companys recent acquisitions and higher rate of housing completion.



Dycom Industries, Inc. DY provides diverse services such as engineering, construction, maintenance and installation for cable and telephone companies.



Dycom has a Zacks Rank #1 and a VGM Score of A. Its earnings estimate for the current year has gone up by 5.9% over the last 30 days. The company has gained about 17.0% over the month of May.



Dycom reported robust fiscal third quarter 2016 results on May 24, crushing markets expectations on both counts. The strong quarterly results were driven by stellar top-line growth and favorable industry trends.



Comfort Systems USA, Inc. FIX provides comprehensive heating, ventilation and air conditioning installation, maintenance, repair and replacement services.



The company has a Zacks Rank #1 and a VGM Score of A. Its earnings estimates for the current year increased 7.7% over the last 30 days. The company has gained about 1% over the month of May.



Comfort Systems reported strong earnings per share in the first quarter of 2016 on Apr 27. The quarter was also marked by solid bookings and positive cash flow. The company is optimistic about the upcoming quarters of 2016 and beyond.



Conclusion



With the rise in demand for homes in 2016, manufacturers of homebuilding products such as the ones discussed above are poised to benefit. Despite the obvious headwinds, there is a strong possibility that these companies will continue to perform well in the near term.



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MASCO (MAS): Free Stock Analysis Report



HEADWATERS INC (HW): Free Stock Analysis Report



COMFORT SYSTEMS (FIX): Free Stock Analysis Report



VULCAN MATLS CO (VMC): Free Stock Analysis Report



MARTIN MRT-MATL (MLM): Free Stock Analysis Report



DYCOM INDS (DY): Free Stock Analysis Report



PULTE GROUP ONC (PHM): Free Stock Analysis Report



TOLL BROTHERS (TOL): Free Stock Analysis Report



KB HOME (KBH): Free Stock Analysis Report



INSTALLED BUILD (IBP): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries or OPEC  the international cartel of oil producers  is scheduled to meet in the Austrian capital of Vienna on Thursday, June 2. As usual, the outcome of the gathering of the 13 member countries from the Middle East, Africa and Latin America is expected to have far-reaching implications for all involved in oil trade  from retail stations to the budgets of oil-dependent nations.



Has Anything Changed from the Past?



Things have considerably changed from when OPEC last met in December. At that time, the meeting was overshadowed by sharp criticism of the Saudi Policy of oversupply by fellow members Venezuela and Iran. Notwithstanding opposition, OPEC scrapped its output target of 30 million barrels. Subsequently, a move toward production freeze with non-OPEC countries failed in April owing to the traditional Saudi-Iranian rivalry.



What Now?



However, with crude currently hovering close to the psychological $50 per barrel mark, we feel the time has come for the long-beleaguered sector to come back to life. This we feel can be attributed to the Saudi policy which is akin to OPECs "keep on pumping" decision which would ultimately revive demand and more importantly, peg back growing competition from the U.S. shale industry.



The Triggers



As of now, the commodity is taking a breather thanks to a host of macro issues round the globe including production disruption in Canada due to the Alberta wildfires, militant attacks and the threat of a nationwide strike in Nigeria, the political rout in Venezuela, and reduced shale production in the U.S. Going by market trends, we believe that given the fact that Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabias state-owned oil and gas entity, is preparing for partial privatization and an initial public offering, the focus on oversupply would be intact.



Iranian Factor



We expect the Saudi proxy plan to find support from Iran. Earlier, for years, Iran saw lower production levels because it was restrained by international trading sanctions. However, since January, sanctions on Iran have been lifted, allowing the country to sell its oil abroad. The country was freed from these limits about a month ago. Subsequently, the nation has ramped up production to 3.56 million barrels per day (bpd) and is steadily progressing toward its targeted output of 4 million bpd.



Top Picks



With market consensus pointing to no production freeze at the OPEC meeting, we feel the time has come for a closer look at the space. Declining non-OPEC output and the fact that several agencies and analysts do not see a production freeze agreement undermine the outcome of the OPEC meeting. This indicates that oil prices are unlikely to lapse into another steep decline. However, it is important to focus on company fundamentals and inherent strengths. Now, the complicated backdrop may make it difficult to pick winning stocks.



This is where our VGM score comes in. Here V stands for Value, G for Growth and M for Momentum and the score is a weighted combination of these three scores. Such a score allows you to eliminate the negative aspects of stocks and select winners. However, it is important to keep in mind that each style score will carry a different weight while arriving at a VGM score.



We have narrowed down our search to the following stocks based on a good Zacks Rank and VGM score.



EXCO Resources Inc. XCO: Headquartered in Dallas, TX, EXCO Resources is an oil and natural gas exploration, exploitation, acquisition, and development and production company. In the last reported quarter, the Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) stock delivered a positive earnings surprise of 36.36%. Enbridge has a VGM Score of A.



World Point Terminals L.P. WPT: St. Louis, MO-based World Point Terminals is involved in operations like development and acquisition of storage terminals for crude oil. The partnership delivered a positive earnings surprise of 3.85% last quarter. Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) World Point Terminals has a VGM Score of A.



McDermott International Inc. MDR: Incorporated in 1959, Houston, TX-based McDermott International holding a Zacks Rank #2 is an engineering and construction company that serves the worldwide offshore oil and gas field developments. Last quarter, the company delivered a positive earnings surprise of 1,200%. McDermott has a VGM Score of A.



Enbridge Inc. ENB: Based in Calgary, Canada, Enbridge is an energy transportation and distribution company with operations in North America and internationally. The company has a Zacks Rank #2 and a VGM Score of B.

Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days.Click to get this free report >>



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MCDERMOTT INTL (MDR): Free Stock Analysis Report



ENBRIDGE INC (ENB): Free Stock Analysis Report



EXCO RESOURCES (XCO): Free Stock Analysis Report



WORLD POINT TER (WPT): Free Stock Analysis Report



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Zacks Investment Research
Hard to believe, but a decade ago today, Lauren Conrads destiny was still unwritten: The Hills took to the airwaves (and took over your life) on May 31, 2006. It was a simpler time, when Lauren and Heidi Montag were still best friends, Speidi was a nickname for Spider-Man and Audrina Patridge was just the bikini-clad girl next door. Little did we know, the Laguna Beach spinoff would become a phenomenon  not only for the casts relationship trials and tribulations but also for the way their Cali-girl style completely transformed your wardrobe for a few years in the late 00s. In honor of a decade of mascara tears and minidresses, we present the five most salient fashion rules we picked up from LC, Heidi, Audrina and Whitney. Sing it with us now,  Feel the rain on your skin

Lauren Conrad the Hills



Rule 1: Always have a Chanel bag.

In season 1, LC was given the gift of a every fashion girls dream accessory: a classic quilted Chanel bag, courtesy of then-boyfriend Jason Wahler. And every since that high-fashion moment, she, along with her co-stars, was rarely seen without the super-luxe label dangling from one shoulder throughout the series, right up until her final dramatic exit from the series.

Whitney Port The Hills style

Rule 2: Strapless tops are for the da club  not the office.

In season 3, Whitney Port gave a presentation at Teen Vogues New York office while wearing a strapless floral number. Although she looked adorable, her boss Lisa Love informed her she heard about the dress she wore all the way back in L.A. (read: It was the talk of the office, and not in a good way.) So, ladies, take the wise Loves advice and leave your sweet, strapless tops for Les Deux  not your 9 to 5.

Lauren Conrad, Stephanie Pratt, Lo Bosworth The Hills style

Rule 3: Theres no wrong way to wear a Going Out Top.

After hours, it was those strapless tops time to shine. Whether LC and co. were hitting up Area or even their local sushi spot, they were almost certainly wearing a satin strapless top, keyhole halter or empire-waist cami  preferably with jeans, a long necklace or two and sky-high heels. Bonus points for ruffles!

RELATED VIDEO: Whitney Port Opens up About Amplifying Drama for [ITALIC The Hills]



RELATED PHOTOS: I Really Love My: Princess Kates Nautical Outfit & More!

Lauren Conrad the Hills cropped leggings

Splash News Online

Rule 4: Self-promotion is key.

By the time season three rolled around, Lauren was famous enough to launch her first clothing line, a collection of jersey dresses, tops and leggings true to her California-girl aesthetic. Already a savvy businesswoman, LC gave the line major exposure by wearing her own pieces in tons of scenes, including Brodys beach bonfire, above.

Lauren Conrad fashion line The Hills

Also, we couldnt help but point out that Lauren held a fashion show for the collection that year at L.A. Fashion Week, while she was (ostensibly) still an intern at Teen Vogue. Very normal.

Lauren Conrad the Hills

Rule 5: Cropped leggings + tunic = Instant outfit.

The girls of The Hills were pioneers of the athleisure of their day: a slightly oversize tunic (often accented with embellishments) worn over a pair of nondescript, cropped cotton leggings. To top off the look, bejeweled flip-flops were a must. Were still all about the leggings these days, but please, keep them ankle-length.

Lauren Conrad headband the hills

Bonus rule: Nothing makes you look more 2006 than a wide headband.

Enough said.

If youre feeling nostalgic, weve got some good news: LC is heading back to the land that made her famous with a special 10-year anniversary special, set to premiere on MTV this August. She announced the news on Twitter earlier this morning:

Today is the 10th anniversary of The Hills! I am excited to announce that @MTV will premiere an anniversary special with me on Tuesday 8/2!  Lauren Conrad (@LaurenConrad) May 31, 2016

Never thought I'd see the day. A photo posted by Lauren Conrad (@laurenconrad) on May 25, 2016 at 3:09pm PDT

Are you a fan of The Hills? Will you be tuning in to the shows anniversary episode? Share below!

Lindy Segal and Sarah Kinonen
It wouldn't be The Bachelorette without a token bad boy  and two episodes in, the mansion's bad boy has emerged. Don't worry though, he's loving the attention.



Chad Johnson has already sparked tension with the other competitors and thrown shade at JoJo Fletcher, all while somehow still obtaining a rose at the end of the night.



"I had no idea there was this much tension between Chad and the other guys," Fletcher wrote in her exclusive PEOPLE blog after viewing the episode. "I knew there was some tension, of course, but I didn't know there were threats of violence. I don't feel great now seeing this. It's all just so complicated. Chad is a complex guy with complex emotions."



In addition to those complex emotions, here's everything you need to know about Johnson, 28, as he continues his journey to win Fletcher's heart  and ostracize his housemates along the way.









1. He's a Bachelorette fan because of his mom.

Johnson opened up about losing his mother to liver cancer last summer on Monday, and now he's revealed how she played into his decision to join The Bachelorette.



"The one question people keep asking, is why did I go on #TheBachelorette? Well other than the fact that I work all the time, for 7 years I watched my mother slowly die from cancer," he wrote in an emotional Instagram post. "Over the last 3 she got much worse and I decided to spend all of my time that I wasn't working at her house taking care of her and generally spending time with her."





A photo posted by Chad Johnson (@realchadjohnson) on May 30, 2016 at 10:41pm PDT



The Tulsa, Oklahoma, resident said that he helped his mother live out her last years "in comfort and surrounded by family."



"I still miss her everyday," Johnson said. "She was my best friend and the person I told everything to."



2. He's a former Marine.





A photo posted by Chad Johnson (@realchadjohnson) on May 24, 2016 at 1:49pm PDT



Johnson has switched careers, but for several years he served the country as a U.S. Marine after graduating from the University of Oklahoma.



He paid tribute to his past on Memorial Day, posting a photo with his sister from his Marine Corps boot camp graduation.





Story continues

A photo posted by Chad Johnson (@realchadjohnson) on May 29, 2016 at 1:33pm PDT



3. He works in luxury real estate.



Not only is Johnson a luxury real estate agent, but, according to his Realtor.com profile, he also comes from a family of investors in the industry.



He's also dabbled in flipping homes  do we smell an HGTV fan?





RELATED VIDEO: Bachelorette JoJo Fletcher's Top 3 Tips for Getting Over Heartbreak

Bachelorette JoJo Fletcher's Top 3 Tips for Getting Over Heartbreak!" data-ad-channel="peoplenow" data-ad-subchannel="sharethisnow" data-auto-play="no">



4. His heart belongs to someone else  his dog Pumpkin.

Fletcher might have some competition in the love department  Johnson can't seem to get enough of his adorable pooch Pumpkin who's a Maltese Yorkie.





My daughter Pumpkin A photo posted by Chad Johnson (@realchadjohnson) on May 4, 2016 at 8:56am PDT



The fluffy puppy is a regular on Johnson's social media, despite her lack of modeling expertise: "It's impossible to get a good picture with Pumpkin because she's either licking my face or extremely distracted," Johnson wrote on Instagram.



5. He doesn't mind being the bad guy.

Johnson knows what you're saying about him, and he doesn't mind.



"So maybe I'm a bit cocky, but you know what.. I think it's hilarious, and so did my mother," Johnson wrote on Instagram. "As men we call each other names and make fun of each other because that's what we do, and you either rise above it and have fun with it, or get offended because you can't handle it at which point you should just turn in your man card."





#TheBachelorette A photo posted by Chad Johnson (@realchadjohnson) on May 30, 2016 at 7:08pm PDT



Of the suitor, host Chris Harrison told Yahoo: "[Chad] is not shy about sharing his opinions, he does what he wants and he is competitive. He will definitely make some waves in the house."



The Bachelorette airs Mondays (8 p.m. ET) on ABC.
Itching for the key to unlock your dream of a new house? Heres yet another reason to love your country: The U.S. has plenty of programs and incentives that could make that goal a reality. If youre a first-time buyerand even if youre not, in some casesthere are some government benefits that can help you afford those new digs.

Before we dive deep into the ways the government can help fund your new home, theres a little matter to clear up: your eligibility.

The Department of Housing and Urban Developmentthe U.S. agency that oversees all housing mattersis fond of bolstering the success of first-time buyers. But that doesnt mean youre locked out of options if youve already owned a home. Heres what HUD considers a first-time home buyer:

An individual that hasnt owned a principal residence during the three-year period ending on the date of purchase of a new property. If a spouse meets this test, the couple does, too.

A single parent who owned a home only with a former spouse while married.

A displaced homemaker who owned only with a spouse.

A person that owned a principal residence not permanently affixed to a permanent foundation. (Maybe you owned a tent, RV, or mobile home unit.)

Someone who owned a property that didnt comply with state, local, or model building codesand couldnt be brought into compliance for less than the cost of constructing a permanent structure.

If any (or a few) of those statements sounds like you, these options could make a move even more affordable.

1. Various HUD-funded programs

The folks at HUD grant money to a myriad of different organizations and services that can help first-timers purchase a home. From loan programs that offer lower down payments to special programs for teachers, firefighters, and a few other vocations, HUDs resources are vast and diverse. HUD even offers federal assistance at the state level, so make sure to see if your state is covered.

2. State-specific assistance

In addition to HUD assistance, states such as Illinois, Ohio, and Washington have down payment assistance programs for first-time buyers. Eligibility criteria vary by state, but often factor in your income and the value of the property youre hoping to purchase. If you qualify, you could score financial assistance with down payment and closing costs. You might also net some monetary relief to rehab or improve a property.

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3. Military benefits

Active-duty and veteran families might be eligible for a zero-down payment Veterans Affairs home loan. Its part of a benefit program thats helped millions of veterans and military members purchase a home since World War II. While loans typically top out at $417,000, that limit can swell in counties with higher costs of living.

Not only do these loans allow borrowers to sidestep down payments, service personnel can also roll the mortgage insurance of 2.15 points (a point is equal to 1% of the loan amount) into the loan. More and more veterans are using these flexible, $0 down loans to crack the housing market during a time of tight credit and limping wages.

For more information, consult with a VA home loan provider such as Veterans United Home Loans.

4. Loans for Native Americans

Native American first-time buyers can apply for a Section 184 loan, which lets them buy a home with as little as a 2.25% down payment on loans of $50,000 and more. If you need a loan for less, the down payment dips to 1.24%. Unlike traditional loan approvals that are heavily dependent on a borrowers credit score, these hinge on the prevailing market rate.

There is a small catch: Section 184 loans are applicable only to single-family homes that are for a primary residence.

5. Your retirement fund

That trusty tool youre using to fund your golden years can help put a new roof over your head while youre still young(ish). First-time buyers can pull up to $10,000 during their lifetime from their traditional or Roth IRA without being whacked with the 10% early withdrawal penalty.

However, Uncle Sam might come knocking with his hand out. Pull money out of a traditional IRA and expect to shell out some moolah to cover the income tax on the money. Roth IRAs arent subject to income tax because theyre funded with post-tax dough.

Of course, like any government agency, HUD and its local municipality siblings are often tweaking, adding, and (sadly) dropping funding options. So before signing on a purchase offers dotted line, make sure you investigate eligibility and availability in your area to make homeownership a tad more affordable.



Video: 5 Fun & Affordable Cities for First-Time Home Buyers

The post 5 Ways the Government Can Save You Big Bucks on Your First Home appeared first on Real Estate News and Advice - realtor.com.





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crimea annexed russian vehicle

Since Russia's illegal seizure and annexation of Crimea from Ukraine on March 18, 2014, six countries have come out in support of Moscow.

And in any other circumstance, the support Russia has received would be enough to make politicians blush.

The following map from the spokesman for the US Embassy in Russia shows the six nations, in addition to Russia, that have supported the Crimean annexation.

Those countries are Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Syria, Afghanistan, and North Korea. Each nation is generally considered a rogue or a teetering state with deep historical roots connecting it to Russia and the former Soviet Union.

Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela have maintained close military and economic ties to Moscow.

Use this map the next time someone says #Crimea is Russia. It's the six countries who have publicly recognized. pic.twitter.com/tff4bKWFSh  Will Stevens (@WBStevens) May 28, 2016

Gen. John Kelly, former head of the US Southern Command, said on March 12, 2015:

Russia is using power projection in an attempt to erode U.S. leadership and challenge U.S. influence in the Western Hemisphere ... Russia has courted Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua to gain access to air bases and ports for resupply of Russian naval assets and strategic bombers operating in the Western Hemisphere.

Syria, meanwhile, has been in a state of civil war since 2011. The regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad has stayed in power in large part because of arms transfers and joint military operations with Russia.

Russia, likewise, has played a role in shielding North Korea from the international community. Earlier in May, Moscow blocked a statement from the UN Security Council against North Korea over its missile tests. The relationship between Moscow and Pyongyang is likely to continue to grow as Russia seeks to challenge US policy abroad and as China increasingly grows frustrated with the rogue nation.

Story continues

Afghanistan's support of the annexation is the most surprising. Only a generation ago, the Soviet Union was brutally occupying Afghanistan, and the US military and NATO are still present in the country now. But Afghanistan announced its support of the Crimean annexation in 2014 under then President Hamid Karzai.

Karzai, toward the end of his presidency, increasingly sought to distance Afghanistan from the West. His support of the Crimean annexation was likely an attempt to differentiate Kabul from Washington.

NOW WATCH: Here's the high-tech military equipment Russia could use against the world





More From Business Insider


From Good Housekeeping

After abandoning his 7-year-old son in remote, bear-filled woods, a Japanese father now regrets the cruel punishment that's led to a days-long search for his missing child.

Yamato Tanooka disappeared on Saturday at 4 p.m. local time, when his parents apparently ordered their son out of the car and drove 500 meters away. When they returned five minutes later, he was gone. The family first told officials that they were hiking to gather wild vegetables, but later admitted they had intentionally left their son behind as a reprimand for throwing stones at cars and people.

Four days later, more than 150 rescuers haven't seen a single sign of Yamato in the isolated area of Nanae-cho, Hokkaido. With 40-degree temperatures, heavy rainfall, and evidence of nearby bears, the wilderness has proven a serious risk to the child's safety. Yamato, who was wearing just jeans and a pullover, didn't have any food or water with him, either.

"I regret what I did to my child," his father Takayuki Tanooka later told the media. "I am so sorry for causing trouble for many people." The police are currently deciding whether the family should be charged with child abandonment.

[h/t CNN]
Photo essay by Smita Sharma

As 86-year-old Maharani Pudahar steps out of her terra-cotta brick home to say hello, her neighbor Robi Das laughingly remarks that she looks like Mahatma Gandhi. Wearing cotton cloths wraped loosely across her torso, with just one jaunty yellow tooth remaining in her smile, Pudahar is hunched over a cane-like wooden stick  not unlike Gandhi.

Its a dark reference, seeing as some might blame Gandhi for Pudahars shabby living conditions. Pudahar, along with some 20 other families, is here at the Ranaghat Mahila Camp in West Bengal, existing in the long shadow of an event much of modern India would like to forget and which Gandhi never forgave himself for: the 1947 partition that split the country along Hindu and Muslim lines, displacing an estimated 15 million people and killing more than a million. Pudahar is a Hindu whose childhood home became Muslim turf.

They were leaving a country where Hindus were thrown into rivers, raped and roasted alive  often in response to Hindus attacking Muslims across the border in India.

On the other side of India, in Punjab, bordering Pakistan, most of the refugees were resettled in the 1960s. But here, nearly 70 years later, a handful of women in Pudahars cohort remain in limbo. They continue to live on government-allotted plots for refugees; several say they are still awaiting their government-promised 3 kathas of land (approximately 720 square feet).

Theres no water, no food, says Ashok Chakraborty, who spearheads the governments United Central Refugee Council in the state. They have the right to be rehabilitated  in the form of 10 kathas. But, Chakraborty says, policymakers have been too busy with the states spring elections to follow through on promises. Which explains one year of mistakes  not 70. So why the different treatment for refugees in Punjab and Bangladesh? Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhury, a researcher at the Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, explains that the government was not initially sure Hindu migrants would remain in India. She says some refugees still describe themselves to her as from East Bengal: Our desh  country  is someplace else, someplace we cannot return.

Story continues

But what can rehabilitation mean for people whose homeland has been repainted not once but twice? Modern West Bengal, an Indian state, borders Bangladesh; but Bangladesh is the second incarnation of East Pakistan. The women in Ranaghat Mahila Camp and the neighboring Coopers Camp  plus a handful of others in the area  are legacies of the first national divorce, says Chaudhury.

Ozy widows 17

Geeta Das, 65, lives alone in extreme poverty at the camp.

Source: Smita Sharma for OZY

Theyre mostly from lower-caste and lower-class rungs of society, Chaudhury explains. The wealthy fled East Pakistan first, shortly after Gandhis somber day of silence objecting to the impending partition. They had the most to lose: honor and money. When they arrived in India, they quickly found their way out of the transition camps and resettled in cities, making themselves comfortable with new jobs and homes thanks to a cushion of social capital.

The less fortunate only found their way to India in the 1950s, Chaudhury says. At first, Hindu-Muslim relations in Bengal were less bellicose than in their western counterpart, until the 1950 Barisal Riots, the culmination of several years of mounting tensions. Then came the trail of poorer people, making their reluctant egress, not to save their pride but their lives; they were leaving a country where Hindus were thrown into rivers, raped and roasted alive  often in response to Hindus attacking Muslims across the border in India.

And here they are today, those who havent yet died and their children, some of whom were raised in the camps. A strange immigrant economy persists  49-year-old Arugula Somas parents came from Andhra Pradesh in south India during partition because of the promise of work. They cooked and cleaned, and Soma never left; her son, a member of a slivered third generation in Ranaghat, is studying gloomily for his police academy exams. Theres not much work here, and he doesnt want to stray far because this is home.

The women in Ranaghat and Coopers Camp dont have history on their tongues. Sixty-something Geeta Das shows us her present-day home. Its dank, and snakes have made themselves comfortable on the dirt floor. She unearths the single sari the government gives her every year: Its made of rough pink cotton, no petticoat included. Other women in the camp are wearing their saris without blouses, their breasts spilling out. Are Das and her friend Lili Roy  who makes extra income selling goats for meat  angry about the partition, Lord Mountbattens orchestration of it or Gandhis failure? They shrug. Theyre familiar with the geopolitics that brought them here.

We dont need sympathy, Das says. We need someone to fight for our rights.

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In the world of a Las Vegas gaming hall, there are no clocks to tell time and no one to tell you when to stop blowing your dough. Gambling is risky business at best -- or maybe reckless is more like it. The bright lights of the strip blind many casino patrons to a simple, irrefutable fact: The decks and dice are always stacked against the player.

So it goes with certain investments where playing the market is anything but fun and games. Watching a roulette wheel whirl might offer fleeting excitement, but there's nothing thrilling about seeing your investment dollars spin down the drain. Penny stocks wind up worth less than Monopoly money, and repeated stabs at market timing land somewhere between futile and foolish.

[See: 8 Easy Ways to Make Money.]

Still, that doesn't stop the adrenaline junkies from stepping up to the table with a fistful of dollars and a head full of fantasies about the Big Score. It almost always ends up badly -- and you can likewise tank if you try the eight investment categories below with anything less than wisdom, patience and experience.

Foreign exchange markets. It looks so simple -- then again, so does blackjack. Too many novices see it this way: Buy loads of a slumping currency in dollars, wait for it to go back up, and buy back lots more dollars. But experts say it's like DIY plumbing: Spring a big leak and you could soon flood your financial foundation. "For do-it-yourself investors, forecasting in and attempting to profit from movements in currencies can be difficult and dangerous," says Joe Jennings, senior vice president and investment director at PNC Wealth Management in Baltimore.

Bitcoin. Maybe someday, you'll be able to feed Bitcoins into slot machines. That might produce a steadier payoff than Bitcoin itself, the mysterious virtual currency without a central bank. On Dec. 14, 2013, speculators jacked the price up to a dizzying $1,150. Eighteen days later, it fell by more than half. Today Bitcoin goes for $453.

Story continues

Startups. Silicon Valley daydreams can divert attention from a real-life investor's nightmare. Report after report drives home this fact: 90 percent of startups fail. The May 16 green flag for equity crowdfunding investment promises to drum up new startup excitement, but it's not going to change the batting average anytime soon. In fact, it could attract an even higher percentage of losers. "I don't foresee most top-tier startups adopting Title III equity crowdfunding as a fundraising outlet," says Chance Barnett, CEO of Crowdfunder.

[See: 13 Money Hacks to Turbocharge Your Investments.]

'Story' stocks. Some companies have a fantastic story to tell, such as Tesla Motors (TSLA), a pioneer in the luxury electric car market. Charismatic CEO Elon Musk predicts Tesla sales will increase tenfold by 2020. Enter the Big Bad Wolf: Tesla hasn't reported a profit in any quarter since going public. The progenitors of story stocks "are companies with big ideas but very few fundamentals to back up investors' hopes," says Jim Hardison, branch manager and managing director in the private client group at Stephen in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Market timing. You know how to time a roulette wheel, right? Of course not -- so why try to time a stock? Still that doesn't deter the Smartest Gamblers in the Room. "Market timing is a scam," says Robert Novy-Marx, a professor of finance at the University of Rochester's Simon Business School. "You might get it right -- and someone always does, and they're happy to tell you what a genius they are. But you are just as likely to sell too early, or get back in too late, or too soon."

Media stocks. Anxiety over the mass exodus of cable customers -- known anecdotally as "cutting the cord" -- has media companies reeling. A and B classes of Viacom (VIA, VIAB), the home of MTV, Comedy Central, BET and Nickelodeon, are down more than a third since May 2015. On the newspaper side, Chicago-based Tribune Publishing Co. (TPUB) is off 54 percent since splitting from Tribune Co. in 2014. Many investors hope Gannett Co. (GCI) will double down its $15-a-share takeover bid. TPUB currently trades at $11. But so far, no dice.

Options. Options can hedge risk when you own its underlying asset, says Yale Bock, a portfolio manager on Covestor and president of YH&C, a registered investment advisor in Las Vegas. "But if you don't, you're essentially betting on the direction of your trade; if wrong, it can force you into coughing up hard-earned dough." And in many cases, "the cash you get from selling the option is minimal relative to what you can potentially make on the asset. Conversely, the cost of protecting the downside is often large."

[Read: Decoding Wall Street's Wall of Jargon.]

Penny stocks. The name conjures images of breaking open a piggy bank on the way to breaking the bank and walking away with enough coin to fill up an armored car. In reality, penny stocks are very high-risk investments, especially for those who sink a great deal of money into them. For starters, penny stocks get almost no scrutiny because the companies aren't required to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Assuming you can find out anything about the stock, it's likely not credible -- though the hype might be incredible.





More From US News & World Report


In the world of a Las Vegas gaming hall, there are no clocks to tell time and no one to tell you when to stop blowing your dough. Gambling is risky business at best -- or maybe reckless is more like it. The bright lights of the strip blind many casino patrons to a simple, irrefutable fact: The decks and dice are always stacked against the player.

So it goes with certain investments where playing the market is anything but fun and games. Watching a roulette wheel whirl might offer fleeting excitement, but there's nothing thrilling about seeing your investment dollars spin down the drain. Penny stocks wind up worth less than Monopoly money, and repeated stabs at market timing land somewhere between futile and foolish.

[See: 8 Easy Ways to Make Money.]

Still, that doesn't stop the adrenaline junkies from stepping up to the table with a fistful of dollars and a head full of fantasies about the Big Score. It almost always ends up badly -- and you can likewise tank if you try the eight investment categories below with anything less than wisdom, patience and experience.

Foreign exchange markets. It looks so simple -- then again, so does blackjack. Too many novices see it this way: Buy loads of a slumping currency in dollars, wait for it to go back up, and buy back lots more dollars. But experts say it's like DIY plumbing: Spring a big leak and you could soon flood your financial foundation. "For do-it-yourself investors, forecasting in and attempting to profit from movements in currencies can be difficult and dangerous," says Joe Jennings, senior vice president and investment director at PNC Wealth Management in Baltimore.

Bitcoin. Maybe someday, you'll be able to feed Bitcoins into slot machines. That might produce a steadier payoff than Bitcoin itself, the mysterious virtual currency without a central bank. On Dec. 14, 2013, speculators jacked the price up to a dizzying $1,150. Eighteen days later, it fell by more than half. Today Bitcoin goes for $453.

Story continues

Startups. Silicon Valley daydreams can divert attention from a real-life investor's nightmare. Report after report drives home this fact: 90 percent of startups fail. The May 16 green flag for equity crowdfunding investment promises to drum up new startup excitement, but it's not going to change the batting average anytime soon. In fact, it could attract an even higher percentage of losers. "I don't foresee most top-tier startups adopting Title III equity crowdfunding as a fundraising outlet," says Chance Barnett, CEO of Crowdfunder.

[See: 13 Money Hacks to Turbocharge Your Investments.]

'Story' stocks. Some companies have a fantastic story to tell, such as Tesla Motors (ticker: TSLA), a pioneer in the luxury electric car market. Charismatic CEO Elon Musk predicts Tesla sales will increase tenfold by 2020. Enter the Big Bad Wolf: Tesla hasn't reported a profit in any quarter since going public. The progenitors of story stocks "are companies with big ideas but very few fundamentals to back up investors' hopes," says Jim Hardison, branch manager and managing director in the private client group at Stephen in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Market timing. You know how to time a roulette wheel, right? Of course not -- so why try to time a stock? Still that doesn't deter the Smartest Gamblers in the Room. "Market timing is a scam," says Robert Novy-Marx, a professor of finance at the University of Rochester's Simon Business School. "You might get it right -- and someone always does, and they're happy to tell you what a genius they are. But you are just as likely to sell too early, or get back in too late, or too soon."

Media stocks. Anxiety over the mass exodus of cable customers -- known anecdotally as "cutting the cord" -- has media companies reeling. A and B classes of Viacom (VIA, VIAB), the home of MTV, Comedy Central, BET and Nickelodeon, are down more than a third since May 2015. On the newspaper side, Chicago-based Tribune Publishing Co. (TPUB) is off 54 percent since splitting from Tribune Co. in 2014. Many investors hope Gannett Co. (GCI) will double down its $15-a-share takeover bid. TPUB currently trades at $11. But so far, no dice.

Options. Options can hedge risk when you own its underlying asset, says Yale Bock, a portfolio manager on Covestor and president of YH&C, a registered investment advisor in Las Vegas. "But if you don't, you're essentially betting on the direction of your trade; if wrong, it can force you into coughing up hard-earned dough." And in many cases, "the cash you get from selling the option is minimal relative to what you can potentially make on the asset. Conversely, the cost of protecting the downside is often large."

[Read: Decoding Wall Street's Wall of Jargon.]

Penny stocks. The name conjures images of breaking open a piggy bank on the way to breaking the bank and walking away with enough coin to fill up an armored car. In reality, penny stocks are very high-risk investments, especially for those who sink a great deal of money into them. For starters, penny stocks get almost no scrutiny because the companies aren't required to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Assuming you can find out anything about the stock, it's likely not credible -- though the hype might be incredible.

A former longtime staff writer, editor and columnist at the Chicago Tribune, Lou Carlozo writes about investment for U.S. News & World Report, and personal finance for Money Under 30 and GOBankingRates. He is based in Chicago. Connect with him at linkedin.com/in/loucarlozo.
By Stephanie Nebehay and Tom Miles GENEVA (Reuters) - People returning from areas where the Zika virus is found should follow safe sex practices or abstain from sex for at least eight weeks rather than just four, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday. The recommendation, which doubles the abstinence period the WHO had previously advised, comes after scientists found the virus lingers longer than previously thought in blood or other body fluids, spokesman Christian Lindmeier told a news briefing. If the male partner in a couple planning pregnancy has symptoms of the Zika virus, the period of safe abstinence should be six months, he added. "People should practise safer sex or abstain for at least eight weeks if they are returning from Zika-affected areas," he said. "The previous recommendation suggested a period of at least four weeks, so we're upping (it)." The new guidelines "reflect what we have learned about Zika disease and its complications," he added. Asked if this new advice amounted to an effective ban on pregnancies in Brazil, where the virus first appeared a year ago, Lindmeier said: "The guidance is to delay or consider delaying pregnancy, certainly recognizing that this is tough for some populations." The spokesman said scientists are still investigating how long the virus can be traced in saliva but these tests have so far been inconclusive. "All this is being studied to see where else we find the virus and how long it sustains there," he said. (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay and Tom Miles; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
Nairobi (AFP) - The Burundi correspondent of Agence France-Presse and Radio France Internationale, who was tortured last year by security forces, received threats on social media Tuesday after being accused by authorities of "promoting crime and violence" with his coverage of the country's crisis.

Esdras Ndikumana, winner of France's diplomatic press prize in 2015, is considered one of the leading specialists on Burundi and is highly regarded across Africa.

Fearing for his life, the 55-year-old was forced to flee Burundi in August 2015 but continues to cover developments in the country from abroad.

On Monday night, General Alain-Guillaume Bunyoni -- minister of public security and second most powerful figure in the Burundian government -- launched an attack on the journalist, targeting him by name in a statement.

"The ministry forcefully condemns everyone who, knowingly getting ahead of the normal course of inquiries, devotes themselves to attributing every criminal act to whoever they want to justify their preferences, interests and thinly-veiled political convictions -- like the journalist Esdras Ndikumana and certain activists on social media -- with the goal of dividing Burundians and promoting crime and violence," Bunyoni said.

Following the statement, two pro-government civil society figures on Tuesday issued serious threats against Ndikumana on Twitter.

"AFP deems unacceptable these personal attacks on its correspondent Esdras Ndikumana, which target and imperil a journalist providing irreproachable coverage of news in Burundi under very difficult circumstances," said AFP's Global News Director Michele Leridon.

Burundi has been plunged into a deep crisis since President Pierre Nkurunziza announced in April 2015 that he was running for a third term. He was re-elected last July.

Marked by assassinations on both sides, attacks against the police and summary executions, the violence has left more than 500 people dead and forced more than 270,000 Burundians to flee the country, according to the UN.

Story continues

Burundi's government has silenced independent journalists at home and regularly lashes out at the international media, accusing the press of being part of a "conspiracy" to overthrow it.

Ndikumana, who began working as Bujumbura correspondent for AFP in 2001 and for RFI in 2002, fled the country last August after being arrested by the security services.

He was beaten and tortured in detention.

RFI, AFP and Ndikumana have filed a criminal complaint over his mistreatment. So far, the complaint has not led to an investigation.
By Orhan Coskun and Tulay Karadeniz ANKARA (Reuters) - When Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan visits Uganda and Kenya this week, he will be seeking not only to increase trade but to stamp out the influence of an Islamic cleric whose network was long an instrument of Turkey's soft power in Africa. Ankara officially declared the Hizmet organization of preacher Fethullah Gulen, which claims millions of followers worldwide, a terrorist group this week, stepping up pressure on a movement Erdogan once looked to for help in spreading Turkish cultural influence and commerce overseas. Erdogan now accuses his former ally of building a "parallel state" through followers in the police, judiciary, media and business, and of using it to try to overthrow him, allegations which Gulen denies. The president has made eradicating the Hizmet movement a top priority at home and abroad. "This network organizes itself swiftly in the countries it goes to by using Turkey's name and power, and opportunities are offered to it as a result," a senior Turkish official said ahead of Erdogan's departure for Uganda on Tuesday. "Through these trips, it will be explained that this is a terrorist organization harmful to Turkey and that Turkey does not support it," the official said. Erdogan has long described Hizmet as a terrorist grouping, but the formal designation by cabinet puts it on a par with Kurdish militants confronting the Turkish army and Islamic State fighters operating in the country. The Hizmet movement had for decades underpinned Turkish efforts to deepen foreign ties, especially in the assertive opening to Africa, the Middle East and Asia after the Islamist-rooted AK Party founded by Erdogan took power in 2002. Its schools, including close to a hundred in sub-Saharan Africa alone, have been a source of influence and revenue for the movement and paved the way for Turkish commercial interests to gain a foothold in new markets. Sons and daughters of political elites have been educated in their classrooms. But differences between Erdogan and Gulen began to emerge over issues including a peace process with Kurdish militants in Turkey's southeast, and came to a head in December 2013 when police and prosecutors seen as sympathetic to Gulen opened a corruption investigation into Erdogan's inner circle. Authorities have since taken over Gulenist media companies, seized a bank and purged police and judiciary of presumed followers. They have also taken their battle overseas, pressuring governments to shut down Hizmet schools and seeking Gulen's extradition from the United States, where he lives in self-imposed exile. "We consider the Gulen network a national security threat and the issue of their influence regularly comes up in our discussions with African leaders among others," a source in Erdogan's office said. "The president will presumably convey this message to his counterparts over the coming days." BATTLE FOR INFLUENCE It is a struggle for influence with significant implications in trade as well as political relations. Turkish exports to Africa have grown more than sevenfold since the AKP came to power, rising to $12.5 billion last year from $1.7 billion in 2002, with textiles, food, construction and infrastructure services among the key sectors. Instability in the Middle East and economic weakness in Europe, Turkey's traditional export markets, have made trade with Africa all the more important. But Ankara faces new rivals like China, India and Brazil as it seeks to carve out influence on a continent long dominated by former colonial powers. "The African continent is a big opportunity for Turkey because there are many problems in the Middle East ... affecting Turkey's economic projects," said Fouad Farhaoui of the Ankara-based USAK think-tank. Uganda and Kenya were particularly important to Turkey in part for their energy, agriculture and infrastructure needs, where Turkish firms have expertise, Farhaoui said, but also because of Kenya's role in regional security. Turkey is a key ally of the Somali government as it tries to rebuild after more than two decades of conflict, with Erdogan the first non-African leader to visit in nearly 20 years when he went there in 2011. Good relations with Kenya, also trying to secure Somalia's stability, are vital for that Turkish effort. A second Turkish official acknowledged that the question of Gulen had become a thorn in relations with some African states, but said Turkey would continue to seek the closure of Hizmet schools and their replacement with Turkish state-backed institutions. A government source said there was at least one Hizmet school in Uganda and four in Kenya. The schools are generally very well equipped and funded and teach a secular curriculum in English. The deputy head of the Journalists and Writers Foundation (GYV), a Gulen-affiliated group which has spoken on behalf of the Hizmet movement in the past, said previous efforts to close institutions had caused a backlash in Africa and met with limited success. "African government officials send their kids to these schools ... They have their own intelligence and allow the schools accordingly," Deputy Chairman Erkam Tufan Aytav said. "(Erdogan's) efforts in African countries didn't succeed and will not succeed." (Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Seda Sezer in Istanbul, Nevzat Devranoglu in Ankara; Writing by Nick Tattersall; editing by Ralph Boulton)
A day after the Indian governments decision to cancel all deals with Finmeccanica, a key interlocutor from the United Kingdom hinted at India losing out on some cutting-edge military hardware. Hugo Swire, Minister of State in Charge of Foreign and Commonwealth office, hinted that there are companies within the Finmeccanica group that make extremely good aircrafts which may be of interest to the Indian Air Force.

The Union government on Monday had cancelled all ongoing tenders for defence equipment won by Italys Finmeccanica, which is being investigated for bribery in the AgustaWestland VVIP helicopter deal. Only fresh capital acquisition has been cancelled and the firm would continue to conduct annual maintenance and supply spare parts for defence supplies already acquired.

The government has already withdrawn the RFP for heavyweight torpedoes for Socrpene submarines, which was won by Finmeccanica subsidiary WASS during the UPA regime. The government is now working out the alternatives.

A timeline of the transactions:

August 1999: Air HQ proposes procurement of VIP helicopters

February 2010: Ministry of Defence concludes a contract with AgustaWestland for 12 VVIP choppers at euro 556.262 million (Rs. 3,726.96 crore)

November 2012 to February 2013: First three VVIP AgustaWestland helicopters arrive at Palam Air Force base.

February 12, 2013: Finmeccanica chief Giuseppe Orsi, accused in VVIP chopper scam, arrested by Italian police for alleged payoffs.

February 25, 2013: The CBI registers inquiry against 11 persons, including former IAF Air Chief Marshal S.P. Tyagi, and his cousins, besides four companies, for alleged kickbacks by AgustaWestland.

February 27, 2013: The government moves a motion in the Rajya Sabha for the formation of a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC).

January 2014: India terminates VVIP chopper deal on the grounds of breach of pre-contract integrity pact. Justice B.P. Jeevan Reddy is named arbitrator.

January 11, 2014: Mysterious initials AP crop up in AgustaWestland trial.

Story continues

September, 2014: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) makes first arrest in the money laundering probe. Gautam Khaitan, a former board member of a Chandigarh-based tech firm named in the case, is arrested for his alleged role in routing funds for kickbacks.

October, 2014: Mr. Orsi and ex-AgustaWestland head Bruno Spagnolini are acquitted of corruption charges by an Italian court. But the two are sentenced to a two-year jail term on charges of falsification of invoices.

April 7, 2016: An Italian court reverses the acquittal of executives of Finmeccanica. The unofficial translation of the order shows evidence of corruption in the helicopter deal between IAF and Finmeccanica. The order also says that some of the kickbacks travelled to India as payment for various officials.

April 26, 2016: BJP targets Congress leaders over recently found evidence of corruption. Accused middleman in the deal, James Christian Michel, says he is willing to answer all questions from Indian investigators.

May 2, 2016: Former Air Chief, Sandeep Tyagi appears before CBI. CBI says, Tyagi has confessed to having met Finmeccanica chief.

May 27,2016: PAC takes up CAG report on AgustaWestland issue
How much should the public really know about the Air Forces next-generation bomber? Thats the question the Senate Appropriations Committee is asking in a report accompanying the panels 2017 $575 billion spending bill for the Defense Department.

The legislation, which the powerful committee approved last week, directs the Pentagons Inspector General to review the security strategy for the budget-busting Long Range Strike-Bomber, designated the B-21, and provide an assessment back to Capitol Hill about what the general public should be let in.

Related: Do the Numbers Add Up for the New B-21 Bomber?

The Air Force awarded the contract to Northrop Grumman last October for the B-21 program, which could cost $100 billion over its lifetime. But while the Air Force is slated to wrap up its own review of the security surrounding the program this summer, the service and its leaders have been evasive when asked for details about the program.

Thats raised the ire of some Senate lawmakers who are worried the Air Force might be hiding the aircrafts true price tag, among other things, and doesnt want to be embarrassed should costs spiral out of control. Another reason to be on edge is that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the countrys most prestigious, and expensive weapon is believed to have been hacked by the Chinese in 2011.

The report states that while "there is additional pressure on the Air Force to reveal further information, including the roles of the subcontractors and the contract value for the prime contractor  the value of additional program transparency must be balanced with the need for security protection."

The report stresses that any details about companies and subcontractors working on the bomber program "could be of interest to foreign intelligence services for traditional or cyber espionage efforts."

Related: How Will the Air Force Pay for its Budget-Busting Next-Generation Bomber?

By kicking the decision-making to a neutral, third party on what can or cant be disclosed about the high profile bomber seems to be a compromise between transparency, something the Pentagon is clearly bad at, and national security.

Story continues

While good government advocates will likely praise the Senates action as a step in the right direction, some security analysts who believe the less known about the B-21 the better, at least for now.

The openness and insecurity of the Pentagons acquisition system contributes directly to the rapid erosion of the U.S. militarys technological edge, Mackenzie Eaglen, a defense analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote last month in Defense One.

Worse, unneeded transparency risks sacrificing a national military advantage for no tangible gain, she added, noting the world doesnt need to know the exact weight and size of the stealthy aircraft just yet.

The reality is that Congress has successfully overseen highly classified programs for decades and could ably do so for the B-21 bomber, according to Eaglen. While public disclosure is often conducive to oversight, it can hamper certain weapons programs, encouraging political tampering that engenders cost overruns, schedule delays, and over-sharing of critical technical details.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
As part of their Live There' campaign that promotes experiencing destinations like a local, Airbnb is setting up a pop-up in Paris that invites travelers to learn about the art of being Parisian.

Between June 2 to 5, tourists in Paris will be able given a glimpse of France's " joie de vivre" through a series of workshops and events hosted at a pop-up venue in the 11th arrondissement.

Activities range from cooking workshops that revisit Parisian classics like the ham baguette sandwich, a craft beer tasting in line with one of the burgeoning local trends, wine tastings, a perfume-making workshop or a running tour of Paris with the local Nike Run Club.

To participate, guests are invited to 153 avenue Ledru-Rollin where workshops are scheduled between 10:30 am to 9 pm.

If your trip to Paris is later in the year, Airbnb hosts and travel experts will answer questions on Twitter with the hashtag #dingdong.

Select workshops will be hosted by English speakers.

For more details visit https://www.facebook.com/events/1076318509107630/.
Alexander McQueen's Paris boutique has won the second edition of the Prix Versailles for Commercial Architecture, reports Women's Wear Daily.

A jury of architects and cultural experts weighed in to choose the Rue Saint-Honore boutique for its ability to integrate with its landscape, its exterior architecture, interior design and services.

While last year's inaugural competition judged boutiques in France only, this year's contest was opened up to those internationally, with successful projects from Cambodia, the U.S., India and Brazil. Ganjam's jewelry boutique in Bangalore, India was awarded the interior store prize, while furniture store TOG-Philippe Starck in Sao Paulo, Brazil won for best store exterior.
The father and stepmother of the man suspected in the shooting rampage in west Houston Sunday that left two dead  including the 25-year-old gunman  says he was a veteran struggling with PTSD.



"That's not who he was," his stepmother told ABC7 in Los Angeles about Dionisio Garza III of San Bernardino, whom ABC7 identified as the alleged shooter.



A spokesman for the West Houston Police Department says they are not confirming "any identities" until the medical examiner at the Harris County Institute of Federal Sciences concludes his investigation. However, police sources told WFAA that Garza has been identified as the suspect.



KPRC Channel 2 in Houston also identified Garza as the alleged shooter. The news station reached Garza's father, who said his son had become increasingly troubled in recent months, and traveled to Houston to meet others who believed that the U.S. was on the brink of collapse.







"He was trying to get us all to go over there and you know go live in a compound. That kind of talk, you know? That wasn't my son," the man told KPRC, while also explaining that "I really believe this is a PTSD thing."



The father, a missionary, also said he spoke to his son just one day before the deadly shooting.



"He was rambling off about the economy collapsing, you know. And that something was going to happen by Monday, that kind of stuff. Of course you look back now and there were signs. There were signs," he said.



Meanwhile, Garza's stepmother told ABC7 he was trying hard to adjust to life as a civilian, but was struggling.



"He did two tours in Afghanistan," she says. "I think he was proud to be in the military, but I know he went through a lot. I think he was always haunted by everything that happened, what he saw."



She told ABC7 she had just seen him last week. "We're devastated. I can't think of all the families that were affected by this, and it's just not him."



 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 Sunday, Garza allegedly killed a man in an auto detail shop before opening fire in the neighborhood, say police. Multiple outlets report the victim was Eugene Linscomb, 57.



Houston police responded to a report of a shooting in progress at 10:15 a.m. and arrived at Memorial Drive where at least one suspect repeatedly shot at officers, Police Chief Martha Montalvo said at a Sunday afternoon news conference.





Alleged Gunman in Deadly Houston Shooting Spree Suffered from PTSD, Says Family: 'He Was Always Haunted by What Happened'| Crime & Courts, Shootings, True Crime



"Our primary responding officer is lucky to be alive and was unhurt when the suspect opened fire on his patrol vehicle as it arrived on scene," police wrote in a Facebook post alongside photos of the car riddled with bullet holes.



Local residents were told to stay inside or to "avoid the area."



An officer fatally shot one of the suspects, officials announced in another Facebook post.



"An active shooter fired shots from a high powered weapon and caused multiple bullet strikes to one of our HPD helicopters," police wrote, noting that none of the officers in the chopper was injured.



Police said one citizen was fatally shot in the head inside a vehicle. The circumstances surrounding the death were not immediately available.



"We do not know what started this," Montalvo said at the news conference. "But what we do know is they were shooting randomly, just at whoever."



On Sunday, police said in a Facebook update that the two deputies who were shot by the suspect had been released from hospitals.



Three citizens wounded by the active shooter suspect are reported to have non life-threatening injuries and will be hospitalized for some time, the post said.



"HPD homicide detectives say no motive in the incident has been determined at this time. They are interviewing the second armed male possible suspect to determine his role in today's incident. He remains at an area hospital with gunshot wounds.



"Active shooter struck five law enforcement patrol vehicles using a high powered weapon. The HPD patrol vehicle shown in previous photos had at least 21 visible bullet strikes."
Per reports from Tech Insider on Friday, Alphabet Inc. GOOGL is selling its robotics division Boston Dynamics to Toyota Research Institute, a division of Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corp. TM.

The financials of the deal have not been disclosed yet, but according to Tech Insider sources, its almost finalized.

According to an earlier report from Bloomberg in March, Amazon.com AMZN and Toyota Research Institute were the potential buyers.

Google acquired Boston Dynamics in late 2013 as a part of its robotics division, Replicant, which makes humanoid and animal-like mobile robots customized for military purposes.

The primary architect of Replicant was Android founder Andy Rubin under whose leadership eight robotics-related companies were bought by Google in 2013. Under Rubin, the division was preparing for its first consumer product launch in 2020. However, the process was obstructed with Rubins departure in 2014.

Additional issues cropped up when the Boston Dynamics team started facing problems working with Google robotic engineers in Tokyo and California while developing a new range of products including the "low-cost quadruped robot.

With all these, Google executives became skeptical about the revenue-generating capacity of Boston Dynamics. They also feared that humanoids could take human jobs.

In December, after its reorganization into Alphabet, Google announced the decision to fold Replicant into Google X hardware lab. Boston Dynamics was not made a part of this fold and instead put up for sale.

One of Tech Insiders sources called this deal a friendly buyout considering Boston Dynamics long-time relationship with the Toyota Research Institute.

The deal appears to be a win-win situation for both Google and Toyota. Google will be able to cull what appears to be a problematic and non-revenue generating operation while Toyota Research Institute will be in a position to use Boston Dynamics expertise for developing robots for industrial or personal use.

Story continues

At present, Google has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). A better-ranked stock in the broader technology space is CommVault Systems, Inc. CVLT, sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).

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Altitude Film Distribution has acquired U.K. and Ireland rights to Simon Dixons Tiger Raid, following its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival last month. Bankside Films is handling international rights.

Bankside describes the film, which will receive its U.K. premiere next month at the Edinburgh Film Festival, as a tense and visceral thriller. It tells the story of Joe and Paddy, members of a private security crew working in the Middle East.

They have been assigned to kidnap the daughter of a powerful man as part of a major robbery  a Tiger Raid, Bankside says. Joe, the older of the two, carries a brutal and unrepentant view of the world, defined by fear and adoration of their invisible but omnipresent boss. Paddy is younger and recklessly ambitious, hungry to progress through the ranks of the crew.

Neither man trusts the other as they tell half-truths and stories of previous victories in a battle to determine who controls this increasingly volatile situation. As the raid progresses, deeply hidden truths about both mens pasts are revealed, fracturing their already fragile relationship and forcing them to face up to who they really are in order to survive its violent and shocking conclusion.

The movie is a Dixon Baxi Evans production, directed by Simon Dixon and produced by Gareth Coulam Evans with the participation of the Irish Film Board in association with Samson Films. Adapted from the stage play Radio Luxembourg by Mick Donnellan, the film was written by Donnellan, Dixon and Coulam Evans. Martina Niland and David Collins co-produce for Samson Films in Ireland.

Brian Gleeson (Assassins Creed, Snow White and the Huntsman), Damien Molony (Kill Your Friends) and Sofia Boutella (Kingsman: Secret Service, Star Trek Beyond) star in leading roles.

The deal was negotiated by Altitude Film Distributions Ellie Gibbons, with Bankside representing the filmmakers.

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Amber Heards lawyers said Tuesday that the actress has now filed a claim with Los Angeles police to investigate domestic violence allegations against estranged husband Johnny Depp.

Heards lawyers said The Danish Girl star didnt initially tell police about the abuse in order to protect Depps career, but has since been forced by his team to give a police statement.

Amber did not provide [an initial] statement to the LAPD in an attempt to protect her privacy and Johnnys career, Heards attorney Samantha F. Spector and her co-counsel Joseph P. Koenig said in a statement. Johnnys team has forced Amber to give a statement to the LAPD to set the record straight as to the true facts, as she cannot continue to leave herself open to the vicious false and malicious allegations that have infected the media.

With her statement Amber hopes to give the LAPD the opportunity to conduct an accurate and complete investigation into the events of that evening and before, the statement says. If that occurs, and the truth is revealed, there is no doubt that Ambers claims will be substantiated beyond any doubt, and hopefully Johnny will get the help that he so desperately needs.

An LAPD spokesperson told Variety on Tuesday that the department could not disclose information about domestic violence claims and that it was still investigating the case.

Heard was granted a temporary restraining order late last week after she accused the Edward Scissorhands thesp of domestic violence. She said the actor threw a cellphone at her, hitting her cheek and eye, while he was high and drunk during a fight on May 21.

Heard entered Los Angeles Superior Court on Friday morning with a bruise around her right eye, which she said was a result of the altercation.

Law enforcement officials said last week that investigators found no evidence of an assault the previous weekend, when the police responded to a domestic dispute on May 21 in downtown L.A. Heard told investigators that night that she did not want to file a criminal report.

Story continues

In reality, Amber acted no differently than many victims of domestic violence, who think first of the harm that might come to the abuser, rather than the abuse they have already suffered, Spector and Koenig said. Amber can no longer endure the relentless attacks and outright lies launched against her character in the Court of Public Opinion since the tragic events of May 21.

The statement mirrors Heards sworn declaration in which she said she endured excessive emotional, verbal and physical abuse during the entirety of their relationship.

Amber has suffered through years of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of Johnny, the attorneys statement continues. In domestic violence cases, it is not unusual for the perpetrators playbook to include miscasting the victim as the villain.

Amber is the victim. Amber is a hero, the statement goes on to say after Depps lawyer, Laura Wasser, said Heard was motivated by financial gains.

We took the high road. Unfortunately, Johnnys team immediately went to the press and began viciously attacking Ambers character. Amber is simply a victim of domestic violence, and none of her actions are motivated by money. Amber is a brave and financially independent woman who is showing the courage of her convictions by doing the right thing against Johnnys relentless army of lawyers and surrogates, Spector and Koenig added.

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Johnny Depp's Daughter Lily-Rose Defends Father After Abuse Allegations

Johnny Depp: Anatomy of a Fallen Movie Star

Amber Heard Says Johnny Depp Is 'Scary,' Struggles with Drug and Alcohol Abuse
(Reuters) - Amicus Therapeutics Inc said on Tuesday the European Commission approved the use of migalastat, its experimental treatment for Fabry disease, an inherited disease that creates pain and burning in the hands and feet. The European Medicines Agency had recommended approving migalastat in April. The Cranbury, New Jersey-based company is still seeking approval from U.S. regulators. Fabry disease is a potentially fatal disorder that affects about 1 in 40,000 to 60,000 men and occurs less frequently in women. It is caused by the build-up of fat-like substances, most notably in the kidneys, due to the deficiency or lack of an enzyme that metabolizes these lipids. The accumulation damages cells and can lead to kidney failure, heart attacks and strokes. It is currently treated with metoclopramide. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last fall asked Amicus for more comprehensive analysis of its trial data and the company put off submitting a new marketing application for the treatment. (Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru and Caroline Humer in New York; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Jeffrey Benkoe)
Leases can be chock full of fine print, but a move by one Salt Lake City apartment complex may have apartment dwellers reading their next one very carefully before signing on the dotted line.

City Park Apartments presented tenants with a "Facebook Addendum" late last week that requires them to like the building on the popular social media site within five days or otherwise be considered in breach of their lease, KSL-TV reports.

The addendum, which was taped to residents' doors, also reportedly includes a release that would allow the complex to post pictures of tenants and their visitors on their page  and a clause that prevents residents from posting anything negative about the community on any public forums or pages. (Editor's Note: A law firm representing City Park said the complex has sent an update to residents that they will not be in violation of their lease if they opt not to sign the addendum.)

It was brought to KSL's attention by a tenant who considered the addendum "outrageous" and a "violation of my privacy."

The law firm representing City Park Apartments told Credit.com in an email that the complex, "as part of opening its pool and an anticipated pool party  desired to provide some protection to its residents and its owners from usage of photos on its Facebook page from all community events."

"The 'Facebook' addendum was provided to them to assist in that protection," the firm wrote. "That addendum went beyond the request and intent of City Park Apartments, and was not carefully reviewed to ensure that it met with their needs and requests. At no time was any resident in jeopardy of eviction or action from City Park for failure to sign the addendum or 'friend' City Park Apartments. City Park has not implemented the addendum nor is it requiring its residents to execute it."

The firm did not respond immediately to follow-up questions from Credit.com regarding what protections, specifically, were being referenced.

Story continues

City Park Apartments' Facebook page, which boosts a 1.1. star rating, is currently riddled with reviews from people calling the complex out on the policy.

"This is one of the most absurd requirements I have EVER heard," one Facebook user wrote.

Facebook did not immediately respond to questions about whether it had any policies pertaining to this type of situation.

Attorney Zachary Myers told KSL, however, that the City Park Apartments' addendum had a few potential broader issues.

"The biggest issue that I have with it is that it seems to be discriminatory against elderly individuals and disabled individuals who are unable to utilize an online presence such as Facebook," he said.

Attention, Apartment Shoppers

Myers also told KSL that the complex may not be able to require tenants who already signed a lease to put their John Hancock on the add-on. Once you do sign the addendum, however, you could be legally beholden the terms, he said  a comment that underscores the importance of not blindly signing anything your landlord  or companies in general  put in front of you. You'll want to be aware of any clauses that you may not agree with.

And, of course, if you're in the market for a new apartment, you should check your credit. Most landlords pull a version of your credit report when deciding who to rent you and you don't want any errors or surprises to cause you to miss out on a lease that aligns with what you're looking for in an apartment. (You see where your credit currently stands by pulling your reports for free each year at AnnualCreditReport.com and viewing your credit scores for free each month on Credit.com.)



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LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / May 31, 2016 / Apivio Systems Inc. ("Apivio" or the "Company") (APV.V), a leading provider of VoIP solutions, today announced that it will be presenting at the 6th annual LD Micro Invitational on Tuesday, June 7, 2016 at 9.00 AM PST / 12 PM EST. President and CEO, Rob Bakshi, will present and meet with investors.

The conference will be held at the Luxe Sunset Bel Air Hotel and will feature 195 companies in the small / micro-cap space.

About Apivio Systems Inc.

Apivio is a Canadian technology company principally engaged in the design, development, marketing, and sale of communications equipment and software. It has a wholly-owned Korean subsidiary with an established track record of supplying VoIP telephone equipment and other products to major Korean and international telecommunications carriers. For more information regarding the Company, please visit www.apivio.com.

Contact:

Apivio Systems Inc.

Rob Bakshi

President and Chief Executive Officer

604-343-4200

rbakshi@apivio.com

About LD Micro:

LD Micro was founded in 2006 with the sole purpose of being an independent resource in the microcap space. What started out as a newsletter highlighting unique companies has transformed into an event platform hosting several influential conferences annually (Invitational, Summit, and Main Event).

In 2015, LDM launched the first pure microcap index (the LDMi) to exclusively provide intraday information on the entire sector. LD will continue to provide valuable tools for the benefit of everyone in the small and microcap universe.



For those interested in attending, please contact David Scher at david@ldmicro.com or visit www.ldmicro.com for more information.

SOURCE: Apivio Systems Inc. via LD Micro
Yahoo Finance is tracking the stocks youre following, based on your Yahoo Finance ticker searches.

Apple (AAPL) The tech giant may take longer between major iPhone upgrades from now on. A report by Japans Nikkei says Apple will adopt a three-year cycle.

Verizon (VZ)  Unionized workers who have been on strike since April will likely be headed back to work. A tentative deal between Verizon and its unions has been reached. The agreement includes 1,400 new jobs and pay raises topping 10%.

Monsanto (MON) - The Sunday Times is reporting that Bayer (BAYRY) is ready to sweeten its all-cash offer for Monsanto as soon as this week. Monsanto rejected Bayer's $122 per share offer last week. It is the biggest takeover proposed by a German buyer.

Cliff Natural Resources (CLF)  JPMorgan upgraded Cliffs Natural Resources to overweight from neutral with a $7 price target. The investment firm said it expects an increase in steel prices to generate higher near-term earnings growth.

Valeant Pharmaceuticals (VRX)  Details of the separation agreement between Valeant and its former CEO Michael Pearson have been released. In a regulatory filing, it was revealed that the company will pay Pearson $83,333 a month for the rest of the year to consult for the company and $15,000 for each month services are performed after 2016.
apple ad

Apple appears to have edited out an image of a same-sex couple in some of the international versions of its latest Mother's Day ad.

The tech company first posted the "Shot on iPhone  Mother's Day" video to its US YouTube page on May 1.

The ad runs through a sequence of images and short videos, "celebrating motherhood." It is set to the soundtrack of "Because You Are Who You Are," by K.S. Rhoads.

Among the many pictures of children and their mothers in the US version is a sweet image of a same-sex female couple lying down and smiling at the camera, alongside two babies.

Here's the US version of the 30-second ad:

But as French title Jeanne Magazine first reported, the image of the couple appears to have been cut from the French version of the video.

To make up for lost time, the French version includes two different images to the US video: A black-and-white image of a pregnant lady and an image of a woman lying in bed, kissing her small baby.

BuzzFeed points out that the same-sex couple  which it identifies as Instagram stars Melanie and Vanessa Roy (which goes with the "by Vanessa R." caption in the ad)  also don't appear in the German, Italian, Turkish, and Japanese versions of the ad.

It's not unusual for Apple to run different versions of an ad in different markets. However, it is strange that this particular image was omitted only in certain geographies  especially from a company that has made very public commitments to fostering inclusion and diversity across the business.

Apple hasn't yet explained its reasoning. The company was not immediately available to comment when contacted by Business Insider. BuzzFeed reported that Apple declined to comment.

NOW WATCH: Humans are defying the law of evolution





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There was no "choppa" to get Arnold Schwarzenegger out of this scary situation.

Read: Mother of Child Who Fell Into Gorilla Enclosure Defends Herself: 'Accidents Happen'

The action star was on safari in South Africa when an elephant blocked the road for his jeep to pass.

The animal decided to leave the road after a brief standoff and began walking away into the bush nearby. But suddenly, the elephant changed its mind and began charging the actors vehicle.

Schwarzenegger posted the heart-stopping video on Instagram saying: I couldn't have written this safari encounter better if it was a movie. I'm absolutely in awe of these beautiful, strong animals, even though some of us had to change our pants after this.

Luckily, Schwarzenegger and his friends in the Jeep were able to get away.

Read: Arnold Schwarzenegger Storms Out of Interview After Being Asked About Trump

The actor has been in South Africa since the weekend where he visited the home of the country's late leader, Nelson Mandela.

It was an honor to visit the home of one of my heroes today. We should all strive to emulate the grace Mandela showed in his commitment to public service. A photo posted by Arnold Schwarzenegger (@schwarzenegger) on May 28, 2016 at 8:28am PDT

The Terminator star also played chess with a young girl.

One of my favorite snaps today. Follow along with the @arnoldsports South Africa on Snapchat: ArnoldSchnitzel! A video posted by Arnold Schwarzenegger (@schwarzenegger) on May 28, 2016 at 4:28am PDT

He even fed a lion.

Story continues

Wait! This lion is stealing my protein! A photo posted by Arnold Schwarzenegger (@schwarzenegger) on May 26, 2016 at 2:52pm PDT





Watch: Caretaker Serenades Elephant to Sleep With Traditional Lullaby

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As well as offering low prices for tourists visiting the region, Asia is a major destination for travelers in search of idyllic beaches. The Singapore-based hotel booking website, Agoda, which specializes in the region, has given Relaxnews its expert advice on the best places to enjoy the turquoise waters of South-East Asia without breaking the bank. Plus, now is a great time to discover these upcoming Asian hotspots before the masses move in.

Thailand

To find rock-bottom prices in the Land of Smiles, travelers should avoid the county's well-trodden tourist hotspots. In Chanthaburi, in the east of the country, holidaymakers can find hotel rooms priced at an average $50 per night. This small town is situated 143 miles (230km) from Bangkok. For those who prefer to stay closer to the beaten track, Agoda recommends heading to Koh Tao, Koh Kood, Koh Mak or Kamala Beach in Phuket.

Philippines

The gulf between luxury hotels and budget backpacker accommodation is huge in this Asian archipelago. Among the many low-cost options, the booking experts recommend Coron Island, where a night's accommodation can be snapped up for around $82, on average. Travelers in search of low-cost luxury should consider Malapuscua Island, where a sea-view room with air con shouldn't cost more than $130.

Indonesia

Travelers can count on spending around $100 per night for a room in one of Indonesia's beachside destinations. However, lower prices can be found in Banyuwangi and Bangka, where intrepid travelers can find rooms under $40 a night. For an all-inclusive stay with breakfast and a sea view, the Raja Ampat Islands have options under $130 per night.

Malaysia

Travelers don't have to pay premium rates to stay near popular beaches in Malaysia. The country's three favored beach destinations -- Tioman Island, Langkawi and Penang -- all offer reasonably priced accommodation, with hotels costing no more than $70 a night, on average.

Cambodia

Cambodia still has some relatively well-hidden gems, such as Koh Rong and Koh Rong Samloem. According to Agoda, Koh Rong -- the second largest Cambodian island -- is set to become a popular tourist destination over the next few years. There's no time like the present to visit, since the average hotel room currently costs under $50 per night.

Story continues

Myanmar (Burma)

After a long period of isolation, Myanmar is Asia's up-and-coming fashionable destination. The country's most stunning beaches can be found in Ngapali, Ngwe Saung and Chaungtha. The cheapest option for travelers is no doubt Chaungtha, where the Agoda website lists hotel rooms under $45 a night, which is 50% less than in the two other destinations.

Vietnam

According to Agoda, one the best beach destinations in Vietnam is Da Nang, in the center of the country. In this coastal city -- right next to the Marble Mountains and not far from the picturesque Hoi An -- a hotel room can be snapped up for $8 a night. At the other end of the scale, Vietnam's luxury hotel prices can shoot up to $4,000! The booking experts recommend the island of Phu Quoc as must-see in Vietnam. Located in the Gulf of Thailand, close to Cambodia, travelers can bag hotel rooms priced under $100 per night.
WHITE ROCK, BC / ACCESSWIRE / May 31, 2016 / The Asiamet Resources Limited (the "Company" or "ARS") Financial Statements and Management Discussion & Analysis - Quarterly Highlights ("MD&A - QH") for the three months ended March 31, 2016 are available for viewing on www.sedar.com or www.asiametresources.com.

Exploration and evaluation expenditures on Asiamet projects for the three months ended March 31, 2016 totaled $498,024 or 72% of total expenses of $694,753. Administration expenses totaled $196,729 or 28% of total expenses of $694,753. By comparison, exploration and evaluation expenditures on Asiamet projects for the three months ended March 31, 2015 totaled $4,299,981 of which $3,866,813 related to the acquisition of the Beutong IUP for direct exploration expenses of $433,168 being 60% of total expenses of $722,683 (net of the acquisition costs). Administration expenses totaled $289,515 or 40% of total expenses of $694,753.

As at March 31, 2016, the Company had a working capital deficiency of $145,233. On April 27, 2016, the Company closed a brokered private placement and issued and settled through CREST 48,387,097 common shares at a price of GBP 3.1 pence per share for total gross proceeds of 1.5 million (equivalent to approximately $2.2 million). The Company has received 1.39 million ($2 million) as at the date of this release, with the balance to be received shortly. On April 26, 2016 and May 19, 2016 the Company received a total of 13.2 billion IDR or approximately $980,000 of expected VAT refunds. This funding will allow the Company to continue its planned operations without interruption.

As previously reported the highlight of the quarter was the announcement on April 5, 2016, of the results of the independently prepared Preliminary Economic Assessment ("PEA") study of the Beruang Kanan Main Copper Deposit. The PEA is the first study undertaken to evaluate the economics of developing an open pit mine and heap leach solvent extraction electro-winning facility ("SX-EW") to directly produce copper cathode based on the near surface copper deposit reported in the 2015 BKM Resource estimate (ARS NR October 21, 2015). Results of the PEA study demonstrate excellent potential for developing a robust, low strip ratio, low capital intensity copper project with low operating costs, strong cash flow generation capacity and significant upside potential through further resource growth. The PEA is available for viewing on www.sedar.com or www.asiametresources.com.

Asiamet also holds an indirect 40% interest in the Beutong Izin Usaha Pertambangan ("Beutong IUP") and has been focused on the conversion of this IUP exploration to an IUP production. Following a number of delays related to implementing regulations associated with the Mining Law, this conversion is now in the latter stages of the approvals process. A final presentation to the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources ("ESDM") is scheduled for May 31st, 2016 and a decision on the grant of the IUP production is expected shortly thereafter. Approval of the IUP production would secure long term mining title valid for 20 years, extendable for two subsequent periods each of 10 years' duration.

Under Indonesian Mining law the holder of an IUP exploration is guaranteed an IUP production provided all requirements have been met, and an IUP exploration cannot be terminated if there has been an application made to convert to an IUP production. Irrespective of this provision, the Company has also requested an additional one year suspension of the Beutong IUP exploration to ensure continuity of title during the final stages of the IUP conversion process. The Beutong IUP exploration would otherwise expire on June 15, 2016.

Similarly, Asiamet has been progressing the conversion of the Jelai Izin Usaha Pertambangan ("Jelai IUP") (100% indirect interest) from an IUP exploration to an IUP production. Asiamet is actively engaged in providing and presenting the required documentation to various government departments including ESDM and is in the latter stages of this process. Approval of the IUP production would secure long term mining title valid for 20 years, extendable for two subsequent periods each of 10 years duration.

To ensure continuity of title during the IUP conversion process, the Company has requested an additional one year suspension of the Jelai IUP exploration. The Jelai IUP would otherwise expire on June 2, 2016.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Tony Manini, Deputy Chairman and CEO

For further information please contact:

Tony Manini

Deputy Chairman and CEO, Asiamet Resources Limited

Telephone: +61 3 8644 1300

Email: tony.manini@asiametresources.com

FlowComms Limited

Sasha Sethi

Telephone: +44 (0) 7891 677 441

Email: Sasha@flowcomms.com / Mehrdad@flowcomms.com



Asiamet Resources Nominated Adviser

RFC Ambrian Limited

Andrew Thomson / Oliver Morse

Telephone: +61 8 9480 2500

Email: Andrew.Thomson@rfcambrian.com / Oliver.Morse@rfcambrian.com

VSA Capital Limited

Andrew Raca / Justin McKeegan

Telephone: +44 20 3005 5004 / +44 20 3005 5009

Email: araca@vsacapital.com

Optiva Securities Limited

Christian Dennis

Telephone: +44 20 3137 1903

Email: Christian.Dennis@optivasecurities.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 contains forward-looking statements that are based on the Companys current expectations and estimates. Forward-looking statements are frequently characterized by words such as "plan," "expect," "project," "intend," "believe" "anticipate," "estimate," "suggest," "indicate" and other similar words or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from estimated or anticipated events or results implied or expressed in such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, among others: the actual results of current exploration activities; conclusions of economic evaluations; changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined; possible variations in ore grade or recovery rates; accidents, labour disputes and other risks of the mining industry; delays in obtaining governmental approvals or financing; and fluctuations in metal prices. There may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which it is made and, except as may be required by applicable securities laws, the Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and accordingly undue reliance should not be put on such statements due to the inherent uncertainty therein.

SOURCE: Asiamet Resources Limited
Kuala Lumpur (AFP) - Half a century after they died, the bodies of 32 Australian soldiers and their dependents, many of whom were killed in the Vietnam War, were returned home from Malaysia Tuesday.

In a sombre ceremony, their flag-draped coffins were loaded onto Australian airforce planes by a military guard of honour as a bugle sounded the Last Post.

Australia sent more than 60,000 troops to fight in the Vietnam War and 521 were killed. Soldiers were buried in the nearest Commonwealth cemetery unless their families could pay for repatriation to Australia.

"As a soldier, I am proud that the remains can be brought closer to their loved ones," said Abdullah Sani Mohamed, the Army Museum Director, who oversees Terendak Military Cemetery in Malaysia, where the Australians were buried.

He said 21 of the deceased were Australian soldiers killed in Vietnam, three had been killed in the fight against communist insurgents in Malaysia, and eight others were family members.

In 1966, Australia changed the repatriation policy so that all fallen soldiers would be taken home.

Last year, the government offered to pay for the repatriation of any soldiers buried overseas prior to the policy change, with 33 families accepting the offer.

Another body will be repatriated from Kranji Cemetery in Singapore, the Australian government said in a statement.

The remains in Malaysia were driven from Terendak Military Cemetery to Subang Airbase, west of the capital Kuala Lumpur, in white vans early Tuesday.

The caskets, draped with the Australian flag, were carried onto two waiting Royal Australian Air Force C-17 Globemaster aircraft, as top brass and officials from both countries looked on.

Family members of the deceased, including Christopher Bowtell, whose grandfather Robert Walter Bowtell died in the Vietnam War, were at the event.

"He is finally coming home," Bowtell, who also serves in the Australian army, told AFP, adding that his family were "pretty excited -- it is going to be quite an experience".

The coffins will be flown to Richmond Royal Australian Air Force Base, where families of the servicemen and civilians will gather for a ceremony Thursday.

This year also marks half a century since the Battle of Long Tan, which took place in August 1966 and was Australias costliest day in the Vietnam War, with 18 soldiers killed.
(Repeats with no changes to text)

By Susan Taylor

MONTREAL, May 31 (Reuters) - An Australian mining veteran who made investors billions with a shrewd bet on coal in Mozambique is aiming for another big score with Canadian iron ore, even as a global gush of new supply threatens to depress already slumping prices.

Champion Iron Chief Executive Michael O'Keeffe is laying the groundwork to restart Bloom Lake mine in northern Quebec's metals-rich Labrador Trough.

Champion bought Bloom Lake last year for only C$10.5 million ($8.04 million) after Cliffs Natural Resources, which paid $4.9 billion for it in 2011, put the unprofitable mine into creditor protection.

Champion will have its work cut out. The spot iron ore price is sputtering at $51 a tonne, down from an all-time high of about $190 in 2011, as an already oversupplied market absorbs ore from new mega-mines.

Best known for turning Riversdale Mining from a coal explorer in Mozambique with a market cap of A$7 million ($5 million) into a producer that Rio Tinto acquired for nearly A$4 billion in 2011, O'Keeffe says he's "measured and controlled" - anything but a gambler.

"I pride myself on being able to pick the bottom," he said in an interview with Reuters.

Rio, however, wrote off its investment in Riversdale a few years later and fired its CEO over the failed venture.

O'Keeffe, who moved his family to Montreal, doesn't see the market recovering quickly. That gives Champion the time to develop mine and processing plans, he said, that will reduce costs and boost annual production to 7.5 million tonnes from 6 million tonnes.

Pilot studies have already shown new processing equipment could help boost recovery rates to 80 percent from about 70 percent when the mine last operated, he added.

The timing and pace of any restart will likely be decided at year-end, he said, a call that boils down to costs.

NOT TIME FOR NEW MINES

There are few companies anywhere making concrete plans to start producing iron ore.

Story continues

"Now is not the time to start new mines. Now is the time to work what is already up harder," said Nev Power, chief executive of Fortescue Metals, the world's No. 4 producer.

The "Big Three" - Rio, BHP Billiton and Vale - have been slashing costs to squeeze out higher-cost rivals.

Separately, Australia's 55-million-tonne Roy Hill mine, combined with Vale's development of a 90-million-tonne expansion, S11D, in Brazil, may add more than 10 percent to the global sea-borne iron ore supply, said Clarksons Platou Securities analyst Jeremy Sussman.

"In order to balance the market, we'll need to see high-cost production come offline. And that's going to be painful," he said.

Iron ore from the remote Labrador Trough gets a premium for its high 66 percent concentration, versus the 62 percent standard, but is disadvantaged by its distance from the Chinese market.

Australia's government forecasts a price of $55 per tonne next year, so "what we have to then ensure, is that our costs of delivering to China are below $55," O'Keeffe said.

That's far from Bloom Lake's 2014 cash production cost of $81 and the largest miners' current cost of about $30 a tonne.

"They're going to have their hands full," said Clarksons' Sussman, noting that Bloom Lake was in the top quartile for costs.

O'Keeffe said company spending has been cut "significantly" and the mine is now free from costly rail and port access agreements. It could also benefit from planned government investments in that infrastructure.

Sandy Chim, the chief executive of neighboring miner Century Iron, said O'Keeffe is "brave" to bet on an uncertain market.

"It is courageous to put it forward," Chim said. "I like to see people take the first move in a particular area that we're in. It would be good to have somebody being a catalyst."

($1 = 1.3066 Canadian dollars)

($1 = 1.3922 Australian dollars) (With additional reporting by Jim Regan in Sydney; Editing by Paul Simao)
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Police in Australia on Tuesday charged a former worker at the Perth Mint with stealing more than A$75,000 ($54,000) worth of coins and gold bars. The theft occurred during the 27-year-old man's short employment as a contractor at the mint, the Western Australian Police Gold Stealing Detection Unit said. The Perth Mint has sophisticated security measures to detect any breaches and the theft was an isolated incident and no customers' precious metals were taken, the mint said in a statement. (Reporting by James Regan; Editing by Robert Birsel)
LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / May 31, 2016 / Bucha, Inc. (ABRW), the California-based owner of the Bucha Live Kombucha brand that recently signed a definitive agreement to acquire the New Age Beverages Group, a leading all-natural tea and other healthy beverage company, today announced that it will be presenting at the 6th annual LD Micro Invitational on Wednesday, June 8th at 1 PM PST / 4 PM EST. Brent David Willis, Chief Executive Officer of Bucha, Inc. will be giving the presentation and meeting with investors.

The Bucha Live Kombucha brand is one of the leaders in the rapidly growing Kombucha category and one of the fastest growing brands in the segment with revenue growth of 353% growth 2012-2015. It was recently named as a breakout brand for 2016 by the Hartman Group because of it's mainstream appealing flavor profile and was rated the preferred Kombucha flavor by 43% over its competitors.

Bucha, Inc. recently signed a definitive agreement to purchase the $50 million New Age Beverages Group, including their XingTea in the RTD Tea category, the new XingEnergy in Energy Drinks, and Aspen Pure in Functional Waters. The transaction is expected to close on or about June 30th, and brings more than $7.5MM in cost and revenue synergies.

Bucha, Inc. will be sampling its entire portfolio at the event including its new Elderflower Green Tea Kombucha and the full line of products from New Age Beverages. The Company will also discuss the merger, convergence and integration plans, and next steps.

The conference will be held at the Luxe Sunset Bel Air Hotel and will feature 195 companies in the small / micro-cap space.

View Bucha, Inc.'s profile here: http://www.ldmicro.com/profile/ABRW

Profiles powered by LD Micro - News Compliments of Accesswire

About Bucha, Inc.

Based in Torrance, California, Bucha, Inc. was created in May 2016. It was originally founded as two separate companies in 2010, American Brewing Company and B&R Liquid Adventure. In 2014 American Brewing became a public company trading under the symbol ABRW, and in 2015, the Company acquired 100% of the assets of Bucha Live Kombucha from B&R. American Brewing then sold their brewing assets to focus on the new business. In May 2016, the company signed a definitive agreement to acquire 100% of the assets of the New Age Beverages Group. The Company's website is www.mybucha.com.

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About LD Micro

LD Micro was founded in 2006 with the sole purpose of being an independent resource in the microcap space. What started out as a newsletter highlighting unique companies has transformed into an event platform hosting several influential conferences annually (Invitational, Summit, and Main Event).

In 2015, LDM launched the first pure microcap index (the LDMi) to exclusively provide intraday information on the entire sector. LD will continue to provide valuable tools for the benefit of everyone in the small and microcap universe.

For those interested in attending, please contact David Scher at david@ldmicro.com or visit www.ldmicro.com for more information.

Contact:

Name: Julie Anderson

Phone: (408) 605-9449

Address: 180 W. Dayton Street, Edmonds, WA 98020

Email: Julie@mybucha.com

SOURCE: Bucha, Inc. via LD Micro
Monday at the Sasquatch! festival, held at the famous Gorge Amphitheatre in Quincy, Washington, also happened to be Memorial Day. Traditionally, the holiday is a time to reflect and honor those who died while serving in the armed forces, of course; but in a musical festival setting, it was a day for paying tribute to recently departed rock n roll legends as well.



Sasquatch!s fourth and final day started off with a bold set from electro-soul-pop androgyne BRNS, who took the stage serving Marc Bolan/Jim Morrison rock-star realness (its no wonder one fan tossed a pink brassiere in his direction), and capped off his electric, glammy set with a falsetto-laced cover of the late David Bowies Heroes. The song was a perfect segueway after his unexpected remake of Arcade Fires Rebellion (Lies), since Arcade Fire were one of Bowies last musical collaborators.

Later on the main stage, New York alt-rockers X Ambassadors paid homage to Prince, with this festival seasons go-to cover song, Purple Rain. It wasnt the first Prince tribute of Sasquatch! 2016: On Friday, Seattle R&B revivalists Grace Love & The True Loves grooved out to Kiss, and Andra Day covered I Would Die 4 U. (Day also honored other late musical greats, including Nina Simone, Bob Marley, and Queens Freddie Mercury.)

While BRNS and X Ambassadors drew inspiration from the past, other Sasquatch! on Monday acts looked to the future  and, in their own indirect way, honored ground-breakers/game-changers like Bowie and Prince, by pushing musical boundaries and defying expectations.

Most notable was former folky Sufjan Stevens, now reinvented as an angel-winged, banjo-smashing, Prophet-synth-playing, glow-in-the-dark, postmodern space-rocker. Looking like hed just walked off the set of Liquid Sky (or maybe off the set of an Empire of the Sun or Flaming Lips music video), Stevens hit the stage wearing neon warpaint and Christmas tinsel, and flanked by two dancers nicknamed Cat and Dog (the hardest-working ladies in show business  besides Grimes and Florence Welch). Stevens explained that after touring for a year singing songs about death (his 2015 critics-list-topper, Carrie & Lowell, was inspired by the passing of his mentally ill mother), it felt good to be performing more celebratory fare  although he later asked the audience, Do you mind if we ruin the party with some folk songs? It wouldnt be a Sufjan Stevens show without a few songs about death!

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The party got restarted at the end of the set, however, when Stevens performed a Vocoder-trippy, 25-minute rendition of Impossible Soul while dressed like a giant disco ball, undergoing a costume change midway through the song and reappearing wearing a suit fashioned out of rainbow balloons. It was a nonstop ecstatic cabaret, and even if some people in the crowd were confused by Stevenss wild new Day-Glo direction, no one seemed disappointed.

Canadian visionary Grimes, aka Claire Boucher, also brought experimental, exploratory electropop to the main stage  coming across as a sort of avant garde Debbie Gibson during her aggressive but effervescent, proudly girl-powered set. While her boundless creativity was hampered a bit by her daytime slot, which didnt allow for her usual onstage trippy audiovisuals, Grimes definitely didnt play it safe. The highlight of her hour-long show: a Russian version of Scream, originally recorded with Taiwanese rapper Aristophanes. The bubbly, Hello Kitty-bowed Grimes turned downright demonic  and, yes, she screamed a lot  in what was Mondays most ferocious and fearless moment.

Sasquatch! ended with a very different sort of pop goddess: the ethereal and benevolent Florence Welsh, of the Machine, gliding onto the stage like a dream in an Old Hollywood pink chiffon dressing gown, barefooted and beaming. When she wasnt belting out her bands many anthemic hits or channeling Stevie Nicks circa Fleetwood Macs Gypsy music video with her hippie ballet moves, Florence was a great unifier of the Sasquatch! masses  crawling into the crowd to accept gifts of flower crowns from fans, or even (nicely) demanding that audience members put away their phones for the duration of her sentimental love ballad How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful. The fact that the audience actually heeded her request and stopped taking selfies for five minutes was a testament to this womans total command of the stage, and it was the perfect way to end Sasquatch!s 15th year.
Babymetal has been steadily building a portfolio of candid pics with metal celebrities, from Metallica's Kirk Hammett and Megadeth's Dave Mustaine to Trivium's Matt Heafy, Deftones' Chino Moreno and Slayer's Kerry King and Gary Holt. The children of the Fox God also had a meta moment when they took photos with the Metal God himself, Judas Priest's Rob Halford, during their worldwide travels. Now Halford is giving Babymetal an even bigger stamp of approval: Billboard can exclusively announce that when the trio performs at the third annual Journeys Alternative Press Music Awards (APMAs) on July 18, live from Schottenstein Center in Columbus, Ohio, he will join them onstage.

How Japanese Phenoms Babymetal Were Made in Pop's Image

"Honestly, I am still at a loss of what to feel," says Babymetal's Su-metal about the pairing with Halford. "But to be able to perform together with the Metal God, I am in disbelief."

"It's really cool to hear and watch such a strong young Japanese metal band make solid growth in the world with such unique conviction and invite me to headbang along with them for this special appearance," says Halford. "Further proof of the continuing power exchange from the roots of metal into the future metalsphere!"

Babymetal and Halford will join such previously announced performers as Good Charlotte, Yellowcard, Papa Roach and Beartooth at 2016's event, which will once again be hosted by All Time Low's Alex Gaskarth and Jack Barakat. In addition to bestowing such fan-voted awards as best live band, most dedicated fan base and album of the year, the APMAs have named four-time Alternative Press cover subject Marilyn Manson as 2016's Icon Award recipient. Go here for more information about the APMAs.

[Editor's note: This article has been updated with a quote from Rob Halford.]
Babymetal has been steadily building a portfolio of candid pics will metal celebrities, from Metallica's Kirk Hammett and Megadeth's Dave Mustaine to Trivium's Matt Heafy, Deftones' Chino Moreno and Slayer's Kerry King and Gary Holt. The children of the Fox God also had a meta moment when they took photos with the Metal God himself, Judas Priest's Rob Halford, during their worldwide travels. Now Halford is giving Babymetal an even bigger stamp of approval: Billboard can exclusively announce that when the trio performs at the third annual Journeys Alternative Press Music Awards (APMAs) on July 18, live from Schottenstein Center in Columbus, Ohio, he will join them onstage.

How Japanese Phenoms Babymetal Were Made in Pop's Image

"Honestly, I am still at a loss of what to feel," says Babymetal's Su-metal about the pairing with Halford. "But to be able to perform together with the Metal God, I am in disbelief."

Watch the clip below of Babymetal's announcement:

Babymetal and Halford will join such previously announced performers as Good Charlotte, Yellowcard, Papa Roach and Beartooth at 2016's event, which will once again be hosted by All Time Low's Alex Gaskarth and Jack Barakat. In addition to bestowing such fan-voted awards as best live band, most dedicated fan base and album of the year, the APMAs have named four-time Alternative Press cover subject Marilyn Manson as 2016's Icon Award recipient. Go here for more information about the APMAs.
Nutanix Dheeraj Pandey

2016 is a hard year for any tech startup to go public, much less a startup burning cash and valued at $2 billion.

More proof of that is IPO-bound Nutanix. In a very rare move for a company trying to raise money with an IPO, Nutanix borrowed $75 million from one of its IPO underwriters, Goldman Sachs, it says in updated IPO documents filed with the SEC.

Goldman Sachs is also an equity investor, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Investors are looking for profits in this tough IPO season.

There have been two tech IPOs this year. The first was from Dell, which spun off its tech security unit, SecureWorks, in preparation for its huge merger deal with EMC. SecureWorks was operating in the red and its IPO fizzed.

But the IPO of Acacia Communications, which makes optical networking products, did well. Acacia was growing sales and was profitable.

Nutanix has never had a profitable quarter, it says, although sales are growing well. It helped invent a hot data center market called "hyper-converged" and its been challenging some established players in the market like VMware. Its revenues nearly doubled to $305 million from the year ago period, but its losses grew too, to $119 million from $89 million, it says.

Nutanix CFO characterized the loan from Goldman as "insurance," telling the WSJ that it was a less expensive way to get that "insurance" than other forms of financing.

And that's not a good sign. If investors were eager to buy its public stock at the price it wanted, it wouldn't need insurance. It would move forward with its IPO instead.

If Nutanix goes public sooner rather than later it says it will repay Goldman immediately. Goldman will collect a minimum of $6.5 million for the loan. If Nutanix doesn't go public quickly, it has three years to pay the loan off at 10% interest.

Nutanix filed for its IPO in December. There's no word yet on when that IPO might take place. It reportedly delayed its plans once already, in February.

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In early April, it looked like Nutanix was getting closer to the IPO day when it updated its paperwork. At that time, Nutanix cofounder and CEO Dheeraj Pandey, its biggest personal shareholder, also gave up 1.3 million shares, valued at $14 million to sweeten the number of shares available to employees.

NOW WATCH: Doctors now say this type of cancer isnt actually cancer  and the new classification is changing thousands of lives





More From Business Insider


DUBAI (Reuters) - A court in Bahrain has ordered the release of a prominent activist, the state news agency BNA said on Tuesday, citing the well-being of Zainab al-Khawaja's one-year old son who lived in the prison with her. Khawaja began serving five sentences totaling over three years in March. The charges related to insulting Bahrain's king, according to her lawyer. She chose to take her son Hadi with her into detention rather than leave him in the care of relatives. A Bahraini judge ordered her release and that of another mother "on account of their humanitarian situation and for the well-being and interests of their children," the public prosecution statement said. It was not clear what the charges were against the other mother, named as Irina Bojutova. Khawaja has been arrested and freed several times since an uprising in 2011 mainly by Bahrain's majority Shi'ite Muslims demanding reforms and a bigger share in government of the Sunni Muslim-led kingdom, and has already served time in prison. Political unrest in Bahrain has tapered off since 2011 due to a security clampdown on opposition leaders and activists. A Bahraini appeals court on Monday more than doubled the prison term imposed on the country's most prominent opposition leader, Sheikh Ali Salman, to nine years from four, a ruling that could increase political tensions in the Gulf kingdom. (Reporting By Noah Browning Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)
Dubai (AFP) - Bahraini authorities on Tuesday released on "humanitarian" grounds opposition activist Zainab al-Khawaja, who had been imprisoned with her toddler son since March, a public prosecution official said.

The Bahraini Shiite mother, who also holds Danish nationality, had been convicted of insulting King Hamad by ripping up a picture of him, and had chosen to keep her 17-month-old son with her in jail.

Judicial authorities ordered "the suspension of the sentence" for Khawaja and another defendant identified as Irena Bogotova who had been jailed with her four-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Sayed said in a statement.

They were released "considering their humanitarian situation and in the interests of their children," he said.

Bogotova is reportedly Russian, but no details have been given about her case.

Zainab al-Khawaja is the daughter of prominent rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, who is serving a life sentence for plotting to overthrow the Sunni regime.

The Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) has said Khawaja was jailed for three years and one month on charges including tearing up the monarch's picture and insulting a police officer.

Her sister Maryam, co-director of the GCHR, confirmed on Twitter that Khawaja "is officially out and on her way home to her (other) children".

The foreign ministry said earlier in May Khawaja would be freed with another foreigner for "humanitarian" reasons, adding that their release was the result of a follow-up into the situation of inmates with foreign citizenship held in criminal cases.

Foreign Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa said during a press briefing with visiting US Secretary of State John Kerry in April that Khawaja would go home.

"We're certainly aware of the reports of her release." US State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters in Washington.

"As you know, we've consistently raised her case, so we welcome the news in the reports."

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Brian Dooley of the Washington-based Human Rights First said in a statement that "while it is better that" Khawaja and her son "are out of rather than in prison, this is no major breakthrough for human rights, (and) no indicator of fundamental reform".

"If the Bahraini government is interested in serious reform it will immediately organise a mass release of political prisoners," he said.

Tiny but strategic Bahrain, home base of the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, remains deeply divided after authorities crushed a month-long, Shiite-led uprising that called for reforms in March 2011.

Dozens of activists are serving lengthy jail terms, including Sheikh Ali Salman -- the leader of Bahrain's main opposition bloc Al-Wefaq.

An appeals court on Monday increased his jail term on charges of inciting violence to nine years from the original four.

In Washington, Kirby said the United States was "deeply concerned" by the extended sentence.

"We understand now that another appeal may be available in this case," he said.

"We strongly urge the government of Bahrain to abide by its international obligations to respect and protect freedom of expression, to reject these charges against Sheikh Ali Salman and to release him."
ROME (Reuters) - Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco warned on Tuesday that Italy's public debt may not fall this year as the government has targeted.

Italy's debt-to-GDP ratio, at 132.7 percent in 2015, is the highest in the euro zone after Greece's, and Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's government has repeatedly assured its partners that it would begin to fall this year.

However, with the economy still listless, Visco warned in a speech to the Bank of Italy's annual assembly in Rome that "the way the economic context will evolve could hinder the achievement of this goal in 2016."

He called for a "careful monitoring of public finances and the implementation of a programme of privatisations" to "approach" the target of 132.4 percent this year and ensure the debt comes down significantly in 2017.

(Reporting By Gavin Jones)
By Gina Cherelus

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York bar known as the birthplace of the gay pride movement could become the country's first national monument honoring LGBT rights under a plan to be considered by President Barack Obama.

The Stonewall Inn in Manhattan's Greenwich Village was the site of a 1969 police raid that touched off riots and ignited a long struggle to bring lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people into the mainstream and guarantee their rights.

A year after the Stonewall riots, activists staged the country's first gay rights parade. The event has evolved into LGBT Pride Month, which begins Wednesday, with parades and street parties around the world that draw millions of people of every sexual orientation.

To honor that legacy, Obama is being asked to designate the tavern and adjoining Christopher Park as a national monument, the second highest recognition in the U.S. National Park Service. U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, several members of Congress and local and state officials have strongly endorsed the effort.

Stonewall is already a National Historic Landmark and both inn and park are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Melissa Sklarz, a transgender rights activist, was among those attending hearings in Manhattan this month to push for the national monument status.

It was great for me to be able to stand up for my part of the community, that LGBT includes trans women and it's important that that voice be heard," she said.

NEW FIGHT FOR LGBT RIGHTS

The proposal has its critics. Some of them say national monuments should honor war heroes or the Founding Fathers, not a symbol of gay rights.

"A monument to sin?" said Franklin Graham, the Christian evangelist continuing the work of his famous father Billy Graham. "That's unbelievable," he added in a Facebook post this month.

The proposal to elevate Stonewall coincides with a contentious national debate over protections for transgender people that is considered the next frontier in the fight for LGBT rights after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage last year.

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The recent battle between North Carolina lawmakers and the Obama administration over bathroom access for transgender people suggests that equality issues that came to the fore in 1969 are yet to be fully resolved.

Back in the 1960s, police raids on gay bars were common. But when officers arrived at the Stonewall Inn, in the early hours of June 28, 1969 to clear the bar and make arrests, patrons decided to resist, according to witnesses. It was a galvanizing event, ultimately destroying the tavern.

Now, the reconstructed Stonewall is a low-lit, two-level space decorated inside with wooden floors, high-rise bar stools, mirrored walls and televisions playing music videos from artists like Rihanna and Enrique Iglesias.

With its trademark brick exterior, blood-red neon sign and rainbow flags, the tavern continues to attract people from all over the world.

For Fred Etree, who at 77 years of age still works as a bartender at Stonewall after nearly 50 years, the memories of the riots are vivid.

"I was in there dancing with my friends Frank and Charlie when the cops came in and we heard everybody screaming," Etree recalled. They came in nasty."

As patrons were being led outside and loaded into police vans, a crowd of several hundred people gathered in the park across the street. Eventually bottles and other objects were thrown at police and violence erupted. Tactical officers were called in to clear the streets and days of unrest followed.

OBAMA'S LGBT LEGACY

For Obama, the monument designation in his last year in office could solidify his legacy as a defender of LGBT rights.

While he started his first term opposed to gay marriage, he came out in favor of it before his re-election in 2012. In the battle over transgender rights, he asked all U.S. public schools this month to allow all students to use the bathroom of their choice, a non-binding directive that conservatives have vowed to resist.

His administration has also sued North Carolina, saying limits on bathroom access are a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. But state lawmakers say the law, which limits people to using the bathroom of their gender at birth, protects women and girls from predators. Eleven other states are suing the administration for an overreach of power on the issue.

A White House spokeswoman said the president is aware of "the overwhelming support" for the monument proposal from Greenwich Village residents and the LGBT community. But she would not say when he would make a decision or what he is leaning toward doing.

Down in the Village, proponents say making the Stonewall a monument would send a powerful message to states opposing transgender rights.

"I think it's absolutely fabulous," said Etree. "I think it will be very good for our community, that recognition."

(Editing by Frank McGurty and Mary Milliken)
If you think you scored a great deal buying a bottle of luxury perfume at a bargain-basement price, you may actually just be spritzing a disgusting  and possibly toxic  blend of urine and antifreeze on your neck.

"Deceptive packaging" is allegedly how the unimaginatively named "Counterfeit Perfume Ring" managed to swindle wholesalers across seven states into buying pee perfume, Fashion Law reported. An investigation by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security division revealed ingredients in the knockoff fragrances  under the guise of brands like Chanel, Ralph Lauren and Gucci  included urine and antifreeze, yes, but also "other unpleasant, flammable or dangerous chemicals that burn when applied to the skin," Fashion Law reported.

Source: Giphy

ICE , who the investigation said imported the pungent cocktails from China and sold them to wholesalers, according to Fashion Law.

During a Manhattan, New York City, raid on Wednesday, Homeland Security Investigations agents seized more than 10,000 boxes of the stuff, a Homeland Security investigator said, according to the local ABC outlet. According to authorities, the bust happened after Shazzed showed an undercover agent into a room filled with designer-esque bottles, which he reportedly said "were not real but were of good quality" and priced at $15 a pop, ABC 7 reported.

Source: Giphy

The men have been charged with conspiracy to traffic in counterfeit goods, trafficking in counterfeit goods, trafficking in counterfeit packaging and smuggling goods into the U.S., according to Fashion Law.

ICE spokesman Khaalid Walls said counterfeiting is on the rise in the beauty industry.

"If you're getting a counterfeit beauty product or cosmetic, the reality is you don't know what's in it," he said, according to Fashion Law.
From Esquire

A University of Florida scientist issued a major buzzkill to beach bums on Saturday: 2016 may be a record year for shark attacks.

"We should have more bites this year than last," University of Florida researcher George Burgess told Reuters. Burgess directs the school's International Shark Attack File.

Why? The shark population is gradually increasing after plummeting in the 1990s. And hotter water temperatures (thanks, global warming!) combined with a larger human population mean more people will want to go for a swim in the ocean. Those two factors together are a recipe for a year with record shark attacks.

Last year, 98 shark attacks occurred worldwide, six of which were fatal. That's 26 more than the prior year.

Although those numbers are scary, you are still more likely to be killed by an avalanche of sand from a collapsing sandcastle than from being bitten by a shark, according to Reuters.

Your chances of getting melanoma are also much higher than the odds of being shark chum or buried alive in sand. So if you're looking to avoid death at the beach, your best bet is probably sunscreen. Just make sure you're using the right kind.
By Joseph Sipalan MIRI, Malaysia (Reuters) - Spotting a large vessel off the coast of Sarawak state in March, officers on a Malaysian patrol boat were shocked when it steamed toward them at high speed, blaring its horn before veering off to reveal "Chinese Coast Guard" emblazoned on its side. According to an officer from the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA), Chinese Coast Guard vessels have been sighted several times before around the South Luconia Shoals, off the oil-rich town of Miri. But such an aggressive encounter was a first. "To us, it looked like an attempt to charge at our boat, possibly to intimidate," said the officer, who was not authorized to speak publicly but showed Reuters a video of the previously unreported incident. Spurred by the incident and the appearance of some 100 Chinese fishing vessels in the area around the time, some in Malaysia are hardening the nation's previously muted responses toward their powerful neighbor China. One senior minister said Malaysia must now stand up against such maritime incursions as China flexes its muscles along dozens of disputed reefs and islands in the South China Sea. China's growing assertiveness has already alarmed the Philippines, Vietnam and other claimants. It has also increased U.S.-China tensions, with the two heavyweights trading accusations of militarizing the vital waterways through which some $5 trillion in trade passes each year. But heralding its "special relationship" with China, and heavily reliant on trade and investment, Malaysia's previous responses to China's activity in the region have been described by Western diplomats as "low-key". It downplayed two naval exercises conducted by China in 2013 and 2014 at James Shoal, less than 50 nautical miles off Sarawak. And in 2015, concerns raised by Malaysian fishermen in Miri about alleged bullying by armed men aboard Chinese Coast Guard vessels were largely ignored. FISHING FRACAS But when scores of Chinese fishing boats were spotted in March encroaching near South Luconia Shoals, a rich fishing ground south of the disputed Spratly Islands, Malaysia sent its navy and uncharacteristically summoned China's ambassador to explain the incident. China's foreign ministry downplayed the matter, saying its trawlers were carrying out normal fishing activities in "relevant waters". Just a couple of weeks later, Malaysia announced plans to set up a naval forward operating base near Bintulu, south of Miri. The defense minister insists the base, which will house helicopters, drones and a special task force, is to protect the country's rich oil and gas assets from potential attacks by Islamic State (IS) sympathizers based in the southern Philippines, hundreds of kilometers to the northeast. Some officials and experts however say China's activities off the coast are a more important factor. "If you beef up security for oil and gas assets, you are protecting yourself from non-state and state actors so there is some plausibility to what he's saying," said Ian Storey, a South China Sea expert at Singapore's ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute. "But is it really being driven by Daesh? I don't think so," Storey added, using an alternative name for IS. Underscoring the hardening attitude, one senior federal minister told Reuters that Malaysia must take more decisive action on maritime incursions or risk being taken for granted. The minister, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter, highlighted the contrast between Malaysia's response in March to a similar incident just days earlier in neighboring Indonesia. "When the Chinese entered Indonesia's waters, they were immediately chased out. When the Chinese vessels entered our waters, nothing was done," the minister said. Last month in parliament, Malaysia's deputy foreign minister also reiterated that like other Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Malaysia did not recognize China's controversial Nine Dash Line, which it uses to claim over 90 percent of the South China Sea. LIMITED OPTIONS Asked about the incident described by the MMEA officer, China's foreign ministry said both countries had a "high degree of consensus" on dealing with maritime disputes through dialogue and consultation. "We are willing to remain in close touch with Malaysia about this," spokeswoman Hua Chunying said. Malaysia's reliance on China goes some way to explaining Kuala Lumpur's reluctance to react more strongly. China is Malaysia's top export destination and Malaysia is the biggest importer of Chinese goods and services in the 10-member ASEAN group. Corporations owned by the Chinese government also paid billions of dollars last year to buy assets from debt-riddled state investment firm 1MDB, which has been a major embarrassment for Prime Minister Najib Razak. Chinas influence in Malaysias domestic affairs has always been a concern for the Malay-majority nation. Ethnic Chinese in Malaysia account for about a quarter of the population. Diplomatic ties between the two countries were tested in September when the Chinese ambassador visited China town in the capital Kuala Lumpur ahead of a pro-Malay rally, and warned that Beijing has no fear in talking against actions that affect the rights of its people. The ambassador was summoned to explain his comments but the Chinese foreign ministry defended the envoy. Seeking to balance its economic and national security interests, Malaysia is pursuing various strategies including bolstering its surveillance and defense capabilities while promoting a code of conduct between China and ASEAN countries signed in 2002. A more sensitive option is to seek closer military ties with the United States. One senior official told Reuters that Malaysia has reached out to the United States for help on intelligence gathering and to develop its coast guard capabilities, albeit quietly to avoid angering Beijing. Storey said moves to secure closer U.S. military ties could be twinned with soft diplomacy to try to convince China to be less assertive on its claims, but resolving the issue would be difficult regardless. "None of these strategies work very well, but what can you do?," Storey said. "This dispute is going to be around for a very long time." (Additional reporting by Rozanna Latiff in KUALA LUMPUR and Ben Blanchard in BEIJING.; Editing by Praveen Menon and Lincoln Feast)
You say you want a revolution  well, you know, Dr. Jill Stein wants to change the world.

The Massachusetts physician says she and the Green Party can carry on the work of Bernie Sanders if, as expected, he doesn't overcome Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary.

And Stein says if the legions of millennials  many gasping for air from beneath crushing student debt  would follow her in rejecting the "corporatist," "imperialist" machine she thinks the Democratic Party has become, they could give rise to a second American Revolution.

There are 43 million young people locked into debt. That alone is a plurality of the vote. A #Green vote is a vote to cancel student debt.

A movement based on math: Sanders, the Democratic socialist senator from Vermont, has fired the imaginations of millions, but the nomination math isn't in his favor: Of the 2,383 delegates needed, as of Monday, former Secretary of State Clinton had 2,310, including superdelegates, according to RealClearPolitics. Sanders had 1,542.

Sanders supporters and general critics of the way America's major political parties operate have long railed the Democratic Party is pulling for Clinton by throwing obstacles in his path.

Stein, who talks about "revolt" and nuclear "oblivion" the way some people talk about what they're doing next weekend, is among them.

"What we're seeing here in the sabotage of Bernie's campaign by the Democratic National Committee [is] the reality [that] it's very hard to have a revolutionary campaign inside a counter-revolutionary party," Stein said in a phone interview.

While important primary contests remain, including the June 7 vote in California, Sanders remains the underdog. Stein is touting herself as "Plan B" for Sanders' followers because, she says, voters shouldn't give in to the false assumption the only choice left is deciding whether Clinton or Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican Party nominee, is the lesser of two evils.

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"We will not get real solutions from political parties that are funded by predatory banks [and] war profiteers," Stein said.

Source: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Instead, "We're here to build the revolution so all the work of Bernie's campaign doesn't get thrown to the dogs inside the Democratic Party," she said.

Stein's official "Power to the People" platform has lofty goals, to say the least.

Among her promises, in addition to the clean energy themes that form the bedrock of her party's existence: ending poverty, police brutality and unemployment, slashing military spending by half and guaranteeing health care and education as "rights"  including by abolishing student debt.

Here's how I would reform our democracy: full public election financing, ranked-choice voting, proportional representation & open debates.

Stein has formally asked Sanders to team up with her and the Greens to advance their common causes.

So far, she says, she's still waiting for his phone call.

Who is Stein, anyway? Stein, 66, is not a newcomer to politics by any means. Like Clinton, she has run for president before, most recently in 2012.

The Chicago-born Stein, who now lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, holds degrees from Harvard College and Harvard Medical School. She and her husband, Richard Rohrer, have two grown sons.

Stein credits her career in medicine as the catalyst for her environmental activism, which has included fighting for better regulation of water and air pollutants, toxic waste incineration and disposal and coal plants.

Her first bid for elected office came in 2002, when she ran for governor of Massachusetts. (A businessman named Mitt Romney won that race.)

Stein officially launched her 2016 presidential bid in June.

Realistic? If the odds are stacked against Sanders, they are much more so against Stein.

For one thing  like it or not  the U.S. political system is dominated by two major parties that are moneyed, entrenched, organized and not the least interested in being usurped.

Modern-day independent or third-party candidates may have made it into the public eye  think Ralph Nader or Ross Perot or John Anderson  but didn't gather the steam needed to propel them to the White House.

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg pondered a 2016 run of his own. He ruled against it, explaining his conscience forbade him from taking the risk of becoming a spoiler that could aid the election of a "divisive" major-party contender like Trump.

Still, reams of poll results have suggested there is room at the top for change: Voters don't trust neither Trump nor Clinton. Americans continue to be frustrated or angry and have long told pollsters they want more options besides donkeys and elephants.

There are others besides Stein who say a November matchup between Clinton and Trump isn't a foregone conclusion: The conservative-leaning Stop Donald Trump PAC, for example, has been heavily teasing the announcement of an alternative candidate for those who can't stomach seeing either Clinton or Trump in the Oval Office. Talk of a last-minute crusade by Romney is still simmering.

A Green Partier with white-hot rhetoric: Whether it's knowing her audience or something else, an interview with Stein is far more heavily peppered with slams on Clinton (and her husband) than it is on Trump.

She dismisses the latter as no political outsider, but a co-conspirator with the boogeymen of the Beltway:

Donald Trump has a record of economic failure and mismanagement... He has a record of abusing his workers [and] offshoring his jobs. He is not honest. He won't reveal his taxes... he's kind of a wolf in sheep's clothing  or a wolf in wolf's clothing... Many people are voting for him out of desperation [but] this is a guy who's totally speaking with forked tongue here. Do not trust him... Don't believe the hype here from this professional shyster.

Stein saves her sharpest cuts for Clinton  and pointedly notes that "It's really very exciting [that] in this election to be a feminist, you don't have to be [a] militarist or a corporatist."

Source: Seth Wenig/AP

If Stein has anything "nice" to say about Clinton, it may be only that over the course of a brutal primary season, she's "adopted Bernie's tune" on certain issues that appeal to the left.

"I think anyone who buys into the Hillary [pitch]... they're being victimized by the slick and glossy Democratic Party propaganda," said Stein, who has no qualms about insisting Clinton has both taken credit for and been a "full partner" in promoting her husband's "neoliberal" agenda, sucking up to Wall Street and corporate interests for "gobs of money" and warmongering (for starters).

Doesn't Clinton have domestic and national experience necessary for the presidency? "Under Hillary Clinton, we have an air war over Syria, a bombing campaign of Iran and in Syria; with this air war, we're engaging a nuclear power... I don't think Hillary Clinton is a safe bet," Stein said.

But hasn't Sanders shown his message hasn't resonated with African-Americans and other minority groups as well as Clinton's? "He has not been able to break into key communities, but he could still win," Stein said. "At the end of the day any candidate comes with strengths and weaknesses."

Source: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Green light? For all her call-to-arms campaigning, Stein does get real about her election prospects, which are certainly not helped by a serious lack of financing.

"I am not holding my breath that we are going to win the White House," she said. "In my view, my job as a medical doctor [is] protecting life and health and wellness."

But the woman described by GQ as possibly the most "badass" of the 2016 crop of presidential hopefuls sees politics not just as a high-stakes game, but quite literally a matter of life or death, particularly for young people who may see themselves as powerless.

"We're looking at the end of civilization in a couple of decades, in the lifetime of the millennial generation. ... Our job is to reject that propaganda," Stein said.

If there's a real thirst to sustain and build on the Sanders phenomenon via a third-party candidate, "What the public is clamoring for, they can have in a heartbeat  right now."

But does she consider herself a badass?

"If you mean if I'm a person that will stand up and that is really willing to go the [extra] mile, I mean, yeah," Stein said. "We need a badass to stand up to Donald Trump."
From Esquire

Bernie Sanders is still chugging along ahead of the California primary on June 7, which is why he stopped by Real Time with Bill Maher last night. He made his case that he should still come out ahead of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic race-despite the fact that she has 271 more delegates and 2.4 million more popular votes. That case is still tied heavily to superdelegates, which he once condemned as undemocratic, and the pre-general election polling that shows him doing better than Clinton against Donald Trump.

We've dealt with the hypocrisy of Sanders' superdelegate rhetoric before, but in fairness to the Vermont senator, he had a new angle here. "Four hundred or more superdelegates actually supported Hillary Clinton-came out publicly-before anybody else was in the race," he told Maher, "Before the first ballot was cast."

The point is a reasonable one: shouldn't they reassess their choice now that he is a viable candidate which polling indicates would defeat Donald Trump?

Except it still doesn't really deal with the fundamental issues at hand. Why should the superdelegates-unaccountable elites and party insiders-overturn the will of the people, many more of whom have voted for his opponent? And why are poll numbers from hypothetical general election match-ups the rationale for doing so?

More on that later. First, Sanders had a couple of good riffs. Regarding the new developments in the interminable Hillary Clinton email saga, he opted against wading into the intricacies of the new State Department Inspector General's report. Instead, he reminded Bill, and everyone else, that normal people have bigger-or at least more pressing-fish to fry.

"There is immense frustration on the part of the American people with the way we do politics in this country...The middle class is disappearing, we've got a lot of poverty, we don't have healthcare for all people. People want us to talk about their lives and their issues, and not just spend our whole lives attacking our opponents."

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He pulled no punches when it came to the apricot demagogue who is the presumptive Republican nominee. Sanders challenged Trump to "change his mind a fifth time" when it came to their proposed debate, mocking him as a "big tough guy" who wouldn't step up. And then he really went in: "This guy is a pathological liar... That's just the damn truth. He would not only be an embarrassment, he'd be a real danger to this entire world if he were to become president."

But eventually, they got back to the Sanders electability argument. "If he runs against you," Maher said, "The big word is going to be socialism." This points to "hypothetical" being the operative word in "hypothetical general election" polling. As a thoroughly detailed account in Slate indicates, Sanders simply has not been vetted as a viable general election candidate. The media has not dug into the fact that, according to Slate, he was a presidential elector for the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party in 1980, for instance. The Republicans, as a whole, have barely attacked him at all-only Trump has lashed out with "Crazy Bernie."

Once you deal with the idea that Sanders wants to nix 2.4 million popular votes because of some poll numbers, you've got to face the question: Would he really, once the general election gears ground into motion and a sophisticated Republican opposition apparatus got going, be the strongest candidate against someone like Trump?
O weekend, a hacker in Texas publicly declared Donald Trump a reptile.

I'm not sure this is what @TxDOT meant for this road sign to say... #Dallas @NBCDFWpic.twitter.com/4iPldtM9gJ

Three Texas Department of Transportation electronic road signs were hacked in west Dallas over Memorial Day weekend, N. The signs, which usually display text like "Exit Closed" or "Lanes Shift Ahead" instead broadcast "Bernie for President," "Donald Trump Is a Shape-Shifting Lizard" and "Work Is Canceled  Go Back Home" The first two signs were found on or Interstate 30 and the latter was just north of that.

And we have a third hacked sign - though I think this one is a little less divisive politically. #Dallas @nbcdfwpic.twitter.com/TUp1Vj2M1G

I don't think @TxDOT really meant to send this msg to drivers off i30 today in Dallas. . Spotted todaypic.twitter.com/IKZ6EHeoyQ https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CjsFSrBVEAEKVYK.jpg:large

The Texas DoT started to turn off the signs "shortly before 6 a.m." on Tuesday morning. The DoT told NBC 5 reporter Tim Ciesco that, to "their understanding," all of the electronic road signs were "turned off, locked and secured" ahead of Memorial Day weekend. They added that whoever hacked the signs would have had to do it at the physical location  there is no way to remotely hack them.

The pro-Bernie message comes after Hillary Clinton "easily won" the Texas Democratic Primary, crushing Sanders with 65% support to his 33%. The red state hacker remains at large.

TxDOT added if they find whoever did this, there could be legal consequences.
Bernie Sanders speaks at a rally in Santa Maria, Calif., on May 28, 2016. (Photo: Mark J. Terrill/AP)

Bernie Sanders says Donald Trump is a very dangerous man who has already significantly damaged this country.

I think Trump is incredibly irresponsible and an incredibly dangerous person, the Vermont senator and Democratic presidential hopeful told Rolling Stone earlier this month in an interview in Oregon. A man who is primarily a showman and an opportunist and an egomaniac. A man who has already significantly damaged this country with his attacks on Mexicans and Muslims and women and veterans and African-Americans and so forth. Very dangerous man.

Sanders was asked what his message would be to his supporters who say theyd rather vote for Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, than Hillary Clinton, who is by far the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.

Wrong question, Sanders replied. Its not, What is my message to them? Its not my job to think that I can reach out and say to millions, Do what I want you to do. Thats not the way it works. The question that should be asked is, Why?  How come you have millions of people who are prepared to vote for him and not Hillary Clinton? Why is that?

The self-described democratic socialist attempted to answer his own question, suggesting that the billionaire real estate mogul had craftily managed to brand himself as a populist outsider.

Many working-class people in this country no longer have faith in establishment politics, Sanders said. And, of course, thats what Trump has seized upon. Hes a phony and an opportunist. But he has seized upon that and said, I am not part of the establishment. Hes only a multibillionaire who has worked with Wall Street and everybody else. But he claims not to be part of the establishment, right? That has created a certain amount of support for him.

Sanders further said anger is the common denominator between Trumps supporters and his own.

To the medias great shock and to the pundits great shock, there are millions of Americans who are very, very angry, he said. And theyre angry because theyre working longer hours for lower wages. Theyre angry because theyre working two and three jobs. Theyre worried about the future of their children  getting decent jobs and getting homes.

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Sanders continued: And then they look at the leadership of the Democratic Party and the leadership of the Republican Party and they dont see people addressing or even paying attention to their needs. And Trump comes along and starts to blame Mexicans or Muslims or women for the problems facing society. The people are seeing that someone at least is speaking to their anger. And thats unfortunate. Thats a very ugly approach. But thats why hes succeeding.

Shawnee Badger, 22, listens to Sanders speak at a rally in Santa Barbara, Calif., on May 28, 2016. (Photo: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

Earlier in the interview, Sanders also addressed his critics, including Clinton, who say he doesnt offer enough specifics behind his ideas for launching a political revolution.

What are the specifics about how I, personally, all by myself, do what nobody in American history has done? And Im being criticized? Why dont you do it? Why doesnt the editor of Rolling Stone do it? he said. Look, you know, with all due respect, thats an absurd question.

Later, though, Sanders was asked what the Democratic Party has to offer to the younger generation of progressives who have come out in droves to support him.

Thats a good question. Unlike all your other dumb questions, Sanders said, laughing, before offering a lengthy example of the challenge the party may soon face:

We were in Denver. We had a rally at 5:00 in the afternoon. We had 18,000 people. People who are passionate about wanting to change America, wanting to be involved in the political process. My guess is that 95 percent of those people had never gone to a Democratic Party meeting  or ever dreamed of going to a Democratic Party meeting. Two hours later, I walk into a [Democratic Party Jefferson-Jackson fundraising] dinner where there are 1,000, maybe 2,000 Democrats, who are contributors to the party, who are lawyers and whatever, local politicians. Older people, upper-middle-class and professional people  who are active in the Democratic Party.

There are two different worlds. So the question is: What happens when that 18,000 marches into that room with 2,000 people? Will they be welcomed? Will the door be open? Will the party hierarchy say, Thank you for coming in. We need your energy. We need your idealism. Cmon in!? Or will they say, Hey, weve got a pretty good thing going right now. We dont need you. We dont want you?

Thats the challenge that the Democratic Party faces, Sanders said. And I dont know what the answer is.
Time Out Paris has named their favorite bars in Paris, giving a new bar in the trendy Canal Saint-Martin neighborhood, Gravity Bar, top nods.

In the second edition of their Bar Awards, a panel of experts named their favourite Paris watering holes in a range of categories including best value, best new cocktail bar, best bar team, and coolest wine bar.

Located in the 10th arrondissement, Gravity Bar was named best cocktail bar overall less than a year after opening for their original menu and minimalist Scandinavian decor.

If you're headed to Paris, here are some of the top bars of 2016, according to Time Out Paris:

Best cocktail bar: Gravity Bar

Best new cocktail bar: Castor Club

Best bar team: Moonshiner

Best snack bar: l'Avant Comptoir de la mer

Coolest wine bar: la Cave du Septime

Time Out Paris honorable mention: le Tony
By Andrew M. Seaman (Reuters Health) - Pediatricians rarely receive training in gender-affirming health care, and as a result, few transgender youths who are eligible for such healthcare actually receive it, experts say. Now the authors of a new report have suggested steps to correct that problem. Transgender people, whose gender does not align with their sex assigned at birth, experience higher rates of anxiety, depression, substance abuse and suicide than other people, the researchers write in the Journal of Adolescent Health. Timely access to gender-affirming healthcare, such as puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, is tied to improved body image and a lower risk of long term mental health problems, according to Samantha Gridley of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville and colleagues. For the new study, the researchers surveyed 15 transgender youths and 50 caregivers of transgender youths in 2015. Participants were recruited from Seattle clinics, a blog and a support group. Barriers to appropriate care, according to the youths and the caregivers, included providers untrained in gender-affirming healthcare, inconsistently applied protocols, inconsistent use of a youth's chosen name or pronoun, uncoordinated care, limited and delayed access to treatments and insurance issues. For example, one youth said it was difficult to find doctors who were accepting new patients, worked with adolescents and took their insurance, adding, "Finding someone who was trans-friendly made it all but impossible." A caregiver reported that a doctor repeatedly called a child by the wrong name and pronoun. "I keep saying 'he,' 'Jack,' and she starts getting angry with me and flipping her head at me, like I was causing her to be annoyed . . . She gave me a look to kill." To improve healthcare access for transgender youths, Gridley's team recommends mandatory training for pediatric providers and staff on gender affirming healthcare and awareness. They recommend developing protocols for the care of transgender youths and a roadmap for their families. They also recommend that a child's chosen name and pronoun be recorded in medical records, and that clinics designate patient navigators to help transgender patients. In addition, they call for more gender clinics, and they urge doctors to provide gender-affirming treatments to youths so they develop alongside their peers. The study's senior author Dr. David Breland, of Seattle Children's Research Institute, was unable respond to a request for comment by press time. Dr. Aron Janssen, who directs the Gender and Sexuality Service at NYU Langones Child Study Center in New York City and wasn't involved in the study, told Reuters Health that access to healthcare for transgender youths is generally moving in the right direction. But still, he said, there are things in medical education that need to change. He said some organizations are helping to train doctors to care for transgender youths and adults. Doctors who don't feel equipped to provide competent care should take steps to get educated, he said. "The important piece about the study is that it incorporates the patient's family's voice," said Janssen. "All too often, services are developed without the perspective of patients and their families. I think its a vital piece and a piece that we havent heard much of." He added, "Too often the patient and family voices are absent in the scientific literature and theyre the ones who are most affected by treatment and access issues, and theyre crucial to the research we do." SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1Xd4cw3 Journal of Adolescent Health, online May 24, 2016.
By Patpicha Tanakasempipat KANCHANABURI, Thailand (Reuters) - Wildlife authorities in Thailand have raided a Buddhist temple where tigers are kept, taking away 40 of the animals by Tuesday and vowing to confiscate scores more in response to global pressure over wildlife trafficking. The Buddhist temple in Kanchanaburi province west of Bangkok had more than 130 tigers and had become a tourist destination where visitors took selfies with tigers and bottle-fed cubs. The temple promoted itself as a wildlife sanctuary, but in recent years it had been investigated for suspected links to wildlife trafficking and animal abuse. Wildlife activists have accused the temple's monks of illegally breeding tigers, while some visitors have said the animals can appear drugged. The temple denies the accusations. The raid, which began on Monday, was the latest move by authorities in a tug-of-war since 2001 to bring the tigers under state control. Adisorn Nuchdamrong, deputy director-general of the Department of National Parks, said his team was able to confiscate the tigers thanks to a warrant obtained a few hours before the operation began. "We have a court warrant this time, unlike previous times, when we only asked for the temple's cooperation, which did not work," Adisorn told Reuters. "International pressure concerning illegal wildlife trafficking is also part of why we're acting now." Officials moved seven tigers from the temple on Monday and 33 on Tuesday, leaving 97 still there. Adisorn said the department planned to remove all of the tigers and send them to state-owned sanctuaries. Officials also found also found six hornbills, which are protected birds, at a monk's residence, he said. Monks at the temple were not available for comment. Previous attempts to inspect the tigers were largely blocked by the temple's abbots but in January and February wildlife officials removed 10 tigers. Thailand has long been a hub for the illicit trafficking of wildlife and forest products, including ivory. Exotic birds, mammals and reptiles, some of them endangered species, can often be found on sale in markets. The government introduced new animal welfare laws in 2015 aimed at curbing animal abuse, but activists accuse authorities of not enforcing the legislation. The group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said the temple was "hell for animals", which spent much of their lives in cement cells. "The tigers ... should be transferred to suitable sanctuaries and facilities that can offer them a better life," the group said in its statement. It called on tourists to stop visiting animal attractions at home or abroad. (Additional reporting by Juarawee Kittisilpa; Writing by Amy Sawitta Lefevre; Editing by Robert Birsel)
The Biggest Loser is under investigation by the L.A. County Sheriffs Department for illegal drug use following allegations by former contestants that the show pushed the use of amphetamines and diuretics to facilitate weight loss.

In May, 2016, a journalist advised Malibu/Lost Hills station personnel of a news report regarding unsubstantiated allegations of illegal narcotics use in the past on the set of the television reality show, The Biggest Loser, Lieutenant James Royal said in a statement released on Tuesday.

Based on the information contained in the news report, Malibu/Lost Hills Station personnel are conducting an inquiry regarding the unsubstantiated allegations.

Also Read: 'Biggest Loser' Pushed Drug Use to Lose Weight, Ex-Contestants Say

NBC did not immediately respond to TheWraps request for comment.

The New York Post reported last week that multiple former contestants of the NBC weight-loss competition show were encouraged to use drugs to lose weight, including by the shows trainers.

Bob Harper was my trainer, said Joelle Gwynn of 2008s Couples season. He goes away and his assistant comes in. Hes got this brown paper bag thats bundled up. He says, Take this drug, itll really help you. It was yellow and black. I was like, What the f- -k is this? 

Also Read: Why 'Biggest Loser' Contestants Gain the Weight Back

After taking the pill once, Gwynn surmised, People chastise Bill Cosby for allegedly offering meds to women, but its acceptable to do to fat people to make them lose weight. I feel like we got raped, too.

Producers of the show denied the allegations after the initial report last week, saying in a statement, The safety and well-being of our contestants is, and has always been, paramount. Contestants are told at the start of the show that there is zero tolerance for any weight loss drugs. We prohibit the use of any illegal substances, in addition to the many other rules and procedures of the show that are designed to ensure safety.

Story continues

Related stories from TheWrap:

'Biggest Loser' Pushed Drug Use to Lose Weight, Ex-Contestants Say

Why 'Biggest Loser' Contestants Gain the Weight Back

Alison Sweeney Quits as Host of 'The Biggest Loser' After 13 Seasons
Bismack Biyombo

Getty Image

Bismack Biyombo was a huge factor in the Toronto Raptors playoff run this season, and now he is set to cash in on the free agent market. The five-year veteran burst onto the scene in the postseason thanks to his big plays, rebounding, and rim protection, and he also seemed like he energized the team with his style of play. He even channeled the likes of legends like Vince Carter and Dikembe Mutombo during the teams run to the Eastern Conference Finals.

With the Raptors coming just two wins away from the Finals this year, the team is looking to bring back its core for next season, and that includes Biyombo. After securing DeMar DeRozan, the Raptors primary goal will be to try and bring the Congolese center back to round out their frontcourt.

However, Toronto GM Masai Ujiri has said that he ownership is committed to Toronto going into luxury tax territory, a seeming inevitability of inking both DeRozan and Biyombo to big-money deals. But the Raptors, surprisingly, might be able to avoid that financial penalty. Why? Biyombo has said he is willing to take a hometown discount to remain in the red and white next season.

While appearing on Sportsnet 590 The FANs The Andrew Walker Show, Biyombo said he expects to be back in Canada next season  even if that means he has to take less money.

Yeah. Things can always be worked out. Ive said that to my people, Ive said that to Masai. When the right time comes Id be open to figuring something out. At the end of the day, its for fun, not money. Its not always about money. Money is great, but at the same time I ask how much fun am I going to have? The city is great, the team is great, and were winning.

Biyombo coming back for less money would allow Toronto to hold onto a key piece while also having a little more flexibility to grab other free agents, so this is a significant development if he means what he says. While it may be tough for him to turn away a huge money contract offer he gets from somewhere else, Biyombo sounds like he wants to stay in Toronto, and as long as they make him a reasonable offer, it looks as though he will.

(Via SportsNet)
NEW YORK (Reuters) - BlackRock Inc (BLK.N) Chief Executive Laurence Fink on Tuesday said he is "nervous" about Europe ahead of a June referendum on whether Britain should remain in European Union, the region's multinational governance bloc.

Fink called for more leadership from Germany to invest in the Europe's future and said he expects the region to look "quite different" within the next decade. He also said he was worried that China's use of bank and insurer balance sheets to fund inefficient state-owned enterprises could be dangerous.

Fink, whose company is the world's largest asset manager, spoke at an investor conference organised by Deutsche Bank AG (DBKGn.DE).

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt)
(Adds quote, CEO views on China and industry consolidation, paragraphs 3-10; adds byline)

By Trevor Hunnicutt

NEW YORK, May 31 (Reuters) - BlackRock Inc Chief Executive Laurence Fink on Tuesday said he was "nervous" about Europe ahead of a June referendum on whether Britain should remain in European Union.

Fink called for more leadership from Germany to invest in the Europe's future and said he expects the region to look "quite different" within the next decade.

"It may be better, it may be worse," he said. "I'm nervous about Europe."

In a wide-ranging interview at an investor conference organized by Deutsche Bank AG, he also said he was worried that China's use of bank and insurer balance sheets to fund inefficient state-owned enterprises could be dangerous.

But Fink said the Chinese government was among the world's best in terms of responding to its economic challenges, and he faulted developed democracies with failing to invest sufficiently in infrastructure and other investments in the future.

Fink also said he expects a larger move to index-based, "passive" investing and more "consolidation" in the asset-management industry, a reference to potential mergers-and-acquisition activity.

He said such moves could be among the less-appreciated consequences of a push by U.S. federal regulators to raise the standards of care to which retail financial advisers are held.

The U.S. Department of Labor in April introduced new rules governing the advice given on retirement-savings accounts, but Fink said such practices could eventually become a broader industry standard.

Traditional asset managers have been faced with an increasingly fierce rivalry from low-cost index funds and tough markets that have made it difficult to post competitive performance.

New York-based BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager, with $4.7 trillion under management, as of March 31. The company's products include both index funds and traditional funds curated by "active" managers.

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt)
By Trevor Hunnicutt

NEW YORK (Reuters) - BlackRock Inc (BLK.N) Chief Executive Laurence Fink on Tuesday said he was "nervous" about Europe ahead of a June referendum on whether Britain should remain in European Union.

Fink called for more leadership from Germany to invest in the Europe's future and said he expects the region to look "quite different" within the next decade.

"It may be better, it may be worse," he said. "I'm nervous about Europe."

In a wide-ranging interview at an investor conference organised by Deutsche Bank AG (DBKGn.DE), he also said he was worried that China's use of bank and insurer balance sheets to fund inefficient state-owned enterprises could be dangerous.

But Fink said the Chinese government was among the world's best in terms of responding to its economic challenges, and he faulted developed democracies with failing to invest sufficiently in infrastructure and other investments in the future.

Fink also said he expects a larger move to index-based, "passive" investing and more "consolidation" in the asset-management industry, a reference to potential mergers-and-acquisition activity.

He said such moves could be among the less-appreciated consequences of a push by U.S. federal regulators to raise the standards of care to which retail financial advisers are held.

The U.S. Department of Labor in April introduced new rules governing the advice given on retirement-savings accounts, but Fink said such practices could eventually become a broader industry standard.

Traditional asset managers have been faced with an increasingly fierce rivalry from low-cost index funds and tough markets that have made it difficult to post competitive performance.

New York-based BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager, with $4.7 trillion under management, as of March 31. The company's products include both index funds and traditional funds curated by "active" managers.

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt)
Sagar Bhanushali

Luxury car buyers in China tend to favour rear seat comfort over other attributes in their cars. This explains the rising number of luxury carmakers coming up with a long wheelbase version of their regular cars. BMW, for one, has just introduced a long-wheelbase version of the X1 called the X1 Li.

The X1 Li is made locally by the BMW-Brilliance joint venture and is sold with prices ranging between 286.000 yuan (Rs 29.20 lakh) and 439.000 yuan (Rs 44.82 lakh).

The X1 Li is 8 centimetres longer, 2 centimetres wider and 4 centimetres taller than the standard X1. This has added around 18cm to the wheelbase of the car all of which has been put in the second row. This additional space has also translated into a bigger boot of around 675litres which can be extended to 1650litres with the seats folded down.

Powering the X1 Li is a range of 1.5-litre 3-cylinder turbo, 213hp 2-litre turbo and a 257bhp 2-litre turbo petrol engines. With more space on offer compared to the standard car, the X1 Li joins a host of long wheelbase models designed specifically for the Chinese market.

For more news,reviews,videos and information about cars, visit CarWale.com.

Check On-Road Prices | Find New Cars | Upcoming Cars | Compare Cars | Dealer Locator
Bollywood star Sonam Kapoor has visited holy sites in Jerusalem and drew comparisons between the Holy City and her homeland. The actress and fashion icon is the daughter of renowned actor and producer Anil Kapoor. During her visit to Jerusalem she met local fans who recognized her, asked for her signature and took photos with her. Kapoor arrived in Israel as a guest of the Israeli tourism ministry and visited Jerusalem's Old City where she toured the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and placed a note between the stones of the Western Wall. She also visited other locations including Tel Aviv and the Dead Sea.
MORRISTOWN, N.J. (AP) - A bookkeeper who stole $234,500 from former Saturday Night Live castmember Joe Piscopo has been sentenced in New Jersey to three years in prison.

Frank Larocca's lawyer had asked the judge on Friday to sentence his client to probation and a suspended prison term. But the judge declined, noting the benefits of the plea agreement Larocca received from Morris County prosecutors.

The 40-year-old Larocca pleaded guilty in February to theft by unlawful taking. His wife also pleaded guilty to theft and is expected to be sentenced to three years' probation.

Prosecutors say Piscopo hired LaRocca to pay his bills and manage his bank account. The thefts occurred between February 2010 and March 2014.

Larocca used the money for personal expenses.

Piscopo's run on SNL lasted from 1980 to 1984.
A desperate search for a 7-year-old boy has stretched into its third day after his parents reportedly left him in the Japanese wilderness as a punishment.

Yamato Tanooka was in the mountains of northern Japan with his parents Saturday when Hokkaido Prefectural Police say he was abandoned there to punish him for throwing stones at cars and people.

Watch: Harrowing Moment Officials Discovered Body of Missing Hiker Off Appalachian Trail

Hours later, when it became apparent that Yamato was gone, the parents made an emergency call to police.

The boy has now been missing since Saturday in an area known for its wild bears, CNN reports.

The boy's father told local Japanese-language reporters that they initially hesitated to alert authorities to their son's disappearance because of the circumstances in which they left him.

Read: Missing Hiker Left Haunting Journal of Last Days: 'When You Find My Body, Please Call My Husband'

"I couldn't bring myself to make the request [for the search] and give the reason [for him being missing] as it is because of a punishment," he said.

Police said the parents first drove back to where they left the boy, but he wasn't there.

Since then, some 150 search and rescue personnel have been searching for boy.

Watch: Searchers Get Emotional Finding Remains Of Missing Hiker 2 Years Later

Related Articles:
Brazils Transparency Minister Fabiano Silveira resigned Monday after recordings that were made public suggested he tried to stymie a corruption investigation.

In the recordings, Silveira seems to be heard advising Senate leader Renan Calheiros on how to protect himself from the massive corruption investigation into state-controlled oil company, Petrobras. He also seems to criticize the probes prosecutors, according to Reuters.

Silveira is the second minister to fall from the Cabinet of interim President Michel Temer. Last week, Planning Minister Romero Juca stepped down after a recording from the same leaked tapes suggested he too plotted to curb the corruption investigation. Both Juca and Silveira have said the recordings, made secretly by a former oil executive as part of a plea bargain, were taken out of context.

The tainted ministers were appointed by Temer when he temporarily took over the presidency from Dilma Rousseff on May 12. Rousseff was suspended for up to 180 days after Brazils Senate voted that she face an impeachment trial for allegedly violating budget laws. She has said she is the victim of a coup.

[Reuters]
BRASILIA, May 30 (Reuters) - Brazilian Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles will name the finance secretary of the state of Espirito Santos as the country's new Treasury chief, a senior government official familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday.

Ana Paula Vescovi, an economist who worked for the finance ministry, will replace Otavio Ladeira and is expected to play a key role in talks aimed at easing the debt states have with the federal government in exchange for tougher rules to cap spending.

Those negotiations are set to start this week. It is not clear when Vescovi will formally take office.

Since becoming finance minister earlier this month, Meirelles has replaced key officials, bringing in economists with market experience and fiscal experts in a bid to rebalance the country's overdrawn public accounts.

Vescovi has overseen the finances of Espirito Santos, one of the few states that has so far weathered a fiscal crisis that has forced local governments to delay payments to public workers and retirees.

The finance ministry did not answer emails seeking comments.

The state of Rio de Janeiro missed a debt payment to a French development bank last week, raising fears about the fiscal health of Brazilian states struggling with lower tax revenues due to a crippling recession and drop in oil prices.

Moody's Investors Service said on Monday the missed payment further presses the government to offer more "generous" relief to struggling states.

(Reporting by Alonso Soto; Editing by Paul Simao)
By Barani Krishnan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices dipped on Tuesday as a stronger dollar and slide in equity prices sparked profit-taking, but crude futures posted a fourth straight monthly gain as investors bet that the global glut was slowly easing.

Crude futures had gained early in the session, with investors expecting higher U.S. fuel demand as peak driving season arrived in the No. 1 oil consumer.

Caution ahead of weekly U.S. crude inventory data kept investors from pushing prices toward seven-month highs above $50 a barrel. The dollar's rise and slide in Wall Street stocks in afternoon trade eventually tipped oil into the negative zone.

Brent crude futures for July settled down 7 cents at $49.69 a barrel before expiring as the spot contract. August Brent , the market's spot contract from Wednesday, finished down 47 cents, or nearly 1 percent, at $49.89.

U.S. crude's West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures for July (CLc1) settled at $49.10, down 23 cents, or 0.5 percent, from Friday's settlement. U.S. financial markets were closed on Monday for the Memorial Day holiday.

For the month, Brent rose 3 percent and WTI gained 7 percent.

"The dollar's strength and the weakness in equities hit crude on the day," said Chris Jarvis, analyst at Caprock Risk Management in Frederick, Maryland. "Plus, $50 remains a psychological target to cross, with caution playing ahead of the EIA data."

The dollar (.DXY) gained as strong U.S. consumer spending data fed expectations of a rate hike in coming months.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), will issue crude supply-demand data on Thursday. Oil prices last traded above $50 on Thursday, when Brent last hit a November peak of $50.51 and WTI an October high of $50.21.Prices rose early in the session after traders said that data from market intelligence firm Genscape showed a drawdown of 686,700 barrels at the Cushing, Oklahoma delivery point for WTI futures in the week to May 27. A Reuters poll of analysts forecast that U.S. crude stocks fell 2.7 million barrels last week. [EIA/S]

Story continues

U.S. fuel demand is set to rise with the summer driving season that began with Monday's holiday. Hedge funds and other money managers last week raised bullish bets on WTI to 2016 highs.

Investors do not expect the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to make any substantial changes in production at a meeting set for Thursday.

Some analysts believe oil prices can slowly meander higher.

"The bulk of our technical indicators remain tilted in a bullish direction ... with upside possibilities to the $52-52.50 areas still valid," said Jim Ritterbusch of Chicago-based oil consultancy Ritterbusch & Associates.

(Additional reporting by Ahmad Ghaddar in LONDON and Henning Gloystein in SINGAPORE; Editing by William Hardy and David Gregorio)
By Alastair Macdonald BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Dawn, Friday, June 24. The votes are in. The British have spoken in their EU membership referendum and they want out. It is a scenario European leaders are now planning for in earnest while praying it never happens. Secret meetings in Brussels and across Europe reveal huge uncertainty, officials and diplomats familiar with the proceedings say, over what would follow a vote that British Prime Minister David Cameron calls a "leap in the dark" -- and also no little concern about what happens if Britain stays on. This is a rough roadmap to Europe after June 23, based on conversations with many diplomats and officials, few of whom speak of it in public for fear of inflaming debate in Britain: DAY 1 - FRIDAY, JUNE 24 - THE THREE R'S - OR MORE Polls close at 10 p.m. (2100 GMT). No mainstream exit polls are planned but overnight counts should give a result by around the time the midsummer sun is coming up over Brussels. Aside from the result itself, there are already several big imponderables. Cameron says he will notify the EU "immediately" if Britain is leaving. But he may take at least a few days. If he has lost he will be under huge pressure from his divided Conservative party to resign. He might also be, even if he wins. Money markets will be volatile. The Bank of England and European Central Bank, with global allies, are assumed to have contingency plans to deal with a "Brexit shock" to sterling. Expect joint statements from EU founders Germany and France and from EU institutions. Look for a mantra of Three Rs: Regret - at losing nearly a fifth of the EU economy and more of its military and global clout; Respect - for the will of the British people; and Resolve - to forge ahead with European integration. "The show must go on," one senior EU official said. There may be a fourth message. Call it Reprisal, perhaps, though Britons should not take it personally; warnings of woe for those leaving will aim to discourage others from following suit. "Don't try this at home," was how one senior EU diplomat summed up the idea. There may be an element of spite, too. Some Europeans, sotto voce, may also feel Relief. Some in France fret at British blocking of federalist ideas and fear a British vote to remain could unleash a new push for a free-market EU. DAY 3 - SUNDAY, JUNE 26 - RALLYING ROUND THE EU FLAG After a Brexit vote, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker will chair an emergency meeting of the executive's "college" of 28 commissioners, including Britain's Jonathan Hill, officials say. The Commission will be responsible for negotiating the divorce settlement between London and Brussels. EU officials insist there is no "Plan B" in place for Brexit. But, recalling the same denials during last summer's narrowly avoided Grexit during the Greek debt crisis, one speaks of a "Room B", where a fire-fighting team of EU lawyers and experts will be ready. "The idea is to have everything ready for Monday," the EU official said. The start of a new week on global financial markets will see investors and voters demanding answers on where Britain and the EU are heading. Expect both to offer assurances of orderly talks, while nothing changes immediately, for firms or citizens. DAY 5 - TUESDAY, JUNE 28 - "DAVID, ARE YOU LEAVING NOW?" A 24-hour EU summit is scheduled. After a Brexit vote, his political career may be over but Cameron would likely stay on at least until his deeply divided party elects a successor. He would be expected to appear for dinner in Brussels. Big question - would he notify summit chair Donald Tusk that he is triggering Article 50 of the EU, the legal basis for Britain to leave the Union? In London, pro-Brexit would-be successors may try to play for time. Until Britain declares its hand, the EU would stall, though many would be impatient to make clear there will be no new talks to try and keep it in. If Cameron secures a referendum win, the summit will discuss quickly enacting the reform package he won in March to give Britain a special deal to stem EU immigration. DAY 6 - WEDNESDAY, JUNE 29 - "PLEASE WAIT OUTSIDE, DAVID." Day Two of the summit and, if it is to be Brexit, leaders of the 27 other states will confer without Cameron in the room - a pattern Britons will have to get used to. Article 50 sets a two-year limit on divorce talks. The EU must fill a Britain-sized hole in its budget and reassure millions of EU citizens living in Britain and Britons on the continent of their future rights. EU leaders, notably Germany and France, may push for a quick show of unity on more integration. Divisions between Berlin and Paris on managing the euro zone probably rule out a big move on that front before both hold elections in 2017. Closer EU defence cooperation, without sceptical Britain, may be revived. A major EU security policy review is already on the summit agenda. Other initiatives, aimed at blunting Marine Le Pen's far-right, eurosceptic bid for the French presidency in 2017, could include a push to stimulate job creation, especially among the young. "Brexit or not, we have to think about what comes next," French Finance Minister Michel Sapin told Reuters. "France will speak. Germany expects us to. We'll need to ... work together and not alienate the others from a Franco-German initiative." The Council of EU leaders must give the executive Commission a negotiating mandate. Some in Britain see exit discussions lasting longer than two years. But an extension requires an EU unanimity that few in Brussels expect. Some suggest talks with Britain on its future trade terms can run in parallel to the exit talks. Juncker, who spoke to reporters over lunch in Paris on Tuesday, ruled that out: "After the two years, we'll negotiate relations with a blank slate," he said. FROM DAY 7 - NOTHING (AND EVERYTHING) CHANGES; HELLO ESTONIA After a Brexit vote, all EU laws apply in Britain until two years after London starts the process to leave. Then none would apply. Meanwhile, British lawmakers sit in the EU parliament, Hill in the Commission, thousands of Britons would go on working as EU civil servants and British ministers sit in EU councils. But they will have no real voice and Britain plans to renounce its EU presidency in the second half of 2017; Estonia would come forward to start its first stint in the chair six months early. Some also see heavy pressure to exclude British MEPs from a say on EU laws and to deprive Hill, a Cameron appointee, of his sensitive portfolio overseeing financial services regulation. Whatever the referendum's outcome, a host of other EU plans, shelved for fear of alienating British voters, will come out of cold storage, including energy-saving rules to limit the power of toasters and kettles. Dealing with the fallout from a Swiss referendum on EU migration and a Dutch rejection of the EU trade deal with Ukraine will get back on track, as will a review of the EU's seven-year budget. If Britain votes to stay in, some, notably in France, fear a new British-led push to free up EU markets and rein in regulation. Others doubt that Cameron, if he survives at all, would have much appetite for deeper EU engagement amid post-referendum Conservative blood-letting. A post-Brexit relationship between Britain and the EU is the great unknown. Many EU leaders, wary of eurosceptic voters at home, are determined Britain cannot have access to EU trade and financial markets if it wants to keep out EU workers. "All four freedoms, or none," is how EU officials refer to free movement of goods, services, capital and labour in the EU treaty. Others put it more even starkly: "Out means out." New trade barriers would hurt both sides' economies. But the EU fears a political "domino effect" would cost more long-term. Brexit would "break a taboo", Juncker says: "If others open the door, inspired by the British model, we'll see a stream of referendums, depriving the European project of all credibility." END OF THE ROAD? Leaders have much else on their plates to distract them from negotiating with Britain, including Russia, the euro, jobs and refugees. London may have other priorities, too, not least the likelihood europhile Scotland would bid again to break away. There is a "Brussels consensus" that Britain would face a chilly future, cast out after two years to perhaps talk its way back later into some kind of trade access in return for many of the things -- notably free migration from inside the bloc and contributions to the EU budget -- which Brexit voters want to end. But cautious diplomats do not rule out surprise turns. EU law may seem clear but EU leaders, German Chancellor Angela Merkel included, are loath to see Britain go and may yet seek a way to keep it in, whatever the vote on June 23. "Will Merkel really shut the door?" a senior EU diplomat said. "It may seem clear-cut in Brussels. But in politics, never say never." (Additional reporting by Paul Taylor, Ingrid Melander, Emmanuel Jarry and Elizabeth Pineau in Paris; Editing by Peter Graff)
ATHENS, May 31 (Reuters) - Bulgarian state energy holding company BEH and Greek natural gas company Gastrade have set up a joint task force to prepare a proposal to build an off-shore liquefied natural gas (LNG)terminal in northern Greece, Gastrade said on Tuesday.

Greece currently has one LNG terminal on an islet off Athens and Gastrade, part of Greek energy group Copelouzos, is planning a second LNG terminal near the northern city of Alexandroupolis.

The task force will prepare and submit a proposal to the Bulgarian government for the best possible way to take part in the project, Gastrade said in a statement.

The facility, with an estimated annual capacity of 6.1 billion cubic metres (bcm), will seek to supply gas to southeastern Europe via another natural gas pipeline scheme that will cross through Greece, the Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria (IGB). Bulgaria and Greece signed the final investment agreement for the pipeline last year.

The IGB and the LNG terminal fit with the construction of the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) which will transport Caspian gas to European markets and was signed off by Greece and its partners this month.

The Alexandroupolis terminal is expected to cost about 370 million euros ($413 million) and is expected to be operational at the end of 2018, an official at Gastrade told Reuters.

Cheniere Energy, a U.S-based liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter, is interested in a minority stake in the LNG project, a senior company official said last year.

($1 = 0.8967 euros) (Reporting by Angeliki Koutantou, editing by David Evans)
Traders are looking for a rebound in Macy's, which has been beaten down for months.



optionMONSTER's tracking program detected the purchase of more than 13,000 July 34 calls for $0.53 to $0.89 on Friday. This represents new positioning, as the volume was far above the strike's open interest of 1,783 contracts.



Long calls lock in the price where investors can buy stock, allowing them to profit from a rally with limited capital at risk. Their cheap cost can also generate significant leverage on a percentage basis if shares move in the right direction. (See our Education section)



M rose 3.64 percent to $32.72 on Friday but is down 27 percent in the last three months. The department-store operator reported bearish results on May 11 and is expected to announce its next quarterly numbers on Aug. 10.



Overall option volume in the name was twice its daily average on Friday. Calls outnumbered puts by a bullish 12-to-1 ratio.





More From optionMONSTER


California Gov. Jerry Brown said Tuesday that he will vote for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the states Democratic primary next week, urging Democrats and independents in an open letter to unite around Clinton and put an end to the partys protracted and increasingly bitter nominating contest.

Brown said Clinton has the tenacity and skill to advance the Democratic agenda. He also said he was deeply impressed with Sanders message, drawing a parallel between Sanders bid and his 1992 presidential campaign. (During a debate in that campaign, Brown and Bill Clinton had an infamous clash about Hillary Clinton, in which Bill Clinton said to Brown, Youre not worth being on the same platform as my wife.)

But Brown noted Clinton is already leading by three million votes and hundreds of delegates, a lead he called insurmountable. Some polls have showed Clinton holding a comfortable lead over Sanders ahead of the June 7 primary, but a survey from the Public Policy Institute last week showed Clinton up by only two points, within the margin of error.

Brown painted a Clinton candidacy as the best hope for stopping presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, noting Trump has called climate change a hoax, promised to deport millions of immigrants and allow more nuclear proliferation. This is no time for Democrats to keep fighting each other, Brown said. The general election has already begun.

Next January, I want to be sure that it is Hillary Clinton who takes the oath of office, not Donald Trump, he added.
In November 1984, a newborn baby girl was left by her mother in a box in a laundry room at San Francisco State University.



Hours later, two students found the baby, one of whom happened to be a nursing student named Esther who knew how to care for the baby until the paramedics arrived.



After a city-wide search for the baby's biological parents and dozens of applications from couples hoping to adopt the baby, she was placed with Sam and Helene Sobol, who named the baby girl Jillian.



On Friday, Jillian Sobol graduated from the university where her life began. She celebrated the achievement with her adoptive parents, Esther and her biological father  a loving and supportive extended family brought together through years of searching.







"I had my whole little crew on the other side of the field," Sobol, 31, tells PEOPLE of her graduation day. "I was looking in their direction for the entire ceremony and I could really feel their love and support."





A Remarkable Beginning



Because of support she received from her adoptive parents, Sobol longed to know more about her biological parents "more out of curiosity than out of need," she says.



When Sobol was 16, her mother sat her down and told her about the circumstances of her birth and discovery.



"I was happy that my mom told me because she was able to break it to me slowly," she says. "She wanted me to empathize with my biological mother who she said must have been very scared. It was a different time and to have a baby out of wedlock wasnat acceptable."



Sobol says her mother helped her focus on the kind strangers who came forward after her discovery  such as the students who cared for her and the many couples who came forward wanting to adopt her.





California Woman Graduates From Same University Where She Was Abandoned as an Infant| Adoption, Graduation, Real People Stories, The Daily Smile



"She helped me understand that there was this outpouring of love and caring from the city of San Francisco," she says. "It made me feel special and cared for and I said, 'I'm going to make all that worth it.' "





A First Meeting



At 22, Sobol wrote to Esther and the two women met for the first time. The meeting went so well that Sobol felt emboldened to request information about her biological parents, who had been identified by campus police.



"I wanted to meet my biological father first because he wasnat the one who abandoned me," she says. "He didn't even know I was born."



So, Sobol wrote her birth dad a letter and he traveled to California to meet her and take her and her family to lunch with his parents.



"It was a great first encounter," she recalls. "I couldn't have done it if I hadn't been holding my mom's hand the whole time. It was overwhelming but it helped me to understand a lot biologically."



"My biological dad's family is is Dutch and English and they're loud and boisterous people," she continues. "I finally learned where I get that from."



Before reaching out to her biological mom, Sobol, who struggled with dyslexia in school and worked as a housekeeper and a waitress in her 20s, made the decision to pursue a degree in hospitality.



"I wanted to see if I could go back to that academic setting so many years after high school and succeed," she says.



She enrolled in a culinary program at San Francisco City College and then "things kind of just fell into place," she says.



While enrolled at San Francisco City College, she worked up the nerve to write a letter to her biological mother.



"I thanked her for giving me the gift of life and told her I was okay and that I hoped that she would write me a letter back," she says.





A 'Miraculous' Return



As Sobol was waiting to hear back from her mother, she found herself drawn to San Francisco State's hospitality management program.



"I knew that I was born there and I didnat want to go there specifically for that reason, but it worked out kind of miraculously," she says.





California Woman Graduates From Same University Where She Was Abandoned as an Infant| Adoption, Graduation, Real People Stories, The Daily Smile



Sobol kept her own history with the university to herself until earlier this year when she wrote a letter to the university's president.



"It was hard to keep the story in for the two years I was there because I felt like I wanted to tell everybody and nobody at the same time," she says. "I just wanted to focus on my education but then the president sent me very encouraging words."



Right around the time she wrote her letter to the president, she found a two-year-old message from her birth mother in a filtered messages folder on Facebook.



"I was very taken aback that I hadn't seen it for two years, but it was nothing but heartwarming and sincere," she says.



Sobol says she hasnat been able to find the words to respond to her mom, but she hopes she will know what to say later this year.



"I do hope in the future we can make contact and I look forward to that, but for now, I've been focused on graduating," she says. "It feels like this goal I've been working towards for the past few years is finally here."
By Prak Chan Thul PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodia's parliament voted on Monday to allow a court investigation into an opposition leader accused of procuring a prostitute, a vote that could push the country closer to political turmoil. The case of the opposition leader, Kem Sokha, and his alleged assignation has dominated politics for weeks and has raised tension in the run-up to a 2018 election that could prove to be veteran Prime Minister Hun Sen's most serious test at the ballot box. Opponents of Hun Sen say the self-styled strongman is using the judiciary to neutralize his opponents. The government denies that. Kem Sokha is acting chief of the main opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP). Party leader Sam Rainsy, a former finance minister, lives in self-exile to avoid arrest for an old defamation case he was pardoned for. His party has denounced the new warrant as politically motivated. All 68 members of parliament from Hun Sen's ruling Cambodian People's Party voted to allow a court to proceed with an investigation into Kem Sokha stemming from a secretly recorded, and leaked, telephone conversation between him and a woman who the government says he was having an illicit affair with. Prostitution was made illegal in Cambodia in 2008 even though it is widespread. Kem Sokha has neither confirmed nor denied having an affair with the woman and has dismissed the action against him as politically motivated. He has ignored court summonses, most recently last Thursday. Trade unions allied with the CNRP have called for protests if Kem Sokha is arrested. "The CNRP wants Cambodia to be ruled by rule of law and a multi-party democracy," Son Chhay, a senior CNRP lawmaker, told a news conference. "We will continue our fight." The party said Monday's vote was unconstitutional. The last election in 2013 marked Hun Sen's toughest electoral challenge in three decades of rule and the opposition is expected to mount a sterner test next time as younger voters seek change. Hun Sen has warned that an election victory for the opposition would see a return to civil war. The United Nations on Sunday voiced alarm at the escalating tension between Hun Sen's party and the opposition, in particular the arrest or attempted arrest of politicians. (Editing by Amy Sawitta Lefevre and Robert Birsel)
Is Schlumberger Looking Attractive after the Cameron Acquisition?

(Continued from Prior Part)

Schlumbergers business model

Despite the energy sector weakness, Schlumberger (SLB) remains a strong OFS (oilfield services and equipment) company. Its business model is diverse and not overly dependent on any particular line of business while catering to upstream companies needs. Its operations are geographically spread over 85 countries. The company is thus insulated from an energy business cycle downturn in any particular geographic location.

Schlumbergers merger with Cameron International has added to its product and service portfolio. Lets see how these factors have contributed to SLBs returns, which are better than the industry ETFs.

Energy price weakness hurts all

The slowdown in E&P (exploration and production) activity has spread around the world, scathing even the strongest companies such as Schlumberger. Lower E&P activity negatively affects OFS companies revenues and profitability. SLBs management expects the energy price weakness to continue in fiscal 2016 and budgets to remain pressured.

Investment in technology

SLBs investment in digitally enabled systems is expected to start benefiting its land drilling system and hydraulic fracturing system in late 2017. A multiclient seismic survey is a key area in which SLB invests. SLB currently has eight active 3D (three-dimensional) vessels that use IsoMetrix technology. These vessels are in use in the Campeche Basin in Mexico and in offshore Mozambique and South Africa.

Change in approach

Schlumberger is shifting its traditional procurement-driven business model to integrated services management. Under this, Schlumbergers production management takes full responsibility for field management. SLB has used this model with Royal Dutch Shells (RDS.B) projects in five wells in three countries. In the Auca project in Ecuador, SLB started implementing this in fiscal 1Q16.

Schlumberger is 0.6% of the iShares S&P 500 ETF (IVV). For investors looking for exposure to the energy sector, energy makes up 7.2% of IVV.

Story continues

Will the Cameron integration be beneficial for SLB?

Following Schlumbergers acquisition of Cameron International on April 1, 2016, Cameron became Schlumbergers fourth product group. Schlumberger management expects pre-tax cost synergies to be ~$300 million in the first year of the Cameron integration and $600 million in the second year.

Camerons developments in the incubated surface and subsurface systems technology may improve SLBs drilling and production performance. SLB also expects to integrate its existing drilling system with the new purpose-built surface and downhole hardware. These can increase SLBs operational efficiency.

Next, well take a look at Schlumbergers revenue and earnings.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
OTTAWA, May 31 (Reuters) - Canada, following the lead of Britain and Australia, will make plain packaging of cigarettes compulsory in a bid to cut the rate of smoking, Health Minister Jane Philpott said on Tuesday.

Although Canada already obliges firms to slap large graphic warning labels on cigarette packets, Philpott said more must be done, given that some 5 million of Canada's 36 million inhabitants still use tobacco products.

The measures would require a uniform, standardized color and font on packages and restrict the use of logos and trademarks.

"I don't believe tobacco companies should be allowed to build brand loyalty with children for a product that could kill them," Philpott told reporters.

A final decision on what packaging rules to apply will be announced after a three-month period of public consultations.

Earlier this month, a British court backed the government's plans for mandatory plain packaging when it struck down a legal challenge from tobacco companies.

In 2011, Australia became the first country to adopt plain packaging legislation.

Major producers of tobacco sold in Canada include Japan Tobacco's JTI-Macdonald unit, Rothmans Benson & Hedges Inc, which is partly owned by Philip Morris and Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd, a unit of British American Tobacco.

"With products already hidden from view in stores and 75 percent of the pack covered with health warnings, nobody starts smoking because of the pack," said Eric Gagnon, a spokesman for Imperial Tobacco.

(Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Alan Crosby)
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will not face punishment for manhandling a legislator and inadvertently elbowing another during a fracas in the House of Commons, parliamentarians decided on Tuesday. A committee examining what punishment if any to impose on Trudeau for his actions on May 18 voted to drop the matter after the female opposition legislator he elbowed said she accepted his apologies. Trudeau has formally expressed regret three times for the incident, which was prompted by impatience at what he saw as stalling tactics by the opposition ahead of a vote. His chances of facing serious sanctions had in any case been slim, since the committee is dominated by members of the ruling Liberal Party. Trudeau told Reuters on May 19 that he was only human and cited the "tremendous amount of pressures that come with this job". He also promised there would be no repeat of his actions. (Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Alan Crosby)
Ottawa (AFP) - A Canadian man who stabbed soldiers at a recruiting center in Toronto in March has been formally charged with terrorism, federal police said Tuesday.

Ayanle Hassan Ali, 27, faces attempted murder, assault and weapons charges "for the benefit of a terrorist group," the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said in a statement.

These are in addition to related charges already brought by the Toronto police, it said.

Ali is alleged to have stabbed a soldier in the arm without provocation after entering a government building in mid-March. Police say he then sought to wound a second soldier before he was subdued.

The suspect was overheard saying at the scene of the attack, "Allah told me to do this, Allah told me to kill people," Toronto police chief Mark Saunders told reporters the next day.

No link to terrorism was made at that time.
Florence (Italy) (AFP) - Italian cruise ship captain Francesco Schettino was on Tuesday due to hear the outcome of his appeal against his lengthy jail sentence for the 2012 Costa Concordia disaster that left 32 people dead.

Schettino was sentenced in February 2015 to 16 years and one month in prison after a judge ruled that his recklessness was to blame for the fate of the giant ship, which struck underwater rocks off the Tuscan island of Giglio.

He was convicted of multiple manslaughter, causing a maritime accident and abandoning ship before all passengers and crew had been evacuated, earning him the nickname "Captain Coward" in the press.

The 55-year-old career seaman, who has yet to begin his sentence, says he has been made the solitary scapegoat for the disaster.

As his lawyers demand his acquittal, prosecutors are simultaneously appealing the sentence, saying it should be raised to 27 years.

Prosecutor Alessandro Leopizzi said he recognised that other members of the ship's staff played a role in the disaster, but that they too had been found guilty and their errors "did not detract from Schettino's culpability".

The appeals court in Florence was deliberating and was due to give its verdict from 1600 GMT at the earliest.

Schettino was not present and was awaiting the verdict at his home near Naples.

During his first trial, which lasted 19 months, Schettino was accused of showing off when he steered the ship too close to the island and of being distracted because he was entertaining a nightclub dancer.

He was given 10 years for manslaughter, five for causing a disaster that led to the biggest salvage operation in maritime history, and one for abandoning ship before all the passengers and crew had been evacuated.

The ship had been carrying more than 4,200 people, including 3,200 tourists. The bodies of two of the victims have never been found.

His lawyers insist the accident and its deadly impact were primarily due to organisational failings for which the ship's owner, Costa Crociere, its Indonesian helmsman and the Italian coastguard should share the blame.

Costa Crociere avoided potential criminal charges by accepting partial responsibility and agreeing to pay a one million euro ($1.2 million) fine.

Survivors who rejected Costa's initial compensation offer and became civil parties in the Schettino case were awarded an average of 30,000 euros ($34,000) each.
(Adds Allergan comment, updates share price)

May 31 (Reuters) - Billionaire investor Carl Icahn said on Tuesday he had acquired a "large position" in Botox-maker Allergan Plc and that he was very supportive of Chief Executive Officer Brent Saunders.

Shares of Allergan rose 0.8 percent to $237.85 in mid-morning trading.

Icahn, who did not disclose details of the stake, said in a statement on his website that he was confident in Saunders' ability to enhance value for all Allergan shareholders. (http://bit.ly/1UatnIM)

Allergan has "no reason to believe that this investment was made for purposes of influencing the actions of management or control of the company," spokesman Mark Marmur said in an emailed statement.

Saunders has come close to Icahn before. Saunders became CEO of Allergan after it was bought by Actavis, where he had been CEO, and then changed its name. Saunders had moved into the top spot at Actavis from the CEO job at Forest Labs, which Actavis acquired.

Icahn had a Forest Labs stake and was agitating for change when the company's long-time management ceded control and Saunders took the CEO job in 2013. Icahn said he sold the Forest position when the company changed hands.

Allergan is near to closing the sale of its generic business to Teva Pharmaceutical Industries. Once that happens, Saunders has said the company will be able to make acquisitions of more than $1 billion. Allergan needs to pay off more debt before it will make even bigger deals, he has said.

The move comes a few months after Allergan's plans to be bought by Pfizer fell apart. In that so-called "inversion" deal, Pfizer would have moved its headquarter to Dublin, where Allergan is based, in order to lower the taxes it pays in the United States.

Icahn, who launched a $150 million political action committee advocating tax reform to eliminate such deals, had said the Pfizer-Allergan tie-up would result in the loss of the country's 10th largest company to Ireland.

The government effectively blocked that deal by issuing new tax rules that made it less favorable.

(Reporting by Caroline Humer in New York and Amrutha Penumudi in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Alan Crosby)
LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / May 31, 2016 / Cavco Industries, Inc. (CVCO), one of the largest producers of manufactured and systems built homes, today announced that it will be presenting at the 6th Annual LD Micro Invitational on Tuesday, June 7th at 8:00 AM PT / 11:00 AM ET.

For more information about Cavco Industries, Inc. and to access a copy of the presentation slides, please visit the Investor Relations section of Cavco's website at http://investor.cavco.com.

The conference will be held at the Luxe Sunset Bel Air Hotel and will feature 195 companies in the small / micro-cap space.

View Cavco Industries, Inc.'s profile here: http://www.ldmicro.com/profile/CVCO

Profiles powered by LD Micro - News Compliments of Accesswire

About Cavco Industries, Inc.

Cavco Industries, Inc., headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, designs and produces factory-built housing products primarily distributed through a network of independent and Company-owned retailers. The Company is one of the largest producers of manufactured homes in the United States, which are marketed under a variety of brand names including Cavco Homes, Fleetwood Homes, Palm Harbor Homes, Fairmont Homes and Chariot Eagle. The Company is also a leading producer of park model RVs, vacation cabins, and systems-built commercial structures, as well as modular homes built primarily under the Nationwide Custom Homes brand. Cavco's mortgage subsidiary, CountryPlace Mortgage, is an approved Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac seller/servicer, a Ginnie Mae mortgage backed securities issuer and offers conforming mortgages and chattel loans to purchasers of factory-built and site-built homes. Its insurance subsidiary, Standard Casualty, provides property and casualty insurance to owners of manufactured homes.

About LD Micro

LD Micro was founded in 2006 with the sole purpose of being an independent resource in the microcap space. What started out as a newsletter highlighting unique companies has transformed into an event platform hosting several influential conferences annually (Invitational, Summit, and Main Event).

Story continues

In 2015, LDM launched the first pure microcap index (the LDMi) to exclusively provide intraday information on the entire sector. LD will continue to provide valuable tools for the benefit of everyone in the small and microcap universe.

For those interested in attending, please contact David Scher at david@ldmicro.com or visit www.ldmicro.com for more information.

Contact:

Name: Dan Urness

Phone: 602-256-6263

Address: 1001 N. Central Ave., Ste. 800, Phoenix, AZ 85004

Email: danu@cavco.com

SOURCE: Cavco Industries, Inc. via LD Micro
Chemical and advanced materials maker, Celanese Corporation CE has announced its decision to raise the list and off-list selling prices of acetic acid by RMB100/MT in China. The rise in price will be effective immediately, or as contracts permit.

Earlier this month, Celanese announced its decision to raise the list and off-list selling prices of Vinyl Acetate Monomer, effective Jun 1, 2016, or as contracts allow. The company is increasing the price by 2 cents per pound in the U.S. and Canada, by $50 per metric ton in Mexico, Central and South America, and by 50 per metric ton in Europe.

Global growth remains sluggish while raw materials face deflationary trends in a world under severe geopolitical strain. On the brighter side, demand in China has picked up but is still under pressure, while demand in Europe and Asia remains modest.

Meanwhile, Celanese is focused on increasing shareholder value. Last month, the company revised its outlook for 2016 and now expects adjusted earnings per share to increase 810%, up from 510% projected earlier. If the economy recovers in the second half of the year, the company may be able to touch the high end of the revised outlook.

Celaneses adjusted earnings for the first quarter were $1.83 per share, indicating a 6% increase from the prior-year quarter. Earnings also beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.52. Although revenues fell roughly 3% year over year to $1,404 million in the quarter, the figure beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate.

Celanese currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).



Better-ranked companies in the chemicals industry include Innophos Holdings Inc IPHS, Innospec Inc. IOSP and Asahi Kasei Corp. AHKSY, each sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).



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CELANESE CP-A (CE): Free Stock Analysis Report



ASAHI KASEI CP (AHKSY): Free Stock Analysis Report



INNOPHOS HLDGS (IPHS): Free Stock Analysis Report



INNOSPEC INC (IOSP): Free Stock Analysis Report



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Memorial Day is a chance to recognize the sacrifice made by those who have given their lives in the name of defending America. To show their patriotic spirit, celebs spent the three-day weekend enjoying family, friends and freedom. Here's a look at how the stars celebrated, as shown in their own Instagram pics!

Many stars took to the beach with friends to commemorate the federal holiday, including Vanessa Hudgens, who rocked a retro-hippy look while catching some rays with her pals.

PHOTOS: Hollywood's Hottest Bikini Bods!

Britney Spears, her kids -- Jayden and Sean -- and some of their friends spent the day at a beach-side palatial estate enjoying the luxury pool and then frolicking in the sand and surf.

A lot of stars used the holiday to spend time with their kids. Mariah Carey took her kids, Moroccan and Monroe, to Disneyland, while Jessica Alba took her daughters, Honor and Haven, to see the ocean.

PHOTOS: Stars Share Pics of Their Cute Kids

Comedian Amy Schumer took to the high seas on a boat to celebrate the special day, but didn't appear to be having the best time. "I'm a blast at sea," Schumer ironically captioned the Instagram pic.

Meanwhile, others stars opted to keep things more low-key for their observance of Memorial Day. Justin Bieber rocked a fedora and a white dinner jacket with no shirt over swim trunks while talking on his phone and standing at the edge of an infinity pool.

WATCH: Justin Bieber Goes Shirtless, Grabs His Package in New Mirror Selfie

Lena Dunham chose to stay at home with her "girl gang," reading Innocents and Others by Dana Spiotta, and Giving Up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel.

As for Ryan Seacrest, the former American Idol star seemed to be really proud of his holiday-themed patriotic socks.

WATCH: 6 Movies You Should Watch This Memorial Day

Blac Chyna also showed off some clothing, but was more interested in showing off some skin, when she rocked a super low-cut champagne gown during her Memorial Day festivities. Check out the video below for a look at the model's steamy, cleavage-baring style.

Story continues

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Centric Health Corporation to Present at the LD Micro Invitational in Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / May 31, 2016 / Centric Health Corporation ("Centric Health" or "the Company") (CHH.TO), today announced that it will be participating in the 6th Annual LD Micro Invitational on Tuesday, June 7, 2016 at 3:00 PM PST / 6:00 PM EST. David Cutler, President and Chief Executive Officer of Centric Health, will be presenting and available to meet with investors on June 7th and 8th.

Centric Health is Canada's leading diversified healthcare services company. It is uniquely positioned to complement the Canadian healthcare system during a period of unprecedented challenges as the Canadian seniors population is forecast to double over the coming decades. In addition, consumption will drive higher costs and result in increased wait times combined with constrained access.

Centric Health is poised for sustainable long-term growth and free cash flow generation through its leading market positions and large national networks with significant capacity and operating leverage, which allows the Company to generate high margins on incremental volumes. The Company is operating via two business divisions:

Institutional Pharmacy Services (Specialty Pharmacy):

Surgical and Medical Centres:

A webcast of the presentation will be available at http://wsw.com/webcast/ldmicro10/chh.to. The webcast will be archived for one year.

The conference will be held at the Luxe Sunset Bel Air Hotel and will feature 195 companies in the small / micro-cap space.

View the Company's profile here: http://www.ldmicro.com/profile/CHH.TO

Profiles powered by LD Micro - News Compliments of Accesswire

About Centric Health

Centric Health's vision is to be Canada's most respected provider and brand in the independent healthcare sectors in which it operates, world renowned for delivering the highest levels of quality care and outcomes, innovative solutions and value to patients, clients and stakeholders. To this end, Centric Health primarily focuses on two core healthcare businesses:

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The Specialty Pharmacy division is composed of a growing national network of fulfilment centres that offer high-volume solutions for the cost effective supply of chronic medication and other specialty clinical services, serving more than 25,000 residents in over 300 seniors communities (long term care facilities, retirement homes and assisted living facilities) nationally. The Specialty Pharmacy division also provides pharmaceutical dispensing services for employees insured by corporate health plans.

The Surgical & Medical Centres division is Canada's largest independent surgical provider operating six facilities across four provinces. It serves a diversified customer base with private paid non-insured surgeries and diagnostics, government outsourcing of insured surgeries and diagnostics and other procedures funded by third-party payors (including Workers Compensation) and is the proud owner of Canada's first Centre of Excellence in Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery.

With national networks of facilities in each of its businesses, deep knowledge and experience of healthcare delivery and extensive, trusted relationships with payers, physicians, and government agencies, the Company is uniquely positioned to address current and future healthcare needs in growing markets as the Canadian healthcare industry continues to evolve over the medium to long term.

About LD Micro

LD Micro was founded in 2006 with the sole purpose of being an independent resource in the microcap space. What started out as a newsletter highlighting unique companies has transformed into an event platform hosting several influential conferences annually (Invitational, Summit, and Main Event).

In 2015, LDM launched the first pure microcap index (the LDMi) to exclusively provide intraday information on the entire sector. LD will continue to provide valuable tools for the benefit of everyone in the small and microcap universe.

For those interested in attending, please contact David Scher at david@ldmicro.com or visit www.ldmicro.com for more information.

For information, please contact:

David Cutler

Chief Executive Officer

Centric Health Corporation

416-619-9401

david.cutler@centrichealth.ca

Lawrence Chamberlain

Investor Relations

NATIONAL Equicom

416-848-1457

lchamberlain@national.ca

SOURCE: Centric Health Corporation via LD Micro
staples

Ron Sargent, CEO of office-supply giant Staples, has agreed to step down from his position, according to a release from the company.

The move comes a little more than two weeks after the company was forced to scrap its proposed merger with rival Office Depot because of pushback from regulators.

"He also worked diligently on the acquisition of Office Depot and the Board appreciates the strong effort he made to secure governmental approval," said Robert E. Sulentic, lead director of Staples' board, in a release. "With the termination of the merger, we mutually agreed that now is the right time to transition to new management to lead Staples through its next phase of growth."

Antitrust concerns led to an injunction by a federal judge, causing the firms to toss out the merger on May 11.

"It has been an incredible honor to have worked with the talented and dedicated team at Staples for the past 27 years through a dynamic and ground-breaking time for the Company, our customers and the retail industry overall," said Sargent in the release.

He continued: "I want to sincerely thank our associates and partners, every one of whom helped to deliver value for our customers."

Shira Goodman, president of North American operations, will replace Sargent as interim CEO.

The stock is unchanged in after-hours trading following the announcement.

NOW WATCH: Staples, REI, and H&M are going against the grain  and now Thanksgiving is becoming a real holiday again





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By Diadie Ba DAKAR (Reuters) - Former Chad president Hissene Habre, an ally of the West during the Cold War, was convicted on Monday of war crimes and crimes against humanity for ordering the killing and torture of thousands of political opponents during his eight-year rule. The verdict capped a 16-year battle by victims and rights campaigners to bring the former strongman to justice in Senegal, where he fled after being ousted in a 1990 coup. Habre, 73, was sentenced to life in prison by the Special African Chamber (CAE), a tribunal created in 2013 by Senegal and the African Union. He was also convicted of rape. Dressed in white robes with dark sunglasses and a head scarf covering most of his face, Habre was defiant after his conviction and sentence were announced, raising his arms and shouting to his supporters as he was led from the courtroom. Many, including some of his victims present in the courtroom, cheered in celebration. "After years of struggle and many setbacks on the way to justice, this verdict is as historic as it was hard-won," said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein. "In a world scarred by a constant stream of atrocities, the ramifications of this verdict are global." Habre has refused to recognise the CAE's jurisdiction and at times had to be forced to appear in court, delaying proceedings. The tribunal is supported by the African Union but is part of Senegal's justice system, making it the first time in modern history that one country's domestic courts have prosecuted the former leader of another country on rights charges. Other such cases have been tried by international tribunals. The case centred on whether Habre, who was feted at the White House in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan after expelling Libyan forces from Chad, ordered the large-scale assassination and torture of political opponents and ethnic rivals. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called Monday's verdict "a landmark in the global fight against impunity" in a statement that alluded to Washington's Cold War-era support for Habre. "As a country committed to the respect for human rights and the pursuit of justice, this is also an opportunity for the United States to reflect on, and learn from, our own connection with past events in Chad," he said. "NEVER AGAIN" A 1992 Chadian Truth Commission accused Habre's government of up to 40,000 political murders as well as systematic torture, mostly by his intelligence police, the Documentation and Security Directorate (DDS). An investigation by Human Rights Watch in 2001 unearthed thousands of documents in the abandoned DDS headquarters updating Habre on the status of detainees. During the trial, a court handwriting expert confirmed margin notes on one document to be Habre's. During the trial, some of his victims testified in Habre's presence, recounting the acts of torture to which they were submitted. Presiding Judge Gustave Kam recounted how Habre was directly involved in interrogations and torture, sometimes inflicting the abuse himself or ordering it by phone or walkie talkie. "The verdict sends a powerful message that the days when tyrants could brutalize their people, pillage their treasury and escape abroad to a life of luxury are coming to an end," said Reed Brody, a Human Rights Watch researcher who helped to investigate the crimes. Habre's lawyers now have two weeks to launch an appeal. The trial was seen as highlighting African countries' ability to hold their own trials at a time of growing criticism of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, which many on the continent accuse of bias against Africans. "We are proud that this trial took place on African soil. Never this type of terror again," said Clement Abaifouta, president of the Chadian Victims Association (AVCRP), whose aim was to bring Habre to justice. (Writing by Edward McAllister; Editing by Joe Bavier and Gareth Jones)
Charlize Theron and Emily Blunt (Photo: Getty Images)

Thats what friends are for! Charlize Theron threw a baby shower at her Hollywood Hills home for Emily Blunt on Sunday, May 29.

PHOTOS: 2015s Babies of the Year

Blunt, 33, whos expecting baby no. 2 with husband John Krasinski, 36, wore a printed sundress as she celebrated with her The Huntsman: Winters War costar and friends.



Actress A.J. Johnson was in attendance at the afternoon party and posted a sweet pic with the pair on Instagram, captioning it, An afternoon of love, laughs and friendship celebrating a special piece of my [heart] #EmilyBlunt with hostess with the mostess @charlizeafrica.

Photo: Instagram

Although Blunt, who has not publicly revealed the sex of her baby, was presented with a cake that was frosted pale-blue and topped with yellow ducks, Everything at the party was done in shades of light pink, an eyewitness tells Us Weekly. There were pink balloons and light-pink floral centerpieces. It was very low-key.



PHOTOS: Celebrity Couples and How They First Met  Love Story Beginnings

Us Weekly broke the news exclusively in January that Blunt, whos already the mom of daughter Hazel, 2, was expecting another baby with her husband of almost six years.



The British star said in an interview in March that pregnancy is different the second time around.

PHOTOS: Famous Celebrity Pregnancies  Baby Bump Hall of Fame

The first pregnancy is the most self-indulgent thing in the world because you get massages and prenatal yoga and hypnotherapy CDs, she told C magazine. During this one I forget that Im even pregnant. Im hoisting my 2-year-old around!



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On May 30, 2016, we issued an updated research report on Oklahoma-based Chesapeake Energy Corporation CHK.



Chesapeake is on track with its plan of reducing long-term debt by monetizing its assets and cutting lease-hold spending. This monetization initiative is mainly aimed to cope with the mounting debt level as well as to fill the funding gap for its 2016 expenditures that resulted from volatile natural gas prices.



The company foresees remarkable cost-cut efforts as well as efficiency gains in its core operating areas. Chesapeake has the deepest inventory in the preeminent part of the Utica as well as some of the finest locations in Eagle Ford and Marcellus. These are likely to help the company in achieving its target.



Chesapeake announced a cut in its 2016 capital spending. For 2016, the company expects capital expenditure in the range of $1.3$1.8 billion, down 57% from $3.6 billion in 2015. This should help the company in improving cash flows as the pricing weakness continues to weigh on financials.



Chesapeake remains one of the industrys most active players in managing asset portfolio through a combination of acquisitions and disposals. With a bigger inventory of unconventional resource potential than probably any other domestic independent, Chesapeake boasts a leading position among the top unconventional liquids-rich plays comprising Eagle Ford, Utica, Granite Wash, Cleveland, Tonkawa, Mississippi Lime and Niobrara and in the Marcellus, Haynesville/Bossier and Barnett natural gas shale plays.



However, Chesapeakes oil exposure, though limited, further increases bearishness on the stock as the commodity has nosedived since Jun 2014. With crude prices anticipated to remain weak throughout 2016, financials are likely to remain pressed.



For 2016, Chesapeake expects total production, after adjusting for asset sales, in the range of flat to 5% decline from 2015. Though the company is the second-largest natural gas producer in the U.S., it has been struggling to fund its capital budget amid diminishing cash flows in a weak natural gas price scenario.



Though Chesapeakes ongoing asset monetization initiatives are working well, the companys balance sheet is still more leveraged than its peers. At the end of the first quarter, the companys debt balance was $9.4 billion. In the reported quarter, the company retired its 3.25% Senior Notes due Mar 15, 2016, and repurchased approximately $282 million of debt due in 2017 at an average discount of approximately 39%.



Stocks to Consider



Currently, Chesapeake carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked stocks in the oil and gas sector include CVR Refining, LP CVRR, Murphy USA Inc. MUSA and Braskem S.A. BAK. All these stocks sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).



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MURPHY USA INC (MUSA): Free Stock Analysis Report



BRASKEM SA (BAK): Free Stock Analysis Report



CHESAPEAKE ENGY (CHK): Free Stock Analysis Report



CVR REFINING LP (CVRR): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
(Adds comment from House speaker)

CHICAGO, May 30 (Reuters) - Chicago will be able to spread out state-mandated higher payments to its police and fire pensions after the Illinois Legislature on Monday overrode the governor's veto of a bill that became entangled in a political impasse.

The Senate voted 39-19 and the House voted 72-43 to undo Republican Governor Bruce Rauner's veto on Friday that the city claimed would lead to a $300 million property tax hike.

The bill gives Chicago short-term budget relief but will add to the city's big pension funding gap.

The override bolsters Democrats, who control the legislature, as they battle with Rauner over state assistance for Chicago and its public school system, which is seeking state money for its teachers' pensions. The political impasse had left Illinois without a complete budget 11 months into fiscal 2016.

Rauner called the bill "terrible policy," while Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel accused him of using the city as a political pawn.

Rauner's spokeswoman Catherine Kelly released a statement reiterating the governor's contention that the measure would end up costing Chicago taxpayers $18.6 billion over time.

The measure alters a 2010 state law that boosted Chicago's payments to its public safety workers' pensions in order to reach a 90 percent funded level by 2040. Under that law, Chicago's contribution will jump to nearly $834 million this year from $290.4 million in 2015, according to city figures.

The new law reduces the payment to $619 million and allows for smaller increases through 2020 than under the 2010 law. It also gives the police and fire funds until 2055 to become 90 percent funded. The police system is 26 percent funded and the fire system 23 percent funded.

Chicago's fiscal 2016 budget assumed the bill's enactment by lowering the city's contribution to police and fire pensions by about $220 million. The city council also approved a $543 million phased-in property tax to exclusively cover higher contributions to the two retirement systems.

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House Speaker Michael Madigan was clearly delighted as he addressed reporters after budget talks with Rauner.

"I think it was interesting the governor had nothing to say about the override. I was raised not to cause embarrassment for people so I didn't raise it," Madigan said.

The city must still deal with underfunding problems for its municipal and laborers' retirement systems after the Illinois Supreme Court in March tossed out a 2014 law that cut benefits and increased contributions to keep the pension funds from insolvency.

(Reporting by Karen Pierog; Additional reporting by Dave McKinney in Springfield, Illinois; Editing by Richard Chang)
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Chicago will be able to spread out state-mandated higher payments to its police and fire pensions after the Illinois Legislature on Monday overrode the governor's veto of a bill that became entangled in a political impasse. The Senate voted 39-19 and the House voted 72-43 to undo Republican Governor Bruce Rauner's veto on Friday that the city claimed would lead to a $300 million property tax hike. The bill gives Chicago short-term budget relief but will add to the city's big pension funding gap. The override bolsters Democrats, who control the legislature, as they battle with Rauner over state assistance for Chicago and its public school system, which is seeking state money for its teachers' pensions. The political impasse had left Illinois without a complete budget 11 months into fiscal 2016. Rauner called the bill "terrible policy," while Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel accused him of using the city as a political pawn. Rauner's spokeswoman Catherine Kelly released a statement reiterating the governor's contention that the measure would end up costing Chicago taxpayers $18.6 billion over time. The measure alters a 2010 state law that boosted Chicago's payments to its public safety workers' pensions in order to reach a 90 percent funded level by 2040. Under that law, Chicago's contribution will jump to nearly $834 million this year from $290.4 million in 2015, according to city figures. The new law reduces the payment to $619 million and allows for smaller increases through 2020 than under the 2010 law. It also gives the police and fire funds until 2055 to become 90 percent funded. The police system is 26 percent funded and the fire system 23 percent funded. Chicago's fiscal 2016 budget assumed the bill's enactment by lowering the city's contribution to police and fire pensions by about $220 million. The city council also approved a $543 million phased-in property tax to exclusively cover higher contributions to the two retirement systems. House Speaker Michael Madigan was clearly delighted as he addressed reporters after budget talks with Rauner. "I think it was interesting the governor had nothing to say about the override. I was raised not to cause embarrassment for people so I didn't raise it," Madigan said. The city must still deal with underfunding problems for its municipal and laborers' retirement systems after the Illinois Supreme Court in March tossed out a 2014 law that cut benefits and increased contributions to keep the pension funds from insolvency. (Reporting by Karen Pierog; Additional reporting by Dave McKinney in Springfield, Illinois; Editing by Richard Chang)
Investing Compass: How to Navigate China's Choppy Waters

(Continued from Prior Part)

Chinas business sentiment

The MNI China Business Sentiment Indicator is a leading indicator. It measures Chinas current business sentiment and future expectations for the economy. A reading above 50 indicates that business sentiment is growing. A reading under 50 suggests that business confidence is falling.

Chinas MNI Business Sentiment Indicator fell to 50.0 in May from 50.5 in April. The fall in new orders was offset by an increase in production. However, firms were more optimistic that the situation might change over the next three months.

The production indicator increased for three consecutive months, even as overall confidence flatlined over the same period. Companies reported the easy availability of credit due to easing measures introduced by Beijing since 2014. This supported growth and demand.

However, with the slow and uncertain economic recovery, expectations for overall business conditions are down.

Road ahead

According to Philip Uglow, the chief economist of MNI Indicators, A year and a half since the authorities embarked on the current programme of monetary stimulus, the MNI China Business Sentiment Indicator is still languishing at a low level. Measures of credit availability in the survey show that looser policy is flowing through to companies on our panel, although its having only a limited impact on the real economy metrics of output and orders.

Chinas gross domestic product grew 6.7% in the first three months of 2016. It was in line with Market expectations. Easing measures introduced by Beijing since 2014 supported growth and demand.

Impact on funds

A fall in production could lead to a decrease in business and revenue for companies such as Tencent Holdings (TCEHY), China Mobile (CHL), and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSM).

China-focused mutual funds such as the Clough China Fund  Class A (CHNAX), the Guinness Atkinson China & Hong Kong Fund (ICHKX), and the RS China Fund  Class A (RSCHX) provide exposure to Chinese shares. Investors can also invest in ETFs like the iShares China Large-Cap ETF (FXI) and the Deutsche X-trackers Harvest CSI 300 China A-Shares ETF (ASHR).

Story continues

In the next part, well look at Chinas Westpac MNI Consumer Sentiment Indicator.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
BEIJING (Reuters) - China will "pressure" the United States on maritime issues at talks in Beijing next week because of Chinese concern about an increased U.S. military presence in the disputed South China Sea, a major state-run newspaper said on Tuesday. China has been angered by what it views as provocative U.S. military patrols close to islands China controls in the South China Sea. The United States says the patrols are to protect freedom of navigation. "Beijing will pressure Washington over maritime issues during the upcoming Strategic and Economic Dialogue, as the United States' increasing military presence in the South China Sea is among China's major concerns," the official China Daily said, citing unidentified officials. China claims most of the South China Sea, through which $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have overlapping claims. This month, Beijing demanded an end to U.S. surveillance near China after two Chinese fighter jets carried out what the Pentagon said was an "unsafe" intercept of a U.S. military reconnaissance aircraft over the South China Sea. The South China Sea is also likely to feature at a June 3-5 security forum in Singapore known as the Shangri-La Dialogue. China's Defence Ministry said on Tuesday that Admiral Sun Jianguo, a deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission, would lead China's delegation at the Singapore talks. At the Beijing talks with the United States, which U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will attend, other issues will also be on the table. China will bring up the issue of self-ruled Taiwan - claimed by Beijing but which elected a pro-independence party to power in January - as well as the situation on the Korean peninsula, the China Daily added. "The two countries have differing pursuits on major issues at the strategic level. However, the two still have many common interests," the paper said. "Whether it is on the South China Sea issue or on the Korean Peninsula issue, the two countries have a shared security goal to maintain regional stability," it added. The newspaper did not elaborate. China is reclusive North Korea's only major ally but has been angered by Pyongyang's nuclear and missile tests and signed up to tough U.N. sanctions against it in March. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Robert Birsel)
The Chinese metropolis of Hangzhou is under fire from various quarters online after local media reported that parking spaces have begun proliferating throughout the city.

The spots are wider than normal spots and outlined in pink with a woman painted on the ground to remove any possible doubt.

They look like this:

Source: Facebook

L officials defended the spots online, saying it's all for the sake of women who are poor drivers.

"The bigger parking spaces are for women drivers whose driving skills are not superb," Pan Tietong, a manager of a local service area which has the spots told the Q Saturday. The spots "are especially designed for women drivers. ... It's a humane measure."

While many western observers might be quick to cry sexism, reaction on Chinese social media was mixed, the Los Angeles Times reported.

"Although I can park in normal parking spaces, my other female friends may need bigger spaces to park," 34-year-old Lin Zhuzi, said on the Chinese social media service Weibo.

"

S speaking, science offers conflicting evidence on the subject.

A 2010 New York City traffic study, for example, asserted that men cause the vast majority of car accidents. A year later, however, a University of Michigan study concluded exactly the o, finding women to be more dangerous.

While the science will probably never offer conclusive proof on anything as subjective as which gender is "better" at what, studies have found that women learn faster than men, are cleaner, and are more likely to survive car accidents, Cosmopolitan reported.
Chris Kyle, the subject of 2014s American Sniper, may have lied about his decorated military career, according to The Intercept.

PHOTOS: Most Shocking Celebrity Deaths of All Time

Kyle, the former Navy SEAL and Iraq War veteran  who penned the New York Timesbestselling memoir American Sniper  has been largely celebrated as a war hero for his brave service. His stories of fighting overseas inspired the Clint Eastwooddirected blockbuster, which was nominated for Best Picture at the 2015 Academy Awards. Subsequently, Bradley Cooper, who played Kyle in the film, was also nominated for Best Actor the same year.



PHOTOS: Celebrities' Political Affiliations

In his tome, Kyle wrote that he received two Silver Stars, a prestigious decoration two levels below the Medal of Honor, and five Bronze Stars with a V device, signifying they were earned for valor. Contrary to his account, The Intercept suggests that Kyle embellished his achievements, citing one Navy officer who chose to remain anonymous. The unidentified officer claimed that Kyle received only one Silver Star and three Bronze Stars with V.



However, after Kyle was shot and killed at 38 in 2013 at a Texas gun range, the Navy released Kyles discharge paperwork, aka a DD Form 214, that stated he earned two Silver Stars and at least five Bronze Stars with a V, which he originally took credit for. The Navy is looking into the discrepancy between Kyles medal count (which matches their official log) and The Intercepts report.

The Navy considers the individual service members official military personnel file and our central official awards records to be the authoritative sources for verifying entitlement to decorations and awards, Navy spokesperson Lt. Jackie Pau said in a statement.



PHOTOS: Celebrities' Political Affiliations

The form DD214 is generated locally at the command where the service member is separated, Pau added. Although the information on the DD214 should match the official records, the process involves people and inevitably some errors may occur.










Police are investigating a weekend incident at the Cincinnati Zoo which prompted zookeepers to shoot a 17-year-old endangered gorilla to death, PEOPLE confirms.



A Cincinnati Police Department spokeswoman tells PEOPLE that detectives are "looking at the facts and circumstances" that led a 4-year-old boy to plummet into the zoo's gorilla exhibit.



After his 12-foot fall, the child was grabbed up by the 450-pound animal, who is named Harambe, and dragged around the enclosed exhibit.



The police spokeswoman tells PEOPLE a "thorough review" is underway into the "facts and circumstances that led to this 4-year-old falling into this enclosure."



Upon the conclusion of their review, the spokeswoman says law enforcement authorities will likely determine whether criminal charges should be filed against the boy's parents.



The spokeswoman tells PEOPLE there is no "specified timeframe" for the review, but added the investigation should wrap up before the weekend.



"Obviously, our goal is the safety of the children who visit the zoo," the spokeswoman says. "That is why we're conducting a review like this  to look at all the facts and the circumstances in this matter."



In a statement issued Tuesday morning, Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters confirmed the investigation was initiated by the Cincinnati Police Department, and that "once their investigation is concluded, they will confer with our office on possible criminal charges."









The gorilla's death has sparked outrage on social media, with critics blasting the child's mother for taking her eyes off of him.



But the boy's mom, Michelle Gregg, took to Facebook to defend herself in a now-deleted post, writing: "God protected my child until the authorities were able to get to him. My son is safe and was able to walk away with a concussion and a few scrapesa no broken bones or internal injuries."



 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.



Gregg continued, "As a society we are quick to judge how a parent could take their eyes off of their child and if anyone knows me I keep a tight watch on my kids. Accidents happena"



Cincinnati Zoo Director Thane Maynard, who says the zoo will not be pressing charges against the family, has defended the decision to shoot and kill Harambe.



"The idea of waiting and shooting it with a hypodermic was not a good idea. That would have definitely created alarm in the male gorilla. When you dart an animal, anesthetic doesn't work in one second, it works over a period of a few minutes to 10 minutes. The risk was due to the power of that animal."



He added, "Everyone should keep hold of their kids. Here, the mall, the schoolyard. But the zoo is a safe place."



A vigil for Harambe was held near the front entrance to the zoo on Monday afternoon and people have been leaving flowers, notes and pictures in memory of the animal around a gorilla statue on the premises.



Animal activists created an online petition requiring 300,000 signatures called "Justice for Harambe," that will be used to encourage the Cincinnati Zoo, Child Protection Services and Cincinnati Police Department to hold the parents accountable for Harambe's death.
CIT Group Inc. CIT, which is among the world's top 10 lessors, is said to be considering a spin-off or sale of its aircraft leasing unit by the end of this year in order to simplify operations and focus more on domestic banking. The news was first reported by Reuters.



The sale has attracted over a dozen prospective suitors including China's HNA Group, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China's Leasing unit and Japan's Orix Corp. and is expected to result in a deal worth $3$4 billion.



Entities like Century Tokyo Leasing, sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corp, CDB Leasing along with some global pension funds and insurers have also been invited to bid for the aircraft leasing assets.



Per the Reuters report, The strong line-up of Chinese and Japanese suitors in the auction underscores the growing importance of cashed-up Asian lessors who are investing billions of dollars in a sector that offers stable, long-term and dollar-based revenue.



CIT's leasing unit owns, finances and manages a fleet of more than 350 planes. The first-round bids for it are due in Jun according to the sources familiar with the matter. CIT Commercial Air has assets valued at around $11 billion and about 100 customers including Delta Air Lines and China Eastern Airlines.



According to the sources, some of the potential bidders will be given access to detailed financials of CIT's unit in a few weeks.



There has been a growing trend among companies to invest in aviation financing owing to expectations of "mid to single digit" returns and relatively less challenges than real estate and stocks. Additionally, Asias aviation industry has experienced remarkable growth over the past decade.



Currently, CIT holds a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell). Some better-ranked companies in the same space include Apollo Residential Mortgage, Inc. AMTG, Euronet Worldwide, Inc. EEFT and Grupo Financiero Banorte, S.A.B. de C.V. GBOOY. Each of these stocks carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).



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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday her campaign has been in contact with the campaign of rival Bernie Sanders about unifying the Democratic Party. Unifying the party will be a central challenge once Democrats choose their nominee, with Clinton heavily favored to win the nomination but facing a protracted battle with Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont In an interview on CNN, Clinton said the contacts are likely to intensify after next week's California primary. "I will certainly do everything I can to unify the Democratic Party. Our campaigns have been reaching out to one another. We will continue to do that," she said. She said both she and Sanders "are going to do everything we can" to prevent Republican candidate Donald Trump from winning the Nov. 8 presidential election. (Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Sandra Maler)
Abidjan (AFP) - Ivory Coast's former first lady Simone Gbagbo goes on trial Tuesday for crimes against humanity, but rights groups acting as plaintiffs in the case have pulled out, blasting the proceedings as flawed.

The wife of ex president Laurent Gbagbo has already been handed a 20-year jail sentence for "attacking state authority" over her role in post-election violence in 2010 that left more than 3,000 people dead.

Accused of involvement in rights abuses against supporters of her husband's rival Alassane Ouattara to keep Gbagbo in the presidency, she faces allegations of crimes against prisoners of war, crimes against the civilian population and crimes against humanity.

But on Monday three rights groups, representing nearly 250 victims, said they would refuse to take part in the trial of the woman once known as the "Iron Lady" because of doubts over its "credibility".

"Our lawyers have not had access to all stages of the procedures -- how can they defend their case?" the head of one of the groups, the Ivorian League of Human Rights, told AFP.

Pierre Kouame Adjoumani said the trial lacked "relevance", adding that Simone Gbagbo "is accused of crimes against humanity, something she could have only done through an organised group -- so why is only she being judged?"

The trial is taking place in Ivory Coast's commercial hub Abidjan, where the 66-year-old former first lady is being held.

It opens just five days after the Supreme Court rejected her final appeal against the 20-year sentence she was handed last year in her first trial.

- 'Pivotal moment' -

Ivory Coast, the world's top cocoa producer, suffered months of bloodshed after Laurent Gbagbo and his supporters refused to accept defeat to Ouattara in a 2010 election.

The violence was ultimately halted by an international military intervention under a UN mandate, led by former colonial power France, and the Gbagbos were arrested in April 2011.

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Ouattara won a second presidential term in October in the nation's first peaceful vote for more than a decade.

Laurent Gbagbo is currently on trial for crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

The ICC also wanted to prosecute his wife and issued a warrant for her arrest, but Ivorian authorities refused to hand her over, saying she would face a fair trial at home.

The decision was seen as a snub to the ICC, with Ouattara saying he would "not send any more Ivorians" to The Hague, insisting his country has an "operational justice system".

But the rights groups that pulled out of the trial on Monday complained that the initial investigation into Simone Gbagbo's crimes was rushed and her first trial failed to establish her personal role in the violence.

Global body Human Rights Watch also complained that the Ouattara government has yet to carry out urgently-needed legal reforms, including a witness protection programme.

The president has also faced accusations that Simone Gbagbo's trial is a sign that his government only intends to prosecute crimes by pro-Gbagbo forces in the conflict, charges he rejects.

Human Rights Watch said the trial could be a "pivotal moment" for justice in Ivory Coast, a country yearning for stability following several years of civil war from 2002 that split the mainly Christian south and the largely Muslim north.

"However, for the trial to be meaningful to victims, it must be credible, fair, and followed by other trials that target high-level rights abusers from both sides of the 2010-2011 post-election crisis," the group warned.
By Michael Martina BEIJING (Reuters) - Controversial cyber security regulations for China's insurance industry, now before the World Trade Organization (WTO), could soon take effect despite efforts by foreign business groups to persuade Beijing to change tack. Those groups say the draft measures are vague and discriminatory, and industry experts say international insurers could be required to source substandard or insecure technology or software in order to do business in China, or use products incompatible with their global operations. First announced by the China Insurance Regulatory Commission(CIRC) last year, the draft rules have revived debate over Chinese rules that incorporate contentious data localisation mandates and "secure and controllable" provisions for IT products. Critics fear the rules could be used to drive preferential treatment for Chinese companies supplying businesses and government departments - as China rolls out its Internet Plus and Made in China 2025 strategies, which aim to make Chinese firms world technology leaders and call for more local components in key industries such as robotics. Concerns over the draft insurance regulations are likely to add to already rancorous U.S.-China trade relations ahead of the annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue on June 6-7 in Beijing, which will be attended by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. "This is much broader than the CIRC measures. It's about laying down a marker which they [China] will then replicate in other sectors," said a person with knowledge of the rules and the upcoming talks. The person said the regulations and the attending "secure and controllable" issue are set to be one of the top items on the United States' agenda for the June talks. "This has been raised across the U.S. government at the highest levels ... there is a good understanding of what this CIRC play represents and that it's a big problem," the person said. China is considering similar regulations for banking technology, though push-back from industry and the U.S. government last year has slowed their rollout. Beijing has said repeatedly that foreign businesses have nothing to fear from new measures intended to address what officials say are growing security threats, such as terrorism. But industry advocates say insurance products are hardly critical to national security and don't merit such provisions. "'Secure and controllable' policies are unworkable for global industry," said Jacob Parker, vice president of China operations for the U.S.-China Business Council. Foreign insurers already face market access barriers in China, including ownership caps and licensing difficulties. Foreign-invested insurers have less than 5 percent market share in China, according to the American Chamber of Commerce. PURCHASING PRIORITY More than 20 foreign business lobbies, including the American Chamber of Commerce in China and the American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI), petitioned the CIRC late last year to amend the draft regulations, which state that insurance companies should prioritize buying "secure and controllable" products, including Chinese encryption technologies, hardware and software. On April 19, the CIRC filed a technical barriers to trade(TBT) notification to the WTO, indicating the rules would be approved within 60 days. Trade experts say the WTO has no say in the filing designed simply to alert trade partners. The foreign groups say the rules have not been substantially changed to address concerns after an initial comment period, and the tight deadline listed in the WTO filing suggests China has little intention to incorporate feedback. Several groups plan to petition CIRC Chairman Xiang Junbo in writing ahead of the U.S.-China talks, according to documents seen by Reuters. The CIRC could not be reached for comment on the issue. The regulations currently require all China data for insurance products be stored in China, and mandate that any international data transfers be conducted according to yet unspecified regulations. That could also create obstacles to moving information overseas and to third-party service providers, such as accounting firms. Article 53 requires that insurance providers give purchasing priority to so-called "secure and controllable" products. Such provisions have appeared in a number of draft Chinese laws and regulations. Though Beijing has not formally defined the term, foreign business groups say they would entail onerous conditions, such as providing authorities access to proprietary source code or incorporating Chinese components. (Reporting by Michael Martina, with additional reporting by Matthew Miller; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)
VALLEY CENTER, CA / ACCESSWIRE / May 31, 2016 / Concierge Technologies, Inc. (CNCG) (the "Company"), today announced the planned acquisition of Brigadier Security Systems of Saskatoon, Canada ("Brigadier") for an undisclosed price to be paid in cash. Brigadier is a long standing security alarm company serving Saskatchewan, Canada since 1985. With security solutions ranging from products designed to protect residential premises and property through to complex access control and camera monitoring equipment, Brigadier designs customized solutions to meet clients' security needs in most all situations. Brigadier has offices in Saskatoon and Regina and they do business in all four corners of Saskatchewan and beyond. With over 25 years of high level customer service and technical expertise the business has built a solid brand and is now among the largest independent security contractors in the province.

Nicholas Gerber, CEO of Concierge Technologies, commented, "We are excited to be continuing our acquisition strategy to include such a recognized firm as Brigadier Security. The timing turned in our favor with the owners of Brigadier considering an exit strategy and Concierge's ready ability to accommodate them. They have a solid, profitable business in a friendly economic environment that also happens to dovetail nicely with our development stage business of vehicle security and analytics currently underway here in the USA at Kahnalytics. We're looking forward to completing the steps as needed to close the transaction within a very short time."



The planned acquisition remains contingent upon completion of various disclosure schedules required for closing, determination of any final purchase price adjustments as well as any regulatory approvals that are usual and customary for transactions of this nature.

About Concierge Technologies, Inc.

Concierge Technologies, Inc. operates through its wholly-owned subsidiaries Gourmet Foods, Ltd. in Tauranga, New Zealand, a commercial-scale manufacturer and distributor of New Zealand gourmet meat pies, and Kahnalytics, Inc. a US based provider of live streaming mobile video, vehicle tracking and driver behavior data. Kahnalytics was founded by Concierge in June 2015 and has recently launched its online platform and begun accepting subscribers to its service. The Company completed the acquisition of New Zealand-based Gourmet Foods Ltd., a well-established producer of popular New Zealand meat pies and bakery products under recognized supermarket brand names "Pat's Pantry" and "Ponsonby Pies" on August 12, 2015. Management is actively seeking the acquisition of established enterprises with a high likelihood of profitability to add to its growing, diverse portfolio of operating businesses.

This release may contain "forward-looking statements" that include information relating to future events and future financial and operating performance. Forward-looking statements should not be read as a guarantee of future performance or results, and will not necessarily be accurate indications of the times at, or by, which that performance or those results will be achieved. Forward-looking statements are based on information available at the time they are made and/or management's good faith belief as of that time with respect to future events, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual performance or results to differ materially from those expressed in or suggested by the forward-looking statements. For a more detailed description of the risk factors and uncertainties affecting Concierge Technologies or its subsidiary companies, please refer to the Company's recent Securities and Exchange Commission filings, which are available at the Company's website or at www.sec.gov.

For more information about Gourmet Foods, Ltd. please visit www.gourmetfoodsltd.co.nz.

For more information about Concierge Technologies, Inc. or Kahnalytics, Inc. contact:

Concierge Technologies, Inc.: conciergetechnology.net

Nicholas Gerber, CEO: ngerber@conciergetechnology.net

David Neibert, CFO: dneibert@conciergetechnology.net

Tel: 866.800.2978 ext. 3

SOURCE: Concierge Technologies, Inc.
Lyle Denniston, the National Constitution Centers constitutional literacy adviser, looks at an argument that the Founders saw the judicial branch as an afterthought, and what Alexander Hamilton actually wrote about that concept.

THE STATEMENTS AT ISSUE:

It is only in the small fraction of politically charged cases where the Supreme Court may divide along ideological linesAmericans have learned to view these cases as central to the courts role.But we ought to ask ourselves whether deciding important cases in this manner is what the court should be doing. This was not, after all, the original plan. The Supreme Court today is both political and powerful in ways that would be unrecognizable to the framers of the Constitution.The judicial branch was something of an afterthought for them, because they believed that in a democracy, the elected branches would be responsible for governing the country.

Excerpt from an opinion column in The New York Times on May 26 by Barry P. MacDonald, a law professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., arguing that the Supreme Court can function very well with only eight Justices and that, with that number, the Justices might be more inclined to confine their decisions to resolving disputes between the parties rather than making bold, sweeping and highly debatable proclamations about the meaning of the Constitution.

No legislative actcontrary to the Constitution can be valid. To deny this would be to affirm thatmen acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid. If it be said that the legislative body are themselves the constitutional judges of their own powers, and that the construction they put upon them is conclusive upon the other departments, it may be answered, that this cannot be the natural presumption, where it is not to be collected from any particular provisions of the Constitution.It is more rational to suppose that the courts were designed to be an intermediate body between the people and the legislature, in order to keep the latter within the limits assigned to their authority. The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts.

Story continues

 Excerpt from Federalist Paper No. 78, written by Alexander Hamilton and published in 1788, part of the founding eras most important documents explaining to the people the nature of the Constitution then under consideration for ratification.

WE CHECKED THE CONSTITUTON, AND

Americans love to debate constitutional questions, and are equally fond of making their own assessments of what it means. That is continuing a tradition that began soon after the Constitutions final draft was completed and made public in 1787, and it continues to be a lively pastime today.

One favorite topic now is whether the Supreme Court is assuming powers of judicial review that it is not supposed to have. That is generally understood to mean the power to decide what the Constitution means and to enforce it against the actions of Congress and the Executive Branch. It is true that this authority was questioned during the constitutional ratification period, but it is also true that those directly involved in writing and promoting the basic document did not share that skepticism. They believed that an independent system of courts was vital to human liberty, and the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. To them, it was hardly an afterthought.

Historians generally accept that Alexander Hamiltons essay No. 78, in the Federalist Papers, was a true reflection of what the founding generation believed about the judiciary. And it was less than a generation later  a mere 15 years  that Chief Justice John Marshall famously declared that it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. That was what Marbury v. Madison stood for in 1803, and stands for today.

In every generation, it seems, revisionist ideas come back into vogue in the nations public discourse about the Constitution, and not uncommonly the suggestion arises that the Supreme Court is far too powerful and needs to be put back into the limited place that, supposedly, the founding generation wanted it to have.

This is sometimes offered as originalist thinking about what the Constitution truly meant in the 18th Century. True, there were anti-Federalists who fretted back then about the power that the new Supreme Court would have, as Hamilton recognized and as he sought to answer in Federalist 78. Hamiltons view, surely, were closer to the prevailing sentiment at the time than were those who simply did not want the new Constitution even to be ratified. They did not get their wish.

Part of the problem in trying to make the case that the Supreme Court was not to have the power to check the other branches of the government is the belief that the Constitution mainly sought to create a democracy, where the elected branches were to have ultimate authority to act for the people. In the opinion column quoted above, Professor McDonald has asserted that a diminished role for the Supreme Court surely fits better into the intended  and democratic  constitutional scheme.

But, remember, so wise a Founder as Benjamin Franklin appreciated that what was then being created was not a democracy, but a republic. That was what he pronounced the new government to be as he left Independence Hall in Philadelphia on the final day of the Constitutional Convention.

In a republic, the people are sovereign, not the government, and the people choose representatives to act on their behalf, rather than acting as the government themselves. Their representatives are checked in the use of those powers by the Constitution itself, as worked out in actual cases or controversies, ultimately emerging as decisions of the Supreme Court.

The people, of course, retain the ultimate authority to amend the basic document. From time to time, there have been suggestions that this power be employed to curb the Supreme Court and its power of judicial review. That usually comes up when the court has done something that a segment of the population does not like  such as recognizing a right to racially desegregated public schools, or a right of gays and lesbians to get married.

However disturbed a part of the public may be by such rulings, the people have not used their ultimate authority to rein in the Supreme Court. That they do retain that authority acts as their check upon excesses or abuses in the Supreme Courts use of the power of judicial review.

Recent Stories on Constitution Daily

Repealing the 17th Amendment would be no small task

Supreme Court down to three major cases this term

Constitution Check: Is plea bargaining a step toward closing Guantanamo?
Could Netflix Steal the Show? A Fundamental Overview

(Continued from Prior Part)

Foreign regulations governing content

This month, CNBC reported that in Europe (IEV), streaming service providers such as Netflix (NFLX) and Amazons Prime Instant Video service (AMZN) could be forced to ensure that 20% of their content catalogs consist of European television shows and films. The decision could be just one change required to comply with the European Unions broadcasting rules.

In Europe, it is usually mandatory for national broadcasters to keep 20% of their content European, but so far, streaming services such as Netflix have been excluded from it. This legislation, if implemented, could be a blow for Netflix as it pursues its original programming strategy in Europe.

According to the CNBC report, Netflix, reacting to the news, stated that rigid numerical quotas risk suffocating the market for on-demand audiovisual media services, adding that an obligation to carry content to meet a numerical quota may cause new players to struggle to achieve a sustainable business model.

Foreign regulations such as these could be a hindrance for Netflixs international expansion. China (FXI) is another market where Netflix could face content issues.

Why could Netflix face a problem in China?

In its fiscal 1Q16 letter to shareholders, Netflix stated that it continues to explore its options in China. The company is interested in the Chinese market because of the countrys rising Internet penetration. According to a January 2016 report from the China Internet Network Information Center, and as shown in the above chart, China had 668 million Internet users and a 48.8% Internet penetration of as of June 2015.

However, Netflixs original programming could face censorship issues in the country. The Chinese government has censored Time Warners (TWX) HBOs Game of Thrones.

Netflix believes that it will take time for it to enter the Chinese market. Theres also a possibility that the company may have to enter into a joint venture with a Chinese partner to offer content in China. Piracy is another issue that Netflix could face in the Chinese market.

Story continues

Time Warner (TWX) makes up 0.32% of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY). SPY has an exposure of 3.5% to the computer sector and a 0.17% exposure to 21st Century Fox (FOXA).

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
While looking at an online comparison shopping website with her husband, Toni Dolce, 36, realized that she could use credit card reward s points to pay off her grad school debt.

"It's been about $1,000 and $1,500 per year that we've been able to cash in and go toward student loans," says Dolce, who has paid off $6,000 of her $35,000 debt from attending the American Musical Dramatic Academy. "When we went online to see where we could get the most value for our points and straight away it was student loans."

Student loan borrowers can use reward s points on credit cards and apply these points to pay off their student loans -- federal or private.

"When I pay my student loans, I pay from a check that is granted by Citibank," says Dolce, who has been using this strategy for almost six years with her Citi Forward ThankYou card. "They send me a third-party check."

Wealth advisors say there are a ton of ways to use credit card points such as travel-related benefits or gift cards, so savvy consumers should check whether the card allows points to be redeemed for a student loan rebate -- a check to their student loan servicer.

[Know when it's OK topostpone your student loan payment.]

Most borrowers aren't aware that they can use points this way, says Daniel Grote, a Denver-based certified financial planner at Latitude Financial Group. "It's more unique or less common to use it specifically for tuition or student loan payments."

The Citi ThankYou Premier, Chase Sapphire Preferred BankAmericard Cash Rewards and Sallie Mae's Upromise Mastercard, are among the credit cards with reward s points that offer this feature.

If a borrower spends $1,000 on gas or taxis, for example, on a reward s card and accumulates three points for every dollar spent on travel, those purchases are worth 3,000 points. Each card has its own point-to-dollar conversion rate, but 3,000 points might be worth $30, for example.

Story continues

These points can then be used as cash toward student loans or mortgage payments, depending on the card.

[Discover more methods ofstudent loan forgiveness.]

But credit card experts say borrowers should check if their student loan servicer accepts a rebate check from a third-party institution before pursuing this strategy.

Here are some pros and cons of using credit card points to tackle student debt.

Pro: If the borrower has good financial habits, using credit card rewards can help pay down student loans. "The pros of the strategy is that you're accumulating points with cash back rewards and those benefits stand out," the Denver-based advisor says, but he says the individual must be disciplined and pay off that credit card bill every month.

Grote suggests only using the card for certain expenses such as travel or student loan payments, so it's not all your monthly expenditures on the card if a sudden , unexpected bill arises.

[Check outcelebrities who have dealt with student debt.]

"It's a good strategy for someone who knows how to use credit cards and makes a payment every month," says Jeffrey Trull, content strategist at Student Loan Hero, a website for managing student debt.

Con: Missing a payment can damage a credit score. Borrowers can ding their credit rating with a missed payment.

"The debt spiral can happen from just two missed payment," says Grote. "If they lose track of a payment then then will have a negative impact on their credit if that payment is more than 30 days late."

Pro: Using a credit card can help build credit -- especially for young college grads. Good credit card usage can be part of a strategy to increase a credit score.

Most adults ages 20 to 24 have a lower credit score on average at around 635, according to Credit Karma, a website that provides free credit reports and scores. Good credit is considered to be 700 and above.

Experts say using a credit card and not exceeding more than 20 percent of that card's line of credit is a good way to maintain and build a healthy credit history.

"They're going to see a positive effect on their credit score by virtue of managing their credit in a responsible way," Grote says.

Con: Most student loan servicers don't accept credit cards for monthly payments. "There's not really an easy way to pay for student loans with credit cards," says Trull.

For most loan service providers, such as Navient or Great Lakes, borrowers have to call to make a one-time payment with a credit card. So borrowers have to call for each payment -- every month.

A person who is forgetful about payments might be better off using automatic payments to pay monthly bills, personal finance advisors say.

"Some servicers even offer a 0.25 percent interest reduction for automated payments," Trull says. "That's a great feature and it's not available from credit cards."

Trying to fund your education? Get tips and more in the U.S. News Paying for College center.

Farran Powell is an education reporter at U.S. News, covering paying for college and graduate school. You can follow her on Twitter or email her at fpowell@usnews.com.
PARIS (Reuters) - Dassault Aviation is ready to sign a contract with India at any moment, but the ball is in India's court, chief executive Eric Trappier told French daily Les Echos in an interview published on Tuesday.

The Indian defence ministry said in April protracted talks to buy 36 French Rafale fighter jets were nearing the finish line.

"We are ready to conclude (the sale) at any moment, the ball is in the Indian government's camp," Trappier was quoted as saying.

Asked about reports in Indian media that a bank guarantee was required for the deal, he said that was not the case since the deal was already guaranteed by the French state.

Asked about business jets, Trappier said: "Business jets are a good barometer of the global economy, and, this year, it will be difficult."

(Reporting by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Mark Potter)
BOCA RATON, FL / ACCESSWIRE / May 31, 2016 / Dawson James Securities, Inc. a leading, full service investment firm, today announced Richard Aulicino has been appointed Executive Director-National Sales Manager for Dawson James Securities.

With over 30 years of financial industry experience, Mr. Aulicino has recapitalized, structured, and led equity investments of upwards of $2 billion. He has administered over 250 small to medium sized growth oriented business transactions. Prior to joining Dawson James, he served as Executive Vice President and Director of Barington Capital Group, L.P. which, he co-founded in 1991. His responsibilities included: public and private financing transactions, general financial advisory for mergers and acquisitions, restructuring, and recapitalization as well as overall direction of sales and trading for the firm. From November 2006 to February 2009, Mr. Aulicino served as Head of Investment Banking for Dawson James Securities. Mr. Aulicino has held Management positions for several Wall Street firms including Robb Peck McCooey and Ladenburg Thalmann. Mr. Aulicino has also served on the boards of Tresp Associates, a Government Service Contractor in Alexandria, VA, and Bigmar Pharmaceuticals in Lugano, Switzerland. Richard attended the University of South Florida and holds his Series 7, 63 and 24 Securities Licenses.

"We are very pleased that Rich has accepted the senior position of Executive Director-National Sales Manager at Dawson James Securities," said Robert D. Keyser, Jr., Dawson James CEO. "Richard is an outstanding businessman with extensive experience in the world of financial transactions. During his career he specialized in capital markets structuring, negotiating, and implementing a wide array of highly successful transactions. We are very pleased he has accepted this key position at Dawson James."

About Dawson James Securities

Dawson James Securities specializes in capital raising for small and microcap public and private growth companies primarily in the Life Science/Health Care, Technology and Consumer sectors and is a full service investment banking firm with research, institutional and retail sales, as well as execution trading and corporate services. According to Sagient Research Systems*, Dawson James has been ranked as a top Placement Agent in terms of aggregate PIPE and RD transactions cumulatively since 2005.

Dawson James utilizes a unique approach to financings using their trademarked DIO "Diversified Investor Offering" which blends investor interest using a combination of retail clients and Institutional investors. Dawson James will once again be hosting the Small Cap Growth Conference on October 20th at the Wyndham Hotel and Resort in Jupiter, Florida, which will feature the exciting "Up-list Bootcamp". Headquartered in Boca Raton, FL, Dawson James is privately held with offices in New York, California, Maryland and New Jersey. www.dawsonjames.com

Safe Harbor Statement

Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: This news release may contain forward-looking information within the meaning of Section 27A Of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, including statements that include the words "believes," "expects," "anticipates" or similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.

*www.sagientresearch.com

Member FINRA/SIPC. For more information, please contact:

Contact

Elise Stern, Managing Director, Corporate Finance

estern@dawsonjames.com

561-208-2926

Media Contact

Sean Leous

PCG Advisory Group

646-863-8998

sleous@pcgadvisory.com

SOURCE: Dawson James Securities, Inc.
A customer and employee in a 7-Eleven store were lucky to escape with their lives Friday after a deaf and unlicensed Oregon woman plowed through the store's walls, authorities said.

The Keizer Police Department said it was Cindy Rosas Ortega's first time behind the wheel.

Read: Teen's Dirt Bike Prank in School Hallways Ends With an Arrest After He Runs Over Student's Foot

Jaw-dropping surveillance footage shows the 2000 Jeep Grand Cherokee crashing through the entrance of the store and right into the counter.

A cashier and customer can be seen quickly darting out of the way. Police said that the momentum of the crash startled them, but no injuries were reported.

Ortega, 22, and her passenger, 27-year-old Johana Gomez Ortega, were both unharmed, police said.

"The investigating officer learned Ms. Rosas Ortega who is deaf was reported to have been operating a motor vehicle for her first time when the crash occurred," the Keizer Police Department posted on Facebook.

Read: Bystanders Miraculously Save a 4-Year-Old Stuck Under a Car

"Ms. Gomez Ortega told the investigating officer she was not able to tell Ms. Rosas Ortega how to stop the vehicle."

Rosas Ortega was issued a traffic citation for operating a vehicle without a license, and Gomez Ortega was issued a traffic cititaion for providing a vehicle to an unlicensed driver, police said.

Watch: Girl Loses Control on Hoverboard, Slams Into Wall: 'I Seriously Can't Stop!'

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By Tom Perry and Suleiman Al-Khalidi BEIRUT/AMMAN (Reuters) - At least 23 people were killed in Russian air strikes overnight in the rebel-held Syrian city of Idlib, the heaviest bombardment there since a cessation of hostilities was agreed in February, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The Observatory said the air strikes targeted a number of positions in the city, one of them next to a hospital. Seven children were among the dead, Observatory Director Rami Abdulrahman said. The toll was likely to rise with scores of injured, mostly civilians, in a critical condition. Residents of Idlib said hundreds of families had begun leaving the city for fear of further air raids. Two rebel sources said Russian jets also intensified strikes on towns in rural Idlib including Binish, Maarat Misreen and Saraqeb. However, a Russian Defence Ministry spokesman on Tuesday denied it had conducted air strikes overnight against Idlib, calling the Observatory's allegations "a horror story" that should be regarded with scepticism. Russia deployed warplanes to Syria last year to support President Bashar al-Assad against rebels seeking to end his rule. The Turkish Foreign Ministry said the air strikes had killed more than 60 civilians and complained in a statement about what it said were the "indefensible" crimes of the Russian and Syrian governments. It gave no indication how it arrived at the higher toll. Later the monitor reported that unidentified jets bombed a major camp of the powerful Islamist Ahrar al Sham insurgent group in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib, leaving a large number of dead and wounded. The Observatory, which tracks violence across the country, said top trainers from among Ahrar al Sham's leaders were normally present at the camp, located in the Sheikh Bahar area of rural Idlib. A senior member of the group, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to comment, said the report was unfounded but gave no details. Rescue workers searched for casualties through the night, finding some survivors including a child under the rubble of buildings, the Civil Defence said on its Facebook page. Idlib city and the province by the same name is a stronghold of rebel groups including the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. The U.N.-backed Feb. 27 cessation of hostilities agreement was intended to allow an opportunity for peace talks and delivery of humanitarian relief across Syria. However, peace talks in Geneva aimed at ending the war have so far failed and the cessation of hostilities agreement has all but collapsed with intensified fighting among warring parties. In Aleppo city, the Syrian army stepped up its bombing and shelling of the Castello highway, the only route for civilians and rebels in and out of the city. "The artillery shelling has affected the traffic on the road but they have not taken it," said Captain Abdul Salam Abdul Razaq, a military spokesman for Nour al Din al Zinki, a main rebel group operating in northern Syria. The Syrian army and allied fighters failed in three major offensives in the past month to advance toward the highway from the village of Handarat, several kilometers to the northeast, where rebels have been holding their ground, he added. The rebel held towns of Anadan, Hreitan and Maarat al-Artieq just north of Aleppo city that are located along the rebels' supply route, also witnessed intense raids by Russian and Syrian fighter jets, Abdul Razaq said. In southern suburbs of Damascus, the Syrian army made new advances in an area that they had seized almost two weeks ago, the Syrian Observatory and rebel sources said. The monitor said army had taken large parts of the town of Mahamadieh and Beit Nayem, further consolidating gains made with the help of Lebanese Hezbollah fighters.[L5N18G1A9] The areas seized are mainly lush agricultural land that provide food for tens of thousands of residents. (Reporting by Tom Perry in Beirut and Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman and Idrees Ali in Washington.; Editing by Ralph Boulton/Mark Heinrich)
Copenhagen (AFP) - Denmark will next year declassify "being transgender" as a mental illness, lawmakers from the parliament health committee decided on Tuesday.

"It is completely inappropriate to call it a sickness," the committee's deputy chairman Flemming Moller Mortensen told AFP.

"There is a longstanding wish from the trans community in Denmark to have it removed" from the health ministry's clinical guidelines on illnesses, he added.

The move, which would come into force on January 1, is also intended to put pressure on the World Health Organization (WHO), which has yet to remove transsexualism from its list of mental disorders.

Denmark has "no more patience" with the WHO, which will discuss the issue later this year, Mortensen said.

Amnesty International hailed the Danish decision, saying it made Denmark "a role model for transgendered people's rights".

"Amnesty would also like to commend the government for its effort in the WHO, where it has worked to have the disease classification system changed," the group's Denmark chief Trine Christensen said in a statement.

Rights group LGBT Denmark also welcomed the move.

"To remove transgender from the section of mental disorders means removing an institutionalised stigmatisation of trans people," spokeswoman Linda Thor Pedersen said.
Since the release of the Endless Summer movie in the '60s, the term has appeared repeatedly in the pop music lexicon. The following decade, it provided the title for a greatest-hits compilation from the Beach Boys; fast-forward more than four decades, and you'll find at least two Endless Summer tours in the works. The latest is from the Desert Hearts label -- including Mikey Lion, Lee Reynolds, Deep Jesus, Marbs and Porkchop -- which hopes to pump your summer full of house, techno and, of course, love. (In April, the rapper G-Eazy announced a similarly titled cross-country jaunt.)

Meet the Five Friends Behind San Diego's Desert Hearts Collective

Desert Hearts' co-founder Lee Reynolds recently explained his sunny DJing ethos in a Facebook video. "Something I learned from Lee Scratch Perry is never playing anything negative," he noted. "I want to play stuff that's uplifting. I want people to dance. I want people to almost, like, go into some kind of ecstatic dance where they forget about everything -- the only thing they can think about at that moment is this energy of the dancefloor, the vibe my best DJ shows are the ones where I can't remember anything specific, it just seemed like the whole event was one pulsating, unified thing."

After starting with a pair of shows in Brooklyn, Lion, Reynolds & Co. will spend most of their tour on the West Coast, making stops in San Diego, San Francisco, L.A. and Denver. Desert Hearts posted the tour flyer on Instagram; you can buy tickets here.

CONTEST TIME!! We're going back on tour!  Tag ALL your friends you want to bring with you and the winner will win DH NECKLACES + CITY HEARTS TICKETS for you and your crew! We'll announce the winner next Wednesday! --

A photo posted by HOUSE &bull TECHNO &bull LOVE (@desertheartsfestival) on May 25, 2016 at 1:22pm PDT
FRANKFURT, May 31 (Reuters) - Deutsche bank CEO says at Global Financial Services Investor Conference

* Bank may not make a profit this year

* On Q2 business: client volumes are down but 'markets are ok'

* Expects agreement on branch closures in Germany within a month or two

* Getting closer to resolving some large litigation issues

* Some cases may be resolved in early or late summer

* Operationally D.Bank will be fine in case of Brexit, despite signifcant market turbulences

* D.Bank does not really need to sell Postbank until 2018 (Reporting by Arno Schuetze)
In case there wasnt already a list a mile long of reasons to be envious of Bella Hadid (i.e. the rock star boyfriend, supermodel sister, mile-long legs, international travel, etc.), on Tuesday morning she cemented her status as the consummate cool girl, landing the coveted position of brand ambassador for Dior Makeup a few hours prior to the launch of the fashion houses Cruise 2017 show. At this point, if youre starting to feel the grasp of the green-eyed monster taking hold, just wait, because once you see all of the behind-the-scenes social media shots of this larger-than-life runway experience, the word jealousy wont even begin do your emotions justice.

Bella Hadid Dior Cruise 2017

On Monday night before the Cruise 2017 show, guests were treated to a one-night-only pop-up pub called The Lady Dior where they were able to have a beer, gaze out over the Bar Suit-clad topiaries, and male models-turned-bartenders were even tattooed with the insignia.

It's show day! But first, glimpse a #latergram from yesterday's 'one-night only' celebration at the Lady Dior Pub. #DiorCruise A photo posted by Dior Official (@dior) on May 31, 2016 at 12:45am PDT

Let the cruise celebrations begin as our guests enjoy a night-out at the Lady Dior Pub before tomorrow's #DiorCruise show. A photo posted by Dior Official (@dior) on May 30, 2016 at 1:50pm PDT

From the windows to the bartenders, Dior has taken over a classic English pub for the #DiorCruise show tomorrow evening. A photo posted by Dior Official (@dior) on May 30, 2016 at 2:44pm PDT

To kick off the cruise celebrations, Dior has installed an ephemeral garden filled with white roses at the terrace at Scott's restaurant, a London landmark. #DiorCruise A photo posted by Dior Official (@dior) on May 29, 2016 at 6:31am PDT

Guests were also invited to take a ride in one of the brands Dior-printed taxi cabs parked in front of their new Bond Street location:

Looking for the customized Dior cabs? Here is one parked in front of the Dior New Bond Street boutique, which will open its doors to the public soon. #DiorCruise A photo posted by Dior Official (@dior) on May 30, 2016 at 7:43am PDT

But onto the main event, the spectacle that is the runway show itself. Celebrities and editors alike gathered at Londons Victoria Station to board the Dior Express train, the interior of which looked like something out of an Old Hollywood film, and be whisked off to Blenheim Palace, the location for the Cruise 2017 show.

Story continues

Our guests are about to embark on the Dior Express train to the @BlenheimPalace from Victoria Station in London. #DiorCruise A photo posted by Dior Official (@dior) on May 31, 2016 at 6:40am PDT

The beautiful silhouette of @_katebeckinsale_'s @dior outfit for the #diorcruise show whist awaiting the #diorexpress to Blenheim A photo posted by Natasha Cowan (@tashonfash) on May 31, 2016 at 6:28am PDT

Hopping on the Dior Express #DiorCruise A photo posted by Kiernan Shipka (@kiernanshipka) on May 31, 2016 at 7:38am PDT

Once aboard the train, the celebrity selfie-ing commenced, with picture perfect seating, a chance to showcase your accessories strewn across Dior Express-branded menus and chinaware  and the idyllic view of the countryside outside the window wasnt too shabby either.

RG @nicolefritton Lunch is served! #diorexpress #pullmancar #1920s @dior #diorcruise A photo posted by Harper's BAZAAR (@harpersbazaarus) on May 31, 2016 at 7:47am PDT

All aboard the #diorcruise express. This time Kate Mara gets to ride the train instead of being pushed in front of it. @dior A photo posted by Michael Carl (@carlscrush) on May 31, 2016 at 6:02am PDT

On the @Dior express heading to #DiorCruise. Feels like I'm in a movie.  A photo posted by Negin Mirsalehi (@negin_mirsalehi) on May 31, 2016 at 7:29am PDT

All aboard @dior #DiorCruise A photo posted by Emma Roberts (@emmaroberts) on May 31, 2016 at 6:04am PDT

RELATED VIDEO: Jennifer Lawrence Stuns as Met Gala Co-chair in Classic Dior Gown



RELATED PHOTOS: Bella Hadid, Lily Aldridge and More Stars in Swimwear

And, of course, theres the actual venue, the enormous country home of the dukes of Marlborough, located in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England. Attendees to the show were greeted at the estates entrance in proper royal fashion, with 80 broodingly handsome butlers decked out in full suits with tails:

80 of Cellar's top butlers for the #DiorCruise show at #BleheimPalace today @dior @thecommsstore @tcs_daniel @mybeautifulcity @blenheimpalace #dior @bureaubetak A photo posted by Cellar Society (@cellarsociety) on May 31, 2016 at 8:23am PDT

And if youre not entering a country estate to the tune of 60 trumpeters, now you know youve been doing it wrong this whole time.

What a welcome at the @BlenheimPalace for today's #DiorCruise 2017 fashion show. Stay tuned! A photo posted by Dior Official (@dior) on May 31, 2016 at 8:33am PDT

Inside, guests were provided with champagne, light bites, and the chance to view some of the houses iconic archival pieces and silhouettes up close and personal.

Now it's five o'clock tea! And champagne, too #fiveoclockchampagne #DiorCruise #london #2017 #elenasotnikova #sweet A photo posted by Elena Sotnikova (@elenaellerussia) on May 31, 2016 at 9:46am PDT

Atmosphere at #blenheimpalace before #diorcruise starts #gettyentertainment #mygettyoffice A photo posted by @juliettecha on May 31, 2016 at 8:15am PDT

Guests were then funneled into various rooms throughout the house and given programs featuring a painting of a horse and hounds which was also transformed into a print that lined the runway as well as featured on a handful of pieces in the collection.

#Emptyspaces at the @BlenheimPalace, minutes before our first guests arrive. Follow us on Snapchat with our account name 'Diorlive' for behind-the-scene views of the show. #DiorCruise A photo posted by Dior Official (@dior) on May 31, 2016 at 9:32am PDT

Before the show in the Blenheim palace #DiorCruise #2017 #london A photo posted by Elena Sotnikova (@elenaellerussia) on May 31, 2016 at 8:41am PDT

Current view. Stel je voor dat we geen iphones hadden en met elkaar moesten praten. Brrr! #diorcruise #bazaarnl #blenheimpalace A photo posted by Cecile Narinx (@cecilenarinx) on May 31, 2016 at 9:12am PDT

And while theres no bad seats when you get invited to one of the most exclusive runway shows in the world, Kate Beckinsale undoubtedly had one of the best, seated alongside the boyfriend of the lady of the hour, The Weeknd.

Date: May 31, 2016. #KateBeckinsale #ChristianDior A photo posted by Kate Beckinsale (@_katebeckinsale_) on May 31, 2016 at 9:35am PDT

Oh, and then of course there was the runway show itself.

A trip outside London is well worth it with the arrays of formal and casual wear thanks to @Dior. Photo by @thanglvfotos @fashiontomax #diorcruise A photo posted by voguethailand (@voguethailand) on May 31, 2016 at 9:46am PDT

Bella Hadid Dior Cruise 2017

I found @alineds75 A photo posted by Bella Hadid (@bellahadid) on May 31, 2016 at 7:54am PDT

Although, personally, we still have our eye on those XXL Dior swag bags all of the models walked out with. Now that Bellas a brand ambassador, surely she can spare one or two to send our way?

What was your favorite part of the Dior show?

Emily Kirkpatrick


LONDON (Reuters) - Appointing a new Dior creative director is a "work in progress", the French fashion house's chief executive said on Tuesday, with the luxury label still to name a head designer some six months after Raf Simons left to set up his own brand. Dior, one of the world's most famous designer houses, announced Simons' surprise departure in October after some three years at the helm. An in-house creative team has been working on collections since. "(It is a) work in progress, work in progress and we're giving it a little bit of time," Chief Executive Sidney Toledano told Reuters. "It's an important position." Toledano was speaking at a preview for Dior's new London boutique opening this week, a four-floor store selling clothes, accessories, children's wear as well as a home collection. "The UK market in London business for us is doing very well, we still have double digit growth," he said, adding however that last year's Islamist militant attacks in Paris had hurt tourism and sales in France. "...What happened in November had a real impact on the first quarter but still we will continue developing our presence in Paris. We have a five-year plan and in September we'll open a new fine jewelry boutique." Dior also presented its cruise collection on Tuesday at Blenheim Palace near Oxford, Winston Churchill's birthplace and where the label hosted fashion shows in 1954 and 1958. Cruise collections, originally designed for wealthy fashionistas holidaying on yachts or cruises during the winter months, are outfits produced by stylists on top of seasonal lines. Lucie Meier and Serge Ruffieux, who are leading Dior's creative team, took inspiration from "not only the post-war high society's wardrobes but also the restlessness and wanderlust (that) characterized the period", according to show notes. Models, such as new Dior makeup ambassador Bella Hadid, strutted down the catwalk in tops, dresses and skirts adorned in floral as well as Asian and African prints and embroidery. Sleeves were voluminous and up to the elbow, worn with trousers flared and cut above the ankle or slim skirts. Dior's signature Bar jacket, usually cinched at the waist, was slightly longer and covering hips, while its well-known bows were loosened to resemble scarves. Several outfits were layered, such as skirts over trousers. (Reporting By Vanessa Clements and Sarah Mills; Writing by Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
The director of the Cincinnati zoo is speaking out about the decision to use lethal force on Harambe, the 420-pound western lowland gorilla killed Saturday when a 4-year-old somehow breached a barrier and entered the Gorilla World exhibit's moat.

Zoo director Thane Maynard rejected the notion Harambe was protecting the child, as many news outlets reported, and noted this was the first animal killing in the zoo's history.

"It's unprecedented  we never had to kill a dangerous animal in the middle of an emergency situation," Maynard told reporters Monday. "The zoo has been here for 143 years, and that's saying a lot. It's a big loss to the Cincinnati zoo. Harambe was one of our most magnificent animals, he's a critically endangered species.

"We're one of the key players in gorilla captive breeding and conversation and so it's a big loss."

Public outcry sparked immediately following Harambe's death, with petitions circulating online to investigate the child's mother for neglect. But people were equally upset, and some confused, by the zoo's decision to kill the endangered animal rather than tranquilizing him with a dart.

A gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo had to be killed to rescue a 4 year old boy who fell into the enclosurepic.twitter.com/utagUV3xrD

However, as Maynard explained Monday, a tranquilizer would have taken minutes to incapacitate the gorilla from inflicting harm. "The child was being dragged around," Maynard told reporters. "His head was banging on concrete. This was not a gentle thing. The child was at risk."

Harambe appeared confused and at times agitated by the screams coming from onlookers Saturday, including a continued shouting, "Mommy loves you!" Maynard said the zoo ultimately used deadly force against Harambe to ensure the livelihood of the boy, noting the gorilla was capable of crushing a coconut with its mere hands.

A tranquilizer likely would not have caused Harambe to immediately pass out, as evident in a recent video of an escaped chimpanzee named Chacha that was tranquilized while climbing telephone poles in Japan. The angered primate leaped toward workers after being shot with a dart, and spent several moments hanging from the cords before falling to the ground.
By Devika Krishna Kumar (Reuters) - Oil traders keep a low profile. So when one of the most widely followed oil traders on Twitter abruptly closed his account last week, the outpouring of dismay among his thousands of followers was rare for the secretive multi-trillion-dollar industry. Eric Rosenfeldt, who goes by the Twitter handle of Oil Merchant or @energyrosen, had attracted more than 8,000 Twitter followers for his quirky and candid opinions on the crude oil market. Rosenfeldt does not identify himself or his company on his Twitter profile, but he previously confirmed his identity to Reuters. The trader, who lives in Virginia Beach, Virginia, on Thursday deleted his account after a user questioned some of his tweets about crude prices and called him dishonest. Saying his remarks had likely been misinterpreted, Rosenfeldt decided it was the last straw for him with Twitter, where he found the climate sometimes hostile. "It was a death by a thousand cuts. Then someone said I was dishonest or something like that and I was like, 'Why am I doing this crap?'," Rosenfeldt, who has been in the oil business for 16 years and on Twitter since 2009, said in an instant message on Friday. It's not unusual for arguments to break out in the Twittersphere, and Rosenfeldt had told Reuters previously he had considered leaving the social media site because of negative responses from other members. For many traders, including Rosenfeldt, Twitter is in some ways similar to the free-for-all spirit of the open-outcry trading pits, which have been replaced by electronic trading. Still the feud last week demonstrated how the public glare on the internet can be tough even for veteran traders used to the rough and tumble of the pits. RARE SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE In the fiercely competitive world of physical commodities trading where merchants scour the market for tips, @energyrosen was a relatively rare voice on social media. On some days, he received as many as 800 direct Twitter messages. His departure unleashed pleas on Thursday and Friday for his return from his followers, who missed his real-time tweets and commentary on everything from crude demand, prices, refinery margins to closely-watched weekly storage data. "He's a class act and spends his time helping traders and investors learn an aspect of the oil industry that they wouldn't learn otherwise," said trader Anthony Crudele, who has followed Rosenfeldt for a long time. Swiss-based consultancy Petromatrix tweeted, "Missing @energyrosen; if you are out there under another name, thanks for all and please come back after the holiday." Others simply expressed gratitude. CLAIMS OF MISLEADING TWEETS Rosenfeldt's departure followed a squabble with another Twitter user, Joshua Demasi, whose user name is @joshuademasi. Demasi in tweets accused Rosenfeldt of making bearish tweets about oil in early May but later saying he was bullish all along. "@EnergyRosen I think you give valuable info, but no one is above reproach. To tweet bearishly and then say I was long all along is dishonest," tweeted Demasi, who has 2,422 followers. Demasi, a strategist and portfolio manager at Loomis, Sayles & Co, according to his LinkedIn profile, said he hoped Rosenfeldt would come back. "If he did indeed leave for good, that is too bad ... I was merely seeking clarification about some of his posts and thought our interaction to be innocuous," Demasi told Reuters in a direct Twitter message. Rosenfeldt, who is vice president of sales, supply and trading at PAPCO Inc, said Demasi may have misinterpreted his comments on intraday price moves made within the confines of Twitter's 140-character limit. The ensuing exchange between the two men is not publicly visible in its entirety because Rosenfeldt's account has been removed from Twitter since his departure. On Tuesday, Demasi changed his username to make his account anonymous, saying he was "forced go dark" because he could not have his interactions on Twitter interfere with his career. While Rosenfeldt is off Twitter for now, he did not rule out a return. "Yesterday morning, I would have said something different but after receiving (lots of) emails... I am thinking maybe a break. So we'll see," he said on Friday. (Reporting by Devika Krishna Kumar in New York; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Jonathan Oatis)
mary poppins

It's been 52 years since Julie Andrews starred in the timeless classic "Mary Poppins," and now Disney has announced that it's making a sequel.

Emily Blunt will play the no-nonsense nanny with the catchy songs in a sequel titled "Mary Poppins Returns," according to a press release sent out by Disney on Tuesday.

Also starring is creator of Broadway hit "Hamilton," Lin-Manuel Miranda, who will play a new character, a lamplighter named Jack.

According to the release, the story will take place in Depression-era London and follow Jane and Michael Banks  the kids whom Poppins looked over in the first movie, now grown  along with Michaels three children. They're all visited once more by Poppins following a personal loss.

The film will be directed by Oscar nominee Rob Marshall ("Chicago," "Into the Woods") and come out on Christmas Day, 2018.

The original "Mary Poppins," released in 1964 and based on a series of children's books by P.L. Travers, was revolutionary for the time as it melded live action and animation. It went on to win Oscars for original score, special effects, and best actress for Andrews.

The film has a lifetime gross of over $100 million (that would be over $670 million by today's ticket prices).

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From Town & Country

Disney CEO Bob Iger erupted in frustration against Bernie Sanders' attacks on Disney's low wages and Iger's sky-high salary, asking in a private Facebook post obtained by TheWrap: "How many jobs have you created?"

In a private Facebook message on Tuesday, Iger, a supporter of Sanders' Democratic presidential rival Hillary Clinton, wrote:

"To Bernie Sanders: We created 11,000 new jobs at Disneyland in the past decade, and our company has created 18,000 in the US in the last five years. How many jobs have you created? What have you contributed to the US economy?"

On Tuesday, Sanders launched into a broadside attack on the Walt Disney Co. during an Anaheim Convention Center rally filled with 1,500 supporters.

"Anybody make a living wage working for Disney?" Sanders asked. "It's an example of what we're talking about when we talk about a rigged economy."

Sanders went on to claim that "Disney pays its workers wages that are so low that many of them are forced to live in motels because they cannot afford a decent place to live." He added, "People are asking is it right that at Disneyland you have a CEO making $46 million while they're paying their workers starvation wages."

Sanders also attacked Disney, which made a record $2.9 billion in the first quarter of this year, for sending jobs overseas.

"It would be very nice of the Disney corporation to start building factories in the United States," Sanders said.

A Disney spokesperson told TheWrap in a statement that, "Mr. Sanders clearly doesn't have his facts right. The Disneyland Resort generates more than $5.7 billion annually for the local economy, and as the area's largest employer has added more than 11,000 jobs over the last decade, a 65% increase. These numbers don't take into account our $1 billion expansion to add a Star Wars-themed land, which will create thousands of additional jobs across multiple sectors."

Iger has contributed $2,700 to Clinton's presidential campaign, the maximum allowed by law, according to OpenSecrets.org.

From SF Gate
Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews in the original Mary Poppins (Disney)

By Pamela McClintock, The Hollywood Reporter

Super-cali-fragil-istic-expi-ali-docious.

Disney on Monday announced that its Mary Poppins sequel will open on Dec. 25, 2018, more than five decades after the 1964 classic film first played in theaters. The studio also revealed the movies title for the first time: Mary Poppins Returns.

The musical stars Emily Blunt as the magical nanny opposite Lin-Manuel Miranda, star and creator of the Broadway hit musical Hamilton.

Related: Disney Stakes Out Release Dates for Jungle Book 2, 'Maleficent 2 and More

Rob Marshall is directing Mary Poppins Returns from an adapted script by David Magee, as well as producing alongside Marc Platt and John DeLuca. Marc Shaiman is composing an all-new score, while he and Scott Wittman are collaborating in writing the original songs.

The character of Mary Poppins was first introduced to the world in P.L. Travers 1934 book, which Disney adapted into the 1964 movie starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke. Travers wrote seven additional books about Mary Poppins that were published between 1935 and 1988.

I am truly humbled and honored to be asked by Disney to bring P.L. Travers further adventures to the screen, Marshall said in a statement. "The iconic original film means so much to me personally, and I look forward to creating an original movie musical that can bring Mary Poppins, and her message that childlike wonder can be found in even the most challenging of times, to a whole new generation.

Related: Dick Van Dyke Celebrates 90th Birthday With Mary Poppins Flash Mob

The story will be set in Depression-era London, where a now grown-up Jane and Michael Banks, along with Michaels three children, are visited by their former nanny following a tragedy in the family that leaves them numb and joyless.

Miranda will play the role of Jack the lamplighter, a new character. He is fast becoming part of the studio fold, having composed the music for Disneys upcoming animated film Moana and worked on the music for Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Story continues

The only other pic currently slotted to open on Christmas Day 2018 is an untitled event film from Warner Bros.

Mary Poppins: Watch the 50th Anniversary trailer:


Super-cali-fragil-istic-expi-ali-docious.

Disney announced Monday that its Mary Poppins sequel will open on Dec. 25, 2018, more than five decades after the 1964 classic film first played in theaters. The studio also revealed the movie's title for the first time, Mary Poppins Returns.

The musical stars Emily Blunt as the magical nanny opposite Lin-Manuel Miranda, star and creator of the Broadway hit musical, Hamilton.

Rob Marshall is directing Mary Poppins Returns from an adapted script by David Magee, as well as producing alongside Marc Platt and John DeLuca. Marc Shaiman is composing an all new-score, while he and Scott Wittman are collaborating in writing the original songs.

The character of Mary Poppins was first introduced to the world in P.L. Travers' 1934 book, which Disney adapted into the classic 1964 movie starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke. Travers' wrote seven additional books about Mary Poppins that were published between 1935 and 1988.

"I am truly humbled and honored to be asked by Disney to bring P.L. Travers' further adventures to the screen. The iconic original film means so much to me personally, and I look forward to creating an original movie musical that can bring Mary Poppins, and her message that childlike wonder can be found in even the most challenging of times, to a whole new generation," Marshall said in a statement.

The story will be set in Depression-era London, where a now-grown up Jane and Michael Banks, along with Michael's three children, are visited by their former nanny following a tragedy in the family that leaves them numb and joyless.

Miranda will play the role of Jack the lamplighter, a new character. He's fast becoming part of the studio fold, having composed the music for Disney's upcoming animated film Moana, and worked on the music for Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

The only other film currently slotted to open on Christmas Day in 2018 is an untitled event film from Warner Bros.

This article originally appeared on The Hollywood Reporter
By Alex Dobuzinskis

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A woman bitten by a shark off the coast of Southern California suffered a single chomp from her shoulder to her pelvis and survived largely because she was physically fit enough to tread water until she was rescued, doctors said on Tuesday.

The victim, identified by medical officials as 52-year-old Maria Korcsmaros, was pulled from the Pacific Ocean by lifeguards on a patrol boat on Sunday about 150 yards (meters) off the shore of Newport Beach after she was seen in distress, said Mary Locey, a spokeswoman for the city.

Korcsmaros was training for an Ironman triathlon when she was attacked by the shark on Sunday and doctors have credited her physical fitness for her survival, said Kelsey Eiben, a spokeswoman for Orange County Global Medical Center where the woman is being treated.

The mother of three did not go into shock after the attack, Eiben said.

"She was able to tread water and hold her own until help arrived and that's pretty remarkable," Dr. Philip Rotter, a physician at the hospital, told a news conference.

Korcsmaros, who lives in Southern California, is expected to survive and is listed in stable condition, Eiben said.

The shark attack occurred during the Memorial Day weekend, which signals the unofficial start of summer vacation season in the United States.

It followed last year's record 98 shark attacks, a figure that is expected to increase this year due to a rise in shark populations from historic lows in the 1990s and other factors, according to the Shark Attack File at the University of Florida.

Korecsmaros is a personal trainer and aerobics instructor, according to her LinkedIn page.

"She seems like a very strong lady, she's remarkably calm," Dr. Humberto Sauri, medical director of trauma services at Orange County Global Medical Center, told reporters.

Doctors will seek to prevent any infections from the bite, which they said left teeth marks from Korecsmaros' shoulder to her pelvis.

Story continues

It was not immediately clear what type of shark bit Korecsmaros.

Great white sharks are known to hunt off the coast of California, but they generally do not attack people and shark attacks in general are rare events worldwide.

Also on Sunday, a 13-year-old boy was bitten by a shark on the right leg in Neptune, Florida, east of Jacksonville. He was expected to survive, according to local media.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Sharon Bernstein and Sandra Maler)
Stockholm (AFP) - Dogs sniffing hopefully at cafe tables are a common sight the world over -- but in Sweden, one restaurant chain is serving up a dedicated menu for canines, complete with imitation beer.

Man's best friend can now sup on cod or organic beef at Avenyfamiljen in the western city of Gothenburg, with non-alcoholic "dog beer", made from beef stock, set to be added to the menu from July.

"For a couple of years we've allowed dogs into our restaurants -- the next step was to offer water bowls, and now we also offer a special dog menu," restaurant boss Tobias Hamberg told AFP.

"Most dogs prefer the beef, and they usually take their meals on the floor near to the feet of their owners."

Like a few other eateries around the globe that offer up pet treats, Avenyfamiljen and two other restaurants from the same chain are hoping the move will attract custom from diners who just can't bear to leave their furry friends at home.

Doggy meals at Avenyfamiljen, which the restaurant buys ready-made from a company in Stockholm, will set the owner back 50 kroner (5 euros, $6).

The goal is "to attract a new kind of guest -- ones who can't leave their dogs for more than an hour at home," said Hamberg.

"Food service is a very competitive market -- we always need to find a new ways to make competitive offers for our customers. At the moment we just allow dogs. But who knows -- in the future we might build restaurants just for animals," he joked.
Four months after he staged a veterans' fund-raiser with great fanfare, Donald Trump peevishly addressed on Tuesday weeks worth of questions about what happened to the money he said he raised.



"I'm not looking for credit," the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said in a combative press conference at Trump Tower in New York, where, on live TV, he read down a list of the 41 veterans' charities receiving a total of $5.6 million from Trump's Jan. 29 fund raiser.



Trump, who has been aggressively questioned by news outlets seeking an accounting for those funds, explained the four-month delay by saying it took time to vet the groups selected as beneficiaries.



"We raised a lot of money. I didn't have to do that," Trump said. He bristled at the press scrutiny and singled out CNN's Jim Acosta ("I've watched you on television; you're a real beauty," Trump said with sarcasm) and ABC News's Tom Llamas, who questioned if Trump "had a problem with the truth," given that the candidate has regularly boasted of raising $6 million.









RELATED VIDEO: What You Need to Know About Trump Clinching the Republican Nomination



"No. I raised almost $6 million. Some of it didn't come through," Trump said. Minutes later, he returned to Llamas, saying: "I don't want the credit for it, but I shouldn't be lambasted ... what I don't want is when I raise millions of dollars, have people say, like this sleazy guy right over here from ABC. He's a sleaze in my book  you're a sleaze because you know the facts."





Trump just called me a "sleaze." Should be an interesting week. a Tom Llamas (@TomLlamasABC) May 31, 2016

In the middle of his recitation of charities and dollar amounts, Trump paused to recall that the money was raised back in the heyday of his feud with Fox News, when he boycotted the network's presidential debate days before he lost the Iowa caucuses.



"The one debate I missed. It was the lowest rated debate, by the way, but I won't say that."



Among the groups receiving funds this week is the Bob Woodruff Foundation, which is named for Llamas' ABC News colleague, Bob Woodruff, who was almost killed in 2006 while covering the war in Iraq.

We are grateful for the $75K donated to the Bob Woodruff Foundation through the Donald Trump Foundation. a Bob Woodruff Foundtn (@Stand4Heroes) May 31, 2016

Trump's own $1 million personal check, a photocopy of which he brandished at Tuesday's news conference, went to the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation.



"They are fabulous people. They honored me last year at the Waldorf-Astoria. I know them ... and I didn't have to go through a big vetting process with them," Trump said.



His check was written to the group just last week.
Donald Trump

Donald Trump slammed Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol at a press conference Tuesday, calling him a "loser" after he alluded to a possible independent run in the 2016 presidential election.

Kristol tweeted Sunday that there would be an "independent candidate  an impressive one, with a strong team and a real chance," prompting Trump to tweet in response, calling Kristol a "dummy." Kristol responded that he hoped Trump's "nervousness about an independent candidacy doesn't affect his composure."

Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, continued his attacks against Kristol on Tuesday, saying he couldn't win as an independent.

"For the most part, you can't even get on Texas and various other states now, it's too late," Trump said, referring to state ballots. "... So here's what happens. What happens is ... you will not have Supreme Court justices."

Trump later said that an independent candidate could lose the general election for Republicans, which would put Supreme Court justice nominations in the hands of Democrats.

He explained:

If they do an indy, assuming it's decent, which I don't think anybody with a reputation would do it because they'd look like fools. But what you're going to do is you lose the election for the Republicans, and therefore you lose the Supreme Court. Therefore, you will have a group of people put on the Supreme Court where this country will never, ever recover, it will never, ever be the same.

Trump also called Kristol a "loser" and railed against his "failing" magazine.

Kristol's the one who, he's the last one. Don't forget, he said, 'Trump will never run.' The guy's not a smart person. He said, 'Donald Trump will never run.' Remember? Do you remember? I actually blame you, why do you put this guy on television? I see him on the different shows. He's got no credibility. Said I won't run, if I run I won't do well. ... He looks like such a fool.

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He later continued: "Bill Kristol's a loser. His magazine is failing. ... I don't think it even survives. He's getting some free publicity."

It's unclear whether Kristol is actually planning to mount some kind of bid against Trump. A source who's part of the effort to find an independent candidate to run against Trump and the presumptive Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, told CBS News that there won't be an announcement about a potential challenger for a couple of weeks.

Kristol responded to Trump's insults with one of his own.

"I gather Donald Trump said I'm a loser," Kristol tweeted after the press conference. "I've won some and I've lost some, but one thing I've always tried not to be is a roaring jackass."

NOW WATCH: Trump said hes willing to do what no sitting US president has ever done





More From Business Insider


The Hague (AFP) - Convicted Congolese war criminal Jean-Pierre Bemba found himself back in the dock at the International Criminal Court on Tuesday -- this time accused of bribing witnesses and falsifying evidence.

Prosecutors at the first such trial in ICC history said the alleged bribery and forgery was a sign of "how far the accused were prepared to go to hide their illegal behaviour."

Bemba stands accused, along with two of his lawyers and an MP from his party, of presenting fake documents to the court and giving backhanders to witnesses in his warcrimes trial.

In March, the ICC convicted the former militia chief of warcrimes and crimes against humanity for rapes, mass murders and looting from late 2002 to March 2003 in the neighbouring Central African Republic.

His rebel militia from northern Democratic Republic of Congo went on a rampage through part of the CAR after he sent some 1,500 men to prop up then president Ange-Felix Patasse, who was nonetheless ousted in a March 2003 coup.

"Bemba had a lot to lose in his trial: his stature, his standing, his political power, the possibility of a successful presidential election, his freedom," prosecution lawyer Kweku Vanderpuye told the court.

According to the prosecution, eight witnesses have already admitted to perjury and two of them were bribed just hours before leaving for the court in The Hague.

Bemba's defence team was due to address the court later Tuesday.
Not every wealthy resident of Southern California wants to buy a Beverly Hills mansion or a Malibu beach house. There are a few who prefer high-rise condo life, and those who do almost always are looking for anything available in prestigious Sierra Towers, one of the first and finest to go up in the area, just off Sunset Boulevard on the border of Beverly Hills and West Hollywood.

Anyone whos interested in living here happens to be in luck at the moment, if they have a lot of cash on hand, of course. A rare listinga double unit in the buildinghit the market a month ago and just had its price cut to $5.95 million.

Just how hot is this building? Well, celebs including David Geffen, Sandra Bullock, Matthew Perry, Courteney Cox, Rachel Zoe, Lindsay Lohan, Kelly Osbourne, Joan Collins, Peter Lawford, Diahann Carroll, and Sidney Poitier have all called it home. Elton John sold his condo there to Cher.

Celebs once appreciated the short walking distance to Hollywoods hallowed Hamburger Hamlet. Now that the Hamlets gone, current residents enjoy the proximity to the exclusive SoHo House, recently declared by the Hollywood Reporter as L.A.s top power lunch spot.

West Hollywood's famous Sierra Towers, home to the stars

Because two units were combined, the condo for sale has large, open rooms

Combining units within the building to create larger living spaces is a popular pastime for condo residents. This units previous ownersa producer/director and his actress wifemashed up a three-bedroom with a smaller one-bedroom more than a decade ago. The result is a condo with four bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms in 3,402 square feet of space.

The buildings steel framing and no interior load-bearing walls makes renovations easier than in most other buildings. Constructed in 1965, Sierra Towers was one of the first high-rises in the area to be built on rollers, in order to withstand earthquake damage. According to listing agent Su-Z Schneider of Gibson International, who has been selling condos in the building since the 1990s, earthquake damage has been miniscule.

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This Sierra Towers condo will need "a little" work.

Theres no damage to this oversize unit, but Schneider says the condo will need some renovations and updating. However, lovely views all the way out to the ocean on a clear day are undeniable.

And Schneider says its hard to find a truly blank slate in a popular building with services including 24-hour guards, concierges, porters, and valet parking. Also, amenities include a saltwater pool, a spa-like fitness center, and a banquet room.

Its just like living in the Four Seasons, she says, noting that some of the staff have been there for 30 years. Celebrities also love it because its very private and virtually inaccessible to paparazzi.

You can see that one part of the condo was used as a film production office.

Of course, those luxury services and amenities do come with a price. The homeowner fee for this unit is about $4,000 a month. However, if you can afford $6 million for the condo, the monthly fee probably wont be an issue.

The post Dwelling With the Stars: $6M Condo for Sale in Hollywoods Elite Sierra Towers appeared first on Real Estate News and Advice - realtor.com.





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Gillian Anderson has formidable competition in the form of Khaleesi.

While the X-Files actress is the most recent to toss her hat in the Jane Bond ring, teased fans about playing the female version of the United Kingdom's most famous spy in a May 23 Tumblr Q&A, Game of Thrones actress Emilia Clarke recently announced her interest in the hypothetical role. Game on.

"I have a lot of unrealized dreams," she told the U.K.'s Daily Star. "I would love to play Jane Bond."

Source: Giphy

While Hollywood hasn't yet moved to reverse the iconic series' gender roles  as Mashable reported, Daniel Craig's predecessor hasn't yet been named, although Tom Hiddleston, Idris Elba and Jamie Bell are under consideration  Clarke doesn't seem an at all unreasonable choice for a female Bond. She is best known for playing the Mother of Dragons, after all, which involves seducing men and occasionally lighting them on fire. She seems more than up to the task.

Source: Giphy

Plus, she already has her "Bond boy" picked out. "My ultimate leading man would be Leonardo DiCaprio," she told the Star. "No doubt about it."

Unrealized dreams, indeed.
Looking back, 2015 was a transformative year for the Emmys.

HBOs Game of Thrones and Veep nabbed their first wins in the top series categories. First-time champs Jeffrey Tambor and Jon Hamm took the lead actor wins for the freshman season of Amazons Transparent and the final season of AMCs Mad Men, respectively. Viola Davis became the first black woman to triumph in the drama lead actress category thanks to ABCs How to Get Away With Murder.

Can 2016 possibly top that celebration of the new?

After all, when it comes to the Emmys, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

In the midst of all the fresh faces, last years winners across the drama and comedy supporting categories were all repeat honorees. The award in the brand new variety talk series category went to longtime Emmy favorite The Daily Show (although buzzy Inside Amy Schumer managed to take down stalwart Saturday Night Live for the first-ever variety sketch series kudo).

And nothing represents Emmy stasis better than the reality competition series category. For four years running the nominees have been the exact same six series: The Amazing Race, Dancing With the Stars, Project Runway, So You Think You Can Dance, Top Chef and The Voice.

Only three shows have won that category in its 13-year history: Race, Chef and Voice (and NBCs singing competition waltzed off with last years trophy for the second time).

Its always a crapshoot for newcomers at the Emmys, especially when old favorites remain at the top of their game.

By crowning new top bananas in the drama and comedy series categories, have Emmy voters cracked the field wide open? Or established new favorites for years to come? A look at the TV Academys recent history suggests it could go either way.

Thrones finally took the top prize after Breaking Bad claimed back-to-back wins for the two halves of its final season. Before that, Homeland became Showtimes first drama series winner in its debut season, ending Mad Mens winning streak at four consecutive seasons.

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In what may be good news for Thrones, its fairly unusual for a series to only win once in the drama series competition, but in addition to Homeland, both 24 and Lost did exactly that in recent years. Back in the mid-90s, iconic series ER, Law & Order and NYPD Blue each had a single turn in the winners seat.

Among the series looking to upset Thrones this year are USAs stylish newcomer Mr. Robot, which took the Golden Globe and Critics Choice prizes for drama series, and returning favorites like AMCs Better Call Saul, Netflixs House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black, and the final seasons of PBS Downton Abbey and CBS The Good Wife.

Additional newcomers include Showtimes Billions, HBOs Vinyl, Netflixs Narcos and Marvels Jessica Jones, Hulus The Path, Lifetimes UnReal, WGNs Underground and Louis C.K.s labor of love Horace and Pete, as well as a handful of shows that skirted the sophomore slump  HBOs The Leftovers, Showtimes The Affair and Starzs Outlander  to deliver seasons even more acclaimed than their Emmy-overlooked inaugural runs.

With all of those contenders  plus shows like FXs The Americans, still seeking its first nom after four critically acclaimed seasons  there are bound to be a lot of disappointed showrunners come Emmy nom morning. But hope springs eternal.

On the comedy side, Veeps election over firmly established Emmy fave Modern Family was a very big deal indeed. But now that Emmy voters have shown their preference for Selina Meyers foul-mouthed hilarity, does any other series have a legitimate shot at the win?

A case could be made that the comedy field is broader and deeper than ever before, as oddball candidates like FXs Baskets and Netflixs Lady Dynamite join mainstream favorites like ABCs Fresh Off the Boat and Black-ish and little shows in need of love like the CWs Jane the Virgin and Foxs Last Man on Earth.

Freshmen Master of None from Netflix and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend from the CW have already scored kudos attention, and the list of favorites eligible to return is downright intimidating: HBOs Girls and Silicon Valley, Amazons Transparent, Net-flixs Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, CBS The Big Bang Theory.

One repeat were guaranteed not to witness this year: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. The Comedy Central stalwart soldiers on with new host Trevor Noah, and itll be interesting to see if the series can remain in the race opposite last years heavyweight competitors Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, Jimmy Kimmel Live and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

Another wildcard is Late Show, which earned a nomination last year for David Lettermans farewell season and is now captained by perennial nominee Stephen Colbert. This will be the first test of how Emmy voters are responding to Colberts big move.

In the even later night slots, both James Corden and Seth Meyers have heat, but keep an eye on Samantha Bee from TBS Full Frontal and Chelsea Handler from Netflixs Chelsea, who are both looking to shake up the boys club.

But perhaps the best news for any scripted or variety newcomers this year: At least theyre not trying to break into reality competition.

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SHENZHEN, CHINA / ACCESSWIRE / May 31, 2016 / China Information Technology, Inc. (CNIT), a leading provider of internet-based platforms and digital advertising services in China, today said it has entered into a strategic partnership agreement with Tianjin Hailuo Technology Company Ltd., an advertising agency in Tianjin City, for the rollout of 10,000 CNIT digital ad terminals in Tianjin within the next two years.

The terminals, which will be installed in elevators in office buildings, hotels, shopping malls and residential communities beginning the second half of 2016, will carry advertising targeted to diverse audience groups and enable viewers to request information about these advertisers' products and services.

In addition to sales revenue on the terminals, CNIT is expected to receive recurring monthly fees for the life of the units via Elevator Guard, the company's elevator maintenance system providing building management entities with comprehensive data monitoring services and providing elevator passengers with sophisticated alarm and emergency functions.

CNIT will also receive additional revenue from customers' use of Yunfa Net (www.pubds.com), the company's award-winning cloud-based content delivery platform that enables advertisers to design ads on their PC or mobile app and transmit them to their terminals of choice.

Today's announcement follows five previous agreements signed by CNIT since last August providing for combined installation of some 32,000 terminals in 20 Provinces and Municipalities.

Tianjin, with a population of nearly 15.5 million, is among China's most prosperous cities and a leading center for the nation's information technology, automotive, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, metallurgy, and petrochemicals industries. The city is also one of only four PRC municipalities under direct administration of the Central Government, thus classifying it as a Province.

"We're thrilled to have completed this agreement for Tianjin," said CNIT CEO and chairman, Mr. Jianghuai Lin. "This region, we anticipate, will be especially fertile ground for both our display terminals and Yunfa Net service, which together can allow Tianjin's advertisers to create, distribute and display ads precisely targeted to the City's diverse demographic groups.

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"More and more, advertising techniques and capabilities in China are equaling or exceeding those available in America, Europe and across the world. We at CNIT are extremely proud to be in the forefront of this progress."

The CEO said he expects the company's overall revenue and bottom line performance would likely increase "significantly" over the next several quarters.

About China Information Technology, Inc.

China Information Technology, Inc. (CNIT) is a leading Internet service company that provides integrated cloud-based solutions enabling innovation and smart living in the fields of new media, city safety management, education, etc.

Through continuous innovation, CNIT is aiming to leverage its proprietary Cloud-Application-Terminal technology to level the competitive landscape in the new media industry and deliver value for its shareholders, employees, customers, and the community. To learn more, please visit http://en.chinacnit.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

This press release may contain certain "forward-looking statements" relating to the business of China Information Technology, Inc., and its subsidiaries and other consolidated entities. All statements, other than statements of historical fact included herein, are "forward-looking statements" in nature within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements, often identified by the use of forward-looking terminologies such as "believes", "expects" or similar expressions, involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, they do involve assumptions, risks and uncertainties, and these expectations may prove to be incorrect. Investors should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. The Company's actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of a variety of factors, including those discussed in the Company's periodic reports that are filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available on its website (http://www.sec.gov). All forward-looking statements attributable to the Company and its subsidiaries and other consolidated entities or persons acting on their behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by these factors. Other than as required under the securities laws, the Company does not assume a duty to update these forward-looking statements.

For further information, please contact:

China Information Technology, Inc.

Iris Yan

Tel: +86-755-8370-4767

Email: IR@chinacnit.com

http://www.chinacnit.com

or

Asia IR-PR

Jimmy Caplan

Tel: +512-329-9505

Email: jimmy@asia-irpr.com



or



Media Relations: Asia IR-PR

Rick Eisenberg

Tel: +212-496-6828

Email: rick@asia-irpr.com

SOURCE: China Information Technology, Inc.
By Francesco Guarascio

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Nearly $1 billion of European Union funds were given out to fraudulent claimants last year, with the biggest concentrations of suspected false claims in Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary, data from EU investigators shows.

In an annual report published on Tuesday, the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) concluded that 888 million euros (674.07 million pounds) were probably disbursed to dishonest claimants in 2015, a slight decline from 901 million the previous year.

It amounts to some 0.6 percent of a budget that concentrates spending on subsidies to farmers and poor regions.

Among examples of probes into nearly 1,400 fraud allegations was a 1.3-million euro payment to modernise a vegetable chilling plant in Bulgaria, the EU's poorest state. When investigators looked into it, they found the equipment supplier and the factory owner were the same person, who had inflated the price.

Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary saw the biggest concentrations of fraud on the EU in 2015.

In another type of scam, importers of solar panels from China cheated EU authorities of penal import duty by using fake documents changing their provenance.

Cheating and error is endemic in public spending programmes. The British government estimates its welfare system, 50 percent bigger than the EU budget, also loses some 0.7 percent to fraud.

But fraud on the European Union's 141-billion euro budget is a sensitive issue for an EU under pressure from voters sceptical of Brussels. Britain, a major contributor to the budget, holds a referendum next month on quitting the 28-nation bloc altogether.

OLAF's director-general, Giovanni Kessler, said he did not believe there was widespread corruption, however, and that a sharp increase in fraud detected after 2013 showed his agency was making its mark in encouraging people to report concerns.

Last year, 187 million euros were recovered through judicial action in member states and returned to Brussels, a drop of 10 percent from 2014. Kessler backs the creation of a prosecutors office for the EU which could have greater powers than OLAF to investigate. Governments have resisted that idea, however.

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Some EU officials complain that national authorities can lack zeal in pursuing those who defraud the EU budget and in general can be careless about handing out EU funds correctly.

Only about half of OLAF's recommendations for prosecutions have led to indictments by national prosecutors in recent years.

(Editing by Alastair Macdonald and Alison Williams)
By Julia Fioretti and Eric Auchard

BRUSSELS/LONDON (Reuters) - European Union governments should not ban services like home-rental site Airbnb or ride-hailing app Uber except as a last resort, the EU says in new guidelines, seeking to rein in a crackdown on the "sharing economy".

In guidelines seen by Reuters, the European Commission said any restrictions by EU member states on these new online services should be justified and proportionate to the public interest at stake.

"Total bans of an activity constitute a measure of last resort that should be applied only if and where no less restrictive requirements to attain a public interest can be used," the draft document says.

In the case of room-renting sites like Airbnb, the Commission said banning short-term lets of apartments "appears difficult to justify" when limits on the maximum number of days apartments can be rented out would be more appropriate.

The guidelines will come as good news for the likes of Uber and Airbnb, which have faced outright bans or restrictions in some cities as established industry players complain of unfair competition.

Airbnb, founded in 2008, and Uber, launched a year later, both grew up in the hot-house San Francisco Internet scene and almost from the start have faced regulatory battles across the United States, and, more recently, around the world.

Both have become favorite targets of local officials and rival trade groups in Europe, with its tradition of strong social oversight.

In the "sharing economy", customers use the Internet to contract services such as ride-sharing, where amateur drivers displace professional taxis, or home-sharing, which reduces hotel demand.

"These services can fall within several sectors, falling under the regulatory burden of all of them," the Commission said.

A case in point is Uber, which considers itself merely a digital service connecting drivers and passengers as opposed to a transport service, which would make it subject to more onerous rules on driver qualifications, road rules and insurance.

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The EU's highest court is set to rule later this year or next on whether Uber is a transport company or a digital service.

LOCAL SKIRMISHES

Associations of taxi drivers have staged high-profile protests against Uber in France, Britain, Portugal, Spain and many other European countries since 2014.

Last year, French prosecutors staged a high-profile raid of Uber's Paris offices in a showdown over whether the company was violating a law to curtail online taxi services.

Uber suspended its UberPOP service, which relies on non-professional drivers, in Brussels last October after a court ordered it shut down.

The company reintroduced its service in Madrid in March after beating a hasty retreat from the market in 2014 following a court ruling against it.

Airbnb has faced loud criticism from city officials in Barcelona and Paris over its impact on local housing markets.

On May 1, Berlin officials implemented one of the world's toughest clampdowns on Airbnb. City officials have promised to reject 95 percent of requests by landlords to rent out places on a short-term basis.

City officials have received more than 500 legal complaints over the murky provisions of the new law. A Berlin court on June 8 is handling the case of German Airbnb competitor Wimdu, which filed suit over the new regulation.

German hotel association IHA said in response to the EU guidelines: The current legal vacuum...comes at the expense of consumers, residents and taxpayers and distorts the competition to the (disadvantage) of the heavily regulated hotel industry.

(Additional reporting by Tina Bellon in Frankfurt, Michel Rose in Paris, Paul Day in Madrid, Toby Sterling in Amsterdam and Axel Bugge in Lisbon; editing by Adrian Croft)
By Alastair Macdonald and Gabriela Baczynska BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker's plan to meet President Vladimir Putin in June in Russia on Monday reignited a debate about ties with Moscow as the bloc weighs renewing sanctions on the Kremlin. Diplomats in Brussels still expect the 28-nation bloc to extend - most likely for six months - the energy, financial and defence sanctions against Russia, which were introduced over Moscow's role in the conflict in Ukraine and expire in July. But they said that intensifying high-level contacts with Russia two years after it annexed Crimea from Ukraine signals the EU may soften its policy in the second half of the year. While several EU leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel have visited Russia since the annexation in March 2014 and the backing of separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine, the trip will be Juncker's first as Europe's chief executive. Putin was also in Athens last week. It will come as the 28-strong EU tries to preserve unity on sanctions, which have been questioned by Hungary, Greece and Italy. The United States insists they must remain in place until Russia fulfils its part of the Minsk peace plan. Lithuania and Latvia, former Soviet republics that are now EU and NATO members very wary of Russia, were critical. "A visit by an official of this level always carries a symbolic value. I don't see any reasons why we would need to symbolically demonstrate to Russia that we're seeking contact," Lithuania's Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius told Reuters. His Latvian counterpart, Edgars Rinkevics said Juncker should avoid creating "an impression made that relations between Russia and the EU will hold the framework of 'business as usual' by ignoring the events of 2014". Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas said Juncker would "convey to the Russian leadership ... the EU's perspective regarding the current state of the EU-Russian relations". "DESIRE FOR DIALOGUE" Schinas reiterated EU sanctions policy on Russia, saying that Juncker's June 16 visit was not inconsistent with it. EU leaders are due to decide at their June 28-29 summit on whether to extend the sanctions. "The duration of sanctions is clearly linked to Russia's complete implementation of the Minsk agreements and respect for Ukraine's sovereignty," Schinas said, referring to the stalled peace accord, which the EU says must be implemented for sanctions to be eased. He said Juncker and Putin would meet during the economic forum in St Petersburg but declined to say whether there would be a separate face-to-face meeting. The Kremlin welcomed Juncker's visit, but said it was unlikely to be a breakthrough. "The most positive element to this trip is that it shows a readiness and a desire for dialogue aimed at getting consensus on those issues where we still have strong disagreements," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. Juncker, a former Luxembourg prime minister, has called for a "practical relationship" with Moscow and last November wrote to Putin suggesting closer trade ties between the EU and the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union. He has at times been criticised by EU members more hawkish on Russia. Germany and France, on the other hand, want dialogue to avoid a further worsening of ties with Moscow, Europe's main energy provider. Moscow may have given EU states advocating sanctions relief more arguments by last week returning to Kiev jailed Ukrainian military pilot Nadezhda Savchenko in a prisoner exchange welcomed by Western politicians. An EU diplomat said on Monday that, while this may help "general mood" in ties with Europe, the economic sanctions were still most likely to be prolonged by six months from July. EU's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said earlier this month that a broader review of the bloc's policy towards Russia was looming in the later in the year. Mogherini will also present in June a new "Global Strategy" for the bloc. The EU diplomat who spoke on condition of anonimity said the document would name Russia as a "strategic challenge" but reiterate calls for limited engagement in areas of common interest. (Additional reporting by Robin Emmott in Brussels, Dmitry Solovyov, Polina Devitt and Andrew Osborn in Moscow, Andrius Sytas in Vilnius, Gederts Gelzis in Riga; Editing by Alison Williams)
By Jim Forsyth

SAN ANTONIO, Texas (Reuters) - Mandatory evacuations were ordered on Tuesday along the swollen Brazos River in Texas ahead of what could be the worst flooding in more than 100 years after at least six people died.

Forecasters predicted more rain as the Brazos rose to levels not seen in 103 years after heavy rainfall late last week and was expected to crest at about 53 feet on Tuesday, according to emergency officials in Fort Bend County, located southwest of Houston.

Jeff Braun, director of the Fort Bend County emergency management office, said many parts of the county would experience water levels "not seen in our lifetime."

Dozens of people have been rescued from cars and homes in the past 24 hours, according to the agency's website.

"The water level is going to stay at the same level for 24 to 36 hours before there will be a slow decrease," Braun said. "If you flood, you're going to have the water there for a while."

The storm system dumped up to 22 inches (56 cm) of rain in just a few hours, killed at least six people last week, according to local authorities.

SECURITY TO STOP LOOTING

In Simonton, Texas, in Fort Bend County, officials provided transportation to help residents leave their homes as well as security to prevent looting.

The American Red Cross opened additional shelters in the Houston area.

Several rivers in southeast and eastern Texas were in "major flood stage." While relatively rare, forecasters have seen a number of such events in Texas over the past year, said National Weather Service meteorologist Patrick Burke.

A swath of Texas including San Antonio, Austin and Houston has been hardest hit, although other areas in the state have also been affected by flooding, including Dallas-Fort Worth, Burke said.

More than 20 inches of rain have fallen over some parts of southeast Texas during the last month, 8 to 10 inches above normal, Burke said.

An area between the Texas cities of College Station and Houston received 17 inches in one extreme situation late last week, he said.

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More rain is forecast this week, which could lead to additional flooding, the weather service said. Moderate and heavy rain will hit western and central Texas, then move east, drenching San Antonio, Austin and Houston on Wednesday and Thursday, Burke said.

"This will certainly prolong the problems they're having there," Burke said.

(Additional reporting and writing by Suzannah Gonzales; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Jeffrey Benkoe)
Stephen Hawking is a pretty smart guy  he once wrote a whole book about the universe. But one thing he can't explain is Donald Trump.

During an interview with the English television show Good Morning Britain, the iconic theoretical physicist said he was completely at a loss for words in explaining the billionaire's rise in American politics.

"I can't [explain Donald Trump]," he said, the Guardian reported. "He's a demagogue who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator."

Source: Mic/AP

During the interview, Hawking, who has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and communicates through a specialized computer, also weighed in on more local matters. The theoretical physicist came out strongly against the United Kingdom leaving the European Union.

"Gone are the days when we could stand on our own, against the world," he said. "We need to be part of a larger group of nations, both for our security and our trade. The possibility of our leaving the EU has already led to a sharp fall in the pound, because the markets judge that it will damage our economy."

As Hawking is widely considered one of the smartest people on Earth, his pronouncements on all subjects are covered in great detail. In recent months, the physicist has mostly discussed his grim assessment of the threats facing Earth and humanity.
A dad in Padua, Italy, has been acquitted by a judge after offering to pay child support with pizza.

Read: Buon Appetito! The World's Largest Pizza Makes History by Stretching More Than a Mile

In a 6-year-long criminal case against Nicola Tosa brought by ex-wife Nicoletta Zuin, Judge Chiara Bitozzi said last week: In lieu of money, the defendant offered his ex-wife the same amount of compensation in the form of take-away pizzas from his workplace, an offer promptly rejected as 'beggars change.'"

The judge said there was no evidence of any crime and he was acquitted.

Tosa and his ex-wife divorced in 2002, during the time he agreed to pay child support for their then 6-year-old daughter. The amount was reportedly about $355-a-month back then.

In 2008, a recession hit the country and Tosa opted for payment with a different kind of dough  feeding his ex-wife and kid in pizza, calzones and other dinners from his business in lieu of cash.

Read: La Dolce Vita! Watch This Guy Wear a Speedo and Swim Through the Flooded Streets of His Sicilian Town

Two years later, he closed his business and remarried, which is when Zuin filed the criminal complaint alleging non-payment of child support.

Tosas lawyer, Sonia Della Greca, said that even though his client fell on hard economic times, he still fulfilled his obligation of child support. In 2011, his daughter even moved in with him after her relationship with her mother fell apart.

Tosa and his family can now enjoy their pizza in peace.

Watch: Some Pre-Grated Parmesan Contains Additive Derived From Wood Pulp, Investigation Finds

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By Justin Madden

(Reuters) - Drew Peterson, a former Chicago-area police officer imprisoned for murdering his wife, was found guilty on Tuesday of trying to hire someone in 2014 to kill the prosecutor who convicted him, prosecutors said.

Peterson, 62, was found guilty of solicitation of murder and solicitation of murder for hire. He faces mandatory sentences of 20 to 40 years for the first charge and 15 to 30 years for the second charge, according to a statement by the Illinois Attorney General's office, which helped prosecute the case.

The jury deliberated for about an hour before finding Peterson guilty, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Sentencing is scheduled for July 26 before Randolph County Judge Richard Brown.

Peterson was accused of trying to contract the killing of James Glasgow, the Will County prosecutor.

Peterson was charged with seeking a hitman from prison, where he is serving a 38-year sentence for the 2004 murder of Kathleen Savio, his third wife, a case that was made into a television movie starring Rob Lowe.

The murder-for-hire case centers on recordings made at the maximum security Menard Correctional Center in southern Illinois where Peterson is serving his sentence and where a fellow inmate, Antonio Smith, taped him saying he wanted to hire someone to kill Glasgow, according to prosecutors.

Peterson's defense attorney Lucas Liefer said the recordings were nonsensical prison talk and that Peterson never directly said on the recordings that he wanted Glasgow killed. He also said Smith, serving time for attempted murder, was unreliable and a liar, newspaper reported.

Liefer could not be immediately reached by Reuters for comment.

Smith, who testified Peterson told him he would pay $10,000 for the murder, worked with authorities to record conversations in November 2014, the newspaper reported. Smith also testified that Peterson told him he killed his missing fourth wife, Stacy Peterson.

Prosecutors argued Peterson was guilty because he was deliberate and intentional in his actions to have Glasgow killed.

Savio was found dead in a bathtub in 2004, during a contentious divorce. Her death was at first ruled accidental, but suspicions were raised when Peterson's fourth wife disappeared in 2007.

(Reporting by Justin Madden in Chicago; Editing by Bill Trott and Alan Crosby)
(Photo: Facebook)

The former tour guide at the heart of the case involving a wealthy elderly widows assets on Tuesday (31 May) pleaded guilty to 120 charges involving falsification, immigration and cheating-related offences.

Another 227 charges will be taken into consideration when Yang Yin, 42, is sentenced on 11 July.

The China-born permanent resident had indicated his intention to plead guilty on Monday, but the trial was adjourned after his lawyer took issue with one sentence in the court documents.

Yang also faces a separate trial involving two counts of criminal breach of trust for allegedly misappropriating $1.1 million from Chung Khin Chun, a Singaporean.

In 2006, Yang was a tour guide based in China when he met Chung, then 79, at a travel fair in Singapore. He later began living with her in Singapore in 2009, almost two years after Chungs husband passed away. In 2011, Yangs wife and two children also moved in to live with Chung after he obtained his PR.

The majority of the 120 charges that Yang pleaded guilty to were for falsification of receipts made to his company, Young Music and Dance Studio.

According to court documents, Yang planned to create the appearance that his company was profitable and that his income was sufficient to support his application for an employment pass and subsequently, permanent residency in Singapore.

In his application for PR, Yang had submitted payslips stating that he was drawing a salary of $7,000 a month as the managing director of his company, and submitted false figures for its turnover. However, his company had no real business and the transactions that he recorded, including for piano tuition and singing classes, did not exist.

The Immigrations and Checkpoints Authority of Singapore (ICA), which handles PR applications, confirmed that Yang would not have been granted PR if it had known his statements to be false, the documents showed.

Chung, now 89, listed her bungalow to be given to Yang in a will made in 2010, and granted him the Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) to make decisions on her welfare and assets in 2012.

In 2014, Hedy Mok, a niece of Chung, took legal actions against Yang after Chung was diagnosed with dementia. Yangs LPA was revoked and Chung made a new will.

Yang was arrested and charged in September 2014, and has been remanded since October that year after he was denied bail. He faces up to 10 years in jail, a fine, or both, on each falsification charge.
By Nate Raymond

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former U.S. Army sergeant nicknamed "Rambo" who prosecutors say supervised an international band of hit men and mercenaries was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Tuesday for conspiring to kill a federal drug agent and an informant.

U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain in Manhattan said Joseph Hunter, 51, deserved a lengthy sentence given the "grave and serious" crimes he committed and his guilty plea to charges including that he conspired to murder a law enforcement officer.

"The crimes you committed are serious, and the sentence you received today reflects that," Swain said.

Hunter, a former Army sergeant with over 20 years of military experience, apologized in court, saying he would still be with his family "if I only asked myself what God would have wanted me to do."

The case stemmed from a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration sting operation that followed the arrest in Liberia in 2012 of Hunter's boss, Paul Le Roux, the Zimbabwe-born head of a multinational criminal organization.

Le Roux subsequently agreed to cooperate with authorities, admitting to his involvement in shipping drugs and weapons around the world and to having ordered various murders, according to court records.

Le Roux also helped authorities pursue cases against others, including Hunter, who prosecutors said had performed and overseen contract killings and other violent crimes for him.

During a sting operation, Hunter, at Le Roux's request, assembled a team of former soldiers to provide security to DEA informants posing as Colombian drug traffickers, according to court papers.

Hunter's mercenary squad used Thailand as its base and performed several tasks in 2013, including assisting a purported 300-kilogram cocaine transaction in the Bahamas, prosecutors said.

For $800,000, Hunter and two ex-soldiers, Dennis Gogel of Germany and former U.S. Army Sergeant Timothy Vamvakias, also agreed to assassinate a DEA agent and an agency source in Liberia, prosecutors said.

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No murders occurred, though prosecutors said Hunter previously had organized seven murders-for-hire, including of a Philippines woman whose death is the subject of a related case.

Hunter was arrested in Thailand in 2013, and authorities also arrested Gogel, Vamvakias and two other members of Hunter's team, Slawomir Soborski of Poland and Michael Filter of Germany.

The defendants later pleaded guilty. Vamvakias and Gogel were sentenced to 20 years in prison, while Filter received an eight-year term. Soborski's sentencing is set for June 10.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Tom Brown)
The International Criminal Court wants to know why Djibouti didnt arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir when he visited the tiny African nation earlier this month, and is giving the government there until next month to explain itself.

Bashir joined dignitaries from across the region  as well as a delegation from the United States  to celebrate the inauguration of Djiboutis president, Ismail Omar Guelleh, who was sworn in for an unprecedented fourth term on May 8. Bashir had a unique distinction among the dozens of guests: He was the only one wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity.

Now, the ICC wants to know why Djibouti did nothing to apprehend him. In a May 17 letter, the court gave the government of Djibouti until June 24 to submit its observations with respect to their failure to arrest and surrender Omar Al-Bashir while present on the territory of the Republic of Djibouti. The existence of the letter has not been reported before.

The letter highlights a central weakness of the court, which was established in 2002. Djibouti is one of 139 signatories to the Rome Statute that established the institution, which technically obligates Djibouti to act against Bashir. But the ICC doesnt have the power to sanction any member country which fails to arrest a suspect within its borders. (The United States is not a signatory to the Rome Statute.)

At issue is the fate of Bashir, who has long been an international pariah for the brutal war his forces have waged on several ethnic groups in Darfur since 2003, killing an estimated 300,000 civilians and displacing up to 2.3 million more. Bashir is the first sitting head of state ever indicted by the court.

The indictment hasnt made Bashir shy about traveling abroad, however. Despite being wanted by the court, hes flaunted the unwillingness of any head of state to place him under arrest during visits to China, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Kenya, and Qatar. He paid an earlier visit to Djibouti in 2011.

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The United States also sent a delegation to Djibouti, led by the State Departments principal deputy assistant secretary for African affairs, Bruce Wharton.

Asked about Washingtons willingness to attend an event with a man wanted by the International Criminal Court, State Department spokesperson Victoria OConnell told Foreign Policy that U.S. officials raised our concerns about Bashirs travel with the government of Djibouti. She added that no one from the U.S. government had any contact with Bashir at the event.

A second State Department official, speaking to FP on condition of anonymity, said Washington has made its position with respect to hosting Bashirs travel clear with allies, and has called on them to not invite, facilitate or support travel by President Bashir.

Interestingly, just days after the inauguration in Djibouti, a group of American, Canadian, and European diplomats walked out of a swearing-in ceremony for Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni in Kampala in part because Bashir was in attendance. Museveni, who is entering his fifth term, called the court a bunch of useless people who he no longer supports, remarks which sparked the walkout. Uganda, for the record, has also signed the Rome Statute.

Questioned about the walkout by reporters, State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said the walkout came in response to President Bashirs presence and President Musevenis remarks.

Bashirs presence in Djibouti didnt seem to rankle the U.S. nearly as much, probably because Guellehs nation serves as a hub for U.S. drone and special operations missions in Africa, Yemen, and the Middle East. China has also started construction on a naval facility there, stoking Washingtons fears of having to compete for Guellehs attentions, port facilities, and runways.

Photo Credit: ASHRAF SHAZLY/AFP/Getty Images
Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Microsoft have agreed to work with European officials to crack down on hateful speech published on their respective platforms. Each company has agreed to review potentially problematic posts and remove offending content within 24 hours.

The recent terror attacks have reminded us of the urgent need to address illegal online hate speech, Vera Jourova, EU Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, said in a joint statement from the European Commission and the participating companies. Social media is unfortunately one of the tools that terrorist groups use to radicalize young people and racist use to spread violence and hatred.

The new partnership comes after Facebook, Twitter, and Google agreed to erase hate speech from their platforms within 24 hours in Germany, an attempt to address racism following the refugee crisis. That agreement, which Reuters reported last year, also made it easier for individual users to report hateful speech.

Under the new code of conduct, technology companies will have clear rules in place for reviewing content that may be deemed malicious or hateful. The document also says the companies should be responsible for educating their users on the types of content that are disallowed.

Tech companies assure that the recently announced code of conduct wont interfere with freedom of speech. We remain committed to letting the Tweets flow, Karen White, Twitters head of public policy for Europe, said in the statement. However, there is a clear distinction between freedom of expression and conduct that incites violence and hate.
(Adds details, background)

By Julia Fioretti and Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS, May 31 - Facebook, Twitter, Google's YouTube and Microsoft on Tuesday agreed to an EU code of conduct to tackle online hate speech within 24 hours in Europe.

EU governments have been trying in recent months to get social platforms to crack down on rising online racism following the refugee crisis and terror attacks, with some even threatening action against the companies.

As part of the pledge agreed with the European Commission, the web giants will review the majority of valid requests for removal of illegal hate speech in less than 24 hours and remove or disable access to the content if necessary.

They will also strengthen their cooperation with civil society organisations who help flag hateful content when it goes online and promote "counter-narratives" to hate speech.

"The recent terror attacks have reminded us of the urgent need to address illegal online hate speech. Social media is unfortunately one of the tools that terrorist groups use to radicalise young people," EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova said.

Germany got Google, Facebook and Twitter to agree to delete hate speech from their websites within 24 hours last year and even launched an investigation into the European head of Facebook over its alleged failure to remove racist hate speech.

"There's no place for hate speech on Facebook," said Monika Bickert, Head of Global Policy Management at Facebook.

"With a global community of 1.6 billion people we work hard to balance giving people the power to express themselves whilst ensuring we provide a respectful environment."

The code of conduct is largely a continuation of efforts that the companies already take to counter hate speech on their websites, such as developing tools for people to report hateful content and training staff to handle such requests.

Twitter has suspended over 125,000 accounts since the middle of 2015 for threatening or promoting terror acts, primarily related to Islamic State.

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The United States has undertaken similar efforts to entice the cooperation of tech companies in combating online radicalisation, focusing on promoting "counter-narratives" to extremist content.

EU ministers had called for cooperation with tech companies to be stepped up after the Brussels attacks in March.

Jewish lobbyists, frequently the target of hate speech, welcomed the code of conduct.

"This a historic agreement that could not arrive at a better time," said Dr. Moshe Kantor, President of the European Jewish Congress.

(Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
Internet and social media giants Facebook, Twitter, Google's YouTube and Microsoft on Tuesday pledged to combat online hate speech in Europe as the European Union's European Commission unveiled a new code of conduct in Brussels designed to avoid the "spread of illegal hate speech."

The companies vowed to review most valid requests for removal of illegal hate speech within 24 hours and to remove or disable access if necessary.

They also promised to educate and raise awareness about the types of content not permitted under the rules and guidelines and to share best practices with one another and others.

The companies "support the European Commission and EU member states in the effort to respond to the challenge of ensuring that online platforms do not offer opportunities for illegal online hate speech to spread virally," a joint statement from the EU and the companies said. "They share, together with other platforms and social media companies, a collective responsibility and pride in promoting and facilitating freedom of expression throughout the online world."

"The recent terror attacks have reminded us of the urgent need to address illegal online hate speech," said Vera Jourova, the EU commissioner for justice, consumers, and gender equality. "Social media is unfortunately one of the tools that terrorist groups use to radicalize young people and racists use to spread violence and hatred. This agreement is an important step forward to ensure that the internet remains a place a free and democratic expression, where European values and laws are respected."

Monika Bickert, head of global policy management at Facebook, said: "With a global community of 1.6 billion people, we work hard to balance giving people the power to express themselves whilst ensuring we provide a respectful environment. As we make clear in our Community Standards, there's no place for hate speech on Facebook. We urge people to use our reporting tools if they find content that they believe violates our standards so we can investigate."

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Said Karen White, Twitter's head of public policy for Europe: "Hateful conduct has no place on Twitter, and we will continue to tackle this issue head on alongside our partners in industry and civil society. We remain committed to letting the tweets flow. However, there is a clear distinction between freedom of expression and conduct that incites violence and hate."

And Google EU public policy and government relations director Lie Junius said: "We are pleased to work with the Commission to develop co- and self-regulatory approaches to fighting hate speech online."

The code of conduct includes commitments from the tech giants to "have in place clear and effective processes to review notifications regarding illegal hate speech on their services so they can remove or disable access to such content."

Upon receipt of a valid removal notification, they promise to review such requests against their rules and community guidelines and, where necessary, national laws. The companies also pledged "to review the majority of valid notifications for removal of illegal hate speech in less than 24 hours and remove or disable access to such content, if necessary."

Read More: Germany in Free Speech Debate Over Satire Show's "Slander Poem" Criticizing Turkish President
Shutterstock / Marvel

Controversy in comics isnt a new thing, but in the age of the internet and Marvels Cinematic Universe, the reach and impact for comics is far different than it ever has been before. Especially when it comes to red-hot characters like Captain America, star of the recent Captain America: Civil War film that shook up the Avengers franchise for good. So needless the say  spoilers ahead  when Captain America said Hail Hydra the world of comics felt a tremor run through it and people are upset.

So while Twitter has been abuzz with Captain America turning to Hydra and, at least by association, with crazed comic book Nazis like Red Skull, it left a few fans unsettled. Taking into account that Captain America was originally penned by two Jewish Americans, it feels a bit awkward for Cap to take such a dramatic twist. According to DailyDot, some of these unsettled fans have been trying to turn their outrage to good use and have been donating money to the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Steve Rogers name.

Good idea: if you're pissed off about Captain America, donate to the US Holocaust Museum: https://t.co/snKYJNLE8S  Krista (@lechatsavant) May 29, 2016

The idea started out on Tumblr and has bled over onto other forms of social media. Its not apparent how many people have done it, but for those that are donating it is, indeed, a very good cause. History can always use preserving and the Holocaust is something that absolutely should be remembered. As for the controversy itself, the writer, Nick Spencer, brings up a rather valid point via his Twitter account.

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Everyone is talking about a comic book. Refuse to believe that's a bad thing.  Nick Spencer (@nickspencer) May 28, 2016

That is some #RealTalk right there. People are talking about a comic book, not a movie that was adapted from a comic book, but an actual comic book. Comics do well, but have a much smaller audience than films or television series do. So Spencer is right, he got people talking, but now hes gotta find a way to keep his audience engaged beyond the initial outrage. Fans, on the other hand, well, they are turning their outrage into something a bit more positive and thats nice to see.

(Via DailyDot)
VIENNA (Reuters) - Far-right parties in some European countries are winning over Jewish voters by exploiting fears about militant Islamists and mainstream parties must do much more to address Europeans' security concerns, a Jewish leader said on Tuesday. Boosted by Europe's migrant crisis, Norbert Hofer of Austria's anti-immigration Freedom Party only narrowly lost the country's presidential election on May 22. He would have been the first far-right head of state in the European Union. "I understand that, most probably, a not insignificant part of the (Jewish) community here voted for Hofer for the presidency," the head of the Conference of European Rabbis (CER), Pinchas Goldschmidt, told Reuters in an interview. Goldschmidt, who is also the chief rabbi of Moscow, said he had received reports of a similar shift among French Jews towards supporting the anti-immigration National Front ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections next year in France. "When God gave out intelligence, not everybody stood in line. And so when those parties come with a populist message to the Jews and say 'We're going to save you from the Muslims' ... propaganda is effective," he added. Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem in April - a gesture rich in symbolism, given the Nazis' role in Austrian history and the flight or murder of most Austrian Jews following the country's annexation by Adolf Hitler in 1938. "Not only from the Freedom Party in Austria but also from the side of, for example, the National Front in France ... and also (Geert) Wilders in Holland, they all seem to want us Jews to say they are acceptable," Goldschmidt said. Today Austria is home to an estimated 15,000 Jews and more than 500,000 Muslims. "DANGEROUS" POPULISM The security threat posed by Islamist militants has become much clearer after last year's Paris attacks and must be tackled, Goldschmidt said, adding that Europe's Schengen area of passport-free travel made that more difficult. "I think that since the populist right-wing parties raised real concerns of people, unless the mainstream parties of Europe are going to address those issues, they're going to lose." Goldschmidt, who was in Vienna for a gathering of the CER, suggested measures including the creation of a European anti-terrorism task force, improvements in border security and more effective integration of refugees. He also condemned what he said was the tendency of far-right parties to conflate ordinary Muslims with Islamist militants. "(The) moderate Muslim is our natural ally. They are as much the victims of radical Islamism as we Jews. It is the populism, the generalization, which is dangerous and destructive." (reporting by Francois Murphy; Editing by Gareth Jones)
Fear the Walking Dead executive producer Dave Erickson has heard your complaints that his series isnt The Walking Dead. He gets it. And that has been one of the challenges of the show, he tells TVLine. The Walking Dead has a huge fan base to whom we are incredibly grateful, and we obviously want to deliver a story that everybody loves. But at the same time, we wanted to make sure that our characters didnt embrace the tropes [of the genre] as readily as, say, the characters in a zombie movie.

RELATEDFear the Walking Dead Showrunner Talks Madisons Rick Grimes Moment, Daniels Fiery Grave and More

On the big screen, the learning curve is so steep that, ordinarily, by the end of the first reel, everybody knows the score and is able to kill [the undead] without any thought, the showrunner notes. They become very practiced at it very quickly. And that was something we wanted to avoid. We wanted to [instead] try to balance expectations of how people should behave once they know there are zombies with this sort of attempted slow burn into the apocalypse from a character standpoint.

Which makes sense from a long-term storytelling perspective. However, even Erickson acknowledges that that creates frustrations, to a certain degree, because in some instances, you want [the characters] to get it already. And in some circumstances, the things that they do that dont seem particularly zombie-savvy are, for me, moments where they arent zombie-savvy.

RELATEDFear the Walking Dead EP on Chris Breaking Point, Alicia and Jacks Future and the Back Half of Season 2

If you marked off the days [that have passed on air since Fear TWD debuted], I think right now, by the end of the first half [of Season 2], were getting very close to Rick waking up in Georgia on The Walking Dead, he continues. Only now have Fear TWDs survivors arrived at a place where theyre up to speed on how one deals with the apocalypse and the dead. In other words, theyre no longer beginners.

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Still, viewers shouldnt expect Fear TWDs characters to start going to the extremes that The Walking Deads routinely do. Yes, Madison condemned Celia to die in the midseason finale. But that doesnt mean that shes become as ruthless as Rick. That wasnt a matter of We have to have one of our core characters do something that seems incredibly immoral or violent in order to catch up with where they should be,' Erickson explains. That was more a mother who was trying to protect her son [Nick] from, essentially, a drug dealer.

What do you think? Do you see the logic in Ericksons approach? Looking forward to the second half Fear TWDs sophomore season? Hit the comments.

Launch Gallery: <i>Fear the Walking Dead</i> Season 2 Photos

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Like a scene from an apocalyptic movie, rows of people inhaled white smoke billowing from luminous cubes. Others, wrapped in emergency space blankets, gazed at a glass wall smeared with a red substance later discovered to be 55 gallons of lipstick. But this was no film set. Its the opening night of an art exhibition in New York, a carefully orchestrated Adam Abdallatrademarked event in which the space blankets are actually printed press releases.

Abdalla, the smiling, bearded publicist to New York Citys art and culture elite, is not your average public relations flack. For one, artists actually like him. Shunning antiseptic PR tactics for one-on-one meetings, hes earned himself a reputation as a connector and the go-to guy in the art and culture world. At just 30, Abdalla is the head of Cultural Counsel, a communications company he founded last July after spending years working under the helm of Nadine Johnson, one of the few prominent publicists who works with the arts. His client roster has included everyone from rapper will.i.am to Creative Time, the nonprofit arts organization behind artist Duke Riley, who in May began releasing 2,000 pigeons over New Yorks East River every weekend as part of an exhibition. Ive been doing this for 10 years, Abdalla shrugs, speaking from Cultural Counsels white-walled office, housed in the same building as Red Bull Studios (one of the energy drinks 12 contemporary art and music locales). I came into it from the perspective that youre not just a press office, and a lot of people value that, he says. His companys website, which bears only his email address and the double C logo for Cultural Counsel, shows theres little need for self-promotion for the arts man about town.

Gettyimages 496593322

Adam Abdalla and Patrick McGregor attend the 2015 Whitney Art Party at 99 Gansevoort on November 10, 2015, in New York City.

Source: Slaven Vlasic/Getty

Abdallas genius, according to people whove worked with him or know him, is his seemingly effortless ability to reel in aloof artists with a disarming charm and sincere knowledge about art. That comforts contemporary artists, gallerists and curators, people who have traditionally shied away from the PR world, considering the industry tacky or a costly extravagance. The received wisdom was that if a gallery had good artists and exhibitions, the press would come clamoring. But thats all changed as the number of galleries in Manhattan quintupled, from around 100 in 2000 to todays 500 or so. Now, an artist needs more. Theres been a sea change, says top curator Neville Wakefield, who has worked with Abdalla on a series of exhibits in Switzerlands Gstaad mountains, favored by the rich for vacations. Artists have become more adept at self-promotion, he says.

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While PR firms can charge anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 a month for a retainer, Abdalla occasionally gets paid in paintings, and has built himself an impressive private art collection from artists including Scott Reeder and Mark Flood. Others, like pieces from Laura Owens and Jim Shaw, he buys himself. He says hes not in it for the cash, and only takes on artists he admires. That would be boring for me, he says. Somebody else can do that job. He claims he doesnt really do celebrity PR, though hes taken on higher-profile clients  like will.i.ams optics brand ill.i, which released a collaboration with Chinese artist Xu Zhen; that work, he says, was all about the design. Abdalla is fiercely eager to show hes neither into the mainstream nor into writing repetitive press releases. I dont want to be pigeonholed as just a PR company, he says. Abdallas plan is to expand his business (and the currently blank website) by combining promotions with events, strategic art collaborations and an editorial bent, publishing essays on the art world.

Born to an Egyptian father and an American mother, Abdalla stumbled into communications. He started out working with New Orleans nonprofit The Green Project, which helped rebuild homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. He and some seven artists helped organize a pop-up art exhibition in an abandoned storage facility, where the group also lived for three months, and he became the exhibitors de facto publicist. He later landed a position on the front desk of art communications giant Susan Grant Lewins firm. I was basically a receptionist, he says. But his knowledge of the contemporary art world led to a quick ascent to senior account executive. He cut his teeth here, Lewin told OZY, of Abdallas two-and-a-half-year stint at her company. Now, she says, I dont think hes interested in being just an employee anymore. Hes beyond that. If anything, shed consider an offer to merge firms, she said.

It hasnt all been smooth sailing. His departure from Nadine Johnsons firm after five and a half years was soured with disputes over who kept which clients. It meant several of the clients he worked with as the senior vice president of arts and culture could not jump ship with him to his new gig until a noncompete agreement had expired, according to a few people familiar with the situation. (Johnson did not respond to requests for comment; meanwhile, Abdalla said he had no basis to comment.)

Last month, during an elaborate spring gala in a hangar at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Abdalla, hair slicked back, sporting a light pink blazer, was mingling with well-dressed guests. Then, Johnson arrived. His friends pointed out in hushed whispers: Nadines here. He waved them off, eyeing her just a few meters away, before swiftly moving to the opposite corner of the hall. Going rogue in the world of art PR can be a dangerous business if youre on the wrong side, but Abdallas deluge of friends and partners appears to be standing with him in good stead.

Hes a PR guy that I actually dont hate, says Nic Rad, a Brooklyn artist who attended the gala. Thats pretty hard to believe.

An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of Xu Zhen.

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ANKARA (Reuters) - A former Miss Turkey was handed a 14-month suspended prison sentence on Tuesday for insulting President Tayyip Erdogan through a poem she shared on Instagram, the latest of at least a dozen Turks to face such a sentence. An Istanbul court found model Merve Buyuksarac, 27, guilty of insulting a public official but suspended the sentence on condition she does not repeat the act for the next five years, local media said. Insulting the president is a crime punishable by up to four years in jail in Turkey. The law was used infrequently until Erdogan won the presidency in August 2014, since which time prosecutors have opened more than 1,800 cases for insulting him, including against cartoonists, journalists and teenagers. Prosecutors are also pursuing a case against a German comedian who mocked Erdogan on German television. Buyuksarac, who was crowned Miss Turkey in 2006, was briefly detained last year for sharing the poem on Instagram in 2014. It was called "the Master's Poem" and referred to a high-level Turkish corruption scandal in 2014. (Reporting by Ece Toksabay; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Tom Heneghan)
By Lenzy and Krehbiel-Burton

TULSA, Okla. (Reuters) - A former Oklahoma reserve deputy convicted in the fatal shooting of an unarmed man being subdued by regular deputies last year was sentenced on Tuesday to four years in prison for second-degree manslaughter.

Robert Bates, an insurance executive who volunteered as a reserve sheriff's deputy in Tulsa County, was found guilty in April of the charge stemming from the 2015 death of Eric Harris.Bates, 74, will receive credit for time already served, District Judge William Musseman said. He has been held at the Tulsa County jail since his conviction.

Lawyers for Bates said he thought he had a Taser rather than a gun in his hand when he fired at Harris, 44. But prosecutors said Bates' actions were tantamount to professional negligence.

The shooting, captured on video, was one in a series that raised questions of racial bias in U.S. policing. Bates is white and Harris, who was fleeing from deputies during a sting targeting illegal gun sales, was African-American.

Citing Bates' health, defense attorneys said they plan to appeal the sentence. Bates has been diagnosed with a host of medical conditions, including sleep apnea, cardiovascular problems and low testosterone.

Among the witnesses called to testify on Tuesday was Harris' 17-year-old son, Aiden, who said graduating from high school this month without his father there "crushed him."

The younger Harris said he had forgiven Bates but said there had to be consequences for his actions.

Musseman denied a request from Bates attorneys for a 30-day extension to file a motion for a new trial. Oklahoma allows for such a request if good cause can be shown, but Musseman disagreed with the defenses assertion that the lack of a completed trial transcript met that threshold.

(Reporting by Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton; Editing by Leslie Adler and Tom Brown)
Four Bangladeshi guest workers who pleaded guilty to raising finances for an alleged Islamist terrorist plot in their homeland were convicted by a Singapore court on Tuesday and could face up to 10 years in jail.

The men, aged 26 to 31, were brought to court in three armoured vehicles and became the first to be prosecuted under a Singapore law specifically targeting terrorism financing.

They will be sentenced at a later date.

In court, the men were dressed in purple overalls with the word "detainee" emblazoned across their chests and backs, shackled at the hands and feet and closely watched by members of the elite Gurkha unit of the Singapore police.

Court documents said the men contributed, collected or possessed funds for the alleged plot ranging from Sg$60 ($44) to Sg$1,360.

For involvement in terrorist financing, the men face up to 10 years in jail, a maximum fine of Sg$500,000 ($362,000), or both.

Singapore, which depends heavily on Bangladeshis and other foreign workers in the construction sector, considers itself a potential target of extremists because of its strong military ties with the United States.

It was the second group of Bangladeshis rounded up in Singapore since 27 were arrested in late 2015, also over alleged plots in their homeland. All have since been deported.

State prosecutors say the second group's leader Rahman Mizanur, 31, had repeatedly tried to join the Islamic State (IS) group but was unsuccessful because he could not get visas to Turkey or Algeria. He then went to Singapore as a construction worker.

A fifth worker, Zzaman Daulat, 34, pleaded not guilty, along with a sixth man, and both will now go to trial.

"I know I contributed $200 but I didn't know it'll be used for terrorism," Zzamat said through a court interpreter.

The five were among eight Bangladeshis held since April under Singapore's tough Internal Security Act.

Items seized from them included manuals on bomb-making and how to use a 0.50 calibre sniper rifle, along with a list of Bangladesh government and military officials allegedly targeted for attack, Singapore's home affairs ministry said.

The Singapore convictions come amid growing concern in Bangladesh over an increase in attacks on liberals and religious minorities in the Muslim-majority nation.
After at the Cincinnati Zoo shot and killed a 400-pound Western lowland silverback gorilla named Harambe, Fox News pointed a finger at the culprit: Deonne Dickerson, the father of the 4-year-old boy who snuck into the gorilla's enclosure.

Tuesday morning's Fox & Friends got their information from a widely-criticized Daily Mail report that grasped at racist straws to forge a tenuous connection between Dickerson's alleged history with the criminal justice and the weekend's proceedings at the Cincinnati Zoo. The Daily Mail reported that Dickerson served a year in prison in 2006 for drug trafficking.

Fox News host mentioned Dickerson's alleged "long rap sheet" and time in prison prior to talking about protestors outside the Cincinnati Zoo who demand justice for Harambe.

Father of boy who fell into gorilla's zoo enclosure has a lengthy criminal historyhttp://dailym.ai/1OZeG9V

When Fox & Friends brought wildlife expert Grant Kemmerer onto the show, rather than talking about the gorilla, they peppered him with questions about Dickerson's past and his absence at the zoo.

"Some say the parents need to be charged, bringing up the dad's past criminal history who wasn't even there at the zoo at the time," co-host Ainsley Earhardt said to the wildlife expert.

Throughout the segment, the Fox & Friends hosts neglected to mention that the Daily Mail reported that, since Dickerson's alleged 2006 arrest, he "appears to have turned his life around to become the proud father of four."

Source: Mic/YouTube

Co-host Brian Kilmeade opened another interview segment citing the father's alleged "lengthy criminal history" and asking whether someone was to blame or if the event was a tragic accident.

Animal expert Jeff Corwin did not corroborate the neglectful father theory.

Story continues

"It's a tragic event," Corwin said. "And it's really hard for us Tuesday morning to kind of tell them what they should have done."

After Saturday's incident, a Change.org petition circulated asking that the parents be held accountable for the gorilla's death. The petition currently has 371,400 signatures.

The one question no one was able to answer is what Dickerson's now decade-old alleged criminal past had to do with his son's tragic encounter  especially considering that he wasn't even there.
Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (NYSE: FCX) revealed that it completed its previously announced sale of a 13 percent stake in its Morenci unincorporated joint venture to Sumitomo Metal Mining Co. Ltd. (SMM) for cash consideration of $1.0 billion. According to the company, the transaction has an effective date of May 31.

Freeport-McMoRan said the Morenci unincorporated joint venture was now owned 72 percent by it, 15 percent by Sumitomo Metal Mining Arizona Inc. (SMMAz is owned 80 percent by SMM and 20 percent by Sumitomo Corporation), and 13 percent by SMM Morenci Inc., which is fully owned by SMM.

The company said it intends to use net proceeds from the transaction of approximately $1.0 billion to repay $0.5 billion in borrowings under its bank term loan. The remaining amount would be used to cut down amounts drawn under its revolving credit facility. The company expects to record about $0.6 billion after-tax gain on the transaction in its second-quarter of the current year.

FCX's portfolio of assets included the Grasberg minerals district in Indonesia, one of the world's biggest copper and gold deposits; significant mining operations in the Americas. This included the large-scale Morenci minerals district in North America and the Cerro Verde operation in South America; the Tenke Fungurume minerals district in the Democratic Republic of Congo; and significant U.S. oil and gas assets principally in the Deepwater Gulf of Mexico and in California.

Shares of the company traded 1.35 percent higher on Tuesday.

See more from Benzinga

 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
By Ingrid Melander

PARIS (Reuters) - France will "go all the way" to ensure that multinationals operating on its soil pay their taxes and more cases could follow after Google and McDonald's were targeted by tax raids, Finance Minister Michel Sapin said.

Sapin, speaking in an interview with Reuters and three European newspapers, ruled out negotiating any deal with Google on back taxes, as Britain did in January.

Dozens of French police raided Google's (GOOGL.O) Paris headquarters on Tuesday, escalating an investigation on suspicions of tax evasion. Investigators searched McDonald's (MCD.N) French headquarters on May 18 in another tax probe.

"We'll go all the way. There could be other cases," Sapin said.

Raids this month by police and justice investigators build on the work started by tax authorities three or four years ago, when they transferred tax data to judicial authorities that look into any possible criminal angle, Sapin said.

Google, McDonald's and other multinational firms such as Starbucks are under increasing pressure in Europe from public opinion and governments angry at the way businesses exploit their presence around the world to minimise the tax they pay.

Google says it is fully complying with French law and McDonald's declined to comment on the search, referring back to past comments that it is proud to be one of the biggest tax payers in France.

Sapin said he could not discuss what sums were at stake because of the confidentiality of tax matters.

A source in his ministry had said in February that French tax authorities were seeking some 1.6 billion euros ($1.78 billion) in back taxes from Google.

NO DEAL

Asked if tax authorities could strike a deal with the tech giant, he said: "We don't do deals like Britain, we apply the law."

Google agreed in January to pay 130 million pounds ($190 million) in back taxes to Britain, prompting criticism from opposition lawmakers and campaigners that the sum was too low.

"There won't be negotiations," Sapin said, adding that there was always the possibility of some marginal adjustments "but that's not the logic we're in."

Story continues

Google, now part of Alphabet Inc, pays little tax in most European countries because it reports almost all sales in Ireland. This is possible thanks to a loophole in international tax law but it hinges on staff in Dublin concluding all sales contracts.

This week's police raid is part of a separate judicial investigation into aggravated tax fraud and the organised laundering of the proceeds of tax fraud.

Should it be found guilty of that, Google faces either up to 10 million euros ($11 million) in fines or a fine of half of the value of the laundered amount involved.

A preliminary inquiry into McDonald's was opened early this year after former investigating magistrate and politician Eva Joly filed a lawsuit in December on behalf of an employee committee, a judicial source said.

French business magazine L'Expansion reported last month that authorities had sent McDonald's France a 300 million euro bill for unpaid taxes on profits believed to have been funnelled through Luxembourg and Switzerland.

It said tax officials had accused the giant U.S. burger chain of using a Luxembourg-based entity, McD Europe Franchising, to shift profits to lower-tax jurisdictions by billing the French division excessively for use of the company brand and other services.

The judicial source confirmed the investigation was looking into this.

The government said this week that it had raked in 3.3 billion euros in back taxes and penalties from just five multinationals in 2015.

"Nothing prevents big groups from coming to us and declaring their taxes," Sapin said.

(Reporting by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
Le Raincy (France) (AFP) - When Alain Benhamou walked into his apartment near Paris in July 2015 and saw the words "dirty Jew" scrawled on the wall, he knew it was time to leave.

It was his second such break-in in less than three months and the 71-year-old no longer felt welcome in Bondy, a Parisian suburb he had called home for more than 40 years.

"Until the years 2000-2005, the town was nice and quiet, with 250 to 300 Jewish families and synagogues full on the Sabbath," Benhamou says.

"Now, only about a hundred Jewish families remain."

Benhamou is part of a growing number of French Jews who have effectively become internal refugees, fleeing insecurity and seeking protection in numbers in an atmosphere they say is increasingly hostile, and often expressed in relation to conflict in the Middle East.

He moved a few miles south to Villemomble, where there is a larger and more established Jewish community.

But others have fled France altogether.

A record 8,000 or so French Jews moved to Israel in 2015 alone, according to Israeli figures, in the year that a jihadist gunman linked to the Charlie Hebdo newspaper attackers killed four Jews in a kosher supermarket.

France has the largest Jewish population in Europe, estimated at 500,000 to 600,000 people.

Half of them live in the Paris region but their numbers have declined steadily over the past 15 years, researchers say.

Jerome Fourquet of polling firm IFOP says the change started around 2000 following a fresh surge of violence between Israel and the Palestinians, known as the second intifada.

With France also home to Europe's largest Muslim community, which counts around five million members, the bloodshed in the Middle East unleashed a wave of unrest, particularly in the Paris region which saw a surge in anti-Semitic acts and threats, he says.

- A disappearing community -

Benhamou still lives within the sprawling Seine-Saint-Denis department that sits northeast of the capital and combines run-down immigrant ghettos with trendy new gentrified business districts.

Story continues

In the last 15 years, it has gone from being one of France's most densely-populated Jewish areas to what the community now considers "one of the lost territories of the Republic".

"The Jewish community is expected to disappear from here," Benhamou says.

In nearby Raincy, Rabbi Moshe Lewin shares Benhamou's pessimism, fearing he could be one of the last Jewish leaders in Seine-Saint-Denis.

"What upsets me is that in some areas of France, Jews can no longer live peacefully, and that just five minutes from my home, some are forced to hide their kippas (skullcaps) or their Star of David," he admits.

Even areas with a strong Jewish population, such as Sarcelles to the north, still have major problems.

Francois Pupponi, the Socialist mayor of Sarcelles, says many Jewish residents come to him for help with stories of being assaulted or having swastikas daubed on walls outside their homes.

Some have been caught in "extremely violent situations" that in some cases required families to be "urgently rehoused", says Pupponi.

He became aware of "a phenomenon of internal migration" about five or six years ago, which he says "is getting worse".

- 'Little Jerusalem' -

Nonetheless, Jews from elsewhere still see Sarcelles as a relative haven. New arrivals now find "a much stronger police and institutional presence" than before and "they can live out their Judaism here in safety," says Pupponi.

Among the newcomers is Eva Sandler, the widow of Rabbi Jonathan Sandler who was killed in an Islamist shooting attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse in 2012.

Other areas have also seen an influx of new arrivals.

Many say the heart of the Jewish community is no longer Sarcelles but in Paris' western 17th district which has now taken over the moniker of "Little Jerusalem".

Now in his 60s, Robert moved there a decade ago with the northwestern neighbourhood's Jewish population reflected in the wealth of eateries selling kosher foods, from specialised sweet shops to sushi bars.

"Because anti-Semitism is growing, we try and stick together to avoid it," admits Robert, who did not want to give his surname.

Community group the Consistoire Israelite has taken note of the shift in centre of gravity and is currently building a Centre for European Judaism in the neighbourhood which is slated to open next year.

- 'Becoming less visible' -

But across the city in the eastern neighbourhood of Saint-Mande, the wind appears to have changed.

Formerly known for its large Jewish community with two synagogues and a community day care centre, the district has been badly hit by the deadly hostage-taking at the kosher supermarket in January 2015.

"There were about 12 or 13 Sainte-Mande residents among (the hostages)," recalls local mayor Patrick Beaudouin.

"It had a huge psychological impact."

He said dozens of families had since left the area, deciding it was best "to spread out, to be less visible".

For now, most French Jews have preferred to cluster in towns and neighbourhoods where they know a large Jewish community already exists.

But that decision to flock together brings about its own problems.

"We are creating ghettos," Pupponi says. "We are aware of that."

The solution, he says, would be "to achieve social and ethnic integration in all neighbourhoods."

"But France has been trying to achieve this for the past 30 years and it still hasn't happened."
What's Frontier Doing with Its Newly Acquired Verizon Assets?

Frontier on the Verizon transaction

Frontier Communications (FTR) acquisition of Verizons (VZ) wireline assets in California, Florida, and Texas was completed on April 1, 2016. According to Frontier, it was a ~$10.5 billion deal. Lets look now at Frontiers integration efforts after the Verizon transaction.

Daniel J. McCarthy, Frontiers CEO (chief executive officer), spoke recently at the JPMorgan Global Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference. He said, Two months into the integration, and I would describe this integration as, by and large, it has gone better than any one that weve done before. He added, If you look at the billing systems, the ERP, payroll, HR, every part of the integration has gone exceptionally well. Weve actually got through all of our billing, and out the door, were back on normal cycles with customers. And weve moved to the point now where were moving forward with a normal business rhythm around trouble tickets and service orders in the market.

Financial dynamics of assets in the Verizon transaction

In 2015, revenue for assets in the Verizon transaction continued to decline YoY (year-over-year). During the year, revenue from these operations declined ~0.9% YoY to ~$5.7 billion. According to Frontier, legacy voice and data services negatively affected the overall revenue of these operations.

In terms of core operating profitability, adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization) of these operations was ~$1.6 billion for 2015. The adjusted EBITDA margin of these operations was 27.8% for the year.

For a diversified exposure to select US telecom companies, you could consider investing in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY). At the end of April 2016, SPY held a total of ~2.7% in AT&T (T), Verizon (VZ), CenturyLink (CTL), Frontier Communications (FTR), and Level 3 Communications (LVLT).

In the next part of our series, well look at Frontiers plan for broadband with the Verizon assets.

Story continues

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
emilia clarke

"Game of Thrones" star Emilia Clarke is looking beyond riding her dragons on the HBO hit to slaying spies as the first female version of James Bond.

"I have a lot of unrealized dreams," Clarke recently told UK newspaper Daily Star. "I would love to play Jane Bond."

And as for the British actress' main Bond guy?

"My ultimate leading man would be Leonardo DiCaprio. No doubt about it," she said.

But the "Thrones" star, who plays fan favorite Daenerys Targaryen, will not only have to compete against men for the honor of replacing the current Bond, Daniel Craig. She'll also have to go up against a growing list of women.

Priyanka Chopra, a former Miss World and star of ABC's "Quantico," has thrown her hat into the ring. And fans of "The Fall" and "The X-Files" actress Gillian Anderson have started a petition to get her into the role.

Reportedly, "Spectre" might be Craig's fourth and final spin as the international spy.

NOW WATCH: 4 things you might have missed on this weeks 'Game of Thrones'





More From Business Insider


kit harington sexism hollywood getty

"Game of Thrones" star Kit Harington says that women aren't the only victims of sexism in Hollywood.

"I think there is a double standard," the British actor told the UK's Sunday Times. "If you said to a girl, 'Do you like being called a babe?' and she said, 'No, not really,' she'd be absolutely right.

"I like to think of myself as more than a head of hair or a set of looks," he added. "Its demeaning. Yes, in some ways you could argue Ive been employed for a look I have. But theres a sexism that happens towards men. Theres definitely a sexism in our industry that happens towards women, and there is towards men as well... At some points during photo shoots when Im asked to strip down, I felt that.

The star's comments have definitely earned him some ribbing in the media.

Feminist news site Jezebel began its article about Harington's statements by correcting his use of the word "sexism": "I think what he is actually describing is feeling objectified, which certainly isnt a phenomenon belonging to a single gender."

Vanity Fair summed up his statements with, "Harington really wants us to understand how hard it is to be pretty."

This isn't the first time Harington has spoken about being objectified. Last year, he told New York Post's Page Six that he found it demeaning to be called a "hunk." And the media threw elbows at him then, too.

NOW WATCH: 4 things you might have missed on this weeks 'Game of Thrones'





More From Business Insider


Caveat emptor, Gawker gawkers: Any company considering buying the controversial digital publisher should know that its namesake site has hit some serious traffic lows.

Gawker.coms traffic in April dropped a whopping 37% from the previous month, to 7.6 million visitors  the sites lowest mark in at least three years, per comScore. That was enough to take Nick Dentons entire empire down to a 29-month traffic low, even though most of his other brands, including Gizmodo to Deadspin, have held up.

Its not an encouraging sign for Gawker, which says it has refocused on political coverage rather than salacious gossip about the media biz. But if its any consolation to Denton, Gawker is far from alone in experiencing sudden freefall, even as the explosive presidential campaign would presumably be pushing politics-centric websites to new heights.

There hasnt been much good news for Gawker of late. A federal judge last week upheld a $140 million verdict in favor of Hulk Hogan, who successfully sued the company for posting a sex video featuring the wrestler, and it also came to light that tech billionaire Peter Thiel had been secretly bankrolling Hogans legal effort. Denton reportedly had been exploring a sale before the verdict even came down  a move the company didnt explicitly deny.

Everyone take a breath, Gawker said in a statement. We recently engaged [Houlihan Lokey banker Mark] Patricof to advise us and that seems to have stirred up some excitement, when the fact is that nothing is new.

The rumor mill churned out potential buyers ranging from Vox Media to Varietys own parent company, Penske Media Corporation, which indicated via a company spokeswoman, At this time, PMC has been contacted by Gawkers banker and there are no current negotiations of any kind between PMC and Gawker.

If the deal chatter is true, the timing couldnt be worse, considering the number of unique visitors to Dentons portfolio of websites has sunk to a collective 44.4 million, its lowest level since December 2013.

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Regarding the recent traffic plunge at Gawker, a rep points to Dentons previous comments that the company had expected a traffic decline as the site shifted gears. In todays crowded and confusing digital media world, you should focus on your strengths and have a clear message for your audience, Denton wrote in a staff memo last November.

Gawkers new political bent has been seen as something of a palate cleanser  and a bid to appeal to a higher-income demographic  after the Hogan affair and other scandals blackened its name, the result of the companys vitriolic brand of journalism.

But theres a voluminous stream of political news, opinion, and rabid journalism all over the internet, and Gawkers snark simply doesnt stand out as much. (One of Gawkers most popular stories last week was speculation about the cost of Donald Trumps hair weave.)

This election cycle was tailor-made for Gawker-style coverage, says Benjamin Toff, a political scientist who has been named research fellow at the Oxford Universitys Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. But the distinctive voice Gawker once had is not as distinctive now. When one of the Republican nominees is talking about his penis size, and thats all over the news everywhere, its hard to be the one thats pushing the limits of whats deemed appropriate.

That said, Gawkers traffic problems may have as much to do with a mysterious malaise afflicting the entire political category as from any intrinsic deficiencies.

Millions of visitors to political websites vanished in April, after months of healthy growth fueled by the contentious 2016 election season. The drop, coming off record traffic numbers for many outlets in March, nailed political pubs of all persuasions, according to comScore data. Politico.com saw U.S. unique visitors drop 33%; TheHill.com fell 35%; Tucker Carlsons Daily Caller plummeted 43%; and ESPNs FiveThirtyEight.com dropped 32%.

Other political sites that saw steep drops in unique visitors for April, per comScore, included Glenn Becks TheBlaze.com (-17%), Daily Kos (-24%), Talking Points Memo (-29%), DrudgeReport.-com (-25%), The Nation (-18%), and the Weekly Standard (-32%). Breitbart News Network, the conservative news and opinion site founded by the late Andrew Breitbart, saw uniques decline by 6%.

Click Dips Politics-focused sites showed surprising traffic drop-offs in April. -37% Gawker -35% The Hill -33% Politico

Some observers speculated that the shift may be partly attributable to changes in content algorithms at Google or Facebook; the latter has been in damage control after allegations it tinkered with trending-news topics to downgrade conservative viewpoints. I dont think youd see that sort of drop-off in traffic just due to fatigue with politics, says one news-industry veteran.

But there may be a more straightforward explanation: There was simply less going on in the political circus tent. In April, there were far fewer primaries (nine) and just one debate, between the two Democratic contenders  whereas in March, there were more than two dozen primaries, including Super Tuesday, and four debates.

Web traffic to political sites in April was still at a very elevated level versus a typical month, says Andrew Lipsman, comScores VP of marketing and insights. March 2016 isnt a fair comparison because, for a number of reasons, it should represent a major peak in activity for these sites.

And its worth noting that visitors to general news websites and viewers of cable news dropped from March to April, although not quite as spectacularly. Fox News Channel averaged an audience of 2.86 million from Feb. 29 to March 27, dropping about 16% with 2.4 million the following four weeks, according to Nielsen data; CNNs viewers fell 26% from 1.92 million to 1.43 million per week over the same periods.

A FiveThirtyEight rep dismisses the comparison, noting that March was the biggest month in the sites history. Its ridiculous to suggest that a one-month reduction in our traffic has any real meaning when our long-term growth is exceptionally strong, she says. The site claims its getting 30 times as many page views as when FiveThirtyEight began at The New York Times in 2012, also a presidential election year.

This election cycle was tailor-made for Gawker-style coverage. But the distinctive voice Gawker once had is not as distinctive now. Political scientist Benjamin Toff

The Hill owner Jimmy Finkelstein has no concrete explanation for why traffic fell off in April. But Ive seen this happen before, where whole categories are down, he says. Its not completely unusual. He points out that April unique visitors were up 70% year-over-year and says May numbers for The Hill are trending toward a double-digit uptick.

Did political traffic resume an upward trajectory in May? We dont yet know, but its possible the category rebounded, after Trump earlier in the month secured his status as the GOPs presumptive nominee, and rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich dropped out of the race.

But comScores Lipsman says traffic may be flat with April, and if [sites] are down a bit, its probably because the field narrowed even further, and there are no more debates to drive the same intensity in the news cycle.

Gawker, along with the rest of the players that have feasted on the bizarre turns of the 2016 election year, is banking on the prospect that the American electorate will regain its appetite through the bitter end of the campaigns.

Related stories

Writers Guild Blasts Peter Thiel for Bankrolling Gawker Suit

Why Gawker Versus Peter Thiel Isn't Just About Gawker

Gawker on Reports of Possible Sale: 'Everyone Take a Breath'
By Gernot Heller and Georgina Prodhan

BERLIN/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Germany's Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Tuesday he would welcome an alternative offer for industrial robot maker Kuka (KU2G.DE) following Chinese home appliance maker Midea Group Co Ltd's 4.5 billion euro (3.4 billion) takeover bid.

Kuka is the latest and biggest German industrial technology group to be targeted by a Chinese buyer as the world's second-largest economy makes the transition from a low-cost manufacturer into a high-tech industrial hub.

Government sources have said Berlin will examine how critical Kuka's technology is for the digitisation of industry, an economic priority for Chancellor Angela Merkel's government.

"Of course I would view it as appropriate if there were at least an alternative offer from Germany or Europe," Gabriel said at an economic conference, describing China's interest in German technology companies as "not worrying, but noticeable".

Citing government and industry sources, Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung said on Wednesday that Gabriel wants to forge an alliance of German or Europe firms to prevent a sale to the Chinese company.

Gabriel has approached several companies in recent days, including German carmakers, to see if they would be interested, the paper said, adding it remained unclear who would lead such a consortium.

German industrial group Siemens (SIEGn.DE) had considered a counterbid for Kuka, but quickly dismissed the idea as too expensive, sources familiar with the matter have told Reuters.

The ruling coalition of Merkel's conservatives and Gabriel's Social Democrats (SPD) is loath to meddle in takeovers and Berlin has indicated it will not intervene to stop the transfer of Kuka and its technology to Chinese ownership.

Gabriel said ministers in Germany's cabinet had not addressed the bid, but he had discussed it with Merkel's office.

"The possibilities we have are basically limited to words," he said, adding: "Of course you can imagine that we have had a number of conversations in the last few days and weeks to support any such possibilities," he said without elaborating.

Story continues

Asked about the desirability of keeping Kuka European, the company's chief marketing officer and supervisory board member Wilfried Eberhardt said his priority was to safeguard jobs and, in the best case, to create new ones.

"There's no simple answer there as to what the right option is," he told a Frankfurt conference on the future of work.

"Of course know-how is important for jobs. On the other hand, markets are important for jobs," he said, noting that China is the world's biggest market for industrial robots.

"I'm sure that Kuka's management will make a sensible decision," added Eberhardt, who is an employee representative on the supervisory board.

Gabriel's emphasis on the benefits of keeping knowledge in Germany chimed with remarks by Germany's European Union Commissioner Guenther Oettinger, who called on majority shareholders to consider alternatives to Midea's bid. Kuka was of strategic importance to Germany, he said.

"Since there was no cry for help to China, we should be allowed to think about whether a European approach wouldn't be the better solution for Kuka," Oettinger told Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Industrial chiefs have urged that rules of free movement of capital must prevail in Europe and also in China. BDI industry association chief Ulrich Grillo told the economic conference it was a good sign if China wanted to buy something in Germany, but Beijing must give German companies equal opportunities in its country.

(Writing by Madeline Chambers; editing by David Holmes and G Crosse)
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's ruling coalition has agreed on a new draft law designed to remove all legal risks associated with providing free Wi-Fi to the public, government sources told Reuters on Tuesday.

Many cafes and restaurants currently restrict Wi-Fi access since they run the risk of being made liable if users carry out illegal activities such as copyright infringement while using their connection.

Under the new law, hotspot providers will no longer be held responsible if users do forbidden things such as breaching copyright by downloading songs or films illegally.

The law also removes the risk that providers will be forced to fork out for claims to damages and written warning letters from lawyers if users commit crimes.

The agreement follows months of wrangling between Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) and her junior coalition partner, the Social Democrats (SPD), over the new law.

Earlier versions of the new law had required Wi-Fi providers to protect their connection with a splash page or passwords, measures critics derided as cumbersome and counterproductive.

Germany's restrictive rules have been blamed for the poor availability of public Wi-Fi.

Europe's biggest economy currently has only 1.87 Wi-Fi hotspots per 10,000 residents, compared to 37.35 in South Korea, 28.67 in Britain and 9.94 in Sweden, the German government says.

Better internet access is viewed as a crucial part of Germany's so-called Digital Agenda, which aims among other goals to provide all households with download speeds of at least 50 megabits per second by 2018.

The German lower house of parliament is due to vote on the law on Thursday and it is expected to come into force this summer at the latest.

(Reporting by Thorsten Severin; Additional reporting and writing by Caroline Copley; Editing by Gareth Jones)
(Recasts with new Steinmeier quotes, background)

* Says would like Britain to stay, but up to British voters

* Should avoid 'fantasy proposals' for Brexit scenario

* Such speculation would risk affecting referendum

BERLIN, May 31 (Reuters) - Germany's foreign minister said on Tuesday a British vote to leave the European Union would create a negative dynamic in the remainder of the EU, but that Berlin should not discuss any proposals for dealing with such a scenario.

Britain votes in a June 23 referendum on whether to remain in the EU, and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he hoped British voters would decide to stay.

Asked if, given the 'Brexit' debate, he saw a need for a new initiative to make Europe strong and if he had discussed such plans with colleagues, Steinmeier said: "I have no influence on the campaign to prepare for the referendum in Britain."

"Even if I had plans drawn up in my head, they would have an influence either way on the debate in Britain," he told the foreign press association in Berlin. "Therefore, I can only say: the decision really lies in Britain."

"We can't have any influence on that and we shouldn't have any influence with fantasy proposals about the future of the European Union and 'what would happen if', and in particular 'what would happen if Britain leaves," he said.

"Those are all speculative discussions that could possibly have an undesirable influence on preparations for the British referendum."

An ORB poll for the Telegraph showed on Monday that support for Britain to stay in the EU stood at 51 percent, 5 points ahead of support for a withdrawal.

"I think there are good reasons for Britain to remain in the EU," Steinmeier said, adding it was up to British voters to decide. "I am only sure that if Britain decides to leave, that will initiate a negative dynamic in the rest of the EU." (Reporting by Joseph Nasr and Paul Carrel; Editing by Madeline Chambers and Richard Balmforth)
Berlin (AFP) - Germany's parliament votes Thursday on a resolution that brands the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces as genocide, drawing a clear warning from Turkey's president that it would harm ties.

Put forward by the ruling left-right coalition and the opposition Greens, the resolution entitled "Remembrance and commemoration of the genocide of Armenians and other Christian minorities in 1915 and 1916" also carries the contested word throughout the text.

The vote comes just over a year after President Joachim Gauck became Germany's highest ranking official to describe the massacre as a "genocide", sparking a fierce response from Turkey.

Its timing is also awkward, as Germany and the European Union need Ankara to help stem a migrant influx even as tensions are rising between both sides over a string of issues, including human rights.

In a strong call against the Bundestag move, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said: "If (Germany) falls into such a game, that would harm our future ties -- the diplomatic, economic, political, commercial and military ties between the two countries."

"I believe all of these would be reconsidered," he told reporters in the western province of Izmir, adding that he had also telephoned Chancellor Angela Merkel over the wording of the text.

Merkel's Christian Democrats were instrumental in putting the resolution forward, and she herself could, as an elected MP, cast a vote.

- 'Partial responsibility' -

Turkey and Armenia have long been at loggerheads over the World War I-era massacre.

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kin were killed between 1915 and 1917 as the Ottoman Empire was falling apart and have sought to win international recognition of the massacres as genocide.

"It's about rendering historical justice, it's an obligation of the entire international community towards the memory of the victims of the genocide," Armenian foreign ministry spokesman, Tigran Balayan, told AFP.

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He added that recognition is "important for the prevention of genocides in future".

Modern Turkey, the successor state to the Ottomans, rejects the claim, arguing that 300,000 to 500,000 Armenians and as many Turks died in civil strife when Armenians rose up against their Ottoman rulers and sided with invading Russian troops.

More than 20 nations, including France and Russia, have recognised the Armenian genocide, but Germany has not.

In direct reference to the atrocities against the Armenians, the resolution says: "Their fate exemplifies the mass exterminations, the ethnic cleansing, the expulsions and indeed the genocides that marked the 20th century in such a terrible way."

It also states that the "German Empire bears partial responsibility for the events," a point that Gauck had also made last year.

Germany was then allied with the Ottomans, and deployed soldiers who participated in the deportations of Armenians, Gauck had said.

- 'Wrong path?' -

The issue is particularly sensitive in Germany, as it has special ties with Ankara not least due to its three-million-strong ethnic Turkish population which settled following a massive "guest worker" programme in the 1960s and 1970s.

Ahead of the vote, around 1,000 people marched Saturday in a protest organised by Turkish groups, which also sent letters to lawmakers to campaign against the vote.

Kurds in Germany launched a counter-campaign, flooding Bundestag lawmakers with emails urging them to withstand Turkish pressure.

Yet the vote is also controversial within party lines.

Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who a year ago rejected Gauck's use of the word "genocide", said Tuesday he hoped the Bundestag vote would not derail efforts to reconcile Turkey and Armenia.

The German government's top official in charge of integration, Aydan Oezoguz, warned that it is the "wrong path" to take.

"Those who think that such a move would lead automatically to a rehabilitation in Turkey are wrong. Through this vote, that aim would be pushed further away."

Nevertheless, party leaders shrugged off any potential impact on relations with Turkey.

The aim is "not to put Turkey in the dock," Franz Josef Jung, who is the deputy chief of the Christian Democrats group in parliament, told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily.

"We are not asking the Turkish government to admit its guilt in the genocide, but for it to recognise its historical responsibility."
By Apeksha Nair

(Reuters) - Global oversupply in crude oil is likely to limit price gains this year despite a series of unplanned outages and shrinking U.S. shale production, a Reuters poll showed on Tuesday. (OILPOLL) (OILPOLL2)

Wildfires in Canada, political unrest in Venezuela and supply disruptions in Nigeria and Libya have wiped out nearly 4 million barrels of daily production.

That has soothed some of the concern about oversupply and helped push oil prices close to $50 a barrel for the first time in seven months.

But analysts do not expect annual prices to average much more than that before next year.

In the latest monthly Reuters poll, the 33 analysts surveyed forecast a 2016 Brent crude (LCOc1) average price of $43.60 per barrel, up $1.30 from a forecast of $42.30 a month earlier.

That marked a third consecutive monthly rise in forecasts for Brent prices, which have averaged about $39 so far this year.

But record-high global oil inventories were expected to curb any major gains for some time.

Brent futures were expected to average $56.40 per barrel in 2017 and rise to $64.30 in 2018, the poll showed.

"The output disruptions are a key factor supporting prices at the minute. We don't think prices will go much further from here," Capital Economics commodities analyst Thomas Pugh said.

"In fact, we think prices are vulnerable to a downturn in the short term if some of the disrupted supply returns, or there is evidence that higher prices are stimulating more production."

The analysts polled by Reuters forecast U.S. crude futures (CLc1) would average $42 per barrel in 2016, up $1.50 from last month's poll. U.S. futures have averaged nearly $38 per barrel so far this year.

Analysts were unanimous in expecting no significant decisions from this week's meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

However, some analysts expressed concern over the uncertainty surrounding Saudi Arabia's strategy as it battles Iran for market share and after the appointment of new energy minister Khalid Al Falih.

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"We do not expect much from the next OPEC (meeting), given the state of disarray in producer relations after the Doha meeting. What people will be scrutinising is Saudi Arabia's position and intent, with newly appointed Energy Minister Khalid Al Falih," BNP Paribas analyst Harry Tchilinguirian said.

Analysts also expressed surprise at the pace at which Iran has increased production and forecast a return to its pre-sanctions level of output by the third quarter of this year at the latest.

"The oil market is already oversupplied by about 1-1.5 million bpd. With Iran likely to increase output by at least 500,000 to 1 million bpd in the near term, and despite the fall in U.S. shale production of 600,000-800,000 bpd, the overall market will continue to remain oversupplied as demand growth is expected to remain weak," said Rahul Prithiani, director at CRISIL Research.

Most analysts expect supply to match demand next year, but agreed that it could take much longer for the market's overhang of unused inventories to clear.

(Editing by Amanda Cooper and Jason Neely)
LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A new international treaty is needed to compel businesses to stamp out abuses such as child labor and modern-day slavery in their supply chains, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Monday at the start of a global labor summit in Geneva. Around the world and estimated 21 million are trapped in forced labor, according to the United Nations' International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates. Many, including workers producing clothing for global brands, children working in tobacco farms, artisanal miners and migrant construction workers experience abuses and don't have access to complaint mechanisms or lawyers, HRW said in a report. The rights group said the ILO should get the ball rolling to draft a new treaty under which governments would require companies to have human rights safeguards throughout their supply chains. "Millions of people around the world suffer human rights abuses because of businesses' poor practices and lax government regulation," said Juliane Kippenberg, associate children's rights director at HRW, said. "Legally binding rules are the only realistic way to ensure that companies don't exploit workers or contribute to labor abuses," Kippenberg said in a statement. International norms aimed at preventing abuses are not legally binding, allowing businesses to ignore them, HRW said. "Voluntary standards on human rights and business are not enough," she said. "Some companies embrace them, but others don't care and ignore their human rights responsibilities. The International Labour Conference is a unique opportunity to change this ineffective laissez-faire system." HRW said initiatives such as the Dodd Frank Act in the United States or Britain's Modern Slavery Act, which require companies to disclose information about their supply chains, have improved supply chain transparency. Elizabeth George, a London-based employment lawyer, said that controlling the treatment and conditions of workers down the supply chain shouldn't be left for businesses to regulate. "A binding agreement between governments sends the right message that safer, fairer and more humane workplaces are a human right, not a business choice," George said via email. The International Labour Conference is a global summit bringing together governments, employers, workers from the 187 ILO member states to discuss labor-related issues, including global supply chains. (Reporting by Magdalena Mis; Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, womens rights, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)
May 31 (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc President and COO Gary Cohn defended the bank's trading business, saying investors should focus on the unit's profitability and not just revenue.

"While we could increase our market-making revenue, it may not translate into better returns," Cohn said at an investor conference organized by Deutsche Bank AG in New York on Tuesday. "Instead, we are focused on maximizing our returns."

Cohn said there was little correlation between the average size of a bank's fixed income and equities trading revenue, with the firm's overall return on equity a key measure of how well it uses shareholder capital to earn profits.

Wall Street banks have seen revenue from their fixed income trading units slump as new regulations introduced since the financial crisis have made bond trading less profitable and more capital intensive.

(Reporting by Olivia Oran; Editing by Dan Grebler)
(Adds comments from Cohn, background)

By Olivia Oran

May 31 (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc President and COO Gary Cohn defended the bank's trading business on Tuesday, as investors have questioned the units' slumping revenue.

Cohn said there was little correlation between the average size of a bank's fixed income and equities trading revenue and the firm's overall return on equity, a key measure of how well it uses shareholder capital to earn profits.

"While we could increase our market-making revenue, it may not translate into better returns," Cohn said at an investor conference organized by Deutsche Bank AG. "Instead, we are focused on maximizing our returns."

Goldman typically leads its peers with a return on equity of around 11 percent. But its returns during the first quarter were 6.4 percent, down from 14.7 percent a year earlier.

Wall Street banks have seen revenue from their fixed income trading units decline as new regulations introduced since the financial crisis have made bond trading less profitable and more capital intensive.

Goldman has stressed the bank's commitment to trading, even as other banks have scaled back or exited the business to focus on less-volatile activities that require less capital, such as wealth management. Cohn said Goldman could pick up clients from other banks that are pulling back in certain trading businesses.

Goldman is increasingly focused on soliciting feedback from clients on how its fixed income, currencies and commodities, or FICC, trading unit ranks with its peers, Cohn added.

The bank is also investing heavily in electronic technology within FICC trading, which has been slower to go electronic than equities.

During the first quarter, Goldman posted its worst results in more than four years as volatile markets kept clients from trading, investing or issuing new securities.

Goldman's revenue from FICC slumped 47 percent in the quarter to $1.7 billion.

Equities trading revenue slid 23 percent to $1.8 billion.

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"The current low-growth and low-rate environment has negatively impacted our clients' performance and our own opportunity set," Cohn said, adding that the firm is adapting to these challenges.

Goldman has reduced the amount of capital it allocates to its trading business by 25 percent from the second quarter of 2013 to the end of 2015. It has also reduced its headcount in FICC by 10 percent since 2012.

(Reporting by Olivia Oran in New York; Editing by Dan Grebler)
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / May 31, 2016 / GREAT ATLANTIC RESOURCES CORP. (TSXV.GR) (the "Company" or "Great Atlantic") is pleased to announce it has entered into a letter of intent (the "LOI") to acquire a 100% interest in the Golden Promise Gold Property, located in central Newfoundland through an option agreement (the "Transaction").

The property hosts multiple gold-bearing quartz vein zones and zones of gold-bearing float boulders, some with reported high grade gold including up to 327.97 g/t Au over 0.40 meters in drill core and float samples of 335.9 g/t Au and 353.4 g/t Au. A National Instrument (NI) 43-101 compliant inferred resource of 921,000 tonnes at an average grade of 3.02 g/t Au (89,500 ounces contained gold) was reported in 2008 for the Jaclyn Main Zone. Gold recovery from a 2,241 tonne bulk sample collected in 2010 at the Jaclyn Main Zone was reported to average 4.47 g/t Au. The 2008 NI 43-101 Technical Report states the style of veining, mineralization, alteration, host rock and tectonism most closely resembles other turbidite-hosted (or slate belt) gold deposits throughout the world. The Property has been recently expanded to the current 300 mineral claims (7500 hectares) to cover geologically prospective ground including an area of reported high-grade gold-bearing float.

Gold-bearing quartz float boulders were first discovered during 2002 by local prospector, William Mercer in the central region of the property, during which a composite sample from 10 boulders was reported to assay approximately 30 g/t Au. Subsequent 2002 prospecting by Rubicon Mineral Corp. confirmed gold-bearing boulders in this central area with boulder samples reported to assay up to 353.4 g/t Au. This region is referred to as the Jaclyn Zone or Jaclyn Area and contains 6 zones containing gold bearing quartz veins (including the Jaclyn Main Zone). Visible gold was reported.

Exploration on the property since 2002 has involved Rubicon Minerals Corp., Placer-Dome (CLA) Ltd., Paragon Minerals Corp. and Crosshair Exploration & Mining Corp. including over 22,000 meters of diamond drilling (136 holes) and a bulk sample. Much of this work was conducted at the Jaclyn Main Zone, including trenching, 87 diamond drill holes and the bulk sample. The Jaclyn Main Zone has been traced for a strike length of approximately 800 meters (northeast to east striking) and locally to approximately 420 meters vertical depth. Reported drill hole intersections (core length) included:

GP02-01: 16.57 g/t Au / 2.55m (interval includes 0.55m of lost core)

GP02-05: 11.41 g/t Au / 2.20m

GP02-09: 50.10 g/t Au / 0.60m

GP02-12: 18.00 g/t Au / 0.85m

GP02-13: 17.68 g/t Au / 2.30m

GP02-14: 23.14 g/t Au / 0.90m

GP02-21: 68.95 g/t Au / 0.40m

GP06-52: 327.97 g/t Au / 0.40m (reported 5m from Main Zone in hanging wall)

GP06-56: 39.56 g/t Au / 0.50m

GP06-65: 55.03 g/t Au / 0.60m

GP06-66: 21.87 g/t Au / 0.55m

GP07-91: 43.83 g/t Au / 1.45m

GP07-92: 10.41 g/t Au / 4.70m

GP07-93: 20.89 g/t Au / 1.90m

GP10-114: 69.06 g/t Au / 0.60m

A 2008 NI 43-101 Technical Report prepared for Crosshair Exploration & Mining Corp. included a resource estimate for the Jaclyn Main Zone. This estimate included drill holes prior to 2008 that penetrated the zone (68 holes). At a 1 g/t Au cutoff, an inferred resource of 921,000 tonnes averaging 3.02 g/t Au (89,500 contained ounces of gold) was reported. A bulk sample was collected in 2010 by Crosshair from a trench at the Jaclyn Main Zone. The trench was reported to be 170 meters long. The sample, reported to be 2,241 wet tonnes, was milled at the Nugget Pond Mill of Rambler Metals and Mining in Baie Verte. The average recovered gold grade for the bulk sample was reported to be 4.47 g/t Au. The average tails grade for the sample was reported to be 1.12 g/t Au. Crosshair reported a "back-calculated head grade of 5.59 g/t Au" for the bulk sample.

To view the image of the Jayclyn North Zone, please click on the following link:

http://www.fscwire.com/sites/default/files/NR/1096/11159_greataimage1.png

The Jaclyn North Zone is reported approximately 250 meters north of the Jaclyn Main Zone. The northeast striking Jaclyn North Zone has been reportedly traced for approximately 450 meters and locally to a vertical depth of 175 meters (13 diamond drill holes). The zone is reported to contain 3 quartz veined sub-zones. Reported drill hole intersections include:

GP03-32: 12.13 g/t Au / 0.35m & 12.30 g/t Au / 0.30m

GP07-76 (Upper Sub-zone): 11.28 g/t Au / 0.30m

GP06-51 (Middle Sub-zone): 5.24 g/t Au / 1.70

GP06-47 (Lower Sub-zone): 15.23 g/t Au / 0.30m

The Jaclyn South Zone is reported approximately 300 meters south of the Jaclyn Main Zone. This zone is reported to strike slightly northeast, being tested by 4 diamond drill holes. The best reported drill hole intersection was in hole GP03-31 (44.59 g/t Au / 0.30 m).

The Jaclyn East Zone is located approximately 500 meters east of the Jaclyn Main Zone. At the Jaclyn East area, quartz float samples were reported to assay up to 45.5 g/t Au. A total of 18 diamond drill holes were completed at this zone. The best reported drill hole intersections included are:

GP10-121: 19.92 g/t Au / 1.60m

GP10-131: 8.90 g/t Au / 0.50m

The Jaclyn West Zone (or Christopher Zone) is reported to be approximately 400 m west-southwest of the Jaclyn South Zone. The Christopher Zone is reported to have a known strike length of 35 meters, being intersected during diamond drilling at a vertical depth of 28 metres. It is reported to be a 2 meter wide composite quartz vein zone. A grab sample of a vein subcrop was reported to assay 3.8 g/t Au. A grab sample of vein outcrop from a trench was reported to assay 1.96 g/t Au. Two diamond drill holes were completed in this zone intersecting the quartz veining but with insignificant amounts of gold.

Diamond drill hole GP04-41 intersected a quartz vein approximately 450 meters west-southwest of the Jaclyn North Zone. The vein was reported to be 1 meter wide. A 0.4 meter drill core sample was reported to assay 3.42 g/t Au. This is referred to as the GP04-41 Zone. A later hole (GP10-107) tested the down-dip extension of this vein and intersected quartz veins (best reported intersection being 2.40 g/t Au / 0.53m).

Gold-bearing quartz float are reported approximately 3.5 km northeast of the Jaclyn Area at the Justin's Hope Float Occurrence. Float samples from this occurrence were reported to assay up to 335.9 g/t Au. Subsequent diamond drilling (2 holes) at this float occurrence intersected thick overburden and did not intersect mineralized veins.

Gold-bearing quartz float are also reported further northeast in the northeast region of the property approximately 8.5 km northeast of the Jaclyn Main Zone. This zone of gold-bearing float is referred to as the Branden Float Occurrence. Reported float samples assays included 20.5, 22.6, 62.6, 72.1 and 80.0 g/t Au. Three subsequent trenches in this area did not reveal the source of the gold-bearing float. The Golden Promise Property was recently expanded to cover this area of float and adjacent ground.

The Shawn's Shot vein is reported in the southwest region of the property, approximately 7.5 km southwest of the Jaclyn Main Zone. This quartz vein is reported to be 0.35 metres wide, striking slightly southeast in an outcrop along a river. Grab samples were reported to assay 14.0 - 100.5 g/t Au. Two diamond drill holes intersected quartz veins (up to 0.60 g/t Au / 0.30m). The Golden Promise Property was recently expanded to cover the ground between this occurrence and the Jaclyn Area and the area west of and east  southeast of this vein occurrence.

The Otter Brook vein is located in the southern region of the property, approximately 7.5 km south-southwest of the Jaclyn Area. The vein, described as quartz breccia vein is reported to be 5-20 cm wide, striking northeast. Grab samples from the vein were reported up to assay up to 3.2 g/t Au. The Golden Promise Property was recently expanded to include this vein occurrence.

Access is excellent with a paved provincial highway transecting the property. The property is near the town of Badger.

Christopher R. Anderson, President and CEO for Great Atlantic Resources, stated

"The previous 43-101 resource completed in 2008 does not include the new drilling completed in 2010 nor does it reflect the 2010 bulk sample that bumped the head grade to 5.5 g/ton Gold, (2200 Tons returned 313 oz Gold.) The blue sky potential on the several other gold bearing quartz veins in the district yet to be drilled and the Gold boulder trains yet to be followed up that are now included in the 7500 hectors that make up this land package, lead us to believe that this project the Golden Promise is the right project to add to Great Atlantics portfolio as we move forward into what we believe in a major Gold bull market."

The Option will be exercisable by Great Atlantic making certain staged cash option payments and share option payments of common shares in the capital of Great Atlantic over a four year period equal to a total of CAD$500,000 cash and such number of common shares equal to CAD$500,000, the number of each such issuance to be determined in accordance with applicable corporate and securities laws and the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange (the "TSXV"). Great Atlantic will also be required to have completed approved exploration expenditures of CAD$500,000 on the Property by the fourth anniversary of the Option Agreement.

To view the image of the loaction of the Jayclyn Mine Zone, please click on the following link:



http://www.fscwire.com/sites/default/files/NR/1096/11159_greataimage2.png

To view the image of a rock sample, please click on the following link:



http://www.fscwire.com/sites/default/files/NR/1096/11159_greataimage3.png

To view the image of a rock vien, please click on the following link:

http://www.fscwire.com/sites/default/files/NR/1096/11159_greataimage4.png

Great Atlantic resources, has granted nine hundred thousand (900,000) stock options at an exercise price of five cents. The options are exercisable for five years and will be cancelled 30 days after cessation of acting as director, officer, employee or consultant of the Company.

Readers are warned that historical records referred to in this News Release have been examined but not verified by a qualified person. Further work is required to verify that historical assays referred to in this News Release are accurate.

The Transaction is subject to, among other things, the completion of due diligence, the executive of a mutually satisfactory definitive agreement and obtaining all necessary regulatory approvals. Further details about the Transaction will be provided in a comprehensive press release when the parties enter into a definitive agreement.

David Martin, P.Geo., a Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101, is responsible for the technical information contained in this News Release.

About Great Atlantic Resources Corp.: Great Atlantic Resources Corp. is a Canadian exploration company focused on the discovery and development of mineral assets in Atlantic Canada. Great Atlantic is currently building the company utilizing a project generation model, with a focus on antimony, tungsten and gold.

On Behalf of the board of directors

"Lorne Mann"

This News Release may contain forward-looking statements including but not limited to the Transaction, comments regarding the timing and content of upcoming work programs, geological interpretations, receipt of property titles, potential mineral recovery processes, execution of the Option Agreement, the making of cash payments and share payments, obtaining TSX-V approval, etc. Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions and therefore involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements consist of statements that are not purely historical, including any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future. Such information can generally be identified by the use of forwarding-looking wording such as "may", "expect", "estimate", "anticipate", "intend", "believe" and "continue" or the negative thereof or similar variations. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements and Great Atlantic undertakes no obligation to update such statements, except as required by law. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking information. There can be no assurance that the proposed Transaction will be completed or, if completed, will be successful.

Forward-looking statements are based on the then-current expectations, beliefs, assumptions, estimates and forecasts about the business and the industry and markets in which the Company operates, including that: the current price of and demand for minerals being targeted by the Company will be sustained or will improve; the Company's current exploration programs and objectives can be achieved; the Company will be able to obtain required exploration licences and other permits; general business and economic conditions will not change in a material adverse manner; financing will be available if and when needed on reasonable terms; the Company will not experience any material accident; and the Company will be able to identify and acquire additional mineral interests on reasonable terms or at all. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions which are difficult to predict. Investors are cautioned that all forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including: that resource exploration and development is a speculative business; that the Company may lose or abandon its property interests or may fail to receive necessary licences and permits; that environmental laws and regulations may become more onerous; that the Company may not be able to raise additional funds when necessary; potential defects in title to the Company's properties; fluctuations in currency exchange rates; fluctuating prices of commodities; operating hazards and risks; competition; potential inability to find suitable acquisition opportunities and/or complete the same; and other risks and uncertainties listed in the Company's public filings. These risks, as well as others, could cause actual results and events to vary significantly. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and information, which are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. There can be no assurance that forward-looking information, or the material factors or assumptions used to develop such forward looking information, will prove to be accurate. The Company does not undertake any obligations to release publicly any revisions for updating any voluntary forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable securities law.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Great Atlantic Resource Corp

888 Dunsmuir Street - Suite 888, Vancouver, B.C., V6C 3K4

SOURCE: Great Atlantic Resources Corp.
(Adds Greek minister comment)

By Renee Maltezou

ATHENS, May 31 (Reuters) - Greece and its international lenders are inching towards an accord over a set of extra measures demanded from Athens to qualify for vital rescue funds, officials with knowledge of the negotiations said on Tuesday.

The two sides wrapped up the bulk of reforms needed for badly needed bailout cash last week, but left some loose ends which must be tied up before Athens gets 10.3 billion euros ($11.48 billion) of sub-tranches by September.

To qualify for the funds, Greek lawmakers grudgingly approved tax hikes and pension reforms, freed up the sale of bad loans weighing on banks' balance sheets and promised to expedite privatisations.

But Greece must also legislate a series of extra actions which the left-led government resists due to growing dissent at home after six years of belt-tightening. One of the measures is phasing out a top-up benefit to pensioners.

"It's a matter of parliamentary dignity. We cannot ask lawmakers to vote over the same issues again and again," a government official told Reuters. "Some of the actions demanded are also worsening the impact of the measures already adopted and hurt sensitive groups further."

To break the deadlock, some of the pending issues would be postponed to September, the official said, adding: "We are close to reaching a deal."

Greek State Minister Nikos Pappas, the right-hand man of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, dismissed reports that a deal could be held up, citing major progress over the last two days.

"There was a sense of great disagreement 48 hours ago, but this changed yesterday," Pappas told reporters in Brussels.

"I just spoke to (Finance Minister Euclid) Tsakalotos, he is even closer. There are minor things that we will be taking through the parliament that have to do with secondary legislation. But we are very, very close, nobody should worry."

"There is a political and economic decision that we have an agreement. So if there is agreement at the political level, the technical level has to deliver. Everybody is abiding by the agreement," Pappas said.

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DISGREEMENTS

Consecutive votes on reforms have tested the left-led coalition government, which has a narrow parliamentary majority with 153 of the 300 lawmakers and ranks second, behind the conservative opposition, in opinion polls.

Greece opposes some amendments on reforms, including retroactively clawing back an income-based benefit paid to certain groups of pensioners, and freezing the wages of essential staff as it struggles with Europe's worst migrant crisis in decades.

It also opposes the privatisation of grid operator ADMIE and the sale of state-guaranteed bad loans, saying the move demanded by the European Central Bank would widen its fiscal gap.

The lenders are looking into the issues raised, an EU official said on Monday. Another source from the lenders said the pending issues were not a deal-breaker.

The country's bailout review was initially expected to be wrapped up last year. It dragged on for months mainly due to a rift between the EU and the International Monetary Fund over Greece's fiscal progress and its bailout targets.

Despite the disagreements, sources close to the lenders and government officials were optimistic that a deal would be reached soon and the ECB would this week resume accepting Greek government bonds as collateral for lending funds to Greek banks. ($1 = 0.8971 euros) (Additional reporting by Lefteris Papadimas in Athens and Jan Strupczewski in Brussels, Editing by Gareth Jones)
Families who are saving for college have an average of $10,040 set aside for higher education. But the cost of a four-year public university for 2016-2017 is estimated to be $30,232. So should you dip into your retirement fund or pick up a second job to send your kid (or yourself) to school?

The short answer is no. This is where federal student aid comes in.

FAFSA



Getty Images/iStock Photo

To apply for federal loans, you need to fill out the FAFSA, or the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. For the 2016-2017 school year, the federal deadline isnt until June 30, 2017, but make sure you check your states deadline as well.

The info you provide about your household income will determine how much your family is expected to contribute to funding education. Once each FAFSA is processed, the applicant will receive offers of grants, work study, and/or loan amounts.

But lets back up. Before applying for student aid, you need to know the jargon involved. Here are some terms to get familiar with.

Adjusted Gross Income: Your familys total income minus standard deductions (like alimony payments, deduction for tuition, etc.). You can easily find this listed on your most recent federal income tax return.

Capitalization: The amount of interest added on the full balance of the loan. This number will add up during the time a student is in school and during the grace period thereafter, ultimately increasing the overall loan cost.

Dependency Status: This is a tax designation that will affect the amount offered in a loan. Simply put: A parent can claim a child as their dependent when the parents are financially responsible for the child. Once a child is out on their own, they file as an independent.

Direct Consolidation Loan: If youre offered multiple federal student loans and accept them during the school period, you can consolidate them into one single loan. This means youll make only one payment per month as opposed to several. Interest gets recalculated by the average of the loans that are consolidated, so it could end up being higher for than some of the lower-interest loans. But theres good news: The rate is fixed, so you dont have to worry about it going up.

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Direct PLUS Loans: If your childs financial aid doesnt cover all their necessary college costs, you can take out an additional Parent PLUS Loan. You will be fully responsible for paying this back  even if you make an agreement with your kid that theyll pay it. If your child misses payments after graduation, its your credit score that will get dinged. This loan is only for undergrads, but if youre a graduate or professional student, you can apply for a Graduate PLUS Loan for yourself.

Entrance Counseling: This training session is available online and must be completed before accepting any federal student loans. It explains a students responsibilities as a loan borrower and takes about 30 minutes to complete.

Expected Family Contribution: All your FAFSA information will ultimately determine a number that represents what your family is expected to contribute toward your students higher education  and your eligibility for financial aid. Typically, the higher your EFC, the lower your loan offer will be.

Forbearance: A temporary period when monthly loan payments are suspended or reduced due to financial hardship. During this period, interest will continue to accrue. Go to your loan providers website to learn how to apply for a forbearance. Often it requires just a phone call or filling out an online form. Make sure to read the fine print and ask questions before finalizing.

Grace Period: When a student graduates, leaves school, or drops below half-time status, they have a period of time in which theyre not required to make payments on loans. Usually interest is added to the principal balance during this time. And take note that different loans offer different grace periods  they typically vary from six months to about a year.

Grant: This is financial aid that does not need to be repaid (unless the student withdraws from school and owes a refund). Grants are almost identical to scholarships, except that grants tend to be need based while scholarships are usually merit based. Read more about the types of grants offered.

Loan Forgiveness: In very limited cases, your loan balance can be canceled and you wont be responsible for repaying the remaining balance. Note that unlike with credit card debt, its very rare for student debt to be discharged in bankruptcy.

Subsidized Loan: A need-based loan in which the federal government pays the interest that accrues while the student is in school. This is available only to undergraduate students.

Unsubsidized Loan: A loan in which borrower pays the interest that accrues. This loan isnt need based, and is available to both undergrad and graduate students.

Verification: A process the school uses to confirm that your FAFSA information is correct. About one-third of FAFSAs submitted are selected for it, and it usually means you need to submit more paperwork. If youre selected, its recommended that you use the IRS Data Retrieval Tool, which pulls information directly from your submitted tax docs and the IRS (this can be found on the FAFSA application). It takes about one to three weeks for verification to be completed.

Work-Study: A federal student aid program that offers a student a part-time employment while enrolled in school to help pay for college. Generally, universities will offer various options for work-study. When filling out the FAFSA you indicate whether youre interested.

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Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) (AFP) - Gulf Arab states grappling with lower oil revenues on Tuesday formed a new agency to tighten economic cooperation in the region.

The Economic and Development Affairs Authority "will boost coherence, integration and coordination between member states in all economic and development sectors," the Gulf Cooperation Council said in a statement after a summit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

The GCC was founded in 1981 to more deeply integrate the Gulf countries, but analysts say progress has been slow.

The collapse of global oil prices has forced the Gulf monarchies to make unprecedented fuel and energy subsidy cuts and plan to introduce indirect taxation. They have also scaled back spending on large projects.

Oil prices have fallen from more than $100 a barrel in early 2014 to around half that level.

The newly formed body "will look into matters such as completing the customs union and the common market of the GCC states", Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told a news conference after the summit.

He said the authority "can solve these issues urgently and effectively" to promote cooperation.

No decision has been made on when to start using a single Gulf currency, which has been mooted for years, GCC Secretary General Abdullatif al-Zayani said.

After a summit with the GCC in Riyadh last month, US President Barack Obama said the six-nation GCC will establish a "high-level economic dialogue" with the United States.

It will "focus on adjusting to lower oil prices, increasing our economic ties and supporting GCC reforms", Obama said.

Along with Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter and largest Arab economy, the GCC includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Emirs and kings of the Gulf also decided to hold an annual summit with the British prime minister "to strengthen and intensify cooperation", Jubeir said.

With the United States and France, Britain is a major weapons supplier to Saudi Arabia.

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French President Francois Hollande last year became the first Western leader to attend a GCC summit, which was held in the Saudi capital.

Riyadh has been deepening ties with major powers beyond its traditional security partner the United States.

Gulf ties with Washington have been strained over how to deal with Shiite Iran, regional rival of the Sunni-dominated Gulf.
Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - Hamas authorities in the Gaza Strip executed three Palestinian men for murder on Tuesday, the attorney general said, drawing condemnation from the United Nations.

The three, who were not named and whose cases were unrelated, were put to death by firing squad behind closed doors, security sources said.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) said, however, that two of them were hanged and the third was shot.

"To achieve public deterrence and curb crime, the competent authorities carried out at dawn on Tuesday, May 31, 2016 execution rulings against three of those convicted of shocking murders," a statement from the attorney general said.

Rupert Colville, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, condemned the executions which he said occurred "despite serious and widespread concerns that international fair trial standards were not respected".

The European Union, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International all also condemned the killings.

In theory, all execution orders in the Palestinian territories must be approved by president Mahmud Abbas, who is based in the occupied West Bank.

But Hamas, the militant Islamist group that runs Gaza, no longer recognises his legitimacy, and Gaza attorney general Ismail Jaber recently announced that the authorities there would carry out the executions without Abbas's backing.

Hamas and Abbas's Palestinian Authority agreed a unity deal in April 2014 which was supposed to lead to a joint technocratic government, but the accord was never fully implemented and they remain at loggerheads.

The UN statement said that the failure to get Abbas's backing for the executions was a breach of Palestinian law.

Sari Bashi, Israel and Palestine director at HRW, said Hamas authorities had been under pressure to act because of perceptions of increased crime in Gaza, including a number of grisly murders of civilians.

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"This is an attempt by the government to show they are doing something," she told AFP, "but killing criminals is not going to decrease crime."

"These people were convicted in a judicial system where torture and coercion are common," she added.

The attorney general said the three had been given a fair trial.

- 'Example to others' -

Jaber had initially said he wanted executions to be carried out in public, and it was unclear if this would happen in the future.

At the time of the attorney general's announcement last week, 13 men, most convicted of murder connected to robberies, were awaiting execution.

The last public executions in Gaza were during the 2014 war with Israel when a firing squad from Hamas's armed wing shot dead six alleged collaborators with Israel.

They were executed in front of Gaza City's main mosque following prayers.

Mkhaimar Abusada, professor of political science at Gaza's Al-Azhar University, said the reintroduction of the death penalty would be popular in the Palestinian enclave.

"Gaza is very much a tribal society, meaning people believe in revenge for tribal or familial reasons," he told AFP.

"In order to avoid people taking the law into their own hands the best (route) is through government or the judicial system."

On the streets of Gaza, which has been blockaded by Israel for 10 years and has an unemployment rate of almost 45 percent, opinion about the executions was mixed.

"Whoever kills people should be killed as an example to others," said Nahed al-Luh, in his 60s.

But Amin Abed, 25, called the executions "illegal" because "Hamas didn't deal with the Palestinian Authority and the president didn't ratify the verdicts".

According to the PCHR, nine death sentences were passed in Gaza in 2015 and two in the West Bank, run by the Palestinian Authority (PA).

So far this year, around 10 more people have been sentenced to death in Gaza.

Palestinian law allows the death penalty for collaborators, murderers and drug traffickers.

Of the more than 170 Palestinians sentenced to death since the PA's creation in 1994, around 30 have been executed, mostly in Gaza, the PCHR says.
By Ron Bousso and Dmitry Zhdannikov

LONDON (Reuters) - On the last Sunday of February 2016, late in the evening, Genel Energy's (GENL.L) Chairman and former BP boss Tony Hayward held an urgent call with the board to break some bad news: the firm's prized oil field was worth much less than they had thought.

Hours later, the company released a statement to the London Stock Exchange announcing the halving of the reserves of the Taq Taq oil field in Iraqi Kurdistan, the value of which had already been hurt by the collapse in oil prices and the proximity of Islamic State fighters.

The news forced Genel to write down $1 billion (681.66 million pounds) and saw its shares lose a third of their value.

Genel says it announced the bad news as quickly as possible after an independent review of the oil field, conducted promptly after extra water was found in wells late last year.

"Up to and including the first half of 2015, there was no cause for concern  the Taq Taq reservoirs were performing in line with expectations," Chief Executive Officer Murat Ozgul told Reuters. "Once we started to see the wells decline... we took appropriate steps."

Some industry figures argue however that Genel might have been able to avoid the surprise if it had conducted reviews of its oil fields annually, as is standard in much of the industry, instead of allowing a four-and-a-half year gap between audits.

"Yearly reserve revisions are part-and-parcel of the business (both upwards and downwards)  so their absence alone may warrant further investigation," said Nick Ingrassia, managing director at oil exploration consultancy 6 Point Energy.

Genel, whose share price still lingers at around 90 percent below its early 2014 peak, has told investors it will now switch to reviewing reserves annually. Nevertheless, it insists it did nothing wrong by taking so long to uncover the shortfall.

"We understand the market perspective," said Ozgul, who argues that annual reports would not have uncovered the drop in reserves any earlier. "What the company did in the past was correct, based on the information we had at the time."

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Ozgul - who took over from Hayward as CEO last year after Hayward became chairman - urges investors to look past the downgrade and focus on the future, as Kurdistan, an autonomous region in northern Iraq, starts paying off debts to oil companies and Genel gears up to pump gas to Turkey.

EXPLORATION FAILURES

Kurdistan has long been high on the agenda of oil companies as it is one of the last places in the world with easy and cheap-to-extract reserves.

A longrunning dispute between the autonomous Kurdish regional government (KRG) and Baghdad over the right to exploit the oil kept big companies away, allowing room for smaller players like Genel.

BP under Hayward, a geologist and veteran oil explorer, studied entering Kurdistan but was deterred by tensions between the region and the central government in Iraq, where BP is one of the largest investors.

Hayward, whose time as BP's CEO ended abruptly following the deadly 2010 Gulf of Mexico spill, bought Genel, then a private company, in 2011 together with financier Nat Rothschild. Their goal was to develop assets in Kurdistan and Africa at a time when oil prices stood above $100 per barrel.

Hayward became CEO while another BP veteran, Rodney Chase, formerly deputy CEO of the British giant, became chairman.

The firm quickly won favour among London investors, claiming shortly after its listing in 2011 to be "the largest independent UK listed exploration and production company by proved and probable reserves".

But its searches for oil in Malta, Angola and Morocco ended with little success last year and a writedown of $480 million.

That left its main investments in Kurdistan, where it has a 44 percent stake in Taq Taq. China's Petroleum & Chemical Corp holds 36 percent and Kurdistan the rest.

Alarm bells were set off when water levels in Taq Taq started rising rapidly in the second half of 2015. A subsequent study by consultancy McDaniel & Associates revealed that the ability to access oil in the field had been significantly overstated, leading to the reserves downgrade.

Genel expects to produce up to 70,000 barrels per day of oil from Taq Taq and the nearby Tawke field this year, down from 85,000 in 2015.

After the $1 billion impairment, anyone who had bought a Genel share for 10 pounds in early 2014 was left with just 70 pence. Meanwhile, the oil price collapse made it unlikely that Genel investors could be rescued by a merger with a larger firm.

"The downgrade makes Genel more reliant than they already were on oil price recovery in order to generate value for shareholders," said Daniel Slater, research director at Arden Partners stockbrokers.

Since those depths, Genel's share price has recovered somewhat, nearly doubling to around 130 pence as oil prices have also risen.

Nevertheless, the poor performance has led to criticism of Hayward from some investors, including tension between Hayward and the venture's early backer Rothschild. Both men declined to comment for this story.

Hayward owns just 0.5 percent of Genel, while Rothschild owns around 8 percent, making him the third largest investor after Turkish businessmen Tolga Bilgin and Mehmet Karamehmet.

Hayward, who also serves as non-executive chairman of miner Glencore (GLEN.L), will remain chairman despite the setback, says Ozgul: "He is the ideal fit for our chairman and has stated publicly that he has no intention to leave."

BIG TURKISH GAS GAME

Ozgul says the fortunes of Kurdish oil firms will improve as the government of the region cuts spending, leaving more money for repayment of arrears to oil firms and as independent oil pipeline exports via and to energy-hungry Turkey are rising.

"Despite the challenges, progress in the KRG oil industry has been impressive  exports have risen from next to nothing to well over half a million barrels a day," Ozgul said. "The speed of infrastructure development in the region has been incredible."

The company's future growth hangs in large part on the success of the development of the Miran and Bina Bawi gas fields, which it plans to link via pipeline to Turkey.

Genel is in advanced talks to sell a stake in the project to the Turkish government, although talks have been slowed down by tensions in the region, according to Ozgul.

"Politics will define the speed of the development of the project," Ozgul said. "We will try our best with the Turkish entity - they are after all the natural partner - until the end of the year and I am hopeful about the result."

Genel plans to sell down around half of its stake in the gas fields, Ozgul said, adding that if talks with Turkey fail, the company has "a Plan B with other international partners."

(Editing by Peter Graff)
PARIS (AP) -- Heavy rain drenched parts of France on Tuesday, prompting flood warnings near the English Channel, causing more delays at the French Open and soaking tourists in Paris.

Floods or heavy rain were forecast for about a quarter of the country Tuesday, from Normandy in the west to Burgundy southeast of Paris.

Rescue workers evacuated homes or ordered people to higher floors in the Pas-de-Calais region in the far north as rivers rose more than a meter (3 feet) in some spots, according to local authorities.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve urged people to exercise the ''greatest caution.'' He said rescue services were deployed 4,500 times overnight and Tuesday morning to help people affected by rising water. No casualties were reported.

The national meteorological service, Meteo France, warned of possible exceptionally dangerous floods in the Loiret region, south of Paris.

France has seen rain and storms now for several days. During a sudden storm Saturday, a lightning bolt struck a children's birthday party at a Paris park. Five of the 11 people hit remained hospitalized Tuesday.

All matches at the French Open were cancelled Monday, the first all-day shutdown in 16 years. Matches got underway on Tuesday, but play was soon disrupted again by rain.

Canadian tourist Helene Gazaille, who was visiting Paris to celebrate her 50th birthday, was determined to have a good trip even if that meant stuffing plastic bags into her sneakers in the morning and using a hair dryer to dry them out at night.

Others like Tang Jiru, a 26-year-old Chinese groom-to-be, looked on the bright side of the gray weather. Posing for photos with his fiancee in the Trocadero's Warsaw fountains, across from the Eiffel Tower, he said he was pleased despite - or maybe even because of - the driving rain.

''The weather, it's like blue. Blue means romantic,'' he said, his white tie-tuxedo-and-waistcoat combo becoming increasingly wet as his 27-year-old bride-to-be, Liu Yuan Yuan, smiled in her rain-sodden wedding dress.

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''Every time you take a photo, it's a sunny day. But it's a rainy day, (so) oh it's special!'' said Tang, who is getting married in September in Shanghai but had flown to Paris for the express purpose of taking romantic photos.

---

Raphael Satter in Paris contributed to this report.
Donald Trump

Hundreds of pages of Trump University internal documents were released on Tuesday in connection with an ongoing fraud lawsuit against the presumptive Republican presidential nominee's now defunct series of courses on real estate and investing.

The unsealed documents include sales and marketing "playbooks" from 2007 through 2010. Politico, however, published the 2010 playbook in March.

One of the playbooks informed sales people that the last song played before an instructional video in a seminar "should be the Apprentice Theme Song: For the Love of Money by the OJays.

The seminar referenced was a free 90-minute presentation open to the public called "Fast Track to Foreclosure."

The seminar, which aimed to drum-up interest for Trump University courses, discussed "the current trends of the real estate market and ways to still make money."

Sales people were advised to watch the body language of the audience members during the presentation to identify which viewers were "most likely to buy," encourage them to join, and then collect payment.

"Full payment of $1,495 must be collected before paperwork is submitted to Trump U," the playbook reads.

The documents were unsealed as part of a court decision by Judge Gonzalo Curiel, whom Trump has called a "hater" and suggested his Mexican heritage made him biased and unfit to oversee the case.

Before the documents were released on Tuesday, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman slammed Donald Trump and his eponymous Trump University as "phony" and "shameless."

Trump remains enmeshed in multiple lawsuits filed by former students of Trump University and faces a third fraud suit from Schneiderman, which likely won't go to trial until after the November election. The suits accuse Trump of defrauding students into paying thousands of dollars for worthless classes on real estate and investing.

Trump and his lawyers, however, have continually defended the for-profit university, citing stellar student reviews. Some students, however, may have been pressured into writing them, according to The New York Times.

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Hewlett Packard Enterprise Revenue Rose Again: Heres Why

(Continued from Prior Part)

Details of the merger

As discussed in the previous part of this series, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is planning to spin off and merge its technology services operations with CSC (CSC), in a deal worth $8.5 billion. HPE will spin off a business that accounts for 100,000 employees, or 67% of its total workforce.

HPEs remaining operations will concentrate on server systems, networking, software, and storage hardware. Analysts believe that traditional data centers are making way for cloud computing and HPE is likely to benefit from this merger. However, HPE faces competition from cloud computing heavyweights such as Microsoft (MSFT) and Amazon (AMZN). Hewlett-Packard Enterprises will target companies looking to build their own private cloud.

Customers will get access to world-class offerings

As stated earlier, the CSC-HPE merger will create a new company that will be a pure-play global IT (information technology) services leader. Enterprises will have access to world-class offerings in mobility, cloud, application development and modernization, business process services, IT services, big data and analytics, and securities.

HPE CEO Meg Whitman stated that HPE and this new company will be closely connected moving forward with agreements that will keep the two companies aligned for current customers and grow new business opportunities over time.

In April 2016, HPE announced its plan to sell its majority stake outsourcing firm Mphasis, which is based in India (INDA), for $825 million to The Blackstone Group. As shown in the above chart, HPEs and CSCs shares rose 11% and 28%, respectively, in after-hours trading on May 24, 2016.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
The United States does not have a tradition of public deference toward its presidents in modern times, much less toward presidential candidates, and that seems to really irritate the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Donald Trumps belief that he is entitled to be taken at his word -- despite copious proof that he has lied, misled, and distorted the truth multiple times -- was never more on display than at his epic meltdown of a press conference Tuesday.

The event was supposed to give Trump a chance to account for the money he raised for veterans in a televised event four months ago. But the billionaire former reality television star turned it into a frontal assault on the members of the media.

Related: Trump Hits the Panic Button at the Hint of a Third-Party Run

Calling one reporter sleaze and blasting the press as unbelievably dishonest Trump looked peevish and angry, and he seemed truly resentful of the fact that members of the news media asked any questions at all about the disposition of the money he raised.

The 40-plus minute event was the usual Trumpian pastiche of bogus grievances, half-truths and outright lies. There was his absurd-on-its-face claim, repeated ad nauseam, that he didnt want to take credit for raising money for veterans charities. And his insistence that merely raising questions about the disposition of the funds was probably libelous.

In all, the billionaire again proved that he is stunningly thin-skinned for a public figure and, more troublesome for a major party presidential candidate, that he feels he is entitled to the sort of deference from the press that is not -- and should not be -- available to a someone aspiring to the highest office in the land.

The press should be ashamed of themselves. And on behalf of the vets, the press should be ashamed of themselves, Trump said. Instead of being, like, Thank you very much, Mr. Trump, or Trump did a good job, You say, 'Well who got it? Who got it? And it makes me look very bad.

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Related: The Libertarian Johnson-Weld Ticket Is Bad News for Donald Trump

The idea that Trump somehow believes that the job of the political press is to praise him -- and even to thank him -- is almost as breathtaking as the fact that he seems to expect people to believe that the fundraiser he held for veterans was something he did out of the goodness of my heart.

A little reminder: Trumps veterans fundraiser was, in point of fact, a calculated political event that -- questionably -- mixed the work of the Trump Foundation and Trumps campaign.

It was held on January 28 in Des Moines, Iowa, at exactly the same time that Fox News was hosting a debate featuring all of the other Republican candidates for president. Trump had previously made a big show of refusing to participate in the debate, claiming that host Megyn Kelly would treat him unfairly. Trump made it clear that part of his intention in scheduling the event when he did was to damage the ratings of the Fox debate.

His event was carried live and in its entirety by C-SPAN and One America Network, and all of the major news networks other than Fox cut to it regularly. Despite its supposed charitable intent, Trump spoke from behind a podium emblazoned with his campaign slogan, Make America Great Again, and delivered remarks virtually indistinguishable from a campaign speech.

Trump claimed to have raised $6 million that night, which is possible given pledges that never paid, later downgraded to $5.6 million. But the amount of free media coverage his campaign received as a result of the event was likely worth a whole lot more than that.

Given that background, an aggressive fact-check of Trumps claims about the fundraiser was necessary. Trumps petulant reaction to that fact-check, given everything he has demonstrated about himself in the past year, was probably inevitable.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Before they exit high school, some soon-to-be graduates leave one last mark on the institution they are graduating from.

Senior pranks, which are generally stunts pulled by seniors designed to amuse the school community, and often not school-sanctioned, have been going on for generations.

But sometimes teens take the tradition too far. For example, nearly half of the senior class at an Arkansas high school wasn't allowed to attend graduation this month -- and are even facing criminal charges -- because of a prank that involved vandalism, according to a recent news report.

However, some of today's teens organize more harmless stunts. At one Texas high school, for instance, seniors filled the school with thousands of balloons, which the principal seemed to enjoy, a local news publication reported this month.

High school educators have differing opinions on these activities.

"We definitely worry about senior pranks every year," says Peyton Chapman, principal of Lincoln High School in Portland, Oregon. The administration meets each year to discuss how to deter pranks, since they've had some issues with pranks in the past.



[See how high school teachers say goodbye to seniors.]

She says her students are really great kids, but staff informs them of the consequences of senior pranks, including jeopardizing walking at graduation. Staff tries to completely discourage senior pranks, she says, but if they can't completely prevent them, they try to encourage students to tell a staff member what is happening beforehand so they can give feedback if it's a really bad idea.

Flat-out saying "no" can really challenge students to do bigger and worse things, she says.

Chapman says she can't condone pranks, but sometimes seniors pull clever pranks that don't hurt anyone or violate school policy. However, as a school principal, she doesn't always have a say in whether the district will enforce a policy or police will press charges over of a prank, simply because she knows the students didn't mean any harm or are good kids.

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"I don't like senior pranks," says Scott Greupink, principal of Oostburg High School in Wisconsin. His school has not had a tradition of senior pranks, for which he is thankful. When there is a tradition, stunts tend to escalate, he says.

There have been a few small pranks at his school, but none have been mean-spirited or disruptive, he says.

"We don't overreact to them," he says. "But when we get the opportunity we just say, 'We are not going to endorse this.' We are not going to pretend we like it."

[Find out how educators eliminate physical violence in high schools.]

Some school districts in Colorado allow senior pranks. And a high school in Connecticut recently allowed a prank with school approval.

Greupink says there's a principal in his area who goes out of his way to approve senior pranks. He's not in favor of that because he thinks it somewhat sanctions pranks and sends a mixed message.

Twitter users shared their opinions with U.S. News.

@alipannoni @usnews No wiggle room if it compromises safety and/or security

-- Thomas M. Pond, Jr. (@TommyPond) May 26, 2016

@alipannoni

Yes ma'am. I want them to have fun & remember good times. They sort of know they need to "do the right thing" & not go too far

-- Thomas M. Pond, Jr. (@TommyPond) May 26, 2016

@alipannoni @USNewsEducation @usnews In my experience they have been an innocent, fun tradition that add to the end-of-year festivities

-- Aaron Payne (@AaronPayne14) May 26, 2016

When it comes to pranks, Chapman thinks students' intent is generally good, but today there are often stricter policies.

"I think that they are trying to be funny, make the end of the year something memorable for them and their peers that when they get to their 20th or 50th class reunion they will have a great story," she says.

Have something of interest to share? Send your news to us at highschoolnotes@usnews.com.

Alexandra Pannoni is an education Web producer at U.S. News. You can follow her on Twitter or email her at apannoni@usnews.com.
This high school got rid of prom kings and queens for an important reason

This high school got rid of prom kings and queens for an important reason

For decades, prom has been exactly the same. Theres the dresses, the dancing, and of course, the prom king and queen. But one high school in Andover, Massachusetts has said, No more. According to the Eagle Tribune, Andover High Schools junior prom, held on May 14th, didnt elect a king and queen. Instead, the students voted two people to prom court as a part of their mission towards gender neutrality.

This decision is based on the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Educations Guidance for Massachusetts Public Schools: Creating a Safe and Supportive School Environment, which writes that as a general matter, schools should evaluate all gender-based policies, rules, and practices and maintain only those that have a clear and sound pedagogical (educational) purpose.

Since having a prom king and a king queen does not serve an an educational purpose, the school made some changes. So on the special night, two male students were welcomed to the court after students voted based on a list of 10 names.

This isnt the only change the school has made in an effort to be more inclusive.

Were in the process of developing gender-neutral bathrooms throughout the district, but have one gender-neutral bathroom at the high school right now, explained Superintendent Sheldon Berman. Principal Phil Conrad is working on transitioning two or three more so that we would have up to four gender-neutral bathrooms at the high school.

Of course, this prom decision came with some controversy.

Theyre not getting the whole perspective of the 450 plus kids in our grade, which is concerning to me because it wasnt a reflection of what the junior class wanted, Junior Jules Teichert said during a committee meeting last week. Weve been somewhat of a guinea pig class and have had a lot of changes happen to our grade. I feel like this should really be a student decision rather than all of a sudden just going ahead with it.

However, this doesnt mean students are against the change. Caitlin Mitchell, an English teacher and the schools Gay-Straight Alliance advisor, told the newspaper they have only received positive or neutral reactions to the new prom courtwhich proves how ready our generation is to make the world a safer and more inclusive place.

The post This high school got rid of prom kings and queens for an important reason appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Government appointed committee, headed by, former Cabinet Secretary, TSR Subramanian recently submitted its recommendations on new education policy. The report that was submitted to the Ministry of Human Resource Department (HRD) is in the consultation process in the department. The ministry is said to be in the process of framing a New Education Policy, which will include thematic online, grass-roots, and national-level deliberations on 33 themes.

The committee comprised of, other than Subramanian, former Chief Secretary of Delhi government Shailaja Chandra, former Home Secretary, Delhi government Sevaram Sharma, former Chief Secretary Gujarat Sudhir Mankad, and former Director- NCERT, JS Rajput.

As per the HRD Ministry, the bottom-up consultative process was done across nearly all gram panchayats, blocks, urban local bodies and districts of all 36 states and UTs was undertaken between May to October 2015. Thematic consultations were conducted both by the ministry and also by institutions like UGC, AICTE, NCTE, NCERT and several universities and autonomous bodies. Six zonal meetings were held by the HRD Minister in eastern, central, north-eastern, western, southern and northern zones covering all states.

Here are a few recommendations of the committee:

1- One Lakh scholarships for meritorious students from poor families and socially and backward communities to pursue higher education.

2- The autonomy of a higher education institution should depend on their rating or performance. Those making it to the highest bracket should have the freedom to choose their fee structure, curriculum, and even the scales paid to the faculty. However, those falling in the lowest category will have to close down.

3- The committee also proposed greater professionalism in rating, which is presently done NAAC under University Grants Commission. The committee suggested rating should be taken care of by agencies or companies that are trained to evaluate.

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4- To generate more talent in the teaching industry, the committee has called for an Indian Education Service. The selection to which should be done by the UGC.

5- For greater quality of education in schools, committee has suggested that the no detention policy be restricted to Class V only instead of Class VIII. A student failing in Class V examination will be given another attempt to pass, if he or she fails again, there should be an option to specialize in some vocation in order to inculcate vocational training alongside language and numerical skills.

6- Students who are unable to learn as per the requirements should be given remedial classes from Class I itself and online resources should be put to use for this.

7- Pride in the nation  such as inculcation of peace, harmony, respect for diversity, equality etc- should be one of the values inculcated in students through education.
From Cosmopolitan

Three years after 66-year-old Geraldine A. Largay was reported missing while hiking the Appalachian Trail, investigators at the Maine Warden Service have released over 1,500 documents regarding her disappearance, including evidence that suggests that Largay had survived for nearly a month while lost in the wilderness.

According to the New York Times, the retired nurse from Tennessee had originally begun her journey at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, along with a friend, Jane Lee, on April 23, 2013. A couple months later, however, her friend was forced to cut her trip short due to a family emergency; and Largay decided to continue on the trail alone.

For the next three weeks, everything went according to plan, and Largay had traveled all the way from New Hampshire to Maine alone. With less than 200 miles to go, Largay set off early on the morning of July 22 from the Poplar Ridge lean-to, where a fellow hiker snapped her photograph. This would be the last time she was spotted alive.

As the New York Times explains, at some point, Largay strayed from the trail to go to the bathroom, but was unable to find her way back when she was done. She attempted to send multiple text messages to her husband to explain her situation and ask him to call for help, but to no avail.

"Lost since yesterday," one of them read. "Off trail 3 or 4 miles. Call police for what to do pls."

Over the next couple weeks, Largay kept an extremely detailed journal about her time lost in the wildnerness, and by her final entry, seemed to have accepted that she would not be found.

"When you find my body, please call my husband George and my daughter Kerry," she wrote. "It will be the greatest kindness for them to know that I am dead and where you found me - no matter how many years from now."

The entry was dated August 18, nearly a month after she'd been reported missing; yet her remains would only be discovered two years later, when a logging company surveyor happened upon her body and her campsite. As a result, her family was finally able to find peace - and a couple weeks later, visited the spot that she had been discovered to leave a small, white wooden cross, covered in well-wishes.

For more of the story, you can read the rest of the New York Times article here.

Follow Gina on Twitter.
Celebrities are reacting to the controversial shooting of an endangered gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo over the weekend.



Seventeen-year-old gorilla Harambe was shot and killed on Saturday after a 4-year-old boy slipped into his enclosure. The child climbed through a public barrier, falling into the Gorilla World exhibit's moat. While two female gorillas were removed from the enclosure immediately, Harambe remained near the child.



The Zoo's Dangerous Animal Response Team determined that the situation was life-threatening, and decided to kill Harambe.



"The Zoo security team's quick response saved the child's life. We are all devastated that this tragic accident resulted in the death of a critically-endangered gorilla," the zoo's director Thane Maynard said in the statement. "This is a huge loss for the Zoo family and the gorilla population worldwide."



"He was acting erratically, he was disoriented," Maynard said. "It's due to his strength, that's where the danger was."



An eyewitness told PEOPLE that the gorilla displayed violent behavior soon after he came into contact with the young boy.



"What you don't see is the way he pulled the boy up the wall. He was treating the little boy like a Raggedy Ann doll in his grip," said Kim O'Connor, who filmed the incident.









Regardless, animal activists have launched a petition, pressing the zoo to take legal action against the boy's parents. And several celebrities have spoken out against the zoo's decision to kill Harambe and the parents' involvement in the incident.





Taking their eye off the ball, but no child should ever be able to crawl into a gorilla compound. https://t.co/intjxDvUqk a Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) May 29, 2016





Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump shared his opinion during a press conference Tuesday:



"I think itas a very tough call. It was amazing. Because there were moments with the gorilla the way he held that child, it was almost like a mother holding a baby. It looked so beautiful and calm. And there were moments where he looked pretty dangerous. I donat think they had a choice. Probably they didnat have a choice. you have a child, a young child who's at stake. It's too bad there wasnat another way. I thought it was so beautiful to watchathat powerful, almost 500-pound gorilla, the way he dealt with that little boy. It just takes one second a It just takes one little flick of his finger and I will tell you they probably had no choice."





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This is why I hate zoos! This is so messed up. This poor gorilla. https://t.co/sdr3KXMyQa a Kat McPhee (@katharinemcphee) May 29, 2016







It seems that some gorillas make better parents than some people. a Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) May 29, 2016







It saddens me to no end that a gorilla had to be put down because of an irresponsible parent. However you look at it, that's just sad. a Katee Sackhoff (@kateesackhoff) May 30, 2016







How was the gorilla enclosure not child proof? You're dealing with an endangered species & yet you've made it possible for kids to fall in? a Zelda Williams (@zeldawilliams) May 29, 2016







For the record, the parents are absolutely partially at fault, but it shouldn't have been possible, unsupervised or otherwise. a Zelda Williams (@zeldawilliams) May 29, 2016







Damn homie.. You was just chillin at your crib. R.I.P pic.twitter.com/shTdDzldwh a ICE T (@FINALLEVEL) May 30, 2016







Oh the poor gorilla,he did nothing wrong,if you watch the video,so sad..as a mother I would've jumped in too. a Lisa Vanderpump (@LisaVanderpump) May 30, 2016







A photo posted by @normancook on May 30, 2016 at 9:25pm PDT







shame on those for the murdering of #Harambe a Kelly Osbourne (@KellyOsbourne) May 31, 2016






From handcuffs to aspiring model, his career is heating up. Jeremy Meeks, whose mug shot went viral in June 2014 and earned him the nickname hot felon, is ready to begin his modeling career when hes out of federal custody on July 7.

PHOTOS: Internet Celebrity Sensations: The Top 14 Viral Stars of 2014

The former forklift operator has signed with talent agent Jim Jordan from White Cross Management in L.A., according to New York Magazine. Since Meeks isnt technically supposed to be giving interviews at the moment, Jordan is opening up about his vision for Meeks and telling his story in an interview in the latest issue of New York Magazine.

Back in 2014, Meeks was arrested after he pulled up at the house of a documented gang member during a raid. He had marijuana and a 9mm cartridge in the car plus an unregistered, loaded pistol in the trunk. He was later convicted of one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm. I just visited my wife and she said I, like, blew up all over Facebook, he had previously said when a TV crew arrived at the San Joaquin County Jail the day after his mugshot went up online, according to the magazine.

PHOTOS: Celebrity Mugshots

His wife, Melissa Curl  with whom Meeks shares a son, plus two of Curls children from a previous relationship  has been key in communicating between her husband and the plethora of people who want to manage him. While Jordan wasnt allowed into the prison to see the convicted felon, he would speak with Curl weekly about their hopes for Meeks, and she would translate their conversations to Meeks during her visits.



Eventually, Jordan began speaking on the phone and over FaceTime with the Stockton, California, native. When I talked to Jeremy about his world, its not like me or people I know, Jordan told New York Magazine. He has never known a model or an actor or anyone in our business. For him, the celebrities growing up were, like, gang people. And when I talked to Jeremy and got to know his heart, I understood this is something real. And I chose to have a vision for him. Meeks also told Jordan it was the realization that he was well and truly screwed that caused him to pout in his mug shot and position his head in a certain way to hide his neck tattoos.

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PHOTOS: Stars at Court

Recently, Meeks announced he wanted to get all his tattoos removed, which include a teardrop under his left eye. Jordan expressed this could be an obstacle to signing deals for Meeks because many people were drawn to his bad-boy image. When Jordan asked Meeks over FaceTime if he still intended to remove them, the felon said, As soon as possible. My kids are at the age when they ask questions. I want them to know this is not the life. I dont want them to think, My dad is that, so I have to be that.

PHOTOS: Celebrities' Crazy Tattoos

For now, Meeks is in a re-entry program and is under house arrest for good behavior, so he's been filling his time by hitting the gym. He works out three, four times a day, Jordan said. He has a 10-pack. Lean, hes 6-foot-1  the perfect height  fits the clothes perfect, super-white teeth.



The talent agent bragged to the magazine about all the opportunities lined up for Meeks and all the companies that have expressed interest. Hes going to walk in the shows in Paris, Jordan said, adding that the aspiring model's runway walk is spectacular. Other projects Meeks has missed out on while hes been in prison: a role in the Vin Diesel film xXx: The Return of Xander Cage, a September cover of W with Rihanna, and photo shoots with famed photographers such as Bruce Weber and Steven Klein.

I dont want Jeremy just going on shows and being like, Hey, Im a prisoner, Jordan told New York Magazine. Meeks plans to have a message: To help get guns out of kids hands, Jordan said.








Tuesday, May 31, 2016

From this point forward, I will be replacing Zacks Director of Research Sheraz Mian for this Ahead of Wall Street feature. Sheraz moves to the soon-to-come Zacks Research Daily, which will showcase each days must-read research reports from our analyst team. (More information to come on Zacks Research Daily over the next few days.)

On this final trading day of the month of May, we await a slew of economic data this week, both domestically  from Consumer Confidence today to the big non-farm payroll jobs report on Friday  and globally  from Chinese data throughout the week to the Eurozone PMI Composite Friday. Futures this morning are tepid; with solid data due, traders are likely to sit on their hands even if they are back to work after a long Memorial Day weekend.

At this point, the next big mover of the markets looks to be Janet Yellens Fed speech next Monday, after the FOMC has had a chance to review the vast array of information that comes out this week. Its pretty apparent the committee does want to move forward on a new rate hike (0.25 percent, no more) but remains cautious in the wake of rather noisy, but not catastrophic, global economic developments.

Look no further than this mornings Personal Income and Spending numbers for April: income up 0.4 percent, as expected. A slight March revision brought it up 0.1 percent to UNCH. Personal spending rose exactly one full percentage point, on strong durables sales (cars). (We also get a comprehensive vehicles sales report tomorrow.)

Chicago PMI, Consumer Confidence are also due out today. The ADP jobs report comes out tomorrow morning, along with EMU, Global, ISM and PMI Manufacturing results. Lots to chew on.

So, will it be Hot Fun in the Summertime or a Bummer in the Summer? This weeks data may go a long way in providing some answers and clearer outlooks.

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As opinions shift in the outlooks of the various markets, its best to track aggregate impressions of these developments as theyre taking place. The Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell) and the Zacks Style Score (Value, Growth, Momentum, or VGM) are excellent meters to utilize changing moods among your most loved (and/or loathed) stocks. Check out your favorite stocks Quote Page.

Mark Vickery

Senior Editor



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Men are the kings of convenience- A line from a very pro-feminist Malayalam movie.

The sex ratio (women:men is 1058:1000) is the best in the country. Many Malayali couples consider it a blessing when their newborn is a girl. So no, we Malayalis dont murder our babies when we discover that theyre penis-free.

I dont think theres another community in India that encourages women to get educated and have fulfilling careers as much as us Malayalis. When it comes to education and employment opportunities for women, were #1.

More From 101 India: When You Live In Kerala, Everyones Entitled To Judge You And Give You Their Opinion

But that encouragement comes with a list  a list of terms and conditions longer than the one on iTunes. If youre from Kerala, your ability to adhere to whats expected of you is your support system.

Malayali women (Photo credit: Arjun Raj)



You have to dress a certain way, walk a certain walk, and talk a certain talk.

Back when I was a kid, there was this family of 5 living in the neighborhood  parents and three beautiful girls. From what I could see, the parents were really open-minded. The girls usually wore sleeveless tops and tight jeans. Considering the place and time they were living in, that took some serious chutzpah.

The girls would walk around the streets, wearing whatever they wanted. But as soon as they were out of sight, the neighborhood aunties would gather around, like hungry piranhas swarming around an unsuspecting swimmer.

And one of those aunties was my very own sweet mother.

She just doesnt know it yet, but my mother is a feminist icon to me. Shes a badass, well-respected, working woman who reached great heights in her career while simultaneously caring for her family like a champ.

But she doesnt necessarily believe in feminist values like the rest of us. In fact, I think its right to say shes not a feminist. Is it possible for my mother to not be a feminist but still be a feminist icon to her children? To me, it is.

Story continues

More From 101 India: Walking In The Sea Bed At Zanzibar, Flying A Micro Light Plane, Tandem Bungee Jumping

Every day, Id watch her join the neighborhood judgment panel that would pass its daily verdict on those three girls. She wasnt an active participant in the panel, though she did share valuable inputs whenever she could.

But when my sister moved to Bangalore for college and started wearing all those slutty clothes the trinity used to, it was amazing how quickly my mothers opinions changed.

Suddenly, my mom was a staunch supporter of liberal attire. The hypocrisy of the Malayali mother, I tell you!

Whats even more ironic is the weekly schedule of the other members of the judgment panel.

Kudumasree (Photo credit: The Hindu)



After all the nosiness and holier-than-thou judging at their weekly meeting, they would go straight to another meeting, at Kudumabshree: the largest, most successful woman empowerment network in the country.

The Kudumbashree project and all the similar ones in Kerala are something every Malayali can be proud of. The concept of housewife doesnt exist anymore in Kerala. Everyones contributing and everyones participating.

How a society this progressive can be equally backward, Ill never know. Im sorry, I cant decode that for you.

Now back to the men of convenience. A real feminist would say women are still oppressed in Kerala. As a feminist, I should be able to fact check the statement, but as Im writing this, Im realizing my own hypocrisy.

A true feminist wouldnt ignore the blatant sexism of organized religion the way I do while I visit my parents with my sister during Onam. Me? I conveniently ignore the mountain of dishes, so that my sister can take care of them. And she does. Every single time I visit.

More From 101 India: Travel & Food

Yes, I am a man of convenience. So is my father. So are most of the Malayali men I know.

Maybe its this convenience that is holding us back as a community. But whatever it is, in a society where everyone is educated and well informed, its not just ignorance: its the epitome of hypocrisy.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are independent views solely of the author(s) expressed in their private capacity and do not in any way represent or reflect the views of 101India.com.

By Arjun Raj

Cover Photo Credit: www.businessinsider.in

For more visit www.101india.com


Indias multi-Oscar-winning musician and composer A.R. Rahman has been named as grand prize winner of the prestigious Fukuoka Prize.

The Fukuoka Prize was established in 1990 to honor the outstanding work of individuals and organizations to preserve and promote the unique and diverse cultures of Asia. Previous winners include Muhammad Yunus, from Bangladesh, who went on to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, Mo Yan, from China, subsequent winner of the Nobel Literature Prize and another Indian music giant Ravi Shankar.

Prolific and multi-talented, Rahman has music credits for major Indian films including Raavan, Yuvraaj, Rockstar and Rang de Basanti, as well as Western and Hollywood titles including Elizabeth: The Golden Age, 127 Hours and Slumdog Millionaire.

Fukuoka Prize organizers said: By his world-famous music, Mr. A. R. Rahman has opened up a new arena for film music, and has become a driving-force of this field to gain it a new recognition (he has a) bold fusion of traditional South Asian, classical Western and popular contemporary American hip-hop and other music.

Winners of this years other prizes are Dr. Ambeth R. Ocampo (Philippines/History) for the academic prize and Yasmeen Lari (Pakistan/Architecture), winner of the Arts and Culture Prize. Laureates will receive their awards in Fukuoka, Japan in September.

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Indonesian police briefly detained hundreds of pro-independence demonstrators in Papua on Tuesday, the latest round-up of protesters in the insurgency-hit eastern region.

Police said demonstrators staged rallies calling for the release of political prisoners and for an organisation representing Papuan resistance groups to be given full membership of a regional trade and security body.

A low-level insurgency has simmered for decades in resource-rich Papua, with Jakarta keeping a tight grip on the region through a heavy military and police presence.

Papua police chief Paulus Waterpauw said that around 300 people, some in traditional tribal dress, were briefly detained as they were demonstrating in Jayapura, the capital of Papua province, and several other cities without a permit.

"These people were supporting groups who demand Papuan independence, and they did not have permits to stage a protest," he told AFP.

He said the demonstrators were rounded up and addressed by police and local politicians before being released.

Victor Yeimo, from pro-independence youth group the West Papua National Committee, said that the demonstrators had requested a permit to stage a protest but police refused.

"This is a peaceful act and the right to express our opinions is protected by law -- why do the police always try to stop us?" he said.

Earlier this month 1,200 pro-independence demonstrators were briefly detained in Papua to stop rallies planned to mark the anniversary of Indonesia taking control of the region from former colonial power the Netherlands in 1963.

Tuesday's demonstrators were calling for the release of dozens of Papuan separatists jailed for committing treason for acts such as raising the pro-independence "Morning Star" flag and taking part in anti-government protests.

They were also demanding that the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) -- an umbrella body representing resistance groups in the Papua -- be given full membership of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG), a trade and security body.

Indonesia last year joined the group as an associate member, but the ULMWP was only given observer status.

Insurgents are fighting on behalf of the mostly ethnic Melanesian population, whose livelihoods President Joko Widodo has pledged to improve.
Updated May 31 at 4:45 p.m. EST

Investigators released a yearlong investigation on Tuesday that looked into painkiller abuse at Wisconsins Tomah Veterans Affairs Medical Center and found systemic failures in the way the facility operated.

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs headed the investigation of the center, which has been called Candy Land by some veterans because doctors there were said to easily prescribe painkillers. The 359-page report also said the centers psychiatrist, David Houlihan, and his nurse practitioner, Deborah Frasher, may also have been using the drugs they offered to veterans. Among veterans, Houlihan, who still has a medical license, was especially well-known for passing out pills.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported:

Johnson said a number of whistleblowers had raised questions about Houlihan and Frasher's personal use of prescription medication. He said the inspectors appear to have observed this problem firsthand, but left it to DeSanctis to follow up. There was some talk, Johnson said, about conducting drug tests on the two medical professionals. "We don't think that happened," Johnson said. Still, Wisconsin's senior senator stopped short of saying he thinks Houlihan should be stripped of his license, saying that is up to the state's medical board. "I'm not a doctor myself, but I hope they read this report," Johnson said.

This report is a follow up to one conducted in 2014 by the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, which found that over-prescribing painkillers may have led to three deaths.

The facility has been at the center of political attack ads during the U.S. Senate race between Republican Ron Johnson and Democrat Russ Feingold, who have blamed each other for ignoring the issue during their terms in the U.S. Senate. In 2011 Feingold lost his seat to Johnson, who now heads the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, the committee leading the investigation.

Story continues

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
#Korean Air Korean Air plane heads to Cebu to bring back stranded passengers An alternative Korean Air plane departed for the Philippines on Tuesday to bring home passengers stranded after another plane run by the air carrier overran the airport runway in C...

#(G)I-dle I-dle tops local music charts with 'Nxde' Girl group (G)I-dle topped daily and weekly charts of five major local music streaming services with its release "Nxde" on Tuesday, a week after it dropped. "Nxde," the main tra...
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Iran will soon sign a $3 billion investment deal with Turkish private companies on building a 5,000 megawatt power plant in Iran, Turkey's Hurriyet newspaper on Tuesday cited the Iranian deputy energy minister as saying. Most international sanctions on Tehran were lifted in January in exchange for curbs on Iran's nuclear program under a deal reached with world powers in 2015. Hurriyet reported Husheng Felahetiyan as saying the Turkish energy sector had shown strong interest in Iran after the lifting of sanctions. "In the coming days we will sign an investment deal with Turkish private sector companies for the construction of a 5,000 megawatt power plant in Iran. The size of this deal is $3 billion," he was quoted as saying. "We have other agreements with Turks but they have not been finalised and talks are continuing," he told Hurriyet during an energy conference in Tehran. He said Iranian power trade with Turkey would also increase. (Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by David Dolan)
By Maher Nazeh and Saif Hameed CAMP TARIQ, Iraq (Reuters) - Islamic State fighters halted an Iraqi army assault on the city of Falluja with a counter-attack at its southern gates on Tuesday, while the United Nations warned of peril for civilians trapped in the city and used by militants as human shields. The Iraqi army's assault on Falluja has begun what is expected to be one of the biggest battles ever fought against Islamic State, with the government backed by world powers including the United States and Iran, and determined to win back the first major Iraqi city that fell to the group in 2014. A week after Baghdad announced the start of the assault, its troops advanced in large numbers into the city limits for the first time on Monday, pouring into rural territory on its southern outskirts but stopping short of the main built-up area. Baghdad describes the assault to retake the city as a potential turning point in its U.S.-backed campaign to defeat the ultra-hardline Sunni Muslim militants who rule a self-proclaimed caliphate across much of Iraq and Syria. Falluja, where U.S. troops fought the biggest battles of their own 2003-2011 occupation against Islamic State's precursors, is the militants' closest bastion to Baghdad, believed to be the base from which they have waged a campaign of suicide bombings on the capital less than an hour's drive away. Retaking it would give the government control of the main population centers in the fertile Euphrates River valley west of the capital for the first time in more than two years. But the assault is also a test of the army's ability to capture territory while protecting civilians. Although most of Falluja's population is believed to have fled during six months of siege, 50,000 people are still thought to be trapped inside with limited access to food, water or healthcare. "HUMAN CATASTROPHE UNFOLDING" A human catastrophe is unfolding in Falluja. Families are caught in the crossfire with no safe way out, said Jan Egeland, Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, one of the organizations helping families displaced form the city. Warring parties must guarantee civilians safe exit now, before its too late and more lives are lost, he said. The United Nations said there were reports that the militants were using several hundred families as human shields in the city center, a tactic they have employed in other locations in Iraq. It said 3,700 people had managed to escape the city in the past week. "Most people able to get out come from the outskirts of Falluja. For some time militants have been controlling movements, we know civilians have been prevented from fleeing," said Ariane Rummery, spokeswoman for UN refugee agency UNHCR. "There are also reports from people who left in recent days that they are being required to move with ISIL within Falluja," she said, using an acronym for Islamic State, also known as ISIS or Daesh. Soldiers from Iraq's elite Rapid Response Team stopped their advance overnight about 500 meters (yards) from the al-Shuhada district, the southeastern part of city's main built-up area, an army commander and a police officer said. MILITANTS DUG IN "Our forces came under heavy fire, they are well dug in in trenches and tunnels," said the commander speaking in Camp Tariq, the rear army base south of Falluja, 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad. Reuters journalists in the area could hear explosions from artillery shelling and air strikes from a U.S.-led coalition supporting the Iraqi forces. A staff member of Falluja's main hospital said it received reports of 32 civilians killed on Monday. Medical sources had reported that the death toll in the city stood at about 50 -- 30 civilians and 20 militants -- during the first week of the offensive which had yet to involve street fighting. Foreign aid organizations are not present in Falluja but are providing help in camps to those who manage to exit. Falluja is the second-largest Iraqi city still under control of the militants, after Mosul, their de facto capital in the north that had a pre-war population of about 2 million. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the assault on Falluja on May 22 after a spate of bombings that killed more than 150 people in one week in Baghdad, the worst death toll so far this year. A series of bombings claimed by Islamic State also hit Baghdad on Monday, killing more than 20 people. In Washington, U.S. officials said the Falluja operation would take time to complete, without giving a timetable. "The Falluja offensive is tough ... They have faced a lot of heavy fighting in the past couple of days, machine gun fire, artillery fire, not to mention the constant threat of IEDs," Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said on Tuesday. POLITICAL PRESSURE ON ABADI The worsening security situation in the capital has added to political pressure on Abadi, a member of Iraq's Shi'ite majority who is trying to hold a ruling coalition together in the face of public protests against an entrenched political class. He has called for politicians to set aside their differences and rally behind the army during the Falluja offensive. Shi'ite militia groups backed by Iran are also taking part in the offensive against Islamic State, but are holding back from participating in the main assault on Falluja to avoid inflaming sectarian tension. Reuters journalists saw hundreds of Shi'ite militia fighters rallying at one location near Saqlawiya, a village north of Fallluja still under IS control. The United States is leading a coalition conducting air strikes in support of the Iraqi government offensive, and says it is having success in rolling back Islamic State. In neighbouring Syria, U.S. forces have also aided mainly Kurdish fighters who have seized territory from the militants, as has the Russian-backed government of President Bashar al-Assad. Falluja has been a bastion of the Sunni insurgency that fought both the U.S. occupation of Iraq and the Shi'ite-led Baghdad government that took over after the fall of dictator Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, in 2003. It would be the third major city in Iraq recaptured by the government after Saddam's home town Tikrit and Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's vast western Anbar province, which also includes Falluja. (Reporting by Maher Nazeh and Saif Hameed near Falluja; Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Idrees Ali and Timothy Gardner in Washington.; Writing by Maher Chmaytelli and Peter Graff, editing by Peter Millership and Alan Crosby)
ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - Two Yazidi women have been rescued from Islamic State captivity in Falluja by Iraqi forces during an ongoing offensive to retake the militant stronghold, a representative of the minority said on Tuesday. Vian Dakhil, a Yazidi member of the Iraqi parliament, thanked the army for rescuing the two women on Monday in a post on her official Twitter account. "My prayers for saving the rest," she wrote. More than 5,000 Yazidis, mostly women and children, were captured and enslaved by the militants when they overran the Sinjar area in northwestern Iraq in the summer of 2014, purging the minority they consider to be devil worshippers. Since then, more than 2,000 Yazidis have escaped, been ransomed or rescued, but the rest remain unaccounted for. Yazidi captives have been taken to towns and cities across the militants' self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria, including their de facto capitals of Raqqa and Mosul. After Mosul, Falluja is the largest Iraqi city still under control of the militants. Dakhil suggested in another Twitter post that many more Yazidis were being held in prisons there. Iraqi forces backed by Shi'ite paramilitaries reached Falluja's southern outskirts on Monday, but faced fierce resistance overnight and paused. Aid workers are warning of what they call a "human catastrophe" inside the city, which has been besieged by Iraqi forces for six months, trapping more than 50,000 people within. (Reporting by Isabel Coles; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
DUBLIN (Reuters) - Irish consumer sentiment slumped to its lowest level in over a year in May as optimism about Ireland's economic outlook deteriorated in the European Union's fastest growing economy, a survey showed on Tuesday.

The KBC Bank Ireland/ESRI Consumer Sentiment Index fell to 98.1 in May from 102.7 in April, its lowest level since March 2015. The index hit a 15-year high of 108.6 in January.

While consumers did not report a significant fall in their current financial circumstances, they were less optimistic about future employment prospects and their personal financial situation twelve months from now, the survey's authors said.

The survey "points towards a more nervous consumer who is a little less confident in the outlook for the Irish economy and disappointed with the development of their own household finances," KBC chief economist Austin Hughes said.

He said uncertainty about the global economy also appeared to be weighing on sentiment.

Ireland outperformed the rest of the euro zone for the second time last year, growing by 7.8 percent with gross domestic product forecast to grow 4.9 percent this year.

But the country was without a government for ten weeks after an inconclusive Feb 26 election in which voters expressed anger that they were not feeling the recovery in their personal finances.

Prime Minister Enda Kenny was re-elected as head of a minority government earlier this month.

Of respondents to the May survey, 49 percent said they expected the Irish economy to strengthen in the next twelve months, but that was down from 62 percent in the January survey.

Expectations of future jobs prospects to their weakest reading in two years, the survey said, as high profile lay-offs and industrial action overshadowed a steady fall in the unemployment rate.

(Reporting by Conor Humphries; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
Dive in, your impulses tell you as soon as the fragrant bowl of layered deliciousness is delicately placed on the table. But you mustnt approach with haste.

Khao soy deserves reverence, and you, dear eater, must put the final touches on this Laotian hit before you can become a satisfied slurper. So let us belly up to a noodle shop in scenic Luang Prabang to take a trip through this increasingly popular cultural collision.

The process begins with tangy fermented soybean paste, the critical element that can be hard to find outside Southeast Asia. Mix with minced pork belly, garlic, onion and cherry tomatoes. Simmer for six hours, and theres your meat paste. The blood-red mixture is combined with soft, broad rice noodles and broth. At homes in the countryside, the stock is typically made from buffalo bones. In city restaurants, more often than not, its store-bought stock hyped up with MSG  an unfortunate little secret shared with OZY by Joy Ngeuamboupha, owner and chef at Tamarind Restaurant in Luang Prabang, who makes khao soy occasionally at home. His wife is a devotee.

When the steaming bowl arrives, it comes with a fresh basket of sides. The final step is in the hands of the eater. You must sift through the green beans, Thai basil, lettuce, chilies and mint, perhaps some coriander or watercress, to decide what is worth adding and mixing in to the concoction. Fish sauce, soy sauce, chilies, sugar and vinegar are available to tinker with the flavor profile. If youre flush with cash, spring for the flash-fried sticky rice cake for an extra 12 cents. Crumbled into the soup, it crackles like Rice Krispies as it sinks in to become a salty, soggy delight.

Once the bowl is brought to equilibrium, grab your spoon and chopsticks and get to work.

The spice hits the back of your tongue but does not overpower. The green beans provide a welcome snap. The noodles are even more tender than the pork.

Not bad for about $2.

This seemingly timeless dish has only grown popular in recent years in these parts. Originating from the Tai Lu ethnic minority, which lives in parts of China, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam, it showed up in Luang Prabang around the 1990s. Along with a cousin of Vietnams pho noodles, khao soy has become an increasingly popular breakfast and lunch, Ngeuamboupha says. The dishs growth is a sign of rising incomes in still-impoverished Laos, as eating meat was once an extreme rarity. Nonetheless, khao soy is seen as a delicious and relatively cheap way to feed a crowd. In the capital city of Vientiane, the sauce is lighter. Further north they crank up the soybean paste but skimp on the meat. That makes the Luang Prabang version the Goldilocks choice.

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That is, if Goldilocks liked her porridge with a haymaker of flavor.

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CAIRO (Reuters) - Islamic State on Tuesday urged Muslims to destroy their satellite TV sets to prevent hostile channels "destroying their beliefs and polluting their ethics". The ultra-hardline Sunni group issued its call as military pressure increased against it with offensives targeting its strongholds in Raqqa, Syria, and in Falluja, west of Baghdad. "The enemies of Islam are waging a media war on the Islamic State that is no less dangerous than the military campaign," the group said in a video on its official Telegram account, filmed in Raqqa and monitored in Egypt. It did not say whether it would try to enforce its appeal in the territory under its control in Syria and Iraq. It singled out religious channels funded by Saudi Arabia and also showed the logos of al-Jazeera and Orient TV, a channel close to the Syrian opposition, as well as the Egyptian religious channel al-Nas. The video ended with a scene showing people stamping on satellite dishes to destroy them. Islamic State declared a caliphate over the territory of Syria and Iraq in 2014. (Reporting by Omar Fahmy; Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
Florence (Italy) (AFP) - Florence's appeals court on Tuesday upheld a 16-year jail term for Francesco Schettino, the captain of the Costa Concordia cruise ship that sank off Italy in 2012 leaving 32 people dead.

Schettino was not in court when the verdict was read out by presiding judge Grazia D'Onofrio.

He will not be jailed immediately pending a possible further appeal and Italy's crammed jails and generous parole system mean it is unlikely he will ever serve the full term.

Schettino was sentenced in February 2015 to 16 years and one month in prison after a judge ruled that his recklessness was to blame for the fate of the giant ship, which struck underwater rocks off the Tuscan island of Giglio on the night of January 14, 2012.

The prosecution had asked for his sentence to be increased to 27 years on appeal. Schettino's lawyers had demanded he be acquitted.

Schettino, 55, was convicted of multiple manslaughter, causing a maritime accident and abandoning ship before all passengers and crew had been evacuated, earning him the nickname "Captain Coward" in the press.

The violation of the ancient code of the sea which states a captain must be the last man off a sinking ship only accounted for one year of the sentence handed down by a three-judge panel in the Tuscan town of Grosseto.

During the first, 19-month trial, Schettino was accused of showing off when he steered the ship too close to the island while entertaining a female friend.

The ship had been carrying 4,229. people, including 3,200 tourists. The bodies of two of the victims have never been found.

- 'Shared blame' -

Schettino's lawyers had insisted the accident and its deadly consequences were primarily due to organisational failings for which the ship's owner, Costa Crociere, its Indonesian helmsman and the Italian coastguard should have shared the blame.

They also argued that it was not the collision, but rather the chaos that ensued due to the ship losing power that was the direct cause of the deaths. Schettino could not be blamed for the mechanical failures, they said.

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Costa Crociere avoided potential criminal charges by accepting partial responsibility and agreeing to pay a one million euro ($1.2 million) fine.

Five of its employees received non-custodial sentences after concluding plea bargains early in the investigation.

They included the ship's Indonesian helmsman, who could have averted the disaster but did not understand an order given by Schettino to change course just before the collision.

The ex-captain's lawyer said he would have liked the man at the helm to be questioned further "but he cannot be found, he has disappeared into thin air".

Survivors who rejected Costa's initial compensation offer and became civil parties in the Schettino case were awarded an average of 30,000 euros each.

Among those awarded a payout were Domnica Cemortan, the blonde Moldovan dancer with whom Schettino had dinner just before the ship hit the rocks.

On top of his original prison term, Schettino was banned from public office for life and from working as a ship captain for five years.
ROME (Reuters) - Italian police have arrested 16 people suspected of trafficking migrants across the Mediterranean from Libya after a week in which thousands were rescued and hundreds drowned trying to make the journey. As Europe's worst migration crisis since World War Two continues, more than 2,500 people are thought to have died this year after being packed into rickety boats by traffickers. Police in Catania, Sicily, said in a statement on Tuesday they had detained 16 men who were rescued in international waters along with hundreds of migrants and brought to the port city on May 28. On arrival, testimony from the migrants helped police to identify a Gambian man believed to have captained one of the boats from Libya and 15 others who had brought fuel, looked after the engine and supervised the migrants during the journey. The suspects arrived in Catania with more than 860 others who had been rescued in five different operations, police told a news conference. Most of the migrants who arrive in Italy looking for a better life in Europe come from sub-Saharan Africa via Libya, where criminal gangs have taken advantage of the breakdown of order to set up a lucrative trafficking business. The migrants arriving in Catania said they had been taken to a site near the western Libyan cities of Sabratha and Zuwarah, where they stayed for up to 45 days while the traffickers kept watch over them and fed them once a day. They were then charged the equivalent of 500-1,000 euros ($557-$1,115) for the journey. None of the migrants were given life jackets, but all the suspected traffickers wore them. Police suspect the group had contacts in Sicily to help organize the next phase of the migrants' journey. Most people who come to southern Italy want to head to stronger economies in northern Europe where they expect more opportunities. ($1 = 0.8971 euros) (Reporting by Isla Binnie; Editing by Gareth Jones)
* Shipwreck killed 32 people off Italian island in 2012

* Captain denied blame for deaths during evacuation

* Schettino can appeal again, remains free pending appeals (Adds lawyer's comment, details, background)

By Silvia Ognibene

FLORENCE, Italy, May 31 (Reuters) - A 16-year prison sentence for the former captain of the Costa Concordia cruise liner for his role in the deadly 2012 shipwreck was upheld on Tuesday by an Italian appeals court.

Francesco Schettino, who was commanding the ship when it hit rocks off the Tuscan island of Giglio, killing 32 people, and the prosecutor had both appealed against the sentence handed down last year.

Schettino was found guilty by a lower court of multiple manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning passengers in one of the highest-profile shipping disasters in recent years.

Florence's appeals court upheld that ruling, rejecting a prosecutor's request to extend the term to 27 years and three months and Schettino's lawyers' call for him to be acquitted.

The captain, who has admitted some responsibility but denied blame for the deaths that occurred during the evacuation after the ship's side tore on the rocky shore, did not attend court.

"The blame is shared, the problem is quantifying it," Schettino's lawyer Donato Laino said outside court after breaking the news to his client by telephone.

Asked whether Schettino, who wept during his final testimony last year, had expressed bitterness, Laino said: "Certainly."

Schettino can appeal against the appeal court's ruling, which also bars him from working on a ship for five years.

The judges who delivered the first verdict ruled that he would not go to prison until the appeals process - which can take years in Italy - is complete.

Investigators said Schettino brought the 290-metre vessel too close to shore and criticised his behaviour severely.

The ship's owner, Carnival Corp unit Costa Cruises, paid a fine of 1 million euros ($1.3 million at the time) and prosecutors accepted plea bargains from five officials.

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A lawyer representing a group of survivors said she had asked for a probe into the company's role to be reopened, because "there are still some guilty parties to identify".

The Costa Concordia's hulk wallowed on its side in the waters off Giglio, a popular holiday destination, for two-and-a-half years before it was righted and towed away in one of the most expensive maritime wreck recoveries in history.

The last body was recovered in 2014.

The Florence court ruled Costa Cruises and Schettino should pay the island's government 300,000 euros in compensation.

(Writing by Isla Binnie; Editing by Alison Williams)
By Ange Aboa ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Ivory Coast's former first lady, Simone Gbagbo, went on trial on Tuesday, accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes for her alleged role in a civil war that followed a 2010 presidential election and killed around 3,000 people. The trial, the West African nation's first for crimes against humanity, is being held in a domestic court after the government rejected her extradition to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. It has already drawn criticism from Gbagbo's supporters, who claim it is politically motivated, as well as from rights groups, who accuse the prosecution of rushing the investigation. Her husband, ex-president Laurent Gbagbo, is already before the ICC on charges linked to the brief conflict, which was sparked by his refusal to accept defeat to Alassane Ouattara in an election run-off. Flanked by policemen, Simone Gbagbo, a key figure in her husband's regime, greeted several dozen cheering supporters gathered at the entrance of the court in the commercial capital Abidjan with waves and smiles. The prosecution alleges she was part of a small group of party officials from Gbagbo's Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) that planned violence against Ouattara's supporters to keep him out of power. "The FPI put in place a crisis cell in January 2011 that met at the presidential residence and constituted the organ charged with planning and organising the repression," an indictment read in court stated. Simone Gbagbo did not immediately enter a plea on Tuesday. However, the indictment said she rejected the charges and denied the existence of a crisis cell at the presidency. As each witness's name was read in court, she turned in her seat, scanning the gallery. RUSHED INVESTIGATION? "This is a political trial," said Rodrigue Dadje, a member of her defence team. "Mrs Gbagbo has the right to be judged in court like any Ivorian, but her trial must be fair and that isn't the case. We already knew what the verdict would be even before the trial even opened." The former first lady's trial opened a day after Chad's ex-president Hissene Habre was convicted by a special tribunal in Senegal for ordering the killing and torture of thousands of political opponents during his eight-year rule. The success of that trial is likely to bolster the position of many African leaders who say African courts should be left to mete out justice as they see fit. Having emerged as the victor of both the polls and the war, Ouattara, now president, has refused to honour an ICC warrant against Simone, claiming that the Ivorian justice system is now capable of judging her. In an earlier trial, she was convicted in March 2015 of offences against the state and given 20 years in prison, a sentence that was upheld on appeal this month. However, despite the conviction, rights campaigners criticised the trial for failing to provide evidence linking her and other political leaders to violence by their supporters. Human rights groups including the International Federation for Human Rights, which was representing nearly 250 victims in the case against her, announced this week that it would not play a part in the trial. They claimed the prosecution's investigation had been rushed in order to respond to the ICC warrant and the trial would not give victims a full picture of the Gbagbo administration's orchestration of the post-election violence. (Writing by Joe Bavier; Editing by Gareth Jones)
Abidjan (AFP) - Ivory Coast's feisty former first lady Simone Gbagbo went on trial Tuesday for crimes against humanity in what many see as a litmus case for justice in the west African country.

The hearings into the 66-year-old's role in post-election carnage in 2010 is expected to last a month with at least 25 witnesses testifying.

Security was tight as a smiling Gbagbo, in an elegant red and white floral dress and sporting her trademark braids, was led in and seated in a red chair opposite the bench.

Nicknamed the "Iron Lady", she is accused of planning and directing rights abuses against supporters of her husband's presidential rival to try to maintain Laurent Gbagbo in power at all costs.

He was finally defeated at the polls however and is currently also facing trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

More than 3,000 people died in the bloody post-poll violence which petered out only after the arrest of the Gbagbo couple in 2011, when troops stormed the bunker where they had taken refuge in the nation's main city, Abidjan.

Simone Gbagbo faces allegations of crimes against prisoners of war, crimes against the civilian population and crimes against humanity.

For several hours her lawyers contested the court's competence, arguing that since war crimes and crimes against humanity had only been added to the Ivorian penal code in March last year, she could not be tried for incidents that went back to 2011.

After a recess the accusations were read out in court.

"I do not recognise these events," Gbagbo declared.

Outside the court house 30 people proclaimed their support for Gbagbo.

- 'Pivotal moment for justice ' -

This is her second trial in Ivory Coast where she is being held behind bars in Abidjan after a 20-year conviction for "attacking state security".

Witnesses have accused her of personally distributing arms to death squads that operated in Abidjan during the five-month conflict but she has repeatedly denied this.

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Human Rights Watch said the trial "could be a pivotal moment for justice" in the world's top cocoa producer, a beacon of stability in restive west Africa until a 1999 coup that was followed shortly after by years of low-level civil war.

The decade of strife and last wrenching months of violence between pro- and anti-Gbagbo supporters have left deep divisions in a nation still seeking reconciliation.

The trial opened just five days after the Supreme Court rejected the former first lady's final appeal against the 20-year sentence she was handed last year.

"Simone Gbagbos trial  the first in Ivory Coast for crimes against humanity  should be an opportunity for victims of pro-Gbagbo forces to learn the truth about her alleged role in abuses," Jim Wormington, west Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch said.

One of her lawyers, Mathurin Dirabou, has described the charges against her as "fanciful".

"These accusations have been created to please certain parts of the international community. It's a pity. Enough is enough," he added.

- 'Operational justice system' -

The ICC in The Hague had issued a warrant for Simone Gbagbo's arrest, but Ivorian authorities refused to hand her over, saying she would face a fair trial at home.

The decision was seen as a snub to the ICC, with President Alassane Ouattara saying he would "not send any more Ivorians" to The Hague as his country has an "operational justice system".

Ouattara has faced accusations of selective justice, with critics saying he is bent only on prosecuting crimes by pro-Gbagbo forces in 2010-2011 and is ignoring those committed by his own camp. He rejects the allegations.

On Monday, three rights groups pulled out of Simone Gbagbo's trial because of doubts over its "credibility".

"Our lawyers have not had access to all stages of the procedures -- how can they defend their case?" the head of one of the groups, the Ivorian League of Human Rights, told AFP.

The trial resumes Wednesday.
Jane Goodall, one of the worlds most renowned primatologists, wrote an email on Tuesday to the director of the Cincinnati Zoo, saying she thought the slain gorilla may have been protecting the boy who fell into the animals exhibit.

The scientist and animal rights activist extended her sympathies to the zoos director, Thane Maynard, amid national backlash over the shooting death of a 17-year-old western lowland gorilla named Harambe.

I tried to see exactly what was happeningit looked as though the gorilla was putting an arm round the childlike the female who rescued and returned the child from the Chicago exhibit, she wrote, according to the correspondence the Jane Goodall Institute made public. Goodall may have been referring to the 1996 incident at the Brookfield Zoo in Illinois in which a female gorilla carried a boy to safety after he fell into her pit.

Anyway, whatever, it is a devastating loss to the zoo, and to the gorillas, Goodall wrote.

Harambe was shot dead after officials said he dragged around a 4-year-old boy who fell into its enclosure on Saturday. Authorities are considering possible criminal charges, a prosecutor said Tuesday.

Goodall also asked how the two other female gorillas living with Harambe reacted to the death. Are they allowed to see, and express grief, which seems to be so important? she wrote.

I feel so sorry for you, having to try to defend something which you may well disapprove of, she added.

Goodall declined to comment further, a spokesman for the Jane Goodall Institute told TIME on Tuesday.

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TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will announce a delay in a planned sales-tax increase on Wednesday, local media quoted the ruling party's secretary-general as saying.

Sadakazu Tanigaki, the Liberal Democratic Party's secretary-general, said Abe would hold a news press conference on June 1 to announce the delay, according to Jiji Press and Kyodo News.

Abe pitched a plan to delay next year's sales tax hike to fellow ruling party members on Monday, some of whom expressed concerns that such a move would signal a failure of his policies to reflate the economy out of stagnation.

(Reporting by Kaori Kaneko; Editing by Chris Gallagher)
Silicon Valley-based virtual reality company Jaunt Inc. is to establish a joint venture in China with Shanghai Media Group and Whaley, the technology arm of China Media Capital.

SMG and its Oriental Pearl subsidiary will also become investors in parent company Jaunt, putting up an undisclosed sum. CMC is already an investor in Jaunt, having been a co-lead investor alongside Disney and CAA-backer Evolution Media in a $65 million series funding round last September.

Jaunt China will replicate the business models of Jaunt Inc. to bring cinematic VR experiences to the China market. International VR specialists will be teamed up to produce and distribute premium content for advertising, films and exhibitions taking advantage of the shareholders extensive IP resources, SMG said in a statement.

Jaunt has developed its own VR camera and operates cloud-based rendering and stitching algorithms and a widely compatible publishing platform.

SMG is also partnering with Amazon Web Services, which will provide Jaunt China with advanced cloud computing services in content production, processing and storage.

SMG also announced it would allocate $32 million (RMB 200 million) from its recently established RMB1 billion SMG Cultural Innovation and Entrepreneurship Fund to support professionally-generated content. It aims to develop 500 VR productions within two years.

The company is also sponsoring the phase II venture fund of UCCVR, a Chinese online community for VR content producers to incubate programs.

The Chinese pair say that the establishment of Jaunt China will help them develop VR versions of their successful content such as SMGs reality show Go Fighting and CMCs The Voice of China. Content production and IP development is what SMG has built its reputation on. We are more than happy to do our bit to promote VR development together, said Jianjun Wang, Director-General and President of SMG in a statement.

SMG recently released its first VR music video and is now offering VR-enhanced shopping on its OCJ e-commerce platform. The new alliances could also be extended to SMGs interest in gaming. It is the exclusive Chinese distributor of PlayStation consoles in China. And has partnered with Polands G2A to develop virtual theme park.

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ENDS

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From Esquire

Donald Trump must release approximately 1,000 pages of internal Trump University documents to comply with an order from a federal judge, The Washington Post reports. The judge is overseeing a civil lawsuit against Trump University for allegedly using deceptive practices to fleece its customers for thousands of dollars.

The documents include "playbooks" that outline sales strategies on how to sell expensive courses on how to get rich quick in real estate.

Three suits have been filed against the "university" in recent years-two class action lawsuits in California and one by New York state's attorney general, who called the business a "classic bait-and-switch scheme."

Ten thousand students enrolled over the five years Trump University between 2005 and 2010. However, many former students claim that they unable to get in touch with the experts they paid thousands of dollars to get access to. These experts, Trump claimed, would be "hand-picked" by the Donald himself.



At a campaign rally in San Diego on Friday, Trump fired back at Judge Gonzalo Curiel, alleging that his motivations for compelling the documents' release may be tied to his heritage and, of course, the big wall Trump wants to build on the Mexican border. Trump said the judge is a "hater of Donald Trump," later adding that he "happens to be, we believe, Mexican."

"I think Judge Curiel should be ashamed of himself. I think it's a disgrace that he is doing this, " Trump said. His attorney maintains that many students were satisfied, and those who have filed suit are just a few disgruntled customers.

The documents must be released by June 3, according to the order. A trial is set for November.
Kaley Cuoco is joining the chorus of voices speaking out against the killing of a gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo over the weekend after a 4-year-old boy fell into its enclosure. Cuocos statement comes as an eyewitness account of the gorillas violent behavior has emerged.



RIP #harambe, Cuoco wrote on Instagram, alongside a photo of the 17-year-old, 450 lb. gorilla. Im sure I will get tons of backlash (per usual) I mean lets be honest, I wear the wrong sweatpants and the entire world has something to say about it, but once again, another senseless horrendous animal being killed over people not using their brains.



Cuoco continued, If you watch the footage, you see this gorgeous animal holding that childs hand. Do with that, what you will. As sad as this makes me, a part of me is happy for that amazing creature doesnt have to live in captivity another day. Bring on the hate!!!





A photo posted by @normancook on May 30, 2016 at 9:25pm PDT









Harambe was shot by the Cincinnati Zoos Dangerous Animal Response team after the little boy dropped 15 feet into the parks gorilla enclosure. Video footage shows the gorilla pulling the little boy around the enclosure.



The woman who filmed the terrifying incident told PEOPLE she turned the camera off when Harambe pulled the boy onto the cement portion of the exhibit.



I was frozen in fear, it was too traumatic to be on camera, Kim O'Connor said. What you dont see is the way he pulled the boy up the wall. He was treating the little boy like a Raggedy Ann doll in his grip.



Harambe was shot dead by zookeepers after he grabbed the little boy and dragged him around the exhibit.



The idea of waiting and shooting it with a hypodermic was not a good idea, director Thane Maynard said at a press conference Monday. That would have definitely created alarm in the male gorilla. When you dart an animal, anesthetic doesnat work in one second, it works over a period of a few minutes to 10 minutes. The risk was due to the power of that animal.











Maynard also refuted claims (made by Cuoco and many others) that the gorilla appeared to be holding the boys hand and protecting before zookeepers opened fire.



The gorilla was clearly agitated. The gorilla was clearly disoriented, he said on Monday in a press conference



Regardless, animal activists have launched a petition, pressing the zoo to take legal action against the boys parents.



In a statement issued by a family spokesperson on Monday, the boys parents said we are so thankful to the Lord that our child is safe.



We extend our heartfelt thanks for the quick action by the Cincinnati Zoo staff. We know that this was a very difficult decision for them and that they are grieving the loss of their gorilla, the statement red.



The zoo has received support from numerous experts for making the quick decision, including Ron Magill, the communications director for Zoo Miami.



They made the absolutely right decision, he told Good Morning America of the Cincinnati Zoos actions, adding, This was just a perfect storm of bad situations that ended in tragedy.



He continued of the gorilla appearing to hold onto the boys hand, Hes confused. He certainly didnt try to hurt the child. He just doesnt know his strength.
Kaley Cuoco is ready for you to "bring on the hate!!!!" after weighing in on the killing of a 17-year-old gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo over the weekend.

Harambe the gorilla was shot and killed after a 4-year-old boy slipped into his enclosure at the Ohio zoo on Saturday. While zoo officials have defended their decision, calling the incident "life-threatening," the Big Bang Theory actress blasted it as "horrendous" on Instagram.

"Another senseless horrendous animal being killed over people not using their brains," she wrote. "If you watch the footage, you see this gorgeous animal holding that child's hand. Do with that, what you will. As sad as this makes me, a part of me is happy for that amazing creature doesn't have to live in captivity another day."

WATCH: Kaley Cuoco Kisses Karl Cook After Horseback Riding-Filled Weekend

Other celebs, including Ricky Gervais and Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Lisa Vanderpump, have also weighed in, with the latter tweeting, "Oh the poor gorilla, he did nothing wrong."

Oh the poor gorilla,he did nothing wrong,if you watch the video,so sad..as a mother I would've jumped in too.  Lisa Vanderpump (@LisaVanderpump) May 30, 2016

It seems that some gorillas make better parents than some people.  Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) May 29, 2016

This is why I hate zoos! This is so messed up. This poor gorilla. https://t.co/sdr3KXMyQa  Kat McPhee (@katharinemcphee) May 29, 2016

Damn homie.. You was just chillin at your crib. R.I.P pic.twitter.com/shTdDzldwh  ICE T (@FINALLEVEL) May 30, 2016

How was the gorilla enclosure not child proof? You're dealing with an endangered species & yet you've made it possible for kids to fall in?  Zelda Williams (@zeldawilliams) May 29, 2016

Anywho, no matter how you cut it, this whole situation blows. The only party that didn't do anything wrong is the gorilla, and it died. Sad.  Zelda Williams (@zeldawilliams) May 29, 2016

Taking their eye off the ball, but no child should ever be able to crawl into a gorilla compound. https://t.co/intjxDvUqk  Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) May 29, 2016

Last week a naked man in Chile jumped in a lion den on purpose now this boy with the gorilla...Beautiful innocent animals killed. Smh    Holly Robinson Peete (@hollyrpeete) May 29, 2016

It saddens me to no end that a gorilla had to be put down because of an irresponsible parent. However you look at it, that's just sad.  Katee Sackhoff (@kateesackhoff) May 30, 2016

In a statement to ET, the family of the 4-year-old boy, Isaiah, said, "We are so thankful to the Lord that our child is safe. He is home and doing just fine. We extend our heartfelt thanks for the quick action by the Cincinnati Zoo staff."

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"We know that this was a very difficult decision for them and that they are grieving the loss of their gorilla," it reads. "We hope that you will respect our privacy at this time."

PHOTOS: This Is Apparently the World's Most Handsome Gorilla (and Women Are Flocking to the Zoo to See Him)

Meanwhile, famed zookeeper and TV personality Jack Hanna, who serves as director emeritus of the Columbus Zoo, told CBS This Morning that he agrees "1,000 percent" with the zoo's choice to put down the gorilla.

"They made the correct decision. Matter of fact, it's a millisecond decision," Hanna explained. "All of us are sorry. We're all, in the zoo world, heartfelt for this whole thing, but thank goodness a human being is alive today because of the decision that the zoo made."

"Just watch your kids," he added. "I'm sure that the mother here did the best she could. I guess maybe she was doing something else, I don't know, I wasn't there."

With Zelda Williams speaking out on the killing of Harambe, look back on the touching way Koko the gorilla mourned her friend -- and Zelda's father -- Robin Williams in the video below.

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The Wolf from Royal Vineyard Street, the final feature of Czech filmmaker Jan Nemec, who died in March at the age of 79, will have its world premiere as part of the Official Selection competition at this years Karlovy Vary Film Festival. The film is one of 12 international features vying for the Crystal Globe during the fest, which kicked off Friday and runs through July 9.

Nemecs film is an adaptation of the celebrated directors own quasi-autobiographical short stories, resulting in what the fest describes as a dejected comedy, an unsentimental reminiscence and a nonchalant settling of scores in punk regalia. Both the movie and its maker defy categorization.

Nemec, a co-founder of the Czech New Wave, saw his worked banned in the 1960s and 70s for its exposure of communist brutality, prompting the filmmaker to leave the country. He returned to his homeland in 1989 following the Velvet Revolution.

Also in the running is Italian director Roberto Andos The Confessions, a suspense drama about a charismatic monk (Toni Servillo) who shows up at a meeting of G8 finance ministers on the Baltic coast, where a financier is subsequently murdered.

Hungarian helmer Szabolcs Hajdu offers an intimate study of two families thrown together by circumstance in Its Not the Time of My Life.

Germanys Sven Taddickens Original Bliss adapts Scottish author A. L. Kennedys novel of the same name about an unhappy married woman whose life is changed when she meets a charismatic psychologist, while Canadian helmer Jesse Klein tells the story of a bullied school boy who runs off with a young stranger in Were Still Together.

Spanish directors Isaki Lacuesta and Isa Campos The Next Skin follows a teenager who went missing as a child and was presumed dead but returns home after eight years.

In Catalin Mitulescus Romanian drama By the Rails, a man returns home after spending a year working abroad only to find his wife has changed, while in Jan Hrebejks Czech-Slovak The Teacher, set in 1983 Czechoslovakia, parents learn that a kind teacher has been allegedly using her students to manipulate their parents.

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From Russia, Ivan I. Tverdovskys Zoology centers on a lonely middle-aged admin employee at a zoo whose life is turned upside down when she discovers she has grown a tail.

Also screening in competition are: My Fathers Wings, by Kivanc Sezer (Turkey); Waves, by Grzegorz Zariczny (Poland); and Nightlife, by director Damjan Kozole (Slovenia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina).

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Katie Couric has apologized for the Under the Gun documentary that aired on EPIX, saying she regrets the editing process that was misleading.

The documentary came under scrutiny when it first seemed like a group of gun rights activists were stumped by her question about background checks, taking eight seconds to respond: If there are no background checks for gun purchasers, how do you prevent felons or terrorists from walking into, say, a licensed gun dealer and purchasing a gun?

Audio recordings revealed they, in fact, responded right away.

In a statement posted on the Under the Gun documentarys website, Couric took responsibility and expressed regret for the editing process.

As executive producer of Under the Gun, a documentary film that explores the epidemic of gun violence, I take responsibility for a decision that misrepresented an exchange I had with members of the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL), she wrote. My question to the VCDL regarding the ability of convicted felons and those on the terror watch list to legally obtain a gun, was followed by an extended pause, making the participants appear to be speechless.

When I screened an early version of the film with the director, Stephanie Soechtig, I questioned her and the editor about the pause and was told that a beat was added for, as she described it, dramatic effect, to give the audience a moment to consider the question. When VCDL members recently pointed out that they had in fact immediately answered this question, I went back and reviewed it and agree that those eight seconds do not accurately represent their response.I regret that those eight seconds were misleading and that I did not raise my initial concerns more vigorously.

Couric also posted a message on Twitter, saying, After speaking with Under the Gun director and reviewing editing process, I wanted to respond.

After speaking with Under the Gun director and reviewing editing process, I wanted to respond https://t.co/zLbh4Wv7XN  Katie Couric (@katiecouric) May 31, 2016

The website also posted a full transcript of Courics exchange with members of the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL).

Story continues

Couric had originally expressed support of Soechtig, saying, I am very proud of the film.

When the criticism first surfaced, Soechtig issued a statement saying, There are a wide range of views expressed in the film. My intention was to provide a pause for the viewer to have a moment to consider this important question before presenting the facts on Americans opinions on background checks. I never intended to make anyone look bad and I apologize if anyone felt that way.

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Katie Couric on Monday released a statement saying she regrets the "misleading" editing on the documentary Under the Gun following a storm of criticism from gun rights activists.

Pro-gun blogs and pundits took issue with selective editing by director Stephanie Soechtig on the doc, which premiered at Sundance earlier this year and focuses on the effects of gun violence in the U.S.

The specific controversy arose in a section where Couric interviews members of the pro-gun Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL). In the film, Couric asks the members about background checks on gun ownership, specifically related to convicted felons and people on the terror watch list. There follows a long pause, implying the members were stuck for an answer, but in reality the transcript shows they responded right away.

Couric, who narrates Under the Gun and also executive produced the doc, tweeted a link to her statement on the issue as well as posting the full transcript of the interview after speaking to Soechtig about the editing process.

After speaking with Under the Gun director and reviewing editing process, I wanted to respond https://t.co/zLbh4Wv7XN

- Katie Couric (@katiecouric) May 31, 2016

Read More: Katie Couric, 'Under the Gun' Filmmaker React to Editing Controversy

Couric revealed that Soechtig and the film's editor added the pause for dramatic effect, but after complaints from the VCDL that they misrepresented, she reviewed the section in question and agreed that the film did "not accurately represent their response."

Couric added: "I regret that those eight seconds were misleading and that I did not raise my initial concerns more vigorously."

Couric's full statement:

As Executive Producer of "Under the Gun," a documentary film that explores the epidemic of gun violence, I take responsibility for a decision that misrepresented an exchange I had with members of the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL). My question to the VCDL regarding the ability of convicted felons and those on the terror watch list to legally obtain a gun, was followed by an extended pause, making the participants appear to be speechless.

Story continues

When I screened an early version of the film with the director, Stephanie Soechtig, I questioned her and the editor about the pause and was told that a "beat" was added for, as she described it, "dramatic effect," to give the audience a moment to consider the question. When VCDL members recently pointed out that they had in fact immediately answered this question, I went back and reviewed it and agree that those eight seconds do not accurately represent their response.

VCDL members have a right for their answers to be shared and so we have posted a transcript of their responses here. I regret that those eight seconds were misleading and that I did not raise my initial concerns more vigorously.

I hope we can continue to have an important conversation about reducing gun deaths in America, a goal I believe we can all agree on.
John Cryan

Emma Slatter, the head of strategy in the legal department at Deutsche Bank, is leaving the firm, according to a memo seen by Business Insider.

Slatter, who had been UK regional general counsel before her most recent role, was part of the team charged with resolving Deutsche Bank's legal woes.

Deutsche Bank declined to comment.

Among the issues it faces is an investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission over mortgage securities it traded in 2013. It is also addressing the issue of currency-rate manipulation by its traders and is reportedly facing investigations into money laundering by Russian clients.



Just last week Financial News ran a profile of Slatter that explained her new job, including where and how to deploy Deutsche Bank's 900-person legal operation  not just to address regulatory investigations but also as the company's new CEO, John Cryan, reshapes the bank with as many as 160 projects.

Slatter is planning on setting up as a consultant, advising on a range of business ventures, according to the memo, which was sent by Chris Dodds and Christof von Dryander, joint global general counsels.

Deutsche Bank's legal strategy has been a point of contention among its senior executives.

Cryan in February said he was personally investing time in resolving open regulatory and legal cases. And in mid-April the bank announced a new global head of compliance and new global head of anti-financial crime.

But then in late April, Alfred Herling, the deputy chairman at Deutsche Bank, publicly criticized Georg Thoma, another board member, for deploying too many lawyers and spending too much time pursuing wrongdoing. Thoma later stepped down from the board.

NOW WATCH: How Merrill Lynch changed the way people are paid on Wall Street





More From Business Insider


Europe faces a growing drugs problem with more people using more powerful narcotics, a European Union report said Tuesday.

Here are the key findings from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Addiction report.



- Ecstasy back in favour -

Ecstasy, once the drug of choice at rave parties in the 1990s, is back in favour and finding a wider market this time around.



In 2014, an estimated 2.5 million people said they had popped the pill.



Amphetamines are also popular, with an estimated 1.6 million people having taken some form of the drug.



Police raids across Europe in 2014 netted 6.1 million ecstasy tablets and 7.1 tonnes of amphetamines.



- Cannabis still drug of choice -

More people use cannabis in Europe than any other.



Last year, an estimated 22.1 million people -- 6.6 percent of the adult population in Europe -- said they used it.



Cannabis accounted for 38 percent of the money generated from illegal drugs in 2013, representing 9.3 billion euros out of a total 24.3 billion euros, according to conservative estimates.



Offences related to cannabis use make up three quarters of drug-related crimes in Europe.



- Cocaine keeping share of market -

Cocaine is the second most popular drug and is particularly in demand in Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain.



Between them, these countries account for 84 percent of the 61.6 tonnes seized in 2014.



Last year, 3.6 million people -- 1.1 percent of the population -- said they used it.



- Heroin still deadliest drug -

Heroin remains the most addictive drug and the one that accounts for the most deaths.



Traces of opioids were found in 83 percent of the 6,800 fatal overdoses in the EU.



Europe has 1.3 million people classified as high-risk users of opioid drugs.



Some 644,000 opioid users were in substitute treatment programmes in 2014.
KeyCorp.s KEY deal to acquire Buffalo, NY-based First Niagara Financial Group Inc. FNFG might be in trouble again as U.S. regulators have launched a probe into the latters minority-lending practices. Notably, the investigation was initiated more than two years ago by the Justice Department.



According to Bloomberg, U.S. regulators are suspicious that First Niagara has been violating a federal law which bans companies from discriminating in issuing loans. However, the effect of the outcome of the investigations on the deal is uncertain.



First Niagara will continue to engage in safe, sound and fair banking practices that focus on the underserved, said David Lanzillo, a company spokesman who declined to comment on the investigation or its implications on the sale. Moreover, spokesmen for the Justice Department and KeyCorp refrained from commenting on the matter.



Previously, U.S. lenders were accused for discriminating against minority and female borrowers with the aim of recording higher earnings which led to a rise in foreclosures during the financial downturn. Among others, Wells Fargo & Company WFC settled a similar case for $235 million while Bank of America Corporation BAC agreed on a $335 million settlement.



The Deal in Brief



The stock-and-cash deal, worth approximately $4.1 billion, is expected to prove accretive to earnings in 2017, excluding merger and integration costs of approximately $550 million. Also, KeyCorp anticipates savings of $400 million in annual expenses. Further, KeyCorp and First Niagara have overlapping operations that will strengthen the formers revenue base.



Moreover, upon closure, the combined entity will enjoy a diverse footprint across markets in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest and Pacific Northwest. KeyCorp will have roughly $99.8 billion in deposits, $83.6 billion in loans and 1,366 branches across 15 states.



While the Federal Reserve extended the public comment period by a month in Dec 2015, Governor Andrew Cuomo officially urged the federal regulators to stall the merger deal in Feb 2016. This had raised significant anti-trust concerns that the proposed acquisition of First Niagara by Key Bank would have a devastating impact on consumers and businesses.



Conclusion



Despite cost savings and revenue synergies, we believe KeyCorp will have a challenging time convincing the public about the potential long-term benefits of the deal. Moreover, the company is not certain about the impact the investigations will have on the impending deal.



Currently, KeyCorp carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) while First Niagara has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).



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S. Mitra Kalita, who joined the Los Angeles Times as its managing editor in March of last year, is leaving the Tribune Publishing-owned broadsheet in favor of a roost at CNNs digital operations.

Kalita will join CNN as vice president of digital programming, part of a broader push the Time Warner-owned outlet is making into digital content. She will report to Meredith Artley, editor in chief of CNN Digital. As part of her duties, she will supervise CNNs efforts to distribute its digital journalism across a growing number of venues  and its maneuvering to gain attention for it as well.

The move was reported previously by Politico.

The success of our journalism rests on two important factors: how good is the story and how good is the distribution. How adaptive are we to different devices and different platforms? How accessible, relatable, intimate, authoritative? Kalita said in a statement provided by CNN. Technically, I will oversee the homepage, alerts, projects and planning, mobile news and off-platform partnerships and initiatives. But really, I see this job as one that collaborates across departments, time zones and mediums to maximize the reach of our journalism.

CNN recently indicated it would invest $20 million to ramp up its abilities in web video and mobile, as well as overseas staffing, and add 200 new positions as part of the effort, while trimming more than 50 employees who work on more traditional technologies. The new workers will help CNN build out new venues for digital audiences, such as Facebook and Snapchat.

Prior to joining the Los Angeles Times, Kalita had been executive editor of Quartz. She has also worked at The Wall Street Journal, Mint and the Washington Post.

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Florida's native alligators and crocodiles could be facing some new competition  from a bigger and meaner member of their own crocodilian family. Nile crocodiles  American crocodiles' larger, more aggressive cousins from the African continent  have been identified in the wild in southern Florida for the first time, according to a new study.

Between 2009 and 2012, scientists responded to reports from Floridians of "unusual looking" crocodiles, the study authors said. The scientists caught three young crocodiles  one of which was captured on the porch of a Miami home  and, through genetic analysis of tissue samples, confirmed that they were invasive Nile crocodiles, connecting them to crocodile populations in South Africa.

A female crocodile captured in 2012 was released and later recaptured in 2014, providing the scientists with proof that the Nile crocodile species could survive and thrive in the Everglades for nearly two years. In fact, they found that the crocodile grew about 28 percent faster during that period than juvenile Nile crocodiles typically grow in parts of their native African ranges. [Alligators vs. Crocodiles: Photos Reveal Who's Who]

Nile crocodiles (Crocodylus niloticus) measure about 16 feet (5 meters) long, on average, but can grow to be 20 feet (6 m) long, the scientists wrote in the study. A full-grown Nile crocodile is an opportunistic predator that eats whatever big animals it can catch, such as zebra, buffalo, "and any other animal it can overpower, swallow whole, or rip apart and ingest"  even people, according to a nonindigenous aquatic species fact sheet published by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

The USGS added that Nile crocodiles preying on humans in Africa have been "well documented" since the 1950s, and the scientists reported in their study that Nile crocodiles were responsible for 480 attacks on people across their range in Africa between 2010 and 2014, resulting in 123 deaths.

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DNA taken from the captured crocs did not match samples from Nile crocodiles kept in Florida zoos. However, they were genetically identical to each other, hinting that they originated from the same source  likely, they were escapees originally brought to Florida for the exotic pet trade, the scientists suggested.

Florida's native crocodilians  the American crocodile (Crocodylus acutus) and the American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) are somewhat smaller than the Nile crocodile and do not typically prey on people. American alligator males reach 10 to 15 feet (3 to 5 m) in length on average, and adult females can grow to be 10 feet long, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC).

Male American crocodiles can grow to be about 15 feet (5 m) long, while females typically range between 8 and 13 feet (2 to 4 m) in length, the FWC described in a fact sheet.

The Nile crocodile may be the biggest invader to take up residence in the Sunshine State, but it has plenty of company. Currently, about 500 nonnative fish and wildlife species call Florida home, according to the FWC.

The researchers found no evidence of established populations of Nile crocodiles lurking in Florida waters. But don't breathe a sigh of relief just yet, said study co-author Kenneth Krysko, the herpetology collections manager at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Between Florida's exotic pet trade and the demand for Nile crocodiles in animal parks, there has been a steady flow of African crocs into the region, the researchers noted. If any of these animals were to escape, they would quickly find that the local climate and abundant food supply would help them do what they do best: hunt and grow.

"The odds that the few of us who study Florida reptiles have found all of the Nile crocs out there is probably unlikely," Krysko said in a statement.

The findings were published online April 30 in the journal Herpetological Conservation and Biology.

Follow Mindy Weisberger on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Editor's Recommendations

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
gammasquadhansolo4

Disney/Lucasfilm

The Han Solo anthology film is going to be a big deal. While its not a mainline, numbered entry in the Star Wars saga, it could be just as popular. I mean, everybody loves Han Solo, and new nerf herder Alden Ehrenreich is going to be a huge star. That said, we still dont know a lot of basic things about it  like when the filmmakers are actually going to start making the darn thing.

Well now we do thanks to legendary screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan, who let some Han Solo info slip while receiving the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival Icon Award. Kasdan seemed quite excited about the movie (moreso than he was about The Force Awakens) and revealed its production timeline:

Chris Miller and Phil Lord are going to direct it. Theyre great, funny and imaginative and weve had a great time together. My son and I wrote the script and Chris and Phil are working on it and theyre about to move to London to start shooting in January [2017]. And it should be fun. [The release] is scheduled for May [2018]. The others are falling on Christmas  Rogue One and Episode IX. Han will come before Episode IX.

Good to have confirmation on where everythings falling. Kasdan also hinted at how involved he is in the rest of Disneys Star Wars sequel trilogy, and it sounds like hes more hands-on than previously indicated:

I have a little information! Rian Johnson is a friend of mine. Im getting to know Colin Trevorrow, who is going to direct Episode IX, so I feel very involved with it.

I dont think theres anybody else who understands the heart of Star Wars better than Lawrence Kasdan, and that includes series-creator George Lucas. So the more Kasdan the better, I say!

(Via Star Wars News)
Lagos (AFP) - At least 10 people were killed during protests by pro-Biafra campaigners as they marked the anniversary of the start of Nigeria's civil war, police said on Tuesday.

Activists wanting a separate state for the Igbo people in the southeast were commemorating the 49th anniversary of the declaration of an independent Republic of Biafra on May 30, 1967.

The civil war that followed lasted until January 1970 and left more than one million people dead, many of them from starvation and disease.

Police said officers opened fire because members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) movement shot at security forces deployed to monitor the protests.

But IPOB spokesman Anayo Chukwu-Okpara denied the claim and said at least 35 members of the group were killed in the commercial hub of Onitsha in Anambra state.

An Anambra police spokesman told AFP "five corpses were recovered" in Onitsha while in the capital of neighbouring Delta state, Asaba, the police said five protesters were killed.

"We had to deploy our officers to ensure that the protest was peaceful but we were surprised that the people turned violent," said Delta police spokesman Charles Muka.

There was also violence in the capitals of Imo, Ebonyi, Abia and Rivers state, he added.

- IPOB claims -

IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu has been in custody since his arrest last October on charges of treasonable felony, which has sparked protests demanding his release.

The government has repeatedly refused to release him despite several court rulings granting him bail.

Kanu's brother, Prince Emmanuel Kanu, said of the Onitsha protest: "We are not armed, we only came to remember people who died between 1967 to 1970, that was just our crime to open fire on us.

"What happened on Sunday night at the ground we were supposed to use for the remembrance day, on that evening they opened fire, they shot about 20," he said.

He said on Monday during the march, 16 people were killed and 56 people were injured.

Story continues

"They blocked everywhere and all of a sudden they started shooting at us, they shot 56 people, who are injured."

- Police crackdown -

Federal police chief Solomon Arase on Tuesday said any IPOB member found with a firearm would be arrested and tried, while those held in connection with police deaths would be charged with murder.

The police "will continue to diligently work towards eliminating any threat to internal security", he added.

Since Kanu's arrest, positions have hardened on both sides. President Muhammadu Buhari, a former military ruler, has publicly stated he "will not tolerate" any threat to Nigeria's unity.

IPOB members told AFP recently that armed police and soldiers released tear gas and shot "indiscriminately" at crowds with live ammunition at previous protests.

There have also been allegations the dead were buried in mass graves and of disappearances.

Similar claims have been made against the military in its response to unrest involving Shiite Muslim protesters in the northern city of Zaria last year and in the Boko Haram conflict in the northeast.

Human Rights Watch described the latest clashes as "a wake-up call to urgently de-escalate the situation" and called for a "credible judicial investigation" to determine what happened.

"In this context of escalating tensions in southeast Nigeria, government security forces should ensure they take reasonable steps to protect security and avoid excessive use of force in controlling public demonstrations," said HRW's Mausi Segun.

"Leaders of the protest groups should redouble their efforts to inform demonstrators to act peacefully and to condemn those who do not," she added in an emailed statement
By Brendan O'Brien (Reuters) - At least five animal rights activists on Monday rushed the stage as presidential candidate Bernie Sanders spoke at a rally in Oakland, video posted online showed. The protesters were led away by several Secret Service agents before they were able to reach the Democrat, whose speech was briefly interrupted by the disturbance, a video posted by CNN showed. A Secret Service agent rushed to Sanders' side, grabbed him and wrapped his arms around the presidential candidate during the ruckus. "We don't get intimidated easily," said Sanders, as he resumed his speech. Animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere claimed responsibility for the protest, saying in a statement that it hoped to persuade Sanders to take a tough stance against factory farms. Bernie Sanders claims to support the 'good' farms," activist Rachel Ziegler said in the statement. "But as our repeated investigations have shown, even the 'good' farms are horrific." The organization posted a video online showing at least five protesters being led away by security personnel after they climbed onto the stage. Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, is running far behind Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic nomination for the Nov. 8 presidential election. In March, a man stormed the stage as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump spoke in Vandalia, Ohio before being held by several agents. (Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Michael Perry and Ralph Boulton)
MILAN (Reuters) - Italian defence company Leonardo Finmeccanica has threatened to reassess its business in India, a few days after New Delhi said it would blacklist the company over the alleged payment of bribes to win a large helicopter contract.

Former executives of the state-controlled conglomerate were found guilty last month after being tried in Italy on corruption charges relating to a 560 million euro ($624 million) contract in 2010 to supply a dozen helicopters to the Indian government.

Finmeccanica has distanced itself from the allegations, saying the case is against the individuals rather than the company, but India's defence minister said the company would be banned from future government tenders.

Manohar Parrikar made the comments after India's top court allowed an Italian marine accused of murdering two fishermen to be freed and flown back to Italy in another case that has soured relations between the two countries.

Responding to the minister's comments, Finmeccanica issued a statement saying that its business in India is "very marginal".

"The Company hopes that an agreed and transparent solution is found as soon as possible to shed light on current initiatives and future business opportunities," it said.

"Should this not be the case, the company will not refrain from assessing the situation given the limited size of ongoing business in the country."

Since his appointment in May 2014, Finmeccanica CEO Mauro Moretti has worked to improve the company's reputation and streamline the organisation to increase transparency.

In its statement on Monday the defence group stuck to its previous full-year guidance of 20 billion euros in orders and core profit of 1.22 billion euros to 1.27 billion euros, saying that new Indian orders have not been included in its budget forecasts over the past few years.

($1 = 0.8980 euros)

(Reporting by Giulia Segreti; Editing by Stephen Jewkes and David Goodman)
When Nico Yaryan went on tour with his high school friend and fellow multi-instrumentalist Hanni El Khatib, he discovered his two greatest loves: guitar and a student from Amsterdam that sparked a miles-apart romance and an unlikely story. The Los Angeles-based artist explores both of his heart's desires on the forthcoming album What a Tease, and now he's teamed up with Billboard to stream the album in full ahead of its June 3 release date.

The Helmets Share Love of Metallica, Hate of Pop Music at BottleRock 2016: Watch

Although Yaryan departed from the band after the tour, he couldn't forget his Dutch love and left his retail job to find more flexible work to fund his visits. That's when he landed a gig trimming at a marijuana farm in Humboldt County, working straight for one month followed by a one-month visit to Amsterdam.

As the long-distance saga unfolded, so did Yaryan's feelings of isolation, uncertainty and longing for his significant other, which went on to become the stories of What a Tease, a stagnant time capsule for the emotional rollercoaster that became a norm for the artist.

"It took three years of a weird life to make this record, two weeks of it in the former storied halls of Sound City Studios, now Fairfax Recordings," said Yaryan in a statement to Billboard, noting it's also where artists such as Neil Young and Fleetwood Mac had made records.

Neil Young Explains 'Earth,' One of the Quirkiest Live Albums of All Time

Kevin Agunas also produced the album and helped with pulling the songs from Yaryan -- "as painful as that extraction was at times." What a Tease takes his heavy thoughts and transforms them into distorted guitar riffs, bluesy cathartic melodies and stripped-down acoustic tracks that whale a relatable state of melancholia.

"I played almost all the instruments, Kevin played a few too. I couldn't have done it without the help of my friends who pushed me to go through with it. I needed some pushing. I could have been still somewhere in the middle of the forests of Northern California, or back in Amsterdam, or somewhere in between, in purgatory forever. Maybe the songs still are."

Stream the full album below.
London (AFP) - A man slashed the throat of a London Underground passenger for his "Syrian brothers", a court heard Tuesday.

The aftermath of the incident in December was captured on mobile phone footage, and a bystander's retort to the attacker -- "You ain't no Muslim, bruv" -- became famous in Britain.

Muhiddin Mire, a 30-year-old Somali-born taxi driver, is accused of attacking 56-year-old musician Lyle Zimmerman at Leytonstone Tube station in east London. Zimmerman survived the attack.

As the trial opened, London's Old Bailey central criminal court was told that Mire had said as he lashed out: "This is for my Syrian brothers. I'm going to spill your blood."

He had added: "Do you know if you live in Syria they bomb you? I'm going to attack your civilians."

Mire's mobile phone contained a graph showing US and coalition air strikes on the Islamic State jihadist group and images of hostages before they were executed by having their throats cut, prosecutor Jonathan Rees told jurors.

The incident was captured on security cameras as well as by a member of the public on his phone, the Old Bailey heard.

The prosecutor said Mire launched a brutal attack on "wholly innocent" commuters.

He flung Zimmerman to the floor and kicked him repeatedly around the head.

"At the end of the assault, when Mr Zimmerman was lying motionless and defenceless on the floor of the ticket hall, the defendant crouched over him and quite deliberately began to cut Mr Zimmerman's throat with a knife blade," the prosecutor said.

Mire then swung the blade at others in the station.

The court heard Mire accept he used the knife and has pleaded guilty to wounding Zimmerman with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, and to attempting to wound four other Tube passengers.

He is being tried for attempted murder, having pleaded not guilty to that charge.

Jurors must decide whether, at the time of the attack, he tried to kill Zimmerman.

Story continues

Mire sat in the dock with an interpreter.

The defendant had suffered from mental illness for years and suffered his first psychotic episode in 2006, the court heard.

A month before the Underground station incident, doctors referred him to the mental health services, saying he had paranoid delusions he was being followed by the security services.
Which Large-Cap Mutual Funds Have Done Well Year-to-Date in 2016?

(Continued from Prior Part)

TWCGX overview

The American Century Growth Fund Investor Class (TWCGX) invests in companies that its managers believe will increase in value over time. Managers focus on large-capitalization companies and follow the bottom-up selection process.

The funds literature states that its growth team believes excess returns can be attained by investing in companies whose business fundamentals are improving. To identify such companies, fund managers employ analytical indicators such as accelerating earnings or revenue growth rates and increasing cash flows.

OReilly Automotive (ORLY), Lockheed Martin (LMT), Fiserv (FISV), Expedia (EXPE), and Perrigo Company (PRGO) were among the funds 87 holdings as of March 2016s end. As of April, the fund was managing assets worth $7.4 billion.

Portfolio changes in TWCGX

For this analysis, we will be considering the funds holdings as of March 2016, as that is the latest available sectoral breakdown. The funds holdings after March reflect valuation-driven changes to its portfolio, not its actual holdings.

Information technology, consumer discretionary, and healthcare form the core of TWCGX. Combined, these three sectors command 70% of the funds portfolio. Industrials and consumer staples are the only other two sectors with 10% or more of the funds assets invested in them. TWCGX is not invested in the telecommunications services or utilities sectors. It exited the telecommunications services sector completely in March 2016.

Both the consumer discretionary and consumer staples sectors form more of TWCGXs portfolio than they did a year ago. However, compared to intrayear, the portfolio weight of the funds consumer discretionary stocks has fallen slightly. TWCGXs exposure to the energy and industrials sectors has fallen from a year ago, while its exposure to the materials sector has increased.

The portfolio turnover of the fund is quite high, which means that the funds managers have not persisted with their holdings.

Story continues

Has the funds unique positioning helped or hurt its performance in 2016? Lets take a look in the next article.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
The maid was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment at the High Court on Tuesday (31 May) - Yahoo file picture

Dewi Sukowati was unhappy with her employer who had allegedly abused the Indonesian maid since her first day of work at a bungalow in Bukit Timah in March 2014.

After experiencing the alleged abuse from Nancy Gan Wan Geok for six consecutive days, then 18-year-old Dewi snapped on the morning of 19 March 2014. The petite woman banged Gans head against a wall before slamming it against a ceramic step and disposing the body of the 69-year-old Singaporean into a swimming pool.

On Tuesday (31 May), 20-year-old Dewi pleaded guilty in the High Court to one charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

Appearing before Justice Foo Chee Hock, Dewi looked calm as she was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment, which was backdated to the day of the incident and her arrest on 19 March 2014.

Court papers revealed that Dewi had arrived from Semarang, Indonesia, on 13 March 2014 and was placed to work as a maid at Gans bungalow at Victoria Park Road. The victim was a well-known philanthropist who was married to former Hong Kong Legislative Council politician, Hilton Cheong-leen.

Mohamed Muzammil Mohamed, Dewis lawyer, told the court that the maid had alleged that she was abused daily by Gan from the day that she started working.

Maid lost control and attacked victim



On the day of the incident, Dewi had woken up at 5.30 am, Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) James Low revealed. She was going about her daily chores when Gan rang the call bell to signal Dewi to bring a glass of water to Gans bedroom.

Upon entering the bedroom, Gan scolded Dewi in Bahasa Indonesia, accusing the maid of using the wrong type of tray for the glass of water despite having been instructed before. Gan then splashed the water onto Dewis face and threw the tray on the floor. Dewi was about to pick up the tray when Gan snatched it and hit the maids head with it.

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Gan also told Dewi that she would reduce the maids pay to $200 a month. Upon hearing the threat, Dewi lost control of herself and grabbed hold of Gans hair and hands and swung her employers head against the wall.

DPP Low said that Dewi wanted to slam Gans face against the wall but the older woman resisted, which led to the back of her head hitting the wall. Gan collapsed from the impact and was unconscious.

Dewi then noticed that her employer was bleeding profusely from the back of her head and panicked as she was unsure whether Gan was still alive. She checked to see if Gan was still breathing after 10 minutes and realised that her employer was alive.

Worried that Gan would call the police if she were to regain consciousness, Dewi decided to place Gans body in the swimming pool of the house to an attempt to drown her and make it look like a suicide.

While she was dragging the body to the swimming pool, she was reminded of the abuse and criticism from Gan and became angry again. Dewi then slammed Gans head against the edge of a ceramic-tiled step, causing the already bloodied head to bleed further.

Upon reaching the swimming pool, Dewi flipped Gans body face down into the pool before throwing Gans sandals into the pool to give the impression that her employer had committed suicide.

Attempted to cover up

Dewi then started to clean up the blood trial by mopping the floor several times before changing out of her blood-stained clothing. She then went across the road to alert a neighbour.

Before the neighbour could answer the door, Dewi spotted a despatch rider and alerted him that her employer is in the swimming pool. The despatch rider rang for police assistance.

While waiting for the police, Dewi broke down. She was promptly arrested when police arrived at the scene.

In mitigation, Muzammil said that Gan had abused Dewi during the six days that she was working in the Bukit Timah bungalow. Muzammil added that Gan repeatedly called Dewi stupid and had used a broom to hit the maids head on her first day on the job.

According to Muzammil, Dewi studied until secondary three and had a bad relationship with her father, who constantly hit her.

Dewis parents, Sukilan and Sutriswati, had flown in from Semarang and were in the High Court when she was sentenced. They were given time to speak to their daughter after the trial ended.

Sutriswati, 45, was seen wiping the tears off Dewis cheeks and comforting her eldest daughter. Dewi has two younger sisters aged 17 and four.

Speaking to Yahoo Singapore after the trial, Sukilan, 49, said that he was not happy with the sentence. Personally, I think it is not fair. Dewi was alone (when it happened) and there were no other people (witnesses) when it happened. She is a very soft-spoken person and I was surprised that this happened.

Her younger sister (17) is affected by it and as of now, we will leave it up to the lawyer to advice us accordingly, said Sukilan.
Man Son

It's been a difficult year for the drug industry as far as reputations go.

Pharmaceutical giants and small biotechnology companies have been scrutinized for the way they price new, life-saving drugs, how they jack up prices on old drugs, and even for striking deals aimed at avoiding US taxes.

Now, Pfizer is making an effort to turn things around with a new ad campaign highlighting the science behind its products.

"Before it became a medicine, it was an idea, an inspiration, a wild what if," the first commercial in the campaign, which aired on Monday, starts.

The ad doesn't get into the specifics of any specific disease or drug, but the voiceover ends with a scene with a dad telling his son how he was saved by the medicine.



All of the scientists featured in the ad work for Pfizer, and the idea is to give patients a way to connect their medications to the people who develop them.

"When Im talking to people in my family, or even physicians that I know and work with, colleagues outside of the industry, and even me before I got into the industry just had no idea of all that goes into it," Pfizer's Chief Medical Officer Dr. Freda Lewis-Hall told Business Insider.

Pfizer has its work cut out for it. In a recent study by the Reputation Institute it had the lowest reputational ranking  based on perceptions of everything from their products to citizenship. It's perhaps not a huge surprise given that Pfizer was last in the news for its foiled efforts to relocate its tax-base outside of the US.

The pharmaceutical industry "thinks everyone is out is out to get them," Kasper Ulf Nielsen, an executive partner at the Reputation Institute told Business Insider. "They're afraid to communicate and engage. People are asking who's behind the drugs."

Pfizer's not alone in this effort to turn the story around. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the industry's largest trade group, is ramping up spending to lobby Washington, including on an ad campaign aimed at lawmakers to show how the industry advances research and development for new medical treatments.

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Pfizer, though, has one of the most recognizable brands in the Reputation Institute's study, and a campaign like this is aimed directly at consumers.

"I hope the more information we provide, the transparency we have, the interactions that we seek that those experiences with us as an industry will improve the overall view of what we do," Lewis-Hall said.

Pfizer is also releasing mini documentaries, a little more than two minutes in length, that feature individual scientists and patients. The first of the series features Bob Abraham, Pfizer's senior vice president and group head of oncology, and Matt Hiznay, who as a medical school student was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer.

Hiznay, who is now in remission, went in to meet the Pfizer scientists who had developed the drug that helped get him there. "To meet people that have been there since the beginning and to shake their hand and look them in the eye, and say 'thank you,' it's even hard to describe that I'm here and able to do it. Years of research went into it and it's giving me years back now," he explains.

Watch the whole ad here:

NOW WATCH: Doctors now say this type of cancer isnt actually cancer  and the new classification is changing thousands of lives





More From Business Insider


Thursday marks National Gun Violence Awareness Day, and the second annual Wear Orange Party for Peace will return to Chicago's Harold Washington Playlot Park to honor those affected by gun violence and bring attention to prevention efforts. The event will also feature free performances from Windy City artists Malik Yusef, a five-time Grammy winner, and rising rapper Noname (formerly Noname Gypsy).

Five Beyonce Collaborators Explain Their Roles in the Making of 'Lemonade'

Yusef has been noted as Kanye West's mentor and recently for his collaboration on Beyonce's Lemonade, while Noname has gained wide recognition for her appearances on Chance the Rapper's mixtapes, including "Finish Line / Drown" from his new project Coloring Book.

Hosted by the Wear Orange Campaign, the block party and family event will also feature poet and activist Malcolm London as emcee. He will be joined by Cecilia Rodhe, founder of Noah's Arc Foundation and mother of Chicago Bulls' Joakim Noah, and Nate and Cleo Pendleton, who lost their daughter Hadiya to gun violence. Hadiya's high school friends went on to inspire Wear Orange, and June 2 would have been her 19th birthday.

Wear Orange Party for Peace will kick off Thursday at 4 p.m.
The New York City husband arrested after police say he killed his wife's would-be rapist has had his charges reduced.

While Mamadou Diallo's case was gainining widespread media coverage  much of it from people who see him as a hero  the 61-year-old saw his initial charge of mansalughter reduced to a lesser assault charge.

Prosecutors warned that Diallo could face additional charges should the investigation warrant them, but Diallo's supporters were calling the arraignment a victory on Tuesday as they cheered Diallo on.

This was an attack on his family under extreme circumstances, Diallo's defense attorney, Anthony Michaels, said in Bronx Criminal Court on Tuesday.

Read: Woman Allegedly Stabs Fellow YWCA Resident 80 Times: 'It Really Could Have Been Any One Of Us'

Prosecutors chose not to ask for a specific bond amount and asked the judge to decide at his discretion.

After he was arraigned on charges of assault and criminal possession of a weapon, a judge released the livery driver on his own recognizance. He's due back in court June 27.

According to authorities, Diallo's wife was in their Bronx apartment when a man police identified as 43-year-old Earl Nash knocked on the door.

When Diallo's wife answered, she told police Nash rushed in and began to forcibly rip off her clothes.

The victim struggled away from her attacker and was able to call Diallo using a cell phone, the NYPD said.

Diallo, who was outside the building at the time of the alleged attack, re-entered and soon confronted Nash in a hallway, police said.

Read: Cops: Japanese Pop Singer in Coma After Being Stabbed By Fan Who Stalked Her

Diallo then "assaulted the perpetrator to the point where he was removed to the hospital in critical condition and later succumbed to his injuries" according to an NYPD release.

Diallo was arrested by NYPD and charged with manslaughter, which has since been reduced.

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Meanwhile, Diallo's family members have spoken out in his defense. His son, Abdul, told CBS New York his father did what any husband would have done.

"I think any husband would do the same thing as what he did," Abdul said. "You see your wife being attacked and sexually harassed, you're going to beat on the person. You are not just going to sit there and let the person leave or whatever. So I don't think he's wrong."

Watch: High School Teacher Dies Saving Pregnant Waitress Being Stabbed During Attack

Related Articles:
Another New York City music venues is in the headlines this week, with news coming out over Memorial Day that Santos Party House in Manhattan's Chinatown neighborhood has shut down, effective immediately. DNAInfo notes that the club hosted a controversial punk event called Oi Fest on its final night May 29, which has been accused of promoting Nazism and racism.

The venue's closing seems like a sudden decision, particularly as Santos' social media accounts -- not incredibly active overall -- had retweeted artists like Tony Touch who had an event scheduled for June 3, and its web site promoted shows through the end of July. When reached via email, Touch confirmed that the venue had closed and his show was canceled, though he did not respond to requests to elaborate as to why. Multiple requests for comment from representatives from Santos, in which Andrew W.K. is a co-owner, went unreturned as of press time.

In a statement provided to DNAInfo, Santos' manager Sean Kane said the venue's 10-year lease was up and "we're not renewing it," suggesting the decision came from the club rather than the landlord or any other party. But a quick glance at Santos' Facebook page reveals a small piece of the backlash the club received for hosting Oi Fest, with one person calling the decision "abhorrent" and another writing, simply, "Yikes." Santos hosted Oi Fest's second day after its original host venue, Black Bear Bar, decided to cancel its second night to distance itself from the festival's reputation.

Santos' events coordinator has said that all previously-planned events have been canceled, according to reports. At press time, it was unclear if Santos' management intends to re-open the club at a different location.
ISIS's rapid advancement across Iraq in the summer of 2014 has caused so far irreparable damage to any idea of unity in the country.

As the following map shows, Iraqi territory can be thought of as belonging to one of three factions: ISIS, the Kurds, or the Iraqi government. But in actuality, the factionalism of Iraq runs much deeper.

iraq faction map

In the north of Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan and the neighboring provinces are held by various Kurdish forces that are often antagonistic towards each other. A checkpoint on the Syrian border is held by a grouping of the PKK and YPG forces that are active in Syria and Turkey. Meanwhile, the major population centers under Kurdish control are held by either the KDP Peshmerga or the PUK Peshmerga.

The KDP and the PUK are political rivals in Kurdistan that fought their own intra-Kurdish civil war in the 1990s. As a holdover of the conflict, both the KDP and the PUK maintain their own standing Peshmerga forces, despite the KDP being the political party currently leading Iraqi Kurdistan. Safe to say, the two groups still are not fully integrated nor are they complete political friends.

Likewise, the PUK and the PKK have often supported each other, much to the KDP's chagrin.

In central and southern Iraq, the situation is just as fluid. These regions are largely under the nominal control of the Iraqi central government. Except, in large part, the Iraqi Security Forces are often augmented, or are totally replaced, by various Shiite militia groups.

Shiite fighters Tikrit

And these various militia groups are often extremely varied themselves with various patrons. Some of the groups are essentially Iranian proxies and have been linked to possible war crimes against Sunni civilians, while other militia groups include sizeable Sunni and Christian contingents.

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Either way, the lack of any central authority for the various militia groups could pose problems for a unified Iraq in the future and could lead to potential warlordism down the road.

Finally, ISIS still controls large sections of Iraq challenging any idea of Iraqi unity. The militant group still holds Mosul, Iraq's second largest city. And the Iraqi government is only now managing to launch a bid to retake Fallujah, a city an hour away from Baghdad, that ISIS has managed to hold since 2014.

NOW WATCH: Female soldiers have created a 30-woman unit to fight ISIS in Iraq





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Following Glee alum Mark Salling's indictment on child pornography charges, the actor has been cut from the upcoming miniseries Gods and Secrets, director Adi Shankar said Tuesday.

Salling was charged Friday with receiving and possessing child pornography, following an investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office. The actor, who previously played Puck on the Fox TV series Glee, was arrested on Dec. 29, after which investigators seized a laptop, hard drive and USB flash drive from Salling's home. Investigators said Friday that the devices contained thousands of pictures and videos depicting child pornography.

Shankar had previously weighed in following Salling's arrest, saying he would remove the actor from the project if the allegations were true.

Salling's indictment does not convict him of a crime, with a statement accompanying the news of his indictment stating, "Every defendant is presumed to be innocent until and unless proven guilty in court," but it seems Shankar couldn't wait any longer to make the call about the actor's role in the miniseries.

Read More: 'Glee' Actor Mark Salling Indicted for Possessing Child Pornography

In a statement released Tuesday, Shankar said Salling had been cut from the project, with the director "personally paying" for reshoots to replace the actor. Beyond that, Shankar, who included a number of "nauseating" statistics about the "cultural cancer" of child sex abuse in his remarks, said a percentage of the profits from Gods and Secrets would go to a charity for abused children.

"I hope that Mark finds inner peace," Shankar wrote, adding, "Hopefully some good will come of all of this and I pray that when the dust has settled, the hyper-connectivity of the information age that has brought to light the transgressions of several public figures, will also force us to look within our society to identify and eliminate the root cause of the rape culture we exist in."

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Salling played a villain in Gods and Secrets, which focuses on superheroes and the dark consequences of their existence.

If convicted, Salling faces five to 20 years in federal prison.

Read More: Director of Mark Salling Movie Says He'll Cut Him Out if Child Pornography Allegations Are True

Read Shankar's full statement below.

The innocence of our planet's children is something that must be protected at all costs. As entertainers, our role is to be the "conscience of humanity," striving to make the world better for future generations. Sadly, we live in a country where statistically at least 1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime, 80,000 children are reportedly sexually abused every year, and at least 1 in 6 boys and 1 in 4 girls are sexually abused before the age of 18. According to available data, every two minutes, an American is sexually assaulted. Even more troubling, exponentially more cases go unreported as in most situations, authority figures are ill equipped to help.

The aforementioned statistics are nauseating, reminiscent of a third world country, and until very recently, kept out of the limelight. Child abuse is a cultural cancer whose tentacles penetrate far deeper than a single celebrity caught with illicit images on his computer, just as date rape is a far more prominent issue than the repeated transgressions of one mediocre entertainer from the 1970s. Child abuse is a democratic disease existing across socioeconomic lines affecting every walk of life. It affects all of us, and more importantly, its existence needs to cece [sic] to exist. Period.

Adi Shankar's Gods and Secrets will be moving forward without Mark Salling. He has been cut from the mini-series, I will personally be paying for the reshoots, and I hope that Mark finds inner peace. Furthermore, a percentage of profits from the project will go to a charity for abused children. Hopefully some good will come of all of this and I pray that when the dust has settled, the hyper-connectivity of the information age that has brought to light the transgressions of several public figures, will also force us to look within our society to identify and eliminate the root cause of the rape culture we exist in.
Which Large-Cap Mutual Funds Have Done Well Year-to-Date in 2016?

(Continued from Prior Part)

Performance evaluation of FSAEX

As of May 27, 2016, the Fidelity Series All-Sector Equity Fund (FSAEX) had risen by 3.3% YTD (year-to-date) in 2016, making it the second-best performer among the ten funds in this review. Weve graphed its performance against the PowerShares QQQ Trust, Series 1 ETF (QQQ) and the iShares Russell 1000 Growth ETF (IWF).

Lets take a look at what has contributed to the funds superior performance so far in the year.

Portfolio composition and contribution to returns

Energy stocks have generally performed well since February 11, 2016. This has been reflected in the performance of FSAEX. Though stocks from the energy sector form just 6% of FSAEXs portfolio, theyve emerged as its biggest positive contributor YTD in 2016.

Cimarex Energy (XEC), Apache (APA), and Schlumberger (SLB) are among the stocks that have contributed positively to FSAEX, albeit in small measure. The absence of any major negative contributors has ensured that the small positive contributions from various stocks add up.

The industrials and consumer staples sectors are quite close to each other in terms of their positive contributions in 2016 so far. While industrials stocks have been led by JB Hunt Transport Services (JBHT) and HD Supply Holdings (HDS), consumer staples stocks have been led by Philip Morris International (PM).

Altria Group (MO) has also contributed positively to consumer staples returns, but its contribution has been quite small compared to PM.

Healthcare stocks have remained a painful point for FSAEX, though the fund hasnt been as badly affected as some of its peers. Allergan (AGN) has been one of the sectors worst performers, while Boston Scientific (BSX) has been among its best performers, helping to reduce the drag on FSAEX.

Comparison with QQQ

The passively managed QQQ has been unable to provide any contest to the actively managed FSAEX in 2016 so far. Except for the consumer discretionary sector, all other sectors making up FSAEX have outperformed their counterparts in QQQ.

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Investor takeaway

Weve outlined the sectors that have helped and hurt FSAEX in 2016 so far. However, it would be unfair not to mention the contributions made by the financials and utilities sectors, which have played pivotal roles in helping the fund to rise.

Note that there are restrictions in purchasing FSAEX, which we outlined in the previous article. Also, FSAEXs role is different from the roles of other funds in this review. As its name suggests, the fund will remain invested across all sectors. This may help or hurt it depending on market conditions. At present, diversification has helped the fund. Its role is to provide access to all sectors rather than to focus on a particular set.

Lets move to the next fund under review, the Janus Fund Class A (JDGAX).

Continue to Next Part

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- By Omar Venerio





Marriott International Inc. (MAR) is a $16.86 billion market cap company that operates more than 3,500 hotels and 600,000 rooms in more than 50 countries.

New hotel brands

The company has a strong cash flow driven by its 90% franchised or managed hotels, with which the hotels signed long-term contracts, for durations of about 20 to 30 years. Two things are primary for the company. It plans to expand room as well as revenue share in the next decade. This could be reached by the positive next-generation traveler position with renovated and updated brands. Moreover, the industry-leading loyalty program should boost the metrics, too. For next year, the firm is expecting over 18 brands with over 5,000 hotels. In 2000, there were 10 brands with 2,100 hotels, and now there are about 18 brands with 4,100 hotels. At the end of the first trimester, there was an increase to more than 275,000 rooms, but almost 10% are not yet subject to contracts.





International presence

At the end of 2014, the company's overseas operations were driven by 237 properties. There were about 44,500 rooms or suites in Europe more than 53,000 in Asia and more than 24,000 in the Middle East or Africa. This is the route to expand its customer base further while gaining market share abroad to continue to contribute to cash flows.

Marriott added more than 10,000 rooms in the first quarter of 2016. From those, 1,500 rooms were converted from competitor brands and 3,300 were in international markets.

Some key numbers from the first quarter

In the first quarter, adjusted net income reached $226 million, a 9% increase when compared to 2015's first-quarter net income. Adjusted diluted earnings per share reached 87 cents, a 19% increase over prior-year results. Net income totaled $219 million compared to $207 million in the year-ago quarter. Reported diluted EPS was 85 cents compared to 73 cents in the first quarter of the prior year. Further, the adjusted net income and adjusted diluted EPS exclude $10 million of related costs of the Starwood (HOT) acquisition. At the end of February, the company projected first-quarter diluted EPS in the range of 81 cents to 85 cents. These figures donat include transaction costs related to that acquisition.

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Ratings and stock price performance

The stock's performance on a year-to-date basis is negative 1.09% but in the 12 past months, the stock has done well with a return of 15%. Yahoo! (YHOO) Finance estimates a one-year target share price at $76.05. Also, investors will be paid a dividend of $1.2 at the end of the year, yielding 1.8%. The company declares dividends of 30 cents per share quarterly, a 20% increase from prior dividend of 25 cents. Dividends have been paid since 1926 and during the past 13 years, the highest trailing annual dividend yield of Marriott International was 2.92%, the lowest was 0.11%, and the median was 1.03%. The actual stock dividend yield is close to a five-year high.

According to Marketbeat the one-year target price is $77.86 with 17.5% upside potential. Analysts at Bank of America (BAC) have reiterated their abuya rating but lowered the price objective to $75 from $76.

Relative valuation

Regarding valuation, the stock sells at a trailing P/E of 20.29x, trading at a discount compared to an average of 21.9x for the industry, and it is close to a five-year low of 18.73x. To use another metric, its price-to-sales ratio of 1.20x is below the industry average of 1.77x and it is close to a two-year low of 1.13x.

Final comment

Although the hotel industry is facing intense competition, we believe that the world with higher demand due to an increase in consumerAs income will benefit the company. Marriott is achieving healthy growth and is also going to achieve growth in the next couple of years.

The acquisition of Starwood will be close by mid-2016, by the time I feel bullish on this stock.

While Arnold Schneider (Trades, Portfolio) and Paul Tudor Jones (Trades, Portfolio) sold out the stock, PRIMECAP Management (Trades, Portfolio) has boosted its position by 150%. Other gurus like Ken Fisher (Trades, Portfolio), Tom Gayner (Trades, Portfolio), and Spiros Segalas (Trades, Portfolio) have increased their portions as well.

Disclosure: Omar Venerio holds no position in any stocks mentioned

This article first appeared on GuruFocus.






A Florida woman might have found a new way to get elected to congress: marry the lawmaker you hope to replace.

This weekend Rep. Alan Grayson (D) married Dena Minning who is look to replace him in the race for Florida's 9th Congressional District, the Tampa Bay Times reported. People learned about the nuptials late Monday when Minning, a Democrat, changed her last name on her Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Related: Is Marco Rubio Ready to Make a Senate Comeback?

My handsome, brilliant, and amazing husband, Alan Grayson!! Minning said on her Facebook page in the caption of a picture of her and Grayson.

Rep. Alan Grayson and his wife Dr. Dena Grayson had a small, private wedding ceremony Sunday evening, with friends and family in attendance to celebrate their union, in the Florida beach town where Dena grew up," a Grayson spokeswoman told the newspaper.

Grayson is locked in a tough primary with Rep. Patrick Murphy to replace Marco Rubio (R) in the Senate.

The race has come under greater scrutiny in recent weeks as top Republicans have urged Rubio, who opted out of re-election to pursue the White House, to enter the race before Floridas June 24 filing deadline in order to help the GOP hold onto its majority.

"I and my colleagues have been trying to convince Sen. Marco Rubio to run again in Florida," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told radio host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday, adding his voice to a growing chorus that includes presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Related: Why Are the Feds Investigating a Senior GOP Senator?

"He had indicated he was not going to, but were all hoping that hell reconsider, because poll data indicates that he is the one who can win for us. He would not only save a terrific senator for the Senate, but help save the majority," according to McConnell.

As for Grayson, hopefully love can be lovelier a second time around. The congressman finalized a highly-messy divorce last year but not before court filings showed that he once tried to have his estranged wife, who he labeled a gold digger, criminally charged for using his credit card.

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Whether putting a ring on it will help Grayson or his new bride remains to be seen, as Minning herself is in a three-way primary for the open seat.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
LOS ANGELES, May 31 (Reuters) - Britain's beloved cinematic singing nanny Mary Poppins will once again grace the big screens, this time with Emily Blunt and Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator and star of the Broadway smash-hit "Hamilton," as her sidekick, Walt Disney Co said on Tuesday.

"Mary Poppins Returns," a sequel to the 1964 classic film "Mary Poppins," is scheduled for release in theaters on Christmas Day 2018 and will star British actress Blunt in the titular role made famous by Julie Andrews.

Miranda, who recently won a Pulitzer Prize for creating and starring in Broadway's historical, hip-hop musical "Hamilton," will play a new character named Jack, a street lamplighter.

"Mary Poppins," the movie based on the popular children's books by author P.L. Travers, followed a magical flying British nanny as she improved the lives of the unhappy Banks family with the aid of chirpy Cockney chimneysweep Bert, played by Dick Van Dyke.

The new film will be set in Depression-era London, the setting of Travers' stories, and will see Mary Poppins return to the now grownup Jane Banks, Michael Banks and his three children after they suffer a personal loss, Disney said.

"Through her unique magical skills, and with the aid of her friend Jack, she helps the family rediscover the joy and wonder missing in their lives," the studio said.

The studio did not say in its statement whether Andrews, now 80, or Van Dyke, 90, will appear in any capacity and representatives for the actors did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment.

"Mary Poppins Returns" is the latest in a slate of reboots from Disney, which last year remade animated fairytale "Cinderella" into a live action film. Disney will also release the live action "Beauty and the Beast," starring Emma Watson, next year.

The studio also owns George Lucas' "Star Wars" science-fiction adventure franchise and the Marvel superhero franchise.

(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by G Crosse)
The Latest on Medtronic: Product Launches, Strategic Partnerships

(Continued from Prior Part)

The Medtronic-Qualcomm partnership

Medtronic (MDT) has partnered with Qualcomm to develop a disposable continuous glucose monitor (or CGM) for the type 2 diabetes patient population. The device will enable better monitoring and timely treatment of the disease due to the intelligent care provided by the device from its data capabilities.

Type 2 diabetes is a medical condition in which the body isnt able to produce enough insulin or doesnt react to insulin in order to function properly. Its more common in older people. About 400 million people are estimated to have type 2 diabetes worldwide. Currently, several medical device companies, including Medtronic, DexCom (DXCM), and Abbott Laboratories (ABT), provide professional CGMs for in-clinic use to monitor blood glucose levels, primarily in type 1 diabetes patients.

Emerging market opportunity

Type 2 diabetes patients in emerging markets generally dont monitor themselves on a regular basis due to the lack of access to self-monitoring devices. Medtronic aims to target these markets, specifically China and India, for disposable CGMs.

The Medtronic-Qualcomm partnership strengthens Medtronics strategic plan to evolve its business model and provide value-based services with intelligent and connected care to patients. Medtronic has entered into a number of partnerships over the last year to enhance its capabilities in the field of diabetes. These partnerships include Becton Dickinson (BDX) and Glooko, a diabetes data firm.

The company has also partnered with IBM Watson Health, a new unit of IBM launched in September 2015, for using big data to enable integrated care delivery solutions in the diabetes speciality area. With these initiatives, Medtronics CEO (chief executive officer) Omar Ishrak expects to unleash potential opportunities in type 2 diabetes. Investors can invest in the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV) for diversified exposure to Medtronic.

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Next, lets see why Medtronic acquired Smith & Nephews gynecology business.

Continue to Next Part

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With her long legs, piercing green eyes, high cheekbones, plump pink lips and lustrous black hair, Talleen Abu Hanna has all the looks of a model. Last month a taxi driver was convinced that she was Gal Gadot, the Israeli actress who plays Wonder Woman in Batman v Superman, and like Abu Hanna, lives in Tel Aviv. Gadots career took off after she was crowned Miss Israel in 2004. Walking through the market this morning, men selling produce ask Abu Hanna, Arent you the beauty queen?

Actually, Abu Hanna is a beauty queen. Last week the 21-year-old beat out 11 finalists to win Miss Trans Israel, Israels first transgender beauty pageant.

Aside from its holy sites and holy wars, Israel is also known for being one of the worlds most gay-friendly countries. In 2012, Tel Aviv was named the worlds top gay city by GayCities.com, and was recently referred to as the gayest city on earth by the Boston Globe.

The 18th annual Tel Aviv Pride Parade is expected to draw nearly 200,000 participants, of which an estimated 35,000 will fly in from abroad, according to the Tel Aviv municipality. Tel Avivs is among the biggest pride parades in the world, and certainly the largest in the Middle East, where being gay isnt typically celebrated.

For those who wish to showcase the relative freedom and tolerance enjoyed by Israels LGBT community, Talleen Abu Hanna is an ideal model. Born and raised in Nazareth, the childhood home of Jesus Christ, Abu Hanna is a Catholic Israeli Arab. Like many of Israels 1.6 million Arab citizens, she calls herself Palestinian as well. But ask her where shed rather live, and her response is swift.

I wouldnt be alive if I grew up in Palestine, she says in perfect Hebrew. Not as a gay man, and definitely not as a transgender woman.

She recalls how in Thailand, where she completed her gender transition surgery just one year ago, she met many transgender women from Arab countries. Their occasional trips to Thailand  known in the trans community as the best place for transitional surgery were the only times when these women felt safe to be themselves, wearing makeup and dressing as women. Back home, they told her, they had to disguise themselves as men. Its something you need to keep a secret in Arab countries, and even then its forbidden, she says.

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Homosexuality is considered a crime in many countries. Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen are just a few whose penalties for homosexuality include death and lashings.

I got really lucky to live in a country where they bring everything to you on a silver platter says Abu Hanna, ticking off each of her long fingernails the rights shes been given as a transgender Israeli woman: people refer to her with female pronouns, her Israeli ID card says that she is female and she can enter retirement at a younger age.

With that, she stops and reminds herself that there is still room for improvement, and still some rights we deserve. After all, it is impossible for same-sex couples to marry in Israel, as marriage is overseen by religious courts. Same-sex couples are also barred from Israels surrogacy process, which leaves many couples no choice but to pay exorbitant amounts of money for foreign surrogates.

There are also many social challenges facing transgender women, says Yuval Egertt, director of the Tel Aviv municipalitys LGBT center. Outside of Tel Aviv, he says, Israeli society is not so open to the LGBT community. Its only open here in the bubble, in the State of Tel Aviv, he says.

Just last year, an ultra-Orthodox Jew attacked participants in Jerusalems Gay Pride Parade with a butcher knife, killing a 16-year-old girl. He had just been released from prison, where he was serving time for stabbing marchers at the same parade in 2005.

While Abu Hannas mother, sisters and friends all accept her  shes been female since she was 5, she jokes, explaining that she was a ballerina and often dressed as a girl  her father hasnt spoken to her since she underwent sex reassignment surgery. Other women in the competition had it much worse. According to the pageants producer, Shenhav Levi, both of the Muslim finalists were beaten and exiled by their families.

Caroline Khouri, a 24-year-old from the Arab-Israeli village of Tamra, fled her home after her male relatives threatened to kill her for transitioning from man to woman. Her father, uncles and cousins chased her to Tel Aviv, where they tied her up inside an apartment, beat her, cut her hair, and starved her for three days. Israeli police rescued Khouri and imprisoned her attackers. She now has no connection to her family, says Levi.

Abu Hanna works at a clothing store owned by a transgender designer, but according to Egertt, many trans women face discrimination in housing and employment, leading many in the trans community to resort to prostitution.

Those who draw attention to Israels thriving LGBT community are sometimes accused of pink-washing, or using the issue of gay rights to paint a pretty picture of what critics say is an ugly place for Palestinians.

Talleen Abu Hanna insists she is merely describing the reality she knows, and isnt trying to sugarcoat anything. If I was somewhere else in this region I would have been in my grave a long time ago, she shrugs. Of course there are problems here, and Im still Palestinian, but what Ive gotten here I couldnt get anywhere else.
Former New Mexico gov. Gary Johnson is new to the presidential race, but it seems he's already vying for a special Donald Trump nickname.



Johnson was selected as the Libertarian candidate on Sunday at the party's convention in Orlando, Florida, and former Massachusetts gov. William Weld was picked as his running mate, according to CNN. During the convention, Johnson fired shots at the presumptive Republican nominee, calling his immigration policies "just racist."



Appearing on CNN, Tuesday, Johnson added that he's ready for whatever attacks Trump may launch at him. "I think that they've already started coming, so you know, Donald," he said, before blowing a kiss at the camera.



Johnson, 63, has been the party's nominee once before, landing on the ticket in 2012  despite backlash from the party's radical wing, according to CNN. He received 1 percent of the vote in that year's general election.









Related Video: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump: Flashback Moments, 1979 - 1992

"This is another voice at the table," Johnson said on Sunday after charging that the Libertarian party could poll well amid disapproval of Trump and Hillary Clinton.





Meet Gary Johnson, the Third Party Presidential Candidate Who's (Literally) Kissing Off Donald Trump| 2016 Presidential Elections, politics, Donald Trump





Trump addressed Johnson's nomination during his Trump Tower press conference on Tuesday.



"He got 1 percent of the vote last time, I watched that whole situation," Trump, 69, said. "It was really pretty disgraceful... I think he's a fringe candidate, you wanna know the truth... And your second, Weld, when you do a little research on that I think it's not gonna be a factor."



Here's a few things you need to know about Johnson as he begins his face-off with the Donald.



 He served as New Mexico's governor from 1995 - 2003.

 He's pro-choice, anti-government involvement in personal privacy, and supports the legalization of marijuana.

 In a recent Fox News national poll, Johnson received 10 percent of support from registered voters.

 Johnson originally ran for election in 2012 as a Republican, switching to the third party after losing the nomination.
EXCLUSIVE: At long last, 20th Century Fox is moving forward with Guys And Dolls. The studio has set Michael Grandage to direct the picture, and casting is just getting underway on the remake of the stage and movie classic. Danny Strong wrote the script. John Goldwyn is producing the picture with Working Title. Bernie Telsey is casting.

This is sure to set in motion a lot of lust from leading men and ladies who can sing and dance. When Deadline revealed that Fox finally tied down the rights a couple years ago, the studio was eyeing a killer pairing of Channing Tatum and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the roles made famous by Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando. It is unclear whether these guys are still in the mix. A lot of time has passed, and a number of actors have coveted these roles in past attempts to adapt Guys And Dolls, each time a movie deal was rumored. Years ago, it looked like Harvey Weinstein was getting the rights, with his Chicago exec producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron producing the film. Thesps from Russell Crowe to Vin Diesel, Hugh Jackman and others all tossed their hats into the ring to play the leads. Those deals never happened because Jo Loesser, the widow of songwriter Frank Loesser, never found a deal to her liking. That finally happened in 2013.

genius-photo

Grandage directed a stage version of the musical in the West End in 2005, a production that starred Ewan McGregor as Masterson and Douglas Hodge as Nathan Detroit. Grandage directed Genius, the John Logan-scripted adaptation of the A. Scott Berg book about Max Perkins, the legendary literary editor who oversaw works of Thomas Wolfe, Ernest Hemingway and other great writers. That film stars Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, Jude Law, Guy Pearce and Laura Linney, for Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions releasing June 10.

RelatedGenius Trailer: Colin Firth As Editor Max Perkins And Jude Law As Writer Thomas Wolfe

guys and dolls

Guys And Dolls

was taken from Damon Runyons short stories that captured the rogue gangsters and gamblers of the 1920s and 30s. In the 1955 movie, Nathan Detroit (Sinatra) has a town full of captive gamblers and wants to set up a floating crap game but needs money to do it. He bets his pal Sky Masterson (Brando) that Sky cant get the wholesome Sarah Brown (Jean Simmons)  who runs a mission  to go with him to Havana. Frank Loesser wrote the music and lyrics, and Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows wrote the book. The musical won the Tony for Best Musical when it premiered in 1950, and won the 1951 Pulitzer for Drama, until the troubles Burrows was having with the House Un-American Activities Committee caused the Trustees of Columbia University to veto the selection. Guys And Dolls was then turned into the 1955 movie. The classic Loesser songs included Luck Be a Lady and Sit Down, Youre Rockin The Boat.

Story continues

CAA reps Grandage.

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Here are some of the stocks the Yahoo Finance team will be watching for you today.

Celator Pharmaceuticals (CPXX) shares are surging ahead of the open. Ireland based Jazz Pharmaceuticals (JAZZ) is buying its US rival in a deal valued at about $1.5 billion. That translates to $30.25 a share in cash, which represents a 72% premium from Celator's closing price on Friday. The deal will give Jazz access to an experimental drug for a rare leukemia.



Micron Technology (MU) shares soared in early trading after RW Baird upgraded the stock to outperform from neutral and raised its price target by about 50% from its current price to $18 a share. The analyst is citing a rebound in PCs and the Chinese smartphone market, which will help improve demand for memory chips.



Get the Latest Market Data and News with the Yahoo Finance App

Tesla (TSLA) shares are in the spotlight. The luxury electric car maker is gearing up for its annual shareholder meeting in Mountain View, California at 5 p.m. ET. CEO Elon Musk's Q&A session with investors will be closely monitored.

Tata Motors' (TTM) US listed shares were up sharply this morning after the Indian automaker delivered better-than-expected earnings for the first three months of the year. Profits tripled thanks to strong sales of its Jaguar Land Rover in Europe and China.
BEIJING/SINGAPORE, May 31 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp chief executive Satya Nadella is in Beijing this week, a company spokesman said on Tuesday, as China's anti-trust investigation of the U.S. software titan nears its third year.

Nadella is expected to meet government officials to discuss the probe, a source familiar with the matter said.

His visit is the second over the past month to China by a high-profile U.S. technology executive after Apple Inc chief executive Tim Cook's mid-May visit in a bid to reinvigorate sales. Cook met China's Vice Premier Wang Yang on May 17.

Microsoft is one of several foreign firms to have come under scrutiny as China seeks to enforce a 2008 anti-monopoly law, which some critics say is being used to unfairly target overseas businesses.

Revenues earned in the country for the firm also have come under pressure, as China seeks to replace western tech products with those manufactured locally.

The State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC), one of China's anti-monopoly regulators, conducted raids on Microsoft in mid-2014 relating to the anti-monopoly law.

The investigation relates to compatibility, bundle sales, and file verification issues related to Windows and Office software, according to Microsoft.

Nadella is no stranger to China. He visited in September 2014, after news of the investigation broke. At a meeting with a top regulator in Beijing at that time, Nadella promised to cooperate fully with authorities in their investigation. (http://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-china-idUSKCN0HN0EQ20140928)

But in a sign that the matter still had not been resolved, SAIC said in January that it had requested Microsoft to explain some issues that came to the fore from digital data obtained as part of an anti-trust probe.

A spokesman for Microsoft declined to confirm whether Nadella is meeting with government officials and said his China visit will include attending a Microsoft Developer day and Tsinghua Management School event.

Story continues

He is a member of the advisory board of the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University, which counts President Xi Jinping among its alumni. Nadella hosted Xi at Microsoft's campus in Seattle in September when the Chinese president visited the United States for a week-long trip.

The Information Office of the State Council, China's cabinet which oversees SAIC, did not immediately respond to questions.

Nadella's visit also comes as Microsoft prepares to shut down its MSN China portal in June.

The U.S. software company has also taken a public beating in China in the past few days as users criticised its push to get them to mandatorily upgrade their Windows operating systems, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

(Reporting by Matthew Miller in BEIJING and Jeremy Wagstaff in SINGAPORE; Editing by Miyoung Kim and Muralikumar Anantharaman)
BEIJING/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) chief executive Satya Nadella is in Beijing this week, a company spokesman said on Tuesday, as China's anti-trust investigation of the U.S. software titan nears its third year.

Nadella is expected to meet government officials to discuss the probe, a source familiar with the matter said.

His visit is the second over the past month to China by a high-profile U.S. technology executive after Apple Inc (AAPL.O) chief executive Tim Cook's mid-May visit in a bid to reinvigorate sales. Cook met China's Vice Premier Wang Yang on May 17.

Microsoft is one of several foreign firms to have come under scrutiny as China seeks to enforce a 2008 anti-monopoly law, which some critics say is being used to unfairly target overseas businesses.

Revenues earned in the country for the firm also have come under pressure, as China seeks to replace western tech products with those manufactured locally.

The State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC), one of China's anti-monopoly regulators, conducted raids on Microsoft in mid-2014 relating to the anti-monopoly law.

The investigation relates to compatibility, bundle sales, and file verification issues related to Windows and Office software, according to Microsoft.

Nadella is no stranger to China. He visited in September 2014, after news of the investigation broke. At a meeting with a top regulator in Beijing at that time, Nadella promised to cooperate fully with authorities in their investigation.

(http://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-china-idUSKCN0HN0EQ20140928)

But in a sign that the matter still had not been resolved, SAIC said in January that it had requested Microsoft to explain some issues that came to the fore from digital data obtained as part of an anti-trust probe.

A spokesman for Microsoft declined to confirm whether Nadella is meeting with government officials and said his China visit will include attending a Microsoft Developer day and Tsinghua Management School event.

Story continues

He is a member of the advisory board of the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University, which counts President Xi Jinping among its alumni. Nadella hosted Xi at Microsoft's campus in Seattle in September when the Chinese president visited the United States for a week-long trip.

The Information Office of the State Council, China's cabinet which oversees SAIC, did not immediately respond to questions.

Nadella's visit also comes as Microsoft prepares to shut down its MSN China portal in June.

The U.S. software company has also taken a public beating in China in the past few days as users criticised its push to get them to mandatorily upgrade their Windows operating systems, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

(Reporting by Matthew Miller in BEIJING and Jeremy Wagstaff in SINGAPORE; Editing by Miyoung Kim and Muralikumar Anantharaman)
BEIJING/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp chief executive Satya Nadella is in Beijing this week, a company spokesman said on Tuesday, as China's anti-trust investigation of the U.S. software titan nears its third year.

Nadella is expected to meet government officials to discuss the probe, a source familiar with the matter said.

His visit is the second over the past month to China by a high-profile U.S. technology executive after Apple Inc chief executive Tim Cook's mid-May visit in a bid to reinvigorate sales. Cook met China's Vice Premier Wang Yang on May 17.

Microsoft is one of several foreign firms to have come under scrutiny as China seeks to enforce a 2008 anti-monopoly law, which some critics say is being used to unfairly target overseas businesses.

Revenues earned in the country for the firm also have come under pressure, as China seeks to replace western tech products with those manufactured locally.

The State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC), one of China's anti-monopoly regulators, conducted raids on Microsoft in mid-2014 relating to the anti-monopoly law.

The investigation relates to compatibility, bundle sales, and file verification issues related to Windows and Office software, according to Microsoft.

Nadella is no stranger to China. He visited in September 2014, after news of the investigation broke. At a meeting with a top regulator in Beijing at that time, Nadella promised to cooperate fully with authorities in their investigation.

(http://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-china-idUSKCN0HN0EQ20140928)

But in a sign that the matter still had not been resolved, SAIC said in January that it had requested Microsoft to explain some issues that came to the fore from digital data obtained as part of an anti-trust probe.

A spokesman for Microsoft declined to confirm whether Nadella is meeting with government officials and said his China visit will include attending a Microsoft Developer day and Tsinghua Management School event.

Story continues

He is a member of the advisory board of the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University, which counts President Xi Jinping among its alumni. Nadella hosted Xi at Microsoft's campus in Seattle in September when the Chinese president visited the United States for a week-long trip.

The Information Office of the State Council, China's cabinet which oversees SAIC, did not immediately respond to questions.

Nadella's visit also comes as Microsoft prepares to shut down its MSN China portal in June.

The U.S. software company has also taken a public beating in China in the past few days as users criticized its push to get them to mandatorily upgrade their Windows operating systems, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

(Reporting by Matthew Miller in BEIJING and Jeremy Wagstaff in SINGAPORE; Editing by Miyoung Kim and Muralikumar Anantharaman)
LEWIS CENTER, OH / ACCESSWIRE / May 31, 2016 / Midwest Energy Emissions Corp. (OTCQB: MEEC) ("ME2C" or the "Company"), an emerging leader in mercury emissions control technology for the global coal-power industry, has been invited to present at the Sixth Annual LD Micro Invitational in Los Angeles on Wednesday, June 8, 2016, at 9:00 a.m. Pacific time.

Richard MacPherson, CEO of ME2C, will be giving the presentation and holding one-on-one meetings with investors throughout the day.

The presentation will also be webcast and available for 90 days following the live presentation. The webcast can be viewed at http://wsw.com/webcast/ldmicro10/meec and on the investor relations section of the ME2C website.

The conference will be held at the Luxe Sunset Bel Air Hotel and will feature 195 companies in the small/micro-cap space.

View ME2C's profile here: http://www.ldmicro.com/profile/meec

Profiles powered by LD Micro - News Compliments of Accesswire

About Midwest Energy Emissions Corp. (ME2C)

Midwest Energy Emissions Corp. (MEEC) delivers patented and proprietary solutions to the global coal-power industry to remove mercury from power plant emissions, providing performance guarantees, and leading-edge emissions services. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) MATS rule requires that all coal- and oil-fired power plants in the U.S., larger than 25 mega-watts, must remove roughly 90% of mercury from their emissions starting April 15, 2015. In June 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court remanded MATS back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for further review, but left the rule in place. The D.C. Circuit has since remanded the rule to the EPA for further consideration, but without vacatur, allowing MATS to remain in effect until the EPA issues a final finding. On April 14, 2016, the EPA issued a final supplemental finding upholding the rule and concluding that a cost analysis supports the MATS rule. ME2C expects legal challenges to the rule will continue. ME2C has developed patented technology and proprietary products that have been shown to achieve mercury removal levels compliant with MATS at a significantly lower cost and with less operational impact than currently used methods, while preserving the marketability of fly-ash for beneficial use. For more information, please visit www.midwestemissions.com.

Story continues

About LD Micro

LD Micro was founded in 2006 with the sole purpose of being an independent resource in the microcap space. What started out as a newsletter highlighting unique companies has transformed into an event platform hosting several influential conferences annually (Invitational, Summit, and Main Event).

In 2015, LDM launched the first pure microcap index (the LDMi) to exclusively provide intraday information on the entire sector. LD will continue to provide valuable tools for the benefit of everyone in the small and microcap universe. Visit www.ldmicro.com for more information.

Company Contact:

Richard MacPherson

Chief Executive Officer

Midwest Energy Emissions Corp.

Main: 614-505-6115

rmacpherson@midwestemissions.com

Investor Relations Contact:

Greg Falesnik

Senior Vice President

MZ Group - MZ North America

Main: 949-385-6449

greg.falesnik@mzgroup.us

www.mzgroup.us

SOURCE: Midwest Energy Emissions Corp. via LD Micro
By Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani and Kieran Guilbert ABUJA/DAKAR (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A promising student who dreamed of going to university, Mary was 16 when a woman approached her mother at their home and offered to take the Nigerian teenager to Italy to find work. Pushed to go by her family who hoped she would lift them out of poverty, Mary ended up being trafficked into prostitution. Her voice faltering, Mary described three years of being forced to sell her body, beatings, threats at gunpoint and being made to watch as a 14-year-old virgin was raped with a carrot before being sent on to the streets of Turin in northwest Italy. After being arrested by Italian police, Mary was repatriated to Nigeria's southern Edo state in 2001, but she was rejected by her family and left feeling like a failure. "I returned with nothing," Mary, now 35, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation from Benin city in Edo. "I hated myself." While Mary's ordeal ended 15 years ago, a soaring number of Nigerian girls like her are being trafficked to Europe - mainly Italy - and forced to sell sex by gangs taking advantage of the chaos caused by the migrant crisis, anti-slavery activists say. Thousands of women and girls are lured to Europe each year with the promise of work, then trapped by huge debts and bound to their traffickers by a religious ritual - the curse of juju. "The victims are getting younger as girls, mainly those in rural areas, are more likely to focus on the positive stories of those who made it to Europe and didn't end up in prostitution," said Katharine Bryant of the Walk Free Foundation rights group. She spoke ahead of the launch of the third Global Slavery Index, which found Nigeria has the world's eighth highest number of slaves - 875,500 - and is a key source country for women trafficked to Europe and sold into sex work. BOUND BY JUJU More than nine in 10 of the Nigerian women trafficked to Europe come from Edo, a predominantly Christian state with a population of about 3 million, according to the United Nations. While Edo is not among the country's poorest states, its history of migration to Italy has fueled locals' hopes of easy money in Europe - leaving people vulnerable to traffickers, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) says. Before going to Europe, women and girls must sign a contract with traffickers to finance their move, racking up debts of up to $100,000. They then must seal the pact with a juju ritual. "I was taken to a native doctor's shrine, and told to bite the neck of a chicken to add its blood to a concoction made with bits of my hair and fingernails, and my underwear," Mary said. This belief in black magic means victims fear they or their family may fall ill or die if they do not pay off their debts. Most of the women and girls know they will have to sell sex but are pressured by their families and deceived by traffickers, said Nigeria's anti-human trafficking agency (NAPTIP). Many have no idea they will live under the control of older "madams" and be forced to work for several years to clear their debts, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Madams, who make up almost half of traffickers in Nigeria, are mostly former victims who target others in order to escape prostitution - perpetuating a cycle of exploitation, the UNODC said in its latest global report on human trafficking. MIGRANT CRISIS Traffickers and gangs in Nigeria are now exploiting Europe's migration crisis - moving girls to lawless Libya, before crossing the Mediterranean to Italy on flimsy, overloaded boats, said Bryant from the Walk Free Foundation. More than 5,600 Nigerian women and girls arrived in Italy by sea last year, up from 1,200 in 2014, and at least four in five were trafficked into sex work, the IOM said. At least 1,250 Nigerian women have landed in Italy this year, up from 373 for the same period in 2015, IOM data shows. Traffickers also take victims to Europe by plane, using forged documents and flying via other West African countries to avoid suspicion, said Mikael Jensen of the UNODC. British airports such as Gatwick are increasingly used as entry points by Nigerian trafficking gangs with forged documents, Spanish police said earlier this year. "Many traffickers are careful with their goods, they don't want to risk them on a dangerous sea crossing," Jensen said. About 3,770 migrants and refugees died in 2015 crossing the Mediterranean, making it the deadliest year on record for those fleeing conflict and poverty, according to the IOM. RE-TRAFFICKED Human trafficking by Nigerian organized crime gangs is one of the greatest challenges facing police forces across Europe, according to the EU's law enforcement agency Europol. A lack of coordination between European states and Nigeria is allowing traffickers to act with impunity, said Kevin Hyland, who was appointed Britain's first anti-slavery chief in 2014. "There has been some progress, but it's been a piecemeal plan, and responsive rather than proactive," Hyland said. Nigerian anti-trafficking official Arinze Orakwe said more European nations should criminalize the purchase of sex to curb the number of Nigerians trafficked into prostitution in Europe. "If nobody is buying, nobody will sell," said the official at NAPTIP, which has rescued some 1,340 victims in Nigeria over the past year, and works with NGOs to support them. The Women Trafficking and Child Labour Eradication Foundation (WOTCLEF) clothes and feeds victims, provides counseling and attempts to reunite them with their families. "But sometimes families are hostile, and not interested in getting them back," said WOTCLEF coordinator Veronica Umaru. Disillusioned by her parents' disappointment at her return home, Mary hoped to go back to Italy before being referred to Girls' Power Initiative, a Nigerian NGO that housed her, trained her to run a business and encouraged her to help other victims. Yet Mary says many former victims have been re-trafficked to Italy, and fears not enough is being done to stop traffickers or persuade women and girls not to go abroad and into prostitution. "Girls today, unlike me, know exactly what they are in for when they agree to go to Italy to work," Mary says tearfully. "But they do not understand the trauma they will face." (Reporting by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani and Kieran Guilbert, writing By Kieran Guilbert, editing by Alisa Tang. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)
Geneva (AFP) - More than 2,500 people have died trying to make the perilous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe so far in 2016, the UN said Tuesday, a sharp jump from the same period last year.

At the same time some 204,000 migrants and refugees have crossed the Mediterranean to the continent since January, a figure that has also climbed acutely.

In the past week alone, at least 880 people have died in a series of shipwrecks, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said, citing information from survivors who made it to Italy.

"I emphasise that that figure is a conservative estimate," UNHCR spokesman William Spindler told reporters.

A number of small children reportedly drowned in the series of boat accidents over the past week, as thousands continue to attempt the sea crossing to Europe in rickety vessels from the Middle East and Africa.

UNHCR described desperate situations at the weekend, with 47 people still missing after one incident where a raft carrying 125 people from Libya deflated.

Spindler warned that "2016 is proving to be particularly deadly," saying that during the first five months of 2015, the death toll stood at 1,855, while the number during the same period in 2014 was 57.

The number of arrivals is more than double the nearly 92,000 who landed on the continent's shores during the first five months of 2015, according to the International Organization for Migration, although more than one million made the trip by the end of last year.

Three quarters of those who have arrived in Europe so far in 2016 landed in Greece before the end of March -- most of them refugees fleeing conflicts in Syria and Afghanistan.

But arrivals to Greece have fallen sharply since the EU entered a controversial deal on March 20 with key transit country Turkey to stem the flow of migrants.

- Deadly route -

Meanwhile, 46,714 people have arrived in Italy since the beginning of the year, around the same number as during the first five months of 2015, UNHCR said.

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Nearly all of those travelling on this route are from sub-Saharan Africa, especially Nigeria and Gambia, as well as Somalia and Eritrea.

Counting all routes across the Mediterranean, Spindler said the odds of dying while trying to cross to Europe was now one in 81.

The route between Libya and Italy, which is far longer than the one between Turkey and Greece, has proven particularly deadly, with 2,119 of all deaths registered this year along that route.

Spindler warned that the risk of dying on that route was now one in 23.

The boats taking this route tend to be far more crowded, he explained, often carrying 600 or more passengers and sometimes being towed by larger fishing boats, which Spindler said was "very dangerous."

"Smugglers are getting more ruthless," he warned.

He said there was suspicion that the recent increase in numbers attempting to cross the Mediterranean could be linked to "efforts by smugglers to maximise income before the start of the holy month of Ramadan", which begins next week.

Also on Tuesday Italian prosecutors announced the arrest of 16 alleged traffickers who are accused of helping nearly 900 migrants make the journey from Libya to Italy.

The suspects -- 11 of whom were Moroccan -- were on board a boat that arrived Saturday in Sicily after being rescued two days earlier off the coast of Libya.
With the possible exception of Germany and Swedens overwhelmed immigration agencies, few institutions on the front lines of the migrant crisis have played a more prominent role than the Italian Navy.

Every day, its ships and sailors rescue dozens  sometimes hundreds  of migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean in leaky, overcrowded vessels. Over the course of the past year, the Italian Navy rescued 47,335 men and women in trouble at sea, according to Defense Ministry statistics. On May 6, Italian sailors rescued nearly 1,800 within 24 hours; on one day in August last year, they rescued 3,000  and then they made sure to tweet about it.

Italy has taken the lead among European nations in rescuing migrants trying to make the dangerous crossing from North Africa, which last week may have claimed as many as 700 lives. And somewhere along the way, the Navy has managed to parlay these rescues into a popularity boost: one that has turned sailors into heroes and helped the maritime services secure funding for long into the future.

In the funding package, approved last year, Italys government granted the Navy 5.4 billion for new vessels. The funding was approved with very little opposition, with only the Five Star Movement  an anti-establishment protest party  voting against it, thanks to canny lobbying by the head of the Navy and by focusing politicians attention on the need to save thousands of migrants sailing across the Mediterranean from North Africa, reported Defense News.

By contrast, there has been plenty of opposition to buying additional F-35 fighter jets for the Italian Air Force. (In 2012, the government cut back on the number of aircraft it planned on purchasing.) Peoples attitude was, what do you want these planes for? Do you want to bomb something? said Fabrizio Coticchia, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Genoa and co-author of Venus in Arms, a blog about Italian defense.

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Italian public opinion is usually opposed to acquisitions of military equipment deemed to be offensive, but Italians like humanitarian operations, said Coticchia.

The Navy has made efforts to draw attention to its sailors valiant efforts on the high seas, providing a steady stream of photos on social media and making videos available to news media. It has its own YouTube channel, too, where this month it shared a dramatic video of a migrant ship capsizing. (Of the more than 500 souls aboard, the Italian Navy was able to rescue nearly all.) The institution has also made a point of using the media to emphasize its new role: in an interview with the newspaper La Repubblica this month, for example, Adm. Enrico Credendino, the commander of the EUs Mediterranean anti-smuggling operation known as Operation Sophia, stressed the emphasis on saving lives: At sea there is only one law: if youre in difficulty youre rescued, he said.

And polling data shows its working. Public attitudes toward the institution are overwhelmingly positive: According to a recent poll by the Eurispes institute, more Italians than ever  75.4 percent  say they respect the Navy. The Navys Twitter account, @ItalianNavy, has 33,000 followers.

The popularity of the Navy may be in part due to what the migrant crisis symbolizes to Italians. Those coming on boats arent just people in need of rescue from dangerous waters; theyre a reminder of the growing dangers in the Mediterranean. Those dangers include both jihadists and smugglers who traffic in people, arms, and narcotics. [I]n southern Europe the main threat comes from North Africa and the Middle East, says Stefano Stefanini, Italys former ambassador to NATO. To protect ourselves against those threats, we need to control the Mediterranean, and that means a strong Navy.

With or without the recent wave of migrants, the Navy would have had to replace parts of its aging fleet  many of its vessels are approaching two decades of service and some have been working since the 1970s. But the new funding allows it to do so faster and more efficiently. And lobbying efforts for the package werent hurt by the fact that, with Italys unemployment rate at 12.7 percent last summer, politicians welcomed labor-intensive activity like shipbuilding, said Giampaolo Di Paola, Italys defense minister just before the naval investment program, who has also served as the Italian militarys chief of staff and chairman of NATOs defense committee. The Italian shipbuilding industry is Europes second-largest after Germany but has been in a slump ever since the 2008 global financial crash.

The public support, and politicians solid backing, are in some ways an unexpected turn of events. Naval forces all over the world suffer from the lontano dallocchio, lontano dal cuore phenomenon: theyre far from average citizens eyes, and thus far from their hearts. Or as sailors like to say, land-dwellers suffer from sea blindness. By contrast, armies soldiers and their equipment are a common presence among civilians; the air force, for its part, enjoys regular interaction with the population through air shows and sporting event flyovers.

Before the crisis erupted two years ago, the Italian Navy spent most of its time in faraway destinations, including Haiti and the Gulf of Aden, while rescue efforts were left to the Coast Guard (which in Italy operates as part of the Navy). Under ordinary circumstances, coast guards are responsible for search and rescue, as most boats get into trouble relatively close to shore.

But the crisis, and the post-Arab Spring Middle East, has radically changed Italys security situation. The country is not only engaged in search-and-rescue operations: Italy will take the lead on a NATO mission, expected to be approved at the alliances Warsaw Summit this July, that aims to stop migrants from using Libya as a launch pad to get to Europe. All of a sudden its possible for people to cross the Mediterranean in leaky boats, not just large vessels, said Stefanini. The Mediterranean is like Europes moat, and in this new situation its no longer enough to patrol the coast; you need to patrol international waters too. That means bringing in the Navy.

The Italian Navy was a sizable force during the Cold War, when it was seen as a crucial component of NATOs front against the Warsaw Pact, tasked with defending the alliances southeastern border against a Soviet invasion. The Marina Militare operated not just assault ships and destroyers but small aircraft carriers and submarines.

But once the Cold War ended, the Italian militarys fortunes turned. Like most European armed forces, it saw its budget cut, in Italys case from 2.3 percent of GDP in 1990 to 2 percent in 2000 and 1.3 percent in 2015, according to statistics from SIPRI, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

But while the Italian Air Force and especially the Army still have to economize, last year the Navy received unprecedented governmental largesse with the 5.4 billion funding package. Thats partly because security issues in Mediterranean countries have shifted from land to water. In the nineties, the focus was on land-based defense, but today its maritime security, noted Vice Adm. Ferdinando Sanfelice di Monteforte, a former commander of NATOs naval forces in southern Europe and Italian military representative to NATO.

The Italian Navy vessels currently patrolling the Mediterranean include 10 ships, two of which are frigates, assigned to search-and-rescue and anti-smuggling operations. Italian vessels also patrol the waters off Libya, as do four Italian submarines, which according to Italian news media monitor jihadist communications.

The Navys newly ordered vessels include seven multi-purpose offshore patrol ships  which are particularly suited to search and rescue  a logistics support ship, and two high-speed multi-role vessels for special operations. Most of the vessels will be made by Fincantieri, the state-owned Italian shipbuilder. But the new acquisitions wont limit the sailors to non-warfare missions like migrant search and rescue, said Di Paola: The Navy needs a more modern and balanced fleet, and the construction plan meets those requirements.

The new vessels will be delivered between 2021 and 2026  by which point, of course, the migrant crisis may already be over. But the Italian Navys resurgence will be in full force.

Photo credit: GIOVANNI ISOLINO/AFP/Getty Images
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Millennials are a problem at work.

At least, that's what people are telling the Dallas Federal Reserve.

"The younger workers are often off task, engaged on social media, on the internet, texting on phones and other unproductive activities," one manufacturer told the Dallas Fed.

In related news, one of the top oil traders on Twitter deleted his account after being called a liar, and Carl Icahn announced a new position in hedge fund favorite Allergan Pharmaceuticals with a Tweet.

The departing Valeant CEO's separation agreement might make you choke up a little bit. Mike Pearson will get paid $83,333 a month for the rest of the year to "consult" for the company.

Nice work, if you can get it.

Emma Slatter, the head of strategy in the legal department at Deutsche Bank, is leaving the firm, according to a memo seen by Business Insider.

And here 5 former Goldman Sachs interns explain how to prepare for life on Wall Street.

Here are the top Wall Street headlines at midday:

This is the 'reckoning point' for a bunch of oil producers  The political, economic, and security crises of several OPEC members, which have been exacerbated by nearly two years of lower oil prices, are finally reaching a critical moment.

US companies issued a staggering $517 billion of debt in the last year The debt pile encapsulates the largest 1500 non-financial companies in the US, and the chart of its growth is astounding.

GOLDMAN SACHS: 5 practical uses for blockchain  from Airbnb to stock markets "Is the hype around blockchain justified?" asks Goldman Sachs in a blockbuster 88-page note sent to clients this week.

The answer to millennials' biggest money worry might have something to do with Candy Crush  It's tough to be a millennial.

Chicago is back in contraction Business activity in Chicago is back in contraction.

Story continues

India's GDP is literally unbelievable India's economy grew by 7.9% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2016, according to the Statistics Ministry.

5 successful women at Morgan Stanley share their best career advice Wall Street has not traditionally been a woman's world.





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Farzana shivers with her seven children in what has been her home for more than a decade in Chaman-e-Babrak, Afghanistan. This settlement in northern Kabul houses hundreds of displaced families who have been forced to flee the conflict between Afghan forces and their international allies and armed groups like the Taliban. A tarpaulin hangs over the edges of her small, damp, mud-brick hut where the windows and doors should be. The roof leaks from the recent heavy rains; outside, the settlements barely walkable roads have turned to mud.

Farzana is 30 years old, and life on the run from the war has taken its toll. She fled her native Parwan province in the late 1990s because of fighting between the Taliban and local warlords and made her way to Kabul after a stint as a refugee in Pakistan. She has been her familys sole breadwinner since her husband, a drug addict, left years ago and her oldest son was killed in a car accident. Aid  which she says was paltry to begin with  has dried up even more over the past years, with the Afghan governments resources dwindling and international interest in the country fading. The family relies mostly on handouts  old bread from a nearby bakery, mostly  but it is not enough to feed them. When you cant put food on the table for your children, it is worse than being shot with a gun, Farzana said. Im worried about my children and that they will die [this winter].

As the conflict in Afghanistan has intensified over the past year, due to a resurgent Taliban and the withdrawal of international troops, the growing violence has exacted a devastating toll on ordinary Afghans. In the West, stories of Afghans risking their lives on dangerous journeys to reach European shores have made headlines. Almost 200,000 Afghans applied for asylum in EU states in 2015, four times as many as the year before. But the vast majority of Afghans lack the resources to pack up and leave. Like Farzana, they end up becoming displaced within their countrys borders.

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Internal displacement has exploded in Afghanistan in recent years. Today, some 1.2 million people have been forced to flee their homes due to the conflict in the country. This is more than double the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) just three-and-a-half years ago (almost 500,000 by the end of 2012).

These are the Afgan conflicts forgotten victims. As a new Amnesty International report released Tuesday shows, IDPs are forced to live in squalid conditions, clinging to survival. We interviewed more than 100 IDPs in camps and settlements in Kabul, Herat, and Mazar-e-Sharif, and all told the same stories. Most cannot find enough food for the day, let alone access essential services like education and health care. While these are common struggles for many poor Afghans, those displaced  uprooted from their communities, deprived of their livelihoods, traumatized, and without shelter  are facing even greater hurdles.

The Afghan government has failed to improve the situation of IDPs, and many government officials often treat their plight with callous indifference. At the same time, the United States and international governments risk abandoning these people who are bearing the brunt of an increasingly brutal war.

In 2014, Kabul endorsed a new National Policy on IDPs, which could have been a lifeline for those displaced. Widely hailed as one of the most comprehensive such documents in the world, the policy, for the first time, spelled out the human rights of IDPs and the Afghan governments primary responsibility to uphold these rights. Crucially, the IDP policy also set out a thorough implementation plan and assigned roles and responsibilities across state institutions for turning it into reality. Food, schools, and clinics for the displaced looked within reach.

But more than two years later, the IDP policy is nothing but a failed promise. It has resulted in virtually zero tangible benefits for the internally displaced. If anything, those we spoke to said that their situation has worsened with time. The massive influx of the newly displaced means that competition for the meager resources on offer has intensified, and there are fewer essentials like food and job opportunities. With international donor money drying up as the world turns its attention away from Afghanistan, most people also reported receiving less aid over the past years.

There are several reasons why the IDP policy stalled, all of which point to wider failures to respect and protect human rights in Afghanistan. For one, there is an enormous lack of capacity and expertise in the Afghan government when it comes to IDPs. The Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation, charged with coordinating the policys implementation, is badly under-resourced and has been beset by allegations of corruption for years, to the point that some international actors have stopped funding it.

The ministry simply lacks the tools to handle a task as complex as implementing a policy meant to benefit more than 1 million IDPs. Other ministries charged with allocating funding for IDPs and developing programs to aid them have either not done so or are unaware of the policys existence, as was evident from Amnesty Internationals meetings with them. There is a major need for training and capacity building across the Afghan government on IDP rights and the policy. Thankfully, some such programs are already underway. But to make an impact, the Afghan government must expand them.

At the same time, the international community has failed to cover Kabuls funding and resource gaps. With other crises grabbing global attention and donor money, organizations working for IDPs in Afghanistan have experienced major budget cuts over the years. Aid workers also spoke to us of a human resources crisis, where it is harder than ever to fill positions and the most competent staff are often shipped to more headline-grabbing crises.

The United Nations has asked for $393 million in humanitarian funding for Afghanistan in 2016. While this might sound like a big number, it is the smallest figure in years, despite the worsening situation. By May, less than a quarter of the requested money had arrived. While Kabul is supposed to take the lead on the IDP policy, its obvious shortcomings make increased international engagement all the more urgent.

This is the tragedy of Afghanistan: While the humanitarian situation is worsening by the day, many international governments are less interested than ever. Many NATO countries are trying to spin a dangerous narrative that they have left a stable and peaceful country behind after the troop withdrawal, while the reality on the ground is the complete opposite.

While the world looks the other way, the conflict in Afghanistan is intensifying, and ordinary people are paying the price. Farzana is desperate to leave her settlement and build a new life for her family but sees no way out. I hate it here. Every corner of this camp reminds me of my sons death, she said. A 16-year-old girl in the same settlement told us: I see no improvement; our situation has gone from bad to worse. I feel like we are being forgotten. There is no attention on displaced people anymore.

The Afghan government and its international partners must act now to meet the countrys exploding displacement crisis before it is too late.

Photo credit: AREF KARIMI/AFP/Getty Images
Mark Thompson runs Talga Resources Ltd. (ASX: TLG) (OTC: TLGRF), an Australian-based gold miner that is no longer interested in the coveted commodity. Instead, the company is now focusing on graphite  the exact same material used in pencils.

What Is Graphene?

According to Bloomberg, graphite can actually be converted into a material called graphene, which is not only stronger than steel but conducts electricity more efficiently than copper. It is also lightweight and flexible and a key component in batteries.

Turning Bullish

Thompson turned uber-bullish on graphene's prospects in 2011 when he examined the material and realized that the biggest component in lithium batteries is the graphite coating wires and anodes.

Related Link: Tanker Rates Down This Week: Here's Why

"After seeing the supply chain for batteries and the growth in electric vehicles, we knew we wanted to get into graphite," Bloomberg quoted Thompson as saying.

As such, his quest to mine the material has begun. He even discovered a seam of graphite in Sweden and acquired the mining rights from a Canadian company that was looking for copper and gold in the region. In fact, the graphite is so concentrated that Thompson's company can slice the material into blocks that are cheaper and easier to process when compared to low-cost producers in China.

Catalysts And Headwinds

"The biggest blockers of the graphene sector have been the cost of production and the lack of volume," said Simon Moores, managing director at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, an industry researcher based in London. "The industry can't really get true volume consistently into the market, and this is a major problem for large purchasers."

Thompson hopes to solve this "major problem" and earn a lucrative profit while doing so. He estimates that his company can produce the material for approximately $352 a ton  a far cry from the estimated shipping cost of at least $30,000 a ton for the material.

The company is investing approximately $22 million in its Swedish mine and processing plant ahead of an expected surge in demand. Currently, lithium-ion batters consume around 80,000 tons of graphite a year and is expected to spike to 250,000 tons in 2020.

Story continues

See more from Benzinga

 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
Mitch McConnell

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell joined the growing chorus of voices calling for Donald Trump to release his tax returns.

In an interview promoting his newly released memoir, "The Long Game," McConnell pointed out that for decades every major presidential candidate has released his or her tax records, a tradition intended to shed light on whether a candidate attempts to take advantage of the tax structure.

"For the last 30 or 40 years, every candidate for president has released their tax returns, and I think Donald Trump should as well," McConnell told Business Insider on Tuesday.

Over the past several months, Trump has resisted calls to release his returns, citing supposed legal advice to wait until the IRS finishes an audit of his records.

The majority leader previously suggested that he was puzzled by Trump's decision not to release his tax returns, but didn't explicitly call for the real-estate mogul to do so.

While McConnell asserted that Trump should release his records, he stopped short of supporting a bill backed by Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden that would require all presidential nominees to publicly disclose their tax records.

Many prominent Senate Republicans have echoed their party's leader in calling on Trump to disclose his tax records.

Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, a top-ranking Republican in Senate leadership, told CNN earlier this month that it would be a "good idea" for Trump to release his tax returns.

Other prominent Republican figures have also frowned on the presumptive Republican presidential nominee's refusal to release his tax records.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has repeatedly suggested that Trump's hesitancy could stem from a potential "bombshell" in the returns.

"It is disqualifying for a modern-day presidential nominee to refuse to release tax returns to the voters, especially one who has not been subject to public scrutiny in either military or public service," Romney wrote in a recent Facebook post.

Story continues

Watch McConnell's comments below:

And watch more of our interview with the Senate majority leader here:





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Mitch McConnell

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday responded to Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol's weekend assertion that he would put forward a strong third-party candidate to compete with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

"Well, I hope he's not successful, because that will help elect Hillary Clinton to the presidency," McConnell told Business Insider in an interview that centered on his newly released memoir, "The Long Game." "It's hard to run as an independent and be successful. You could conceivably take votes away from a right-of-center nominee and make it more likely that a liberal gets elected president."

"I like Bill Kristol and I know he's a smart guy, but I hope he's unsuccessful," the Senate majority leader continued.

Trump slammed Kristol, the editor of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine, at a press conference on Tuesday. He called Kristol a "loser" days after Kristol alluded to a possible independent candidacy in the 2016 presidential election.

Kristol tweeted on Sunday that there would be an "independent candidate  an impressive one, with a strong team and a real chance," prompting Trump to tweet in response, calling Kristol a "dummy." Kristol responded that he hoped Trump's "nervousness about an independent candidacy doesn't affect his composure."

Bloomberg's Mark Halperin and John Heilemann reported Tuesday that Kristol is trying to recruit David French, a conservative lawyer and veteran of the Iraq war, to run against Trump and Clinton.

McConnell said that Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, won the primary "the old-fashioned way" by going out and winning elections.

"The voters have [been] pretty well spoken in the right-of-center world, and they've chosen Donald Trump to be our nominee," he told Business Insider. "And I think it would be rather arrogant for me to say, 'Well, all you folks are wrong, and we ought to nominate someone else.'"

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House Speaker Paul Ryan and a number of other prominent elected Republicans have refused to throw their support behind Trump.

McConnell said that the filling of the Supreme Court vacancy would be the most important issue for voters heading into the election. He has worked to block President Barack Obama's nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to fill the seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia earlier this year, maintaining that the next president should appoint a new justice.

"Trump will appoint the right kind of person to the Supreme Court," he said, praising the list released by the Manhattan businessman earlier this month.

The Supreme Court "will determine probably more things than the next president on what Americans like in the next generation."

Trump on Tuesday echoed those sentiments. He suggested that an independent candidate could lose the general election for Republicans, which would put Supreme Court justice nominations in the hands of Clinton.

He said:

If they do an indie, assuming it's decent, which I don't think anybody with a reputation would do it because they'd look like fools. But what you're going to do is you lose the election for the Republicans, and therefore you lose the Supreme Court. Therefore, you will have a group of people put on the Supreme Court where this country will never, ever recover, it will never, ever be the same.

Watch the comments from McConnell below:

And watch more from our interview with the Senate majority leader here:

Pamela Engel contributed to this report.





More From Business Insider


In 2016, our bodies are inherently political  whether it's transgender bathroom politics, birth control and abortion resources for women or Black Lives Matter. And the more identities those bodies exist at the intersection of, the more political those bodies become. Maya Mones, a rising model and trans woman of color, knows that simply by existing, by being seen, she is helping to advance an agenda of inclusivity.

"If mainstream culture teaches us anything, it's that our bodies are not our own. They exist to be consumed, and they exist to be compared to other bodies," said a recent Mic article on the dangers of "passing" culture for trans people. No industry offers more bodies up on the altar of capitalism the way fashion does. By elevating and marketing to only certain bodies  mainly white, fit, cisgender ones  fashion teaches our culture what kinds of bodies and identities are valued.

As a trans woman of color, Mones' presence in the industry is doubly radical. "Fashion is changing and people are starting to speak up, but there are still a lot of people that see the consumer of fashion as a white person, so they only use white models," Mones says. "It's frustrating because models don't, let's say, walk as well as you or someone you know, but they're getting runway work because of their skin color." But Mones is looking at the bigger picture, and believes the industry is changing, little by little. "Women of color in the fashion industry, our existence alone is breaking down so many barriers and pushing so many lines."

Source: Maya Mones

In her short career, Mones has already had some exciting highlights. Last fall, she walked for Gypsy Sport, 2015 winner of the of CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund. Mones also appeared in a spread in CR Fashion alongside five other trans models, several of them also women of color. The gig came from someone within her personal network via an Instagram message.

According to Mones, most of the work she books comes to her through random messages and people within her community, people who know her. As a trans woman, she says, the traditional model of castings doesn't work for her. "It's mostly a scam," she laughs. "Most of the time [casting directors] have people in mind, or they just want white people."

Maya Mones walking at Gypsy Sport' Presentation during New York Fashion Week Men's Fall/Winter 2016

And despite the fact that trans bodies and narratives are finding their way more and more into the mainstream, fashion still hasn't quite figured out how to deal with trans people. The aesthetics of transness and androgyny are happily co-opted for runways and magazine spreads, but trans models themselves are still seen as a fad  or not at all. While there are trans models in positions of visibility in fashion  Hari Nef, Andreja Peji?, Laith Ashley  they are often either anomalies or fully immersed into cisnormative standards of beauty.

"When Fashion Week comes around you deal with a lot of douchey casting people that really don't respect trans people and see trans as a trend," Mones explains. "You walk into a casting and they're kind of giving you an eye already without even meeting you. That's frustrating to just have to take and not go off on them, because you want the gig," she laughs.

Maya Mones

And in fashion, like in politics, the higher you go structurally, the more of a mess things are. "The bigger the opportunity, those people are the most clueless," she said. "They're the most removed from reality."

But Mones reiterates that things are changing, sometimes simply because of the persistence of models like her and her contemporaries, especially those who own their identities as trans models and refuse to blend into cis culture. Passing culture is dangerous, Mones cautions, and a vehicle for trans people to "hide behind cisnormative beauty and not be proud and stand up for their transness."

Read more: This Transgender Barbershop Is Redefining What a Salon Can Be

While Mones is critical of cisnormative beauty standards, she is currently fundraising for FFS (facial feminization surgery), not to "pass", but to overcome dysphoria. "I've never really felt good in my body, or I've never really recognized myself or identified with myself when I was male presenting, and this goes back to when I was little. Looking in the mirror and never feeling like it was right. Now it's becoming more of a reality."

More than anything else, Mones hopes surgery will help her find herself. "I want to recognize myself finally. That's pretty much it, looking in the mirror and being like, 'Oh yeah, that's what I see in my head.'"

Maya Mones

While FFS might help Mones' fashion career, opening doors that would otherwise be shut by closed-minded casting directors, she says she'll never stop identifying as a trans model first and foremost. "That's who I am," she insists. And while fashion still has much to learn when it comes to trans models, Mones is in it for the long haul, not just to get the gigs, but to politicize her body and the fashion world at large. The next few months will see Mones continuing her takeover of New York nightlife and snatching up gigs at every chance she gets.

"Having a mindset of 'and I am telling you I'm not going,'" she laughs, "and 'I'm here, I'm not moving, bitch'  is a huge political and radical statement."
Shares of Molson Coors Brewing Company TAP hit a 52-week high of $100.62 on May 27, after regulators with the European Commission approved the potential merger of beer giants Anheuser-Busch InBev BUD and its rival SABMiller plc SBMRY, which in turn bodes well for Molson Coors. Shares of Molson Coors were up 0.85% on the day and eventually closed at $100.20.

Anheuser Busch reached a deal to acquire London-based SABMiller in Oct 2015. Per the deal, AB InBev is offering common SABMiller shareholders $67.59 per share, while SABMillers two biggest investors, Altria Group, Inc. MO and the Santo Domingo family from Columbia will be offered cash and shares alternative worth about $60 per share. However, the deal is yet to receive shareholders and regulatory approval.

On May 25, 2016, per media sources, the two big global beer companies received approval to merge from the European Union's (EU) competition regulator, the European Commission. Anheuser-Busch InBev could receive the EU approval after it reached a deal with a Japanese brewing company, Asahi Group Holdings Ltd. in April to sell three of SABMiller's premium European beer brands for 2.55 billion euros. The sale included SABMillers Peroni, Grolsch and Meantime brands, along with their related businesses in Italy, the Netherlands, U.K. and internationally, minus certain U.S. rights.

How Molson Coors Stands to Gain?

Denver-based Molson Coors owns 42% of MillerCoors, its joint venture with SABMiller. It also agreed to purchase SABMillers 58% stake in MillerCoors in November. However, Molson Coors acquisition of the remaining Millers Coors is conditioned upon the closing of AB InBevs $107 billion takeover of SABMiller, which is expected in the second half of 2016.

Besides purchasing SABMillers 58% stake in MillerCoors, Molson Coors plans to buy the Miller brand portfolio globally and retain the rights to all the brands currently in the MillerCoors portfolio for the U.S. market, including Redds and import brands such as Peroni and Pilsner Urquell.

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We note that AB InBev-SABMiller merger is a critical one and would draw scrutiny from antitrust regulators, as this would be the biggest beer merger ever and could have wide implications on the worldwide beer market. The merger is bringing together the two largest beer companies in the U.S. with combined annual sales of over $70 billion. The concern with giant mergers like this is that the new combined company would wield too much power over pricing and hurt consumers.

AB InBev consequently agreed to divest SABMiller's 58% stake in MillerCoors to Molson Coors, in order to satisfy the U.S. regulators.

Molson Coors purchase of SABMillers stake would allow it to take strategic control of its operations in its biggest market. Molson Coors would also be in a position to gain significant synergies, which would allow the company to cut costs quickly. As the U.S. beer market grows slowly, lower costs will help Molson Coors to increase its profits in the coming years.

Per the Wall Street Journal, the purchase of SABMillers stake in the joint venture could add nearly 50% to Molson Coors earnings per share, besides allowing the company to cut nearly $400 million in costs.

Molson Coors currently carries a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).

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By Nita Bhalla NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - India has the most slaves in the world with over 18 million people trapped in debt bondage, forced into marriage, sold to brothels or born into servitude, according to a global slavery index, which noted an improved government response to the issue. Forty percent of the world's estimated 45.8 million slaves are in India, although the scourge exists in all 167 nations surveyed by the Australian-based group Walk Free Foundation. Fiona David, head of global research at Walk Free, said while estimates of slavery had risen by 15 percent in India from the previous figure due to better data collection, government efforts to curb such exploitation had also improved. "The incidences of slavery in 2016 is larger than we thought. This doesn't necessarily mean the numbers have gone up since the last Global Slavery Index, but more because of a greater improvement in our measurements," David said. "But what is new is that the Indian government is taking really exciting steps to bring all the different pieces of legislation together into one anti-trafficking act. It's a huge step forward." The index found that India with a population of 1.3 billion had the largest number of slaves in absolute terms at 18.35 million, followed by China, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan. India however ranked fourth in the index in terms of prevalence of slavery as a percentage of the population - at 1.4 percent - after North Korea, Uzbekistan, Cambodia. FORCED MARRIAGE, CHILD SOLDIERS The third edition of the index was based on interviews U.S. pollster Gallup conducted with about 42,000 people globally - 14,000 of them in India. All forms of slavery were prevalent in India, it said, including inter-generational bonded labor, forced child labor, commercial sexual exploitation, forced begging, forced recruitment into non-state armed groups and forced marriage. Respondents admitted to being made to work to repay a loan taken by themselves or another family member. Girls and women described being forced or duped into prostitution by traffickers and brothel owners, many of them locked in a room and repeatedly raped. Domestic workers spoke of a lack of freedom, long working hours, little or no wages and physical and sexual abuse. Street beggars said they were made to beg by organized criminal gangs. The report said a preference for sons in India had led to the widespread, yet illegal practice of aborting female foetuses - resulting in fewer females in some parts of the country and fuelling the trafficking of girls and women for brides. "It is reported that in some instances, girls are forced into marriage and then used as unpaid laborers  local day laborers cost $140 for a season but a bride can cost only $100 as a once off payment," the Global Slavery Index report said. In Indian states such as Kashmir, Jharkhand, Assam, Odisha and Chhattisgarh, children were being forcibly recruited by opposition groups as informers or trained to fight, it noted. GOVERNMENT RESPONSE IMPROVES The index, which also rates government response to tackling slavery based on support for victims, a strong criminal justice system and effective coordination and accountability, said India's response had improved. It upgraded India's rating, praising efforts a national policy on domestic workers, the introduction of a new anti-trafficking law and an online platform to find missing children. India unveiled a draft of its first-ever comprehensive anti-human trafficking law on Monday which focuses on greater protection for victims and provides for special courts. The proposed law also provides for more shelters for victims as well as a fund to help them rebuild their lives, and calls for a special investigative agency to boost convictions. David said this was a critical step toward curbing modern day slavery in India, but stressed that implementation was key. "After all, a law is just words on paper until it is implemented," she said. (Reporting by Nita Bhalla. Editing by Katie Nguyen. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)
(Adds HSBC, Citi and Bank of America)

May 31 (Reuters) - The following financial services industry appointments were announced on Tuesday. To inform us of other job changes, email moves@thomsonreuters.com.

HSBC HOLDINGS PLC

The bank has named former UBS banker Andre Cronje as chief operating officer for its global banking and markets division, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters on Tuesday.

CITIGROUP INC

The Wall Street bank appointed Morgan McKenney the head of cash management for its treasury and trade solutions (TTS) business in Asia Pacific.

BANK OF AMERICA CORP

The U.S. bank has named Marc-Olivier Regulla co-head investment banking for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, alongside Christof Bechtel, the lender said in an internal memo to staff on Tuesday.

DEUTSCHE BANK AG

Nigel Cree has retired from his job as co-head of sovereign, supranational and agency origination and syndicate at the German bank, becoming the latest official to leave the bank as it undergoes a deep restructuring, IFR reported.

BANK OF TOKYO-MITSUBISHI UFJ LTD

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc's banking arm, said it promoted Masahiro Kuwahara to chief executive, EMEA region.

BANCO SANTANDER SA

Spain's biggest bank has let go of a handful of sales and trading staff in its rates business in Madrid and London, people familiar with the matter said.

TULLETT PREBON ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENTS

The alternative investments arm of interdealer broker Tullett Prebon Plc named Alastair Sword as its global head based in London.

FREITAG & CO

The German investment bank said three new senior businessmen would join its board this week to bolster its advisory work on M&A deals, restructuring and capital markets activity.

(Compiled by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru)
On Sunday, a group of Muslim volunteers took to the streets of Baltimore and handed out 700 "Mercy Bags"  kits filled with toiletries and other essential goods  to homeless and low-income

But distributing the "Mercy Bags for Baltimore" had a separate goal altogether: to give back to the community.

"We came up with the idea that thousands of Muslims are coming to Baltimore [for ICNA], what are we going to do for the city of Baltimore?" ICNA President Naeem Baig told the Sun.

T toiletries, water, undergarments, laundry essentials and other goods to those in need at no-cost came to fruition in response to issues the city faced last year. During protests over Freddie Gray's death at the hands of police, much of the country's news coverage doubled down on the looting of convenience stores that followed without discussing what items were being stolen: toilet paper, tampons and diapers, among other basic necessities for survival.

To Baig, this was the inspiration behind starting the Mercy Bags service project.

"People were going through difficult times," Baig said. "Many seniors and homeless people were in need of sanitary products."

Source: Islamic Circle of North America

"They're doing what's in their heart," Katie Crowder, a 68-year-old Baltimore resident, told the Sun. "If everybody stopped judging one another, they'd be a lot better off. It'd be a better world, I'm telling you."

Story continues

With "z," or "charity," being one of the five pillars of Islam  tenets the religion requires all followers to adhere to  the act of giving is a common expectation for Muslims around the world.

This has manifested itself in various ways: In the United Kingdom, Muslims donate the most money of any religious group to charities, . In July 2015, when several churches were set ablaze across the American South, three Muslim organizations raised over $100,000 to help repair them.

Whether they're donating to charities, providing about 2 to residents of Flint, Michigan, during the city's recent water crisis or raising nearly $200,000 for the families of the San Bernardino shooting victims, in which 14 people were killed in December, American Muslims have a strong track record of giving back to their communities.

P
Nadiya Savchenko, the Ukrainian military aviator who was held for almost two years in Russia, was released last week and returned home to a heros welcome.

Savchenko achieved national renown during her detention, which involved several hunger strikes, and was elected to parliament in absentia, in 2014.

On Tuesday, May 31, reports RFE, she took her seat in parliament and made her first speech.

A translation provided by RFE reads:

I have returned and I will not let you forget  you, the people who sit in the armchairs in parliament  about the boys who began laying down their lives for Ukraine on Maidan Square and continue dying today in the east. In Donbass.

[]

I want to tell you that nothing is forgotten, nobody is forgotten, and nobody is forgiven. The people of Ukraine will not let us sit here if we betray them. Ukraine stands above all. And for those of us who sit in the hall, Ukraine is more important than the life of every one of us. Credit: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
A giant disco ball has been monitoring the Earth from space for forty years  and will continue to hang there for millions more.

The NASA satellite, dubbed LAGEOS  short for Laser Geodynamics Satellite  celebrated its 40th year in space on May 4. The craft was launched from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in 1976. NASA officials describe the orb's construction in this retro video from NASA's archives.

Although LAGEOS completely transformed the way scientists explored and gathered data about Earth, it uses relatively simple technology. The 900-pound (408-kg) satellite has no onboard sensors, electronics or moving parts; it's simply a brass core surrounded by an aluminum shell that's covered in 426 retroreflectors. [Satellite Tracker Map: How to Spot the ISS and More]

The retroreflectors, which reflect light with minimal scattering, made LAGEOS the first NASA orbiter to use a technique called laser ranging to take measurements. By sending light to LAGEOS and measuring how much time it took that light to bounce off the reflectors and make it back to Earth, NASA scientists could make measurements to millimeter-level precision of how far away LAGEOS was from the ground. Those measurements over time revealed how the ground stations were moving relative to Earth's center of mass.

"At the time, people couldn't believe that we could actually range to a satellite orbiting at that altitude with such high accuracy," Erricos Pavlis, a researcher with the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, said in a statement.

Previous satellite laser-ranging technologies could measure with an accuracy of up to 3 feet, but LAGEOS made it possible to measure distances from the ground to the satellite's orbit  which is 3,600 miles (5,900 kilometers) above the Earth  within half an inch.

Over the past 40 years, NASA has used LAGEOS to measure the movement of Earth's tectonic plates, detect irregularities in the rotation of the planet, weigh the Earth and track small shifts in its center of mass via tiny changes in the satellite's orbit and distance from Earth.

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At the time of LAGEOS' launch, the theory of plate tectonics was already established and supported by evidence of seafloor spreading and magnetic patterns in the crust. But scientists still wondered whether the plates were currently moving, how much they were moving and how they related to earthquakes.

"What had been missing was a way to measure the speed and direction of plate movement over time," Frank Lemoine, a geophysical scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said in the statement.

LAGEOS provided scientists with that ability, as well as the ability to detect small shifts in the Earth's rotation that are caused by movement of mass in the atmosphere and oceans. Ranging to LAGEOS also revealed the migration of Earth's axis of rotation as well as changes in the satellite's orbit, which helped scientists develop early models of the planet's gravity.

"Today, we see Earth as one system, with the planet's shape, rotation, atmosphere, gravitational field and the motions of the continents all connected. We take it for granted now, but LAGEOS helped us arrive at that view," David E. Smith, who was the LAGEOS project scientist at Goddard and is now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, said in the statement.

When LAGEOS-2, an identical sister satellite that travels in a complementary orbit, was launched in 1992, it opened up even more possibilities for data and eventually confirmed a prediction from Einstein's general theory of relativity: Small perturbations in the satellites' orbits around Earth matched up with a "frame-dragging" effect that the theory predicted (also called the gravitomagnetic or Lense-Thirring effect). That's not the only drag effect LAGEOS has measured. It also showed proof of the Yarkovsky effect, which says that an object that is heated from sunlight on one side will later emit that heat and experience a small, slowdown force. Both of the drag forces, as well as others, lower LAGEOS' orbit by about one millimeter each day.

Eventually, the forces will bring LAGEOS crashing back to Earth, but scientists don't expect that to happen for about another 8.4 million years. So for the foreseeable future, the disco ball lives on.

Follow Kasandra Brabaw on Twitter @KassieBrabaw. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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A proposal to transform Indonesia's former leader Suharto, one of the 20th century's most brutal dictators, into a national hero sparked anger Tuesday from rights activists and netizens.

General Suharto led Indonesia with an iron fist for 32 years and his military-dominated rule was marked by severe repression and corruption.

But in recent years there has been growing disillusionment in Indonesia with democracy, which was introduced following Suharto's 1998 downfall, leading some to look back on his regime with nostalgia.

Indonesia is currently governed by the Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) alongside President Joko Widodo, but critics point to weak decision-making and a new breed of corrupt politicians.

The name of Suharto, who died in 2008, has been nominated as a potential candidate to a government committee tasked with naming the country's national heroes, said Jimly Asshiddiqie, the body's deputy head.

The Golkar party, which was Suharto's political vehicle during his time in power, put him forward.

But prominent human rights group Imparsial condemned the move.

"I don't think this is right because Suharto is accused of having violated human rights during his regime," said its executive director Al Araf.

Netizens were also angered, with Twitter user Yunantyo saying: "What's the purpose of having the 1998 May reform movement, if Suharto is going to be awarded the title national hero?"

At least 500,000 people were killed in anti-communist massacres in the run-up to Suharto's rule.

Many activists also went missing during Suharto's regime.

Indonesia appoints national heroes every November. Suharto's name has been suggested before, although he has never been picked.

Those wanting to rehabilitate the reputation of the former leader praise him for bringing stability and overseeing an economic boom after Indonesia's painful birth pangs that followed Dutch colonial rule.

The government committee will next month decide whose names should be sent to the president, who has the final say.
Maryland high school student Dylan McCabe, set to graduate from North Point High School on Thursday, was hoping to walk down the aisle wearing a pair of traditional Navajo moccasins to honor her Native American heritage. School officials, however, have said no, citing the school's dress code, Fox 5 DC reported.

"I want to have that connection to my Navajo side as I walk across that stage," McCabe told the station.

Source: Mic/Facebook

McCabe's principal informed her she could wear a traditional ceremonial dress, as it would not be visible under her graduation gown. The moccasins and leggings were a no-go, however, because they were visible and violated the dress code requirement for black shoes.

McCabe told Fox 5 DC the moccasins carry special significance because they were part of a Navajo coming-of-age ceremony she participated in when she was 11.

"You run three times a day  at daybreak, noon and dusk  wearing those moccasins," she told the station. "When you run, you run farther and farther each time signifying that you can push yourself harder and harder each time with that personal strength and endurance."

Source: Melanie Alnwick FOX 5 DC/Facebook

McCabe and her family have started a Change.org petition to pressure administrators to allow the moccasins.








Elvis Norquay, a member of the Chippewa Indian tribe, sits in his home on the Turtle Mountain Reservation in Belcourt, North Dakota, U.S. May 11, 2016. (REUTERS/Mica Rosenberg)

By Mica Rosenberg

BELCOURT, North Dakota (Reuters) - Elvis Norquay, a member of the Chippewa Indian tribe, has lived most of his 58 years on North Dakotas remote Turtle Mountain reservation and says hes never had a problem voting.

That was before 2014, when he hitched a ride with a friend to cast a ballot in local and congressional elections and was turned away. Embarrassed, he asked why he couldnt vote. He was told he lacked proper ID under new state requirements. He has no phone, no current drivers license and his tribal ID lacks a street address.

When we left, my friend said, thats not right, said Norquay, who has lived on disability since 2002 in a rural county near the Canadian border.

Norquay is among a growing number of Native Americans embroiled in court battles over changes to voting laws that could influence the outcome of some tight races in the November 2016 presidential and congressional elections.

While the Native American population is small nationally, lawsuits involving tribes over voting problems have proliferated since the Supreme Court struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, a signature legislative achievement of the 1960s civil rights movement.

North Dakota is one of 17 states that have new voting restrictions in place since the last presidential contest, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.

Many of these changes have sparked lawsuits and accusations that black, Hispanic and other minority voters could be disenfranchised.

Five federal lawsuits involving Native Americans have been filed since the Supreme Court decision, including three this year alone.

Suits in North Dakota, Utah, South Dakota and Arizona claim new voting rules passed in majority Republican states are discriminatory and could reduce voting by tribal members, who tend to back Democrats. A suit in Alaska, for example, claimed the state violated federal rules by failing to translate voting materials for tribal voters.

Story continues

The tribes say changes to voting rules in those states disproportionately affect Native Americans, an allegation the states and counties deny.

The Native American vote is not big enough to flip a safe Republican state such as North Dakota into the Democrat column in this years presidential election, but Native Americans are a growing proportion of the population and a majority in some counties where increased voter turnout in recent years has tipped the balance in some congressional races.

In many states, the number of Native Americans is growing faster than the population as a whole. Between 2000 and 2010, the Native American population rose by 26.7 percent to 1.1 million, compared to 9.7 percent growth in Americas overall population, census data showed.

Recent changes to voting laws, such as North Dakotas new voter ID law, are part of a much broader, deliberate, and concerted effort by Republicans to reduce turnout among particular groups of voters on election day, said Pratt Wiley, head of voter protection issues at the Democratic Party in Washington.

Those voters are more vulnerable today than they were before the Supreme Court invalidated a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, he said of Native Americans.

Republicans deny that voting law changes passed by Republican-dominated legislatures are discriminatory and say they are intended to reduce fraudulent votes.

These are popular common sense laws to protect elections from fraud, said Lindsay Walters, national spokeswoman at the Republican National Committee.

TRIBAL ID CARDS

At issue in North Dakota are revisions pushed largely by Republican state legislators in 2013 and 2015 to a 2003 state elections law that eliminated a provision that had allowed people without proper identification such as Norquay to vote if they were recognized by a poll worker or if they signed an affidavit swearing to their identity.

Norquay and six other members of his tribe sued the secretary of state in January in U.S. District Court in North Dakota. They said they were refused the right to vote in November 2014 because many old tribal IDs such as Norquays dont list a current residential address.

It says some tribal members cant afford a new tribal ID or struggle to obtain proper identification because there are no state offices that provide drivers licenses on the reservations.

Richard McCloud, chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, said widespread unemployment and poverty among tribal members meant that some struggle to afford the $10 needed to obtain a new tribal card.

"Ten dollars is three pounds of hamburger and some macaroni for a family, said McCloud at the tribes headquarters on the reservation of about 4,274 people a few miles (km) south of the Canadian border.

Maybe its no big deal if you work, but its a big deal to people that dont have access to $10, he said.

North Dakotas secretary of state, Al Jaeger, the only defendant in the suit, said in an interview that the law is not discriminatory and simplifies the voting process in the only state in the country that does not require voters to register ahead of an election. He said his office has spent heavily on ad campaigns to educate voters about what IDs are accepted.

Jaegers deputy, Jim Silrum, said the ID requirements are not a barrier for the 97 percent of state residents with drivers licenses, an accepted form of ID, so the number of people affected by the changes is miniscule. Those with no drivers license, can get a non-driver state ID allowed at the polls from the motor vehicle department for free.

Jaeger and Silrum said they could not respond directly to an assertion in the lawsuit that residents on reservations have to travel long distances to obtain a state ID.

LITTLE EVIDENCE OF FRAUD

Republican state Representative Jim Kasper from Fargo repeated his partys argument that the changes were aimed at reducing the risk of voter fraud, but Silrum said there was little evidence of such irregularities. In the 2012 presidential election, there were only nine cases of people voting twice, but that was because they used the same ID rather than a lack of proper identification, he said.

State Representative Kylie Oversen, a Democrat from Grand Forks, said the changes could alter tight elections in favor of Republicans. She said Republicans pushed for the bill after Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012 by less than 3,000 votes.

In sparsely populated states such as North Dakota, with just 739,000 people, congressional elections have been decided by just a few thousand votes.

Rolette County, surrounding Norquays reservation, is one of two counties in the state where about 75 percent of the population is Native American. Those two counties were the only places in North Dakota that gave President Barack Obama more than 70 percent of the vote in 2012.

After the changes in the ID law were implemented in North Dakota, voter turnout in Rolette County dropped by more than 12 percentage points between the 2010 and 2014 mid-term elections, more than any other county in the state, election data from the secretary of states office shows.

What has happened is the Native American vote has become something that can tip elections, said Jean Schroedel, a professor at Claremont Graduate University in California who studies Native American voting.

The Native American Rights Fund, a non-profit law firm representing Norquay and other members of his tribe in the lawsuit against the state, plans to file a motion by June 30 requesting that the court invalidate the changes to the ID law ahead of Novembers election, according to court documents.

(Additional reporting by Julia Harte in Washington and Grant Smith in New York, editing by Jason Szep and Ross Colvin; Editing by Noeleen Walder, Jason Szep and Ross Colvin)
From Popular Mechanics

The MBT Advanced Technology Demonstrator, seen in this new video, takes a widely available older tank design and upgrades it with a host of new tech.

The tank in the video is an upgraded Leopard 2A4. (Ignore the annoying quick cuts at first-they go away after a while.) The -A4 was the most manufactured of the Leopard 2 series of tanks, with 2,570 built for Germany and the Netherlands between 1985 and 1992. After the Cold War ended, many A4s were sold off to other NATO countries including Canada, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey, where they still serve today.

In other words, there are a lot of A4s out there that could use upgrades- and upgrades are on NATO's mind, with the recent introduction of Russia's brand-new T-14 Armata tank. The teaser video is short on details, but a few things stand out.

The tank armor appears to be modular, so individual sections can be replaced after sustaining battle damage. Although there's no obvious "hard-kill" active protection system against anti-tank missiles and rocket-propelled grenades, this report by The National Interest says such a system will definitely make it onto upgraded Leopard 2 tanks.

The tank is studded with cameras, giving the crew much greater situational awareness. The tall, coffee can-sized cylinder on top of the turret appears to be a commander's independent thermal viewer, allowing the commander to scan the battlefield at night and through smoke, and line up targets for the gunner who has his own thermal viewer.

The demonstrator's turret is enormous, much larger than the A4 turret, with the overhang on the opposite side of the gun having grown the most. This is likely to cope with carrying larger main gun rounds, and also to act as a counterweight on the other side of the turret to a long, heavy main gun barrel.

Interestingly, that's exactly what the MBT Demonstrator doesn't have: a long barrel. It appears to have a standard 120-millimeter L44 caliber tank gun. (The 44 refers to the length of the barrel, which is the diameter times 44. That makes 5,280 millimeters, or 17 feet, 4 inches.) That the barrel is 17 feet long and still looks puny gives an idea of just how big the turret is. Rheinmetall is currently working on a 130-millimeter tank gun it will unveil this summer.

Russia's recent aggression in the Crimea and intimidation campaigns from Scandinavia to the Black Sea have NATO spooked, and looking to upgrade their tank arsenals. Whatever new tech makes it onto the MBT Demonstrator will almost certainly be retrofitted to existing European (and Canadian) tank fleets.
Devon Van Houten Maldonado is a writer and artist based in Mexico City, where he stumbled into a career in journalism. Originally from Boulder, Colorado, he developed an endurance-running habit atop the Rocky Mountains.

I was too busy basking in the real and imagined cultural riches of my adopted bohemian megalopolis of Mexico City to see the obvious. Immersed in the counterculture and my work as a journalist, I never imagined my across-the-hall neighbor was a lady of the night, until I had her Wi-Fi password.

One day, when Democracy Now! wouldnt buffer with my laptop pegged against the kitchen wall closest to my neighbors apartment, I crossed the third-floor landing, where exposed wires and graffiti decorated the walls, to reset the modem. A hazy curtain of incense and marijuana smoke enveloped me as I passed through her doorway. The drapes were drawn and the apartment was filled with a damp red light, which somehow still didnt tip me off.

Tune in Tuesday at 11/10C for PBS new late-night series Point Taken to see OZY co-founder Carlos Watson moderate a spirited debate on the legalization of prostitution.

On her kitchen table, I noticed a puddle of black candle wax, incense, figurines and a stack of tarot cards. She offered to read my fortune and asked if I wanted to be her roommate. She said she could get me a job as a stripper. I imagined myself gyrating in a banana hammock stuffed with grimy pesos and laughed out loud. Her heavy Argentine accent made it difficult for me to understand everything she said, but we managed to complain at length about the relentless water shortages that left the building high and dry and smelling of raw sewage for days at a time.

Suddenly it all made sense  men in cheap suits calling for the senorita at all hours of the day and night 

During one of these awkward visits, we exchanged cellphone numbers, strictly for Wi-Fi business. Her explicitly pornographic profile picture raised an eyebrow, and then I noticed her status: Solo por dinero (Only for money). And suddenly it all made sense. Men in cheap suits calling for the senorita at all hours of the day and night, her ungodly hours of operation, the fact that she always seemed to be home, the inappropriately loud telenovelas and, of course, the smoky red light beckoning to the streets below.

Story continues

There are as many as 250,000 women and underage girls working in the sex industry in Mexico City, where the local government has set up official tolerance zones, according to Publimetro and a study by the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean. Its unclear how many are forced into sexual slavery, and how many turn tricks by choice, like my onetime neighbor.

It was impossible to guess my neighbors age. Rounds of plastic surgery had made her ageless and, as far as I could surmise, her breasts, butt and face had all been upgraded. Before noon, wearing sweats and without makeup, she looked at least 40, but then she began a daily metamorphosis into a work of art.

I became accustomed to her routine through casual observation. She started the day with a joint, pungent incense and meditation. Droning chants and smoke seeped around her door and into the hallway. Then shed eat at the fanciest of several restaurants below our apartments, while I ate at the cheapest. I wouldnt see her again until the late afternoon, installed at the hair and makeup salon around the corner, where she began to morph into her nocturnal form. Once, as I was returning home around midnight and she was heading out into the city, I didnt even recognize her from across the street, but I do remember thinking she looked beautiful.

Another late night, I came home to find my apartment ransacked, the lock picked and everything of value gone. Of course, no one had seen or heard anything. There had been the usual deafening noise  jackhammers, honking, whistling, sirens  throughout the day, the neighbors said. The usual suspicious characters had been hanging around the construction offices upstairs, they said, and it must have been one of them. As a foreigner and a reporter  Mexico is among the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist  I worried about getting thrown into an unmarked van and disappearing. I decided to leave Villa Bohemia ASAP.

I suppose shes still there, doing her thing. Smoking Marlboro Reds, wrapped in that dim red light or in the salon being primped and preened, transforming into a butterfly in the night. Solo por dinero.

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By Ben Hirschler

LONDON, May 31 (Reuters) - Nestle, the world's biggest food company, is stepping up its push into medicine with a global deal worth up to 100 million euros ($111 million) to develop and market an experimental milk allergy test for infants.

The Swiss group will pay DBV Technologies 10 million euros upfront for rights to its skin patch test for cow's milk protein allergy, with the balance depending on successful development, the two companies said on Tuesday.

The deal with the Franco-American company underscores Nestle's ambitions for its Health Science division, which it believes could eventually generate more than 10 billion Swiss francs ($10 billion) in annual sales.

Nestle has signed a series of similar deals with other small companies in its bid to create a new kind business that is midway between food and pharmaceuticals. The goal is to find new ways to treat, diagnose and prevent a range of diseases, from gastrointestinal problems to Alzheimer's.

An allergy to cow's milk is common in babies and young children and Nestle sees a significant market for an simple diagnostic tool.

Under the terms of the agreement DBV will be eligible to receive up to 90 million euros in development, regulatory and commercial milestones - on top of the upfront payment - and will also collect royalties on eventual product sales.

The new test will need to go through extensive clinical trials before it is cleared for sale and DBV expects it to be submitted for approval to regulators worldwide by 2021.

Nestle Health Science, which employs around 3,000 people, is an expanding part of the Swiss group's operations.

Given ageing populations around the world and spiralling cases of lifestyle diseases, Nestle sees big opportunities in health - but the initiative also poses new challenges, since it takes Nestle into the highly regulated medical field.

Strategically the shift towards health offers Nestle a hedge against slowing growth in packaged foods and may also offset crackdowns on unhealthy foods blamed for obesity and other lifestyle problems.

For DBV the deal is a vindication of its Viaskin patch technology. The company also has another test for peanut allergy in clinical trials, as well as an earlier-stage programme for egg allergy. ($1 = 0.8994 euros) ($1 = 0.9938 Swiss francs) (Editing by Greg Mahlich)
Jerusalem (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken of reviving a long-dormant Arab peace initiative with the Palestinians, amid questions over whether he is sincere or trying to fend off international critics.

Netanyahu made his comments late Monday at the swearing in of his new hardline Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman, forming what many analysts call the most right-wing government in Israeli history.

Lieberman is detested by the Palestinians, and foreign governments have expressed concern over his appointment to the powerful post.

Both Netanyahu and Lieberman have repeatedly sought to address such concerns, saying they are committed to a two-state solution.

Netanyahu went a step further on Monday, saying an Arab League-endorsed peace initiative dating to 2002 "includes positive elements that can help revive constructive negotiations with the Palestinians".

"We are willing to negotiate with the Arab states revisions to that initiative so that it reflects the dramatic changes in the region since 2002, but maintains the agreed goal of two states for two peoples," Netanyahu said.

His comments come after Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said two weeks ago that there was now a "real opportunity" for an Israeli-Palestinian deal that could lead to warmer ties between his country and Israel.

Egypt and Jordan are the only two Arab nations with a peace deal with Israel. Israel has also seen improved ties and security cooperation with Cairo in recent months as part of the fight against Islamic State group jihadists.

UN Middle East envoy Nickolay Mladenov welcomed Netanyahu's comments, saying "this opportunity should not be missed and must be followed up with concrete and timely action".

- Eye on Obama -

But Netanyahu's comments come with the veteran premier under pressure over a French plan to hold an international peace conference, which Israel strongly opposes and the Palestinians support.

Story continues

There is also speculation that US President Barack Obama could seek a UN resolution on the conflict -- or at least allow one to pass without vetoing it -- before he leaves office in January.

"There has been a feeling in the (prime minister's) office for a while that they are worried what will happen in the UN, that maybe the Americans will let a resolution go through that would be difficult for Israel," said Jonathan Rynhold of the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies.

As for the French initiative, a first meeting of foreign ministers from a range of countries -- without the Palestinians and Israelis present -- is due to take place on Friday in Paris.

An international conference including the Israelis and Palestinians would then be held before the end of the year.

"Netanyahu is very aware, as is Lieberman, that they have formed a right-wing coalition, and therefore the international community will be very distrustful, so they have gone out of their way to say something positive about the Arab peace initiative and to publicly say that they back a two-state solution," Rynhold said.

"That is a way of signalling to the international community: we are not as bad as you think we are."

- Opportunity or smokescreen? -

If a peace effort were to move forward on the basis of the Arab proposal, Israel would no doubt seek a list of changes.

The proposal essentially calls for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories and resolve outstanding issues with the Palestinians, leading to the creation of a Palestinian state, in exchange for normalised relations with Arab countries.

While some accused Netanyahu of creating a smokescreen by mentioning the old initiative, others said that, whatever his motivation, progress should not be ruled out.

"This is an opportunity," said Shmuel Sandler, a professor of international politics at Israel's Bar Ilan University.

"He has now two years where he doesn't have to worry about elections (if his coalition lasts its full term), so he might have a chance of moving ahead."

Sandler said that "the question is whether the other side will come forward. Will he have a partner?"

Palestinian leaders argue that years of negotiations with the Israelis have not ended the occupation. They have focused on pursuing their cause through international bodies, and strongly back the French plan.

"If the Israeli government is serious, it must take measures on the ground to prove its commitment to a two-state solution," said Nabil Abu Rudeina, spokesman for Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

"The first of those measures is the end to the occupation of the Palestinian territories."
verizon strike protest shouting shout yell

Friday's jobs report would be better if Verizon workers were not on strike.

Economists forecast that nonfarm payrolls grew by 160,000 in May, unchanged from the prior month, according to Bloomberg.

But they think the job gains could have been higher.

Nearly 40,000 Verizon workers walked off the job after contract negotiations fell apart; unions had been in talks with the company about plans to cut benefits over a three-year period.

They announced a deal on Monday that could end the seven-week strike.

But the dent to the jobs report has already happened. The strike was on during the reference period for the establishment survey, which usually includes the 12th day of the month.

Here's Barclays' Jesse Hurwitz, writing in a recent client note (emphasis ours):

As we had expected, the Verizon worker strike that began on April 13 and continued through the May reference week will likely depress monthly nonfarm payroll growth in next Friday's report. The magnitude of the BLS strike estimate is in line with media reports and our expectations (30-40k) and bolsters our confidence that information sector payrolls will register a sharp temporary decline in May. Specifically, we expect the gross strike effect to show up in the Labor Department's estimate of wired telecommunications carriers employment (NAICS code 5171), which is a subcomponent of information payroll employment.

Hurwitz noted that even though there were 35,100 workers on strike, there may not be a one-to-one net effect on the headline payrolls gain. That's because when Verizon workers went on strike in August 2011, much of the drop in telecomms payrolls was offset by a rise in the temporary workers the company hired.

"It is difficult to estimate the degree of an offset from Verizon's temporary hiring given the lack of hard data, but we do not expect that the company has been able to offset as large a share of its striking workforce as in 2011," he said. His forecast for job gains is below consensus, at 150,000.

Story continues

Previous episodes like this show that the Verizon strike could also affect average hourly earnings and hours worked, Deutsche Bank's Joseph LaVorgna said in a recent note. That didn't cause them to change their forecasts for either.

NOW WATCH: Harmless lies that can help you ace your job interview





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(Adds Moussa quote, details)

DAKAR, May 31 (Reuters) - Bollore remains Niger's sole partner on the rail link between the capital Niamey and Cotonou in Benin, Mohamed Moussa, an adviser to the prime minister, said on Tuesday.

The deal exposes tensions and challenges with constructing infrastructure in West Africa, where governments have called publicly for boosting regional trade and economic growth.

Moussa issued a statement a few months after French firm Geftarail and its Nigerian subsidiary filed a lawsuit with the Paris-based International Court of Arbitration, arguing that it won the rights in 1999 to link Niger, Benin and Burkina Faso.

A third rival firm, Petrolin Group, won a court order in November to stop Bollore's Niger-Benin rail line from going ahead, saying it had won the rights to its own Cotonou-Niamey railway and that the Bollore project overlapped with it.

"Niger reiterates that the Bollore group remains its only credible partner for the realization of the railway between Cotonou and Niamey," Moussa said.

"It has all of the rights under the construction and operating concessions duly signed by the state of Niger."

According to the statement, Bollore has already laid 140 km of track between the two capitals.

(Reporting by Boureima Balima; Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Abuja (AFP) - Muhammadu Buhari will this week make his first visit as president to Nigeria's oil-producing south, which has been riven by an upsurge in violence from militants, his office said Tuesday.

Attacks on pipelines and other infrastructure have cut Nigeria's oil production to some 1.4 million barrels per day, exacerbating revenue shortfalls caused by the global slump in crude prices.

But a media aide to Buhari said the president would travel to Ogoniland in Rivers state to flag off a long-awaited clean-up of the area, which has been affected by oil spills.

"All things being equal, the president will be in Ogoniland on Thursday for the historic clean up of the area," the aide told AFP.

In August 2011, a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report said Ogoniland may require the world's biggest-ever clean-up.

Environmental devastation to farming and fishing in the area has for many come to symbolise the tragedy of Nigeria's vast but squandered oil wealth.

Decades of crude production filled the pockets of powerful government officials and generated huge profits for oil majors but corruption and spills left the people with nothing.

Neglect and pollution fanned local resentment and anger, prompting militant groups to take up arms against the government in the 2000s. Attacks on oil facilities and personnel were frequent.

The violence was ended in 2009 when the government introduced an amnesty programme. But a new group calling itself the Niger Delta Avengers has renewed attacks since the beginning of the year.

Sporadic bombings of key pipelines run by Nigerian subsidiaries of Anglo-Dutch group Shell, US firm Chevron and Italy's Eni, as well as the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.

On Monday evening, the group warned in an email and in a statement on its website that more devastating attacks were to come.

"To the international oil companies and indigenous oil companies, it's going to be bloody this time around," it said.

Buhari said on Sunday he would keep and "re-engineer" the amnesty, apparently reversing previous policy to wind-down the programme by 2018.
A North Korean state media outlet has praised Donald Trump as a wise politician and far-sighted candidate who can reunify the Korean peninsula.

The DPRK Today editorial welcomed the presumptive Republican nominees willingness to talk to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, NKNews.org reports, saying Trump could help bring about an end to the isolated countrys Yankee go home policy of hostility with the U.S.

In my personal opinion, there are many positive aspects to the Trumps inflammatory policies Han Yong Mook, who describes himself as a Chinese North Korean scholar, wrote in the editorial. Trump said he will not get involved in the war between the South and the North, isnt this fortunate from North Koreans perspective?

The editorial also urged Americans to not vote for the dull Hillary Clinton.

On May 23, the North Korean ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva dismissed Trumps offer to meet Kim Jong Un as a kind of a propaganda or advertisement.
LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / May 31, 2016 / Notis Global Inc. (NGBL), a pioneer in the worldwide hemp and CBD oil (cannabidiol) industry specializing in cultivation, production and consulting today issued a press release regarding its participation in the 2016 Marcum Microcap Conference.

Jeffrey Goh, the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Company said that the Company was pleased to be invited to present at Marcum Microcap Conference at Grand Hyatt in New York.

The Company's presentation to attendees consisting of investors, finance professionals and investment bankers will be at 11:30 AM on June 1, 2016. The Conference also provides the opportunity for the Company and interested investors to meet "one on one." Mr. Goh will make a thirty minute presentation and will be supported by key company management including Clint Pyatt, COO & Senior Vice President of Government Affairs along with Chairman of the Board of Directors, Ambassador Ned L. Siegel and Directors Manny Flores and Mitch Lowe.

The subject of the Company's presentation will be the status of the cannabidiol (CBD) hemp oil market and industry, potential health benefits from the use of hemp oil along with update on the Company's farming operations and plans for the future.

About Notis Global

Based in Los Angeles, Notis Global is a pioneer in the burgeoning, multi-billion dollar legal hemp industry. The Company and its partners are working to grow confidence and generate revenues in the hemp industry.

Safe Harbor Statement

Certain statements in this press release constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Words such as "may," "might," "will," "should," "believe," "aim," "expect," "anticipate," "estimate," "continue," "predict," "forecast," "project," "plan," "intend," "goal," "strive," or similar expressions, or statements regarding intent, belief, or current expectations, are forward-looking statements. While the Company believes these forward-looking statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on any such forward-looking statements, which are based on information available to us on the date of this release. These forward looking statements are based upon current estimates and assumptions and are subject to various risks and uncertainties, including without limitation those set forth in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), and including not limited to Risk Factors relating reflected in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the Commission on April 13, 2016. Thus, actual results could be materially different. We advise you review our Annual Report and the Risk Factors set forth therein. The Company expressly disclaims any obligation to update or alter statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. Our audited financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2015, were prepared under the assumption that we would continue our operations as a going concern. Our independent registered public accounting firm has included a "going concern" explanatory paragraph in its report on our financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2015, indicating that we have sustained substantial losses from continuing operations and have used, rather than provided, cash in our continuing operations, and that these factors raise substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern.

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Continued operations and our ability to continue as a going concern are dependent on our ability to obtain additional funding in the near future and thereafter, and there are no assurances that such funding will be available at all or will be available in sufficient amounts or on reasonable terms. Our financial statements do not include any adjustments that may result from the outcome of this uncertainty. Uncertainty concerning our ability to continue as a going concern may hinder our ability to obtain future financing. Without additional funds from generation of revenues through execution of our business plan, debt or equity financings, sales of assets, or other transactions, we will exhaust our resources and will be unable to continue operations. If we cannot continue as a viable entity, our stockholders would likely lose most or all of their investment in us. See Liquidity and Capital Resources under Item 7. Management's Discussion and Analysis in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for further information regarding the Company's efforts to secure liquidity and future cash flows. The Company has granted to an investor a lien against its equity interests in EWSD and its other assets as security for repayment of a note in the amount of approximately $225,000 and retains the right to pledge all or any part of its real or personal property to secure Company's indebtedness in its sole discretion. If the Company is unable to meet the obligation that gave rise to this lien or to future liens on such stock and assets, it may default on such obligation or on future obligations and its lenders could foreclose upon, or cause the sale of, the Company's ownership of EWSD.

SOURCE: Notis Global Inc.
LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The number of Afghans internally displaced by conflict has "dramatically" doubled to 1.2 million in just three years, Amnesty International said on Tuesday, warning that a lack of basic services was putting people on the brink of survival. The rights group said that situation of people uprooted from their homes in Afghanistan has deteriorated in recent years as global attention and aid money have been diverted to other crises. "While the world's attention seems to have moved on from Afghanistan, we risk forgetting the plight of those left behind by the conflict," said Champa Patel, South Asia director at Amnesty International. "Even after fleeing their homes to seek safety, increasing numbers of Afghans are languishing in appalling conditions in their own country, and fighting for their survival with no end in sight," she said in a statement. The insurgency in Afghanistan has gained strength since the withdrawal of international troops from combat at the end of 2014 and the Taliban are stronger than at any point since they were driven from power by U.S.-backed forces in 2001. The Taliban launched a spring offensive in Afghanistan last month, vowing to drive out the Western-backed government in Kabul and restore strict Islamic rule. Amnesty said displaced Afghans lacked proper shelter, food, water, access to healthcare, employment and education. "Even an animal would not live in this hut, but we have to," Amnesty quoted a 50-year old woman living in a camp in the western Afghan city of Herat as saying. "I would prefer to be in prison rather than in this place, at least in prison I would not have to worry about food and shelter." With food being scarce, some people were struggling to have a one meal per day, Amnesty said. "We mostly live off bread or spoiled vegetables from the market," Raz Muhammad, a community leader in Kabul's Chaman-e-Barbak camp, told Amnesty. Access to healthcare was limited to mobile clinics operated by charities or the government, which were only available occasionally, forcing displaced people to seek private care which they could hardly afford. "If we are ill, then I have to beg and find some money to go to the private clinics," a 50-year-old woman in Herat told Amnesty. "We have no other choice." The rights group said the international community and the Afghan government must address the needs of the displaced people "before it's too late". (Reporting by Magdalena Mis; Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, womens rights, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New York's attorney general, who has filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump's education venture, Trump University, slammed the presumptive Republican presidential nominee on Tuesday for his attack on a U.S. district judge's ethnicity. Trump, a New York billionaire businessman, is fighting a trio of lawsuits that accuse his education program of misleading thousands of people who paid up to $35,000 for seminars to learn about his real-estate investment strategies. "This was a fraud from top to bottom. He's using every trick he can to delay the release of documents, to delay the trials, attacking the judge for his ethnicity, attacking me and accusing me of conspiring with the president of the United States," New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a Democrat, told CNN. Days after Judge Gonzalo Curiel ordered some documents in one case involving the school to be unsealed, Trump called Curiel "hostile" and "a hater" and said he believed the judge was Mexican. Curiel is an American who was born in East Chicago, Indiana, and graduated from the Indiana University School of Law. Schneiderman, re-elected as attorney general in 2014, dismissed a question about Trump's allegation that Curiels ruling was politically motivated, saying that in three individual cases against the university, "every judge has said these are valid fraud claims." "He's taking it to New York's highest court for one more round of appeals, but no judge has dismissed this," Schneiderman said. Asked about Trump's efforts to downplay the case, Schneiderman called it hugely important for the way it cast Trump as someone who is absolutely shameless in his willingness to lie to people. He blasted some of the university's specific tactics, including the way instructors would persuade students to ask their credit card companies for an increased credit limit as a step toward being successful in real estate, and then persuade them to use it to buy more Trump seminars. It was shameless, it was heartless, its important information to get out there, Schneiderman said. Trump's campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment. (Reporting by Megan Cassella; Editing by Peter Cooney)
New York City venue Santos Party House, owned partly by Andrew W.K. and Despot, has suddenly closed, DNAinfo reports. Last night, on the venues final night in business, it hosted the second night of NYC Oi! Fest, a punk festival with alleged ties to skinhead and neo-Nazi groups. The festival was originally scheduled to take place at Black Bear Bar before being cancelled after the first night due to public outcry.

The club has not yet issued an official statement regarding the closing, and its not yet clear if it was directly caused by this controversy. It was a 10 year lease, manager Sean Kane told DNAinfo. Our lease is up and were not renewing it. According to an email from event coordinator Jackalyn Tipchaieuh to groups who had booked shows at the venue, Our last day open will be Sunday  May 29th, 2016. If you have an event after the previously mentioned date, please consider it cancelled. As of now, the clubs website still lists events through the end of June.
Caracas (AFP) - President Nicolas Maduro has called for a demonstration Wednesday against the Organization of American States over what he labels its meddling in Venezuela's political crisis.

As part of an escalating war of words, Maduro Tuesday told the head of the Washington-based organization to "shove it."

The verbal barrage came after OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro called for an urgent meeting on the Venezuelan crisis, warning democracy was at risk in the country.

Oil-rich Venezuela's economy is in very dire straits and the opposition wants to remove the president through a referendum. There are increasing signs of social unrest, such as looting, with shortages of most basic consumer goods such as soap and toilet paper.

In a 132-page letter to the president of the OAS Permanent Council, Almagro requested a meeting of the organization's 34 member states from June 10 to 20.

"The institutional crisis in Venezuela demands immediate changes in the actions of the executive branch," Almagro wrote, adding that the socialist nation is "at risk of falling immediately into a situation of illegitimacy."

Venezuela's opposition-controlled legislature had requested that Almagro invoke the Inter-American Democratic Charter -- which regulates government behavior in members states -- to assess whether the Maduro government violated standards.

"Mr Almagro, you can take your Democratic Charter... put it in a skinny little tube and shove it wherever it fits," Maduro fired back at a rally of thousands of his supporters in Caracas.

"Venezuela must be respected. No one is going to apply any charter to Venezuela. I call for a national rebellion in the face of these international threats."

Maduro also vowed to sue the congressional leadership for "treason" and "usurping" executive duties.

Later Tuesday, appearing on TV, Maduro said: "Seeking to intervene in Venezuela is a crime. I call for mobilization against interventionism."

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He said he wanted "a big anti-imperialist and anti-Almagro march" by young Venezuelans who follow Maduro's socialist agenda.

The leftist leader accuses the United States and the OAS of conspiring against his government at the behest of the "fascist Venezuelan right," which he blames for severe shortages of food and medicine gripping the recession-racked country.

He has decreed a state of emergency and recently held military exercises to counter the alleged foreign threat.

- Warning for region -

The OAS leader has repeatedly sparred with Maduro in recent months, calling him a "dictator."

Under the OAS Charter, the Permanent Council may vote to suspend Venezuela's membership with a two-thirds vote, on the grounds of preserving democracy.

Venezuela's economy has plummeted along with global crude prices over the past two years.

The crisis has been aggravated by electricity shortages that have forced rolling blackouts, school closures and a dramatically shortened work week for public sector employees.

Polls indicate that nearly seven in 10 Venezuelans want Maduro to go.

In early May, an opposition coalition turned in as many as 1.85 million signatures demanding a referendum to recall the unpopular president.

The leftist leader's allies say the petitions are rife with fraud.

The opposition welcomed Almagro's move and urged the international community to step up pressure on Maduro's government.

"The international community, including the OAS, can't turn a blind eye to the grave humanitarian crisis we're in, not just (shortages of) medicine and food but also human rights violations and a non-existent democracy," said legislative speaker Henry Ramos Allup.

"They can't turn their heads, because an explosion in Venezuela will affect the entire region."
The interview by Montu Motors has already gone viral, racking up 1.1 Million views on Facebook

TAMPA, FL / ACCESSWIRE / May 31, 2016 / Montu Motors, a respected dealership in Tampa, Florida, recently interviewed Denver police officer Matt about his Nissan Skyline GTR.

On August 1st, 2014, history was made when the first 100% legal Skyline GTR crossed from Canada into the United States. First reported by a Yahoo News article, the Skyline rolled over the boarder at exactly 12:01am, and Montu Motors was the first Auto Dealer to import a legitimate 1989 GTR R32.

When Denver police officer Matt heard that the R32 was available for purchase he dropped his plans to get a 2009 GTR and instead go for the newly legal 1989 version. Now, a year and a half later, Montu Motors interviewed Matt, and the resulting video has already been watched by approximately 1.1 million viewers.

According to the Youtube Video featuring Matt's interview, after the car arrived at Montu Motors in Tampa Florida, Matt met the team at the airport and was picked up in the GTR. They let him test drive it for as long as he wanted, and they closed the deal that same day.





After a long trip back to Colorado, Matt pulled into an auto parts store to pick up everything he needed for an oil change. Still dirty from the trip, a group 25+ highly modified Subarus pulled into the parking lot and surrounded Matt's GTR. What at first looked like a threatening posture was actually a group of car enthusiasts marveling at his exceptionally rare Skyline. Matt then spent the next hour and a half talking about his new purchase.

"You feel like a rockstar driving one of these cars," says Matt. "People follow you into parking lots, they give you thumbs up and wave at you, and you see the looks of shock."

Matt's R32 is one of the most highly sought after GTRs ever produced. With a RB26DETT motor, it offers unparalleled performance and speed. It transfers 50 percent of the total power from the rear wheels to the front wheels, which gives the driver an unprecedented feel for the road. After his purchase, the only upgrade Matt made to the car was to install a carbon fiber hood and replaced the alternator.

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Matt's car is one of many JDM imports that Montu Motors has brought to the streets of America. The company, which was founded in 2014, specializes in dealing with cars that exceed the 25 year exempting the cars from emissions & safety requirements (EPA & NHTSA exempt). "We have a stronger passion to get these cars onto the roads than we do for making huge profits," says a company spokesperson.

The video of Matt's experience with Montu Motors and his Skyline has already gone viral on Facebook with 1.1M views, 16k likes, 21k shares, and 2.5k comments. According to the statistics, it already has 1.2M minutes of view time, which calculates to roughly 2.5 years. Those numbers are expected to grow exponentially in the weeks ahead.

To learn more about Montu Motors, their inventory, and Matt's interview about his Skyline GTR R32, please visit: http://www.montumotors.com/

About Montu Motors:

Founded in 2014 by a team of automotive enthusiasts, Montu Motors specializes in bringing exceptionally rare JDM imports to the public. They are a Licensed, Bonded & Insured Auto Dealer and Importer located in Tampa, Florida. All their cars are 100% federally legal based on the 25 year exemption rule, exempting the cars from emissions & safety requirements (EPA & NHTSA exempt). On August 1st, 2014, Montu Motors were the first auto dealers to legally import, register, and insure an R32 Nissan Skyline GTR into the United States through the 25 year exemption rule.

Contact:

Montu Motors

Trent Henry

sales@montumotors.com

1-800-262-3679

SOURCE: Montu Motors
Will >$50 Crude Oil Prices Extend the Oversupplied Market?

(Continued from Prior Part)

Crude oil prices could rise

The International Energy Agency (IEA) and Goldman Sachs estimate that the global oversupply of crude oil will diminish in 2016. To learn more, read Will Crude Oils Supply and Demand Balance Narrow or Widen?.

Crude oil price forecast

Goldman Sachs (GS) forecast that Brent crude oil prices could trade around $50 per barrel in 2H16 due to recent supply outages. For more on supply outages, read Why Crude Oil Prices Rose 84% since the Lows in February 2016.

On the other hand, BNP Paribas predicts that Brent crude oil prices could trade between $35 and $40 per barrel in 2016 due to a stronger dollar, oversupply, and near-record US crude oil inventories.

An OPEC (the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) meeting is scheduled for June 2 in Vienna. There are no optimistic cues as to the group reaching any agreement to cap production. OPEC members will produce more to maintain their market share. This higher production will pressure crude oil prices. Bloomberg surveys project less chance of any production freeze at this meeting. For more on OPEC production, read OPEC Crude Oil Production Data Ignites Concerns of Oversupply.

US crude oil prices briefly breached the psychologically significant mark of $50 per barrel. Theyre also trading above their 200-day moving averages. However, technical indicators (like stochastic) suggest that oil is overbought, so prices could fall. Bank of America Merrill Lynch predicts that a strong dollar could pressure oil prices.

The EIA (U.S. Energy Information Administration) estimates that Brent crude oil prices will average $40.52 per barrel in 2016 and $50.65 per barrel in 2017. US benchmark WTI (West Texas Intermediate) crude oil prices are expected to average $40.32 per barrel in 2016 and $50.65 in 2017.

The uncertainty in crude oil prices affects oil and gas exploration and production companies like Stone Energy (SGY), Sanchez Energy (SN), and Carrizo Oil & Gas (CRZO). They also affect ETFs and ETNs like the ProShares UltraShort Bloomberg Crude Oil (SCO) and the PowerShares DWA Energy Momentum ETF (PXI).

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For related analysis, you can visit Market Realists Energy and Power page.

Browse this series on Market Realist:
After spending the last two weeks on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List, a 39-year-old Los Angeles man accused in the shooting death of his pregnant girlfriend was apprehended on Sunday near America's border with Mexico, PEOPLE confirms.



A statement from the FBI alleges Philip Patrick Policarpio fired a single bullet into 32-year-old girlfriend Lauren Olguin's forehead during a visit to a friend's home in East Hollywood back on April 12.



According to investigators, Policarpio started punching Olguin during what was described as a heated card game.



Policarpio is facing murder charges as well as one count of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.



His life on the run ended on U.S. soil, at the border crossing near Tijuana.



 Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.



The FBI is expected to release more information on his arrest later today.



It is unclear if Policarpio was aware at the time of the shooting that Olguin was 17 weeks pregnant. She died instantly, police claim.



The FBI added Policarpio to its most wanted list earlier this month. He'll be arraigned later this week.



Court records fail to indicate if Policarpio has retained legal counsel.
From Cosmopolitan

Lindy West is known for shouting her abortion, challenging rape jokes, slaying Internet trolls, fighting period stigma, championing fat acceptance, and generally being one of the most outspoken feminists on the Internet today. But in a new collection of poignant, hilarious, and contemplative memoir essays, Shrill: Notes From a Loud Woman, West writes about growing up a shy girl plagued by the daily indignities that resulted from being fat in a culture shaped by the whims and wants of men. It took a series of experiences (getting an abortion and looking at Leonard Nimoy's Full Body Project and deciding to no longer hide her body, to name a few) before West was ready to be loud and fight back against misogyny. West talked to Cosmopolitan.com about her essays, how she deals with offensive comments and rude people, and the progress of the fat acceptance movement.

In one of the first essays, you write that "in a certain light, feminism is just the long, slow realization that the stuff you love hates you," and later on, you write about how sexism in comedy broke your heart. Can you tell me more of what you mean by that?

For me, figuring out that I was a feminist and learning about feminism was this eye-opening process where you start to realize the way that cultural and social forces shape your life. Every single thing is steeped in these limiting, dehumanizing notions about who women are and what women are like and how you're supposed to treat women and how women are supposed to behave. And you just can't get away from it once you see it ... you realize somewhere along the way that there's no media that you can consume that doesn't do a bad job in some way.

I guess there are people, like a super feminist purist, who don't consume any problematic media. But that's really no fun at all. Because then you're left with almost nothing. You realize at some point that you're not going to find much stuff to watch on TV that doesn't have some shitty caricature of a woman or some antiquated gender roles or some weird, racist thing where you were just sitting there enjoying your show and then all of a sudden they had to do some awful, racist joke that maybe would have been normal in 1987 but now it's just like, "Really?" It just never stops. Because humans are have weird hangups and prejudices and we're all raised in the same screwed-up toxic culture and that manifests in what people make. [You] just have to figure out where your line is and make sure that when you're watching something and something shitty happens, just keep evaluating whether it's crossed your line. And whether you want to keep giving this person money and attention.

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You realize at some point that you're not going to find much stuff to watch on TV that doesn't have some shitty caricature of a woman or some antiquated gender roles or some weird, racist thing...

There's an essay about a guy being rude to you, likely because of your size, on an airplane. For a moment you consider whether you want to confront this person or not, and you decide to do it to set an example for other women. I'm wondering if there are times where you've done this calculation and decided just not to say anything. How do you be true to yourself while also taking care of your mental health and happiness in these situations?

For the most part, in person, I'm really not confrontational. I mean, obviously if something's really egregious, I'll speak up. But it's hard. When someone says something really cruel to you in public, it's not like you always have a snappy comeback right there, you know? And that's a shame, because it would feel good to destroy those people in real time. But it is really important to keep an eye on your mental health and to balance [it with] the idea of being outspoken and confrontational in a performative way, which is what I try to do to model that for other people, to hopefully empower other people who feel like they can't stand up for themselves.

I think lots of women, LGBT people, minorities, and people with disabilities experience this in daily life - an offhand comment or maybe a purposefully snide comment - and you just don't feel like dealing with it but it really does affect you. Do you say something? Because all of a sudden, even though this person invaded your space, you're the one who is now seen as making a scene about it, not that person.

It's tough. If we just keep never saying anything, then it doesn't change. But yeah, they really set up a neat little trap where if you complain, you're the one making a scene, exactly. I kind of follow my instincts. If I feel like I have it in me to say something, [I will]. I'm around women constantly who are talking about how fat they are - women who are not fat, complaining about how this outfit makes them look fat, or just listing every calorie they ate that day and how bad they are. And in those situations, it's pretty easy to be compassionate but firm and be like, "Just FYI, I actually am a fat person and this is how that kind of talk affects my life and if you could not do that around me, that would be great." If you're going to feel like shit either way, you might as well get your point across.

In the past couple of years, we've started seeing more talk about body positivity and fat shaming that we weren't talking about even five, six years ago. As somebody who has been vocal about this long before this movement gained traction, how do you feel about the changes and where do you think it still needs work?

I think it's great. I can definitely feel some palpable changes just in the couple years since I've been writing about this. But I think there's a danger of getting a super conventionally beautiful, hourglass-shaped size-10 woman on the cover of a magazine and calling it a day. Because that doesn't actually help the impoverished size-32 fat people who are struggling to get adequate medical care and employment and fair treatment in trials, and these issues that are actual life-and-death issues that fall by the wayside when we switch to the much blander but more palatable term "body positivity" and away from actually talking about fat people and fat bodies and the way that those are stigmatized and oppressed in our culture.

It's not nothing to have plus-sized models on the covers of magazines and it would have meant a lot to me as a plus-sized teenager, but it's just barely scratching the surface of the work that actually needs to be done.

I would love to have more discussion of why people are fat and what makes our bodies the way that they are. What [people] want to talk about is gluttony and laziness and why thin people are better and more morally upright than fat people. And what I would like to talk about is the systemic issues that change people's bodies. The fact that there are people who have to work three minimum wage jobs to make ends meet and to keep the lights on, and then those people are just derided in our media and in our private lives all across our culture for feeding their children McDonald's. For not having the time to go to a grocery store that they may not even have access to in their neighborhood and buy their child a bunch of expensive produce and cook it for them.

It's not nothing to have plus-sized models on the covers of magazines and it would have meant a lot to me as a plus-sized teenager, but it's just barely scratching the surface of the work that actually needs to be done.

You write about how representation matters. You point out that in Hollywood, we see fat men on the screen and they're taken seriously. They are men who go about their lives and they can play all sorts of roles, including romantic interests, but we don't treat fat women the same way. What kind of shift do you think we'd see if half, or even a majority, of powerbrokers in this country were fat women?

It would be incredibly powerful; it would be a massive change. So much of what we see in the media is - forgive me for saying it like this, except I'm not really sorry - is geared toward men's boners. Like, everything has to be boner-approved. And what that does is strip the humanity out of women. And it's incredibly boring. I'm tired of these stories. It's not that I want more fat people on screen or more women on screen. I want women and fat people and any other underrepresented, marginalized person presented as a human being. As a complex fully-formed human being and not just a placeholder or a joke. So yeah, I think having women in charge, having women actually making some of these artistic and financial decisions would make a huge difference. But unfortunately, there's this idea that woman-centered media doesn't sell, that boys don't want to read books about girls or play video games with girls in them. I don't know that we've really taken the time to test that hypothesis and let it play out. I want to hear new stories and I don't understand how that's not common sense and how that's not a good business decision. Surely, I'm not the only bored person.

Follow Prachi on Twitter.
A former director of the CIA said Sunday that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's rhetoric on Islam is providing a boost to the enlistment efforts of radical jihadist groups like the Islamic State group.

Michael Hayden, who was also once the head of the National Security Agency, told the Guardian that the former reality TV star has been playing into the kind of clash-of-civilizations narrative on Islam and the West that fuels the growth of militant Islamist organizations.

"The jihadist narrative is that there is undying enmity between Islam and the modern world, so when Trump says they all hate us, he's using their narrative," Hayden told the Guardian. "He's feeding their recruitment video."

Hayden also said in the interview he believed Islam is undergoing a bout of turmoil and attempts at redefinition akin to what Christianity experienced during the 17th century, and that bombings in Western cities were not the ultimate goal of terrorist networks.

Source: Mic/Getty Images

"We are not the target, we are collateral damage. What has happened in Paris, in Brussels ... is spillage," he said.

Trump said in March that "Islam hates us" and that it's "hard to separate" radical Muslims from non-radical Muslims.

In December he called for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States," but earlier in May he said that the proposal was "only a suggestion."
By Stanley White

TOKYO (Reuters) - Delaying a sales tax increase in Japan scheduled for April next year makes "some sense" as it could push the economy into several quarters of anaemic growth, making it hard to raise revenue, a senior Standard & Poor's executive said on Tuesday.

Weaker growth resulting from faltering consumer spending would jeopardise the government's goal of returning to a primary budget surplus, which excludes new borrowing and debt servicing costs, in fiscal 2020, Kim Eng Tan, S&P's Asia-Pacific senior director of sovereign ratings, told Reuters in an interview.

Although Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has yet to declare his intentions regarding the planned sales tax hike, sources have told Reuters that he will delay the planned increase to 10 percent from 8 percent by two and a half years to October 2019.

The risk of the tax increase pushing consumer spending even further down and possibly hastening a return to deflation persuaded Abe in favour of delaying, the sources said.

"It does make some sense, because what you aim to achieve by introducing at tax hike is to generate more revenue," Tan said.

"We also have to recognise the current economic environment is relatively uncertain and the yen has appreciated quite a lot since the end of last year, which puts some pressure on growth."

Delaying the tax hike would not be an indication that Japan's government is giving up on fiscal consolidation, Tan said.

Abe has already delayed raising the sales tax once after the earlier increase to 8 percent from 5 percent in April 2014 hit consumption and knocked the economy into recession.

Tan said the government needed to introduce bolder structural reforms to push up growth and consumer prices in order to generate revenues as there was limited room to expand fiscal and monetary policy.

Tan's comments could ease concerns about sovereign credit ratings downgrades and a potential spike in yields in the Japanese government bond market.

Story continues

Japan's debt-GDP ratio is the world's worst, standing at more than twice the size of Japan's $5-trillion economy.

"One of the reasons why the budget deficit has been so big is because inflation hasn't been positive, so revenue that depends on wages and profits is not growing," Tan said.

"On the other had, spending is growing steadily because of social (welfare) commitments."

In September last year S&P cut its rating on Japan to A+ from AA-, which is four notches below its top rating of AAA, because it doubts the government's will reverse economic deterioration. The agency raised its outlook to stable from negative.

(Reporting by Stanley White; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
cornetto rings

If youre in a longterm relationship, chances are you have been, at one time or another, tempted to be unfaithful  specifically when it comes to binge-watching Netflix.

There are times when you know your partner is on episode five of a series, and you probably shouldnt watch episode six, or seven, or eight, but you just do anyway. Once you are mid-binge, it can be hard to simply stop.

But Cornetto, the British ice cream company, has come up with a way to keep your relationship in harmony. The company has created Commitment Rings, which use NFC technology to make sure you are only watching a show when your partner is there.

Heres how they work.

First, you can sign up to get a pair of rings from Cornetto (first-come first-serve). Once they arrive, you link the rings to a video streaming service for six months. The exact services are still being worked out, according to Fast Company, but lets imagine Netflix and Hulu will be the big ones. Then you use an app Cornetto has created for the rings to choose which shows you and your partner want to watch together. These shows will then only play when the rings are physically close together.

Heres a video explaining the project:

NOW WATCH: The 7 best TV shows on Netflix you've probably never heard of





More From Business Insider


By Asad Hashim ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif underwent successful open heart surgery in a London hospital on Tuesday, his second cardiac procedure in five years, his daughter said. Sharif's surgery comes as his government prepares to present its annual budget on Friday. It also remains under pressure over allegations of corruption linked to the so-called Panama Papers. "Surgery successful," his daughter, Maryam, said on her Twitter account about four and a half hours after she said the operation had begun. Earlier, she said her father "was in high spirits" as he was taken in for an operation for a "perforation of the heart", a complication from a 2011 procedure. Sharif, 66, was prime minister for two terms in the 1990s before being overthrown in a 1999 military coup. After years in exile, he returned to Pakistan in 2007 and led his party to a victory in a 2013 election. He has traveled to London for medical treatment several times over the past year and was accompanied on this trip by his brother, Shahbaz Sharif, who is chief minister of Punjab province, and several other family members. On Monday, Sharif telephoned his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, thanking him for his wishes for a quick recovery, the Pakistani Foreign Office said in a statement. Sharif made a bid to improve ties with old rival India a main policy in his 2013 election campaign, though progress has been slow. Sharif has been overseeing state affairs in the days leading up to the surgery, and on Monday addressed an economic meeting, signing off on budget proposals that include a target of 5.7 percent growth in the year beginning in July. Pakistan missed its gross domestic product growth target of 5.5 percent for the year ending in June, hitting only 4.7 percent. (Reporting and writing by Asad Hashim; Editing by Robert Birsel)
Paris Jackson dyed her hair bright blue for prom and it looks incredible

Paris Jackson dyed her hair bright blue for prom and it looks incredible

Prom season is upon us and that means getting choked up at the teenagers looking all grown up in their formal attire. Paris Jackson, 18-year-old daughter of the late Michael Jackson, didnt disappoint with a gorgeous Instagram she posted on Saturday of her prom date and her ~ new blue hair ~.

Paris revealed that she dyed her hair bright blue to match her unnamed dates metallic blue prom dress. Only true friends dye their hair to match their gals prom gown, Paris wrote. She also accessorized her tux with a shiny blue tie to complete the whole lewk. These two look absolutely adorable posing together in that age-old prom photo pose!

only true friends dye their hair to match their gal's prom gown. A photo posted by Paris-Michael K. Jackson (@parisjackson) on May 27, 2016 at 6:50pm PDT

Paris actually debuted her new blue hair earlier in the week in an Instagram post captioned, Spilled an icee on my head with a blue heart. A blue raspberry flavor, perhaps?

spilled an icee on my head A photo posted by Paris-Michael K. Jackson (@parisjackson) on May 26, 2016 at 11:09pm PDT

Before going blue, earlier this year the 18-year-old had dyed her hair peroxide blonde. We hope this means she got professional dye jobs for both (AKA didnt attempt to do this by herself in with some Manic Panic in the bathroom) because the blonde-to-blue transition is perfect (AKA not accidentally green). We may be speaking from experience on this one.

we mustn't dwell. no, not today. we can't! not on rex manning day! A photo posted by Paris-Michael K. Jackson (@parisjackson) on Mar 1, 2016 at 2:25pm PST

Last week, Paris debuted another new look on Instagram: a large and intricate tattoo honoring her dad The meaning of life is contained in every single expression of life, she wrote in the caption. It is present in the infinity of forms and phenomena that exist in all of creation. Never forget your roots, and always be proud of where you came from.

Story continues

"The meaning of life is contained in every single expression of life. It is present in the infinity of forms and phenomena that exist in all of creation." Never forget your roots, and always be proud of where you came from. A photo posted by Paris-Michael K. Jackson (@parisjackson) on May 23, 2016 at 4:28pm PDT

The super-sweet tat showed her fathers piercing eyes, a menagerie of animals, and a crown.

Between the tattoos, the blue hair, and the nose ring, Paris is totally badass!

The post Paris Jackson dyed her hair bright blue for prom and it looks incredible appeared first on HelloGiggles.
PARIS (Reuters) - Municipal authorities in Paris plan to build a camp to house several hundred refugees in the French capital, the mayor said on Tuesday, criticizing the dire living conditions for migrants who have fled to Europe. Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo said city services were looking for a site in the north of the city and that the camp could be built within two months. Hidalgo cited as a model a migrant camp made up of modular cabins housing about 2,500 people in Grand-Synthe on the northern French coast. Opened in March, that camp is run by the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres. "We cannot accept any longer the humanitarian situation, the sanitary situation that migrants have to put up with," Hidalgo told reporters, without elaborating. It would be the first refugee camp in the Paris area. France has been much less affected by the migrant crisis than, for example, neighboring Germany, which has taken in more than a million migrants, many fleeing war in Syria and Iraq, since last summer. However, thousands have transited France to reach the Channel in the hope of crossing to Britain. Some 3,900 migrants currently live in squalid conditions in a camp outside the port of Calais. (Reporting by Simon Carraud; Writing by Matthias Blamont; editing by Gareth Jones)
What's Kept Payment Processors Strong among Financials in 2016?

(Continued from Prior Part)

Valuations

Visa (V) is trading at 25.2x on a one-year forward earnings basis. Its peers are trading at 15.3x. Historically, Visa has traded at a premium to its peers because of its strong brand, zero leverage, higher growth, and strong operating margins.

The company has taken on a debt of ~$16 billion to fund its acquisition of Visa Europe. The companys stand-alone valuation gap has increased marginally due to the relatively low performances of its competitors.

MasterCard (MA) is trading at 25.8x on a one-year forward earnings basis. Its peers are trading at an average of 18.4x. Historically, MasterCard has traded at a premium to its peers because of its strong brand, increasing partnerships, diversified earnings, higher growth, and operating margins.

The foreign exchange rate could continue to negatively impact MasterCards revenue growth in 2016. Client incentives are expected to be higher in the upcoming quarters. The company will focus more on payments through mobile phones and digital wearables.

American Expresss valuations

American Expresss (AXP) stock has fallen by 16% over the past year. The company is currently trading at a one-year forward price-to-earnings ratio of 12x compared to the industry average of 20.9x. The discount has widened over the past few quarters on higher expenditures toward services, marketing, and new partnerships.

American Expresss relatively low valuation, along with its increased spending on new partnerships and clients, should be reflected in its stock price going forward. The company is targeting cost savings of $1 billion by 2017, which should boost its operating margins.

Takeover bids can attract decent premiums on current prices. However, in the event of failed attempts or continued weak operating performances, we could very well see further falls in AXPs stock price.

Discover Financial Services (DFS) is also trading at a low price-to-earnings multiple of 12x due to its higher leverage and lesser brand presence.

Story continues

Payment processors (DIA) on the whole are valued at a premium compared to the Market and other financials due to their increased spending and higher operating margins.

In the next part of the series, lets look at payment processors strategies for expansion and growth.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
Hit British drama Peaky Blinders returns to Netflix on Tuesday for a third season, with Cillian Murphy's real-life 1920s gangland boss Tommy Shelby orchestrating yet more post-WWI violence from the cobbled streets of Birmingham (the central English city, not the one in Alabama).

With the BBC already greenlighting seasons four and five, The Hollywood Reporter caught up with creator Steven Knight (currently in New York with his script for Sony's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo sequel, The Girl in the Spider's Web) to discuss the show's "bonkers" U.S. fan base, the new Peaky Blinders clothing line and spending three hours talking gangs with Snoop Dogg.

Congratulations on the new season and being commissioned for seasons four and five.

It's so un-BBC, it's fantastic. They normally don't re-commission until a series has ended.

Did you expect it to get this far?

No, and I certainly didn't expect it to get this big, especially over here [in the U.S.]. The response to it is equal to if not more than the U.K. People are just bonkers about it. And the unusual step of the BBC giving permission to Netflix to air all six episodes before eps 5 & 6 play out in the U.K. means the show is eligible for this years Emmys. Hopefully, as the underdog against all these huge established shows people will vote for it. That's the wish.

Do you find it strange that people in the U.S. have responded to a drama about early 20th century gangs in Birmingham?

It's amazing because of the numbers of them, but also because the nature of some of them. I've been contacted spontaneously by Dennis Lehane, Michael Mann, Snoop Dogg

Snoop Dogg?

I had a three-hour meeting with him because he loves it so much.

What did you talk about?

About gangs, gang culture and the series. Aside from him, I hear anecdotally that [the show]'s very popular in South Central and in New York, where people are responding to it. It's a family story, so a lot of women and men recognize themselves, but I think there's something about the way the men are and the way they dressit's a sort of impossible masculinity that people respond to. There's also the David Bowie thing -

Story continues

What was that?

Cillian heard that he was a fan. At the end of the first series, Cillian was given the cap he wore throughout the shoot, in a glass case. He smashed the case, sent the cap to Bowie and Bowie sent a photo back of himself with razor blades sewn into the cap. So we contacted his people and asked if he'd like his music on the series and they were really keen. I had someone come to my house to play Black Star before it was released. They didn't say anything about his state of health, and a couple of days later it was announced he had died. We continued talking and episode five will have Bowie's music in it.

Read More: 'Peaky Blinders,' 'The A Word' Renewed by BBC

Has there been any talk of a feature spinoff?

We've always been open to that. I've always been baffled by the fact that it doesn't happen and that usually people wait until a series is unpopular. And then it's sort of the way they bow out. I'd love to do one while it's at its height. I should also mention that there's going to be a clothing line called Garrison, with Peaky-style clothing. People have been trying to find the clothes, so this is coming soon - in London and Birmingham first, but also online.

The series started before Netflix became the juggernaut it is today. How important has it been to have such a major brand behind it?

It's fantastic because it gives people access. Because there's no longer the tyranny of the schedule, this stuff is available whenever and what it's meant, I think, is that you've got these dark horses, things that people are picking up on that no one thought they would. No money has ever been spent on Peaky Blinders in terms of publicity, there's no massive campaign - because it's the BBC you just get the trailers. But what's happened is people have found it for themselves and I think the loyalty is greater when people find than when they're told to watch something.

Do you ever get any figures from Netflix?

No, no figures ever. All we get is a glow of warmth, which we interpret as very good figures. I'm sure just from meeting the people that it is doing really well.

Netflix has recently started picking up U.K. shows - like Black Mirror - exclusively, taking them away from the original U.K broadcaster. Is this something you've heard regarding Peaky?

You'll find it hard to believe that I know less than nothing about this side of how it goes. But obviously I've heard about these things. I love the BBC. I love working with the BBC. They leave you alone; they give you zero notes. It's like being on vacation. Via the BBC, we don't get any notes from Netflix. Not that Netflix would ever do that, but we're happy with the way that it's working.

Do you think the BBC doing something very un-BBC and recommissioning a fourth and fifth season just as the third starts was its way of combating any possible predatory approach from Netflix?

I have no idea. But for us all I can say is their announcement was a great vote of confidence and confidence is always good. And now I can approach the next two series really feeling like I'm writing 12 hours of television rather than six. It just means you can have a bigger arc and you can have more fun with itit's much better.

Read More: MIPTV: Why the 'Black Mirror' Deal Marks a Turning Point for Netflix

Julian Fellowes said that he wanted to end Downton Abbey before it started to near WWII. Do you have a similar time frame of where you'd like to take Peaky?

Oh yeah. In my mind, if we keep getting the green light and I can keep going and the actors are all happy, I would take it up to the first air raid siren of WWII. That's always been the destination. And when the siren goes off, the series ends.

You've quite an impressive slate of upcoming feature films that you're writing. With Peaky now coming back for more, how do you fit it all in?

I don't really know. I've got a film called Allied coming out, with Brad Pitt. They've nearly finished shooting that and the word is that it's absolutely fantastic, it's coming out on Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. Dragon Tattoo is the thing I'm doing right now. And I've got a Western being shot later this year - Woman Walks Ahead. I'm just doing the final bits on that this morning.

Read More: 'Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' Follow-up in Works With Steven Knight in Talks to Adapt (Exclusive)

And the World War Z sequel?

Yeah, that's ongoing. There are long fallow periods, so that's not troubling me at the moment. These things take time - I did the first draft for Woman Walks Ahead 10 years ago.

Do you have a preference between TV and film?

They've both got their advantages. With a feature you're in and out in a sense. You've got a beginning, middle, end. Also, the money's good! The drawback, for me, is that it's much more collaborative so unless you're directing it yourself, you do hand it over. TV is a writer's medium, the writer is in charge effectively. So what you write is what gets shot, so in that sense I prefer it. But in terms of the scale of it, features are fantastic.

Is there any other TV work at present?

There's Taboo with Tom Hardy. I think the last piece of filming is this week, so that'll be out I think autumn on BBC One. I've seen the first three episodes. It's fantastic. It's really good.

With Taboo, Peaky Blinders and your last turn as director, Locke, Hardy has become a frequent collaborator. How did that start?

We met in the Soho Hotel in London because his manager had said they were going to do Taboo and wanted to know if I'd be interested in writing it. While we waited for Tom I mentioned this thing called Locke and asked if it would be OK to bring it up in the meeting. And by the end of it we sort of did a deal whereby Tom would do Locke if I would do Taboo. And then along the way Peaky came along and he loved Alfie Solomons' character.

Any other deals made in the Soho Hotel?

Not in the Soho Hotel, but I've written a script that I want to direct that would star him. It will be a longer shoot than 10 days, which is what we did Locke in. This will be a more conventional film, but with Tom. There's nothing much else I can say about it, but it'll be interesting.

So it's not set entirely in a car, like Locke?

No, definitely not. Everyone who works with me has always worked and shot in freezing cold, horrible places so I've promised the next one will be 'exterior, beach, day,' that's what this is.

And will Hardy have a thick Welsh accent, a la Locke?

Ha, no.

What was the thinking behind that, it didn't seem vital to the story?

I was trying to make him the most ordinary man in Britain, and also wanted him to have a working-class background. Some accents people - internationally - can't understand, also they come with baggage. London means a certain thing, Liverpool means a certain thing. Whereas with Welsh, he can be a middle-class man with working-class roots and still have an accent and it not be an issue. The other reason, which is true, is that Tom had a friend and he thought this character Locke reminded him of him, so he said he would base the way he speaks on him. The local newspaper contacted this bloke and asked him about his voice being used, and he said, 'It's fine, but I'm not Welsh.' He was from Devon or somewhere.

Read More: Locke: Venice Review
On May 30, 2016, we issued an updated research report on Penske Automotive Group, Inc. PAG. The company continues to gain from increasing dealerships, rising sales of new vehicles and capital deployment. However, the large merchandise inventory and intensifying competition pose concerns.



Penske Automotives first-quarter 2016 earnings per share improved 7.1% to 90 cents from 84 cents earned a year ago. Moreover, earnings beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 87 cents.



Revenues grew 7.6% year over year to $4.82 billion, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $4.77 billion. Excluding foreign exchange, total revenue increased 10%, driven by a 9.9% rise in total retail automotive sales to 111,494 units.



Penske Automotive aims to boost earnings by expanding its dealership network. In Apr 2016, its subsidiary, Premier Truck Group acquired Harper Truck Centres, a Freightliner, Western Star, Thomas Built Bus and Fuso commercial truck dealership that operates in Ontario, Canada. Penske Automotive expects that this acquisition will add annual revenues of $130 million and complement its partnership with the Freightliner and Western Star brands. This acquisition should also provide huge market potential and bring about business opportunities in the future. In the same month, the company opened a new dealership, Porsche West Broward, in Florida. This is Penske Automotives eighth Porsche dealership in the U.S and sixteenth worldwide.



Additionally, Penske Automotive has been benefiting from increasing new vehicle sales over the past few years. The company expects the U.S. automotive markets to perform well in the future which will lead to good business opportunities. The U.S. auto market will benefit from rising demand, backed by an increase in the aging vehicle population, a strong credit environment for consumers, launch of new models by different automakers and low oil prices, leading to lower consumer fuel costs.



However, Penske Automotive has a large merchandise inventory. The high proportion of inventory in the current assets can affect the short-term liquidity of the company in periods of low sales. In addition, intensifying competition in the industry poses concern.



Penske Automotive currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).



Some better-ranked automobile stocks include Autoliv, Inc. ALV, Oshkosh Corporation OSK and Superior Industries International, Inc. SUP. All the three stocks sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).



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To read this article on Zacks.com click here.
US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter departed Tuesday for an Asian security summit in Singapore, where Beijing's military expansion across the South China Sea likely will once again dominate discussions.

Regional neighbors are fretting over what they see as China's expansionism as it rushes to exert sovereignty over the waterway, a major global shipping route believed to be home to large oil and gas reserves.

China is using dredgers and other tools to convert low-lying ocean features and sandy blips into military bases.

A Pentagon report this month said China has added more than 3,200 acres (1,300 hectares) of land to the seven features it occupies in the Spratly Islands archipelago.

The so-called Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual meeting in Singapore, will see defense ministers, military chiefs and defense experts from the Asia-Pacific region and beyond discuss regional security issues.

Aside from the South China Sea, delegates are expected to focus on the growing threat of Islamic terrorism in the region and North Korea's nuclear program.

Since becoming President Barack Obama's fourth Pentagon chief in February 2015, Carter has taken a forceful tone on Beijing's South China Sea construction.

He criticized the drive at last year's Shangri-La meeting and on Friday, Carter said China risks creating a "Great Wall of self-isolation."

"Countries across the region - allies, partners and the unaligned - are voicing concerns publicly and privately at the highest levels," Carter said.

The United States has conducted several "freedom of navigation" operations where it pointedly ignores China's claims of sovereign exclusion zones around the islands by closely flying or sailing past.

Carter's trip will see him first visit an Army base in Arizona.

He had also considered meeting his Japanese counterpart Gen Nakatani during a visit to Japan, but the two decided to meet in Singapore instead, a US defense official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Story continues

The official said the meeting would have been too politically sensitive, given the furor surrounding the arrest of a former US Marine on Okinawa in connection to the death of a 20-year-old woman who had been missing since late April.

A series of crimes including rapes, assaults and hit-and-run accidents by US military personnel, dependents and civilians have long sparked local protests on the crowded island.

Carter and Obama were quick to condemn the crime and offer "regret."

Carter "made the decision to not visit Japan on this trip given that he and Minister Nakatani are already planning to meet in Singapore as well as other scheduling concerns," Pentagon spokesman Commander Gary Ross said.

While in Singapore, Carter will be joined by senior US military leaders, including Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson and the commander of US Pacific Command, Admiral Harry Harris.
Incoming Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte on Tuesday described China's Xi Jinping "a great president", in another hint that frosty relations between the Asian neighbours could soon warm.

Duterte heaped the praise on Xi in a news conference in response to questions about a message the Chinese president sent to congratulate him on winning this month's election.

But the longtime mayor of the southern city of Davao, who has been criticised for lacking foreign policy experience, appeared unsure of Xi's title.

"I was honoured, receiving a congratulatory message from a great president, uh prime minister," Duterte said.

The Chinese foreign ministry said Monday that Xi wrote to Duterte after his victory, a standard diplomatic tradition for heads of state.

China's official news agency Xinhua reported that Xi hoped the two sides would "get bilateral relations back on the track of sound development".

Chinese-Philippine ties soured during the six-year term of outgoing President Benigno Aquino, whose government sued China before a United Nations tribunal over its claims to most of the South China Sea.

A ruling is expected in the coming weeks, with the Philippines' response to it likely to be left to Duterte, who takes office on June 30.

In contrast with Aquino, Duterte has said he is willing to engage China in bilateral talks on the issue. Yet he has also played to nationalist sentiment by saying he would ride a jet ski to plant a Philippine flag on disputed islands in the sea.

Duterte also emphasised on Tuesday that he would not be fully reliant on the United States, the Philippines' former colonial ruler and most important military ally.

"We will be chartering a course of our own. It will not be dependent on America, and it will be a line not intended to please anybody but the Filipino interest," he said.
Internally displaced Afghan girl An Afghan Internally Displaced Person (IDP) poses for a photograph outside her temporary shelter in Kabul, Afghanistan, on May 31, 2016. Amnesty International said on May 31 that more than 1.2 million Afghans have been forced to flee their homes due to violence in the past three years and urged the Afghan government and the international community to tackle the countrys growing crisis of refugees. (Hedayatullah Amid/EPA)

An Afghan Internally Displaced Person (IDP) poses for a photograph outside her temporary shelter in Kabul, Afghanistan; a daughter of a U.S. military veteran demonstrates with veterans outside Republican presidential candidate Donald Trumps news conference outside Trump Tower in New York; and a vendor sleeps at his vegetable shop at a main market in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

These are just a few of the photos of the day for May 31, 2016.

See more news-related photo galleries and follow us on Yahoo News Photo Tumblr!a
Solar Impulse in 2014

Flying around the world fueled only by sunshine, the Solar Impulse is now two-thirds of the way through the first-ever attempt to fly around the world in a solar-powered aircraft.

The plane is currently making final preparations for its trip across the Atlantic from the eastern United States.

Swiss pilots Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg, who have alternated legs since the attempt began in Dubai in March of 2015, told Business Insider that although flying the strange, wider-than-a-Boeing-747 aircraft is very challenging, they both very much enjoy it.

Solar Impulse

"There is first a feeling of complete freedom because you have no fuel," Piccard said. "This is really the first aircraft with an unlimited endurance."

For Piccard, whose exploits include being the first  along with partner Brian Jones  to fly around the world in a balloon in 1999, the finicky Solar Impulse took some to get used to.

Borschberg, a former fighter pilot in the Swiss Air Force who currently holds eight various aviation world records, agreed.

"At the beginning it was very hard, because everything happens slowly and you tend to over-correct, overreact, over-control and create oscillations," Borschberg said. "It takes some time in the simulator."

Control forces are very heavy, and the airplane is especially difficult to handle in turbulence, Borschberg said.

"Any time we put new pilots, or even pilots that have never flown it, into the simulator, they always crash," Piccard said.

The aircraft travels at about 50 mph, and given enough headwind it can maintain the same place over the earth or even go backwards. That can make lining up an approach to an airport a challenge when the wind threatens to blow the aircraft away from the field, Borschberg said.

But despite the challenges, both pilots expressed a deep connection with their craft.

"It's an incredible airplane. I mean I love it," Borschberg said. "Sometimes when you talk to test pilots it is like 'It's okay, I did it, but I am glad I don't have to get into the airplane again.' But this is totally not the case."

Story continues

Solar Impulse Cockpit

"It helped me to fly across the Pacific Ocean for five days, and of course I help it to get its energy, so we became partners in achieving the record flight," Borschberg said.

The machine, currently being kept cool under a large tent alongside the Lehigh Valley International Airport in Allentown, PA, looks like a prehistoric bird of outrageous proportions. Its carbon fiber bones, visible through the slightly translucent fabric skin, add to the illusion.

All around it, a team of mechanics and engineers are preparing for the transatlantic crossing.

Air conditioning units were brought in to keep its batteries cool hum under each wing, and the cockpit's carbon fiber shell sits on the ground beside the aircraft, revealing the complex systems underneath.

Behind the pilot's seat, which fully reclines to allow rest periods and a little mobility, several green oxygen tanks keep the pilot alive at altitudes of up to 28,000 feet  nearly the height of Mount Everest. They must wear cold-resistant flight suits in the un-pressurized, unheated cockpit.

Solar Impulse Hawaii 2016

Piccard and Borschberg have their own strategies for dealing with the stresses of extremely long flights. Borschberg practices meditation derived from yoga, while Piccard, a psychiatrist, practices self-hypnosis.

Borschberg found that he can sleep for about 20 minutes every two hours.

Each 24 hour period that the aircraft is airborne, the procedure is the same. During the day, the aircraft climbs to 28,000 feet and recharges its batteries in the sunlight. Just before sunset, when the light is no longer strong enough to charge the batteries, the pilot shuts down the electric motors and begins a slow and steady decent to around 5,000 feet that takes about four hours.

The motors are then restarted, and the aircraft uses the stored energy in the batteries to cruise through the night until dawn. At that point, only about 10% of the batteries' capacity remains.

Things get tricky, though, if it is unexpectedly cloudy, Piccard said.

From the way the pilots talk about their flights, its clear there are two things keeping the Solar Impulse aloft: sunlight and some very heavy duty math.

Each trip requires serious number crunching by engineers and meteorologists who must calculate the route and timing with the widest margin for error.

Piccard even brought with him Belgian meteorologist Luc Trullemans, who assisted him during his around the world balloon flight.

Solar Impulse

"He's a genius," Piccard said.

Borschberg will next fly the Solar Impulse from Pennsylvania to John F. Kennedy International in New York City, making a few circles around the Statue of Liberty for good measure.

From there Piccard will pilot it across the Atlantic, the last major barrier to overcome on the journey to Dubai.

The flight will roughly retrace the same voyage Charles Lindbergh undertook almost exactly 89 years ago, when he became the first to cross the Atlantic non-stop. But unlike Lindbergh, they will do so without using a single drop of gasoline.

"It's a technical adventure," Borschberg said. "A human adventure."

Solar Impulse Over Dubai  where the flight began and where it will end.

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By Wiktor Szary WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland will appeal a court decision not to extradite filmmaker Roman Polanski to the United States over a 1977 child sex conviction, Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro said on Tuesday, reigniting a long legal battle. The United States requested Polanski's extradition from Poland after he made a high-profile appearance in Warsaw in 2014. The Oscar-winning filmmaker lives in Paris but also has an apartment in Krakow in southern Poland and visits regularly. A Polish court rejected the request in October last year, and the prosecutor's office initially said it would not appeal the decision. But since then, Poland's new, staunchly conservative government of the Law and Justice (PiS) party has merged the posts of justice minister and prosecutor general, giving it more direct control over prosecution. Zbigniew Ziobro, who assumed the newly merged post, has been a vocal critic of the court's decision not to extradite the filmmaker, saying Polanski's celebrity status had helped him escape justice. "I've decided to file an appeal in the supreme court against the ruling ... in which the ... court decided not to extradite Mr Polanski to the U.S. in a situation when he's accused of and wanted for ... a rape of a child," Ziobro told Poland's state radio. "If he was just a regular guy, a teacher, doctor, plumber, decorator, then I'm sure he'd have been deported from any country to the U.S. a long time ago," he said. Speaking to private broadcaster TVN24, Polanski's lawyer Jan Olszewski said that given Ziobro's previous comments, his decision was "not surprising." "I guarantee that if there were no factual arguments on our side, Polanski's (celebrity) status itself would not protect him from extradition." CAUSE CELEBRE The case of the Polish-born Polanski, now 82, remains an international cause celebre nearly four decades after the crime, with some demanding harsh punishment and others urging that extradition efforts be dropped. Polanski pleaded guilty in 1977 to having sex with a 13-year-old girl during a photo shoot in Los Angeles. He served 42 days in jail after a plea bargain but later fled the United States fearing a lengthy jail time if the deal was overruled. The Los Angeles County District Attorneys Office has long insisted that Polanski remains a fugitive and subject to immediate arrest in the United States because he fled the country before sentencing. It says his case cannot be resolved until he returns to California to face justice. In 2009, he was arrested in Zurich on a U.S. warrant and placed under house arrest. He was freed in 2010 after Swiss authorities decided not to extradite him. Samantha Geimer, the victim in the case, has made clear she believes Polanski's long exile has been punishment enough. (Additional reporting by Pawel Florkiewicz and Adrian Krajewski; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
Polands government says it will appeal a decision to reject an extradition request for Roman Polanski, the celebrated filmmaker who is wanted in the U.S. over a child sex conviction from 1977.

Here are Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobros remarks to the Polish state broadcaster, via Reuters:

Ive decided to file an appeal in the supreme court against the ruling ... in which the ... court decided not to extradite Mr Polanski to the U.S. in a situation when hes accused of and wanted for ... a rape of a child. If he was just a regular guy, a teacher, doctor, plumber, decorator, then I'm sure hed have been deported from any country to the U.S. a long time ago.

Polanski lives in Paris, but maintains a home in Krakow, Poland, which he visits regularly. The U.S. had sought his extradition in 2014 in connection with the 1977 conviction, but a Polish court last year rejected the request, and the Polish prosecutor-general subsequently said the decision wouldnt be appealed. But the new government has since merged the posts of justice minister and prosecutor-general, thereby giving Ziobro, who holds the new position, more control over the decision. He has previously criticized the decision not to extradite Polanski.

Polanski, now 82, fled the U.S. after pleading guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl. He has lived in Paris since then, but travels frequently to Poland where he was born. He remains a fugitive in the U.S.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
Authorities are considering possible criminal charges following an incident at the Cincinnati Zoo over the weekend left a 17-year-old gorilla dead after a boy fell into its enclosure, a prosecutor said Tuesday.

Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters said in a statement that the Cincinnati Police Department is looking into Saturdays shooting death of the zoos male western lowland gorilla named Harambe, which has sparked national outrage. Harambe was killed to save a four-year-old boy who officials said was being dragged around by the gorilla after the child crawled through a barrier and fell into the gorillas exhibit.

Once their investigation is concluded, they will confer with our office on possible criminal charges, Deters said.

The zoos director, Thane Maynard, said the 420-pound gorilla was shot dead instead of tranquilized because the anesthetic would have taken too long to go into effect and may have created alarm in the animal. The risk was due to the power of that animal, he said at a news conference Monday.

Meanwhile, an animal rights activist group on Tuesday filed a federal negligence complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture against the zoo, Reuters reports. Stop Animal Exploitation Now is seeking the maximum penalty of $10,000.

The failure of the Cincinnati Zoo to adequately construct this enclosure to protect both the public and the animal held prisoner there is a clear and fatal violation of the Animal Welfare Act, it said in its complaint letter to the USDA.
The Pope says beauty vloggers make the world better, and we agree

The Pope says beauty vloggers make the world better, and we agree

Pope Francis has worked on a music album, joined Instagram (and instantly got millions of followers, obvs), and stated his support for gender equality in the workplace, so obviously, we were already huge fans. Now, the Pope has voiced his support for beauty vloggers and were over here wondering if he could possibly get any cooler.

According to the UKs Guardian, the Pope held an intimiate meeting with 12 YouTube stars on Sunday, including British vlogger Louise Pentland, who runs a fashion and beauty channel called Sprinkle of Glitter, and Mexican-American lifestyle vlogger Dulce Candy, who moved to the U.S. at the age of six.

I am glad that you carry out the type of work you said, following the line of beauty, its a great thing. To preach beauty and show beauty helps neutralise aggression, the pope said.

He also had a message for YouTube vloggers in other areas, including comedy YouTube entertainer Hayla Ghazal from Dubai and American video game vlogger Matthew Patrick. You can create a virtual identity; you belong to this circle at least virtually. From that you can start taking a path of optimism and hope, the Pope said, encouraging the vloggers to help any of their fans who may feel lost.

He then thanked the vloggers for giving me some of your youth as a gift, according to the Guardian. TBH, were pretty sure Pope Francis has plenty of youth already  after all, hes way better at Instagram than we are. But we cant help but smile at the thought of the Pope watching a tutorial on how to make the perfect flower crown.

The post The Pope says beauty vloggers make the world better, and we agree appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Posh Spice helps Eva Longoria get ready for her wedding, defines #friendshipgoals

Posh Spice helps Eva Longoria get ready for her wedding, defines #friendshipgoals

Eva Longoria and Jose Antonia Baston got married on May 21st in the beautiful lakeside town of Valle de Bravo, Mexico. Famous friends like Ricky Martin, Mario Lopez, Melanie Griffith, and Victoria and David Beckham were all in attendance.

Posh Spice (shell always be Posh to us, we cant help it), aka Victoria Beckham, has since been posting the sweetest photos of her and Longoria before and during the wedding, making us all mild to severely jealous of both the gorg wedding/vacation spot and their friendship.

Victoria helped Longoria put on her wedding dress, which she also happened to design. And of course, stunning photos captured all the moments.

She captioned the photo, @evalongoria the most beautiful bride. I am honored to have created your wedding dress X Thank you for asking me!!! X We love u! X #friends #VBDoverst #VBHongKong X VB Picture courtesy of @hellomaguk

@evalongoria #friends x VB Picture courtesy of @hellomaguk A photo posted by Victoria Beckham (@victoriabeckham) on May 30, 2016 at 11:34am PDT

And one more, because were FEELING these friendship vibes over here. Victoria wrote the sweetest caption honoring her friend  Congratulations @evalongoria. The smartest, most beautiful woman I have ever met. I feel honored to call you my friend X. Such a wonderful day filled with love X. We love Pepe so much!!! @davidbeckham #blessed #toomuchtequilla #omgmyfeethurt #inlovewithmexico. Too. Much. Cute.

Congratulations @evalongoria The smartest,most beautiful woman I have ever met.I feel honored to call you my friend X Such a wonderful day filled with Love X We love Pepe so much!!! @davidbeckham #blessed #toomuchtequilla #omgmyfeethurt #inlovewithmexico A photo posted by Victoria Beckham (@victoriabeckham) on May 22, 2016 at 9:29am PDT

We are so happy for the stunning couple and are only a little mad that we werent invited. But weddings are expensive  we get it.

The post Posh Spice helps Eva Longoria get ready for her wedding, defines #friendshipgoals appeared first on HelloGiggles.
LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / May 31, 2016 / POYDRAS GAMING FINANCE CORP. (PYD.V) ("Poydras" or the "Company"), a leading provider of gaming machines to casino operators in its core markets of Oklahoma and Texas, today announced that it will be presenting at the 6th Annual LD Micro Invitational on Wednesday, June 8, 2016 at 1:00 PM PST / 4:00 PM EST. Peter Macy, Chief Executive Officer of Poydras, will be giving the presentation and meeting with investors. The conference will be held at the Luxe Sunset Bel Air Hotel and will feature 195 companies in the small / micro-cap space.

A webcast of the presentation will be available at http://wsw.com/webcast/ldmicro10/pyd.v. The webcast will be archived for one year.

"The past year has seen Poydras undergo a significant transformation, with the acquisition of the Integrity Companies and significant new contract wins with existing and new customers over the course of 2015 and early 2016," said Peter Macy, CEO of Poydras. "We are pleased by the opportunity afforded by the LD Micro Invitational to introduce to investors our story of growth in Oklahoma, the most vibrant Tribal gaming market in the U.S., our continuing opportunities in that market, with additional upside from expanding into new geographies."

View the Company's profile here: http://www.ldmicro.com/profile/pyd.v.

Profiles powered by LD Micro - News Compliments of Accesswire

About LD Micro

LD Micro was founded in 2006 with the sole purpose of being an independent resource in the microcap space. What started out as a newsletter highlighting unique companies has transformed into an event platform hosting several influential conferences annually (Invitational, Summit, and Main Event).

In 2015, LDM launched the first pure microcap index (the LDMi) to exclusively provide intraday information on the entire sector. LD will continue to provide valuable tools for the benefit of everyone in the small and microcap universe.

For those interested in attending, please contact David Scher at david@ldmicro.com or visit www.ldmicro.com for more information.

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About Poydras Gaming Finance Corp.

Poydras Gaming is a regional slot route operator with approximately 2,400 revenue-generating gaming machines across 25 casinos in Oklahoma and Texas. The Company provides slot machines and related capital expenditures under short- and long-term contracts for existing casinos, new casino developments and gaming machine suppliers in the United States. Additional information about the Company can be found on the SEDAR website 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.

For further information, please contact:

Keith Richards

Investor Relations | NATIONAL Equicom

T: 416.848.1599

E: krichards@national.ca

James Kim, VP of Corporate Development

Poydras Gaming Finance Corp.

T: (604) 683-8393

E: info@poydrasgaming.com

SOURCE: Poydras Gaming Finance Corp. via LD Micro
obama

As the current presidential nominees jockey to take the reins of America's highest office, the current commander in chief passed a somber milestone earlier this month.

Since President Barack Obama's ascension to office, his administration has been at war longer than that of any other US president.

The milestone comes after Obama, from the time he entered office, had pledged to end what has become America's longest war.

The conflict in Afghanistan has been ongoing since 2001.

The Vietnam War lasted a little more than 10 years, while the Iraq War took nearly eight years.

Perhaps pointing a rebuking finger toward Obama's policies would be impetuous: The US's asymmetric wars are no longer fought in glorified Hollywood fashion with a readily identifiable enemy.

Instead, they can be more "difficult," in that it has become a game of patience and strategy.

As technology has advanced the capabilities of US forces, so has the ability of enemy forces to meet these upgrades with effective, cheap, and readily available weapons of destruction.

It can also be debated that because Obama inherited a war on such a massive scale, it would have been difficult to fully withdraw and successfully close out such a war during his administration, if at all. Compared with the 200,000 troops who were stationed in the two countries, the 13,000 who are now in the area represents a figure that can be used as a measurement of success.

On the other side of the aisle, critics say he has failed to effectively curb the conflicts, perhaps even damaging the nation's ability to fight. The definition of "war" can also be fluid and easily manipulated, as in the case of the current campaigns: As Operation Enduring Freedom officially came to an end, the ongoing Operation Freedom's Sentinel took the helm the very next day. In addition, as the Pentagon has withdrawn its forces over the years, it has actually agreed to increase the use of nontraditional fighting tools, such as drones.

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With plans on sending an additional 250 Special Operations troops to Syria, Obama may be fanning the flames of his legacy or in fact adding fuel for his critics.

NOW WATCH: Heres the $5.3 million mansion the Obamas will reportedly live in after the White House





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May 31 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the New York Times business pages. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

- Viacom's directors vowed on Monday to fight any potential moves by the ailing media mogul Sumner Redstone and his daughter, Shari Redstone, to eject them from the company's board. (http://nyti.ms/1XajnWZ)

- Verizon reached a series of tentative agreements with unions representing nearly 40,000 workers on strike, retreating on some of the major points of contention, including pension cuts and greater flexibility to outsource work. (http://nyti.ms/20QWghX)

- Martin Senn, the former chief executive of Zurich Insurance Group, has killed himself, the company said on Monday, citing information from his family. Senn had resigned in December, mentioning business "setbacks in recent months." (http://nyti.ms/1XKWojC)

- After more than 1,100 deaths exposed dangerous labor conditions in Bangladesh in 2013, brands such as Walmart , H&M and Gap pledged to improve the safety of some of the country's poorest workers. But human rights groups say that three years on, those promises are still unfulfilled. (http://nyti.ms/20QXSbp) (Compiled by Bhanu Pratap in Bengaluru)
New Delhi (AFP) - Almost immediately after Deepti's wedding at a traditional ceremony in the Indian capital, the horrific abuse began -- behind closed doors at the hands of her new husband.

"He was brutal. He forcefully had sex with me even when I was admitted sick to hospital," she told AFP, shuddering at the memory of the assaults which she endured for months before running away.

Deepti has spent three years since then fighting for justice, but she doubts her husband will ever be punished in a deeply patriarchal country that does not consider marital rape a crime.

"I want to ask is there no justice for victims like me? Just because he married me, did it give him a right over my body?" said Deepti, whose identity, like those of other victims interviewed, has not been revealed for legal reasons.

India has long suffered from high levels of sexual violence including in the home, but governments have shunned making marital rape a crime.

Women and children's minister Maneka Gandhi told parliament recently that a lack of education along with poverty, religious beliefs and societal norms, among other reasons, make such a law out of the question.

The comments sparked outrage among women's groups, and baffled many after the outspoken minister had earlier indicated her support for moving on the issue.

But as the torrent of criticism grew, Gandhi reversed her position, saying it was now under consideration.

"This is one of the most complicated places to intervene because you are intervening in the bedroom," she explained to reporters this month. "How to do it with grace and with firmness is something we need to negotiate."

The law states "sexual intercourse by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under 15 years of age, is not rape".

- Tougher laws -

Husbands can be charged with a relatively minor offence of cruelty, which carries a maximum three years in jail or a fine. Women can also seek restraining orders and other protections under domestic violence legislation.

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But victims and activists say criminalising marital rape would act as a powerful deterrent and go a long way to protecting women in their own homes.

"You can't have two yardsticks for rape. You can't discriminate just because a woman is married," said a mother-of-two, Roma, at a counselling session for marital rape in a Delhi neighbourhood.

"I am sure if this law is put in place, husbands will think twice before raping their wives."

The government toughened laws in 2013 following the fatal gang-rape of a Delhi student which unleashed seething public anger about abuse against women. Rapists can now even get the death penalty in extreme cases.

A former chief justice of India, appointed by the government at the time to investigate the laws, recommended including marital rape -- but his suggestion was disregarded.

A parliamentary panel looking into the issue in 2013 also rejected the idea, saying it would place the "Indian family system" under "great stress".

Karuna Nundy, a lawyer who helped overhaul the laws in 2013, dismissed such arguments, along with those that warn of wives misusing such laws to settle personal scores with their husbands.

"Any law can be misused," Nundy told AFP, adding that marital rape was rarely reported to authorities, in part because of the shame attached to it.

- Keep quiet -

Over half of women in India surveyed two years ago said they had experienced some form of sexual violence by a partner.

And 60 percent of men questioned in the same survey admitted to perpetrating sexual abuse against a partner, according to the study conducted by the International Center for Research on Women and the United Nations Population Fund.

Marital-rape counsellor and lawyer Monica blamed India's deeply entrenched patriarchal culture and a lack of awareness of women's rights for the figures.

"Men think that marriage is a licence for sex. They don't even realise they need to ask for consent," said Monica, who uses one name and works for non-profit group Maitri.

"If a wife thinks of complaining and goes to police, she will be told 'you should be lucky he is coming to you. Go back home and make him happy'."

At the counselling session, many of the women said they felt they had no choice but to endure the abuse if they wanted to stay married.

"I was very young at the time that I got married. I did not even know what sex was," said mother-of-three Meera.

"I know whatever happened with me was very wrong. But my parents told me to keep quiet and just do as he said," she said, her eyes welling with tears.
A , writing a hit song feels less like a science and more like . The most truly inspired melodies are the product of scores of broken pencils, broken hearts, broken egos and a ton of random chance. The trials don't end with the writing, either: The song has to be tested, labels have to approve, every concerned party has to argue their side until everyone is confident the artist and the public is ready.

From the outside it all looks so clean. But so many of the most peerless songwriters stumbled at one of the vital steps on their way to writing the hit that changed their genre as fans know it. Some of the most game-changing singles in music history  Prince's "Kiss," Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" and Marvin Gaye's "What's Goin' On"  nearly didn't make it out of the gate.

R

W

1. "Kiss" by Prince

Source: RTNAtlas / MediaPunch/AP

"Kiss" was never meant to be a Prince tune. The Purple One originally wrote it for the Paisley Park act Mazarati, led by Prince's bassist Brownmark, who recorded it as a bluesy acoustic demo. The band, assisted by David Z, re-worked the song, blessing the track with its lythe, minimalist funk groove and "impossible to play" drum patter. When Prince heard it, he was so blown away he took it back for himself, re-recording the vocals and adding in the song's guitar solo breaks.

When the song was ready to go, Prince's label stood as one final hurdle. They felt the song had no bottom; it was too minimal. But Prince held his ground. "'That's the single and you're not getting another one until you put it out,'" David Z remembered Prince saying, according to Sound on Sound. The label yielded and it went on to become his third No. 1 single. It's a sound artists from Daft Punk to Pharrell have since.

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2. "What's Going On" by Marvin Gaye

Source: Facebook

The lead single off an album that Rolling Stone once described Sgt. Pepper's of soul, also faced immense label backlash leading up to its release. Inspired by the tragedies of Vietnam and the stateside political confusion in the late 1960s, Gaye wanted to write songs that drew attention to the issues of the day.

Motown, which felt it had perfected its pop formula, wasn't thrilled at the prospect or the product. The company took special issue with "What's Going On" being the lead single, with Stevie Wonder being its sole champion. Berry Gordy, the company's founder, called the song "the worst thing I've ever heard." Gaye pushed for the song anyway and it became a hit, leading to a flood of socially conscious soul out of Motown's camp.

3. "Stan" by Eminem

Source: EminemVEVO/YouTube

Often it's not industry meddling or creative disputes that hold a song in limbo, sometimes it's straight fuck-ups. Eminem's tale of a tragically dedicated fan, redefined hip-hop storytelling and even added a new word to the lexicon. However, due to an error in the booth, the version we got is apparently only a shadow of what could have been.

While annotating his own lyrics for Genius, Eminem shared a story about a stoned engineer who accidentally recorded over his best take. He was supposed to punch in and clean up one final bar, but the engineer rewound too far.

"Back then we were recording on two-inch tape, so once you recorded over something it's gone forever," Eminem wrote. "The first half of the verse was gone. I re-recorded it but you should have heard the original take that shit was way better."

4. "Billie Jean" by Michael Jackson

Source: Getty Images

Before Michael Jackson's iconic "Billie Jean" topped the charts, won Grammys or earned a platinum certification, Jackson and his recording team were considering scrapping it altogether. Jackson came up with the song while driving, and was so entranced by the sound he didn't notice that his car had caught fire.

The song didn't strike Jackson's producer, the legendary Quincy Jones, the same way. Rumor has it he thought the song was weak and tried to keep it off the album  a rumor he's since denied. He did think the intro was too long, though when Jackson told him that part is what made him want to dance, he relented.

"When Michael Jackson tells you that's what makes me want to dance," Jones once told a reported, according to the Houston Chronicle, "well, the rest of us just have to shut up."

5. "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen

Source: Leonard Cohen/Facebook

Cohen's "Hallelujah" was hell to write. Those trials and tribulations the songwriter faced bringing the song to life are recorded in its own Dantean Inferno in The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of "Hallelujah." According to that text, Cohen wrote over 80 verses for the song before finally whittling it down to four for the studio recording. The label hated it, said it wasn't hit and wasn't even pop, choosing the word "disaster" instead.

It wasn't until Jeff Buckley found it and re-introduced it to the world that the song earned the reverence, and its holy place in the American canon it enjoys today.

6. "Love Me Do" by the Beatles

Source: Getty Images/Getty Images

The Beatles launched their epic seven year career with their first single, the sunny and bright-eyed "Love Me Do." Yet, if George Martin, the group's producer and honorary fifth Beatle, had gotten his way, the Fab Four's career would have launched on a very different and far less impressive first step. Martin wanted a hit for the band and wasn't convinced Lennon-McCartney had the writing chops to make that happen. He pushed for Mitch Murray's "How Do You Do It" to be the song to introduce the band to the world, but the band were not fans.

"'It may be a number one, but we just don't want this kind of song, we don't want to go out with that kind of reputation,'" McCartney remembered telling Martin, according to the Beatles Bible. "'It's a different thing we're going for, it's something new.'" Eventually Martin relented and allowed the Beatles to record it and release "Love Me Do." It became a smash and proved in a small way the Beatles were not going to be any ordinary pop band.

7. "Uptown Funk" by Mark Ronson

Source: Larry Busacca/Getty Images

Ronson had a feeling from the start of writing "Uptown Funk" that it was going to be the song to either make him a household name, or break him. For close to six months, it seemed a lot more likely it would do the latter, according a Grantland profile.

"It nearly self-destructed, like, 18 times," Ronson said. "The song would have these kinds of sessions, like two days straight, and, man, I'm just exhausted. Bruno [Mars] would be like, 'Shit, man, it breaks my heart, but maybe this song just wasn't meant to be.'"

T When it all came together, thanks to some key contributions from Mars, it became the biggest No. 1 single of 2015, and the second-longest running no. 1 single of all time. Hopefully that makes the baldness worth it.
The Sunset hotspot Estrella (8800 Sunset Blvd.) has upped its menu with the opening of the boho-chic Mother's Auxilary Theater. The unveiling of Hollywood's newest theater is led by the restaurant's Alan Nathan and Brett Nestadt (Choice Hospitality Group).

The design concepted by Christian Schulz and Studio Collective is a rebirth of the '60s and '70s, decorated with plush hunter green velvet love seats meant for an intimate setting for 55 guests in the walnut-trim and copper-accented space. The copper accents highlight the theater's state-of-the-art technology by tech partner New Box Solutions. Some features include 3D capability and 7.1 surround sound. Events that can take place in the space include screenings, musical performances, presentations, weddings, seminars and more.

It's not the first theater to hit the building, though. Its Hollywood history is endless.

Read More: Bryan Cranston-Owned Movie Theater's Lawsuit Against Cinemark Revived on Appeal

"I remember going to a screening of Chaplin with Robert Downey Jr. It was one of those Oscar screenings," says music executive Ricardo Vinas who frequented the theater in the '90s. The space used to be its own destination for Oscar parties. Not the main ones. It would be the go-to-spot for the overflow of people from "Swifty" Lazar's famous Oscar parties. "All of the people that couldn't get into "Swifty" Lazar's party because they weren't on the list or the place was too small there was a whole overflow of people back-and-forth between both of those places," adds Vinas.

"People walk the stage and say, 'Oh my God this used to be Carolco's screening room - they did screenings here 20-plus years go," says Estrella's partner Nathan about the independent film company that once screened the Sylvester Stallone-starring Rambo in the space. It also screened some box-office blunders, which ultimately led to it closing down. "Showgirls and Cutthroat Island were the two disasters that brought down Carolco pictures. For Showgirls it was like, 'What the hell is this?' One of those films where you go to the after party and you don't really know what to say," quips Vinas.

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Geena Davis and Matthew Modine in 'Cutthroat Island'

The former theater also ended a relationship. It was the last time Women on the Verge star Carmen Maura would ever star in director Pedro Almodovar's films. According to one historian of the theater, the Spanish starlet got into a heated argument with the director (who won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Hable con ella). The reason for their spat? They got into a screaming match in the theater because Maura refused to sit next to the director during the film's screening there.

After Carolco owned the theater, Ticketmaster bought it, and then it was bought by Barry Diller's IAC. Most recently The Hunstman: Winter's War, Popstar, Hacksaw Ridge and The Nice Guys have all screened at the Mother's Auxilary Theater. "The idea of the theater now is how we now created a space that will bring together movies, TV, and music," says Nathan.

Nathan also hopes to host the spot to give a shot to Hollywood's rising artists. And for them to get in it's easy, Nathan says: "They just call Estrella and we'll set them up." For celebrities who don't want to walk through the public area, there's a private entrance to the theater and to the lounge. They'll walk through the hidden entryways and stay for the popcorn. Chef Dakota (Top Chef, pictured below) of Estrella has her Pop Parlor Popcorn Bar with more than 40 to 50 flavors, including green tea, coconut and white chocolate. There's vodka too. The Oyster, Potato Chips, Vodka Bar is ready for the theater's new audience.

Mother's Auxilary Theater bookings are available. To get in on Hollywood's new screening room, call Estrella at 310-652-6613 for a site tour or booking.
SDF

Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, the anti-ISIS citizen-journalist organization, said last week that the US's strategy to drive the Islamic State out of its de facto capital using a Kurdish-dominated brigade risks pushing "a lot of people" inside Raqqa to join the Sunni militant group.

The US-backed, Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have been taking back villages within Syria's Raqqa Province as it pushes toward the city of Raqqa, which fell to ISIS in mid-2014.

The SDF's Kurdish fighters have said that they don't plan on entering the city itself. But Washington's support for the SDF  led by the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG)  has still unnerved some Syrian Arabs who are suspicious of the Kurds' territorial ambitions and wary of their ties to Russia.

"The Arab fighters are just camouflage," Gen. Salim Idris, the former Free Syrian Army chief of staff, told Voice of America earlier this month. "The SDF is the YPG, which collaborates with anyone  Assad, the Russians, the Americans  when it suits its purposes."

He added: "I really don't think the Obama administration has thought this through. Will the Kurds give up Arab towns they capture?"

Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently (RSS), a citizen-journalist organization founded in 2014 to expose ISIS's brutality and human-rights abuses, went even further by claiming that a Kurdish-led offensive on Sunni-dominated Raqqa would push citizens there to join ISIS, a Sunni extremist group.

"The fact that a US-backed group is criticising the role of the Pentagon-backed YPG against a group that killed some of its colleagues is remarkable," Syrian journalist Hassan Hassan, coauthor of "ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror," wrote in the Financial Times.

Several members of RSS have been executed by ISIS militants inside Syria and Turkey since 2014.

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RSS did not provide any evidence to back up its claim that an SDF offensive might lead Sunnis in Raqqa to join ISIS to defend the city. But the ethnic tensions that do exist between Syria's Sunni Arabs and Kurds at least offer ISIS "an opportunity to present itself as a custodian" of Sunnis in the cities the group has conquered, Hassan said.

The US faces a similar dilemma in Iraq, where ISIS has positioned itself  however disingenuously  as a Sunni alternative to Shiite rule.

sdf

Syrian Kurdish and Arab fighters have a long history of mutual distrust that peaked between 2012 and 2013, when the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) battled FSA-aligned rebel groups for control over the Syrian city of Ras al-Ayn.

Those tensions have reemerged over the past eight months. The YPG-controlled neighborhood of Sheikh Maqsood has come under siege by Syrian-government forces and the rebels, with reports emerging that the rebels have committed war crimes against the neighborhood's Kurds, and rebels further north alleging that the Kurds have terrorized Arab civilians and forced them out of their homes.

The rivalry has put the US in a difficult position. The YPG has proved to be the most effective force fighting ISIS on the ground in northern Syria, but the territorial expansion their victories have afforded them has fostered resentment among the country's Arab population  and, in northwestern Syria, has left the rebels caught between the SDF and ISIS.

syria

Americans "just don't trust the Arabs," a Syrian Arab figure told the Financial Times last week. "They say, 'we will look into it, we will do our best.' A lot of 'we wills.' But their actions show that the core they are creating will always be Kurdish."

Washington has struggled to recruit enough Arab soldiers willing to fight alongside the Kurds to liberate cities from ISIS.

Most are either too distrustful of the Kurds to work with them or want to focus on battling forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad. Photos that emerged last week of US troops wearing YPG patches while fighting ISIS in northern Syria  and a visit by the US's top military commander to Kurdish troops earlier this month  have not helped, either.

"People here understand that America wants the area to fall to Daesh, so it can then destroy Azaz on top of Daesh and these terrorist PKK can advance and take the area," Yasser Abu Omar, a cleric based in the Syrian border city of Azaz, told Vice News last week.

The PKK is a Kurdish militant group with ties to the YPG.

Syria

Other groups, meanwhile, "would probably like to rise up against the Islamic State, but they don't see that as a viable option," Syria expert Aron Lund, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the Military Times in January. "If the US is able to bring a force to the region of Arabs and Kurds and others, with an air of inevitability, then maybe that calculus would change."

Hassan, for his part, was not as optimistic about the US's ability to foment unity within a conflict he and others have characterized as "nakedly sectarian."

"With this campaign, backed by groups abhorred by residents of the two cities"  Raqqa and Mosul  the US "seems to have privileged a tactical victory against ISIS over a strategic one," Hassan wrote.

He added: "It looks likely to provide ISIS with a gift it has long wanted, especially in Syria: creating for ordinary people the perception that their choice is between its own jihadis and militias they see as invaders."

NOW WATCH: A Canadian model went to Syria to fight ISIS





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By Lacey Ann Johnson FORT MEADE, Md. (Reuters) - U.S. government prosecutors asked a military judge on Tuesday to let 10 relatives of Sept. 11, 2001, victims testify in open court during a pre-trial hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Five men face the death penalty in the case, including Pakistan-born Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who took credit for masterminding the hijacked plane attacks in 2001 that killed nearly 3,000 people. Civilian prosecutor Edward Ryan said about 400 relatives have asked to testify. He told Judge Army Colonel James Pohl that his team would like to question the first 10 in October, many of them the elderly parents of victims. He noted that two potential witnesses "wanted very much to testify," but have already died. Ryan said one witness would be Lee Hanson from Easton, Connecticut. His granddaughter was the youngest victim in the attacks. Hanson's son, Peter, was flying with his wife and 2-year-old daughter on United Airlines Flight 175 when it was hijacked and crashed into the South Tower of New York's World Trade Center. "During the hijacking, Peter called our witness ... and described to him what was going on inside the plane," said Ryan. "That's about the only direct evidence we have from someone on Flight 175." Defense attorneys opposed the request, saying it was inappropriate to depose the witnesses in an open hearing because the remarks could influence potential jurors. They suggested the statements instead be videotaped and saved as potential evidence for the trial. "What the government is asking to do is have a public exposition of the tragedy that these individuals experienced, and they're asking to do that in a way where future panel members and jurors can have exposure to it," said Cheryl Bormann, attorney for Walid bin Attash, a suspected al Qaeda training camp leader from Yemen. There was no indication on when Pohl would rule on this motion. Other motions scheduled for the week-long hearing at the Navy base in Cuba include requests by defense lawyers for evidence of how the five suspects were treated at secret Central Intelligence Agency prisons. Proceedings have been plagued by repeated delays, and the case is likely years from going to trial. Seven relatives of Sept. 11 victims are in Guantanamo Bay this week to attend the hearing. Reuters monitored the proceedings over closed-circuit television from a media center at Fort Meade, outside Washington. The case is among a half dozen against Guantanamo inmates. There are 80 prisoners still at the Cuban base, mostly from Yemen. Almost 800 inmates have been transferred as U.S. President Barack Obama tries to fulfill his pledge to close the offshore prison before he leaves office in January. (Editing by Ian Simpson and Sandra Maler)
A police armoured vehicle said to be carrying two of the six Bangladeshis charged for their role in terrorism financing (Photo: Bryan Huang/Yahoo Singapore)



At a HDB void deck in Sembawang in January, four Bangladeshis working in Singapore swore an oath to the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and planned to form a splinter group of the extremist organisation in Bangladesh.

Led by Rahman Mizanur, a draftsman, who later recruited three other Bangladeshis, the group planned to wage an armed jihad against non-believers in their country and kill them.



Rahman and the other Bangladeshis, who were working as construction workers, were prepared to contribute part of their salaries to the cause. Some of them even have designated roles to handle financial, legal and media matters for the group.

The details of the groups plot were revealed in court on Tuesday (31 May) as four of them - Rahman Mizanur, 31, Miah Rubel, 26, Md Jabath Kysar Haje Norul Isam Sowdagar, 31, and Sohel Hawlader Ismail Hawlader, 29 - pleaded guilty to charges of terrorism financing. Two others - Mamun Leakot Ali, 29, and Zzaman Daulat, 34 - are claiming trial to similar charges.

The six were charged in court last week, the first time that the law on terrorism financing had been used in Singapore. They were also among the eight Bangladeshis who were arrested under the Internal Security Act earlier in May for alleged terror plots.

Court documents showed that Rahman decided to form the Islamic State in Bangladesh after failing to join ISIS on three occasions because he could not get a visa to Turkey or Algeria.

He had told the group that money was needed for their campaign for the purchase of items like food and weapons. At the end of March, the group decided to form the Islamic State in Bangladesh (ISB), with the intention of overthrowing the Bangladeshi government and establish an Islamic Caliphate.

In the final meeting before his arrest, Rahman had distributed the ISBs organisation chart, detailing each members roles and responsibilities. He had also discussed the use of false names to hide the group members from the authorities and shared a five-page document on counter-surveillance techniques.

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Discussing the groups timeline to overthrow the Bangladeshi government, they agreed that they would start in the Panchagarh district because of its large Muslim population, and that violent action would be taken against those who did not agree with the ISBs beliefs. They also planned to eventually join up with ISIS, court documents said.

The six Bangladeshis charged were (top row from left to right) Mamun Leakot Ali, 29; Md Jabath Kysar Haje Norul Islam Sowdagar, 30; Miah Rubel, 26; (bottom row from left to right) Rahman Mizanur, 31; Sohel Hawlader, 29; Zzaman Daulat, 34.



Escorted into the courtroom by members of the Ghurka contingent, Rahman, Jabath, Sohel and Miah pleaded guilty through the court interpreter to charges including contributing, collecting or possessing funds to help finance terror attacks.

Zzaman admitted to contributing money to the group, but claimed he did not know how the money would be spent. His case, along with that of Mamuns, will be heard at a later date.

The other four will be back in court for sentencing on 21 June. The prosecution has said it would be seeking a deterrent sentence.

For financing terrorism, the men each faces up to 10 years in jail and a fine of up to $500,000 per charge, or both.

They are the second group of Bangladeshi nationals to face terrorism-related charges in Singapore. In 2015, Singapore deported 27 Bangladeshi nationals detained under the Internal Security Act over alleged plots in their homeland.
By Pritha Sarkar PARIS (Reuters) - Fans were left wet and miserable at a soggy Roland Garros on Tuesday -- but not as drenched or depressed as Agnieszka Radwanska after the world number two's French Open hopes fizzled out following a monumental meltdown against Tsvetana Pironkova. Leading her Bulgarian rival 6-2 3-0 when rain halted play on Sunday, Radwanska appeared to have one foot in the quarter-finals. However, when the fourth-round tussle resumed more than 40 hours later following Monday's washout, the Polish second seed seemed all at sea as the players were forced to play through misty rain. She lost 10 games in a row as she fell to a 2-6 6-3 6-3 defeat by an opponent ranked 100 places below her. "I'm just so surprised and angry that we have to play in the rain," Radwanska told reporters. "I mean, it's not a $10,000 tournament. It's a grand slam. How can you allow players to play in the rain? I cannot play in that conditions." While Radwanska became the highest-ranked player to exit this year's French Open tournament, her defeat also meant that at least five of the top eight women's seeds failed to make their allotted quarter-final spots. Radwanska, playing with a full-sleeved white top over her sleeveless pink dress, struggled to handle the heavy conditions and the sodden balls on Court Suzanne Lenglen and lost six games in a row to surrender the second set with a forehand error. A further two hour 45 minute rain disruption failed to improve Radwanska's mood or her fortunes as she fell 4-0 behind in the third set. The 27-year-old, who called on the trainer to get treatment on her right hand midway through the decider, eventually halted Pironkova's run by breaking the Bulgarian in the fifth game. But Radwanska could not avoid the embarrassment of being beaten by a player ranked outside the top 100 for the first time in more than seven years when she netted a forehand on Pironkova's second match point. "I had hand surgery few years ago and I couldn't really play in that conditions. End of story," a fuming Radwanska added. "For me, playing with those balls in that kind of court is pretty much impossible." A match that lasted just two hours and 12 minutes on court finally finished at 4.18 pm local time on Monday, almost 46 hours after it had started on Sunday. "It was very difficult with all the rain as we were waiting almost two days to finish the match," a beaming Pironkova said after becoming the first Bulgarian woman to reach the quarter-finals since Sesil Karantantcheva in 2005. "But I can't complain." (Reporting by Pritha Sarkar, editing by John Stonestreet)
The World Health Organization (WHO) has advised people returning from Zika-virus infected areas should either abstain from sex or practice safe sex for eight weeks, according to a Reuters report. Previously, the WHO had announced a four-week "safe" period.

"The recommendation, which doubles the abstinence period the WHO had previously advised, comes after scientists found the virus lingers longer than previously thought in blood or other body fluids," Reuters reported, citing spokesman Christian Lindmeier.

Furthermore, Lindmeier added an additional caveat: "If the male partner in a couple planning pregnancy has symptoms of the Zika virus, the period of safe abstinence should be six months," the report said.

Related Link: Weighing Zika's Global-Spread Risks Ahead Of Brazil Olympics

These changes "reflect what we have learned," Lindmeier added, explicating how the development of the virus and the scientific understanding about the disease are continually in flux.

When questioned as to whether these restrictions "amounted to an effective ban on pregnancies in Brazil," Lindmeier responded, "The guidance is to delay or consider delaying pregnancy, certainly recognizing that this is tough for some populations."

Update On Rio Olympics, Travel

The agency has said, "Cancelling or changing the location of the 2016 Olympics will not significantly alter the international spread of Zika virus. Brazil is 1 of almost 60 countries and territories which to date report continuing transmission of Zika by mosquitoes."

As part of its travel advise, "WHO advises pregnant women not to travel to areas with ongoing Zika virus transmission. This includes Rio de Janeiro.

According to the WHO, anyone considering travel to the Olympics should:

"Follow the travel advice provided by their countries' health authorities, and consult a health worker before travelling.

"Whenever possible, during the day, protect themselves from mosquito bites by using insect repellents and by wearing clothing  preferably light-coloured  that covers as much of the body as possible.

"Practise safer sex (for example, use condoms correctly and consistently) or abstain from sex during their stay and for at least four weeks after their return, particularly if they have had or are experiencing symptoms of Zika virus.

"Choose air-conditioned accommodation (where windows and doors are usually kept closed to prevent the cool air from escaping, and mosquitoes cannot enter the rooms).

"Avoid visiting areas in cities and towns with no piped water or poor sanitation (ideal breeding grounds of mosquitoes), where the risk of being bitten by mosquitoes is higher."

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The Zika virus is caused by Aedes mosquitoes, which also transmit chikungunya, dengue and yellow fever.

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 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
On Monday, Troy Ave was formally charged with criminal possession of a weapon and attempted murder in connection to a backstage shooting at a T.I. concert that left one dead and three wounded on May 25.

The 33-year-old rapper, whose real name is Roland Collins, appeared at Manhattan Criminal Court in a wheelchair. His lawyers say their client was not responsible for last weeks gunfire, which erupted in the backstage area of Irving Plaza before rapper T.I. was to perform, reports the New York Times.

Three people were wounded in the shooting, including Ave. His bodyguard, Ronald McPhatter, was killed in the gun fight. Apart from security camera video, which showed a man the police identified as Ave firing a weapon, there is little information on what happened backstage. Maino, who was performing at the concert, has a history of feuding with Ave.

Hes the real victim here, said Aves lawyer Scott E. Leemon in court, reports the NYT. Leemon also said that scientific evidence would prove Ave did not shoot himself. McPhatter died a hero trying to protect Mr. Collins. He was not shot by Mr. Collins.

Ave will be held without bail until trial.

[NYT]
Nothing galvanizes bipartisan opposition quite like flawed tax policies, as the Obama Administration recently learned when 18 former high ranking U.S. Treasury officials of past administrations from both parties publicly rebuked Treasury Secretary Jack Lew for Treasury's latest proposal to discourage corporate inversions. Their assessment was succinct: the Treasury's ' ix will likely make matters worse. Instead, they urged Lew to focus on "addressing the competitive disadvantages that are harming capital investment, employment, and economic growth in the United States." In other words, let's get serious about reforming America's tax code.

Inversions, where U.S.-based corporations relocate their official headquarters to another country with a more favorable tax rate, should be discouraged. But it's a mistake to view the phenomenon, as Obama administration officials do, through the singular lens of recovering millions of dollars in lost tax revenue. Instead, they should recognize corporate inversions as the manifest result of an American tax structure that's inhospitable to business. Or, as former Treasury officials, including ex-Secretary George Shultz smartly put it, "Inversions are a symptom. The disease is America's anomalous international tax code."

Just as you would expect your physician to treat a bad lung infection with more than merely proscribing lozenges for the coughing, the U.S. should demand that government address the fundamental flaws of the nation's tax system that's driving away jobs, investment, and yes, tax revenue. The Joint Committee on Taxation puts lost tax revenue at close to $20 billion over a decade from inversions.

While the new rules are temporary, pending a public comment period on July 7, they nonetheless do nothing to fix the systemic flaws within the U.S. corporate tax structure. Nor do they discourage the practice of corporate inversion. They don't lower the rate. They don't institute fairness by adopting a territorial system. They do nothing to indicate the U.S. wants to host more enterprise. They don't make America a more hospitable, business-welcoming environment, which means, in the end, neither will they lead to more tax revenue.

Some of these new rules are so far-reaching that they seek even to change the very definition of the basic business accounting concepts of "equity" and "liability." It's why the Wall Street Journal has reported that corporate tax lawyers who've delved deeply into the new rules say they cast aside "decades of precedents and force corporations to alter routine cash-management techniques." The new regulations that could wrap in collection of tax liabilities on cash management, in part derived from the 47-year-old Section 385 of the tax code, would have a chilling effect on American enterprise.

U.S. businesses are already burdened with the highest corporate tax rates in the developed world, with an overall federal corporate tax rate of 39%. We are at the top of the pile - which is to say, we are the least business-friendly - of all 34 members of the OECD, the organization of the largest developed world economies. In contrast, the average tax rate of an OECD country is 25%. South Korea offers 24%, while the U.K. sets theirs at 20%. The U.S. is not only disadvantaged based on its high statutory corporate tax rate but it has also the 5th highest effective marginal tax rate among OECD and BRIC countries, according to research and data prepared by Katarzyna Bilickaand Michael Deveraux of Oxford University.

America is also nearly alone among OECD countries for its worldwide tax system. Whereas most countries - 28 of the 34 OECD member nations - operate under a territorial system that assesses taxes only in the countries in which profits are earned, American-based companies that do business abroad are also on the hook for corporate taxes at home.

Combined, these two tax policies put U.S. companies at a huge disadvantage to their foreign counterparts, according to tax experts at the Tax Foundation's International Tax Competitiveness Index. It's also partly why the U.S. ranks 32nd out of 34 OECD countries in terms of tax competitiveness, ahead of only France and Italy.

Thankfully, some elected leaders including U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Finance Committee Senior Democrat Ron Wyden, and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady have committed to tax reform in various capacities. A lower, fairer, uniformly applied rate will spur growth, and encourage American investment right here at home. No better way to discourage corporate inversions.

Mark Bloomfield is President and CEO of the American Council for Capital Formation, an economic policy research organization that promotes economic growth and global competitiveness. He is also a co-editor of the book, The Consumption Tax: A Better Alternative and was Secretary of President-Elect Reagan Transition Task Force on Tax Policy from 1980 to 1981.

See original article on Fortune.com

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After rebounding from one of the roughest outings of his young career, Jon Gray hopes to help the Colorado Rockies halt their latest slide.

Looking to end a mostly solid month on a high note, the right-hander tries to keep the Rockies from a fourth straight home defeat Tuesday night against the Cincinnati Reds.

Gray (2-2, 5.95 ERA) allowed nine runs in 3 1/3 innings of a 13-7 loss at St. Louis on May 19, but he's 2-1 with a 1.98 ERA in his other four starts this month. A week removed from being roughed up by the Cardinals, Gray yielded a two-run homer to David Ortiz in the first inning of the career-high 7 1/3 he lasted in Thursday's 8-2 victory at Boston.

''I just took one pitch at a time and focused on what I can do and didn't worry about the results," the 2013 third overall pick said after his 16th career outing. "Executed each one best I could.''

Manager Walt Weiss was impressed.

"The progress for a young player, a young pitcher, is never going to be without speed bumps," Weiss told MLB's official website. "It doesn't happen in this league. Every once in a while you have a hiccup, but the thing I look for is how you respond.

"Jonny, after a tough outing, came out and responded about as well as you can."

Facing Cincinnati for the first time, Gray gave up two runs and struck out eight in seven innings of a 5-2 win May 13 in his most recent effort at Coors Field. It was his first win there in eight tries.

Colorado's last three starters, however, have yielded 16 runs in 13 2/3 innings during a three-game skid at Coors. Chad Bettis allowed six in 3 2/3 innings in Monday's 11-8 loss to Cincinnati as the Rockies (23-27) lost for the ninth time in 12 games and fell to 9-13 at home.

''We know we're better than the way we're playing,'' outfielder Carlos Gonzalez said. "(The Reds) have some really good players out there, but they've been limping."

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Adam Duvall homered twice and Joey Votto went deep for the 200th time for the Reds (17-34), who have won two of three following an 11-game skid.

Six of Duvall's 13 home runs have come over the past eight games. He's 7 for 17 with 10 RBIs in the last four.

Votto is 7 for 15 with two home runs and six RBIs in his last four at Coors.

Cincinnati will activate Jon Moscot (0-2, 4.02) to take the mound after missing just over a month with inflammation in his surgically repaired non-throwing shoulder. The right-hander gave up three runs - one earned - and walked four in five innings of a 5-2 loss to the Mets on April 27 in his most recent big league outing.

Moscot made three rehab starts at Triple A-Louisville, highlighted by six scoreless innings Thursday.

"He satisfied our expectations as far as getting through six innings and throwing the ball well," Reds manager Bryan Price said. "He didn't lose his job because he got hurt."

This will be his first appearance against Colorado.

Gonzalez is looking to homer in a fourth straight contest for the first time since 2010. He's 16 for 32 in his last eight games and has seven RBIs in the last five. He's batting .484 with five homers and 11 RBIs in his last eight against Cincinnati.
(Adds details)

May 31 (Reuters) - Great Plains Energy Inc, the parent of regulated power utility Kansas City Power & Light, will buy rival Westar Energy Inc for $8.6 billion in cash and stock as it looks to gain scale to better compete in a challenging market.

Westar shareholders will receive a total of $60 per share, representing a premium of 13.4 percent to the stock's Friday close.

The deal comes at a time when U.S. utilities are struggling with falling demand for electricity in both open and regulated markets due to increased energy efficiency and a weak economy.

The enterprise value of the deal is about $12.2 billion, including about $3.6 billion in Westar's debt, the companies said on Tuesday.

The transaction will increase Great Plains Energy's customer base to more than 1.5 million in Kansas and Missouri, with nearly 13,000 megawatts of generation capacity.

Great Plains Energy has secured about $8 billion of committed debt financing from Goldman Sachs.

Goldman Sachs & Co is Great Plains Energy's financial adviser for the deal and Bracewell LLP is its legal adviser.

Guggenheim Securities LLC is as Westar's financial adviser and Baker Botts LLP is its legal counsel.

(Reporting by Amrutha Gayathri in Bengaluru; Editing by Kirti Pandey)
By Nidhi Verma

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - French major Total (TOTF.PA) has agreed to buy East African oil retailer Gulf Africa Petroleum Corp (Gapco) from Reliance Industries (RELI.NS) for an undisclosed amount as it seeks to strengthen its presence in the continent.

Reliance, which has 76 percent stake in Gapco, and the minority shareholders have agreed to sell their holding for cash to Total, the Indian company said in a statement on Tuesday.

The two companies said the transaction is yet to be approved by authorities.

"The net proceeds for the sale will be finalised on completion of the transaction which is expected to be within the coming months" Reliance said.

With this acquisition Total aims to raise its market share in Africa from 17 percent in 2015 to more than 20 percent.

"This acquisition is in line with Total's growth strategy for the distribution of petroleum products and services in Africa, which aims at expanding in fast-growing regions while maintaining high profitability," Momar Nguer, President, Total Marketing & Services said in a statement.

Gapco's assets in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda include logistic terminals, 108 fuel stations, and 260,000 kilolitres of storage capacity. Total currently operates a network of more than 4,000 fuel stations in Africa.

"Although Africa's overall oil demand is low by global standards, the continent's oil demand growth rates are very high, having risen by around 50 percent over the last decade to almost 4 million barrels per day (bpd)," BP said in a report.

Reliance acquired Gapco in 2007 as the government-set low retail fuel prices in India forced the private refiner to turn to stable export outlets ahead of commissioning of its second refinery.

Reliance's two refineries sited next to each other at Jamnagar have a capacity to process about 1.24 million bpd oil.

"Gapco's share was very small in the East African retail market but it has large storage tankage whereas Total has a much bigger market share and small tankage. So it makes good sense for Total to buy Gapco," said Tushar Bansal, senior consultant at Singapore-based energy consultancy FGE.

"For Reliance the margin lies in participating in the tenders for bulk supplies to retailers and they still have that option," he said.

(Additional Reporting by Henning Gloystein in SINGAPORE; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
Back on this day in 1913, the 17th Amendment to the Constitution went into effect, ending indirect elections to the U.S. Senate. To this day, some folks want that amendment repealed on the theory it curtails states rights as envisioned by the Founders.

Prior to 1913, when the 17th Amendment was ratified, the Constitution allowed state legislatures to choose two U.S. senators to represent them in Congress. Members in each state House and each state Senate, in most cases, would meet separately to pick a candidate as its representative in the U.S. Senate.

In the decades prior to the 17th Amendments passage, that practice was continually attacked as corrupt and problematic by reformers. But in recent years, some conservatives have demanded the right for the state legislatures to name their states representatives at the U.S. Senate.

Earlier this year, Utahs legislature passed a resolution calling for the 17th Amendments appeal, quoting James Madison and Alexander Hamilton in the resolution. Whereas, James Madison argued in Federalist Papers No. 62 that, The appointment of senators by state legislatures gives the state governments such an agency in the formation of the federal government as must secure the authority of the former, the lawmakers wrote.

Todd Zywicki, a George Mason University law professor, explained two of the current repeal arguments to the Huffington Post.

The framers understood that, in order for the states to be protected from federal government overreach it was necessary to give the states a formal check, Zywicki said. That check was by allowing the states in their corporate political capacity, the state legislatures, to choose senators.

He added that the original election system was a hedge against corruption. The second aspect was that the Senate was to be a check on special-interest activity, Zywicki said. By having the Senate chosen by a different constituency than the House, that was designed to raise the level of consensus to enact legislation, making it more difficult for special interests to capture the government.

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But in the era before repeal, how the states picked their Senators and how often that process was stalemated triggered enough outrage to lead to a constitutional amendment.

Corruption was certainly an issue. In their 2013 analysis of the historical selection process, political scientists Wendy J. Schiller and Charles Stewart III noted that a lot of money was spent by candidates and factions influencing state legislators to vote their way.

This use of large sums of cash to fund campaigns for state legislators, advertise in media outlets (or purchase them outright), and bribe state legislators once balloting began, was typical in indirect Senate elections, said Schiller and Stewart.

However, they also concluded that modern direct Senate elections arent that different in terms of money and ballots. Despite the blatant use of money to win indirect Senate elections, 100 years after the 17th Amendment was enacted, the modern Senate elections process is swamped with campaign money in ways that far outpace elections under the indirect elections system, they said.

But a look at Senate indirect election trends between 1871 and 1913 shows one big current roadblock to a 17th Amendment repeal. In 98 percent of those indirect elections, the legislators always voted for a candidate from their own party for the Senate.

Currently, the Senate is made up of 54 Republicans, 46 Democrats and two Independents. If the Senators were appointed today by state lawmakers along party lines within the states themselves, there would be 64 seats for the GOP in the current Senate.

That would put the Republicans four votes over a filibuster-proof 60-vote majority and within three seats of a 67-vote supermajority needed to override a presidential veto and approve constitutional amendments for state ratification. And it also would require at least 19 Democratic Senators to decide to approve a 17th Amendment appeal resolution that could lead to their own removal from office.

Another option would be a direct Article V convention of the states to pass a 17th Amendment repeal. Thats never been done before, but ironically it almost happened 102 years ago when enough states were fed up with the indirect Senate election process.

By 1912, many states starting using the Oregon System, where voters took part in primaries that committed state lawmakers to pick the primary winners as Senators. At the same time, 27 states not satisfied with the process petitioned Congress for an Article V constitutional convention. With just four more states needed for a convention and indications that three western states would join the Article V movement, the Senate finally agreed to approve the proposed 17th Amendment by a six-vote margin.

On May 31, 1913, one of the amendments biggest supporters, William Jennings Bryan, signed the document in his role as Secretary of State, telling Congress that it had become valid to all intents and purposes as a part of the Constitution of the United States.

Constitution Daily History Stories About The Founders

Forgotten facts about George Washingtons private life

Ben Franklins best inventions and innovations

Phillys convention history: FDR and Wendell Willkie
air force one

Taxpayers fork over $206,337 every hour the world's most famous plane is in flight, according to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) documents obtained by the nonprofit Judicial Watch.

The FY15 cost per flying hour for Air Force One (VC-25A) includes "fuel, flight consumables, depot level repairables, aircraft overhaul, and engine overhaul," according to the letter from the Department of the Air Force Headquarters Air Mobility Command to Judicial Watch.

According to the National Taxpayer Union Foundation, President Barack Obama has traveled internationally more than any other president, and he has done it on the "most expensive-to-operate Air Force One to date."

BI_Graphics Air Force One Cost of Flying

The aging Air Force One and it's twin decoy will be replaced with two Boeing's 747-8 and are expected to be operational in 2020.

NOW WATCH: SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Why some soldiers return to battle when they don't have to





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Equal pay for women. Gay rights. Access to abortion. These were some of the issues championed by the titular politician in Doreen Mattinglys new book A Feminist in the White House. But that feminist is not Hillary Clinton in the 1990sor, conceivably, the 2010s. Its Midge Costanza, Jimmy Carters adviser on social issues and the first female assistant to a president.

Costanzas path to the White House was unusual: a working-class Italian-American without a college education, she rose through the ranks of Democratic politics in Rochester, N.Y. In 1974, Carter helped campaign for her in an unsuccessful bid for Congress, and they became fast friends, Mattingly tells TIME. Carter was impressed with her street style and her strength in the community, and he turned to her for help in his presidential election. She was able to deliver upstate New York for him, which was quite a feat because New York was not friendly to the Governor of Georgia in that race.

She was rewarded with a spot in the administrationwhich also fulfilled his promise from the Democratic convention to appoint women. As Assistant to the President for Public Liaison (a job now done by Valerie Jarrett), Costanzas job was to be Carters window on America, Mattingly says, to bring the voices of disenfranchised people, particularly in groups, to him.

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And she did. On domestic violence she really tried going through the system; on the issue of federal funding of abortion she pretty clearly spoke out against her boss; on the issue of gay rights she just kind of acted on her own, Mattingly says, and on the issue of the [Equal Rights Amendment] she kind of disobeyed what shed been told to do, pushing the president to stay committed to its passage. She felt like Carter was committed to these issues, thats what she believed, and she wanted to see him keep those promises.

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But she didnt feel her efforts were paying off. It became clear to Costanza and her team that their voices were not being heard. Thats why the original title for Mattinglys book was An Unwilling Token, the author says: the White House official was an outward symbol of the Carter administrations inclusiveness, but she wasthanks to what she saw as resistance from others in the administrationunable to help others be included.

Everything unraveled for Costanza after she said she thought Bert Lance, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, should resign over questions of financial conflicts of interest. Shortly after, her staff was taken away and her desk was moved to the basement. She felt there was nothing left to do but resign.

Costanza went on to work in politics in San Diego, and she died in 2010 at 77. Mattingly credits a combination of sexism and classism with her downfall on the national stage. I think that theres still a real double-edged sword, particularly for women who are feminists, who say Yeah, I think theres something wrong with the conditions women experience and Im trying to change them.

MORE: Read a 1977 story about Costanza, here in the TIME Vault

Mattingly says she believes that the same dynamic is playing out today in Hillary Clintons bid for the presidency. [Theres a] notion that womens issues are not serious issues, she says. So when you say, as I do, I support Clinton, shes been a leader on womens issues, people say, But what about real issues? Well for me they are real issues!

Mattingly befriended Costanza later in life, and even promised to write this biography when Costanza was dying. She thinks her friend would have some advice for young Democrats watching the 2016 election: If she were watching the political scene today, she would say to [Bernie] Sanders supporters, O.K., now youre interested in politics, but you dont like the rules for the state party? Get involved, get active and change them. She had no interest in people who wanted to change things without participating in Democratic politics.
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / May 31, 2016 / Klondike Gold Corp. (TSX.V:KG; FRA: LBDP) ("Klondike Gold" or the "Company") announces that it has entered into a Property Purchase Agreement with Rise Resources Inc. ("Rise") for the acquisition by Rise of 100% of a portfolio of seven of Klondike's British Columbia properties totalling 150 claims covering 128 square kilometers located in the southeastern part of the province. The seven properties are Red Point, Clubine, Ron Gold, Panda Irishman, Cruz-Midway, Thea, and Quartz Mountain.



The terms for the Agreement are as follows:

Payment within 60 days of signing of $50,000 in cash, and payment of 1,500,000 Rise shares and 1,500,000 Rise warrants to purchase 1,500,000 shares for a period of 24 months (collectively the "First Closing").

Payment upon the one year anniversary of First Closing of $150,000 in cash, and payment of 2,000,000 Rise shares and 1,000,000 Rise warrants to purchase 1,000,000 shares for a period of 24 months (collectively the "Second Closing").

Klondike will retain a 2.0% NSR and Rise will have the right to purchase 50% of this royalty for $1.0 million at any time after the First Closing.

Peter Tallman, President and CEO of Klondike states, "Klondike has divested its interests in southeastern British Columbia in return for a meaningful share position in Rise Resources while retaining a royalty interest. This strategy allows Klondike Gold shareholders significant leverage to a portfolio of highly prospective British Columbia gold and base metal properties while keeping the Companys financial and exploration focus on its core Yukon assets. We welcome Rise Resources as our partner in realizing value from these properties for both our Companies."



ABOUT KLONDIKE GOLD CORP.



Klondike Gold Corp. is a Canadian exploration company with offices in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Dawson City, Yukon Territory. The company is focused on exploration and development of its Yukon gold projects, accessible by government maintained roads located on the outskirts of Dawson City, YT, covering 25,000 hectares of hard rock and 2,000 hectares of placer claims including McKinnon Creek leased to Todd Hoffman/Jerusalem Mining LLC and featured on the Discovery Channel show Gold Rush.

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On behalf of Klondike Gold Corp.



"Peter Tallman"

President and CEO

(604) 609-6110

E-mail: info@klondikegoldcorp.com

Website: www.klondikegoldcorp.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.

Disclaimer for Forward-Looking Information

This press release contains forward-looking information and forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. This information and statements address future activities, events, plans, developments and projections. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, constitute forward-looking statements or forward-looking information. Such forward-looking information and statements are frequently identified by words such as may, will, should, anticipate, plan, expect, believe, estimate, intend and similar terminology, and reflect assumptions, estimates, opinions and analysis made by management of Klondike in light of its experience, current conditions, expectations of future developments and other factors which it believes to be reasonable and relevant. Forward-looking information and statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause Klondikes actual results, performance and achievements to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking information and statements and accordingly, undue reliance should not be placed thereon.

Risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to vary include but are not limited to the availability of financing; fluctuations in commodity prices; changes to and compliance with applicable laws and regulations, including environmental laws and obtaining requisite permits; political, economic and other risks; as well as other risks and uncertainties which are more fully described in our annual and quarterly Managements Discussion and Analysis and in other filings made by us with Canadian securities regulatory authorities and available at www.sedar.com. Klondike disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information or statements except as may be required.

SOURCE: Klondike Gold Corp.
By Emma Thomasson BERLIN (Reuters) - The major start-ups of international ecommerce investor Rocket Internet managed to reduce their losses in the first quarter, the German company said on Tuesday, although revenue growth slowed and even went into reverse at two general merchandise sites. Europe's biggest Internet group said its top 12 start-up businesses, which range from online fashion to food deliveries, cut their losses on average by 23 percent in the first three months of 2016 compared with the same period last year, with the absolute loss down by more than 40 million euros ($45 million). "We are going in the right direction on the path to profitability," founder and Chief Executive Oliver Samwer told a conference call for reporters. Rocket said ingredients delivery firm HelloFresh was the one exception, widening losses as it keeps investing in marketing and warehouses to drive growth of 211 percent in the quarter. Rocket Internet, which has seen its shares almost halve since it listed in 2014 on concerns that its start-ups are overvalued and are making unsustainable losses, has pledged to make three of its start-ups profitable by the end of 2017. Its shares were down 4 percent at 21.36 euros by 0748 GMT, valuing the firm at 3.5 billion euros, well shy of the 5.3 billion euros valuation Rocket put on its portfolio at April 30. Rocket's shares tumbled in late April and are still down 24 percent this year after major investor Kinnevik slashed the valuation for its fashion sites by two thirds, prompting questions about the worth of the other start-ups. On Tuesday it said first-quarter revenue rose 34 percent to 532 million euros, slowing from the 69 percent growth rate of 2015, which finance chief Peter Kimpel said was largely due to the fall in currencies in the emerging markets where it operates. Rocket excluded Southeast Asian online retailer Lazada after agreeing in April to sell a majority stake to Alibaba. Meanwhile revenue dropped 37 percent at African general merchandise retailer Jumia and 51 percent at Latin American site Linio, which Kimpel blamed on currencies and a shift from their selling their own inventory to becoming commission-based marketplaces. As Rocket is more optimistic about the prospects for growth in Africa than Latin America, Samwer said it had swapped shares in Linio for a bigger stake in Jumia and was considering a possible sale of the Linio business. The company also highlighted an improved performance at Middle East fashion site Namshi and furniture retailer Westwing, saying they recorded absolute losses of 1 million euros and 6 million respectively. ($1 = 0.8985 euros) (Reporting by Emma Thomasson; Editing by Georgina Prodhan, Greg Mahlich)
Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski is facing a fresh attempt to extradite him to the U.S. in connection with his 1977 conviction for unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl. Polands government has decided to appeal a courts decision in October to deny a U.S. extradition request. Prosecutors had previously said they would not challenge the courts ruling.

Zbigniew Ziobro, Polands justice minister and prosecutor general, said on Tuesday, Ive decided to file to the supreme court an appeal over the ruling  in which the  court decided not to extradite Mr. Polanski to the U.S. in a situation when hes accused of and wanted for  a rape of a child, the Polish state news agency PAP reported.

Polanski, who holds dual French-Polish citizenship, has an apartment in Krakow, in southern Poland, but spends most of his time in France, the country where he was born.

A judge in Krakow ruled last October that Polanski could not be extradited from Poland because it could jeopardize the octogenarian directors human rights by exposing him to possible confinement. In a statement at the time, he said he had already paid the penalty for his conviction, an apparent reference to the 42 days he spent in jail before he fled the U.S. in 1979.

Although prosecutors had said they would not challenge the ruling, the leader of Polands right-wing Law and Justice party, which is now in government, said last fall that Polanski should be extradited, in order to demonstrate that the rich and famous did not receive special treatment in the Polish legal system.

Polanski has said he would like to shoot a film about the Dreyfus Affair in Poland, but only if he did not face the threat of extradition. The lead producer on the project is Frances Robert Benmussa, who said the budget would be 35 million ($37.1 million). The film, which is based on Robert Harris novel An Officer and a Spy, would be an international co-production made in English with English and American actors, Benmussa said.

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Polanskis closest brush with being sent back to the U.S. as one of its famous fugitives came in 2009, when he was arrested by Swiss authorities in Zurich, where he had gone to pick up an award. He was jailed for two months, then allowed to remain under a form of house arrest in his chalet in Gstaad while authorities weighed the U.S. governments extradition request. In July 2010, the Swiss Federal Department of Justice and Police rejected that request.

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Roman Polanski faces yet another attempt to be extradited to the U.S., where he has been a fugitive after pleading guilty in 1977 to unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl.

Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro has asked Polands Supreme Court to annul a decision by a court in Krakow from last October which ruled that Polish law forbids Polanskis extradition, according to the Associated Press. In November, prosecutors said they found no grounds to challenge the decision.

Ziobro assumed office late last year, after the ruling, and has argued that the Oscar-winning filmmaker should not be shielded from prosecution because of his fame.

Also Read: Gene Gutowski, Producer of Polanski Films and Holocaust Survivor, Dies at 90

In a statement, Ziobros office argued that the Krakow courts decision defied a Polish-U.S. extradition agreement, under which the defendant should be handed over to the United States.

Polanski, the director of films such as Chinatown and Tess, pleaded guilty in 1977 of having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl in Los Angeles. He was charged with six offenses, including rape by use of drugs and sodomy.

After serving 42 days in jail as part of a 90-day plea deal, Polanski fled the U.S. for France.

Also Read: Roman Polanskis Victim Applauds Polish Ruling Denying Extradition

Last year, the Krakow judge ruled that the director had served his punishment in U.S. jail term and later for 10 months  partly under house arrest  in Switzerland in 2009-2010 when the U.S. unsuccessfully sought his extradition from that country.

Polanski won an Academy Award for best director for his 2002 Holocaust drama The Pianist, which he filmed in Warsaw.

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Gene Gutowski, Producer of Polanski Films and Holocaust Survivor, Dies at 90

Roman Polanskis Victim Applauds Polish Ruling Denying Extradition
Polish prosecutors said last November that they would not challenge a judges decision to reject a U.S. request to extradite director Roman Polanski. The decades-old case could be reignited, however, with Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro telling Polish radio today that he will appeal the 2015 court decision.

Ziobro has been a vocal critic of the courts October decree, citing Polanskis celebrity status. Ive decided to file an appeal in the supreme court against the ruling, he told state radio today. If he was just a regular guy, a teacher, doctor, plumber, painter, then Im sure hed have been deported from any country to the U.S. a long time ago, he said, according to Reuters.

Poland has a new, staunchly conservative government wherein the posts of Justice Minister and Prosecutor General have been merged, giving it more direct control over prosecution, Reuters notes.

Speaking to private broadcaster TVN24, Polanskis lawyer Jan Olszewski called Ziobros decision unsurprising. I guarantee that if there were no factual arguments on our side, Polanskis (celebrity) status itself would not protect him from extradition.

The case began with the now 82-year-old Oscar-winning directors 1977 conviction on five charges stemming from having unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl. Polanski, 43 at the time, cut a plea deal and served 42 days in prison but fled the States on the eve of sentencing when it appeared the judge in the case had moved the legal goalposts. The Chinatown and Pianist director has been a fugitive from American justice ever since.

Polanski holds dual citizenship in Poland and France. While French law prohibits extradition of its citizens, Polish law does not. Polanski lives in Paris but also has an apartment in Krakow. Last years attempts to have him extradited were sparked in October 2014, when U.S. officials asked Polish prosecutors to question the director while he was in the country. He was eventually released, but U.S. authorities filed a formal extradition request in January 2015 in Poland where Polanski was working on a film about the Dreyfus Affair.

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Previously, in 2009, Polanski was placed under house arrest in Switzerland while a similar extradition request was examined. He was released after nine months.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia on Tuesday denied its planes had conducted air strikes overnight against the Syrian rebel-held city of Idlib, which the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said had killed 23 people. "Russian planes did not carry out any combat missions, to say nothing of any air strikes, in the province of Idlib," Igor Konashenkov, a Russian Defence Ministry spokesman, said in a statement. The Observatory had earlier said the air strikes targeted a number of positions in the city, one of them next to a hospital. Seven children were among the dead, Observatory Director Rami Abdulrahman said. The Turkish foreign ministry said the strikes had killed more than 60 civilians and complained in a statement about what it said were the "indefensible" crimes of the Russian and Syrian governments. Konashenkov called the Observatory's allegations "a horror story" of the kind he said it had disseminated in the past and said such pronouncements should be regarded with greater scepticism. Idlib is a stronghold of rebel groups including the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. (Reporting by Maria Kiselyova; Writing by Dmitry Solovyov/Andrew Osborn; Editing by Christian Lowe)
ASTANA (Reuters) - The Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) is starting negotiations on a trade deal with China, officials said on Tuesday, and aims to forge an agreement within two years.

Comparing the planned deal to the proposed EU-US Transatlantic partnership agreement, Igor Shuvalov, Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister, said the talks would be very difficult.

Shuvalov told reporters in the Kazakh capital Astana that the decision was taken by the presidents of member states and former Soviet republics Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan who met in Kazakhstan.

Shuvalov said Beijing wanted the EEU to cut customs duties on Chinese goods or even remove them completely, but no decision has been taken within the bloc on whether to do so.

"We will work on this matter in order to ensure the balance of mutual interests," he said, adding that negotiators would first focus on non-tariff barriers.

Russia and Kazakhstan, the two biggest economies in the EEU, mostly supply commodities such as oil and metals to China and import goods ranging from textiles to cars and electronics. Another major oil exporter, Iran, "could potentially become a member of such a partnership", Shuvalov said.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said at the meeting the EEU, which has already signed a free trade deal with Vietnam, was also interested in cooperation with India, Israel, Egypt and Cambodia.

"Free movement of goods and services within the union is in line with the Silk Road Economic Belt initiative put forward by the Chinese leadership," he said.

But Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko urged his partners to resolve the internal issues of the bloc set up two years ago such as numerous - about 600 - exclusions to its free trade rules.

"Equal conditions for EEU members and an environment free of barriers have still not been created," he said. "Moreover, since the agreement has been signed, our internal trade turnover has only been declining."

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Trade turnover within the bloc fell to $45 billion (31 billion) in 2015 from $65 billion a year in 2012-13, Lukashenko said.

Trade between Russia and China was worth about $64 billion last year, compared with China's total foreign trade of about $3.8 trillion.

(Reporting by Denis Dyomkin and Raushan Nurshayeva; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
ASTANA (Reuters) - The Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) is starting negotiations on a trade deal with China, officials said on Tuesday, and aims to forge an agreement within two years.

Comparing the planned deal to the proposed EU-US Transatlantic partnership agreement, Igor Shuvalov, Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister, said the talks would be very difficult.

Shuvalov told reporters in the Kazakh capital Astana that the decision was taken by the presidents of member states and former Soviet republics Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan who met in Kazakhstan.

Shuvalov said Beijing wanted the EEU to cut customs duties on Chinese goods or even remove them completely, but no decision has been taken within the bloc on whether to do so.

"We will work on this matter in order to ensure the balance of mutual interests," he said, adding that negotiators would first focus on non-tariff barriers.

Russia and Kazakhstan, the two biggest economies in the EEU, mostly supply commodities such as oil and metals to China and import goods ranging from textiles to cars and electronics. Another major oil exporter, Iran, "could potentially become a member of such a partnership", Shuvalov said.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said at the meeting the EEU, which has already signed a free trade deal with Vietnam, was also interested in cooperation with India, Israel, Egypt and Cambodia.

"Free movement of goods and services within the union is in line with the Silk Road Economic Belt initiative put forward by the Chinese leadership," he said.

But Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko urged his partners to resolve the internal issues of the bloc set up two years ago such as numerous - about 600 - exclusions to its free trade rules.

"Equal conditions for EEU members and an environment free of barriers have still not been created," he said. "Moreover, since the agreement has been signed, our internal trade turnover has only been declining."

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Trade turnover within the bloc fell to $45 billion in 2015 from $65 billion a year in 2012-13, Lukashenko said.

Trade between Russia and China was worth about $64 billion last year, compared with China's total foreign trade of about $3.8 trillion.

(Reporting by Denis Dyomkin and Raushan Nurshayeva; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
MOSCOW, May 31 (Reuters) - Russia's state competition watchdog has again postponed a decision on a possible fine on Alphabet Inc's Google, the agency said on Tuesday.

The watchdog, FAS, had been expected to discuss the fine on Tuesday after postponing a decision in early May but again put off the decision following a request from the company, it said on its Twitter account.

A new date for the discussion will be set in the very near future, the FAS press service told Reuters.

The regulator ruled last September that Google had broken the law by requiring pre-installation of certain applications on mobile devices running on its Android operating system, following a complaint by Russia's Yandex.

(Reporting by Polina Devitt; editing by Adrian Croft)
If you own a Samsung Smart TV, then you should know youre in for a much more annoying experience in the near future, because the South Korean giant is reportedly making big changes to its on-TV advertising campaigns. According to a new report, the company is looking for new revenue streams to offset its slowing TV business.

MUST SEE: Game of Thrones is falling apart

According to The Wall Street Journal, former Google exec Lee Won-jin, who is currently Samsungs Executive Vice President, is leading the effort. Samsung added tile ads to the main menu bar of its premium TVs in the US last June, and its looking to expand its program to Europe in the coming months.

But that's not the worst news. According to the report, Samsung is planning to retroactively activate ads on old Smart TVs that might not already have them enabled.

Samsung sells an estimated 50 million TV sets a year, making up 20% of the global market. However, Samsung only enjoys a margin of between 3% to 5%, and the overall demand is dropping. In the first quarter of the year, Samsung shipped 48.3 million LCD TVs, a 20.9% quarterly decline, and a 6.3% year-over-year drop, according to market research firm TrendForce.

Were likely to see a host of new devices that allow users to consume video content in various ways, which leads to thinking that competition which has centered around picture quality, will change significantly, Kim Hyun-suk, the head of Samsungs TV business, said recently.

The company brought in $24.8 billion from TV sales in 2015. Comparatively, Samsung's TV advertising business is still in its infancy, having generated between $20 million and $30 million in sales for Samsung during the same period. The TV advertising business is yet to turn a profit, the Journal notes.

Samsung already takes a share of Netflixs revenue generated by streaming videos through Samsung's smart TVs, but its not clear how much money streaming companies generate for Samsung.

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Samsung will face some challenges in Europe as itll have to convince regulators and TV networks to accept its advertising program. Ultimately, for Samsungs advertising plans to really take off, the company will also have to give consumers reasons to agree to interact with these ads.

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This article was originally published on BGR.com
By Alex Lawler, Rania El Gamal and Reem Shamseddine

VIENNA (Reuters) - For OPEC watchers, every little detail matters.

When the oil producer group holds its half-yearly meetings, what time the ministers arrive in Vienna, how they speak and which hotel they stay in - anything will be analysed in an attempt to predict its policies.

So it was seen as a sign that new Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih takes OPEC seriously when he turned up in the Austrian capital on Monday, three days before the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries' upcoming discussions.

But Falih will have little opportunity to see fellow ministers ahead of Thursday's meeting. Many of them, including those from Iran and Venezuela, won't show up in Vienna until midday or even late on Wednesday.

For veteran OPEC watcher Gary Ross, founder of New York-based consultancy PIRA, that signals expectations should be low as far as OPEC policy is concerned.

"These guys are not exactly getting along these days," Ross said. "OPEC is becoming far less important. We are entering an era when market management will be non-existent".

One exception to the later arrivals was UAE Oil Minister Suhail bin Mohammed al-Mazroui, who told journalists in Vienna on Tuesday that he was happy with the oil market, suggesting OPEC should refrain from action at this week's meeting.

"We need to wait. The market will fix itself to a price that is fair to the consumers and the producers," Mazroui said.

"This year is a year of correction. The rules of the market, that is supply and demand, are working and I think that is the essence of this policy."

OPEC last decided to change output in December 2008, when it cut supply amid slowing demand due to a global financial crisis. By contrast, between 1998 and 2008, OPEC made 27 changes to output.

For decades, Saudi Arabia, Vienna-based OPEC's largest producer and de facto leader, had a preferred range for oil prices and, if unhappy, would try to orchestrate a group-wide production cut or increase.

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But a technology-driven spike in non-OPEC output such as that of U.S. shale and growing fuel efficiency led Riyadh to conclude that the era of fast oil growth might be ending.

In the past two years, Riyadh has stuck to a strategy of fighting for market share, thinking that pumping more oil now at low prices is better than producing less in the future.

"We think continuity will carry the day at the June OPEC meeting in Vienna. The only real uncertainty is how divisive the meeting will be and how much discord will be put on public display," said Helima Croft, head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets.

FIGHT FOR SHARE

Unlike his predecessor, Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi, Falih has a much larger portfolio overseeing energy, industry, mining, atomic power and renewables.

On Tuesday, Falih visited OPEC headquarters to meet Secretary-General Abdullah al-Badri, staying for 90 minutes in a clear display that despite being a busy man, he has time for the producer group.

"There are times when you need OPEC and when you don't. You only need OPEC when you have major oversupply and OPEC doesn't want prices to crash any further," Ross said.

Oil prices have recovered to around $50 (34.5) per barrel in recent weeks from their lowest in a decade of $27 per barrel in January - but are still far below the $115 seen in June 2014.

Prices crashed after Saudi Arabia increased production to an all-time high to fight for market share with higher-cost producers, including U.S. shale firms.

The drop in prices also badly hurt fellow OPEC members, with production declining from Nigeria to Venezuela.

Iraq and Iran, however, kept pushing production higher as Baghdad sees recent investments by oil majors pay off and Tehran regains market share after the lifting of some Western sanctions in January.

Falih's ultimate boss, Saudi Deputy Crown Price Mohammad bin Salman, has said Saudi Arabia may raise production further if other members don't restrain their output increases.

"As long as Mohammed bin Salman is in charge, I don't think anything reasonable (OPEC action) can happen. This policy has hurt not only the exporting countries, but companies and the industry," a non-Gulf delegate said.

(Additional reporting and writing by Dmitry Zhdannikov; Editing by Dale Hudson)
Riyadh (AFP) - Saudi Arabia intercepted a ballistic missile fired from Yemen on Monday night, the military coalition supporting the Yemeni government against rebels said.

It was the second missile launch from Yemen since UN-brokered peace talks began in Kuwait on April 21 between the Huthi Shiite rebels and the government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.

"From time to time there are breaches of the ceasefire, but we have to focus on finding a political solution for the Yemeni crisis," Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said after a Gulf Cooperation Council summit in Riyadh on Tuesday.

"We must support a peaceful solution and we support the Kuwait talks."

Fighting has continued despite a ceasefire that paved the way for the talks in Kuwait. Analysts have said the Saudis appear to want a way out of the war.

The Saudi-led Arab coalition in March last year began air strikes and other military aid in support of Yemeni forces resisting the Huthis.

The rebels, who still hold the capital Sanaa, had seized much of the country and are backed by Saudi Arabia's regional rival Iran.

The Huthi rebels are allied with elite troops loyal to Yemen's former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The missile launches are designed to "sabotage efforts of the international community to make the peace negotiations a success", the Saudi-led coalition said in a statement.

Saudi Arabia has deployed Patriot missile batteries to counter tactical ballistic missiles which have been fired occasionally during the war.

The coalition warns that it could retaliate if such strikes continue.
DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has intercepted and destroyed a ballistic missile fired from Yemen and a Saudi-led military coalition said late on Monday it may be forced to reconsider a truce that has been place since April. Saudi state news agency SPA quoted the statement as saying that the missile, the second such strike this month, was destroyed in mid-air without causing any casualties. The air force also destroyed the platform from which the missile was fired, it said. Saudi Arabia, leading a coalition of Arab states, intervened in Yemen in March last year mainly with air strikes to try to restore President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Houthis, backed by forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, had advanced on Hadi's temporary headquarters in the southern city of Aden, forcing him to flee the country. The war has killed more than 6,200 people and displaced more than 2.5 million people. The Houthis describe their capture of the capital, Sanaa, in 2014 and their advance on Aden as part of a revolution against corruption and to end attacks by al Qaeda. They have accused the Saudi-led coalition of violating the truce with air strikes. The Houthis and Yemen's Saudi-backed exiled government are currently engaged in peace talks in Kuwait aimed at ending the 14-month-old war and easing a humanitarian crisis in the Arabian Peninsula's poorest country. The U.N.-sponsored talks have so far yielded few results. Saudi Foreign Minister, Adel al-Jubeir, played down the prospects of a breakdown of the truce and said the kingdom hopes the talks would advance and produce a peace agreement. "The kingdom had reached an understanding to calm the situation on the border ... From time to time, violations of the truce or the period of calm happen but we must look forward and focus on achieving a political settlement," he told a news conference at the end of a Gulf Cooperation Council summit in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday. SPA gave no details on the target or the type of missile used. However, the agency said the Saudi-led coalition warned it would not sit idle against any further violations of the truce, which began on April 10. "The coalition command, through this statement, assert that violating the truce by the Houthi militia and its supporters and the targeting of the kingdom's lands ... would force the coalition to reconsider the feasibility of this policy (of self restraint)," SPA said. Saudi Arabia said on May 9 it had also intercepted and destroyed a ballistic missile fired from Yemen before it reached its target. (Reporting by Ahmed Tolba and Omar Fahmy in Cairo,; Writing by Sami Aboudi; Editing by Paul Tait and Richard Balmforth)
By Pavel Polityuk KIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian servicewoman Nadiya Savchenko, whose resistance to her imprisonment in Russia has made her a national hero and a potentially disruptive force in Ukrainian politics, received a standing ovation in her first address to parliament on Tuesday. A helicopter navigator captured while fighting pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass region, Savchenko's bold defiance at Russian authority during her two-year captivity restored Ukraine's national pride bruised by the conflict with Russia. Her popularity became such that Savchenko, 35, was made a lawmaker by opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, and upon her release last week, she announced she was willing to run for president, making her a possible thorn in the side of a weakened President Petro Poroshenko. "I'm back and will not let you forget - you who sit in these seats in parliament - about all those guys, who laid down their lives for the country," Savchenko said. "I tell you that nobody is forgotten, nothing is forgotten. Nothing is forgiven. And the Ukrainian people will not let us sit in these seats if we betray them," she said. Ukrainians are disappointed in the pro-Western leadership that came to power after street protests ousted a Kremlin-backed president in 2014. "One gets the impression that lawmakers are like lazy schoolchildren who shirk their work," Savchenko told reporters after her speech. A ceasefire brokered between Ukraine and Russia in the east regions is fraying, and the conflict has claimed more than 9,000 lives so far. After Savchenko's speech, some lawmakers played down how much influence she could have in the long run. "Savchenko's speech scared some people, but far from everyone," Leonid Kozachenko, a lawmaker in Poroshenko's faction, told Reuters. Vadim Rabinovich, an opposition lawmaker, said Savchenko had both positive and negative aspects to her, and that much depended on her relations with Tymoshenko. "She brings an air of war with her, this is bad. On the other hand, she brings a certain openness, which is good. Let's wait and see," he said. "She and Tymoshenko will have to sort things out first of all. Two lionesses in one cage." Savchenko, who had been accused of murdering two Russian journalists, arrived home to scenes of jubilation on Wednesday after her release by Russia in a prisoner swap. Her handover had been demanded by the West and was cast as a humanitarian gesture by Russian President Vladimir Putin. It came weeks before the European Union decides whether to extend sanctions against Russia imposed over its support of the rebels. (Additional reporting by Alexei Kalmykov and Alessandra Prentice; Writing by Matthias Williams; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
Big brains are racing to save our power-hungry planet. While solar, gas and wind are increasingly playing a role, many say theres no escaping the need for nuclear power to maintain our tech-heavy worlds. Lucky for us, scientists believe theyve found a way to eliminate smog-inducing coal production and reduce the risks and costs of nuclear power.

The answer? A renaissance fueled by molten salt reactor (MSR) technology, a way of dissolving uranium pellets in molten salt and transforming them into a liquid that can be safely kept in reactors for decades. So far, Beijing has proven the biggest gambler  investing a whopping $350 million  but researchers and firms in the U.S., Canada and Europe are also running full speed ahead, and global deployment of full-scale test reactors is expected before 2030. Experts reckon this revolutionary system could be cheaper to use than coal, and, because the liquid can be drained into tanks and quickly cooled in emergencies, MSR holds the promise of a future free of Chernobyl-style meltdowns.

When we produce power cheaper than coal-fired plants, demand will be huge. Moltex lead engineer Rory OSullivan

Nuclear power currently provides 11 percent of the worlds energy. But that number needs to grow to 17 percent to hit the globes targeted carbon dioxide emission reduction levels by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency. And the robust and reliable nature of CO2-free nuclear power complements the expansion of more intermittent renewable energy, lowering demand for fossil-fuel generation. But to safely deliver, nuclear plants cant carry the costs, safety or political baggage of existing sites. There are six leading technologies among the so-called fourth generation of nuclear power plants  all of them offer improvements, but MSR promises the best economy, some experts say. [MSR has] a reasonable chance of being the winner in the race, says Stephen Tindale, director of the U.K.-based Alvin Weinberg Foundation, a nonprofit organization advocating the use of advanced nuclear technology.

The process operates at temperatures in excess of 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit and at low pressure, which means it can produce more heat and extract more power from the fuels without the risks of todays high-pressure systems. Also, radioactive gases dont exist with MSR, which means that any nuclear fallout is contained within the plant and doesnt hurt the surrounding area. Reactors can also be designed to burn plutonium or thorium, the latter being a scalable material well suited for energy-intensive industries such as cement and desalination.

Born in the 1950s at Tennessees Oak Ridge National Laboratory, MSR was initially floated as a way to power long-range bombers and deliver nuclear weapons. Led by Weinberg, Oak Ridges test reactors in the 1960s resulted in power plant deployment proposals in the 1970s. Critically though, MSR doesnt easily produce weapons-grade material, and the U.S. favored building the power reactors we have today to secure a constant supply of such material during the Cold War. Research continued in the U.S., Russia, Japan and the U.K., but building plans were all but abandoned as the industry was struck by soul-searching disasters such as Three Mile Island in 1979, Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011.

Msre diagram

MSRE diagram

Source: Public Domain

But the prospects of climate change and the need to find a clean, cheap and abundant power source is now breathing new life into nuclear energy, especially for high-demand growth markets like China. This has led to burgeoning hope in MSRs potential, culminating in a string of deals and research efforts worldwide that has vastly shortened its development period by at least a decade. When we produce power cheaper than coal-fired plants, demand will be huge, says Rory OSullivan, lead engineer at Moltex, a British company thats proposing a simpler version of MSR.

The technology still needs to be proven, of course, but multilateral collaboration is taking off. Oak Ridge, part of the U.S. Department of Energy, is still at the heart of research efforts and is helping China, which has 700 nuclear experts working full time at the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics on the targeted delivery of a functioning MSR pilot plant by 2020. This will be followed with a demonstration plant by 2025, and a commercial one five years later. But there are also two other proposed designs Oak Ridge is helping get off the ground  one from Canadian startup Terrestrial Energy and another from Alabama-based Southern Energy in partnership with the Bill Gatesbacked nuclear developer TerraPower, based in Washington state.



MSRs will be up and running by 2030, OSullivan says. And while Tindale agrees theyre coming soon and will be cheaper than conventional reactors, he warns that its still unclear when MSR will be less costly than coal. Much of the uncertainty about MSR can be blamed on regulatory holdups. Getting any nuclear effort off the ground requires government support and guaranteed long-term returns for private investment.

So who will cross the finish line first? There is no technical reason that front-runner China would take more time, says David Eugene Holcomb, a nuclear researcher at Oak Ridge. The problem is simply that China hasnt decided yet whether to double down on its investment in MSR and likely wont until results are in from the early efforts currently underway, he says.

Tindale says the U.K. is also struggling under regulatory red tape. If we can remove the bottlenecks, we could have a demonstration plant by the mid-2020s and commercialization by 2030, he says. But Tindale and his colleagues have an ace up their sleeve: Britain has 140 tons of plutonium  the worlds biggest stockpile  that it may be eager to convert into energy via MSR. Thats why Im confident it will get off the ground, Tindale adds.

Related Articles
A 7-year-old boy has been reported missing for two days after his parents left him near the mountain range of Nanae-cho, Hokkaido in northern Japan on Saturday, according to the Hokkaido Prefectural Police.



Over 150 members of the local police and fire departments, along with rescue teams, have been searching for Yamato Tanooka after his parents left him in the mountain range "as punishment," CNN reports.



The location where the young boy was abandoned is home to wild bears.



Authorities received an emergency call from his parents at around 6 p.m. Saturday. At first, police were told that the boy had gone missing during a day trip to the area with his parents and sister to collect wild vegetables.







However, his parents later reportedly admitted they had left their son alone in the mountains to punish him for throwing stones at passing cars and people while on their way home.



"I was not able to ask for [a search] with a reason of punishment," the father told TV Asahi. "I thought it might be taken as a domestic violence."



The parents also reportedly confessed they had initially stalled in reporting their son missing due to the reasons behind his disappearance.



According to the police, the parents quickly drove back to where they had left the child, but he was no longer there.
Its prom night. Youve got the perfect dress, the perfect date, and the perfect hashtag to accompany your Instagrams (#Prom2k16!!!). What could possibly go wrong?

Lots, as teen Kathleen Garvey recently discovered. Garvey, a senior at Wellesley High School in Massachusetts, was headed to prom with her boyfriend, Colin Emerson, who kept fiddling with his boutonniere. She tried to adjust it, presumably by holding the floral pieces pin between her lips, as people often do. But at the same moment, Emerson cracked a joke  causing Garvey to laugh, and  GULP!  swallow the pin.

Since she experienced no acute pain and only a slight cough, Garvey went on to enjoy her prom without incident. But the following day, she went to the hospital to get an x-ray just in case.

And thats when they saw it: The pin from Emersons white rose boutonniere, lodged in Garveys bronchial tube. Thankfully, doctors were able to retrieve the nearly inch-and-a-half-long pin quickly with a relatively simple surgery.

As Garvey told CBS 4 Boston: It went down my throat and down my trachea, and then theres two bronchial tubes right before your lungs. So I knew exactly where it was and exactly how bad it couldve been  I was freaking out, and I was so blessed to realize that it hadnt hit my lung and it hadnt punctured anything; it was just sort of sitting there.



Her boyfriend was more succinct. I just hope we all learn not to put sharp things in our mouths after this, he said. One more lesson we hope Emerson has learned? Next time, maybe go with a pocket square.



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NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / June 16, 2016 / Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC, notifies investors of class action against TransEntrix, Inc. ("TransEntrix" or "the Company") (NYSE MKT: TRXC). The class action has been filed in the United States District Court, Eastern District of North Carolina, on behalf of a class consisting of all persons or entities who purchased TransEntrix securities during the period between February 10, 2016 and May 10, 2016 inclusive (the "Class Period").

This class action seeks to recover damages against Defendants for alleged violations of the federal securities laws under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the "Exchange Act").

The Complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, defendants made materially false and misleading statements or failed to disclose adverse information regarding key aspects of the Company's business. Specifically, the complaint alleges defendants failed to disclose deficiencies within the Company's 510(k) submission regarding the SurgiBot that undermined the likelihood that the SurgiBot would receive FDA clearance, which would leave the Company unable to commercialize the SurgiBot in 2016 and would impair the Company's ability to obtain approval for and commercialize its other robotic surgery platform in the United States. As a result of these false statements and/or omissions, TransEnterix common stock traded at artificially inflated prices during the Class Period.

On April 20, 2016 post-market, TransEnterix announced that the Food and Drug Administration ("FDA") informed the Company on the previous day, April 19, 2016, that it has determined that "SurgiBot System does not meet the criteria for substantial equivalence based upon the data and information submitted by TransEnterix in its 510(k) submission." Following this news, TransEnterix's stock dropped as much as $2.99, or 63.08%, to just $1.75 in after-hours trading on April 20, 2016.

Then on May 20, 2016, the Company issued a press release stating that it "expect[ed] to have further discussion with the FDA, but currently believes that a new 510(k) submission would be required to obtain clearance," that it was reprioritizing its near-term regulatory efforts to focus on another submission, and that, as a result, it "ha[d] taken actions to reduce headcount and investment related to the SurgiBot."

Story continues

Following this news, the price of TransEnterix fell 10% to close at $1.84 per share on May 11, 2016.

A class action lawsuit has already been filed. If you wish to review a copy of the Complaint and join the action please contact Peretz Bronstein, Esq. or his Investor Relations Coordinator, Eitan Kimelman of Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC at 212-697-6484 or via email info@bgandg.com. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address and telephone number. If you suffered a loss in TransEntrix you have until August 1, 2016 to request that the Court appoint you as lead plaintiff. Your ability to share in any recovery doesn't require that you serve as a lead plaintiff.

Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC is a corporate litigation boutique. Our primary expertise is the aggressive pursuit of litigation claims on behalf of our clients. In addition to representing institutions and other investor plaintiffs in class action security litigation, the firm's expertise includes general corporate and commercial litigation, as well as securities arbitration. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.

Contact:

Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC

Peretz Bronstein or Eitan Kimelman

212-697-6484 | info@bgandg.com

SOURCE: Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / May 31, 2016 / The following statement is being issued by Levi & Korsinsky, LLP:

To: All Persons or Entities who purchased Westar Energy, Inc. (WR) stock prior to May 31, 2016 .

You are hereby notified that Levi & Korsinsky, LLP has commenced an investigation into the fairness of the sale of Westar Energy, Inc. to Great Plains Energy Incorporated (GXP) for $51.00 in cash and $9 in Great Plains stock for each Westar Energy share. To learn more about the action and your rights, go to: http://zlk.9nl.com/westar-energy-wr 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. There is no cost or obligation to you.

Levi & Korsinsky is a national firm with offices in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, California, 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 lawsuits and have recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for aggrieved shareholders. For more information, please feel free to contact any of the attorneys listed below. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.

Levi & Korsinsky, LLP

Joseph Levi, Esq.

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 / May 31, 2016 / The following statement is being issued by Levi & Korsinsky, LLP:

To: All Persons or Entities who purchased SciQuest, Inc. (SQI) stock prior to May 31, 2016 .

You are hereby notified that Levi & Korsinsky, LLP has commenced an investigation into the fairness of the sale of SciQuest, Inc. to affiliates of Accel-KKR for $17.75 per share. Accel-KKR currently owns 4.9% of SciQuest's outstanding shares. To learn more about the action and your rights, go to: http://zlk.9nl.com/sciquest-sqi 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. There is no cost or obligation to you.

Levi & Korsinsky is a national firm with offices in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, California, 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 lawsuits and have recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for aggrieved shareholders. For more information, please feel free to contact any of the attorneys listed below. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.

Levi & Korsinsky, LLP

Joseph Levi, Esq.

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 / May 31, 2016 / The following statement is being issued by Levi & Korsinsky, LLP:

To: All Persons or Entities who purchased Rose Rock Midstream, L.P. (RRMS) stock prior to May 31, 2016 .

You are hereby notified that Levi & Korsinsky, LLP has commenced an investigation into the fairness of the sale of Rose Rock Midstream, L.P. to SemGroup Corporation (SEMG) for 0.8136 SemGroup common shares for each Rose Rock share. SemGroup currently owns 56% of Rose Rock's common units. To learn more about the action and your rights, go to:

http://zlk.9nl.com/rose-rock-midstream-rrms

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. There is no cost or obligation to you.

Levi & Korsinsky is a national firm with offices in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, California, 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 lawsuits and have recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for aggrieved shareholders. For more information, please feel free to contact any of the attorneys listed below. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.

Levi & Korsinsky, LLP

Joseph Levi, Esq.

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
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Shari Redstone, vice chair of Viacom Inc (VIAB.O) and the daughter of controlling shareholder Sumner Redstone, said on Tuesday she has no desire to manage the media conglomerate or to chair its board.

The statement from Shari Redstone was a response to a letter on Monday in which Viacom's six independent directors vowed to fight any attempt to oust them from the board.

In a statement from her spokeswoman, Shari Redstone said she wants "strong, independent directors" for Viacom, the owner of MTV, Comedy Central and Paramount Pictures.

"Shari has made it abundantly clear that she has no desire to manage Viacom nor chair its board," the statement said.

Last week, a statement issued by a spokesman for Sumner Redstone said the 93-year-old media mogul was considering ousting Viacom Chief Executive Philippe Dauman and the board of directors. Redstone has controlling stakes in both Viacom and CBS Corp (CBS.N).

(Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Chris Reese and David Gregorio)
Viacom Vice Chair Shari Redstone just returned fire following Lead Independent Director Fredric Salernos public letter yesterday saying that her father, controlling shareholder Sumner Redstone, long believed she should not control Viacom or his other companies.

Salerno must have missed the widely reported fact that Sumner named Shari the non-executive Chair of both companies in the irrevocable Sumner M. Redstone National Amusements Trust in 2002, says a statement released on Shari Redstones behalf. He must have also missed the portion of the February Viacom Board meeting where Shari was offered the Chair position and turned it down.

Saying she doesnt want to run Viacom or CBS, she strongly hinted that her father plans to clean house at the Viacom board  following his move to dump CEO Philippe Dauman and director George Abrams from his family trust and the board of National Amusements.

The shareholders who Salerno and other independent directors purport to representwant new management at the top and strong Directors with independent oversight on the Board.

She adds that the group should spend less time worrying about her, and more on a long term strategy to increase the value for shareholders and to develop a specific long-term plan to turn around the current state of Viacom.

Salerno said yesterday that independent directors would ask a court in Delaware, where Viacom is incorporated, to block a move by Redstone to oust them. They dont believe that hes acting of his own free will and with the mental competency to do so.

The Viacom director added that he and his colleagues see that as our responsibility to the non-control shareholders of Viacom who own 90% of the equity of the company as well as to Redstones legacy, to make sure that their interests are impartially decided by the courts.

Story continues

Viacom says that Mr. Salernos letter is clear and speaks for itself.

Heres Shari Redstones response:

In his letter yesterday, Fred Salerno said that Sumner Redstone had made the .judgment for many years that his daughter, Shari, should not control Viacom or his other companies. Today it was reported that Salernos letter said Redstone has always made it known that he did not want his daughter in control of the company. Salerno must have missed the widely reported fact that Sumner named Shari the non-executive Chair of both companies in the irrevocable Sumner M. Redstone National Amusements Trust in 2002. He must have also missed the portion of the February Viacom Board meeting where Shari was offered the Chair position and turned it down. Shari has made it abundantly clear that she has no desire to manage Viacom nor Chair its Board and is fully engaged in running and growing her firm, Advancit Capital. What she has also made clear is that what she wants for Viacom is the best management in place, and strong, independent Directors who will properly oversee that management. The shareholders whom Salerno and the other independent directors purport to represent have already spoken  they want new management at the top and strong Directors with independent oversight on the Board. The Board should spend less time focusing on 1) Shari and 2) how to maintain their own directorships, and more time on a long term strategy to increase the value for shareholders and to develop a specific long-term plan to turn around the current state of Viacom.

Related stories

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Viacom Watchers Wonder: Who'd Step In If Sumner Redstone Cleans House?

Viacom Directors Vow To Fight Ouster Effort And Sell Paramount Stake
A Los Angeles jury convicted Michael Jace of second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of his wife, April Jace, in May 2014, the Associated Press reported on Tuesday, May 31.



Jace, 53, who is best known for playing policeman Julien Lowe on the 2002-2008 crime series The Shield, told detectives that he did not mean to kill his wife. Subsequently, it was revealed on May 26 that the fallen star claimed he only meant to wound April, not murder her.



PHOTOS: Stars at Court

However, evidence showed that her shot his wife three times, and a panel of six men and six women deemed his attack a second-degree murder. The verdict was decided on Tuesday, May 31, two years after the incident.



Jaces lawyers insisted that their client shot April in the heat of passion. I was just angry. All I intended to do was shoot her in the leg. And then I shot her in the leg and that was it," Jace told detectives in 2014, via CBS. "I just ruined lives. Four lives. I mean, you could put the needle in my arm right now and be done. I'm fine with that."

As previously reported, Jace called 911 after shooting his wife at their L.A. residence. Their two sons, then 5 and 8, were at home at the time. At a court hearing on May 26, their now-10-year-old son stated that his father told April, "If you like running, then run to heaven," before shooting her.

PHOTOS: Cheating Scandals of the Year!

According to a transcript from the call, Jace alleged that April lunged at him before he shot at her. His attorney, Jamon Hicks, claimed that the actor believed that his wife was having an affair.



PHOTOS: Hollywood's Ugliest Divorces

While his sentence hasnt yet been determined, Jace could face 50 years to life in prison. According to the AP, his ex-wife, Jennifer Bitterman, claimed in past court documents that he once physically abused her by pushing her head into a wall. In addition, the embattled New Jersey native filed for bankruptcy protection in March 2011.






Michael Jace, who starred as a cop in FX crime drama The Shield, has been found guilty of murdering his wife.

A jury found Jace, 53, guilty of second-degree murder on Tuesday in the May 2014 slaying.

Jace's shot his wife April three times in their Los Angeles home.

Read: Wife Wearing 'Stop Domestic Violence' Shirt Arrested... for Domestic Violence

The verdict came after a week-long trial in which Jace's attorneys argued their client had told detectives he'd merely wanted to inflict pain on his wife, not kill her.

Jace's camp was pushing for a manslaughter charge.

However, prosecutors argued Jace was upset because his wife wanted a divorce. They said he shot her in the back before taunting her and then shooting her in the legs, the AP reports.

The actor's 10-year-old son testified he heard his father tell his wife: "'If you like running, then run to heaven.'"

Read: Man Accused of Killing Girlfriend, Posting Photo of Body to Her Facebook Page: 'Please Pray For Us'

Deputy District Attorney Tannaz Mokayef said Jace also believed his wife was having an affair.

Mokayef said the potential sentence would be 40 years to life in prison.

Jace did not testify in his own defense.

The Shield ran on FX for seven seasons from 2002 to 2008. Jace also appeared in the films Planet of the Apes, Boogie Nights and Forrest Gump.

Watch: How This Woman Escaped From Serial Killer Ted Bundy Over 40 Years Ago

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By Alex Dobuzinskis LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actor Michael Jace, best known for his role as a policeman on the TV drama "The Shield," was convicted by a jury on Tuesday of second-degree murder for fatally shooting his wife in 2014 in front of the couple's two children at their Los Angeles home. Jace, 53, faces a sentence of 40 years to life in prison when he is sentenced on June 10. The actor was upset that his wife, April Jace, wanted a divorce when he shot her once in the back and twice more in the legs on May 19, 2014, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office said in a statement. He then called authorities and reported that he had shot his wife, prosecutors said. The couple's sons, ages 8 and 5 at the time, watched the killing in the family's South Los Angeles home, prosecutors said. She was 40 years old when she was slain. Prosecutors had asked jurors to find Jace guilty of first-degree murder, which involves premeditation, Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office spokesman Greg Risling said. But the jury in Los Angeles Superior Court instead found Jace guilty of second-degree murder, an intentional killing that was not premeditated. Jace's attorneys acknowledged in court that he shot his wife. "Our entire goal was to show this was not a case of premeditation, and we achieved that goal," Jace's attorney, Jamon Hicks, said in an email. "This was a very smart and intelligent jury who deliberated and considered the evidence. They were not just moved by emotion but by the evidence." The jury of six women and six men began deliberations late on Friday and resumed on Tuesday morning, spending two hours considering the case before reaching the verdict, prosecutors said. The jury found Jace used a handgun in the crime, a special circumstance that increases his minimum prison time by 25 years beyond the minimum term for second-degree murder, Risling said. Jace is best known for portraying police officer Julien Lowe, a religious Christian conflicted about his homosexuality, on the FX cable drama "The Shield" that ran from 2002 to 2008. Aside from "The Shield," Jace had small parts in the films "Forrest Gump," "Boogie Nights" and "Planet of the Apes" as well as various supporting roles on television in the past two decades. He filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection in 2011. (Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Will Dunham)
Attention Danish royals: Unless you're in direct line to the throne, you're about to be less rich.



Through a spokesperson, the royal family stated on Monday that they accepted that no one except direct heirs should be eligible for government financial support.



"It's not expected, and it never has been, that anyone of his generation other than Prince Christian should receive payment," palace communications director Lene Balleby told DR News.



Prince Christian is the 10-year-old second-in-line to the nation's throne (after his father, Crown Prince Frederik).







And while it seems that the state is happy to pay his way once he's old enough to undertake royal duties, future funding for Prince Christianas three younger siblings  and the four children of the crown prince's younger brother Prince Joachim  appears less certain.



"Simple mathematics dictate that there needs to be some sort of limit. Otherwise within a few generations there will be several hundred princes and princesses who need an annual salary," Jan E. Jorgensen, a spokesman for Denmark's ruling party Venstre, told the Danish daily newspaper Politiken.



"Anyone can see that that wonat fly," he said.



Currently the government pays an annual subsidy of more than 100 million kroner ($15 million) to support Queen Margrethe, her two sons, their wives, an ex-wife and a total of eight grandchildren.



From 1849 to 1995 only heirs to the throne (and their spouses and widows) received financial support from the state. But those rules were changed two decades ago when Prince Joachim married (his now ex-wife) Alexandra to include allowances for his family too.



Next year's looming 18th birthday of Prince Nicolai, Prince Joachimas eldest son, marks the moment at which he would qualify for apanage, or a government allowance, and has triggered a debate over Royal finances that may foreshadow bigger changes ahead.



 Want to keep up with the latest royals coverage? Click here to subscribe to the Royals Newsletter.



Lars Hovbakke Sorensen, a historian at University College SjAlland, said a rethink of the stateas financial support of the royal family is overdue  particularly when Queen Margrethe is the only royal with any actual obligations or duties.



"The others need to define their missions. Until they do, you canat really be sure of what you're getting for the money," Sorensen told the Danish news agency Ritzau.



The Danish royal family expert acknowledged it was unusual for the royals to enter any political debate, even if it was about their own finances.





Where Might Prince William and Princess Kate Send Prince George to School?





"It was quite smart of the Royal House to come out and say this now," he said, after opinion polls suggested a large majority of the public believed only Prince Christian should receive funding.



Danes are also solidly against the idea of continuing to give Joachimas ex-wife Countess Alexandra the 2.3 million kroner ($345,000) she receuves annually from the state, despite not having been an official member of the royal family since 2005, according to polls.



Acknowledging the changing landscape, Denmark's R=royal palace has just launched new social media pages on both Facebook and Instagram.



Both show heir apparent Crown Prince Frederik photographing his mother Queen Margrethe, reminiscing, as she walks around Amalienborg Palace, the family's Copenhagen home.
Have operators been complacent?

Taiwanese rail operators used to travel to Singapore to learn about the city's efficient rail lines. Now, it's the other way around: Singaporean rail engineers have been told by the Ministry of Transport (MOT) to emulate their Taiwanese peers, who boast one of the most efficient urban rail systems in the world.

Speaking at the Second Joint Forum on Infrastructure Maintenance, transport minister Khaw Boon Wan noted that Singapore is studying the Taipei Metro (TRTC) closely. TRTC clocked in 800,000 MKBFwhich refers to the mean distance in train-km between delays exceeding 5 minutesin 2015, compared to just 130,000 MKBF for Singapore.

Khaw said that TRTC's excellence stems from a strong focus on organisational structure, engineering excellence and passion of staff.

TRTC is about 10 years younger than our North-South Line. In fact, the senior staff at TRTC told our study team that they came to study our MRT in their initial years. Some of them could still remember their tour of our Bishan Depot. We were then an exemplary MRT player and a subject of study. Unfortunately, perhaps due to complacency or certainly distracted management attention, we lost our earlier standing, he said.

Looking at the TRTC transformation journey and their achievements, I challenge SMRT and SBST to set stretched audacious targets, and work our guts out to attain them. TRTC's MKBF is now 800,000 train-km for delays exceeding 5 minutes. As I said, we were 130 odd thousand when I last spoke. Our preliminary figures for the 1st Quarter of 2016 show that we are now at about 160,000 train-km. But it's still a big gap, he said.

Khaw challenged operators to aim for 400,000 MKBF by 2018, from 160,000 in Q1 2016.

This is a very high target, seemingly impossible, looking from where we are today. But looking from where we came from, and what others have already achieved, I say: why not? Let's go for it, he said.





More From Singapore Business Review


The city-state topped 124 other cities in the ranking.

Going full speed towards its Smart City initiative, Singapore has been ranked as the top city for online presence in the A.T. Kearney Global Cities Index 2016.

According to a press release by A.T. Kearney, the city-state topped the information exchange criteria of the survey, including metrics for access to information via the internet and other media sources.

It was also included in the Global Elite category, ranking second in the Asia-Pacific after Tokyo. It also beat out Sydney and Melbourne in the region.

Globally, Singapore ranked eighth, maintaining its 2015 positioning, and 17th under the Global Cities outlook.

According to Soon Ghee Chua, partner and head of Southeast Asia at A.T. Kearney, Singapore is on its way to becoming a dynamic global infocomm hub by effectively leveraging technology for economic and social development.

Just this week, the government called for a projected S$2.82 billion of ICT tenders for 2016 that are aimed at enhancing the quality of citizens' lives and easing business transactions with the government, he said.







More From Singapore Business Review


Under Pressure. Tension between Washington and Beijing continues to build in the South China Sea, with officials in Beijing saying Tuesday theyll increase pressure on the United States to curb its militarization of the critical waterway.

When the two sides sit down next week for the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, Beijing will pressure Washington over maritime issuesas the United States increasing military presence in the South China Sea is among Chinas major concerns, a Chinese official told the official China Daily. China has long claimed most of the South China Sea as its own, and embarked on an ambitious island-building program on a series of reefs also claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei.

Rhetoric, and action. May was a busy month in the increasingly tense standoff between Washington and Beijing. Earlier this month, Chinese fighter planes buzzed an American surveillance plane in the South China Sea in what the Pentagon said was an unsafe intercept. Prior to that incident, the U.S. Navys USS William P. Lawrence passed near Fiery Cross Reef, angering Beijing. Chinas Defense Ministry responded by saying it was deploying more military hardware to the disputed islands in the waterway. In a statement, the ministry said, the provocative actions by American military ships and planes lay bare the U.S. designs to seek gain by creating chaos in the region and again testify to the total correctness and utter necessity of Chinas construction of defensive facilities on relevant islands.

Fat Leonard. The U.S. Navys 7th Fleet is at the tip of the spear when it comes to safeguarding American interests in the Pacific. But the fleets leadership has also been roiled by a years-long investigation into a bribery and corruption scandal the likes of which the U.S. military has never seen. The issue revolves around tens of millions of dollars in Navy sustainment contracts shoveled to Singapore-based businessman Leonard Glenn Francis, (Fat Leonard) in return for lavish dinners, expensive gifts, prostitutes, travel, and other bribes to U.S. Navy officers and civilian staffers.

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As many as 200 people remain under investigation, and 13 have already been charged, including three announced on Friday: (ret.) Capt. Michael Brooks, Cmdr. Bobby Pitts, and Lt. Cmdr. Gentry Debord.

The scope of the scandal is staggering. In the Washington Post, Craig Whitlock delivers the latest update on the saga, reporting that in December, Adm. John Richardson, chief of naval operations, told a meeting of about 200 of his admirals that 30 of them were under criminal investigation by the Justice Department or ethical scrutiny by the Navy for their connections to Francis, according to two senior Navy officials with direct knowledge of the meeting. Buckle up.

Incoming. Defense Secretary Ash Carter leaves for Asia Tuesday, where hell lead the U.S. delegation to the Shangri-La Dialogue, the annual strategy meeting in Singapore. Warming up for the trip, Carter told U.S. Naval Academy graduates on Friday that China is building a Great Wall of self-isolation in the South China Sea.

Thanks for clicking on through as we kick off the summer 2016 edition of SitRep. As always, if you have any thoughts, announcements, tips, or national security-related events to share, please pass them along to SitRep HQ. Best way is to send them to: paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or on Twitter: @paulmcleary or @arawnsley

North Korea

North Korea carried out a test of its Musudan road-mobile intermediate range ballistic missile late Monday. The test was was a failure, according to South Koreas Joint Chiefs of Staff, and may have exploded immediately on launch. That would make this the fourth consecutive failed test for the Musudan. Pyongyang most recently attempted two Musudan launches in late April ahead of the Korean Workers Party Congress.

Russia

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin says his country will spend $25 billion on its defense industry over the next four years, focused primarily on personnel, scientific research, and substituting NATO gear currently off-limits due to sanctions against Russia. Rogozin made the remarks at a meeting alongside Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who said modernization of Russias defense industry is crucial for maintaining the countrys arms export competitiveness.

Starting next year, Russias one and only aircraft carrier will head to port to undergo a major modernization effort that will take the ship offline for months, according to the TASS news agency. The ship is currently training with elements of a new air wing that will ditch the Su-25, but include the Sukhoi Su-33 and MiG-29K fighters, along with Kamov Ka-27, Ka-31 and Ka-52K helicopters. Russian officials expect the carrier to head to the eastern Mediterranean this fall.

Syria

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are pushing farther into Raqqa province towards the town of Tabqa, which the Islamic State took in 2014, according to Reuters. The town is just 40 miles from the jihadist groups capital in the city of Raqqa. The capture of Tabqa would cut off the Islamic State capitals links with Aleppo

The Nusra Front, al-Qaedas Syrian affiliate, has grown stronger since the cessation of hostilities between the Assad regime and a coalition of rebel groups was signed. The agreement excluded the Nusra Front, allowing Syrian, Russian, and Iranian attacks against it to continue, but the group has since expanded its territory and recruited at least 3,000 new fighters, according to the AP. The group, however, is currently split between two factions  one which wants to proclaim an Islamic caliphate along the lines of the Islamic State and another which wants to disassociate itself from al-Qaeda and devote its efforts exclusively to toppling the Assad regime.

Israel

Israel has a new defense minister, but hes not very popular among the Israeli militarys top officers, according to the Wall Street Journal. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed Avigdor Lieberman, a hardline conservative, after the resignation of the former defense minister, Moshe Yaalon. Israeli generals are reportedly worried that Lieberman could provoke further tension with the Palestinians and undo some of their work in establishing a relative peace after a recent flareup of violence.

Afghanistan

The fighting season is underway in Afghanistan and the Taliban have carried out a series of attacks in Helmand province that killed at least 25 policemen, the New York Times reports. The attacks took place on police checkpoints in the province. Local officials say corruption is a big factor in the resumption of violence in Helmand, where a renewed focus by U.S. and Afghan security forces was thought to have calmed things. Taliban forces are reporting setting their sights on the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah.

Navy

U.S. Navy Petty Officer First Class Kristian Saucier has pleaded guilty to taking pictures of classified areas on board a nuclear submarine, the Hill reports. An investigation into the Navy officer began when his phone, containing pictures of the USS Alexandrias propulsion system and nuclear reactor, was found in the trash. The maximum penalty for the charges Saucier copped to include a 10-year prison sentence and a quarter million dollars in fines.

Photo Credit: VCG/VCG via Getty Images
Nicole Beharie took her last porch-seat swing as Sleepy Hollows Abbie Mills in April, and for the first time since then, co-star Tom Mison is publicly commenting on her exit from the Fox drama.

Abbie Mills represented more than just another character in the show, the actor told The Realistic Optimist during a roundtable conversation at London MCM Comic Con this weekend. It wasnt an easy decision for them to make. I know that. The writers, they like writing Abbie Mills. And I like acting with Nicole.

RELATEDSleepy Hollow Renewed for Season 4

Echoing what Fox CEO Dana Walden told reporters after the supernatural series season finale, Mison said Abbies death-by-Pandoras-Box was a decision that had to be made, and added, But I dont know the machinations of the politics behind it.

Mison also addressed the fan outcry, much of which centered on the perception that Abbie  a black female character  had been marginalized and disposed of in order to prop Ichabod, her white male counterpart.

RELATEDBeckett! Abbie! McDreamy! Jon! Liz! Has a Lead Characters Exit Ever Prompted You to Abandon a Show?

When you have a woman of color in the lead role, its not just a woman of color in the lead role. It immediately means so much more than that, across the whole of America, Mison said. Theres a woman of color in a position that not very long ago she wouldnt have been. It comes to symbolize so much more. So when something like this happens, when they kill off said character, of course its going to mean an awful lot more, consequently.

He added that he goes back to shooting in July, that hed cut his hair before the show was renewed (but wasnt sure whether that would mean a return to wearing Ichabods wig), and that he and Beharie still got along: My relationship with Nicole has not changed because of her death on the show.

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Scroll down to watch the full roundtable discussion with Mison.

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(Reuters) - Japanese telecommunications and internet firm Softbank Group Corp (9984.T) on Tuesday said it will sell at least $7.9 billion (5.4 billion) of shares in Chinese ecommerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (BABA.N) in order to raise funds to reduce its debt.

The transaction marks the first sale of Alibaba shares by its largest shareholder since Softbank first began investing in the company. Softbank's Alibaba stake will fall to about 28 percent of the Chinese firm from 32.2 percent in March.

Both companies said they would maintain a strategic partnership. Softbank Chairman and Chief Executive Masayoshi Son will remain a director at Alibaba, while Alibaba Executive Chairman Jack Ma will remain on the board of Softbank.

Shares of Alibaba fell 2.8 percent in extended trading on Tuesday.

The deal includes a $2 billion sale of shares to Alibaba itself, a sale of $400 million in shares to the Alibaba Partnership, a 34-person group of Executive Chairman Jack Ma and other Alibaba founders and executives, a $500 million sale of shares to an unidentified sovereign wealth fund, and an offering by a new Softbank-controlled trust of $5 billion to $6 billion in securities that convert in three years into Alibaba stock, Softbank said.

Stifel analyst Scott Devitt in a note said that he maintained a buy rating after the Softbank sale. "We do not view this as a shift in confidence from a major investor. In fact, it could remove an overhang of expectation of such an event," he wrote.

Alibaba said it will buy the $2 billion of its shares with cash on hand.

In connection with the transaction, Softbank also entered into a lockup agreement with Alibaba under which it will not transfer any Alibaba shares held by the company for six months.

U.S. web company Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O) has been exploring a sale of its core business. It also has been investigating how to dispose of its 15 percent stake Alibaba, but that potential sale has been complicated by concerns that Yahoo would incur a major tax bill. People familiar with the matter say Alibaba is not interested currently in buying the stake from Yahoo at a high price.

An Alibaba spokeswoman declined to comment on the Yahoo-owned stake.

(Reporting by Narottam Medhora in Bengaluru, Peter Henderson and Liana Baker in San Francisco; Editing by Don Sebastian and Diane Craft)
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The world's largest brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev (ABI.BR) gained conditional approval on Tuesday for its $100 billion-plus acquisition of SABMiller (SAB.L) from South African anti-trust regulators, bringing the deal closer to fruition.

Conditions attached to the deal include a binding one that no South African employee be laid off because of the merger, the Competition Commission said in a statement.

The commission said it had recommended to the Competition Tribunal, which has the ultimate say, that the deal be "approved with conditions." Its recommendations usually meet the tribunal's approval.

Other conditions to the tie-up include a requirement the merged entity sell off SAB's stake in liquor maker Distell (DSTJ.J) and that it make a 1 billion rand ($63.60 million) investment in South African agriculture.

The companies have also agreed to submit within two years of the merger "black economic empowerment plans setting out how the merged entity intends to maintain black participation in the company, including equity," the commission said in a statement.

South Africa's government has a number of targets that companies must meet to lift the ownership of previously disadvantaged blacks in the economy.

Jobs are a major issue in South Africa, where unemployment is over 25 percent and income disparities are glaring, and AB InBev granted significant concessions on this front as it strives for approval of one of the largest corporate takeovers.

"The Commission received concerns regarding the potential impact of the proposed merger on employment ... In this regard, AB InBev has undertaken that it will not retrench any employee in South Africa as a result of the merger. This condition will endure in perpetuity," the commission said.

In the area of social development, AB InBev has committed to investing 1 billion rand over five years in to the agriculture sector that supplies the brewing business, with a focus on emerging black farmers.

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"This investment will be utilised for the development of the South African agricultural outputs for barley, hops and maize, as well as to promote entry and growth of emerging and black farmers in South Africa," the Commission said.

Last week AB InBev gained EU antitrust approval for the transaction. The takeover will give the merged entity a third of the global beer market, selling twice as much beer as its nearest rival Heineken (HEIN.AS).

(Reporting by Ed Stoddard; editing by Adrian Croft)
Seoul (AFP) - A South Korean appeals court ruled on Tuesday that a contested merger between two Samsung Group affiliates last year had short-changed minority shareholders, and said they should receive a bigger payout.

The Seoul High Court decision overturned a lower court ruling that had dismissed the shareholders' suit against the giant South Korean conglomerate.

The merger last July saw Samsung's de facto holding company, Cheil Industries, take over construction firm Samsung C&T in an all-stock deal worth an estimated $8.0 billion.

The merger had been passionately opposed by a significant number of C&T investors, rallied by US hedge fund Elliott Associates -- the company's second-largest single shareholder.

Elliott had argued that the takeover wilfully undervalued the C&T share price, at an unacceptable cost to its shareholders.

The High Court ruled that five shareholders who sued C&T for more money should be offered 66,602 won ($55.92) for each C&T share they held before the merger, compared with 57,234 won offered last year.

"The court's decision is inconsistent with the decisions in other related cases," Samsung said in a statement.

"After a thorough review of the court's rulings, we plan to file an appeal with the Supreme Court," it said.

Last year's merger was seen as crucial step for Samsung's founding Lee family in its effort to consolidate control of the giant, multi-headed conglomerate, ahead of a generational transfer of power from ailing patriarch Lee Kun-Hee.

Although the anti-merger camp lost the final vote, its muscular campaign marked a watershed moment for shareholder activism in South Korea -- where family-run conglomerates, or "chaebol," dominate the economy and are accustomed to run their businesses with minimum investor interference.
Madrid (AFP) - Spain's opposition on Tuesday blasted Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's conservative government for campaigning for a June general election on promises to lower taxes as well as slashing the public deficit.

Rajoy has said he is eyeing more tax cuts if re-elected at the June 26 general election even as the European Commission mulls sanctions against Madrid for breaking deficit rules.

The head of the main opposition Socialists, Pedro Sanchez, accused the prime minister of "lying", saying Spain's fiscal situation does not allow for taxes to be reduced.

"He will once again trick Spaniards," said Sanchez, who plans to raise taxes to balance the budget.

New anti-austerity party Podemos, which also wants to raise taxes so as to increase social spending, also lashed out at Rajoy.

"Fresh tax cuts are a danger for public services and it will commit us to budget cuts in the future," Podemos economist Nacho Alvarez told top-selling Spanish daily newspaper El Pais.

Podemos has formed an alliance with its smaller far-left rival Izquierda Unida to run together in the elections and polls show it is poised to surpass the Socialists in the upcoming election to finish second.

Meanwhile Albert Rivera, the head of new market-friendly party Ciudadanos which is seen as a natural ally for the conservatives, advised Rajoy "to not make promises he can't keep".

Rajoy's Popular Party (PP) has made its handling of the economy the focus of its campaign.

The PP credits its reforms for returning Spain to growth in 2013 after a property bubble burst in 2008.

The party came in first in an inconclusive December 20 general election but lost its absolute majority in parliament and was unable to form a governing coalition with other formations.

Both Ciudadanos and the Socialists refused to join forces with the PP, whose image has been tainted by a string of corruption scandals and austerity measures.

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No other party was able to cobble together a coalition, leading to the repeat election next month.

- July decision on fine -

Rajoy, in power since December 2011, has also vowed to continue to reduce unemployment.

Under his watch the unemployment rate has fallen from 27 percent at the height of Spain's economic crisis to just below 21 percent, although it remains the highest in the European Union after Greece's.

The Spanish economy, the eurozone's fourth largest, expanded by 3.2 percent last year, well above the European average.

But despite the return to growth Spain's public deficit came in at 5.0 percent of gross domestic product last year, far higher than the target of 4.2 percent Madrid agreed with Brussels and vastly above the 3.0 percent limit set by eurozone rules.

The European Commission will decide in July -- after the elections -- if it slaps Spain with a fine for violating its deficit rules.

Rajoy has promised Brussels to take steps to reduce the deficit if he is re-elected, according to a letter that was made public by El Pais.

The PP, which reduced taxes in 2015 just before the december election, argues tax cuts will raise consumer spending and boost job creation.

"The goal of reducing the deficit is perfectly compatible with the reduction of income taxes," Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said.

Polls predict the result of the June election will be similar to that of the December election with the PP in first place, followed by the Socialists and Podemos neck and neck with Ciudadanos in fourth place.

Many analysts predict that this time round the Socialists and Ciudadanos will allow the PP to form a minority government.
Investing Compass: How to Navigate China's Choppy Waters

SSE Composite Index was almost flat last week

The SSE (Shanghai Stock Exchange) Composite Index was almost flat for the week ending May 27, 2016. It ended at 2,821.05 on May 22. Investors were cautious about a probable rate hike in the US.

Equity markets are also falling amid growing uncertainty about Chinas monetary policies and economic health. The Peoples Bank of Chinas policy team published a report on May 26. The report said, Its objective and appropriate to keep Chinas monetary policy generally prudent with slight loosening. The report also stated that Chinas economic growth remains within a reasonable range, but the economy faces relatively big downward pressure.

The SSE Composite Index includes all of the listed stocks (A-shares and B-shares) at the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges. A-shares are shares denominated in the domestic currencythe renminbi. Theyre only available to local investors. B-shares are denominated in a foreign currency such as in the US dollar on the SSE and in Hong Kong dollars on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. Theyre available to foreign investors.

Tight trade suspension rules

The two main stock exchanges in China, the SSE and the Shenzhen tightened the rules on voluntary trading suspensions. According to notices posted on their websites, share suspensions of listed companies involved in major asset restructuring cannot exceed three months, and companies conducting private placements cannot be suspended for more than one month.

The guidelines issued by the Shenzhen Stock Exchange said, Companies that want to apply for trading suspension longer than three months should hold a board meeting to decide the arrangement. Professional opinion is required from sponsors and financial advisories if the company apply for long term trading suspension.

The trading suspension restriction comes ahead of June 15 when MSCI will decide whether it will include Mainland Chinese stocks in its emerging market index. Its tracked by about $1.5 trillion in assets all over the world.

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Return of China-focused funds

For the week ending May 27, the John Hancock Greater China Opportunities Fund  Class A (JCOAX) was the best performer. It rose 5.4%.

Meanwhile, the Columbia Greater China Fund  Class A (NGCAX), the Clough China Fund  Class A (CHNAX), the Fidelity Advisor China Region Fund  Class A (FHKAX), and the Neuberger Berman Greater China Equity Fund  Class A (NCEAX) rose by 4.3%, 3.2%, 2.6%, and 1.5%, respectively.

For the same period, the Deutsche X-trackers Harvest CSI 300 China A-Shares ETF (ASHR) and the iShares MSCI China ETF (MCHI) rose by 0.1% and 3.8%, respectively.

American depositary receipts of Chinese companies such as 58.com (WUBA), Baidu (BIDU), and NetEase (NTES) rose by 10.4%, 8.8%, and 5.8%, respectively, for the week ending May 27.

In the next part, well discuss why Mark Yusko and Mark Mobius are bullish on China.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
(Reuters) - Office supplies retailer Staples Inc (SPLS.O), which called off a deal to buy smaller rival Office Depot Inc (ODP.O) this month, said Chief Executive Ron Sargent will step down after the company's annual meeting on June 14.

The decision comes three weeks after a U.S. federal judge ordered to halt the deal because of antitrust concerns.

"With the termination of the merger, we mutually agreed that now is the right time to transition to a new management to lead Staples through its next phase of growth," independent lead director Robert E. Sulentic said.

The company announced several actions after scrapping the deal, including a $300 million cost-cutting plan and exploration of strategic alternatives for its European operations.

Shira Goodman, Staples President of North America Operations will become interim CEO, the company said, adding that a special committee of the board would identify a permanent replacement, with the support of an executive search firm.

Sargent, who has been the CEO since February 2002, will continue to serve as non-executive chairman through Staples' fiscal year ending Jan. 28, 2017 on re-election at its annual meeting, the company said.

(Reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bengaluru,; Editing by Don Sebastian)
The Durable and Double-Sided POW MIA Flag is Available through the Companys Website and Amazon Page

LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / May 31, 2016 / The founders of Star Spangled Flags, a company that is dedicated to providing high quality and durable flags, are pleased to announce that they have just launched a new double-sided POW MIA Flag. As company spokesperson Rick Johnson noted, the POW Flag, which is available on the Star Spangled Flags website, is UV treated to last longer and has extra-tough stitching.

"This flag is expertly crafted using Heavyweight 200 Denier Nylon specially treated to dry fast and resist sun and chemical deterioration," the spokesperson said, adding that the authentic "YOU ARE NOT FORGOTTEN" emblem is appliqued on both sides.

"Our flags are treated to dry fast and resist sun and chemical deterioration holding the colors strong against ultraviolet rays in the bright sunshine."

The extra durable all-weather POW MIA Flag, which is also available through Star Spangled Flags on Amazon, is 100% made in the United States and features a bright white canvas header that is secured using two rows of superior lock stitches. Some other flag companies use a chain stitch on their flags, the spokesperson noted, which is not nearly as long-lasting and is more likely to unravel.

The fly end of the POW Missing in Action Flag also has four rows of lock stitching to improve its durability, the spokesperson said.

The timing of the launch of the extra-durable Prisoner of War Flag could not be better; to commemorate Memorial Day, the founders of Star Spangled Flags are offering 10 percent off on the POW MIA Flag. To receive the discount, shoppers need to add the coupon code 10POW16 during checkout. The discounted price is available through June 4, 2016.

Even though the UV protected and extra durable POW MIA Flag was recently released, it is already getting a lot of positive reviews from shoppers on Amazon. For example, one reviewer noted that while other POW MIA Flags that he purchased from other companies were made of flimsy nylon and were not always two-sided, the flag from Star Spangled Flags is very high-quality.

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"The adage, you get what you paid for, is appropriate in your case. I was impressed of the heavier nylon and it is also very well made," the reviewer noted.

About Star Spangled Flags:

Star Spangled Flags was begun to provide the highest quality, longest lasting American, State, and Military flags available. For more information, please visit http://starspangledflags.com/

Contact:

Rick Johnson

pr@starspangledflags.com

877-864-3209

SOURCE: Star Spangled Flags
Starbucks (SBUX) founder, chairman and CEO Howard Schultz is considered one of the best business leaders of our generation.

But he has also been outspoken on a range of political and social issues.

He told Yahoo Finance he was disappointed with how the election has developed.

What would we say to all of the young people in America watching the behavior of the candidates over the last few months in the presidential primary season? he said. Is that the kind of behavior we want to model for young children in America? We clearly have such significant, substantive problems that require civility, a high level of intellect, and what we dont need is division and vitriol and the kind of things that would divide us.

He added that he hopes as we get into the general election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump that there is a more serious focus on the issues.

The issues of the country and the world is facing today are so serious and so fragile. And I would just hope that as we move towards the summer and the two candidates began to really square off against themselves, that theres a higher level of respect for one another and the office of the presidency.

In a New York Times op-ed last summer, Schultz responded to reports that were encouraging him to enter the 2015 race for president as a Democratic candidate.

Despite the encouragement of others, I have no intention of entering the presidential fray, he said. Im not done serving at Starbucks.

Schultz has been outspoken over the years on a range of political and social issues. In 2015, he launched a Race Together initiative urging baristas to write the slogan on cups of coffee they served. The effort was aimed to spark a national dialogue about race in response to the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, two unarmed black men, and the related civil unrest. In 2012, he encouraged baristas in D.C.-area shops to write come together on customers cups as Congress negotiated over the fiscal cliff.

He has also taken up many social initiatives, including pledging to hire 10,000 veterans by 2018 and providing unique education assistance opportunities for employees.
Starbucks, America's foremost purveyor of milkshakes disguised as coffee drinks, is turning to the periodic table of elements for its newest menu item: .

While "nitro" sounds more at home on the set of The Fast & The Furious then it does in a cup, the word is short for nitrogen, the chemical element that gives the coffee a velveteen texture.

Source: Starbucks

Starbucks plans to introduce its Nitro Cold Brew to more than 500 of its stores across the country by the end of the summer, a company spokesperson said in an email. The first 500 stores to get the menu makeover are located in major cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco and Boston. The move will make Starbucks the largest retailer of nitro coffee in the nation. Starbucks plans to eventually roll out the drink  which requires the installation of nitrogen kegs  to stores nationwide.

Here's the deal with nitro

Nitro coffee is unique because it's served on tap, like a beer. The coffee, which is typically made with cold brew, is "treated with nitrogen under high pressure and then it is chilled in a keg and served on draught," Bon Appetit noted. The result is an incredibly creamy coffee with a foamy head, giving the beverage a Guinness-like appearance.

Source: Khushbu Shah/Mic

Although nitro coffee is carbonated, it doesn't taste like a coffee-infused seltzer. Nitrogen bubbles are smaller than the carbon dioxide bubbles that carbonate soda, the Starbucks spokesperson said. And because the bubbles are smaller, the coffee is a smooth, non-fizzy drink that requires zero milk to achieve its silky texture. Better yet, because the coffee is pre-chilled, the drink doesn't need any ice. This means it won't get watered down like a standard iced coffee is wont to do (hallelujah!).

While Starbucks is just beginning its nitro coffee journey, the method can be traced back as far 2012. Mike McKim, the founder of Austin's Cuvee coffee told Eater that he was the first to serve the specialty drink.

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The trend has been spreading like a caffeinated wildfire ever since, and is now available at a number of speciality coffee shops like Brooklyn Roasting Company. A number of companies, including Stumptown and Cuvee, are selling canned versions of their nitro cold brews, too.

Source: Stumptown

How Starbucks' compares to the rest

Mic taste-tested Starbucks' Nitro Cold Brew a found that, even without milk or sugar, the flavor is mild and smooth  adding either only enhances the drink. The beverage is pretty chuggable, too, which could be dangerous considering its caffeine content.

Cold brew is already much stronger than iced coffee, and some claim that the nitrogen could be responsible for "increased absorption rates," meaning the buzz will hit more quickly, Bon Appetit reported. So consider being mindful of the fact that it's possible to get a little too wired a little too fast, and sip Nitro Cold Brew like a fine wine rather than a cheap can of beer. (Just because it looks like beer, doesn't mean it should be consumed like beer.)
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Starbucks thinks iced coffee has a big future, so the global coffee giant will add two new, innovative drinks to their "Cold Bar" menu this summer: the Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew and the Nitro Cold Brew.

Being one of those extremely rare coffee lovers who only enjoys their coffee cold and black, I was very eager to taste what's in store for the future of iced coffee, so we visited Starbucks to check the drinks out.

SEE ALSO: Discover the world's most Instagrammed coffee

At a spacious Starbucks on Spring Street in SoHo, we met Mackenzie Karr, a coffee education specialist. After I finished telling Karr that her job title would make her an extremely cool contestant on The Bachelor, she led us through our tasting and discussed the unique flavors, differences and crafts of the iced beverages.





Image: starbucks

To understand just how different the new drinks were from the existing Cold Bar menu items, we kicked off the tasting with some traditional Starbucks iced coffee. From there, we moved on to the Starbucks Cold Brew, which was much smoother than the more acidic iced coffee, and had a subtly sweet flavor.

Then came the main events.

Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew

Image: tyler essary/mashable

The main difference between the regular slow-steeped Cold Brew and the Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew is, well, the cream of course. Karr explained that the cream was specifically created to compliment the cold brew and offers customers a "complete" drink  no need for extra milk or sugar.

The cream was definitely a refreshing break from my usual cup of plain black coffee, and as a little bonus, it's made in-house daily.

Nitro Cold Brew

Image: tyler essary/mashable

The Nitro Cold Brew is simply regular Starbucks Cold Brew infused with nitrogen. Yep, you read that right. Cold brew and nitrogen, what a time to be alive.

In a press release, Starbucks referred to this as the drink that "will redefine the way you think about cold coffee," and after trying it I can't say I disagree.

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According the Starbucks, the nitrogen is infused into the coffee much like carbonation in your favorite sodas and carbonated drinks. However, the nitrogen bubbles are much smaller than carbonation, which gives the Cold Brew a smooth texture rather than a bubbly one, along with a distinct creamy sweetness. For this reason, the Nitro Cold Brew is served unsweetened.

Image: Starbucks

After the coffee was infused and released cold from the tap, the nitrogen prompted a cascading effect and formed a thin layer of foam on top as it settled. Starbucks has described the Nitro as having the "texture and body you'd expect from a draught beer," and I will admit that after seeing it in person I had to remind myself once or twice that a cold beer was not in fact sitting before me in a coffee shop.



What's next?

When Starbucks introduced their iced coffee in 1986, it had a long and successful run before their Cold Brew debuted nationwide last summer. According to the chain, these two new beverages are, "just the beginning of the kind of innovation Starbucks is bringing to cold coffee."

Hear that coffee lovers? There's more to come.

The Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew will be available in stores in the U.S. and Canada beginning May 31 and the Nitro Cold Brew will be available at over 500 Starbucks locations by the end of summer.
London (AFP) - Physicist Stephen Hawking appealed Tuesday to British voters to back the campaign to stay in the European Union in a referendum next month while criticising US presidential hopeful Donald Trump.

"Gone are the days when we could stand on our own against the world," Hawking, one of the world's best known scientists, said in an interview on ITV's Good Morning Britain television show.

"We need to be part of a larger group of nations, both for our security and our trade," he said.

He said freedom of movement for academics and research funding were the most important reasons to stay in the bloc.

"At the level of research, the exchange of people enables skills to transfer more quickly and brings new people with different ideas," he said.

Asked if he could explain Trump's popularity, Hawking said: "I can't. He's a demagogue who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator."

A British vote to leave the European Union in next month's referendum would put almost A1 billion in EU research funds given to Britain at risk, a study by research company Digital Science warned this month.

Competitive research funding from the EU and European Research Council to Britain amounted to A967 million (1.24 billion euros, $1.39 billion) in 2015.

Britain is the second largest recipient of EU research funds after Germany, receiving A8.04 billion in the past decade compared to A8.34 billion for Germany, the study found.

The amount is equivalent to 7.4 percent of Britain's net contribution to the EU budget over the same period.

The report authors said the extent of EU funds concealed the fact that, despite its world-class reputation, Britain does not invest as much in research as its competitors.

Germany spent 2.85 percent of GDP on research in 2013, according to the latest figures from the World Bank, while Britain spent just 1.63 percent.
Home shopping season is in full effect. Kids are wrapping up the school year, the weather is getting warmer by the day, and its time to make a move on the house of your dreams. If youre targeting a home in one of the hottest markets on realtor.com, youll need to make it a quick move to beat the summer surge.

According to our chief economist, Jonathan Smoke, the pace of total home sales is up more than 10% over last year. Translation: You shouldnt spend your entire summer in a hammock or a yurt if you need a new place to live.

Smoke added that limited supply is leading to higher prices, as evidenced by home prices in Californias most popular markets. The Golden State still dominates the hot list, snagging seven of the top 10 spots. Many of the Cali metros are cost-prohibitivewere staring at you, San Francisco and San Jose.

But, if you dive into the housing market of our hottest cityVallejoyou can still fulfill your California dream for less than a half-million bucks. Ready for summer, we eagerly picked a cool house to represent each of Mays 10 hottest markets. Slap on the SPF and have a look.

18 La Vuelta St

Price: $350,000

Hot note: Old school bar and nice swimming pool.

Vallejo, CA



20 Santa Rita Ave

Price: $2,695,000

Hot note: Banquet-size formal dining room with French doors.

San Francisco, CA



3732 Quivas St

Price: $599,900

Hot note: Fabulous to the studs renovation.

Denver, CO



2605 Spring Oaks Dr

Price: $599,900

Hot note: Open space behind home.

Santa Rosa, CA



5412 Hildreth Ln

Price: $595,000

Hot note: Hidden charm  tucked down a private drive.

Stockton, CA



13621 Far Hills Ln

Price: $474,900

Hot note: Entry includes a one-of-a-kind custom-built 50-inch-wide front door.

Dallas, TX



3092 Bertis Dr

Price: $249,900

Hot note: Gorgeous, lush, and tranquil backyard with fenced pool.

Sacramento, CA



3128 Grim Ave

Price: $770,000

Hot note: Craftsman upgraded and updated galore!

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San Diego, CA



1184 Campbell Ave

Price: $895,000

Hot note: Previously a model home.

San Jose, CA



960 N Nelson Rd

Price: $222,000

Hot note: Enjoy time outdoors on the oversized front porch, the side porch, or on the back deck overlooking the backyard.

Columbus, OH

The post Summer Is Here! Heat Up With Homes in Americas 10 Hottest Markets appeared first on Real Estate News and Advice - realtor.com.





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When the recently renewed The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills returns to Bravo for season seven, there may be a brand-new face on the 90210 block.

Sydney Holland, the ex-girlfriend of Sumner Redstone who was famously ousted from the 93-year-old mogul's mansion last fall, has formally pitched herself to join the cast of the reality show, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter. Holland, 44, is now in the running to appear alongside stars Lisa Vanderpump, Kyle Richards, Yolanda Foster and Lisa Rinna.

Though no decisions have been made, Holland - who was with the billionaire Viacom and CBS mogul for five years - has a backstory that rivals any in the ZIP code. After being introduced by Millionaire Matchmaker star Patti Stanger, Holland began dating Redstone and quickly established herself as an influential figure in his life. Along with longtime Redstone companion Manuela Herzer, Holland was a regular presence at his mansion, traveled with him and bought real estate using the millions of dollars in gifts the mogul gave her.

In a 2014 interview with THR (likely the last the frail mogul will ever give), Redstone sat with both Holland and Herzer by his side. And last year, Redstone's former driver detailed the extent of influence Holland had over Redstone and the staff at his mansion. The driver also wrote that Holland had personally instructed him to deliver cash to various women around Los Angeles.

But last fall, Holland was abruptly ejected from Redstone's Beverly Park estate for allegedly having an affair with a former actor and flying to and from Arizona on private jets to see him. She has since gone quiet as the succession issue at Viacom has exploded in litigation and maneuvering. Holland declined to join Herzer's legal effort to be reinstated as Redstone's health care provider when Herzer also was ousted from Redstone's life.

One source says Holland or her reps have created a "sizzle reel" - a promotional video for casting executives - that was presented to Real Housewives producers. Bravo declined to comment on the Housewives casting process and Holland did not respond to requests for comment.

This story first appeared in the June 10 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
(Reuters) - Support for Britain to stay in the European Union stood at 51 percent, five points ahead of support for a withdrawal from the 28-member bloc but down from a 13-point lead a week ago, an ORB poll for the Daily Telegraph said. Support to leave the EU grew by 4 points to 46 percent according to the poll published on Monday for Tuesday's edition of the newspaper. Britons vote on June 23 on whether to remain in the EU, with important implications for its trade, economic and political status. Writing in the newspaper Lynton Crosby, the political strategist behind Prime Minister David Cameron's election victory, said the campaign focus on migration over the past seven days had boosted the Leave campaign. "Increasing focus on lack of control over immigration" had helped to boost support for the "Leave" campaign, he said. Two leading members of Cameron's ruling Conservatives have accused him of breaking his promise to curb immigration, stepping up hostilities in the party over a battle to win next month's referendum. They pointed to official statistics issued last week showing net migration to Britain reached 333,000 in 2015, the second-highest level for a single year since records began in 1975. Of those, a net 184,000 came from the EU, which upholds the principle of free movement. Immigration is a key focus in an increasingly bitter fight over EU membership, with many voters concerned about the strains a growing number of people put on schools, hospitals and housing. (Reporting by Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru and Elisabeth O'Leary in Edinburgh; Editing by Diane Craft and Sandra Maler)
Surfer Blood guitarist Thomas Fekete died Monday after battling a rare, aggressive form of cancer, his wife, Jess, wrote on the musician's GoFundMe page to cover medical expenses. He was 27.

50 Best Songs of 2010: Surfer Blood,

"Even as his body failed him, his mind and spirit soldiered on," Fekete wrote. "Never was there a day that we weren't filled with hope. Never was there a day that he even considered throwing in the towel. He was the kind-hearted, funny, fearless, magnetic beam of light you all knew him to be up until his very last breath." She added at the end: "Now, my beautiful angel, go find Bowie and jam."

Fekete revealed his cancer diagnosis to fans in April 2015, when he was forced drop off a Surfer Blood tour. The guitarist wrote that he had had major surgery to remove a large tumor from his abdomen, but that doctors had discovered that the cancer had spread to his lungs and spine.

Despite surgeries and extensive chemotherapy, Fekete continued to make music, releasing a cassette-only LP, Burner, last December. "Sometime between March and June of 2015 while healing from two surgeries and starting chemotherapy, I hunched over my four-track and created this disaster," Fekete said of the record in a statement. "No multiple takes, no expensive mics, no outside direction ... just me in my bedroom with a very cheap, bare bones setup."

All proceeds from the album helped Fekete with his medical costs, while Surfer Blood also staged a series of benefit shows on his behalf  but the donations from those shows were stolen when the band's van was broken into on the outskirts of Chicago. Other bands, however, stepped in to help raise money for Fekete, with Yo La Tengo, Guided By Voices, Cults, Real Estate and more contributing unreleased songs, demos and live tracks to a compilation sold through the GoFundMe page.

Surfer Blood co-founders John Paul Pitts and Tyler Schwarz first met Fekete and bassist Brian Black at an Ultra Music Festival afterparty in Miami. The Florida outfit began a regimen of non-stop touring and recording, crafting their 2010 debut album, Astro Coast, in Pitts' off-campus apartment at Florida Atlantic University. Led by breakout single, "Swim," Astro Coast established Surfer Blood as one of contemporary indie rock's lead Nineties-revivalists. The group went on to release the Tarot Classics EP in 2011, their second album Pythons in 2013, and 1000 Palms in 2015.

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Jess Fekete will host a celebration of Thomas' life on the beach in South Florida, the first weekend of July. More details will be made available soon, and the event will be open to "anyone who holds Thomas in their hearts."

Related
- One-armed American surfer Bethany Hamilton finished third in the Fiji Women's Pro on Tuesday. Hamilton, whose left arm was bitten off in a shark attack in 2003, defeated Australia's world number one Tyler Wright in the second round, then six-time world champion Stephanie Gilmore in the third. The 26-year-old from Hawaii finally fell to the competition's eventual winner, France's Johanne Defay, in the semis. "Beyond stoked to finish 3rd... as the wildcard! LOVED competing & looking forward to more adventures," she tweeted. It is the sixth time Hamilton has competed on the elite tour, with her previous best a ninth place in 2010.

AFP
Ariad Pharmaceuticals Inc. ARIA is a global oncology company that could be an interesting play for investors. That is because, not only does the stock have decent short-term momentum, but it is seeing solid activity on the earnings estimate revision front as well.

These positive earnings estimate revisions suggest that analysts are becoming more optimistic on ARIAs earnings for the coming quarter and year. In fact, consensus estimates have moved sharply higher for both of these time frames over the past four weeks, suggesting that Ariad Pharmaceuticals could be a solid choice for investors.

Current Quarter Estimates for ARIA

In the past 30 days, 3 estimates have gone higher for Ariad Pharmaceuticals, while none have gone lower in the same time period. The trend has been pretty favorable too, with estimates narrowing from a loss of 22 cents a share 30 days ago, to a loss of 10 cents a share today, a significant move.

Current Year Estimates for ARIA

Meanwhile, Ariad Pharmaceuticals current year figures are also looking quite promising, with 4 estimates moving higher in the past month, compared to none lower. The consensus estimate trend has also seen a boost for this time frame, narrowing from a loss of 95 cents per share 30 days ago to a loss of 69 per share today, an increase of 37.7%.

Bottom Line

The stock has also started to move higher lately, adding 14.5% over the past four weeks, suggesting that investors are starting to take note of this impressive story. So investors may definitely want to consider this Zacks Rank #3 ( Hold) stock to profit in the near future.

Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >>



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ARIAD PHARMA (ARIA): Free Stock Analysis Report



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By Naomi Tajitsu TOKYO (Reuters) - Suzuki Motor Corp on Tuesday blamed a lack of resources for failing to use correct tests in Japan to calculate vehicle mileage, and reiterated its employees did not intend to manipulate fuel economy data for better readings. The company also said its domestic minivehicle sales slumped 18 percent in May from the previous year, likely due to the testing issue which affected 2.14 million vehicles, slightly more than the previously stated 2.10 million. Japanese automakers have been under increased scrutiny for how they calculate mileage after Mitsubishi Motor Corp said it had misrepresented fuel economy readings. That led to a takeover of the company by Nissan Motor Co Ltd and the resignation of its president earlier this month. Suzuki, Japan's No. 4 automaker by sales, said it lacked the resources after the 2008 global financial crisis to perform tests required under Japanese regulations to calculate mileage. It also cited increased pressure to develop models and engines in the late 2000s. After submitting additional data on its non-compliance to Japan's transport ministry on Tuesday, Suzuki said incorrect fuel tests involved 14 of its branded models, rather than the 16 it initially reported, while 12 models sold under other brands were also affected, up from 11. Earlier this month, Suzuki said it had used the wrong tests to calculate mileage for models going back to 2010, submitting figures compiled from indoor tests performed on individual parts, rather than vehicle coasting tests. The company said its test procedures were "lax" and that it would strengthen its compliance systems. "It's become clear that we must follow Japanese regulations or else we will not recover from this issue," said Chairman Osamu Suzuki. "Cheating is cheating." The company said new tests conducted on the most fuel-efficient versions of affected models showed mileage that exceeded levels stated in sales catalogues. Suzuki has said it would continue to sell the affected vehicles. Suzuki is the second Japanese automaker to have been non-compliant over mileage testing after Mitsubishi in April said it had been using a different standard for years while also overstating the fuel efficiency for four of its mini vehicles. Suzuki specialises in mini-vehicles, which have engines of up to 660cc and get preferential tax treatment under Japanese law. It has roughly a third of the country's mini-vehicle market. It also has a successful Indian subsidiary, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd. Shares in Suzuki have largely recovered from a 15 percent slide earlier in the month, when the automaker first acknowledged the issue. (Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Edwina Gibbs and Christopher Cushing)
* Abe to stick to budget target even after tax hike delay

* No plan on how to hit target despite revenue shortfalls

* Rating agencies sanguine now, but downgrade risk looms

By Leika Kihara

TOKYO, June 1 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is essentially giving up on fiscal reform by postponing a sales tax hike for two and a half years, putting Japan's credibility on the line and heightening the risk of a credit downgrade that could lift corporate borrowing costs.

With the central bank's massive bond buying hammering yields near zero, few in the market expect the tax delay to trigger an immediate bond sell-off and a dangerous spike in the cost of financing Japan's massive public debt.

But a second delay in less than two years - expected to be announced by Abe at a Wednesday news briefing - is a major setback for Japan's drive to get its fiscal house in order, and makes it nearly impossible to achieve a target of turning its budget deficit into a surplus by the 2020 fiscal year, analysts say.

The world's third-biggest economy barely averted recession in the first quarter, and analysts expect only feeble growth, if any, this quarter as weak emerging market demand and slow wage growth weigh on exports and consumption.

"It's become clear Abe is not so serious about fiscal discipline," said Masamichi Adachi, senior economist at JPMorgan Securities Japan. "The budget balance target was considered ambitious to begin with and now looks to be given up or pushed back until a few years later."

Some analysts say Abe is effectively abandoning the tax hike by delaying it to October 2019 as he's unlikely to still be in office then. His term as head of the ruling party, and thus premier, expires in September of that year.

"It's essentially a freezing of the tax hike plan," said Katsutoshi Inadome, fixed income strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley. "It might be interpreted as a message that Abe won't implement fiscal reform during his tenure."

Story continues

CREDIT RISK

Standard & Poor's, which cut Japan's sovereign rating to A+ last year, said it made "some sense" for Abe to delay the tax hike given anaemic economic growth. But it warned that Japan needs to speed up structural reforms given the limited space to deploy fiscal or monetary stimulus.

If Japan keeps dragging its feet on fiscal reform it may face a sovereign rating cut that pushes up the cost of overseas funding for some companies, according to SMBC Nikko Securities.

"A two-notch cut to A- would mean the ceiling for corporate bond ratings would be set at that level. Corporate funding conditions may worsen as a result," it said in a research note.

Japan's government debt, at nearly 250 percent of GDP, is the biggest among major industrialised nations as tax revenues fall short of meeting ballooning social welfare costs for a rapidly ageing society.

Raising the sales tax is considered crucial to reining in debt, but has been a taboo for politicians. After an increase to 8 percent from 5 percent in April 2014 tipped Japan into recession, Abe postponed a further hike to 10 percent planned for October 2015 for 18 months.

Mindful of the need to reassure markets that Japan is serious about fixing its finances, its leaders including Abe have maintained a pledge to turn the primary balance - the budget balance net of interest payments - into surplus by 2020.

But achieving the target has been a challenge even without the tax hike delay. A government estimate shows the budget balance would be 6.5 trillion yen ($58.6 billion) in the red in fiscal 2020 even if the economy expands a nominal 3 percent.

Analysts say that's an unrealistic assumption for an economy that posted nominal growth of just 1.6 percent in 2014 and 2.5 percent in 2015.

MORE 'GROWTH' SPENDING?

Finance Minister Taro Aso said on Tuesday Japan will stick to the budget target even if the tax hike is delayed, a move that could shave roughly 5 trillion yen off annual tax revenues.

But the government is unclear on how to do this.

Lawmakers are opposed to slashing spending on childcare and subsidies to low-income pensioners, which were to be paid for by revenues from the tax hike. The government is even considering deploying fresh spending of up to 10 trillion yen to spur growth.

Abe's solution seems to be to keep reflating growth in the hope that rising corporate profits would lead to higher tax revenues - enough to plug the gap left by delaying the sales tax hike.

"Without growth, it's impossible to achieve fiscal consolidation," said Etsuro Honda, an economic adviser to Abe. "The budget target could still be achieved as long as GDP expands to the full and consumer sentiment stabilises, which would offset the blow from the 2019 sales tax hike."

With global headwinds intensifying and the yen's rebound clouding the outlook for corporate profits, however, even advocates of Abe's reflationist policies have their doubts.

Delaying the tax hike runs counter to the basic principle of the three arrows of "Abenomics" - bold monetary easing, flexible fiscal policy and a growth strategy - said Takatoshi Ito, a Columbia University professor who is among the most prominent Japanese economists supportive of Abe's policies.

"The second arrow is flexible fiscal policy, not aggressive fiscal spending. That means Japan needs to focus on restoring fiscal health," he said.

"When you need short-term fiscal stimulus you deliver it. But I wonder whether that's really necessary now."

($1 = 110.9800 yen)

(Reporting by Leika Kihara, with additional reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto, Stanley White, Kaori Kaneko, Minami Funakoshi and Takashi Umekawa in Tokyo, and Masayuki Kitano in Singapore; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)
A 45-year-old man has been arrested by authorities in Texas for allegedly stabbing his girlfriend to death before logging onto her Facebook account to post gory photos of her body online, PEOPLE confirms.



Court and inmate records obtained by PEOPLE indicate Kenneth Alan Amyx faces charges of murder, indecency with a child, and sexual abuse of a child. He is being held on $600,000 bail.



A Plano, Texas, police official tells PEOPLE that on Sunday, officers were dispatched to the apartment that Amyx shared with his girlfriend, Jennifer Streit-Spears.



When no one came to answer the door, police forced their way inside, where the 43-year-old woman was found unresponsive with multiple lacerations and stab wounds.



Officers also discovered Amyx laying on the apartment's floor with several knife wounds they contend were self-inflicted.



According to police, Amyx allegedly posted a photo to Streit-Spears's Facebook page, showing the woman's throat slashed open. Detectives confirm he also posted a self-shot image of his blood-splattered face.



The images remained on the site for nearly 36 hours. The caption accompanying the photos read, "Please pray for us and love you all."



 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.



Streit-Spears' sister told The Daily Dot she contacted Facebook to try and get the photos removed.



"I did ask them to remove it several times," she reportedly said. "They told me I could block Jennifer if I didn't like what she posted and gave me other similar options."





#BREAKING: Friends of slain Plano woman, Jennifer Spears, report Facebook pic posted of her murder has been removed. pic.twitter.com/YGDxWZK1x8 a Justin W. Waldrop (@JustinWWaldrop) May 31, 2016



New York's Daily News reports that Facebook initially declined to take the photos down because they initially believed the victim posted the images as a cry for help. However, it deleted the images after realizing they were seemingly posted by the alleged killer.



"Facebook has long been a place where people share their experiences and raise awareness about important issues," a Facebook spokesperson told the Daily News. "Sometimes, those experiences and issues involve violence and graphic images of public interest or concern."



The news outlet also reports that police learned during this weekend's arrest that Amyx was also wanted in Rockwall County for continued sexual abuse of a child, and in Dallas County for indecent exposure to a child.



Amyx's attorney, Keith Gore, could not be reached for comment. Amyx has not yet appeared in court to enter a plea.
This afternoon Amber Heard announced via her lawyers that she'll be making a full statement to the Los Angeles Police Department about the alleged domestic abuse that husband Johnny Depp subjected her to.

In Heard's statement she says she chose to remain silent previously in hopes "to keep this matter as private as possible" and that "Amber acted no differently than many victims of domestic violence, who think first of the harm that might come to the abuser", and that she hopes "Johnny will get the help that he so desperately needs".

The statement from Heards lead attorney Samantha F. Spector and her co-counsel Joseph P. Koenig is in full below:

As the result of Ambers decision to decline giving an initial statement to the LAPD, her silence has been used against her by Johnnys team. Amber did not provide a statement to the LAPD in an attempt to protect her privacy and Johnnys career.

Johnnys team has forced Amber to give a statement to the LAPD to set the record straight as to the true facts, as she cannot continue to leave herself open to the vicious false and malicious allegations that have infected the media.

Amber has suffered through years of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of Johnny.

In domestic violence cases, it is not unusual for the perpetrator's playbook to include miscasting the victim as the villain.

In reality, Amber acted no differently than many victims of domestic violence, who think first of the harm that might come to the abuser, rather than the abuse they have already suffered.

Amber can no longer endure the relentless attacks and outright lies launched against her character in the Court of Public Opinion since the tragic events of May 21st. With her statement Amber hopes to give the LAPD the opportunity to conduct an accurate and complete investigation into the events of that evening and before. If that occurs, and the truth is revealed, there is no doubt that Ambers claims will be substantiated beyond any doubt, and hopefully Johnny will get the help that he so desperately needs.

From the beginning it has been Amber's desire to keep this matter as private as possible, even though LAPD officers responded to a 911 call made by a third-party. The LAPD officers viewed not only the disarray that Johnny had caused in the apartment but also the physical injuries to Ambers face. We filed the Petition for Dissolution of Marriage at the very end of the day on Monday May 23rd and we did not serve Johnny with the Petition at the premiere of Alice Through the Looking Glass that evening. We sent a letter to Johnny's counsel team the next morning making it clear we wanted to keep this matter out of the media. We then held off requesting a domestic violence restraining order as we knew that Johnny was out of the country.

We took the high road. Unfortunately, Johnny's team immediately went to the press and began viciously attacking Ambers character. Amber is simply a victim of domestic violence, and none of her actions are motivated by money. Amber is a brave and financially independent woman who is showing the courage of her convictions by doing the right thing against Johnny's relentless army of lawyers and surrogates.

The Family Law Court is not going to be influenced by misinformation placed in the social media based on anonymous sources. Amber is the victim. Amber is a hero.

Johnny Depp's representatives have yet to respond to the new statement.

Via Independent
Animal rights activists have created an online petition on Change.org to protest the death of an endangered gorilla who was fatally shot after a 3-year-old boy fell into its enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo.

The petition, which has already garnered over 300,ooo signatures, asks that the Cincinnati Zoo, Child Protective Services and the Cincinnati Police Department hold the parents of the child responsible for the death of the 17-year-old male gorilla.

The zoo decided to shoot, as opposed to tranquilize, the 450-pound silverback gorilla to minimize the risk of aggression since the boy was in close proximity to the animal.

The petition reads: This heartbreaking decision was made in the best interests of keeping the child and the public safe. This beautiful gorilla lost his life because the boys parents did not keep a closer watch on the child. We the undersigned believe that the child would not have been able to enter the enclosure under proper parental supervisionIt is believed that the situation was caused by parental negligence and the zoo is not responsible for the childs injuries and possible trauma.We the undersigned want the parents to be held accountable for the lack of supervision and negligence that caused Harambe to lose his life.

The childs family also released a statement via a public relations firm, stating that the boy is doing just fine and offering condolences for the death of Harambe.

We extend our heartfelt thanks for the quick action by the Cincinnati Zoo staff, the statement read. We know that this was a very difficult decision for them, and that they are grieving the loss of their gorilla.
Kiev (AFP) - Three Ukrainian soldiers were killed and eight wounded in a fresh "escalation" of fighting between pro-Russian rebels and government forces, Kiev said Monday.

Military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said fighting had intensified compared to a month ago and accused rebels of "actively using heavy weapons" including a Grad rocket launcher.

"Over the past 24 hours, as a result of the hostilities, three Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and eight more wounded", he said.

The spokesman said the fighting took place around the eastern rebel hub of Donetsk and the government-controlled town of Mariupol.

There has been an uptick in violence in the east of Ukraine, with seven troops reported dead on Tuesday and five more over the weekend.

Kiev and the West have accused Russia of buttressing the rebels and sending in regular troops across the border, claims Moscow has repeatedly denied.

Ukrainian Defence Minister Stepan Poltorak said last month it could take years to end the conflict, which has claimed more than 9,300 lives since it erupted in April 2014.

Earlier this month, France and Germany held fresh talks with Kiev and Moscow as part of efforts to try to seek a lasting peace deal but no consensus was reached over elections in the separatist regions of eastern Ukraine.
Thai authorities seized at least three tigers from a Buddhist temple in Thailand on Monday amid allegations of wildlife trafficking and animal abuse.

Wildlife authorities say they will continue their weeklong operation to relocate dozens of tigers from the temple in Kanchanaburi province, west of Bangkok, CNN reports.

Tiger Temple, or Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua as its officially known, is a Buddhist monastery founded in 1994. The temple sells itself as an animal sanctuary housing 137 tigers and has become a popular tourist attraction, offering visitors the chance to pose for photos with tigers or play with cubs.

But the temple has long been under the scrutiny of local authorities and animal-welfare activists, who have accused the temple of animal abuse, trafficking and illegal breeding, as well as raising concerns the tigers pose a threat to visitors reports the Guardian. Some visitors have also claimed the tigers look drugged.

Tiger Temple has denied these allegations. There is nothing illegal and dangerous at all, Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua Temple Foundation vice president Suthipong Pakcharoong told CNN. If they do like this, it would affect the tourism industry.

More than 1,000 personnel are taking part in the mission to relocate the tigers to nearby animal refuges.

[CNN, Guardian]
A top North Korean official made a rare visit to China on Tuesday in an apparent attempt by Pyongyang to mend frayed ties with its powerful neighbour.

China is North Korea's largest trading partner and has been its key diplomatic protector for decades. But relations have soured following Pyongyang's internationally-condemned nuclear tests, with Beijing supporting UN sanctions against its isolated neighbour.

The visit by Ri Su Yong, vice chairman of the North's ruling Workers' Party and former foreign minister, came even as South Korea said Tuesday the North had tried and failed to launch a powerful new medium-range missile.

The attempted launch is the latest in a series of setbacks for a ballistic weapons programme that aspires to threaten the US mainland.

UN resolutions ban North Korea from any use of ballistic missile technology, although it regularly fires short-range missiles into the sea off its east coast.

Ri Su Yong met Chinese official Song Tao, head of the international department of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee, to brief him on the North's once-in-a-generation party congress, according to the CCP.

North Korea held its first party congress for nearly 40 years in early May, formally endorsing leader Kim Jong-Un's policy of expanding the country's nuclear arsenal.

The lack of any official Chinese representation at the congress was viewed as a sign of friction between the two traditional allies.

"Both sides pledged to cherish the traditional friendship, strengthen exchanges and cooperation," the website of the CCP's international department said of Tuesday's visit.

Kim has not visited China since coming to power and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping has not visited Pyongyang.

But the North Korean leader watched the local Sobaeksu basketball team beat China's Olympic squad in three matches on Monday, Pyongyang's official news agency reported.

Kim "expressed great satisfaction over the successful game", it said.

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China's official Xinhua news agency said Ri would visit for three days as part of a delegation.

He is the highest-ranking North Korean official to visit China since last year, when Kim Jong-Un's close aide Choe Ryong Hae attended a military parade in Beijing to mark the 70th anniversary of Japan's defeat in World War II.

South Korea's foreign ministry said Tuesday it "hopes relations between North Korea and China will advance in a way that could contribute to peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula (and) get the North to give up its nuclear weapons".
SEOUL (Reuters) - One of North Korea's highest-profile officials, career diplomat Ri Su Yong, will visit China on Tuesday, Japan's Kyodo news agency said. Ri was the country's foreign minister until he was named a member of the politburo during the recent congress of the ruling Workers' Party. Kyodo said his departure from Pyongyang's international airport was confirmed. Ri is known as a powerful and close family confidant of the isolated state's leader Kim Jong Un. If true, the French-speaking Ri, who acted as Kim's surrogate father when he was at a Swiss school, is touring China when North Korea's main ally has been growing increasingly frustrated with it over its nuclear ambitions. China disapproves of Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions. South Korea separately said the rival North attempted to fire a missile from its east coast early on Tuesday morning, but the launch appears to have failed. (Reporting by Ju-min Park; Editing by Michael Perry)
From Town & Country

Between terrorism threats and Zika scares -not to mention the occasional political upheaval-you may be tempted to cancel all your summer travel plans abroad and safely hide out on Hilton Head. But there's no need.

"We tell clients all the time that they should not live in fear-as long as they take the proper precautions, they will be safe pretty much anywhere," says Daniel Richards, chief executive officer of Global Rescue, a travel risk and crisis management firm. Here's what you need to know about three hot destinations.

ISTANBUL

Last year, Istanbul was the fifth most visited city in the world, outpacing even New York, with reports predicting that within four years it would overtake Paris to become the second most popular city in Europe. But after a series of bombings in tourist areas (the most recent one, last March, killed four people on the busy shopping street Istiklal Avenue), enthusiasm for the once-dubbed "Queen of Cities" has dimmed. Still, security experts remain optimistic that Istanbul is still fairly safe: "While there's definitely an elevated threat in Turkey, both because of its proximity to the Middle East and the fact that there are several different active terrorist elements, the overall risk is still low compared to other general risks such as being in a car accident or contracting a serious disease," Richards says.

Many luxury hotels, though, mindful of guest fears, are not only offering rates 15-20% lower than in typical tourist seasons, but have also instituted additional security measures. The Pera Palace Hotel Jumeirah, for example, checks everyone entering the building with hand detectors, requires guests to insert their keys into elevators, and will not allow anyone into the property who has a backpack. "We also communicate with police daily, so if we hear of any concerns we inform guests immediately to avoid certain areas," says general manager Pinar Kartal Timer. Museums and stadiums are usually among the safest places, she notes, since police are everywhere and security precautions are airtight. If you're skittish about visiting some of the big tourist areas-such as Sultanahmet square or the Blue Mosque-Timer recommends hiring a private guide, which is around 175 euros a day, or $200. "They'll know the least crowded times to go, which reduces chances of anything suspicious happening when you're there," she says. And while the state department has issued a travel advisory recommending you avoid travel to southeastern Turkey, areas along the country's western Turquoise Coast, such as Bodrum, are only a 50-minute flight away and are still tranquil.

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Verdict: Go

MEXICO CITY

It was recently named the number one place to visit in 2016 by the New York Times, but Zika fears are leading many people to shun the so-called city of palaces. "Clients are staying away from areas like Costa Rica, Mexico, and Jamaica because they feel that the risk of infection is too high," says Eric Grayson, owner of luxury travel agency Discover 7. But the good news is you can keep it on your bucket list after all. "It's at a very high elevation, so mosquitoes won't venture up there," points out Amesh Adalja, MD an infectious disease specialist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. The CDC also says anything above 6,500 feet (and Mexico City is at almost 7,400) is safe. Even more reassuring is the fact that resorts like the Four Seasons Mexico City told T&C that they have not had any guests or employees develop the Zika virus, and that bookings have remained relatively unaffected.

Keep in mind that while areas like Mexico City are generally considered now safe for everyone (including pregnant women) you do expose yourself to risk if you venture down to lower lying areas. But for most people, that's fine. "If you're not pregnant or planning on trying to conceive within the next six months, travel to Zika-affected areas is generally considered safe," says Richards. If you are in a Zika infested area, your best defense is judicious use of mosquito repellant that contains either DEET or the more natural ingredient Picaridin-that means reapplying every couple hours to all exposed areas, since it can evaporate with sweating. While it may be difficult to follow the CDC advice to wear long sleeves to protect yourself against mosquitos in 90-plus degree heat, you can buy clothing pre-treated with bug repellant from stores like L.L. Bean.

Verdict: Go

BRAZIL

The Summer Olympics are a few months away, and only half the tickets have been sold. The Brazilian Hotel Association maintains there haven't been any cancellations, adding that Rio's hotels are almost completely booked. But despite that news, travel experts say it's a good idea to temporarily take this country off of your bucket list, given its struggles with political upheaval, Zika, a struggling economy, and pollution. (In fact, Brazil was recently dubbed the murder capital of the world, with more cities than any other nation plagued by violent crime.) "This may be one of the most sparsely attended summer Olympics in history," says Richards. The CDC has also already issued an advisory recommending pregnant women strongly consider not going on the trip. One of the biggest threats may not come from mosquitoes or terrorists, notes Richards, but petty crime: "I think the likelihood that foreigners will get caught up in criminal events is decent," he warns. For clients who want to travel to South America, Grayson has been advocating for Peru and Argentina, which not only have more robust economies and lower crime rates, but are still according to the CDC Zika free.

Verdict: Pass
Troy Ave has reportedly pleaded not guilty to attempted murder charges connected with a shooting last week at a hip-hop concert in New York.

The Brooklyn rapper (real name Roland Collins) appeared in a Manhattan court Monday (May 30) to face attempted murder charges related to incident at the Irving Plaza nightclub in Union Square last Wednesday, where T.I. was booked to perform.

Troy Ave: A Quick Rundown on the Rapper Charged Following Irving Plaza Shooting

Three people were wounded and a 33-year old man Ronald (Edgar) McPhatter was killed when shots were fired in the venue's VIP room.

Collins underwent surgery to have bone fragments removed from his leg and was wheeled into court Monday, the NY Daily News reports. He was remanded without bail.

The rapper's lawyer, however, claims his client is the victim and plays-down the contents of a video which appears to show Collins firing rounds in the backstage green room as patrons fled for safety. Opening acts Maino and Uncle Murda were performing at the time gunshots were heard while headliner T.I. had not yet taken the stage.

Troy Ave Charged With Attempted Murder Following Irving Plaza Shooting

"What really happened here is Mr. Collins here is the real victim," Scott Leemon said. "The person who was killed at this event, he died a hero. He (McPhatter) was his bodyguard. He wasn't shot by Mr. Collins. He was a lifelong friend."

"This 11 seconds of video that the NYPD released, it doesn't say what happened before, it doesn't say what happened after. The scientific evidence will show he didn't shoot himself. This was another rush to judgment. In this case he's the victim and should be treated like the victim."

The results of ballistics tests from the crime scene have yet to be published.
It's one of our most hotly anticipated films of 2016, but it looks Rogue One might be in bother already.

A report surfaced online late last night suggesting that the first Star Wars spin-off movie didn't go down well with Disney executives at a recent private screening. The report suggests that the House of Mouse isn't "happy with the movie, and Rogue One will have to go back into four weeks of expensive reshoots in July."

The report also adds that "Disney wont take a back seat, and is demanding changes, as the movie isnt testing well." Oof.

To be honest, the idea of Rogue One getting reshoots isn't all that surprising. There's a decent chance The Force Awakens had reshoots in its schedule and there isn't a blockbuster in cinemas today that hasn't had reshoots for it. The difference here, of course, is that Rogue One is a hugely anticipated film and people are crawling over any bit of news going.

The idea of not testing well, however, is interesting. Gareth Edwards has said that the creative angle behind the film is that it's more closer to a tough, gritty war movie. This alone is, in our mind, the whole reason for the film. Star Wars has always been a space opera, sure, but to see it from a completely different viewpoint - that of the ground soldier - is really, really cool.

There's also been reports that Rogue One is also a lot more violent than previous Star Wars films, with reports that Darth Vader turns up and decapitates people with wild abandon. There was even talk that he uses Rebel soldiers as a human shield with the Force. Again, incredible and unlike anything we've seen in Star Wars to date.

That's got to scare the bejaysus out of Disney and, in that sense, maybe they wanted reshoots to cut it all down. Who knows?

Via PageSix.com
Image via Instagram

Image via Instagram

UPDATE: Reports surrounding last weeks shooting at Irving Plaza continue to be revealed. According to DNAinfo New York, a gun was found inside of a hidden compartment within the vehicle that Troy Ave was driven to the hospital in. Investigators have reportedly matched this gun to one of the bullets that struck and killed Troy Aves bodyguard Ronald McPhatter aka BSBBanga.

It has been reported that NYPDs auto crime division found three guns in total hidden within this same vehicle. Details from this developing story continue to shine more light on exactly what may have happened that night. DNAinfo also reports that the entire incident was due to someone who covers the rap industry and gave Troy Ave a bad rap that started it all.

NYPD believes that after a brawl between Troy Ave and Mainos entourages, Troy made an attempt to pull out his gun but it went out prematurelysending a shot through his own foot and the floor, which wound up hitting a victim identified as Christopher Vinson, 34. Vinson was reportedly on the main floor, underneath the green room where the brawl was taking place. The security footage of Troy letting off multiple shots followed this moment.

We will update with more details as they become available.

Last week after a recent T.I. concert at Irving Plaza in New York City was abruptly brought to a halt following a shooting, it was later revealed that rapper Troy Ave had some involvement in the incident. Soon after, security footage from the venue showed a clear image of Troy Ave firing several shots. Today it has been reported that the Brooklyn rapper was formally charged with attempted murder for the occurrence.

According to the New York Times, the 33-year-old rapper born Roland Collins was charged last night in the Manhattan Criminal Court with charges of attempted murder and criminal possession of a weapon. Collins pleaded not guilty to these charges and asked the judge for $50,000 bail, considering he has no previous criminal record. However, Judge Ushir Pandit-Durant ordered for him to be held without bail until trial.

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That nights incident resulted in the death of Collins own bodyguard Ronald McPhatter, and left several more injuredincluding Collins himself, who showed up to court in a wheelchair due to being shot in the leg.

His lawyers Scott E. Leemon and John Stella claim that Collins was not responsible for the shots fired just before T.I. was set to perform. But because of the security footage that surfaced, Detective John Santiago was able to charge Collins with attempted murder.

Details about this situation are still unfolding.

More from Pigeons & Planes
Troy Ave will have to spend at least the next two weeks in the infirmary at Riker's Island, although his lawyer told Billboard on Tuesday (May 31) that the rapper is the real victim in the shooting last Wednesday (May 25) at Irving Plaza that took the life of 33-year-old Roland (Edgar) McPhatter.

"I said it in court, he's the real victim here," attorney Scott Leemon said of the Brooklyn rapper born Roland Collins, 30, who pleaded not guilty to attempted murder charges in a Manhattan courtroom on Monday (May 30). Collins is being held without bail and was brought into the courtroom in a wheelchair following two surgeries on his legs conducted in the prison infirmary. Leemon also stated in court that McPhatter was not shot by his client and that Collins did not shoot himself.

Troy Ave Faces Court Over Deadly Shooting at Irving Plaza

According to Newsday, bodyguard McPhatter was facing attempted murder charges as a result of a shooting outside a Manhattan hookah bar in November and was due back in court in the case on June 29.

Leemon would not comment on what the surgeries entailed and what specific injuries Collins suffered in the incident, which also resulted in two other people getting wounded when gunfire erupted backstage in the venue's VIP room. "His longtime friend and bodyguard died trying to protect him," Leemon said of McPhatter. "As my co-counsel, John Stella, said in court, Troy has no criminal record and he is not a gangsta rapper."

Stella was specifically reacting to NYPD Commissioner William Bratton's comments last week in which he lamented the violence in the "gangsta rap world," which he said glorified violence. "The crazy world of these so-called rap artists who are basically thugs, that basically celebrate violence they did all their lives, and unfortunately that violence oftentimes manifests itself during their performances and that's exactly what happened last evening," Bratton said.

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As for the eight-second clip of security footage that police released the day after the shooting, Leemon said it doesn't tell the whole story of what happened in that backstage area before or after the shooting and who was just outside of the camera's range as it took place. Leemon declined to comment when asked if the real shooter is still out there or if stringent security procedures were in place at the backstage entrance to the venue. "If anyone does have information about this case, please feel free to reach out to me," he urged witnesses.

Troy Ave Arrested Following Irving Plaza Shooting

According to The New York Times, NYPD Detective John Santiago, who signed the criminal complaint charging Collins with attempted murder, based his finding entirely on the security camera footage that appeared to show a person the police identified as Collins limping into the room, raising a handgun and firing a shot in the "direction of other individuals." Results of ballistic tests from the scene have not yet been revealed.

Collins is due in court for a status hearing on June. 9.
Under the stony eye of President Abraham Lincoln, down the marble steps from where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his I Have a Dream speech, and over the rumbling of thousands of bikers gathered to honor those who serve in the military, Donald Trump on Sunday told a crowd of veterans and their families: We dont win with military.

In a red ballcap with his trademark Mark America Great Again, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee told a biker gear-clad crowd, many sporting military patches, that Memorial Day is our day. Trump has claimed that attending a military academy during his high school years was essentially the same as serving. He also effectively dodged the draft during the Vietnam War with claims of bone spurs, educational deferments, and a high draft number.

When you think of the great Gen. Patton and all of our great generals, theyre spinning in their graves when they watch we cant beat ISIS, Trump said. He added later, Our country doesnt win anymore; we dont win with military.

Yet a number of the onlookers said the comments were refreshing rather than offensive, underscoring the challenge for the campaign of likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and her unlikely Never Trump GOP allies.

Rolling Thunder, the group that organizes the annual Memorial Day weekend motorcycle event, invited Trump to speak. Traditionally, the motorcycle ride from the Pentagon to the National Mall, begun in 1988 to bring attention to prisoners of war and those missing in action in Vietnam, is more patriotic than partisan.

But Trump delivered a defiant version of his stump speech. As part of an ever-shifting foreign policy he dubs America First, he said the U.S. shouldnt spend so much time defending other countries who dont even like us. He also reiterated hed consider pulling U.S. troops out of NATO, a multilateral security alliance, as well as Japan and South Korea. You always have to be prepared to walk, folks, he said.

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Repeating a popular conservative line on the campaign trail, he continued, We have to rebuild our military, its been decimated. Actually, military spending is at historic highs.

Trump criticized Clinton, his likely general election opponent, for comments on the beleaguered Department of Veterans Affairss continued struggle with wait times.

Trump also has come under fire from the veterans community for his belated granting of funds promised to veterans groups. On Sunday, he repeated he had raised $6 million (though campaign officials have suggested its less), and said he would announce on Tuesday which groups received the money.

Early in Trumps campaign, he said that Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a POW in Vietnam, was not a hero. McCain has said Trump owes POWs an apology; Trump has thus far declined to grant one.

Yet such breaks with decades of U.S. foreign policy and general decorum is what has helped boost Trumps campaign  including with veterans.

Byron Jones of North Carolina, whos ridden in Rolling Thunder more than two-dozen times, and served in Vietnam as an Army Ranger, said he likes Trumps plain talkin. Hes not a politician, he told Foreign Policy.

We wouldve won that war if they wouldve let us, he said of Vietnam.

Also in Trumps audience was Lillian Anderson, who was working but decided to listen. She has two daughters serving in the Navy, an ex-husband who served in the Air Force, and a grandfather who served in WWII.

In a way I understand, because if you stretch the military too thin, then its not effective, she said of Trumps speech, though she added he needs to get more specific about his policy proposals. I just dont want him to start another war, she added, saying his off-the-cuff style is risky.

Asked whether she supports Trump, Anderson cautioned him to respect the military, given he hasnt served. Dont go there, she said. Yet she said shes now leaning toward Trump, even though I know its finger food.

Its rhetoric, Anderson laughed, you have to separate it from the real stuff.

Credit: Alex Wong / Staff
Donald Trump

Hundreds of pages of Trump University internal documents were released on Tuesday in connection with an ongoing fraud lawsuit against the presumptive Republican presidential nominee's now-defunct series of courses on real estate and investing.

The unsealed documents include sales and marketing "playbooks" from 2007 through 2010. Politico, however, published the 2010 playbook in March.

One of the playbooks advised members of the marketing team to be vague about pricing of Trump University courses.

If a client is adamant about knowing the price, simply say 'Our course range anywhere from $29 to $35,000 thats why we have this interview/screening process to make sure you will be receive the most appropriate level of support to help you achieve your goals [sic]."

Later, the playbook acknowledged that it may be uncomfortable when a prospective client asks, "How much will this cost?"

"After you have heard this question you will start to get a little uneasy," the playbook read. "You are nervous because you know this will cost money, and lots of it at that."

The playbook advised marketing-team members to respond to questions about money by saying, for example, "Im not talking about tens of thousands of dollars, but on the other hand not a couple of hundred dollars either.

The documents were unsealed as part of a court decision by Judge Gonzalo Curiel, whom Trump has called a "hater" and suggested his Mexican heritage made him biased and unfit to oversee the case.

Before the documents were released on Tuesday, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman slammed Trump and his eponymous University as "phony" and "shameless."

Trump remains enmeshed in multiple lawsuits filed by former students of Trump University and faces a third fraud suit from Schneiderman, which likely won't go to trial until after the November election. The suits accuse Trump of defrauding students into paying thousands of dollars for worthless classes on real estate and investing.

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Trump and his lawyers, however, have continually defended the for-profit university, citing stellar student reviews. Some students, however, may have been pressured into writing them, The New York Times has reported.

NOW WATCH: Heres why your jeans have that tiny front pocket





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By Daren Butler ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey's conflict with Kurdish militants, said to have killed more than 5,000 people since July, has also destroyed at least 6,000 buildings that will cost approaching 1 billion lira ($340 million) to rebuild, according to a government estimate. Large swathes of towns in the mainly Kurdish southeast have been devastated by daily shelling, blasts and gunfire in battles that are still raging, even as President Tayyip Erdogan says the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) is in its "death throes". Turkish warplanes struck overnight at PKK gun positions and shelters in Semdinli by the border with Iraq and Iran, the army said. The fighting, at its most intense in two decades, resumed after a two-year-old ceasefire collapsed last July. A day earlier, roadside bombs killed at least six people in two attacks on security forces in the southeast. Air strikes in northern Iraq's Metina area have killed 14 PKK fighters since last Wednesday, the army said. As fighting continued, the government of new Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said 6,320 buildings, or 11,000 dwellings, had been destroyed in five areas alone: Sur in Diyabakir, Silopi, Cizre and Idil in Sirnak province and Yuksekova in Hakkari. "We now face a process of planning reconstruction and repairing damaged houses," Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said after a cabinet meeting on Monday, estimating the cost of rebuilding in the areas at 855 million lira ($290 million). Lawmaker Dengir Mir Mehmet Firat of the pro-Kurdish HDP was dismissive of the reconstruction plans in ancient places like Sur and Cizre, where the "historic fabric had been wiped away". "They are deluding themselves and trying to cover up their crimes," he told Reuters. "If they are think they can win over the local people like this they are wrong. The destruction of these towns has caused an emotional rupture." MOSQUES AND CHURCHES DAMAGED Some 338 civilians, including 78 children, have died in the conflict since last summer, and curfews violated the rights of 1.6 million people, Turkey's Human Rights Foundation said. Ankara says 355,000 people have migrated to other parts of Turkey. "These are the last death throes of the separatist terror group," Erdogan told a crowd waving Turkish flags and chanting "damn the PKK" in the Aegean coastal city of Izmir overnight. Military sources say 5,000 PKK militants have been killed since the conflict resumed, around half in southeast Turkey and half in northern Iraq, where the PKK has bases. They put the death toll for Turkish security forces at around 500. The PKK, designated a terrorist group by Turkey and its Western allies, launched its insurgency in 1984 and more than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict. Alongside destruction of housing, nine mosques and two churches in Sur alone have suffered damage, a local official told journalists taken under escort to the area on Tuesday. The 500-year-old Kursunlu mosque's facade is pockmarked by gunfire, its interior burned out and sandbags in its windows testament to fighting there, a Reuters witness said. The Roman-era basalt walls which surround Sur district were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in July 2015. Weeks later, the armed conflict was reignited. (Additional reporting by Gulsen Solaker in Ankara, Seyhmus Cakan in Diyarbakir; Writing by Daren Butler, editing by Larry King)
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Muslim families cannot understand and accept birth control and family planning.

Erdogan said in a speech in Istanbul Monday that it was womens responsibility to make sure Turkeys population  currently more than 78 million  keeps growing, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

We need to increase the number of our descendants, Erdogan said. People talk about birth control, about family planning. No Muslim family can understand and accept that! As God and as the great prophet said, we will go this way. And in this respect the first duty belongs to mothers.

His comments are the latest to anger womens-rights activists in the country. Erdogan has previously described birth control as treason, according to AFP, and in 2012, women activists protested in the streets over the then Prime Ministers announcement that his ruling party planned to increase restrictions on abortion, which is legal up to the 10th week of pregnancy in Turkey.

[AFP]
Yes, that headline is factually correct and we're totally not making this up.

Yesterday, a sizable contingent of Pokemon fans marched on the Japanese Consulate in Hong Kong to protest Nintendo's plans to rename Pikachu. The argument centres around a Cantonese translation of Pokemon. With the release of Pokemon Sun and Moon, Nintendo released the new 151 creatures in China under Mandarin names.

Many of the names were renamed entirely, much to the ire of Chinese fans. Pikachu, in particular, was originally known as Bei-Kaa-Chyu (aA?e ) in Hong Kong. However, with Sun and Moon, Pikachu is now known as Pikaqiu (csaA?a). While you might argue that the new name sounds more like the English version, the name sounds completely different in Cantonese.

Fans protesting are demanding that Nintendo use a different Cantonese translation of the beloved characters, with many arguing that Nintendo is not respecting Hong Kong culture. Many are vowing to boycott both Pokemon and Nintendo entirely if the changes aren't made.

By harmonising the names of Pokemon, it's an easier option for Nintendo and brings Hong Kong more closely in line with mainland China. However, language and the differences between Mandarin and Cantonese and Hong Kong's nomenclature is highly political. Many of the protestors are in favour of Hong Kong seceding from China and forming an independent nation.

So far, more than 6,000 fans have signed an online petition demanding Nintendo to reconsider their decision.

Via QZ.com
Two Asian-American students at Arizona State University were allegedly assaulted on the light rail for speaking Mandarin on Saturday. The victims, one male and one female, were on their way home in Tempe when the 22-year-old suspect, Kalie Rutledge, reportedly interrupted the two's conversation and then followed them off the train to physically attack them.

While on the train, Rutledge allegedly yelled, "I don't speak Chinese" and told the two to shut up, ABC15 reported.

"It was 100% racial hatred, no other reason," the female victim, Xiaolin Shi, said, according to China Daily. "I don't know [Rutledge]. I've never met her before."

Source: Ross D. Franklin/AP

Shortly after the attack, Rutledge was arrested and charged with assault, disorderly conduct and aggravated assault. After being released from Maricopa County Jail, she will attend her preliminary hearing on Monday, according to China Daily.

Shi's remains in stable condition, though her eye socket was fractured from being hit in the face.

Earlier this year, a fellow Chinese ASU student was shot by a driver following a car accident. The incident sparked a larger conversation surrounding gun control and recent violence against the local Chinese community.
By Amy Sawitta Lefevre BANGKOK (Reuters) - A Thai court on Tuesday found two men guilty of attacking villagers and human rights activists protesting against a gold mine in what an international rights watchdog called an important verdict for people standing up for communities. About 150 men, many of them masked and armed, attacked villagers and rights workers blocking a road to a gold mine in the northeastern province of Loei on May 15, 2014. Many of the villagers, who were protesting against the environmental damage they said the mine caused, were rounded up and some were beaten, they said. The attackers were not identified at the time while police declined to comment. Investigators were later able to identify two men, a father and son, the former a retired army officer and the latter a serving one, as being among the attackers. The two, retired Lieutenant General Poramet Pomnak and his son, Lieutenant Colonel Poramin Pomnak, were found guilty of taking part in the attack and causing bodily harm, the court said in a statement. Poramin was sentenced to just under three years in prison while Poramet was handed a two-year sentence. Reuters was unable to contact their lawyer or an army spokesman for comment. Environmental and right activists have long criticized Thailand for a poor environmental record and a culture of impunity for the rich and powerful. Well-connected figures including military officers, civil servants and business people, often enjoy special privileges in exploiting resources and protection from scrutiny and prosecution for wrongdoing. The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) welcomed the verdict as an important step. "It establishes that human rights defenders and community activists can't be attacked with impunity," Sam Zarifi, Asia-Pacific director at the ICJ, told Reuters. "The overwhelming trend in Thailand for community rights defenders remains that of impunity for their attackers. We hope this is the beginning of a new trend." More than 100 villagers showed up at the Loei Provincial Court to hear the verdict. "The villagers have received justice but the legal process is not complete," said Sor Rattanamanee Polkla, a lawyer for the community rights activists. "There were more than two attackers in this case but police have not yet proceeded with a case against the rest." Thailand has been ruled by a junta since the military took power from an elected, civilian government in a May 2014 coup. Last month, the junta said all gold mining would be abolished by the end of the year over environmental and health concerns. (Editing by Robert Birsel)
By Tom Hals

WILMINGTON, Del (Reuters) - Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners underpriced their 2013 $24.9 billion (17.1 billion) buyout of Dell Inc [DI.UL] by about 22 percent and may have to pay tens of millions to investors who opposed the deal for the computer maker, a Delaware judge ruled on Tuesday.

The ruling, which applies to about 5.5 million Dell shares, is a victory for the specialised hedge funds that have increasingly tried to squeeze more money from mergers using a type of lawsuit known as appraisal.

The lawsuits allow investors who oppose a deal, such as the bitterly contested Dell buyout, to sue and ask a Delaware judge to determine a fair deal price.

Activist investor Carl Icahn urged Dell shareholders to vote down the deal and take their case for fair value to court. Initially appraisal was sought for about 40 million shares, but the bulk was removed for procedural reasons.

In Tuesday's ruling, Vice Chancellor Travis Laster said fair value was $17.62 per share, not the $13.75 per share deal price.

With interest, investors who sought appraisal will collect about $20.84 per share.

The Dell investors presented evidence that fair value was $28.61 per share, which would have cost Michael Dell and Silver Lake hundreds of millions of dollars. The buyers contended that fair value was $12.68.

Dell and a lawyer for the stockholders, Stuart Grant, declined to comment. Tuesday's ruling can be appealed.

Laster said the Dell buyout took advantage of a dip in the company's stock price and its board never determined the intrinsic value before negotiating.

"The original merger consideration was dictated by what a financial sponsor could pay and still generate outsized returns," wrote Laster.

The judge dedicated much of the opinion to explaining why deal price was not a fair value indicator, particularly in a management-led buyout. Delaware judges had used deal price in appraisals involving the closely watched buyouts of Ancestry.com in 2012 and BMC Software Inc in 2013.

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The added cost to the buyers from Tuesday's ruling is about $36 million.

About 3.9 million appraised shares were held by affiliates of Magnetar Capital.

A small number of hedge funds have built a strategy of swooping in just before a deal closes, when there is less risk a deal would collapse, and buying stock for the sole purpose of seeking appraisal.

Investors who seek appraisal do not get paid at the deal's closing, but they collect interest of 5 percentage points above the federal discount rate while the case is pending. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has complained that that encourages hedge funds to bring cases because they can earn a return even when a deal price is found to be fair.

One of the biggest losers from the Dell case may be T Rowe Price, one of the few mutual fund managers to test the appraisal strategy.

Dell was able to knock out T Rowe Price's stock, which comprised the bulk of the shares in the case, because the fund manager mistakenly voted in favour of the buyout.

T Rowe Price stood to collect around $190 million if its Dell stock had been appraised. Laster also ruled on Tuesday the fund manager was not entitled to interest on its shares.

"T Rowe Price runs mutual funds and allocates capital, but they may regret trying to do this themselves," said Minor Myers, a professor at Brooklyn Law School in New York. "This is just one of the pitfalls with appraisal, and it's not for novices."

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Richard Chang)
By Dustin Volz

WASHINGTON, May 31 (Reuters) - Police do not need a warrant to obtain a person's cellphone location data held by wireless carriers, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Tuesday, dealing a setback to privacy advocates.

The full 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, voted 12-3 that the government can get the information under a decades-old legal theory that it had already been disclosed to a third party, in this case a telephone company.

The ruling overturns a divided 2015 opinion from the court's three-judge panel and reduces the likelihood that the Supreme Court would consider the issue.

The decision arose from several armed robberies in Baltimore and Baltimore County, Maryland, in early 2011, leading to the convictions of Aaron Graham and Eric Jordan.

The convictions were based in part on 221 days of cellphone data investigators obtained from wireless provider Sprint, which included about 29,000 location records for the defendants, according to Monday's opinion.

Writing for the majority, Judge Diana Motz said obtaining cell-site information did not violate the protection against unreasonable searches found in the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution because cellphone users are generally aware that they are voluntarily sharing such data with their provider.

"Anyone who has stepped outside to 'get a signal,' or has warned a caller of a potential loss of service before entering an elevator, understands, on some level, that location matters," Motz wrote.

Judge James Wynn disagreed, arguing that users do not discretely submit their location the way they would when dialing a phone number or depositing money into a bank. Location data should be exempt from the third-party doctrine that affects more traditional records, Wynn argued.

The Supreme Court last year declined to review a separate test case on cell-site location information rising from another U.S. court of appeals, which had also ruled in favor of the government.

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Last month, a panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also held that no warrant was required to obtain such data. The defendant filed a petition for a rehearing before the full court last week.

"The Fourth Circuit's decision is not the last word on this issue," said Nathan Freed Wessler, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a brief supporting Graham and Jordan.

The U.S. Justice Department declined to comment on the decision.

(Reporting by Dustin Volz; Editing by Richard Chang)
(Adds privacy advocate's comment)

By Dustin Volz

WASHINGTON, May 31 (Reuters) - Police do not need a warrant to obtain a person's cellphone location data held by wireless carriers, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Tuesday, dealing a setback to privacy advocates.

The full 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, voted 12-3 that the government can get the information under a decades-old legal theory that it had already been disclosed to a third party, in this case a telephone company.

The ruling overturns a divided 2015 opinion from the court's three-judge panel and reduces the likelihood that the Supreme Court would consider the issue.

The decision arose from several armed robberies in Baltimore and Baltimore County, Maryland, in early 2011, leading to the convictions of Aaron Graham and Eric Jordan.

The convictions were based in part on 221 days of cellphone data investigators obtained from wireless provider Sprint, which included about 29,000 location records for the defendants, according to the appeals court opinion.

Writing for the majority, Judge Diana Motz said obtaining cell-site information did not violate the protection against unreasonable searches found in the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution because cellphone users are generally aware that they are voluntarily sharing such data with their provider.

"Anyone who has stepped outside to 'get a signal,' or has warned a caller of a potential loss of service before entering an elevator, understands, on some level, that location matters," Motz wrote.

Judge James Wynn disagreed, arguing that users do not discretely submit their location the way they would when dialing a phone number or depositing money into a bank. Location data should be exempt from the third-party doctrine that affects more traditional records, Wynn argued.

The Supreme Court last year declined to review a separate test case on cell-site location information rising from another U.S. court of appeals, which had also ruled in favor of the government.

Story continues

Last month, a panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also held that no warrant was required to obtain such data. The defendant filed a petition for a rehearing before the full court last week.

The Supreme Court may eventually need to rule on the issue as other plaintiffs file challenges in lower courts, said Nathan Freed Wessler, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a brief supporting Graham and Jordan.

The U.S. Justice Department declined to comment on the decision.

(Reporting by Dustin Volz; Editing by Richard Chang)
BEIRUT (Reuters) - The United Nations said on Tuesday it was worried about 8,000 Syrians trapped by fighting north of Aleppo where Islamic State has advanced against rebels, and that both Kurdish and rebel authorities had hindered people fleeing the area. The fighting has displaced thousands more Syrians near the Turkish frontier where more than 160,000 people are already sheltering, most of whom fled fighting earlier this year, the U.N. says. "An unknown number of people are also unable to flee due to fighting and the closure of the main road leading north towards the town of Azaz in northwestern Syria," said a joint statement from the Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Syria and the Humanitarian Coordinator for the Syria Crisis. Islamic State advanced in recent days into the opposition-held town of Marea. The Turkish-backed rebels who are battling Islamic State north of Aleppo have also been involved in hostilities with the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which controls wide areas of territory to the west of Marea. In a separate report on the situation, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said civilians fleeing the IS advance had been prevented by Syrian Kurdish authorities from entering areas under their control in response to rebel shelling of a Kurdish-held area of Aleppo. It said about 2,000 people had managed to evacuate Marea and nearby Sheikh Issa, which were encircled by Islamic State on May 27. "However, an estimated 7,000 civilians still remain inside and unable to leave due to restrictions imposed by Kurdish authorities," it added. OCHA said this was a Kurdish response to rebel shelling of Aleppo's Kurdish-held Sheikh Maqsoud area. Meanwhile, opposition authorities in the rebel-held town of Azaz near the Turkish border had issued a directive on May 24 to not let in any more people fleeing Islamic State-held areas, OCHA said. The court that issued the order cited fears of infiltration by covert Islamic State militants posing as internally displaced people (IDPs), after 8,000 IDPs arrived in Azaz. "Humanitarian agencies have continued to suspend operations and evacuate staff from towns in close proximity to hostilities," the OCHA report said. (Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Raissa Kasolowsky)
By Barani Krishnan NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices dipped on Tuesday as a stronger dollar and slide in equity prices sparked profit-taking, but crude futures posted a fourth straight monthly gain as investors bet that the global glut was slowly easing. Crude futures had gained early in the session, with investors expecting higher U.S. fuel demand as peak driving season arrived in the No. 1 oil consumer. Caution ahead of weekly U.S. crude inventory data kept investors from pushing prices toward seven-month highs above $50 a barrel. The dollar's rise and slide in Wall Street stocks in afternoon trade eventually tipped oil into the negative zone. Brent crude futures for July settled down 7 cents at $49.69 a barrel before expiring as the spot contract. August Brent , the market's spot contract from Wednesday, finished down 47 cents, or nearly 1 percent, at $49.89. U.S. crude's West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures for July settled at $49.10, down 23 cents, or 0.5 percent, from Friday's settlement. U.S. financial markets were closed on Monday for the Memorial Day holiday. For the month, Brent rose 3 percent and WTI gained 7 percent. "The dollar's strength and the weakness in equities hit crude on the day," said Chris Jarvis, analyst at Caprock Risk Management in Frederick, Maryland. "Plus, $50 remains a psychological target to cross, with caution playing ahead of the EIA data." The dollar <.DXY> gained as strong U.S. consumer spending data fed expectations of a rate hike in coming months. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), will issue crude supply-demand data on Thursday. Oil prices last traded above $50 on Thursday, when Brent last hit a November peak of $50.51 and WTI an October high of $50.21.Prices rose early in the session after traders said that data from market intelligence firm Genscape showed a drawdown of 686,700 barrels at the Cushing, Oklahoma delivery point for WTI futures in the week to May 27. A Reuters poll of analysts forecast that U.S. crude stocks fell 2.7 million barrels last week. [EIA/S] U.S. fuel demand is set to rise with the summer driving season that began with Monday's holiday. Hedge funds and other money managers last week raised bullish bets on WTI to 2016 highs. Investors do not expect the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to make any substantial changes in production at a meeting set for Thursday. Some analysts believe oil prices can slowly meander higher. "The bulk of our technical indicators remain tilted in a bullish direction ... with upside possibilities to the $52-52.50 areas still valid," said Jim Ritterbusch of Chicago-based oil consultancy Ritterbusch & Associates. (Additional reporting by Ahmad Ghaddar in LONDON and Henning Gloystein in SINGAPORE; Editing by William Hardy and David Gregorio)
(Adds background on case, paragraphs 3-4)

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON, May 31 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected Cubist Pharmaceuticals Inc's bid to revive four patents for its antibiotic drug Cubicin, paving the way for rival Hospira Inc to introduce a generic version as soon as this year.

The high court left in place a November ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upholding a lower court ruling invaliding four of five patents held by Merck & Co Inc-owned Cubist, which were challenged by Pfizer Inc-owned Hospira.

The appeals court decided that four of the patents, expiring in 2019 and 2020, were invalid, and that one, expiring in June of this year, was valid, meaning Hospira can move forward with plans for a generic version of the drug.

Cubicin is an antibiotic injection used in hospitals to treat bacterial skin infections.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)
By Lawrence Hurley WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected Cubist Pharmaceuticals Inc's bid to revive four patents for its antibiotic drug Cubicin, paving the way for rival Hospira Inc to introduce a generic version as soon as this year. The high court left in place a November ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upholding a lower court ruling invaliding four of five patents held by Merck & Co Inc-owned Cubist, which were challenged by Pfizer Inc-owned Hospira. The appeals court decided that four of the patents, expiring in 2019 and 2020, were invalid, and that one, expiring in June of this year, was valid, meaning Hospira can move forward with plans for a generic version of the drug. Cubicin is an antibiotic injection used in hospitals to treat bacterial skin infections.
It was only this morning that we brought you news of Garth Brooks' ALLEGED desire to return to Ireland - and now bookies are offering 1/4 odds that the man in the cowboy hat will return in 2017.

BoyleSports are offering a number of 'Croke Park Specials' with odds on the Oklahoma man returning both to play one date at Croker next year, three dates at Croker next year, and odds on him returning to Croke Park before 2020.

If you're a betting man/woman, other names in the ring for next year's Croke Park stadium gigs include Ed Sheeran and Coldplay - but it's Brooks that is the favourite, according to the bookies.

A spokesperson for BoyleSports said: "Garth Brooks is almost a certainty to return to Croke Park next year if hes allowed but diehard fans may well be disappointed as he will only be allowed to play three nights unless the Croke Park concert rule of three concerts per year is uplifted.

Ed Sheeran, who is currently on a break from music wouldnt be out of the running to play Croker in 2017 but if Mr Brooks has his way he will want to play all three available concert dates. The only thing that might backfire on him is that he disappointed a lot of fans with the fiasco that he caused in 2014 and his friends in low places may not have forgiven him.

In any case, Bruce Springsteen's recent gigs were not announced until this February - so make sure you put that betting slip in a safe place, if you fancy a flutter.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Tuesday condemned an attempted missile launch by North Korea and urged Pyongyang to refrain from actions that create tensions in northeastern Asia. "The United States, and the rest of the international community, calls on North Korea to refrain from actions including this failed missile test that further raise tensions in the region and focus instead on taking concrete steps toward fulfilling its international commitments," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. "The United States strongly condemns North Korea's missile test," he told a news briefing. The U.S. military's Strategic Command assessed that North Korea attempted to launch an intermediate-range ballistic missile on Monday but that the test was a failure. (Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Writing by David Alexander; Editing by Doina Chiacu)
OTTAWA (Reuters) - The United Arab Emirates on Tuesday freed a Libyan-Canadian man acquitted of aiding militants and he is set to leave the country on Wednesday, campaigners on his behalf said in a statement. Salim Alaradi and two Libyan-American businessmen - Kamal Eldarat and his son Mohamed - had been charged with supporting Libyan militants but were cleared by a UAE security court on Monday. The campaign to free Alaradi said he had been released at 10 p.m. Abu Dhabi time (1800 GMT). "Lawyers and family welcome the release but are cautious until he leaves the country and is reunited safely with his family. Tomorrow morning Canadian officials will continue to provide assistance and will accompany Alaradi to the airport," said the statement. In the Canadian capital Ottawa, a source connected to the case confirmed Alaradi had been released and was set to leave on Wednesday. Alaradi was arrested in 2014 on a visit to the UAE. The Eldarats were detained the same year. The U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture said in February he had received credible information that the men had been tortured in custody, an allegation the UAE denies. (Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Alan Crosby)
(Reuters) - British fashion retailer Austin Reed Ltd will start winding down as no viable offer was received for the company over a five-week sale process, its joint administrators said. The retailer will shut its 120 stores by the end of June, which will affect about 1,000 jobs, Austin Reed's administrators at AlixPartners Services UK LLP said in a statement on Tuesday. Five of the company's outlets inside Boundary Mills stores will be sold to AR Operations Ltd. The deal includes the transfer of 28 employees to AR Operations. The retailer's 'Austin Reed' and 'Country Casuals' brands have also been sold to Border IP Ltd. The statement did not provide the value of both the deals. An AlixPartners spokeswoman was not immediately available for comment. Austin Reed, a 116-year-old business, fell into administration on April 26 after struggling for years in the UK's intensely competitive clothing market. The news came just a day after British department stores group BHS was placed into administration, putting the 88-year-old retailer in danger of disappearing from the high street and placing 11,000 jobs at risk. (Reporting by Esha Vaish in Bengaluru and Costas Pitas in London; Editing by Kirti Pandey)
(Adds quotes, details)

By Kate Holton and William Schomberg

LONDON, May 31 (Reuters) - British voters have moved towards voting to leave the European Union in next month's referendum according to two surveys by polling firm ICM, surprising investors and sending sterling sharply lower.

The "Out" campaign stood three points ahead of "In" in each of the two surveys for the Guardian newspaper, one of which was conducted online and the other by telephone.

They were conducted over three days to Sunday after official figures showed on Thursday that British net migration hit the second highest level on record last year. Last week, leaders of the Out camp turned their focus back on migration.

Britons will vote on June 23 on whether to remain in the 28-member EU, a choice with far-reaching consequences for politics, the economy, defence and diplomacy in Britain and far beyond.

From U.S. President Barack Obama to the International Monetary Fund, a host of world leaders and international organisations have cautioned British voters about the risks of leaving the bloc it joined in 1973. The Bank of England has said a British exit, or Brexit, could tip the economy into recession.

Despite the warnings, Out has appeared to gain traction by focusing on the issue of migration. Many voters are concerned about the strains placed on schools, hospitals and housing from people moving to live in Britain.

ICM said the polls published on Tuesday gave Out its first lead in one of its telephone surveys.

Telephone polls have previously tended to give the In campaign a comfortable lead and the sharp swing wrong-footed financial markets, sending sterling to a one-week low against the U.S. dollar.

Polls conducted over the Internet have largely suggested a tighter race but ICM's latest weekly online poll - separate to its phone survey - showed voters favouring Britain leaving the EU by 47 percent to 44 percent.

"Our poll rather unhinges a few accepted orthodoxies," ICM's director Martin Boon said. "It is only one poll, but in a rather unexpected reverse of polling assumptions so far, both our phone poll and our online poll are consistent on both vote intentions and on the EU referendum."

Story continues

A poll published on Monday in The Telegraph newspaper showed support for Out rising but still behind the In campaign. Lynton Crosby, the political strategist behind Prime Minister David Cameron's election victory, attributed the move to the focus on migration.

The ICM polls published on Tuesday were conducted between May 27 and 29. The telephone poll interviewed 1,004 people aged over 18. It found that 45 percent of respondents favoured leaving the EU compared with 42 percent who said they would vote to stay in the bloc. Thirteen percent said they did not know.

ICM interviewed 2,052 people for the online survey, which showed Out holding a three percentage point lead at 47 percent to 44 percent, and 9 percent undecided.

An online ICM poll published last week had put the two camps neck and neck at 45 percent each.

(Reporting by Kate Holton and William Schomberg; editing by Stephen Addison)
Kiev (AFP) - Ukraine's defiant pilot Nadiya Savchenko sang the national anthem Tuesday in a strident first appearance in parliament since her release in a prisoner swap with Russia last week.

The 35-year-old member of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko's populist party strode to the podium draped in the flag of Ukraine and holding one of Crimea -- annexed by Russia in March 2014 -- at the opening of an emotional session.

Savchenko has turned into a national symbol of resistance to Russia since joining a volunteer battalion fighting pro-Kremlin eastern separatist insurgents and then being taken prisoner in June 2014.

She then mysteriously turned up in a Russian detention centre and was sentenced to 22 years behind bars for her alleged role in the murder of two Moscow state television journalists covering the war.

Her release in exchange for two purported members of Russia's military intelligence service who were captured during a May 2015 battle came after months of international negotiations and was celebrated in the West.

During her detention Savchenko was elected in absentia to Ukraine's parliament.

She also staged a series of prolonged hunger strikes -- which were dismissed on Tuesday by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as a staged act.

"She is a rather peculiar lady and, by the way, fairly plump," he said in an online questions-and-answer session with one of Russia's most popular dailies.

"So all those hysterics about her hunger strike -- I think now everyone understands what they were worth."

- 'Nothing is forgiven' -

But some analysts say Savchenko may yet become a thorn-in-the-side for President Petro Poroshenko because of her political ambitions and high esteem among soldiers still fighting in the former Soviet republic's 25-month war.

Savchenko has already floated the possibility of one day running for president and gave a hint of the trouble she may cause other members of parliament -- some of them tainted by links to powerful business interests -- in her opening address.

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"I have returned and I will not let you forget -- you, the people who sit in these armchairs in parliament -- about the boys who began laying down their lives for Ukraine on Maidan Square and continue dying today in the east," she said.

Ukraine's bloody Euromaidan Revolution of February 2014 toppled an unpopular Moscow-backed leadership and opened the door to stronger ties with the West.

Some of the most prominent of the leaders of those historic days have since expressed disenchantment with Poroshenko's seeming inability to eliminate decades of cronyism and back-room dealings from Ukrainian politics.

One of Savchenko's first acts as deputy was to tear down a banner bearing her name and picture that had hung from the parliament's rostrum for months.

She also intimated a possible leading role in the struggle to rid the nation of the corruption that drove many to join the 2014 pro-EU revolt.

"I want to tell you that nothing is forgotten, no one is forgotten, and no one is forgiven," Savchenko said firmly.

"The people of Ukraine will not let us sit here if we betray them," she added in a veiled warning of another popular revolt.

Parliament speaker Andriy Parubiy praised Savchenko for being "one of the irreplaceable symbols of Ukraine at a time when Ukraine was on fire".

Other lawmakers stood and applauded as Savchenko approached the podium in a short-sleeved white shirt.
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - The United Nations raised alarm Tuesday concerning the fate of 300-400 Iraqi families rounded up by Islamic State (IS) group jihadists, possibly for use as human shields in the battleground city Fallujah.

UN officials have received "credible reports that families are being concentrated into the center of the city by Daesh and they are not allowed to leave these concentration points," said UN deputy representative to Iraq Lise Grande, using a term for the IS group.

"That would suggest that Daesh could be using them or may intend to use them as some kind of human shield," she told reporters.

"They are at extreme risk if there is a military confrontation."

Iraqi forces launched an offensive a week ago to recapture Fallujah, which became an IS group stronghold after its fighters seized the city in January 2014.

The United Nations has raised concerns with the Iraqi government, which has slowed down the pace of its operation to try to protect the trapped families.

The government is "fully aware" of the need to protect civilians during the assault, Grande said.

"The operation is moving more slowly than it might otherwise," she added.

Only 5,000 civilians of the 50,000 trapped in the city have managed to escape, many of whom walked for hours and came under fire as they fled, Grande said.

Fallujah and Mosul -- the capital of the northern province of Nineveh -- are the last two major cities the IS group holds in Iraq.
PITTSBURGH, PA / ACCESSWIRE / May 31, 2016 / Unique Pizza and Subs Corporation (UPZS) has announced its subsidiary PopsyCakes LLC will begin selling its five Unique flavored PopsyCakes, "The First Cupcake on a Pretzel", at four of the Six Flags Amusement Parks (NYSE:SIX).

PopsyCakes come in five Unique Flavors: Red Velvet Rush, Peanut Butter Burst, Strawberry Milkshake, Dark Chocolate Decadence & Vanilla Bean Dream. All five delicious PopsyCakes will be featured at these parks starting this week: Six Flags Magic Mountain Valencia, CA, inside The Cartoon Candy Kitchen; Six Flags New England Agawam, MA, inside The Candy Cabin; Six Flags Great America Gurnee, IL, inside Trudys Sweet Shop; Great Escape & Splashwater Kingdom Queensbury, NY, inside Dr. Sweet Tooth Candy Shop.

PopsyCakes President Marc Falcone said, "Six Flags Amusement Parks are the ultimate family fun parks and is a great venue for us to feature our gourmet PopsyCakes! When a family takes a vacation to one of the premier Six Flags Amusement Parks they are expecting to have a complete day full of fun and a lifetime of enjoyable memories. Now thanks to our partnership with Six Flags, our scrumptious PopsyCakes will be a part of those treasured family memories!"

History of PopsyCakes

The PopsyCakes Company was founded by Jessica Cervantes when she decided to create an innovative cupcake on an edible stick in 2006 at the age of 16. Ever since her grandmother taught her how to bake, Jessica has loved measuring and tasting different ingredients - and mixing them up to see how her culinary creations would turn out. But it wasn't until Jessica became a part of the International Business and Finance Academy at John A. Ferguson Senior High school, that baking and business came together in a brand new recipe for success.

The budding baker/entrepreneur, who emigrated to the U.S. from Cuba as a child, competed against 25,000 business students across the country and won first place in the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship National business plan competition which was held in 2008 in New York City, sponsored by Oppenheimer Funds.

Story continues

Visit us on the web: http://www.PopsyCakes.com & Six Flags: http://www.SixFlags.com

Twitter: @PopsyCakes, @SixFlags

About Unique Pizza and Subs:

Unique Pizza franchises pizza and sub restaurants throughout the United States. With a limited menu of pizzas, subs, calzones, salads, and beverages, the company is primarily focused on takeout and delivery services with limited full size restaurants. The company has three wholly owned subsidiaries Jose Madrid Salsa, Unique Pizza Taphouse and PopsyCakes.

Visit us on the web: http://www.uniquepizza.com

Safe Harbor Act: 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. There are no financials in this press release so this is not needed and undermines the release.

For Unique Pizza and Subs Corp. Investor Relations

Phone: (586) 228- 2290

Fax: (586) 228-6920

hank@capinc.net

http:/www.capinc.net



SOURCE: Unique Pizza and Subs Corporation
United Technologies Corp. (NYSE: UTX) unit, UTC Aerospace Systems, disclosed that it played a key role in the successful first flight of the next-generation Embraer E-Jet E2. According to the company, on board its maiden flight, the E2 was equipped with a number of systems, as well as, components from UTC Aerospace Systems.

United Technologies' UTC Aerospace Systems said it was selected by Embraer to be the sole source supplier of wheels and carbon brakes for the E2 aircraft family. The company said the electric system consisted electric power generation, emergency power generation, primary power distribution and secondary power distribution, and fire protection, evacuation systems and air data systems.

UTC Aerospace's President, David Gitlin, commented, "UTC Aerospace Systems is proud of our contributions to the E2 program, our close relationship with Embraer and the trust they have put in us. We congratulate Embraer on this historic milestone and we will continue to fully support the E2 over the life of the program."

The company indicated that it was selected by Pratt & Whitney as the exclusive nacelle provider for both engine models for Embraer's E2-Jet aircraft. The company added that the E2-Jets would be equipped with Pratt & Whitney's PurePower GearedTurbofan PW1700G and PW1900G engines that include UTC Aerospace Systems engine controls. The aircraft also includes Pratt & Whitney's APS2600 [E] auxiliary power unit.

See more from Benzinga

 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
Which Upstream Stocks Should You Consider as Oil Nears $50?

Oil is near $50

On May 27, 2016, US crude oil (USO)(OIIL) closed at $49.33, just 0.47% below its 2016 high of $49.56 on May 25. Crude oil rose 0.3% on May 27, 2016, compared to the previous trading session. This series will analyze the correlation of oil-weighted stocks with crude oil and the correlation of natural-gas-weighted stocks with natural gas. Understanding these correlations will help investors realign their portfolios based on quantitative data.

Upstream stocks

Out of the upstream companies that are part of the SPDR S&P Oil & Gas Exploration & Production ETF (XOP) and operate with a production mix of at least 60% of crude oil, Carrizo Oil & Gas (CRZO) had the highest positive correlation with WTI (West Texas Intermediate) crude oil between April 27 and May 27, 2016. It had a correlation of about 70.2% with US crude oil during this period.

Upstream stocks Whiting Petroleum (WLL), Clayton Williams Energy (CWEI), Murphy Oil (MUR), and Hess (HES) had correlations of 69.6%, 62.3%, 58.6%, and 57.8%, respectively, with US crude oil over the past month, as shown in the above table.

Diamondback Energy (FANG) and Halcon Resources (HK) had correlations of 25.7% and 23.4%, respectively, with WTI crude oil in the past month. Among XOP stocks that operate with production mixes of at least 60% crude oil, FANG and HK had the lowest one-month correlations with WTI crude oil.

Next, well look at the returns of these oil-weighted stocks compared to crude oil.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
US ambassador Kirk Wagar spoke to Yahoo Singapore last week. Photo: Hannah Teoh

The long-running territorial dispute in the South China Sea is as much about a countrys word as it is about the specific dispute, said the American ambassador to Singapore.

Kirk Wagar said that while the United States does not take a position on issues of sovereignty in the body of water, there are mechanisms for conflict resolution that many countries in the dispute have signed on to.

So if someone decides to ignore that process, then their signature becomes suspect on all other agreements. This is about a countrys word as much as it is about the specific dispute, said Wagar, who was speaking to Yahoo Singapore in a wide-ranging interview last week.

While the diplomat did not mention specific agreements, China is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which lays out comprehensive rules for use of the oceans.

The Middle Kingdom lays claim to most of the South China Sea. This includes several island chains and reefs that are also claimed by Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei and the Philippines. The latter has taken its case to the International Court of Arbitration.

Wagar reiterated that the US sees it as its responsibility to keep the sea lanes open, and to ensure unfettered commercial transportation in the South China Sea. This has sometimes resulted in tense encounters between the Chinese and American navies near the disputed isles.

Annual security summit

(Video by Jeremy Ho)

The diplomat spoke ahead of this weekends Shangri-La Dialogue, which will bring together defense ministers and chiefs from more than two dozen countries. A high-level American delegation, including Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Senator John McCain, will be in attendance.

The annual event has taken on added significance, given that an international tribunal at The Hague is expected to deliver its judgment on the case brought by the Philippines soon.

Story continues

This is not the first time that the Dialogue has taken place in the shadow of the South China Sea dispute.

In 2014, Chinas representative Lieutenant-General Wang Guanzhong slammed then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel for his provocative remarks. Hagel had denounced Chinas destabilising, unilateral actions in the South China Sea.

Ambassador Wagar told Yahoo Singapore that it is the peace and stability of the region that has allowed all countries to prosper. And I think itd be hard to argue that any country has benefited more than China. So it seems strange to me that rules [are what China] would want to be changed at this point, when theyve benefited from it.

Wagar added, Anything that upsets (the peace and stability) and increases the tension, just seems like a bad idea to me.

During his visit to Singapore in January this year, the top US diplomat for Asia Daniel Russel, also warned that Chinas activities on the disputed islands, which include building runways and naval facilities, were destabilising the region.
Washington (AFP) - Police in the US state of Ohio launched an investigation Tuesday into the weekend accident that prompted zoo officials to kill a prized gorilla, after a young child fell into its enclosure.

The authorities will probe whether criminal charges should be filed in the case, the prosecutor in Hamilton County, site of the zoo where the incident occurred on Saturday, said in a statement.

"The incident at the Cincinnati Zoo involving the young child who fell into the gorilla enclosure is under investigation by the Cincinnati Police Department," Prosecutor Joseph Deters's statement said.

"Once their investigation is concluded, they will confer with our office on possible criminal charges," he added. "When the investigation and review are complete, we will update the media."

Workers at the Cincinnati Zoo shot and killed the 400-pound silverback gorilla -- a 17-year old male named Harambe -- after the four-year-old boy fell into its enclosure.

The toddler had crawled through a barrier and fell into a moat at the gorilla exhibit.

The incident has become a cause celebre in the United States, where video images played on a recurring loop on television, showing the massive primate handling the child sometimes in an apparently tender manner, other times roughly, dragging him though the moat.

The zoo director on Monday defended the killing of the rare animal, which is on a list of critically endangered animals.

Cell phone footage of the incident, which has gone viral, has elicited a barrage of condemnation from those who believe the animal should not have been killed.

There have also been harsh words for the child's mother, whom online critics blamed for not supervising her son more closely.
Washington (AFP) - Two US troops were wounded over the weekend in separate Islamic State attacks in Iraq and Syria, Pentagon officials said.

The casualty in Syria marks the first time an American soldier has been injured in that country since military advisors deployed there at the end of last year.

Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said the soldier was wounded by "indirect fire" -- a term that typically refers to rocket or artillery fire -- north of Raqa, the jihadists' de facto capital.

The Iraqi incident occurred near in northern Iraq near the city of Erbil, also by indirect fire, Davis said.

He stressed the troops was "not on the front line" and "were not engaged in active combat."

But Defense Secretary Ashton Carter later told reporters that "of course" the troops were in fact in combat.

President Barack Obama has repeatedly assured the American public there would be no US combat boots on the ground in Iraq or Syria, but troops are edging ever closer to the front lines, leading many to question what constitutes "combat" versus simply advising local partner forces.

The United States has sent more than 200 special forces personnel to northeastern Syria to advise and assist rebels fighting the Islamic State group.

American soldiers are focusing on aiding the Syrian Democratic Forces, a coalition dominated by the Kurdish militia YPG.

Fighting is currently raging in northern Raqa eight days after the start of an SDF offensive, with support from air strikes by a US-led international coalition.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Michael Pearson, the former chief executive officer of Valeant Pharmaceuticals International <VRX.TO>, will receive a $9 million severance payment and agreed to a consulting agreement worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to a document filed with regulators.

Pearson, who left Valeant on May 2 after a year in which it had drawn scrutiny for its sharp drug price increases, financial relationship with a specialty pharmacy and accounting practices, is also eligible for a pro-rated performance bonus for 2016, the separation agreement document said.

He can earn $83,333 a month this year as a consultant and next year, the company agreed to pay him $15,000 per month for consulting services, plus expenses. If Valeant severs the consulting services, Pearson will still receive the payments that would have been due, the document said.

After that time, Pearson could be paid $3,750 per day for any consulting services. He also promised to cooperate with the company on providing information related to government inquiries.

Pearson, who was replaced by former Perrigo CEO Joseph Papa, had led Valeant since 2008, driving its growth through serial acquisitions. Under his watch, the company's stock hit a high of $263.70 in August of 2015 and fell as low as $25.27 in April of 2016 due to doubts that the company could recover from its hefty debt load. It hit a year-low of $23.55 on May 12, after he left.

Valeant announced Pearson's departure in March as activist investor William Ackman took a position on the company's board of directors.

(Reporting by Caroline Humer; Editing by Bill Trott and Alan Crosby)
As well as being a leading member of the Memphis Group, the Italian architect and industrial designer, Ettore Sottsass, designed the groundbreaking Synthesis 45 office system presented by Olivetti in 1973. The collection is now the subject of an exhibition, "Sottsass Olivetti Synthesis" (S.O.S), held in the Olivetti showroom in Venice, May 28 to August 21, alongside the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale.

Around 60 pieces from the collection are on show at the exhibition, with furniture items and original documents, including previously unseen and little-known items. The designer's desks, chairs and modular partitions are all featured, as well as bookshelves, filing cabinets and accessories like coat stands, umbrella stands, ashtrays, pen holders, pencils and telephone stands.

The exhibition also features a series of photos of office spaces, taken by the Italian photographer, Gabriele Basilico, and an Olivetti promotional film starring Sottsass himself.

When designing the collection with his associates, Sottsass imagined a whole new approach to office design. The resulting furniture combined functional rigor with modular design, while also adding a pop art twist with colors like gray, plum, light blue and yellow.

This new kind of furniture marked a historic transition to the postmodern age, when the traditional laborer became an office worker.

This exhibition comes as a precursor to the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ettore Sottsass and is the first in a trilogy of showcases dedicated to the designer due to be held at the Olivetti showroom in Venice between 2016 and 2018.

In April 2017, "S.O.S" will be heading to the Museu da Casa Brasileira, in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Italian designer Ettore Sottsass was a founding figure of the Memphis movement, a 1980s design movement characterized by the use of bright colors and extravagant forms, bringing an end to a previous age of functional sobriety.

"S.O.S. Sottsass Olivetti Synthesis" runs May 28 to August 21, 2016, at the Olivetti Showroom, Venice, Italy.
Nearly 40,000 striking Verizon workers will return to their jobs Wednesday after reaching a tentative contract agreement over the Memorial Holiday Weekend. The Communication Workers of America say the new deal includes 1300 new call center jobs, nearly 11% in raises over 4 years and the first contract for Verizon wireless store workers. The CWA called the deal a victory for working families. Crude oil prices are quiet as investors wait for cues from OPEC on oversupply. OPEC meets Thursday and will discuss what to do with oil production after prices hit $50 a barrel last week. Oil prices have doubled since hitting lows over the winter. Viacom's board is preparing for a fight with the Redstones. The Wall Street Journal says board members are anticipating their ouster and and will argue that former Chairman Sumner Redstone doesn't have the mental competency to act of his own free will.
Verizon Communications Inc. VZ has entered into a tentative deal with two workers unions whose members went to strike from Apr 13, 2016. Verizon and the striking unions, The Communications Workers of America (CWA) and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), have almost resolved their differences and nearly 36,500 workers in the companys wireline and cable TV (FiOS Internet and TV) segment will resume work from Jun 1, 2016. Union members will vote on the tentative contract by Jun 17.

Verizon and its wireline workers were at a stalemate over a labor contract. The companys wireline employees have been working out of contract since August last year. Earlier this month, the U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez met with the Verizon CEO and the heads of the two unions that represent the companys striking workforce. Perez requested both sides to sit at the negotiation table to resolve the issues.

Under the new contract, Verizon will provide a 10.9% pay rise to its unionized workers over a period of four years, a small increment in pension benefit and a promise to create nearly 1,400 new union jobs. This will include around 1,300 new call center jobs and about 70 wireless retail store employees. Importantly, the company agreed to reduce subcontracting and withdrew a proposal to relocate employees for extended periods. These two were the main issues of the strike.

Though Verizon had to make certain concessions, it stood to gain on some points. The company will be able to reduce benefit costs by modifying employee health-care plans. Verizon stated that it will achieve cost savings through healthcare plan design changes, adopting Medicare Advantage plans for its retirees, maintaining limits on post-retirement healthcare costs, and freezing the mortality table for lump sum pensions using the GATT rate.

Just a week ago, Verizons CEO warned that the companys second-quarter 2016 financial results may be affected by the ongoing strike. Lowell McAdam stated that the company is currently on track with respect to repairing and maintenance issues of the existing installed bases. However, the number of new installations of FiOS high-speed Internet and FiOS pay-TV has dropped significantly. As a result, the company may suffer high-speed broadband and pay-TV customer attrition.

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It is crucial for Verizon to ensure smooth operations and continuing service even in the face of a walkout. Cable and landline revenues, although not comprising a large share of the pie, come directly from Verizons business customers. In 2015, FiOS generated 29% of Verizons total revenue and slightly less than 7% of operating income.

Verizon is already facing severe competitive threat from its telecom rivals, AT&T Inc. T, T-Mobile US Inc. TMUS and Sprint Corp. S, and any disruption in services can prove to be fatal for the company. Therefore, a solution to the labor problem will bode well for the companys near-term growth. Verizon currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

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Christopher Chulack has signed with CAA, The Hollywood Reporter has exclusively learned. He previously was with UTA.

The veteran television producer won an Emmy in 1996 for outstanding drama series along with the rest of ER's producing team to go along with 11 other Emmy nominations, including individual recognition for directing specific episodes of ER. He also has won three DGA Awards, and was nominated for two further DGA Awards.

Chulack is now executive producing and directing TNT's upcoming family crime drama Animal Kingdom, a reimagining of the acclaimed 2010 Australian film of the same name starring Jacki Weaver (in an Oscar-nominated performance) and Joel Edgerton. Ellen Barkin will star as the clan's matriarch (Weaver's role in the film) in the series, which is set to premiere June 14.

Chulack also will continue to executive produce and direct episodes for another cable series about a dysfunctional family, Showtime's Shameless, and his banner Chulack Productions has a number of original television and film projects in development.

Chulack also served as an executive producer on Third Watch and Southland, and directed multiple episodes of Longmire, which ran on A&E for three seasons before moving to Netflix, which has renewed it for a fifth season.

Chulack continues to be repped by Ken Gross of Ken Gross Management.
In his first public accounting of his fundraising for veterans groups, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said he did not want credit for trying to help American troops. Then he blasted the media for not giving it to him.

In all, Trump said Tuesday he raised $5.6 million for vets as the direct result of a January fundraiser that he held instead of attending a GOP candidates debate. His snub of that Fox News debate fueled accusations he was using veterans as a political prop, and prompted reporters to investigate whether he had, in fact, collected and dispersed the $6 million he boasted of raising.

I wanted to keep it private because I dont think its anybodys business if I want to send money to the vets, Trump told reporters Tuesday at Trump Tower in New York. Instead of being like, Thanks very much, Mr. Trump, or Trump did a good job, everybodys saying, Who got it? Who got it? Who got it? And you make me look very bad.

The donations have stirred unease among some of the charities, and split the veterans community.

We appreciate the generous contribution, as it will help immensely, but we do not support or oppose any political candidate or party, said Joe Chenelly, a Marine Corps veteran and executive director for AMVETS, which accepted $75,000. That cannot and will not change.

Paul Rieckhoff, founder and CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, told MSNBCs Andrea Mitchell his group politely declined when the Trump campaign offered funding last week.

We must remain impartial, and were not going to be used as a political prop for any candidate, Rieckhoff said.

The group Veterans of Foreign Wars didnt receive any of the funds, said Joe Davis, director of public affairs. He called the questions over Trumps fundraising a non-issue.

Story continues

Whatever amount that was raised did make a difference to the groups that were the beneficiaries. Thats where the medias focus should be, Davis told Foreign Policy. Properly taking care of veterans, service members, and their families belongs to no political party or ideology.

Trump did acknowledge some delay in distributing the money, citing a robust review of each group before checks could be cut. A few of the veterans charities are well-known and national organizations, but many are small or local. The donations range from $50,000 to a high of $1.1 million. They include:

The Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, which provides scholarships for the children of fallen U.S. Marines and federal law enforcement officers, according to the groups site. It received $1.1 million, $1 million of which Trump said came from his own pocket.

The Navy Seal Foundation, headquartered in Virginia Beach, Virginia, which was founded in 2000 to help ease the stressors of serving as a SEAL. The group was given $465,000.

The Green Beret Foundation, founded in 2009 by a former Green Beret, collected $365,000, according to Trump. The organization held a large fundraiser at the annual SOFIC Special Operations conference in Tampa, Fla., in May that raised thousands of dollars auctioning off weapons, humidors, and other items donated to the group. The event featured a buffet and an open bar aboard an old WWII-era Liberty Ship docked downtown.

Four other groups  22Kill, Achilles International, Inc., Folds of Honor Foundation, and Racing for Heroes, Inc.  all received $200,000.

The website for 22Kill  which describes itself as a global movement bridging the gap between veterans and civilians to build a community of support  autoplays loud rock music repeating Now! Now! over photos of service members. The group, which officially became a tax exempt nonprofit in July 2015, seeks to slow the alarming suicide rate among veterans. A U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs study in 2012 that found that an average of 22 veterans a day commit suicide.

Retired Marine Al Baldasaro, a New Hampshire state representative and an advisor to Trump on veterans issues, scolded reporters at the press conference for failing to focus on veterans suicide and other, more pressing concerns than the Republicans donations. Stop using veterans as political pawns, Baldasaro said.

Nonprofit veterans groups are facing a tough financial climate amid a declining veterans population and donations base. A December 2015 report found that despite increased needs for the more than 21 million veterans in the United States, donations to veterans nonprofits from corporations, philanthropies, and individuals have declined since 2001.

The large majority of veterans nonprofits pull in less than $100,000 per year, according to the studys author, Phillip Carter, an Iraq veteran, former Army officer, and the director of veterans research at the Center for a New American Security  meaning for a number of the groups, a novelty check from Trump outmatches an entire years earnings.

Jon Soltz, an Iraq War veteran who serves as chairman of VoteVets.org, blasted Trump as a walking, talking fraud who only acted because he was caught up in a PR disaster. VoteVets.org describes itself as nonpartisan, but also the largest progressive organization of veterans in America.

Karen Meredith, a military families liaison for VoteVets.org and also a Gold Star mother who lost her son Ken in 2004 in Iraq, said in a VoteVets.org statement that she is now certain Trump feels no respect for the fallen.

I know I speak for a great many Gold Star mothers when I say that he has no place being commander in chief, Meredith said.

FP reporter Paul McLeary contributed to this article.

Credit: Spencer Platt / Staff
By Dan Levine

NEW YORK, May 31 (Reuters) - Viacom Inc's chief executive and independent directors would face an uphill courtroom battle to remain on the board if controlling shareholder Sumner Redstone followed through on a threat to remove them, legal experts said on Tuesday.

Lead Independent Director Fred Salerno on Monday questioned 93-year-old Redstone's mental competence and said any move to oust Viacom's six independent directors would be "legally flawed."

But unlike some companies, Viacom's corporate charter gave Redstone's National Amusements Inc (NAI) the ability to immediately remove Viacom's board at any time under Delaware law, said Lawrence Hamermesh, a corporate law professor at Widener University Delaware Law School.

NAI holds 80 percent of the voting shares in Viacom and CBS Corp.

The ousted directors could petition a Delaware judge to issue a "status quo" order that keeps them on the board while the case is being litigated. Such orders are somewhat easier to obtain than a formal injunction in other kinds of civil cases, Hamermesh said.

However, status quo orders are meant to last only a few weeks. A Delaware judge would likely be reluctant to delve into questions about Redstone's mental competency when that issue is already being litigated in other courts, said Minor Myers, a corporate law professor at Brooklyn Law School.

"It appears to be an uphill battle," Myers said.

Earlier this month, Redstone removed Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman and Viacom board member George Abrams from NAI's board, as well as the seven-person trust that will control the voting shares after Redstone exits.

Dauman, 62, has filed a legal challenge to stop his removal from the trust, arguing that Redstone was being manipulated by his daughter, Shari. She has called that allegation "absurd" and said her father made his own decisions.

Last week, a statement from Sumner Redstone, issued by his spokesman, said the media mogul was considering replacing Dauman and Viacom's board of directors.

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The directors are hobbled by the fact that shares of Viacom have risen since Dauman was removed from NAI's board, Myers said, which undercuts any corporate governance argument they could make.

Some Viacom shareholders said they were concerned that the public battle involving the CEO, the board and Redstone was a distraction at a time when the U.S. media company should focus on turning its business around.

"I would rather they would stay focused," said Mario Gabelli, whose asset management firm was the second-largest owner of voting shares of Viacom. "I like the current board, but I am sure I will like the new board too."

A representative for Viacom declined to comment.

Salvatore Muoio, another owner of voting shares of Viacom, said he believed that the board was doing right by shareholders because he agreed with their contention that Sumner Redstone was not the one making the decisions.

"I believe there is no Sumner at this point," Muoio said. "I believe it's all his daughter."

A spokesperson for Redstone's daughter said Shari had "made it abundantly clear that she has no desire to manage Viacom nor Chair its Board."

"What she wants for Viacom is the best management in place, and strong, independent Directors who will properly oversee that management," the spokesperson, Nancy Sterling, said in a statement.

(Reporting by Dan Levine; Additional reporting by Jessica Toonkel in New York and Ross Kerber in Boston; Editing by Tiffany Wu)
Viacom's stock traded slightly lower Tuesday morning after a marginal gain at the start of the trading session as Wall Street analyzed latest developments in a power struggle and analysts said investors have been bidding up the stock amid hope for management changes.

As of 9:50 a.m. ET, the stock was trading down 1.2 percent at $43.71 a day after Viacom board members had sent a letter vowing to fight any attempts by controlling shareholder Sumner Redstone and daughter Shari to oust them.

On Monday, stock markets had been closed for Memorial Day. Over the past year, Viacom shares have traded between $30.11 and $69.17. The stock has lost more than 30 percent of its value over that period, but has moved higher in recent days amid a power struggle between Viacom's board and controlling shareholder Sumner Redstone and his daughter Shari.

"Given the market's reaction to the battle at Viacom, investors are clearly hoping for a change in Viacom leadership," MoffettNathanson analyst Michael Nathanson said in a Tuesday report based on stock moves in recent days. "After a decade of underperformance, that makes sense."

"In terms of the stock's reaction, investors seem to favor a managerial change at all costs, even if the process by which it might occur merely serves to highlight the underlying problem of dual-class shareholding structures," Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser similarly told THR. Sumner Redstone controls the company via Class A voting stock.

Nathanson on Tuesday also argued that Viacom's recent business challenges go back to the split of Viacom and CBS Corp. and renewed his call for a re-combination of the two companies. "Maybe [Sumner Redstone] realizes the lunacy of his asset separation and wants to make things right by recombining these assets," he wrote.

Meanwhile, Wunderlich Securities analyst Matthew Harrigan said Tuesday that Viacom shares are still undervalued. "Even after last week's rally, we estimate that Viacom stock discounts 4 percent advertising declines to fiscal year 2022," he wrote in a report.

Story continues

Read More: Viacom Activist Shareholder Calls for Firing of CEO, Re-Merging With CBS

The comments came as trading opened after Memorial Day amid expectations of possible new salvos in the showdown between Viacom's board and the Redstones.

Viacom board members on Monday had sent a letter vowing to fight any attempts by controlling shareholder Sumner Redstone to oust them from their positions in the latest salvo in the showdown over the media giant that owns such properties as MTV, Nickelodeon and Paramount Pictures.

Frederic Salerno, lead independent director of Viacom, and his fellow board members on Monday argued that Sumner Redstone does not appear to be acting on his own "free will" and could be under the influence of daughter Shari Redstone. The letter said that Sumner Redstone has always made it known that he did not want his daughter in control of the company.

"We know that none of us is 'entitled' to his or her board seat," Salerno said in the letter. "But we were elected, until our terms expire or we are properly removed, to look after the interests of all the stockholders of Viacom. That is what Delaware law requires - and that is what Sumner Redstone has always expected."

Salerno also portrayed the 11-member board as defenders of mom-and-pop shareholders and held steadfast to their decision to sell a minority stake in Paramount, despite reports that Redstone is opposed to such a deal.

Co-signers of the letter included board members Deborah Norville, Charles Phillips, William Schwartz, Blythe McGarvie and Cristiana Falcone Sorrell.

There has been heavy speculation in Hollywood and on Wall Street that the Redstones would try to oust the board members and then dump chairman and CEO Philippe Dauman. Shari Redstone and Dauman have often been at odds in recent years.

Harrigan in hisTuesday report signaled that a board removal may not happen immediately. "National Amusements' 80 percent voting position in 'buy'-rated Viacom ... implies that this is a plausible maneuver if Redstone is found competent," he argued. "The addition of high-profile Los Angeles securities lawyer Michael Tu also suggests a plausible effort to remove the board, including CEO Philippe Dauman."

Meanwhile, big Viacom investor Mario Gabelli, who has also been outspoken regarding the corporate soap opera at Viacom, has called for a special shareholders meeting to discuss the latest twists of the corporate and family drama that escalated in recent weeks in a flurry of legal action between Dauman and Redstone. Dauman and another longtime Redstone ally were ousted from the mogul's trust, which will control Viacom and CBS once the mogul dies or is deemed incapacitated, and the board of National Amusements, through which he controls the companies.

Some say that ouster wasn't the real beginning of the recent drama at Viacom though. "In our view, the circus at Viacom was put into motion more than 10 years ago by the ill-fated move to separate CBS and Viacom," Nathanson argued in his report on Tuesday. "The idea that the market was mistakenly valuing the old Viacom asset made zero sense to us at the time."

The analyst recently downgraded his rating on Viacom shares to "neutral" after many years of a "buy." Nathanson explained that with such catalysts as a carriage deal renewal with Dish and some recovery in ratings having played out, the stock was "devoid of positive surprises."

He also renewed his call for a re-combination of Viacom and CBS. "When we made this call a year ago, CBS was strongly opposed to a re-combination," Nathanson wrote. "Their argument is clear: consumers want smaller bundles and adding Viacom's long-tail cable networks strongly works against that logic." He concluded: "Nothing will be solved until the pieces are put back together again. We just aren't sure how or when that happens."

Read More: Viacom Activist Shareholder Calls for Firing of CEO, Re-Merging With CBS
- By Long Tran Thang





The first thing that comes to people's minds about Vietnam is usually a 20 years' war that divided the country and somehow the world until 1975. Vietnam has more to offer than just a war memory or an emerging travel destination.

So permit me to briefly summarize Vietnam and its economy. Located in the southeast of the continent of Asia, Vietnam covers 310,070 square kilometers of land and 21,140 square kilometers of water, making it the 66th-largest nation in the world with a total area of 331,210 square kilometers. Vietnam shares land borders with China, Laos and Cambodia and sea border with China, Taiwan, The Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia. Vietnam's GDP reached U.S. $204 billion last year with a 10-year growth average of 5.7%.





The dynamic behind one of the fastest-growing economies is the golden structure of a young and large population (94 million people and 60% under 30 years old). After "Doimoi" 1986 (30 years ago), Vietnam transformed from a centralized economy to a market-oriented economy and joined the lower middle income countries group.

Vietnam currency, real GDP growth, stock return, P/B vs.A emerging countries (2015)

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Source: BIDV Securities Company BSC

Enough about the big picture, let's take a look at Vietnam's stock market which is classified as a frontier market by MSCI. The main Index a Vnindex (Hochiminh Stock Exchange) started from 100 points in 2000 and now stays around 600 points after 16 years. Among the youngest stock markets, the "mid-teen" stock market of Vietnam has gone through many ups and downs. On May 23, President Barack Obama visited Vietnam. The last two times an American president visited Vietnam, the Vnindex soared in the two months before and after the event by 31% in 2000 and 49.9% in 2006.

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The first wave of privatization in Vietnam's stock market

What I call the first wave of Vietnam's stock market (2002-2006) was the golden time when foreign investors visited and stayed for a few weeks just to open an account to invest in listed stocks and IPOs in Vietnam.

Vnindex at the Hochiminh Stock Exchange increased by 144% in 2006 while HNX-Index in the Hanoi Stock Exchange rose by 152.4%. The total market capitalization was $13.8 billion in late 2006 (22.7% of GDP), in which foreign investors held approximately U.S. $4 billion, accounting for 16.4% of the capitalization of the entire market.

In 2007, the Vietnam market boomed with a new securities law. The Vietnam stock market witnessed strong growth in terms of size and volume. By the end of 2007, total stock market capitalization reached nearly VND500,000 billion, about 43.7% of GDP.

Up to 2007, the stock market helped Vietnam privatize around 3,274 state-owned companies. The first wave of privatization created a number of popular companies for public and great stocks for investors. Some of those companies were considered the gems of the country, and one even gained as much as 2,200%. Vietnam today could be so underdeveloped without the strong privatization wave of 2006.

Standout Vietnam stocks that transformed from SOE

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Source: HSX, HNX

Researchers show that after being privatized, most Vietnam SOEs had significant improvement in both business aspects (in terms of growth in sales, profit and ROA, ROE, ROS) and social aspects (job creation, labor welfare).

How SOEs improve after privatization

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Source: Dr. Doan Ngoc Phuc's Doctoral Thesis 2012

Vietnam's stock market hasn't recovered from the global financial crisis of 2007. Compared to the peak in 2007 (post-crisis), Vnindex now is about 50% discounted while the size of the economy has been tripled from U.S. $75 billion to $204 billion. The fact that Vnindex still is lagging far behind all Asian markets makes Vietnam such an attractive investment opportunity.

Vnindex and Asia main indices (2007-2016)

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Source: Bloomberg

Ready for the second wave of privatization

It seems that all the years ending with a six are "transition years" for Vietnam, such as "Doimoi" in 1986 (decentralized planning economy), ASEAN and AFTA membership in 1996 and WTO membership in 2006. This year 2016, Vietnam will have a new political term cabinet which is expected to make Vietnam more open to the Western world, attracting both direct and indirect foreign investment. For foreign investors, it is about time to catch the second wave of IPO and divestment of Vietnamese SOEs.

I do not mean that Vietnam will have a super bull this year, but investors should keep their eyes on Vietnam's stock market. There are three main investment points:

Obama has "Buncha" for dinner at a traditional shop in Hanoi

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Source: Tuoitre online

First, the privatization of the rest of SOEs (the private sector and SOE reforms are the main story of Vietnam).

The real story at present in Vietnam is the rapidly improving performance of the private sector, including FDIs, domestic private firms and especially soon privatized SOEs. The Vietnamese government now realizes that it should reduce the number of SOEs to improve efficiency and promote a market-oriented economy. In the past, the first wave of IPO has created great companies and equities for investors. This time is the last chance to catch the new IPO and divestment in Vietnam. Some popular names that investors have been waiting for:

Telecommunication: Mobifone (the second biggest telecom company in Vietnam).

Consumer products: Vinamilk, SJC (the biggest gold bar producer in Vietnam).

Insurance: BaoMinh, VinaRe (the biggest reinsurance in Vietnam).

Transportation: VietjetAir, Vinalines, Danang Port, Nhatrang port.

Oil and gas: Binhson, Pvoil, PV Power.

Construction and materials: Binh Minh, Tien Phong.

Real estate: Handico, Udic, Rescovn, Benthanh.







Number of IPOs in Vietnam

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Source: HSX, HNX

Vietnam is so ready to push the privatization of the SOEs (which local authorities called "equalization"). The Vietnam government targeted to reduce the number of SOEs by 50% to 200 companies from 2016 to 2020. That is the reason why investors should be in a hurry. Vietnam's government has new policies to push the process that will be in favor of foreign investors' participation:

Lifting the foreign ownership limitation. The government issued Decree 60, which will increase the cap for foreign stake holding in a local company. Previously, foreign ownership ratio in listed companies was the same for all companies (49% for nonbanks and 30% for banks). Decree 60 now provides different foreign ownership ratios for each sector and subsector. For some sectors, foreign investors are allowed to own up to 100% of the stocks.

State-owned enterprises IPO meaning listed stocks. Previously, IPO companies in Vietnam don't need to be listed in the stock market like in other countries. The Ministry of Finance's Circular 01/2015/TT-BTC issued on Jan. 5 has laid down regulations for unlisted securities operating in the local stock market. State-owned enterprises (SOEs) must trade in the unlisted public-company market (UPCoM) within 90 days of an initial public offering before official listing (in Hochiminh Stock exchange or Hanoi Stock Exchange). This policy is expected to raise the market capitalization of Vietnam which is now only U.S. $60 billion, equivalent to 34% of GDP, by 17.3% year over year.

Second, Vietnam completed negotiations for two majorA free trade agreements.

The free trade agreement Vietnam - EU (EVFTA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are making the year of 2016 somehow look a lot like 2006 when Vietnam was about to join WTO. The only difference is that this time the economy is much more ready for a global integration than it was 10 years ago.

Up to now, Vietnam has signed 17 free trade agreements, which exposes Vietnam to 62% of the world's population and 80% of the world's GDP. In the near future, these 17 FTAs will be promoting Vietnam's exportation. They have made significant impacts on medium and long-term growth in both politics and the economy of Vietnam.

62.2% of the world's population is 4.5 billion of 7.3 billion people.

79.6% of the world's GDP $61.3 trillion of $77 trillion.







Countries have FTA with Vietnam

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Source: BIDV Securities (BSI)

Third, valuation compared with other regional stock markets.

Most Asian stock markets excluding Vietnam have reached the previous high of 2007. That lagging makes Vietnam's stock market worth a superior site for investment in Asia (both listed stock and IPO).

Compared to Southeast Asia (emerging stock markets), Vietnam's stock market has always been valued at a discount in terms of P/B and P/E. With the EPS annual growth rate around 10%, the low P/E ratio makes Vietnam's market quite attractive.

The economic growth was strong in the last five years. In 2015, Vietnam has become a bright spot when the gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 6.68% year over year, and it is the only place in Asia where exports grew significantly.







P/E ratio of Vnindex and Asian indices (2007-2016)

(click to enlarge)

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Source: Bloomberg

How to invest in Vietnam's stock market

Here is how to get a ticket to catch the opportunities in Vietnam's stock market. I will briefly explain how investors can invest in Vietnam's stock market, including (1) listed stocks and (2) IPOs.

How to invest in listed stocks

There are three ways for foreigners to invest in Vietnam's listed stock market: (1) ETFs, (2) Vietnam focus funds and (3) open a trading account at a local broker.

ETFs: There are only a few ETFs that have exposure to Vietnam. Two of the biggest are Market Vectors Vietnam ETF (VNM) listed in the U.S. and the FTSE Vietnam listed in EU and Asia.

Vaneck VNM - NAV: U.S. $338 million invest in 31 stocks.

FTSE Vietnam (FTSE) - NAV: U.S. $353 million invest in 21 stocks.







Vietnam focus funds: There are few listed and unlisted funds that have large exposure to Vietnam stock markets. The good news is some of the close-end funds are trading with huge discounts. Here are some of the names:

Vietnam Holdings Ltd. (VNMHF): NAV U.S. $109.5 million.

Vietnam Enterprise Investment (STC:FID): NAV U.S. $850 million.

VinaCapital Vietnam Opportunity Fund Ltd. (VOF.L) NAV U.S. $743 million.

PYN - Elite (Gray market ELITE:FH): NAV U.S. $215 million.

Vietnam Emerging Equity Fund Limited (Grey market PXP) NAV U.S. $100 million.







Open a trading account: If you want to directly invest by yourself, there are three main steps to open an account for foreigners (to directly invest in listed stock market):

Register for an indirect investment capital account (IICA) at State Bank of Vietnam (SBV). Your custodian bank can do that for you in one or two weeks.

Apply for a trading code at Vietnam Securities Depository (VSD). Your custodian bank or a local broker house can do that for you in one or two weeks.

Open a trading account at a local broker house. When the IICA and TCA are completed, you can instantly open trading account at local broker.







How to bid IPO in Vietnam

It is quite a process to bid in Vietnam's IPO; hence you will need your local broker's assistance. If you already have a trading account to invest in Vietnam, the process will be much simpler than starting a new one. Anyway, as people always say, a hidden gem is worth the digging. A list of the ongoing IPOs and more information can be found on the website of Hochiminh Stock Exchange, Hanoi Stock Exchange or local stock broker's website. There are some steps to take:

Bidding registration requires documents as below (in order):

Bidding register form (with the confirmation of the bank where investor opened the account).

Indirect investment account (at the State Bank of Vietnam) : Original copy plus a copy.

Business license (or equivalent documents): Notarized copy.

Authorization form for authorized executing individual: Original copy.

ID or passport of authorized individual: A copy.

Deposit paper: A copy (investor has to deposit 10% of value of amount registered to buy, calculated at starting price before the deadline).

Account opening confirmation of the bank in Vietnam where the investor opened indirect investment account and will pay through: Original copy.







Bidding participation form submission:

After submitting all the required documents, investor will receive the receipt to get bidding participation form. Complete and put the bidding participation form directly to the ballot box in the auction agency.

Or send the bidding participation form in the envelope that is sealed with the signature on the edge. Time for receiving is the time when the auction agency receives and signs with the post or the investor.







Conclusion

It seems that all the years ending with six are "transition years" for Vietnam, such as "Doimoi" in 1986 (decentralized planning economy), ASEAN and AFTA membership in 1996 and WTO membership in 2006. In 2016 Vietnam will have its new term cabinet which is expected to make Vietnam more open to the Western world, attracting foreign investment both direct and indirect.

On May 23 President Barack Obama visited Vietnam, putting the country under the spotlight of businessmen and investors. In the last two times a USA President visited Vietnam, Vnindex soared during 2 months before and after the event by respectively 31% in 2000 and 49.9% in 2006.

Vietnam stock market has been in a lagging cycle since the 2008 financial crisis which makes it attractive for investors. This year, we expect that it will be the last chance to catch the second wave of IPO, divestment and privatization of big SOE in Vietnam. There will be more and more interesting SOEs going IPO and get listed soon. The stock market and investors will benefit from (1) Privatization (state divestment and IPOs), (2) Lifting up the Foreign ownership limitation and (3) low valuation ratio compared to Asian countries.

Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.

Additional disclosure:A Long Tran Thang is proud to work for BIDV Securities Company Vietnam (BSC) as head of research and before that as deputy head of investment and analyst since 2007. BIDV Securities is one of the first securities firms in Vietnam. Being a subsidiary of BIDV a the largest commercial Banks in Vietnam A aA BSC inherits both the 55 years of experience in investment, banking and finance and the nationwide network of enterprises. Long Tran Thang earned an MBA from Solvay Brussels School (ULB) in 2014. Long Tran Thang graduated with a B.A. in economics from the ANU Australian National University (ANU) and a B.A. in finance from The National Economics University (NEU).

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This article first appeared on GuruFocus.






By Ho Binh Minh

HANOI, May 31 (Reuters) - Vietnam's rice paddy output will likely fall this year for the first time since 2005 following the worst drought in 90 years, but the decline will be limited as farmers expand planting in the current and final crops, a government official said.

The Delta's winter-spring output fell 10.2 percent on last year, but total production could fall just 1.5 percent to 44.5 million tonnes, said Tran Cong Dinh, deputy head of the Agriculture Ministry's Crops Department.

"So overall the annual paddy output will only be short by 700,000 tonnes," Dinh told Reuters on the sidelines of an agriculture conference last Friday.

Severe drought and sea water intrusion linked to the El Nino weather pattern in Vietnam's southern Mekong Delta food basket have destroyed fruit, rice and sugar crops in the world's third-largest rice exporter after India and Thailand.

Vietnam grows three rice crops annually, of which the winter-spring crop is the biggest and its grain is used mostly for export.

The country, which produced a record 45.21 million tonnes of paddy last year, exports around 30 percent of its output, mainly to China, the Philippines and Indonesia. Production last fell in 2005, also due to drought.

Salination has delayed planting of the summer-autumn crop, and Dinh cautioned that planting of the third crop could be threatened by seasonal floods on the Mekong River.

Weather forecasters have warned of the possibility of a La Nina weather event, the counterpart of El Nino, which could bring intense rains in the second half of 2016.

"Planting will have to be within the dyke system to protect the crop," Dinh said.

Rice traders said the planting delay meant harvest times will vary in the Delta, which comprises 12 provinces and Can Tho city.

"The harvest will not peak at the same time so prices won't decline much," said a trader at a foreign firm in Ho Chi Minh City said.

Vietnam's benchmark 5-percent broken rice eased this week to $370-$380 a tonne, free on board basis, from $375-$380/tonne last week and a five-month high of $390 on March 25.

Vietnam's rice exports this year will dip 4.45 percent from 2015 to 6.44 million tonnes, partly due to drought in the Delta, an analyst has said. (Reporting by Ho Binh Minh; Editing by Richard Pullin)
(Adds details, shares, background)

May 31 (Reuters) - Marketo Inc, a maker of cloud-based marketing software, said on Tuesday it agreed to be bought by private equity firm Vista Equity Partners, in a cash deal valued at about $1.79 billion.

Vista Equity will pay $35.25 per share for Marketo, representing a 9.5 percent premium to the company's closing price on Friday.

Earlier in May, Bloomberg had reported that the company was working with Morgan Stanley to explore strategic alternatives including a potential sale.

Shares of Marketo, which have risen 12.2 percent this year, were halted before the bell.

The company's shares have been rising after JMP Securities said in a research note that the company had given presentations to SAP SE and Microsoft Corp about a potential sale.

Morgan Stanley is Marketo's financial adviser for the Vista deal and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati is its legal adviser.

Kirkland & Ellis LLP is Vista's legal counsel.

Marketo headquarters will remain in San Mateo, California, after the deal closes in the third quarter of 2016.

(Reporting by Anya George Tharakan in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)
Frankfurt (AFP) - Volkswagen suffered whiplash from a massive engine-rigging scandal as profits slumped in the first quarter, but the embattled German auto giant Tuesday insisted things were not as bad as they look.

Volkswagen, which owns 12 brands in all, from VW to Audi, Porsche, Seat and Lamborhgini, said in a statement that it "put in a solid performance in the first three months" of 2016, despite the so-called "dieselgate" scandal.

The carmaker, once a paragon on German industry with ambitions to overtake Toyota as the world's leading automaker, has been plunged into its deepest-ever crisis after it emerged last September that it installed emissions-cheating software in 11 million diesel engines worldwide.

The still incalculable costs of the affair -- including regulatory fines and legal costs -- pushed VW into the red for the first time in more than 20 years last year when it booked a loss of 1.6 billion euros due to the 16 billion euros in provisions it was forced to set aside.

And it is continuing to feel the fallout this year, its first-quarter results showed.

VW's net profit slumped by 20.1 percent to 2.31 billion euros ($2.6 billion) in the period from January to March, on a 3.4-percent decline in sales to 50.96 billion euros.

Underlying or operating profit rose by 3.4 percent to 3.44 billion euros, meaning the operating return on sales rose to 6.8 percent from 6.3 percent.

The number of vehicles sold edged up by 0.8 percent to 2.508 million units worldwide.

In the US, where the scandal initially broke, deliveries to customers were down 5.7 percent in the three-month period.

But the biggest headache for VW appear to be the markets of Brazil and Russia, where sales skidded by 37.6 percent and 15.5 percent respectively, as a result of the difficult economic and political situations in those countries.

In western Europe, vehicles sales were up 2.6 percent and in the key market of China they grew by 6.4 percent.

Story continues

- 'Solid Q1 performance' -

Chief executive Matthias Mueller insisted VW's performance was solid, given the circumstances.

"In view of the many challenges we're currently facing, we're satisfied overall with the start we made into what will undoubtedly be a challenging year," he said.

"We have succeeded in limiting the economic fallout from the diesel scandal and chalk up respectable results in very difficult conditions," he said.

In view of the first-quarter performances, VW said it was "confirming our forecast for the whole year," with overall sales set to decline by "up to five percent."

The operating return on sales was projected to come out between 5.5 and 6.5 percent.

However, investors did not appear to share Mueller's optimism and VW shares were the biggest losers on the Frankfurt stock exchange on Tuesday, shedding 2.6 percent to close at 134.35 euros in a slightly softer overall market.

Analysts believed the final costs of the scandal could be much larger.

"As we still expect additional burdens related to Dieselgate in 2016, we're sticking to our sceptical view on VW," said DZ Bank analyst Michael Punzet.

NordLB analyst Frank Schwope agreed.

"We view the provisions of 16.2 billion euros so far to the lower limit," he said.

"Our estimate for the overall costs is 20-30 billion euros and that range is more likely to be exceeded than undershot," the expert said.

"We're maintaining our 'hold' rating on the stock," Schwope concluded.
By Andreas Cremer BERLIN (Reuters) - Volkswagen's mass-market VW brand returned to profit in the first quarter, in a sign deep cost cutting is starting to revive the business at the heart of the German carmaker's emissions test cheating scandal. Europe's biggest motor manufacturer said on Tuesday group underlying operating profit fell 5.9 percent to 3.1 billion euros ($3.5 billion) in the quarter. That was better than analysts' average forecast of 2.8 billion euros, as demand for upmarket Audi and Porsche models offset a drop in sales at the mass-market VW brand. But Volkswagen said it was still braced for a tough year as it battles to rebuild following the biggest business crisis in its 79 year history. Volkswagen plunged to a record loss last year after making provisions at a group level to cover the costs of the diesel emissions scandal and ditched its long-standing CEO after it admitted in September to cheating tests in the United States. It has set aside 16.2 billion euros to cover vehicle refits and a settlement with U.S. authorities, but still faces potential U.S. Justice Department fines and questions over who was responsible for the cheating, with investigations ongoing. The company has been slashing costs by using more common parts across its range of models, investing in electric vehicles and working on a new business structure aimed at improving accountability and speeding up model development. The VW brand, the group's largest by revenues, which was struggling with high costs and weak sales even before the emissions scandal, showed some signs of improvement. It swung to a 73 million euro profit, having made a loss of 127 million euros in the previous quarter. But that was still well down on a profit of 514 million in the first quarter of 2015, with revenues down 4.6 percent and an operating margin of just 0.3 percent. This compares with a 9.3 percent margin at Volkswagen's Czech division Skoda and 2.6 percent at Spanish brand Seat, which has long been grappling with losses. Finance chief Frank Witter warned of a long road to recovery, saying that while the VW brand was committed to boosting its margin to 2 percent this year, it was unrealistic to expect to it hit its long-standing 6 percent target by 2018. "The situation is on our radar and it is among the highest priorities within the organization," Witter said on a call. Moving the VW brand into sustainable profit is key for the strategic overhaul underway at VW following years of strong volume growth and spiraling costs. Volkswagen is counting on steps to streamline vehicle development to adapt the VW brand more quickly to market trends, speed up cost cuts and expand modular platforms to boost common parts and production flexibility. "This is an ongoing complex task," he said. Volkswagen shares, which hit an 8-month high heading into the results, were down 1.6 percent at 135.70 euros at 1452 GMT (10.52 a.m. ET). "We continue to view VW as a huge restructuring opportunity and nothing from Q1 changes that view," said Evercore ISI analyst Arndt Ellinghorst who has a "buy" rating on the shares. Others are more wary, with DZ Bank analysts saying the prospect of further scandal-related costs led them to retain a "skeptical view" on Volkswagen, which did not make any further provisions in the first quarter. Its turnaround plan has come under close scrutiny recently from activist investor TCI, which has urged it to speed up and extend restructuring efforts. CONTRASTING VIEWS Group results at the 12-brand company were supported by broadly flat sales at flagship luxury brand Audi and a big rise in both sales and profits at sports car maker Porsche. Higher demand in western Europe and the Asia-Pacific also helped to offset declines in South America and eastern Europe. However, Volkswagen reported a 25 percent plunge in operating profit at its two Chinese joint ventures - which are not included in quarterly results. Analysts have said heightened competition in China has led the company to step up incentives for buyers ahead of the expiry of tax breaks for smaller cars at the end of this year. Quarterly sales in China, Volkswagen's biggest market, rose 6.4 percent after falling in 2015. Including one-off items, group operating profit rose 3.4 percent to 3.4 billion euros. That was helped by 300 million euros of "currency-related adjustments" to provisions. Volkswagen said net liquidity at its automotive division was 26 billion euros at the end of March, around 1.4 billion higher than at the end of 2015, bolstering its finances ahead of an expected bond issue to replace expensive bank loans. The company reiterated guidance issued in April for sales to fall this year by up to 5 percent and for a group underlying operating margin of 5-6 percent, versus 6 percent in 2015. (Writing by Mark Potter; Editing by Alexander Smith)
The Entrepreneur Insiders network is an online community where the most thoughtful and influential people in America's startup scene contribute answers to timely questions about entrepreneurship and careers. Today's answer to the question "What leadership style should every entrepreneur try to adopt? is written by James Green, CEO of Magnetic.

Leadership is a journey, and I am learning new lessons all the time. So here are the top three that I currently strive toward, in order of importance.

Be yourself

If youre not comfortable with yourself, others will pick up on that and doubt you. Or youll say one thing and communicate another with your body. With the advent of social media and being 'transparent' (more on that later), authenticity is increasingly important. With successful growth as a leader, you'll evolve into your own brand: every action - or inaction - will be judged and considered at a much finer level of detail than your average daily exchange. Try not to hide, omit, or spin the truth. Looking someone in the eye and conveying passion with all your being will be noticed. Then, when you inevitably have to change your mind, direction, or make a difficult and unpopular decision, people will understand, believe, and follow you more readily.

Build trust

This one is personal - I hate being told what to do. In fact, the best way to get me to do something is to forbid it and tell me its impossible. I firmly believe that one of lifes great joys is setting your own goals and getting yourself there with your team. So I try very hard not to tell people what to do. Even when its risky and uncomfortable, youve got to let the people who are closest to the problem make their own decisions.

When I was running Walt Disneys film distribution business in Japan in the mid 1990s, AMC started building new, state-of-the-art facilities despite the dearth of movie theaters in Japan. To encourage this expansion, which was clearly good for our business, I lobbied to play our films in AMC at the same time as everywhere else. But AMC didnt have very many screens (yet), and the traditional Japanese theater chains told us that if we played our films in AMC "first run" they would block access to their screens.

Story continues

My conviction was that they couldnt afford to execute on the threat, but my superiors were more conservative and caved to the Japanese demands. The result was that I realized I didnt have much authority, and I quit.

The lesson I learned form this was that if you dont think your people are strong enough to make the decisions, then recruit better people. But dont overrule your management team. Trust and ye shall be rewarded.

Be transparent

Increasingly, the speed at which information flows and our access to that information has given new meaning for what it really means to be transparent. If you arent transparent, the truth will come out quickly and youll be judged a liar even if all you did was omit details. There are few things worse in life than being caught in a lie. Thinking back to my first couple of startups (Im currently on my fifth gig as CEO), I remember painful experiences where I could see things going wrong, but because I thought that I could fix them, I didnt share the information with my investors.

In one case, our largest client was looking to cancel. It was going to be catastrophic, but I calculated that there was a very good chance we could save the business and started doing everything possible to remedy the situation. After months of hard work, the client cancelled anyway and I informed the board. The first question was, When did you find out and what are you doing about it? Of course, Id known for months, said nothing, and had already done all I could do. The outcome would probably not have changed if Id informed our investors earlier, but their trust in me as a person and a leader eroded. Today, I communicate any bad news immediately. Good news is always welcome but bad news is best delivered as soon as you get wind of it.

See original article on Fortune.com

More from Fortune.com
Weatherford International: Life after Its Credit Rating Downgrade

(Continued from Prior Part)

Moodys downgrades Weatherfords debt

On May 13, credit rating agency Moodys downgraded Weatherford Internationals (WFT) Corporate Family Rating (or CFR) from Ba3 to B1. Moodys also downgraded WFTs Speculative Grade Liquidity Rating from SGL-3 to SGL-4. Overall, Moodys rating outlook on Weatherford International remains negative.

CFR ratings reflect the relative likelihood of a default on a corporate familys debt and debt-like obligations. In May, Fitch Ratings also downgraded WFTs long-term issuer default ratings and senior unsecured ratings.

What a rating downgrade means

Weatherford International may continue to stay highly leveraged. Moodys credit rating downgrade reflects Weatherfords cash flow constraints and possible liquidity concerns. Moodys expects WFTs reliance on external sources of capital associated with debt repayment to increase in the future.

According to Moodys, obligations rated B are considered speculative and are subject to high credit risk. The SGL-4 rating reflects weak liquidity as opposed to adequate liquidity indicated by the SGL-3 ratio.

What are the rationales for a downgrade?

Upstream capital spending is expected to stay weak while drilling activities will remain muted in 2017. This will constrain oilfield service companies (or OFS) like Weatherford Internationals cash flows, resulting in only moderate free cash flow in 2016.

This can also increase WFTs reliance on external sources of capital, which again can pressure Weatherfords cash flow and credit metrics. WFT constitutes 0.05% of the iShares Core US Value ETF (IUSV).

Weatherford Internationals debt profile

As shown in the table above, Weatherford International (WFT) is currently in compliance with all the debt covenants. WFT now has a ~$1.9 billion draw-down facility from April, down from $2 billion earlier. This facility will fall to ~$1.5 billion after its amortization in July 2017, and it will decline to $1.4 billion in July 2018.

Story continues

In addition, WFT maintains ~$500 million of cash balances on an ongoing basis. WFTs total debt was ~$7.1 billion on March 31, including a revolver draw-down of ~$1.0 billion. Patterson-UTI Energys (PTEN) total debt was $841 million on March 31, 2016.

In the next article, we will discuss Weatherford Internationals historical valuation multiples.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
How 1Q16 Drove YTD Performance of Major Coal Mining Companies

(Continued from Prior Part)

1Q16 shipments

Mild winter weather and low natural gas prices led to lower shipments for the majority of coal mining companies in 1Q16. However, Westmoreland Coal (WLB) was an exception.

For 1Q16, total shipments of Westmoreland Coal came in at 13.8 million tons compared to 13.5 million tons in 1Q15. Cloud Peak Energy (CLD) reported its consolidated 1Q16 shipments as 13.0 million tons compared to 19.7 million tons in 1Q15.

Peabody Energys (BTUUQ) 1Q16 shipments came in at 42.5 million tons compared to 60.6 million tons in 1Q15. Arch Coal (ACIIQ) reported 20.1 million tons in shipments in 1Q16 compared to 33.1 million tons in 1Q15.

Alliance Resource Partners (ARLP) reported its 1Q16 shipments as 7.5 million tons compared to 9.5 million tons in 1Q15.

Shipment growth rate

Except Westmoreland Coal, other major coal (UGAZ) mining companies witnessed negative shipment growth rate in 1Q16 on a YoY (year-over-year) basis. Among WLBs peers, Arch Coal reported the highest fall in its 1Q16 shipments on a YoY basis. Arch Coals shipments dropped by nearly 39%, which is closely followed by Cloud Peak Energy with a 34% drop.

Industry major Peabody Energys shipments dropped by nearly 30%. Alliance Resource Partners witnessed an ~22% drop in its 1Q16 shipments on a YoY basis.

What helped Westmoreland Coal?

According to Westmoreland Coals company filings, the marginal increase of ~2% on a YoY basis in 1Q16 coal shipments is mainly due to the acquisition of San Juan Coal in January 2016. Also, the acquisition helped the company in offsetting lower sales by its other mines during the same period.

In the next part of this series, well compare the coal pricing of the major coal mining companies in 1Q16.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
Navistar International Corporation NAV is set to report second-quarter fiscal 2016 (ended Apr 30, 2016) results on Jun 2. In the last quarter, the company delivered a positive earnings surprise of 48.05%. Lets see how things are shaping up for this announcement.



Factors Influencing this Quarter



Navistar expects adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization), excluding pre-existing warranty and one-time items, for fiscal 2016 in the band of $600$650 million, significantly higher than $494 million recorded in fiscal 2015. Further, sales volume of the school bus and severe service segment is anticipated to improve. The company also expects to generate profit and manufacturing free cash flow in fiscal 2016. Higher annual guidance raises hopes about an improvement in the companys second-quarter results as well. In addition, the company will benefit from increased production at its heavy truck assembly plant in Escobedo, Mexico and its bus assembly plant in Tulsa, OK. It also hopes to gain from the launch of new products with improved quality and performance, together with its expansion strategies.



However, Navistars results have been affected by lower volumes in Brazil, resulting from economic uncertainties. Additionally, the company is incurring additional costs due to the ongoing changes in the on-highway emissions standards concerning fuel efficiency, noise and safety. Further, Navistar operates in a highly competitive industry. The intensity of this competition is expected to continue, resulting in price discount and pressurized margins.



Earnings Whispers



Our proven model does not conclusively show that Navistar is likely to beat estimates this quarter. This is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1, 2 or 3 for this to happen. This is not the case here, as you will see below:



Zacks ESP: The Earnings ESP represents the difference between the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate. Navistars Earnings ESP is -17.65% because the Most Accurate estimate stands at a loss of 20 cents, while the Zacks Consensus Estimate is pegged at a loss of 17 cents.



Zacks Rank: Navistar carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), which increases the predictive power of ESP. However, we need to have a positive ESP to be confident about an earnings surprise.



We caution against stocks with a Zacks Rank #4 or 5 (Sell-rated stocks) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions.



Stocks to Consider



Here are some other companies you may want to consider as our model shows that these have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter:



Autoliv, Inc. ALV has an Earnings ESP of +0.57% and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). The companys second-quarter 2016 financial results are scheduled for release on Jul 15.



Cummins Inc. CMI has an Earnings ESP of +0.46% and a Zacks Rank #3. The companys second-quarter 2016 financial results are scheduled for release on Jul 26.



BorgWarner Inc. BWA has an Earnings ESP of +1.22% and a Zacks Rank #3. The companys second-quarter 2016 financial results are scheduled for release on Aug 4.



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To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
The Entrepreneur Insiders network is an online community where the most thoughtful and influential people in America's startup scene contribute answers to timely questions about entrepreneurship and careers. Today's answer to the question, "What are some tips that promise success at networking events?"is written by Michael Gasiorek, editor-in-chief of Startup Grind.

When I think of networking, I can't help but gravitate to a favorite movie, Oceans Eleven. The movie's fictional con squad may be an odd way to think about creating your own team, but The 11 perfectly exhibit the elements of the most profound connections:

First, they are friends: they know each other as people, not just job descriptions. Though their goals are important, their relationships last beyond whatever con they're scheming.

Second, they are professionals: they have great faith in one another's skills and are allies in tackling the big problems. Individually, each member is an expert; together, they're an unstoppable team.

Third, they're partners in crime: the trust the partners share is beyond reproach and, with their visions aligned, it's truly The 11 against the world.

See also: How To Make The Most Of Really Boring Networking Events

Don't cancel tonight's business drinks in favor of pulling off a casino heist just yet, but consider the analogy: while most amateurs run-and-gun through networking events swapping business cards left and right, the best networkers are subtle and deliberate. They aim to build lasting friendships with those whose professional skills they can benefit from and whom they too can help.

Then, when they meet others who share their vision, they nurture trust in one another by being consistently helpful. As the partnership gradually grows, they connect their new friends with the rest of their network, ad in the process, build their own unstoppable team.

Beyond all the tips and tactics, three golden rules have been part of my most successful connections. Here's what it takes to meet your next partner in crime.

Story continues

Make Friends, Not Contacts

There's nothing like the feeling of having a friend who truly listens to your ideas and provides constructive feedback, versus a contact who's mentally rehearsing his pitch while you finish your thoughts. It's the positive influence of someone who helps you grow across many areas of life, versus one who only contacts you when you get a promotion. Being a friend means you'll be on top of someone's mind, rather than a LinkedIn search away.

Rather than asking someone, "What do you do," like everyone else that night, start with "What have you been thinking about lately?" Then shut up and listen. Dig into the why, and unpack their values, seeing how they compare to yours. Best, do it over lunch or drinks after the event: sharing food and fun lets a conversation spill over into life as well as work.

Most importantly, create opportunities to get to know each other better across different contexts after your first meeting. In a given week, I'll work out with a business mentor, invite some new friends to a startup event, and invite colleagues to a party to escape their routine. Every contact point brings these connections closer, and the diversity of experiences means we'll get a fuller picture of one another.

Be helpful

So you've finally met a great potential connection, and as you already opened with a question less common than, "What do you do?" how do you end on an equally positive note? With everyone else at an event out for something, what if, instead of asking about how your new friend could help you, you ask how you could serve them? Try asking, "How could I help you right now?" If your experience is anything like mine, you'll see their barriers melt away  if they don't ask you to repeat yourself first.

Though some new friends won't immediately be looking for something, there will still be things they're curious to learn or people they'd like to connect with. Teaching them something or making an introduction will make all the difference. After the event, send a follow-up with some of your favorite marketing resources, an introduction to a friend they'd click with, or even a cafe suggestion. After all, these random acts of kindness are one of the key building blocks for building lasting connections are built on, say researchers.

Weave a connected web

Ever hear of the PayPal Mafia? It remains Silicon Valley's most powerful networks, comprised of luminary founders, investors, and technologists like Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, and Elon Musk. Each member is a super-connector, but what makes them a true mafia is the amplification effect: each member enjoys many of the successes, new resources, or connections one makes.

Consider, for example, the people Hoffman considers colleagues  Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon; the minister of cabinet affairs of the United Arab Emirates; President Obama. It's not by chance that Musk, Thiel, and other PayPal Mafiosos hang out with the same crew  it's by proximity. In this way, the Paypal Mafia doesnt just network  often with the likes of presidents and prime ministers  but rather, they interconnect.

By interconnecting your network, you're building a web of personal and professional connections, and placing yourself in the middle. When you become a habitual connector, the value you can offer a new member of your network extends to the know-how of your entire web.

When you build a reputation for consistent and useful introductions, your anxiety to network evaporates, and your best new connections begin to come to you rather than needing to be sought out.

If the secret to loving one's work is to make it feel like play, the secret to making great networking connections is to make friends instead. Rather than adding one more "what do you do" to the evening, approach a networking event as a search for co-conspirators: make connections that are friendly, professional, and  by taking the interaction deep rather than broad  meet your next partner in crime. When youve got your heist squad locked in, you'll know you've mastered this game.

See original article on Fortune.com

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Work to start on 3rd unit of Karachi K3 nuclear plant in Pakistan Updated: 2016-05-31 07:47 By Lyu Chang(China Daily)

The construction site of a Hualong One project by China National Nuclear Corporation in Fuqing, Fujian province. [Photo/Xinhua] Company also reports progress in promoting its technology to countries like Algeria and Sudan

Construction is expected to start next month on the third unit at the K3 plantthe Karachi nuclear power plant using a reactor developed by China National Nuclear Corporation.

The plant is being built by CNNC using Hualong One, its own third-generation nuclear reactor design.

CNNC spokesman Pan Jianming said on Monday it is the second nuclear power project in Pakistan to use the Hualong One technology, after construction started at the K2 plant in August last year.

"Hualong One was developed based on very mature technologies and the project is going very smoothly. It will help ease power shortages in the Karachi region after completion," Pan told a forum in Fuqing, Fujian province, where the Hualong One pilot project is based.

CNNC has been accelerating its efforts to sell the technology to overseas buyers, and Pan said inroads have been made this year with countries such as Algeria and Sudan.

Although still at the early stages, he said an initial agreement has been reached with Algerian energy authorities for the development of a nuclear research center. The two parties will look at the use of Hualong One technology, and also at renewable-energy projects.

The cooperation is expected to include technical and training services, in a country that has yet to develop any nuclear power stations.

CNNC signed a framework deal last week with Sudan to build a 600-megawatt atomic reactor, its first project in the African country.

Li Zhuoqun, deputy director of CNNC's nuclear power division, said: "One reactor may be worth several billion dollars, but there could be deals worth hundreds of billions of dollars further down the industrial chain.

China National Nuclear Power, a CNNC subsidiary, currently has 14 nuclear reactors in operation, with 11 under construction in China.
What's Really Driving Bristol-Myers Squibb's Valuation?

(Continued from Prior Part)

Bristol-Myers Squibbs profitability

Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) reported an increase of 8.7% in revenues to ~$4.4 billion during 1Q16. The company reported a net profit of only about $1.2 billion in 1Q16, which represents a decrease of 4% in net margin as compared to 1Q15.

The gross margin decreased to 76.1% in 1Q16, as compared to 79.9% for 1Q15. This was partly due to the negative impact of foreign exchange, and also due to the increased sales of products with lower profit margins.

The companys research and development expenses increased to $1.1 billion in 1Q16, which represents a 12% increase over $1.01 billion in 1Q15, due to increases in spending on clinical trials and research alliances for Opdivo and other pipeline drugs.

BMYs marketing, selling, and administrative expenses increased to $1.1 billion in 1Q16, which is a 4% increase, due to increased spending on Opdivo, Empliciti, and Eliquis. These gains were partially offset by lower spending on marketing of older products.

Meanwhile, other income and expenses increased by nearly $160 million due to increases in royalty revenues for Amylins diabetes products from AstraZeneca (AZN), and royalty revenues of $60 million due to Erbituxs sales from Eli Lilly (LLY). Other total income was ~$520 million in 1Q16, as compared to $299 million in 1Q15.

Financial guidance 2016

Bristol-Myers Squibb revised its financial guidance 2016 in its 1Q16 results April 28, 2016. The company expects a low double-digit growth in worldwide revenues for 2016. For 2016, marketing, sales, and administration expenses are expected to decrease by low single digits, and research and development expenses are expected to rise by low double digits.

The companys earnings per share guidance range has been revised and increased by $0.20 to $2.50$2.60 for 2016.

To gain exposure to BMY while divesting risk, investors might consider the Market Vectors Pharmaceutical ETF (PPH), which holds 5.5% of its total assets in Bristol-Myers Squibb. It also holds 5.3% in Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), 5.3% in Novartis AG (NVS), 5.4% in Merck & Company (MRK), and 5.6% in Pfizer (PFE). Investors might also consider the PowerShares Dynamic Pharmaceuticals ETF (PJP), which holds 5.7% of its total assets in BMY.

Browse this series on Market Realist:
Investing Compass: How to Navigate China's Choppy Waters

(Continued from Prior Part)

Chinas industrial profits rose

According to the NBS (National Bureau of Statistics), Chinas industrial profits for firms above a designated size rose 4.2% YoY (year-over-year) to 502 billion yuan ($76.6 billion) after rising 11.1% in March. According to the NBS, since 2011, enterprises above a designated size refers to all industrial enterprises with revenue from the principal business over 20 million yuan.

In the first four months of 2016, the profits of these firms rose 6.5% YoY to 1.8 trillion yuandown from 7.4% in the first three months of 2016.

Profits at state-controlled firms fell 7.8% YoY year-to-date. This created a drag on total industrial profits. Private firms profit grew 8.4% and foreign-owned firms profits rose 7.3%. The inventory levels at industrial firms fell 1.2% YoY at the end Aprilthe first fall in recent years.

The first-quarter growth isnt sustainableApril data supported this. Sluggish demand, higher inventory levels, and availability of credit still haunt Chinas industrial sector. Theres still room for policy easing. This would allow Beijing to drive growth activities in the economy.

Impact on mutual funds

China-focused mutual funds such as the Oberweis China Opportunities Fund (OBCHX), the Matthews China Fund  Investor Class (MCHFX), and the Guinness Atkinson China and Hong Kong Fund (ICHKX) have sizable exposure to industrials. A rise in industrial profits would have a positive impact on the performance of the mutual funds mentioned above. They invest substantially in the industrials sector. The previously mentioned mutual funds invest in stocks of companies such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSM), CNOOC (CEO), Tencent Holdings (TCEHY), and China Mobile (CHL).

Investors can get exposure to Chinese stocks through ETFs such as the iShares MSCI China ETF (MCHI) and the Deutsche X-trackers Harvest CSI 300 China A-Shares ETF (ASHR).

Story continues

In the next part, well analyze Chinas MNI Consumer Sentiment Indicator.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
Which Large-Cap Mutual Funds Have Done Well Year-to-Date in 2016?

(Continued from Prior Part)

Performance evaluation of the American Century Growth Fund

As of May 27, 2016, the American Century Growth Fund Investor Class (TWCGX) had posted a rise of 0.2% YTD (year-to-date), placing it fourth among the ten funds in this review.

We have graphed TWCGXs performance against the PowerShares QQQ Trust, Series 1 ETF (QQQ) and the iShares Russell 1000 Growth ETF (IWF). Lets look at whats contributed to its above-average performance so far this year.

Portfolio composition and contribution to returns

The consumer discretionary and energy sectors are a close first and second in terms of positive contributions to TWCGXs returns in 2016. Consumer discretionary stocks have been led by Comcast (CMCSA), with TJX Companies (TJX) playing an important role as well.

The sector would be doing better if Expedia (EXPE) and TripAdvisor (TRIP) were not dragging on it. Meanwhile, both energy sector holdings Concho Resources (CXO) and Halliburton Company (HAL) have contributed positively.

The consumer staples and industrials sectors are a close third and fourth to the consumer discretionary and energy sectors. Consumer staples have been helped by Philip Morris International (PM) and Church & Dwight Co. (CHD).

However, Kroger (KR) has emerged as a substantial drag on the consumer staples sector. Meanwhile, 3M Company (MMM) and Lockheed Martin (LMT) have helped industrials, but theyve been held back by the Boeing Company (BA).

Stocks from the healthcare sector have undone nearly all of the good done by other sectors. Perrigo Company (PRGO) and Express Scripts Holding Company (ESRX) have driven down other contributions from healthcare.

Comparison with QQQ

TWCGX has done better than QQQ in 2016 so far. However, its stock picks from the information technology and telecommunications services sectors have done worse than those making up these sectors in QQQ.

Investor takeaway

TWCGX has emerged as an above-average performer among its peer group in 2016. However, its performance is far from impressive. The sectors that have contributed positively to its returns have done so only in small amounts, and substantial outperformance hasnt been seen in any sector. Long-term performance will better indicate whether the fund has the potential to outperform when the business cycle turns.

Story continues

In the next article, well look at the Vanguard Capital Opportunity Fund Investor Shares (VHCOX).

Continue to Next Part

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clouds silver lining

Google and Microsoft both lost out on a marquee customer last week, when Amazon Web Services snagged a $400 million partnership deal with Salesforce.

But Wall Street doesn't think it's a big loss for the two cloud vendors, both of which are playing catch up to Amazon. Rather, the deal is a taste of bigger things to come for the entire public cloud service industry.

"We hardly believe this serves as a death blow to competing public clouds, like Microsoft's Azure, but rather an acknowledgment that public cloud infrastructure utilization is the wave of the future, even for leading SaaS vendors," financial research firm Stifel wrote in a note to investors last week.

Stifel's note underscores the massive shift to public cloud services that we're seeing across all industries. A growing number of companies are expanding their use of public cloud services, as opposed to running things in their own data centers, and Salesforce's deal with AWS highlights this trend. Even customers like financial services firm Capital One, which operate in highly regulated industries, are making the move over to the public cloud.

In fact, according to a survey by Cowen & Co. last week, companies currently store 24% of their workload in the public cloud on average, with the use rate expected to grow to 32% by 2021. A recent report by IDC showed this trend more clearly, saying public cloud spending will jump meaningfully at the expense of traditional IT infrastructure costs over the next few years.

IDC

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Alphabet's Key Strategies for Non-Advertising Business Growth

What to look for in this series

In the series titled Google Taking a Number of Initiatives to Grow Its Ad Business , we discussed the key growth drivers of Alphabets (GOOG) advertising business. Although Alphabets advertising business accounts for about 90% of the companys overall revenues, there are a number of other potential growth areas for Alphabet. In this series, well discuss Alphabets non-advertising businesses such as the Google Cloud Platform, Google Fiber, and Google Play. Some of these business could become large for Alphabet.

Google is still a small player in the cloud services market

Google (GOOG) has suddenly become a serious player in the cloud services market. Until recently, it had allowed rivals Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), and IBM (IBM) to command a majority share of the cloud infrastructure services market. According to a report from Synergy Research Group and as the chart above shows, Amazon had a 31% share of this market as of 4Q15, while Microsoft, IBM, and Google had shares of 9%, 7%, and 4%, respectively.

The report also mentioned that this was a $23 billion market in 2015, and it grew by a healthy rate of 52% over 2014. This indicates why big technology players are eager to capture a share of this market.

Why Google has suddenly become aggressive in the cloud space

During its 1Q16 earnings call, Google mentioned three reasons why it has suddenly become aggressive in the cloud space.

Google mentioned that it has been consuming cloud internally over the years. It has gained experience in handling cloud investments and is now ready to scale it to external customers. Google has been investing in artificial intelligence and machine learning for years. It plans to integrate all these applications with cloud for enterprises. The third and most important factor was the appointment of Diane Greene, cofounder of VMware (VMW), to lead Googles cloud business in November 2015. Google defines her as a great leader who understands this space deeply.

Story continues

In the next part of this series, well discuss why Google plans to integrate machine learning apps with cloud technology.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
Which Large-Cap Mutual Funds Have Done Well Year-to-Date in 2016?

(Continued from Prior Part)

Performance evaluation of MIGFX

As of May 27, 2016, the MFS Massachusetts Investors Growth Stock Fund Class A (MIGFX) had risen by 5.3% in YTD 2016, making it the best performer among the ten funds in this review.

We have graphed its performance against the PowerShares QQQ Trust, Series 1 ETF (QQQ) and the iShares Russell 1000 Growth ETF (IWF). Lets look at whats contributed to MIGFXs stellar performance in 2016.

Portfolio composition and contribution to returns

The primary reason that MIGFX has outperformed its peers YTD (year-to-date) in 2016 is that no sector has contributed negatively to its returnsa big plus, given that every other fund has struggled due to negative contributions from more than one sector.

The information technology sector has led in terms of positive contributions so far in 2016. Accenture (ACN) has been the star performer from the sector, with Fidelity National Information Services (FIS) and Texas Instruments (TXN) also contributing in good measure. However, class A shares of Alphabet (GOOG) have dragged slightly on the sectors returns.

The industrials sector has followed, led by W.W. Grainger (GWW). Danaher (DHR) and Equifax (EFX) have also been major positive contributors. Interestingly, no stock in the sector has dragged on its returns.

Consumer staples stocks have been a distant third in terms of positive contributions. Colgate-Palmolive (CL) has been the biggest positive contributor from the sector. The materials sector has closely followed the consumer staples sector. Its been led by Monsanto Company (MON).

Comparison with QQQ

To put it simply, passively managed QQQ has been no match for MIGFX in 2016 so far. Theres been no sector in which QQQ has even been close to the returns posted by MIGFX.

Investor takeaway

MIGFX has had a brilliant run so far in 2016. Even in sectors such as consumer discretionary, healthcare, and financials, which have troubled its peers, the fund has been able to generate positive returns.

Story continues

A long-term review would be helpful in determining if this has been a skill-based performance or if market conditions have been generous to the companies in which the fund invests.

Lets move on to the next fund in this series, the Principal LargeCap Growth Fund I Class A (PLGAX).

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
In April, climbing season for Mount Everest opened after two years of disasters shuttered the mountain earlier than usual. In that time, there have already been four confirmed deaths. Two more climbers are missing and are unlikely to be found, experts say. One worker died while fixing a route near the summit. The other three deaths were climbers, all suspected of having altitude sickness.

In 2014, Everest expeditions almost completely halted following the deaths of 16 Nepali mountain workers in an avalanche and subsequent protests for improved work conditions. Then, in April 2015, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake and avalanche caused nearly 8,500 deaths in Nepal and resulted in 19 fatalities at Mount Everest Base Camp, leading to the cancellation of the climbing season, a choice made on the Tibet side by the Chinese government and by individual teams on the Nepal side.

So what makes Mount Everest such a dangerous place? In addition to the capriciousness of Mother Nature and the treacherous terrain on the lofty peak, the altitude can take a real toll on the human body, scientists say.

Altitude sickness on Mount Everest

At 29,029 feet (8,848 meters), Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the world in terms of altitude. However, the tallest mountain is actually Mauna Kea in Hawaii, which measures 33,480 feet (10,205 m) from its underwater base to its peak, according to Guinness World Records. (Most of Mauna Kea is underwater.) [Photos: The World's 10 Tallest Mountains]

Altitude sickness, also called acute mountain sickness, can begin once a person reaches an altitude of about 8,000 feet (2,440 m). Symptoms include nausea, headache, dizziness and exhaustion. Many Colorado ski resorts surpass this altitude.

If climbers remain below 12,000 feet (3,600 m), they are unlikely to experience the more severe forms of altitude sickness, which may cause difficulty walking, increased breathlessness, a bubbling sound in the chest, coughed-up liquid that is pink and frothy, and confusion or loss of consciousness, according to the U.K.National Health Service (NHS).

Story continues

Oxygen insufficiency is the root of altitude sickness. The barometric pressure decreases at high altitudes, which allows oxygen molecules to spread out, according to Dr. Eric Weiss, a professor of emergency medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine and founder and former director of the Stanford Wilderness Medicine Fellowship. At Everest Base Camp on the Khumbu Glacier, which lies at an altitude of 17,600 feet (5,400 m), oxygen levels are at about 50 percent of what they are at sea level. That drops to one-third at Everest's summit, which reaches about 29,000 feet (8,850 m) above sea level. [Infographic: Take a Tour Through Earth's Atmospheric Layers]

"The marked reduction in barometric pressure and oxygen you get has very deleterious effects on the brain and the body," Weiss told Live Science.

If someone is experiencing mild altitude sickness, they should not go any higher for 24 to 48 hours, according to the NHS. If symptoms don't improve, or if they worsen in that time, the NHS advises descending 1,640 feet (500 m). Severe altitude sickness is a medical emergency that requires immediate descent to a low altitude and attention from a medical professional.

Altitude sickness can lead to pulmonary or cerebral edemas, which are buildups of fluid in the lungs and brain, respectively. These symptoms often occur together and are the body's attempt to get more oxygen to these vital organs in response to the decreased oxygen environment at these high elevations, said Weiss. Because blood vessels and capillaries are porous, this increased flow can cause leakage and fluid retention. Fluid buildup in the brain may result in loss of coordination and problems with thought processing, said Weiss. It can lead to coma and death. Weiss said that fluid buildup in the lungs can make it hard for someone to breathe and physically exert themselves. It can eventually cause death through a process similar to drowning.

Researchers reporting in 2008 in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) looked at deaths on Everest from 1921 to 2006 and found that "profound fatigue and late times in reaching the summit are early features associated with subsequent death," they wrote in the BMJ.

Weiss has a similar view on the safest way to climb Everest: "When people climb Everest [], the mantra is that you have to get up to the summit by a certain time so that you can get down while you still have oxygen left and while you still have daylight," he said. Too often, people refuse to turn around when they should because they can see the summit and think it's close enough to justify continuing, he added.

Why Sherpas survive

Overall, the BMJ study found that the total mortality rate for Everest mountaineers was 1.3 percent. The mortality rate for climbers is 1.6 percent, compared with 1.1 percent for Sherpas. The most common cause of death for climbers was falls, whereas the most common cause of death for Sherpas was "objective hazards," which included avalanches, falling ice, crevasses and falling rock, and were likely related to the extended time they had to spend in more treacherous areas of the mountain as part of their employment. The researchers noted that neurological dysfunction, which could be related to altitude sickness, also could have contributed to fatal falls.

There are no distinct reasons why altitude affects one person more than another. The National Institutes of Health notes that speed of ascent and physical exertion often play roles in whether someone develops altitude sickness. Acclimatization is often touted as a vital step in attempting Everest with reduced risk.

Living at high elevations, such as the elevations at which Sherpas grow up, may give certain people an advantage in climbing Everest, according to a study detailed in 2015 in the journal F1000Research. That study, which involved Sherpas and lowlanders at various elevations, including Base Camp, suggested that Sherpas may be protected from altitude sickness due to various physiological processes, including mitochondrial function and microcirculation. The mitochondria, often called the powerhouses of the cells, take in oxygen and convert it to fuel. It's possible that Sherpas' mitochondria process oxygen more efficiently, making them better suited to high-altitude environments that other people. Microcirculation is the movement of blood to the smallest blood vessels, which also includes the delivery of oxygen to bodily tissues. Research has shown that Sherpas maintain better microcirculatory blood flow in low-oxygen environments than people who are from low elevations.

The BMJ researchers noted that Sherpas may be less likely to die at the highest elevations because they spend more time up there preparing routes, further increasing the time they have to acclimate. The competitive process involved in becoming a mountain worker likely also means that only the people best suited for the job are working on Everest, the researchers added.

Tips for surviving altitude sickness

Bringing someone to a lower elevation is the best way to treat altitude sickness, but doing so can be very challenging. "Prevention is paramount, because once those changes occur at those kinds of extreme altitudes, it is very hard to assist someone to a lower altitude," Weiss said. Climbing downhill is more challenging than trekking uphill because it often requires increased coordination and technical skills, he said. Other factors  such as exhaustion, dehydration and a low supply of supplemental oxygen can add to the difficulty. People experiencing altitude sickness also may be struggling to walk or may be unconscious, Weiss said.

There is medication that may help to prevent, and partially treat, the buildup of fluid in the brain, but it is not effective in treating the buildup of fluid in the lungs, Weiss said. Supplemental oxygen can help, but it isn't always available.

In Nepal in 1989, Weiss and his colleague Dr. Ken Zafren, also of Stanford, were the first people to field-test another potential treatment for severe altitude sickness, called the Gamow bag. The inflatable bag, which looks a little like a closed sleeping bag, can essentially create a lower-atmosphere environment for the person inside. A foot pump is used to inflate the bag, creating higher pressure inside than outside. The extent of descent this bag can simulate depends on where it's being used. At the top of Everest, it could simulate a descent of about 9,195 feet (2,800 m), according to a manual provided by the American Mountain Guides Association. Weiss said the bag is helpful but is not practical to use at Everest's summit because it weighs nearly 13 lbs. (6 kilograms) and requires a lot of physical exertion in order to inflate it and keep it inflated at extreme altitudes. A Gamow bag is almost always available at Base Camp, but the sick person must be brought to it, Weiss said.

So far this year, approximately 400 climbers have made it to the top of Mount Everest. According to National Geographic, they include Melissa Arnot, who summited for her sixth time and is the first American woman to do so without supplemental oxygen; Staff Sgt. Charlie Linville, the first combat-wounded amputee to reach the summit; and Lakhpa Sherpa, a Nepalese woman who summited for the seventh time, breaking her own record as the most accomplished female Everest climber.

Editor's Note: This article was updated to correct the description of cerebral edema.

Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

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Chinese economy still full of vitality: Panasonic president Updated: 2016-05-31 10:18 (Xinhua)

BEIJING - "Despite pessimistic talk about the Chinese economy in some Japanese media, I'm constantly impressed by the changes brought about by China's rapid economic development every time I come," Panasonic President Kazuhiro Tsuga said.

The market and the government are simultaneously playing a vital role in the Chinese economy, and China's potential is immeasurable given its huge population and vast market, Tsuga said in a recent interview with Xinhua while attending a business forum in Beijing.

Tsuga, 59, has visited China eight times since he took the helm of the Japanese electronics giant four years ago.

Tsuga said he was impressed by the development of Chinese high-speed railways, which is "several times faster than its Japanese counterpart," and is propelling the development of relevant infrastructure in China.

Tsuga is also highly optimistic about the growth of new-energy cars in China, which he thinks would be especially promising with the adoption of stricter environmental protection standards in the country.

He believes new-energy vehicles will grow rapidly in China and will lead the development of this industry across the world.

"China is a country to which Panasonic can contribute, especially in the sphere of environmental protection," he said.

With first-class lithium battery technology, Panasonic announced in 2014 a decision to jointly set up a super lithium battery factory in the United States with the U.S. electrical vehicle maker Tesla. It hopes to reduce battery costs through mass production, and thus promote the popularization of electrical vehicles.

As a giant of the Japanese home appliance industry, Panasonic will celebrate its centenary in 2018. In striving to change its image as a "home appliance provider", Panasonic eyes the automobile industry as one of the focuses of its transformation drive.

In the 2011 fiscal year (from April 2011 to March 2012), Panasonic registered the biggest deficit in its history of as much as 772.17 billion yen ($9.66 billion).

Since becoming Panasonic's president in June 2012, Tsuga has decisively closed those declining industry like plasma panels, and shifted its focus to automobiles and vehicle-mounted services, housing and B2B businesses. As a result, Panasonic transformed itself ahead of other old home appliance makers in Japan.

Panasonic's experience shows that transformation must be speedy. In today's globalized world, businesses without technological edges can be easily squeezed out of the market by powerful competitors.

Talking about Panasonic's development plan, Tsuga noted that his company would give its overseas teams a bigger role to play with hopes of pooling talents from around the world to promote its development and building favorable mechanisms to cope with all sorts of changes.
A village in Switzerland would rather pay a fine of close to $290,000 than accept 10 refugees, required under the countrys quota to deal with the 1 million refugees and migrants who have arrived in Europe in recent years.

Residents of Oberwil-Lieli, one of the wealthiest villages in Switzerland, voted this weekend to keep the refugees out. They simply wouldnt fit in at the village of 22,000, which has 300 millionaires, residents said. One resident told The Telegraph:

We do not want them here, it is as simple as that. We have worked hard all our lives and have a lovely village that we do not want spoiled. We are not suited to take in refugees, they would not fit in here.

Andreas Glarner, the mayor of the village, told The Telegraph he was concerned with the refugee-screening process, saying he was unsure if they were accepting Syrian refugees or economic migrants from other countries. He further said refugees are better served by being helped in the camps nearer their homes.

Switzerland accepted 30,000 refugees between September 2014 and September 2015, according to EU data.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
Photo: Getty Images

Most of us are familiar with the Freudian Oedipus complex, but we might not be as familiar with the Electra complex, which is when women fall for men who are like their dads.

You might not think you choose guys like your dad, but your mind has a way of falling back on the familiar.

Finally, a relationship expert has let us in on the reason women choose partners who are similar to their fathers both physically and personality-wise.

In an interview with Marie Claire U.K., Judith Wright says, You might think that youre dating the extreme opposite to your father, and yet the unconscious mind finds a way of slipping back into whats comfortable.

When were young, pre-sexual programming occurs, where we start to form relationship ideals based on those around us, like our parents.

Various situations women grow up in can make them more likely to opt for a men similar to their dads.

For example, women with bad father-daughter relationships will unintentionally fall for similar men because they feel they can do a better job this time around, Wright says.

Women who didnt have father figures growing up are likely to fall for older men, hoping to fill the empty space their fathers left.

On the other hand, women with supportive fathers are more likely to succeed romantically.

Linda Nielsen, a professor of educational and adolescent psychology at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, affirms this on Family Studies.

Photo: Getty Images

A girl who has a secure, supportive, communicative relationship with her father is less likely to get pregnant as a teenager, Nielsen writes. Women with good father-daughter relationships are also less likely to suffer from a range of illnesses, including depression, anorexia, and body dysmorphia, she says.

Wright assures those worried about dating someone like their dad that it isnt a bad thing, as long as the partner shares his best qualities.

She suggests women should see their relationships as completely separate from their parents. Only then can they break free from the Electra complex and fully move on.
Apparently there is more to worry about when flying than just making sure your liquids are the correct size or that your carry-on fits safely in the overhead bin. Your outfit might also have to pass an inspection by none other than the flight's pilot.

Such was the case for burlesque dancer Maggie McMuffin, who was dressed in striped shorts, a sweater and high socks when she was asked to change before being allowed to board a JetBlue flight from Boston to Seattle.

"[A gate agent said what] I was wearing was not appropriate and the flight crew had discussed it and the pilot had decided that I needed to put something else on or I would not be allowed to board the flight," McMuffin told KIRO7 in Seattle.

According to McMuffin's friend Molly McIsaac, who posted on Facebook about the incident, McMuffin had to go to another terminal to buy a pair of shorts for "proper coverage." She claims that JetBlue apologized and refunded McMuffin for these shorts and provided less than $200 in credit, but did not offer any explanation or an apology from the pilot.

Mic reached out to the airline for more information, but JetBlue issued the following statement to KIRO7:

"The gate and on board crew discussed the customer's clothing and determined that the burlesque shorts may offend other families on the flight. While the customer was not denied boarding, the crew members politely asked if she could change. The customer agreed and continued on the flight without interruption.We support our crew members' discretion to make these difficult decisions, and we decided to reimburse the customer for the cost of the new shorts and offered a credit for future flight as a good will gesture."

As Mashable points out, there is no dress code on any U.S. carrier, but JetBlue's contract of carriage does state that passengers whose "clothing is lewd, obscene or patently offensive" could be denied boarding.

Story continues

From schools to work to gyms, women have either been sent home or asked to change when wearing clothing that some have deemed too revealing. As Mic's Rachel Lubitz wrote earlier this month, "All of these rules are constructed to make elders (and sometimes young boys) feel more at ease, as if seeing a shoulder blade or knee will send someone into a catatonic, drooling, lustful fit."

"Yes, she did deserve to be treated like that. Put some clothes on. She looks like she's wearing underwear or a bathing suit. Have some class and dress appropriately for public," and "Yeah she was going on a flight not on stage. Have a bit of self respect," are just two of the comments on Facebook, out of thousands, that highlight how important this conversation is.

Besides the fact that McMuffin's shorts were not showing much of anything, in this case, what's especially startling is that an airline believed her outfit, or more specifically her legs and thighs, could "offend other families on the flight." Because it would be terrible if little children saw a woman's legs. (The horror!)

As McIsaac asks, "How does what Maggie was wearing affect her ability to fly?" The bottom line is: It doesn't. And it doesn't affect any of the non-striped-short-wearing people on the plane, either.
This piece is part of an ongoing series on the unsung women of history. Read more here.

After the Civil War, an unusual public figure took to the stage in New York. Her name was Richmonia Richards, and she delivered a scintillating account of wartime feats of espionage that must have delighted her Northern viewers. But two things about Richards stood outthe name was an alias, and she was a woman of color. Both borrowed names and black skin play into the amazing story of Mary Richards Bowser, a woman now recognized as a Union spy who actually made her way into the Confederate White House during the Civil War.

Bowser was born a slave in Richmond around 1839. She was raised in the home of Virginias prominent Van Lews, a family with Northern roots who nonetheless owned slaves. Elizabeth Van Lew, Bowsers owner, was Quaker-educated and loyal to the abolitionist cause. When her father died in 1843, the Van Lews freed all of their slaves, and Elizabeth later used money from her fathers estate to buy and free relatives and friends of the people she had freed.

One of those freed slaves was Bowser. Elizabeth took note of the young womans intelligence and paid to send her to a Quaker school for black students in Philadelphiapartly because it was illegal for a freed slave to stay in Virginia. Under an 1806 laws, they had to leave the state within a year or run the risk of being re-enslaved.

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Perhaps in response to that persistent threat, Bowser soon headed to Africa, to live in Liberia. At the time, there was increasing pressure for former slaves to leave the U.S. and settle there, and perhaps Bowser sought a new life in a place where she did not face the threat of the pervasive racism that faced even free blacks in the abolitionist North. But for whatever reason, Bowser did not stay in Africa. Instead, she returned to Richmond illegally.

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Back at home with the Van Lews, Bowser remained with the family as a free servant. But Virginia would not recognize her freedom and arrested her for claiming to be a free person of color. Elizabeth paid her bail and claimed that Bowser was in fact a slave, laying the foundation for one of the Civil Wars greatest ruses.

Elizabeth wasnt just an abolitionistby the time the Civil War began, she was a committed supporter of the Union cause. Unlike many of her counterparts, she felt that her best work on behalf of the North could be done in the heart of the Confederate capital. She remained in Richmond, spending her time doing good deeds among the imprisoned Union soldiers at the rat hell of Libby Prison. Elizabeth herself was able to escape the notice of her Southern enemies by posing as a mentally ill figure who became known as Crazy Bet. It was easy for Richmonders to overlook her eccentricitiesand miss the fact that she was running a spy ring in the center of the Confederate capital.

MORE: The Special Reason Harriet Tubman Is Perfect for the $20 Bill

But she wasnt alone. While Elizabeth Van Lew had to feign insanity to remain in Richmond without arousing suspicion about her abolitionist views, Mary Richards Bowsers stupidity was assumed by Southerners who did not allow black people educations or dignity. Aided by those prejudices and a photographic memory, Bowser posed as a dim-witted slave and began spying on Confederate officials. Van Lew encouraged a friend to take her to events and eventually Bowserin the role of a slave who had been hired out by her masterwas employed full-time by Jefferson Davis himself. Her time working in the house of the Confederate president reporting all the while on the comings and goings of the householdwas by far her biggest coup.

When I open my eyes in the morning, I say to the servant, What news, Mary? and my caterer never fails! Van Lew wrote in her diary during the war. Most generally our reliable news is gathered from negroes, and they certainly show wisdom, discretion and prudence which is wonderful.

After the war, Bowser took on the persona of Richmondia Richards and other aliases, speaking to New Yorkers about her spy work and spreading the word about her educational work with freed slaves. Her speeches were sarcastic, humorous and filled with eloquence about the equal treatment she felt was finally black peoples due after the long years of enslavement and toil. Soon Bowser gave history the slip, too. Its not certain what happened to her after the 1860sperhaps she changed names or simply faded into the woodwork. She left behind only tales of her bravery and questions about what became of a Union spy who played on prejudice to help the anti-slavery cause.
Woodkid and composer Nils Frahm have teamed up for a collaborative mini-album featuring spoken word by Robert DeNiro. As the soundtrack accompaniment to the JR-directed short film Ellis, proceeds from the DeNiro starring short and the mini-album will go to charity Sea Watch, which will help those affected by the refugee crisis. Due for release on July 8, the mini-album will be released via Erased Tapes. The film stars DeNiro as an immigrant exploring New Yorks abandoned Ellis Island hospital complex.

FACT reports that Frahm said that the Opportunity to work on JRs fantastic short film came through my good friend Yoann aka Woodkid. He continued, saying, We agreed on recording the piano parts in my studio in Berlin and so it happened that JR and Woodkid were guests at Durton studio on a wonderful late summers day in 2015. We managed to record all the crucial elements that day. The music fell into our laps and melted with the images: a wonderful experience. The film has stuck in my head ever since; it moved my heart and changed my soul.

Speaking more about the current refugee crisis, Frahm explained, Robert says it all in 17 minutes. We are not facing a refugee crisis. We are facing a crisis because we do not embrace, we do not sympathize and we cannot give up fear. Art can encourage so I hope this project will help fight the fear in all of us.

Watch a trailer for the short film above, and check out some more previews of the soundtrack below.

More from Pigeons & Planes
Nicholas Kristof recent reignited the debate over liberal bias in academia with his claim that universities risk becoming liberal echo chambers and hostile environments for conservatives. He does single out my profession, economics, as being better than most social science departments in representing conservative viewpoints:

Economists remain influential. I wonder if that isnt partly because there is a critical mass of Republican economists who battle the Democratic economists and thus tether the discipline to the American mainstream.

But the extent to which conservative ideology is represented within the profession is much larger than a simple tally of the number of conservatives versus liberals indicates.

Related: Why College Professors Are Afraid to Teach Millennials

The conservative bias in economics begins with the baseline theoretical model, what is often called Economics 101. This model of perfect competition describes a world that agrees with Republican ideology. In this model, there is no role for government intervention in the economy beyond setting the institutional structure for free markets to operate. There is nothing government can do to improve the ability of market to provide the goods and services people desire at the lowest possible price, or to help markets respond to shocks.

The great majority of economists, Democrats and Republicans alike, believe in the ability of markets to perform the magic of coordinating the desires and productive activity of millions and millions of people without the need for a central authority to guide them, and to provide the correct incentives for innovative, robust economic growth. Thus, in order to make the case that there is a role for government, one must first provide a strong case that there is a significant market failure that results in a departure from the assumptions needed for markets to work their magic, and then explain how government policy can improve upon the outcome.

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That is done all the time within the profession. Although economists believe in markets in general, they are continuously identifying instances of market failure and then designing government policy responses that can make these markets work better. In fact, the standard model used in macroeconomics incorporates a particular market failure that plagues a broad swath of markets  wage and price rigidities  into the basic theoretical framework. This model, along with supporting empirical evidence, provides a basis for the use of monetary and fiscal policy to improve the performance of the macroeconomy.

Related: Are Economists Driven by Ideology or Evidence?

But even though economist have made a strong case for government intervention and regulation in many cases, and for the use of monetary and fiscal policy to stabilize the macroeconomy, the public debate tends to fall back on simple Economics 101, keep the government out of the way discourse.

This has been attributed to economics writers [who] present Econ 101 stuff about supply, demand, and how great markets are as gospel, ignoring the many ways in which economists have learned to qualify those conclusions in the face of market imperfections. But I think it goes beyond economics writers who shape public opinion with standard Economics 101 arguments they remember from their principles of economics classes.

There is a substantial and influential block of mostly conservative economists who always stand ready to defend the idea that markets work best when they are left alone. They will acknowledge that market imperfections exist, but they argue that given enough time market forces will fix the problem. If government tries to help through regulation or more direct measures, it will undermine these forces and make things worse.

Even when there is broad based agreement that government action can improve the performance of the economy, as there is with monetary policy, conservative economists argue that the Fed should commit to a specific policy rule that places restrictions on how monetary policy can be used. When it comes to fiscal policy, which has a solid theoretical and empirical foundation, they argue that government incompetence will cause more harm than good. Better to do nothing at all unless its tax cuts for the wealthy  somehow the government will get that right.

Related: Facebook's CEO Meets Conservatives Over Bias Controversy

The result is that Republican policymakers in Congress, or economics writers with a conservative outlook, can appeal to academic arguments to support their ideological, small government, tax-cutting, deregulation agenda. This leaves the public thoroughly confused even when there is substantial agreement within the economics profession, and gives political cover to Republicans in Congress who stand in the way of government taking an active in overcoming market failures and managing the macroeconomy.

The conservative viewpoint is accorded significant weight despite the fact that it is often a minority viewpoint. There is strong evidence that the minimum wage has much smaller effects on employment than the simple competitive model implies, social insurance deters work far less than the models predict, taxes on the wealthy do not harm economic growth, monopoly power is distorting markets, wages do not always rise with productivity, etc., etc., but its hard to overcome the cover conservative voices provide as they are echoed loudly in the right wing media.

Republican economists may help to tether the discipline to the American mainstream due to their ability to shape what the public believes, but it ought to be the other way around. What is needed is for public opinion to be tethered to the mainstream of economics.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft have all agreed to ramp up the fight against hate speech with a new code of conduct that was announced by the European Union Tuesday. Under the new agreement, the four tech giants promise to review and if necessary remove the majority of hate speech that has been brought to their attention within 24 hours.

The new code of conduct is as much a response to the terror attacks in Paris and Brussels as to growing right-wing violence across Europe. In many ways, it follows similar rules that have already been in place in Germany for some time.

The code of conduct also includes a commitment to closer cooperation between the four companies to develop industry-wide best practices, as well as the support of speech countering hate. The participating companies aim to continue their work in identifying and promoting independent counter-narratives, new ideas and initiatives and supporting educational programs that encourage critical thinking, according to a press release of the European Commission.

The four tech companies lauded the agreement, saying that it is in line with their existing efforts against hate speech. We remain committed to letting the tweets flow, said Twitters European head of public policy Karen White. However, there is a clear distinction between freedom of expression and conduct that incites violence and hate.

Added Googles public policy and government relations director Lie Junius: Were committed to giving people access to information through our services, but we have always prohibited illegal hate speech on our platforms.

However, there are notable differences on what constitutes hate speech in some European countries and the U.S.. Civil rights groups also expressed displeasure Tuesday with the fact that the code of conduct puts too much of an emphasis on rules developed by each company, and not the letter of the law, calling the agreement ill considered.

Related stories

Story continues

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Google Dodges a Bullet, Wins $9 Billion Oracle Lawsuit
For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL  May 31, 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 Oracle Corp. (ORCL), Alphabet (GOOGL), NetEase, Inc. (NTES) and Facebook Inc (FB).

Today, Zacks is promoting its ''Buy'' stock recommendations. Get #1Stock of the Day pick for free.

Here are highlights from Fridays Analyst Blog:

Oracle to Appeal Jury Verdict Favoring Google

In a landmark ruling, a 10-member jury has found no copyright violations of Oracle Corp.s (ORCL) Java APIs by Alphabet ( GOOGL) while developing its Android system.

Oracle sought $9.3 billion as compensation from Alphabet for unauthorized usage of Java APIs in its Android operating system. As per media reports, Oracles damage expert James Malackowski had claimed $8.8 billion as compensation for profits made by Google in addition to $475 million in damages. A booming smartphone market especially for Android run devices in the last few years is a contributing factor to the mammoth compensation demanded by Oracle.

The dispute has been going on for the past six years now. Oracle had first sued Alphabet, then Google. It claimed that Google in order to take a leading position in the mobile market was scrambling to launch its operating system and therefore used Java unauthorized as it was a well-known script with a lot of programmers then. However, Google denied such allegations and maintained that the usage of Java APIs was protected under the fair use clause which permits copying under limited circumstances.

Java was developed in the early 1990s by Sun Microsystems, which was taken over by Oracle in 2010.

In May 2012, Alphabet had initially gained an edge as the Northern District of California Judge William Asylup ruled that APIs are not copyrightable. However, next year, a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed the district courts ruling, thereby bringing some relief for Oracle.But at the same time, it gave Alphabet a breather in the form of the fair use defense clause which permits copying under limited circumstances. In Oct 2014, Alphabet filed a petition in Supreme Court but SCOTUS turned it down and redirected it to a district court.

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The ruling was welcomed by Silicon Valley as they apprehended that a decision in Oracles favor could prove detrimental to innovation since programmers use open source APIs across various interfaces for developing codes. Analysts observe that if Oracle had won, it would have been a very puzzling situation for developers as to which APIs can be accessed and which are off limits. Further, they added that it would have marred software cooperation and made the process expensive, the eventual burden of which would fall on consumers.

In an email, Google said "Today's verdict that Android makes fair use of Java APIs represents a win for the Android ecosystem, for the Java programming community, and for software developers who rely on open and free programming languages to build innovative consumer products."

However, Oracle is not willing to accept this decision. The company is planning to appeal against the verdict. Oracle general counsel Dorian Daley was quoted saying Oracle brought this lawsuit to put a stop to Googles illegal behavior. We believe there are numerous grounds for appeal."

At present, Alphabet carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) whereas Oracle carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell). Better-ranked tech stocks include NetEase, Inc. (NTES) and Facebook Inc ( FB). Both sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).

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Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss. This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit https://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release.



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For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL  May 31, 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 Trina Solar Ltd. (TSL), JA Solar Holdings Co. Ltd. (JASO), ReneSola Ltd. (SOL) and JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd. (JKS).

Today, Zacks is promoting its ''Buy'' stock recommendations. Get #1Stock of the Day pick for free.

Here are highlights from Fridays Analyst Blog:

China Stock Roundup: Solar Companies in Focus

Markets declined again over the week as concerns about the economy continued to weigh on investor sentiment. The benchmark index gained on Monday with telecom, consumer staples and tech stocks leading gains. The index declined for the first time in three days on Tuesday, with commodity stocks emerging as the biggest losers.

The Shanghai Composite Index moved lower on Wednesday after fears arose regarding a flight of capital from the economy even as the U.S. prepares to raise rates. The benchmark index increased on Thursday, rebounding after two consecutive days of declines. The Shanghai Composite Index declined on Friday to register is sixth consecutive weekly decline.

Trina Solar Ltd. (TSL) reported earnings of 29 cents per American Depositary Shares (ADS) in the first quarter of 2016. JA Solar Holdings Co. Ltd. ( JASO) posted first-quarter 2016 adjusted earnings of 36 cents per diluted American Depositary Share (ADS), beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 22 cents by a wide margin of 63.6%.

Last Weeks Developments

Last Friday, the Shanghai Composite Index moved up 0.7%, but declined 0.1% for the week. This was its fifth consecutive week of losses. Investors remained concerned about the state of the economy and the imminent Fed rate hike. The CSI 300 gained 0.5%, posting a 0.1% increase for the week. In contrast, the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index gained 0.7%.

Story continues

Markets and the Economy This Week

The benchmark index gained 0.6% on Monday with telecom, consumer staples and tech stocks leading gains. Volatility slumped to its lowest level in 15 months even as investors favored companies with minimum exposure to manufacturing which is undergoing a slowdown.

The CSI 300 advanced 0.3%. Sub indexes of telecom, tech and consumer staples companies gained a minimum of 0.8%. The Hang Seng declined 0.2% while the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index moved up 0.1%. The small cap ChiNext added 1.6%.

The benchmark index declined for the first time in three days on Tuesday, losing 0.8%. Commodity stocks were the largest decliners after speculation arose that prices of raw materials will drop further. This would be the outcome of an economic slowdown which is reducing demand.

The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index ended flat for the day. The Hang Seng advanced 0.1%. Sub-indexes of telecom and material stocks within the CSI 300 declined by a minimum of 1%.

The Shanghai Composite Index declined again on Wednesday, losing 0.2%. Fears arose regarding a flight of capital from the economy even as the U.S. prepares to raise rates. The CSI 300 moved 0.1% lower as nearly all sector closed in the red with transportation emerging as the largest decliner. The Hang Seng jumped 2.7%, increasing by the largest extent in six weeks. The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index advanced 2.8%.

The benchmark index increased 0.3% on Thursday, rebounding after two consecutive days of declines. Commodity stocks emerged as the highest gainers for the day, boosting the Shanghai Composite above the crucial level of 2,800. The CSI 300 advanced 0.2%. The Hang Seng moved 0.1% higher. However, the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index lost 0.1%.

The Shanghai Composite Index declined 0.1% on Friday to register is sixth consecutive weekly decline. Consumer staples, industrials and pharma stocks were the worst performers for the week. Additionally, fresh data revealed that profit growth of industrial companies had declined to 4.2% for April.

The benchmark lost 0.2% over the week and has lost 4% over the month as of now. The CSI 300 moved 0.1% lower, taking the weeks decline to 0.5%. The Hang Seng gained 0.9%, adding 3.7% over the week. The Hang Seng China Enteprises Index increased 0.8%, advancing 3.5% over the week.

Stocks in the News

Trina Solar reported earnings of 29 cents per American Depositary Shares (ADS) in the first quarter of 2016. The bottom line beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 23 cents by 26.1% and also surged 81.3% from 16 cents earned in the year-ago quarter.

Trina Solar posted revenues of $816.9 million in the first quarter, up 46.4% year over year but down 15.1% sequentially. The year-over-year increase in revenues was primarily driven by higher shipment volumes in key markets in China, the U.S., and India. However, lower demand in Japan and Europe partially limited the upside. The sequential decrease was mainly due to seasonality. The quarterly figure surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $803 million by 1.7%.

Solar module shipments in the reported quarter totaled 1,423.3 megawatts (MW) compared with 1,026.2 MW in the year-ago quarter and 1,776.3 MW in the previous quarter. This was attributable to increasing demand from prime geographical regions, like China, the U.S. and India.

Trina Solar expects second-quarter 2016 module shipment in the range of 1.50 gigawatts (GW) to 1.60 GW. For the full year, the company reaffirmed its guidance for total PV module shipments to the range of 6.30 GW to 6.55 GW.

JA Solar posted first-quarter 2016 adjusted earnings of 36 cents per diluted American Depositary Share (ADS), beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 22 cents by a wide margin of 63.6%. Earnings also surged from the year-ago figure of 13 cents by 176.9%.

JA Solars revenues in the reported quarter were $538.1 million, beating both the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $431 million by 24.8% and the year-ago figure by 44.4%. The improvement in revenues was driven by strong shipments to key markets, primarily to its domestic market China.

Total shipments in the first quarter 2016 were 1,128.3 megawatts (MW). External shipments were 1,038.3 MW, up 52.4% year over year. The year-over-year improvement in external shipments was attributable to a 57.4% upside in module shipment as well as a 22.1% rise in cells and cell tolling.

The increase in shipments came on the back of strong demand from China, which constituted 59.6% of the quarters total shipment. Shipments to America jumped to 4.5% of the total from 1.0% in the year-ago quarter.

Europe, however, witnessed a considerable drop, having contributed 5.6% to total shipments, compared with 22.6% a year ago. Asia-Pacific (excluding China) markets also witnessed a slowdown with shipments constituting 26.7% of the total, a considerable drop from 53.9% a year ago.

JA Solar expects to ship 1.41.5 gigawatts (GW) of cells and modules in the second quarter of 2016. The company anticipates module shipment of about 100 MW to its downstream projects.

ReneSola Ltd. (SOL) reported earnings of 6 cents per American Depositary Share (ADS) in the first quarter of 2016. The Zacks Consensus Estimate was a loss of 4 cents.

The company has made significant progress in transforming itself from a solar product manufacturer to a multi-faceted participant across the green energy value chain. Moreover, it has reduced its debt level.

ReneSolas first-quarter net revenue of $260.7 million was almost in line with the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $260 million. Reported revenues, however, tanked 25.3% year over year and 12% sequentially.

The company attributes the decline to lower module shipments to external customers, and reduced module average selling prices (ASP) as it has strategically directed more shipments toward downstream projects.

In the quarter under review, total module shipments were 350.7 megawatts (MW), down 6% sequentially. Wafer shipments totaled 351.0 MW, up 79.9% year over year and 29.8% sequentially.

JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd. (JKS) announced that it has supplied 122 megawatts (MW) of photovoltaic (PV) modules to Pattern Energy Group LP (Pattern Development), for the Conejo solar project in Chile. U.S.-based independent power producer, Pattern Development, is a joint owner of the project. The project is expected to be complete in the second half of 2016.

Conejo is one of the largest PV projects in Chile. The project has already secured a 22-year power purchase agreement from Minera Los Pelambres, an affiliate of Antofagasta Minerals. Under this agreement, upon completion, the project will fulfill 65% of the electricity requirement of the Los Pelambres.

Situated in the Antofagasta region in Chile, the project will be connected to the Sistema Interconectado Central transmission system.

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Continuous coverage is provided for a universe of 1,150 publicly traded stocks. Our analysts are organized by industry which gives them keen insights to developments that affect company profits and stock performance. Recommendations and target prices are six-month time horizons.

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Zacks.com is a property of Zacks Investment Research, Inc., which was formed in 1978. The later formation of the Zacks Rank, a proprietary stock picking system; continues to outperform the market by nearly a 3 to 1 margin. The best way to unlock the profitable stock recommendations and market insights of Zacks Investment Research is through our free daily email newsletter; Profit from the Pros. In short, it's your steady flow of Profitable ideas GUARANTEED to be worth your time! Register for your free subscription to Profit from the Pros.

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Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss. This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit https://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release.



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Living in the past Updated: 2016-05-31 09:44 By Lin Qi(China Daily)

A Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) huanghuali table on show at the International Antiques Fair, hosted by William Chak's company. Photos provided to China Daily

In a typically inspiring story, William Chak has evolved from an apprentice to a connoisseur. Lin Qi reports.

Antique collector and dealer William Chak has a hectic schedule of traveling between Hong Kong, where he lives, and the mainland that connects him with a growing base of buyers.

A few weeks ago, the 58-year-old also made trips to auction previews in cities like Xiamen in East China's Fujian province, and Shanghai, to advise local collectors.

The annual International Antiques Fair, organized by his outfit, Chak's Company Ltd, an antique gallery and advisory firm, is being held through May 31 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center, gathering dozens of antique galleries and auction houses worldwide. Launched in 2005, the fair features Oriental art, mostly Chinese antiques.

As an associated project of the annual Le French May Arts Festival, this year's International Antiques Fair includes classical and decorative European art catering to Asian buyers.

Chak will be back in Beijing at the weekend to deliver a lecture on Tang Ying, a ceramic artist of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) who oversaw official kilns.

Chak became a television personality in 2006, when he appeared as a regular guest for about six years in Tianxia Shoucang (the world of collecting), the high-rated weekly show on Beijing Satellite Television. He sat on a judging panel with experts from academic institutions who examined the authenticity and evaluated antiques brought by common people.

His cheerful face and easy explanations of art made him popular with viewers, helping him to reach out to an increasing population of collectors on the mainland. His Sina Weibo account has more than 420,000 followers, and he replies to people who post photos of recently purchased wares or family heirlooms discovered in their storerooms.
Tobacco makers faced yet another jolt after companies in New Zealand were asked to remove logos from cigarette packets and also enlarge the health warnings posted on the their packages.

Under the regulation, still in the draft stage, cigarette packages should be plain with graphic warnings covering at least 75% of each side of the pack.

The law is expected to be passed in 2016 and enforced by early next year.

Not only that, the government of New Zealand has recently announced a tax hike for cigarette makers. This is expected to raise the price of a cigarette pack to about 30 New Zealand dollars ($20), one of the highest in the world.

New Zealand expects to eliminate smoking by 2025 and .is working towards it for long. In 2013, the company first announced plans to pass a law regarding the use of plain packaging of cigarettes by tobacco companies. In 2012, the Australian government was the first to propose plain packaging.

The ruling was enforced by The World Health Organization which had pleaded that countries consider the plain packaging norm.

The move was vehemently opposed by tobacco sellers like Philip Morris International Inc.PM and British American Tobacco Plc. BTI as these companies rely on packaging to build their brand and draw consumer attention. Packaging was the last resort for advertising after the government put a ban on tobacco advertising by placing ads in magazines, billboards and TV.

Tobacco companies have been penalized for taking recourse to any kind of advertising or packaging that flouts the laws, to boost sales. The global tobacco industry has been facing severe advertising and packaging restrictions on their products for some time.

Meanwhile, governments around the world are imposing restrictions on tobacco makers which, in turn, are lowering cigarette consumption and affecting margins. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has made it mandatory for tobacco companies to use precautionary labels on cigarette packets to dissuade customers from smoking.

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A regulatory warning issued by the FDA in Aug 2015 against four of R.J. Reynolds, a subsidiary of Reynolds American Inc. RAI, cigarettes forced the company to stop sales and halt further distribution, marketing and promotion of the products.

Moreover, the European Union and the FDA have proposed a ban on menthol in accordance with the Tobacco Control Act, which essentially states that menthol cigarettes have an adverse impact on public health. Moreover, this ban will create a serious black market for these products, which would be detrimental to all tobacco companies.

Further, the Indian government has imposed plain packaging rules on tobacco makers who are required to cover 85% of the cigarette packets with pictorial warnings.

The regulatory authorities have imposed marketing and product regulations on e-cigarettes as well. Also, there is not much scientific evidence to back their ability to help smokers quit or smoke less. Putting such a regulation into effect is expected to impact the e-cigarette business and the top line of the tobacco companies in the coming quarters.

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From Good Housekeeping

Think twice before you book a trip to the "Happiest Place on Earth" this summer. According to one expert, your dream vacation spot will soon be hosting another type of visitor: Zika-carrying mosquitoes.

Some families should avoid the southern United States for the next few months, advises Professor Jimmy Whitworth of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. While Zika virus hasn't reached Florida, Texas or Louisiana yet, the rising summer temperatures provide the perfect conditions for the infected insects to spread stateside.

Whitworth isn't alone in his predictions, either. "The primary mosquito that can transmit Zika virus, (Aedes aegypti, aka the yellow fever mosquito) is found in parts of the southeastern United States, specifically in Florida, the Gulf Coast areas and parts of Texas," infectious disease expert Kamran Khan, MD, MPH told Dr. Oz The Good Life. Plus, the CDC believes the number of domestic cases will also increase as travelers return to the U.S. from affected areas like the Caribbean and South America.

Fortunately, most scientists agree that the virus poses just a small risk to the vast majority of people. Only pregnant women and couples trying to conceive should really reconsider their vacation plans, since Zika primarily impacts developing fetuses by restricting brain development. Only about one in five people with the disease will actually become ill, usually with only mild symptoms.

"If you are not pregnant or not thinking of getting pregnant, then I don't think it is something to worry about," Whitworth told the Daily Mail.

As for women who are expecting, factor Zika into potential travel plans - especially for places where the virus is already present - and definitely take precautionary measures, such as wearing long clothes and applying insect repellent.

[h/t Daily Mail]
The death of Harambe, a silverback gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo who was shot and killed after picking up a small boy who fell into his enclosure, has made national headlines since the deadly incident Saturday. Animal rights activists and others have begun offline and online protests against the zoo and the boy's parents, with many claiming that the gorilla was trying to shield the child at the time he was shot.

But while the protesters are right that Harambe's death was an avoidable mistake, their opinions about the gorilla's behavior before his death may be misinformed. Facebook user Amanda O'Donoughue wrote about her experience as a zookeeper and gorilla handler in her twenties and underscored what she said was the truth about male gorilla behavior: that their one job is to "protect the group."

"Now Gorillas are considered 'gentle giants' at least when compared with their more aggressive cousins, the chimpanzee. But a 400-plus-pound male in his prime is as strong as roughly 10 adult humans," O'Donoughue wrote. "What can you bench press? OK, now multiply that number by 10. An adult male silverback gorilla has one job, to protect his group ... Gorillas are considered a Class 1 mammal, the most dangerous class of mammals in the animal kingdom, again, merely due to their size and strength."

According to O'Donoughue, an aggressive gorilla is so dangerous, Association of Zoos and Aquariums-accredited institutions do not allow handlers into the enclosure with the animals.

Harambe was likely not protecting the child, who'd fallen into the enclosure, contrary to what has been claimed on Twitter and by some animal experts, O'Donoughue added.

all the yelling caused harambe to protect the child. he was standing over him and bringing him around to safety, not waiting to hurt him.

Expert: Gorilla #Harambe was trying to protect child from screaming people #CincinnatiZoo http://www.kentucky.com/news/nation-world/national/article80855652.html ...pic.twitter.com/ZiqGLBJpEC https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CjyzXBvXEAAVFot.jpg:large

Sums it up perfectly. #justiceforharambepic.twitter.com/Ika95fM9Kv https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CjuC5gAW0AAkVaC.jpg:large

Instead, O'Donoughue wrote, in the video the gorilla "reaches for the boy's hands and arms, but only to position the child better for his own displaying purposes. Males do very elaborate displays when highly agitated, slamming and dragging things about."

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According to CNN, witnesses said while Harambe may initially have meant the boy no harm, as he became agitated, he became rougher and more determined to keep hold of the child.

Zookeepers attempted to call the animals out of the enclosure, but Harambe stayed in the pen alongside the child. Shooting tranquilizers at the gorilla would not have worked, as "[Harambe] would've taken too long to become immobilized, and could have really injured the child in the process as the drugs used may not work quickly enough depending on the stress of the situation and the dose," she added.

The real problem, O'Donoughue concluded, is the zoo's fencing, which is designed to give a better view of the animals' habitats, but is less secure than the caging that preceded it.

Cincinnati Zoo Director Thane Maynard advanced a similar justification for killing the endangered animal in a press conference on Monday.

"The idea of waiting and shooting it with a hypodermic was not a good idea," Maynard told reporters. "That would have definitely created alarm in the male gorilla. When you dart an animal, anesthetic doesn't work in one second, it works over a period of a few minutes to 10 minutes. The risk was due to the power of that animal."

"Western lowland gorillas are critically endangered in the wild, numbering fewer than 175,000, according to the zoo," reported CNN. "An additional 765 gorillas dwell in zoos worldwide. The zoo had hoped Harambe would father more gorillas."

Amanda O'Donoughue did not immediately return a request for comment from Mic.
While a whole bunch of Google services saw updates at Google I/O, Maps was almost entirely left out in the cold. But according to code inside the latest version of Google Maps for Android, some significant new features are on the way.

The folks at XDA Developers have dug through the latest APK for Android, and found some clues to upcoming features including two that we've been waiting for: live ETA sharing and destination shortcuts. There's also a third new feature incoming, and it's slightly creepy.

DON'T MISS: Is this why the iPhone 7 is so boring?

None of these features are official yet, but clues in the code provide strong hints that they're coming soon. ETA sharing is exactly what it sounds like on the tin: Maps will send a message to whoever you want, with your approximate ETA and a blurb about why the traffic is bad (hopefully, Google will ham it up a little to give you an excuse for being late).

google-location-history

Destination shortcuts are also obvious -- so obvious that I'm confused why they've taken this long to make. You assign an address an easy name (like 'David's house'), and then search for that when you're setting up your route. Even better, you can create a home screen shortcut, which when you tap it, will open Maps and auto route you to your destination.

The most dangerous feature is Location History, a map of all the places you've been, with any device that you're signed into with your Google account. Probably a feature most teenagers will want to be turning off, but it is a fun way to see where you spend most of your time. (You can already see a day-by-day location map in the Maps app, mind you.)

There's no timeline for when these updates will roll out, but if the code is already in place, it will likely be weeks and not months.

Related stories

A list of every single Chromebook that'll support Android apps this fall

How Google's big court win just made history

$35 Raspberry Pi 3 might soon run Google's Android

More from BGR: This is probably our first look at a real iPhone 7

This article was originally published on BGR.com
BEIJING (Reuters) - China's President Xi Jinping has vowed to increase government support for technology companies, state media reported, in an attempt to raise the country's competitiveness that could also further fuel concerns over protectionism. Beijing has put forward so-called Internet Plus and Made in China 2025 strategies, which aim to make Chinese firms world technology leaders and call for progressive increases in domestic components in priority industries such as robotics and aerospace equipment. Foreign business groups have voiced concerns that such policies could limit foreign firms' opportunities in China and ultimately starve innovation. "To be the world's major scientific and technological power, the state will have to champion first-class institutes, research-oriented universities and innovation-oriented enterprises," the official Xinhua news agency cited Xi as saying at a science event on Monday. Xi said the country will "provide bigger support for tech companies", especially small and medium-sized firms, reorganise research institutes and universities, and plan cities and regional centres to be attractive to innovation industries. "Our biggest advantage is that we, as a socialist country, can pool resources in a major mission," Xi said, in comments reported late on Monday. He also vowed to give scientists more power in allocating funding and directing their research, Xinhua reported. Xi did not specify if support would be geared toward home-grown technology firms. Chinese officials have said their policies do not unfairly take aim at foreign companies and have repeatedly promised to ramp up intellectual property rights protection to attract more foreign investment. Nonetheless, China has long sought to establish a firm grip over the country's sensitive technology infrastructure, particularly in the face of what it says are growing security threats such as terrorism. Many foreign technology firms were put on the defensive as their China business suffered in the wake of information leaks by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden in 2013. Frustration also has been mounting within the foreign business community over slow progress on China's promised market-opening reforms. (Reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Christopher Cushing)
Egyptian-Chinese partnership to thrive in coming decades Updated: 2016-05-31 07:56 By MAGDY AMER(China Daily)

Vice-Premier Liu Yandong addresses a forum of Chinese and Egyptian university chiefs held in Cairo University on Saturday. [Photo by Hou Liqiang/China Daily]

On May 30, 1956, Egypt was the first Arab and African country to establish diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China. This year marks the 60th anniversary of this historic step, and in commemoration of this event, the two sides agreed that the celebration will not be limited to one day only, but instead be a year-long celebration. They agreed to make 2016 the Sino-Egyptian Culture Year, in commemoration of the start of relations between the two countries.

Since then, relations have taken an upward trend, and they are bound to achieve even more success and prosperity, as they are more vibrant and dynamic than at any time before. During the last two years, there have been three presidential visits. During the first visit by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to China, relations between the two countries were elevated to a "comprehensive strategic partnership". He will visit China again in September to attend the G20 summit in Hangzhou. Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Egypt last January and delivered a historical speech at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo. He also attended the inauguration of the Sino-Egyptian culture year in Luxor. These visits have and will have widespread effects.

The two countries have a shared strong will to strengthen and deepen their cooperation and coordination on all fronts. There is no doubt that the convergence in policies will help further strengthen relations. Both countries endorse a policy of non-interference in their foreign relations, call for win-win cooperation among nations, and reject double standards in dealing with international threats such as terrorism and separatism. The two countries also call for reform of international institutions such as the UN Security Council, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Egypt also welcomes China to step up its role in helping to solve the problems in the Middle East.

When President Xi Jinping announced the Belt and Road Initiative, the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, in 2013, Egypt was one of the first countries to welcome the initiative. Egypt is also a founding member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. China, on its part, has shown solidarity with Egypt in the past years. The Chinese government has encouraged Chinese companies to invest in Egypt and the number of Chinese tourists increased by 35 percent in the first quarter of 2016.

The cooperation between the two countries thrives in different fields, including the political, economic, cultural and educational fields. The Sino-Egyptian Culture Year is adding momentum to the already prospering relations. Exchanges, festivals, forums, exhibitions and other events are being organized in both countries reciprocally. At the Cairo International Book Fair 2016, the Chinese pavilion was a prominent phenomenon that attracted many visitors, with many books translated from Chinese into Arabic and vice versa. Egyptian people are becoming more and more acquainted with the Chinese language and culture. Also Chinese people have ample opportunity to know more about the different aspects of the Egyptian culture.

However strong the existing friendship between the two countries, I am confident that this is not the peak for relations, which began at the Bandung Conference 60 years ago. The coming decades will witness more and more development and win-win partnership.

The author is the Egyptian Ambassador to China.
We issued an updated research report on premium appliances company iRobot Corporation IRBT on May 30, 2016. The company designs and sells mechanized robots worldwide for defensive, household and security-related purposes.

Scopes for Growth

iRobot expects growth in earnings and revenues in the upcoming quarters on the back of its robust Home Robotics business and the success of the Defense & Security segment divestiture. The company anticipates 1213% Home Robotic revenue growth in 2016. Better distribution of the Roomba 980 robot, improved wet floor core trade and extensive business diversification in China are expected to drive the upside. Moreover, the company expects its aggregate revenues to increase significantly in 2017 and 2018 driven by new business investments. In addition, the company would be using advertisements to promote product awareness across global markets. The appliance manufacturer intends to improve the sale of its existing as well as new products in the near future through innovative market penetration and development strategies.

Ongoing Issues

iRobot earns the major portion of its revenues from its Home Robotic business. However, the success of this business depends upon the companys ability to penetrate the consumer home-care market. Inability to introduce Home Robotics products or deliver the same at the proper time might considerably hurt the companys top line.

Moreover, iRobot expands its business through internationalization which exposes it to several headwinds. For instance, a strong U.S. dollar has been eroding value of the company's international revenues and margins to some extent in recent times. Also, intense competition exposes the company to risks of market share loss. Furthermore, failure to maintain business competency can weigh on the companys sales in the near future.

Other Stocks to Consider



iRobot presently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked stocks in the industry include AMC Networks Inc. AMCX, Capella Education Co. CPLA and Carter's, Inc. CRI. All three companies currently hold a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).



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Hackers last week breached the systems of Myspace, the music-focused social networking site now owned by Time Inc., and have attempted to sell data on millions of users in an online forum, Time Inc. confirmed Monday.

The hackers responsible were offering to sell about 360 million Myspace user emails and passwords, Vices Motherboard tech site reported last Friday. Myspace  once a high-flying social networking site that had been acquired by News Corp. $580 million in 2005  became part of Time Inc. after its acquisition of data marketing firm Viant in February.

Myspace said in a blog post that it believed the data breach was the work of Russian cyberhacker Peace, who was allegedly behind similar attacks on LinkedIn and Yahoos Tumblr. It said it has reported the hack to law enforcement officials and is cooperating with an investigation into the incident.

The info stolen from Myspace was limited to a portion of usernames, passwords and email addresses registered prior to June 11, 2013, when the site instituted stronger security measures, according to Time Inc. The company said the Myspace breach does not affect any of Time Inc.s systems, subscriber information or other media properties and does not appear to include any financial data.

We take the security and privacy of customer data and information extremely seriously  especially in an age when malicious hackers are increasingly sophisticated and breaches across all industries have become all too common, Jeff Bairstow, Time Inc. exec VP and CFO, said in a statement. Our information security and privacy teams are doing everything we can to support the Myspace team.

Myspace said it has invalidated all user passwords for the affected accounts created prior to June 11, 2013, on the old Myspace platform, and that it is using automated tools to attempt to identify and block suspicious activity on user accounts.

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The Asus Zenbo robot steals the show as it serenades Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen (L) at the Computex computer exhibition on May 31, 2016 in Taipei (AFP Photo/Sam Yeh)

Taipei (AFP) - A knee-high robot designed to help around the house ended up serenading Taiwan's president as Asia's largest tech trade show kicked off Tuesday in Taipei.

The Computex fair comes as Taiwan looks to tech innovation as a way out of economic stagnation, seeking to diversify its reputation as a hardware hub best-known for manufacturing chips.

Organisers are hoping that new zones dedicated to smart living and start-ups will breathe new life into the show, as well as Taiwan's tech industry, which is increasingly under pressure from international rivals including China.

On the first day it was a small white robot called Zenbo from Taiwanese brand Asus -- traditionally a notebook and smartphone maker -- which drew the biggest crowds.

The voice-controlled, English-speaking robot is billed as a home-help, able to read receipts for the elderly and recite children's stories as well as carrying out tasks around the house.

Introduced to Taiwan's new president Tsai Ing-wen, who opened the show, Zenbo was seemingly on its best behaviour, saying it wanted to be "just like" her when asked what it would like to do when it grew up.

"Do you think I can be the first robot president one day?" it added.

Tsai then asked the robot to play some music to her, although it took several goes to make herself understood before it pumped out some dance tunes.

In her opening speech, Tsai said her new government would promote Taiwan as Asia's "Silicon Village", focusing on talent-building and research and development.

Computex comes weeks after the CES Asia tech show in Shanghai, launched last year, putting extra pressure on the fair.

"There's been a lot of conferences that have been trying to get their foothold in Asia, particularly China," said Bryan Ma, a technology industry analyst at market intelligence provider International Data Corporation (IDC).

While many "key parts" of the tech industry are still in Taiwan, said Ma, market leaders will also have an eye on other big shows.

Story continues

Computex has put virtual reality (VR) -- an emerging industry where Taiwan hopes to position itself as a trailblazer -- at the heart of this year's fair.

"In the computing space, we haven't had fun for a while," said L.Z. Wang, managing director of semiconductor company AMD Taiwan.

"VR is going to bring back demand and development that will encourage people to refresh their PCs."

Taiwan's ailing HTC phone brand saw queues of people waiting to try its new Vive headsets, which were linked to five different experience games, including one in which users lie on a moving chair and simulate flying over New York.

Struggling PC maker Acer also displayed a new line of VR-ready computer -- Predator -- expected to hit the market as early as July.

The global market size of virtual reality products may reach $5.1 billion this year and is projected to more than double to $10.9 billion in 2017, according to Taipei-based market intelligence provider TrendForce.
ROK says DPRK appears to have failed in 4th Musudan missile test-launch Updated: 2016-05-31 14:07 (Xinhua)

SEOUL - The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) appeared to have failed in its fourth test-launch of an intermediate-range Musudan ballistic missile after its dialogue overtures on military matters were repeatedly dismissed by the Republic of Korea, Seoul's military said Tuesday.

An official at the ROK's defense ministry told Xinhua on the phone that the DPRK tried to test-fire one unidentified missile at about 5:20 am local time from its Wonsan area in its east coastal region.

The official said the test-launch was estimated to have failed, adding that Seoul's military is analyzing details. He noted that the ROK's military has been maintaining complete preparedness for possible launches of additional missiles.

According to a government official of the ROK , cited by Yonhap news agency, Seoul's military believed that it was the Musudan ballistic missile which is known to be capable of hitting part of the US territory such as Guam and the outer reaches of Alaska.

The DPRK test-launched three Musudan missiles this year alone, two on April 28 and one on April 15 each, but all of the three test-firings were believed to have failed as the missiles exploded in mid-air or crashed in waters several seconds after lift-off.

The April 15 launch was the DPRK's first known test-firing of the intermediate-range ballistic missile. Pyongyang has allegedly deployed the Musudan missiles since 2007.

The missile is considered especially threatening as it is fired from a mobile launcher, making it hard to detect and track in times of military conflicts. It can also carry a nuclear warhead.

As all of the three test-firings ended as failure, the DPRK was widely expected here to conduct another test-launch to prove its nuclear-tipped ballistic missile technology.

The ROK's government official was quoted by Yonhap as saying that the fourth launch appeared to have failed as the missile was estimated to have exploded on its mobile launcher even before take-off.

The ROK's military estimated that the DPRK had deployed an unspecified number of Musudan missiles on the Wonsan area, which were closely tracked and monitored by military authorities of the ROK and the United States.

The fourth test-launch was in line with top DPRK leader Kim Jong-un's order on March 15 to test a nuclear warhead and ballistic rockets capable of carrying the warhead "in a short time".

After the seventh ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) congress that last four days through May 9, the DPRK repeatedly made dialogue overtures toward South Korea to talk about military matters in order to defuse tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Seoul, however, rejected the proposals as Pyongyang failed to mention its willingness to denuclearize. the ROK held fast to its position that no dialogue will be held with the DPRK unless Pyongyang shows its denuclearization will through sincere actions.
Having trouble viewing? View this mailing online. SUBSCRIBE TO THE FLAME HOTLINE DONATE TO FLAME FORWARD TO A FRIEND May 31, 2016 No Hope for Peace Between Israel and the Palestinians until Hateful Incitement Stops Dear Friend of FLAME: On the evening of March 8 of this year, 29-year-old American Taylor Force and his wife were viciously stabbed by a knife-wielding Palestinian terrorist as they strolled on a boardwalk in the Israeli seaside city of Jaffa. The Forces were tourists, neither was Jewish. Taylor Force himself was a West Point graduate and veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. He died shortly after the attack, and his wife was critically injured. Police killed the murderer shortly after the deed, but within hours the terrorist was praised as a "martyr" at his West Bank funeral and in Palestinian media. Such incidents of cruel, bloody incitement against Israel, Jewsand even non-Arabs who would dare to visit Israelare commonplace in Palestinian society. All day Palestinian TV stations broadcast audio and video hysterically accusing "the Zionists" of murdering Palestinian children in cold blood nearly all of whom are teens shot by authorities as they tried to kill Israelis with knives. Many of these TV messages exhort viewers to avenge the children's deaths. At the heart of Palestinian hate for Jews and Israel is the beliefalso daily repeated in Palestinian mediathat Jews are animals (hyenas, pigs, snakes) who have no right to occupy Arab lands, and specifically the Palestinian "homeland," which includes all of present-day Israel. It is within this contextin a bold triumph of fantasy over facts on the groundthat France is convening a summit this week to force Israel and the Palestinians to make peace. John Kerry, ever the naive striver after his Nobel Peace Prize, has agreed to join 20 other countries in attendance. The fact that neither Israel nor the Palestinians has been invited to the party only underscores the futility of such a meetingbut then again, Paris in early summer can be so fine. What the Europeans and Kerry ignore in their compulsive do-goodism is the glaring reality that the Palestinians don't want peace and don't want a two-state solution . They want Israel. Perhaps just as important, even if the well-intentioned Western nations could find a "moderate Palestinian," a leader who does want peace and isn't obsessed with defeating Israel, still no peace could be forged. Because the Palestinian people have been conditioned for decades to rabidly hate Jews and believe they can and must defeat them. They would never permit such a "Jew-loving" leader to live. Indeed, even Yasser Arafat, father of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, admitted that he couldn't accept Israel's generous land-for-peace offer in 2001 , because he would have been quickly assassinatedas was Egyptian strongman Anwar Sadat in 1981 following his signing of a peace treaty with Israel. This week's FLAME Hotline tells a touching, personal story about Palestinian hate. It's by Micah Lakin Avni, son of Richard Lakin, another American who was recently killed by a terrorist in Israel. Mr. Avni tells his father's poignant storyof a man who loved peace and lived for peace , but whose aspirations and goodwill were brutally struck down by a vicious 22-year-old who cared nothing for peace. I think you'll find Mr. Avni's short article to be both informative and useful as you discuss the upcoming Paris "peace" summit with friends, family and colleagues. It's important our fellow Americans realize that incessant Palestinian incitement poisons any chances of peace with Israeland that peace talks are useless until the incitement stops. In addition, I hope you'll also quickly review the P.S. immediately below, which describes FLAME's current hasbarah campaign to support Israel's touch-and-go negotiations with the Obama administration to renew U.S. military aid to the Jewish state in these treacherous times. Best regards, Jim Sinkinson

President, Facts and Logic About the Middle East (FLAME) P.S. Every year, the U.S. allocates $3 billion in aid to Israel, and the White House is currently playing hard ball in negotiating a new agreement with Israel right now. Enemies of Israel often criticize this investment, arguing that it's a waste of taxpayer money. Though nothing could be further from the truth, too many Western media are buying it! That's why FLAME is publishing a new position paper in media nationwidewhich explains the inestimable strategic value the United States receives from this support of the Jewish state. I urge you to review this outspoken hasbarah message: "Why Does Israel Matter?" This inspirational piece is appearing in magazines and newspapers, including college newspapers, with a combined readership of some 10 million people. In addition, it is being sent to every member of the U.S. Congress and President Obama. If you agree that this kind of public relations effort on Israel's behalf is critical, I urge you to support us. Remember: FLAME's powerful ability to influence public opinionand U.S. aid to Israelcomes from individuals like you, one by one. I hope you'll consider giving a donation now, as you're ablewith $500, $250, $100, or even $18. (Remember, your donation to FLAME is tax deductible.) To donate online, just go to donate now. Now more than ever we need your support to ensure that Israel gets the financial and political support it needsfrom the U.S. Congress, from President Obama, and from the American people. As of today, more than 15,000 Israel supporters receive the FLAME Hotline at no charge every week. If you're not yet a subscriber, won't you join us in receiving these timely updates, so you can more effectively tell the truth about Israel ? Just go to free subscription. The Anti-Israel Poisoning Starts Young Palestinian Schools honor the killing of my father, a teacher. This would break his heart. By Micah Lakin Avni, Wall Street Journal, May 18, 2016 My Father, Richard Lakin, a 76-year-old retired elementary-school principal from Connecticut, was on a bus in Jerusalem last October when two young Palestinian men boarded and began shooting and stabbing passengers indiscriminately. Two passengers were killed that awful day and 16 injured, including my father. Despite the efforts of first responders and the nurses and doctors at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital, my father died two weeks later. He had been shot in the head and stabbed multiple times in the head, face, chest and stomach. Over the past seven months I've spent a lot of time trying to understand what would cause two educated Palestinian men in their early 20s to board a public bus and butcher a group of innocent civilians, many of them senior citizens. I'm sorry to report that the Palestinian reaction to the attack has led me to believe that the "peace process" is more one-sided than ever. My father grew up a fighter for civil rights in America. He took those values with him in 1984 when he emigrated to Jerusalem, where he taught English to Arabs and Jews. He was a kind, gentle-hearted man who dedicated his life to education and promoting peaceful coexistence. Yet Palestinian newspapers praised Baha Alyan, one of the terrorists who murdered my father, as a "martyr and intellectual." Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has met with the families of the attackers and praised them as "martyrs." A Palestinian scout leader said Baha Alyan, who was shot and killed by a security guard before he could kill more innocent passengers, was "an example for every scout." Muhammad Alyan, the father of Baha Alyan, has been invited to speak at Palestinian schools and universities about this son the "martyr." He recently spoke to children at Jabel Mukaber Elementary School in East Jerusalem, about a half a mile from where my father lived. Tragically, many Palestinian children, perhaps most, are still taught to honor terrorists and fight for the destruction of Israel. All of this would break my father's heart. In 2007 he published a book called "Teaching as an Act of Love" summarizing his life's work and educational philosophy. The message of his book is that every child is a miracle that should be nurtured with love. After Baha Alyan's father visited Jabel Mukaber Elementary School, I asked school officials if I could come and share my father's message of peace and coexistence. My offer was rejected. As long as Palestinian leaders nurture a culture of hate, encouraging school children to go out and kill, more violence is inevitable. By encouraging hatred, they distance all of us from the love and belief in peaceful coexistence for which my father stood. My father's book begins with a quote from William Penn: "I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again." My father lived by those words. If only his murderers had as well. Mr. Avni is the CEO of Peninsula Group Ltd, a publicly traded Israeli commercial finance institution. HOME SUBSCRIBE DONATE PR FOR ISRAEL HOTLINE ARCHIVE ABOUT CONTACT US THIS MONTH'S AD APPEARED IN PUBLICATIONS REACHING 10 MILLION READERS IF YOU SUPPORT PUBLISHING FLAME'S BOLD PR MESSAGES, PLEASE HELP US!! FLAME is the only organization that defends Israel with paid editorial hasbarah messages placed in media nationwide every month: The dire threats from Iran, Hamas and Hizbollah, the injustice of BDS, Palestinian anti-Semitism and more. If you support a bold voice that tells the truth about Israel in American media, please donate now. FLAME'S WEEKLY HOTLINE E-NEWSLETTER FLAME's Hotline e-newsletter keeps you up to date on the most important pro-Israel advocacy issues and features our choice of the week's most informative and thought-provoking article on Israel and the Middle East. If you only subscribe to one pro-Israel news service, make it the FLAME Hotline.

Facts and Logic

About the Middle East

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Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco attends the session 'Recharging Europe' in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos January 23, 2015. REUTERS/Ruben Sprich

ROME (Reuters) - Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco warned on Tuesday that Italy's public debt may not fall this year as the government has targeted.

Italy's debt-to-GDP ratio, at 132.7 percent in 2015, is the highest in the euro zone after Greece's, and Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's government has repeatedly assured its partners that it would begin to fall this year.

However, with the economy still listless, Visco warned in a speech to the Bank of Italy's annual assembly in Rome that "the way the economic context will evolve could hinder the achievement of this goal in 2016."

He called for a "careful monitoring of public finances and the implementation of a programme of privatisations" to "approach" the target of 132.4 percent this year and ensure the debt comes down significantly in 2017.

(Reporting By Gavin Jones)
By Guillermo Parra-Bernal and Tatiana Bautzer

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazil's federal police accused Banco Bradesco SA (BBDC4.SA) Chief Executive Officer Luiz Carlos Trabuco and two senior executives on Tuesday of plotting to avoid a 3 billion-real ($828 million) tax fine, the latest episode of alleged white-collar crime in Latin America's largest economy.

The office of Brazil's Prosecutor-General said that a police report seeking formal charges against Trabuco and the executives was received earlier on Tuesday. A source briefed on the matter said Chief Financial Officer Luiz Carlos Angelotti and Senior Vice President Domingos de Abreu were also named in the report.

In a statement, Bradesco vowed to fight the accusations against Trabuco in court, saying the bank had been acquitted in prior rulings. Trabuco did not participate in any meetings in which ways to eliminate the fine that Brazil's Tax Revenue Service had imposed on the bank were discussed.

The police report "took Bradesco's management by surprise," the statement said. The three executives face accusations of influence peddling, corruption, racketeering and money laundering, the report said, without specifying which applied to Trabuco.

The accusations against Trabuco, one of Brazil's most influential power brokers, came in the midst of a sweeping corruption scandal at state firms that has rattled Brazil's political establishment and accelerated a Senate decision to put President Dilma Rousseff on impeachment trial.

Bradesco preferred shares (BBDC4.SA) slumped on the news, shedding 5 percent to 22.80 reais, the steepest decline since mid-March. Voting shares (BBDC3.SA) fell 3.7 percent, while Bradesco's American depositary receipts (BBD.N) fell 5.6 percent to $6.26 in New York.

The police investigated negotiations between Bradesco and government tax auditors over the elimination of a 3 billion-real ($828 million) fine that the country's Tax Revenue Service had imposed on the bank. The incident is part of a broader probe of fraud at the Finance Ministry's tax appeals board unveiled in March 2015.

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'OPERATION ZEALOT'

The tax probe, known in Brazil as "Operation Zealot," alleges that some of Brazil's largest companies bribed members of the CARF, a Finance Ministry body that hears appeals on tax disputes, to get favorable rulings that reduced or waived the amounts owed.

The cases under investigation came before the CARF board between 2005 and 2013. The Zealot probe is worsening the political climate as a larger corruption scandal known as "Operation Car Wash" and a two-year-long recession are hampering the country.

Apart from Trabuco, the tax probe has ensnared other prominent executives such as Andre Gerdau Johannpeter, the scion and CEO of steelmaking giant Gerdau SA (GGBR4.SA) and Joseph Safra, owner of Banco Safra SA [SODEPB.UL] and reported by Forbes to be the world's richest banker.

Safra Group, the conglomerate that controls Safra's investments in banking, real estate and other segments, has repeatedly said the accusations have no basis. Gerdau has also denied wrongdoing and has vowed to cooperate with the probe.

Since taking over the top job at Bradesco late in 2008, Trabuco, 63, has presided over Bradesco's rapid growth in consumer financial services and the bank's largest acquisition ever - the $5.2 billion purchase of HSBC Holdings Plc's Brazilian unit in August.

($1 = 3.6240 Brazilian reais)

(Reporting by Guillermo Parra-Bernal; Additional reporting by Eduardo Simoes in Sao Paulo and Marcela Ayres in Brasilia; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
(Recasts, adds details, background)

BRASILIA, May 31 (Reuters) - Brazil's government vowed on Tuesday to free up as much as 21 billion reais ($5.8 billion) in additional credit for farmers and cattle ranchers, in an effort to help pull Latin America's largest economy out of a two-year recession.

In a statement, the National Monetary Council, Brazil's top economic policymaking body, allowed farmers to use proceeds from the sale of securities backed by agricultural receivables for purposes beyond short-term operating activities, while raising the threshold on agricultural credit from state development bank BNDES.

Both measures, which aim to increase the flow of funding toward machinery purchases and other investment activities in the sector, take effect on Wednesday and July 1, respectively.

Policymakers are trying to stimulate credit and encourage long-term investment without putting Brazil's public finances under further strain.

Interim President Michel Temer, who took office after the Senate put President Dilma Rousseff on impeachment trial this month, has pledged to cut a record budget deficit to revive an economy facing its worst crisis in decades.

Farming companies have tapped the market for so-called LCAs, as agricultural receivable-backed securities are known in Brazil, to raise money after years of tight credit supply and rising borrowing costs. The instrument has been a favorite of fixed-income investors in the country because of their tax-exempt status and relatively low risks.

The council, known as CMN, is formed by the finance and planning ministers and the president of the central bank.

($1 = 3.6059 Brazilian reais) (Reporting by Alonso Soto and Marcela Ayres; Writing by Guillermo Parra-Bernal; Editing by G Crosse and Peter Cooney)
Californias governor Jerry Brown said Tuesday that he is backing Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the states primary on June 7, calling her delegate lead insurmountable and adding, This is no time for Democrats to keep fighting each other.

Brown wrote, The stakes couldnt be higher. Our country faces an existential threat from climate change and the spread of nuclear weapons. A new cold war is on the horizon. This is no time for Democrats to keep fighting each other. The general election has already begun. Hillary Clinton, with her long experience, especially as Secretary of State, has a firm grasp of the issues and will be prepared to lead our country on day one.

He did praise Sanders as someone he identified with  Brown ran against Bill Clinton in 1992 and waged a campaign that focused heavily on the corruptive influence of money in politics and income inequality.

Sanders has driven home the message that the top one percent has unfairly captured way too much of Americas wealth, leaving the majority of people far behind. In 1992, I attempted a similar campaign.

He slammed presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, and said that Clinton was the only path forward to win the presidency and stop his dangerous candidacy.

Browns endorsement may not have a huge impact on the way people vote, as there is a certain degree of skepticism among political analysts at the influence of endorsements at this stage of a presidential race. But it still will be a boost to Clintons campaign, as Brown laid out just how unlikely it is that Sanders could capture the nomination.

The bitterness between Clinton and Sanders supporters does have some parallels to the 1992 race. Brown, who waged an insurgent campaign in which he would not collect contributions about $100, hammered Bill Clinton at debates, at one point accusing him of funneling Arkansas state business to his wifes law firm. Clinton defeated Brown in the California primary, passing the threshold for securing the nomination, but Brown didnt drop out until the convention that July.

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Despite the acrimony from that year, Bill Clinton campaigned for Brown when he ran for governor in 2010.

Related stories

Donald Trump: No Debate With Bernie Sanders

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Who's Dominating the Clinton-Sanders California Primary? Donald Trump.
China may soon be constructing its own version of the Panama Canal through the Isthmus of Kra in Thailand. The proposed 30-mile canal would connect the Andaman Sea and the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea, reported the National Interest.

If built, the canal would shave off three or four days of travel time (and potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars per trip) for vessels that currently have to travel all the way around Singapore, a route that has been plagued by pirates.

The proposed canal could cost up to $30 billion to build, and so far, China has balked at taking up the project.

Related Link: Stakes Have Never Been Higher Headed Into Annual U.S.-China Economic Meeting

Not A New Discussion

Last summer, reports surfaced of an agreement between Thailands Asia Union Group and Chinas China-Thailand Kra Infrastructure Development to construct the canal. However, the deal was denied within days of the initial reports, leaving onlookers to speculate that the United States had pressured Thailand not to allow the canals construction.

Why? The canal would give China easier access to European markets and could increase militarization and tensions in the South China Sea.

Stay In Check

According to Lyle Goldstein, associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College, its not always in the United States best interest to stifle Chinas every plan.

Washington would do well to maintain an agnostic or even modestly supportive disposition toward projects that help knit Eurasian peoples and markets closer together, Goldstein explained.

The Kra Canal is hardly a threat to US national security and...is mainly an issue for the people of Thailand to decide on.

See more from Benzinga

 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
WEST KELOWNA, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - May 31, 2016) - COLORADO RESOURCES LTD. (TSX VENTURE:CXO) ("Colorado" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that, further to its press release of May 19, 2016, it has completed the second tranche of its non-brokered private placement (the "Offering") for aggregate gross proceeds of $2,091,425. The Offering consists of 9,274,931 (non-flow through) units of the Company (the "NFT Units") at an issue price of $0.35 per Unit and 3,542,334 common shares of the Company that qualify as flow-through shares for purposes of the Income Tax Act (Canada) and 1,771,167 warrants (one share and half a warrant being a "FT Unit") at an issue price of $0.42 per FT Unit.

The initial tranche ("Tranche 1"), which closed effective May 19, 2016, consisted of the issuance of 2,211,430 NFT Units and 2,282,334 FT Units for aggregate gross proceeds of $1,732,580.

The second tranche ("Tranche 2"), which closed effective May 31, 2016, consisted of the issuance of 4,463,500 NFT Units and 1,260,000 FT Units for aggregate gross proceeds of $2,091,425.

The third and final tranche of 2,600,001 NFT Units for proceeds of $910,000 is expected to close on June 1, 2016.

In connection with Tranche 1 and Tranche 2 the Company paid aggregate finders' fees of $182,279 cash and issued to finders 68,880 warrants at an exercise price of $0.35 and 128,119 warrants at an exercise price of $0.42 (collectively the "Finder Warrants"). Each Finder Warrant is otherwise exercisable on the same terms as the warrants issued to investors in the Offering.

For Tranche 2, each NFT Unit consisted of one common share in the capital of the Company (a "NFT Share") and one common share purchase warrant (a "NFT Warrant"), with each NFT Warrant entitling the holder to acquire an additional NFT Share at an exercise price of $0.50 until May 31, 2018.

For Tranche 2, each FT Unit consisted of one flow-through common share in the capital of the Company (a "FT Share") and one-half of one non-transferable non-flow through common share purchase warrant. Each whole warrant (a "NFT Warrant") will entitle the holder to purchase one additional (non-flow through) common share of the Company (a "NFT Share") at an exercise price of $0.60 until May 31, 2018.

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The NFT Warrant and FT Warrant terms for Tranche 2 contain an acceleration provision such that if, commencing on October 2, 2016 the closing price of the common shares of the Company on the TSX Venture Exchange is higher than $0.75 for 20 consecutive trading days then on the 20th consecutive trading day (the "Acceleration Trigger Date") the expiry date of the Warrants may be accelerated to the date that is 20 trading days after the Acceleration Trigger Date by the issuance of a news release announcing such acceleration within two trading days of the Acceleration Trigger Date.

The shares issued under Tranche 2, and any shares issued on exercise of the FT Warrants and NFT Warrants, will be subject to restrictions on transfer until October 1, 2016.

The proceeds will be used by the Company for exploration activities on it Canadian properties and for working capital.

About Colorado

Colorado Resources Ltd. is currently engaged in the business of mineral exploration for the purpose of acquiring and advancing mineral properties located in British Columbia and is also seeking opportunities in Southwest USA and Latin America.

Colorado's current exploration focus is to continue to advance: the KSP property optioned from SnipGold, located 15 km's along strike to the southeast of the past producing Snip Mine; its 100% owned North ROK property, located 15 km's northwest of the Red Chris mine development, both located in northern central British Columbia.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF COLORADO RESOURCES LTD.

Adam Travis

President and Chief Executive Officer

NR 16-07

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this news release, constitute "forward-looking information" as such term is used in applicable Canadian securities laws. Forward-looking information is based on plans, expectations and estimates of management at the date the information is provided and is subject to certain factors and assumptions, including: that the Company's financial condition and development plans do not change as a result of unforeseen events, that the Company obtains required regulatory approvals, that the Company continues to maintain a good relationship with the local project communities. Forward-looking information is subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause plans, estimates and actual results to vary materially from those projected in such forward-looking information. Factors that could cause the forward-looking information in this news release to change or to be inaccurate include, but are not limited to, the risk that any of the assumptions referred to prove not to be valid or reliable, which could result in delays, or cessation in planned work, that the Company's financial condition and development plans change, delays in regulatory approval, risks associated with the interpretation of data, the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits, the possibility that results will not be consistent with the Company's expectations, as well as the other risks and uncertainties applicable to mineral exploration and development activities and to the Company as set forth in the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis reports filed under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com. There can be no assurance that any forward-looking information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, the reader should not place any undue reliance on forward-looking information or statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking information or statements, other than as required by applicable law.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

The securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933 (the "1933 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 1933 Act) unless registered under the 1933 Act and applicable state securities laws, or an exemption from such registration is available.
DUBAI, May 30 (Reuters) - Egypt's Carbon Holdings has secured agreement with one of the four export credit agencies expected to provide financing worth between $4 billion and $5 billion for its massive Tahrir petrochemicals project, its chief executive said on Monday.

The $7 billion scheme at Ain Sokhna at the southern end of the Suez Canal will be one of the largest petrochemicals projects in Egypt. It is projected to increase by about 50 percent the amount of such products made by the North African country in the first 10 years after becoming operational.

The financing was expected to close by the end of 2015 and be provided by five agencies, but talks were put on hold because the Export-Import Bank of the United States (U.S. EXIM) couldn't lend new cash until its licence was renewed by Congress, according to Carbon Holdings CEO Basil El-Baz.

However, the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation has now agreed to direct funding, Baz told Reuters in Dubai without stating for how much the agreement was worth.

"We are optimistic that we should be in a position to wrap this up this year," Baz said of the full finance package.

Carbon Holdings expects three other agencies to contribute to the 17-and-a-half-year debt facility, either through direct lending or guarantees for commercial bank loans. They are U.S. EXIM, Sace of Italy and UK Export Finance.

The start of Tahrir's construction has also been delayed from the timetable given last year. Baz said that work is now expected to begin at "the back end of this year" and last for about 48 months.

Societe Generale is advising on the Tahrir project, Baz said.

Other petrochemical projects with links to the main scheme have progressed much further. A polypropylene plant had been online since September and a $570 million ammonium nitrate facility is expected to be fully operational in July.

The chief executive was speaking as the company announced a $25 million investment in Carbon Holdings by the International Finance Corporation.

The transaction, aimed at developing Egypt's petrochemicals industry, could led to larger investments in Carbon Holdings and its projects, including around Tahrir, said Mouayed Makhlouf, IFC director for the Middle East and North Africa.

(Reporting by David French and Dahlia Nehme; Editing by David Goodman)
By Renee Maltezou

ATHENS, May 31 (Reuters) - Greece and its international lenders are inching towards an accord over a set of extra measures demanded from Athens to qualify for vital rescue funds, sources with knowledge of the negotiations said on Tuesday.

The two sides wrapped up the bulk of reforms needed for badly needed bailout cash last week, but left some loose ends which must be tied up before Athens gets 10.3 billion euros ($11.48 billion) of sub-tranches by September.

To qualify for the funds, Greek lawmakers grudgingly approved tax hikes and pension reforms, freed up the sale of bad loans weighing on banks' balance sheets and promised to expedite privatisations.

But Greece must also legislate a series of extra actions which the left-led government resists due to growing dissent at home after six years of belt-tightening. One of the measures is phasing out a top-up benefit to pensioners.

"It's a matter of parliamentary dignity. We cannot ask lawmakers to vote over the same issues again and again," a government official told Reuters. "Some of the actions demanded are also worsening the impact of the measures already adopted and hurt sensitive groups further."

BREAKING IMPASSE

To break the deadlock, some of the pending issues would be postponed for September, the official said. "We are close to reaching a deal."

Consecutive votes on reforms have tested the left-led coalition government, which has a narrow parliamentary majority with 153 of the 300 lawmakers and ranks second, behind the conservative opposition in polls.

Greece opposes some amendments on reforms, including retroactively clawing back an income-based benefit paid to certain groups of pensioners, and freezing the wages of essential staff as it struggles with Europe's worst migrant crisis in decades.

It also opposes the privatisation of grid operator ADMIE and the sale of state-guaranteed bad loans, saying the move demanded by the European Central Bank would widen its fiscal gap.

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The lenders are looking into the issues raised, an EU official said on Monday. Another source from the lenders said the pending issues were not a deal-breaker.

The country's bailout review was initially expected to be wrapped up last year. It dragged on for months mainly due to a rift between the EU and the International Monetary Fund over Greece's fiscal progress and its bailout targets.

Despite the disagreements, sources close to the lenders and government officials were optimistic that a deal would be reached soon and the ECB would this week resume accepting Greek government bonds as collateral for lending funds to Greek banks. ($1 = 0.8971 euros) (Additional reporting by Lefteris Papadimas Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL--(Marketwired - May 31, 2016) - News came from Brazil Hengtong on May 19th that its first patch of optical cables supplied to Oi Brazil came off the production line and would be used for the optical network construction in Rio de Janeiro, the host city of 2016 Olympic Games.

Oi is the leader of the four major operators in Brazil. Hengtong Brazil signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Oi in April 2016, becoming the communication cable supplier of the latter, which shows Oi's trust in as well as recognition of Hengtong Optic-electric. It implies that Hengtong Brazil has made a figure in South America and breakthroughs in the international market initially.

According to the research report of CRU, Brazil is estimated to hold a 9 percent average growth rate in demand of optical cable in the next 5 years. A few days ago, Brazil Communications released a national broadband development plan, "Intelligent Brazil," seeking to cover 95 percent of the population in Brazil by 2019. Besides, the plan tells that Brazil will construct 6 submarine cables, linking it to Europe, Africa and America in order to improve the network data transmission capacity and secure communications. Hengtong will do its best to booster the broadband development in Brazil.

About Hengtong

Hengtong Optic-Electric Co., LTD. (SH. 600487) was founded in 1993 and has committed itself to providing integrated solutions of telecommunication and energy network, including optical communication, copper communication, power transmission, marine engineering and new materials. According to Global Optic & Cable Markets Investigation released by CRU, HENGTONG Optic-Electric ranked the second with a share of 8% of the global market.

HENGTONG has founded nine industrial base stations in South America, South Africa, Southeast Asia, Europe and other regions, and has established marketing and technology services branches in more than 30 areas; thus HENGTONG products have covered more than 100 countries and regions.
NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwired - May 31, 2016) - ICMediaDirect.com has announced its plan to attend this year's ad:tech, an exhibition for the technology and media industries in New York City. The conference was established to allow companies to meet and share new ideas, build strong partnerships, and define the marketing strategies for the year ahead. With a chance to address key challenges and opportunities, the reputation management agency plans to explain the essential tactics and methods they've learnt over the years on how to sustain a positive status across the Internet. See your Online Reputation Report now, by visiting http://www.icmediadirect.com

Named one of the Top 10 conferences for digital marketers by AdWeek, ad:tech New York is cited as an event that centers on important issues in online marketing such as programmatic buying, viewability, and measuring digital media. Their annual events around the world focus on education through keynote speakers and topic-driven panels showcasing the latest products and services to help deepen understanding and create new ideas to drive business forward. Last year, ICMediaDirect.com joined the 2015 attendees including John Costello from Dunkin' Brands, Inc., podcaster Marc Maron, and marketers behind recent digital political campaigns. Well-known brands such as Hyundai Motor America, Comedy Central, AMC Networks, Pandora, MTV, American Express, and Absolut also shared their expertise on how to tackle the various challenges for marketers that lie ahead.

The conference promises to address the major shifts within content marketing and its ever-changing industry, encourage participation and attendance among businesses for their insight and ideas. 2016 has shown signs of significant change for advertisers, with much emphasis being placed on mobile search results and video advertisement. Companies will discuss future possibilities as marketers find different ways to interact with customers across mobile devices and new social media platforms. The ongoing merge of technology firms with media distributors will help maintain a fruitful future for both industries, as it is likely they will see a mutually beneficial partnership in the future as video placements overtake conventional text-based advertising.

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Established in 1996, ICMediaDirect.com is an online reputation management agency dedicated to brand repair for individuals and companies across the world. With clients ranging from Fortune 500 CEOs to celebrities, the company delivers effective results to help businesses and individuals gain control over their online search results. ICMediaDirect.com has been awarded the New York Excellence Award from the Small Business Institute for Excellence in Commerce (SBIEC) for three consecutive years due to their exceptional results. The firm attends a variety of esteemed marketing conferences and events throughout the year, including SES, Affiliate Summit, and LeadsCon. To see your Online Reputation Report, visit http://www.icmediadirect.com

ICMediaDirect -- PR and Marketing News: http://icmediadirectnews.com

Reputation-Control.com -- 100% Reputation Control: http://www.reputation-control.com

ICMediaDirect.com -- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGYnOjU3KEDbTn2xQR8Rltw

Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2016/5/31/11G100589/Images/ICMediaDirect.com_-_Reputation_Management_-_IC_Med-78d0e976ae00a0b7bc1f00c15314aef0.jpg

Embedded Video Available: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGYnOjU3KEDbTn2xQR8Rltw


An Indonesian Navy ship.

(Hobe, Holger Behr/Public domain via commons)

In March, an Indonesian patrol boat captured a Chinese fishing trawler illegally operating within Indonesias territorial waters. Before it could impound the offending vessel, however, two Chinese coast guard vessels appeared, stole back the trawler, and towed it back to international waters, leaving the Indonesians with only the Chinese crew to show for their efforts.

Last week there was a another, similar encounter, but with different outcome. This time around, the Indonesians brought a bigger boat: a Navy destroyer.

Both of the incidents took place around Indonesias remote Natuna islands, northwest of Borneo in the South China Sea. Beijing acknowledged last November that the islands belong to Indonesia.

Territorial jurisdictions based on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. (Wikipedia)

China claims almost the entire South China Sea as its own, based partly on a nine-dash line drawn on a map shortly after World War 2. Its been aggressively bolstering that claim with island-building, militarization, and diplomatic maneuverings.

The exclusive economic zone of the Natunas intersects with Chinas nine-dash line. That zone, prescribed by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, extends 200 nautical miles from the coast, and within it a nation has the rights to marine, energy, and other resources.

But while China conceded the Natunas to Indonesia, it didnt mention anything (paywall) about the exclusive economic zone, which it doesnt seem to have much respect for judging by the intrusions of its well-backed fishing militia. In March Chinas foreign ministry called the area where the episode took place traditional Chinese fishing grounds. And Chinas fishing fleet ignores the exclusive economic zones of many nationseven distant Argentinas.

Thats a big reason why Indonesia has since last year been beefing up its military presence in the Natunas, sending soldiers, fighter jets, and warships to the islands, and upgrading a small military base. Last month it even added networked nano-satellites orbiting the planet to its arsenal, so it can more easily decide where to send patrol ships. We aspire to turn Natuna Air Force base into an integrated military basethe Pearl Harbor of Indonesia, Indonesian air force commander Agus Supriatna told Antara last November.

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In the incident last week, the Chinese fishing trawler, called the Gui Bei Yu 27088, was intercepted by the Indonesian destroyer Oswald Siahaan-354, which blocked a rescue attempt by a Chinese coast guard vessel. The Indonesian Navy said it fired shots at the trawler when it refused to stop fishing, then seized it.

The Chinese crew is now in Indonesian custody awaiting prosecution under Indonesias fisheries lawsand this time, so is their trawler.

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Former Israeli foreign minister and ultra-nationalist MP Avigdor Lieberman is seen during a session of the Israeli parliament on May 30, 2016 (AFP Photo/Menahem Kahana)

Jerusalem (AFP) - Israeli ultra-nationalist Avigdor Lieberman assured he supported the creation of a Palestinian state after being sworn in as defence minister despite outrage over his appointment to the powerful post.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's choice of the hardline Lieberman to head the defence ministry has caused alarm among moderates in Israel and has been openly questioned by the United States.

His nomination was approved by the 120-seat Knesset, or parliament, by a vote of 55-43 with one abstention. Twenty-one lawmakers were absent for the ballot.

In a speech after taking office, the 57-year-old former foreign minister and ultra-nationalist who heads the Yisrael Beitenu party sought to calm fears his appointment will add to unrest in the region.

"I listened to everything you [the Prime Minister] said and I absolutely agree with every word, including two states for two peoples," he said.

He also praised Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's recent proposal to revive stalled peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, saying it had "created a genuine opportunity".

"We must try to pick up the gauntlet," he said, referring to the Arab Peace Initiative, which he said had "some very, very positive elements".

Netanyahu -- who has been accused of forming the most right-wing government in Israeli history -- was forced to resolve a last-minute dispute with another party in order to bring Yisrael Beitenu into his coalition.

The Knesset vote gives him a 66-seat majority in the assembly.

Speaking alongside Lieberman after the vote, Netanyahu also referred to "positive elements" in the Arab League's peace initiative of 2002, which was relaunched in 2007. The plan offers Israel the recognition of Arab nations if it withdraws from the Palestinian territories.

"We are willing to negotiate with the Arab states revisions to that initiative so that it reflects the dramatic changes in the region since 2002, but maintains the agreed goal of two states for two peoples," Netanyahu said.

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- US raises 'legitimate questions' -

Netanyahu's pact with Yisrael Beitenu, which also gave the nationalist party control of the ministry of immigrant absorption, drew criticism both inside Israel and abroad.

Lieberman has pledged harsh measures against Palestinian "terrorists" in the past, and pushed for the expansion of settlements in the West Bank.

He has however promised to act in a "responsible" manner while in office.

The United States said the new coalition raised "legitimate questions" about the commitment of Netanyahu's government to a two-state solution with the Palestinians.

In the wake of the agreement, Environment Minister Avi Gabbay of the centre-right Kulanu party announced his resignation, saying: "I do not think it is right... to form an extremist government."

Lieberman's predecessor Moshe Yaalon, from Netanyahu's Likud party, resigned as defence minister on May 20, warning of a rising tide of extremism in Likud.

Netanyahu's bid to expand his coalition also reopened other fissures in his government, including with the religious nationalist party Jewish Home party.

On Sunday evening, he reached a compromise with Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett on the latter's demand for the creation of a military liaison position in the government's security cabinet.

Bennett says such a post is needed to avoid security cabinet members being kept in the dark about important developments.

Under the compromise brokered by Health Minister Yaakov Litzman of the United Torah Judaism alliance of ultra-Orthodox parties, security cabinet members will receive frequent personal briefings from the National Security Council as an interim measure.

While some analysts say such a change is needed, Bennett's demand is also seen by some as manoeuvring ahead of the next general election, which is due by 2019 at the latest.

Bennett is widely seen as aspiring to replace Netanyahu.
Costa Concordia's captain Francesco Schettino in the courthouse for his final declaration on the last day of his trial on February 11, 2015 in Grosseto (AFP Photo/Alberto Pizzoli)

Florence (Italy) (AFP) - Florence's appeals court on Tuesday upheld a 16-year jail term for Francesco Schettino, the captain of the Costa Concordia cruise ship that sank off Italy in 2012 leaving 32 people dead.

Schettino was not in court when the verdict was read out by presiding judge Grazia D'Onofrio.

He will not be jailed immediately pending a possible further appeal and Italy's crammed jails and generous parole system mean it is unlikely he will ever serve the full term.

Schettino was sentenced in February 2015 to 16 years and one month in prison after a judge ruled that his recklessness was to blame for the fate of the giant ship, which struck underwater rocks off the Tuscan island of Giglio on the night of January 14, 2012.

The prosecution had asked for his sentence to be increased to 27 years on appeal. Schettino's lawyers had demanded he be acquitted.

Schettino, 55, was convicted of multiple manslaughter, causing a maritime accident and abandoning ship before all passengers and crew had been evacuated, earning him the nickname "Captain Coward" in the press.

The violation of the ancient code of the sea which states a captain must be the last man off a sinking ship only accounted for one year of the sentence handed down by a three-judge panel in the Tuscan town of Grosseto.

During the first, 19-month trial, Schettino was accused of showing off when he steered the ship too close to the island while entertaining a female friend.

The ship had been carrying 4,229. people, including 3,200 tourists. The bodies of two of the victims have never been found.

- 'Shared blame' -

Schettino's lawyers had insisted the accident and its deadly consequences were primarily due to organisational failings for which the ship's owner, Costa Crociere, its Indonesian helmsman and the Italian coastguard should have shared the blame.

They also argued that it was not the collision, but rather the chaos that ensued due to the ship losing power that was the direct cause of the deaths. Schettino could not be blamed for the mechanical failures, they said.

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Costa Crociere avoided potential criminal charges by accepting partial responsibility and agreeing to pay a one million euro ($1.2 million) fine.

Five of its employees received non-custodial sentences after concluding plea bargains early in the investigation.

They included the ship's Indonesian helmsman, who could have averted the disaster but did not understand an order given by Schettino to change course just before the collision.

The ex-captain's lawyer said he would have liked the man at the helm to be questioned further "but he cannot be found, he has disappeared into thin air".

Survivors who rejected Costa's initial compensation offer and became civil parties in the Schettino case were awarded an average of 30,000 euros each.

Among those awarded a payout were Domnica Cemortan, the blonde Moldovan dancer with whom Schettino had dinner just before the ship hit the rocks.

On top of his original prison term, Schettino was banned from public office for life and from working as a ship captain for five years.
A logo on a British Petroleum petrol station is seen in London April 30, 2010. REUTERS/Toby Melville

By Marianna Parraga and Sarah McFarlane

HOUSTON/LONDON (Reuters) - Four tankers carrying over 2 million barrels of U.S. crude are stuck at sea and cannot discharge at a Caribbean terminal because Venezuela's PDVSA has not yet paid supplier BP Plc (BP.L), according to two sources and Thomson Reuters vessel tracking data.

The cargoes are part of a tender Petroleos de Venezuela [PDVSA.UL], known as PDVSA, awarded in March to BP and China Oil. The deal was to import some 8 million barrels of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude so Venezuela could dilute its extra heavy crudes and feed its Caribbean refineries.

While three cargoes for this tender were delivered in April, seven other vessels, including BP's four hired ones, are waiting to discharge, leaving up to 3.85 million barrels of WTI in limbo.

PDVSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The company's cash crunch, which also affected its oil imports late last year, have added to a backlog of tankers since March due to malfunctioning loading arms at Jose, Venezuela's main crude port.

PDVSA initially offered to pay for the imports with Venezuelan oil, but negotiations for those swaps failed as the proposed loading windows and crude grades did not work for BP, a source close to the talks said.

Amid low crude prices, declining exports and a brutal recession at home, PDVSA has since 2015 delayed payments to suppliers. As a result, service firms including Schlumberger (SLB.N), Halliburton (HAL.N) and Petrex have curtailed operations in the OPEC country.

The payment delays are also raising questions about who will pay for demurrage, or the daily costs for delays. Three of the BP tankers have been anchored for over 30 days.

As China already lifts Venezuelan crude as part of broader oil-for-loans deals, its companies have agreed on swaps for this tender, the sources said.

PORT PROBLEMS

Issues with loading arms to receive tankers at Jose port have doubled wait times for shippers since March.

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PDVSA said in a statement that installation of replacement equipment in the port's southern dock were successfully concluded on Tuesday.

Some 30 dirty tankers are currently waiting around PDVSA's ports in Venezuela and Curacao.

PDVSA has become one of the largest buyers of U.S. crude since last month even with a narrow arbitrage that makes most exports unattractive, analysts have said, but payment delays could stymie its bid to continue imports.

(Reporting by Marianna Parraga in Houston and Sarah McFarlane in London, with additional reporting by Alexandra Ulmer in Caracas; Editing by Cynthia Osterman, Toni Reinhold)
Renewed attacks by militants in the Niger delta region have caused oil output to be cut to 1.4 million barrels per day, down from a budgeted 2.2 million bpd this year (AFP Photo/Pius Utomi Ekpei)

Lagos (AFP) - Nigeria's oil output has slumped to a 22-year low, figures showed on Tuesday, because of pipeline sabotage and increasing unrest that has seen major companies evacuate staff.

Data compiled by Bloomberg indicated that output in Africa's biggest oil producer has fallen below 1.7 million barrels per day (bpd) for the first time since 1994.

Rebels seeking a fairer share of revenue for locals in the oil-rich southern delta are increasingly targeting facilities, posing a fresh security challenge for President Muhammadu Buhari.

The attacks have sparked fears of a repeat of violence and kidnappings that plagued the region in the 2000s and saw Nigeria's output cut by a third, slashing government revenue.

It also risks hitting crude supplies at a time when Nigeria's oil-dependent economy is facing a slump because of the fall in global prices.

Nigeria's military described the attacks as "economic terrorism" and vowed to employ "all available means within its rules of engagement to crush any individual or group" responsible.

To compound matters, long queues formed at petrol stations again this week, exacerbating a fuel shortage, after speculation government subsidies that keep pump prices low would be shelved.

- Rebel attacks -

Last week, rebels from the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) group claimed responsibility for an attack on the Okan offshore facility operated by US oil major Chevron.

The company said on Saturday some 35,000 bpd of crude was lost, although some estimates have put the loss higher.

At the weekend, Anglo-Dutch giant Shell evacuated most of its staff from its Eja production facility near the Bonga field.

Local media said 98 personnel were airlifted to safety by helicopter, leaving a skeleton staff protected by the military. Shell's Nigerian subsidiary did not confirm the operation.

But it said in a statement it was continuing to monitor the security situation and was "taking all possible steps to ensure the safety of staff and contractors".

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Dirk Steffen, of the Denmark-based Risk Intelligence consultancy firm, told AFP the evacuation was a "precautionary" step because of threats from the NDA.

Steffen, the head of maritime security for the firm, said the NDA issued new threats on May 5 after claiming responsibility for the Chevron attacks.

"This time they specifically name the facilities they would be targeting... I assume this is also what prompted Shell to take precautionary measures," he wrote in an email.

In February, Shell declared "force majeure" after an attack on a pipeline feeding the Forcados terminal, which typically exports about 200,000 barrels a day. It is expected to resume in June.

- Driving factors -

Consultants BMI Research said the renewed unrest in the key region was "a worrying development as it demonstrates the increasing sphere of assets that are under risk".

"Shell's much larger Bonga field sits next door to the Eja facility and often exports over 200,000 bpd, highlighting much greater production risks than were previously anticipated."

BMI said production disruption in the delta has historically been onshore and was a major factor driving Shell's divestment of onshore assets and switch in focus to offshore blocks.

"The most recent attacks offshore are a new safety concern for those companies which once again find themselves vulnerable to supply disruptions," it added.

The renewed violence comes after Buhari -- facing Islamist militants Boko Haram in the northeast -- began a crackdown on endemic corruption in the sector and rampant oil theft.

The government has also said it would wind up an amnesty programme, which was introduced in 2009 and saw thousands of rebels swap violence for monthly training and education stipends.

The upsurge in attacks since January has also been linked to multi-million-dollar corruption charges brought against Government Ekpemupolo, a former rebel leader nicknamed Tompolo.

He is accused of defrauding the government of some $225 million. The NDA is thought to contain his supporters although he has denied any links to the group.
By Felix Onuah and Anamesere Igboeroteonwu ABUJA/ONITSHA, Nigeria (Reuters) - Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari will on Thursday visit the Niger Delta region, rocked by attacks on oil and gas facilities, for the first time since taking office a year ago, an official said on Monday. The visit was announced as the Niger Delta Avengers militant group, which has claimed a string of recent attacks, issued a warning to oil firms in the southern region that their "facilities and personnel will bear the brunt of our fury," according to a statement. Buhari said on Sunday said the government would hold talks with leaders in Nigeria's main oil-producing region to address their grievances, in a bid to stop a surge in pipeline attacks. Buhari will visit a Niger Delta area called Ogoniland to launch a much-delayed programme to clean up areas heavily polluted by oil spills, said the government official who asked not to be named. Residents in the southern swamp areas, where oil giants such as Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron operate, have for years complained about the oil industry's pollution and about economic marginalisation by the government. Some have taken up arms, and a surge in attacks on energy installations has cut Nigeria's oil output to a 20-year low. A militant group called Niger Delta Avengers, which staged several attacks in recent weeks, has accused Buhari, a Muslim from the north, ignoring local problems by having never visited the Christian region in the south. "To the international oil companies and indigenous oil companies, it's going to be bloody this time around," the group said in a statement late on Monday. It did not elaborate. Local officials and Western allies such as Britain have told Buhari that moving army reinforcements to the Delta region would not be enough to stop the attacks and that the population's grievances should be dealt with. On Thursday, Oil Minister Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu said an amnesty programme for former militants, signed in 2009 to quell a previous insurgency, needed to improve. The scheme providing cash benefits and job training to those who lay down their arms has had its funding cut by two thirds. Buhari has also upset former militants by ending contracts to protect pipelines, part of a drive to tackle graft. (Writing by Ulf Laessing; editing by Andrew Roche, G Crosse)
It was a week where oil prices briefly traded above the psychologically important $50 per barrel level for the first time since October though natural gas futures ended lower again.

On the news front, shareholders at Exxon Mobil Corp. XOM voted down climate change proposals, while Suncor Energy Inc. SU announced plans to restart operations after the Fort McMurray fires in Canada.

Overall, it was a mixed week for the sector. While West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures gained 1.9% to close at $49.33 per barrel, natural gas prices fell 1.7% to $2.169 per million Btu (MMBtu). (See the last Oil & Gas Stock Roundup here: FMC Tech to Merge with Technip, Chevron Aims to Restart Gorgon.)

Oil prices moved north for the seventh time in 8 weeks on supply disruptions in Nigeria, France, Venezuela and Canada. Things were further helped by the U.S. Energy Department's weekly inventory release that showed a large drop in crude stockpiles. Additional support came from a Baker Hughes report that showed another decline in oil-directed rigs, indicating a break in shale drilling activities.

On the other hand, natural gas fared badly following a bearish inventory report. Meanwhile, predictions of mild temperatures across most parts of the country over the next two weeks will restrict the commoditys requirement for power burn.

Recap of the Weeks Most Important Stories

1. U.S. oil major Exxon Mobil has been relieved of the tremendous pressure to implement climate change policies, after its shareholders narrowly voted the resolutions down.

The policies, which necessitated limiting greenhouse gas emissions, reducing global warming, putting a climate expert on the board, reporting on fracking activities and even climate change impact assessments, were rejected at Exxon Mobils annual meeting.

Notably, this is first time in the companys history that the climate-related proposals have received so much support. Initial results showed 38% support from Exxon Mobil investors that cast ballots. This is a sign that more conventional shareholders like pension funds, sovereign-wealth funds and asset managers are beginning to take the threat of a global warming from fossil fuels more seriously. (See More: Exxon Mobil Shareholders Reject Climate Change Resolutions.)

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2. Suncor Energy announced that its operations, which were halted due to the massive Canadian wildfire, have resumed.

The leading integrated player in Canada has restored its activities at its base plant and the MacKay River sites in Alberta. The initial production at the facilities will likely be started by this weekend.

Almost 4,000 employees and contractors of the company have returned to the areas. In fact, an additional 3,500 people will likely return to the region to shore up operations. This announcement shows that the oil sands producers of Canada are gradually coming back to operations following the outage caused by the latest wildfire.

3. Europes largest energy firm, Royal Dutch Shell plc RDS.A, has decided to reduce its headcount further. This time, the company will eliminate a minimum of 2,200 jobs this year, of which 475 workers are attached to exploration and production activities in the U.K. and Ireland.

Following this announcement, Shell is on the verge of slashing 5,000 jobs in 2016, while the total for 2015-16 will stand at 12,500. Energy companies around the world continue to slash jobs, defer/cancel projects worth billions of dollars and renegotiate contracts with suppliers to help protect their balance sheets and cope with lower for longer oil.

The contentious takeover of BG Group and integration of its business also contributed to the decision. (See More: Shell to Slash 2,200 More Jobs Amid Prolonged Oil Rout.)

4. Offshore contract driller SeaDrill Ltd. SDRL reported weak first-quarter 2016 results owing to underperformances by Jack-up Rigs and Floaters. This was partially offset by decreasing operating expenses.

Net operating income for the Jack-up Rigs segment plummeted from the first-quarter 2015 figure of $325 million to $86 million, while for Floaters the net operating profit came in at $237 million, significantly below the prior-year quarter figure of $376 million. SeaDrill incurred operating expenses of $568 million in the reported quarter, reflecting a significant decline from the year-ago quarter figure of $731 million.

The company projects second-quarter 2016 operating income of almost $510 million, which is less than the first-quarter level of $528 million. (See More: SeaDrill Posts Weak Earnings in Q1, Revenues Lag.)

5. British oil and gas finder BP plc BP has commenced a major water injection project at its Thunder Horse platform, one of the biggest deepwater fields in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico (GoM). Located in a water depth of 6,000 feet, the Thunder Horse platform commenced production in Jun 2008.

BP has revamped the platforms existing topsides and subsea equipment over the last three years alongside drilling two water injection wells at the site. Water is expected to be injected into the reservoir from these wells to enhance pressure and augment production. Moving ahead, these developments are anticipated to help the Thunder Horse facility recover an extra 65 million barrels of oil equivalent. Thus, the water injection project will extend the production life of the platform.

Out of the five major upstream projects in 2016 that BP expects to commission, the aforesaid project is the second. BP intends to add new production of about 800,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day worldwide from projects commissioned between 2015 and 2020.

Price Performance

The following table shows the price movement of the major oil and gas players over the past week and during the last 6 months.

Company Last Week Last 6 Months XOM +0.44% +10.23% CVX +3.03% +11.72% COP +1.49% -17.98% OXY +1.59% +0.74% SLB +3.65% +0.03% RIG +7.83% -31.41% VLO -2.82% -24.06% TSO -1.69% -31.87%

Over the course of last week, The Energy Select Sector SPDR was up 1.85% on supply outages. Consequently, investors witnessed a buying spree in most large companies. The best performer was offshore drilling giant Transocean Ltd. RIG that added 7.83% to its stock price.

Longer-term, over the last 6 months, the sector tracker is down 1.31%. Downstream operator Tesoro Corp. TSO was the main casualty during this period, experiencing a 31.87% price decrease.

Whats Next in the Energy World?

As usual, market participants will be closely tracking the regular weekly releases i.e. the U.S. government data on oil and natural gas. Investors are also keenly looking ahead to the OPEC meeting scheduled in the Austrian capital of Vienna on Thursday, June 2.

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OPEC oil output falls from near-record in May on Nigeria outages

By Alex Lawler

VIENNA (Reuters) - OPEC's oil output fell in May from near a record high, a Reuters survey found on Tuesday, as attacks on Nigeria's oil industry and other outages outweighed increases in Iran and Gulf members.

A rise in supply from Saudi Arabia plus Iran suggests the group's top producers remain focussed on market share, following the failure of an initiative in April between OPEC and non-OPEC producers to support prices by freezing output.

With OPEC meeting in Vienna on Thursday, outages are effectively achieving the supply restraint on which producers could not agree. Those disruptions are supporting oil prices (LCOc1), which are close to 2016 highs, and the rally has reduced the urgency of any new attempt at deliberate supply curtailment.

"There is a tiny chance of a bullish surprise but as things stand right now, the odds are the continuation of OPEC's market-share policy," said David Hufton, of oil brokers PVM.

Supply from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries fell to 32.52 million barrels per day (bpd) this month, from 32.64 million bpd in April, according to the survey, based on shipping data and information from sources at oil companies, OPEC and consultants.

OPEC output has surged since the group abandoned in 2014 its historic role of cutting supply to prop up prices, in a shift led by Saudi Arabia. There are more indications, however, that some producers are struggling to maintain supply.

May's biggest decline occurred in Nigeria due to militant attacks on the country's oil industry. The disruption has pushed output to its lowest in more than 20 years.

Libyan output declined further due to a blockage of shipments from the port of Hariga. Loading difficulties and other problems made a further dent in Venezuela's supply, sources in the survey said.

Iraq, the fastest source of OPEC production growth in 2015, also pumped less as power outages limited southern exports, which in April were at a near-record.

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Of the countries boosting output, Iran managed a further increase after the lifting of Western sanctions in January.

At 3.55 million bpd, Iranian output has more than matched the 3.50 million bpd it pumped at the end of 2011 before sanctions were tightened, according to Reuters surveys. However, any further rises will be smaller, sources said.

"Getting back to pre-sanctions output was not a problem," said a source familiar with Iranian thinking. "Getting beyond that will be harder."

Saudi Arabian output edged up to 10.25 million bpd, compared with 10.15 million bpd in April, the survey found.

"Exports are higher," said an industry source who monitors Saudi output. "But production is not really changing very much."

Other increases came from the United Arab Emirates, following the end of maintenance on oilfields, and Kuwait as supply rebounded after a three-day workers' strike in April cut output.

(Editing by Dale Hudson)
SOFIA, May 31 (Reuters) - These are some of the main stories in Bulgarian newspapers on Tuesday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

-- Bulgaria ranks third in the list of most attractive outsourcing destinations in the world and is first in Europe, President Rosen Plevneliev said at the opening of the new outsourcing centre of Telus International in the central city of Plovdiv. (24 Chasa, Capital Daily)

-- The chief prosecutor of Sofia prosecution has resigned from his post citing health reasons a month before the European Commission sends experts to inspect the work of Bulgarian prosecution and help improve its efficiency. (Capital Daily, 24 Chasa, Duma, Trud)

CAPITAL DAILY - Bulgaria's competitiveness has improved and the country now ranks 50 among 621 surveyed countries in terms of business and government efficiency, infrastructure and economic performance by Swiss IDM World Competitiveness Centre.
Jin Liqun, president of the AIIB. [Photo provided to China Daily]

The European Investment Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank on Monday signed a framework agreement and agreed to broaden cooperation, in an accord seeking to jointly finance strategically important projects.

"The agreement is crucial to expand our partnership in addressing the monumental infrastructure financing needs around the world," said Jin Liqun, president of the AIIB.

Jin added that the AIIB was created with the goal of promoting regional cooperation and partnership to address development challenges. He said joint efforts between the two banks could be a steadying force in a complex global economic environment and create enduring positive developmental results.

Werner Hoyer, president of the EIB, said the two banks shared similar business models. Hoyer said he was looking forward to working together with the AIIB to address global challenges, in particular programs that would help tackle climate change, ensuring the provision of sustainable transport and providing clean water.

Werner Hoyer, president of the EIB. [Photo provided to China Daily]

The two did not provide further details, but it is believed the first investment project on which the banks are going to cooperate will be located in India. That's where the EIB decided to provide a 450 million euros ($501 million) long-term loan earlier this year to finance the first metro line in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh.

Hoyer said that such programs were able to improve the construction of urban infrastructure and fit his bank's criteria to invest in economically, socially, and ecologically sustainable projects.

"China's Belt and Road Initiative would provide more opportunities along the countries effected to make investments in valuable projects," Hoyer said.

The EIB and the AIIB have already established a strong track record of cooperation, including sharing technical and financial expertise.

EIB President Hoyer is currently on a five-day official visit to China, the focus of which is to strengthen the EIB's partnership with China on addressing the problems of climate change.

The EIB is the world's largest lender for climate-related investment and global leader in issuing green bonds.

Last year, EIB support for climate finance outside Europe represented 30 percent of overall lending, according to Hoyer.
By Nidhi Verma NEW DELHI (Reuters) - French major Total has agreed to buy East African oil retailer Gulf Africa Petroleum Corp (Gapco) from Reliance Industries for an undisclosed amount as it seeks to strengthen its presence in the continent. Reliance, which has 76 percent stake in Gapco, and the minority shareholders have agreed to sell their holding for cash to Total, the Indian company said in a statement on Tuesday. The two companies said the transaction is yet to be approved by authorities. "The net proceeds for the sale will be finalised on completion of the transaction which is expected to be within the coming months" Reliance said. With this acquisition Total aims to raise its market share in Africa from 17 percent in 2015 to more than 20 percent. "This acquisition is in line with Total's growth strategy for the distribution of petroleum products and services in Africa, which aims at expanding in fast-growing regions while maintaining high profitability," Momar Nguer, President, Total Marketing & Services said in a statement. Gapco's assets in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda include logistic terminals, 108 fuel stations, and 260,000 kilolitres of storage capacity. Total currently operates a network of more than 4,000 fuel stations in Africa. "Although Africa's overall oil demand is low by global standards, the continent's oil demand growth rates are very high, having risen by around 50 percent over the last decade to almost 4 million barrels per day (bpd)," BP said in a report. Reliance acquired Gapco in 2007 as the government-set low retail fuel prices in India forced the private refiner to turn to stable export outlets ahead of commissioning of its second refinery. Reliance's two refineries sited next to each other at Jamnagar have a capacity to process about 1.24 million bpd oil. "Gapco's share was very small in the East African retail market but it has large storage tankage whereas Total has a much bigger market share and small tankage. So it makes good sense for Total to buy Gapco," said Tushar Bansal, senior consultant at Singapore-based energy consultancy FGE. "For Reliance the margin lies in participating in the tenders for bulk supplies to retailers and they still have that option," he said. (Additional Reporting by Henning Gloystein in SINGAPORE; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
(Adds detail, background)

MOSCOW, May 30 (Reuters) - Shareholders of indebted Russian coal and steel producer Mechel approved on a second attempt a series of debt restructuring deals with major creditors, Mechel said in a statement on Monday.

Mechel reached agreements in principle to restructure $5.1 billion of debt with creditors including some of the largest Russian banks and a syndicate of foreign lenders in February, but it had since struggled to get approval from shareholders.

After a shareholders' meeting in March failed to reach a quorum, the management asked minority shareholders to encourage them to approve the deals.

"We are very grateful to our minority shareholders who voted in favour of Mechel's debt restructuring," Mechel's Chief Executive Officer Oleg Korzhov said in a statement.

The company, controlled by businessman Igor Zyuzin, borrowed heavily before Russia's economic crisis and has struggled to keep up repayments as demand for its products weakened alongside tumbling coal and steel prices.

With other Russian steelmakers, Mechel has also been hit by a collapse in global steel prices, which plumbed 10-year lows in late 2015 and early 2016, while demand for at home has been undermined by Russia's deepening economic downturn.

The coal-to-steel producer has been in talks with Russian lenders Sberbank, Gazprombank and VTB and foreign creditors to restructure its debts for the past two years.

In April, Mechel offered Gazprombank an option to buy a 49 percent stake in its Elga coal project by June 30, a deal crucial for the debt restructuring.

(Reporting by Anastasia Lyrchikova; Writing by Lidia Kelly; Editing by Alexander Winning/Ruth Pitchford)
Saudi Arabia's Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reacts upon his arrival at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, June 24, 2015. REUTERS/Charles Platiau/File Photo

Saudi Arabia might take a page right out of Qatar's playbook.

The Kingdom is thinking about a sale of as much as $15 billion of bonds this year in light of the investor demand for Qatar's recent issue, report Bloomberg's Ambereen Choudhury, Dinesh Nair, and Ruth David.

This would be Saudi Arabia's first bond sale in international capital markets.

People with knowledge of the situation who asked not to be identified told Bloomberg that Saudi Arabia may copy Qatar's $9 billion sale from earlier in May by issuing bonds with five-, 10-, and 30-year maturities.

They added that no final decision has yet been reached and that talks are still in early stages.

The kingdom has been struggling with the reality of lower-for-longer oil prices and has been looking for ways to generate funds. Even though the commodity's prices have rebounded this year to around $49-50 per barrel, they are still far below June 2014's peak of $100 a barrel.

Most notably, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman recently unveiled a plan, called Vision 2030, which aims to curtail the Saudis' "addiction" to oil.

Moreover, while some economists remain firm in their belief that the Saudis will not abandon their currency peg to the US dollar, Zach Schreiber, the CEO of PointState Capital who made $1 billion betting against oil two years ago, recently announced that he was short the riyal against the US dollar.

He thinks ongoing low oil prices and growing costs will ultimately lead the kingdom to abandon its three-decade-old peg. (And should that happen, a Bank of America Merrill Lynch global-commodities research team thinks oil will crash to $25 a barrel.)

As for Qatar, although the Gulf state has weathered lower oil prices far better than its OPEC peers, some analysts are now starting to see warning signs flashing. Specifically, folks are worried that Qatar's credit boom looks increasingly unsustainable and could lead to instability in the future.

Story continues

Check out the full report at Bloomberg.

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Business loans dropped 1.6%.

Loan growth in Singapore continued to contract in March. Preliminary data from the central bank show that bank lending dropped 0.9% month-on-month to $591 billion in March, extending the 0.7% decline in February.

Loans to businesses dropped 1.6% to $348 billion, while consumer lending stayed flat at 0.3%.

Bank lending fell 1.8% on a year-on-year basis, a steeper decline compared to 1.2% in February.





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Garment workers from the Six Plus Industry Co. Ltd factory recover at a hospital after fainting at their workplace in Kandal province July 31, 2014. Around 200 workers from the factory producing clothing for Adidas collapsed at work on Thursday morning, said the Free Trade Union (FTU). Another 150 workers fainted on July 26 at the same factory, according to the union. REUTERS/Samrang Pring

H&M, Gap, and Walmart are three of the largest sellers of cheap clothes in the world. Like many other companies in the global garment industry, they make much of that clothing in Asian countries with low wages and little regulatory oversight, leading to widespread accounts of worker abuses.

A new series of reports by the Asia Floor Wage Alliance (AFWA), a group of trade unions and labor rights activists, has put a spotlight on those abuses, documenting some of the worst of the problems at the factories where these brands make their clothes. The AFWAs research draws on hundreds of interviews with workers at factories used by H&M, Gap, and Walmart in countries including Cambodia, India, Bangladesh, and Indonesia.

The findings paint an ugly picture of widespread mistreatment of workers, most of them poor women. Thats far from the image these international clothing brands are eager to project.

These [abuses] are all, to me, inhuman treatment of workers, says Anannya Bhattacharjee, international coordinator of the AFWA. Theyre all connected and they all form a web of terror, insecurity, and a high level of vulnerability for workers.

The reports come just as the International Labour Organization (ILO) holds its annual conference in Geneva, where the AFWA and other labor groups are urging the agency to create binding regulations ensuring better wages and conditions for workers in the global garment trade.

The findings paint an ugly picture of widespread mistreatment of workers, most of them poor women.

Here is a summary of some of the conditions workers say are standard in their factories, as documented by the AFWA:

Fired for becoming pregnant

In interviews with 251 workers from H&Ms supplier factories in Cambodia and India, the AFWA found workers at 11 of 12 Cambodian factories reported women being fired for becoming pregnant. All 50 workers from the Indian factories reported the same. These women often depend on their jobs for survival, leading many to undergo abortions in countries where the procedure can be dangerous.

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H&M responded to the report by saying that the practice is far outside the bounds of the commitment it requires supplier factories to sign. H&M does not accept termination on the grounds of pregnancy under any circumstances, the company said in a statement (emphasis theirs).

Pressured to tolerate sexual harassment

Allegations of sexual harassment in supplier factories for all three brands were rampant. At Gaps supplier factories in Cambodia, Indonesia, and India, the AFWA determined from interviews with 150 workers that one in five experiences sexual comments or advances, and inappropriate contact from male managers or co-workers.

Often women have no method for reporting this sort of behavior, or they may be pressured to let it continue. At Cambo Handsome, a Walmart supplier in Cambodia, women reported that they were rewarded with longer breaks and other benefits if they allowed the harassment to go on.

Unsafe and unhealthy work schedules

Given the grueling conditions some workers described, those breaks could seem a desperate necessity, not a perk. At Walmarts Cambodian factories, work lasted up to 14 hours a day in sweltering heat, without adequate supply of clean drinking water or any breaks, leading to episodes of mass fainting, the AFWA reports.

A Walmart spokesperson says the company uses collaborative approaches to improving working conditions, and is working with the International Labor Organizations Better Factories Cambodia program to make sure suppliers follow its set of standards. The company also told the New York Times (paywall) those standards specifically address working hours, breaks, the cultivation of a safe and healthy work environment, and freedom of association.

Gap responded to the report with a statement: When we encounter an issue or violation of our code of vendor conductwhether through our monitoring program or when an external group brings an issue to our attentionour approach is to drive improvements in a timely manner, oftentimes in coordination with NGOs or other civil society organizations.

Temporary contracts

Another growing problem the AFWA found at suppliers for all three brands were temporary, fixed-duration contracts. For example, a worker may be employed on a three-month contract. If during that time she voices any grievances about harassment, demands better wages or conditions, or joins a union, the factory can easily choose to not renew her contract.

H&M calls these contracts an industry-wide problem and says its trying to address it. Since 2015 it has required that workers have contracts valid for an unlimited time, but that only applies to workers who have been employed for more than two years.

Suppression of efforts to organize

Workers attempts to protest or unionize have been violently suppressed at times. In Cambodia, paramilitary groups such as Brigade 911 and the police break up worker protests, and workers have been killed in the process.

At least three people were killed when Cambodian garment workers demanding higher wages clashed with riot police in 2014. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

Wage theft

Workers at supplier factories for all three brands reported being forced to work overtime or faced firing, verbal abuse, or beatings. Many workers producing for Gap said they didnt even receive the legally mandated overtime rates. The AFWA calls it wage theft, and says overtime pay isnt the only problem. At H&Ms supplier factories in India, for instance, workers reported earning less than the minimum wage demanded by Indian law.

The AFWA calls it wage theft.

The AFWA is attending the ILO conference in Geneva to call for regulations that would put an end to these practices and establish a living wage for garment workersmeaning one that provides a decent standard of living, not just the bare minimum. According to its calculations, which use purchasing power parity to determine a living wage in various countries, workers in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, to take two examples, now make about a fifth of a living wage.

Brands often argue that they dont own the factories directly and dont decide what workers earn. Were not setting the wages, Karl-Johan Persson, CEO of H&M, has said. Walmart told the New York Times that it doesnt own or operate the factories it sources from, and in a statement said it encourages suppliers to provide wages that provide income beyond basic needs. It also noted that its standards specify that suppliers provide overtime pay and benefits that meet or exceed legal standards or collective agreements, whichever are higher.

Brands note that these problem are not theirs alone. The issues addressed in the [AFWA] report are industry-wide problems, a spokesperson for H&M said. They are often difficult to address as an individual company and we firmly believe that collaboration is key. Gap echoed the sentiment in its statement.

The AFWA disputes the claim that brands arent responsible for wages. They seek out the lowest prices in countries with poor populations who need work, creating a pricing race to the bottom where worker pay is whats ultimately squeezed most, according to Bhattacharjee. The way the system is structured right now is highly unequal, not profitable sufficiently for production countries, and highly exploitative of a very large labor force, she says.

But on whether these problems extend beyond H&M, Gap, and Walmart, the AFWA couldnt agree more. In a press release for its H&M report, it noted that the sheer scale of rights violations it had found are fundamentally linked to the structure of the garment global value chain as a whole.

Still, Bhattacharjee says brands just arent doing enough to police themselves. H&M supposedly has pilot factories where its testing a living wage (paywall), but the AFWA says H&M wont give it access to the names of these factories. H&M is under no obligation to do so, but Bhattacharjee says theyve been unable to find anyone who has ever worked in one.

Voluntary enforcement is not working, which is why we need binding regulation with grievance procedures, arbitration procedures, she says. This has to happen at a global level. We believe the ILO is in the best position to do it.

As of now, it appears the ILO believes there is no regulatory gap. The agency has not replied to our request for comment on how responsible it believes it should be in regulating the industry.

This story was updated with statements from Walmart.

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BELFAST (Reuters) - Two men have been arrested in Northern Ireland as part of an investigation into a 1.3 billion pound sale of property loans by Ireland's state-owned "bad bank" to a U.S. private equity firm, British authorities said.

Northern Ireland police opened a criminal inquiry last year into the sale by Ireland's state-run "bad bank", the National Asset Management Agency, of its entire portfolio of loans belonging to Northern Ireland-based debtors to U.S. private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management.

The investigation was begun after an independent member of the Irish parliament, Mick Wallace, raised concerns about the portfolio, alleging that a 7 million-pound fee had been "earmarked" for a Northern Ireland politician.

The National Crime Agency said in a statement it arrested two people and carried out searches in the County Down area of Northern Ireland "in connection with a fraud investigation".

A spokesman said the arrests were the first in the investigation into the NAMA loan sale to Cerberus but declined to give any further details.

Cerberus has said that no improper or illegal fees were paid by it or on its behalf. NAMA says the police investigation has not suggested it behaved improperly.

NAMA is one of the world's largest property groups, having paid a total of 32 billion euros (24.6 billion) to purge Irish banks of risky loans worth over double that amount following a crash that forced Ireland to seek an international bailout.

The Northern Ireland portfolio was one of a series that has been sold by the agency in recent years.

(Reporting by Amanda Ferguson; Writing by Conor Humphries)
For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL  May 31, 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 Nucor (NUE), U.S. Steel (X), AK Steel (AKS), Steel Dynamics (STLD) and ArcelorMittal (MT).

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Here are highlights from Fridays Analyst Blog:

U.S. Thumps China with Heavy Tariffs on Steel Imports

The U.S. Department of Commerce ("DOC") has made its final decision on anti-dumping investigations on imports of corrosion-resistant steel and concluded that China, India, Italy, South Korea and Taiwan are selling these products in the U.S. market below their fair values and therefore, are subject to anti-dumping duties. The ruling marks yet another major step in stemming the torrent of unfairly-traded foreign imports.

Corrosion-resistant steel is coated with a corrosion or heat-resistant metal such as zinc and aluminum to prevent corrosion, thus extending the service life of the products made from the steel. It is used in making automobiles, trucks, appliances, and industrial and agricultural equipment.

The biggest U.S. steel producers, in Jun 2015, filed anti-dumping and countervailing duty petitions with the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) and the DOC against five countries accused for illegally dumping cheap corrosion-resistant steel.

The petitions, which were filed by six major U.S. steelmakers including Nucor (NUE), U.S. Steel (X), AK Steel (AKS), Steel Dynamics (STLD) and ArcelorMittal USA  a part of ArcelorMittal ( MT)  charge that a deluge of significantly subsidized imports of corrosion-resistant steel from China, India, Italy, South Korea and Taiwan are causing material injury to the U.S. steel industry. The petitions also charge that these producers benefit from a number of countervailable subsidies provided by their respective governments.

Story continues

Imports of corrosion-resistant steel from China, India, Italy, South Korea, and Taiwan were valued at an estimated $500.3 million, $219.6 million, $110 million, $509.1 million, and $534.4 million, respectively, in 2015 (combined value of nearly $1.9 billion). These products are being illegally dumped by foreign steel producers in the American market at unfairly low prices that significantly undercut the prices of U.S. steel makers.

The DOC, on Wednesday, imposed a whopping final anti-dumping duty rate of 209.97% on imports of these products from China. This will hurt Chinese exporters including Yieh Phui (China) Technomaterial Co. Ltd and Jiangyin Zongcheng Steel Co. Ltd. India, Taiwan, South Korea, and Italy received anti-dumping duties in the range of 3.05% to 92.12%.

The commerce department also issued its final rulings on countervailing duty investigations on imports of corrosion-resistant steel from the five countries. The regulator levied final countervailing duty rate in the band of 39.05% to 241.07% on Chinese imports. With respect to Taiwan, the DOCs final countervailing duty determinations were negative and hence, no countervailing duties were imposed on imports from that country.

The DOC will now instruct U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to start requiring cash deposits based on the final anti-dumping duty rates. The commerce department will also order the CBP to require cash deposits (based on the final countervailing duty rate) in applicable cases should the USITC issues an affirmative injury determination. The USITC is expected to make its final injury rulings on July 8.

The latest trade actions came after the DOCs affirmative final rulings on the cold-rolled steel case, announced last week. The regulator, on May 17, levied a hefty final anti-dumping duty rate of 265.79% on imports of cold-rolled steel from China. The commerce department also levied a massive final countervailing duty rate of 256.44% on Chinese imports. The USITC is expected to make its final injury ruling on cold-rolled steel case on June 30.

In Mar 2016, the DOC also imposed preliminary anti-dumping duties on imports of certain hot-rolled steel flat products by seven countries. A final ruling by the DOC on this case is expected in August.

China has reportedly criticized Washington's latest trade actions, calling them harmful. The countrys Ministry of Commerce said yesterday that it will take all necessary actions to gain fair treatment and protect the interests of Chinese steel firms.

The U.S. steel producers are still struggling to cope with falling steel prices as a result of the combined impact of imports and overcapacity in the industry. Low costs of production have allowed overseas producers (especially China) to sell their products at cheaper rates, leading to an industry-wide price decline.

China, which accounts for around 50% of global steel output, continues to pose a threat to the U.S. steel industry. The Chinese steel industry continues to reel under massive excess steel capacity and sluggish domestic demand amid a cooling economy. Chinas economy rose at an annual rate of 6.7% in the first quarter of 2016, its slowest in seven years.

Beijing has been repeatedly criticized by the U.S. and the European Union for dumping its excess steel capacity in the overseas markets at unfairly low prices. China's steel exports jumped 7.6% year over year in the first four months of 2016 (per customs data), indicating sustained demand weakness at home.

The USITC, yesterday, launched a probe into the allegations contained in U.S. Steels complaint against Chinese steel producers. U.S. Steel, in April, lodged a complaint with the USITC, asking the regulator to start an investigation against biggest Chinese steel producers and their distributors. The complaint alleges three clauses of action  illegal conspiracy to fix prices, theft of trade secrets and circumvention of trade duties by false labeling. U.S. Steel is seeking the exclusion of all unfairly traded Chinese steel products from the U.S. market.

Steel market conditions in the U.S. have somewhat improved of late, thanks to favorable rulings on steel trade cases in the recent past. Domestic steel makers continue to actively press the U.S. regulators to stop unfair trade practices and enforce new trade laws to rescue the crisis-hit U.S. steel industry.

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Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss. This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit https://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release.



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The latest EU referendum poll indicates that voters have swung considerably towards backing Brexit. 52 per cent of people surveyed said they were planning on voting for Britain to leave the European Union, compared to 48 per cent who are voting in...



Coffee House



Majority of voters are backing Brexit, according to latest EU referendum poll



Tom Goodenough



31 May 2016The SpectatorThe latest EU referendum poll indicates that voters have swung considerably towards backing Brexit. 52 per cent of people surveyed said they were planning on voting for Britain to leave the European Union, compared to 48 per cent who are voting in. The ICM poll, carried out for the Guardian , is significant for two reasons. Firstly, it flies in the face of the prevailing view that remain has surged ahead. In recent weeks, those campaigning for Britain to stay put in Europe appear to have enjoyed a significant margin of support over the leave campaign. A poll of polls conducted by Lord Ashcroft suggested an almost exact opposite to the figures out today: giving remain 53 per cent of the vote to leaves 47 per cent. But these latest numbers show a big swing the other way and make it clear that the referendum remains an open contest.Secondly, the margin of the swing towards Brexit also makes this latest poll worth following particularly closely. Apart from at the start of May, the leave campaign have been pipped to second place in most polls which have been conducted. Whilst last years election showed the danger of reading too much into any poll, the fact that more people are backing Brexit  and appear to have shifted their stance on the referendum  shows that the leave campaign is doing something right. To give an idea of comparison here, an ICM phone poll also carried out by the Guardian two weeks ago handed remain a 10 per cent lead. With the purdah period having now kicked in  taking away the Governments advantage in being able to count on its huge resources to convince Brits of the need to stay in  these results will act as a big boost for leave.Its still worth remembering, as Fraser Nelson points out , that many voters tend to stick with the devil they know. This means that in order for the change proposition (leave, in this case) to win, that side needs to enjoy a very healthy lead in the polls. Whilst its important not to read everything into todays poll, that margin appears to have grown considerably and with it the chances that Britain could well vote out of the EU.
The Supreme Court struck down a law banning doctor assisted suicide, and instead of making it legal right then and there, the court gave the government a year to come up with a new law that met the constitutional criteria the previous law did not. The government asked for a extension last year and now the extension is about to expire.



If the court hadn't done that then doctor assisted suicide would have been legal but completely unregulated in February 2015.
Battle of Jutland centenary marked

Battle of Jutland in numbers





British fleet



British 5th Battle Squadron at sea: Queen Elizabeth-class battleships HMS Barham, HMS Valiant, HMS Malaya and HMS Warspite



 6,097 lives lost



14 ships lost



177 sailors captured



674 sailors wounded



PA 6,097 lives lost14 ships lost177 sailors captured674 sailors woundedPA

Battle of Jutland in numbers





German fleet



German sailors on SMS Frederick der Grosse in Scapa Flow after the Armistice in November 1918. This ship fought at the Battle of Jutland



 2,551 lives lost



11 ships lost



0 sailors captured



507 sailors wounded



Getty Images 2,551 lives lost11 ships lost0 sailors captured507 sailors woundedGetty Images

BBC News31st May 2016The centenary of the biggest naval engagement of World War One is being marked by commemorative events.A service at St Magnus Cathedral in Orkney will pay tribute to the 8,648 sailors who died during the Battle of Jutland.A service of remembrance will also take place on board HMS Duncan at Jutland Bank, the site of the battle.The battle was fought near the coast of Denmark on 31st May and 1st June 1916 and involved about 250 ships.It saw the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet, based at Scapa Flow in Orkney, clash with the German High Seas Fleet. It was the only major naval battle of the war.Prime Minister David Cameron and German President Joachim Gauck are attending the service at St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall, along with the Princess Royal and her husband Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence, representing the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.Events will continue with a service at Lyness Cemetery on the island of Hoy - the final resting place for more than 450 service personnel who died in the war, including sailors killed at Jutland.The Duke of Edinburgh had also been due to attend the events, but has pulled out following medical advice Representatives of all the other nations connected to the battle - Australia, Canada, Ireland (part of the UK in 1916), Japan, Malta, New Zealand and South Africa - will also be at the cathedral.The commemoration is being led by the minister of the cathedral, Fraser MacNaughton.He has been be joined by the Royal Navy's chaplain of the fleet, the Venerable Ian Wheatley, and a German naval chaplain.In the North Sea, the German ship FGS Schleswig-Holstein will join HMS Duncan at Jutland Bank.Many relatives of those who took part in the battle are in Orkney to join the commemorations.Alexander Nicol's grandfather John drowned when HMS Invincible exploded and went down with the loss of more than 1,000 men.He left a wife and eight children.Mr Nicol said: "I'm fortunate enough to be a grandfather in my own right... My grandfather didn't live to see any of his children get married, let alone to see any of his grandchildren. So to me it's a privilege that he missed out on."Michael Mulford's father Mark survived the battle as a teenager aboard the HMS Malaya, which was hit eight times with the loss of more than 60 men.Mr Mulford said his father, then 19, had watched as the bodies were sewn into hammocks and released over the side."I can't really imagine it because what he ever said about it was absolutely nothing - which speaks volumes for the horror of raw naval warfare," he told the BBC."This was duty, this was service, but whatever else, it was nothing you could talk about at the dinner table. It was not something to regale the grandchildren with. It was long ago, it was dreadful but it had to be done and was done."Mr Mulford added: "Today is a day for peace and reconciliation. Today, 100 years on we wonder what our forefathers were doing."They were fighting each other across in the North Sea. Today we are at peace and we should be really grateful and defend that for all time."The Battle of Jutland was the only major sea battle of World War One . It was a battle that Britain, with its long naval tradition, was widely expected to win.Germany's fleet, under the command of Vice-Admiral Reinhard Scheer, was aware of the Royal Navy Grand Fleet's superiority in terms of numbers, and wanted to lure Britain's battle cruisers into a trap.The German admiral's strategy was to draw portions of the British fleet into battle with a strike at Allied shipping off the Norwegian coast.However, British admiralty intelligence intercepted a German radio message saying the High Seas Fleet was preparing to leave port and the commander of the British fleet, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, sailed from Scapa Flow in Orkney to intercept it.There were a series of clashes throughout 31 May, including the loss of HMS Indefatigable which was hit by German shellfire and exploded in a ball of flame.From a crew of 1,019 men, only two survived.HMS Queen Mary was also sunk, with the loss of 1,266 crew.The main battle began at about 18:30 on 31 May when Vice-Admiral Scheer realised he was up against the entire British Grand Fleet.At the end of the engagement, the British had lost more in terms of ships and men, but it later emerged the Germans had concealed the scuttling of two of their ships, and it soon became seen as a strategic victory for the Royal Navy.In a message on the St Magnus order of service, the Duke of Edinburgh said that, whatever the judgement on the outcome, the commemorations were focused on the "endurance and gallantry" of all those who took part."War may be senseless and the Battle of Jutland may have been inconclusive, but there can be no doubt that their sacrifice was not in vain," he said."Historians may differ in their opinions about who won and who lost, but the fact remains that the German High Seas Fleet was unable to effectively challenge the Royal Navy's dominance at sea for the rest of the war."
Twenty years of serving God is just a beginning for The Rev. Fr. Loras Grell who celebrated this milestone anniversary as a pastor last weekend.

Grell currently serves as Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) for St. John the Baptist School and pastor for Church of the Holy Spirit in Plattsmouth.

He began his spiritual journey, however, in Beatrice after his birth in 1968.

I was raised a Catholic and attended St. Joseph Church in Beatrice, he explained.

He also attended St. Joseph Catholic School through sixth grade, at which time he began junior high school and later, high school, at Wymore Southern.

After graduating high school in 1987, he studied agronomy for three years at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He became involved in the Newman Center on campus, and realized he had a change of heart regarding his future.

I did not have peace with being in agriculture. I could not imagine myself spending my whole life there, he said. I started praying the Rosary and it became apparent to me that I had to see if the priesthood was more like the peace that would fulfill me.

Upon the advice of other priests, Grell finished his Bachelor of Science degree in agronomy from UN-L in 1991. He was then accepted into the seminary by Bishop Glennon Patrick Flavin of the Lincoln Diocese.

We had a one-on-one talk. He was 76 years old and close to retiring. He had confirmed me and he knew me since I was a child, Grell said.

Regarding the priesthood, Bishop Flavin told Grell, Its a great life.

Before his Bible study began, Grell needed to hone up on philosophy and theology. Bishop Flavin chose St. Philips Seminary in Toronto, Ontario, for Grell to attend.

The bishop decides where youll go and Toronto was well known for having good philosophy courses. Its also known for providing good formation classes for priests, Grell explained.

At St. Philips, Grell studied how to serve people and be Christ-like in prayer, social skills and understanding people.

Although he enjoyed his studies, Grell said he did get homesick. What am I doing in Canada? he asked himself at the time.

The year at St. Philips, however, proved a growing experience for him. Toronto is very multicultural. I was exposed to a lot of beautiful people, he said.

His next stop was Mount St. Marys College in Emmitsburg, Md., for four years. Emmitsburg is very historical. A shrine there is dedicated to St. Elizabeth Anne Seton. She was the first American-born saint. She started the first Catholic school in the United States, Grell explained.

After nine years of preparation, Grell was ordained as a priest May 25, 1996. His first assignment was as an assistant priest at the Newman Center for two years training under an experienced priest.

Then, I spent one year at North American Martyrs Catholic Church in Lincoln. It is named after the eight martyrs of the faith, he said.

His first assignment as a head pastor came when he was assigned to Assumption Church serving Dwight and Bee residents near David City.

I was there for six years, Grell said.

Next, he served as pastor for three parishes in Lawrence, Neb. There were 300 people and three parishes  Sacred Heart, St. Stephens and Assumption Deweese, Grell said. During the eight years there, he also was CAO for a K-8 Catholic school.

In 2013, Grell was moved to Plattsmouths Church of the Holy Spirit and St. John the Baptist School where he continues to share the Catholic faith.

He frequently recalls the first line of Psalm 63, one of his favorite Bible verses, which states, You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.
Lincoln  The number of mumps cases increased from 10 to 21 according to public health officials with the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services. The cases are related to an outbreak at Midland University in Fremont, Nebraska.

Most students have returned home for the summer and some started experiencing symptoms. New cases have been reported by Cass, Douglas, Dodge, Hall, Madison and Platte counties in the past week. DHHS is working with the local health departments involved to investigate these cases.

Mumps is an illness caused by a highly contagious virus and this outbreak is ongoing with potential for further spread, said Dr. Tom Safranek, State Epidemiologist for DHHS. If people start experiencing mumps-like symptoms, they should contact their health care provider, and health care providers should be on the lookout for mumps cases.

Mumps is spread by coughing, sneezing and sharing saliva. People with mumps are most contagious for the three days before and five days after their symptoms begin. To prevent the spread of mumps:

 Always cover your nose and mouth when you cough or sneeze

 Wash hands frequently

 Dispose of used tissues and other similar objects appropriately

 Do not share glasses, eating utensils, water bottles, etc.

Mumps causes swelling of glands in the face and neck. Symptoms may include:

 Ear ache

 Jaw pain

 Testicular pain

 Fever

 Fatigue

 Muscle aches

For people with symptoms, health officials recommend avoiding public activities and contacting a physician.

Antibiotics are not a treatment option because mumps is a viral infection; however, the symptoms like pain and fever can be addressed.

People who have had mumps are likely to be immune from the virus. If a person has been vaccinated, it is less likely, but possible to be become infected because over time immunity wanes. Those who have not been vaccinated should consider taking that step by contacting their physician, local health department or local pharmacy. Pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems are at increased risk of complications.

Additional information on Mumps is available at: http://www.cdc.gov/mumps/

Nebraska Local Health Departments: http://dhhs.ne.gov/publichealth/Pages/puh_oph_lhd.aspx#Websites
CASA recruits

Cass Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) is currently recruiting CASA advocates to speak up for the best interest of abused and neglected children in Cass County. The next training session will begin July 24 and will run for five weeks. The training consists of 15 hours of online training and 15 hours of in-person training. We are also seeking male volunteers for this class as over 60 percent of the local CASA children are males. If you are interested, please contact Debbie Green at (402) 296-9521; email dgreen@casscasa.org or if you would like to learn more information about the CASA program, please visit www.casscasa.org

Blue Star Museum

Cass County Historical Society Museum in Plattsmouth was designated a Blue Star Museum on May 31. The designation means it will offer free admission over the summer to active military personnel.

Korn Klub meets

The next Korn Klub meeting to discuss and plan the Plattsmouth Harvest Festival is 7 p.m. Thursday, June 16, upstairs in the Plattsmouth State Bank Community Room. The meeting is open to the public. If you are unable to attend the meeting but have a report, please email it to plattsmouthharvestfestival@gmail.com or to one of the following 2016 officers:

Christine MacLellan, President - luvmynailz228@hotmail.com

Chad Aaron, 1st VP - caaron1998@yahoo.com

Susie Dietrich Nielsen, Secretary - mrs.strut@charter.net

Brian Harvey, Treasurer - b.harvey@windstream.net

Members-at-large:

Tim Dunlap (2015-16)

Joyce Winters Foster (2015-16)

Arline Anderson (2016-17)

Don Rhoden (2016-17)

Advisers: Nancy Johnson and Terry Little

The dates for this year's Plattsmouth Harvest Festival are Sept. 8-11, 2016. The theme is: "85 Years of Harvest.

Twin Rivers Water Park

Twin Rivers Water Park, 414 S. 18th St., Plattsmouth, will open seven days a week on May 28 and stay open until Aug. 7.

Hours of operation are noon to 5 p.m. Starting Friday, June 10, also 6-8 p.m. On July 4th the pool will close at 5 p.m.

In case of lightening, thunder, heavy rain, heavy fog, high winds and temperatures below 70 degrees F, the pool will also close.

Plattsmouth Recreation Director Michael Lennen added that a special chemical has been added to the pool water to combat the additional manganese and iron in the system while improvements are being made to the citys water treatment plant.

Although there are some stains on the bottom of the pool, he said, the water is very clear and clean. The stains will slowly be eradicated over the summer by the use of the additional chemical. Lennen stressed that the pool water is safe and clear.

Parkinsons Outreach

The Parkinsons Education & Outreach Group will meet 10 a.m. Tuesday, June 21, at Nebraska Medicine Bellevue, lower level classroom. There is no charge to attend. Patients, family and caregivers are welcome.

The program is Driving Safety Assessments, and will be presented by Sara Hamilton, PT. Call Lauren with questions, 402-763-3736.

Pillage the Village

Manley residents are once again working on their annual celebration, Pillage the Village.

Scheduled Saturday, Aug. 20, activities include crafters and DSM vendors, a flea market, bike show, car show, kickball tournament and demonstrations of dancing and tumbling.

Of course, no celebration is complete without musicians and Pillage the Village will have its share of those as well.
With over 95 percent of the worlds population living outside the borders of the United States, growing overseas trade is one of the best ways we can grow Nebraska. Last year, I led two overseas trade missionsone to the European Union and one to Asia, including Japan and Chinato reach potential customers for Nebraskas exports. These were successful missions which helped to strengthen trade relationships with several countries. Companies we met with during those trips have announced new projects, and are growing their investment in Nebraska.

To continue to build on our relationships, Nebraska Department of Economic Development (DED) and the Nebraska Department of Agriculture (NDA) announced a few days ago we would be leading a trade mission to China this fall. From November 9th through the 15th, we will meet with investors and host events in Xian, Shanghai, and Hong Kong to strengthen Nebraskas relationships with our states fourth largest trading partner.

DED and NDA worked with me to build the itinerary for the fall trade mission. During the trip, my agencies and trade mission members will join me in participating in the 23rd China Yangling Agricultural Hi-Tech Fair while in Yangling. Yangling is located in Shaanxi Province just outside the city of Xian. The fair offers roughly 1.7 million square feet of exhibition space and is expected to draw 1.6 million visitors over five days, making it Chinas premier agricultural fair.

Shanghai is one of the worlds largest metropolitan areas with a population of 24 million. It is also a leading international business center, consumer market, and key entry port into China. Thats why Nebraska established a trade office in Shanghai in 2013 to help our businesses make key connections and work with Chinese companies seeking opportunities in the U.S. and globally. The trade office will play a pivotal part with planning and facilitating the trade delegations visit.

Our final stop on the trade mission will be Hong Kong, one of the largest importers of Nebraska beef and a key market for other Nebraska products. The city also is an important gateway for business throughout East Asia. In 2015, Hong Kong by itself was Nebraskas sixth largest export market, accounting for $234 million in goods purchased from our state with approximately 80 percent being exported food products. Since beef is Nebraskas number one commodity, this visit to Hong Kong is a great opportunity to build on our success in this market.

Chinas growing economy offers nearly boundless opportunities for Nebraska ag producers, manufacturers, and other businesses. This trade mission will help Nebraska businesses build on our existing relationships. It will also give us an opportunity to advocate for expanding and opening up new markets. While Hong Kong imports Nebraska beef, China still prohibits the purchase of beef products from the United States. On this trip, I will continue to advocate for reopening the beef trade between China and the United States, so Nebraskas ranchers and beef industry have even more opportunities to market and sell their beef products.

Nebraska businesses and ag producers who do business in China, or those that are hoping to enter this market, should contact DED or NDA to express their interest in joining the trade mission. Space is limited. Company officials interested in participating in the trade mission should contact Cobus Block at 402-480-5806 or cobus.block@nebraska.gov or Stan Garbacz at 402-471-2341 or stan.garbacz@nebraska.gov to express their interest soon.
One sip of this soup is like getting wrapped in your warmest, coziest sweater. Between the thick chunks of vegetables, tender cubes of potato, juicy shreds of chicken (take your pick of boneless breasts or thighs), and thick, creamy broth, it truly doesnt get more comforting than chicken potato soup.

As the temps begin to dip, this is a family-friendly soup to keep on repeat all through fall and winter.
The youth of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Fremont will be hosting a four-course New Orleans themed dinner on June 11 in the churchs Community Life Center.

The Cajun-style meal will be prepared by guests from the Texas-Louisiana border. The evening will begin at 7 p.m.

Tickets can be obtained by contacting Amanda Bell at the church office, 402-721-8412. Tickets are $12 for adults and $8 for youth under age 18.

All proceeds will help defray the cost of the 2016 National Youth Gathering trip to New Orleans in July.
Whitewater? Vince Foster? Juanita Broaddrick? Donald Trump appears to have tumbled into a time warp. He wants to revive the Arkansas scandals of the 1990s, when many Republicans thought impeaching then-President Bill Clinton was a sure path to victory. (It wasnt.) Trump has turned an old political bromide on its head. For the moment, his campaign isnt about the future; its about the past.

In interviews, speeches and a campaign video, Trump has cited the often-lurid controversies of the Bill Clinton administration as a reason voters shouldnt put Hillary Clinton in the White House.

Clinton was the biggest abuser of women, as a politician, in the history of our country, Trump said in one interview.

Hillary was an enabler, he added.

Whether its Whitewater or whether its Vince or whether its Benghazi, its always a mess with Hillary.

(For younger readers, Whitewater was a land deal in Arkansas in which Bill and Hillary Clinton were investors; one of their partners was convicted of fraud in 1997, but the Clintons were not found at fault. Vince Foster was a law partner of Hillary Clinton who killed himself in 1993; conspiracy theorists, including Trump, suggest  without evidence  that he might have been murdered. Juanita Broaddrick is an Arkansas woman who says Bill Clinton raped her in 1978; Clintons lawyer has denied the allegation, which Broaddrick did not report to police at the time. And yes, Congress impeached then-President Clinton; in 1999, the Senate held a month-long trial and acquitted him.)

Trumps resurrection of tales from the Clinton crypt may seem bizarre. After all, Bill Clinton has been one of the more admired politicians in America since his presidency ended in an economic boom 15 years ago. Hes far more popular than either Trump or his wife.

Other Republican politicians have been scratching their heads.

Its something I might not have done, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who led the impeachment effort in 1998, told the Washington Post. But he operates on such a different model that Id be very cautious about rendering judgment.

Trump claims hes raking up ancient muck because he thinks he has been forced to. Its only retribution for what (Hillary Clinton) said, he told CNN. She is playing the womans card to the hilt.

But as often with Trump, theres an element of strategy at work here, too.

Throwing allegations at Clinton, even indiscriminately, helps reinforce the label hes trying to pin on the presumptive Democratic nominee: Crooked Hillary.

If Trump can get the media and voters to focus on Clintons problems, real or imaginary, that helps counter her negative messages about him  his past statements about women or his refusal to release his tax returns. Reviving old controversies also gets in the way of Democrats portrayal of the 1990s as a golden age.

If this becomes a race about which one would be the worse president, thats to Trumps advantage, GOP strategist David Winston told me. It puts him on an equal footing with Clinton.

Clinton advisers, for their part, think Trump is trolling  trying to provoke Bill or Hillary Clinton into losing their tempers and responding in kind, thereby turning this sideshow into the main event.

Any response would make it into a huge story, one Clinton adviser told me.

Fully cognizant of that fact, Hillary Clinton and her husband have stolidly refused to directly counter Trumps nastiest charges (predator, enabler). Theres probably been plenty of lip-biting in the Clinton household these days.

When the Clintons do attack Trump, they focus mostly on what they call his dangerous and divisive statements and his proposals. They say hes an unqualified loose cannon but leave his marital history  which includes past charges of adultery and spousal rape  off the table. And in this election, that qualifies as the high road.

Indeed, Clinton is trying  really she is  to make this contest about something other than bluster.

She has already been talking at length  sometimes great length  about the policies she proposes to make the country better. The problem is, those speeches havent earned her much live coverage on cable television; Trumps unscripted news conferences beat her on that count every time.

But Ill boldly offer a scrap of good news: The scandals of the 1990s wont remain a novelty forever. Theyre already old  and pretty soon, theyre going to seem old again. One of these days, possibly on a debate stage, even Trump will have to talk at length about policies and programs  about the economy, and health care and foreign policy. But only, it appears, once he has exhausted every other topic.
MASON CITY | Deadra Stanton was overcome with emotion on Sunday when she walked into the room.

For days, her husband Mark had helped keep up the ruse they were attending a graduation party.

But, more than 100 current and former students had gathered at Mason City High School for her, with a red carpet to mark the longtime English teacher's semi-retirement.

Juniors Kaitlin O'Neill and Abbie Read organized the event.

Even with a clandestine Facebook page, Twitter retweets and Mark's suspicious last minute venue change, Stanton said she had no idea the party was for her.

"You know when you really have those moments when you just go, 'What?," she said afterwards. "I'm overwhelmed."

After 38 of a 40-year teaching career spent at Mason City, Stanton will transition in the next two years to become a mentor for educators in the state's teacher leadership and compensation program at the school.

"There's going to be a hole to fill," said Mason City High School teacher John Lee, who also spoke at the ceremony.

Students said Stanton left a mark as a tough and compassionate teacher with a sense of humor who earned their respect with high expectations.

"She was one of my favorite teachers of all time," said U.S. District Judge Stephanie Rose, who was Stanton's student from 1988 to 1991. Rose drove from Des Moines for the event. "She was a tough teacher that just made you want to work harder, because you wanted to (please) her."

As a teacher, she could be counted on to gut their papers with red marks and made them read unpopular literature like Ernest Hemingway's "Old Man and the Sea".

But, she said, the purpose was to teach them to "never let go of the fish"  a message of perseverance against all obstacles.

For graduating seniors, she often kept in touch and sent them out of high school with postage to return their first college essays to her, so she could "rip it up" again.

After the ceremony, Stanton hugged many who had come to pay tribute to her, including Principal Dan Long, who she remembered as a rookie first-time teacher.

She also thanked the Mason City High School community for its generosity, who after the ceremony left at least 10 cards on the cafeteria table across the hall for her.

"I'm pretty lucky to have spent my career in this town and this school because both of them has been very supportive of me my whole life," she said. "Mason City is my town, my home. I am the lucky one."
MASON CITY  A woman was taken to the hospital Tuesday after a car crashed into a tree in Mason Citys Highland Park neighborhood.

The crash was reported about 2:30 p.m. in the 1400 block of North Virginia Avenue.

A silver two-door Dodge was smashed into a tree on the east side of the street.

Mason City firefighters lifted a woman out of the vehicle, put her on a stretcher and loaded her into an ambulance.

The ambulance left about 10 minutes later.

A police officer at the scene did not release details of the crash.
CLEAR LAKE | Officials say no one was hurt when a dock collapsed on Clear Lake on Sunday.

The incident happened about 3 p.m. Sunday as a storm with high winds approached Ritz Park, 15406 Crane St., Clear Lake.

Responding in Fire Boat Bud, Clear Lake firefighters used the boat's side-scanning sonar to search the water for possible victims.

Four firefighters also searched the wreckage for any possible victims.

Officials determined no one was trapped underwater.

Responders believe winds from the approaching storm caused boats tied to the dock to hit it, collapsing the structure.

 Molly Montag
MASON CITY  A Mason City man sought by police for allegedly killing a kitten during a dispute has been arrested.

Jerrick Rinnels, 28, was arrested Sunday afternoon on a warrant for misdemeanor animal abuse after police received an anonymous tip about his whereabouts, said Mason City Police Sgt. Greg Scott.

The arrest took place during a traffic stop in the 2000 block of South Federal Avenue. Rinnels was taken into custody without incident, Scott said.

Police had asked the publics help in finding Rinnels, who is accused of taking a kitten from someone and slamming the animal into a solid object early Friday.

Police say Rinnels had been arguing with the person holding the cat.

The kitten died before it could be taken to a veterinarian.

Rinnels was released on bond early Monday.

 Molly Montag
CLEAR LAKE  A Memorial Day program in Clear Lake Monday honored fallen veterans with band music, a flyover and an honor guard salute.

It was one of dozens of events held around North Iowa Monday, and among thousands around the country.

The Clear Lake observance began at the Sea Wall with a performance by the Clear Lake High School Band and a flag-raising by local Boy Scouts. A wreath was cast upon the water, followed by a missing man formation flyover.

The program then moved to the Clear Lake Cemetery. After more musical selections by the high school band, wreaths were placed by members representing the Daughters of the American Revolution, Civil War, American Legion Post 222, VFW Post 4868 and Amvets 135.

The guest speaker was Monsignor and retired Army Brig. Gen. John Hemann.

A Missing Man Table ceremony at the cemetery honored service members who have fallen in the line of duty, those who are missing in action and local veterans who have passed away in the past year.

A salute by the VFW Honor Guard and the Civil War Honor Guard concluded the event.
MASON CITY | Cerro Gordo County election officials of 201 absentee ballots sent to residents who requested them, only 102 have been sent in.

The ballots are for the June 7 primary election.

An absentee ballot that is received in the county auditors office by 9 p.m. on election night will be counted.

A voter may personally deliver or mail a ballot to the county auditors office or designate another person to do so.

An absentee ballot received after election day must bear a legible postmark dated prior to election day and must be received in the county auditors office by noon on Monday, June 13.

Anyone with questions is asked to contact the county auditors office at 641-421-3041, or visit the county website at www.co.cerro-gordo.ia.us.
Alli Marie Seglem

FOREST CITY  Alli Marie Seglem, 19, of Opportunity Village in Clear Lake, gained her angel wings on Saturday, May 28, 2016, on her 19th birthday. Alli was a resident of Twilight and most recently Moon Valley, where she passed away peacefully in her sleep.

Memorial services will be held at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, June 1, 2016, at the United Methodist Church in Forest City with the Rev. Charles Layton officiating.

A visitation will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 31, 2016, at Cataldo Schott Funeral Chapel, 505 North Clark St., Forest City, IA 50436.

Alli Marie Seglem was born May 28, 1997, in Mason City, IA, the daughter of John and Tracie (Conrad) Seglem. She graduated from Forest City Community Schools with the class of 2015. She was baptized at the Winnebago Lutheran Church and confirmed at the United Methodist Church in Forest City.

Alli had an infectious personality and smile that would light up any room. She had a great love for Scooby Doo, Curious George, swimming, swinging, and eating her favorite foods. Even though Alli was non-verbal, she could always communicate with those around her by simply showing off her smile, giving you the Alli Look with those big brown eyes, and of course the great big hugs and slobbery wet kisses that she was always willing to share. They were Allis ways of telling others how much she loved them. She was constantly on the watch for those who were not paying attention. When your back was turned Alli was very sneaky  your meal and drink would be Allis meal and drink in the blink of an eye.

Left to cherish Allis memory are her parents, John and Tracie Seglem; her big brother Cole and her little sisters Becca and Dru; grandparents Jim and Barbara Seglem and Lloyd and Kathy Conrad; her aunts and uncles, Sara and Tommy Teeter, Courtney, Josh, and Cassidy, Sandy and Todd Graves, Joey and Kelly, Carrie and Erik Faul, Dylan, Trisha and Mike Quinn, Hudson, Logan, and Breven, and Lance and Jen Conrad, Gracie and Clara.

A special thank you to the staff at Opportunity Village for taking such great care of Alli and loving her like their own. We never felt sad to say goodbye when we would visit her as she was excited to go back to her new home. Also, to her wonderful teachers Sandy Wagner and Kris Linder for nurturing her throughout her school years.

In lieu of flowers memorials may be directed to the Alli Marie Seglem memorial fund in care of the family.

Fly high Baby Girl, we love you and miss you dearly. Allis last greatest gift was being an organ donor.

Arrangements are with Cataldo Schott Funeral Home in Forest City.

Online condolences may be left for the family at www.cataldoschottfh.com.
CLARION  Wilbur L. Claude, 88, of Riverside, California, and formerly of Clarion, Iowa, died Wednesday, May 18, 2016, at Lifestyle Board and Care in Riverside, California.

Funeral services will be held at 11:07 a.m. Thursday, June 2, at Ewing Funeral Home in Clarion with Pastor Warren Curry officiating. Burial will take place at Evergreen Cemetery in Clarion. Military graveside honors will be conducted by the Clarion American Legion and VFW Posts.

Visitation will be held 10:30 a.m. until time of service Thursday, June 2, at Ewing Funeral Home in Clarion.

Wilburs family invites those in attendance to wear casual clothing in red, blue or white.

Arrangements are with Ewing Funeral Home, Clarion.
NORA SPRINGS  Army Staff Sgt. Jerry Kelleys fiancee met him at the airport with a change of civilian clothes when he flew home from Vietnam in 1969.

Kelley, of Nora Springs, changed in the airport bathroom, threw his Army uniform in the garbage and walked out the door.

At the time he would never have imagined going back to Vietnam, but five years ago thats exactly what he did.

Hes been there every year since.

I always wanted to go back, because I thought it was  I liked the country myself, Kelley explained. A lot of these guys are like, What the hells wrong with that guy? But, I had the opportunity to go back.

Drafted into the Army in 1967, Kelley did basic training at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Advanced training was in Fort Knox, Kentucky.

He went to non-commissioned officer school and arrived in South Vietnam in August 1968 as a sergeant in B Troop in the 1st Squadron, 1st Cavalry Americal Division.

A commander of an armored personnel carrier, Kelley rode on top of the vehicle issuing commands to the driver and two gunners as they rolled along wood lines and through the rice paddies.

They had some close calls as they went on search-and-destroy missions based out of Firebase Hawk Hill near Tam Ky, Vietnam.

His carrier hit two land mines and was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade, or RPG.

Although the land mines were not direct hits, each triggered blasts that blew Kelley off the vehicle and the carrier off its track.

The RPG didnt detonate, but left a fist-sized dent next to the Snoopy decal on the side of the personnel carrier.

We didnt know it was a dud until the next morning (when) it was laying on the ground, Kelley said. We were real fortunate nobody got killed.

Kelley was injured later that night.

The same night that that RPG rocket hit us, all this artillery was coming at us  rockets coming at us, Kelley said. Most of us got shrapnel in several places.

He was eventually transferred to headquarters troop, whose commander oversaw the activities of the A, B and C troops. Kelleys responsibilities at headquarters included keeping an eye on the Chinese man who served as the units interpreter.

That could be an adventure.

He could speak difference languages so they needed him, Kelley said. So, when he went to town, I had to go with him at night, too. I was scared.

When asked to participate in the Globes series, Kelley wasnt sure whether he wanted to share his story.

He eventually decided it was something he wanted to do. His wife, Connie, who met him at the airport in 1969, sat in on the interview.

Kelley figures that a lot of people probably dont know he is a Vietnam veteran. Its not something hes talked about much, even to his sons.

Theres a lot of veterans out there that people dont know are Vietnam veterans, Kelley said.

Many were recognized for the first time at Operation LZ, a large welcome-back event for Vietnam veterans held last year in Forest City.

Kelleys convinced theres more.

He hopes theyll be able to step forward and get recognition for their service.
Silly me.

There have been a lot of state and local events and circumstances recently that are just baffling.

Gov. Terry Branstad, in response to a question, recently spoke against the federal government issuing guidelines on transgender restrooms in schools, preferring it be left up to individual schools. In other words, local control.

But he has been a proponent of the proposed Prestage pork processing plant in Mason City and criticized the City Council for rejecting it. In other words, in this case he was apparently against the local control exhibited.

Also on Prestage, those passionately in favor of the plant and those passionately against it have been in the spotlight for weeks. It has unfortunately become an us versus them dilemma. My question is: How about the citizens who say, I can live with it one way or the other? I count myself in this category and think it just might represent the majority of citizens views.

Why would the Chamber of Commerce set up a private meeting to try to drum up support for Prestage? It just plays into the hands of those who believe too much has been done in private on a matter they care so much about.

And another thing. Why would the Chamber, the cheerleader for Mason City, put itself in a position of holding a meeting on behalf of someone who described our citizens as kooks and racists?

Silly me.

Why didnt the city have an economic impact study done? It would have accomplished so many things. First, it would have slowed down the process without hurting it. Second, it would have provided opponents with something they sought. In other words, it would have proven the city was listening to them.

And lastly, the study might have turned up information that would have foretold the probable success or failure of the project. But it wasnt done, so here we are.

In politics, you have to know how to count. Mayor Eric Bookmeyer knew before the May 3 council meeting the votes werent there to approve the development agreement. From his standpoint, why didnt he pull it from the agenda?

It would have avoided a humbling political defeat. It would have also provided him the opportunity to try to come up with a fourth vote  not unlike the opponents lobbying hard for the three votes they needed to defeat it. But it wasnt done, so here we are.

Former Mason City Councilman and Mayor Roger Bang used to say, Mason City politics is pretty simple. You need four votes. If you have them, youre good. If you dont have them, you need to go get them.

One more thing to chew on. Many of the opponents of the Prestage plan, at public meetings, through emails and especially through social media, have resorted to character assassination of council members, questioning their intelligence, their honesty and, in one case, mocking the names of their children.

I have never understood the logic behind insulting the very people you want something from. It doesnt make sense. It also undermines the efforts of the countless people who opposed the plan but have done so with dignity and respect.

All six members of the City Council, regardless of how they voted, acted with the best interests of the city in mind. Their efforts should be commended, not condemned.

Thats just my take.

Silly me.
PITTSBURGH, Pa., May 31, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via PRWEB - UPMC and First Chengmei Medical Industry Group (FCMG) of Haikou, China, have signed an agreement to collaborate on the development of health care services for the people of Hainan Island, the southernmost province in China. The agreement is UPMC's third health services partnership in China.

Beginning this summer, UPMC will provide clinical training opportunities for FCMG physicians and nurses, both in Haikou and in Pittsburgh, with an initial focus on medical, radiation and surgical oncology. In addition, a team of UPMC experts will visit Haikou to observe clinical practices and offer recommendations on hospital operations, including information technology, supply chain, patient satisfaction and quality.

FCMG, a subsidiary of First Investment Holding Group, solely owns three hospitals in the greater Haikou region, including the Hainan Cancer Hospital, an Orthopaedics Hospital and the newly built Chengmei International Medical Center. First Investment Holding is one of the oldest and most renowned local enterprises, founded when the Province of Hainan was established in 1988.

"First Chengmei Medical Industry Group conducted an exhaustive search for the best possible partner in creating our international collaboration, and we selected UPMC based upon its extensive international experience and its recognized reputation for clinical excellence," said Lin Shi Quan, executive director-general of Hainan Cancer Hospital and chief executive officer of FCMG. "Most importantly, UPMC has proven its commitment to the development of health care programs of excellence in China. We expect this initial one-year agreement to grow into a long-term relationship covering a multitude of clinical services."

Charles Bogosta, president of UPMC International, said, "UPMC is pleased to initiate this important new relationship, our third major agreement in China. Like UPMC, FCMG is committed to achieving international standards of clinical excellence so that patients can get the best possible care close to home."

In addition to its work with KingMed Laboratories in Guangzhou for the provision of second-opinion telepathology services, UPMC helped to develop and supports the operation of the Xiangya International Medical Center in Changsha.

# # #

About UPMC

A world-renowned health care provider and insurer, Pittsburgh-based UPMC is inventing new models of patient-centered, cost-effective, accountable care. The largest nongovernmental employer in Pennsylvania, UPMC integrates 60,000 employees, more than 20 hospitals, more than 500 doctors' offices and outpatient sites, and a more than 2.9 million-member Insurance Services Division, the largest medical and behavioral health services insurer in western Pennsylvania. Affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences, UPMC ranks No. 13 in the prestigious U.S. News & World Report annual Honor Roll of America's Best Hospitals. UPMC International provides hands-on health care and management services with partners in 12 countries on four continents, while UPMC Enterprises functions as the innovation and commercialization arm of UPMC. For more information, go to UPMC.com.

http://www.upmc.com/media

This article was originally distributed on PRWeb. For the original version including any supplementary images or video, visit http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/05/prweb13445790.htm
English Latvian

Riga, 2016-05-31 15:05 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AS Latvenergo invites bondholders, investors, mass media representatives and other stakeholders to join its investor conference webinar scheduled on June 14, 2016 at 16:00 (EET). To join the webinar please follow the instructions below.

Webinar will be hosted by Guntars Balcuns, AS Latvenergo Chief Financial Officer. The presentation will be held in English.

During the webinar Guntars Balcuns will analyze Latvenergo Group financial results of 3 months 2016 and inform about current issues in the group.

After the presentation investors are welcome to ask questions. Due to the limited webinar time, please send in your questions in advance till June 13 to e-mail: ieva.unda@nasdaq.com or Investors portal naudaslietas.lv.

What is webinar?

Webinar is a virtual conference, during which companys representative gives information about the company, its activities and future plans. Webinar allows interactive communication and provides an opportunity to ask questions and get answers directly from the company.

How to join the webinar?

All you need is a computer with internet connection and headphones.

To join the webinar, we invite you to register via http://ej.uz/Latvenergo_Q1_2016.

You will be provided with the webinar link and instructions to join webinar successfully. When joining the webinar for the first time, you will be asked to download the system application on your computer which will take only few seconds.



For more information on webinar service please visit: http://www.nasdaqbaltic.com/en/products-services/webinars-3/

Additional information:

Janis Irbe

Group Treasurer

Phone: +371 67 728 239

E-mail: investor.relations@latvenergo.lv

www.latvenergo.lv

About Latvenergo

Latvenergo Group is a pan-Baltic energy company, engaging in electricity and thermal energy generation and supply, electricity distribution services and management of transmission system assets. Latvenergo Group holds one-third of the entire Baltic electricity market, thus ensuring its leadership in the Baltic electricity supply. Latvenergo AS has been acknowledged as the most valuable company in Latvia for several years in a row. International credit rating agency Moodys has assigned Latvenergo AS an investment-grade credit rating of Baa2/stable.

Latvenergo Group includes the parent company Latvenergo AS (electricity and thermal energy generation and supply) and its subsidiaries Latvijas elektriskie tikli AS (management of transmission system assets), Sadales tikls AS (electricity distribution), Elektrum Eesti OU (electricity supply in Estonia), Elektrum Lietuva UAB (electricity supply in Lithuania), Energijas publiskais tirgotajs AS (administration of electricity mandatory procurement process) and Liepajas energija SIA (electricity and thermal energy generation and supply), as well as Elektrum Latvija SIA (electricity supply), a subsidiary of Elektrum Eesti OU.
RHINEBECK, N.Y., May 31, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Early on, the October 2014 Apple Pay splash prompted the question of whether Apple Pay would be the 'next big thing' to transform the credit card market. Today, the third-party smartphone wallet market has expanded as Android Pay and Samsung Pay address the large Android OS universe. According to a new report from Phoenix Marketing International, 32% of all smartphone-owning credit cardholders have loaded a credit or a debit card to one or more of these third-party "pays" brands.



Since most adopters are Millennials (18-32) or Generation X (33-48), incidence rates are impressive: 67% of Millennials and 50% of Generation X smartphone-owning credit cardholders have loaded a credit or debit card to Apple Pay, Android Pay or Samsung Pay.



"If we look at adoption alone (excluding usage), the approximately 23 million Millennial and Generation X third-party wallet adopters taken together point to the next big thing," said Leon Majors, Senior VP at Phoenix. "Right now, it's not much about winning the brand race as it is giving these 'apped up' consumers more places to shop. This is the current state but a burgeoning future market is wide open as bank-branded and retail-branded payment schemes enter the ecosystem."

Credit cards are leading the way in terms of payment type linkages to a third-party wallet. The Apple Pay adoption rate enjoyed a mini-surge in recent months due solely to credit card loads.



"Apple Pay adopters have said from the beginning that they plan to add cards to the Apple Pay wallet," added Greg Weed, Credit Card Research Director. "A year ago, 58% of Apple Pay adopters reported loading more than one credit card to Apple Pay; now the percentage has jumped to 74% -- escalating the key issue of wallet position in a third-party wallet scheme."



The research also examined other issues, such adopter attitudes, perceptions, in-app vs. in-store purchases and usage of Samsung Pay's two payment modes, MST and NFC. The findings found in the Phoenix report are based on data collected in March 2016 among 3,000 credit cardholders as part of a long-term credit card market tracker, Credit Card Monitor.



For more information click here or contact:



About Phoenix Marketing International

Phoenix Marketing International is a premier global marketing services firm providing its clients tailored and unique insights with expertise in product innovation, customer experience and communications and brand via a wealth of existing proprietary data, advanced analytics and statistical modeling techniques. The company has extensive research experience across the Automotive, Financial Services, Healthcare, Converged Technology and Media, Restaurant and Travel/Leisure sectors. With the recent acquisition of Sterling Research Group, the Phoenix team is further expanding its capabilities into the VOC (Voice of the Customer) marketplace. Phoenix's innovative mobile engagement platform, mXP, provides access to an extensive network of on-the-go consumers offering clients deeper insights into the wants and needs of customers across multiple market segments. Founded in 1999 by Chairman and CEO, Allen R. DeCotiis and President, Martha Rea, Phoenix Marketing International has established its global presence with offices in major locations such as New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, California, Michigan, Florida and London. For more information visit www.phoenixmi.com.
MINNEAPOLIS, May 31, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- KeyedIn Solutions, an innovator in aPaaS and SaaS-based business solutions, today announced its partnership with Sage, the market leader for integrated accounting, payroll and payment systems. KeyedIn will integrate its Manufacturing Cloud ERP (enterprise resource planning) solution with the Sage Live cloud accounting solution.



Like KeyedIn software, Sage Live was developed in the Cloud, for the Cloud, giving organizations of all sizes tools to more efficiently manage their business by reducing complexity, simplifying processes and quickly responding to customers. "KeyedIn and Sage Live software complement each other in many ways," noted Lauri Klaus, CEO and Co-Founder of KeyedIn Solutions. "KeyedIn leverages the Cloud to empower businesses of all sizes with flexible, affordable and highly configurable solutions  solutions that work the way our clients need them to work. With Sage Live, we are combining a market leading accounting system with KeyedIn Manufacturing, giving clients a single system from which to fully manage their operations and securely run their business in the Cloud."



In partnering with Sage and integrating Sage Live software, KeyedIn Manufacturing Cloud ERP clients not only benefit from seamless integration to powerful accounting capabilities, but also gain instant access to real-time data, allowing them to make decisions quickly and manage their business from anywhere, using a smartphone, tablet or other supported device.



KeyedIn Manufacturing Cloud ERP is a supremely flexible, comprehensive business application that drives operational excellence for manufacturers by managing everything from an opportunity, quoting, sales order entry, estimating, and materials availability to production planning, scheduling, shipping, and invoicing the customer. Users can easily manage and access client, customer and supplier invoices, supplier payment, job costing data and more from KeyedIn Manufacturing through a fluid, real-time integration with Sage Live accounting software, all within a single application, creating a seamless user interface.



Alan Laing, EVP Partnerships and Alliances at Sage said, "Real-time information is crucial to manufacturers as they look to improve customer service and operations. The level of insight that Sage Live gives for business data coupled with the capabilities of KeyedIn Manufacturing Cloud ERP will bring a new level of control to manufacturers."



More information on KeyedIn Manufacturing Cloud ERP with integrated Sage Live accounting software, and the ability to request a software demonstration is available at www.keyedin.com/mfg.



About KeyedIn Solutions



KeyedIn Solutions helps organizations simplify business processes, improve performance and drive results through an innovative combination of aPaaS and SaaS business solutions. These applications were developed in the Cloud for the Cloud, to capitalize on the exclusive benefits of mobility, accessibility, and flexibility only the Cloud can offer.



The company's SaaS-based business systems include KeyedIn Manufacturing, a configurable Cloud ERP software that drives operational excellence for manufacturers, and is designed exclusively for production manufacturing. KeyedIn Projects is a strategy-led and execution-driven project management solution that aligns organizations with complete visibility for effective Project Portfolio Management (PPM) as well as drives utilization, profitability and performance to achieve growth with Professional Services Automation (PSA). KeyedIn Konfigure aPaaS is transforming custom enterprise-level application development, building new business systems and system components with greater speed, agility, and innovation.



When businesses need results fast, they look to the Cloud  and turn to KeyedIn Solutions. You should too. Keep up with us at KeyedIn Manufacturing, Twitter @KeyedInMFG; or LinkedIn: KeyedIn Solutions, Inc.



About Sage



Sage is the market leader for integrated accounting, payroll and payment systems, supporting the ambition of the world's entrepreneurs. Sage began as a small business in the UK 30 years ago and over 13,000 colleagues now support millions of entrepreneurs across 23 countries as they power the global economy. We reinvent and simplify business accounting through brilliant technology, working with a thriving community of entrepreneurs, business owners, tradespeople, accountants, partners and developers. And as a FTSE 100 business, we are active in supporting our local communities and invest in making a real difference through the philanthropy of the Sage Foundation.

A photo accompanying this release is available at: http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=40406
DANBURY, Conn., May 31, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ethan Allen, a leading interior design company that manufactures and retails quality home furnishings, announces the launch of three new lookswhich include hundreds of new productsthat will be available this summer.



A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/4dc7baeb-7075-456e-baae-81bdccffce5c.

The first of the companys featured looks is Buckheada nod to Atlantas posh suburbwhich will debut in June. A fresh take on traditional design that blends farmhouse and townhouse styles, Buckhead is infused with European inspiration and Southern charm.

Santa Monica will follow in July. Inspired by the cool, relaxed vibe of the coastal California town, its more than a place; its a state of mind. The look is casual, sun-washed, and worry-free. Santa Monica is unfussyand proud of it.

Brooklyn will arrive in August. Everything you love about urban style, its eclectic look lives at the intersection of interior and industrial design. Exhibiting a fearless individuality, Brooklyn is comfortable with its unconventional beauty.

In addition, a groundbreaking line of products that fuse Disney magic with Ethan Allen quality will be available in the fall. The Ethan Allen|Disney home collection promises to include clever nods to Disney icons in exclusive fabrics, furniture, and home accentsplus plenty of surprises.

This major introduction of new productswhich are classically designed, beautifully crafted, and fashionable yet relaxedstrengthens our brand as a home fashion leader," says the companys Chairman, President and CEO Farooq Kathwari.

The new looks come on the heels of the companys successful Custom Quick Ship program that made its debut in March. The program offers clients a remarkable selection of custom upholstery29 frames, five fabrics, and two leathersdelivered in 30 days or less.

Next year, well be 85 years young, added Kathwari. But really, weve only just gotten started.

Shoppers can find Ethan Allens new products at ethanallen.com and in the companys Design Centers, beginning June 1.

About Ethan Allen

Ethan Allen Interiors Inc. (NYSE:ETH) is a leading interior design company and manufacturer and retailer of quality home furnishings. The company offers complimentary interior design service to its clients and sells a full range of furniture products and decorative accessories through ethanallen.com and a network of approximately 300 Design Centers in the United States and abroad. Ethan Allen owns and operates nine manufacturing facilities including six manufacturing plants and one sawmill in the United States plus one plant each in Mexico and Honduras. Approximately seventy percent of its furniture products are made in its North American plants. www.ethanallen.com. Follow Ethan Allen: Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Houzz, You Tube, Instagram, Google Plus

The photo is also available at Newscom, www.newscom.com, and via AP PhotoExpress.




LOS ANGELES, May 31, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Wedbush Securities is proud to announce and congratulate its Equity Research Team on its achievements in the 2016 StarMine Analyst Awards. Wedbush's Equity Research team earned high rankings throughout the "Top Stock Pickers" and "Top Earnings Estimators" categories in the Retail & Consumer, Healthcare, and Technology/Internet/Media/Social Media sectors.

The StarMine Awards recognize and highlight the top sell-side firms and analysts around the globe, by measuring and ranking their performances and returns on their sell and buy recommendations earnings estimate accuracy, relative to the broader sell-side peer group. Top stock pickers and earnings estimators are identified and ranked across various categories, including: Top 10 Overall Earnings Estimators, Top 10 Overall Stock Pickers, Top 3 Industry Earnings Estimators, Top 3 Industry Stock Pickers, and Top 3 Most Winning Brokers. The Wedbush Equity Research Team was recognized in the following categories:

Industry Analyst Awards - Top Stock Pickers

Heather Behanna, #2 Top Stock Picker in Biotechnology

James Dix, #2 Top Stock Picker in Media

Overall Analyst Awards - Top Earnings Estimators

Steve Koenig, #7 Top Earnings Estimator in Software

Industry Analyst Awards - Top Earnings Estimators

Morry Brown, #3 Top Earnings Estimator in Specialty Retail

Steve Koenig, #2 Top Earnings Estimator in Software

Phil Terpolilli, #2 Top Earnings Estimator in Food & Staples Retailing

Kirsten Fraunces, Co-Head of Equities Division at Wedbush Securities, states, "It is extremely gratifying to see our Equity Research Team be recognized for their continued excellence in fundamental analysis and stock picking. I am very proud of the team's work, and congratulate them on their StarMine Awards and growing achievements." Mark Benson, Managing Director and Director of Research at Wedbush, adds, "I want to congratulate each analyst for their hard work and strong performance in these key metrics versus their sell-side competitors."

Wedbush Securities' Equity Research offers in-depth and differentiated research coverage across the consumer, healthcare, technology, and industrial growth sectors. The team, comprised of 20 publishing analysts, generates timely, insightful analyses, along with the firm's award-winning "Wedbush Best Ideas List," an actively monitored compilation of stock ideas identifying outperformance trends over the forward six to twelve month period. Wedbush's Equity Research consistently ranks among the industry's leading performance surveys, including Barron's and Zacks Investment Research's "Top Stock Picking Firm," Financial Times' "Top Analysts," Institutional Investor's "Rising Stars of Wall Street Research," Wall Street Journal's "Best of the Street," and StarMine's "Analyst Awards for Excellence."

# # #

About Wedbush Securities

Founded in 1955, Wedbush Securities is a leading investment firm that provides brokerage, clearing, investment banking, equity research, public finance, fixed income, sales and trading, and asset management to individual, institutional, and issuing clients. Headquartered in Los Angeles, with nearly 100 offices, the firm focuses on dedicated service, client financial safety, continuity, and advanced technology. Wedbush Securities is the largest subsidiary of holding company WEDBUSH, Inc., which also includes affiliated firms Wedbush Asset Management, Wedbush Capital Partners, Wedbush Opportunity Partners, and Lime Brokerage, LLC.
While battle-weary north Brooklyn residents continue to demand the 28-acre Bushwick Inlet Park that former-mayor Michael Bloomberg promised them over a decade ago, another faction is making the case that the Bayside Oil Depot could be renovated rather than demolished, and converted into a studio, performance and manufacturing compound for the types of small business owners and artists who identify as "artisanal" and don't cringe at the word "maker."

So-called Maker Park is the brainchild of a developer with Kushner Companies (run by Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner), an advertiser, and the events coordinator for the Municipal Art Society of New York, a longstanding nonprofit that promotes quality of life along with environmental preservation.

Stacey Anderson of MAS unveiled the concept last fall, peppering her speech with words like "activate" and "eclectic," and phrases like "industrial fabric" and "creative renaissance."

"We envision a park that reflects the creative ethos of the surrounding neighborhood and draws upon the rich legacy of making and collaboration," she said, adding that the 50-foot iron fuel containers are "reminiscent of the works of Richard Serra," and could provide "incredible acoustics" for performances.

The Maker Park website fawns over all of the remaining industrial structures in Bushwick Inlet on its website, celebrating the "beautiful and otherworldly industrial topography" that they imagine integrated into the green space.

"The empty fuel containers could be activated as viewing platforms, performances spaces, rotating sound and art exhibitions, or greenhouses, to name just a few ideas," the group predicts.

But Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park, which has been advocating for a 28-acre green space unbroken by development, says the alternative proposal goes against what theyve been fighting for.

"The whole idea is really out of context with the plan for the neighborhood that was established through the rezoning, which was to create 28 acres of pure open space to mitigate all the buildings and the population spike that's ongoing [in the neighborhood]," said Friends co-chair Steve Chesler on Tuesday. "Having about a dozen well tanks and two buildings on the land would basically take away a quarter of the proposed park land."

While Maker Park has stressed that "the next stage will be to engage with the community for input on this vision," the NY Times reports that a group of developers has already been brought on board, including architect Jay Valgora who's also working on this glowing retail paradise in DUMBO.

But the optimistic pro-maker team definitely isn't getting any early endorsements from the Parks Department, which is planning to demolish the Bayside site in order to remediate it for future park use.

"The necessity of environmental remediation on this post-industrial site requires the demolition of the existing buildings and contaminated tanks on the Bayside site," said a Parks spokeswoman in a statement Monday. "Parks met with representatives of the Maker Park group in September 2015 and explained that the presence of the buildings and other infrastructure on the Bayside site has hindered efforts to complete testing of potential underground contamination, and the structures need to be demolished to ensure the property is safe for recreational use."

As of this month, the city is no closer to purchasing the prohibitively expensive CitiStorage site, which cuts the promised park in half, taunting locals relentlessly.

[UPDATE 6/10:] The Maker Park team issued the following statement:
We're years away from seeing self-driving cars on New York City streets, and there's not yet any guarantee that they'll have stopped crashing into buses and Priuses by the time they do make their way to the East Coastbut NY state lawmakers are already paving the way for the technology, taking another look at a 1971 law that would, as it currently stands, make any hands-free technology illegal.

New York is currently the only state in the country that has a law requiring drivers to keep one hand on the steering wheel at all times while the vehicle is in motion. That single sentence in the state's Vehicle and Traffic Law means that driverless car technology can't be tested or demonstrated in the state, and it also means that drivers can be ticketed for using the parking assist features currently available on some cars.

New legislation could change that, though some lawmakers are skeptical about encouraging driverless cars, which they believe could pose hazards, particularly in the city. A new bill from State Senator Joseph Robach, who chairs the Transportation Committee, would amend the Vehicle and Traffic Law to specify that drivers must keep a hand on the wheel while the vehicle is in motion, unless "driving technology is engaged to perform the steering function."

Robach has presented the bill as a common-sense measure, saying that "we are just trying to have the law match up to the technology that people are using today and I think is only going to grow down the road." The bill did make it through the Senate and is now under consideration by the State Assemblybut even some of those who voted in its favor in the Senate had their concerns, particularly those who represent districts in New York City.

"Self-driving car technology certainly has a lot of promise, but its in the very early stages of development," said State Senator Liz Krueger, who represents the Upper East Side and parts of Midtown, and voted in favor of the bill but with reservations. "Right now I don't think we're at a place where we should be seeing driverless cars of any sort on the streets of Manhattanthere are simply too many variables, with pedestrians, bikes, delivery trucks, taxis. Hands-free options might be more realistic outside of big cities, but for now our crowded streets require human drivers focused on defensive driving. If our laws and regulations need to be adjusted to allow for more R&D, that's something that should be done carefully and deliberately, not by simply saying it's okay to take your hands off the steering wheel."

The two senators who voted against Robach's billVelmanette Montgomery and Bill Perkinssimilarly represent city residents in Brooklyn and Upper Manhattan, respectively.

Some driverless cars under development are actually designed specifically for cities: Google, for example, has been testing autonomous cars in cities like Austin, Texas and Phoenix, Arizona, and when those cars have crashed, it has pointed to US DOT data showing that about 94% of crashes are the result of human error. A Columbia study focusing specifically on NYC found that if Manhattan's yellow taxi fleet were replaced by a smaller fleet of driverless cabs, congestion on city streets could be reduced, and the cost-per-mile in a cab could drop from about $4 to $0.50.

Other models under development are focused less on city streets, and more on highway driving: Audi, for example, is planning to have a car on the market by 2018 that'll allow hands-free driving on highways, up to 35 or 40 miles per hour, and will focus on increasing that speed before turning to the complexities that arise when trying to engineer a car to navigate obstacle-filled city streets at low speeds. Audi brought prototypes of its autonomous vehicle to Albany in conjunction with the presentation of Robach's bill, but wasn't able to actually demo them due to the current state law.

"That law was passed well before anyone thought that computers would be able to steer a car, before anybody envisioned this kind of future other than science fiction writers," pointed out Brad Stertz, Audi's director of government affairs, who went to Albany in support of Robach's bill. "It probably was a common sense law back then, but now with hands-free driving really on the horizon, it obviously prevents that."

Indeed, the idea of driverless car-filled roads can still seem like something out of a science fiction novel, but widespread use of the technology might not be all that far away. Audi says that it will have a model on the market as soon as 2018, and Google has said its autonomous cars will be on the market by 2020. Telsa CEO Elon Musk, meanwhile, has suggested that 2023 may be more likely, as it'll take some time for regulators to approve the vehicles for public use. Some autonomous car manufacturers have argued that government regulators wouldn't be able to accurately appraise the vehicle's safety; meanwhile, a group of business leaders and former members of the military called for federal legislation that would override local barriers to the widespread adoption of driverless cars.

Robach's bill passed the Senate with just two votes in opposition, but will now have to go to the State Assembly, where it's currently before the transportation committee. The chair of that committee, Assemblyman David Gantt, has said that he's not yet sure whether to support the measure.
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In addition to eternal salvation, New York City churchgoers enjoy the privilege of parking their cars in bike lanes with impunity. But for the Sunday cyclist, this means saying a little prayer before turning out into traffic. Dave, a Harlem cyclist, sent us this video showing 14 cars and a row of cones blocking the southbound bike lane on Adam Clayton Boulevard, outside the First Corinthian Baptist Church on 116th Street. Every Sunday [the church] makes my son and I veer into the car lane, Dave writes. In this case, the detour lasts two entire blocks.

A comment left on the DOTs Vision Zero public dialogue map two years ago notes that cars double parking on the south bound bike lane of ACP is a constant problem.

Phone calls and emails to the First Corinthian Baptist Church and the NYPDs 28th Precinct have not been returned, but the commanding officer of Brooklyns 84th Precinct, Deputy Inspector Sergio Centa, shed some light on the police departments policy of absolution at a neighborhood meeting earlier this month.



Blocking the bike lane on Henry Street, 2014 (courtesy Peter Kaufman)

Centa was asked by Brooklyn Heights resident Peter Kaufman, who has written blog posts criticizing the practice, why members of Our Lady of Lebanon were allowed to park in the Henry Street bike lane on Sundays without being ticketed.

Its a courtesy we do for the church, Centa replied. Giving the courtesy to people going to church on Sunday is something thats done all over the city. For a couple of hours, Im not going to write anybody going to church a ticket. Im not doing it. Its a courtesy we give to people.

Centa added that We can have a discussion with the church. We can let them know the community is not happy about it.

A person who answered the phone at Our Lady of Lebanon told us that the NYPD has not contacted them about the issue, and confirmed that the department allows their parishioners to park where they please on Sundays.



A parking placard given to parishioners (courtesy Peter Kaufman)

We have continued to liaison with the department very closely and with their advice and through their discretion we offer our parishioners parking permits which identify them as being members of the parish, said the person, who declined to give their name.

The permit does not give them special privileges, it simply allows them to park without the fear of getting a ticket, they said.

We pointed out that this sounded like a special privilege.

Freedom of religion allows you to make your way to church and the point is that if in fact people have difficulty with their parking arrangements, thats an impediment, the person said.

Kaufman told us that parishioners from First Presbyterian Church, four blocks up Henry Street from Our Lady of Lebanon, have stopped parking in the bike lane, opting instead to illegally park on the other side of the street. It's not ideal, but at least it's not a safety issue as it is with the bike lane, Kaufman said.

He argues Our Lady of Lebanon could extend the same courtesy.

Whether or not the cops give them this privilege, the church can clearly see that they are forcing bicyclistswomen, children, everybodyinto traffic. All to avoid paying for parking. Do they really feel that is something they should be doing as good neighbors, let alone good Christians?

An NYPD spokesperson declined to comment on these specific instances in Brooklyn and Harlem, but noted that "there is no official citywide policy relating to this issue."

"However, our enforcement of parking regulations at times can take into account special circumstances, including social, civic, community-based and religious events," the spokesperson wrote in an email. "The overall issue of safety is paramount but certain temporary accommodations can be made at the discretion of the local precinct staff."



With additional reporting from Emma Whitford
About 50 Helenans gathered at Memorial Park on Monday for a moment of silence to honor those who died while serving in the military. The solemn time was followed by reflection on the meaning of Memorial Day and its history.

Retired Col. James Hogan, a Vietnam veteran who was the keynote speaker, thanked those who gathered.

"Together, we honor and pay tribute," he told those in attendance for the Lewis and Clark County Veterans Memorial Remembrance Ceremony.

During his 35-year career, Hogan served with the Montana Army National Guard.

"It's difficult to express," Hogan said of his gratitude for those who died while enlisted in the military.

"For many -- maybe all -- here today this day is personal because of the loss of family or friends or comrade in arms," he said.

Hogan spoke of the history of the holiday, originally called Decoration Day. It began in 1868 under the order of Gen. John Logan. The name and variations of the day of remembrance may have changed over the decades but the heart of the holiday to honor those who died while serving the nation stays intact, he said.

"General Logan's intent remains today," Hogan said.

Lewis and Clark County Veterans Memorial Foundation hosted the event in conjunction with the Montana Military Museum.

Master of ceremonies Bill Woon said he was encouraged that people took time out of their day to remember those who fought and died for their freedom.

"I thought it was a nice ceremony," he said.

Woon read a poem written during World War I by Canadian physician Lt. Col. John McCrae after his close friend died in battle.

"It's as pertinent now as it was in 1915," he told the crowd before reading "In Flanders Fields."
When the Montana Medical Marijuana Act passed in 2004 most Montanans thought medical marijuana would have a positive impact on people who needed it for medical purposes in Montana. I, and 60 percent of Montana voters, thought that the ensuing regulations would ensure that patients who need marijuana as part of their treatment would get it after it had been tested, measured, prescribed and monitored by physicians and pharmacists as is normal medical protocol.

Its not.

In fact, the green card system does not safely provide medical marijuana for those who could possibly benefit from it.

The Safe Montana I-176 fight is not necessarily about medical marijuana. It is about fighting all illegal drugs and the corruption that profits from the illegitimate green card system that allows drug abusers to maintain the false pretense that they are taking it for medical purposes. We have not encountered a medical professional at a hospital, a law enforcement officer, or a school administrator who does not want to get marijuana shops out of Montana. Medical professionals dont like the fact that the "medicine" that patients are getting is not controlled, tested, or monitored, and it does not have a warning label, let alone that most MM medicine is smoked. Law enforcement officers are seeing a surge in traffic accidents due to the driver being under the influence of marijuana now that they are testing for it at the scene of the accident. Teachers have seen a rise in kids who are high in school because they have access to their familys medical marijuana.

Colorado and Washington have become examples that there are severe social consequences for those states that buy into the fallacy that marijuana is safe and therefore should be taxed and legal. Crime rates, emergency room visits, unemployment and homelessness, and even marijuana-related deaths have risen in those states.

13,000 green cards

Montana should not be funding infrastructure or anything else on the destruction of our children and families. We have a responsibility to ensure that our children are healthy and motivated  not high and without ambition. State and local funding should come from a tax revenue source that is based on a strong economy because people are educated and gainfully employed, not strung out.

According to Montanas own March registry, there are almost 14,000 green card holders and 500 providers. Almost 2,500 growers and users can have 16 plants with four of them being mature at any one time. Each mature plant can produce up to one pound of marijuana, which sells on the market for around $2,000 wholesale or $4,000 retail. Approximately 63 percent of the patients use it for chronic pain. There are only 200 physicians out of 2,300 in the state who have approved medical marijuana cards. However, only three in-state traveling doctors process almost 10,000 green cards or almost 70 percent of the patients. There is a lot of marijuana in the system that is not monitored, there are a lot of patients who have no chance of being monitored and there are a few doctors who are getting rich filling out green cards because they are not being monitored either.

Let us drug test

Medical treatment should be evidence-based and determined by professionals and not delivered by green card providers that are on the drug and truly only want it legalized. Let us drug test the providers. It should not be authorized by a ballot initiative.

Safe Montana does not deny that patients can benefit from a medicinal marijuana program when it is tested, measured, prescribed, monitored and registered in the states pain pill registry. We strongly support the use of FDA approved medicinal marijuana key ingredients such as Marinol (THC), Cesamet (THC in pill form), and Sativex (Cannabis  THC and  CBD in liquid form for seizure relief for MS and epilepsy patients.) We are not in favor of putting marijuana, a harmful illegal drug, on Schedule 2 of the Controlled Substance Act; it needs to stay on Schedule 1.

Safe Montana has been in conversations with Sen. Steve Daines and Rep. Ryan Zinke to encourage them to help fast track these possible medicinal marijuana viable options through the FDA. This proposed solution allows veterans and all Americans in all 50 states would have access to the Schedule 2 medical marijuana products and it would be paid for by insurance.

It is time to for the citizens of Montana to ensure that we make every responsible effort to ensure that our families are safe, happy, healthy and motivated.

Billings businessman Steve Zabawa is the sponsor of Initiative 176, which if it gets enough signatures to go on the November ballot and voters approve it, would make all marijuana illegal under Montana law so long as it remains illegal under federal law.
There is a perceived right to protest and thereby a perceived right to subvert the friendly, open process of democracy that gives everybody a chance. Recent violence at the Nevada Democratic Convention finds party officials saying that this misbehavior could easily go on to the national convention.

No matter who you are, you need the Democratic Party to function at its best. Our unique nation requires both parties in order to survive. Violence could happen among Republicans as easily as it has among Democrats.

Political activism south of the U.S. border sometimes turns into guerrilla warfare with wholesale murder. This is one of hundreds of reasons why Americans need the freedom to discuss.

If we like our political system with its earnest attempts to hear and to satisfy the wishes of every citizen, then caution about any immigration seems justified.

A Montana a group recently began asking unresponsive officials for particulars on allowing Middle Eastern refugees into the U.S. Inquiry was going nowhere and ugly activism emerged trying to prevent any discussion of refugee issues. Inquiring citizens were called, anti-refugee," haters and racists.

At this point people wanting information stood up as graciously as they knew how and asked for a standdown. On the other side, one of the pro-immigration leaders, Jameel Chaudhry, a peacemaker of high order, promptly honored that request and asked activists to stop protesting, to be honest and to stop calling names. The confrontations halted immediately and dialogue is opening. Thanks, Jameel. You made it safe to ask questions again.

In order to preserve that reopening dialog with its friendly atmosphere and to keep America considerate of all its citizens, we need to listen carefully to every side of every argument. More than that, we must convince others that we really are listening and that we are doing so with respect.

Friendly discussion has served Americans well for some 240 years. Ours is not a perfect system but seems seems superior to any other. If you know of something better, be sure to discuss it on the Opinion Page of this newspaper.

Here are some questions that want discussion:

Why was refugee immigration from the Middle East established without citizen input?

The original prediction was 10,000 refugees to Montana every year. How was the number lowered to 100 and what keeps it from going back to 10,000 per year?

Are the proposed hosts long-term citizens or are they recent refugees from the same Middle Eastern sadness?

As long as we are getting 100 refugees per year, how can we (graciously) help them assimilate?

Secretary of State John Kerry claimed that the U.S. accepts more than twice as many refugees as all other nations combined. Then, without notice, the figure was changed to  more immigrants than all other nations combined.  Then that statement disappeared entirely and was only available as a quote from a lesser officer. Is there one government officer who will give stable answers that are trustworthy?

How can we maintain friendly dialogue on this tough issue and get needed answers?

Is there an effective way to ask members of Congress, Tester, Daines and Zinke, to establish precise, long-term numbers on refugees and/or immigrants to be admitted?

In the meantime, thanks for taking part in this top-notch nation.
Two recent editorials deserve the Pinocchio award decorated with a hyperbole ribbon.

Greg Hertz, R-Polson, did everything he could at the 64th session to kill the infrastructure bill, succeeding at the very last minute to convince his tea party colleagues to kill it by one vote. Now he blames the whole loss on Gov. Bullock. His version of the demise of the infrastructure debacle is pure hogwash.

Carl Glimm, R-Kila, astonishingly defends Rep. Art Wittich, whom he describes as "steadfast and honest." A jury of Wittich's peers otherwise found Wittich guilty of campaign-finance violations. Glimm says Jonathan Motl, commissioner of political practices, is to blame for Wittich's woes and Motl is a danger to candidates because "most Republicans are beyond paranoid about the prospect of making an honest mistake" in their filing for public office. But mostly he seems to be mad at Motl because of Wittich's conviction.

These specious messages by the Republican hard-right legislators should apprise every voter to examine the statements of candidates. And then cast their votes for candidates that best serve Montanans with facts and integrity.

Pat Bradley

Twin Bridges
MATTOON -- Etched portraits of local service members who were killed in action were unveiled Monday on the Coles County Vietnam memorial at Peterson Park.

The portraits are part of a new granite addition to this memorial to the 17 Coles County service members who died in Vietnam. These images were unveiled as part of the annual Memorial Day ceremony at the park.

Efforts to raise money and gather photos for the memorial were led by Harold and Colleen Van Gundy of Mattoon. Harold's brother, Marine Cpl. Nelson Earl Van Gundy, was Coles County's first fatality in Vietnam. He was killed in action in June 1965 at age 21.

"I think it's wonderful what that family did to honor our soldiers who have been forgotten for so long," said Elisabetha Czerwonka, widow of Army Cpt. August Czerwonka. She said her husband was killed in action in 1968 in Vietnam at age 31 while serving as a company commander with the 1st Infantry Division.

Czerwonka, a native of Germany, said she met her future husband while he was stationed in her home country. She said her husband told her before deploying that he wanted to be buried at Mattoon's Dodge Grove Cemetery, near the land that his family farmed, if he died.

While carrying out his wish, Czerwonka said she found that Mattoon "felt like home" to her. Consequently, she and their three children settled here after moving from California.

Several other family members of the fallen service members of Coles County also attended the ceremony on Monday, including the family of Marine Lance Cpl. Robert Overmyer. He was killed in Vietnam in 1967.

His brother, Mattoon resident Dennis Overmyer, said he was impressed and deeply moved by the finished etchings on the memorial. He thanked the Van Gundy family for having a dream and following through on it, something that very few people are able to accomplish, he said.

"They had that vision. It's just fantastic. It's just a wonderful thing they have done," Overmyer said, adding that he also thanks everyone who helped raise money to make the portraits possible. "It will make a difference."

Overmyer said he ended up being drafted into the Army and serving in 1969 in Vietnam, working at an office job at Cam Ranh Bay, after his brother was killed in action.

"Those were pretty tough times for Mom and Dad," Overmyer said of his parents, Lloyd and Ruth.

The addition that Adams Memorials made to the original 1982 memorial includes 16 portraits for the fallen service members whose photos were available. Organizers of the portrait project have not been able to locate a photo for 1st Sgt. George Morrison of Lerna.

Space is available on the addition next to Morrison's name to include a portrait of him once a photo is found. Anyone with information about an image of Morrison is asked to call Harold Van Gundy at (618) 553-1439.
DECATUR  The entire crowd at Fairview Park's main pavilion watched in total silence as the Black Tiger Honor Guard performed the ceremony of the battlefield cross at the Veteran's Assistance Commission of Macon County's Memorial Day ceremonies Monday.

First, members carried out the armed services' flags one at a time to recorded music of each branch's theme song. Then, with great solemnity, two members performed a weapon inspection before placing the rifle into position.

One by one, other members of the Black Tigers carried boots and helmets, World War II/Korea, Vietnam and the Iraq and Afghanistan uniforms, symbolizing the eras of their grandfathers, their fathers and themselves. Finally, a folded flag, which is given to survivors of military members who have died.

We are an honor guard to pay tribute to our fallen brothers and sisters, said James Culp of Tuscola, who spent 4 years in the Army and served in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are men of honor.

Members come from Illinois, Florida, Arkansas and Tennessee and represent all branches of the service. They were requested to attend this year's Memorial Day service at Fairview Park by the family of James Hensley, killed in action in Southeast Asia on Sept. 22, 1969.

Hensley's parents, John and Annette, fondly called Mom and Pop Hensley, attend almost every local event honoring the military, and laid a wreath during Monday's event.

Today we pause to reflect on the blessings of a free nation, and the huge cost of those blessings, said the Rev. Miley Palmer in his opening prayer. We commit to you those who have served and are serving and pray you protect those who protect us.

Memorial Day is set apart, Palmer said, not just for celebration but as a solemn remembrance of the ultimate sacrifice given by those who never came home alive.

Keynote speaker U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Taylorville, spoke of meeting Honor Flight veterans who visit the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.

It's easy to walk by them every day and forget those monuments have lives attached to them, Davis said. Our lives would not be the same without those veterans. Imagine being part of the small group who decided to declare independence. Imagine how much courage that took, knowing it would lead to war.

He spoke of Vietnam and the difficult time veterans of that war had when they came home, some to ridicule, due to the unpopularity of the conflict. They were drafted and didn't have the chance to be part of the all-volunteer armed forces America has now, he said.

Davis also spoke of the problems with the Veterans Administration hospitals and the long waits for care that veterans endure. He has 100 requests from veterans in his office that he said he's working to get resolved.

It's a travesty that our veterans cannot get the care they need and deserve, he said. We are going to stand and fight together.

Veterans' groups laid wreaths and each pair saluted before turning in unison and marching away. After wreaths were laid, Boy Scout Troop 202, which led the Pledge of Allegiance, stayed nearby so Scouts could right any wreaths blown over by the breeze.
DECATUR -- Frank Delgado can still remember the cold.

More than 60 years since he first arrived on the coast of what was then called Pusan, South Korea, the veteran of the Korean War can still remember how cold he was that week before Christmas 1950.

It was cold, really really cold, said Delgado, who served as a radioman in the Air Force. Ill never forget that when I arrived there.

For Delgado and those gathered at Graceland Cemetery on Monday, there was more to remember than just the extreme weather on the Korean Peninsula.

The cemetery hosted the 21st annual Memorial Day Service of the local Korean War Veterans Association, as veterans, their families and others came together to reflect on and remember the more than 36,000 Americans who lost their lives during the war.

Sometimes referred to as The Forgotten War, the war between United Nations-supported South Korea and communist-supported North Korea ended with the division of the two Koreas that exists to this day. The bulk of United Nations support came from the United States.

The war ended in an armistice in 1953, not a peace treaty, so a state of war technically still exists, and the United States keeps thousands of troops stationed in South Korea to deter North Korea from attempting another attack.

For R.C. Smith, a veteran of the war and master of ceremonies for Mondays event, those who served and lost their lives during the conflict should never be overlooked.

We must never overlook any war, and we must never forget any veterans, he said.

The guest speaker was Decatur Mayor Julie Moore Wolfe, who touched on the somewhat forgotten placement of the Korean War, several years after a triumphant victory of America and her allies during World War II and years before the controversial nature of the Vietnam War began to unfold.

While celebrations were held for service members returning from World War II, and protests for those back from Vietnam, Moore Wolfe recited a phrase one veteran of the Korean War said upon the muted response as he returned home to the states.

He said, We just came home, took off our uniforms and went back to work, she said. You, as our veterans of Korea, deserved better.

Efforts to highlight the sacrifices made by veterans during the Korean War have increased in recent decades, including events such as Mondays service and the construction of the Korean War Memorial in Washington, D.C., which was officially dedicated 42 years after the armistice that ended the war.

Another part of that narrative comes with dismissing the idea that service members "died for a tie," Moore Wolfe said, addressing a term some used to describe the end of the conflict.

Though North Korea remains an oppressive, totalitarian state, South Korea has blossomed into a developed democratic society with one of the largest and most diverse economies in the world. South Korea is America's sixth-largest trading partner, greater than the United Kingdom and France.

That war was no tie; Korea was a victory, Moore Wolfe said. When 50 million South Koreans live with freedom, a vibrant Democracy and one of the worlds most dynamic economies in stark contrast to the repression and poverty of the North, that is a victory and that is your legacy.
CHICAGO -- It is often said that the problem with immigrants is that they're poor and contribute only their cheap labor when they get here.

But rarely discussed is the fact that the United States does a terrible job of enabling the immigrants who already have post-secondary certifications, college degrees and professional work experience to continue their careers once they've arrived.

To start, a foreign-trained professional has to make his or her way to this country legally, navigating the red tape of visas and permissions, and, of course, master the English language. Then they must maneuver the thicket of proving their credentials and work experience.

If you've had to pull copies of your college transcripts in the last few years, you know it couldn't be easier. It's generally a short order on a website and a credit card payment, and you get PDFs within 48 hours.

But if you're an immigrant or a refugee who has arrived here from a war-torn country, one decimated by a natural disaster or from a place where the government bureaucracy is slow and impenetrable, you're in for an uphill battle. Not only to prove your credentials to professional certification boards, but also to show potential employers that you have documented experience.

And then it gets worse.

According to the Migration Policy Institute, there is no single federal structure governing professional certification in regulated occupations. "A profusion of overlapping, sometimes contradictory, local, state or national rules, procedures and examinations makes it complicated, time-consuming and expensive for immigrants and refugees to become recertified in the United States," the institute said in a 2013 report. "The vast patchwork of organizations involved in the credential-recognition process -- from professional associations and state or federal regulatory bodies to credential-assessment services and private- or public-sector employers -- requires considerable effort to understand and work with."

The stereotype of the brilliant, degreed immigrant taxi driver is not an urban myth. Let me introduce you to Guillermo Saavedra Sr., a former college-educated accountant who today works two jobs far below his expertise to keep his family afloat.

"Back in the '90s, things in our native Peru were very difficult, the economy was bad and there was a crisis, so we got visas and came to this country. But it's never how you think it will be," said Saavedra, who settled in Herndon, Va. "I was very qualified in my country, but it was the language that was a real challenge. Then you start looking into how to get back into your profession and it's so hard. I asked around and was told I'd have to enroll in college again and study for another two years and it was going to cost thousands of dollars. It really felt impossible."

Saavedra simply couldn't put his family's livelihood on hold, and he took a string of jobs in food service and retail to make ends meet and help his children through college. To this day he works two jobs: one at a McDonald's and one at his local Target store.

"It's not easy and it's a widespread problem -- the immigrants come here and have families, so what are they going to do but take whatever job they can get?" said Saavedra. "It's a problem because we come here as professionals, as engineers, medical staff, but they don't see us that way."

According to the Migration Policy Institute's most recent data on foreign professionals, an estimated 1.9 million college-educated immigrants in the U.S. are working below their educational and skill levels, or are unemployed.

There are no easy fixes to the issue. Even starting by simplifying the recertification processes in high-barrier (and high-need) disciplines like medicine and engineering would require a broad coalition of gatekeepers and licensure organizations to come together and work on system-wide solutions.

And while the benefits to society would be obvious, the problem tends to be seen as a small one affecting a tiny segment of immigrants. Saavedra's son, Guillermo Jr., who contacted me to ask that I speak out on behalf of others like his dad, refers to this blind spot as a "growing problem that has stolen the professional identities of a large portion of the educated immigrant community."

The U.S. is in global competition for talented individuals in disciplines where there are shortages. Surely we can do better than to squander the talents of our own nation's immigrants.
SPRINGFIELD (AP) -- The Illinois House has approved a plan to expand the state's medical marijuana pilot program by 2 years and add post-traumatic stress disorder and terminal illness to the list of allowed conditions.

Lawmakers voted 86-27 on Monday to advance the measure, which Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner supports. It now goes to the Senate, where it's expected to pass.

Illinois' four-year pilot program is set to sunset at the end of 2017. Under the bill, it will continue to July 1, 2020.

State museum

The Senate has approved a measure that would reopen the state museum and use donations to pay for needed repairs to state fairgrounds.

Rauner closed the Illinois State Museum in Springfield and its satellite sites in October due to the state budget impasse.

Bill sponsor Democratic state Sen. Andy Manar said Monday there are concerns the institution could lose its accreditation if it doesn't reopen. The plan would allow the museum to charge admission fees.

The Senate approved the measure 38-18, sending it to the House.

Republican lawmakers say they agree the fairgrounds in Springfield and DuQuoin are in need of repairs. But they opposed the plan because it requires work done with private donations to be subject to state purchasing rules.

Sexual abuse

Victims of sexual abuse would get up to four weeks of unpaid leave from work following the incident under a bill approved by the Senate.

The measure would apply to businesses with fewer than 15 employees. The initial plan sponsored by Democratic state Rep. Camille Lilly called for 12 weeks of unpaid leave.

The Senate supported the measure by a 40-14 vote on Monday, advancing it to the House.
New Braunfels, TX (78130)

Today

Clear skies. Low 48F. E winds shifting to N at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Clear skies. Low 48F. E winds shifting to N at 10 to 15 mph.
Armenias Investigative Committee reports that Major-General Melsik Chilingaryan and Colonel Armen Margaryan were arrested on May 30 and charged with Abuse of power, transgression of authority or administrative dereliction causing grave consequences. (Article 375, Point 2 of Armenias Criminal Code).

Chilingaryan is a former chief of the Armenian Armed Forces Department of Armaments, and Margaryan once headed the armaments departments vehicle services division.

In another criminal case, the IC reports that Colonel Mher Papyan was arrested the same day on charges of negligent service causing grave consequences. (Article 376, Point 2 of Armenias Criminal Code)

Papyan had been serving at the Department of Procurement of the Ministry of Defense.




"The HoseMaster is the funniest satirist writing about wine in the world today."



--Karen MacNeil













--Terry Theise









HoseMaster

HoseMaster

HoseMaster



--Robert Parker





"...With sometimes crude analogies and occasional droppings of f-bombs, Washam cleverly uses satire to expose the underbelly of the wine business. It's often hilarious stuff as long as you're not the one being lampooned.



Washam takes no prisoners in skewering all that is silly, stupid, frustrating and pretentious about wine, and his favorite targets are other bloggers and writers. No one is immune."



-- Linda Murphy in "Vineyard and Winery Management"









-- JancisRobinson.com





"

Hosemaster of Wine

First: Im not sure if there is anyone better at cutting through the confidence trick that is often intrinsic to the business of wine.

Second: in a world where offending people appears to border on the illegal, the Hosemaster piles in. No one is safe."

--Joss Fowler "Vinolent.com"







"As serious as the world of wine is, it does allow time for humor. Each Monday and Thursday, Ron Washam customarily posts a commentary on his needling wine blog HoseMaster of Wine . Washam, a former sommelier and comedy writer  he might say they are closely related  is the most opinionated, humorous and ribald observer in the wine world. His body of work is irreverent and remorseless. Its almost always satire and parody, though he occasionally drifts into straight commentary, sometimes even with tasting notes. This past year, one of his posts was named the best of the year in the Wine Blog Awards. His success has spawned several imitations, which in their awkwardness show just how difficult satire is."



--Mike Dunne, Sacramento Bee





Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/01/21/6089630/dunne-on-wine-wine-blogs-and-bloggers.html#storylink=cpy





"Please let this guy write the scripts for Saturday Night Live which has gotten so lame...his newest "wisdom" is worth an Emmy....I wonder if he is the genius behind all those Hitler/Parker,etc. clips? No one else is remotely as funny or as talented.And the wine world sure needs someone to poke fun at all the nonsense and phoney/baloney unsufferable crap out there."



--Robert Parker





"

Washam uses his own blog, HoseMaster of Wine , to skewer the industry in general and wine blogs in particular. If your mouse scoots to your browser's close box while reading a wine blog, Washam may be the blogger for you."



-- San Francisco Chronicle



"Ron Washam, former sommelier, is easily the most bitingly funny blogger/wine writer that we have ever come across. He is an equal opportunity crusader who pillories big wineries and amateur bloggers alike, as well as everything and everyone in between...One needs a sense of humor and a tolerance for earthiness to enjoy reading The Hosemaster . We must have both because this guy deserves a wider audience, in our humble opinion."





--Connoisseurs' Guide to California Wine

--Steve Heimoff





"This site should carry a warning label. It's sort of a Dave Barry/George Carlin approach to wine. The Hosemaster (real name Ron Washam) skewers fellow bloggers and industry savants with glee, while offering hilarious wine guides such as his Honest Guide to Grapes...

--Paul Gregutt, Seattle Times

"Washam is a skilled wine judge (I have judged with him) who is willing to judge wine double blind, in public . To my knowledge, Parker does not do this and never has. So Ron's credentials are in place, and so is his sense of the absurd."

--Dan Berger, VintageExperiences





"...I consider Ron a

talented writer and Ive long been an admirer of his scathing wit..."

--1WineDude

"And if any free sites think they can conquer the world, theres always the Hosemaster

to take em down a notch."

--Tyler Colman "Dr. Vino"

--Jo Diaz "Juicy Tales by Jo Diaz"





"I must say you are an idiot. I've never liked you. I have no idea why people find you funny."

--Reign of Terroir

--Will Lyons (WSJ) on Twitter







--Levi Dalton on Twitter

very
In the last fiscal year, the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs spent nearly double the amount to administer grants and run programs for veterans compared to the grants and programs themselves, according to data from legislative reports and the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
Daniel Kunene, professor emeritus of African languages and literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, died last Friday at age 93. A poet and short-story writer of renown as well as an internationally acclaimed linguist and scholar, he was also an activist who worked to end apartheid in his native South Africa.
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.
Vice-Premier Liu Yandong addresses a forum of Chinese and Egyptian university chiefs held in Cairo University on Saturday. [Photo by Hou Liqiang/China Daily]

On May 30, 1956, Egypt was the first Arab and African country to establish diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China. This year marks the 60th anniversary of this historic step, and in commemoration of this event, the two sides agreed that the celebration will not be limited to one day only, but instead be a year-long celebration. They agreed to make 2016 the Sino-Egyptian Culture Year, in commemoration of the start of relations between the two countries.

Since then, relations have taken an upward trend, and they are bound to achieve even more success and prosperity, as they are more vibrant and dynamic than at any time before. During the last two years, there have been three presidential visits. During the first visit by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to China, relations between the two countries were elevated to a "comprehensive strategic partnership". He will visit China again in September to attend the G20 summit in Hangzhou. Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Egypt last January and delivered a historical speech at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo. He also attended the inauguration of the Sino-Egyptian culture year in Luxor. These visits have and will have widespread effects.

The two countries have a shared strong will to strengthen and deepen their cooperation and coordination on all fronts. There is no doubt that the convergence in policies will help further strengthen relations. Both countries endorse a policy of non-interference in their foreign relations, call for win-win cooperation among nations, and reject double standards in dealing with international threats such as terrorism and separatism. The two countries also call for reform of international institutions such as the UN Security Council, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Egypt also welcomes China to step up its role in helping to solve the problems in the Middle East.

When President Xi Jinping announced the Belt and Road Initiative, the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, in 2013, Egypt was one of the first countries to welcome the initiative. Egypt is also a founding member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. China, on its part, has shown solidarity with Egypt in the past years. The Chinese government has encouraged Chinese companies to invest in Egypt and the number of Chinese tourists increased by 35 percent in the first quarter of 2016.

The cooperation between the two countries thrives in different fields, including the political, economic, cultural and educational fields. The Sino-Egyptian Culture Year is adding momentum to the already prospering relations. Exchanges, festivals, forums, exhibitions and other events are being organized in both countries reciprocally. At the Cairo International Book Fair 2016, the Chinese pavilion was a prominent phenomenon that attracted many visitors, with many books translated from Chinese into Arabic and vice versa. Egyptian people are becoming more and more acquainted with the Chinese language and culture. Also Chinese people have ample opportunity to know more about the different aspects of the Egyptian culture.

However strong the existing friendship between the two countries, I am confident that this is not the peak for relations, which began at the Bandung Conference 60 years ago. The coming decades will witness more and more development and win-win partnership.

The author is the Egyptian Ambassador to China.
State Debate: James Rowen calls on media to highlight Scott Walker's lies about his role in scuttling Wisconsin Idea
TOMAH  A top Veterans Affairs official testified before a congressional hearing Tuesday that the agency was to blame for problems linked to the deaths of at least two patients at the Tomah VA Medical Center.

Sloan Gibson, deputy secretary of Veterans Affairs, said clear and inexcusable lack of leadership allowed the deaths to occur and outlined steps taken to reform the facility and reduce the reliance on opioid painkillers.

I own those problems, those failures, Gibson said. We had ample opportunity over a number of years to fix this  and we failed to get it done.

His statements came after the conclusion of a Senate investigation that blamed systemic failures by the Veterans Administration and governmental watchdog agencies for allowing the deaths of at least two veterans.

The 359-page report by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs that said failures across the executive branch allowed problems of over-medication and abuse of authority to fester in the facility for at least nine years despite attempts of patients and employees to contact law enforcement and the VAs Inspector General.

The VA has been under fire since January 2015, when a report by the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting detailed high levels of opioid prescription at the Tomah VA and a pervasive culture of intimidation and retaliation against employees who spoke out. Two top officials from Tomah  Director Mario DeSanctis and medical Chief of Staff Dr. David Houlihan  were removed in the wake of that report, as were at least two other care providers.

In 2014, the VAs Office of Inspector General concluded a three-year investigation that identified troubling levels of opioid prescriptions but found no criminal wrongdoing. The OIG did not release the report until its existence was revealed by the media.

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who chairs the committee, said the inspector generals office lost its way under the leadership of Richard Griffin, who stepped down in 2015 and that new Inspector General Michael Missal needs to clean house.

I believe these tragedies could have been prevented if the Inspector General had done its job, Johnson said. The office of the Inspector General under Richard Griffin was loyal to the VA instead of to the finest among us and the American public.

Tuesdays report, the result of a 16-month investigation by the committee, said employees at the hospital had referred to Houlihan since at least 2004 as Candy Man because of his copious prescriptions for opioid painkillers and that the Drug Enforcement Administration has been investigating potential drug diversion for seven years with no public results.

Among the other revelations in the report:

In the months before his death at the hospital, Jason Simcakoski called multiple law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, which denied any record of contact.

The former chief of the Tomah VA police knew the facility had a reputation as a big pill box when he took over in 2009 but didnt investigate the allegations.

The VA did not fully investigate past allegations of misconduct against Houlihan when he was hired and later promoted to chief of staff.

An OIG agent reported that Houlihan and another practitioner appeared to be under the influence of drugs when he interviewed them; the OIG suggested that DeSanctis consider drug testing his staff but there was no follow up.

While handling of the Tomah scandal has been a point of contention in Johnsons re-election campaign against former Sen. Russ Feingold, Johnson focused his criticism on the VA and denied politicizing the issue.

Ive done nothing political here, he told reporters before the hearing.

The committees minority members released a supplemental report that largely echoed that sentiment.

Fixing the problems at the VA isnt a partisan issue, said Sen. Tom Carper, the committees ranking Democrat. Its a shared responsibility among Congress, the Administration, and the VAs leadership.

Johnson, a proponent of privatizing the VA health system, said he believes veterans today are receiving better care at Tomah than they did under Houlihan but said problems are inherent in a government-run system.

Its rare that people get held accountable, he said.

Gibson later disagreed, saying the VA is unmatched in its ability to provide care to more than 8.7 million veterans.

No healthcare operation in America or perhaps in the world does the things VA does, he said. What other organization in America can bring that scope and that scale to bear on care for veterans?

Gibson outlined other reforms undertaken in Tomah.

Under interim director Victoria Brahm, Gibson said, the number of veterans receiving opioids has dropped by nearly a quarter, to just over 9 percent, below the national rate of about 13 percent.

Shes finding options, Gibson said. Other than just a bag of pills.

Marvin Simcakoski, the father of a Marine veteran who died from a toxic combination of medications while at the hospital in 2014, said hes encouraged by efforts to reform the VA.

I can tell these guys are sincere, he said after the hearing. And I think were going in the right direction.
The suspect in a shooting in Sun Prairie on Monday has been identified as Lloyd McKire-Bennett, 20, no permanent address.

McKire-Bennett was arrested in Madison later in the day, following the shooting in the 200 block of Talon Place, Sun Prairie police said.

The victim, who is an acquaintance of the suspect, suffered a non-life-threatening gunshot wound and was treated at a Madison hospital.

McKire-Bennett was arrested on a probation and parole hold; charges related to the shooting incident were being forwarded to the Dane County District Attorney's Office, police said.

The shooting was an isolated incident and there was no apparent tie to shootings in the Madison area in recent weeks, police said.
A Madison man who crashed his car into another car on the city's isthmus allegedly took the license plate off his car before fleeing on foot, police said.

Witnesses gave a description of the suspect to police, who found and arrested Sidney Ivy, 24, a couple of blocks away.

The crash happened at about 6 p.m. Saturday on Williamson Street at South Baldwin Street.

According to police:

Two people, a 48-year-old man and a 44-year-old woman, both from Madison, were driving west on Williamson Street when their car was hit by Ivy's car.

"The driver removed the rear license plate and fled on foot, leaving his significantly-damaged car, airbags deployed, in the middle of the intersection," said police spokesman Joel DeSpain. The car had no front plate.

Ivy was arrested and tentatively charged with a third drunken driving offense, hit and run, operating after revocation, bail jumping, failure to yield and improper registration.
A Madison teen who currently has four unresolved criminal court cases was arrested on Monday for allegedly taking a cellphone and camera from an SUV parked on the city's Northeast Side.

Travon Pearson, 17, was arrested on tentative charges of theft from a motor vehicle and felony bail jumping, Madison police said.

Pearson and two other young men were located by officers in the area of the theft that was reported at about 5:25 p.m. Monday in the UW Health at the American Center lot, 4602 Eastpark Blvd.

The unlocked SUV belongs to a 27-year-old Monticello man.

"The victim confronted the suspects seconds after the crime," said police spokesman Joel DeSpain. "He was able to get his camera back but not his phone as the suspects fled on foot.":

Pearson admitted to police that he was the one who went into the SUV. The cellphone was not recovered.
A man charged with selling heroin that police said caused the death of a Stoughton man in 2012 pleaded guilty Tuesday to a lesser charge.

Antoine M. Edwards, 42, of Fitchburg, who is already serving an eight-year federal prison sentence for heroin delivery in an unrelated case, pleaded guilty Tuesday to delivery of heroin. A charge of first-degree reckless homicide, for the May 1, 2012, death of Chase Newman, 26, was dismissed as part of a plea agreement.

No sentencing recommendation was stated in court as being part of the agreement.

Edwards was charged with selling heroin to Arion Moosavi, then of Deerfield, who then took it to Newman, according to a criminal complaint. Moosavi pleaded guilty in 2014 to delivery of heroin and was placed on four years of probation.

Moosavi, who would have been a key witness at Edwards trial, died last year. The trial was to go forward using statements that Moosavi had given to police, but instead settled on Tuesday, when a jury was to have been selected.

Edwards will be sentenced at a later date by Dane County Circuit Judge Josann Reynolds.
A 31-year-old Milwaukee man was seriously injured following a collision with a deer on Highway 41 in Dodge County early Monday morning, authorities reported.

The Dodge County Sheriff's Office received a report of a traffic crash just after 12:30 a.m. on Monday, according to a news release.

The man, who was riding his motorcycle southbound on Highway 41. did not have a valid motorcycle endorsement and was not wearing a helmet, the release said.

The man was flown to Summit Hospital, according to the office. The crash is under investigation by the Dodge County Sheriff's Office and the man's identity will not be released until Tuesday, the release said.
A person was shot Monday during a fight on the 200 block of Talon Place in Sun Prairie, according to police.

The shooting victim sustained a non-life threatening gunshot wound and was treated at a Madison hospital, Sun Prairie police reported.

Police said in a news release that they responded to reports of a disturbance in which subjects were fighting.

A suspect left the area but was later taken into custody in Madison, the release said.

The victim and the suspect know each other, the shooting was an isolated incident, and the public is not in immediate danger, the release said.
The four fatal victims in a three-vehicle crash Saturday in Walworth County have been identified, with three of the victims from the same family from Delavan, and the fourth victim from Rockford, Illinois.

The Medical Examiner's Office said on Monday that Carlos Venegas, 26, Delavan, was killed, while a family member told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Maria Flores, 27, and their 2-year-old son, Carlos, were killed.

Venegas' 6-year-old daughter was critically injured in the crash. The family was driving to a wedding.

The fourth fatal victim was Carol Terry, 67, Rockford, driver of a GMC Envoy involved in the crash. Her husband Mark Terry, 68, Rockford, was critically injured.

The crash happened Saturday morning at the intersection of Highway K and Town Hall Road in the town of Sharon, and involved a semi driven by Jerry Morris, 52, Elkhorn, Venegas' pickup truck and the Envoy.

The Sheriff's Office said the pickup truck was on Town Hall Road and failed to yield from a stop sign, getting hit on the passenger side by the semi on Highway K, with the Envoy also getting hit in the crash.

Morris and semi passenger Kevin Grethe, 46, Sparta, suffered multiple injuries.

The crash remains under investigation.
Finalists announced Friday for UW-Madisons top financial and administrative position include a vice chancellor from UW-Platteville and an official overseeing financial planning at the University of California-Berkeley.

A UW-Madison committee has narrowed its search for the campus next vice chancellor for finance and administration, a position held for more than a decade by administrator Darrell Bazzell before he left the campus this spring, to four finalists.

They are Robert G. Cramer, vice chancellor for administrative services at UW-Platteville; Laurent Heller, assistant vice chancellor for financial planning and analysis at UC-Berkeley; Charles Edward Perusse, senior vice president and chief operating officer for the University of North Carolina System; and Dawn M. Rhodes, a former vice chancellor for finance and administration at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

The finalists will give public presentations about their vision for the position on campus over the next two weeks, starting Tuesday.

A full schedule of the presentations and resumes of the finalists can be found at go.madison.com/vcfinalists.

Michael Lehman, a UW Foundation board member and former chief financial officer of Sun Microsystems, is filling the job on an interim basis.

Speaker: Review shows tenure job for life

The Assemblys top Republican says the University of Wisconsin System has only fired a handful of tenured faculty members in recent decades, confirming his criticism that tenure amounts to a job for life for professors.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, has criticized the concept of tenure and faculty resolutions of no confidence in UW leaders spurred in part by new tenure policies.

Data UW provided to his office found the system has fired six tenured professors for just cause over the past 20 years, Vos said. The review of firings shows the rules provided an ironclad protection for professors, Vos said  a criticism he and other Republicans have leveled in recent weeks.

New tenure policies approved this spring give chancellors greater authority to lay off faculty members.

David Vanness, a UW-Madison professor who has pushed for strong tenure protections, said Vos statement implies that UW has been plagued by under-performing faculty.

Instead, Vanness said, UW faculty have worked hard to bring in research funding and build their campuses into a top public university system.
Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne will face a challenger for his job in the August primary, and it will be someone from within his office.

Former Kenosha County District Attorney Bob Jambois, who for about the past year has worked as an assistant district attorney in Dane County, announced Tuesday that he is running for Ozannes job.

The people in the DAs office deserve a leader and the people of Dane County deserve a DA who shows up for work and holds violent repeat offenders accountable, Jambois wrote in a statement issued Tuesday.

Earlier Tuesday, on his campaigns Facebook page, Ozanne said he had become aware of a challenger.

I plan to run a positive campaign, focusing on my achievements and my goals for the future of the Dane County District Attorneys Office, Ozanne wrote.

This isnt Jambois first attempt to get the Dane County DAs job. In 2010, after then-District Attorney Brian Blanchard was elected to the state 4th District Court of Appeals, Ozanne and Jambois were among those who sought appointment to the DAs job.

Jambois, who was then the state Department of Transportations chief legal counsel, withdrew his name, citing personal reasons. Then-Gov. Jim Doyle appointed Ozanne, who became the states first African-American district attorney.

Ozanne was elected to the job unopposed in 2012.

Both Ozanne and Jambois are Democrats. No Republicans have so far filed nomination papers ahead of the deadline on Wednesday. If there are no candidates from other parties, the primary election on Aug. 9 would be decisive.

Both Ozanne and Jambois were involved in the fight over Act 10, the controversial state law that sharply curtailed the collective bargaining rights of most public sector workers in Wisconsin. Ozanne attacked the process by which the bill was passed, winning a brief stay but ultimately losing before the state Supreme Court.

Jambois represented state Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca, D-Kenosha, in the court fight.

More recently, Ozanne and two other district attorneys, John Chisholm of Milwaukee County and Larry Nelson of Iowa County, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court a state Supreme Court decision halting a secret John Doe investigation into coordination between Gov. Scott Walkers campaign and so-called issue advocacy groups.

In his announcement, Jambois noted many experienced prosecutors have left the district attorneys office, saying that Ozannes administration has undervalued and demeaned attorneys in the office.

Jambois also criticized Ozanne for not personally prosecuting jury trials, claiming that Ozanne hasnt done any during his six years on the job.

If youre going to be the chief prosecutor, you need to prosecute jury trials, Jambois said.

Ozanne was co-prosecutor in the jury trials of Chad Chritton, who was convicted in 2013 of the abuse and neglect of his daughter.

The first trial ended with a felony neglect conviction and a misdemeanor neglect acquittal but was deadlocked on four other felony charges.

In the second trial, Chritton was convicted of three more felonies.

Ozanne has said many times over his tenure that state funding for prosecutor positions is severely below what it should be. In his Facebook announcement, he highlighted things he intends to continue pursuing, including advocating for more resources and staffing for the DAs office, supporting continued treatment alternatives for low-risk offenders, pursuing government corruption cases and enforcing the state open records law.

Jambois is currently special prosecutor in the case of Mark Jensen, who was convicted in 2008 for the 1998 poisoning death of his wife. But in 2013, a federal judge overturned the conviction, and an appeals court upheld that decision. The case was sent back to Kenosha County for a new trial.
Veterans from American Legion Post 113 led a lengthy procession from Mount Horeb High School to the Mount Horeb Union Cemetery Monday morning in order to honor their communitys fallen soldiers.

People of all ages followed. Many wore red, white and blue. Some shed tears at the graves of loved ones when they reached the cemetery. All were somber and silent as taps played.

Those in Mount Horeb joined countless communities across Wisconsin and the country on Memorial Day in their remembrance of the men and women who died while serving in the U.S. armed forces.

Lt. Col. Josephine Daniels of Portage spoke during Mount Horebs ceremony, which was held at the villages high school gymnasium prior to the cemetery ceremony. Her speech to the packed crowd focused on remembering National Guard specialist Michelle Witmer, who died in Baghdad, Iraq, in 2004.

Witmer was the first Wisconsin National Guard soldier to die in military combat in 60 years.

Memorial Day is always a difficult day, Daniels said. Its a day of remembrance and when asked to come speak at these events its incredibly humbling because I made it home and those of us here made it home. ... This day isnt about us.

The ceremony also featured music from the Mount Horeb High School band and the Mount Horeb Firehouse Minstrels.

The events turnout has grown in the last few years, said Mount Horeb resident Jim Brice, who served in the Navy from 1967 to 1970.

Theres a lot of veterans here, Brice said. Theres a lot of support.

Following the ceremony, veterans led the procession to the cemetery, located a half-mile away. The high school band and the villages fire and police units followed. Spectators walked alongside while other residents watched from their yards, many of which displayed American flags.

Craig Mortvedt, Commander for Mount Horebs American Legion post, said the ceremonys high turnout highlights the supportive nature of Mount Horeb residents.

This is a community thats so tight, Mortvedt said. They take care of each other.

Tom Brindley, who attended the ceremony, said the event is a way for him to remember and express gratitude for his friends in the military who died.

It means everything, Brindley said. Its a lot of honor.

Jill Kietzke, who has lived in Mount Horeb for 20 years, described the community as close-knit and patriotic. She said she attends the Memorial Day event every year.

Its such a big thing in this community, Kietzke said. Its something I wanted my kids to see.
WASHINGTON  Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump last week disparaged New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, probably the most prominent Hispanic Republican officeholder in America, saying at a rally in Albuquerque that she has a bad record and shes got to do a better job.

At the same rally, where windows were smashed and Trump and his supporters clashed with demonstrators, the candidate also mocked Sen. Elizabeth Warrens claim to Native American roots by repeatedly calling her Pocahontas.

And House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, sitting down with reporters last Wednesday, wanted to talk about policy? It wasnt going to happen.

The Washington Posts Mike DeBonis, noting Trumps attack on Martinez, asked Ryan, Do you have a partner whos interested in party unity?

Shes a friend of mine, and I think shes a good governor. I will leave it at that, the speaker replied.

Would the speakers policy agenda include plans for deporting millions of people, as Trump has suggested?

Thats not in our agenda, Ryan said.

Should Trump apologize for belittling prisoners of war, the physically disabled and womens appearances?

Im focusing on what we can control here in the House, Ryan said.

And what he can control is, well, not much. Ryan had wanted a sit-down with reporters for a pen and pad session to talk policy. But, unbeknownst to the speaker, his staff released a flock of photographers into the room just as questions were starting.

Jeez. Good grief. Goddamned, Ryan said with a laugh when the barrage of shutter clicks began.

He can probably blame Trump for that, too. Last week, Trump campaign officials leaked word that Ryan, who had said he wasnt ready to endorse Trump, would indeed be endorsing Trump as soon as the next day. This, like much of what comes out of Trumps campaign, was false. But it turned Ryans policy session into another installment of his soap opera with Trump.

I dont know where all this got from, he pleaded when CNNs Manu Raju asked whether he had made a decision to back Trump. I have not made a decision and ... I have nothing more to add.

What the speaker did have to contribute was an albatross of a metaphor.

Were a big-tent party with lots of different wings of the Republican Party, and we [he and Trump] clearly come from different wings of the Republican Party  theres no two ways about that, he said. The question is, if were going to unify, can we figure out what is the common foundation that ties all these wings together?

Actually, if you tie a lot of wings together and attach them to a foundation, its pretty obvious what will happen: That bird wont fly.

Republicans in the House have said, look, Paul Ryan eventually has to endorse Donald Trump, Fox News Chad Pergram informed the speaker Wednesday. Why not just rip the Band-Aid off?

Replied Ryan: Im really focused on my day job.

But he surely has to be focused on a momentous calculation: He could withhold support, potentially costing Trump the presidency and perhaps losing his House majority. Or he could support Trump and have Trump define conservatives and the GOP for years  even if its with isolation, trade wars and racial strife.

My worry, one top Republican official remarked during the primary campaign, is not that Trump will lose the general election. Its that he could win. Cementing the alienation of women, immigrants and non-whites would shorten the fuse on the demographic time bomb underneath the GOP.

Ryan seems to be hoping that Trump, in exchange for the speakers endorsement, will offer him a token concession: some sort of blessing of his agenda of economic growth, national security, health care, anti-poverty measures and limits on presidential power. We need to normalize these ideas, the speaker said.

But there is no way to finesse this, no fig leaf big enough to cover the gap between them. How does he square Trumps expansive view of executive power with his own plan to limit such power?

That is one of my big concerns, not just with Donald Trump but with whoever the next president may be.

Is he concerned that Trump doesnt share his views on entitlements?

Were going to focus on our own proposals.

Is Ryan disappointed there arent more discussions with Trump?

I can control what I can control.

But Ryan cant control Trump, nor win real concessions from him.

As the highest-ranking Republican in America, he has a stark and binary choice to make: tie his and his partys future to Trump, or walk away.
Mosquitoes are bad enough in Wisconsin without having to worry about bites causing terrible birth defects.

Congress should quickly grant the Centers for Disease Controls request for funding to fight the Zika virus.

Health officials on Friday confirmed a second Wisconsin woman  this time a resident of Dane County  has contracted the illness. Both women had traveled to Latin America, where the virus is concentrated.

Wisconsin cant pretend its not at risk. Though no mosquitoes here carry the virus  yet  Zika also can be transmitted by sexual contact.

Congress needs to act, not play political games with public health.

In a public health emergency, speed is critical, Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the CDC, told the National Press Club on Thursday. A day, a week, a month can make all of the difference.

The U.S. Senate, with bipartisan support, just approved $1.1 billion for efforts to exterminate mosquitoes that carry the virus, testing and vaccine research. Thats down from the presidents request of $1.9 billion but more than the $622 million the House wants to spend.

Congress should be able to hammer out a reasonable agreement.

Its been three long months since President Barack Obama requested the money. All the while, the CDC has issued increasingly urgent warnings about the need to act quickly to prevent an outbreak in the United States.

Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Janesville, and his fellow Republicans who control the House want to offset the cost of Zika funding with cuts in other spending. Thats a fine idea  but not if it delays action.

This isnt  or shouldnt be  a partisan issue. Unfortunately, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson pulled Obamacare into the debate. Republicans have been unrealistically trying to repeal the presidents signature health care law for years. Johnson, R-Oshkosh, voted against bipartisan Zika funding in the Senate, saying he wanted to take dollars for battling the virus from an Obamacare prevention plan instead.

Other Republicans, including former presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio from the swampy state of Florida, backed Obamas full $1.9 billion request. Florida and other states closest to Latin America face higher risk of exposure than the rest of the nation.

This is a public health emergency that cannot wait for this extended debate on this issue, Rubio said.

Hes right.

The longer Congress waits to steer money to the CDC, the more likely the virus will spread  costing more money to contain than it would now to prevent. That point should resonate with Johnson and other funding sticklers.

Hundreds of pregnant women in the United States and its territories have tested positive for Zika. All of them contracted the illness while traveling, but theres no guarantee that pattern will continue. About 10 cases have resulted from sexual transmission.

The CDC just warned its having to borrow from funds intended for flu, hurricane relief and other emergencies to stay after Zika. The CDC also worries it may have to delay testing for a vaccine if Congress cant negotiate adequate funding soon.

America shouldnt panic. At the same time, America shouldnt put off prudent effort and expense to ensure the public is safe.
It is only upon reading it in full, recognizing what he chose to say, and what he chose not to say, that one realizes how malicious the speech was especially when the timing is considered.

Obama spoke of how war has always been with us, how wars are horrible things, how they may be fought over hunger or greed, how we should mourn the innocent dead. Line by line, almost everything he said there is defensible, when taken out of context.

Given just before our own Memorial Day commemoration, it was not a horrifying speech on the surface reading through the transcript, one sees nothing that jumps out as a specific mark of insult or error.

On May 27, 2016, Barack Hussein Obama, the current resident of the White House, gave a major speech (defined loosely as one that the global press eagerly covers, in the hope it will embarrass the United States) at Hiroshima, Japan, site of one of the two atomic bomb blasts that the United States relied upon to bring an end to World War II.

The Moral Equivalency of the Left

There are certain themes in the modern statist lexicon. A confusion of the difference between rights and privileges, a denial of the basic laws of economics, a contortionists twisting of the value of a colorblind society into the championing of a quota-based society.

And one of the most fundamental of these errant leftist themes is the concept of moral equivalency.: The burglar has an equal right to those possessions as the homeowner has; the mugger has an equal right to that wallet as his victim has. You cant blame the gang member for robbing and raping and killing; youd do it too if you lived in his neighborhood and so it goes. Moral equivalency, everywhere.

Such a position isnt accidental. Just as a building is built on foundation, the whole of Democrat policy is rooted in the concept of moral equivalency. Without moral equivalency, you cannot justify robbing the working man to fund a welfare state, or turning a blind eye to the terrorism of Hamas while denouncing the identical terrorism of the Taliban.

So moral equivalency appears throughout Obamas Hiroshima speech. Only upon careful reading do we see that there is no mention of the critical fact that Imperial Japan started the war with the United States, no distinction between the two sides at all no mention of the fact that nothing but the use of nuclear weapons would end the war with such a stubborn and suicidal enemy.

His speech speaks of the casualties of war, the loss of innocent lives but doesnt say all because Japans megalomaniac rulers started the war. He left that part out  the critical premise with which any thoughtful analysis of the war in the Pacific must begin. He lamented the loss of innocent life at Hiroshima, but didn't say a word about the millions of victims of Imperial Japan's war crimes - the Rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March, the Manila Massacres, and most important, Hirohito's "Three Alls Policy" - all of which demonstrates that Imperial Japan simply had no moral high ground to claim in 1945.

Its understandable that he wouldnt want to say all that out loud who would? Japan is our friend today; we shouldnt go there to remind them of an evil, but long past, moment in their history. That would hardly be diplomatic but it is a necessary part of the narrative, and lacking that part, the event is incomplete, and even deceptive. Thats why no other American president has gone to Hiroshima. You dont go to a friends house to remind him of his past failings, so, as friends, we just dont bring it up.

The audience who listens to this speech doesnt get the message that America has forgiven Japan for pulling us into that awful war. They dont need to; our close trade relations prove it already. Todays United States and todays Japan are friends, with massive corporate investment in each others countries already. Our citizens work for their conglomerates; their citizens work for ours.

But as necessary as it is to acknowledge that we have no reason to hold WWII against todays Japanese, it is just as necessary to acknowledge that we do NOT forgive the Japanese leaders of the 1930s and 40s, the ones who started the war: the megalomaniac Hirohito and his general staff who chose to launch a sneak attack on our Pacific fleet, in time of peace, before even declaring war, and then to continue committing war crimes against us and everyone else until we stopped them.

If we forgive the villains of Imperial Japan, those war criminals who tortured American prisoners of war and made sex slaves of Korean captives and murdered millions of innocents, then we are saying that anyone deserves a second chance, that past performance doesnt matter, because each day is a new day with a clean slate.

Such moral equivalency flies in the face of judgment, and sews a poisonous thread into every practice of a free country our elections, our career choices, our education. Obamas Hiroshima speech contradicts such critical truisms as the famous Santayana quote Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

We must study history, not only for the facts of what happened, but also for the recognition of who made the mistakes. What kind of leaders started World War II? What kind of people ordered the atrocities? What kind of positions should we look out for in our own lives, as we face our own personal trials, especially in the voting booth?

Barack Obama does nothing by mistake. If he delivers a speech that gives the impression that the United States and Imperial Japan were morally equivalent, then that can only be because he wants to reduce Americas recognition of our own moral righteousness during the horrible period of the 1940s. For 70 years, America and Great Britain have been the world heroes who saved the world from Hirohito, Hitler and Mussolini. And that fact grates on the nerves of the modern Left.

The Left wants the world to see equivalency: "We both suffered, we both committed evil acts, we both killed millions." They dropped bombs and we dropped bombs. In fact, we dropped the biggest ones. Nobodys better than anyone else, nobodys worse Tell every tale in a vacuum; never share the necessary context; this is the theme of Barack Obamas speech at Hiroshima.

How much would it have hurt to just add a single line: From the very day when Imperial Japans unprovoked attack on our installation at Pearl Harbor pulled our nation into that painful war, our nation strove to find a way to bring it to an end But no; the very reason that line is critical to the truth of the matter is the reason that Obama would never say it. He needs to blame America for dropping the bomb on Hiroshima; his worldview depends on assigning as much blame as possible to the United States  on every problem there ever is to address.

The Power of the Presidency

We pundits  both the professional kind and the armchair kind  carefully track the evil actions of criminals in government. We report on the newest awful spending bill, the latest encroachment upon our liberties, the latest foolishness of a nanny state. And we are right to do so, as confiscatory taxes and crippling regulations do incalculable damage to our nation and the world around us.

The Presidency has, in the past century, become such a source for destructive government action, we sometimes forget the presidents other role in our polity: as the semi-official spokesman for our country, both domestically and on the world scene.

Theodore Roosevelt  no conservative he, but certainly a perceptive historian and a fine writer  recognized this aspect of the job like few others, and spoke reverentially of his office as wielding the bully pulpit. However strong a Speaker of the House or Senate Majority leader might be, only the president can give a speech that radio and television will carry, that foreign press will attend and report on, that school children may even study in school for centuries.

The Left understands this better than many on the Right. After a president leaves office, the next president can undo his Executive Orders, the next Congress can repeal his tax increases, the next administration can revoke books of regulations.

But a presidents speeches live on in more than just the national archives Just as good people still proudly read George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and as we still watch Ronald Reagan on YouTube today, children will read and watch the speeches of Barack Obama for a hundred years. And what will they learn from those speeches?

Obamas written and spoken legacy  after eight years in the office  will be an unbroken record of attacks on the American people and on our way of life. In speech after speech, he has attacked our record for meddling in world affairs, for being imperialistic abroad and paternalistic at home. On hundreds of occasions, he has become known for certain offensive catch phrases, such as Thats not who we are as if he were in any way representative of the true American character.

Obama has spent his presidency amassing his own history sourcework, to be played and read in schools, to be fed into the innocent minds of students, so that future children will be raised independently from the pro-American atmosphere of past generations.

Obamas legacy of speeches is a war engine of its own. In post-educational America, and across the world, his speeches are their own atomic bomb, as destructive to historical truth as the actual bombs were to their sadly necessary physical targets, seventy long years ago.

When America votes and especially, when we vote for a president we must consider how that president will speak in public. What will he say; what image will he convey as he teaches the worlds future children what it is to be an American, and what Americas role is  and has been  on the world stage?

There was a time when Americas leaders were eloquent spokesmen; their every word was an homage to the American experiment. America needs men of the caliber of Washington, Hamilton, Morris, Webster even recently, we still came close, with men like Goldwater, Reagan and Buckley

And we are lost without them.

Copyright 2016 John F. Di Leo

John F. Di Leo is an international trade trainer and writer, based in Chicagoland. A former county chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party, he has now been a recovering politician for nineteen years.

Permission is hereby granted to forward freely, provided it is uncut and the IR URL and byline are included. Follow John F. Di Leo on Facebook or LinkedIn, or on Twitter at @johnfdileo.
According to recent news reports, there are public water systems that have had tests showing lead levels exceeding federal standards. House Joint Resolution 153 directs the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency to conduct a study of lead in Illinois drinking water. The study would begin immediately and the IEPA will have to issue a comprehensive report no later than December 31, 2016.

The situation in Flint, Michigan taught us that we have to take lead levels in our water systems seriously, McSweeney said. We do not want what happened in Flint to happen here. The only way we can solve this issue is to understand what is going on and just how widespread the problems really are.

House Joint Resolution 153 passed the House by a vote of 111-1. The measure is sponsored in the Senate by Senator Tom Cullerton (D-Villa Park).
In a letter to supporters, the board of directors of Patriots United announced the disbanding of the organization. According to the email missive, the decision to disband was due to the fact that current board members were otherwise occupied, and replacement directors could not be found. Additionally, the board felt directed to focus its efforts on "Our Great Eight," an organization working to "regain freedom and liberty in an overly regulated and controlled economy."

Dear Patriots,



Life is full of passages. As in all steps from one platform to the next, there is sorrow and gladness involved. As children step out of childhood into the land of adults, we have mixed emotions of missing what was before but rejoicing over what comes next. Such it is with Patriots United.

In 2013, Patriots Uniteds president stepped down in order to serve in other ways and spend more time raising family. In 2015, our next president stepped down in the late summer to make a career change. An interim president was appointed in fall of 2015, and by the end of that same year, the call for a change in direction was heard and discussed.

A new platform and focus had been in development for two years and the time was ripe to formulate a roll-out of Our Great Eight. Since Turning Point USA was very interested in collaborating in getting these materials onto college campuses across the country, it was prayerfully considered and a decision was made to form a collaboration to launch Our Great Eight on a national level.

In March of 2016, the board of Patriots United held a motion to disband as an organization for the following two reasons:

All the board members were occupied in other venues that were taking up a majority of their time, with no replacements available.

Several members of the board were directed to give their energy and time commitments towards Our Great Eight believing this would have a more direct impact on citizens, especially the youth of our country.

A vote was taken, which resulted in a unanimous vote to disband Patriots United, giving full attention to Our Great Eight a newly formed constituency.

It is with sadness and gladness that we turn our attention from what has been to what will be! As is true with conservative thought, it is imperative to look back and find encouragement in the great truths we stand on, and find inspiration to spring forward to the things yet to be done.

We take off our hats to Patriots United and bow our heads in gratitude and appreciation for all who have led us from the beginning, to the faithfulness of our constituents, and to our sister and brother organizations we have had the privilege of standing beside.

Blessings to all as we move forward, carrying the torch of freedom through Our Great Eight and those who stand for liberty in the United States of America.

God bless and please join us!

Maida Korte, Jackie Larson, Bill Parrot and John Wuich

Board Members

Patriots United
The Illinois State GOP Convention was held in Peoria May 20-21, 2016, and I attended as a delegate, whose name was initially submitted by Mark Shaw, Republican State Central Committee Member representing the 10th Congressional District for the Illinois State GOP Convention. Shaw appointed Bonnie Quirke, who heads Lake County Right for Life, as his Deputy.





There were 978 voting delegates present, the largest number in recent years, mostly to vote on a major platform issue in the party. The stacked platform committee on Friday voted 60% to 40% to drop the previous definition of marriage as 1 man and 1 woman (normative throughout all of recorded history), according to their sex on their birth certificates (or by visual identification of their genitalia more specifically).

This 60% majority of the platform committee intended to substitute other forms of marriage, such as homosexual and lesbian, legalized recently by the Supreme Court and by other states.

The full Convention voted down substitute marriages 80% to 20%. Voting was by head count, not voice vote, because most delegates believed the vote could have gone either way. The platform committee wrote the substitution as a double negative (an old trick to fool the unwary to vote the opposite of their intentions), so we made sure to vote "yes" to block marriage redefinition. Long-time GOP delegates for 30 or 40 years were amazed and pleased by the results. I would think that something like an 80% plurality is very rare.

The marriage issue in turn brought transgenderism into focus, where sex can be self-changed into what "gender" you "feel" you are. Discrimination against transgenderism has been added recently to the Title IX law by the Obama administration, an unconstitutional move because transgender discrimination was never foreseen or intended by the legislature in the 1970's.

Even more, it has proven to be a legal lunacy that the courts can't handle. If schools can't discriminate against a deranged boy who has transgendered himself into a girl and therefore must be allowed to shower with girls and live in the girls dorm, schools can't discriminate against a healthy boy who prefers to shower with girls and live in the girls dorm. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Judges must have all parties to a suit stand naked before them in order to make a decision on whether discrimination is occurring. This is pure idiocy.

A few observations I sensed at the convention:

1. The Party has a significant number of homosexual, lesbian, and gender-benders who belong in the Democrat Party. There may have been Democrats present at the Convention under false pretenses. The Cook County delegation seemed to be the largest supporter of the substitute definition of marriage.

2. Delegates at the convention were especially furious over the Moderate GOP, or the "Democrat Light Party", that has refused to counter Obama and the Democrat Party after winning two elections. I believe men substantially outnumbered women at the Convention and yelled the loudest against substitute marriage. Also, Trump is by far the favorite of the delegates because he flattened the Moderate GOP into a dead skunk on the highway of life.

3. Delegates were incensed by the criminalization and the resulting stiff penalties for not accepting homosexual and lesbian marriage, like the prosecution of a baker in Oregon for not baking a cake for a lesbian "marriage" that awarded the lesbians $135,000 for their "psychic hurt." This is grossly unAmerican!

4. Male delegates were additionally incensed by the idea of men "transgendered" into women and invading girls bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, dorms, and other historically sex-segregated facilities by new laws being imposed in favor of a cultural rot devoted to an infinitesimally small percentage of the population.

5. Now men are being prosecuted for acting like men, by a deviant 1% to 3% of the population; the tail is wagging the dog. This cannot stand; real men and strong women will crush this nonsense.

6. Strong support was expressed for Trump by the delegates. I believe the coming election will prove it, or Trump will be a one term president.

As Bonnie O'Neil informed me, vice president of Eagle Forum in CA and my collaborator on many article published at Illinois Review, when I shared the results of the IL GOP 16 State Convention with her:

Fortunately you were able to win this time around. I went through this same thing in CA way back. We won that year too. But the liberals came back with a vengeance. If I could do it over again, Id get the right delegates together and be prepared for their dirty tricks. They are mean and willing to do whatever it takes to win. PREPARATION is key. Be prepared for the worst case scenario. If you get enough people and they are VOCAL  you have a better chance. They will do their best to find a way to stop your from wining, so you have to be very smart and outwit and outshout them. Bring some powerful people to the table. Trust me, they will be coming back next time with a vengeance. Be strong; be prepared for a good fight.

As an aside apart from the Convention, I expect more evil and silliness to come from Democrats and deviant Republicans in (1) the criminal prosecution of climate-change deniers, which is already in process; (2) the confiscation of all guns "for children's safety;" and (3) the imposition of a Living Constitution to eliminate the present cast-in-granite Constitution that is "too difficult" to change -- for good reason.
I traveled Friday night to our neighbors just north of the Illinois state line to meet a good conservative running for Congress. Businessman and inventor Paul Nehlen is challenging the incumbent U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan in Wisconsin's 1st Congressional District. The rally was held at the Raddison Hotel in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin.

Nehlen hopes to pull an upset similar to the success of Congressman David Brat when he ousted Eric Cantor in Virginia's 7th Congressional District.w Paul Ryan has been under fire from conservatives for not being aggressive in balancing the budget, supporting the omnibus spending bill, and possibly supporting amnesty and immigration.

Two years ago I attended a lunch at the City Club of Chicago which featured Ryan with Congressman Luis Gutierrez who fully supports amnesty for illegal immigrants. Conservatives want to see a more aggressive stance challenging the policies of President Obama. Nehlen describes the race as a "David and Goliath" battle. While Nehlen has grassroots and Tea Party support, Ryan has a $7 million dollar war chest made up primarily of contributions outside of his congressional district.

The featured speaker at the event was popular blogger, author, and Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin.

I was invited to attend by the West Suburban Patriots including longtime activists Carol Davis and Jan Shaw.

Wisconsin runs their primary different than Illinois where we pick all our nominees in March. Arizona also has a late congressional primary separate from the presidential race, and it has conservative Dr. Kelli Ward challenging U.S. Senator John McCain.

The Wisconsin primary is Tuesday, August 8, 2016. More information can be found at Paul Nehlen.com.

Mark Weyermuller is small business person, real estate professional, and conservative activist in Chicago. He is a citizen journalist and regular contributor to Illinois Review. Mark can be heard weekly on the radio in a "man in the street segment" at 10:31pm as a regular guest on the Stephanie Trussell Show heard Sunday nights 9pm-midnight on WLS 890-AM .
The Mahindra Electric Verito sedan is powered by the latest electric drive train from Mahindra Reva, and is a 100 per cent zero emission, green vehicle.

We expect the Mahindra e-Verito electric sedan to come with a base price of Rs 8 lakh (ex showroom, New Delhi). (Photo: Mahindra Electric Auto Expo 2016)

By India Today Web Desk: Mahindra Electric have confirmed they will launch the e-Verito electric sedan in the market on June 2. First showcased at the Auto Expo 2014 and then again seen at the Auto Expo 2016, Mahindra will finally launch the much awaited e-Verito electric sedan.

ALSO READ: After failing GNCAP tests, Mahindra, Renault say their cars match Indian safety standards

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The Mahindra Electric Verito sedan is powered by the latest electric drive train from Mahindra Reva, and is a 100 per cent zero emission, green vehicle.

The upcoming Mahindra e-Verito will come with a 72V 3-phase AC induction motor producing maximum gross power of 41 hp @3500 rpm and maximum torque of 91 Nm @3000 rpm, mated to a automatic transmission.

ALSO READ: Mahindra XUV500 gets automatic transmission for W6 variant

The automatic transmission Mahindra e-Verito sedan can be charged at home and can also be quick charged in 2 hours through fast charging (top-end). It offers an exceptionally smooth and noiseless driving experience and comes with features like hill-hold and great stand-still pick-up.

In one charge, Mahindra e-Verito can travel for up to 100 kms based on vehicle loading and can achieve a top speed of 86 kmph. It also comes with ECO drive mode and remote diagnostics which includes real time and immediate assistance no matter where you are.

ALSO READ: Mahindra TUV300 to get similar engine as the NuvoSport

We expect the Mahindra e-Verito electric sedan to come with a base price of Rs 8 lakh (ex showroom, New Delhi).



--- ENDS ---
A fortnight after Suzuki Motor admitted using an improper method to test the fuel efficiency of its vehicles, its Chairman Osamu Suzuki said the methods of calculating mileage differ from country to country.

The company had said it hasn't found a flaw affecting the fuel efficiency of Suzuki vehicles.

By India Today Web Desk: Suzuki Motor Corp on Tuesday shrugged of use of wrong methods to test fuel economy of its cars in Japan, saying there was no universal method of calculating mileage.

A fortnight after Suzuki Motor admitted using an improper method to test the fuel efficiency of its vehicles, its Chairman Osamu Suzuki said the methods of calculating mileage differ from country to country.

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ALSO READ: Suzuki admits to using wrong fuel economy tests in Japan

"The way of calculating mileage (varies) in different countries... so there is not really a universal method for all over the world," he told reporters after meeting Finance Minister Arun Jaitley here.

On May 18, Suzuki Motor had stated that it had used the wrong methods to test the fuel economy of its cars in Japan, but claimed that these didn't make the final results very different. Also, it did not affect cars sold by the company outside its home market.

The company had said it hasn't found a flaw affecting the fuel efficiency of Suzuki vehicles.

ALSO READ: Maruti Suzuki to recall 75,419 Baleno cars and 1,961 DZire cars

Its India unit, Maruti Suzuki had stated that the issue of using improper fuel economy and emission tests faced by parent Suzuki Motor Corp in Japan will not have implications in India citing distinct testing regulations.

"The system of conducting vehicle mileage tests in India is distinct from the one in Japan. In India, all vehicles are tested for road load and emissions by government approved agencies like ARAI, ICAT and VRDE," a Maruti Suzuki India spokesperson had said in a statement.

There are no fixed test mandated for auto companies in India to test fuel economy or mileage. Disclosures on this count are voluntary in India, although it is usually certified by the government-run testing body Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI).

ALSO READ: Seven Maruti Suzuki models in top 10 best selling passenger vehicles

Suzuki Motor was the first automaker to come forward and admit potential wrongdoing after Japan's transport ministry asked companies to conduct internal investigations after Mitsubishi Motors overstated the ratings of four mini-car models by as much as 10 per cent.

It had stated that as many as 2.1 million vehicles in Japan were affected including models like Alto, Alto Lapin, Wagon R, Hustler, Spacia, Every, Carry, Jimny, Solio, Ignis, Baleno, S-Cross, Swift, Escudo 2.4, Escudo and Jimny Sierra.

While some of the models carry the same names as those sold in India, the technical specifications are usually different.

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ALSO READ: Toyota Camry Hybrid, Maruti Suzuki Ciaz, Ertiga to cost less in Delhi after VAT cut

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The Secondary Education Board of Assam (SEBA) has declared the results of the Class 10 examination today i.e. May 31. All the candidates can check the result son the official website.

By India Today Web Desk: The Secondary Education Board of Assam (SEBA) has declared the results of the Class 10 examination today i.e. May 31.

All the candidates who appeared for the High School Leaving Certificate (HSLC) examination can check their results on the official website, the link for which is www.resultsassam.nic.in

Along with HSLC results, the board has declared the results of the Assam High Madrassa (AHM) examination.

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All the candidates appeared for the examination from February 19 and March 12, 2016 at different test centres.

Steps to check the results:

All the candidates can log on to the official website, www.resultsassam.nic.in

Click on the relevant link

Enter all the required details like name and date of birth

Click on to submit

The results will be displayed

All the candidates are advised to take print out of the same for future reference.

About Assam Board:

The Board of Secondary Education, Assam came into existence on March 14, 1962. It started functioning with the conduct of 11 year H.S.S.L.C. Examination of 1962. Under the provisions of the Act the Govt. of Assam constituted the Board with Sri S.C. Rajkhowa, D.P.I., as Chairman and Md. N. Islam, Inspector of Schools (Central Assam Circle) as Secretary.

Read: Street vendor's daughter tops Karnataka PUC exam

For exam related news click here .



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Bihar arts topper could not even pronounce the name of the subject, 'Political Science', properly as she calls it 'Prodigal Science'.

By India Today Web Desk: Yet again, the real face of Bihar education has been exposed by the arts topper Ruby Ray, who told Aaj Tak, "Political Science is a subject that talks about the preparation of food." The girl could not even pronounce the name of the subject 'Political Science', and referred to it as 'Prodigal Science'.

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Ruby's score card:

However, this Hazipur girl topped the Bihar board Class 12 (Arts) examination, securing 444 marks (90 per cent), which was declared on May 28. But, the question that is being asked is how could a girl who hardly knows her subject properly top in the board examination?



On asking how many subjects, she appeared for, the topper gave a fumble reply: "May be five or six".



Bihar Board Class 12 Inter-Arts examination: In brief



This year, over 5.5 lakh students appeared for the examination. The results were delayed multiple times over the last one week leading to a lot of confusion among students and fake media reports about the exam result dates.



About Bihar Board:



The board conducts secondary and senior secondary school examinations twice a year. The board also holds departmental examinations such as Diploma in Physical Education, Certificate in Physical Education and Teachers Training Examination.



Read: Exclusive! Six Indian students awarded at International Science and Engineering Fair, US: Meet the Einsteins

Read: Intel India announces new initiatives supporting Digital India

Click here for education related news.

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The Territorial Army has released an employment notification, inviting gainfully employed young men to apply for the positions of officer. Successful candidates will further undergo a test at a Service Selection Board (SSB) and medical board for final selection.

By India Today Web Desk: The Territorial Army has released an employment notification, inviting gainfully employed young men to apply for the positions of officer.

Vacancy details

Name of the posts:

Territorial Army Officers

Eligibility criteria

Educational qualification:

The candidates interested in applying for this post should be a graduate from any recognised university. They must be physically and medically fit in all respects. Serving member of the regular army/ navy/ air force/ police/ GREF/ para military and like forces are not eligible to apply.

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Age limit:

The age of the candidates applying for this post must not exceed 42 years and must be minimum 18 years. Relaxation in age will be provided as per the government norms.

Selection procedure

A written examination followed by an interview will be conducted for shortlisting and final selection of the candidates. Successful candidates will further undergo a test at a Service Selection Board (SSB) and medical board for final selection.

Pay scale

The selected candidates will be getting a monthly salary of Rs 15,600 to Rs 39,100, along with a grade pay of Rs 5,400.

How to apply

The candidates interested in these posts are required to obtain application form from employment news or download from www.indianarmy.nic.in and send it along with a self addressed envelope (28 x12 cm) with postal stamps affixed worth Rs 27 and two passport size photographs (no other cost for submission) to the respective territorial army group headquarters.

Important dates

The last date for the submission of an application is June 30.

The written examination will be conducted on July 31.

Read: Ministry of Home Affairs is hiring, apply now



For information on more latest government jobs, click here.



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The Staff Selection Commission (SSC) has released an official notification regarding postponing of the declaration of results of Combined Graduate Level Examination, 2015 (CGLE-2015).

SSC CGL Exam 2015: Results delayed, expected to be declared soon at www.ssc.nic.in

By India Today Web Desk: The Staff Selection Commission (SSC) has released an official notification regarding postponing of the declaration of results of Combined Graduate Level Examination, 2015 (CGL-2015).

Earlier, the commission assured to publish the results on May 30 on its official website, the link for which is http://ssc.nic.in/

According to the notification, the results have been delayed due to some administrative reasons.

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SSC CGL examination details:

The total duration of the test was 2 hours.

The commission conducted the SSC CGL Tier 1 examination from August 9 to August 16, 2015 while the CGL Tier 2 exams Paper 1, 2 took place on October 25, 2015. Paper 3 was scheduled on October 26, 2015.

The question paper included 200 objective type multiple choice questions based on General Intelligence & reasoning, General Awareness, Quantitative Aptitude and English Comprehension.

SSC CGL Tier 2 exam paper had 400 objective multiple choice questions. The pattern will be bifurcated into three sections, i.e. Quantitative Abilities, English Language & Comprehension, and Statistics.

All the candidates are requested to keep a check on the official website for more information.

How to check the results:

In order to check the results, candidates should visit the official website and click on the link, 'SSC CGL 2015'. Enter all the required details and click on the submit button. After the results will be displayed on the screen, the candidates must take a printout for future use.



About SSC:

Staff Selection Commission (SSC) is an organisation that works under the government of India to recruit staff for various posts in various ministries, departments and subordinate offices.

Read: Reforms in education policy: Class 5 students can now be detained for poor performance

Read: Thane girl Kejal Pandey who saved three lives on dying scores 8.6 CGPA in CBSE Class 10

Click here for more updates from India Today Education.



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By PTI: Thane, May 31 (PTI) A key accused in the Rs 2,000-crore drug haul here has been arrested by Thane police from Uttar Pradesh near Nepal border, police said today.

Jay Mukhi, who was evading arrest since the ephedrine drug racket was busted in April this year, was spotted in Gorakhpur city of Uttar Pradesh following which a team of Thane police arrested him yesterday, Thane Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Parag Manere said.

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Acting on a tip-off that Mukhi was hiding at a place in Gorakhpur near the Nepal border, the Thane police closely co-ordinated with their counterparts in Uttar Pradesh and arrested him, Manere said.

The police were just in time and nabbed him at about 10.20 AM yesterday when he was preparing to board a train from Gorakhpur to go to Nepal, he added.

The police team is at present interrogating Mukhi and he would be brought to Thane after which more details in the case would be known, the DCP said.

Thane police had unearthed the haul of around 18.5 tonne of ephedrine, worth approximately Rs 2,000 crore, by raiding the premises of Avon Lifesciences Limited in Maharashtras Solapur district in April this year.

The lid on the drug syndicate was blown after police arrested a Nigerian drug peddler from Kalyan and recovered around 500 grams of ephedrine from him on April 10.

During probe in the case, the police came across the role of Mukhi and were on the look out for him.

Nine persons were earlier arrested in connection with the case, including a director and an operations manager of Solapur factory of Avon Lifesciences Limited, a senior police official said.

Considering the alleged involvement of international drug-baron Vicky Goswami, police were earlier also looking into the role of a former Bollywood actress who was reportedly in a relationship with him.

However, as yet no proof of her involvement had come to light, a police officer had earlier said. PTI CORR GK PVI BAS

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By PTI: From Anisur Rahman

Dhaka, May 31 (PTI) Six Islamist militants were today sentenced to death in Bangladesh for murdering seven persons during a bank robbery last year as authorities stepped up crackdown on radicals after a spate of brutal killings of secular activists and minorities.

A Dhaka court handed down death sentences to six who raided the private bank on the outskirts of the capital, using grenades, guns and machetes.

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Prosecution lawyers and police said the convicts belonged to outlawed Jamaatul Mujaheedin Bangladesh (JMB) and Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT).

"They will be hanged until death," pronounced Dhakas District and Sessions Judge S M Kuddus Zaman.

The court also sentenced three other militants from the groups to prison terms ranging from three years to life. Two other suspects were acquitted.

Court officials said five of the convicts appeared in person as the verdict was delivered. One person was tied in absentia as he was still on the run.

"All of them were originally operatives of JMB but some of them later joined the newer outfit of ABT," a police officer familiar with the investigation earlier told newsmen.

Seven persons, including the banks manager and an entrepreneur, were killed during the April 21, 2015 robbery at the Ashulia Industrial zone.

Police and bank officials earlier had called the heist "unusual and unprecedented" with an investigator saying "it was not aimed at robbery but something different...to kill people to cause panic (and) we don?t think it was done for money alone".

Under Bangladeshs law, the death penalties are required to be reviewed by the High Court even if the convicts preferred not to appeal against the judgement.

In 2007, Bangladesh hanged six JMBs kingpins, including its founder Shaikh Abdur Rahman for murdering two lower court judges.

Bangladesh in recent months witnessed a wave of murders of liberal and secular activists, writers and minorities by suspected Islamist militants.

The Islamic State reportedly claimed responsibilities of most of the murders but Bangladeshi authorities rejected the claims. PTI AR NSA AKJ NSA

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By PTI: From Ashwani K Anand

Rabat (Morocco), May 31 (PTI) Vice President Hamid Ansari has condemned the string of assaults on African nationals in India as "despicable", saying they are "our guests" and should be looked after in the wake of "violation of law and order".

Interacting with media on board his special aircraft before arriving here in the Moroccan capital, Ansari said, "Attack on anyone ? whether own person or guest, it is despicable."

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"Nobody or no government can say anything different ? condemning all types of violence," he said.

He said, "They (Africans) are our guests. We have to look after them in the wake of violation of law and order."

Describing Indias ties with African countries as "good", Ansari said, "We greatly value our relationship with African countries and we always stood by them."

"Even before 1947 we talked of decolonisation of Africa," he said, adding that the stand of the previous UPA government and the present NDA government has been no different.

Ansari is on a five-day visit to two North African countries ? Morocco and Tunisia - as part of efforts to build on diplomatic gains from the India-Africa summit held in New Delhi in October last year.

The Vice President said India attaches great importance to Africa, and in that context he was undertaking the trip to Morocco and Tunisia.

There has been a spate of attacks on African nationals in the last few days including killing of a Congolese youth in the national capital and assault on a 23-year-old Nigerian student in Hyderabad. PTI AKA ABH PMS AKJ PMS

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Swaraj was talking to reporters after meeting a delegation of African students at New Delhi's Jawahar Bhawan where she assured them of full security and support in India. She condemned the killing of Congolese national MK Olivier on May 20, but said it was not a racial attack.

Swaraj said the killing of Olivier over a minor altercation, was not only unfortunate but painful.

By India Today Web Desk: Even as a number of African nations have complained of alleged racism against them, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj today said the lynching of a Congolese man in New Delhi was not an act of racial discrimination.

Swaraj was talking to reporters after meeting a delegation of African students at New Delhi's Jawahar Bhawan where she assured them of full security and support in India. She condemned the killing of Congolese national MK Olivier on May 20, but said it was not a racial attack.

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MINOR ALTERCATION

She said the killing of Olivier, 29, over a minor altercation, was "not only unfortunate but painful". "I met a delegation of African students and leaders and tried to explain that the incident is huge but not a case of racial discrimination," she said.

"On the day the incident took place, I sought a report from the Lt Governor and I was informed that two people have been arrested," she said.

Sushma Swaraj, who has been personally monitoring the outreach to the African community, was flanked by Minister of State for External Affairs VK Singh and Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar during the meeting.

WIDESPREAD ANGER

The killing of the Congolese national and a slew of other attacks on Africans staying in New Delhi, and a case in Hyderabad, has caused widespread anger among the community. A group of African students held a protest at Jantar Mantar on Monday.

African envoys had last week threatened to boycott the Africa Day event over the killing of the Congolese national, but agreed to attend the May 26 event after the government intervened to assuage their concerns.

Also Read:



VK Singh calls attack on Africans 'a minor scuffle blown up by media'



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By PTI: Bengaluru, May 30 (PTI) The Akshaya Patra Foundation has been honoured with the Nikkei Asia Prize in Japan for its contributions in the field of "Economic and Business Innovation."

Madhu Pandit Dasa, Chairman of The Akshaya Patra Foundation, received the honour at the award ceremony of Nikkei Asia Prize at Tokyo yesterday.

The winners have been awarded three million yen each along with a certificate by Naotoshi Okada, President, CEO of Nikkei Inc, an Akshaya Patra release here said.

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Madhu Pandit Dasa said,"I accept this honour and the prize of 3 million JYN, with a profound sense of gratitude to Nikkei Inc and with humility on behalf of our movement and for the benefit of those 1.5 million children whose lives has changed because of a wholesome meal day after day."

Akshaya Patra Foundation, headquartered here, says it is the worlds largest (not-for-profit run) mid-day meal programme serving wholesome food to over 1.5 million children from 11,360 schools across 10 states in India, in partnership with the central and state governments.

Nikkei Asia Prize, an annual award, is instituted to recognise outstanding achievements contributing to sustainable development and for a better future of Asia.

Since 1996, Nikkei Inc., one of the largest media corporations in Japan, has been presenting the awards to honour people in Asia who have made significant contributions in one of the three areas: Economic and Business Innovation, Science, Technology and Environment and Culture and Community. PTI RA BN AMS

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The draft of Trafficking of Persons (Prevention, Protection and Rehablitation) Bill 2016 was released by WCD minister Maneka Gandhi but it got a thumbs down from those working against human trafficking.

By Neetu Chandra Sharma: Experts have panned the draft anti-trafficking Bill released by the Ministry of Women and Child Development (WCD) claiming that it was "toothless" and brought nothing new to the table. The draft of Trafficking of Persons (Prevention, Protection and Rehablitation) Bill 2016 was released by WCD minister Maneka Gandhi but it got a thumbs down from those working against human trafficking.

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Ineffective anti-trafficking draft Bill

The bill has features similar to the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act 1956, which it proposes to improve upon. The similarities include mandatory registration for placement agencies, the very hub of human trafficking. "The new bill proposes mandatory registration of placement agencies, but registration of these agencies is already mandatory. There are still lakhs of illegal placement agencies trafficking women and children for domestic and sex work without any tab," said Ranjana Kumari, director, Centre for Social Research. Interestingly, the government has proposed a new fund for the welfare and rehabilitation of victims and that too, lacks explanation on its utilisation. The Bill says that the amount would be credited to the fund through voluntary donations, contributions or subscriptions made by any individual or organisation.

"There is no clarity on this fund such as what would be the amount, who will manage it, how would it used categorically etc. We are afraid that it would also have the same fate as Nirbhaya fund which still remains unutilised," said Kumari. Maneka Gandhi, while releasing the bill, said the draft bill plugs in loopholes in existing laws and brings within its fold additional crimes pertaining to trafficking which don't find a place in the existing laws. Protocols will also be worked out for those trafficked from other countries.

Women activists have called the Bill unrealistic. "Cross border and regional trafficking can be monitored but what about internal trafficking in cities? The Bill requires more consultations with states and experts. Itis not factual but just another document from a new government," said Barkha Singh, a women activist & former chairperson of Delhi Commission for Women.

Also read: International Missing Children's Day: A child goes missing every 8 minutes in India

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The Oscar-winning composer has been awarded for his contribution towards creating, preserving and showcasing South Asian traditional fusion music.

By India Today Web Desk: Music composer AR Rahman has another beautiful feather added to his cap, with Japan's Fukuoka prize, 2016. The Oscar-winning musician was conferred with the prestigious award on Monday for his outstanding contribution towards creating, preserving and showcasing South Asian traditional fusion music.

The Fukuoka Prize is an award established by the city of Fukuoka, and the Yokatopia Foundation, to honour the outstanding work of individuals or organisations in preserving or creating Asian culture. There are three prize categories: Grand Prize, Academic Prize, and Arts and Culture Prize. Last year, noted Indian Historian Ramchandra Guha was conferred with Fukuoka Prize in academic category.

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In 1995, Rahman was the recipient of Mauritius National Award and the Malaysian Award for his contributions to music. A four-time National Film Award winner and recipient of six Tamil Nadu State Film Awards, Rahman has a total of 15 Filmfare Awards in his kitty.

In 2009, Rahman won the Broadcast Film Critics Association Award, the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, the BAFTA Award for Best Film Music and two Academy Awards (Best Original Score and Best Original Song, which he shared with Gulzar) for his Slumdog Millionaire score--at the 81st Academy Awards.

Previous recipients of the award from India include legendary sitarist Ravi Shankar, dancer Padma Subrahmanyam, historian Romila Thapar, sarod player Amjad Ali Khan and historian Ramachandra Guha.

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By Siddhartha Rai: The India-Bangladesh border along Assam would be sealed by the end of this year putting an end to the menace of infiltration, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) general secretary and Assam in-charge Ram Madhav told Mail Today. The border would be jointly patrolled by the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) and the Border Security Force (BSF) of India. Chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal had made similar announcement asserting that infiltration will be completely plugged in two years. The move will fulfil BJP's major poll promise. The party had contested elections primarily on issues of infiltration and illegal Bangladeshi migrants damaging the cultural identity and demography of the state.

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Ramifications

"The victory in Assam has ramifications which are ideological, local and national as well as international. We promised two things in the elections: development and the security of the identity, honour and culture of Assam which has been facing the perennial problem of infiltration. A lot of the border had been sealed post Indo-Bangladesh Land Boundary Agreement and the remaining will be sealed by 2016," said Madhav. The BJP leader also said action would soon begin against illegal migrants living in the state. "The National Register of Citizens of India (NRC), which is under preparation, will be completed soon and then the state can take legal action, though it cannot deport them, as it is the domain of the Union government," Madhav said. The party general secretary, a former RSS functionary, said that the BJP's victory has come at an opportune time so far as national politics was concerned. "At the national level, the victory came at the right time. It has been a gift to the PM on the second anniversary of BJP's coming to power. The victory has changed the mood of the entire country since many had started thinking that BJP was on the downhill slide," Madhav said.

Madhav also stressed the international implications impinging BJP's Assam conquest. "The victory was important for our Look East or Act East policy as Northeast is a geostrategic territory. We can connect India by land to countries as far as Malaysia and even Singapore." Will Assam be declared a Tribal State? Madhav refused to give a definitive answer, though indicated towards it being a strong possibility. "Such a decision comes only with the census, which is up for 2021. There are six communities that are asking for the status of Scheduled Tribe and their demand is genuine.

If the status is bestowed on them, then if the overall population allows for such a status of the state as per the next census, a Constitutional process will be followed. The matter is being followed up by the home ministry," he said. The chief architect of BJP's victory, Madhav said he had his eyes on the upcoming assembly polls in Manipur, Meghalaya and Tripura in 2017 and Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland in 2019. "We have already formed a non-Congress alliance in the Northeast. The alliance goes by the name of North East Democratic Alliance," Madhav said. Meanwhile, Madhav, also credited with the formation of BJP-PDP government in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), said that though radicalism within the youth of the valley had raised its head currently, the security establishment had handled it effectively and in a tough manner. On the issue of relocation of Kashmiri Pundits, Madhav said the state government was committed, but the issue had been twisted by rumours.

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"The chief minister has said in the House that they will be relocated. The separatists have, however, indulged in hypocrisy. They first welcomed the Pundits and now they are opposing them. They are acting at the behest of external forces. Pundits can be relocated in exclusive localities, mixed localities or can go back to their villages. This is a call they will have to take; we are no one to impose our views on them," said Madhav.

Also read: Assam BJP's Sarbananda Sonowal wants to stop infiltration, will seal border with Bangladesh in 2 years

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North Korea has never had a successful launch of the Musudan, which theoretically has the range to reach any part of Japan and the US territory of Guam.

In this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the country's army test-fires an underwater ballistic missile. (Photo: KCNA/via Reuters)

By Reuters: North Korea attempted to fire a missile from its east coast early on Tuesday morning but the launch appears to have failed, South Korean military officials told Reuters.

The launch attempt took place at around 5:20 am Seoul time (2020 GMT), said the officials, who asked not to be identified, without elaborating.

Japan put its military alert on Monday for a possible North Korean ballistic missile launch, state broadcaster NHK reported.

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Tension in Northeast Asia



Tension in Northeast Asia has been high since North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in January and followed that with a satellite launch and test launches of various missiles.

South Korea's Yonhap News Agency said it appeared North Korea had attempted to launch an intermediate-range Musudan missile. North Korea attempted three test launches of the Musudan in April, all of which failed, US and South Korean officials have said.

North Korea has never had a successful launch of the Musudan, which theoretically has the range to reach any part of Japan and the US territory of Guam.

The attempted launch took place near the east coast city of Wonson, one of the South Korean officials said, the same area where previous Musudan tests had taken place.

The flurry of weapons technology tests this year had come in the run-up to the first congress in 36 years of North Korea's ruling Worker's Party early this month. Tuesday's attempted launch appears to have been its first missile test since then.

ALSO READ: North Korea warns US to stop 'hooliganism or die a dog's death'



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By PTI: Geneva, May 31 (PTI) Unfavourable weather conditions may have been behind the sudden, mysterious retreat of the mighty Mongol army from Eastern Europe in 1242, just when it seemed poised to conquer Hungary.

The sudden retreat by the Mongols has puzzled experts for hundreds of years.

The Mongol army had conquered their way out of Asia and into Russia, winning every battle they had fought. After making their way into Eastern Europe during the early 1200s, the army abruptly turned back to Russia, never to return.

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Some have suggested it was Mongol politics, while others have maintained that armies in the Eastern Europe were putting up much more of a fight than the Mongols had expected.

In a new study, the researchers suggest that the reason might be much more mundane - simple bad weather.

Ulf Buntgen from the Swiss Federal Research Institute and Nicola Di Cosmo from the Institute for Advanced Study in the US studied tree ring data from Hungary and historical records, which showed that the weather during the time of the Mongol invasion was not well suited for an army travelling on horseback.

According to them, horses used by the Mongols survived by eating the grasses that were plentiful in Asia and Russia - grasses that were healthy and strong due to several years of good weather.

However, tree ring data, and some evidence in historical writings suggest that the winter of 1242 caused widespread freezing, Phys.org reported.

During spring, when the Mongols arrived, the snow melted and flooded the part of Hungary that sits at low elevations.

Melting ice and snow would have puddled, preventing the grass for growing very well that spring, leaving little for the horses to eat.

The water also made the land muddy, making travel very difficult. As a result, Mongols simply decided against progressing further because it did not seem worth the trouble, researchers suggest.

The study was published in the journal Nature. PTI MHN SAR SAR

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Meeting for the first time after the assembly elections, the Polit Bureau was of the view that "electoral tactics evolved in West Bengal was not in consonance with the Central Committee decision based on the political tactical line".

By Javed M. Ansari : The CPI(M) Polit Bureau has expressed its disapproval of the decision to have an electoral understanding with the Congress party in the recently concluded assembly elections in West Bengal. Meeting for the first time after the assembly elections the Polit Bureau was of the view that "electoral tactics evolved in West Bengal was not in consonance with the Central Committee decision based on the political tactical line". "There shall be no alliance or understanding with the Congress party," party added.

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BENGAL LEADERS STAND THEIR GROUND



In real terms what it does mean is that while the resolution is a kind of a setback for the line taken by Sitaram Yechury and the Bengal unit, it is no way a defeat for those batting for closer cooperation with all those opposed to the BJP including the Congress party. In fact, according to sources, the leaders from Bengal not only stand their ground and, vigorously defend the line they had adopted, they even strongly advocated continuing the understanding with the Congress party. "True we did badly, on our own we would have done worse" one senior PB member is reported to have said at the meeting. Many of them even underscored the point that the continuation of the alliance was necessary to ensure the survival of the party in the state.

"We may have failed to get the kind of results we expected in the elections but in order to face the terror tactics of the Trinamool its essential that we continue with this understanding," said a senior PB member. Most of the members from the state repeatedly made the point that the decision to forge an understanding with the Congress party, was not something that was forced on them by central leadership of the party. "The workers on the ground were the ones who pushed for it", he added.

However, even those batting in favor of continuing with the understanding in Bengal, were of the opinion that it was state specific tactic dictated by the extra ordinary ground realities in the state.. "We are in way advocating a deviation from the line "of no truck with the Congress party" that was decided by the Central Committee.

The last has obviously not been heard on the issue as the Central Committee (apex policy making body of the party) meeting scheduled for later in the month will also have its say on the issue. Prakash Karat, the former party General Secretary of the party, has long been opposed to any truck with the Congress party, a line that is said to have the support of Kerela unit of the party where the two parties have been at each others throat for decades.

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ALSO READ: We are political soldiers, we won Kerala battle, we lost West Bengal, says Sitaram Yechury





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By PTI: New Delhi, May 31 (PTI) Rating agency Fitch today said that telecom giant Airtel to may not bid for premium 700 Mhz band spectrum in the upcoming auction due to its high price and limited availability of devices. "We do not expect Bharti to bid in the upcoming auction of 700 MHz in India, given the high indicative price for this spectrum, limited device availability and the companys ownership of alternative spectrum (1800MHz/2300MHz) to roll out 4G services," Fitch Ratings said in a statement.

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The government is preparing for next round of spectrum auction in July in which airwaves worth Rs 5.66 lakh crore will be put up for sale.

Telecom Commission has approved a record high base price of Rs 11,485 crore per Mhz for the 700 Mhz band. If all available radiowaves under this get sold at the Trai-suggested price, it alone will yield a whopping Rs 4 lakh crore. Fitch Ratings has "affirmed Bharti Airtels long term foreign currency issuer default rating and senior secured rating at BBB-", the agency said in a statement.

It also affirmed the same rating for Bharti Airtel International (Netherlands) BVs bonds. This entity manages Bharti Airtels Africa operation.

The credit rating indicates ability of a company to pay back debt. While AAA ratings denotes highest credit quality, BBB is granted for good credit quality indicating that expectations of default risk are currently low. (MORE) PTI PRS MR

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By PTI: Bhubaneswar, May 31 (PTI) Senior BJP leader and former MP Rudra Madhab Ray passed away at a hospital here today following prolonged illness.

He was 79.

Ray, who had been ailing for quite some time, breathed his last while undergoing treatment at a private hospital, family sources said.

A three-time MLA in Odisha assembly from Daspalla constituency, Ray had been elected to the Lok Sabha in 2009 from Kandhamal seat as a BJD candidate.

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However, Ray who had long association with the Janata Dal and Biju Janata Dal joined BJP after being suspended from BJD in 2014.

Ray, regarded as an influential leader and good organiser, was associated with a number of activities in social, educational and cultural sectors.

A host of leaders and dignitaries including Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik condoled the demise of Ray. In a message, the chief minister described Ray as an effective leader and organiser.

Union Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, Odisha BJP unit president Basanta Panda, senior BJP leader Bijay Mohapatra, Rourkela MLA Dillip Ray and State Parliamentary Affairs Minister Bikram Keshari Arukh expressed grief over his demise. PTI AAM SKN CR ANP

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The victim is said to be the daughter of the vice-president of a corporate firm.
The China Tibetology Research Centre (CTRC) in Beijing, which this week hosted Bharatiya Janata Party leader and MP Subramanian Swamy as well as Indian Embassy officials, has discussed expanding links with India.

By Ananth Krishnan: China's premier government think-tank that advises Tibet policy has for the first time signalled its readiness to open its doors to India, officials said, with moves underfoot to initiate exchanges between Indian and China-based Tibetan academics.

The China Tibetology Research Centre (CTRC) in Beijing, which this week hosted Bharatiya Janata Party leader and MP Subramanian Swamy as well as Indian Embassy officials, has discussed expanding links with India. In the past, India has always been viewed with particular sensitivity, officials say, given the Dalai Lama's presence and the sizeable Tibetan community.



Indian scholars in Tibet universities

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While the CTRC is an official think-tank that parrots Beijing's views on Tibet, exchanges could for the first time open up universities in Tibet to Indian scholars on a large scale considering the CTRC's ties.

"The CTRC said they had cooperation with 22 countries but I was surprised to find very little with India," said Dr. Swamy. "I will write to the Prime Minister and suggest we look at a joint formal collaboration between the CTRC and an institution such as the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), which is currently headed by Professor Lokesh Chandra, who is himself a prominent Tibetologist."

Swamy said this could open up Tibet and its universities to Indian scholars and vice-versa. He has also proposed installing a first ever chair on Hindu religious studies in a university in Tibet as well as a chair on Mahayana Buddhism in an institution in India.

"The time has come for us to normalise our relations with China to the extent that we can interact across the border, whether in Tibet or Xinjiang, which would boost economic cooperation and the ability of tourists to travel," he said.



China to reconsider UNSC stance?

Dr. Swamy, who is in China at the invitation of a foreign ministry-linked think-tank and will undertake the Kailash Mansarovar pilgrimage in Tibet starting this week, said he was of the view following interactions with officials in Beijing that recent strains in ties, such as over China blocking India's moves at the United Nations Security Council to list the Jaish-e-Muhammad chief Masood Azhar, could be ironed out. Among the officials he met was the head of the foreign affairs committee of the Chinese upper house, as well as a vice-minister of the finance ministry.

China would likely be amenable if India submitted an application that focused primarily on hard evidence linked with Azhar rather than generally censure Pakistan as an epicentre of terror.

"If India in the UN concentrated more on getting Azhar rather than seeking a censure of Pakistan as a sponsor of terror, as a tactical move that would be more prudent," he said. "Based on what I have learnt here, I would be very surprised if China continued to obstruct, once it is limited to hard evidence."

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"My impression is India can expect cooperation from China on the issue of dealing with Masood Azhar as a terrorist who should face trial in India," he said, adding that a tripartite approach with China, India and Pakistan could help iron out differences on the terror issue, especially with China becoming, like India, a party increasingly affected by terror emanating from Pakistan.

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By PTI: Washington, May 31 (PTI) The Antarctic Ocean has remained unaffected by climate change and global warming due to the deep, centuries-old water that is continually pulled to the surface, a new study has found.

The study from the University of Washington and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US resolves a scientific conundrum, and an inconsistent pattern of warming often seized on by climate deniers.

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Observations and climate models show that the unique currents around Antarctica continually pull deep, centuries-old water up to the surface - seawater that last touched Earths atmosphere before the machine age, and has never experienced fossil fuel-related climate change.

"With rising carbon dioxide you would expect more warming at both poles, but we only see it at one of the poles, so something else must be going on," said lead author Kyle Armour, assistant professor at University of Washington.

Gale-force westerly winds that constantly whip around Antarctica act to push surface water north, continually drawing up water from below.

The Southern Oceans water comes from such great depths, and from sources that are so distant, that it will take centuries before the water reaching the surface has experienced modern global warming.

Other places in the oceans, like the west coast of the Americas and the equator, draw seawater up from a few hundred meters depth, but that doesnt have the same effect.

"The Southern Ocean is unique because its bringing water up from several thousand meters," Armour said.

The water surfacing off Antarctica last saw Earths atmosphere centuries ago in the North Atlantic, then sank and followed circuitous paths through the worlds oceans before resurfacing off Antarctica, hundreds or even a thousand years later.

Delayed warming of the Antarctic Ocean is commonly seen in global climate models. However, the culprit had been wrongly identified as churning, frigid seas mixing extra heat downward.

"The old idea was that heat taken up at the surface would just mix downward, and thats the reason for the slow warming," Armour said.

"But the observations show that heat is actually being carried away from Antarctica, northward along the surface," he said.

In the Atlantic, the northward flow of the oceans surface continues all the way to the Arctic.

Researchers used dyes in model simulations to show that seawater that has experienced the most climate change tends to clump up around the North Pole.

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This is another reason why the Arctics ocean and sea ice are bearing the brunt of global warming, while Antarctica is largely oblivious, researches said.

The study was published in the journal Nature Geoscience. PTI MHN SAR SAR

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According to the police, the incident took place around 4am when Nuruddin went to pick the passengers up. There were six of them - four African men and two women.

By India Today Web Desk: Six Africans allegedly beat up an Ola cab driver after he refused to admit more than four people in his cab. The driver, identified as Nuruddin, was roughed up in south Delhi's Rajpur Khurd area, a day after locals attacked Africans in the same locality. Among those arrested, is a woman, who was earlier allegedly involved in a visa fraud case in Bengaluru last year.

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Five others accused of beating the cab driver are absconding. According to the police, the incident took place around 4am when Nuruddin went to pick the passengers up. There were six of them - four African men and two women. An altercation took place between Nuruddin and the passengers when he refused to accommodate all six of them in his cab, a senior police official said.

CAB DRIVER HECKLED



The group then allegedly attacked Nuruddin and ran away. The injured driver, however, managed to hold back one woman, who is from Rwanda. Nuruddin, who sustained injuries on his face, was rushed to AIIMS. The woman has been detained for questioning. A case has been registered and efforts are on to identify the other accused people. Nuruddin recalled, "He abused me in Hindi. I objected to it, after which they started thrashing me. They also robbed me of Rs 10,000," Nuruddin said.

"A meeting was organised to sensitise people on Friday at Rajpur Khurd, a day after four separate incidents of assault took place on people from African countries like Nigeria, Uganda, South Africa and Cameroon," a senior police official said. Addressing one such gathering, DCP (South) Ishwar Singh said, "The African nationals are our guests and friends. They have come here just because they trust us. The way you behave with them will have repercussions on our brothers living outside the country," he said.

Union Minister of State for External Affairs V K Singh, along with police chief Alok Kumar Verma, also addressed one such meeting, at Chhatarpur Extension. The meetings attended by both locals and African nationals, are being organised by ACPs in the sub-divisions, under the supervision of their seniors.



Also read: African immigrants worried after string of racial attacks in India





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The brutal murder of a young Congolese man, Masonda Ketada Olivier, in Vasant Kunj on May 20 and subsequent attacks on Africans have jolted the otherwise shy and inhibited community.

By Baishali Adak: On the night of January 15, 2014, former Delhi law minister and AAP leader Somnath Bharti, raided the house of some Ugandan women in Malviya Nagar in order to bust a "drug and prostitution ring."

MEA assures assistance

That is when the national Capital made global headlines and earned widespread infamy for being 'racist.' In the past one week, that title has come back to haunt Delhi with people of African origin residing in Delhi, seething in pain and anguish over the recent turn of events.

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The brutal murder of a young Congolese man, Masonda Ketada Olivier, in Vasant Kunj on May 20 and subsequent attacks on Africans have jolted the otherwise shy and inhibited community.

However, the MEA has assured the family of the Congolese national of a speedy trial in the case and prosecution of all those responsible for the crime as per law. This was conveyed by a senior official of External Affairs Ministry (MEA), who met the family members of Olivier at the airport on their arrival.

He also informed them that the government of India will bear all expenses related to dispatch of mortal remains of Olivier, MEA spokesperson Vikas Swarup said. He said that the family members have thanked the Indian government for its assistance. They were told that External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has instructed speedy trial in the case. As of now, Swaraj and her office are busy trying to assuage revolting African embassies. But there is no consoling the Africans living in Delhi who are facing daily harassments on the streets.

Racial slurs against Africans

Ingim Dozie, a 30-year-old saloon owner in Mehrauli, has been living in Delhi since 2013. The Nigerian moved to India for his grandmother's treatment, who is a severe diabetic. "I still haven't been able to adjust myself to the whistles, hoots and racial slurs, which are hurled on us time and again," he says. "Only a few days back, I was walking towards my shop, which is in a dark alleyway. Some men began laughing and calling me, 'habshi.' I was later told it's the Hindi word for monkey."

His customer, Jave from Cameroon, faced a similar harrowing experience. "I was on my way to Hauz Khas. A woman and her child were approaching the road from the other side. Both looked at me with fearful eyes. Then the lady stooped and said something in her son's ear, after which he started running away from me. I have no idea what she told him."

"I am sad to see children being fed with lies and rumours about us. We are human beings. We don't eat babies or kidnap them. Why do you have to poison their minds?" said the anguished 20-year-old.

Another recurrent problem is being friends with Indian women. Gotham from Tanzania says, "I was beaten up for just smiling and saying hello to a local woman. We have known each other as neighbours for some time and she had no objections. Nobody even asked her if she had a complaint. I was just punched in my face."

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He added, "African people are an open society. We don't segregate our women as another race. I am not sure why Indian men behave like this."

THE AAP LINK



From Khirki Village and Extension, south Delhi, where AAP's ex-law minister, conducted his midnight raid, most Africans have left. A store owner, Ajay Saini, said, "Earlier, they were all over. There was a street named, Nigerian Gali, because of their dominating presence. Now, 90 per cent of them have left. They have all dispersed to Sangam Vihar, Neb Sarai, and other areas."

Local businessman, Ajay Gautam, heartily thanks Bharti. Also, he criticises the media for portraying the incident in a 'biased' manner. "We were the victims here," he insists, "They would party all night and play loud music. We have seen them carrying packets of white powder, most certainly drugs; their women would be out in skimpy clothes at 2 am. There is a vast difference in their culture and ours. How do you expect us to tolerate this?"

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The few remaining African women however, have a different story. Rose Dungham said, "I have changed my dressing habits. I understand sensitivities. But I suppose the taunts don't depend on the clothes I wear. They are mostly because of my black skin colour."

Also read: African immigrants worried after string of racial attacks in India



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Trump frequently retweets messages from other people's accounts, something he's admitted "gets me in trouble".

By AP: Peter Costanzo is the man who helped turn Donald Trump into @RealDonaldTrump.

That, of course, is Trump's Twitter account - a high-octane portal for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to pump out insults, political attacks and self-promotion to more than 8 million followers. But the billionaire's foray into the world of social media began with a much simpler purpose, yet one that's still distinctively Trump: making money.

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Costanzo crossed paths with Trump in 2009 when he was working as online marketing director for the publishing company putting out the businessman's book, "Think Like a Champion." Twitter was still in its infancy at the time. But Costanzo saw the 140-character-per-message platform as a new tool that the real estate mogul could use to boost sales and reach a broader audience.

SELLING THE IDEA

He was given seven minutes to make his pitch to Trump - "Not five minutes, not 10," Constanzo said - in a boardroom at Trump Tower in Manhattan that appeared to be the same one used on Trump's reality television show.

Trump liked what he heard.

"I said, 'Let's call you @RealDonaldTrump - you're the real Donald Trump,'" Costanzo said. "He thought about it for a minute and said, 'I like it. Let's do it.'"

Costanzo would spend the next several months helping coordinate Trump's Twitter account, as well as his official Facebook page, often sending out messages for his famous client. He credited Trump with being an early adopter of the service and says he believes Trump understood its potential.

"He seemed very excited about the idea of being able to reach people so directly," Costanzo said. "I think he immediately got it."

Trump's office confirmed the outlines of Costanzo's account. Costanzo - a 51-year-old who goes by @PeterCostanzo on Twitter - now works as digital and archival publishing manager for The Associated Press, a position that is separate from the news department.

While Costanzo's moniker for Trump on Twitter may have survived, the early days of the businessman's account bear little resemblance to the current iteration, which frequently drives news in the White House race.

FINAL APPROVAL FOR EVERY TWEET

During the roughly eight months when Costanzo was in charge of the burgeoning Trump Twitter account, each missive was carefully crafted by the publishing company or the businessman's office. Trump got final approval before Costanzo pressed "Tweet."

Most of the messages were quotations from the book, a collection of Trump lessons on life and business. "My persona will never be that of a wallflower - I'd rather build walls than cling to them," read one early tweet.

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Sometimes Trump would send word through an associate that he wanted to offer a holiday greeting. His retweets were rare then.

SHOUTING OUT TWEETS

Now, Trump starts firing off messages early in the morning and often continues past midnight. He'll shout out tweets for aides to type during the day and take over himself at night. Spelling and grammar are sometimes amiss, and exclamation points are plentiful.

Trump frequently retweets messages from other people's accounts, something he's admitted "gets me in trouble." He faced particular criticism for retweeting an unflattering photo of former rival Ted Cruz's wife and has since said he wished he hadn't done that.

Costanzo, who no longer has any role with Trump's Twitter account or books, says he's marveled at the following his most famous client has built on social media. Asked whether he had any Twitter advice for Trump now, Costanzo said, "He seems to be doing just fine without me."

FIVE OF HIS 'WORST TWEETS'



Obama is, without question, the WORST EVER president. I predict he will now do something really bad and totally stupid to show manhood! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2014

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I have never seen a thin person drinking Diet Coke. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 14, 2012

Robert Pattinson should not take back Kristen Stewart. She cheated on him like a dog & will do it again--just watch. He can do much better! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 17, 2012

.@ariannahuff is unattractive both inside and out. I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man- he made a good decision. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2012

Amazing how the haters & losers keep tweeting the name F**kface Von Clownstick?? like they are so original & like no one else is doing it... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2013

Also read:

Obama: Trump has shown ignorance of global affairs, rattled world leaders

Fundraising row: Donald Trump fires his national political director Rick Wiley, say sources





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Locals said there was an explosion inside the depot around midnight.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar is coming to Pulgaon to assess the situation.

By India Today Web Desk: At least 20 people were killed and 19 others were injured on Monday night after fire broke out at a military ammunition depot in Pulgaon in Maharashtra's Wardha district. Locals said there was an explosion inside the depot around midnight.

The injured people are being treated in a nearby hospital.

Rao Inderjit Singh, MoS Defence, said the government is ascertaining the facts under which circumstances fire broke out at the Army depot.

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Here are the latest developments:

Two officers and 18 Defence Security Corp (DSC) jawans were injured in the blaze, some of them critically, an Army officer said. "The main fire at one of the sheds has been extinguished. The situation is being stabilised. Secondary fire and explosions cannot be ruled out now," the Army officer added. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar to visit Maharashtra's Pulgaon to take stock of situation. Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar will visit Pulgaon later today. Modi on Tuesday expressed grief over the deaths caused by a fire at Central Ammunition Depot in Wardha in Maharashtra. "My thoughts are with the bereaved families. I pray that those who are injured recover quickly," Modi tweeted. "Have asked Manohar Parrikar to take stock of the situation," he said. Congress president Sonia Gandhi has expressed shock and deep anguish at the reported death of jawans and officers in the fire at Central Ammunition Depot near Wardha. Following the mishap, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said in a tweet: "News of fire at Central Ammunition Depot, Pulgaon is very unfortunate and disturbing. Spoke to Wardha collector & took stock of the situation." The fire at the ammunition dump is reported to have spread after secondary explosions. Three nearby villages have been evacuated. People from other villages are also being taken to a safe distance. The casualty figure is expected to rise since several others have been injured critically in the accident. Explosions could still be heard, almost eight hours after the fire broke out around 2 am today. Water to extinguish fire is being transported from the tankers of nearby villages. Army says firefighters have controlled the massive blaze, but smaller fires and repeated explosions remain a concern. One shed reportedly caught fire after the initial explosion. Army is not ruling out sabotage behind the tragedy. The central ammunition depot at Pulgaon, 110 km from Nagpur, is one India's biggest ammunition depots.

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By PTI: (Attn.editors: The following press release comes to you under an arrangement with PRNewswire. PTI takes no editorial responsibility for the same). For the First Time in India, NewsBytes Launches its News Bot on Facebook Messenger

GURGAON, India, May 31, 2016/PRNewswire/ -- Started by IIT, IIM and Ivy League alumni; Gurgaon-based news technology start-up NewsBytes launched its automated bot on Facebook Messenger. The beta version of their cross-platform bot is a part of Facebooks Messenger program revealed at F8 conference. It is known to be Indias first news bot. (Logo:http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160531/10147254)

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In its one year of existence, NewsBytes, by Elysium Labs Private Limited, with around 40k downloads on Play Store, has seen a spectacular growth so far. It is one of the highest-rated news apps in India. Its primary focus is to reduce information overload in your everyday news consumption. Its engine along with human curators picks up the most significant news events of the day, summarizes them and creates the contextual timeline around them.

Available globally, in English, the bot lets users read latest news along with its timeline, search across the content and subscribe to the daily news digest. The readability is enhanced by the card-like view, further supported by appropriate images. One can decide to read just the headlines or the entire story behind that particular news item. (MORE)PRNewswire DL

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Top Rail Bhavan officials confirmed that the government wants the entire 508-km corridor to be built on an elevated stretch to avoid any legal and environmental hurdles regarding land acquisition.

By Maneesh Pandey, Rakesh Ranjan: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ambitious bullet train project between Mumbai and Ahmedabad, may take the elevated route. That is if the Japanese consultants give a go-ahead to Rail Bhavan's request for a route review before the execution stage.

Top Rail Bhavan officials confirmed that the Indian government wants the entire 508-km corridor to be built on an elevated stretch to avoid any legal and environmental hurdles regarding land acquisition. PM Modi, who has been pushing his ministers to speed up the big-ticket projects, has often encountered legal barriers in several states.

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Bullet trains facing legal issues

Top Railway Board officials told Mail Today that anticipating a possible derailment of the bullet train project because of legal issues, they have requested the Japanese government "to revise and reassess the feasibility of doing away with constructing the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail (HSR) link on embankment and build it entirely on an elevated corridor". The government wants to know the cost implications of this idea.

A senior Railway Board official said: "Constructing the elevated corridor will save the Centre the hassle of land acquisition. For an elevated corridor, compensation amount to land owners will be little. Also, it will ensure speedy execution of the project."

Already more than 440 rail projects have been stuck over land acquisition. This, according to a CAG report of 2015, has resulted in cost overrun of Rs 1.07 lakh crore. Railways also faced major hurdles in acquiring land for its ambitious dedicated freight corridors that will significantly decongest the railway network and increase the speed of passenger trains.

Rail Minister Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu has announced that the bullet train will start its operation in 2023. But if both the Indian and Japanese governments agree to the idea of an elevated corridor, the deadline can also be advanced, say Rail Bhavan officials.

The Detailed Project Report (DPR) submitted by Japan to the Rail Ministry has proposed 25 per cent of construction on elevated corridor, 64 per cent of the work on surface (mostly embankments) and 6 per cent as tunnels. This includes the 21-km undersea tunnel between Thane creek and Virar in Mumbai. However, the rail ministry has proposed to the Japanese government to explore the feasibility of converting the entire route running through 12 stations into an elevated corridor.

"If the Japanese authorities find the proposal feasible, the DPR will be revised," an official said. "The difference in the project cost would only be Rs 7,000 to Rs 8,000 crore. Construction of the elevated corridor will be costlier per km, but the government may save on the cost of land acquisition and delay overruns.

India may follow China's strategy

India is also closely watching China, which has managed to bring down its cost of construction by going elevated. To put the project in a fast lane, the Rail Bhavan is also urging their Japanese counterparts to appoint a design consultant soon. According to the MoU between India and Japan, the loan agreement will be signed by December 2016 only after which Japan will go ahead with fund disbursal by mid-2017. The appointment of design and general consultants for the project can take place only after that. The construction work is scheduled to begin by 2018. But the Railways officials are in no mood to sit idle for nearly a year.

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India has requested Japan to appoint the consultants before the loan agreement is signed and make possible a grant of Rs 1,500 crore towards fees (total consultancy charge being nearly Rs 3,000 crore) for consultants to get the work started. This will advance work by at least a year.

The urgency to save time is also because the project is not without a few engineering challenges. Such pioneering projects like the Kashmir Rail Link had posed many problems delaying them by years. Railway officials on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad HSR route are readying for a similar challenge in constructing the undersea tunnel in Mumbai. But this time, India has with it Japanese experience and expertise in constructing tunnels under the seabed. Japan and the UK have undersea tunnels. The 53.85 km Seikan Tunnel in Japan is the longest one followed by the 50.5 km Channel Tunnel between the UK and France.



Also read: High-speed Spanish Talgo train's trial run begins in India: List of fastest trains in the world



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By PTI: New Delhi, May 31 (PTI) Faced with shortage of pulses and rising prices, Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh today said the governments decision on GM pulses will depend on green signal from the biotech regulator GEAC.

Currently, Bt cotton is the only genetically modified (GM) crop allowed for commercial cultivation in the country. The previous government had put a moratorium on commercial cultivation of Bt Brinjal in 2010.

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Asked if the government would promote GM pulses to boost pulses production, Singh said, "our ministry will implement the decision taken by the regulator Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) under the Environment Ministry."

He was responding to queries at a press briefing on the governments achievement in the last two years.

Earlier this month, the government had informed Parliament that ICAR-Indian Institute of Pulses Research, Kanpur has developed transgenic events for resistance against gram pod borer in chickpea and pigeon pea.

The government had said the institute has submitted the application to Review Committee on Genetic Manipulation (RCGM) for event selection trials of four transgenic events, two each in chickpea and pigeon pea.

After the selection of appropriate events and clearance of RCGM, transgenic events will be submitted to GEAC for further observation and approval of BRL1 trial, it added.

The government had also informed that a group of secretaries has recommended resolving regulatory issues of GM crops.

Earlier during the day, NITI Aayog member Ramesh Chand said increase in the minimum support price of pulses alone will not help in raising output without technological breakthrough.

Pulses output is estimated to be 17.33 million tonnes this year, marginally higher than previous years production of 17.15 million tonnes, but much below the record 19.25 million tonnes achieved in 2013-14 crop year.

There is a deficit of 7-8 million tonnes as annual demand is estimated to be more than 23 million tonnes. PTI LUX JTR ANU

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By India Today Web Desk: In February, author JK Rowling surprised her fans by declaring that an 8th part of the famous Harry Potter series will be released soon.

It was later announced that the 8th instalment--which is actually a two-part play, titled Harry Potter and the Cursed Child--.will also be published as a book.

And as if the buzz around the play wasn't enough, JK Rowling's official website has now released the first set of photographs featuring a grown-up Harry Potter, Ginny and their son, Albus.

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"We're just a week away from the first preview of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Parts One and Two and today we are thrilled to share character portraits of Harry, Ginny and Albus Severus Potter, as they will appear in the play," a quote on Pottermore reads.

Although the cast looks completely different from what we've seen in the Harry Potter movies, the thought of going back to Hogwarts again is what is keeping us excited.

One of the pictures features a young Albus Severus Potter in his robes. While another one is a family photograph of Harry, Ginny and Albus together.

L-R, Jamie Parker as Harry, Sam Clemmett as Albus and Poppy Miller as Ginny. L-R, Jamie Parker as Harry, Sam Clemmett as Albus and Poppy Miller as Ginny.

While this is the first time fans will be seeing the whole cast together, a "special rehearsal edition" script book, also will also be available at midnight on July 31--a day after the Harry Potter play opens in London.



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When 8-year-old Becky from Dublin, Ireland, had had enough of her 'mean teachers' and extra homework, she decided to give the "Demolish company" a call and ask them to knock down her school.

By India Today Web Desk: Come on, accept it, we all felt that way one time or the other during our school lives, wished that our school would just cease to exist. Be it on the morning after summer vacation ended, or on the day of a Math test.



But while we pinned our dream on prayers, 8-year-old Becky from Dublin took matters into her own hands.

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Hold on, she did not get RDX or something. What she did was actually quite hilarious:





Hello, "Demolish company"?

Having had enough of her 'mean teachers' and extra homework that ruined her weekends, Becky decided to give the "Demolish company" a call and ask them to knock down her school.

How she got hold of the number, we do not know. But what we can tell you is that the conversation between this little girl and the "demolition guys" will be one of the most hilarious things you hear today.

Give it a listen:









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By PTI: officers apply for leave

Shimla, May 31 (PTI) Apparently upset over appointment of a junior officer as the chief secretary of Himachal Pradesh, two senior IAS officers of additional chief secretary rank Vineet Chowdhary and Upma Chowdhary have decided to go on leave.

Vineet Chowdhary of 1982 batch and his wife Upma Chowdhary of 1983 batch applied for leave soon after a notification regarding appointment of V C Pharka, also of 1983 batch, as the chief secretary was issued.

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When asked about the development, the couple admitted to have applied for leave but did not give the reasons.

Another IAS officer of 1982 batch, Deepak Shanan, additional chief secretary, who was on leave did not react to the development while other three senior officers are on central deputation. PTI PCL SMN

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A view shows a damaged school that was run by UNICEF in the rebel-controlled area of Jobar, a suburb of Damascus, Syria March 2, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

UNITED NATIONS - The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) on Sunday expressed alarm at the number of migrant and refugee deaths in the past week in the Central Mediterranean, many of whom were believed to be unaccompanied minors.

In anticipation of a major summer upswing of child migrants using the dangerous crossing between Libya and Italy, UNICEF will shortly begin an operation with the Italian government and partners to provide protection support, the UN agency said in a press release.

The UN agency made the expression after at least 700 migrants may have died while trying to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe, the UN's refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Sunday. Hundreds of others are missing after their boats capsized in the waters.

The vast majority of children using the crossing are unaccompanied adolescents and they have faced appalling abuses, exploitation and the possibility of death at every step of their journey.

"The stories which I have personally heard from children making this journey are horrifying. No child should face them. Their lives are in the hands of smugglers who care for nothing other than the money they exhort from them," said Marie-Pierre Poirier, UNICEF special coordinator for the European Refugee and Migrant Crisis.

An average of 1,000 unaccompanied children a month have arrived in Italy this year but UNICEF expects this figures to spike in the coming months.

UNHCR said on Sunday that several shipwrecks had taken place over the weekend as migrants tried to cross the Mediterranean Sea in flimsy vessels.

Nearly 600 people were missing after boats capsized on Wednesday and Thursday, the refuge agency said.
By PTI: From Ashwani K Anand

Rabat (Morocco), May 31 (PTI) India today said it wanted to make Morocco the hub for its economic activities in the African region as the two countries sought to inject fresh momentum in bilateral ties with Vice President Hamid Ansari holding wide-ranging talks with the Moroccan Prime Minister.

Two MoUs on cultural cooperation and institutional training were signed after Ansari met Moroccan Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane and delegation-level talks were held between the two sides.

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"We reviewed all aspects of our expanding cooperation. Morocco is crucial to us for food security as it is the main supplier of phosphate which is crucial for agriculture," Ansari said as the two leaders jointly spoke to the media.

Five Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs) had been finalised between India and Morocco for improving bilateral relations but only two could be signed.

The MoUs on Cultural Exchange and Institutional Training for Foreign Service officers were signed, Secretary Economic Relations Amar Sinha said at a media briefing.

Sinha said the MoUs relating to other three areas of cooperation -- Water Resources, Television Broadcasting and Education -- have been finalised but "could not be signed due to technical issues".

Sinha said the Vice President conveyed to the leadership that the Indian government would like to look at Morocco and expand its economic activities since the two countries have a trade of USD 350 million.

"We would like to use Morocco as a hub for our economic activities in the African region," Sinha quoted the Vice President as saying during the talks.

The Moroccan Prime Minister said India is an important partner for them, Indias Ambassador to Morocco Dinesh Patnaik said.

"The two agreed to make the relations more dimensional for increased cooperation," Patnaik said.

Both the sides stressed on the need for injecting fresh momentum in bilateral relations. Morocco said that they need to look into the issues of political stability, economic development and human resources development, Sinha said.

Ansari said India appreciates Moroccos support for Indias candidature for the UN Security Council.

The two sides identified new areas of mutual cooperation which included information technology, the Vice President said, adding that the MoUs signed will be beneficial for both countries.

He said that India was very happy to receive the King of Morocco Mohammed VI, who came to India last year for the Indo-Africa Summit.

The Vice President said on behalf of the Indian government he invited Prime Minister Benkirane to visit India.

Benkirane said Morocco sees India as a friend. "We will work together for a common future for the Mediterranean region."

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He said the two countries will also work in engaging jointly in efforts towards counter-terrorism. MORE PTI AKA ASK AKJ ASK

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By PTI: From Ashwani K Anand

Rabat (Morocco), May 31 (PTI) India and Morocco today launched the India-Morocco Chamber of Commerce and Industry (IMCCI) here to accelerate the pace of economic development between the two countries.

The chamber was jointly launched by visiting Vice President Hamid Ansari and Moroccan Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane at a function here.

Speaking on the occasion, Ansari said that a Chamber of Commerce and Industry did not exist because "we took things for granted".

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He said that the world is changing and it has become a globalised world.

"We do need bodies like the IMCCI," he added.

Ansari said, "It is a testament to the growing importance of commercial engagement between our two countries".

He said that the IMCCI should focus on the requirements of both sides.

An official spokesman said that bilateral trade between the two countries stood at USD 1.26 billion in 2015 with Indian exports forming roughly 25 per cent of the trade volume.

He said that Morocco has emerged as a favoured destination for investments by Indian firms adding that Indian companies have cumulatively invested more that USD 320 million in Morocco, including in the flagship project, the Indo-Maroc Phosphore SA joint venture.

The last two decades of economic growth have also strengthened Indias private sector and it is keen to expand its global operations, the spokesman said.

Earlier in the evening, Ansari visited the Mohammed VI Imam Training Centre which promotes the values of moderate Islam and is actively working on ideologies and beliefs.

The Centre trains a large number of preachers from the Arab world besides Africa, including women. PTI AKA KUN

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The prime minister has taken personal interest in the strategy and wants a special team to be set up that will work on the challenges of digital jihad.

By Mail Today: Digital jihad and cross-border infiltration of terrorists have been the two biggest challenges for the Narendra Modi government in the last two years even though there has been no major strike in the hinterland. But this, security officials feel, is just "good fortune" and no reason to pat each other's back. However, the government has managed to get a grip on the situation in the Northeast. In a rare act, security forces last year crossed over to Myanmar and carried out an operation against the NSCN (K) soon after the group killed 18 Army personnel in Assam.

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SECURITY THREATS

In case of the Maoist insurgency, the violence is come down and the Centre along with the states is focussing on getting the rebels to surrender. There have been 400 surrenders already whereas the number for 2015 in the corresponding period was 150.

In the last two years, the ISIS threat is making security officials anxious even though the government has downplayed it. But the security establishment is alarmed at the high rate of online indoctrination.

In fact the government is trying to keep pace with the rapidly changing dynamics of ISIS that is making efforts to lure Indian youth. A recent video featuring Indians who joined the group and focusing on India has worried anti-terror officials.

With no concrete mechanism to tackle this threat of youth getting swayed by terror handlers, who are radicalising them on the cyber space, is giving jitters to the security establishment. The government has put in place a countrywide counter-radicalisation strategy to ensure those brainwashed by ISIS ideology can be brought back to the mainstream. This approach has been successful and allowed intelligence agencies to approach the Muslim clergy and leaders to reach out to the community. "Knee-jerk arrests have been discouraged those crossing a certain threshold moving from being radicalised to actually planning terror acts are being taken in custody," said an official.

While 49 youth have been arrested for alleged ISIS links, there are several who were let off after being intercepted and were put through several sessions of counselling. The government has been successful in ensuring the return of many ISIS-bound recruits from the UAE using diplomatic channels. Officials say monitoring the Internet is a tough task and there hasn't been a breakthrough in scaling up the mechanism or the technical knowledge for it. A 24x7 social media monitoring cell is being planned but the plan is still at a nascent stage. "The Internet has broken geographical barriers and time has come to use specialists to crack the online terror indoctrination," said a counter-terror official.

PREVENTIVE MEASURES



The prime minister has taken personal interest in the strategy and wants a special team to be set up that will work on the challenges of digital jihad. While there have been no major terror attacks but the international border with Pakistan has been vulnerable to suspected infiltrations leading to a series of skirmishes between Pakistan based terrorists and security forces.

The attack on the Pathankot airbase earlier this year is a reminder of the critical gaps in the security along the border. In Jammu and Kashmir too, infiltration has gone up but what is also worrying is the increasing number of locals joining militant groups, especially after Afzal Guru's hanging.

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Also read: ISI's 'medical tourism' alarms security agencies





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By PTI: New Delhi, May 30 (PTI) Markets regulator Sebi seems to be on the fast-track mode in case of giving approvals to IPO proposals, as it has cleared 16 such applications this year so far while just four companies await green signal to launch their public offers.

Among the pending ones, three firms -- Hinduja Leyland Finance, Seaways Shipping and Logistics and CL Educate -- filed their IPO prospectus with the regulator on March 30. The draft prospectus of RBL Bank (formerly Ratnakar Bank) was filed in June last year but has been kept in abeyance as the past violation by the company is under examination. The regulator is often accused of taking long time for clearing the IPO issues. However, it approved as many as 16 IPO applications in the first five months of 2016 and only four companies are currently awaiting clearance for launching their public issues. In case of pending approvals, Sebi has sought clarification from the merchant bankers of Hinduja Leyland Finance and Seaways Shipping and Logistics regarding their proposed initial public offers (IPOs). While the initial-share sale programme of CL Educate is currently under process. All the 16 firms had filed draft papers with Sebi during September 2015 and April 2016. Of these, three firms -- Equitas Holdings, Thyrocare Technologies and Ujjivan Financial Services -- have already hit the capital markets and collectively raised Rs 3,500 crore. So far this year, as many as ten companies including Parag Milk Foods, TeamLease Services, Infibeam Incorporation and Quick Heal Technologies -- launched their initial public offerings. Last year, there were 20 main-board IPOs which together pocketed about Rs 15,000 crore, making 2015 the best period in the past few years in terms of fund raising through such plans. In comparison, six IPOs had hit the market in 2014 and garnered just Rs 1,261 crore, while three firms had launched their public issues in 2013 to mobilise Rs 1,284 crore. PTI SP SBT MR

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"Take two and call a Muslim in the morning" reads the tag line of the new spoof commercial that seeks to end Islamophobia.

By India Today Web Desk: Suffering from chronic symptoms of blind intolerance, unthinking bigotry, irrational fear of Muslims? Worry not. Here comes the mock medicine designed to cure all of it in just five minutes- the Islamophobin gum.

This spoof chewing gum commercial was created by the Council on American-Islamic Relation (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization in the US. This witty satirical campaign is to combat the rise of Islamophobia in America.

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The commercial which pokes fun at people who are chronically Islamophobic also showcases the alarming rise of irrational fear of Muslims that is spread across the US. The organisation feels many Americans consider random people who even 'look like' Muslims a potential threat, from an Uber driver named Mohammad to a lady with a veil or a man wearing a turban.



To dispel this enormous cloud of fear and undue stereotyping of Muslims, the CAIR produced this innovative campaign.

The Islamophobin website says "Side effects" of Islamophobin may include "warm feelings toward Muslims, immigrants or refugees and an allergy to the promotion of anti-Muslim bigotry."

The site also hilariously warns, "For those who hold bigoted stereotypes of Muslims and subscribe to Islamophobic conspiracy theories, use of this product may result in feelings of remorse and /or guilt."

On their official website , the group sent out a message saying, "We believe that a little humour goes a long way. With Islamophobia on the rise in the US, what better way to help dispel the bigotry and stereotypes about Islam and Muslims than through satire?"Watch the video below





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"On February 22, agitators set ablaze several vehicles parked near Sukhdev Dhaba and harassed the stranded commuters. They also reportedly misbehaved with some women," says the report on page 141.

By Manjeet Sehgal: The Prakash Committee - appointed by the Punjab and Haryana government to look into the role of officers of civil administration and police during the Jat reservation agitation has exposed how the police officers openly supported the rioters and gave them a free run to loot, riot and set ablaze public and private properties.

WHAT THE REPORT SAYS

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Page 157 of the report, made public by the state government today, says that the National Highway remained blocked between February 20 to 22 near Murthal. According to credible eye-witnesses several rioters riding motorcycles and brandishing firearms were allowed a free run. They terrorised and misbehaved with the commuters, owners of several dhabas along the highway and burnt more than 50 vehicles.

As told to the Punjab and Haryana High Court by the Amicus Curiae Anupam Gupta, the report did mention about the Murthal mayhem but hesitatingly.

"On February 22, agitators set ablaze several vehicles parked near Sukhdev Dhaba and harassed the stranded commuters. They also reportedly misbehaved with some women," says the report on page 141.

RIOTERS INDULGED IN ARSON, LOOTING

The report also says that on February 22 the district administration rescued about 400 vehicles which were trapped in various dhabas and restaurants near Murthal as the NH1 had been blocked by the rioters. The rioters on the night of February 21 and 22 indulged in arson and looting near Sukhdev Dhaba and pelted stones at police.

As per the report, miscreants riding motorcycles and armed with firearms and weapons were allowed a free run on the National Highway on February 21 and 22, 2016 and they continued to burn vehicles and harass and terrorise the helpless and stranded commuters at will.

The committee has recommended exemplary disciplinary action against the DSP and SHO of Murthal police station who were responsible for highway violence.

"It is evident that Satish Kumar DSP and Ajay Dhankar, SHO Murthal did not initiate any action against these miscreants. Exempalary disciplinary/departmental action should be taken against them so that it becomes a deterrent to all such officials who derelict their duties and fail to protect the life and property of citizens," the Prakash Committee report says (Pg 141).

NO HELP FROM POLICE

Another reference to the Murthal mayhem can be found on page 357. A resident of Kurad village, Bijender Singh had told the committee that anti-social elements came on motorcycles and had covered their faces. They were fanned away by the locals but returned on the intervening night of February 21 and 22 and torched about a dozen vehicles.

"He gave shelter to one family in his house during the night of 21/22 February. They were victims of violence on the GT road. Their vehicles were burnt by the rioters. He helped them leave for Delhi the next morning. He stated that he has the visiting cards of these victims," says the report.

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Besides Bijender Singh, a doctor who owns a hotel at Murthal Chowk had told the committee (Pg 357) requesting anonymity that he had given shelter to 30 to 40 'victims of violence' in his hospital. He said the police station is just 500 metres away from his hospital but the police did not stop the rioters who were carrying arms.

"Those 30/40 persons who took shelter in his hospital informed him that they had been looted and their vehicles set ablaze by the rioters. He did not close his hospital and kept on serving the people. No help was coming from any quarters. The rioters were having a free run," says the report.

The owner of Amrik Sukhdev Dhaba, along-with four others, told the committee about the violence but have not given any information about the alleged rapes.

"At about 0300 hours on February 22, 13-14 vehicles were set ablaze by the rioters in front of his dhaba. The owners of these vehicles took shelter in his dhaba." The victims of violence were terrorised, says the report.

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Besides Murthal, the Prakash Committee report, quoting one Omvir Tanwar of Maharana Partap Colony and ten others also mentions another incident in which a girl was misbehaved by the rioters.

"One Sumer, owner of Adidas Showroom, misbehaved with a Rajput girl at the dharna site in Sector 13 of Bhiwani but no FIR has been registered against him," says the report (Pg-336).

MORE DETAILS IN THE REPORT

The report has details of incidents when the police officials allowed the rioters to vandalise and loot. In Kaithal the police officials also funded the rioters. BJP leaders have also been accused of giving provocative speeches during the agitation.

Also read:

Murthal rapes: Naked women took shelter in dhaba, say reports





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By PTI: Jind, May 31 (PTI) All-India Adarsh Jat Mahasabha chief Pawanjeet Banwala today claimed the group has received a notice from government warning it against going forward with a fresh quota agitation.

"We have a constitutional right to protest peacefully and no notice can snatch that right from us. The government notice is like the murder of democracy and the constitution," Banwala said.

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"The way the government has been warning us to stay away from protesting, it seems there is an Emergency-like situation," he said.

He said there would be a meeting of office-bearers of the Mahasabha on here tomorrow, during which they would devise future strategy and discuss the notice.

Sedition cases have been falsely lodged against the Jats who raised their voice against the anti-people policies of the government, he claimed.

This proves that the Jats are a patriotic community which the government wants to label as traitors, he said. PTI CORR BSA ZMN BSA

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By PTI: Patna, May 31 (PTI) The Bihar ruling JD(U) today questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP for nominating "mining mafia" Gopal Narayan Singh as the partys candidate for Rajya Sabha polls from Bihar.

"...both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP have completely been exposed with the nomination of mining mafia Gopal Narayan Singh for Rajya Sabha poll from Bihar," JD(U) chief spokesman Sanjay Singh told reporters.

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"Gopal Narayan Singh has 28 cases against him including those of attempt to murder, robbery, forgery, under arms act, mining act etc. PM and the BJP president Amit Shah should explain as to why a mining mafia has been given a ticket," he said.

Gopal Narayan Singh, who was formerly BJPs state unit president, today filed nomination papers for Rajya Sabha, along with two other party who filed for Legislative Council.

Singh, who was accompanied by party leader and national spokesman Ajay Alok, said Gopal Narayan Singh has been booked under mining act and various sections of IPC including section 307 (attempt to murder), section 353 (assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty), section 337 (causing hurt by act endangering life or personal safety of others).

Alleging that PMs "actions do not match his words", Alok said the Modi government in its first Cabinet decision had asked the Law Ministry to prepare a roadmap to complete the trials of charge-sheeted MPs within a year and if it was not possible, then there should be a provision to debar the such legislators from voting inside the House.

Earlier, when question regarding cases pending against BJP RS nominee was asked to senior party leader Sushil Kumar Modi he had brushed it aside saying "one dozen cases due to political rivalry have been foisted on me too."

In his Mann Ki Baat programme aired on May 22, 2016, the PM talked of protecting the environment but "to my utter surprise, Singh was given ticket who is facing 16 (out of 28) cases of environmental violations," Alok said.

Both the spokesmen, especially Sanjay Singh, who is generally critical of Sushil Modi, today heaped praise on him saying that he (Sushil), politics apart, would have been far better candidate than Gopal Narayan Singh in Bihars interest. PTI AR SNS CR TIR

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Lily-Rose Melody Depp never had any big acting ambition until she started working and realised how much she enjoyed it.

By Bang Showbiz: Lily-Rose Melody Depp never had any big acting ambitions.

ALSO READ: Amber Heard accuses Johnny Depp of domestic violence, verbal abuse and drugs



The 17-year-old star may be the daughter of Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis, but she insists she had no great desire to follow in their showbiz footsteps until she actually started working.

She said, "I mean, I never really thought I wanted to be an actress until I actually started working. So when that opportunity presented itself I was just like... I realised that's what really makes me happy and that's what makes me feel comfortable and everything.

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"I just love losing myself in a character, I think it's the most liberating job in the world."

The teenager is thankful her parents are very supportive but knows they wouldn't have been able to persuade her to pursue an alternative career even if they weren't happy about her becoming an actor.

She said, "I'm very independent and my parents support me in whatever I do...

"I don't think they would really be in the right position to warn me against the industry."

The Dancer actor - who can be seen alongside her famous father in upcoming comedy horror Yoga Hosers - values her family above everything else.

She said, "I love family. Sacrifices come with everything, especially in this industry, but personally I wouldn't sacrifice my relationships in my life for work because I think you don't have anything if you don't have love and you don't have people close to you that care about you and keep you grounded. So that's something I wouldn't sacrifice."

Lily-Rose stars alongside Natalie Portman in upcoming fantasy drama Planetarium and has great admiration for her co-star.

She told Britain's HELLO! magazine, "She's incredible. I've always looked up to her as an actor.

"And she's really just a sweet, down-to-earth person, so yeah, she's great."

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By Samonway Duttagupta: The summer heat has been troubling India for the last couple of months, and June is the time when it will finally reach its peak before starting to subside. It is also the last month in which you can go on a summer vacation. Keeping the same in mind, we have shortlisted a few Indian destinations you might like to visit in June.

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Also read: 5 Indian destinations where the maximum temperature is not more than 25 degrees



Sangla, Himachal Pradesh

A trip to Ladakh is not easy, considering its distance and the number of days you require. So, you can try Sangla instead. Located in the Kinnaur region of Himachal Pradesh, the road to this valley offers views that are similar to that of Ladakh. You will be able to experience the same nip in the air, the same blue skies, and the same arid mountains towering high up to kiss the clouds. As far as Sangla as a destination is concerned, all you get to experience is the serenity offered by its charming natural surroundings. While the Baspa River makes its way through the rocks, the surrounding mountains with their various shades of green make for a soothing view.



One gets to witness the occasional herd of sheep making its way through the meadows, while the bird calls create melodies that can calm the senses. Besides, stunning views of snow-capped peaks are in plenty, thanks to the Tibetan border which is just a few kilometres away. Those looking for adventure activities can either go for hikes or take part in activities like angling and fishing.

Picture courtesy: Flickr/Lihi Koren/Creative Commons

Coorg, Karnataka

If you want to experience the true beauty of the Western Ghats, Coorg is the place to be. The town sits quietly in the lap of lush green hills that spread across the region for as far as the eyes can see. A sense of calm and nostalgia touches you the moment you step into this town. It's the natural beauty and the simplicity of the local residents that trigger such feelings. Also known as the Scotland of India, Coorg is the place where you can unwind and be at peace in the company of nature. Apart from the verdant valleys and lush forests, Coorg is also known for acres of coffee plantations that dot the landscape. A nature walk can bring you close to a wide variety of flowers and an interesting mix of flora and fauna.

Picture courtesy: Flickr/Kalidas Pavithran/Creative Commons Picture courtesy: Flickr/Kalidas Pavithran/Creative Commons

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Pelling, Sikkim

No doubt that Gangtok is the first name that comes to the mind when somebody mentions Sikkim, and for good reason. But if you are on the lookout for something offbeat, head to Pelling. This quaint hill town is known to offer unparalleled views of Mount Kanchenjunga and other adjacent peaks of the Great Himalayan Range. The tourist attractions of the place include the beautiful and serene Pemayangtse Monastery, ruins of the Rabdentse Palace, and the nearby Khecheopalri Lake.

Picture courtesy: Flickr/Atanu De/Creative Commons Picture courtesy: Flickr/Atanu De/Creative Commons

Kausani, Uttarakhand

This place is often confused with Kasauli, a small hill town in Himachal Pradesh. But this one is no less. Located at a driving distance of 53 km from Almora, Kausani is a sleepy hamlet in Uttarakhand, known for its scenic splendour and the spectacular views of the Western Himalayas. Flanked by rivers Kosi and Gomti down the hill, the place owes its beauty to the dense pine forests and numerous tea gardens. The best you can do here is take a nature walk, or simply sit in silence and enjoy clear views of famous peaks including Trishul, Panchchuli, and the Nanda Devi range.

Picture courtesy: Flickr/V.Vasant/Creative Commons

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According to sources, Karnataka CID has not received any response to the five letters that they had written to Pune SIT regarding the case.

By Aravind Gowda: Karnataka CID has blamed Pune Special Investigation Team (SIT)for the delay in Dr M M Kalburgi's murder probe.

According to sources, Karnataka CID has not received any response to the five letters that they had written to Pune SIT regarding the case.

"We have written to the Pune SIT to share information on people they detained for questioning in connection with the killing of rationalist Govind Pansare in the last six months. We sought information on some other aspects of the case also. Unfortunately, they have not responded to any of our five letters so far. We have hit a dead end while probing the death of Dr Kalburgi," sources in the Karnataka CID told Mail Today.

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Here's all you need to know:



Unidentified gunmen shot dead Dr Kalburgi at his residence on August 30 last year in Dharwad in northwest Karnataka. They later fled from the scene of crime on a two-wheeler. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, had given special instructions to identify the culprits in the wake of public pressure. So far, the police have not been able to identify the culprits though sketches of the suspects were prepared. In March, the CID came to a conclusion that three different contract killers were used to kill Dr Kalburgi, Pansare and Dabholkar. Karnatak CID has blamed Pune SIT for delaying the probe. A 20-member-CID team has claimed the same weapon was used by miscreants to kill Dr Kalburgi, Pansare and Narendra Dabholkar. However, Pune SIT and CBI, which are also probing the case, are not on the same page on the issue. The CBI is seeking help of the Scotland Yard police to ascertain whether the same gun was used by the killers in all the three cases.

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Kamal Morarka, former union minister and businessman, is filing nomination for Rajya Sabha in Rajasthan as independent with support of opposition Congress, independents and others.

By Rohit Parihar : Kamal Morarka, former union minister and businessman, is filing nomination for Rajya Sabha in Rajasthan as independent with support of opposition Congress, independents and others. He arrived in Jaipur in the morning and had a meeting with leader of Opposition Rameshwar Doodi at later's residence.

This has made BJP jittery which was very confident to win all four seats until morning.CROSS-VOTING FROM BJP CAMP



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Morarka needs 41 first priority votes and with 24 MLAs of Congress, he has a clear support of 34. In 200 member assembly, ruling BJP has 160 MLAs. So it is just a matter of getting all non-BJP votes as also one cross vote. BJP needed 164 votes to win all four seats and has got four independents to propose names of its candidates.

His candidature is less based on his or Congress's optimism to get magic numbers but more on cross-voting from BJP camp as of the four nominations, two have been forced upon by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party President Amit Shah.

MORARKA TARGETS MODI'S AIDES



Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje has for long opposed a Rajya sabha ticket for Om Mathur, national vice president and rejected his attempt to be state president either. Mathur has often got himself projected as contender to Raje and has hobnobbed with a few dissidents who like him, neither have any support of MLAs nor any mass following. Although, he doesn't enjoy as much proximity to Modi and Shah as some believe but given that he has been made to look after Uttar Pradesh for assembly polls, Modi wants him strengthened. That has been the reason for giving him the Rajyasabha ticket.

The second nomination from BJP has been of Harshvardhan Singh, erstwhile royal from Dungarpur who has family ties with Rajkot royals who have proximity to Modi. Singh's nomination is again attributed to Modi. Morarka is targeting Singh as he doesn't enjoy much support within the BJP. Morarka does have friends in BJP.

Of the other two, Raje won't have objected to Venkaiah Naidu, union minister's nomination or Ram Kumar Verma, a retired Dalit officer from Reserve Bank of India.

In this situation, it has to be seen how much difficult things become for Mathur and Singh. Even if Raje or anyone in BJP are unhappy with them, it won't be easy for her or the party to let cross voting take place. Yet, she will have to work very hard to ensure that it does not happen and thus, she will be obliging Mathur and Singh as also top BJP brass realise that she can't be ignored.

Incidentally, Modi had consented to celebrate his two years in office addressing a rally in Ajmer on May 31 but it was cancelled because of RS polls. Yet, on May 29, Modi's aircraft was diverted to Jaipur because of bad weather in Delhi and he had half an hour discussions with Raje on board at Jaipur airport. The content of their talks hasn't been revealed but how to tackle situation that Morarka has created must have been seriously talked about too.

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ALSO READ: BJP's show of strength in Assam as Sarbananda Sonowal is sworn in as CM

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By PTI: Bengaluru, May 31 (PTI) As lower rung police personnel plan to go on a mass leave on June 4 in protest against alleged harassment and lesser pay, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah today warned against any act of "indiscipline" by the force.

Siddaramaiah chaired a meeting of Home Department and police officials and asked the force not to get instigated, saying there should not be any room for indiscipline.

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Speaking to reporters after the meeting, he said, "A non-recognised organisation has called for protest by police on June 4 by going on one day mass leave. Police department is a disciplined organisation. It is a department that has the responsibility of protecting public life and property, so there should not be any room for indiscipline."

"If there is any act of indiscipline, government will take it seriously and will take strict action against them," he said. An organisation called Akhila Karnataka Police Maha Sangha is spearheading the stir led by V Shashidhar, who is its founder-President and a suspended police personnel. Asking police personnel to discuss their demand with the government, Siddaramaiah said, "The government will be open minded on this. If the demands are just we are ready to fulfil them. All issues can be solved through discussion." Requesting police not to participate in the protest, he said, "If you participate, it will be indiscipline. We have complete faith in our police force. There has never been indiscipline. Even now they will not indulge in any indiscipline by going on mass leave." (MORE) PTI KSU RA BN SRY MVV

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Katrina Kaif has finally opened up on her break-up with Ranbir Kapoor and said that she stayed silent on the issue all this while as she isn't too comfortable sharing things.

By India Today Web Desk: Katrina Kaif is back in India after wrapping up the last schedule of Anurag Basu's upcoming film Jagga Jasoos in Morocco. And if reports are to be believed, the schedule was full of awkward moments between Katrina and her ex-flame Ranbir Kapoor. It isn't easy to romance your ex on screen after a break-up. But like thorough professionals, Ranbir and Katrina made their way through the ordeal and finished the shooting of the film.

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ALSO READ: After break-up, Ranbir Kapoor not comfortable kissing ex-girlfriend Katrina Kaif?

ALSO READ: Ranbir Kapoor is NOT dating Delhi girl Bharti Malhotra



It's been a few months since the ex-flames broke up and a lot has been said about their ugly break-up. But Katrina and Ranbir have maintained silence over the entire issue all this while. However, the Bang Bang actor has finally opened up and said that she isn't too comfortable sharing things.

In an interview to Vogue, the 32-year-old actor revealed that she is a guarded person and doesn't like giving a clarification on every and anything. The Fitoor actor was quoted as telling the fashion magazine, "People share things all the time?it doesn't come naturally to me. I fear I might get into a war of words, constantly clarifying myself. I guess there is a positive and negative side to it."

She added, "All Cancerians are guarded to a certain extent. That's just the way it is. It's also just about being a girl."

Ranbir and Katrina met on the sets of the 2009 film Ajab Prem Ki Gajab Kahani and the rest is history. But after dating Ranbir for a very long time, the break-up wasn't too easy on her. The split made her learn a few things and she now believes that it isn't too wise to mix personal and professional choices. In fact, Katrina feels that Bollywood isn't the right place to make real friendships.

"I think I no longer make friends in a way that I am too attached or dependent on people. This is the film industry, this is a place of work and sometimes we mix the personal and the professional too closely," she said.

On the work front, Katrina will be next seen in Nitya Mehra's Baar Baar Dekho. It is for the first time that she is cast opposite Sidharth Malhotra. The film is set to release on September 9 this year.

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According to the police, 36-year-old Sherin John, who is working with a company in IT hub Technopark, was arrested after he confessed that he had killed his father Joy V John (68) last week.

By PTI: In a gruesome incident of patricide over property dispute, a 36-year-old IT professional has allegedly shot dead his NRI father, cut his body into pieces and dumped them at various locations in Chengannur, Kerala.

Police said Sherin John, working with a company in IT hub Technopark, was arrested after he confessed that he had killed his father Joy V John (68) last week.

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John was living in US for the last three decades and visited his ancestral home near here when he was murdered, police said, adding property dispute led to the crime.

Based on Sherin's statement, police carried out a search in various places and recovered a portion of limb, head and some other body parts, believed to be that of Joy.

"The recovered body parts will be sent for DNA testing and other scientific analysis.

PROPERTY DISPUTE LED TO MURDER



"As per our preliminary investigation, property dispute between the father and son had led to the murder," Alappuzha District police chief B Asok Kumar told PTI.

Joy had gone missing since last Wednesday after he had gone out with Sherin to repair an air-conditioner.

As her husband and son did not return, Joy's wife Mariamma lodged a missing complaint with the police.

During interrogation, Sherin confessed to committing the crime, police said, adding he had been booked for IPC offences including murder and destruction of evidences.

ALSO READ: Missing Delhi woman found murdered in Madhya Pradesh

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During her inaugural speech at the West Bengal assembly, Banerjee said, "I would like to request for state funding of elections. We want electoral reforms."

By Indrajit Kundu: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today once again reiterated her long standing demand for state-funding of elections in the country. During her inaugural speech at the West Bengal assembly as chief minister in her second term, Banerjee said, "I would like to request for state funding of elections. We want electoral reforms."

"There is no need to shout 'black money, black money'. If there is state funding for elections, the use of black money will stop," Banerjee added. Maintaining that electoral reforms were as crucial as economic or administrative reforms, Mamata said, "I believe in electoral reforms so that the democratic process is strengthened and remains clean."

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"We were the first to fight for implementation of voter ID cards with our 'no-ID card no vote' campaign," she added. Welcoming all newly-elected MLAs to the state assembly, Banerjee stressed on the need for everyone to engage in constructive discussions. "We must leave behind a bitter legacy and work towards making a new Bengal," she said.

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Maruti Suzuki which is reported to be the largest customer of Subros India has temporarily suspended production at their Manesar facility starting from the second half of May 30, 2016. (Picture for representational purpose only)

By Rahul Ghosh, Rahul Ghosh: A few days back Subros India faced a major setback when their Manesar factory was engulfed in flames as a result of a possible short circuit. According to reports , the incident took place at Subros Limited, located in Sector 8, Industrial Model Township, around 2.30 pm.

Over 150 workers were inside the factory and were immediately evacuated. Fire tenders from the local fire station were rushed to the spot and a few more from the nearby factories such as Maruti Suzuki were sent to the rescue. However, despite all efforts, more than a fourth of the facility was gutted.

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ALSO READ: Maruti Suzuki's Manesar and Gurgaon plants shut temporarily

But why is Subros important you might be thinking! Subros India is one of the largest manufacturers of automotive air conditioning systems in the country and supplies to almost all major automotive manufacturers in India. As a result of this setback, Maruti Suzuki which is reported to be the largest customer of Subros India has temporarily suspended production at their Manesar facility starting from the second half of May 30, 2016. As it shut down its production in the second half, it may have had a production loss of around 2,500 vehicles.

This fire also comes at a juncture when both the recently launched models like the Maruti Suzuki Baleno and Vitara Brezza are witnessing high demand. With the Manesar plant shut, the waiting periods of these cars and specific variants may become even longer than the current eight to nine months for the Vitara Brezza and five months for the Baleno. Apart from these two, other models such as the Alto series and Wagon R among others will also have issues as they too are manufactured in the same facilities owing to the fact that no cars in the current portfolio can be sold without air conditioning systems.

ALSO READ: Maruti Suzuki Vitara Brezza waiting period extends to seven months

Delegates from both Maruti Suzuki and Subros were in a meeting which lasted late into the night to find a possible solution to the situation.

Maruti isn't the only manufacturer which is likely to face production issues due to the blaze at the Subros outlet. The fire is likely to have a domino effect across automobile industry because if other facilities start furnishing demand for Maruti Suzuki, Subros might have to reduce supply to other manufacturers. Needless to say, Subros has started the process of reviving the Manesar facility in full swing. Maruti Suzuki too is yet to confirm till when its plants will remain shut.

ALSO READ: Maruti Suzuki inches closer to market supremacy with Vitara Brezza, Baleno

So at this point of time if you have booked the two hottest selling models from Maruti Suzuki - the Vitara Brezza or the Baleno - get ready to wait a bit longer than promised.

--- ENDS ---
Production has been shut down temporarily at Maruti Suzuki's two plants in Manesar and Gurgaon in Haryana after a major A/C components supplier's factory was gutted with fire. The company is working on chalking out a new strategy to restore the supply chain of the A/C components and resume production at its factories.

By India Today Web Desk: Maruti Suzuki has had to temporarily shut down production at its Manesar and Gurgaon plants in Haryana due to a fire at major A/C components supplier Subros Ltd's plant in Manesar. The fire has resulted in the disruption of the supply chain resulting in the shutdown of Maruti Suzuki's plants. The fire was caused due to a short circuit and escalated by strong winds.

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Also Read: Seven Maruti Suzuki models in top 10 best selling passenger vehicles

Subros Ltd, which is a manufacturer of thermal products for car companies like Maruti Suzuki, Tata Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra, Force Motors, Renault and Nissan has two plants in Noida, and one each in Manesar, Pune, Chennai and Sanand and has a combined annual capacity of 1.5 million A/C kits. Half of these kits are bought by Maruti Suzuki. The company could use the Noida plants as a viable alternative to take over the duties of the Manesar plant that was damaged due to fire and resume the supply chain to its largest client.

Also Read: Maruti Suzuki to recall 75,419 Baleno cars and 1,961 DZire cars

Maruti Suzuki also put out a statement saying, "Owing to an unfortunate incident of a fire at the Manesar facilities of our supplier, M/s Subros Limited, on Sunday (May 29), supplies of components from that plant have been disrupted. As a consequence, Maruti Suzuki India will have to temporarily suspend manufacture of cars at its facilities in Manesar and Gurgaon, starting second half Monday (May 30). Subros Ltd and Maruti Suzuki are jointly assessing the extent of damage to essential equipment. We are also examining the options available to start supply of components from other facilities. Production will resume as soon as components become available."

Also Read: Maruti Suzuki Vitara Brezza waiting period extends to seven months

The dent in the supply chain will not be troubling for Maruti Suzuki at first but if the supply chain is not functioning again soon, the Indian car maker could seriously fall behind production schedule with the waiting period for its latest car the Vitara Brezza being 7-9 months. The Vitara Brezza and the Baleno have both been successful products for Maruti Suzuki and long waiting periods could see customer interest fade.

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Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called his Indian counterpart before his open-heart surgery and Modi wished him a speedy recovery. Find out how they have taken their friendship uphill since Modi's swearing in ceremony.

By Sanjana Agnihotri: The friendship between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif started when Sharif was among those invited to attend Modi's swearing in ceremony in 2014.

Since then they both have made efforts to take the friendship uphill and here is how!

1. Speed-dial buddies

Just before his scheduled open-heart surgery at a hospital in UK, PM Nawaz Sharif called up Narendra Modi. Modi wished him a speedy recovery and tweeted to wish him good health.

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External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup tweeted about this conversation.

PM @narendramodi receives phone call from PM Nawaz Sharif just before Pak PM is wheeled in for surgery. Wishes him a speedy recovery. Vikas Swarup (@MEAIndia) May 30, 2016

2. Sought parental approval

We all want our parents to like our best friends, don't we?

When Sharif visited India to attend Modi's swearing ceremony, he took home a shawl for his mother which was gifted by his Indian counterpart. Reciprocating the gesture, Sharif sent a sari for Modi's mother.

Impress mothers. Check.

3. Perks of having a friend 'sarhad paar': When Sharif donned a Rajasthani pink turban

In December 2015, Pakistani leader wore the pink turban Modi gifted to him for his granddaughter's wedding.

"Wearing the gifted turban of Mr Modi itself shows that Mr Sharif's sincere intention towards the neighbouring country. Besides, it also demonstrates that Mr Sharif values the gift of Mr Modi," a source at Sharif's Jati Umrah residence told PTI.

Photo: PTI

4. The familial touch

After Modi sent a shawl for Sharif's mother, daughter of the Pakistani leader Maryam Nawaz Sharif took to Twitter to thank the Indian prime minister.

Thank u v much PM @narendramodi for the beautiful shawl for my grandmother. My father personally delivered it to her pic.twitter.com/QGj1qA2BQ2 Maryam Nawaz Sharif (@MaryamNSharif) May 27, 2014



5. The hug diplomacy

Modi has been deemed as the 'serial hugger' by many. Thanks to his ways of 'personalized diplomacy' but when it comes to his friendship with his Pakistani counterpart, both the leaders cannot stop gushing admiration.

From walking hand-in-hand to praising each other and making the admiration public, the two leaders have quite a 'bromance' going on. In fact, Modi even called Sharif "Man of Peace".

Indian PM Modi refers to PM Sharif as 'MAN OF PEACE'.... Hope negativity fails and peace wins... Maryam Nawaz Sharif (@MaryamNSharif) May 27, 2014

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While the state government has refused to divulge contents of the report, selected information being quoted from the report has left the state government fuming.

The violence, arson and alleged rape cases reported during the Jat quota stir in February continue to haunt the Haryana government, which has yet to make the Prakash Committee report public.

Haryana Governmnet's denial

While the state government has refused to divulge contents of the report, selected information being quoted from the report has left the state government fuming. After the information about the guilty cops and bureaucrats, another shocker for the government came after it submitted the report to the Punjab and Haryana High Court on Monday.

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Despite the state government's claims that no rapes took place on February 22 in Murthal, Amicus Curiae Anupam Gupta, quoting the Prakash Committee report, said the report has mention about the alleged Murthal gangrapes which proves that the state government was deliberately hiding the facts.

"The report has details about the naked women who took shelter in a roadside eatery (dhaba). Though the report has not mentioned the name of dhaba and its owner, three members of the panel had recorded the statement of dhaba owner who said naked women had come to his outlet and he had managed blankets and clothes for them before they were sent home," Gupta said. Meanwhile, the Haryana government also submitted a status report on the issue.

SIT chief Mamta Singh told the court that the police interrogated the dhaba owner, who broke down during the six-hour interrogation but denied that the rapes took place. The hearing of the case witnessed heated arguments between Gupta and Haryana government counsel Lokesh Sinhal with the former demanding appearance of Haryana DGPor an affidavit on the deposition by the dhaba owner.

Also read: Haryana government admits to possibility of mass rapes in Murthal





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The solar winds produced from these holes (coronal holes) have the potential to not only create geomagnetic storms on the Earth which can disturb communications in all forms, but also affect astronauts' on deeper space mission.

Coronal holes are low-density regions of the sun's atmosphere, known as the corona. (Photo: NASA)

By India Today Web Desk: The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) department of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has spotted two huge holes, which are source of a high-speed wind of solar particles, on Sun's surface.

The solar winds produced from these holes (coronal holes) have the potential to not only create geomagnetic storms on the Earth which can disturb communications in all forms, but also affect astronauts' on deeper space mission.



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"While it is unclear what causes coronal holes, they correlate to areas on the Sun where magnetic fields soar up and away, without looping back down to the surface, as they do elsewhere," said Karen C Fox and Steele Hill of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Here's all you need to know:



The holes are less dense and have lower temperature than the rest of the Sun's surface. They have little solar material and appear much darker than their surroundings. Coronal holes are visible in certain types of extreme ultraviolet light, which is typically invisible to our eyes. One of them is the biggest seen in decades which is about "six-eight percent of the total solar surface. A massive coronal hole that formed last May 17 to 19 engulfed 40 percent of the Sun. SDO used special imaging to capture an enormous Coronal Hole on the Sun. According to NASA, these 'coronal holes' are important to understanding the space environment around the Earth through which our technology and astronauts travel.

With inputs from agencies.



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No, it's not just the jar of pickle they aren't allowed to touch.

By Mini Dixit: With constant efforts being made towards the eradication of stigmas and misconceptions associated with menstruation, it's only natural to be heartbroken when something as real and hard-hitting as this comes along.

Celebrated as a mark of fertility and power in a handful of cultures, the process of menstruation continues to be a source of taboo and shame for the female brigade in most parts of the world--including Sindhuli, near Kathmandu, Nepal.

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While the primary aim of a recent campaign in the Sindhuli district by a charity named WaterAid was to generate awareness about the importance of hygiene and menstrual health, it brought to the foreground a truth that was miserable and disturbing, to say the least.

Also Read: These countries are offering 'period leave' to women. Seriously. Should India follow suit?

A bunch of girls from the district were asked to click pictures of the things they were asked to refrain from during the course of their periods. From their own beds to the mirrors in their homes--these Nepali girls clicked pictures of everything they weren't allowed to touch during their periods.

Girls on their periods aren't allowed to eat with their family--captured by Bandana, 15. Picture courtesy: Facebook/ WaterAid UK

Deemed as 'impure' and 'contaminated' during their periods, girls in Nepal are made to disconnect with their own things and homes every month, a practice that is 'traditionally' know as chhaupadi, a report by Independent UK states. And even though the existence of chhaupadi was put to end in 2005, the 'tradition' continues to be practiced in several Nepalese communities.

Also Read: This web series is about women having their periods in different periods

As if the lack of sanitation facilities wasn't enough to make things miserable for these girls, they are also asked to stay away from food items like meat, fruits, vegetables etc and are instead forced to consuming rice, salt and dry food.

Captured by Rabina, 15 the picture shows her grandmother making leaf plates that girls aren't allowed to eat in durinf their periods. Picture courtesy: WaterAid UK

Speaking on the grave short and long term effects of chhaupadi, Barbara Frost, WaterAid's chief executive, says, "The silence and stigma that surround menstruation impinge on girls' everyday lives. Furthermore, when there are no safe, private toilets in schools, girls often skip school during their period, or drop out of school altogether once they reach adolescence. With nowhere hygienic to clean sanitary pads or wash, women and girls also risk infection."

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Also Read: 5 everyday things that could be messing with your period

With nothing else but a camera at their disposal, these little girls painted a poignant picture of the unfair treatment they are subjected to every month. Here are some more things they captured as a part of WaterAid's campaign.

Girls are asked to live away from the comfort of their home when they get their first period. Picture courtesy: Facebook/ WaterAid UK

Girls aren't allowed to comb their hair or look inside the mirror. Captured by Bisheshta, 15. Picture courtesy: Facebook/ WaterAid UK

It's only fair to mention that if the amount of attention given to period-shaming was redirected towards menstrual hygiene, the planet would've been a better place to live in.

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By PTI: Mumbai, May 31 (PTI) Maharashtra BJP today denied that there was discontent among party workers over Pravin Darekar being nominated for polls to state Legislative Council.

"There are no discontent among party workers. The atmosphere is jubilant and everyone is excited for upcoming Rajya Sabha and MLC elections," state BJP unit chief Raosahab Danve said here.

He was asked if there was any discomfort among leaders and party workers in the wake of Darekar being made one of the nominees for polls to 10 MLC seats.

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Darekar, a former MNS leader recently quit the party after his name surfaced in alleged co-operative bank scam and later joined BJP.

On allegations levelled against Darekar, Danve said, "Such accusations are common in political life. Until and unless it is proven guilty (by court), he is not guilty."

Darekar today filed his paper for the MLC elections.

Danve said as of now five candidates have filed their nomination for MLC elections.

They are Sadabhau Khot, Vinayak Mete, Surjit Singh, Praveen Darekar and R N Singh.

Meanwhile, Danve when asked to comment on controversy surrounding state revenue minister Eknath Khadse, chose to evade the question, saying, "We are here to talk on filing of papers (nomination) and there is excitement among party workers." PTI APM ARS RCJ PTP

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Telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, who rolled out the plan, said that the department of posts can also use e-commerce platforms to send Ganga Jal.

By Kumar Vikram: Next time you get a dripping snail mail, don't be surprised! It could well be a holy delivery. The Modi government is making arrangements to courier sacred "Gangajal" (Ganga water) at doorstep. India Post, the country's oldest courier service run by the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, could soon offer subscribers the option of dispatching Ganga Jal by postman.

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E-COMMERCE PLATFORMS TO BE USED



Telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, who rolled out the plan, said that the department of posts can also use e-commerce platforms to send Ganga Jal.

"I used to get several requests asking me if with the vast network of India Post, Ganga water be delivered at doorsteps. I have directed the Department of Posts to utilise the ecommerce platform and make arrangements for providing pure Gangajal from Haridwar, Rishikesh to people. They have assured me that they will take proactives step to address this cultural need," Prasad said, while sharing details of the NDA government's achievements.

The 'holy' initiative by the ministry has received huge applause. BJP spokesperson Anil Baluni, who belongs to Uttarakhand (where the Ganga originates), welcomed the proposal. "This is a very welcome initiative by the ministry. Ganga jal is in huge demand in Indian families. But many people could not source it from Rishikesh or Haridwar. Now, with this initiative, even people at faraway places would be able to get the holy water."

The minister said parcel revenue of post offices has increased by 80 per cent during the NDA regime by delivering ecommerce products. "If a postman can deliver, mobile phones, sarees, jewellery, apparels then why not Ganga water?"

Prasad said that even CAG has said in its report that the Speed Post courier service by the Indian Post is the best courier service in the country. He added that the speed post revenue of the department has increased from Rs 1,372 crore in 2013-14 to Rs 1,600 crore in 2015-16 and cash on delivery collections for e-commerce parcels has increased from Rs 100 crore to Rs 1300 crore in the same period.

INDIA POST IN BANKING SECTOR



Speaking about efforts of India Post in the banking sector, Prasad said, "Today, core banking network of post offices is more than that of State Bank of India. SBI has 1,666 core banking branches while 22,137 post offices now have core banking facility," Prasad said.

Prasad said that the ministry has also decided to empower the postmen working in both rural and urban areas. "By the end of this year all postmen in urban centres will be given smartphones and handheld devices will be provided to postmen in 1.3 lakh rural post offices by March 2017. 4,000 handheld devices have already been given. This move will help in financial inclusion. It will be a moving ATM. Postmen of urban centres will get smartphones. We will provide (smartphones) by end of this year," Prasad said.

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Apart from empowering the postmen, the new gadgets will further improve the postal services in the country. With the help of these gadgets, postmen can give real time information about the posts and many other things, said an official.

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By PTI: From Sajjad Hussian

Islamabad, May 31 (PTI) A top former Pakistani official was arrested today for his alleged involvement in the issuance of National Identity Card to Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour who was killed in a US drone attack, becoming the fifth official to be arrested in the high-profile case.

National Database and Registration Authoritys (NADRA) former assistant director Ghulam Muhammad Bugti was arrested by Federal Investigation Agency for his suspected involvement in the issuance of identification papers to the Taliban chief.

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Mansour was killed in a US drone attack on May 21 in troubled Balochistan province.

Officials recovered a Pakistani identity card and passport under the fake name Wali Muhammad from the site of the attack, prompting interior minister Nisar Ali Khan to announce that those who helped the Taliban chief get the documents will be punished.

An official said Bugti was arrested by FIA for his role in issuing the ID card in 2002. Bugti retired in 2007.

Bugti has been shifted to FIAs regional office for interrogation.

"The scope of investigation is being widened," an unnamed FIA officer was quoted as saying by the Dawn.

Earlier, FIA arrested former assistant commissioner Qila Abdullah Rafiq Tareen for verifying Mullah Mansours passport, in addition to three NADRA officials in Qila Abdullah and provincial capital Quetta for issuing Mansours NIC.

"All officials are being probed and will be punished according to the law," the official said. PTI SH ZH AKJ ZH

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By PTI: Shimla, May 31 (PTI) Senior IAS officer and Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister, V C Pharka, today took charge as Chief Secretary of Himachal Pradesh.

An IAS officer of 1983 batch, Pharka, succeeds P Mitra who retired today.

Meanwhile, T G Negi, State Election Commissioner, has been appointed Principal Advisor to the Chief Minister and his term would be co-terminus with the CM.

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Pharka has superseded six senior IAS officers including Deepak Shanan, Ajay Mittal, Vineet Chowdhary (all of 1982 batch) and Upma Chowdhary, Bharti S Sihag and Asharam Sihag.

Ajay Mittal and Sihag couple are currently on deputation to the Centre while three other officers are posted as additional chief secretaries.

Pharka isthe fifth chief secretary of the state hailing from tribal areas.

Earlier, Thakur Sen Negi and B C Negi from Kinnaur, A N Vidyarthi from Lahaul and Spiti and Tochhawng from Nagaland held the coveted post.

Born onOctober 15, 1959 in Pooh village of Kinnaur district, Pharka did his schooling from government high school, Pooh and graduation from St.Stephens College, Delhi.

He did MA in International Studies and MBA from Australia.

Pharka started his career as SDM, Rohru and served in the Himachal Pradesh government in various capacities. PTI PCL DIP ZMN NSD

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Spread across 10,000 hectares, the central ammunition depot at Pulgaon near Nagpur is country's biggest.

Several villages around the depot have been evacuated. (ANI PHOTO)

By India Today Web Desk: A huge fire at the Pulgaon Central Armament Depot near Nagpur in Maharashtra killed 16 personnel, including two army officers and injured 19 others.

The injured were evacuated to the nearby military hospital by helicopters. | When massive blast in Central Ordnance Depot rocked Jabalpur



The fire, which broke out around midnight today in one of the sheds at the country's biggest arms depot, spread rapidly. Explosions were heard kilometres away from the depot.

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WATCH: A timeline of big ammunition depot fires in India



Several villages around the depot have been evacuated. Water is being transported from tankers of nearby villages.

The fire is now under control but secondary explosions are still taking place.

Maharashtra: Fire broke out at Central ammunition Depot in Pulgaon last night,19 injured.Nearby villages evacuated pic.twitter.com/ASPjHmbTBd ANI (@ANI_news) May 31, 2016

SERIES OF DISASTERS AT AMMUNITION BASE

This isn't for the first time that a fire has broken out at the Pulgaon ammunition base. In 2005, a massive fire broke out at the same base.

While the real cause of the latest accident will be revealed only after a thorough probe, sabotage angle has not been ruled out.

SABOTAGE NOT RULED OUT

Speaking to India Today, Lieutenant General (retired) Trevor A DCunha, former Director General, Ordnance Services, said the cause of fire will be known after investigation but sabotage can not be ruled out.

"Since the fire started at night, apparently, there was nobody handling arms, ammunition, therefore, human error in handling (of explosives) is ruled out. The chances of grass fire in this hot weather has to be considered as one of the causes. I think this could be the most probable reason," DCunha said.



"When it comes to strategic assets like central ammunition depot, any accident taking place (inside) must be thoroughly probed. I don't want to comment over it with inadequate information but I am not ruling it (sabotage) out," DCunha said.

ABOUT PULGAON ARMS DEPOT

Spread across 10,000 hectares, the central ammunition depot at Pulgaon is country's biggest ammunition depot.

Bombs, grenades, shells, assorted rifles and other explosives from various factories are transported at the base, situated some 110 kms from Nagpur, first and then distributed to various forward areas.

PROBE ORDERED

The Army has ordered an inquiry into the incident.

"The cause of the fire has not yet been ascertained. Actions to access the damage are currently in progress. but the Army has ordered an enquiry to investigate the accident," Lieutenant General Ranbir Singh, DGMO, said.

"I am given to understand that Defence Minister will be visiting the site and this itself is an evidence of how serious and concerned is the Central government. My heart goes out to the families of jawans and officers killed and injured in the incident. The nation stands by them," Minister of State Jitender Singh said.

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Following a directive from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, who is in Pune, will be visiting Pulgaon later today. Army Chief Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag is also headed for the site.

Modi tweeted, "Pained by loss of lives caused by a fire at central ammunition depot in Pulgaon, Maharashtra. My thoughts are with the bereaved families.

"I pray that those who are injured recover quickly. Have asked Raksha Mantri Manohar Parrikar to visit the spot and take stock of the situation," he said.

I pray that those who are injured recover quickly. Have asked RM @manoharparrikar to visit the spot & take stock of the situation. Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) May 31, 2016

Instructed Wardha collector to provide all required help in this situation. Also asked collectors of the neighbouring districts to be alert. Devendra Fadnavis (@Dev_Fadnavis) May 31, 2016

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As many as 55 members from 15 states - mostly from the opposition Congress are retiring from the Rajya Sabha between June and August.

By India Today Web Desk: The BJP knows there is one place where its dream project of a Congress-free India is not doing so bad: the Rajya Sabha. With as many as 55 members from 15 states - mostly from the opposition Congress - retiring between June and August this year, the Amit Shah-led party is preparing to take on the Upper House, where it has been in a minority so far.

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Today is the last date for filing nominations for the biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha. Polling (if required) will take place on June 11 and votes will be counted the same evening.



The Congress, aware of its dwindling numbers - and impact - in the Upper House has compensated for it by naming some of its biggest names.

Have a look:



P Chidambaram

The senior Congress leader and former Finance Minister has filed his nomination papers from Maharashtra. Chidambaram, 70, did not contest the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and his son Karti had unsuccessfully fought from his native Sivaganga constituency in Tamil Nadu.

Other than being a formidable speaker, Chidambaram is also an expert on economy and we might expect fireworks between him and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, another Rajya Sabha member, when Parliament meets next.

Kapil Sibal

Again, a former Union minister and a senior lawyer, Sibal has filed his nomination papers from Uttar Pradesh. Congress has 29 MLAs in the 403-member state Assembly and Sibal would require an additional eight votes for victory. Asked whether ruling Samajwadi Party has assured him of support for the extra votes, he said 'Saab Ka Saath, Mere Saath'.

Sibal's legal expertise has brought him closer to the Samajwadi Party. He has represented the SP government in the Supreme Court on several crucial cases, at times drawing the ire of the UP Congress.

Jairam Ramesh

With Chidambaram and Sibal, Ramesh forms the formidable triumvarite that the Congress hopes would make up for what it has lost in Rajya Sabha. Ramesh is contesting from Karnataka.

In the 225-member state Assembly, which forms the electoral college, the Congress has 123 lawmakers, BJP 44, JD(S) 40, Independents 11 and others 6. Since each candidate requires 45 votes to win the contest from the state, Ramesh's election, along with Oscar Fernandes, is certain.

Ram Jethmalani

The senior Supreme Court lawyer will be the Opposition's answer to BJP's 'cannon' called Subramanian Swamy. Jethmalani, who served as Law Minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Cabinet, will be going to the Upper House on RJD ticket. Lalu Prasad's decision to send Jethmalani is being seen by many as a masterstroke which can give the Congress much-needed impetus is Rajya Sabha.

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Misa Bharti

After successfully launching and establishing his sons - Tej Pratap and Tejashwi - in Patna, Lalu Prasad is now sending his eldest daughter Misa Bharti to Delhi.



Misa, 40, contested the 2014 Lok Sabha polls from Patliputra, Patna but lost to Ram Kripal Yadav, an ex-aide of his father.

For those who labelled Lalu as 'spent force' as far as national politics was concerned, his 'family planning' is an answer. This Yadav family will be seen in the political bylanes of Delhi and Patna for some more time to come.

MJ Akbar

The Bharatiya Janata Party has be re-nominated former journalist MJ Akbar to Rajya Sabha.

Akbar, who was elected to the Upper House from Jharkhand, has now been fielded from Madhya Pradesh.

Interestingly, the names of 12 candidates recommended by the state BJP election committee to the Central Election Committee for two Rajya Sabha seats did not have Akbar's name. However, the veteran scribe pipped them all.

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Apart from Akbar, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu has also been re-nominated by the BJP.

Also Read:

BJP fields party leader as independent candidate for Rajya Sabha polls



Rajasthan: Kamal Morarka's entry makes Modi's men nervous in RS poll



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By PTI: Oman eyes 15-20% rise in tourists arrivals from India in 2016

Mumbai, May 31 (PTI) Oman, which hosted nearly 3 lakhs Indian travellers in 2015, is expecting 15-20 per cent rise in footfalls this year, mainly backed by the wedding destination, and MICE (meetings, incentives, conferencing, exhibitions) segment.

"We have received 2,99,022 tourists from India in 2015, which is 17 per cent growth from 2014. With growing interest in the wedding destination and MICE segments, we are expecting 15-20 per cent growth in travellers visiting from India in 2016," Oman Tourism Ministry, India Representative, Lubaina Sheerazi told PTI here.

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She said Oman targets high-end, evolved, neo-educated travellers from India, who are looking for a destination filled with natural beauty and provides authentic Arabian experience.

"Our target segment from India mainly consists of families, couples, business and weddings. And we mostly look at age group between 25-65 years," she added.

Meanwhile, Oman is set to become a major regional centre for MICE, for which the countrys Tourism Ministry has has established a new Convention Bureau.

"The objective of the Bureau is to support the international and local organisations in hosting their events and cater to their requirements. The main aim is to promote Oman as an ideal destination for the MICE tourism sector," Oman Tourism Ministry Director General of Tourism Promotion Salim Al Mamari said.

Oman saw a growth of 17.7 per cent in total international visitor numbers in 2015 to 2.4 million.

The Arab country has an ambitious new tourism strategy and plans to increase the number of international visitor to 5.3 million by 2040. PTI SM ARS AMS

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A good show in country's most populous state will give the saffron party a great impetus ahead going into the general elections.

Amit Shah knows that BJP must get its caste mathematics absolutely correct if it has to win Uttar Pradesh. (File Photo/PTI)

By Himanshu Mishra: After scripting a historic victory in the just concluded Assam Assembly elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has now started preparing for Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, scheduled to be held in 2017.

Coming two years ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the UP polls are crucial for the BJP. A good show in country's most populous state will give the saffron party a great impetus ahead going into the general elections.

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GETTING THE CASTE MATHEMATICS RIGHT

BJP's chief strategist Amit Shah has already got down to business chalking out his party's tactics. Shah knows that BJP must get its caste mathematics absolutely correct if it has to win Uttar Pradesh. Amit Shah and Om Mathur, who is considered close to PM Modi, are the chief supervisors of BJP's UP masterplan 2017.

With an eye on the backward votebank, Keshav Prasad Maurya was roped in as party's state unit president - the first move of the 'social engineering' the party is working upon in the state.

WHY NAQVI GOT RAJYA SABHA TICKET FROM JHARKHAND

Considering the caste equations, the BJP has decided to send Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi to Rajya Sabha from Jharkhand and bring Shiv Pratap Shukla, a known Brahmin face of the party in UP, in his place. BJP's social engineers are aware that the party is unlikely to get a lot of Muslim support in the state and sending Naqvi to the Upper House from Uttar Pradesh would have irked its core vote bank.

MORE DISTRICT CHIEFS FROM BACKWARD CASTES

In the last couple of decades, 80 to 90 per cent of BJPs district chiefs in Uttar Pradesh came from forward caste(Brahmin or Thakur). Things are changing thick and fast now. Out of the latest list of 94 district presidents, 44 belong to backward or extremely backward castes, 29 are Brahmins, 10 Thakurs, nine Vaishyas and four Dalits.

During the Bihar elections in 2010, the BJP and Nitish Kumar's JD(U) utilised the Mahadalit card, successfully handing a massive defeat to Lalu Prasad's RJD and Ram Vilas Paswan's LJP alliance. The BJP would like to work out a similar plan for UP.

The state has 35 per cent vote of Yadav, Jatav and Muslim combine, and it is the remaining 65 per cent of vote share that the saffron party is eyeing. BJP strategy makers aim to strike a perfect balance between the backward and forward votebanks.

EYE ON SMALL BUT IMPORTANT PLAYERS

The BJP is also planning to dent BSP's core vote bank and for that it has already started luring extremely backward castes. It was precisely for this reason that Amit Shah addressed a rally of the Rajbhar community in Varanasi last year. The community has its presence in Dewaria, Balia, Azamgarh, Salempur and Gazipur. BJP masterminds have suggested giving 10 seats to Ashok Rajbhar's Bhartiya Samaj Party or persuade the local party leader to merge with the BJP ahead of polls.

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The BJP is already in alliance with the Apna Dal, the party which commands a handsome number of backward caste votes.

DENT IN MAYAWATI'S CORE VOTE BANK

Home Minister Rajnath Singh flagged off Brahm Chetna Yatra from Varanasi on April 24, a move seen as targeting Buddhist voters.

Rajnath Singh has even promised to build a Buddha statue taller than the ones in Bamiyan in Afghanistan which were blown up by the Taliban, if BJP came to power in Uttar Pradesh in next year's polls.

SHAH, RAJNATH'S RALLY MARATHON

Prime Minister Narendra Modi sounded the poll bugle in Uttar Pradesh from Saharanpur addressing a massive rally on the occasion of second anniversary of his government. Today(May 31) Amit Shah had lunch at a Dalit's house in Allahabad following which he addressed a farmers gathering. The BJP chief is slated to host six party workers' seminars in the next one month. Rajnath Singh will be addressing at least six public rallies. The home minister will be in Amroha on June 5, and in Mau on June 9.

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NO DECISION ON CM CANDIDATE YET

While the party is finalising its strategy, it is yet to zero in on the CM candidate. Sources said that Union Ministers Smriti Irani and Mahesh Sharma are the top runners.

However, insiders say that neither Shah nor Modi are keen on these two names. According to some media reports, the BJP is also likely ask veteran leader Kalyan Singh to lead the election campaign. The 84-year-old leader, who is currently serving as Rajasthan governor, was once the face of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement.

Also Read:

Country's changing but some minds refuse to change, says Modi at Saharanpur rally

RSS' welfare projects helping BJP ahead of 2017 Uttar Pradesh elections



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By Samonway Duttagupta: We travellers like going places. From the top of the mountain to the bottom of the ocean to sandy beaches and riverbanks. And we have always been grateful to Haridwar and Rishikesh for offering some of the best spots on the banks of the holy river Ganga. Nothing can match the experience of taking a dip in the waters that are known to have healing powers. Neither is there a better place for whitewater rafting in India. Having known that, and understanding that this is a great time to cool yourself by the river, here are the best places to stay around Haridwar and Rishikesh.

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Also read: On the Ganga trail: 5 destinations in India to witness the river at its best



Aalia on the Ganges

Popularly known as the Aalia resort, this property blends contemporary living with its surroundings, in style. Spread over an area of five acres, this riverside property offers some of the most mesmerising views of River Ganga and its surroundings. Offering accommodations in plush villas, every part of this resort overlooks the Ganga and the Chilla forest range of the Rajaji National Park bordering it at the distance. While staying here, one realises how clean, soothing and beautiful the Ganga is--better than you might have ever imagined it to be. When you are at Aalia, wake up to the soothing sound of bird calls, experience the best of luxury and enjoy enchanting views at all times. And if you are in the mood for some adventure, take the whitewater rafting and forest safari packages offered by the resort.

Where: Aalia on the Ganges is located at a distance of 12 km from Har-ki-pauri, which is a less than a 20-minute drive from the place.

Namami Ganges Resort and Spa

It hasn't been too long since Namami Ganges Resort and Spa opened its doors to guests. Located in Rishikesh's Shivpuri area, which is the starting point of all whitewater rafting tours, this resort is perched in the middle of lush greens. Overlooking the rapids of River Ganga, this resort offers accommodation in two categories of rooms, namely the Presidential Suite and Executive Suite. Although the resort has been built in a simplistic manner, it offers a comfortable stay to its guests with each room offering stunning views of the Ganga. As the name suggest, the resort also offers rejuvenating spa massages.

Picture courtesy: Namami Ganges Resort and Spa

Where: The resort is 16.5 km from the Rishikesh railway station.

Glasshouse on the Ganges

This one needs no introduction. Owned by the famous Neemrana group of hotels, Glasshouse on the Ganges is counted among the best riverside resorts in Rishikesh. Offering accommodation in cottages, individual rooms and tents, there's no other resort in Rishikesh that lets you stay this close to the river. Besides, the entire property is set within a lychee and mango orchard owned by the Maharajas of Tehri Garhwal. That's a perfect marriage of royalty and nature for you. There's a garden full of tropical plants, rare species of birds and butterflies, and a private white sand beach--a feature no other resort can boast of. Needless to say, the resort offers some of the finest white water rafting tours.

Picture courtesy: Glasshouse on the Ganges Picture courtesy: Glasshouse on the Ganges

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Where: Both the Haridwar railway station and the Dehradun airport are 45 km from the resort.

Ganga Kinare

The name of this resort is no misnomer, rather it is what it says it is--the property sits beautifully on the banks of River Ganga for close to two decades now. Keeping the location aside, this resort is known for being one of the most therapeutic hotels in the area. And it's been famous for its yoga and wellness sessions since 1989. More so, because the resort has hosted the International Yoga Week quite a number of times. Talking about the rooms, each one of them lets you witness and feel the serene environment around River Ganga and its tranquil surroundings, including the Rajaji National Park and the lush green mountains around.

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Where: The resort is 23 km from Haridwar railway station.

Atali Ganga

Sitting quietly on the top of a hill, surrounded by a green cover, the Atali Ganga resort offers accommodation in 22 independent cottages, each of which offers stunning views of the Ganga valley. The interiors of these cottages have been carefully crafted to offer the qualities of modern architecture, blended well with the natural environment. What sets the resort apart from the rest is its unique location--while it offers valley views like no other in the area, the property itself is in the middle of a reserve forest filled with several colourful birds and trees. Besides, there's a plethora of adventure activities on offer including a 24-foot climbing wall, rafting, kayaking, mountain biking, abseiling, hiking, yoga, and jumaring.

Picture courtesy: Atali Ganga

Where: Atali Ganga is located at a distance of 30 km from the main town of Rishikesh and is best reached by road.

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Sonia Gandhi rubbished allegations that her son-in-law Robert Vadra owns a benaami (proxy owned) property in London. The Congress chief dared the BJP to order a probe if they have evidence.

BJP comes up with such baseless allegations daily, said Sonia Gandhi. (File Photo/PTI)

By India Today Web Desk: Congress president Sonia Gandhi has come to the rescue of her son-in-law Robert Vadra amid allegations that he bought a 'benaami' (proxy owned) house in London from controversial arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari. Last month, agencies had conducted simultaneous raids at 18 premises owned by Bhandari.

Replying to India Today's queries over the allegations, Sonia Gandhi, who was in her constituency Rae Bareli today, said, "Kabhi aisa nahi dekha...ek pradhan mantri hain..shahenshah nahi.(He (PM Modi) is a prime minister not an emperor.)

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"Roj...roj ye Congress mukt Bharat ke liye naya mudda uthate hain. Roj galat iljaam lagate hain. (The Opposition keeps on coming up with new baseless allegations daily. This is a conspiracy against the Congress.)

"Agar kuch galat hai to bina bhed bhaaw jaanch karo. Doodh ka doodh, paani ka paani karo (If they have evidence, then they must order an independent probe for the truth to come out)," Gandhi said.

NO LINKS WITH BHANDARI, NO PROPERTY IN LONDON: VADRA

A statement issued by Vadra's lawyers rejected media reports about him owning any property in London.

The statement also claimed that Vadra has "no business relations with Sanjay Bhandari."

"Our clients wish to state categorically and unequivocally that Mr. Robert Vadra does not own, directly or indirectly, any house described by you as house No. 12, Ellerton House, Bryanston Square, London. Hence, question of purchase or sale of the house in the year 2009 or in the year 2010 does not arise at all. Our Clients regret that you are proceeding on a completely incorrect and false assumption," the statement said.

"Our clients have no business relations with Mr. Sanjay Bhandari. Our clients further state that Mr. Robert Vadra has not entered into any transaction of a financial nature with Mr. Sanjay Bhandari and is not even aware that Mr. Sanjay Bhandari is involved in any Defense transaction. Our clients have scrupulously avoided even being remotely involved in relation to any Defense transaction," it added.

BJP DEMANDS PROBE

Senior BJP leader Kirit Somaiya had earlier demaded a detailed investigation by central agencies into the alleged involvement of Robert Vadra in the purchase of Rs 19 crore mansion in London in 2009.

Somaiya wrote a letter to the Enforcement Directorate seeking a detailed probe into the matter. The BJP leader in his letter quoted media reports alleging Vadra's links with Sanjay Bhandari.

According to reports, Bhandari's associate was in touch with Vadra and his assistant through email. They discussed the purchase of the property situated in London's upscale Bryanston Square locality. The house was bought in 2009, renovated and sold a year later.

Vadra's legal team has denied allegation of him having any property in London in his name, and also denied any link with Sanjay Bhandari.

'FINISH PROBE AGAINST VADRA BEFORE HE BECOMES BRITISH CITIZEN'

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Meanwhile, BJP MP Subramanian Swamy has urged the government to speed up its probe in Robert Vadra case before he takes up British citizenship.

Swamy told India Today in Beijing that there was "no doubt" that Vadra had property in London .

Swamy has also claimed that Vadra is paying hefty amount to get fast-track British citizenship.

"I think it is already under investigation by the Enforcement Directorate and it is only a matter of time before a case is registered for summoning of Mr Vadra. But they should do it quick enough before he takes British citizenship because I heard he wants to take British citizenship by paying a hefty amount which enables foreigners who invest in Britain to get fast-track citizenship," said Swamy.

Also Read:

Punjab and Haryana High Court dismisses Robert Vadra's petition



Robert Vadra won't be summoned before Haryana probe panel in land deal case



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By PTI: Mumbai, May 31 (PTI) Eminent scientist S K Sharma today took charge as the Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) of Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL).

NPCIL is responsible for design, construction, commissioning and operation of nuclear power reactors.

Sharma has been appointed to the post for a period of five years, a release by NPCIL said.

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Sharma completed his BE (Electronics) degree from the Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology (MANIT), Bhopal in 1980 and graduated from the 24th batch of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre Training School in 1981.

He started his career at Rajasthan Atomic Power Station.

He has held several key positions in Indian nuclear power stations, including that of site director at Rawatbhata Rajasthan site, before assuming the position of Director (Operations) in 2015, the release said.

He has also worked in a key position for improving the safety and reliability of nuclear power stations across the world in association with an international team of nuclear experts in World Association of Nuclear Operators ? Tokyo Centre, it added. PTI DS NRB BJ PTP

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By PTI: Hyderabad, May 31 (PTI) Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines division of Sanofi, today said commercial production at its affiliate Shantha Biotechnics new vaccines manufacturing facility began on May 25.

The new facility, located in Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Muppireddipalli near here, has the latest technology to produce vaccines that meet global standards of quality, the company said in a statement.

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Construction of the 19,000 sq-meter facility began in 2010 and the site has received approvals from the Indian regulatory authorities and the World Health Organisation.

Shailesh Ayyangar, Country Chair and Managing Director ?Sanofi India Ltd, said, "With this dedicated site for vaccines, the company is reinforcing its commitment towards Make in India and disease prevention and public health in India and also across the world."

"This site is a part of over Rs 5,500 crore investment undertaken by Sanofi since acquisition of Shantha Biotechnics in 2009. We thank Government of Telangana for their encouragement and support in our endeavours," Ayyangar added.

The new filling facility will be used for producing vaccines against multiple diseases starting with Shan5 (a five-in-one, high-quality vaccine that provides effective protection for children from 6 weeks of age against five diseases: diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, Hib and hepatitis B (DTP - HepB ? Hib)) and pediatric pentavalent vaccine, which provides protection against five diseases in one shot.

Mahesh Bhalgat, Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer, Shantha Biotechnics, India, said, "At Shantha Biotechnics, our mission is to develop, produce and market affordable vaccines. We are committed to providing our customers with the assurance of products that meet best-in-class international standards for purity, potency and safety." PTI GDK ARS ABM SSB

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Sunny Leone is gearing up for her next Bollywood film. The actor will be seen alongside Arbaaz Khan in the film.

Sunny Leone will soon be seen on screen with Arbaaz Khan

By India Today Web Desk: Sunny Leone will soon be seen on the silver screen with Arbaaz Khan. The actors have been roped in for an upcoming musical drama Tera Intezaar. This is the first time that Sunny and Arbaaz are working together in a film.

ALSO READ: Want Sunny Leone in a film? Make sure no kissing is involved!

WATCH: These 5 songs of Sunny Leone will make your day

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The Ek Paheli Leela actor will shoot for the film alongside Arbaaz in the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat in August this year.

Confirming the news, Sunny told IANS, "I'm very excited about working with Arbaaz Khan."

The film, which marks the directorial debut of Raajeev Walia, will also have an international shoot apart from the 25-day Kutch schedule.

According to a source, Sunny and Arbaaz will meet for their first recording together on Tuesday (May 31).

Arbaaz Khan

"Arbaaz had already been locked for the film. When Sunny heard the first narration, she signed on the dotted line immediately. This is the first time that she will be seen in a film of this genre," the source added.

Sunny, who entered Bollywood with the 2012 erotic thriller Jism 2, has done films like Ragini MMS 2, Ek Paheli Leela, Mastizaade and One Night Stand in the last few years.

On his part, Arbaaz has been in the news for his separation with wife Malaika Arora after 17 years of marriage. Following that, there were reports that Malaika was supposedly moving back in with Arbaaz, but nothing is known for sure yet.

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By PTI: London, May 31 (PTI) A super-rich village in Switzerland, one of the wealthiest in Europe, has chosen to pay a fine of 200,000 pounds instead of accepting 10 refugees under the countrys newly imposed quota system.

Residents in the picturesque Oberwil-Lieli village, which has 300 millionaires in a population of 22,000, voted no in a referendum over whether to accept the refugees.

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The vote has resulted in a division in the town and led to people slamming residents for being "racist".

But Andreas Glarner, the mayor of the village, denied that they were being racist by refusing the refugees.

"We were not to be told if the 10 were from Syria or if they are economic migrants from other countries. Yes, the refugees from Syria have to be helped and they are better served by being helped in the camps nearer their home," said Glarner.

"Money could be sent to help them, but if we are housing them here it sends out the wrong message. Others will come and risk their lives crossing the ocean and paying people smugglers to bring them," he was quoted as saying by metro.co.uk.

Glarner added that the language barrier would also be an issue.

"They are not likely to be able to speak the language and if some of the refugees have children they will have to go into the local school where they will need special focus," he said.

The Swiss government had recently announced a quota system to take in about 50,000 asylum seekers. The plan was to distribute the refugees across the countrys 26 counties according to the quota system.

According to International Organization for Migration (IOM) and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), around one million refugees arrived in Europe till 21 December 2015, three to four times more than in 2014. PTI MRJ

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It's a known fact that it is easier for people to communicate feelings via the written word--as we humans are always skeptical about hurting or not being in sync with feelings of those around us, when indulging in verbal communication.

By India Today Web Desk: In an age where we neither have the time nor the luxury to engage in telephonic conversations too often, the concept of texting has become of mammoth importance.

We're not saying texting hasn't been important all this while, but let's just say that we are dependent on it a lot more than we were earlier--and not just in terms of work, family or friends, but also romance, relationships and dating.

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With millennials increasingly getting inclined towards mobile dating apps, it's only understandable for them to be constantly searching for a partner who they are 'textually' compatible with.

That's correct.

Written word has had a reputation of being more meaningful than the verbal word. Why else does one associate the art of letter-writing with romanticism and all things genuine?

In fact, a 2015 survey by the Gravitate Research Group revealed that 80 per cent of Americans preferred text messages to voice calls, which is not surprising at all.

All of us have heard of at least one incident where someone snapped all ties with a potential date on the pretext of incorrect grammar--or for that matter, their speed of replying to texts.

It's a known fact that it is easier for people to communicate feelings via the written word--as we humans are always skeptical about hurting or not being in sync with feelings of those around us, when indulging in verbal communication.

But is there a downside of depending on texting? Probably.

A study in 2014 by the psychologists at the University of North Carolina found that couples in long distance relationships, who relied on texting for a major part of their communication, reported to be less satisfied with their relationships. "The higher the percentage of communication between partners that came via texting, the less happy they reported being in their relationships," Psychology Today reported about the findings from the study.

Basically, while we increasingly become dependent on technology and have lesser time in hand, texting is gradually creeping into our dating lives--not as a choice but a necessity.

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After Marathi film Sairat won the hearts of fans and critics, it's Raam Reddy's National Award-winning Kannada film Thithi that has caught the fancy of Bollywood.

By India Today Web Desk: Regional cinema is making the right noises these days. After Marathi film Sairat won the hearts of fans and critics, it's Raam Reddy's National Award-winning Kannada film Thithi that has caught the fancy of Bollywood.

From Aamir Khan to Anurag Kashyap to Swara Bhaskar, B-Town celebs are bowled over by this Kannada film.

Aamir, who will be next seen in Dangal, took to Twitter to laud the film and has called it a must watch.

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Hey guys, just saw one of the most amazing films I have seen in a long time! Thithi. (1/4)https://t.co/xc0LTGcW6c Aamir Khan (@aamir_khan) May 30, 2016

The 51-year-old actor shared that the film has English subtitles and is releasing in theatres on June 3.

It's a Kanada film, with subtitles in English. It's an absolute MUST WATCH! It's releasing in theatres on 3rd June. (2/4) Aamir Khan (@aamir_khan) May 30, 2016

Aamir is surprised that the film has all non-actors and still Reddy was able to pull off this masterpiece.

Absolutely UNBELIEVABLE performance! And all non actors in the film. And how funny is it?!!! (3/4) Aamir Khan (@aamir_khan) May 30, 2016

It's a little difficult to slot it into a genre, but it's really funny. Don't miss it. Love. a. (4/4) Aamir Khan (@aamir_khan) May 30, 2016

Produced by Pratap Reddy and Sunmin Park, Thithi was screened in over 12 prestigious international and national film festivals and won 13 awards.

The film started its journey at the prestigious Work-in-Progress Lab (WIP) at the NFDC Film Bazaar, 2014 where it was declared the Best WIP Fiction Feature.

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.

And it isn't just Aamir Khan who is showering praises on this Kannada film. Even filmmaker Anurag Kashyap can't stop raving about Thithi on social media. So much so that Kashyap has already watched the film four times.

Saw THITHI the 4th time and it was funnier than it was ever before.I seriously envy this Ram Reddy, how do you make non actors act so well? Anurag Kashyap (@anuragkashyap72) May 30, 2016

And Kashyap recently held a special screening of the film which was attended by Kangana Ranaut, Vicky Kaushal, Swara Bhaskar, Kartik Aaryan and Sudhir Mishra.

Sudhir Mishra and Shekhar Kapur at Thithi screening

Vicky Kaushal at Thithi screening

Even these Bollywood celebs took to Twitter to laud the film, which has only non-actors.

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#Tithi hypnotises you into its world in such a beautiful way. Brilliant work @RaamReddy89 ?????? Film releases June 3rd Vicky Kaushal (@vickykaushal09) May 30, 2016

In the amazing @anavila_m #anavilamisra at #thithi screening.. SO much to think about after watching this one.. <3 pic.twitter.com/yzoiYR4g4J Swara Bhaskar (@ReallySwara) May 31, 2016

Set in a small village in Karnataka, the three storylines intertwine before converging at Century Gowda's 'thithi' - the final funeral ceremony, 11 days after a death. The film will hit the screens on June 3 this year.

(Photo Courtesy: Yogen Shah)



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Try Beating Me Lightly, a photo series featuring empowered women depicts the consequences of 'lightly beating'.

The monochrome photo series, Try Beating Me Lightly. Picture courtesy: Fahhad Rajper

By India Today Web Desk: When a ridiculous bill about 'beating wives lightly' was proposed by the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), it caused major social-media uproar.

If this is news to you, and you are wondering if it's really possible for such silly bills to even proposed, the answer is a big old YES.

Remember the time when a Saudi Sheikh proposed a bizarre fatwa allowing men to eat their wives if they are hungry?

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Yup, we live in THIS world.

Also read: A 40-year-old homemaker is the first Indian woman to buy a Lamborghini Huracan; who is she?

CII introduced this bill with a directive for husbands to beat their wives "lightly", in order to discipline them for acts such as refusing sex, not washing or bathing themselves after sex or menstruation, and for not dressing as their husbands please.

The bill, of course, infuriated many Muslims--not only women, but also sound-headed men in the country.

As a result, a Pakistani photographer, Fahhad Rajper, snapped 12 empowering and fierce modern-day women to show the consequence of what 'lightly beating' will do.

And thus, the monochrome photo series, Try Beating Me Lightly, was born.

Rabya Ahmed, Photo-Blogger



"#TryBeatingMeLightly - I'm the sun. Touch me and I will burn you like hell fire. I am light, you will try, but you can never stop me. You can never contain me. I am the kind of woman they name hurricanes after. I dare you, #TryBeatingMeLightly"

Sumbul Usman, Social Media Manager



"#TryBeatingMeLightly, you won't survive to see the morning."

Amber Zulfiqar, Travel and Lifestyle Blogger



"#TryBeatingMeLightly and take a punch in the ass!"

Shagufta Abbas, Doctor



"#TryBeatingMeLightly--I'll break that hand you raised at me. Remaining damage? I'll leave it upto Allah."

Priyanka Pahuja, Product Designer turned Digital Marketer



"#TryBeatingMeLightly and I'll run a car over you with my 7 years of driving experience!"

Farah S. Kamal, Education Consultant



"#TryBeatingMeLightly and tell me if you would like yourself to be beaten up lightly?"

Adeeqa Lalwani, Digital Storyteller



"#TryBeatingMeLightly, I'll become the destruction you will never foresee."

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According to reports, Shahid Kapoor will not be part of the promotional campaign and spend the time with wife Mira Rajput.

By India Today Web Desk: With only a few days left for Shahid Kapoor's film Udta Punjab to hit the screens, the filmmakers have a plan for city-musical promotional tours. Marketing head of Zee Music, Kirthi Rai confirmed to Deccan Chronicle, "Yes we are planning a few music activities with the lead actors across a few cities to promote the music of the film."

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ALSO READ: Censor Board demands 40 cuts - Has Shahid Kapoor and Alia Bhatt's Udta Punjab been banned?

But Shahid won't be a part of it and the reason is Mira Rajput. Rumour has it, the Haider actor will not be part of the promotional campaign and spend the time with wife Mira Rajput instead, who is a few months pregnant. Shahid's spokesperson said he won't be available for the tour when Udta Punjab team approached him.

However, Aman Gill, the CEO of Balaji Motion Pictures has denied this news, and told the leading daily, "It's absolutely baseless. In fact, Shahid has been there for all the promotional activities across and continues to promote as we speak. Unlike other films, with Udta Punjab, we are being very selective with the GEC shows that we visit, owing to the content of the film."

Shahid's Udta Punjab, recently, has also landed into trouble with Censor Board for excessive use of abusive language. The Censor Board has demanded 40 cuts in the film. There were rumours that the film has been banned but producer Anurag Kashyap has clarified that the film is under the process for clearance and has not been banned.

Apart from Shahid Kapoor, Udta Punjab also stars Alia Bhatt, Kareena Kapoor Khan and Diljit Dosanjh in the lead roles. The film is based on the drug menace in the state of Punjab. Directed by Abhishek Chaubey, Udta Punjab will hit the screens on June 17 this year. Here's the trailer:

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According to sources, Mulayam's hand was forced by realpolitik, giving more leverage to Shivpal Yadav who is known more for his grip over the organisation than anything else.

By Brijesh Pandey: With the crucial Uttar Pradesh elections scheduled next year, the power equations within the Samajwadi Party are also changing. Two decisions taken in the last 10 days have given a clear signal that Professor Ram Gopal Yadav, SP's all-powerful, one-man "think tank", may have been sidelined while his bete noire Shiv Pal Yadav has aligned himself firmly with CM Akhilesh Yadav and Mulayam Singh Yadav.

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But the moot question on everyone's mind is what led to this changed equation?



REALPOLITIK RAGA

According to sources, Mulayam's hand was forced by realpolitik, giving more leverage to Shivpal Yadav who is known more for his grip over the organisation than anything else.

THE AMAR CONNECTION

The first clear indication of this change came from the decision to give a Rajya Sabha nomination to Amar Singh. Given the bad blood which followed Amar Singh's ouster from Samajwadi Party (Akhilesh Yadav and Ram Gopal Yadav had aligned over the issue), it was unthinkable a month ago that Amar Singh will enter Rajya Sabha on a SP ticket.

But Mulayam Singh Yadav was prevailed upon or rather he saw the merit in inducting Amar Singh to appease the Thakur community in the all-important election of 2017. According to highly placed sources, the party parliamentary party was divided over Amar Singh's induction with Ram Gopal Yadav and Azam Khan opposed to the idea. But Akhilesh Yadav, Shivpal Yadav and others were in favour. It was left to Mulayam to take the final decision and he picked Amar Singh.

Later, Shivpal Yadav tried to underplay the differences and claimed "there was no opposition to Amar Singh's name... all the names have been finalised with consensus". But the equation had changed and it was clear to everyone.

According to an SP leader, "It is but natural for Ram Gopal to oppose Amar Singh as he has seen what the Thakur leader is capable of. Besides, nobody has forgotten his legendary fund-raising abilities. Considering Amar Singh's equation with Mulayam, it won't be long before he starts gnawing at Ram Gopal Yadav's circle of influence".



RLD: WITH OR WITHOUT YOU

The second instance of the change in the air was the pre-poll alliance with RLD chief Ajit Singh.

There is a clear-cut division with the Samajwadi Pariwar and it was clear in the way Ramgopal Yadav and Shivpal Yadav reacted to it. Ram Gopal Yadav said, "In one's life credibility is most important. If someone loses his credibility he is no longer deemed important. Entering an alliance with such a person is not advisable for any political party".

But in Moradabad, Shiv Pal Yadav sang a different tune. He said, "We want all the parties who believe in the thoughts of Lohia ji, Gandhi Ji and Chaudhary Charan Singh to come together to remove communal powers and BJP from India".



THE SAIFAI SAGA

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Sources say that till the zila panchayat elections, there was no love lost between Akhilesh Yadav and Shiv Pal Yadav. In fact, the UP CM boycotted the Saifai mahotsav after sacking of three of his closest aides by Shiv Pal. Later, after the success of the zila panchayat elections, the relationship between Akhilesh and Shiv Pal improved and if sources are to be believed, Amar Singh played an important role in breaking this thaw.

Sources say Mulayam is aware of the task he is saddled along with the importance of the UP elections, and this is the reason why he is not letting personal likes or dislikes of any individual mar his political expediency. That is perhaps the biggest reason why Ram Gopal Yadav is feeling left out in the Samajwadi Parivar.

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After attending graduation party with friends, Amitabh Bachchan's granddaughter Navya Nanda is now off to a secret destination. One of the fans of Navya shared a video on Instagram.

By India Today Web Desk: Amitabh Bachchan's granddaughter Navya Nanda recently graduated from the London school. And it seems that Navya is no mood to end the celebrations. After attending graduation party with friends, Navya is now off to a secret destination. One of the fans of Navya shared a video on Instagram. In it, she is seen enjoying a ride on a helicopter.

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A video posted by Navya Naveli Nanda (@navya__nanda) on May 29, 2016 at 7:37pm PDT

Navya also shared a picture of her sitting at a poolside and has a caption, 'Do Not Disturb'.

The 18-year-old Navya Naveli is the third generation of the Bachchan family and is the eldest granddaughter of Big B and daughter of Shweta Nanda and Nikhil Nanda. Navya usually keeps her fans updated with regards to her social and a bit of personal life.

Speculations were rife that Navya is eyeing a bollywood career. Navya has already made her fashion debut at Parisian Le Bal des Debutantes.

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Smoking cigarettes at a public place is not a valid option since laws have taken care of the offenders slapping them with huge fines. A good law perhaps but there are a few laws one would fail to understand. So here we go, the bizarre smoking laws in United States.

By India Today Web Desk:

Smoking at a public place and getting fined for that is fine. A legit law is hard to oppose. But what if the law is absurd and you have no idea why would lawmakers even care to go in that direction?

Well, there are a few laws, particularly in United States, to redefine bizarre when it comes to smoking laws. Some are too obvious to be legit and some are downright weird.

1NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA - US You cannot smoke while participating in carnival or a parade, though almost everything else is legal there. shares



2ILLINOIS - US You are not allowed to give lighted cigars to domestic animals in the town of Zion. shares



3NEW JERSEY - US You are not allowed to give cigars, cigarettes or whiskey to animals. shares



4NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND - US You are free to smoke a pipe but only during daylight hours because it's illegal to do so after sunset. shares



5MISSOURI - US If you are a teenager, you are permitted to buy loose tobacco, rolling paper and even matches, but you have no right to buy a cigarette lighter. shares





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Bonus:

If you are a child in Australia, you are banned from purchasing tobacco production. However if you have a grown up person to buy it for you, you are legally allowed to smoke a cigar or cigarette in front of policemen, parents, teachers, etc. Also in France, ashtrays are banned as they are considered deadly weapons over there.

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By India Today Web Desk: Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone's 2013 blockbuster Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani clocked three years on May 31. And to celebrate the occasion, the actors' fans took over Twitter with the trend 'YJHD Forever Favorite'.

ALSO READ: This is why ex-lovers Deepika and Ranbir are meeting secretly

ALSO READ: What's brewing between ex-lovers Deepika Padukone and Ranbir Kapoor?

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The film saw ex-lovers Ranbir and Deepika getting back together on the silver screen after their much-discussed break-up. While the lovers-turned-friends astonished all with their brilliant chemistry on screen, their fans flocked to the theatres to make the film one of the biggest blockbusters of 2013.

Ranbir and Deepika's equation on film was loved by all. Director Ayan Mukerji gifted Bollywood one of its best buddy films in recent time, one that still dominates several reunions.

Apart from Ranbir and Deepika in the lead roles, Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani starred Aditya Roy Kapur and Kalki Koechlin in the supporting roles. The film attained a cult following of sorts upon release, making several people pack their bags and get on a train to Manali, where it was shot.

Gulmarg's snow-capped peaks too made to several travel freaks' list after Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani.

As the film completes three years, take a trip down memory lane. Watch some of the deleted scenes from Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani. These never made it to the final cut:

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Under the programme, wi-fi will be delivered, with a viability finding kind of approach, to each and every citizen at the price of about Rs.100 per month.

By Indo-Asian News Service: All the gram panchayats will have the wi-fi connectivity by October 2018 under the Bharat Net programme, a senior government official said here on Monday.

"By October 2018, the plan is to finish coverage of all gram panchayats with wi-fi as the last mile solution," Telecom Secretary J.S. Deepak said here at a round table conference on the topic 'Data Connectivity for the next Billion'.

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The conference was organized on the occasion of the annual general meeting of the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI).

The Bharat Net initiative is committed to take the optical fibre to each and every gram panchayat in next three years, Deepak said.

Under the programme, wi-fi will be delivered, with a viability finding kind of approach, to each and every citizen at the price of about Rs.100 per month, he said.

"In the first phase of the program, by March 2017, we will have 100,000 gram panchayats with 80-100 mbps connectivity with a last mile wi-fi, hotspot kind of end-user possibility to make data available to those who do not have access to it," he said.

"In the next phase of the plan (Bharat Net), with underground fibre, overhead fibre, radio satellite and the use of state government agency, specially the power distribution companies, the plan is to finish coverage of all gram panchayats," he added.

On the occasion, COAI also released its 2015-16 annual report, which said that about 800 million Indians will be covered by wireless broadband services by 2020 from the current 250 million.

Bharti Airtel's managing director and CEO (India and South Asia) Gopal Vittal was on Monday elected as the new chairman of COAI while Vodafone India MD and CEO Sunil Sood took over as its vice chairman.

Also read: BSNL testing wi-fi network to connect 1 lakh panchayats

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The ZenFone 3, the ZenFone 3 Deluxe and the ZenFone 3 Ultra are without a doubt the most premium-looking phones that Asus has ever built.

By Saurabh Singh: Asus launches many ZenFones, nay, too many ZenFones. On Monday, it launched three new ZenFones - the ZenFone 3, the ZenFone 3 Deluxe and the ZenFone 3 Ultra, ahead of Computex 2016 in Taipei, Taiwan. Things are however different, nay, very different this time round. Different in a good way. Asus ZenFones have never been particularly exciting from a design and build point per se. They've been just regular smartphones with well to-do spec sheets. Had it not been for their aggressive pricing, these ZenFones would have been lambasted left right and centre for their near awful looks (and feel). The ZenFone Zoom - boasting of a price tag of almost Rs 40,000 -- is a classic example of how Asus cannot afford to screw things up with pricing. But 2016 isn't just about hardware and pricing. It's about the design as well. A smartphone has to look good. It has to feel good. It's safe to say that Asus has joined the party with its third-generation ZenFones...finally.

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The ZenFone 3, the ZenFone 3 Deluxe and the ZenFone 3 Ultra are without a doubt the most premium-looking phones that Asus has ever built. Boasting of a full-metal unibody design replete with all the essentials you'd hope for from a flagship smartphone, the new ZenFone 3s also achieve something that even the iPhone hasn't, yet -- invisible antennas.

Also Read: Asus Zenbo robot is as cute as it is smart

Of the three, the ZenFone 3 Deluxe is the company's new flagship phone, while the Ultra variant is simply a super-sized version of it. The ZenFone 3 on the other hand is the most affordable offering, and, the sexiest. While the ZenFone 3 Deluxe and the ZenFone 3 Ultra are near-flat rectangular slabs of metal with a soft matte finish, the regular ZenFone 3 adds a healthy dose of Corning's Gorilla Glass 4 into the mix. The approach - a curved 2.5D glass-metal sandwich - is pretty reminiscent of the OnePlus X and so is the guiding philosophy -- a mass-market phone that looks (and feels) as good as a high-end phone - behind it. The design is trademark Asus complete with its signature concentric-circle pattern on the back that makes the light reflect in peculiar ways on viewing from different angles.

The ZenFone 3 Deluxe and the ZenFone 3 Ultra are pure metal. The Ultra is the flattest, and the largest of the three ZenFone 3s. At 6.8-inch it is on the edge of being confused for a tablet. Although it weighs a good odd 233 grams, it's pretty amazing how that thing can measure just 6.8 mm even after cramming in a massive 4,600mAh battery inside. It also comes with dual five-magnet speakers and what is being claimed as the world's first DTS headphone: X for virtual 7.1 surround sound. The Deluxe and the regular ZenFone 3 come with a mono-speaker.

All the three smartphones come with oblong physical home buttons that doubles as a fingerprint scanner. While the Deluxe and the regular ZenFone 3 have this on the rear, the Ultra has it on the front. All the phones sport physical capacitive keys on the front that are backlit and offer good tactile feedback.

The ZenFone 3 has a 5.5-inch FullHD IPS display, the Deluxe a 5.7-inch FullHD AMOLED display and the Ultra comes with a 6.8-inch FullHD IPS display. Now, ZenFones have never had the best displays in the business. They have been just regular with mostly washed out colours and average viewing angles. The new batch of ZenFone 3s however change that, convincingly. These are undoubtedly the best display toting phones that Asus has ever built. Especially, the ZenFone 3 and the ZenFone 3 Deluxe. While the Deluxe churns out more saturated colours, the IPS panel of the ZenFone 3 is closer to nature. Both the phones have excellent viewing angles. The ZenFone 3 Ultra would have done better with a QHD screen, but well, it's not too bad either, especially by Asus standards.

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The flagship ZenPhone 3 Deluxe is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor with Adreno 530 GPU and up to a blistering 6 gigs of RAM and up to 256GB of internal memory for the maxed out variant. If that wasn't enough, the phone also supports expandable storage of up to 128GB via microSD (hybrid) card slot.

The ZenFone 3 is meanwhile powered by a humble Snapdragon 625 processor with Adreno 625 GPU and up to 4GB RAM and 64GB memory while the ZenFone 3 Ultra comes with a Snapdragon 652 processor with Adreno 510 GPU and up to 4GB RAM and 128GB memory powering the whole thing. Both the phones also support expandable storage.

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All the three phones are dualSIM, support 4G LTE and run Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow-based ZenUI 3.0 out-f-the-box. The latest version of ZenUI tries to cut flab, just a bit though. The phones are still loaded with enough unwanted apps from Asus, some of which can't be uninstalled. The new version brings in new animations, parallax scrolling and a new frosting effect to the interface which makes it a little more visually appealing than the previous version.

Asus is relying heavily on the rear camera of its new ZenFone 3s, with tall claims about their quick focus abilities, with the obvious iPhone comparisons thrown in every now and then. The ZenFone 3 Deluxe and the ZenFone 3 Ultra have the same camera setup, which is 23-megapixel camera on the rear with Sony IMX318 image sensor, f/2.0 aperture and a 4-axis optical image stabilisation. Additionally, they feature a 3-axis electronic image stabilisation for steady 4K UHD videos, according to the company. There's also Asus proprietary TriTech autofocus system that can "automatically select 2nd generation laser, phase detection, or continuous autofocus to provide accurate and nearly instant 0.03-second focusing and subject tracking." On the front, the two phones have an 8-megapixel camera.

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The ZenFone 3 on the other hand comes with a 16-megapixel camera on the rear with f/2.0 aperture, laser auto-focus, 4-axis optical image stabilisation and dualLED real tone flash along with an 8-megapixel camera on the front.

In our brief usage, we found the rear cameras of all the three phones fairly quick to focus, with good shutter speed. The phones' post-processing algorithm does tend to slightly oversaturate colours a bit, especially in indoor lighting conditions. At the same time, post-processing also takes an odd second or two to do its mojo. Having said that, we reserve our final verdict for our full review of the devices.

The ZenFone 3 Deluxe and the ZenFone 3 are backed by a 3,000mAh battery while the ZenFone 3 Ultra has a 4,600mAh battery inside. All the phones support Qualcomm's Quick Charge 3.0. Additionally, the Ultra can double as a portable power bank to charge other phones.

Prices for the new ZenFone 3s start at $249 for the 3GB RAM 32GB memory ZenFone 3 (roughly Rs 16,724) and go all the way up to $499 for the 6GB RAM 64GB memory ZenFone 3 Deluxe (roughly Rs 33,517) which is pretty good (read aggressive) for what these phones have to offer. I personally am in love with the ZenFone 3, especially for how good it feels and how pretty it looks.

Availability will vary from region to region. Sources have told India Today Online that the new batch of ZenFone 3s may be coming to India in the first week of August. Watch this space for our full review of the Asus ZenFone 3, the ZenFone 3 Deluxe and the ZenFone 3 Ultra.

Disclosure: Asus sponsored the writer's travel and hotel expenses for the launch event in Taipei, Taiwan.





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Microsoft is one of several foreign firms to have come under scrutiny as China seeks to enforce a 2008 anti-monopoly law, which some critics say is being used to unfairly target overseas businesses.

By Reuters: Microsoft Corp chief executive Satya Nadella is in Beijing this week, a company spokesman said on Tuesday, as China's anti-trust investigation of the US software titan nears its third year.

Nadella is expected to meet government officials to discuss the probe, a source familiar with the matter said.

His visit is the second over the past month to China by a high-profile U.S. technology executive after Apple Inc chief executive Tim Cook's mid-May visit in a bid to reinvigorate sales. Cook met China's Vice Premier Wang Yang on May 17.

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Microsoft is one of several foreign firms to have come under scrutiny as China seeks to enforce a 2008 anti-monopoly law, which some critics say is being used to unfairly target overseas businesses.

Revenues earned in the country for the firm also have come under pressure, as China seeks to replace western tech products with those manufactured locally.

Also Read: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in Delhi 'celebrates' India's technology, invokes Ghalib

The State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC), one of China's anti-monopoly regulators, conducted raids on Microsoft in mid-2014 relating to the anti-monopoly law.

The investigation relates to compatibility, bundle sales, and file verification issues related to Windows and Office software, according to Microsoft.

Nadella is no stranger to China. He visited in September 2014, after news of the investigation broke. At a meeting with a top regulator in Beijing at that time, Nadella promised to cooperate fully with authorities in their investigation.

But in a sign that the matter still had not been resolved, SAIC said in January that it had requested Microsoft to explain some issues that came to the fore from digital data obtained as part of an anti-trust probe.

A spokesman for Microsoft declined to confirm whether Nadella is meeting with government officials and said his China visit will include attending a Microsoft Developer day and Tsinghua Management School event.

He is a member of the advisory board of the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University, which counts President Xi Jinping among its alumni. Nadella hosted Xi at Microsoft's campus in Seattle in September when the Chinese president visited the United States for a week-long trip.

The Information Office of the State Council, China's cabinet which oversees SAIC, did not immediately respond to questions.

Also Read: Tim Cook, Satya Nadella... all want a slice of India. But India not sure

Nadella's visit also comes as Microsoft prepares to shut down its MSN China portal in June.

The US software company has also taken a public beating in China in the past few days as users criticized its push to get them to mandatorily upgrade their Windows operating systems, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

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"We have already invested $2 billion and we are interested in investing more," said ceo, SoftBank.

By Press Trust of India: Having made a string of technology investments in India , Japanese telecom and Internet giant SoftBank has said its investments in the country will top $10 billion in 5-10 years. SoftBank, which owns one of Japan's biggest mobile carriers and a controlling stake in US-based Sprint Corp, will make its first $350 million investment in a solar project in India, its Chief Executive Masayoshi Son told PTI.

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"We have already invested $2 billion and we are interested in investing more," he said. "India has a great future. We are interested in investing in Internet companies and also in solar energy. We would make strong commitments." Son said SoftBank is looking at accelerating the pace of investments in future. "We also made a first move on solar energy. We are making $350 million investment in first project in solar (in India). We will expand. In next 5-10 years, we will definitely make probably around $10 billion of investments," he added.

In June last year, SoftBank announced a joint venture with Bharti Enterprises and Taiwan's Foxconn Technology Group to generate 20 gigawatts of renewable energy. This would entail the three partners investing about $20 billion. Son said achieving the electricity generation target would depend on power purchase agreements being signed with offtaker states, adding that "we will support it".

SoftBank's investments in the past two years include $627 million in online-retailing marketplace Snapdeal and leading a $210 million funding round in taxi-hailing app Ola Cabs. It paid $200 million for a 35 per cent stake in InMobi, an Indian mobile-advertising network. SoftBank also has a JV with the Bharti Group, Bharti SoftBank, the investments of which include the mobile application Hike Messenger. Its other investments cover real estate website Housing.com, hotel-booking app Oyo Rooms and Grofers.

Son said India's market is poised for massive growth, making it an important destination for investors. Asked whether concerns about high valuations would lead SoftBank to cut its planned investments in the country, he said, "We are very very confident about India, so we will increase investment. I am not worried. I am very very excited about the opportunity." Son, who had previously predicted that India's e-commerce industry would become a $500 billion business in the next 10 years, is confident that it will grow exponentially.

"And it will become like China and become worth hundreds of billions of dollars," he said.

Though India has lagged China on development of the Internet, SoftBank believes the country will grow strongly over the next decade.

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On consolidation in the e-commerce space, he said, "We always thought that whenever there is an opportunity to win, I am sure there will be lots of co-operation."

Asked what he wants from the government on renewable energy push, Son reply was "just support international standard" for paying for electricity generated and consumed.

"On making investment, there is international stand on the rules. For example, if we make investment, then we want payment? there are international rules and standards and as long as India provides (that), we don't need any advantage. As long as there is parity with international standards that is enough," he said.

SoftBank, Bharti and Foxconn plan to invest in the joint venture called SBG Cleantech.

India is targeting generation of 100 gigawatt of solar power by 2022, up from around 5 gigawatt today.

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The report quoted Filip Kaczmarek, a member of the European Parliament, as saying that such emphasis on trade relations at the expense of human rights issues is contrary to the European Unions action plan on human rights, which includes the imperative to keep such issues at the heart of the international bodys agenda.

In the wake of nuclear negotiations, a number of human rights groups including Amnesty International and the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran have expressed concern that excessive focus on nuclear and trade-related issues could have the effect of diminishing international attention on Irans ongoing human rights violations. Whats more, political groups like the National Council of Resistance of Iran have observed that Western negotiating posture has apparently been based in large part on the expectation of moderation within the Iranian regime. These groups go on to say that recent human rights stories seriously undermine such claims of moderation.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani came to power in 2013 on promises of greater domestic openness and the release of political prisoners. But in the ensuing three years he has become subject to sever criticisms from some of his former supporters, who see no signs of progress or even the attempt at progress on these fronts.

In fact, it has been widely reported that the Islamic Republic is currently in the midst of a wide-ranging crackdown on political dissent and pro-Western attitudes, apparently as a counterbalance to the compromise involved in negotiating with the Great Satan that is the United States. One of the latest examples of this crackdown comes in the form of Tehrans attempt to order foreign-based internet messaging apps to move their Iranian user data into the country for easier monitoring by regime authorities.

Naturally, this interest in monitoring reflects the brisk pace of political arrests in recent months, including mass arrests of journalists, artists, and activists. Such individuals have at times been subject to remarkably swift and severe punishment. Last week it was reported that more than 30 Iranian students had been arrested, charged, sentenced, and flogged 99 times each, all in the space of 24 hours, because they had been caught attending a graduation party considered to be un-Islamic by Irans morality police.

The story helps to shine a light on the frequency with which Iran uses corporal punishment as a legal response to citizens acting out, either in their personal lives or via social protest. On Monday, IranWire reported upon the flogging sentences recently carried out on 17 gold miners who held a demonstration in 2014 to protest lay-offs. Each person received a suspended prison sentence and between 30 and 100 lashes, with some being ordered to pay fines, as well. The cases supposedly focused on damage done to the employers property in the course of the demonstration, but it is also the case that labor unions are illegal in the Islamic Republic and that protests over difficult economic conditions are frequently targeted for repression.

In other situations, however, physical repression is not so formalized. Political prisoners who have been sentenced only to time in prison may nonetheless receive beatings in the course of serving out that sentence, especially if they are imprisoned for certain offenses that are relevant to the regimes religious or political identity. Such crimes often fall under vague titles like enmity against God and insulting the supreme leader.

The latter was the focus of abuse recently reported by the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, in its coverage of the case of Farahi Shandiz. The labor activist was not only severely beaten but also had his arm broken by prison authorities and was subjected to degrading and torturous extrajudicial punishments that a source close to his case called hard to describe. Most of apparently came in reaction to his having been charged with insulting the supreme leader, and his supposedly repeating that offense while in prison. The mistreatment correlated with his being charged twice while in prison, for the same crime that had landed him there in the first place. In this way, an initial three year sentence has been extended to nine years.

But as much as these individual stories may be cited to corroborate claims of an ongoing crackdown under the supposedly moderate Rouhani administration, the most frequent source of support for those claims is the status of the death penalty in the Islamic Republic. Already the country with the highest rate of executions per capita, that figure has only climbed higher over the past three years, with nearly 1,000 people being confirmed executed in 2015 alone.

The vast majority of the victims of capital punishment in Iran are convicted of non-violent drug crimes. And during the Rouhani presidency, this trend has continued not only in spite of outcry from international human rights organizations, but also in spite of mounting evidence that such liberal use of the death penalty has had no positive impact on the countrys drug problems. In fact, Quartz has reported that drug addiction has become particularly pronounced among well-educated, middle class females, in large part because of the lack of support for such people under a theocratic regime that is notoriously restrictive of the rights of women.
Relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia hit a particular low point in January when Tehran stirred up sentiment among Shiite hardliners, accusing Riyadh of anti-Shiite policies and sectarian motives in the execution of a dissident Shiite cleric. This led to Iranian mobs attacking the Saudi embassy and consulate, after which the Saudis severed diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic, followed by several Saudi allies downgrading their diplomatic relations with Iran as well.

But naturally, sectarian tensions have been pronounced between the two sides throughout much of their modern history. Consequently, a stampede and crush in the Meccan suburb of Mina during last years hajj led to political tensions as Iran apparently sought to blame its adversary and take over responsibility for security arrangements affecting future Iranian pilgrims. In May, Iranian authorities announced that they would not be sending pilgrims to this years event, out of concern about unresolved issues.

Although each side blamed the other for a failure of such resolution, both also announced that they would be making a new effort to come to an agreement last week. But Saudi Arabias latest condemnations are only part of renewed mutual attacks by the two leading Muslim powers as they vie for influence. According to Zee News, the Saudi statements emphasized that in the past Iran has signed memoranda of understanding with 70 other nations regarding the hajj activities, but it refused to do so in this instance in spite of the renewed satisfaction of the other signatories.

While it is certainly possible that this conflict has little to nothing to do with the broader diplomatic and political situation between the two countries, it is also possible that it is an attempt to win points on either or both sides of the sectarian conflict, in which case the hajj disagreement would have significant bearing on the other Saudi condemnations.

Those statements come particularly in response to reports of Iranian-led forces massing around the Islamic State stronghold of Fallujah, Iraq, according to the Associated Press. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir referred to this Iranian presence as unacceptable, and called for a halt to Iranian meddling in its western neighbor. Although Iran has rejected such criticisms and has in turn accused the Saudis of supporting extremism, Jubeir held a joint press conference with UK Foreign Minister Phillip Hammond in Saudi Arabia to explain how Iranian influence has provoked sectarianism on both sides of the conflict.

This claim was underscored by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Monday, in a news brief indicating that the emerging Iranian offensive in Iraq is a counterpoint to efforts by the US in Syria. The article notes that some US policymakers see Iranian and American interests as converging with regard to the fight against the Islamic State. Nevertheless, the same policymakers recognize severe divergence, as well, particularly insofar as the Shiite makeup of Iranian-backed forces is raising the danger of a sectarian blood bath.

This threat is even more recognizable in Syria itself, where Iran has long stood as the primary defensive apparatus for the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, which the US and many other world powers have called to be removed as part of a negotiated solution to the Syrian Civil War. Iran has flatly refused any such efforts, leading to criticisms that Iran is responsible for a very large share of the roughly 250,000 casualties in that war.

This criticism was reiterated by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in an address to a national rally on Monday. He described the failure to depose Assad as a major contributor to Syrians pain, thus reinforcing Turkeys previous position in the conflict. Turkish backing for moderate rebel groups had led to animosity between Iran and Turkey earlier in the conflict. However, economic interests and a breakdown in Turkish relations with Russia had also recently led the Erdogan government to vigorously pursue improved relations with Iran in other dimensions.

Erdogans latest comments arguably undermine this outreach, but they may have also been counterbalanced by the fact that he made a point of criticizing the US at the same time, according to Press Trust of India. This goes to show that while Iranian-Saudi relations have trended almost exclusively in the direction of greater animosity, Irans relations with other regional powers, especially potential trading partners, have been much more complicated.

As reported above, many of Saudi Arabias political and geographic neighbors joined in responding to expanded Iranian influence by downgrading their relations, but none went as far as severing those relations in the way that the Saudis did. In fact, some powers in the region have eagerly sought new economic relations even in spite of wariness about Irans influence on regional and sectarian conflicts.

Just one of the latest examples of this comes in the form of Omani announcements, reported in ATW Online, regarding plans to help in the training of new Iranian commercial pilots and to expand the schedule of flights between the two countries. Earlier in May, Turkey and Iran similarly announced the expansion of flights schedules to include some 4,000 over the next six months. While Turkey would no doubt like such plans to benefit both countries tourism industries, it is nonetheless true that some Iranian commercial airlines have been linked to well-known arms trafficking operations by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, with potential impact on the conflicts in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere.
[May 31, 2016] Network International Selects OT's MOTION CODE Solution to Secure Online Transactions in the Middle East & Africa

Network International , the leading payment solutions provider in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) and OT (Oberthur Technologies), a leading global provider of embedded security software products and services, today announced their partnership to offer to banks in the MEA region OT's dynamic cryptogram payment card to secure online transactions - OT MOTION CODE solution. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160531005698/en/ Network International selects OT's MOTION CODE solution to secure online transactions in the Middle East & Africa. Picture from Cards & Payments Middle East trade show, with Frederic Beylier, Chief Operating Officer at OT, Bhairav Trivedi, Chief Executive Officer at Network International, Eric Duforest, M-BU Managing Director Financial Services Institutions at OT and Muzaffar Khokhar, Regional President for Russia, Middle-East and Africa at OT (Photo: Business Wire) The OT MOTION CODE solution provides an extra layer of security for Card-Not-Present (CNP) transactions (ecommerce transactions via telephone or Internet for instance). The technology replaces the static 3-digit security code usually printed on the back of a card, by a mini screen that displays a code, which is automatically refreshed according to an algorithm, typically every hour. For the cardholder, the solution is fully transparent: no plug-in to install on their web browser, no button to press, the code appears at the same location on the card, the key benefit being the code's dynamic generation and periodical refresh. The refresh timing is defined by the card issuer, for instance each hour. For issuers, a specific server synchronized with the algorithm and refreshing rules defined in the cards is needed and supported by OT's offer. Today, millions of ecommerce transactions are processed by Network International every year. In order to help banks to increase trust in online transactions and reduce online fraud, Network International has added OT MOTION CODE solution to its fraud management products portfolio. "E-Commerce adoption in the UAE is growing rapidly, and we have to offer security and convenience to end-users," said Bhairav Trivedi, Chief Executive Officer of Network International. "As the first company to market this kind of technology in the world, OT in collaboration with Network International will offer banks with a turnky solution to help them mitigate online fraud and also to provide their consumers with a reliable, secure and seamless online shopping experience in the Middle East and Africa region."



"We are delighted to partner with Network International to offer our OT MOTION CODE solution in the MEA region. Network International has a major reach in this region and we are convinced this solution could benefit millions of potential end-users. Online fraud is growing rapidly worldwide, and thanks to our revolutionary innovation, we provide this e-commerce fraud fighting solution to financial institutions to secure online transactions," said Eric Duforest, Managing Director of the Financial Services Institutions business at OT. OT MOTION CODE solution will be showcased on OT's booth (E20) during Cards &Payments Middle East in Dubai (May 31 - June 1)

ABOUT NETWORK INTERNATIONAL

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Itongadol.- The Knesset Land of Israel caucus called to annex Maaleh Adumim Tuesday, citing a poll showing nearly 78 percent of Israelis agree to it, a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said hes ready to negotiate based on the Arab Peace Initiative.

The controversial Arab Peace Initiative  long rejected by Jerusalem and also known as the Saudi Initiative  calls for normalizing relations between Arab countries and Israel, in exchange for a complete withdrawal by Israel to pre-1967 lines, which Maaleh Adumim is beyond. Most calls for a two-state solution on pre-1967 lines with land swaps put the city east of Jerusalem on the Israeli side of the proposed border.

Still, Land of Israel Caucus chairmen MKs Yoav Kisch (Likud) and Bezalel Smotrich (Bayit Yehudi) submitted legislation calling to apply Israeli law to Maaleh Adumim, which would be de facto annexation of the city.

The MKs called for the right-wing government, newly infused with a five-seat boost from Yisrael Beytenu, to realize the will of the people and apply sovereignty to Maaleh Adumim.

A poll Kisch and Smotrich ordered from prominent research institute Midgam found that 77.9% of Jewish Israelis think Israel should apply sovereignty to Maaleh Adumim even if there is no agreement with the Palestinians, as it did with the Golan Heights and east Jerusalem in 1980, while 70.4% said such a move would be worthwhile even if there is a significantly negative reaction from the international community.

Only 34.5% said it would be better to wait for an agreement with the Palestinians before annexing the city.

In addition, 88% of those polled said residents of Maaleh Adumim deserve the same rights as all other Israeli citizens.

The poll was conducted by a representative sample of 500 Jewish Israeli adults, and has a margin of error of 4.4%.

Smotrich said the poll shows that the People of Israel know what is good for them, and most of the nation on the Right and Left support applying Israeli sovereignty to Maaleh AdumimMr. Prime Minister, youve run out of excuses; its time for sovereignty.

Maaleh Adumim is part of the public consensus as an inseparable part of Israel and is part of the political consensus on Right and Left, the Land of Israel Caucus statement reads. It is clear that Maaleh Adumim will remain part of Israeli territory in any future agreement.

The caucus said it will take advantage of the current coalition situation to bring about the annexation.

Gush Etzion Local Council Mayor Davidi Perel demanded that his region, which is south of Jerusalem and past the 1949 armistice line, be included in any discussion of annexation.

Gush Etzions status is rooted in the Israeli public and the connection between Gush Etzion and Jerusalem and the State of Israel cannot be severed, Perel stated. Gush Etzions contribution to the establishment of the state and the leadership of Jerusalem, as well as its importance to the future of Israel cannot be questioned.

Perel pointed out that parties on the Right and Left see Gush Etzion as part of Israel in an eventual peace treaty.

Jews lived in Gush Etzion before the establishment of the state in 1948, but the region was lost to Arab armies in the War of Independence. The most famous incident in the battle in the region was in January 1948, when a convoy of 35 Haganah fighters, known as the Lamed Heh (35 in Hebrew numerals), was killed by Arabs while trying to resupply the kibbutzim of Gush Etzion, which were under a blockade.
ARTHUR -- Local Lions Clubs and other organizations will once again be participating in the Lions of Illinois Foundation (LIF) Walk for Sight of East Central Illinois raising funds for local projects to serve others.

The annual family-friendly event will take place in Arthur on Sunday and the coordinators said they are excited about this new location.

"Arthur is easy to get to, has great facilities and good people," says event chairwoman Crystal Trotter of Paris.

The LIF is a collective fund built and supported by the Lions Clubs in Illinois to help provide services to the blind and vision impaired in our communities. The Walk for Sight is a shared fundraiser between the LIF and the qualifying humanitarian organization of your choice. The event rotates around east central Illinois to help more people become involved. For the past three years, it was hosted by the Mattoon Lions Club.

To learn more, visit www.lionsofillinoisfoundation, check it out on Facebook (Walk for Sight of East Central Illinois) or email: walkforsighteci@gmail.com.
Two Nebraska ethanol plants that shut down last fall as their owner faced bankruptcy are operating again.

Abengoa SA, a Spanish energy company, said in a bankruptcy court filing May 20 that its ethanol plants in Ravenna and York, operated by subsidiary Abengoa Bioenergy, "are operating at or near full capacity."

The filing did not indicate exactly when the plants restarted, but it did say they restarted sometime after March 1. Officials at Abengoa Bioenergy's corporate office in Chesterfield, Missouri, did not respond to an email seeking comment.

The company said in the filing that the two plants were expected to generate more than $26 million in revenue in May, although a monthly operating report for April submitted to the court listed only about $500,000 in revenue for the two plants and a net operating loss of nearly $500,000.

The two plants shut down in late 2015 due to a lack of money to operate them. In February, several creditors owed millions of dollars tried to force Abengoa Bioenergy into an involuntary Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which would have required it to liquidate its assets. A judge instead converted that petition to a Chapter 11 filing, which allows the company time to reorganize its finances.

The May 20 filing by Abengoa sought a 120-day extension on filing the reorganization plan.

The company said in its filing that the extension will allow it to market its assets to potential bidders. Though the company said it is open to other restructuring options, its preferred path is to sell its U.S. assets, for which it said there has been considerable expressions of interest.
Nebraska's highest court has ruled that a Hastings judge won't have to start over in his efforts to get custody of his 14-year-old son because his ex-wife in Kansas wasn't served with a summons at the start of the case.

The Nebraska Supreme Court's decision in Burns v. Burns reversed a Court of Appeals decision last year.

The boy had lived with his mother, Kerry Burns, from age 2 until another Nebraska judge granted Adams County Court Judge Michael Burns custody on Aug. 11, 2014, following a trial.

On Dec. 1, an opinion by the Nebraska Court of Appeals vacated Dawson County District Judge James Doyle IV's decision because Kerry Burns never was served with a summons at the start of the case.

Michael Burns appealed.

In April, his attorney, Bob Sullivan of Hastings, argued before the Supreme Court that when Kerry Burns was given a copy, she immediately notified her counsel, and since that time has vigorously defended herself.

Her attorney, Matt Catlett of Lincoln, argued that service by summons was a hard-and-fast rule.

Justice John Wright asked if he wanted to stall the proceeding and start over.

"What good does that do anybody?" he asked.

"Well, that's the rule," answered Catlett.

Wright can be heard on an archived recording calling the argument "disgusting" soon after as another justice asked a question.

In the decision Friday, Supreme Court Justice William Cassel wrote that the plain language of the statutes supported the appeals court's conclusion.

But, the Supreme Court concluded, Kerry Burns had waived service by making a general appearance, which doesn't take much to do, he wrote.

"Kerry's actions through her counsel clearly crossed this threshold."

Reached Friday, Catlett said: "Kerry is processing the opinion and considering what to do."

One option would be to ask for a rehearing.

It almost certainly won't be the end of what Cassel described as a "procedurally complicated" case.

Since the Court of Appeals decision in December, Doyle, the district court judge, found Kerry Burns in contempt and sentenced her to jail for failing to appear at a hearing in the case.

On Dec. 6, she refused to return her son to the boy's father and his wife in Sutton, saying she believed the Court of Appeals decision should stand even though a mandate hadn't been issued because Michael Burns was appealing.

In an affidavit seeking temporary sole custody, Michael Burns said his son has thrived since moving to Sutton.

On Dec. 11, Doyle ordered Kerry Burns to return the boy to the custody of his father.

When she failed to do it, Doyle found her in contempt and sentenced her to 10 days in jail, which he said she could avoid by following an order that allowed her parenting time under her ex-husband's supervision and required her to email him an itinerary stating where they will be staying and what they will be doing and to allow him to observe them together.

Kerry Burns argued that she didn't believe the court had jurisdiction because the case had gone to the Supreme Court.

She is appealing the contempt order.
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When Gov. Pete Ricketts analyzed legislative races in the May primary, he said the results demonstrated that legislators would be held accountable by voters.

Six incumbents were in second place when the votes were tallied. Ricketts opined that constituents sent a message that you need to pay attention to the people in your district.

He pointed to votes to repeal the death penalty, raising the state gas tax and allowing young immigrants brought into the country illegally as children to get licenses.

The governor may have a point. But his analysis doesnt tell the whole story; the election results were hardly the result of a sanitized process like that taught in grade school.

Independent political groups that can avoid financial reporting requirements played a major role in the election outcome.

In the waning days prior to the May 10 primary election Americans for Prosperity Nebraska and Trees of Liberty, political action committees with ties to the Koch brothers, unleashed an onslaught of advertising, including direct mail, radio advertising and robocalls.

The spending by independent groups neared an estimated $50,000 in some races, often double and triple the amount spent by the incumbents. Across the entire state spending by the independent groups surely was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Incumbent senators hit the hardest were Republicans who cast votes to override vetoes by Ricketts, including Sens. Les Seiler of Hastings, Al Davis of Hyannis and Jerry Johnson of Wahoo.

The mailings were the usual unsavory concoctions of innuendo and exaggeration.

One mailer accused the senators of opposing transparency in the legislature because they voted against making public votes for speaker of the legislature and committee chairs.

Party bosses in the state GOP want public votes so they can exert control over their members in Nebraskas nonpartisan, one-house Legislature.

The mailers also accused the senators of supporting state benefits for illegal immigrants. In the case of Davis and Johnson, the only vote that would fit that vague description would be a vote in the 2015 session to allow a few thousand young immigrants brought into the country illegally as children to get drivers licenses. They did not vote to override the veto of the 2016 legislation to allow so-called DACA youth to get professional licenses.

The independent groups went after Republican senators. Democratic senators were targeted with similar attacks by the state GOP.

It should escape no ones notice that if the infusion of shadowy funding from outside groups is successful it would greatly boost Ricketts ability to twist arms in the Legislature.

Because the incumbents were basically ambushed in the primary, they might be able to bounce back strongly in the general. We hope that voters dont reward shadowy groups that flood mailboxes with dubious attack ads. Nebraska will be better off with a robust balance of power in state government.
There will always be an argument in politics about moving forward. Do we stay afloat or move forward for the sake of moving forward? I believe firmly in moving forward towards inclusivity and economic freedom. I think this is the end-state goal of all progressives in the nation. The question, at that point, becomes how do we achieve this objective?

I voted for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Primary this March. I voted again for him in the primary held earlier this month in the symbolic primary for Democrats. However, I feel my votes were for more than just a single individual's ambition to become president. I was, in my mind, voting for the person who was most likely to move the country forward on an ambitious track.

I believe that our country, given it's history, should proceed expeditiously. We have nothing to lose this election cycle and every thing to gain. I believe that those who headed out west on the Oregon and Mormon trails would be shocked at the timid nature of our country when it comes to progress. These were people who struck out into the unknown to seek a better life. Politically, our country should be able to do the same. Pass model legislation for the rest of the world to follow as an example of what to do. Affordable, if not free, healthcare, college and a minimum wage that anyone and everyone can live on should be the agenda of the congress and our federal government.

We need to move on from this selfishness and greediness that our country has devolved to. We should be concerned, as a nation, with how we can help people when we can rather than how can we tear down those who have nothing.

Scott Weiss, Shelton
No, Donald Trump was not my first choice for the Republican presidential candidate. However, we Republicans need to unite and elect him President. We cannot allow another four years with a Democrat in the White House. We potentially have three or four Supreme Court justices to nominate and put in place to get this country back.

Now we have another wolf in sheeps clothing telling us he is not voting for Trump. His name is Randy Moody ("Veteran Republican urges vote for Clinton," May 24). Moody says vacancies on the U.S. Supreme Court, one now, with more likely to follow, is reason enough to vote for Hillary Clinton because Trump has said he is likely to vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that made abortion legal. I will be the first in line to run Moody out of Nebraska for these types of comments.
COLUMBUS  After dedicating his professional career to education, Rich Patton is devoting his retirement to his second love  music.

My career didnt give me a lot of time to work on my music, said Patton, who was assistant principal at Columbus High School from 1979-80 and 1987-88. The last few years Ive worked 60-plus hours a week (on that).

Hell perform Blues and More at Columbus Public Library at 7 p.m. June 9, a sort of reunion concert for Patton, who said hes looking forward to seeing familiar faces.

So many of my friends will be there, he said. And Im actually hoping some of my former students show up. I love to see former students.

Patton started playing guitar during his final semester of high school. When he went to college in the 1960s, he developed a love for blues music and artists such as B.B. King. He started playing blues guitar and later expanded his performance sets to include country, like Hank Williams, and classic rock including Elvis Presley, Marshall Tucker, The Eagles and Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Most American music, especially pop music, is related to the blues, Patton said. Jazz and blues are the heart of American music.

Since retiring, Patton has also learned how to play the saxophone.

Boy, I love that instrument. Ive always loved the sax. Theres been some times Ive been lucky enough to play with a sax player and man, said Patton. Sometimes its hard to find a sax player so I thought, Why dont I learn how to play?

Patton and his wife live in Carter Lake, Iowa, an Omaha suburb.

Im enjoying it. Im living on a lake; we have a boat. Never had a boat, never lived on a lake before, he said.

He also performs for groups ranging from preschools to retirement communities.

The preschoolers just have a ball. We laugh, dance and just have a lot of fun, Patton said. Retirement groups are very polite and just have lot of fun.

Hes also played at festivals and wineries across the state.

I guess I really like people, so I have fun all the way around.

Patton started his career in education as a special education teacher, but he spent most of it as either a principal or assistant principal. His career took him all over the country -- from Alaska to Colorado, Kansas and Illinois.

Weve been wayfaring strangers, my wife and I, said Patton.

But Nebraskas always been a special place for him.

Nebraska has good people with good values that are very sensible, Patton said. We really liked Columbus. We made really good friends, and weve been lifelong friends ever since.
Saturday - St. Leger Cowley Chapter of DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) to meet at 1 p.m. in the Flanagan Room at Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital, 5401 South St. Program: "Sharpie: Nebraska's Queen of the Air," presented by Diane Bartels. For DAR info., contact Jennie at (402) 975-9447. (No meetings in July and August.)

Monday  Disabled American Veterans Auxiliary (DAVA) monthly meeting 7 p.m. at DAV Chapter House, 3901 N. 70th St.

Wednesday - Women in Sales & Business (WISB) monthly meeting at Hillcrest Country Club, 9401 O St. Lunch at 11:30 a.m., presentation follows 11:55 a.m. to 1 p.m. Cost: $18, includes lunch ($10 for meeting only). Register at www.wisblincoln.org or email wisblincoln@gmail.com to RSVP.

Coming soon - Lincoln Quilters Guild meeting 7 p.m. Monday, June 13 at Union College Seventh-Day Adventist Church, 4015 S. 49th St. Guest speaker: Guild member Holly Zemke. Program: "Red, White and Green All Over," a presentation on 19th century red and green applique quilts. Also, class offered Tuesday, June 14, "3 Ways to Applique," with instructors Donna Welte, Jaynee Wolfe and Carol Curtis at St Marks United Methodist Church. Class registration form on the guild website at http://www.lincolnquiltersguild.org. Come early and check out Guild activities such as the Guild Library, Quilts of Valor, Cuddle Quilts and the Mini Raffle. New members welcome. The Guild has implemented a $5 fee for visitors.

Coming soon - Women's Welcome Club of Lincoln luncheon 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, June 14 at the Country Club of Lincoln, 3200 S. 24th St. Guest speaker Walt Miller to discuss the Naval Ammunitions Depot in Hastings, and a history of this area as it appeared in WWII. All women of Lincoln invited to the luncheon. Womens Welcome Club offers group activities such as several card groups, including Hand and Foot, Tick, and newly-started Pitch. Reservations (required) due by Thursday, June 9. Luncheon costs $13. New women interested in attending may call Aileen at (402) 488-0132. More information about the organization at www.womenswelcomecluboflincoln.org

Coming soon - Lincoln Womens Connection South (affiliated with Stonecroft Ministries) continental breakfast and program from 9:30 to 11 a.m. Tuesday, June 21 at the Country Club of Lincoln, 3200 S. 24th St. Cost: $8. Guest speaker: Kristi Burchfiel from Wichita, KS, a published author and speaker. Topic: What to do when best laid plans go awry? Special feature: Edible Arrangements presents ideas for gift-giving or just for yourself and guests. Reservations due Friday, June 17; call Leslie at (402) 484-8842, or Emily at (402) 464-4593.
RACINE  Stressing the importance of offering nutritious meals to children during the summer months, Racine Unified School District announces the sponsorship of the Summer Food Service Program.

The Summer Food Service Program, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and is administered by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, provides nutritious meals to children during the summer, when free and reduced-price school meals are typically unavailable.

Free meals will be made available to children 18 years of age and younger. Persons older than 18 who are determined by a state or local public educational agency to be mentally or physically disabled and who also participate in a public or private nonprofit school program during the regular school year may receive free meals as well.

Meal service will begin on Wednesday, June 15, and end on Thursday, July 28, and will be served Monday through Thursday.

Meals will not be available on July 4 or 5.

The following summer school locations will be serving the free meals this summer:

Fratt Elementary School, 3501 Kinzie Ave.

Giese Elementary School, 5120 Byrd Ave.

Janes Elementary School, 1425 N. Wisconsin St.

Jerstad Elementary School, 3535 Lasalle St.

Johnson Elementary School, 2420 Kentucky St.

Mitchell Elementary School, 2713 Drexel Ave.

Roosevelt Elementary School, 915 Romayne Ave.

Wadewitz Elementary School, 2700 Yout St.

West Ridge Elementary School, 1347 S. Emmertsen Road.

Gilmore Middle School, 2330 Northwestern Ave.

Mitchell Middle School, 2701 Drexel Ave.

Racine Alternate Education, 2405 Northwestern Ave.

Horlick High School, 2119 Rapids Drive

Park High School, 1901 12th St.

Breakfast will be served from 8-8:30 a.m. at all elementary and middle schools and from 8:30-9 a.m. for high school locations. Lunch will be served from 10:15-10:45 a.m. at all elementary locations and 10:30-11 a.m. at all middle and high school locations.

The following community centers will also participate in the Summer Food Service Program through the Racine Unified School District:

Bryant Center, 601 21st St., noon-2 p.m.

Martin Luther King Center, 1134 Martin Luther King Drive, noon-2 p.m.

Racine Literacy, 1510 Villa St., noon-2 p.m.

Salvation Army, 1901 E. Washington Ave., 1-3 p.m.

Tyler-Domer Center, 2301 12th St., noon-2 p.m.

Urban League, 718 N. Memorial Drive, 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.

Anthony Lane COP House, 2437 Anthony Lane, noon-2 p.m.

Thelma Orr COP House, 1146 Villa St., noon-2 p.m.

Mount Pleasant Lakeside COP House, 2237 Mead St., noon-2 p.m.
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RACINE  A ruling Tuesday allowed the placement of a Racine County sex offender in Kenosha County to move forward.

Racine County Circuit Judge Allen Pat Torhorst denied Kenosha Countys request to stay a decision last week allowing Michael L. McGee to live in a home in the Town of Wheatland. Kenosha County had asked Torhorst to put last weeks order on hold while it appealed.

Torhorst said he had to balance the interests of the public and McGee. He believed McGee would be harmed if he halted his order, saying state law allowed McGee to be placed in Wheatland.

McGee, 53, was convicted in November 1987 in Racine County Circuit Court of second-degree sexual assault and burglary. During a Racine burglary, he raped a 26-year-old woman, authorities said.

State officials placed McGee at 32200 Geneva Road (old Highway 50) in the Town of Wheatland after it could not find suitable housing in Racine County, drawing the ire of neighbors and officials in Kenosha County.

McGee had been at the Sand Ridge Secure Treatment Center in Mauston before he was released Tuesday morning, said his attorney, Robert Peterson. McGee is one of many who have remained behind bars after they are granted release because officials struggle to find suitable housing.

We think its important that we follow the law, Peterson said after the hearing. To detain people after theyve already completed their sentences, there has to be a way out. Once youve gotten to the point where the release from an institution is appropriate, there has to be some place to go.

McGee, who was declared a sexually violent person, is on supervised release and will be under house arrest for the next year. Residents should know that this is an individual the states been watching every minute of every day for the last 13 years, and they think its appropriate to release him, Peterson said.

Jennifer Kopp, first assistant corporation counsel for Kenosha County, argued the county and residents would suffer irreparable harm if the placement moved forward. She said the county will continue fighting the issue in the Court of Appeals.

The Town of Wheatland house is about 100 feet from a home in which a couple and their 1-year-old boy live. McGee in 1992 was accused of molesting a 10-year-old child relative, but because the case was dismissed, he is not considered a serious child sex offender, officials have said.
ROCHESTER  With barely a cloud in the sky on a pleasantly warm late-spring day, hundreds of area residents gathered in the Village of Rochester for a day of festivities Monday, but also for a day of remembrance.

While the celebration and parade took on special significance as the community commemorated its 150th Memorial Day parade, veterans and public officials urged residents to keep in mind the reason for the national holiday and remember the U.S. soldiers who laid down their lives so that other citizens might live and prosper in a free country.

For 150 years, folks have gathered here in Rochester with family, friends, neighbors  and if you look around theres probably some people you dont even know  but youve all come here to Rochester to remember our fallen heroes who served and defended this great nation, said Scott Gunderson, former state legislator who served as emcee of the event.

You have made it clear to everyone in this country that we must never, ever forget those who died in sharing democracy, protecting our freedoms and standing up for those ideals that make this country the greatest nation in the world, he added to a burst of applause.

Gunderson was one of numerous speakers  including House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester  who addressed hundreds of area residents in the shade of a small gazebo at Pioneer Park, a sliver of land on Front Street along the Fox River near the villages historic downtown, on Monday afternoon.

In addition, residents heard from five veterans, one from each branch of the United States armed forces, on their experience of Memorial Day.

Before that, hundreds more residents crowded around the streets of downtown Rochester for the 150th time to watch local veterans and servicemen march from the Rochester firehouse on Academy Road, and travel through the village to Pioneer Park.

Civil War roots

The parade and event paid special homage to its origins 150 years ago, when James D. Wright is credited with starting Rochesters first Decoration Day parade, in May 1867, to honor soldiers killed in military service. In particular, he sought to honor his brother, Joseph D.H. Wright, who was killed on May 15, 1864, while serving in the Union Army during the Civil War Battle of Resaca in Georgia.

Donning a red sash while leading the procession on a blind, white horse, Wright reportedly led the parade for about 50 years. In homage to Wright, the parade included a rider dressed in period garb atop a white horse, as well as Civil War re-enactors who encamped in Pioneer Park.

Mr. Wrights love for his brother and love for his country laid the foundation for this Memorial Day ceremony that has continued for over 150 years, Vos said. So today, lets pay the highest tribute to our servicemen and our servicewomen who lost their lives in service to our country fighting for our freedom.

Speaking later, Ryan wondered to the gathered crowd about what might be going through the minds of those who die in service to their country and why they do it, eventually concluding that perhaps they act without reservation in acceptance of Gods plan for them.

I think about these people who do this for us, who have done this for us. They were glad to give, theyre happy to serve, you can see it in their pride, Ryan said. No other country produces people like this, thats what makes us so special. They remind us that character is not just something that we can necessarily understand  its something that we have to aspire to.

Quoting Civil War veteran and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Ryan concluded: Today, all of us bow to the people who died for our country and to their families.
WATERFORD  Rozanne Jones didnt need a push to festoon the front of her downtown business with festive flowers.

We always have something out there. Customers look forward to seeing what we have, said Jones, manager of Rendezvous Jewelers, 217 E. Main St., Waterford. But this summer, I just wanted to do something that said wow. 

This year, Jones got rid of several large round flower pots and replaced them with multi-level plant holders that include lanterns. She has filled the holders with brilliantly colored flowers and wants other downtown merchants to join her.

It will be great to have more, she said. Some businesses have already asked us where we got the lanterns.

This summer, the Village Board and community group Absolutely Waterford want to make downtown blossom with beauty. The groups have joined forces to make it simple, easy  and free  to display planters and flowers in the villages Heritage District, which covers downtown.

Absolutely Waterford volunteers began promoting the project at the beginning of May, talking to business owners, said Executive Director Cynthia Jensen. She said she hoped many merchants used the Memorial Day holiday to start planting.

The reaction from business owners has been very positive and all indications are that we will have good participation, Jensen said.

Under the pilot program approved by the Village Board, businesses and residents in the Heritage District wont have to complete a right-of-way permit, pay a $75 permit fee, or attain a certificate of liability to display flowers.

This program is the kind of initiative the board likes to support, said Village Trustee Don Houston. I hope our downtown businesses will take advantage of this opportunity.

Absolutely Waterford is glad to hear the enthusiasm expressed by the board for this effort, said Howard Bryant, president of the Absolutely Waterford board. We all want an attractive village, and this is a small first step toward achieving that goal.

At their visits, volunteers provided a short set of guidelines for the placement of flower pots and containers, and suggested the kind of flowers most likely to flourish based on sun exposure and length of bloom time.

The guidelines are:

Flower pots or planters must be no further than six inches away from the front of a building, and cannot extend more than 18 inches from the building.

A minimum clearance of four feet of sidewalk must be maintained at all times.

Pots and planters must be kept level, tended regularly, and have dead materials removed as needed.

Plantings should not pose harm to customers or visitors such as thorns, prickly plants, or tailing vines.

This summers pilot could the start of a beautiful friendship between flowers and the downtown.

The level of participation, and success of the pilot program, has the potential to change the way we beautify the Heritage District in the future, said Mary Beth Mikrut, vice president of Absolutely Waterford.

Absolutely Waterford helps village businesses to secure low-interest loans and state tax credits, minority business and manufacturing grants, and workforce training assistance.

The group also coordinates the curb appeal grant program, designed to stimulate improvements to the exterior of commercial buildings and building signs located in village.

For more information about the pilot project, contact Cynthia at director@absolutelywaterford.org or call 262-534-9000.
Sen. Ron Johnson is holding a hearing in Tomah on Tuesday following the release of a report that found "systemic" failures resulting in "preventable" tragedies at the Tomah Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

The report, following a 16-month investigation by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, found issues with a VA inspector general's review of the facility including:

"Serious problems of over-prescription and abuse of authority" existed from at least 2007 to 2015, resulting in the deaths of at least two veterans and the suicide of a staff psychologist .

Law enforcement and executive branch agencies were aware of over-prescription allegations since at least 2009.

Federal law enforcement agencies failed to identify the root causes of those allegations.

The VA Office of the Inspector General received several complaints during this time.

The VA OIG's office lacks "clear standards" for substantiating allegations.

The VA OIG's office declined to publicly release the finding of its own report and "narrowly focused" its investigation.

Speakers at Tuesday's hearing include Deputy Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs Sloan Gibson and VA Inspector General Michael Missal.

Johnson, in a statement, said a lack of transparency and lack of an independent watchdog are primary factors in the facility's problems.

"Now that appropriate oversight and publicity have occurred, those responsible for these tragedies have been held accountable. They no longer work for the VA, and can do no further harm to veterans," Johnson said. "I look forward to working with VA officials and the new VA inspector general that I was proud to help confirm to enact necessary reforms to prevent tragedies like what occurred at the Tomah (VA) from ever happening again."

Problems at the Tomah VA have been the subject of a series of ads in the race between Johnson, a Republican, and Democratic former Sen. Russ Feingold.

Earlier this month, Freedom Partners Action Fund launched an ad accusing Feingold of ignoring complaints while in office regarding over-prescription of opiate medications at the facility.

The ad featured Tomah whistleblower Ryan Honl accusing Feingold's office of failing to act after receiving a memo in 2009 detailing issues at the facility. Lawyers for Feingold's campaign said the ad's central claims were false, and the spot was modified after several TV stations took it off the airwaves.

Feingold's campaign responded to the Freedom Partners ad with its own spot, accusing "Johnson and his allies" of not telling the truth about the Tomah scandal. The Feingold ad went after Johnson for his office's handling of complaints and tips about the Tomah facility.

On Tuesday, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin held a call with reporters and two combat veterans who accused Johnson of "grandstanding."

David Boetcher, who served as a chief warrant officer in Iraq during the first Gulf War, criticized Johnson for voting against the Senate Comprehensive Benefits and Military Retirement Pay Restoration Act, a bill introduced by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2014.

Dan Krehbiel, who served as a U.S. Army sergeant in Vietnam from 1969-1970, said he is concerned that Johnson's support for partially privatizing veterans' health care could lead to a diminished quality of care for veterans in rural areas.
A world through paubha

Samundra Man Shresthas collection of paintings is currently on display at Nepal Art Council
Banks laud universal bank account plan

Banks have welcomed the governments announcement to bring all Nepali households into the banking channel with the help of Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB).
Case filed against SC Justices recommendation

A case has been filed at Supreme Court (SC) against parliamentary hearing on the recommendation of SC Justices forwarded by the Judicial Council (JC).
Cement industry seeks to be self-sufficient

Cement manufacturers have asked the government to formulate an improved policy so that the country can achieve self-sufficiency and boost exports.
Equal but unequal

Prez Bhandari, Speaker Magar should clearly state support for womens citizenship rights
Former Kamlaris demand ID cards

Former Kamlaris (indentured girl labourers) have urged the government to keep its promise of providing them identity cards.
From the opposition benches

The Madhesis are also Nepalis; the lens being used to look at the Madhes from Kathmandu must be changed
Indian National Congress flays Modi govt for its Nepal policy

Indian National Congress (INC) has criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government for its inept handling of Nepal-India relation in the last two years.
Islamic State group hits back as Iraqi army moves into Falluja

Militants from the so-called Islamic State have launched a dawn counter-attack as Iraqi government troops push into the city of Falluja.
LDCs call for implementation of past accords

The mid-term review of the implementation of the Istanbul Programme of Action (IPOA) for the Least Developed Countries for 2011-2020 concluded on Monday in Antalya, Turkey, by unanimously adopting the outcome document finalised through rigorous inter-governmental negotiation.
Libyan oil guard captures coastal town from Islamic State after clashes

A force that controls oil terminals in eastern Libya said it had captured the town of Ben Jawad from Islamic State, pushing the militant group back along a coastal strip they control east of their stronghold of Sirte.
Madhesis, Janajatis to stage hunger strike

Madhesi and Janajati parties affiliated to the Sanghiya Gathabandhan, also known as the federal alliance, on Monday announced fresh protest programmes, including a relay hunger strike.
Maoist Centre ratchets up pressure on CPN-UML

The governing CPN-UML, it seems, is headed for a tough time, with its key coalition partner, CPN (Maoist Centre), raising the issue of government change againsecond time in a month.
Narrating Nepal

How relevant is your writing when you reside in one country and write about another?
Respiratory problems among kids on rise

A steady rise in air pollution levels has spiked respiratory problems among children, a preliminary patient data from a leading children hospital and other medical facilities in Kathmandu Valley show.
Revered Buddhist leader Sherab Dorje no more

The eight Chiniya Lama, Sherab Dorje, a descendant of the historical Taipo Shing, who was appointed as main Lama of Boudhanath, died in Kathmandu on Sunday. He was 80.
Binod Ghimire covers parliamentary affairs and human rights for The Kathmandu Post. Since joining the Post in 2010, he has reported primarily on social issues, focusing on education and transitional justice.
Saving lives

A surge in the number of hospitals, medical schools and medical graduates has done little to help patients in rural Nepal
South Korea says North Korea missile launch likely failed

A North Korean missile launch likely failed on Tuesday, according to South Korea's military, the latest in a string of high-profile failures
Sukarma on Europe tour

Popular Nepali folk-classical group Sukarma is currently touring the Italian city of Sarzana as part of a month-long musical journey that is being organised in various cities in Italy and Switzerland.
The forgotten fighters

Former Maoist combatants must be politically integrated so that they see the Nepali state as theirs as much as other citizens do
Unpaid, Babai levee workers warn of strike

Workers have threatened to halt the embankment construction at Panditpur in Bardiya, saying that the Water Induced Disaster Control Office (Widco) in the district has not paid them for the last three months.
Vehicle imports: Mandatory to present a tripartite agreement now

Vehicle importers now have to present a tripartite agreement on vehicles imported from third countries other than India if imported via a third party.
World Ranger Congress: Nepal to host the meet in 2019

Nepal has been selected to host the 9th World Ranger Congress, first ever in Asia, for the remarkable achievement the country has made in anti-poaching campaign in recent years.
Career diplomat Ri Su-yong, one of North Korea's highest-ranking officials, arrived in Beijing on Tuesday in a surprise visit to China that appears to signal the North's attempt to mend soured ties between the allies.

A number of North Korean delegates led by Ri, vice chairman of the North Korean ruling party's Central Committee and the director of the party's International Department, arrived at the Beijing Capital International Airport amid tight security.

Shortly after arriving at the airport, Ri's motorcade of 12 black sedans and one mini bus headed to the Daioyutai State Guesthouse in central Beijing.

Ri served as North Korea's foreign minister until he was promoted as a member of North Korea's politburo during the North's party congress earlier this month.

Ri is expected to meet with Chinese officials, according to diplomatic sources in Beijing.




President Park Geun-hye's three-nation tour of East Africa was marred by a mishap involving Uganda's relations with its long-time ally North Korea. During an AFP interview on May 28, Uganda's deputy government spokesman Shaban Bantariza lashed out at Cheong Wa Dae's claim that Uganda would cut military ties with Pyongyang, calling it "propaganda."



The Ugandan foreign ministry later confirmed that it will cut military ties with North Korea, overturning the initial angry reaction from the deputy government spokesman. This incident involving the Uganda-North Korea ties nonetheless highlighted a glaring lack of judgment on the part of Cheong Wa Dae.



There are two things wrong with Cheong Wa Dae's hasty announcement about a shift in Uganda's North Korea policy. First, it is not Korea's place to announce such a huge about-turn in Uganda's diplomacy before the country makes a public declaration first. It is in accordance with diplomatic protocol and common sense for Cheong Wa Dae to wait until the Ugandan government officially declares the policy shift regarding North Korea. Only then should Cheong Wa Dae have spoken publicly about it in careful coordination with the Ugandan authorities.



After Cheong Wa Dae's announcement caused a stir, Uganda's State House said late Sunday that "the government had already been given orders to disengage with North Korea on police and other military engagements." But the deputy government spokesman underlined that Uganda is simply "disengaging from military cooperation" and not cutting diplomatic ties with North Korea.



Second, Park's media team is mistaken if it believes that Uganda's disengaging with North Korea is an occasion for trumpeting the President's diplomatic achievements. In fact, it is unclear how much impact Park's visit will have, if any, in fundamentally changing the strong bilateral relations Uganda and North Korea have forged since establishing diplomatic ties in 1963. Museveni, who has ruled Uganda since 1986, has visited North Korea three times and met Kim Il-sung, the country's late founding president and grandfather of current leader Kim Jong-un. Under a cooperation program, North Koreans are believed to be working in Uganda as military trainers.



Uganda's disengagement with North Korea in the military sector should not be seen as Uganda taking sides with South Korea over North. If Uganda has decided to distance itself from Pyongyang, the decision is based strictly on its own national interest and a commitment to its policy of not supporting nuclear proliferation. Cheong Wa Dae has no right to take credit for another country's diplomatic strategy and should not use it to promote the outcome of an overseas visit.




Kendallville, IN (46755)

Today

Periods of rain. Thunder possible. Low 52F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Periods of rain. Thunder possible. Low 52F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%.
In a recent column, I discussed using a television antenna to receive free over-the-air television channels. I heard from numerous readers who appreciated this idea, including readers who didnt know that free television signals still existed:

DEAR JILL: Thank you for sharing the information on how to get free television with an antenna. I am 70 years young and did not realize you could still get TV the old fashioned way! We have had cable for decades, but I do not watch television nearly as much as I used to. I have an antenna installer coming next week to put an antenna on. The antenna was only $30 and my cable bill is over $160 per month.  Myrna M.

The FCC protects consumers right to receive television broadcast signals via the Over The Air Reception Devices Rule. It isnt legal for homeowners associations to prohibit the installation of devices to receive television signals. However, one of my readers took issue with this, arguing that people should pay for television and avoid mounting an antenna for aesthetic reasons:

DEAR JILL: I know your column is all about saving money. I usually agree with your advice. However, there are situations that override penny-pinching measures, even if they are, according to you, legal.

I remember aerial photos from back in the day of housing tracts that had an antenna on every rooftop. The sea of antennas was ugly, but the only way to get TV reception. In todays world, there is no reason to install these unappealing eyesores on roofs other than to save a few bucks.

Just because you can do something doesnt mean you should. My HOA would never give approval to an external antenna installation. I suppose someone could hire a lawyer to challenge it, but who would care enough to spend money, time and aggravation to challenge the regulation? In the remote possibility that the complaining person won the case, the neighbors would view such a person as a troublemaker who cares only about himself.

My advice to anyone who has their heart set on a roof antenna installation is to buy a home where you can paint your house purple, leave trash cans out on the street all week long and park rusty cars in the dirt strip that used to be the front yard in front of your house.  Suzanne F.

I hardly think installing a television antenna equates to causing a neighborhood disturbance.

We love our over-the-air signal, and with pay television services costing upwards of $100/month, households can save more than $1,200 each year by switching to an antenna. Thats sound financial advice of which anyone struggling to pay bills should take advantage. To me its very hard to advocate paying for something thats free to everyone simply for aesthetic reasons. Additionally, modern HD antennas are much smaller and sleeker in design than the old, element-style antennas, so much of the worry over aesthetics is unfounded.

I understand not wanting to upset the neighbors, but federal law is firmly on the side of the consumer. Regardless of what the bylaws state, HOAs are legally not allowed to restrict homeowners from installing antennas or satellite dishes. The HOA actually would be the party violating federal law here, not the homeowner.

As for the comments about assuming non-HOA communities must be undesirable and neglected, I think its a gross assumption that no one would take care of their homes without an HOA.

As long as were on the topic, though, my husband and I specifically chose an HOA-free neighborhood when we built our house. We take great pride in our home, but we also did not want the added expenses and headaches of HOA fees and restrictions. We know too many friends frustrated with both. One friends HOA fees have gone from $50/month to $200/month in just five years.

Im curious to hear from you on this topic though. According to the AP, 20 percent of Americans live in association communities. Do you find value in your homeowners association, and is it worth what you pay?
Its tough out there for a craft brewer. And, in a twist, thats good news for us.

The latest out-of-state arrival on Wisconsin beer shelves is the eminently quirky but entirely excellent Shorts Brewing, which until recently had been to Michigan what New Glarus Brewing was to Wisconsin.

New Glarus has been around twice as long as Shorts and is five times bigger, but they shared a rigorously enforced and loudly proclaimed devotion to their home states. If youre not in Wisconsin, you cant buy New Glarus beer. Outside Michigan? No Shorts for you. (Mostly.)

This exclusivity has been a key part of these breweries identities in recent years  New Glarus since it pulled out of Illinois in 2003 and Shorts since its off-the-wall beers and well-executed classics inspired Michiganders to look up Bellaire on Google Maps sometime after its founding in 2004.

So when Shorts announced this February that it would begin selling beer in first Pennsylvania, then Illinois and, finally, last month Wisconsin, some answers were in order. Joe Short, the brewerys curly mustachioed founder, took the change in philosophy so seriously that he hand-wrote a letter explaining the decision to its Michigan fans.

We championed the Michigan-only thing for so long that I kind of had to take a couple of steps back and think about everything  all of the employees, the future of the industry, and give everyone a heartfelt explanation of why were doing what were doing, he said later this winter in a candid company podcast.

The short version? Shorts overreached in expanding its brewing capacity.

Joe Short and other company executives said in the podcast that the intent in 2009  after building out a brewery in Elk Rapids, not far from Shorts hometown of Bellaire  was always to remain Michigan-only. Shorts saw 25 percent sales growth in Michigan in 2015, but that was below company goals, and, more worrisome, production forecasts lagged further in the second half of year.

That left a brewery that can make about 52,000 barrels of beer a year running at about 80 percent capacity, due, Short said, to robust competition from Michigan breweries and those out of state: Were one of the first breweries to say, hey, were experiencing some saturation in our market.

The addition of out-of-state markets, then, would allow Shorts to utilize that excess capacity, cashing in on a reputation for interesting and quality beer that had crossed state lines even if the beer hadnt. It wasnt about moving enough units to build another or bigger brewery, it was about sustaining what was already in place and in motion without selling out.

We had to evaluate the marketplace and the changing craft beer scene and evolve so we could stay true to our core belief and our core mission, which is to stay fiercely independent, and not to have any outside owners and not to sell out and to keep making the best beer possible and get the beer to the people who love it, Short said.

Later in the podcast he evoked Deb and Dan Careys Only in Wisconsin paradigm: I would have loved to remain in the spirit of a New Glarus model, but times are a-changin, the industry is changing ... We have to evolve and move as necessary.

Wisconsin was the last of three new markets added by Shorts, and the company has no immediate plans to add any additional states to their beer footprint at this time, it said in its announcement.

The windfall for Wisconsin at the outset includes five year-round beers and one seasonal, as well as a handful of offerings from the companys Starcut Ciders brand.

Shorts portfolio includes more than 30 beers planned for limited release this year, but the team on the podcast hinted most of those would be held back in Michigan to meet demand for them there. Time will tell how much of those well see here.

While I really like the year-round India pale ale Huma Lupa Licious, the beer to showcase in Shorts introduction to Wisconsin is a no-brainer. Its pure Michigan and pure Shorts.

Soft Parade

Style: Fruit rye beer

Brewed by: Shorts Brewing in Elk Rapids, Michigan, due east from Door County on Grand Traverse Bay.

What its like: Soft Parade is a different animal from both of Michigans and Wisconsins best-known fruit beers. Its less sweet than Founders Rubaeus, and not sour like New Glarus Serendipity or Raspberry Tart. And its bigger and burlier than all of them.

Where, how much: If a Madison bottle shop has one Shorts, it might be Huma Lupa Licious, but if it has two, chances are Soft Parade will be in that mix. My six-pack was $11 at Trixies Liquor.

The beer: Soft Parade  the name is a reference to the Doors album  pours the beautiful mauve you might expect from a beer thats made with pureed strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and blackberries, and the aroma is all of that bouquet of Michigan bounty.

The problem I often have with fruit beers  they become jammy, unbalanced messes  is a distant memory in Soft Parade. Critically, the berries are added before fermentation is complete, so the ale yeast chews up some of their sugars, leaving behind only modest sweetness but a lot of the fruity flavor essence. The piquant rye adds quite a bit to the intrigue, and Soft Parade finishes with a clean, refreshing dryness and a gentle but lingering bitterness that reminds you youre drinking beer. For a beer conceived to appeal to wine drinkers, I sure do like Soft Parade.

Booze factor: Though its label identifies it as a high-gravity ale, Soft Parade weighs in at 7.5 percent ABV  much higher than it tastes, and quite a bit higher than most fruit beer peers, but about on par with a hearty IPA.

The buzz: Sharp Beer Baron observers might remember that I wrote about a Shorts beer in August 2012, when a few of its offerings briefly appeared in Madison around the Great Taste of the Midwest. Brewers who attend the festival need to be licensed to sell beer in Wisconsin, and with that hurdle cleared, Shorts decided to send a small amount of beer into local distribution as well.

More Shorts beer followed in subsequent Augusts, which seems now  and, honestly, did a bit then  like a trial balloon for outside-Michigan distribution, despite the company line. Beer is a passion for many of us, but its also a business, and brewers would be foolish not to constantly re-evaluate strategy as home markets become increasingly competitive, as Shorts did.

And if, for Wisconsin, that means a sixer of Soft Parade or Bellaire Brown or Huma every once in a while, that seems like a pretty good deal all around.

Bottom line: 4 stars (out of five)
An Onalaska man once charged with vehicular homicide in the death of his girlfriend drove his pickup truck off a bike trial and into a slough 
Investigators discovered three children alone Monday in a South Side house littered with drug needles and garbage before arresting their father for robbing a La Crosse credit union and their mother for neglect.

Shane Sherburn, 37, told police he robbed the Altra Federal Credit Union inside Festival Foods, 30 Copeland Ave., about 3:10 p.m. Saturday to pay off a heroin debt to his getaway driver, 41-year-old Rodney Simmons of Illinois, according to the complaint filed Tuesday in La Crosse County Circuit Court.

The teller turned over $862 after Sherburn demanded cash on a note written on a deposit slip. He did not show a weapon and fled in a car waiting outside the store.

La Crosse police used security video to identify the getaway car and Simmons, who admitted driving Sherburn to the grocery store, but denied involvement in the robbery, the complaint stated.

Officers were monitoring Sherburns house at 947 Green Bay St. while investigators prepared a search warrant, and they saw him leave in a car and arrested him at 3:15 p.m. Monday. His wife, 36-year-old Tenesha Sherburn, also left the house.

Investigators found the couples three children, ages 10 years, 7 years and 10 months, alone in the house covered with garbage, dirty dishes, food containers, soiled diapers and more than 300 syringes.

Investigators indicated it was extremely dangerous for anyone to live in the residence, the complaint stated. Investigators were barely able to walk through the house due to all of the items all over the place.

Tenesha Sherburn admitted to concealing the clothes her husband wore during the robbery in a used needle collection container, according to the complaint.

Sherburn told investigators Simmons threatened him into robbing the credit union to repay an $850 drug debt, according to the complaint. The stolen money was not located.

La Crosse County Child Protective Services found safe places for the children. The citys inspection department was notified about the condition of the dwelling.

Prosecutors charged Shane Sherburn and Simmons each with robbery with threat of force as party to the crime. Shane Sherburn and his wife each are charged with three counts of child neglect as party to the crime, while Tenesha Sherburn also is charged with aiding a felon.
A controversial proposal to regionalize and consolidate Wisconsins county veterans service offices  a move that failed in the Legislature earlier this year  remains a key concern for veterans advocates as lawmakers develop their agenda for the next session.

The issue, which will likely resurface when the Legislature convenes in January, is contributing to an ongoing dispute between the states counties and its veterans affairs agency.

Regionalization, along with a shift in state funding for county veterans services from a block grant to a reimbursement model  both initiatives pushed by the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs  hurts rural and poor vets by reducing access to services, veterans advocates say.

Following the Memorial Day holiday, the Walker administration is set to facilitate a meeting Thursday between county and state veterans officials in an attempt to mitigate policy differences on the funding issue. It is unclear if regionalization will also be discussed at the meeting.

The Department of Veterans Affairs did not respond to the Cap Times' interview requests to talk about regionalization and other veterans issues.

Our job at the local level is purely veterans advocacy, our focus is individual vets and their families, said Bill Rosenau, president of the County Veterans Service Officers Association of Wisconsin and the CVSO in Waushara County, who will participate in Thursday's meeting. Keeping supervision and local control is key to that. Its the only way youd be able to truly help advocate for veterans best interests.

Wisconsin law requires each county to employee at least one designated County Veterans Service Officer, who must be a veteran. That mandate is critical, say CVSOs and counties, in making sure there is a person stationed in every veterans' community to offer support and help vets apply for federal and state benefits.

Veterans who isolate themselves, who are poor and who live in rural parts of the state already face significant obstacles to getting help, advocates say. The most vulnerable often lack transportation or regular access to mental health services, and feel a stigma accepting government benefits, advocates say. Critics of regionalization say removing a mandate for every county to have a designated point-person for vets will make the problem worse.

But proponents of a new model say as the veteran population decreases in the state, each county may not need its own service office. Requirements for local veterans services should be loosened to give counties flexibility, said proponents of last sessions regionalization plan.

As the population of veterans decreases, the need to regionalize funding and services will increase, according to a February fiscal memo by the Department of Veterans Affairs on the regionalization proposal.

The initial plan, proposed to lawmakers by the Walker administration last year, would have allowed WDVA to approve a county veterans service consortium to administer benefits and services.

The bill would have also shifted the mandate for counties, allowing them to appoint a veterans specialist, in lieu of a veterans service officer. The benefit specialist could be a county employee in any department, but would be required to be accredited under federal law to assist veterans with benefit claims. The proposal would also have allowed those who served in reserve units and in the U.S. National Guard to become county veterans services officers.

The measure, Assembly Bill 821, was introduced in the Assembly by Rep. Ken Skowronski, R-Franklin, and in the Senate by Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine. Both lawmakers later withdrew their support for a consortium model for CVSOs, instead proposing a task force to study how best to deliver services to veterans. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle largely supported studying the consortium issue, as did several veterans groups.

Proponents of a consortium model say it could improve access to benefits for veterans in rural areas by giving counties flexibility to pool resources to offer improved services. Some counties may have a veterans service officer on staff who only sees one person a week, said Jason Johns, a former deputy secretary at WDVA, who now lobbies for Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Military Order of the Purple Heart. It makes sense in a situation like that for counties to join and deliver services together, he said.

Disagreement among veterans groups over the consortium proposal was more about the timing, Johns said, as the bill was introduced in the waning days of the session. But he acknowledged the agency did not get the input from veterans groups it needed to.

Theres definite improvements that can be made, he said. If they were to pursue anything going forward they would seek a lot more participation (and) comments from the veterans community.

The Department of Veterans Affairs and veterans groups, including the VFW, Military Order of the Purple Heart and the American Legion support a study to examine how the state can better administer services to vets as the population changes.

We feel its time for the state to look at the universe of services and compare it to the identifiable needs of Wisconsins veterans, said David Kurtz, a U.S. Army veteran and adjutant for the American Legion, the largest veterans group in the state.

Kurtz acknowledged that there is division in the veterans community over CVSO issues and said his group plans to work with all parties to move the veterans community forward.

The number of veterans overall may be decreasing, but they are aging, which creates more need for assistance when they retire and health care services, said Melinda Dresen, site manager of Dryhootch in Madison, a nonprofit group that offers programs and support to veterans and their families. The group offers a place for veterans to gather over coffee and helps connect them to community resources.

Now is not the time to be rolling back, she said. Dresen said she frequently works with the CVSO in Dane County, which has been instrumental in building relationships with veterans and getting them benefits.

You have something that works, that has been working, so why go backwards? she said.

The biggest constraint for people getting what they need is knowing what exists, she said. Veterans as a group are often reticent to ask for help, which makes a personal relationship so critical, she said. Face-to-face outreach, thats whats going to get vets in the door.

Tammy Walters, the County Veterans Service Officer in Oneida County, said her office is constantly busy. Battling with the state veterans agency over funding and structural changes takes up time, she said, and ultimately hurts veterans.

For her, the long-term acrimony between CVSOs and WDVA feels personal.

Our association is constantly wasting time defending ourselves and fighting for our veterans for whatever reason. And I say it like that because after being a CVSO for over 10 years, I still don't know why all this is happening, she said in an e-mail. I know it's personal but I don't know what we ever did to deserve this. And I'm appalled our veterans are the ones taking the brunt of it.
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With grilling season having officially begun, thoughts turn to the big issues  namely, who cleans the grill?

That should be on your list  or someone near and dear  before the food even leaves the kitchen, which makes sense to anyone operating the grill.

But to be even more prepared for the summer cooking season, we turned to the grillmeister himself, Jamie Purviance, author of 15 books for Weber Grill, three of them New York Times best-sellers (Webers Way to Grill, a James Beard Award finalist; Webers Smoke, and Webers New Real Grilling). His new book, Webers New American Barbecue: A Modern Spin on the Classics, is hot off the presses.

Purviance, a graduate of Stanford University and the Culinary Institute of America, has explored what would seem to be every aspect of the grill, whether charcoal or gas.

We asked him for a Top 10 list of dos and donts for making the best meal outdoors. Heres what he had to say:

Do preheat the grill. A lot of cooks use a grill thats not properly preheated and they end up with food sticking or not browning very well, and not tasting particularly good, either. If the grate is cold, the food will stick and never have a decent chance of searing properly or developing those awesome grill marks. Even if a recipe calls for medium or low heat, you should preheat the grate on high first for 10 minutes. The grill temperature should reach at least 500 degrees.

Dont start with a dirty grate. If you left some stuff on the grate from your last barbecue, it could be the glue that holds your new food to the grill a lot longer than you want. To clean the grill, wait until the grill gets very hot (preheat it for at least 10 minutes), then scrape off the last meal. The best tool for the job is a sturdy, long-handled brush with stiff, stainless steel bristles.

Do get your act together. Bring everything you need near the grill before you start to cook. That means all the necessary tools, as well as food that is prepped  oiled and seasoned  along with any glaze or sauce or whatever else. Dont forget the clean platters for the cooked food.

Do give yourself at least two heat zones. Have one for direct heat (where the fire is right under the food) and one for indirect heat (where the fire is off to the side). This provides some flexibility, so you can move your food from one zone to another if the food is cooking too quickly or the coals are flaring up. Think of this as a safety zone. It also allows you to grill two very different foods at one time. There are foods that do well with a combination of types of heat, such as when you sear food on one side and then cook it more slowly on the other.

Dont overcrowd the grill. Packing a lot of food into a tight space is asking for trouble because it restricts where you can move the food. Case in point: If you try to squeeze too many pieces of food over direct heat, the pieces at the edge of direct heat, right where the indirect heat begins, will cook unevenly. The direct heat should extend at least 3 inches beyond all the items you are grilling. And try to leave some space between each item of food so that you get your tongs in there easily and move the food from one area to another. Purviance typically leaves 25 to 30 percent of the grill open so he has the flexibility to move food around.

Do use the lid. Keep the lid down as much as possible. It traps some of the smokiness that develops on the grill, which is important for flavor. It also eliminates a lot of flare-ups that are fueled by air rushing through the grill. Keeping the lid down also tends to cook things a little faster because now the heat is coming from below and above, reflecting off the lid. Thats really good for quick-cook items such as chicken breasts, hamburgers and pork chops, which dry out quickly. If you can cook them less on both sides by a couple minutes, they will be juicier. Dont forget to open the vents of a charcoal grills lid at least halfway. Every fire needs a little air to keep on burning.

Dont fiddle with food so much. Turn the food only once or twice. This is really important. It means you wont have the lid open so much, which affects how quickly food cooks (which impacts how dry it becomes). Cooks tend to try to turn food too early. This is especially true of fish and chicken with the skin on. As soon as food lands on the grate, it tends to stick, but if you leave it long enough, it releases. The problem is most cooks dont wait long enough, so they end up with some issues with sticking. And if you move the food too much, it never really develops as deep a sear as it could.

Do take charge of the fire. This is more of an issue with charcoal. Lit charcoal changes over time. Its quite hot in the beginning and then it fades out slowly or quickly. You need to take charge of the fire by refueling it, by pushing the coals around to suit your needs, by sweeping away the ashes that clog the bottom vents, and by adjusting the vents on the lid for optimal airflow. For the best result, anticipate what the fire is going to need and act proactively.

Do watch for doneness. Sometimes in grilling the most important thing to know is when to stop. Learn some doneness clues, as in the gently yielding firmness of perfectly grilled chicken when you press the surface with a fingertip. If you want an even more reliable test of doneness, get an instant-read thermometer, which will help you pinpoint that critical moment when your food is at its best.

Do use the grill for more than grilling. This is the spirit of the new book, that there is more to grilling than meat over the flames. There is a whole world of techniques that you can do on a grill, whether its charcoal or gas. You can smoke or roast, simmer, saute or stir-fry on the grill. If you want to be a true master of the grill, expand your repertoire and do a more mixed menu.

Pork loing spiedies

A spiedie is a type of hoagie from Binghamton, N.Y. Cubes of meat are marinated with a combination of Italian seasoning and mint, and then cooked and arranged, skewer and all, in a long roll or slice of Italian bread. This recipe must be prepared in advance and requires 6 long bamboo skewers and a handful of hickory wood chips. From Webers New American Barbecue: A Modern Spin on the Classics, by Jamie Purviance. Serves 6.

1 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

1/4 cup fresh lemon juice

1/4 cup finely chopped fresh mint leaves

1/4 cup finely chopped fresh Italian parsley leaves

2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh dill

2 teaspoons minced garlic

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1 teaspoons fennel seed

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 pounds trimmed pork loin, cut into 1 1/2-inch chunks

6 Italian or French sandwich rolls, cut lengthwise in half but not all the way through

In a large bowl whisk the olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice, mint, parsley, dill, garlic, salt, fennel seed and pepper. Reserve and set aside cup plus 2 tablespoons to drizzle over the cooked pork. Place the pork chunks in the large bowl with the remaining marinade, cover and refrigerate for 2 hours, stirring once.

Soak the skewers and wood chips (separately) in water for at least 30 minutes.

Prepare the grill for direct cooking over medium heat (350 to 450 degrees).

Thread pork cubes onto the skewers. Discard the marinade. Drain and add the wood chips to the charcoal or to the smoker box of a gas grill, and close the lid. When smoke appears, grill the skewers over direct medium heat, with the lid closed, until the meat is evenly seared and cooked to an internal temperature of 145 degrees, 9 to 11 minutes, turning occasionally. During the last minute of grilling, toast the rolls, cut side down, over direct heat.

To serve in the authentic style, place a skewer on each roll and, using the roll as a pot holder to grasp the meat, twist and pull out the skewer, leaving the pork cubes in a neat line right down the middle of the roll. Drizzle each spiedie with 1 tablespoon of the reserved marinade and serve right away.

Hasselback potatoes with garlic butter and parmesan

The brilliant idea for these accordion-looking potatoes came from the chefs at Restaurant Hasselbacken in Stockholm. From Webers New American Barbecue, by Jamie Purviance. Serves 6.

6 russet potatoes, each about 12 ounces, scrubbed and dried

6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter

6 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled

1 teaspoons kosher salt

3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

2 ounces Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, finely grated

2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh Italian parsley leaves

Prepare the grill for indirect cooking over medium-high heat (400 to 450 degrees).

So that each potato will lie flat on the cooking grate, cut off a very small piece (1/4 inch or less) on the widest side of each potato, which will now be the bottom side. Then, using a very sharp knife, starting 1 inch from the end, cut slits crosswise into each potato, 1/8 to inch apart, stopping just before you cut through so that the slices stay connected at the bottom.

In a small skillet over medium heat on the stove, melt the butter. Add the garlic and cook until lightly browned, 1 to 2 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove the skillet from the heat and add the salt and pepper. Fan out the layers of each potato enough that you can get some butter and seasonings inside the layers. Brush the potatoes, including the bottoms, with half of the butter mixture.

Grill the potatoes over indirect medium-high heat, with the lid closed, for 30 minutes. Brush the potatoes with the remaining butter mixture, making sure some of the butter drips down into the slices. Continue grilling, with the lid closed, until the potatoes are almost cooked through, 30 minutes more.

Top the potatoes evenly with the cheese and cook until the cheese is melted and slightly browned and the potatoes are crisp on the outside and tender on the inside, 5 to 10 minutes more. Garnish with the parsley and serve hot.
Winona bridge workers pulled a woman from the Mississippi River after she went over the side of the interstate bridge around 2:45 p.m. Tuesday.
On 30 May Mexicos interior minister, Miguel Angel Osorio Chong, rejected any suspicions that government officials may have been involved in the killing of the individuals whose bodies were recently discovered in an unmarked shallow grave in the town of Tetelcingo, Morelos state.

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Brazil continues to fall into political chaos as its transparency minister resigned.

Fabiano Silveira resigned Monday after he was allegedly heard in a recording passing information to a politician under investigation, Reuters reported.

Officials are investigating the state-owned oil company  Petrobras  and alleged bribes to politicians.

On May 12, President Dilma Rousseff was suspended while the Senate looks into her conduct.

Opponents of Rousseff and her Workers Party took money from Petrobras in return for favoring the oil company. Supporters of Rousseff say she has been the target of a plan to unseat her.

Last week, Brazils planning minister resigned when the released tapes showed him possibly influenced by Petrobras officials, as well.

The resignations have hurt the government of Michel Temer, of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, or PMDB. The lawyer and politician is acting president since Rousseffs suspension May 12, Reuters said.

Several members of Temer's government are under investigation in the Petrobras probe. While Rousseff faces an impeachment trial on charges of breaking budget laws, others say Temer plotted against her.

Temer has strongly denied the allegation.

The recordings could lessen support for Rousseff's unseating, observers say.

The two-year investigation into billions of dollars in bribes at Petrobras has also looked into the honesty of dozens of politicians. They include members of Temer's PMDB, and Rousseff's Workers Party, Reuters said.

Kathleen Struck adapted this story for Learning English. Mario Ritter was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and please join the conversation on our Facebook page. ________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

transparency  adj. something that can be seen through, visible

allegedly -- adv. accused but not proven

bribes -- n. giving something in return for a favor

impeachment -- n. to remove from office after proven wrongdoing

allegation -- n. saying someone did something wrong


Some activists are warning that at least a million Turkish immigrants will enter the UK if Britain remains in the European Union (EU). They claim Turkey is on a course to join the EU; therefore, its citizens will be able to move freely to Britain.

Activists say the immigrants could include murderers, terrorists and kidnappers. The activists are part of the Vote Leave movement. They want Britain to withdraw from the EU when citizens vote on the issue next month. However, the Vote Leave movement is narrowly behind in current polls.

Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, is trying to rally support for Britain to leave the EU.

We want our borders back, we want our passports back, we want our country back," he said. "And if everyone that agrees with us goes out to vote on June 23, we will make it UK Independence Day.

Prime Minister David Cameron has criticized the position of the activists. He has called leaving the EU the self-destruct option. He said withdrawing could cause recession and could eliminate half a million jobs.

Cameron also addressed the issue of Turkish immigrants. He said the process of Turkey joining the EU will take many years. He added that Britain would be able to veto Turkeys membership.

Turkey began negotiations to get EU membership in 2005, but has not been approved.

EU expert Damian Chalmers, from the London School of Economics, said negotiations between Turkey and the EU are progressing very slowly. A deal would require agreement on 53 different policy areas.

The debate comes as the EU and Turkey try to finalize a deal to stop the flow of migrants from Turkey to Greece. Turkey agreed in March to take refugees back from Europe, partly in return for moving forward its bid to join the EU.

Im Bryan Lynn.

Henry Ridgwell reported on this story for VOANews.com. Bryan Lynn adapted it for Learning English. Kelly Jean Kelly was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Do you think Britain should remain in the European Union? Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

course  n. the way something progresses or develops

rally  v. to bring people together for a common purpose

self-destruct  v. to destroy itself

eliminate  adj. to completely remove or get rid of something

bid  n. an attempt or effort to achieve something
From Washington, this is VOA News.

Im Sarah Williams reporting.

Civilian casualties are beginning to mount as the battle for the Islamic State-held city of Fallujah intensifies.

Iraqi forces have launched an offensive aimed at retaking the city.

The UN refugee agency has received reports of civilians being killed in heavy shelling or buried alive under the rubble of their homes.

Some 625 families have managed to escape the fighting since last week.

Iraqi forces are separating out and screening the men, out of concern about the loyalties of those who are leaving the city after living under IS rule for more than two years.

A report released by the Global Slavery Index on Tuesday says more than 45-million people are subject to some form of modern slavery.

India and Uzbekistan are among the countries with both the highest absolute number of slaves and the highest proportion of slaves to their population. Citizens of Uzbekistan are subject to state-sanctioned forced labor picking cotton.

North Korea also makes the list for highest proportion of slaves among the population for forced labor in prisons as well as commercial sexual exploitation and forced marriage of women in neighboring states.

Andrew Forrest is chairman of the Walk Free Foundation:

"It's where a person cannot leave their place of existence. Either their passport is taken or there's a threat of violence against them or a member of their family so they're stuck there and probably worse, they're treated akin to a farm animal."

The study found that Qatar, Singapore, Kuwait, Brunei, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Japan, and South Korea are among the nations whose governments have taken relatively little action against modern slavery.

This is VOA News.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section.
The World Bank says 9 billion electronic devices are connected to the Internet today.

But the bank says more than half of the worlds population is still not connected.

Technologists and government officials say getting connected to the Internet is critical to improving the lives of millions of people.

Joe Mucheru is Kenyas Cabinet Secretary for the Ministry of Information, Communications and Technology. He says technology is good for business.

We have got huge fights in terms of corruption, transparency, openness - and technology is really the vehicle were using to ensure that whatever transactions are taking place, you can see them. Theyre digital.

But there are still many areas without Internet connections. That is what Hilton Romanski says. He is the Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer for the technology company Cisco.

Obviously we look at Africa, we look at Southeast Asia; there are large swaths obviously of the population that are not connected.

Denis OBrien is chairman of Digicel, a mobile telephone service. He says once people start using smartphones, they talk less and use more computer data, for text messages, pictures and video.

This makes for high-speed service or broadband a requirement for nearly all users. OBrien said building the telecommunications infrastructure in developing areas is difficult but needed for economic growth.

Everybodys built the easy bit, in other words theyve done the towns and the cities, but going into rural communities they havent done it because the business case is very thin.

Technology experts say businesses and governments need to come together to bring the Internet to developing areas to drive economic growth.

OBrien says broadband is not a secondary need.

Any country that wants to create investment and be a location for investment to create employment, the first thing you need is broadband.

Is technology the answer?

But others do not think technology is a cure-all for economic growth.

Kentaro Toyama is Associate Professor of Community Information at the University of Michigan. He has a warning for developing nations that see modern technology as the solution for economic growth.

Toyama says the world has changed over the past 45 years because of developments in technology. But all this digital innovation did not reduce differences between rich and poor people in the United States.

During that same span of time, this country has experienced rising inequality. The median income has declined.

He adds that, in developing nations, a smartphone alone will not help people who are uneducated and lack technological skills.

If they do have a mobile phone, people, for example, who are physical laborers on farms where it doesnt make too much of a difference if you can have access to the latest agronomic research paper as a way to improve your farming.

Denis OBrien disagrees.

Once you get broadband, you can educate people. You can create jobs for people, and people from an agricultural point of view become much more efficient. He also pointed to cultural differences in each country.

Joe Mucheru sees the issue as many Kenyans do.

The fact that maybe some of the people in the West havent come out of poverty because they have not used their devices well is not the same for Africa.

Ciscos Hilton Romanski says it takes cooperation between private, government and non-profit groups to make technology effective.

Its going to take all the parties coming together to drive the right cultural shift and the right education into these countries so that the developing market can over the long term enjoy the benefits of economic growth.

The experts do agreed that good things can happen if education about technology is combined with the right policies.

Im Mario Ritter.

Elizabeth Lee reported this story for VOANews.com. Mario Ritter adapted it for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

Do you think Internet access is necessary for development? Leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

_____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

critical  adj. very important or necessary

strategy  n. a long term plan

infrastructure  n. important physical structures like roads, bridges, and power plants that are needed for a society to operate

broadband  n. a wireless communications network that provides Internet access

innovation  n. a new idea, device or method

savvy  adj. practical understanding or knowledge of something

agronomic  adj. having to do with the science of producing plants
COZAD, Neb.  The art gallery at the Robert Henri Museum has four new paintings on display this week depicting members of Henris family.

This is the first time the Henri family will spend the summer in Cozad since the 1880s. The Henri family, with John J. Cozad and his son, known as Robert Henri, is the founding family of Cozad.

The museum welcomed four paintings on loan from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Museum of Art this Monday. The four portrait paintings were done by Henri himself. One shows Henris father, John J. Cozad, one shows his mother Mrs. R.H. Lee, one shows Henris brother John A. Cozad and the other depicts Henri himself in a black suit.

The four Henri paintings will be on display at the art gallery through October, said Caroline Gaudreault, executive director of the RobertHenriMuseum in Cozad.

In between the four Henri paintings in the art gallery are original sketches and drawings by Henri. Gaudreault pointed out that her museum houses the worlds largest collection of Henri drawings.

Also on display in the art gallery is the masterpiece of the museum, a large painting of Mariana of Austria, Queen of Spain by Henri. The Henri museum owns the painting of Queen Mariana, which has been restored to its original splendor in recent years.

Another masterpiece by Henri, Young Woman in Yellow" (Jesseca Penn) was on display on loan from the collection of the Mississippi Museum of Art in 2014.

Gaudreault said the museum was fortunate to receive a large donation from Larry Paulsen of Cozad last fall. The donation was made in memory of Paulsens parents, Ike and Shirley Paulsen.

A committee was formed, which decided to use the Paulsen donation for acquisitions and loaning of art, she said. The four family portraits were already on the radar of Cozadians, who remember seeing the art works in Cozad for a Henri exhibition from the Sheldon Museum of Art in the 1990s.

After meeting with the director and the curator of the SheldonMuseum and filling out paperwork, the process for approval of the loaning of the four paintings took five months from beginning to end, Gaudreault said.

She said the four paintings on loan could help visitors to the museum see and learn more about Robert Henri the person and artist.

I hope people comes to appreciate who Robert Henri was and how influential he was. Everything the family had to go through, thats why were here, Gaudreault said.

She continued, I want local people to realize how lucky we are to see these paintings here. They dont have to go far away to see masterpieces.

The Robert Henri Arts Festival will be held on Saturday, June 25 at the RobertHenriMuseum from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Local artists and artisans will be conducting demonstrations during the festival, which will also include vendors and live music.

The RobertHenriMuseum is located at 218 East 8th Street in downtown Cozad. For more information about the museum call (308) 784-4154 or visit https://www.facebook.com/rhenrimuseum/.
BROKEN BOW  Marilyn Mauldin of Broken Bow vividly remembers the day she discovered her youngest child, Patrick, had joined the military.

He came home that day, and I said, Pat, do you have something you want to tell me? He said, No I dont think so. So I told him, Pat, I know you joined the Navy today. Im not sure he would have ever told me on his own, Marilyn said with a laugh.

It was Dec. 12, 1983, during the Cold War. Mauldin enlisted in the U.S. Navy in El Paso, Texas, and began his training in San Diego.

Friday, AseraCare Hospice of Kearney honored Mauldin for his service. AseraCare is a partner in We Honor Veterans, a program of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization.

Marlene Williams, volunteer coordinator for AseraCare Hospice, thanked Mauldin for his sacrifices and willingness to serve his country.

When you see this pin, please know that your service to our great nation is deeply, deeply appreciated, she said.

Broken Bow American Legion Commander Rocky Schall was present at the ceremony in the Mauldin home, and placed the pin on Maudlin. He also was presented with a special commemorative U.S. Navy blanket made by AseraCare volunteers.

Mauldin was diagnosed with epithelioid sarcoma in 2014. He has chosen to not seek any treatment for the cancer that is growing in his left shoulder and left leg.

Mauldin said that in order to remove the tumors, doctors would most likely have to remove both limbs with no guarantee that would stop the cancer.

I really dont know how much time I have, but its ultimately going to kill me. Ive already had two surgeries, and I just finally said enough is enough, Mauldin said.

He just wants to enjoy life and thats what hospice tries to focus on, is comfort and quality of life, Williams said.

Maudlin said he was a sonar man. He liked it so much that in April 1984, he extended his service time to an additional two years.

I really wanted to get out and see the world, Mauldin said when asked why he chose the Navy. I heard stories from buddies. There was one fellow who told me he had been in the Air Force and got stationed in Alaska for like four years. And all he did was guard duty  for like four years, in Alaska. So I was thinking to myself, no I dont want that.

Mauldin said he thought about joining the U.S. Army, but everyone he knew at that time in the Army was stationed in Germany and he didnt want to go there.

I really wanted to see more of the Pacific. And Im glad I did. I got to go to Hawaii, Japan, Guam, Singapore, the Philippines  I just really got to see a lot more of the world, he said.

His first duty station was in San Diego where he served on the USS Merrill, a destroyer, for the first three years of his career. He also served on the USS McCandless, a frigate stationed in Norfolk, Va., during the last three years. Both ships, he said, are sub hunters.

As sonar man, he said his job was to monitor the hull-mounted sonar equipment.

Active sonar is similar to what you see in the movies where you hear that pinging sound, Mauldin said. Basically it puts out a sonar pulse, and when it hits something that comes back to the ship and you can get a range on the target. Sonar is like radar under water.

Mauldin said the ships also served as support for U.S. submarines and surface ships that were looking for the Soviet subs.

The USS McCandless was part of the Kennedy battle group during what became known as the second Gulf of Sidra incident on Jan. 4, 1989. During this incident two US Navy F-14 Tomcats shot down two Libyan MiG-23 planes. The McCandless had crossed the so-called line of death, established by Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi.

After serving six years, Mauldin went to work for Raytheon and Lockheed Martin as a Navy contractor, doing the same thing he had done in the Navy. During that time, he sailed on the USNS Effective and the USNS Victorious, both Victorious-class ocean surveillance ships assigned to the Navys Special Mission Program.

We preferred to call it oceanographic surveillance. Some people might call it spying. We always operated in international waters; we always operated within the parameters of the 12-mile boundaries of each country, Mauldin said. He did that job for 10 years.

During his Navy service, Mauldin was awarded a Sea Service Deployment Ribbon, Coast Guard Special Ops Ribbon, Good Conduct Medal and Meritorious Unit Commendation.
LGs latest Android tablet features an 8 inch, 1920 x 1200 pixel IPS display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 octa-core processor and 2GB of RAM.

The LG G Pad III 8.0 is now available in South Korea for under $300, and as MobileSyrup notes, a couple of Canadian wireless carriers are selling it for $240 CAD (about $180 US).

The tablet supports 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 4.1, features a 4,800 mAh battery, and runs Android 6.0 software. It also has a feature that you dont find on a lot of small Android tablets: a full-sized USB port which you can use to connect a flash drive, mouse, keyboard, or other accessories.

The Korean version seems to have 32GB of storage, while the version available in Canada has just 16GB. On the other hand, the Canadian version supports for LTE.

LG seems to be positioning the G Pad III 8.0 as both a tablet, and an eReader. It has a dedicated button for enabling a reading mode that reduces blue light from the screen, which is supposed to make it easier to read in bed without messing with your natural sleep patterns.

via Android Authority
Rivky Berman, a young woman who battled serious illness while serving as a Chabad emissary, passed away Monday. Rivkys pluck and perseverance, her larger-than-life attitude in the face of great challenge, made her an inspiration to many. She was 29.

Born in Stamford, Connecticut, to Chabad representatives Rabbi Yisrael and Vivi Deren, Rivky reflected profound idealism. Her desire to lead and to impart positive values, opening up about her struggles through blog posts and even video recordings, while focusing on her lifes calling as an emissary of the Rebbe, moved many to make positive change in their own lives.

One of several siblings who were born with Blooms Syndrome, Rivky experienced inhibited growth and susceptibility to life-threatening illness. Still, she determined to focus on the positive: I dealt with it, I am here, and I have an incredible life . . ., she said in a video

Bringing a Child Into The World from maria helena deane on Vimeo.

In 2012, after a successful lung transplant, Rivky married Rabbi Shmulie Berman. The great-granddaughter of Chabads pioneering emissaries, Rabbi Sholom and Chaya Posner who were sent by Rabbi Joseph I. Schneersohn to establish a Jewish educational infrastructure in Pittsburgh in the 1940s, Rivky and her husband determined to follow in their path.

They couple moved to North Carolina where Rivky had earlier awaited her lung transplant. There they helped with undergraduate programming at Chabad of Duke and were instrumental in the founding of Chabad at North Carolina State University.

When diagnosed with lymphoma in 2015, Rivky continued to work from her hospital bed, coordinating community events and outreach activities. Rivky recently joined the Ruderman Chabad Inclusion Initiative advisory committee which advances inclusion for people with disabilities.

Rivky Berman is survived by her husband, her parents and her siblings: Rabbi Yossi Deren, Rabbi Asher Deren, Rabbi Chezky Deren and Chanie Backman. She was predeceased by her siblings Shlomo Aharon Deren, Blumi Deren, and Rabbi Mendel Deren.
Without increased economic activity across all industry sectors, Africa will need to focus on softer issues such as good corporate and political governance to retain investors in the short to medium term.

Image by 123RF

The global economic environment is changing and investors are hard pressed to find profitable and stable investment harbours for their funds. The end of the commodity super cycle, the slowing Chinese economy and volatile international markets are affecting Africas ability to maintain projected growth targets for 2016.

The African Corporate Governance Network (ACGN), a NEPAD Business Foundation (NBF) programme developed to improve the institutional capacity of Institute of Director (IoD) organisations across the continent, recently launched a report titled 'The State of Corporate Governance in Africa: An Overview of 13 African Countries' during a summit in Maputo, Mozambique.

The report, which was released in South Africa at the Nedbank-NBF Networking Forum, offers an insightful look into the corporate governance frameworks and the systems in place in 13 African countries that are key economic development role-players for the continent.

Its all about reputation

During the Nedbank-NBF Networking Forum, Thabang Chiloane, head of public affairs for Nedbank Group, expressed confidence in the findings of the ACGN report, which not only demonstrate Africas commitment to strengthening its governance foundation, but also establishes a solid baseline in terms of what corporate governance in Africa looks like.

The report which was done on 13 countries, namely, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, shows where the continent needs to focus its attention, and how to accurately measure governance improvements in the years to come.

Africa has an unfortunate reputation of being a very difficult place to do business, and while the continent has made exceptional progress in addressing the fears and concerns of international investors in this regard, much work remains to be done,Chiloane explained.

This report clearly shows that many African countries understand the significance and importance of good corporate governance and are working towards improving the levels of good governance as the cornerstone of future economic growth for themselves and the continent as a whole.

Brightest stars

Looking at Africas top 10 brightest stars in terms of economic growth, the correlation between good corporate governance and the financial inflows from foreign investors is apparent. Good corporate and political governance is the foundation from which sound and sustainable economic activity can be built on, as it feeds into the frameworks and structures that govern commerce - including the movement, inflows and outflows of local and international funds.

The ACGN report presents a compelling picture of a continent largely committed to sustainably raising its governance game in order to compete for investment on the global stage. However, while this may be the big picture of the overall state of corporate governance across the 13 countries included in the research, what is also clearly evident from the findings is that Africa remains a continent of immense diversity and complexity - and the corporate governance systems and approaches of its various countries are no exception to this.

This is demonstrated by the often vastly different stages of corporate governance progress seen across the 13 countries surveyed, with some still facing significant challenges as they start the process of setting out clear corporate governance frameworks, while others have established themselves as global leaders in governance with innovative and unique models and frameworks that many developed countries would do well to imitate.

Good corporate and political governance is the foundation for sustainable economic activity

According to Lynette Chen, CEO of the NBF, despite these disparities, a key take-out of the report is the fact that African countries now have an obvious desire for, and commitment to, good corporate governance, and this augurs well for global investment into the continent going forward.

It is no secret that Africa is a lucrative market with its wealth in resources and a population of over 1 billion people. Whilst Africa has become one of the most appealing investment destinations in the world, it also poses many political and governance challenges to investors.

The key to the continents ability to grow that appeal and attract steady and sustainable inflows of vital investment money, will be its capacity to raise global investor confidence by ensuring that good political and corporate governance standards are entrenched by governments, its institutions, as well as in the private sector, said Chen.

That said, the report findings also underscore that many of the countries surveyed still have many challenges to be overcome, many of which will require collaboration and partnership with other countries on the continent.

However, the fact that all 13 of the countries included in the research have established a national governance oversight body in some shape or form, demonstrates their commitment to tackling these challenges, and their seriousness in terms of putting good governance at the centre of their future development.

The African Corporate Governance Network (ACGN) is a collaborative network of director membership organisations that promote effective corporate governance on the African continent and now has 16 members and 7 affiliate members from 16 African countries representing over 16 000 senior executives and directors across the continent.
(This is the first part of a series on evolving definitions of masculinity in Hindi cinema)

Despair is a natural consequence of being a feminist who reviews Hindi cinema.

Take the coming Fridays big release. Irrespective of how the content of Housefull 3 turns out, this series exemplifies the dispensability of female stars in Hindi screen comedies and, in turn, male dominance in Bollywood. Akshay Kumar and Riteish Deshmukh play the central characters in each of the Housefull films with girlfriends/wives who have been played by a succession of actresses: Deepika Padukone, Jiah Khan and Lara Dutta in the first film, Asin and Zarine Khan in Part 2, Jacqueline Fernandez and Lisa Haydon in the latest.

If Tennyson had written of Bollywood instead of a brook, his poem might have read: For women may come and women may go, but men go on forever.

The Hindi film industrys male-centricity should not come as a surprise to those who have lived or travelled through Indias Hindi-speaking states. A language reveals much about the culture it has emerged from and it is no wonder that in this deeply patriarchal region, mard  meaning, man  in Hindi is also the word for hero, brave person, warrior and husband; and from mard comes the Hindi word for machismo, mardaangi.

Quite naturally, then, men have held centre-stage through most of Hindi cinemas existence, with women usually playing the support staff of their lives. Mainstream Hindi film heroes have, by and large, been north Indian, Hindu, upper-caste, heterosexual men marked out by their ability and desire to be the sole breadwinner, protector and head of a household, to fight wars if they are aristocrats, to single-handedly bash up dozens of goons and/or to woo women to the point of hounding them. In short, to trumpet their mardaangi.

This, after all, is a film industry that has given us Akshay Kumar supposedly courting Sonakshi Sinha in Holiday (2014) by stalking her and even forcefully kissing her in public; where Salman Khan laughingly lifted Fernandezs skirt with his teeth surrounded by a gaggle of male dancers in Kick (2014); where a majority of heroines are stay-at-home wives and single women holding down ill-defined jobs or working in what are traditionally deemed womens professions while they wait to fulfill the primary purpose of their existence, which is to be won over by the hero.

Keeping in mind though that evolution tends to come in exasperatingly tiny, incremental steps, it is worth noting that the past couple of years and especially the first five months of 2016 have seen a marginal change in Bollywoods troubling traditional definition of masculinity.

The most noticeable challenge to the mardaangi cliche this year has come in the form of films featuring homosexual men. Hansal Mehtas Aligarh starring Manoj Bajpayee and Tanuj Bhramars Dear Dad with Arvind Swamy both revolve around the heros homosexuality. They are not flawless, but at least they do not pigeonhole gay men as effeminate, comical or crass. Some might point out though that like Onirs beautiful My Brother Nikhil (2005) and I Am (2011), these films too occupy a less commercial space and feature niche actors.

That cannot be said of Kapoor & Sons (Since 1921), which received almost universal critical acclaim this March and has gone on to achieve box-office success. History books will remember it as arguably the first mass-targeted, mass-marketed Hindi film from a mainstream producer (Karan Johar) to feature a central character who is gay without fitting any stereotype, played by a mainstream star much lusted after by women viewers, without homosexuality being the theme.

Film writer-cum-editor Apurva Asrani underlines the significance of this trend when he says: None of these three films presents their male protagonists apologetically or offers explanations of childhood trauma for their sexual orientation. They just happen to be gay. They have solid vocations and passions that dont overlap with their sexual behaviour. It is heartening to see these non conformist characters treated with so much dignity on screen.

Asrani wrote Aligarh based on the true story of Professor Shrinivas Ramchandra Siras who was suspended by a homophobic Aligarh Muslim University. He adds: A few years ago, to be a man, the male protagonist needed a wife or a girlfriend. He needed to be cut in the image of Ram the dutiful family guy. If not, it was considered that ma da laadla bigad gaya (mothers favourite son has been spoiled). Then the deviant male could share screen space with a real male protagonist, but only as the buffoon, the villain, or at best, a sidekick! Today men can cry on screen, swoon alone to Lata Mangeshkar songs like Siras, look as gorgeous as Fawad Khan and still have a long-term relationship with another man, father children yet realise one day that they must stop living a lie.

The loud posturing of macho heroes from 1970s-80s Hindi cinema survived the much-touted return of romance in the 1990s and has carried over in considerable measure into this century. Through this time, it has been hard to find heroes who unabashedly shed tears before their girlfriends and wives, who are not the benevolent bosses of the women in their lives, who are open about their vulnerability or at least do not compensate for displays of such emotion by letting their fists fly or by bullying women into falling for them.

Director Shakun Batras Kapoor & Sons is important for this too, in addition to its sensitive, atypical handling of a gay character. For K&S Arjun (Sidharth Malhotra) and Rahul (Imran Khan) from Batras 2012 film Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu, it would be unthinkable to rough up a heroine who has rejected their romantic overtures and laughable to utter chest-thumping lines like mard ka bachcha hai to saamne aa (if you are the child of a real man, face me) that once came so naturally to so many heroes.

Ditto Naseeruddin Shah in Anu Menons Waiting, released this week. Waiting is a reminder that more credible lead roles are being written these days for older male actors  not just for Amitabh Bachchan  who do not wish to play characters 20-30 years younger than their real age, as Bachchan did during his forgettable 1990s. This is a tougher battle than it seems. Anil Kapoor, who went gray haired to play an elderly father of two children in their 20s in Zoya Akhtars Dil Dhadakne Do (DDD), has found himself nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category by all awards givers so far this year. He was DDDs protagonist yet Best Actor noms have gone to Ranveer Singh who played his son. Singh, you see, at this point and even in this unusual film, better fits the orthodox Hindi film definition of a hero: young  check, commercial star  check, his character is in love with a young woman played by a commercial female star (Anushka Sharma, no less)  check.

A youthful female romantic partner, however marginal she may be, has been an essential ingredient in a male protagonists life so far, which is why the advent of gay heroes is remarkable. Winning a womans affections and making a woman fall in love with you have been a crucial mark of masculinity in mainstream Hindi films for decades. Add to this some belligerence and blood-letting, and the recipe is complete.

A light shines at the end of the tunnel though in the form of a new generation of writers, directors and actors challenging formulaic diktats. It could be argued that Sidharth Malhotra, Imran, Fawad and their ilk could afford to defy prescribed standards since they are still establishing themselves, that real change will come only when films of well-entrenched male stars routinely and outrightly defy patriarchy. Well, the opportunities offered to the younger lot, their risks and experiments could end up testing as much as influencing audience tastes, in the long run making such projects less intimidating to blockbuster-delivering commercial stars.

Aamir Khan has long been lauded for spotting  and making a success of  offbeat ventures within the commercial space, but recent choices by his relatively conservative colleague Shah Rukh Khan are causing some disquiet among Hindi film viewers and makers. The songless, understated Fan in which SRK played both a superstar and an obsessive devotee this year  earning widespread critical acclaim for his performance  is being seen as too experimental for his mass base. Couple this with his role as a dwarf in director Aanand L. Rais forthcoming film, and his well-wishers are disturbed.

A few weeks back, director-producer Ram Gopal Varma argued on Twitter that megastar SRK becoming ordinary fan, dwarf etc is the kind of blunder that caused Kamal Haasan to lose his stardom to Rajinikanth. In an interview aired this week, Varma stuck to his stand when he told me: Big star cannot have a choice of doing anything that they want because it is related to how the film is going to be pitched, sold, distributed and released. It has to be a kind of subject matter which should cater to as many people as possible as what the film is being spent on and sold on.

This being conventional Bollywood wisdom, you can imagine why money-spinning superstars usually avoid experimentation.

Of the present reigning kings, Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar are the ones most faithfully adhering to the mardaangi formula, with their heroines rarely rising above being a pretty showpiece or an aside. On the other hand, you cannot ignore the fact that these two men are among the pioneers of a phenomenon now near-universal in Hindi films: the body proud man.

Womens bodies have been objectified in films from the beginning. In the 1980s, a trickle of stars began to persistently tap the audiences latent interest in the display of male flesh. Salman and Akshay have made male shirtlessness on screen perfectly acceptable to the point that now a hero who does not work hard on his physique is a rarity, unlike the more careless  sometimes even pot-bellied  actors of the past.

Let the record show that there is still no equivalence between male and female objectification in Bollywood: all young women are objectified in Hindi films, men are objectified when they wish to be; men make their choices within a system in which they call all the shots, whereas choice is a loaded word for women since even the biggest female stars are not in a position to dictate terms in quite the same fashion as their male colleagues; and male objectification in Hindi films has so far not dehumanised a star/character the way female objectification often crudely does.

Still, it must be acknowledged that without undermining their dignity, Bollywoods male stars acknowledged the heterosexual female gaze and the homosexual male gaze a while back in this department. The body proud hero crossed many Lakshman rekhas this summer with the John Abraham-starrer Rocky Handsome, which was, from A-Z, an ode to Abrahams gorgeousness.

Likewise, posters of the Tiger Shroff-Shraddha Kapoor-starrer Baaghi, which is still in theatres, completely overturn gender equations in the matter of objectification. There she sits, covered from top to toe in a jacket and jeans, while a shirtless Shroff fronts the visual flaunting a bronzed, muscular torso gazing at us from within an open jacket. In another, he stands topless while a jeans-clad Kapoor flashes a relatively mild bare arm, her bra and a stretch of torso showing in silhouette through a top split down the side.

Compare this to the posters of Housefull 3 on which three fully clothed men in casual attire hang out with three women dressed to the nines in microscopic clothing.

The other side of this coin is that when male bodies are paraded through Hindi films, the intention is not merely to please the viewers eye. They also serve to further tomtom the heroes physical might, and must be seen in the context of an industry that remains highly patriarchal despite the progress made over the years.

In this scenario, could Hindi cinemas highest paid male stars afford to let go of their on-screen machismo, the seeming invulnerability and invincibility that appears essential to their image? While we wait for that answer, youngster Arjun Kapoor last month opened up a new conversation when he played a stay-at-home husband of a professionally successful wife (Kareena Kapoor Khan) in R. Balkis Ki & Ka, albeit through the medium of comedy perhaps to soften the blow to conservative male audiences. Despite the films mixed messaging, it has to be lauded for placing a male character in a domestic role that even feminists have not yet widely discussed on public platforms in India.

The pace of change is no doubt infuriating and frustrating, but an eternal optimist must chronicle these as the tentative baby steps of a slow moving infant. Like loving parents who are usually the only ones at hand to watch the baby, commercial cinema demands patience from viewers.

Ah well, no one ever said being a feminist is easy.

(Tomorrow in this series: Part 2: Interview with actor Fawad Khan)
The Tata group could not have launched its e-commerce venture CLiQ at more difficult time. For one, the sector is under severe scrutiny of the investors for high cash burns. Secondly, competition is only getting fierce with more players with deep pockets entering the fray.

However, the group is unfazed and has drawn up a strategy to make a mark in the crowded sector. The crux of the company's strategy is revealed in a statement of Ashutosh Pandey, CLiQ's chief executive, in an interview to The Times of India.

"While Amazon and Flipkart can become the Walmarts of Indian e-commerce selling everything under the sun, we want to be seen as the John Lewis of the space," he has told the newspaper. Established in 1864 in the busy Oxford Street in the City of Westminster, London, John Lewis is an upmarket super market chain in the UK.

In other words, the aim is to be a niche player, selling only "aspirational" products.

The reason clearly is the lesson learnt from the high expenditure of the existing players which are yet to make a profit. According to Pandey, there is an overlapping of customers.

Secondly, the company is strategy of the company is its 'Phygital' format - a combination of physical and digital where it aims to integrate, apart from its hyper-local omni strategy.

For example, if a customer chooses, she can place the order of a particular product online on CLiQ but pick up the delivery from a nearby brick and mortar store.

A marketplace is being created which would allow buyers to 'ship-to-stores, collect-from-stores and return-to-stores', according to a report in The Economic Times.

This strategy is making the company more technology-intensive. In order to connect offline stores to their online site and give a seamless experience to customers, perfect coordination between the front end and the back-end divisions of the store is a must. For this CliQ has roped in TCS, and has paid Rs 36.48 crore before launching the website, the ET report.
Raigarh: A 17-year-old girl was allegedly gangraped by five persons, including two minor boys, at a village in Raigarh district of Chhattisgarh, following which all the accused have been held, police said Tuesday.

After the incident that took place last week, the victim had tried to end her life by consuming pesticide. Currently, she is in a critical state and undergoing treatment at a private hospital in Raigarh, according to police.

Three of the accused  Mohan Sahu (50), Mahesh Sahu (25), and Gulshan Chandra (21)  have been booked under IPC Section 376 (g) (gangrape) and Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.

"The incident had taken place on 23 May at Uchh Bhatti village, located around 65 km away from the district headquarter, when the victim was at home along with her elder sister," City Superintendent of Police (CSP) Satyendra Pandey said.

However, the crime came to light on Monday when the minor girl was admitted to Raigarh district hospital in a serious condition, he said.

"The victim's parents are labourers and had gone to a different state for work. On the night of 23 May, the accused Mohan Sahu stormed into the victim's house along with his four friends and locked her elder sister in a room and then took turns to rape the girl," he said.

The accused fled from the spot after committing the crime, he said.

"Following the incident, the girl tried to commit suicide by consuming pesticide on the same night, but was admitted to Sarangarh hospital by her neighbours, who rushed to her house after hearing her screams," Pandey said.

When the girl's condition deteriorated and she developed infection in her kidneys, she was shifted to a private hospital, where the doctors informed the police about the case, the CSP said, adding, her statement was recorded.

"Based on her statement, a case been lodged with Kosir Police Station against the accused," he said.

The girl is undergoing treatment at ICU and her condition is said to be critical, the CSP said.
Rameswaram, Chennai: Seven fishermen from Tamil Nadu were arrested on Tuesday by the Sri Lankan Naval personnel for allegedly fishing in Lankan territorial waters prompting Chief Minister Jayalalithaa to request Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take steps for their release.

The seven, part of groups of fishermen who ventured into the sea from Rameswaram, have been taken to Talaimannar in northern Sri Lanka, Rameswaram Fishermen Association President T Sesuraja said.

The arrest came on the first day of fishermen resuming their work after the end of a 45-day-long annual fish breeding season ban on fishing using mechanised boats.

In a letter to Modi, Jayalalithaa also flagged the issue of Sri Lanka reportedly trying to rebuild a church in Katchatheevu.

She said seven fishermen who had set out for fishing from Rameswaram on Monday were apprehended by the Lankan Navy early Tuesday. She said it was their first day of fishing after the 45-day ban period and they were taken to Talaimannar.

Seeking to bring the resumption of fishermen's arrest to his "direct personal attention," she said, the "Sri Lankan Navy has escalated the frequency and magnitude of instances of abduction of our fishermen and the seizure of their boats and fishing equipment over the last two years."

She urged him to take up the matter with the highest authorities in Sri Lanka and secure the immediate release of the fishermen and a total of 89 fishing boats impounded on various occasions, without any delay.

The "Sri Lankan strategy," of not releasing boats and fishing gear of the state's fishermen, was causing great frustration among them, she said and requested him to direct the External Affairs Ministry to take immediate action in the matter.

Against the background of reports indicating efforts to rebuild a church in Katchatheevu, she said,"in a related provocative move, the Sri Lankan Government is trying to rebuild St Anthony's church on the disputed Katchatheevu Island without obtaining the consent and contribution of Tamil Nadu fishermen."

On 14 May, she had said "the Indian fishermen from Tamil Nadu apprehend that if the church is demolished and reconstructed by the Sri Lankan side unilaterally, their traditional and customary access to this important place of worship could also be curtailed in the future."

She had urged the Centre to prevail on Colombo to involve Indian fishermen in the church rebuilding initiative.
Varanasi: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah on Tuesday had lunch with a Dalit family here as part of the party's mass contact expansion programme ahead of next year's assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh.

Shah was welcomed with drum beats and garlands when he arrived at Jogiyapur village in this district and sat down later with the family of Girija Prasad Bind to have lunch.

The Dalit family is said to be a great supporter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who represents Varanasi in Lok Sabha, and spent most of the previous night preparing for Shah's visit.

Local BJP workers and leaders had started arriving in Jogiyapur on Monday night.

Shah had taken a sacred bath in the Kshipra river with Dalit sadhus at the Simhastha Kumbh in Madhya Pradesh earlier this month.

The BJP president is scheduled to address a public rally in Allahabad on Tuesday evening.
Nothing can be more scarier than to be on the receiving end of a bungled blood transfusion procedure. This report published in The Hindu, states that since the past 17 months almost 2,234 people across the country have been infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) during the blood transfusions.

The cited data released by the National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) further reveals that Uttar Pradesh has 361 such botched up blood transfusion cases, the highest, with Gujarat, Maharashtra and Delhi trailing behind with 292, 276 and 264 cases respectively.

NACO revealed the numbers in response to a query raised by an Right to Information activist Chetan Kothari, states the report.

"No action has been taken against hospitals or blood banks yet," Kothari was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

According to NACO's Deputy Director General, Naresh Goyal, the HIV-infected blood would be transfused because the donor would be in that stage where the viral load would still not be detected during the screening process.

These are unfortunate cases and we are working towards the goal of zero transmission. Having said that, these numbers must be looked in the context of the scale of our HIV programme. For example, 20 years ago, nearly 8-10 percent of total HIV infections were coming to transfusions. Currently, that figure is below 1 percent. We have conquered this route of infection. It is now legally mandatory for every blood bank to screening the units before giving it to a patient," he said.

Earlier in May, a three-year-old boy in Assam contracted HIV after he underwent multiple blood transfusions for serious burn injuries at Gauhati Medical College Hospital, The Times of India reported.

Although it is said that blood transfusions can be life-saving, we should not ignore the possible risks involved in it. This report lists down several reactions one might attract if the transfusion doesn't agree with the receiver. Apart from HIV infection, sudden fever, acute lung injury, Hepatitis B and C and bacterial contamination are some of the fatal infections to name a few.

NACOs 2015 annual report states that the total number of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHIVs) in India was estimated at around 20.9 lakh in 2011. About 86 percent of these fall under the age-group of 15-49. Also, children with less than 15 years of age accounted for 7 percent while 39 percent 8.16 lakh were among women.
Korba, Chhattisgarh: Elephant attacks continue to claim lives in Chhattisgarh's Korba district as another villager was trampled by a wild jumbo taking the death toll to six in the region this month.

The local forest authority has sought permission to tranquilise two 'rogue' tuskers in order to shift those to another place or kill the pachyderms if necessary.

"Mukhiram Manjhwar (45) was attacked by the jumbo last night while he was sleeping in front of his house at Pidiya village under Kartala forest range," Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) of Korba Forest Division Vivekanand Jha said.

Dori (Mahua fruit) was kept in front of the victim's house and a jackfruit tree was also there. Prima facie it appears that pachyderm was attracted by the smell of Mahua or jackfruit, the DFO said.

So far six villagers, including two women, were killed by three rogue tuskers at separate places in Kartala and Kudmura forest ranges of Korba division this month.

An elderly woman, Samudribai Rathiya, was killed on Monday morning near Charmar village in Kartala forest range when she had gone to pick Mahua fruits.

"Of the three rogue tuskers, one has now joined its herd while two others are still venturing alone in the forests.

After monitoring the activities of the elephants for the past few days, we have become certain that the animals have gone rogue," Jha said.

In a letter to Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (wildlife), we have sought his direction into the matter. Besides, permission has also been sought to tranquilise the two tuskers and shift them to other region or kill them if necessary keeping in view the welfare of people, he said.

"The chances of human-animal conflict increases in this season as villagers go in the forest to pluck tendu leaves and pick mahua fruits. After the recent incidents, the villagers have been advised to take precautions and stay alert," the DFO said.

Moreover, Van Samiti (forest committees) have been asked to organise meeting with villagers to discuss the situation and take necessary precautions, Jha added.

The thickly forested northern Chhattisgarh, comprising Surguja, Korba, Raigarh, Jashpur and Korea districts, are notorious for incidents of human-elephant conflict.

The region has witnessed killings of several people and damages to houses and crops by rogue elephants in the last few years.
Berlin: Germany's parliament votes Thursday on a resolution that brands the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces as genocide, drawing a clear warning from Turkey's president that it would harm ties.

Put forward by the ruling left-right coalition and the opposition Greens, the resolution entitled "Remembrance and commemoration of the genocide of Armenians and other Christian minorities in 1915 and 1916" also carries the contested word throughout the text. The vote comes just over a year after President Joachim Gauck became Germany's highest ranking official to describe the massacre as a "genocide", sparking a fierce response from Turkey.

Its timing is also awkward, as Germany and the European Union need Ankara to help stem a migrant influx even as tensions are rising between both sides over a string of issues, including human rights. In a strong call against the Bundestag move, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said: "If (Germany) falls into such a game, that would harm our future ties  the diplomatic, economic, political, commercial and military ties between the two countries."

"I believe all of these would be reconsidered," he told reporters in the western province of Izmir, adding that he had also telephoned Chancellor Angela Merkel over the wording of the text. Merkel's Christian Democrats were instrumental in putting the resolution forward, and she herself could, as an elected MP, cast a vote.

'Partial responsibility'

Turkey and Armenia have long been at loggerheads over the World War I-era massacre.

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kin were killed between 1915 and 1917 as the Ottoman Empire was falling apart and have sought to win international recognition of the massacres as genocide.

"It's about rendering historical justice, it's an obligation of the entire international community towards the memory of the victims of the genocide," Armenian foreign ministry spokesman, Tigran Balayan, told AFP.

He added that recognition is "important for the prevention of genocides in future".

Modern Turkey, the successor state to the Ottomans, rejects the claim, arguing that 300,000 to 500,000 Armenians and as many Turks died in civil strife when Armenians rose up against their Ottoman rulers and sided with invading Russian troops.

More than 20 nations, including France and Russia, have recognised the Armenian genocide, but Germany has not.

In direct reference to the atrocities against the Armenians, the resolution says: "Their fate exemplifies the mass exterminations, the ethnic cleansing, the expulsions and indeed the genocides that marked the 20th century in such a terrible way."

It also states that the "German Empire bears partial responsibility for the events," a point that Gauck had also made last year.

Germany was then allied with the Ottomans, and deployed soldiers who participated in the deportations of Armenians, Gauck had said.

'Wrong path?'

The issue is particularly sensitive in Germany, as it has special ties with Ankara not least due to its three-million-strong ethnic Turkish population which settled following a massive "guest worker" programme in the 1960s and 1970s.

Ahead of the vote, around 1,000 people marched Saturday in a protest organised by Turkish groups, which also sent letters to lawmakers to campaign against the vote.

Kurds in Germany launched a counter-campaign, flooding Bundestag lawmakers with emails urging them to withstand Turkish pressure.

Yet the vote is also controversial within party lines.

Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who a year ago rejected Gauck's use of the word "genocide", said Tuesday he hoped the Bundestag vote would not derail efforts to reconcile Turkey and Armenia.

The German government's top official in charge of integration, Aydan Oezoguz, warned that it is the "wrong path" to take.

"Those who think that such a move would lead automatically to a rehabilitation in Turkey are wrong. Through this vote, that aim would be pushed further away."

Nevertheless, party leaders shrugged off any potential impact on relations with Turkey.

The aim is "not to put Turkey in the dock," Franz Josef Jung, who is the deputy chief of the Christian Democrats group in parliament, told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily.

"We are not asking the Turkish government to admit its guilt in the genocide, but for it to recognise its historical responsibility."
In the city of dreams, it is no surprise that the police force performs miracles. In its latest feat, the Mumbai police has, wonder of wonders, brought the dead back to life. Poor old Orkut, that prehistoric relic from a more innocent internet age, found itself being dragged into the controversy over Tanmay Bhat's Snapchat video.

In an interview to The Times of India, a Mumbai police spokesperson said that the authorities have written to Google and Youtube administrators to block the video "on their social Orkut." This would be a slightly difficult proposition, considering that Orkut is now the social media equivalent of dinosaurs, having become extinct in September 2014.

Considering the Mumbai police's newfound affinity for time travel, here is what our cops spend their day doing, in an alternative universe:

Monitoring telegrams: Ever alert, the Mumbai police have a very advanced surveillance system and they actively monitor telegram communications. You never know what malicious plans people might be hatching to overthrow the Empire...no wait...the government. Or worse, they may be hatching plans to eat beef. Gasp!

Research in new sword technologies: When terrorists are upgrading their weapon stockpiles, the protectors of the law must keep pace. A committee has been constituted comprising of prominent noblemen, astrologers and retired priests to examine the issue. Sources have told FP Special Forces that the terms of reference for the committee include deciding whether weapons from Shivaji's era have in fact become obsolete.

Tackling crimes on trams: Modern means of travel come with modern policing challenges. The cops have successfully figured out that trams are in fact not terrifying demons taking sinners to their chosen hellholes, but are actually modes of transport. Who would have thought? The exigencies of the age demand a close eye on what people are up to in those things. At present, the police are following up on intelligence inputs saying that unmarried men and women even hold hands in these newfangled carts.

Gramophones: In their spare time, the cops unwind by listening to music on a mysterious gadget called a gramophone. The police are enchanted with the discovery that voices can be stored inside a machine and be heard later. Last heard, a widespread agitation was launched over the choice of music to be played. "We won't tolerate all this anti-national Mozart and Beethovan nonsense. Only KL Saigal and VD Paluskar are allowed."

Meanwhile, at a prominent traffic junction in the city, a bullock cart owner is stopped by the police for wrongly parking his bullock cart. "Don't you know who I am? I know the Viceroy's son-in-law," he is heard arguing. A few metres away, a constable whispers to his colleague, "Some things never change."
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A report in The Indian Express mentioned that the area has been cordoned off and that residents from nearby villages were evacuated. Army helicopters were also used to help shift injured security personnel.

The fire, which injured 20, spread to a number of sheds that housed ammunitions, bombs and other explosive item. Though the cause of the blaze has not been ascertained, the officials have not ruled out sabotage. Some with burn injuries are in a critical condition.

Fire caused by primary explosion has been brought under control, according to reports by India Today. The Master general Ordnance will also visit the site.

An earlier report in The Hindu mentioned that the depot, besides storing ammunition reserves, is also involved in demilitarising or disposing the ammunition, after its expiry date. This is naturally a dangerous process and is usually done in open spaces where the demolition explosives are employed, as accidents are common.

A report by the Ministry of Defence detailed that apart from the central ammunition depot in Pulgaon, there are 14 others located in different parts of the country.

CAD in Pulgaon, one among many

A Sunil Raman article in Firstpost says that in recent years, there have been several fires at ammunition depots, with the last one in West Bengal's Panagarh, which is also an IAF base that was rocked by explosions in 2010.

Sunil Raman further writes for Firstpost that a fire in 2000 at an ammunition depot in Bharatpur in Rajasthan put the spotlight on the handling of ammunition and the safety of civilians around such locations. And that in the recent years, the defence ministry has been under pressure from local politicians to relax norms on no-go-areas around these ammunition depots.

To put things into perspective, the Pulgaon depot is responsible for the all-India supply of ammunition and explosives after it receives them from agencies including Ordnance Factories and trade sources. It, in turn, issues these to other ammunition depots or field ammunition depots for replenishing of stocks.

The fire that started at 1 am has been completely doused, said Lt Gen Ranbir Singh. The army has also moved medical teams from Pune to help with the injuries and has also ordered an enquiry to investigate into the incident.

A CNN-News 18 report says that all injured have been evacuated and shifted to Wardha hospital.

In a major fire followed by a blast at India's biggest Central Ammunition Depot at Pulgaon in Maharashtra, 20 Army personnel, including 18 Defence Security Corps jawans and two officers, have been killed.

According to latest reports, Army chief General Dalbir Singh has left for Pulgaon. ANI tweeted:

Army Chief General Dalbir Singh leaves for Pulgaon (Maharashtra) where fire broke out at central ammunition depot killing 17 and injuring 19  ANI (@ANI_news) May 31, 2016

The 25 injured are in the ICU at a hospital in Wardha, 40km from Pulgaon, Times Now reported. The fire has now been brought under control. Some of them with burn injuries are in a critical condition, an army officer said.

The main source of the fire was a shed which caught fire.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked Defence Minister to visit the central ammunition depot in Maharashtra's Pulgaon to take stock of the situation. Modi also expressed pain over the loss of lives caused by the fire and prayed for quick recovery of the injured.

The figure of casualties, including fatalities, is expected to increase even as nightlong fire-fighting efforts continued inside the sprawling CAD. Lt Col R S Pawar and Major K Manoj, were among those who were killed in the fire, reported India Today. The ammunition depot has the highest level of security, the report added.

The ammunition depot at Pulgaon is Asia's second largest weapons depot. According to this report in NDTV, officials said the fire broke out due to secondary explosions around 1 am.

Maharashtra: Fire broke out at Central ammunition Depot in Pulgaon last night,19 injured.Nearby villages evacuated pic.twitter.com/ASPjHmbTBd  ANI (@ANI_news) May 31, 2016

NDTV reported that over a 1,000 people have been evacuated from villages near Pulgaon Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar is supposed to reach Pulgaon by Tuesday afternoon, NDTV report said.

Reactions soon started pouring in. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis offered condolences to those injured and to the families of the bereaved.

PM Modi tweeted that he was "Pained by loss of lives caused by a fire at central ammunition depot in Pulgaon, Maharashtra."

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis offered his condolences.I pray that those who are injured recover quickly. Have asked RM @manoharparrikar to visit the spot & take stock of the situation.

 Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) May 31, 2016

We are providing whatever assistance and resources required, primarily medical assistance: Devendra Fadnavis pic.twitter.com/f0bizNmxsG  ANI (@ANI_news) May 31, 2016

Unfortunate incident. I've been given to understand that Defence Minister will be visiting site: Jitendra Singh (MoS PMO) on army depot fire  ANI (@ANI_news) May 31, 2016

"Secondary fire and explosions cannot be ruled out now," the Army officer said refusing to go into the reasons of the fire.

Army has ordered an inquiry into the incident.

The central ammunition depot at Pulgaon is India's biggest ammunition depot as stocks from various factories comes here first and is then distributed to various forward areas. Pulgaon is 110 km from Nagpur.

With inputs from PTI
New Delhi: Thousands of Muslim women have sought support to abolish the "heinous" practice of 'triple talaq', which they have termed an "un-Quranic" practice.

The Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) wrote to the National Commission for Women (NCW) and sought its support to make the practice that "destroys the life of women" as illegal.

"We demand to end the practice of oral or unilateral divorce or triple talaq and we have collected 50,000 signatures from women and men for this," the rights group said in their letter to Lalitha Kumaramanglam, Chairperson, National Commission for Women.

The group had found that women want "a legal ban on the practice of the heinous practice which destroys the life of many women and children".

They had compiled case studies of women who have "suffered" the ordeal of triple talaq.

"We are bringing out the suffering and pain caused to women and children owing to this inhuman practice," it added.

The co-founders, Noorjehan Safia Niaz and Zakia Soman of BMMA "strive for equal citizenship of Muslims as enshrined in the Constitution as well as for justice and equality for Muslim women based on the Quranic tenets".

"The instant method of divorce has no mention in the Quran. In fact the Quranic method requires a 90 day process of dialogue, reconciliation and mediation before divorce takes place," they said.
Thiruvananthapuram: The new government in Kerala will take a considered view of the issue of entry of women into the famed Sabarimala temple and not rush into taking any decision, Minister for Temple Trusts K Surendran said on Tuesday.

Surendran told reporters here that currently the issue is being looked into by the Supreme Court.

"The issue is before the court and we are in no hurry to make any announcement. We will take into confidence all those concerned and then take a considered decision," the minister said.

The Supreme Court ruled in February that no temple can bar the entry of women devotees except on the basis of religion.

The court had then asked the Kerala government to file its affidavit in response to a petition challenging the Sabarimala Ayyappa Temple's custom of prohibiting the entry of women between the age of 10 and 50 years.

The previous state government had then defended the ban on entry of women in Sabarimala temple, telling the court that beliefs and customs of devotees cannot be changed through a judicial process and that "the opinion of the priests is final" in matters of religion.

The Congress-led UDF government had also withdrawn the "erroneous" stand of its predecessor, the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government, which had stated in an affidavit in November 2007 said "it is not fair to deny a section of women from entering Sabarimala temple".

Now back in power, the LDF government is in no hurry to resume its earlier stand on the issue.

"It may be that the Left government (2006-11) had taken a stand about allowing the entry of women into Sabarimala temple, but today we are in 2016 and we now feel that no decision need be taken in a hurry on this," said Surendran.

Situated on the mountain ranges of the Western Ghats at 914 metres above sea level, the Sabarimala temple is four kilometres uphill from Pamba river in Pathanamthitta district.

The temple bars the entry of women who have attained puberty.
Hyderabad: Telangana's Director General of Police Anurag Sharma on Tuesday said that Africans living in Hyderabad and elsewhere in the state "can rest assured about their safety," adding there is "no racism here."

"There is no racism here. All are equal. Still, we will take further care to ensure their safety in the wake of the attacks reported in the recent times and the concerns raised over their safety," Sharma said at a media interaction here in the wake of President Pranab Mukherjee commenting on the issue of safety of Africans in India.

The police chief asserted that the attack on 23-year-old Nigerian student Kazeem Dami in Hyderabad last week was a clear case of dispute over car parking and had nothing to do with racism as alleged by the student. "The accused in that case was arrested for assaulting on the student (Nigerian)," the DGP said.

"We have many foreign students studying or working here. We are taking care of their safety. We do not have different laws for different people. All will be governed and dealt with under the same law of the land," Sharma elaborated.

Asked if the police face problems from the Africans here, the DGP said: "We do not categorise. If problems are faced from some people, that will not be attributed to the community."

Kazeem had parked his Honda Accord car in front of the house of a neighbour. This resulted in Mohammed Gafoor, the neighbour, and some other locals attacking Dami.

The student suffered head injuries that required seven stitches. Gafoor was arrested the same day. Kazeem alleged that "some 15 Indians attacked me".
History was made on Tuesday evening as anchor-turned-gladiator Arnab Goswami, to the utter disbelief of his countrymen, let out a laugh in the midst of the Newshour. It was a moment to rejoice, as the prime-time outrage warrior turned into a mellow professor, explaining the wonders of Snapchat to his panelists. As Arnab said those magical words "Relax, guys!," the nation reached for their remote control.

The setting for the incredible transformation was a debate on Tanmay Bhat's controversial video mocking Lata Mangeshkar and Sachin Tendulkar. As the time came to take on the evil, unrelenting politician Shaina NC, our hero decided that it was time for definitions. "Snapchat is an instant message and multimedia mobile application used in the smartphone age. In fact, the video is deleted in a maximum period of 24 hours." There were some malicious attempts to interrupt Arnab, but they were made in vain.

Undeterred, Arnab provided perspective. "Drought is a prolonged period of abnormally low rainfall leading to a shortage of water," he pointed out. Take that!

Yes, you heard it right  our hero actually knows what is drought, and even waged prime-time war on the subject as soon as the Bombay High Court linked it to the Indian Premier League.

But alas, the tranquility was short-lived. "One second, one second, one second...It's is a serious question!," went the crescendo. He went on to explain how "28,000 villages have been hit in Maharashtra across 20-22 districts by drought. What should be the concern of the Maharashtra government, Snapchat or drought?"

As he sent down a triumphant thump on the table, you could have heard a postmodern pin drop in the nation's collective conscience.

Never ever, ever, tell Arnab Goswami what the nation's priorities should be. There is the odd chance that he may be right.
New Delhi: BJP National Secretary Sidharth Nath Singh on Tuesday rejected Congress' charge of having links with a controversial arms dealer and accused it of dragging his name to "digress" from Robert Vadra issue.

Singh said he knew the dealer, whose premises were searched by the IT department, as their children have gone to the same school.

"My association is social and unlike Robert Vadra who is under investigation for controversial acquiring of a London house. Moreover, Congress has alleged that I have made in a short period 450 calls to the defence dealer. The same is factually incorrect and nowhere near reality.

"However I am open to any investigation which is welcome ... Congress party, rather than answering questions on Vadra's alleged home in London, is dragging my name with him, so as to digress from the main issue. To put the record straight, let me admit I know him socially to the extent that our children have gone to the same school," Singh said in a statement.

News reports today quoted from purported papers seized by the IT department during searches last month on the arms dealer's premises that allegedly led to a trail of emails between Vadra and his assistant on the one hand and the dealer's aide on the other regarding the purchase of a London house for approximately Rs 19 crore in 2009 which was subsequently said to have been sold.

Vadra's legal firm has denied that he owned the London property directly or indirectly. It also denied that Vadra had any business ties with the arms dealer or his aide.
You've got to give it to Sonia Gandhi these days. In spite of being continuously jabbed with electoral defeats, punched with charges and allegations, she is keeping her chin high, gaze firmly locked with the opponent's eyes. On being hit she is bouncing back, not willing to retreat into her corner or throw in the towel.

Perhaps it is just bravado, the hubris of the once mighty in free fall, even a facade to keep the party morale high. Maybe she derives her strength from something contemporary India is not willing to credit her much withmoral strength. Or, since it is well-established that leaders try to cast themselves into the mould of their believers, Sonia has taken Jyotiraditya Scindia's filmi hyperbole of being a sherni literally.

Whatever be the reason, Sonia is roaring again, daring her opponents to a fight. On Tuesday, when the opposition accused her son-in-law Robert Vadra, the family's perpetual Achilles' heel with a billion tender points, of buying a benami property in London, Sonia hit back: "Kabhi aisa nahi dekha...ek pradhan mantri hain..shahenshah nahi. (He is a PM, not an emperor.) .

"Roz...roz ye Congress-mukt Bharat ke liye naya mudda uthate hain. Roz galat iljaam lagate hain. Agar kuch galat hai to bina bhed bhaav jaanch karo. Doodh ka doodh, paani ka paani karo," Sonia dared the government.

Vadra is accused of buying a benami property through an arms dealer in London. According to NDTV, last month, enforcement agencies raided 18 premises owned by Sanjay Bhandari, an arms dealer. Two preliminary reports prepared after the raids state that Vadra and his executive assistant sent several emails discussing payments and renovations for a London home (12 Ellerton House, Bryanston Square) bought for 19 lakh GBP (Rs. 19 crores) in October 2009 and sold in June 2010.

Vadra's lawyers have denied the charge. They claim their client does not own directly or indirectly the aforementioned house in London. They said Vadra and his assistant have not entered into any transaction of a financial nature with Bhandari.

Sonia's aggression isn't recent. She had looked the government in the eye when BJP had alleged her involvement in the AgustaWestland chopper deal, asking, in what has now become her trademark response, to launch a probe instead of just blackmailing.

Before that, when she was summoned to court in connection with the National Herald case, Sonia had dug up trenches and gathered her army of loyalists and darbaris in Delhi in a show of defiance and preparedness for battle.

Notice the contrast. For the past few days, Rahul Gandhi has completely been on silent mode. In fact, he has not even been visible. Some ascribe it to ill-health--a suspected bout of Chikungunya. Others think it is part of a strategy: Unlike the son, the mother is still taken seriously by politicians and opponents, her words still matter to workers and loyalists. So, Sonia has decided to become the face of the Congress fightback.

Sonia is emboldened also by the BJP's shoot-and-scoot tactics on many of the allegations against the family, the propensity of its leaders to just spray verbal darts in every direction, hoping that something might hit.

Consider the allegations against Vadra. Whatever be the truth in the allegation, it is an established fact that tracking down benami transactions, if they exist, is impossible. Hundreds of politicians in India use bogus companies, relatives and middlemen to gather wealth, own real estate. Ever heard of a big fish being caught?

Then there are Gandhi-haters like Subramanian Swamy who repeatedly makes the mistake of diluting the seriousness of an issue with infantile trivialisation.

Swamy's latest allegation against Vadra is a hoot. He claims he's trying for British citizenship. "... I heard he wants to take British citizenship by paying a hefty amount which enables foreigners who invest in Britain to get fast-track citizenship," Swamy told India Today magazine during his stopover at Beijing during the Kailash-Mansarovar yatra.

Swamy's allegation that Vadra is trying to fast-track British citizenship by investing in London is downright fallacious. If Vadra has indeed made a benami investment, there is no way he seek citizenship on the basis of it. It is a no-brainer that he would have to invest in his own name, from his own account to get any purported preference to applicants for citizenship.

Swamy's shooting from the lip in all directions has become symptomatic of the BJP's strategy against the Gandhi-Nehru-Vadras. Instead of going through the grind of hard-nosed investigation, prosecution and follow-up action, the BJP seems to be believing that it can successfully keep the dynasty on the backfoot just by firing verbal arrows.

After raising a din on the AgustaWestland deal, claiming it had enough evidence to nail Sonia, the BJP has suddenly clammed up. So far there has been no evidence to conclusively establish any wrong-doing by the Congress president. For some curious reason, the Agusta deal has completely disappeared from the political discourse after the recent round of Assembly elections in five states.

The heat is off also on the National Herald case, where the action seems to have died down once the Gandhis were granted bail and exempted from personal appearance. May be the pot will start boiling just around the time electioneering in Uttar Pradesh picks up in 2017.

Even more curious is the case of Vadra. After creating a ruckus against his land deals in Rajasthan and Haryana, the government has almost frozen in its tracks. In Rajasthan, where the BJP has had its chief minister for almost 30 months now, no action has been initiated. Only some low-level revenue department employees have been chargesheeted for registering land bought by Vadra's companies. Earlier this month, the enforcement director searched offices of some companies that bought and sold land to Vadra companies.

In December 2013, Firstpost had argued that Vadra's land deals in Rajasthan will never be probed seriously. "To those who are hoping that (CM Vasundhara) Raje will act swiftly and ultimately punish Vadra for his deals, it should be clear that the threat of an enquiry is just a political stunt. It is unlikely to lead to the son-in-laws conviction. Vadra is likely to walk away without any damage, including financial.

But it is a stunt worth performing. In the ongoing game of politics of probe between the Congress and the BJP, Vadra could serve many other purposes."

So far, the drama is playing out to script.

Is it then a wonder that Sonia is trying to stare down the BJP?

Politics of allegations, vendetta and witch-hunts is dictated by the law of diminishing returns. The more noises the opponents make without supporting them with action, the more difficult it becomes to believe them the next time. If the cycle continues, it turns into the story of the shepherd and the wolf that never comes. And, in no time, the object of ridicule becomes a subject of sympathy.

BJP's got to be careful. It must investigate, act and prosecute. By just crying Vadra, it is making Sonia believe in the "sherni" within.
Panaji: Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar has said that Goans are "annoyed" with the behaviour, attitude and lifestyle of the Nigerians living in the coastal state.

Speaking to IANS, Parsekar also said that he was getting complaints against Nigerians on many occasions from locals.

"The Goans are complaining about these foreigners. We get people from all other countries, but in general the people of Goa are very much annoyed with their (Nigerians') behaviour, with their attitude, with their way of life," Parsekar said, even as police on Monday arrested a Nigerian for allegedly raping a 31-year-old woman in Assagao village, 20 km from Panaji.

"I cannot generalise. But people in Goa are not happy with these people," Parsekar said, adding that he regularly hears complaints about Nigerians.

Earlier, Goa's Tourism Minister Dilip Parulekar had demanded a new law to facilitate quick deportation of Nigerians, who Parulekar claimed got embroiled in criminal cases on purpose, in order to extend their stay in India.

"Nigerians create problem not just in Goa, but in the entire country. Nigerian students come to Goa and India to study, they get an FIR filed (against them), make it a judicial matter and they try to stay in India or Goa and indulge in drugs and other unwanted things," Parulekar said on Monday.

In October 2013, over 50 Nigerians had blocked the National Highway 17 in Goa, to protest against police inaction following a murder of a Nigerian national, allegedly by a local drug cartel.

The blockade had also seen police and locals being beaten up by the protesting Nigerians, before some of the foreigners were also beaten up in retaliation by a local mob.
Chandigarh: Amid threats from the Jat community to launch a fresh agitation from 5 June, Haryana government has set up a state-level riot control room at the Civil Secretariat to report any untoward incident.

The control room shall function round-the-clock and will be manned by Inspector and Sub-Inspector-level officers, the government said in a statement.

The control room has been set up amid threats from the Jat community to launch a fresh agitation from 5 June for reservation and against registration of criminal cases against their leaders in Haryana.

Central forces have been deployed in many sensitive districts and prohibitory orders under Section 144 at few places have been issued.

Thirty people were killed in the large-scale violence during Jat quota agitation in Haryana in February this year.

Last week, Punjab and Haryana High Court had stayed the reservation for Jats and five other communities provided by the Haryana government under a newly-carved Backward Classes (C) category.
Drowning in a deluge of controversies, Maharahstras Revenue Minister Eknath Khadse seems to be only filling his lungs with more water each time he opens his mouth for a gulp of fresh air.

Latest in this technically ill-advised move to stay afloat is his brazen attempt to defend his decision to facilitate the sale of a disputed plot in an industrial zone in Pune in favour of his wife Mandakini and son-in-law Girish Chaudhari.

Khadses wife and son-in-law acquired a three-acre plot in Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC), Bhosari, from Abbas Ukani, a 90-year-old resident of Kolkata for just Rs 3.75 crore. The compensation was fixed, by Khadses own earlier admission, by him at a meeting in his office between the buyers and seller as, per the ready reckoner rates (thank god for small mercies).

Khadse explained his undue interest in the case to The Indian Express thus: I also hold charge of the Department of Minorities Welfare and Revenue. He (Abbas Ukani) wanted to sell the land and sought my help. Ukani is now 90 years old. And since his matter is in court, he has to travel to Mumbai and so he wanted to sell the land. Ukani urged me to look for a good buyer saying his efforts were not yielding any results. Since the matter was in court, and the land title was in the name of Ukani, prospective buyers were not willing to put their money.

The Indian Express further quotes him: I informed him (Ukani) that I cannot buy the land in my name since I am a minister. To which, he indicated that my family could buy. I verified the legality from the industries department and MIDC. And only after a verification did I give the nod to my wife and son-in-law to buy the land.

The ministers defence is simple. He was extending humanitarian assistance to a 90-year-old man. In the process, so what if some close family members helped themselves to a lucrative piece of land whose ownership should have rested with the MIDC but is now being contested in court?

One wouldve loved to compliment the minister for his readiness to assist a nonagenarian to get rid of a troublesome plot but for this little irritant called the Constitution of India.

In any state in India, every minister takes the following oath, as mandated in Schedule 3, Para V of the Indian Constitution:

I, AB, do swear in the name of God/ solemnly affirm that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India as by law established, 1 [that I will uphold the sovereignty and integrity of India, ] that I will faithfully and conscientiously discharge my duties as a Minister for the State of ..........and that I will do right to all manner of people in accordance with the Constitution and the law without fear or favour, affection or ill-will.

Similarly, Schedule 3, Para VI mandates:

I, AB, do swear in the name of God/solemnly affirm that I will not directly or indirectly communicate or reveal to any person or persons any matter which shall be brought under my consideration or shall become known to me as a Minister for the State of ....................except as may be required for the due discharge of my duties as such Minister.

It is clear that Khadse failed this oath on many counts. Firstly, when Upani approached Khadse for help, the fact that the land owner wanted a way out was information that became known to him as a minister of the state of Maharashtra and he was thus bound by that oath not to directly or indirectly reveal the information to any person or persons. The due discharge of his duties as minister required him to make the first call to his colleague in the Ministry of Industry (Subhash Desai) and not to his family.

The minister works for the government of Maharashtra and it was his duty to ensure that if the owner of a plot, in dispute with MIDC, wanted to bail out, that land came back to MIDC.

The word in the corridors of Mantralaya is that there is a political conspiracy against Khadse. That might well be the case, who knows. But what becomes apparent from his schoolboy-ish explanation for his questionable behaviour  and his naive expectation that it will fly  is that nothing that has been said about him has damned Khadse more than what Khadse himself has revealed.

Forget about the rest of the controversies that have erupted. For this grave misdemeanour alone Khadse deserves to go.
Prohibition is not the best way to serve gender justice.

But it has become a convenient tool for mobilising the emerging constituency of women voters. And politicians are ready to leverage prohibition to the hilt. Last month Chief Minister Nitish Kumar declared Bihar dry while his Tamil Nadu counterpart J Jayalalithaa, following her recent electoral victory, has promised to work towards phased prohibition.

Bihar is the fourth state after Gujarat, Nagaland, and parts of Manipur, to go dry. Kerala recently opted for partial prohibition. In defence of the ban, political leaders maintain that prohibition is what women want. A Newslaundry report quotes Kumar as saying that driven by womens opposition to alcohol, prohibition, is dedicated to them and their concerns.

The politics of prohibition is double-edged.

On one hand, politicians are finally becoming aware of the potential of women as a distinct constituency. On the other, they are prioritising issues that grab headlines over more substantial matters that concern women. The link between alcoholism and violence is more complicated than it appears at first sight. Lets be clear on the basics: Alcoholism can, of course, be a trigger to violence in some cases. But prohibition is the easiest  not the best  long-term solution to gender-based violence. As long as social and cultural structures embedding gender violence remain intact, prohibition is not going to have the desired impact.

It is only a piecemeal, expedient poll strategy couched in gender-friendly language.

What we know to be substantiated by data is that sober men are as prone to sexual violence  or maybe more  as some alcoholics are. There is no reliable evidence to show violent alcoholics turning over a new leaf when denied access to alcohol. On the other hand, prohibition  as we have seen time and again  simply drives alcoholism underground. When something is banned, people look for other ways to acquire the substance; they dont give it up.

An important but politically inconvenient question, then, is: Why is the political class privileging prohibition over the many other concerns raised by women? Why, for instance, have political parties not prioritised the strict enforcement of laws against sexual violence, or addressed root causes like inequalities between husbands and wives in domestic life?

The more radical womens demands  autonomy in making life and sexual choices, challenging entrenched conservative cultural norms  are predictably studiously ignored. Consider for instance, the governments refusal to treat marital rape as a sexual offence, despite women repeatedly urging an amendment to the law. The calculation behind such reluctance is purely electoral; not to challenge so-called Indian norms. On this cultural register, prohibition is not only a safe and popular issue on which to pitch campaigns, it is also conducive for leaders projecting a holier-than-thou image of themselves.

In order to deal with larger (and often more pressing) problems like marital rape or sexual violence, our overwhelmingly male political party leaders will need to address the misogyny and patriarchy embedded within their own organisations. Prohibition is an easier solution  it projects the problem outward onto society and makes the political class appear utterly blameless. The truth, however, is very different. Every once in a while, politicians  including legislators and ministers  are accused of sexual violence.

Take for instance, the case of Goa Assembly legislator Atanasio Monserratte, who, earlier this month, was arrested for allegedly buying and raping a minor girl. Or, consider the comment made by Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav while opposing capital punishment for rapists: ladke, ladke hain galti ho jati hai (boys will be boys they commit mistakes). While Puducherrys education minister T Thiagarajan has been on record suggesting that girl students should wear mandatory overcoats to prevent men from lusting after them, a Haryana khap panchayat has blamed rape on chowmein!

The list goes on and on.

If party leaderships are serious about heeding womens concerns they have to censor sexist or criminal-minded members, preferably even show them the door. Such action would be more decisive than prohibition. But it would also mean challenging the prevailing cultural and social order. Issuing an administrative fiat on prohibition is easy in comparison. Prohibition is more about votes and less about women.

It makes alcohol the villain and political leaders heroic saviours of damsels in distress.
Lucknow: BSP supremo Mayawati today strongly condemned the alleged vandalisation of party founder Kanshi Ram's statue in Haryana and demanded action against the guilty.

"On the one hand, the statue of BSP-founder Kanshi Ram is being vandalised in a BJP-ruled state while on the other, the BJP national president is indulging in theatrics by sharing meal with Dalits, like Congress 'yuvraj' (Rahul Gandhi) used to do in Uttar Pradesh during BSP regime," she said in a statement.

Her remarks came after the statue of Kanshi Ram was allegedly vandalised at Ambedkar Bhavan in Gurgaon by unidentified men on Monday.

Mayawati alleged that since the Jansangh days "BJP's character had been casteist" and due to their "anti-Dalit mentality," the Dalits and OBCs have to face "irreparable loss."

"Due to this mentality Dalits were being denied the chance to live with dignity and self-respect, especially in BJP-ruled states," she claimed, adding conspiracy is being hatched to abolish the system of reservation.

The BSP supremo also claimed that the entire country has witnessed as to what extent the Narendra Modi government was anti-farmer as the "growers are being made to give up their land to industrialists."
Jammu: Terming as absurd the comments by Congress President Sonia Gandhi describing Prime Minister Narendra Modi as "Shahenshah", Union Minister Jitendra Singh on Tuesday said that her remarks amounted to "sacrilege of democracy" and disregarded the mandate of people.

"That sounds very absurd," Singh told reporters in Jammu when asked about Gandhi's remarks in which she had attacked the Centre over the celebrations of two years of NDA government.

"To make remarks like this not only amounts to sacrilege of the democracy but it amounts to disregarding the mandate of people and also disrespecting the preference shown by the people of this country in favour of the Prime Minister," said Singh, Minister of State in Prime Minister's Office.

On charges against Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra, Singh said that law will take its own course.

"For a party which is totally centered and totally based on family lineage, any threat which they perceive to family interest is perceived by them as national interest. Time has come when people of this country will force them to make a course correction," Singh said.

News reports on Tuesday quoted from purported papers seized by the IT Department during searches last month on an arms dealer's premises that allegedly led to a trail of emails between Vadra and his assistant on the one hand and the dealer's aide on the other regarding the purchase of a London house for approximately Rs 19 crore in 2009 which was subsequently said to have been sold.

Vadra's legal firm has denied that he owned the London property directly or indirectly. It also denied that Vadra had any business ties with the arms dealer or his aide.
Srinagar: Senior National Conference (NC) leader Abdul Rahim Rather on Tuesday alleged the demand for revocation of Afspa from Jammu and Kashmir was rejected by Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar as the PDP and the BJP have a "tacit agreement" on the issue.

"Struggle to seek the revocation of Afspa from the state has received an enormous setback because of PDP's tacit agreement with the BJP and the Central Government on this issue," Rather said.

He said Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and her party are answerable to Defense Minister's "categorical refusal to even consider" revocation of the Act.

The former Finance Minister accused the Chief Minister and the PDP-BJP government of "compromising on crucial issues" of importance to the state for political power.

"We all remember how the present Chief Minister was vocal about Afspa revocation while she was an Opposition leader and now suddenly it (Afspa revocation) is not even in the list of priorities for the government she heads," the NC leader said.

"The Central government has also categorically refused to handover power projects to the state which was another main demand of PDP and a pillar of their Agenda of Alliance," he said.
The Congress party leadership has done the best it could to defend Robert Vadra's alleged benami London house deal.

Party president Sonia Gandhi took time off to declare that her son-in-law was innocent and counter-charged that it was all a political conspiracy hatched against her family by the Modi government.

Sonia is acutely aware that any allegations against Vadra, husband of Priyanka Gandhi, which keep surfacing at regular intervals in some form or the other, dents the Nehru-Gandhi family's aura and by consequence, the fortunes of the Congress party.

The problem for Congress, however, is much more than that. It concerns the integrity of the 'first family'. In past few months, each time that Sonia has spoken  brief sound bites to the media  it had been forced by circumstances, damaging media reports, court orders, or to defend the family from charges of taint  National Herald case, AgustaWestland chopper scam, Robert Vadra deals  actual or perceived. This kind of situation for the top leadership of the main opposition party, howsoever shrunk, is not a healthy sign.

Rahul Gandhi had to defend and counter-charge all these allegations as well. The last statement made by Sonia and Rahul Gandhi to the media was about their innocence in the AgustaWestland VVIP chopper deal. Without speaking a word about the substance of these allegations, the Congress president and vice-president have always chosen to target Prime Minister Narendra Modi instead, alleging "vendetta" and "conspiracy".

This time around, things were no different. Surrounded by her close supporters and personal staff in Rae Bareli, Sonia in her characteristic aggression asserted: "Maine kabhi aisa nahi dekha... Modi ji pradhanmantri hain, shahenshah nahi (I've never seen anything like this...Modi ji is a PM, not a shehenshah)."

Responding to queries from the media about Vadra's alleged benami house deal in London, through arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari, she thundered: "Yeh bhi ek sharyantra hai. Congress-mukt Bharat ka matlab kya hai? Yeh log roz kuch na kuch bahana banate hai, galat ilzam lagate hain, agar galat hai to bina bhed-bhav ke janch karo, dudh ka dudh pani ka pani ho jayega (This is also a conspiracy. What do they mean by Congress Mukt Bharat? Everyday these guys come out with fresh excuses, level false allegations. If a wrong has been committed then make an impartial investigation, which will separate milk from water)."

The supporters cheered her remarks with chants of 'Sonia Gandhi Zindabad', as she moved away from the spot.

The latest charge levelled against Vadra is very damaging for the Gandhi-Nehru family for three reasons.

First, it links Vadra with Sanjay Bhandari, the arms dealer who is under the scanner in the AgustaWestland chopper scam. The Italian High Court judgment papers had mentioned Sonia Gandhi as the "driving force" behind that AgustaWestland deal, while also mentioning her close aide, Ahmed Patel. There is no clear connection yet with the deal, but politics is about public perception and the Gandhi-Nehru family is currently on the wrong side.

Second, it yet again points to Vadra's unending zeal for acquisition and disposal of real estate properties, both in India and abroad. An alleged benami deal in London is sure to set tongues wagging, even in remote chai-paan shops.

Third, it comes at a time when Congress' chief strategist (outsourced) Prashant Kishor has mooted the idea that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra should be projected as Congress' chief ministerial candidate in Uttar Pradesh. Priyanka's image shall forever be linked with Vadra's deeds, be it actual or alleged.

A fortnight ago, Robert Vadra's posters and banners had come up at the Congress party's 'Save Democracy' protests at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. Though a rally and a short protest march was organised to target the Modi government, the Vadra posters made the headlines.



Incidentally, the Congress had organised that rally when the AgustaWestland heat was high on their backs. From the podium, she asserted, 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).  This sounds very similar to what she said on Tuesday.

The BJP sensed a fresh kill against Congress and Vadra, and were quick to pounce on it, seeking a CBI probe. Party MP Kirit Somaiya said, "She has to protect son-in-law. CBI and investigative authorities should coordinate and probe the benami deals."

In a series of tweets Somaiya said:

https://twitter.com/KiritSomaiya/status/737557329420292096

https://twitter.com/KiritSomaiya/status/737298899459674112

https://twitter.com/KiritSomaiya/status/737221702757670912

NDTV broke the story about Vadra's alleged benami house deal in London on the basis of investigations carried out by the Income Tax department and other enforcement agencies, based on documents recovered from raids at 18 premises of arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari.

Vadra's lawyers denied the charges. The investigation was based on two reports by investigating agencies. The reports quote from emails allegedly sent by Robert Vadra and his executive assistant, Manoj Arora to Bhandari, and his London-based relative Sumit Chadda.

It is a rare occasion when Sonia herself comes forward to defend herself or her family members, and that has made the issue even more interesting  marking the lead stories on various news channels and papers, be it print or digital.
A firebrand reporter, Rana Ayyub's claim that her cliffhanger investigative report was nailed by cotton-eyed editors has triggered vociferous reactions in Indias beleaguered media space. In her recently self-published book, Gujarat Files: The Anatomy of A Cover Up, Rana Ayyub blamed Tehelka's editors for dropping a crucial sting involving Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi and top officials of his government in the fear he and his men could wreak havoc in the magazine.

But Tarun Tejpal, then the chief editor of the magazine, said he never dropped the copy because of fear  This is graceless, we did not carry the story because it was simply incomplete. It did not say anything. And in 2010-11, Modi was not even a PM candidate. So what are we talking here?

The publication  it needs to be mentioned here  once bore the brunt of the BJP governments fury after a sting showed the then party president Bangaru Laxman accepting cash from interested parties. Tejpal said he was pained to be maligned by Ayyub and wondered what had he done to deserve this disrespect. She did her best journalism in Tehelka, neither before or after, and goes on to blame us for something we never did. Her story was full of holes, we told her to fill in the gaps. It did not happen.

Some of Indias finest investigations happened in Tehelka, reporters travelled wide and deep into the countryside to probe, to question the wrongs. Rana was offered the moon, she had all the facilities. And what pains me is that she continued to stay with Tehelka even after the story was not carried. It was not a big issue for her, nor for us.

Shorabuddin and Ishrat Jahan happened after this. Howcome? We never worked under pressure, never. We lost investors because of our investigations. I simply do not understand why she has done this, said Tejpal.

Some support has poured in for Tejpal. Former Tehelka investigations editor and current Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Ashish Khetan expressed his shock when he called up the former editor, historian Mamood Farooqi, who had called Tejpal to congratulate him for grooming Ayyub, expressed shock when told of her accusations.

Former Tehelka managing editor Shoma Chaudhury, issued a note that read:

I will leave Tarun Tejpal to refute the specific allegation Rana makes against him, but as the managing editor of Tehelka at the time, I find her assertions about Tehelka buckling under political pressure extremely baffling, to say the least. The many hard-hitting exposes done by Tehelka on Gujarat hardly seems the track record of a magazine that was afraid to touch Mr Modi because it had once been shut down...There is a simple reason why Ranas sting on Gujarat was not carried in Tehelka: it did not meet the necessary editorial standards. While parts of the story were good, there were a lot of loopholes and serious concerns about the procedure that had been followed. Her assertion that she was treated as a guinea pig and her story was withheld out of political pressure seems a serious departure from the truth.

But the reporter, Ayyub said that she stands by what she wrote in the book. This was my biggest moment, the copy could have turned many things upside down. But it kept on going back and forth, eventually, I got tired and left it. Yes, I stayed back and did other investigations. Tehelka was a platform I needed. But I would always remember the story which got dropped. It was not an isolated sting, it was a combination of months of hard work. So lets not see it as an isolated piece of work. The sting, combined with my other work, could have been a great piece of investigation and nailed many lies that continue to exist even today. And I must say I am not the only one to complain about dropped stories in Tehelka, the list is fairly big, she said.
Heres a question for the BJP-led government. Why are the members of Gandhi family roaming free?

Given all the scams they are supposedly involved in, they should be in prison by now. As the citizen of a fair country one has reason to be worried. Criminals, in whatever hue they come, need to be punished. It is immaterial whether some of them are politically influential. Television channels have been updating us on the latest scandal by the family at regular intervals and those connected with the government have been busy working the decibels up over these, but the fact remains that the Gandhis, including Robert Vadra, are still out, going about their business without much fuss.

As Vadra dominates the prime time space yet again, heres something to ponder. Theres something intriguing about the corruption charges against the Gandhis. If the government and the BJP were actually serious about pursuing the cases against them, they would not stop at anything if they had proof of wrong-doing. Given the public show of acrimony towards the Gandhis from several senior BJP leaders, it is assumed that they would not miss even half a chance to put them behind the bars. Its possible theres no evidence at all to nail them and the effort is only to put them under a cloud of suspicion.

Or is it, like Arvind Kejriwal would say, a case of mutual understanding between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Gandhis? The latter, he had said in one of his Twitter posts, were privy to some secrets of the prime minister and ...Thats why Modi ji will never be able to act against any member of Gandhi family. Its easy to dismiss this remark as wild allegation, but what have all the charges against the Gandhis proved to be, at least so far, other than wild allegations?

It could be true that Vadra, son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, has benami property in London which he owns by proxy in the name of a controversial arms dealer. Its possible corruption is involved, and coming not long after the AgustaWestland deal controversy rocked the nation it opens up scope for interesting speculation. Will the government pay heed to Sonia Gandhi and initiate a probe? Not likely. Vadra has been involved in controversies earlier too, the most important being his land deals in Haryana and Rajasthan. Both the states have BJP governments for a considerable period of time, yet we have got nothing more than noise.

Theres an apparent sense of urgency in raking up issues and throwing muck at the Congress first family, but its absence in follow-up action is surprising. Expect the AgustaWestland case all others to drag on till a few years, till it is milked fully for political advantage. And get prepared for new ones in the coming months. Theres something seriously fishy.

The point of this article is not to defend the Gandhis. If they are found guilty by the court of law, they should go to jail like all ordinary criminals. The purpose here is to highlight the callous manner in which the country is being denied knowledge of the truth. Since the government and the party in power have been making the allegations and they have the investigating agencies at their command, the onus is on them to dig out and place the truth before the nation. Till now the intent of both is unclear.

Sonia is correct in demanding an impartial probe to get the truth out. Agar kuch galat hai to bina bhed bhaaw jaanch karo. Doodh ka doodh, paani ka paani karo, she said today while replying to queries from media persons on Vadras London property. She charged the government with bring up wrong charges on a daily basis.

Wrong or right, the country is as eager as her to know the truth.
WASHINGTON U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday her campaign has been in contact with the campaign of rival Bernie Sanders about unifying the Democratic Party.

Unifying the party will be a central challenge once Democrats choose their nominee, with Clinton heavily favoured to win the nomination but facing a protracted battle with Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont

In an interview on CNN, Clinton said the contacts are likely to intensify after next week's California primary.

"I will certainly do everything I can to unify the Democratic Party. Our campaigns have been reaching out to one another. We will continue to do that," she said.

She said both she and Sanders "are going to do everything we can" to prevent Republican candidate Donald Trump from winning the Nov. 8 presidential election.

(Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Sandra Maler)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Singapore: Four radicalised Bangladeshi supporters of the Islamic State terror group were convicted on Tuesday by a Singapore court for raising finances to launch terror attacks back home, becoming the first to be prosecuted under the country's tough terrorism act.

The four men  Rahman Mizanur, Miah Rubel, Jabath Kysar Haje Norul Islam Sowdagar and Sohel Hawlader Ismail Hawlader  pleaded guilty to one and two counts each of providing or collecting hundreds of dollars.

The convicts, employed in the local construction and marine industries, face up to 10 years in jail and are expected to be sentenced on 21 June.

Ringleader Mizanur, 31, pleaded guilty to two of four charges against him. The remaining two charges will be taken into consideration during sentencing, according to a Channel News Asia report.

The four were part of a group of six charged under the Terrorism (Suppression of Financing) Act (TSOFA)  this is the first time the Act has been used for prosecution.

Mizanur had set up the group called Islamic State in Bangladesh, in March this year after developing a "liking" for the dreaded Islamic State terror group.

The court heard that Mizanur had tried to join Islamic State three times, but was unable to obtain a visa allowing him to travel to Turkey and Algeria. He travelled to Singapore to find work instead, and recruited his five co-accused, four of whom pleaded guilty alongside him.

The prosecution said that Mizanur's dream was still to join Islamic State and become a fighter to destroy disbelievers' activities through an armed struggle. The group met regularly to discuss waging an armed jihad to fight against non-believers.

They agreed that when they returned to Bangladesh, they would "find and kill" non-believers, the prosecution told the court. In January this year, the four had taken an oath that they would follow Abu Bakar al-Bagdadi, the leader of Islamic State, until their deaths, the court heard.

Another accused Zzaman Daulat, who was also part of the group charged last week, denied the charges against him.

Daulat, who was the "security council" of the group, said he did not know the money he contributed would be used for terrorism activities.

"I contributed Singapore dollar 200 but I did not know how the money would be spent. I did not know the money would be spent for terrorism," Daulat told court via an interpreter.

The men had intended to join Islamic State as foreign fighters, but upon realising it would be difficult to travel to Syria, focused their plans closer to home, Singapore's Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) had said.

Based on investigations, the group had identified several possible attack targets in Bangladesh, and possessed documents on weapons and bomb-making, as well as ISIS and al Qaeda radical material, it said.

The group had also planned to recruit other Bangladeshi nationals working in Singapore, it added.

A sixth man  Mamun Leakot Ali, who took over as leader of the group after Mizanur was arrested in March  had denied the charges against him at a hearing last week.

If found guilty of financing terrorism, the men could be jailed up to 10 years, fined up to Singapore dollars 500,000 per charge, or both. Another two men, Sohag Ibrahim and Islam Shariful, both 24, will be dealt with separately.

They were listed as witnesses in the case this morning against the five men.
Recently, I was in the capital of Iran, Tehran when the epoch-making trilateral relations were built between India, Iran and Afghanistan. After 15 years, the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi visited Iran to rejuvenate the bilateral ties. He signed a $500m deal to develop Iran's Chabahar port in a strategic effort to open up India's trade routes to Afghanistan and Europe. According to the Chabahar project which was agreed between PM Narendra Modi and the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, India will invest billions of dollars in Iran following the removal of sanctions. Indeed, this deal will greatly help to deepen ties between India and Iran in business, commerce, agriculture, culture and education. But one wonders how India and Iran can exert joint efforts in countering extremism and growing radicalism? This is a relevant question because the two countries have also agreed to consult 'closely and regularly' on combating the threats of radicalism and terrorism.

Since India and Iran share grave concerns at the spread of radicalised forces, their agreement over close and regular consultation on combating threats of radicalism is well received in the region. To curb extremist thoughts and hardcore philosophies, both countries have great potentials and civilisational forces stemming from their ancient inclusive and pluralistic cultures.

As Narendra Modi pointed out, India and Iran are not new friends. Their friendship [or dosti in the Persian language] is as old as history. Through centuries, their societies have stayed connected through culture, art and architecture, poetry, spiritual traditions and commerce. Today, when terrorism and radicalism are among the most baffling problems in the region, it was urgent and timely for the two governments to sit together and brainstorm effective ways to tackle the radical onslaught. Modi has rightly pointed out that India and Iran share a crucial stake in peace and stability and that both share common concerns relating to radicalism and terrorism. Therefore, the two countries have agreed to enhance cooperation between their defence and security institutions. Already, both establishments have spent a large amount of money on internal security, domestic peace and counter-terrorism. But what seems more effective to help the two countries in their bid to curb extremism is their renewed pledge to preserve the rich ancient culture of religious pluralism, peaceful co-existence and celebration of multiculturalism.

The ancient civilizations of the both the Vedic and Islamic countries have been inclusive and welcoming to foreign cultures. In his address to the conference on traditional linkages between India and Iran before winding up his two-day visit to Iran, Mr Modi highlighted Sufism and other cultural linkages as a perfect response to those who preach radical thoughts in our societies.

It is interesting to note that the current Indian PM has been consistently celebrating the universal appeal of Sufism as a rich product of India.

It is common knowledge now that after his participation in the World Sufi Forum recently held in Delhi, PM Modi is seen constantly preaching religious pluralism, the composite nature of Indian culture and its diversity. For instance, in his recent visit to Brussels in the wake of terrorist attacks on Belgium, he ardently praised Islam and its offshoot Sufism referring to the World Sufi Forum. He affirmed: In recent days in India, liberal Islamic scholars, linked to Sufism, said those who speak of terror are un-Islamic. The more such voices rise, the faster the radicalization of youth can be prevented.

Similarly, in his visit to Iran, the Indian PM delivered a remarkable speech on Sufism and its humanitarian approach to strengthen Indio-Iran relations. Recalling the historical religious and traditional bearings of the two countries, Modi invoked Sufism as the binding force that unites the world as one family. "Sufism, rich product of our ancient links, carried its message of true love, tolerance, acceptance to entire mankind," he remarked in his speech in Tehran.

In my own recent experience in several historic cities of Iran, particularly Qom, Shiraz, Mashhad, Isfahan and the capital Tehran, I could see the same culture of peace emanating from deep-rooted Islamic mysticism. The pluralistic essence of Sufism which both India and Iran share in common has contributed to the growth of moderate and tolerant societies in both the countries. Iranians reflect the very spirit of Sufism, which Mr. Modi recalled as voice of peace, co-existence, compassion and equality. It is equally embedded in the Indian Vedic concept of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, which means that the World is one family.

Similarly, there are striking parallels between the ancient heroes and epics of the two countries. The holy shrines [dargahs] of Khawaja Gharib Nawaz in Ajmer Sharif and Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia in Delhi are equally adored in Iran. Much in the same way, Mahabharata of India and Shahnama of Iran, Bhima of Bharat and Rustam of Persia and Arjuna and Arsh of the two countries bear great symbiosis in universal values and egalitarian messages for brotherhood of mankind.

This is an established historical fact that Islam in India and Iran owes much of its existence to Sufi saints and dervishes like Shaikh Saadi and Hifiz Sherazi in Iran and the 13th century Sufi saint Khwaja Ghareeb Nawaz of Ajmer Sharif in India. Gharib Nawaz came from Iran to India and rendered great humanitarian services. His peace activism is regarded a milestone in the path of love, human equality, spirituality and religious pluralism. Thus, this peaceful and pluralistic Indian tradition ushered in a new era of composite culture in the country which still remains well-spirited and widely accepted among the Indian common masses regardless of faith and creed. After Khwaja Ghareeb Nawaz, one of the most celebrated Indian Sufi masters, Makhdum Sayed Ashraf Jahangir Simnani (1287  1386 CE) left his birthplace Simnan in Iran and settled in India. Revered by both Indian and Iranian Muslims, Makhdum Simnani was a prominent Sufi Shaikh belonging to the Chishti and Qadiri Sufi orders. He became the disciple of the well-known Sufi saint of Bengal, Hazrat Alaul Haq Pandavi and established his own Sufi order (silsila) through his spiritual disciple Syed Shah Abdur Razzaq Nurul-Ain, the 11th direct descendant of the world renowned Sufi Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani. His shrine is still revered as great Sufi hospice and is known as Aastana-e-Hazrat Jahangir Simnani in Ambedkar Nagar, Uttar Pradesh.

The long and short is that Iranian-origin Indian Sufis fervently taught and promoted pacifism, spirituality and non-violence. As a result, the shrines of these saints are still attracting people from all faith traditions even after hundreds of years. In the current situation of growing religious hatred, faith-inspired terror and malice, the Indian and Iranian governments are reminded of these peace actors. It is indeed a welcome move.

A view is emerging in both the countries that the menace of extremism can be better wiped out from the region through the restoration of Rishi-Sufi tradition and propagation of its universal values. Not only the governments, but more of common citizens have developed this impression in their own ideological battle against the extremist thoughts and hardcore philosophies. I met a considerable number of Muslim youths in Iran who consider Islamic State an offshoot of radical Islamism, not just a handiwork of the Jews a widespread perception in the global Muslim community. When asked how they try to rebut its ideology, they told me they seek to strengthen Islamic moderation through the doctrine of Mahdism, an Islamic belief in the awaited messiah or spiritual savior of the world from the clutches of the evils.

Iranian Muslims in general are Shiites and, hence, venerate the fourth caliph of Islam, Hazrat Ali as their supreme spiritual leader. He was assassinated by the Kharijites, the first terrorist faction in Islamic history. They indulged in violent takfirism, declaring others kafir [infidel] and thus legitimizing their killings. With the commencement of the 19th century, many new-born Kharijites emerged in the Middle East and took roots in the wider Asian region. They started anti-Sufism and anti-Shia movements with an aim to fan the fire of sectarianism and thus giving rise to extremism among Muslims. The ideology of Kharjiites which basically originated in the time of Hazrat Ali was later propagated among people on the grounds of misinterpreted and seemingly militant Quranic verses.

In this entire duration, spiritually inclined masters of the community, the Sufis, remained confined to their conclaves in holy shrines and hospices. As a result, particular fractions of religionists began to adopt theoretical extremism, religious bigotry, takfirism and justification of wanton killings. This is the Kharijite ideology which is now playing havoc across the world and the Middle East in particular.

It is indeed gratifying to note that the two peace-loving countries, India and Iran, with their ancient civilizational and cultural linkages, are on the lookout for an acute anti-extremism alliance. While India has been ideologically fighting the Islamic State on its soil, Iran has been the most proactive Muslim country in breaking terror's back. Tehran has already committed its military and weaponry in Iraq, offering Baghdad its unconditional support against the self-imposed Islamic caliphate, Daeshs atrocities.

Since Iran is a Shia-majority country and Daesh is ideologically anti-Shia, it has killed thousands of Shias considering them kafir (infidel). After its expansion in Iraq only kilometers away from Iranian western borders, Islamic State became the biggest threat to the Shia Muslims of Iran. Therefore, Iran has been actively engaged in an ideological battle against the radicalism since the beginning of Syrian Civil War in 2011. It was the first Muslim country to provide assistance to Iraqi and Syrian regimes to fight Islamic State, deploying its troops in the two countries. It is still combating the takfirist terrorists of Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria. The Iranian Quds Force played pivotal role in military intervention against the Daesh. Al Jazeera once reported that hundreds Iranian Sunni Kurds crossed the Iran-Iraq border to fight Islamic State in January 2015.

As a result of its effective anti-terror strategy, the Jihadists of Islamic State, despite having their strong base in the close neighborhood, in Iraq and Syria, have not yet succeeded in Iran. Various research works and polls have shown that Islamic State got no recruitments from the Iranian Muslim society, not even from the Sunni community of Iran. At this juncture, we are amazed at the naivety of our anti-terror Indian establishments that could not prevent a few Indian Muslim youths from travelling to Iraq and Syria and joining the Islamic State.

While signing the 12 new agreements, India and Iran have also decided to jointly combat cyber crime to weaken the terror networks and radical recruiters. As the two strategic partners in counter-extremism, India and Iran can fiercely battle the online radical indoctrination. In fact, we have contagious cyber threat against peace, pluralism religious diversity in India. This forms the bedrock for the extremists recruitment of Indian youth. Growing cyber radicalisation and terrorists recruitments on social media are still unrestrained. Young and naive Muslims with impressionable minds are still being drawn into extremism through different online channels. Seductive messages in the disguise of Islamic exhortations easily catch the imagination of the young netizens in Indian subcontinent like in the Middle East, US and Europe. Inspired by the neo-Kharijite extremist ideology, a few Indian Muslim youths traveled to the Middle East, particularly in Iraq and Syria, for terrorist training that was meant to bring the cancer of radicalism back home. In this grim situation, the Indo-Iranian joint efforts to counter the cyber radicalization will be a panacea for this ill.

Ghulam Rasool Dehlvi is a scholar of Comparative Religion & Classical Islamic sciences, cultural analyst and Doctoral Research Scholar at Centre for Culture, Media & Governance (JMI Central University).
Tokyo: With China slowing down, the world is now looking for "other shoulders to rest its growth on" and India, with planned infrastructure spending to bridge deficit, can be a very powerful driver, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Tuesday

Speaking at 'The Future of Asia' Conference organised by Nikkei Inc, he said China shouldered almost 50 per cent of global growth over the last few years.

With its economy slowing down, "the ability of China to shoulder that percentage of growth may not be there and therefore the world also is now looking for other shoulders to rest its growth on.

"And since we have a lot of infrastructure deficit and expenditure still to undertake and I think all that is going to be a very powerful driver of economic growth in India," he said.

Jaitley, who is on a six-day investor-wooing visit to Japan, however, said no one country can really replace another because the world has enough space for major economies to emerge.

China started growing at a much faster pace ahead of India and therefore has maintained a higher level of GDP. But the current slowdown has meant it is "going through a structural transition into a more consumption, service oriented economy," he said.

And so India's growth rate has moved higher than China. "But China will always remain a major economy," he said.

Finance minister said even when global growth has slowed down to close to 3 per cent, developed world seems to be growing at lesser pace.

But, Asia has maintained growth around 6 per cent.

"Chinese slowdown did impact the average Asian growth, which is now anticipated to be about 5.7 per cent. The Chienese developments do certainly (have) impact on Asia," he said.

Stating that China could not have grown 9-10 per cent indefinitely, the transition of its economy is taking its own time.

"But I have not the least doubt that an economy of that size even with the normal that they now predict, or something less than the normal, would still have a great impact both on Asia and the world," he said.

Jaitley said 40 per cent of world FDI now comes to Asia, whose growth rate today is 3 times faster than the developed world.

It is belatedly slowly now becoming the hub of trade integration.

"Whether it is the ASEAN, SAARC, RCEP or TPP... India always had a very important and powerful message for Asia," he said, adding it has established that it can grow nothwithstanding its diversity.

India, he said, has historically been a stabilising force and it stands committed to absolute peace and prosperity.

"So I think the structures for ensuring that peace in the region are still structures that are evolving as the economy of Asia is evolving and I am quite sure that India will be a major stabilising force in the region," he added.
Rabat: Vice President M. Hamid Ansari on Tuesday said that India has traditionally maintained strong ties with Morocco.

"India has a substantial economic relationship with Morocco on account of the large quantity of phosphate which is imported by India and is critical for agriculture. Apart from this, the cooperation is also deepening in the sectors of automobile, pharmaceuticals, and information and technology," he told reporters on board his special aircraft.

The vice president is on his official visit to Morocco and Tunisia from 30 May-3 June.

India's trade with Morocco stands at more than $1 billion, he said.

Responding to a question on recent attacks on African students in India, the vice president said that such incidents must be condemned in the strongest terms.

"African students are guests in India and the government remains fully committed to their safety and security," he said.

Asked about India's cooperation with Morocco and Tunisia in tackling terrorism, Ansari said New Delhi continued to work closely to share intelligence and security-related information with other countries.

He added, "Sharing real-time cyber security related information is crucial in the efforts to tackle terrorism."

Commenting on China's increasing presence in the region, he said that India and China had different approaches towards the African nations.

"India does not see itself in competition with China. We had always sought to partner with African nations in their development journey, particularly in areas of information technology, telecommunication and health among others," he added.
Beirut: Fighting along Syria's northern border intensified Tuesday as the Islamic State group pressed an offensive against a key swathe of rebel territory where thousands of civilians remain trapped, a monitor said.

IS swept towards the opposition strongholds of Marea and nearby Azaz in Aleppo province on Friday, forcing thousands of civilians to flee.

Rebel groups in Azaz tried to launch a counter-offensive on Tuesday but failed, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

IS blocked the attack with a suicide bomber, killing six rebel fighters, the Britain-based monitor said. "The battles are intensifying," said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.

The UN relief agency said thousands of civilians were still trapped in Marea and a nearby town after Kurdish authorities closed the main road towards the autonomous Kurdish canton of Afrin to the west. "Due to the closure of the Marea-Afrin road, an estimated 7,000 civilians are effectively trapped in Marea and Sheikh Issa towns," the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Monday.

Some 2,000 people had already managed to leave Marea and Sheikh Issa before the road was closed on Sunday, OCHA said. Around 5,000 people in total have been displaced by fighting since Friday, and the situation remains "volatile and unpredictable," it said.

The UN's humanitarian coordinator for Syria, Yacoub El Hillo, called on armed groups to "ensure the unhindered movement and protection of civilians trying to reach safety".

Kurdish authorities on Sunday announced the closure of the two roads from Afrin to Marea and Azaz in response to rebel shelling of a majority-Kurdish district of the provincial capital, Aleppo city. The Observatory said rebels continued to shell the Sheikh Maqsud neighbourhood on Tuesday.

Rebels have been shelling Sheikh Maqsud for months after an advance by Kurdish forces into rebel territory west of Marea, Abdel Rahman said.

An estimated 130 civilians have died in the shelling since February, he said. The UN has said that the recent clashes have also trapped some 165,000 civilians between Azaz and the closed Turkish border.

Pablo Marco, the regional manager of Doctors Without Borders, said Monday tens of thousands -- many of them already displaced from other areas -- were caught less than five kilometres (three miles) from the front line with "nowhere to go". Also in Aleppo city on Tuesday, four civilians were killed in air strikes on a car crossing the bombed-out Castello road, the civil defence rescue force told AFP.

At least 280,000 people have been killed and more than half of Syria's population have fled their homes since the conflict first erupted in 2011.
New York: Call it bizarre but the management at an apartment building in Salt Lake City has told tenants living in the complex to like its Facebook page or they will be in breach of their lease.

According to tenants of the City Park Apartments, a Facebook addendum showed up taped to their doors last weekend, asking them to "like" its Facebook page, www.ksl.com reported on Tuesday.

According to the contract, if tenants do not friend the City Park Apartments on Facebook within five days, they will be found in breach of the rental agreement.

I dont want to be forced to be someones friend and be threatened to break my lease because of that, tenant Jason Ring was quoted as saying.

Its outrageous as far as Im concerned, he added. Some of the tenants have already signed a lease agreement months ago.

The contract document also has a release allowing the apartment to post pictures of tenants and their visitors on the Facebook page.

The building currently has a 1.1-star rating on its Facebook page. The building's managers or Facebook didn't respond to a request for comment, the report added.
Islamabad: The body of Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour, who was killed in a US drone attack in Pakistan this month, had been handed over to his relatives in Afghanistan after fulfilling all legal requirements.

In a statement, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said the body of Mansour was "handed over to heirs in Afghanistan after fulfilling all legal requirements".

Mansour was killed in a US drone attack on 21 May in troubled Balochistan province.

Earlier, Pakistan had said DNA test will be performed to establish the identity of the man killed in the drone attack.

On Sunday, an interior ministry spokesman had said that it had been confirmed through DNA test that the second person killed in the drone attack in Balochistan was former chief of Afghan Taliban Mullah Mansour.

He said the confirmation was made after conducting a DNA test of Mansour's body and matching it with the DNA of a close relative of the Taliban chief  who had come to claim the body.

"DNA of Mansour matched with one of his relative who came to receive his body from Afghanistan," he had said.
London: Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday underwent an open-heart surgery at a British hospital which his party said was "successful", the Premier's second cardiac procedure in five years.

Sharif had gone to London on 22 May for a regular medical checkup but was diagnosed with a heart complication by doctors who suggested surgery.

The 66-year-old PML-N leader was recovering after the operation at Princess Grace Hospital in London and was expected to be conscious in a few hours.

"The operation was successful and we are now just waiting for him to recover and wake up in a couple of hours," a PML-N UK spokesperson told PTI.

Sharif's daughter Maryam Nawaz had earlier given updates on the surgery on social media.

"By the Grace of Almighty, surgery progressing fine. Will take another couple of hours or so. Prayers doing miracles... Grafting of vessels started an hour ago," she said on Twitter.

"PM's surgery started at 8 AM UK time. Spoke to him earlier, he was in high spirits. I entrusted him to Allah," Maryam said in an earlier tweet.

This is Sharif's second cardiac procedure in five years.

The need for the surgery arose after the Premier went through a cardiac procedure called Atrial Fibrillation Ablation in 2011, "during which certain complications occurred resulting in perforation of heart", Maryam had told the media.

"After some recent symptoms, a team of cardiologists and cardiac surgeons carried out some scans and tests, following which they decided to go for an open-heart surgery," she said.

Sharif will stay in the hospital for at least a week. He will return after being allowed by the doctors.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani were among several world leaders who wished Sharif ahead of the surgery.

However, Sharif only spoke to Prime Minister Narendra Modi before the surgery, the Pakistan Foreign Office said in Islamabad.

"PM Nawaz Sharif telephoned PM Modi and expressed gratitude for Mr Modi's best wishes for his upcoming operation and speedy recovery," Foreign Office Spokesperson Nafees Zakaria said.
Madrid: A Pakistani man was arrested on Tuesday in the city L'Hospitalet de Llobregat near Barcelona for spreading jihadist propaganda, the Spanish Ministry of Interior said on Tuesday.

"The jihadist spread Daesh (Islamic State) dogma and hatred against westernised Muslim women through social media," Xinhua cited the ministry as saying in a statement.

The man had different accounts on social media which he had used to spread ideas and strategies of different jihadist groups operating in Syria and Iraq, especially Daesh.

Spain is threatened by jihadism, a phenomenon that has increased last year, according to a report by Spain's National Security Council, which was passed at a cabinet meeting on 27 May.
Poland launched a fresh bid Tuesday to extradite Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski to the United States to face sentencing over a 1977 case of statutory rape. Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro said he had appealed to the Supreme Court to overturn an October ruling that Polanski should not face extradition, saying no-one should be above the law.

"He is accused of a terrible crime against a child, the rape of a child," Ziobro, who is also prosecutor general, told Polish public radio. "Were he a teacher, a doctor, a plumber or a painter, I'm sure any country would have extradited him to the United States long ago."

The announcement appears to be part of what the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) government, which took office after October elections, touts as a moral revolution in strongly Catholic Poland. Polanski is still wanted by the United States for sentencing over the 1977 statutory rape of Samantha Gailey after a photo shoot in Los Angeles.

He was arrested after Gailey, now Geimer, accused him of forcing her to have sex after drugging her. She was 13 at the time. Polanski was 43. He pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a minor, or statutory rape, avoiding a trial, but then fled the country fearing a hefty sentence.

Ruling by August

Supreme Court spokesman Krzysztof Michalowski told AFP that a ruling was expected by August, with an exact date for the hearing to be set in June. Polanski will not be required to show up in court and is free to visit Poland without fear of arrest pending the verdict, he added.

The court can either uphold the decision not to extradite Polanski or send the case back to a lower court. Jerzy Stachowicz, a lawyer for the 82-year French-Polish director, said Ziobro's decision was not a surprise.

"We were expecting this. Ziobro had previously announced he was going to do this," he said. He also confirmed that Polanski was currently not in Poland, without disclosing his current whereabouts.

Ziobro's move is an attempt to reverse an October ruling by a court in the southern city of Krakow which ruled that Polanski should not be sent to the United States, a decision prosecutors agreed was "justified".

"Had Poland accepted the US extradition request, it would have violated the rights of Mr Polanski and at the same time the European Convention on Human Rights," judge Dariusz Mazur said at the time. The Krakow court was fiercely critical of the original US investigation into the film-maker's case, saying the US judges and prosecutors had flouted "the rules of a fair trial". And one of his lawyers at the time said the decision "ends the legal proceedings" against Polanski.

'Avoid double standards'

Fearing arrest, Polanski declined to travel to Hollywood in 2003 to receive an Oscar for best director for his harrowing Holocaust-drama, The Pianist  one of his eight Academy Awards. He currently lives in France with his wife, actress Emmanuelle Seigner, but often visits Poland where his family has roots.

Ziobro said he wanted to "avoid double standards" that would afford the director special treatment. "Everyone is equal before the law," he said, accusing "social elites and part of the liberal media" of supporting Polanski. "Does this mean that an eminent artist is free to rape or commit other vile crimes, while a simple Kowalski (the Polish equivalent of Smith) must be severely punished?"

Born in Paris in 1933 to Polish Jewish parents, Polanski's family was torn apart by the Holocaust after returning to live in Poland before World War II. He was eight when the Nazis arrested his parents in Krakow's Jewish ghetto -- sending them to concentration camps from which his mother never returned -- and forcing him into years of wandering with other children.

He survived and went on to win acclaim in Hollywood for his 1962 feature debut in Poland, "Knife in the Water", an erotic thriller about a couple inviting a switchblade-toting hitchhiker onto their yacht. He arrived in Hollywood in 1968 to shoot his first big international hit, "Rosemary's Baby".

Tragedy shattered Polanski's life again the following year when his heavily-pregnant wife, the model and actress Sharon Tate, and four friends were brutally slaughtered in the director's mansion by cult leader Charles Manson and his followers.
FORT MEADE, Md. U.S. government prosecutors asked a military judge on Tuesday to let 10 relatives of Sept. 11, 2001, victims testify in open court during a pre-trial hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Five men face the death penalty in the case, including Pakistan-born Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who took credit for masterminding the hijacked plane attacks in 2001 that killed nearly 3,000 people.

Civilian prosecutor Edward Ryan said about 400 relatives have asked to testify. He told Judge Army Colonel James Pohl that his team would like to question the first 10 in October, many of them the elderly parents of victims.

He noted that two potential witnesses "wanted very much to testify," but have already died.

Ryan said one witness would be Lee Hanson from Easton, Connecticut. His granddaughter was the youngest victim in the attacks.

Hanson's son, Peter, was flying with his wife and 2-year-old daughter on United Airlines Flight 175 when it was hijacked and crashed into the South Tower of New York's World Trade Center.

"During the hijacking, Peter called our witness ... and described to him what was going on inside the plane," said Ryan. "That's about the only direct evidence we have from someone on Flight 175."

Defense attorneys opposed the request, saying it was inappropriate to depose the witnesses in an open hearing because the remarks could influence potential jurors.

They suggested the statements instead be videotaped and saved as potential evidence for the trial.

"What the government is asking to do is have a public exposition of the tragedy that these individuals experienced, and they're asking to do that in a way where future panel members and jurors can have exposure to it," said Cheryl Bormann, attorney for Walid bin Attash, a suspected al Qaeda training camp leader from Yemen.

There was no indication on when Pohl would rule on this motion.

Other motions scheduled for the week-long hearing at the Navy base in Cuba include requests by defence lawyers for evidence of how the five suspects were treated at secret Central Intelligence Agency prisons.

Proceedings have been plagued by repeated delays, and the case is likely years from going to trial.

Seven relatives of Sept. 11 victims are in Guantanamo Bay this week to attend the hearing. Reuters monitored the proceedings over closed-circuit television from a media centre at Fort Meade, outside Washington.

The case is among a half dozen against Guantanamo inmates. There are 80 prisoners still at the Cuban base, mostly from Yemen. Almost 800 inmates have been transferred as U.S. President Barack Obama tries to fulfill his pledge to close the offshore prison before he leaves office in January.

(Editing by Ian Simpson and Sandra Maler)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Washington: Edward Snowden performed a "public service" in stoking a national debate about secret domestic surveillance programs, but he should still return to the US to stand trial, former US Attorney General Eric Holder said in a podcast released on Monday.

As a National Security Agency contractor, Snowden leaked classified details in 2013 of the US government's warrantless surveillance of its citizens before fleeing the country. He now lives in Russia and faces US charges that could land him in prison for up to 30 years.

In a podcast interview with CNN political commentator David Axelrod, Holder said that Snowden had grown concerned that the domestic spying programs weren't providing a "substantial" return of useful intelligence even before even before he revealed the secrets.

Axelrod is a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, while Holder served as attorney general from 2009 to 2015.

"We can certainly argue about the way in which Snowden did what he did, but I think that he actually performed a public service by raising the debate we engaged in and by the changes that we made," Holder said. "Now, I would say doing what he did in the way he did it was inappropriate and illegal."

Holder said Snowden's leaks harmed American interests abroad and put intelligence assets at risk.

"He's got to make a decision," Holder said of Snowden. "He's broken the law. In my view, he needs to get lawyers, come on back and decide what he wants to do  go to trial, try to cut a deal."

He said Snowden should have to face consequences for his actions, including prison time.

"But in deciding what an appropriate sentence should be, a judge could take into account the usefulness of having that national debate," Holder added.

Snowden has repeatedly said he would be willing to return to the United States if the federal government would provide him a fair trial. However, Snowden says he is concerned that under federal espionage laws he would not allow him to present a whistleblower defense, arguing in court he acted in the public interest.
Condemning the murder of the Congolese national Masunda Kitada Oliver in Delhi, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday said in a media briefing that the attack was not racially motivated and it should not be seen in that context.

The External Affairs Minister met the delegation of African students in Delhi on Tuesday. Swaraj said, "The incident is not only unfortunate but painful. Being a mother I can understand the pain of Oliver's parents who lost their son on a foreign soil."

Oliver, 29, was allegedly beaten to death by a group of men in south Delhi's Vasant Kunj area, on 20 May. The incident took place around 11.45 pm on Friday when Oliver had a heated argument with a group of three people at Kishangadh locality in Vasant Kunj.

Following the altercation, the group pounced on Oliver, and as he tried to escape, they chased him for around 20-25 metres and attacked him again with stones.

Oliver was rescued by another group of locals present at the spot and called up police. He was rushed to a hospital, where he later succumbed to his injuries.

Swaraj assured that a thorough probe will be initiated into the case and said: "We have chalked out a plan as per which, our ministers will visit every metro city and hold discussions with African students. We will initiate awareness and sensitisation in areas with maximum population of African students,so that such incidents don't recur."

"On the day the incident took place, I sought a report from the Lt Governor and I was informed that two people have been arrested."

The killing of the Congolese national and a slew of other attacks on Africans staying in New Delhi, and a case in Hyderabad, has caused widespread anger among the community. A group of African students held a protest at Jantar Mantar on Monday.

Telangana's Director General of Police Anurag Sharma asserted that the attack on 23-year-old Nigerian student Kazeem Dami in Hyderabad last week was a clear case of dispute over car parking and had nothing to do with racism as alleged by the student. "The accused in that case was arrested for assaulting on the student (Nigerian)," the DGP said.

African envoys had last week threatened to boycott the Africa Day event over the killing of the Congolese national, but agreed to attend the 26 May event after the government intervened to assuage their concerns.

With inputs from Agencies
Bangkok: Wildlife officials in Thailand have begun removing some of the 137 tigers held at a Buddhist temple following accusations that the monks were involved in illegal breeding and trafficking of the animals.

The director of Thailand's Wildlife Conservation Office, Teunjai Noochdumrong, said three tigers were tranquilized and transported Monday in an operation involving about 1,000 state personnel that is expected to continue for a week.

The animals will be taken to three government animal refuges elsewhere in Thailand.

The temple, a popular money-earning tourist attraction in the western province of Kanchanaburi, has been criticised by animal rights activists because of allegations it is not properly set up to care for the animals and flouted regulations restricting their trade.

The monks resisted previous efforts to take away the tigers, and impeded the effort again on Monday morning despite the massive show of force by the authorities. They relented after police obtained a court order. More than 300 officials remained at the temple overnight to ensure the tigers remained safe.

The temple recently made arrangements to operate as a zoo, but the plan fell through when the government determined that the operators failed to secure sufficient resources.
Cincinnati: The director of the Cincinnati Zoo says it remains safe for its 1.6 million annual visitors despite a weekend tragedy in which a gorilla was fatally shot to protect a 4-year-old boy who had entered its exhibit.

Thane Maynard, however, said a review is underway to determine any improvements that can make the zoo safer.

The male western lowland gorilla named Harambe was killed Saturday by a special zoo response team that feared for the boy's safety. Video taken by zoo visitors showed the gorilla at times appeared to be protective of the boy but also violently dragged him through the shallow moat.

Maynard said the decision to kill the gorilla was the right one. He said the gorilla was agitated and disoriented by the commotion during the 10 minutes after the boy fell. He said the gorilla could crush a coconut in one hand and there was no doubt that the boy's life was in danger.

Jack Hanna, host of Jack Hanna's Into the Wild, said the zoo made the right call by shooting the gorilla. Hanna said he saw video of the gorilla jerking the boy through the water and knew what would happen if the animal wasn't killed.

"I'll bet my life on this, that child would not be here today," Hanna told WBNS-TV.

In an interview with Boston television station WFXT, conservationist and television host Jeff Corwin suggested that the boy's family should shoulder some of the blame, saying "zoos aren't your baby sitter."

"I don't think this happened in seconds or minutes. I think this took time for this kid, this little boy, to find himself in that situation. Ultimately it's the gorilla that's paid this price," he said.

A Cincinnati police spokesman said no charges against the parents were being considered. A spokeswoman for the family said Monday they had no plans to comment.

"I do think there's a degree of responsibility they have to be held to," said Kate Villanueva, a mother of two children from Erlanger, Kentucky, who started the "Justice for Harambe" page and attended a Monday vigil for the gorilla outside the Cincinnati Zoo. "You have to be watching your children at all times."

The Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas, where Harambe spent most of his life, said its staff is deeply saddened by the gorilla's death. Harambe was sent to Cincinnati less than two years ago in hopes he would eventually breed with gorillas there.

Jerry Stones, facilities director at Gladys Porter Zoo raised Harambe since birth and has worked with the gorilla's family since they first entered the US, the Brownsville Herald reported. He spoke Monday about his relationship with Harambe.

"He was a character. . He grew up to be a beautiful, beautiful animal, never aggressive and never mean," Stones said, according to the newspaper. "He would tease the heck out of people and would do things to irritate you just like some kids, he added."

Stones said he would take Harambe home with him when the gorilla was a baby and let him sleep on his bed, according to KRGV-TV.

There are critics of the zoo's decision to kill Harambe. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said the zoo should have had better barriers between humans and the gorillas.

Maynard said the atmosphere following the incident is "very emotional."

"Not everyone shares the same opinion and that's OK," he said. "But we all share the love for animals."

Maynard said the zoo has received messages of support and condolences from around the world, including from other zoo directors and gorilla experts. He said zoo visitors have been leaving flowers at the exhibit and asking how they could support gorilla conservation.
ISTANBUL Turkey's conflict with Kurdish militants, said to have killed more than 5,000 people since July, has also destroyed at least 6,000 buildings that will cost approaching 1 billion lira ($340 million) to rebuild, according to a government estimate.

Large swathes of towns in the mainly Kurdish southeast have been devastated by daily shelling, blasts and gunfire in battles that are still raging, even as President Tayyip Erdogan says the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) is in its "death throes".

Turkish warplanes struck overnight at PKK gun positions and shelters in Semdinli by the border with Iraq and Iran, the army said. The fighting, at its most intense in two decades, resumed after a two-year-old ceasefire collapsed last July.

A day earlier, roadside bombs killed at least six people in two attacks on security forces in the southeast. Air strikes in northern Iraq's Metina area have killed 14 PKK fighters since last Wednesday, the army said.

As fighting continued, the government of new Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said 6,320 buildings, or 11,000 dwellings, had been destroyed in five areas alone: Sur in Diyabakir, Silopi, Cizre and Idil in Sirnak province and Yuksekova in Hakkari.

"We now face a process of planning reconstruction and repairing damaged houses," Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said after a cabinet meeting on Monday, estimating the cost of rebuilding in the areas at 855 million lira ($290 million).

Lawmaker Dengir Mir Mehmet Firat of the pro-Kurdish HDP was dismissive of the reconstruction plans in ancient places like Sur and Cizre, where the "historic fabric had been wiped away".

"They are deluding themselves and trying to cover up their crimes," he told Reuters. "If they are think they can win over the local people like this they are wrong. The destruction of these towns has caused an emotional rupture."

MOSQUES AND CHURCHES DAMAGED

Some 338 civilians, including 78 children, have died in the conflict since last summer, and curfews violated the rights of 1.6 million people, Turkey's Human Rights Foundation said. Ankara says 355,000 people have migrated to other parts of Turkey.

"These are the last death throes of the separatist terror group," Erdogan told a crowd waving Turkish flags and chanting "damn the PKK" in the Aegean coastal city of Izmir overnight.

Military sources say 5,000 PKK militants have been killed since the conflict resumed, around half in southeast Turkey and half in northern Iraq, where the PKK has bases. They put the death toll for Turkish security forces at around 500.

The PKK, designated a terrorist group by Turkey and its Western allies, launched its insurgency in 1984 and more than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

Alongside destruction of housing, nine mosques and two churches in Sur alone have suffered damage, a local official told journalists taken under escort to the area on Tuesday.

The 500-year-old Kursunlu mosque's facade is pockmarked by gunfire, its interior burned out and sandbags in its windows testament to fighting there, a Reuters witness said.

The Roman-era basalt walls which surround Sur district were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in July 2015. Weeks later, the armed conflict was reignited.

($1 = 2.9550 liras)

(Additional reporting by Gulsen Solaker in Ankara, Seyhmus Cakan in Diyarbakir; Writing by Daren Butler, editing by Larry King)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
WASHINGTON The U.S. government is following up on press reports about alleged Russian air strikes in Syria, including one near a hospital, the White House said on Tuesday.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest told a press briefing, "Let me say start by saying I cannot confirm those reports. Obviously I've seen them and we are following up on those reports, but if it is confirmed, this strike would be the latest in a series of strikes against medical facilities in Syria. The international community needs to get to the bottom of this, and those who are responsible for these strikes need to be held accountable."

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday that at least 23 people were killed in Russian air strikes overnight in the Syrian rebel-held city of Idlib, including one near a hospital, marking the heaviest bombardment there since a cessation of hostilities was agreed in February.

(Reporting by Mohammad Zhargham; Writing by Eric Walsh; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
China's largest private airline operator will buy 13 per cent of Virgin Australia in a deal the Australian airline says will help it capitalise on the growing Chinese travel market.

While analysts praised the strategic value of the deal, questions remain about how much capital Virgin needs to raise to support its growth strategy and how it will manage five airline shareholders.

Virgin and HNA Aviation Group will fly directly between Australia and a number of Chinese cities starting next year, and will co-ordinate code-sharing, frequent flyer programs and lounge access.

HNA Aviation, which is part of the HNA Group conglomerate, will invest $159 million in Virgin as part of the deal, and plans to increase its stake to 19.99 per cent over time.
It took six days and three hospital visits before an X-ray realised Francesca Lever's worst nightmare.

For almost a week, Mrs Lever's nine-month-old son Leo had been lethargic; coughing, vomiting and unable to swallow food.

"I saw the X-ray come up on the screen and just said, 'What is that?'."



Wedged at the front of Leo's oesophagus was a round lithium button battery, about the size of a five-cent coin.

"Within half an hour we were in theatre...This was an emergency. Everything just went from zero to 100," Mrs Lever said.
Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop has denied falling out with former prime minister Tony Abbott over his troubled leadership and has ruled out ever challenging Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Opposition frontbencher Anthony Albanese was quizzed on Monday about his leadership ambitions in the event of Labor losing the election, and Ms Bishop on Tuesday faced similar questions on whether she wanted to lead her party.

During a sometimes difficult interview in the Melbourne studios of 3AW, Ms Bishop restated her regular response, saying she was "happy being the Foreign Minister".
Inaccurate forecasts were partly to blame for a Virgin Australia jet making a last-ditch attempt at an emergency landing as it nearly ran out of fuel, air-safety investigators have found.

Passengers on board the Boeing 737-800 endured a terrifying ordeal as they were told to "brace, brace, brace" and keep their heads down as the plane was forced to land at a fog-bound Mildura Airport on June 18, 2013.

A Virgin 737-800 similar to the one pictured had no choice but to land at Mildura because it was close to running out of fuel. Credit:Brendon Thorne

The Virgin jet, which had 85 passengers and six crew on board and was on route from Brisbane, had earlier diverted from landing at Adelaide Airport due to fog.

A Qantas 737 carrying 152 people bound for Adelaide from Sydney had also re-routed to Mildura, only to find fog and cloud had enveloped the Victorian town's airport.
Georgia, a proud nation in the Caucasus that went to war with Russia in 2008, is no stranger to conflict. But a weekend assault by sausage-wielding attackers at a vegan cafe in central Tbilisi is fanning concerns that a simmering culture war could be intensifying.

The attack began Sunday evening at the bohemian Kiwi Cafe a popular spot for foreigners and Georgians alike - when, witnesses say, more than a dozen men carrying slabs of meat on skewers suddenly showed up and began pelting patrons with grilled meat, sausages and fish.

Witnesses writing on social media said that customers at the cafe, who were watching an animated science fiction sitcom called Rick and Morty, felt intimidated by the men, who refused to leave. The cafe referred to the attackers, some of whom wore sausages around their necks, as anti-vegan "extremists."

"A group of people who prepared an anti-vegan provocative action, entered and started to be violent," said a post on the cafe's Facebook page. "They pulled out some grilled meat, sausages, fish and started eating them and throwing them at us, and finally they started to smoke." It added, "They were just trying to provoke our friends and disrespect us."
Egyptian prosecutors have ordered the head of the country's journalists union and two other senior union officials to stand trial for allegedly spreading false news and harboring fugitive colleagues.

The order, issued Monday, targets union chief Yehia Qalash, Khaled al-Balshy and Gamal Abdel Rahim. It calls them to trial on June 4 in Cairo.

The controversial case stems from a May 1 police raid on the Cairo offices of the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate, where police aimed to arrest two opposition journalists who had sought refuge inside.

Qalash and the union condemned those arrests, at the time accusing police of storming their offices for the first time in the union's 75-year history. The Interior Ministry later denied using force to enter the building, while acknowledging police had arrested the opposition reporters.

Days later, the union demanded a presidential apology and the release of all detained journalists, while threatening to strike if its demands were not met. Protesters spurred by the arrests also called for the removal of Interior Minister Magdy Abdel Ghaffar.

Monday's order charging the union trio comes as authorities face rising public dissent against President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, whom rights activists and diplomats inside and outside the country describe as increasingly authoritarian.

The rights group Amnesty International denounced the union leaders' arrests, calling them "the most brazen attack on the media the country has witnessed in decades." Amnesty's Magdalena Mughrabi also said the arrests signal "a dangerous escalation of Egyptian authorities' Draconian clampdown on freedom of expression."

A lawyer for the union trio, Sayed Abu Zeid, told the Associated Press his clients were questioned for hours Sunday evening and that they initially refused to post bail because "publishing news ... should not involve imprisonment or bail." Prosecutors later said bail was posted.

The two suspects arrested May 1 were detained after publishing content in mid-April criticizing Egypt's decision to transfer two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia.
Ukrainian military pilot Nadiya Savchenko was welcomed by parliament on Tuesday, a week after being released from two years of Russian captivity during which she herself was elected a lawmaker.

"I have returned and I will not let you forget  you, the people who sit in these armchairs in parliament - about the boys who began laying down their lives for Ukraine on Maidan Square and continue dying today in the east," she said at an emotional appearance in which she also led fellow lawmakers in singing the national anthem.

The 35-year-old was captured and taken prisoner in June 2014 after joining a volunteer battalion to fight pro-Kremlin eastern separatist insurgents. Since then, she has become regarded by many Ukrainians as a hero.

She was elected a lawmaker in 2014 while still a prisoner, but was released last week in a prisoner swap with Russia.

Savchenko, one of Ukraine's first female military pilots, was elected to the country's parliament and appointed to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe during her nearly two years in captivity, fueling speculation that she might have political ambitions.

Questions involve Savchenko's relationship with Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukraine's former prime minister and leader of the Fatherland party.

Both Tymoshenko and Savchenko are known for their strong personalities. Both are outspoken and popular with the public. Tymoshenko was a symbol of political persecution under former president Viktor Yanukovych, while Savchenko is a symbol of Ukrainian resistance against the Kremlin.
A 28-year-old transgender man who goes by the name of Mr. C has become the public face of the fight for job equality in China, where sexual and gender minorities are only beginning to emerge from virtual invisibility.

The man, who keeps his real name secret to protect his parents privacy, is fighting his dismissal from a medical testing center in court and is seeking a ruling stating that no one should be discriminated against on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.

On my shoulders I am carrying the hopes of many, many people, said Mr. C, whos been both praised and insulted since filing the countrys first suit against transgender job discrimination earlier this year.

Many people are working toward [employment equality]. I cannot let them down. There are many members in our group who are unwilling to or dare not step forward, but they are watching.

While still relatively conservative, Chinese society has grown gradually more accepting of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people in recent years, particularly among the younger generation. Thats encouraged some members of sexual and gender minorities to come forward and demand their legal rights, with mixed results.

In 2014, a Beijing court ruled conversion therapy intended to change gays sexuality to be illegal. A court in the central province of Hunan shot down an attempt by a gay couple to register their marriage in April.

Although never specifically outlawed, alternative expressions of sexuality were frowned upon following the 1949 establishment of the communist Peoples Republic, which associated them with the corruption and decadence of the former imperial regime. Those caught up in police raids could be jailed on charges of hooliganism or even executed during particularly severe crackdowns.

In 2001, however, the Chinese Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. Police raids on LGBT gatherings largely came to a halt, as long as they remained low-profile. Empowered by the internet and social media, LGBT groups in different cities began networking, leading to calls for strong legal protections.

China has no law addressing employment discrimination, and efforts are ongoing to enact laws protecting minorities in the workplace.

Mr. C hopes to nudge the government toward recognizing and protecting LGBT rights. Born female, Mr. C grew up in the southwestern province of Guizhou, a more conservative environment than the eastern cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. He didnt even come across the term transgender until age 21, when he finally was able to best describe his gender identity.

After graduating from college in 2010, Mr. C continued to appear as a woman when applying for jobs. That all changed in 2013, when he began dressing as a man, wearing a buzz cut and growing a mustache.

In 2015, he applied for a sales job with Ciming Health Exam Center in the provincial capital of Guiyang, but was let go at the end of the eight-day tryout. He believes he was dismissed because of his gender expression, but the company argued his job performance had been substandard.

Mr. C took the dispute to a local labor arbitration panel, which ruled in early May that his dismissal had been legal, while ordering Ciming to pay him $62 in back wages.

Days later, Mr. C filed his case in a local court, which has yet to put it on the docket.

Now I place my hope with the law, he said. I will do whatever I can do to fight to the end. MDT/AP
Last week Sands China Ltd held its three-day Clean Plate Challenge for the second straight year, in support of World Hunger Day.

Nearly 58,000 team members completed the challenge, which forms part of the Sands ECO360 global sustainability strategy. The activity challenged team members at the companys staff dining rooms to take only what they could eat and return a clean plate, according to a statement by Sands China.

Following the conclusion of this activity, 100 team members will participate in a Hunger Meal Experience in August, which will be organized by the Oxfam Hong Kong-Macau office. The experience is aimed at increasing their understanding of hunger issues around the world. In addition, team members had the chance to purchase rice packs and become donors to support Oxfams work, in a recruitment drive during the three-day event.

Held annually on May 28, World Hunger Day aims to raise public awareness about the problem of hunger and starvation worldwide.

Hotel Royal launches light lunch set

Hotel Royal is launching its light meal featuring ten scrumptious sandwiches at the lobby lounge, with a menu tailored by chef Luis Americo.

According to Hotel Royals press release, the set will offer treats such as daily freshly baked croissants, Portuguese soft bread, baguettes and more, with tasty ingredients including suckling pig, Parma ham and smoked salmon. A vegetarian option with roasted zucchini is also available. The light lunch set comes with a fresh salad, the soup of the day and a light dessert.

Diners can also enjoy free flowing tea and coffee, including cappuccinos and lattes, at a price of just MOP80/set with three hours of complimentary free parking.
The bodies of 32 Australian service personnel and their dependents, many of them killed during the Vietnam War, were handed over by Malaysian soldiers to their Australian counterparts yesterday. Australian officials say its among the biggest single repatriations in the nations history.

The remains handed over at Subang military air base had been interred for decades at Terendak Military Cemetery in Malaysia. Malaysia soldiers carried coffins draped with Australia flags to the tarmac, where Australian troops carried them aboard two Royal Australian Air Force C-17 Globemaster aircraft.

Malaysian officials said 21 of the deceased were Australian soldiers killed in Vietnam and three others died in the fight against communist insurgents in Malaysia. The remaining eight consisted of two wives and six children of Australian military personnel who died from accidents or sickness, they said.

The bodies, plus one additional set of remains from Singapore, are to arrive in Sydney on Thursday. After a formal military repatriation ceremony that will include some veterans who served with those killed, a private memorial service will be held.

The Australian government offered a year ago to repatriate 36 Australian servicemen and dependents from Malaysia and Singapore. The families of 33 servicemen and dependents accepted that offer.

Before January 1966, Australias policy was to bury soldiers killed in battle in foreign countries in the nearest Commonwealth war cemetery.

As 2015 marks 50 years since the arrival of combat troops and the escalation of Australian involvement in Vietnam, it is right and proper that we honor their service with this gesture, then Prime Minister Tony Abbott told Parliament in May last year.

Australia deployed more than 60,000 military personnel to the Vietnam conflict between 1962 and 1973, of whom 521 were killed. AP
A Hong Kong activist whose beating by police was caught on video was sentenced yesterday to five weeks in prison on charges related to the confrontation, stirring outrage among pro-democracy supporters.

Local broadcaster RTHK said Ken Tsang was sentenced on charges of assaulting police and resisting arrest stemming from the October 2014 incident at the height of street protests that had gripped the semiautonomous southern Chinese city.

A TV station videotaped police officers carrying Tsang away in handcuffs and then punching and kicking him in a dark corner of a public park. At the time, demonstrators protesting Beijings plans to restrict elections for Hong Kongs top leader were tangling with authorities during a pre-dawn clash for control of an underpass next to city government headquarters.

Tsang, who prosecutors said splashed an unknown liquid on officers trying to clear demonstrators from the underpass, was found guilty last week. Seven officers are to go on trial this week over the beating.

Even though Im disappointed and sad about the legal judgment, I still respect the legal system in Hong Kong, said Tsang, who was freed on bail after he filed an appeal.

Were going to stand until the last minute. Were going to fight until the end. We never give up, Tsang told reporters. He was surrounded by supporters carrying yellow umbrellas, which became a symbol of the protest movement that brought key sections of the Asian financial hub to a standstill for 79 days. AP
HSBC Holdings Plc is strengthening its oversight of its safe-deposit boxes in Hong Kong as the U.K. bank moves to bolster its defenses against financial crimes.

The London-based lender has introduced several clauses to the conditions of lease for its safe-deposit lockers, HSBC said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. Customers were requested not to deposit any property which could become a nuisance or of an illegal or offensive nature, including explosive, inflammable or liquid items, illegal drugs, weapons, guns and stolen property.

The statement didnt provide details on how the bank would police the new rules, or any penalties for box holders who broke them. The South China Morning Post reported the tighter oversight earlier yesterday, citing a letter sent by the bank to clients last month.

The nature of a safe-deposit locker service means it has the potential for misuse for criminal purposes, the bank said. The new clauses will further strengthen our defenses against financial crime and to enable HSBC to co-operate with law-enforcement agencies when required, it said.

Europes biggest bank is among global financial firms that have been grappling with investigations into money laundering and tax evasion around the world. The banks total expenditure on regulatory programs and compliance rose 19 percent in the first quarter to USD700 million, according to the earnings statement HSBC released earlier this month. Alfred Liu, Bloomberg
The Macau Military Club marked its 146th anniversary yesterday with the opening ceremony of an exhibition of paintings by Portuguese artist Graca Morais: Tras-os-Montes, Terra Magica.

The anniversary will be celebrated with a series of exhibitions titled Pontes de Encontro (Meeting Bridges).

According to Ambrose So, chairman of the Board of Directors of SJM and the president of the Macau Military Club, the club is a unique institution as it serves the local community as a cross-cultural venue. So commented that several institutions and the Portuguese consulate hold numerous exhibitions and events at the citys Military Club.

We have to be a unique cultural icon, he suggested. We are inventing ourselves in a sense that we will [continue to] bridge more multi-cultural exhibitions.

So affirmed that they would do so without losing the identity of the Military Club, which serves as a multi-national venue.

The clubs president also revealed several of the clubs upcoming events, such as its yearly gastronomy event where chefs from Portugal are invited to visit the institution to attend cultural exhibitions and seminars.

Meanwhile Manuel Geraldes, a member of the clubs board of directors, has expressed pride in the clubs achievements, claiming that the club is one of the oldest social institutions in the region.

We want to continue to be a social and cultural meeting point, he told the Times.

Geraldes revealed that they are collaborating with Macau Forum and other organizations to invite artists from Portuguese-speaking countries to visit the city in December, in time for the anniversary of Macaus handover to China. Staff reporter
Intense fighting between Philippine troops and a little-known Muslim group apparently inspired by the Islamic State group has killed 54 militants and two soldiers, officials said yesterday.

Regional military spokesman Maj. Filemon Tan said the operations against the Maute group began last Thursday in southern Lanao del Sur provinces Butig town and were still continuing. He said nine soldiers had been wounded in addition to the two who were killed.

The military fired artillery and launched air strikes to get the criminals behind the beheading last month of two sawmill workers, Tan said. He said the workers were forced to wear orange robes while being beheaded, like victims of the Islamic State group. Four other sawmill workers were freed after their employers negotiated with the captors.

Troops have not retrieved the militants bodies, but based the count on intelligence reports and on sightings of bodies being carried away by other militants, Tan added.

In February, the group attacked an army outpost in Butig, sparking days of fighting that killed 24 militants and six soldiers, one of whom was beheaded.

Authorities said the group has used black clothing with the symbol of the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.

Several small militant factions in the southern Philippines, the home of minority Muslims in the largely Roman Catholic country, have expressed support for the Islamic State group in online videos, but the military says there is no evidence of any direct, active collaboration. AP
Tenants at a Salt Lake City apartment complex are not giving likes to a Facebook-centric condition to their lease.

KSL-TV reports (bit.ly/1XH25il) that tenants at City Park Apartments received a notice on their doors late last week about a contractual add-on involving Facebook.

According to the document, a new lease agreement mandates that residents friend the complex on Facebook within five days of signing or be found in violation.

The document also has a release that permits the property to post pictures of tenants and their visitors on its Facebook page.
China yesterday lashed out at criticism from U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, accusing him of harboring a Cold War mentality and saying Beijing has no interest in playing a role in a Hollywood movie of Washingtons design.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters Carters comment last week that China was creating a Great Wall of self-isolation was merely an attempt to provide cover for U.S. plans to deploy additional military forces to the Asia-Pacific region.

Carters remarks laid bare the stereotypical U.S. thinking and U.S. hegemony, Hua said at a daily news briefing.

Indeed, there are some in the U.S. who live physically in the 21st century, but whose minds are stuck in the in the Cold War era, she said.

China has no interest in any form of Cold War, nor are we interested in playing a role in a Hollywood movie written and directed by certain U.S. military officials. However, China has no fear of and will counter any actions that threaten and undermine Chinas sovereignty and security, Hua said.

In a commencement speech Friday at the U.S. Naval Academy, Carter said China wants and enjoys the benefits of free trade and a free internet, but sometimes chooses to restrict both. He said the U.S. also continues to be concerned about Beijings actions in the disputed South China Sea, where Beijing has sought to strengthen its claim to almost the entire region by building new islands atop coral outcroppings and adding airstrips, harbors and military infrastructure.

The United States is committed to upholding the freedom of navigation and commerce, and peaceful resolution of disputes, Carter said.

Chinas actions [in the South China Sea] challenge fundamental principles, and we cant look the other way, Carter said. AP
CHINA A teenage boy sneaked into the cargo hold of an Emirates passenger plane in China and made it all the way to Dubai before being apprehended, the airline and Chinese media said yesterday. The Dubai-based airline, the Middle Easts biggest, said the stowaway was found in the cargo hold of Flight EK303 from Shanghai on Friday, May 27. We are cooperating fully with authorities in Dubai and as this is a police matter, the airline said in an emailed statement.

CHINA A 28-year-old transgender man who goes by the name of Mr. C has become the public face of the fight for job equality in China, where sexual and gender minorities are only beginning to emerge from virtual invisibility.

HONG KONG Chinese residents pumped a record amount of money into Hong Kong insurance in the first quarter even as the mainland government tightened restrictions on the purchases, which serve as a popular tool for skirting the nations capital controls.

CHINA-RUSSIA Russian foreign minister says President Vladimir Putins planned trip to China will give powerful new impulse to ties between the two nations. Speaking yesterday at a Moscow conference, Sergey Lavrov (pictured)described expanding ties with China as Russias top foreign policy priority.

KOREAS A North Korean missile launch likely failed yesterday, South Koreas military said, the fourth in a series of high-profile failures that somewhat temper recent worries that the North is pushing quickly toward its goal of a nuclear-tipped missile that can reach Americas mainland.

AFGHANISTAN Amnesty International says more than 1.2 million Afghans have been forced to flee their homes due to violence in the past three years and urges the Kabul government and the international community to tackle the countrys growing crisis of refugees internally displaced by war.

THAILAND Wildlife officials remove 40 of the 137 tigers held at a Buddhist temple in western Kanchanaburi province following accusations that the monks were involved in illegal breeding and trafficking of the animals.

UNITED NATIONS The UN health agency says plain packaging on tobacco products has shown to be an effective complement to health warnings, advertising restrictions, and curbs on misleading packaging to help save lives. The World Health Organization released yesterday an 86-page report on plain packaging, hoping to decrease the lure of smoking on World No Tobacco Day.

CAPTAIN COOK If the ship legendary explorer Capt. James Cook used to sail around the world is found at the bottom of Newport Harbor, Rhode Island will own it outright because of a legal maneuver it took nearly two decades ago based on an obscure, centuries-old maritime practice.
TWIN FALLS  Kami Bleeker didnt want to be just another hairdresser  so shes taking her passion and vision to another level.

Bleeker is one of six artists selected nationwide to attend the Ryder Make-up Labs Emerging Artist Boot Camp beginning June 5. She will be working with celebrity hair and makeup artists to build a portfolio, and open the door for more opportunities down the road.

Bleeker is just one of several Magic Valley residents who have decided to take on additional training or certification to enhance their careers.

I want to be really successful and make a difference in our community, she said.

As owner of Kami B Hair and Makeup Artistry, 270 Falls Ave. W., Bleeker said she wants to show others that there is more to this than just cutting hair. After competing at a workshop in Boise, she was selected to attend the boot camp for her creativity and passion. Bleeker hopes to bring another culture to Twin Falls by hosting workshops, demonstrations and classes.

I have a lot of fun when I do that, she said.

The boot camp will give her practice doing hair and makeup for editorial content.

Im just excited to go and see what its like to work on set, Bleeker said.

To raise money for the camp  which costs $3,500  she will help teach a makeup tips-and-tricks class at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at Salon Centric. The cost to attend is $10.

While some choose to take continuing education, others are required to by their profession. Lindsey Ketterling, a physical therapist for the Center of Physical Rehabilitation, said she has to take 16 credit hours of education a year.

Still, new certifications arent part of that requirement, but several physical therapists are choosing to get them to help the community, said Physical Therapist Assistant Christy Hall. Ketterling recently took a three-day course and test for certification in Mesa, Arizona, for vestibular rehabilitation.

Ive been doing a lot of vestibular stuff for our clinic, Ketterling said. Its good to have those skills.

Vestibular rehabilitation therapy assists with balance/inner ear disorders, re-training the brain and using positioning maneuvers or balance training. Ketterling said she opted for the certification, knowing that over 50 percent of people older than 70 will have a vertigo condition at some point in their lives.

Theres always more research coming out, she said. Its a nice way to get an update on whats new and improved in physical therapy.

For professionals such as Rachel Richins, certification adds credibility to their role in an organization. Richins is the vice president of human resources for Agri-Service.

Earlier this month, she passed the test to become a senior certified professional from the Society for Human Resource Management.

Richins spent weeks studying for the 180-question exam with local members of the Snake River chapter.

As a group, we spent two hours per week for three months, and on our own we had to study as well, she said.

Testing is offered nationally at different times of the year.

I think its important to continue my learning throughout my career, and make sure Im a viable resource for my organization, said Richins, whos been working in human resources for 14 years.

While education doesnt end after graduation, sometimes its a good time to change directions altogether.

Im kind of taking a break and re-evaluating my life, said Shalimar Summers, who is in the process of taking a 200-hour Yoga Alliance yoga certification class.

The class, offered by Denise Druce with Yoga Assets, will allow her to teach yoga professionally. While certification can be obtained at a lower cost, and for less time, Summers said the 200-hour certification is more in-depth, covering meditation and anatomy.

Theres so much more to yoga than practicing poses, she said.

Yoga Assets is requiring her to offer 10 free classes to the community. Summers began with just four or five people, and had about 15 attend the fifth class. The next one is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. June 4-5 at a location to be determined. Class dates are announced in the Magic Valley Yoga Community Facebook group.

Summers said that for her, this certification is just the first step. Beginning in July, she will teach classes at Shimmy Shakti Studio of Yoga & Belly Dance in Twin Falls.

Eventually, Id like to do my own retreat, she said.

Shed also like to take a 1,000-hour yoga therapy certification class, and own her own business.
HANSEN | The Twin Falls County Sheriffs Office, Magic Valley Safe Kids and the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation will offer the fifth annual Magic Mountain OHV Safety Fair on Saturday, June 11.

Three-hour sessions are offered for anyone operating ATVs, UTVs or motorbikes. Classes will be 8:30 a.m.-noon, 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. and 2:30-6 p.m. This free class meets the requirements for unlicensed operators, the sheriff's office said, as well as being a great course for anyone riding on Idahos public lands, roads and trails.
KETCHUM  Rick and Lynn Flickinger lead quiet lives as retirees playing violin in the community orchestra and raising funds for nonprofits 51 weeks of the year.

But one week a year they turn into roadies, helping to move 2,400 bicyclists and 2,000 volunteers from San Francisco to Los Angeles in the seven-day, 545-mile AIDS/LifeCycle.

The ride, which will take place June 5-11 this year, is organized by San Francisco AIDS Foundation and Los Angeles LGBT Center to prevent new HIV infections and ensure testing and care for those who do have it. The ride has raised more than $220 million since it began in 1993.

Honestly, its been a life changer for me, Rick said. I thought it was all good and nice when our daughter told us about it, but you have no idea what its really like until you go on one of these. I get shivers now when I talk to people about it. 

The Flickingers got involved in the event through their daughter Kristin Flickinger, a Wood River High School grad who now serves as director of AIDS/LifeCycle in Los Angeles.

Kristin had set out to be a constitutional lawyer but switched careers when she was contacted by AIDS/LifeCycle to teach them how to raise funds.

For me, AIDS/LifeCycle is a wonderful opportunity to make a difference for those living with HIV, Kristin said. I never thought Id end up in L.A. But I was an LGBT kid who grew up riding bikes in the mountains of Idaho so when the opportunity came to work for the Los Angeles LGBT Center as director of AIDS/LifeCycle, the decision was easy. Nobody does more for LGBT people than the Centerthe worlds largest provider of programs and services for LGBT people.

Kristins parents helped move the traveling village the first year, tearing down and setting up such things as bicycle racks at lunch stops and camping spots.

They volunteered on the sweep team last year, picking up cyclists experiencing bike problems, exhaustion or injury.

They take Spuddy Buddy, a toddler-sized representative of the Idaho Potato Commission, along to put a smile on the faces of those who need help. And, as Team Idaho Hot Potatoes, they hand out Idaho potato pins.

During the week they sleep in a sea of 1,500 wall-to-wall tents, flanked by 15 shower trucks and tents full of doctors, massage therapists, chiropractors, acupuncturists and bicycle repairmen.

If you get up at night to go to the outhouse, you might never find your tent again unless you distinguish it with a blinking light or something, Lynn said. At night you get symphonic snoring. We know to bring ear plugs now!

In the seven days it takes participants to ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles, more than a thousand Americans will become infected with HIVone in four of them between the ages of 13 and 24. One in five living with HIV do not know they have it.

High school and college students are unwittingly being infected at ink parties where kids tattoo each other.

A Pennsylvania doctor told us of one such party where about 60 percent of the hundred kids there tested positive because someone had the HIV virus, Rick said. A third of high school kids brag theyve had sex and over half of those dont use condoms and dont get tested because they think AIDS is a thing of the past. A third of the new cases are now occurring among straight people.

Unlike cancer we can prevent AIDS. We can eradicate it in the United States. But we need education, Lynn said.

Last year riders ranged in age from their 20s to 75. They came from 50 states and 18 different countries, including China where you can be arrested if youre openly gay.

The ride costs $2,500 for each rider. But cyclists go beyond that, with each contributing about $6,000 with the help of donations from family members, friends and co-workers. Many of the roadies also bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations, even though theyre not required to fundraise.

Everyone has a storyabout losing a brother to AIDS after a blood transfusion, about babies born with HIV, Rick said. Theres so much out there that people are unaware ofthat I was unaware of.

The ride is capped with a candlelight ceremony remembering those who have died of AIDS.

No one spoke for 1 and a half hours, Lynn said. It was so touching.
TWIN FALLS  A father of four from Tennessee accused of robbing a convenience store Thursday was arrested Monday night after confessing the crime to a friend and then fleeing from cops and hiding in a Dumpster, police said.

Cody William James Meade, 25, whose last known residence was in Tennessee, was arraigned Tuesday in Twin Falls County Magistrate Court on one felony count of robbery.

A public defender said Meade has four children in Tennessee and needed to get back to work to support them, but Magistrate Judge Calvin Campbell called Meade a flight risk who was likely to reoffend if released from jail.

Campbell set Meades bond at $200,000, more than the $150,000 requested by prosecutors. Deputy Prosecutor Peter Hatch said Meade has a long criminal record in Tennessee that includes charges for assault, burglary and theft.

This is a community safety issue, Campbell said during Tuesdays arraignment. This was a violent crime in which a gun was used.

Prosecutors say Meade pointed a handgun at a convenience store cashier Thursday night, threatened to put a hole in her and made off with $626 in cash and $194 in cigarettes and hookah sticks from the Oasis Stop N Go at 1390 Blue Lakes Blvd. N.

The robbery happened about 11:50 p.m. when a man entered the store, pulled out a handgun and demanded the cashier give him all the money from the till, court documents said. The cashier gave the man all the money from both tills behind the counter, at which time the robber demanded cigarettes and the cashiers purse, which she handed over.

The robber then walked behind the counter and looked under the register drawers for more money, stealing more cigarettes while he was there, court documents said. When the cashier asked the robber to give her back her wallet from her purse, he gave the wallet back, asked her for the money from the wallet but ended up leaving the money behind.

The cashier reported to police that during the robbery, the man told her he would put a hole in her if she didnt hurry up, court documents said. He also told her sorry and to have a good night on his way out the door, telling her not to call the police for five minutes.

Police set up a perimeter shortly after the robbery but did not find the suspect.

On Sunday, a woman called police and said a man named Cody James had confessed to her friend to robbing the store, court documents said. Police later learned Cody James was actually Cody William James Meade, a Tennessee man who they believed was staying at one of Twin Falls motels.

Police distributed photos of Meade to all of the citys motels on Sunday, and early Monday morning they got a call that he was staying at the Old Towne Lodge on Second Avenue East, court documents said. When cops went to the motel Monday night, Meade fled into the alley between Second Avenue West and Main Avenue West.

Officers set up a perimeter and searched the immediate area, eventually finding Meade, who was hiding inside a dumpster. He was taken into custody.

Meade is being held at the Twin Falls County Jail in lieu of $200,000 bond and a preliminary hearing is scheduled for June 10.
TWIN FALLS  Idaho Power customers will see higher rates starting Wednesday.

In addition to the companys seasonal rate change, two filings approved Friday by the Idaho Public Utilities Commission will add to customer bills. The average residential bill will increase by $3.48 from those two filings, which show up as the utilitys Annual Adjustment Mechanism on customer bills.

The latest increases were filed so the company can recover money from more solar power contracts, infrastructure and administrative costs.

Stephanie McCurdy, spokeswoman for Idaho Power, said in past years, customer use has peaked in July. Because of higher demand, base rates also increase each year between June and August.

Were a summer-peaking utility because of air conditioning and irrigation, McCurdy said.

Customers using up to 800 kilowatt-hours of power will have a base rate of about 8.6 cents per kilowatt-hour  compared to the 8 cents billed in non-summer months. Customers using between 800 and 2,000 kilowatt-hours will pay 10.3 cents (versus 8. 8 cents) per kilowatt-hour, and the highest tier will way 12.3 cents per kilowatt-hour (9.7 in non-summer).

As Idaho Power is required by law to sign on new solar power contracts, the company is paying for more expensive power. Furthermore, drought has created low flows in the Snake River system, generating lower-than-average hydroelectric power. In the meantime, energy savings in 2015 increased 12 percent year-over-year.

The PUC determined that Idaho Powers present rates are insufficient for it to recover projected power costs and fixed costs in the upcoming year.
Hillary Clintons campaign may have made a calculated decision, even a smart one, given the campaign atmosphere. Betting that the public is not hung up on the details of the inspector generals report and just assumes the email scandal is no big deal (unless and until the FBI finds otherwise), Hillaryland may think it can get through this by ignoring, minimizing or even misrepresenting the findings. Nevertheless, it is both painful and disturbing to see her surrogates peddle half-truths and insult our intelligence. On Fox News Sunday, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.. fared poorly against an experienced interviewer like Chris Wallace:

Wallace: Two members of the State Departments record keeping division complained about this, expressed concerned, a superior instructed them this way. He instructed the staff never to speak of the secretarys personal email again. Thats a quote from the OIG report.

Congressman, Clinton never got approval.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., ranking member, Intelligence Committee: No, she was mistaken about that. She thought that it was approved, that the practice was allowed, and she was wrong. The report also makes clear that Secretary Powell also thought it was appropriate to use a personal server, private server -

Wallace: But thats notthats not true. That is not true. And II had a feeling you were going call me on that and thats discuss it right now.

Schiff: Yes. I am going to call you on that.

Wallace: Secretary Powell had two computers in his office. He used one, a government computer, for classified information. He had a second computer for private emails. Some of those included business, State Department business, but he did have a separate office of the State Department, secretary of the state, computer.

Schiff: He had aa laptop, a State Department laptop, which the OIG report says he never used for email. Not for official business.

Wallace: Thats now whatthats not what Secretary Powell said.

Schiff: Thethethethethe OIG report says that he used personal email exclusively for all of his official email business. And the OIG also says that when theSecretary Powell was asked to provide -

Wallace: Did he uselet me ask another question.

Schiff: No, no,let methisthis is very important.

Wallace: Well, let me just ask you this, though, did he ever use a private server?

Schiff: He did use a private server. It wasnt his own private server. It was a server owned presumably by America Online. But heyes, he used exclusively a private server. And -

Wallace: And he had a laptop that goes to the State Department.

Schiff: But let melet melet me make one other point, which isis I think very critical, which is, the OIG also found that the retention by Secretary Clinton of her emails, the fact that she provided 55,000 pages of emails, mitigated the fact that she used a private server. In the case of Secretary Powell, there was no mitigation. None of those emails were turned over. So thethe person who was secretary of the state during the decision to go to war in Iraq did not preserve any of his emails, one of the most consequential decisions in recent history. That, to me, is far more consequence than the fact that the secretary did preserve them and turn them over.

Wallace: Whenwhen didwhen did Secretary Clinton leave the State Department?

Schiff: I believe it was in 2012 or 2013.

Wallace: It as January of 2013. Do you know when she turned over the 55,000 pages?

Schiff: After she left office and she was -

Wallace: No. No, sir, and youand you know it was -

Schiff: And she wasand she was requested by the State Department.

Wallace: Wait a minute, you know it was December of 2014. It was two years later.

Schiff: Yes. Yes, thats right. Thats absolutely right.

In other words, every talking point Schiff is forced to present is wrong. She did not get approval. Her situation is not analogous to Powells. She did not turn over the materials voluntarily. And she did not turn over everything.

One really cannot blame the surrogates, of course. It is the campaign and Hillary herself who are continuing down the path of denial and deflection. In doing so, she continues to cements the impression of a defiant, dishonest pol. Moreover, it reminds us, as Ron Brownstein remarked, that  there was no one around her who was willing to tell her that she was wrong. And when people tried to raise questions, they were told to be quite. That is athat was ominous traits for a president.

It is true that saying nonsense with great confidence often gets one through a scandal. And it is equally true that Donald Trump, who has been so dishonest and nontransparent himself, is in a poor position to exploit Clintons weakness. That does not make it any more disturbing that arguably the better of the two presidential candidates is disingenuous even in the face of a government investigation, prone to secrecy and defiant of the rules that apply to the little people.
The following editorial appeared in the Washington Post:

Last week's Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows that voters think Donald Trump would handle the economy better than would Hillary Clinton. But from his destructive tax proposals to the illogical energy plan he detailed on Thursday, there is little basis for that belief.

Trump's vision on energy, as on almost everything, starts with the premise that the country's politicians have sold out the American people. President Obama has "done everything he can to keep us dependent on others," he argued, with a policy of "death by a thousand cuts through an onslaught of regulations" on oil, gas and coal. Trump's headline policy is "complete American energy independence" by "lifting these draconian barriers" so that "we are no longer at the mercy of global markets."

Setting "energy independence" as an overriding policy goal is a policy mistake of long standing in Washington. In fact it is far less risky to participate in the global market than to erect barriers to energy imports or ban them entirely. If you rely only on yourself for your oil, you put all of your eggs in one supply basket. Disruptions due to a natural disaster or anything else that would be relatively localized in a global oil market would cause major volatility in a closed domestic one. The best way to insulate the country from oil price volatility would be to make the economy less dependent on oil, but Trump has no interest in doing so.

Trump's error reflects a deeper contradiction in his thinking. He praises the unencumbered free market, insisting that, "the government should not pick winners and losers" and that he would "remove obstacles" in the way of private enterprises. At the same time, he promises energy independence, a renaissance for the coal industry and other goals that would require government interference in the market. The decline of coal, for example, has occurred in large part because under the Obama administration natural gas drilling has boomed, lowering the price of gas and spurring utilities to move away from coal.

Trump's plan is dangerous as well as incoherent. In his zeal to revoke environmental regulations, Trump promises to kill the Environmental Protection Agency's carbon dioxide rules and pull the country out of the Paris climate agreement. He also promised "clean air and clean water," but over the past half-century, it has been government regulation, sometimes market-based, that has helped clear up the nation's air and water. Trump's plan would lead to dirtier air and water -- and to a massive blow to the global fight against climate change. With great care and difficulty, President Obama persuaded major polluting countries such as China to listen to scientists and move with the United States toward cuts in emissions.

Future generations will suffer if Trump succeeds in reversing that progress.
Chicken will be the best-positioned protein due to its low price position in times of pressure on consumer spending power but rises in production costs and the long-term impact of COVID-19 threaten to disrupt the sector, according to Rabobank.
Latvia urges Azerbaijan to use its transport infrastructure

Uldis Augulis, the Latvian transport minister, called on Azerbaijani representatives to cooperate in the transport sector, Latvian media reported May 20.Augulis was participating in the International Transport Forum in Leipzig, Germany, on May 17-19.During the meeting with Transport Minister of Azerbaijan, Ziya Mammadov, Augulis said that Latvia and Azerbaijan had built good and constructive relations in road hauling and aviation but called for increased cooperation, urging Azerbaijan to use the Latvian transport infrastructure for exports to the EU.According to the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee, Azerbaijan-Latvia trade turnover amounted to $2.87 million in January-April 2016. Some $2.63 million of this amount accounted for import of goods from Latvia.
CoE efforts to obtain access to occupied regions

By Messenger Staff

The Secretary General of the Council of Europe (CoE), Thorbjorn Jagland, says the CoE continues to prepare reports on the frozen conflict in Georgia and to obtain access to Georgias occupied territories.The CoE official said at the 126th meeting of the Committee of Foreign Ministers of CoE that was held in Bulgaria on 17-18 May.Georgias Minister of Foreign Affairs Mikheil Janelidze attended the gathering.Jagland said the decision taken by the Committee of Foreign Ministers in early May over the human rights situation in Georgias de-facto regions and the report prepared by him included all the important issues on the agenda of the CoE.The CoE Secretary General stressed he would continue working on this conflict issues affecting Georgia.International access to Georgias occupied territories is essential, as the Russians continually violate the rights of Georgians in the occupied regions of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali (South Ossetia).Hundreds of Georgians have been kidnapped by occupant forces near the Administrative Boundary Lines (ABL) or in the area close to the de-facto regions.The recent brutal killing of a Georgian citizen, 31-year-old father of two Giga Otkhozoria, by Russias border guards indicates towards the necessity of international missions in Georgia.At present, only the European Union Monitoring Mission observes developments on Georgias contested borders but without access to the occupied regions.At the same time, Georgia should ensure the continued presence of law-enforcers at the ABLs, as Otkhozporia was killed on an area controlled by Georgia. No one could help despite the fact the incident had dozens of witnesses.
The News in Brief

Saakashvili: Ivanishvili will be Defeated This Year



Georgias former president Mikheil Saakashvili, who is now governor of the Odessa region in Ukraine and who chaired the UNM party before losing Georgian citizenship late last year, said that uneducated oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili will be defeated this year.



He made his remarks on Rustavi 2 TV when commenting on violence outside one of the polling stations in the Zugdidi municipality in the Samegrelo region during local by-election in which some of the leaders and activists of the UNM party were beaten by supporters of the ruling GDDG party, founded by ex-PM Ivanishvili.



Ivanishvili will definitely be defeated and he will be defeated this year; he will be defeated by a large margin, he said, apparently referring to parliamentary elections scheduled for October 8.



Future cant be stropped by evil forces of the past. They tried it today in Samegrelo; that was an insult to Georgia, including an insult to Samegrelo; they [GDDG] brought in people [who assaulted UNM members] there to try to solve political issues with violence, he said.



He also said that Ivanishvili, whom he described as uneducated oligarch from Chorvila  Ivanishvilis native village - will share the fate of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych and possibly even worse if he does not come to his senses.



There will be no compromise with this dark force, he added.

(Civil.ge)







Georgia to seek international criminal prosecution for suspect in Khurcha incident



In a statement released on Saturday, Prosecutors Office of Georgia laid out its version of the tragic event of May 19, and announced it would appeal to the court demanding detention in absentia of Rashid Kanciogli, identified as a person who allegedly fired a fatal shot at Giga Otkhozoria, Georgian IDP hailing from Gali district, who lived in Zugdidi.



In the case the motion is satisfied, Rashid Kanciogli will be requested both on national and international levels, the statement reads.



A video of the murder taken by a surveillance camera was shown by the media and shared online, sparking a wave of outrage across Georgia.



Although Abkhazias de facto Military Prosecutors Office has opened a criminal investigation into the incident, Georgian authorities are doubtful that the perpetrator will ever be brought to justice.



We will not give up until the killer is punished. We will use all international and local mechanisms to ensure that this crime does not go unpunished, Deputy Interior Minister Archil Talakvadze said in an interview with Imedi TV.



A shooting against two minibuses on election day in 2008 has also been called the Khurcha incident.

(DF WATCH)







IDFI - Event in Honor of Georgian Officers Executed by Russian Bolsheviks



On May 20, IDFI in cooperation with Tbilisi City Hall, Ministry of Defense and Archive of Ministry of Internal Affairs organized an event in honor of Georgian officers executed by Russian Bolsheviks in 1923.



The event was opened with the Georgian anthem performed by the Defence Ministry's military orchestra. This was followed by a welcoming speech by IDFI Director Giorgi Kldiashvili, who spoke about the contribution of the repressive officers to their homeland and their importance of both the past and the future of Georgia.



Deputy Mayor of Tbilisi Irakli Lekvinadze also spoke about the heroism of executed officers and stated that such examples give all the more value to our countrys 25 years of independence. The Deputy Mayor emphasized IDFIs role in studying the history of the repressed officers and organizing an events in their honour. Tbilisi City Hall plans to place a memorial in Vake Park, at the location where Georgian officers were executed 93 years ago.



Also among the speakers was the Deputy Head of the Archive of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Vladimer Luarsabishvili, who thanked IDFI for its work and for remembering the heroes.



The IDFI used the data held by the Archive of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to locate the addresses of the executed officers and requested Tbilisi City Hall to put up memorial plaques in these locations.

(IDFI)




Gov. Rick Scott must be getting to like these ceremonial bill signings, where local leaders are invited to help him celebrate enactment of a bill already signed into law. Tuesday marked a ceremonial two-fer.

Scott planned stops in two TV markets, Naples and West Palm Beach, to twice ceremonially sign a bill that creates a dedicated source of money for restoration of the Everglades, a program the Legislature branded as the Legacy Florida Initiative.

In each of the past two years, Scott has signed the state budget -- the most important bill of any session -- in private, with no lights, cameras or questions. But Tuesday's dual ceremonies bring to 10 the number of victory lap events this year compared to two in 2015 for a governor widely seen as laying the groundwork for a U.S. Senate candidacy two years from now.

That's a lot of blue Sharpie pens, which Scott hands out as souvenirs after a signing ceremony.

The subjects, dates and places of Scott's previous 2016 bill signing ceremonies were for Israel (April 6 in Boca Raton); veterans (April 7, Palm Beach); tax cuts (April 13, Jacksonville); Holocaust memorial (April 18, Davie); rape kits (April 21, Tampa); benefits for fallen officers (April 25, Orlando); college affordability (May 23, Boca Raton again) and mental health and substance abuse funding (May 25, Miami).
Get ready for Democrats Tim Canova and U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz to schmear each other Tuesday morning at dueling bagel events.

It started when Wasserman Schultz announced she would hold a bagel fundraiser hosted by former U.S. Rep. Barney Frank -- co-chair of the Democratic rules committee for the convention -- at Oceanfront Investments on Las Olas Boulevard at 8 a.m. The maximum donation is $5,400.

That prompted Canova to fire back a campaign email with the header "$5,400 for a bagel?"

"Theres a pretty good breakfast place near our headquarters where you can purchase a bagel for $1.35. Including schmear," Canova's fundraising email stated.

At the same time as Wasserman Schultz's fundraiser, Canova will host a free bagel event at Family Bagels of Long Island in Cooper City.

Canova, of Hollywood, and Wasserman Schultz, of Weston, are battling in Congressional District 23 which spans from Weston to northern Miami-Dade. The race somewhat mirrors the Democratic presidential primary between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Canova has the backing of Sanders and argues for campaign finance reform, has focused on small dollar online donations and has the backing of Democracy for America, Howard Dean's group. Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic National Committee chair, has the backing of the establishment including President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.

Canova has drawn considerable national media attention since Sanders recently endorsed him and his campaign has raised more than $1.5 million -- a hefty sum for a first-time candidate. And Wasserman Schultz has drawn criticism in her role as DNC chair particularly by the Sanders campaign which has accused her of favoring Clinton -- a charge she denies. But working in her favor: Clinton won District 23 -- and the state of Florida -- in a landslide.

There have been no publicly released polls in the district so it is difficult to assess his chances. Wasserman Schultz raised $1.8 million through March and has not released an updated total.
Danica Winters, a romance novelist who lives in an immaculately clean home with a neatly mowed lawn, wouldn't appear to have ever been anywhere near a police station.

For her latest book, she paid some visits to the police and the fire department. She did a lot of Googling that would seem suspicious.

"I am pretty sure I am on the FBI watch list at this point," she said with a laugh. "For this book, I actually had to look up bomb-making, and how fires are started, how chemical fires and oxidizers work."

The romance novelist's new book, "Smoke and Ashes," features a Missoula fire inspector as its protagonist who's on the trail of an arsonist targeting a woman trying to escape an abusive marriage.

Winters also consulted with her father, a retired Missoula city firefighter who for a time was a training officer. A Missoula city police officer provided information on their operations and evidence kits.

Mel Holtz, a Frenchtown Fire firefighter and paramedic, thought it was funny when she called asking questions about arson, until she explained that it was for a book. He said it's usually the opposite of their outreach, such as visits to schools on how to prevent fires.

As with any profession, he said he's used to seeing the details botched in popular culture.

"You kind of have to laugh when the TV gets it wrong and (the) movie gets it wrong," he said.

"I want the books to be accurate and realistic. There's going to be people out there who've had firemen in their lives, that are firemen or firewomen, or police officers, so I want it to be right," she said.

"You're going to get picked apart in this business," she said.

***

Winters grew up in Missoula and graduated from Big Sky High School. She grew up reading Harlequin novels. "It was a closet habit," she said. But she thinks fans are open about it now.

She attended the University of Montana and earned a scholarship for writing, but switched to anthropology. (She didn't want to go into teaching.)

In 2007, she began publishing her writing for Mamalode magazine, which is based here in Missoula. The led to marketing work for a publishing house, and she became an assistant editor, and began writing romance novels five years ago.

She joined a local romance writers' group to learn the beats and contours that the genre requires.

"It taught me to write a bit quicker, and taught me the ways and rules to write a romance novel," she said.

"Smoke and Ashes" marks her debut on the "Intrigue" suspense line for Harlequin  the publisher whose name is practically an adjective for romance novels, a genre unto itself.

There's something of a stigma attached to romance writers, even though Winters' books never delve into R-rated behaviors.

"'Oh, you write smut. You write porn.' I probably get it at least once a week," she said.

However, the bulk of the criticism of "Smoke and Ashes," which she said has sold some 21,000 copies in the last month, has focused on the character's morals: Heather begins a relationship while still married, albeit to an AWOL abusive husband. One magazine article called Heather "morally ambiguous," a trait that's usually a point of pride in literary fiction.

"It's causing some backlash. People are saying 'I couldn't even look at this book, it disgusts me,'" she said.

More important to Winters were the issues of domestic abuse, which she said she's experienced in other periods of her life.

"As a female, if you're raised in a situation where you are abused and believe you have less value than a man, less self-worth, and told you're fat and ugly and stupid and never going to do anything with your life, then you look for a relationship later in life that is similar to what you already know," she said.

It typically falls upon the victim to break the cycle, a point she'd rather raise the character's marriage.

"Why aren't we celebrating her strength, and her ability to finally see the situation for what it is?" she said.

***

The writing life only comprises about 30 percent of this writer's life, in Winters' estimation. There are social media accounts to maintain, newsletters to produce and marketing plans to develop, all while writing up to 3,000 words a day.

There are at least two more books in her fire inspector series. Another series set in Ireland is being shopped to television.

And she has another western Montana series in the works, this one set at Dunrovin Ranch outside Lolo, famed for its osprey nests and accompanying osprey cams. As popular as the cameras are, osprey fans should be warned: Winters said her readers are more interested in horses.

Like "Smoke and Ashes," the series will have some law-enforcement characters, and she's going to do some research. This time, it's at a sunnier locale than the police station.
Many people do not know that the first Sunday of June is National Cancer Survivors Day. This June 5 will be the 28th annual celebration of life for cancer survivors around the world. With advances in treatment and early recognition, there are now an estimated 14.5 million cancer survivors in America.

National Cancer Survivors Day recognizes and celebrates survivors who may have just been diagnosed, those who are currently undergoing treatment, and those who have completed treatment. On this day, cancer survivors can reflect upon their journey and celebrate with friends, family, and loved ones.

For many cancer survivors, remembering their personal cancer journey can hold different meanings and bring up multiple emotions. Triumph, gratitude, joy, fear and grief are just a few of the many emotions cancer survivors can experience as they reflect on their experiences. Life after a cancer diagnosis is often about adjusting to a new routine and adapting to physical and psychological changes. It is common for cancer survivors to have questions and even anxiety about their future health care needs. Whatever the emotions and questions may be, tools and organizations are in place to assist cancer survivors.

Within the last 10 years, national cancer organizations have identified the need to help cancer survivors as they continue their journey and transition to life as a cancer survivor. This has led to the development of the Survivorship Care Plan (SCP). Currently, accredited cancer treatment centers are providing Survivorship Care Plans to patients who have completed curative therapy.

The SCP contains a variety of information individualized to each patients cancer type and treatment. It provides a summary of the patients treatment, potential long-term side effects, recommended follow up, general health maintenance (i.e. nutrition, exercise, sleep and rest), preventive health and wellness screenings and available support resources.

The SCP is one tool to assist patients as they move from active treatment to the role of survivor. Physicians involved with the patient also receive a copy of the SCP. This ensures improved communication and a smooth transition between specialty care providers and primary care providers.

With the increasing number of cancer survivors nationally and worldwide, there is an opportunity to better understand and meet the needs of this unique patient population. National Cancer Survivors Day is a great reminder to honor and celebrate cancer survivors and strive to improve care to this growing population.

You can find additional resources at the American Cancer Society and National Cancer Survivors Day Foundation websites.

***

Bev Williams, RN, BSN, is a Nurse Navigator at Providence St. Patrick Hospital
TOWNSEND  Barbara Kay (Beers) Kirscher, 89, passed away from natural causes Wednesday, May 25, 2016, in Townsend. Barbara was born in her grandmothers bed in Judith Gap to Charles Leander and Mabel Arnegard Beers on Good Friday, April 15, 1927.

All of Barbaras life was directed by her faith and love of family and friends. She was a joiner from birth, compelled to participate in educational pursuits as well as community service throughout her years. Barbara graduated from Judith Gap High School in 1944 as valedictorian of her class.

Barbara chose to attend Montana State College (now MSU) in Bozeman although her mother was a Montana State University (now U of M) alumni and several of her dads family resided in Missoula. Her interests were both academic and extracurricular. She played trumpet in the marching band, traveling by train to perform before the Legislature in Helena. She used her flare for journalism with work on the Exponent and yearbooks. Barbara was a member of the freshman honorary Alpha Lambda Delta, Spurs, the sophomore service club (serving as local president and editor of the national magazine), and Mortar Board-the Senior Honorary.

Barbara married Frederick Joseph Kirscher, a World War II Army Air Corps veteran, on July 27, 1947, in Missoula, and together they graduated from Montana State College (now MSU) in 1948, Barbara with highest honors.

For two years Joe and Barbara partnered with Joes sister Betty and Bill Zabel growing hay, grain and sugar beets on the family farm along the Missouri River. Joe and Barbara lived in Townsend with baby Marie until the Zabels left. Anticipating the inundation of the Lower Ranch by the new Canyon Ferry Dam, Joe and Barbara built a house on the Upper Ranch on Whaley Lane. Four other children (Jan, Keith, Kerry and Vivianne) were born to them as they continued to operate the ranch until Joes death in 1973. Barbara was employed by the Selective Service Board and the Broadwater County Clerk of Court.

Barbara continued to operate the ranch in partnership with son Keith and daughter Marie and Ken Romo until the winter of 1978 when she went to work with the Montana Department of Public Instruction as a secretary in the Indian Ed division. That next summer she accepted a position with Montana Health System Agency and moved to Sidney. Barbara served on the State Governing Board for MHSA. Later, as federal funds for health planning shrunk, she moved to Billings where she was responsible for the 14 south-central counties in a half-time MHSA position. She was also employed by a branch office of the Montana Lung Association; these jobs were ideal for Barbara as she was able to combine her gifts for organization, communication and leadership. She was proud of her role in establishing and directing Camp Huff and Puff, a camp for children with breathing problems. MHSA was phased out and Barbara continued working for the Lung Association until her retirement in the fall of 1989.

Barbara moved back to Townsend, where she used her training to help form the Broadwater Community Health Foundation. Barbara also served on the THS Board and the District Board until her health required her resignation in early 2016.

Barbara participated in a variety of community activities. She supported and contributed to school affairs including PTA, the 4-H program, and the Canton Valley Womans Club. Barbara served the Order of Eastern Star as Worthy Matron (twice), as grand representative several times, and in numerous state appointments. Her membership in Daughters of the Nile, as part of the Egyptian Oriental Band and her support of Shriners Hospital for Children, was especially important to her. Barbara served four terms on the board of Live at the Civic and worked many years as a membership volunteer. She supported the Townsend United Methodist Church for 58 years, and was a charter member of the Trailhead Christian Fellowship, where her faith grew stronger. Barbara loved playing pinochle and bridge and was always ready for a game.

Some of Barbaras most pleasurable and fulfilling activities had to do with travel, beginning with the KEEP project which took her to China, Japan, and Hawaii in 1975. Subsequently, she was able to visit Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Ireland, England, Greece, Egypt, the Panama Canal and Mexico. Barbara enjoyed several trips to the Caribbean and numerous U.S. locations including Alaska.

The love for her family was uppermost in Barbaras thoughts, prayers and actions. She treasured each one and did not hesitate to give support for every dream and endeavor.

Barbara is survived by her children, Marie (Ken) Romo, Keith (Robin) Kirscher, Vivianne (Audie) Anderson, all of Townsend, and Jan (Kim) Keltner of Terry; grandchildren, Shane (Teresa) Romo of Townsend, Jodi (Nels) Hanson of Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Marty Keltner of Chicago, Amy Kirscher of Helena, Shannon (Jamie) Meier of Columbus, Joe Kirscher of Watford City, North Dakota, Rosanna (Josh) Talbott of West Valley City, Utah, and Cole (Kyndra) Anderson of Townsend; and great-grandchildren, Mariah and Shanrea Romo, Annelise and Koen Hanson, Justin, Clayton, Haylee, Tanner, Jayden, Kymber and Kaitlyn Meier, Torin Talbott, and James Anderson. Also surviving are her brother Charles L. M. Beers of Bozeman; sister-in-law Dorothy Kirscher Zimmerman of Sun City, Arizona; and numerous nieces and nephews.

Preceding her in death were her parents Lee and Mabel; husband Joe Kirscher; sister Rosa Lee Lea; son Kerry Lynn Kirscher; and grandson Cameron Anderson.

A celebration of her life will be held Friday, June 3, at 11 a.m. at the Trailhead Christian Fellowship Church with the Rev. Mike Dexter officiating. A reception will follow immediately after the service. Interment will follow at Deep Creek Cemetery.

The family requests that memorial donations be made to the Trailhead Sunday School Building Fund.
Take a closer look at Hellgate High School's Class of 2016 and you'll see several similar faces, some identical. This year, there are six sets
On April 6, 2012, a 31-year-old Blackfeet man from Great Falls named Antonio Tony C. Burnside (Many Hides) was killed when his U.S. Army unit was attacked with small-arms fire by insurgents in the Ghazni province of Afghanistan.

He left behind a wife, four children, parents, siblings and a grieving Blackfeet Nation. But his memory lives on.

On Memorial Day, under a beautiful azure sky, friends and family paid tribute to Burnside (Many Hides) and the the other Montana service members killed in the line of duty at the Fallen Soldier Memorial on the University of Montana campus.

The Warrior Song and the Flag Song, sung by Blackfeet tribe military veterans Kevin Kicking Woman (U.S. Navy) and Ray Kingfisher (U.S. Marine Corps), pierced the air as a solemn crowd gathered to remember those who have fought and died for this country.

Dustin Monroe, a Blackfeet and Assiniboine tribal member who grew up with Burnside in Great Falls, shared his memories of his friend. Monroe served in Operation Iraqi Freedom and fought in Fallujah, but unlike Burnside, he made it back home to Montana.

Today its truly an honor for me to speak about my friend Tony Burnside, Monroe said. Its kind of hard. Ive lost a lot of friends back home too, to suicide. Here in Montana Ive lost a lot of friends. Its not easy. A lot of times a lot of us dont look like were suffering from anything but a lot of us are. A lot of us, you know, we never leave the war. And thats why a lot of Vietnam vets and WWII vets, we all share this commonality. We fight this battle inside our head that a lot of us come back, you know, war never ceased for us.

Monroe said that he watched the events of Sept. 11 on a screen in a cafeteria at UM, and he knew he was going to war.

I was just a scared 20-year-old kid having to go to war, he said. I watched Rambo: First Blood and I went to Chief Mountain and prayed. I always believed in the power of the holy places. But my son was 3 months old. I was having to think about writing a will. Its life or death.

Monroe recalled running into Burnside in Great Falls before he deployed.

We were talking and he said Bro, its going to be all right, just dont be a hero and go over there and blow some (expletive) up,  Monroe recalled. You know, he didnt understand because he was just a civilian.

Monroe said he quickly found out war is not all G.I. Joe, and he lost some exceptional people overseas. But when he came back and found out his friend Burnside had joined the military, he was proud of him.

He was doing real good, he said. He had a wife and children. And that to me was why he did it. He didnt do it for himself, he did it for his children. We shared that together, that this was our mutual duty.

Monroe gave his friend a hug before his third deployment, and it was the last time he ever saw him. He remembers having a weird feeling the last time he saw him. He choked up a little bit when he recalled how he found out he died through a phone call.

When I heard that he had passed, it was really surreal for me because it was somebody I had grown up with, Monroe said. I had lost other people, but I didnt grow up with them so it was easier to move on. So it was hard.

At the funeral, Monroe learned that Burnside had made a pact with one of his fellow troops that if either one of them died, they would fly the entire way with the others body until it got to the family.

Thats the real people fighting this war, Monroe said. When Tony was able to be laid to rest, I was so proud of him. So when I speak out for other vets I feel its my obligation to make this a better world. And for Tony, thats a hero. If youre ever looking for a hero and youre walking around the Missoula community, come look here. We all knew what we were getting into, but these are the true heroes.

Monroe said that he knows Tony is in a good way.

I know he smiles down on us, and I know hes happy, Monroe concluded.

Burnside (Many Hides) was assigned to the the 1st Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 1st Brigade Combat Team, part of the 82nd Airborne Division based in Fort Bragg, N.C.
Named in one of Political Practices Commissioner Jon Motls lawsuits, I have yet to hear from his office.

Sam Wilson, reporter for the Daily Interlake newspaper, told me about the January decision, sent me a copy of the lawsuit in April, and after his April 20 article sent me a copy of the letter upon which the lawsuit is based. One look at the letter and I knew I hadnt written it. The case against me as president of Montana ProLife Coalition is therefore nonexistent.

Are Motls other cases capricious and sloppily done? No notification, no verification of data? Is this slipshod incompetence? A Laurel and Hardy comedy? Or is there sinister design?

Motls lawsuits that carry significant penalties are against conservative pro-life Republicans. This suggests, rather than incompetence, pro-abortion big government Democrat Gov. Steve Bullock appointee Motl is fomenting a concerted effort to maintain the Montana political good old boys club that includes Democrats and Republicans like Bruce Tutvedt who vote like Democrats.

I believe most Montanans believe in fairness, regardless of where they fall politically.

The man who claims to wage a righteous war against dark money. To see what darkness is, he and Bullock need only look in the mirror.

Annie Bukacek,

Kalispell
Patrick Johnson is a legislative candidate in the House District 80 primary. For those of you in HD80, I dont think you can find a better person to represent you. I am good friends with Pat Johnsons mother, Audrey, and have gotten to know Johnson through her. He treats his mom great and is devoted to family.

I lived in Cut Bank for many years and knew the Johnson family there. They are fine people. Johnson graduated from Cut Bank High School and left for West Point at age 17. He had a successful military career and then returned to Montana to work. I have seen him often when he came to Missoula to visit his mom.

Many people talk about family values but Johnson lives them. He often came over to see his mom, but I particularly remember him coming over to take his mom to church and brunch on Mothers Day. On one occasion, he also took me and the church pastor, a single lady. It was a special day for all of us. Johnson's wife is another great person from Cut Bank and they have three great daughters.

So for the folks in HD8O, you have the chance to vote for a hard-working, accomplished person of great character and Christian values. I recommend you vote for Pat Johnson.

Lynne Jenson,

Missoula
I am writing in support of Dave Strohmaier's candidacy to become Missoula County's next commissioner. Others have written in support of Strohmaier's background and credentials for this important public service position. I want to offer some insights on Strohmaier from my perspective as a long-time friend and supporter of his quest to once again become an elected leader.

Beginning in 2011 I had the pleasure of being Strohmaier's volunteer driver when he was running to be the Democratic candidate for Montana's lone congressional seat. With six other candidates running for that position, it was a monumental challenge. But Strohmaier was more than up to it. Together in 2012 we toured our great state, putting some 1465 miles on his rig, travelling as far east as Glendive and Poplar, then returning along the Hi-Line. Throughout that six-day trip I was struck with his dedication to the goal of personally meeting as many voters as possible, really listening to their concerns and asking for their support so that he could become their voice in Washington.

In his campaign for Missoula County commissioner, Strohmaier has shown that same kind of focus and dedication. He has traveled throughout the county, personally meeting the residents and learning of their concerns. As a father of two, Strohmaier knows the importance of supporting the health of all families through better mental health services and addiction treatment programs. Because of his experience as a former firefighter and city councilman, historian and outdoorsman, he will bring a broad understanding of to the rural and urban demands of county government. He is both a strong proponent of efficient public transportation, and a supporter of preserving the county's precious agricultural lands.

Please show your support for a candidate who will be a progressive leader for Missoula County. Vote for Dave Strohmaier for county commissioner!

Kent Watson,

Missoula
Although we don't live in Missoula, our son does. He has been a part of your community for four years, attending school and working downtown. We have visited him many times and always enjoyed our visits. We like to stay, dine and play near downtown Missoula.

We learned about the downtown Missoula Mercantile project through Andy and Laura Holloran of HomeBase Montana. We own an independent, community oriented restaurant located around the corner from HomeBase's new Element Hotel project in downtown Bozeman. Since the new hotel opened, our business has seen a noticeable increase in traffic from visitors, especially through the usually slower winter months. The Element is run with a team dedicated to giving back to the community and participating in downtown events. We couldn't be happier with how our downtown is growing with the intelligent, mindful and efficient design of the Homebase projects. We appreciate the leadership, spirit and creativity of their team who have contributed greatly to the vibrancy of our downtown.
BILLINGS - Nobody was injured when a small airplane crashed at the Laurel Airport on Monday.

Sgt. Kevin Cunningham, with the Yellowstone County Sheriff's Office, said Laurel and county emergency crews were called out to the airport just before 11:30 a.m. on a reported plane crash.

The pilot, who wasn't hurt and was the only person in the Piper Supercub PA 18, reported that he'd flown out to Columbus and was returning when a strong gust of wind hit the plane as it attempted to land at Laurel, causing it crash off the far west end of the runway, Cunningham said.

While the pilot was uninjured, Cunningham described the aircraft as "extensively damaged."

Police, fire and emergency crews from Laurel assisted and the plane could be seen upright on the runway about two hours later.

The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board are investigating.
BILLINGS  Yellowstone National Park has launched a new education campaign in an attempt to increase the number of tourists carrying bear spray.

Titled A Bear Doesnt Care, the advertisements feature people like Bozeman mountain climber Conrad Anker touting the use of bear spray.

"A bear doesn't care if you climbed to the top of the world," the poster featuring Anker reads. Anker has climbed around the world, including three ascents of Mount Everest.

A bear doesnt care how far youre hiking, if youre just fishing, or even if you work here, said park Superintendent Dan Wenk in a news release. No matter who you are or what you are doing, you should always carry bear spray and know how to use it.

Recent data collected by park scientists revealed that only 28 percent of visitors who enter the parks backcountry carry bear spray. Studies show that bear spray is more than 90 percent effective in stopping an aggressive bear, especially when combined with the park's other safety recommendations: be alert, make noise, hike in groups of three or more, and do not run if you encounter a bear.

Yellowstone visitors care deeply about preserving bears and observing them in the wild, said Kerry Gunther, the parks Bear Management Specialist, in the press release. Carrying bear spray is the best way for visitors to participate in bear conservation because reducing potential conflicts protects both people and bears.

According to Yellowstone's website, close to 100 million people visited Yellowstone between 1980 and 2014. In that 34-year period, 45 people were injured by bears in the park. Last August, a lone hiker was killed by a grizzly sow with cubs. He was the ninth person to be killed by a bear in the park during its 144-year history. More people have died from drowning, suicide and burns inflicted by falling into one of the park's thermal features.

Despite the low incidence of bear attacks, beginning this summer the park has hung posters in retail outlets, is placing ads in magazines and will post images on social media of visitors and local celebrities carrying bear spray while recreating in the park.

The publicity campaign was spurred by negative comments on social media and toward park employees after last year's fatal attack of a park employee, according to Charissa Reid, Yellowstone spokeswoman.

"To me it just seems irresponsible to not have that tool if you might be (attacked)," Reid said. "We're just trying to increase that number."

The other initial poster designs include artist Jennifer Lowe-Anker and National Geographic photographer Ronan Donovan. Actor Jeff Bridges, writer Todd Wilkinson, fly fisherman Craig Mathews, and others will join the campaign in the coming months.

"We're really excited that The Dude said yes," Reid said referring to Bridges' popular character in the movie "The Big Lebowski."

Posters from the campaign are available for download at flic.kr/s/aHskx93BCw and go.nps.gov/abeardoesntcare. Visit go.nps.gov/bearspray for information about bear encounters and how to use bear spray.

Bear spray demonstrations are conducted by park employees at Yellowstone visitor centers throughout the summer months.

Park staff is available to speak with local groups upon request about the history of bear attacks in the park, contributing human behaviors, how to prevent and respond to bear attacks and bear spray use. Anyone interested in hosting an event can contact the park at 307-344-2015.
At least six people have died in flooding from torrential rain across large areas of Texas, and emergency workers were searching for an 11-year-old boy who was swept away in a storm-swollen creek in Kansas, the authorities said on Monday.

Record-breaking rain since the middle of last week has swallowed cars, damaged houses and led to the evacuation of 2,600 inmates. Thunderstorms brought more troubles to areas already saturated by other recent storms.

In an area including San Antonio and Austin, Tex., the heavy rain could not soak into the limestone and sandstone that characterize the Hill Country region, leading narrow creeks to brim with fast-running waters.

Since Wednesday, the thunderstorms have dropped pockets of intensely heavy rain, or rain bombs, as meteorologists call them.
Uganda has agreed to cut all military and police ties with North Korea, depriving the North of a crucial base for arms and other exports in Africa, the office of President Park Geun-hye of South Korea said on Monday.

President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda made that promise in a summit meeting with Ms. Park on Sunday during her visit to Africa, her office said.

In the meeting, her office said, Mr. Museveni agreed to comply with United Nations sanctions aimed at limiting North Koreas capacity to earn foreign cash for its banned nuclear and missile program.

We are disengaging the cooperation we are having with North Korea, as a result of U.N. sanctions, Sam Kutesa, Ugandas foreign minister, told the Ugandan broadcaster NBS Television.
SAN FRANCISCO  Three years after Michael S. Dell and the investment firm Silver Lake took Dell Inc. private, a Delaware judge has decided that the $24 billion deal was 21 percent too cheap.

That said, most investors who held shares in the computer company at the time of the takeover will not be able to collect, owing to the intricacies of Delaware corporate law.

In an opinion published on Tuesday, Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster of the Delaware Court of Chancery found that Dell shares were worth about $17.62 at the time of the 2013 leveraged buyout, rather than the $13.75 that Mr. Dell and Silver Lake paid.

The court filing caps a lawsuit brought by a number of Dell investors who argued that they had been shortchanged by Mr. Dell, the founder of the company, which is incorporated in Delaware. Those shareholders brought what is known as an appraisal suit, calling on the Chancery Court to determine the fair value of their holdings at the time.
A 52-year-old Butte mental-health counselor is facing felony charges for soliciting methamphetamine in what prosecutors called an attempt to implicate three other Butte people in drug activity.

Dana Ann Trandahl, a licensed clinical professional counselor, was charged with solicitation of criminal possession of dangerous drugs. She was also charged with criminal distribution of dangerous drugs at an initial appearance late Friday afternoon before Butte justice court Judge Ben Pezdark.

Trandahl is serving as campaign treasurer for Mark Reavis, a Butte-Silver Bow chief executive candidate.

County prosecutors accuse Trandahl of giving money to a woman to purchase meth and plant it in vehicles owned by a man and another woman. She also allegedly ordered the woman to mail envelopes of meth to the man and another male in an effort to implicate all three individuals, who were not identified, in drug activity, according to a complaint filed Friday.

According to the complaint, Trandahl also sold or gave away hydrocodone, an opioid; Tramadol, a narcotic; and Lorazepam, an anti-anxiety medication, on or about April 19.

On Tuesday morning, Reavis said Trandahl was "innocent until proven guilty" and that she would continue to serve as his campaign treasurer. In a statement, he said, "The orchestrated events taking place one week prior to the primary election are suspicious."

The matters and person involved surround personal longstanding issues that are complex," he added. He said the "issues" went "back decades."

He declined to comment on Trandahls possible drug use or alleged drug activity, only saying that shes one of the most highly respected people in the field of counseling.

Reached by telephone Tuesday morning, Trandahl said I have no comment regarding the allegations lodged by the county attorneys office.

Deputy County Attorney Ann Shea declined to provide specifics on the case late Tuesday afternoon, but she said that in her nearly 20-year career as an attorney, shes never seen a case like this before  ever.

Details released on the case are limited. Police said Tuesday morning an official report had not been filed in the departments computer system. Shea said the basis for the complaint came from secured investigative information from the detective division.

Trandahl was taken into police custody Friday afternoon. She was booked at 3:55 p.m. and released on $100,000 bond at 1:31 a.m. Saturday. She is due back in court June 23.

With just seven days leading up to the primary, Reavis said his candidacy remains strong and is an honest commitment to vastly improve all aspects of local government and to represent fairly all citizens of Butte-Silver Bow.
Our family has known Hillary Clinton for over three decades. Each of us has worked alongside her on various pressing problems and issues facing America and the world. In doing so, she has become a friend. Perhaps it is helpful to hear from folks who personally know a presidential candidate. It is with that in mind that we share these impressions.

In 1985, at the height of the Cold War, Carol was running Peace Links, an organization that had the bold idea to bring professional women from the former Soviet Union to the United States with the aim of increasing understanding of one another. This was a visionary exercise in citizen diplomacy at a time when engaging with the Evil Empire was risky and unpopular.

We asked a handful of states' first ladies if they would be willing to host the visitors. Hillary was the first to agree. Not only did she invite them to Little Rock, she hosted them at the governors mansion for a public conversation and arranged various visits with schools, businesses and hospitals. Perhaps not surprisingly, more than a few people attacked Hillary for being too progressive for hosting the Russian visitors.

We learned first-hand how she identified problems and courageously went to work on a plan to fix them. During her life of public service, her creativity and experience has only grown, and with it has grown our admiration.

Pat met Hillary when he chaired the House Committee on Labor-Management and Hillary was first lady, helping develop President Bill Clintons health care proposal. Pats committee had jurisdiction over the legislation. Working closely together on health care, Pat was impressed with her considerable smarts, dedication and joyous sense of humor. They traveled the country, including Montana, listening to folks needs and doing what they could to craft a plan to solve them.

Hillary always came to Capitol Hill and all of the meetings prepared, knowing the issues, saying what she meant and keeping her word. Pat has liked, supported and trusted Hillary ever since that first meeting 26 years ago.

A few years after graduating from the University of Montana, Whitney went to work for Hillary in the White House, serving as the first ladys trip director. Traveling alongside Hillary to more than 40 states and countries, Whitney got to know Hillary, the person. Hillary is funny and she has one of the best laughs you have ever heard. She is loyal, shes a great Mom and a very good friend to many. At her core Hillary is fearless, humble and kind. She is a hard worker entirely driven by public service and she has limitless grit and determination to leave the world better than she found it. Hillary is trustworthy and has never forgotten where she came from or the progressive values she is fighting for.

Whitney has remained close to Hillary since her time in the White House. They worked together on domestic and foreign issues from foster care advocacy when Hillary was a U.S. senator to development projects in the Congo as during her tenure as secretary of state.

Hillary is a remarkable leader with an impressive track record fighting for progressive causes our family cares deeply about. Each of us is delighted to have worked alongside Hillary to further many of them, but we are most proud to call her a friend of the family.
PABLO  The plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit that seeks to derail a proposal to transfer the National Bison Range to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes lost credibility on Bison Range issues long ago, a tribal spokesman says.

Three Montana residents are among 10 individuals who joined Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this week in Washington, D.C.

Theyre making the same argument PEER successfully used five years ago when it got a federal judge to halt an annual funding agreement that had made CSKT and the Fish and Wildlife Service partners in managing and operating the Bison Range.

The plaintiffs say the federal agency again failed to conduct necessary environmental review before telling CSKT Chairman Vernon Finley in February that it would support legislation to transfer the wildlife refuge to the tribes.

The parties filing suit to try to stop the return of the Bison Range land to the tribes have always opposed tribal participation there  even though it is in the center of our reservation and has ties to our people dating back thousands of years, Finley said. We will move on with what we believe is an elegant solution to the issue.

The lawsuit asks a judge to rule that FWS is violating provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act, the Refuge Act, the National Wildlife Refuge System Act and the Administrative Procedure Act. It also wants the court to order the agency to develop a Comprehensive Conservation Plan for the Bison Range, and to take no further action to sponsor, advocate for, or promote the (transfer) legislation until an environmental impact statement has been produced.

No legislation has yet been introduced. The tribes say they are in discussions with Montanas congressional delegation about doing so.

The plaintiffs include PEER members Susan Reneau of Missoula, Marvin Kaschke of Polson and Delbert Palmer of Charlo. The other seven individuals are from out of state, but include former Bison Range managers and employees.

Reneau is identified in the lawsuit as an author and columnist who volunteers hundreds of hours a year to saving the NBR.

In a statement this week, CSKT noted that Reneau, in a radio interview on Voices of Montana last month, referred to President Barack Obama as an Islamic terrorist.

Kaschke managed the National Bison Range from 1968-'77. Palmer worked in the refuges maintenance department for 16 years prior to retiring late last year, and received an award from Rick Coleman, the FWS regional director, for extra effort towards making (an earlier annual funding agreement) work, according to the lawsuit.

In their statement, the tribes said Palmer is documented by the Montana Human Rights Network as having been a board member of All Citizens Equal, a group designated by the network as an anti-Indian organization.

Other plaintiffs include three former Bison Range managers, David Wiseman of Morrison, Colorado (1995-2004), Jon Malcolm of Cheney, Washington (1981-94) and Jospeh Mazzoni of Rancho Murieta, California (1965-68), as well as Robert Fields of Beaverton, Oregon, a refuge manager trainee at the Bison Range in 1962-63.

Even though no bill has been introduced, PEER claims such a bill would give the entire refuge complex, including the prized bison herd totaling nearly $100 million in value, to the CSKT without any compensation. Ironically, federal taxpayers had previously paid twice to purchase the refuges 18,000 acres.

PEERs press release announcing the lawsuit also charges that there will be no requirement for the tribes to maintain the Bison Range as a wildlife refuge or admit the public, nor make any provision for the fate of the bison herd that calls the refuge home.

The law requires federal agencies to think through the consequences of proposals before launching them, Paula Dinerstein, PEERs lead attorney, said. The inability or unwillingness of the Service to do its homework on the Bison Range has kept this century-old refuge in political limbo for more than a decade.

In response, CSKT spokesman Rob McDonald said, PEERs press release intentionally ignores the fact that legislation to restore the Bison Range to federal trust ownership for the tribes would require continued bison conservation, as well as continued public access. Chairman Finley publicly affirmed both of those points in an April 3 Missoulian guest column.

McDonald also took issue with the suggestion that the federal government has twice paid the tribes for the land where the Bison Range is located.

The government unlawfully took the land, which the tribes did not want to sell, to begin with, he said, and then paid the tribes $1.56 an acre, a fraction of its value even in 1912. Almost 60 years later, a court ordered the government to pony up the rest of the actual 1912 market value of $14 an acre, and the tribes were compensated just over $231,000.

PEER lost credibility on Bison Range issues long ago, McDonald said. Their history of playing fast and loose with the facts is troublesome.
Special Execution

Bank Of America, N.A.,

VS.

Raymond S. Wheeler And Erin Wheeler, ET AL.

As a result of the judgment rendered in the above referenced court case, an execution was issued by the court to the Sheriff of this county. The execution ordered the sale of defendant(s) Real Estate Described Below. To satisfy the judgment. The property to be sold is

Lot 1, Block 29, of Abrahamn Smalley's Addition to South Muscatine, being a part of the City of Muscatine, in Muscatine County, Iowa

Property Address: 1209 Kansas Street, Muscatine, IA 52761

The described property will be offered for sale at public auction for cash only as follows:

Sale Date: 7/12/2016

Sale Time: 9:30 am

Place of Sale: Muscatine County Jail Lobby, 400 Walnut Street, Muscatine

This sale not subject to redemption.

Property exemption: Certain money or property may be exempt. Contact your attorney promptly to review specific provisions of the law and file appropriate notice, if applicable.

Judgment Amount: $61,881.04

Costs: $15,835.52

Accruing Costs: Plus

Interest: $21,399.82

Sheriffs Fees: Pending

Date: 05/17/2016

Attorney:

Halley Ryherd

1401 50th St., Ste. 100

West Des Moines, IA 50266

(515)223-7325

C.J. Ryan

Muscatine County Sheriff

Melissa Hurlbut

Civil Deputy
WEST LIBERTY, Iowa  The Muscatine County Fair Board would like to invite residents of West Liberty and Muscatine County to be a part of a ribbon cutting for the Midwest One Fine Arts Center at 1 p.m. Sunday, June 5.

The Fair Board, in conjunction with the Muscatine County Historic Preservation Commission, has been working on a large project to rehabilitate the historic structures on the fairgrounds and this new building will be used to display art exhibits at the fair and at various other times throughout the year. In July 2015 the Fair Board received a $50,000 donation from Midwest One Bank to fund the project.

All residents of Muscatine County are invited to attend this public event. The ground breaking will take place at the Midwest One Fine Arts Center located at the north end of the fairgrounds. Representatives from the Fair Board, Midwest One Bank, and the Muscatine County Historic Preservation Commission will be in attendance. Light refreshments will be provided.

Please contact the fair office at 319-627-2414 with questions.
This June 7", I will be voting for the future of Muscatine. This June 7", I will be voting to help the nearly 560,000 lowans on Medicaid This June 7th, I will be voting to make sure that the voices of the working and middle class are heard in Dos Moincs. This June 7th, I will be voting for Phil Wiese for Iowa House in the Democratic Primary

Phil isn't running for Iowa House simpty to boost his resume or to stroke his ego.

When Governor Branstad privatized Medicaid this past spring, he hurt hundreds of thousands of lowans, including Phil's younger sister Phil knows that lowans don't treat other lowans like that, and he will make sure that we are getting the quality healthcare they deserve.

Phil is a Fighter and a hard worker. When he's not working in the health care industry, he's helping at his family's tree farm north of Muscatlne, raising funds for the Muscatine Art Center, and talking to people from Muscatine about what issues they care about. I trust Phil to work hard everyday for us In Des Moines.

At the end of the day, I want a representative in Des Moines who will genuinely listen to my concerns and fight for the issues that affect Muscaline, and that's why I'm voting Phil Wiese for Iowa House on June 7th.

Logan Leonard

Blue Grass
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 []
Municipal elections are held every five years to elect councillors who will be responsible for governing a municipality.

The latest round of municipal elections will be held on 3 August 2016, and the ANC, DA, EFF, and other political parties are in full electioneering mode.

The leaders of the various parties are scrutinized for their fitness to hold public office, and educational qualifications are often mentioned as part of the process.

While some political leaders, like the FF Pluss Pieter Mulder and the DAs Mmusi Maimane, are well qualified, others like President Jacob Zuma do not have a strong academic background.

The infographic below shows the academic qualifications of South Africas top political party leaders.

More on political leaders

Who has the best qualifications  ANC vs DA

South African finance ministers qualifications: 1994 to 2015

South Africas biggest qualification scandals
Video game prices in South Africa have increased significantly over the past few months.

Quantum Break and the recently announced Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare raised concern over dramatically escalating prices when their pre-orders came in at over R1,000.

Even though PC games tend to be cheaper in South Africa, Quantum Break was priced similarly on Xbox One and PC.

Pre-orders on Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare for PC and consoles in South Africa are currently R150 to R300 more expensive than other big releases.

The table below shows how the prices of PC and console games compare in South Africa across digital and retail channels.

Game prices: May 2016 Released games PC PlayStation 4 Xbox One Doom  Retail R700 R900 R900 Doom  Digital R800 R999 R999 Overwatch Origins  Retail R900 R979 R979 Overwatch Origins  Digital EUR 59.99 (R1,050) R900 R900 Pre-orders PC PlayStation 4 Xbox One Battlefield 1  Digital R600 R830 R800 Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare  Retail R850 R1,050 R1,050 Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare  Digital  R1,200 R1,200 Platform exclusives PC PlayStation 4 Xbox One Uncharted 4  R900  Quantum Break R999  R1,100 1 EUR = R17.50

More on game prices in South Africa

This is how crazy the prices of games are in South Africa

The South African pricing for Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare is insane

The truth behind SA game prices
NEWPORT BEACH  Thousands of Memorial Day beachgoers were kept out of the water Monday as lifeguards searched miles of popular Southern California shoreline for a shark they believe attacked a swimmer the day before.

The woman, who was swimming in a wetsuit, received large bite marks on her upper torso and shoulder and was bleeding heavily after a lifeguard boat spotted her in distress Sunday at Corona Del Mar State Beach, said Tara Finnigan, spokeswoman for the city of Newport Beach.

The woman's condition was not immediately available, but she was conscious when she went to a hospital, Finnegan said.

"We do suspect the victim was bitten by a shark, but haven't been able to confirm that because we had no other witnesses and there was no reported shark sighting before the incident or after," Rob Williams, chief lifeguard of the Newport Beach Fire Department's Marine Operations Division said in a statement.

Lifeguards were searching the water again Monday, with police in a helicopter assisting, Williams said.

"We are treating this as a shark-bite incident and are asking everyone to please stay out of the water in the closure area," he said.

While people were welcome on the beachfront and pier, lifeguards were asking anybody entering the water to return to the shore. With skies overcast and temperatures chilly Monday, several beachgoers said it was too cold to swim anyway.

The ban on entering the water stretched for several miles from the Balboa Pier to the city limits at Crystal Cove State Beach. Officials said it would remain in effect until further notice.

The injured woman was swimming about 100 yards offshore, just outside buoys marking a protected swimming area near where boats travel.

Lifeguards who saw her struggling witnessed the last part of the attack and quickly ruled out any kind of boating or watercraft accident, Williams said.

There have been no recent reports of sharks in the area, he said.
PHILADELPHIA  Donald Trump trails Hillary Clinton by months, even years, in using fast-evolving digital campaigning to win over voters, data specialists working with the GOP say.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee has dismissed the science that defines 21st century political campaigns, a tool that President Barack Obama used effectively in winning two terms and the Clinton campaign has worked on for nearly a year.

And while it is too early to tell whether the late start signals trouble for Trump, it illustrates the difference between Trump's proudly outsider campaign and the institutional knowledge within Clinton's.

"She's been able to prepare a general election campaign since the beginning," said Alex Lundry, former senior technology adviser to Mitt Romney's 2012 Republican presidential campaign. "That head start in terms of time is extraordinarily valuable."

Precision digital-marketing data, a person's online footprints, have become an electoral science that Democrats have dominated, and Republicans have chased, for a decade. Campaigns used the data at first simply to track supporters. The information now guides a range of decisions, like the types and volume of advertising, where to deploy campaign staff to mobilize voters and where a candidate should visit.

Trump's team has been unclear about its use of data in the general election.

Trump told The Associated Press this month the tool was "overrated" and he planned "limited" data use during the general election, though his campaign has worked with firms and a small in-house staff to track voters during the primaries.

Later, senior adviser Rick Wiley, who was hired in April, suggested Trump would run a "state of the art" campaign and use data strategically, relying on Trump's own list of supporters, the Republican National Committee's voter list and a data service financed largely by the RNC called Data Trust.

"All of the data points  whatever they are  our ability to harvest that data is invaluable," said Wiley, the RNC's former executive director. He has since left the campaign, after what a source close to the matter said were disagreements with Trump loyalists about who should lead campaign efforts in key states. The person spoke on condition of anonymity, lacking authorization to discuss internal campaign matters publicly.

Given how Republicans have long trailed Democrats in digital campaigning, Trump's grudging talk and Wiley's departure hardly signal a rush to catch up.

Trump spent more than $1 million in April on campaign paraphernalia like caps, T-shirts and signs. Even as he was effectively seizing the nomination, he spent less than a third of that amount on data and related functions such as telemarketing.

Obama's 2008 presidential campaign revolutionized the way technology could be used to identify and keep track of supporters who attended his campaign events and gave money to his candidacy.

In 2012, Obama's re-election campaign profiled potential voters by monitoring what online, mobile, reading and shopping choices they made. The data helped them project election outcomes based on advertising decisions in specific markets aimed at select voter types.

Obama's 2012 re-election was viewed as a breakthrough in the political application of what had been a commercial tool, while Romney's own data effort started late, was more limited in scope and ultimately crashed.

Clinton's campaign has been collecting data since she announced her candidacy 11 months ago. Elan Kriegel, an analytics director for Obama in 2012, now heads Clinton's analytics team. And, Jeremy Bird, credited with using the data in 2012 for decision-making that preceded the president's re-election, is advising the Clinton campaign.

Kriegel said the nearly yearlong preparation has allowed his team to build intricate voter turnout models aimed at predicting voter behavior, especially in potential swing states.

"If you weren't doing it several months ago, then you really are starting from scratch," Kriegel said.

Trump's challenge may be even more difficult, said Andy Burkett, the Republican National Committee's former chief technology officer.

As the party's nominee, Trump will have full use of the committee's data program, in which it has invested heavily in recent years. Still, capitalizing on that resource will require Trump's campaign to view data as central to its bid  and to put its own money behind it to tailor the data to preferences related to would-be Trump voters.

The Republican National Committee has recently added data scientists to its staff to assist with the general election. Also, an RNC data specialist first began working directly with the Trump campaign this month. But it takes time to turn raw data into meaningful models, Barkett said.

"It would take them six months to build and integrate the systems," said Barkett, who advised Jeb Bush's GOP primary campaign.

The election is in five months.
After her dog was viciously attacked during a neighborhood walk, Napa resident Claudia Alexander vowed to never step out her door again without carrying protection.

About two years ago, Alexanders husband and their dog, Frankie, were a block away from their home when two large dogs attacked them.

Frankie was grabbed by the neck and violently shaken and would have likely been killed if not for Alexanders husband, who fought off the dogs with his hands and feet.

This frightening incident motivated Alexander to find a self-defense tool, which led her to a company  and future career  with Damsel in Defense.

Alexander works as an independent consultant with Damsel in Defense, an Idaho-based company that sells self-defense equipment and educates women on personal safety.

What inspired me to work with this company was their mission: to equip, empower and educate women to protect themselves, Alexander said.

I have always been passionate about the subject of safety  so much so that my children dubbed me the Safety Queen when they were growing up!

Alexander said Damsel in Defense is a direct sales, party model business. As a consultant, Alexander meets with groups of mostly women at their homes or workplaces and provides presentations on personal safety and self-defense products.

In addition to stun guns and pepper sprays, Damsel in Defense sells striking tools, emergency auto tools, personal alarms, and conceal carry purses for firearms as well as a Digital Defense service to guard against identity theft.

The length of Alexanders presentations can vary anywhere from a 15-minute workplace presentation, to an Empower Hour, to a Personal Protection Party, which can last 1 hours or more.

The hostess picks the format that best fits her needs and those of the guests she will be inviting, Alexander said.

There is no cost to the hostess, other than providing refreshments. The products range in price from $10 to $80, Alexander said.

Women should be interested because they are ultimately responsible for their own protection, Alexander said.

And its not just about carrying a product  education is important. I encourage all women to take a self-defense course.

During her presentations, Alexander provides safety-related statistics, and then presents practical solutions and tools for self-defense. Alexander said its not about fear-mongering, its about being smart.

Sadly I find that the majority of women I talk to do not carry any type of protection, Alexander said.

My goal is to make sure no one leaves a party without at least a $10 pepper spray. I encourage women to take a proactive role in their personal safety.

Statistics show that 1 in 3 women have been victims of some form of physical violence by their partner, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

And 1 in 6 women in America will be a victim of an attempted or completed rape, according to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network.

Many women do not carry protection, Alexander said, because they have a false sense of security.

I hear things like my husband/boyfriend is really strong or I have a dog or I live in a safe neighborhood. What I say to that is: Do you ever venture out of your neighborhood? Drive out of town? Is your husband/boyfriend or dog with you at all times? Alexander said.

Carrying self-defense products is much like having insurance. You hope you dont have to use it, but it sure is nice to have if you do!

The women Alexander meets at her presentations often have a lot of questions about self-defense products and are more comfortable buying these tools in the comfort of a friends home, as opposed to buying online or in a store.

The pepper spray sold by Damsel in Defense is 18 percent OC (oleoresin capsicum), which is one of the hottest on the market, Alexander said, and it also contains a UV identifying dye.

Its important to know exactly what you are buying, Alexander said.

As she points out, not all pepper sprays are created equally. Some store-bought pepper sprays are not always well-labeled, so it can be hard to tell if its a quality product, Alexander said.

I have also seen pepper spray being sold at events when it is past its expiration date. The same holds true for stun guns, Alexander said. Not all stun guns are created equally and our stun guns come with a lifetime warranty.

Alexander has lived in Napa since 1968 and has an A.A. degree from Napa Valley College in early childhood education and a bachelors in business management from St. Marys College. She and her husband have three adult children and five grandchildren.

All my life I have either worked with, or on behalf of children, Alexander said. I have owned my own family child care business, taught preschool and been a child care center director.

In 2012, she retired from her position as an HR manager after working 14 years at a local nonprofit. She also completed training to become a member of the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT).

My passion for safety has followed me throughout my entire adult life, Alexander said. Being a consultant with Damsel in Defense is just a perfect fit for me.
Ask most Americans what they know and like about Japanese cuisine and most will recount their experiences eating sushi.

A more knowledgeable few might relate other fast-food encounters, such as dining on soba noodles or tempura dishes.

Half a century ago in this country, the so-called Japanese dining experience would have focused on sukiyaki, known in Japan as the friendship dish, as the combination of bite-sized pieces of meat, vegetables, noodles and tofu appealed to foreigners.

Yet Japanese cuisine is a whole lot more, even though its main ingredients are simply rice, vegetables and fish.

At the beginning of this decade, we began to see a new style of Japanese eatery popping up, the izakaya.

At the annual Culinary Institute of America conference in St. Helena nearly six years ago  where the focus was on all things Japanese  the arrival of the izakaya was spelled out by a young San Francisco chef, Nick Balla, who, at the time, operated one in the Mission.

Balla informed us that basically an izakaya is a Japanese small plates spot that traditionally serves sake.

A bit of research showed the Japanese izakaya concept came about first in the 1980s  informal dining and social places patronized by mostly men. Today, everyone goes to the izakaya for drinks and small bites.

And now, the izakaya has come to downtown Napa, thanks to chef Curtis Di Fede, a true disciple of the cuisine in the Land of the Rising Sun. As one might expect, the concept of the izakaya is rooted in recent tradition but not afraid to let in new ideas.

Initially in Japan, izakayas were places to get cheap food, where youd pay one price for all you could eat and drink. Throughout Japan, that has evolved into places to go for good food and drink served in an informal setting. Thats the model Di Fede is following in his new downtown Napa izakaya, the first of its kind in wine country.

If you wanted to describe the food, you would find grandmother-style dishes and basic sauces  a lot of popular dishes, Balla told the CIA conference. In this country, I guess the best description for izakaya would be a mix of a place serving tapas and American dive bar.

Pulling open the massive hand-carved Mount Fuji poplar door to enter Miminashi from Coombs Street, the diner should not expect to find the dive bar as described by Balla. Rather, one encounters a highly stylized dining room and imposing bar  the latter a 22-foot-long arrow anchoring the eatery below two peaked ceilings that represent Buddhist and Shinto temples.

A convivial collaboration between Di Fede and designer Michael McDermott, Miminashis design incorporates natural and reclaimed woods typically found in the traditional Japanese izakaya. The bar and tabletops are beveled 5-inch-thick solid wood slabs with hand-wrought steel bases.

An open binchotan grill provides background to the omakase counter seating for five while booths emphasize privacy along the opposite wall. Including the bar, Miminashi can accommodate up to 80 diners at dinner. A front window on Coombs dispenses Sightglass coffee in the morning, Japanese soft cream in a variety of flavors throughout the day.

Asked about his shift from cooking Italian  he was an opening partner in Napas Oenotri  to Japanese, Di Fede said hed always wanted to do a noodle bar. In 2013, I went to Japan and fell in love with it. I feel its similar to Italy because of the dedication to craft  the Japanese are more disciplined, however.

When he and former partner Tyler Rodde opened Oenotri, we brought a quite different concept of Italian restaurant to downtown, Di Fede said. I want to do the same with a Japanese restaurant.

No sushi at Miminashi

Diners can order a variety of raw fish at chef Di Fedes new izakaya but it doesnt come to the table as sushi. In fact, theres no sushi on the menu at Miminashi. Rice here is served in bowls, such as donburi, or is fried, and offered with seasonal treats like soft shell crab.

The menu  a quarter of which changes daily  features everything from donabe (clay pot dishes) to yakitori (chicken skewers that spotlight every part of the fowl, from wing to tail, breast to gizzard, skin to cartilage). Yakitori skewers ($5-$9) also incorporate beef tongue and rib as well as trout belly.

Theres Japanese-style fried chicken (katsu, $18), and a couple of ramen options ($16). The chicken and pork gyoza (dumplings, $11) incorporate savory ginger and garlic and will be a must-have dish for return visits to the new izakaya.

Numerous items are cooked on a robata grill, which uses binchotan coals (white charcoal produced from oak, elm and maple wood). On a recent visit, binchotan roasted asparagus ($13) was served with black garlic, wakame, puffed rice, fried egg and shaved bonito. Keep your eye on the bonito shavings as they dance on the plate due to the heat generated by just-off-the-grill asparagus. Binchotan grilled skirt steak was the main ingredient in the evenings abundant donburi ($16).

As with most restaurants in Japan, a tasting menu, or omakase, is offered at Napas izakaya. The phrase means, Its up to you. The omakase menu is set at $100 per person  you leave the decisions up to the chef who consults with diners before creating the evenings menu for you and your friends.

Di Fedes izakaya is a new dining experience for Napans. It might be best to let the servers know if you have any allergies and then just follow their lead. The staff is well schooled in the izakaya menu  and Di Fede is but a few steps away, eager to share his newfound joy in Japanese cookery. Ask questions  then enjoy.

One thing Di Fede did point out was the distinct izakaya chopstick offered at Miminashi. Note that one end of the chopstick is used to pick up food from the communal plate, the other to bring food to the mouth.

As for the name hes chosen for his new eatery, Di Fede said Miminashi is a blind ear-less minstrel rooted in Japanese folklore, well known to natives of Japan. Fast-forward to present-day ramen shops where chefs wrap towels around their heads, appearing ear-less.

On yet another important front, wine director/sommelier Jessica Pinzon has put together a cellar of wine to pair well with the izakaya menu. Its about two-thirds international, one-third domestic, complemented by an extensive offering of sakes for all palates.

With lunch service to be added in June, Miminashi is open at present for dinner Sunday through Thursday from 5 to 11 p.m. For those craving a late-night bowl of ramen, hours on Fridays and Saturdays are 5 p.m. to midnight.

A simple neon kanji sign informs diners that Miminashi is located at 821 Coombs St., Napa, on the back side of the historic Napa County courthouse. For reservations, call 707-254-9464.
How did carrots evolve from ghostly white vegetables into the dayglow orange things we're used to seeing in Bugs Bunny's hand?

Philipp Simon, a research geneticist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, had the same question. He has been studying carrots for about 35 years, looking at their reproductive habits, their relationship to other vegetables (celery and fennel are close cousins, grapes have been evolving away from them for 113 million years) and their coloring. See, the carotenoids that give carrots their vibrant hue are also what make them healthy for humans: Those chemicals are sources of vitamin A.

If you ask Simon what got him interested in carrots, he responds in a tone of polite indignation (he is from the Midwest, after all).

"You wouldn't ask someone who studies corn that question," he said.

The reality is that the USDA has scientists studying pretty much every crop imaginable, all of them looking for ways to make produce bigger, healthier and more resilient. "Anything that you can breed," Simon said, "somewhere in the world there are breeders working on it."

The community of carrot breeders may be small, but as Simon shows, it's plenty hardy. Recently, he and 20 other scientists scraped together the vegetable's genome - a string of DNA more than 32,000 genes long.

Their results, published Monday in the journal Nature Genetics, help explain how carrots evolved from their wild white form to the one we know today. The find could give a boost to breeders looking to make related vegetables - say, the colorless parsnip or cassava - as rich in nutrients as carrots are. Given the world's booming population and ever-growing nutritional needs, this will undoubtedly come in handy in the future.

But sequencing a genome is also a way of traveling back in time, of figuring where and when things started and how and why they changed. The carrot genome has some interesting things to tell scientists about the history of the plant - and the humans who cultivated it.

At 32,000 genes, the carrot genome is a good deal longer than ours (somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000 genes). It's not actually surprising that a lowly carrot's DNA would have to be more sophisticated than a human's, Simon said. After all, plants can't choose or change their environments, so they need to prepare for all contingencies, stocking their genome with traits that can be turned on or off depending on changing environmental circumstances.

From that crazy long string of DNA, Simon was able to tease out a gene thought to be responsible for making carrots orange. It's still just a candidate, he cautioned. "Like with the election. You've got your favorite candidate but in the end it may turn out to be a different gene," Simon said.

He paused, and chuckled: "Though there's maybe more certainty about carrots than about the election."

The gene in question is known as DCAR_032551, or the "Y gene" for short. It's found in plenty of other plants as well; it causes red, orange and yellow pigments to accumulate in leaves, where they help with photosynthesis. We see the Y gene at work in the fall, when green chlorophyll drains from tree leaves and only the colorful carotenoids remain.

But sometime about 1,100 years ago, farmers living in what is now Afghanistan took advantage of a mutation in the Y gene that put it to work down in their carrots' roots. In the process of domesticating the white, wild carrot, they turned it yellow.

Six hundred years later in Europe, cultivation took another turn, and carrots deepened in hue from yellow to dark orange. Simon knows this from his examinations of carrot DNA, but you can also see for yourself by visiting an art museum. Before the 16th century or so, carrots were painted yellow. Afterward, they were orange. They also became a fixture of artwork from the Netherlands - not because the Dutch were particularly carrot crazy, but because painters wanted to honor their royal family, who were members of the House of Orange. (If you're into carrot artwork, or vegetable history in general, check out the World Carrot Museum website, which is chock-full of both.)

So now Simon knows when carrots got their color, and has a pretty good idea of how that happened. But he still can't figure out why.

"There's no good biological reason for carrots to be orange except one," he said. "And it's that people have been diddling around with carrots for 1,000 years."

It's obvious that farmers were selecting for the mutation that concentrated carotenoids in the carrot root. It's a good thing they did so, too, since it made carrots much more nutritious. But health can't have been bygone breeders' motivation - no one in the 9th century knew what a carotenoid was, let alone that it was a source of a vitamin that's good for our eyes, immune systems and other organs.

So Simon examined flavor, to see if colorful carrots tasted better. Again, no dice: Orange carrots and their white counterparts taste pretty much the same. There are other possibilities - perhaps the gene for color is linked to one for size, or hardiness. Or perhaps historic humans just liked the way yellow and orange carrots looked.

Is it possible that this is one question best answered by people, rather than carrots?

Simon demurred. There's a lot of genome left to explore - he's not ready to give up on carrots yet.
SAN LUIS OBISPO  A long-standing sign on East Branch Street in the Village of Arroyo Grande offers a $75,000 reward for information leading to the location of missing student Kristin Smart.

Twenty years ago, Cal Poly freshman Kristin Smart, the daughter of the principal of Napas Vintage High School, walked away from an off-campus party and headed back to her dorm room.

By all accounts, the 19-year-old should have been safe in her room some 20 minutes later.

But she wasnt.

Smart hasnt been seen since that night on May 25, 1996, when she was standing just steps from her dorm at Muir Hall with Arroyo Grande resident Paul Flores, who reportedly said hed continue walking her home as others in their group dispersed.

Flores, also then 19, and Smart apparently met at the house party, where they both had been drinking.

Near the dorms, a female student who had been walking with the pair parted from them. It was the last time anyone, other than Flores, saw Smart alive.

It seems impossible that 20 years later our journey continues and we are still searching and praying for the recovery of our beautiful daughter, Smarts parents, Stan and Denise, wrote in a statement released last week through the San Luis Obispo County Sheriffs Department.

Stan Smart was Vintage Highs principal at the time, commuting to work in Napa. Kristin graduated from high school in Stockton, but she attended Vintage for her junior year, a family spokesman says.

The couple have declined all media requests for interviews. They said in the statement they were choosing to observe the 20-year anniversary of their daughters disappearance privately, as its a difficult and stressful time for their family.

Denise is emotionally overwrought, said Dennis Mahon, a close family friend and organizer of several Facebook pages dedicated to locating Smart, including Find Kristin Smart. The glass is already full and she cant absorb any more.

Although Smarts body has never been found, her parents and law enforcement believe shes dead and buried locally.

She was declared legally dead in 2002, and where her body is buried remains one of the biggest mysteries surrounding the missing persons case.

Sheriff Ian Parkinson said he hopes its a question his department is able to answer sooner than later, as he believes no parent should have to wonder year after year when theyll get to bring their child home.

The department has a full-time investigator dedicated to the case, which is being actively investigated, meaning detectives arent sitting around waiting for the phone to ring.

Theres also a deputy district attorney assigned to the investigation, Parkinson said.

Kristin does matter. Its personal to me, Parkinson said. Inheriting a case after 15 years is tough, but I am pleased with the work were doing. Our hearts go out to the family, and our goal is pretty selfishly to bring Kristin home and bring (her family) closure.

No charges have ever been filed in the case; however, the Sheriffs Department has considered Flores, a 1995 Arroyo Grande High School graduate, a person of interest from the beginning of the case that has drawn national media attention over the years.

Flores, who reportedly lives in Arroyo Grande again, was questioned by a grand jury shortly after Smarts disappearance but invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself.

The Sheriffs Department has been criticized for not doing enough to bring justice to the Smart family, but Parkinson said a solid case that will lead to prosecution cant be built on speculation and conjecture.

We need a case, he said. We dont have the luxury of arresting people based on opinion.

Mahon, who didnt know the Smart family before Kristins disappearance, has been involved with trying to find the missing woman since almost day one.

He said he never thought hed still be looking for answers two decades late.

I really thought at any second I would get a call that Kristin had been found, Mahon said from his home in New York. If I quit today, it would just pull me back in. At what moment in time do you quit? I know Im doing what I can to help.

Smart would have turned 39 on Feb. 20.

Editor's Note: This item has been modified to reflect the fact that she attended Vintage High School for one year.
Transportation leaders think projects that help people travel more conveniently by foot can be built without destroying scenery, fouling the air or disturbing rare frogs -- and they have a study to prove it.

The Napa Valley Transportation Authority under state law had to do an environmental study for its draft Countywide Pedestrian Plan. But this study is a walk in the park at 85 pages.

By comparison, a proposal to mine hills for the Syar quarry expansion resulted in more than 2,500 pages of studies. A proposal to create the Walt Ranch vineyard in hills east of Napa resulted in more than 1,500 pages.

Still, the pedestrian plan for the county and its five cities is about more than installing a few additional sidewalks. Some of the 99 proposed projects would reshape the landscape to some extent, if money can be found to build them.

One section of the environmental report looks at aesthetics and finds steps can be taken to avoid significant impacts.

For example, Napa wants to build overpasses along Highway 29 at West Pueblo Avenue and Trower Avenue. Although the proposed -- and yet-to-be funded -- projects are for cars as well as walkers and cyclists, they show up in the pedestrian plan.

These overpasses would block views of the Napa Valleys scenic hillsides, the study said. But the areas are urbanized and dont afford highly scenic views relative to rural sections of Highway 29, it said.

Design treatments could make the overpasses themselves more attractive, the study said. It mentions artistic endeavors that display the history of the area as a possibility.

Installing more pedestrian lighting along Jefferson Street in Napa near downtown Napa and in rural Angwin would improve safety, the study said. It concluded that these types of projects would not significantly cause light pollution that blocks out views of the nighttime skies.

Two proposed pedestrian bridges over the Napa River in the Oxbow District would block river views. A St. Helena trail along Sulphur Creek could remove trees and shrubs visible from Highway 29.

On balance, however, the pedestrian projects would improve the visual quality of scenic roadways and expand non-motorized access to scenic areas, the report said.

Another section of the report addresses air pollution.

Walkers on the new sidewalks and bridges could be exposed to carbon monoxide and other pollutants from passing cars. But the report said the exposure would be brief and the projects could reduce vehicle miles traveled.

Yet another section addresses plants and animals protected by federal and state law.

Projects such as new trails, road extensions and bridge construction could disturb habitat where the California red-legged frog and other rare species live. A biologist should inspect the areas before construction, the study said.

Proposed landscaping improvements in downtown Calistoga and St. Helena would require irrigation. To reduce water use, drought-tolerant plants are to be used for landscaping.

People can comment on the environmental study -- called a mitigated negative declaration -- through 5 p.m. June 22. Go to nvta.ca.gov to find the pedestrian plan and environmental study.

The Napa Valley Transportation Authority is to consider adopting the pedestrian plan on July 20. Transportation leaders say having such a plan in place will help the county compete for grants to build the projects.
ST. HELENA  JoAnn Bell isnt comfortable marching to the beat of anybody elses drummer, and for 23 years shes tried to foster that same independent, questioning attitude in her students at The Young School.

But the Montessori-inspired school is closing after June 10, a victim of declining enrollment. The current and final class consists of 10 kids, down from a high of 42 in the schools heyday.

Nevertheless, Bell is proud of the roughly 225 students whove attended The Young School.

Theyre diverse, theyre all over the world, and theyre happy, well-adjusted human beings who are truly contributing, said Bell, the schools founder.

Tracy Sweeney, whose son and daughter attended The Young School, said she appreciated its emphasis on problem-solving and critical thinking rather than rote memorization.

They learned to be independent thinkers, and thats benefited them throughout their lives, Sweeney said.

The schools closure is a result of the rise of Transitional Kindergarten (TK) programs in public schools, competition with the St. Helena Montessori School and its new campus, and declining energy and enthusiasm once The Young Schools founding generation of parents and backers moved on.

The St. Helena Unified School Districts TK program, which provides a smooth transition from preschool to kindergarten and ultimately first grade, was an especially hard blow. Kids under the age of 6 now become more deeply entrenched in St. Helena Primary Schools K-3 program, leaving The Young School (grades 1-6) without a natural feeder program.

Nobody wants to move a child around once theyre settled in, Bell said.

For regulatory reasons, The Young Schools modest facility on Brown Street cant accommodate students younger than 6, so starting a comparable TK/K program is out of the question. Expanding up to grade 8 was also ruled out, since it would have required facilities like a lab and a gym.

Natural curiosity

A few things set The Young School apart from regular Montessori schools. It was unaffiliated with the Catholic church, so religious texts were analyzed strictly in a literary and comparative context. And instead of being a full-fledged Montessori school, it was Montessori-inspired.

I cant march to anybodys drummer, and I dont think (Montessori founder Maria Montessori) could have either, Bell said.

And while independent learning is the hallmark of every Montessori program, Bell said she was always determined to provide a high level of rigor that would enable students to succeed in a traditional school setting.

Montessori says a lot of things like Follow the child and Educate the human potential, but those are rhetorical devices, Bell said. How do you really do that?  You have to have organization and self-discipline, and know who you are in the context of what you need to get done.

That meant homework and structured class projects that still found a way of tapping into a students natural curiosity.

Lets say a student isnt curious about handwriting, but theyre really curious about dinosaurs, Bell said. So OK, why dont you write about dinosaurs?

At times backers would encourage Bell to ease up on the homework to compete with another school, or raise tuition, which is half of what other local Montessori schools charge. But she always resisted, only grudgingly agreeing to a small tuition hike.

She and her teachers created their lesson plans from scratch, and avoided teaching any one subject in isolation.

A Young School history lesson would look at scientific advances, art and architecture  the latter being a particular favorite of Bells, who loved teaching kids about the animal architecture practiced by beavers, ants and spiders.

Biology lessons would examine the bodys interconnecting systems through the metaphor of the great river, with forays into English to talk about metaphor as a literary device.

Learning to learn

Cathy Corison, whose two daughters attended The Young School, said it successfully combined a rigorous curriculum, plenty of homework, parent involvement, and a respect for the arts that encouraged her daughters natural love for dance.

It engendered independence and hard work, Corison said.

When her daughters finished sixth grade and moved on to a conventional school, they were shot out of a cannon, Corison said. They were years ahead when they got into middle school.

One of Corisons daughters just graduated from Harvey Mudd College in Claremont with a degree in engineering, and the other is studying acting at Syracuse University. Both are still dancing.

They were prepared to excel because the motivation came from inside, Corison said.

Bell is especially proud of the schools annual science fair. This years event featured Honoria Medynskis demonstration of how a fuel pump works and Sophia Trujillos working model of a human heart.

The science fair was open to the public, part of Bells effort to connect kids with the wider community. Students would perform a puppet show at the library or participate in the Napa Valley Film Festival. The school donated a $23,000 play structure to Meily Park.

That community connection was one of the things that impressed Tracy Sweeney.

They walked into town all the time, they went to the library, they were encouraged to be involved in sports, Nimbus Arts and Scouts, Sweeney said. They always felt like a part of the community.

The curriculum was challenging, but there was no busy work, she said.

Sweeney praised Bell for customizing the learning experience, finding each students strength, and encouraging them to find their voice and speak for themselves.

They didnt just fill in the blanks, Sweeney said. They learned to learn.
Im in support of Dan Wolk and to all my bilingual speaking friends and family members, Yo apoyo a Dan Wolk. Ive had the honor and privilege to live most of my adulthood between Davis and Napa. Ive been part of both communities and I can personally say that his priorities are aligned with what I, my friends and family care about.

His priorities are to reinvest in our schools, fight for universal preschool and affordable college tuition to give every child the opportunity to succeed. As a dad, he has not only made a promise to his daughters, but also to yours and my two beautiful nieces, to grow up in a world that has great respect for women. He will fight for our equal pay for equal work.

His experience in wearing many hats, as county counsel and mayor of Davis, clearly demonstrated he is the right person to represent us in Sacramento and understands the needs of our counties and cities. As mayor, he led a regional surface water supply project to stabilize long-term water supply. In the Assembly, hell work to invest in more water conservation measures and responsible storage. He is against fracking and for protecting our environment.

He is also someone who cares about the community; when he saw the need, he founded the Legal Clinic of Yolo County to provide legal services. I encourage you to vote for Dan Wolk for the 4th Assembly District as I will on June 7.

Elba Gonzalez-Mares

Napa
At a time when voters are clearly fed up with the role that big money now plays in our electoral process, it should concern all of us that corporate money and wealthy individuals with interests in Big Oil, tobacco, public school privatization and public utility companies are funneling millions of dollars into the Assembly and State Senate races for our representatives, both directly and through dark money sources via Independent Expenditure Committees to buy themselves a lot of loyalty from our next state senator and Assembly member. In the Assembly race, this money is being invested in seeing Cecilia Aguiar-Curry elected; in the state Senate, Bill Dodd.

What will this mean for those of us who are considerably less privileged, should either of these candidates actually get elected? Something tells me that the interests of those big money supporters are going to trump those of the average voter every time.

Much of the big money backing Aguiar-Currys campaign likely finds her statement that the jury is out on the dangers of fracking appealing.

We need a state Assembly member who will fight for safe communities and a clean environment for future generations, not something we will likely find in a candidate whose position on fracking is ambiguous, at best.

Judging by the unprecedented number of mailing pieces that I have received recently, some of the nations largest corporations and wealthiest individuals seem to have virtually unlimited funds to put toward seeing Bill Dodd elected to the state Senate. Dodd, formerly a lifelong Republican, switched his party affiliation to Democratic just months before announcing his 2014 run for the state Assembly and is now receiving unprecedented monetary support from a group seeking to privatize (and funnel taxpayer money away from) our public schools, as well as from the oil industry (well over a million dollars so far!).

The Peoples Report Card of California gave Dodd an F because he voted against bills that would expand Medicare protections, expand paid family leave, and double pay on holidays. I am particularly shocked that Dodd abstained from voting on SB 32 (the California Global Warming Solutions Act). SB 32 would have limited greenhouse gas emissions substantially; it was legislation critical to furthering our common goal of combating climate change. In failing to support it, Dodd subordinated the interests of my generation and future generations to those of his wealthy donors. For we will be the ones most severely impacted by the practical realities of climate change in the coming years.

I urge voters to support Don Saylor for state Assembly District 4 and Mariko Yamada for State Senate District 3 because both of these candidates have the experience to be effective legislators and they both have a long record of standing up for ordinary people and progressive values.

An alarming number of trains transporting crude oil have derailed in communities throughout the United States in the recent past, with catastrophic results, which is why Don Saylor does more than just say he wont stand for Big Oil. He has a meaningful record of challenging the industry when Valero sought approval of a dangerous crude-by-rail project, which threatened the safety of residents in his district. Saylor served as a courageous and collaborative advocate for the residents in his district to oppose this project before the Benicia City Council.

Saylor, the most experienced in the race with a proven record of standing up for his constituents, is best positioned to serve the voters as a true representative of the people and is most worthy of our votes. His campaign is supported and funded by ordinary people. His competitors are supported and funded by corporate special interests and Sacramento insiders.

Mariko Yamada served our communities and environment well in the state Assembly from 2008 to 2014. Now she would like to continue to use her legislative experience (unmatched by any of her opponents in this race) to champion issues of social and environmental justice in the State Senate. Yamada has a strong record of supporting legislation that protects our environment and combats climate change. She also supports a living wage, extending Prop 30 taxes on millionaires and billionaires, closing corporate tax loopholes, and free community college. With that, she supports things that will truly benefit young adults (like myself), working families, seniors, and Californians living in poverty. In a state that has the highest poverty rate in the nation, we need a state senator who has a record of supporting those of us who are not 1 percenters instead of those who have a keen interest in doing their bidding to keep their campaign contributions flowing.

Yamada is that candidate. Because she wont side with the Big Oil and corporate interests over us, she also has my enthusiastic support.

Please vote for Don Saylor for state Assembly and Mariko Yamada for State Senate.

Haley Rekdahl

Napa
In the District 4 State Assembly race, there is only one candidate who understands the importance of legislation regarding womens rights, encompassing both the the vision and determination to implement legislation fighting for and defending these fundamental human rights. That one candidate is Dan Wolk.

Earlier this year, I attended an open forum with all three Democratic candidates: Dan Wolk, Don Saylor, and Cecelia Aguiar-Curry. We were allowed to freely submit questions that the candidates would eventually answer and when I was given the opportunity to submit a question, I asked, If elected, what will you to do to fight for womens rights and gender equality in California? While the Democratic Party overwhelmingly supports and understands the need to address these issues, all three Democratic candidates had very different answers.

Cecelia Aguiar-Curry was the first to respond, saying that due to her farming background, she is comfortable sitting at the mens table and can name varieties of apricots and almonds as good as any man. With all due respect, I would not like to think of the State Assembly of California as the mens table. In addition, while I applaud Aguiar-Currys dedication to rural concerns, I do not feel confident that her plethora of knowledge regarding species of fruits and nuts will propel her to be a strong advocate for the rights of women across the state.

Don Saylor continued the forum by saying that his mother was a strong influence throughout his life and was a large part of the reason he decided to go into politics, therefore making him a strong advocate for women. Again, with all due respect to Saylor and his mother, this background story, while heartfelt, still does not provide any sufficient evidence that he will fight for gender equality in the State Assembly, or that he even has any plans to do so. While female role models are wonderful, they do not translate into ones aptness to fight for complex legislation that could affect the lives of millions of women, children, and their respective families.

Finally, Dan Wolk was able to address the question posed. Dan answered that as the Mayor of Davis and a county attorney in Solano County, he has already been able to fight for the women and families of Yolo and Solano counties, and is very prepared to do that at the state level. As a father of two young daughters and the founder of the Legal Clinic of Yolo County, a program to help low income families get proper legal services and counseling, Wolk has been a firsthand witness to the importance of legislation helping women, children and families try to thrive in an institutionally skewed system.

Wolk concluded by stating if elected he will, fight tirelessly for the movement towards equal pay for equal work and will continue to defend Planned Parenthood in its mission to provide women and families with adequate heath care and coverage.

Like Aguiar-Curry, Wolk has a multitude of knowledge in his specific fields, in addition to a deep understanding of the needs of women and families across the district. Like Saylor, Wolk has also been influenced by strong female role models, including his mother, Senator Lois Wolk, a long time advocate and voice for womens rights in California government, but didnt even mention her when answering the question because he chose to take the time to articulately lay out his past experiences fighting for womens rights and to describe his goals to continue the fight for gender equality once he reaches the State Assembly.

Dan Wolk is the only candidate who understands and exhibits the traits needed to fight for womens rights in California. His years of experience in conjunction with his bright vision for the future make him the exact kind of person and candidate needed to take on this fight, largely overshadowing his two opponents who were unable to even layout their plans to fight for womens rights if elected. After thoughtful consideration, I wholeheartedly support Dan Wolk for State Assembly and strongly encourage all voters, especially women, to do the same.

Madeline Thomas

Davis
Tuesday, May 24

0943  Report of multiple cars, trailers and RVs parked around the corner of La Fata Street and Vintage Avenue for weeks if not months at a time.

1114  Report of an ongoing problem with cars speeding around Olive Avenue and Valley View Street. The caller said he has been away for several weeks, but now that he is back he will be calling often.

1123  A pharmacy employee reported a prescription had been called in and picked up last Friday, but it was just discovered that the doctor calling it in had used a fraudulent name and ID number. Police took a report.

1645  Report of a man walking two dogs off leash on Carpy Field. Police gave him a warning.

1715  A mountain bike that police had been holding was returned to its owner.

2253  Report of a white truck parked in the middle of Crinella Drive with nobody around. Police checked the area.

2327  Police found a man sleeping in the post office.

Wednesday, May 25

0737  Medical aid for a trip-and-fall victim on Railroad Avenue.

1610  Report of a white car parked for three months on Voorhees Circle, with weeds growing all around it.

1725  Tallulah, a small female black lab mix wearing a purple collar, was reported missing from Stockton Street.

1809  Medical aid on Main Street.

Thursday, May 26

0804  Medical aid on Olive Avenue.

1545  Report of a car speeding on Sulphur Springs Avenue. Police cited the driver.

Friday, May 27

0122  Report of two men fighting in a living room on Monte Vista. Police arrested a 35-year-old St. Helena man on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon.

1343  Noninjury hit-and-run on Britton Way.

1946  A St. James Drive resident reported that a small brown Chihuahua had followed him home and run into his house. He needed help catching it.

2336  Report of a car weaving and traveling at varying speeds on Highway 29.

Saturday, May 28

0723  A resident reported being stalked by a man she has a restraining order against.

0842  A caller was concerned about a dog left in a truck with its windows up on Main Street.

0937  A white car was parked in the middle of Grayson Avenue.

1204  The fire department investigated the smell of gas in a garage on Oak Avenue.

1206  A young resident came to the lobby to inquire about her missing dog.

1452  An officer contacted a vendor with a food truck near Main and Adams streets.

1600  Cash and hearing aid batteries were found on a sidewalk.

1639  Three-car noninjury accident at Main Street and Vintage Avenue.

1820  Report of a snake in a backyard on Charter Oak Avenue.

2111  Medical aid on Hunt Avenue.

2124  A truck was parked on someones driveway on Hollis Lane.

2334  Two callers reported loud music and shouting on Stockton Street. The noise had been occurring since the afternoon.

Sunday, May 29

0740  Some drugs and other personal property were found on a bench at Meily Park.

1424  An officer found a dog locked inside a car on Pine Street. The windows were down, and the owners arrived momentarily.

1539  Noninjury accident at Main and Spring streets.

2053  Medical aid on Olive Avenue for an elderly woman who was breathing but unresponsive.

Monday, May 30

0006  A Hudson Avenue resident reported chasing a prowler out of their backyard. The man hopped a fence and got away. Police checked the area.

0038  A motorcycle entered private property on Silverado Trail. It headed to the back of the property and turned off its lights. When the caller contacted the motorcyclist, he said he was looking for a place to stay. The caller said he couldnt stay there, but he wasnt sure if the motorcyclist had left the property. The property was outside the city limits, so police transferred the call to the sheriffs office.

1152  Report of a car blocking a driveway on Madrona Avenue. Its owner moved it.

1249  Report of a white pickup heading down Madrona Avenue with five people in its bed.

2029  Police responded to a disturbance on Deer Park Road.
We are gathered, as we do every year at this time, on this most solemn of occasions in this most peaceful of settings. We are here to acknowledge ultimate sacrifice. We honor those who in our too many wars lost their lives whether in battle or from disease, accidents or otherwise. They are soldiers and sailors, airmen and Marines. Some are now distant forbears, some are our more immediate family and relatives, and some are our friends. They sacrificed their lives because they were devoted to our country. They wanted a better and safer place for us. We have a huge debt to them. It is hard to capture adequately in words our profound gratitude and respect for their sacrifice.

Memorial Day began as a memoriam and tribute to Union soldiers who lost their lives in the Civil War. The human cost of that war was staggering: about 500,000 battle and other deaths in a national population so much smaller than in later wars. My early memories of Memorial Day are of the proud veterans of World War I, the war to end war as President Wilson saw it. There were about 117,000 American battle and other deaths in that war. Today, veterans of World War II and the Korean War are dwindling all too rapidly. We should give them big hugs. American battle and other deaths in World War II were about 405,000 and about 54,000 in the Korean War. We all know veterans who served our country during the Vietnam War. The total lost in battle and other deaths in that war was about 90,000.

Sadly, we never seem to be out of warfare, and the casualties of war, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and other countries, do not stop. The numbers are far lower, but that is not the point. As the English poet John Donne said, any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. So it is not the numbers; there is a story behind each of those who perished in war. Each deserves his or her marker. Each deserves to be remembered.

It is why we try so hard to identify all who have fallen in battle. The Department of Defense works hard on resolving the identities of the fallen from past conflicts. Some remain unknown. They, too, are much on our minds. We all recall the words on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery: Here rests in honored glory an American soldier known but to God.

The high duty of identifying the fallen was brought home to me from a soldiers story in a book of family genealogy. A distant collateral relative on my mothers side was Dorence Atwater, a Union soldier and prisoner of war who was confined at the notorious Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia. He was detailed to work in the surgeons quarters of the hospital department, where it was part of his duty to keep a record of the dead. He made a personal copy of this record, which he managed to secrete away in his clothing when he was paroled. His record contained the names, dates, regiments, companies and states of origin of 13,000 soldiers who had died at that awful prison. He would cause his list to be published and disseminated with no benefit to himself. It was the essential tool that allowed an expedition after the war, led by Clara Barton and to which Atwater was assigned, to identify and properly mark the graves of the Union dead at Andersonville.

Since inception in 1868, Memorial Day has been a day to care for the graves of those who perished in war. We decorate them with flags and flowers. The act of doing so connects us to our past. It reminds us that real people, on our behalf, lost their lives. It makes us think about the grieving families that the fallen left behind. And by leaving flags or flowers or other tokens, we are acknowledging that they are gone, but with our grave-site tokens we also in some way feel bound together.

Americans are not the only ones who decorate the graves of our fallen. Their sacrifice is much respected by those whom they liberated from oppression. There are 8,300 headstones at the Netherlands American Cemetery. The headstones mark the graves of American soldiers killed in the last brutal months of World War II. The soldiers had freed the Dutch from the scourge of Nazi occupation.

In appreciation, the Dutch established an adoption program shortly after the end of the war. The adopters were mostly Dutch families but some Belgium and German families, too. They stop by their chosen graves, delivering flowers on soldiers birthdays, dates of death, Christmas and Memorial Day. As time moves on, younger generations in the same family have taken over as the adopter. Seventy-one years have passed since the end of World War II, yet there remains a substantial waiting list to become an adopter. Adopters have come to know the families and descendants of those buried in the cemetery. Strong bonds have been created among American and Dutch families. Indeed, it comes full circle: adopter families are known to come to our country to visit relatives of their adoptee fallen. It is all so touching.

There is a strong feeling of universality about Memorial Day. It comes about because we, as citizens, honor the ideals for which our fallen gave their lives: preservation of our union, freedom and liberty, an idealistic hope to end all wars, and the defense of our national security or, in current parlance, homeland. Memorial Day provides us with the opportunity to proclaim openly our profound appreciation and respect for all those who, through the sacrifice of their lives, in the graceful and indelible words of President Abraham Lincoln, gave the last full measure of devotion to our country.

I am honored and humbled by the opportunity to address you on this somber holiday of remembrance.
Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow welcomed on Tuesday (31 May) the 2016 annual Conference of the NATO Committee on Gender Perspectives (NCGP). Ambassador Vershbow was joined by the NATO Special Representative for Women, Peace and Security, Ambassador Marriet Schuurman, and by the Deputy Chairman of the Military Committee, Lt. Gen Mark O. Schissler.

We have placed gender perspective at the heart of NATOs analysis, planning, execution and evaluation of our planning missions. We place gender perspectives at the centre of our defence planning and reporting by our Allies. We have a wide network of gender advisors. We have learned from our experiences in Afghanistan and in the Balkans, he said.

Stressing that the conference is a good opportunity to share experiences, ambitions and challenges the Deputy Secretary General said that integrating gender across all activities contributes to a more modern and more responsive NATO.

The conference from 31 May to 3 June will bring together experts from NATO and partner countries and national delegates in order to discuss how NATO and partner countries can strengthen military leadership and accountability to implement a gender perspective.

An exhibition with the title Women in NATO: From Pioneers to Champions since 1961 was also inaugurated at NATO Headquarters on Tuesday, featuring historical pictures of female military personnel, and commemorating the 40th anniversary of the NATO Committee on Gender Perspectives (NCGP).

The NATO Committee on Gender Perspectives (NCGP) is one of the oldest in the NATO structure and was formally recognised by NATOs Military Committee in July 1976. Senior female officers in NATO began in 1961 to organise conferences on an ad hoc basis to discuss the status, organisation, conditions of employment and career possibilities for women in the armed forces of NATO member nations. The first NATO Conference of Senior Service Women Officers of the Alliance took place in Copenhagen in June 1961. Throughout the years, the NATO Committee on Gender Perspectives (NCGP) has played a vital role in promoting gender mainstreaming as a strategy for making womens as well as mens concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies, programmes and military operations.
On the second day of his visit to Poland (31 May 2016) the NATO Secretary General met with the Prime Minister Beata Szydo, Minister of Defence Antoni Macierewicz and with the Minister of Foreign Affairs Witold Waszczykowski to discuss NATOs response to a more challenging security environment and preparations for the Warsaw Summit.

Speaking at the Warsaw University on Tuesday, Mr. Stoltenberg focused on the agenda for the Warsaw Summit and commended Poland for making extraordinary progress since joining NATO. Over the past seventeen years, Poland has evolved from a new Ally into a leading Ally, he said.

Mr. Stoltenberg noted that the Warsaw Summit will take place at a critical moment for the Alliance. A moment where our security and our values face significant challenges. Challenges both from the east and the south, he said. At the Summit, NATO members will take the next steps enhancing a forward presence in the Eastern part of the Alliance, and projecting stability beyond NATOs borders.

Mr. Stoltenberg said that NATO military planners have put forward proposals for several battalions in different countries in the region. We are now discussing the exact numbers and the exact locations. And we will take those decisions at the Summit. The Secretary General also made clear that everything the Alliance does is defensive, proportionate and in line with NATOs international commitments. He stressed that NATO does not seek a confrontation with Russia, and NATO Allies remain committed to dialogue with Russia and to transparency in military affairs.

Another major theme for the Warsaw Summit will be projecting stability beyond NATOs borders. Mr. Stoltenberg highlighted: We have learned through many years of operations, building local capacity and training local forces is as important as our ability to deploy combat troops. NATO is helping its partners in the Middle East and North Africa to build stronger defence institutions, to field more capable forces, and to regain lost territory.

The Secretary General also said that to ensure strong deterrence and defence and to project stability NATO needs sufficient resources. He commended Poland for meeting NATOs target of spending 2% of GDP on defence. In every Allied capital I visit, I use Poland as an example of what is possible, he said.

At the Warsaw Summit, the Alliance will also seek a new level of cooperation with its partners, especially the European Union, on issues such as countering hybrid threats, cyber defence and maritime security. Cooperation between NATO and the European Union - as demonstrated by our deployment in the Aegean Sea - gives a big boost to security in and around Europe, Mr. Stoltenberg said.
(As delivered)

Good morning, its good to see you all here this morning, and Im looking forward to speak to you and Im also looking forward to answer your questions afterwards.

But let me start by thanking for the kind introductions. And also to thank you Professor Palys for the invitation to speak to this audience today. And I would also like thank Dr. Debski and his colleagues at the Polish Institute of International Affairs for the work they do in cooperation and in partnership with NATO.

And Im also very much looking forward to speak to your experts at the prestigious Experts Forum which you are co-hosting with NATO in connection with and on the margins of the NATO Summit in July. So thank you once again for inviting me here. And then I will address all of you, guests, professors, students. And Im looking forward to speak to you because we are facing a new and more challenging security environment and therefore it is important that we keep the debate going on on how we can develop, how we can strengthen NATO in response to a more challenging security environment.

And for me its very natural to do that at this university because this year Warsaw University celebrates its 200th anniversary.

And this great institutions long history reflects Polands turbulent past.

Occupiers have turned it, at different times, into a medical school, an Imperial University, and even a military barracks.

And when martial law was declared in the early 1980s, brave members of the academic staff organised an underground university.

At great risks for themselves.

The University library opened in 1999.

The very same year that Poland joined NATO.

Since then, Poland has made extraordinary progress.

Over the past seventeen years, Poland has evolved from a new Ally into a leading Ally.

This evolution is testament to the transformative powers of the Open Door of NATO, and of EU enlargement.

But it owes most, of course, to the commitment, determination and hard work of the Polish people. And of successive Polish governments.

At NATO, that commitment takes many forms. Including the most precious.

Over the years, 40 Polish soldiers have given their lives serving under a NATO flag in Afghanistan. Their sacrifice will never be forgotten.

As Secretary General of NATO, I have a close political relationship with Poland.

But I also have a personal relationship with your country.

When I was a child, I remember my grandfather telling me about his time in a German prisoner of war camp in Poland.

My father visited Poland frequently during the 1970s and the 1980s as a Norwegian politician.

He met secretly with representatives of Solidarnosc on several occasions  providing political and financial help.

He went on to become a strong advocate of NATO membership for Poland and other countries of the former communist bloc.

And I, as a young activist, was one of many in Western Europe who supported Solidarnosc and political prisoners in Poland during the 1980s. And I as a young politician in Norway had also then strong relationships with Poland.

So it was natural that I, when I became Secretary General of NATO, to make my first visit to Poland, in my very first week in the job, and I have also visited Poland later. I came again last summer.

To see the first military exercise by our new high-readiness Force.

And, today, I am here to meet with the President and members of the government.

To discuss the preparations for NATOs Summit, here in Warsaw, just in a few weeks.

At the Summit, NATOs leaders will come together to agree on the Alliances future direction.

I often think about the sacrifices my grandfathers generation made in service to a greater good. What they went through is a powerful reminder of the importance of collective security and the need to prevent war.

It is also a reminder of NATOs essential role in continuing to keep the peace. And our nations safe. That is why the upcoming Summit is so important.

It will take place at a critical moment for our Alliance. A moment where our security and our values face significant challenges.

Challenges both from the east and from the south.

To the east, we see Russias illegal annexation of Crimea.

Its continuing actions against Ukraine.

And a significant build-up of its military forces  stretching from the Barents Sea, to the Baltic and the Black Sea, and the eastern Mediterranean.

To the south, turmoil across the Middle East and North Africa has unleashed the biggest migrant and refugee crisis in Europe since World War Two.

We see other threats that have no respect for territorial borders. Terrorism. Cyber-attacks. Nuclear, and ballistic missile proliferation.

To carry out NATOs mission in this more dangerous world, we need to strengthen our collective defence, and to project stability beyond our own borders.

This will be the focus of our decisions at our Warsaw Summit in July.

And this is what I want to talk about now.

Let me start with defence and deterrence.

In response to the changes in our security environment, NATO has significantly increased its collective defence.

The NATO Response Force  our quick reaction force  is now three times bigger compared to what it was previously.

With 40,000 troops ready to move at short notice.

Including a very-high readiness force capable of moving within 48 hours.

We have added eight new small headquarters in the east of our Alliance  including here in Poland  to help link up national forces with other NATO forces.

We have increased the number of our exercises.

We have developed detailed plans for the defence of our eastern Allies. And we have sped up our decision-making.

Together, these measures represent the largest reinforcement of our collective defence since the end of the Cold War.

We need to continue to adapt, and to be prepared for the long haul. And we are.

Last night, I met with President Duda.

I told him there will be more NATO troops in Poland.

We have already agreed to enhance our forward presence in the Eastern part of our Alliance. With more troops, more infrastructure and more pre-positioned equipment. And a greater capacity to plan and command, so that forces already on the ground can provide a bridgehead for NATO reinforcements, if needed.

This presence will be multinational and rotational.

Our military planners have put forward proposals for several battalions in different countries in the region. We are now discussing the exact numbers and the exact locations. And we will take those decisions at the Summit in Warsaw.

This enhanced forward presence, combined with the ability to deploy NATO forces quickly, will send a clear message.

An attack on Poland  or any other Ally  will trigger a response from the entire Alliance.

That multinational forward presence shows our resolve. It enhances our deterrence.

And  because it will significantly increase the costs to any potential aggressor  it will have a stabilising effect on NATOs borders.

NATO is adapting to other existing and emerging challenges too. We are improving our resilience. Our ability to resist  and to recover from  hybrid and cyber-attacks.

Recently, you broke ground here in Poland on a new missile defence site. This will become an important part of our defence against ballistic missile attacks from outside the Euro-Atlantic area.

Later this year, we will deploy our advanced reconnaissance drones to Sicily and it will enhance our ability to keep a continuous watch on developments in and around the Alliance.

And we will maintain a safe, secure and effective nuclear deterrent as part of our overall collective defence and deterrence.

Everything we do is defensive, it is proportionate and its fully in line with our international obligations.

My message is clear:

NATO does not seek confrontation with Russia. We dont want a new Cold War. We dont want a new arms race.

Russia is our biggest neighbour, a member of the UN Security Council, and can still play a constructive role in world affairs.

We saw this with the Iran nuclear negotiations and in the destruction of chemical weapons in Syria.

Our aim is a more positive and a more cooperative relationship with Russia.

At the very least, we must work towards a relationship that is more predictable.

NATO Allies remain committed to dialogue with Russia and to transparency in military affairs.

Poland itself has put forward constructive proposals to strengthen confidence-building measures.

Channels of communication and political dialogue are in our best interest.

That is why the NATO-Russia Council, where we have met for almost 20 years, is important.

And why there is broad agreement among Allies that we should seek to meet again before the Summit here in Warsaw.

***

Defending our homelands is not just about defending our borders.

It is also about projecting stability beyond our borders.

Because if our neighbours are more stable, we are more secure.

That will be the other major theme for the Warsaw Summit.

In North Africa and the Middle East, terrorist groups like ISIL exploit weak states and ungoverned spaces to spread chaos and violence.

Terrorism poses a real threat to our security and to our way of life.

NATO Allies are taking direct military action as part of the Global Coalition Against ISIL.

Helping to degrade and destroy a brutal terrorist group, which has inspired and directed attacks on our own streets.

But, as we have learned through many years of operations, building local capacity and training local forces is as important as our ability to deploy our own combat troops.

In fact, training local forces is often our best weapon against terrorism.

That is exactly what we are doing in Afghanistan. While our combat mission there has come to an end, we remain to train, advise and assist the Afghans. So they can continue to take full responsibility for the security of their own country.

For the same reason, we are helping our partners in the Middle East and North Africa  to build stronger defence institutions, to field more capable forces, and to regain lost territory.

We are training Iraqi officers.

And we are working with the Iraqi government to identify ways of scaling up this training.

We are also helping Jordan and Tunisia to develop stronger defence institutions, and improve their Special Forces and intelligence capabilities. And all of this is part of how NATO contributes to the global efforts to fight ISIL and to fight terrorism.

And we stand ready also to assist Libya, if requested, and as part of broader UN-led efforts.

Given the magnitude of the threats we face, we must do more. And that is also among the issues we will discuss at the Summit here in Warsaw in July.

In the East, we are also boosting the defence capabilities, and increasing the resilience, of our partners.

At the Summit, we will meet with the Ukrainian President and agree on a new comprehensive package of assistance from NATO to Ukraine.

And we are strengthening our already very close cooperation with Georgia, and with Moldova.

To do all this, to ensure strong deterrence and defence, and to project stability in our neighbourhood, we need sufficient resources.

That is why Allies have to invest more in defence. Poland has shown leadership on defence spending over several years. Last year, in 2015, Poland met NATOs target of spending 2% of GDP on defence. And that is something I welcome very much. In every Allied capital I visit, I use Poland as an example of what is possible.

Other Allies are also starting to increase their defence spending. After a long decline, defence cuts among European Allies virtually came to a halt last year.

This is an important first step. We must spend more. And we must spend better.

That means strengthening our cooperation with other partners.

The European Union is a unique partner for the Alliance.

Together, we have transformed Europe.

We have helped to spread peace and prosperity across the continent after centuries of war.

And we helped to extinguish the fire of ethnic conflicts in the Western Balkans.

Cooperation between NATO and the European Union  as demonstrated by our deployment in the Aegean Sea  gives a big boost to the security in and around Europe.

At the Warsaw Summit, we will seek a new level of cooperation with the EU. On issues such as countering hybrid threats, cyber defence and maritime security. Cooperation in the face of common threats. Cooperation to ensure our common security.

NATO is an Alliance of democracies.

In democracies there are many different opinions and views. And democracies sometimes disagree with each other. But throughout NATOs history we have demonstrated our ability to stand together. To make decisions. And to act.

Our common values  individual liberty, democracy and the rule of law  are the source of our unity.

And unity is our greatest strength.

At our Summit here in Warsaw, we will demonstrate that unity. With a strong deterrence and defence. And a determination to project stability beyond our borders. To honour the generations who fought to defend our values. And to safeguard peace and security for the generations to come

Thank you so much.

MODERATOR: Ladies and gentlemen, the Secretary General kindly agreed to take some questions. So I would like you, all those who would like to take the floor, to introduce themselves, show their affiliation, and wave to me if you'd like to take the floor.

Q: My name is [inaudible], I'm a PhD scholar at the University of Warsaw, for International Relations. Sir, after the death of Mullah Omar and Akhtar Mansour in Afghanistan do you think the Afghanistan security is still a challenge for NATO? Thank you.

JENS STOLTENBERG (Secretary General of NATO): The answer is yes, but I can add some more reflections, because the important thing we have done in Afghanistan is that we have helped to build a strong Afghan National Army and Security Force. We ended, at the end of 2014, our combat mission, so what we do now is that we train, assist and advise the Afghans themselves because we believe that in the long run it's better that they are able to take responsibility for security in their own country themselves instead of we fighting and deploying combat troops there.

It is a challenging situation in Afghanistan: there's going to be violence, there's going to be fighting and there's going to be difficulties, but at the same time we have seen that the Afghan National Forces are capable, they're professional and they are dedicated, so they are now able to take responsibility for the security of their own country, provided that we continue to train and assist and advise them, and also provided that we continue to not only assist and train and advise them but also to fund, provide financial support for the Afghan Army and Security Forces.

And let me just end by saying that for me Afghanistan is an example of what I believe of what we should do more of, and that is to train local forces to enable them to fight terrorism, train local forces to enable them to stabilize their own countries, train local forces to enable them to destroy ISIL.

So NATO has an important role to play but in the long run we need local forces. This is not a fight between the West and the Muslim world, but this is a fight against terrorists, against criminals, and we know that the majority of the victims of terrorism are Muslims, and therefore I welcome very much the dedication and the commitment of the Afghans themselves and President Ghani and of Abdullah to be in front in that fight.

MODERATOR: Gentleman over there.

Q: Good morning, my name is Philip  [inaudible] and I am an observant of Warsaw University of Life Sciences, of environmental protection. Mr. Stoltenberg, let me explain something, okay. Dont you realize that NATO and U.S. murderers were responsible for the attack on a sovereign and peaceful Libya? Dont you realize that NATO and U.S. murderers and Blackwater are responsible for genocide of innocent people in Eastern Ukraine?

MODERATOR: Thank you very much.

JENS STOLTENBERG: I think it's important to understand that some of the most important and most difficult decisions politicians are making, and also some of the most difficult decisions NATO has to make, is when to use military force and when not to use military force.

And I was at that time Prime Minister of Norway, we had the discussions in Norway but I supported the decision of NATO to take part in the military actions against the Gadhafi regime. We did so because we had a very clear UN mandate. It was a clear decision by the UN Security Council to use all necessary means to stop the regime killing its own population, and we had a very critical situation just outside Benghazi, and I think that we all felt that it was an urgency to act. And NATO acted, NATO allies acted, and we were able to stop the killing of civilians by government forces or regime forces in Libya.

Having said that, I think that one of the lessons we have learned from Libya is that one thing is to win the war but you also have to win the peace, and it underlines the importance of my message in my speech, that we have to build local capacity, we have to build defence institutions, we have to enable local forces to stabilize their own country. And this is a responsibility of NATO. We stand ready to help the new Government of National Accord in Libya. It's a responsibility of the European Union, of UN, of the whole international society.

So NATO acted upon a very clear UN mandate; we stopped the killing of civilians, or we contributed to that, but the lesson learned in Libya is that we also have to be much more focused on the stabilization efforts after the end of the military operations.

Q: My name Arian Meinhardt. I'm a student at the College of Europe in Natolin. Thank you first of all for your speech. We heard a lot on deterrence against, not against Russia but towards Russia, so we're very clear about the stick, but what's the carrot? What do we have to offer Russia in case the situation gets better?

JENS STOLTENBERG: Let me first underline that strong defence and deterrence is not about that we want to fight a war but it is about that we want to prevent war. So if we stay strong, when we stay united, then we are also able to prevent war. That's the main reason why we are enhancing our collective defence and our deterrence.

Second, the message from NATO is that we have a dual track approach to Russia. We have strong defence, strong deterrence, but we also convey a very clear message that we are open for dialogue, we are striving for a more cooperative relationship with Russia, because we strongly believe that that is not only in our interest but in the long run it will also be in the interests of Russia to have trade, to have open borders, to have cooperation.

And I say that partly because I have also experience as a Norwegian politician, and Norway being a country bordering Russia on land but also with a long, long border in the sea where we have fish, energy, oil and gas, we have experienced how it is possible to cooperate with Russia, how political dialogue on defence, on energy, on many other issues, and that has been of mutual benefit both for Russia and for Norway.

The thing is that we have to stay strong. We have to enhance our collective defence, because that also provides the best foundation for a political engagement with Russia, and they will also gain from a more cooperative relationship with us. So we have to make it clear for them, for Russia, that in the long run they will gain more from cooperating with us instead of confronting us, and I think we convey that message very clearly. We are prepared for the long haul, but we're also prepared for a more cooperative relationship.

MODERATOR: Two questions from the ladies on my right side.

Q: Thank you. My specialization is the Balkans and I know very well the operations of NATO and UN in the Balkans, when all the countries accused Serbian aggression, first Yugoslavian, later Serbian. It was the 90s. Now it's 2016 and two months ago Azerbaijan attacked Nagorno-Karabakh, the same, like killing civilians, and I dont want to take about cutting bodies of Armenian soldiers and so on, but all members kept silence, nobody accused Azerbaijan for aggression even though Armenian side represent all [inaudible], all pictures

MODERATOR: Question please.

Q: My question is why? Thank you.

JENS STOLTENBERG: Why? I have not been silent. I have strongly supported the initiatives to have a political negotiated solution and also strongly supported the efforts to make sure that the ceasefire is respected, so I actually issued a statement not so many weeks ago on Nagorno-Karabakh and the importance of supporting the efforts of a political negotiated solution to the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.

So I dont believe in a military solution, I dont believe that what we need there is more troops, more military presence, but we need strong support, and I appeal to both parties and to all parties involved to make sure that the ceasefire is respected and that the political process can continue to find a lasting political solution.

Q: I am a student from the University of Warsaw. My faculty is European Administration. I have only one question. Is it possible for my country, Ukraine, to enter the NATO, and how much time could take this process? Thats all. Thank you.

JENS STOLTENBERG: Sorry, you are from which country? Ukraine? Sorry, sorry. The main focus now in Ukraine is to support Ukraine when it comes to its territorial integrity and its sovereignty, and NATO provides a lot of practical support for Ukraine and political support for Ukraine, and again that will be an important issue at our summit in Warsaw because we have President Poroshenko at the summit and we have a meeting in the NATO-Ukraine Commission addressing how we can increase our support for Ukraine.

Ukraine is now in the process of reforming its institutions, fighting corruption, modernizing its different government institutions, and that is the main focus of Ukraine, and they have clearly stated that they have to implement these reforms before Ukraine can apply for membership.

If Ukraine some time in the future applies for membership, an application from Ukraine will be assessed in exactly the same way that we assess any other application. And the thing is that whether Ukraine is going to become a member of NATO or not, that is a question which has to be decided by Ukraine and the 28 members of NATO, no-one else. No one else has the right to interfere or to intervene or to try to veto such a process. And it is a very, very important principle that every nation, including Ukraine, has its sovereign right to decide its own path, including what kind of security arrangements it wants to be part of.

So if Ukraine applies then the application will be assessed in exactly the same way as any other application.

MODERATOR: We have time only for two more questions. First we go for the gentleman from the first row and from the lady almost from the last row.

Q: Michal Baranowski, I'm a director of the Warsaw Office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. It's great to see you Secretary and thank you very much for your message in Warsaw ahead of the summit.

I actually wanted to ask about something beyond the summit. You mentioned a need for NATO's development and transformation facing the threats and challenges in the east as well as the south, but if you look over the arch of your mandate, going forward, where do you see the main emphasis on transformation of the alliance? What do we do post-Warsaw? How do we face those two very different challenges coming from the east and the south? Thank you.

JENS STOLTENBERG: First of all I think it's extremely important that an alliance as NATO stay agile, stay prepared, and are able to adapt also to unforeseen events. So it is important that when we look beyond Warsaw that we have the ability to also respond to unforeseen events, because it is extremely hard to predict about the future, and we have been wrong again and again.

Experts, when they try to say, most experts were not able to predict the fall of the Berlin Wall, they were not able to predict the Arabic Spring, and many other major international events that they havent been able to predict. So I think that this is not about predicting exactly what is going to happen in the future, but it's developing our ability to quickly adapt when we see different unexpected events occurring.

Then, I of course believe that one thing is to make decisions at Warsaw related to collective defence deterrence and dialogue, and at the same time increase our ability to project stability, but of course a major responsibility for me, for all NATO allied countries after the summit in Warsaw, is to implement also the decisions. So when we decide to increase our collective defence, when we decide to increase our presence in the eastern part of the alliance, that's a good thing, but we have to also make sure that we deliver, that we implement those decisions.

And I hope that the summit will decide for instance to step up our efforts to help Iraq fight ISIL, to work with Jordan and Tunisia, two stable countries in a region of a lot of instability, help them stabilize their own countries, help them increase their capacity to fight ISIL, and that is important decisions at the summit, but then after the summit we have to find the resources, find the people who are going to do exactly that. So stay agile, prepared for the unforeseen, and implement the decisions: that's my main message for beyond Warsaw.

MODERATOR: And the last question. You have 15 seconds.

Q: Hello, Does our government's anti-European discourse and nationalist view, we can [inaudible] on the international arena?

JENS STOLTENBERG: What was that . ? Sorry.

Q: How are we such a good ally if our government is anti-European and has nationalist views?

JENS STOLTENBERG: Poland is a good ally because Poland provides a lot of military support to different missions, activities of NATO, to NATOs presence in Afghanistan and Kosovo, to our collective defence, so Poland is an ally which invests in our collective defence, contributes to our collective defence.

I have underlined many, many times that NATO is an alliance which is based on some core values: individual liberties, democracy and the rule of law. I personally attach very strong importance to those values because they are so important for the alliance, they are so important for the unity of the alliance, and therefore these values are the basic values for NATO and for me personally.
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Azerbaijan manipulates facts, creates information pretext to encroach on Lachin corridor

Azerbaijan military aggression against Armenia is discussed at Francophonie Parliamentary Assembly conference (PHOTOS)

Peskov says details of gas hub with Turkey were being worked out

Konstantin Zatulin on ban on his entry into Armenia: I see it as insulting move

Putin's spokesman says building wall on Russian-EU borders is nonsense

Turkey begins its part of work on gas hub agreement with Russia

Kremlin responds to Macron's appeal to Pope to negotiate with Putin

Millliyet: Turkish and Finnish delegations hold talks on NATO membership in Ankara

Zelenskiy: Ukraine receives not 'a single cent' on $17 billion rapid recovery plan

Rishi Sunak takes office as Prime Minister of Great Britain

Indonesian armed woman tries to break into presidential palace

Pashinyan's family newspaper writes that Konstantin Zatulin is forbidden to enter Armenia from now on

President Raisi accuses U.S. of information terrorism, organizing riots in Iran

AraratBank and 4090 Charity Foundation team up for the education of war participants

Ursula von der Leyen: EU to provide Kyiv with 1 billion for urgent restoration of energy supply

World Bank to provide Armenia with EUR 22.6 million of additional credit funds

Macron asks Pope to call Putin to solve Ukraine crisis

PM: Azerbaijan hinders search of Armenian soldiers' bodies in occupied territories

German president assures Ukraine of his full support

Armenia ruling force MP: Major powers have told us You should sign that agreement by the end of the year

WSJ: Saudi Prince Bin Salman mocks Biden in private talks

OSCE needs assessment mission is briefed on situation in Armenias Jermuk after Azerbaijan military aggression (PHOTOS)

Armenias Pashinyan to Kazakhstans Tokayev: Mutually beneficial cooperation corresponds to our countries interests

Driver, 41, dies in hospital 2 days after Armenia car accident

US: Former student opens fire at school

Turkish Finance Minister says he would seek gas discount from Gazprom

US State Dept.: We are interested in seeing stable Caucasus where we work both with Armenia and Azerbaijan

US plans to allocate $25M to project to strengthen Armenia economy

Copper prices decline

Armenia premier: Italy is friendly country, important partner for us

Pashinyan to Xi: We will succeed in qualitatively raising Armenian-Chinese political dialogue to new level

World Bank allocates Ukraine additional $500 million

Zelenskyy: If Moscow says Ukraine is making dirty bomb, then Russia made it

Newspaper: Anti-CSTO consolidation initiative group of Armenia sends petition to parliament speaker

World oil prices going up

Newspaper: Armenia PM forbids political teammates to say anything about Karabakh

Azerbaijan opens fire at Armenia positions

Largest cruise liner in world 'Icon of the Seas' presented

U.S. police officers mistake pet cat for mountain lion

Joe Biden gets another Covid-19 booster shot

US imposes sanctions on Nicaragua's gold mining industry

Kremlin says Russian, Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents prepare to meet

Leading Party Sponsor: Conservative Party is not fit to run Britain

'From Old Memory': Drivers can't see road signs on section of North-South highway under construction in Yerevan

Russian MFA: We are sure that attempts of external forces to split Moscow and Yerevan will not succeed

Yair Lapid: Israel is deeply concerned over Russia and Iran's military ties

Another school shooting in U.S.: 3 dead, including shooter

Azerbaijani Armed Forces shell Armenian positions

Kenyan police shoot and kill prominent Pakistani journalist

OSCE representatives visit villages affected by Azerbaijani aggression in Syunik Province

US presidential adviser calls OPEC's decision to cut oil production political move

Lavrov: Russia and Iran gave comprehensive answers about alleged use of Iranian drones

Netanyahu's comeback dominates Israel's elections

Georgian president complains that she was not informed about Aliyev's visit

S&P Global Market Intelligence: Recession in Eurozone looks increasingly inevitable

Benny Gantz tells his Ukrainian colleague that Israel will not supply weapons to Kiev

Greek Armed Forces can effectively respond to any provocation by Turkey

Qatar urges to depoliticize oil and gas

General Staff of Armed Forces head discusses Ukraine with his British colleague

Zelenskyy: Russia wouldn't cooperate militarily with Iran if Israel had not denied air defense systems to Kyiv

Azerbaijan sends note in connection with 'anti-Azerbaijani statements' on Channel One

Goldman Sachs foretells European business worst year since global financial crisis

Artificial intelligence leads political party in Denmark

Aliyev says Baku-Tbilisi-Kars route should be increased

U.S. State Department official expresses support for Armenia's sovereignty

Iranian MFA: IRGC exercises on borders with Azerbaijan are not directed against any neighboring state

Pashinyan: Damage caused to country by corruption must be restored

Rishi Sunak to become UK PM

Armenia official: Defense sector expenses will increase the most, state budget allocations will increase by 160bln drams
Georgia has the highest maternal mortality rate and the eighth highest infant mortality rate in the United States. Several years ago, Emory nursing dean Linda McCauley and the nursing dean of Valdosta State University (VSU) began to brainstorm about how to change this dismal picture.

There was little the nursing leaders could do about the rural hospital closings and physician retirements that forced pregnant women to travel long distances for careor go without. They could, however, do something about the fact that many rural counties in central and south Georgia have few or zero nurse-midwives. In states with the highest percentage of nurse-midwives, these practitioners attend one in four births, building obstetric workforce capacity and improving outcomes for mothers and newborns.

To push the partnership forward, McCauley turned to Judith Wold PhD RN ANEF FAAN in the School of Nursing. As Distinguished Professor for Educational Leadership and director of the Farmworker Family Health Program in Moultrie, Georgia, Wold knows the state's rural areas well. She enlisted MaryJane Lewitt PhD CNM FACNM, coordinator of Emory's nurse-midwifery program, to meet with faculty at Valdosta State.

Emory has trained nurse-midwives for almost 40 years, producing 350 graduates who comprise the majority of the 500-plus nurse-midwives now licensed in Georgia. It has the only accredited, on-the-ground (not online) nurse-midwifery program in the Southeast and is highly ranked nationally. Many of its students are enrolled in the dual family nurse practitioner/nurse-midwifery program.

In fall 2014, Valdosta State established its own seven-semester family nurse practitioner program. Now those graduates can pursue a postgraduate nurse-midwifery certificate program offered through Emory.

Enthusiasm for the proposed Rural Georgia Midwifery Education Project grew led to a $24,600 award from the March of Dimes in 2015 to implement it and an endorsement from the Georgia legislature through the Women's Health Study Committee. Emory will offer the new postgraduate nurse-midwifery certification program beginning in fall 2016.

The hybrid distance education program will combine classroom instruction, led by Emory faculty who will travel regularly to Valdosta State, and online coursework, enabling VSU students to combine work and study.

The most significant challenge to creating more nurse-midwives, notes Lewitt, is the lack of certified midwives available and willing to precept students during deliveries and other parts of their clinical training. Thus Lewitt and Wold are enlisting the help of midwives throughout the state, especially in critically underserved areas.

In time, says Lewitt, "This innovative public-private partnership will expand the number of nurse-midwives in Georgia, increase access to care for women in rural areas with significant disparities of health care, and, most important, improve Georgia's poor maternal and newborn health outcomes."
When Emory historian Carol Anderson wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post on protests and lootings in Ferguson, Missouri, in the wake of the death of Michael Brown, she knew there would be a reaction.

In her op-ed she called Ferguson the latest outbreak of white rage, the result of white backlash against African American advancement.

When you say things of consequence, there are consequences, says Anderson, who is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor and chair of African American Studies. What she did not anticipate was the op-ed going viral with more than 5,000 online comments on the Posts website, becoming one of the most-read articles of the year.

The op-ed resulted in a literary agent seeking her out and publisher Bloomsbury offering a book contract. Anderson put her research and writing into high gear to get the manuscript into print  and into the national conversation  quickly.

This is a book that could not have happened without Emory Universitys incredible intellectual strengths, from students, to faculty, to resources, says Anderson. She cites support from Emory College Dean Robin Forman, faculty colleagues who read and commented on drafts, Emory students who served as research assistants, and Woodruff Library, which had every book I needed; every database was there.

Below, Anderson talks about the ideas behind White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide.

What was your motivation in writing the original Washington Post op-ed on which the book was based?

As a historian I understand the power of narratives and how they define and frame reality. In 2014, as I watched the news about Ferguson burning, reporters talked about black rage: Black people burning up where they lived and did they have a right to do so. Because I had lived in Missouri for 13 years or so, I knew that framing was incorrect. We were so busy looking at the flames that we missed the kindling.

We missed the public policies that have created an environment where the police are using African Americans as a revenue-generating source, where the school systems for over a decade have been on accreditation probation, and the policymakers seem alright with that. What does that mean in this society, in this democracy? I wanted to help reframe that narrative so we can begin to have a real conversation about the way the policy works and doesnt work and the implications for American democracy.

How did reaction to your op-ed inspire the book?

The op-ed went viral in November 2015 when the grand juries in Missouri and in Staten Island concerning Eric Garners death came back with no indictments. You had a large number of people who were just trying to figure out  how did we get here? That is the work a historian can do, which is to map out [this process] systematically.

In White Rage, the vignettes are known and have been written about, but they havent been linked thematically so that you can see how over time, even as political structure changes, even as the [political] parties change, there is a consistent motif. At first, it looks like a jigsaw puzzle  the Great Migration, the Brown decision  but when you pull these events together, all of a sudden youre saying, Oh my God, thats it; thats white rage. Think about it: How is it that we could be so viscerally opposed to children getting an education?

Since the historians task is to separate fact from myth, what are some of the widespread myths connected with the history of African Americans that you unpack in the book?

I think there are actually two major myths: The first is the role of Ronald Reagan as president. So even while the GOP right now is longing for a Ronald Reagan and in a recent Gallup Poll most Americans rate him as one of the greatest presidents ever, when you look at what he actually did, were still living with the devastation. Were living with the myth of blacks as lacking initiative, drive and intelligence. Were living with funding initiatives that undercut the safety net.

One of the policies that floored me was how the Reagan administration tinkered with financial aid for college bound students. What we know in a knowledge-based economy is that the more educated the population, the better off youre going to be, and the better off the nation is going to be. What does it say, though, when we get a funding frame saying were going to make it harder for those with the least amount of money to be able to access financial aid?

In the early 1980s, five times as many African American college students families earned less than $12,000 per year compared to white students families. So the Reagan administrations policy of student aid cuts for those most in need of financial support doesnt say were targeting blacks. Instead, the assertion is that this is only about economics. But because economics is so closely linked with race, unable to afford tuition, African American undergraduate enrollment dropped by 12 percent. You begin to understand what those policies really did. And while the target was African Americans, it took out so many other people: whites, Hispanics, Asians. It just was devastating when you look at Reagans policies.

Second, the war on drugs was one of the greatest lies perpetuated on the American people. When Reagan announced the war on drugs there was no major drug crisis. It was manufactured. John Ehrlichman (counsel and assistant to the president for domestic affairs under Richard Nixon) talked about that in a recently published interview. As I began to pore through the documents in the National Security Archives, which are housed at George Washington University, it was stunning. What we know now is that the Reagan administration had a deal with the Contras in Nicaragua; the Contras were able to fund their operations by trafficking cocaine into the United States while the NSC (National Security Council) and CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) looked the other way.

The result of the lie is a flood of drugs into the country, mass incarceration and the stripping of voting rights  because of a felony conviction  for almost eight percent of the black voting-age population.

In the book, one of the unspoken truths you discuss is how racism and racial prejudice have been infused in public policy through the use of language that doesnt refer directly to race, but serves as a signal that race is an issue. How does this exist today?

American society defines racism as the Klan, as cross-burning, as throwing the N word around. So if its not that, it cant be racism. But white rage isnt what we consistently and normally think of racism in the United States.

White rage is subtle as policy makers and a series of courts systematically undercut advancement of African Americans, and in doing so wreak major havoc on American democracy. A key example, of course, is after President Barack Obamas election, the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act and in trying to clamp down on the black vote, state legislatures  under the veneer of stopping voter fraud  issued a series of laws that also caught the elderly, the poor, Latino/as and students in the net. In one statewide election in Texas, after the laws went into effect, only 1.48 percent of the electorate voted. That is not democracy.

Its absolutely essential to understand, however, that white rage is not about casting this wide net that all whites are evil or bad or racist. Throughout the book, you see whites fighting hard, putting their lives, their reputations and their money on the line for a better democracy.

At the books conclusion, you mention that full voting rights, funding for quality schools and policing the court system are well within our grasp. Does this mean youre optimistic about the countrys future, despite its past?

Yes, let me tell you why.

We came from a nation that valued chattel slavery, where 80 percent of the nations GNP was tied up in owning human beings. But because of the consistent struggle, we changed that norm. We know slavery is wrong. The same thing happened to take down Jim Crow. We knew we couldn't be in a democracy where racism and inherent inequality was the accepted way of life.

The idea of America is so powerful; it is so strong that you consistently have large numbers who are fighting to reach that goal [of equality]. Thats why white rage has to always morph into something else, because once its revealed, its policy antics are no longer tolerated or accepted. Thats why Im hopeful.
01:27

Donald Trump went on the offensive against the United States media on Tuesday, slamming coverage of $6 million he claimed to raise for veterans, branding the political press "dishonest" and one journalist "a sleaze", AFP reported.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee slammed the press for questioning his claim to have raised $6 million on one night in Iowa in January.

The former reality TV star annihilated 16 rivals in the race to sew up the Republican nomination for the White House, and is trailing Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton by just a few percentage points in recent polls.

Last January, he skipped a Republican debate hosted by Fox News in a row over the television channel's perceived bias and instead hosted a fundraising event for veterans' charities.

Trump said that he had raised $5.6 million, of which every penny had been donated to veteran charities, and that he expected additional donations to tip the figure over the $6 million mark.

But the real estate tycoon said the media coverage seemed intent on finding fault in actions he said were entirely altruistic.

"The press should be ashamed," he said. "I have never received such bad publicity for doing such a good job," Trump hectored.

"I think the political press is among the most dishonest people that I have ever met," he added, before pointing to Tom Llamas, who covers the Republican race for ABC News.

"You're a sleaze because you know the facts and you know the facts well."

Llamas took to twitter in response. "Trump just called me a 'sleaze.' Should be an interesting week," he wrote.

The candidate called Bill Kristol, editor of neoconservative magazine "The Weekly Standard" and a fierce critic of the Republican nominee "a loser."

"I've won some and I've lost some, but one thing I've always tried not to be is a roaring jackass," wrote Kristol on Twitter in response.

Trump batted aside questions on whether he needed a thicker skin to run for the presidency.

"I think it's bothersome," he insisted. "I have given a lot of money... and I think when the press portrays it differently, the press is being very dishonest, so I don't like that."
SGPC president Avtar Singh Makkar said that the Pakistan High Commission had not issued visas to the jatha and hence the visit was cancelled.

The jatha was to leave on May 31.

SGPC officials said that the visas had been sought for the period between May 31 and June 9. They said that there was difference in date of the martyrdom day of the Guru between the SGPC and the Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee.

--IANS js/vd

( 126 Words)

2016-05-31-21:50:06 (IANS)
Proceedings in Nepal's parliament were on Monday obstructed by the main opposition Nepali Congress protesting vociferously over the alleged leakage of the contents of the annual budget, including its size, to the media even before its unveiling in the house two days ago. Speaker Onsari Gharti Magar had to adjourn the house at least twice as the NC lawmakers protested the leakage of the budget contents by rising from their seats and raising slogans, Xinhua news agency reported. Madhes-based lawmakers, agitating in Nepal's southern plains against the new constitution, also joined the NC members in the protest. Finance Minister Bishnu Poudel presented a budget of Nepali Rs.1,048.92 billion (about $10 billion) for the 2016-17 fiscal on Saturday by hiking planned expenditure significantly. But the Nepali media had covered the news on the budget details much before its presentation in parliament. Right after Speaker Gharti Magar began Monday's sitting, the NC and Madhesi lawmakers rose from their seats in protest against the budget leak. NC lawmaker and former Finance Minister Ram Sharan Mahat demanded "a fair probe" into the leakage of the budget information to the press. "We will not allow parliament to move ahead without launching a probe into the issue," he said. He claimed that the leakage of information violated parliament's "privilege" to know first about the budget proposals. On Sunday, NC's parliamentary party meeting had sought Poudel's resignation on "moral grounds". The NC has also been protesting the size and contents of the budget over its alleged "distributive nature" and claiming that the budget proposals violated fiscal discipline and they could not be implemented. The meeting had also decided to take strong stand during the deliberations in the house on the Finance Bill. The budget has doubled the allowance being provided to the elderly, widows and marginalised communities and also doubled the grant being provided to the local governments which the NC has termed "distributive". There also are concerns about utilisation of the grants being provided to the local bodies as they are without elected representatives for the last 14 years. But Poudel on Saturday defended the budget saying the state could not run away from its responsibility towards senior citizens and other disadvantaged communities. "The government is also against piling up resources in the Centre instead of distributing the resources at the local level," he maintained. --IANS py/dg ( 401 Words) 2016-05-30-15:56:04 (IANS)
According to tenants of the City Park Apartments, a Facebook addendum showed up taped to their doors last weekend, asking them to "like" its Facebook page, www.ksl.com reported on Tuesday.

According to the contract, if tenants do not friend the City Park Apartments on Facebook within five days, they will be found in breach of the rental agreement.

I dont want to be forced to be someones friend and be threatened to break my lease because of that, tenant Jason Ring was quoted as saying.

Its outrageous as far as Im concerned, he added

Some of the tenants have already signed a lease agreement months ago.

The contract document also has a release allowing the apartment to post pictures of tenants and their visitors on the Facebook page.

The building currently has a 1.1-star rating on its Facebook page.

The building's managers or Facebook didn't respond to a request for comment, the report added.

--IANS na/dg

( 208 Words)

2016-05-31-17:26:05 (IANS)
Talking to reporters on board to Rabat, Vice President Ansari, who left for a five-day state visit to African nations of Morocco and Tunisia, said India greatly value its relationship with Africa.

The Vice President said, "There are no two views about it; attack on anybody, whether it is on our own citizen or other country's citizen, it is condemnable."

He said, "The Government of India's views are very clear that they are guest in our country and we have to look after them." "If they are victims of law and order problem, it is the duty of the government to provide them safety," he said. (ANI)
"The Ministry of Urban Development has notified the Fare Fixation Committee (FFC) for recommending the passenger fares for Delhi Metro network in Delhi and its extension to National Capital Region. Justice

M.L.Mehta, retired Judge of the High Court of Delhi, for submission of its report and recommendations to the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Ltd (DMRC)," the ministry said in a release today.

The other members of the 4th FFC are Urban Development Ministry Additional Secretary, Durga Shanker Mishra and Delhi Chief Secretary, KK Sharma.

The fares of the Delhi Metro were last revised in 2009. (ANI)
In wake of the recent attacks on the African nationals, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj is set to meet African students to assure them of their safety and security in India. The Indian Government had yesterday assured the family members of African national Masunda Oliver, who was brutally killed in the national capital, that speedy trial would take place in the case and all the three accused would be prosecuted as per law of the land. Birender Yadav, Joint Secretary (West Africa), who met the family members of Oliver at the airport, offered his heartfelt condolences and informed that the Indian government would bear all the expenses to dispatch his mortal remains back to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Expressing "deep" concern over attacks on African nationals here, President Pranab Mukherjee had yesterday said it is "not tolerable" as India's relationship with African countries is close, and always we considered. Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju earlier in the day had dubbed the recent attacks as 'unfortunate'. Rijiju said the government will try its best to avoid such episodes in the future. "After what has happened with the African students in Delhi, we are holding regular meetings to come up with ways to sensitize the local populace," Rijiju said. "Arrests have already been made and the foreign ministry is also looking into the matter along with us. I also had a meeting with the Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh to discuss the same," he added. A week after the killing of a Congolese man in the national capital that stirred a diplomatic row and instigated violence against Indians in Congo, four attacks on African nationals by the residents in Chattarpur were reported on Friday. Five people were arrested by the Delhi Police in connection with the four attack incidents on the African nationals on Sunday. The African nationals had sustained minor injuries in the attack that took place in South Delhi's Mehrauli area on Friday. he accused have been arrested are identified as- Babu (32), Kunal (20), Om Prakash (24), Rahul alias Rocky (24) and Ajay (25). The police are carrying out search operations to nab the other accused persons. On Sunday, Swaraj spoke to Rajnath Singh and Delhi Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung about the attacks and said she was assured that the culprits would soon be arrested. "They assured me that the culprits will be arrested soon and sensitisation campaign will be launched in areas where African nationals reside," she tweeted. (ANI)
New Delhi, May 31 ( ANI): Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar urged the nation to come out in large numbers and join the African students for the 'March for Justice' at the Jantar Mantar in the national capital on Tuesday. Condemning the government's approach in the matter, Kanhaiya said that the government wanted to perpetually function in a denial mode, adding that the attack on the African students showed the racial discrimination that was taking root in this country. "All that the spokesperson for the state has to say is that it is a 'minor issue'. It is shameful that the government takes this issue so lightly when diplomats from 42 African nations boycotted the weeklong celebration of Africa Day, hosted by the Indian government as a sign of protest against renewed 'racism and Afro-phobia'," he added. Kanhaiya further stated, that the government wanted to turn the citizens of the nation into an unthinking and blindly following mob with intolerant attitude. "The BJP-RSS government continues to attack the cultural ethos of this nation that promotes unity in diversity and welcoming people from diverse background and through these attacks, they pose a very serious threat to the very constitution of this country," he added. Further escalating attack, Kanhaiya asked the government to stop turning the people of the country into a crowd and stop propagating ideas, which promote discrimination on the basis of colour, caste, religion and regions. In wake of the recent attacks on the African nationals, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj is set to meet African students today to assure them of their safety and security in India. The Indian Government had yesterday assured the family members of African national Masunda Oliver, who was brutally killed in the national capital, that speedy trial would take place in the case and all the three accused would be prosecuted as per law of the land. Birender Yadav, Joint Secretary (West Africa), who met the family members of Oliver at the airport, offered his heartfelt condolences and informed that the Indian government would bear all the expenses to dispatch his mortal remains back to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). A week after the killing of a Congolese man in the national capital that stirred a diplomatic row and instigated violence against Indians in Congo, four attacks on African nationals by the residents in Chattarpur were reported on Friday. Five people were arrested by the Delhi Police in connection with the four attack incidents on the African nationals on Sunday. The African nationals had sustained minor injuries in the attack that took place in South Delhi's Mehrauli area on Friday. The accused have been arrested are identified as- Babu (32), Kunal (20), Om Prakash (24), Rahul alias Rocky (24) and Ajay (25). The police are carrying out search operations to nab the other accused persons. On Sunday, Swaraj spoke to Rajnath Singh and Delhi Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung about the attacks and said she was assured that the culprits would soon be arrested. (ANI)
The Sri Lankan Navy also detained one fishing boat.

The fishermen from Rameswaram had ventured out into the sea for fishing after 45 day fishing ban.

Sri Lankan Navy confronted the fishermen at the international maritime boundary line.

According to reports, the fishermen have been taken to Talai Mannar by Sri Lankan Navy. (ANI)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday called on Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar to take stock of the deadly inferno at the Central Ammunition Depot in Wardha, Maharasthra, in which 15 Defence Security Corps (DSC) jawans and two officers were killed. "I pray that those who are injured recover quickly. Have asked RM @manoharparrikar to visit the spot & take stock of the situation. Pained by loss of lives caused by a fire at central ammunition depot in Pulgaon, Maharashtra. My thoughts are with the bereaved families," the Prime Minister tweeted. Echoing similar sentiments, Congress President Sonia Gandhi expressed shock and deep anguish at deaths of jawans and officers in the fire. "Extending her condolences to the family members of the deceased, Smt. Gandhi hoped that the injured were being taken care of and ample efforts were being undertaken to limit and control damage," the party said in a statement. Meanwhile, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has said that the fire has been brought under control. "It is an unfortunate incident and we have suffered huge loss of lives and property. I have directed district officials to extend whatever help possible," Fadnavis told ANI. The incident took place in the wee hours of morning today as a fire broke out in the depot storing ammunition. 15 DSC jawans and two officers were killed and 17 jawans and two officers are injured, in which some are critical. The main site of the inferno, which is a shed which caught on fire, has been extinguished. However, secondary fire and explosions has not been ruled out and precautions are being taken to control the fire. (ANI)
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa today announced an assistance of Rs ten lakh to the family of a Lance Havildar, who died in a mishap while protecting the borders at Jaswanthkar area in Arunachal Pradesh on May 19. In a statement here, Ms Jayalalithaa expressed deep anguish and sorrow over the death of Lance Havildar C Ramasamy, whois a native of Bodinayanapalli village in Krishnagiri district of the State. Ms Jayalalithaa expressed her heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family members and announced the assistance of Rs ten lakh to the family of Ramasamy, who is a member of the 10-Madras Regiment.UNI GV 1200 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0414-761056.Xml
Tripura Urban Development Minister Manik Dey today asked Union Urban Development Ministry to comply with the decision to allocate fund on 90:10 ratio for implementation of smart city project in the city.In a letter to Union Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu, Mr Dey objected the decision of his ministry regarding 50:50 sharing of capital investment between Centre and State for implementation of smart city project. "This is the decision of the Narendra Modi government that in Northeast all the central project will be implemented on 90:10 ratio and so far it has maintained. But suddenly in case of smart city development project ministry has changed the norms, which put the state in serious trouble," he told Mr Naidu.In the second phase, Agartala city has been included in smart city plan along with 13 other cities and each city selected in different rounds of competition will be given central assistance of Rs 200 crore in the first year and Rs 100 crore each during the subsequent three financial years.In case of smart city project, the ministry had said that State governments and respective urban local bodies will provide matching funds to the same amount. However, the state government sharply reacted to the proposal of 50:50 ratio.Mr Dey, however, alleged the Centre has not been releasing second installment for constructing town halls at Kailashahar and Sabroom. The Centre had allocated first installment money to construct 763 houses in Dharmanagar under Rajiv Awas Yojana but outlay of second installment is not released yet.The houses undertaken under the same project in Amarpur and Sabroom remained undone due to non-availability of fund by the Centre, he added.UNI BB AD DS SV PM1237 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0108-761028.Xml
Armed criminals today looted valuables worth lakhs of rupees from passengers traveling in three sleeper bogies of New Jalpaiguri-Patna Capital Express and injured a passenger on resisting near Bakhtiyarpur station on Mokama-Danapur section of East central railway.Rail Police Superintendent Jitendra Mishra said here that nearly 15 outlaws boarded Patna bound Capital Express near Bakhtiyarpur station and started looting passengers. When a woman passenger resisted them, criminals injured her by hitting with the pistol.Mr Mishra said security personnel escorting AC-2 bogie of the train started chasing criminals who were trying to escape with booty when the train stopped near Karaunta station.Desperadoes in their bid to make good their escape started pelting stones on members of the escort party which opened fire in air to overpower them. But they managed to escape from the spot in the melee.Criminals in the hurry left five bags stuffed with looted valuables but managed to escape with one bag. The injured woman has been admitted to a hospital in Patna.The SP said the gang involved in the crime had already been identified and a massive manhunt was on to nab it's members.UNI XC DH DS SV PM1253 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0108-761033.Xml
Goa Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar has said that people in the state were not happy with Nigerians.Speaking to reporters last night, he said,'' We get people from all other countries but in general people of Goa are very much annoyed with their behaviour, attitude, way of life of Nigerians. On many occasions I hear about them.'' ''People in Goa are not happy with these people. The Goans in general are complaining about them. I have heard that one woman from Mapusa has registered a complaint against one Nigerian with an allegation that he had raped her. Based on the complaint police have arrested the accused. Let us see what comes out of this complaint,'' he said. A woman had lodged a complaint at Mapusa police station in north Goa that she was raped by an unknown Nigerian at knife point on May 27 last. An offence under section 365, 506, 342 and 376 of Indian Penal Code (IPC) was registered against the foreign national who was arrested yesterday. UNI AKM DS SV PM1247 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0171-761012.Xml
Crime against women continues unabated in Uttar Pradesh, as now goons forcefully abducted a minor girl from her house and gangraped her in the city late Sunday night. They not only gangraped the girl but even made video clippings of the incident and made viral two clippings in the social media. Police sources here today said the five goons forcefully abducted the girl from her house in Dilari area and then gangraped her. The criminals also beat up the victim and made a video clipping of the incident by their mobile phones. The victim family were threatened by the accused that they will make viral the video clippings, if police was informed. But when the video was loaded in the social media, the family informed the police last night. Police said, "a case has been registered against five youths of the village along with the friend of the girl. The main accused, has been arrested and all the video clippings have been recovered from him. The medical examination of the victim has proved of her gangrape . Efforts were on to arrest the remaining four accused in the case.UNI MB DS SV SB1240 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0196-760964.Xml
Over 62 per cent successfully cleared Class X examination conducted by Board for Secondary Education, Assam, results of which were declared today. Altogether 3,81,585 students had appeared for the examination, out of which over 2.39 lakh cleared it. The overall pass percentage was 62.79. Sarfaraz Hussain of Sankardev Sishu Niketan, Betukuchi, Guwahati, scoring 590 marks out of total 600 marks, secured the top position. Altogether, 232 students were placed in the top 20 positions in the state. Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal congratulated the successful students and wished them good luck for their future. State Education Minister Dr Himanta Biswa Sharma, who visited Mr Hussain's school, announced an ex gratia of Rs five lakh to him for pursuing higher studies as the student hails from a lower middle class family. The State government will also bear his admission and education expenses for higher secondary level. UNI SG AD DS SB1334 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0108-761143.Xml
"The cause of the fire is not yet known. The army has ordered an enquiry to investigate the incident," said Director General, Military Operations, Lt. Gen Ranbir Singh.

The toll at 14 - one soldier and 13 fire brigade staff, he said.

"... One army jawan, and 13 civilian fire fighter staff lost their life, while two officials and 15 personnel including nine jawans and six fire fighters got injured," Singh said.

"As per last reports all the injured are stable," he added.

All the injured have been admitted to a super speciality hospital at Wardha and a team of especialised doctors has also rushed there, said the DGMO.

--IANS bns/vd

( 155 Words)

2016-05-31-16:42:03 (IANS)
Union Minister of State for Human Resources Development Upendra Kushwaha today said law and order situation in Bihar had become the first casualty of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's prime ministerial ambition. Mr Kushwaha told mediapersons here, "Mr Kumar's distraction from state`s basic issues, including law and order situation, had made lives of the people of the state deplorable." Slamming the Chief Minister for pursuing his prime ministerial ambition at the cost of his prime duty, the Union Minister said Mr Kumar cannot escape from his primary responsibility of establishing rule of law and order in the state. To a question, he said the JD(U)-led state government could not try to salvage its position by obliquely holding RJD, another major constituent of the grand alliance, responsible for the rising crime graph in the state. He said the state government had maintained a stoic silence when doctors, engineers, journalists and other sections of the society were felling prey to the bullets of trigger happy criminals. He said people had started migrating to other states in disgust and even investors were scared of investing money in the state due to rising crime graph. He said the grand alliance government had failed to fulfill its pre-poll promises and people of the state were ready to teach a lesson to Mr Kumar at an "opportune" time.UNI DH IS AD SW AS1552 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0108-761372.Xml
Sixteen soldiers perished and around 17 were injured when a major fire broke out in one of India's largest army ammunition depot in Pulgaon in Maharashtra's Wardha district during wee hours today. While the Army had established a special investigative team to ascertain the cause of the mishap along with a separate Court of Inquiry, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar had already left for the accident site to take stock of the situation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, expressing grief over the disaster on his Twitter handle, wrote, "Pained by loss of lives caused by a fire at Central Ammunition Depot in Pulgaon, Maharashtra. My thoughts are with the bereaved families."I pray that those who are injured recover quickly. Have asked RM @manoharparrikar to visit the spot & take stock of the situation," he added. Apart from the Prime Minister, many dignitaries such as President Pranab Mukherjee, vice President Hamid Ansari and others also mourned deaths. Lt Gen Ranbir Singh, Director General of Military Operations (DGMO), told mediapersons here that one shed (no 192) of ammunition depot caught fire somewhere between midnight and 0100 hrs, leaving one jawan, two officers and 13 fire-fighting staff dead. Around 17 personnel, including two officers, nine jawans and six fire-fighting staff also suffered injuries during the inferno, he said.Underlining that situation was fully under control, he said fire had already been doused and the injured had been admitted in Nagpur's multi specialty hospital. More UNI RG SW AE 1714 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0377-761672.Xml
The names of the victims, who lost their lives in the inferno were still to be confirmed by the Army headquarters.

About 18 Army personnel also sustained burn injuries and were admitted at Sawangi hospital and Vinoba Bhave Medical College Hospital in Wardha.

District Magistrate of Wardha Shailesh Naval, who is camping on the spot since 0500 hrs today, informed that the Civil Surgeon of Wardha has been instructed to provide best treatment to the injured Army personnel in the hospitals.

He said soon after getting information about fire in the DSC Pulgaon, the fire engines were rushed from the adjoining Nagpur and Yavatmal districts.

The ambulances from Vinoba Bhave Medical College Hospital, Sawangi Neghe Hospital, Mahatma Gandhi Medical College Hospital and Sevagram Hospital were also rushed to the spot, along with doctors, who provided first aid to the injured Army personnel on the spot.

According to the District Magistrate, villagers of the adjoining Muradgaon, Agorgaon, Yashgaon, Nagjhari and Pimpri, who were evacuated in view of the potential threat, were kept at Nagar Parishad school in Devlai and zilla parishad school of Digdo.

Later, after the fire was under control, the villagers were allowed to move to their respective places.MORE UNI RS PK SS RJ AE NS1740

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Congress president Sonia Gandhi today strongly hit out at the Narendra Modi government, alleging that this NDA government was trying to defame her family through new -new conspiracies. "The Modi government, which has failed to provide any relief to the poor and farmers of the country, in order to divert the attention of people, was bringing out new-conspiracies everyday and raking up the slogan of ' Congress mukt Bharat' to defame my family," she alleged. Ms Gandhi, who embarked upon a two-day visit to her constituency here this morning, talking to reporters here after inaugurating a panchayat bhawan in Dalmau area, strongly defended her son-in-law Robert Vadra, in the recent controversy of having a bunglow in London. "If the government has anything, they can probe it and the real thing would emerge. Everyday, they charge my family but till date, they have nothing to prove it," she claimed. The Congress president coming down heavily on the NDA government over their celebrations of completion two years at the Centre, said," this government which came through fake promises was now celebrating its second anniversary also through fake claims." "The NDA government had neither done anything for the poor and peasants of the country during this two-year regime, nor they launched any new scheme or project.They just changed the names of the schemes and projects of Manmohan Singh government to take the credit," she claimed. Ms Gandhi said, 'it is surprising that even though the NDA government failed to provide any relief to the poor and ryots, but the industrialists and capitalists were enjoying the most in this regime." Ms Gandhi reached here at 0930 hrs this morning and later inaugurated the nagar panchayat building at Dalmau area at 1100 hrs. She will be meeting the district party leaders and workers at Bhuyemau guest house in the evening, besides honouring the children of the constituency, who were in the merit list of different board examinations. Tomorrow morning, the Congress president would hold a Janata Durbar in the guest house for about two hours, where she would be hearing the grievances of people of her constituency. At around 1100 hrs, she is likely to reach Vikas Bhawan, and inaugurate the public utility centre and then attend the meeting of the District Vigilance and Monitoring Committee.UNI MB RJ AE NS1701 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0196-761538.Xml
Accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of behaving like a "Shehenshah", Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday backed her son-in-law Robert Vadra over the allegation that he owns a 'benami' property in London and termed the charge a political conspiracy. She also dared the government to probe the allegation against Vadra 'unbiasedly'. Sonia Gandhi, who was visiting her constituency Rae Bareli, said: "This is also a political conspiracy. What do you mean by Congress-mukt Bharat? Everyday they give excuses and level wrong allegations." "If this (allegation) is true, then they should conduct an unbiased probe. Everything will become clear," said an angry Sonia Gandhi. Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Kirit Somaiya on Monday sought detailed inquiry by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) into alleged involvement of Robert Vadra in the 2009 purchase of a 'benami' or proxy-owned mansion in London. On the celebrations by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on completion of two years in office, Gandhi said: "I have never seen anything like this, Modi ji is the PM, and not a Shehenshah (King)." "Our nation is facing drought, poverty, farmers are in pain. At these times, such a 'show' is not appropriate," she said of the gala event held in New Delhi on Saturday night by the government. The BJP hit back and said the Congress President's defence of her son-in-law vindicates the party's old charge that whatever Vadra does has the backing of the Gandhi family. "Vadra has the blessings of 10 Janpath...That is why he has earned so much money. He can't be dubbed as a private citizen. Whatever he has done has the backing of Sonia Gandhi and Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi," BJP National Secretary Srikant Sharma told IANS. "You can't separate Vadra from the Gandhi family. Sonia Gandhi coming out in support of Vadra has established our charges," he added. The BJP's national media convenor said that the Congress President has been trying to "threaten" the BJP whenever there is a corruption charge against them. "Congress has looted the nation and now they are coming out. Whenever there are corruption charges against the Congress and its family, they try to threaten us. We are not scared," he said. On Sonia Gandhi's jibe at Prime Minister Modi that "he is the PM, and not a Shehenshah (emperor)", Sharma said, "Modi ji is a 'jan sewak'. Those who were Shehenshah are nowhere today. They were sent packing by voters in 2014. Those emperors are now on bail in the National Herald case involving corruption of over Rs 5,000 crore. They are in panic and in frustration," referring to the Gandhi family. --IANS bns/rn/dg ( 458 Words) 2016-05-31-19:24:06 (IANS)
It may recalled that the AIMIM had scheduled its public meeting at Afzalpur Takiya in Bijapur yesterday, which was to be addressed by Barrister Owaisi and other leaders.

However, a police team from Bijapur, visited AIMIM Headquarters at Darusalam in Hyderabad, and served the Notice on behalf of Bijapur Collector, D. Randeep, on Mr. Owaisi.

The District Collector said that, in exercise of the powers vested in him under Section 144 (3) of Criminal procedure Code, imposing prohibitory orders banning the entry of Mr. Asaduddin Owaisi in Bijapur City and restraining him from participating in and or speaking at any public meeting in Bijapur City for a period of 7 days.

Responding to the notice, Mr Asad Owaisi said 'I will abide by the order and I have never violated any order given to me so far and that the contents of the notice served on him were completely biased and untruthful.

He said he would continue to strive for the right of minorities, weaker sections and Backward Classes.

He charged that the notice was a convenient device to 'Stop my party from strengthening its base in Bijapur'. I will criticize the ruling Congress party in Karnataka for their anti-people policies.UNI KNR MVR AK 1904

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Manipur has become the first state in the North East to take up the electronic fund transfer for government payments using electronic clearing services (credit) of the Reserve Bank of India. In consultation with RBI, payment of monthly salaries of employees and other personal entitlements are done through ecs (credit) from the month of October, 2009. An official today said that RBI not only appreciated Manipur for being a model state by leading the other states in NE for making ecs(credit) for salary payment, but also awarded the "jury special mention" in 2011 for the project on "The payment of salary through ecs (credit) for the government employees of Manipur" in the category of "ICT & financial inclusion". Further, other forms/versions of electronic payment like regional electronic clearing system (RECS) of payment for salaries & pensions, national electronic fund transfer (NEFT), real time gross settlement (RTGS) and cash management product (CMP) of SBI have been introduced successfully in the state. The main objective of the entire shift in payments is to enhance transparency in fund transfer, ease of doing financial transactions and to develop a trail of fund flow, he added. Computerisation of all treasuries was initiated during 2005-2006, with funding by the 11th Finance Commission. Treasuries in Manipur are among the first offices to be fully computerised in the state. The hardware installations were taken up, along with computerisation for bill passing through "treasurynet" software.More UNI NS AKM RJ NS1823 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0213-761650.Xml
They said 52-year-old Sumitra Mehta, wife of Ashwin Kumar Mehtra, resident of Mumbai collapsed after complaining chest pain at Kangan on way to Srinagar from Leh.

However, she was immediately rushed to hospital where she was declared dead.

The deceased was returning from Ladakh alongwith other family members, they said adding the body will be flown to Mumbai.UNI BAS SB AN2150

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The fire broke out in the dumping yard at around 1730 hrs this evening with a huge smoke billowing from the spot, causing irritation in the eyes of the residents, an officer in the Disaster Cell of the Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC) said.

At least a dozen fire engines from the neighbouring towns and cities, including Thane, Bhiwandi, Ambernath and Ulhasnagar rushed to the scene and presently fighting the blaze, he said.

The fire fighters along with the civic workers were engaged in the task of putting out the fire.

The cause of fire is said to be excessive heat and the usual methane gas emitted from the yard, the officer added.UNI XR SS SB AN2153

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Unidentified criminals looted Rs 3.5 lakh from a businessman when he was going to deposit the money in a local branch of Bank of India at Rasalpur village in Saran district today. Police said here that four motorcycle borne desperadoes snatched the money bag from the potato merchant Mithilesh Prasad when he was going to deposit the money in Rasulpur branch of Bank of India. Criminals made good their escape on the gun point. A massive manhunt has been launched to nab criminals. UNI XC-DH AKM SB BL2141 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0213-762374.Xml
Ms Banerjee presented the visiting dignitary with a bouquet of flowers and exchanged pleasantries.

This was Ms Banerjee first meeting with the President after she swept the state assembly polls winning for second five-year term winning 211 seats in the 294-seat house.

The President was here to visit his sister's place at Howrah.

Earlier, the President was greeted by state Governor Kesari Nath Tripathi and Agriculture Minister Purnendu Bose at the city airport.UNI PC SB 2142

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"There is no influence of loo but the temperature may increase slightly in the next couple of days. Khajuraho and Burhanpur were the state's hottest today at 43 C. Corresponding figures were Sheopur 42.4 C, Naugaon 42.1 C, Rewa 42 C and Gwalior 41.8 C. The figures were normal," the city-based Regional Meteorological Centre's Meteorologist RR Tripathi told UNI.

The state capital was hotter than yesterday at 41.2 C but this temperature was normal. The minimum 27.4 C was also normal.

In the next 24 hours, isolated dust-storms and thundershowers may lash Rewa, Sagar, Shahdol, Jabalpur, Indore, Bhopal and Gwalior divisions.UNI HLV-AC SB AN2220

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Vice-President M Hamid Ansari has said incidents such as recent racist attacks on African students must be condemned in the strongest terms. ''African students are guests in India and the government remains fully committed to their safety and security,'' he told reporters replying to a question on attacks on African students in India. Dr Ansari, who began a five-day visit to Morocco and Tunisia yesterday, was speaking to reporters on board the special aircraft. Asked about the increasing presence of China on the Dark continent, the Vice-President said both countries had different approaches to engaging African nations, and India did not see itself in competition with China. He highlighted the historical connection, and the common struggle against decolonisation that India shared with the African continent, and that India had always sought to partner it in the development journey, particularly in areas of Information Technology, Telecommunication and health. India, he said, maintains traditionally strong ties with Morocco and Tunisia, both important partners in Africa. The Vice-President said India has a substantial economic relationship with Morocco on account of the large quantity of phosphate which is imported by India and is critical for agriculture. He mentioned that there are a few other sectors where cooperation is deepening such as automobiles, pharmaceuticals and Information Technology. In fact, Bollywood films might find ideal shooting locations in Morocco, he added. India's trade with Morocco stands at more than a billion US dollars, he said. Touching upon India's close ties with Tunisia, Dr Ansari praised the success of the democratic process in the country, speaking of how different political parties managed to work together in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. With Tunisia as well, phosphate was an important item of trade, and there was the potential to expand economic cooperation including the presence of Indian investments, he added.UNI SD SW AE 1600 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0005-761494.Xml
Ivan Krulko, an MP from the Batkivshchina (Fatherland) faction, said Savchenko was elected to the Rada from Batkivshchina, Tass news reported.

"She will join the Verkhovna Rada National Security and Defense Committee," he said.

Savchenko on Tuesday appeared at the parliament meeting.

The former military servicewoman said a few words of gratitude to those who contributed to her release and urged not to forget those who died in Donbass.

Savchenko on the sidelines of parliament accused her new colleagues of inactivity.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian social media have rather ambiguously taken Savchenkos first appearance in parliament, especially her singing during which she mixed up the anthem words.

On March 22, 2016, a court in Russia's southern Rostov region found Savchenko guilty of directing the pro-Kiev forces' artillery fire in southeast Ukraine that had killed two Russian journalists.

Savchenko illegally crossed the Russian border and was sentenced to 22 years in a general-security penal colony and a fine of 30,000 rubles ($440).

On May 25, the Russian president signed a decree to pardon the former Ukrainian servicewoman, who had been in custody in Russia for the past two years.

Savchenko was handed over to the Ukrainian side in exchange for two Russians, Alexander Alexandrov and Yevgeny Yerofeyev, who were convicted in Ukraine.

The former pilot was taken to Kiev onboard the Ukrainian presidential plane the same day.

--IANS py/vt

( 275 Words)

2016-05-31-21:22:05 (IANS)
The body of Mullah Akhtar Mansour, head of the militant outfit Taliban in Afghanistan, who was killed in an air strike by the US in Balochistan earlier this month, has been handed over to his family, an official today said.Mansour's body was ''handed over to heirs in Afghanistan after fulfilling all legal requirements,'' The Express Tribune quoted Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar as saying in a statement.The Interior ministry had confirmed on Sunday that the man killed in the drone strike was the chief of Afghan Taliban after a DNA report verified the same.DNA samples of the charred body found from a remote area near Noshki district of Balochistan were tested against the relative, who came forward to claim the remains.Mansour was originally identified as Wali Muhammad, with the Interior Minister saying that Pakistan was relying on scientific and legal methods to confirm his death.Pakistan had condemned the strike in strongest terms, saying it could have strong implications on Pakistan-US relations as well as the ongoing Afghan peace process.UNI XC RJ SB 2000 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0098-762365.Xml
The UN-backed government in Libya has not invited European ships into its territorial waters to help stop people smuggling because this could harm efforts to broaden support for the fledgling government, its envoy to Rome said today.Ahmed Elmabrouk Safar, ambassador to Rome for Fayaz Seraj's Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA), told reporters foreign warships within sight of its coast "would not help Libyan stability"."Inviting foreign military and naval forces in Libyan waters could be seen as an important security-led step which might cut down on the number of people who are crossing over the Mediterranean, but would it help in unifying the country in the current phase?" the envoy said.The Tripoli government, established in March, is still struggling to assert its authority. It does not control the entire country, including much of the coastline. Armed groups hold real power on the ground and in the east there is a separate government that has not accepted the GNA.This is allowing people smugglers to operate in relative impunity. Last week some 880 migrants may have died in three separate shipwrecks, while more than 13,000 were rescued at sea, the UN Refugee agency said yesterday.The European Union has deployed warships to fight people smuggling off the coast of Libya and Italy has its own naval force in the area, but they have not been invited by the Seraj government into territorial waters, which would allow them to stop migrant boats before they reach the open sea.Libya still lacks resources to fight smuggling alone, including a navy or coastguard fleet, Safar said. Tug boats are being used to stop some migrant boats, he said.What is important for a long-term solution to the smuggling is that the Seraj government build a national consensus so that it can eventually enforce territorial control, and EU training and boats so that it can field its own coastguard fleet, Safar added. REUTERS AKC BL2003 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-762161.Xml
Philippines President-elect Rodrigo Duterte said today his country would not rely on long-term security ally the United States, signalling greater independence from Washington in dealing with China and the disputed South China Sea.The Philippines has traditionally been one of Washington's staunchest supporters in its stand-off with Beijing over the South China Sea, a vital trade route where China has built artificial islands, airstrips and other military facilities.Duterte, the tough-talking mayor of Davao City who swept to victory in a May 9 election, has backed multilateral talks to settle rows over the South China Sea that would include the United States, Japan and Australia as well as claimant nations.He has also called on China, which claims most of the sea, to respect the 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone granted to coastal states under international law.Asked by reporters if he would push for bilateral talks with China, Duterte replied: "We have this pact with the West, but I want everybody to know that we will be charting a course of our own."It will not be dependent on America. And it will be a line that is not intended to please anybody but the Filipino interest."Duterte was unveiling his cabinet line-up a day after a joint session of Congress declared him the election winner. He formally takes over as president on June 30.Key ministerial appointments went mainly to conventional choices, a decision likely to allay nerves among foreign and domestic investors about a lurch away from reforms that have generated robust economic growth.They also may point to a bid to resolve differences over the South China Sea.The Philippines, Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia and Taiwan have overlapping claims to waters rich in oil and gas and through which trillions of dollars' worth of trade pass each year.Duterte's pick for foreign secretary, Perfecto Yasay, has sounded a conciliatory note."I don't think that there is another way of resolving this dispute except talking to each other," Yasay told reporters this week. "We certainly would like to make sure that we are able to resume bilateral talks because these are necessary."NOT SO CLEAR CUTMuddying the picture somewhat was the choice of Nicanor Faeldon, a former marine who led a coup bid about a decade ago, as head of the customs bureau, the country's second-largest agency in terms of revenue.In December, Faeldon took a group of Filipino protesters to a disputed island in the South China Sea that is held by the Philippines, triggering an angry response from Beijing.Before Duterte's election, the Philippines also took the dispute to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, although China does not recognise the case. A ruling is expected in the coming weeks."I am waiting for the arbitration," Duterte said of the process, when asked about investment prospects with China."It will impact on us in so many fronts ... I would like to wait for this, then, with the advice of the cabinet, I might be able to proceed. But you know, I am not ready to go to war. It will just result in a massacre."Duterte, 71, named a former school classmate, Carlos Dominguez, as finance minister, and an economics professor, Ernesto Pernia, as economic planning minister."I can assure you they are all men of integrity and honesty," Duterte said in Davao, where he was mayor for more than two decades before being elected president.Dominguez, who was mining and farm minister in two previous governments, hails from a wealthy family that has interests in real estate and hotels, while the US-educated Pernia is a former lead economist for the Asian Development Bank."We are very excited about this cabinet," said Perry Pe, president of the Management Association of the Philippines. "They will hit the ground running from the first day."Duterte's defiance of political tradition has drawn comparisons with US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.His "man-of-the-people" demeanour tapped into voters' disappointment at the ruling elite's failure to tackle poverty and inequality despite average economic growth of more than 6 per cent under President Benigno Aquino.Duterte condones execution-style killings of criminals, shudders at the thought of wearing a tie or socks, and has vowed not to work until after noon when he becomes president.Some cabinet positions have yet to be announced, and two of the 21 jobs confirmed so far are women. When a female journalist asked a question at the briefing, Duterte wolf-whistled. REUTERS AKC NS2100 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-762495.Xml
Six men were sentenced to death in Bangladesh today for killing eight people during a bank robbery in Dhaka last year that police blamed on Islamist militants, the public prosecutor said.Although no group claimed responsibility for the robbery, police blame two outlawed groups, Ansarullah Bangla Team and Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, which have been active in a recent surge of Islamist militant violence in Bangladesh.Since early last year, almost 30 people have been killed in militant attacks, some of which were claimed by Islamic State and al Qaeda. The government denies either network has a presence in Bangladesh, blaming home-grown groups instead.Public Prosecutor Khandaker Abdul Mannan said the defendants had confessed to being members of Ansarullah Bangla Team and Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen during the trial."They committed a heinous crime. They killed innocent people," Mannan told reporters outside the court after the sentencing.The men were sentenced to death by hanging. One suspect was still on the run, Mannan said. Another man was sentenced to life imprisonment and two others were handed three-year jail terms. Two more were acquitted.The gang set off crude bombs as it fled a branch of state-run Bangladesh Commerce Bank on the outskirts of Dhaka, the capital, with takings of 8,900 dollar. They had killed the manager to get the key to the vault.Of the nine people killed, one was a robber who was chased and beaten to death by customers and bystanders.Defence lawyer Faruq Ahmed said his clients would appeal the verdict and that they had been denied justice."The video footage of the robbery was not produced before the court," he said.The authorities blame Ansarullah Bangla Team for a series of attacks since February last year in which five atheist bloggers, a publisher and two gay rights activists were hacked to death.The hardline Islamist groups want to impose strict Islamic law on Bangladesh, whose population of 160 million are mostly moderate Muslims.The government has launched a security crackdown that has seen dozens arrested. At least five Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen members, including the alleged mastermind of the robbery, have been killed in shootouts since November, according to the police.Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen has laid low since six of its leaders were hanged in 2007 for attacks that included 500 bombs exploding almost simultaneously on a single day in 2005, some in Dhaka. REUTERS AKC BL2121 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-762527.Xml
Two US service members were injured over the weekend, one each in Iraq and Syria, a Pentagon spokesman said today."They were not on the front lines, they were not engaged in active combat, but they were hit in both cases by indirect fire and suffered injuries," Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said.Davis did not say to which branch of the military they belonged, but added that they were carrying out advise and assist duties. REUTERS AKC AN2206 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-762556.Xml
The long-standing leader of Western Sahara's separatist movement, Mohamed Abdelaziz, died today after more three decades of leading a fight for independence for the disputed territory from Morocco.Abdelaziz, who was 68 and the Polisario Front's secretary general and president of its self-declared Sahrawi Republic, had suffered from a long illness, the movement's Sahara Press Service and Algeria's state news agency said.His death came at a sensitive time for the Western Sahara, after Morocco earlier this year expelled part of a United Nations peacekeeping mission from the territory after a disagreement with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.Morocco took over most of the territory in 1975, but Abdelaziz's Polisario Front began a guerrilla war saying the desert region in Africa's northwest belongs to them. Polisario has been based in Algeria since a UN ceasefire in 1991.Algeria's government declared eight days of mourning after his death was announced. Polisario rules state that the movement's assembly president takes over for 40 days after which an extraordinary session will be held to choose a new leader.Abdelaziz, who lived in the Sahrawi refugee camp in southern Algeria, had led the Polisario though a period a struggle and into the UN-backed truce. Since 1991, the dispute has been frozen by a deadlock over how to hold a referendum on the territory's future.Polisario representatives say Morocco put the ceasefire at risk by expelling UN staffers and trying to scuttle the referendum, including on the question of independence. Morocco has offered an autonomy plan as the only way forward. REUTERS AKC AN2252 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-762592.Xml
I dont blame him for killing attacker

Alban John, the father of the police officer told reporters yesterday that he does not blame Johns relative for killing the man  Joseph Logan, 31,  because if he were present he would do the same thing.

If I was there I would have been in trouble too, because I could not see my daughter being attacked like that and do nothing, said Alban John, while speaking to reporters at his Peytonville Road home.

Alban told reporters yesterday of his shock when his daughter recounted the ordeal while lying on a hospital bed being treated for wounds that Logan inflicted while he was beating her.

Alban explained that Johns relative is building a house near to his home on Peytonville Road, and on weekends he and the workers assisting him would come together after they finishing for the day, cook food and lime.

Newsday was told that on Sunday, both Burke and John were present, but Burke was acting in an aggressive and belligerent manner, and it led to an argument between him and John.

Natalie (John) told me that he was drinking alcohol straight from a bottle and was acting very aggressive.

She told him that it was best he called his mother to come and pick him up, because she was not carrying him home in that condition. She told him that his behaviour was an embarrassment. According to the father, Natalie went to her car at about 4 am, and was grabbed from behind and dragged to an empty room on the property. Burke threw Natalie to the floor, got on top of her and began banging her head against the floor, and hitting her in the face and head. The relative, after realising he was not seeing Natalie, decided to look around for her. He came into the room just in time to see Burke on top of Natalie, beating her relentlessly.

A fracas broke out when Natalies relative attempted to save her from her attacker.

During the fray, it is believed that Burke was hit in the head with a blunt object.

Both Natalie and Burke were rushed to the Arima District Hospital, but Burke was pronounced dead on arrival.

Natalie John was treated for injuries to her head and face at the hospital and was later discharged.

Newsday understands that she still has bruises and swelling on her head and her face from the beating she received. Her relative is said to be at the Maloney Police Station assisting police with inquiries.

While homicide detectives are still trying to ascertain the circumstances surrounding Burkes death, Newsday was told that he had a history of violence.

Johns relatives yesterday said that he was seen in several altercations, from as early as a week ago, and had also been seen abusing the mother of his children some time ago.
Go to hell Mr Archbishop, says Sat

That was the message Secretary General of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha (SDMS) Satnarayan Sat Maharaj sent publicly for Roman Catholic Archbishop Joseph Harris in light of the controversial debate on child marriage and the law.

Mr Archbishop and all you other people, look at the mote in your own eye before you point out the mote in the eye of the Hindu.

If I have to leave one message, the message is Allyuh go to hell. This is a business of the Hindu community and the State. If we require a change in the law, we will invite the government to speak to us and change the law, Maharaj said.

He was delivering the feature address yesterday at the Indian Arrival Day celebrations held at Parvati Girls Hindu College, Debe.

He supports child marriage while Roman Catholic Archbishop Harris views it as legalised statutory rape.

Referring to the controversial debate as a spectacle in Trinidad in recent years, Maharaj accused the RC officials of corrupting more young children more than anyone else. Describing himself as a aging warrior, Maharaj charged that RC has the most corrupt church in the whole world and called for Harris to mind his own  damn business.

The Pope in Rome had to pay tens of millions of dollars for corrupting the children of the world.

And here we have a Catholic Archbishop telling us how to get our girls married. Mind yuh own damn business. Archbishop, mind yuh own damn business, Maharaj repeated. For the third time he called on the Archbishop to mind his own damn business saying that children are having babies for old men in TT.

No body locking up the ole men.

Mt Hope reported last year that 74 teens between the ages of 12 and 14 made child and they eh know who the father is. But you have an archbishop who want to tell us how to get married, how to make children.

I say Archbishop, Mind yuh own damn business. Not one Hindu girl under the age of 18 has gotten married within the last two years, Maharaj charged.

Maharaj also threw jabs at ambassadors who are in the country, accusing them too of telling Hindus at what age devotees should get married.

Maharaj charged: They want to tell us when to get married, how to get married, how to dance, how to make love. They might even give you a license when to make love to your wife, how many days a week, or how many days a month. As soon as you give them an opening, they would want to enter your bedroom. Although he did not referr to any of the ambassadors my name, he noted that in each State in the US there is a different age for marriages.

A person as young as 13 years old can be married in the US. US Ambassador to this country John Estrada had weighed in on the debate of child marriage and was reported as saying: Let the child be a child, Maharaj said: Mr Ambassador, cure your own evil before you come to tell us how to cure our evil.

We dont instruct anybody at what age your daughter should make ah child. We dont tell them that. We leave that up to the parents, parental control. The Hindu leader added that three-quarter of the problems in the nations schools is not delinquent children but rather delinquent parents. Parents, he said, have lost control or not interested in their children.

He emphasised that the issue of child marriage is the business of the Hindu community and the State. Maharaj explained:  It is only there as a safety net. When you are young , you take chances and if a girl at the age of 14 took a chance and get pregnant, the two sets of parents would come together and they will give support. They will send them back to school and they will take charge of the child.

This is the culture of our community.

So dont discuss our business out there. He suggested that both the State and media should discuss the business of the Hindus with the Hindus.

Maharaj reminsced that from 1845 to 1945, Hindus got married with parental consent and the the entire village attended the ceremony.

But that marriage was not recognised by the State and it was only in 1945 that the Hindu Marriage law was passed. To Hindus, a marriage is not a secular event, it is a religious event, he noted.

Maharaj further criticised Canadian missionaries accusing the foreigners of viewing Hindus as animals as well as for trying to convert them to Christianity.

In a fiery mode, Maharaj said English education had its price.

The price was conversion. They did not leave Canada and came here to educate us out of the goodness of their hearts. They regarded us as animals to be converted into Christianity. Speaking about the arrival of East Indians to this country , 171 years ago, he said they came with their jahaji bundles which contained, pieces of scriptures, plants and seeds. Today the products of these jahaji bundles overwhelmed TT and Maharaj estimates that about 40 percent of all the trees and plants in Trinidad were from the bundles.
TT making progress in drug war

resulted in an increased overall volume of drug seizure. The State Department continued.

 The Government of Trinidad and Tobago continues to progress in its ability to investigate and prosecute complex drug cases that target criminal networks. In collaboration with several international partners, local law enforcement entities seized 2,541 kilograms (kg) of marijuana and 392 kg of cocaine in 2015. The State Department said this was an increase compared to 471 kg and 83 kg of these respective drugs in 2014. The State Department also noted the TT Transnational Crime Unit, continues to collaborate with law enforcement, international partners, and the Coast Guard.

plays a significant role in the increased detection and interception of illegal drugs. While this countrys open coastline and direct transportation routes to Europe, Canada, and the United States make it an ideal location for cocaine and marijuana transshipment, the State Department observed, Illegal drug shipments appeared to increase in 2015, mainly originating from Trinidads southern neighbors. Marijuana is locally produced and is the most widely used drug domestically.

but other drugs, including cocaine, heroin, and ecstasy are also available. Local marijuana producers compete with imports from St Vincent and the Grenadines, Jamaica, Guyana.

and Venezuela.Other illicit drugs  primarily cocaine, but also small amounts of heroin and ecstasy  are trafficked through the country by transnational organised crime groups operating in TT, exploiting its close proximity to Venezuela and vulnerabilities at ports of entry. The main destination for these substances is the European market. On May 23, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro agreed that both countries will intensify their border security efforts to curb the flow of illegal drugs and weapons and other transnational criminal activities. National Security Minister Edmund Dillon was in Caracas yesterday for security talks with his Venezuelan counterparts. The State Department said while TTs commitment to drug demand reduction is strong, its rehabilitation capacity remains under-resourced to meet local demand for treatment. Corruption and gaps in legislative and organizational implementation are challenges to the countrys efforts to curb the trafficking and use of illegal narcotics, the State Department added. The State Department observed that this countrys drug control institutions are challenged by deficiencies in staffing and funding. There is also distrust within and between certain units of law enforcement.

the military, and the intelligence community impedes effective interagency information sharing and collaboration. On the issue of corruption, the State Department said Government neither directly encourages nor facilitates the illicit production or distribution of drugs nor the laundering of proceeds from the sale of illicit drugs. No charges of drug-related corruption were filed against senior government officials in 2015. Media and anecdotal reports of drug-related corruption in the ranks of the Police Service.

Prisons, Defense Force, Customs and Excise Division, and port employees are common, the State Department added. The State Department also said the Police Complaints Authority.

an independent law enforcement oversight body, recorded 317 complaints.

including perverting the course of justice, fraud, corruption and extortion last year. Local counternarcotic units continue to receive support from international donors in specialized training and equipment. Improvements in investigating and prosecuting drug cases illustrate the effectiveness of international support, and the growing ability of Trinidad and Tobagos law enforcement and investigative units to innovate and track highly flexible criminal networks, the State Department said. While TT and the US have had an extradition treaty in force since 1999, the State Department said, Although extraditions from TT can take one or more years to complete, the treaty remains an effective way to return fugitives to the United States for prosecution. In 2015, several fugitives were returned to the United States from Trinidad and Tobago for prosecution.

including a major narcotics trafficker, the State Department indicated. TT remains an active partner in the US Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI) where the focus for this country is on law enforcement and military capacity building.

juvenile justice, and demand reduction.
Medical orderlies suspended over scuffle

Newsday learned that Singh has also been sent on leave, pending an investigation into the scuffle.

A report was made to the San Fernando Police Station that letters were served by the hospitals Human Resources Department on the Orderlies, that they were to be transferred from the SFGH to the the Princes Town District Health Facility.

Following that memo, Singh was confronted in his office at about 11.30 am on April 28. The door to his office was locked and he was grabbed by his shirt and a scuffle ensued.

A memo from Anita Lakhan, who is the SFGHs manager of administration, dated May 25 and headed: Suspension of Medical Orderlies, was addressed to all members of staff. It advised that the medical Orderlies (names stated; two males and a female), have been suspended with effect from Tuesday May 24, 2016, until further notice.In this regard, you all are hereby notified that until further notice, these officers are not rostered for duty and are relieved of their previous duties and not authorised to access work-related areas, the memo stated.

It further stated that staff are to desist from allowing them to handle patients or perform any other duties in their capacity as medical Orderlies.

The memo concluded, To do so could jeopardise patient care and your own employment. The memo was copied to Chief Executive Officer Anil Gosine, Acting General Manager (Human Resources) Debra Singh-Khan and Manager (employee relations) Dan Mahabirsingh.
Kamla: Holly a national icon

She further observed, Few people in our country have come close to Holly B in his contribution to creating understanding among our people and for his efforts at nation building. Persad-Bissessar added .
Ramesh: People fed up with politicians

Maharaj, who heads a group called Democracy Watch, believes that the population is growing intolerant of politicians hyprocritical behaviour and sounded a warning yesterday that there could be societal reactions.

Maharaj was at the time addressing a joint press conference of the Highway Re-Route Movement (HRM) and trade unions, at the Oilfield Workers Trade Union (OWTUs) headquarters in San Fernando.

Maharaj said: I want to tell you, the people of Trinidad and Tobago have become intolerant that you have a situation in which when you are in opposition, you play one tune, and when you get into government, you play a different tune.

Over the years, this has happened too often. In opposition, the opposition party condemns the then government and say if you put me in government, we going to do x, y, z. But when the people put you into office, the government then continues with the same policies and in effect, the same problem continues. Maharaj warned that citizens may feel compelled to intervene if governments are not seen to be acting in their interest. The former Attorney General went on to call for a change in laws, to have a recall of government.

He said, If you look at the country at this time, murder and crime, uncontrollable, and nothing is happening about it.

We cannot remain silent about this.

Something has to happen.

People are unsafe. People are being robbed, they are afraid to go to the police station. When you go to the police station, nothing is being done. Look at the murders? Our society is becoming numb about murders.  Maharaj said he felt duty bound to tell the government that the public was not satisfied with their governance.

He supported a call by HRM for an independent probe in the San Fernando to Point Fortin Highway project, saying that there must be justice when it comes to the construction of the controversial project.

He called on the government to appoint a three-member task force or a special council, to make recommendations for criminal or civil action to be taken against those involved in the highway project if any wrongdoing were committed.

Maharaj said: It is not fair to the people of Trinidad and Tobago, for members of government to rape the treasury, to be corrupt and disregard the law, to be reckless and cause billions of taxpayers money to be lost and for another government to do nothing about it.
Fire threat at Food Basket

According to a police report, it was at about 4.30 am yesterday when Giovanni Clarke, was on guard duty at Southern Food Basket on Coffee Street, when he observed black smoke emanating from the front entrance to the building.

An alarm was raised and fire fighters were able to extinguish the blaze which is believed to have started in a refrigerator. When contacted, the supermarket owner Nazim Mohammed told Newsday that there was no damage to the building.

He said, We suffered just minor damages to two fridges. There was fire in one of the fridges. Mohammed added that the supermarkets employees were not displaced and once the store had been cleaned, it will re-open for business as usual.

A spokesperson from Belgroves Funeral Home and Crematorium which is located next door told Newsday they suffered some smoke damage
Parang Association mourns Betaudiers passing

We are moreover pleased that Mr Betaudiers legacy in Parang has been kept alive as the programme continues through his son Holly Jr who also serves as the host of our annual Junior Parang Festival. Holly Betaudier was born in Santa Rosa, Arima and was fondly referred to as the Arima Kid. He was very instrumental in the careers of many of our best known entertainers over the last six decades through his other well-known television programme ,Scouting for Talent. The release ended, on behalf of the President, members of our Executive Management Committee, Honorary members and all represented parranderos and parang groups of NPATT, we extend our deepest condolences to Mr Betaudiers wife, children, relatives and the entire national community. ?Viva la parranda!
Morocco and Tunisia are Important Partners in Africa - Vice President

Morocco, Tue, 31 May 2016 NI Wire

Departs for Official visit to Morocco and Tunisia

The Vice President of India, Shri M. Hamid Ansari has said that India maintains traditionally strong ties with Morocco and Tunisia, both important partners in Africa. He was addressing a Press Conference on board the Special Aircraft on his way to an Official Visit to Morocco and Tunisia from May 30, 2016 to June 03, 3016, today.

The Vice President said that India has a substantial economic relationship with Morocco on account of the large quantity of Phosphate which is imported by India and is critical for agriculture. The Vice President mentioned that there are a few other sectors where cooperation is deepening such as Automobiles, pharmaceuticals and Information Technology. He also indicated that Bollywood films might find ideal shooting locations in Morocco. India's trade with Morocco stands at more than a billion US dollars, he said.

Touching upon India's close ties with Tunisia, The Vice President praised the success of the democratic process in the country, speaking of how different political parties managed to work together in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. With Tunisia as well, Vice President mentioned, phosphate was an important item of trade, and there was the potential to expand economic cooperation including the presence of Indian investments.

Responding to a question on recent attacks on African Students in India, the Vice President said that such incidents must be condemned in the strongest terms. African students are guests in India and the government remains fully committed to their safety and security, he added.

On a question on India's cooperation with Morocco and Tunisia in tackling terrorism, the Vice President said that India continues to work closely to share intelligence and security related information with these countries. Sharing real-time cyber security related information is crucial in the efforts to tackle terrorism, he added.

Responding to a question on increasing presence of China, the Vice President said that both countries had different approaches to engaging African nations, and that India did not see itself in competition with China. The Vice President highlighted the historical connection, and the common struggle against decolonization that India shared with the African continent, and that India had always sought to partner it in the development journey, particularly in areas of Information Technology, Telecommunication, Health, etc.

Source: PIB
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Investigators believe learning why malaria causes acute, potentially lethal disease in some humans and animals, while others are much more resilient or tolerant, could lead them to better intervention strategies for malaria and other diseases, including new and better drugs.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) are supporting the research through a $6.4 million contract. The research partnership is part of DARPAs THoR (Technologies for Host Resilience) program and is termed the HAMMER (Host Acute Models of Malaria to study Experimental Resilience) project.

HAMMER is one of a few projects in the THoR program, established for a three-year period, covering a variety of diverse host-pathogen model systems. The HAMMER project uniquely focuses on malaria and its effects on human and non-human primate hosts.

Malaria, which is transmitted through mosquito bites, is the most widespread human parasitic disease and is endemic in approximately 100 countries. It causes fever, pain and other acute responses, and in severe cases it can become deadly within days of the onset of symptoms.

Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease caused by a parasitic microorganism called Plasmodium.

Malaria is a potentially lethal disease, but resilience in some people and non-human primates allows them to control the disease and avoid adverse outcomes, so that the infection is not incapacitating, says Mary R. Galinski, PhD, professor of medicine and infectious diseases at Emory University School of Medicine, Emory Vaccine Center and Yerkes National Primate Research Center.

Our goals are to identify host features associated with resilience, thinking beyond the hosts immune response into the realms of physiology, biochemistry and pathogenesis, and develop interventions that could enhance that resilience.

In addition to Galinski, key leaders of the THoR HAMMER project include Juan B. Gutierrez, PhD, associate professor of mathematics and bioinformatics at the University of Georgia, and Rabindra Tirouvanziam, PhD, assistant professor of pediatrics at Emory University School of Medicine.

The project includes more than 40 established investigators in infectious diseases, systems biology, physiology, pathology, immunology, genomics, bioinformatics, pediatrics, cardiology, pulmonology, biomedical engineering, and mathematics at the three institutions, and through other collaborations.

THoRs HAMMER project focuses on the malaria parasite Plasmodium knowlesi, which can infect both humans and non-human primates. Plasmodium knowlesi causes mild chronic infections in some monkeys, such as long-tailed and pig-tailed macaques, which are its natural hosts. However, it causes severe, virulent infections in other monkeys, such as rhesus macaques.

Using systems biology approaches, the THoRs HAMMER team will generate large datasets on characteristics of P. knowlesi infection in the two types of non-human primates and in humans. They will then develop and apply mathematical models to compare and contrast the different scenarios of infection to identify particular host features associated with resilience. This may yield insights that could lead to novel interventions for malaria, including new drugs.

The researchers will use surgically implanted telemetry devices to gather continuous real-time physiological data from the two types of monkeys, before and during infection, including temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, and mobility. The HAMMER project will investigate correlates of physiological signals captured via telemetry with clinical and molecular variables, to detect signatures of the onset of severe disease.

The team also is collaborating with Balbir Singh, professor and director of the Malaria Research Centre at the University of Malaysia, Sarawak, to examine a large cohort of samples from human P. knowlesi infections. Malaysian Borneo is the epicenter of a significant animal-to-human public health threat in Southeast Asian countries and P. knowlesi accounts for the majority of Borneos malaria cases. Such zoonotic infections have been reported in other parts of Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar and Vietnam.

By combining the new technology of telemetry devices in non-human primates with data from human infections, our project will both deepen understanding of malaria caused by P. knowlesi, and generate valuable information to address other types of malaria, including disease caused by P. falciparum and P. vivax, the most common malaria parasites worldwide, says Gutierrez.

The researchers ultimate goal is to test candidate therapeutic interventions in highly susceptible hosts with the aim of reducing disease severity and death in the absence of effective antimalarial chemotherapy, or in conjunction with antimalarial chemotherapy. If successful, such host-directed therapeutic strategies could be available for use by people in need, whether they are infected with P. knowlesi, other species of Plasmodium, and possibly other pathogens. These challenging goals are fitting with DARPAs track record taking on some of the worlds most difficult and creative research projects, venturing into unchartered scientific territory.

The THoRs HAMMER project builds upon the scientific infrastructure of the Malaria Host-Pathogen Interaction Center (MaHPIC), a malaria systems biology partnership between Emory, UGA, Georgia Tech, and the CDC Foundation, established in 2012 with Federal funds from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Health and Human Services, under Contract No. HHSN272201200031C. Through its robust, multi-institutional research partnership and global collaborations, MaHPIC has used technological advances to conduct innovative systems biology research in non-human primates and applied mathematical modeling tools to integrate large, diverse datasets, including from human samples. The MaHPIC and HAMMER team members will work collaboratively to further the distinct goals of both projects.

Our systems biology team, which has become well-established through our MaHPIC consortium, plans to positively impact the work of all THoR projects by continuing to promote cross-fertilization of ideas both within our team and among all THoR project participants nationally, says Tirouvanziam.

SOURCES- DARPA, Emory University
Modernization of Russias heavy aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov is planned to be launched in the first quarter of 2017, the corresponding contract will be signed in the short run, a source in the defense industry complex told TASS on Wednesday.

The works on the vessel will begin after she returns from a long-distance voyage in the Mediterranean in the first quarter of 2017 and will last for two-three years, the source said.

The Defense Ministrys contract with the United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) on the aircraft carriers repair with modernization worth several billion rubles under the technical design of the Nevskoye Design Bureau is ready, it will be signed in June, he added. The source said that the service contract on the Admiral Kuznetsov with the Northern Fleet command has already been concluded.

It is unknown where the upgrade will be carried out. According to the source, the Sevmash shipyard and Zvezdochka Ship Repair Center are among the bidders. The modernization will focus on the aircraft carriers flight deck, including replacement of the deck covering, tailhooks, aircraft arresting gear and other elements of the take-off system, he said.

The 55,000-ton Admiral Kuznetsov will enter the two to three-year upgrade availability at an unknown Russian yard sometime next year to undergo upgrades to allow the carrier to improve launching and recovering aircraft.

SOURCES  Tass, USNI, Youtube
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The unpredictable California governor predictably supports an old foe.

If you stick around politics long enough, its often said, you get to see everything. Anyone who remembers Jerry Browns unorthodox, left-bent 1992 presidential campaign, which contested Bill Clintons nomination long after it was certain and right up to the convention, has to be a bit amused at Browns decision today to endorse Hillary Clinton on the grounds that Bernie Sanderss challenge threatens party unity.

In his open letter to California Democrats and independents, Brown alludes to certain similarities between his 92 campaign and Sanderss effort this year. But he doesnt mention the duration of his challenge to Bill Clinton, even as he suggests that Bernie should pack it in lest he indirectly help Donald Trump become president.

At the 1992 Democratic convention in New York, Browns supporters tried to shout down speakers with chants of Let Jerry speak! (the Clinton campaign wanted an endorsement from Brown before letting him near the podium, of course), and some in the California delegation tried to shout down Hillary Clinton when she addressed them on her husbands behalf.

That wasnt the first or worst time HRC felt the wrath of Jerry: During a candidate debate earlier that year, Brown lashed out at Bill Clinton for allegedly steering state business to Hillarys law firm in Arkansas. After accusing the unpredictable former California governor of reinventing yourself every year or so, the Big Dog bitterly said to Brown, You arent worthy of standing on the same platform as my wife.

Well, Brown may or may not stand on the same platform with Hillary Clinton in the seven days remaining before the end of the California primary. But Bill Clinton was wrong about one thing: Jerry Brown hasnt reinvented himself every year or so; hes prone to long, slow arcs of reinvention, which ultimately made him, in this (presumably) last incarnation, into a tough-minded centrist who has managed to turn Californias notoriously dysfunctional fiscal situation around and become the closest thing California Democrats have to a unifying figure. If you knew nothing of Browns history, his endorsement of Hillary Clinton would be completely unremarkable. But the Golden States relationship with its current governor is full of rich and tangled history; he was, after all, elected chief executive the first time around four years before Bill Clinton first became a governor, and seven years before Bernie Sanders was elected to anything.

For all the urgency Brown expresses in his open letter about Donald Trumps threat to America, Californias not in danger of falling to the tycoon in November. As he notes, moreover, Clinton has all but wrapped up the Democratic nomination no matter what happens on June 7. But an actual Clinton win in California would go a long way toward forcing a pre-convention reckoning between the two candidates, and perhaps avoiding the kind of dissension Brown himself tried to unleash in New York 24 years ago. If Clinton does win on June 7, Brown will probably get more credit than he deserves, given the limited impact of endorsements. And that might finally bury one of the best-known hatchets in American politics.
Were heading into a general election with nominees who have mirror strengths and weaknesses, even within the universe of white voters. Photo: Getty Images

The stereotypical Donald Trump voter is a non-college-educated white man. Hillary Clintons base of support is much more diverse, but in terms of general-election swing voters, her stereotypical voter is probably a professional white woman. Stereotypes are always overgeneralizations and are sometimes misleading, but depending on how the general election develops, the impressive strength of the major-party candidates among downscale white men and upscale white women could prove to be the key matchup.

Veteran journalist Ron Brownstein looked at the internals of some recent general-election polls and found that adding gender to education levels among white voters produced a shocking gap between the two candidates.

In early polling, the class inversion between Clinton and Trump is scaling unprecedented heights. In the national CBS/NYT poll, Trump led Clinton by 27 percentage points among non-college-educated white men, while she led him by 17 points among college-educated white women, according to figures provided by CBS. The ABC/Washington Post survey recorded an even greater contrast: it gave Trump a staggering 62-point advantage among non-college-educated white men and Clinton a 24-point lead among college-educated white women. State surveys reinforce the pattern. In the Pennsylvania Quinnipiac survey, Trump led among non-college-educated white men by 43 points, but trailed by 23 among college-educated white women. In Quinnipiacs latest Ohio survey, Clintons vote among college-educated white women was 20 points higher than her showing among blue-collar white men.

Brownstein argues that each candidate is reaching, or in some cases exceeding, the all-time records for their party in these demographics  which means the gap could be larger than ever, too. What makes the trade-off potentially acceptable to Democrats is that college-educated white women are a growing part of the electorate while non-college-educated white men have been steadily declining for decades. What gives Republicans some hope is the theory that blue-collar white men, who are usually somewhat marginal voters, will turn out at record levels for Trump. Sean Trende, the primary author of the missing white voters hypothesis explaining a big part of Mitt Romneys 2012 loss, thinks Trump is a good fit for these voters despite his weaknesses elsewhere in the electorate.

To be very clear: Even though these two opposite corners of the white vote are significant, in the end, a vote is a vote, and there are many dynamics that could matter more. Most notably, if Hillary Clinton can reassemble the Obama coalition of young and minority voters with the same percentages and turnout numbers as the president did in 2012 or (even more) in 2008, she has a big margin for error among all categories of older white voters. And within the universe of white voters, racial polarization could give Trump a higher share of college-educated voters than currently appears likely, while Democrats have high hopes of doing very well among non-college-educated white women by hammering away at the mogul on both economic and gender issues.

In the end, Democrats have won the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections and have a coalition that is growing while that of the GOP is shrinking. They also have a nominee who, for all her problems, raises far fewer worries among both swing and base voters than does the Republican. Trumps carefree attitude about who he offends could be more problematic in a general than in a primary election, and his disdain for the technological tools necessary to carefully target voters could prove to be a strategic handicap.

If the election does come down to a contest between women and men of any race or level of educational achievement, a Clinton victory would be not only historic, but also a demonstration of the power of sisterhood against an opponent whos a cartoon-character representation of the Man.
Rob Portman: Bipartisan, anti-heroin.

Rob Portman is campaigning against heroin in Ohio. Kelly Ayotte is running against absenteeism in New Hampshire. And Mark Kirk is telling Illinois that its hardworking families and heroic vets inspired him to fully recover from his stroke.

Recent ads from these three vulnerable Republican senators are as provincial as they are non-ideological  qualities that reflect a broader GOP strategy to insulate down-ballot candidates from Donald Trumps extreme unfavorability numbers. Party officials have instructed Republican senators to keep their races focused on local issues by campaigning as though they are running for sheriff, the Washington Post reports.

For Portman, the heroin epidemic is an issue ideally suited to the sheriff strategy: a genuine social crisis with special resonance in Ohio that the senator successfully co-sponsored bipartisan legislation to address.

Working together with Democrats and Republicans, I passed legislation to help break the grip of addiction, Portman says in an ad called Wildfire, one of three new spots championing his leadership on the opiate crisis. By investing in prevention, treatment, and recovery, empowering law enforcement, and stopping the over-prescribing of painkillers, we can turn the tide.

Donald Trump will doubtlessly be spending significant time in Portmans backyard this fall, as he tries to make Ohio a red state again. But the senator has expressed little enthusiasm for campaigning with the GOP nominee.

Im going to have my own campaign out there and do my own thing, Portman told the Post earlier this month. So I dont know that thatll happen. But if he wants to help, thats fine.

Kelly Ayotte  who has pledged to support Donald Trump while refusing to endorse him  struck a similar note when asked about whether shed like to see the Donald stumping for her in the Granite State.

I have one priority and thats campaigning for myself, the New Hampshire senator said.

Ayottes most recent ad is laser-focused on her Democratic opponent Maggie Hassan, attacking the sitting governor on the fiercely non-ideological grounds of absenteeism. Hassan and her Democratic supporters have criticized Ayotte for refusing to give President Obamas Supreme Court nominee a hearing, scolding her on social media with the hashtag #DoYourJob. Ayottes new spot rebutts that critique without actually defending the merits of her position on Merrick Garlands nomination. Instead of engaging Hassan in a debate on a matter of national concern, Ayotte harangues her for neglecting her local responsibilities.

The response from Team Hassan reflects her campaigns diametrically divergent strategy: While Ayotte tries to keep the race focused on the local and nonpartisan, Hassan just wants to talk about Donald Trump and the Senates Supreme Court blockade.

Kelly Ayottes hypocritical and misleading attacks wont fool Granite Staters, Hassan spokesperson Aaron Jacobs told WMUR. [Shes] taking on increasing criticism for her support for Donald Trump and her refusal to do her job by obstructing the Supreme Court confirmation process.

Mark Kirks new ad is the most rigorously apolitical in the litter. The vulnerable Illinois Republican uses his 60-second spot to tell the story of his struggle to regain the full use of his legs after a stroke he suffered in 2012. Shots of Kirk undergoing physical therapy culminate in footage of him mounting the Capitol steps for the first time since his calamity  and being embraced at the top by a bipartisan contingent of his colleagues. To the extent that political issues enter the frame, they are kept meticulously vague.

As I learned to walk and climb again, I thought of Illinois families struggling to get by. I thought of our veterans, Kirk says. I climbed the steps for everyone facing their own challenges.

Mark Kirk: pro struggling families, anti your personal challenges. This is markedly less red-blooded stuff than Kirks December ad assailing his opponent, Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth, for being soft on Syrian war orphans.

Still, the turn toward non-ideological innocuousness isnt universal. Pennsylvania senator Pat Toomey has taken the sheriff strategy more literally than his colleagues  and embraced strains of Trumps law-and-order ethos in the process.

When rioters destroyed American cities, Pat Toomey stood strong with police, a voice-over assures the Keystone State cops in an ad released in late March.

Toomey has called it outrageous for his Democratic opponent Katie McGinty to tie him to Donald Trump. But hes also shown no qualms about nationalizing their race.

She can do whatever shes going to feel she needs to do, Toomey told Philadelphia radio host Dom Giordano in late April. But the fact is, she is in lockstep with [Democratic front-runner] Hillary Clinton. She actually agrees with Hillary Clinton and the most liberal wing of the Democrats on everything.

Still, Toomey paired his anti-rioters spot with an ad touting the bravery of his heterodox position on gun control. This two-step  one message geared toward base turnout, one toward reassuring the fickle middle  is a gambit that Toomeys colleagues will likely emulate in the coming months. Theres more than one way to run for sheriff.
U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a press conference at the Trump Tower on May 31, 2016, in New York. Photo: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

The most important decision every president must make is how to feel, on a personal level, when the Cincinnati Zoo shoots a gorilla to protect a small child. When our next commander-in-chief gets that 3 a.m. phone call, the American people deserve to know whether he or she will tweet, Im no expert, but I think they could have waited another minute, or, Its a shame, but the zoo did what it had to do.

And yet, for 48 hours after the shooting death of 17-year-old Cincinnati silverback Harambe, the Republican nominee managed to avoid disclosing his feelings about this zoological controversy. Yahoo News Hunter Walker ended that evasion on Tuesday, forcing Donald Trump to tell the electorate exactly how the dead-ape story makes him feel inside.

One of the biggest stories from this weekend was the situation from the Cincinnati Zoo and animal activists are outraged that they killed this gorilla who was holding a 4-year-old boy. How do you feel about it? the intrepid reporter asked as his one question at a presidential nominees press conference.

There were moments with the gorilla, the way he held that child, it was almost like a mother holding a baby. It looked so beautiful and calm, Trump said, weighing his words carefully, conscious of the immense gravity this subject holds for all Americans. And there were moments when it looked pretty dangerous. I dont think they had a choice.

It would have been easy for Walker to ask Trump a more frivolous question, like whether the Donald really told Paul Ryan that he believes in cutting Social Security from a moral standpoint and is only praising the program to win an election, or why he recently decried a federal judge overseeing his fraud case as a Mexican, when that judge was born in Indiana, and, anyway, dont Latinos love him? Or why he wants to cancel the Paris climate agreement when the evidence for man-made global warming has only increased in the months since it was signed?

Those kind of softballs might have generated goodwill from the Donald while supplying Yahoo with some buzz-worthy news copy  but they wouldnt have told American voters anything useful about their choices this November. Its a testament to Walkers journalistic bravery that he refused to ask such a question.
Trump isnt pleased with the verdict. Photo: Spencer Platt/2016 Getty Images

On Monday, a federal judge in San Diego ordered the release of hundreds of pages of internal documents belonging to Trump University, the school designed to teach aspiring real-estate investors how to mimic Trumps decision-making process and end up rich. The plaintiffs in the case, filed in 2010, accuse Trump and his now-closed school of defrauding people who paid as much as $35,000 for real estate advice, according to The Wall Street Journal; a similar case was filed in New York in 2013.

U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiels order requires that, among other documents, two sets of Trump University playbooks will be released  one published by Politico in 2010 reportedly instructed Trump University employees to rank each student by their assets to figure out which course packages they could afford.

Other documents released will include a sales handbook that gives employees instructions on selling Trump University programs and procedures on dealing with students and the news media, the New York Times reports. Curiel added that making such documents public in a fraud case is routine and commonplace. The deadline for the documents release is June 2.

On the same day Curiels ruling was handed down, Trump lambasted the judge by name at a rally in San Diego, devoting a full ten minutes of his 58-minute speech to the case. I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, he said. Hes a hater. His name is Gonzalo Curiel. He is not doing the right thing. And I figure, what the hell? Why not talk about it for two minutes?

Were in front of a very hostile judge. The judge was appointed by Barack Obama, Trump said, before adding that he believed Curiel to be Mexican. (Curiel was, in fact, born in East Chicago, Indiana.) He later added a few tweets to his diatribe for good measure:

I should have easily won the Trump University case on summary judgement but have a judge, Gonzalo Curiel, who is totally biased against me.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2016

I have a judge in the Trump University civil case, Gonzalo Curiel (San Diego), who is very unfair. An Obama pick. Totally biased-hates Trump  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2016

Looks like the Republican-nomination process isnt the only thing thats rigged.
Donald Trump at the annual Rolling Thunder Ride for Freedom parade, May 29, 2016. Photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images

Anybody who still believes Donald Trumps appeal to the Republican base arises from any remotely concrete policy agenda  this or that adjustment to trade or immigration policy, say  ought to pause for a moment to consider the candidates appearance this weekend at the Rolling Thunder Memorial Day rally in Washington. The putative purpose of the rally is and has always been to honor Vietnam-era prisoners of war. This year they cheered remarks from the candidate who last summer insisted that being captured by the Vietnamese disqualified John McCain from heroism.

News coverage of the event emphasized the ironic juxtaposition, but the full implications may be worth a bit more consideration. Taken literally, here was the equivalent of the NAACP cheering David Duke: a pro-Vietnam POW group warmly receiving the figure who has made the most disparaging remarks about Vietnam POWs of any presidential candidate in history, and quite likely any candidate for public office of any kind. Indeed, Trump was not only permitted to address the rally, but was the only candidate invited to do so. The notion of inviting Hillary Clinton (who has never disparaged Vietnam POWs) was dismissed out of hand. Just like asking Jane Fonda to show up, itd be a very, very bad thing, one biker told the New York Times. Clinton reminds the Rolling Thunder crowd of Fonda, and Fonda is Rolling Thunders enemy number one for her 1972 trip to North Vietnam, where she posed with anti-aircraft guns. Fonda has apologized profusely for this implied slight to the military that took place more than four decades ago. Trump, on the other hand, has refused to apologize for the explicit insult to the military that took place less than a year ago, but for which he has been forgiven anyway. One pro-Trump biker explained to the Times that they have very short memories. What a description of a group ostensibly organized for the singular purpose of preserving memories!

Rolling Thunder is not a numerically significant portion of the Republican base, but it is a symbolically significant one. It is the ne plus ultra of conservative Americas willingness to overlook any and all flaws in the Republican front-runner and embrace deeper markers of social solidarity. Like just about everything else in the Republican base, the ostensible purpose turns out to be a flimsy pretext for a political movement that is actually rooted in sublimated identity politics.
Donald Trump is a bad man. Photo: Scott Gries/Getty Images

Its worth remembering that even before Donald Trump launched his pseudo-fascist campaign for the presidency, he was already among the most loathsome humans our great nation has ever produced. On Tuesday, U.S. district court judge Gonzalo Curiel ordered the public release of Trump Universitys playbooks  guides the (bait-and-switch scheme masquerading as a) real-estate school used to recruit (or con) its enrollees. The playbooks show that prospective students were encouraged to pay for the program, which could cost up to $35,000, by going into credit-card debt.

Oh, just Trump University instructions for conning single parents out of their kids meal money, nbd pic.twitter.com/ynVioDLSHh  Jamison Foser (@jamisonfoser) May 31, 2016

In practice, Trump University staff delivered this message a bit more crudely, according to newly released written testimony obtained by the New York Times. Its O.K., just max out your credit card, Corrine Sommer, an event manager at the school, recalled her colleagues telling prospective students.

If a cash-strapped applicant said, I dont like using my credit cards and going into debt, the playbook instructed recruiters to respond, [D]o you like living paycheck to paycheck?  Do you enjoy seeing everyone else but yourself in their dream houses and driving their dreams cars with huge checking accounts? Those people saw an opportunity, and didnt make excuses, like what youre doing now.

Most charmingly, the playbooks suggest recruiters exploit the desperation of a single parent with hungry children in order to convince said parent to take on massive credit-card debt.

Whether or not Trump University constituted a legal fraud remains to be adjudicated. But the tycoon already admitted that one of the schools core promises to students was a lie, in a sworn deposition last December. In promotional materials, Trump assured students that the schools professors are people that are handpicked by me. On the witness stand, however, Trump failed to recognize the name of a single presenter or teacher at his real estate seminars, CNN reports.

According to Sommer, one of the schools lecturers on real-estate investing had been promoted from the sales team. He had previously worked as a jewelry salesman and had no real estate experience whatsoever.

The Republican nominee is literally, objectively, a con man.
We get it: she messed up with the email thing. Photo: Eric Thayer/2016 Getty Images

Hillary Clintons campaign chairman would like everyone to get over the email thing, please. In a memo sent out to hundreds of top-tier Clinton supporters over the weekend, John Podesta wrote that Clinton knows the use of a private email server while she was secretary of state was a mistake. The Secretary has once again acknowledged this was a mistake, he said. And she has taken responsibility for that mistake  including in many interviews shes done since the reports release.

Hes referring to the inspector generals report, which was released last Thursday and which chastised Clinton  yet again  for using a personal email account to conduct official business. The report found that Clinton failed to formally seek approval for setting up her private email server, and it noted that in doing so she failed to comply with the governments rules regarding federal record-keeping.

Podesta concedes these points. Had Secretary Clinton known of any concerns about her email setup at the time, she would have taken steps to address them, he wrote. But there are bigger issues at hand:

There is a lot at stake in this election. This week Donald Trump officially clinched enough delegates to become the Republican nominee. That means an unqualified loose cannon is within reach of the most powerful job in the world. While we understand the questions about Secretary Clintons email practices, we are confident that voters will look at the full picture of everything she has done throughout her career. We have faith in the American people. They know we have to be focused on solutions that will make a real difference in peoples lives.

Trump, of course, has seized on Clintons email abuse with glee, saying it might be enough to drive her out of the race. (That Trump makes about as many gaffes in a single week as Clinton did in setting up her private server is, apparently, beside the point.) But Clintons allies are encouraging her to ignore Trumps digs and focus on the issues, believing Trumps hypocrisy will come to the forefront without Clintons help.

I think whats more relevant is how Donald Trumps behaved throughout his life, and theres plenty of scandal there, Missouri senator Claire McCaskill told The Hill. We dont want to give a reality TV star the nuclear codes.
For the cover of the current issue, photographer Brigitte Lacombe re-created her 2008 portrait of Clinton.

In this weeks New York Magazine cover story, Rebecca Traister takes readers inside Hillary Clintons campaign, where nothing about the candidate or candidacy is simple. Below, a look back at how the magazine has covered her through the years  as spouse, senator, loser, and winner.



1990s

Friends remember Hillary Rodham as a fierce feminist who had trouble choosing between Clinton and a career of her own in politics. I was kind of disappointed when Hillary married Bill, says [aide Betsey] Wright, who is active in feminist politics. I was hoping shed run for office herself.  Bill Clinton: Who Is This Guy?, by Joe Klein, January 20, 1992

Rumors have been circulating about the First Lady throwing things at her husband; one even has an anti-smoking Hillary lighting a cigarette to aggravate Bills allergies. Intelligencer item, May 10, 1993

The Clinton health-care-reform plan, not so long ago considered an unstoppable juggernaut, bled to death on the floor of the Senate  [Regarding the midterm-election losses by Democrats] Hillary Clinton continued to maintain there had been some terrible mistake  how could we lose when were so sincere? Feeling Their Pain, by Jacob Weisberg, December 19, 1994

There are  a lot of wise ideas in this book. To make them as nonthreatening as possible, Hillary Clinton swathes them in little homilies. Review by Judith Shulevitz of It Takes a Village, January 29, 1996

What  could explain the speech Hillary Clinton made at the Democratic National Convention last week? One strenuously modulated sentence after another, delivered with all the enthusiasm and soul of those new Directory Assistance recordings  They shouldnt insult us by insisting that theyre letting Hillary be Hillary, because the woman onstage last week was someone else entirely. Stepford First Wife, September 9, 1996

What I found spookiest about Monicagate is our First Ladys ability to rise to the occasion  I expected her head to explode on the Today show last week  Instead, she was more golden-helmeted, controlled, strategic, pol-like, and mediagenic than ever. The Hillary Mystique, by Barbara Lippert, February 9, 1998

Hillary for Senate. It seems, at first blush, ridiculous  Off the record? says a Senate Democratic staff person. Not a chance in hell.  Its only a dream, and its likely to remain so. It Takes a  Carpetbagger, by Michael Tomasky, January 25, 1999

2000s

We were doing an event at C. W. Post  And I walked in, and the man who was going to be on the program and his wife  he had on a Three Stooges tie. Which Ive never seen! And I mean, all their faces in big relief coming down his chest, you know? And so I go up to the man, and I go [she leans forward, puts her hands right in front of my face, and, a la Curly, starts snapping her fingers and rapping her knuckles] and he looks at me like [laughs, imitates mans shock]  and I say, Hi, I want to be your senator!  Quoted in Hillary, Frankly, by Michael Tomasky, April 3, 2000

It could get much uglier over the next dozen years, when the blue-state Democratic presidential nominees in 2008 (Hillary Clinton) and 2012 (Barack Obama) are trounced. People Like Us, by Kurt Andersen, November 22, 2004

I meet people all the time who say, I just dont like Hillary,  says Susan Estrich  But Ive learned not to fight with them. I smile and say, Well, you go vote for a pro-life, pro-war, pro-gun, anti-environment conservative. Enjoy yourself.  The Trouble With Hillary, by Craig Horowitz, May 29, 2006

Once Hillary stepped out of her husbands shadow and found a proper power base of her own  namely, as a United States senator  she rarely faced the accusation of being either too much or too little like her husband. In short order, she managed to define herself in a way that was sui generis  and the uncompromising, humorless ideologue was gone. The First: Female President, Male First Lady, Former President in the White House, by Jennifer Senior, October 8, 2007

 If you say anything about the specificity of Hillary being a woman, youre just doing the knee-jerk feminist stuff, thats the reaction, said one woman  Thinking about race is a serious issue, whereas sexism is just something for dumb feminists to think about.  The Feminist Reawakening, by Amanda Fortini, April 21, 2008

Albeit temporarily, the loser has more power than the winner. She, not Obama, is in a position to bring the party together or rip the thing to shreds. The Fall and Rise of Hillary Clinton, by John Heilemann, June 23, 2008

2010s

Clinton, removed from the undertow of partisan combat in her role as secretary of State, has enjoyed soaring approval ratings  If Hillary gave up one of her balls and gave it to Obama, James Carville told a Christian Science Monitor breakfast last year, hed have two.  When Did Liberals Become So Unreasonable?, by Jonathan Chait, November 28, 2011

Some of her close confidants  are far less circumspect than she is. Shes running, but she doesnt know it yet  Its just like a force of history  I think she actually believes she has more say in it than she actually does. Hillary in Midair, by Joe Hagan, September 30, 2013
Michelle Obama. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Growing up near Santa Fe, New Mexico, we were used to being a forgotten state. Sixth-least-populated, part of Mexico till 1912, consistently neck-and-neck with Mississippi in poverty rates. People from elsewhere in the U.S. used to, without irony, compliment me on my English, ask me what kind of money I used.

And the perception flowed both ways: We reveled in being a land apart, populated long before America was even an idea, where gringos were the minority and political power rested with Hispanic families whod settled at least 400 years earlier, as well as numerous Native American Pueblos who had sovereign-nation power to do what they wanted with their vast tracts of land, much of which theyd merely leased to the government for things like highways and schools. (My elementary school, built on Pueblo land and reclaimed in the late 80s, is now a casino.) Spanish and the native languages of Tewa, Tiwa, and Towa were taught in public schools, starting at kindergarten. Every morning Id say the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish and then my native friends would sing their own national song.

So it feels miraculous, and like something particularly special about this administration, that last week Michelle Obama showed up from D.C. for the sole purpose of giving the commencement address at the tiny Santa Fe Indian School  non-p.c. nomenclature dies hard in these parts  which has a graduating class of fewer than 100. And it sounds like all they had to do was ask: I heard that when you were first brainstorming about who to invite to your commencement and someone suggested me or my husband, some of you thought that that was an impossible dream, that it just wasnt realistic to think that people like us would ever visit a school like yours, she said in her speech. Well, today, I want you to know that there is nowhere I would rather be than right here with all of you.

The history of the Santa Fe Indian School is both painful and triumphant; started by the U.S. government as a means of enforced assimilation, ripping children from their families, its now run by the 19 Pueblo governors with a mission of preserving native culture. As we all know, said the First Lady, this school was founded as part of a deliberate, systematic effort to extinguish your culture; to literally annihilate who you were and what you believed in. But look at you today. The Native languages that were once strictly forbidden here now echo through the hallways and in your dorm room conversations at night. Nearly every member of the graduating class is going to college, many of them to the Ivy League, with a collective total of $5 million in scholarships. Valedictorian Emanuel Vigil, a member of the Jicarilla Apache Nation, is going to Columbia University this fall.

The First Lady drew a line connecting that history of oppression to the one borne by her own ancestors: I am the great-great-granddaughter of Jim Robinson, who was born in South Carolina, lived as a slave, and is likely buried in an unmarked grave on the plantation where he worked. I am the great-granddaughter of Fraser Robinson, an illiterate houseboy who taught himself to read and became an entrepreneur, selling newspapers and shoes.

She praised the students for joining a long line of defiance in the face of extreme adversity. Im talking about your ancestors who came together to lead a revolt, risking their lives to preserve their traditions. Im talking about your predecessors at this school who defied the rules by speaking their languages and running away to attend ceremonial dances back home. And Im talking about the leaders who reclaimed and reopened this school for you, rebuilding it in your image and the image of your communities. She urged them to go out into the world and spread a message of tolerance and respect for the Earth that is inherent in their culture, and to persevere even when college got tough and they felt like giving up, knowing how much their communities needed them.

And you dont need your First Lady to tell you that, she said. All you have to do is tune in to the news and youll see that right now, some of the loudest voices in our national conversation are saying things that go against every single one of the values that youve been living at this school. Theyre telling us that we should disrespect others because of who they are or where they come from or how they worship. Theyre telling us that we should be selfish  that folks who are struggling dont deserve our help, that we should just take what we can from life and not worry about anyone else. And theyre saying that its okay to keep harming our planet and using our land, our air, our water however we wish.

Standing here today with all of you, she went on, I am filled with hope. Its the same hope I feel when I think about my own story  how my great-great-grandfather was another mans property, my great-grandfather was another mans servant, my grandparents and parents felt the sting of segregation and discrimination. But because they refused to be defined by anyone elses idea of who they were and what they could be, because they held fast to their impossible dreams for themselves and their children, today, my two daughters wake up each morning in the White House  So graduates, in closing, I hope that you will always remember your story, and that you will carry your story with you as proudly as I carry mine. I am so proud of you. I am so excited for you to continue this extraordinary journey. Read her full speech here, or watch it here.
in b4 someone brings up gone girl

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same

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agreed. i love julianne moore but that oscar belonged to rosamund.

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Me fucking too!



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I can't believe she didn't win. She was brilliant in Gone Girl.

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i literally just watched this movie for the first time!!!!

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It's a wonderful documentary

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regardless of whether or not she filed a report immediately after the incident happened (the lack of bruise argument is such bullshit anyway), she went to court with enough evidence that a judge granted her a restraining order, end of story

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This. They hand them out like candy. My stepmom got one on my dad last summer. They're going through a nasty divorce.



Edited at 2016-05-31 01:18 am (UTC)

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they're notttt though. yes, they're easier to get than plenary orders because there's no one contesting you, but many times people don't come in with allegations sufficient to be considered abuse under a state's DV statute or they wait too long after the incident for it to be considered an emergency to be granted ex parte.

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no. she got a temporary restraining order. that's not a full blown restraining order, it's an emergency restraining order pending a hearing.

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I'm a little surprised Amber didn't try to shoot Johnny in self-defense, since she's always been a big gun supporter.

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She'd def be in prison, with his ex's claiming that he never abused them and the police saying that they found nothing, and the way the press is going it wouldn't look good for her, so it's good she didn't.

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That's a good point. I didn't even think of that, lol

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i know she's okay with guns but i don't remember her being a BIG gun supporter?

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I was just thinking that...could you imagine if she had shot him? OMW

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tmz remains transparent and gross

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Wasn't this brought up initially when people were saying since the police said they didn't see any sign of abuse, it didn't happen? I could swear I read that she decided not to press charges at the time. That's pretty common with DV couples. The person backtracks because they feel guilty or protective of their abuser. They think they can work it out in the end.



Also that her lawyers said that she wanted to settle this out of the media. Which says to me that she was still bent on keeping his image intact and hiding the fact he abused her.



Edited at 2016-05-31 01:16 am (UTC)

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That's exactly what I thought. Its what started this whole "The police didn't see anything! She's lying!" excuse. TMZ a.k.a Johnny's team are running out of excuses for mudslinging if they are rehashing old shit.

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I live in LA, the cops WILL NOT let you get away with saying he didnt do anything.



2 years ago my bf and i got drunk in the house and were being loud in the house yelling and stomping everywhere---well a neighbor called the cops. I was more sober by then then him, they grilled me for a full HOUR trying to get me to admit he may have hit me (he DID NOT) they searched for a scratch or a bruise---nothing!! They STILL took him in, because they believed I was lying. It was insane!



If she looked like she was roughed up in the slightest, they would have done something regardless or her wishes and wants.



I am team no one, but wanted to share that the LAPD dont fuck around.

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It used to be almost standard practice in some places to convince the woman not to press charges because the husband would get out by the next day and might come back and murder the woman.



Whatever the case I'm always inclined to believe the victim because I've seen people deny someone is abusive because they're "nice" and you never know what happens behind closed doors. It can be hidden well and not everyone gets bruises from it.

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was the timeline ever firmly established or is it possible that they had an argument, she called the cops, he came back, and all hell broke loose AFTER the fact?

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We're told Amber still has not filed a police report. If Johnny's right and he never touched her ... had she filed an official report she could be prosecuted for a felony -- filing a phony police report.



um, i'm not american so american law is not my specialty but aren't the docs she submitted for the restraining order request + the court hearing itself also legally binding?! this makes 0 sense to me.

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https://www.propublica.org/article/false-rape-accusations-an-unbelievable-story



I think it's seldom used though It's called filing a police report. Here's an example of a rape victim being charged with it and later vindicated when they caught her rapist. Trigger warning for graphic descriptions of rapeI think it's seldom used though

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I'm no expert but I think a restraining order is different from assault charges...if she had filed a report with the police he'd be charged for assault & investigation would be pending, but a restraining order usually can be gotten for a variety of reasons and it's not something that has a guilty/not guilty verdict or connotation, and there's no deeper investigation, you just have to prove that someone is a threat to your wellbeing etc? And the way domestic charges work if she chooses not to press assault charges then nothing can be done 2 him despite her evidence for the restraining order...



Edited at 2016-05-31 01:26 am (UTC)

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Yes, she filed a sworn document in the restraining order case, so if anything material in it were false, she could be prosecuted. (Prosecutions for filing false reports and false affidavits is not common though.)

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She's been very lowkey the past 15 years, I doubt many people outside of her family and friends even know where she lives, lol

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I'm sure her agent's phone is ringing off the hook. People must be chomping at the bit to get her take on this.

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would you be surprised if she came out and said johnny would never?

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it would certainly be a twist if she and kate said something but i think that's unlikely. i actually wonder if this would be triggering to them in any way :\

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i was wondering about her



~wino forever



does he still have that bitter ass tattoo?

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maybe she took money to stay quiet

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she needs a harvey specter

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+1



Honestly, I'm wondering how much money she can invests into PR and a decent legal representation. Johnny obviously has tons of money and half of his Hollywood friends at his disposal... it's David against Goliath.



(On an optimistic note, we all know how that story ended).

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Maybe her lawyer believes there's a shot of her getting big $$ in the divorce so she doesn't have to pay til it's over?? I mean he has a 400 mil fortune and is an abuser...If I were a lawyer, I'd do my damn best to get at every penny he has using that.

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She should do whatever she wants to do it's entirely up to her - though if she did go file a report, you know it would just make people say "well she's only doing it now to make her 'story' more believable because yet again - women can't win no matter what they do.



Plus it's super common for DV victims to call the cops and then not want to say anything once they get there - people still feel like they should protect the abuser often times (and they are likely afraid of what the abuser will do in retaliation and anger after they bring the police into it)

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It is very common. The only thing that is sort of causing a niggling feeling for me is that what she described in the affidavit--him smashing everything, etc.--would have been evident when the police arrived. Also, if 911 was called, what did the caller say? I'd be really curious about that. A lot of times the 911 call is in the middle of the attack, so they will say what's happening in order to make sure emergency responders get there ASAP, but especially if the abuser is gone by the time police come, the victim might decide not to anything. Regardless, officers are trained to look for signs of domestic abuse even with recalcitrant victims, and if they thought something had happened, it normally would have been given to another officer for potential follow-up. But that really depends on how well-trained the responding officers were and how well they were doing their jobs.

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The only thing that is sort of causing a niggling feeling for me is that what she described in the affidavit--him smashing everything, etc.--would have been evident when the police arrived.



She lives in an apartment that is three condos strung together, if the damage wasn't done in the foyer (and it wasn't, based on what she wrote he targeted one of the condos that was for her personal use), the police wouldn't have seen shit, it's not like they have the time or even the right to go around searching her apartment.



Edited at 2016-05-31 01:50 am (UTC)

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They live in a penthouse apartment - aka massive - if she didn't let them in, they wouldn't have seen anything and even if she did, it's still large enough that they still might not have seen anything, and if she had her hair down like in that photo at a party they wouldn't have seen the bruises either.



And again as I said, DV victims often want to protect their abuser so why is it "niggling at you" that she may have taken steps to protect or minimize what happened? She might have cleaned up. How we react after acute trauma is not universal.

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if he kept the damage contained to other areas other than the front entrance then they wouldn't have seen anything. anyway, i think it was a friend who called the cops. amber, at that point being unsure of what to do, decided not to file charges. when johnny came back and smashed the iPhone in her face, i think she was probably like fuck no i'm hitting up a lawyer monday.

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the voice she uses in her sworn document is very sympathetic towards johnny imo. she practically absolved him of personal responsibility and put everything on drugs and alcohol was how i read it :/



Edited at 2016-05-31 02:55 am (UTC)

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TMZ ain't shit for that picture choice, as ever, but why didn't she file?? I would think that would come right before filing the divorce papers. idgi.

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i honestly think she wasn't even going to go ahead with the restraining order until johnny's PR started to slander her name in the news.

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I asked that initially and apparently that was a poor question and i'm an asshole...but from what I gather, she could've been in denial or trying to protect him still, maybe she was scared, maybe she wanted to use it as an incentive for him to get help with his substance abuse and he said fuck no and she was like well that's it etc etc. no one knows.

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LOL right? Come on we all know that's not how he looks now (on the other hand if that's the worst pic they can find of her she still looks pretty damn good).

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Like someone else said, the timeline of this makes me believe she actually was going to wait it out with him but then the stories came out about poor old Johnny, Amber's bisexuality, how his family hated her, etc.

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well, if that pic was supposed to make her look bad... i mean, that's a testament to how beautiful she is

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TMZ is doing the absolute most right now. even if she didnt file a police report, that DOES NOT mean that johnny didnt do anything. just because she didnt bruise right away doesn't mean he did not abuse her.



it's incredibly heartbreaking to see how much abusers get the benefit of the doubt as opposed to their victims. she's been slandered all over and it's only going to continue. if this was really about the money, she would've taken the money he was trying to pay her off with.



Edited at 2016-05-31 01:20 am (UTC)

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The pics Raquel Rose took of her were supposedly right then and there tho

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Every article I've seen from them on this makes them looks like they're his paid PR force.

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TMZ are a bunch of misogynistic fuckers.

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YES DRAG HIS ASS TO JAIL



he can take his buddy johnny with him too

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YES GET HA

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In October 2015, a judge in Krakow, ruled that "turning over Mr. Polanski would be an obviously unlawful deprivation of liberty and that the state of California was unlikely to provide humane conditions of confinement for the filmmaker, who is 82."







I don't care how fucking old this POS is... I don't care how fucking old this POS is...

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And he doesn't deserve humane conditions.

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right? What drugs are these people on, going on about "humane conditions" for someone who raped a child?

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If I had killed somebody, it wouldnt have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But fucking, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to fuck young girls. Juries want to fuck young girls. Everyone wants to fuck young girls! -Polanski in 1979.

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lol that argument makes zero sense

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They have an extradition treaty. Polanski's a convicted criminal who fled justice. What part of taking him in would be unlawful?



So much bullshit

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Agree, remove this bitch from my continent and put him in jail (or hell), where he belongs.



Edited at 2016-05-31 04:32 pm (UTC)

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but anyway

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that the state of California was unlikely to provide humane conditions of confinement for the filmmaker, who is 82.





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lol



and I really doubt a US jail wouldn't be able to provide such conditions for him. I'd like to see his ass in a jail here in Brazil.

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The prison system in the US is horrible. But I doubt he'd be send to a really bad one...

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send his ass to siberia, it's also closer and thus cost effective.

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...I recommend choosing another way of death

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Whoops. I didnt even think of that...maybe I'll just delete my comment

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This fucker deserves zero sympathy and it's a shame he will likely never truly get what's coming to him. I was just revisiting this list the other day. http://www.indiewire.com/2009/09/over-100-in-film-community-sign-polanski-petition-55821/ This fucker deserves zero sympathy and it's a shame he will likely never truly get what's coming to him.

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damn upon revisiting this list some of these names are a bit surprising...wtf is wrong with all of these assholes

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LANDIS



that little fucker is just like his father, huh

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Another director who belongs in jail.

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So many directors signed this yikes

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/adds all these people to my shit list. some of these i'm not surprised at but some i'm really disappointed in.

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Tilda Swinton



Of course

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Gael Garcia Bernal, Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuaron, and Pedro Almodovar all have their names on this thing. It's really disheartening. And a LOT of ONTDers adore these men.

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oh man yes i hope this happens. what is the status of the statute of limitations for the rape, though?



regardless, i'm sure everyone showing their asses on twitter about johnny depp will go off on this too, ugh.

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Polanski pled guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor or something like that. Since he pled guilty and accepted a plea bargain, there is no statue of limitation.

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He agreed to some lesser charge, and then he found out that the judge was going to penalize harder so Polanski fled the country. I don't think there's any statute of limitation for fleeing the country to avoid going to jail.

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in most states, the statute of limitations is tolled (on hold) when you flee custody. In this case, he already had been charged so the SOL isn't an issue.

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I'm sorry to derail here, but Executive Cookie is so cute :)

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But His Art !!





(I don't know which because I'm a philistine who prefers their movies pedo free but)

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Come on Ziobro, don't let me down!

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I hope he gets some form of punishment before he dies

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I didn't believe you so I googled.



Polanski admitted his crime before he ran away, and for years afterwards, he boasted from exile that every man wants to do what he did. He chuckled to one interviewer in 1979: If I had killed somebody, it wouldnt have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But... fucking, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to fuck young girls. Juries want to fuck young girls. Everyone wants to fuck young girls!



oh my god.

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He "dated" Nastassja Kinski from 1976/77 to 1979 starting when she was just 15. Her mother send her to him and told her to make a movie with him, "no matter what it takes". Klaus Kinski molested her older half sister from when she was a kid and noone knows what he did to Nastassja, she escaped, only to be send to Roman Polanski of all people.



Edited at 2016-05-31 05:14 pm (UTC)

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this movie looks awesome to me  I'll watch it for sure



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i saw this trailer when i went to see the lobster this weekend. i immediately recognized it so i started laughing just thinking about the plot. but the opening scene in the trailer is paul dano hanging himself so it was really awkward that i was laughing at that.



((GO SEE THE LOBSTER))

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the lobster destroyed me omg

& like quadrupled my love for rachel weisz

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omg I'm glad you like The Lobster. I really want to see it, but I wasn't sure.



I hate summers for how many movies I want to go see.

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I hate summers for how many movies I want to go see.



yes! i saw 4 movies this weekend lmao and i recommend the lobster A LOTTT. it's so funny and sweet and heartbreaking tbh. rachel and colin are soooo great together<3

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Aww, yay!! I'll definitely try to see it. I'm seeing X-Men this weekend, so maybe the next. Wish tickets weren't so damn expensive, or I'd just double-feature these this weekend.

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It looks original and seems to be well received so why not?

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The trailer for this movie seriously creeped me the fuck out the first and only time I saw it

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omg manchester orchestra

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I'm really excited to see this JUST for Andy. He's so proud of it. I'm pretty sure everything was recorded without instruments, as well?



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This movie looks so terrible

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I'm so excited to see Swiss Army Man. I showed my wife the trailer. She's interested, so that's good lol.



Bless A24 for putting out some interesting, original movies.

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One of my friends got to see this and she LOVED it. And she usually watches ""normal"" movies too; she genuinely thought that the story played out really well.

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ahh my 2 fave white boys



really wanna see this but i doubt it will be shown in my local cinema or that i'll be able to get someone to come see it with me lol

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I enjoy Paul Dano films but idk if I can make it through this lol

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French oil services company Technip has signed a preliminary deal worth US$500 million to refurbish a key Libyan offshore oil platform in partnership with Libyas National Oil Company (NOC) and Italian Eni, Reuters reported.

The drilling platform lies in the offshore Bahr Essalam oil field, 100 kilometers from the capital Tripoli. The platform is operated by Mellitah Oil and Gas, a joint venture between Libya's NOC and Eni.

According to Technip, installation is scheduled for the second half of 2017 through to the second half of 2018 and they are targeting 12.6 million barrels per day in production.



Related: Flower Power Takes On A New Meaning With Pollen Batteries

In March, Mellitah Oil and Gas announced what they called a significant discovery at Bahr Essalam, with a well producing 29 million cubic feet per day of gas and over 600 barrels per day of condensate in testing. The company said the well could eventually produce over 50 million cubic feet of gas per day and 1,000 barrels of condensate per day.

The deal is being lauded as part of French efforts to support the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA), which controls the Tripoli-based National Oil Company (NOC).



Related: Driving Season Could Jolt Oil To $60

On Sunday and Monday, Libyas Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG), loyal to the GNA, said it had captured of the two strategic towns from ISIS.

Earlier this month, the Tripoli-based Libyan government announced the resumption of exports from the eastern port of Hariga, which has been under the control of the parallel eastern government based in Tobruk.

By James Burgess of Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Lost Valley Cider Co., Milwaukees first hard cider bar, will open to the public on Wednesday, June 1 in the Brix building at 408 W. Florida St. in Walkers Point.

The bar is the brainchild of father-and-daughter team Stuart and Chandra Rudolph, who say theyve been brainstorming a concept focused on cider for a number of years.

The Rudolphs, who have been brewing both beer and cider at home for quite some time, said they originally planned to start a cidery where theyd brand their own cider. But, ultimately, they changed gears.

"We realized that there really werent any great platforms for promoting all the great ciders out there," says Chandra. "And its something we were really interested in taking on, especially as we saw the cider market beginning to boom."

"Wed done our research," adds Stuart, "Traveling to places like Portland, Virginia and North Carolina. And we saw such a big opportunity for showcasing all of the varieties of cider that are being produced around the nation and nationally."

Find your Lost Valley

"Everyone has a 'lost valley' ... kind of their like Shangri La," says Stuart as we chat about the concept behind the name for Lost Valley, which was inspired by family travels.

"When my dad was growing up he would visit his grandparents' farm in Massachusetts," Chandra explains. "They always referred to the area as as the 'lost valley.' Years later, when we would take hiking trips out west as a family, we always called them lost valley expeditions.'"

Stuart adds: "The name really attempts to capture our natural propensity for adventure and exploration. And thats really what we do here, encouraging the collaborative exploration of ciders from around the world."

The space, in turn, reflects that sense of adventure. A wooden map on the wall sits above a corner lounge on the west end of the bar.

Photographs on the walls encourage adventure and exploration.

Look for the elevation marker for the highest peak in Wyoming, a souvenir from the Rudolph's family travels, emblazoned on the flooring near the bar.

Meanwhile, the "Starry Night booth," featuring a ceiling filled with twinkling LED lights, accommodates seating for two to four in the north east corner, conjuring the look and feel of the night sky.

Additional stories are told through the design of the space, which features reclaimed items  including bricks and windows along the bottom face of the bar  taken from the building itself, which once housed a candy factory.

An old fire door emblazoned with Lost Valley's name is also displayed, complete with the pulley system that would have been used in the building.

Offerings

Lost Valleys cider selection, which includes 20 taps, plus canned and bottled varieties, will include selections from England, France and Spain, along with American craft ciders from the Pacific Northwest and Mid-Atlantic states. There will also be Wisconsin ciders, including Island Orchard (Door Co.), AeppelTrow Winery & Distillery (Burlington) and Restoration Cider (Madison).

To assist customers in finding ciders theyll love, offerings are divided into categories based on their flavor profiles.

Apple forward : These ciders are straight-up apple, with no additions. Ciders in this category range from sweet to dry.

: These ciders are straight-up apple, with no additions. Ciders in this category range from sweet to dry. Fruit forward : If youd like to try ciders that incorporate other fruits, choose from options that range from dry cherry and black currant to sweeter options like strawberry cider.

: If youd like to try ciders that incorporate other fruits, choose from options that range from dry cherry and black currant to sweeter options like strawberry cider. Herb and spiced : If youre looking for something different, this category offers selections including hopped ciders, basil mint cider and mango pepper cider.

: If youre looking for something different, this category offers selections including hopped ciders, basil mint cider and mango pepper cider. International: These ciders come primarily from England, France and Spain, including the Basque and Asturias regions.

Cider will be available in 9- or 12-ounce pours ($5-9), as well as 3-ounce tastings and "Howlers," which are 32-ounce growlers that can be taken to go.

"Everybody has a cider they love," notes Chandra. "They just havent necessarily met it yet. But were always happy to guide people to what their taste profile might be."

There will also be cider cocktails ($9-10), including Currant Affairs, featuring Twisted Path gin, black currant cider from Finn River, lime and ginger; Northern Lights with Aquavit, Pimiento dram, lemon, Seattle Cider semi-sweet; or the Mead Mule made from Twisted Path Vodka, ginger beer, lime and Pollen-Nation, a blackberry mead with hops from Crafted.

For those whod prefer beer, there will be three craft brews on tap, including Raised Grain Paradocs Red IPA, Enlightened Pale Wheat Daily Stipend and Metropolitan Crankshaft Kolsch. The bar will also feature a selection of wines from around the world on a seasonal basis. Current selections include environmentally conscious Chilean wines priced $7-10 per glass.

Bar snacks, including popcorn from Knights Gourmet Popcorn (Milwaukee), as well as a seasonal cheese board featuring three rotating selections from Clock Shadow Creamery with crackers.

Bottles of cider will also be available for purchase at a discount in the Lost Valley Bottle Shop, which is open daily until 9 p.m. (8 p.m. on Sundays). Discounts include 40% off on-premise prices on all cans and small format bottles, with a 50% discount on the purchase of four or more. Premium ciders carry a 30% discount.

Education

Beginning June 26, Lost Valley will also offer weekly Sunday afternoon tasting classes that will cover topics including the basics of cider, along with tasting classes featuring flights from Europe and Wisconsin. The first class will be Cider 101 and will include a tasting of five ciders.

Lost Valley Cider will be open Wednesday and Thursday from 3 to 11 p.m., Fridays from 3 p.m. to midnight, Saturday from noon to midnight and Sundays from noon to 8 p.m.
The latest

Milwaukee's best craft cocktails, 2020

With its menu-free approach, dimly lit and warmly jazzy vibe, and - of course - its old-school cocktails, ice cream drinks and tasty tipples, Bryant's may be a total throwback, but the South Side lounge is a classic no matter the year.
Reprinted from To The Point Analyses

Part I -- A Common Denominator

What do opportunists and fanatics have in common? They both chronically exaggerate -- the former often to con folks into doing their bidding, and the latter most often because they have already been conned by their own grossly distorted worldview. There are plenty of both types of people in today's America, and the uncertain political environment has brought a lot of them out of the woodwork. The recent marriage of convenience of the National Rifle Association (NRA) leadership (fanatics) and Donald Trump (opportunist) is a case in point.

Part II -- The Fanatics

The NRA is one of the country's most influential advocacy organizations, with a membership of over 3 million. Its worldview, which can be neatly summed up as "freedom equals unrestricted gun ownership," almost certainly carries weight beyond its membership numbers. In the wilds of places such as Minnesota, Wyoming and Alabama, NRA principles might carry more weight than the Bible.

Wayne LaPierre is the executive vice president of the NRA and Chris Cox is its executive director for Legislative Action. LaPierre and Cox are typical of NRA stalwarts and we can see them as representative of a good percentage of the organization's members. On 20 May 2016 both men gave speeches before the NRA convention in Kentucky announcing the association's endorsement of Donald Trump for president.

In his speech, Cox spent a lot of time painting a picture of the United States as a place about to lose its "freedoms" if Hillary Clinton gets elected. Here is how he put it: the present political environment in the U.S. is mired in "dishonesty, corruption and contempt for everyday Americans" and the only thing that stands between those "everyday Americans" and "the end of individual freedom in this country" are "gun owners," who must turn out to vote "in droves this fall."

Wayne LaPierre painted a similar crisis picture, again emphasizing that it is only the country's gun owners who stand in the way of catastrophe. Here is how he put it: "We in this room, we are America's best hope, and this is our moment. In all of history, there's always been a time and a place when patriots stand up and rise up against the decree of the elites and shout, 'No more! Get your hands off my freedom!' That time and place is now. ... The revolution to take America back starts here."

Hillary Clinton was characterized as a "corrupt politician" whose "policies and Supreme Court picks would destroy individual freedoms, and therefore destroy the America we all love." According to Cox, Clinton's vision of the U.S. is a place "where only law enforcement has guns and everything is free: free meals, free health care, free education." It seems Cox has a real distaste for free access to anything that does not have lethal potential. He likens a society that provides no-cost availability to the items he lists to a prison.

As these sentiments suggest, the NRA's notion of freedom is harshly reductionist and based on its members' own idiosyncratic interpretation of the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. That interpretation is discussed in Part IV below. For the NRA, freedom is the right to own and carry a gun of any type. All other freedoms listed in the Bill of Rights are secondary, probably because without the right to own large numbers of assault rifles, the population cannot defend itself against an American government allegedly bent on dictatorship. Assigning such an exaggerated importance to the right to bear any arms is, of course, a gross distortion of the concept of freedom and demonstrates "contempt" for the ability of U.S. society to function based on the rule of law.

The NRA stalwarts live and breathe this exaggeration. There is something pathological going on here, for their obsession with gun ownership has also spun out conspiracy theories about looming oppression. There is here a general inability to analyze, in any reasonable way, the political and social environment around them. In other words, the NRA devotees are fanatics.

Part III -- The Opportunist

The speeches of LaPierre and Cox laid the groundwork for the introduction of Donald Trump -- now the NRA's endorsed candidate for president. Trump's appearance at the NRA convention marked his official acceptance of the organization's exaggerated reductionist position. Actually, it was but a culmination -- months before, Trump had discarded his more moderate position and, upon launching his campaign for the presidency, almost immediately adopted the NRA's stance.

Now on stage at the Kentucky convention, he started off with what has become his characteristic patter for things he finds convenient to endorse: "I love the NRA. I love the Second Amendment." Then he moved on to, essentially, parrot Cox and LaPierre: "The Second Amendment is under a threat like never before. Crooked Hillary Clinton is the most anti-gun ... candidate ever to run for office. And, as I said before, she wants to abolish the Second Amendment. She wants to take your guns away. She wants to abolish it."

All of this is a mixture of lies and gross exaggeration. In addition, Trump pledged to "get rid of gun-free zones" because that will make us safer. Trump has claimed that if we all went around armed, the death toll during the terrorist attacks in San Bernardino and Paris would have been lower. At this point the Huffington Post contacted a number of Trump hotels and found that, lo and behold, most of them remain "gun-free zones."

The truth is that Trump is an opportunist and a chronic exaggerator. You might say that all politicians fit this bill. However, here we are dealing with a matter of degree, and most the key word is "chronic." Trump's practice in this regard is habitual and therefore may be pathological as well.
Attorney and Hillary supporter Dan Metcalfe has written, for the law blog, LawNewz.com, a particularly credible and persuasive article, Hillary Clinton's Emails Now Might Finally Take Her Down , which suggests a nauseating, yet terrifying possibility. It all hinges on FBI Director Comey doing his job, and, most important, when.

Dan Metcalfe is a registered Democrat who has long said that he will vote for Hillary Clinton in November "if she escapes indictment and manages to become the Democratic presidential nominee." He served as Director of the Justice Department's Office of Information and Privacy for more than 25 years, during which time he handled information-disclosure policy issues on the dozens of Clinton Administration scandals that arose within public view, as well as two that did not. Since retiring in 2007, he has taught secrecy law at American University's Washington College of Law. Here's Metcalfe's bio:

Metcalfe first discusses the legality of Hillary's private server, which we'll get to in a minute, but he then goes on to speculate what the DNC and Obama, through the FBI and the DNC could do, which is enough to make you grind your teeth and puke-- no teasing here, but get your barf bag out-- they'll wait until after the Philly convention to bring charges against Hillary, offer her a deal to go light on her if she drops out, then replace her, with John Kerry or Joe Biden.

So, let's first look at what Metcalfe says about Hillary's criminality. His assessment is damning:

"...knowing that there are no applicable penalties within the FRA (Federal Records Act) (or in the FOIA, for that matter, which Ms. Clinton also blatantly circumvented), the primary significance of the IG (State Department's Inspector General) report is that it so flatly and persuasively belies nearly every public "defense" that she has uttered on the matter... "No, her self-serving email set-up was not "allowed" under the State Department's rules. No, she was not "permitted" to use a personal email system exclusively as she did. No, what she did was hardly just a matter of her "personal convenience." No, there is no evidence that any State Department attorney (other than perhaps Secretary Clinton herself) ever gave "legal approval" to any part of her special email system. No, everything she did was not "fully above board" or in compliance with the "letter and spirit of the rules," far from it."

Metcalfe says that Hillary was REQUIRED by the Federal Records Act to maintain all of her official emails in an official system so they could be properly reviewed delineated and retained when she left the State Department. He also says that her private server was subjected to multiple attempts at intrusion, in other words, hacker efforts, including ones by foreign nations.





"...seriously wounded by this week's IG (inspector general) report, is manifestly vulnerable to a much greater wound in the form of a criminal indictment for misconduct that far transcends what the IG report dealt with. "Former Secretary Clinton's intent (known in criminal law as mens rea), or lack of same, is not what matters in this case. Rather, the applicable legal standard is a mere "gross negligence" one, as specified in the standard national security non-disclosure agreement that she signed and its underlying criminal statutes. And when you marry that to the fact that (among other things) her admitted failure to use the State Department's special classified email system for classified (or potentially classified) information constituted a clear violation of a criminal prohibition" And this is especially so given that Ms. Clinton did not just violate such laws inadvertently or even only occasionally -- she did so systemically. In other words, her very email scheme itself appears to have been a walking violation of criminal law, one with the mens rea prosecution standard readily met. "....the ongoing investigation of Ms. Clinton's misconduct is being conducted by the FBI, under the leadership of FBI Director James Comey. Those of us who worked under him when he was the deputy attorney general during the George W. Bush Administration know him to be an exceptional man of utmost integrity, one who can be counted on to recommend a criminal prosecution when the facts and the law of a case warrant it, regardless of political circumstances. Given that the facts and law are so clear in Ms. Clinton's case, it is difficult to imagine her not being indicted, unless Jim Comey's expected recommendation for that is abruptly overruled at "Main Justice" (i.e., by Criminal Division Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell, by Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, or by Attorney General Loretta Lynch) or at the White House by President Obama (who customarily does not intervene in such things and would do so here either secretly or at no small political peril)." Metcalfe offers an interesting exploration of how different players-- Sanders, Trump, the DNC, etc. would consider the risks of Hillary being indicted. Then he throws down the hammer that Hillary:

Metcalfe speculates how the prosecution will pan out. He suggests that

FBI director James Comey will do the right thing, but the question is When? He predicts it will happen shortly AFTER Hillary wins the nomination and has selected a VP who is confirmed, that Obama, as head of the Democratic party, will make it clear that Hillary is in serious trouble, declare an emergency and offer Hillary a lenient treatment, like Spiro Agnew was given, in exchange for stepping down. Joe Biden or John Kerry will be put in her place to run as President with the VP Hillary selected and the Convention approved running with Kerry or Biden.

I'm not sure Hillary would go willingly, but if Obama, who has not endorsed her this late in the campaign, sticks it to her, and makes a serious threat, this is possible.

Metcalfe thinks Bernie as candidate would be a disaster. Of course, I strongly disagree. I hope that Metcalfe is right about FBI director Comey, that he'll prosecute Hillary. But I hope he does the right thing for America, for democracy and justice and announces it before the Philly Convention. Anything less would be a betrayal of the American people.
By Taxpayer Association of Oregon,

The Taxpayer Association first debuted this cartoon at the beginning of the year and months later it stands as the same, except the tax has grown bigger as Oregon Governor Kate Brown refused to comment again this month on the states largest tax increase. Our cartoon says it all. Please pass it along.
Army to eleminate Sleepers cells 31 May, 2016



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Hand Wash and Toiletries in Pakistan And the Role of DUPAS in Reshaping the Industry

Woke Bingo PESHAWAR: After completing the tactical phase of Operation Zarb-i-Azb in the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (Fata), the army has launched a combing operation in the rural and urban areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to eliminate terrorists sleeper cells and networks, according to a military commander.



Security forces have presence in 99.2 per cent areas of Fata. Only 0.8pc area adjacent to the Afghan border in Khyber and North Waziristan agencies remains to be cleared of terrorists because of tactical reasons, said Corps Commander of Peshawar Lt Gen Hidayatur Rehman while briefing reporters about the security situation in the region here on Monday.



He said that the army had cleared 100,927 square kilometres area in Fata but 814sq km area in Rajgal (Khyber) and Lawara Mandi (North Waziristan) had been left untouched due to tactical reasons and keeping in view the sanctity of the border with Afghanistan.



He argued that deployment of troops in the two areas did not give any tactical benefit to the army because terrorists could move across the border and fire at security forces from the Afghan side.



He said that Afghan army had no presence in the areas and security forces could not take action against terrorists inside Afghanistan because of the sanctity of border.



These are contested areas as they are controlled neither by the Pakistan army nor by the Afghan army. Militants will not be able to operate from the areas if security forces of the two countries fulfil their responsibilities, he said while citing Afghanistans inability to control its territory.



In reply to a question, the corps commander said that the Frontier Corps and the Levies Force would assume control of Fata after 2021 and reconstruction work would be completed by 2019 if the situation remained normal.



He said that the strength of the FC in the region was above 79 wings (a wing consists of between 700 and 800 soldiers) and 10 new wings would be added to the force by the end of August.



Lt Gen Rehman seemed concerned over governance-related issues in Fata, particularly the slow pace of reconstruction of damaged infrastructure, rehabilitation of IDPs and poor quality of developmental works being executed by the Civil Secretariat of Fata.



I talked to the KP governor yesterday and brought poor quality of construction work to his notice, he said, adding that the governor had asked the army to monitor work on development schemes being executed by the civilian departments.



Since army engineers are busy in North and South Waziristan, they cant focus on development and reconstruction activities in entire Fata, Lt Gen Rehman said.



The military commander said that security forces had sealed the border with Afghanistan, adding that Pakistan had established 535 checkpoints from Chitral to South Waziristan but Afghanistan had set up only 145 posts in the region.



Pakistan has a post at the distance of every two kilometres along the border, he said.



Replying to another question, he said that border management system with Afghanistan would be in place at Torkham from Wednesday and only those tribes which had easement right (Rahdari) would be allowed to move within 20km along the border without visa.



Right of easement does not mean that a person will travel from Torkham to Karachi without valid documents, he said, adding that there would be no cross-border movement without visa after Wednesday.



He said that the jurisdiction of the Federal Investigation Agency had been extended to Torkham and seven more crossing points would be established along the border in future. The points will be located in Arandu (Chitral), Nawapass (Bajaur), Kherlachi (Kurram), Ghulam Khan (North Waziristan) and Gorsal (South Waziristan). He said that the army was ready to install a proper system at the seven points if the federal government released funds.



The corps commander said that 11th Corps and 10th Corps were conducting combing operations in eight districts of KP. Eleventh Corps was presently combing areas in Peshawar Valley and Shangla and 10th Corps has moved in Torghar district of Hazara division.



Our first priority was to clear major hideouts of terrorists in areas like Waziristan and then start combing operations, he said.



Security forces had conducted 77 operations in rural and urban areas of the province, rounded up 151 proclaimed offenders and seized suicide jackets and ammunitions etc, he said. Kurram, Khyber, Orakzai and North and South Waziristan have almost been cleared, but threat warnings are coming from Bajaur, Mohmand and inside Swat. Threat warnings in Kurram have been received from across the border.



He cited slow pace of release of funds by the federal government as major impediments in the rehabilitation of displaced persons and reconstruction of damaged infrastructure.



The government had announced Rs 400,000 grant for a destroyed house and Rs160,000 for a partially damaged house, he said. An amount of Rs32 billion is required for paying the grant to affected families but the government has released Rs5bn so far of which Rs1.3 billion has been paid to affected families.



An amount of Rs5.3bn was needed for immediate repair of infrastructure and the government had released 3.6bn so far, Lt Gen Rehman said. Similarly permanent repair of infrastructure requires about Rs30bn but the government has released Rs5bn so far.
Democracy not threatened by Panama Leaks: Bilawal

MIRPUR: Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said on Monday that accountability threatened the Raiwind throne, not democracy.



Moving from one palace to another palace is not called accountability. Why do you run from courts when your accountability comes under discussion? Bilawal asked, targeting Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in his address to a public gathering in Mirpur ahead of the general election in Azad Kashmir.



It is pertinent to mention here that Nawaz Sharif will undergo an open-heart surgery in London on Tuesday (today). This has been Nawazs second visit to London in less than two months for medical purposes at a time when the controversy over the Panama leaks still continues at home.



In the beginning of his speech, Bilawal asked people to pray for prime ministers health. We do not have any personal enmity with anybody. Our every action is in the interest of the country and the nation. Do not take anything personal, he said. He criticised the prime minister for announcing billions of rupees projects in rallies where people were holding flags of another party.



Lion does not run on diesel, the young PPP chairman said, taking a jibe at the prime minister who is seeking support of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman amid the Panama leaks crisis.



Bilawal narrated the story of the oppression his parents faced in different eras and termed it as strict accountability. He said that his mother was exiled and her bank accounts were frozen. He said that his father was put behind the bars for 11 years without any charges in the name of accountability. Revengeful actions are being taken against the PPP even today. Your government is also holding us accountable by detaining the doctor of former president Asif Ali Zardari, he said, indirectly pointing to former petroleum minister Dr Asim Hussains arrest. He said that he believed in transparency and justice.



Bilawal said that his party would never back off from its historic stance on the Kashmir dispute. We want peaceful resolution of the Kashmir issue and only a strong Pakistan can support the Kashmir cause on every forum.



He said that talks with opponents could be held on equal terms. Kashmir elections are around the corner; these elections are not ordinary, as they will decide the future of Kashmir. The world is keeping an eye on the Kashmir elections because these elections will prove a milestone to shape the future of Kashmir, he said.



Bilawal said that if the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) wins these elections using its old tactics of drama and rigging, it would be as if Kashmiris supported PML-Ns anti-Kashmir and Modi-friendly policies. Will the Kashmiri people let this happen? Never! he said



He said the Kashmir cause had no importance for the ruling PML-N. He said that former president Asif Ali Zardari spent the last day of his presidency with Hurriyat leaders at the Kashmir House.



The PPP has supported talks on all forums but people cant forget that you did not even mention Kashmiris in your Ufa declaration out of your criminal silence. It was an injustice to the Kashmir cause and a conspiracy against the Kashmiris.



He said that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto made Pakistan an atomic power because he did not want to see Pakistan becoming Nepal, Bhutan or Sikkim. He called for the resignation of the foreign minister for the countrys disastrous foreign policy. The demand for PMs resignation aside, today I demand resignation from the foreign minister as well, he said and added, Today our state has drifted towards isolation. India is our adversary. We dont have the same terms with Afghanistan like we had before. Iran is also not happy with us. Where is our self autonomy?



He said that drone attacks were being carried out in settled areas of Balochistan and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects were being made controversial. We failed to get F-16s from America. Our foreign policy is heading towards destruction, he deplored.
Eighteen women have filed complaints to police alleging they were sexually assaulted at a music festival in Germany over the weekend, according to local media.

Both the alleged victims and perpetrators were attendees at the Schlossgrabenfest music festival in Darmstadt, near Frankfurt, on Saturday night.

According to a police report, several women were sexually harassed on Saturday, when the dance floor was completely packed. Fkn gross.

Three of the women notified police straight away, informing them how the men surrounded them and began to sexally assault them. Police were able to arrest three men at the scene, but are now hunting between two and three more alleged perpetrators.



Since those arrests, a further 15 women have come forward with claims of sexual assault

All of the men who were arrested are asylum seekers from Pakistan, and aged between the ages of 28 and 31.

While it is only natural to draw conclusions between this incident and the mass sexual assault in Cologne on New Years Eve, we simply dont know enough about the situation to make any such link yet.

Well keep you updated as this story develops.





Source: Reuters.



Photo: Facebook / Schlossgrabenfest.



Hey mates, if this has brought anything up for you and you would like to speak to a counsellor about sexual assault, call 1800 RESPECT on 1800 737 732.
European buyers of wood pellets 2015  2016 (I)

Marketing department of Ukrainian Biofuel Portal pellets-wood.com compiled the database of European companies which have been purchasing and importing wood pellets in 2015 and I quarter 2016.

The database of European wood pellet importers is based on export operations stats data structuring of Ukrainian producers for the pointed period by the means of Trading and analytical system. The database contains volumes comparison, dynamics and supply geography of Ukrainian wood pellets.



Release Date: 16.05.2016

Format: .xls

Companies 2015: 696

Companies 2016(I): 309

Wood pellets market in Ukraine: background information

Ukrainian wood pellets producers in 2015 exported 151 095 MT of their production. This fuel type production is growing from year to year in Ukraine, that entirely meets world tendency. Pellet export to Europe is of priority for the traders. This is provided by reasonable price of Ukraine, high product quality and optimized logistics costs by pellet import from Ukraine. The logistics component is important when forming end pellet price and that is why besides geographical location of Ukraine the developed transport infrastructure allows European buyers to do transactions quickly and successfully. Moreover, the main wood pellet producers are located in the Eastern part of the country and this factor greatly cuts the transport expenditures when deliverying wood pellets to the countries of Europe.

Pellet Importers Database Structure

The database provides the information about European importers of Ukrainian wood pellets, in particular: name and exact address of foreign company, purchase volume for the relevant period, its representative first name and last name, detailed contacts, including phone and fax in international format, email, web-site.

The information about European importers given in the database is a useful information resource for taking strategic decisions by top management of Ukrainian wood pellet manufacturing enterprises. The database will also be useful by planning foreign economic activity in short-term and long term perspective providing opportunity for objective evaluation of the European pellet market. Manufacturing enterprises will also find the database useful for efficient operation at the market.

The provided wood pellets buying companies list will be useful for pellet producers in other countries as these companies do the purchases not only in Ukraine. Such approach allows to find new marketing channels.

The database of European importers of Ukrainian wood pellets can direct buyers of this product. Studying the terms on which Ukrainian pellets are supplied to the European countries, they can alter purchase conditions and choose the most acceptable suppliers.

The researcher of solid biofuel market will also be able to find useful information, which helps the analysis of market situation and defining its tendencies

All databases

Prices on wood pellets: November 2015 - January 2016

Ukrainian Sunflower Husk Pellet Producers Database: 2015  2016 (2Q)
A simulation of combustion within two adjacent gas turbine combustors. GE researchers are incorporating advanced combustion modeling and simulation into product testing after developing a breakthrough methodology on the OLCF's Titan supercomputer. Credit: GE Global Research

In the United States, the use of natural gas for electricity generation continues to grow. The driving forces behind this development? A boom in domestic natural gas production, historically low prices, and increased scrutiny over fossil fuels' carbon emissions. Though coal still accounts for about a third of US electricity generation, utility companies are pivoting to cleaner natural gas to replace decommissioned coal plants.

Low-maintenance, high-efficiency gas turbines are playing an important role in this transition, boosting the economic attractiveness of natural gas-derived electricity. General Electric (GE), a world leader in industrial power generation technology and the world's largest supplier of gas turbines, considers gas-fired power generation a key growth sector of its business and a practical step toward reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. When burned for electricity, natural gas emits half the carbon dioxide that coal does. It also requires fewer environmental controls.

"Advanced gas turbine technology gives customers one of the lowest installed costs per kilowatt," said Joe Citeno, combustion engineering manager for GE Power. "We see it as a staple for increased power generation around the world."

GE's H-class heavy-duty gas turbines are currently the world's largest and most efficient gas turbines, capable of converting fuel and air into electricity at more than 62 percent power-plant efficiency when matched with a steam turbine generator, a setup known as combined cycle. By comparison, today's simple cycle power plants (gas turbine generator only) operate with efficiencies ranging between 33 and 44 percent depending on the size and model.

GE is constantly searching for ways to improve the performance and overall value of its products. A single percent increase in gas turbine efficiency equates to millions of dollars in saved fuel costs for GE's customers and tons of carbon dioxide spared from the atmosphere. For a 1 gigawatt power plant, a 1 percent improvement in efficiency saves 17,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year, equivalent to removing more than 3,500 vehicles from the road. Applying such an efficiency gain across the US combined-cycle fleet (approximately 200 gigawatts) would save about 3.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year.

In 2015, the search for efficiency gains led GE to tackle one of the most complex problems in science and engineeringinstabilities in gas turbine combustors. The journey led the company to the Titan supercomputer at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), a US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility located at DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Balancing act

Simultaneously increasing the efficiency and reducing the emissions of natural gas-powered turbines is a delicate balancing act. It requires an intricate understanding of these massive energy-converting machinestheir materials, aerodynamics, and heat transfer, as well as how effectively they combust, or burn, fuel. Of all these factors, combustion physics is perhaps the most complex.

In an H-class gas turbine, combustion takes place within 6-foot-long chambers at high temperature and pressure. Much like a car engine has multiple cylinders, GE's H-class turbines possess a ring of 12 or 16 combustors, each capable of burning nearly three tons of fuel and air per minute at firing temperatures exceeding 1,500 degrees Celsius. The extreme conditions make it one of the most difficult processes to test at GE's gas turbine facility in Greenville, South Carolina.

At higher temperatures, gas turbines produce more electricity. They also produce more emissions, such as nitrogen oxides (NOx), a group of reactive gases that are regulated at the state and federal levels. To reduce emissions, GE's Dry Low NOx combustion technology mixes fuel with air before burning it in the combustor.

"When the fuel and air are nearly perfectly mixed, you have the lowest emissions," said Jin Yan, manager of the computational combustion lab at GE's Global Research Center. "Imagine 20 tractor-trailers full of combustible fuel-air mixture. One combustor burns that amount every minute. In the process, it produces less than a tea cup (several ounces) of NOx emissions."

Such precise burning can lead to other problems, specifically an unstable flame. Inside a combustor, instabilities in the flame can cause deafening acoustic pulsationsessentially noise-induced pressure waves. These pulsations can affect turbine performance. At their worst, they can wear out the machinery in a matter of minutes. For this reason, whenever a new pulsation is detected, understanding its cause and predicting whether it might affect future products becomes a high priority for the design team.

Testing limits

In 2014, one such pulsation caught researchers' attention during a full-scale test of a gas turbine. The test revealed a combustion instability that hadn't been observed during combustor development testing. The company determined the instability levels were acceptable for sustained operation and would not affect gas turbine performance. But GE researchers wanted to understand its cause, an investigation that could help them predict how the pulsations could manifest in future designs.

The company suspected the pulsations stemmed from an interaction between adjacent combustors, but they had no physical test capable of confirming this hypothesis. Because of facility airflow limits, GE is able to test only one combustor at a time. Even if the company could test multiple combustors, access-visibility and camera technology currently limit the researchers' ability to understand and visualize the causes of high-frequency flame instabilities. So GE placed a bet on high-fidelity modeling and simulation to reveal what the physical tests could not.

The company asked its team of computational scientists, led by Yan, to see if it could reproduce the instability virtually using high-performance computers. GE also asked Yan's team to use the resulting model to determine whether the pulsations might manifest in a new GE engine incorporating DOE-funded technology and due to be tested in late 2015, less than a year away. GE then challenged Yan's team, in collaboration with the software company Cascade Technologies, to deliver these first-of-a-kind results before the 2015 test to demonstrate a truly predictive capability.

"We didn't know if we could do it," Yan said. "First, we needed to replicate the instability that appeared in the 2014 test. This required modeling multiple combustors, something we had never done. Then we needed to predict through simulation whether that instability would appear in the new turbine design and at what level."

Such enhanced modeling and simulation capabilities held the potential to dramatically accelerate future product development cycles and could provide GE with new insights into turbine engine performance earlier in the design process instead of after testing physical prototypes.

But GE faced another hurdle. To meet the challenge time frame, Yan and his team needed computing power that far exceeded GE's internal capabilities.

A computing breakthrough

In the spring of 2015, GE turned to the OLCF for help. Through the OLCF's Accelerating Competitiveness through Computational Excellence (ACCEL) industrial partnerships program, Yan's team received a Director's Discretionary allocation on Titan, a Cray XK7 system capable of 27 petaflops, or 27 quadrillion calculations per second.

Yan's team began working closely with Cascade Technologies, based in Palo Alto, California, to scale up Cascade's CHARLES code. CHARLES is a high-fidelity flow solver for large eddy simulation, a mathematical model grounded in fluid flow equations known as Navier-Stokes equations. Using this framework, CHARLES is capable of capturing the high-speed mixing and complex geometries of air and fuel during combustion. The code's efficient algorithms make it ideally suited to leverage leadership-class supercomputers to produce petabytes of simulation data.

Cascade's CHARLES solver can trace its technical roots back to Stanford University's Center for Turbulence Research and research efforts funded through DOE's Advanced Simulation and Computing program. Many of Cascade's engineering team are alumni of these programs. Although the CHARLES solver was developed to tackle problems like high-fidelity jet engine simulation and supersonic jet noise prediction, it had never been applied to predict combustion dynamics in a configuration as complex as a GE gas turbine combustion system.

Using 11.2 million hours on Titan, members of Yan's team and Cascade's engineering team executed simulation runs that harnessed 8,000 and 16,000 cores at a time, achieving a speedup in code performance 30 times greater than the original code. Cascade's Sanjeeb Bose, an alumnus of DOE's Computational Science Graduate Fellowship Program, provided significant contributions to the application development effort, upgrading CHARLES' reacting flow solver to work five times faster on Titan's CPUs.

Leveraging CHARLES' massively parallel grid generation capabilitiesa new software feature developed by CascadeYan's team produced a fine-mesh grid composed of nearly 1 billion cells. Each cell captured microsecond-scale snapshots of the air-fuel mix during turbulent combustion, including particle diffusion, chemical reactions, heat transfer, and energy exchange.

Working with OLCF visualization specialist Mike Matheson, Yan's team developed a workflow to analyze its simulation data and view the flame structure in high definition. By early summer, the team had made enough progress to view the results: the first ever multicombustor dynamic instability simulation of a GE gas turbine. "It was a breakthrough for us," Yan said. "We successfully developed a model that was able to repeat what we observed in the 2014 test."

The new capability gave GE researchers a clearer picture of the instability and its causes that couldn't be obtained otherwise. Beyond reproducing the instability, the advanced model allowed the team to slow down, zoom in, and observe combustion physics at the sub-millisecond level, something no empirical method can match.

"These simulations are actually more than an experiment," Citeno said. "They provide new insights which, combined with human creativity, allow for opportunities to improve designs within the practical product cycle."

With the advanced model and new simulation methods in hand, Yan's team neared the finish line of its goal. Applying its new methods to the 2015 gas turbine, the team predicted a low instability level in the latest design that was acceptable for operation and would not affect performance. These results were affirmed during the full-scale gas turbine test, validating the predictive accuracy of the new simulation methods developed on Titan. "It was very exciting," Yan said. "GE's leadership put a lot of trust in us."

With the computational team's initial doubts now a distant memory, GE entered a world of new possibilities for evaluating gas turbine engines.

The path forward

Validation of its high-fidelity model and the predictive accuracy of its new simulation methods are giving GE the ability to better integrate simulation directly into its product design cycle. "It's opened up our design space," Yan said. "We can look at all kinds of ideas we never thought about before. The number of designs we can evaluate has grown substantially."

Coupled with advancements in other aspects of gas turbine design, Citeno projects the end result will be a full percentage-point gain in efficiency. This is important to GE's and DOE's goal to produce a combined-cycle power plant that operates at 65 percent efficiency, a leap that translates to billions of dollars a year in fuel savings for customers. A 1 percent efficiency gain across the US combined-cycle fleet is estimated to save more than $11 billion in fuel over the next 20 years.

"The world desperately needs higher-efficiency gas turbines because the end result is millions of tons of carbon dioxide that's not going into the atmosphere," said Citeno, noting that in the last 2 years, more than 50 percent of gas turbines manufactured at GE's Greenville plant were exported to other countries. "The more efficient the technology becomes, the faster it gets adopted globally, which further helps to improve the world's carbon footprint."

Internally, GE's experience with the OLCF's world-class computing resources and expertise helps the company understand and evaluate the value of larger-scale high-performance computing, supporting the case for future investment in GE's in-house capabilities. "Access to OLCF systems allows us to see what's possible and de-risk our internal computing investment decisions," Citeno said. "We can show concrete examples to our leadership of how advanced modeling and simulation is driving new product development instead of hypothetical charts."

Building on its success using Titan, GE is continuing to develop its combustion simulation capabilities under a 2016 allocation awarded through the DOE Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) Leadership Computing Challenge, or ALCC, program. As part of the project, GE's vendor partner Cascade is continuing to enhance its CHARLES code so that it can take advantage of Titan's GPU accelerators.

"A year ago these were gleam-in-the-eye calculations," Citeno said. "We wouldn't do them because we couldn't do them in a reasonable time frame to affect product design. Titan collapsed that, compressing our learning cycle by a factor of 10-plus and giving us answers in a month that would have taken a year with our own resources."

Explore further May carbon dioxide turbine help address clean power generation?
A graphical user interface built in the system to display the tubes position inside the human body which can enhance the cognitive and psycho-motor training. Credit: PolyU

The School of Nursing of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has recently developed a computerized haptic system for nasogastric tube (NGT) placement training, enabling nursing students to practise NGT insertion in computer-simulated virtual environment.

The system, supported by General Research Fund (GRF) under Research Grants Council , is the first computerized haptic system developed for training nurses in clinical skills in Hong Kong.

Nasogastric intubation, through the nostril and the throat, is an essential clinical procedure for inserting a plastic tube into the stomach for feeding or drainage. However, the placement is a blind process in which the tube may be misplaced and could lead to unexpected complications or fatal incidents. Hence, the training of placement techniques is very important to every nursing student.

Conventional training in NGT placement includes lecturing the theories in classroom, followed by small-group clinical teaching with instructors demonstrating the practical skills. The hands-on learning of skills is usually conducted on low-fidelity mannequins. The mannequins cannot respond to the user, render human anatomy realistically and provide the actual sense of insertion forces.

To address these limitations, a computerized virtual training system is developed by the School of Nursing of PolyU with the application of force models to simulate NGT insertion and render the feedback forces through a haptic device. Two methods were used to calculate the force needed. The first method is "Engineering Mechanics", which involves the numerical calculation of the forces between the NGT and the nasogastric passage as if they were structures in engineering design. The other is "Expert System", leveraging the knowledge and experience of expert nursing professionals to compute the forces. With these methods, the system can simulate the insertion forces at different locations along the nasogastric passage, as well as the static and dynamic friction between the NGT and the nasogastric passage during the insertion process.

A nasogastric tube (NGT) placement training system developed by PolyU School of Nursing with haptic feedback makes the training more realistic. Credit: PolyU

This computerized simulation can provide students with safe, standardized, repeatable and self-paced training with interactive feedback like gag and coughing reflexes of the simulator during NGT insertion for more realistic experiential learning and performance evaluation of the students. In addition, a graphical user interface is specifically built in the system to visually and virtually display the tube's position inside the body, so as to facilitate the cognitive and psycho-motor training for the blind process. Quantitative measurements, in terms of completion time and insertion force applied during the virtual NGT placement, provide students with feedback of how well they perform the NGT placement. These functions and learning occasions are not possible with conventional training using mannequins.

Nursing professionals and academics positively commented that the computer-generated forces of the system are similar to what they experience during the real NGT placement of patients. The system will enhance the skills of NGT placement of the students and advance clinical nursing education. To evaluate training effectiveness, the School of Nursing at PolyU is planning to conduct a pilot run in the 2016/17 academic year for students to use this system as a supplementary training platform to the conventional training approach. The research team will also enhance the features of the system by adding other simulated insertion outcomes such as the coiling of NGT inside the mouth during insertion, and rigorous body responses and movements of the virtual patient; and to develop another high-fidelity simulator for the training of urinary catheter insertion.

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Put simply, cool roofs cool the globe, says Concordia engineering professor Hashem Akbari. Credit: Concordia University

As the summer heats up, so do cities. That's true not just for hot places like Los Angeles and Phoenix, but also for cooler capitals like Ottawa and Reykjavik.

Regardless of latitude, urban temperatures are typically several degrees higher than those of nearby suburban and rural areas. The resulting "heat islands" mean increased discomfort, higher air-conditioning bills and denser smog.

A major culprit? Hot roofs baked by the sun. The solution? Cooling down those roofs by using reflective surfacesand doing so even if those cities are covered in snow for several months of the year.

A new study published by researchers from Concordia University in Montreal in Energy and Buildings confirms that, contrary to the belief that cool roofs won't work in colder climates, they actually provide net energyand monetarysavings.

"Using a cool roof on a commercial building in cold climates is typically not suggested based on the presumption that the heating penalties may be higher than the cooling savings," says Hashem Akbari, professor in the Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering and the study's senior author.

"Our research shows that any improvement to a roof that limits the summertime solar heat gain actually results in energy-cost savings for the building owner, as well as a reduction in the building's overall environmental impact."

For the study, Akbari and his co-author, Mirata Hosseini, a Concordia PhD candidate, used modelling software to simulate energy consumption for several prototype office and retail buildings in four cold-climate cities in North America: Anchorage, Milwaukee, Montreal and Toronto.

They found that cool roofs for the simulated buildings resulted in annual energy expenditure savings in all municipalities.

A cool roof on a new, medium-sized office building would save four dollars per 100 square metres in Montreal, $10 per 100 square metres in Toronto and $14 per 100 square metres in Milwaukee and Anchorage. The research also showed that cool roofs can reduce the peak electric demand of the retail buildings by up to five watts per square metre.

"Our study proves that cool roofs for commercial buildings are a net saver of energy in all climates that use air conditioning during the summer," says Akbari.

"In cooler climates, installing cool roofs may even prevent buying an air conditioner altogether. Even in non-air-conditioned buildings, cool roofs improve comfort during hot summer days. And in extreme cases, these roofs may even save lives by reducing the risk of heat stroke."

Many municipalities already prescribe cool roofs in the construction of new buildings and for re-roofing existing buildings. This study proves that those rules should also apply in colder climates. It is Akbari's hope that cool roofs become the global standard.

"On a large scale, cool roofs can moderate the air temperature surrounding a building, decrease greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the urban heat island effect," he says.

"Put simply, cool roofs cool the globe."

Akbari is organizing and chairing the Fourth International Conference on Countermeasures to Urban Heat Islands, being held May 30 to June 1 in Singapore. At this conference, over 300 scientists, practitioners, and policy makers gather to discuss implementation of heat island mitigation technologies. On top of the list of implementation is developing policies that lead to installing cool roofs on all buildings that are air conditioned.

Explore further Cool roofs in China offer enhanced benefits during heat waves

More information: Mirata Hosseini et al, Effect of cool roofs on commercial buildings energy use in cold climates, Energy and Buildings (2016). Mirata Hosseini et al, Effect of cool roofs on commercial buildings energy use in cold climates,(2016). DOI: 10.1016/j.enbuild.2015.05.050
A blue wild indigo flower is rooted at the edge of an annual prescribed burn on Kansas State University's Konza Prairie Biological Station, where ecologists are advising an increase in burning. Credit: Kansas State University

Kansas State University researchers have found a three-year absence of fire is the tipping point for the tallgrass prairie ecosystem and advise an increase in burning.

A collaborative study, recently publish in Elsevier's journal, Rangeland Ecology and Management, suggests many land managers in the Flint Hills need to increase burning frequency to more than once every three years to keep the tallgrass prairie ecosystem from transitioning to woodland. The study applied 40 years of data collected at Konza Prairie Biological Station, an 8,600-acre native tallgrass prairie jointly owned by Kansas State University and The Nature Conservancy, to satellite fire maps of the Flint Hills from 2000 to 2010.

The satellite data used in the study"Assessing the Potential for Transitions from Tallgrass Prairie to Woodland: Are We Operating Beyond Critical Fire Thresholds? "indicated at least 50 percent of the tallgrass prairie in the Flint Hills is burned every three to four years or less frequently and is susceptible to becoming shrubland. Fire intervals greater than 10 years apart or complete fire suppression have drastic effectsparticularly in the absence of grazing.

"In this area, if we completely exclude fire, the landscape can go from tallgrass prairie to a cedar forest in as little as 30-40 years," said John Briggs, director of Konza Prairie and one of the authors of the study. "Once it gets to that point, we are not confident that fire alone is going to bring that back."

According to Briggs, also a professor of biology, the tallgrass prairie is one of the most altered ecosystems in North America with only 4 percent remaining. The grasslands are conducive to cattle ranching and provide economic stability for the area. Native grasses filter freshwater, prevent soil erosion, provide wildlife habitat for grassland birds like the prairie chicken, and mitigate nutrient loading. Briggs also said that if woody vegetation increases near human settlements, so will the chances of dangerous wildfire.

"We knew some areas around the Flint Hills were beyond these fire thresholds but we were still surprised how much of the region is susceptible to shrub and tree expansion," said Zak Ratajczak, the study's lead author and Kansas State University doctoral alumnus.

Ratajczak, now a National Science postdoctoral fellow at the University of Virginia, started comparing the results from the Konza Prairie fire experiments with the fire maps from K-State's geography researchers as part of his doctoral studies at Kansas State University. Assisting with the study were Doug Goodin, professor of geography, Lei Luo, master's student in geography, and Jesse Nippert, associate professor of biology, all from Kansas State University; Rhett Mohler, Kansas State University alumnus and assistant professor of geography at Saginaw Valley State University; and Brian Obermeyer, director of The Nature Conservancy's Flint Hills Initiative.

"Prescribed fire is the most effective tool owners have to manage their land," Briggs said. "Other means, such as mechanically removing woody vegetation or using herbicides, are very expensive and very harmful. Fire is pennies per acre to implement; the other methods can be dollars per acre. That can really add up."

Managed by the university's Division of Biology, Konza Prairie has more than 50 sections of land called watershedsbecause they are partitioned based on water flowthat are burned at varying frequenciesfrom annually to every 20 yearssince the land was donated in 1971. The areas of the station with one- and two-year fire intervals have minimal large shrubs compared to a nearby watershed that is burned at three-and-a-half-year intervals and that has lost 40 percent of its area to shrub expansion.

This comparison, combined with the satellite data of the region, is one reason the researchers are advising an increase in burning in many areas, even though they realize this might stimulate discussion locally and for communities downwind.

"This comes at a time where people are really concerned about smoke and our suggestion to increase burning comes with a trade-off," Briggs said. "We are going to have more fire and more smoke, which can affect the air quality in the region and other parts of North America."

To find solutions for this problem, Briggs said land managers are working with fire cooperatives and the Kansas Flint Hills Smoke Management to find best practices and compromise. Briggs said a tour of Konza can give land managers access to research data and might help them establish collaborative practices to reduce the abundance of smoke.

"There is always a conflict to burning," Briggs said. "Most people think that the remaining tallgrass prairie should be a fenced-off preserve. They think that it will take care of itself, but this system is fire derived and historically fire maintained. Aside from the sustainable and ecological aspects, it is critical to people's livelihoods and necessary to ranching communities."

Explore further Water research tackles growing grassland threat: Trees

More information: Zak Ratajczak et al, Assessing the Potential for Transitions from Tallgrass Prairie to Woodlands: Are We Operating Beyond Critical Fire Thresholds?, Rangeland Ecology & Management (2016). Zak Ratajczak et al, Assessing the Potential for Transitions from Tallgrass Prairie to Woodlands: Are We Operating Beyond Critical Fire Thresholds?,(2016). DOI: 10.1016/j.rama.2016.03.004
An image of the "Canarias Einstein ring". In the centre of the picture, we can see how the source galaxy (the greenish-blue circle), which is further away "surrounds" the lens galaxy (red dot) almost completely. This phenomenon is produced because the strong gravitational field of the lens galaxy distorts the space-time in its neighborhood, bending the paths of the light rays which come from the source galaxy. As they are almost perfectly aligned, the resulting image of the source galaxy is almost circular. Credit: Image made up from several images taken with the DECam camera on the Blanco 4m telescope at the Cerro Tololo Observatory in Chile.

The PhD student Margherita Bettinelli, of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC) and the University of La Laguna (ULL), together with an international team of astrophysicists has recently discovered an unusual astronomical object: an Einstein ring. These phenomena, predicted by Einstein's theory of General Relativity, are quite rare but scientifically interesting. The interest is sufficiently strong that this object has been given its own name: the "The Canarias Einstein ring". The research was carried out by the Stellar Populations group at the IAC, led by Antonio Aparicio and Sebastian Hidalgo. The results were published in the international journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

An Einstein ring is a distorted image of a very distant galaxy, which is termed "the source". The distortion is produced by the bending of the light rays from the source due to a massive galaxy, termed "the lens", lying between it and the observer. The strong gravitational field produced by the lens galaxy distorts the structure of space-time in its neighbourhood, and this does not only attract objects which have a mass, but also bends the paths of light. When the two galaxies are exactly aligned, the image of the more distant galaxy is converted into an almost perfect circle which surrounds the lens galaxy. The irregularities in the circle are due to asymmetries in the source galaxy.

Confirmation using the GTC

The chance discovery was made by Margherita Bettinelli when she was examining data taken through the "Dark Energy Camera" (DECam) of the 4m Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Observatory, in Chile. While working on her doctoral thesis, she was analyzing the stellar population of the Sculptor dwarf galaxy and noticed the peculiar morphology of the Einstein ring. This quickly raised the attention of the members of the group and they started to observe and analyze its physical properties with the OSIRIS spectrograph on the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS (GTC).

This "Canarias Einstein ring" is one of the most symmetrical discovered until now and is almost circular, showing that the two galaxies are almost perfectly aligned, with a separation on the sky of only 0.2 arcseconds. The source galaxy is 10,000 million light years away from us. Due to the expansion of the Universe, this distance was smaller when its light started on its journey to us, and has taken 8,500 million years to reach us. We observe it as it was then: a blue galaxy which is beginning to evolve, populated by young stars which are forming at a high rate. The lens galaxy is nearer to us, 6,000 million light years away, and is more evolved. Its stars have almost stopped forming, and its population is old.

"Studying these phenomena -says Antonio Aparicio, one of the IAC astrophysicts who is leading the resarch-, gives us especially relevant information about the composition of the source galaxy, and also about the structure of the gravitational field and of the dark matter in the lens galaxy".

Explore further The dark side of the diffuse galaxies

Provided by Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC)
Asian fish disease study. Credit: University of Southampton

The University of Southampton is leading an international project to understand how the environment can help to control the risk of disease in fish and crustacean aquaculture in India and Bangladesh.

Infectious disease outbreaks represent a key limitation to the sustainable expansion of the aquaculture industry to meet the global challenges of food security and poverty alleviation.

The consortium, which is jointly led by the University of Southampton (UK) and the Central Institute of Brackishwater Aquaculture (India), involves nine research institutes and universities in India, the UK and Bangladesh.

The aim of the project is to calculate the role of physical pond conditions in controlling two socio-economically devastating pathogens of decapod crustaceans and freshwater fish in Asian aquaculture.

Global losses to White Spot Syndrome Virus (WSSV), the causative agent of white spot disease (WSD) in shrimp and other crustaceans, have been estimated to cost between US$ 8-15 billion.

Dr Chris Hauton, Associate Professor in Ocean and Earth Science at the University of Southampton and Principal Investigator of the project, said: "Currently, there is no effective means of controlling this globally significant pathogen that has been proven at farm scale. Our current best option is to understand how the environment controls disease progression in shrimp ponds, as a means to reduce the risk of infectious outbreak. This knowledge, incorporated into guidelines for best management practice, will allow for the development of novel intervention strategies to be implemented in the future."

At least 94 species of fish are affected by ulcerative syndromes (EUS) caused by the pathogenic fungal-like oomycete Aphanomyces invadans. In the period 1988-89 Bangladesh alone suffered a revenue loss of US$ 4.8 million due to EUS.

Professor Pieter van West, Director of the International Centre for Aquaculture Research and Development at the University of Aberdeen, added: "This is a very important award that will give us much needed information about EUS. As far as we know, this disease has not reached European aquaculture, but is one disease we should be very vigilant about as it is uncontrollable at the moment."

Researchers will work with farmers in India and Bangladesh to identify existing best practice to formulate new guidelines to disseminate throughout farming communities across Asia. The team will also develop new understanding of the host pathogen interaction for both diseases, with the intention of developing future novel intervention methods with which to tackle infection.

Explore further The new recirculating aquaculture development environment in Laukaa gives new boost to fish farming
For Immediate Release

Turkish security personnel blocked a Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) research team from accessing the town of Cizre in Turkeys restive southeast earlier this month. That comes despite statements from Turkeys Ministry of Foreign Affairs that international organizations can easily visit the countrys southeast, where PHR was investigating allegations of human rights violations.

Denying PHR access to Cizre shows that Turkeys promises of unimpeded access are totally false, said PHRs director of programs Widney Brown. We already have grave concerns about reports of extrajudicial killings and the targeting of medical personnel in southeast Turkey. Barring PHRs delegation was entirely arbitrary and heightens our concerns about what exactly is taking place outside public view.

PHRs delegation attempted to enter the town of Cizre on May 4. At a security checkpoint approximately three miles from the city, police from Turkeys anti-terror branch stopped PHRs investigators for further questioning. After two hours, the officials said they could not guarantee the delegations safety and would not allow it to proceed. Police officers said the PHR team could enter the city at a later time but only with the governors permission and a police escort.

Having a police escort would have jeopardized PHRs objectivity and intimidated the very people PHR was there to interview, said PHRs Brown. There was no requirement that the delegation have permission from any government official to enter the town. The restrictions were only meant to prevent our team from doing its work.

Earlier this month, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Raad Al Hussein, said the Turkish government had effectively enacted a blackout in areas of the southeast. The Commissioner said Turkish officials had not responded positively to his requests to send impartial observers to investigate allegations of the targeting of civilians and other human rights violations committed by Turkish security services and Kurdish separatist forces.

For too long, Turkey has used concerns about terrorism as an excuse to throw a cloak over its own dubious practices, said Brown. Turkish officials must allow investigators from independent organizations like PHR as well as international observers like the UN unimpeded, free access to investigate allegations of human rights abuses.

PHRs investigators were eventually able to interview some residents of Cizre outside of the citys limits. The team is set to release its investigation into human rights abuses and the targeting of health care workers in Turkeys southeast later this summer.

Cizre was under a 78-day curfew until March 2, which effectively sealed off the town of 100,000 residents. The action was part of a long-running Turkish military operation against the PKK Kurdish separatist group. Both Turkish and PKK fighters have been accused of human rights abuses.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is a New York-based advocacy organization that uses science and medicine to prevent mass atrocities and severe human rights violations. Learn more here.
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SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher announced Tuesday that she is stepping down next year after seven years at the helm.

Zimphers tenure will end on June 30, 2017. She said in a letter that among her priorities for the coming year would be to increase college completion rates, furthering the efforts to increase teacher prepration and obtaining an extension of the SUNY 2020 rational tuition plan, which contained steady increase in tuition over a five-year period. The Legislature did not act on that in this last session.

"The State University of New York is the greatest, most impactful system of higher education in the country, and being chancellor of SUNY is a highlight of my career, ZImpher said in a news release. "Guided by the strategic vision for SUNY that we developed in partnership with all New Yorkers, and through the collective and outstanding leadership of our trustees, college and university presidents, faculty and student shared governance organizations, and our partners in government and communities across the state, SUNY has made incredible progress.

Zimpher said she was giving a years notice, so the Board of Trustees had adequate time to find a successor.

SUNY Board Chairman H. Carl McCall praised her leadership. He said a national search for SUNYs next chancellor would begin soon.

During her seven year tenure with the State University of New York, Nancy Zimpher has transformed SUNY and lifted our system up as the national model of higher education for the 21st century," McCall said in a news release. "Throughout her leadership, Chancellor Zimpher has put our students at the forefront, championed efforts to create a more efficient system, enriched the intellectual edge of our teaching and research initiatives, and positioned SUNY as New Yorks economic engine.
A Democratic congressman from Massachusetts who U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Willsboro, said shares a kindred spirit endorsed her Democratic challenger on Tuesday.

U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, the Massachusetts Democrat, said Stefanik challenger Mike Derrick, a retired Army colonel, has crucial perspective on defense and veteran issues that would counter policies supported by House Republicans and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

I am so grateful these three competent veterans have stepped up to run for Congress, Moulton said, endorsing Derrick and two other New York House Democratic challengers in a conference call Tuesday with regional and national reporters.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee organized the call.

Moulton, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, discussed two specific proposals he said Trump has endorsed  restructuring the Veterans Affairs health care program to a system of contracts with private health care facilities, and reducing benefits veterans receive under the Post 9/11 GI Bill, both of which Stefanik oppose.

Privatization is not an answer, he said, referring to VA health care.

Stefanik has said she opposes privatizing VA health care.

She thinks veterans deserve all the benefits they are entitled to under the Post 9/11 GI bill, congressional office spokesman Tom Flanagin said Tuesday.

Stefanik would not comment directly for this report.

Campaign spokesman Lenny Alcivar said Stefanik does not respond to partisan tactics.

Partisan talking points lodged by partisan attack dogs have no place when it comes to vital foreign policy, he said.

Later on Tuesday, Alcivar released a statement from Stefanik: I consider Seth a friend and we have a strong record of working together on a bipartisan basis. It is unfortunate that he let partisan politics get in the way today.

Moulton, a House freshman, serves with Stefanik on the House Armed Services Committee.

Stefanik has co-sponsored legislation Moulton introduced to establish an online network for scheduling and confirming VA medical appointments.

Moulton has co-sponsored legislation Stefanik introduced to re-instate the year-round Pell program, which provides supplemental grants for courses in summer and other nontraditional semesters.

Derrick has said the legislation, although it has good intentions, is shortsighted without an increase in overall Pell funding.

Stefanik has often mentioned Moulton as a bipartisan ally.

I found him a kindred spirit and am really looking forward to reaching across the aisle, she said in a November 2014 meeting with The Post-Star editorial board, just after the 2014 election.

Responding to questions from The Post-Star during the conference call Tuesday, Moulton said co-sponsoring legislation is just one aspect of the political process.

She is co-sponsoring it (VA bill) because it is a good idea. And I likewise think that her bill on Pell grants is a good idea. But were not talking about who happens to co-sponsor legislation here, he said. Were talking about the fact that we have never had fewer veterans in Congress in the nations history.

Later on Tuesday, Meredith Kelly, national press secretary for DCCC, said the conference call was not planned as an endorsement.

The express purpose of this call was to highlight for the nation and New Yorkers just how devastating an impact Donald Trump would have on our nations veterans, she said in a prepared statement.

Moulton said he conceptually supports legislation that U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., introduced to transfer prosecution of sexual assault cases in the military from military commanders to independent military trial lawyers.

While I think there are valid concerns on both sides of this issue, my votes on the Armed Services Committee reflect support for that in principle, he said.

Derrick and Green Party congressional candidate Matt Funiciello support the legislation, while Stefanik opposes it.

Funiciello said Tuesday that Democratic and Republican defense policy is essentially the same, while the Green Party supports cutting spending on weapons advancement and increasing wages and health care benefits for the military.

They both miss the point, said Funiciello, a bread company owner and political activist from Hudson Falls.

Moulton on Tuesday also endorsed DuWayne Gregory, Democratic challenger to Rep. Peter King, R-Long Island, and John Plumb, Democratic challenger to Rep. Tom Reed, R-Corning.
GLENS FALLS  Verizons call center in Glens Falls, which employs about 50 people, will remain open under the terms of the new labor agreement reached last week.

The contract still must be ratified by employees of the unions that represent about 36,000 Verizon employees. Those unions are the Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

Verizon spokesman Rich Young said Tuesday that the new labor agreement would preserve the Glens Falls call center, though it was unclear whether the center would be impacted by another aspect of the proposed labor agreement: a commitment to hire more call center employees.

Its way too early to tell, Young said. The fact is that weve agreed to hire 1,300 new call center representatives in the Verizon footprint, which runs from Massachusetts to Virginia, but at this point, well assess the needs of the business and react accordingly.

A previous labor contract offer from Verizon to the unions called for closure of the Glens Falls operation, along with three other smaller call centers.

Under the terms of the new labor agreement, union employees would receive a wage increase of 10.5 percent over the term of the contract, which would expire Aug. 3, 2019. The first wage increase would come after ratification.

Verizon and the labor unions had been in dispute over the new labor contract for nearly a year, and union workers launched a strike in mid-April.

Rick Bachand, a union steward for CWA Local 1104, called preservation of the Glens Falls operation a victory, though he agreed its too early to know whether the local office will benefit from new jobs as a result of the tentative agreement.

I think the solidarity of our members and our willingness to hold the line is ultimately what won this contract for us, Bachand said.

Community support, including donations of food and water and signs of support during local picketing events, were also key to the success of the strike, he said.

The unions will begin voting on the new labor contract soon, in a process that should be finished over the next two weeks or so, Bachand said.
Inventory needs to be managed and managed well, or you are going to get in recurring trouble, and lose your credibility and hard-earned conversions, whether 

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More recently, energy sector stakeholders like the Integrated Social Development Centre, the Consumer Protection Agency, and the opposition New Patriotic Party have blamed sharp spikes in electricity prices as a consequence of high taxes imposed on the cost of power. Total amount of taxes on electricity has been pegged at 35% by the ranking member of parliament on the Mines and Energy Committee of Parliament, K.T Hammond.

READ MORE: Here is why you are paying so much for your electricity bills

Responding to the concerns, Minister of Finance Seth Terkper conceded that government has had to resort more to taxes as a source of revenue to block recent revenue generation gaps owing to the countrys recent economic challenges.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is important to situate this in the context of using taxes as a means of correction as part of macro economic policy and as part of fiscal policy. I know it has been made to look simple that you can do a correction [Resuscitating an economy] without falling on taxes, he said.

As a background to his point, Seth Terkper gave a brief summary of the current challenges of the Ghanaian economy and why an intensified tax regime is necessary to correcting those challenges.

It all started from the implementation of the Single Spine Pay Policy which led to huge ballooning of the wage bill. In fact, we just paid the final GHC3 billion of the salary arrears. At the same time, oil production dropped from 90,000 to 70,000 barrels and, more recently, huge drops in all three commodity prices.

Mr. Terkper maintains that no country in history has successfully manoeuvred through such economic challenges without increasing taxes.
He made the comments during the inauguration of the revamp Komenda Sugar Factory in Komenda in the Central Region.

President Mahama said: Indeed, the next term of office will see a massive investment in the real sector. In the first term as president, I have been engrossed with trying to ensure macroeconomic stability and restoring the social and economic infrastructure. That has been my focus in the first term. The second term is going to see massive investment in the real sector and that is the sector that creates jobs across the country.

He added a second term in office will see a launching of the green revolution in Ghana. This, he says, will establish 50 new farmer service centres across the country to assist farmers.

The next term of office will see a launching of the green revolution in Ghana," he said. "Were already designing and preparing for establishment 50 new farmer service centres across the country to provide subsidized fertilizers, agricultural mechanization services, improved seeds to farmers in all parts of this country.
President of the Association Esther Bamfo explained that they are unhappy with the change of name from Community Health Nursing to Nurse Assistant Prevention.

She further stated that though the name has been changed the certificate awarded has remained unchanged.

She also questioned why the then SRN nurses are being awarded diplomas after the change of name to RGN.

But the public relations officer of the Health Ministry, Tony Goodman has said the Minister of Health has already met with the aggrieved nurses and stakeholders involved over the name change subject matter.

According to him, the Minister, Alex Segbefia believes a Legislative Instrument (LI) is needed for the name change, as it is an Act of parliament that established the name.

He [Alex Segbefia] thought it is proper to also look at the Act, it is also good to listen to everybody and find a solution to it. So this is where we are. The minister is actually working at resolving the issue, Mr. Goodman told Accra-based TV3.

The President of the community health nurses had earlier mentioned their dissatisfaction with the poor job progression among the Community Health Nurses. "Some Community Health Nurses have worked for over eight years and yet seen no promotion" she lamented.
North Korea has the greatest prevalence of modern slavery, with 4.37% of its population estimated to be enslaved. It is also the country with the weakest government response in terms of actions taken to combat modern slavery. The next highest prevalence of slavery is found in Uzbekistan (3.97%), followed by Cambodia (1.65%).

The survey results estimated that there are 103,300 people enslaved in Ghana . 85% of the people are in forced labour, and 15% are in forced marriage. "For forced labour, the main industries of concern are farming and fishing, retail sales and then manual labour and factory work" the research stated.

The Communications Manager for Challenging Heights, Miss Pomaa Arthur in a statement said Ghana needs to do more although the report is a reflection that Ghana is making some progress in bringing an end to modern slavery.

According to the report Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for approximately 13.6% (6,245,800) of the worlds total enslaved population. Within the region, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, and the Central African Republic have the highest prevalence of modern slavery (all 1.13%). Forms of slavery in Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa and Ethiopia were forced labour and forced marriage.

In 2014, the Global Slavery Index ranked Ghana 21 in the world and 8 in Sub-Saharan Africa with an estimated 193,100 people enslaved. It is good news that our prevalence rate is dropping but we shouldnt forget that there are still 103,300 trapped in slavery in the country, she said.

Miss Arthur therefore called for a better coordination between the Government and NGOs such as Challenging Heights working to bring an end to slavery.
The parents of the baby - a Ghanaian father and a woman who have been described by Italian authorities as a refugee are in the grip of the police.

An autopsy will be carried out on the body of the baby on Wednesday.

According to reports from ansa.itan online news platform in Italy, the baby suffered a cardiac arrest after the circumcision and was later confirmed dead at the hospital.

The emergency call to alert authorities came from a venue know as "Spazio Neruda" occupied by the homeless.

A resident at the Spazio Neruda told ansa.it "They circumcised their son, then they wrapped him with gauze and gave him paracetamol,"

Ansa.it reports that the baby had been brought to the shelter by parents on Sunday evening to pass the night.

The mother of the baby who was reported to the police for alleged culpable homicide told investigators she gave the baby 250mg of paracetamol after the circumcision.

The Italian police is yet to track down the Ghanaian doctorwho carried out the circumcision.

The news portal reports that Mustafa Qaddurah, a pediatrician with the Islamic Cultural Centre of Rome, said the national health system in Italy does not cover circumcision performed for cultural or non medical purposes.
Worse still, in communities where oil is drilled, there is no community participation which often leads to vandalism of oil pipes.

Politicians and businesses connected to the corridors of power are often accused of sharing oil blocks amongst themselves.

In a new report, The African Oil Governance Report, the Africa Center for Energy Policy (ACEP) observes that African countries have shied away from disclosing beneficiaries of oil blocks in oil producing countries.

Benjamin Boakye, deputy executive director at ACEP says when it comes to the core issues of who actually owns the contracts, who actually negotiates oil blocks on the continent, that is beneficiary ownership information, none of the countries have signed up, or started implementing those requirements.

When it comes to disclosure of contracts, letting people know what fiscal terms politicians have signed on behalf of the people, countries have not adopted.

In cases where owners of oil blocks are known, the persons involved are often names of close associates of presidents or influential people in government.

The problem though for you now if you look at all these (oil) blocks they have people connected with you or your party, and it looks like you divided up the oil among political cronies. And now that oil has been found, these blocks could deliver hundreds of millions of dollars to people connected with your party. Is it not understandable that the government that came in started having a look at this stuff? The Financial Times asked former president Kufour, under whos tenure Ghana struck oil.

The paper listed only Ghanaian beneficiaries of Ghanas oil as: Kodjo Alata-an 80-year old long time associate of the President and a kingpin of the party he led, New Patriotic Party (NPP); Berwuah Edusei - friend of President Kufuor, NPP North American Chairman, former Ambassador to Switzerland and later to the U.S. under Kufuor; George Owusu - Friend of Kufuor; and Nick Amarteifio - personal friend of Kufuor and a board member of the Central bank, Bank of Ghana under his tenure.

But what worries ACEP most is the fact that communities are not central to the way oil revenues are managed.

Communities have not been central to the way we manage our resources that is why you see for example in Nigeria, people are attacking pipe lines, communities always at war with oil companies because they have always been relegated to the background, Boakye said.

He noted that communities must have a say in whether resources should be exploited or not.

We want to see pre-plan and informed consent being institutionalized across the region so that communities have a say in whether the resources should be exploited or not.

The African Oil Governance Report noted that beneficial and mandatory disclosure [of oil blocks] remains unsatisfactory.
The Chairman of the party, Prof. Edmund Delle presented the accounts and other documents in compliance with the Political Parties' Act. He did so together with other leaders of the party.

Prof. Delle said meeting the EC's deadline is indicative that the CPP is a serious political party.

"We have the men to work night and day to carry out tasks that we are given within the shortest possible time," he said.

He urged the public not to compare the CPP to other smaller parties as it is one of the oldest. He said the party enjoys massive grass root support and will surprise Ghanaians in the upcoming elections.

"It is a party which is vibrant and will pull surprises in the upcoming general elections,"
The first one is about the constitution of Kenya, the second about religious tolerance and the third is about secularism.

According to the countrys 2014 demographic profile, the dominant religion is clearly Christianity (82.5%). There are eight religions listed as major religious groups: Protestant, Catholic, Hindu, Muslim, Other Christian, Other Religion, Traditionalists and No Religion. The roughly 80% of Christians include Protestants, Catholics and Other Christians.

Protestants number more than 18 million and Catholics are in excess of nine million. Other Christians number 4.5 million. It is the latter group to which the Pentecostal groups belong.

There are close to a million people registered as having no religion. The 2014 demographic profile placed those who have no religion at 2.4% of the population, and those with unspecified religion at 0.7%. If one adds the two together it takes the figure of those who are unaffiliated higher than the 2009 figure. It seems that the number of people who are either atheists, or agnostics or just simply not affiliated is growing. Taken together, the million who claim to have no religion in a population of 45 million can be a significant number.

Whether or not this segment of the population is atheist or antitheist, it certainly would include those who Atheists in Kenya could easily attract to its membership.

The growth of religiously unaffiliated people in Kenya is slow but steady, and could be attributed to religious discontent and access to scientific knowledge. What is significant is that the median age of those who are turning to atheism or simply non-affiliation is set at 20 years. In developing countries such as Japan and Europe it is 34. Even pastors seem to admit that atheism in Kenya is on the rise. It may be of interest that Richard Dawkins, one of the most outspoken atheists, was born in Kenya.

The background

At the beginning of the year Atheists in Kenya applied for registration with the registrar of societies. But after protestations from a section of the Christian community, specifically the Kenya National Congress of Pentecostal Churches, the attorney general directed the registrar to suspend the registration on the grounds that peace and order in Kenya would suffer.

The founder of the atheist organisation denied that it constituted a threat to society, saying it was a peaceful group wishing to have formal recognition and space to interact with the rest of society. This makes it unlike those suspected of criminal activities, such as the quasi-religious Mungiki sect.

In a democratic society it is fundamental that all people have equal opportunities to express themselves through any formal organisational networks, as long as such associations are not a threat to society. But the atheists, in so far as they have demonstrated publicly, seem to be interested in promoting their worldview among like-minded people. There is, therefore, no reason for anyone to be agitated about it.

On the other hand, the resistance from a certain section of the Christian community to the groups establishment and registration can only lead to unnecessary friction based on unfounded fear. It is not as if the organisation is on a massive conversion programme so as to pose a challenge to Christianity.

What the law says

First lets establish if Atheists in Kenya qualifies to be registered in accordance with the laws of the country. According to the Societies Act the term society refers to any club, company, partnership, or other association of ten or more persons.

Atheists in Kenya does have more than ten members, according to its claim. Is it an unlawful society as it stands? Not if it has applied for registration within 28 days of its formation and if it has not been notified of the determination of its application. As it stands the organisation has applied for its registration and has not been formally informed of the decision from the registrar of societies.

The law provides guidelines for the rejection of an application by a society. The grounds on which it can do this is if the registrar

has reasonable cause to believe that the society has among its objects, or is likely to pursue or to be used for, any unlawful purpose or any purpose prejudicial to or incompatible with peace, welfare or good order in Kenya, or that the interests of peace, welfare of good order in Kenya would otherwise be likely to suffer prejudice by reason of the registration of the society.

There is no evidence thus far that Atheists in Kenya poses a threat to the nation of Kenya. The law provides for appeal to the minister against the decision and provides for appeal to the High Court. It would be interesting to see how far this matter goes.

What the constitution says

Notwithstanding the fact that the constitution does make explicit reference to belief in God, chapter two of the Kenyan constitution makes it explicitly clear that there shall be no state religion. Furthermore, chapter 2.10 and the Bill of Rights clearly provide an insight into the values that govern the constitution of Kenya. Taken together there is nothing in them to suggest any discrimination against minority groups.

When it comes to religious tolerance, the constitution clearly provides for the protection of ones belief and opinion. Whether or not Kenya is a secular state can be debated, but the values enshrined in the constitution are clearly as secular as can be, and these provide protection to all citizens regardless of their worldviews.

Expression of belief in God in the constitution does not automatically make the country a religious one, but is rather an expression of the broader worldview of the nation. Notwithstanding the dominant worldview of any nation, democracies have clear statements in their bill of rights sections providing for the essential freedoms that underpin the expression of human conscience.

The constitutions of India and South Africa, and the First Amendment to the US constitution, are clear examples of such statements of tolerance in society.
The event which attracted art lovers, corporate executives, entertainers and media personnel alike featured an array of graffiti works by foremost Nigerian graffiti artist, Osa Okunkpolor,including a brand new Kia salon car which was covered completely in graffiti art.

The 2-day event held on the 28th and 29th of May at the Kia Showroom, Victoria Island and had several notable faces in attendance including Portfolio Marketing Manager, Guinness, Liz Ashdown, 'Jagaban' artist, Ycee, celebrity Disc Jokey (DJ), DJ Spinall,Nollywood actor, Deyemi Okanlawon, Falana,amongst others.

In an exclusive chat with Pulse, Head Of Innovation at A2 Creative, Adaora Mbelu-Dania spoke on the evolution of graffiti as an art form, saying:

Graffiti has evolved over the years from just tagging your name on walls in one color, to experimenting with different colors, huge pieces, always been a beautiful and creative way to express feelings from the beginning of time

Asides from Osa, she revealed that the A2 creative group was working towards creating a platform for Nigerian graffiti and urban artists to share their heart, and showcase their work in its most interactive form.
According to the Instagram user with the handle @royal_eki, "Madam find your own self, what do you do beside getting fat and posting pics on Instagram," the troll asked, adding, "#unambitious #menlookbeyondlooks men should marry women that will add not these kind that will subtract forever #setupabusiness. Lazy shadow."
Dakore was pictured rocking an all white two piece made up of a pant and cropped top with ruffles down the front, looking lovely and simply sexy.

Of course, her hubby had to appreciated what he has as he gushed about his wifes figure today, May 31, 2016, in a post of his own.

Akande shared the photo, writing:

"Don't normally do this but, "Damn!" Remind me to thank your parents one more time #WCE# LADoesABodyGood."

And yes, we do agree that she looked hot in her own modest way, a gift she has that has endeared many to her personality.

How sweet though!
The actress and wife of actor, Gbenro Ajibade was one of the judges at the Miss Nigeria USA pageant on Saturday, May 28, 2016.

The expectant new mum was looking very happy and glowing in a series of shots shared on her Instagram page.

Osas is pictured rocking a sleek black gown which showcased her bump perfectly.

Osas and her model husband, Gbenro Ajibade first shared their pregnancy news with Genevieve Magazine.

The two movie stars had their white wedding on July 4, 2015 during USAs Independence Day in New York.

This is really great news for the love birds! Congratulations guys!
This is following the efforts made by the Lagos State Police Command to settle the fight between the pair, over some threats made by Egbegbe, who is a movie producer.

The movie producer was reported to have prostrated before Aimakhu at the office of the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Fatai Owoseni.

Egbegbe, in an interview with Encomiun Magazine, has however dissociated himself from such claims.

He said, "I, Seun Egbegbe, didnt appear before the CP to sign any undertaking and I didnt prostrate for Toyin or beg her for any reason. Its just a rumour. Maybe those writing or posting that are only looking for unnecessary attention or maybe its being sponsored."

"If thats true, I believe there should be a photograph as evidence just like it happened in the case of Wizkid and Linda Ikeji. So, its just a waste of time believing that kind of rubbish. All I know is that Toyin and I have settled and theres no issue between us again."

Toyin Aimahku's camp have rejected Egbegbe's denial regarding signing an undertaking and apologising to the actress, TheNet.ng reports.

They dismissed Egbegbe's claim in a statement saying, "Yes, Seun Egbegbe has signed an undertaking before the Lagos State Commissioner of Police that nothing would happen to Toyin Aimakhu or her career as earlier threatened. He signed the undertaking on Tuesday, May 17, 2016. He also begged Toyin in front of CP".

Toyin Aimahku, formerly married to actor, Niyi Johnson, recently professed his undying love for him in an interview with Fashion Buss TV.
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ALSO READ: Pet dog mauls owner to death

Cindy Waldron, 46, who reportedly hails from Lithgow in New South Wales, was swimming with her childhood friend, Leeann Mitchell, 47 at Thornton beach in Daintree, North of Cairns at about 10pm on Sunday, May 29, 2016 when the unfortunate incident occurred.

The pair are reported to have gone waist deep into the water known for having high population of crocodiles, and Leeann had tried desperately to free Cindy while she was being dragged away by the reptile.

Warren Entsch, the Federal MP blamed the sad incident on 'human stupidity', telling AAP on Monday, May 30, 2016:

"You can't legislate against human stupidity. This is a tragedy but it was avoidable. There are warning signs everywhere up there."

Senior Constable, Russell Parker, disclosed the details of the brutal struggle:

"They had been walking along the beach and they've decided to go for a swim ... (it was) probably a very nice, clear night, but obviously (they) may not have been aware of the dangers.

"We believe they were visiting the area and weren't local to it.

Channel Nine reports that Cindy's last words had been, "a croc's got me", just before she was dragged away.

ALSO READ: Camel mauls owner to death after being left tied under the sun all day

Leeann is reported to have run to a nearby business establishment to raise alarm, before she was taken to a nearby hospital to treat her grazes and shock.
For instance, when Chief M.K.O. Abiola was in prison, many notable Nigerians visited him. They will visit him in the morning and when they come back to the Villa in the evening to see Abacha, they would say a different thing entirely, he said.

Unknown to these notable Nigerians, particularly notable Yoruba personalities, who visited Abiola, their visits were recorded on video. I did the video recording without their knowledge. These people would visit Abiola and come back to tell government a different thing about him.

These same people would still go and tell Abiola a different thing about government. They are on video. The agencies of government have these videos evidence. These same people told M.K.O. Abiola never to accept any compromise or negotiations.

They advised him never to come back home without his mandate. All these things are on video. Of all the Yoruba leaders, only Oba Tejuosho told M.K.O. Abiola the truth: to accept the conditional bail and go home.

Only Oba Tejuosho told M.K.O. Abiola that Abacha was his friend, urging him to reconcile with Abacha who was ready for reconciliation. It was Oba Tejuosho who told M.K.O. Abiola that he still had the goodwill and would win if he re-contests after Abacha.

What killed Abacha is what killed MKO Abiola. But I would reveal that after my court case, still at the Supreme Court," he added.
Speaking in Kaduna on Sunday May 29, 2016, the Secretary General of Hope Arewa Development Initiative (HADI) , Mallam Musa Wada , said Amnesty programme is a national project which must be supported by all Nigerians considering the role it has played in stabilizing the polity.

While condemning calls for the removal of the Coordinator of the Amnesty programme, Brig Gen Paul Boroh, the group said the calls was for a selfish interest of some elites in the Niger-Delta region who are not comfortable with the transparent approach in the entire programme.
The Senate Chief Whip, Olusola Adeyeye who was at the Presidential dinner has reacted to the allegation by Senator Ben Murray-Bruce saying the Bayelsa state lawmaker breached an elementary protocol.

According Senator Adeyeye, Senator Dino Melaye had exchanged pleasantries with those on the president's table, an action which prompted others to do same.

He stated that the scene became clumsy and indecorous prompting the DSS officials to intervene.

Adeyeye his claims that move by the DSS was political adding that Barnabas Gemade, an All Progressive Congress (APC) lawmaker was also turned back by the security operatives.

He said: "It was Sen Dino Melaye who first went to greet those seated at the presidents table, including President Buhari. He was well greeted. No one in the Senate has criticized President Buhari more than Senator Melaye.

"But as others rose to do what Dino had done, the scene got clumsy and indecorous because people were approaching the presidents table from different directions.

I sat between and . The three of us felt embarrassed by what was clearly a breach of dinner protocol. At that level, if dinner was served or being served, good etiquette demanded that the Presidents table should not be approached. One should wait until people had finished eating.

No senator in the USA would breach such elementary protocol. We (on my table) predicted in whispers that colleagues would soon be barred from approaching the presidents table and it happened.

"The first person to be turned back was Senator Gemade who was visibly embarrassed. He belongs to the APC; he is not a known critic of the president.

When I noticed that most people had finished their food, I approached the table and offered my pleasantries. Others followed suit. No one was turned back, he added.
The incident was said to have occurred on Monday, May 30, at a Democracy Day dinner hosted by Buhari at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.

He wrote on twitter after the dinner; I was at the Presidential Villa today. Went to the Presidents table. DSS wouldnt allow me greet him but let another Senator greet him!

In a matter of minutes, the tweet went viral - many twitter users swooped on the senator, describing him as being petty and hypocritical, saying he deserved the treatment, as he was also fond of blocking his critic-followers on the microblogging site.

However, a disappointed Senator Sola Adeyeye, representing Osun Central Senatorial District, explained what transpired that night.

I was at the dinner. I sat in the front row along with other principal officers of the National Assembly. I had a vantage view of what transpired. I am disappointed by this comment from a respected colleague, he said on Tuesday, May 31.

I have on two occasions provided robust defence of Senator Ben Bruce. Not this time!

Adeyeye recounted: It was Sen Dino Melaye who first went to greet those seated at the Presidents table, including President Buhari. He was well greeted. No one in the senate has criticized President Buhari more than Sen Melaye.

But as others rose to do what Dino had done, the scene got clumsy and indecorous because people were approaching the Presidents table from different directions. I sat between Sen Olujimi and Sen Bwacha. The three of us felt embarrassed by what was clearly a breach of dinner protocol. At that level, if dinner was served or being served, good etiquette demanded that the Presidents table should not be approached.

One should wait until people had finished eating. No senator in the USA would breach such elementary protocol. We (on my table) predicted in whispers that colleagues would soon be barred from approaching the Presidents table and it happened.

The first person to be turned back was Sen Gemade who was visibly embarrassed. He belongs to the APC; he is not a known critic of the President.

When I noticed that most people had finished their food, I approached the table and offered my pleasantries. Others followed suit. No one was turned back.

In a separate reaction, another lawmaker representing Kaduna Central Senator District, Shehu Sani, who was also present at the dinner, also condemned Ben Bruce's outburst.

We met with Mr. President at the Villa yesternight. He was frank and blunt with us and we were honest with him. He addressed us, and those nominated to speak responded, raised issues and asked questions of which he answered. I actually wanted to speak but I was not so lucky, Sani said.

I was surprised to learn that one of us later disclosed that he was prevented by security agents from coming close to Mr. President.

"I personally experienced no such. And I dont think Mr. President can bar any legislator from coming close to him for holding different opinion on national issues. I always have an independent mind and will always speak my mind when there is the need to do so.

For decades, Mr President knows me for that and still respects me for that. Its not everything the security agents do that Mr. President will know.

Mr. Presidents address to us was comprehensive and satisfying. Wishing him Lords blessings and good health in this historic mission to rebuild our great country. PMB is a leader we most need and deserve at this time, the senator added.

It was however gathered that it was Sani who met with Buhari before Ben Bruce was denied access.

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The delegation was led by a former senate president, Ken Nnamani.

Those in attendance include Ernest Ndukwe, former executive vice-chairman of Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC), George Moghalu, national auditor of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Ifeanyi Ararume, a former senator; and Osita Izunaso, also a former senator.

Others were Emma Eneukwu, APC national vice-chairman (south-east), Austin Edeze, a member of the APC board of trustees; Uzoma Obiyo, a top businessman; and Chris Akomas, a former deputy governor of Abia state.

Report said the meeting may not be unconnected to the clash between the members of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and security agents on Monday, May 30.

Soldiers and policemen were said to have opened fire on pro-Biafra agitators during rallies to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the defunct Biafra Republic

The clashes were recorded in Ebonyi, Anambra, Enugu and other states in the eastern part of the country.

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Seminatari said Ogonis are united behind this effort by the Federal Government to clean up their environment, and as such, the people will help in ensuring sustainability of the clean-up.

This was announced in a statement issued on Monday, May 30, 2016, by the NDDC Head of Corporate Affairs unit, Chijioke Amu-Nnadi.

The President's visit is coming on the heels of the inspection tour carried out by the minister of Environment, Amina Mohammed, who announced that the Buhari led administration is committed to cleaning up Ogoni land.

The exercise is in-line with recommendations made by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The NNDC official statement quoted the minister of environment saying I can confirm that President Buhari will visit Ogoni land on June 2 to flag-off clean-up of oil spills in the area as recommended in the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report.

Buhari would return to Ogoni land where he inaugurated a fish pond in 1984 where the once flourishing pond regrettably had been destroyed by oil pollution.

The Federal Government is coming back to restore the ecosystem to what it used to be and as such restore the peoples source of livelihood.

We are not just committed to implementing the UNEP report but we are also going beyond that by taking steps to improve security, good governance and economy of the Niger Delta region.

I can assure that the clean-up exercise is only the beginning, as Mr President is focused on restoring hope to people of the region.

Mohammed was at Numuu-Tekuru Waterfront in Bodo City, Gokana Local Government Area of Rivers State, venue of the flag off ceremony, to ascertain the level of work that has been done.
The move by the initial Senate to amend the Act in April had suffered set back following public outcry against the exercise.

It was believed that the amendment was a ploy to favour the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, who is currently standing trial on false declaration of assets before the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT).

In section 4 (2) of the amended Act, the national assembly will now be responsible for appointing members of staff of the bureau and exercise control over them, and not the president.

In the amended version, section 3 of the Act now has a paragraph which stipulates: Upon complaints of any breach or where it appears to the bureau that there is a breach of the provision of this Act, the person concerned shall be given particulars of such non-compliance or breaches to explain before any reference to the tribunal.

Pulse recalls that Saraki had challenged his trial at the CCT on the grounds that the bureau did not give him a chance to explain himself before a case was filed against him at the tribunal.

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The Minister of Works, Power and Housing, Babatunde Fashola (SAN) stated that the National Assembly has already empowered the National Electrical Regulatory Commission (NERC) to fix tariff in the country.

He said this while speaking at a public hearing at the Senate, which was attended by officials from the labour unions in the electricity sector.

Fashola explained that the country cannot enjoy steady power supply if electricity tariff is not increased, insisting that the increase is inevitable.

The Senate however said that the Federal Government needs to urgently address some critical problems in the power sector.

The Upper Chamber said it is not insensitive to the plight of Nigerians, noting that the hike in electricity tariff without a reciprocal increase in electricity supply in many areas in the country is a bitter pill for many Nigerians to swallow.

The Senate had in February 2016 asked Fashola, NERC and electricity distribution companies to immediately suspend the new electricity tariff that have seen charges raised by over 40 per cent.

It also directed its Committee to hold a public hearing to get the views of stakeholders on the electricity tariff hike and how to move the sector forward.

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The OPC leader also said his men lost the interest to protect the Yorubas, due to various derogatory remarks people have made about the group.

Adams chided traditional rulers in the South-West, saying When one is too fanatic in religion, it brings shame, religion is good, but when it becomes fanatic, it brings ridicule.

If we are being moderate in our religions in Yoruba land, be it Christian, Muslim or traditional religions, who dare bring attack into our communities?

Adams said this at a lecture organised by the Ondo state chapter of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), tagged: Herdmen/ Fulani clashes : what implication for inter- Ethnic relations/ Nigerian Economy.

He also said his men have been branded thugs, bandits, criminals, touts and terrorists by the Yoruba people.

Recently, Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti state, banned Fulani herdsmen from grazing in the state.
This is coming on the heels of reports of the deployment of surveillance aircrafts to the creeks of Delta State in search of militant group.

In its bid to end the incessant pipeline bombings in the Niger Delta region, the Federal Government on Wednesday, May 25, held a meeting over 50 militant leaders at the Transcorp Hilton, Abuja.

After the meeting, the government reportedly reached some agreements with the ex-militants.

The Niger Delta Avengers however denounced the meeting and on Thursday, May 26, 2016.

The militants also said The Niger Delta stakeholder's meeting is an insult to the people of Niger Delta. What we need is a Sovereign State not pipeline contracts.

According to Vanguard, a resident , Ayebatari, said There is a massive security operation going on in the area. Fighter jets and helicopter gunships have been hovering around the airspace at low level, apparently on surveillance mission. Many of the natives are worried about the development.

The Save Niger Delta group has slammed the Federal Government over the alleged invasion of some areas in the Niger Delta.
For today, May 31, 2016

THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER

How Jonathan saved Nigeria from grave crisis, by BuhariPresident Muhammadu Buhari in more glowing terms than he had used before, yesterday commended his predecessor, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, who conceded defeat to him.He said that but for that singular act, the country would have been in turmoil. READ MORE

Key milestones of Buharis achievements in one yearHe came to power following the decisive victory of his party, the All Progressives Congress, APC over the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP and its candidate, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. The victory ended the 16-year reign of the PDP READ MORE

Nigeria, South Africa need $90b to bridge energy gaps for telecoms servicesSub-Saharan African (SSA) countries including Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Angola, among others might need between $60 billion and $90 billion (N17.7 trillion) yearly investments to bridge the growing energy gaps in the region for a sustainable telecommunications sector. READ MORE_____________________________

THE PUNCH NEWSPAPER

Pro-Biafran activists, security agents in bloody clashesNo fewer than 30 persons and a soldier were allegedly killed on Monday in Onitsha, the Anambra State capital, after some pro-Biafran protesters, said to be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the declaration of the defunct Biafra republic, engaged soldiers and policemen in a bloody clash. READ MORE

Stock market lost N1.732tn in one year under BuhariThe Nigerian stock market crashed by N1.732tn within one year of the Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government. READ MORE

Nigeria risks losing oil buyers to Iran, SArabiaNigeria, which recently lost its Africas top oil producer status to Angola on the back of huge decline in its output, stands a chance of losing some of its traditional buyers to rival producers such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, industry experts have said. READ MORE_____________________________

THE NATION NEWSPAPER

Bloody pro-Biafra protests in Onitsha, Asaba, othersThe Southeast was on the boil yesterday as pro-Biafra agitators staged protests in major cities to mark the 49th declaration of the state of Biafra by the late Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. READ MORE

UK detectives in Nigeria for Alison-Maduekes caseAs part of the ongoing probe and preparation for the arraignment of a former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, some investigators from the United Kingdom have visited Nigeria to gather evidence. READ MORE

PDP crisis: BoT raises three-man panel to meet SheriffNearly two weeks after the botched Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) national convention in Port-Harcourt, Rivers State, embattled factional chairman of the party, Senator Ali Modu Sheriff, has explained why he took a last-minute decision to call off the event. READ MORE_____________________________

VANGUARD NEWSPAPER

South-East burns as Biafra Day turns bloodyAwka Biafra Day anniversary celebration turned bloody, yesterday, in South-East states as soldiers and policemen clashed with pro-Biafra groups. READ MORE

Ill soon reveal how Abacha, Abiola died, says Al-MustaphaLAGOSFormer Chief Security Officer to the late Head of State, Gen. Sani Abacha, Major Hamza Al-Mustapha, yesterday, said he would soon reveal how his boss and the acclaimed winner of June 12, 1993 presidential election, Chief Bashorun MKO Abiola, died. READ MORE

FG deploys 5 warships, 100 gunboats, fighter jets to Delta creeksThe federal government, yesterday, deployed an armada of five warships, 100 gunboats and fighter jets to the creeks of the Niger Delta, in response to continued bombing of oil and gas pipelines by Niger Delta Avengers, NDA. READ MORE_____________________________

BUSINESS DAY NEWSPAPER

FG 2016 deficit plans in doubt as militants raise risk premiumRenewed militant attacks on Nigerias oil and gas infrastructure, combined with a recent downgrade of the countrys sovereign debt ratings may make it more difficult for the government to borrow from international capital markets this year putting a question mark on the Federal Governments ability to fund the 2016 budget. Subdued investor appetite for dollar READ MORE

Nigeria : Running on emptyIn his former role as the managing director of one of Nigerias leading banks, Godwin Emefiele had a reputation for being soft-spoken and unassuming. In the year since he became governor of the central bank, he has stood out for the opposite. The change is being put down to one thing: the control he wields READ MORE
According to the statement issued by MajorNC Agwu, the Assistant Director, Army Public Relations, a church, house and shop were burnt while 25 others were looted during the incident on Sunday, May 29, 2016.

The statement reads: "At about 6pm on Sunday, 29 May 2016, one a 24 year old trader based in Pandogari, Rafi LGA of Niger State was attacked and killed by a mob in the town on allegation of posting a blasphemous statement about Prophet Muhammad on the social media.

"Regrettably, one church, one house and a shop were burnt while 25 other shops were looted following the violence. Three other persons including personnel of the NSCDC also lost their lives.

Troops of 31 Artillery Brigade of 1 Division, Nigerian Army on operation MESA quickly intervened and restored law and order while a was imposed in the town.

Some arrests have been made in connection with the violence and the suspects handed over to the police. The military and other security agencies are currently embarking on confidence building patrols in all nooks and crannies of the town.

Early Monday morning however, the rioters embarked on further violence, looting shops and blocking the Lagos  Kaduna Road, a major artery connecting the northern and southern parts of the country.

Again, troops in conjunction with the personnel of Nigeria Police and Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) took control of the situation to forestall escalation of violence and any threat to the peace in the town."

He stated that the military is working with the local government council authorities and community leaders, including the Kagara Emirate Council to pacify all aggrieved parties and build on the peace so far established.
It reads:

Our dear brother, Tompolo, how is your friendship with the Nigerian Government. The people you took side with against us (the Niger Delta Avengers). We offered you the olive branch by beckoning you to join us in this struggle, but you refused.

It is not our business what goes on in Gbaramatu Kingdom but our concern is the innocent children, women and aged people, whom the Nigerian military has chased away from their homes now taking refuge in the forest. We warned you beforehand that the Nigerian Government, can never be trusted.

To the Nigeria military, why are you looking for soft targets? If you are looking for the Avengers, you know how to find us. Dont deceive your President. Information gathered by the Intelligence unit of the Niger Delta Avengers revealed that Oil Marine Services (OMS) whose Chairman and CEO is Capt. Okunbor Idahosa also known, as Capt. Hosa, is the company Nigerian Government awarded the Pipeline surveillance contract to, spanning from Escravos to Lokoja.

The question is, why the innocent people of Gbaramatu, why the innocent pregnant women, why unleash terror on the aged people of Gbaramatu, Capt. Hosa, Major Yahaya, Ayiri and Brig. Gen Faruk  must you waste all these innocent blood just to secure the pipeline surveillance job?

Why making the innocent people of Gbaramatu suffer? This act of the Nigerian Army to us is the greatest act of cowardice. This fight we believe is against the Avengers and not the innocent villagers of Gbaramatu Kingdom.

As for you Tompolo, what do you have to say about the horrible treatment meted your people by Nigerian Military, are you still going to call the Niger Delta Avengers criminals, are you still going to take sides with the Nigeria Government against your people?

What happened to you (Tompolo)? We respect the love you have for your people, the Niger Delta. What is really happening to you when the likes of Mr Ayiri, Capt Hosa and co are unleashing this kind of atrocities on your people.

Has the wealth you acquired made you soft that you do not know what to do anymore?
The premiere was attended by celebrities including Rita Dominic,Linda Ejiofor, Kemi Lala Akindoju, Adesua Etomi, Wale Ojo, Chika Chukwu, Chioma Onyenwe, Bimbo Akintola among others.

The upcoming movie features co-stars IBK Spaceship Boi and Linda Ejiofor, as love interests Victor E and Vanessa.

It also stars Ade Bantu, SamuelRobinson, Bimbo Akintola, Wale Ojo and Kehinde Bankole.

"8 Bars and A Clef," which chronicles the rise to grace of a talented act, Victor E, was produced and directed by Chioma Onyenwe for Raconteur Productions.

ALSO READ: undefined

The movie has as its lead character as the multi-talented alternative music act Ibukun (IBK) SpaceshipBoi,with the iconic Ade Bantu who makes a stellar Nollywood debut.

"8 Bars and A Clef" is set to offer love, drama, tears and great music as the movie follows the struggles of a young talented rapper (IBK) who battles a learning disability, a dysfunctional home and betrayal to make it in the Nigerian music industry.

ALSO READ: undefined

"8 Bars and a Clef" was first screened at AFRIFF in November 2015.
"I'm sick of this shit. How the fuck are they going to put Roots on, on Memorial Day?" the rapper said.

"They going to just to keep beating that shit into our heads about how they did us, huh? I ain't watching that shit, and I advise you motherfuckers as real niggas like myself; fuck them television shows," the rapper added.

"Let's create our own shit based on today, how we live and how we inspire people today. Black is what's real. Fuck that old shit."

ALSO READ: undefined

"Roots" stars Forest Whitaker, Anna Paquin, Laurence Fishburne, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Anika Noni Rose, Tip T.I. Harris, Emayatzy Corinealdi, Matthew Goode, Mekhi Phifer, James Purefoy, Rege-Jean Page and Malachi Kirby.

Based on African-American writer Alex Haleys 1976 bestseller, "Roots: The Saga of an American Family", the original miniseries aired in 1977.

The miniseries and the novel portrays Haleys family lineage, kicking off with his ancestor Kunte Kinte in Gambia.
Sheriff was removed from his position at the May 21 PDP national convention in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, and replaced with Senator Ahmed Makarfi as a caretaker Chairman.

He was reportedly removed because his stay in office was dividing the party as many party leaders and key Chieftains were against him. It was also rumoured that he might be eyeing the Presidency seat in 2019.

He said he never mentioned to anyone that he wanted to run for the 2019 Presidential race, noting that even if he intended to, Fayose could never have been his running mate, as being speculated.

I am eminently qualified to seek for the presidency of Nigeria, but I have never told anybody I want to be President, but even if I want to be I cannot offer such a sensitive position to a character like Ayo Fayose, who has exhibited gross disrespect for others, Sheriff said.

He challenged any of the Governors, who alleged that he made promises to come forward with proof, adding that he was unfairly treated by the party.
Tambuwal said what Buhari promised Nigerians was to provide security, tackle corruption and provide jobs.

He also added that Mr. President has reduced corrupt tendencies, and instilled discipline among public office holders.

Tambuwal said Before PMB came on board, corruption in Nigeria was mind burgling. The economy was badly damaged and when some of us being the progressive raised concern and blow the whistle when I was still the National Assembly Speaker, those who never meant well for the country felt we were simply betrayals.

Now, let asked ourselves in an objective manner as Nigerians, has PMB not succeeded in addressing the three key issues of his campaign within just a year?

The Sokoto state Governor, who also said he does not think one year is enough to judge Buhari, called on Nigerians to hold public office holders accountable.

Tambuwal said Can anybody now come out to dispute the fact that PMB has not succeeded in relatively fighting corruption in Nigeria within just one year?

Just within one year, public office holders in Nigeria are now scared of appending their signatures on any fraudulent file because they would be tracked without delay.

Governor Aminu Tambuwal gave N500,000 each to 138 families to celebrate his one year in office.
Ben Bruce had alleged that an official of the Department of State Services (DSS) prevented him from greeting Buhari during a dinner held by the president for legislators at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.

I was at the presidential villa today. Went to the Presidents table. DSS would not allow me greet him but let another Senator greet him, Murray-Bruce said.

I have nothing against the President, however, nobody is too important to be criticised and my mouth will never be silenced, he added.

Sani, who was at the event, dismissed the claim via Facebook. He wrote:

We met with Mr President at the Villa yesternight. He was frank and blunt with us and we were honest with him. He addressed us, and those nominated to speak responded, raised issues and asked questions of which he answered. I actually wanted to speak but I was not so lucky.

I was surprised to learn that one of us later disclosed that he was prevented by security agents from coming close to Mr President. I personally experienced NO such. And I don't think Mr President can bar any legislature from coming close to him for holding different opinion on National issues.

I always have an independent mind and will always speak my mind when there is the need to do so; For decades, Mr President knows me for that and still respect me for that. Its not everything the security agents does that Mr President will know.
The members of the APC in Rivers also said Mr. President has fast-tracked development in the oil rich region.

They also announced that Buhari has been made a honorary son of the Niger Delta.

The Rivers APC chairman, Dr. Davies Ibiamu Ikanya said The Ogoni clean up, which the past administrations including the high corrupt administration of Dr Jonathan though a son of the region wickedly and totally ignored, it will not be out of place therefore if we declare President Muhammadu Buhari as a true friend and son of the Niger Delta region. With this development, all the efforts of Chief Wike to frustrate this exercise now amounts to noting.

Ikanya also cited the inclusion of the Lagos/Calabar railway project in the 2016 budget, and the planned clean-up of Ogoni land, as some of the many projects the President has embarked on in the region.

Ekiti State Governor, Ayo Fayose, recently accused President Muhammadu Buhari of destroying Nigerias economy.
The APC issued a statement in reaction to Fayoses comment that he could not pay salaries because the former Governor of the Ekiti state, Kayode Fayemi plunged the state in debt.

The Ekiti APC Publicity Secretary, Taiwo Olatunbosun said The Adewale Omirin-led House of Assembly approved for Fayose to take N2bn Central Bank loan for artisans and small scale traders, but up till now, he has not given one naira to anybody.

He deceived the workers that the April federal allocation is N700m even though the Federal Ministry of Finance figure as published in the newspapers indicated that Ekiti collected N1.08bn and you wonder what the governor did with the balance of N300m.

The party also praised the civil servants for taking the bold step to continue the strike, despite several alleged attempts of the government to intimidate them.

Olatunbosun added that He(Fayose) has so far collected about N20bn loan which he would not disclose to Ekiti people. These include the N9.6bn bailout cash and another N10bn taken from another bank while he also denied collecting refunds on federal roads and misapplied N2bn ecological funds which he denied collecting for a long time until our party applied the FoI Act to get the fact from the Ecology Fund Office in Abuja.

He paid one month salary from N9.6bn bailout and nobody knows what he did with the balance the same way that no one knows what he does with the fresh N10bn loan and the interest it generates in the secret account he keeps the money after vowing several times never to borrow a naira to run his government.

Workers in the state embarked on a strike to protest the non-payment of their salaries.
Fayose also said he would travel to anywhere at anytime he wants, and he will make his journey public, adding that the states are not appendages of the Federal Government.

Fayoses Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, also said Buharis government has no respect for the constitution.

Olayinka also expressed surprise at the dangerous dimension of compelling a sitting governor that enjoys immunity like the President to obtain clearance from the Director General of the DSS before travelling out of Nigeria can ever be contemplated.

He also said The question is, if Governor Fayose has become a threat to the security of Nigeria just because he criticises President Buhari and says the truth about his mismanagement of the country, is this not a confirmation that the President hates dissenting views?

Adding that President Buhari and his agents should also be mindful of the fact that under a federal system of government, the states and Federal Government both enjoy some autonomy, with sovereign power formally divided between the Federal Government and the states such that each state retains some degree of control over its internal affairs.

Therefore, the President of Nigeria cannot lord himself over any state governor and President Buhari and his agents should accept this basic reality and stop behaving as if they own Nigeria in totality. President Buhari and his agents, especially his kinsman, Alhaji Lawal Daura of the DSS, need to purge themselves of this blood of dictatorship running in their veins and be guided by the constitution of Nigeria.

Governor Ayo Fayose also accused President Muhammadu Buhari of destroying Nigerias economy.
Many PDP members were against Sheriffs appointment due to his alleged connection to Boko Haram but their concerns were dismissed by Fayose and other members.

His [Sheriffs] emergence at this time is the best thing in the present circumstance and those aggrieved should sheath their sword and deploy their time and resources into fighting the All Progressives Congress (APC) instead of their own party," Fayose said on February 22, via a statement released by his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka.

I therefore call on all my admirers and believers in my dogged fight for the revival of our party to support our new chairman, whom I believe has the required capacity to reposition the party, the governor added.

Sheriff later thanked Fayose for his support and revealed that it was the governor who made him chairman of the PDP.

I never planned to be the PDP Chairman but God used people like Fayose and other Nigerians to make me the chairman (of the party),Sheriff said on March 17.

I was sleeping in my room when Fayose called me from Port Harcourt and said I was going to be the new National Chairman. For me, it was a miracle, he added.

Unfortunately for Sheriff, the miracle became a nightmare when Fayose said that he would not support his presidential bid, hinting that all was no longer well between the two.

I will not support Ali Modu Sheriff for President in 2019, Fayose said on Monday, May 9, 2016, during his monthly media chat.

Twelve days later, on May 21, Sheriff was voted out of officeat the partys convention in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.

I supported Senator Ali Modu Sheriff in good conscience. But when it became obvious that his continuous stay in office as the National Chairman will jeopardise the collective interest of the party, I had no option than to support his removal, Fayose said after Sheriff was booted out.

The former PDP Chairman didnt take kindly to Fayoses comments and he suddenly remembered that the governor has no respect for others.

I am eminently qualified to seek for the presidency of Nigeria, but I have never told anybody I want to be President, but even if I want to be I cannot offer such a sensitive position to a character like Ayo Fayose, who has exhibited gross disrespect for others, Sheriff said in reference to Fayoses desire to be a Vice Presidential candidate.

The drama between the two is slightly amusing, but it also shows that the PDP is yet to repair its fabric of loyalty which was ripped apart in 2014.

Sheriff was supposedly chosen as chairmanbecause of his wealth, but it appears that the PDP has found other sources of finance and as such doesnt need him anymore.
Prof. Hayward Mafuyai, Vice Chancellor of the University of Jos and host of the event, said the conference will give the heads of varsities a chance to discuss challenges facing universities in the nation with the aim of coming up with solutions.

The conference usually provides the forum where Vice-Chancellors assess the university system and suggest ways to improving it, Mafuyai said to the press, to mark the commencement of the conference.

The conference is an avenue for discussing common problems relating to inter-university cooperation, maintenance of academic standards, staff recruitment, students affairs and international cooperation.

It is a forum through which the opinion of universities can be expressed on matters concerning education in the country.

It also provides members the opportunity for formulating action plans on any national issue to be communicated to government, Mafuyai said.

Mafuyai added that this annual conference will have all the VCs from federal, states and private universities in attendance.

Mafuyai said that the Vice-Chancellors were conscious of their responsibilities to university education hence the need to prepare the universities to play that role.

The university plays a pivotal role in human and material development of the nation; that goal can only be best realised by pursuing a joint action toward achieving quality education and high academic standards, he said.

Mafuyai said that the theme of the conference Quality Assurance and Global Competitiveness: A Challenge for Nigerian Universities, was targeted at tackling hurdles on the path to such excellence.

The Vice-Chancellor observed that the challenges of universities were compounded by the failing crude oil prices and sluggishness in the diversification of the economy, which he described as the inevitable way forward.

He said that plenary sessions on various sub-themes had been lined up to give added impetus and character to discussions, while high profile scholars had been invited to deliver papers.
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The verdict capped a 16-year battle by victims and rights campaigners to bring the former strongman to justice in Senegal, where he fled after being ousted in a 1990 coup.

Habre, 73, was sentenced to life in prison by the Special African Chamber (CAE), a tribunal created in 2013 by Senegal and the African Union. He was also convicted of rape.

Dressed in white robes with dark sunglasses and a head scarf covering most of his face, Habre was defiant after his conviction and sentence were announced, raising his arms and shouting to his supporters as he was led from the courtroom.

Many, including some of his victims present in the courtroom, cheered in celebration.

"After years of struggle and many setbacks on the way to justice, this verdict is as historic as it was hard-won," said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein. "In a world scarred by a constant stream of atrocities, the ramifications of this verdict are global."

Habre has refused to recognise the CAE's jurisdiction and at times had to be forced to appear in court, delaying proceedings.

The tribunal is supported by the African Union but is part of Senegal's justice system, making it the first time in modern history that one country's domestic courts have prosecuted the former leader of another country on rights charges. Other such cases have been tried by international tribunals.

The case centred on whether Habre, who was feted at the White House in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan after expelling Libyan forces from Chad, ordered the large-scale assassination and torture of political opponents and ethnic rivals.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called Monday's verdict "a landmark in the global fight against impunity" in a statement that alluded to Washington's Cold War-era support for Habre.

"As a country committed to the respect for human rights and the pursuit of justice, this is also an opportunity for the United States to reflect on, and learn from, our own connection with past events in Chad," he said.

"NEVER AGAIN"

A 1992 Chadian Truth Commission accused Habre's government of up to 40,000 political murders as well as systematic torture, mostly by his intelligence police, the Documentation and Security Directorate (DDS).

An investigation by Human Rights Watch in 2001 unearthed thousands of documents in the abandoned DDS headquarters updating Habre on the status of detainees. During the trial, a court handwriting expert confirmed margin notes on one document to be Habre's.

During the trial, some of his victims testified in Habre's presence, recounting the acts of torture to which they were submitted.

Presiding Judge Gustave Kam recounted how Habre was directly involved in interrogations and torture, sometimes inflicting the abuse himself or ordering it by phone or walkie talkie.

"The verdict sends a powerful message that the days when tyrants could brutalize their people, pillage their treasury and escape abroad to a life of luxury are coming to an end," said Reed Brody, a Human Rights Watch researcher who helped to investigate the crimes.

Habre's lawyers now have two weeks to launch an appeal.

The trial was seen as highlighting African countries' ability to hold their own trials at a time of growing criticism of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, which many on the continent accuse of bias against Africans.
The attackers stopped three buses on a road and ordered the passengers out, shot dead nine of them and kidnapped the rest, said Massoum Hashemi, deputy police chief of Kunduz.

Government forces later freed most of the abducted passengers in a rescue operation.

There was no claim of responsibility and Taliban spokesmen were not immediately available for comment. The Taliban have in the past denied accusations of attacks on civilians.

The identity of the victims was not immediately clear but a campaign of kidnappings against Shi'ite Hazaras in the past year has became a source of ethnic tension, fueling concern about sectarian violence.

Since persecuting Hazaras and other minorities during their rule in the 1990s, the Taliban have largely avoided specifically targeting Shi'ite Muslims.

But a rise in Afghanistan in the number of militants claiming allegiance to Islamic State, a hard-line Sunni movement that emphasizes purging Shi'ites and is a rival to the Taliban, has coincided with a number of attacks on Hazaras.

The brief capture by the Taliban of Kunduz last year was a major blow to the government of President Ashraf Ghani.
The ten employees were travelling underground in a mine shaft elevator on Sunday evening when the accident happened, Minster of Minerals and Energy Kitso Mokaila said in statement.

Only one of the mine's four shafts was affected.

BCL is the country's only operational copper mine after two others were closed last year due to a slump in global commodity prices.

The mine employs over 6000 people and produced 31,000 tonnes of copper matte and 139,000 tonnes of nickel concentrate in 2015.
Thabet, 70, describes being dragged outside by Muslim villagers and stripped naked in the dirt roads of Alkarm, the Egyptian village where she spent her most of her adult life.

Her crime? Her son, a married Christian, was rumoured to have had an affair with a married Muslim woman. The woman has since denied the affair took place on national television.

"They burned the house and went in and dragged me out, threw me in front of the house and ripped my clothes. I was just as mymother gave birth to me, screaming and crying," Thabet told Reuters a week after the attack.

Orthodox Copts like Thabet, who make up about a tenth of Egypt's 90 million population, are the Middle East's largest Christian community. They have long complained of discrimination in the majority-Muslim country.

Sectarian attacks occur so frequently in Egypt that they rarely attract wide publicity. But Thabet's ordeal, the public humiliation of an elderly woman, prompted an outcry among Copts and led to the case becoming national news.

"If it were just a burning we could handle it, but what can we do about what happened to the woman? How can you compensate for this insult?" Ishak William, Thabet's neighbour and relative, told Reuters at his house in Alkarm.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has denounced the Alkarm attack, which underlines that Copts remain vulnerable three years after he took power and pledged to unite the country following years of political turmoil.

Sectarian violence often erupts on the back of rumours about inter-faith romances or suspicions that Christians are building churches without the required official permission.

Homes are burned, crops are razed, churches are attacked and, occasionally, Copts are forced to leave their villages, say human rights groups and residents of the southern province of Minya, home to Egypt's largest Christian community.

Then come the reconciliation sessions, processes informally backed by the government that see local Coptic priests and Muslim clerics attempt to mediate a communal peace without resorting to the legal system.

Christians interviewed by Reuters said the sessions often end with them making concessions, such as agreeing that certain families leave town or that the church not bear a visible cross, while those who perpetrated the attacks often go unpunished.

Muslim residents and religious officials say the informal process helps broker compromises to avoid a cycle of escalation and retribution.

Copts often go along with it to avert more trouble.

But the latest attack has left a new bitterness among the Copts of tiny Alkarm, in the agricultural hinterland of Upper Egypt. This time, they say, reconciliation is not enough.

"We answer to the law, not to reconciliation sessions. Whoever did this must be held accountable," said William.

'PEOPLE WON'T HAVE IT'

Thabet's ordeal led to the Diocese of Minya releasing a statement demanding justice. The attack subsequently drew condemnation from the government and Al Azhar, Cairo's ancient centre of Islamic learning.

"We have people getting killed and there is no one answering for it, money stolen, houses looted, girls kidnapped ... and we bear it all and let it pass, but now there is escalation," Bishop Makarios, the highest Coptic church official in Minya, told Reuters by telephone.

"We get told, take reconciliation because it is better for you than other bad scenarios and people are simple and just want to live in peace, but this time people won't have it."

Since the case went public, 15 men have been detained in connection with the violence and will be investigated, according to security sources.

Before then, said William, the attackers were freely walking around the village.

Neighbours who witnessed the incident told Reuters it took place on May 20, when a group of Muslim men set fire to seven Christian homes and stripped the grandmother naked in the street after rumours of her son Ashraf's inter-faith affair.

Ashraf fled with his wife and children on May 19 after receiving threats, said William. His parents went to the police, fearing for their lives, said Ishak Ibrahim of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. The mob burned down their house the next day, Ibrahim and several local residents said.

The Governor of Minya initially denied the attack took place in comments to local media. On May 26, after it became public, Tarek Nasr, said it was a "minor incident."

Nasr did not respond to repeated attempts to reach him on his mobile phone. He visited Alkarm on Friday, after Sisi denounced the attack.

"What is happening in Egypt is unacceptable and must never happen again ... anyone who made a mistake no matter how many they are, will be held accountable," Sisi said during a speech at the opening of a housing project on Monday.

On Friday, a joint delegation of Cairo-based Muslim and Coptic clerics visited Alkarm, where several armoured vehicles and dozens of police patrolled the streets. Local Copts refused to meet them.

'LOCKED OURSELVES IN'

With deep scars visible on his head, face, and arm, Ishak Yakoub, a Copt who lives next door to Thabet, says he almost died the night the grandmother was attacked and wants the law to take its course and put an end to what he sees as mob justice.

"I heard gunfire so I got out of the house and stood at the doorway. People advised me to get back inside, so I did andlocked the door. I climbed up on the roof and saw smoke coming from her house so I called the fire department," he said.

"I came back down and found they had broken in and were in my house. One of them hit me on the head but I don't know withwhat, then they dragged me onto the street and beat me."

Yakoub later found Thabet hiding in the home of a Muslim neighbour. He took her to his house.

"When I heard what they did, that a woman was strippednaked in the street, I took her to my room and we locked ourselves in," says Yakoub's wife, who declined to be named.

Umm Magdi, the Muslim neighbour who sheltered Thabet, played down the incident as "threats from silly youths".

"My son came in with (Thabet) and told me to dress her. She came into my house and I dressed her. I told her to sit but she wouldn't ... it was like she didn't feel safe with me," Umm Magdi said.

"I've known her all my life and lived by her side like a sister. She's Christian and I'm Muslim but I won't take sides."

But Copts from Alkarm said forgiveness would not prevent future attacks.
More than 5,000 Yazidis, mostly women and children, were captured and enslaved by the militants when they overran the Sinjar area in northwestern Iraq in the summer of 2014, purging the minority they consider to be devil worshippers.

Since then, more than 2,000 Yazidis have escaped, been ransomed or rescued, but the rest remain unaccounted for.

Yazidi captives have been taken to towns and cities across the militants' self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria, including their de facto capitals of Raqqa and Mosul.

After Mosul, Falluja is the largest Iraqi city still under control of the militants. Dakhil suggested in another Twitter post that many more Yazidis were being held in prisons there.

Iraqi forces backed by Shi'ite paramilitaries reached Falluja's southern outskirts on Monday, but faced fierce resistance overnight and paused.
In the incident, a suspected suicide bomber was sucked out of the Daallo Airlines plane through a one-metre (one-yard) wide hole when a blast ripped open the pressurised cabin in flight, officials said.

The plane made an emergency landing in the Somali capital Mogadishu. Somalia's al Shabaab insurgents said they were behind the blast.

"Abdiweli Mohamed, the security head of the civil aviation, and Areys Hashi, who was the funder but absent, were sentenced to life imprisonment by the court," Abdullahi told Reuters by phone.

"Areys Hashi is a member of al Shabaab who funded the operation," he added.

Abdullahi said eight others who worked in a range of jobs at the airport, including security screeners, a police officer, a porter and immigration officers were sentenced to jail terms ranging from six months to four years.

Five others were acquitted, Abdullahi said.

In February, Daallo's chief executive said the bomber was meant to be on a Turkish Airlines flight that was cancelled due to bad weather.

Daallo had picked up the 70 stranded Turkish Airlines passengers to fly them to Djibouti, including the suicide bomber. In total, the flight had 74 passengers.
Akal Takht Jathedar calls for Panthic unity, seeks release of Bandi Sikhs, warns against conversions

We are following the footsteps of Lord Vishwakarma to overhaul entire system in Punjab : says CM
Under the watchful eye of one of the adult eagles, Alcoa's two eaglets temporarily were removed from their nest Monday to become part of a migration study.

With one of the parent eagles circling the sky above, Dr. Trish Miller, a wildlife biologist at West Virginia University, was raised 80 feet into the air on a boom with Duane Smith, an Alcoa electrician and president of IBEW 1379, at the controls. After the boom was maneuvered to reach the nest, Miller carefully retrieved the two young birds that hatched more than seven weeks ago on Alcoa Davenport Works' property in Riverdale.

While still above ground, Miller placed tiny leather hoods over each birds' head and beak to protect the handlers and eaglets. The pair then were carefully placed into cloth bags and brought down to the ground to be banded and equipped with a special GPS transmitter.

''They're both a little stressed out because, obviously, we took them out of their homes," Miller told the small group of fellow researchers and Alcoa employees. "But the good thing about chicks is you can just let them sit there."

The birds, which hatched in early April, are still a few weeks away from learning to fly, Alcoa spokesman John Riches said.

The Alcoa eagles now are among more than 25 eagles under study as part of the Midwest Bald Eagle Project, which plans to trap as many as 50 eagles in order to put the GPS/GMS transmitters on each bird.

"The whole point of the project has been there have been issues with eagles getting killed in wind farms, and we want to find out when and why it is happening," said Drew Becker, a fish and wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, which is partnering on the project now in its third year. "We're trying to figure out ways to mitigate that."

Becker said the project is looking at birds across Iowa and Illinois, but they migrate from all over the Midwest and as far away as northern Canada. "These are river eagles, but we also are going to get birds out in the farmlands of Iowa and Illinois."

With the birds safely on the ground, Miller took several measurements of their beaks and legs, pulled a feather sample and drew a small sample of blood from each  explaining each step to the 10 volunteers and onlookers.

"We're testing for heavy metals. We have students who are doing a project on lead contamination," she said, adding that the blood test also would confirm the sex of the bird, though from their size she believes there is one of each sex. Lead likely comes from the animals they eat, including deer or other animals that have been shot or fish with lead sinkers.

The most time-consuming task was attaching the transmitter, a GPS-GSM telemetry unit, to the bird's body. Using Teflon ribbon, a non-abrasive material, she secured the transmitter like a backpack, using the ribbon to create a harness. "Body feathers help the transmitter stay in place," she said.

"We put them on to stay on. It's too dangerous if they come off," she said, adding it could become a flight hazard. "At this point, they should be full-grown body-wise," she said, adding that all the growth now will be in feathers and building up muscles.

The tiny transmitter will allow researchers to follow the migration path of the eaglets, which now are known to fans of Alcoa's Eaglecam website as Star and Sky. Some transmitters have remained working as long as five years.

According to Becker, the transmitter weighs 60 grams, is solar-powered and contains a GPS that not only will track where the bird flies to but its speed and altitude.

Each bird also received a silver band around its leg that included an identifying number. Riches had the privilege of banding the first eagle. He has led Alcoa's Eaglecam, a web camera positioned over the nest streaming video to a website, since it began in 2010.

As populations of bald eagles have increased so have their conflicts with human activities, mainly wind turbines, communication towers and other structures.

"One of the central questions is if you know the Mississippi River concentrates eagles, at what times and what conditions are they going off river to feed?" Miller said. She added that it is when they migrate upland that eagles tend to get killed by wind towers. "They are not programmed to see a wind turbine spinning in the sky."

While most of the birds being studied are adults, she said, "we'd miss a whole part of their life if we only studied adults."

In fact, Becker said juvenile birds have the highest rate of colliding with human structures.

When the birds begin to take flight and data comes in from all the tagged birds, Becker said they will have information on their migration paths. "So when a transmission line or a wind farm (is locating), they can try to intelligently site these structures."

Riches said the study is a "win-win" for everyone. "Environment is a key issue for us here, a priority here in the Quad-Cities for a long time." He added Alcoa is pleased "for them to be able to include our eagles in their project."
Alexis Fire Equipment, the manufacturer that helps firefighters everywhere battle blazes, now is taking on the fight against childhood cancer.

The second-generation company, located in tiny Alexis, Ill.,  population 814  has partnered with St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital. One of the last remaining family-owned fire equipment makers in the Midwest, Alexis Fire has pledged to donate $1,000 for every fire and medical unit it sells between April 16, 2016, and April 15, 2017 in the continental United States.

"There are very few people that havent been touched by childhood diseases," said Jeff Morris, the company's owner. "Everyone from our employees to the customers we serve to the communities we live in, has been affected by cancer in some way."

Alexis Fire manufactures fire trucks, pumpers, tankers and other fire appartus, including custom-built aerials, and sells custom-crafted law enforcement vehicles and ambulances.

Founded in 1947 by Morris' father, Eugene, Alexis Fire has grown from a small fabrication shop to a 75-person workforce of skilled engineers, craftsmen and mechanics.

The company soon will have a feature on its website for others to donate to the cause. For more information, visit www.alexisfire.com.

"Knowing the impact that St. Jude has on the patients and their families, it makes us proud to know we can contribute to such a worthy cause," Morris said.

St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital, founded in 1962, conducts research and treats childhood cancer. According to information from the hospital, "through generous donations, like Alexis Fire's commitment, St. Jude ensures that no child's family will ever receive a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing or food, and can focus on what matters most  helping their child live."

HooahQuad-Cities supports military

Just in time for Memorial Day, the Quad-Cities Chamber has launched a newly designed website to connect military with resources, community events and military-friendly employers.

The site, HooahQuadCities.com, was redeveloped in partnership with Sedona Technologies, Moline.

"This was the perfect melding of our web expertise and commitment to supporting the military and the Rock Island Arsenal," said Ernie Cychosz, vice president of Sedona Technologies Government Services.

Tara Barney, the chamber's president and CEO, said the website is part of the longstanding program that focuses on supporting the military. She offers these ideas for others to show their support through Hooah Quad-Cities:

Be recognized as a military-friendly employer by completing a Statement of Support found under the We Hire Military tab.

Submit details of an upcoming military-related event to website.

If your business offers a military discount, provide the information to the Hooah website.

So long, Moline Governor's

The Moline Governor's will close its doors today.

The Governor's restaurants/bars in Moline and Bettendorf have been sold, and the Bettendorf one will remain open. The new owners plan to remodel the Moline location and reopen in about three weeks with a new concept. There is more to come on that story.

But after 42 years, the pub is ending its run as a favorite watering hole for Moliners, loads of ball teams and a few Scouters I know.

Governor's in Moline opened the doors in 1974, founded by Dave Koenig and John Allan "Al" Johnson. Their partnership of Johnson-Koenig Co. introduced a host of restaurants on the Quad-City scene, including Tortilla Flats, The Dock, JK Frizbee's, Iowa River Power Company, Old Oaks, Bixby's, Huff's, Spaghetti's and The Palace.
A woman wanted in connection with the shooting death of a Rock Island teenager has been arrested.

U.S. Marshals arrested Chelsea Michelle Raker, 21, in Chatham County, Georgia, about 3:50 p.m. Saturday, Rock Island Police Chief Jeffrey VenHuizen said Tuesday in a new release Tuesday. She is being held in Chatham County Detention Center pending an extradition hearing set for Thursday.

Authorities said Raker originally is from Savannah, Georgia.

Raker was arrested on warrants accusing her of two counts of first-degree murder and aiding a fugitive to flee. She is being held on $1 million bond.

She and Kire G. Carr, 17, are accused in the shooting death of 15-year-old Jescie Armstrong. Authorities said Raker drove Carr from the scene of the shooting and out of Rock Island County.

Police were dispatched just before 2 p.m. April 27 to the 500 block of 20th Avenue after receiving a report of shots fired inside a home.

Officers found Armstrong, 15, with a gunshot wound to the head inside the residence. He later died at Trinity Rock Island.

Prosecutors believe Armstrong was shot while Carr and Raker were committing an armed robbery.

Carr was arrested April 28 in Columbus, Ohio, by the U.S. Marshals Service. Carr is charged as an adult with four counts of first-degree murder.

Marshals said Carr and a female accomplice, later identified as Raker, were involved in a dispute with several others that led to the shooting of Armstrong. The marshals said Carr was staying in Columbus briefly and had plans to flee to coastal Georgia.

The Rock Island Police Department is asking anyone with information related to this case to contact the department at 309-732-2677 or Crimestoppers of the Quad-Cities at 309-762-9500.
A bill aimed at helping Exelon's money-losing nuclear plants in the Quad-Cities and Clinton, Ill., likely won't make it out of the spring session, but the company hasn't yet confirmed it will close the two plants.

The bill's main sponsor, Sen. Donne Trotter, D-Chicago, has pulled the plug on the legislation, according to a report in the News-Gazette of Champaign, Ill. The newspaper quoted him as saying that time had run out.

A Quad-Cities Chamber of Commerce official also said Tuesday that he has been told the bill is dead for the spring session. The session was scheduled to end Tuesday.

"The general consensus is that its dead for this session," said Henry Marquard, director of government relations for the chamber. He said that he had spoken with an aide to Trotter, as well as others at the Capitol.

Exelon had said that, if legislation wasn't passed by the end of the spring session, it would close its plant in Clinton in 2017 and the one in the Quad-Cities in 2018.

Bill Stoermer, a spokesman for the Quad-City plant, did not comment on the legislation Tueday. But, in an email, he said: "We will have a formal statement later this week."

Despite the apparent failure of the legislation for this session, Marquard said he's hopeful it can be resurrected in the fall session. Even though Exelon gave a spring session deadline for the bill to be passed, he said the Quad-City plant is not closed yet.

"Were just going to keep fighting until they literally close the thing," he said.

Some supporters of the plan are hopeful that Exelon can be persuaded to extend its deadline, the News-Gazette article said.

The Cordova plant employs more than 800 people in the Quad-City region, and there had been an intense effort to get lawmakers to pass a bill Exelon said would put it on an even footing with other energy providers. The bill also would establish a surcharge on utility customers that would help the nuclear plants, which Exelon said have lost more than $800 million over the past seven years.

Consumer groups, as well as others, had objected to the legislation, calling it a bailout for a profitable company.
CEDAR RAPIDS  Theres been no polling to show who is leading in the Democratic primary race in Iowas U.S. 1st Congressional District, but Monica Vernon is running away with the money race.

Vernon raised more than three times as much money as Pat Murphy of Dubuque during the Federal Election Commissions preprimary reporting period that covers April 1 to May 18.

Murphy, a former state representative, raised $35,869 during that time frame while Vernon pulled in $112,190, according to her FEC report.

She also spent nearly six times as much as Murphy  $465,934 to $78,052  and closed out the preprimary reporting period with nine times as much cash on hand  $420,887 to Murphys $46,294.

Vernon continued her fundraising dominance over Murphy, who was the Democratic candidate in the open-seat 1st District race in 2014. In the 2015-16 election cycle, Vernon, a former business owner and city council member in Cedar Rapids, has raised $1,402,326 to Murphys $238,990, according to their FEC reports.

In the primary, Vernon has outspent Murphy $981,439 to $194,030.

Whoever wins the June 7 Democratic primary will face first-term Republican Rep. Rod Blum, a Dubuque businessman. He has raised more than either Democra, $1,486,503 with $1,284,392 cash on hand for the general election race.
How quick we forget our World War I history! The Scottish band from Glasgow takes its name from the ill-fated Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Students of history will remember that Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, were assassinated in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914 (coincidentally their 14th wedding anniversary) at the hands of a Serbian national, Gavrilo Princip. Their assassination was the spark that ignited World War I. As for how the band came to choose it for their name, they were reportedly watching horse racing on television one day. One of the entrants was named Archduke, which got the members discussing various historical archdukes, leading inevitably to Franz Ferdinand. The band consists of Alex Kapranos (vocals/guitar), Nick McCarthy (guitar/keyboards), Bob Hardy (bass) and Paul Thomson (drums). They released their self-titled debut album in 2004. Since then, they have released three additional albums, including 2013s Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action. In 2015, Franz Ferdinand announced they had joined Sparks, the American duo composed of brothers Ron and Russell Mael, to form the superband, FFS.

Kent LaVoie, a.k.a. Lobo, was born in Tallahassee, Fla., in 1943. He joined his first band in 1961 and continued to play in various bands, one of which included Gram Parsons, until he released his first solo recordings in the early '70s. His first hit was Me and You and a Dog Named Boo which reached No. 5 in 1971. Before the song was released, he used the name Lobo rather than his real name for fear that he would be typecast as a novelty act. His biggest pop hit came the next year when Id Love You to Want Me reached No. 2. Although he reached the top 10 on the pop charts three times, his greatest success was on the Adult Contemporary charts where he had seven top 10 hits including four that reached No. 1. His last appearance on the A/C charts was in 1979 when Where Were You When I Was Falling in Love topped the charts. He recorded sporadically throughout the '80s and '90s and achieved success in Asia where he toured and released CDs exclusively for the Asian market.
SIOUX FALLS | Six groups are teaming up to try to improve how they serve the homeless in South Dakota's largest city.

The Sioux Falls organizations are launching a pilot program to track each person who depends on their help. The Sioux Empire Network of Care will bring together local providers of food, clothes, shelter and financial assistance, the Argus Leader reported.

The new database is designed to improve care by cutting down on the duplication of services and preventing people from falling through the cracks.

"There's a lot of opportunities (for help), but you've got to know how to use" the system, said Jeff Irving, who needed help getting back on his feet after a felony conviction made it hard for him to find a job. "It's a good plan."

Advocates for the homeless say it also might help reveal the full scope of Sioux Falls' homelessness problem, since the organizations currently don't know if they're serving the same people.

"All I know right now is how many people who have utilized a service, but I don't have any idea if that person is duplicated," said Stacey Tieszen, coordinator for Minnehaha County's Homeless Advisory Board.

Getting a handle on the number of homeless is difficult. In January, a single-day count done by the state identified 434 homeless in the Minnehaha County. Sioux Falls public schools have identified more than 800 children who were homeless at some point this school year. County human services in 2015 served 1,425 households that identified as homeless.

There also is no easy way to determine what services people rely on each day to survive, said Janet Kittams-Lalley, president of the Helpline Center.

"We don't really know the entire journey of a person in need as they go through the system," she said.

The Sioux Empire Network of Care is funded by a $200,000 grant from the Bush Foundation. The effort is scheduled to begin next month.
DALLAS | A South Dakota man has pleaded not guilty to charges related to harming a 14-year-old girl, including second-degree rape and distributing drug to a minor.

The Daily Republic on Tuesday reported that 51-year-old Donald Story, of Dallas, South Dakota, has entered pleas to 10 charges.

Court records show the girl on May 6 told an agent with the state's Division of Criminal Investigation that Story smoked methamphetamine with her and made sexual advances. The girl denied having sex with Story, but a witness told authorities that Story and the girl had sex at Story's home.

An indictment against Story states he "encouraged" other adults to have sex with the girl.

It wasn't immediately clear Tuesday if Story has an attorney. A home telephone listing couldn't be found.
PIERRE | Shoppers are set to spend a little more at the store when South Dakota's historic half-cent sales tax hike for teacher pay takes effect.

The state sales tax rate increases from 4 percent to 4.5 percent on Wednesday in the first permanent jump in nearly 50 years. Cities can also impose sales taxes on top of the state rate.

Here's a look at the tax hike:

TEACHER PAY

State lawmakers passed the tax increase this year as a way to put more than $60 million in new funding toward boosting South Dakota's lowest-in-the-nation teacher pay to a target average of $48,500 per year. Gov. Dennis Daugaard signed a package of education measures, including the tax hike, which also puts millions of dollars toward property tax relief and salaries at technical schools.

A state task force found that South Dakota teachers earn less than their counterparts in every other state and Washington, D.C. The state's average teacher salary of $40,023 in 2013-14 was $8,643 less than that of North Dakota, its next-lowest neighbor.

The new money will help improve education in South Dakota and ensure that students have high-quality teachers, said Mary McCorkle, president of the South Dakota Education Association.

HISTORIC INCREASE

This marks the first permanent increase in the state's sales tax rate since 1969. The rate was temporarily increased to 5 percent twice in the 1980s to purchase rail assets and for a state economic development loan fund, said Jonathan Harms, a spokesman for the state Department of Revenue. South Dakota introduced its sales tax in 1935, when it was 2 percent.

Daugaard isn't enthusiastic about tax increases, but he said there was no way within current state receipts to make an "appreciable impact" on teacher pay without raising revenue.

The increase is expected to raise about $107 million in its first year.

In addition to teacher pay, about $36.5 million of the increase will go toward property tax relief and about $3.2 million will go toward salaries at technical schools.

SMOOTH SAILING

The Revenue Department's goal is to make the transition as easy as possible for taxpayers, Harms said. South Dakota Retailers Association Executive Director Shawn Lyons said businesses are making the necessary changes without offering much pushback.

"By and large, it should not be that difficult of an adjustment," he said.
SIOUX FALLS | Mike DeVries wasn't sure what to make of the precipitous drop in his sales, but when the Midwest businessman started digging, he discovered a new shipping phenomenon that makes it cheaper to send a package around the world than across the state.

DeVries and his wife run an eBay business from their home just southeast of Sioux Falls in Alvord, Iowa, selling farm, automotive and machinery parts, the Argus Leader reported.

Everything else sold as it always had, but two smaller items  12-volt solenoids and lawn mower bearings  stopped moving altogether a little over a year ago.

The solenoids went for $10 apiece, plus around $3 shipping.

"They just stopped selling altogether," DeVries said.

His curiosity led him to do what business owners have done for hundreds of years: Check the competition. What he found were 12-volt solenoids from China selling for $3.29 on eBay. Not only were prices lower, the items were offered with free shipping through an "ePacket."

"I can't even ship across the United States for free," DeVries said.

A google search for ePacket turned up a Washington Post article about the small shipping bags and their impact on the U.S. Postal Services' bottom line. He also found websites highlighting complaints from domestic shippers angry about an unfair field of play.

The United States Postal Service lost $75 million in 2014 thanks to the UPU deal with China, according to the testimony of David Williams, inspector general of the USPS, and the Postal Service received 27 million ePackets in fiscal year 2012. Each packet lost the post office $1.10 on average.

The losses caused by the entrance of Chinese sellers into the online marketplace are something that needs attention in the next round of negotiations, Williams said.

"The UPU's mission is as relevant as when the institution was created. But, like many enterprises, the UPU system has been greatly disrupted by globalization and the digital age," Williams told the committee.

An Amazon executive named Paul Misener told the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Government Reform last summer that the rates were unfair and illogical.

The deal creating the ePacket system with China Post makes it cheaper to ship from thousands of miles away than within the same state. Shipping a one-pound parcel from Greenville, South Carolina, to New York would cost the domestic shipper nearly $6, Misener said, while a Beijing seller would pay $3.66 in postage.

"At high volumes, especially for low-priced items, such dramatic shipping cost differences can make or break a small ecommerce business," he said.

DeVries didn't worry about the downturn in solenoid and bearing sales much at first. The family sustains itself with a mix of farm income and sales of larger, more expensive items on eBay.

"I just threw them in the trash," DeVries said.

Even so, the discovery of the imbalance made him uneasy, and he wanted to get the word out. He hopes more people will take note, take action and do as he did: Email their Congressional delegation and ask for a level playing field.

If no one speaks up, DeVries fears, the next deal could involve the approval of low cost, international flat-rate boxes for larger items, impacting more businesses.

"People need to know about this," DeVries said. "It's not about me."
A new National Park Service (NPS) report shows that 478,830 visitors to Devils Tower National Monument in 2015 spent $29,889,500in communities near the park which would include Belle Fourche, according to a news release from the monument's information officer Nancy Stimson.

Stimson said the study indicates that spending supported 477 jobs in the local area and had a cumulative benefit to the local economy of $37,409,000.

Nationally, the peer-reviewed visitor spending report shows $16.9 billion of direct spending by 307.2 million park visitors in communities within 60 miles of a national park. This spending supported 295,000 jobs nationally, with 252,000 of those jobs found in gateway communities.

The cumulative benefit to the U.S. economy was $32 billion. In the Devils Tower area, the greatest visitor spending was for lodging (34.7 percent), food and beverages (25.7 percent), gas and oil (14.2 percent), and retail sales (9.6 percent).

Devils Tower National Monument welcomes visitors from across the country and around the world, said Superintendent Tim Reid in the news release.

We are delighted to share the story of this special place and the experience it provides. National park tourism is a significant driver in state and local economies, returning $10 for every $1 spent in National Park Service units. We appreciate the support of our neighbors and partners, and are looking forward to another robust year of visitation as we celebrate the NPS Centennial, he said.

An interactive option allows users to explore current year visitor spending, jobs, labor income, value added, year-by-year trend data, and output effects by sector for national, state, and local economies. The interactive tool and report are available at the NPS Social Science Program webpage: go.nps.gov/vse.

To learn more about national parks in Wyoming and how the National Park Service works with Wyoming communities to help preserve local history, conserve the environment, and provide outdoor recreation, go to www.nps.gov/state/wy.

In another news release, the monument's staff announced their annual "voluntary" climbing closure.

A voluntary closure for climbing at Devils Tower will be in effect through the month of June. Climbers are asked and encouraged to refrain from climbing on the Tower June 1 -30 out of respect for the spiritual and cultural significance of the Tower to regional American Indian tribes.

American Indian activities and ceremonies occur in the monument throughout the year, however the month of June is an especially significant time for some traditional tribal practitioners. Climbers are asked to consider tribal perspectives and encouraged to climb during June at the many other climbing sites in the region such as the Mt. Rushmore Needles, Custer State Park Needles and Spearfish Canyon in South Dakota, and Tensleep Canyon and Tongue River Canyon in Wyoming.

The final 1995 Monument Climbing Management Plan for the Monument established this annual voluntary closure for all climbing routes as a way to balance the cultural and spiritual importance of the feature to American Indian tribes with its history as a unique and world class rock climbing destination. The Access Fund, a nonprofit organization working to maintain access to climbing areas and protect the climbing environment, fully supports the voluntary climbing closure. Most climbers choose not to climb the Tower during June.

In addition to the voluntary June climbing closure, certain sections of the Tower are currently under a mandatory closure to protect nesting peregrine falcons. This mandatory closure can shift depending on falcon behavior during nesting and fledging, so please check the park website at www.nps.gov/deto for affected routes, areas and current status. The mandatory nesting falcon closure will be lifted once the young have fully fledged.
The Obama administration recently issued a new regulation  one of the 195 new regulations issued so far in 2016  to more than double the salary threshold under which employees can qualify for overtime pay of time and a half.

Like so many of the administrations regulations, the new overtime rule is a one-size-fits-all mandate that doesnt take into account individual needs and regional differences. In fact, it will actually end up hurting the citizens it is meant to help: employees and the job creators who hire them.

Currently, employees making $23,660 or less per year automatically qualify for overtime after 40 hours per week. The new rule issued by the Department of Labor (DOL) would raise that threshold to $47,476, effective Dec. 1, 2016.

Labor costs will go up, and many hard-working, mid-and-entry-level employees will feel the squeeze. Employers will be forced to either pay these new labor costs or reclassify salaried employees as hourly workers and limit their hours.

Additionally, employees who will be converted from salaried to hourly will lose the flexibility they have today. Not only is this bad for business, it also makes it more difficult for new and mid-level workers, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck to support their families and advance their career.

By forcing small businesses, restaurants, retailers, colleges and universities to comply with yet another costly new mandate, the administration is hindering economic growth and stifling innovation.

The best way to strengthen the middle class is to boost our economy by lowering the tax burden, removing costly regulatory mandates and increasing workplace flexibility. Unfortunately, this new overtime rule will have the opposite effect.

Earlier this year, I cosponsored the Protecting Workplace Advancement and Opportunity Act, which would require DOL to pursue a balanced and responsible approach when updating federal overtime rules. Under this legislation, DOL would be required to perform a deeper analysis of the impact changes to overtime regulations will have on businesses, nonprofits, local economies, healthcare providers and colleges.

Senator Lamar Alexander, Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has pledged to file a Resolution of Disapproval to stop this new rule, which I wholeheartedly support.

Since the rule was first proposed in 2014, DOL received nearly 300,000 comments, many of which came from employees, business owners and local government officials, who tried to explain that the rule would stifle growth.

Still, the DOL pushed forward with the rule, disregarding the input from those it says it is trying to help. Additionally, the administration failed to take into account regional differences when finalizing this new mandate.

Whats good for South Dakota may differ greatly from whats good for California and New York. This is especially true when youre talking about cost of living and family budgets.

Employees deserve fair pay for an honest days work, but forcing employers to comply with this rule is irresponsible. It threatens businesses, employees, state and local governments and the economy as a whole.

If the president wants to truly help the middle class  he should start by withdrawing this misguided rule.
Brookings | South Dakota's weather this summer could be a bit of a climate roller coaster according to outlooks issued by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center May 19.

The outlook shows the early summer months to be wetter and possibly cooler in the southwest part of the state.

"These conditions usually fit together in the warm season," said Dennis Todey, state climatologist/associate professor. "If conditions are wetter, South Dakota is rarely warmer than average for any length of time in the summer."

Laura Edwards, SDSU Extension climate field specialist added that the current, fairly wet soil conditions in areas of South Dakota and the Plains are likely to help maintain temperatures cooler into the early summer.

"In South Dakota, cooler and wetter conditions are more likely to impact the early summer with warmer and drier than average conditions later," she said.

In the Black Hills and the northeast corner of South Dakota, these wetter conditions are good news. Both areas are reflected on the U.S. Drought Monitor map as being abnormally dry (D0) in the most recent map.

"For producers in the northeast, the conditions should line up well as the current dryness will allow for quicker progress on planting into the slightly dry soils," Edwards said. "The rain after planting should help early crop progress."

Although rain in the Black Hills will have little agricultural impact, Edwards said the additional rainfall will help limit potential wildland fire issues for the short-

Climate outlooks from NOAA is fairly consistent in showing warmer than average conditions to cover the region by late summer, as well as some drier than average conditions in parts of the state.

"The current El Nino continues to weaken and fade and a La Nina is likely to take hold," she said.

This transition, Edwards said, is expected to be fairly quick, but the atmospheric patterns do not change overnight. "They take many weeks to transition between the different phases. How late in the growing season this occurs will determine what impacts we experience and where those impacts occur," she said.

Depending on transition timing, the impacts could vary.

A late transition (mid-late August) would have limited impact except for soybean areas, unless conditions turn severely dry and warm quickly.

However, Edwards said a late transition looks to be the most likely case at this point.

"The additional heat during the growing season may not be a major issue and possibly help with some crops that were planted late," Edwards said. "Some dry conditions seem likely to have some impact towards the end of the growing season."

If dry conditions set up late in the growing season, Edwards said this could be a benefit to corn and soybean growers.

"It could mean grain could dry down in the field before harvest, reducing their costs of mechanical grain drying in the fall," she said. "While not reducing yield too much."

The fall outlook currently maintains the warmer than average conditions into harvest.
The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board has issued a partial ruling in the renewal of Crow Butte Mines operating license, and while the board ruled in favor of those opposing the renewal on two issues, it declined to revoke the facilitys license.

The ruling issued Thursday afternoon addresses the Nuclear Regulatory Commissions (NRC) attempts to consult with the Oglala Sioux Tribe and Consolidated Intervenors to identify sites of historic and cultural significance within the mines license area.

Crow Buttes operational license expired several years ago, and the facility has been operating on a temporary license since 2007 pending the renewal process. The Oglala Sioux Tribe and the Consolidated Intervenors filed requests to intervene in 2008. Last fall, after the NRC had granted a 10-year license renewal to Crow Butte, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board heard conducted hearings to address ongoing concerns from the tribe and the Intervenors.

In the initial protest, the board admitted for review four environmental contentions brought forth by the opposing parties; the board admitted five more contentions last year regarding the NRCs analysis for the environmental assessment (EA). Last weeks partial ruling addressed only Contention 1 relating to the NRCs consultation with the tribe and the identification of tribal cultural properties.

The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board ruled on four separate matters regarding Contention 1, issuing a split decision on those matters - two in favor of the NRC and two in favor of the intervenors.

This decision relates to the NRC and tribes working together to identify potential cultural sites. We are still reviewing the decision but it does not put our license at risk or affect our ability to operate, said Cameco spokesman Ken Vaughn in an email Thursday afternoon. We have fully cooperated with the NRCs efforts to identify and assess cultural resources to date and will continue to do so. We look forward to the ASLB decision on the technical and environmental issues -- which is to come at a later date

The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board ruled that the NRC staff made a genuine effort to consult with the Oglala Sioux Tribe, meeting its consultation obligations under the National Historic Preservation Act. The board also ruled that while the NRCs environmental analysis was deficient in explaining how it met those obligations, a review of the evidence in its entirety cures those deficiencies.

The board ruled in favor of the tribe, however, in finding that the NRCs survey of the license area for historical and cultural sites did not meet the identification obligations under the Preservation Act and that the environmental analysis is deficient under National Environmental Policy Act because the NRC failed to take a hard look at potential sites significant to the tribe and analyze the objections the tribe had to the site survey approach.

The record before the Board presents a close call as to whether the NRC Staff provided a meaningful opportunity for the Indian tribes to consult on the Crow Butte license renewal. We find that the NRC Staffs consultation process suffered from years of inaction and delay, a confusing multi-site approach, and for most of the process an absence of sincere respect for the government-to-government relationship that exists between Indian tribes and the United States. Nonetheless, in 2013, the NRC Staff attempted to rectify its mistakes by endeavoring to consult meaningfully with affected Indian tribes. Sadly, at that time, the Oglala Sioux Tribe also took steps that undermined the process.

While the NRC could have done many things differently, the board said there is no evidence that the OST has a genuine interest in further consultation efforts.

The report finds that the NRC delayed the consultation with the tribes for four years after Crow Butte filed its renewal application. Once the NRC initiated communication, it created further problems by attempting to consolidate communications for the Crow Butte renewal license, the facilitys three expansion licenses, and the Powertech license in South Dakota, resulting in confusion on the part of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. The NRC did not separate the consultation on Crow Butte from Powertech until October 2012.

Other attempts at communication with the tribes included teleconference calls and a three-day trip in 2011 to Crow Butte allowed tribes to see the site, in which they were not able to exit the bus and there was no attempt to identify culturally significant sites. That meeting, the rulings say, only served to initiate the consultation process.

To argue otherwise is to treat the entire consultation process as a checklist, without examining the substance of the dialogue among the parties.

The NRC also failed to give the Oglala Sioux Tribe the respect required in a government-to-government relationship. A meeting in February 2012, for example, was attended by the president of OST but the NRC sent no one holding a similar level of authority.

This example again reflects the NRC Staffs prioritization of form over substance  The government-to-government relationship is not benefited, and if anything harmed, if the focus does not remain on substantive consultations between equivalent levels of NRC Staff management and Tribal executives, the ruling says.

The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board found that the NRC eventually corrected that mistake by sending a deputy division director to meet with the tribe, but OST representatives did not attend the meeting. The NRC also made the mistake of sending a draft copy of the EA to the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality but failed to send the document to OST. NRC staff never offered a satisfactory reason for the oversight, the ruling says.

It is worrisome that the NRC Staff could not admit that this was a simple mistake, and instead defended its failure to send the draft EA to the Tribe by asserting that theres no NRC regulatory requirement.

The OST, however, was not blameless in the lack of communication, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board said. The tribe failed to discuss their misgivings and instead disengaged, making no effort to work with the NRC staff.

Even though its overtures were repeatedly rebuffed, the NRC staff persisted in making genuine efforts at consultation, the report says, offering a March 2013 meeting as an example. OST President Bryan Brewer accepted an invitation to meet at Crow Butte but did not show up.

In ruling in the tribes favor on the site survey approach, the board noted that the NRC, after four years of slow progress on the renewal application, made an abrupt decision to adopt an open site survey approach.

The area around the Crow Butte mine is steeped in history. This calls for greater scrutiny of the license area, not less, the report says. There is no record evidence to support Mr. (Nathan) Goodmans purported reasons for selecting and designing an open site approach. Insofar as there is evidence available, it points in the opposite direction.

Both Crow Butte Mine and the OST initially proposed a highly structured approach to the site survey that would take several weeks to complete; Crow Butte later suggested the open site proposal with the review to be completed in three weeks, and the NRC adopted it quickly, offering tribes who participated in the survey a $10,000 honorarium. The OST viewed this as a bribe.

We certainly recognize that the intensive TCP (traditional cultural properties) survey preferred by the tribes may well have been infeasible on a cost basis. At the same time, however, we do not agree with the NRC Staffs argument that suddenly scrapping the TCP survey approach, on which it had been working with Indian tribes for over a year, was done for the benefit of the Indian tribes.

Only two tribes participated in the initial steps of the site survey, neither of which has any connection to Crow Butte, further devaluing the NRCs attempt to identify cultural properties. The Crow Nation is not a Sioux Nation and is located in southern Montana, while the Santee Sioux Nation is located 300 miles from Crow Butte and originated in Minnesota. Neither tribe actually toured the site and told the NRC disturbances at the mine would make it impossible to identify significant sites.

Based on the record as a whole, it is at least plausible that there are TCPs within the license area requiring identification and protection . The NRC Staffs open site approach involved no independent evaluation by the NRC Staff of any of the decisions the Crow Nation or the Santee Sioux Nation reached.

While the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board did not order specific actions to remedy the deficiencies it found in the EA, it encouraged the NRC to supplement the public record with additional analysis, adding that the tribe and other intervenors will have an opportunity to file new contentions on any updated information.

The board declined to issue an injunction against the mines operational license saying that the tribe failed to present evidence that imminent harm was likely if mining operations continue and citing the tribes unwillingness to participate in the process as justification.
The Chadron Police Department is seeking the publics assistance in determining who broke into a local pharmacy and stole $24,000 of drugs.

Officers were called to Petersen Drug the morning of May 26 when it was discovered that someone had broken in. A Chadron Police Department press release says the burglar gained entry to the building by cutting a large hole into the tin of the east wall in the alley.

Missing from the pharmacy was a large quantity of drugs, including Fentanyl, Morphine, Hydrocodone, Vicodin, OxyContin, Tramadol, Adderall and Alprazolam. The drugs have a wholesale value of $24,000 but are worth more on the black market.

These drugs have a street value of approximately $70,000.00. They are dangerous and we are very concerned about them hitting the streets. Drugs such as Vicodin, OxyContin or other stimulants such as Adderall are common prescription drugs of abuse. I am asking for the publics help in solving this crime, Lt. Rick Hickstein said in the press release.

The Chadron Police Department is currently following up on several leads and its investigation is ongoing. If you have information related to this crime, please call the Dawes County Crime Stoppers Hotline at 308-432-0519 or you can report this crime from your computer or smartphone, through the Nebraska Crime Stoppers webpage by simply clicking on the tab, Leave a Tip. By utilizing a crime stoppers program in your area, you can remain anonymous and you may be eligible for reward money.

The Chadron Police Department was assisted by the Dawes County Sheriffs Department and the Nebraska State Patrol.
Ride the Ridge named Senator Al Davis and Virlyn and Betty Norgard as Honorary Trail Bosses for the 25th Annual Ride the Ridge at Fort Robinson State Park on June 18.

The Honorary Trail Bosses are selected by the Ridge the Ridge outriders to recognize those who have served and supported the legacy of northwest Nebraska and this event.

Senator Davis is a first-time participant and is excited for his first Ridge the Ridge experience at Fort Robinson.

It is really an honor to be named one of this years Honorary Trail Bosses, Davis said. Tourism is so important for the northwest Nebraska area, and events like this do a great job of highlighting what it has to offer. I hope to continue to be an advocate for promoting tourism in western Nebraska.

The Norgard nominees have participated and supported Ride the Ridge for many years and are thankful to receive this honor. Virlyn took part in this event for many years and has also led several different rides in the area.

Ride the Ridge is wonderful because other people can come see our country and how pretty it is out here, Betty, said. Virlyn has been a lifelong horseman and he said the Honorary Trail Boss Award is a great fulfillment for him.

Since its inception in 1991, Ride the Ridge has been an annual trail riding event in northwest Nebraska. The family-oriented event brings horsemen, women, and families from all over the region to ride trails in Pine Ridge Country.

This years event includes a morning and afternoon trail ride, the GPS Poker Run, an American Quarter Horse Association training sessions, and the Trail Horse Challenge Competition. All trail rides are free, but there is a one-time $5.00 fee for the trail challenge training and competition sessions.

All skills and ages are welcome, but participants must bring their own horses. Stalls and lodging are available at Fort Robinson State Park. Registration begins at 8 a.m. and the first trot is scheduled for 9 a.m. For more information contact Bruce at 402-269-7636 or email westernnebraskaridetheridge@gmail.com.
Campaign finance reports filed in recent days show that Governor Dennis Daugaard has pumped money into the campaigns of Republican primary candidates, backing many who supported his ambitious sales tax hike plan to boost teacher pay in South Dakota.

Daugaard made $1,000 contributions to a variety of Republican legislative candidates who have primary elections June 7, including a handful of hotly contested West River races.

He focused most on Republican primaries for Senate seats. Among those receiving money from the Republican governors campaign committee were:

 Sen. Bruce Rampelberg of Rapid City, challenged by term-limited Rep. Lance Russell of Hot Springs.

 Term-limited Rep. Jacqueline Sly of Rapid City, who is challenging Sen. Phil Jensen of Rapid City.

 Sen. Alan Solano of Rapid City, challenged by Richard Kriebel of Rapid City.

 Rep. Jeff Partridge of Rapid City, who is competing with Janette McIntyre of Rapid City for a Senate seat being vacated by term-limited Sen. Craig Tieszen of Rapid City.

 Sen. Terri Haverly of Rapid City, who challenged by Tina Mulally of Rapid City.

 Sen. Larry Tidemann of Brookings, challenged by Doug Post of rural Volga.

 Sen. Deb Peters of Hartford, challenged by former Rep. Lora Hubbel of Sioux Falls (Hubbel ran against Daugaard in the 2014 gubernatorial primary).

 Caleb Finck of rural Tripp, who faces former Rep. Stace Nelson of Fulton for a Senate seat. Republican Sen. Bill Van Gerpen of Tyndall isnt seeking re-election and donated $100 to Fincks campaign.

 Rep. Roger Solum of Watertown, who is competing against Neal Tapio of Watertown for the Republican nomination to the Senate seat now held by Republican Ried Holien of Watertown.

Holien hopes to be chosen as South Dakotas Republican national committeeman and didnt seek re-election to the Senate.

Tidemann, Peters, Rampelberg, Sly, Solano, Partridge, Haverly and Solum all voted in favor of the state sales-tax increase that takes effect Wednesday.

Daugaard proposed the tax increase as a means to raise teacher salaries and to increase property-tax relief.

Jensen and Russell voted against the tax increase. Nelson, who ran for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in 2014, is a political ally of Russell. McIntyre and Mullaly come from the same wing of Black Hills Republicans as Jensen and Russell.

Pre-primary campaign finance reports werent available online yet as of Saturday for Nelson and Russell.

In the Senate Republican primaries where both candidates have reported, the candidates backed by the governor had broader and deeper financial support than their opponents in every instance.

In several of the contests, the candidates challenging incumbents provided substantial amounts of personal money into their campaigns, such as McIntyre $15,000; Hubbel $5,000; Tapio $10,000 and Kriebel $700.

Tapio didnt report any contributions other than his money.

Daugaard didnt take a side in the Republican primary between former Sen. Ryan Maher of Isabel and Belle Fourche city council member Steven Ritch.

According to his report, Ritch didnt receive or spend any money for his campaign.
South Dakota Secretary of State Shantel Krebs met last week with the Black Hills Forum and Press Club to talk about transparency, budgets and politics. It would be hard to overestimate her potential in South Dakota's future. While she demurred from answering whether she would be interested in running for governor, it was clear she may. And it was clear, at least to this observer, that she has the right stuff.

Ever since a Catholic priest decided to help the legislature by starting the first voter initiatives and referred initiatives in the nation, the secretary of state has had oversight of issues relating to making sure people can and do vote in the general elections and on initiatives. Its harder than you would think.

There are about 830,000 people in South Dakota. Of those, 521,000 are registered voters. Were pretty lenient on who we let vote, so there are plenty of voters who are residents because we have no state income tax. They get to vote anyway because they claim South Dakota as home and we let them.

Of those people 18-40 years old, 140,000 are registered voters. It doesnt seem like many and its even less when Secretary Krebs, a constitutional officer, revealed that only 22,000 of this critical demographic shows up to vote. Thats less than 15 percent. The secretary believes they don't vote because they don't trust the government. Given the national election picture, shes probably right. Lisa Modrick, a candidate for City Council in Rapid City, said that in her area only about 1,600 of the 10,000 registered voters turn out. The mayor of Deadwood won by a single vote. They call him Landslide.

Krebs faces other challenges as well. We're definitely behind in information technology, she said about the need for better technology, like hospitals now have to share medical information across platforms. Her main frame is 30 years old. While there are still lots of people who like to file in hard copy, the world has changed and she needs new technology. And shes not waiting for someone to get it for her.

A strong proponent of zero-based budgeting, Krebs likes to start from scratch, look at every penny, and see if we still need it where it is or if it can be shifted to things like tech upgrades. We made $7.5 million in the first six months I was in office, she said, by eliminating the backlog of business filings and timely collecting fees using proven customer-service strategies, up from $5.9 million the previous six months.

In one frustrating example of government inefficiency, she described how the state's departments can't talk to each other across system platforms. The Departments of Labor and Revenue can't cross talk with Shantel, kind of like the situation with the military not long ago. If business people want something that involves three departments, they still have to go to several if not dozens of people to get done what one integrated website could do at the click of a mouse.

Krebs views about why South Dakota ranks consistently low in the corruption department were a little thin. She thinks its probably the universal application of metrics across states that vary wildly in operations and available resources. For example, one of the questions is how many elected officials in the state have been arrested or served time in prison, a number skewed by reservation demographics. She avoided referring to the cronyism that has dominated headlines, but my money is on her for bigger things soon.
RAPID CITY | Robert Stephen Bowers, 82, of Rapid City, died at his home on Thursday, May 26, 2016.

Robert Stephen Bowers began his lifes Journey on March 5, 1934, in Newcomb, N.Y. His parents are Frank and Mildred Bowers.

Immediately after graduation, he joined the Air Force and spent 20+ years in the radar and communication section. After retiring from the Air Force, Bob spent the next 20+ years at Ellsworth AFB in the Fire Department. His belief is that each person needs to believe in and be okay with themselves before they can develop sustaining relationships or grow professionally. No hill was too tough to climb as he helped those around him see the entire picture of life.

He married his soul mate Elizabeth Jane (Schneider) Bowers. To this union was born one son, Frank Leo Bowers. Bob considered his grandchildren, Mason and Annabelle, as true treasures and watched proudly as they advanced toward adulthood.

Bob was always a busy man.

The depth of Bob Bowers cannot be captured adequately in words.

Bob is survived by his wife, Betty B; son, Frank, grandchildren Mason and Annabelle. One sister Ruth Wells of New York, sisters-in-law Ramona Babl and Marie Ramold of ONeill, Neb.; 48 nieces and nephews on Schneider side and nine on the Bowers side of the family; many great nieces and nephews, and scores of friends.

A gathering of family will be held from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Thursday, June 2, 2016 at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help with a Firefighters presentation at 7 p.m., followed by a Catholic wake service and Rosary Recitation.

Funeral Mass will be at 10 a.m. Friday, at Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help with Fr. Jonathan Dillon Presiding followed by military honors at the Cathedral.

Inurnment will be at a future date.

A memorial has been established to the Western Resources for Independent Living, Adult Care Center.

Friends may sign his online guest register at osheimschmidt.com.
Vendors planning to be at the 2016 Sturgis motorcycle rally can now apply for a 2016 South Dakota Tax License

Vendors doing business at the 2016 Sturgis Rally will need a 2016 South Dakota Sales Tax License for each vendor space before opening for business in South Dakota.

How vendors can apply:

 Electronically submit an application at http://sd.gov/sturgisapp. The deadline for electronic applications is July 22.

 Fax application to 1-605-394-6076. The deadline to fax applications is July 22.

If vendors apply before July 1, 2016, the Department of Revenue can mail the license card and packet to the vendor.

If vendors apply after July 1, Vendors will need to pick up the license card and packet after arriving in Sturgis.

The Department of Revenues temporary office in Sturgis opens August 2, 2016 at 1 p.m. MDT. For a listing of office hours, visit http://sd.gov/rally. If vendors need to pick up a packet before August 2, visit the Department of Revenue office in Rapid City.
Cheyenne, WY  The Wyoming Stock Growers Association (WSGA) welcomes cattle producers and agricultural enthusiasts from across the state to this years WSGA Cattlemens College, to be held Friday, June 3, 2016 from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM, during the annual Wyoming Cattle Industry Convention & Trade Show in Laramie, Wyo., June 1-4. The event, which is sponsored in part by Zoetis, will feature speakers and sessions encompassing a variety of topics important to farm and ranch owners and managers.Providing solid information that can enhance the productivity and profitability of Wyoming ranchers is one of the core missions of Wyoming Stock Growers, states WSGA Executive Vice President Jim Magagna. Over the past 15 years Zoetis and their predecessor company have been indispensable partners in enabling us to deliver quality educational programs to our membership through their sponsorship of Cattlemens Colleges.Topics at this years Cattlemens College will include DNA Testing to Enhance Profitability from Dr. Kent Anderson starting at 8:00 AM and the Three Secrets for Increasing Profit given by Dave Pratt of Ranch Management Consultants, Inc. beginning at 9:45 AM and 2:00 PM.The Cattleman's college will offer a chance for ranchers, young and old, to learn tools that will help increase their profitability for years to come. The presenters are some of the nation's best, and this is one of the best chances I've seen for producers to learn quality necessary information that I have seen come to Wyoming in some time, states Young Producer Assembly Board Member and Lusk rancher, Sage Askin. Both speakers are known for their innovated ranching practices from the genetics of the cowherd to the operations bottom line. You wont want to miss this great educational session during the 2016 Wyoming Cattle Industry Convention & Trade Show.Producers and community members interested in attending the event should register on the Wyoming Stock Growers Association website, www.wysga.org, by contacting the WSGA office for additional information at (307) 638-3942 or visiting the WSGA registration booth at the event.
NEW DELHI , May 31: A fire broke out at a major ammunition depot in western India on Tuesday, killing at least 17 army personnel, the Defense Ministry said.

At least 19 other people were injured in the blaze, said ministry spokesman Nitin Wakanker.

The fire at the Pulgaon ammunitions depot started before dawn, said an official at the local police station, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media. The army said that by evening the fire had been completely extinguished.

New Delhi Television reported that about 1,000 villagers had to be evacuated from the area soon after the blaze started.

The cause of the fire at the ammunition depot, one of India's largest, was not immediately known.

Devendra Fadnavis, the chief minister of Maharashtra state, where the depot is located, told reporters that the fire caused a "massive loss of life and property."

Fadnavis said the state government was making "every resource" available to the army to help it respond to the situation, and was ensuring that all local hospitals were equipped to deal with the injured.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that he was "pained by loss of lives" and had asked the defense minister to visit the site.
Kathmandu, Nepal: The government has on Tuesday announced a public holiday Wednesday for the elections for the authorized trade union of the civil servants.

However, the Ministry of Home Affairs has said that the public holiday will be applicable only for the civil servants.
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sacw.net - 31 May 2016

Can there be two type of Justice delivery system in the same country? This question came to oneas mind with the U turn taken by NIA in the cases related to terror acts in which many Hindu names were involved. Now the NIA in a fresh charge sheet (May 13, 2016) has dropped the charges against Pragya Singh Thakur, has lightened the ones against Col Purohit and others. Along with this new line of NIA is that Hemant Karkareas investigation in these cases was flawed and that it was ATS which had got the RDX planted in Purohitas residence to implicate him in this case. The implication is that all this was being done at the behest of previous UPA Government.

A brief recap is in order. Maharashtra in particular and many other places in the country were witness to acts of terror. The first major attention to this phenomenon took place when two Bajrang Dal activists were killed while making the bombs in the house of one RSS worker Rajkondawar (May 2006). There was a saffron flag flying atop the house and a board of Bajrang Dal was put up in front of the house. At the site of bomb explosion fake moustaches, beard and pajama-Kurta were also found. This was followed by many other blasts, Parbhani, Jalna, Thane, and Panvel etc. In most of these case police investigated on the lines in which generally Muslims were blamed for such acts. After every act of blast few Muslims young men were arrested who were later; after long grueling court cases; were released as no evidence was found against them.

The Malegaon blast in which Sadhvias role came to surface; took place in 2008. In the blasts those returning from Namaj (prayers) were killed and many injured. Following this the usual suspects, Muslims, were arrested. Then while investigating the cases the Maharashtra ATS Chief Hemant Karkare found that the motorcycle used for the blast belonged to Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, ex- ABVP worker. The trail of investigation led to Swami Dayanad Pande, Retd. Major Upadhyay, Ramji Klasnagra, Swami Aseemanand amongst others. They all belonged to the Hindu right wing politics. There was lots of evidence in the material recovered. One of the helpful evidence came in the form of the legally valid confession of Swami Aseemanand. This confession was made in judicial custody in presence of a Magistrate.

In the confession Swami spilled the beans and said that after the Sankat Mochan blast of 2002, they had decided that bomb will be replied by bomb. He was then looking after the VHP work in Dangs. He gave the detailed narrative of the whole process in which all the people were investigated and became part of the charge sheet of NIA.

When Karakare was investigating the case and many of Hindu names started coming under the shadow Bal Thackeray wrote in Saamna that awe spit on the face of Karakarea. Narendra Modi; then CM of Gujarat; called him Deshdrohi (Anti National). Advani also reprimanded Karkare. Feeling the heat of this pressure from Hindutva political outfits Karkare went to meet his professional peer Julio Rebeiro. Rebeiro. Rebeiro has a record of high level of professional integrity. Rebeiro appreciated his painstaking work. Karkare asked that what should be the stand of a person like him when facing such a heat from politicians. The senior officer told him to honestly do the work and ignore these insinuations.

Meanwhile the global terror phenomenon hit Mumbai. On 26/11 ten terrorists, armed to the teeth attacked Mumbai. On this occasion Karakre got killed. There is a strong controversy about this killing also. The then minority affairs Minister A. R. Antulay said that there is terrorism plus something else which is behind the killing of Karakare. Narendra Modi who had earlier called Karkare as Deshdrohi landed up in Mumbai and wanted to give a cheque of Rs. one Crore to widow of Karkare, she refused to accept the amount.

After Karkareas death the investigations continued on the lines laid down by him. The charge sheet was ready and all the involved were to be tried for acts of terror. Meanwhile Government changed at the center and the NIA adopted the line which has led to the present situation where the efforts to release Sadhvi are marching with intimidating speed. The change in the line got reflected in the statement of Public Prosecutor, Rohini Salian. She stated that she was told to go soft on these cases. As she refused to toe this, she was sacked.

One recalls that in Mumbai 92-93 violence over one thousand people died. This carnage was followed by the bomb blasts in which over two hundred people died. As far as the communal carnage is concerned not many got severe punishments, no death penalty- no life imprisonment. In the cases of bomb blasts many have been given death penalty and many more life imprisonment. One of the people undergoing life imprisonment is Rubina Memon. Her crime, she owned the car which was used to ferry the explosives. She never drove the car with explosives.

Sadhvi owned the motor cycle used for Malegaon blasts; she will be out from the prison soon. Rubina owned the car; she will be in prison all her life. In Mumbai carnage so many died. No severe punishment to anybody. So many severe punishments in bomb blast case!

So where does our democracy stand at the end of all this? It seems two type of justice delivery systems are out there in the open. While shrill debates on TV will defend Sadhvi and blame Karkare for faulty investigation, the people in Malegaon are protesting furiously and planning to go to the court against the change in the stance of NIA. Two political parties seem to be preparing to save the honor of Karakare and press for sincere examination of the evidence collected by him.

One hopes the guilty will be punished and innocents will be protected. But this seems a bit too much to expect in current scenario!
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 SCOTUS order list inclludes a couple notable criminal appeal summary reversals | Main | "Marijuana Enforcement Disparities In California: A Racial Injustice" 

May 31, 2016

Highlighting just some of the ways that "Democratic Leadership Is Missing In Action on Mass Incarceration"

The quoted portion of this post's title comes from this new commentary at The Nation authored by Inimai Chettiar and Ames Grawert. The piece carries the subheading "Sentencing reform will be a compromise between moderate and conservative Republicans, unless Democrats finally come to the table," and here are extended excerpts:

Even though it now looks like Americans will be deprived the drama of a contested Republican convention, the gathering in Cleveland could hold at least one surprise. The Republicans are set to vote on an RNC resolution to reduce mass incarceration. The measure asks for reforms for nonviolent offenders at the state and federal level and urges state legislators and Congress toprovide substance abuse treatment to addicts, emphasize work and education, and implement policies that cut costs while obtaining better outcomes. Finally, Democrats may say, Republicans have woken up to mass incarceration as a 21st-century civil-rights struggle, joining what has for years been a progressive fight. Not so fast. If the Republican Party makes criminal justice reform a priority, theyll be the first major party to do so, ever. Democrats need to catch up. Adding ending mass incarceration to their own platform would mark a significant step, boldly breaking with their past politics. So what have the Democrats said about criminal justice? Recent Democratic platforms havent merely been silent; they have actually called for policies creating more imprisonment, and then applauded the result. Mentions of progressive alternatives are hard to find. In 1992, Democrats supported alternatives to incarceration, such as community service and boot camps for first-time offenders. But four years later the platform went in the opposite direction. It praised mandatory three-strikes-youre-out laws, truth-in-sentencing provisions that limited earned early release, and $8 billion in new funding to help states build new prison cells. At the turn of the century, the party still championed tougher punishments as a way to fix an overburdened justice system that lets thugs off easy, and applauded federal funding for new prison cells as a major success story (a clear nod to the 1994 Crime Bill, which paid states to increase imprisonment). More recently, in 2008 and 2012, the DNC approved language supporting local prison-to-work programs aimed at making citizens safer and saving the taxpayers money, and noting the importance of fight[ing] inequalities in our criminal justice system. But neither platform made any mention of sentencing reform, or reducing the number of criminal laws, even as the US incarceration rate topped the world and some states reversed course on their tough-on-crime policies. This years Democratic presidential candidates have broken with this legacy. Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have prominently featured prison reform in their campaigns and vocally noted that the 1994 Crime Bill, which they both supported, went too far. Yet Democrats still lag behind. Todays movement to end mass incarceration has largely been led by Republicans. If the federal Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act passes Congress, advocates will have Republican Senators Mike Lee (Utah) and John Cornyn (Texas) to thank for courting support for the bill and hammering out compromises with the partys most conservative members. At the state level, Republican Governors Rick Perry in Texas and Nathan Deal in Georgia fought for and signed laws that led to sharp reductions in the prison population. In Ohio, Governor John Kasich championed and signed legislation in 2011 to expand the use of treatment in lieu of prison. In announcing the Republican National Committee resolution to end mass incarceration, RNC member Tom Mechler claimed that Republicans are the ones that have taken the lead on this. Thats no idle boast  hes right. So where are the Democrats? A few Democrats have stepped up to champion the cause, such as Senators Dick Durbin, Corey Booker, and Patrick Leahy. But the senior party leadership  Senator Harry Reid, Representative Nancy Pelosi, and DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Shultz  have largely been mum. Other influential party voices, including Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer, have done the same. To be sure, Democrats may still be haunted by the ghost of Willie Horton and the fear of being branded as soft on crime. And some may believe that stoutly maintaining a belief in law and order will secure votes. But times have changed. Now Democrats can point to Republicans such as Lee, Cornyn, Perry, and Kasich. Even law enforcement supports reform. These conservative voices now give Democrats cover to come out strongly on the issue. And, in the wake of a national protests to reform policing, Clinton and Sanders have energized parts of Democratic electorate  African-American communities and white liberals alike  on the issue. The consensus to reduce unnecessary imprisonment has arrived. But we will never see true reform until Democrats provide a solid left flank, so that compromise lands at the center, instead of to the right..... Criminal justice reform should be a simple step for a party that believes in progress, equality, and inclusion. It was the Democrats who fought for civil rights in the last century. If the Democrats do not raise their voice, history will record that it was the Republicans who led the civil-rights struggle in this one.

Though I am pleased to see this piece calling out failings of Democratic Party leaders like Senator Harry Reid, Representative Nancy Pelosi, and DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Shultz, this commentary still strikes me as many days too late and many dollars short. First and foremost, where is the needed criticisms of the Clintons and the Obamas, who are and seem likely to remain for some time the four most important Democratic leaders? Regular readers know I lay particular blame on the Clintons not only for consistently moving to the right on criminal justice issues for crass (and racialized) political benefits in the 1990s, but particularly for not being involved in helping to swinging the pendulum back when mass incarceration became an obvious problem in the following decade and Justice Reinvestment movements could have used an extra boost from the mainstream left. But I also blame the Obamas: the Prez (and lawyer and constitutiuonal scholar) certaintly could have and should have invested more time, energy and political capital on an array of "low-hanging" federal sentencing reform opportunities during his first Term; the First Lady (also a lawyer) perhaps could have and should have incorporated discussion of criminal justice reform into her advocacy for healthy families, service members and their families and higher education.

Second, as especially critical right now, this piece (and many others) ought to be aggressively attacking Prez Obama and other Democrats for being resistent to the federal mens rea reform that Republicans want to see included in sentencing reform efforts. I continue to be both annoyed and deeply disappointed that an issue like mens rea reform, which should be a cause championed by true liberals, has become a critical impediment to getting a sound and needed federal sentencing reform bill through Congress. I have long suspected and feared that sentencing reform would not get done this year absent Prez Obama and other Democrats being willing to work toward sound and needed mens rea reform, and yet it does not appear any real efforts are being made by anyone on the D side of the aisle.

And do not get me started on the failure of federal Democratic Leadership to see the extraordinary opportunities that state-level marijuana reforms has created in recent years for remaking the modern federal war-on-drugs narrative. As long time readers may know, I consider effective federal and state marijuana reforms to be a critically important front in the battle against mass incarceration, and one that should have even more long-term potential and impact than modest federal sentencing reforms discussed in Congress. But, short-sighted and fixed in their own dated views of political realities, establishment Democrats have now an impressively long record of mistakes and missed opportunities in this arena. Sigh.

May 31, 2016 at 11:37 AM | Permalink

Comments

"To be sure, Democrats may still be haunted by the ghost of Willie Horton and the fear of being branded as soft on crime. That's the sticking point and the explanation for Democratic inaction. Democrats perceive they will always be blamed whenever there's a Willie Horton type case. Like Nixon going to China, the Republicans will have to carry the ball by themselves on this one.

Posted by: Michael R. Levine | May 31, 2016 12:45:23 PM

@Michael

Yes, that us true up to a point. In fact, I have made similar statements to yours in the past. But there is a difference between expecting Republicans to carry the ball and outright foot-dragging when they DO carry the ball. I agree with Doug that when it comes to mens rea reform the Democratic leadership is engaging in foot-dragging. Yes, there are some legitimate concerns about the context and scope of that reform but as I has also insisted in the past there is a middle ground on that issue, in fact, the Venn diagram where liberal and conservatives don't agree is tiny.

So enough of this about Republicans needing to carry the ball. They ARE carrying the ball. It is the Dems who refuse to play along.

Posted by: Daniel | May 31, 2016 1:33:53 PM

Moreover, Michael and Daniel, there have been hundreds of modern "Willie Horton" cases since the 1988 campaign and VERY rarely have these cases been used effectively as political fodder against a politician if that politician has been consistently and effectively highlighing the injustices and inefficiencies of modern mass incarceration. (Notably here is that Bill Otis has been trying to turn Wendell Callahan into a modern-day Willie Horton, and very few are taking up that cause (in part because so many GOP folks are talking about reform in this space.)

In 1988, the Willie Horton add mattered because crime was way up and Dems looked soft on an array of fronts. But it is now 2016, and Dems now just look unprincipled here (and elsewhere), and we even get D leaders like Obama who should know better talking about defendants' rights as "technicalities" or like Hillary who cannot figure out how to develop a smarter set of talking points on criminal justice reform than the tripe she had delivered to date. And that is one big reason so many are now "feeling the Bern."

Posted by: Doug B. | May 31, 2016 2:16:03 PM

If the article is supposed to be informative how about this part:

This years Democratic presidential candidates have broken with this legacy. Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have prominently featured prison reform in their campaigns and vocally noted that the 1994 Crime Bill, which they both supported, went too far.

But, apparently Clinton just has 'tripe.' Is the professor selectively finding things to target Democrats with here or what?

The article also calls out "the senior party leadership" while praising Dick Durbin and Pat Leahy. Come on. They ARE members of the leadership! Elizabeth Warren is called out. Her focus is more economic reform. There are many problems to address. I think she has done her part in her area. Eric Holder and Obama also has spoke out in support of reform. At some point, yeah, "Democrats" have. Republicans control Congress though. They are in the driving seat. Especially with some Republicans speaking out against reform, focusing on, e.g., Dems concerned about mens rea rules for which they have "some legitimate concerns," seems a bit selective to me as well.

Posted by: Joe | May 31, 2016 2:36:39 PM

More importantly criticizing the Democrats ignores how Congress operates. The Democrats will almost certainly vote for cloture on any sentencing reform bill that gets to the floor of the Senate (at least in enough numbers to matter, a small minority might not). Whether a bill gets to the floor in either house, however, depends upon the Republican leadership which will not do so unless enough Republicans support the bill -- especially in the House. The Republicans do not want to see a floor debate (on any issue, much less sentencing reform) in which the Republican Party is split down the middle and the bill depends on Democratic votes to pass.

Because, in today's Congress, the first test for a bill is its support within the majority party, Sentencing Reform is currently an issue (like every other issue) that depends first upon compromise within the Republican Party, with the caveat that if that compromise is too one-sided then the Democrats would have a problem with the bill.

Posted by: tmm | May 31, 2016 3:03:26 PM

We must put "mass incarceration" reform into perspective. Currently there are 2.3 million criminals in state/federal prison/jail. Of those 2.3 million, 230,000 or so are in federal prison. So, if every federal prison is released, there would still be 2,000,000+ criminals in jail. Of course, even those who believe in prison reform agree that not all of the 230,000 federal prisoners should be released, but even at best, that's a 10% decrease in the prison population.

The days of the states looking to the feds to set the example may have passed by. If a REAL and MEANINGFUL dent in the prison population is going to take place, it must come from the states, not from a Congress that is refusing to earn their money.

Posted by: Kelly | May 31, 2016 3:47:54 PM

@tmm

Again, that is true up to a point but it ignores how political rhetoric shapes the climate in which the political process happens. The Dems could drop their opposition to mens rea reform, promise to work something acceptable out, and move on to other issues. Instead, what they did is create a stalking horse out of corporate executives rampaging through fragile wetlands and escaping responsibility via mens rea. Dems don't believe that will happen any more than I do but they want to create political mileage in front of the interest groups who support them. The problem with this stalking horse is that it allows those in the Republican party who don't like mens rea reform--because it will reduce the number of people they can lock up--an easy out by laying the blame on Democratic foot dragging.

So one can make the argument that the Dems aren't truly foot dragging, they are just putting on a political show. I'd respond that this political show isn't creating an environment that produces healthy political debate. If the problem is truly in the Republican party then the best things the Dems can do is get out of the way, clear off all the smoke, and let the public see how things really are...rather than confusing matters with preposterous FUD.

Posted by: Daniel | May 31, 2016 5:36:16 PM

Democratic party in general is a boat anchor. You not only hVe to come up with good bills, but you have to get them passed in spite of the fact, knowing that they will vote almost all Republican sponsored bills down.

in general, both sides need to be horse whipped, then soaked in salt water.

Then see who wants to work together to get a common bill passed.

Maybe, just maybe these guys and girls can get a budget Nd stick to it. Naw, too much to happen.

Durbin is a very good guy, along with some others mentioned. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi need to get a life and retire. Dead beats.

Posted by: MidWestGuy | Jun 1, 2016 12:51:03 AM

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 New Vera Institute report reviews trends in state sentencing and corrections | Main | SCOTUS order list inclludes a couple notable criminal appeal summary reversals 

May 31, 2016

Intriguing capital case tussle between South Carolina and feds in Dylann Roof prosecution

As noted in this prior post, last week federal prosecutors finally decided that they will seek the death penalty for racist mass murderer Dylann Roof. That decision, as reported in this recent local article, now creates some novel issues in light of South Carolina's parallel capital prosecution plan. The article, headlined "Dylann Roof prosecution entering uncharted waters of legal history," includes these passages:

Authorities will have two chances to see that Dylann Roof meets the same fate as his victims. But never in modern times have both state and federal prosecutors sought someones execution at the same time. How they will manage two death penalty cases could break legal ground and offer some lessons. We are in completely uncharted waters, said Chris Adams of Charleston, an experienced capital defender. The federal governments decision (to seek the death penalty) creates many more questions than it does answers.... Scheduled for Jan. 17, the states trial is on a faster track. Wilson also sent a letter to [U.S. District Judge Richard] Gergel, asking him to set the federal trial later. The judge could finally set a trial date at a June 7 hearing.... The possibilities are daunting. It just creates logistical chaos, Adams said. Officials must sort out subpoenas being filed in two different courts, he said. Prosecutors in each case also must give the defense all exculpatory evidence, or information used to fend off a guilty verdict or to mitigate a sentence. If some evidence is missed in the first trial only to be discovered when its turned over in the second trial, that might be grounds for an appeal in the first... State and federal authorities rejected Roofs offer to plead guilty and serve life in prison. Now what were going to have is ... possibly two very public, very painful trials and unquestionably a decade of appeals, [DPIC executve director Robert] Dunham said. The families will have to deal with Dylann Roof getting all the attention. But Dan Simmons Jr., whose father was slain in the attack, said prosecutors have made him well aware of that. The Virginia resident has attended most hearings in the two courthouses that sit across the street from each other. Its been more than overwhelming, he said. But its not an overnight thing. ... Its going to open up some wounds. But we will endure.... The state ran out of its supply of the fatal drug [used in executions] in 2013. Citing ethics, all major manufacturers have cut off the states, whose stashes soon expired or were seized as illegal imports. And the federal government has been reviewing its injection methods since 2010, effectively halting executions. There is no indication that either government is in a better position to obtain the supplies now, Dunham said. State prisons spokeswoman Stephanie Givens said, Officials continue to research solutions and alternatives but have been unsuccessful in acquiring lethal injection drugs. So even if a jury condemns Roof to death, experts said, the 22-year-old could live a long life in prison  unless he voluntarily opts for South Carolinas alternative execution method: the electric chair.

I cannot at this point resist highlighting that I flagged the possibility of a double capital prosecution in this post about the case back in June 2015.

A few prior related posts:

May 31, 2016 at 09:10 AM | Permalink

Comments

Yes, I hold to my comments in that older post as well, including the double jeopardy matter (as I noted recently, I realize different sovereigns are allowed to prosecute under current law though Koons v. U.S. hinted at a limited concern regarding sentencing).

If this is going to cause problems, it only underlines it's just ill-advised and avoidable by just letting SC prosecute. There also seems to be no great rush -- the feds might actually be better off waiting to see how the state prosecution goes. Finally, there is a reasonable argument that the decision should be made by the Administration under which the trial should take place.

Posted by: Joe | May 31, 2016 9:22:45 AM

("prosecute" might work -- even a non-capital federal case might best wait -- but the ultimate issue is clearly the capital part)

Posted by: Joe | May 31, 2016 9:24:13 AM

It's not entirely unprecedented: http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_16906226

Posted by: John | May 31, 2016 9:38:31 AM

I should have noted that having both a state and federal capital prosecution is not unprecedented. The Anh Dung case in California involved exactly that. There, the federal case went second and resulted in a life verdict. The state case landed him on death row. http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_16906226

Posted by: John | May 31, 2016 9:48:21 AM

Concurrently try the federal and state cases , using total of 24 jurors , 12 from each jurisdictional pool 

Posted by: Docile Jim Brady  the Nemo Me  Impune Lacessit  in Bend, Oregon  | May 31, 2016 4:11:33 PM

Not unprecedented, they ended up doing dual prosecution with Nichols (McVeigh's co-defendant), but both juries deadlocked on death.

From the prosecution side, two good reasons for federal prosecution: A) one less round of review; B) more likely feds will actually be able to carry out execution.

Brady is not really a good reason not to have dual trials. If the evidence it is not disclosed for the state trial, it will be an issue used to challenge the sentence regardless of how it is discovered later.

Posted by: tmm | May 31, 2016 5:57:26 PM

"more likely feds will actually be able to carry out execution"

Wouldn't know that from the execution totals.

Posted by: Joe | May 31, 2016 6:39:14 PM

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On July 1st, much of San Francisco's spending on homelessness, a total of $241 million distributed among more than 400 contracts with 76 mostly nonprofit private organizations, will at long last be corralled under a single, new department. That city government arm, the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, will be lead by Jeff Kositsky, formerly the executive director of the Hamilton Family Center. How he'll go about his new post will inevitably be subject to scrutiny, and Medium's tech-leaning blog Backchannel is positioning one of his supposedly controversial tactics as working with tech companies who are eager to address the homelessness crisis, a task at which he's succeeded in the past.

Kositsky's mandate is clear: Make good on Lee's pledge to take 8,000 people off the streets before his term is through. To be able to bring all of those under the same department under a unified strategy to help really amplify Mayor Lees vision for addressing homelessness in San Francisco is an honor and an amazing opportunity," the Chronicle quoted Kositsky as saying earlier this month. For his work, Kositsky will make $205,000 a year. His department will consolidate the 2013 office created by Lee, Housing Opportunity, Partnerships and Engagement, which has been led by Sam Dodge. Dodge will now report to Kositsky, who will in turn report to Lee.

This is going to be a huge accelerator in our ability to tackle homelessness, Dodge told the Chron. There will be so much more efficiency as we all row together in the same direction.

Backchannel calls Kositsky a "tech-whispering" success for his previous work at Hamilton Family Center. In 2014, he took $1 million from Google to assist students reportedly at risk of becoming homeless. Now he says that two major tech companies (he won't say which) have asked to assist in his next endeavor. "This is the spirit of the tech community Ive been working with since working at Hamilton, Kositsky tells Backchannel. I still believe that anti-tech dogma is counterproductive." That's the "dogma" that plagued him once word broke that he'd accepted the Google donation. I absolutely got creamed on Facebook, he said. Tying rental prices to high-salaried workers like those at Google and citing tax breaks to companies like Twitter, critics disdained the deal.

Kara Zordel, the director of Project Homeless Connect, is familiar with the complaint. In the city, some people think that [tech companies are] the ones that have displaced people, she says of technology companies. But they dont see the amount of volunteers and donations weve received [from the tech sector].

Backchannel also got Bevan Dufty, Lee's former homelessness czar whom Dodge replaced, on the phone to discuss working with tech. Google is in a very different stage where theyre branding themselves through social justice, while unicorns are stampeding, worried that the bubble is going to burst, Dufty tells the blog. Smaller startups that are fighting are much more likely to pay for dry cleaning for employees than underwrite a [residential] hotel, and gift it to the city for homeless tenants. Since Dufty thinks this will fall to bigger companies, he reveals that his hope is for Twitter or rather its CEO Jack Dorsey to buy up some hotels for currently homeless San Franciscans to take occupancy.

Kositsky seems to also want to harness technological solutions themselves, such as tracking homeless San Franciscans, keeping records of their health issues and more. Maybe we find out that a homeless single adult whos experiencing a first incidence of homeless will do better off in X shelter, or with X intervention," he suggests. "That way the assessment tool is essentially making itself better.

Such idea aren't new, at least for him. In 2006, Kositsky, who was then head of Community Housing Partnership, told the Chronicle that "In the end, it's not how much you spend that really counts, it's how effective that money is."

Related: San Francisco's Homeless Navigation Center Plan, By The Numbers
Blondes at Powell is closed FOREVER. They were closed not long ago for roaches. pic.twitter.com/wAhdWVKqWo  Akit (@AgentAkit) May 29, 2016

Following the Health Department's discovery of a "severe cockroach infestation" earlier this month, it now appears that Blondie's Pizza has closed permanently. The Powell Street pizza spot was forced to shut its doors in an attempt to clean the place up and resolve any health issues before an eventual planned reopening  something we now know will not be happening.

"We're really trying to open at 100 percent and correct everything," an employee named Steven told Hoodline at the time. "I want our customers to come back."

Located next to the cable car turnaround, Blondie's was mostly a tourist spot, but definitely pulled in locals looking for a quick slice. In what may or may not have been a surprise, health inspectors shut the restaurant down on May 9 with the Chronicle reporting "an imminent health issue" as the cause. That health issue just so happened to be cockroaches.

The Blondie's website simply states that the "San Francisco and Berkeley locations are closed," but provides no further information. A call this morning to the business went unanswered, and no voicemail picked up.

welp, looks like blondies SF is hella closed. inside totally scraped clean. pic.twitter.com/vsx2ERzfoS  alyssa pereira (@alyspereira) May 31, 2016

However, if the interior of the place truly is "totally scraped clean" as one passerby says, I think we can finally close the book on that particularly greasy chapter in San Francisco's delicious pizza history.

Previously: Blondie's Pizza On Powell Shut Down For 'Severe Cockroach Infestation'
One really excellent element of Sunday's pitch-perfect episode of Silicon Valley was its fortuitous timing, airing after news this week that Paypal billionaire Peter Thiel had secretly funded a lawsuit against Gawker Media in a semi-personal vendetta. Similarly, Gavin Belson, Hooli's CEO, finds himself at war with the press after the fictional website Coderag publishes a story about his company scrubbing negative news from its search results. "You know 100 years ago, men like me could have had people like that killed, just like that," Belson says of protesters outside his offices, exhibiting a disdain for critics and the media that smacks of the attitude of which Thiel has been accused of harboring. "You think captains of industry like Andrew Carnegie or Cornelius Vanderbilt would have batted an eyelid? Times sure have changed... Or have they?" Belson asks suggestively, looking for encouragement from his staff, who don't offer anything but bewildered disgust. "Of course they have," he concedes. "For the better.... Unless?" As an underling points out to Belson, "Libel laws don't really apply when what's said is true," so Belson finds himself in a Thiel-like position: "I'll just have to light a fire under this reporter's ass... you know, there was a time, not so long ago, when it could have been a literal fire. But, as discussed, those days are gone. Unless?"

This episode, called "Bachmanity Insanity," boasts another trenchant dig at tech culture in a commentary on lavish launch parties. Erlich, who now runs a vague incubator/VC company fueled by funds from Big Head which they've called Bachmanity, is renting Alcatraz for an event with a ridiculous luau theme. But that venture is under threat when Gavin intimidates the reporter from Coderag, whose source for her story was Big Head. She isn't willing to take the fall for her source: "Journalist?" she scoffs. "I'm a tech blogger, I write stories for the internet, about the internet. I am not going to jail for that." So, to protect his interests, Erlich buys Coderag. Owning the press is, after all, the best way to control any narrative.

Those parodies aside, most of the of the episode isn't dedicated to the usual tech-skewering and business woes of the Pied Piper team. Instead, we see the group's romantic side, or where that romantic side would be. First, Richard meets a love interest at a bar, stunning the group. How could she be interested in him? "She's a founder hounder?" Dinesh suggests. No, in fact, she works for Facebook and makes more money than any of the Pied Piper folks. "But you did tell her that you're the CEO of your own company?" Of course he did. As they say: How do you know if someone is a founder? They'll tell you. "It came up," Richard says, "but honestly, how else was I going to explain that me and my friends were at a bar?" Dinesh agrees with the tactic. "Every time you are near a woman, he says, it is important to explain why. Otherwise, they get nervous.

But Richard's romance with that woman, Winnie, who is smart and charming, is cleverly undone by his pedantic insistence on code formatting. Richard insists that his employees use tabs instead of spaces in their code in a long-running conflict that one character refers to as a "holy war." As Jared puts the stakes: "At Hooli I once saw two engineers get into a fight so vicious they almost made physical contact." Dinesh and Gilfoyle discover that Winnie herself uses spaces, which she reveals to Richard, eventually driving him, in what I see as a 2016 San Francisco version of a Seinfeld plot, to sabotage their budding relationship.

Meanwhile, Dinesh pursues his own romantic interest  a remote Pied Piper employee in Estonia whom he's taken to chatting with on Skype. "Packet loss over Estonian broadband is terrible," Gilfoyle points out. "She could be hideous." While Dinesh says he doesn't care if she "is a dogface," he's worried that Gilfoyle's right, so he uses Pied Piper's compression algorithm to improve the video quality. The move backfires. When the two digitally meet in a clearer fashion, Dinesh likes what he sees, but his would-be Estonian girlfriend does not. He's not the "Pakistani Denzel Washington" he described.

Meanwhile, as a comeuppance to all this, Jared casually introduces the group to a woman he's just slept with, a fact about which he's rather gentlemanly and sweet. "Jared, nice," Erlich says boorishly, "using that dick."

The episode culminates with the Hawaiian party on Alctraz, a useful set piece. Just as Erlich prepares to take the stage and "ejaculate his success" on his purported enemies, Big Head's financial advisor, who's been hounding them, informs the two that they're financially insolvent. When they address they're audience, they're like deer in headlights.

"Aloha" says Erlich." Big Head pauses, then snaps to. "That means hello," he says. "Oh, and goodbye," he remembers. And, scene.

Get ready for a successful night. A new episode of #SiliconValleyHBO starts now. pic.twitter.com/GFXwZCcuvd  Silicon Valley (@SiliconHBO) May 30, 2016

Departing from the usual conflicts that plague the Pied Piper team and introducing interpersonal ones instead, Silicon Valley gave viewers a really rewarding, delightful episode that I'd happily watch again. "Nerdy men meet women" is sort of a natural, fairly hackneyed formula, but since the show hasn't really indulged in it yet, it was almost overdue. Having Richard and Winnie disagree over code, I thought, was sort of a (key)stroke of genius, and Dinesh's backfiring vanity, while in hindsight slightly predictable in a TV sort of way, was unexpected to me.

Now that funny, somewhat nuanced characters (Jared in particular) are in place, Silicon Valley doesn't have to run out of material, as I've worried about here before. With nerds we (mostly) like, this show is starting to prove it can nerd out about anything.

Previously: Silicon Valley Ep. 3.5: Watch The Chair
The San Francisco Police Department is investigating a Memorial Day homicide today, after a woman was shot dead in the Mission District.

Details remain scarce, but here's what we know: At 2:54 a.m. Monday, officers were called to the intersection of 18th and Alabama Streets.

When they arrived, they discovered a 27-year-old woman suffering from gunshot wounds. Though she was transported to San Francisco General Hospital, she was pronounced dead on arrival. The San Francisco Medical Examiner's office has since identified her as Richmond resident Tiara Williamson.

According to SFPD's report, the male suspect in the shooting occupied a "light colored sedan." As of Tuesday morning, no arrests have been made, and no further details were available on the case.
PONCA, Neb. | On a table covered with old Army uniforms and fatigues and other items Glenn Stapleton kept from his service in Vietnam are two small books.

Small enough to fit into a pocket, they contain Stapleton's thoughts, feelings and observations that he recorded almost daily while stationed in Qui Nhon, a city on the coast of the South China Sea.

Stapleton pulls his wartime diaries out from time to time and reads through them.

"I remember most of the stuff," he said.

Many more memories likely will resurface Monday as Stapleton and some 500 other Vietnam veterans from Nebraska board three charter jets in Omaha and fly to Washington, D.C., on the Vietnam Combat Veterans Flight. Monday's flight is similar to past all-expenses-paid trips for World War II and Korean War veterans. On this trip, veterans will visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and other monuments and witness the changing of the guard ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery.

Stapleton has visited the half-scale replica of the Vietnam memorial in South Sioux City and traveling versions of the wall that have passed through the area. It will be his first time visiting the memorial in Washington, a trip he's always wanted to make to see all those names etched into the dark stone panels.

"It'll be moving," he said. "I've got two friends that are on it."

A 1964 Ponca High School graduate, Stapleton, now 69, was 19 years old when he was drafted. He completed basic training in Louisiana, then was sent to Ft. Sam Houston in Texas for medical training.

"I wasn't even supposed to be a medic. They just put you where they need you," he said.

Assigned to the 1st Aviation Brigade, 18th Company, 163rd Medical Detachment, Stapleton was in Vietnam from Feb. 13, 1967, to Feb. 6, 1968. Working as a dispensary in a medical facility, he gave shots and medications and went out into Vietnamese villages to provide care to civilians. He spent a month working in an evacuation hospital where casualties were brought in from battle.

"I had two people die on me. You don't forget things like that," Stapleton said.

He counts himself among the fortunate ones who didn't have to go out in the field much and face the danger other medics did. He wears a metal bracelet engraved with the name H. Diane Orlowski, a nurse he worked with who died in an airplane crash while returning from helping at another hospital.

Stapleton plans to find her name on the wall, as well as that of childhood friend Jack Golden, a Ponca native killed in combat.

"I know what panel they're on," Stapleton said.

Stapleton, who retired five years ago after working at the IBP/Tyson plant in Dakota City for 38 years, said he read about the flight earlier this year in an American Legion newsletter. He applied because he knew veterans who had great experiences on previous flights.

"When they had the World War II Honor Flight, we had about 15 people go from Ponca. What you hear from the World War II guys, it was the best time they had in their lives," Stapleton said.

When he received notification in April that he'd been chosen to go, Stapleton said, he was surprised because he wasn't really involved in combat situations.

But he served, and he saw plenty of the sacrifices made by brave men and women.

"You think about it two or three times a week, about Vietnam," he said. "You'll never forget it."

At home, his diaries ensure his memories will remain, and in Washington he'll pay tribute to the memory of his two friends and other soldiers listed on the wall who will never be forgotten.
SIOUX CITY | In just five months, voters will elect a new president and a host of federal, state and county office holders.

Cody Hoefert, Iowa GOP co-chair, stopped in Sioux City Tuesday morning to urge the importance of strong Republican showing from the school house to the White House in the November general election.

He said thats only possible through unity. Hoefert predicted Republican voters would largely support presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump, even though some have misgivings about the outspoken billionaire businessman and reality TV star.

There are two things that unite our Republicans like no other, Hoefert said. Number one, the thought of Hillary Clinton as president of the United States, and number two, the thought of the continuation of the failed policies of (President) Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Hoefert said the party is well on track to unite by November. He cited statistics that showed the Iowa GOP was on par with Democrats for absentee ballots in the 2014 election, and that the GOP has had a director on staff for more than 900 days.

He also pointed out that the Republicans have a nominee in Trump, while Democratic voters are still divided over Clinton, the former secretary of state and first lady, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Here we stand at the end of May and we have a nominee and they do not, he said. Grassroots activists of our party have spoken and spoken loudly and they have said they want Donald Trump to be the nominee. I couldn't be more excited to work with Donald Trump to make sure he becomes the next President.

Standing in front of supporters holding #UniteIowa signs, Hoefert turned his attention to races in Iowa. He stressed the partys desire to re-elect Sen. Chuck Grassley, continue to support Gov. Terry Branstad and target Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal of Council Bluffs.

At the unity news conference, the contested GOP primary between 4th District Rep. Steve King and state Sen. Rick Bertrand of Sioux City was not addressed.

By gaining the majority in both the Iowa House and Senate, Republicans can work to pass bills in regards to Voter ID, water equality and other issues, Hoefert said.
SIOUX CITY | An Anthon, Iowa, man will serve 60 days in jail and three years on probation for his role in the burning of a stolen pickup truck.

Christopher Aspleaf, 21, pleaded guilty Tuesday in Woodbury County District Court to felony second-degree arson and a misdemeanor charge of third-degree theft, which was reduced from first-degree theft as part of a plea agreement. Charges of first-degree criminal mischief and first-degree fraudulent practice will be dismissed.

District Judge Mary Jane Sokolovske suspended a 10-year prison sentence for the arson charge and ordered probation.

Aspleaf is eligible for work release for his 60-day jail sentence on the theft charge. He also could serve the time on electronic monitoring.

According to court documents, Aspleaf helped Brooks Olson strip parts from a Ford F350 pickup stolen on Feb. 21 from Sioux City Ford, 3601 Singing Hills Drive. The two tried to submerge the truck in a pond on March 21. When the truck wouldn't sink, they doused it with gasoline and set on fire, destroying it.

Olson, 19, of Sioux City, is charged with breaking into the dealership and stealing the keys to the truck. He has pleaded not guilty to several charges.
SPENCER, Iowa | The National Weather Service in Sioux Falls on Monday issued a handful of new flood warnings for Siouxland rivers while continuing a trio of warnings that were already in effect.

According to the National Weather Service, water levels at the Little Sioux River near Milford, Spencer and Linn Grove, Iowa, all reached or rose above their respective flood stages over Memorial Day weekend, some of them causing minor flooding in low-lying agricultural areas.

As of 9 a.m. Monday, the Little Sioux River at Spencer was more than a foot above its 10-foot flood stage, measuring 11.1 feet. It is expected to ascend near 12 feet by Wednesday. Warnings for all three portions of the river will continue until further notice.

A separate warning for a portion of the Little Sioux River located above Spencer began Monday and will expire Thursday.

Additional warnings were issued for the Little Sioux River at Cherokee, Iowa, the Big Sioux River at Hawarden and at Akron, Iowa, and the Ocheyedan River near Spencer. These warnings go into effect on Tuesday or Wednesday and are expected to expire toward the end of the week.

During the end of April and beginning of May, rainfall in Siouxland bloated several rivers, causing minor flooding along several low-lying downstream areas. Siouxland has continued to be pummeled by rain throughout May.

As of 8 p.m. Monday, accumulated rain from March 1 to May 30 in Sioux City was 13.75 inches, the fourth-highest spring rain total since 1889.

More rain was expected Monday night into Tuesday morning.
Hulse is doing what she believes to be right. If you want to call her something, call her an example to landowners whose property is along the route of Navigator's proposed CO2 pipeline. She wants others like her to know they're not powerless.
SIOUX CITY | The Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Sioux City is looking for volunteers to help with this year's Saturday in the Park.

Volunteers are needed to prepare Grandview Park for the July 2 festival, which is expected to draw more than 50,000 attendees from around the country. Volunteers will also help haul ice and water and keep the event flowing smoothly.

This year's music lineup includes Kacey Musgraves, Kongos, and Big Head Todd and The Monsters.

Volunteers can sign up at saturdayinthepark.com or by calling the SITP office at 712-277-2575.

All volunteers should plan to attend the volunteer meeting at Grandview Park at 7 p.m. June 29 to sign up for times and positions.

Volunteers will receive benefits such as t-shirts and free food and beverages.
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!)
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Democrats and other activists on the left are doing their part to ensure that the 2016 presidential election is one of the ugliest in decades.

Their actions sully the democratic process and detract voter attention from where it belongs.

In the most recent incident, protests turned violent last week outside the Albuquerque convention center where presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was holding a rally.

Protesters broke a glass door, jumped on police vehicles and threw burning T-shirts, rocks and bottles at police. Police used smoke grenades and pepper spray. Protesters inside the center were forcibly removed by police when they tried to disrupt the event.

In March, Trump cancelled a rally in Chicago for safety reasons after hundreds of protesters showed up in the pavilion where the rally was to be held. After the cancellation, fistfights broke out between Trump supporters and protesters.

In April, hundreds of demonstrators took over streets near an Orange County amphitheater where Trump was holding a rally. Protestors threw rocks, broke a window on a police vehicle, punctured the tires on another and hurled objects at passing motorists.

Occasionally, Democrats have turned on each other. After the Nevada Democratic convention gave most of the states delegates to Hillary Clinton, Sanders supporters charged the stage and threw chairs.

Death threats were left on a cellphone belonging to the state party chairwoman.

The behavior of Sanders supporters have Democratic leaders understandably worried about what might happen at the Democratic National Convention in July.

Earlier this month, Gabriel McArthur, a delegate from Colorado, told the Associated Press. I dont think were going to see a lot of violence, but we are going to see some screaming and shouting if the DNC does not humanize itself.

Perhaps Sanders could be doing more to discourage violence among his supporters. Perhaps other Democratic leaders could be doing more to discourage violence at Trump rallies.

But the real responsibility for violence rests on the participants. Their actions disgrace American democracy. There should be no need for riot police at campaign events. The violence must end before it escalates into scenes that are even worse.

Lincoln (Neb.) Journal Star
SIOUX CITY | Bob Larsen has the same philosophy for restaurant decor as he does with home-cooked comfort food.

You've got to keep things funky and you got to keep it real.

"We want to create a place where the atmosphere is always fun," said Larsen, who manages Crazy Bob's Maximum Bar-B-Que Restaurant, at 1800 Pierce St., with wife Laurie.

For instance, Larsen doesn't mind utilizing antique farm tools on his dining room's walls nor does he skimp on the portion sizes of his stick-to-your-ribs smoked meats.

"That's what brings our customers back time and again," he said.

Crazy Bob's is just one of the Sioux City restaurants that have recently opened, relocated or updated an image.

Larsen's restaurant opened in February in the home of Sioux City's legendary Green Gables.

Green Gables -- which specialized in sandwiches and matzo ball soup -- closed in August 2014 after more than 85 years in business.

"We've already had several people come in and say their grandparents used to bring them into Green Gables," Larsen said. "We feel good about being inside a historic Sioux City building."

That isn't to say Crazy Bob's has much in common with the former eatery.

For one thing, Larsen's restaurant has a well-stocked bar in the back of his dining room in addition to a menu that features smoked meats.

"I've been smoking meats before it became a cool thing to do," he said, adding Crazy Bob's has other locations in Inwood, Alvord, Hartley and Peterson, Iowa.

So, does Larsen have some family friendly comfort food faves? He recommended the smoked beef brisket, pork loin ribs and pulled pork (all of which are served with homestyle side dishes and cornbread).

If you're not crazy for 'cue, he suggested the "Hart" Breaker burger (a 1/3 pound beef patty served with bacon, cheddar cheese, grilled onions, peppers and Thousand Island dressing).

As diners depart following a busy lunch, Larsen can't help but smile.

"When people want Crazy Bob's, I suggest they come hungry," he said. "We'll fill 'em up."

Contemporary Italian cuisine finds a new home

Trattoria Fresco's Israel Padilla knows a lot about authentic Italian cuisine. But when it comes painting, carpentry or laying down new flooring, he wasn't feeling quite so confident.

"Thank god for YouTube," he said. "If it wasn't for how-to videos, we would've been sunk."

In March 2016, Padilla's Trattoria Fresco moved from 416 Jackson St., to a new location on the ground floor of the Howard Johnson Hotel, 707 Fourth St.

Essentially, the restaurant moved to an empty space next door.

"We didn't have to move a great distance," Padilla said. "But the new spot required a lot of cleaning and repairing that I did myself."

Walking through the refurbished space, he pointed to an intimate dining room highlighted with high-backed booths.

"We wanted to create a space where a guy can be alone with his girl," Padilla said. "The mood is romantic, the acoustics are low and the food is always excellent."

That's been Padilla's winning formula ever since he opened Trattoria Fresco more than six years ago.

During lunch, homemade soups, salads and special panini sandwiches remain popular. At night, heartier pastas, seafood and entrees like filet mignon, prime New York steak and Italian-style pork chops draw oohs and aahs from Trattoria Fresco's regulars.

Still, many of Padilla's favorite foods are not found on the menu.

"Italian food is the ultimate home-cooked meal," he said. "You can add or subtract ingredients that will make the meal seem different every time."

For instance, a seafood platter will get additional depth of flavor with the inclusion of black-and-white bow tie pasta that is made with squid ink.

"Food is a great canvas," Padilla said. "You can do anything you want with it."

Cocktails & Cupcakes

Talk about doing anything with food. Do cupcakes pair well with cocktails?

Tiffany Parsons thinks so. She always thought the two disparate items share a common bond. That's why she added a full menu of beers, wines and nighttime appetizers to The Daily Grind Market & Bakery's menu in March 2016.

"Over the past few years, we've developed a large group of regulars who come in for their coffee, cupcakes and sandwiches every day," Parsons said. "By adding a bar, we're hoping to attract an entirely new clientele."

To that end, she said the eatery will stay open late Wednesday - Saturday nights.

A veteran home baker, Parsons began making The Daily Grind's gourmet cupcakes more than three years ago. After taking over ownership of the business shortly thereafter, she expanded the food menu to include breakfast items, market-fresh sandwiches, homemade soups and healthy salads.

"We discovered that people loved the food but they also loved the lounge-y feel of the shop," she said.

That got Parsons thinking of ways to attract nighttime customers to her business.

"(For our night menu), we have flatbread pizzas and appetizers like salami chips, taco cups as well as a cheeseboard you've got to see to believe," she said.

In addition, Parsons has a full array of beers and wines, many with regional ties.

"Iowa has many excellent wineries and breweries," she said. "I think it's important to stay local whenever possible."

As she looked out into the recently redecorated dining room, Parsons said she felt good about the change.

Indeed, she has even renamed the business The Grind Cafe & Lounge to better reflect the change.

"I like the fact that we've evolved into a place where you can drink coffee in the sunshine and drink wine in the moonlight," Parsons said. "It's such a fun concept."
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
Working an oyster bed. Rock Point, Charles County, Maryland, Sept. 1936. (Photo: Library of Congress)

It is getting embarrassing. As Maryland's General Assembly drew to a close last month, the state's Department of Natural Resources was once again bowing to pressure from watermen whom it is charged by law with regulating. It was the third time in less than a year.In May of 2015 the DNR fired Tom O'Connell, its respected (including by many watermen) fisheries chief. It was to appease Maryland's most vocal watermenchief among them Robert T. Brown, president of the Maryland Watermen's Association, whose backing of Governor Larry Hogan's successful election campaign made him influential with Hogan. Also transferred out of the DNR was Mike Naylor, the agency's head shellfish regulator, who presumably made the watermen's hit list because of his concerns about unsustainable fishing of oysters.Then came the DNR's meeting with oystermen, who urged the agency to stop a multimillion dollar, state-federal program to build oyster sanctuaries in Bay rivers. Rejected by the DNR, the watermen went directly to the Hogan administration, which ordered the DNR to delay work on the sanctuaries. That move has already cost Maryland some $1 million in federal money (given to Virginia for oyster restoration there). But the most recent cave-in by the DNR seemed the worst yet, because the agency opposed carrying out the very science upon which state law requires it to base sustainable management of oysters.To set the scene:Oysters baywide, depleted by pollution, diseases and overharvest, are at one percent or less of their historic abundance. Their immense capability to filter pollution and provide habitat as they build reefs has made restoring and protecting oysters high priority, along with traditional maintenance of the commercial oystering rooted deeply in the state's culture.In the last decade or so, Maryland oyster harvests have risen more than 10-fold, to around 400,000 bushels a year, a happy circumstance but one that raises important questions: How much is this bounty a true oyster comeback from disease and pollution? How much is it from a doubling of oystermen who've jumped into fishing by the hundreds since 2010, as prices for oysters rose? And how much is it from a more than 40-fold increase in oystermen pulling dredges behind powerboats, a technique illegal before 2000 for fear its efficiency over traditional tonging and sail dredging might risk overharvesting?The DNR needs to know. It needs to know how many oysters are out there, at least a very close estimate. It cannot manage, cannot set harvest levels that will prevent overfishing of the public resource unless it can first count what's there to harvest. The DNR knows this works, because Maryland has already done the good science needed to count blue crabs and rockfish. And as a result, it is able to manage both species sustainably for both watermen and sportsmen.Which brings us to the General Assembly's final days in April, and a hearing on a bill to finally begin the scientific surveys needed to count how many oysters are out there. Oystermen showed up in force to oppose the study. The last few good winters' incomes are proof that all is well, they argued. The state has already taken 25 per cent of the publicly-owned oyster grounds to build sanctuaries. More science would surely lead to more regulations.A number of environmental, educational and sportfishing groups supported it. Oysters have ecological as well as commercial value. They belong to everyone who loves the Bay, and we don't want more booms followed by busts in their populations as in past decades, they argued.Then there was the DNR. Twice during the legislative session, the department's secretary, Mark Belton, had assured the bill's sponsor, Sen. Roger Manno (DMontgomery) that the DNR would remain "neutral" if the bill was amended, which it was. But even neutral appeared once again beyond the DNR's control. To Senator Manno's dismay, it lined up with the watermen and opposed the bill again in the House committee hearing.The bill passed anyhow, somewhat weakened, but still in a form supporters say will make a long overdue start on putting oysters under science-based management. Governor Hogan took the passive approach in late May, choosing to neither veto nor sign the bill, allowing it to become law.The DNR now claims support for the studies, which it will carry out with the University of Maryland's Center for Environmental Science (UMCES). That should ensure some independence from oyster politics. Years ago, when the DNR and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency were denying the need to control nitrogennow acknowledged as the Bay's principal pollutantUMCES' science convinced a federal judge to overrule both the state and federal governments.Let's hope Governor Hogan is able to turn a corner with oysters. The DNR should of course listen to watermens' concerns, and it's fair for oystermen to play political hardball. But DNR can't play ball if Hogan keeps taking the bat out of its hands.
Joseph Hall, Jr., 31, of Charlotte Hall. (MSP booking photo)

COLUMBIA, Md.

(May 31, 2016)Maryland State Police investigators from the Maryland Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC) arrested a St. Mary's County man on sexual solicitation related felony charges Monday.The accused is identified as Joseph Hall, Jr., 31, of Charlotte Hall. Hall was arrested yesterday at 7:30 a.m. without incident. He is charged with the sexual solicitation of a law enforcement officer posing as a minor. Upon conviction, Hall faces up to ten years imprisonment and up to $25,000 in fines.On Sunday, May 29, 2016, the Maryland State Police Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force conducted a proactive operation involving the online sexual solicitation of minors. During the covert operation Hall communicated online with an undercover police officer posing as a minor. He made statements expressing a desire to meet the minor and engage in sexual activity.On Monday, May 30, 2016, Hall traveled to an undisclosed location in St. Mary's County for the encounter. Shortly after 7:30 a.m. during the operation, Hall was arrested without incident and transported to the St. Mary's County Detention Center for processing. Investigators from the Maryland State Police Computer Crimes Unit and state troopers from the Field Operations Bureau conducted the covert operation.The Maryland Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force is organized under the Maryland State Police Computer Crimes Section. The task force is comprised of police agencies from around the state and its primary mission is to protect children from computer-facilitated sexual exploitation. The Task Force works cooperatively with law enforcement agencies and prosecutors to provide resources to combat these crimes. Additionally, the Task Force provides community awareness campaigns helping to prevent the spread of these crimes through education.
(EDGE) A new poll shows Volunteer State residents are more closely divided than previously thought over a new Tennessee law that allows mental health counselors and therapists to refuse to treat LGBT patients and others based on the counselor's personal beliefs.

According to the poll by icitizen, a Nashville-based icitizen, a digital app and civic engagement platform developer, 49 percent of Tennessee voters favor the therapist exemption bill, while 41 percent oppose it. Sentiment among both sides is fairly strong and fairly divided, as 27 percent say they "strongly" support the law, while 26 percent say they "strongly" oppose it.



The online poll was conducted among 562 registered Tennessee voters, ages 18 and older, from May 12-16. Data were balanced by age, gender and region to reflect the composition of registered voters in Tennessee. The margin of error for the poll is 4.1 percentage points.



"That only about half of Tennesseans support a piece of religious freedom legislation suggests that people are mindful of the potential economic consequences," said Dr. Mark Keida, icitizen's head of polling and research. "Last month, we ran a poll on the 'Bible Bill,' and 67 percent of Tennesseans favored making the Bible the state book. There is quite a bit of drop off in support when it comes to this bill, and about half say they are 'concerned' with it."



Support for the bill remains strongest among self-identified conservatives, residents over the age of 55, evangelicals and Republicans, with clear majorities supporting it. Majorities of self-identified liberal and Democrats oppose the bill. Geographically-speaking, majorities of voters in Middle Tennessee and East Tennessee support the bill, though more twice as many East Tennesseans -13 percent - are "unsure" about how they feel about the bill than Middle Tennesseans. Support for the bill flags in West Tennessee, where more voters oppose it than support it, though by a small margin.



The poll also asked respondents if they were concerned about the cancellation of two major conferences, one by the American Counseling Association and the other by the Centers for Spiritual Living, in response to the bill's passage. There, sentiment was also divided, with 48 percent saying they were concerned about the cancellations, and 52 percent saying they were not. Among those who were concerned were 61 percent of millennials (ages 18-34) and 60 percent of state residents who have lived in Tennessee for fewer than five years.



"The interesting narrative is that Tennessee appears to be at a crossroads with these types of issues," said Keida. "Those who have moved to the state in the past five years are much more concerned with the economic impact of this legislation, as are younger Tennesseans. They don't see these types of bills as reflecting their priorities; instead, they see a potential negative impact on their pocketbooks."
(AP) Former Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard will be honored by an LGBT business group for his advocacy on gay rights issues.

The Indy Rainbow Chamber of Commerce will present Ballard with a plaque at a June 1 ceremony. The group praises Ballard for embracing diversity and opposing discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Indiana residents.

Ballard was a vocal opponent of a religious objections law signed by Gov. Mike Pence last year, which provoked a strong national backlash that pressured lawmakers to make changes.

The former Republican mayor was succeeded by Democrat Joe Hogsett in January.
Exciting news out of Paris, where our friends and partners at Belleville Brulerie have debuted a new coffee bar serving all-day coffee, beer, food, and wine. Located between the Canal Saint Martin and Belleville neighborhoods, La Fontaine de Belleville is the first-ever coffee bar for the Paris roasting brand served in top cafes like Holybelly, CREAM, Melali Coffee Riders, and many more places weve featured in our Paris coverage here on Sprudge. Were lucky to be in a beautiful corner cafe space that has been a operating cafe since 1915, says Belleville co-founder David Nigel Flynn. Inside the space theyre serving natural wines from top producers, a couple of beautiful French beers, an assortment of -tifs (both apper- and diges-), plenty of food, and of course coffee, all of it modeled on the classic Parisian sidewalk cafe.

Our own co-founder Jordan Michelman caught up with Flynn from Paris after a whirlwind opening week.

First, some basic questionshow large is the new space? What is its full street address? What will your hours be?

The main cafe space is ~60m2 with a separate kitchen. The street address is 31-33 Rue Juliette Dodu, 75010 Paris. We will be serving continuously from 8am. Last call is at 10pm and we will close a bit later as people finish their drinks.

Describe the overall concept for La Fontaine.

A traditional French cafe (but with great coffee). We have been talking about a French sidewalk cafe serving great coffee for a long time. Its a bit ironic that despite the development of the specialty coffee scene here in Paris over the past few years there were very few (if any) traditional cafes serving great coffee. La Fontaine de Belleville is an attempt to fill that gap. This means were open all day every day serving great coffee alongside great food, wine, beer, and aperitifs.

This is your first cafe, but Belleville is an established roasting brandwhat is the thinking behind making that jump?

We knew from the start that Belleville would be more than just a roasting brand although we werent sure exactly what our retail presence would look like at the time. Weve always been obsessed with the idea of sharing: sharing great coffee, great service, and the cafe project is an extension of that.

At Belleville, were really interested in exploring different formats for sharing great coffee other than the now-global coffee shop format. The weekend roastery boutique was our first attempt at this and we were surprised at how it allowed us to present Belleville to a different audience that didnt necessarily frequent the coffee shops we supplied. La Fontaine de Belleville is the next step, and were hopeful that it will allow us to share great coffee with even more people.

What is this cafe inspired by?

La Fontaine de Belleville is inspired by Parisian sidewalk cafes. Its a format that everyone in Paris is very familiar with, although it takes slightly different forms in different neighbourhoods. We took inspiration from many cafes in Parisfamous and notas well as the history of La Fontaine itself. Taking over a space that has been an operating cafe for over 100 years is a new experience for us, but its also a huge source of inspiration. We found out from friends in the jazz scene here that the Fontaine used to be a major after-hours jazz spot years ago. While we wont be open late night, we are going to have a live music program, and we kicked it off with a concert by our friend Hermon Mehari at our inauguration party.

Please tell us more about the food and wine youre serving.

Food, wine, and beer are all part of this cafe. We assembled a small list of (for the most part) natural wines for the cafe working with our friends in the wine industry. At any given time we will have 3 white wines and 3 red wines by the glass, at the moment those include A toi Nous, an 100% Grenache from Andrea Calek in the Ardeche region, and a Muscadet Coteaux de la Loire from Domaine Landron Chartier. Like many coffee industry people, were big wine fans and its been a lot of fun to apply our palates to something other than coffee.

For food, we worked with Madison OMara (discretely behind the food menu at a number of coffee shops here in Paris) to put together a menu of simple French brasserie food. Among other things were serving pain perdu and pain depices (spice cake) for breakfast and a classic croque monsieur and ham and butter baguette sandwich at lunch. In the evening, were super-excited to be serving rillettes and pate from our friends at Epicerie O Divin up the street from the Belleville roastery and a selection of other charcuterie and cheeses.

Its worth a mention that were also serving some great beer from craft breweries Outland and Deck & Donohue just outside of Paris, and a wide range of aperitifs and anisees just in case wine, food, and coffee wasnt enough.

Coffee in Paris has come so far since the landmark Oliver Strand articles for The New York Times in 2010, 2011, and 2012describe what its like to be in the middle of those changes.

Its been a lot of fun. Olivers articles really lit a fire under the French press, and turned attention to good coffee, it gave a big boost to the nascent coffee scene at the time. More than just coffee, the restaurant scene as a whole in Paris has undergone a lot of changes over the last few years and its been a privilege to get to be a part of it. While the general conception has been that Paris has always had great food (and to some extent thats true), the last few years have been something of a revival of the Parisian restaurant scene. Its amazing to be a part of this renewal and to play a small part in the continuing tradition of Parisian restaurants.

What is the neighborhood for your new cafe like?

La Fontaine de Belleville is sandwiched between the Canal Saint Martin and Belleville on a small square. Its a neighbourhood with a semi-industrial past (the Exacompta paper factory is still located just down the street along the canal) that has experienced a lot of change over the last few years as the canal has become a popular leisure spot. Were a little bit off the canal and in a small corridor that includes some great restaurants and bars tucked away along the side streets. Its a neighbourhood where a good portion of the Belleville team live and hang out so were excited to be a part of it as a cafe.

Did you work with a design team for this space? Can you share anything with us about the choices youve made for espresso machines, furniture, and such?

The design for the space was done in house. We were able to take over a beautiful corner cafe space that has been a operating cafe since 1915 so there was a lot to work with. Our goal was to update the space and clean it up without fundamentally transforming it or losing any of its inherent charm.

While we didnt hire in a design team, we had the opportunity to work with some great artisans for the space and a few definitely deserve a mention. Our glass chandeliers come from Omer Arbel and Bocci Lighting (also present in our roastery). Ged Palmer, our longtime graphic designer and sign painter, came down from London to hand letter some gold leaf to the doors and windows as well as apply the finishing touch to our terrace tables. Our terrace chairs were custom-made by Maison Gatti (in business hand-making rotin chairs since 1920) just outside of Paris. Working with these talented people (and others) was a real pleasure and I think their attention to detail really shows through when youre in the cafe.

As far as coffee equipment goes our filter coffee service is batch brewed on a Marco BRU and we will soon be serving the entire Belleville menu using a Marco undercounter system and Clever Coffee Drippers. For espresso, we have a gravimetric La Marzocco Linea PB paired with a Mazzer Robur E grinder. We will also be pulling allonges, the French equivalent of the lungo, with a Mahlkonig EK 43 grinder and the Linea.

Has good coffee in Paris plateaued, or is it still just getting started?

Its probably not a shock that I think good coffee in Paris is just getting started! There is a real value attributed to flavour in French culture. Its not snobby to think that a wine (or a meal, or coffee) should be more expensive because it tastes better, and I think this creates a pretty fertile ground for exploring different ways of presenting great coffee to people.

Thank you.

Jordan Michelman is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Jordan Michelman on Sprudge.

Photos courtesy Cafes Belleville.
The MUOS system is made of four ground bases around the world, which are linked to satellites. Ground bases are located in Hawaii, Virginia, Australia, and in Southern Sicily.

Seven Years in the Making

The US places special strategic value on its base in Sicily, and for an obvious reason; it allows them to monitor ongoing situations in an area of particular interest  the Middle East.

Overall, the Navy has spent seven years working on the facility, and the US is now ready to flick the switch and make the base operational.

However, in the nearby town of Niscemi, which houses nearly 30,000 people, locals have decided they don't want to live with the electromagnetic fields generated by the satellite antennas.

Protests against the base are not a new development. They began as soon as the navy started building several years ago. Local campaigners against the base have taken it all the way to the courtrooms, now meaning that the US cannot use the MUOS facility until it's given the green light by the Italian judiciary.

"Initially, the US Navy and the Italian Ministry of Defense tried to ignore the inconvenient truth that the base was upsetting the locals," says professor Massimo Corradi, a leading campaigner against the base.

"However now our campaign has taken them to the courts, they have to at least listen to our grievances."

Headaches, Sickness and Brain Cancer

The main defender of the base has been the Ministry of Defense, who has tried to guarantee the US Navy a safe place to set up camp. The main accuser is a group of organizations, led by the No-MUOS committee, who has built a case against the base on grounds that it is poses serious health risks. The campaigners fear that the electromagnetic emissions will increase the risk of cancer to locals.

Professor Massimo Zucchetti, a nuclear energy expert, conducted an independent study with Corradi into whether the concerns about the base were legitimate. In conclusion, they found that if activated, the base would pose a danger to the health of the local population:

"We found that many people have complaints about suffering with headaches and sickness, especially those living close to the base," Zucchetti told Sputnik.

If that's not enough to demonstrate the risks of the base, Corradi also told Sputnik that "there is strong evidence to suggest that prolonged exposure to such electromagnetic fields can, and in some cases we are sure, has been linked to diseases such as brain cancer."

To combat these claims, the US charged Dr John Oetting with an independent assessment of the risks of exposure. Mr Oetting also happens to be the base's project manager and lead system engineer. He concluded that a person living near it is "exposed to less energy than someone making a give-minute cell phone call or cooking with a microwave."

Italians understandably have questioned the reports reliability, given that its written by someone involved with the MUOS.

"Why should we trust a report that's clearly partisan, and we know that the US will probably distort facts to get its way," said Francesca Nicolo, a local activist with the No-MUOS campaign.

Construction Not Allowed

Despite local protest and research criticizing the possible dangers, the lack of agreement and long-term studies have made it difficult to come to a conclusion.
"The failed test yesterday by North Korea proves that the country is indeed going along this trajectory. North Korea is apparently pursuing a global nuclear delivery capability, so its missile and nuclear efforts are a threat to the global security. Very likely North Korea will conduct more missile tests in the future to improve its missile capability," Li Bin, a Senior Associate at Nuclear Policy Program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said.

The situation on the Korean Peninsula demands serious discussions, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov told journalists on Tuesday after an alleged failed missile launch, adding that any launches are prohibited by the UN Security Council.

Condemnation of the Security Council appears to be hollow, as all the permanent members posess nuclear missiles, Fihn noted. Therefore, only a treaty banning all nuclear weapons and their delivery systems can become an effective tool for increasing pressure on North Korea and other nuclear-armed states.

Fihn added that such negotiations are ongoing and may result in a comprehensive nuclear ban treaty at the United Nations General Assembly in October.

"The international community should consider both measures of carrots and sticks to encourage North Korea to dismantle its nuclear missile capability," Li Bin said.

Tensions over North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs escalated after Pyongyang said on January 6 that it had successfully carried out a hydrogen bomb test and put a satellite into orbit on February 7, violating UN Security Council resolutions and triggering condemnation from the international community in both cases.

North Korea declared itself a nuclear power in 2005, and has conducted several underground nuclear weapon tests since then, raising concerns worldwide, and especially in its neighboring states.
The hawks of yesteryear once again garner an audience within the Beltway echo chamber for their age-old bigoted rhetoric, predicated on the inferiority of the Arab people as a reason for a Western guiding hand to civilize the unwashed masses.

Kristol, however, continues to search for a conservative third-party candidate to undermine Trumps electoral bid, in an effort to either secure the presidency for the hawkish Clinton or, in a fantastic scenario, to prevent either candidate from receiving the requisite 270 Electoral College votes necessary, leaving the choice to the Republican House of Representatives.

Loud & Clears Brian Becker asked former US Marine and anti-war activist Michael Prysner about how racism was used to motivate combat soldiers in Iraq and what it portends for the future.

"Yes, absolutely," Prysner said. "Not only was there a lot of racism, but racism became the primary tool of our officers and politicians who set up the war to convince service members that they should go and risk their lives."

"Look, it was true in Korea, it was true in Vietnam, and it is true today as we send more troops back to Iraq and as we continue to send soldiers to Afghanistan," explained Prysner. "Racism is accepted throughout the chain of command as not only part of the job, but as the motivating factor that we were supposed to have to invade."

"I was in the Army right before the 9/11 attacks," Prysner told Sputnik. "It was a very different military from a cultural perspective than it was right after the 9/11 attacks when our commanders and politicians realized that they were going to start sending us to a war like we havent seen in some time."
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  Middle East expert and historian Helena Cobban said that "the Saudi policy  and especially that of hawkish Prince Mohammed Bin Salman  has been to engage in a dangerous game of oil production chicken targeted against Russia and Iran in particular."

Cobban explained that Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi deputy crown prince and defense minister, had tried to bring pressure on Moscow and Tehran to bow to Saudi policies on Syria.

Bin Salmans had "the idea of driving/keeping oil prices so low that Moscow and Tehran would run squealing to Riyadh begging for mercy, including by agreeing to accede to the Saudi policy of regime change in Syria," Cobban pointed out.
At the same time North Korea is the country with the biggest proportion (about 4.8 percent) of people suffering from modern slavery.

"In North Korea, there is pervasive evidence that government-sanctioned forced labour occurs in an extensive system of prison labour camps while North Korean women are subjected to forced marriage and commercial sexual exploitation in China and other neighbouring states," the report said.

Iceland and Luxembourg are the two countries with the lowest number of people facing modern slavery (less than 500 people).

The report calls on the international community to take measures aimed at eradicating the problem of modern slavery.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Two army officials were among those eight killed, the Indian Express newspaper said, while according to the Zee News TV channel, the blaze killed 17 troops and injured 17 others.

The fire broke out after a reported explosion, the cause of the blast is still unknown.

Residents of the nearby villages have been evacuated.
Buddha Day was marked in Pakistan on May 30. It is the first time that the event was celebrated at the official level.

The Ministry of National History and Literary Heritage Division organized a special function in Islamabad to praise the significance of Buddha in history. A 50-member delegation of monks, devotees and media representatives from Sri Lanka, the birthplace of Buddha, attended the event along with high-ranking state officials. The members of the delegation visited Buddhist archeological sites and performed the religious rituals, according to PM adviser on National History and Literary Heritage Irfan Siddiqui, the chief guest in the festival inaugural ceremony.
Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar stated that some of the directives of the judiciary were "senseless" and said that the Court had been issuing directions "without any scientific basis," while adding "Some people who do not understand science have begun interpreting it.

According to Parrikar, court orders are hurting foreign investment. We welcome the ban on polluting vehicles, but why ban (diesel) vehicles with reduced pollution emission rather than their petrol counterparts. Car manufacturers like Mercedes Benz have stopped investment in our market as they fail to see any logic in the courts decision, he stated.

Mercedes Says India Investments On Hold Due to Supreme Court Diesel Ban  The Siasat Daily: The Siasat DailyM https://t.co/fx0kTikIOP  Supreme Court India (@SupremeCourtFan) 21  2016 .

Industry body Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) had already questioned the SC order. According to SIAM, the diesel ban in Delhi, which had been in effect since December 16, has cost nearly 5,000 jobs in the automobile sector.

Additionally, it has led to a production loss of about 11,000 units. The SIAM said that there is no link between engine capacity and engine levels. It believes the ban, without a comprehensive policy, could be disastrous for the industry.

However, the 'green lobby' had hailed the SC for controlling the diesel cars. Anumita Roy Chowdhury, executive director at the Centre for Science and Environment said that, Its a welcome step towards a green and clean environment. But the government is not happy because they are striving hard for foreign investment."
In an unexpected move to boost e-commerce and the struggling state-run India Post, the New Delhi administration is planning to deliver packets of water from river Ganges throughout the country.

According to Indian tradition, the water from the river is considered holy and millions of people regularly take a dip in the river. Those who are unable to visit the river in person for a bath, usually purchase water in small bottles through various means for their holy bath.

Indias Communications and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters: I have directed my department to provide for a network using the e-commerce platform so that the people of India can get shudh [pure] ganga jal from Haridwar/Rishikesh. We assure you all that we will take proactive steps to address the cultural needs of the people of India.
The United States has continued its military operations across the South China Sea, with some senior US officials saying that such moves will be even more frequent in the future.

A former US defense official, quoted by media reports, said that the United States is sticking to freedom of navigation and is following the rules.

Some Western media on Sunday called the recent US military moves in the South China Sea the new normal, in spite of continuous opposition from China, online publication China Daily reported.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  Earlier on Tuesday, the Pentagon confirmed that it detected a failed intermediate range ballistic missile launch by Pyongyang.

The United States and the rest of the international community calls on North Korea to refrain from actions, including this failed missile test, that further raise tensions in the region, Earnest said.

Tensions over North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs escalated after Pyongyang said on January 6 that it had successfully carried out a hydrogen bomb test and put a satellite into orbit on February 7, violating UN Security Council resolutions and triggering condemnation from the international community in both cases.
The last recorded case of fetus in fetu was a 45-year-old London woman, Jenny Kavanagh, who had a 10-centimeter mass removed from her left ovary, which turned out to be an unborn twin. The fetus had a face, an eye, a tooth, and long black hair  similar to her own.

I try not to think of it too much because I dont want to feel sad about it, she told the Mirror last year. But I try not to feel sad about it. I try to remember that it had no heart and no brain. And that it would have almost certainly killed me if they hadnt found it and removed it.

The doctors treating Kavanagh compared her case to that of an ectopic pregnancy, though the twin had been inside her since birth. For over four decades, the fetus was protected by her ovary, which allowed it to grow. The bigger it grew, however, the greater risk Kavanagh was in of it hemorrhaging.

The fact that it had long black hair  just like mine  a face with one eye, and one baby tooth makes it more believable, she said. Its difficult to describe how I felt when I saw it. I felt shocked, very scared, horrified, and it felt like an alien was inside me.
Currently, oil prices are heavily dependent on disruptions on the supply side, with terrorist and military activity rife in Nigeria, Libya, and the Middle East, whilst in the US, the commencing summer driving season has pushed prices up, yet, all these positive effects to prices might fade swiftly as OPEC has still no single opinion on production quotas. The world's biggest oil producers have been increasing extraction, undermining prices in the medium term. Subsequently, energy giants are winning a larger share of the international market, and a creeping monopolization is more often than not an upward factor in regard to prices in the long run.

According to estimates by the UBS Group AG, a Swiss-based multinational bank, investing in "big oil" stocks is at this point a more lucrative strategy than trading crude given the current uncertainty in energy prices. With impact of small-cap drillers to the market and prices are waning, severe disruptions in supply from notable oil producers among developing nations, gains in oil output in Russia and Saudi Arabia, and the global economy slowing down as a combination of upward and downward factors to oil prices, the wisest choice would be exiting crude trading. While it would take time to show what factors will eventually prevail, "big oil" has traditionally turned out to be winners no matter the scale of short-term volatility in energy prices.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  WTI Nymex futures were over 0.7 percent in the green, increasing to $49.71 per barrel by 06:25 GMT, reaching the highest point since late July. Brent crude hit $49.82 per barrel, reaching record highs since October, before wiping out gains and falling to $49.63 per barrel by 06:30 GMT.

The rise in prices comes ahead of an Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) meeting due to take place on Thursday in Vienna. While no specific agenda has been disclosed, an Iranian delegation, led by Petroleum Minister Bijan Zangeneh, is expected to attend.
The bill has drawn massive criticism as potentially impairing overall economic productivity, whilst the recent wave of disruptive union activity with massive strikes across the nation has posed questions as to the overall efficiency of the government's economic policies. However, the bill's supporters argue, since the employee is not at work anyway, it hardly makes sense disturbing them with work-related matters, as such a practice does not enhance an employer's productivity, but takes up an employee's time  unless the latter is forced into overtime work in such a manner.

French companies with 50 and more employees are bound by the new law to abstain from sending work-related e-mails during the fixed evening and weekend hours, when personnel are not supposed to be at work. President Francois Hollande's Socialist Party claims the move will improve the quality of life for the French workforce, insisting that in the digital era the issue of "permanent connectiveness" has resulted in people abusing each other's time via online messaging. Therefore, since an employee is only paid to undertake certain effort in particular hours, conveying any work-related matters outside of work hours via email takes the employee's time to read and consider, and is illegal.
Who will benefit from Asia's 'Suez Canal'

The project could have "a major impact on both the commercial and strategic landscape of the entire region," expert on China's security policy Lyle J. Goldstein wrote for the National Interest.

"At a minimum, the canal could move the locus of dynamic regional and global maritime trade hundreds of miles to the north, but it could also serve as a major enabler for China's ambitious 'one belt, one road' strategy as well, " the Associate Professor in the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) at the US Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, noted.

Chinese analysts say that the canal, estimated to cost nearly $30 billion, would not only benefit China. According to the Chinese Foreign Policy journal, Japan, South Korea, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand and other regional nations would be better off from its construction.

For their part, Malaysia and Singapore would hardly be happy if the project is indeed carried out.
Import substitution in Russia's economy, urging companies to localize their production and create new work places in Russia, has become of current interest to the country since mid-2014.

The Western states imposed several rounds of sanctions against Moscow, citing its alleged involvement in the Ukraine conflict denied by Russia. The restrictions targeted Russia's banking, energy and defense sectors. Russia imposed restrictions of its own, banning food imports from the countries that sanctioned it.
ASTANA (Sputnik)  Earlier in the day, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the EEU Supreme Council meeting that the establishment of the single EEU market in hydrocarbons would bring the income of up to $9 billion annually to the oil and gas industry.

"Today the presidents received the documents over the concept of establishment of these oil, oil products and gas markets, and this concept was approved," Shuvalov told reporters after the EEU Supreme Council Meeting.

According to Shuvalov, the documents were finally prepared after all disagreements had been resolved.
"We have discussed <> approaches toward the trade and economic partnership with China, this partnership has principal importance for our countries. Eurasian Economic Commission will begin the negotiation process according to the given mandate. We will arrange these relationships according to the interests of the economic entities of our countries," Sargsyan told at the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council meeting.

The EEC is the permanent regulatory body of the Eurasian Economic Union. The EEU is an economic association founded by Russia. It includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin visited Iran on May 29-30, where he met with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif and President Hassan Rouhani, as well as other officials.

"Tehran and Kiev discussed yesterday during the visit of the Ukrainian foreign minister and his delegation and his meeting with Iranian Deputy Oil Minister Amir Hossein Zamani Nia ways to strengthen cooperation in the oil and gas sector," the source said.

According to the source, the sides discussed ways to transport gas to Ukraine, cooperation in storing gas, as well as creation of a joint company specializing in in the field of oil and gas industry.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Leaders of Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) member states gathered in Kazakhstan's capital of Astana earlier on Tuesday for a EEU Supreme Council meeting. The bloc's leaders discussed approaches to trade and economic partnership with China and resolved to start talks on the formation of the partnership, according to Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov.

"For now, a non-preferential trade agreement, which does not have an impact on customs duties, was discussed, since the countries of the bloc are not objectively ready for such a liberalization of trade with one of the world's leading economies," Nikishina told RIA Novosti.

The cooperation agreement must mainly address the lifting of non-tariff barriers for mutual trade, she stressed, adding that it must also deal with developing cooperation in the areas of customs administration, sanitary and phytosanitary norms, technical regulations, intellectual property and electronic commerce.
Plentiful rains in the south helped plant development and will increase yields, making up for drier conditions for crops in areas of the Ural Mountains and Siberia, he said.

At the same time, a report by the Institute for Agricultural Market Studies expects this years harvest of at least 107 million tons. However, the outlook may soon be upgraded.

The wheat harvest is expected to reach 63.3 million tons this year, the second-largest after a record of 63.8 million tons in 2008, according to government data. Last year, Russian farmers collected 61.8 million tons.

The barley harvest is also expected to rise to 18 million tons, from 17.5 million tons last year.

Earlier this month, Agriculture Minister Alexander Tkachev said that Russia was going to collect some 106 million metric tons of grain in 2016.

The minister also expressed hope that in 10 years the annual grain harvest in Russia would reach 120-130 million tons.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  According to the Iranian official, Tehran is also in talks with Moscow on the sale of 40 tons of the product, the Tasnim news agency reported.

Salehi also said that he ordered to halt the supply of heavy water under a deal with the United States, which was concluded after the nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers entered force in January.

According to Salehi, Tehrans deep distrust of the United States, especially after the US confiscation of some $2 billion of Irans assets, was the reason for the decision.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The latest short-term energy forecast by the US Energy Information Administration estimates oil prices will continue to rise, averaging between $42 and $44 per barrel through the end of 2016. Oil prices dropped significantly in the past 18 months from a high of $110 in 2014.

"I think as oil prices continue to go up, there will be less incentive for OPEC to actually get anything done," Otaiba said, noting that with oil prices rising, OPEC members "will feel there is even less need for a cap."

Oil prices have rallied back to approximately $50 per barrel ahead of the OPEC meeting scheduled for Thursday in Vienna, Austria. For the past three months, oil forecasts have tended to be positive, indicating traders confidence prices will continue to rise.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Naftogaz said in 2014 it wanted to change the 2009 deal with Gazprom to increase the tariff rate for gas transit through its territory. Starting this year, it unilaterally hiked the rate by 1.5 times to $4.5 per 1,000 cubic meters for every hundred kilometers (62 miles).

"It is very strange that despite the current contract, which will be in effect till 2019, the Ukrainian colleagues unilaterally claim increase of the tariff rate We work and will continue working in accordance with the contract. We know about arbitration processes in Stockholm, that is why, if we fail to come to the agreement, we will solve these issues in the arbitrary court," Medvedev told reporters.

According to Medvedev, Russia does not refuse to carry out talks and the Ukrainian colleagues have been invited to Moscow to discuss the issue.
According to the ambassador, Ethiopia is already finalizing the list of these projects that would then be considered by the Russian side.

"They are in the engineering area, science and technology and innovation. Once they are finished we will present them to the Russian side. I think they will be presented before September," the ambassador explained.

Russian companies need to be active in the market of the Ethiopian development projects as they face competition from Chinese firms, the Ethiopian ambassador said.

"They [Russian companies] have to be very active because the Chinese are there. The Chinese have always been around, but we want to diversify some of the infrastructure projects," Grum Abay Teshome said.

According to the ambassador, Addis Ababa needs Russias technology and expertise. Gazprombank, one of the largest banks in Russia, and the Inter RAO energy firm are looking for expanding their operations in the country, he said.
Brazil's Transparency Minister Fabiano Silveira submitted a letter of resignation after the release of a recording containing a conversation about the probe into corruption in the country's energy company Petrobras.

The recorded conversation reportedly took place before the impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  According to the ORB pollster's survey carried out for the The Daily Telegraph, 46 percent of those interviewed said they would vote to leave the European Union, while 51 percent supported the Remain campaign. The previous poll results showed 55 percent said they would vote in favor of remaining and 42 percent said they would vote to leave the bloc.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The latest round of Western sanctions against Russia is up for extension among EU members before the July 31 expiration deadline. The European Council, which comprises the leader of all 28 EU member states, is set to meet on June 28 and is expected to debate the issue.

"I think that this issue will be on the agenda. I cannot foresee the final decision, but I assume that the sanctions will be extended after some serious debate. And, of course, sanctions are not forever," Xydakis told the Kommersant newspaper in an interview published on Tuesday.

The alternative minister's comment comes just days after Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Greece, where he met with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. Putin stated that Russian counter-sanctions have harmed Greek agricultural exports to Russia.
Last week, the news of a 49-year-old woman in the United States who had supposedly been infected with a multi-resistant "superbacterium" sent shock waves through Denmark's scientific circles. Danish researchers argued that multiresistence may send the treatment of inflammations 100 years back in time.

"If these bacteria become widespread, then we are left with virtually no treatment. This scenario has never before been closer than it is now. We are moving into a post-antibiotic era, which may prove quite similar to the pre-antibiotics era," Hans Jrgen Kolmos, professor of clinical microbiology at the University of Southern Denmark, told Jyllands-Posten.

Last year, researchers from China and Great Britain discovered bacteria that are resistant to 'last resort' antibiotic agent Coliston in living pigs, pork meat and a number of people in China. Similar findings in a US woman leaves us with a gloomy' future, said Svend Ellermann-Eriksen, professor and chief physician at the Department of Clinical Microbiology at Aarhus University Hospital.
"Before this US military convoy arrived we were told how important it was for us to have American troops in our country. Some of us disagreed but, since we have no civilized means of getting our opinion across to the authorities, Lieutenant Zapletal opted for what we think was not necessarily the best form of protest. Putting on his dress uniform he stood in front of the leading vehicle, turned around and pulled down his pants, forcing the convoy to stop."

They arrested him right away and took him to the local police station. If we had a normal legal system he would have gotten away with a fine, but it looks like they want to make him a political prisoner and put him in the slammer on charges of organizing mass riots.

We have found him a lawyer and we are now launching a media campaign in his defense. Look, if all these people taking part in gay parades can freely walk around Prague with their naked bums, if we so actively rooted for Pussy Riot, putting someone in jail for three years just for pulling down his pants is an outrageous example of double standards! We are now trying to make them drop the charges, Ivan Kratochvil said in colclusion.

A US military convoy entered the territory of the Czech Republic on Friday to participate in the Saber Strike-2016 exercises in the Baltic states.
Only 494 asylum seekers who arrived in Sweden last year managed to find a job to support themselves, while waiting for their application to be processed, Swedish television network SVT reported, citing figures from Sweden's employment agency and the Migration board.

An asylum seeker with a valid ID is usually allowed to work in Sweden despite not yet having a residence permit, provided he or she is granted an exception by the Migration board. Typically, such an exception is granted automatically. Last year, however, Sweden was faced with an unprecedented number of asylum claims, which stalled the administrative machinery.

"It was an incredible number of people applying for asylum in Sweden, and we had to de-prioritize certain tasks to simply be able to register them all, and it was the matter of jobs," Lisa Bergstrand of the Migration board told SVT.
"I'd seen a number of these sort of things on Facebook, old soldiers or people requesting 'likes' and 'shares' and things, and initially I thought that was a bit rubbish really  fishing for compliments and stuff  but I thought I'd give it a go with my father in law. He's 90 now, and he's quite frail, and he's one of the dwindling band of his comrades  they're a very loyal bunch and there's so few of them now," Tam told Sputnik.

Veterans of #Russian #Arctic Convoys find themselves in archival photos of exhibition at #SimonsTown Naval Museum pic.twitter.com/ZRJ6HjLFPi      (@RusConsCapetown) May 16, 2016

By all accounts, his father in law is somewhat bemused by the response, though extremely touched. At 90 years old he's not particularly au fait with the world of social media, but Tam's wife has been reading some of the thousands of comments to him at his home in Cornwall.

Ambassador #Petrakov & SA Navy top officials open "Russian Arctic Convoys 1941-1945" exhibition in #SA Naval Museum pic.twitter.com/RIbNp0jOHk  Rus Embassy in RSA (@EmbassyofRussia) May 17, 2016

"What amazed us what that people started uploading photographs of their own family members who were also veterans, and all their stories as well. So it's become a bit of a tribute to the whole veteran community," Tam said.

Tam told Sputnik that the point at which the response got "very big" was once it had reached Russia, saying:

"The Russian people idolize these guys from the Arctic convoys."

Celebration of the #VDay in the Northern Scotland  Arctic Convoys Memorial in Lynesshttps://t.co/B1fw7lxWJ2 pic.twitter.com/zzetvtbShj  Russian CG Edinburgh (@RusCG_Edinburgh) May 18, 2016

He went on to explain that the British veterans of the Arctic Convoy had only very recently been recognized by the UK Government:

"Only three or four years ago did these guys finally get recognized and presented with a medal, from the British Government. The Russians have been feting them for years with accolades and medals. Because it's taken so long for the British Government to recognize them, a lot of them are dead, and families had to apply retrospectively to get these medals posthumously, it's disgusting."

The Arctic Convoys of World War II played a huge role in the allied campaign to defeat the Nazis, maintaining vital supply links between the UK, Iceland and the US to northern ports in the Soviet Union.

Wreath laying at the Arctic Convoy Memorial at Cove, Loch Ewe on 14th May 2016. pic.twitter.com/BaGt5PlbFq  Arctic Convoy Museum (@InfoRACM) May 16, 2016

78 convoys ran in total between August 1941 and May 1945, comprised of around 1400 merchant ships escorted by ships from the Royal Navy, Royal Canadian Navy and the US Navy  constituting almost a quarter of the total aid to the USSR during the war.

Arctic convoy PQ17 assembled at Hvalfjord, Iceland (June 1942). #WW2 pic.twitter.com/LLHCXwMMev  Paul Hamilton (@_PaulHamilton) May 22, 2016

On this day 1941 @RoyalNavy cruisers HMS Norfolk & HMS Suffolk sight German battleship Bismarck &cruiser Prinz Eugen pic.twitter.com/vZpM8Y5d4v  Dr Phil Weir (@navalhistorian) May 23, 2016

Whilst the Arctic route was the quickest and most direct supply route to the USSR, it was by far the most dangerous and many of those who operated the routes never returned home. This August sees the 75th anniversary of the first of the Arctic Convoys, celebrating the arrival of the 'Dervish' to Arkhangelsk on August 31st 1941.

"Arctic Convoys hold a very special place in our memory. It was an inspiring symbol of the Soviet-British friendship, brotherhood-in-arms forged between our nations during the war. British, Soviet, American vessels brought important supplies to Russia and back or defended the lines from the dangerous and experienced enemy. Our sailors and pilots fought bravely together in the Arctic theatre," Andrey Pritsepov, the Consul General of Russia in Edinburgh told Sputnik.

"I am delighted that people around the globe are aware of what they did and show their respect and admiration to the veterans who fought with great bravery and to those who sacrificed their lives for our joint victory."
WARSAW (Sputnik)  The Warsaw NATO Summit 2016 will take place on July 8-9, with members of the alliance set to discuss increasing military activities on NATO's eastern flank.

"Our aim is a more positive and a cooperative relationship with Russia That is why there is a broad agreement among allies that we [the NATO-Russia Council] should seek to meet again before the summit here in Warsaw," Stoltenberg said speaking at the Warsaw University.

The NATO chief praised Russias constructive role in the Iran nuclear talks and destruction of chemical weapons in Syria.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Last week, the leaders of the so-called Normandy Quartet, comprising Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine held phone talks and confirmed their commitment to implementation of the Minsk agreements on settling the crisis in eastern Ukraine.

Soon after the negotiations, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's press service said that the sides supported deploying an Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) special police mission to Donbass.

The following day, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the parties to the Monday negotiations discussed arming the existing OSCE monitoring mission in Donbass, but not creating a police mission.
The Citizen's Party lists Finland's independence and neutrality, a sensible migration policy as well as a balanced development of the country as its top priorities.

First and foremost, however, the party plans to raise the question of Finland's membership in the EU and the Eurozone, as Vayrynen himself has been a consistent critic of the European Union and an ardent supporter of Finland's financial and military independence.

Earlier this year, Vayrynen argued that Finland had no time to waste and encouraged a prompt withdrawal from the monetary union, which he deemed largely detrimental for Finland's economy.
Turkey, the successor state to the Ottoman Empire, rejects the use of the word "genocide" to describe the mass killing of Armenians during World War One, arguing that any deaths that occurred during the relocation and deportation of Armenians were justified as the Armenians posed a threat due to their supposed sympathies towards Russia.

Delicate Times in German-Turkish Relations

The vote in the Bundestag comes a year after German President Joachim Gauck became the country's highest-ranking official to publicly describe the killing as "genocide," which led to a fierce rebuke from Ankara.

It also comes at a delicate time in German-Turkish relations, with Berlin and the EU looking to Ankara for help to stem the flow of refugees into Europe.

Officials have agreed on a refugee deal, however tensions have risen in recent times over a number of issues amid fears a diplomatic breakdown could see the refugee agreement scrapped.

Germany: 1000 Turks protest against Bundestag's vote on a resolution regarding recognition of the Armenian genocide. pic.twitter.com/ZcdDva3rHj  Dr Partizan (@DrPartizan_) May 28, 2016

While many in Germany support the move to recognize the Armenian genocide, there is also criticism from within, with more than 1,000 people taking to the streets on Saturday (May 28) to protest the Bundestag vote, in an event organized by local Turkish community groups.

Germany has an estimated three million ethnic Turks living in the country, with Turkish activists saying the genocide resolution could have negative consequences "for peaceful coexistence between Germans and Turks here but also in Turkey."

The threat from Turkey is also causing disagreements in the political sphere with Aydan Oezoguz, the government's top official in charge of integration, warning the parliamentary vote is the "wrong path" to take.

"Those who think that such a move would lead automatically to a rehabilitation in Turkey are wrong. Through this vote, that aim would be pushed further away," she said.

Tens of thousands rally outside Turkish Consulate in Los Angeles to mark 101st anniversary of #ArmenianGenocide. pic.twitter.com/FYVPgPAH3n  Armenian Genocide (@Genocideof1915) April 25, 2016

While figures vary, historians estimate that as many as 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman forces between 1915 and 1917.

The governments and parliaments of more than 20 countries, including Russia, Brazil and France, along with 44 American states, have recognized the Armenian genocide as such, however the US federal government, the UK and Israel are among those that do not consider the events to be genocide.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  According to the NOS broadcaster, some 72 percent of schools face questions from parents concerned about terror threats.

According to the survey, several schools cancelled summer trips to European capitals. Those who did not change their mind about the destination amended the itinerary to avoid public places.

The EU law enforcement agency Europol warned earlier in May that Europe could face more terrorist attacks. Last November, Islamist militants killed 130 people in a series of suicide and gun attacks in Paris. Brussels was struck by a terrorist attack in March, which killed 31 people and was linked to the Paris attackers.
Three men have been detained by police in connection with the assaults. The detainees, aged 28 to 31 are asylum seekers from Pakistan , police said, adding that the investigation revealed the men had, alongside several other unidentified perpetrators, surrounded and groped female festival goers.

Europe's refugee crisis has been accompanied by a rising number of sexual assault incidents. A series of sexual attacks on women in the German city of Cologne occurred on New Years Eve, where groups of men of North African origin targeted female revelers. In January, Finnish and Swedish authorities issued warning for women to be wary of sexual attacks, while Vienna's police chief advised women against walking alone.
"To preserve free movement in EU & save #Schengen, we must secure our external borders" https://t.co/6PyjmmHoWZ pic.twitter.com/s0waJKfOwh  ALDE Group (@ALDEgroup) May 30, 2016

The European Commission have now granted extensions to some border controls due to the European migration crisis being deemed a situation of emergency.

Several European think tanks have over the past years warned of the implications of rolling back the Schengen agreement.

Most recently, France Strategie warned that the impact on trade could result in costs of over US$110 million over 10 years. Their report also notes the impact that the re-introduction of internal borders could have on tourism and cross-border commuters. The free travel zone is widely considered to play a major role in the high tourist numbers across the region.

5. #VisaFreeAfrica, Europe receives highest number of tourists globally coz of Schengen free visa, it's a very good precedent to learn from  Nyemazi Bosco (@BoscoNyemazi) May 30, 2016

In 2015, Greece was threatened with expulsion from the Schengen zone amid fears that their own external border controls were not strong enough, leading to an influx of refugees and illegal immigrants entering the zone and traveling to other EU countries.

If the current internal border controls being put in place by the eight Schengen zone members are extended further, it could pose a much wider question over the Schengen zone's existence.

Discussing migration & refugees position, now at #EMIFA16. Free movement & #Schengen draft proposals also on agenda. pic.twitter.com/CVW9M9XwAC  Petros Fassoulas (@PetrosFassoulas) May 27, 2016

However, measures currently being considered by the European Parliament to strengthen external borders could offer light relief to those who fear the Schengen zone is at risk. On Tuesday (31 May), the European Parliament's all-party committee for Home Affairs and Civil Liberties set out its demands for the new European Border and Coast Guard.

MEP Peter Niedermuller, a spokesperson for the Socialists and Democrats group within the European Parliament, said:

"The establishment of the new agency will be a positive step to help in better managing migration to the EU, it is not a 'game-changer' in terms of the overall migration policy as much more remains to be done in terms of the Common European Asylum rules, relocation, resettlement and the beefing up of the European Asylum Support Office (EASO)."

Did you miss press conf by @Pabriks on EU Border & Coast Guard? LIVE REPLAY available  https://t.co/M9vAvVTzhohttps://t.co/KVxys6fgMm  EP Audiovisual (@europarlAV) May 31, 2016

Though whether this may lighten the influx of refugees is unknown. The EU's Migration Commissioner, Dimitris Avramopoulos, stated in early May that despite any extensions to temporary border controls, "the aim is that, by the end of this year, the Schengen zone will be fully normalized."
"Simple mathematics dictate that there needs to be some sort of limit. Otherwise within a few generations there will be several hundred princes and princesses who need an annual salary. Anyone can see that that won't fly."

Graham Smith  of the British campaign for the abolition of the monarchy Republic  told Sputnik:

"The only person that should be receiving a salary is the person doing the job of Head of State, so if they're looking at cutting those people out, I'd say it's too little  but about time  they should all be struck off the funding list entirely."

He went on to say that the sort of action being considered in Denmark should be considered in all countries with monarchies, specifically the United Kingdom, where the cost of "junior royals" also makes up a large chunk of the costs:

"It's about 334 million (US$488 million) a year to fund the British monarchy, and a large part of that is money being spent on junior royals  accommodation, travel, security and all sorts of things which we don't owe them. We should strip it right back to just the Queen, who should be on a salary, and the rest of them should be told to go away and fend for themselves," Smith told Sputnik.

Whilst Danish politicians are still to reach agreement on the future of royal salaries, the public are overwhelmingly in favour of cutting funding for Prince Joachim's four children by a margin of 7:3, according to a Megafon poll for TV2 and Politiken.

Despite concerns over state funded salaries, the Danish Royals  whose family line dates back to the 1600s  enjoy very high approval ratings ranging between 82% and 92%.
"The former Mayor of London is the most preferred candidate to succeed Mr Cameron among Conservatives, among Labour supporters, among Lib-Dems, among Ukip followers and even among the undecided," BMG Research representative Michael Turner said as quoted by Evening Standard outlet.

UK nationals are set to vote on June 23 in a referendum on the country's EU membership, after Prime Minister David Cameron and the leaders of the 27 EU member states agreed in February to grant the United Kingdom a special status within the bloc. The rival campaigns officially started in early April.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The decision to deploy four NATO battalions in Poland and Baltic states has been already made, only technical details are left to discuss, Polish Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz said Tuesday.

"Our conversation confirmed that four combat battalions on a rotating basis, which would represent an important element of NATO's expanded permanent presence in Eastern Europe, would be deployed in Poland, as well as in Baltic states," Macierewicz said during a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, as quoted by the local TVN24 broadcaster.

According to Macierewicz, one of the technical details currently in discussion is a specific location of the battalions deployment. He also noted, that one out of four battalions would be deployed in Poland.
The amendment meant that the tribunal would need a two-thirds majority to take a decision on constitutional matters instead of a simple majority. The minimum number of judges needed to make a decision was also raised from nine to 13, making it more difficult to convene a quorum.

The changes stated that there should be a six-month period before the tribunal can examine a case, rather than two weeks, which critics say allows the government to pass legislation that will go unchallenged for months.

Just met representatives of @Kom_Obr_Dem. We need to bring Europe and #Poland together again & secure rule of law. pic.twitter.com/NP6sqieDrk  Guy Verhofstadt (@GuyVerhofstadt) 24 May 2016

However, Chief Justice Andrzej Rzeplinski ruled that many sections of the law passed in December 2015 were:

"non-compliant with the Polish Constitution. [The law] prevents the honest and proper functioning of the Constitutional Court, by interfering in its independence and separation from other powers, thus violating the principles of the rule of law."

Warsaw Refusal

However, the government in Warsaw said it would ignore the ruling, refusing to publish it. Under the Polish constitution a ruling does not become final until officially published. The Council of Europe's Venice Committee said:

"A solution to the current conflict over the composition of the Constitutional Tribunal must be found."
An unusual protest campaign against NATO expansion took place in Chemnitz on Monday. A group of activists sunk a fake Russian submarine in the city's lake Schlossteich.

The official reasons behind the protest were the US' aggressive foreign policy and NATO's expansion to the East.

"No war against Russia," banners of the activists read.
Though admitting that Warsaw has been receiving financial assistance from the EU, Korwin-Mikke, the founder of the libertarian conservative party KORWiN, said that Poland had lost more than it had gained.

We could live like kings Our economy was growing 8 percent [] before we entered the EU. Now we are down to 1 percent, sometimes 2. These losses are absolutely terrible, he complained, adding that if we had maintained the previous growth rate would have been ahead of Germany.

Janusz Korwin-Mikke insisted that Poland is dying under EU occupation and therefore should leave it.

Moreover, he believes that the the entirety of Europe is dying, people will soon take to the streets and that Europe will plunge into a major crisis before 2018.
The poll, conducted for German tabloid Bild, found that Merkel's Christian Democratic Union party (CDU) and its Bavarian sister group, the Christian Social Union (CSU), would receive 30 percent of the vote if elections were held today.

Meanwhile, support for the grand coalition's junior partner, the Social Democrats (SDP), is sitting at just 19 percent, meaning that overall support for the center-right/center-left grand coalition is under 50 percent for the first time since the 2013 elections.

The slide comes after the two parties won a combined 67 percent of the vote in the last federal election in 2013.
The latest poll by the ITUC covers nine countries with 55 percent global GDP and 45 percent of the world's population, the ITUC believes that this just demonstrates the failure of governments to control corporate greed and corruption.

Prompted by sad collapse of @BHS_UK #SE_Mark @LucyFindlay ponders consequences of corporate greed in her latest blog https://t.co/yf5a4TviQZ  SocialEnterpriseMark (@SE_Mark) April 27, 2016

Countries that the report looks at are Argentina and South Korea. Sixty-three percent of families in Argentina for instance, said they did not have enough money for basic needs. 14 percent of them said that once they had covered the bare necessities they had nothing left.

For South Korea, one in five said they did not have enough money to cover housing, food and electricity.

"The world needs a pay rise. Well set minimum wages that ensure living wages raise the income of workers at the bottom. Investment in infrastructure to create quality jobs, boost aggregate demand and reduce inequality will help kick start the global economy. Governments should implement and enforce the rule of law, so companies pay tax and pay wages on which people can live. And if governments prioritize the dignity of the social protection floor for their people  the basic income and the public services that ensure sustainable and peaceful communities  the endless race to the bottom would stop and we could rebuild economic justice," Sharan Burrow told Sputnik.

However, governments have been lax when it comes to corporations, working in their interests and not supporting the everyday family.

Getting better #Solr search results need not be so painful! The whole enterprise can understand & improve search http://t.co/AgRNTY47ma  Quepid (@quepid_search) September 16, 2015

"Corporate capture where governments act in the interests of big business instead of working families has undermined confidence and trust in governments.

"Austerity policies, pursued in a misguided hope that they will grow economies have done nothing but stripped away workers' rights and eroded wages, working conditions and social security in too many countries. In its wake, inequality has  within and between nations  grown to record levels," Sharan Burrow told Sputnik.

The ITCU believe that reason for this is the increase in corporate greed boils down to the simple fact that companies must start recognizing the power they have for good and bad.

"Multinationals must be held to account for fundamental rights and safety at work across borders. Governments, the ILO and international organizations can make a difference. The debate at the ILO conference this week over global supply chains will be a major test of commitment to the rule of law in the global economy.

"The OECD is now developing a standard on due diligence. If that is successfully negotiated, we'll be calling an all governments to mandate it, so people can prosecute companies where they're failing in that regard," Sharan said.

"Workers and their unions are one of the fundamental checks and balances to the power of big business, but for this to happen, workers' rights to form and join trade unions and collectively bargain should be upheld in law and practice."
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  He elaborated that the Ukrainian army has adopted about 2,000 units of weapons, more than a 1,000 units of small arms and more than 475,000 of missiles and ammunition.

"During 2014-2016 as the result of state tests, 36 latest models of weapons and military equipment were taken into service and supply or permitted to be used under the control," Shostak said, as quoted in the Ukrainian Defense Ministry statement.
Since 2007, Norway has signed agreements providing a total of 640 million kroner (roughly 80 million dollars) to projects the Clinton Foundation operates and thus became one of its biggest contributors, on par with such controversial donors such as Saudi Arabia. Presently, these "gifts" are becoming a significant issue in the US election, as Republican candidate Donald Trump has already attacked the Clinton family on the grounds that it was supposedly financed by foreign governments.

According to Craig Holman of the Public Citizen Foundation, which has been campaigning for greater transparency in the US election campaign, foreign governments are using donations to secure the favor of the Clintons.

"These are influence attempts in their purest form, and the Clinton family seems to be quite open to them," Holman explained in an email to the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Earlier in the day, local media reported that 7,500 were taking part in the demonstrations, which is a lower turnout than the 10,000 protesters CSC had expected.

"We are more than 10,000 [people], we are 12,000. Our signal today is clear, weve had enough," CSC president Luc Hamelinck said, as quoted by the Belga news agency.
The outlet cited government sources alleging that Turkey relaxed the terms of its migrant-for-refugee deal signed with the European Union this spring. The sources claimed that migrants and small boats were seen being unloaded in Turkey's coastal city of Izmir over the weekend.

In March, Brussels and Ankara agreed on a deal, under which Turkey pledged to take back all undocumented migrants that crossed to Europe through Turkey, in return, the bloc pledged to introduce a visa-free regime, as well as to speed up the Turkish EU accession bid.
Tusk told the delegates at the 40th anniversary of the formation of the European People Party:

"Obsessed with the idea of instant and total integration, we failed to notice that ordinary people, the citizens of Europe do not share our Euro-enthusiasm. Today, Euroskepticism, or even Euro-pessimism have become an alternative to those illusions. And increasingly louder are those who question the very principle of a united Europe. The specter of a break-up is haunting Europe and a vision of a federation doesn't seem to me like the best answer to it.

"It is us who today are responsible for confronting reality with all kinds of utopias. A utopia of Europe without nation states, a utopia of Europe without conflicting interests and ambitions, a utopia of Europe imposing its own values on the external world. A utopia of a Euro-Asian unity."
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Turkey and the European Union are using the hotspots and smart borders to select the best cheap labor force from the refugees who flee violence and war in the Middle East to benefit their economies, a Greek member of the European Parliament told Sputnik.

Not only Turkey but also throughout the EU they are seeing the refugees and migrants as cheap labor force, and they are sorting them through mechanisms such as the hotspots, the so-called "smart borders", so they can have those and how many needed for the profitability of the capital. The remaining will be crushed by the EU mechanisms against refugees, Konstantinos Papadakis from the Communist Party of Greece said.

Turkey has repeatedly been accused of the selective approach to the refugees while implementing the refugee swaps stipulated in the EU-Turkish refugee deal. Papadakis said that in the current situation, Turkish bourgeoisie is seeking to wrest the greatest possible exchanges, blackmailing through the control of the refugee flows.
Trade unions in Belgium have been protesting against government attempts to change Belgium's labor laws, with fears the changes could lead to weakened job security and even the introduction of zero-hour contracts.

Tuesday's strikes are not the last planned for Charles Michel's government, with the 1.5 million-member FGTB union calling another general strike on June 24, to combat the Belgian's government's policies of "austerity and labor-market flexibility."

The standstill delivered a fresh blow to Michel, whose government is still under immense pressure following security lapses that led to the Brussels airport terror attacks in March.

Belgian Divides Shown Bare

While almost all trains in Belgium's French-speaking regions were halted, an estimated 50-65 percent of services were still running in the Flemish-speaking parts of Flanders, leading many to highlight the divide between the wealthy north and poorer French-speaking south of the country.

Many Francophones are unhappy with the policies of the center-right/liberal government, which contains a number of Flemish nationalists, with a difference in economic ideology between the predominantly socialist south and Flemish north.

Even the lift at #Marolles seems to be on strike on this dull day in #Brussels #greve31mai pic.twitter.com/yV9wvvsCyv  Meabh (@Brusselsness) May 31, 2016

Flemish Christian Democrat MP Hendrik Bogaert told Le Soir that the strikes had "without a doubt put communitarian peace in danger," amid criticism of both unions and the government.

The dysfunction of Belgium amazes. Today, train strike, tomorrow general strike, unclear what strike on Wednesday. Like UK before Thatcher.  Anders Aslund (@anders_aslund) May 30, 2016

The chaos in Belgium has also been seized upon by Euroskeptics as a weapon to protest against the EU, highlighting the symbolic nature of the anti-austerity protests and division in a country that houses the bloc's main institutions.
However, the section devotes a mere 4 pages to the Remain argument, compared to a whopping 9 pages for Leave.

Senior campaign spokesperson for Scotland's Stronger In campaign, John Edward, told Sputnik:

"It would be slightly less disingenuous if, when BMW and various other much larger employers a couple of months ago said exactly the opposite, the Leave campaign hadn't got all high and mighty and said it's a disgrace that these people are telling their employees and customers what to think, and that they shouldn't be getting involved."

He added: "Tim Martin's views of Brexit are well known and he obviously feels it's appropriate to expect his customers and employees to share his views.

"It's not the way I'd go around working, or the way I think most people would, but I suspect most of them are probably capable of making up their own minds without being influenced by what they read on a beer mat," Edward told Sputnik.

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the beer mats https://t.co/B1OLhtDUNy #EU #wetherspoons pic.twitter.com/HS8mLEfLt5  Left Foot Forward (@LeftFootFwd) May 31, 2016

The UK's Electoral Commission requires any individual or organization spending over US$14,560 during the 10 weeks leading up to the referendum, to become a "registered campaigner."
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Earlier on Tuesday, the European Commission, together with major social media and IT companies  Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft  announced the Code of Conduct on illegal online hate speech. The Code requires that the companies review the majority of hate speech notifications in less than 24 hours and take necessary measures, removing illegal posts.

"The Commission is itching to shut down free speech in the [EU] parliament, trying to stop MEPs from speaking on behalf of their voters," Atkinson said.

There is a delicate balance between fighting hate speech and attacking uncomfortable political views. There have already been attacks on social media, Facebook, "for so-called policing of write-wing posting," Atkinson noted.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  By September 1, Latvia is expected to begin to examine the bill obliging parents to give their children only Latvian names.

"This is a clear violation of international law, in particular the Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. Today, wewill send an appeal to the Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner Nils Muiznieks asking for their public assessment of this document," Sutormina told RIA Novosti.

She added that more than 500,000 Russians currently lived in Latvia.
"It is extremely important for us and it will strengthen our feeling of security and effective security of Poland and Eastern flank," Polish Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz said on Tuesday.

NATO has consistently justified its unprecedented military buildup by citing a "Russian threat." Michael Turner, the US president of the alliances parliamentary assembly, reiterated his concerns on Monday.

"The challenge from Russia is real and serious," he told the assembly. "[It has] left NATO no choice but to consider the prospect of aggressive Russian action against an Alliance member as a potential threat, and to adopt measured, proportionate responses."

While the West has repeatedly cited debunked claims of Moscows involvement in a conflict in Eastern Ukraine, as well as the reunification of Crimea, a decision supported by 96% of the voting population during a referendum, it is NATO that has been prone to aggression.
"We remain committed to letting the Tweets flow," said Karen White, Twitters head of public policy for Europe, in a statement. "However, there is a clear distinction between freedom of expression and conduct that incites violence and hate."

Facebooks Monika Bickert, head of global policy management for the company, stated that, "Theres no place for hate speech," on the social media platform.

"With a global community of 1.6 billion people we work hard to balance giving people the power to express themselves whilst ensuring we provide a respectful environment."

Working in conjunction with the EU, tech companies will rely on the cooperation of civil society organizations to deliver "anti-hate campaigns."

"The internet is a place for free speech, not hate speech," said EU commissioner Vera Jourova.
TEL AVIV (Sputnik)  The proposal, aimed at ending the ArabIsraeli conflict, was adopted by the Arab League in 2002. The Arab nations pledged to normalize relations with Israel after the country withdraws from the territories occupied in 1967.

"The Arab Peace Initiative includes positive elements that can revive constructive negotiations with the Palestinians. We are ready to discuss the adjustments to the initiative with the Arab countries, so that it reflects the dramatic changes that have occurred in the region since 2002, but maintained the agreed goal of the 'two-state solution," Netanyahu told the parliament on Monday.
BAGHDAD (Sputnik)  Last week, Iraqi military and Shiite militia with the support of the international coalition have launched the military operation to liberate the city 40 miles west of Baghdad. On Sunday, according to reports, these forces took control of almost all entrances to Fallujah.

In the next few hours you will see the positive results of the operation of our counter-terrorism units and SWAT teams, as well as our federal police, Rasul said.
Canopus and Thonis-Heracleion were two major port cities that existed in the Nile Delta in the 5th century BC.

Founded by Greek and Macedonian colonists during the 26th dynasty of Egyptian pharaohs, the cities survived the countrys occupation, first by Persians and then by Alexander of Macedons armies before being taken over by Rome during Queen Cleopatras reign.

Then, around 750-800 AD the millennium-old cities were mysteriously submerged several meters into the Mediterranean and their location was lost for centuries before a team of British and French archeologists began large-scale excavations in the Abu Qir Bay in the Nile Delta.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  In December, Turkey deployed about 150 troops and 25 tanks to a base in the Iraqi Nineveh province, without Baghdads approval. Turkey said its troops had entered Iraq to protect Turkish instructors deployed at the base earlier to train local militias, fighting against IS, a terrorist group outlawed in a number of countries worldwide, including Russia.

"We demand that Turkey withdraw its troops from the Iraqi territory where they are located to strengthen the sovereignty of Iraq, according to ex-Prime Minister [Ahmet] Davutoglu. That is a completely unacceptable position, in principle, I believe what the Turks are doing deserves far more public attention by our western partners," Lavrov said.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  On May 22, the Iraqi government deployed at least 20,000 troops to combat extremists in the city Fallujah, which is under control of IS militants and told residents to flee the city ahead of the operation.

"Around 3,700 people (624 families) have fled Falluja[h] over the past week, since the new offensive by Iraqi forces to retake the city began, according to figures provided by authoritiesIraqi forces are helping to transport families escaping the city, and have set up a hotline (195) to provide information to people wanting to leave," the UN's refugee agency statement read.

According to the UNHCR, around 1,300 of the fleeing people remain in a government-run camp Ameriyat al, Fallujah district where UNHCR is operating. Others are staying with relatives or relocated in other state-owned camps.
Kurdish Peshmerga and Shiites Hashd al-Shaab

The two major groups in question are the Kurdish Peshmerga and Shiite Hashd al-Shaab, separated by both their faith and ethnicity, Sunni-Shia and Kurdish-Arab, respectively.

Long have the Kurds desired autonomy or even a full independence from Iraq to form a Kurdish state, comprised of the oil-rich province of Kirkuk. Their goals have been stunted by the Shiite majority Iraqi government, who has denied them any of their claims.

Baghdad though, is currently experiencing a lasting bought of volatility, with several districts having been taken under control by semi-Shiite militias. Recently, they formed large mobs and charged into the green zone, making it as far as the parliament building where they descended into a violent confrontation with deputies from Kurdistan.

In response, the Kurdish Peshmerga was forced to evacuate their elected officials out of the green zone via helicopters. Now, Kurdish MPs are refusing to return to Baghdad, paralyzing parliament.

The Kurds themselves are not without fault. After they captured Bashir from Daesh, they held gladiatorial style fights between their prisoners, with the audience and even social media users giving their opinion on whether the militants should live or die.

Rein of the Caliphate

The current state of affairs is what is know as a water truce, as the deadly threat of Daesh has compelled these diverse groups to band together.

The sheer amount of groups vying for power in Northern Iraq is growing by the day. As Dmitry headed towards, he was greeted by checkpoints manned by either the Federal Iraqi police, Kurdish Peshmerga, Shiite militia, Iraqi army and so on.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Daesh besieged in Fallujah by the Iraqi army smuggles stolen jewelry to its stronghold in Mosul, the Fars News Agency reported Tuesday.

"The ISIL [Daesh] is awfully scared of the soon collapse of its rule in Fallujah. Recent advances of the Iraqi government forces in the region have caused the terrorist group's commanders to decide to move the huge amount of their treasure to the safer region of Mosul," sources were quoted as saying by Fars News Agency.
UNITED NATIONS (Sputnik)  The statement called on all parties in the conflict to allow unhindered movement and protection of civilians, who are attempting to reach safety, as well as access to life-saving assistance.

The United Nations is deeply concerned over the fate of an estimated 8,000 Syrians trapped by fighting around the towns of Marea and Sheikh Issa in northern Aleppo Governorate following advances in the last three days by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [Daesh] into areas controlled by non-state armed groups, the statement said.

Aleppo remains one of the several areas of Syria, where fighting between government and opposition forces has continued despite the Russia-US-brokered ceasefire in place across the country.
Since March 2015, the Saudi-led coalition of mostly Persian Gulf countries have been carrying out airstrikes against the Houthis at Hadi's request.

The latest round of the UN-mediated peace talks between the Yemeni government and the Houthis started in Kuwait on April 21.
Russia was blamed by Syrian opposition activists for the attacks which left 44 people dead.

It is not the first time that Russia has been blamed for attacks it did not carry out.

In September 2015, evidence emerged showing that the "White Helmets," a controversial quasi-humanitarian organization was fabricating evidence of Russia's disastrous involvement in Syria.

The organization had published a photo on its Twitter account, depicting a bleeding girl claiming that the poor child was injured along with a number of civilians during the Russian airstrike launched on September 30.

However, the false claim was immediately exposed: Twitter users discovered that the photo of the wounded girl was actually taken on September 25, 2015, five days ago.

The White Helmets in their haste to point the finger of blame at Moscow managed to tweet about Russia's airstrikes several hours before the Russian Parliament actually authorized the use of the Air Force in Syria.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  Two US soldiers sustained injuries in Iraq and Syria in non-combat operations over the weekend, Department of Defense spokesman Jeff Davis told Sputnik on Tuesday.

"There were two injuries to US service members over the weekend, both by indirect fire. One incident was in Iraq, one in Syria. Both were behind the forward line of troops," Davis said.

A US-led coalition of more than 60 nations has been carrying out airstrikes against Daesh in Syria and Iraq since summer 2014. The terror group is outlawed in the United States and Russia, among many other countries.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  US State Department spokesperson John Kirby said on Tuesday that the US will cooperate with Russia on determining the details of the attack on the hospital in Syrias Idlib province.

We are still looking into what happened in Idilib. We dont have great sense of complete knowledge here of who is responsible, Kirby stated. We are going to continue to work closely inside the cessation of hostilities task force, with the Russians to try to figure out what happened here.
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MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Daesh extremist group, outlawed in a number of countries including Russia, took control of Quaryatayn in August 2015. The Syrian government forces with support of the Russian air group liberated the town in early April 2016.

"The work to restore the Quaryatayn locality's infrastructure continues. A medical station started operating [there]," the center said in the Tuesday's bulletin.

According to the statement, the locals are being provided with water, telephony and power supply system are under reconstruction, as well as the local bakery.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  According to the statement, the extremists keep on attempting to undermine the ceasefire.

"Nusra Front militants continue attacks on the positions of the Syrian armed forces units near the Handrat village in the Aleppo province. All attacks have been repulsed by the government forces and militia detachments," the center said in the Tuesday's bulletin.

The ceasefire in Syria worked out by Russia and the United States took effect on February 27. The cessation of hostilities does not apply to terrorist organizations, such as the Islamic State and the Nusra Front, outlawed in a number of countries worldwide including Russia and the United States.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  KADEX-2016 is a biannual event and has been held since 2010. The fourth exhibition will take place in Kazakhstan's capital Astana and will see over 300 military equipment producers from around the world showcase aircraft and space technologies, army and navy armaments, air defense systems, IT technologies and robotic systems and military equipment utilizing alternative energy sources. A total of 40 Russian companies will attend the event.

"The Zala Aero Group will for the first time take part in the KADEX-2016 exhibition of weapons systems and military equipment, which will take place on June 2-5 in Kazakhstan. Displays of a wide range of unmanned complexes are planned, with both aircraft and helicopter-type vehicles among these," the manufacturer said in a press statement.
The drills will be also held in the Warsaw's district of Zoliborz.

The Warsaw NATO Summit 2016 will take place on July 8-9 at the National stadium, which is capable to include 72,000 people. The members of the alliance are set to discuss increasing military activities on NATO's eastern flank among other issues.
Stephen Hawking has resolved great mysteries, including subjects related to cosmology, general relativity and quantum gravity. The revered British scientist has mastered the conundrum of measuring and studying black holes. But now the generations greatest polymath has turned his attention to more mundane issues, including why in the hell people would want to have Donald Trump as President of the United States.

Hawking, who is physically-disabled and bound to a wheelchair, took exception to the candidates mockery last year of a reporter with a debilitating joint condition, but it is Trumps affronts to science, bordering on fascist anti-intellectualism, that Hawking finds most distasteful.

The physicist openly derided Trumps claims that childhood vaccines, the most important life-saving advance of the past hundred years, are linked to autism or other diseases. Hawking also laughed at Trumps claims that hell bring water to drought-stricken California.
That message has been strengthened by Republican candidate Trump, who has labeled Mexican immigrants as "murderers and rapists," before suggesting that, "some of them are good people, I guess." Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, for her part, has called for the mass deportation of Central American children, to "send a message" to the people of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

For many the message to those outside America who seek a better life seems to be abandon all hope, but, in spite of the danger, people continue to risk their lives.

From October 2015 to March 2016, the US Border Patrol averaged 330 arrests of Central American migrants daily, an increase of 100% over the same period a year earlier, despite the removal of the welcome mat by the Obama Administration. Much like refugees in Europe, those traveling from Central America are designated by the United States as economic migrants, rather than refugees, to avoid providing internationally-mandated protection.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  On May 19, the heads of the Democratic Party, Japanese Communist Party, the Social Democratic Party and the People's Life Party agreed to consider submitting a no-confidence motion against the government over a scheduled consumption tax hike from 8 percent to 10 percent.

Party leaders met again on Monday, deciding to back no-confidence motion action as well as demanding Abe to account for the state of Japan's economy in parliament, The Nikkei newspaper reported.
Moscow has been understandably concerned with NATO " deliberately eroding " the strategic balance of power in Europe, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov put it last week. The bloc's latest steps include an unprecedented military buildup in Eastern and Central Europe, as well as the Baltics.

The so-called European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA) meant to create a missile defense shield over the continent is another worrying trend. The EPAA's second stage has recently been completed when an Aegis Ashore base came online in Romania earlier this month.

#Lavrov: We hope that common sense will eventually prevail within NATO and that our partners will stop building confrontational plans  MFA Russia (@mfa_russia) 25  2016 .

Yet Russia does not intend to "overdramatize" the situation, Lavrov added. "We hope that common sense will eventually prevail within NATO and that our Western partners will stop building confrontational plans arising from their desire to ensure their own security at the expense of others," he noted.

Alksnis is less hopeful. He does not think that the alliance will stop before it achieves its key goal.

"No, they will not calm down. They, let's say, are 'boiling a frog'  they move ahead taking slow and small steps. They have one goal  they want to achieve first strike capability. We are not talking about nuclear weapons, but rather high-precision conventional armaments," the politician noted.
The move marks the first official contact between the two countries on a senior level since relations soured after North Korea pushed ahead with its nuclear program earlier this year.

Tensions over North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs escalated after Pyongyang said on January 6 that it had successfully carried out a hydrogen bomb test and put a satellite into orbit on February 7, violating UN Security Council resolutions and triggering condemnation from the international community in both cases.
Alloush is also a member of Jaysh al-Islam, one of the most powerful factions within the Syrian opposition. Moscow and Damascus have repeatedly opposed the participation of Jaysh al-Islam members in the negotiations.

The group has been accused of attacking the Syrian Army and government facilities as well as of using terrorist tactics. The group has been part of the so-called pro-Western Syrian opposition, backed by the US, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

At first glance, Alloushs departure could be viewed as a positive development for Russia. However, at the moment Moscow is not interested in his resignation, former Russian diplomat Veniamin Popov said.

According to him, Alloush is an infamous person, and this is why his resignation is a positive step. At the same time, it disrupts the course of the peace talks.

"Both Moscow and Washington are interested in the continuation of the negotiations," Popov told Gazeta.ru.

The crisis in the Syrian peace talks began five days after the large-scale offensive on Raqqa, the de-facto capital of Daesh, was launched.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The upcoming visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin to China will be fruitful, with a big package of documents and bilateral agreements expected to be signed, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov told Sputnik Tuesday.

"I am sure that the visit will be extremely fruitful. A big package of bilateral agreements and documents of political nature is being prepared," Morgulov said.

Putin is expected to visit China in June.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  He added that all the issues on which the sides have not reached consensus, are not muted, but rather discussed in order to find a mutually beneficial solution.

"The Russian-Chinese partnership, the best ever, is an excellent example of the intergovernmental relations in 21 century," the foreign minister said at Russian International Affairs Council conference in Moscow.

Lavrov was speaking ahead of Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to China in late June. According to the Russian Foreign Minister, the visit will give a powerful impulse to the strategic partnership between the two countries.
DUBAI (Sputnik)  On Monday, HNC adviser Yahya Aridi told Sputnik that the committee may need no chief negotiator. The comment came after Alloush resigned from the position the previous day over the failure of the peace talks to bring a political settlement in Syria.

"We got no information regarding this," Agha told RIA Novosti.

According to Agha, the committee will discuss the candidates for the post of the new chief negotiator at its next session. The spokesman did not clarify when this session would take place.
"Meetings for the sake of meetings as such do not bring added value to EU-Russia relations," Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius told Politico . "The Kremlin uses meetings to create the impression of business as usual, and usually reports this impression to their own public."

When former Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker was appointed President of the European Commission experts noted that he supported those European countries which stood against Western dominance in the world.

Reaction to Junckers plans to visit Russia rather proves that he is "playing his own game," Kirill Koktysh from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) told the Russian online newspaper Vzglyad.

"On the one hand, there are Junckers personal goal, plans and intensions which are dictated by Europes interests. But it would be premature to say that EU bureaucracy is changing its stance towards Russia," Koktysh said.

Juncker may come to Russia without concrete proposals and a definite goal because the forum in St. Petersburg is not for making decisions; it is a platform for discussions.

"But if Juncker offers something it would be a positive signal because his proposal would reflect collective will of the EU," he said.

"Juncker needs a strategy rather than just playing games. But he needs Europe as a solid political actor, not a half-disintegrated one like it is now," the expert pointed out.

Vasiliy Koltashov, an analyst at the Russian Institute for Globalization Research, underscored that what is most important is what Juncker will say at the forum.
ASTANA (Sputnik)  Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko called Tuesday for strengthening the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) to boost dialogue with the European Union and China.

"Everything I said before is necessary for carrying out dialogue with foreign partners. In order to do that we should form our own developed common market, we should be strong ourselves, strengthen our union  then it will be easier for us to hold dialogue with the European Union and the People's Republic of China," Lukashenko said.

Equal economic conditions for the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) member states have not been created while the internal trade volume is decreasing, Lukashenko said.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Russian aviation did not conduct any operations in the Syrian province of Idlib, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj.-Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Tuesday.

"There were neither military tasks nor airstrikes by Russian aviation in the province of Idlib," Konashenkov said.

"We call for being more critical regarding these "horrors" by a "British tandem" consisting of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Reuters news agency."
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  In 2011, as the civil war broke out in Libya, a multi-state coalition, consisting mostly of NATO members, began a military intervention in the country with the declared aim of establishing an immediate ceasefire. The operation led to the escalation of the conflict in the country and the subsequent killing of the country's long-standing leader, Muammar Gaddafi.

"It was a mistake not because they violated the [UN] Security Council mandate that proposed to close the [Libyan] airspace, not allowing aviation to fly. They [NATO] simply bombed [Libya] flying in that airspace and in the end Gadaffi was violently killed. Whichever way you look at this, this is also a war crime," Lavrov said during a live linkup on kp.ru.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Last week, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which includes the Kurdish People's Defense Units (YPG), supported by Washington started an operation to liberate Daesh-occupied Raqqa from jihadists.

The Syrian leadership said, and the Americans have been informed of this stance, that if the coalition coordinates its operations [in Syria] with the Russian Aerospace Forces, then Syria would not voice protest. They will consider that they [US-led coalition] are our partners in the fight against terrorism, Lavrov said during a live linkup on kp.ru.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  On Monday, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier suggested gradual removal of sanctions against Russia in case of progress in the Minsk process.

"Nobody has brought up the issue [of sanctions removal]. The Russian side has repeatedly said that it had been not us who had imposed sanctions, and it is not us who will lift them," Meshkov told journalists.

According to the Russian diplomat, peace process in Ukraine is stumbling on regular violations of the Minsk agreements by Kiev.
The crisis in relations between Russia and Germany, which has lasted now for two years, was a complete surprise, prominent German politician and chairman of the board of the German-Russian Forum Matthias Platzeck said.

"Relations between our two countries are in a deep crisis, which several years ago couldn't be predicted [] at all," Platzeck said while opening the conference "Potsdam Meetings" in Berlin.

According to the politician, the two countries seemed to "have created a good foundation to make such development impossible."

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier also took part at the conference and noted that Berlin needs to make every effort to maintain relations and dialogue with Moscow.
The ambassador underlined that Palestine dismisses Netanyahu's proposal and sees it as an attempt to demand in exchange a recognition of the Jewish state and to start negotiations without any witnesses.

"I believe it is a big joke from Netanyahu and [Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor] Lieberman who are trying to send a misleading message to the international community. For any format of negotiations, we need the international community as a witness and we need a timetable. First and foremost, we need a clear statement that Israel is willing to stop its settlement policy, as the only way to restart the negotiations," Nofal stressed.

Palestinians seek diplomatic recognition of their independent state on the territories of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, partially occupied by Israel, and the Gaza Strip. Israel has been building settlements on the occupied territories, despite objection from the United Nations.
VIENNA (Sputnik)  In April, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault announced that the ministers of 20 countries would take part in a meeting in Paris to relaunch the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Neither Israeli nor Palestinian officials will be attending the event.

"An official expert meeting is set for June 2 in Paris. The experts will discuss procedures, look into the final declaration that will be discussed at the ministerial level on June 3," Harfi said.

Palestinians seek diplomatic recognition for their independent state on the territories of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which is partially occupied by Israel, and the Gaza Strip. Israel has been building settlements on the occupied territories despite objection from the United Nations.
However, many European say that the deal would place corporate interests above national interests and would ruin small and medium business in Europe. The secrecy of the deal has also been criticized.

Recently, German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel questioned the need for further negotiations with the US on the TTIP. He also criticized Chancellor Angela Merkel for premature steps on the issue.

Thus, German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel has opposed German Chancellor Angela Merkel's "hasty" approach toward the deal.

"This was wrong that in the euphoria of Obama's visit to Germany, the Chancellor said we will be able to conclude negotiations by the end of this year and recently repeated this statement once again," the politician said in an interview with RND.

The negotiations on the TTIP have been underway since July 2013. In addition to the US and the EU, a number of countries are expected to join the initiative, including Canada, Mexico, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Norway and Iceland.

Mikhail Belyaev, senior economist at the Institute of Stock Market and Management, said that the TTIP is an American economic invasion of Europe.

"The terms of the deal are not acceptable for a country trying to preserve its sovereignty. This is the kind of partnership that would justify a US economic invasion in Europe. Its also about politics. American capital will invade in Europe, and access to the European market for US products will be much easier. This is economic aggression," Belyaev told Radio Sputnik.

According to the expert, the US is likely to achieve its goals because the EU lacks capabilities and the political will to oppose the deal.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The vote was broadcast live on the Internet.

Earlier in the day, four opposition parties, including the Democratic Party, the Japanese Communist Party, the Social Democratic Party and the People's Life Party filed a no-confidence resolution against Abe's Cabinet, saying the economic policy, dubbed Abenomics has failed and the prime minister is no longer qualified to rule the government.

One of the economic policy errors is that the consumption tax hike from 8 to 10 percent has been postponed for 2.5 years due to unfavorable economic conditions. The consumption tax hike was one of the main factors, proposed by the ruling coalition, to revive economy.
US leadership has already reversed its approach to Russia, Dr. Josef Braml told Speigel Online. Still, the restrictive measures the West imposed on Moscow following Crimea's reunification with Russia and the outbreak of the Ukrainian civil war will not be removed soon.

"Washington needs to save its face, but the signs [that they will be lifted] are already there. The West is already preparing new lucrative offers like Angela Merkel's recent initiative to create a single economic space from Vancouver to Vladivostok," he said.

For Braml, this is the trend and it will not change, regardless of who becomes the next US president. Sceptics might not be convinced, but the signs that Russia and the US are growing closer to each other are already there. Syria is a fine case in point.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  News broke earlier in the day that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan designated his former ally Gulens movement a terrorist group.

The arrests and detentions were carried out on suspicion of being members and providing financial support to the Gulen movements sympathizers known as the "Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETO)/Parallel State Structure (PDY)," the Turkish Minute online outlet said.

The arrests and detentions were made in Mersin, Siirt, Ankara, Gaziantep, Antalya and other cities and provinces, according to the outlet.
Back in September 2014, just before being appointed as the European top diplomat, Mogherini was the first to say that Russia was no longer a "strategic partner" for Brussels.

The new strategy expected to be unveiled to EU leaders at the 28-29 June summit invokes a new diplomatic "language" towards Moscow.

"The main part of this language is limited engagement with Russia on issues of other interest," an EU diplomat said.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The planned visit of the European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to the St.Petersburg Economic Forum (SPIEF) in June and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeiers softer rhetoric on anti-Russia sanctions show a shift in EU's stance on relations with Moscow, German lawmaker with Die Linke party told Sputnik Tuesday.

There have been different stances on [anti-Russia] sanctions inside the EU member states already before and I think that those who oppose them are growing, Andrej Hunko said.

The scheduled visit of Mr Juncker to St. Petersburg is also indicating that shift. That might be a reason for Steinmeier to soften his position  a step that I welcome but that is still questioned inside the German government. Also in Germany there are significant actors who question the sanctions, which has contributed to the current developments, he added.
"The fact that it has taken the administration more than a year of indiscriminate coalition attacks on civilian areas to take even this first step shows how thoroughly the US has been enabling the Saudi-led war on Yemen," Larison observed. "For the most part, the US is still enabling that war."

Cluster bombs are air-dropped our ground-launched explosive weapons that disperse over a large area and leave smaller bombs behind. If their remnants do not explode on impact, they turn into landmines. Cluster munitions have been banned by a treaty that more than 110 countries singed in 2008, but Saudi Arabia and the US are not among them.

If Washington's decision to stop selling cluster munitions to the oil kingdom is an isolated step, it will change nothing.

"We shouldn't let this small bit of good news make us forget that the US still provides weapons, fuel, and intelligence to assist the Saudis and their allies in wrecking Yemen, and Washington backs the coalition blockade that is starving Yemen to death," the analyst noted.

Amnesty International warned earlier this month that the Saudi-led coalition has essentially turned civilian areas in Yemen into minefields.

Locals "cannot live in safety until contaminated areas in and around their homes and fields are identified and cleared of deadly cluster bomb submunitions and other unexploded ordnance," Senior Crisis Advisor at Amnesty International Lama Fakih asserted.
Commanders for Israel's Security (CIS)  a group of more than 200 retired top level officials from Israel's Defense Forces (IDF), Mossad intelligence service, Shin Bet and Israel Police  criticized the Netanyahu government for "passivity" and "inaction" in solving the longstanding Israeli-Palestinian conflict and presented its own vision on how to settle the smoldering crisis.

The CIS' plan envisages a series of political and security initiatives, aimed at peaceful resolution of the standoff, together with providing economic benefits to Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Furthermore, the CIS recommends that Tel-Aviv should freeze its settlement building initiative and accept the Arab Peace Initiative.

The CIS' report envisions, in particular, that East Jerusalem should become part of a future Palestinian state. The Associated Press (AP) reported that Maj. Gen. (Res.) Amnon Reshef, the Israeli war hero and CIS' chairman, denounced "'the fear mongers' who claim there is currently no Palestinian peace partner or that conditions are not right for negotiations." Reshef underscored that such an argument "should not serve as an excuse for passivity and inaction."
ANKARA (Sputnik)  Bundestag is about to debate the recognition of the 1915 killings of Armenians on the territories controlled by the Ottoman Empire as genocide. On May 20, German lawmakers proposed a resolution condemning the mass killings of Armenians. The parliamentary vote is scheduled for June 2.

Erdogan expressed hope that the Bundestag would demonstrate common sense regarding the resolution, according to a source in the Turkish presidential administration, as quoted by the NTV channel. Erdogan and Merkel also agreed to continue the negotiations on introducing visa free regime for Turkey.

On Monday, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus voiced doubts the the German parliament would adopt the resolution.
SIMFEROPOL (Sputnik)  Muradov noted that the initiative to open the Crimean representative office in Germany came from local politicians and public.

"It must be a tourist and information center created on a voluntary basis, and in this case it should be a German citizen who will provide information on Crimea. We are able to implement that idea," Muradov, who is also Crimea's permanent representative with the Russian president, said at a press conference in Moscow.

In March 2014, Crimea decided to secede from Ukraine and rejoin Russia after more than 96 percent of the local electorate who voted in a referendum on the issue backed the move. Kiev has not recognized the public vote, claiming that the territory was annexed.
SIMFEROPOL (Sputnik)  Earlier in May, the group of lawmakers from Italian regional council of Liguria have introduced a resolution calling for the official recognition of Crimea as a part of Russia and for lifting of anti-Russian sanctions.

"I will definitely put this question in my parliament, although we [The Left Party] have no majority there, but to put this issue in the Parliament means to acquire a platform for discussion," Maurer said to journalists.
The media outlet noted that by launching the "Freedom of Navigation (FON)" program back in 1979 Washington has sought to legitimize its own geopolitical interests around the world.

Closing its eyes to the fact that that the South China Sea had enjoyed decades of peace and commercial prosperity before Washington's meddling into the region's affairs, the US government is aggravating further tensions by "deliberately blurring the distinction between commercial navigation and military operation in the region," the article stressed.

On Friday, Ma Zhaoxu, China's permanent representative to the United Nations, stated that the South China Sea dispute should be resolved diplomatically by the countries concerned, echoing April's joint communique released by the foreign ministers of China, Russia and India.

Much in a similar vein Su Xiaohui, the Deputy Director of the Department for International and Strategic Studies at the China Institute of International Studies, characterized Washington's "Asian Pivot" in his article "Asia-Pacific Rebalance, an unjust strategy that finds little support" published Tuesday by the People's Daily.

The Chinese scholar pointed out that by beefing up its military presence in the Asia-Pacific Washington is undermining the region's stability and triggering concerns among the regional players.
ANKARA (Sputnik)  In 2010, relations between the two countries deteriorated after the Freedom Flotilla incident, when a convoy of six ships, including one under Turkey's flag, tried to approach the Gaza Strip allegedly to deliver humanitarian aid.

The flotilla was blocked and stormed by Israeli forces, resulting in a fight with Muslim activists aboard the ships, in which eight Turkish citizens were killed.

"The thing that we wanted [for the normalization of relations] was apologies. It is done. The compensation is almost completely paid. The third condition was the lifting of the blockade [of Gaza]. There are serious problems with electricity and water supply in Palestine. We have made several proposals to solve them. Things are developing in a positive way, it seems. If we are able to solve these problems, Turkey will build schools, hospitals [in Gaza]," Erdogan said at press conference.
KIEV (Sputnik)  France's Senate will vote on the resolution on the easing of anti-Russia sanctions on June 8. According to French lawmakers, the bill was met with almost unanimous support in the Senate Committee for the European Affairs.

"[The Verkhovna Rada] urges French Senate to prevent the adoption of a resolution that can be seen by the Russian Federation as the weakening of the EU unified position regarding unacceptability and condemnation of Moscow unlawful actions on the international arena," the Ukrainian resolution said.

In April, the National Assembly, France's lower house of parliament, supported a resolution calling to lift the sanctions imposed on Russia.
Turkey wants to improve relations with Russia, but does not understand what kind of first step Moscow expects from Ankara, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.

"I do not understand what kind of first step is being expected from us. We are not a country that is sitting in the defendant's chair. We did not row with Russia. On the contrary, we are the country that wants to develop relations with Russia. We have been friends with Putin, and when one sacrifices such a vast country like Turkey because of a pilot's mistake, or for any other reason, it raises some thoughts. I think we need to make efforts in order to rebuild relations with Russia. I hope that we can overcome this problem as soon as possible," Erdogan said at a press conference.
These new factors are pushing both the sides to reconsider and possibly revise bilateral relations. Here, on one hand, it means a new quality of bilateral relations.

The analyst pointed out that the conference itself is a meeting of experts, so one should not consider statements made at these meetings by experts and specialists, as official.

Nonetheless, judging by what has been heard at the conference, the analyst has highlighted three main directions of cooperation in the sphere of regional security.

According to the analyst, first of all it is important to understand if the Shanghai Cooperation Organization can be reorganized into a regional platform for cooperation in the field of security to include participants apart from the current ones.

Secondly, we see a clear trend in Russia's active attempts to increase its presence in the Asia-Pacific region, which is widely manifested, in particular, in security cooperation, Xin said.
Mullah Mansour has been killed literally within months of being declared the new leader of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Technically he was in charge of operations for at least two years prior to his official succession of Mullah Omar, Taliban founder. Mansour showed his true colors when he declined everyone the burden to worry their pretty little heads about one small detail  Omar died two years ago. The US were quick to react by sending a drone into its very own ally Pakistans airspace to remind the Taliban and Karachi that the Obama administration also has a sense of humor. Joe Rogan, Omid Djalili and John Oliver deliver the funny, while Hasan Abdullah (political analyst and expert on Islamic militancy) shares his professional opinion.
MURMANSK (Sputnik)  Over 70 Russian military facilities on the Arctic Alexandra Land island are due to be put in commission before the end of the year. Several key social and infrastructure objects have been put into operation on the Franz Josef Archipelago island. These include a 36-person amenity building, a diesel power plant, a water treatment plant, a waste disposal site and storage containers, among other facilities.

"Chartered ships have started making regular trips from the ports of Murmansk, Arkhangelsk and Kandalaksha, where an accumulation of cargo deliveries bound for the Arctic is taking place under the supervision of specialists from the Northern Fleet," Serga told reporters.

Russia has been increasing military presence in its Arctic regions. There are plans to build and equip military facilities mainly on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, the Franz Josef Archipelago, the New Siberian archipelago and the Wrangel Island.
According to the newspaper a company employee was bitten by exactly this kind of bloodsucking insect during a 2012 business trip to India.

After returning to Russia the man was diagnosed with malaria. Ten months later he had a complication and received permanent disability.

According to the newspaper, the mans bosses refused to accept the fact that their worker had suffered the tragic accident while being on the job.
STUTTGART (Sputnik)  The minister said he expected the Russian economy to overcome downturn by the end of the second quarter and to resume growth in the third quarter.

"In 2015, the GDP dropped by 3.7 percent, in the first quarter of this year by 1.2 percent and in April by 0.7 percent. We have no final figures for May yet but estimates put the number at about 0.5 percent," Ulyukaev said at a meeting with German businesspeople.

On May 20, Ulyukaev said the Russian economy had been out of recession for some six months.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Russia is prepared to build nuclear research reactors in Belarus and Tanzania, the director general of Russia's state nuclear energy corporation Rosatom, Sergei Kirienko, said Tuesday.

"In the process of preparation for the signing are projects in Belarus and Tanzania," Kirienko said at the ATOMEXPO 2016 forum in Moscow.
ST. PETERSBURG (Sputnik)  Russia's new Project 22220 nuclear-powered icebreaker dubbed "Arktika" will be launched in less than three weeks, United Shipbuilding Corporation President Alexei Rakhmanov said Tuesday.

"The date has not yet been finalized, but this event will take place within the next two or two and a half weeks," Rakhmanov told reporters.

The corporation currently plans to build two more icebreakers of the series, he added.
The research group found out that UAE authorities used malware dubbed "Stealth Falcon" to attack almost 30 targets, including Rori Donaghy, a British journalist working for the Middle East Eye and a founder of the Emirates Center for Human Rights. Donaghy had previously been critical of UAE's human rights record.

A group we call #StealthFalcon has been trying to hack UAE dissidents since 2012. Read our @citizenlab report here: https://t.co/l0JDsv2Q2g  Bill Marczak (@billmarczak) May 30, 2016

Stealth Falcon  rudimentary, but effective spyware  had made their way to journalists and activists by means of "fake personas." In other words, the state hackers sent their targets emails or Tweets with links to documents that purported to contain news, but were actually malware-laden. Citizenlab managed to link several of these "personas" to the UAE's government, although the evidence is  so far  only circumstantial.

The fake identities taken by the hackers varied, being fine-tuned depending on who they were supposed to target. For instance, Donaghy received various malicious tweets and messages from an "Andrew Wright"  a fake profile saying he was as a journalist.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  When asked if Obama agreed with Holders assessment, Earnest told reporters that "the president has had the opportunity to speak on this a number of times", and that "a careful review of his public comments would indicate that he does not"

The documents leaked by Snowden, former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, fostered public debate and changes the United States has made to surveillance practices in the aftermath, Holder told the CNN broadcasters podcast Monday. He served in the Obama administration when the whistleblower shared 1.7 million NSA documents with the US and British press in 2013.

"I would point out that even Mr. Holder pointed out in that interview that hes broken the law, in my view," Earnest said at the daily briefing, adding that Snowden should face due process in the United States.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The White House comments are at odds with an assertion by former US Attorney General Eric Holder, who told CNN on Monday that Snowden had performed a "public service" by exposing US government surveillance, which "raised the debate" on the issue.

"Much of the work to reform these [intelligence collection] programs was being discussed and in some cases was even initiated before anybody had ever heard of Edward Snowden," Earnest stated.

Earnest argued that President Barack Obama was already fully engaged in reforming US data collection practices prior to Snowdens leaks in 2013.
BERLIN (Sputnik)  Almost 350 high-profile experts from the OSCE member countries will gather for the two-day conference, which will focus on preventing violent extremism and radicalization, the organization said in a statement.

The OSCE members are also expected to discuss the creation of information exchange system among the OSCE states on air passengers, allegedly linked to terrorist activities.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere and OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier will open the conference.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  On May 30-31, Moscow hosts a conference called "Russia and China: Taking on New Quality of Bilateral Relations" devoted to the 15th anniversary of the conclusion of the bilateral Treaty of Good-Neighbourliness and Friendly Cooperation.

"Over 150 members of international terrorist organization were killed with the assistance of RATS in 2015, about 1,000 supporters of terrorists were detained, nearly 2,000 units of weapons and improvised explosive devices and over 150,000 units of ammunition were seized," Alimov told journalists at the conference.
In September 2015, President Barack Obama announced a series of new US investments in the Arctic, months after the United States took the chairmanship of the international Arctic Council. The investments included fast-tracking American icebreaker acquisition of new heavy icebreakers between 2020 and 2022.

Saindon noted that the Canadian Coast Guard, which is a special operating agency within the DFO, is responsible for safeguarding movement of vessels through Canadian waters to ensure human safety and the protection of the marine environment.

"The anticipated increases in vessel traffic in the Arctic are of great concern to the Coast Guard in light of the difficulties associated with conducting search and rescue in the region and the vulnerability of the environment and wildlife habitat to vessel traffic and spills and the knock-on implications for people whose well-being is closely tied to that of the environment in which they live," Saidon noted.

Canada signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the US Coast Guard in 2009 which provides for the exchange of information on the design and construction of new vessels, including icebreakers.

Russia has the largest icebreaker fleet, with six nuclear-powered icebreakers, more than 30 ocean-going icebreakers, and over half a dozen under construction. Russia is also developing two new nuclear icebreakers as part of Project 22220, capable of cutting through ice that is 13 feet deep.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Over 880 migrants drowned last week while trying to get from Libya to the European Union by crossing the Mediterranean Sea, according to UN. Frontex said that around 13,800 migrants had been rescued in nearly 90 search and rescue operations last week.

"The situation in Libya as it is right now, when smugglers can operate without any obstacles because of the law enforcement, when the country has several governments at the moment and they dont control the entire area, so as long as the situation in Libya is unstable, I am afraid, people-smugglers will continue doing what they do," Moncure said.

Libya has been in a state of turmoil since 2011, when a civil war broke out in the country and long-standing leader Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown, and the country was contested by two rival governments  the internationally-recognized Council of Deputies based in Tobruk and the Tripoli-based General National Congress.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The aim of UN Security Council economic sanctions imposed on the Pyongyang government was, "Not to bring North Korea to its knees, but to its senses," Russel stated.

"What we are looking for is agreement to negotiate the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, Russel stated in a briefing. "We have a vastly better chance of getting there with China's full cooperation."

Russel also noted that China had been the co-author with the United States in the UN Security Council of some of the toughest economic sanctions that had ever been imposed on North Korea.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The Agency explained the approved sale will include 80 missiles and 15 guidance sections, as well as technical and logistics support services.

"The SM-2 Block IIIB missiles proposed in this purchase will be used for anti-air warfare test firings during Combat Systems Ship Qualification Trials for the Royal Australian Navys three new Air Warfare Destroyers (AWD) currently under construction," the release stated.

Raytheon will be one of the prime contractors for the sale.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  In Berlin, Sajjan will discuss "issues of common interest" with German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, before traveling to the annual IILS event in Singapore, the release explained.

"He will meet with a number of Asia-Pacific security partners and participate in a plenary session entitled Pursuing Common Security Objectives, the release noted.

The IISS, a global think tank, said on its webpage that the upcoming seminar in Singapore will focus on steps needed to meet Asia's complex security challenges and how to manage military competition in the region.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The exercise will take on the islands of Hawaii and southern California, bringing together 45 ships, five submarines and more than 200 aircraft, according to the press release.

"This is the first time that Brazil, Denmark, Germany and Italy are participating in RIMPAC," the Navy stated.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The State Department noted that prior to the visit to Kiev, Berry will travel to Canada on June 1-2 to participate in a conference on LGBTI rights.

"June 7- 8, Special Envoy Berry will visit Kiev, Ukraine, to participate in the countrys Pride Festival and meet with various civil society organizations and government officials," the release stated.

Berry will then visit Bologna, Italy, on June 3-5 to take part in the Sixth European Transgender Council.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The deliveries mainly included flour, food products and sweets for children, according to the bulletin.

Camp for internally displaced persons located in Deir al-Fardis  has received 16 tons of humanitarian aid," the ministry said in a daily bulletin posted on its website.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  ASEAN comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The association was set up on August 8, 1967 to accelerate economic, social and cultural development in the region.

The leaders of ASEAN member countries are expected to attend the Kuala Lumpur forum themed "Shaping the ASEAN Agenda for Inclusion and Growth."
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  Earlier in May, Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation for International Cooperation in Information Security Andrei Krutskikh said that Moscow is calling for regular cybersecurity meetings with Washington, including on the military level.

"At this point in time, there are no plans for the DOD to have discussions with the Russian military regarding cyberspace," Baldanza said on Tuesday.

"In light of Russia's aggressive actions in Ukraine, the DoD put a hold on all military-to-military engagements between the United States and Russia  this includes exercises, bilateral meetings, port visits and planning conferences," Baldanza explained.
"In fact, the central tenet of the OPEC movement  the nationalization of oil and gas resources  is quietly being set aside in favor of partial privatization measures. Even the Saudis  whose resources are gigantic  are planning to sell off a slice of the national company, Saudi Aramco," Paul pointed out.

Memories of OPECs years of maximum profit form artificially-high-priced oil-exports in the 1970s had motivated other nations to open up new supplies and cheaper oil producing technologies that resulted in the current global glut, Paul noted.

"In a sense, OPEC under the rule of the Saudis and the other petro-monarchies has led the way into this low oil price environment that has caused so much of the crisis among oil producers," he recalled.

Now, the fracking movement, deep sea extraction and hazardous drilling were all being squeezed in battles among big players in global energy markets, Paul observed.
Billy Graham Rapid Response Team Chaplains Enter Fort McMurray, Prepare for Return of Residents into Fire-Devastated Community

Contact: Erik Ogren, 704-401-2117, eogren@bgea.org



CHARLOTTE, N.C., May 31, 2016 /Standard Newswire/ -- Crisis-trained chaplains with the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team have deployed to fire-ravaged Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, and are ministering to first responders and utility workers as they endeavor to restore critical functions in the city.



The chaplains will maintain a presence in Fort McMurray as residents begin returning to the area on June 1. Many will be seeing what is left of their homes for the first time since hastily evacuating in the face of the enormous wildfire in early May.



It is reported that the fire has now burned more than 566,000 hectares (more than 1.4 million acres) across the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.



Jack Munday, the international director of the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team, said, "The devastation caused by the Fort McMurray fire has resulted in more suffering than we can imagine. As the residents return, we need to pray for God's hope and comfort as they face intense grief in their loss."

Munday continued, "Our chaplains have been in the area for several days. We will continue to be there to offer emotional and spiritual care to those who have been working long, brutal days to get the city back up and running, and for those who are returning home to find that their whole world has changed."



Billy Graham Rapid Response Team chaplains from Canada and the United States are partnering in the effort. The group has deployed in coordination with Samaritan's Purse, the Christian disaster relief organization also headed by Franklin Graham. Together the two ministries will address the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of those who have been affected.



In addition to the work in Fort McMurray, the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team currently has chaplains in Ecuador (earthquake) and West Monroe, La. (flooding). They recently completed ministry efforts in the Houston, Texas, area (flooding).



For more information on the ministry, including videos, photos, news articles and an interactive map of former and current deployments, visit www.billygraham.org/rrt. Updates can also be found at www.facebook.com/RRTChaplains.



About the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team:

The Billy Graham Rapid Response Team was developed by Franklin Graham and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It has since grown into a nationwide network of chaplains in 48 states who are specifically trained to deal with crisis situations. They have deployed to more than 215 disaster sites, including shootings, floods, hurricanes, wildfires and tornadoes.
Clinton Email Update: Judicial Watch Releases Former Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills Deposition Testimony

Contact: Jill Farrell, Judicial Watch , 202-646-5172WASHINGTON, May 31, 2016 / Standard Newswire / -- Judicial Watch today released the deposition transcript of Cheryl D. Mills, Hillary Clinton's chief of staff throughout her four years as secretary of state. Though instructed by her attorney not to answer several questions, the transcript is available here . Mills was deposed last week as part of the discovery granted to Judicial Watch by U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in response to its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit involving former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's unsecured, non-government email system ( Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-01363)). Last week, Judge Sullivan ordered that all deposition transcripts be made publically available.Mills testimony covered Clinton's use of emails; whether FOIA searches were done of Clinton emails, information about the set-up of the Clinton email server; Mills' communication with Clinton email witness Bryan Pagliano; Mills' involvement in prior Clinton email controversies; and the handling of politically sensitive FOIA responses. Mills' attorneys directed her not to answer many questions.Mills is among seven depositions of former Clinton top aides and State Department officials that Judicial Watch has scheduled over the next four weeks. The next witness is Stephen Mull, the former executive secretary under Clinton. Mull is scheduled to be deposed this Friday, June 3. Former State IT employee Bryan Pagliano is scheduled to testify on Monday, June 6. A State Department official designated by the agency (30(b)(6)) will testify on June 9. Huma Abedin is scheduled to testify on June 28 and top State Department official Patrick Kennedy on June 29.MORE: www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/clinton-email-update-judicial-watch-releases-former-clinton-chief-staff-cheryl-mills-deposition-testimony
Forbes Announces 2016 Congressional Arts Competition Winner

Contact: 202-225-6365



WASHINGTON, May 31, 2016 /Standard Newswire/ -- Congressman J. Randy Forbes is pleased to announce that this year's Congressional Arts Competition winner, representing Virginia's Fourth Congressional District, is Heather Danet. Heather, currently a junior, attends Colonial Heights High School in Colonial Heights, Virginia. Heather chose to create her incredibly detailed piece of art by only using a pencil. Her work depicts a globe, book, and a set of keys.

"Talented high school students from across the district submitted artwork for this year's Congressional Arts Competition," Congressman Forbes said. "It was wonderful to get to see each of their creativity and skill expressed through their art. A special congratulations to Heather for her achievement; we are proud to have your artwork representing the Fourth District in the tunnel to the U.S. Capitol this year."

Heather has been invited to come to D.C. and join Congressman Forbes for an unveiling ceremony and reception in June. Her artwork, along with the other winning pieces from across the country, will be proudly displayed in the Cannon Tunnel, where hundreds of visitors, staffers, and Members of Congress pass through every day as they make their way to the U.S. Capitol.

For more information about the Congressional Arts Competition, please visit Congressman Forbes' website at www.forbes.house.gov/ConstituentServices/artscompetition.htm.
WOODLAND  In the latest sign of growth here, what was formerly Quality Inn has reopened under the Best Western brand and a completed a $1.3 million renovation.

The two-story building, adjacent to Interstate 5, underwent a year-long update of everything from floor to ceiling."

The new owner, Harj Singh Virk of Portland, owns a half dozen Best Westerns throughout the region, including one each in Vancouver and Long Beach (formerly Super 8). Singh Virk purchased the Woodland inn from a family friend, Onkar Dhaliwal, last spring.

We stumbled upon this opportunity.  The town is developing and theres also the casino that is being built just three miles south of us. So you know theres a lot of development ongoing on in the area and it's right next to I-5, Singh Virk, 31, said Friday, referring to the Cowlitz Indian Casino rising at Exit 16 near La Center.

Originally from India and raised in the United States, Singh Virk said hes essentially spent his entire life in the hospitality industry. His parents owned two hotels in Southern Oregon.

I went to hospitality school at my house, he quipped.

"Its a fun industry. Theres never a dull moment. I like meeting people from different regions, from different cultures, and keeping up with the trends and the changes in the business."

After buying the Woodland property, he immediately launched a remodel and brand conversion.

Hotel manager Jessica Sandoz pulled out a thick packet of detailed standards the hotel had to meet before taking the Best Western name. The guidelines include a checklist of instructions for hotel conversion, from repairing cracks in the parking lot to the size of curtain rods in rooms.

The remodel added a new elevator, expanded the breakfast room and fitness center, improved the pool area and redecorated the entire hotel with dark wood, chocolate brown, burnt orange and red colors. Each room has new beds, furniture and televisions, and each has a quartz bathroom sink and new light fixtures, among other changes.

Speakers pipe light jazz into the entry area, where a gas fire burns in front of soft couches. A designer-cut custom marble flooring in geometric sun-burst shapes decorates the front desk area, which is bordered by silver-toned light fixtures.

I hear a lot of people say, I cant believe this isnt a Plus, Sandoz said, referring to the higher-quality hotel that is typically above a regular Best Western. We definitely offer many of the same amenities as the Best Western Plus in Vancouver, such a bigger breakfast area and the same thread count for sheets and towels.

A third-party assessment of the hotel placed it among the top 13 Best Westerns for cleanliness and the top three for Internet speed among the 300 hotels a regional district, Sandoz said.

Since the renovations completion in March, Sandoz said there has been a slight uptick in customers. She expects the 51-room hotel to be even busier during the summer. The renovation allowed her to hire one additional front-desk receptionist and four part-time housekeepers. Overall there are about 12 to 15 employees throughout the year.

Prices rose slightly after the remodel (at least $10 more a night, although prices vary based on season and room size).

The Long Beach location also recently underwent a similar extensive remodel, and the Vancouver location got a less-extensive upgrade, too.

Sandoz and Singh Virk expect business to continue to grow as nearby construction projects come to fruition. The hotel already offers discounts for casino construction workers and is looking ahead to construction of the McMenamins Hotel in Kalama.

I definitely think Vancouvers growth will trickle more into Woodland. Its definitely getting bigger, and I think theres going to be a lot of business, Sandoz said.
Mumbai: With no end in sight to the strike by a section of Air India pilots which entered the 15th day today, the airline management has extended its contingency plan of curtailed operations to 1 June.

"The contingency plan that we have put in place has now been extended to 1 June from 25 May," Air India sources said in Mumbai.

Besides, the bookings are being accepted only for those flights which are being operated under the contingency plan, they said.

Under the plan, which Air India implemented on 16 May following the strike by its over 200 pilots owing allegiance to the now-derecognised Indian Pilots Guild (IPG), the national carrier is operating a bare minimum number of international operations by clubbing flights to destinations in Europe and the US.

Consequently, Air India continued operating a curtailed international schedule, flying seven West-bound flights instead of normal 16 daily flights.

The airline has so far lost more than Rs 250 crore due to the agitation by over 200-odd pilots, who have not been flying for the past 15 days despite the management terminating the services of 100-odd agitating pilots in last two weeks.

The government wants the pilots to first join back duties and then come to the negotiating table to resolve their issues, while the IPG maintains that the management should first take back all sacked pilots, as a pre-condition to end their agitation.

Trying to find a way out to resolve the deadlock, Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh had met leaders of 10 recognised unions of Air India in Delhi on Monday and appealed to them to persuade the IPG to call off their agitation.

PTI
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More than a thousand new power reactors may come up by 2050 as the world looks at alternate power sources to cut on carbon emission, a top official said on Monday. "Share of nuclear power in the global energy balance will be growing. More than a thousand new nuclear reactors may be constructed and commissioned by 2050. This is a very important task as we need to reduce hydrocarbon consumption globally," Agneta Rising, director general of the World Nuclear Association, said at the opening of nuclear power conference Atomexpo 2016 here.

Speaking on the occasion, M.V. Chudakov, deputy director general of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said nuclear energy is becoming popular as an alternate power source. "Despite events like Chernobyl and Fukushima, more and more developing countries are opting for nuclear power plants," he said. Atomexpo International Forum is an exhibition and business platform on nuclear power industry, which has representatives from 55 countries meeting in Moscow. It will conclude on Wednesday.

IANS
Naina Khedekar

Soon after Tim Cook and several other global tech leaders, Satya Nadella was in India, marking his third visit as the Microsoft CEO. He spoke about innovations and creativity to dreaming and creating big at the 'Tech for Good, Ideas for India'event. He also met prominent figures in the country including PM Modi. Here's a quick recap of his visit.

Tech for Good, Ideas for India

Satya Nadella was at the Tech for Good, Ideas for India event wherein his speech had all elements of how together Microsoft and innovations in India can help us move forward. He said how its not about celebrating Microsoft's technology, but the technology that India' creates. Every time I come here, I go back energised. Its infectious to see the creativity here. Its important to dream big and create big, Nadella told the media, after a meeting with Microsoft developers, and entrepreneurs and students. There is no denying that Microsoft is inviting entrepreners to leverge its platform for building onto Microsoft services, and eventually looking at leveraging the talent pool for its own services. A win-win for both.

Quoting Ghalib

This was unexpected, and definitely one of the highlights of Nadella's India visit. He quoted a couplet, Hazaaron khwahishen aisi ke har khwahish pe dam nikle, Bahut niklay mere armaan, lekin phir bhi kam nikle and encouraged youngsters in the audience to be bold and ambitious. I learn something new there are so many layers there My interpretation of that is its not just your dreams being fulfilled, it is your ability to dream that is worth dying for. It is a source of inspiration, he said.

Meeting PM Modi

https://twitter.com/narendramodi/status/737219534877274112

Satya Nadella met PM Modi, yet again. While no details of the discussion were revealed, a tweet by the PM stated 'issues pertaining to the IT sector and enhancing partnership for initiatives like Digital India' were discussed.

Digital India

https://twitter.com/rsprasad/status/737160140399476736

Nadella also met Telecom and IT Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad, who later tweeted stating the meeting discussed Microsoft's participation towards Digital India. However, reports floating on the Internet reveal that the discussion was about linking Skype to Aadhaar card and further bring cloud services for the government sector.
Anirudh Regidi

The average consumer may not really know much about Computex. It is, after all, more of a B2B show than a consumer-centric one like CES. That said, as anyone closely following the tech space will be aware, Computex is the weather-gauge that determines the direction that computing in general and PCs in particular are headed.

What we see at Computex now, well see in the consumer market at least 6 months down the line. Most of the big-name PC manufacturers like Asus, BenQ, Gigabyte, MSI, etc. are all based out of Taiwan. Their factories, research and development wings and even their headquarters are mostly based in Taiwan.

It was at Computex that we saw the push towards IoT and smart home devices, the start of the tablet revolution (everyone who was anyone was building a tablet) and even 3D Printers and POS systems. The last couple of years have been relatively dull, for someone who loves technology that is. In line with the state of the PC industry at the time, all we really saw were iterations on pre-existing PC and laptop designs and ever more smart watches.

Nobody really knew what to do and it showed. Those who could afford to, threw everything and the kitchen sink at their consumers. Those who couldn't just did their best to get by with what they had. Inside sources even surmised that Computex would die out very soon.

This year however, the buzzword is VR (Virtual Reality) and it's injected new life into Computex and the PC market. As usual, everyone whos anyone is already working on getting their finger in the VR pie. To be fair, theres really nothing else to get excited about at the moment.

As far as Taiwan is concerned, VR is the best thing to have happened to the PC industry in a long time. Its an exciting new platform that offers users an experience unlike anything before it. Its also an expensive offering that demands powerful PCs and dedicated hardware and is giving computing the push needed to keep it relevant. For now at least.

A lot of the hardware and platforms unveiled at COMPUTEX this year are about VR. Motherboards, GPUs, powerful PCs, headsets, portable VR-ready PCs, laptops with desktop-grade hardware, theyre all there.

HTC, despite being based out of Taiwan, never really showed up at COMPUTEX before; theyve got a whole booth this year and all they want to talk about is the HTC Vive.

ASUS launched a VR headset of their own, something very much like Samsungs Gear VR. ASUS offering does have leather straps though.

HP and MSI have both announced their own version of a backpack PC for no other purpose than VR and everyone else, ASUS and Gigabyte included, are pushing out VR Ready PCs and laptops. Nvidias got a whole ballroom to itself and all they want to talk about are their 1080 and 1070 GPUs and their unquestionable ability to provide the best VR experience on PC. Did we mention that Qualcomm is also working on a VR-ready GPU?

Computex 2016 is primarily about VR. Whats next year going to be like?
tech2 News Staff

In an interview at the TNW Conference, Reddit CEO, Steve Huffman revealed that the website may be keeping a tab on its user's interests. The statement which was taken lightly initially, now seems to have reached critical levels as the post on Reddit, which reveals the video seems to be gathering plenty of interest.

"We know all of your interests. Not only just your interests you are willing to declare publicly on Facebook  we know your dark secrets, we know everything" said the CEO. The video (embedded below) does in fact make one think twice about whether Reddit is indeed spying on its users.

The Reddit community seems pretty interested as the video post reached the number one spot on the Reddit homepage and even gathered more than 6000 upvotes and 4800 comments.

Although Steve Huffman makes the statement in a sarcastic manner, the topic did grab the attention of many as privacy is not something that users take lightly.

Recently, the Belgian police had asked citizens to shun Facebooks Reactions buttons to protect their privacy, the media reported on Sunday.

In February, five new Reaction buttons were added next to the Like button to allow people to display responses like sad, wow, angry, love and haha.

According to alarabiya.net, police said that Facebook is able to use the tool to tell when people are likely to be in a good mood  and then decide when is the best time to show them ads.
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After disrupting the Smartphone market in India and globally, the internet and technology conglomerate, LeEco is rumored to unveil its next generation of Super products in New Delhi on June 8th. This much-anticipated event reportedly themed as, 2Future is expected to be attended by more than 1500 people including industry veterans, media, fans and influencers.

While speculations around what LeEco will launch at the event are all in the air at the moment, the event invite is suggestive of what users can expect! As per the media invite that has been rolled out by the global internet and ecosystem conglomerate, the event will be centered around the theme, 2Future. This has triggered varied speculations among industry veterans and the media. Some believe that the company is either going to roll out its second, Made for India device after Le 1s Eco or its second generation of Superphones in India.

On the other hand, some industry analysts are of the opinion that given the companys tradition of launch events, LeEco might launch their VR headsets on June 8th. As brands are tapping into the booming virtual reality market, the industry leader LeEco is no exception. It launched the LeVR COOL 1 in December last year and takes the lead in developing wearable tech at disruptive pricing. On the same day when it launched its second generation phones and concept Super Car in Beijing on 20 April 2016, it organized a VR live streaming event in Bangalore where attendees watched the launch event simultaneously through the companys VR headsets. For this upcoming grand launch, it can be expected that the company may have some major announcements around virtual reality.

Some business analysts are also connecting the dots between the upcoming event in New Delhi and the Mumbai event LeEco hosted on May 3, 2016. It is rumored that after bringing alive content partnerships with Eros Now and YuppTV and announcing a new one with Hungama Music in Mumbai, LeEco would now look at scaling things on the content front. LeEco has transformed peoples internet lifestyle globally and the company has time and again reiterated its intentions of replicating its successful ecosystem model in India. Since the company recently launched its first, Made for India Superphone, Le 1s Eco, it can be believed that the June 8th event will be a step ahead in bringing its ecosystem to consumers in India.

Another product that the company will potentially be launching is its Super TV. LeEco has started its TV businesses in 2013 and it has successfully sold out more than 3 million units in 2015. The sales target for 2016 is 6 million units, making LeEco a household name in the smart TV market in China. There is no reason LeEco won't bring this star product into India.

Perhaps it may be even more - something totally unexpected! As per some media experts, the time is ideal for LeEco to target an altogether new segment of users by offering them premium Superphones with high-end specs that are flaunt-worthy. This is because the company has already established itself as a market disruptor in India across price points with its Superphones Le 1s (Sub 15K), Le Max (Sub 40K) and Le 1s Eco (Sub 10K).

The internet major boasts of having a powerful content ecosystem that has one of the world's largest content library. In India, LeEcos unique content ecosystem brings alive the companys partnerships with Eros Now and YuppTV, through its platforms - Levidi and LIVE. The third premium content under LeEco Membership Program will be LeMusic powered by Hungama Music. This gives users access to 2000+ movies (in 10 languages), 100+ live premium TV channels, which will happen soon through an OTA software update. Apart from that, users will get access to *3.5 million songs in 25 languages that will come live in Q3 of 2016. The vast repertoire of content makes Le Super products as consumers favorite.

With a record of bringing path breaking innovations to the country, come June 8th, LeFans can expect another Super announcement from LeEco.

This is a sponsored post.
4 Bangladeshis found guilty of terror financing in Singapore

Four Bangladeshi workers detained in Singapore last month under the Internal Security Act (ISA) were found guilty on Tuesday of financing terrorism, reports the Straits Times. The four are Rahman Mizanur, 31; Miah Rubel, 26; Md Jabath Kysar Haje Norul Islam Sowdagar, 31; and Sohel Hawlader Ismail Hawlader, 29. All pleaded guilty in a court. They were charged last Friday with providing or collecting money to fund terrorist acts in Bangladesh. The four were part of a group of six charged under the Terrorism (Suppression of Financing) Act (TSOFA) - this is the first time the Act has been used for prosecution. Bangladeshi foreign workers detained under ISA arriving at court on May 31 The other two - Zzaman Daulat, 34 and Mamun Leakot Ali, 29 - have denied the charges. A pre-trial conference for them has been set for June 9. Court documents show that the men had clearly defined roles. They were led by Rahman, with Mamun as the group's deputy leader. Miah was in the group's financial council, while Jabath handled the group's media. Zzaman and Sohel were in the group's security and fighter councils respectively. Miah and Jabath were also accused of possessing money for terrorist purposes. Court documents show that Jabath was in possession of $1,360 - this includes a sum of $1,060 that he was handed by Miah last month. In all, the six had contributed sums of $60 to $500 to the cause. The six were among eight men arrested between late March and early last month. Working in the marine and construction industries, they called themselves the Islamic State in Bangladesh (ISB). They were planning attacks back home in hopes of toppling their government. Their goal was to set up an Islamic state in Bangladesh and bring it under the self-declared caliphate of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In the statement of facts presented to the court, Rahman was said to have been radicalised in Bangladesh in April 2015 after meeting with a fellow Bangladeshi man, identified as a Jahangir Alam. The documents also show that Rahman, who came to Singapore to work in December 2015, met Miah, Zzaman and another Bangladeshi, Sohag Ibrahim, 27, in January this year at a HDB void deck in Sembawang, where he convinced them to join ISIS. Sohag was among the group of eight detained under the ISA. The group took shape over subsequent meetings in February and March, and the other members were recruited. The documents also show that the men had discussed "waging an armed jihad", and that they would find and kill non-believers when they returned to Bangladesh. They agreed that money was needed for their campaign, to buy food, firearms and knives, and the group agreed that they would contribute part of their salary to the cause. Prosecution sought a three-week adjournment to prepare submissions for sentencing. The four men are expected to appear in court on June 21. --Dhaka, May 31 (UNB)
BD expects to start direct coastal shipping with Thailand 'soon'

Economic Reporter :

Bangladesh expects to start direct coastal shipping 'soon' with its Bay of Bengal neighbour Thailand to cut short the trade route as well as costs, State Minister for Foreign Affairs Md Shahriar Alam said.

It is two hours flying time between the countries, but shipping takes 15 days to 20 days to reach as it goes via Singapore and now Colombo.

Talks are on to connect the Chittagong Port in the Bay of Bengal with the Ranong Port in the East of the Andaman coast in southwestern Thailand.

The state minster speaking at a panel in the ongoing Bangladesh expo in Bangkok on Tuesday said a Thai team recently visited Chittagong to check the port's infrastructure.

"We're hoping they'll be able to establish the link soon," he said, adding that Bangladesh was focused on establishing all sorts of connectivity with the Southeast Asian community, ASEAN. Thailand is considered as a 'gateway' for that.

Bangladesh also wants to sell its pharmaceutical products, ceramics and diversified jute products in Thailand and take investments for energy, ICT and tourism sectors.

The three-day expo, where Bangladesh showcased businesses, culture and heritage to lure Thailand into taking a fresh look at the country, was the first-of-its-kind initiative in 44 years of diplomatic relations.

The state minister said Bangladesh's current strategy was to boost 'physical connectivity' to Southeast Asia.

"Bangladesh is an aspirant to join the East-West Economic Corridor (EWEC) with a view to connecting trade routes from the Andaman Sea to Thailand to the South China Sea through land route between Thailand, Lao PDR, and Vietnam."

"With sustained and proactive engagement with two of our closet ASEAN neighbours, Myanmar and Thailand, Bangladesh believes it would be a logical next step to create Bangladesh's connectivity to the EWEC," he said.

The state minister said Thailand is Bangladesh's close Bay of Bengal neighbour with whom "we share ancient trading, cultural, religious and linguistic linkages and a common aspiration for regional and global peace, progress and prosperity."

He said it was "critical that the two countries sharing a coast along the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea that will make it possible to establish direct coastal shipping links."

"I am happy to note that the process has begun and I am positive to note that direct shipping connectivity will boost bilateral trade."

Bangladesh Ambassador to Thailand Saida Muna Tasneem supplemented the state minister at the panel and said even in 1200 years ago, there was "active" coastal shipping between the countries.

She said spices, betel leaves and many other products used to come from Bangladesh's Narshingdhi to some of the ports in Thailand.

"We are trying to revive that link using Chittagong port," she said, adding that Thailand is also focusing its Ranong port as a regional port for BIMSTEC grouping, countries along the Bay of Bengal.

"If we can introduce this, then it'll take three days to maximum five days for shipping between the countries from the current time of 15 days to 20 days".
Remembering Tofazzal Hossain Manik Mia

Manik Mia seen talking with a guest at a family function while late Zahur Hossain Chowdhury (sitting), another renowned journalist, keenly following the conversation.

Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque and Dr. M. Abul Kashem Mozumder :

The name Manik Mia is very popular in our country. Manik Mia is a symbol of protest against conspiracy against democracy and palace intrigue. He used to be in the opposition staging movement against nefarious design of the ruling regime. He was associated with Ittefaq, once very popular Bangla daily as the Chief Editor. We remember Manik Mia with a deep sense of respect. He was a person rising to the occasion scathing any act of misgovernance and repression on the part of the government.

Manik Mia was not only journalist . He was politician too. He was born in Bhandaria thana of Pirozpur in 1911. He attended Pirojpur High School upon passing his Entrance Examination and earned his B. A. degree from Barisal Brajamohan College. He started working under Sub-divisional officer of Pirojpur as an assistant. Subsequently he became Barisal's district Public Relation Officer. Manik Mia was an outspoken person. Therefore, he resigned from government job and took up journalism as a profession. He died in June 1 1969. It was a premature death of the great man-an irreparable loss to the country. He was honoured with Ekushey Padak.

Manik Mia played a vital role in the development of Bengali nationalism in 1960s. His editorial 'Rajnoitik Moncho' or 'The political stage' was immensely popular and influential at that time. Most of his journalists were considered pro-Awami League as Manik Miah followed the pattern of Awami League. "The discussion of Jinnah with the student representatives could not bear any fruit but blurred the difference between the student group led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his associates and the student group led by Shah Azizur Rahman. The National leadership resorted to repressive policies in order to crush the Bengali language and put its supporters behind bars." - Md. Abdul Wadud Bhuiyan

So the seed of Bengali nationalism was anchored in the Language Movement. "The Language Movement added a new dimension to politics in Pakistan. It left deep impression on the minds of the younger generation of Bengalis and imbued them with the spirit of Bengali nationalism. The passion of Bengali nationalism which was aroused by the Language Movement shall kindle in the hearts of the Bengalis forever  Perhaps very few people realised then that with the bloodshed in 1952 the new-born state of Pakistan had in fact started to bleed to death." - Rafiqul Islam.

To mention vernacular elites backed by Bengali intelligentsia became proactive in organizing the movement for cultural rights and subsequently the movement for autonomy based on Six Point. Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman directed the movements from the front being a jailed leader. All such movement coalesced to develop a sense of alienation in the clear manifestation of a racial and linguistic nationalism like Bengali nationalism. Imbued with Bengali nationalism we fought Liberation War under the leadership of Babgabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1971 to create a new state of nation.

According to journalist and editor of Shongbad Bozlur Rahman, Awami activists followed his editorial more than any actual decision of a meeting.

Tofazzal Hossain Manik Mia was famous for his powerful pen preparing political write-ups in Bengali. As columnist he was prolific in writtings in Bengali. "He was equally prolific in his English renderings." Abdul Hamid Khan Bhasani and Yar Mohammed Khan contributed largely to the birth of Ittefaq that became a Bengali daily in wider circulation Being deeply entrenced in expansion of Ittefaq all with powerful columns and editorial Manik Mia used his mighty pen as a "weapon of struggle being inspired by patriotism, love for humanity and social responsibility. He was turned into an institution during his lifetime."

Manik Mia was a close companion of Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardi and Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Keeping in close touch with them he fought against military rule, autocracy and stark violation of political rights of the people. So his activism in the movement for democratic rights is clear-cut.

Bangabandhu was his admirer appreciating his intellectual involvement in the mass movements with Eleven Points and Six Point and 1969 upheaval. Six-Point Movement is observed as a milestone in our history of Liberation. On this day srike was called to press home demand for provincial autonomy based on Six and Eleven Points.

East Pakistanis did not feel they had a proportional share of political power and economic benefits within Pakistan. East Pakistan was facing a critical situation after being subjected to continuous discrimination on a regional basis, year after year. As a result, the economists, intelligentsia and the politicians of East Pakistan started to raise questions about this discrimination, giving rise to the historic Six Point Movement.

As Bangabandhu revealed (printed from The New Nation, June 1, 1999 for wider dissemination) :

"Many, perhaps, are not aware of the contribution of Manik Bhai to the country's freedom struggle. On the other hand, it is difficult to express in language how deep was the influence of Manik Bhai on me. We first met in 1943. Since then, we two, like brothers, worked and struggled, together for the rights of the people. In doing so, we could not always be pleased with each other during our long course of movement. But that had momentary effect only. We had one common objective before us where we agreed. And that was independence of Bengal. There was no hesitation or confusion among us that there could be no emancipation of Bengalees without achieving freedom. So we two could work from two fronts despite many odds. I worked in the field while Manik Bhai worked through his sharp writings. Manik Bhai is no more with us in physical terms but his memory remains bright like an eternal flame. It pains me deeply on the occasion of his death to ponder over the hurdles that both of us had to undertake in uniting the opposition in Bangladesh politics. All of us are aware how the then Pakistani rulers and vested quarters had conspired through a blueprint to destory industry, culture, language and literature and tried to pollute everything with the venom of communalism here in this country. Manik Bhai through his writing created awareness among the people of this country against these evil designs. None can forget all these unless one is betrayed by his memories.

Manik Bhai had discharged the difficult task of responsibilities through his writing at the time when there was no right of expression of thoughts and speech for people as well as for projecting ideas and thoughts of the opposition parties in this country. And he had to undergo sufferings in various ways and forms in discharging his responsibilities. It is rare in the world history that a journalist had to go to jail on political reasons so many a time as in the case of Manik Bhai as an editor and for longer period.Manik Bhai had a clear vision about politics. We used to discuss day after day and night after night about the rights of the people. Manik Bhai's love for the people and the country that I found in him, impressed me tremendously. He could have easily realised what the people used to think and want due to his deep love and strong sense of feeling and his writings had those reflections.After Ayub Khan's martial law in 1958, Manik Bhai was detained under martial law regulations.

The charges brought against him had the provision of awarding the highest 14 years of rigorous imprisonment. I was also in jail during that time. I was kept confined in a solitary cell. I was spending difficult days of loneliness there. Suddenly I came to know that Manik Bhai was arrested and kept confined in the room next to mine. We, two brothers, stayed in two rooms side by side in the same jail. But there was no scope of meeting each other. The authorities issued a stern warning that under no circumstances we could meet each other. Despite those orders, we managed to meet each other.

One day during such a meeting, Manik Bhai said the government side requested him to compromise. I asked : what was your answer? Manik Bhai replied : 'Ready to suffer 14 years imprisonment. But there can be no compromise on the question of principle, and that I conveyed'. After a pause he said : 'What lies in fact is that they would continue repression on you as they think people of Bengal repose their confidence in you. So if they can finish you, they can get rid of all problems." Later, he reassured me : "You have nothing to worry. You must succeed.' Many such incidents and pictures crowd in my mind on this sad occasion of his death anniversary. It was in 1962. After a few days of the arrest of beloved leader Shaheed Suhrawardy, we, the two brothers were also sent to jail. But the consolation was that both of us were kept in the same room unlike the previous occasion. So we could talk and that provided us the opportunity of exchanging views. We discussed most of the time about the country and its future. During our conversations, a certain firm determination that I found in him, impressed and influenced me overwhelmingly.

I also felt clearly the deep love and strong confidence he had in me during that time. Many were not aware of it, however. When there was apparently any conflict-like situation between us, some went to Manik Bhai with an ulterior motive to instigate him. And they had to get frustrated. Those who went to Manik Bhai to tell against me with a view to becoming dear to him, Manik Bhai did not hesitate to turn them out of his room. All are aware that I used to be sent to jail frequently during the Ayub regime. As a result, at one stage the situation reached such a pass that many of my friends lost the courage of keeping contacts, even with my family out of fear. But it was Manik Bhai who had the courage to stand by my family in my absence under any circumstance and without any fear. So I used to feel certain about my family during my detention in jail if Manik Bhai had remained outside.For that reason, when I talk about him, many more episodes become vivid in my memory. It was in 1949, I had been in jail for two and half years. Manik Bhai had also bad days as he came from Calcutta after losing almost everything. Both of us were followers of Shaheed Suhrawardy. The authorities were very angry with us. The situation was such that no house-owner in Dhaka would let us any house on rent.

During that time, one day I was produced before the court. Manik Bhai came to the court. He said : 'I had plan to bring out a weekly but resource remains as a constraint.' Manik Bhai was then made Deputy Secretary at the Information Directorate of the Central Government. He had the appointment letter in his pocket. Apparently in an emotionless mood, he said: "Let me go to Karachi. Is it alright." "Would not that disrupt our efforts?" I gave him the reply. Manik Bhai said : "Alright, I shall not go. It's better for me and my family to pull on with a vendor's shop but not to serve under them". The firmness that he had demonstrated on the question of principle could not easily be found.

Many a time, I found the same firmness of Manik Bhai later so far the question of principle is concerned. It was in 1966, the Ayub regime detained me when it failed to face the strong movement built on the Six-Point programme. Manik Bhai also joined me in the jail few days later. He was also detained in the face of Six-Point Movement and the Ittefaq Printing Press also was confiscated. I had to remain behind the bars for long three years since my arrest in 1966. The Agartala case was framed against me. Many may not be aware of the ploy to implicate Manik Bhai in that case.That Manik Bhai is no more with us now, though still I am sceptic about his death. Still I remember the mysterious letter in which he wrote :

"Don't come to Pindi or Karachi. You would be killed." Almost every morning I used to go to Manik Bhai's residence wearing 'Lungi' after leaving the bed and had tea there. On one such occasion, I was having tea and discussing country's political situation. Suddenly Manik Bhai said : "I received a letter from Pindi. There was no mention of the sender. In the letter it was written that you and I should not go to Pindi or Karachi. If we go, we would be killed."

He then laughed and said to himself : "Who would kill me? And Why ? Rather you can be killed if they want." I said : 'What's the urgency of going there ? Can't you avoid going, Manik Bhai?" Manik Bhai said: "Let me go and see what for they summoned me. I'll be back within a couple of days, Insha-Allah." Manik Bhai went. But he returned dead. Whenever I think of Manik Bhai, the mysterious letter comes to my mind very often.

The way Shaheed Shaheb was killed, Manik Bhai was also mysteriously killed the same way by being invited there at the Pindi's Inter-Continental Hotel. Manik Bhai had strong feelings for the soil of Bengal and its nature including its air, water and fruits. He had all the love for the grief-stricken of this country deeply from the core of his heart. And for that he struggled till his death. Bangladesh has become independent today at the cost of supreme sacrifice of three million people. After the demise of Shaheed Shaheb, when everything appeared to be bleak to me, Manik Bhai used to enthuse inspiration and courage in me. If he were alive today in this free country, he could have rendered help in many ways.

The question comes obviously whether the Yahya bahini would have kept him alive. The question comes as because the way intellectuals like Siraj, Shahid (Shahidullah Kaisar) were killed in order to create a void intellectually in a free country, it is doubtful whether Manik Bhai would have been spared.Though Manik Bhai is no more present amidst us but he remains immortal."

He would remain alive all the time to come through his principles and ideals. It would be befitting for us to show honour to his memory if two square meals could be ensured to the people of this country, if democracy could be possibly restored and if people could be protected from injustice and repression. That is why though physically he would not exist, but his ideals and principles would make him immortal. His soul moves from door to door in every home here as Bangladesh is now independent. Manik Mia is thus a journalist with a difference. His Bengali newspaper Ittefaq once was most popular identified with popular hopes and aspirations.

(The writers are Professor of Public Administration, Chittagong University and Member Public Service Commission (PSC) respectively.)
Manik Mia : A legend stalwart of democracy

Sanaullah Noori :

I can hear him till now. He was speaking by the side room. The room was crowded. The talk might be centered on any problem of the country. Or there might be some critical arbitrations or problems to be solved and settled down. The arbitrators and the people in the audience came from different strata in the society. Some of them were famous politicians, law practitioners and pressmen. Some professors, young political leaders and activists were attending the meeting. Beside that some other people of different opinions were present. All came to a man, as if all roads lead to Rome. Almost everyone came to him. Why? Is he an authority of the higher echelon? Did some expect donation or gift from him that they crowded around him? Only answer to these questions is no. He was one of the commoners. He was of us a journalist and an Editor of a newspaper. He had no power to distribute gifts or gains. He had no state power overhead. He had a pen only in his hand. Is the pen powerful than the state power ? We don't know. But we are convinced first that his daring writing had extraordinary attraction. That magnetised the people to come to him. They came to him to get rid of the crisis they faced. They came to be inspired by him. They had faith in him that they would be given the right direction in their hours of crisis.

He had no less conviction and faith in himself. He believed in the invincible power of Democracy. This belief is as much as the light of a lamp, the flame of which remains steady even at the violent storm. He knew that democracy is that sovereign power the source of which remains at the wakeful heart and soul of the people. As one cannot uproot the people in all, likewise the power of democracy cannot be uprooted. It can be kept unworkable due to absolute power of an arrogant despot for the time being. But when time passes, the situation is exploded by the agitated masses and the arrogant despot is smashed asunder. The pride of power of those obdurate elements burn into ashes in that conflagration. Democracy is lighted by its own magnanimity. The unity of the people comes out victorious. This is the law of history, this is its dictum.

I am talking of Tofazzal Hossain Manik Mia. He was confident of this law. He had that firm confidence for which he could stand keeping his head erect and could move against the current. Through his pen he could spread fire. This fire is not his alone. This is the fire of the agitated people of the entire country. This is of the crores of the agitated, bereaved and uprooted people. He was one of them. So he set fire on their behalf. Sometimes he threw gushing hatred and vehement irony over the face of those enemies of democracy as well as of those sycophants of the despotic regime. He found their hoods up and he was bled as they stuck him by their poisonous fangs. Yet he was never cowed down to them. Because he knew it well that their blows would never undo his firm conviction. He knew their unjust poisonous teeth of pride of fascism will be defeated by the invincible power of the people.

In spite of such formidable time he could speak against them firmly. He could speak with self-confidence. His indomitable personality and power of influence drew the people near at him. He never disappointed them. Also he never disappointed the readers of his 'Rajnoitic Moncho' (Political Platform). And herein lies the mystery of his outstanding popularity of the said column. Such popularity is seldom found among the most eminent politicians. It appears to be a matter of envy to many. He narrated the sorry state of the common people in a very simple language. So he got love from the simple common people, this love was great power to him and it was most dependable for his edited paper.

I am speaking about all these from my own experience. It's all for my close contact with him and experience, I express them all in fact. When I look at the dilapidated Ittefaq building, I find my Manik Bhai there till now. He is talking with someone. I hear the sound of his feet outside the room. His profound voice is felt in the air. Looking forward he is walking onward wearing white shirt and pant. He looks pale. But it's clear that his profound self-confidence lighted. His face looks to be a mirror. That mirror reflects the face of the politics of the country. As if the countenance of the entire country is reflected there. The gloomy shades on his face identifies how clouds overwhelmed the nation's fate !

Because he had relation with the nation's destiny. He became restless having seen the ominous fate of the nation. But he won't fear. Everything came clear on his face. Sometimes his hands trembled (in deep sympathy with the suffering of the people) in anger (against the dictators and despots). Those seenes are still reflecting over my eyes.

It was October 1958. We faced a strange experience. A black hairy face drew our attention on our tele-printer at 11.59 hours. with a message inside. Earlier we had no knowledge of Martial Law or military rule. Only we heard of it by name. Now we find the entire subject of military rules on the tele-printer. Meanwhile we heard the sounds of heavy military boots in front of the gate of our office. The military rule takes away human sleep. We are in fear. There's shadow of terror at the wall. Fear overwhelmed everything. Martial law declaration was hooked on the bayonet. Rest of the night we could not sleep. We understood that Martial Law takes away peaceful sleep also. The body shivers with fear. The wall reflects the shade of panic. It's hard to walk away the road. It is understood that panic of military rule thrashed human freedom to speak, to write, and to walk abreast the wall. We closed all the windows of the room, so that sound could not pass through them. The sound of military boots was heard on the floor of the press on the following morning. The declaration of Martial Law censorship was hung on the bayonet head by the ugly-looking large mouthed apparitions. The sword of do's and don'ts were hung over the shoulder. No news will be printed in the newspaper without the permission of the military authorities. Nothing sorts of editorial, news, essays, comments, news scripts, even the news of natural calamity and accidents could be printed without permission. Even the words of politics, democracy, peoples' wants and allegations were prohibited completely. Even articulating or signaling of any sort of news were restricted. Any violation of it would tantamount to long term jail or huge amount of monetary fines. Even the printing press along with the entire property could be confiscated. The agents of the censorship were engaged in the newspaper offices.

Instead of the pen they have their blunt swords. They occupy the seat of the Editor forcibly. They go through editorials, literary essays, poetry, stories, everything as they like and censor many a write-ups. Sometimes the entire editorials are cut by their blunt swords. Their words are law. They reject the write-up if there's any smell of politics or any word contrary to their law. They are the authorities of the newspaper. So helpless are the professional Editors of the newspapers.

No newspaper was allowed to be circulated without their red seal of censorship. There was no way out.

On the other side people were being arrested on any plea of Martial Law violation all over the country. The prison was filled in. Most of the dedicated political leaders were in jail. Many others went underground for they had been sought to arrest warrants. Some of the journalists were thrown in jail. Some were fugitives. Those who were out, kept their mouths shut. But even then Manik Bhai spoke highly. He looked seethe with anger. He told the people of the censorship that one day the Martial Law authorities will have to pay in all respect for destroying the freedom of the Press. He said, the write-ups on the walls would burst upon their heads as the cruel derision of it.

It comes to an event at that time. The Martial Law Administrator General Omrao Khan convened a meeting of the newspaper Editors. The office of the Martial Law Administrator in the Secretariat was a heavily guarded and well protected area. There the meeting was to be held. Military personnel were guarding strictly outside the gate. Many a star marked military officers crowded therein. All Editors of the newspapers took their front seats. In their midst Manik Bhai took his seat. He was the focal point as the Chief of all. Being the representative of the Editor of another paper I went there. Omrao Khan talked about the Martial Law censorship. Gravely he dictated how to run the newspapers under the military rule. All Editors heard him silently. None spoke then. One or two of them looked at the face of Manik Bhai. Afterwards we heard his stern voice. Omrao Khan looked on his face. High ranking military officers looked stiff at him. Unequivocally said Manik Bhai, "If the people of censorship take over the responsibility of the newspaper, the newspaper cannot run. They have censored an innocent news by their blunt pen. The journalists are responsible people. They know what to write and how much to write. If someone takes over it all the time, there's no effective and meaningful result of newspaper publication."

We all were wondered. In such grave environment within the military circumvent how could he dare to say so firmly ? Omrao Khan also became no less stunt. His associates also became no less wondered. So silently General Omrao Khan heard the Editor of the Ittefaq. Afterwards he said, "I shall see into the matter."

After a few days he was bound to lessen the restriction of censorship to some extent. On that day I found on the face of Manik Bhai a brilliant gleam. He had that brilliant face I found in him till the end of his life.

Translated by M.Mizanur Rahman
UK Education Open Day in city on June 4

Campus Report :



The British Council Bangladesh is going to organise a UK Education Open Day on 4 June at the British Council in the city. Thirteen education agencies trained by the British Council will participate in the event to provide information to visitors on more than 100 higher education institutions in the UK.

In addition to obtaining information on higher education in the UK, students visiting the event will be able to get their academic documents checked on the spot by the trained agents at the event. The participating agents include BSB Global Network, Center for Foreign Studies (CFS), Cubic Education, Education Excellence, H&S Education Services, IECC: Bangladesh, Karim & Karim Consultants, MACES, MIM Study Abroad, N&N International Education Consultancy Ltd., Overseas Study Counselling Ltd, Pinnacle Counselling Centre and RSL Education Counselling.

Students interested to attend the event are encouraged to bring photocopies of academic documents. The event will be open for all from 11am to 4pm with options to pre-register or register on the spot.

UK courses give the skills, qualifications and connections the students need to succeed in their chosen career. Plus, UK degrees have a global reputation for quality and employers worldwide recognise a UK degree as a sign of high academic standards.

Every year, the British Council organises Open Days to inform interested students looking for a higher education experience in the UK. Two UK Open Days have been held recently at Sylhet and Chittagong.
Minor boy killed in road accident

A five-years old boy was killed in a road accident in Khejurtal area under Patenga Thana in city on Monday. The deceased was identified as Mohammad Momin, 5, son of Surjo Mia, hailed from Netrokona district.

Police said Momin was critically injured when a Tomtom, an electric-run tree-wheeler, knocked him as he was crossing the road in the area that afternoon. The wounded minor was brought to Chittagong Medical College Hospital (CMCH) immediately where attending doctors declared him dead, said Nayek Mohammad Hamid of CMCH police outpost.


How Trump would weaken America

Joseph S. Nye, Jr. :

Donald Trump, the Republican Party's presumptive US presidential nominee, has expressed deep skepticism about the value of America's alliances. His is a very nineteenth-century view of the world.

Back then, the United States followed George Washington's advice to avoid "entangling alliances" and pursued the Monroe Doctrine, which focused on US interests in the Western Hemisphere. Lacking a large standing army (and with a navy that in the 1870s was smaller than Chile's), the US played a minor role in the nineteenth-century global balance of power.

That changed decisively with America's entry into World War I, when Woodrow Wilson broke with tradition and sent US troops to fight in Europe. Moreover, he proposed a League of Nations to organize collective security on a global basis.

But, after the Senate rejected US membership in the League in 1919, the troops stayed home and America "returned to normal." Though it was now a major global actor, the US became virulently isolationist. Its absence of alliances in the 1930s set the stage for a disastrous decade marked by economic depression, genocide, and another world war.

Ominously, Trump's most detailed speech on foreign policy suggests that he takes his inspiration from precisely this period of isolation and "America First" sentiment. Such sentiment has always been a current in US politics, but it has remained out of the mainstream since the end of World War II for good reason: It hinders, rather than advances, peace and prosperity at home and abroad.

The turn away from isolation and the beginning of the "American century" in world politics was marked by President Harry Truman's decisions after WWII, which led to permanent alliances and a military presence abroad. The US invested heavily in the Marshall Plan in 1948, created NATO in 1949, and led a United Nations coalition that fought in Korea in 1950. In 1960, President Dwight Eisenhower signed a security treaty with Japan. American troops remain in Europe, Japan, and Korea to this day.

While the US has had bitter partisan differences over disastrous interventions in developing countries such as Vietnam and Iraq, there is a bedrock of consensus on its alliance system - and not just among those who make and think about foreign policy. Opinion polls show popular majorities in support of NATO and the US-Japan alliance. Nonetheless, for the first time in 70 years, a major US presidential candidate is calling this consensus into question.

Alliances not only reinforce US power; they also maintain geopolitical stability - for example, by slowing the dangerous proliferation of nuclear weapons. While US presidents and defense secretaries have sometimes complained about its allies' low levels of defense spending, they have always understood that alliances are best viewed as stabilizing commitments - like friendships, not real-estate transactions.

Unlike the constantly shifting alliances of convenience that characterized the nineteenth century, modern American alliances have sustained a relatively predictable international order. In some cases, such as Japan, host-country support even makes it cheaper to station troops overseas than in the US.

And yet Trump extols the virtues of unpredictability - a potentially useful tactic when bargaining with enemies, but a disastrous approach to reassuring friends. Americans often complain about free riders, without recognizing that the US has been the one steering the bus.

It is not impossible that a new challenger - say, Europe, Russia, India, Brazil, or China - surpasses the US in the coming decades and takes the wheel. But it is not likely, either. Among the features that distinguish the US from "the dominant great powers of the past," according to the distinguished British strategist Lawrence Freedman, is that "American power is based on alliances rather than colonies." Alliances are assets; colonies are liabilities.

A narrative of American decline is likely to be inaccurate and misleading. More important, it holds dangerous policy implications if it encourages countries like Russia to engage in adventurous policies, China to be more assertive with its neighbors, or the US to overreact out of fear. America has many problems, but it is not in absolute decline, and it is likely to remain more powerful than any single state for the foreseeable future.

The real problem for the US is not that it will be overtaken by China or another contender, but that a rise in the power resources of many others - both states and non-state actors - will pose new obstacles to global governance. The real challenge will be entropy - the inability to get work done.

Weakening America's alliances, the likely result of Trump's policies, is hardly the way to "make America great again." America will face an increasing number of new transnational issues that require it to exercise power with others as much as over others. And, in a world of growing complexity, the most connected states are the most powerful. As Anne-Marie Slaughter has put it, "diplomacy is social capital; it depends on the density and reach of a nation's diplomatic contacts."

The US, according to Australia's Lowy Institute, tops the ranking of countries by number of embassies, consulates, and missions. The US has some 60 treaty allies; China has few. The Economist magazine estimates that of the world's 150 largest countries, nearly 100 lean toward the US, while 21 lean against it.

Contrary to claims that the "Chinese century" is at hand, we have not entered a post-American world. The US remains central to the workings of the global balance of power, and to the provision of global public goods.

But American preeminence in military, economic, and soft-power terms will not look like it once did. The US share of the world economy will fall, and its ability to wield influence and organize action will become increasingly constrained. More than ever, America's ability to sustain the credibility of its alliances as well as establish new networks will be central to its global success.



(Joseph S. Nye, Jr., a former US assistant secretary of defense and chairman of the US National Intelligence Council, is University Professor at Harvard University).

Courtesy: Project Syndicate


Sundarbans robber gang surrenders to RAB

Ten members of infamous robber gang Master Bahini including its ring-leader surrendered along with 52 firearms and 5000 rounds of bullets to RAB in presence of Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal (not seen in the picture) at Mongla Jetty in Bagerhat on T

UNB, Bagerhat :Ten members of infamous robber gang 'Master Bahini', including its ringleader, surrendered to Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) in presence of Home Minister Asaduzzamna Khan in Mongla here on Tuesday.All the robbers formally surrendered with 52 firearms and 5,000 rounds of bullets around 3 pm, said commanding officer of RAB-8 Lt Col Md Faridul Alam. The 10 gang members are Mostafa Sheikh alias Kader Master, 46, ringleader of the robber gang, Mohammad Sultan Khan, 58, Mohammad Sohagh Akon 37, Mohammad Fazlu Sheikh, 35, Mohammad Solaiman Sheikh, 28, Mohammad Shahin Sheikh, 28, and Mohammad Sumon Sarker, 34, Harun, 24, Arif Sardar, 22 and Asadul Islam Kokil, 27.Additional director general of RAB Anwar Latif Khan, commanding officer of RAB-8 Lt Col Md Faridul Alam, commanding officer of Khulna-6 RAB Khandaker Rafiqul Islam and Deputy Inspector General of Khulna range Mohammad Maniruzzaman were present on the occasion. The Minister said the government will provide all out support to those robbers who surrendered before RAB and the law enforcing agencies will continue their drives in the Sundarbans. Earlier, the robber gang was scheduled to surrender on Sunday. However, the formal surrender was postponed as the Home Minister could not attend the programme due to inclement weather.Mostafa hailing from Mongla upazila in Bagerhat district formed the gang 'Master Bahini' several years ago. They used to attack trawlers of fishermen, golpata and wood cutters and honey collectors and abduct fishermen for ransom in deep forests of the Sundarbans.
Aslam on fresh 7-day remand

Court Correspondent :

The Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) Court of Dhaka on Tuesday placed BNP Joint Secretary General Aslam Chowdhury on a seven-day remand afresh under Section 54 of the Criminal Procedure Code in a case filed over his alleged anti-government activities.

Magistrate M Golam Nabi passed the order after hearing on the remand plea of Detective Branch (DB) Inspector Fazlur Rahman, who is also the Investigation Officer of the case. The police produced Aslam Chowdhury in the court on Tuesday with a plea of 10-day remand to interrogate him about the incident.

On May 26, DB Inspector Golam Rabbani filed the sedition case with Gulshan Police Station against BNP leader Aslam Chowdhury. Meanwhile, Md Masudur Rahman, Deputy Commissioner, DMP (Mass Media and Public Relations), told newsmen that earlier, they got permission from the Home Ministry to file the sedition case and it was filed under Sections 120(B), 121(3) and 124(A) of the Penal Code.

Besides, Magistrates Golam Nabi and Mohammad Mazharul Islam fixed June 6 for hearing on remand pleas against Aslam in two sabotage cases filed with Motijheel and Lalbagh Police Stations of the city for his alleged involvement in arson attacks.

Plainclothes police arrested Aslam from Kuril Biswa Road of the capital on May 15 within hours of imposition of a travel ban on him for his alleged conspiracy against Bangladesh government with Israeli spy agency Mossad.

However, Aslam denied any conspiracy against the government although he reportedly admitted to meeting Israel's Likud Party leader Mendi N Safadi at a tea party in India.


Indian army ammo depot fire kills 17 soldiers

AFP :

The massive blaze broke out overnight at the high security army facility stockpiling tonnes of bombs, grenades and other ammunition outside the city of Pulgaon in central India.

Thousands of families living in nearby towns and villages have been evacuated from surrounding areas in the western state of Maharashtra, amid fears of secondary explosions at the depot.

"Seventeen people have died. Nineteen are injured but are out of danger," Smita Patil, superintendent of Wardha district police, told AFP by phone from the scene.

"An operation is in progress and the fire has been brought under control," Patil added.

Two officers were among the 17 soldiers killed, according to the Press Trust of India news agency, and an investigation was underway into the cause of the blaze.

PTI reported that the other 15 were members of India's Defence Security Corps, whose personnel provide security at defence sites.

India's military has a history of fires and other accidents that have been blamed on lax safety standards.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said there has been a "great loss of lives and property" at the massive depot without giving details.

Firefighters using 10 engines worked through the night to contain the blaze which broke out at 1:30 am (2100 GMT Monday), Ramesh Barde, a fire officer from the nearby city of Nagpur, told AFP. "The fire was brought under control by 6:15 am. The situation is under control and a report is being prepared," he said from the scene.

The depot is one of the largest in India, providing ammunition for the army, navy and air force, Colonel Danveer Singh, an associate editor an Indian Defence Review magazine, told AFP. The sheer size of the depot means trains are used to transport ammunition on kilometres of railways lines around its grounds, defence expert Brigadier Sandeep Bhalla told NDTV.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was "pained by loss of lives", adding on Twitter that his "thoughts are with the bereaved families".

The accident was the latest to hit the Indian armed forces in recent years and the largest since August 2013 when submarine INS Sindhurakshak burst into flames in Mumbai, sinking the vessel and leaving 18 sailors dead.

In February 2014 a fire aboard a nuclear submarine also killed two officers off the Mumbai coast.

In 2007, in the northern region of Indian Kashmir, a fire wrecked an ammunition dump, exploding artillery shells and mortar rounds, which rained down on surrounding villages. At least 17 people were killed and two dozen injured.

A fire also ripped through one of the army's largest ammunition depots in 2010 in Kolkata, destroying 150 tonnes of explosives and ammunition. But no one was killed in the accident. Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar was on his way to the accident site, around 700 kilometres (435 miles) east of Mumbai while Indian army chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag was also expected to visit.
Big haul of forex at HSIA: One held

Staff Reporter :

Customs officials have detained a person with a large haul of foreign currencies worth around Tk 50 crore at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport (HSIA) on Tuesday.

Of the amount 10,300 is Qatar Riyal, 2,400 Jordan Dinar, 7,950 Oman Riyal, 1,250 Bahrain Dinar, 49,700 UAE Dirham, and 3,850 Kuwaiti Dinar.

The detainee has been identified as Nizamul Haque Farayezi, 35, from Feni district, Customs official said.

Dr Moinul Khan, Director General of Customs Intelligence and Investigation Directorate, said "A team of Customs officials conducted a drive in the airport area following information and arrested Nizamul when he was boarding a plane of Qatar Airways to go to Dubai around 2.00am."

Nizamul was handed over to Airport Police after he was shown arrested in a case, the DG said.

He was being interrogated in this connection, he said.


Manik Mia`s 47th death anniv today

Staff Reporter :Different political and socio-cultural organisations will observe the 47th death anniversary of the legendary journalist and founder-editor of the Daily Ittefaq Tofazzal Hossain Manik Mia in a befitting manner today (Wednesday).Leaders and workers of different organisations, groups, individuals, family members, journalists and employees of The New Nation (Robbar Publications Limited) will visit the Mazar of Manik Mia at Azimpur Graveyard in the morning to pay homage by placing wreaths and offering Fateha there.Journalists and employees of Robbar Publications Limited will also hold a Milad and Doa mahfil in the Ittefaq Bhaban after Zoh'r prayer. Manik Mia Foundation will also hold a discussion meeting on Manik Mia's eventful life at the Ittefaq Bhaban at 1 R.K. Mission Road, Dhaka around 3pm today.Prominent lawyer and politician Dr Kamal Hossain will attend the discussion as the chief guest. President of Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) Advocate Yusuf Hossain Humayun, teachers of Dhaka University Prof Dr Abul Kashem Fazlul Haque, Syed Anwar Husain, Prof Golam Rahman, veteran journalists Kamal Lohani and Amanullah will remain present at the programme as panel discussants.The discussion will be conducted by Syed Tosharaf Ali, Secretary General of Manik Mia Foundation.
HSIA loader slaughtered

Staff Reporter :Unidentified assailants slaughtered an airport loader, Abdul Barek, 37, son of Siddique Miah, in the city's Dakshinkhan area on Tuesday. He was posted at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport, Dhaka.Sources said that, the killers left his body in a solitary place after slaughtering him near the Nipa Garments at Dakshinkhan Bazzar. On receipt of the information, the Officer-in-Charge of the Dakshinkhan Police Station reached the spot and recovered the body.
Last year, Iran blocked Telegram and many other social networks after their founders refused to help Iranian authorities to spy on their citizens.Now it looks like Iranian government wants tighter controls on all foreign messaging and social media apps operating in the country that will give the authorities a wider ability to monitor and censor its people.All foreign messaging and social media apps operating in Iran have one year to move 'data and activity' associated with Iranian citizens onto servers in Iran, Reuters reported In order to comply with the new regulations, the companies would need to set up data centers in Iran within one year, but apps may lose a larger number of users by moving data onto Iranian servers.However, transferring data to Iran servers might not be enough, as some of the most popular messaging services like WhatsApp Apple iMessage , and Telegram are offering end-to-end encrypted communication i.e. nobody in between, not even WhatsApp can read the content of your messages.Just two weeks back Iranian authorities arrested eight women with involvement in online "un-Islamic" modeling photographs without wearing the compulsory headscarf, and their Instagram page has been shut down, along with Facebook pages and business websites." @Mehrdxd said in a tweet.
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP)  Gov. John Bel Edwards and Attorney General Jeff Landry are clashing over how to handle millions in BP settlement money from the massive Gulf oil spill, the latest skirmish between the statewide elected officials.

The issue, which had been the subject of quiet dispute and a flurry of letter-writing over the last month, spilled into public view at a recent Senate budget hearing, with the two sides describing a stalemate that also dragged in Treasurer John Kennedy.

At one point, Landry asserted a $200 million settlement payment that lawmakers slated to help balance this year's budget should be held by Kennedy's office in escrow pending his clearance.

In a May 4 letter from Landry to Kennedy, the attorney general described himself as the "constitutional and legal officer" for the state and told the treasurer to "hold any funds wired from BP in escrow in the Treasury pending further instructions from me."

The treasurer has decided against complying with that request, and he said he won't hold up the $200 million since lawmakers clearly decided how that should be spent. However, Kennedy has asked state lawmakers to intervene and settle the disagreement over how another $32 million should be handled.

"We're all adults here, and we need to sit down and resolve this. To me it's just clear that the Legislature has the final say," said Kennedy, a Republican.

The oil spill money is among a variety of financial and legal issues over which the Democratic governor and Republican attorney general have been at odds since both men took office in January.

Louisiana recently received a $20 million payment for fees and costs from the oil spill litigation. The state is expected to shortly receive $19 million for natural resource damage assessment costs.

Millions more will be coming in annually. State and federal laws govern much of the $6.8 billion the state is expected to receive from BP PLC for the 2010 oil spill. Most of the money is required to be set aside for coastal restoration projects and environmental rehabilitation.

But there are gray areas about some of the pots of money, like the $20 million payment for legal expense reimbursement.

The Edwards administration said Landry's office was owed $5 million for documented legal expenses tied to the case. The treasury was owed a $16.6 million repayment for a loan from state reserves used to reimburse prior legal expenses for the attorney general's office, a loan the Edwards administration  through its coastal agency  is on the hook for repaying.

But both Edwards' coastal office and Landry's office sent requests to Kennedy for the full $20 million.

In a May 8 letter to Kennedy, the governor's executive counsel Matthew Block said it appeared the attorney general's office wanted to be overpaid for costs from the spill litigation.

"This request by the Attorney General is asking for the same money twice," Block wrote.

Kennedy determined that lawmakers earlier had earmarked $7 million to the attorney general and sent the money, more than the $3.4 million the Edwards administration wanted to provide.

Lawmakers agreed they wanted the $7 million to reach Landry's office, but even that drew complaints from senators that Kennedy didn't move the money as they specified through Edwards' coastal office.

Now, Kennedy wants guidance on what he should do with the remaining $13 million and the $19 million payment coming in early June, after his office couldn't broker an agreement between Edwards and Landry.

"Those parties have not been able to resolve their strong disagreement over these funds and have submitted competing letters and instructions to the Treasury over the last several weeks," Kennedy wrote to legislative leaders.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Eric LaFleur, D-Ville Platte, expects lawmakers will make their intentions for the money clear in the remaining days of the current legislative session.
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.
President Joe Biden has decided to ban Russian oil imports, toughening the toll on Russia's economy in retaliation for its invasion of Ukraine. The United States generally imports about 100,000 barrels a day from Russia, only about 5% of Russia's crude oil exports, according to Rystad Energy. Last year, roughly 8% of U.S. imports of oil and petroleum products came from Russia. Gas prices have been rising for weeks due to the conflict and in anticipation of potential sanctions on the Russian energy sector. The U.S. national average for a gallon of gasoline soared 45 cents a gallon in the past week and topped $4.06 on Monday, according to auto club AAA. Should the US ban Russian oil imports over Ukraine war?

You voted:
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  Lovely Varughese has finally received part of what she has been looking for from the city of Carbondale.

On Friday, during a meeting with city officials, Varughese received all the police records regarding her sons death investigation.

Pravin Varughese went missing the night of Feb. 12-13, 2014. Officials learned he took a ride from a person  later identified as Gaege Bethune of West Frankfort  when an altercation took place. Varughese got out of vehicle and ran into a wooded area near Buffalo Wild Wings where his body was found five days later.

Since his death, the Varughese family has tried several avenues to obtain information, including Freedom of Information Act Requests and lawsuits, only to be rejected because of the pending investigation.

Varughese assumed Friday that she and her husband were only going to have a conversation and did not expect to receive any records.

Not in a million years that I thought I would get the reports, she said.

The meeting included Mayor Mike Henry, Interim City Manager Gary Williams, Police Chief Jeff Grubbs and Lt. Mark Goddard.

Varughese said city officials were very respectful and actually listened to what she had to say.

That is all I am asking for, she said. I was able to get my frustrations out.

Henry said Tuesday that the meeting had been set with the Varughese family for two weeks prior, but the city only got the go-ahead to release the documents at 10:30 a.m. Friday morning. The meeting with the Varugheses was set for 1 p.m.

He said the city has wanted to release the records to the family, but had to wait on permission from the Illinois State Appellate Court, because of the open investigation.

Once the police department got the green light, Henry said Grubbs turned his entire records staff on to copying and making records for the family. He said the family also received digital records.

We were really excited to be able to give this to them, he said. We have been wanting to try and find some peace for that family.

Varughese said she isnt going to release the documents to the public until after the States Attorney Appellate Prosecutor's office releases a report.

She didnt comment about what exactly was in the documents, but did say that she has a clearer picture about how the police handled the investigation.

Until now, I had no clue what was going on, she said. I didnt know how many investigators were on the case and where they went. It gives me peace that they were doing things.

"Right now, I couldn't be more peaceful with the reports in my hand."
CARBONDALE  While some were excited to enjoy their Monday away from work and others were ready to spend the extended weekend that is often call the unofficial weekend to summer, there were hundreds of people gathered at Woodlawn Cemetery Monday morning to take place in a local ceremony that has been happening in Carbondale for 150 years.

Carbondale has been rumored to be one of the first northern sites to host a Memorial Day ceremony  actually called Decoration Day  before General John A. Logan read General Order No. 11 declaring Memorial Day as a national holiday.

The program kicked off with Carbondale resident and Ceremonial Bugler Calvin Scott as he called soldiers to assemble. Then, Carbondale Mayor Mike Henry served as the master of ceremonies for the event.

The keynote speaker for the event was U.S. Congressman Mike Bost, R-Murphysboro.

Bost, a former marine, said individuals often forget the significance of the weekend and just launch themselves into kicking off their summer.

They run off with the activities associated with the weekend and they unfortunately, quite often forget what it is that this day is all about, he said.

He said it is to honor the men and women who have fallen during battle.

Bost said Southern Illinois has the to ability to know that one of the men who was critical in establishing the holiday comes from a town just to the west in Murphysboro.

He gave a brief history about the holiday in Southern Illinois and then reminded the crowd that the General Order No. 11 established the holiday that people celebrate today.

So many people have shed blood, loss their lives  so many families have given up loved ones, Bost said. The fear of the people and John A. Logan is that people would forget, and by putting together this day where they recognize and remember those who served, it is so vitally important that we dont forget.
MARION  Wayne Hurley had a Memorial Day to remember.

Although Memorial Day is usually a day to remember those soldiers who had fallen, this was a chance to honor a veteran who should have been given a few medals, but said he never got them.

Monday, Congressman Mike Bost presented Hurley with the War World II medal, the Philippine Liberation medal and the Republic Philippines Presidential Unit Citation Badge.

The Congressman also presented the former Navy Veteran with an American Flag and a certificate saying the flag was flown in Hurleys honor on May 19.

The event took place at the River to River Assisted Living Facility in Marion. The ceremony happened at the Anchor, the organizations memory-care center.

Hurley didnt have much to say to the crowd, but he did thank everybody for coming to the event, and reminded them to stick together.

When we come together as one and fight as one, we usually make it back, he said.

Sherry Hamlin, CEO of River to River, said the reason for the celebration started when Deborah Hogg with Hospice of Southern Illinois spoke with Hurleys family and discovered he didnt receive his medals for his service during World War II. After learning of this, she reached out to Bost and his office, and worked to make the presentation happen.

Hurleys Daughter Randi Price said everything started as a simple sentence that he didnt get his medals.

I am so proud to see that people still care, Price said.

Hamlin said Monday that it was a wonderful way to celebrate Memorial Day.

To honor those who have fallen and those who have served our country, she said. But to think about that we get to honor those who are still with us, thats amazing.

There arent many War World II vets among us, and today we get to celebrate Mr. Hurley.

Representative John Bradley, D-Marion, was schedule to be in attendance, but due to the House Legislature being in session, Jim Kirkpatrick made a few remarks on his behalf.

Kirkpatrick spoke of those veterans who left their families to serve their country, and then they came back and started a career. He said no matter how successful those veterans were after returning home, what they did in serving the country should not be forgotten.

Their efforts should not be forgotten and their work continues today, he said. As we deal with future crisis in Afghanistan and Iraq, we have future veterans that will be honored as days go by.

Marion Mayor Bob Butler also was in attendance and made a few comments about how history has proven that there will come a time where each generation will have to step up and defend the country and protect residents freedoms.

To those veterans, I commend you all on your service and I wish you all a long and pleasant retirement, he said. Also, I want to give thanks and gratitude to those who paid the ultimate sacrifice.

River to River Administrator Ashley Harlow said Hurley was the first resident at the memory care facility.

He turned this place from a brick-and-mortar facility into a home. We would be nowhere without Wayne and his family, Harlow said. We do this because we have a passion for it. We want to honor Wayne and all of our residents.
A Chicago man was arrested in Marion Monday after he led officers on a high-speed chase that crossed into Illinois from Missouri, Williamson County Sheriff Bennie Vick announced Tuesday.

Erik Peoples, 29, is being held on charges of aggravated fleeing or eluding a police officer, driving while license suspended, and other traffic offenses.

At about 1:33 p.m. Monday, the sheriffs office said it learned of the pursuit that started in Missouri. After crossing into Illinois, the vehicle continued through Union and Johnson Counties when a Williamson County deputy noticed the vehicle and attempted to stop it. Peoples exited onto Illinois 13 in Marion. He speed to Russell Street, made a U-turn, and returned to Interstate 57, reaching speeds of in excess of 120 miles per hour, the sheriff said.

Peoples then exited at Johnston City, and deputies lost sight of him. A resident in the area called 911 to report a vehicle had been abandoned in his or her yard, and another resident reported a man who matched the description of the driver offered her cash if she would drive him from the area. This caller said the male ran into a nearby wooded area when she refused, authorities said.

The sheriff's office said Peoples was quickly found by a Williamson County canine unit in the woods and arrested.

-- Dustin Duncan
CHESTER  Jurors on Tuesday found former suburban Chicago police officer Drew Peterson guilty of trying to hire someone to kill the prosecutor who helped to convict him in the killing of his third wife.

Peterson was convicted of trying to hire a fellow inmate's uncle while in prison to kill Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow, who helped convict Peterson in 2012 of killing ex-wife Kathleen Savio eight years earlier. Prosecutors say Peterson believed that with Glasgow dead, he could win an appeal of his conviction

The jury deliberated for about an hour before finding Peterson guilty of solicitation of murder for hire and solicitation of murder. Peterson, 62, is serving a 38-year sentence in Savio's death and faces up to 60 more years in prison.

While the verdict was read, Peterson sat and listened with his head resting on his left hand.

Several jurors declined to comment.

During closing arguments Tuesday, prosecutors said prison recordings of Peterson speaking with a fellow inmate prove he wanted Glasgow killed.

"It's the defendant's own words that prove him guilty beyond reasonable doubt," said Steve Nate of the Illinois attorney general's office, which assisted Randolph County prosecutors with the case.

Peterson's fellow inmate, Antonio "Beast" Smith, wore a wiretap for prosecutors, and jurors heard hours of Smith's recorded conversations with Peterson at Menard Correctional Center in November 2014. Smith testified last week that Peterson enlisted him to help kill Glasgow.

Nate pointed to a specific section of secret recordings in which Smith tells Peterson that he gave his uncle the go-ahead to kill Glasgow.

"OK, all right, I'm in," Peterson, a former Bolingbrook police sergeant, responded. "From the first time we talked about it, there was no turning back."

Peterson's defense lawyer, Lucas Liefer, told jurors his client never explicitly says in the recordings that he wanted Glasgow killed. Liefer called Smith unreliable and said Smith asked for a shortened prison term in exchange for help with the Peterson case.

"This case is wrought with inconsistency and incomplete evidence," Liefer said.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said in a statement after the verdict was read that "the evidence was clear that the defendant plotted from jail to solicit the murder" of Glasgow.

Glasgow issued a statement saying that rather than accept responsibility for killing Savio and serve his sentence, Peterson broke the law again.

"Today a jury once again has held him accountable for his unlawful actions," he said.

Savio's death was initially deemed accidental. Glasgow reopened the case after the 2007 disappearance of Stacy Peterson, Peterson's 23-year-old fourth wife. Peterson was never charged in her disappearance but told the informant he worried that Glasgow would eventually do so.

As Peterson left the courtroom Tuesday, he glanced at and said something unintelligible to Stacy Peterson's sister, Cassandra Cales, the Chicago Tribune reported.
As someone who believes that excessive partisanship and Balkanization is poisoning our politics, I have tried to view Hillary Clinton as something other than the ghoul she is portrayed as in conservative circles. No accusation against her is considered too outlandish to gain assent in some precincts of the right: Vince Foster was murdered. Clinton covered up a cocaine smuggling operation in Arkansas. She assassinated Kathleen Willey's cat.

It seems a waste of effort to conjure lurid theories about Hillary Clinton, when the truth is thoroughly, totally damning. Of course, all politicians shade the truth to some degree, and we're not electing a pastor, and all that -- but as a voter, one likes to believe that candidates are at least operating broadly within the same moral universe as the rest of us. She isn't -- and neither is Donald Trump.

As the new report from the State Department's inspector general hammers home, Clinton endangered U.S. secrets and then repeatedly lied about it. "Everything I did was permitted," she has claimed. Actually, while serving as secretary of state, the department sent out an advisory over her signature to all State Department employees warning them against transacting public business on private emails. Not clear if the dateline of that cable was Chappaqua, NY...

Clinton has maintained that classified material was never discussed on her bathroom server system. In March 2015, Clinton said, "I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email." But the State Department itself has declined to release 22 Clinton emails, because they were deemed secret. Having been trapped in a lie, Clinton has attempted to cloud the issue by criticizing the over-classification that afflicts government departments. Maybe it does, but even matters that are not strictly top secret are sensitive when you are the secretary of state.

This is where we enter the different moral universe. Of the more than 300 million Americans, how many would be casual to the point of reckless about national security information falling into the hands of our enemies?

I worked in the White House for Ronald Reagan and recall with special intensity the protocols that governed handling secret materials. This was before the email age. Classified documents were paper. They were kept in a safe. They did not leave the grounds. You were careful to the point of reverence about classified materials. It was a high honor to be entrusted with them.

Clinton couldn't be bothered to trouble herself about security. Why? Who knows? Perhaps she didn't want Freedom of Information Act requests to reveal that she was selling valuable American policies in return for contributions to the Clinton Foundation, as alleged in "Clinton Cash." Perhaps she feared congressional investigators would comb through her records in search of damaging revelations that would harm her political chances (yes, the irony here is rich). Whatever the reason, she has demonstrated utter contempt for the American people by endangering national security. When caught, she stares straight into your face and lies. When old lies are exposed, she concocts new lies without shame.

Donald Trump has not yet had the opportunity to endanger American security. So far, he has merely been able to cause tremors of panic among American allies and among those Americans who blanche at the thought of such an unstable, emotionally stunted man with access to the nuclear codes. But he lies with as much or greater fluency than she. Trump deceives not just about petty matters -- his polling numbers, how many books he's sold, whether his vodka or steak brand is still in business -- but about serious matters as well. Thousands of American Muslims were not celebrating in the streets on 9/11. Ford did not cancel plans for a factory in Mexico in response to criticism from Trump. Trump did not oppose the Iraq War pre-invasion. We are not "losing" $500 billion a year in trade with China. Our trade deficit with China was $365 billion last year, and it's not "losing" -- we are buying products. Wisconsin's "real" unemployment rate is not anywhere close to 20 percent.

American primary voters have left us with this excruciating choice. Both candidates fail to clear even the lowest bar of basic political/personal decency, far less offer anything approaching responsible leadership.

With such a choice looming, and with 6 in 10 voters expressing disgust with both candidates, an independent run by Mitt Romney would be a lifeline. One could praise Romney in many ways, but I give you the times: Romney is not a corrupt, despicable liar. If, in democracies, people get the government they deserve, at least let there be a fighting chance for integrity.
"You can't always get what you want." - The Rolling Stones

A few words in defense of pragmatism.

That ideal has taken quite a beating lately, mostly at the hands of Bernie Sanders and his supporters. The Vermont senator faces a virtually impossible deficit in his battle with Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. Pragmatism would seem to suggest it's time for him to pack it in.

But pragmatism don't know Bernie. Or Bernie Nation.

If this weren't clear before, it has been made abundantly so in the last two weeks, beginning with Sanders supporters in Las Vegas tearing open the Nevada Democratic convention in a protest so angrily chaotic it was shut down by security, fearing violence. But Sanders supporters weren't done yet; they also sent death threats to party officials.

The proximate cause of this Trumpish behavior was a dispute over rules, a claim that, as Sanders' campaign manager put it, the convention had been "hijacked" to award more delegates to Hillary Clinton. Politico rated that false.

Not that this has made much difference to Sanders, now locked in a battle with the party he ostensibly seeks to lead. His denunciation of the convention chaos was as tepid and belated as Donald Trump at his worst. He has blasted the party for being, as he sees it, in the pocket of the rich, and specifically denounced Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. In a Monday interview, Sanders told the Associated Press that this summer's convention could be "messy," though he later insisted that was not a tacit suggestion of violence.

Given the intensity of the emotions at play and the behavior of his supporters in Vegas, it's hard to see how it could have been anything but. Which is disappointing. A few days ago, Sanders' campaign seemed headed for an honorable legacy. But he has apparently decided instead upon a legacy of peevishness and sore losing, which is, as Frank Bruni noted a few weeks back in The New York Times, a hallmark of this political epoch.

Look: There is something to be said, under certain circumstances, for fighting to the last breath. Under certain circumstances, it is noble to stand one's ground, come what may. Under certain circumstances, it might even be heroic to soldier on past the point of defeat.

These are not those circumstances. Trump awaits. And every second the left spends arguing with itself is a gift to the presumptive Republican nominee.

Let's not get it twisted. For all that some people now seek to normalize him and his campaign, for all that they fool themselves into thinking he wouldn't be so bad, for all that a party once appalled to find him its leader now coalesces behind him, Trump is still what he's always been: a tire fire in an expensive suit.

Yes, Clinton is, putting it mildly, a flawed candidate, stiff at the lectern, shameless in her pandering and disliked for reasons both substantive (she sometimes seems to have only a nodding relationship with truth) and not. (Since when is it a sin -- or a surprise -- for a politician to be ambitious?) But she's also intelligent and experienced. And compared to Trump, she's a plate of Lincoln with a side of FDR.

As such, she might make a good president, might be a middling president, might even be a bad president, but at a minimum, she would be a president unlikely to hand out nuclear weapons like party favors or require customs agents to ask would-be visitors, "Are you now or have you ever been a Muslim?"

Clinton is, in other words, a good, pragmatic choice. And no, that's not an inspiring battle cry.

But a reality show buffoon unburdened by knowledge, decency or dignity is closing in on the White House. We should probably take a little inspiration from that.
DENMARK  Denmark-Olar Elementary School recently honored Voorhees College President Dr. Cleveland L. Sellers Jr. for being an inspirational and motivating guest speaker during a Black History Month program.

Sellers stressed the importance of striving for the best in life. He also encouraged the audience to take full advantage of their education and seek leadership positions in their communities.

During the program, Sellers shared his experiences in the civil rights movement and how he fought against injustice.

Sellers also spoke about the 1968 event known as the Orangeburg Massacre, when three students were killed as South Carolina Highway Patrol officers fired shots into a crowd of students protesting the whites only policy of All-Star Bowling on Russell Street.

Sellers noted that he was the only individual sentenced to jail as a result of this incident.

Having formed a bond with icons such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Fannie Lou Hamer during the civil rights era, Dr. Sellers was the best person to share the history of the struggle for freedom with us, said Black History Month committee member and special education teacher Dianna E. Richburg.

Denmark-Olar Elementary School wanted to present the award to Sellers, who is retiring from Voorhees College on June 30, as a way for the school to show its appreciation for his commitment to education and contribution to black history.
Thirty McDonalds employees who graduated from high school and college were honored Wednesday for their academic achievements.

Owner/Operations Manager Lisa D. Main held a dinner at Orangeburg Country Club last week to celebrate the students accomplishments and encourage them to continue with their education.

I want the community to see these kids, that theyre not just hamburger flippers, Main said. Working and going to school at the same time, its not an easy thing.

Main says she wants the students to realize how important their education is.

To inspire the employees to continue pursuing higher education, Main read aloud the Dr. Seuss book Oh, the Places Youll Go! saying it is one of those books that help as youre going through a transition in life.

After the reading, every graduate was given their own copy of the book from their general managers.

Demetrius Reliford, who is graduating from Voorhees College, says he found it great that Main chose the right one to tie into her theme.

It was one of the greatest opportunities to sit down with the owners, Reliford said. They gave great advice.

It was very thoughtful of them, graduating high school senior Jonathan Isaac said. He said Mains being the owner of multiple McDonalds stores and taking the time to hold an event like that was huge for him.

Isaac graduated from Orangeburg-Wilkinson High School and plans to attend the University of South Carolina in Columbia to major in computer engineering.

Main, along with her husband Emory Main, own and operate 14 South Carolina McDonalds locations from Charleston to Columbia and from Walterboro to Manning.

Emory Main was a business partner with Dewall Waters until Waters retirement. Upon his retirement, Lisa Main took over Waters position, becoming partners with her husband.

Shes a people-person, Emory Main said of his wife. We sell hamburgers but were in the people business.

Main said she wants the students to know that they have someone to turn to if they need help finding a college.

The McDonalds Corporation offers scholarships to its employees with certain eligibility requirements.

McDonalds is dying to give this money away, Main said.

Main says she looks for ways to show her employees that she appreciates their hard work.

This is the first time that Ive been one of the operators in the business, she said. Because she is now in a position to do so, she said she felt it was important to show her appreciation.

This is the first year for the banquet. When asked if she plans to make it an annual event, Main said, Absolutely!
It has been 35 years since Ronald Reagans first inaugural speech as president  the one in which he said, In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. Over that time, hostility toward government seems only to have grown, led by politicians and embraced by millions of Americans.

I find this troubling. Not because those agencies  or the government as a whole  are faultless, but because I dont see how a democratic society and market economy can function without an effective government.

In fact, Id argue that limited government is more often part of the solution than it is a problem. It funds core functions  such as infrastructure, the court system, and national security  that allow the private sector to flourish. It sustains national parks, interstate highways, the air traffic control system and other services that make this a vibrant society. It strives to protect Americans from hazardous food and drugs, unsafe workplaces, and toxic polluters. It has played a key role in asserting fairness for minorities, women and the most vulnerable people in our society.

This is not to say that government does not overreach, or that it always performs as it should. On occasion, its leaders make poor and misguided decisions; its legislators, however well intentioned, create wasteful and unneeded programs.

But were not going to do away with government. Instead, we have to make the sometimes comfortable, sometimes uneasy co-existence of the market and the government work.

So its crucial for our political leaders to find the right balance. To establish in clear terms where government should and should not be active. To test what works and what does not and then pursue the former and shut down the latter. To wring duplication out of the bureaucracy and rigorously pursue efficient, effective, and accountable government. To ensure tough, fair enforcement of the law. And to recognize that their focus on policy needs to be balanced by a focus on effective management and implementation of programs.

As a politician, you can always get applause for quoting the old line, That government is best which governs least. But list what government does that affects peoples everyday lives, and youll see members of that same audience nod their heads in agreement. Its the balance between limited government and the private sector that its our job constantly to assess, debate, and get right.
The month of May is typically associated with spring, graduations, new beginnings and endless possibilities. However, in this season of renewal and looking forward, we are also reminded that for many of our neighbors, May is nothing extraordinary. For those who live in poverty, May is just like any other month; it is a daily struggle to survive.

May is also recognized nationwide as Community Action Month, so it is fitting that we at OCAB Community Action Agency Inc. join with other members of Americas poverty-fighting network to reflect on the continuing plight of the poor in our communities. Moreover, as OCAB gears up to observe the 50th anniversary of its founding in August, May is also an opportunity to celebrate the success stories  the individuals, families and communities that are helped every day through programs provided by the community action partnership.

In the OCAB service area comprising Orangeburg, Calhoun, Allendale and Bamberg counties, the 2014 American Community Survey (U.S. Census Bureau) estimates that just under 30 percent of the 131,969 residents of all ages live at or below the poverty level on average  almost twice as high as the nationwide percentage of 15.5 percent, and better than 1-1/2 times more than the rate for the State of South Carolina, at 17.88 percent.

By county, the figures range from a high of 40 percent in Allendale County to a low of 20 percent in Calhoun County, with Bamberg and Orangeburg Counties in the middle. These figures are even more alarming when we look at how the federal government defines poverty.

In 2016, for example, a household of two that receives income of $16,020 or less per year is living in poverty. For a household of four, the poverty income threshold is $24,300 per year, a mere $2,025 per month.

For many, it may be hard to imagine meeting a familys needs on such meager financial support, but while some are eligible for other government programs that provide subsidies for food, medical care, housing, and other needs, the harsh reality is that more than 31,000 people in our service area do so out of necessity every day.

They are men and women, children and adults of all ages and all ethnicities. They are married and single, both working and unemployed, college graduates and high school dropouts. They are homeowners and renters. Some do not have indoor plumbing, and some are homeless.

In short, they are people just like you and me, who want to provide for their families, enjoy meaningful, well-paying work, educate themselves and their children, access affordable, quality health care, eat nutritious meals, live in safe, secure and energy-efficient homes and neighborhoods, and contribute to the overall betterment of our community.

Unfortunately, for most, a combination of social and economic factors such as the lack of jobs, job skills, education, training and work experience (especially for youth); the already high and rising costs of health care, energy, food, housing, and other essential services; the lack of transportation; recession; business and plant closures; natural disasters, and other circumstances place them at the bottom rows of the income tables.

But there is hope. And that is where Community Action steps in, as it has been doing since former President Lyndon Johnson declared the War on Poverty in 1964. For 52 years, the Community Action Partnership agencies, also known as CAPs, have advocated for those who dont have a voice. Community Action has provided much-needed services and opportunities to millions of individuals and families with low incomes in 99 percent of Americas counties. Community Action leverages programs, services, public/private resources, volunteers, board members and experienced staff to impact the communities where we live and work.

OCAB Community Action Agency was established in 1966 to wage the war on poverty by promoting self-sufficiency for those of limited income, and ensuring that all residents are able to live in dignity; by implementing innovative and cost-effective programs to improve the lives and living conditions of the impoverished; by providing support and instruction for everyone in need of assistance; and by contributing to the development of an entire discipline in early childhood development and education through the Head Start Program.

Community Action Month is a great time to honor and celebrate the impact Community Action has in the lives of families and communities locally and across the country. Agencies are successful every day in helping families achieve economic security. Given that the needs of each family and community are unique, Community Action is able to use a range of resources and programs to meet local needs in creative and impactful ways.

OCABs record of service underscores the positive impact of Community Action in the four-county service area. The agency helps countless individuals improve their lives each year by providing them essential services and life-changing opportunities through Head Start and Early Head Start, Senior Companions, Teen Pregnancy Prevention, Weatherization Assistance, Community and Emergency Services, Home Energy Assistance programs, and more.

Despite experiencing budget cuts, shrinking resources, and increased demands for services during these challenging economic times, OCAB has been remarkably successful assisting unserved and underserved residents in the area with opportunities to achieve and maintain economic security. Our staff is committed to the task of replacing disadvantages with opportunities because it is right, because it is wise, and because, in our hearts and minds we believe it is possible to conquer poverty in our lifetimes. You will hear more about OCAB and the work of Community Action in the coming months.

OCAB strives to deliver on the promise articulated by the National Community Action Partnership: Community Action changes peoples lives, embodies the spirit of hope, improves communities, and makes America a better place to live. We care about the entire community, and we are dedicated to helping people help themselves and each other.
Whether its offering an encouraging embrace, applying a healing hand or speaking a comforting word, teachers fulfill many roles in educating students throughout Orangeburg County.

An aptitude for teaching reading, writing and arithmetic is just a portion of what teachers are called to do in preparing students for success. It takes love, a listening ear and tender care, too.

With the 2015-2016 school year nearing its end, teachers throughout the region, including those in Orangeburg Consolidated School Districts Three, Four and Five, have demonstrated poise in making a difference in the lives of children academically, emotionally and physically.

Their commitment to doing that while sometimes having to bear provocation or annoyance without complaint, irritation or loss of temper has earned the teachers recognition as the exemplification of patience for May as part of Orangeburg Countys Community of Character initiative.

Teachers have to have patience even with academics. Sometimes children dont get things right away, so they have to work with them more. I have teachers that will give up their planning time to work with students and help them grasp a skill they were teaching in class, Marshall Elementary School Principal Dyisha Taylor said.

We even have teachers who volunteer to stay after school, going the extra mile to help students. All of that could be exhibited as patience. Nobody does it better than teachers. Every kid is different, and you have to know what each kid needs to motivate that child. You have to work with them, Taylor said.

Students come to school with so many different things going on in their lives, but they must not be given up on, the principal said.

We dont know what it may be. A student could be having a bad day, and we cant just give up on the child and say, Oh, youre misbehaving, were going to do this or that. Sometimes teachers have to talk to them and get to the root of the problem, so they have to be counselors, Taylor said.

Deloris Smith, a guidance counselor at Mellichamp Elementary School, said, I think that teachers show an awesome amount of patience by giving students the opportunity to prove themselves daily with their behavior, giving them a chance and opportunity to self correct.

Helping students get the knowledge they need at their own pace is another way teachers show patience, she said.

I think they show patience in tolerance. Theyre dealing with a lot of things while giving the students the opportunity to prove themselves not just as a person, but to them as well. It also takes love and persistence in patience, Smith said, noting that practicing patience is not just a one-time thing.

You have to pursue it relentlessly in order to see that the students are successful. I think many of the teachers have a lot of patience, which is key in being a successful one, she said.

Wearing different hats is something teachers have had to get used to, Taylor said.

Theyre counselors, nurses, mentors and role models. They have to work with the whole child and even go beyond the classroom in doing that. It extends into the community, or working with parents. We have teachers going to support students at events and hoping that will translate into their academic performance in the classroom, she said.

Dr. Brian Newsome, superintendent of Orangeburg Preparatory Schools, said, Were so fortunate that our teachers do so much work. Theyre so underpaid and still do it with a heart and passion for students. They have patience with families, students and all of the things that they have to be accountable for.

Newsome said continuing to handle their responsibilities with a smile and as much effort and love as they can muster is what makes teachers special.

No better group of people could have been chosen to represent patience than teachers because they really and truly have it, he said. Theyre the reason were all here right now. Weve had a great teacher in our life that impacted us and helped us get on the track to be successful.

Newsome added, Its amazing that I get to work with over 70 teachers every day. Im fortunate to be able to just try and be a positive influence for them  and give them what they need.
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/By Azernews/

By Fatma Babayeva

Price of the black gold jumped above $50 per barrel last week on the backdrop of positive forecasts for the market.

Since the beginning of 2016, price of oil futures contracts experienced increase of 32 percent making the producers optimistic about the investments.

Cost of July futures of WTI crude in New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) increased by 0.63 percent to $49.64 per barrel on May 31. In the meantime, prices of July futures of Brent benchmark stood at $49.76 per barrel in London ICE without experiencing any change compared to the previous day, according to Bloomberg Energy.

Meanwhile, price of the Azeri LT CIF produced at the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli block of oil and gas fields reached $50.87 per barrel on May 31, Azertac reported.

OPECs oil basket cost $44.76 on May 27, according the organizations official website.

Based on the current developments in the market, some analysts expect the price of oil to attain $60 or even higher rate by the end of 2016.

Although many experts believe the recent increase in oil prices to be temporary caused mostly by the disruptions in oil production of some oil producing countries like Canada, Nigeria, Venezuela and Libya, others call to attention the demand side of the issue, which also gaining strength.

Its possible for oil prices to reach $60 or more during this summer, said Economy Minister of UAE, Sultan Bin Saeed Al Mansoori on May 30.

Increase in demand for oil in the U.S. is pointed as the main reason pushing up prices during this year on the background of the decline in the countrys oil stockpiles.

Crude will end the year higher than $60 a barrel, Mario Maratheftis, global chief economist at Standard Chartered Plc, said to Bloomberg. SEB Bank forecast last week that Brent would touch $60 in 2016.

Weve always been incredibly bullish on oil, Maratheftis said. We expected supply to collapse. Demand is still very strong. I would expect oil prices to keep rising, he added.

In the near future, oil prices in the global market will increasingly depend on the situation in Libya, said Gal Luft, senior adviser to the United States Energy Security Council and co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS) to Trend on May 27.

If the political conflict in Libya continues, there is a possibility for oil prices to trade at $60-70 range within a year, he said.

Libya, along with Iran, rejected to join oil freezing plan of OPEC which was held in Doha on April 17.

Oil freezing plan was previously designed to cap oil output of the producers at the level of January 2016 in order to shore up oil prices in the market.

Now OPECs upcoming meeting on June 2 is unlikely to bring any fundamental breakthrough due to geopolitical tensions among oil producing countries.

Earlier, Saudi Arabia reiterated that the country is not going to limit its production level without Irans commitment to the plan. Iran, in its turn, said that the Islamic Republic may only consider freezing plan after it reaches pre-sanction level of exports (2.2 million barrels a day).

Whats more, this time, Russia is not attending OPECs June meeting which is a sign that like many others, Russia does not believe that the cartel will be successful in realizing oil freezing plan either.

In addition, Russias oil production surpassed Saudi Arabias output in March. Russia produced almost 11 million barrels per day, Russian Federal Statistics Service Rosstat said on May 30.

According to Rosstat, Saudi Arabia produced 10,120 million barrels daily in March, compared to Russia's 10,927 million barrels.

In total, OPEC countries produced 32 million barrels a day throughout the first quarter of 2016.

According to Rosstat, over the first three months of 2016, Russia sold oil worth more than $10 billion.

The share of oil sales in Russian export made up 23 percent in the first quarter of 2016, compared to 25.2 percent in the same period of 2015.

It is very hard to predict developments in the oil market as this global commodity is not only influenced by economic but also political factors.
/By Azernews/

By Laman Ismayilova

Azerbaijan Fashion Week  the first global fashion project meeting the standards of Milan, Paris, London and New York Fashion Weeks completed its work in Baku, Trend Life reports.

The eye-catching fashion show, supported by Azerbaijans Culture and Tourism Ministry and the French embassy in Baku met the high expectations of all fashionistas.

The fourth day of event featured bright and modern collection by international designers such as ZHEREBTSOV, NARGIZ SHAKHBAZI, TIKO NEBIERIDZE and SH COUTURE.

The fashion show ended with presentation of fashion collection JITROIS by a world-renowned French designer Jean-Claude Jitrois, who works with the world stars such as Sharon Stone, Monica Bellucci, Celine Dion, Beyonce and Lady Gaga.

The French Ambassador to Baku, Aurelia Bouchez, who attended the event, praised the level of organization of the Azerbaijan Fashion Week. The Ambassador stressed that the holding Azerbaijan Fashion Week plays a significant role in the development of fashion industry.

The project aimed to popularize growing fashion industry in Azerbaijan and give an opportunity to young and talented designers to show their work to the world. The event featured 20 shows from 6 countries, including designers from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, France and Latvia.

The event featured fashion shows of famous national and international designers such as LIBAS (Azerbaijan), ALLA Couture (Russia), SS by Sergey Shabunin (Kazakhstan), JITROIS (France) and many others.

In the framework of the project, Boulevard Hotel in Baku opened a showroom AFW, where one had a chance to buy trendy fashion style clothes presented at the shows, and pieces from many others brands such as UGLY, Dameli, Datuna, Tako Dvaliashvili, Natia Tkhelidze, Samidel, Tamta Shindelishvili, Verbena, Smirnova.

Azerbaijan Fashion Week is held twice a year in November and May. More than 40 designers from Azerbaijan, Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, France and Spain participated in last two seasons.

Media partners are Trend, Day.az, Milli.az and Azernews.az.
President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has received credentials of the newly-appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Carole Mary Crofts.





The Ambassador reviewed the guard of honor, and then handed her credentials to the head of state.





President Ilham Aliyev then had a conversation with the Ambassador.





Pointing to the broad agenda of the bilateral relations between the two countries, the head of state expressed his hope that Ambassador Carole Crofts would contribute to strengthening these ties.





Ambassador Carole Crofts said her country had maintained cooperation with Azerbaijan for more than 20 years. Noting that BP was the largest investor in Azerbaijan, the Ambassador highlighted prospects for Azerbaijan-UK cooperation. She said she visited Baku and regions of the country, adding that she was impressed by hospitality of the Azerbaijani people and the country`s unique beauty. The Ambassador added that she was amazed by Baku, which she described as an international city.





The head of state said that visiting Azerbaijani regions was a good opportunity for getting familiarized with the country.





President Ilham Aliyev wished the Ambassador success in her future activities.





They also discussed the ongoing settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.




Another meeting on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict can be held in June 2016 in order to achieve significant progress for changing the status quo, Azerbaijan's Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said May 31 speaking at the North Atlantic Council.

Azerbaijan's internationally recognized borders have been violated for over 20 years already, 20 percent of the country's territory is under occupation and over a million Azerbaijanis were subjected to ethnic cleansing, said the minister.

Mammadyarov noted that the status quo, which is based on the fact of occupation, remains the main source of tension.

"The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs and the international community consider the status quo unreliable, inconsistent and unacceptable," he said. "In order to change the status quo, it is necessary to put an end to the occupation, the Armenian armed forces should withdraw from Azerbaijan's occupied lands."

Talking about Armenia's threatening Azerbaijan with "dirty bomb", Armenia's non-fulfillment of the international commitments on non-proliferation of the weapons of mass destruction, Mammadyarov said that Yerevan continues its policy aimed at disrupting the negotiation process.

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.
North Korea attempted to fire a missile from its east coast early on Tuesday but the launch appears to have failed, South Korean officials said, in what would be the latest in a string of unsuccessful ballistic missile tests by the isolated country.





The launch attempt took place at around 5:20 a.m. Seoul time (04:20 p.m. EDT), said the officials, who asked not to be identified, without elaborating.





Tension in Northeast Asia has been high since North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in January and followed that with a satellite launch and test launches of various missiles.





Japan put its military alert on Monday for a possible North Korean ballistic missile launch.





"We have no reports of any damage in Japan . We are gathering and analyzing data. The defense ministry is prepared to respond to any situation," Japanese Minister of Defence Gen Nakatani told a media briefing.





" North Korea shows no sign of abandoning the development of nuclear missiles and so we will continue to work closely with the U.S. and South Korea in response and maintain a close watch on North Korea ," Nakatani said.





South Korea 's Yonhap News Agency said it appeared North Korea had attempted to launch an intermediate-range Musudan missile. North Korea attempted three test launches of the Musudan in April, all of which failed, U.S. and South Korean officials have said.

Yonhap quoted a South Korean government source as saying the missile was likely to have exploded at about the time it lifted off from a mobile launcher.





The flurry of weapons technology tests this year came in the run-up to the first congress in 36 years of North Korea 's ruling Workers' Party early this month, where young leader Kim Jong Un further consolidated his control.





Tuesday's attempted launch appears to have been its first missile test since then, and experts have said it was unusual to test-fire a missile so soon after a previous failure.

The South Korean military said Pyongyang 's continuous missile launches could stem from Kim's order in March for further tests of nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles.





"They must've been in a rush. Maybe Kim Jong Un was very upset about the failures," said Lee Choon-geun, senior research fellow at South Korea 's state-run Science and Technology Policy Institute.

REPEATED FAILURES





North Korea has never had a successful launch of the Musudan missile, which theoretically has the range to reach any part of Japan and the U.S. territory of Guam .





North Korea is believed to have roughly 20 to 30 Musudan missiles, according to South Korean media, which officials said were first deployed in around 2007.





"It could have cracks and something wrong with the welding," Lee said of possible causes for the latest failure. "But deployment before test-firing these to complete development seems unusual."





The attempted launch took place near the east coast city of Wonson , one of the South Korean officials said, the same area where previous Musudan tests had taken place.





Separately, Japan 's Kyodo news agency reported on Tuesday that career diplomat Ri Su Yong, one of North Korea 's highest-profile officials, would visit China on Tuesday.





There was no indication of any link between the latest failed missile launch and Ri's visit to China .





China is reclusive North Korea 's only major ally but has been angered by Pyongyang 's nuclear and missile tests and signed up to tough UN sanctions against the reclusive country.





Ri was North Korea 's foreign minister until he was named a member of the politburo during the recent Workers' Party congress.








Bahrain-based Bank ABC, which successfully concluded a comprehensive rebranding exercise in 2015, won a prestigious accolade at the international Transform Awards Mena 2016, held in Dubai earlier this month.

The bank won the silver prize for Best Visual Identity from the financial services sector category. The awards were organised by the UK-based Transform Magazine, which is dedicated to the global rebranding and brand development industry.

The awards recognise excellence in brand development, brand advancement and visual identity rebranding based on a number of criteria such as content, strategy, execution, type and business sector. The awards also celebrate the most innovative, creative and successful brand work across the world, including the Mena region.

The judging panel consisted of 16 branding and communication experts from the Middle East and North Africa region with extensive experience and knowledge of branding, marketing, corporate communications and advertising from various industries. This year, 68 brands were shortlisted in various categories, marking a record number of submissions in these awards.

I am delighted with this award, which acknowledges our successful rebranding that was conducted last year to reflect our refined business strategy, new vision and mission, and our new promise to customers, a team committed to your success. The award is also a testimony of the uniqueness of our new, reinvigorated corporate identity, said Sael Al Waary, executive vice president and group chief operating officer of Bank ABC.

Bank ABC is a leading international wholesale bank operating from presences across Mena, Europe, Asia, the US and Brazil and provides innovative wholesale financial products and services that include corporate banking, trade finance, project and structured finance, debt capital markets, syndications, treasury products and Islamic banking. It also provides retail banking services through its network of retail banks in Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria. - TradeArabia News Service
Dubai Financial Market (DFM) has launched the Direct Deals Service, enabling investors and brokerage firms to accomplish bulky deals on shares of a listed company while exempted from the price cap in effect.



Dubai Financial Market (DFM) has launched the Direct Deals Service, enabling investors and brokerage firms to accomplish bulky deals on shares of a listed company while exempted from the price cap in effect (15 per cent up and 10 per cent down).



The price must not exceed the previous closing price by 25 per cent up or down, will not be reflected on the closing price, the DFM General Index, and high and low prices during the session or the 52 weeks.



The Direct Deals will be implemented through the trading engine yet during a special session between 8:00 and 8:30 am. Number of shares has to be 3 per cent and above of the capital or with a value of Dh200 million ($54.4 million) at least.



This new arrangement further streamlines large quantity deals enabling investors to directly sell their shares through mandating brokerage firms and investment banks to arrange for the deal with potential buyers. Disclosure and transparency rules in effect must be observed when conducting such deals.



Essa Kazim, chairman of DFM said: As part of DFMs commitment to further enhance its momentous record in terms of adopting best practices and providing investors with a fair and transparent trading environment, we have prepared to launch this new mechanism in coordination with the market participants.



This new service streamlines large quantity deals as offering them through the regular trading session may affect the share price. Sometimes, institutions and high net worth individuals require conducting such deals.

In order to facilitate the implementation of large deals and based on our thorough deliberations, we make this service at investors disposal so that they offer the quantity to potential buyers and conclude the deal during a special session within broader fluctuation band.



To maintain transparency and justice amongst investors, Direct Deals will be subject to the disclosure requirements of the Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA) and DFM in general and the rules relating to transactions that lifts ownership to 30 per cent or more in particular, he added.



The details of implemented Direct Deals will be announced through DFM website and a new tap on the Market Watch page will be introduced to display the details of such deals. Additionally, the exchange will notify the SCA of the details of Direct Deals once implemented and update percentages of major shareholders ownership according to the settlement date.  TradeArabia News Service
Cards & Payments Middle East, the regions number one conference and exhibition for commerce and payment solutions, opened its doors today (May 31) at the World Trade Centre in Dubai, UAE.



Regional and international experts will showcase the future of payments at the 17th edition of the event until June 1.



Inaugurated by Sami Al Qamzi, director general, Dubai Department of Economic Development, the conference hosts over 150 keynote speakers, topics include how to ensure physical, online and mobile transactions remain customer centric and secure in todays digital world.



The event, which this year drew more than 10,000 visitors, witnessed many launches and announcements on the day of its opening, including a strategic partnership between Emirates Islamic, Abu Dhabi Government Ministry of Interior, SAAED Traffic System and Network Intelligent Payment Solutions (NIPS) on next generation digital services kiosks, as part of the UAEs drive on smart initiatives.



World leader in digital security Gemalto is one of the events Platinum sponsors showcasing the latest technologies enabling banks to provide frictionless, secure and highly flexible banking service to customers across all touch points from in branch, to ATMs, online and mobile.



Eric Claudel, president Middle East & Africa at Gemalto said: Driven by a generation who have grown up in a world of 24/7 connectivity, customers today expect instant one-click fulfilment across all areas of their lives including banking and payments.



They expect seamless transactions that require minimal thought and input, but also want to be treated as individuals with the freedom to shape banking and payment products and services to suit their lifestyles. Events like Cards & Payments Middle East provide a platform to bring together leaders in this space, to share best practice and give insight into the latest technologies set to take the region by storm, he added.



Avanza Solutions, a gold sponsor of the event, also launched some exciting products changing the banking and retail industries including Novus-xcite, a next generation ATM interface empowering the regions banks to provide enhanced customer engagement through their self-service channels.



Waqas Mirza, managing director, at Avanza Solutions, said: Customers today are used to advanced interfaces such as smart phones and tablets, that perform an array of actions in real-time and current ATM softwares simply do not live up to this experience. Our Novus-xcite solution will revolutionize customer ATM experience, allowing them to update their Emirates ID at the touch of a button, while withdrawing cash, for example. They will also allow banks to enhance customer experience, without the need to invest heavily in retro-fitting existing equipment.



Joseph Ridley, general manager, said: This year marks our 17th annual Cards & Payments Middle East event, and it is fantastic to see how much it has grown over the years. Along the way Cards & Payments Middle East has been at the forefront of major changes across the industry, regionally and internationally.



Today this show is not simply focused on the banking and finance sector, but also technology, telecoms, retail and commerce, as the payment sector continues to develop. We would like to thank all of our speakers and sponsors who have made this event such a remarkable success, he added.  TradeArabia News Service
Dubco Construction, a leading builder in Dubai, UAE, has been awarded a Dh195-million ($53 million) contract for construction and maintenance of a residential complex in Al Quoz area of the emirate.

The 900,600-sq-m residential project will feature four-bedroom villas designed according to Mediterranean, modern, Andalusian and Islamic designs, said Dr Abdullah bin Mohammed Belhaif Nuaimi, Minister of Infrastructure Development, and chairman of Sheikh Zayed Housing Programme, after signing the agreement with Ahmed Moussa, general manager of Dubco Construction.

The Al Quoz Residential Complex will boast 159 villas. Located in Dubai 's Al Quoz Area 2, the facility is in close proximity to the Burj Khalifa and Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai.

"Under the project, four different models of housing units will be available for the Emirati families. A total of 40 units each will be designed in Mediterranean, modern and Andalusian-style, while 39 homes will be in pure Islamic style," explained Dr Al Nuaimi.



The site preparation for the Al Quoz Residential Complex project began early this month and the project is due for completion in 20 months, he added.-TradeArabia News Service
Sixty per cent of existing jobs will cease to exist in the next two decades as a result of new technology, an industry expert was quoted as saying by the Gulf Daily News, our sister publication.



To read further, please visit GDNonline.




Saudi Basic Industries Corp (Sabic), one of the world's largest petrochemicals groups, said on Monday it had signed an agreement with Shenhua Ningxia Coal Industry Group to build a petrochemical complex in China.



Sabic said in a statement the joint project would be a "greenfield petrochemical complex" located in the Ningxia Hui Region of China and would help the Saudi company diversify its feedstock sources.



"The joint venture would benefit from its location in Ningxia and utilize locally available coal feedstocks to be supplied by SNCG," Sabic said. The Chinese company is a unit of Shenhua Group Corporation Limited.



No financial details or time frame for the project were given. Sabic said the companies would now work on getting approvals from Chinese authorities for the complex.



Sabic said the plans were part of its ongoing strategy to diversify its operations geographically and to seek investments that would open up the company to new markets.



The China-based complex would also help Sabic get its feedstock from a wider variety of sources, it said.



"This protects Sabic against the fluctuations and cyclical movements in feedstock price in the international markets, which helps ensure a profitable growth strategy," Sabic chairman and chief executive Yousef al-Benyan said in the statement.  Reuters
GlassPoint Solar, a leading supplier of solar to the oil and gas industry, was recently honoured at the Middle East & North Africa Solar Conference and Expo 2016 (Menasol) held in Dubai, UAE.



GlassPoint Solar received the title of CSP Technology Innovation for Middle East and North Africa (Mena) for the second year in a row, said a statement from the company.



The award was presented to GlassPoint for making significant contributions to the industry through its drive for innovation and cost reduction that exceeds all others, it added.



The companys concentrating solar power (CSP) technologies seals the mirrors and other vulnerable components inside a greenhouse that protects them from high winds, dust and sand. Its structure enables the use of lightweight, readily available materials that are a small fraction of the cost of those used in exposed systems.

The greenhouse roof is cleaned each night with a proven automated washing unit that eliminates manual cleaning and conserves water. Research shows that soiling can reduce performance by an average of 2.5 per cent every day, demonstrating the need for automated washing in desert environments, it stated.



Daniel Palmer, vice president of sales at GlassPoint, said: Being recognised by the regions principal solar conference for the second year in a row is truly an honour. The award reinforces the success and economic viability of our enclosed trough design even in todays challenging conditions.



When prices are high, oil producers concentrate on increasing output. However, when prices are low, the focus shifts to reducing costs. At a typical heavy oilfield, 60 per cent of operating cost is fuel purchase for steam generation and our companys solution can reduce gas used in thermal enhanced oil recovery by up to 80 per cent, he added.  TradeArabia News Service


Ras Al Khaimah Free Trade Zone (RAK FTZ) has been honoured by the Emirates and Europe Economic Forum with an Innovation Award, winning the category of Innovative Development of Free Zones at an event in Warsaw, Poland recently.



Being named as the most innovative free zone gives us great honour and joy. We, at RAK FTZ, have adopted the concept of innovation since our inception. This award is a recognition of our constant hard work of making the free zone an enabling business environment to the investment community, said Ramy Jallad, CEO of RAK FTZ.



In support of the UAEs National Innovation strategy, we encourage everyone in the free zone to think and act in creative ways to achieve client satisfaction. We are proactive in coming up with new projects and value-added services, constructing more tailor-made facilities as well as reinventing our administrative systems to fast-track the processes and provide more ease of doing business. We always ensure that our clients are well supported by the best and most innovative business solutions.



Gulay Avci, RAK FTZs regional manager  Turkey, accepted the award on behalf of the free zone. She also participated as one of the panellists at a discussion held on second day of the conference, which tackled the sources of investment financing and the role of financial institutions.  TradeArabia News Service
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif underwent successful open heart surgery in a London hospital on Tuesday, his second cardiac procedure in five years, his daughter said.



Sharif's surgery comes as his government prepares to present its annual budget on Friday. It also remains under pressure over allegations of corruption linked to the so-called Panama Papers.



"Surgery successful," his daughter, Maryam, said on her Twitter account about four and a half hours after she said the operation had begun.



Earlier, she said her father "was in high spirits" as he was taken in for an operation for a "perforation of the heart", a complication from a 2011 procedure.



Sharif, 66, was prime minister for two terms in the 1990s before being overthrown in a 1999 military coup.



After years in exile, he returned to Pakistan in 2007 and led his party to a victory in a 2013 election.



He has travelled to London for medical treatment several times over the past year and was accompanied on this trip by his brother, Shahbaz Sharif, who is chief minister of Punjab province, and several other family members.



On Monday, Sharif telephoned his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, thanking him for his wishes for a quick recovery, the Pakistani Foreign Office said in a statement.



Sharif made a bid to improve ties with old rival India a main policy in his 2013 election campaign, though progress has been slow.



Sharif has been overseeing state affairs in the days leading up to the surgery, and on Monday addressed an economic meeting, signing off on budget proposals that include a target of 5.7 percent growth in the year beginning in July.



Pakistan missed its gross domestic product growth target of 5.5 percent for the year ending in June, hitting only 4.7 percent. - Reuters
The role of chief information officers (CIOs) needs to be redefined in the wake of organizations facing increased cyber attacks and almost all sites are unsafe, experts said at the recent fifth CIOMajlis in Dubai, UAE.



CIO is not an IT guy anymore, but a strategy man, as no corporate is 100 per cent secure. The CIO is the core of an organization, explained Dr Saif Al Ketbi, CIO at Abu Dhabi Airports, addressing the majlis held at Armani Hotel Dubai.



Giving an overview of cyber security, Dr Saif said: Cyberspace and its underlying infrastructure are vulnerable to a wide range of risk stemming from both physical and cyber threats and hazards. Sophisticated cyber actors and nation-states exploit vulnerabilities to steal information and money to disrupt, destroy, or threaten the delivery of essential services.



There are only two choices: Using the technology or returning to the 19th century. There is no third one. With the growing volume and sophistication of cyber attacks, ongoing attention is required to protect sensitive business and personal information, as well as safeguard national security, said Dr Saif.



About 99.9 per cent of sites are easy to hack, he said.



They are more prone to attacks as everything is online, but we believe they are secure. The UAE is targeted and there is a spyware with every hardware coming into the country. Attacks are rising by the month, 60 per cent of which are through the hardware, not from apps, he added.



Abdulqader Obaid Ali, chief executive officer, Smartworld, a joint venture between Etisalat and Dubai South said: CIOs need to be thinking differently. Today, whether we like it or not, technology is really defining the daily use. The CIOs role is evolving as they are not looking after information technology (IT) alone. They are judged by how they can actually enable IT to make businesses more competitive. There is a proliferation of devices. By 2020 there will be more than a billion devices that can be interconnected. Everything is going to talk to you through technology.



So, there is a mandate on the CIOs. Security is a bigger issue today. For any organisation, information is important and if you lose it, you lose your competitive edge. That's why we are asking for specialists in security. It is a special field.



People usually spend 80 per cent on their equipment security, such as firewall, servers, etc. You need to educate people about security because they are very vital and important. The question today is how we can try and help our organisations become more secure. It's not that the boards (management) do not understand the issue. They do. However, they need to listen more and support the CIOs, or the security officers. They should listen to the CIOs for the good of the organisations, Abdulqader added.



"Most organisations do not have a clear strategy on security. If at all there are any, they are in a fragmented way. So, there is a need for a clear strategy across all organisations. Also we should ask if the regulation is for consumers or suppliers," said Ahmed Al Mulla, chairman of CIOMajlis, who is also senior vice president, Corporate Services at Emirates Global Aluminium.



The role of CIOs has changed drastically in the past five to ten years. They used to look at CIO as a spender of money, but now the perception has changed. It will be easier to convince the board the need to make the organization more secure. As already said, 99.9 per cent of sites are not secure. That's the issue today, said Al Mulla.



"Cyber security market today is valued at $450 billion to $1 trillion. The approach should be how we can ensure security in a collaborative way. Everyone should collaborate, that is, the organisation, the customer, the open community at large, the developers and also the government, said Ahmed Al Ahmad, CIO, Nakheel.



In his presentation, Dr Saif said: Global spending on cyber security is floating around $77 billion this year, according to market research firm Gartner estimates. By 2020, companies around the world are expected to spend around $170 billion, a growth rate of nearly 10 per cent in the next five years.



The big data and analytics market is expected to reach $125 billion by the end of 2015, according to research firm IDC. Global revenues for companies that offer digital forensics will total $2.7 billion this year and are estimated to reach $4.7 billion in 2020, ABI Research finds.



This is a direct result of the real, on ground practice of dealing with cybercriminals and hackers. Spending such amounts is much cheaper than the damages caused by ignoring the threats that are coming from the Internet and other modern technologies.



A range of traditional crimes are now being perpetrated through cyberspace. This includes the production and distribution of child pornography and child exploitation conspiracies, banking and financial fraud, intellectual property violations, and other crimes, all of which have substantial human and economic consequences.  TradeArabia News Service
Saudi Arabia has intercepted and destroyed a ballistic missile fired from Yemen and a Saudi-led military coalition said in a statement it may be forced to reconsider a truce that has been place since April.



Saudi state news agency SPA quoted the statement as saying that the missile, the second such strike this month, was destroyed in mid-air without causing any casualties. The air force also destroyed the platform from which the missile was fired, it said.



Saudi Arabia, leading a coalition of Arab states, intervened in Yemen in March last year mainly with air strikes to try to restore President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Houthis, backed by forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, had advanced on Hadi's temporary headquarters in the southern city of Aden, forcing him to flee the country.



The war has killed more than 6,200 people and displaced more than 2.5 million people.



The Houthis describe their capture of the capital, Sanaa, in 2014 and their advance on Aden as part of a revolution against corruption and to end attacks by Al Qaeda. They have accused the Saudi-led coalition of violating the truce with air strikes.



The Houthis and Yemen's Saudi-backed exiled government are currently engaged in peace talks in Kuwait aimed at ending the 14-month-old war and easing a humanitarian crisis in the Arabian Peninsula's poorest country.



The UN-sponsored talks have so far yielded few results.



SPA gave no details on the target or the type of missile used. However, the agency said the Saudi-led coalition warned it would not sit idle against any further violations of the truce, which began on April 10.



"The coalition command, through this statement, assert that violating the truce by the Houthi militia and its supporters and the targeting of the kingdom's lands ... would force the coalition to reconsider the feasibility of this policy (of self restraint)," SPA said.



Saudi Arabia said on May 9 it had also intercepted and destroyed a ballistic missile fired from Yemen before it reached its target. - Reuters
Egypt's Carbon Holdings has secured an agreement with one of the four export credit agencies expected to provide financing worth between $4 and $5 billion for its massive Tahrir petrochemicals project, its chief executive said.



The $7-billion scheme at Ain Sokhna at the southern end of the Suez Canal will be one of the largest petrochemicals projects in Egypt.



It is projected to increase by about 50 per cent the amount of such products made by the North African country in the first 10 years after becoming operational.



The financing was expected to close by the end of 2015 and be provided by five agencies, but talks were put on hold because the Export-Import Bank of the United States (US Exim) couldn't lend new cash until its licence was renewed by Congress, according to Carbon Holdings CEO Basil El-Baz.



However, the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation has now agreed to direct funding, Baz told Reuters in Dubai without stating for how much the agreement was worth.



"We are optimistic that we should be in a position to wrap this up this year," Baz said of the full finance package.



Carbon Holdings expects three other agencies to contribute to the 17-and-a-half-year debt facility, either through direct lending or guarantees for commercial bank loans. They are US Exim, Sace of Italy and UK Export Finance.



The start of Tahrir's construction has also been delayed from the timetable given last year. Baz said that work is now expected to begin at "the back end of this year" and last for about 48 months.



Societe Generale is advising on the Tahrir project, Baz said.



Other petrochemical projects with links to the main scheme have progressed much further. A polypropylene plant had been online since September and a $570-million ammonium nitrate facility is expected to be fully operational in July.



The chief executive was speaking as the company announced a $25-million investment in Carbon Holdings by the International Finance Corporation.



The transaction, aimed at developing Egypt's petrochemicals industry, could lead to larger investments in Carbon Holdings and its projects, including around Tahrir, said Mouayed Makhlouf, IFC director for the Middle East and North Africa.-Reuters
Emirates is on a mission to raise awareness about the threat that the illegal wildlife trade poses to the survival of some of the planets most endangered and iconic animals.



Emirates has unveiled its fifth A380 emblazoned with special livery in support of United for Wildlife - an alliance between seven of the worlds most influential conservation organisations and The Royal Foundation of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry.



Unlike its four jet-powered siblings, this latest Emirates United for Wildlife A380 aircraft is featured in situ, at the traffic roundabout leading to London Heathrow airport  a highly visible site that reaches over million international travelers and their families and friends annually.



One of the largest known aircraft models in the world, the Emirates A380 model at London Heathrows roundabout is built to an exact 1:3 scale of a real A380 aircraft. Weighing more than 45 tonnes, the model is the same size as a real Boeing 737.



Over the past six months, Emirates has literally taken its message against the illegal wildlife trade to the skies and across the world. Since November, the airlines four eye-catching United for Wildlife A380 aircraft have flown more than 4.2 million km on over 800 flights, delighting customers, global travellers and plane spotters in 34 cities spanning five continents.



Sir Tim Clark, president of Emirates Airline, said: The illegal wildlife trade has brought many of our planets most majestic animals to the brink of extinction. It is unthinkable that a generation from now, there may be no more rhinos, elephants or tigers to be found in the wild. The need for action is urgent, and both the demand and supply side of the illegal wildlife trade has to be tackled. Through our global brand footprint, Emirates can help drive consumer awareness and interest in the issue. And as the worlds largest international airline, we believe we can make a difference to help break the supply chain of illegal wildlife trade. We will continue to do all we can in this regard.



Earlier in the year, as a member of the United for Wildlife Transport Taskforce, Sir Tim signed the landmark Buckingham Palace Declaration on behalf of Emirates. The Declaration, developed by representatives from across the transport industry outlines key actions to strengthen defences against trafficking by removing the vulnerabilities in transportation and customs that criminals are currently exploiting. This agreement is a result of 12 months of meetings held in London, Geneva, and Dubai, and thousands of hours of work by legal, conservation, transport, and customs experts.



The Rt Hon The Lord Hague of Richmond, chair of the United for Wildlife Transport Taskforce, said: "Emirates and Sir Tim have contributed enormously to raising awareness of the illegal wildlife trade and are setting a great example for the world's airlines. Their efforts are part of our work to eliminate the demand for illegal wildlife products. Through complementing other international efforts to tackle this issue airlines are disrupting illegal supply chains. Emirates' actions are bringing this issue front and centre, taking us one step close to eradication of this appalling crime against wildlife."



In addition to consumer awareness efforts, Emirates is collaborating with international organisations to train and better equip its ground and cargo staff to detect and deal with illegal wildlife products in transit. As the required paperwork for movement of some wildlife products is often forged, Emirates also made the decision to ban trophy shipments. - TradeArabia News Service
Cameroon Airlines (Camair-Co), one of West Africas fastest-growing airlines, has implemented Sitas next-generation passenger services system (PSS) to manage every aspect of its operations - from reservations, pricing, ticketing and departure control to loyalty program and business intelligence.



After examining several different passenger service systems, Camair-Co selected Sitas Horizon Passenger Management and Distribution as it offers the most comprehensive range of services available. Its infrastructure is built on a flexible platform of core systems required by every airline, allowing each carrier to customize the system to meet their specific business requirements to accommodate future growth.



The Horizon suite of services is used by 100 airlines and ground handlers around the globe to board more than 131 million passengers and check in 165 million travelers each year.



Among the Horizon applications to be used by Camair-Co is Sita Reservations, which can manage bookings made from online sites, at airline and partner sales offices, through GDSs and travel distributors. It also facilitates code share and interlining and it allows airlines to sell partner services in conjunction with their own.



The airline will also deploy Horizon Loyalty, a web-based loyalty programme solution which can be integrated with Sita Reservations. Horizon Loyalty is available anywhere, on any mobile device, and includes a branded website for program members as well as the back office systems used by call center agents and programme administrators.



At the airport, Camair-Co will use Sitas Departure Control Services (DCS), a fully integrated multi-host system for automated check-in, boarding and load planning.



Jean Paul Nana Sandjo, CEO of Camair-Co, said: Key to the successful management of any airline is a passenger service system that ensures that every aspect of your passenger operation runs like clockwork. Sitas Horizon platform will be key to transforming Camair-Co into a competitive force in the region by providing flexible, reliable technology that manages every aspect of our business and supports a great passenger experience every step of the way.



Hani El-Assaad, Sita president, Middle East, India and Africa said: Our new-generation Horizon portfolio has been proven to support the needs and demands of airlines globally, no matter the size or complexity of their business. As Camair-Co builds its network across the region and the globe, our technology will support their business and provide a reliable and memorable passenger experience, whether on the ground or in the air.



Camair-Co flies to 17 destinations across Africa and Europe. The airline continues to expand its domestic and international network with new routes between Yaounde-Bafoussam and Douala-Bafoussam in Cameroon announced earlier this year. - TradeArabia News Service
Crews are still working to identify the source of an oil field odor that forced the closure of a Midwest school Thursday.

Fleur de Lis Energy, operator of the nearby Salt Creek oil field, has dispatched two workover rigs to identify and repair the leak. Another two rigs are expected to join them in the coming days, said Justin Westmoreland, health and safety director for the Dallas-based company.

We have people working around the clock to find the source, he said.

Midwest School, home to roughly 150 students in grades K-12, closed Thursday after school staff detected a gas odor. Trace amounts of methane and carbon dioxide were identified. State regulators said there was no threat to public safety. Air quality monitoring continues.

The company first focused efforts on a series of plugged wells near the school and is expanding its search area from there, said Mark Watson, Wyoming Oil and Gas supervisor. The workover rigs are entering the plugged wells in search of a buildup in pressure, which could be the cause of a leak.

Salt Creek is among the oldest Wyoming oilfields, dating back to the early part of the 20th century, and its older wells were not plugged to modern standards, Watson said.

Theyve had a couple of these before, the oil and gas supervisor said. A couple times its happened just because the wells are so old.
Grownup Stuff

Lunch and Learn Saturday

The Fort Caspar Museum Association announces a late spring Lunch & Learn program to be held on Saturday with the optional lunch beginning at noon, followed by the lecture at 1 p.m. Saint Louis-based travel author Bruce A. Raisch will present "Wyoming History for Fun and Profit, or, How I Turned Traveling Through Wyoming Into a Job."

Raisch is a ghost town hunter, historian, and photographer, and he was able to turn his love of outdoor adventure into a career.

The presentation is free with the optional paid lunch or free with paid museum admission. (Advance reservations are required for lunch and requested for the lecture.) Lunch will begin at noon. We are offering a buffet-style meal of fried chicken, sides, desserts, and beverages with an RSVP by Wednesday, June 1. The cost for lunch is $5 for museum members and $8 for non-members; reserve your space in advance, but please plan to pay at the door. The presentation begins at 1 p.m. Those who choose not to join us for lunch may attend the lecture for free after paying museum admission ($3 for adults). Again, please call the museum by Tuesday, to reserve a spot at the lunch, 235-8462.

Cast iron Dutch oven cooking class

A morning of cast iron Dutch oven cooking, history of the area, and brunch will be held from 8 a.m. to noon on Saturday at Edness Kimball Wilkins State Park, east of Casper. See many different types of cast iron and how to season, clean, and store them. Discussion will also include various choices of heat sources and delicious recipes. You will prepare, cook, and enjoy a complete Dutch oven brunch together. While meal is cooking, learn about the history of the area along the Platte River. You will receive a complimentary Dutch oven cookbook and sour dough starter for biscuits and pancakes. To register, get directions, or arrange for a ride, please call 259-2869. (Free admission to the state park if you tell the gate attendant that you are with the class and ask for directions to shelter.) Instructors are Carolyn Buff and Jan Burnett.

Adult book club on the move

This summer the Natrona County Library is mobilizing its adult book discussion to celebrate the summer reading theme of "On Your Mark, Get SetRead!" Featuring interrelated outings and books, participants will gather at a new location each month for a book discussion. The first Book Club Field Trip will be held at 6 p.m., on Tuesday, June 7, at the Bart Rea Learning Circle. June's novel is "The River Why," by David James Duncan. The discussion is free and open to the public. To participate, pick up your copy of "The River Why," at the Library's second floor Reference Desk, and then join us at the Bart Rea Learning Circle for an immersive experience. Call 577-READ ext. 2 or email reference@natronacountylibrary.org for more information.

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 community's 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.

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. Martin's 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.

Taylor Scott Band June 17

The Wyoming Blues and Jazz Society presents the Taylor Scott Band on June 17, 2016 at the Attic above the World Famous Wonder Bar. Doors open at 7 p.m., show starts at 7:30 p.m.Tickets are $12 for WBJS members, and $15 for non-members and can be purchased through the web site at www.wyobluesandjazz.org or at the door the night of the concert. Taylor, originally from Cheyenne, now lives in Denver. His music is influenced by soul, funk, blues, jazz, and rock and roll. His first band, Another Kind Of Magick, represented Wyoming in the International Blues Challenge in 2012.

Adult coloring club

Drop by the Natrona County Library anytime between 2 and 5 p.m. on Friday for our Adult Coloring Club. Coloring isn't just for kids anymore, it's a way for anyone to destress and get back to their creative side. The Adult Coloring Club meets the first Friday of the month from 2 to 5 p.m. for a time of relaxation, conversation, and creativity. Coloring books and pages will be available for you to turn into works of art. Colored pencils, crayons, and markers also will be provided. Just bring yourself and your friends, and enjoy the afternoon. Call 577-READ ext. 2 or email reference@natronacountylibrary.org for more information.

Craftastic Saturday 'ZenYoga'

The Natrona County Library will continue its monthly adult-level crafting program on Saturday at 2 p.m. in the Crawford Room. This summer find your zen and liberate your mind through an afternoon of ZenYoga featuring an hour of Zentangle followed by an hour of yoga. Supplies and space limited. Creating opportunities for adult creativity and interaction, Craftastic Saturday is free and open to ages 18 and up, and held the first Saturday of every month. Call 577-READ ext. 2 or email reference@natronacountylibrary.org for more information.
State authorities have investigated Wyomings top wildlife official for killing two turkeys with one license.

Scott Talbott, director of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, said Tuesday he inadvertently killed a female turkey along with a male turkey during a May 13 hunt in the Black Hills. Hunters are allowed only one turkey license in the spring.

Talbott said he shot at a male turkey, and when he went to pick it up, he found a dead female as well.

I took the two turkeys and turned them into the local game warden and asked DCI to come in and do the investigation, he said, referring to the Division of Criminal Investigation.

The Crook County attorneys office will ultimately decide if Talbott will be cited with a poaching violation. A decision will likely be made this week, said Crook County Attorney Joseph Baron.

When a warden investigates any violation, the warden uses his or her discretion whether or not to issue a citation or a warning, said Scott Edberg, deputy chief game warden for Game and Fish.

Our wardens look at the totality of the circumstances, the big picture, and based on their investigation they make the call, he said.

These types of hunting violations are not uncommon with turkeys or big game, Edberg said. But anything can be prevented by the hunter taking his or her time in the field, he added.

You have to do your best diligence to make sure there arent animals directly behind it, and at some point the person has to make the decision on when to pull the trigger, he said.

Talbott said there were about eight birds in the area when he shot at the male turkey.

DCI has been involved in wildlife violation cases in the past, said Talbott and Edberg. Neither could recall an example.

I asked DCI to take a look at this because I didnt want any accusations of improprieties because I was the director, Talbott said.
A Casper man is facing a robbery charge after a woman told police she was attacked Sunday while running on a popular bike path, according to the mans arrest report.

Jesus Rodriguez grabbed the woman as she ran underneath the Poplar Street bridge and threw her to the ground as he tried to steal her running belt, the report alleges. Robbery is a felony that carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years.

The woman suffered scrapes to her legs during the assault, but was otherwise uninjured, according to the report.

Rodriguez, 31, appeared in Natrona County Circuit Court on Tuesday for his initial hearing, during which a judge set his bond at $100,000. Rodriguez told the judge he is homeless and had been in Casper for one week. He requested a public defender.

Prosecutor Alan Dees said the alleged robbery is Rodriguezs third violent offense  he has previous convictions for robbery and aggravated assault  and he poses a great danger to the community of Casper.

Police responded to First and Poplar streets about 8:15 p.m. after the victim reported the attack, the report states. She gave officers a description of her attacker and police located Rodriguez, who matched the description, shortly thereafter at First and Walnut streets. The victim identified Rodriguez as the man who assaulted her.

Rodriguez was sweating and smelled of alcohol, according to the report. He initially told police he was out for a jog, though he was wearing jeans and boots. He denied doing anything wrong. A breathalyzer indicated he had a blood alcohol concentration of .21 percent, more than twice the legal limit for driving in Wyoming.

A woman who was walking her dog with her family told police Rodriguez had been following them that evening, the report states. She said she saw the victim pass and that Rodriguez then began following the woman instead.

Officers interviewed the victim at the police department, the report states. She said she was running on the path underneath the bridge when she felt someone grab her from behind by her neck and shoulders. She said the man threw her to the ground and she fell on her stomach. She told officers she was screaming as the man held her down by her waist. The man grabbed her running belt and tried to pull it off her.

The woman said she was able to push her attacker off her and he ran away, according to the report. She told police she was scared for her life and did not know if the man was trying to sexually assault her or rob her.

Police also interviewed Rodriguez, who denied having an altercation with a woman on the path, the report states. He said he got in a fight with two men while he was walking on the trail to a liquor store. He said his problems stemmed from his prison sentence at Rawlins and his affiliation with the Surenos gang.
BOZEMAN, Mont.  Jack Horner, the paleontologist who discovered the worlds first dinosaur embryos and found that dinosaurs had nests and cared for their young, is leaving the Montana museum he spent decades filling with fossils from across the globe.

Horner, 69, Is one of the best known dinosaur researchers in the world. Michael Crichton based the character Alan Grant on Horner in the 1990 book Jurassic Park, and Steven Spielberg brought Horner on as a technical adviser on all of the Jurassic Park movies  and Horner did it without a college degree and with dyslexia.

From his base at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, and before that with Princeton University, Horner discovered a dozen dinosaur species, the first dinosaur eggs in the Western Hemisphere, and provided proof of the theory of their close relation to birds. He built the Museum of the Rockies from eight dinosaur specimens when he started working there 34 years ago to more than 35,000 today.

As he ponders a state of semi-retirement, he plans to turn his attention back to education by teaching a class on imagination and creative thinking at Chapman University in California.

His struggles with dyslexia caused him to flunk out of college multiple times and initially hindered his ability to raise money for research because the grant applications had to be signed by an advanced-degree holder. He still reads at a third-grade level, and claims to have written more books than hes read.

Horner solved one funding crisis by seeking $10,000 from the Ranier Brewing Company, whose beer he and his team drank. Princeton, his employer at the time in the late 1970s, balked and gave him the money instead.

So Ranier Brewing Company gave us 100 cases of beer for the summer, he said in a recent interview.

That summer in 1979 would result in one of his most important discoveries  dinosaur nests on what was later called Egg Mountain in Montana. He found the site less than a mile from where he had discovered the fossils of young dinosaurs a year earlier.

That one square mile out there is the richest dinosaur site in the world, he said.

Little was known then about juvenile dinosaurs, and with the finds, Horners career path was set. The money came pouring in from the National Science Foundation and from other grants. The head of the Museum of the Rockies, tired of seeing Horner take the valuable specimens out of Montana, hired him as the museums paleontologist.

After that, Horner led as many as nine crews in a single digging season from Montana to Mongolia, and he started building what would become one of the largest Tyrannosaurus rex and triceratops collections in the world.

Horner for the last several years has been working on the chickenosaurus, or dino-chicken. His idea is to revive dormant dinosaur DNA found in chickens to give them some traits of their ancestors, such as a long tail.

Horner said work continues on that project, and he will likely set up a laboratory for it in California, but his focus is being pulled to other things, as well. He has five books in the works, including an autobiography. He said he is helping Microsoft develop an app, but declined to speak about it in any detail.

He also wont give up dinosaur hunting. The University of Washington is planning to open its new Burke museum, and Horner has agreed to be a part-time research associate to help fill the museum up with dinosaurs.

The Museum of the Rockies is overflowing with dinosaur fossils after 34 years of Horner as its curator of paleontology. A planned expansion will allow the museum to bring its vast collection under one roof, but there wont be any room for him to bring in anything new to work on, he said.

I filled this place up. Theres no reason to just stay, Horner said. I would just be  what do you call it  resting on your laurels or something?

The Museum of the Rockies, which is a part of Montana State University, hasnt found a new curator yet. Members of Horners team who will remain in Bozeman say he will be difficult to replace, but the museum is strong enough now to stand on its own.

We may have a lag while we get re-established with a new curator, but I dont see us diminishing and going away, said Jamie Jette, who worked with Horner for 18 years.

For his part, Horner is most interested in applying his approach to paleontology to the education system. He made his most famous discoveries because he was unafraid to take a hammer to a dinosaur egg when everybody else thought eggs were too precious to crack, he said.

I made a discovery because I had a hammer, Horner said. That kind of thinking is basically what I made my career on.
CHEYENNE  The former president of the Wyoming Board of Nursing and a senior Wyoming Department of Health official face felony charges alleging illegal delivery of a prescription painkiller.

The Laramie County District Attorneys Office last week filed a charge against Cynthia Woods, of Wheatland, alleging illegal delivery of hydrocodone.

Laramie County District Attorney Jeremiah Sandburg declined comment on the charges Tuesday. Woods faces a preliminary hearing in Laramie County Circuit Court on Thursday.

Cynthia LaBonde, executive director at the Wyoming Board of Nursing, said Tuesday that Woods resigned last week as board president.

Cheyenne lawyer Marci Bramlet represents Woods. Bramlet declined comment Tuesday.

Prosecutors charged Eric McVicker with being an accessory to delivery of the drug. Court records identify McVicker as chief financial officer of the Wyoming Department of Health.

Records dont reflect if McVicker has an attorney yet. Attempts to reach him for comment Tuesday were unsuccessful. Kim Deti, a spokeswoman for the Health Department, said Tuesday he remains employed as chief financial officer.

Brad Wnuk, special agent with the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation, swore out a statement to support the charges filed against Woods and McVicker. Wnuks statement says the following:

A Cheyenne lawyer who was representing Elizabeth McVicker in a divorce proceeding against Eric McVicker contacted the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and reported that Elizabeth McVicker had discovered email correspondence during the divorce that indicated Woods was providing controlled substances to Eric McVicker.

Eric McVicker previously had worked as CEO of Platte County Memorial Hospital in Wheatland, where Woods worked as a nurse.

Wnuk and another DCI agent interviewed Eric McVicker on May 18. McVicker stated he had been provided Vicodin by Woods approximately 10 times between 2010 and 2014, Wnuk stated. He stated that McVicker said he had received a total of about 20 tablets of Vicodin, a brand name for a drug that contains hydrocodone.

Woods brought the tablets to McVicker in Cheyenne, Wnuk stated. Most of the time, the two would meet in Cheyenne because Woods had traveled to Cheyenne for her position on the Board of Nursing, he wrote.

Wnuk and another DCI agency interviewed Woods at her office in Wheatland on May 18. After the agents told Woods that McVicker had told them she had given him the drug, she then admitted that she had, on occasion, provided narcotics to McVicker, Wnuk wrote.

Woods told agents that she had not taken any of the drugs that she provided to McVicker from her husband, a medical doctor.
The national board of Republican Liberty Caucus, an organization that opposes limits to the free market and minimal taxation, voted unanimously to endorse Rex Rammell for Wyomings only seat in the U.S. House.

Rammell, a Republican and veterinarian from Gillette, is one of nine Republicans vying for the seat. Hes run for federal office in Idaho in the past.

The groups chairman Matt Nye said the board was impressed by Rammells willingness to fight for the ideas of limited government, the 10th amendment in particular.

His website says the proper role of government is to protect our rights to life, liberty and property. That sounds right to us, Nye said in a statement.

Rammell described the group as an iconic liberty group.

I pledge my undying support for the principles of freedom and liberty that made America great, he said.
GREAT FALLS, Mont.  Marilyn Fritz receives two or three calls a month from Montana Department of Family Services asking her to provide foster care for children being removed from their homes.

A single mom with four foster children, two of which she has adopted, Fritz has to say no to the other children she knows need support.

"It makes me sick to my stomach to say no," Fritz said.

There were 1,000 more Montana children in foster care in November 2015 than the same month in 2011, according to statistics provided by DFS.

And as the number of child protection cases in Montana continues to grow, there is a shortage of available foster families able to take these children into their homes.

"The dominant factor on these cases is drug abuse  predominantly methamphetamine," Cascade County Attorney John Parker said.

According to DFS, there were 851 children in foster care in 2010 due to abuse or neglect resulting from parental substance abuse. In early April of this year that number was 1,658.

Local data shows that 59 percent of the 160 cases filed this year in Cascade County have some tie to meth. That's according to statistics compiled by District Judge Greg Pinski while preparing a Drug Treatment Court grant application.

The data showed 15 percent of the cases were filed due to suspected substance abuse involving alcohol, prescription drugs or other opiates and marijuana. Physical abuse accounted for 17 percent of the cases filed through May 20.

The demand on the foster care system continues to grow, but, finding a safe place away from a dangerous situation is just the beginning for children removed from their homes.

Fritz has provided a home to at least 40 children in the past four-and-a-half years. Her parents fostered children for 30 years.

"I wanted to continue what they started," she says.

Fritz adopted two of the children currently in her care. J.J., now 13, came to Fritz when he was 9. She took Sam, now 3, from the hospital days after his birth. His adoption was just finalized last November. Her foster children are siblings ages 16 months and 5 months.

J.J. was Fritz's 21st foster child. She was asked to provide temporary care until he could be admitted to Shodair Children's Hospital in Helena, the state's only acute and residential psychiatric treatment facility for children and adolescents.

Fritz had J.J. evaluated locally and diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. He stayed with her and began a medication and treatment regimen.

J.J.'s birth mother was only 15 when he was born. Fritz was told she was addicted to opioids  prescription pain pills  and probably took them while she was pregnant.

J.J. recalled times he had to call 911 as a child when she would threaten to stab herself in front of him.

He's been with Fritz for six years, but he still struggles with emotional issues, a problem she's seen in all of her foster children stemming from abandonment, separation anxiety and anger management.

"It gets worse before it gets better," Fritz says of the treatment process.

Fritz says the kids she's cared for gravitated toward bad behavior even if they didn't want to. They engage in harmful habits for comfort.

For example, Fritz says, J.J. rubbed a bald spot on his head for years because his mother rubbed his head repeatedly in an attempt to comfort him when he suffered from untreated illnesses.

A young girl frequently masturbated because it reminded her of the only relationship she had with a sexually abusive family member. Another child Fritz fostered kept the last bite of food he ate in his mouth because he frequently went hungry at home.

The 16-month-old in Fritz's care suffers from reactive attachment disorder, the result of being neglected during the critical early months of infancy. According to the Mayo Clinic, reactive attachment disorder occurs when a child's basic needs for nurturing, comfort and affection are not met, and the child fails to establish any stable, loving attachments with a caregiver.

The 16-month old was removed from his home at 3 months old and came to Fritz three months after that, but "the damage was done," she said.

Fritz says the toddler's condition is improving, yet sometimes he'll drift off "somewhere else," rocking, moaning and sucking his thumb, the evidence of how he coped during his earliest weeks. These are typical symptoms of the disorder, along with a lack of social interaction and unexplained sadness or irritability.

"It's hard to watch the kids go through this," Fritz says with tears in her eyes. "You feel helpless."

The child's 5-month-old sibling has respiratory issues after visiting with his biological mother, "who can't stay clean," Fritz says. The father of Fritz's foster children is abusive, and still involved with their mother, though he is currently in jail.

The proximity of her foster children's parents has been a concern for Fritz.

"It doesn't just affect the kids," Fritz says of a birth parent's behavior. "It affects me and my other kids."

The life children lead before their removal also impacts everyone they come in contact with - peers, teachers, care providers and others they form relationships with in the future.

Sleep can be a problem, too, as issues seen in other children such as bed wetting or waking during the night stretch on for years.

Despite the conditions the children endured in their previous homes, being taken from those homes, and the only family they know, is extremely traumatic. The older children feel helpless, with no control over their lives, Fritz says.

Her children receive counseling or therapy, but the progress takes time and the work is constant.

"You go once a week," Fritz says. "Every other day the foster parent is the therapist, trying to correct behavior."

Behavior, bad or good, is one of the only things the kids can control after being removed from their homes.

Fritz views her role as "breaking the cycle," as she figures the parents of many of the children she cared for were subjected to similar treatment when they were young.

It's hard work, she says, but "it's where things start to get good."

At this point Fritz has no way of knowing how long she will be a part of her foster children's lives. Their cases are still open.

Open cases are Lisa Goff's business. She is the executive director of Cascade County CASA-CAN, a nonprofit group matching volunteer guardians ad litem to children involved in youths in need of care (YINC) court cases. The guardians appear at hearings on a child's behalf after they've been removed from the home.

"The kids are the real victims," Goff says. "It's not their fault, yet they are underrepresented."

The cases ultimately end with parental custody restored or terminated. Goff says cases involving substance abuse, especially drug addiction issues, can prompt cases to drag on as a parent struggles with sobriety.

"Our first priority is to reunite the family, make them whole," she says. "But, if a parent can't stay clean, that's not an option."

The staff and volunteers at CASA are seeing the same increase in meth-related cases as other facets of the justice system. According to Goff, 49 percent of the cases CASA has taken in the last two and a half years have a tie to meth, including meth-dependent newborns, children exposed to the drug in some fashion, a caregiver driving while impaired or an instance of drug-fueled domestic violence.

She also says meth was tied to about 24 percent of "re-abuse cases" filed during the first three months of 2016. These cases involve a child who has been involved in a previous YINC case.

The number of YINC cases filed each year continues to rise, but CASA's volunteer levels remain flat, meaning they can't assign guardians to every child in the system. This trend began in 2014.

Goff says they need more volunteers. "We need people who can be a voice for kids, advocate for their rights in a state where parents' rights are paramount."

___

Information from: Great Falls Tribune, http://www.greatfallstribune.com
PHOENIX  Saying there is no reason for further review, a judge has thrown out the last bid by an organization to unearth texts between state utility regulator Bob Stump and others.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Randall Warner acknowledged that an examination of Stumps phone by an expert hired by the Attorney Generals Office did not produce the documents that Dan Barr, attorney for the Checks and Balances Project, contends are there. And he did not dispute the contention that the organization may have an expert who could recover more of the deleted texts.

But Warner, in a ruling released Tuesday, said all thats legally irrelevant.

The legal standard is that a custodian must make a good faith search, the judge wrote. And he said the burden is on whoever has the phone to show it adequately searched for the records sought.

Based on the evidence submitted, the court concludes as a matter of law that the attorney generals forensic examination of the phone was an adequate search, Warner wrote.

But Scott Peterson, the groups executive director, said the ruling, the second by Warner denying further review of Stumps phone, may not be the last word and that an appeal is possible.

The judge overlooked what we believe is compelling evidence, he said. That includes a contention that there is other data available in the phone, information a better examination could uncover.

Peterson has said he wants the texts to determine if there was any improper activity by Stump to steer dark money into last years Corporation Commission race.

Stump said he was not surprised by the possibility of an appeal.

I suspect theyll invest yet another cockeyed excuse to push on and keep suing me because they wish nothing more than to seize my phone and publish my personal texts, he said in a statement.

This is Dan Barrs witch hunt, Stump continued. He should be embarrassed and ashamed for abusing the legal system in this manner.

But Barr said the evidence suggests there is more information to be had. He said just the circumstances that have created the barriers to getting the texts merit a deeper review.

Here you have a public official who did everything in his power to evade the public records law, Barr said. That includes Stumps admission he routinely deleted text messages from his state-issued phone and that he later threw away that phone without approval of the Arizona Corporation Commission.

Then theres the log of texts  essentially a list without content  which showed about 3,600 messages between Stump and others, including 2014 candidates for the commission, their campaign manager, the head of a group using anonymous cash to get them elected and a utility executive.

With Stumps original phone gone, what was examined is a new phone Stump was issued in a bid to see what might have transferred from the old device.

Warner said he reviewed several hundred deleted texts that the expert hired by the attorney general did recover. But the judge said only 36 fell within the dates sought by Peterson. And all 36, he said, came up empty.

Everything else Warner said he saw were either personal matters or protected by attorney-client privilege and therefore not public.

Barr said other electronic footprints suggest more texts can be recovered. And he disputed Warners findings that the fact that the attorney generals expert could not find them should end the matter.

He said Checks and Balances was willing to foot the entire bill for a more thorough review of the phone and even sign an agreement that its expert would keep what he found secret from everyone but the judge.

As a practical matter there wasnt any reason for the court to say no to that, Barr said. Peterson has 30 days to decide whether to file an appeal.

Stump himself was not up for election in 2014 when the texts were being exchanged.

But he was openly backing Tom Forese and Doug Little in the Republican primary over two other Republicans who were running as solar advocates. There were messages between Stump and the candidates as well as their campaign manager.

Forese and Little won the primary and went on to defeat Democrat challengers.

Of particular note in that election is that outside groups that will not disclose their donors spent more than $3.2 million to get Little and Forese elected. There were messages between Stump and Scot Mussi, who headed one of those groups, as well as with Barbara Lockwood, an executive of Arizona Public Service, which has refused to confirm or deny it funneled money into the race.

Stump said the texts were for things like setting up meetings but not to conduct commission business.
The Amphitheater School District will evaluate whether its high schools teachers and students are spending more time in their classrooms than their peers in other districts.

The district has formed an advisory committee to conduct a study on high school instructional scheduling after a Canyon del Oro High School parent approached district employees and Governing Board members with concerns about possible negative impacts of longer hours in the classroom.

Independent research done by that parent, Tina Mehren, showed that Amphis high schools had about 300 more hours per year in instructional time than their peers, thus making each school day a little longer.

This is a long day for students, she said. But its also a big deal if faculty arent aware.

Amphitheater administrators disputed that the high schools hours are exceptionally long, noting that Mehrens calculations factor in time between classes, whereas the numbers for other districts high schools did not.

There are some variances in different schools instructional hours, due to the individual specifics of each high schools bell schedule, and such other factors as the frequency and duration of their early release periods and their passing time between classes, Associate Superintendent Todd Jaeger wrote in a memo.

An Arizona Daily Star review of high school bell schedules showed that CDO students spent an average of about 7.4 hours a day in class, Amphi High students, six hours and Ironwood Ridge students just more than seven hours.

However, not all students  in Amphi or at other Tucson-area districts  are required to take whats called zero hour classes that typically start at 7 a.m.

Excluding time allotted for those periods, the averages went down, but findings showed that Amphitheaters high school students were spending slightly more time in the classroom than Catalina Foothills and University high schools, which were two peer schools Mehren used as examples in her research.

Students at Catalina Foothills spend just shy of seven hours each day on average in the classroom, and University High, six hours.

The extra time spent by Amphis high schools has no apparent correlation to higher academic success, as evidenced by those schools instructional time, Mehren said.

Students arent scoring so much higher than other districts because they have longer classes, the CDO parent said. She believes the extra time is a burden for both students and teachers.

The state requires 900 hours of instruction per year for high school students and 180 calendar days. If spread out equally, that would amount to about five hours a day of instructional time.

Several district employees said Amphitheater adjusted the high schools schedules about three years ago when it was found to have been noncompliant to those state standards.

The penalty for not meeting the minimum requirement would be a decrease in funding, as students would no longer be considered full time.

Longer instructional hours, if used correctly, could lead to a richer and more robust educational experience for students, said David Farbman, senior researcher for the National Center on Time and Learning, which advocates for expanded time in schools.

Expanded time, in best practice, allows for more collaboration and project-based learning, he said.

Farbman reviewed the bell schedules of the districts three high schools and said their hours appeared to be longer than the nationwide norm of 6.8 hours of instruction a day. But he could not comment on whether that time was being well-spent, as he had not reviewed that.

He said there is no single figure identified as an ideal amount of time students and teachers should spend in classrooms.

The ideal is not a quantity, he said. The ideal comes in making sure in the schedule that we develop and in the education program that you put in place, you are serving all kids adequately.

A longer schedule shouldnt be in place without significant consideration going into it, he said. If its not designed in a way that serves students well, then there is value in reflecting on that and making changes.

Jon Lansa, principal of Amphitheater High School, said at his school, instructional time has not been an issue. Schools are given parameters, but also allowed autonomy in creating their own schedules. What Amphi High has set for itself works, he added.

It really hasnt even come up among our teachers, he said.

However, if the study reveals that changes must be made, then the school will do so, he said.

The concerned parents research grabbed the attention of the Amphitheater Education Association.

I think the data is very compelling, said Mike Robinette, vice president and advocacy chair of the association.

The association conducted a survey of teachers and an overwhelming majority of teachers wanted the issue studied, he said.

The advisory committee, of which Mehren is a part, will look into the numerous pieces that go into scheduling instruction, including transportation, food services and compliance with state law. It was directed by the Governing Board to produce a report by November.
In April, Pima County received $1.5 million from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to fund efforts to reduce the population at the county jail.

This Thursday, county officials will provide details to the public on how they plan to spend the money and achieve that goal. The county was one of 11 jurisdictions nationwide to receive such a grant.

Risk-screening of misdemeanor defendants, drug-abuse and mental-health screenings before initial appearances, improved court-date reminder systems and weekend warrant-resolution courts are among the proposed measures being considered by the county, according to a news release.

The county also intends to put together a so-called Community Collaborative, which will help implement the changes and be composed of justice-system officials and community members, including people who have spent time in jail, according to the release.

In 2014, there were an average of 2,136 inmates at the county jail, where the capacity is 2,377 on any given day.

The facility costs the county $66 million a year to operate, according to the release.

Many of those held at the jail are in pretrial detention and facing misdemeanor charges or are arrested after failing to appear for court hearings, often for minor crimes. The poor and racial minorities are disproportionately represented, and many inmates have behavioral-health issues.

One of the goals of the grant is to reduce the jails average daily population by 18 percent over three years, according to an early May memorandum from County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry.

That reduction would save the county well over $2 million per year.

On the other hand, increasing the jails capacity, even modestly, would cost millions more and likely would require bond funding, Huckelberry wrote.

The meeting will be held Thursday, June 2, from 3-5 p.m. at the YWCA at 525 N. Bonita Ave., just south of St. Marys Road near the Santa Cruz River Park.

For further information on the program, go to pima.gov/safetyandjustice
Florida

Fewer problems than expected for travelers in airports

MIAMI  Travelers who had braced for long lines and long waits were instead moving through most U.S. airports fairly quickly Monday, as the busy Memorial Day travel weekend drew to close.

Honestly it wasnt too bad, said Kendra Morehead of Wooster, Ohio, who flew from Detroit to Denver for a conference. I got to the airport an hour and a half early, but security only took like 15 minutes.

However, the airlines werent ready to say mission accomplished yet, as its just the beginning of the busy summer travel season.

District of Columbia

Holder: Snowden performed public

service

Edward Snowden performed a public service in stoking a national debate about secret domestic surveillance programs, but he should still return to the U.S. to stand trial, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in a podcast released on Monday.

As a National Security Agency contractor, Snowden leaked classified details in 2013 of the U.S. governments warrantless surveillance of its citizens before fleeing the country. He now lives in Russia and faces U.S. charges that could land him in prison for up to 30 years.

In a podcast interview with CNN political commentator David Axelrod, Holder said that Snowden had grown concerned that the domestic spying programs werent providing a substantial return of useful intelligence even before he revealed the secrets.

Axelrod is a former senior adviser to President Obama, while Holder served as attorney general from 2009 to 2015.

We can certainly argue about the way in which Snowden did what he did, but I think that he actually performed a public service by raising the debate we engaged in and by the changes that we made, Holder said. Now, I would say doing what he did in the way he did it was inappropriate and illegal.

White House on brief lockdown

The Secret Service says the White House has returned to normal operations after being placed on lockdown early Monday afternoon.

Secret Service spokesman Robert Hoback says someone at about 12:15 p.m. threw a metal object over the north fence along Pennsylvania Avenue and was arrested without incident. Hoback did not identify the person, though a witness saw a woman placed in handcuffs.

Fire trucks and a hazardous materials response unit were called to the scene. Its common for officers to sweep the grounds after such incidents to ensure nothing dangerous was thrown over the fence. Hoback says the sweep results were negative.

The lockdown ensued shortly after President Obama returned from a Memorial Day observance at Arlington National Cemetery.

New York

Striking Verizon workers

to return to work

NEW YORK  Nearly 40,000 striking Verizon employees will return to work Wednesday after reaching a tentative contract agreement that includes 1,300 new call center jobs and nearly 11 percent in raises over four years but also makes health care plan changes to save the company money, the company and unions said Monday.

The pact, subject to approval by union members, stands to end one of the largest strikes in the United States in recent years. Workers and Verizon Communications Inc. had reached an agreement in principle Friday but hadnt released details or a date for the workers return. The strike began in mid-April.

California

Swimmers kept out of water due to shark scare

NEWPORT BEACH  Thousands of Memorial Day beachgoers were kept out of the water Monday as lifeguards searched miles of popular Southern California shoreline for a shark they believe attacked a swimmer the day before.

The woman, who was swimming in a wetsuit, received large bite marks on her upper torso and shoulder and was bleeding heavily after a lifeguard boat spotted her in distress Sunday at Corona Del Mar State Beach, said Tara Finnigan, spokeswoman for the city of Newport Beach. The womans condition was not immediately available, but she was conscious when she went to a hospital, Finnegan said.






PHOENIX  An Arizona man convicted of murder and robbery will get another chance to escape the death penalty.

It was a mistake for a Maricopa County Superior Court judge not to tell jurors that if they did not sentence Shawn Lynch to death that he would be sentenced to life behind bars, with no chance of parole, six of the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court said in an unsigned opinion Tuesday morning.

Had jurors been given that information they might have decided not to impose the death penalty, the majority said.

Today's ruling drew a dissent from Justice Clarence Thomas. Joined by Justice Samuel Alito, Thomas said it was the "sheer depravity of the crime that caused jurors to sentence Lynch to death, not the question of whether he might ever get out of prison.

Lynch and Michael Sehwani met James Panzarella in March 2001 at a Scottsdale bar. All three went to Panzarella's residence early the next morning, according to court records.

The victim's credit cards were used during the next two days.

Panzarella was eventually found in his home tied to a chair with his throat slit.

Police also found credit card receipt from purchases made that morning at a supermarket and convenience store.

Lynch and Sehwani were arrested later that day. Sehwani had Panzarella's credit cards and checks in his wallet. And in the truck and motel room he and Lynch were using they found the keys to Panzarella's car, a pistol belonging to the victim and a sweater with Panzarella's blood on it,

Blood on Lynch's shoes matched the victim's DNA.

During sentencing, prosecutors argued that jurors should consider Lynch's future dangerousness when determining proper punishment. But the trial judge refused to let defense counsel tell the jury that under Arizona law, the only alternative sentence was life without parole.

The majority, in today's ruling, conceded that there was a chance Lynch could be released after 25 years.
Help India!

By Raqib Hameed Naik, TwoCircles.net

Srinagar: In a major embarrassment for ruling People Democratic Part in Jammu and Kashmir, two of its ministers, Haseeb Drabu and Abdul Rehman Veeri, were seen smoking in public, which is restricted under the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act 2003 in the state.

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Haseeb Drabu, the state Finance Minister and Adbul Rehman Veeri, Minister for Public Works and Parliamentary Affairs surrounded by people and police men were puffing cigarette without worrying about the laws.

J&K Finance Minister, Haseeb Drabu Smoking in Public.

The previous and incumbent Jammu and Kashmir Government on various occasions have made their stand clear against consumption of cigarettes and other Tobacco Products by taking strict measures on offenders. Recently, the Police also took out a drive to remove illegal billboards and advertisements from city centers and banning sale of tobacco products near educational institutions.

Importantly, on May 14, a delegation of Voluntary Health Association of India (VHAI) consisting of its Director Seema Gupta and J&K and its J&K President Ali Mohammad Mir, had met J&K, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti to discuss the various measures required to be taken for comprehensive implementation of COTPA (Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act) at the state-level and creating more smoke-free settings.

The Chief Minister while showing much concern over the health issues had sought support of the group in generating mass awareness about hazards of tobacco smoking, which has shown an alarming upward trend in J&K.

She asked the organization to liaise with the State Information Department so that both print and electronic media are roped in to protect people from the menace of smoking.

Adbul Rehman Veeri, Minister for Public Works and Parliamentary Affairs smoking in Public.

The Chief Minister had assured the delegation of taking all out measures to protect the health of people by strictly enforcing COTPA. She also gave directions to police for immediate removal of illegal billboards and advertisements from city centres and banning sale of tobacco products near educational institutions.

In the back drop of such initiatives by the government, its own ministers who are holding important portfolios are making a mockery of COTPA.

Smoking in public places is prohibited and its particularly important for public figures to follow and enforce this rule, so that it sets an example for others to follow but this is harming our efforts which we have been trying all these years to enforce in this state, President, Jammu and Kashmir (VHAI), Ali Mohammad Mir told TwoCircles.net .

As per Section 12 of the COTPA, any police officer not below the rank of the sub-inspector can take action against such violations.The COTPA, enacted in 2003 and applicable to the entire country, was mainly to discourage the consumption of cigarettes and other tobacco products by imposing progressive restrictions and to protect non-smokers from passive smoking and a fine up to Rs. 200 can be imposed for smoking in public place

In a recent survey conducted by Government of India, the monthly expenditure on smoking tobacco in Jammu and Kashmir is substantially higher than the national monthly expenditure. Nearly 70% of adults are exposed to tobacco smoke in Jammu and Kashmir and the state is now emerging as the highest spending state on tobacco products.

Related:

Average monthly expenditure on smoking tobacco highest in Jammu and Kashmir, study reveals
Help India!

In the second of the three-part series, we look at how the Police completely botched up in handling the protests of May 2 and opened fire on protesters without any warning. Although following the incidents, heads have rolled and the administration has promised swift action, the shooting has reminded anti-dam protesters of what lies ahead in their struggles. Read part one here

By Amit Kumar, TwoCircles.net

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Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh: The end of April was a bad time for the town of Tawang; landslides had caused substantial damage of life and property in the area and the general apathy of the district administration had left a bad taste with the residents. Earlier that month, the NGT order denying environmental clearance to the 780 MW Nyamjang Chhu power project had further polarised opinions in the city; the businessmen who were looking forward to lucrative contracting opportunities, along with the town administration were visibly angry at the outcome.

Tenzin Dakpa talks about the May 2 incident

On April 25, buoyed by the NGT order, Lama Lobsang Gyatso of the Save Mon Region Federation decided to file a PIL against the alleged low-quality construction material used in the making of the Mukto Shaikangchu, a 6 MW project developed by the state government. The police, in an attempt to put an end to any further anti-dam movement, promptly arrested Gyatso, only to see him out on bail the same day. Although this action angered his supporters and the anti-dam activists in the region; things had until then, remained under control.

On April 28, however, things took a turn for the worse. As we have mentioned in part one, the Zilla Parishad called a meeting under the aegis of discussing the Panchayat affairs, only to use the moment to slander Gyatso in public for insulting the Abott of the Tawang Monastery. Interestingly, they used a clip from 2012 to stoke anger against Gyatso, and ensure that a case was filed against him. The same day, Gyatso was arrested again. Sensing the gravity of the situation and given that the SP had already called for additional forces, a platoon of Indian Reserve Battalion arrived in the town on April 30.

People were angry and protesting, but none saw the outcome

Ngawang Choegyal, 25, has been volunteering with the Save Mon Region Federation for the past three years and has been a witness to the peoples struggles against the Mega Dams. However, it was only three months ago that he returned home from Bengaluru and ever since, he has been actively involved in the affairs of SMRF. On May 2, Choegyal, along with thousands others, had been demanding the release of Gyatso, who had been secretly hushed into the police station. When the protestors demanded his release, the police, according to Choegyal, initially denied his presence in the lockup. However, a few people had seen him being taken into the police station from the back gate and refused to believe their version. We wanted to know why he has been taken so secretly, says Choegyal. By afternoon, the crowd around the police station had started to swell and the residents could no longer carry on with their business like usual. By 1 pm, we knew that something bad is happeningthere were people all over the roads and surrounding the police station. I knew I had to shut my shop immediately and go home before anything untoward happened, said Sheela, the owner of a Fast Food stall about the May 2 incident. What we had never expected however, was that police would open fire, she added. Sheela had been in Tawang for the past sixteen years and had never seen such commotion in the town.







What happened next is something that is unlikely to be forgotten by any person who was in Tawang that day. As we continued protesting, the police asked us to back off. But since we would not back off without seeing Gyatso, we remained in our position, said Sonam, a local resident and the owner of a small guest house. Initially, the police asked three people to enter the police station compound, but the moment they entered, the other policemen started lathicharging at them, he added. Before long, other protestors tried to climb the compound wall and enter the station. Within minutes, the main gate was breached too and protesters started pouring inside the station.

Interestingly, apart from a platoon of the Indian Reserve Battalion, the Seema Suraksha Bal had also been called into action. However, as protesters ran inside, the SSB are said to have vacated their posts. More worryingly for the police, they had until then, did absolutely nothing to disperse or pacify the protesters. They had not come out from the station in their anti-riot gears and not tried to create a barricade between the police station and the protestors.

Tenzin Dakpa recovers at the Tenga Millitary Hospital

It is important to point out that the Tawang police station has a narrow gate to enter the police station, and as such, a majority of the protesters had not entered the compound but chose to shout slogans from outside. However, as the crowd of people entering the compound increased, albeit slowly, the police did the unthinkable: instead of firing teargas shells, or even warning shots, it started shooting blindly at the protestors. In all, protesters said more than 300 rounds of live bullets were fired at them and had it not been for the compound wall, riddled with bullets, the death toll would have much higher than the two recorded that day.

Of course, such views were of little comfort to the families of Tsering Tempa, a 30-year-old resident of Jangda village and17-year-old Lama Nyima Wangdi. Tempa died after a bullet him in his head while Wangdi died after being shot in his abdomen. Ten others suffered injuries, including four who suffered serious injuries and are still admitted in the hospitals of Guwahati and Shillong. The patient in Shillong, Tenzin Wangchuk, is a 30-year-old from Pempaling village. He was shot in his head and he has been in COMA since the incident.

According to Tenzin Dakpa, a 17-year-old Lama from the Tawang Monastery, the firing was incessant. Initially, we did not even realise these were live bullets. We had no idea that they would open fire on Lamas protesting, he said. Before he could get out of the harms way, a bullet had scraped past his face and ripped up his right cheek. Another got lodged in his shoulder and soon, he was unconscious. I woke up in the Tenga Millitary Hospital the next day. My shoulder had turned green and it hurt a lot, he said. Although he is out of danger now, he says he never expected such actions from the police. But ask him if he will protest again, and he breaks into a smile. Of course I will. We cannot let Mega Dams ruin our ecology, he says defiantly.

This was no way to handle a protest

Tumme Amo has not had the time to see much of Tawang. On the first day of the month, he had been on a break after he had been relieved of his duties as the Superintendent of Police, Ziro. Eight days later, he had taken charge of Tawang as the SP, and since then, it has been a constant attempt to ensure that what happened on May 2 never happens again; although he admits that the next month is crucial. Speaking to Twocircles.net, he immediately accepted that the police had handled the matter in an extremely callous way. The local policemen did little to calm the people down. Bringing Gyatso from a different entrance was a big mistake. What was the need to do that? If the people had seen Gyatso initially, they would have been unlikely to enter the compound, he says. Amo added that the police also made a mistake in not filing an FIR initially against the shootings. That should have been done immediately, but instead the police filed a complaint against the rioters while keeping themselves out of harm, he says. When asked if reports that 300 rounds of bullets were fired, he immediately said, No.

The total number of rounds fired that day stands at 380. The weapons of the IRB were used by all, including the civil police. There is no way this can be justified, he said.

The police during the May 2 incident

Over the next four days, as pressure on the police built up, the SP, Anto Alphonse, Deputy Commissioner Duly Kamduk and Officer in Charge Lam Dondhup were suspended. However, it was not until two weeks later that an FIR was finally filed against the officials after sustained media pressure. During this period, the families of the dead persons were paid an ex-gratia amount of Rs 18 lakh each while the people injured were paid Rs 6 lakh. Amo also added that the magisterial report by ADC Jang, Dr D Chutia and the one constituted by the state government headed by IAS officer Hage Khoda are being prepared and would be tabled by the first week of June, after which appropriate action will be taken against the erring officers.

The incident also saw protests in Delhi on May 26 in search of justice, while the National Alliance of Peoples Movement wrote to the National Human Rights Commission requesting the Chairperson to constitute an independent expert committee and send them to Tawang valley for investigation of the whole incident including role of police officials and politicians.

But for the people of Tawang, this incident has forever scarred their belief that their town was a peaceful place with no threat to life. As for Gyatso, he has decided to stay in the Monastery itself and not return to his house. If they can open fire at Lamas, I do not know what they can do to me when I am alone. I am safer here, he says.

Read part One: Why Tawang is protesting against Mega Dams
Help India!

By Ram Puniyani,

Can there be two type of Justice delivery system in the same country? This question came to ones mind with the U turn taken by NIA in the cases related to terror acts in which many Hindu names were involved. Now the NIA in a fresh charge sheet (May 13, 2016) has dropped the charges against Pragya Singh Thakur, has lightened the ones against Col Purohit and others. Along with this new line of NIA is that Hemant Karkares investigation in these cases was flawed and that it was ATS which had got the RDX planted in Purohits residence to implicate him in this case. The implication is that all this was being done at the behest of previous UPA Government.

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A brief recap is in order. Maharashtra in particular and many other places in the country were witness to acts of terror. The first major attention to this phenomenon took place when two Bajrang Dal activists were killed while making the bombs in the house of one RSS worker Rajkondawar (May 2006). There was a saffron flag flying atop the house and a board of Bajrang Dal was put up in front of the house. At the site of bomb explosion fake moustaches, beard and pajama-Kurta were also found. This was followed by many other blasts, Parbhani, Jalna, Thane, and Panvel etc. In most of these case police investigated on the lines in which generally Muslims were blamed for such acts. After every act of blast few Muslims young men were arrested who were later; after long grueling court cases; were released as no evidence was found against them.

The Malegaon blast in which Sadhvis role came to surface; took place in 2008. In the blasts those returning from Namaj (prayers) were killed and many injured. Following this the usual suspects, Muslims, were arrested. Then while investigating the cases the Maharashtra ATS Chief Hemant Karkare found that the motorcycle used for the blast belonged to Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, ex- ABVP worker. The trail of investigation led to Swami Dayanad Pande, Retd. Major Upadhyay, Ramji Klasnagra, Swami Aseemanand amongst others. They all belonged to the Hindu right wing politics. There was lots of evidence in the material recovered. One of the helpful evidence came in the form of the legally valid confession of Swami Aseemanand. This confession was made in judicial custody in presence of a Magistrate.

In the confession Swami spilled the beans and said that after the Sankat Mochan blast of 2002, they had decided that bomb will be replied by bomb. He was then looking after the VHP work in Dangs. He gave the detailed narrative of the whole process in which all the people were investigated and became part of the charge sheet of NIA.

When Karakare was investigating the case and many of Hindu names started coming under the shadow Bal Thackeray wrote in Saamna that we spit on the face of Karakare. Narendra Modi; then CM of Gujarat; called him Deshdrohi (Anti National). Advani also reprimanded Karkare. Feeling the heat of this pressure from Hindutva political outfits Karkare went to meet his professional peer Julio Rebeiro. Rebeiro. Rebeiro has a record of high level of professional integrity. Rebeiro appreciated his painstaking work. Karkare asked that what should be the stand of a person like him when facing such a heat from politicians. The senior officer told him to honestly do the work and ignore these insinuations.

Meanwhile the global terror phenomenon hit Mumbai. On 26/11 ten terrorists, armed to the teeth attacked Mumbai. On this occasion Karakre got killed. There is a strong controversy about this killing also. The then minority affairs Minister A. R. Antulay said that there is terrorism plus something else which is behind the killing of Karakare. Narendra Modi who had earlier called Karkare as Deshdrohi landed up in Mumbai and wanted to give a cheque of Rs. one Crore to widow of Karkare, she refused to accept the amount.

After Karkares death the investigations continued on the lines laid down by him. The charge sheet was ready and all the involved were to be tried for acts of terror. Meanwhile Government changed at the center and the NIA adopted the line which has led to the present situation where the efforts to release Sadhvi are marching with intimidating speed. The change in the line got reflected in the statement of Public Prosecutor, Rohini Salian. She stated that she was told to go soft on these cases. As she refused to toe this, she was sacked.

One recalls that in Mumbai 92-93 violence over one thousand people died. This carnage was followed by the bomb blasts in which over two hundred people died. As far as the communal carnage is concerned not many got severe punishments, no death penalty- no life imprisonment. In the cases of bomb blasts many have been given death penalty and many more life imprisonment. One of the people undergoing life imprisonment is Rubina Memon. Her crime, she owned the car which was used to ferry the explosives. She never drove the car with explosives.

Sadhvi owned the motor cycle used for Malegaon blasts; she will be out from the prison soon. Rubina owned the car; she will be in prison all her life. In Mumbai carnage so many died. No severe punishment to anybody. So many severe punishments in bomb blast case!

So where does our democracy stand at the end of all this? It seems two type of justice delivery systems are out there in the open. While shrill debates on TV will defend Sadhvi and blame Karkare for faulty investigation, the people in Malegaon are protesting furiously and planning to go to the court against the change in the stance of NIA. Two political parties seem to be preparing to save the honor of Karakare and press for sincere examination of the evidence collected by him.

One hopes the guilty will be punished and innocents will be protected. But this seems a bit too much to expect in current scenario!

(Ram Puniyani is a former IIT Professor, Mumbai-based author and peace activist. His most recent book is Indian Nationalism Vs Hindu Nationalism .).
Police ready to protect China's summer tourists Updated: 2016-05-30 21:23 (Xinhua)

KUNMING - As the summer season kicks off, tourist destinations across China are increasing police presence to ensure any crimes or disputes are dealt with in a timely manner.

This increased presence follows a similar campaign last year, which was launched to handle disputes over forced shopping, exorbitant food prices and illegal vendors.

Police officers dispatched across resorts, parks and major scenic spots in Southwest China's Yunan Province are preparing for summer travel rush. Tourist visits to the province exceeded 300 million last year, generating 320 billion yuan in revenue.

Despite China's booming tourist market, complains about dishonest or poor service abound. Disputes between consumers and merchants sometimes escalate into violence without timely intervention by authorities.

The tourism police will respond to any complaints and coordinate with other regulatory bodies to address illegal activities.

"It's psychologically reassuring to know there are cops to watch out for travellers," said Zhang Pengfei, who traveled from northeast China to southwest Yunnan's Xishuangbanna.

Zhang added that during his travels he had filed complaints but the authorities had not responded immediately, and this had disrupted his travel plans.

Police based in Xishuangbanna since March this year have already uncovered a fake-liquor scheme in the tropical resort.
Top Chinese legislator meets US lawmakers Updated: 2016-05-31 00:17 (Xinhua)

Top legislator Zhang Dejiang meets with a delegation of US lawmakers led by Republican Senator from Montana Steve Daines on May 30, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

BEIJING -- Top legislator Zhang Dejiang met with a delegation of US lawmakers led by Republican Senator from Montana Steve Daines on Monday.

China and US relations have generally maintained their momentum and a sound China-US relationship serves the interests of the two countries and two peoples, said Zhang, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC).

He said China's NPC and the US senate will have another meeting in the next half of the year.

"The exchanges between legislative institutions contribute to mutual understanding and help avoid misunderstanding, miscalculation and disturbance in cooperation," Zhang told the delegation.

He called on both sides to contribute to building a new type of major country relationship between China and the US, providing legal protection for two-way investment, economic and trade cooperation and people-to-people exchanges.

The delegation said they are ready to work more to promote practical cooperation in various areas with China.
Media 'can help to defuse' conflicts Updated: 2016-05-31 02:35 By Fu Jing(China Daily)

Zhu Ling (center right), publisher and editor in chief of China Daily, presents a winner's trophy to Suthichai Yoon, chief adviser of Nation Multimedia Group, whose staff won two top prizes in the fourth Asia Press Photo Contest on Monday in Beijing. WANG ZHUANGFEI / CHINA DAILY

Geopolitical tensions in Asia could be defused or prevented partly by increased content-sharing among the continent's media outlets, thereby achieving a better understanding of countries' different positions, media industry leaders said.

This was among the views that emerged as about 30 editors from Asian media outlets gathered in Beijing on Monday for the two-day annual board meeting of the Asia News Network. The meeting is being held the same week as China Daily's 35th anniversary, which falls on Wednesday.

The editors will also join a discussion on Tuesday, with Jin Liqun, president of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

The two-day ANN conference includes discussions of the media situation in Asia, a review of the organization's achievements in the past year and talks on possible expansion.

Zhu Ling, publisher and editor-in-chief of China Daily, said he appreciated the spirit of cooperation and sharing among leading Asian media in recent years.

"Let us do more," Zhu, also acting chairman of the ANN for 2015-16, said at the opening of the meeting.

Warren Fernandez, editor of The Straits Times of Singapore, said geopolitical issues always catch the media's attention.

"I think the most important thing we can do is to write about it, to explain what's going on, to help our people understand the perspective one country has on an issue."

Members of the ANN are mostly English-language Asian media outlets.

Ravindra Kumar, editor of The Statesman, said that when geopolitical or political concerns arise, ANN members' countries might be exposed to opposite stances. "The role the ANN could play is to put the other country's views across to the readers."

Suthichai Yoon, chief adviser of Nation Multimedia Group of Thailand, said, "With an open and frank exchange of views, and analysis from all the aspects, we get a better understanding. And, hopefully, we can prevent tensions."

Li Xiang, Peng Yining and Yan Dongjie contributed to this story.

fujing@chinadaily.com.cn
Reaction mixed to new paid leave rule Updated: 2016-05-31 02:35 By Wang Xiaodong in Beijing and Qi Xin in Zhengzhou(China Daily)

Henan province has adopted a policy allowing single children to take paid leave of up to 20 days a year to look after parents who are age 60 or older and hospitalized. Residents and experts alike hailed the move as a way to embrace the country's rapidly aging population.

Some, however, said enforcement of the regulation, which took effect on Friday, could be a problem and the policy might pose challenges for smaller companies.

Hua Huiping, a 53-year-old retired worker in Pingdingshan, Henan, who suffers from hypertension, said she is glad to hear of the regulation.

"My daughter is working in Zhengzhou and very busy," she said. "We know it would be difficult for her to ask for a leave from her company. I hope the policy will change that."

Wang Lili, a researcher at the China Research Center on Aging, said that with people living longer in China, the country's single-child generations will face heavier pressure, since such couples must simultaneously look after two pairs of parents and their own children.

"The policy is a good beginning and will play a positive role in promoting family-based elder care in Henan province and in China," she said.

"It may be very difficult to enforce the regulation without supporting measures, as many enterprises may not be willing to follow the regulation, considering the costs.

"The government can take some incentive measures to encourage enterprises to follow the regulation, such as a preferential tax policy," she said.

Huang Yuliang, chairman of the Zhengzhou Orchard Commune Animation Co, said he believed the additional paid leave could hurt smaller enterprises.

"It's good and a duty for people to care for their elders, but there's the rub  how can we find backup staffers if a department chief takes weeks off?"

China dropped its decadeslong one-child policy on Jan 1, encouraging all couples to have a second child.

Contact the writers at wangxiaodong@chinadaily.com.cn
China intercepts substandard children's products of foreign brands Updated: 2016-05-31 15:00 (Xinhua)

SHANGHAI - Shanghai's quarantine officers have returned or destroyed 101 batches of substandard imported children's garments, toys and diapers this year, some of which were produced by well-known high street brands, such as H&M and Next.

The shoddy imports, found between Jan 1 and May 15, failed to meet quality and safety standards on formaldehyde, PH levels and color fastness, according to a spokesperson with the Shanghai Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau.

For example, more than 3,900 T-shirts made in Turkey by H&M were destroyed due to below-standard color fastness, along with nearly 300 kg of its infant one-pieces that failed PH level tests and more than 1,000 scarfs that failed formaldehyde level tests.

High-end brands, such us Armani Junior and Polo Ralph Lauren, were also named for exporting the substandard clothes.

Shanghai Port has handled more than two thirds of China's imported children's products so far this year.
Bamboo development in Africa topic of Beijing forum Updated: 2016-05-31 20:37 By ZHENG JINRAN(chinadaily.com.cn)

The International Network of Bamboo and Rattan hosted a forum on Monday in a bid to create a platform for collaboration and promoted the utilization of bamboo as an effective option for a sustainable future in Africa.

The forum, In the Bamboo for South-South and Trilateral Cooperation in Africa, was held at the Embassy of Ghana in Beijing. Representatives from several African countries, potential investors and funding agencies came together for dialogue and an exchange of ideas to explore opportunities in bamboo development in Africa.

The International Network of Bamboo and Rattan, or INBAR, established in 1997, is a multilateral development organization to find and demonstrate innovative ways of using bamboo and rattan while protecting the environment and biodiversity, and alleviating poverty.

"Bamboo is an indigenous African species present throughout most of the continent. INBAR's technical and policy assistance can help African countries fully tap the benefits of their existing bamboo resources," said Anani Demuyakor, the ambassador of the Republic of Ghana and the vice chair representative of the INBAR Council.

"Ghana has benefited tremendously from its membership in INBAR. INBAR has helped to set up the Bamboo and Rattan Development Program within the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, creating approximately 15,000 jobs," he said.

Wang Chunfeng, deputy director general of the State Forestry Administration of China, said China is active in promoting South-South cooperation and increasing support to Africa. That is based on an earlier announcement on the establishment of the South-South Climate Cooperation Fund and the provision of $60 billion to ensure the smooth implementation of A 10-Point Plan in Africa in Paris and Johannesburg in 2015, respectively.

These initiativesare providing new opportunities for expanding bamboo development in the African continent, he said.
Pennsylvania welcomes Chinese Updated: 2016-05-31 11:02 By Hua Shengdun in Washington(China Daily USA)

Visiting the US, Chinese tourists are usually drawn to New York, California or Washington DC for the obvious reasons - these destinations have an aura of excitement that throws you right into the thick of American culture.

Another state hopes to add its name to the list, and hopefully before the lure of the 2016 China-US tourism year expires.

Mike Stack, lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, thinks his state offers Chinese tourists the chance to immerse themselves in American history.

"There's all kinds of history in Pennsylvania," he said. "If Chinese tourists are looking for one place to come to really learn about American history, Pennsylvania is absolutely the place."

Home to world famous icons like the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall and Gettysburg National Military Park, Pennsylvania boasts a number of landmarks at the heart of American history.

Stack made his comments at an event celebrating Chinese company Fuling Plastic USA's two-year anniversary at its facility in Allentown, Pennsylvania on May 26. The company produces straws and plastic ware for major US fast food chains, including Subway, Wendy's and Burger King.

"We have from one end of the state to the other, really important historical things," said Stack. "In Philadelphia, where we began to create Old Liberty, there are a million things to see and we also have beautiful outdoor sights."

Stack said his natural affinity for travel and Asian culture drew him to visit China two decades ago and he has made a point of familiarizing himself with Chinese culture ever since.

When I went 20 years ago, it was so much different than I understand it is now. And I was so impressed back then, said Stack. Since then, with globalization, all the different exchanges of culture weve had, I would love to go back. We have so many things in common culturally, and we can learn so much from China.

One particular memory that has stuck with Stack from his visit was riding a bicycle along with the thousands of others in Beijing. His cycling skills not being up to par, he wobbled along, drawing attention from other cyclists.

But if youre a bad bike rider, dont worry. Because when I was riding my bike badly, all the other people sort of boxed me in and said watch this guy, hes a bad biker so lets make sure he stays up, said Stack.

This sense of mutual support is one that has developed between Pennsylvania and China over the years. China is the top importing country to Pennsylvania, totaling more than $20 billion in imported goods and services in 2015.

Pennsylvanias investment relationship with China is in its early stages of development. Two years ago, the state received its first greenfield Chinese outbound foreign direct investment in the form of Fulings plastics manufacturing plant in Allentown.

Pennsylvania is ripe for Chinese investment. We are anxious and open to working with China, and having business relationships. Pennsylvania is the next state to be discovered. Fuling is the first, and I guarantee there will be many more, said Stack.

Chinese outbound foreign direct investment to the US reached an all-time high last year, but this relationship is just beginning to take root in Pennsylvania.

I may travel to China and encourage companies to come here as well, said Stack. I am going to emphasize to the governor that we should do it. We dont have anything concrete yet, but we have had some informal discussions about a trade mission to China.

A number of US governors have traveled to China on trade missions, and many have set up relationships through the sister cities program.

Allan Fong in Washington contributed to this story.

(China Daily USA 05/31/2016 page1)
Togo's leader backs China on sea issue Updated: 2016-05-31 08:21 By An Baijie(China Daily USA)

Visiting Togo President Faure Gnassingbe called on Monday for a peaceful resolution of the South China Sea issue through direct dialogue, a Foreign Ministry official said.

"African countries, including Togo, have issued declarations for relevant parties to resolve disputes through peaceful dialogue in accordance with bilateral agreements," said Lin Songtian, the ministry's Africa Department director.

Gnassingbe is in China on a state visit from Sunday to Thursday. During his talk with President Xi Jinping, he reiterated his government's stance on the South China Sea, Lin said.

"More and more African countries have agreed that international peace and security could be threatened by attempts to resolve territorial disputes through arbitration cases," Lin said, adding that many African countries, including Togo, Gambia, Niger and Mozambique, have issued communiques urging parties back to the track of negotiation.

The Philippines initiated an arbitration case against China over maritime disputes in the South China Sea at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in early 2013. The court's decision is expected to be announced in coming weeks.

Xi told Gnassingbe that the Chinese government encourages companies to invest in Togo, and the two countries could enhance cooperation in areas including agriculture, industrialization, fighting piracy and curtailing organized crime.

"There is a Chinese saying: While having water, we should not forget the people who dug the well," Xi said, adding that the leaders of the two countries have developed a good relationship over the past 44 years since the establishment of diplomatic ties in 1972.

China is Togo's largest trading partner and its biggest source of imports. China is also the main source of investors and project contractors.

Xi expressed his condolences for the five United Nations peace keepers from Togo who were killed in Mali on Sunday by suspected militants.

Gnassingbe expressed gratitude for China's support of the Togo government's efforts to improve people's livelihoods and infrastructure construction.

Witnessed by the two presidents, seven agreements were signed covering a range of areas, including diplomacy and finance.

As an important gateway to West Africa, Togo could become a transportation hub for China's Belt and Road Initiative, Gnassingbe was quoted as saying by Xinhua News Agency.

It was Gnassingbe's second state visit to China since he became president in 2005. In December, Xi met with Gnassingbe during the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Johannesburg, South Africa.

In April, Gnassingbe inaugurated a motorcycle assembly plant of Chinese company Dayang Group in Notse city, 96 kilometers north of the capital, Lome.

The plant will produce over 3,000 Leopard brand motorcycles per year and will help to reduce unemployment, Xinhua reported.

anbaijie@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily USA 05/31/2016 page4)
China-Thai agreement targets MICE business Updated: 2016-05-30 14:35 By Yang Feiyue(chinadaily.com.cn)

Dancers perform at a conference. [Photo provided to China Daily]

The Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the China Chamber of International Commerce on May 28, aimed at attracting more MICE travelers from China  its biggest source market.

Thailand attracted roughly 1 million visitors for business events in the fiscal year 2015 (October 2014 to September 2015), and associated revenue hit 95.9 billion baht ($2.7 billion). That included 110,000 Chinese MICE travelers, contributing 9.2 billion baht. The momentum continued when 47,455 Chinese business-event travelers visited during October 2015-March 2016, contributing 4 billion baht to the Thai economy.

Under the terms of the agreement, TCEB and CCOIC have agreed to establish a long-term partnership in several areas and across several MICE platforms. This includes a plan to further improve and regularly exchange information on trade promotion, and a commitment to providing support and encouraging academic research, business trade missions and participation in trade events in both countries.

"Thailand and China have enjoyed more than 40 years of relations and mutual prosperity in which trade between the two nations now exceeds $63 billion annually," says Nopparat Maythaveekulchai, president of TCEB.

The MOU has been initiated so that enhanced cultural and economic exchanges will improve and enhance the MICE industry.

Related:

Tourists view lily flowers in East China's Jiujiang
Chin P'ing Me (The Plum in the Golden Vase), David Roy's lifelong passion. Provided to China Daily

Sad news came on Monday morning via WeChat that David Tod Roy, a professor emeritus in East Asian languages and civilizations at the University of Chicago, died early in the morning.

The message, from The Paper, a Shanghai-based news portal, has been reposted by many people I know. They expressed their condolences with signs of tears and prayers.

The headline, which described him as someone who had spent 30 years translating Chin P'ing Mei, or The Plum in the Golden Vase, is simply impressive enough for many Chinese.

Most Chinese can hardly read the book written in ancient Chinese, so it would be a surprise that it was translated into English by a laowai (foreigner).

Chin P'ing Mei, written anonymously in 1618, has been widely regarded by some as a milestone in the history of Chinese novels and dubbed the "ancestor of A Dream of Red Mansion" by Chairman Mao but also officially condemned in China as pornography and banned under Mao.

One of my colleagues told me on Tuesday that when she checked out the book in her school library a few years back, she found it was abridged, with notes saying certain pornographic content was cut.

As recently as April, the Beijing municipal authorities raided an illegal print shop in the city's Tongzhou District "based on tips that pornography book Chin P'ing Mei was being printed there. The authorities confiscated 120 copies of the book, based on a manuscript of the book from the Emperor Qianlong (1711-1799) era.

I had long hoped to interview David Roy about his amazing work, but that's now become a regret.

In a 2013 interview with J. Stapleton Roy, the former US ambassador to China and David Roy's younger brother, I was told that the fifth and final volume of the English translation would be published. But I still teased, saying it's still considered pornography by many in China.

"The fact that it is printed by Princeton University Press suggests that it is not considered to be pornography in the United States," said Stapleton Roy, laughing.

In fact, the two brothers are not really that much laowai. Both were born in Nanjing of East China's Jiangsu province in the first half of the 1930s to their Presbyterian missionary parents, who went to China in 1930.

David was born in 1933. The family returned to the US on furlough in 1936. When the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression broke out in 1937, the University of Nanjing moved to Chengdu in West China's Sichuan province. So when the family returned in 1938, they stayed in Chengdu until 1945.

In a feature posted on the University of Chicago website, David Roy said that the two brothers didn't have any formal schooling between 1939 and 1945.

The family again returned to the US while the father, Andrew Roy, got his PhD at Princeton University from 1945 to 1948. When they again returned to China in 1948, the brothers went to the boarding school at the Shanghai American School.

While most parents withdrew their children from the school and returned to the US or wherever they came from, the Roy family stayed.

"By May 1949, when the Communists took the city, there were only 16 of us left out of the original 400. In fact, I took my final exam in 10th-grade geometry the day the Communists marched into Shanghai," wrote David Roy.

The family's experience in China after 1949 was tortuous, but the brothers made huge progress in Chinese.
Sany learns lessons in US, catches up Updated: 2016-05-31 11:02 By Dong Leshuo in Washington(China Daily USA)

It took almost 10 years for Sany, the Chinese manufacturer of construction and material-handling equipment, to become profitable in North America.

Since opening a plant in Peachtree City, Georgia, in 2006, Sany America Inc has been manufacturing, selling and supporting their products in the US, Canada, Mexico and Central America.

"When we decided to come to the US, we estimated that it may take 7-8 years for us to start making a profit. It took a little longer, but we have achieved this goal, which is a milestone for Sany America," said Liang Linhe, senior vice-president of Sany Group and chairman of Sany America.

Sany's loader and road roller may enter the North America market by the end of 2016, and all product lines will show up in North America in three years, according to Liang. He said that among Sany America's different products, excavators are becoming more and more accepted in the US market.

"Though it took long to do it, sales for excavators in 2015 are pretty good; more than 400 were sold last year, which is one of the best records for a Chinese company in the US. We aim to sell 800 excavators by the end of 2016," Liang said.

He said that not only have sales increased, but so has recognition of Sany by clients.

"The evaluations we got for our excavators are very high. Our products are even better than some of the US products. And we do have a higher cost-performance ratio," he said.

However, compared to other world-class excavator makers, like Caterpillar Inc, Sany's market share for excavators is still at the third-tier level, with only about 4 percent of the market share, according to Liang.

"We are making all efforts to edge into the second tier, which means the market share will have to rise to 8 percent," he said.

Liang said he believes that one reason for the excavator not selling well is because "American clients tend to reject products from a Chinese company."

He said 2008 and 2009 represented the peak period when Chinese manufacturers came to the US, but he said most exited the market in 2011 and there are only a few left now, some of which have caused problems.

"Some Chinese companies sold products to American clients, but did not provide quality service. The prices are affordable, but the service is not good. This has left US clients with a negative impression of Chinese manufacturers," Liang said.

Sany made the same mistake, he said.

According to Liang, Sany's strategy toward the US market was similar to its strategy for its African market: a focus on sales, while service fell behind.

"Actually, in 2013, our US sales record was very good, reaching almost $600 million. But in the following year it started to fall, as our service did not catch up. So from 2014, we started to reconsolidate our strategy by enhancing our service system," he said.

"Now we are building up our service capacity, but it may take a long time for us to alter clients' impressions toward Chinese products. It also needs all Chinese manufacturers to work together on this issue," Liang said.

Despite this, Liang said he thinks Chinese manufacturing has advantages, and one is comparatively lower cost, "especially the cost of labor and cost of raw materials, which will be reflected in the price of the product".

Liang said that for certain products the price listed by Chinese manufacturers is only 70 percent of that listed by US manufacturers.

Another advantage he said is that Chinese companies' manufacturing technique is still competitive, which means the high value-added products it produces match the world's most advanced class of products, but with a lower price.

However, Liang said that standards and requirements in the US, such as emission standards, differ from those in China and Europe, so it takes more effort to innovate existing products and research and development for new products in the US.

"The research and development for the products in the US has to be two generations in advance of those in China," he said.

"We developed one model of our crawler crane especially for the North American markets, which meets standards in those markets. The new model is designed to reduce the cost of transportation for our clients in North America," Liang said.

"The market for port machinery was pretty dominated by Austrian companies. But gradually, our products have gained recognition among our clients in the US. We figured out that clients want machinery that is comfortable to operate, but they also want it to have good safety performance," Liang said.

leshuodong@chinadailyusa.com

(China Daily USA 05/31/2016 page2)
Gas-mileage standards fuel A123 Updated: 2016-05-31 11:02 By Paul Welitzkin in New York(China Daily USA)

A global push to improve gas mileage and the Chinese government's strategy to bolster the use of electric vehicles will continue to help the bottom line for battery maker A123 Systems, according to CEO Jason Forcier.

"We believe that the auto industry will need to turn to micro-hybrids to help boost fuel economy and the use of incentives in China will continue to drive the market for electric vehicles (EVs)," said Forcier.

A123 manufactures advanced lithium-ion batteries for vehicles and energy-storage systems for commercial and industrial uses. The company, based in Livonia, Michigan, was rescued from bankruptcy in 2013 by Wanxiang Group, China's biggest auto-parts maker.

Forcier said A123 was formed in 2001 as a spinoff from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "Three founders, including Yet-Ming Chiang, started the company based on IP (intellectual property) that was licensed from MIT," he added.

A123 spent the next seven years developing its technology. In 2008, the US government got behind the development of electric cars and A123 went public in 2009 and "raised over $400 million from an IPO (initial public offering) and built a lot of capacity (plants in Livonia and another Detroit suburb) to support growth in the automotive market," said Forcier.

That growth never happened, and A123 filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2012. Wanxiang acquired the company a year later.

"We have been successful since then by focusing on specific areas of the automotive industry," said Forcier. He said the company should generate revenue of about $400 million this year and is cash-flow positive.

A123 employs more than 2,100 globally. "Most of our business (about 60 percent) comes from China," said Forcier. The US generates about 25 percent of company revenue, the rest comes from Europe and elsewhere.

Forcier said that China is pushing hard for electric vehicles. "It's largely an incentive-driven market as the government is taking an aggressive role with free vehicle registration, rebates and other incentives," he said.

Forcier said low gas prices are hindering US demand for EVs. But government pressure on the industry to improve mileage will benefit A123.

"Here in the US the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards are set to rise to 54.5miles a gallon by 2025 and China's standards will be even tougher," Forcier said.

paulwelitzkin@chinadailyusa.com

A123 Systems was purchased by China's Wanxiang Group in 2013 and has carved out a market niche by producing lithium-ion batteries for vehicles. The company's headquarters is in Livonia, Michigan. Provided to China Daily
European Investment Bank and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to strengthen cooperation Updated: 2016-05-31 10:47 By Chen Yingqun(chinadaily.com.cn)

The logo of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is seen at its headquarter building in Beijing January 17, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

The European Investment Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank signed a framework of cooperation on May 30 to broaden cooperation to support investment in strategically important projects, seek to jointly finance projects and increase cooperation in countries where both institutions are active.

"I am delighted to sign this framework of cooperation with the European Investment Bank as a sign of our expanding partnership in addressing the monumental infrastructure financing needs around the world," said Jin Liqun, president of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

"AIIB was created with the goal of promoting regional cooperation and partnership in addressing development challenges, and we no doubt have a strong partner in EIB. Through joint efforts we can be a steadying force in this complex global economic environment and create enduring positive development outcomes," he said.

Werner Hoyer, President of the European Investment Bank, says that international financial institutions play a crucial role supporting long-term investment that improves crucial infrastructure, supports job creation and improves lives.

"I look forward to working together with President Jin and his team to address challenges that no single institution can overcome alone, such as tackling climate change, ensuring sustainable transport and providing clean water. The framework signed today will enable more effective cooperation between our respective institutions," he said.

The EIB and the AIIB have already established a strong track record of cooperation, including through the sharing of technical and financial expertise. The new framework, which was signed by President Jin and President Hoyer at the AIIB's headquarters in Beijing, will build on this cooperation, including through streamlining the joint financing of projects and ensuring regular dialogue between the two institutions.

EIB President Hoyer is currently on a five-day official visit to China, the focus of which is strengthening the EIB's partnership with China on addressing Climate Change. The EIB is the world's largest lender for climate related investment and the global leader in issuing green bonds.
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In the last three years, the PetroVietnam Gas Joint Stock Corporation (PV GAS) as the representative of the oil industry often listed as one of the top five in previous lists.  File Photo

Viet Nam News HA NOI  Forbes Viet Nam Magazine has named the top 50 listed companies of the year in the local stock markets.

The magazine selected the companies of all sizes with the best business performance in 13 sectors, including multidisciplinary. The companies market capitalisation reached VN829 trillion (US$37 billion), accounting for 62.14 per cent of the total market on the two bourses as of May 16, 2016.

Their total revenue reached VN475.5 trillion, or 37.77 per cent of the of total market revenue and their profit after tax reached VN53.5 trillion, 53 per cent of the total profits in the market.

Most of the companies in this list were traded on the southern bourse of HCM Stock Exchange (HoSE), only five companies were listed on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange (HNX). Compared to last year, 2016s list has 10 new companies.

According to Forbes Viet Nam, which rated the best listed for the fourth time, the list this year reflected changes in the economy.

The companies related to the consumer industry continued to thrive and the recovery of the real estate market saw the realty industry bounce back in the stock market.

On the contrary, low prices of oil and gas that resulted in lower revenues and profits of related companies pulled out all stocks of the industry from this years list.

In the last three years, the PetroVietnam Gas Joint Stock Corporation (PV Gas) as the representative of the oil industry often listed as one of the top five in previous lists. This year, it was still in the list but as a representative of the appliance industry.

The realty industry, with ten companies, had the strongest showing in this years list. Popular names like Vingroup, Ha o or Fecon, at Xanh Group and Khang ien House also joined the list.

While in the financial and insurance sector, new comers like Asian Commercial Bank (ACB) and PetroVietnam Insurance (PVI) joined the list with Vietcombank, Sai Gon Securities Inc (SSI), and HCM Securities Company (HCM) and Bao Viet Holdings (BVH).

FPT Joint Stock Company was the only representative of the technology industry while Hau Giang JSC and Traphaco represented the pharmaceutical industry and Masan Group and Refrigeration Electrical Engineering Corporation (REE) were listed in the multidisciplinary group.

Thanh Cong-Tay Ninh Sugar Company and Pan Group were also two new representatives on the list, for the agriculture production industry.

The milk producer Viet Nam Dairy Products JSC (VNM), steel makers Hoa Sen Group and Hoa Phat Group, Thien Long Group (TLG) and Rang ong Light Source And Vacuum Flask (RAL) were also selected in the list this year.

To formulate the list, Forbes Viet Nam used its own method with the consideration of specific characters of local businesses under the basis of the audited financial statements in five years in a row and the fiscal year 2015 of all the companies.  VNS
Last year the city welcomed 4.6 million foreign visitors, accounting for a full 50 per cent of the number coming to Viet Nam, who spent VND94.6 trillion, or 30 per cent of national tourism revenues. Photo vietnamtourism.gov.vn

Viet Nam News HCM CITY The HCM City tourism sector has made good preparations this year to attract international visitors but more new attractions are needed for them to succeed.

We spent a lot of effort and time to carefully prepare for festivals and improve service quality and are very glad to see good results, Truong Hien Hoa, director of the city Tourism Promotion Centre, was quoted as saying to Thoi bao Kinh te Viet Nam (Viet Nam Economic Times).

Tourism activities have been accelerated this year with the holding of the Ao dai Festival and Southern Colour Festival.

According to the city tourism department, 1.38 million international visitors came to the city in the first quarter and spent VN25.8 trillion (US$1.15 billion), 12 and 9 per cent higher than in the same period last year, respectively.

They came predominantly from South Korea, Japan and the US, but also included a lot of overseas Vietnamese, thanks to the Lunar New Year that fell in that period.

The number of visitors arriving by ship increased by 80 per cent to 9,000.

Last year the city welcomed 4.6 million foreign visitors, accounting for a full 50 per cent of the number coming to Viet Nam, who spent VN94.6 trillion, or 30 per cent of national tourism revenues.

The citys share of tourism has decreased because tourism development always accompanies investment in new attractions, Hoa added.

He said the city lacks such new attractions, mentioning several major delayed ones like a safari in Cu Chi District, the Vietnamese History and Culture Park in District 9 and the Bach ang Culture Park in District 1.

However, the city has been launching some new services, including a boat tour on the Nhieu Loc  Thi Nghe canal.

A successful tourism model needs time to become known and popular, Hoa said.

We should make each local resident a tourism ambassador.

In the first quarter 2.46 million foreign tourists arrived in Viet Nam, an increase of nearly 20 per cent year-on-year, while domestic visitors numbered 18.7 million.

The sectors total revenues rose 21.2 per cent to VN109 trillion.

The number of mainland Chinese visitors increased by 66 per cent, while it was 30 per cent for South Korea, 160 per cent for Hong Kong, 15 per cent for Taiwan, and 12 per cent for Japan.  VNS
ONG NAI  The lives of thousands of local people living near the Nhon Trach Industrial Zone No 1 in southern ong Nai Province have been badly affected by polluted water for over 10 years, reported Lao ong (Labour) Newspaper.

According to the provincial Natural Resources and Environment Department, everyday the industrial zone discharges about 4,300cu.m of treated waste water.

But in fact, before flowing into the Thi Vai River, the stinky waste water runs through a canal in Hiep Phuoc Commune and has threatened the health of about 800 households living nearby.

Everyday, the black and stinky waste water from the industrial zone is discharged into the canal, Nguyen Tan uoc, a local resident, told the newspaper.

Water for the daily lives of local households is taken from wells near the polluted canal.

The water has a stinky smell even after boiled, but we have to use the water every day because we do not have any choice. We do not have the money to install tap water, said Pham Thi ao.

I am afraid that using the water could cause some diseases, but I do not have money to buy tap water, said Le Thu Mai who is working in the industrial zone.

Local people had sent complaints about the water pollution to local authorities many times but the situation has yet to be addressed.

Many people posted clips of the pollution on social networks with an aim of luring the attention of authorities and society at large.

Bui Phuoc uc, head of economic department of Nhon Trach District said there was a project to build a sewage system in Hiep Phuoc Commune with capital of VN10 billion, but so far the project was still only on paper.

Speaking to the newspaper, Vo Tai Hung, leader of Hiep Phuoc Commune, said the Nhon Trach Industrial Zone had a waste water treatment plant discharging water to the residential area, but they usually discharged untreated water into the canal.

The provincial Natural Resources and Environment Department has installed a monitoring station in the area and has confirmed that the level of toxins in the waste water was higher than the permitted norms, said Hung.

People of the commune have sent petitions for two years but the situation has not been solved. They were so tired of the lack of response that they had stopped sending complaints, he said angrily.

Meanwhile, the zones management board said that they have not received any complaints from local people about discharging polluted waste water.

Chau Anh Huy, representative of the Nhon Trach Industrial Zone, refused to provide information related to the waste water discharge.

While waiting for solutions, the local residents of Hiep Phuoc Commune must continue to live with the stinky polluted water.  VNS
QUANG NINH  Environmental protection in Ha Long Bay, in the northern province of Quang Ninh, remains difficult as large amounts of rubbish are generated by tourists and rubbish collection activitiy is not effective, according to local authorities.

Observations by a Tien Phong (Vanguard) newspaper correspondent revealed that one of Ha Long Citys most beautiful roads which runs along the seashore from the Bai Chay Road to Hong Ha Ward, always hosts different rubbish dumps. The rubbish smells bad when the tide ebbs. And rubbish drifts when the tide rises.

Nguyen uc Ba, a resident of Bach ang Ward, said he sometimes sees a team aboard a ship collecting drifting rubbish floating in the sea. But no one collects rubbish on the shore.

Vu Thi Lan, a visitor from the central city of a Nang, came to Ha Long Bay for the first time. She felt uncomfortable seeing rubbish everywhere.

Nguyen Cong Thai, deputy director of the Ha Long Bay Management Board, told Quang Ninh Newspaper that protecting the environment of the bay is very difficult. The most difficult problem is the shortage of workers, tools and ships to collect the rubbish.

To improve the polluted conditions, the management board recently set up teams to collect rubbish along the seashore and transport it inland. The board regularly offered education on protecting the environment to visitors and local residents. The board also gave rubbish bins to residents living in fishing villages on the bay and assigned ships to take the rubbish to the mainland for treatment weekly.

Next time, concerned wards will be assigned to manage and collect rubbish along the seashore in their areas, to tighten management on the issue.

To protect Ha Long Bay, community responsibility is very important, in addition to management board responsibility, said Thai.

Every year Ha Long Bay receives nearly three million visitors. The provincial Peoples Committee spends more than VN3 billion (US$133,300) per year from the Ha Long Bay tourism fund to collect and treat rubbish, according to the committee.  VNS
A NANG  Over 500 Yoga students will participate in the International Day of Yoga at My Khe beach in a Nang on June 19th . Yoga has developed in the city in recent years.

Yoga teacher Nguyen Kim Thu said the event, which is organised by the Viet Nam-India Friendship Association of a Nang, would be set up on the pristine beach of Son Tra peninsula. Yoga lovers and students in the city and nationwide will participate in the yoga demonstration.

Participants will receive a two-hour free practice session starting at 5am on June 19th, led by Indian Master Avi, who manages Aro Yoga centre in a Nang.

Thu said Yoga students can practise on the beach or on the isolated islets of Son Tra peninsula.  VNS
HCM CITY  Hundreds of new books for children of Vietnamese and international authors will be released during the summer.

The Tre (Youth) Publishing House will present 100 titles on arts, literature, history, and living skills.

To Nghi Gi Khi Con Be (What I Am Thinking When I Am a Child) is an interactive two-book set by artist Bien Thuy.

It raised questions about family, friends, people and the environment for children aged six to 10.

As a mother of two children, I know how to ask questions that encourage our children to share their feelings and thoughts about life, and learn more about living skills, Thuy said.

The publisher will reprint a book set titled Co Tich Moi (New Fairy Tales) written by author Nguyen Huong.

The set consisting of eight books tells new stories inspired by Vietnamese and foreign fairy tales in a modern style.

The publication won the golden prize at the Viet Nam Publishers Associations Best Book Awards 2016.

Nguyen Minh Nhut, director of the publishing house, said: The Tre Publishing House worked hard last year to release 100 new books for children that increase the number of our books for children up to 700.

Nhut said that his company focused on books for children because books provide children knowledge about people, nature and the world, as well as amazing adventures.

He said that educators and psychologists agreed that reading books is the best way to help children distinguish right and wrong.

The publishing house hosted a childrens book fair at the HCM City Pedestrian Book Street in District 1 on Sunday. The event displayed thousands of copies of books for children and sell them at a 20-30 per cent discount.

The Nha Nam Culture and Communications Company and the Writers Association Publishing House will introduce a set of four books on sex education for children and parents on International Childrens Day on June 1.

Some Secrets Should Never Be Kept was written by Jayneen Sandlers, an Australian teacher, author, mother of three teenagers and an active advocate for sexual-abuse prevention education both in the home and schools.

In order to raise awareness of parents about the importance of books for children, the publishing houses will host discussions with leading childrens book authors, educators and psychologists on the Pedestrian Book Street early next month.

Encouraging local writers

The Tre Publishing House launched a campaign Vietnamese Writes Books for Vietnamese Children to encourage local writers to provide more quality publications for Vietnamese children.

Nhut said the publishing house had published hundreds of childrens books by foreign authors in recent years, and now wanted to see more books by Vietnamese authors.

The market is lacking Vietnamese books for children. Foreign books impart general knowledge for both children and parents, but they may not be suited to Vietnamese tradition and culture," he said.

However, many young and veteran Vietnamese writers agreed that writing books for children was not easy.

To me, writing books for children means telling about my childhood, said veteran author and journalist Le Van Nghia.

Nghia has released two books for children, Mua He Nam Petrus (Summer in Petrus), and Chu Chieu Bong, Tay anh Bai va Tui Con Nit Xom Nho Sai Gon Nam Ay (Cinema Projectionist, Gambler and Children in Sai Gons Alley).

They have received warm welcome from both children and adults.

Nhut said: Through the campaign, we hope to receive more and more drafts for childrens books from Vietnamese writers, especially from young writers. We hope to provide young readers quality books featuring Vietnamese culture, history and tradition.  VNS
Star: Agnes Letestu, danseuse etoile of the Paris Opera Ballet, will star in the Paris Ballet in Ha Noi on June 11.  Photo celebsvenue.com

Viet Nam News HA NOI  Quintessential French ballet will be presented to audiences in Ha Noi when some of the best ballet dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet (Ballet de lOpera de Paris) perform in the capital city this month. Agnes Letestu, Mathilde Froustey, and Alice Renavand  stars (danseuse etoile) of the worlds oldest national ballet company - will dance a one-night performance of Paris Ballet. The performance will also feature other principal dancers from Opera Berlin, La Scala Theatre Ballet, and the San Francisco Ballet. According to the artistic director of the Paris Ballet, Frederic Fontan, the performance will take audiences on a journey to discover French ballet, which is considered the origin of all ballet. The performances repertoire has been arranged like a sightseeing tour for Vietnamese audiences. So they can learn about the development and specific style of French ballet through the centuries since the Paris Opera Ballet was founded under the reign of Louis XIV in the 17th century, Fontan said at a press conference in Ha Noi recently. The ballet feast will present extracts from nine famous ballets, including Carmen, The Nutcracker, Giselle, Don Quichotte, and In the Night. The performances repertoire also features extracts from Les enfants du paradis (Children of Paradise), Non, je ne regrette rien (No, I regret nothing), Les intermittences du coeur (The Intermittences of the Heart), and La Parc. The Paris Ballet will also present French pianist Henri Barda, dubbed The best kept secret of the French piano by Le Monde in 2008.

Duet: A scene from the ballet In the Night. An extract from this ballet will be presented during the Paris Ballet in Ha Noi on June 11.  Photo courtesy of the organiser

Born in 1941 and raised in Cairo, Bardas prodigious talent was recognised when he was 6 years old by the Polish pianist Ignace Tiegerman (1893-1968), who founded the Conservatoire Tiegerman in Cairo and became Bardas teacher.

At age 16, Barda moved to Paris to study under maestro Lazare Levy (1882-1964) and then under professor Joseph Benvenuti at the Conservatoire Nationale Superieur, where he graduated with top grades in piano and chamber music. In the late 1960s, he won a four-year scholarship to the Julliard School in New York, where he attended concerts by his favorite virtuosos Sviatoslav Richter and Vladimir Horowitz at Carnegie Hall.

Through the influence and guidance of such greats, Barda absorbed various traditions that helped him develop his style of brilliant and elegant -- and sometimes darkly passionate -- performances.

He worked with Jerome Robbins at the Paris Opera on his ballets tributes to Chopin. His recording of three Chopin Sonatas won the Warsaw Chopin Disc Award.

During the Paris Ballet, this renowned interpreter of Chopin and Brahms will beguile the audience with his amazing skill as he accompanies an extract from the ballet In the Night.

Other ballet extracts will be accompanied by the Viet Nam National Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Principal Conductor Honna Tetsuji.

Paris Ballet was brought to Viet Nam by VPBank, with the collaboration of the French Embassy in Viet Nam, the French Cultural Centre  lEspace, and Opal Vietnam. It will be staged at the My inh National Convention Hall at 8pm on June 11. A limited number of tickets are on sale via the hotline number 01272722015. VNS
HCM CITY  Austrian chef Eckart Witzigmann, who received the award "Chef of the Century from the Gault Millau guide and has worked at prestigious restaurants around the world, will take part in the 2016 Golden Spoon cooking contest to be held in three cities in the country.

Witzigmann will be the judge at the Chiec Thia Vang (Golden Spoon) contest, which aims to identify the countrys best chefs and dishes, the organisers said at the launch of the contest in Binh Duong Province.

Themed Huong vi que nha - Hanh Trinh Gia Vi Viet (Homeland Tastes - Journey of Vietnamese Spices), the contest will take place in Ha Noi, HCM City and a Nang, with the qualifying round from June 7 to September 29.

The semi-final rounds in the north and south will be organised in Ha Noi on October 11-12 and HCM City on October 25-27. The final round will be held in HCM City on December 6-7.

The total prize this year will exceed US$135,000.

Co-organised by the Viet Nam National Administration of Tourism, the Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Binh Duong-based porcelain manufacturer Minh Long I Company and the Business Support Academy, the cooking contest aims to seek talented chiefs who can create world-class Vietnamese dishes from each region of the country.

The past three cooking contests help to promote Vietnamese cuisine as a main economic contributor and also contribute to healthy lifestyle, said Ly Huy Sang, deputy general director of Minh Long 1 and deputy head of the cooking contests board of organisers.

Speaking at the launch of the contest, Nguyen Quoc Hung, deputy general director of Viet Nam National Administration for Tourism (VNAT), said: Golden Spoon is not only a symbol but also a brand name of the countrys tourism industry.  VNS.
WELLINGTON  New Zealand said today it will introduce plain packaging on tobacco products, joining a growing list of countries planning similar measures despite the threat of legal action from the industry.

The move, which coincides with World No Tobacco Day, means cigarettes must be sold in drab boxes plastered with health warnings and gruesome pictures of smoking-related disease.

Associate Health Minister Sam Lotu-Iiga said the measure targeted one of the most powerful tools used to get young people hooked on tobacco.

"Twelve New Zealanders die prematurely every day from smoking-related illnesses -- each of these deaths is preventable," he said.

New Zealand first proposed plain packaging in 2013, saying it would "remove the last remaining vestige of glamour from these deadly products".

But it was put on hold pending the outcome of tobacco giant Philip Morris legal action against the Australian government, which pioneered the introduction of plain packets in 2012.

The lawsuit failed last December and since then a number of countries, including Britain and France, have passed legislation on the issue.

Numerous other countries, including Canada, Singapore, Belgium and South Africa have announced plans to follow suit, according to data from the Canadian Cancer Council.

With momentum building, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has made "Get Ready For Plain Packaging" the slogan of this years World No Tobacco Day.

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key admitted the fact that so many countries were adopting the packing had emboldened his government to ignore the threat of legal action from Big Tobacco.

"They may well take a case against the government, but the advice we have been getting over time now has been that the risks of them being successful... is reducing," he told reporters.

The New Zealand ban is not immediate. There is a two-month consultation, then Lotu-Iiga said recommendations on implementation would go to the government later this year.

British American Tobacco NZ said it remained "strongly opposed" to plain packaging and reserved the right to take legal action.

"BATNZ hopes that the government will review all the evidence and be cautious about progressing a measure that has failed in Australia," it said in a statement.

A study commissioned by the Australian government found tobacco use dropped 14.4 percent in the two years after Canberras world-first ban was introduced.

The Maori Party, which first proposed plain packaging in New Zealand, said smoking rates among the indigenous population were well above average and the ban was long overdue.

"It is also a message to international tobacco companies that New Zealand will not be intimidated by threats of legal action," co-leader Marama Fox said.  AFP
WASHINGTON - US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter will depart today for an Asian security summit in Singapore, where Beijings military expansion across the South China Sea likely will once again dominate discussions.

Regional neighbors are fretting over what they see as Chinas expansionism as it rushes to exert sovereignty over the waterway, a major global shipping route believed to be home to large oil and gas reserves.

China is using dredgers and other tools to convert low-lying ocean features and sandy blips into military bases.

A Pentagon report this month said China has added more than 3,200 acres (1,300 hectares) of land to the seven features it occupies in the Spratly Islands archipelago.

The so-called Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual meeting in Singapore, will see defense ministers, military chiefs and defense experts from the Asia-Pacific region and beyond discuss regional security issues.

Aside from the South China Sea, delegates are expected to focus on the growing threat of Islamic terrorism in the region and North Koreas nuclear programme.

Since becoming President Barack Obamas fourth Pentagon chief in February 2015, Carter has taken a forceful tone on Beijings South China Sea construction.

He criticised the drive at last years Shangri-La meeting and on Friday, Carter said China risks creating a "Great Wall of self-isolation."

"Countries across the region -- allies, partners and the unaligned -- are voicing concerns publicly and privately at the highest levels," Carter said.

The United States has conducted several "freedom of navigation" operations where it pointedly ignores Chinas claims of sovereign exclusion zones around the islands by closely flying or sailing past.

Carters trip will see him first visit an Army base in Arizona.

He had also considered meeting his Japanese counterpart Gen Nakatani during a visit to Japan, but the two decided to meet in Singapore instead, a US defense official said on condition of anonymity.  AFP
Hundreds of ancient trees in Tra Vinh city, which is described as the "Green City" of the Mekong Delta region, could be at risk of death, experts warn.Photo tuoitre.vn

TRA VINH  Hundreds of ancient trees in Tra Vinh city, which is described as the "Green City" of the Mekong Delta region, could be at risk of death, experts warn.

The warning came as a survey conducted by experts from the Australian Institute of Horticulture, HCM City University of Agriculture and Forestry, and other specialists showed that as many as 420 old trees werent growing well.

The trees suffering include tamarind, dau (dipterocarpus alatus), and sao ( hopea odorata) trees. Dau and sao trees, valued for their wood, are threatened species in their natural habitat.

Experts blame the construction of concrete pavements and improper care, which limit photosynthesis and water absorption, decreasing plant vitality.

According to Pham Tiet Khoa, chairman of Tra Vinh Urban Works Company  which manages all trees in the city, the affected trees dont have many leaves and are not a healthy green. Trees on Pham Hong Thai, Nam Ky Khoi Nghia and Tran Quoc Tuan streets are affected the most.

Local resident Le Cong Sy said the affected trees seemed less green and healthy in recent years. Their leaves turned yellow in rainy or dry season, and branches often fell off, he said.

Diep Van Thanh, chairman of the Peoples Committee of the Mekong Delta province of Tra Vinh, said authorities of Tra Vinh City proposed a project to maintain old trees to 2020, at an initial cost of VN20 billion (US$893,600). The project is expected to begin next month.

Local authorities also suggested the provincial Peoples Committee direct relevant agencies who lay underground power cables to avoid damaging tree root.

Tra Vinh city is home to over 13,690 trees. Of these, about 800 trees are more than 100 years old, including tamarind, dipterocarpus alatus and hopea odorata trees. -- VNS
NGHE AN  Five students reportedly drowned in three districts of central Nghe An Province yesterday afternoon.

In Dien Chau District, three victims from Dien Chau Communes Primary School, identified as Tran Thu Huong, Class 1C; Tran Viet Hung, Class 4C; and Tran Thanh Trung, Class 5A, drowned while swimming in a local lakeThe area around the lake where the bodies were found is under construction as part of a project to supply clean water to the region. It is located near the headquarters of Dien Chau Communes Peoples Committee.

There are no warning signs or barriers posted around the lake, Lao ong (Labour) newspaper reported.

Local authorities visited and offered condolences to the families of the deceased and provided VN5 million (US$223) in compensation to each family.

Meanwhile, in Tan Ky District, Truong Thi Huyen, 14, fell to his death, landing in the Vuc Tron stream, while herding buffalo.

Locals said the water level of the stream had risen to high levels, reaching 4-5m, following heavy rains some days ago.

In Yen Thanh District, Bui Thi Thu Trang, a 12th grader, was swept away by the current while washing her sandals in a local lake.

Many cases of children drowning have been reported recently across the country.

Also in Nghe An Province, last Monday, two children, aged 5 and 6, drowned when swimming in a local river in Ky Son District.

On May 4, four female students drowned in the ocean off the shore of Khanh Hoa Province.

Earlier, on April 15, nine students from Nghia Ha Secondary High School in Quang Ngai City drowned in Tra Khuc River.

This month, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc called on the concerned agencies and parents to strictly enforce his Decision No. 234/Q-TTg, dated February 5, 2016, on preventing accidents and injuries among children during the 2016-2020 period.

Under the order, the peoples committees of cities and provinces nationwide are in charge of inspecting facilities for physical training activities for students and placing warning signs in dangerous areas.  VNS
HCM CITY  Heavy rains and strong winds have flattened paddy fields in the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta, making it difficult for farmers to harvest rice.

In Hau Giang Provinces Chau Thanh A District, farmers have entered the peak harvest season of the summer-autumn rice crop.

Rains and strong winds have flattened all of my rice that was ready for harvest," said Cao Thanh Binh, who grows 1.4ha of rice in Chau Thanh As Truong Long A Commune.

Owners of combine harvesters are now charging VN300,000 per 1,000 sq.m to harvest rice in flattened paddy fields. The price is normally VN260,000 per 1,000 sq.m.

Pham Thanh Hoai, chairman of the Truong Long A Commune Peoples Committee, said the process of harvesting the communes 1,900 ha of rice had been slow because of prolonged rains.

The flattened fields had caused yields to fall by 20-30 per cent, he said.

The price of paddy has fallen, causing a drop in profits for farmers, he said.

Before mid-May, traders made deposits to buy in advance fresh normal-quality paddy at fields at a price of VN4,700 a kilo.

The price is now VN4,300 a kilo, according to the Truong Long A Commune Peoples Committee.

In major rice cultivating areas in Can Tho City, Kien Giang and ong Thap provinces, farmers also face a similar situation.

Farmer Le Ngoc Le in Can Thos Vinh Thanh District said farmers had been waiting at fields a week as combine harvesters were overloaded.

In the summer-autumn rice crop, paddy fields in fresh water areas in Can Tho City, ong Thap, An Giang and Vinh Long provinces had high yields as they were not affected by drought and salt water intrusion.

Farmers were able to have a profit of VN20 million (US$900) per ha, according to the Deltas provincial departments of agriculture and rural development.

But in areas affected by heavy rains and strong winds in recent days, farmers have had a profit of VN12-15 million per ha because of reduced yield and price.

Le Van oi, deputy director of the Hau Giang Provinces Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, was quoted as saying to Sai Gon Giai Phong (Liberated Sai Gon) newspaper that his department had warned farmers to follow the weather forecast and watch for crop diseases.

In areas in Hau Giangs Long My District that have not planted the summer-autumn rice because of drought and salt water intrusion, farmers should sow the summer-autumn rice as rains have pushed salt water away, he said.

Long My has about 6,000ha of rice fields that have not planted the summer-autumn rice crop.

Rains, however, have created good conditions to sow autumn-summer rice in drought and saline-hit areas, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Developments Plant Cultivation Department.

About 500,000ha of the deltas paddy fields located 50 km from the coast have not planted the autumn-summer rice.

These paddy fields should be promptly sowed as there is an abundance of fresh water due to early rains, said the Plant Cultivation Department. VNS
NGHE AN  The Civil Aviation Authority of Viet Nam (CAAV) is investigating the damage caused to a local households roof allegedly caused by an aircraft landing at an airport in central Nghe An Province.

Earlier, last Friday, Le Van Tien, 56, a local in Nghi Trung Commune of Nghi Loc District reported that 200 tiles came off the roof of his house. Twenty of the tiles were completely damaged.

No casualties or other damage to property was recorded.

At 1pm when the incident occurred, there was no wind, Tien said, but he did see an airplane flying past his house.

He blamed the damage to his roof on the aircraft landing at the nearby Vinh International Airport.

Northern Airports Authority and security officers of the Vinh International Airport came to Tiens house the same day to examine the case and report it to the CAAV for further investigation.

CAAV said that it would study the air traffic and flight route control information and ask the airline to deal with the incident in line with the laws if the damage had been caused by the airplane.

Locals in Nghi Trung Commune are reportedly usually wary of living near the airport due to the noise and strong winds caused by aircrafts landing and taking off.  VNS
HA NOI - Australian Navy warship HMAS ANZAC, with 28 officers and 156 sailors on board, is visiting Viet Nam from Monday until Thursday on a goodwill visit.

The port visit is expected to strengthen the relationship between the navies of the two countries and enhance nation-to-nation ties between Australia and Viet Nam, a press release from the Australian Embassy in Ha Noi said.

The commander, Captain Belinda Wood, and the crew will meet senior officers and sailors from the Vietnamese Peoples Navy to engage in a series of goodwill activities and to conduct a professional exchange on ship operations.

The crew will also participate in a friendly sporting activity with cadets of the Naval Technical College and also use this opportunity to explore Viet Nams rich culture and meet the local people.

This visit is an excellent opportunity to build upon the Australia-Vietnam defence cooperation relationship that commenced in 1999 and has grown in size and complexity since then, Colonel Darren Kerr, Australian Defence Attache in Viet Nam, said.

Since 1999, the Australian Defence Force has trained over 1,500 Viet Nam Peoples Army officers in Viet Nam and Australia and is now assisting the Viet Nam Peoples Army to prepare for United Nations peacekeeping operations.

HMAS ANZAC is an ANZAC Class guided missile frigate used in air defence, surveillance, interdiction and reconnaissance, as well as anti-submarine and surface warfare.

Weighing 3,600 tonnes and 118m in length, HMAS ANZAC is armed with Evolved Sea Sparrow surface-to-air missiles, Harpoon Block 2 anti-ship missiles, a Mk 45 127mm gun and six Mk 32 torpedo tubes.

HMAS ANZAC is also fitted with a flight deck and a hangar for a multi-role S-70B-2 Sea Hawk helicopter and has a top speed of 27 knots.  VNS
HA NOI  Cigarette smoke affects some 30 million non-smokers, especially women and children in Viet Nam, according to the Ministry of Health.

Smoking is the main cause of lung cancer. Each year, Viet Nam witnesses an additional 20,000 cases of lung cancer and more than 17,000 people die from the disease, the Lao ong (Labour) newspaper reported in its weekend edition.

Of late, more and more young people are afflicted by the disease.

Scientists have also indicated that the total number of deaths due to tobacco usage was higher than those caused by HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

According to scientists, around 48 per cent of deaths were caused by 12 types of smoke-related cancers including Oesophageal, kidney and liver cancer. The exposure rate to second-hand smoke in Viet Nam is relatively high. As many as 67.6 per cent and 49 per cent of non-smokers are exposed to cigarette smoke, at home and at the workplace, respectively.

Head of the Ministry of Healths Legal Affairs Department Nguyen Huy Quang, who was part of the team that compiled the 2012 Tobacco Control Law, said, I had been addicted to smoking for 20 years. Later through work I realised that the practice would not only damage the health of smokers but also of people around me who did not smoke.

I have detoxified for two years. I feel healthier and my respiratory diseases have shown a remarkable decrease.

Despite the availability of the Tobacco Control Law, the settlement of violations remains a challenge.

It is quite difficult to completely deal with offenders, Quang said. What is necessary is a joint effort between office heads and a conscious effort from smokers themselves.

Smokers light up freely even next to smoke-ban signboards.

I know smoking is banned here, but I cannot stand when I am in the mood for a smoke, Nguyen Manh V, from the Thai Nguyen Provinces ai Tu District said while waiting for a family member inside the National Hospital of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.

Former head of the National Cancer Hospitals Thorax Surgery Ward, Doctor Hoang inh Chan, said, The health ministry has issued directives prohibiting smoking in public places. But I, myself, have not seen any sanctions at all. Therefore, a penalty cannot be applied yet.

A month ago, we worked on an initiative to build smoke-free hospitals. Accordingly, patients, their family members, and the hospital staff were banned from smoking within the hospital premises. Our ultimate aim is to provide a clean and fresh environment for patients, to which they have a right, Chan said.

Deputy Head of the Bach Mai Hospitals Nuclear Medicine and Oncology Centre Dr. Le Chinh ai admitted, It would be a hard journey to that end [to ensure all hospitals are free from smokers]. It needs closer co-ordination from various sectors, and also laws and sanctions.

Even at Bach Mai Hospital, signs banning smoking are seen everywhere but people still smoke. It seems, everyone understands the harmful effects of smoking, but they continue to do so. The hospital is unable to control the entire complex as the number of patients is huge, ai said.

On the occasion of World No Tobacco Day on May 31 and the National No Tobacco Week from May 25 to May 31, a range of activities are being held across the country.  VNS
NAM INH  The Song a Joint Stock Company 11 was accused of mixing soil with concrete while laying a base for the 220kV-electric poles in Vu Ban District of northern Nam inh Province.

Two brothers, Vu uc Thuan and Vu Ngoc Hoi, who were hired by the companys construction section head, levelled these accusations.

Hoi said the companys construction head, Nguyen Van Toan, hired him to build the 220kV-electric poles in March this year.

While using his concrete mixer during construction, Hoi discovered the concrete was mixed with soil to make the base for the poles.

He told Toan about it but his concerns were ignored. So he and his brother decided to terminate the contract with the company as he said they could not indulge in cheating.

In May, by accident, he discovered that the company continued to build the second pole using the same methods.

An angry Hoi recorded the clips and sent it to the media to denounce the cheating.

At present, the construction site has stopped operations after the two brothers accusations became public, and investigations are on.

Thereafter, the company decided to suspend Nguyen Van Toan from his post.

The National Power Transmission Company under project investor Electricity of Vietnam Corporation (EVNNPT) denied all responsibility.

In a press release, the company said that it had asked the construction section head and the contractor to halt work in March. But the contractor had continued work so the two must be held accountable for the cheating.

Member of the National Assembly (NA) Economic Committee, Tran Du Lich, told the Lao ong (Labour) newspaper that the three entities of investor, construction section and contractor had to accept responsibility for the wrongdoing.

He said the wrongdoing must be strictly treated by authorised agencies since the case was serious.

Cheating in capital construction works must be strictly punished. It is unacceptable, he said.

Meanwhile, permanent member of the NA Finance and Budget, Bui uc Thu, expressed his anger over the case.

At present, effectively using investment resources was a hot issue for the economy, the NA deputy said.

For the sake of quality of capital constrution works and effectiveness of using investment, I suggested to the authorities to carefully inspect and define the responsibility of each related side, Thu told the paper. VNS
Manali Petrochemical is padding up to go global with five international application centres and is already in talks with Singapore, Qatar, the US and some western European nations. The listed petrochemicals major, a part of the MA Chidambaram group, will make an investment of Rs 150 crore for the centres through a subsidiary to be set up in Singapore.

Muthukrishnan Ravi, managing director, Manali Petrochemicals, said the discussions with authorities in Singapore and Qatar were at an advanced stage. The investment would be funded through internal resources, he added.

The application centres will work on new technologies and create better systems for existing applications to cater to the needs of their respective geographies. These will drive Manali Petrochemicals expansion plans, and will be crucial in augmenting the companys capabilities in product development and technology generation, catering to its global customer base.

The first application centre has been set up in Chennai.

The move is also expected to strengthen the speciality product portfolio of the company that has witnessed a growth in demand. The company aims to move towards more value-added products, which are more profitable.

Ravi said the mix of speciality and applications products to commodity ratio is expected to be half and half eventually, from the current 30 to 70. This would increase the margins.

Ashwin C Muthiah, chairman, Manali Petrochemical, told Business Standard, So far, the Rs 800-crore crore company has been more focused on commodity. To improve the bottomline and stakeholders value, it has now decided to focus more on speciality and value-added products. Our vision in the next five years is to transform from an indigenous industry pioneer to a company with a multinational presence through value addition.



The company will also look for opportunities to set up manufacturing facilities and appointed consultants to study inorganic opportunities in the additive industry, system houses as well as industries catering to the system houses. The new facilities will be manned by top class technical talent including 20-25 in each centre having PhDs. The centres can also impart technical training for small scale applications to aspiring entrepreneurs and small-scale industries.

GOING GLOBAL
Vice President Hamid Ansari has condemned the string of assaults on African nationals in India as "despicable", saying they are "our guests" and should be looked after in the wake of "violation of law and order".

Interacting with media on board in the Moroccan capital, Ansari said, "Attack on anyone - whether own person or guest, it is despicable."



"Nobody or no government can say anything different - condemning all types of violence," he said.

He said, "They (Africans) are our guests. We have to look after them in the wake of violation of law and order."



Describing India's ties with African countries as "good", Ansari said, "We greatly value our relationship with African countries and we have always stood by them."



"Even before 1947 we talked of decolonisation of Africa," he said, adding that the stand of the previous UPA government and the present NDA government has been no different.

Ansari is on a five-day visit to two North African countries - Morocco and Tunisia - as part of efforts to build on diplomatic gains from the India-Africa summit held in New Delhi in October last year.

The Vice President said India attaches great importance to Africa, and in that context he was undertaking the trip to Morocco and Tunisia.

There has been a spate of attacks on African nationals in the last few days including killing of a Congolese youth in the capital and assault on a 23-year-old Nigerian student in Hyderabad.
27:08 IN FULL: Treasurer delivers Labors first budget Treasurer Jim Chalmers has handed down the Albanese Governments Budget 2022, saying it begins to build a better future that befits Australians....

07:52 Albonomics: Five things Australians need to know from horror budget In tonights episode of Paul Murray Live, Paul discusses the five things Australians need to know from the Albanese governments horror...

00:32 Government expects inflation to peak at 7.75 per cent later this year Treasurer Jim Chalmers says inflation is expected at 7.75 per cent later this year before moderating over time to 3.5 per cent through 2023-24....

04:06 Australias GDP to grow 3.25 per cent in 2022/23 Australias GDP is expected to grow 3.25 per cent in 2022/23 before slowing to 1.5 per cent growth in 2023/24, according to Treasurer Jim Chalmers...

01:36 Power of pain for families in Albanese governments budget Sky News Political Editor Andrew Clennell says its a power of pain for families in the Albanese governments first budget.
CEDAR FALLS  A new pet supply store planned for a retail power center in the growing East Viking Road-Pinnacle Prairie area will be operated by the outgoing Waterloo city clerk and human resources director.

Pet Supplies Plus of Livonia, Mich., a 330-store-plus retailer with a variety of pet goods, grooming services and animal expertise announced the signing of a franchise agreement with Suzy Schares, who is leaving her job as Waterloo city clerk and human resources director this fall to run the store, which will employ about 15 people.

The Cedar Falls location, which will be the third Pet Supplies Plus in Iowa, is projected to open in November.

Schares submitted her resignation from the city last week, effective in October. She was hired as the city clerk in January 2010 and took on human resources responsibilities in January 2012.

The Waterloo native worked as a deputy city clerk in Colorado before returning to the Cedar Valley.

The Pet Supplies Plus store is one of four new retail tenants announced earlier this week for a new 120,000-square-foot strip mall going up at the intersection of Prairie Parkway and Brandilynn Boulevard in Cedar Falls.

The Bluff Pack LLC, developer of the project, officially broke ground on the $14 million project on more than 11 acres at The Bluffs in Pinnacle Prairie and announced Dollar Tree, Famous Footwear, HomeGoods and Pet Supplies Plus will occupy about 45,000 square feet of the retail center, joining anchor tenant Hobby Lobby.

Oklahoma City-based Hobby Lobby will close the Waterloo store it operates at 3731 University Ave. when the new store opens during the first quarter of 2017. Hobby Lobbys other local store, at 2711 Crossroads Blvd., will remain open.

Talks are ongoing with potential additional tenants for the new strip mall, said Dustin Whitehead, of Lockard Cos. and a leasing agent for The Bluff Pack LLC.

Construction began in April, and grand opening events are expected to occur in the first quarter of 2017.
WATERLOO -- Hawkeye Community College student Gabbryella Reis of Ames has been awarded a U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship to study Korean in Gwangju, South Korea, this summer.

The Critical Language Scholarship Program is part of a U.S. government effort to expand the number of Americans studying and mastering critical foreign languages.

Reis just completed her first year at Hawkeye. She will spend eight weeks in South Korea in group-based intensive language instruction and structured cultural enrichment experiences. She plans eventually to teach English as a second language.
WATERLOO  Larry Gage, 69, of rural Soldiers Grove, Wis., formerly of Waterloo, died Monday, May 23, at his farm of natural causes; graveside services 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 1, at Iowa Veterans Cemetery in Adel, with military honors; visitation from 5 to 7 p.m. today, May 31, at Locke Funeral Home, Waterloo, 233-6138, with a 6:30 p.m. time of remembrance service; memorials to Soldiers Grove Church of Christ or the American Legion.

WATERLOO  Benjamin F. Skalsky, 82, of Waterloo, died Monday, May 30, at UnityPoint Health-Allen Hospitals emergency room; Hagarty-Waychoff-Grarup Funeral Service on South Street, 234-6274.

DECORAH  Maurene Kae Teslow, 72, of Polk City, formerly of Decorah, died at home Tuesday, May 24; Fjelstul Funeral Home, Decorah, (563) 382-5210.

DENVER  Eldora (Bahlmann) Hagen, 91, of Marshalltown, formerly of Denver, died Monday, May 30, at Glenwood Place, Marshalltown; memorial Services at 11 a.m. Thursday, June 2, at Faith United Church of Christ, Tripoli; burial of cremains to precede the service at 9:30 a.m. in Faith United Church of Christ Cemetery, Tripoli; visitation from 5 to 7 p.m. on Wednesday, June 1, at Kaiser-Corson Funeral Home, Denver, 984-5379, with prayer service at 6:30 p.m.

INDEPENDENCE  James A. Richardson, 78, of Independence, died Thursday, May 26, at home; White Funeral Home, Independence, 334-2595.
WATERLOO  An artist walks into a Paris bar and meets a scientist. Both young men are on the cusp of greatness, both impassioned and arrogant. They begin to debate on the value of art, science and genius.

The artist is Pablo Picasso, and the scientist is Albert Einstein. The imaginary meeting between these two wild and crazy guys in a Paris bar in 1904 is at the heart of Steve Martins absurdist comedy, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, opening Friday.

The show is a Waterloo Community Playhouse production, with seven performances to be performed in the intimate McElroy Theatre at the Walker Building.

I enjoy shows that vacillate between being funny and being serious. Picasso and Einstein get into some fairly serious discussions  pontificating, really  and theres some typical Steve Martin zaniness, says Charles Stiwill, former WCP artistic director.

Current Artistic Director Greg Holt lured Stilwill out of retirement to sit in the directors chair. Its a show I was familiar with because it had been on the play reading list several years ago. Its been a lot of fun to direct, Stilwill explains.

This was Martins debut play, opening at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago in 1993, followed by successful runs in New York City and Los Angeles. It won the 1996 Outer Circles Award as the best off-Broadway play.

Ultimately Picasso (Brian Merrick) and Einstein (Mike Schlumbohm) will have tremendous impact on the 20th century. Picasso will paint Les Demoiselles dAvignon in 1907, a controversial departure from traditional composition and perspective, while Einstein will publish his theory of relativity in 1905. But on this particular night, the protagonists are raising elbows in a bar, musing about the new century, cruising chicks and arguing about which is more valuable, art or science.

The bar is populated by a cast characters who each offer their insights, including the supposedly simple-minded bar owner, Freddy (Jens Petersen); Gaston (Bill Shaffer), an old Frenchman who appears to care only about sex and booze; Germaine (Michelle Rathe), a waitress with ideas of her own; Suzanne (Megan Schlumbohm), a beauty who is in love with the womanizing Picasso; Sagot (John Mardis), Picassos art dealer; Charles Schmendiman (Joel Zummak), an inventor who thinks hes a genius; and the Countess (Janelle Ewing), the one person who understands Einstein. Martin also throws into the mix a time-traveling musician in blue suede shoes to shake things up.

The small theater setting is ideal, Stilwill says. The audience is on all three sides, which makes it very attractive and very much like the audience is sitting in the bar, too. 
WATERLOO  When Physician Assistant Angie Fuller began her career in medicine 50 years ago, women in the field became nurses, and thats where they stayed.

In the 60s, attitudes in the workplace were different. Choices for women were limited to teacher, nurse, hairdresser, waitress, Fuller said. I actually had a doctor tell me he would not recommend me for medical school. He said, You would just get married, get pregnant and drop out.

But there was one doctor, now-retired Dr. Ronald Roth, who encouraged Fuller to reach for whatever heights she desired. So she became a PA.

He trained me. He pushed me. Dr. Roth was a great mentor, she said.

Physician assistants examine, diagnose and treat patients as part of a team of physicians, surgeons and other health-care workers.

Fuller will retire from her post June 6  her birthday  after five decades of treating patients within the Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare system.

She began as a part-time nurse assistant during high school, trained by staff at Schoitz Hospital, now the Kimball Ridge Center.

We bathed patients, made beds. There was no central supply, so we sterilized drinking pitchers and bedpans ourselves, Fuller said. It was a hard job and helped me have appreciation for what nurses do.

She graduated from East High School in 1968 and, through a scholarship from Schoitz, earned a registered nurse certificate three years later. She returned to Schoitz as a charge nurse in an extended care ward.

We had people who were drying out from substance abuse, back patients, cancer patients. I worked second shift. It was me and two (licensed practical nurses) with 72 patients, she said.

Roth was one of the doctors who made rounds, and he offered Fuller a job in his office. He trained her so thoroughly she was able to pass the PA Board exam in 1977. The rest is history.

Its an honor and a privilege to take care of people who trust you with their care, she said.

Lu Ann Kulis, of Waterloo, has been a patient of Fullers for more than 30 years. She was Roths patient when Fuller was his nurse.

I can remember her calling me at home to check on me, Kulis said. I thought, this is unbelievable care.

That care hasnt changed over the decades, Kulis said.

She walks in the exam room and the first thing she does, she looks in your eyes. She makes you feel comfortable. But she can be very firm  she has been with my husband and I, Kulis said, laughing.

When Kulis mother was in a nursing home, Fuller would visit her every week.

She would go after work to see my mother. Thats how dedicated she is. Shes never too busy to see a patient, and she will spend the amount of time she needs with you. That kind of passion and dedication, you dont find many like that, Kulis said.

Those sentiments are echoed by Fullers staff. Sandra Parish, Fullers nurse of 15 years who also is her patient, said Fuller truly cares about her patients. Patients believe in her. Shes so genuine.

If they feel like you listened, that is key, Fuller explained.

Though its tougher than I realized to say goodbye to patients, Fuller said, she does have retirement plans in the works. Shell spend lots of time with her five grandchildren and will devote time to fishing and swimming.

I also have a room full of quilting projects waiting for me, she said.
WATERLOO  A Waterloo man was treated for stab wounds following an attack over the weekend.

Kirk Lamar Sallis Jr., 24, told police he had just pulled up to his home on Fowler Street at about 3:45 a.m. Sunday when he was approached by a stranger, according to police reports. The man stabbed Sallis in the lower back and fled, and Sallis went to Unity Point/Allen Hospital by private vehicle.

His injuries arent considered life threatening, and no arrests have been made in the case.

Waterloo police were called to another incident involving a knife over the weekend. On Sunday a woman suffered a cut to her wrist during an argument over a knife, and she received four stitches, police said. Authorities said no charges will be filed because the injury was unintentional.
WATERLOO  Police are investigating two incidents of gunfire over the weekend.

No injuries were reported, and authorities didnt locate any damage.

According to police reports, neighbors in the area of West Fifth and Jefferson streets called 911 after someone fired a single shot from a passing sport utility vehicle at about 2:50 a.m. on Sunday. Officers found one spent shell casing in the area.

Then on Monday, residents reported gunfire from a passing vehicle in the area of Linn and Newell streets about 6:20 p.m. Police recovered about a half dozen spent 9mm shell casings from the roadway.

It wasnt known if the incidents are related.
VINTON  A Vinton man has been arrested for allegedly assaulting and officer and deputy who were investigating a Sunday assault.

The Betnon County sheriffs deputy and Vinton police officer suffered minor injuries before restraining the suspect at Virginia Gay Hospital. The 37-year-old woman who was the victim of the assault had serious head injuries, according to Vinton police.

Authorities arrested Roger LaVerne Hartman, 38, for felony first-degree burglary, willful injury causing serious injury and two counts of misdemeanor assault on an officer causing injury. His bond was set at $25,000 following a Tuesday court appearance.

According to Vinton police, authorities were called to 211 E. Fourth St. in Vinton at about 4:20 p.m. Sunday and found the injured woman and Hartman, who had minor wounds. Both were taken to the hospital by separate ambulances with North Benton Ambulance, and Hartman allegedly assaulted the officer and the deputy at the hospital.

The case was investigated by the Vinton Police Department, Benton County Sheriffs Office, the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation and the Benton County Attorneys Office.
WATERLOO  A veteran of the D-Day invasion of Normandy during World War II is receiving Frances highest military decoration in a ceremony Saturday at the Sullivan Brothers Iowa Veterans Museum.

Glen McClain, a John Deere retiree who lost nearly all of his shipmates when his Navy landing craft hit a mine and exploded at Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, will be formally presented the French Legion of Honor, a decoration established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802, at a 1 p.m. ceremony.

Of course, Im very humbled. Im honored to get it, said McClain, 91. But the problem is, it cost the lives of my shipmates for the circumstances for me to get it. Thats the downside. Its a great medal they give out. But Im also sad about it.

According to several military websites, the French government is awarding the medal to living World War II veterans who participated in military campaigns for the liberation of France, including Normandy, Northern Europe, Southern Europe and the Ardennes, also known as the Battle of the Bulge. The veterans must provide documentation of that service, including other decorations received for those campaigns.

Officials with the Grout Museum District, which operates the Sullivan museum, are in contact with the French Consulate in Chicago in making arrangements for the presentation ceremony, being held on the weekend closest to the invasions anniversary.

McClain will be the second Cedar Valley resident so honored in as many years. Cleon Wood of Cedar Falls, a U.S. Army Air Force veteran of World War II, received the decoration in May 2015 for missions he flew over France as a B-17 bomber crew member, including the D-Day invasion.

Though a resident of Waterloo for more than 50 years, McClain, formerly of Cedar Rapids, maintained membership in American Legion Post 298 in nearby Marion. That post, and Becker-Chapman American Legion Post 138 in Waterloo, encouraged him to apply and helped secure the honor, equipped with a videotaped oral history of his war experience he provided to the Sullivan museum.

McClain, a Navy seaman first class from Exira who enlisted at age 17, was manning a 20mm anti-aircraft gun mount when his LCT (landing craft tank) hit the mine. They were in the 14th wave of ships headed for the beach, shortly after daybreak.

We hit a mine and it blew our little landing craft all to smithereens, McClain said in a 2014 Courier interview. We were taking artillery pieces in, and a truck and their crew and equipment. We hit a mine designed to sink a battlewagon (battleship), a much larger vessel.

I never knew how I got out of that, he said. I was completely unconscious in the water with all my clothes on. It was like coming out a dream. You slowly wake up and tell yourself to swim. I didnt know if I was swimming up or swimming down, I was so disoriented. By the time I surfaced, I was really gasping for air. Another 30 seconds, I would have drowned. Fortunately, I came to in time to surface.

McClain eventually pulled himself onto a life raft and was towed by a PT patrol boat to safety. He also rescued a shipmate, Nick Vasiliou of Charleston, W.Va., who lost both legs. They were the only survivors of their crew; all others were lost in the explosion and one died a day later. He also believes most of the soldiers they were taking up to the beach were lost. Vasiliou and McClain survived the war and remained close friends until Vasiliou died of cancer several years ago.

McClain said he will definitely be thinking of his lost shipmates during the ceremony.
CEDAR RAPIDS  Americans for Democratic Action, the self-described forthright liberal voice of this nation, has endorsed Pat Murphy in the Iowa 1st District primary.

Murphy, who served in the Iowa House for 24 years, is seeking the Democratic nomination in the 20-county northeast Iowa district in the June 7 primary. He faces Monica Vernon of Cedar Rapids. The winner will face GOP Rep. Rod Blum.

Whether youre talking about his support for debt free college, a $15 minimum wage, improving social security, health care reform, or making investments in our infrastructure, Pat Murphy is hands-down the progressive with the strongest record of fighting for working families in this race, according to ADA spokesperson Logun Buckley.

ADA advocates for progressive stances on civil rights and liberties, social and economic justice, sensible foreign policy, and sustainable environmental policy.
WATERLOO  Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Rob Hogg is planning at least 10 events across the state to get out the vote in the lead up to the June 7 primary, including a stop in Waterloo.

Hogg, 49, a state senator from Cedar Rapids, will be here at noon Friday at Hawkeye Community Colleges Tama Hall Room 106, 1501 E. Orange Road.

I want to meet with Iowans and encourage Iowans to vote in the June 7 primary because this election is all about Iowans, Hogg said. I believe we must change the way politics is done in this country. We need to uplift our democracy so our country can achieve in this generation a safe, healthy, peaceful, prosperous, inclusive, and environmental sustainable future for all Americans.

Hogg is one of four candidates vying in the primary to take on incumbent U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, in the general election.

Hogg, who announced his campaign last September, is running in the primary against Democrats Tom Fiegen, a former lawmaker of Clarence; Patty Judge, a former Iowa Secretary of Agriculture and former lieutenant governor of Albia; and Bob Krause, a former lawmaker of Fairfield.

Hogg also will make stops in Clarinda, Council Bluffs, Sioux City, Le Mars, Mason City, Ottumwa, Davenport, Des Moines and Cedar Rapids. But his campaign notes more stops may be added.

Hogg is serving in his third term in the Iowa Senate, and had two terms in the Iowa House. He has focused on education, environmental issues, public health and public safety.

For more information, go to www.robhogg.org/.
WATERLOO  The long-planned South Waterloo Business Park is nearing certification as a top tier site for large state economic development prospects.

Officials with the Greater Cedar Valley Alliance and Chamber said they expect the planned 180 light industrial and office park to receive its certification through the Iowa Economic Development Authority by early fall.

IEDA consultants are currently reviewing the city and GCVACs application to make the proposed park southeast of the U.S. Highway 20 and Ansborough Avenue interchange a preferred shovel ready location for major development prospects.

We have been doing lots of action for about two years now and are nearing the designation, said Community Planning and Development Director Noel Anderson.

Were buying this land primarily to compete with other communities with land along Highway 20 for development, Anderson added.

This has led us to have a number of large potential prospects (already).

The Waterloo City Council voted last week to buy another 10.2 acres of farm land from L and H Farms Ltd., run by the Hollis family, as part of a master contract approved in March 2010 to buy the entire 180-acre site over an 11-year period.

The city has spent more than $3.6 million in tax-increment financing revenue to acquire 96 acres and has roughly 84 more acres to buy under the agreement.

The gradual purchase was designed to allow the Hollises to buy elsewhere in exchange for the land the city buys and to accommodate the citys cash flow from the TIF district.

While land for farming purposes is selling for a third of the price the city is paying, city officials have said the property being acquired for the industrial park is more valuable as a potential development location given its proximity to the highway interchange and the recent extension of Shaulis Road through the area.

MidAmerican Energy has constructed a new electric substation along Shaulis Road, which will help supply power to the South Waterloo Business Park. But the city will need to extend sewer and water lines eventually when a prospect is located.

Anderson said the 96 acres the city controls now could handle a very large prospect or several smaller developments. Should a prospect desire land the city hasnt yet bought from L and H Farms, the city is confident it could still close the deal.

The Hollis family has been very good to work with and has stated they will work with the city to potentially swap land areas for different configurations of land in this area, Anderson said. They also want to see new development in Waterloo.
CEDAR RAPIDS  Theres been no polling to show whos leading in the Democratic primary race in Iowas U.S. House 1st district, but Monica Vernon is running away with the money race.

Vernon raised more than three times as much money as Pat Murphy of Dubuque during the Federal Election Commissions pre-primary reporting period that covers April 1 to May 18.

Murphy, a former state representative, raised $35,869 during that timeframe while Vernon pulled in $112,190, according to her FEC report.

She also spent nearly six times as much as Murphy  $465,934 to $78,052  and closed out the pre-primary reporting period with nine times as much cash on hand  $420,887 to Murphys $46,294.

Vernon continued her fundraising dominance over Murphy, who was the Democratic candidate in the open-seat 1st District race in 2014. In the 2015-16 election cycle, Vernon, a former business owner and city council member in Cedar Rapids, has raised $1,402,326 to Murphys $238,990, according to their FEC reports.

In the primary, Vernon has outspent Murphy $981,439 to $194,030.

Whoever wins the June 7 Democratic primary will face first-term Republican Rep. Rod Blum, a Dubuque businessman. Hes raise more than either Democrat  $1,486,503 with $1,284,392 cash on hand for the general election race.
GILBERTVILLE  On Memorial Day, we honor those who have served and sacrificed their lives in war. John Crotts, of Forest City, N.C., takes the day very seriously.

When Gerry got killed, I made a promise to myself that Id one day visit his family and his grave, Crotts said. It may seem silly to some, but to soldiers whove served, its not silly at all.

Hes speaking of his Vietnam War comrade, Gerald Fettkether. Fettkether, a Don Bosco High School graduate, was honored Monday at a ceremony for three graduates who lost their lives in the Vietnam conflict.

Crotts, 19 at the time, stood shoulder to shoulder with Fettkether as their recon platoon was ambushed outside of Cu Chi, Vietnam, while hunting a grenade factory. Fettkether, 21 at the time, was killed in the crossfire.

Crotts served from January 1967 through 1968. Fettkether was killed just a month into Crotts service. Fettkether had been drafted in the fall of 1965 and was scheduled to go home in three weeks.

I think about him every day  every morning when I wake up and when I go to bed at night, Crotts said, choking back emotions.

Crotts said, having known Fettkether a month, they werent close friends. But he fondly recalled the nights theyd spend swapping stories  Fettkether telling him of his farm back in Iowa, and Crotts recounting memories of his own time on his farm in North Carolina.

As a 19-year-old, Crotts said he initially wholeheartedly believed in the cause of the war. But almost 50 years later, his feelings are different. He says he often wonders what the fighting was for.

I thought I was a man, and I had the macho sense of myself and what I was doing. But really, I was barely out of diapers, Crotts said.

It was similar situation for Fettkether, said his sister Dorothy Sadler. She said the only thing holding Fettkether back was being home to help on the farm.

But he thought he should go, Sadler said. And he didnt want a desk job.

Audrey Babinat, also Fettkethers sister, said the family was devastated to receive word of his death.

Sadler and sister Karen Hall were the only two siblings still at home when their brother was killed  Hall was 17 and Sadler was in eighth grade. They remember riding the bus home and seeing a red car sitting in the driveway.

Someone on the bus asked, Ooh, is that your boyfriend? Sadler remembered. She said, though, she and her sister knew something was wrong when a man in a military uniform stepped out of the car. The man had to come back later when Fettkethers parents were home in order to break the news.

What brother Jim Fettkether remembers most is seeing his brothers coffin lowered from a plane.

Seeing him laying so far down in that coffin and the glass casing over top of him. I dont know why, but that image always stuck with me, Jim said.

Crotts said he waited 30 years to reach out to the family. He corresponded with Fettkethers mother for some time before the family flew down to meet him in North Carolina. He promised the family a year ago hed fly up to Iowa, and it would be his first time in the state.

I had to keep that promise, Crotts said. The family deserves that link to Gerry.

Crotts said the Gilbertville service has eased his burden considerably, and the Fettkether family has been very hospitable. Hes relieved to finally feel a sense of closure.

There are no words to express the horrors and hardships of war, Crotts said. And every time you try to talk about the things youve seen and experienced, it seems inadequate.
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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.

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If youre interested in trying out an online casino but arent quite ready to commit to one, why not try out one of the many no deposit casinos weve reviewed? You can test drive various casinos completely risk-free, so you can feel confident about your choice before you make a single penny deposit.
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May 31, 2016 | By Faith

The juxtaposition between new and old is a common theme as far as 3D printing goes. The ways in which cutting edge techniques can support ancient aesthetic certainly stands as an inspiring application, but its the importance of cultural history that such processes render most relevant. As predicted by numerous professionals over the years, the use of 3D printing to preserve heritage  most notably within Museums worldwide  has continued to develop: providing everyday people a very real (and often tangible) glimpse into the past.

An enlightening experience for many. However, one particular projects focus on the Buddha (a fully enlightened being himself) figure has delivered some stunning results. The Smithsonian Institution, based in Washington D.C. has two museums: the Freer Gallery of Art, which opened to the public in 1923, and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, which welcomed its first visitors in 1987. Connected by an underground walkway, the spaces work together on the foundations of their own rich history to deliver stunning exhibitions of Asian Art, and some of their collections house some incredibly ancient works.

As an example of that familiar juxtaposition between old and new, the use of 3D printing technology within the space has amounted an impressive amount of feedback  especially through its use to liberate ancient sculptural work for visitors to engage with them more directly. In their latest project, along with help from the Smithsonians Digitization Program Office, the Freer|Sackler Museum employed Autodesk Remake (previously Autodesk Memento) to create a highly detailed digital replica of a life-size limestone figure of the Cosmic Buddha. Based on the concept of this work, the Museum is hosting an interactive exhibit entitled Body of Devotion: The Cosmic Buddha in 3D, allowing visitors to explore the previously hidden meanings of an ancient Chinese sculpture.

Like all Buddhas, the Cosmic Buddha (a figure of Vairochana), is wrapped in the simple robe of a monk. But what makes this sixth-century Chinese object exceptional are the detailed narrative scenes that cover its surface, representing moments in the life of the Historical Buddha as well as the Realms of Existence: a symbolic map of the Buddhist world. Over time, those illustrations have faded, and until recently, scholars have been unable to fully examine the ancient drawings. However, this collaborative research project, which also incorporates the use of an Ember 3D printer to 3D print a scaled-down version of the sculptural work, has given exhibition attendees and scholars alike the chance to see the piece like never before.

In addition to these final products of the research project, whats also available to witness and learn about for those visiting the Freer|Sackler Museum is an insight into this contemporary process. An Ember 3D printer is actually installed into the gallery as part of the exhibition, creating replicas of the Cosmic Buddha, whilst demonstrating the power of using 3D technology for studying antiquities.

Its a beautiful way to incorporate incredible works of ancient aesthetic with the kind of exciting technology that members of the public remain inspired by today. Not only used as a tool of production, 3D printing can be seen as a tool of engagement  and its one thats applications only look set to develop.

Posted in 3D Printing Application

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May 31, 2016 | By Tess

Finnish designer and pioneer of 3D printing design, Janne Kyttanen, has announced that he will be leaving the 3D printing industry to launch a new venture capital fund that will effectively conceive of and launch new design tech startups. Kyttanen, who has worked in the 3D printing industry for over 15 years, having founded his own 3D printing design studio, Freedom of Creation, and having worked for 3D Systems for 15 years, most recently as its creative director, decided to leave the large, albeit struggling, company last month. Now, with the announcement of his latest venture, it seems the designer is cutting more ties with the additive manufacturing world.

Kyttanens new venture capital company, called WTFVC, will effectively be turning out new companies as its products, hoping to inspire and innovate within the field of design. As the designer explains, "We are a startup designing startups. I have countless ideas for new products, brands, apps, experiences, companies etc. and also the means and skill to build organisations around them. The companys mission he says, is to push out new companies at the speed of designing new products.

This turn away from the 3D printing industry, though indirect, was spurred on by Kyttanens frustration with how the industry was headed and how investors were affecting it. He explains that early hype surrounding the potentials of additive manufacturing led to a surge of investments, when the technology did not deliver certain things right away, however, investors became frustrated and pulled out. Kyttanen says, Wall Street started to impact our priorities. The stock market was painting a picture that we would all be 3D-printing organs in six months time, or 3D printing food in our living rooms at the push of a button."

Of course, as we know, these technologies and breakthroughs in 3D printing take time, but for investors who wanted to see virtually direct results, many areas of the industry have arguably become inflated and as Kyttanen adds, overrated.

WTFVC was launched by Kyttanen in collaboration with Dutch entrepreneur Eduard Zanen, the co-founder of Bugaboo, a popular brand of baby carriage. The new company will differ somewhat from other Venture Capital firms, who simply invest growth equities or loan capital to promising companies, as it will itself be conceiving of the new startups. With the idea born in WTFVC, the company can then bring it to life by seeking out suitable teams and CEOs to run the new business. WTFVC will also provide capital, along with basic legal, finance, operations, and accounting teams for the startups. CEOs will be provided with a salary along with a small equity share in the new company.

The company, which will be based in Los Angeles, will also reimagine how their startups are run, opting for inexpensive cloud-based services instead of hired expertise. Kyttanen explains, Our mentality about the ownership of things is changing, and this shift helps businesses to flourish in a new sharing economy. You don't need to own a car, you take an Uber. You don't need big servers, you use the cloud. You don't need a bookkeeper, you use Expensify. You don't need an office, you can just rent space at WeWork. We live in a very interesting time; creating new products and starting new companies has become very easy.

We can expect to see WTFVCs first startups, an eyewear brand and a food-related company, this summer. And while we do not yet know the details of the first startups, Kyttanen has said the new companies will focus on design and the integration of technologies like 3D printing, virtual and augmented reality, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.

Kyttanen is known for his innovative and visually appealing 3D printed designs. In fact, the designer was one of the first to introduce 3D printing to light, furniture, and clothing design, making some truly unique and breakthrough pieces. To see more of Janne Kyttanens work, check out his amazing lightweight 3D printed sofa design, and his stunning 3D printed and explosion welded Metsidian table design.

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cedar wrote at 6/8/2016 12:30:50 AM:sorry....was doing some catching up with 3d printing. I think it is disgusting for such a large company to go hound an artist for money. Take it somewhere else. Thanks.David B. Ellis wrote at 6/1/2016 11:33:24 PM:Mr. Kyttanen, I'm the a financial analyst with 3D Systems Corp. The A/R department is attempting to invoice based upon the executed IP License contract. To accomplish this A/R department is requesting contact information. Phone number and e-mail address. Keith Roberson simply referred me to this web site. Keith did indicate that you may be currently operating out of Los Angeles. If you could kindly call myself or Keith Roberson that would be great. Best Regards, David B. Ellis Sr. Financial Analyst 3D Systems Corporation 803.326.4621




May 31, 2016 | By Tess

Craniosynostosis is an infantile condition in which a babys skull bones grow together too quickly and cause irregular head shape and brain growth. The condition, which affects 6 out of every 10,000 infants can have serious effects on a childs development as it causes pressure on the brain and thus can result in serious developmental disorders and even recurring seizures. To treat Craniosynostosis, doctors have to act quickly as best surgical results occur before the age of one, while the cranium is still developing and soft. Of course, as one can imagine, the process of operating on an infants skull can be complicated and high in risk, so precisely planning a surgical procedure is of crucial importance. This is where 3D printing comes in.

Recently, a team of doctors from Shanghai Childrens Medical Center were able to successfully perform a craniosynostosis treatment surgery on an eight-month-old boy Jia Jia (whose name has been changed for this article) with the help of a 3D printed surgical guide. Jia Jia, who was suffering from a quite severe head deformity, was unable to be treated at any of the local hospitals in the Jiangsu Province where he is from. When finally brought to the Shanghai Childrens Medical Center, doctors were able to diagnose him with craniosynostosis, and set about planning a treatment for the young child.

After many tests and images, the team of doctors, led by Dr. Bao Nan, the hospitals chief of neurosurgery, determined that Jia Jias skull had a bilateral coronal suture closure, which resulted in a towering head, flat forehead, a narrow anterior fontanelle, and other facial abnormalities. As the doctors explained, the particular shape of Jia Jias skull would likely limit the development of the frontal part of his brain, specifically the section related to emotional development and IQ, so operating quickly was very important.

The surgery required for treating craniosynostosis involves two major steps: first, disassembling the patients skull to release the oppressed brain, and secondly to split, re-splice, and ultimately remodel the infants skull into the correct shape and dimensions. Additionally, as each case of the cranial disease is unique, a lot of planning is involved for each procedure to minimize risks as much as possible. Traditionally, surgeons would have to do most of the work while the skull was open in surgery, and could only truly see the results at the end of the surgery, when the skull and scalp were sutured. Now, however, and as Dr. Bao Nan explains, 3D printing has offered surgeons a way to visualize and fully plan their procedure before even making the first incision.

In Jia Jias case, the team of surgeons were able to 3D print a 1:1 ratio model of the infants skull which allowed them to physically draw out the surgical cutting lines on the 3D printed model. In addition to the surgical guidelines, 3D scanning and printing technologies have also allowed the doctors to measure the childs parents physical features, so that when remodeling the infants skull and features, family traits can be accounted for.

Jia Jias surgery took place just over a week ago on May 21st, 2016 and lasted a total of four hours. According to the surgeons involved, the procedure was an immense success as the young child now has a regular skull shape which will not inhibit his brains growth.

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May 31, 2016 | By Benedict

Researchers at Nottingham University in Great Britain have been awarded a 3.5m grant by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to establish a series of 3D printing materials libraries. The project will involve investigating the formulation of new materials.

Prof. Ricky Wildman

For many businesses in the industrial sector, 3D printing could offer a serious advantage over traditional manufacturing methods. Countless cases over the last few decades support this claim, yet some manufacturers remain hesitant to adopt additive manufacturing technologyeven if their business seems perfectly suited to the world of 3D printing. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the United Kingdoms primary agency for funding research in engineering and the physical sciences, claims to have identified one of the main reasons for this hesitancy. According to the organization, there is a lack of clear and impartial information out there about 3D printing materials, 3D printing techniques, and the compatibility between material and process.

The lack of information available to businesses has prompted EPSRC to award a 3.5 million grant to a team of researchers at Nottingham University. That team, led by Professor Ricky Wildman, will use the funding to investigate the formulation of 3D printing materials and create a series of libraries documenting those materials. It is hoped that the libraries could be used by those within the industrial sector as an explanatory guide. It is all about widening the portfolio of materials and making it easier for people to use 3D printing, Wildman said.

Wildman and his team believe that creating a series of materials libraries could help to eliminate an important problem in the world of additive manufacturing: the seemingly unbreakable link between materials and their associated printing techniques. Wildman has noted that those in the industrial world can be skeptical of 3D printing because many 3D printers seem limited in their material capabilities. An SLA 3D printer would not appear a worthwhile investment to a company which only occasionally manufactures resin-based parts, while a DMLS 3D printer might only appeal to a company with access to large quantities of metal powder. As such, the prospect of using several machines and methods to accommodate multiple materials can seem unattractive.

To attract further industrial enterprises to the world of 3D printing, the Nottingham researchers will attempt to break this link between process and materials. In order to do this, they have begun working with Morgan Alexander, Professor of Biomedical Surfaces at the universitys School of Pharmacy, who has developed a a high-throughput biomaterials screening technology. The team will use this technology to investigate new materials that could be suitable for inkjet 3D printing, putting the materials through their paces to determine their viscosity and surface tension.

Alexanders screening technique involves printing an array of materials onto a surface. Once printed, these materials can be put through a variety of testing procedures, such as atomic-force microscopy, to better understand their characteristics and to determine their suitability for 3D printing. According to Wildman, this technique is a much faster way of testing materials than 3D printing complete objects in each material: We will very quickly be able to get a snapshot of whether the material is printable and what its properties are, many hundreds of times faster, he said.

Wildman and co plan to investigate the formulation of materials for two other printing processes beside inkjet printing: paste extrusion and hot melt extrusion (HME). The researchers will produce materials libraries for all three techniques, which those within the industrial sector will then be able to examine. Industry will then be able to come along and select the most appropriate formulation for their given purpose, Wildman said.

It is not yet clear in what form the libraries will be published or whether they will be free to access, but a wider pool of accessible information could likely benefit 3D printing companies and the industrial sector in equal measure.

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May 31, 2016 | By Tess

Nearly two years ago, micro-dispensing and 3D printing company nScrypt partnered with electronics company NovaCentrix to create an unrivalled, all-in-one system for 3D printing electronics. Together, and with a significant investment from FlexTech Organization, the companies were able to combine nScrypts top-of-the-line 3Dn 500 3D printer with NovaCentrixs PulseForge to create the currently named 3DnPulseForge, a system which was recently named the winner of the 2016 Innovations Auditions competition hosted by the annual SME RAPID conference on 3D printing.

At the 2016 Innovations Auditions hosted by RAPID, nScrypt and seven other innovative additive manufacturing companies and entrepreneurs were invited to showcase their ideas and technologies to a panel of judges and investors. Keeping in line with the Auditions format of the event, each company was given five minutes to pitch its 3D printing innovation and explain how it could impact the additive manufacturing industry in a big way. Among those in attendance for the event were Trilion Quality Systems, talking about their 3D Digital Image Correlation for holistic measurement of material strength technology, Laser Design with their CyberGage360 3D scanning system, and a number of other candidates.

In the end, Orlando, Florida-based nScypt was selected as the winner of the competition. The 3D printing system developed by them in collaboration with NovaCentrix has offered a versatile multi-head 3D printer capable of printing in an impressively wide range of materials. Primarily, the 3DnPulseForge has applications in the 3D printing of complex electronics and hybrid circuit boards. The easy-to-use system can even print an entire working electronic circuit at the push of a single button, without any necessary post-processing.

Kenneth Church, CEO of nScypt said of the achievement, Working with NovaCentrix has been rewarding on many fronts. Great collaborators can do great things together, and together we have created a new level of possibility for 3D printed electronics. We really appreciate being recognized by RAPID for our joint effort.

Church hopes that the continued advancement of 3D printing technologies, like nScrypts own, will help to resurge the American manufacturing industry. He explained, We used to be so good at machining here in the U.S. We can regain that position, but we can also do much more. Rather than just milling big bulk parts, we can 3D print and polish where its possible and then mill where we need to mill.

nScrypts technology, by offering both precise and fast 3D printing capabilities, is undoubtedly contributing to additive manufacturings viability as a large-scale manufacturing option. Additionally, the technology also offers an unprecedented level of customization, which will impact a number of industries. As Church continued to explain, Personalization in medicine will continue to be really important, but there will also be a bigger demand for it in consumer goods, as well. With 3D printing and the technology it enables, someday people will want more than just comfortable shoes. Theyll want shoes that can give them feedback and data, shoes that can talk to them.

While nScrypt and NovaCentrixs advanced 3D printing system has not been put on the market yet, the attention it has been receiving, along with having won top prize at the 2016 Innovations Auditions competition, indicate that the technology will be a disruptive force, not only in the additive manufacturing world, but in the manufacturing sector at large.

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May 31, 2016 | By Benedict

Anglia Ruskin has become the first university in the UK to offer a dedicated Additive Manufacturing postgraduate course. The MSc, available to graduates from a range of STEM backgrounds, is being supported by a grant from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).

Earlier this month, former Education Secretary Lord Baker called upon Britain to put a 3D printer in every primary school. Although that proposal is unlikely to be realized in the immediate future, 3D printers are being taken very seriously at the other end of the education ladder. Anglia Ruskin, a public university with campuses in Cambridge, Chelmsford, and Peterborough, will this year offer a 1-2 year Additive Manufacturing postgraduate course aimed at engineering and physical sciences graduates. Students enrolled on the course will be able to access workshops and engineering labs which have seen over 2 million of investment over the last three years.

The new course will take place at The Faculty of Science & Technology at Anglia Ruskins Chelmsford campus, which boasts a number of additive manufacturing facilities at its MedBIC Innovation Centre. These include desktop and commercial 3D printers, as well as direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) equipment. Students working and researching in the Innovation Centre will be able to design, develop, and test engineering solutions using state-of-the-art design software and printing equipment, and will have access to a range of 3D printing materials, from plastics to high-end metal compounds.

The Additive Manufacturing MSc will teach students theoretical and technical courses, but will also be highly vocational, challenging students to carry out a project within a real business to solve real-world manufacturing problems. The course will therefore equip students with both technical 3D printing skills and first-hand business experience, both of which will help the postgraduate learners with their future careers in additive manufacturing. An understanding of the business and production issues surrounding additive manufacturing will be made paramount, while emphasis will also be placed on the development of problem-solving, critical, analytical, interpersonal, and computational skills.

Our course, which begins this September, will help students to develop a career in advanced manufacturing engineering, or improve their skills if they are already working in the industry, said Dr Habtom Mebrahtu, Deputy Head of Engineering and the Built Environment at Anglia Ruskin and Course Leader for the MSc in Additive Manufacturing. Students may want to work as a production or research engineer, mechanical designer, or technical lead working directly in engineering and design, or use this degree as a step towards a career in operations, project management, or consultancy.

The course will cover a range of topics, including 3D CAD modeling, business strategy, and engineering management, and will teach students to produce functional 3D printed products and prototypes for use in the biomedical and aviation sectors, amongst others. Students can choose to take the course in one year (full time) or two years (part time), at a total cost of 7,100 (UK/EU) or 11,700 (international).

Core Modules of Anglia Ruskins Additive Manufacturing MSc:

3D CAD and Digital Techniques

Additive Manufacturing Strategy

Computer Aided Engineering Analysis

Innovative Product Design and Manufacture

Engineering Management Systems

Post Processing of Additive Manufactured (AM) products

Industrially Based Project

To help get the new Additive Manufacturing program off the ground, Anglia Ruskin received funding from HEFCE as part of a pilot scheme to promote engineering and computer science conversion courses.

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Carl Zimmer in the New York Times:

The history of African-Americans has been shaped in part by two great journeys.

The first brought hundreds of thousands of Africans to the southern United States as slaves. The second, the Great Migration, began around 1910 and sent six million African-Americans from the South to New York, Chicago and other cities across the country.

In a study published on Friday, a team of geneticists sought evidence for this history in the DNA of living African-Americans. The findings, published in PLOS Genetics, provide a map of African-American genetic diversity, shedding light on both their history and their health.

Buried in DNA, the researchers found the marks of slaverys cruelties, including further evidence that white slave owners routinely fathered children with women held as slaves.

And there are signs of the migration that led their descendants away from such oppression: Genetically related African-Americans are distributed closely along the routes they took to leave the South, the scientists discovered.

More here.
Monday night fire destroys garage, damages home, vehicle

Nobody was injured, but a Monday night fire destroyed a garage and damaged a home in southeastern Aberdeen.


Juruena Drilling Update

Perth, May 31, 2016 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Brazil-focused gold development company Crusader Resources ( ASX:CAS ) is pleased to report drilling at its wholly-owned Juruena project in Brazil is progressing well with approximately 1,500m (18 holes) of the planned 6,000m program now complete.



Crusader expects analytical results for the first batch of holes to be available in mid-late June.



The resource-infill and expansion program comprises a minimum of 50 holes for approximately 6,000m over a period of up to 90 days. The Company expects to convert a high percentage of the current Inferred resources at Dona Maria and Querosene to the Indicated category as well as seek to expand the size of the overall gold resources at Juruena.



The drill program is initially targeting the Querosene and Dona Maria prospects, which are both open at depth and along strike. Also planned are initial holes at several new targets, including Tomate, Mauro and Uiliam.



The Juruena Gold Project is located in the highly prospective Juruena-Alta Floresta Gold Belt, which stretches east-west for >400km and has historically produced more than 7Moz of gold from 40 known gold deposits.



The Juruena Project has been worked extensively by artisanal miners (garimpeiros) since the 1980s, producing ~500koz in that time. Historically there is a database of more than 30,000 meters of drilling and extensive geological data.



To view tables and figures, please visit:

http://abnnewswire.net/lnk/86A582RL





About Crusader Resources Limited





Crusader Resources Limited (ASX:CAS) is a minerals company focussed on the identification, acquisition, development and operation of projects in Brazil. Crusader believes that Brazil is a vastly underexplored country with high potential for the discovery of world class mineral deposits. The company has already acquired a diverse portfolio of projects including gold, iron ore, tin, tungsten and uranium and continues to utilise its strong networks in Brazil to identify new opportunities.

Crusader is characterised by a tight corporate structure and features an experienced board of directors who are strongly focussed on the success of the company.
Kevin Kerney is a familiar name to readers of Michael McGarritys popular mystery series set in New Mexico. Hes the protagonist in those 12 novels.

In case you hadnt noticed, McGarrity, a Santa Fe resident, switched literary gears a few years ago.

He shifted from mystery writing to authoring a fictional trilogy about the American West as seen through a family saga. It is set largely in the southern New Mexicos Tularosa Basin.

The first two were Hard Country (2012) and Backlands (2014). The final installment, The Last Ranch, was recently published.

McGarritys trilogy is in the tradition of A.B. Guthrie Jr. and Larry McMurtry. Four generations of Kerneys family are the central characters in the trilogy, which begins in 1875.

I began wondering about his back story, because it kept coming out in bits and pieces over the course of the (mystery) novels, McGarrity said.

I began to develop an idea about his frontier ancestors because of his life on the (White Sands) Missile Range. At the time it was gearing up for the space race and the Cold War.

McGarrity was about halfway into a book that was to cover 100 years of history when he realized that he couldnt gather everything he wanted in one volume.

Its impossible. I hadnt reached World War I yet, McGarrity recalled thinking.

So he returned to talk with his editor about expanding the book into a trilogy. The editor jumped on it.

But McGarrity began to feel that he had bitten off more than he could chew because it was such a monumental task.

I was delving into a whole new category of fiction writing, historical fiction. It meant I had to have everything in accurate language, costume, dialogue, and fact-blending it with fiction, he said.

And it meant covering a century of history of the Southwest. Given the enormousness of the task, there were moments after he completed the second volume that McGarrity questioned his ability to wrap it up with the third book.

Question answered: He did.

McGarritys extensive research included reading Eugene Manlove Rhodes, J. Frank Dobie and small books by women who became ranchers wives and who learned from scratch how to live that lifestyle.

Having put the trilogy to bed, McGarrity isnt retiring. In fact, hes returning to crime fiction.

Ive already started the next Kevin Kerney novel, he said.
The new medical director of Presbyterian Healthcare Services Cancer Care is overseeing a program that is expanding to meet patient needs.

Oncology and hematology specialist Dr. Bernard Agbemadzo brings an array of international experience to the role he took over in January from his mentor, the former medical director Dr. Mitchell Binder.

Our goal, said Agbemadzo, Is to provide the best cancer care in New Mexico.

Born and raised in Ghana, a West African country of about 25 million between Ivory Coast and Togo, Agbemadzo earned a bachelors degree in medicine and surgery at University of Science and technology School of Medical Sciences in Kumasi, one of the countrys largest cities. He completed internships in pediatrics and obstetrics and gynecology at a major teaching hospital in Kumasi.

Cancer support services

 Presbyterian Healthcare Services offers a variety of free support services to cancer patients, caregivers and survivors.

 Services are available to anyone regardless of where they receive treatment or the type of insurance they have.

 Support services include: support groups for blood cancer patients and caregivers, teens, nutrition education and advance care planning.

For more information call 505-559-6120

Cancer care resource centersThe Ted & Margaret Jorgensen Cancer Center at Presbyterian Rust Medical Center and Presbyterian Kaseman Hospital have volunteer-run boutiques that offer free wigs, hats, bras and prosthetics and fittings. Services are available to anyone, you do not have to be a patient of Presbyterian doctors or have Presbyterian insurance.

If you would like to volunteer at a Cancer Care Resource Center contact Presbyterian Volunteer Services at: 505-841-1501.

He then landed a scholarship to study microbiology for two years in Germany at the prestigious Robert Koch Institute, a medical research institution in Berlin. He returned to his home country and practiced there for a short period. In 1995, he came to the U.S. at the urging of his brother, also a physician, who was already working in this country.

Agbemadzo did a three-year internship followed by a fellowship in hematology and oncology at John H. Stroger Hospital of Cook County (formerly Cook County Hospital), Ill.

After completing this training he landed a position with Lovelace Health System working with Binder.

He and Binder came to Presbyterian Healthcare Services in 2007, shortly after Presbyterian teamed up with the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center of Houston to provide oncology services at Presbyterians Kaseman Hospital in the Northeast Heights.

Binder, a board certified medical oncologist and hematologist, was the medical director of Presbyterians cancer care program until December and he is still helping Agbemadzo with the transition.

So hes been my mentor since I graduated from fellowship, Agbemadzo said.

Agbemadzo is excited about the new facilities at the Ted and Margaret Jorgensen Cancer Center at Presbyterian Medical Center in Rio Rancho which opened in late February. The new facility gives residents of Rio Rancho and the West Side access to services that have been available for many years at Kaseman hospital and Presbyterian Hospital downtown, which he also oversees.

Treatment services at these locations include radiation, chemotherapy and surgery. The design of the new cancer center incorporates input from a patient advisory council, giving patients more privacy when they undergo the lengthy chemotherapy infusion sessions. Agbemadzo said Presbyterian wants to expand surgical services available for cancer patients.

Agbemadzo is particularly proud of the Nurse Navigator services that Presbyterian offers.

When someone is diagnosed with cancer, they are overwhelmed, they are confused, they dont know where to access services, Agbemadzo said, We have nurses dedicated to the various disease types, such as breast cancer, liver cancer. Once a patient is diagnosed the navigator helps them set up appointments and guides them through treatment stage by stage.
Two newborn lambs mysteriously fell sick, quickly regressed and died in the spring of 1999 on a Texas ranch named for Saint Jude, the Roman Catholic patron of lost causes.

That launched an odyssey for Fred and Joan Horak, retirees breeding rare sheep traced to the biblical era and named after the Jewish patriarch Jacob, who is described in the Bible as raising similar sheep. Their quest to discover why the lambs died ultimately helped advance research into Tay-Sachs, a genetic disease that affects humans as well as animals.

Now scientists are fine-tuning new therapy that has extended life spans in diseased Jacob sheep and in cats. And the Tay-Sachs Gene Therapy Consortium plans to seek federal approval to begin clinical trials on humans next year.

Scientists and advocacy groups say the therapy represents the best hope for fighting the disease, which usually kills children by age 5 and for which there is no cure.

It would be a treatment three millennia in the making, dating to the domestication of a breed that has an unusual look  some of them have four horns, some have six  and a genetic defect that is also found in people. But the modern breakthrough required the Horaks tenacity, scientists connecting the dots and cutting-edge medicine.

Its been a long journey, said Miguel Sena-Esteves, head of the consortium of eight scientists and doctors that developed the treatment.

Tay-Sachs is caused when the body does not produce enough of an enzyme, Hexosaminidase A (HexA), which recycles toxins from the body. The toxins build, progressively destroying the nervous system. The earlier the onset in children, the quicker it kills.

Consortium researchers use a re-engineered virus to introduce the gene that produces HexA, said Sena-Esteves, a scientist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School who specializes in gene therapy for neurological diseases. The virus is a cargo vessel, its genetic material removed and replaced with a concentrated dose of the HexA gene as its payload.

Acting like a bucket brigade, healthy cells pass along the gene until, in effect, they soak cells lacking HexA, enabling them to produce the crucial enzyme.

The experimental therapy has extended the lives of cats, which have a similar genetic defect, from an average of four months to 18 months, the consortium reports. Some lived past age 2, the consortium reports.

Outcomes are less dramatic with Jacob sheep: a 50 percent life span extension, from an average of nine months to 14.3 months. But the sheep are especially valuable in the search for a human cure. The Tay-Sachs gene in Jacob sheep is an 86 percent DNA match with the human HexA gene.

The consortium plans to seek federal approval for human trials while refining the gene therapy and methods for administering it. Advocates also will push for routine newborn screening nationwide.

There is no question now the disease can be treated, said Doug Martin, a consortium member whose work involving felines at the Scott-Ritchey Research Center at Auburn University in Alabama expanded in 2010 to include Jacob sheep. Its not perfect, but it can be improved.

The Auburn treatment is administered by precision-guided injections through holes in the skull, which succeeded in getting therapy beyond what is called the blood-brain barrier. The goal is to develop an IV drip that fully treats the central nervous system by providing sufficient doses to both the brain and the blood system.

The treatment is in the first generation, said Susan Kahn, executive director of the National Tay-Sachs and Allied Diseases Association (NTSAD), which helps fund research by the consortium and other scientists exploring different treatment methods. But I think the promise for the future is very positive.

Tay-Sachs was identified in humans in the 1880s. Research on Tay-Sachs in animals dates to the 1960s, including at Auburns Scott-Ritchey Center.

Although Tay-Sachs is deadly in children, a form of the disease that appears in early adulthood is not always fatal, though it causes severe neurological problems.
MIAMI  Travelers who had braced for long lines and long waits were instead moving through most U.S. airports fairly quickly Monday, as the busy Memorial Day travel weekend drew to close.

Honestly it wasnt too bad, said Kendra Morehead of Wooster, Ohio, who flew from Detroit to Denver for a conference. I got to the airport an hour and a half early, but security only took like 15 minutes.

She added, I heard a lot of stories about security being understaffed, but everything seemed fine.

However, the airlines werent ready to say mission accomplished yet, as its just the beginning of the busy summer travel season.

Things have been going pretty well so far this weekend and we are working hard to make sure that we have no repeat of what we saw in Chicago, said American Airlines spokesman Ross Feinstein, referring to Chicago OHare International Airport, which had some of the worst screening problems in recent weeks.

The airline continues to talk daily with the Transportation Security Administration to coordinate, Feinstein said.

The TSA began deploying extra canine teams to the busiest airports months ago. The dogs can screen large groups of passengers for explosives, eliminating the need to remove shoes and laptops, TSA spokesman Mike England said last week.

The extra dogs were concentrated at the nations largest airports, but they werent used for all screenings, meaning that many travelers still had to observe the usual procedures. England said the extra dogs would remain at security checkpoints well beyond the Memorial Day weekend.

In some parts of Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, lines were nonexistent and ID-carrying travelers were outnumbered by clusters of TSA employees.

At John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, travelers arriving from major cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Miami said their security lines had been short.

Not everyone had a smooth trip, however. Bob Dunlap of Milford, Michigan, expected to wait an hour to get through a security line that snaked from the Denver airports cavernous security plaza all the way back to baggage claim.

He had tried to expedite his screening by arriving three hours early and checking his baggage. What can you do? he said with a shrug. Ive never been in a line like this for security, ever.

Californias Sacramento International Airport was crowded but about normal for a holiday travel day, according to an airport dispatcher.

An early morning photo posted on Twitter showed a line into the airport stretching all the way back to a parking garage. The dispatcher said that was taken during the airports busiest part of the day and the line had shrunk by late morning.

At Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, travelers swiftly wove through ropes directing them toward the main TSA checkpoint Monday afternoon. In recent weeks, passengers at the same checkpoint inside the worlds busiest airport have waited in single-file lines stretching into the airports atrium or back to baggage claim.

Reese McCranie, a spokesman for the Atlanta airport, said security wait times averaged 15 minutes or less throughout the weekend, aided by 30 TSA officers on loan from smaller airports and about 34 new officers who started work a week ago.

Memorial Day is really a dress rehearsal for the rest of the summer, McCranie said. Were hopeful that were working toward a similar experience for all other major travel periods.

At Orlando International Airport, extra airport staff was helping keep wait times to just over seven minutes on Monday, said airport spokeswoman Carolyn Fennell.

The airport hired 27 extra customer service staff and added more disposal bins for prohibited items to help smooth out the security screening process, Fennell said. More than 600,000 travelers were expected to pass through Orlando from Friday to Tuesday. Airport officials said thats a 12 percent increase over last year.

At JFK Airport in New York City, where a computer outage caused massive check-in delays on Sunday, officials and passengers said things were much better Monday for most travelers.

But not for everyone.

Bibi Ali, a banker from Queens, said she arrived extra early, fearing she might miss her flight because of security lines. I was there early and it was one hour waiting in line she said. The flight is not bad, just the line, its hectic.

___

Associated press writers Kristen Wyatt in Denver, Colorado; Alan Scher Zagier in St. Louis, Missouri; and Charles Sheehan in New York City contributed to this story.
PHOENIX  With triple-digit temperatures returning to Arizona this week, forest officials are mounting defenses to limit the growth of several small wildfires burning across the state.

A high-pressure system moving into the Southwest is expected to bring sweltering temperatures likely to peak above 110 degrees Friday and Saturday in southern parts of the state, according to the National Weather Service.

The hot, arid weather will also affect the high country by drying out pine needles, grasses and logs on the forest floor, thus making more fuel for fires burning in Coconino and Tonto national forests.

Officials with the U.S. Forest Service say they have the fires under control and are anticipating the changes in weather.

I have no doubt in my mind that they are aware that this is coming and are planning for this weather system, said Carrie Templin, U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman for Tonto National Forest. Its June. Its Arizona. Its hot, and its dry. Thats normal.

The states four largest wildfires that are still burning were all started by lightning. The largest is the Juniper Fire, which has scorched more than 6,600 acres in Tonto National Forest near Young, Arizona.

Three more fires are burning in Coconino National Forest. Each has burned less than 3,000 acres, and they are relatively small compared with some of the states largest fires such as the Wallow Fire, which burned nearly 550,000 acres in 2011.

Fire managers decided its better to allow the fires to burn to help thin the forest, Templin said.

This years wet weather in Arizonas high country has helped to minimize the growth of the fires and helped fire officials to control the burns to remove vegetation and reduce the risk of a more severe fire.

There are a lot of areas in the state of Arizona that need to be restored to a more natural condition, whether that is by mechanical thinning or fires, Templin said.

Still, Forestry officials are urging campers and hikers to take care in putting out camp fires. Campers need to douse camp fires in water and dirt then stir until they are cool to the touch, Templin said.
WASHINGTON  The report on Hillary Clintons email by the State Departments inspector general last week was devastating  not because of how she handled email but because of how she handled investigators.

The reports revelations werent particularly revelatory: Clinton violated department policies and went further than predecessors in her use of private email, but she wasnt the first to take this path. Beyond that, as my colleagues Rosalind Helderman and Tom Hamburger reported, officials say the FBI has found little evidence that Clinton maliciously flouted classification rules.

But whats damning in the new report is her obsessive and counterproductive secrecy:

The Office of the Inspector General said it interviewed Secretary Kerry and former Secretaries Albright, Powell, and Rice. Through her counsel, Secretary Clinton declined OIGs request for an interview.

In addition  eight former Department employees [most of them Clinton aides] declined OIG requests for interviews.

Two additional individuals did not respond to OIG interview requests.

OIG sent 26 questionnaires to Secretary Clintons staff and received five responses.

The stonewalling creates a firm impression, well captured by CNNs Wolf Blitzer last week when he interviewed Clintons spokesman, Brian Fallon: If she didnt do anything wrong and she had nothing to hide, why didnt she cooperate with the inspector general?

There is no good answer to this. And thats why the IG report was just another of Clintons self-inflicted wounds caused by her tendency toward secrecy and debilitating caution.

Donald Trump has decided to dub her Crooked Hillary. This isnt quite true: Though investigations into her activities have occupied much of the past 25 years, her accusers, from Whitewater to Benghazi, never really get the goods. But what Clinton has been is nearly as problematic as being crooked: Hunkered Hillary. At the first sign of conflict or accusation, Clinton circles the wagons, shuts her mouth and instructs those around her to do the same. This generates a whole lot of smoke, even if theres no fire.

Fifteen months ago, when the email scandal broke, I viewed her use of a private server as an extension of the same flaws that have caused Clinton trouble in the past  terminal caution and its cousin, obsessive secrecy. In trying so hard to avoid mistakes  in this case, trying to make sure an embarrassing e-mail or two didnt become public  Clinton made a whopper of an error.

She resisted releasing records on the Whitewater land deal (causing the scandal to drag on, leading to the independent-counsel investigation that exposed the Monica Lewinsky scandal) and about her 1993 health care task force (giving her opponents ammunition to defeat the plan). This time, she again hunkered down.

Clintons response is emblematic of her caution. While Trump and Bernie Sanders drive the narrative of the 2016 campaign with their freewheeling styles, Clinton is missing: She puts herself into the debate less often than the others and, when she does, she says little to merit headlines.

Her hiring of a full slate of advisers to President Obama  himself a cautious leader  reinforces the risk aversion. But caution wont win this year, and its unclear whether Clinton will, or even can, liberate herself from the bunker.

The inspector generals bottom line wasnt good: She did not comply with the departments policies.

But the description of Clintons secrecy was worse. When one State staffer raised concern about Clintons private email, this person was told that the secretarys personal system had been reviewed and approved by department legal staff and that the matter was not to be discussed any further.

Investigators found no evidence of such a review.

What they found was stonewalling by Clinton and her aides  and this, not mishandled email, is what tripped up Fallon as he tried to defend the candidate to Blitzer.

It looks as if shes got something to hide when she doesnt even want to answer questions from the inspector general of the State Department, the anchor said.

Fallon tried to argue that Clinton and her aides prioritized the similar Justice Department investigation and were cooperating with that one. Then he insinuated that there were hints of an anti-Clinton bias in the IGs office.

The vast right-wing conspiracy had infiltrated the State Department! Asked Blitzer: Are you accusing the inspector general of the State Department  a Democratic appointee  of having an anti-Clinton bias?

The spokesman retreated, noting that the report documented that the use of personal e-mail was widespread and done by her predecessors, including Secretary Powell.

And that might have been the takeaway  if Hunkered Hillary hadnt let her instinctive caution again get the best of her.

E-mail: danamilbank@washpost.com. Copyright, Washington Post Writers Group.
The planned sale of an Acoma tribal treasure Monday was canceled after a Paris auction house withdrew the item from bidding.

The EVE Auction Houses decision to cancel the sale of a shield used in Acoma religious ceremonies came after a week of intense lobbying by New Mexicos Acoma tribe and high-level federal government officials, including Interior Secretary Sally Jewell.

It was withdrawn this morning pending further investigation, Ann Berkley Rodgers, an Albuquerque-based attorney for the tribe, told the Journal on Monday.

Rodgers said she and tribal officials were delighted to see the religious artifact pulled from the auction. But she said the battle is not over.

For Acoma, it is not going to be a victory until the shield is returned, she said.

On Friday, Jewell wrote a letter to Catherine Chadelat, president of Frances auctions authority, the Council of Voluntary Sales, imploring the French government to step in and block the transaction.

We have reason to believe that this object was stolen, Jewell wrote. I respectfully request that you prevent its sale and direct the Eve Auction House to work with the tribe on its repatriation.

Jewell also asked the French official to help the U.S. government identify the American citizen who sold the artifact to the auction house so that justice may be served.

In response to a Journal inquiry Friday, the French Embassy in Washington said the government was investigating the issue and giving it most serious consideration.

The French authorities have referred this matter to the Central Office for the Fight Against Trafficking of Cultural Property, and we are awaiting the results of their investigation, embassy spokeswoman Emmanuelle Lachaussee said in an email. In addition, the French Customs Service is in contact with its American counterpart in order to move forward with the necessary verifications.

But she did not say whether the sale of the Acoma shield would be prevented. Rodgers and tribal officials were monitoring the auction online Monday morning when the auctioneer said that the item had been withdrawn from sale.

No further information was available.

The sale of tribal cultural items at the EVE Auction House has gone on for years, with collectors clamoring for ownership of rare Native American items. Mondays auction featured hundreds of religious items and art pieces from the Americas, Africa and Asia.
The Albuquerque Journal and KANW radio are sponsoring a forum June 15 to examine what law enforcement officials call an epidemic in opioid-related deaths in New Mexico.

U.S. Attorney Damon Martinez and University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center Chancellor Dr. Paul B. Roth will be among the speakers to attend the forum, which will run from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Journal auditorium. The forum will be broadcast live by KANW, 89.1 FM, a nonprofit, noncommercial public radio station owned and operated by Albuquerque Public Schools.

The purpose of the forum, Martinez said, is to educate New Mexicans about the dangers of opioids and help prevent them from succumbing to the epidemic. More than 20 experts have been invited to attend the forum and answer questions submitted by the public.

Roughly 90 percent of the 540 drug overdose deaths in New Mexico during 2014 involved heroin or prescription painkillers, making the state No. 2 in the nation for overdose deaths per capita.

Opioid addiction forumWhen: June 15

Time: 7 to 9 p.m.

What: Live program on KANW, 89.1 FM

Details: Experts from health care, law enforcement and nonprofits will answer questions submitted earlier by the public. When: June 15Time: 7 to 9 p.m.What: Live program on KANW, 89.1 FMDetails: Experts from health care, law enforcement and nonprofits will answer questions submitted earlier by the public. To send questionsConcerned community members can submit questions to newsroom@abqjournal.com, or through the Journals website at ABQjournal.com, KANWs website at www.KANW.com or the HOPE Initiative website at www.HopeInitiativeNM.org.

Last year, Martinez and Roth formed the New Mexico Heroin and Opioid Prevention and Education (HOPE) Initiative, which aims to reduce the number of opioid-related deaths in the state through education, prevention and law enforcement.

Many of the organizations providing expertise for the forum are members of the HOPE Initiative.

The public can submit questions for the forum by email to newsroom@abqjournal.com. The deadline for submitting them is June 5.

The Journal will sort the questions and distribute them to the experts, who will research and then answer the questions during the live broadcast.

Journal editor Kent Walz and investigative reporter Mike Gallagher will serve as moderators.

The forums experts will be drawn from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the UNM School of Pharmacy, Generation RX, the New Mexico Poison Center, Bernalillo Countys MATS program, Albuquerque Public Schools, UNM School of Medicine Milagro Program, Greater Albuquerque Medical Association, Healing Addiction in our Community and others.
SANTA FE  Tapping free Wi-Fi at public libraries and cafes, and hawking T-shirts and bumper stickers out of a Santa Fe hemp clothing store, autonomous cells of Bernie Sanders volunteers in New Mexico have been feverishly fundraising and speed-dialing voters for months.

And theyre not about to give up. Supporters of the Democratic presidential candidate canvassed door to door over the Memorial Day weekend, guided by smartphone apps linked to voter databases.

At the same time, Hillary Clinton is on track to clinch the nomination in the final round of state Democratic primaries June 7 that include New Mexico, and higher-stakes votes in California and New Jersey.

The divide between Democratic voters in the presidential primary race is on prominent display in New Mexico, where Sanders recently addressed roaring crowds at rallies in Santa Fe, Albuquerque and elsewhere. Days later, former President Bill Clinton arrived to stump for his wife and raise campaign dollars at a private gathering in Santa Fe.

I think we still have a chance, and I wouldnt sleep well if we didnt keep trying, said Navona Gallegos, 24, a Santa Fe hypnotherapist who joined 10 other Sanders supporters at a phone-banking session in the downtown Santa Fe public library one recent weekday evening.

A 75-year-old woodworker and an attorney in her 50s worked alongside, with personal cellphones wired into laptop computers to speed-dial phone numbers in search of noncommittal voters.

Across New Mexico, Sanders has raised slightly more than Clinton in direct campaign donations  $897,000 to Clintons $857,000 through the end of April, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission.

As the primary approaches, pro-Sanders art and quilting sessions have given way to paid television advertisements that highlight issues of low wages and income inequality.

Clinton has locked in commitments from the majority of New Mexicos nine superdelegates, the party leaders who can back any candidate of their choice. She has tapped support from a long line of local power brokers, from the state attorney general to mayors of Democratic-dominated cities, such as Santa Fe and Espanola.

Her campaign has deployed nine professional staffers in the state and launched initiatives tailored toward women, Hispanics and Native Americans.

In his visit to Santa Fe, Sanders urged followers to help him win 50 percent of pledged delegates plus one to provide hope of winning at the Democratic National Convention. An enthralled audience hung on Sanders every sentence, with the candidate taking long pauses to avoid being drowned out by cheers and whistles.

I love all of you and I love your energy, Sanders told the rally of 2,400 people.

Michael Wolfe, a teacher at St. Johns College in Santa Fe, said the odds are against a Sanders nomination. He took his 10-year-old daughter to see the candidate speak anyway because I think this indicates the direction this country is going in the future.

Both Democratic hopefuls were briefly overshadowed by a raucous Donald Trump rally in Albuquerque last week, where protesters were pulled by security officers from a convention hall and skirmishes with police broke out in the surrounding streets.

By comparison, a two-day visit by Bill Clinton was a tranquil affair, with several hundred supporters gathering in the heavily Hispanic and Native American community of Espanola to hear an upbeat message about diversity and public policy prescriptions for student debt, unemployment and small-business incentives.

There was room to spare on a public plaza where Leroy Ortiz, 72, of Chimayo, a retired public school worker and two-time Bill Clinton voter, credited Hillary Clinton with the toughness needed to beat Trump and urged Sanders to step aside.

Sanders knows he is going to lose the delegate count, Ortiz said. Hes doing more harm than good.
BAGHDAD  Iraqi forces started pushing into the city of Fallujah on Monday as a wave of bombings claimed by the Islamic State group in Baghdad and near the Iraqi capital killed at least 24 people.

The advance is part of an offensive to rout militants from Fallujah and recapture the city west of Baghdad, which has been held by the Islamic State for over two years. The offensive on Fallujah, backed by paramilitary troops and aerial support from the U.S.-led coalition, was first launched about a week ago.

The battle for the strategic city is likely to be a protracted one, with Iraqi forces advancing slowly to minimize civilian casualties. Tens of thousands of civilians are believed to be still inside the city, trapped by the fighting.

Meanwhile, the bombings by the Islamic State, which has been behind several recent deadly attacks in Baghdad and beyond, are seen as an attempt by the militants to distract the security forces attention from the front lines.

The deadliest of Mondays attacks took place in the northern, Shiite-dominated Shaab neighborhood of Baghdad where a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into a checkpoint next to a commercial area, killing eight civilians and three soldiers. The explosion also wounded up to 14 people, a police officer said.

A suicide car bomber struck an outdoor market in the town of Tarmiyah, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of Baghdad, killing seven civilians and three policemen, another police officer said, adding that 24 people were wounded in that bombing.

And in Baghdads eastern Shiite Sadr City district, a bomb motorcycle went off at a market, killing three and wounding 10, police said. Medical officials confirmed casualty figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information.

In an online statement, IS claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying they targeted members of the Shiite militias and a government office. The Associated Press could not verify the authenticity of the statement but it was posted on a militant website commonly used by extremists.

Since launching the Fallujah offensive and until Monday, Iraqi government troops have mostly been fighting IS in the outskirts of the city to tighten the siege ahead of a planned final push into its center. By Sunday, the troops had recaptured 80 percent of the territory around Fallujah, according to Iraqi Maj. Dhia Thamir.

At dawn Monday, Iraqs elite counterterrorism forces started pushing into Fallujah from its southern edge, said Brig. Haider al-Obeidi. He described the clashes as fierce, with IS deploying snipers and releasing a volley of mortar rounds on the Iraqi forces.

Fallujah, which is about 65 kilometers (40 miles) west of Baghdad, is one of the last major IS strongholds in western Iraq. The extremist group still controls territory in the countrys north and west, as well as Mosul, Iraqs second largest city.

In a televised speech Sunday to parliament, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi called on Fallujah residents to either leave the city or stay indoors. Government officials and aid groups estimate that more than 50,000 people remain inside the center of the Sunni majority city.

__

Associated Press writers Murtada Faraj in Baghdad, Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Camp Tariq near Fallujah, Iraq, and Maamoun Youssef in Cairo contributed to this report.
Hotel guests recounted a terrifying night punctured by sounds of shouting and gunfire, the groans of a dying man and door-to-door knocking by someone screaming sheriffs office in the trial of a Santa Fe County deputy who shot and killed his partner in October 2014.

Ex-deputy Tai Chan has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder. His attorneys contend he killed fellow Deputy Jeremy Martin in self-defense. Prosecutors are arguing Chan, 27, deliberately murdered his partner, who was 29.

The trial, which is scheduled to last two weeks, resumes today.

One week into Chans trial in 3rd Judicial District Court in Las Cruces, jurors have heard numerous accounts of the late October night that ended with Martin collapsing out of the elevator onto the hotel lobby floor with five bullet holes in his back, buttock and arm, and Chan being taken into police custody. Servers at a hotel bar, Hooters restaurant and a pub called Dublins recounted the drinks they served the two men that night: Absolut raspberry vodka and Red Bull, fireball shots of cinnamon-flavored whiskey, more vodka and Red Bull, and pitchers of Dos Equis beer.

Two Dublins employees witnessed arguments between Chan and Martin; a bartender had to ask the men to calm things down at one point. They paid their tabs and left sometime before midnight Oct. 27.

Shortly after midnight at the hotel, the sound of two men shouting and a struggle followed by gunfire woke up Hotel Encanto guests sleeping on the seventh floor.

Something happened between Chan and Martin in Room 711  the jurors also saw photos of blood on the sheets of one bed  but jurors have yet to hear what the argument was about before it turned deadly.

More than one witness described the gunfire: a pop, then a volley of shots, the sound of running, then another volley of bullets. Witnesses described the sound of one man groan in agony and another man yell call 911 then bang on hotel room doors and shout sheriffs office.

None of the guests who testified opened their door to the man.

One hotel guest, Audra Davie of Albuquerque, told the jury she was very scared and was texting with a friend who was staying in the hotel to tell her not to open the door.

Another guest, Brody Blain, said he threw himself on the floor under a chair at the sound of gunfire.

Still another guest, Edward Haselwood, in a room next to 711, said he heard someone say, Oh, God, oh, God and later Oh, God, I cant believe this is happening.

Police responding to 911 calls found Martin in the lobby and took him to a nearby hospital, where he died.

Jurors heard 25 minutes of audio from a police recorder that caught the sounds of a half-dozen officers and a police dog named Zero ascending a hotel staircase, where they found Chan on a landing at the locked door to the roof. Chan obeyed police commands to come down backward with his hands behind his back, fingers locked together as if in prayer.

Chans attorney noted that Chan can be heard claiming self-defense on the tape and expressing fear for his family.

Police officers testified to odd or incoherent statements Chan made as they led him down, in the police car and while in custody, such as describing people floating by in sweaters who were after him.

Las Cruces Police Lt. Casey Mullins testified that Chan said, without being questioned: I had to do it. I killed my partner.

Jurors also saw a video of Chan in custody, waiting in an interrogation room. Police read him his Miranda rights. Defense attorneys established that Mullins did not immediately allow Chan to contact an attorney, even though he asked to speak with counsel.

On the video in the interrogation room, a detective is heard telling Chan, I dont know if anybody told you, but Jeremy is dead. Chan takes a drink from a bottle of water and says nothing.

On Friday, relatives of both Chan and Martin shared the same bench in the courtroom.

Chief Judge Fernando Macias is presiding over the trial.
Copyright  2016 Albuquerque Journal

The top two pastors of a nondenominational Christian church thats been active at the University of New Mexico for years have been banned from campus for allegedly entering dorms and other buildings without authorization or escorts and for holding unauthorized services in campus buildings.

In addition, the charter for the Lobos for Christ student group affiliated with the New Covenant Christian Church has been suspended.

UNM notified pastors Jim Cooper and Kirk Walker of New Covenant Christian Church of the ban in letters dated April 8 and obtained by the Journal through an Inspection of Public Records Act request. The letters also said their presence on campus significantly negatively impacted former church and Lobos for Christ members who are currently students.

The churchs current ministers have not been banned.

Cooper and Walker appealed their bans, which appear to last two years, but interim Dean of Students Jenna Crabb said their appeals recently were denied.

Cooper and Walker declined to comment for this story.

The letters to Cooper and Walker also said UNM had evidence that they and their church improperly used the Chartered Student Organization status of Lobos for Christ to gain access to the schools anthropology building and encouraged group members to violate UNM policies.

An investigation into the student group remains ongoing.

The ban and charter suspension came after students who were former church members complained about the groups practices, including aggressive recruiting of freshmen students.

Crabb said she couldnt speak to the specifics of the investigation. But the letters banning the pastors says they violated several university policies, including entering the residence halls without escorts and holding services open to the public in UNMs anthropology building.

UNM also said the pastors presence on campus would affect the former church members ability to continue to pursue their education and move freely on the university campus.

Former members told the Journal they filed complaints with the university regarding the church and what they called emotional and manipulative practices.

It was so controlling

In interviews with the Journal, they painted a picture of a church that targets young freshmen looking for a sense of belonging in what are often lonely early weeks of college.

It reaches those students through proselytizing on campus.

The Lobos for Christ charter describes the importance of recruiting new students, often having a booth at freshman orientation.

We do this to draw students in like fish are drawn in by a big drag net, the charter reads.

Once recruited, the young members found many of their actions monitored by the church, former members said.

It was so controlling. They knew everything about us, and I hated that, said former member and current student Kalyn Kollie.

Before she joined, recruiters at times would call her twice a day in an attempt to get her to join. After joining, she said, young members were encouraged to spend their time with other members and choose them as roommates.

The churchs ministers also advised the students what to study or who to date.

Kollie said that despite her concerns she was attracted by the acceptance and social support the church offered new students.

You feel like you had a place to fit in, Kollie said.

But after a year and half, she had enough. And when she left, none of the members would have any further association with her.

On its website, the New Covenant Christian Church describes itself as reaching the students of the University of New Mexico through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

In a section of the charter manual for the group, the author talks about how to best reserve rooms on campus, but it also said the group acquired a key to the anthropology department building so the church could hold services there.

Les Field, chairman of the anthropology department, said he wasnt familiar with the church and couldnt comment on the situation.

According to UNM officials, Lobos for Christ also received some student funds, about $1,480 between 2008 and 2012.

Aggressive recruiting

Martin Ulloa, who said he is a former minister of the church, wrote a seven-page letter to UNM detailing numerous concerns, several echoing Kollies. He also said ministers were tasked with spending most of their time on campus recruiting students, rather than ministering.

The church practices aggressive recruitment efforts like stalking through constant campus surveys, text messages, phone calls and dorm visits, he said in his letter.

You need to bring in numbers. Thats what its about, Ulloa told the Journal.

Crabb said she hadnt received any complaints about the current ministers on campus.

Debbie Morris, director of the student activity center, said religious groups are required to make a reservation before coming onto campus for proselytizing.

If any individual or group shows up on campus without a reservation, our office would make contact with them to explain the procedure for using outdoor space on campus and ask them to register their activity, she said.

And Crabb said it was improper for the church to use the student group to reserve spaces for its use.

The Albuquerque church, former members say, is an offshoot of the Faith Christian Church in Tucson. In an Arizona Daily Star report, the paper interviewed former members of the Tucson church, who also shared stories about what they considered the controlling nature of the church.

Messages left with the Tucson Faith Christian Church werent returned.
Copyright  2016 Albuquerque Journal

Albuquerque isnt the only place where the thin blue line is thinner than it should be.

Officials from Portland, Ore., to Philadelphia have said their departments are in dire straits because of a shortage of officers.

Last week, police officials in Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Portland told the Journal they are trying to recruit more officers to grow the size of their forces to the number they are authorized to have, which is proving to be difficult.

Albuquerque officials have been saying the same thing for several years as the size of the force has plummeted.

The Albuquerque Police Department had 1,100 officers in 2009 and now has fewer than 850. The department is budgeted for 1,000 officers.

Even with intense recruiting efforts, it could take years to reach that target number, given the number of officers who are about to qualify for retirement, police officials say.

A number of departments around the country, including Houston and Dallas, report being hundreds of officers short, and an increase in crime has been blamed on officer shortages. Smaller New Mexico police departments, such as those in Taos and Santa Fe, are hiring. The Farmington Police Department is offering signing bonuses between $3,000 and $15,000.

Why do so many departments say they are understaffed?

Police officials and police staffing experts say its the result of a combination of factors:

 Police departments grew in the 1980s and 1990s and those officers are now retiring, but an economic downturn that started about 10 years ago prevented departments from preparing for those retirements.

 Public perception of policing and more opportunities in the private sector have steered some away from the field.

 And there are other causes  from poor leadership to changes in pension programs  which can vary from department to department.

But the number of officers compared with the number a department is budgeted for doesnt always tell the whole story.

Its a very rare situation when you go to a police department and they say they are fully staffed, said Mitchell Weinzetl, the assistant director of education for the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

Departments reports of understaffing can prompt local policymakers to provide an agency with more resources, he said.

Weinzetl said an understaffed police department may need to do more than just recruit new officers. And it could be an opportunity to bring the departments practices in line with what the community expects from its force.

Understaffed departments, he said, have to figure out what services theyre not going to provide anymore.

Boom and bust

In the 1980s and 1990s, there was a hiring push in the Portland, Ore., Police Bureau, said Sgt. Jeff Helfrich.

Americas economy was good. And incarceration rates were booming as American police departments battled the war on drugs.

Now, officers hired during that push are retiring. And a hiring freeze in 2008 prevented Portland from offsetting those retirements with new recruits.

Portland, which is slightly bigger than Albuquerque with an estimated population of 620,000, is currently authorized for 950 officers, but there are 62 vacancies, and police officials dont think theyll be able to fill them at a pace fast enough to keep up with retirements. The department is forecasting that it will be understaffed until 2025, Helfrich said.

Were reaching out and showing people its a good profession to be in, he said. But its going to be a while before we get fully staffed.

Alexander Weiss, who last year completed a study in Albuquerque that determined the police force needed 1,000 officers and to restructure itself, also has completed a national study that linked understaffed police departments to the economy.

When the recession hit Phoenix, which has an estimated population of 1.5 million, city officials called for a hiring freeze that lasted six years, from 2009 until March 2015. The number of police officers in that time dropped from a high of 3,400 officers.

The department now has 2,794 officers and is budgeted for 3,268. That means it is about 15 percent below its budgeted force, nearly the same as Albuquerque, said Phoenix Police Lt. Anthony Lopez.

While the economic downturn decimated the ranks, a quick rebound appears to be on the way for Phoenix.

Its numbers have been growing steadily because the department is putting between 20 and 25 officers in a four-month police academy each month, Lopez said. That means the department may be fully staffed in a couple years.

Thats not the case for Albuquerque, where a staffing study draft obtained recently indicates the department wont be fully staffed for the next decade or longer. The analysis compared the number of officers who will qualify for retirement to the estimated 80 police academy graduates per year from now until 2031. Police officials have said that would be the worst-case scenario, and they are hoping to get lateral hires or return-to-work legislation, which allows returning officers to keep their pensions, to grow the ranks more quickly.

Albuquerque police currently are operating under a court-ordered reform effort in response to a U.S. Department of Justice investigation that found a pattern of excessive force. But APD, like Phoenix, said many people are interested in joining the ranks.

Weve had a lot of reporters call and ask about the national conversation of police incidents after coming out of a hiring freeze, Lopez said. But were seeing very healthy numbers of people signing up. Contrary to the perception that there is a large concern about being a police officer, in Phoenix we dont see that.

Albuquerque has lost a similar percentage of officers as Phoenix. The department didnt face a hiring freeze, but it did undergo pay cuts.

While Albuquerque police are 15 percent below what they are budgeted for, the Bernalillo County Sheriffs Office, which shares headquarters with APD, is fully staffed at 300 officers  but its recruiting needs are far less.

Weinzetl said theres more than just the economy that affects staffing, and it would take a deep analysis to determine why APD is struggling while BCSO is not.

The quality of an agencys leadership, culture within the department, changes to pensions, styles of policing, policies and other factors can affect one agency more than another. Also, the BCSO doesnt have to wear lapel cameras, while APD does.

Youre talking about 50 different things intertwined, he said.

Making do with less

As understaffed police departments try to recruit new officers, they need to spread their resources differently to ensure patrol officers can handle the call volume, Weinzetl said.

If you dont (have 1,000 officers), you have to figure out what services youre not going to provide anymore, he said.

For example, police can limit responding to unconfirmed burglary alarms, especially at places that have a history of false alarms, expand the police reports submitted online, and not respond to minor car wrecks without injuries, Weinzetl said. That would free up officers to better handle calls for service.

And you can put officers who patrol on bicycle, SWAT officers and motorcycle cops back to patrol, he said.

Albuquerque Police Chief Gorden Eden is emphasizing some initiatives to try to free up officers for more serious calls. For example, people can make police reports online for crimes such as vandalism, theft and telephone harassment. And reports for wrecks without injuries can be filed at police stations. The department is preparing to launch an app that would allow people to easily make those types of reports from their cellphones.

Salt Lake City police officials said they are exploring similar options.

And Eden has asked for community feedback on how to best handle false alarms and minor wrecks without injuries.

Last year, the chief unveiled a program called Police and Community Together that will take some officers out of their assignments at police headquarters and send them to the area commands on community policing teams. The plan hasnt been implemented yet, but a spokeswoman said the department is preparing to launch a pilot program with a community policing team in one of the citys area commands.

But there has been some public questioning lately whether the understaffed department is in step with how it should focus its limited resources.

Recently, a team of officers made headlines for bartering with homeless people to take their possessions in exchange for crack, then arresting them on drug possession charges.

Thats led city councilors to question the value of such undercover operations, especially given staffing levels.

Eden defended the practice and said the operation was executed in response to complaints about drug dealing from nearby businesses and residents.

We have a robust recruiting program, renewed efforts to push for return to work and are looking at a strengthened lateral academy to further supplement our ranks, Eden said in an email. We are evaluating best practices from around the nation when it comes utilizing our current resources and soliciting feedback from our department and community, specifically through our Community Policing Councils, to determine what resources and priorities are most important to them.
Pronouns are really no big deal

IM A HETEROSEXUAL Christian woman and a grandma. Ive met a few transgender people and I wouldnt be afraid or worried about privacy if a trans woman came into the public bathroom where I or my granddaughter was.

Its always been possible for a perverted male to dress up as female and cause trouble in a womens bathroom. But trans women dont do that sort of thing, nor do trans men. Trans people want to fit in with their gender identity and just get along. They sometimes suffer disrespect from mean people who dont realize yet that a trans woman is really a woman, and a trans man is a real man.

And for me, showering with any other woman would be uncomfortable  no surprise  and showering with any kind of man would be out of the question, especially at my age. We can accommodate trans people as weve done for gay and handicapped people whose civil rights must be respected.

And as far as pronouns are concerned, lets get real  its their identity. I bet Jesus would accept them and not discriminate.

I believe God isnt a male or a female but is way above all that. Our tradition of using male pronouns for God is a patriarchal holdover from the past  no longer so important.

PATRICIA WHITE

Albuquerque

Why not open bathrooms to all?

OUR GOVERNMENT wants every U.S. public school district to allow transgender students to use the restrooms that match their gender identity. Will this requirement apply to all public restrooms?

Does this requirement mean that I, a 77-year-old male, can put on a dress and a wig and use the ladies restroom? All I need to say to defend myself is that this is my gender identity! If this is the case, why bother to have mens and womens restrooms at all. Just make them all open to everyone.

The government has never addressed the existing problem for ladies that have to stand in long lines to use their restrooms while the guys normally have no lines and walk right in. Why should the ladies have to wait longer then the guys? Has the government done some secret study that indicates that the women can hold their bladder longer, so it is OK for them to wait? Isnt this some type of discrimination? And now, with more guys with female gender identity using the ladys restrooms, the lines will get longer!

Of course there will be some ladies that have male gender identity, so they may slow down things a bit for the men. Maybe these ladies can use the stand-up urinals like the rest of the guys to speed things up a little! Has the government thought about that? With the new law, will the stand-up urinals in mens rooms all need to be enclosed behind a lockable door to provide everyone their privacy? Presently, the ladies rooms already have private stalls. If we dont want to discriminate, the mens rooms should all have private stalls, also!

Of course no one should be embarrassed or feel uncomfortable when using a restroom. So why not remove the main doors that state Men and Ladies, and enter into an open shared area with just the sinks, then provide non-gender restrooms with lockable private stalls  with walls from floor to ceiling so no one can peek. This would be the same setup as the port-a-potties at the state fair!

Then, no ones gender identity would be an issue, the waiting time would be the same for all genders, everyone would have private stalls and we could all share the same sinks!

PETE AGRUSA

Rio Rancho

Will you follow Gods word?

SORRY, SCOTT TURNER is wrong on most every point he makes regarding laws preventing transgender people from entering the bathroom of their choice (New laws are like old segregation, April 17). I agree with him that government should back down, but the governments intrusion into what was for many years a church issue, is now for political reasons, not moral or philosophical.

The Christian viewpoint has always held that the perversion of sex is not up to personal opinion, it is a matter of what God says. The governments that are supporting the Defense of Religious Freedom Act are doing so because a law is a law and not open to individual interpretation and those officials believe and support conservative biblical values. What most conservatives disdain is that the power of government is being used by special interests to support the values of 1 percent of the population against not only common sense but what is just plain wrong.

The U.S. Constitution guarantees the right for anyone to dress, act and behave in any manner they want. But at the same time it guarantees the right for others to disagree and even refuse to associate with those who behave that way. To force the change of personal ideals, rearrange bathroom and locker room configuration for a vast minority against the will of the majority is and always will be a violation of constitutional rights.

And talk about opening Pandoras Box! It is wide open. Abortion, once for family management, has resulted in millions of children being aborted for convenience, even post-birth children. Homosexuality, once considered by the medical and psychiatric world a mental problem, is celebrated and protected even now to the point of bathroom location. Imagine what every other special interest group getting their way can lead to?

Yet the question remains, where will he and others who claim to be Christian stand  on his own interpretation or on that of Gods Word?

GARY HAYS

Albuquerque

Catering to everyones issues

IN READING Amy Goodmans column on the Bathroom Bill passed in North Carolina (Institutionalized discrimination alive and well in NC, April 2), I can clear up all the confusion on which bathroom everyone is supposed to use very easily. Any person with a penis is to use the mens bathroom. Anyone who does not have a penis is to use the womens bathroom. How simple is that.

Oh, but wait. I am not taking into account those people with issues. In listening to all these issues these people have, I am developing a few issues of my own. I have an issue with people who think that the normal behavior of civilization since the dawn of time needs to be turned on its head because a minute portion of the population has an issue with who they are. And the majority of the population is increasingly bowing to this minority so they will feel good and not be called names. What a crock! God made men and women different so they could populate the earth. Now we have people with issues questioning the wisdom of God and everyone else falling in line behind them.

Western civilization may be the only place on the planet where these people with these particular issues are allowed to parade them in public and demand that the rest of the population not only tolerate their issues, but actively acknowledge and condone their behavior.

If this were just an American problem maybe a reform of our education system would go a long way toward turning it around. But I think it is a Western civilization problem with Europe further down this politically correct road than we are at present. But we are doing everything possible to catch up as fast as we can. And some of Europe, not all but some, are finally realizing the cost of this behavior and trying to reverse course. I wish them all the luck in the world. If they are successful maybe they would share their solution with us. Then maybe they would be worthy of emulating.

HARRY KERNS

Albuquerque

Gender not set in stone at birth

WHEN I WAS a young child, we lived in a house that had been converted into three apartments. We lived on the main floor and on the second floor was a young couple with a 10-month-old baby. One day, the young mother knocked on our door and asked my mother to please phone for an ambulance because her baby was very sick. Although the ambulance came quickly, it was later learned that the baby had died.

Because there were three families living in the house, my mother and the other tenant felt the need to attend the funeral and express their sympathy to the parents. I still remember them coming home from that funeral in some shock. It seemed that beautiful baby girl who was named Maureen was buried as a baby boy named Maurice.

Naturally, I was very curious to know how that could possibly be since I too had seen that lovely baby girl. My parents explained to me that sometimes nature can make a mistake so although little Maureen had looked like a female baby at birth she had later developed male genitalia and had to be reclassified as a boy.

With that knowledge I grew up certain that gender could be a very nebulous thing and one should never assume or condemn anyone who knew in their heart that nature had made a mistake. It was a lesson well worth learning.

I share this story so that others might learn and not judge those who feel instinctively that a mistake has occurred.

Dont rush to judgment about a quirk of nature. All human beings need to be cherished.

CAROLE EBERHARDT

Albuquerque
A little more than a year into a two-year investment period, The Loan Fund, an Albuquerque-based nonprofit community lender, has spent about half of a $200,000 grant and is looking forward to helping other New Mexico creative entrepreneurs finance their businesses, and, most important, succeed.

George Kenefic, the Loan Funds director of enterprise empowerment, said the organizations CreativeFund has supported an art gallery owner and custom furniture maker in Albuquerque, and a custom lighting fixture designer and musician in Santa Fe.

Loans ranged from $7,000 to $25,000, said Kenefic. Most of it is working capital so these people can move their games up a notich, he said.

The Loan Fund organization works in partnership with the Keshet Ideas and innovation Center, which is the site of workshops on subjects such as the value of branding and choosing the right business structure.

Things are cooking; we should have more announcements soon, Kenefic said about other loans to artistic entrepreneurs who usually dont have a strong enough credit history to qualify for conventional loans from commercial banks.

Loan applicants run the gamut, including painters, sculptors and performing artists, but can also include film and digital media producers, jewelers, fashion designers and chefs.

The money comes from the Kresge and Surdna Foundations, which have joined to give out seven such grants to community lenders around the U.S.

In addition to loans, CreativeFund staffers offer free one-on one, business-related training to help potential borrowers see a path for growth.

Since the loans must be paid back, the Loan Fund remains invested in a business owners success, Kenefic said.

The Loan Fund, a source of capital for nonprofit organizations in New Mexico since 1988, hopes to continue to fund the creative economy once the current grant funds are spent.

As we gain momentum with this project, we hope to build coalitions and collaborations with other funding entities, such as arts-oriented foundations, said Kenefic.
ATLANTA  The Latest on the shooting of sheriffs deputy during a traffic stop south of Atlanta (all times local):

7:30 p.m.

Police have arrested one of the two women riding in the car with a man accused of shooting a sheriffs deputy in the face during a traffic stop south of Atlanta.

WTVM-TV (http://bit.ly/1TMuzrK ) reports that Lytishia Horace was being held Sunday as a fugitive from justice at the Russell County Jail in Alabama while waiting to be extradited to Georgia in connection to the shooting of deputy Jamie White.

Harris County Sheriff Mike Jolley says that at about 7:30 p.m. Saturday White took Joe Lee Garretts drivers license and spoke with him and the front seat passenger for about seven minutes. The 24-year-old Garrett then pulled out a gun and shot White above the left eye. Once White was shot, Garrett exited the vehicle, got his license and drove away.

Police say Garrett turned himself in in Alabama just hours after the shooting happened and is being charged with aggravated assault on a police officer, and is currently being held as a fugitive from justice. He will be extradited to Georgia.

____

2:30 p.m.

Authorities in Georgia say a sheriffs deputy is doing much better but may lose his left eye after he was shot in the face during a traffic stop south of Atlanta.

Harris County Sheriff Mike Jolley said Sunday that deputy Jamie Whites condition has improved after he was shot by the driver of a vehicle that he had pulled over. Joe Lee Garrett, 24, was arrested in Alabama just hours after the shooting happened about 7:30 p.m. Saturday.

Jolley says White took Garretts drivers license and spoke with Garrett and the front seat passenger for about seven minutes. Garrett then pulled out a gun and shot White above the left eye. Once White was shot, Garrett exited the vehicle, got his license and drove away.

Jolley says there were two women in the vehicle  one in the front passenger seat and the other back set. Police are still looking for them.

____

1:05 a.m.

Authorities in Georgia say a suspect has been arrested after a sheriffs deputy was shot in the face during a traffic stop south of Atlanta.

Russell County Sheriff Heath Taylor tells WTVM-TV (http://bit.ly/1TMuzrK) that 24-year-old Joe Lee Garrett was arrested just hours after the shooting happened about 7:30 p.m. Saturday. Police say Garrett turned himself in and was transported to Russell County Jail. He is being charged with aggravated assault on a police officer, and is currently being held as a fugitive from justice in relation to the shooting.

No other arrests have been made and the case remains under investigation.

Police previously said three people were inside a 1994 blue Chevrolet Caprice on I-85 southbound, about 80 miles south of downtown Atlanta, when they were stopped by the deputy. It was not immediately known why the sheriffs deputy stopped the car.

The deputy suffered a single shot to the face, above the left eye, while walking up to the vehicle Jolley said.

He was rushed to a hospital and is being treated. The condition of the deputy was not immediately known Saturday night.

___

11:46 p.m.

Police are searching for three suspects after a sheriffs deputy was shot in the face during a traffic stop south of Atlanta Saturday evening.

Harris County Sheriff Mike Jolley told WTVM-TV (http://bit.ly/1TMuzrK) that the incident happened around 7:30 p.m.

Three people were inside a 1994 blue Chevrolet Caprice on I-85 southbound, about 80 miles south of downtown Atlanta, when they were stopped by the deputy. It was not immediately known why the sheriffs deputy stopped the car.

The deputy suffered a single shot to the face, above the left eye, while walking up to the vehicle Jolley said.

He was rushed to a hospital and is being treated. The condition of the deputy was not immediately known Saturday night.

Police are searching for the suspects, whose car was caught on the deputys dash cam video.

___

11:34 p.m.

A Georgia sheriffs deputy was shot in the face during an interstate traffic stop south of Atlanta on Saturday.

WTVM-TV (http://bit.ly/1TMuzrK ) reports that Harris County Sheriff Mike Jolley says the incident happened around 7:30 p.m.

The deputy suffered a single shot to the face, above the left eye, while walking up to the vehicle. He was rushed to a hospital and is being treated. The condition of the deputy was not immediately known Saturday night.

Jolley says three people were inside the car when the incident happened on I-185 southbound, about 80 miles south of downtown Atlanta.

Police are searching for a 1994 blue Chevrolet Caprice that fled the scene.

Deputies say the vehicle was caught on dash cam video.

Police are searching for the suspects.
Copyright  2016 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  A Santa Fe County magistrate on Tuesday reduced the bail from $50,000 to $10,000 for Carlos Fierro for his DWI arrest this weekend, nearly eight years after the formerly prominent lawyer and lobbyist was found guilty of vehicular homicide.

In 2008, Fierro was accused of driving drunk and running over a pedestrian in a hit-and-run.

In the most recent case, Fierro is charged for only first offense DWI, as the arresting officer found no record of a prior DWI offense by Fierro.

A criminal complaint filed in Santa Fe County Magistrate Court on Tuesday shows that Fierro, 43, was pulled over in Espanola late Friday after a State Police officer saw him throw a cigarette out of the Ford Taurus he was driving and the car then crossed over into the officers lane of travel. The report does not make it clear whether Fierro crossed the center line into ongoing traffic.

The car smelled of alcohol, and when the officer began to administer field sobriety tests, the officers narrative says, Mr. Fierro asked me to give him a break because he said he couldnt do it (perform the sobriety tests).

He was charged with aggravated DWI  not just simple DWI, with the more serious aggravated count resulting from Fierros refusal to submit to a blood or breath test to determine blood alcohol content  as well as failing to maintain the proper lane and for not having proof of car insurance.

On Tuesday, his uncle, Louie Cordova, told a judge that Fierro, who now has a Los Angeles address, has no money and doesnt stand a chance in New Mexico.

That was proven the last time he was in court, said Cordova. He told reporters outside Magistrate Court that Fierro didnt get a fair trial after striking a pedestrian on Guadalupe Street in downtown Santa Fe in 2008.

The last time you convicted him before he even went to trial, Cordova said of the news media. Everybodys innocent until proven guilty, but in this case it doesnt work that way.

At Fierros arraignment, Magistrate Judge Donita Sena reduced Fierros bond to $10,000 surety, meaning he could be released by posting 10 percent, or $1,000, with a bail bond company. Sena also ordered Fierro to turn in his passport, if he has one. Jail records show he made bail and was released Tuesday evening.

Sena said Fierros vehicular homicide charge does not count as a prior DWI, although Fierro admitted at trial in 2009 that he was driving drunk when he ran over pedestrian William Tenorio, 46, outside what was then WilLees Blues Club. Fierros defense essentially blamed Tenorio, who had been drinking himself, saying he walked inattentively into the street on a dark night.

In that case, Fierro was sentenced to seven years in prison. He was released on two years of parole in August 2012.

Alex Tomlin, deputy secretary of the state Corrections Department, said Tuesday that Fierro moved to California after he was released and that state took over management of his parole. She said California gave Fierro an unsatisfactory discharge from parole in 2014 because he failed to follow through with parole directions, including failure to pay off lab fees connected to his prosecution, attend a DWI victims impact panel, finish an Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous program and complete required hours of community service.

Such violations do not constitute breaking the law, Tomlin said, and there arent repercussions for not meeting the requirements. Other, more standard parole conditions  such as getting arrested or testing positive for drugs  would have been constituted parole violations, Tomlin said.

Referring to legal fights Fierro had with Corrections over how much good time he earned in prison to reduce his sentence, Tomlin said, Hes been well-versed on how to game the system.

Lawyer of the year

Before the fatal crash in 2008, Fierro had worked for U.S. Sens. Tom Udall and John McCain and was named in 2007 as Outstanding Young Attorney of the Year by the New Mexico Bar Association.

Before his court appearance Tuesday via television from the Santa Fe County jail, Fierro had been incarcerated since about 5 a.m. Saturday over the long Memorial Day weekend. Fierros bail was initially set at $50,000 by Judge Donna Bevacqua-Young. Cordova said in court that Bevacqua-Young should have recused herself from setting the bail because of her connection to Fierros previous case.

Before she was judge, Bevacqua-Young  as a special prosecutor  pressed charges against Fierros passenger and drinking companion the night of the fatal crash, State Police officer Alfred Lovato, who was a member of then-Gov. Bill Richardsons security detail. Lovato was not convicted.

Judge Sena said before reducing Fierros bail that Bevacqua-Young had noted on documents that Fierro was a flight risk but didnt say what that was based on. Sena went on to say Fierro faces only first-offense DWI and has no history of failing to appear for required court hearings or failure to comply with court orders. She also said that although she can take criminal history into account, she must follow a New Mexico Supreme Court decision requiring that every defendant be given a reasonable bail amount.

Outside court, Cordova said that Fierro was back in New Mexico to see his daughter, who is getting out of school and that he didnt know where Fierro had been staying. Fierro gave the judge a Santa Fe address during his hearing, in which he said he would apply for representation by a public defender.

He doesnt have any money, Cordova said. Every time he applies for a job, he has to fill in that blank and that, you know, is messing him up.

Before, they portrayed him as a high-dollar attorney, and he wasnt a high-dollar attorney. He didnt have money back then, either.

In the criminal complaint filed against Fierro in court Tuesday, the officer who arrested him Friday night wrote that he could smell alcohol coming from Fierro after the traffic stop. Fierro had slurred speech and watery eyes and had a hard time finding his license, registration and insurance papers, according to the officers statement. Fierro said hed had one margarita and was on his way back to Santa Fe, the complaint says.
Many New Mexico students in higher education will receive the same amount of state scholarship aid in a year when tuition rose at many schools.

The Journal learned Tuesday that the states Higher Education Department said the lottery scholarship will still cover roughly 90 percent of a eligible students tuition costs through the 2016-17 school year. The state has made some alterations to the scholarship to keep it alive.

These changes have had some initial benefit on the solvency of the fund, however, tuition and enrollment continue to outpace Lottery Scholarship funding, wrote Barbara Damron, the cabinet secretary of the states higher education department, in a letter dated May 25 to the states universities and colleges.

The lottery scholarship is a program that covers the majority of tuition costs for eligible New Mexico high school graduates who attend state higher education institutions. About 30,700 students received nearly $61 million in scholarships in the 2015 fiscal year, which covered 90 percent of their tuition.

New Mexico students continue to benefit from the generosity of the Legislative Lottery Scholarship and should look to attend colleges and universities in the state to minimize higher education expense and student loan debt, said Terry Babbitt, an associate vice president at UNM.

The scholarship used to cover 100 percent of a students tuition. But in recent years that rate fell from to 95 percent to 90 percent most recently. At the same time, tuition costs at the majority of the states colleges keep rising.

The lottery scholarship has seen changes in recent years. Instead of covering eight semesters, the award covers only seven. Students used to be able to take 12 credit hours and maintain the scholarship, but these days they have to take at least 15 credit hours.

The New Mexico Lotterys contribution amount has fluctuated by millions of dollars since 2010. That year, the New Mexico Lottery contributed roughly $43.6 million to the scholarship fund. The next two years, the lottery gave about $41.3 million, and in fiscal year 2013 it gave $43.7 million. Fiscal year 2014 saw a slump to $40.9 million, and a slight uptick in fiscal year 2015 to $41.1 million.

Fiscal year 2016 has yet to finish, but the department projected a $45.3 million contribution to the scholarship fund. Wendy Ahlm, a spokeswoman with the New Mexico Lottery, said two factors account for the likely record return: a large surge thanks to spending for a massive January jackpot, and the scratcher program, which has seen a $17 million increase in sales in the past three years.

Without the increase in Scratcher sales, we would not be discussing a record return this year, Ahlm said.

Legislators voted to shore up the scholarship fund in 2014 with alcohol excise tax funds annually through fiscal year 2017 because lottery revenues couldnt fully fund it anymore.

We encourage lawmakers to find a balance that has a minimal effect on students, said Joseph Cueto, the spokesman for the states higher education department. Theres no doubt that if balanced and responsible reforms arent enacted, the scholarship will be affected.

Most recently, UNM approved a tuition and fee increase that will boost the overall amount a student pays from $6,664 to about $6,950.
PHOENIX  An Arizona man has been arrested on charges of murder after police discovered the body of a missing 25-year-old woman in a shallow grave near a burned-out sedan in the desert in Maricopa County.

Authorities say the victim may have first connected with 25-year-old Lashawn Johnson through an online dating website.

Maricopa County Sheriffs Office arrested Johnson on Sunday for second degree murder, kidnapping and other charges. Johnson was already in jail for unrelated charges.

Angela Russo first went missing April 19. Russos cell phone led police to the Johnsons apartment.

Johnsons roommate took authorities to the desert outside of Tonopah, Arizona, where they found the body and the sedan.

Detectives later found evidence suggesting Johnsons apartment could be the scene of the murder. Johnson will get a public defender.
PERTH, Australia  A 29-year-old surfer was hospitalized in critical condition Wednesday after a shark tore a leg off at an Australian west coast beach, officials said.

Ben Gerring was attacked at Falcon Beach, a popular surfing spot in his hometown of Mandurah, south of Perth city, as he was paddling his board out beyond 20 other surfers on Tuesday afternoon, his friend Brian Williams said.

Next thing all hell broke loose and they were trying to bring him in, Williams told Australian Broadcasting Corp. His board was broken in half.

Two surfers with longboards paddled out to bring him in, Williams said.

Mandurah Mail newspaper reporter Nathan Hondros said he arrived at the beach shortly after the attack and found ambulance crews trying to resuscitate Gerring.

He had lost a leg from what looked like above the knee, so it was quite a savage attack by the looks of it, Hondros told ABC.

Medical staff stabilized Gerrings condition at Mandurah before he was flown 70 kilometers (45 miles) to the Royal Perth Hospitals trauma center.

The hospital listed his condition as critical.

Life guards had tweeted earlier Tuesday that a 3.5-meter (11-foot) white shark had been seen off a nearby beach on Tuesday morning.

It was the first serious shark attack in Australia since March, when 22-year-old professional surfer Brett Connellan was badly injured off an east coast beach south of Sydney.
Homicide detectives investigated after a man was found dead in the parking lot of a southeast Albuquerque business Tuesday afternoon, according to a spokesman for the Albuquerque Police Department.

Officer Tanner Tixier said police were called to a suspicious situation at San Mateo and Silver SE around 4:30 p.m.

There they found a dead man slumped over in the parking lot against the back of a building on the south side of Central SE.

The information we gathered that brought us to this location where we found the body is the reason we made this a suspicious death investigation and called out our violent crimes unit, Tixier said.

He wouldnt say what that information was.

Tixier said the Office of the Medical Investigator will determine how the man died. Police have not yet identified the man but Tixier said he appears to be in his 30s or 40s.

Detectives dont have any suspects, Tixier said.
ACAs library of educational tools help members improve their business practices. ACA also holds the most popular industry conferences and offers credentialing for collectors, attorneys, and more. ACAs Training Zone subscription gives agencies access to almost all of our education for one low cost.
BDO USA LLP is expanding its New York metropolitan area practice by merging in Charles A. Barragato & Company, a firm with offices in New York City and Long Island that specializes in servicing high net worth individuals and family offices.

[IMGCAP(1)]The deal will add 38 new people, including six partners, to BDO, along with approximately $7 million in annual revenue, according to Barragato. BDO, based in Chicago, earns approximately $1.2 billion in annual revenue and ranks 7th on Accounting Todays 2016 list of the Top 100 Firms.

The merger is BDO USAs 18th M&A deal in the past four years, according to CEO Wayne Berson. In the past four years weve added more than 2,000 staff through the 18 deals around the country, he told Accounting Today in an interview Tuesday. Combined with organic growth, our total staff has now more than doubled to approximately 6,000.

Besides high net worth individuals and family offices, Barragato also services entertainers, health care providers, real estate investors and developers. The combination is expected to be completed on July 1, 2016.

The two firms got to know each other through Barragatos involvement in the BDO Alliance, and BDOs desire to expand its presence in New York.

Looking at high net worth individuals, family offices, and health care providers, these are all areas we are expanding in, said Berson. It ties in perfectly with what were trying to do, which is to get into a number of the more nontraditional areas.

[IMGCAP(2)]Chuck Barragato, who has more than 35 years of experience in public accounting and founded the firm in 1998, will succeed Randy Schwartzman as the office managing partner for BDO USAs Long Island tax practice, allowing Schwartzman to focus his energies on his role as regional managing partner for the Northeast Region tax practice, as well as serving his Long Island-based clients. Barragato will also take on a leadership role in developing BDO's Private Client Services practice in the Northeast region. A current BDO partner, John Kyriakides, will continue to serve as the office managing partner for the Long Island assurance practice.

Barragato said his firm has been approached by others over the years about doing a merger, but he was attracted by BDO. The industry is going through a period of consolidation, and given this climate weve been approached from time to time by a number of interested firms that were either seeking to expand into the New York market or to take a further foothold in the niche that we work in, which is primarily with high net worth individuals, family offices and health care, he said. But we never felt it made sense for our people or our clients. That being said, weve also been a member of the BDO Alliance for the past seven years, and weve really gotten to know the BDO firm and the leadership and seen the direction where the firm has been heading. That, coupled with the fact that we learned they were looking to build out their Private Client Services group and put a significant emphasis in the health care practice, these two areas are our core strengths, so it seemed to make sense for us to have a dialogue. One thing led to another, and having that seven-year courting period was helpful.

Having similar cultures was also important, according to Barragato. Its got to be the right match from a cultural perspective, he said. Doing a combination will enable us to amplify what weve already built in the private client services space and in the health care space, but now we will be able to do this on a national and global platform. That was the impetus for the discussions, and thats where we are today. Were really excited about the opportunities, and I think its going to be a great combination.

Berson and Barragato anticipate the two firms will eventually consolidate their Manhattan and Long Island offices. In the foreseeable future, were going to maintain both offices, said Barragato. Then well probably move into the Melville office on Long Island and the Park Avenue office in New York City.

BDO will have nearly 1,000 people in the New York area, according to Berson. With CAB, their strength with high net worth individuals, family offices and also health carean industry that were really expanding a lot inthis ties in very well with what were seeing is happening in New York, he said. The New York metropolitan region is a market weve been targeting. We wanted to increase critical mass and weve been looking for growth opportunities in New York.

Earlier this month, BDO expanded to Utah by merging in Mantyla McReynolds in Salt Lake City (see BDO Merges in Mantyla McReynolds to Expand to Utah). Berson said BDO is also looking at several other M&A deals in other parts of the country in the near future. We are continuing to have discussions with numerous firms around the country, he said. As you can imagine, theres a lot of interest in joining BDO. From a geographic standpoint we have added a great deal to our Central region and our Atlantic region. We would like to add in the Southeast, and we are working hard in that area.

BDO is also looking to expand its practice in several areas, some of which fit in with the deal with Barragatos firm. Beyond geography we are also looking to add resources to areas of growing demand, like private client services, wealth management, transaction advisory, outsourcing, cybersecurity, data analytics, risk advisory and actuarial services, said Berson. CAB hits private client services, wealth management and risk advisory. We are talking to many firms at the moment, but we dont have anything signed. Were probably close on one or maybe two.

Berson said BDO has to be careful about which firms it brings into deals, however. Weve actually turned away more firms than weve signed deals with, he said. We have to be careful because at the end of the day you want to retain the BDO culture. For us, its important that the firm coming in share a similar culture to what we have, so we do take our time in putting together a deal. We want to make sure the people that are coming in will fit in people wise as well as client wise. I have no doubt CAB is going to be like that.
The pace of small business job growth dropped slightly in May after a strong start earlier in the year, according to a new report from the payroll giant Paychex.

The Paychex | IHS Small Business Jobs Index, which the company compiles with the research firm IHS, declined 0.18 percent in May, from 100.77 to 100.59. Nevertheless, the pace of small business employment growth has increased 0.22 percent since the beginning of 2016.

Its roughly flat compared to a year ago, but the pace of small business job growth slowed a bit in May after a pretty hot start in 16, said Paychex president and CEO Martin Mucci. We had a good start, but its dropped off a little bit. Well see if its a trend or not, but at this point we still feel like weve got pretty good job growth in small business, despite a little slowdown in May.

At 101.72, the East South Central region topped the other regions on the index, gaining 0.40 percent, the best one-month growth rate. Washington remained the top-ranked state index, with its fifth consecutive increase in 2016. Continuing to hold the top spot among metro areas, Seattles index increased for the fifth straight month, hitting a record level in May of 104.97. After holding steady in April, small business growth slowed in every industry sector analyzed in May.

About six of the nine regions decreased in May, but most of the positive results have been in the South, either the South Atlantic region or the East South Central, so the Southeastern states have been the most positive, said Mucci. Thats Florida, Georgia and North Carolina. The cities are hanging in there as well. Seattle still tops the index and had some nice growth over last year, but where youre seeing some positive move is in Atlanta, Miami and places like that.

Washington remained the top-ranked state index with its fifth consecutive increase in 2016. Georgia surged past its southern neighbors into second place with a 0.85 percent increase from April to May. Virginia was the only state to outpace Georgia in May, gaining 0.94 percent from the previous month as its index climbed five spots to sixth place. With Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia, four of the top six states are located in the South Atlantic.

Small business employment growth slowed the most in Texas as its index hit a five-year low at 100.96, decreasing 0.74 percent in May. Illinois and neighboring Indiana had the two lowest 12-month growth rates among states, down 2.51 percent and 2.00 percent respectively from last year.

Continuing to hold the top spot among metro areas, Seattles index increased for the fifth straight month hitting a record level in May of 104.97. With the best one-month growth rate, at 0.82 percent, and boosting its index to 102.92, Atlanta overtook Dallas to become the second-ranked metro index. Dallas is at a four-year low, but remains in strong growth territory with an index above 102. May marks the seventh consecutive monthly increase for New York City, which has gained 1.85 percent year-over-year, second only to Seattle. San Francisco slowed 1.30 percent, its lowest one-month growth rate in more than seven years.

After holding steady in April, small business growth slowed in every industry analyzed in May. Top-ranked Other Services (except Public Administration) fell 0.23 percent in May from the previous month. At 98.82, Manufacturing remained the lowest industry index, but had the best month, declining only 0.02 percent. Education and Health Services is up 0.64 percent so far in 2016 and, at 101.08, is trending near levels not seen since early 2014. Construction maintained the second-highest ranking among industries, but had the lowest one-month growth rate once again in May. Employment growth slowed further in Professional and Business Services as its index level fell to 99.47, down -0.58 percent from last May and representing a four-year low.

All sectors of jobs showed some decrease in May over April, said Mucci.

So far, he hasnt seen much impact on small business job growth from the Labor Departments new overtime rule, expanding overtime pay to roughly 4.2 million more workers, but he noted it hasnt gone into effect yet (see Obama Administration Expands Overtime Pay Eligibility). The new rule will take effect on Dec. 1, 2016. However, laws mandating minimum wage increases in different states and cities may be having some impact on job growth.

We looked at states where there is a minimum wage increase, and where there is not, said Mucci. Those states that have a minimum wage increase seem to have a bit slower job growth for small businesses than those that dont. Their index is lower, and their job growth is definitely lower.

On the other hand, Seattle signed a minimum wage increase into law over a year ago, and it retains the top spot among metropolitan areas on Paychexs index. In second place is New York City, which along with New York State will be seeing a minimum wage increase that was signed into law in April.

Mucci believes overregulation and the increase in licensing also could be having an impact on small business job growth. He cited a study by the Beacon Center of Tennessee that showed back in the 1950s, one in 20 businesses had to be licensed, compared to one out of three today.

The costs of getting the license, the training and the fees have hurt some small businesses, said Mucci. Anything from pet grooming to shampooing hair seems to need a license now. Weve gone amok with licensing.

He advises accountants to be aware of the changing regulations faced by their clients in complying with all the new requirements. Make sure that clients have the right wages in place under the rules for overtime and for paid leave, said Mucci. In the absence of federal online sales tax legislation, states are looking to pass more laws mandating the collection of sales tax if you have an online business. CPAs will want to watch that closely if they have clients who have online sales to make sure theyre following the right sales tax rules.

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Children learn to talk over a period of several years by listening to and interacting with their parents and others around them. Some children, however, dont progress through the natural stages of language development, and may struggle to make themselves understood or to understand what others are saying. Some of these kids are just late talkers, but others may have a language disorder. If your child doesnt seem to be talking or understanding at the same rate as his peers, you may be right to be concerned  and you may want to consider a speech and language evaluation.

Symptoms of Language Disorders

There are two types of language disorders, expressive or receptive. Children with expressive language disorders have a difficult time expressing their thoughts. Those with receptive language disorders can struggle to understand what others are saying or following a conversation. If your childs language disorder is mild, its symptoms may be difficult to detect. He may just appear a little spacey or even shy. Look for the following basic symptoms that can indicate a language disorder. If you notice these symptoms, talk with your pediatrician or the staff at your childs school.

Someone with an expressive language disorder will:

 Have a limited vocabulary for their age

 Use a lot of filler words like um, or use stuff and things instead of specific words

 Confuse verb tenses

 Repeat phrases when telling a story or answering a question

 Frequently say sentences that dont make sense

 Have trouble learning new words

 Feel like words are constantly stuck at the tip of their tongue

 Often seem frustrated by their inability to communicate thoughts

Someone with a receptive language disorder might:

 Seem disinterested in conversations or social situations

 Have difficulty following directions

 Often misunderstand what is asked and answer inappropriately

 Have difficulty getting jokes

 Seem shy or withdrawn

If your child exhibits symptoms from both lists, its possible she has a combination expressive/receptive language disorder. Talk with your childs doctor about your concerns.

Early Diagnosis Timeline

Children progress through developmental milestones at different ages, which is why doctors provide a range; for example, babies normally take their first step sometime between the ages of 9 and 12 months. Starting to talk is the same; there isnt an exact age when children will say their first word or use their first sentence. Some are considered late talkers. These are children between the ages of 18 and 30 months who have a good understanding of language and demonstrate social skills, thinking skills and motor skills typical for their age, but have a limited vocabulary. Not every late talker turns out to have a language disorder, and some children do appear to catch up after slipping developmentally behind their peers. However, most experts agree that the development of speech and language should follow a basic trajectory. If your child exhibits the following early signs of a language disorder, consider speaking with your doctor about an evaluation.

Early signs of expressive language disorder include:

 15 months: Vocabulary of less than three words; the child uses primarily vowel sounds when vocalizing

 18 months: Not saying Mama, Dada, or identifying other known people by name

 24 months: Vocabulary of less than 25 words; doesnt spontaneously exclaim when surprised or delighted

 30 months: Not using simple two-word sentences (noun + verb); difficult to understand most of the time

 36 months: Vocabulary of less than 200 words; not asking for known objects by the correct name; repeats others words when spoken to or asked a question

 Beyond: Speaks differently from other children of the same age; uses words incorrectly or uses related words instead

Early signs of a receptive language disorder include:

 15 months: Doesnt look at or point at objects when theyre named; doesnt respond when name is called

 18 months: Unable to follow simple one-step directions, such as Pick up the ball.

 24 months: Doesnt point to body parts when named (like when parents ask Wheres your nose?); difficulty attending when being read to

 30 months: Does not respond to questions, either with spoken answers or nodding/shaking the head

 36 months: Unable to follow two-step directions (Go to your room and get your hat); has difficulty participating in group activities; forgets or confuses the names of familiar people

In addition, there are some early warning signs that can appear in both expressive and receptive language disorders:

 Says one or two words within the normal age range, but does not add further words and expand vocabulary

 Gestures or points in the place of speech past 18 months old

 Does not imitate sounds or words spoken by parents

 May understand language at home but has difficulty understanding when outside the home

Keep in mind that one or two warning sign does not mean your child has a language disorder, but it might indicate that you should talk with your doctor about your childs development. Not every language disorder is developmental. In rare cases, a language disorder can develop after a traumatic brain event like a stroke, a head injury, or a neurological illness.

Getting a Diagnosis

If youve noticed some of these warning signs and think your child may have a language disorder, the next step is to get a professional evaluation. Language disorders can be frequently misdiagnosed  they are often misidentified as ADHD, autism, or even just laziness  so its important to work with someone who is familiar with speech and language development.

You have a few options. If your child has yet to attend school, you can get a free evaluation through your states Early Intervention (EI) program. If a language disorder is identified, EI staff will help you develop an Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP), which supports your child until age 3. An IFSP lays out what services your child should receive and what parents and specialists expect the progress to look like. Parents are a key component in developing and executing IFSPs, so educate yourself and prepare to advocate on your childs behalf.

If your child has already started school by the time you notice language delays, you can seek support from the public school system  even if your child is enrolled in private school. You can formally request that the school conduct an evaluation with a speech therapist at no cost to you. If the school feels there is no need for an evaluation or that your child is developing within normal ranges, they can deny your request. If this happens, you will receive a written notification that the school has denied your request along with information on your options. At this point, you can request a hearing to appeal the schools decision or work with a private speech and language specialist. Even if the school provides an evaluation, you have the right to work with a private specialist if you choose. This option is often more expensive, but it does offer advantages, such as more flexible scheduling and individualized attention.

Most speech therapists test for language disorders in similar ways. Its important for your child to be tested in the language with which he is most comfortable  even if its not the language he speaks at school. Difficulty with a second language is not necessarily a sign of a language disorder. Speech therapists should interact with and observe your child in various situations, as well as interview you to determine if your communication skills may be contributing to a childs language delays. They may also try different therapy methods, to determine an effective treatment strategy.

If the speech therapist finds that your child has a language disorder, she will work with you to set up a treatment plan, which usually includes speech therapy. If the language disorder has negatively affected your childs social and academic growth in dramatic ways, its possible that psychotherapy will be recommended as well.

Starting speech therapy early is the best way to handle language disorders, but if you think your child was delayed in getting the help she needs, dont despair. Countless studies have shown that as many as 70 percent of patients respond to speech therapy, and while the rate of success is higher for young children, most older children and even adults achieve good results when working with a skilled speech therapist.
Dubai based Websters, a social media digital company specializing in web designing and digital marketing is all set to enter India and begin its operations in full force.



Established in the year 2011, the social media digital company has successfully bootstrapped and established itself as the leading social media digital marketing provider in the Middle East region enabling leading brands like Zee TV, Zee Cinema and TOIFA to create a presence from scratch and scale it further through digital engagement. It now plans to grab its user base in India following the same pattern and has already been able to carve-a-niche for itself with their unique marketing solutions.



The company provides a range of dedicated social media services along with other digital assistance such as website design, app development, graphic designing, branding and related solutions personalized to individual client needs.



Speaking on their expansion in the Indian market, Sheeraz Saeed, Founder, Websters said We have already witnessed a great response in the Indian market, wherein 80% of individuals we met are already active on social media who want to improve, do more with the existing platform and calculate ROI from these platforms. Our vision is to become a one stop shop for every digital marketing requirement by offering a multitude of solutions under one roof.



The company currently has a small dedicated team of 12 employees that consists of designers, website & mobile app developers, BD members, content writers, accountants and account managers. With their expansion, they are also looking at hiring specialized candidates in number of related verticals.



The social media digital company is backed by the strong heritage of parent company SoftAge, Indias leading document management service provider.


Sandeep Goyal, Chairman of Mogae Media, who sold his 26% stake in Dentsu India in 2011 has raised a Rs 100 crore fund. The money will be used to fund the acquisition of digital start-ups in India that have built brands, but are now struggling to raise funds for re-engineering or re-launch. Goyal, former Chairman and JV Partner of Dentsu India, was also the Group CEO of Zee Telefilms.

Goyal aims to make late stage investments in the Digital Media and Mobile Innovation verticals; as also service sector start ups, especially in the F&B, Logistics, E-commerce / M-commerce and Cab pick-up space (local mobility) with mobile enabled platforms.

Goyals Mogae Media, which has an investment from Renuka Ramnaths Multiples PE is keen to look at synergistic investments in the mobile space. Analytics, mobile ad serving platforms, programmatic buying on the mobile, mobile fulfillment and mobile targeting are areas that Mogae Media is keenly focused on. Any acquisitions or investments in this space are of interest to us immediately, says Sandeep Goyal.

Sandeep Goyal adds, We are separately looking at companies who have created a solid brand but have burnt too much cash getting there. They now need an injection of both cash and rock solid experience for a good chance to survive. Outside of Mogae Media, some of my ultra HNI friends and I will partner in these investments. An alumni of Harvard Business School, and former Country Head of one of the worlds largest telecom companies is expected to join hands with Mr. Goyal in this initiative.

Sandeep Goyal launched Mogae Media in 2012 along with his wife Tanya Goyal. Since launch, the company has established itself as one of the leading providers of integrated mobile marketing services, offering a range of mobile branding solutions  from simple outreach to more sophisticated solutions. Tango Media, a subsidiary of Mogae Media recently launched StarStar (**), a patented technology that enables customers to merely dial a name rather than dial a number. The company since then has partnered with established brands like Kelloggs India, Urban Clap, Star TV, Hero, SAB Miller, TATA Motors, Yes Bank, Axis Bank, Kansai Nerolac, Discovery Channel, DSP Black Rock and Max Life Insurance.
Rediffusion Y&R has appointed Ulka Chauhan as Vice President, New Business Development & Strategic Planning. She will be working closely with Dhunji S. Wadia. Chauhan comes with experience from Y&R New York and has worked on various brands such as Burger King, AT&T, Colgate Palmolive and Sony. She also set up Dekraal Country Lodge, a boutique hotel in the Winelands of Stellenbosch, South Africa. Recently she developed and managed Vanilla Kids in Zurich, an online shop retailing clothing and accessories for kids.

Chauhan is a qualified associate in Applied Science, Advertising and Marketing Communication from the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York.

Dhunji S. Wadia, President  Rediffusion Y&R, commented, With over 15 years of experience Ulka brings the right mix of talent, experience and enthusiasm we seek to inject into our talent pool. She will bring further positive changes to our think tank."

On her new role, Chauhan said, I am thrilled to join Rediffusion-Y&R Mumbai. What I liked most about working at Y&R New York was the dynamic work environment. The Mumbai office is equally abuzz and I look forward to the exciting times ahead with Dhunji and the team.
Warner/Chappell Music (WCM), the global music publishing arm of Warner Music Group, and Times Music, one of the leading music labels and publishers in India, have announced that the two companies have expanded their existing licensing deal to now cover several additional South Asian countries.

The deal will see Times Music exclusively represent Warner/Chappells rich catalogue in Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka for the first time, as well as renew their existing partnership in India.

Times Music will manage the rights to Warner/Chappells repertoire in South Asia and drive publishing and synch deals on behalf of its wide array of legendary songwriters.

Warner/Chappell songwriters music knows no boundaries, and Times Music has been a fantastic partner in helping us extend their reach, said Stephen Clark, Senior Vice President, Global Administration, Warner/Chappell Music. The expansion of our partnership allows us to tap into new and vibrant markets with enormous growth potential, and we look forward to further exploring South Asia with the continued help of Times Music.

Mandar Thakur, COO of Times Music, adds: We are pleased to be able to build on our success of representing Warner/Chappells amazing songwriters in India, by expanding our work to other markets in the region. We are at the forefront of the rapidly developing music publishing market in South Asia. We will be bringing our expertise to bear on behalf of the legendary Warner/Chappell catalogue to ensure it reaches its full potential in the region.

Works by leading songwriters that will be looked after by Times Music include: Barry Gibb, Beyonce, Bruno Mars, Eric Clapton, fun, Gamble & Huff, Green Day, Jay Z, Kendrick Lamar, Led Zeppelin, Madonna, Muse, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Stephen Sondheim, Chris Stapleton and Tove Lo, among many others.
The Air Force released a flight plan directing development activity as a result of a yearlong study focused on developing capability options to ensure joint force air superiority in 2030 and beyond.According to the unclassified version of the Air Superiority 2030 Flight Plan , released May 26, the gap between the U.S. militarys air superiority capabilities and potential adversaries means, as it currently stands, the Air Forces projected force structure in 2030 may not be capable of fighting and winning against those adversary capabilities.In order to counter emerging threats, air superiority must be viewed as a condition the Air Force sets to enable joint forces to accomplish mission objectives, and not as an end in and of itself. Providing the capabilities to do this will require multi-domain solutions developed through a more agile acquisition process.After 25 years of being the only great power out there, were returning to a world of great power competition, said Lt. Gen. Mike Holmes, the Air Force deputy chief of staff for strategic plans and requirements. We need to develop coordinated solutions that bring air, space, cyber, the electronic environment and surface capabilities together to solve our problems.The flight plan , put together by an enterprise capability collaboration team composed of Air Force operators, acquirers and analysts, says that to achieve air superiority in 2030 and beyond, the Air Force needs to develop a family of capabilities that operate in and across the air, space and cyberspace domains, including both stand-off and stand-in forces.The speed of capability development and fielding will be crucial to retaining the U.S. advantage. The service can no longer afford to develop weapon systems on acquisition and development timelines using traditional approaches. According to the ECCT, air superiority capability development requires adaptable, affordable and agile processes with increasing collaboration between science and technology, acquisition, requirements and industry professionals.Theres no silver bullet, said Col. Alexus Grynkewich, the Air Superiority 2030 ECCT lead. We have to match tech cycles -- some of them are really long. Engines take a long time to make, but information age tech cycles are fast. Software updates are constantly moving. So how do you move from pacing yourself off industrial age mindsets to information age mindsets?The answer, Grynkewich said, is parallel development of maturing technologies for sensors, missions systems, lethality and non-kinetic effects, on appropriate time cycles, of an integrated and networked family of capabilities. The next step is to pull technologies out of each of those parallel efforts when they are ready and developing prototypes, experimenting and gaining more knowledge to determine if the developments are whats needed in the field.What the flight plan lays out is a series of capability development needs, as well as initiatives to prototype and experiment with a number of concepts, Grynkewich said. You can start building and then move forward if experimental capabilities are determined to make enough of a difference in highly contested environments of the future.In order to achieve air superiority in 2030 and beyond, bringing agility to multi-domain acquisition is crucial.We've talked about acquisition agility a number of times in terms of, How do we save money and not wasting taxpayer dollars is absolutely important, Grynkewich said. But there's an operational imperative that says we have to do this faster, and if we don't we're at a risk of failing as an Air Force and a joint force.Air Superiority 2030 is the first enterprise capability collaboration team to release its flight plan. The ECCTs examine, comprehend and quantify operational needs, including current and emerging capability gaps that span the Air Force enterprise. Future topics will likely cover other core Air Force mission areas.
Luxembourg, US uphold Memorial Day significance

Luxembourgers and Americans united to pay tribute to those who paid the ultimate sacrifice for their freedoms, fulfilling a promise to never forget that price.



More than 200 citizens of both countries paid their respects to the legacy and valor of fallen American service members as part of a Memorial Day ceremony at the Luxembourg American Cemetery and Memorial in Luxembourg, May 28.



David McKean, the U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg; Lucien Weiler, the marshall of the Luxembourg court; Simone Beissel, the vice president of the Luxembourg Chamber of Deputies; U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Timothy Ray, the 3rd Air Force and 17th Expeditionary Air Force commander; laid ceremonial wreaths and commemorated the fallen Americans ahead of the federal holiday observance.



We gather today as countless others have done every year in Luxembourg since 1946 to honor our fallen heroes, McKean said. Behind me lies the final resting place of 5,075 brave young men and one brave young woman who died in service to our country, for the freedom of this beautiful country and for the freedom of the world.



The ambassador remarked how every white marble cross or star marker represented an actual person  someone who made promises he intended to keep, and someone who undoubtedly had hopes and dreams for tomorrow.



Of particular note, McKean observed how many of those buried there had one thing in common that distinctly made them American: they were children of immigrants.



The stories of these men tell the stories of America; we are the country of immigrants, he said. I think President Obama put it best when he said recently, Immigration is at the core of our national character. It is our oldest tradition. It is who we are. It is what makes us exceptional. But these men were more than just children of immigrants  like (U.S. Army Gen. George) Patton, they were also heroes. We may never have heard of them but they had family and friends and promises to keep. They had hopes and dreams.



Both the ambassador and Ray laid wreaths on behalf of the American people and military. The ceremony also involved service members from the U.S. and Luxembourg armed forces, including Airmen from Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany.



The installation's honor guard presented the American, Luxembourg and U.S. Air Force flags and later performed a ceremonial volley with the backdrop of the cemetery of the Airmens predecessors-in-arms, many who died during the Battle of the Bulge.



In his speech, Ray highlighted the legacies of U.S. Army Pvt. William D. McGee and Sgt. Day G. Turner, who both posthumously earned the Medal of Honor for heroism during World War II, as well as U.S. Army 2nd Lt. Nancy Leo, a 216th General Hospital nurse, who is the only woman buried in Luxembourgs cemetery.



(Former) President Reagan said, The martyrs of history were not fools,  they did not die in vain, the general said. The fallen who lay before you today secured for us what we must guarantee for the present and for the future. We have an obligation to face that dilemma  to choose freedom and pursue it will all of our energy.



Ray added how history showed how people have always been faced with threats to their freedom and how the present time is no different.



Today, Airmen from U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa conduct combined training and theater security cooperation engagements with allies and partners aiming to demonstrate a shared commitment to promoting a Europe that is whole, free and at peace.



I believe we have to do more than simply remember, the general said. We have to collectively think about the choices we as free people need to make about our current situation today and tomorrow. Tyrants and tyranny have been a part of human history, no doubt about that. They have been with us in the past, they are with us today and they will be with us in the future.



The first official Memorial Day observance occurred at Arlington National Cemetery May 30, 1868, to honor and decorate the graves of those who died during the Civil War. The holiday serves as an opportunity to pause and remember the sacrifices of more than 1 million Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen who gave their lives in defense of freedom.



Today we come together in this beautiful place, on this beautiful day, as others gather at American cemeteries abroad and across the United States to remind one another that we have not forgotten and that we are so proud of the men and women who serve their country so valiantly, McKean said. We are so grateful that through all these years the people of the Grand Duchy have continued to lovingly watch over and pay tribute to the brave Americans that stayed behind. God bless our service men and women around the world today. God bless Luxembourg and God bless the United States of America.
Total force Airmen support European theater security package

After two months of being split across four countries, approximately 250 U.S. Air Force and Massachusetts Air National Guard Airmen from the 131st Expeditionary Fighter Squadron reunited at Graf Ignatievo, Bulgaria, May 27.



The Airmen, originally assigned to the 104th Fighter Wing at Barnes Air National Guard Base, Massachusetts, deployed to the European theater April 3, as part of a theater security package to Iceland, Estonia, the Netherlands and Bulgaria in support of Operation Atlantic Resolve.



Four of the 104th FWs F-15C Eagles and nearly 100 Airmen deployed to Keflavik Air Base, Iceland, to augment Icelandic Air Surveillance under the TSP designation.



At the same time, eight F-15s and 150 personnel deployed to Leeuwarden Air Base, Netherlands, to participate in Frisian Flag 2016 and conduct training alongside NATO allies and partners.



A few of the 131st EFSs F-15s, at both locations, are on loan from the 144th FW at Fresno ANG Base, California.



While deployed to Keflavik AB, the California guardsmen acted as rotational stateside total force Airmen reinforcing existing U.S. Air Force capabilities to show a forward presence in Europe. Since 2008, the U.S. Air Force has conducted an air surveillance mission there as part of NATOs commitment to Icelands security and defense.



The IAS mission compared to the alert mission in Massachusetts, said Lt. Col. Jeffrey Beckel, the 131st EFS detachment commander for the Icelandic mission.



We were sitting with live loaded jets ready to intercept in the region if needed, he said.



Members of the 131st EFS at Leeuwarden AB commenced flying operations April 11-16, participating in Frisian Flag under the scope of OAR. The multinational, large-force operation included personnel and aircraft from the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Finland, Poland, Norway, U.K., Germany and Australia.



Guardsmen stationed at Keflavik AB later forward deployed to Amari AB, Estonia, while guardsmen stationed at Leeuwarden AB forward deployed to Bulgaria.



In conjunction with OAR, at Amari AB, Estonia, the wings F-15Cs flew alongside Estonian Defense Forces L-39 Albatross, Royal Air Forces Typhoon FGR4 and Polish Air Forces Su-22. They also participated in Estonias exercise Spring Storm from May 2-20, which represented the countrys largest of its kind this year, comprising of approximately 6,000 soldiers and personnel from nine NATO countries.



It was an air-to-ground exercise, and our mission was to provide top cover for the forces on the ground, said Lt. Col. Matthew Woodfield, a 131st EFS F-15 pilot. It depended on the day which side we would be on  good or bad.



Working out of Bulgaria, 104th FW fighter pilots are currently participating in Thracian Flag, an exercise featuring Bulgarian Air Force MIG-29s, SU-25s and L-39s and ground-based air defense in integrated flying scenarios.



Its important for us to have U.S. forces here; we are not able to create a realistic tactical picture to fight on our own, said Bulgarian Air Force Lt. Col. Metodi Orlov, the Graf Ignatievo operations officer. The (Air) National Guard is helping us receive a good sense of modern warfare.



Lt. Col. David Halasi-Kun, the 131st EFS commander, said when in the Netherlands and now in Bulgaria, his Airmen conducted and will conduct all phases of small- and large-scale air-to-air training.



Our goal is to build partnerships with our NATO allies through joint training exercises and operations, he said.



Guardsmen arriving from Estonia to Bulgaria will join their 104th FW counterparts and will remain in place until the end of June when the 144th FW takes over the TSP mission utilizing eight Massachusetts F-15s.
Voices from the past, lessons for the future

If walls could talk, and pictures are worth a thousand words, the Air Forces Art Gallerys new exhibit honoring the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War could tell the story of a generation of service men and women who served during the conflict.



Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Welsh III hosted a ceremony dedicating the new Vietnam Art Exhibit in the Pentagon and thanked members of that conflict with a commemorative pin May 26.



These 26 images represent the more than 58,000 U.S. military members who lost their lives in Vietnam, Welsh said. They serve as a living legacy to those who were held prisoner, and they speak for the 114 heroes who died in captivity. They all returned with honor.



Surrounded by Vietnam veterans, service members and civilians, Welsh spoke on how the Vietnam War fundamentally changed the way the military approached warfare.



After Vietnam, the military took a hard look at what went well and what didnt, to include development of combat systems, training and recruiting, as well as the way the military built the joint force.



Everything changed after that because of the lessons that you (Vietnam veterans) learned  sometimes the hard way, Welsh said. This is about our heritage. Its about our legacy. Its about the pride we feel as American Airmen, and its about the pride we share in being part of the greatest joint fighting force on Earth.



According to Welsh, things like Red Flag, now just part of the Air Force landscape, began after the conflict. Professional military education was adjusted, and educational programs that didnt exist before Vietnam were developed.



The idea of an all-volunteer force became reality and remains a reality because it works, Welsh said. All of that was driven by the sacrifices of remarkable people who went and did the countrys bidding in a place that none of them had ever dreamed they would be in the course of their lifetime, and they did it under very difficult circumstances.



Bradley Riker, a Vietnam veteran who currently works as an Air Force intelligence staff officer, loved all of the artwork in the exhibit, but the one that spoke to him the most was the Perimeter Guard  Cam Ranh Bay, F-4 painting.



Riker enlisted and was selected for linguist school in Washington. From there, he deployed to Vietnam, where he served as a linguist and actually lived on the hill shown in the painting, alongside the C-130 Hercules crew members. Although most of his reconnaissance missions were typically conducted high above the canopies of Vietnam, he would always return to what he described as a beautiful bay with .50 caliber machine guns.



Donald Allen, a senior analyst and Vietnam veteran, served as an AT-28 Trojan pilot assigned to the 56th Special Operations Wing, was excited about the art exhibit.



From all the artwork I have seen, I see almost all the things I did in the Air Force, Allen said. I was in a search and rescue squadron, and the F-104 (Starfighters) and F-105 (Thunderchiefs) were at the same location when I flew the AT-28. The things I enjoyed doing in the Air Force are all around me in this exhibit. Its a neat area to be in, especially because its right around the corner from where I work.



Welsh also shared his feelings on all the artwork housed throughout the Pentagon, particularly the Air Forces contribution.



You will see  acrylic and oil and watercolor that recall timeless moments now in our Air Forces history, Welsh said. Those moments were first painted in blood and now (are) captured by these other media to remind us of the blood, sweat and tears these veterans and others left behind on battlefields all over this world.



Welsh, alongside retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. James T. Jackson, the U.S. of America Vietnam War Commemoration director, personally thanked each of the 12 Vietnam veterans in attendance for their service with a United States of America Vietnam War Commemoration pin.



This event is one of thousands that the United States of America Vietnam War Commemoration organization has been part of to thank and honor Vietnam veterans and their families for their service and sacrifice. Today, more than 8,000 commemorative partners across the country are committed to assisting the nation in recognizing our 7.2 million living Vietnam veterans and the 9 million families of those who served from November 1, 1955 to May 15, 1975.



As the crowd dispersed in preparation for the Memorial Day weekend, the artwork stood as a reminder of what happened, what was lost, what was found and what will never be forgotten.


Reserve C-17 delivers food aid to Haiti

A 445th Airlift Wing C-17 Globemaster III delivered more than 102,000 pounds worth of rice and beans to Haiti May 26, as part of the Denton Program. The food was provided by Kids Against Hunger, a ministry of A Child's Hope International from Cincinnati, Ohio.



Fifteen pallets of the food items, equating to 615,000 meals, were loaded into the cargo area of the C-17 and transported to the impoverished country.



According to its website, the purpose of the Denton Program is to allow U.S. based non-governmental sources to transport humanitarian aid at little or no cost to the donor, while simultaneously putting the extra space on U.S. military transport assets to good use. This program is jointly administered by the U.S. Agency for International Development, Department of State and Department of Defense.
Questions are being raised about the alleged safety violations at defence establishments in the country by defence experts. A major fire followed by blast occurred at Indias biggest Central Ammunition Depot Pulgaon in adjoining Wardha district has claimed the lives of 18 jawans , two officers whereas 17 jawans and two officers sustained injuries. After this incident, questions are being raised about the alleged safety violations at these defence facilities in the country. Pulgaon is home to the biggest stockpile of weapons including Brahmos missiles. The cause of the blaze is not yet known but fire-fighting operations by the defence fire brigade are underway in full swing. In the recent years local politicians have been pressurising the Defence department to relax the restrictions imposed on constructions in the vicinity of defence establishments.

Retired Col Abhayvardhan said, The cause behind the fire will be known after investigation. A possibility of sabotage like the one which occurred in Pathankot attack incident cant be ruled out.

Officials entered the ammunition depot for dousing the fire as two major explosions occurred which claimed the lives of Lt Colonel R.S Pawar and Major Manoj K.

Defence Minister Manohar Parikkar rushed to the spot to take cognisance of the incident. He also went to the hospital for meeting injured soldiers. He said, We have ordered for a probe into this incident. The reason behind the accident can be ascertained only after the completion of investigation. There are lesser possibilities of sabotage.

Hansraj Bhat an avid reader said, I strongly doubt sabotage by Pakistan-backed terror group behind the fire which erupted at Indias biggest arms depot at Pulgaon. The mastermind behind this cunning strategy must be ISI and the Pakistani army for the obvious, known reasons.

Defence expert RSN Singh said that the Army is looking at all possibilities into the Pulgaon fire incident and all angles will be left opened.

They will probe whether there was a foul play in the case.

After the blast two villages had to be completely evacuated. The impact of the explosion was so serious that the roofs of the houses in adjoining villages had collapsed. Even pillars of some houses had fallen as people had to abandon their houses. Two fire engines had reached at the accident spot for dousing the fire even those vehicles were damaged due to explosion.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said, Its an unfortunate incident. We are providing primarily medical assistance. I spoke to Wardha collector and took stock of the situation. I have instructed him to provide all required help in this situation. I have also asked collectors of the neighbouring districts to remain alert.

The damage to assets of defence and fatalities, if any are being ascertained, officials requesting anonymity said.

Local eyewitnesses said that there were multiple explosions after a blaze due to unknown reasons at the defence depot around 1.30 a.m. on Tuesday. According to one of the injured persons, the cause of the explosion could be unused and old bombs which were meant to be disposed

Pulgaon is situated around 40 km from Wardha, the district headquarters, which is 80 kms from Nagpur.
At least 17 defence personnel including two officers were killed and several others were injured in explosions triggered by an overnight fire in one of Indias biggest ammunition depot in Maharashtras Wardha district, officials said.

Television footage showed massive flames lighting up the night sky at Pulgaon where the central ammunition depot is located. Pulgaon is around 110 km from Nagpur.

Eyewitnesses said there were multiple explosions after the blaze caused by yet-to-be-ascertained reasons at around 1.30 am.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered his condolences to the families of those who lost their loved ones.

The dead and injured jawans belong to the Defence Security Corp (DSC) that guards strategic defence installations.

Sources said residents of nearby villages have been evacuated and Army helicopters pressed into service to help in the evacuation of the injured security personnel.

The main fire at one of the sheds has been extinguished. The situation is being stabilised. Secondary fire and explosions cannot be ruled out now, the Army officer said refusing to go into the reasons of the fire.

Army has ordered an inquiry into the incident.

AFP quoted the Wardha superintendent of police Smita Patil as saying that the nineteen jawans injured are out of danger.

Firefighters using ten fire engines worked through the night to contain the blaze, Ramesh Barde, a fire officer with the Nagpur fire department, told AFP.

The fire was brought under control by 6.15 am. The situation is under control and a report is being prepared, he added, speaking from the scene.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and Army Chief General Dalbir Singh have rushed to spot.
The meat in Dadri lynching victim Mohammad Akhlaqs home has been found to be beef. Fifty-two year-old Mohammad Akhlaq and his son Danish were attacked by a mob in Bisada in Dadri over rumours that they had slaughtered a cow and kept beef in their home. A fast track court had permitted the lawyers of the suspects in the case to get a copy of the forensic report which was submitted to the court in April.

Six people were initially arrested by police and a chargesheet was later filed against 18 people, including a local BJP leaders son.

The earlier forensic had said that the meat recovered from Akhlaqs home belonged to the goat progeny.

Beef eating is not a crime in Uttar Pradesh, only cow slaughter is. The police say they tested the meat only to establish the motive for Akhlaqs killing.

Todays report, Mr. Ahmed said, does not diminish the case as murder is an offence.

The meat in Akhlaqs home was initially examined by a veterinary doctor in Dadri, whose analysis that it appeared to be mutton set off conspiracy theories, with the states Samajwadi Party alleging deliberate attempts to polarize the region.

The samples were sent for a final assessment to a government lab in Mathura, which has concluded that it was beef.

The report has been rejected by Akhlaqs family, which has always denied eating beef on the day of the attack.

Dadri police said mutton, now you are saying it is beef. This is all politics, said Akhlaqs brother Chand Mohammad.

The forensic report comes at a time political parties are prepping for high voltage elections in Uttar Pradesh next year.

Akhlaq was lynched on September 28, 2015. His wife Ikraman had alleged that 10-15 armed people barged into their house and started beating up her husband and son Danish with an intention to kill.
Daring the NDA government to prove allegations against her son-in-law Robert Vadra, Sonia Gandhi, Tuesday, said that Congress-mukt Bharat is a conspiracy hatched by those in power.

I have never seen anything like this. A Prime Minister is there, not an emperor. He is the countrys Prime Minister. There is so much poverty in the country. There is drought. Farmers are in trouble. I do not find it appropriate (that government) shows off like this, she said.

Gandhi said Modis ministers have given him this stature and are busy holding celebrations.

Gandhi is on a a two-day visit to her constituency Rae Bareli. Earlier on Tuesday she said there was a conspiracy behind the allegations that her son-in-law, Robert Vadra, had links with an arms dealer and demanded an impartial probe into the charges.

She added, Agar aisi baat hai, toh bina bhed-bhaav jaanch karo; doodh ka doodh paani ka paani (Without any bias, lets have an investigation in the matter. The truth shall be revealed).

Vadra, is being probed after a connection was found between him and arms dealer Bhandari. The connection came to light during an the Income Tax raids on Bhandari, where a series of email interactions between Bhandari and Vadra also revealed the existence of a London property (bought for almost Rs. 19 crore).

Vadra, who arguably shot to fame due to his business deals, was also mentioned in the documents released by India Against Corruption (IAC) that showed how he acquired land assets in and around the National Capital Region (NCR), worth hundreds of crores of rupees, funded by interest-free loans given to him by DLF and other companies for no apparent reason, as mentioned in an earlier report.

Lately, the Modi government has alleged the Congress of corruption in various deals and scams. The party has been under constant scrutiny over various deals like the AgustaWestland chopper deal.

Earlier in the year the party chief and her son Rahul Gandhi had been named in the National Herald controversy wherein the Congress was allegedly involved in illegal activities. At the time too, Sonia had lashed out saying, Why dont you challenge us in the court?.

The case went to the courts and Rahul and Sonia are now out on bail. At the time too, the party president had claimed that this was a controversy by the BJP against the Congress.

On June 1, the Raebareli MP will meet people, district party leaders and workers at Bhuemau guest house and will inaugurate the Jan Suvidha Kendra at Vikas Bhawan. Later, she will attend a meeting of the District Vigilance and Monitoring Committee.
With the garbage menace threatening to explode, the recent announcement by the Karnataka government to ban the usage of plastics is a major step in the right direction. Though use of plastic in domestic utility items and industrial applications have turned out to be a boon, their overuse for packaging purposes has become a curse for citizens. Sure, they are convenient, but is that an excuse to impair the surroundings and the life it supports? Plastic bags hang from the pantry door, line bathroom trash bins, clutter landfills, flap from trees, float in the breeze, clog road side drains, drift on the high seas and even fill sea turtle bellies. Every time a city inundates in deluge, the primary reason being the drains getting choked with plastic.

Earlier hailed as a wonder material, plastic is now a serious worldwide environmental and health concern, essentially due to its non-biodegradable nature. Once natural resources are converted into these disastrous bags, they take hundreds of years to disintegrate, before ending up in lakes, rivers and oceans, polluting the surroundings and killing birds, fish and other marine animals. Besides causing harm to soil fertility, they block absorption of water in the soil. Land animals are not immune and they eat plastic with equally devastating results. The brigade that clamour for the cow-slaughter ban should note that the plastic bags are the staple food of the abandoned cows that live on the assorted waste at the dumping yards and bins. Also, when hot food is packed in wafer-thin plastic paper, chemical exchange causes grievous health issues.

Plastic litter has become such an environmental eyesore that many countries taxed the toxic stuff or banned their use outright. According to UN Environment Programme, scientists estimate that every square mile of ocean contains about 46,000 plastic pieces. Roughly 8m tons of plastic is reportedly dumped in the oceans. Bulk of this waste comes from China, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and India. These emerging nations are experiencing rapid economic growth and improved lifestyle, so does the consumer use of plastic and plastic-intensive goods. The caveat of this increased demand is that they do not have waste-management infrastructure that can tackle the accompanying excess waste.

Though disposable syringes/needles, for instance, meant an end to the threat of cross contamination, a prolonged affair with plastic is not such a healthy relationship, and making some hard choices is imminent.

Raise awareness

Preventing environmental degradation should take precedence over plastic industry. The pollution caused by their creation alone is enough to warrant a taboo on their manufacture and use. Their workforce can alternatively help make more eco-friendly materials. While blanket ban may not be the best solution under weak institutional enforcement, a combination of standards and right incentives can reduce the use of plastic bags.

Plastic ban as a solution does not mean shifting to paper bag, as both have significant environmental consequences. For one thing, weve produced more plastic in the last decade than the entire previous century. When we grapple with the plastic bag, were grappling with our whole throwaway culture  and the environmental problems that culture of convenience has created. Talking about plastics is really a conversation about what kind of legacy we want to leave the generations that succeed us.

While Education department should mandatorily incorporate environment as part of academic syllabus, alternative technologies shall be studied and eco-friendly material shall be made available to make the ban feasible. So, when you step out, carry, along with your mobile and wallet, a reusable bag, too. You probably wont change the world, but you can significantly alter your little corner of it.

(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
The tug of war between the BJP-Sena coalition is getting murkier as the latter continues its scathing attack on Modi Government. It is awkward situation for the ruling party to be part of such a coalition partner and still continue with the same vein for the sake of holding power. Sena leaders are trying hard to make their presence felt before the unveiling of the citys Development Plan (DP) and thereby playing vote bank politics to maintain and brew up the tussle between the two parties. As the alliance with BJP in the State and at the Centre will continue but the relations between the two parties have been strained for a long time. It is a situation for Sena as they want the cake and eat it to. The battle lines were clearly drawn in a long drawn relationship between the two parties. In the tussle between the coalition partners the implementation of development plan should not suffer. It looks rather childish to be part of a team as partners and back stab them with war of words.

Jayanthi S Maniam

(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
The Uttarakhand High Court on Tuesday stayed the arrest of Chief Minister Harish Rawat in connection with the probe of a sting video, in which he can be seen striking a deal with the rebel Congress leaders.

The next hearing in the matter has been scheduled for June 20.

Last week, Rawat was questioned by the CBI in connection with a probe into the sting operation.

I dont have to produce any proof for my innocence, have not done anything wrong, Rawat had told media after the questioning.

Earlier, the Uttarakhand High Court had refused to quash the ongoing CBI probe into the sting operation, following which the agency had summoned the Chief Minister.

The sting operation was done in March, when rebel Congress lawmakers voted against the state budget, triggering a political crisis.

Later, Rawat government was sacked by the Centre and the state was placed under Presidents Rule.

However, Congress knocked the door of the Court and Rawat returned as Chief Minister after winning a trust vote ordered by the Supreme Court earlier this month.
James Phipps, the son of a poor landless labourer, was the first person to be vaccinated by Edward Jenner . On 14 May 1796, Jenner cut into the skin of the 8-year-old boy and infected him with matter from a cowpox sore.

Thanks to Kevin Barry and JB Handley for this info on FB. The title alone piqued my interest - I had once written a Huffpo titled "Dr. Paul Offit, Pope of the Church of the Immaculate Vaccination." Vaccines have had a mythical, pseudo-religious status since their very earliest days it seems. "The Temple of Vaccinia" is rather regal sounding, don't you think? . In reality, they are a century plus long Tuskegee experiment. Before Caitlin, before Bruce, there was another famous Jenner. Edward. Dr. Edward Jenner (see below.) Vaccines have been an experiment since the first patient, James Phipps, patient of Edward Jenner. To be sure most of early medicine has been trial and error - long before there were any approval/safety processes in place. I happen to know that early cryo-freezing of the cornea for cataract surgery in the 1960s was conducted in Connecticut without safety approval or knowledge beyond the surgeon and the technicians who invented the technology. A nurse was outraged, and yet the surgery continued. The result was a highly successful company and a huge improvement in cataract surgery. America was built on risk taking. But should that theory apply to our kids health in 2016? Today's pediatric vaccine schedule remains a mass experiment. Ask your doctor to show you the safety data from the government or vaccine manufacturers on the cumulative safety of the pediatric schedule. Bring a pillow, a blanket and a Kindle loaded with books. It will be a long time before you get an answer. KIM

Over the following days, James developed a fever, but soon became well again. When Jenner then injected the boy with the more dangerous smallpox , James remained healthy. Two other children who shared a bed with James did not catch smallpox from him either. Encouraged by his success, Jenner went on to test his method on various people over the following two years. All of them were poor - farm labourers and their children, or the inmates of workhouses.

Jenner publicised the case of James Phipps as a success story to promote his new method of vaccination. We do not know if James or his father were paid for the experiment, but later in life Jenner definitely rewarded his first test subject. When James Phipps was married with children, Jenner gave him a free lease on a house. Phipps was grateful to Jenner, and attended the physician's funeral on 3 February 1823. However, if the experiment had gone wrong, Jenner would probably have kept quiet about it, and James Phipps would have been forgotten, like many other victims of medical experimentation. From ScienceMuseum.org/uk.


WASHINGTON, May 31, 2016 - In a decision that did not come as a surprise, the Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that landowners can challenge Army Corps of Engineers wetlands determinations in court (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes Co. ).

Three Minnesota peat mining companies that sought to expand their operations were stymied by a Corps jurisdictional determination (JD) that found wetlands on acreage targeted for expansion, even though the land was more than 100 miles from the nearest navigable water.

A U.S. District Court judge rejected the landowners legal challenge, finding that the JD was not final agency action. The 8th Circuit reversed, and the Supreme Court granted the governments petition for review.

The American Farm Bureau Federation and National Cattlemens Beef Association, which filed a friend of the court brief backing the landowners, applauded the decision.

This is wonderful news for farmers and ranchers, particularly under the threat of EPAs and the Corps new waters of the U.S. rule, said Ellen Steen, AFBF general counsel.

And NCBA President Tracy Brunner said, "The ability to challenge a determination before going through the time consuming and costly permitting process or gambling on EPA enforcement provides a measure of fairness to landowners.

 In a press release issued by the Pacific Legal Foundation, which represented the companies before the court, Kevin Pierce of Hawkes Co. said, We are now guaranteed the right to appeal to the courts against the Corps jurisdictional wetlands decision, that doesnt follow environmental policy or law, which harms our wetland dependent business.

T he Corps had argued that the landowners did not have the right to go to court. They could, in the courts words, either discharge fill material without a permit, risking an EPA enforcement action during which they can argue that no permit was required, or apply for a permit and seek judicial review if dissatisfied with the results.

But neither alternative is adequate, the court said. As we have long held, parties need not await enforcement proceedings before challenging final agency action if they are faced with serious criminal and civil penalties.

If (the landowners) discharged fill material without a permit, in the mistaken belief that their property did not contain jurisdictional waters, they would expose themselves to civil penalties of up to $37,500 for each day they violated the (Clean Water) Act, to say nothing of potential criminal liability, the court said.

The courts decision was not unexpected. At oral argument, most of the justices appeared to be skeptical of Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart's argument that a Corps JD is not final agency action but is merely an expression of the agencys opinion of whether the property in question is a wetland and thus should be regulated under the Clean Water Act.

But an approved JD is clearly final action, the court found, noting that it is issued after extensive factfinding by the Corps regarding the physical and hydrological characteristics of the property.

Indeed, the Corps itself describes approved JDs as final agency action, and specifies that an approved JD will remain valid for a period of five years,  the court said in the opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts.

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Three separate concurrences followed the opinion. In the first, Justice Anthony Kennedy, joined by Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, said the Clean Water Act (CWA) continues to raise troubling questions regarding the governments power to cast doubt on the full use and enjoyment of private property throughout the nation.

Quoting Alito from an earlier opinion involving CWA enforcement, Kennedy said the CWAs reach is notoriously unclear and the consequences to landowners even for inadvertent violations can be crushing. An approved (JD) gives a landowner at least some measure of predictability, so long as the agencys declaration can be relied upon.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan wrote separate concurring opinions.

#30

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Iraqi, Syrian Indigenous Communities' Extinction 'Not Inevitable'

The head of Christian brotherhood Knights of Columbus said during a congressional subcomittee hearing that Christians in Iraq and Syria are in the brink of extinction, but there is still a way to avert this. "The world's greatest humanitarian crisis since World War II is unfolding now in the Middle East. In addition to millions of refugees, many of the region's indigenous communities now face extinction. These communities may disappear in less than a decade," Supreme Knight Carl Anderson said. "But their fate is not inevitable." Anderson was testifying to the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, in the hearing called "The ISIS Genocide Declaration: What Next?" The United States, he said, may still be able to do something to keep this tragedy from happening. Among the things he recommended was an increase in humanitarian aid, and an oversight should be provided to make certain that these reach those who are targeted by genocide. "Support the long-term survival of indigenous religious and ethnic communities by supporting their right to remain in their country," he said. Moreover, Anderson expressed that assistance should be provided so that genocide victims could attain refugee status, and the U.S. should "prepare now for foreseeable human rights challenges as ISIS-controlled territory is liberated and civilians flee the violence. Condition humanitarian and military assistance to governments in the region on their meaningful commitment to human rights." He also said that perpetrators of crimes against humanity and genocide ought to be punished. Anderson likewise discussed the issue of Christian leaders receiving aid only from private donors and not from the United Nations or the U.S. government. He said the help of the United States and international organizations is necessary. Finally, he said, "Promote the establishment of internationally agreed upon standards of human rights and religious freedom as conditions for humanitarian and military assistance." Other leaders also testified during the hearing, namely: Johnny Oram, executive director of the Chaldean Assyrian Business Alliance; Sarhang Hamasseed of the U.S. Institute of Peace; and David Crane of Syracuse University College of Law.
May 31, 2016

As they say where I come from, give me a little credit, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol said to his predecessor and rival, David Ben-Gurion, at the 1965 convention of the ruling Mapai, precursor to the Labor Party. Eshkol had sought said credit to lead the state. That was more than 50 years ago, before credit cards were introduced in Israel.

Not so long ago, Israel's current, well-heeled prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had asked a civil servant for credit  that is, to put plane tickets for his sons on the civil servant's credit card. The police will invariably examine Netanyahus version of events, according to which when he served as finance minister more than 10 years ago, he was not in possession of a credit card, and therefore, according to a report by the state comptroller, asked a Finance Ministry official, Yechiel Leiter, to pay for the tickets.

Either way, Netanyahus personal and political credit is scraping the bottom of the barrel these days. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find politicians or rank-and-file Israelis who trust that the state is in good hands. A survey conducted by the Rafi Smith polling agency for Israel public radio, Kol Israel, indicates that if elections were held today for the 120-seat Knesset, a new (virtual) party headed by former Netanyahu Cabinet ministers Moshe Ya'alon and Gideon Saar, and including Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, would get 25 seats, four more than what Likud (currently with 30 seats) would get. The centrist opposition Yesh Atid would get 13 seats, two more than it now has, and the opposition Zionist Camp would plunge from 24 seats to 11.

Netanyahu has survived a long list of political crises and extricated himself from quite a number of police investigations. Nonetheless, it appears that this time, the ground beneath his feet is starting to shake. In his panicked haste to plant his feet on firmer ground, Netanyahu hit Israelis most sensitive spot  security. Even Netanyahus most faithful mouthpieces, including Ministers Tzachi Hanegbi and Yuval Steinitz, are not claiming that Avigdor Liberman was appointed defense minister because his skills to deal with the complexities of the job are better than those of his predecessor, Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon, who was pushed aside in late May. They have also not responded to the accusation by their Likud colleague and Knesset member Benny Begin that Netanyahu acted irresponsibly toward the defense apparatus and Israels citizens.

Kulani member Avi Gabbay, who resigned as environmental protection minister on May 27, is not the only member of the ruling coalition who thinks Ya'alons dismissal and Libermans appointment represent an unusual step even in the cynical world of politics. Gabbay is simply the only one who took the obvious step of walking out of his ministerial office and slamming the door. In a May 30 post on Facebook, Gabbay said, Because I saw up close how things are decided and run for us, I intend to continue to work for the public and to seek ways to wield influence and effect change.

Gabbay is an ideal potential candidate for the virtual political entity of Netanyahu rivals, alongside Ya'alon, Saar and other senior Likud officials fed up with the royal Netanyahu family. The same holds for popular Knesset member Orly Levy-Abekasis, who quit Libermans Yisrael Beitenu and the coalition on May 19 over the sidelining of social issues in the coalition agreement. It is hard to tell whether Netanyahus bizarre discovery of his Sephardic genes will improve his standing among disillusioned Israelis of Sephardic origin in poor, small towns and urban ghettos.

Libermans appointment also exposed the frail ties between Likud and its HaBayit HaYehudi coalition partner, whose chairman, Education Minister Naftali Bennett, feels, and rightly so, that he has come out a real political sucker. In March 2015, Netanyahu was able to keep his job thanks to the tens of thousands of HaBayit HaYehudi voters he talked into voting for Likud in the elections. His move shrank HaBayit HaYehudi from 12 Knesset seats to eight. If that werent enough, Netanyahu has now handed the most important government position, the defense portfolio, to Yisrael Beitenu, a rival right-wing party with a grand total of five Knesset seats.

Netanyahu has extricated himself more than once from seemingly doomed political situations. Now a regional peace initiative is supposed to do for him what the 2005 military withdrawal from Gaza and evacuation of the Israeli settlements there did for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon: free him of the threat of an international diplomatic initiative  a French-US plan for a UN Security Council resolution recognizing Palestine based on the 1967 borders  and push aside corruption scandals.

Officials involved in this latest move vis-a-vis Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi for a regional conference, and who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, said that Liberman promised Netanyahu to support the initiative. A whiff of this could be detected in the praises heaped by Liberman on Sisi shortly after his May 30 swearing-in as defense minister at the Knesset. The sources expect that Zionist Camp leader Isaac Herzog will land the coveted foreign ministers job and bring with him a few friends to fill the void that Bennett and his colleagues will leave in the government if they walk out.

Netanyahus situation, however, is far graver than Sharons was. Sharon split Likud and took the moderate wing of the party with him to Kadima, the new party he established, leaving behind a band that would not hesitate to bring down the government over the uprooting of distant, unauthorized settler outposts. There's also another difference: When suspicions arose concerning the alleged involvement of Sharon family members in criminal wrongdoing, Sharons son Omri assumed the heavy load and did jail time. Netanyahu cannot count on his wife, Sara Netanyahu, despite her loyalty, to go to jail in his stead, shouldering responsibility for the alleged misappropriation of funds at the prime ministers residences and suspected travel freebies for his family. Netanyahu, in hoping that he will not be indicted, has no choice but to rely on the loyalty of the attorney general, the state comptroller and chief of police.

The prime minister may not pay with credit cards, but the credit he got comes with a due date. It should be hoped that the public  which extended Netanyahus line of credit in four elections and pays with its hard-earned money for his ice cream, restaurants and lavish hotels  presents him with the final bill.
May 31, 2016

After last-minute negotiations, Iran and Saudi Arabia failed to provide a breakthrough for Iranian pilgrims to attend the hajj pilgrimage, which is mandatory for all able Muslims. Saeed Ohadi, head of Irans Hajj and Pilgrimage Organization, accused Saudi Arabia of imposing new domineering conditions for Irans participation.

Iranian officials had previously publicly discussed two of the conditions that were causing friction between Iran and Saudi for the participation of Iranian pilgrims to the holy sites in Saudi Arabia: a ban on Iranian planes and a requirement for Iranians to travel to a third country for a visa. Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran after its Tehran embassy was attacked in January in response to the execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.

During a May 30 news conference, Ohadi said that it took three hours of negotiations for Saudi Arabia to agree to allow Iranian pilgrims to use Iranian planes for travel. On the issue of visas, Ohadi said Saudis hajj officials, during negotiations in Saudi Arabia, told them to discuss the matter with Saudi Arabias Foreign Ministry but did not offer any solutions. Saudi Arabias interest section in Iran is in the Swiss Embassy.

In response to recent statements by Saudi officials that they would offer Iranian pilgrims electronic visas, Ohadi said that this agreement took seven to eight hours of negotiations and added that the process for inputting all of the information for the hajj was very complex and time-consuming.

Ohadi said another issue was that Saudi Arabia did not want Iranian flags at any of the buildings for Iranian pilgrims or on any of the routes used by Iranian pilgrims. Ohadi said flags are the only recognizable signs pilgrims can use on their route to stay together with their compatriots during hajj rituals.

According to Ohadi, Saudi Arabia also applied restrictions on Iranian physicians accompanying the pilgrims and the amount of medicine they would be allowed to bring into the country. He also claimed that Saudis would not allow the use of Iranian tents to offer pilgrims relief during the hajj ritual.

Ohadi also said that Saudi Arabia wanted the names, positions and previous work history of the members of the mission from the supreme leader's office and the hajj organization.

There also was an issue concerning the use of electronic wristbands to help locate Iranian pilgrims, in part in response to the hajj pilgrimage last year in which 474 Iranians were killed in a stampede and many were missing for a long period of time. Ohadi said that there was confusion in the Iranian media over the issue. He said that the wristbands were Irans idea but that Saudi Arabia demanded that Saudi officials be in charge of the plan rather than the Iranians.

Another point of contention, which Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir had publicly addressed, was a ban on Iranians holding any public ceremonies. Referring specifically to Shiite observances, Ohadi questioned why they had become illegal. The Saudi foreign minister on May 29 accused Iran of wanting to hold protests during the hajj.

Ohadi also said that since there are no diplomatic relations, Iranians in Saudi Arabia would have no resources to address issues such as lost visas. He added that on previous occasions, a number of Iranians were arrested while on hajj and although they were released shortly afterward without an apology, there is no location for Iranians to address such issues should a similar incident occur.

According to Ohadi, Saudi Arabias proposed agreement letter was one-sided. Despite claims that the religious pilgrimage is separate from political disagreements between the two countries, Ohadi asked, Then why was such an agreement [for hajj] sent with delay and limitations? He concluded, The issue is that Saudi Arabia was determined to not accept Iranian pilgrims and, by buying time, wanted to block Iranian pilgrims.

Ohadi said that during all of the negotiations the Saudis did not observe any of the protocols of accepting the Iranian delegation, adding, If they act this way with an official and political delegation, how they would treat Iranian pilgrims can be easily predicted.
May 31, 2016

TEHRAN, Iran  The first chapter in the political life of Muqtada al-Sadr opened with the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and his armed resistance against foreign forces. In subsequent years, he gradually scaled back such activity and began to cooperate with the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki while continuing to insist that US troops withdraw from Iraq.

The next chapter began in August 2015, when Sadr rallied some 100,000 Iraqis in Baghdad's Tahrir Square in a protest against what he believed to be corruption and partisanship in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, a clear sign of Sadr's return to the political scene. On Feb. 26, he again mobilized hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to take to the streets of Baghdad to protest against the incapability of the government to establish a nonpartisan and technocratic Cabinet.

A few weeks later, on March 18, Sadr and his supporters staged a sit-in outside the Green Zone, where government institutions, including the parliament, and foreign embassies are located. Sadr called the Green Zone a bastion of support for corruption and exhorted his supporters to continue sit-ins and strikes until the parliament and Abadi submit to their demand for political reform. Moreover, in a provocative speech on April 30, he tacitly encouraged his supporters to storm the parliament, which they proceeded to do. This means Abadi faces three main challenges: fighting the Islamic State (IS), implementing reforms and dealing with Sadr and his followers.

In general, to determine whether a political move is justifiable, useful or conventional, it should be assessed by criteria such as rationality, legitimacy, expediency and relative consensus of elites. As far as political rationality is concerned, it is obvious that to sow wind is to reap a whirlwind. By engaging in acts of sabotage and violence, such as storming the parliament, Sadr is provoking the other side, including the government, to take repressive actions against him. Such actions will create a cycle of chaos and disorder in Iraq and, as a result, everyone will suffer.

As far as legitimacy is concerned, it is again obvious that Abadi's government and Iraqi lawmakers  both elected through a democratic and lawful process  have a certain amount of appeal among most political groups in Iraq. Therefore, considering the rules of democracy, Abadi's administration as well as the parliament should be pressured through legal channels such as political parties, parliamentary factions and lobbying, rather than demonstrations, sit-in protests and storming the parliament.

There is no political expediency in Sadrs actions either. He has chosen to rebel just as IS threatens the territorial integrity of Iraq, as Kurds are urged to secede by their leaders such as Massoud Barzani and as Saudi Arabia is fueling ethnic and religious conflict within Iraq. It would appear that Sadr has chosen the worst place and time for the sit-ins, strikes and blocking the normal activities of the Abadi government. More important, in terms of consensus he lacks the backing of main non-Sadrist parties, in addition to the fact that no prominent or reputable religious authorities or experts have voiced support for Sadrs actions. Indeed, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has on various occasions tacitly warned him against engaging in dangerous adventures.

Sadr can in many images over the years be seen seated next to key Iranian figures, showing that the Islamic Republic of Iran has not rejected the Iraqi cleric.

Right after the US-led invasion and Sadr's armed resistance against occupying forces, Tehran had morally and financially supported Sadr. Now, however, although Tehran has not condemned his actions, it hasn't supported them either. The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hossein Jaber Ansari, reacted to rumors of Sadrs visit to Iran in mid-May 2016 after his supporters had stormed the parliament by saying that the Iraqi cleric was not on an official visit and that no official meeting has taken place between him and Iranian officials. What this suggests is that Sadr perhaps decided to travel to Iran for personal reasons and that Tehran, seeking not to appear to legitimize his actions, did not arrange for official meetings between him and officials during his trip.

Ali Akbar Velayati, a foreign policy adviser to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was the only Iranian official to publicly react to the storming of the Iraqi parliament, stating that the people of Iraq will resist against any threat to their security and rule of law and will also resist any group that engages in illegal activities. To be clear, Velayati was indirectly alluding to Sadr's protests. Thus, it appears that Tehran does not seek to pursue an either-or approach toward Sadr and Abadi. In other words, the Iranians want to maintain ties with both Sadr and the Iraqi government.

On the one hand, Iran firmly supports Abadis administration. Indeed, Khamenei clearly stated to Abadi in October 2014, We [Iran] stand with you and will support your administration as firmly as we supported the previous Iraqi administration. Thus, Irans broader policy is to support the legitimate government of Iraq. At the same time, Iran knows full well that if it loses its influence over Sadrs movement, the consequences will be unpredictable. Indeed, while Sadr was pursuing his political adventures in Baghdad, Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani was in the command room near Fallujah during the operation to retake Fallujah, which Abadi had ordered.

Although some of Sadr's rebellious supporters shouted anti-Iranian slogans during their storming of the parliament, some members of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq claim that infiltrators and Baathists were responsible for them and that Sadr's true supporters are not anti-Iranian. Sadr himself has prohibited his supporters in the streets from chanting anti-Iranian slogans.

Tehran knows that chaos in a neighboring state will have negative consequences for Iran, especially a neighbor that after years of hostility has now become its political ally. Therefore, its general policy is to support Abadi's government while also refraining from completely alienating rebellious groups sympathetic to Iran, such as Sadr and his followers.
May 31, 2016

Iranian authorities deny that Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour had just returned from a trip to Iran when he was killed May 21 by a US drone strike not far from the Iran-Pakistan border.

But experts on Afghanistan tell Al-Monitor that Iran has played a complicated game with the Afghan militant group for over a decade and has stepped up contacts in recent years in part to keep an even more dangerous organization  the group that calls itself the Islamic State  from expanding its territory to Irans east.

Although IS has only 1,000-3,000 adherents in Afghanistan, according to the Pentagon, far fewer than in Iraq or Syria, the Iranian government has a much more alarming assessment.

My own personal observation from exchanges with Iranians in various settings is that their estimate of the threat of [IS] in Afghanistan is higher than that of the United States, said Barnett Rubin, a former senior adviser to the Barack Obama administration on Afghanistan and Pakistan. He told Al-Monitor that the Russians also share this view.

Iran and the United States tacitly cooperated in overthrowing the Taliban regime in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks. Iran had staunchly opposed the Taliban in the 1990s and had almost gone to war with it after Taliban forces massacred Iranian diplomats and local Shiite Muslims in the Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif in 1998.

US and Iranian attitudes toward Afghanistan began to diverge after President George W. Bush announced a strategic partnership with the government of then-Afghan President Hamid Karzai in 2005. According to Rubin, the Iranians, already worried about the heavy US military presence to their west in Iraq, considered this declaration a step toward our having permanent bases in Afghanistan.

A decade later, there are still 10,000 US troops in Afghanistan and thousands are likely to remain, given the fragility of the current government of President Ashraf Ghani and the continuing threat to Afghan and US forces primarily from the Taliban.

James Cunningham, a former US ambassador to Afghanistan, told Al-Monitor in an email that while Iran doesnt want the United States to remain, it doesnt want Afghanistan to collapse," explaining, "Iran wants to have contacts but doesnt want the Taliban in power. And it is afraid of [IS].

IS first appeared in Afghanistan in 2014. It proclaimed its presence on Jan. 26, 2015, naming a former Pakistani Taliban chief, Hafiz Saeed Khan, head of what IS called Khorasan province, the name for the region that centuries ago included Afghanistan, Pakistan and several Central Asian countries.

According to Afghan expert Fatemeh Aman, the group has attracted mostly non-Afghan fighters from Central Asia, including members of the Hizb ut-Tahrir (Islamic Party of Liberation) from Uzbekistan, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Islamic Movement of Tajikistan, Chechens from Russia and Uighurs from China. It also has adherents from the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, and other extremist Pakistani groups.

US forces have targeted IS in Afghanistan heavily this year, striking its camps in eastern Nangarhar province. Analysts say the group missed an opportunity to recruit more disaffected Afghan Taliban after it was revealed that the Taliban leadership had kept the 2013 death of the groups founder, Mullah Omar, secret for two years. Earlier this year, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper described IS as a low level threat to Afghan stability.

Given this assessment and the fact that IS is concentrated in eastern Afghanistan, both Rubin and Cunningham said that a recent report claiming Iran had enlisted the Taliban to build a buffer zone against IS on the Iran-Afghan border was overstated.

Rubin said, There is more alignment between the Taliban and Pakistan, which has harbored Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders for many years. With Iran, its a marriage of convenience.

However, the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan has become caught up in the proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia that is churning in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Iran has recruited thousands of Afghan and Pakistani Shiites to fight alongside the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and members of Lebanons Hezbollah in support of the government in Syria against Saudi-backed Sunni militants. Hundreds of members of the so-called Zaynabiyun Brigade have died in the Syrian war.

In providing some minimal support to the Taliban, Iran is likely trying to compete with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan for the groups affections as well as hedging about the durability and reach of the Kabul government.

Iran is also worried about IS recruitment among its own disgruntled Sunni minority, especially members of non-Persian ethnic groups such as the Kurds and Baluch, who live in peripheral areas of the Islamic Republic.

Asked whether Mansour had just visited Iran before he was killed, Hamid Babaei, the press counselor at the Iranian mission to the United Nations, relayed a comment by Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jaberi Ansari. The concerned authorities in Iran reject that such a person had entered Pakistan via Irans border at the stated date, Ansari said, according to Babaei.

The US State Department also declined to confirm Mansours travel, which was indicated by visa stamps on a passport carrying a false name, Wali Mohammad, and Mansours picture that the Pakistanis said was found near his body.

We just dont have any clarity on that," spokesman Mark Toner told reporters May 24.

Rubin was more definitive. Im sure he was in Iran, he told Al-Monitor. He had stamps on his visa and he was killed near a border post.

Rubin added that there are several million Afghans in Iran, most of whom have relatives back home and who travel frequently back and forth across the border. I expect that if the leader of the Taliban goes to Iran, [the Iranians] know about it, he said.

According to one account, Mansour, using the false passport, also traveled frequently from the international airport in Karachi, Pakistan, visiting Dubai 18 times and Bahrain once over the past nine years.

US officials say they targeted Mansour because he threatened US forces and had shown no interest in peace talks with the Afghan government. Mansours successor, a hard-line jurist named Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada, also looks disinclined to pursue peace. Just days after he was elevated, the Taliban carried out new attacks against Afghan police in southern Helmand province.

Pick your conspiracy theory, Cunningham said when asked about Mansours demise. How did his passport survive? Did [IS] shop him to the US? Did the Iranians tip us off? We likely will never know. But the Taliban must be wondering, too.

What needs to be debunked is the Pakistani line that Afghanistan is the fault of the United States and the international community, and that the killing [of Mansour] blocks the [Afghan-Taliban] peace process, Cunningham continued. There is no peace process; Mansour made clear there was no intent to negotiate.
May 31, 2016

Palestinians did not need the appointment on May 25 of Avigdor Liberman, head of Yisrael Beitenu, as defense minister to be convinced that the government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu since May 15, 2015, is the most right-wing and extreme in the history of Israel. Under this government, which brought together different religious and nationalist parties, the peace negotiations stopped, settlements expanded and the Jerusalem intifada erupted in October 2015.

Libermans appointment sparked several Palestinian reactions. While Hamas deemed his appointment as a sign of increasing racism and extremism in Israel, Fatah said the appointment is like a bugaboo scaring Palestinians given the empty threats he makes in the media. For its part, Islamic Jihad stressed that Liberman's appointment is proof of the rising fascism among Israeli leaders.

Youssef Rizqa, the former information minister in the Hamas government, told Al-Monitor, The inclusion of Liberman in the Israeli government is a success for Netanyahu as it would rescue his government from collapsing amid no significant differences between the two men  since both share similar right-wing positions toward the Palestinians and refuse to make concessions. However, Liberman is calling for the expulsion of the Arabs from the land of Palestine while announcing the death of the two-state solution and the end of negotiations with the Palestinians. Although he is annoying and controversial, we do not fear him. He is being used to threaten us. He may not declare direct war on Gaza, but he may resort to assassinations of Palestinians and activate the Israeli military action against the tunnels, which would provoke a reaction on the part of the resistance. Things may spiral out of control and a war may indeed break out, which may be according to him a prelude to his radical approach to Hamas future takeover of Gaza.

What may be a cause for concern among Palestinians as far as Liberman is concerned is that he accused Netanyahu of failing to confront Hamas, which is threatening Israelis in the Gaza envelope. On April 16, Liberman claimed that Hamas plans to occupy the southern Israeli settlements in the next war, knowing that Israel discovered a Hamas tunnel inside its territory April 18. This could lead Liberman to carry out the threats he made March 9 concerning the assassination of Palestinian leaders in a military confrontation.

In conjunction with the appointment of Liberman, Israel's Channel 10 reported May 23 that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is afraid of Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlans relationship with Liberman, who will seek to provide the necessary conditions for the return of Dahlan, Abbas archrival. This, in turn, upsets the latter who is aware that Liberman and Dahlan met in Paris in January 2015, according to reports. They both have a common interest to eliminate Abbas from the political scene; Liberman believes Abbas to be an instigator of violence against the Israelis, and Dahlan considers Abbas survival as an obstacle in his way up the ladder of the Palestinian presidency.

Abdullah Abdullah, the head of the political committee of the Palestinian Legislative Council and member of Fatahs Revolutionary Council, told Al-Monitor, Liberman might try to tamper with the domestic Palestinian arena given the previous threats he made against President Abu Mazen [Abbas] on several occasions. He may carry out assassinations against Palestinian leaders or fabricate a crazy war in Gaza to prove to his political opponents in Israel that he is strong. However, Netanyahu will continue to dominate the political and military decision in Israel, and the cohesion of the domestic Palestinian front will foil Libermans schemes against it. This requires the Palestinians to confront this racist appointment in a more cohesive way.

Palestinians still remember Libermans fiery statements against them, most recently on April 20 when he announced that Israel must not sit idly by as Hamas digs tunnels on the Gaza border. Liberman vowed to assassinate Hamas leaders should they fail to bring back the soldiers who went missing in Gaza in summer 2014, and asked them to start organizing their funeral arrangements.

Ghazi Hamad, Palestinian deputy foreign minister in the Gaza Strip and one of Hamas prominent political leaders, told Al-Monitor, Hamas has previously encountered Israeli leaders who were far more vicious than Liberman  such as Ariel Sharon who headed the Israeli government between 2001 and 2005, and possessed much greater powers than Liberman. He assassinated great Hamas leaders on a daily basis, such as Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, Ibrahim al-Makadmeh and Salah Shehadeh. But he could not eliminate Hamas, and today Liberman comes at a time in which Israel may not want military wars with Hamas  because of the losses it endured in the last three wars in 2008, 2012 and 2014.

Hamad, who has been conducting daily talks with officials and foreign ambassadors visiting the Gaza Strip to oversee the political, security and economic conditions, said, Hamas' position in dealing with Liberman stems from the Palestinian national consensus to implement the truce with Israel that has been agreed upon since the end of the last war on Gaza in 2014. However, Hamas will not allow the hostile and exaggerated Israeli bombardment to continue in response to any missile launched from Gaza. If Liberman decides to expand the aggression on Gaza, any Hamas move in response to Liberman will be in accordance with each field position separately, in coordination with the rest of the Palestinian forces.

But Palestinians know full well that the Liberman who was part of the opposition will not be the same Liberman who has been appointed as defense minister, given that the latter will be surrounded by the army's chief of staff and the heads of the security services, who may want him to calm down and quieten his threats against Hamas. The movement has been wrapped up the past two years, after the last Gaza war in 2014, in building up its potential. In other words, the last military confrontation with Hamas was nothing but a mere sample of what the two sides may witness in the next round, should it take place.

Wasef Erekat, a retired Palestinian major general, told Al-Monitor, Libermans joining of the Defense Ministry will coincide with the next military escalation with the Palestinians, especially in Gaza. [This confrontation] will witness the implementation of a set of assassinations against leaders of the resistance amid attempts to detect new tunnels on the Gaza border. During these attempts, the Israeli military vehicles will pass several kilometers inside the Gaza border, which may provoke the Palestinians into a military escalation. In this regard, the resistance should abstain from responding to Israeli field movements. Also, Libermans appointment may speed up the turning of the Abu Mazen page by exploiting the regional activity and taking advantage of Liberman's preoccupation with the US presidential elections. Any escalation on the part of Liberman against Gaza will intensify should Israel be cornered by US and European pressure to return to the negotiations with the Palestinians.

The appointment of Liberman as defense minister has been a hot topic for the press, Palestinian research centers and social networking websites, as people are interpreting his policies against the Palestinians, both in the West Bank against the Palestinian Authority and in Gaza against Hamas.

Imad Abu Awwad, a Palestinian researcher in Israeli affairs, told Al-Monitor, Libermans options regarding Palestinians are limited to two scenarios: first, launching a blitzkrieg following the assassination of influential Palestinian figures. Such assassinations would lead to a war succeeded by a long period of appeasement with Gaza. Second, Liberman will drag Israel into a broad confrontation with Gaza in a bid to deal a fatal blow to the resistance and significantly abolish its advanced capabilities without risking wild incursions that pose a serious threat to the [Israeli] soldiers. [Liberman] will settle for airstrikes, which may not be able to settle the war in Israel's favor but can push the Palestinians toward a certain settlement as far as Gazas future is concerned.

Finally, despite the Palestinians concerns over Libermans joining of the Israeli government, they still have a glimmer of hope given the Israeli army generals ability to control his actions and not follow his aggressive behavior against the Palestinians based on their extended military experience in dealing with them, and Libermans practically nonexistent military experience. Liberman barely spent a year in the ranks of the Israeli army, which explains the Israeli generals apprehension about him.
May 31, 2016

On May 3, units of the Libyan Armed Forces commanded by Gen. Khalifa Hifter moved from Benghazi westward, launching what was said to be an offensive on Sirte to dislodge the Islamic State, which has been in control of the coastal city since February 2015.

Hifter, under the Tobruk-based elected parliament, has vowed on many occasions to liberate Libya from terrorism, and after liberating Benghazi, Sirte is only a logical destination since it is now IS stronghold in Libya.

As if to remind Hifter that it is still there and to show its force, the terror group moved out of Sirte and in a few hours took more towns and villages, including Zamzam, Bey, Gadahia and the strategic town of Abu Grain. Westward, IS fighters got to Sdada Bridge, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Misrata, a coastal city with militias that have been battling the extremist Islamic group. From a strategic point of view, IS did not intend to keep such small villages, as instead it wanted to kill and displace as many people as possible. Most of the residents of those villages and towns are ex-military men with links to the former regime, so getting rid of them helps IS.

Hifters spokesman, in an unusually long televised press briefing, described what he said was the current situation of the Libyan Armed Forces in Benghazi and elsewhere, and confirmed that IS stronghold in Sirte is the next target. However, instead of sending his troops directly to Sirte through the coastal highway, as a shorter route Hifter chose to move away from the coast and station his forces in the small desert town of Zalla, some 300 kilometers south of Sirte. In explaining this rather strange move the spokesman said, We did not want to engage in unnecessary fights near populated and sensitive areas, referring to the Ras Lanuf oil terminals that are on the coastal road to Sirte but still under the control of local militias that have restricted oil exports for nearly two years now.

Zalla is very close to some of the oil fields that pump oil to the terminals, which means controlling those fields could be useful since those who control the fields could stop the oil flow altogether.

It seems that the long-awaited attack by the Libyan Armed Forces and Hifter on IS in Sirte has been put off for now. It is unlikely that such an attack will happen before Ramadan, which starts in the first week of June. However, Hifter is determined to attack IS in Sirte, not just to keep his promise to the Libyans to rid the country of terror groups but also for a very personal reason: Many of his own tribesmen live in Sirte.

On the other hand, the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord issued its Decree No. 1, ordering some of its loyal military officers to set up a unified operations room to coordinate any future military offensive against IS in Sirte. Hifter was not among those named to lead the operations, which means he is not on good terms with the Government of National Accord, as has been the case ever since it was formed in late January. Hifter has criticized the Government of National Accord on many occasions, because he believes it wants to replace him. The Government of National Accord, however, questions his intentions and wants to satisfy many of its supporters in western Libya who do not like him. He has recently softened his position by linking his acceptance of the Government of National Accord to its parliamentary approval, which has not happened so far.

The Government of National Accord also decreed the creation of what it called the Presidential Guard as a pivot for the future Libyan army, further putting Hifters survival as chief of staff of the Libyan Armed Forces in serious doubt, despite the fact that he was appointed by the only elected legislature in the country. He has so far proved himself at least by liberating Benghazi from the Islamists. During a meeting on Libya in Vienna, the Presidential Guard was presented as a worthy force that deserves support  mainly to lift the arms embargo imposed on Libya in February 2011  from the international community. Since the meeting in Vienna supported the Government of National Accord and approved of its actions so far, getting the same support for its army may only be a minor detail.

Those who met in Vienna  including representatives of the United States, Russia, Italy, Germany and 17 other countries, including Libya's neighbors  seemed to buy into the Government of National Accords claim that it was building a new army, and US Secretary of State John Kerry as well as his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov promised to push for lifting the embargo at the United Nations Security Council.

However, the Presidential Guard is no more than old militias regrouped under a new name in an attempt to integrate them into a professional army that is yet to be established. Previous attempts to do the same have ended in failure because they tried to integrate militia members loyal to their own groups into a disciplined army loyal to the state, without a workable process. This time around, Misrata-based militias and others seeking new legitimacy and a legal cover managed to trick the Government of National Accord into providing these distinctions by accepting the militias as forces loyal to the government. This new army has already scored what it calls a victory against IS, west of Sirte. Yet IS did not suffer any real military defeat other than being pushed back from small villages and towns it had taken west of Sirte  none of which have important military value.

It is clear that this new Presidential Guard and Hifters forces are playing a waiting game when it comes to fighting IS. Hifter does not want to move on Sirte, hoping that the Presidential Guard will do so first, particularly since Misrata itself is threatened now. He might be hoping that such a battle will exhaust  if not finish  either side; any winning force will be left depleted. Then, most probably, he would make his move and finish off the victorious side. Misrata-based commanders of the Presidental Guard could well be making the same analysis and playing the same game.

Instead of being united to face IS as their common enemy, which threatens the entire country, both Hifter's and the Government of National Accords forces appear to be interested in fighting each other and not the terrorist group. If the threat of IS does not unite Libyans, what else could? IS appears to be winning at least by further dividing Libyans more than they already were.
May 31, 2016

Its been decades since the issue of confederation between the Kingdom of Jordan and Palestine was a matter of public debate. The idea gained traction in the mid-1980s and early 1990s as the rift between Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization narrowed and King Hussein and Yasser Arafat appeared to reconcile their differences. In principle, the two leaders agreed that once the state of Palestine is born, it will choose to join Jordan in a confederation between two sovereign states.

But the Oslo process, leading to direct secret negotiations between the PLO and Israel that resulted in the signing of a "declaration of principles" on the White House lawn in 1993, put the idea on hold. Jordan went on to sign its own peace deal with Israel in 1994, and the Palestinians were caught in endless and often fruitless negotiations with Israel under US auspices. That process took a nosedive following the second Palestinian intifada in 2000 and the death of Arafat in 2004.

Under King Abdullah and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, the subject of confederation rarely if ever surfaced publicly. Jordan supported the two-state solution and underlined its historical custodianship of Muslim and Christian holy places in Jerusalem, a subject that often marred relations between Abdullah and Abbas.

So it was surprising that former Jordanian Prime Minister Abdelsalam al-Majali, who negotiated the peace deal with Israel in the 1990s, announced from Nablus May 22 that he personally believes that confederation between an independent Palestine and Jordan is the best option for both people.

He was quoted by a Palestinian news agency as declaring before 100 Nablus notables that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had repeatedly called on Jordan to adopt the confederation option with the Palestinians immediately, and that Jordan had rejected the idea. For Majali, confederation means a joint legislature and a joint government with equal representation whereby the upper authority will have three main missions  security, economy and foreign affairs  and the rest will be the jurisdiction of the joint government. He also said, In a confederation, centralization will have to end and the people will have the ultimate choice of how to govern themselves.

Majalis statements found mixed reactions in Amman. While there has been no official comment from the government, political commentators rushed to warn that the timing of such statements should raise many questions. The online newspaper Raialyoum reported May 22 that prominent Palestinian figures are preparing to dispatch a delegation of 350 notables to the Jordanian capital to call on Abdullah to intervene to protect the West Bank and reactivate the confederation project. It also noted that the majority of West Bank Palestinians now support confederation between an independent Palestinian state and Jordan.

An-Najah University in the West Bank published the results of an opinion poll on May 13 that found that 42.3% of Palestinians support the confederation project while 39.3% oppose it.

No such figures are available for the Jordanian public. But Majalis statements received little support from Jordanian commentators. Former Information Minister Samih al-Maaytah told Al-Monitor, Federalism or confederalism is not an option for Jordanians in dealing with the Palestinian question. It is a Zionist scheme aimed at burying Palestinian rights. He added, All Jordanians reject this without exception. It is a way for Israel to make Jordan pay for the cost of its occupation while denying Palestinians any right to rule over themselves on their land.

Political columnist Fahd Al-Khitan warned in his May 23 column for Al-Ghad, The failure of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations should not come at the expense of Jordan. He argued that such a solution entails annexing the Palestinian people to Jordan without their land. He added that such a choice would be tantamount to the Jordanian state committing suicide. Khitan noted that some parties, which he did not name, were trying to take advantage of the distressed relations between Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.

His conclusion is based on a number of reports that relations between Abdullah and Abbas are frigid and distant. Differences between the two men include Abbas strategy in seeking UN Security Council recognition of Palestinian statehood to Jordans historic role in Jerusalem. Notably, Abdullahs May 25 speech marking the 70th independence anniversary of the kingdom failed to mention the customary support for the two-state solution. Instead the king underlined the historic Hashemite sacrifices in Palestine, Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque, adding that the Jordanians still fulfill their responsibilities and duties toward the holy sites of Jerusalem.

The Jordanian government did not comment on a May 27 report in the Middle East Eye that read, The United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan are planning for a post-Mahmoud Abbas era that would leave his Fatah archrival Mohammed Dahlan in control of the Palestinian presidency, the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority. Author David Hearst wrote that senior Jordanian and Palestinian sources had spoken of the plan separately.

Abbas, who met with Majali during his visit to the West Bank, did not comment on the issue of confederation. But the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported May 26 that Palestinian notables in Jordan and Hebron had begun collecting hundreds of signatures for a petition that rejects any solution that could serve the Israeli enemy.

The resurfacing of the confederation issue could be seen as a litmus test of the public mood in Jordan and the West Bank amid tense relations between Amman and Ramallah and in light of President Abbas' dipping popularity among Palestinians. One critic of the confederation idea, political commentator Labib Kamhawi, told Al-Monitor that it is also likely that Abbas is complicit in this scheme with Jordan and Israel to pass a settlement that would make Jordan the PAs heir following his dismal failure. He added that under this scheme, Jordan would take over security duties from the PA and would rule over Palestinians in the West Bank but without the land. This will effectively close the Palestinian issue for good.
May 31, 2016

Turkeys inability to produce a realistic strategy toward Syria and to coordinate its policy with its allies is coming home to roost, leaving it facing multiple dilemmas that are unlikely to be resolved soon. Ankaras war with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and its related effort to prevent Kurds from gaining ground in northern Syria remains Turkeys main problems.

This complicates, if not prevents, headway by the US-led coalition against the Islamic State (IS) in the region. Washington, by its own admittance, is trying to maintain a delicate balance between Ankara and the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the umbrella organization of the Syrian Kurds, which Turkey says is a terrorist group linked to the PKK.

While acknowledging that the PKK is a terrorist organization, Washington has refused to do the same for the PYD and its military wing, the Peoples Protection Units (YPG), with which it is allied against IS.

The successes against IS by the US-supported Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)  at least 60% of which are made up of YPG fighters  also contrasts sharply with the failure of groups supported by Ankara to make any headway against the Bashar al-Assad regime or IS.

The recent failure of groups supported by Turkey to stop IS advances on the Marea-Azaz line, while the SDF makes gains against IS in its sectors, has underscored this again. Having prioritized the fight against IS in Syria and Iraq, Washington is unlikely to sever ties with the YPG simply to please Ankara.

Turkeys support for groups in Syria with links to al-Qaeda-related Jabhat al-Nusra, which the United States considers a terrorist group, also acts as a disincentive for Washington in this regard.

Ankara is now watching apprehensively as US Special Forces and US fighter jets work closely with the SDF to clear the northern sector of Raqqa from IS, in preparation for an onslaught against the whole city in coming weeks.

Turkey has declared the 98-kilometer (60-mile) stretch along its border between the Syrian towns of Jarablus to the east and Azaz to the west a no-go area for the Kurds and started shelling YPG positions in February from across the border to hammer this point home.

Turkey is concerned that if this region falls to the PYD, it will unite Kurdish-held territories east and west of the Euphrates River and lay the groundwork for an autonomous Kurdish region along the Turkish border. Turkey is worried that the liberation of Raqqa by SDF forces will speed up this process.

Compounding Ankaras dilemma is the fact that it, too, is fighting IS, which has mounted deadly suicide attacks inside Turkey and rocket mortar attacks against the Turkish town of Kilis near the Syrian border.

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu suggested earlier this week that Turkey could mount joint operations with the United States and other Western allies in northern Syria in order to dislodge IS from the region, provided the PYD is excluded from these operations.

Serkan Demirtas from Hurriyet Daily News cited unnamed US officials who said they had not received a detailed plan about Cavusoglus proposal. Some concepts have been put forward, but none are doable or represent a detailed plan that can be enforced rapidly, the official said.

The fact that US-led coalition jets taking off from Incirlik Air Base in Turkey are supporting YPG fighters as they advance toward Raqqa also shows how little real influence Turkey wields over developments in the region.

There is not even a hint from Ankara that it might prevent the use of Incirlik by the anti-IS coalition if the base is used to back YPG fighters. Ankara is aware that closing the base would remove what little influence it has over the United States.

The recent advances by IS along the Marea-Azaz line has left Turkey facing another dilemma with regard to refugees from the region. The refugees are reportedly moving toward regions held by the SDF, thus turning areas held by the Kurds into a potential safe zone, which the United States will clearly want to encourage.

Ankara is hardly likely to be happy over this because it will legitimize PYD rule in the region further in Western eyes. If IS advances along the Marea-Azaz line cannot be prevented, this will also increase the value of the YPG for the West as a much more viable force against IS when compared to groups supported by Turkey.

The ultimate dilemma for Turkey, however, is the fact that it has ended up in what appears to be an ineffectual situation in Syria, even though it is one of the countries bearing the biggest brunt from this crisis.

Mehmet Tezkan, a well-known columnist for daily Milliyet, argues that this situation is of Turkeys own making. If you insist that the only correct foreign policy position is yours.  If your actions at the start were wrong. If you buttoned your shirt the wrong way at beginning.  Then this is what you end up with, Tezkan wrote in his column.

He went on to question Turkeys opposition to YPG fighters entering Raqqa, asking what the alternative being proposed was. Should Raqqa belong to IS then? No, you say, it should belong neither to IS nor to the YPG. If that is the case, should Assad take the city? No, you say, that wont do either. So whose should it be? This is Ankaras dilemma, Tezkan argued.

Even the mood in the Islamist and staunchly pro-government media appears to be coming around to accepting that Turkeys current Syria policy is unsustainable.

Ibrahim Karagul, the editor-in-chief of daily Yeni Safak, suggested in his column this week that the time has come for a change in the governments Syria policy. Turkey has to do today what it should have done three years ago, Karagul wrote. If we cant intervene to prevent Syria from turning into a front from where Turkey can be hit for decades, then we will be responsible for the price this country will have to pay for this tomorrow.

It is not clear if Karagul was exhorting military intervention by Turkey in Syria, a course that most strategists argue is unlikely to produce the expected results, or an intervention of another unspecified kind.

Karaguls remarks nevertheless point at the confusion in the pro-government camp over Syria, as well as Ankaras inability to find the right course in order to overcome its multiple dilemmas and make Turkey a key player in Syria again.

If that cannot be done, it is clear that Ankara will not be able to play a proactive role in efforts aimed at resolving this crisis in a manner that also addresses Turkeys security concerns with help from its allies.
Inmates at the Bibb County Correctional Facility in Brent caused a disturbance at the prison on Saturday.

Bob Horton, the Alabama Department of Corrections spokesperson, said that five inmates caused a disruption in one of the dorms.

The inmates caused minor damage inside of the dorm, Horton said, but no one was injured.

Correctional officers and the prison warden responded to the situation and placed the five inmates in an area segregated from the rest of the prison population.

Horton said that the facility is secure, and the Department of Corrections is investigating the incident.
Kent Faulk | kfaulk@al.com

Sex, Blood, guns, vasectomy, and the Ten Commandments; What some judges said, did, or refused to do that led to them being disciplined or tossed off the bench

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Herman Thomas, a former Mobile County circuit judge,in March 2007 was suspended by the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission and he resigned seven months later. Thomas was disbarred in 2010 after a disciplinary board ruled that he paddled and spanked criminal defendants on his court docket, which the board called "sexually motivated assaults." The Alabama Supreme Court upheld an Alabama State Bar disciplinary board's decision to ban Thomas from practicing law.

(Press-Register, Mike Kittrell)

Herman Thomas

Herman Thomas, a former Mobile County circuit judge,in March 2007 was suspended by the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission and he resigned seven months later. Thomas was disbarred in 2010 after a disciplinary board ruled that he paddled and spanked criminal defendants on his court docket, which the board called "sexually motivated assaults." The Alabama Supreme Court upheld an Alabama State Bar disciplinary board's decision to ban Thomas from practicing law.

(Press-Register, Mike Kittrell)

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Wilson A. Hayes

Wilson A. Hayes, a judge in Baldwin County in 1982, was suspended after he was found to have coerced a man into a vasectomy in a divorce case.

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Marvin Wiggins

Marvin Wiggins, a circuit judge serving Bibb, Dallas, Hale, Perry and Wilcox counties since 1999, was censured in January after the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission filed charges against him that he threatened to throw defendants in jail who had no money to pay their fines unless they donated blood.

It wasnt the first time Wiggins had been brought before the Court of the Judiciary.

In July 2009 Wiggins received a public reprimand and was ordered to serve 90 days without pay for ethics violations involving a voter fraud investigation that involved some of his relatives. The violations involved quashing an Attorney General subpoena and search warrant.

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W.W. Rabren

Shelby County Courthouse in Columbiana. AL.com file photo

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Johnny Langley

Johnny Langley, a Lamar County district court judge, resigned in 1988 amid allegations that included he had sex in the courtroom with a woman not his wife.

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AL.com

Dan King

Dan King, a Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge in the Bessemer Cutoff, received a 60-day suspension without pay and was censured in 2010 for setting aside the rape conviction of a man whom he had represented 15 years earlier, and for publicly criticizing a fellow judge.

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Roy Moore

Roy Moore, the Alabama Chief Justice in 2003 was removed from the bench for failing to heed a federal judge's order to remove the Ten Commandments monument from the Supreme Court building. Moore was re-elected as chief justice in 2012.

Moore now is suspended without pay for the rest of his term for his actions in January, after the court ruled he told probate judges in Alabama to ignore a federal judge's orders and the U.S. Supreme Court's rulings last year and refuse to issue licenses to same-sex couples.

Photo/AL.com

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Jerry Boggan

Jerry Boggan, the Wilcox County Probate Judge, was removed from office by the Court of the Judiciary in 1999 after finding him guilty of numerous counts of violating ethics rules for judges. The court said Boggan deposited a $23,000 check from his personal account, which had less than $200 in it at the time, into the probate office account, then withdrew $23,000 from the probate account and deposited it in his personal account.

Boggan won re-election in 2000 and is currently the countys probate judge.

Photo/Hal Yeager

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John Steensland Jr.

John Steensland Jr., a district court judge in Houston County, was found guilty by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary in 2011 of violating three judicial ethics rules for the way he conducted court. He was on the bench for more than 20 years.

Steensland already had been retired for a year by the time the court ruled. Steensland was accused of numerous improprieties in court, including acting rudely to witnesses, jurors and attorneys. The Court of the Judiciary order stated a teenager pleaded guilty to a crime only because Steensland was acting "too angry" in court, and he repeatedly asked victims of domestic violence what they had done to warrant abuse.

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Stuart Dubose

Stuart DuBose, a former circuit judge who served Clarke, Washington and Choctaw counties, had charges leveled against him by the Judicial Inquiry Commission, including accusations of verbally abusing lawyers and trying to influence fellow judges in matters that benefited him personally. He was removed from the bench by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary.

Witnesses testified at his trial before the court of the judiciary trial that DuBose abused prescription pain killers, promised favorable treatment to hometown attorneys and pressured local attorneys to support him for re-election, the Associated press reported

Meanwhile, a federal jury in 2008 convicted DuBose of possessing guns in violation of a restraining order issued as part of his divorce and of lying about that order on a federal form. He was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison. DuBose also had been accused of firing a machine gun at a survey crew near his home in Jackson. Records show that DuBose was released from federal prison in November 2009.

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Robert A. "Tony" Cothren

Robert A. "Tony" Cothren, a former circuit judge in Bessemer, was suspended for the remainder of his term in 1998 by the court of the judiciary failing to keep his docket up to date and trying to block testimony that the judge feared would show how poorly he ran his office. The court also censured Cothren for sleeping on the bench, but it did not issue sanctions on that count because of undisputed evidence that he suffers from a sleep disorder.

Photo/The Birmingham News File

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Special to AL.com

Leon Archer

In August 2016 the Alabama Court of the Judiciary approved a settlement suspending Tallapoosa County Probate Judge Leon Archer six months without pay for sexting with a litigant.

Archer admitted to the JIC that among the sexually explicit photos he had exchanged with the woman on Facebook messaging were photos of his genitals, taken while at the county courthouse.

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U.S. District Court Judge Mark Fuller

United States District Court Judge Mark Fuller resigned in May 2015 after going through disciplinary procedures with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in the wake of his arrest in August 2014 in an Atlanta hotel room after a domestic dispute with his then-wife, Kelli Fuller.

He was charged with misdemeanor battery, but he later entered into an agreement with the court there to have his record expunged upon receiving counseling and completing a domestic violence program.

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Paul Stribling Conger, Jr.

Paul Stribling Conger, Jr.,73, a former Social Security Administration judge in Alabama allegedly had sex with a woman claimant at the federal court house in Tuscaloosa, according to charges involving a public official accepting a gratuity, theft, and obstruction filed against him in August 2016.

Conger, of Akron, Ala., also entered a plea agreement Tuesday with the U.S. Attorney's Office to the charges of theft of government property, obstructing justice, and accepting a gratuity, according to court documents. Conger was sentenced on March 22, 2017 to a year and a day in federal prison.

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Alabama Court of the Judiciary and the Judicial Inquiry Commission

Commission and court history

The Judicial Inquiry Commission (JIC) was created by the Alabama Legislature in 1973 to review and investigate complaints filed against judges regarding allegations of misconduct, violation of the Alabama Judicial Canons of Ethics or a judge's physical ability to carry out the job. The Alabama Court of the Judiciary also was created that same year to hold trials on charges brought by the JIC.

Sometimes the JIC may get with a judge to correct a problem, such as an addiction, before any charges are necessary.

But since it was formed the JIC has brought charges against judges to the court of the judiciary 46 times, including the current charges against Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore.

In the nearly 43-year history of the at court, only two of the previous 45 judges brought before the court of the judiciary on charges of ethics violations or misconduct on the bench have walked away without facing any discipline. A number of cases were settled before an actual trial was held.

According to records, of those 45 judges brought before the court on ethics violations:

- 7 were removed from the bench

- 11 retired or resigned

- 15 were suspended without pay (many also included censures)

- 7 were only censured

- 3 were suspended until the end of their term

- 1 was dismissed

- 1 faced no disciplinary action by the court

A couple of other federal judges also got in trouble. Their cases were included in this presentation.

Compiled by AL.com reporter Kent Faulk

Alabama Supreme Court building File Photo
Joe Wheeler State Park beach.jpg

Joe Wheeler State Park's beach area is pictured. (Alabama State Parks)

Two women were hospitalized Monday after they were struck by a car as they enjoyed the beach area at Joe Wheeler State Park.

Chad Davis, manager of the park, told AL.com that the women were struck by a car that rolled from the parking lot onto the beach area. One woman was struck, but the other was struck and pinned underneath the car.

"The beach was very crowded and several men were able to lift the car and pull her out from under it," Davis said.

The women, who were identified by friends on Facebook as Misty Calder and her mother, suffered non-life-threatening injuries. Calder's mother was being treated at Athens-Limestone Hospital, but Calder had to be airlifted to Huntsville Hospital.

First Baptist Church of Ardmore gave an update on Calder's condition late Monday, saying she has burns down her back, along with a lacerated liver, broken ribs and some internal bleeding.

Update: Please pray for Misty and the family-- Scans show she's got a laceration on her liver, some broken ribs,... Posted by First Baptist Church Ardmore, Alabama Prayer Chain on Monday, May 30, 2016

It was not immediately clear what caused the car to roll out of the parking lot.
A Midland City man died early Tuesday after his car hit a tree.

Jeremiah Lee East, 27, was driving a 2000 Ford Mustang on Dale County 67. The car left the road and hit a tree at 7:30 a.m.

East was pronounced dead at the scene.

Alabama state troopers continue to investigate, but preliminary investigation indicates that speed may have been a factor in the crash.
A man accused of shooting a Georgia sheriff's deputy during a traffic stop has been denied bond.

News outlets report that 24-year-old Joe Garrett, of Phenix City, appeared in a Harris County, Georgia, courtroom Monday after having been extradited from Alabama. Garrett is facing numerous charges, including aggravated assault on a police officer.

Harris County Sheriff Mike Jolley says deputy Jamie White pulled over Garrett on Saturday night on Interstate 85, about 80 miles south of downtown Atlanta. Jolley says White spoke to Garrett and an unidentified passenger for about seven minutes before Garrett shot White above the left eye.

Authorities say Garrett fled, but turned himself in to Phenix City police the next day.

Jolley says White is recovering, but may lose sight in his left eye.
Police officers in Davie, Florida recovered a body yesterday that had been partially eaten by alligators, WSVN Miami reported.

Fishermen found the decomposing body in a canal of the Everglades. When authorities arrived, CNN said, the body was being eaten by alligators.

Crews chased away the animals, although some lingered behind while divers pulled the body from the water. Police with AR-15 rifles stayed nearby to ensure divers' safety, WSVN said.

The body was removed around 10 p.m., and police said they could not determine the race or sex of the remains.

"The body has been there a little bit," Davie Police Sgt. Pablo Castaneda said.

Police do not believe alligators killed the victim, CNN reported.
The History Channel's remake of Roots aired its first episode Monday night but have no fear if you missed it.

The first episode in the four-night miniseries is available for free on the Historychannel.com. The second two-hour episode will air tonight on the History Channel starting at 9 p.m. EST/8 p.m. CST then the same time the following two nights.

Based on the award-winning 1976 novel by Alex Haley, "Roots" provides a historical portrait of American slavery recounted by the journey of one family.

Monday night's episode introduced viewers to Kunte Kinta (played by Malachi Kirby), a Mandinka warrior in Africa. He is kidnapped and then sold into slavery by British slave traders in 1767 before being shipped to America. Once in Virginia, Kinta is given the slave name "Toby" though he resists the name change and his enslavement.

Kinta befriends Fiddler, played by Forest Whitaker, another slave who is assigned to train him on the plantation.

The cast also includes actors Anna Paquin, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Laurence Fishburne, Mekhi Phifer, and Tip "T.I." Harris.

Paul Buccieri, President of A&E and HISTORY, said the new miniseries is designed to reintroduce the classic story to a new generation.

"'Roots' will allow new audiences to experience this epic family saga with a new vision that is both inspiring and tremendously entertaining," Buccieri said. "We are proud that History will be able to bring new life to this powerful story that remains as important today as it did when the original 'Roots' first premiered."

The History Channel is also offering the "Know Your Roots" feature on its website, complete with genealogy information, know your roots art creator and reading list
A Seattle woman was not allowed on her JetBlue flight because the crew and pilot said her shorts were too short, KIRO 7 News reported.

The burlesque performer, who goes by the name Maggie McMuffin, said that she was in Boston when she was getting ready to board a plane back to Seattle.

A person working the gate approached McMuffin and said that she needed to change her shorts.

McMuffin said to KIRO that the worker "Told me that she was really sorry for bringing this up but just what I was wearing was not appropriate and the flight crew had discussed it and the pilot had decided that I needed to put something else on or I would not be allowed to board the flight."

McMuffin had flown from New York to Boston earlier that day without any comment on her clothing, she said.

Because she did not have any other clothes with her, the passenger had to buy another pair of shorts from an airport store for $22.

She said that she offered to tie a sweater around her waist and put a blanket over herself, but the JetBlue crew would not allow it.

"I was told it was the pilot's final say so these are not official rules that can be broken," she said.

The airline released a statement addressing McMuffin's situation.

"The gate and on board crew discussed the customer's clothing and determined that the burlesque shorts may offend other families on the flight. While the customer was not denied boarding, the crew members politely asked if she could change. The customer agreed and continued on the flight without interruption."

The company did not respond to KIRO's question asking if McMuffin decided not to change, would she have been allowed to board the flight.

JetBlue also reimbursed McMuffin for the cost of the new shorts and gave her a $200 credit for a future flight.
James Sumner, Matt Hart

James L. Sumner Jr. answers questions from prosecutor Matt Hart during Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard's trial on Tuesday, May 31, 2016 in Opelika, Ala. (Todd J. Van Emst/Opelika-Auburn News via AP, Pool)

(Todd J. Van Emst)

State prosecutors and defense lawyers for Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard sparred this morning during an expert's testimony about the state ethics law.

The state resumed calling witnesses for Hubbard's ethics trial, which started last week in Lee County Circuit Court in Opelika.

Prosecutors called former Ethics Commission Director Jim Sumner as an expert witness on the ethics law.

Hubbard attorney Bill Baxley objected to Sumner's testimony as an expert witness, but Judge Jacob Walker allowed it after a discussion with the jury excused.

When the jury returned, Baxley objected to many of the questions that Deputy Attorney General Matt Hart asked Sumner, saying they were leading, hypothetical or outside the scope of expertise.

The judge sustained some and overruled others.

Sumner was director of the Ethics Commission from 1997 until 2014.

Some of the charges against Hubbard accuse him of illegally using his office as speaker to obtain consulting contracts for his company, Auburn Network.

Hubbard's lawyers have claimed the contracts were legal and that the speaker relied on written advice and guidance from the Ethics Commission before starting his consulting work.

In response to questions from Hart, Sumner explained the difference between a formal opinion from the Ethics Commission and an informal opinion.

Sumner said formal opinions, which are issued by the five-member commission, provide legal cover for officials who abide by them.

Informal opinions, which come from the commission staff, do not provide that legal protection, Sumner said.

Hubbard did not request formal opinions about his consulting contracts.

Also, prosecutors allege that Hubbard did not follow guidance from the Ethics Commission that he not use "the mantle of your office" to obtain consulting work or benefit his clients.

That guidance is included in a January 2012 letter from Ethics Commission General Counsel Hugh Evans about Hubbard's contract with Southeast Alabama Gas District.

Sumner said the letter was written after he and Evans met with Hubbard and SEAGD attorney James Sledge about the contract.

Sumner said he has included "the mantle of your office" language in guidance to many public officials.

Hart asked Sumner to define "the mantle of your office."

"The aura of the office, the influence, the power," Sumner said.

"It is intangible. It's not something you can feel or touch."

Sumner testified that he had many discussions with Hubbard about the general prohibitions of the ethics law -- that public officials should not use their office to benefit themselves, their families or their businesses.

In fact, Sumner testified that he and Hubbard discussed it so many times that Sumner referred to the prohibition as "the drill" in conversations with Hubbard.

Sumner testified for more than two hours before court recessed for lunch.

He was the second witness called by prosecutors today.

The first was John Sanderson, a former chief financial officer at Sterne Agee Group, who testified briefly about a $150,000 investment the company made in Craftmaster Printers in 2012. Hubbard is part owner of Craftmaster.

Hubbard is charged with illegally obtaining $600,000 in investments for Craftmasters from four people, including former Sterne Agee Group CEO James Holbrook.

The indictment alleges that Holbrook and three other investors were "principals," which are defined in the ethics law as people or businesses who hire lobbyists.

The other three, Harbert Management Corporation executive and Business Council of Alabama board member Will Brooke, Great Southern Wood President Jimmy Rane and Hoar Construction President Robert Burton are on the prosecution's list of witnesses for today.

Hubbard's lawyers have claimed that the investments were legal and that Hubbard was acting as a business owner, not as speaker, and promised no favors in return for the investments.
Michael Jace

In this May 27, 2016 file photo, actor Michael Jace, who played a police officer on television, appears during closing arguments during his trial at Los Angeles County Superior in Los Angeles. A jury convicted Jace of second-degree murder, Tuesday, May 31, in the 2014 shooting death of his wife in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Nick Ut, File)

(Nick Ut)

A jury today convicted actor Michael Jace of second-degree murder in the shooting death of his wife, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Jace, who played a police officer in the TV series "The Shield," shot his wife April in the back and in the legs. The couple's two sons partially witnessed the killing, the Times said.

Jace's 10-year-old son testified in court that he heard his father tell his mother, "If you like running, then run to heaven."

Deputy District Attorney Tannaz Mokayef said that Jace was waiting for his wife when he shot her in the back. According to the Times, Mokayef said the actor taunted his wife before shooting her in both of her legs.

The prosecutor said that the actor was upset with his wife because she wanted a divorce.

Jamon Hicks, Jace's attorney, said that Jace is remorseful for the crime and that he accepts responsibility. Hicks argued that Jace should be convicted of voluntary manslaughter because he did not plan to kill her.

The Times said that Jace turned himself in to police after the shooting.

The potential sentence would be up to 40 years.
Quick...Can you name Alabama's fastest-growing company? Chances are, you can't.

Findthecompany.com crunched some numbers to determine the fastest-growing company in each state and then ranked them all based on rate of growth. For Alabama, the honor went to Medical Properties Trust Inc., a Birmingham-based company.

Medical Properties Trust is certainly specialized. The company is a real estate investment trust, providing medical facilities more access to capital for improvements, technology upgrades, staffing or new construction through long-term net leases of real estate assets. In other words - the company provides funding sources for medical facilities.

Medical Properties Trust posted $198 million in revenue in 2012, according to Findthecompany.com. By 2015, its revenues had increased to $442 million. That's a three-year growth rate of 123 percent, enough to land it at number 30 on the list.

Another real estate investment trust landed at number one on the list. New York-based Global Net Lease grew its revenues from $30,000 in 2012 to $205 million in 2015, an amazing 684,340 percent three-year growth rate.

Welcome to Monday's Wake Up Call. Here's what's going on:

Trump's first fundraiser nets millions

Donald Trump's first joint fundraiser with the Republican National Committee seems to have paid off.

The Trump/RNC fundraiser held last week raised $6 million. Another $4 million in future pledges was also received.

The fundraiser was held in Santa Monica, with an admission price of $25,000 per person, with host committee members paying $100,000 each.

Oregon militia leader gripes about no internet in jail

Ammon Bundy, leader of the armed group that took over a federal wildlife reserve in Oregon last January, said a lack of internet service is hindering his ability to prepare for his Sept. 7 trial.

Ammon Bundy and his brother, Ryan, are requesting internet access inside their jail cells. The two are among 26 defendants indicted on federal conspiracy and weapons charges related to the 41-day armed takeover of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon earlier this year.

The brothers said the lack of internet is a violation of their civil rights to prepare for their trials.

Man arrested for Memorial Day vandalism

A Henderson, Kentucky man was arrested after he allegedly damaged more than 150 crosses in a Memorial Day display.

Anthony Burrus, 27, allegedly drove through Central Park over the weekend, knocking down about 160 crosses and destroying around 20 more. The display featured more than 5,000 crosses, each bearing the name of a local resident who served in the military.

Burrus was discovered after his vehicle - with pieces of a cross and a ground stake embedded in its tires - was spotted at a local McDonald's. He was later arrested and charged with criminal mischief.

No "Cops" here

A police chief in Manchester, New Hampshire has shut down "Cops."

The long-running television show was filming in the city but Chief Nick Willard discontinued its visit after one night due to concerns from residents and business owners who were afraid it would give the city a bad name.

Cops aired its first episode in 1989.

Until tomorrow.
Last summer, Arc Terminals got in the doghouse with Mobile leaders and environmentalists alike for storing sulphuric acid on the waterfront before receiving permission to do so. On Tuesday, city leaders praised the company for a six-figure gesture of amends.

At the Mobile City Council's Tuesday meeting, Mayor Sandy Stimpson announced that the Mobile Fire-Rescue Department had accepted a $100,000 donation from the company. Stimpson said the gift exceeded any possible fines the city could have levied on the company for the incident, and that he was "grateful Arc has stepped up ... to bring this issue to closure."

The August 2015 revelation that Arc had been acting without approval was a flash point in a long-running debate over city regulation of petrochemical tank facilities along the Mobile waterfront. Even industry supporters were taken aback; Stimpson's administration promised fines and said it was "disappointed by the irresponsible and reckless behavior displayed by Arc and its partners."

The bigger debate finally was settled in March, when the Council approved a measure that imposed some limits on tank farm development, though less than some had hoped for.

On Tuesday, the Mobile Fire-Rescue Department said the $100,000 would go directly to equipment upgrades for its hazardous materials team. Among the planned purchases, $45,000 will buy an AreaRAE monitoring system that can measure potential threats at the site of a chemical spill; $14,094 will pay for upgrades to hazmat suits; $10,000 will go for a thermal imaging camera; and $14,374 will provide sensors used to monitor volatile organic compounds and other hazardous gases.

According to information released by the MRFD, Arc made the donation as part of a settlement negotiated with the city. "The payment by Arc exceeds any possible fines the City could have recovered against Arc for the zoning issue," according to the MFRD statement. "Arc completed the removal of all sulfuric acid from the Blakely terminal last year.

"This generous donation by ARC will go far in helping us be better prepared for an industrial incident of near any type," said Public Safety Director Richard Landolt.
Fairhope Brewing crowler screen grab.jpg

Meet the crowler: Fairhope Brewing Company introduces a new beer-to-go format Wednesday, and has released a video to acquaint patrons with the concept.

Wednesday is a big day for Alabama breweries - So big that the folks at Fairhope Brewing Company can't wait for sunrise.

"We're actually going to open at midnight Tuesday for a little while," said Managing Partner Brian Kane.

Thanks to a change in state law, June 1 is the first day that Alabama breweries will be able to sell beer directly to customers for off-premise consumption. That's both a convenience to customers and a new revenue stream for the state's booming beer industry. Kane described it as the norm in many other beer-producing states.

Statewide, some if not all breweries will begin offering beer in growlers, which are reusable 32- or 64-oz glass jugs, and crowlers, a 32-ounce aluminum equivalent. While "crowler" is a hard word to love, the format does have some attractions - and the gang at Fairhope Brewing, aided by video wizard Kris Skoda, has released a tongue-in-cheek video extolling them. Fairhope won't be doing growlers, but it's ready to fill a crowler for you.

The Crowler Initiative -- Pelican Station from Camera Brain on Vimeo.

What makes a crowler different from a growler? It can keep beer fresh longer, doesn't shatter if you drop it and when you're done, you recycle it like any other can. What makes it different from a quart-size can of beer purchased at a gas station in an adjacent state? You decide what goes in it, and it's filled and sealed before your very eyes, which frankly is kind of neat.

(If you can't wait until Wednesday to see it for yourself, go to Cottage Hill Package in Mobile, where they've been filling growlers for five or six years and have more recently added crowlers to the mix. The store keeps about 15 specialty beers, including at least one Fairhope selection, on tap, with selections and prices listed on the store's website.)

Kane said that at Fairhope Brewing, a crowler will run from $8 to $10. The brewery also will have some prepackaged bottles in various sizes available for sale - and not just the staples that it's already been bottling for retail distribution, but some of its more specialized experiments, like a version of its Merry Widows Imperial Stout that was aged in a port wine barrel. "We saved a couple of kegs in the back just for a rainy day," Kane said.

Kane said that with the legalization of off-premise sales, Fairhope Brewing can now better serve tourists who come into its taproom at 914 Nichols Ave. Previously, if visitors to Fairhope or the nearby beaches found something they liked in the taproom, they had to visit a third-party retailer if they wanted to take any of it home. Now they can buy straight from the source.

Kane stressed however, that Fairhope isn't out to undercut its own retailers. Even with people free to carry bottles and crowlers out the door, the taproom will still be more of a specialty shop than a supermarket.

But he's looking forward to the end of a longtime source of frustration, both for brewers and their customers. "A lot of folks come here thinking that's where you buy it," he said. That's partly because it has been the norm elsewhere for years - and now it will be in Alabama as well.
U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions of Mobile

Jeff Sessions was the first U.S. senator to endorse Donald Trump as president and is the New Yorker's top adviser on foreign policy.

He's reportedly one of Trump's closest allies in Washington, D.C. As an immigration hardliner, he's embraced Trump's views on immigration reform that include the construction of wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. One of his former aides, Stephen Miller, is on Trump's team as a senior campaign consultant.

So why is Sessions, the 69-year-old four-term senator from Mobile, considered merely a long-shot to join the Trump ticket as the first vice presidential nominee from Alabama since John Sparkman in 1952?

In short, Alabama's electoral votes are already in Trump's pocket.

"The fact that Alabama is as sure to go 'R' as anything can be in politics does work against state leaders such as Sessions who otherwise would be a prime prospect for a VP nomination," said William Stewart, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Alabama.

Stated Larry Powell, a communications studies professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham: "Alabama is going to be a red state regardless, so there is no advantage in having Jeff Sessions (or anybody else from Alabama) on the ticket."

'Don't bet on me'

Sessions has said "don't bet any money on me" when asked whether he was on Trump's short-list of vice presidential choices.

Still, in an interview with The Daily Caller last week, he said that he's open to the possibility. "If I could help him in some way -- and he were to ask me -- I would consider it like any other citizen should," Sessions said.

Oddsmaker Paddy Power has Sessions at 10/1 odds as Trump's VP pick, on par with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and ahead of other former GOP presidential candidates - Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (16/1), Ben Carson (12/1), Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (16/1) and Carly Fiorina (25/1).

But the oddsmaker has Sessions trailing Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, whose appearance at Trump Tower last week fueled speculation about his prospects. Other names being mentioned are former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.

According to a New York Times piece this weekend, a few select "battleground" regions will determine the election: Florida; North Carolina/Virginia in the Upper South; the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan; and Arizona.

Even if Alabama were a battleground state, Brent Buchanan, a Republican strategist and political consultant based in Montgomery, said the state's nine electoral votes are too few to tilt the outcome. "Nine votes isn't going to win this election," he said.

Alabama has been a consistent GOP bet during presidential elections since the 1970s. And Trump was the overwhelming winner of the March 1 GOP primary.

Buchanan said he believes that a middle-of-the-road politician like Kasich would be a solid pick for Trump. "He needs to worry about the moderate, business-minded Republicans ... it's also noted that those folks are the ones with the checkbooks," said Buchanan. "He needs someone more in the vein of a John Kasich as his running mate and someone who can win a sing state such as Virginia, Ohio or Florida."

Regarding Sessions, Buchanan said: "He probably would bring a lot to the ticket from a governance standpoint for conservatives. But conservatives are not who Donald Trump needs to worry about."

'Balance the ticket'

Sessions' advantage, political observers note, is the Washington experience that he offers for the ticket.

"The only attribute that Senator Sessions has that could appeal to Mr. Trump would be that he is an experienced politician who could help balance the ticket in that sense," said Steven Taylor, political science professor at Troy University. "One the other hand, however, the Trump campaign is so heavily predicated on 'outsiderness' that he may not want such a balancing."

Trump, however, has been quoted as saying that he'd like a VP candidate with a history of political involvement as opposed to an outsider like himself. Also, during an interview on ABC's "This Week," a Trump campaign official said a vice president should be someone "who knows Washington, is able to deal with Congress and could be viewed as somebody who could be president."

Buchanan believes that the unorthodox nature of the Trump campaign -- successful to this point -- could affect his selection of a running mate.

"Usually a vice presidential pick doesn't bring on a whole lot of votes," said Buchanan. "But this is a very-non traditional campaign with an extremely non-traditional candidate."

Sessions wouldn't bring unpredictability to the ticket, Stewart said.

"Alabama has become so predictably red that we can't expect to see Clinton or Trump around here any time soon," he said, noting it's unlikely either major party candidate will make a campaign stop in Alabama before Election Day.

But there could be opportunity for Sessions if Trump wins the presidency. "I think he'd definitely jump over to a cabinet post if given the opportunity," he said.
J. Pepper Bryars, who grew up in Mobile and lives in Huntsville, is a conservative columnist for AL.com. Contact him at mail@jpepperbryars.com.

Many feared that President Barack Obama's recent speech in Hiroshima would descend into just another stop on his worldwide "Apology Tour" of imagined grievances and revised histories.

Thankfully, our president stopped short of saying he was sorry for his predecessor's decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan and thus putting an end to World War II. But true to form, he did color the remarks with the left's usual themes of moral equivalencies, multiculturalism and self-loathing.

We were all just bad nations doing bad things, the speech seemed to imply, and dropping the bomb was probably the worst of it all.

In fairness, some on the left still criticized Obama for not offering a full throated apology.

"War crimes leave wounds," wrote University of Norte Dame professor Daniel Philpott in the New York Daily News, attempting to lay the moral foundation for a presidential apology. "When a nation's government places its patriotism and its policy behind a gravely immoral deed and continues to justify this deed, it invites both its citizens and future governments to commit further grave wrongs."

A gravely immoral deed?

Tell that to those who were spared from the then-inevitable invasion of Japan, which estimates showed would have cost the lives of nearly a million Allied troops along with 10 million Japanese, who were all training to defend their god-emperor to the last man, woman, and child.

So what's worse? Dropping the bombs and ending the war quickly and decisively, or allowing the battles to drag on, killing more and more with each passing day?

The president's penitent tone and the left's call for even greater remorse show how little they understand about the nature of war, especially about how to win one with the least amount of suffering. Truth is, if you try fighting a war on the cheap - in both blood and treasure - you'll likely end up spilling more of both.

The willingness to inflict devastating blows in war may actually be a good measure of the war's necessity to begin with. If it's not worth fighting to win, perhaps it isn't worth fighting at all, or else everyone may walk away bloodied with nothing settled and another war will loom.

War is always tragic, so this isn't to say that dropping those atomic bombs and incinerating entire cities is something to joyously celebrate, but they're certainly not actions to apologize for, be ashamed of, or allow to be rewritten by later generations.

But we're in real danger of those things happening.

Obama's speech is the closest an American president has come to apologizing for the atomic bombs, and younger generations aren't being taught why they were dropped in the first place. A survey conducted last year by the Pew Research Center showed that while 70% of Americans over 65 believe that dropping the atomic bombs were justified, only 47% of 18- to 29-year-olds thought similarly.

A few weeks ago I took my grandchildren to celebrate their great-grandfather's 92nd birthday. He was a paratrooper in World War II and would have been one of those to invade Japan, and possibly one of the expected casualties. I couldn't help thinking as I listened to him recount his service while my children ate cake and ice cream: if those atomic bombs hadn't dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, would these children even exist?

To recognize the necessity of some wars, and to accept that evil in the world must be fought honorably yet sometimes brutally, isn't immoral. Sometimes it's the only courageous thing one can do to ward off worse suffering in a terrible situation.

"War is brutish, inglorious, and a terrible waste," wrote Mobile native Eugene Sledge, who captured life as a Marine in World War II in his bestselling memoir, "With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa."

"We thought the Japanese would never surrender," Sledge wrote, describing the moment they learned their war was over and they wouldn't need to invade Japan. "Many refused to believe it. Sitting in stunned silence, we remembered our dead. So many dead. So many maimed. So many bright futures consigned to the ashes of the past."

Yet so many more were saved, and we can thank the bombs for that.
Dunkirk, France  The morning sun breaks over the high-roofed farm buildings, setting the tea tent into a cold shade below. It is 10am in Liniere, the refugee camp in the northern French city of Dunkirk, but no one is awake yet.

Most women, children and men have spent the night trying to find a passage out of France, while others slept fretfully with images of Iraq teasing their dreams. Without work, there is little except the old habits of citizenship to hurry them out of the wooden huts.

Dilara*, a 27-year-old Kurdish mother, walks down the camps main street towards a former Red Cross tent; a sign with the word school hangs on the outside. She and three other women, all fleeing the war and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) groups grip on northern Iraq, are learning to teach the 300 children living at the camp.

Their work offers an escape from thoughts of the lorries constantly rolling towards their preferred destination: England.

I would like to be a teacher in England, says Dilara, gripping a mini whiteboard covered in arithmetic. For her, teaching in the camp is work experience for when she can do the job properly.

In the school, I am happier. I do not think about anything, she adds. When I stay at home all day I am thinking and thinking.

Dilara, along with three other Kurdish women  Nasreen, Shepol and Peyam  began helping as teaching assistants in January, when the school was still an old scout tent at the Basroch camp three kilometres into town. Hidden in a muddy copse of trees opposite the tidy lawns of a housing estate, the litter-riven site had attracted such criticism that the mayor of Grande-Synthe, one of Dunkirks districts, opened the Liniere camp in late February .

Anyone can enter

Three months on, newcomers were met with heated wooden huts perched on gravel, a laundry, food trailer, shower blocks  and the school, which recently upgraded from the Red Cross tent to tidy wooden buildings.

The vast majority of those at the camp are from the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. A sense of order feels palpable here, unlike at the Jungle settlement in Calais , further up the coast, where residents come from all over Africa and the Middle East. While the Jungle feels more like a real township, Liniere is something else, and its problems are just becoming clear.

One issue is that the site built to take in Kurdish families from Calais  where, according to volunteers and Kurdish refugees, ethnic differences had begun to smoulder  is now well-enough established to give smugglers a stable base from which to operate, taking those who want to reach the UK, where many say they have relatives waiting for them.

Alarmed, the French government has begun to re-take control of the camp from the grassroots volunteer group, Utopia 56, via the more formally equipped aid organisation AFEJI, which currently acts as joint camp manager . AFEJI told Al Jazeera that it is working more closely with the French state because of the increase in smuggling.

The lack of registration at the camp causes particular concern. There are two ways into the camp: the formal entrance, which has six gendarmes checking passports; and the back entrance, which involves a walk down the central reservation of a motorway and a hop over a barrier.

Virtually anyone can enter.

READ MORE: The lost generation  Children in conflict zones

There is little incentive to utilise the formal check-in system because, under the Dublin Convention (PDF) , registering as a refugee in France will make the chances of asylum in England far less likely. The result is a situation in which no one quite knows anyone else and rumours about smugglers and other criminal assaults circulate freely, adding to the sense of anxiety.

Still, the relative safety of the school enabled its co-founders, Ginny Parry and Rory Fox, to find several of their first Kurdish teachers.

Dilara and the others have helped us understand what Kurdish school was like, explains Parry.

So the [women] have been useful in saying, Yes, this is what they are used to in Kurdistan; they need this. And with them being [Kurdish] promoters of the school in the community, it stops some of the suspicions [felt towards volunteers].

Having Kurdish women teaching at the school has provided some sense of normality for all those involved.

The teaching assistants calm children who are upset, deliver a sharp word, explain complex geometry and have even taught the English teachers how to count to 20 and say divide and multiply in the childrens own tongue. In return, the Kurdish teachers improve their English skills and are taught various teaching techniques.

Here the children make me smile, says Dilara. I am safe here. I can make my English better.

Disappearing pupils

But the camps growing instability is increasingly being felt inside the school as smugglers move young people out.

Fox recalls a young Kurdish woman named Sairan who arrived at the school when she was 15. She had travelled from Erbil across much of Europe and was en route to her father in London.

Fox, who has previously been a headteacher at secondary schools in the UK, says Sairan seemed committed to her studies.

But just after being told she could sit her maths GCSE exams at the British School in Paris, Sairan disappeared. Those at the camp say she gave up waiting for legal help and got on a lorry to London.

Shes the kind of kid who would have come out with [the highest marks]. She was very bright, says Fox. What weve got to remember is that nobody wants to stay in the camp, and theyre only in the camp in order to get out of the camp.

Sairans opportunity came along, and she got out.

As many of the camps 1,200 residents , including its pupils, continue to disappear, the school has had a further setback. According to AFEJI, the French government wants the education facility, as AFEJI calls the school tent, to cease operations and for the children to attend state schools in Dunkirk from September.

The teachers say that they would welcome the plan if parents wouldnt suspect it was a way to keep them in France, rather than clearing their route to England.

Incentives to keep moving

Yet, the odds of asylum in the UK are stacked against the refugees. The Dublin Convention states that the refugees should seek asylum in the first safe country they reach. If they continue their journey, they will be sent back to that country.

Furthermore, not all of Iraq is considered dangerous, so refugees may eventually be returned to cities such as Erbil.

There are already 26,492 people who have been waiting at least six months in the UK to have their case resolved, according to the governments immigration statistics released this month.

One human rights lawyer spoke anonymously to Al Jazeera, saying that with no legal structure in Dunkirk, its all lawyers doing pro bono work to help the refugees.

Still, because little legal help is available to them in France and they can kick-start their asylum claims by landing on English soil, refugees are incentivised to continue catching lorries out of France.

People are risking their lives to get to England even though they dont have solid asylum claims, so they are almost definitely going to be told to leave again, the lawyer says.

In the camp, women such as Dilara can help anchor the girls in school. In the best scenario, according to Fox, there is a double-generation attendance with mothers coming to teach and daughters coming to learn.

[They] continue the lesson by arguing about the problem at home, says Fox. Girls sometimes return with their parent the next day still discussing a particular point.

While the school is appealing to the refugees as a small patch of England in France, it is no real substitute for those refugees determined to join their families on the other side of the channel.

For those like Dilara, the camp and the attempt at normality it offers are only a stepping stone until they reach London.

As she closes the school for the day, Parry reflects on what this means for the camp.

E verybody here has an endgame, she says.

*Names of the refugees have been changed for their protection.

Follow Jessica Staufenberg on Twitter @ StaufenbergJ
Hatay, Turkey  As Syrias civil war continues into its sixth year with no end in sight, more than 2.7 million Syrians have fled the violence in their home towns and crossed the border into Turkey. While some find themselves in refugee camps, others have moved across into pockets of Turkey.

Jabal, an impoverished neighbourhood in the southernmost Turkish province of Hatay, is one such pocket. This neighbourhood, 40km away from the Turkish/Syrian border, is now home to hundreds of widows and orphans who are trying to reconcile the loss of land and loved ones in Syria.

Most refugee families have arrived in Turkey with few possessions and have few prospects of earning a livelihood within Turkey. The Turkish government has made attempts to address the influx of refugees outside refugee camps by providing free basic services such as medical care and schooling.

However, for displaced widows and children, often living in derelict accommodation with no source of income and fast approaching the end of their life savings, the daily fight for survival is real.

*names of the children have been changed
At least three people have died after severe storms battered southwest Germany.

The water raged through the town of Braunsbach, picking up cars and rocks and sending them hurtling through the narrow streets.

Residents said the streets were flooded by up to three metres of water, and some of the cars that floated past still had people inside.

Among the casualties was a 60-year-old man who became trapped in an underground car park when it flooded.

The storms that hit Germany are just the latest of storms which have been causing problems over Europe recently.

On Saturday, 11 people  10 of them children  were injured after being struck by lightning during a birthday celebration at Parc Monceau in central Paris. The group had been taking shelter under a tree when the lightning struck.

On the same day, Poland was also hit by severe weather and one man was killed after he was struck by lightning while hiking down the Babia Gora mountain.

Over the next few days the storms will continue to rumble across Europe. The greatest risk of seeing some damaging hail or flooding rains today is over Poland and Belarus.
The groups current battlefield losses will not automatically translate into meaningful victories for the coalition.

Alia Brahimi is a specialist in terrorism and political trends in the Middle East and North Africa.

The battle to recapture Fallujah from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has gathered momentum, with thousands of government-linked forces encircling the strategic town, supported from the air and advised on the ground by the United States-led anti-ISIL coalition.

It is worth recalling that Fallujah was the first Iraqi city to fall to ISIL (also known as ISIS) in January 2014  a defeat that starkly reflected political failure in Iraq, more than anything else.

In the year leading up to the ISIL takeover, Anbar province was engulfed by popular demonstrations against the marginalisation and brutalisation of Sunnis.

In response, the prime minister of the time, Nouri al-Maliki, called in the armed forces and  on television  described the issue as part of an inescapable religious battle rooted in the 7th century.

ISIL setbacks

This fateful decision, unsurprising given Malikis sectarian track record, only reaffirmed the protests narrative about government heavy-handedness towards Sunnis  and, crucially, it created a militarised space in which ISIL gained a momentous foothold. By the summer, its leader had announced his so-called caliphate.

Fallujah is the latest stop for government-linked security forces on their circuitous march to retake control of Mosul, Iraqs second city and a major ISIL nerve centre.

ISIL is certainly on the strategic back foot in Iraq, and it must also contend with the prospect of imminent offensives against its regional capitals in Syria (Raqqa) and Libya (Sirte).

Since last autumn, setbacks for ISIL have piled up, forcing its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to theorise in an audio address that affliction is an inevitable decree.

Both sides can lose. Fallujah fell to ISIL in the first place because of wider political conditions in Iraq and the region. by

Alongside a stream of territorial losses in Iraq, and some in Syria, ISIL has been pushed out of its eastern spheres of influence in Libya. According to the Pentagon, air strikes have killed 25,000 fighters, including senior leaders such as Abu Waheeb, and important Western recruiters like Neil Prakash.

Coalition air strikes have also relentlessly targeted cash storage facilities in Syria and Iraq, destroying $800m so far, as well as oil production capabilities and convoys.

At the same time, ISILs smuggling economy has been hard hit by a clampdown on the part of the Turkish authorities, as well as territorial losses in the border regions.

ISIL has been forced to cut wages by 50 percent, leading to low morale and a high jump in defections. Only 200 foreign fighters arrive each month, down from a rate of 1,500 a month one year ago, and as a consequence, its military training course for new recruits has been significantly truncated.

Coalitions shortcomings

However, while ISIL may be approaching crisis point, so too is the ad hoc anti-ISIL coalition.

Political turmoil in Baghdad has twice this month culminated in the storming of the fortified Green Zone, by protesters fed up with government delays in implementing reforms.

The parliament is paralysed. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has lurched from one crisis to another, including a concerted bid by parliament to block his proposed government of technocrats  and an attempt by Maliki to oust him from power.

At the same time, the low price of oil has shone a blinding light on corruption, and left the government struggling to balance its books  just as it must ramp up spending in the war against ISIL.

OPINION: ISILs evolving strategy should raise security concerns

This general disarray is reflected dangerously within the anti-ISIL military campaign, where deadly clashes have occurred between supposedly allied factions  most recently at Tuz Khurmato and Ramadi.

Attempts have been made to turn the page on the well-documented crimes of government-linked Shia militia, by bringing in thousands of Sunni fighters and giving them the front seat for the Fallujah assault.

However, an enduring question mark hovers over the fate of civilians in the days and weeks after liberation.

For its part, the US is notably escalating direct combat support to anti-ISIL forces, including targeting assistance, advisers at battalion level and artillery fire, yet the US State Department polling has found that nearly one third of Iraqis believe that the US supports terrorism in general or [ISIL] specifically (PDF).

Syrian and elsewhere

Over in Syria, there is still no consensus on how to deal with President Bashar al-Assad, whose policy of repression and its consequences are clearly among the main drivers of ISILs rise in Syria and renaissance in Iraq.

The ceasefire brokered in February, which enabled humanitarian access as well as prominent victories against ISIL, as at Palmyra, has all but collapsed; in fact, ISIL may seek to retake Palmyra in the coming weeks.

OPINION: Libyas litmus test with ISIL

Meanwhile, Kurdish non-state actors are the main ground partners for the anti-ISIL coalition, yet, some are known to have committed grave abuses against Syrian Arabs and, in April, one unit paraded the corpses of moderate Syrian rebels in public.

These and other excesses have led to the accusation that, with the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Kurds have created their own version of ISIL.

In Libya, at least three rival coalitions are planning anti-ISIL offensives, each with their own operations rooms. The concern is not only the lack of a coordinated campaign, but also the possibility that these clusters of actors may well clash with one another.

It is important to note, too, that ISIL is far from a spent force. The threat remains high in North Africa, with Morocco thwarting 25 ISIL plots in the past year. The latest of these occurred last week, when a Chadian national was arrested for planning to attack Western diplomatic and tourist targets.

Arrests and seizures of heavy weaponry continue in Algeria and Tunisia, and in Egypt  where ISILs local branch is at the fore of a fierce anti-government insurgency in northern Sinai  ISIL elements are starting to infiltrate the capital.

In Libya, which is the weapons and logistics hub for many plots in neighbouring states, ISIL remains entrenched in Sirte and controls 300km of coastline around it, and plans are clearly afoot to soon storm the oil crescent region.

Farther afield, ISIL and allied groups are continuing their slow creep into Gaza, Yemen, eastern Afghanistan, and Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon such as Ain al-Helweh.

They are also fanning out to newer frontiers such as Southeast Asia  the Philippines in particular.

In any case, the war against ISIL is not a zero-sum game. ISILs current battlefield losses will not automatically translate into meaningful victories for the anti-ISIL coalition.

Both sides can lose. Fallujah fell to ISIL in the first place because of wider political conditions in Iraq and the region.

Urgent work must now take place on this level, in Iraq, Syria, Libya and elsewhere, to ensure that any military advances against ISIL in the coming weeks will translate into lasting gains.

Alia Brahimi is the Director of Contest Global, a strategic consultancy firm. She is a specialist in terrorism and political trends in the Middle East and North Africa.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Taliban confirm attack in which officials say at least 35 people were also kidnapped.

The Taliban has attacked a series of buses in northern Afghanistan, killing at least 12 people and taking dozens of others hostage, officials said.

Afghan officials said that the dead were civilians.

Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesperson for the Taliban, told Al Jazeera that four buses carrying around 200 people were stopped by their fighters in Ali Abad District in Kunduz province on Tuesday.

A provincial deputy police commander confirmed to Al Jazeera that the Taliban had killed 12 people and kidnapped 35 security personnel. He said that four dead bodies of security personnel had been taken to the provincial hospital.

Mujahid said there were a number of Afghan security officials dressed in civilian clothes travelling on the bus, which was en route from Kabul to the Takhar and Kunduz provinces.

Thousands killed

The Taliban did not set any demands for the release of the people it was holding.

The Taliban seized power and ruled Afghanistan from 1996, but were toppled by a US-led invasion after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

Almost 15 years later, about 13,000 troops from a US-NATO coalition remain in the country, including about 9,800 Americans.

The violence has killed or wounded about 11,000 civilians in the past year alone, as well as 5,500 government troops and police officers.
Leaked recordings of heavyweight politicians discussing Brazils sprawling kickback scandal caused more headaches for acting President Michel Temer, with a new tape forcing his anti-corruption minister to quit.

The government is in severe crisis The government is in severe crisis and I would actually predict that were going to see several more cabinet ministers falling in the next month. Eight of the minsters appointed by the interim president are under indictment for corruption or other charges against them. It looked, a month ago, when the impeachment proceedings were going full speed ahead in the senate that he [Interim President Michel Temer] in fact might manage to outstay the trial  but there are several senators who voted in favour of having an impeachment trial, who are now backtracking, saying they might vote against impeachment. And if a couple more ministers collapse in the next week or two, its possible that more senators might change their mind. If impeachment people do not get two-thirds of the senate, she [Rousseff] will come back to office, and she will be in a very uncomfortable situation having her vice president [Temer] basically stabbing her in the back and trying to overthrow her. He himself is under investigation for serious crimes and corruption  and could easily then be indicted and have himself removed from office for impeachable offences.  James Green, director of The Brazil Initiative at Brown University

Transparency Minister Fabiano Silveira was the second member of the interim administration to leave in only 16 days on Monday because of recorded conversations about the investigation into corruption at the state oil company Petrobras and the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff.

The new turmoil started when TV Globo broadcast a recording of Silveira giving legal advice to the Senate president, who is under investigation for links to corruption at Petrobras. The recording also shows Silveira criticising the investigation itself, which has implicated some of Brazils most prominent politicians and businessmen.

In its report late on Sunday, TV Globo said Silveira had repeatedly contacted investigators in the Petrobras case to seek information on the accusations against Senate chief Renan Calheiros, but he did not succeed in getting any details.

The conversation was recorded at Calheiros residence some time before the Senate voted to suspend Rousseff pending an impeachment trial and put the government in Temers hands.

Anti-corruption protests

Brazilian media had said Temer met with Cabinet ministers in the afternoon and decided to keep Silveira on the job for now, with Silveira saying he was not involved in any wrongdoing. But later Silveira sent a letter of resignation, saying it was best that he leave the job despite the fact that nothing is hitting my behaviour.

Temer did not announce any pick to succeed Silveira, who came under intense criticism from Brazilians and international groups following the TV Globo report.

According to the union for workers at the Transparency Ministry, about 200 officials of the anti-corruption body offered their resignations to protest against Temers initial decision to keep Silveira in the job.

Rousseffs attorney: Brazil is like House of Cards

Earlier Monday, employees at the ministry blocked Silveira from entering the building in the capital of Brasilia. They also staged a protest in which they cleaned the front doors of the building and his office.

The newspaper O Globo printed an extra editorial to demand Silveiras resignation, echoing calls by allies of Rousseff, who argues that her foes ousted her because she allowed the Petrobras investigation to go forward.





The Berlin-based watchdog group Transparency International also called for Silveira to go. In a statement, the group said it would halt any conversations with Temers interim administration until a full investigation is conducted and a new minister with adequate experience in the fight against corruption is appointed.

Another leaked recording forced Temers planning minister to take a leave of absence last week. In that recording, Romero Juca suggested there should be a pact to impeach Rousseff and appeared to link it to obstructing the Petrobras investigations.

Meanwhile, the newspaper O Estado de S Paulo reported that Temers seven-year-old son, Michelzinho, is the registered owner of properties worth $550,000. The interim president told the daily that he transferred the assets as a way to anticipate his will and that his daughters from previous marriages also received property in similar conditions.

The report also said Temers total assets nearly doubled between 2006 and 2014.
Sixteen-year-old victim of attack, which was filmed and posted online, recounts ordeal as police chief takes over case.

A 16-year-old girl in Rio de Janeiro was drugged and raped by about 30 men, who then posted a video of the attack to social media, in a crime that has shocked Brazil.

The alleged victim, her identity hidden, has now spoken about her ordeal.

I was drugged, I was very groggy, there were lots of people with guns, lots of young guys laughing and talking, she said.

It not only hurt me, it hurt my soul, because people judged me, tried to blame me for something which was not my fault by Teenage victim of gang rape

The images were widely circulated, shocking many in the country which suffers a high rate of criminal violence towards women.

The response to the victims complaint has also provoked outrage.

The initial police reaction has been labelled insensitive. There have also been comments, including death threats on social media, blaming the girl herself for the attack.

It not only hurt me, it hurt my soul, because people judged me, tried to blame me for something which was not my fault. They robbed me, not just in material goods, but in a physical way.

A police woman has now taken over the investigation since her predecessor was blamed for not taking the crime seriously enough.

She needs protection, said Cristina Bento, police chief for crimes against minors. She needs care. A rape crime did happen. Now what Im trying to find out is the extent of this rape, how many people were involved.

I want to collect all the evidence and present it to the prosecutors office, so they can present a robust case and all involved can be condemned for the crime they committed.

Meanwhile, police have issued photographs of several suspects and, backed by helicopters, dogs and armoured vehicles, raided the slum area of Rio de Janeiro where the attack is thought to have taken place.

Brazils Congress last year passed new laws to increase sentences for violence against women. But rights groups say at least 500,000 sexual assaults take place in Brazil every year.
Cairo to investigate allegations after senior official is accused by diplomats of insulting sub-Saharan Africans.

Cairo has said it will investigate accusations that a senior Egyptian official referred to sub-Saharan Africans as dogs and slaves during a recent UN conference in Kenya.

In a letter dated May 29, Kenyan diplomat Yvonne Khamati, chairwoman of the Africa Diplomatic Corp Technical Committee, said the unnamed Egyptian official made the uncivilised, undiplomatic, irresponsible, degrading and insulting comments last week at the end of the UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi.

The remarks were allegedly made in Arabic during consultation on the lack of quorum to pass resolutions affecting Gaza, Khamati said.

He spoke to his delegation in Arabic in the presence of African delegates. That speak:understand Arabic  AMB Yvonne Khamati -Yahaya (@YvonneKhamati) May 30, 2016

She asked for an apology and demanded that Egypt be banned from representing African interests in any negotiations as a result of the allegations, which sparked an outcry on social media.

Many Egyptians took to Twitter to protest against the alleged comments with the hashtag #WeAreSorryAfrica.

#WeAreSorryAfrica

We are ruled by a racist murderous military junta that despises its own people.    (@3arabawy) May 31, 2016

a reminder that as well as racist, Egypt's regime suffers from extreme cognitive dissonance. #WeAreSorryAfrica https://t.co/vrmXB6U6lN  Amro Ali (@_amroali) May 31, 2016

I hereby declare that the Egyptian minister that made those racist comments does not represent me #wearesorryafrica  Ahmed Adel (@click_mobinil) May 31, 2016

Cairo said on Tuesday that its foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, had ordered an immediate investigation into the allegations.

But it expressed its complete rejection of any attempts to cast doubt on it belonging to Africa and its perpetual defence of the continents interests.

It is completely unacceptable to make the mistake of generalising and making flimsy accusations against the Egyptian state and people that cast doubt on its African identity, the Egyptian foreign ministry said in a statement.

In Egypt, black Africans and other minorities have long complained of racism and discrimination
At least 19 others injured after massive fire breaks out at ammunition depot in Pulgaon, in central India.

A fire at a massive military ammunition depot in central India has killed at least 17 people and left many more injured, according to media reports.

The Press Trust of India news agency said on Tuesday that two officers were among the 17 soldiers who died in the blaze at the depot in Pulgaon, near the city of Nagpur in the state of Maharashtra.

The NDTV network also reported that 17 people had been killed in the huge blaze which it said had broken out after an explosion at the depot in the early hours of the morning.

Firefighters using ten fire engines worked through the night to contain the blaze, Ramesh Barde, a fire officer with the Nagpur fire department, told the AFP news agency.

The fire broke out at 1:30am and nearby fire engines reached the venue by 2:30am, he said.

The fire was brought under control by 6:15am. The situation is under control and a report is being prepared, he added, speaking from the scene.

Thousands of families living in the area had been evacuated from nearby towns and villages.
The United States has issued a warning to American citizens visiting Europe this summer to be on the alert about the potential threat of attacks.

The state department said on Tuesday targets could include major sporting events and tourist sites, as well as restaurants, commercial centres and transportation.

The large number of tourists visiting Europe in the summer months will present greater targets for terrorists planning attacks in public locations, especially at large events, it said.

We are alerting US citizens to the risk of potential terrorist attacks throughout Europe, targeting major events, tourist sites, restaurants, commercial centres and transportation.

OPINION: EUs terror problem will get worse

The Euro 2016 football championship, which runs from June 10 to July 10, is being held in France, which is under an extended state of emergency following last years deadly attacks in Paris.

Another major event held in the country is cyclings Tour de France, while millions of people are expected in Krakow, Poland, for the Roman Catholic Churchs World Day in late July.

Al Jazeeras Alan Fisher, reporting from Washington DC, said this was a standard warning from the state department ahead of what could become a very busy summer.

They are saying, Look, if youre travelling to any of these events, if youre moving around Europe, please be aware of the risks involved, he added.

Clearly, given the big summer of sport that is coming up in Europe and concerns with recent incidents in Belgium and France, there is heightened concern.

The state department warning expires on August 31.
South Korean officials say missile exploded at mobile launchpad in latest attempt to test ballistic capacity.

A North Korean attempt to fire a missile from its east coast has failed, South Korean officials said, in what would be the latest in a string of unsuccessful ballistic missile tests conducted by Pyongyang.

South Koreas Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that the North tried to launch an unidentified missile early in the morning from the town of Wonsan on Tuesday, but that it is likely to have failed.

Officials said later they were analysing the incident and gave no further details.

South Koreas official news agency, Yonhap, citing an unidentified government source, said the missile exploded at a mobile launchpad when the launch button was pressed.

Tension in Northeast Asia has been high since North Korea conducted a fourth nuclear test in January and followed that with a satellite launch and test launches of various missiles.

Japan put its military on alert on Monday for a possible North Korean ballistic missile launch.

We have no reports of any damage in Japan. We are gathering and analysing data. The defense ministry is prepared to respond to any situation, Japanese Minister of Defence General Nakatani said.

North Korea shows no sign of abandoning the development of nuclear missiles and so we will continue to work closely with the US and South Korea in response and maintain a close watch on North Korea.

Invasion rehearsal

The most recent launch follows Seouls rejection of an offer from the North to talks.

In April, Pyongyang attempted unsuccessfully to launch three suspected powerful intermediate-range Musudan missiles.

All three missiles exploded in mid-air or crashed, according to South Korean defence officials.

The Souths government believe the missile launches followed an order from the countrys leader Kim Jong-un in March to conduct tests of a nuclear warhead and ballistic missiles capable of carrying such warheads.

That order was thought to be part of Pyongyangs reaction to annual South Korea-US military drills that it sees as a rehearsal for invasion.
Those who escaped the besieged city described a lack of food, frequent executions, and forced domestic violence.

Amiriyat al-Fallujah  As the Iraqi military and allied Shia militias continue their campaign to regain control over Fallujah, a small number of families have managed to escape the besieged city.

Located 50km west of Baghdad in Anbar province, Fallujah was among the first to fall to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) in January 2014. For nearly 18 months now, Iraqi forces have kept Fallujah under siege.

Most of the families who succeeded in fleeing lived in the al-Hessie area, on Fallujahs southern outskirts, about 10km from the city centre.

Although Iraqi forces regained control of al-Hessie a few days ago, the area is not yet fully secured. ISIL fighters still manage to attack it, forcing families to leave their houses in fear of it falling back under ISIL control.

Al Jazeera spoke with some Fallujah residents who managed to flee the city in the past week.

Safia Jasim Saoud: Our biggest fear was to be caught by ISIL fighters



The route is never easy nor safe, but many families like us chose to take the journey in the hope of reaching a safe place, said Safia Jasim Saoud (Um Ahmad), 57, a Fallujah resident who escaped the city with her daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren on May 28.

Many of us lost sons and husbands. We lost our dignity. Food was scarce: We ate dried dates and tried to bake bread with date seeds. It was too much to endure.

They left the city after Saouds son-in-law advised them to flee owing to the Iraqi armys assault. Our biggest fear was to be caught by ISIL fighters. They have no mercy; they will execute anyone whom they catch or even suspect of trying to flee, she said.

The 10km journey to the Amiriyat al-Fallujah camp goes through an open, exposed area where there is no place to hide. Those escaping the city cannot afford to stop until they arrive at an Iraqi army checkpoint.

Upon arrival at the camp, her son-in-law was immediately detained by the Iraqi army. They took him, and they told us it was standard procedure to make sure that he had nothing to do with ISIL. But it has been three days now and he is not back yet, she said.

Saoud said that under ISIL rule our husbands and fathers were pushed to discipline us. Husbands would be forced to hit their wives for not wearing the niqab properly. If our men did not obey the orders of ISIL, they would face punishment.

When the attack on Fallujah began, ISIL tried to move all civilians from al-Hessie into the city, but many families refused to leave. They believed ISIL was trying to keep them from fleeing to later use them as human shields. ISIL responded by executing some of the areas residents to scare the rest into moving, but many families would still not leave.

Hussein Abdo Nassief: ISIL forced us to witness beheadings



ISIL forced us to witness beheadings. We have seen them throw people from the tops of buildings. We have walked through streets where corpses are left to rot and stray dogs would feed on them, said Hussein Abdo Nassief (Abu Ammar), 60, who used to live in Fallujah.

He added that ISIL fighters set up large screens in Fallujahs neighbourhoods to broadcast the executions.

ISIL made sure to spread terror among the civilians. If you didnt attend the public executions, then they made sure to show them on screens. They would even copy them on compact discs and deliver them to every house in the city.

They executed innocent people for reasons like shaving their beards or smoking a cigarette. They killed those who refused to cooperate or join them. Brave men who preached against ISIL lost their lives.

Abu Ammar, who was a soldier in the Iraqi army during Saddam Husseins rule, said he had never witnessed such brutality when he was a soldier.

Mohammad Abbas Jassam: Life in Fallujah was horrific



Thuraya Aboud Zaidan: We barely had anything to eat



We lived under inhuman conditions. We barely had anything to eat. We had to eat grass and dried dates  this is all that we had, and we called it food, says Thuraya Aboud Zaidan (Um Iman), 54, whose family was among those who succeeded in reaching Amiriyat al-Fallujah camp.

Supplies were very rare, and as the siege was fully imposed on Fallujah, it became impossible to get any kind of food supplies, she added.

Although many city residents had been losing their hopes of survival, the start of the attack on Fallujah gave some families the courage to leave.

We were barely alive anyway, and we thought it did not matter any more. We just had to leave at any risk, said Um Iman.
Russia has denied its planes carried out air strikes overnight against the Syrian rebel-held city of Idlib, which the Syrian Civil Defence says has killed at least 50 people.

Russian planes did not carry out any combat missions, to say nothing of any air strikes, in the province of Idlib, Igor Konashenkov, a Russian Defence Ministry spokesman, said in a statement on Tuesday.





The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said earlier on Tuesday the death toll was 23, including seven children.

Turkey also accused Russia of killing at least 60 people in its air strikes on Idlib.

Ten overnight strikes on Monday in Idlib hit areas around the National Hospital and other parts of the city centre, according to Rami Abdul-Rahman, head of the Observatory.

The air strikes are the most intensive on Idlib since the beginning of the truce, Rahman told the AFP news agency. Even though Idlib is not covered by the truce, it had been relatively calm with only intermittent raids.

The strikes on Monday evening on the north-western city, which is held by a coalition of rebel groups, including al-Nusra Front, come five days after Moscow said it was suspending strikes on Syrian gunmen.

The Russian Defence Ministry had said the pause was to allow groups who signed up for a US and Russian-backed cessation of hostilities a chance to cut their links with the al-Nusra, a powerful Syrian group with ties to al-Qaeda.

We have been hearing from different sources on the ground that more than eight areas have been targeted by Russian air strikes, Al Jazeeras Hashem Ahelbarra reported from Gaziantep in Turkey. One area is close to a hospital. Because of that explosion, half of the hospital was destroyed.

Ahelbarra said there were concerns that the death toll could climb as a rescue operation was under way.

Searching the rubble

Idlib is a major opposition stronghold run by a coalition of military factions, including conservative parties such as Ahrar al-Sham. There is also a strong presence by al-Nusra Front, he said.

The opposition says Russians are taking advantage of a ceasefire in place since February, and are trying to undermine defence lines of the opposition.

Idlib is considered the de facto capital for rebels.

Rebels have accused Russia of repeatedly targeting groups not linked to ISIL or al-Qaeda, while the US has said that battlefield alliances between al-Nusra and other rebels have complicated implementation of the truce, especially around the key northern city of Aleppo.

A volunteer with the Syrian Civil Defence, also known as the White Helmets rescue group, said the strikes appeared to have been carried out by Russian aircraft.

Rescue workers were searching for survivors under the rubble of the bombed buildings, the volunteer, who asked to be known only as Majed, told the dpa agency.

The Syrian conflict, which began with peaceful protests in March 2011, has spiralled into a multi-sided civil war.

The death toll has risen to more than 250,000 people while half the countrys population have been forced from their homes, according to UN estimates.
A former Miss Turkey has been handed a 14-month suspended prison sentence for insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan through a poem she shared on social media.

She is the latest of at least a dozen Turks to face such a sentence.





An Istanbul court found model Merve Buyuksarac, 27, guilty of insulting a public official but suspended the sentence on condition she does not repeat the act for the next five years, local media said on Tuesday.

Buyuksarac, who was crowned Miss Turkey in 2006, was briefly detained last year for sharing the poem on Instagram in 2014.

It was called the Masters Poem and referred to a high-level Turkish corruption scandal in 2014.

Her lawyer, Emre Telci, said he would file a formal objection to the verdict and appeal her case at the Strasbourg, France-based European Court of Justice.

These insult trials are being initiated in series, they are being filed automatically, Telci told The Associated Press news agency by telephone after the verdict.

Merve was prosecuted for sharing a posting that did not belong to her. My client has been convicted for words that do not belong to her.

WATCH: Turkeys media takeover

Before the verdict was announced, Erdogans lawyer argued in court that Buyuksaracs Instagram post had gone beyond the limits of criticism and amounted to an attack on the Turkish leaders personal rights, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

Insulting the president is a crime punishable by up to four years in jail in Turkey. The law was used infrequently until Erdogan became president in August 2014, since which time prosecutors have opened more than 1,800 cases for insulting him, including against cartoonists, journalists and teenagers.

Prosecutors are also pursuing a case against a German comedian who mocked Erdogan on German television.
UN releases figures after deadliest week of the year for refugees as 880 lost their lives in Mediterranean.

At least 2,510 refugees have died while making the perilous journey to Europe so far this year, the UN refugee agency said, with fears rising that many more will suffer the same fate.

According to UNHCR, the figure marks an increase of 25 percent from the same five-month period in 2015, when some 1,855 refugees drowned. In 2014, from January until the end of May, at least 57 people died en route to Europe.

Thus far 2016 is proving to be particularly deadly, William Spindler, a UNHCR spokesman, said. This highlights the importance of rescue operations as part of the response to the movement of refugees and migrants in the Mediterranean, and the need for real, safer alternatives for people needing international protection.

The announcement follows the deadliest week of 2016 for refugees at sea.

READ MORE: Refugee deaths intensify call for safe EU passages

Over the past week, a series of shipwrecks off the Libyan and Italian coasts killed at least 880 people. That number was included as part of the UNHCR announcement, and marked an increase on previous estimates of around 700 people.

According to some, unconfirmed, accounts, the recent increase in numbers is linked to efforts by smugglers to maximise income before the start of the holy month of Ramadan, in the coming week, Spindler said in a statement.

So far this year, at least 203,981 people have made the journey to Europe, which is a similar number to those who arrived in the continent last year in the same period.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) put the death toll from January to May at 2,443 people.

Both counts are regularly used by human rights organisations.

The IOM said most of those travelling to Italy were from Nigeria, Gambia, Senegal, Guinea and the Ivory Coast.

None of the deaths in May happened on the eastern Mediterranean route between Turkey and Greece, where arrivals have slowed to a trickle since the EU struck a deal with Ankara to curb the flow.

Analysis by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said that during the week of May 23 to May 30, an average of five refugees drowned per hour as they tried to flee to Europe.
Dr Marc Lamont Hill is an award-winning journalist and author and is the Steve Charles Professor of Media, Cities, and Solutions at Temple University. Hill is known for his work addressing the intersections of race, justice, politics and culture. His latest best-selling book is We Still Here: Pandemics, Policing, Protest and Possibility which follows on the success of Nobody: Casualties of Americas War on the Vulnerable from Flint to Ferguson. Hill has received numerous prestigious awards from the US National Association of Black Journalists, GLAAD, and the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.
Emma Green High school teacher Katherine Martinez-Malo, 41, squats 300 times at B3 Gym while attempting the Murph Challenge on Memorial Day. She was nervous about getting hurt because of the boot on her right foot, but she said she wanted to overcome whatever challenge was put in front of her for the exhilarating feeling that she finished.

Members of B3 Gym and the Gainesville community shed blood, sweat and tears in memory of Sgt. Jonathan Cote and Lt. Michael Murphy on Memorial Day.

About 40 people completed the Murph Challenge, named after the lieutenant who died in combat and favored the workout. The full exercise consists of two miles of running, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups and 300 squats.

Chris Boris Marhefka owns B3 Gym, located at 1527 NW. Sixth Street. Marhefka said he has completed the Murph Challenge four times and raised more than $1,000 each year in Jonathan Cotes memory.

Cote, who was Marhefkas fraternity brother in Sigma Phi Epsilon at UF, died after being held captive in Iraq for 523 days, beginning in November 2006.

Marhefka, 30, started the Jon Cote Memorial Scholarship to preserve the memory of someone who was willing to help others first, he said.

Cote returned to school after serving in the 82nd Airborne Division in the Army. His story fueled Marhefkas idea to give money to veterans going to college for their first semesters, particularly those attending Santa Fe College and UF.

Funded by philanthropies, Cotes family and friends and the Greek community at UF, the scholarship gives winners $1,500 to bridge the gap between the start of school and the time veterans receive benefits from the G.I. Bill, Marhefka said. The G.I. Bill provides service members with money to pay for tuition, housing and other fees while they attend college.

B3 Gyms Memorial Day Murph Challenge will raise more than $1,000 for the scholarship this year, he said.

Emma Green Jennifer Sager, 40, works on completing 100 pull-ups for the Memorial Day Murph Challenge at B3 Gym. Sager was determined to finish no matter how long it took and said, "I would be doing this if I was 60; I'd still be coming out here."

Jennifer Sager, a 40-year-old member of B3 Gym and a veterinary nurse at UF, donated $25 to attempt the challenge in honor of her friends and family who served in the military.

Its about completing the workout today no matter how long it takes, Sager said.

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Katherine Martinez-Malo, a 41-year-old high school teacher, wore a boot on her injured foot while doing the challenge.

This place inspires me, she said. This boot is just one more obstacle that I can overcome; thats what this place has taught me.

The gym was filled with cheers of encouragement from those watching on the sidelines as competitors found their breath and willpower.

(Cote) would probably have something to say to us: Just keep serving and helping people, Marhefka said.
So, lets talk about The Donald. Lets not talk about his obscene, blanket remarks labeling illegal immigrants as criminals bent on destroying society or the fact he thinks Islam somehow has a hatred for the U.S. that nobody else can see. Rather, lets talk about the fact he can make his massive media attention devoid of any actual news to work to his advantage.

The medias love fest with Donald Trump should not be all that shocking. The media, like any other business, needs a profit, and the media can only do that by gaining ratings and sponsors. No one can put eyeballs to television screens like a celebrity mogul who says whatever he wants.

Where media outlets fail to knock Trump down just like any other candidate is their inability to get him to answer a question in a straightforward manner. Whenever the alphabet soup of an answer comes out of The Donalds mouth without any real coherence, the interviewer will usually go onto the next question without posing much resistance.

However, it goes beyond blaming the media, because Trump himself is playing the networks like a finely tuned violin, especially last week with him clogging the news cycle with nearly every Clinton family controversy that ever graced a 1990s newspaper, along with new attacks against Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. They gave him multiple hours of coverage on the 24-hour news cycle.

More importantly, these attacks were the kind Trump thoroughly enjoys because it gave him control of the conversation once again. In Trumps campaign, not all news is good news. For example, Trump in the news cycle for refusing to disclose his tax returns is not-so-good news. It puts Trump on the defensive side, a place he doesnt want to be no matter how much of a counterpuncher he claims he is.

This is how Trump utilizes the media to his advantage: a smokescreen to distract from the continual and justified criticisms about his policies he wishes to create if he were to reach the presidency. It is much easier attacking Hillary Clinton or a prominent GOP official than discussing the details of his plan to build a wall across the southern border.

Instead, we are stuck with a smokescreen of shallowness where none of the issues can be discussed. Even Trumps issues of immigration take a backseat to the insults and conspiracy theories being thrown around by the candidate.

Right now, the only person it is benefitting is Trump, and until the media learns how to approach him differently, we will continue to face news cycles clogged with anything but actual prescriptions on how to make America greater than it already is.

Kevin Foster is a UF political science senior. His column appears on Tuesdays.

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Shuji Kajiyama U.S. President Barack Obama lays wreaths at the cenotaph at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, western Japan, Friday, May 27, 2016. Obama on Friday became the first sitting U.S. president to visit the site of the world's first atomic bomb attack, bringing global attention both to survivors and to his unfulfilled vision of a world without nuclear weapons. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama)

On Friday, President Barack Obama made a remarkably historic visit to Hiroshima, Japan, calling for a moral revolution and a world without nuclear weapons in his address. If this rhetoric sounds at all familiar, thats because, well, it is.

Three months into his presidency, in 2009 (many of us were in middle or early high school. Time flies so quickly!), Obama stood before a crowd in Prague and said, So today, I state clearly and with conviction Americas commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons, to which the crowd applauded and the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided on a new peace prize laureate.

Now, seven years later, we can look back at our countrys nuclear developments and determine whether Obamas words in Prague and in Hiroshima stand true. Unfortunately, the answer is no, they havent. In fact, his administration and the Pentagon currently push a nuclear modernization program set to cost $1 trillion over the next three decades.

Publicly, the Obama administration argues these costs are necessary to revitalize the infrastructure and operating systems of the nuclear storage and deployment sites. Anyone whos seen the epic Last Week Tonight with John Oliver video is well aware of our haphazardly managed nuclear facilities, some of which still use floppy disks on computers that look like they could barely run the 1970s version of Pong.

In reality, though, the justification for this new modernization effort reflects a new post-Crimea strategy against Russia and a degree of political dealing. The budget proposal for the 2017 fiscal year specifically highlights how the budget allows for the Department of Defense to modernize our nuclear arsenal within a broader effort to combat Russian aggression in Eastern Europe.

And while the efforts are framed in terms of modernization and justified with the crumbling infrastructure of our nuclear sites, which is in itself a serious issue, much of the costs of this initiative relate to expansions of weapons themselves: Were talking about 12 new missile submarines, up to 100 new bombers and 400 land-based missiles, either new or refurbished, according to The New York Times.

Even the hawk and maverick Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called the initiative very, very, very expensive, and further asked if we really need the entire Triad, referring to the land, sea and air-based deployment methods for nukes.

This whole nuclear business is yet another example of how Obama will say one thing in front of the microphone, while pursuing literally the exact opposite agenda behind closed doors.

And its not just nukes: He stands before the nation in his State of the Union addresses and calls for comprehensive immigration reform, while simultaneously earning the title deporter-in-chief from Latino advocacy groups like the National Council on La Raza. For however much you may like the president  and theres a lot to appreciate about him  this discrepancy between action and rhetoric is something we must hold him accountable for.

We are not bound to repeat the mistakes of the past. We can learn. We can choose. We at the Alligator would encourage Obama to heed his words from Hiroshima. We know congressional obstructionism and current international military challenges really do not bode well for the prospect of peace currently, but right now, this initiative is akin to a Cold War-era arms race.

We need to be vigilant in our efforts, concerted in our implementation. We need to be able to look at the prospect of nuclear non-proliferation and say those three words it seems weve long forgotten: Yes, we can.

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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

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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

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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]
Suresh Ramamurthi has been on American Banker's radar for some time now. In December, we named the chairman and chief technology officer of CBW Bank our 2015 Innovator of the Year.

Ramamurthi, one of the finalists for the 2016 Digital Banker of the Year, keeps innovating. In the past 12 months, he and his team have introduced a health care payment portal based on a faster payment platform they created. They've set up an API marketplace that customers have already begun using to build their own products and services atop the bank's homegrown technology. And they've created an app for cloud-connected cars.

All at a $17 million-asset bank in Weir, Kansas, population 661, where farmers still stop by the branch to use the knife sharpener. Ramamurthi and his wife took over the bank when it was struggling to survive after the financial crisis, turned it around and have used it as a launching pad for new technologies.

"This bank and Suresh himself look at processes that are broken or that provide an unfavorable or lackluster experience to the end user, and try to find a way to fix them, as a banker and a technology provider," said Jacob Jegher, senior vice president at Javelin Strategy & Research. "For a very small bank, he's able to do a lot."

His years at Google give Ramamurthi some of his edge, Jegher said. "He says, 'I'm going to approach this like a technology project  if it doesn't work out, I'm sure there are things I could learn from it and apply to my future development efforts.' "

The technology behind CBW's new portal and many of its APIs is a system built by Ramamurthi's team at Yantra Financial Technologies (where he's also CEO) that uses debit networks to instantly disburse payments across multiple channels, including cards, the automated clearing house and internal systems.

The health care portal uses the faster payment platform to process and complete payments for claims. Doctors and hospitals can use it to see what they have billed for their services and what they got paid, and then direct the money to any bank account. One doctor's office already uses it to determine the timing of payments and make funds available in real time.

"The market is big. There's almost $2 trillion in health care payments happening in the country," Ramamurthi noted, referring mainly to the payments that insurance companies make to providers after adjudicating claims. "It's a very complex, many-to-many process," he said.

On the API front, the bank's new application programming interface for its faster-payments platform is being used by an online lender that wanted to improve its competitive advantage by being able to underwrite a loan in 30 seconds or less. It's using the bank's technology to deliver funds in real time as soon as a loan application is processed. CBW works in the background, debiting the lender's account and sending the money out to the customer.

This year, Ramamurthi says, CBW Bank is likely to launch an API marketplace for certain industries including, potentially, money services businesses.

"You would have access to disbursement of funds to a number of countries through the API," he said. "Which means you can now focus on the customer experience, customer acquisition. Everything else is abstracted to a couple of APIs."

Is he OK with the idea of acting like a utility in this case?

"As long as I'm making money, yes," Ramamurthi said.

Another idea he's kicking around is SKU-based lending, in which consumers could point their smartphone to anything for sale on the web or in a store and obtain financing for it, with the stock-keeping-unit number providing the product information.

CBW could potentially provide a "buy now, pay later" button on any SKU through an e-commerce engine.

"Say you're able to browse and see something you like for $500; we should be able to tell you in 30 seconds if you qualify for a loan, if marketplace lenders will finance it," Ramamurthi said. "If so, we will deliver the money and you will then owe $500 to the lender."

Ramamurthi also recently created a "commerce-enablement" application for refueling a cloud-connected car. It checks the vehicle identification number to ensure it's the correct car associated with the account and views the miles since the last fill up to confirm that the transaction makes sense. This could be used, for instance, by a truck-fleet company.

"We built it, it works, but consumers don't want to use it because they don't want to be tracked," Ramamurthi acknowledged. Corporations are interested in using it for fleet tracking.

That brings up another reason the bank is opening an API marketplace  to let others write applications and figure out if there's demand for them.

"We cannot write 100,000 apps," Ramamurthi said. "We said, 'Let us open it up as a marketplace and let other people do it.' "


Wellesley Bancorp in Massachusetts has recruited a State Street executive to succeed its outgoing chief financial officer and treasurer.

Michael Dvorak, a senior vice president of finance at State Street, will join the $620 million-asset Wellesley after current CFO Gary Culyer retires on July 1, Wellesley said in a recent news release.

Before he got his start at State Street in 2010, Dvorak worked for several other banks, including a 15-year stint at KeyCorp in Cleveland, where he was the CFO of its community and consumer banking units, according to the release and his LinkedIn profile.




Five years after Bourgeois Dignity the third and last volume of Deirdre McCloskeys Bourgeois Trilogy, all 787 pages, has hit the UPS truck. Unfortunately, it doesnt say anything that McCloskey hasnt already said.

The new book is titled Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital and Institutions, Enriched the World. The subtitle gives the clue. The book is about defending McCloskeys thesis from two other narratives about capitalism. First, the capital-as-accumulation notion, as recently advanced by French lefty Thomas Piketty in Capitalism in the Twenty-first Century and taken apart here; and second, the idea that it was institutions that made the difference.

McCloskey will have none of it. It was ideas, rhetoric, she writes, a different way of thinking about the world that powered the Great Enrichment, the astonishing rise in income from $3 per person per day to the present $100-120 per day. There has never been anything like it, ever.

Apart from a new improved catchphrase, trade-tested betterment, McCloskey already said all this in The Bourgeois Virtues and Bourgeois Dignity, the first two volumes of her epic.

Are you sure there is nothing new in Bourgeois Equality, I said to myself, when blogging all this a week ago? Just to be sure I went back to my McCloskey Week blogs of five years ago and found that I had written this:

The key thing that changed, according to McCloskey, was not technological change, but a cultural, rhetorical change. About three hundred years ago, around the North Sea, societies started to respect the commercial bourgeoisie and the things that it did. It allowed, for the first time, the bourgeoisie to do what comes naturally, to innovate and change things.

McCloskey closes the current book by stating that the Bourgeois Revaluation came out of a rhetoric that would, and will, enrich the world. So why not call the book Bourgeois Rhetoric: How I am Right and the Guys That Say It Was Capital or Institutions are Wrong. Because the problem with picking fights with other academics and going into the long grass with the Oxford English Dictionary to find out when the word "innovation" ceased being a pejorative is this: We Dont Care.

The whole book is a rerun. We get the same magnificent assertions about the Great Enrichment, the same swipes at the post 1848 clerisy and also something we have become familiar with in the Obama era, the false equivalence between left and right. Jonah Goldberg is a bit disappointed about that, when McCloskey states that Intellectuals on the political right, for instance, looked back with nostalgia to an imagined Middle Ages, free from the vulgarity of trade, a nonmarket golden age in which rents and hierarchy ruled.

Okay, so Russell Kirk, now resting for all eternity under his beloved Piety Hill in Michigan, was a bit stiff. McCloskey also takes a cheap shot at Edmund Burke, for his hatred of innovation, which I also get. Burke hated the innovation of the French Revolution.

But these sallies do not distract her from important things, like regular bathroom breaks for public-service announcements from your friendly local LGBT activist.

I was hoping for something more from Bourgeois Equality, a vision that looked above and beyond the well-mown lawns of Virtues and Dignity. But what? I have been thinking about that for a few days, and now I have come up with an answer.

The critical thing to understand about the bourgeois, who I call the People of the Responsible Self in my reductive Three Peoples theory, is that they are not that interested in power. That is the thread that pulls together bourgeois virtues, bourgeois dignity, the culture of having a go, trade-tested betterment, innovation, Adam Smiths invisible hand, and the failure of the Marxist prophecy of 1848.

Consider the robber barons. When John D. Rockefeller finished building Standard Oil he retired and invented modern philanthropy. Andrew Carnegie quit steel to build libraries. Now we have Bill Gates working on malaria and Elon Musk planning to have a go at Mars.

The same cannot be said for our progressive friends, for whom politics and power are everything, and you are a racist, sexist homophobe besides. There is no hiding from the gaze of progressive power, and no right to dissent from its orthodoxy. And certainly no right to innovate and have a go.

When you are not that interested in power, you find that the whole world opens up to you. Now the way is clear to get into virtue and create a rhetoric to dignify innovation and having a go, and watch the Great Enrichment sweep across the world. Now the way is clear to free the slaves and enfranchise the working class, and even indulge upper-class women and sexual adventurers in their shallow enthusiasms and conceits. All because you are not that interested in power.

I wish that Deirdre McCloskey had written that about the bourgeoisie.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also see his American Manifesto and get his Road to the Middle Class.
I agree with Donald Trump that something is very fishy about the Vincent Foster death. Foster was President Bill Clintons Deputy White House who was found dead in Virginias Fort Marcy Park on July 20, 1993. The official United States government conclusion is that Foster committed suicide by firing a revolver into his mouth with the bullet exiting the back of his head.

Background

In 1997 I made a Freedom of Information Act request seeking some of the photographs taken by the government as part of its investigation into the death. I filed a lawsuit to enforce my request that culminated on March 30, 2004, when the United States Supreme Court issued its opinion in my case entitled National Archives and Records Administration [NARA] v. Allan J. Favish, 541 U.S. 157 (2004). A recording and transcript of the oral argument is here.

Two Independent Counsels issued public reports on the death. The first was regulatory Independent Counsel Robert Fiske, who issued his report on June 30, 1994. The second was Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, appointed under a different statute, who issued his report in July 1997 to the special three-judge panel of federal appellate court judges to whom Starr reported. That panel released Starrs Foster report to the public in October of 1997.

By the time the Supreme Court got involved (the case had been to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit twice) the parties were arguing over ten original Polaroid photographs of Fosters body. As the Supreme Court explained, after a federal District Court judge decided that five of the ten photographs should be made public, the Ninth Circuit decided that only four of the photographs should be make public. The Supreme Court decided 9-0 to block public disclosure of the photographs.

Starrs Office of Independent Counsel (and later the National Archives and Records Administration -- NARA), and Lisa Foster Moody (Fosters widow) and Sheila Foster Anthony (one of his sisters), both of whom intervened in the case a few years earlier, sought to block public disclosure of the photographs. They argued that the publics interest in disclosure was subordinate to the privacy interest that the Foster family had in the photographs. They based this argument on a section of the FOIA known as Exemption 7(C), that allows the government to refuse disclosure when somebodys privacy interest in a requested document compiled for law enforcement purposes outweighs the publics interest in disclosure.

My primary arguments in opposition were that nobody had a privacy interest in the photographs, and if a privacy interest was found to exist in the photographs, the publics interest in disclosure outweighed that privacy interest. I argued that the evidence established that the Fiske and Starr reports were not trustworthy, largely, but not exclusively, because of significant omissions. Therefore the public could not trust the government to filter the evidence and the public needed to see the raw evidence. The suicide-in-the-park conclusion may be correct, but we cannot conclude that from the publicly available evidence. The public only can make educated guesses about what happened.

As the Supreme Court recognized, the Ninth Circuit held in a 2-1 decision that Favish, in fact, tenders evidence and argument which, if believed, would justify his doubts about the governments conclusion of suicide in the park. Although the Ninth Circuit stated if believed, the vast bulk of the evidence did not depend on my credibility because the evidence consists almost entirely of the governments own documents from the files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Park Police, and other government agencies.

The number of government investigations and reports is not as important as the demonstrable credibility, or lack of credibility, of those investigations and reports. Some argue as if the credibility of the government investigations is irrelevant, and the raw facts can be ignored if the government has conducted multiple investigations. Under this view, it is difficult to see why there is any need for the FOIA at all because if the government has conducted several investigations, no matter how demonstrably untrustworthy, the public has no need to see any of the hidden evidence. This view is contrary to the purpose of the FOIA, and a license for government corruption.

As my case was concluding, the files of the OIC were transferred to the NARA. According to long-time independent Foster death researchers Hugh Turley and Patrick Knowlton, in 2009 the NARA allowed the public release of copies of various documents from the OIC files. Among the documents Turley and Knowlton posted to their website are documents they identified as having been written by Assistant United States Attorney Miguel Rodriguez, who was the lead prosecutor investigating the Foster death for the OIC before he resigned and went back to his job in Sacramento, California as an Assistant US Attorney. A resignation letter, dated January 17, 1995, states that the existing FBI interview reports and USPP interview reports do not accurately reflect witness statements, and that after having refreshed their recollection with new photographic evidence, four emergency medical personnel identified . . . trauma each had observed on Fosters right neck area.

A memorandum dated December 9-29, 1994, on the subject of November 29, 1994 Meeting Concerning Foster Death Matter And Supplemental Investigation Prior to Grand Jury,  states that one of the Polaroid photos clearly depicts a dark, burnt appearing, blood area on VFs neck. The memorandum states that Rodriguez was confident that this was caused by a stun-gun or Taser. The memorandum states that an autopsy photograph (not a Polaroid taken in the park) shows two puncture wounds on the right side of Fosters neck, and that the District of Columbia Medical Examiner observed the appearance of crater-like indentations on the right side of the neck.

During my lawsuit I attempted to take the deposition of Rodriguez and his former assistant Lucia Rambusch. The District Court denied my request, and despite my appeal of the issue, neither the Ninth Circuit nor the Supreme Court addressed the issue.

I did not learn about the documents Turley and Knowlton posted to their website until February of this year. I notified WorldNetDaily about the documents and it published a story about them on February 28, 2016. I am unaware of any other news organization trying to evaluate the authenticity of the documents, or otherwise do additional reporting on the issues raised. In the interest of full disclosure, some of the research by Turley, Knowlton, and their associate, attorney John Clarke, was invaluable to my case.

In my lawsuit, I filed a 750-page three-volume document called the Excerpts of Record. This consists of copies of the relevant documents that were submitted as evidence in the District Court, that were later filed with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. When I cited to these documents in my briefs the pages of the Excerpts of Record were referred to as ER, with the ER page number in the lower right corner of the page. Below is an abbreviated version of what was in my Supreme Court briefs, with links to the pages of the ER. None of the facts I presented were proven false, inaccurate or misleading. The Supreme Court did not specifically address the details of my factual presentation. It merely stated a one-sentence opinion about the evidence: Favish has not produced any evidence that would warrant a belief by a reasonable person that the alleged Government impropriety might have occurred to put the balance into play. Compare the Supreme Courts statement to the facts.

Fiske And Starr Did Not Discuss The FBI Memorandum That States No Exit Wound

Two days after the autopsy, an FBI agent sent a memo to the director of the FBI stating, Preliminary results include the finding that a .38 caliber revolver, constructed from two different weapons, was fired into the victims mouth with no exit wound. ER 638, 641. The no exit wound phrase directly contradicts Starr, Fiske and the official autopsy report. ER 277, 311-312, 314.

The memo was written by an FBI agent in the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Field Office to the Acting Director of the FBI, who was Floyd Clarke. A draft of the memo is dated July 22, 1993, two days after the death and one day after the autopsy and had minor corrections made to it. ER 636-638. The final version is date-stamped July 23, 1993. ER 639-641. The memo does not appear to be an impromptu communication because it says it is [t]o confirm referenced telcalls, on 7/21/93. ER 636, 639. Neither Fiske nor Starr discussed this memo.

The Medical Report Of A Neck Wound Was Not Discussed By Fiske Or Starr

Officially, there was no neck wound and Foster shot himself in the mouth, leaving an exit hole in the back of the head. ER 277, 311-312, 314. Starr dismisses a report by one of the paramedics that there was a small bullet-like entrance wound on the right side of Fosters neck. ER 277, 315.

The only medical doctor to view Fosters body at the park, Dr. Donald Haut, wrote a two-page report that is internally inconsistent. ER 632-633, 634-635. On the first page it states that the death shot was mouth-head (ER 634), but on the second page it states that the death shot was mouth to neck (ER 635). Moreover, the report appears to have been improperly altered. On page one there is a section near the bottom of the page on the left side that states:

CAUSE OF DEATH: PERFORATING GUNSHOT WOUND MOUTH- HEAD

ER 634.

However, just to the left of the word HEAD there appears to be remnants of a four-letter word that was mostly concealed with correction fluid or tape. ER 634.

Fiske never discussed the Haut Report. Starr quoted from the apparently altered language, and failed to discuss both the apparent alteration, and the unaltered language stating a neck wound. ER 277, 308.

Starr Failed To Explain Why The Apparent Alteration Is Missing On One Version Of The Haut Report

There are three certified copies of the Haut Report. One copy was certified on November 2, 1994. ER 634-635. The second copy was certified on January 30, 1995. ER 643-644. The third copy was certified on March 20, 2000. ER 645-650. The first and third certified copies contain what appears to be an alteration that is improper. ER 634, 646. The second certified copy fails to show this apparent alteration. ER 643. Starr failed to explain why the second certified copy does not show the apparent alteration.

Starr Failed To Report That A Park Police Officer And Dr. Haut Said They Did Not See Blood Spatter

A United States Park Police officer who examined Fosters body at the park testified that he saw a pool of blood under his head, gun in his right hand, appeared to be a .38 caliber revolver, no sign of a struggle, no other obvious signs of trauma to the body. ER 105, 109. This same officer reported that there was no blood spatter on the plants or trees surrounding decedents head (ER 153) and testified that he did not observe any blowout from the back of the head (ER 105, 109). A Federal Bureau of Investigation report of its interview with Dr. Haut states, no blood was recalled on the vegetation around the body. ER 150. None of these statements are discussed in Starrs report.

Starr Failed To Report Evidence That Initially There Was No Gun In Fosters Hand

Officially, Foster was found with a gun in his hand. However, the first person that officially found Fosters body said that there was no gun in his hand. This witness, known as the confidential witness, testified that Fosters hands were palms-up and empty. ER 168-169. In concluding that this witness simply did not see the gun that was in Mr. Fosters hand, Starr cited the witness FBI interview in which the witness said that it was possible there was a gun at the back of Fosters hand that he might have missed. ER 277, 358.

But Starr failed report that one of the body site photos shows a gun in Fosters right hand that eliminates the possibility of there having been a gun at the back of Fosters hand that went unseen by the witness. This photo, leaked to ABC-TV and published in Time and Newsweek, shows Fosters gun-hand palm down (ER 178-179), while the witness said the hand was palm-up and empty. ER 168-169. This photo shows the gun underneath the palm of Fosters right hand with the back of Fosters hand facing up. ER 178-179. The gun is in a position where the witness could not have missed it if it was there when he saw Fosters hand. This means that the only possible condition that the witness agreed would account for his not seeing the gun, is a condition that did not occur.

Furthermore, the witness testified that his concession that he could have missed seeing the gun was based on the FBIs representation that Fosters hands were palms-up with the gun concealed on the other side of Fosters hand. ER 168-169. The witness testified that the FBI would not show him the photo. ER 168-170. But when he subsequently saw the photo he testified that it was not a picture of what he saw in the park. ER 168-170. Therefore, Starr failed to report that he relied upon a statement by the witness that the witness testified was based on a false representation by the FBI.

Fiske And Starr Relied Upon An Invalid Gun Identification

Starr failed to report that Fiske relied upon an invalid gun identification from Fosters widow, Ms. Moody. Nine days after the death, according to the Park Police, they showed Ms. Moody a photo of the official death gun (ER 277, 362), which is blued steel and appears black (ER 178-179). Ms. Moody reportedly said she could not identify the gun because it was not silver and did not have a large barrel. ER 277, 362, 156. The FBI said that ten months later, in May 1994, it showed Ms. Moody the actual official death gun, not a photo of the gun, and she believes that the gun found at Fort Marcy Park may be the silver gun which she brought up with her from Arkansas. ER 147-149. Referring to this reported inspection of the actual gun, Fiske then reported, without stating the gun colors, that Ms. Moody stated that the gun looked similar to one that Foster owned. ER 89, 92.

The problem is that if Ms. Moody was shown the black official death gun at the May 1994 interview and simultaneously identified it as being silver-colored, then she failed to give a valid identification of the black official death gun. Likewise, if she was shown a silver-colored gun at this interview, then she failed to give a valid identification of the black official death gun. No matter what color gun Ms. Moody was shown at the May 1994 interview, given her reported response, Fiske should not have used her response as if it were a valid identification of the black official death gun.

Starr failed to explain why Fiske used Ms. Moodys invalid gun identification. Starr also failed to explain why, if Ms. Moody was shown the black official death gun in May 1994, she reportedly simultaneously described it as silver, without any report of the FBI agents or attorneys present saying anything about such a bizarre response.

By only reading the Starr Report, one would not know that Ms. Moodys May 1994 identification was invalid. This is because Starr failed to report that Ms. Moodys reason for not identifying the gun in the photo shown to her nine days after the death was because it was not silver. Also absent from Starrs report is that the FBI expressly stated that Ms. Moody believed the gun shown to her in May 1994 was silver.

Fiske And Starr Failed To Report That The Park Police Chief Made A False Statement About Alleged Identification Of The Gun

At a press conference on August 10, 1993, Robert Langston, then Chief of the U.S. Park Police, said that the Foster family had identified the official death gun as one of Fosters guns. ER 166-167. But that statement was false at the time it was made. The press conference was given by Philip B. Heymann, then Deputy Attorney General, Robert Bryant, then Special Agent in Charge of the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Field Office of the FBI and Chief Langston. ER 166-167.

By the time of the press conference, Ms. Moody had not identified the black official death gun, in part because it was the wrong color. ER 156.

By the time of the press conference, one of Fosters sisters, Sharon Bowman, failed to give a credible identification of the official death gun. ER 155, 158. The person who showed Bowman the photo of the gun wrote: I asked if she remembered any other features [other than the wavelike detailing at the base of the grip]. She did not. ER 155, 158. So as far as Langston knew on August 10, 1993, Bowman did not even remember the color of the gun as a feature she remembered seeing. A gun identification that does not include the color of the gun is not an identification. Starr and Fiske failed to report this deficiency in Bowmans identification of the black official death gun.

By Aug. 10, 1993, nobody in the Foster family identified the black official death gun as one previously belonging to Foster. Fiske and Starr failed to report that largely because of its color, the black official death gun could not be identified by Fosters nephew, who was the surviving family member most familiar with the familys guns. ER 151-152.

Starr Failed To Report That Fosters Tongue And Parts Of The Soft Pallet Were Removed Before The Park Police Arrived For The Autopsy

Starr reported that several Park Police officers observed the autopsy, and quoted one of the officers who wrote that after he briefed the autopsy doctor, the doctor started the autopsy. ER 277, 309. But Starr failed to report that the next sentence in the officers report states: Prior to our arrival, the victims tongue had been removed as well as parts of the soft tissue from the soft pallet (sic). ER 154. Starrs omission is significant given that this is an autopsy of a man who allegedly fired a gun into his mouth while leaving behind unresolved questions about a right-side neck wound whose track might have gone through the tongue and soft palate. Additionally, Starr failed to report that the autopsy doctor violated policy by beginning the autopsy before the police arrived (ER 115, 117-118), and that the autopsy doctor refused to tell the police the identity of his assistant (ER 134-135).

Starr Failed To Report Evidence That Fosters Car Was Not At The Park Shortly After The Death

Starr discussed four people who were in the park between 4:30 p.m., and just before 6:00 p.m., at a time when Foster was probably already dead (ER 154, 89-90, 57, 124-126, 128, 130, 105, 107-108), and his gray car (ER 277, 299, 302, 307, 349) should have been in the parks parking lot. Starr reported that one of these people reported seeing a brown car, not Fosters gray car. ER 277, 302. But Starr failed to report that the other three people also reported seeing a brown car, not Fosters gray car. ER 137-143, 168, 172. Yet, Starr inexplicably concluded that Fosters gray car was in the lot at this time. ER 277, 307, 349.

In trying to show that there were no suspicious people at the park who may have caused Fosters death, Starr referred to the statements by two of the witnesses who had reported seeing a brown car, not Fosters gray car. But Starr failed to report that these two witnesses said that the car they saw was brown, which did not match Fosters gray car. Starr stated that [a]ccording to the reports of their interviews at the scene on July 20, 1993, C3 and C4 [the two witnesses] did not see anyone in or touching Mr. Fosters car. ER 277, 350. Of course they did not see anyone in or touching Mr. Fosters car because, according to their statements, they did not see Mr. Fosters car! By omitting the fact that these two witnesses stated that they saw a car that was brown, not gray, Starr left the false impression that these two witnesses saw Fosters gray car. There is no evidence in the Fiske or Starr reports that the government searched for the brown car reported by all these witnesses.

If Trumps attorneys ever gave him the same quality of legal service that Fiske and Starr gave to the American people, I suspect that Trump would say: Your Fired! Instead of being condemned by people ignorant of the details of the Foster death, Trump should be applauded for having the political courage to say what is obvious to those who have studied the evidence, when so many others are afraid to do so. Donald Trump should use his unique opportunity to encourage the media to examine the important facts of this case with accuracy and thoroughness, and to challenge those who merely parrot the governments position. Trump should not retreat from his position until somebody can provide plausible and satisfactory answers to the questions raised by the facts discussed in this article.

Allan J. Favish is an attorney in Los Angeles. His website is allanfavish.com. James Fernald and Mr. Favish have co-authored a book about what might happen if the government ran Disneyland, entitled "Fireworks! If the Government Ran the Fairest Kingdom of Them All (A Very Unauthorized Fantasy).
Joe Weisberg, creator of the TV series The Americans, (Wednesdays, 10 PM on the FX Network  current and previous seasons available on Amazon and iTunes Store) worked at one time for the CIA. He became interested in the subject of living abroad, serving government, and raising a family  all while doing covert intelligence work. How do those who work for their government in such a way explain to their families what they are doing? What strains does this subterfuge place on marital relations, child rearing and friendships? Thats the subject of this TV series, except that the expats are Russian, not American.

The story follows two protagonists, Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, a married couple in their 30s, in suburban Washington, DC, in the 1980s. They are both Americans in disguise, deep cover Soviet KGB officers, recruited, married and transported to the United States with false identities, back in the 1960s. Their nonofficial cover includes a travel agency they run in their hometown of Alexandria, VA. Weisberg has said that as we follow Philip and Elizabeth, sometimes with sympathy and sometimes with condemnation,  theres a breakdown of the barriers between us and them. Finding [oneself] rooting for the enemy is a fundamental part of the experience. What is the enemy? What does it even mean to be the enemy?

The Jennings mission is to subvert the US government by stealing secrets, a mission that often requires deadly force. Managed locally by Directorate S handlers who report to The Center in Moscow, and who communicate with the Chief of the KGB station at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C., the couple are directed to identify real Americans as potential witting or unwitting agents, run those agents and dispose of them as necessary when they are no longer needed. The recruited agents cannot know the Jennings identity of Philip and Elizabeth, who hide a vast array of disguises in the basement (wigs, eye glasses, mustaches, and so forth), don them for several hours while on a covert assignment with their agents, then take off the disguises and return home to fix dinner and help the kids with their homework.

Because of the need to take counter surveillance measures, and things in general, of course, never going smoothly, these covert outings can be time-consuming. Offering plausible-sounding excuses to the kids for their long absences becomes more difficult. So far in the series, the couple has managed to keep their real identities a secret from their next-door neighbor and beer-drinking friend Stan, a counterintelligence agent at FBI headquarters in Washington. Stan is tasked with busting up the KGBs operations. Hes figured out that theres a young couple somewhere in the area stealing secrets and committing murder. With the enemy next door, Philip and Elizabeth have little margin for error.

All of this intelligence work requires that the couple maintain their Jennings cover by keeping up appearances as an authentic upper middle class American family with unassailable knowledge of everything American, including body language, idiomatic phrases, sense of humor and a nuanced understanding of American politics and culture. They handle this flawlessly, down to the tiniest detail. When Philip plops himself down on the TV couch next to his daughter, he says to her, Scooch. One wonders how he learned this slang, but he did.

The deception of being American is complete. When the KGB took the Jenningses out of the Soviet Union, they took the Soviet Union out of the Jenningses, at least superficially. But beneath their American disguise, the couple is loyal to the USSR and committed to its cause. Thus we have Americans, portrayed sympathetically, who are undermining US policy for a totalitarian adversary.

Creator Joe Weisberg explained why he chose the last decade of the Cold War. He thought those years, with all the yelling about the evil empire, as he described US foreign policy, might make for an interesting time, and indeed it is. The TV series is replete with depictions of an America that seems to have been jolted suddenly out of the predictability of a balance of power era and into a new, destabilizing, and militaristic strategy, upsetting the Cold War applecart and forcing the Soviet Union to defend itself against an ominous, reckless and unpredictable threat: Ronald Reagan.

Philip and Elizabeth follow closely news reports as the Reagan Doctrine takes shape with the Strategic Defense Initiative, the Nuclear Freeze movement and events in Nicaragua, South Africa, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan. But the doctrine of rolling back Soviet aggression is nowhere to be found. If there is a time in this TV series, now in its fourth season, when the Soviets are the aggressors, Ive missed it. In every aspect of the Cold War, the fast-thinking KGB is just barely managing to contain the adventurist US and its acceleration of the nuclear arms race, support for oppressive regimes, and undermining of national liberation movements.

The heating up of the Cold War is seen through the eyes of Philip and Elizabeth, who, like many in the left wing of the Democratic Party at that time, feel frightened by Reagans threatening behavior, and also through the eyes of the Washington KGB residency and the FBI Counterintelligence office. The Soviets are gracious, polite, articulate, thoughtful, prudent, philosophical, and sexually liberated. Though the officers in the rezidentura are far from home, they are bonded together in America by familial and party ties in Russia. The KGB offices are decorated in rich tones of dark wood paneling, bookcases, artwork, fine upholstered furniture and the ever-present silver tea service.

In contrast to this rich cultural European heritage, the FBI office is decorated, if that is the right word, with an official photograph of president Reagan, staring down at the agents in their cramped, gray cubicles. Next-door neighbor Stan is one of these agents, doing his best despite marital problems, intimacy issues, a tendency to be tongue-tied at critical moments, and a trigger-happy finger. So theres a clear dichotomy thats set up between Russia and America in their respective offices. One is rooted in a love of high culture and the meaning of life, the other is  well, American. One produces sophisticated patriots able to serve heroically deep behind enemy lines, the other is represented by struggling, lonely souls  competent at their jobs but frustrated by life.

The Jenningses live in this lonely American world, as they are not permitted to have contact with their compatriots in the KGB residence. Their world is one of latchkey kids hooked on video games, cookie cutter housing villages, marriages on the rocks, rock n roll churches and EST meetings. The only lures that America holds for Philip and Elizabeth are certain types of food, and fast cars. The concepts of freedom of speech or free enterprise, which were totally absent in their upbringing, has not, as least not yet in the series, dawned on them. The couple appears to bear no scars from culture shock.

Nor do they appear to have an ear for Kremlin propaganda. Philip and Elizabeth take orders from much older handlers who are veterans of the Battle of Stalingrad. The handlers use the defense of Stalingrad as an all-purpose moral justification for everything KGB.

Claudia, one of the handlers, murders a CIA agent in Washington. As the CIA agent lies conscious on the floor and bleeding to death, she shows him a photograph of her mentor, a KGB general, whom the CIA assassinated in Moscow. Explaining the justification for her revenge, she tells him,

We met in Stalingrad in 1942. He was ragged skin and bones, same as we all were. First time I saw him he was standing over two dead Nazis.

Philip and Elizabeth accept at face value their KGB handlers explanation for why they must steal samples of deadly biological weapons from the Americans:

There are certain very powerful weapons  biological  were not allowed to make them  weve signed treaties, but we think the Americans are making them, so we make them, too  If they target our nuke capacity in a 1st strike, our people back home will have nothing to defend themselves with but these weapons. Ive been there, when we couldnt defend ourselves  you know what happened.

Whatever the 1980s Cold War issue, it seems that Stalingrad justifies any conflict and makes the US responsible for resolving that conflict to the satisfaction of the Soviets. One would think that this sophisticated young Russian couple would know how to discount illogical righteousness, since they grew up under communism and probably heard this self-serving Soviet argument a thousand times.

The brutal operational methods of the KGB are on full display, no more so than when a sympathetic file clerk in the Washington residence is executed in a prison basement in Russia. Nina Sergeevna is a beautiful and compellingly intelligent double agent, coerced by FBI agent Stan into spying. The series would not be complete without her, as her efforts to protect herself, aided by agents on both the US and Soviet sides, slowly crumble. The manner of her execution, including the way the KGB officer who reads her death sentence steps quickly out of the way to avoid being splattered with her blood, is horrifying to watch.

The TV series, now well into its fourth season, is focusing more and more on Paige Jennings, the teenaged daughter. She attends the Reed Street Church for its spiritual values, social get-togethers, guitar playing and leftist political activities. Her parents are not particularly impressed with the ideological values Paige is developing, choosing to focus instead on their revulsion toward Christianity, and this revulsion brings out in the parents vicious, withering attacks on Paige. One might optimistically hope that these raw confrontations plant the seed of self-reflection in the parents, and mark the beginning of a true Americanization.

Both Philip and Elizabeth learn about the severe emotional hazards of running agents, the required level of involvement in their agents lives being almost equal to that of a best friend or spouse, and Philip actually marries one of his agents  wedding ceremony and all. One of the most riveting aspects of this dramatic series is the grinding and gut-wrenching betrayal that shows on Philips face as he leads his agents into danger. The emotionally stronger Elizabeth soldiers on in her cases. But she seems to be hitting a wall in the most recent episodes as she breaks up one family by day and nurtures and protects her real family at night.

Among the political issues the Church takes up are the Nuclear Freeze and El Salvador. In reality, the political left in America is, at this time, promoting both of these issues in churches and college campuses. The Nuclear Freeze is aimed at freezing the status quo of Soviet military superiority in Europe. The Stop US Intervention in El Salvador campaign is aimed at allowing the spread of communism and Liberation Theology in Central America.

Philip and Elizabeth are surprisingly uninterested in these issues, even though the campaigns are central to their organization. Perhaps its because theyre busy stealing secrets, maintaining various covers and agents, holding a marriage together, raising children and worrying about the future of their family. Maybe the church will help them in the end.

The Reed Street Church and Pastor Tim play a big role in Paige's character development. When Paige is baptized, Pastor Tim says, "This is no empty ritual." He goes on to explain to the congregation that the baptism is a celebration of political activism, including participation in the Nuclear Freeze movement. There is a cut-away reaction shot of Paige's parents after the baptism. Philip looks unimpressed, but Elizabeth beams and smiles. It may be the Jenningses are finding a home.
You remember David Petraeus. He was the Obama era model for a politically correct general. Petraeus left the military with four stars and a chest full of medals only to be undone by Tampa camp followers and a subordinate female from his days in Kabul. Indeed, poor judgement caught up with the general, ironically, while he was Director of CIA. How the chief of a major intelligence agency could not know that NSA or the FBI might be reading his love notes is a mystery to the cloak and dagger crowd everywhere. It is possible, however, that a naive general at Langley was exactly what the Obama crew sought for CIA. A second and terminal Libya fiasco unfolded shortly after General Petraeus and Paula Broadwell became household words.

With Benghazi, the CIA, DOD, and the State Department lost a diplomatic cover CIA Annex, a black gun running operation, and four brave men, including an ambassador. The al Qaeda/ISIS consortium in Libya has been flourishing ever since.

The American ambassador to Libya now does business from Tunisia. Well she might, lest she suffer the same fate as her predecessor. The big loss in North Africa was not an embassy, nor an ambassador. The big loss was Libya, another entire Muslim oil state given over to Muslim theocracy, chaos, and terror. Who would have ever thought that the world would one day be nostalgic for Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

The woman who orchestrated, the Libya fiasco as Secretary of State is now poised to become the next commander-in-chief.

The Petraeus slide is a fitting coda to Libya as we knew it. Our general was, up to that point, the doctrinal darling of the Department of Defense, an institution that has not won a small war, nor stabilized a third world autocracy, since Korea. Indeed, the Korean stalemate today is a golden success compared to 65 years of futile small wars in the Muslim world.

The phenomenon is now known as the Long War, a DOD euphemism for managing expectations about any future American military operations. Indeed, if you read between lines wherever jihad and small wars are discussed, the new normal is stasis; the passive prospect of more urban terror, more airliners blown from the sky, and more small wars that no one at the White House or the Pentagon intends to win.

The goals of Long War aficionados are stability and nation building and other such vagaries. Success or military victory is not part of the discussion. Indeed, the idea is to use soldiers and Marines like schoolies, cops, and social workers  or targets more likely. The underlying premise of contemporary doctrine is that we should pander; facilitate immigration, study Arabic language, accommodate Muslim culture no matter how vile, and allow more mosques. All the while hoping Muslims will become more like us.

The only sizable Muslim ethnic group capable of reform or integration with the West is Kurdistan. Alas, the Kurds are likely to be thrown to Turkish wolves again by DOD and NATO as soon as their utility in the ISIS fight is exhausted.

Wishful thinking is the hijab of appeasement. America and Europe are turning one cheek, and then the other, then bending over  and praying the future of our collective azimuths will not be as painful as the last fifty years. More of the same might be a recipe for success if and when Europe and America view the world from prayer rugs too.

Part of the problem, surely self-inflicted, is a kind of strategic ambiguity that defies logic and experience. One the one hand, insidious regime change schemes create political vacuums only to have the void filled by theocracy. On the other hand, subsequent civil/sectarian wars are aggravated by American generals and intelligence agents who throw money and arms at both sides of the Shia/Sunni divide.

A US soldier in places like Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan is likely to be killed or maimed by weapons purchased by the American taxpayer. Indeed, neither the Intelligence Community nor DOD has reliable Shia or Sunni allies in the Ummah. Most jihadist sects are joined by contempt for Europe and America. The loyalty of most Muslim, Persian, or Arab factions lasts as long as the baksheesh, hashish, opium, bacha bazi, and immigrant quotas hold out.

Soft power doesnt win friends or wars.

How did we get to where we are? At what point did the American defense establishment morph into feckless flakes, both intrusive busy bodies and pandering catamites? The answer to these questions may lie with science and prophecy.

The science is ironically called military art: strategy, operations, doctrine, and tactics. The idea is that success and victory are usually a function of concrete capabilities (air, land and sea) artfully applied. The artfully applied bit is the job of flag officers like General Petraeus. Alas, Petraeus is not just any general; he is also a military intellectual. Indeed, like his biblical namesake, David is a modern warrior/prophet, the author of a military Koran of sorts: Insurgencies and Countering Insurgencies, US Army Field Manual 3-24.

General Petraeus literally wrote the book that provides the doctrine, or should we say dogma, that rationalizes modern operational art in the 21st Century. Petraeus cant is not without its critics, but who reads military manuals - or their reviews? Nonetheless, the Petraeus worldview is fairly consistent with prevailing sentiments about politically correct social and foreign policy memes. No surprises there.

Unfortunately, like domestic social problems, throwing good lives and scarce resources willy-nilly at global religious riot has proved to be a poor investment. The only proven remedy for toxic ideology is eradication, defeat in detail.

General Washington didnt need to convert the English; he needed to defeat the idea of colonial imperialism. General Grant didnt need to win the hearts and minds of Georgians; he needed Sherman to scorch a path to Atlanta and flank General Lee. Eisenhower and MacArthur didnt need to stabilize Germany and Japan; FDR needed his generals to defeat two toxic ideologies  and demand unconditional surrender.

Nation building is a logical consequence of, not a substitute for, victory.

War, in its essence, is the art and science of killing and breaking things. If you are not in it to win it, you shouldnt begin it. George Patton put it best, I am a soldier. I fight where Im told. I win where I fight. Pattons and MacArthurs doctrines reflected the harsh realities of warfare, not wishful thinking. Rationalizing contemporary military invasions as humanitarian interventions is disingenuous malarkey. Regime change and imperial democracy have little to do with concern for human life and nothing to do with moral superiority.

Petraeus doctrine assumes its conclusions -- and excludes other contingencies. Jihad, religious war, civil war, revolution, urban revolt, or imperial wars are the excluded middles. Indeed, if we were to aggregate most global conflicts at the moment, they could be captured under a single rubric, religious war, surely not insurgency or counterinsurgency.

Petraeuss rhetoric about insurgency is just the bong resin of Vietnam. Killing and terrorizing real or imagined secular, apostate, or infidel enemies is religious war by any plain, if not simple, definition. When politicians and generals cannot define the conflict, or the enemy, defeat or indefinite conflict becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The fact the White House, the Department of Defense, or generals like Petraeus do not choose to see, or recognize, the many conflicts, within and without the Muslim world, as jihad does not make those small wars any less of a global threat. How aggressors like Osama bin-Laden, Mullah Omar, or Abu Bakar al-Baghdadi see warfare is much more relevant than any social rationalizations or defensive wishful thinking at the Pentagon.

Clarity about the nature of war is one of many advantages for the ideologue, the Islamist, the jihadist, the terrorist, and the passive aggressive Muslim majority. Bruce Hoffman put it best; terror and small wars are the preferred Muslim tactics because terror works. The restive Ummah wins, while the West just bleeds.

The no-mans-land between strategic clarity and the fog of war in America is now littered with nearly100,000 American casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan alone. But then again, theyre volunteers now. So maybe the dead and maimed dont matter that much anymore.

This is not to lay the burden of the Muslim Wars at the feet of General Petraeus. He is just the guidon in a long gray line of strategic lemmings. Unfortunately, David is a flag with a paper trail, if we can mix a few metaphors. Yet, unlike most of his mute peers, Petraeus cant stay away from the ink well. Indeed, when it comes to any well, David Petraeus doesnt know when to stop digging.

The other day, Petraeus penned an opinion piece for the Washington Post where he exhumed every politically correct canard and excuse for Islam, Muslims, terrorists, recent small wars, and future jihads. His headline, Anti-Muslim Bigotry Aids Islamist Terrorists, captures the flavor of what followed. The generals argument begins by blaming the victim and goes downhill from there. In short, the Petraeus plea equates pushback against toxic religious ideology or its barbaric consequences as bigotry on the part of victims. For General Petraeus, those who would put a choke chain on Mecca and Mohammed make more terror possible.

Part of the generals apologetics is couched in terms of moral considerations. While we could dismiss any appeal to morality as a slip of the lip, getting ethical advice from David Petraeus, at this point, is a little like getting marriage counseling from Bill Clinton. If Davids argument is a replay of the usual moral equivalence hokum, he fails to tell us why Buddhists, Christians, and Jews do not chop off heads in Gods name as their Muslim brothers do.

We might pose a few questions for David Petraeus, Fred Hiatt, Martin Baron, and Jeff Bozos too. What should we tell gold and blue star mothers these days? What do we tell casualty wives, brothers, sisters, and children? Who are we fighting? What are we fighting? Why are we fighting? When does it end? What can we reasonably expect to achieve besides another generation of White House and Pentagon sissies kicking the Muslim can down the road?

Withal, we might also offer David Petraeus and like-minded flag officers, who shoot from the grave, some modest advice. Please, shut up! You have done enough damage already.

We cant solve problems with the same thinking that created them. - Einstein

G. Murphy Donovan is a former USAF Intelligence officer who writes about the politics of national security
Donald Trump might have written The Art of the Deal, but the title he should peruse today is Dale Carnegies How to Win Friends and Influence People. His more vocal supporters, and by that I mean those who act out on the internet precisely as Donald does on the stump, should pick up a copy as well. Both the candidate and his hard-core supporters have missed the idea that it is the job of the winner to unite a party.

Oddly the Trumpists defend their offensive and insulting demeanor by saying that neither John McCain nor Mitt Romney reached out to voters like them. Uh, well maybeand how did that work out again? And Trump has not learned this lesson to date.

Consider: while many in the Republican Party rally to his side - albeit with varying degrees of enthusiasm -- Trump continues to make it almost impossible for large swaths of the partys voters to join the Trump train. He is maybe the sorest winner in American political history. Sore losers are one thing, but sore winners are an entirely different sub-species.

The Donald sees an open microphone and he just cant help himself -- insulting people he desperately needs to defeat Hillary Clinton (or whomever.) At a California rally, where the leftists against Trump where showing their true hate filled colors by rioting and shouting F-bombs outside, Trump was showing his legitimately unsavory colors inside by once again going to the lyin Ted and Mitts a loser memes.

Poor Mitt Romney he said of his predecessor as presidential nominee, He begged for my endorsement! And now all he does is badmouth me  You know, once a choker, always a choker  And now he walks like a penguin onto the stage -- like a penguin!

Really Donald? There was a tremendous unifying opportunity going on outside the doors, but you had to go there? That is, shall we say, sub strategic. And penguin?

But he was not done.

Lyin Tedholds that Bible high, puts it down and then he lies cackled Trump. Lyin Ted. Well, Im going to retire that from Ted -- Im not going to call Ted that anymore.

And yet, he just did. Not only that, he made sure he revved up the venom meter with the totally gratuitous Bible held up high reference. He never got around to saying exactly what Lyin Ted lied about either, but the salient point is that he is a sore, sore winner; and moreover, he has inspired millions in this regard.

Now, chances are that the most visible Trump supporters, defined above simply as one who behaves on social media as Donald himself behaves on the stump and on Twitter, will probably arrogantly and ignorantly insist that their hero does not need Lyin Ted or choker Mitt to beat the Democrats. Such unawareness is unseemly and demonstrates stupefying shallowness.

Trump may not need the literal single votes of Ted Cruz or Mitt Romney in November, but he damned sure needs the votes of many who voted for each man. For all of Trumps success so far, Mitt (whom I did not support in the 2012 primary) has received some 61 million votes for President. Trump to date has tallied 11.5 million. Before you get all indignant, the narrow context here is not an apples to apples comparison, its merely a way to hammer the point that Trump absolutely needs those 50 million people to have a chance to win.

Yes I realize that many assume Donald will swamp Mitts total in November, and he might, but as of this moment that is merely a theory. The fact that those who voted for Trump were far more enthusiastic matters only so much.

And then there are the Cruz supporters, who make up a good part of the limited government heart of the GOP base. For all of Trumps successes, Cruz still got more than twice the votes in Texas than Trump got in all of massively populated New York State. Cruzs home is absolutely necessary for Republicans -- while New York will not matter a bit and will go Democrat, period.

For the record, I was one of those Cruz supporters, and had made the Hobsons choice that since I vote in purple North Carolina, I will likely take an airsick bag into the booth and pull the lever for the liberal New York son over the liberal New York witch. So call me #NauseousTrump. And pardon my language, but thanks to Trump, thats all part of the acceptable political lexicon today. At least I didnt use an f-bomb.

My decision to pull the Trump lever is ironic given that Trump clearly doesnt want my vote. After all, I was one of those stupid rubes who supported Lyin Ted and cheered him for holding the Bible up high and then lying. That would make me Lyin Edmund, I suppose, one among millions of lyin voters. In so many words, Trump is the one telling the nearly 8 million of us to go pound sand. (You can insert f-bomb here).

And in the spirit of unity, I wont even mention that many of those 8 million were fighting Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton and the Gang of Eight while Trump was funding them. Im going to retire that. Im not going to mention that Trump was kissing up to them while we were fighting them. Nope. Its time to stop saying that. Its retired. I wont mention it ever again, except of course to say that Im not going to say it.

Moreover, Trump clearly doesnt want the voters for choker Mitt either. He paints Mitt as a loser who came on bended knee to Trump Tower to beg for his endorsement. Thats not how it happened, nor would it be relevant if it had. The fact is, even though Mitt was way too harsh on illegal Mexican invaders for Trumps tastes, Trump endorsed Mitt after it became a fait accompli that Mitt was going to win.

I well remember the awkward press conference in Las Vegas where that took place. It meant absolutely nothing in the scope of the primary season then, and certainly means nothing now. Yet Trump cant let it go. If I were disposed to being catty, I would mention that Mitt gave away his entire inheritance while Trump used his as a running head start. But I wont. Neither will I bring up the fact that the bankruptcy protection scoreboard reads Trump 4 Mitt 0. That would be untoward. Im retiring that too.

No, if I were to Drudge all that up - I mean dredge all that up - it would make me look like Im #NeverTrump. And Im not. However, its clear Trump and many of his supporters want voters like me to be just that. He insults many of the people he needs behind every microphone, and his followers take to the socials to do the same. If the #NeverTrump camp hangs around long enough to impact the election, Trump and his supporters -- those who act out just like their hero does -- will have no one to blame but themselves. And the consequences, at least with regard to the Supreme Court, will be devastating and perhaps history altering.

So a word to Donald and his followers: right now there are more of us than there are of you. We dont want our rear ends smooched, but we are justified in conditioning our support on your stopping the vile and childish insults.

Edmund Wright is a contributor to American Thinker, Breitbart, Newsmax TV and Talk Radio Network, and author of an Amazon Elections Best-Seller.
Currently the way to victory in any controversy is to present ones own stance as loving, while disposing of the opposite view as hate speech. Though she is hardly famous for her benevolence, even Hillary Clinton commends herself as one aligned with the forces of love over against those of hate.

The issue of homosexuality among the clergy has been cast in the same terms, as United Methodists debated the issue during their General Conference recently. Lynne Alley-Grant, the pastor of Timberlake United Methodist Church in Lynchburg, campaigned for the endorsement of gay clergy with the argument that we are in the loving business, not the judging business The church is a place supposedly of love and acceptance. Her argument rests on a widespread ideology of love and sexuality that many have not looked at very closely -- one which lacks any real Christian pedigree.

This ideology dates from the advent of Romanticism, which elevated sexual love to a very high status, linking it to self-fulfillment and transcendent experience. In opposition to that mindset, traditional Christians have joined many others before them to resist the open, free expression of all forms of sexuality as a serious danger to human society. The classical scholar Bruce Thornton concludes that the ancient Greeks had an overwhelmingly dark view of sexuality, adding that our own Romantic-inspired idealizations of sexuality as a force of personal liberation and self-fulfillment would strike most Greeks as a dangerous folly and delusion. We can see an instance of their fears in the well-known story of Helen, a daughter of Aphrodite, in which the city of Troy was laid waste as the consequence of illicit sexual passion. Very sensibly, the pre-Christian Greeks believed that sex needed to be controlled in various social institutions. Rejecting such wisdom, we moderns continue to cling to shopworn Romanticism that idealizes sexual passion and justifies abandoning the time-honored social controls -- marriage and chastity, guilt and shame -- that once helped to prevent sexual excesses from destroying American society, in Thorntons verdict.

Thanks largely to the influences of psychotherapism and political correctness, the outlook of Romanticism has been revived and injected with new life. In particular, humanistic psychologists such as Abraham Maslow spread the idealistic, utopian concept of unconditional love, which includes unconditional acceptance. Naturally, they also promoted sexual expression unbounded by any sort of traditional ethical norms, helping to pave the way for the sexual revolution of the sixties and seventies. The fallout of that movement is still with us today in the form of an increased incidence of STDs, divorce, and child abandonment.

Until recently Christianity has not promoted a Romantic concept of love. Instead, Christians trusted in divine love and gracious acceptance through faith, based on the merits and sacrifice of Christ. Their deity was not an indulgent God who turns a blind eye to evil. From the time of Augustine of Hippo to that of the Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon in the nineteenth century, many of them called this divine benevolence holy love, characterized by moral purity. The founder of many of the first Methodist churches, John Wesley also held very strongly to the same inseparable connection between moral sanctification and Christian love. Concerning the popular corruptions of his own age, he once famously quipped, "Vice does not lose its character by becoming fashionable."

While unconditional love sounds a lot like grace, it is really entitlement. It obliges people to accept others no matter what they do. Those who fail to do so can be accused of neglect or abuse. In their naive failure to acknowledge evil human proclivities, humanistic psychologists maintained that children who always receive such unconditional love and acceptance grow up happy and whole. The reality is the opposite. They grow up spoiled, with their parents liable to emotional blackmail. In the wider world, this thinking gives rise to the widespread phenomenon of the cry bully, who demands things from others on the grounds of putative victimhood. So the concept of unconditional love provides an open-ended basis for blame and manipulation, since everyone can claim that they do not get enough such love. After all, who enjoys unconditional love all the time?

Since many in contemporary church bodies have exchanged their historic belief in a holy God who actually punishes sins for one of unconditional love and acceptance, it is not surprising that many in those churches are now also coming to embrace the fashionable morality of the day in regard to sexuality. Likewise, in the minds of many, heaven now features a deity of unconditional acceptance, encountered by at least one heaven-tourism travel writer in his journey to heaven. Of course, the creation of hell would be unthinkable to such a deity. When large denominations like the United Methodists have nothing more to offer the modern world than that worlds own problematic concept of love, one has to wonder why they even bother to exist. At one time, it was better understood that real Christian love comes from the supernatural operation of divine power in sinful hearts, not conformity to the trends of the times.

Bruce W. Davidson is a professor at Hokusei Gakuen University in Sapporo, Japan, and a board member of the Jonathan Edwards Center, Japan.
GOP convention planners are trying to deal with the fact that few governors, Senators, and senatorial candidates will be attending the gathering in July.

Along with dozens of House members likely to skip the conclave, the absence of establishment Republicans may undercut Trump's call for party unity, say some analysts.

But other say that Trump doesn't need these politicians anyway - he won without them and will go on without their support if necessary.

Fox News:

A growing roster of senior GOP figures  from governors to senators to, most notably, nearly every living GOP presidential nominee  is vowing to skip the convention in Cleveland, despite the candidate starting to win over the rank-and-file. In an unconventional election season where Trump has capitalized on an anti-establishment fervor, the case can be made that Trump does not need the blessing of party elders, or their attendance. Trump is a master entertainer and more than likely going to put together a convention program that attempts to highlight his strengths and sideline some of the major absences, Republican strategist Ron Bonjean told FoxNews.com. Still, since wrapping up the nomination, Trump and his surrogates have been regularly meeting with Hill Republicans, showing at least an effort to pursue party unity  a message that high-profile absences in Cleveland could undercut. Trump hit the unity theme again Sunday night, as he responded to the latest prediction that an independent candidate would soon enter the race. On Twitter, Trump warned, if the GOP can't control their own, then they are not a party. Yet Trumps contemporaries will be nowhere near Cleveland. Of all the living Republican presidential nominees and former presidents, only Bob Dole is expected to attend  and even then, only briefly, for the purpose of catching a luncheon hosted by his law firm, a source told Fox News earlier this month. Former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush have said they will not attend, as have 2008 nominee John McCain and 2012 nominee Mitt Romney. Former 2016 White House candidate Jeb Bush also is expected to skip. Of them, Romney is working most actively against Trump, having delivered a major address attacking his candidacy and frequently sparring with the now-presumptive nominee on Twitter. He also reportedly has been the focus of efforts to recruit an independent candidate, though so far to no avail. Others claim to be skipping in order to focus on their own election battles  some of those potentially made more challenging by Trumps primary success. McCain seemingly counts himself among that group. The Arizona senator is facing a tough re-election fight in a state with a heavy Hispanic population, and has said Trump complicates his race. New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte also has said she will not be attending the convention, citing a tough re-election battle. "Unlikely," Ayotte told CNN. "I've got a lot of work to do in New Hampshire, I have my own re-election and I'm going to be focusing on my voters in New Hampshire." Other lawmakers in tight election battles who do not plan to be in Cleveland include: North Carolinas Richard Burr, Wisconsins Ron Johnson, Alaskas Lisa Murkowski, Kansas Jerry Moran, Missouris Roy Blunt, and Illinois Mark Kirk, according to McClatchyDC.

It should be noted that in previous presidential years, some House and Senate candidates locked in tight reelection battles have passed up the party convention. But the absence of so many key GOP players suggests that this year, the no-shows will be unprecedented.

Given the fervor of anti-establishment Republcians, Trump certainly won't lose any support because he can't get many party leaders to back him. But he has the RNC behind him, who will apparently play a big role in running his national campaign. The national party will also assist the candidate in fundraising and get out the vote efforts.

Trump may not unite the entire party. But he is likely to go into the November election with strong support from the party base and most conservatives behind him as well. Ironically, the race may turn on how many Democrats Trump can pull from Hillary Clinton - a prospect that worries the Democrat's campaign and will no doubt complicate her messaging in the fall.
The violent protests that have erupted in and around Donald Trump rallies are moving undecideds to support the GOP nominee, say many experts.

Washington Times:

When people show up throwing bottles and waving the Mexican flag, you have had a lot of people who may have not been willing to supportTrump who see this and say the enemy of my enemy is my friend, said former Rep. Tom Davis, who ran House Republicans campaign committee for two cycles a decade ago. There is no question these are helping Trump, and Democrats know that. The billionaire businessmans stern calls to tighten border controls, his vow to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and his declaration that Mexican society is sending rapists and other bad elements to the U.S. have angered Hispanic activists, who view Mr. Trumps campaign as a tipping point in politics. Likewise, his call for a ban on Muslim visitors and some of his comments about women leave many voters wary and some of them angry enough to take action beyond the ballot box. Attempts to disrupt his rallies from the inside have drawn stiff rebukes from the 69-year-old candidate, who has talked about punching protesters and described others as undatable goobers, diaper-wearing morons and fat blowhards. Go home to mommy, he told a protester at rally last week in Albuquerque.

The videos of anti-Trump protesters burning American flags and screaming obscenities at Trump supporters are not only all over the news. They are all over the internet. This guarantees maximum exposure to voters who apparently aren't buying the Democratic narrative that the violence is Trump's fault.

Patrick Buchanan, a two-time presidential candidate, said the scenes could alarm moderate Republicans already wary of Mr. Trump, and there is a danger the protests could feed into a media narrative that he is inciting the violence.

For now, though, Mr. Buchanan said on balance Mr. Trump wins because the protesters appear to be backing up the candidates claims. Cop-battlers and rock-throwers desecrating American flags and waving Mexican flags are a perfect foil for Trump, he said. They solidify and harden his base and reinforce his case against the illegals from across the border. Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, and her allies have indeed accused Mr. Trump of stoking the violence with his policy proposals and behavior on the stump. When you divide people against one another, you dont know what is going to happen, Mrs. Clinton said at a rally this year. We are seeing violence at political rallies in our country. That is the kind of thing you see on TV, you assume is far away, dont you? Well, this, this hateful talk about immigrants, about Muslims, about women, I mean, enough, enough. It is not who we are.

Polls suggest that voters blame Trump for the violence but blame protesters more.

The implied message of Hillary Clinton is that Trump is to blame because protesters can't control themselves. His rhetoric is so divisive they lose their minds and perform acts of violence without thinking.

Both Sanders and Clinton have refused to denounce these displays of anti-Americanism. Chris Matthews stuck his foot in his mouth when he referred to Trump supporters inadvertently as "the Americans," thus going off script to portray the two sides as "American" and "Anti-American":

Newsbusters:

MSNBC's Chris Matthews had one of his classic gaffes on Friday's Hardball as he watched live footage of Trump supporters facing off against protesters outside one of the billionaire's rallies in San Diego, California. Matthews stopped himself from calling the Trump backers "Americans," and continued by labeling them with their apparent political ideology: "So we hear 'USA' from the Amer  well, the people taking the conservative view  let's put it that way  the ones with the U.S. flags." [video below] Moments later, guest Ann Coulter pointed out the host's misstep: "You got it right before  when you slipped and said something about the protesters versus the Trump supporters  and you called the Trump supporters the Americans. They are the Americans." Matthews admitted, "That was a slip. I was looking at the American flags against the Mexican flags."

There is every indication that the protests will only get bigger and more violent, culminating in tens of thousands of demonstrators descending on Cleveland for the GOP convention in July. The potential for a catastrophic explosion is there, but given the ramping up of security, it's hoped that this scenario can be avoided.
Someone sent me audio of Ted Cruz being interviewed on the Pat Campbell radio show explaining why he suspended his campaign.

During the interview, Cruz vowed to fight to keep conservative principles and values in the GOP platform. Once again, Cruz's character, political savvy (a good thing) and commitment to conservatism shone through. I was also struck by how centered Cruz appeared; calm and ready to move forward in his battle to defend Judeo-Christian values.

Ronald Reagan's mom, Nelle, was a devout Christian. She instilled in Ronnie that God would never allow anything to happen that did not ultimately lead to good for him. Reagan found comfort in he and his mom's shared faith when he lost the GOP nomination in 1976. I suspect Cruz is of a similar mindset. Reagan won the general in 1980.

Folks, I gotta tell ya', Cruz is an awesome man and peerless political leader. His day in the sun is coming. God has big plans for Ted Cruz.

Thus, I do not understand those on our side who persist in attempting to make Cruz a bad guy. What is up with that?

Okay, I get that these folks are all in for Trump. Fine. But why do some of them still feel a need to continue beating up on Cruz? For crying out loud, Cruz is a rare Republican that we sent to Washington who has kept his word to represent and fight for the best interest of his constituents and all Americans. I challenge anyone to deny that fact. So what is behind this weird irrational hatred for Cruz?

Candidly, I was puzzled. Isaiah 54:17 tells Christians, No weapon formed against you shall prosper. And yet, Trump's weapon of lies attacking Cruz's character appeared to have worked to drive down his poll numbers. Whenever life does not make sense, I trust God.

Romans 8:28 says, And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose. Nelle instructed her son Ronnie to trust God no matter how bad things appeared on the surface. Cruz losing his bid for the WH will ultimately lead to good for him and America.

Interestingly, Cruz does not cite Trump's lies about him as the reason for his sudden decline in the polls. Cruz blamed the media's narrative. Cruz said typically the media would deem it big news for a candidate to win five states in a row with landslide victories as he did. Instead, the media played down his wins. Media pundits promoted their narrative 24/7 that Trump was going to win NY which would make Trump unstoppable. Media relentlessly told Cruz supporters that it was hopeless and many gave up.

Anyhow, for you anti-Cruz people who keep sending me emails, in essence, saying, Na-nana-naa-nah, Cruz Lost!, God bless you. I remain a proud supporter of Ted Cruz, a great American and even greater brother in Christ.

Yes, if Trump is the GOP nominee, I will vote for The Donald because he is not Hillary Clinton.

However, in closing I must say, Thank God for Ted Cruz

Lloyd Marcus, The Unhyphenated American

Chairman: The Conservative Campaign Committee

LloydMarcus.com
Hillary Clintons campaign is taking drastic measures, obviously in panic over the California primary a week from today. She may still have the support of the Democratic Part bosses  the superdelegates -- but an embarrassing showing in the nations most populous state would leave her campaign reeling. She does not want the spectacle of the Philadelphia convention settling on her reluctantly, as Bernie supporters go wild, pointing out that he has been a winner and she a loser for the last several months.

This is why, as Abby Phillip reports in the Washington Post:

Hillary Clinton has upended her campaign schedule, adding more stops in California, in an effort to prevent an embarrassing loss there to Bernie Sanders, her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination. Clinton originally planned to campaign for two days this week in New Jersey, but at the last minute canceled an event on Thursday and will instead return to California for a five-day swing. The schedule change comes as Sanders has barnstormed California, not leaving the state in more than a week. Meanwhile, a recent poll found the race closing significantly. Clinton's lead over Sanders had narrowed to just two points. Details are scarce, but Clinton now plans to hold events in California from Thursday until the day before the state's June 7 primary.

There is little prospect that Clintons hastily-arranged events in California will match the size or enthusiasm of Sanderss rallies, like the one yesterday in Oakland that had at least 10,000 enthusiastic attendees (and a few animal rights protestors that rushed the stage).

Judging by bumper sticker count, Sanders will easily carry the East Bay, where I live. California allocates delegates by congressional district, so there will be a split between the two candidates, and the only question is who will get more. A lopsided total for Sanders would leave Clinton humiliated.
College is a time for intellectual curiosity, or at least it used to be. As liberals have increasingly dominated the academic profession, college has been transformed from a thinking space into a safe space and its culture from politically open into politically correct. While on the surface it may seem that liberal professors have accomplished their goal of indoctrinating college students, the work of the professors has had an unintended consequence: young conservatives now know how to fight back against political suppression, and they are in a position to succeed.

In case after case, colleges have instituted a culture that has removed political discourse from campus altogether. From claiming that the use of the word "American" is "problematic" to banning the use of the word "mankind," colleges have created a culture that forces students to live in a bubble of liberalism, whether students like it or not. George Orwell was not far off in his assessment of the future if these professors were the thought police he was talking about.

Efforts by the left to remove political discourse from college campuses have been met with strong resistance from the right. Conservative speakers such as Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder have been traveling to college campuses across the country to share their message with young people, to the ire of campus liberals and progressives.

The left's response has been to repeatedly protest these speakers and prevent them from speaking at all. This has not stopped the speakers from continuing to fight back, and Shapiro has even helped file a lawsuit against the notorious California State University, Los Angeles for preventing him from speaking in February.

These conservative speakers are traveling to college campuses in particular to explain to young people the idiocy of P.C. culture and safe spaces. The conservative message about opening up college campuses to free speech and the free expression of ideas becomes much stronger in the face of campuses removing conservatives' right to speak altogether. The left will be hard pressed to win a debate over freedom of speech by denying conservatives that very right. All it does is reinforce the right's point on the matter as well as giving conservatives the moral high ground.

Students are witnessing colleges attempting to take away their freedoms, and conservative voices are growing on campus in response. Membership in college conservative clubs, like Young Americans for Liberty, is increasing to combat liberalism. What this rise in membership has done is provide conservatives with strength in numbers so they can share their principles on campus without being so easily shut down. When these clubs are juxtaposed with liberal protesters such as these, who protested Milo Yiannopoulos's event at Rutgers, they can credibly claim that they are the voice of reason on college campuses.

Most interesting is how this process can affect the future of conservatism and of politics in general. While conservatives are constantly forced to defend their views on campus in the face of a heated opposition, liberals are given a free pass and are able to be barricaded in an ideological bubble. What this can set up in the future are political debates for which liberals are nowhere near prepared. We are already witnessing that when the political weapon of choice for young liberals is to shut down conservative events instead of preferring to have an honest discussion about the issues.

By having to constantly defend their beliefs, a large segment of young people have become deeply rooted in ideological conservatism. It takes guts to defend oneself among immense scrutiny from the left, so those doing so must truly believe in what they are saying. These young people want their candidates to be just as vigorous in defense of conservatism as the students have been themselves on campus.

Through all of their efforts in trying to make college campuses as politically one-sided as possible, leftists have only hindered their own and have made the right stronger in defense of conservative principles. The left has given the right good reason to rally the clans in a call for freedom, and that is a cry that will only grow louder as campuses continue down this path of political correctness and liberalism.

In the future, liberals will look back on their attempt to overtake college campuses as the day they lost the political debate for good to the true, intellectual conservative.

Trevor Louis is the publisher of The Daily Whig, a conservative blog featuring young writers. He attends Gonzaga College High School in Washington, D.C.
As discussed here yesterday, there is a potential scandal emerging from the Conservative Party of Canada's convention in Vancouver.

On May 27 and May 28, all four major online media outlets in Canada (the CBC, National Post, Globe and Mail, and Maclean's) reported on a Muslim woman named Urz Heer who stood up at the party's convention and tearfully complained about its purported stance against Muslims.

What a tangled web we weave.

According to Maclean's, Ms. Heer is "a 47-year-old delegate who works for Brampton [Conservative] MP Kyle Seeback." Of course, Seeback is no longer an MP (Member of Parliament), as the Parliament of Canada website will tell you. He was defeated in the last election. Regardless, apparently Heer works for Seeback, who is a Conservative.

The Globe and Mail also refers to Heer as a "Conservative delegate."

And then the National Post states that Heer is "a board member on the Conservative party's Brampton South riding association." A board member in the Conservative Party?

Not only does Heer's LinkedIn profile claim that she is still a "Director" with the "Brampton West Federal Liberal Riding Association," but the Liberal Party of Canada's own website for the "Brampton West Federal Liberal Association" also shows Heer as a director.

Based on her Twitter feed, Heer was also clearly a Liberal Party supporter well after the last election.

On November 4, she tweeted "Congratulations @JustinTrudeau on your #swearingin! Bring back the better, peace loving, more inclusive #Canada for everyone. #PM23 #cdnpoli."

Then on December 25, she also tweeted "@JustinTrudeau Happy Birthday! Thank you for saving Canada from going down a path of hatred and division. #aCanadianIsACanadian"

And as late as January 7, Heer nominated Liberal Party of Canada leader Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne for the MAX Gala Canadian Non-Muslim Friend of the Year at the Muslim Awards of Excellence.

But as of May, Ms. Heer is working for the Conservative Party candidate in her electoral riding, and on the riding association's board of directors?

Something smells very odd, and it smells even worse because the Conservative Party is not talking about it even though they were smeared across the national media by incident's coverage.

Does Canada have separate Liberal and Conservative parties at the federal level, or is there an informal merger that the base hasn't been informed of?
Reagan Democrats are with Trump today, driven to this extremity by Bush Republicans. These kinder and gentler, compassionate "conservatives" have not only refused to secure our border against millions of illegals, but conspired with Democrats to pass the so-called Civil Rights Act of 1991, which overturned a series of Supreme Court cases that had refused to recognize claims of racial discrimination based on nothing more than statistics. In passing this bill, Congress created the pernicious doctrine of "disparate impact," and for 25 years, non-discriminatory employment practices have been under legal attack if they result in a work force too white. A Republican president, named Bush, signed this concept into law. This treachery was never forgotten by working-class whites.

For a time, Bush 1 stood firm, threatening a veto. But in an incident reported only by National Review, Alaskan RINO Ted Stevens stormed into the White House, demanding that the veto threat be lifted. Bush caved, and the white working class was betrayed. When Clinton had his "Sister Souljah" moment the next year, they saw in him someone who at least had a minimal amount of courage when confronted by black racism, and the Republicans lost the presidency.

Stevens had failed in Alaska at enshrining racial discrimination in the Alaska Constitution in 1987, and Alaska has been a solid red state since. But he succeeded at the national level, and the seed of the Trump vote was planted. The rights of one group  whites  would have to be sacrificed to appeal to another group  blacks. The repudiation of the Reagan legacy party would continue with Bush 2, ruining the Republican brand by overseas adventurism, expansion of the welfare state, and a domestic spending binge.

Bush Republicans, along with Trump, are big-government conservatives, meaning they're not conservatives at all. They're the Fortune 500 Republicans, happy to use the powers of the federal Leviathan to feather their own nests. At least 80% of congressional Republicans are beholden to big business and are unwilling to stand with the working men and women of this country. They won't fight for much, although their corporate masters do oppose higher taxes on themselves. That's about all they're not willing to bend on.

The failure of the Cruz candidacy and the continuation of Boehnerism (a form of Bushism) in the person of Paul Ryan mean that the only politically practicable way of getting the federal government under control is from the ground up. Congress, regardless of which party is in the majority, is controlled by powerful special interests who profit from the system as it is. The Supreme Court, in upholding Obamacare, has demonstrated that it will not stand in the way of the expansion of federal power.

So we're down to Article V, our last resort, the emergency brake crafted by the Framers for precisely the situation we find ourselves in. Republican state legislators are the last bastion of Reagan conservatives, and they are slowly beginning to understand the role the Framers gave them in our federalist system. Texas governor Greg Abbott is prepared to help provide the leadership of an Article V movement with his Texas Plan, nine proposed constitutional amendments that, together, would restore limited and constitutional government. One of them, the Balanced Budget Amendment, has 28 of the required 34 state resolutions. If six more states are added, the first Amendment Convention in American history will convene to draft the language of a BBA.

Seven states whose legislatures are under complete Republican control have not passed the Article V BBA Resolution: Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Arizona, Wisconsin, Virginia, and South Carolina. Unless 2016 is a Democratic landslide, all should remain Republican in 2017, with the possible addition of Kentucky.

Because no Amendment Convention has been held in our history, some state legislators hesitate to support Article V, fearful of a runaway convention. The John Birch Society and, under Phyllis Schlafly, the Eagle Forum have led the resistance to Article V. In order to allay these concerns, the Assembly of State Legislatures was formed and will meet in Philadelphia on June 16 to adopt a set of proposed rules for the convention to operate under. Most important is the principle of one state, one vote, one amendment. Every state has an equal vote, and only the subject matter contained in the call for the convention can be considered.

Regardless of the outcome of the presidential election, Congress, under either party, will not make the reforms we so urgently need. These reforms will only come from the states, and the people, using the Constitution's last resort: Article V.

Fritz Pettyjohn was chairman of Reagan for President, Alaska 1979-80, and blogs daily at ReaganProject.com.
On January 12, 2016 House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) "announced the creation of a Task Force on Executive Overreach to examine the historic breakdown of the separation of powers and checks and balances that has led to the unprecedented increase in presidential power and executive overreach." Part of the Task Force's mission is to "study the impact the increase in presidential and executive branch power has had on the ability of Congress to conduct oversight of the executive branch, the lack of transparency that furthers unchecked executive power, and the constitutional requirement of the President to faithfully execute the law."

Which is why it is so painfully ironic that this Task Force on Executive Overreach shut down a reasoned legal argument about the very behavior it is supposed to rein in.

On May 24, 2016 law professor Gail Heriot gave testimony to the U.S. House Taskforce on Executive Overreach describing the latest Obama edict on transgender guidance. In her 21-page testimony, Heriot spoke "as an individual member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights and not on behalf of the Commission as a whole" stating that "Congress has succumbed to the temptation to confer more discretion on executive branch agencies" and this has severely damaged the separation of powers so integral to America's governance.

Furthermore, Heriot describes the many administrative agencies that grab power that was never conferred to them via the Constitution. Thus, "the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has . . . managed to transform what was supposed to be a limitation on its power into a greater power . . . by issuing 'guidances,' which are devilishly difficult to challenge in court." Consequently, "resistance by employers is usually futile."

Part of Heriot's testimony concerns sexual violence guidance and she made it "crystal clear" that she "regarded sexual violence as deplorable." Heriot diligently explains that the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is "imposing its own policy preferences in the name of enforcing Title IX." In fact, Heriot is trying to safeguard the rights of accused students in sexual harassment disciplinary proceedings now that cross- examination on due process grounds is being "discouraged" by this same OCR and "vague harassment standards" are instead being used to push their agenda.

Heriot's testimony about "The Transgender Guidance" maintains that "it would be an understatement to say that the Transgender Guidance goes beyond what Title IX . . . passed in 1972, actually requires." Thus, "[i]f someone had said in 1972 that one day Title IX would be interpreted to force schools to allow anatomically intact boys who psychologically 'identify' as girls to use the girls locker room, he would have been greeted with hoots of laughter. OCR is simply engaged in legislating."

For her concern about adherence to the Constitution and the damage of a continuing over-reach of the executive branch, Heriot was told by California Representative Zoe Lofgren that she "really doesnt know anything and probably has never met a transgender child who is going through, in almost every case, a very difficult experience finding themselves." Then Lofgren's final volley was to claim that Heriot was "a bigot, . . . an ignorant bigot."

This, even after Heriot explained:

"[I]n the 1970s, nobody would have thought that a girl and an anatomical boy who thinks of himself as a girl were members of the same 'sex.' They would have said the girl was a girl, and the boy, no matter how feminine he might be, was a boy. This is not to say that they would not have cared about such a students welfare or that they would not have recognized that his 'gender dysphoria' (as it is called in DSM) might sometimes require that special provisions be made. But they never would have said that such a student was in fact 'a girl' or that if a school failed to group him with the actual girls for the purposes of 'separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities' organized 'on the basis of sex' that it was misclassifying him. OCR has not pointed to a single case in which anyone during the 1970s used the statutory terms 'sex' or 'discrimination,' in a manner consistent with the Transgender Guidance."

In fact, Heriot demonstrated:

"that the term 'transgender' was coined specifically to contrast with the term 'transsexual' and was intended to describe individuals who had adopted the habits and traits of the opposite sex without having actually attempted to cross over into 'becoming' a member of the opposite sex (such as through surgical alteration of the body)."

One wonders if this lucid explanation was simply too logical and educational for the likes of Representative Lofgren. At no time did Heriot show anything but compassion. Her point was that the OCR "has pushed past the limits of its legal authority." Title IX clearly states:

"a recipient may provide separate toilet, locker room, and other facilities on the basis of sex [.]" In fact, the "words gender, gender identity and transgender do not appear in Title IX. "

But,

"over the years, the concept of 'gender' has been used, particularly in the LGBT community, specifically as a contrast with the concept of 'sex.' While 'sex' is seen as a biological term, 'gender' is seen as a term that refers to various cultural traits associated with sex, but separate from sex itself. Nothing highlights the fact that the two concepts are different better than the term 'cisgender,' which had to be coined in the 1990s in order to describe those individuals whose gender and sex match."

But in the world of leftist thinking, "When [they] use a word, it means just what [they] choose it to mean  neither more nor less."

"The question is," . . . "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," . . . "which is to be master   thats all."

Thus, create the words to fit the leftist agenda.

To be called a "bigot" actually flies in the face of Heriot's concern for transgender students as exemplified when she stated that "[m]aking up law on the fly" is a perilous endeavor because if "Title IX really forbids gender identity discrimination, that will not always work to the benefit of transgender students." Repeatedly in her testimony, Heriot exhorts that "the bottom line is that a mere guidance cannot impose new duties on regulated persons not contained in the original statute [.] That can only be done, if at all, by rule." And "there are serious limits on the ability of the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to simply adopt its own policy preferences [.]"

Most telling was when Representative Lofgren maintained that she did "not want to get into a debate" about Heriot's points. One is reminded of David Horowitz's claim that "inside every liberal is a totalitarian screaming to get out." Instead of a cogent debate, Lofgren fell back on the standard militant leftist response to call anyone with a different viewpoint a bigot.

And, finally, Heriot asserts that "there is no reason in the world that any federal, state or local government should be telling anyone that he or she needs to conform to the expectations of others regarding members of his or her sex. Thats what freedom is all about [emphasis mine]. But its one thing to butt out of an individuals decision to dress and behave like a member of the opposite sex and it is quite another to declare that this makes that individual an actual member of the opposite sex and mandate that every federally funded school in America act accordingly."

And, finally Heriot is genuinely concerned that such a ruling will, in fact, encourage "pranksters and voyeurs" claiming to be transgender, thus endangering all students.

Heriot highlights the financial noose that OCR tightens when schools do not conform. The idea that federal funding would be withheld if OCR does not get its way demonstrates the coercive power the federal government now wields. It is "an astonishing annexation of new power to the federal government."

Not surprising, "several left-wing blogs . . . characterized Lofgrens remarks as an 'epic smack-down.' The report set off a cascade of hate mail to Professor Heriot, including death threats and a writer urging her to commit suicide. Stephen C. Ferruolo, the dean of the law school at the University of San Diego, has also received demands that he fire Professor Heriot."

Yet, Stanley Kurtz writes that Heriot's "evidence establishes "that the Obama administration's transgender guidance goes far beyond the intent of the 1972 law, and amounts to a usurpation of the legislative powers of Congress."

It is, as Heriot explains, "hard to see how one might oppose [making government accountable] - - unless of course one believes that the executive branch should be able to operate without judicial supervision. People who believe this should be forced to acknowledge it in public."

Et tu, Lofgren.

The National Association of Scholars (NAS)) under the aegis of Peter Wood, has issued a statement of support for Gail Heriot, maintaining that

Lofgrens outburst was outrageous. It violated the standards of civility of the U.S. House of Representatives. And it was especially inappropriate in view of the temperate character of Professor Heriots remarks. It is perhaps too much to hope that Representative Lofgren will apologize for her antics as they seem to have served her purpose in exciting her progressive base. Other observers will take note of her abuse of her authority. We expect the University of San Diego to disregard the calls to remove Professor Heriot from her position. The National Association of Scholars recognizes Professor Heriots outstanding work on behalf of civil rights in America and her determination to uphold the rule of law during a period in which the executive has frequently abused it.

Blurring of the separation of powers, ignoring American rule of law, displays of uncivil behavior, and not adhering to logical argumentation but instead relying on emotional outbursts -- these describe what goes on in the halls of the government these days.

I wish to extend my moral support to Gail Heriot and urge others to do the same.

Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com
Many people are waiting for the Next Big Thing from Samsung  the Galaxy Note 6, or most likely Galaxy Note 7  due to arrive in August. Rumors are at an all-time high as June quickly approaches and most likely, by the time the Galaxy Note 7 arrives we will know it inside and out. One of the most interesting aspects of the new device is that Samsung may go back to an Edge variation on the Galaxy Note 7 and others are predicting either a straight edged version or an edged version, but not both variants. Based on some information on an import listing discovered by our source, it appears that a Galaxy Note 7 Edge version is in the works.

This sort of proof provided by a customs import listing on the Zauba website shows the potential for a curved display version of the Galaxy Note 7. The actual phone has not entered India  this is a metal mask that used on the production line  and its model number gives us pause that could indeed be the curved Galaxy Note 7 Edge. The production mask is numbered SM-N935G. That fits the current pattern of the current models  the Galaxy Note 5 is SM-N920, the Galaxy S7 is SM-G930, and the Galaxy S7 Edge is SM-G935. It is only logical that the new Galaxy Note would be named SM-N935. This extrapolation is the thought process of our source, and as such, understand it is a rumor  not fact.

We are anticipating many other Galaxy Note 7 features, including a 5.8-inch QHD display for the regular Galaxy Note 7 and 5.9-inches for the Edge version. The processor will most likely be a Snapdragon 820 (rumors are that the Snapdragon 823 may sneak in) or the Exynos 8890. We are relatively confident that 6GB of DDR4 RAM will reside inside and that there will be a 64GB or 128GB model offered with the ability to expand that via a microSD card. The primary camera will most likely be the same 12MP shooter found in the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge and the same 5MP front-facing camera for selfies and video chatting, although we expect updated camera software. Some rumors have the Galaxy Note 7 getting even a larger  14MP or 16MP  sensor, but nothing is confirmed. The battery will be at minimum a 3100mAh, and we can expect an IP68 certification for dust and water resistance.
The Iranian Supreme Council of Cyberspace has given non-Iranian companies one year to store all of its citizens data locally, based on the guidelines and concerns of the supreme leader. The exact text is that: Foreign messaging companies active in the country are required to transfer all data and activity linked to Iranian citizens into the country in order to ensure their continued activity. The new regulations were delivered by the Iranian state news agency, IRNA. The announcement, which happened over the weekend, has caused something of a backlash with many comments about of privacy and security appearing on social media  this local data will presumably be available for inspection. Iran has some of the strictest control over the Internet of countries around the world and blocks access to many social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, although many users are able to access these websites through VPN (Virtual Private Network) connections.

One instant messaging application that is at potential risk of the new regulations is Telegram, where it is estimated that one quarter of Irans eighty million population use the messaging application. Telegrams cloud based, secure messaging platform is seen as the main reason why it has become a very popular platform although this does not mean immunity: at the end of 2015, Iranian authorities arrested the administrators of around twenty Telegram groups for spreading immoral content, part of a clampdown on the populations freedom of expression. Twitter saw a number of angry responses such as: Telegrams data centres are to be moved inside the country so they can delete what they want and arrest who they want, and also I would stop using #Telegram if the servers are moved inside the country because it would not be safe anymore.

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It remains to be seen how Telegram, and other social platforms, will react to this news. Will they move local data to local data centres on Iranian soil? With Telegram being a cloud based system, the concept of locating user data in a particular geographical site may not be considered realistic and it is possible that Telegram will be a much harder messaging service to access by the middle of 2017.
Project Tango isnt really new, as it was announced nearly two years ago now. However, Google and Lenovo are looking to bring that technology mainstream this year. Back at CES in January, the two companies announced the first ever Project Tango smartphone. Which Lenovo didnt show the device off all that much. However they are going to be showcasing it at their event next week in San Francisco. June 9th, at the Lenovo Tech World event, we should learn a whole lot more about Project Tango. Ahead of that event, Lenovo penned a blog post talking about three ways that you can use Project Tango in your everyday life.

One example, and perhaps the most exciting, is the ability to game anywhere. At Google I/O 2015, ATAP held demos of Project Tango, where you had a tablet connected to basically a nerf gun, and were able to shoot at things that you could see on the tablet. This example use-case for Project Tango is a big reason why many people believe that this is Googles secret weapon for VR.

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Another way for Project Tango to be used in your everyday life, is to map your world. Lenovo actually showed this off at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona back in February. By taking members of the press to Museu Nacional dArt de Catalunya in Barcelona, and using the indoor navigation and augmented reality capabilities of Project Tango, visitors were able to make their way through the museum and find information on items that were on display in the museum. They were also able to share their experiences with anyone. Definitely changing the museum going experience for everyone.

This last example is probably one of the more interesting and most useful uses for Project Tango. Project Tango is able to help you design your home. As the technology is able to do measurements, you can easily see how much space you have there in that room for that new couch, or table. With Project Tango, youll be able to virtually place an item in your living room and see how well it fits, or if it doesnt fit the design and color scheme youre going for. Lowes is actually doing some work with Project Tango, as they announced earlier this year that they are working on a virtual shopping experience.

Project Tango is shaping up to be some interesting technology that could really change how we do things like shop for furniture, or go to a museum. Project Tango is also going to help Google map the interiors of buildings around the world.
A new patent awarded to Google has revealed how the Mountain View-based technology giant plans to make its self-driving cars switch from manual to autonomous mode at the push of a button. As per details available in the patent, future users of Googles self-driving cars will be able to make the switch by pushing a large ON button. However, there is no way to tell if the technology will indeed be implemented by Google or if it is just one among a large number of technological possibilities being tested by the company for its first commercial vehicle. Given that the testing of these vehicles are at an advanced stage, it is unlikely that Google would stuff its cars with new technologies until it starts work on a new prototype.

If the patented technology is implemented, drivers would be able to take much-needed rests during long drives by switching to autonomous mode when they feel tired, and vice versa. However, there are some restrictions in place to ensure that such switches wouldnt impact safety of the passengers. After a driver would push the ON button, the car will scan its surroundings to ensure it is in a zone where autonomous driving would be possible and if the particular road is pre-approved for autonomous driving. If not, the car would advise the driver to either change lanes or to give up the idea. On the flip side, if a driver wants to take over and switch the cars mode from autonomous to manual, the car would prevent him from doing so in certain cases like when it is in the middle of a sharp turn or if the conditions arent safe enough. The patented technology allows divers to regain control of their cars by engaging with accelerators or steering wheels. This is a great feature as drivers will be able to prevent any incidents caused by malfunctions in their cars hardware or software systems.

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Yet another good initiative taken by Google not so long ago is to limit the speeds of its self-driving cars to just 25 Mph. Even though Google asserts that the limit is in place because it helps it with the development process and to test its software, the slower speeds will also allow drivers to take over easily and reduce changes of heavy damage if things go south. However, in main thoroughfares and wide roads, Google has admitted that it will let the cars run at speeds of up to 35 Mph. In a recent report that Google handed over to the FCC, it was revealed that Google will begin testing its cars in four new cities in the U.S. along with the testing radius in each of these cities. With greater reach and with added knowledge of traffic conditions in new cities, Googles self-driving cars will be able to adapt quickly to local conditions once the first commercial versions are put on sale.
Every 6 months brings a new flagship from Sony, and this time around theyre changing up the name on us just a bit. While the established Xperia name stays the same, its the letter moniker after it thats being shaken up. Xperia Z is now a thing of the past, dying alongside the Xperia Z5 recently launched in October of 2015, and is now curiously being replaced by Xperia X. Its uncommon for an OEM to go backwards in numbers or letters, but its not unprecedented by any means. Does this mean the Xperia X is a step backward from the Xperia Z5, or is Sony just looking to start things fresh in 2016 with something new? Lets take a look!

Video Review

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Specs

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Weve got the US version of the phone, which in some cases is pretty different than the international version. Its not often that Sony releases an unlocked US version of one of their phones, but here we have one in the flesh. If youre familiar with Sony Xperia phones the design here will feel incredibly familiar, although Sony has made some modifications to the design in the last year with the Xperia Z5. On the front youll find a 5-inch 1080p Triluminos IPS LCD display and a pair of stereo speakers. Also on the front resides a 13-megapixel camera with 1/3 sensor and a 22mm f/2.0 lens. Around back sits a familiar 23-megapixel camera with 1/2.3 sensor and a 24mm f/2.0 lens in addition to a single-LED flash. Taking a look inside that sealed body, which is no longer waterproof, reveals a Snapdragon 650 hexacore CPU, which is made up of a 1.8GHz Cortex-A72 dual-core processor and a 1.4GHz Cortex-A53 quad-core processor.

3GB of RAM is seated alongside the Adreno 510 GPU, and either 32GB or 64GB of internal storage is included as well with the option for expandable storage via micro SD card slot. A 2,620mAh battery is tucked away within the sleek frame, which measures 142.7mm high by 69.4mm wide by 7.7mm thin, and weighs a well-balanced 153 grams. Sonys ever-so-light skin sits atop Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. Bluetooth 4.2 support is here as well as A2DP and aptX support, and high-speed WiFi users will be pleased to know that dual-band 2.4GHz and 5GHZ support is here with 802.11 support up to AC. Theres an FM radio found inside and the 3.5mm headset jack up top supports up to 24-bit/192KHz audio. Lastly we see that the US version of the Xperia X once again lacks the fingerprint sensor of the international version, a bizarre business decision made by Sony since the Xperia Z5 hit the US earlier this year. The phone ships in white, lime gold, rose gold and the graphite black review unit were using for a price of $549.99 on June 26th.

AIDA64 is reporting that the board is an MSM8952, which is actually a Snapdragon 617, however all the rest of the specs match up with a Snapdragon 650. Weve seen reporting anomalies like this before, wrong model numbers, wrong boards, etc. and its likely due to a firmware or other software reporting issue thats not registering correctly with the system. Check out all the AIDA64 info below to see the specs in detail.

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In The Box

Contents of the retail box are fairly slim compared to some other phones in this price range. Aside from the obvious phone youll find a set of manuals, USB-A to microUSB cable, and a wall charger. Oddly enough this wall charger is only 5v/1.5a, which is considerably lower wattage than were used to on modern smartphones. Most phones these days ship with at least a 5v/2a charger, and the latest models bump that up to 5v/3a or higher too for quicker charging.

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Display

Sonys Triluminos IPS LCD panels have been a staple of the Xperia Z series for years now, and thats been carried over even with the name change of the Xperia X. Sony produces some of the better LCD panels on the market, and the 5-inch display on the Xperia X is no exception there. Initial impressions with the display will likely leave you audibly saying wow. In true IPS LCD form this thing is super bright, and the default auto brightness is quite aggressive in bringing that brightness up as high as possible in any given situation. This is one of the easiest displays to see in direct sunlight in recent memory without a doubt. By default the image itself is quite good, although colors are ever so slightly washed out and a little too vibrant. Jumping into the image enhancement settings allows you to change to the X-Reality mode, which bumps up the contrast considerably and mutes those colors to a much more realistic level. If you like the extra vibrant colors and still want that high contrast, you can also set it to Super-vivid mode, which makes it behave more like an AMOLED panel with regards to color saturation and contrast.

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Black levels are pretty incredible, especially for an LCD, although these of course are no match for an AMOLED panels infinite blacks. Youll find that a black screen is always going to be dark grey, but of course as you drop the brightness down the relative black levels become better. Refresh rate comes up a little short, as there is some visible trailing and ghosting when dragging things across the screen, especially images that have higher contrast points in them (such as white text on a black background). Viewing angles are superb and only exhibit dimming, no color shifting of any noticeable kind, a true selling point for IPS LCDs. White balance is incredibly accurate too, and I found that this was one seriously attractive display if for no other reason than the sheer accuracy of the whites and colors.

What wasnt great, however, was the digitizer. This is not only disappointing in any phone, but especially in a Sony phone, and a problem Ive never seen before in any of Sonys flagships. The Xperia X is not the high end mid-2016 Xperia device, thats the Xperia X Performance, but its still over $500 at retail and one would expect a first-class touch experience from the phone. What I found was that it often missed my touches, especially when typing fast, and I found myself constantly having to correct my spelling. This carried over into other touch experiences as well, where I often found that it just wouldnt register my touches all the time. I tried enabling the Glove Mode, which is a rather wonderful feature when its available, but the extra sensitivity that brings to the table didnt seem to help oddly enough. This could just be a firmware issue, and as of the writing of this review, were a month out from the US launch, but seeing as the phone is already available internationally its pretty terrible to see this happen to say the least.

Hardware and Build

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Sonys Omnibalance design has evolved over the years but not too much to the extreme. Much like you would still recognize what a Samsung or HTC phone looks like, Sonys designs are immediately recognizable even with the changes made in the past year or so. At first this looks visually identical to the Xperia Z5, which was announced in the Fall of 2015, but closer inspection will show modifications to the trim around the sides. This creates a smoother, more uniform device than the Xperia Z5, and overall feels absolutely excellent in the hand. Sony has thankfully moved away from the glass backs, which are pretty but are fingerprint magnets and make the phone overly slippery, to a powdery metal back instead. Sony says this is a fully metal back but it feels exactly like plastic, and looks like plastic too. Its basically the same case as with the LG G5 and its plastic-like coating, but this feels cheaper than that in every way.

The frame around the edges feels much more solid though, and while it still contains that same plastic-like finish of the back, it feels a lot more solid like a metal frame is expected to feel. The sides are nice and smooth, and even the corners and edges have been smoothed out to make this feel great in the hand. On the left side sits a tray which holds the microSD card and nano SIM card. Its rather nice having a tray thats easily ejectable by hand, but pulling it out will immediately restart the phone, which is a bit of a nuisance. On the right side sits a dedicated two-step camera shutter button, which is situated nearly at the bottom of the phone, with the volume rocker just above it. I absolutely love this volume rocker position and found that I hit it accidentally less often than one thats situated higher, and it was much easier to adjust when on a phone call too.

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Situated dead in the middle of the right side is the recessed and elongated power button, which is identical to the one on the Xperia Z5. The US model of the Xperia X does not feature a fingerprint scanner in here though, something thats beyond questionable at this point in the smartphone market, especially at this price range. Sony has curiously not moved to USB Type-C with the Xperia X, and features a centered microUSB port at the bottom, while the top holds the 3.5mm headset jack situated on the left-most corner. Moving around to the front youll find a 2.5D glass thats curved at the edges to be congruent with the sides of the phone. That beautiful glass face has stereo speakers on it too, one placed at the top and one at the bottom for superb sound. Whats also well worth noting is that this is the first 2016 flagship I havent scuffed the glass on. Ive been less than impressed with Gorilla Glass 4 at this point in time, and the scratch resistant glass that Sony is using here seems to be much better made than other 2016 flagships in my experience.

Performance and Memory

Looking at the spec sheet you might think youll be disappointed in the performance of the Xperia X, especially for the price. At this price range youll find plenty of other devices, like the LG G5, pushing a much beefier Snapdragon 820 processor and Adreno 530 GPU. What youll find in real world and even gaming performance, however, is little discernible difference between the Snapdragon 650 CPU inside the Xperia X, and any Snapdragon 820 powered device. In fact if someone just handed you the phone and asked you what you thought the specs were, its more than likely youd think this is the latest and greatest in powerhouse mobile processors.

Theres a number of different reasons for this, but one of the biggest is that the Snapdragon 650 is made up of cutting edge Cortex-A72 cores on the powerful dual-core side. Its also got the Adreno 510 GPU inside, a next-generation GPU thats quite a bit more powerful than the Adreno 405 found in the previous chipset, the Snapdragon 617. This chipset was actually announced originally as the Snapdragon 618 and later renamed to 650.

What this phone also has is phenomenal multi-tasking performance. At 1080p youll find that 3GB of RAM is more than enough to keep nearly everything youve ever wanted to run in memory without having to reload when switching back and forth between apps. Utilizing Androids software buttons also means that a dedicated multi-tasking button just to the right of the home button, also known as the Overview button, causes app switching to be a single click away. The interface is also phenomenal, as again its the standard Android interface, and is about as good an experience we can think of on any mobile device.

VR Performance

Virtual Reality is a big deal, and a huge importance not just to smartphones, but the technology and gaming industries as a whole. Weve seen some incredible support behind VR since the Google Cardboard initiative started a few years ago, and now this year at Google I/O 2016 we saw an official platform being developed by Google and many OEMs out there. As such were marking the Xperia X as the first smartphone to begin to be judged by its VR performance and overall quality, as its going to become an increasingly important selling point from here on.

Starting with the display weve seen that AMOLED panels are usually favorable for VR experiences, as they allow for better contrast and lower persistence than most mobile LCD displays can. Even though the Xperia X features an IPS LCD display though, and I found the refresh rate to be less than stellar in certain use cases, I didnt notice any problems with ghosting or pixel persistence while in VR. Theres some extra motion blur over using a Galaxy S7 Edge, for instance, but nothing as bad as an HTC 10 or some other displays with worse pixel persistence problems. In addition to having an acceptably fast frame rate, the pixel structure and pixel density of the Xperia Xs display provides an excellent experience for crisp and clean VR.

For these tests Im using an official Google Cardboard headset, which is as entry level an official headset can be, and in general the lenses arent the greatest things in the world on these. Couple this with the fact that mobile VR doesnt normally have a high enough frame rate to ward off motion sickness and youll find that youre not going to be gaming for long periods of time until some more rigorous standards are kept up. Right now though the Xperia X kept up with every VR game I tried, and had no trouble displaying equal frame rates to more powerful phones like the HTC 10 or Galaxy S7 Edge. This is what youre looking for if you want good mobile VR right now, and keeps up with the very best of them in nearly every single way.

Benchmarks

Despite real-world performance feeling the same, benchmarks show the Xperia X sitting around flagship levels from last fall. That means that folks moving from an Xperia Z5, if you have such a reason to do so, should see no discernible difference in any way, shape or form on the Xperia X.

Wireless and Networks

There are two main models of the Sony Xperia X, the F5122, which is the International model with the fingerprint scanner, and the F5121, which is the US model that we have. Whats surprising about both of these models is that the same spectrum is shared between both of them, so as far as signal compatibility between the US and other countries around the world goes, it shouldnt matter which model youre using. Check below for the full listing of all supported bands.

As far as call quality and signal strength is concerned, Sony has designed the Xperia X quite differently from many other metal build phones out there. Instead of having a metal body with rubber trim or plastic pieces to house the antenna, there are no obvious spots that point out exactly where the antennas are stored. This creates a more uniform and quite frankly beautiful device that doesnt skimp on signal strength or quality. The speakers on the Xperia X are also superb to say the least, and offer plenty of volume and clarity no matter if youre using the earpiece or stereo front-facing speakers.

Supported wireless bands:

2G: 850/900/1800/1900MHz

3G HSPA: 800/850/900/1700/1900/2100MHz

4G LTE: 1/2/3/4/5/7/8/12/17/19/20/26/28/38/39/40/41

Battery Life

Sony has long claimed 2-day battery life on its Xperia branded phones, and the Xperia X continues that claim. Whether or not a 2,620mAh battery actually lives up to that sort of hype is going to entirely depend on your usage of the phone. Light to moderate usage in normal conditions with the battery saver turned on at the default 15% actually did net me a full 2 days, with music streaming and video watching during this time frame as I usually would do. This was certainly surprising and rather refreshing to see, as 2,620mAh is a smaller battery than any 2016 flagship thus far, and its great to see Sony working on such efficiencies on the back-end. Those who dont want to turn the battery saver on though may find themselves struggling to get through a full day, especially if youre someone who uses their phone more heavily.

Battery saver mode is a huge deal on Xperia devices though, and leaving that battery saving mode on all the time could net some serious extended use without taking too much of the experience away. Youre going to get reduced frame rate on animations and likely a few less pretty parts of the UI, but its something thats certainly easy to get over if you want to regularly get that claimed 2-day battery life or longer. On heavy use days I was able to get a little over 5 hours screen on time with auto brightness on, but I had to charge it before the day ended to get me through the rest without cutting my usage time. A downside to the battery is complete lack of any quick charging support. This means its going to take a good 2 hours or more to charge the battery from empty to full, and unlike nearly every other flagship on the market released in the last year or two theres no way to get a quick 50-80% battery in half an hour, just plain old slow and steady 5v/1.5a charging max.

Sound

As a company, Sony has pushed sound quality for many decades now, so it should be no surprise to see them offering up high-res audio out of the box on the Xperia X. This makes it one of the least expensive high-res audio capable devices on the market, and reason alone to grab this phone if youre an audiophile. Theres even full support for LPCM, FLAC, ALAC and DSD high-res audio, as well as Digital Noise Cancellation (DNC) headphones. aptX support is here for high quality Bluetooth audio (~330kbps), but if you want the full Monty youll need to be using a speaker with LDAC support for ultra high quality wireless transmission at 990kbps.

On top of all the different supported codecs and high quality wireless transfer methods is a slew of features and processing designed to enhance boring old vanilla audio recordings. Diving into the sound settings in the phone will show DSEE HX as the first option, a method that Sony has devised to help fill in the missing gaps that audio compression has taken out of your audio and bring it closer to a high-resolution audio file. This will never fully replace what isnt there, but it does an unbelievable job of enhancing the sound from your regular collection of standard resolution audio. I found using even non-high-res audio headphones and audio systems still gave me a significantly improved audio quality, including clearer and more substantial bass as well as more pronounced and separated mids and highs. Audio quality coming from the phone is simply astounding, and absolutely bests everything in its class, which says a lot given the incredible leap in audio quality weve seen from flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S7/Edge and HTC 10 this year.

If DSEE HX alone wasnt enough of an improvement for most audio, you may want to check out the other options available on the Xperia X as well. While none of these other settings can be used in conjunction with DSEE HX, you may find for certain types of music or on certain headphones or sound systems that the other options work better. ClearAudio+ is a generic sound enhancement that tries to clean up the audio a bit, and generally I found this was a nice setting to have enabled, especially for music with more electronica-type sounds. Dynamic normalizer is another setting that I left on when DSEE HX was off, as it helps bring those sound levels closer together, but removing dynamic range is obviously not something youre always going to want to do depending on your sound system or headphones. Under sound effects youll find a full equalizer that actually works properly, no weird sound level adjustments as you move the sliders, and even options in here for virtual surround sound too.

Even those speakers on the front of the phone provide some serious wow factor, and make music enjoyable even though theyre just on the chassis of the phone. This concept isnt anything new, as HTC has brought us quality speakers on a phone for years now, and Sony started doing it a few generations ago as well, but its still fantastic to see a company providing such good speakers when plenty of companies dont seem to prioritize them. By default the sound is very centralized and almost sounds like its coming straight from the middle of the screen. These speakers dont seem to have quite as good of a range as the Nexus 6P or HTC 10 offer, particularly when it comes to both ends of the spectrum, but the S-Force Front Surround setting makes a massive difference in quality. First off it tricks your ears into thinking the speakers are somewhere off to the right and left of the phone rather than on the body itself, plus it seems to magically extend the range of audio to bring it in line with some of the best Ive ever heard. These speakers are also crazy loud too, louder than the Nexus 6P and almost as clear at max volume as they are at about 85%.

Software

For years Sonys Android skin has been one of the lightest and least offensive of any OEM skin, replacing only a few icons or other smaller nuances here and there with Sonys own style. This time around theyve pared it back even further, removing most of these small customizations and providing one of the most stock Android experiences out there. All this coupled with the extra features that Sony offers and youre looking at one of the cleanest software experiences on the market, hands down. Sony has also included plenty of great tutorials and getting started features to help users better take advantage of the ecosystem theyve built here, something that other OEMs do but not quite this well. These features appear as needed too and will help users get the most out of regularly used apps, especially when all the features of an app or section of the phone isnt being used often.

Theres a number of included Sony apps that are designed to maximize your experience in Sonys ecosystem, although these can certainly be considered bloatware if you dont want to invest in Sonys stuff. If youre a Playstation user youll find that Sony has added plenty of hooks that allow you to better interface with your PS4, specifically with the remote play feature. The Lifelog app is back and just as good as ever, tracking everything you do during the day including steps moved, pictures taken and apps used so that you know when and what youve been doing throughout the day. Sonys default launcher has a few new features too, namely the app search feature when you pull down anywhere on the home screen to quickly find apps instead of looking through the app drawer for them.

Theres plenty of gestures and little nuance features that are nice if you use them too. Xperia Answering Machine gives you an offline voicemail type feature that records audio straight to your device, and theres gestures for picking up the phone when it rings to answer it, shaking it to decline the call, etc. Sony has a built-in backup and restore feature that helps back up most of your settings to the cloud, and of course the Xperia Lounge where you can find all sorts of Sony related info and news. Last but not least are the additional gestures for quick access to functions, like holding down the camera shutter button or double tapping the power button to launch the camera, and double tapping the screen to turn it on. This last feature is only useful if youve got lock screen security enabled though, as theres no pocket detection, so if youre like me and keep the screen against your leg when the phone is in your pocket youre going to have problems with unlocking the phone on accident and clicking all sorts of hazardous things.

UI/UX

Sonys UI is straight up gorgeous this time around, and features not only a brand new icon set and more stock Android looks, but plenty of themes as well. The Xperia theme engine thats been going strong for years is still here, and will theme hundreds of elements throughout the UI to give your phone a more cohesive and unique look from other Xperia users. Theres plenty of free and paid themes, and they change everything from the icons, lock screen, wallpaper, ring tones and more.

The notification shade is only a slightly modified version of the stock Android one, and features more customizable quick toggles than stock Android provides. Settings is slightly tweaked to show more colorful icons for easily identifying sections rather than just relying on words, and other apps like the dialer have been completely reconfigured from stock to provide all the info you need on the main screen without having to navigate through the app to find stuff. The lockscreen is extremely similar to the stock one too, and can be unlocked either by swiping to the left or swiping up, with quick access to Google Now or the camera via the buttons on the bottom left or right of the screen.

Camera Software

Sonys camera software has long been a point of contention for users, as it provides plenty of options and useful tools, but hasnt always had the best design in the world. This time around Sony has redesigned the experience to bring you the things you need faster and easier than ever. This time around this app is a truly fantastic experience, with very few troubles at all. The only questionable part of the redesign is that Sony has moved the dedicated video recording button out of the picture and has segregated it to its own mode. This means that taking videos is no longer a single instant button press away, rather youll need to swipe over from the Superior Auto mode over to Video mode to take a video.

This is a rather silly change and adds extra time and thought to just taking a video, but at least mode switching is incredibly fast. In fact if nothing this is the fastest mode switching Ive seen on any camera software like it, moving between each mode in a fraction of a second. Theres a total of four modes found on the sliding section; from the bottom to the top youve got manual mode, Superior Auto, video and camera apps. By default the camera always starts in Superior Auto, with manual being a single up swipe away, and video being a single down swipe away. If you want something fancier than this two quick swipes down will bring you to camera apps.

Superior auto is the simple and quick mode that Sony has been using for years and features zero additional choices when taking a shot. If you want to make any adjustments at all, whether it be something as simple as toggling HDR or changing the exposure, youll need to flip down to manual mode to make these adjustments. While I really didnt like this design at first, it made sense after using the phone for a while. Most users will likely just want to take a quick shot and not worry about other stuff in the way, and for those users this should get exactly what they want. Users who want more control of any kind will find the manual mode to be a one stop shop for most things, but dont expect the same kind of granular manual mode that Samsung, LG or HTC offer here. Youll only be able to adjust metering, exposure, white balance and ISO. Theres no shutter speed adjustments, no manual focus and no way to force extra high ISO either.

Theres too many options hidden in menus for my liking too, and not many quick access buttons or controls in the manual mode. I understand this decision for Superior Auto, but for manual mode there should be quicker access to the usual suite of manual adjustments rather than having to constantly go back to settings, scroll down and find the option you want, which may or may not be nested in an additional menu too. Sony did give plenty of options for additional camera apps though, which arent actually add-ons to the standard camera app, rather apps of their own. This means you cannot access them when the phone is locked, a step that likely will annoy users out there, but it decouples these extra experiences from having to be updated through the main app.

It also allows plenty of apps to be added by anyone willing to develop for Xperia phones, something thats not new at all to the Xperia series but definitely a welcome option thats been enhanced over the years. These apps are phenomenal too and add an absolute boatload of features to the camera. Everything from augmented reality dinosaurs and pets to defocusing the background, adding tons of selfie effects to turn yourself into a vampire, geisha or anything else you can think of are here. All these are tied to the Google Play Store too, which means easy app updates and great developer support, as well as options for paid and free add-ons.

Camera Performance and Results

If theres one single thing that Sony got right with the camera on the Xperia X, its speed. In fact this basically ties the Samsung Galaxy S7 in sheer launch and capture speed when you need it most. Holding down the shutter button with the screen on or off will launch the camera in under one second flat, and clicking that shutter button again will take the shot. If you want this to be even faster you can head down to settings and change the quick launch setting to either launch and capture, or launch and record. This will start the video or capture the photo from the screen being off to the camera doing its thing in nearly a second flat. Its insanely fast and its powered by Sonys excellent hybrid auto focus mode that focuses in just over a half-second.

This auto focus mode isnt always quite that fast though, and unless youve clicked on the screen or are using the shutter button to take a shot, youll find that half-second focus time is much more like 2-3 seconds by the time the camera realizes its supposed to refocus the shot. Thankfully the shutter button is here though, and holding it down just before the click will immediately lock the focus and exposure to where the camera is set, allowing you to immediately capture the moment when its ready. This shutter button is beyond brilliant and makes the Xperia X feel much more like a camera than a phone, and reminds me how much I truly miss dedicated shutter buttons on smartphones. Touching the screen will activate the predictive autofocus too, as the phone will then draw a box around the target you pressed on and attempt to follow said target and keep it in focus.

While all of this fancy stuff is nice and all, none of it matters if the pictures themselves dont look great, and to be pretty frank the shots from this camera really dont. As with the Xperia Z5 many shots are way over exposed, and exhibit tons of blown out highlights and objects that are overly bright. This is likely in an effort to pull out more shadow detail, as the dynamic range of this sensor is nothing short of terrible for a flagship device. I dont think I took a single picture where the sky wasnt almost completely blown out, even with HDR mode forced on. Unfortunately too the interface doesnt provide an easy or quick way to adjust the exposure levels, you need to go into settings and then another nested brightness menu to adjust these common settings. In addition to that I found that many times my shots would come out blurry, but not from focusing issues, rather from slower than necessary shutter speeds.

These slow shutter speeds take in more light, but as weve seen from the shots they are too aggressive and both make the shots blurry and overexposed. Theres no way to manually control shutter speed either even if you wanted to, so adjusting exposure is the only way, and this isnt always the best option for many reasons. In addition to these issues theres some weird processing going on that seems to have pretty random results. At 23-megapixels youd expect to see craters on the moon from a good shot (alright thats a ridiculous exaggeration, but you get my point), but what youre likely going to find more often than not are over processed photos with lots of denoise and sharpening going on to compensate for that. Shoving so many pixels onto a tiny sensor means these pixels are also tiny themselves, so the software has to compensate for extra noise by trying to clean it up in post-processing. Sometimes I got better than expected levels of detail, like on the stigmas and anthers in the middle of a sunflower, or the fine veins running through the leaves of a bougainvillea.

Sonys image processing is mediocre during the day for sure, and its just as much of a random mess indoors and in lower light too. Some shots I took exhibited more detail than with other phones I tested against, showing finer lines of objects and sharper text in the distance than phones like the Nexus 6p, Galaxy S7 and HTC 10 to name a few. Other times it was either a blurry mess or just heavily over processed as discussed before. Whats more bizarre is the relatively low ISO used by the phone despite what Sony has advertised. One of the big selling points Sony has been pointing out for this sensor is the maximum ISO of 12,800. While that would be great for extremely low light shots, I found even in pitch black conditions that the ISO wouldnt go higher than 1600 on any auto mode, and even switching to manual mode only let me select up to 3600. Where the rest went I have no idea, but its sorely needed in some of these conditions. Youll also find exposure balance to be way off in any lower light condition, so if youve got a screen on or other light source while other objects are dark, expect those brighter objects to be completely blown out, HDR mode on or not.

The front-facing camera was great more often than not. This was especially true when I used the dozens of different filters, AR effects and more to enhance the boring old selfie. In fact I found in general I had a much, much better experience with the camera, particularly the rear-facing one, when I used one of the many camera apps available through the camera software. These are a lot slower to take and will require more patience, but the ensuing photos are so much better than the vanilla camera software its not even funny. Obviously youre not going to want to use these for every situation, as many of them are rather specific to one type of photography, but when you can use them you absolutely should. The shot at the top of this section was using the Background Defocus mode, which takes many seconds to process, but produces some absolutely stunning imagery.

Video quality was definitely better, although its not without problems too. Video stabilization has been one of the best parts of Sonys Xperia series cameras for a while now, and youll find that its just as excellent here. While its not the very best in stabilized video, its darn close, and offers good video quality because of this when moving. Video quality at 1080p 60FPS, which is the highest quality the Xperia X will record at, is phenomenal and exhibits fantastic levels of detail, a high bit rate for good motion resolution, and better dynamic range than the photo mode on the camera shows. At this framerate though the CPU simply cannot keep up, and I could never record longer than a 60 second clip without the phone displaying this lovely little message telling me the phone was too hot and would have to cool down before recording some more. This is just plain bad, but its likely more down to a software problem than a hardware one, because I never saw this message for anything else on the phone, even when heavy gaming in VR.

1080p 30FPS video doesnt suffer from this silly cool down message, but it does suffer from a lower bit rate that tends to muddy out details, especially when moving. Lower light and night video seems to fare quite well though, and provides good lighting conditions with minimal processing compared to many other phones on the market. Since this phone doesnt support 4K recording its quite surprising to see that it does support 720p 240FPS recording, and thankfully so. Slow motion video on the Xperia X is great, and Sonys excellent Timeshift interface is a good one, albeit a little hard to find unless you first go looking for it.

The Good

Excellent screen

Solid, well-balanced build

Dedicated camera shutter button

Cream of the crop high-res audio output

Above average VR performance

Excellent overall performance

SD card slot

Nearly stock UI with great feature additions and customization

The Bad

Lack of quick charging functionality

Build feels like plastic, not metal

Digitizer can be very unresponsive

Battery life will be a problem for some people

Lots of issues with the camera

Overheating during 1080p 60fps video recording

No fingerprint scanner on US model

Conclusion

Sony is betting quite a bit on the Xperia X by pricing it at $550. Audiophiles will likely jump at the opportunity to have a good device thatll output 24-bit high-res audio with all of Sonys bells and whistles, and lovers of Sonys design will likely be very happy too. Its certainly impressive how well the more mid-range Snapdragon 650 keeps up even with higher-end SoCs from fall 2015, and youll find performance never drops no matter what you do, including VR. Even the screen is fantastic, something not always true of LCD displays on smartphones. The downsides here are going to be battery life, especially for people who heavily use their phones, a build that certainly doesnt feel metal even though it still feels solid, and some crazy problems with the touch experience. Lets not forget that the US model has no fingerprint scanner, which at $550 hinges on unforgivable in 2016. The camera is easily one of the fastest, if not the very fastest on the market, but the quality in the end is a bit hit or miss. Hopefully Sony can iron out some of the weird software issues we came across and maybe get that price down just a bit too, because while it may offer more functionality than a Nexus device, for instance, the end experience may not be what youre looking for depending on why you started looking in the first place.
Back during Mobile World Congress, those who follow Sonys brand of smartphones were in for a bit of a shock when Sony unveiled a brand new line of devices instead of introducing the next generation of the Xperia Z series. Sonys focus has changed, and the Xperia X series was born, designed to be a series of devices which cover a range of different consumers, as opposed to being the best of Sony like the Xperia Z series. There are currently four smartphones in the Xperia X range, including the Xperia XA, Xperia X, and Xperia X Performance which were all announced back at MWC, and the more recently announced Xperia XA Ultra that was just unveiled earlier this month. While none of these phones have yet launched, Sony is gearing up to release the Xperia devices in the U.S. this Summer.

Sonys Xperia X series launch starts with the Xperia X itself, and will hit the U.S. through multiple sources at the end of next month on June 26th. The device is also currently up for pre-order through B&H Photo, Amazon, Best Buy, and Reagan Wireless, and when the phone officially goes on sale it will Sonys own mobile website as well. Following the Xperia X launch will be the Xperia XA and the Xperia X Performance, both of which will be available through all of the above-mentioned outlets on July 17th.

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The last of the Xperia X series to launch in the U.S. this Summer will be the Xperia XA Ultra, which Sony has slated to release on July 24th, and will also be available through the same outlets as the rest of the Xperia X devices. Sony will be launching the Xperia X, the Xperia XA, and the Xperia X Performance in four matching colors of Graphite Black, Lime Gold, White, and Rose Gold. The Xperia XA Ultra will launch with three colors available that include White, Graphite Black, and Lime Gold. While the Xperia X is available for pre-order as of today, Sony will begin pre-order sales of the Xperia XA, the Xperia XA Ultra, and the Xperia X Performance starting on June 19th. Those who place their pre-orders for any of the four devices will also receive a promotional offer of three free movies from Sony pictures. Additionally, orders of the Sony Xperia X and Xperia X Performance will also come with a free UCH10 Quick Charger.
Data privacy of smartphone owners is one of the most controversial topics in the tech world right now. On the one hand, those who are for privacy, stipulate that above all else, a mobile device owner should be able to have their data, location and everything in between secured from prying eyes and especially in the absence of a court-issued warrant. While those who are against such blanket prohibiting of access, argue it is in the best interest of everyone for relevant agencies to be able to gain access to data when needed.

While this is a debate which spiked recently thanks to the difference of opinion between Apple and the FBI over access to a particular iPhone, one aspect which has been hotly debated over the last year or two is the notion of whether law enforcement agencies need to acquire a warrant to obtain a cellphones location from carriers. Back in August of last year, a U.S. Court deemed that law enforcement agencies do indeed require a warrant. A move which looked to be paving the way for the U.S. Supreme Court to also address the issue in due course.

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However, that verdict has now been overturned again by a U.S. court. Last years ruling in favor of warrants came by way of a 2-1 vote. Today, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, again voted and this time voted 12-3 in favor of removing the warrant obstacle for law enforcement agencies. As a result and based on todays ruling, law enforcement agencies will be able to obtain the whereabouts of a smartphone directly from carriers and without the need for a warrant. A sentiment which was echoed by another U.S. court only last month. One of the reasons given for this latest decision is that owners of smartphones do (on some level) inherently understand that they are volunteering data to providers and by association, effectively provide permission for that data to be accessible. While this latest development will not automatically remove the likelihood of the Supreme Court looking at the issue, it is likely to be a decision which lessens the chance of this making it before the Supreme Court.
Lucy Snyder is Scary Good

If career success can be measured by awards, then Angelo State alumna Lucy A. Snyders career as an author is right up there with some of the most well-known names in the dark fantasy and horror genre.

Lucy Snyder A 1992 ASU graduate, Snyder recently won a Bram Stoker Award for her short-story collection While the Black Stars Burn at the annual international meeting of the Horror Writers Association (StokerCon 2016) in Las Vegas. Named for the author of the original Dracula, the Bram Stoker Awards are the highest honor awarded by the HWAand Snyder has now won five of them.

Its thrilling to win the award and be recognized by my writing peers, Snyder said. This is my fifth Stoker, and winning this time for While the Black Stars Burn was just as thrilling as it was to win the first time.

In some ways, it was more exciting, she added, simply because I was able to attend the awards ceremony. The Stoker weekend when I won the first award for my poetry collection, Chimeric Machines, was in Brighton, England, and I just couldnt make it to the convention.

By way of comparison, Snyder has now won almost half as many Bram Stoker Awards as Stephen King (12), who began publishing in 1974 when Snyder was still a toddler. She has also won more Stoker Awards than George R. R. Martin (Game of Thrones) and J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter). Though, to be fair, Martin has won multiple Hugo Awards from the Science Fiction Writers Association and a Primetime Emmy Awardand Rowling is now known as Dame J.K. Rowling after receiving a Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for her contributions to the arts.

My biology studies at ASU have influenced many of my stories and novels. The courses I took gave me a great foundation for world-building and monster-making.

What makes Snyders achievements even more impressive is the fact that she is technically a freelance writer. She has a full-time job helping build online courses at the International Institute for Innovative Instruction at Franklin University in Columbus, Ohio, and is an adjunct faculty member in the Master of Fine Arts in Writing Popular Fiction program at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, Penn. She also writes a regular column for Horror World magazine and will graduate in June with an M.F.A. in creative writing from Goddard College.

Books by Snyder

















Add all that to my writing and Ive been incredibly busy the past few years! Snyder said. I still hope to be able to write full time someday, but since Im the primary earner for my household, Im not sure when that will be feasible.

In the meantime, she added, I set a goal for myself to sell at least one book a year, and so far Ive been able to meet that goal. Since 2007, Ive had three novels and seven collections released by different publishers. If all goes according to plan, my fourth novel, Devils Field, will be out in December 2016.

Devils Field will be the fourth in a series of novels that follow the adventures of young sorceress Jessie Shimmer and her friends in a modern America penetrated by magic. The first book in the series, Spellbent, was selected for the 2009 Locus Recommended Reading List and was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award. It has also been translated for sale in French and Russian.

Snyder has also published more than 90 short stories, over 60 poems and over 160 non-fiction articles on everything from faeries to medical botany to Ethernet switches. She earned her ASU bachelors degree in biology, holds a masters degree in journalism from Indiana University and is a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop.

Award-winning Lucy Snyder









Snyder lives in Worthington, Ohio, with her husband and occasional co-author, Gary A. Braunbeck, who has also won multiple Bram Stoker Awards (7). Her books are available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and many other book sellers - and several of her books are available for check-out from ASUs Porter Henderson Library.

Lucy A. SnyderI Chose Angelo State

Why did you choose to attend ASU?

I chose to attend ASU because of the very generous Carr Academic Scholarship I received. I also knew other students who had attended ASU, and I knew that the school offered high-quality classes and instructors.

What academic and/or career opportunities did ASU provide for you?

The biggest career opportunity I had at ASU was the chance to help rebuild the Oasis Magazine. It had been dormant for probably close to a decade, and Mike Boren and I and several other students restarted it. After Mike graduated, I served as the main editor. Learning about all the production aspects of the magazine was a great experienceI learned how to use PageMaker, for instanceand it paved the way for me to get editing and layout jobs in graduate school, which in turn led to me getting a job in the graphics computer lab, where I learned HTML and a whole lot about computers. Practically every day job Ive had since then has been related to that in some way. In terms of my fiction writing, my biology studies at ASU have influenced many of my stories and novels. The courses I took gave me a great foundation for world-building and monster-making.

Name a professor who made a difference in your education.

Dr. Bonnie Amos Bonnie Amos was a great biology instructor. I loved her classes, and she supervised my undergraduate biology researchwhich went well, but also helped me realize that I didnt want to work in a laboratory!

Where was your favorite place on campus and why?

The Porter Henderson Library was one of my favorite places. Im a huge book nerd and I need a lot of quiet, so Id often hide in the stacks to write or study.

What student groups or activities were you involved with as a student?

Aside from Oasis, I was in the Ram Band my first year, and I was also active in the Tri-Beta biology honor society, Alpha Chi honor society, Sigma Tau Delta (English) and the University Centers film club. I remember how packed the theater was the night we showed Silence of the Lambs!

What was one of your most memorable experiences as a student?

In my junior year, I took an ecology class with Dr. Robert Dowler. He decided to take us on a Saturday field trip to help his graduate students explore the scientific mysteries of the wily armadillo. We all piled into cars to caravan to the field site several miles outside town. My friend Debbie and I amused ourselves by playing Roadkill Bingo as we drove. Soon, we saw the relatively intact carcass of an armadillo. Whoo, Dr. Dowler wont be able to resist that one! Debbie joked. And sure enough, his truck swerved off the road and screeched to a halt in front of the hapless armadillo. He grabbed the carcass, put it in the bed of his truck, and drove on.

Dr. Robert Dowler When we all got to the field site, Dr. Dowler gathered us in a circle. He retrieved the dead dillo and used it to demonstrate the finer points of armadillo wrasslinfull-nelson, half-nelson, tail grab, the works. Then, he led us to an area where some students were tagging captured armadillos. One student was holding down a 30-pound armadillo while the other painted numbers on its carapace with bright pink latex house paint. Suddenly, the painted armadillo broke free, scrabbling away across a rocky flat. Dr. Dowler sprinted after the beastie, took a flying leap and tackled it on the rocks. The armadillo squealed, and the dust rose in a huge cloud as they tussled. When the dust cleared, Dr. Dowler stood in a triumphant Superman pose, holding the terrified armadillo at arms length. He was covered in dirt, pink paint, dozens of bleeding scratches and armadillo poop. I wondered if hed had a tetanus shot.
(ANSAmed) - BRUSSELS, MAY 31 - Congratulations and thanks, maximum operational and economic support for all needs, as well as a call to speed up intervention - new hotspots, a halt on illegal landings, the creation of mobile teams, more places in centers hosting migrants about to be repatriated - to confront the migration emergency. All this was written in a letter penned by Matthias Ruete, head of the migration DG of the EU Commission, which was sent to police chief Franco Gabrielli and prefect Mario Morcone. The letter also asked for more information on the project of floating hotspots.

The three-page letter - which focuses on the implementation of the hotspot plan - starts with congratulations for Gabrielli for his new role and the news that Olivier Onidi is Italy's new operational interlocutor, ready to cooperate to solve problems on the table. And after citing a peak in arrivals over the past few days, Ruete congratulates again and thanks Italian authorities for their work in managing the emergency.

But Brussels also expressed ''some concerns'' on the operational hotspots, doubts on their adequacy in confronting the emergency, calling on opening new ones ''without delay'', also in Messina and Mineo. As far as the possible choice of Cagliari is concerned, the director of the Home Affairs DG also expressed a few reservations over the distance from the center of operations. The Commission, he said, will support Italy without reservations in implementing what is necessary and Brussels' services, also wrote Ruete, are preparing a framework concerning the needs and are available to provide maximum support.

The Commission also asks to avoid migrant landings outside hotspots or limit them to exceptional cases. In this context, Italy is invited to build ''without further delay'' mobile hotspot teams, ensuring full European support also through technical resources and staff. As far as floating hotspots are concerned, ''we are ready to discuss the idea'' but further information on the operational aspects are needed.

It will also be necessary to intervene, the letter also noted, to increase the capacity of identification and expulsion centers: the 500 places currently operating are ''well below'' the estimated need. Finally, Ruete stressed the ''full support'' of the Commission faced with a difficult situation in Italy, guaranteeing assistance with its services and those of all EU agencies involved.

At least 880 people died in a series of migrant disasters in the Mediterranean last week, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said Tuesday, on the basis of conversations with survivors in Italy. The total number of refugees and migrants who have died trying to cross the Mediterranean since the start of 2016 has thus risen to 2,510, against 1,855 for the same period of 2015. As well as three shipwrecks that have been known since last Sunday, the UNHCR has learned that 47 people are missing after a dinghy carrying 125 people from Libya deflated.

Another eight people died on board another boat and four people were reported dead in a fire on another boat.


(ANSA) - Brussels, May 16 - The European Commission said Tuesday Italy has yet to answer its two letters on hotspots for asylum seeker processing and identification. Migration and Home Affairs Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos wrote a letter to Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni and Interior Minister Angelo Alfano. Directorate General for Migration and Home Affairs chief Matthias Ruete wrote to Italy's national police chief Franco Gabrielli and to interior ministry immigration department chief Mario Morcone last Friday, a spokesperson told ANSA.

Avramopoulos said in his letter earlier this months that Italy needed to set up more hotspots in Sicily for asylum seekers as they arrive.

"It's fundamentally important that Italy intensify efforts to provide the necessary reception conditions and prevent escapes," he wrote.

"While recognizing Italy's major effort to address the situation, I observe that many landings take place away from hotspots and the planned mobile groups are not yet operative.

It is important to set up supplementary hotspots in Sicily, Avramopoulos said in his letter.


BRUSSELS - Congratulations and thanks, maximum operational and economic support for all needs, as well as a call to speed up intervention - new hotspots, a halt on illegal landings, the creation of mobile teams, more places in centers hosting migrants about to be repatriated - to confront the migration emergency. All this was written in a letter penned by Matthias Ruete, head of the migration DG of the EU Commission, which was sent to police chief Franco Gabrielli and prefect Mario Morcone. The letter also asked for more information on the project of floating hotspots.

The three-page letter - which focuses on the implementation of the hotspot plan - starts with congratulations for Gabrielli for his new role and the news that Olivier Onidi is Italy's new operational interlocutor, ready to cooperate to solve problems on the table. And after citing a peak in arrivals over the past few days, Ruete congratulates again and thanks Italian authorities for their work in managing the emergency.

But Brussels also expressed ''some concerns'' on the operational hotspots, doubts on their adequacy in confronting the emergency, calling on opening new ones ''without delay'', also in Messina and Mineo. As far as the possible choice of Cagliari is concerned, the director of the Home Affairs DG also expressed a few reservations over the distance from the center of operations. The Commission, he said, will support Italy without reservations in implementing what is necessary and Brussels' services, also wrote Ruete, are preparing a framework concerning the needs and are available to provide maximum support.

The Commission also asks to avoid migrant landings outside hotspots or limit them to exceptional cases. In this context, Italy is invited to build ''without further delay'' mobile hotspot teams, ensuring full European support also through technical resources and staff. As far as floating hotspots are concerned, ''we are ready to discuss the idea'' but further information on the operational aspects are needed.

It will also be necessary to intervene, the letter also noted, to increase the capacity of identification and expulsion centers: the 500 places currently operating are ''well below'' the estimated need. Finally, Ruete stressed the ''full support'' of the Commission faced with a difficult situation in Italy, guaranteeing assistance with its services and those of all EU agencies involved.


GENEVA - More than 1,000 migrants have died or have gone missing in the Mediterranean Sea in the past week, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) estimated on Tuesday.



The U.N. agency said 62 deaths were confirmed and 971 people were missing, presumed dead, in nine shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea between Libya and Italy since May 25. The new estimate has been compiled based on reports from survivors of the shipwrecks. A previous count by rescue workers and Italian authorities estimated about 700 deaths in three shipwrecks in three consecutive days. The IOM added some additional incidents to establish the new total.

Over 200,000 migrant arrivals in Europe this year, 2,119 have died

More than 200,000 migrants and refugees have arrived by sea in Europe since the start of 2016, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said Tuesday. In all, it said, some 203,981 people had made the voyage. Of these, almost three quarters came from Turkey to Greece before the end of March and 46,714 came to Italy, almost the same number as last year. Some 2,119 people have died crossing from North Africa to Italy this year. Boats leaving Libya are fuller than those that had left Turkey for Greece, with often over 600 people on board.

BRUSSELS - The European Commission warned on Tuesday that it will open infringement procedures against member States if the pace of relocation of migrants within the EU does not pick up. "The pace of relocation must accelerate," said EC spokesperson Mina Andreeva, who pointed out that only 1% of the 160,000 people who were meant to be transferred from Italy and Greece have moved. Andreeva said that the relocation agreement was "legally binding" and "must be applied", adding that for this reason "we have sent warning letters" to governments. The spokesperson added that "we won't be ashamed to exercise our powers as guardians of the (EU) treaties if necessary".
EBRD: 1 bln euro for China's projects in Western Balkans

(ANSAmed) - BELGRADE, 31 MAY - Intesa Sanpaolo banking group and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) will credit small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the Western Balkans with 1 billion euros in order for the enterprises to be competitive for participation in projects financed by China, the two banks announced. It is estimated that about 11 billion USD will be invested in the infrastructure projects in the Western Balkans in the coming decades. Banca Intesa Serbia executive board chairwoman Draginja Djuric said that a significant portion of the credit support of Intesa Sanpaolo and the EBRD will be placed in Serbia - where large-scale projects funded by China have already been implemented.



Djuric also said that the companies that are not directly involved in China's projects, but which raise the competitiveness of the domestic economy, will be able to get the loans.



Banca Intesa has approved loans worth 181 million euro to small and medium enterprises in Serbia for the first four months of this year, which is 5% more than in the same period last year. (ANSAmed).




BEIRUT - The number of casualties from air raids carried out on a hospital in Idlib, in north-west Syria, in an area outside government control, has risen to at least 23 victims, including children. According to pan Arab television al Arabiya, ''Russian military airplanes'' carried out several raids on the public hospital of Islib, killing 23 people. Early on Tuesday, UK-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights gave a provisional toll of 14 dead, also reporting that the bombings were carried out by ''Russian planes''.
GENEVA - At least 880 people died in a series of migrant disasters in the Mediterranean last week, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said Tuesday, on the basis of conversations with survivors in Italy. The total number of refugees and migrants who have died trying to cross the Mediterranean since the start of 2016 has thus risen to 2,510, against 1,855 for the same period of 2015.



As well as three shipwrecks that have been known since last Sunday, the UNHCR has learned that 47 people are missing after a dinghy carrying 125 people from Libya deflated. Another eight people died on board another boat and four people were reported dead in a fire on another boat.

Over 200,000 migrant arrivals in Europe this year

More than 200,000 migrants and refugees have arrived by sea in Europe since the start of 2016, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said Tuesday. In all, it said, some 203,981 people had made the voyage. Of these, almost three quarters came from Turkey to Greece before the end of March and 46,714 came to Italy, almost the same number as last year. Some 2,119 people have died crossing from North Africa to Italy this year. Boats leaving Libya are fuller than those that had left Turkey for Greece, with often over 600 people on board.
Egypt: teenage girl dies after FGM procedure Practice banned in Egypt since 2008 but still widespread

(ANSAmed) - CAIRO, MAY 31 - A 16-year-old girl died on Sunday after undergoing female genital mutilation (FGM) in the Suez governorate of Egypt, a procedure that is still widely practiced in the country despite being banned by law.



Suez governor Ahmed Helmi has reported all the people involved in the procedure, which was carried out in a private clinic, and he has also ordered an autopsy, Egyptian daily Al Ahram said.



The health minister of the governorate has ordered the closure of the clinic where the girl was brought by her mother, a nurse.



Skynews Arabiya reported that the doctor who carried out the procedure had been arrested and said the death was possibly caused by a mistake in the dose of anesthetic.



Egypt banned FGM in 2008. Though the number of procedures are declining, the practice is still widespread: a 2014 investigation revealed that about 90% of married women between the ages of 15 to 49 have undergone FGM. That percentage falls to 61% for women between the ages of 15 and 17.



At least 200 million girls and women globally have undergone FGM, according to UNICEF. The procedure, which involves the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, is performed in a number of African countries as well as parts of the Middle East and Asia. (ANSAmed).




Over 200,000 migrant arrivals in Europe this year - UN 2,119 have died

(ANSAmed) - GENEVA, MAY 31 - More than 200,000 migrants and refugees have arrived by sea in Europe since the start of 2016, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said Tuesday. In all, it said, some 203,981 people had made the voyage. Of these, almost three quarters came from Turkey to Greece before the end of March and 46,714 came to Italy, almost the same number as last year. Some 2,119 people have died crossing from North Africa to Italy this year. Boats leaving Libya are fuller than those that had left Turkey for Greece, with often over 600 people on board. (ANSAmed).




Syria: Moscow denies Russian raids on Idlib hospital According to Al Arabiya raids caused 23 civilian deaths

(ANSAmed) - MOSCOW, MAY 31- Russia's Defence Ministry on Tuesday denied that air raids by their own air forces struck a hospital in Idlib, in north-western Syria, refuting a report from Al Arabiya TV which spoke of 23 victims.



"Russian aviation did not undertake any military mission in the province of Idlib, let alone air raids," Moscow said.



It said reports from the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the news agency Reuters should be viewed with a more critical eye. (ANSAmed).




Syria: Russian raid on hospital, 23 dead including kids TV, repeated bombings on Idlib

(ANSAmed) - BEIRUT, MAY 31 - The number of casualties from air raids carried out on a hospital in Idlib, in north-west Syria, in an area outside government control, has risen to at least 23 victims, including children. According to pan Arab television al Arabiya, ''Russian military airplanes'' carried out several raids on the public hospital of Islib, killing 23 people. Early on Tuesday, UK-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights gave a provisional toll of 14 dead, also reporting that the bombings were carried out by ''Russian planes''. (ANSAmed).




Turkey: march for third anniversary Gezi Park On Tuesday afternoon amid massive police deployment

(ANSAmed) - ISTANBUL, MAY 31 - A march on Tuesday afternoon has been organized in Istanbul to commemorate the protests of Gezi Park three years ago, amid very tight security measures by Turkish police.



The demonstration is scheduled to begin at 5 pm local time, along an itinerary that will bring it to cross the long boulevard Istiklal, which is closed to traffic and leads to Taksim square, near Gezi park. Organizers will hold a press conference there.



At the moment, the march has not been banned and entrance to the park has been allowed, although hundreds of police barriers have been transported to the area. A massive deployment of security officers has been organized during the demonstration while tanks and water cannons are already on site. (ANSAmed).




Migrants: EU to Italy, maximum support, much to be done Letter from Brussels to police chief and prefect Morcone

(ANSAmed) - BRUSSELS, MAY 31 - Congratulations and thanks, maximum operational and economic support for all needs, as well as a call to speed up intervention - new hotspots, a halt on illegal landings, the creation of mobile teams, more places in centers hosting migrants about to be repatriated - to confront the migration emergency. All this was written in a letter penned by Matthias Ruete, head of the migration DG of the EU Commission, which was sent to police chief Franco Gabrielli and prefect Mario Morcone. The letter also asked for more information on the project of floating hotspots.



The three-page letter - which focuses on the implementation of the hotspot plan - starts with congratulations for Gabrielli for his new role and the news that Olivier Onidi is Italy's new operational interlocutor, ready to cooperate to solve problems on the table. And after citing a peak in arrivals over the past few days, Ruete congratulates again and thanks Italian authorities for their work in managing the emergency.



But Brussels also expressed ''some concerns'' on the operational hotspots, doubts on their adequacy in confronting the emergency, calling on opening new ones ''without delay'', also in Messina and Mineo. As far as the possible choice of Cagliari is concerned, the director of the Home Affairs DG also expressed a few reservations over the distance from the center of operations. The Commission, he said, will support Italy without reservations in implementing what is necessary and Brussels' services, also wrote Ruete, are preparing a framework concerning the needs and are available to provide maximum support.



The Commission also asks to avoid migrant landings outside hotspots or limit them to exceptional cases. In this context, Italy is invited to build ''without further delay'' mobile hotspot teams, ensuring full European support also through technical resources and staff. As far as floating hotspots are concerned, ''we are ready to discuss the idea'' but further information on the operational aspects are needed.



It will also be necessary to intervene, the letter also noted, to increase the capacity of identification and expulsion centers: the 500 places currently operating are ''well below'' the estimated need. Finally, Ruete stressed the ''full support'' of the Commission faced with a difficult situation in Italy, guaranteeing assistance with its services and those of all EU agencies involved. (ANSAmed).




President Iohannis meets Prince Charles, the two agree on need to preserve biodiversity

President Klaus Iohannis welcomed on Monday Prince Charles at the Cotroceni Prince, with talks focusing on Romania's extraordinary rural tourism potential and the continuation of actions for the preservation of the natural heritage and traditional architecture, the Presidential Administration informs.

According to a release to AGERPRES, the Prince of Wales praised the hospitality and openness whereby he is welcomed each time he visits Romania.

At the beginning of the talks, the two officials insisted that the meeting highlights the extraordinary quality of bilateral relations and also contributes to their development and continuity.

According to the source, President Klaus Iohannis thanked the Prince of Wales for the visit, but also for the significant contribution to the conservation and preservation of the traditions of Transylvanian rural communities.

The main topic of discussion was the mission and role of "The Prince of Wales" Foundation in Romania aimed at supporting heritage preservation, Rosia Montana, Romania's farming and sustainable development.

President Iohannis reiterated his desire and willingness to support the initiatives designed to improve and maintain Romania's natural and cultural heritage. During the meeting, Klaus Iohannis underscored the importance of keeping and promoting Romanian traditions, the need to develop and implement sustainable development policies, with particular focus on the development of rural areas, the release says.

Both the Prince of Wales and President Klaus Iohannis agreed on the need to preserve biodiversity, protect the environment by finding solutions and alternative methods of waste storage and reuse, provide incentives for businesses to protect and develop the environment, and encourage organic agriculture, the release said.

In this context, the head of the state mentioned the successful project of the Vacaresti Natural Park, Europe's only urban natural protected park, and invited the Prince of Wales to visit it.

At the end of the meeting, the two officials expressed their consent to mutually support initiatives designed for the implementation of programs that ensure the transfer of expertise and best practices for social accountability and awareness of Romania's potential and unique resources, the Presidential Administration said.
Emirates has unveiled its fifth A380 emblazoned with special livery in support of United for Wildlife - an alliance between seven of the worlds most influential conservation organisations and The Royal Foundation of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry.

Unlike its four jet-powered siblings, this latest Emirates United for Wildlife A380 aircraft is featured in situ, at the traffic roundabout leading to London Heathrow airport  a highly visible site that reaches over million international travelers and their families and friends annually.

One of the largest known aircraft models in the world, the Emirates A380 model at London Heathrows roundabout is built to an exact 1:3 scale of a real A380 aircraft. Weighing more than 45 tonnes, the model is the same size as a real Boeing 737.

Over the past six months, Emirates has literally taken its message against the illegal wildlife trade to the skies and across the world. Since November, the airlines four eye-catching United for Wildlife A380 aircraft have flown more than 4.2 million kilometres on over 800 flights, delighting customers, global travellers and plane spotters in 34 cities spanning five continents.

Watch Emirates United for Wildlife A380s take the message around the world here, and see a selection of photos from fans from around the world here.

The interest, sharing and discussion generated on social media as a result has helped spread awareness on the issue, with consumers encouraged to refuse products made from endangered species.

Sir Tim Clark, President of Emirates Airline said: The illegal wildlife trade has brought many of our planets most majestic animals to the brink of extinction. It is unthinkable that a generation from now, there may be no more rhinos, elephants or tigers to be found in the wild. The need for action is urgent, and both the demand and supply side of the illegal wildlife trade has to be tackled. Through our global brand footprint, Emirates can help drive consumer awareness and interest in the issue. And as the worlds largest international airline, we believe we can make a difference to help break the supply chain of illegal wildlife trade. We will continue to do all we can in this regard.

Earlier in the year, as a member of the United for Wildlife Transport Taskforce, Sir Tim signed the landmark Buckingham Palace Declaration on behalf of Emirates. The Declaration, developed by representatives from across the transport industry outlines key actions to strengthen defences against trafficking by removing the vulnerabilities in transportation and customs that criminals are currently exploiting. This agreement is a result of 12 months of meetings held in London, Geneva, and Dubai, and thousands of hours of work by legal, conservation, transport, and customs experts.

The Rt Hon The Lord Hague of Richmond, Chair of the United for Wildlife Transport Taskforce said: "Emirates and Sir Tim have contributed enormously to raising awareness of the illegal wildlife trade and are setting a great example for the world's airlines. Their efforts are part of our work to eliminate the demand for illegal wildlife products. Through complementing other international efforts to tackle this issue airlines are disrupting illegal supply chains. Emirates' actions are bringing this issue front and centre, taking us one step close to eradication of this appalling crime against wildlife."

In addition to consumer awareness efforts, Emirates is collaborating with international organisations to train and better equip its ground and cargo staff to detect and deal with illegal wildlife products in transit. As the required paperwork for movement of some wildlife products is often forged, Emirates also made the decision to ban trophy shipments.

About United for Wildlife

United for Wildlife is an unprecedented alliance between seven of the worlds most influential conservation organisations and The Royal Foundation of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry. The collaboration between Conservation International (CI), Fauna & Flora International (FFI), International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), WWF-UK, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and The Royal Foundation hopes to lead the way to substantially increase the global response to major conservation crisis.

With the support of The Royal Foundation, United for Wildlife hopes to bring attention to acute conservation problems, the most pressing of which, as agreed amongst the collaboration, is the rapid escalation of the illegal wildlife trade. This trade is having a devastating effect on wild populations of some of the largest and most iconic species: elephants, rhinos and tigers, plus lesser known animals such as the pangolin

The President of Emirates Airline, Sir Tim Clark, has joined the United for Wildlife International Taskforce on the Transport of Illegal Wildlife Products which is focused on stopping the shipment of illegal wildlife products. Chaired by The Rt Hon The Lord Hague of Richmond, former Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the Taskforce brings together senior representatives of the transport industry to make practical recommendations for the reduction of trafficking of illegal wildlife products.
Yields remained pressured as April freight capacity (measured in available freight tonne kilometers or AFTKs) increased by 6.6% year-on-year. The increase in demand was broad-based across all regions with the exception of Latin America. The strongest growth occurred in the Middle East and Europe, with April demand up by 7.7% and 6.8%, respectively, compared to the same period last year.

Middle Eastern carriers saw demand expand by 7.7% and capacity rise 11.0% in April 2016 compared to the same period last year. Although carriers in the region continued to report the fastest growth in aggregate, the April growth rate was about half that recorded in April 2015. This reflects both a slowdown in network expansion by the regions main carriers over the past six months and weak trading conditions.

While growth appears to be stronger than in the preceding months of 2016, this is largely due to the disappearance from the comparison data of distorting factors associated with the 2015 strike at seaports on the US West Coast.

Overall, the demand for air cargo remains soft and lags behind the relatively robust growth on the passenger side of the business. This is largely driven by weak world trade. The first quarter of 2016 saw the first annual decline in trade volumes since the global financial crisis in 2009, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) predicts only sluggish growth for the remainder of 2016.

While the April uptick in demand growth for air cargo is encouraging, the overall economic environment is not. The decline in global trade does not bode well for air cargo markets in the months ahead, said Tony Tyler, IATAs Director General and CEO.

Asia-Pacific airlines demand for air cargo was basically flat with a 0.1% rise in April compared to last year. Capacity expanded 2.8%. The largest factor impacting this stagnation is weak tradeglobally and in the region.

North American carriers experienced a significant upward swing in year-on-year performance as the exaggerated effects of last years US seaport disruption wore off. Demand grew by 4% in April 2016 compared to the same period last year, significantly better that the 0.8% drop the previous month.

European airlines witnessed a 6.8% increase in freight volumes in April 2016, the highest growth since November 2013. The strong European performance corresponds with an increase in export orders in Germany over the last few months. Despite European cargo demand trending upwards, performance remains weak in historical terms. Seasonally adjusted demand in April 2016 was only 1.5% higher than mid-2011.

Latin American airlines reported a decline in demand of 5.9% and a drop in capacity of 0.7%, as economic conditions continued to worsen, particularly in the regions largest economy, Brazil.

African carriers saw flat-line freight growth in April 2016 compared to the same period last year. Notably, on the back of long-haul expansion, the capacity for African airlines surged by 24.3% year-on-year. This is more than double the pace of any other region in recent months.
Le CBD, cette molecule active du cannabis a aujourdhui le vent en poupe. Et cela est en grande partie du au fait quil permet...
YEREVAN, MAY 31, ARMENPRESS. The Turkish side tries to take every possible measures to prevent the discussion of the resolution of the Armenian Genocide which is going to be held in the German Bundestag on June 2, Armenpress informs, reports Turkish T24 news agency.

Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Turkish Parliament issued a statement condemning the discussion of the Genocide resolution in the German Bundestag. The statement was signed by the Justice and Development, oppositionRepublican Peoples and Nationalist Movement parties.

It is important to state that Kurdish Peoples Democratic party did not sign the document.

The statement says the parties strictly condemn and reject the resolution that distorts the historical truth of 1915 events.

They threatened that the adoption of the resolution will damage the Turkish-German friendly and allied relations.

The heated discussion of the Armenian Genocide on February 25 at Bundestag did not terminate with voting in 2016. It was decided to withdraw the resolution for amendments as a result of opposing positions and assessments between the ruling coalition and the Alliance 90/The Greens.

In 2005, Germany's parliament adopted a resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide. However, in the Bundestags decision, the term Armenian Genocide was avoided, and instead "massacres of Armenians" was used.

On April 24, before the Bundestag hearings, Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier announced that he supports those MPs, who are in favor of calling the mass killings of Armenians Genocide. On April 23, during the ceremony in the Berlin Cathedral dedicated to the memory of the Armenian Genocide, German President Joachim Gauck used the term Genocide in his speech.

In March of 2015, the President of the German Parliament Norbert Lammert said: "what happened in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War in front of the whole world, was genocide. And it was not the last genocide of the 20th century. During the session the leaders of various party fractions also came with their pro-Armenian statements admitting what had happened. However, the discussion of the resolution indefinitely postponed.
YEREVAN, MAY 31, ARMENPRESS. The discussions over the draft resolution of the Genocide and memory of the Armenian and other Christian minorities in the Ottoman Empire 101 years ago are scheduled on June 2 at 11:10 local time, Armenpress reports, Bundestag official website informs.

The discussions will be broadcast via the net: www.bundestag.de.

Despite the Turkish pressures, with the joint initiative of the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) and Social Democratic Partys parliamentary fractions the resolution of the Armenian Genocide was put on the Bundestag agenda with a clear genocide word.

Both coalition and opposition factions support the adoption of the resolution.

In 2005, Germany's parliament adopted a resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide. However, in the Bundestags decision, the term Armenian Genocide was avoided, and instead "massacres of Armenians" was used.

On April 24, before the Bundestag hearings, Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier announced that he supports those MPs, who are in favor of calling the mass killings of Armenians Genocide. On April 23, during the ceremony in the Berlin Cathedral dedicated to the memory of the Armenian Genocide, German President Joachim Gauck used the term Genocide in his speech.

In March of 2015, the President of the German Parliament Norbert Lammert said: "what happened in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War in front of the whole world, was genocide. And it was not the last genocide of the 20th century. During the session the leaders of various party fractions also came with their pro-Armenian statements admitting what had happened. However, the discussion of the resolution indefinitely postponed.

The heated discussion of the Armenian Genocide on February 25 at Bundestag did not terminate with voting in 2016.
YEREVAN, MAY 31, ARMENPRESS. HRD of Artsakh Republic Ruben Melikyan posted a statement on his Facebook page condemning Azerbaijan for detaining 8-year old child with Armenian surname at the Baku airport. Armenpress reports that according to the statement on May 30 publications appeared about the detention of Luka Vardanyan at Baku airport who had arrived in Baku with his mother Kristina Konstantinovna and her husband. They are both Russian citizens. The child was detained for 10 hours. The only reason of the detention was his Armenian surname which raised doubts among Azerbaijanis that he might be Armenian.

Ruben Melkonyan asseses this as a demonstration of Armenophobia, a policy carried out by state level.

Artsakhs Ombudsman urged international human right organizations, particularly those dealing with children protection, to give an adequate assessment to this incident and the Armenophobic policy in general. This policy is the direct cause of the horrible atrocities committed by the Azerbaijani armed forces against Artsakh Republic in early April, 2016. The adequate condemnation of this incident by the international community can stop the dissemination of anti-Armenian propaganda and incitement of violence, as well as gross human right violations in the region, reads the statement.
An established artist in high demand will likely make a much bigger impact by canceling than a lesser-known artist would, so the payoff for the risk is much greater in terms of awareness. And an established artist has more leverage  both with the public and with administrators, agents, and venues  because he can draw on decades of goodwill.
All the latest Ashbourne news. Ashbourne is an historic market town in Derbyshire. Situated on the southern edge of the Peak District, it is known as the 'Gateway to Dovedale' and the 'Gateway to the Peak District'. Ashbourne is famous for the annual Royal Shrovetide Football Match, which has been played since at least 1667, although its origins may date back centuries earlier. Ashbourne became a Fairtrade town in March 2005. The popular Tissington Trail, which follows the route of the former Ashbourne to Buxton railway, starts on the edge of town. Keep up to date with the latest news from the town by signing up for our newsletter.
by Nirmala Carvalho

Pulgaon (AsiaNews) - "The Catholic Church in India expresses its condolences for the tragic loss of life among our beloved soldiers, Card. Oswald Gracias, archbishop of Mumbai and president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India (CCBI) tells AsiaNews, expressing "deep sorrow" for the deaths of soldiers during a fire at the Pulgaon ammunition depot, Maharashtra. The death toll from the accident that occurred around 1.30 am (local time) this morning is 17 victims, including two officers, and 19 seriously wounded, but out of danger.



The fire brigade is still battling the flames and it seems that in addition to the first outbreak, that has been put out, there is a second fire in the same complex.



Witnesses reported multiple explosions that triggered the flames, which spread very quickly. The fire, which broke out in the early hours of this morning, was quelled only after four hours with the use of 10 fire engines.



The cause of the accident is unknown. The army has ordered the opening of an investigation and nearby military intelligence sources reported that the possibility of sabotage cannot be ruled out. Meanwhile the authorities have evacuated about 1,000 residents of neighboring villages, because of bullets and shrapnel splattered everywhere.



The Pulgaon deposit, near Nagpur, is the largest ammunition store in India, and second largest in Asia. But it is not the first incident in a similar site. In 2010 a fire struck the Panagarh deposit, but at that time there were no victims.



On learning of the incident, Card. Gracias said: "Our hearts go out to the families of the brave soldiers and officers who have lost their lives. May the Lord give them solace and bless their families with courage, hope and strength. We pray for the families, parents and colleagues of the military personnel injured in this tragic explosion. We also pray for the safety of our beloved nation and entrust India to the protection of Mary".
Seoul (AsiaNews) - Early this morning the North Korea Army tested a missile from the eastern coast of the country, but the launch failed. In any case, the South has raised the military alert level and is "ready for any eventuality, according to Seouls Joint Chiefs of Staff. A statement released after the test reads: "North Korea attempted to launch an unidentified missile from the region near Wonsan at around 5:20 a.m., but it is presumed to have been unsuccessful. "



The Souths intelligence is unable to say what device was tested, but this mornings flop comes after three tests - all failures - of "Musudan" missiles in April. According to United Nations sanctions, the Pyongyang regime is not authorized to use any missile technology, but after the fourth nuclear test in January 2016, the tension between the North and the international community has spiked.



Different AsiaNews sources on the peninsula emphasize that these events "make the news more in the West than in South Korea. If we were to hide every time tensions spike on the 38th parallel we would not have a normal life." In fact, the news of the failed launch made headlines in Western newspapers but is relegated to normal news in Korean press.



Much more attention is devoted instead to the arrival of new vice chairman of the North Korean Workers' Party, Ri Su-yong, in China. The Souths media believe that the journey is "official, though not announced." Ri became vice president of the only Northern Party during the recent Congress, the first in 36 years, and is considered a close ally of the dictator Kim Jong-un.



For decades China has been North Koreas closest economic and military ally, but after the death of former leader Kim Jong-il and the rise to power of his son Jong-un relations have cooled greatly. In March 2016, Beijing voted in favor of introducing new harsh sanctions against Pyongyang, in response to several military provocations.
by Mathias Hariyadi

The accused was arrested in 2013 at Penang airport with four kilos of amphetamines in her suitcase. According to some activists, she is yet another victim of traffickers who exploit the desperation of migrant workers. She received the suitcase from people she did not know and was not aware of the content. At least 158 Indonesian nationals are on death row in Malaysia.

Kuala Lumpur (AsiaNews)  Rita Krisdianti, an Indonesian migrant worker, was sentenced to death by hanging in Malaysia for drug possession.

Originally from Ponorogo (East Java), she was arrested in 2013 at Penang airport after agents found four kilos of amphetamines in her suitcase.

For human rights activists, she is the latest victim of traffickers who exploit poor migrant workers as drug couriers without their knowledge.

Rita Krisdianti flew to Hong Kong in January 2013 to work as a cleaner for a local family, said Anis Hidayah, an activist with Migrant Care, an Indonesian-based organisation.

After three months she moved to Macao, where she stayed at a migrant centre for another three months waiting for a work permit.

Set on going home to Indonesia, Rita was convinced by a Macao resident to go to New Delhi (India) to meet someone who was willing to offer her a job.

In the Indian city, some men asked her to fly to Malaysia carrying a suitcase for someone who would pick her up on arrival, but they did not tell her the contents.

When she arrived at the airport in July 2013, she was stopped and arrested by police. Since then, she was tried 19 times, the last of which ended in a death sentence.

Ritas case is very similar to that of another woman, a 30-year-old maid from the Philippines, Mary Jane Veloso, who has been on death row in Indonesia since 2010 after she was stopped at the airport with 2.6 kilos of heroin.

Veloso has always claimed her innocence, saying that she was the victim of a scam. Requests for pardon on her behalf have come from various Asian countries. In Indonesia 15 executions are scheduled shortly, but Veloso is not one of them.

Rita Krisdianti is not the only migrant worker on death row in Malaysia. According to the Indonesian Foreign Ministry, at least 158 Indonesians are waiting to be hanged, 60 per cent for drug-related offences.

About two million Indonesians work in Malaysia as domestic workers, on plantations, on construction sites, and in manufacturing.
Anti-terrorism squads, the army and police forces are encircling the city. Iraqi and international air force air raids cover the offensive. But the military must overcome the counter-attacks of the jihadists resistance. The fear is that civilians are being used as human shields. IS strikes Baghdad with new attacks, 21 dead.

Baghdad (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The Iraqi army has launched "its final offensive" for Fallujah, to wrest the city of Anbar governorate, about 50 km west of the capital, under Islamic State (IS) control since 2014. However, local sources reported that the military will have to face fierce jihadist resistance seen in the frequent counter-attacks. The battle which began at dawn yesterday is still underway.



There are at least 50 thousand civilians trapped inside the city; so far only a few hundred families have managed to escape to safety. The fear is that they can be used as human shields against the bombings.



The Iraqi army commander in charge of operations in Fallujah, Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi, says "anti-terrorism forces" are operating in coordination with "other armed forces and the police in Anbar province". He also reports "heavy fighting" on the outskirts of town.

To support ground troops the Iraqi air force and international coalition have launched numerous air raids.

Local sources say that IS has at least 1200 fighters in Fallujah, most of whom come from the city itself.

So far the Iraqi army has retaken two towns south of Fallujah, but the resistance of the militants is complicating their advance. The impression is that the Iraqi forces are trying to form a ring around the city, to stifle Daesh opposition [Arabic acronym of the Islamic state].



Sources on the ground say that there might be a break in operations before the final assault, to allow other civilians to leave the city. Witnesses in the area speak of people dying of hunger and civilians killed because they refused to fight for IS.



Together with Mosul, jihadist stronghold in Iraq, Fallujah is one of the most important cities to have fallen to IS in 2014, at the beginning of the jihad offensive. Before the rise of Daesh 300 thousand people lived in the city and, in the past, it was one of the "symbols" of Sunni "resistance" against the US military invasion following the fall of Saddam Hussein. Furthermore, it is known as the "city of mosques" for the more than 200 places of worship.

Meanwhile the militias of the Islamic State have launched a series of bomb attacks in Baghdad and in some areas around the capital; in yesterday's attacks at least 21 people died and dozens more were injured.
"Christians with a grimace or disgruntled expression on their faces, sad Christians, are a very ugly thing. Its really ugly, ugly, ugly. However, they are not fully Christian. They think they are (Christians) but they are not fully so ." "The courage of women. The courageous women who are present in the Church: they are like Mary. Courageous: they get up and help other people.

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - If "we learn this, serving and reaching out to others," both "signs" of Christians, "how the world would change said the Pope at the Mass this morning at Casa Santa Marta, inspired by the Gospel passage that tells of Mary's visit to Elizabeth. The passage, highlighted by Pope Francis, together with the words of the prophet Zephaniah in the first reading and Saint Paul in the second draw, create a liturgy "full of joy", which comes as a breath of "fresh air" to fill "our lives".

Christians with a grimace he noted  or disgruntled expression on their faces, sad Christians, are a very ugly thing. Its really ugly, ugly, ugly. However, they are not fully Christian. They think they are (Christians) but they are not fully so. This is the Christian message. And in this atmosphere of joy that todays liturgy gives us like a gift, I would like to underline just two things: first, an attitude; second, a fact. The attitude is one of service or helping others.

The Pope pointed out how the gospel describes Mary as setting off immediately and without hesitation to visit her cousin, despite being pregnant and despite the risk of meeting robbers along the route. This young girl of 16 or 17, he said, was courageous by getting up straightaway and setting out on her journey.

The courage of women. The courageous women who are present in the Church: they are like Mary. These women who bring up their families, these women who are responsible for rearing their children, who have to face so many hardships, so much pain, women who look after the sick. Courageous: they get up and help other people. Serving others is a Christian sign. Whoever doesnt live to serve other people, doesnt serve to live. Serving others and being full of joy is the attitude that I would like to underline today. There is joy and also service towards others.

The second attitude whose importance was stressed by the Pope is reaching out and meeting other people. Referring once again to Marys meeting with her cousin, he noted that the two kinswomen greeted each other with joy and their encounter was very festive. In conclusion, Pope Francis said if we could learn these two things: to serve others and reach out to them, how much our world would change:

Reaching out to others is another Christian sign. Persons who describes themselves as Christian and who are unable to reach out to others, to go and meet them are not totally Christian. Being of service and reaching out to others both require going out from themselves: going out to serve and meet others, to embrace another person. Through Marys service towards others, through that encounter, our Lords promise is renewed and makes it happen now, just as it did then. And it is really our Lord  as we heard during the first Reading: The Lord, your God, is in your midst  the Lord is about helping other people, the Lord is about meeting other people.
by Joseph Mahmoud

Christian, Muslim, Yazidi and Sabean leaders took part in prayer promoted by the Chaldean Patriarchate. Shia leader Ali Al-Yacoubi thanked "our Christians brothers for their work. Despite "having suffered lot", they still promote "unity." He called for joint response "against any deed or act of terrorism.

Baghdad (AsiaNews)  "Our Christian brothers" must be thanked for they are an element of peace and coexistence for Iraq, because "despite having suffered a lot," they have never responded to attacks with violence, but have continued to promote unity in a country that "has to be of and for everyone, Shia religious leader Ali Al-Yacoubi told AsiaNews.

Speaking at the prayer for peace in Iraq, Syria and the entire Middle East region held yesterday afternoon in Baghdad, at a time characterised by the barbarity of Jihadi groups, political crises and attacks against ethnic and religious groups, including Christians, the representative of the Shia Awkaf (Endowment) said that "Iraq is for Christians, for Yazidis, for Muslims and for every citizen in search of peace."

"I want to thank [the Chaldean Church and the] Patriarch for the invitation and I extend greetings to all those present at this celebration," the Shia religious leader said. "I take this opportunity to reiterate our brotherhood to all the people of Iraq, as well as our concerns for security against any deed or act of terrorism. Let us pray to God to protect Iraq, bring peace and unite our hearts in love for this beloved homeland.

Heeding Chaldean Patriarch Mar Louis Raphael Sakos appeal, various Iraqi religious leaders, diplomats and ordinary citizens took part in yesterday afternoons prayer in Baghdads Queen of the Rosary Church.

The occasion gave them an opportunity to celebrate the Jubilee Year of Mercy, the end of the month of May dedicated to Our Lady and the upcoming start of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting and prayer.

Participants recited hymns, psalms and prayers, led by Baghdads choir. Many important figures took part in the initiative, including Sheikh Yousif Al-Nasery, Secretary General of the Shura Council, Sayyed Ibrahim al-Jaber, representative of Shia leader Moqtada al-Sadrs movement, as well as diplomats and members of Iraqi civil society groups.

Former Prime Minister and current Vice President Iyad Allawi sent a telegram of praise and support for the event strongly promoted by the Chaldean Church. Sunni representative Abdul-Latif Al-Humaim was unable to attend due to last minute commitments.

Everyone present stressed the importance of reconciliation, peace, equality and the promotion of harmonious coexistence, which are elements on which to build a modern, multi-confessional, secular, and open Iraq.

Participants also included Church figures from Baghdad, Sabean and Yazidi representatives, ambassadors and members of Parliament.

After the ceremony religious leaders placed a candle at the foot of the statue of the Virgin, hoping that it would enlighten the minds of the terrorists and promote a culture of "tolerance and love."

In his address, the Chaldean patriarch noted that the Jubilee Year of Mercy and Ramadan are "an opportunity to correct mutual perceptions" and "choose the way that leads to peace, reconciliation and building of mutual trust.

Mar Sako also urged those present to join efforts to spread a "culture of tolerance", strengthen "the values of belonging" to the nation, and stay away from all forms of extremism.

Finally, His Beatitude invited all present to exchange a sign of peace and shake hands.
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The chief information officer at Australian law firm Allens says that the rise of artificial intelligence at large law firms is on the way to the region but it wont necessarily mean the end to human roles.In an interview with IT News, Philip Scorgie, who joined the law firm from Mayer Brown recently, said that he expects large Australian law firms to start implementing cloud-based cognitive computing systems within the next year.However, he said that the predictions that robot lawyers would replace humans was overstated. Scorgie believes that the role of AI is in assisting lawyers to handle large data volumes to produce structured documents.While there may be reticence among law firms to adopt the new technology, Scorgie told IT News that not doing so carried a risk  that in-house legal teams would do so and handle more work themselves.International law firm Pinsent Masons has joined with academics at Queen Mary University in London to investigate how businesses in the TMT sector can better approach dispute resolution. The four-month survey hopes to discover how often-lengthy dispute resolutions in the tech sector can be streamlined. Hogan Lovells has announced the appointment of two significant hires for its capital markets team. Sammy Li and Stephen Peepels will join the Hong Kong office to bolster the team across Asia-Pacific.Lis practice focusses on IPOs and secondary offerings on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, representing both international and PRC investment banks as well as Chinese issuers. He joins from Paul Hastings.Peepels joins from DLA Piper and his practice includes both debt and equity financing transactions as well as private equity and M&A transactions, where his markets extend across the Asia-Pacific region including Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, and Malaysia.Emma Slatter is leaving Deutsche Bank after 20 years to set up her own consultancy. She is currently the banks global head of legal strategy and has previously held a regional GC role. She will leave at the end of June and a replacement has yet to be named.
An Italian court has ruled in favour of a divorced father who paid his child support in pizza.



The 50-year-old pizza maker from a small village outside Padua, did his best to pay child support during hard times, providing 400 euros worth of pizzas, calzone and other goods from the pizza place he was managing, the Telegraph UK reported.



In lieu of money, the defendant offered his ex-wife the same amount of compensation in the form of take-away pizzas from his workplace, an offer promptly rejected as beggars change, wrote judge Chiara Bitozzi in her ruling.



Nicola Toso and his wife Nicoletta Zuin, divorced in 2002, but in 2008, when the country faced economic crisis, Toso couldnt make ends meet with his new wife and three children. He offered free food instead of the 400 euros stipulated in the divorce agreement.



Zuin filed a criminal complaint, his defence attorney arguing that he had truly fallen on hard times and had been forced to close his business in 2010 when he was unable to pay vendors and employees. She told the court that he had met all other custody obligations.



He was acquitted from criminal charges for failing to make the payments after Judge Bitozzi found that the couples daughter had moved in with her father and his new family in 2011, a court then requiring the mother was now required to pay the father 300 euros a month in child support. Therefore, the judge found no evidence that the father had committed a crime.




Levy, who is a member of the Australian Takeovers Panel, told Australasian Lawyer that the laws are outdated and that Australia is lagging behind other countries.Practice has moved on and so should the rules, said Levy.Current elements of the regulatory framework are overly complex and in some cases unnecessary, Furphy added.Our suggested reforms are intended to reflect the current principles in legislation of providing fairness for shareholders, and to promote greater takeover activity for the benefit of the Australian economy.Under the proposal, some regulation would be removed, such as restrictions on a controller acquiring more shares, along with other rules being relaxed in favour of bidders. A mandatory 50% minimum acceptance condition on all bids would be required to protect shareholders.The changes are intended to change some rules, but most of the existing rules would be retained, Levy said.There would still be full disclosure to shareholders via bidders statements and targets statements, equal treatment of shareholders and adequate time provided for directors and shareholders to consider a takeover proposal.The proposed changes would simplify takeover bids and encourage more takeover proposals, likely to not only benefit shareholders but to encourage better allocation of resources in the economy, Levy said.It has long been accepted that takeovers and the threat of takeovers, provides incentives for directors to use the companys assets more efficiently or face replacement by others who will do that and who are prepared to pay for that position, he said.Click through for the four main proposals.#pb#The four main proposals are:A person who controls more than 50% of the shares in a company should be free to acquire further shares without having to make a bid or satisfy another exemption. The law should focus only on transactions resulting in a change of control. Regulating acquisitions by a person already in control just introduces red tape and unnecessary cost. Shareholders would know this rule when considering whether to accept the bid and would act accordingly if they were concerned about being locked into a minority position.All bids should be subject to a mandatory 50% minimum acceptance condition so control of the target company only passes at a price acceptable to the majority of shareholders. This would bring our laws into line with the rules in many other jurisdictions. It would ensure that effective control could not pass quickly unless the bid was strongly supported. This rule would mean that other rules would require amendment (such as the 3% creep rule) so that a shareholder could not end up with more than 20% and less than 50% to negate the operation of the rule.Where a bid has been recommended by target directors, the bidder should be able to compulsorily acquire all the shares in the company if it achieves acceptances for 75% of outstanding shares. We consider that the dual test of target director support and 75% acceptance provides sufficient protection. Lowering the threshold from 90% to 75% would bring the rule more into line with the rule applying in scheme of arrangement, reductions of capital and alterations to company constitutions. Minority shareholders would still have the protection of being able to resist compulsory acquisition of their shares if fair value was not offered by the bidder.A bidder should be free to obtain commitments to accept the bid from shareholders with more than 20% of the shares on issue, subject to the commitment lapsing if a higher bid is made. This is the ordinary effect of our rules now with bidders frequently securing public commitments under the truth in takeover rule anyway. Introducing a specific rule would at least clarify the legal position.
An industry body representing maritime workers in Australia has called for the 457 visa programme to be overhauled.The 457 visa, which allows people from overseas to work in Australia for up to four years is one of the most controversial visa programmes in the country.All kinds of industries claim that it means that large companies can employ people from overseas more cheaply than Australians despite so called checks being in place for them to seek employees at home first.The latest is Maritime Industry Australia which wants high level jobs like ships masters and ships engineers taken off the Government's skilled shortage list, meaning foreign workers can be hired under the 457 system.According to the most recent figures from the Department of Immigration, there are hundreds of foreign workers employed in the maritime industry under the 457 visa programme.According to MIA the inclusion of seafaring jobs on the skilled shortage list made sense during the commodities boom, but not today when a large number of people in the sector were unemployed.The 457 system requires employers to try the local job market before hiring overseas workers, but law lecturer at the University of Adelaide Dr Joanna Howe said it is poorly policed."There is currently no proper mechanism, no robust mechanism for identifying a skill shortage and for ensuring that where a foreign worker is coming in, they're not taking a job away from a local worker," she explained.There is also concern that under the national shipping regime foreign vessels can obtain temporary licences to operate in Australian waters without needing to pay their workers Australian wages.There are moves to change this so that a foreign ship operating for a certain number of days would need to employ a certain number of Australian staff and those on visas would need to be paid the same amount as an Australian employee.
Hi all,I was wondering if someone has been through this, and is able to clarify something for me.I moved to Australia on a Working Holiday Visa in December 2011, and I applied for a Onshore Partner Visa with my ex partner in November 2012, which was approved in February 2013. I then received my permanent residency approval in March 2015, so I've had it for over a year.My partner left me in May 2015.I know you have to have had your residency for a year and have lived in Australia under a 'valid Australian visa' for four years, I'm wondering if the Working Holiday Visa is considered in that time, as I would have now been in Australia for four and a half years, or will I have to wait until my Partner visa was initially approved?I would really like to apply for citizenship as I am going to University in July and, while I've saved enough money to pay for most of my degree, I would like to at least do my final year as a student loan and I would really like to get my citizenship sorted before starting University.I'm also wondering if it would matter that my ex partner and I are no longer together, considering he ended things, not me.Any help anyone can provide will be greatly appreciated. Thank you
You are not alone. Something weird happened



I clicked an email link and got told i had no rights to view the thread i had previously posted in.



And now like you, i see just that one 4020 sticky.
MPV

Adaptive Cruise Control

Opels latestcomes with numerous new features, as well as a thorough redesign. First of all, the new Zafira has infotainment systems that provide smartphone integration and a Wi-Fi hotspot.The seven-seat lounge configuration of the Zafira , with its three rows of available seats, has been maintained.Zafira's base version comes with five seats, as with other models in the class. This makes perfect sense from a money point of view, as most people might not want to pay for seven seats if they do not use them.Moving on to the design of the Zafira. The car has ditched the boomerang headlamps in for a more conventional approach. The headlights look like those from the new Astra K, as does its front bumper and engine grille. The common elements are normal, as the Zafira is Astras platform sibling, but the components cannot be swapped between the two models.On the inside, Opels new Zafira comes with a simplified dash layout. This is a trend which most carmakers have followed, and General Motorss German branch did have a lot of buttons on the center consoles of its cars. Most of them, including the Zafiras, have been integrated into the seven-inch multimedia touch-screen unit called IntelliLink 4.0. GMs renowned OnStar system is also available in the new MPV, and customers that choose the Navi 950 unit will also get a 4G LTE Wi-Fi Hotspot.On a technical level, the new Zafira comes with Ope ls FlexRide adaptive damper control, ansystem, and many driver aids and assistance systems. The German company will announce the range of engine options for this model soon, but have not specified any details about them, except for the fact that Opel prides itself on the Zafira being the only model in the segment available with gasoline, diesel, LPG, and CNG engines.
This time, the custom wand has touched an Aston Martin Vantage GT12. You know, the track special of which only 100 units are being built.German tuner Wheelsandmore has played with No. 91, but, regardless of what you'd expect judging by the company's name, a new set of wheels is the only aftermarket touch on this Aston We'll quickly go past the VIP Edition designation of the project, as this simply seems like too much, moving on to the rims and tires of the V12 ride.The GT2 has been gifted with forged, multi-piece F.I.W.E. wheels, coming in a 20x10.5-inch size up front and in a 20x12-inch size at the back. These are shod in Dunlop Sportmaxx GT rubber, which is offered in a 265/30 R20 size for the front axle and in a 325/25 R20 size for the rear one.The wheels feature a concave profile, while using a simple design that appears to fit the lines of this Aston rather well. While their lips come in Silver, the wheel centers are finished in Black, with the combination matching the colors on the car.As you might have noticed, the Aston Martin line-up needs to be explained from time to time, as not too many enthusiasts keep track of the British carmaker's complete development range. We'll go ahead and remind you the Vantage GT12 is motivated by a naturally-aspirated V12 that delivers 600 hp.However, the devil is in the weight-saving details: a magnesium torque tube, a titanium exhaust, a lithium battery, as well as carbon fiber front wings, hood and door elements. Oh, and let's not forget the optional goodies such as a carbon fiber roof and polycarbonate windows (side and rear). All of these allow for a 220 lbs (100 kg) weight reduction and, of course, massive bragging rights.
The latest raid on counterfeit car parts comes from Guangzhou, China, where police seized around 33,000 fake parts. More worryingly, 55,000 packages wearing Toyota Genuine Parts branding were also found in the Guangzhou-based large-scale manufacturing facility.According to a press release from the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries of Australia , the men in blue acted on information provided by the Australian arm of Toyota . Truth be told, the Oz is one of the most affected markets in the world as far as fake car parts are concerned. To the point, the FCAI tells that:Ford Australia has also intercepted fake parts, including alloy rims to suit high-performance FPV (Ford Performance Vehicles) models and air intake snorkels and grilles for the Ranger light commercial, while Holden has seized counterfeit parts including body panels, alloy rims, grilles, taillights, and radiators. Yikes!These said, the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries explains that the crackdown in Guangzhou resulted from a couple of Federal Court proceedings against two retailers selling counterfeit airbag parts . After the Australia-based Toyota retailers had agreed to stop selling these parts and refund all of the affected customers, the Toyota HQ in Japan contacted its Chinese subsidiary to orchestrate the crackdown."While this seizure is shocking, sadly it's not uncommon and using counterfeit parts, knowingly or otherwise, means you're taking a huge risk," said FCAI CEO Tony Weber. "It offers a clear reminder to consumers that just because they see a branded box, bag or label they shouldn't assume they're buying a genuine part." You've been warned.
It used to be the case that over 90% of all the cars sold in this Eastern European country were Dacias. But nowadays, the Romanians prefer cars from German brands like Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes, sometimes mixed with a bit of Renault or Opel.Like the Russians, the Romanians have put up with totalitarian regimes for decades. They've been told that leather seats and automatic gearboxes are for people who aren't patriotic, capitalist pigs, as it were. So it's no wonder that Germans buy more Sanderos than they do.Steadily, Dacia has looked at what customers want and added a few luxury features, even though this cuts against the grain of what the company stands for. But the stuff they have has always been inferior to what the Renault Logan and Sandero have in Russia or Argentina.Has that changed? Sadly, no. But the Logan Prestige is the most luxurious Dacia you can buy in Romania. After being presented last year at the Frankfurt Motor Show, the new Easy-R automatic gearbox is also available. Ooh, aah!While it might not be our favorite pick when it comes to automatic gearboxes, the automated manual is cheap. It works like a manual with a little robot that drops the clutch and changes the gear for you. While it might not be the perfect solution, the Easy-R is only 500 in Romania, which is quite cheap.Starting this week, it can be ordered with the 0.9 TCe or 1.5 dCi engines, both producing 90 hp. What's more, the Sandero and Logan MCV may also be ordered as automatics.Editor's note: a Logan Prestige Easy-R 1.5 dCi costs 12,650. What happened to the 4,000 car Renault was supposed to develop?
For those hard to reach places. A photo posted by deadmau5 (@deadmau5) on Jun 11, 2015 at 1:49pm PDT

Never heard of Deadmau5? Well, you should know he is a loaded electronic music DJ from Canada who loves cars. Not only does he enjoy buying the most expensive rides available on the market, but he also drives the hell out of each breed. Take his most recent purchase, the McLaren P1. He bought the hypercar about a year ago, but only recently took delivery of it.Besides driving the vehicle at the famed Gumball 3000 Rally this year, he also became the first of the genre to drift the beast in the dirty sand of the Nevada desert. Maybe there are others out there doing stuff like that too, but it clearly was a premiere for us. But then again, why not, if he has it, he might as well enjoy all that horsepower.He also happens to own a McLaren 650S and both of his British cars were involved in the rally this year, as he clearly loves them 'equally'. One of them got a treat recently and we're talking about the more 'modest' choice.He seemingly messed with the McLaren badge on the trunk of his 650S, turning it into Mr cLean as the picture appears to show. Deadmau5 may get in trouble. Its not because the McLaren ownership police will arrest him for doing it, but for a possible reaction of the automaker itself.After all, it did happen with Ferrari , who sent Zimmerman a cease letter to have the custom emblems he put on his 458 Italia removed.The car was wrapped with a Nyan Cat cover, and they didnt seem to like it that much. Not only was the millionaire DJ edgy about it, but he decided to sell the car after removing the wrap. Again, if he truly did mess with the McLaren badge, the automaker may not be pleased with it. At the end of the day we are talking about a supercar and a hypercar that are worth well over $1,000,000.
Honda entrusted this honor to team Valvoline Racing by Padgetts Motorcycles (Padgett's), who will also take care of the extensive race preparations whose aim is to transform the RC213V-S into a bike that can withstand the hardships of the Mountain Course.The RC213V-S is the closest one can get to Repsol Honda MotoGP prototype and still be able to take it out for a spin on public roads. However, with the feeble 159 hp the RC213V-S makes in street-legal trim, not even the best riders in the world would stand a chance.A long-time partner of Honda , Padgett's knows this only too well, so they prepared a special race trim for the RC213V-S. The OEM race kit is only a fraction of the tuning game. It unleashes the engine's potential, producing around 215 horsepower, but this is only the beginning.Now, the problem is that the exclusive nature of the Honda RC213V-S comes with a terrible lack of off-the-shelf parts. "We have had to beef the bike up for the TT course, so everything has had to be made bespoke. Things like the wheels, the K-Tech forks, the rear shocks, the brakes and the radiator guards have all had to be specially made," Clive Padgett adds.Anstey also believes that the RC213V-S will help him achieve a great performance at the Isle of Man TT races. He says that the bike is around 2" (5 cm) longer than the Fireblade he's used to, and this should increase stability. At the same time, he stresses out that the V4 RC213V-S turns and handles like a 600cc machine, which is consistent with what Casey Stoner used to say when he rode it, before becoming a Ducati test rider.Skipping the not-at-all-subtle advertisement message, here's Stoner's insightful report on the RC213V-S. The bike can still be ordered for around 200,000 Euro.
I remember seeing the BMW Vision Efficient Dynamics concept and thinking that it would never reach showrooms, until I got to drive the production model . So, things are possible, but only if the automaker intended to make a production car out of a particular concept vehicle it showcased.A Reddit user nicknamed clusterkid29 set his sights on Mazdas RX Vision concept. This model got our blood boiling also, but deep within our hearts, we knew that Mazda might not make anything like it very soon, if ever.After all, it had a rotary engine, and the Japanese brand discontinued those because of the costs associated with making them comply with Euro 5 and then Euro 6 requirements.But these facts did not stop clusterkid29 and his dreams. So he contacted Mazdas Customer Experience department. He did not publish his original e-mail to Mazda, but the original poster did explain that the message he sent to the automaker was a request to place a down payment for the upcoming RX Vision model. Mazda kindly replied his message, so he decided to post it on Reddit . Like any other automaker would do, the Japanese carmaker did not accept clusterkid29s deposit proposition. However, Mazda did say that they appreciate his interest in a future RX model, and confirmed that they are developing a new generation of rotary engines For those of you who regularly follow automotive websites like ours (Thank you), this is not news. But Mazdas reply to an interested customer, without any attempt to invite him to a showroom to test drive something else, is what stands out here.The automaker assured the enthusiastic customer that its engineers are developing a new generation of rotary engines, as well as a potential car to suit it for whenever the package is ready for production. Until then, take care of your rotaries
SUV

Instead of roadsters or coupes, the revived British brand will launch two more SUVs. With the additional models on top of the existing GS , MG wants to compete with segment leaders like Nissan.In an interview with Autocar , MGs Sales and Marketing Director Matthew Cheyne stated that they will launch a model to rival Nissans Juke, as well as a competitor for the Nissan X-Trail. The first of them is the Juke competitor, which will come to market by the end of next year.The future B-segmentfrom MG is described as the ongoing GSs baby brother. Since the small crossover segment is booming in Europe, MG should gain traction on the market with its new products. Once the SUVs in the all-new MG range starts achieving sales targets, the company will enter new segments.As the automakers sales and marketing boss explained, MG currently has multiple cars in development. However, none of these are roadsters or coupes, as the brand wants to focus on growing markets.While enthusiasts of MG roadsters and coupe models might be disappointed by the lack of any plans to launch such versions, the brands official does make a point when explaining why this does not happen. The two-seat convertible market is in a decline on a European level, so investing in a platform for a shrinking sector with potentially disappointing sales is a bad business decision.However, the MG official interviewed by Autocar during this years London Motor Show did reveal that the new models will be configured to have "good handling." According to the MG representative, this will be the way the brand will continue the heritage it has behind it without launching modern interpretations of classic models.
Toyota Prius gatherings in America are all about trading car grooming secrets and recipes for raw vegan sweets that won't make you fat(er). However, over in Japan, the Prius has developed into a cult car, and many tuners offer styling packages that cut against the grain.We have to be honest here and tell you that it's not your average gathering of Pri (yes, that's the plural of Prius). It's happening in the back yard of one of our favorite Japanese tuners and they've invited another company to join in.Is it time to drop the names? Yes it is, two of the new Prius tuning projects are from Kuhl Racing , while the other one is from Rowen . It seems the companies were in the mood to show off and also brought along some of the older projects they had, based on the previous Prius and even the wagon.While all three 2016 Pri have quad exhaust systems, the one that gets all the attention is from Rowen International, the company that specializes in the Heat Blue Titanium setup that gives the Toyota hybrid an exotic look, like a Lamborghini.We featured that project very recently and are still in love with the custom trunk wing, which seems like it's been pulled straight from a the Civic Type R. That said, Kuhl Racing's cars are also amazing. They have a cleaner rear diffuser and what's called a necked swan spoiler that extends backward.With only 140 horsepower or so, the Prius is never going to escape from the new Tokyo police car, the Nissan 370Z. However, it would be interesting to see them try, maybe as an endurance race instead of a speed test.
The hostilities we're talking about took place earlier this month (May 15, to be more precise) on the TT Circuit Assen, seeing a monstrous amount of high-octane machines battling each other - from your "average" Porsche 911 to a McLaren P1 GTR , the velocity variety delivered by the event was nothing short of stunning.Returning to the Aventador SV we're here to discuss, our favorite part of the Raging Bull's run can be seen in the first part of the footage below. The Sant'Agata Bolognese supercar dared challenge a LaFerrari, trying to pass the Maranello halo car.As wild as that sounds, you should know the two aren't that far away from each other in terms of track performance. If we go for the blunt horsepower approach, the Aventador SV's 750 PS output isn't nearly enough to allow it to bit the 963 PS LaF.For instance, the Aventador SV is famous for having lapped the Nurburgring in under seven minutes , which means it was just three seconds slower than the Nordschleife production car record holder, namely the Porsche 918 Spyder.While Ferrari has ensured the LaFerrari doesn't set a 'Ring time, we can pull a bit of a far stretch by assuming the gas-electric Prancing Horse's time can't be that far from that of the Porsche 918 Spyder, which means the LaF and the Aventador SV could play in the same league.And to compensate for the stretch mentioned above, we've added a second clip at the bottom of the page - to the best of our knowledge this is the only instrumented track test involving the Ferrari LaFerrari, McLaren P1 and Porsche 918 Spyder. And while the Silverstone track that hosted the battle can be considered the opposite of the Nurburgring in terms of length (all three pulled sub-1m laps), every second of the footage is worth watching.
The brake supplier of Toyota, Aisin Advics Co., said in a statement that it was hit by an explosion regarding one of its plants in central Japan.

Aisin Advics Co. is an auto parts supplier company and as per the latest report, they are still establishing the extent of the damage from the blast. They were not able to detail yet which of their customers will be impacted as it remains unclear what supplies were damaged from the explosion, Reuters said.

Automotive News reported that four people were sent to the hospital due to the blast and one of them was seriously injured. It was not detailed how many workers were in the area when the blast took place. A fire official added that the explosion occurred at around 12:05 P.M. local time on Monday and it was near the painting line for the brakes at the Kariya plant. It remains unclear, however, what caused the blast. The matter is still being investigated.

Bloomberg said that Aisin Advics Co. is majority owned by Aisin Seiki Co., which is also a Toyota supplier. Aisin Advics Co. have two production plants in central Japan and manufactures globally. Aisin Seiki Co. counts Denso Corp., Sumitomo Electric Industries, and Toyota as their minority shareholders.

This is not the first time that Toyota has suffered from production delay this year due to damage to a plant operated by Aisin Seiki. Another affiliate of Aisin Seki, Aichi Steel Corp., suffered from fire. This then disrupted Toyota's engine, transmission, and chassis component supplies in February this year.

Last April, Toyota also reported that 80,000 vehicles were not made due to the earthquakes that struck Kyushu last April. Toyota's Japan production has decreased 17 percent in April equating to 258, 387.

Toyota has not issued any statement yet regarding the blast.
As soon as the weather window looks favorable, Solar Impulse pilot Andre Borschberg plans to depart from Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, and fly about 100 miles to New Yorks John F. Kennedy Airport, according to the support team. The flight path will provide several opportunities along the way for New Yorkers to catch a glimpse of the unique solar-powered aircraft. The plan is for Solar Impulse to cross over the Verrazano Bridge at an altitude of 1,500 feet, at about 5:10 a.m. on the day of the flight. The airplane will then fly over the Statue of Liberty and continue east above Brooklyn on its way to JFK. Liberty State Park, in New Jersey, Battery Park in Manhattan, and several other sites along the coast will provide views of the flight, according to the Solar Impulse team.

After the landing in JFK, pilot Bertrand Piccard will fly the next leg, across the Atlantic, when the weather provides an adequate window. Since crossing the Pacific and landing in California, the airplane has landed in Phoenix, Tulsa, and Dayton. The global flight began more than a year ago, in Abu Dhabi, and the team plans to return there later this summer. New Yorkers who want to see the airplane can sign up online to get advance notice of the takeoff.
31 May 2016 10:13 (UTC+04:00)

Armenian armed forces have 33 times violated the ceasefire with Azerbaijan on the line of contact over the past 24 hours, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry reported on May 31.

Armenian army violated ceasefire from the positions near Goyarkh and Chilaburt villages of Azerbaijan's Terter district, Javahirli and Garagashli villages of the Aghdam district, Kuropatkino village of the Khojavand district, Garakhanbayli, Horadiz villages of the Fizuli district, as well as from the positions located on nameless heights in Goranboy, Khojavand and Jabrayil districts.

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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Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
31 May 2016 14:49 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Azerbaijans National Agency for Mine Action (ANAMA) continues demining operations in countrys regions adjacent to the front-line area.

The Agency has detected five Unexploded Ordnances (UXOs) in Fizuli and Tartar regions of the country on May 30.

ANAMA experts examined seven shell craters on a cultivation area and a territory of 8,000 square meters. As a result, a part of the Grad missile engine was found and neutralized in Jamilli village of Tartar region.

Moreover, during the inspection of six shell craters in pastures, two unexploded artillery shell of 120 mm and two shells of 152 mm caliber were detected in Shukurbeyli village of Fizuli region.

Tartar and Fizuli regions have been suffering from Armenias attacks most of all. During the recent provocations in the front-line areas, their villages have become the main target of the Armenian belligerent army.

The agency also carried out inspections in the Agjabadi region. ANAMA inspected three houses and household plots, area of a high school, 20 shell craters, and detected five UXBs.

In general, 543 houses and household plots, 21 farms and acreages, four rural schools, two military units and rural cemeteries, one medical center and winery in Zardab, Tartar, Shamkir, Agjabedi, Agdam, Fizuli, Tovuz, Goranboy, Samukh, Shamkir, Jalilabad and Ujar regions, Mingachevir and Baku were inspected from April 7 to May 30 by ANAMA. As a result, 1477 UXBs, 13 anti-personnel and six anti-tank mines were detected and neutralized.

Currently, special rapid response teams of ANAMA with minesweeper dogs continue their operations for detecting UXBs in the border settlements.

Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a lengthy war that ended with the signing of a fragile ceasefire in 1994. Since the war, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.

While the OSCE Minsk Group acted as the only mediator in resolution of the conflict, the occupation of the territory of the sovereign State with its internationally recognized boundaries has been left out of due attention of the international community for years.

Armenia ignores four UN Security Council resolutions on immediate withdrawal from the occupied territory of Azerbaijan, thus keeping tension high in the region.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
31 May 2016 13:56 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli



Azerbaijan Tourism Association (AzTA) has offered to introduce compulsory insurance for those traveling abroad.

Reminding that today travel insurance in Azerbaijan is carried out on a voluntary basis, AzTA Chairman Nahid Bagirov said that mandatory travel insurance would simplify the duties of both a travel company and a tourist.

Unfortunately, majority of our tourists do not want to pay for insurance while traveling. Therefore this should be mandatory, he told Trend.



The experience shows that tourists face many problems while traveling, he said adding that many problems occur when they travel with children, as the majority of difficulties arise with the health of children.



When problems arise, a partner of the tour company in that country deals with the problem. And this is very good example. But sometimes tourists improperly understand the services covered by the insurance contract and demand the return of money upon returning home. , the contracts state that, in case of problems, tourist should call the company immediately. They may not require anything on their return from abroad, the chairman explained.

As for the international insurance, there is no need for re-insurance, according to Bagirov, since the companys partners, which issue the international insurance, fulfill all obligations under the insurance on the spot.

Different types of insurance are offered to tourists, while bulk of the proposed insurances is health insurance.

Typically, the insurance cost for one day is about $1. The more is number of trip days, the less will be the amount. For example, if the trip lasts 10 days, the amount of insurance will be $8, he said.

Bagirov also advised tourists not to buy tickets without a contract.

Tourists should require the contract governing the relationship between the tourist and travel company, read it and then sign, he emphasized.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



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31 May 2016 12:47 (UTC+04:00)

By Gulgiz Dadashova

Last week, one of Israels most outspokenly hawkish and experienced political figures, Avigdor Lieberman has been appointed the Defense Minister of Israel.

Baku immediately welcomed the appointment as Lieberman in this position is expected to boost the historic and strategic ties between Azerbaijan and Israel.

With Israeli-Azerbaijani cooperation as a model for many, Liebermans addition to the government would push the bilateral ties to highest levels.

Lieberman, in his exclusive interview with Trend, stated that the level of Azerbaijan-Israel relations is really very high and it is difficult to overestimate their importance for the two countries.

The Israel- Azerbaijan cooperation is developing quite dynamically in the widest range of spheres, said Lieberman. "The expansion of bilateral cooperation in all areas meets the interests of our countries and I believe that it is very prospective, he said.

Israel and Azerbaijan seem strange friends for many, but it is the human bridge that solidifies the Azerbaijani-Israeli ties. Azerbaijan, being a country of total tolerance, is a birthplace of one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world.

There are 30,000 Jews still living in Azerbaijan. Several synagogues are operating in the capital of Azerbaijan, as well as in Guba and Oguz regions. Synagogue, opened in Baku in 2003 is one of the largest in Europe. In September 2003, the first Jewish school was opened in Baku.

The development of economic ties is particularly great, as Israel rose from being Azerbaijans tenth largest trading partner to its third in February 2016, and currently the bilateral trade turnover is around $5 billion.



Speaking about the cooperation between Azerbaijan and Israel in fighting terrorism, Lieberman noted that currently, fighting terrorism is of vital importance for Israel.



"Throughout the history, since the creation of the state, we have to confront the constant and incessant terrorist attacks. All countries of the free world should combine their efforts to repulse the international terrorism," he said.

Azerbaijan and Israel have built strong relations in the field of intelligence and security cooperation for 25 years, and these relations will only grow stronger. The two are fighting against international terror, working together for security, peace and prosperity in the region.

Azerbaijan has always been a strategic country for Israel, a friendly Muslim country and a key energy supplier. Since the early 1990s, Israeli-Azerbaijani relations have expanded to include cooperation in trade and security matters as well as cultural and educational exchanges.

The two countries have repeatedly stated that their cooperation is not against any country, but defending against enemy forces. Baku and Tel-Aviv, as the capitals of two friendly peoples, seek to find ever more in common and bring the ties to the highest levels.

Although, Baku lacks diplomatic mission in Tel-Aviv, the countries continuously exchange diplomatic and business delegations. Israel  Azerbaijan International Association (Aziz), which welcomed Liebermans appointment, works to ensure the evolving pattern of interactions between Azerbaijan and Israel.

Experts say Liebermans appointment as the defense minister will contribute to the expansion of military cooperation between Azerbaijan and Israel, as Lieberman also has good personal relations with the Azerbaijani leadership.

Having Lieberman, who is now the second most important politician of Israel, in the defense minister's office and Tel-Aviv will ensure the successful cooperation between the defense establishments of Israel and Azerbaijan, including the military - industrial projects, believes Ariel Cohen.

Cohen, PhD, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and director of the Center for Energy, Natural Resources and Geopolitics at the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, told Trend that such a cooperation is very much in the interest of both parties.

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31 May 2016 13:17 (UTC+04:00)

President Ilham Aliyev has received credentials of the newly-appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Carole Mary Crofts.

The Ambassador reviewed the guard of honor, and then handed her credentials to the head of state, Azertac reports.

President Aliyev then had a talk with the ambassador.

Pointing to the broad agenda of the bilateral relations between the two countries, the head of state expressed his hope that Carole Crofts would contribute to strengthening these ties.

Ambassador Carole Crofts said her country had maintained cooperation with Azerbaijan for more than 20 years. Noting that BP was the largest investor in Azerbaijan, she highlighted prospects for the Azerbaijan-UK cooperation. Crofts said she visited Baku and regions of the country, adding that she was impressed by hospitality of the Azerbaijani people and the country`s unique beauty. The Ambassador added that she was amazed by Baku, which she described as an international city.

The head of state said that visiting Azerbaijani regions was a good opportunity for getting familiarized with the country.

President Aliyev wished the ambassador success in her future activities.

They also discussed the ongoing settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

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31 May 2016 17:40 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Abbasova

Milli Majlis [the Azerbaijan parliament] held its last plenary meeting of the spring session on May 31. Fulfillment of the state budget was among the issues on the highest agenda.

Addressing the session Ziyad Samedzade, chairman of the parliamentary commission on economic policy, industry and entrepreneurship said that the state budget faces shortage of 200-240 million manats ($134-161 million) annually. He noted that the shortage mainly occurs due to insufficient installation of electric and gas meters in the regions.

Commenting on the issue, Samedzade underlined that the measures taken in the country last year allowed to mitigate negative influences of the external economic impulses. The country was steadily developing regardless certain difficulties of 2015, he added.

Finance Minister Samir Sharifov, in his turn, said that the fulfillment of the state budget in 2015 was implemented within difficult economic conditions. Price of oil which is considered to be the principal good for export sharply declined and the fact produced a range of problems for the national economy. He said that the government was unable to execute the forecast on revenues to the state budget due to low oil price. Nevertheless the government accomplished its main objectives, he added.

The minister also commented on the issue of the concept of pensions. He underlined that the Cabinet of Ministers has already prepared a clause related to the issue and is expected to submit a proposal to the Presidential Administration in a due course. He said that the main objective of the clause is to shape pensions by means of accumulated pension capital.

Commenting on the necessity of AZAL aircraft fleet updates the minister said that the volume of companys borrowings allocated under state guarantee exceeds 650 million manats ($436.066 million). The minister mentioned that the funds are considered for the purchase of new aircrafts.

So far, $150 billion have been invested in Azerbaijans economy. Revenues of the state budget in 2015 were executed by 90 percent and amounted to 17.498 billion manats ($11.738 billion) as compared to the forecast at 19.438 billion manats ($13.040 billion). 41.6 percent of the state budget revenues accounts for non-oil sector. Execution of state budget expenditures was at the rate of 84.3 percent and amounted to 17.184 billion manats ($11.528 billion) against the forecast at 21.1 billion manats ($14.1 billion). Budget deficit amounted to 286.5 billion manats ($192.204 billion). Revenues from the consolidated budget were at the rate of 88.9 percent.

The parliament approved the clause on fulfillment of the state budget in 2015 with the majority of votes.

Parliamentarians also considered certain changes to the law on military service. In accordance with the change to Article 21 which envisages delay of military service in view of continuing education continuation, all citizens of Azerbaijan receiving education abroad will be granted a delay from military service regardless the institution of higher education.

The changes specify that the delay will be presented to full-time students of bachelors degree course, students getting basic higher medical education as well as students of medical residentura (medical internship) studying abroad.

The law in effect provided for the military service delay for the students of certain institutions of higher education the list of which was approved by the respective body of the executive power.

The parliament also approved the clause on the anti-dumping, compensatory and protection measures. In accordance with the clause, margin of dumping will be defined through comparing export price within the country and in the third country should the product is absent in the local turnover of the country and the volume of product sold in the local market is less than 5 percent of its export volume.

In accordance with the clause the influence of dumping and sub-dumping import on the local manufacturing will be defined by means of the analysis of a range of figures, such as import volume, its influence on the local products, the price difference between the imported and local goods, and margin of dumping.

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31 May 2016 13:47 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Abbasova

A ferry complex being constructed in the port of Kuryk in the Caspian Sea is expected to allow transporting goods to neighboring countries without unloading cars and is focused on handling wide range of goods.

Rakhman Alshanovm, the rector of Kazakstan Turan University, scientist and Doctor of Economics, in his interview with Day.az said transit trade from the realization of the new ferry complex project will yield dividends to Azerbaijan. He underlined that the country will get huge advantages as under the conditions of world trade expansion, transit trade accounts to 1/3 of the world economy.

In the first stage, 360,000 tons of freight per year is expected to be transported from Azerbaijan. The volume of Kazakhstan freight will increase in the future and this will lead to the additional flow of funds to Azerbaijan, he added.

Azerbaijan is expected to supply about 82,000 tons of freight to Kazakhstan through Kuryk with 32,000 tons being electric equipment, 30,000 tons of consumer goods, 10,000 tons of vehicles and devices.

The new ferry terminal is expected to allow Kazakhstan to export oil, polyethylene, iron ore and concentrates to world markets through Baku, Azerbaijan. As many as 16 buildings and facilities are planned to be established in the territory of the complex.

Energy-rich Kazakhstan is also considering the issue of the oil terminal construction in the Kuryk port. Nevertheless, timeframe for the construction of the terminal has not yet been established. Oil transportation from Kuryk port will also be implemented through the ferry complex which is currently in the process of construction.

The ferry complex which is considered to be a strategically important object is expected to be commissioned in December 2016. Works on the bank protection of the ferry complex which will provide for wash out and measures to protect the impact of sea waves are currently underway.

The main destinations of oil transportation through the Kuryk port's ferry terminal are Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, Estonia and Latvia. Potential for growth of transportation by the sea route is centered on Kuryk port (Kazakhstan)  Baku port (Azerbaijan)  Batumi port (Georgia)  Constanza port (Roumania).

The volume of cargo transshipment by the new complex is expected to reach the level of 4.1 million metric tons per year.

Currently freight transportation by ferries from Kazakhstan to the Caspian Sea littoral states is possible only through the port of Aktau. Kazakhstan plans to increase transportation which currently amounts to 18 million tons, the figure is expected to reach 33 million tons by 2020, and 50 million tons by 2030.

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31 May 2016 15:08 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Abbasova

Presidential decree on the terms of use of the green corridor and other gating systems for the transportation of goods and vehicles across the customs border will come into force on August 1, 2016.

The decree which determines the rules of implementation of customs control over the goods and means of transport is aimed at the use of simplified rules for goods conveyed across the customs border.

Commenting on the issue the chairman of the Centre for economic and social development, Vugar Bayramov said that four types of corridor will be introduced in the customs border.

In his interview with Day.az the expert noted that the most important line is the so called 'green corridor'. In accordance with the principles of the green corridor, entrepreneurs will fill out electronic declaration which will further be assessed in the context of risks.

Registration of the procedure will be held in accordance with the submitted declaration and goods will be imported into the country without additional checking should the goods comply with all the requirements of the green corridor.

Expert underlined that this will give a stimulus for the electronization of the process as well as enhancing the role of an entrepreneur.

Goods which meet the requirements of the blue corridor will undergo examination in the customs border. In this case, an entrepreneur should submit electronic declaration on import while decision on the admission to the country will be taken on the basis of examination for the compliance with the rules.

Bayramov said that the yellow corridor is considered for goods which need a special licence for the importation. Goods which are submitted to the yellow line should be examined for certification compliance.

Goods passing through the red corridor should be subjected to mandatory inspection. Checking goods in accordance with the declaration includes quality, quantity control as well as compliance with the price.

He underlined that the principle moment is the introduction of green corridor. The decision can be referred to as the new stage in the development of customs system in Azerbaijan, he added.

He mentioned that advantages of the green corridor include speeding up a number of customs procedures. One stop principle will lead to minimizing corruption and interference in the activities of entrepreneurs, as well as reducing queues.

Bayramov also underlined the importance of more clearly defined goods list making in order to exclude the difficulties which may arise during the line choice procedure. Cabinet of Ministers should introduce clearer list of goods, which may be passed through different corridors. In this case entrepreneurs will have the information about the proper line and chose the one which corresponds to the imported goods in advance, he added.

Creating green corridor which is introduced with a view to more rapid and transparent implementation of the customs clearance of goods and means of transport is expected to facilitate a number of procedures.

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Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova

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31 May 2016 15:36 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Abbasova

The Islamic Corporation for the Development of the Private Sector (ICD) is interested in rendering consulting services to Azerbaijan associated with the creation of free-trade zone.

In this regard a delegation headed by Khaled Al-Aboodi, ICD director general will pay a visit to Azerbaijan on May 31. The meeting between ICD director general and Azerbaijan Economy minister Shahin Mustafayev is expected to be held within the framework of the visit.

Among the issues to be on the highest agenda during the meeting are the possibility of using Sukuk,which stands for bonds granting the investor a share of an asset, as well as other financial instruments. The sides will also discuss the issues of attracting additional funds to Azerbaijans economy and allocating resources by the ICD for strategic projects.

Being located in the Alat settlement of Bakus Garadagh district including the territory of Azerbaijans Baku Sea Trade Port special economic area is considered to be a milestone of Azerbaijan's policy to strengthen the country's position as a regional logistics and transportation hub. Creating the free trade zone is expected to give an impetus to the development of transport-logistical industry, pharmaceutical cluster, and bases for the supply of oil plants as well as the spheres of manufacturing, packing and labeling.

Advantageous geographical position at the crossroads of Europe and Asia nearby such important markets such as China, Turkey, Iran and Russia opens huge opportunities for the special economic area to become one of the leading trade and logistics hubs of Eurasia

Azerbaijan and ICD will also discuss the country's participation in regional funds created by Islamic corporation as well as in the ICD Food and Agribusiness funds which is expected to begin its activity by late 2016. The fund is considered to finance the food chain and value chain in such areas as the production of resources necessary for agriculture, infrastructure, trade, and logistics.

Being established in November 1999 the ICD supports the economic development of its member countries through providing finance for private sector projects, promoting competition and entrepreneurship, providing advisory services to the governments and private companies and encouraging cross border investments. The corporation launched its operations in Azerbaijan in 2003. It provides funds for small and medium enterprises in the country.

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Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova

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31 May 2016 14:10 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

The Russian community in Azerbaijan is an island of peace and prosperity, Vladimir Dorokhin, Russian ambassador to Azerbaijan, told journalists on May 30, during the conference on Public Organizations of Russian Compatriots in Baku.

Azerbaijan has declared 2016 as the year of multiculturalism in Azerbaijan and is working to preserve the traditions and cultures of different peoples and nationalities.

I do not think that there are many countries that have the moral right to declare a year of multiculturalism," Dorokhin said. "Russia is interested in the Russians living in Azerbaijan to fully use their potential."

The ambassador stressed that Azerbaijan stands out among other countries as the situation of the Russian community and Diaspora in the country does not divide us, but unites.

We do not have to fight for the political rights of our compatriots, work hard to solve their problems, and issues of teaching in Russian language. All the questions are resolved here on a brilliant level. We work only on the positive, to use this potential for development of Azerbaijani-Russian relations," the diplomat said.

Addressing the conference Father Methodius, the representative of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) in Azerbaijan, noted that the activities of the diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church in Azerbaijan is an apparent proof that representatives of many religions can freely coexist in the country.

During the conference, MP Mikhail Zabelin noted that the rights of nationalities and ethnic groups have never been infringed in Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan and Russia are tied by firmly based relations, which were officially established in 1992. The cultural relations between the two countries are also highly evaluated. A Year of Azerbaijan was declared in 2005 in Russia, and in 2006  the Year of Russia in Azerbaijan. In this framework both countries held 110 joint events.

Currently, 390 Azerbaijanis get education in the Universities of Russia at public expense. Russian is one of the languages students get education in Azerbaijan. More than 15,000 students study in Russian in Azerbaijani universities. A branch of Lomonosov Moscow state University was opened in 2008 in Baku. Moreover, a branch of another Russian university, Sechenov Moscow State Medical University with no education fee was also established on September 15, 2015 in Baku.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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31 May 2016 16:12 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

Genuinely unique and inspirational paintings by Azerbaijani artist Tahir Salahov can often be seen in the most visited and famous museums and art galleries around the world.

He is the vice-president and honorary president of the International Association of Plastic Arts of UNESCO, the vice-president of the Russian Academy of Arts, People's Artist of the USSR, Azerbaijan and Russia, and is the winner of a number of high awards, including the State Prize of the USSR and Azerbaijan.

This time, guests of the International Fine Art Festival "Traditions & Contemporaneity in Moscow had a chance to appraise the works of the master and admire his extensive and aesthetically pleasing collection of carpets, Day.az reports.

"In 1959 the great French artist Jean Lurcat and his wife visited Baku. He was very interested in Azerbaijani carpets. And I thought that it would be interesting to transfer my paintings on carpets. So, Lurcat encouraged me to do so. I am very grateful to him for this, said Salahov.

Many fictional characters of the artist, displayed at the Central Exhibition Hall Manege are strong-willed people of different professions. For instance, images of oil workers and fishermen are displayed together with portraits of famous writers, composers, artists and politicians.

The Red Wheel is a portrait of Russian novelist, historian, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, written for the anniversary of the famous writer and transferred on the carpet.

"I decided to create this picture on the tapestry and use the ornament, because it's the best way to tell about the Soviet emblems. Here you see a notebook of Solzhenitsyn and a rosary made of bread from the camp. Grid in the ornament say "dead stars". A lot of people have left out...," he added.

Another work by artist depicts a fisherman resting after a hard day on the shores of the Caspian sea surrounded by the native landscape and gulls.

Each carpet has its own unique style. For example, the Corrida has not round as usual, but rectangular arena.

Another work by artist "Chicago", done in 1965, was pained a realistic manner and in pure watercolor.

"Modern ornament is very suitable for Chicago. I wrote this at six o'clock in the morning. I left the hotel and saw alone figure skater on the ice. The picture fascinated me and I drew it up," said the artist about the painting.

Salahov expressed his respect for the work done by masters weaving carpets in his sketches. At the bottom of the carpet, you can see the names of the weavers.

Such work is unique. The artists said that during the year, three women painstakingly create unique work. Each knot is made entirely by hand.

National artist added that the rugs waving techniques are of great interest in professional circles and among visitors of exhibitions.

"Recently, I have bought the album with pictures of Pablo Picasso in Germany. The picture "Women of Avignon" was transferred to the carpet. This huge tapestry for hung in Picasso's studio for a long time. I was pleased to learn about it," he said.

Bright, colored and unique Azerbaijani carpets are well-known all over the world for their quality and high artistic value.

The country has seven carpet producing regions including Baku, Shirvan, Guba, Tabriz, Karabakh, Ganja and Gazakh and each of them had its own technology, typical patterns and colors.

Antique Azerbaijani rugs are the honorary "residents" at the White House, State Department, and every important museums in the world including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Louvre, Victoria and Albert Museum, Vatican, and the Hermitage.

Amazing and fantastic carpets of Azerbaijan represent a real mystery, leading one inside the fairy tales full of majestic feelings. In this context, Salahov's works are true reflection of this wonderful fairy world...

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Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

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31 May 2016 18:25 (UTC+04:00)

Famous Azerbaijani artist Abbas Kazimov will celebrate his 60th anniversary with an exhibition at the Museum of Oriental Arts in Moscow.

The exhibition opens on June 2 and includes about 100 works from "Red and Black", "Dedication to Pirosmani" and "In the style of the carpet" series, Azertac reported.

Abbas Kazimov is one of the most prominent supporters of the Absheron painting school - a group of artists, who determined the peculiar character of the Azerbaijani art of the last century. Original masters drew inspiration not only from the innovations of the European art of the 20th century, but in the folk culture of pre-Columbian America, India and Africa. The content, style and method of the artist's works defined the principles of reinterpreted carpet ornaments.

Kazimov is the author of a unique technology, which blends the cultures of the East and the classical school of art. The so-called "carpet style" combines thumbnail, carpet weaving, embroidery and coinage. The exhibition also features Azerbaijani carpets from the collection of the State Museum of Oriental Art. The exhibition will last until June19.
31 May 2016 15:50 (UTC+04:00)

By Fatma Babayeva

Price of the black gold jumped above $50 per barrel last week on the backdrop of positive forecasts for the market.

Since the beginning of 2016, price of oil futures contracts experienced increase of 32 percent making the producers optimistic about the investments.

Cost of July futures of WTI crude in New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) increased by 0.63 percent to $49.64 per barrel on May 31. In the meantime, prices of July futures of Brent benchmark stood at $49.76 per barrel in London ICE without experiencing any change compared to the previous day, according to Bloomberg Energy.

Meanwhile, price of the Azeri LT CIF produced at the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli block of oil and gas fields reached $50.87 per barrel on May 31, Azertac reported.

OPECs oil basket cost $44.76 on May 27, according the organizations official website.

Based on the current developments in the market, some analysts expect the price of oil to attain $60 or even higher rate by the end of 2016.

Although many experts believe the recent increase in oil prices to be temporary caused mostly by the disruptions in oil production of some oil producing countries like Canada, Nigeria, Venezuela and Libya, others call to attention the demand side of the issue, which also gaining strength.

Its possible for oil prices to reach $60 or more during this summer, said Economy Minister of UAE, Sultan Bin Saeed Al Mansoori on May 30.

Increase in demand for oil in the U.S. is pointed as the main reason pushing up prices during this year on the background of the decline in the countrys oil stockpiles.

Crude will end the year higher than $60 a barrel, Mario Maratheftis, global chief economist at Standard Chartered Plc, said to Bloomberg. SEB Bank forecast last week that Brent would touch $60 in 2016.

Weve always been incredibly bullish on oil, Maratheftis said. We expected supply to collapse. Demand is still very strong. I would expect oil prices to keep rising, he added.

In the near future, oil prices in the global market will increasingly depend on the situation in Libya, said Gal Luft, senior adviser to the United States Energy Security Council and co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS) to Trend on May 27.

If the political conflict in Libya continues, there is a possibility for oil prices to trade at $60-70 range within a year, he said.

Libya, along with Iran, rejected to join oil freezing plan of OPEC which was held in Doha on April 17.

Oil freezing plan was previously designed to cap oil output of the producers at the level of January 2016 in order to shore up oil prices in the market.

Now OPECs upcoming meeting on June 2 is unlikely to bring any fundamental breakthrough due to geopolitical tensions among oil producing countries.

Earlier, Saudi Arabia reiterated that the country is not going to limit its production level without Irans commitment to the plan. Iran, in its turn, said that the Islamic Republic may only consider freezing plan after it reaches pre-sanction level of exports (2.2 million barrels a day).

Whats more, this time, Russia is not attending OPECs June meeting which is a sign that like many others, Russia does not believe that the cartel will be successful in realizing oil freezing plan either.

In addition, Russias oil production surpassed Saudi Arabias output in March. Russia produced almost 11 million barrels per day, Russian Federal Statistics Service Rosstat said on May 30.

According to Rosstat, Saudi Arabia produced 10,120 million barrels daily in March, compared to Russia's 10,927 million barrels.

In total, OPEC countries produced 32 million barrels a day throughout the first quarter of 2016.

According to Rosstat, over the first three months of 2016, Russia sold oil worth more than $10 billion.

The share of oil sales in Russian export made up 23 percent in the first quarter of 2016, compared to 25.2 percent in the same period of 2015.

It is very hard to predict developments in the oil market as this global commodity is not only influenced by economic but also political factors.

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Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva

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31 May 2016 18:43 (UTC+04:00)

By Fatma Babayeva

Turkey has increased volume of natural gas it buys from Azerbaijan while reducing gas purchases from Russia.

Azerbaijan exported 1.71 billion cubic meters of gas to Turkey in the first quarter of 2016 as compared to 1.69 billion cubic meters exported in January to March 2015, said the report of the Turkish Energy Market Regulatory Authority (EPDK).

In the meantime, Russias exports to Turkey amounted to 6.35 billion cubic meters of gas during the first quarter of 2016, compared to 7.5 billion cubic meters exported in the first three months of 2015, told the report.

EPDK noted in its report that Azerbaijan supplied 6.17 billion cubic meters of gas to Turkey in 2015 versus 6.07 billion cubic meters in 2014. The countrys share in Turkey's total gas imports was 13 percent in the first three months of 2016. Azerbaijan is the third largest supplier of natural gas to Turkey after Russia and Iran.

Meanwhile, in 2015, Russia supplied to Turkey 26.78 billion cubic meters of natural gas compared to almost 27 billion cubic meters of gas export in 2014. The share of Russian gas in total imports of Turkey totaled 48.2 percent in January to March of 2016.

Overall, Turkey imported 13.17 billion cubic meters of gas in Q1 2016, according to the report. 10.24 billion cubic meters of this volume were imported via pipelines while 2.93 billion cubic meters accounted for the liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports.

Nigeria and Algeria are also suppliers of natural gas to Turkey.

Turkey imports gas from Azerbaijan via the South Caucasus Pipeline (Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum) while gas deliveries from Russia are carried out via Blue Stream and Trans-Balkan pipeline.

Blue Stream - the gas pipeline with capacity of 16 billion cubic meters per year - runs under the Black Sea and ensures direct delivery of gas from Russia to Turkish consumers.

In addition, Turkey has a contract for the annual purchase of 6.6 billion cubic meters of gas from Azerbaijan's offshore Shah Deniz gas and condensate field.

Recently, Turkey has been trying to diversify its gas supply routes since its relations with Russia got tense after Russian fighter jet along was shut down in the Turkish-Syrian border in November, 2015. The construction of the Turkish Stream has also been suspended as a result of the mentioned event.

Moreover, Turkey is implementing program to increase share of renewable, especially solar power in electricity production in the coming decade.

The country aims to become a gas hub in the region. Additionally, Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) - the Turkish leg of the Southern Gas Corridor which envisages transfer of the Caspian gas to Europe- will contribute enhancing Turkeys energy security and increase its role as transit country.

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31 May 2016 17:01 (UTC+04:00)

By Fatma Babayeva

Volumes of Azerbaijans gas purchases from Russia will be discussed during the next meeting of Gazprom and SOCAR.

Russias gas giant Gazprom will hold talks with Azerbaijan on the possible Russian gas supplies in June, said Alexander Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the company during the press conference, reported TASS.

Medvedyev noted that Azerbaijan takes an interest and the next meeting will be held to determine the demand of Azerbaijan perhaps during the upcoming Economic Forum in Saint Petersburg.

Recently, Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR made a proposal for the purchase of additional 3-5 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Gazprom, which will almost double the volume of gas that Azerbaijan buys from Russia.

However, whether this deal is of economic or political nature is yet a question. Some experts view the move as Azerbaijan's intention to test how its two gas storage facilities - Kalmaz and Garadagh function.

The reason making the deal questionable is that it is practically impossible for Azerbaijan to test how its gas storage facilities function in new volumes as the country does not have such free volume of natural gas.

In the meantime, Aleksey Miller, head of Gazprom earlier related Azerbaijan's gas purchases from Russia with the country's economy growth and increasing domestic demand.

However, some experts believe this deal is a political rather than an economic step which is intended to bring Russia and Azerbaijan politically closer.

Gazprom supplies 2 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year to Azerbaijan since September 2015 in accordance with the five-year contract which offers possibility of extension.

The average daily volume of gas deliveries from Russia amount to around 6 million cubic meters.

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31 May 2016 18:01 (UTC+04:00)

Fifteen percent of the total number of participants of the 23rd international exhibition and conference Caspian Oil & Gas 2016 and the VI Caspian International Power and Alternative Energy Exhibition will participate for the first time in these exhibitions, said Farid Mammadov, executive director of Iteca Caspian LLC.

He made the remarks May 31 at a press conference dedicated to the opening of the exhibitions in Baku on June 1.

"This year, 240 companies from 30 countries of the world, including Azerbaijan, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Kazakhstan, China, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and others, will participate in the Caspian Oil & Gas exhibition," said Mammadov. "Two national stands - German and Italian - will be presented."

Companies from the UK, Portugal, Romania, the US and others are among the first-time participants, he noted.

Every year, Caspian Oil & Gas exhibition brings together distinguished guests, who attend the opening ceremony of the event. Thus, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Diplomacy of the US Department of State Robin Dunnigan, UK Prime Minister's Trade Envoy for Iraq Emma Harriet Nicholson, Georgia's First Deputy Energy Minister Mariam Valishvili, high-ranking representatives of such companies as Uzbekneftegaz, Gazprom, Gazpromneft-Sakhalin, BP, Statoil and others are among the VIP guests of the Caspian Oil & Gas 2016.

Companies will represent a wide range of equipment, services and innovative technologies in the areas of oil production and transportation of energy resources, ensuring the storage of oil and gas systems, platforms and floating drilling rigs, laying of pipes and providing protection systems for pipelines, services.

The conference, dedicated to the exhibition, will be attended by nearly 400 delegates from more than 30 countries of the world. More than 40 speakers (leading experts, representatives of government bodies, heads of major oil and gas companies from around the world) will deliver their presentations on key issues of the production, management and transportation of energy resources in the conditions of low oil prices.

Azerbaijan's Energy Minister Natig Aliyev will take part in the plenary session titled "The role of Azerbaijan in ensuring energy supplies to Europe".

President of Azerbaijan's state oil company SOCAR Rovnag Abdullayev, BP's regional president for Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey Gordon Birrell, Chief Executive Officer of Snam S.p.A. Marco Alvera and Chief Executive Officer of Nobel Upstream Jeremy Huck will also deliver their presentations at the conference.

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31 May 2016 17:42 (UTC+04:00)

By Fatma Babayeva

Turkey and Russia are looking for ways to normalize their worsened relations which deteriorated after the Russian SU-24 bomber was shot down in Turkish-Syrian border in November 2015.

The incident was followed by harsh statements from sides shattering the traditionally friendly ties between the nations both politically and economically.

Turkey said that Russian fight jet entered to its airspace, while Russia denied its warplane flying into Turkish skies. Since then the governments could not achieve any rapprochement to move this diplomatic crisis from deadlock.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent statement in Athens on his country's willingness to restore relations with Turkey revitalized the hope for normalization. Putin said that Russia still does not understand why Turkey shot down Russian plane, and that's why, the first move should come from Turkey.

In response to this call the senior government officials of Turkey made a call for Russia to establish a joint working group to discuss which steps can be taken to restore ties between two states, reported Tuskish Daily Sabah on May 31.

Putin says that they want to see a step. Turkey also wants to restore ties. What we say is let's form a joint working group to take these steps, and Russia can discuss and produce ideas about which steps we should take," Mevlut Chavushoglu, Turkeys Foreign Minister said to media after the conference held in Antalya.

In his turn, spokesman of Kremlin Dmitri Peskov responded to Chavushoglus remarks on May 30 that no working group can tackle the question between Turkey and Russia unless Turkey takes the first step.

Referring to the proposal of Turkish officials, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also affirmed on May 31 that Russia does not intend to take the initiative in settling relations with Turkey, but is ready to consider proper treatment of Ankara, reported RIA Novosti.

Turkey is very much affected. Therefore, it offers to set up some committees through various closed channels, said Lavrov.

He further added that Russia has never promised that it will hold out an olive branch to Turkey. Russia said that Turkey is obliged to apologize and compensate for the losses, which were caused by a war crime (shot down of a Russian jet), he added.

Commenting on the issue, Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey Numan Kurtulmush stressed that Russia and Turkey do not have insurmountable problems. He expressed hope that Ankara and Moscow will be able to resolve their disagreements in relations through dialogue in the near future.

During his interview to TRT Haber TV channel on May 30, Kurtulmush highlighted that two countries need each other and can not sacrifice each other.

Russia and Turkey are old friends, rivals and have fortified their relations, he said by reminding that relations became tense with a situation caused by the Syrian crisis.

Turkey did not take part blatantly in this jet's being shot down. Turkey has officially expressed that it does not acknowledge the identity of the jet," he added.

Turkey's new-elect Prime Minister Binali Yildirim also said that his country would seek to normalize relations with Russia through dialogue.

Following the incident, Moscow imposed a wide-range of sanctions against Turkey starting in January, including the end of visa-free travel and a ban on Turkish food products. Moreover, Russia called its citizens to boycott Turkey as a tourist destination.

After these sanctions, economic relations between the two countries saw decline. In particular, statistics show that before the jet incident, about 1,500 Turkish companies operated in Russia in various spheres of business ranging from construction and tourism to imports of Turkish fruit, vegetables and textiles. However, currently, only about 200 Turkish firms are operating in Russia, according to non-official statistics.

Also, statistics show that Turkish exports to Russia fell to around $108 million in January, down two-thirds on the previous year.

Energy is the main Russian exports to Turkey. Russia is the largest gas supplier to Turkey.

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Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
31 May 2016 16:25 (UTC+04:00)

Tehran is eyeing an investment deal with Turkish private companies to build a power plant in the Islamic Republic, an Iranian energy official said. Iranian Deputy Energy Minister Houshang Falahatian has said that the $3 billion worth deal envisages building a 5,000 megawatt power plant in the country, the Turkish Hurriyet newspaper reported.

Houshang Falahatian said that the investment agreement will be inked within the coming days. Following the removal of international sanctions on the Islamic Republic, the Turkish energy sector has expressed high interested in cooperation with Iran, the deputy minister said. He added that Tehran and Ankara are in talks over more agreements that have not been finalized yet.

The Iranian official further said that according to a recent agreement signed between Tehran and Ankara the neighboring countries are planning to increase power trade to 1,200 MW within the next a year and a half. Under the terms of the deal the figure is expected to reach 3,000 MW in future. While Tehran and Ankara intend to raise their bilateral trade to $30 billion per year, their trade turnover stood at $13.71 billion in 2014 and $9.76 billion in 2015.

Although the trade turnover dropped by 29 percent in 2015 compared to the preceding year, many observers believe that the decline came amid global economic crisis ruling out the role of the political disagreements.

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31 May 2016 17:59 (UTC+04:00)

By Fatma Babayeva

Post-sanctions era opens up a unique opportunity for Iran to attract foreign investments. During four month of implementing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran has achieved great progress as a large number of foreign trade and political delegations have visited the country.

The remarks were made by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani during the meeting with the businessmen and investors in West Azerbaijan province of Iran, IRNA reported on May 31.

Rouhani noted that this progress indicate a new beginning in the country.

The president went on to add that Iran enjoys good ties with neighboring countries, and called on the Iranian traders and businessmen to seize the remarkable opportunity and export agricultural products to neighboring countries, including Russia.

Rouhani mentioned that Iran is involved in talks with several countries in order to boost ties and attract investment.

He also urged to give due role to the private sector to advance Iranian economy.

The government has planned to achieve the Economy of Resistance, Rouhani said, further adding that giving the private sector its part will make the national economy resistant to foreign pressures and the sanctions.

During five years, Iran has suffered from sanctions imposed by the Western countries because of the nuclear enrichment program the country pursued.

In January 2016, Iran has reached a historic agreement on the settlement of long-term problems of the Iranian nuclear program. Lengthy negotiations resulted in the adoption of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

The implementation of this action plan will remove completely economic and financial sanctions imposed previously by the UN Security Council, the United States and the European Union in exchange for the verification of the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program.

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Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
More than 19 months have passed since Matthew Odom, a 28-year-old father of four, was found fatally stabbed near the front door of his northwe
Michelin-starred chef Christoffer Hruskova aims to bring the taste of modern Danish baking to London with his first bakery and cafe.

As reported by BigHospitality, The Bread Station plans to open at Arch 373, Hemsley Place in London on 4 June and will produce a range of organic breads, pastries and sweets. Products will include the Familigia, a traditional wheat flour bread, and Hindbaersnitter, which comprises raspberries baked between pastry.

The bread will be made using natural fermentation methods without the addition of extra yeast, using a style inspired by Hruskovas time working with Per Brun, founder of Copenhagen bakery chain Emmerys.

Hruskova was born in Denmark and has run several restaurants over the course of his career, including North Road in Clerkenwell. He left the latter in 2012 after falling out with co-owner Viviane Lorans over the future of the business.

Hruskova told BigHospitality: I wanted to open a bakery for a very long time [sic] to showcase modern Danish Baking.

At The Bread Station, we make bread with actual flour and no additives, and the Danish pastries with the best ingredients and real butter. I am so excited that I am finally ready and can present The Bread Station to London.

Last November, Brd, a Danish-style bakery and cafe, was opened in Cardiff by Betina Skovbro.
Bay Pines National Cemetery was covered with American flags as thousands honored fallen heroes Monday at the annual Bay Pines VA Memorial Day ceremony in St. Petersburg.

"Im a very emotional person and to see your comrades out here and as they get older and as they fall, and the lost ones, the least that we can do is pay tribute," said veteran, Richard Manfrey.

A record number people were in attendance. More than 4,000 people gathered to pay tribute to those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

"I dont know how else to honor them then to be here and just be proud of them, said U.S. Army Veteran, Tom Demasi. I lost friends myself in Vietnam and to this day I see them every day, I miss them every day.

"I lost a lot of my friends, said Vietnam Veteran, Ralph Kingsmill. I have a friend of mine that died 12 days before he was coming home."

"I give thanks all the time but its the guys we cant thank in person that really deserve it," said USMC LCpl. Mathew Tomlin.

"We need to gather together to realize the fortunate country we live in, the men who paid the price that we have these freedoms that we all enjoy and take for granted so often," said USMC Capt. (Ret.) Richard Tomlin.



Bay News 9's Melissa Eichman was master of ceremonies. The keynote speaker was U.S. Marine Corps Lt. General (Ret.) Martin R. Steel. Guest speakers included: Suzanne Klinker, Director, Bay Pines VA Healthcare System; Tracey Betts, Assistant Director, St. Petersburg VA Regional Office; Charles Rudy Arnold, Assistant Director, Bay Pines National Cemetery and U.S. Representative David Jolly (FL-Dist. 13).




More than a thousand people came to the Florida National Cemetery in Bushnell to honor those who gave the ultimate sacrifice.



Cheyanne Decker is one of those people. Shes visited the cemetery every Memorial Day with her family, and other holidays, too.



Every Veterans Day, every Christmas, every birthday, every anniversary, she said. Were always out here.



Decker and her family are from Spring Hill. They come to spend time with her brother, Cody Grater. Her older brother died nine years ago in Iraq when his barrack was hit by a rocket-launched grenade.



They were guarding their barracks and that was it, she said.



Grater was 20 years old and had been in the Army for less than a year.



This year  Decker's family isnt alone. A few soldiers from Graters platoon joined Decker and her family to pay their respects to their fellow soldier.



We were all deployed in Iraq with him, Adam Larson said. Cody was the type of person that you couldnt be around him for more than 30 seconds without cracking a smile.



Its the first time this many soldiers of Graters were able to visit Graters grave. Theyve been trying to come as a group for a while and everyone was able to make it this year.



Nine years later, they still remember him, Decker said. Theyre still family and they still want to visit to honor him and see him.



Its been almost a decade, but Graters death is still painful for those who knew him.



When you lose a guy like Cody, Larson said, holding back tears, he was 20 years old. He had his whole life in front of him.



Graters story is like many of those buried at the Florida National Cemetery. Decker and Larson both said its important to remember the real reason for Memorial Day.



Its not about the barbecues and the three-day weekends, Decker said. Its about remembering the people who didnt get a chance to live out the rest of their lives.



If you look around, there are a lot of men whove given their lives to this country. So people could have barbecues and go to the sales," Larson said. You wouldnt be able to do that if it wasnt for all these men who gave their lives.
There were some tense moments for passengers on board United Airlines Flight 1948 leaving Tampa International Airport bound for Houston on Monday.

Passengers were forced to evacuate after a blown tire caused a fire on the runway.

Katerina Karsante was one of the 131 passengers on board. She said they were on the runway just starting to taxi when they heard a loud "pop."

Karsante said she wasn't sitting in a window seat but people next to her told her they saw smoke and flames. She wasn't sure what was happening.

"You know with everything going on with planes these days, you have no control, you don't know what's happening. You can't just leave," she said.

Passengers were evacuated by stairs and then bused to the main terminal to be rebooked.

"I want to go home," said Karsante. "I'm here with a really big group of friends and I booked an early flight so I could be the first one home and now I'm going to be the last one home."

United Airlines issued the following statement:

"We are working as quickly as possible to get them on their way to Houston this evening. We will substitute another aircraft to operate the flight which is now scheduled to depart Tampa at 10 p.m."

The situation meant a delay of several hours and left some passengers frustrated about missing connections to get to their destinations.

"I won't get home until tomorrow. I have a dog that's being kenneled, there's another day there. We have no way to get home now because everyone's going to be working. I'd like my money refunded. I'd like to be compensated for this and nobody seems to be hearing us," said Mary Lewis, who was trying to get home to Portland, Oregon.

United Airlines did compensate some passengers who had to get a hotel room for the night.

No word on what caused the tire to blow out.


Police are searching for a driver that struck a pedestrian in St. Petersburg Monday night and drove off.



According to St. Petersburg police, 57-year-old Shizer Thornton, was hit at 20th Avenue South and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street South at 9:30 p.m.



Thornton was walking westbound across MLK at the time of the crash. He was pronounced dead at the scene.



Authorities are searching for a blue or black SUV.



Anyone who may have observed the accident or has information about the vehicle that fled the scene is asked to call the St. Petersburg Police Department at 727-893-7780.
A year after a 14-year-old middle school student was killed, his father and Tampa Police are reminding the public that no one has been arrested in the crime.

E.J. Harris, 14, was slain a year ago



No arrests have been made



EJ's father, Edward, and Tampa Police say the case is still open

Edward "E.J." Harris died May 31, 2015 near Woodland Terrace Park at 6410 N. 32nd Street. E.J. was killed in a drive-by shooting as he stood with friends in the East Tampa park. E.J. was the youngest to die in a five-month period in 2015 that saw a disturbing surge in gun-related deaths.

Police found a vehicle, an Infinity, seen on surveillance video near the park around the time of the murder. Police say someone in the four-door, silver or grey vehicle in the video is suspected of shooting E.J.

Now, E.J.'s father, Edward Harris, Sr. is speaking with members of the media about the unsolved case. He says he's certain someone, somewhere, knows who murdered his son.

I would say to them see the pain that they have caused," said Harris. "Now how they have to live everyday with what happened and what could happen if someone doesnt say something."



Around this time last year, there were 18 homicides in Tampa. Over the same time period this year, there have been eight.

Tampa Police attribute the decrease in homicides to increased awareness, units dedicated to tracing stolen guns and the citys initiative to keep nine community centers and parks open until midnight.

"There are some kids who are live today because we did that," said Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn. "Those are kids that would not be on the streets, would not be in the path of the bullets, would not be engaged in activity that could put them in those circumstances."

Buckhorn said last summer 17,000 kids and teens visited community centers. The extended hours will pick back up this summer.

Harris said hes happy to see the city keeping kids safe and hopes one day he will see an arrest in his sons case.

Police and Harris are calling upon the public to step forward if they have any information that would help identify and find the people responsible for E.J.'s death.



Justice is coming, Harris said.

There is an $18,000 reward available for tips that lead to the arrest of suspects in this case, as well as three other still-unsolved murders from the first half of 2015: Lyfe Coleman, Jamylin Turner and Sharon Watkins.
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SOUTHEAST TEXAS TALES

It was a lazy Memorial Day in 1916. Not a single program was planned for Decoration Day, as it was called then.

There was more interest in the following Saturday, when the Confederate Veterans, Daughters of the Confederacy and Sons of Veterans were expected to Jefferson Davis' birthday.

It was a more innocent time - a time when parents could shoo their children outside to play and trust they would return. So no one had paid any notice when they saw a fair-haired little boy wandering around downtown Beaumont the morning before Memorial Day.

The little boy was 8-year-old Jack Elliott, who had walked with his brother to Sunday school at Beaumont's First Baptist Church.

As the hour grew late and her son didn't return home, his frantic mother had reached out to The Beaumont Enterprise.

The item in the Memorial Day edition read: "LOST - A fair-haired, blue-eyed baby boy. If you find him, notify Mrs. J.B. Elliott or Mrs. C.P. McMinn, 935 Liberty St., new phone 660."

The boy was described as slender and small for his age. He was wearing a white and blue-striped waist shirt, blue trousers, tan low-cut shoes and a black-and-white checked hat.

It wasn't until 9 o' clock Tuesday morning that Jack was found in Port Arthur.

He had gone to see Buster Currey, with whom he had been best friends, before the Elliotts moved from Port Arthur to Beaumont and the boys had to part ways.

After church Sunday, instead of heading home, Jack went on a "wonderful" trip.

He hopped aboard a horse-drawn produce wagon traveling south on Park Street. After a time the driver spotted him among the vegetables and insisted he get down. The boy jumped on another southbound wagon that was passing by.

Eventually he came to the interurban car that ran from Beaumont south to some of the outlying areas.

Somehow he coaxed a free ride from the conductor - all the way to Port Arthur. No one questioned why he was traveling alone.

It wasn't until Monday afternoon that he reached his destination. Buster's parents let Jack spend the night with few questions asked.

When the notice ran in the Enterprise, the unintentional accomplices put two and two together and realized the part they had played in Jack's big adventure.

Southeast Texas Tales is a weekly feature that revisits regional history.
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Five-plus months after Port Arthur's longtime police chief announced his retirement, the search for his replacement is ramping up, though a successor likely won't be picked until August, City Manager Brian McDougal said.

Ex-Chief Mark Blanton, who held the post for 10 years, announced in mid-December he would retire by the end of 2015.

Blanton later agreed to stay on until a replacement was found to serve a city rich in industry, diversity and unemployment, though he exited last week as the search continues.

"He was really doing us a favor by sticking around," said McDougal, who could present his selection of Blanton's replacement to City Council in August. "The recruiting process is very important, but it takes time to do that."

To bridge the gap, the city gave the interim job to retired Beaumont PD assistant chief Weldon Dunlap.

"I was asked, and I was surprised," said Dunlap, who retired from BPD in 2009 after almost 42 years with the department. "I'm just trying to keep things going in a real positive direction until a permanent police chief can be located and employed."

The Enterprise

Strategic Government Resources, which recruits candidates for local government positions nationally, is managing the Port Arthur police chief search. Applications will be accepted through June 13.

It is the latest in a series of high-profile city posts to transition. McDougal was hired from an Oklahoma in January 2015 to be city manager, and voters will elect a new mayor next month.

McDougal said he has no preference whether Blanton's successor is a department officer or an outsider like himself.

"There are probably going to be some very qualified internal candidates," McDougal said.

The job posting calls for candidates who are politically savvy but neutral and recommends at least 10 years of senior-level experience.

McDougal said his top priority is to pick a "seasoned law enforcement official."

"It would certainly be excellent if I found someone who was bilingual," McDougal said. "We are a diverse community."

Of Port Arthur's 54,000 residents, 41 percent are black, 36 percent are white and nearly 30 percent identify as Hispanic or Latino, according to Census data.

Home to three crude oil refineries and multiple petrochemical plants, parts of the heavy-industrial Gulf Coast city's residential and light-business areas remain pockmarked from hurricanes.

The city's unemployment rate in March was 8.9 percent, though that number is suppressed because many unemployed residents are not actively looking for work.

Of Port Arthur's 30,600 working-age residents, about 20,300, or 66 percent, were employed in March.

A new police department leader will likely usher in some form of change. Dunlap, during a brief press conference Wednesday, said he's noticed "external and internal" issues that could be addressed.

"It's not a putdown or anything, but any chief would have things they'd want to change," said Dunlap, who said he expects to hold the job for up to three months.

PAPD Maj. Raymond Clark, who has applied for the job, said he sees room to improve community relations. He proposed holding regular town hall meetings, requiring officers to undergo mandatory training and possibly introducing civilians to the department's officer-only review board.

"I want to create a feeling of a little bit more transparency toward police departments," Clark said.

Reporter Brandon Scott contributed.

EBesson@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/EricBesson_news
Arlington-based Texas Health Resources and Aetna are partnering to form a for-profit healthcare plan company, according to Star-Telegram.

Here are seven points:

1. Aetna and Texas Health will each own a 50 percent stake in the company.

2. The company will offer employers and consumers in 14 North Texas counties a new healthcare plan.

3. Some of Aetna's 700,000 commercial members in North Texas will move onto the newly offered healthcare plan. Aetna will offer other members plans that will include both options for its new healthcare plan as well as a broader network.

4. Aetna and Texas Health's new company is the first of its kind in the region. Aetna and Inova Health launched a company in 2013 that provided 189,000 northern Virginia residents integrated care and health plans, which yielded cost savings.

5. Through the new company, members will have better access to care, less variations in care and will help those with chronic conditions have better health options.

6. Aetna officials said the new company may result in lower premiums for its members while also streamlining the healthcare experience.

7. Texas Health and Aetna project their company will start offering policies by next January if they receive approval from the Texas Department of Justice.

"Working together, Aetna and Texas Health will help patients find the best approaches to health that lead to more comprehensive, coordinated and lower overall cost of care," said Michael Nelson, Aetna's market president for Texas. "This partnership was a natural evolution to address the needs of the Dallas-Fort Worth area in an evolving healthcare environment. Together, we believe this plan will provide a unique solution to consumers in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex."

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Here are 30 updates:

Indiana surgery centers file lawsuits against UnitedHealthcare for overpayments

Various Indiana surgery centers are filing lawsuits against UnitedHealthcare for allegedly failing to pay for services the center's physicians rendered to patients, thereby violating state and federal law. UnitedHealthcare maintains it complied with all the appropriate state and ERISA laws and regulations, and utilized "cooperative overpayment recoveries."

California ASCs get final approval for $9.5M United Health suit

The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California granted final approval for a settlement with United Health Services, which will give $9.5 million to 270 California ambulatory surgery centers. The class action claimed United Healthcare and several of its corporate subsidiaries, including Optum, failed to properly calculate the reasonable and customary amounts for out-of-network ASCs.

Illinois physician charged with first-degree murder, denied bail reduction

An Illinois judge denied Brian Burns, MD, a bail reduction after police arrested and charged him in March with first-degree murder in connection with the slaying of his estranged wife. Prosecutors accuse Dr. Burns of shooting his estranged wife, Carla Burns, and concealing her death.

CMS updates Medicare Part B data

CMS released its updated Physician and Other Supplier Utilization and Payment public use data, which includes summarized information on Part B services and procedures provided to Medicare beneficiaries. By the end of this year, CMS intends to tie 85 percent of all traditional Medicare payments to quality or value.

242 legislators oppose Medicare Part B payment proposal

A group of 242 legislators are urging the Obama administration to get rid of the proposed payment changes to Medicare Part B. Legislators caution the program may harm patients by limiting their access to treatment.

Medicare loses $3.2B from DMEPOS improper medical billing

In 2015, Medicare had a 40 percent improper payment rate for improper medical billing for durable medical equipment, prosthetics, orthotics and supplies, resulting in $3.2 billion losses. The DMEPOS billing error rate is nearly three times higher than the national Medicare fee-for-service improper payment rate (12 percent).

Physicians accept responsibility for Joan Rivers' death

Five physicians from New York-based Yorkville Endoscopy agreed to pay a "substantial" amount and accepted responsibility for the death of comedian Joan Rivers to settle a malpractice lawsuit brought by her family. The suit alleged the physicians, in addition to being star-struck and eager to please, made a series of errors that led to Ms. Rivers' death.

ASCA's William Prentice responds to NYT's Joan Rivers piece, defends patient safety at ASCs

William Prentice, CEO of Ambulatory Surgery Center Association, wrote a short rejoinder to The New York Times in response to their coverage of the settlement between Joan Rivers' family and Yorkville Endoscopy. Mr. Prentice wrote a letter to the editor in which he noted ASCs are, in fact, subject to the same federal and state oversight as hospitals and the "the doctors and nurses who work in these centers have the same education, training and credentials as those who perform surgery in hospitals."

Mount Sinai to shutter Beth Israel hospital

New York City-based Mount Sinai Health System has unveiled a plan to shutter 856-bed Mount Sinai Beth Israel and replace it with a much smaller 70-bed facility. Mount Sinai said less than 60 percent of the hospital's beds are occupied, on average, and patient volume at the financially troubled hospital has decreased by double digits since 2012, prompting its decision to replace the facility.

Patient dies after jumping from window at Florida hospital

Police are investigating the death of a Winter Haven (Fla.) Hospital patient who died Saturday after jumping from a window on the hospital's third floor. The patient jumped from the window in his room and was pronounced dead at 1:19 p.m.

Mid-Valley Oral Maxillofacial & Implant Surgery sustains major fire damage

The Mid-Valley Oral Maxillofacial & Implant Surgery in Salem, Ore., has sustained significant damage due to a recent fire. There were no injuries due to the fire. However, it may not be possible to recover the building.

Tenet senior strategic advisor Reginald Ballantyne III to leave in June

Tenet Healthcare senior strategic advisor Reginald M. Ballantyne III is ending his career at the company on June 30. In 2013, Mr. Ballantyne played an essential, "behind the scenes" role in expanding the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System.

Tenet reports $59M net loss in Q1

For the first quarter of 2016, Tenet Healthcare had a net loss of $59 million, or $0.60 per share, compared to a net income loss of $47 million, or $0.47 per share, in the first quarter last year.

AmSurg acquires Jandee Anesthesiology Partners & Karadan Anesthesiology and Pain Management

Sheridan, AmSurg's physician services division, acquired Jandee Anesthesiology Partners and Karadan Anesthesiology and Pain Management, thereby expanding its anesthesiology services business. Jandee Anesthesiology Partners and Karadan Anesthesiology and Pain Management have five physicians. The groups' five physicians provide anesthesia services at nine ambulatory surgery centers and other New Jersey and New York practices.

AmSurg net revenues reach $724.7M

AmSurg net revenues reached $724.7 million during the first quarter of 2016, a 27 percent increase from $570.4 million for the same quarter of 2015.

SCA partners with Dublin Surgery Center

Surgical Care Affiliates partnered with Dublin (Ohio) Surgery Center, effective May 1, 2016. As of May 3, 2016, SCA operated 198 surgical facilities.

SCA names Kenneth Goulet to board of directors

Kenneth R. Goulet is joining Surgical Care Affiliates' board of directors, starting June 1, 2016. Prior to joining SCA, Mr. Goulet held leadership roles with Anthem, including executive vice president and president of Anthem's commercial and specialty business.

Medical errors rank as 3rd leading cause of death

A BMJ study found medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States, following heart disease and cancer. Using data derived from U.S. hospitals in 2013, the study found medical errors cause nearly 251,454 deaths each year.

CMS publishes final fire safety updates for healthcare facilities, including ASCs

For ASCs specifically, all doors to hazardous areas must be self-closing or must close automatically. Additionally, alcohol-based hand rub dispensers may be placed in corridors to allow for easier access.

Humana considers leaving ACA marketplaces

Humana recently gave notice it may leave some Affordable Care Act exchanges in 2017. In an email, a Humana spokesperson wrote, "We do not take these changes lightly. We are striving to avoid unnecessary coverage disruption whenever possible." The payer did not delve into detailed changes for 2017.

CMS grants deeming status to Institute for Medical Quality for ASC accreditation

CMS granted the Institute for Medical Quality deeming status as a national accrediting organization for ambulatory surgery centers participating in Medicare or Medicaid.

Bundle lowers SSI infection risk

Mayo Clinic researchers found a surgical site infection reduction bundle greatly lowered the risk of a SSI. The relative risk reduction for organ and space SSI was 73.3 percent.

Python falls from ceiling at Tacoma hospital

A visitor snuck the snake into the hospital while the snake's owner was in the hospital. When the visitor went home from the hospital, he realized the python had escaped the carrier and immediately notified Tacoma General. The snake was found and reunited with his owner a month later.

CMS posts individual physician payments for 2014

More than 986,000 clinicians were included in the data, receiving around $91 billion in Medicare payments in 2014. In 2013, CMS included 950,000 clinicians in the data-dump, receiving around $90 billion.

Major insurance mergers spend $400M+ on legal & banking services

Anthem has spent nearly $139 million after taxes on financial consulting, legal fees and bridge-loan financing costs. Similarly, Aetna spent at least $119 million after taxes to prepare for its Humana purchase. Cigna paid lawyers and bankers $93 million and Humana paid lawyers and bankers $52 million, both after taxes. Since the deals were announced last summer, the two insurers have paid nearly $403 million in total in acquisition-related costs.

Federal judge rules parts of ACA are 'illegal'

U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer ruled President Obama went above his authority by unilaterally funding an ACA provision that gave billions of dollars of subsidies to health insurance companies. Judge Collyer put her rule on hold pending the Obama administration's appeal.

Anesthesiologist to serve prison sentence for unlawfully distributing controlled substances, fraud

An anesthesiologist was sentenced to 100 months in prison in federal court in Louisville, Ky., for his role in the unlawful distribution of controlled substances, including the prescription opioid hydrocodone, without a legitimate medical purpose, as well as related crimes.

CMS says MACRA will not disproportionably penalize small practices

In a hearing last week, Acting CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt said small practices can succeed just as much as larger practices under CMS' Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act. CMS initially estimated most clinicians in groups of 24 or fewer will endure a penalty in 2019. Mr. Slavitt is claiming that figure is not indicative of the reality and CMS will help small practices so they can succeed in obtaining bonuses.

Pfizer acquires Anacor for $5.2B

Pfizer and Anacor Pharmaceuticals entered into a definitive merger agreement in which Pfizer will acquire Anacor for nearly $5.2 billion. Pfizer projects to complete the acquisition in the third quarter of 2016.

Whistle-blower claims 33 hospitals submitted more than $1B in fictitious costs

A whistle-blower recently defended the viability of a federal complaint he filed, saying 33 hospitals in North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia benefited from fictitious cost report claims submitted to Medicare and Medicaid.

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A ruling by the Internal Revenue Service poses a major obstacle to accountable care organizations as they seek ways to control costs while providing greater coordination of care. According to The New York Times, the IRS denied a tax exemption sought by an ACO that is geared toward people with commercial insurance.

The IRS said the ACO did not meet the criteria for tax-exempt status because it does not operate exclusively for charitable purpose and it provides private benefits to some of the physicians in its network, according to the report. The ACO's name and location were not disclosed, but it is known that the entity was formed by a nonprofit healthcare system.

The ruling does not impact Medicare ACOs, but it could affect other ACOs that serve privately insured patients, according to The New York Times.

ACOs now cover more than 28 million people, according to healthcare consulting firm Leavitt Partners, as cited in the report. Many of these entities coordinate care for both Medicare beneficiaries as well as those with commercial coverage.

Melinda R. Hatton, senior vice president and general counsel of the American Hospital Association, said the IRS ruling "appears to be a serious obstacle for nonprofit hospitals striving to coordinate care for their communities," according to the report. In a letter asking the agency to reconsider its position, Ms. Hatton wrote, "The IRS ruling is in conflict with the direction that the Department of Health and Human Services has given to the hospital field." She said it is critical for the government to clarify that hospitals can participate in ACOs without "incurring the catastrophic loss of their tax-exempt status."

The IRS acknowledged that the organization in question was working to improve the quality of care, lower costs and improve the health of the community, but it has also negotiated agreements with insurers on behalf of physicians, which is not a charitable activity.
Medical practices are always looking for ways to maximize patient care. To achieve this, there are various strategies physicians can use to streamline revenue-related processes, according to the American Medical Association.

The AMA said it's important that physicians have a practice management system in place that works best for staff and medical personnel before implementing new processes.

Once a PMS is in place, the AMA recommends practices take advantage of these six ways to make revenue cycle management processes more efficient.

1. Verify insurance eligibility electronically before visits. Practices can save time with electronic insurance eligibility verification, according to the AMA. This means scheduling or registration staff collects patient insurance information and submits an electronic eligibility request by entering the patient's data into the PMS.

2. Reduce prior authorization burdens through electronic transactions. The AMA said newly available electronic pharmacy prior authorization transactions allow physicians to finish prior authorization requirements as part of the e-prescribing work flow. They said physicians should identify their e-prescribing system vendor's time frame and request this new technology for their practice.

3. Submit claims electronically to save time and money. Practices can save time and speed up health plan adjudication and payment by submitting healthcare claims electronically, according to the AMA. The AMA said after a practice's PMS generates an electronic claim, the practice can either submit it directly to the health plan or indirectly through a clearinghouse or billing service, which may pre-audit or "scrub" claims before submitting them to check for missing or incorrect information.



4. Determine the status of a submitted claim. The AMA recommends practices use an electronic claim status inquiry to confirm receipt and determine status of submitted claims. The group said practices can send "batch" transmissions to health plans to check the status of multiple claims at the same time.

5. Use electronic remittance advice to simplify processing of payment information. The standardized ERA, an electronic version of a paper explanation of benefits, can more quickly identify claims that require reworking and save time for staff to spend on higher-value activities, according to the AMA. The group recommends engaging all involved trading partners, including health plans, the practice's PMS vendor and any billing service that the practice uses when implementing ERA.

6. Maximize collection of patient payment. The rising popularity of high deductible health plans is shaking the financial cornerstones of the healthcare industry, and everyone's pocketbooks are feeling the impact. For practices, collecting payments while the patient is still in theoffice is a vital first step in any effective patient collections strategy, according to the AMA. The AMA recommends practices completing an electronic eligibility check to get information about the patient cost, and then use this information, along with the health plan's current fee schedule, to calculate the amount the patient owes.

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An initiative by paramedics to increase house calls in Dallas has not produced as much revenue as originally hoped, according to The Dallas Morning News.

When city officials launched the Mobile Community Healthcare program in 2015, they thought the cost of the initiative would be covered by fees from hospitals that aim to lessen the burden on their emergency rooms. However, financial records obtained by The Dallas Morning News show that the program has not realized such gains yet.

In the first six months of the program, the city of Dallas invoiced $56,325, but as of May 30, more than $41,000 of the fees had yet to be paid, meaning the program can afford to pay just two of the seven paramedics on the staff this fiscal year.

Despite the program's shortcoming so far, Norman Seals, assistant chief of Dallas' Emergency Medical Services, conveyed optimism regarding the Mobile Community Healthcare initiative. "In terms of revenue, I had hoped to be further along than this," he said, according to the report. "But I think we're on a good track right now, and really starting to show some good positive improvements. In my book, it will always be about the patients we're working with."

The Mobile Community Healthcare program is based on two tiers. The first is to keep EMS "frequent fliers," or those who dial 911 as their primary source of healthcare, to care for themselves. The second tier is to help keep patients out of the ER. Under the program, hospitals can pay the Dallas Fire-Rescue Department to visit their patients. Participating hospitals would still save money by avoiding frequent ER visits from chronically ill patients.

Just two hospitals have inked deals with the city: UT Southwestern Medical Center and Children's Medical Center Dallas. But according to Mr. Seals, other big deals that will make the program self-sufficient are in the works.
Plastic surgeons, longtime participants in the self-pay healthcare sector, have traditionally avoided providing pricing information online. However, online price transparency can be beneficial to providers and their patients, according to a recent study published in Annals of Plastic Surgery.

The study, authored by Jonathan L. Kaplan, MD, and Parker H. Mills, PhD, took place during Dr. Kaplan's first year in a new private practice in San Francisco. At the start of that first year, an interactive cost estimator was integrated into his practice website, allowing consumers to submit a "wishlist" of procedures they were interested in checking prices for online. However, consumers was required to disclose their contact information to receive the desired breakdown of costs that are tailored based on Dr. Kaplan's medical fees, according to the study.

During that first year, without spending money on advertising, the author's website received 412 wishlists from 208 unique consumers. The study found that 17.8 percent of consumers who submitted a wishlist came in for a consultation and 62 percent of those booked a procedure.

Overall, all of the leads from the online price estimator took in that first year generated more than $92,000 in revenue for Dr. Kaplan's practice.

When compared with non-price-aware patients, price-aware patients were 41 percent more likely to book a procedure, the study found. Price transparency led to greater efficiency and reduced consultations that ended in surprise medical bills.

The study's authors concluded there are a number of benefits to online price transparency, including that patients receiving pricing information they seek, plastic surgeons receiving contact information for follow-up and patients having realistic price expectations when they schedule consultations.

"Plastic surgeons ...are better poised to promote price transparency initiatives," the authors wrote. "From a financial perspective, there is no difference between the breast augmentation patient and the patient with a high deductible health plan seeking a full-body MRI. For this reason, plastic surgeons should naturally lead the price transparency revolution  but will they?"

Dr. Kaplan will present results from this study at the Becker's ASC 23rd Annual Meeting: The Business and Operations of ASCs Oct. 29.

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The following are the five most-read health IT stories in May on Becker's Hospital Review.

1. Kansas Heart Hospital pays ransom, then hackers come back for more

After hackers locked files at Kansas Heart Hospital in a ransomware attack, the Wichita-based hospital paid the ransom. But hackers didn't fully unlock the computer files, and they demanded more money to do so. Read more

2. Unpacking hospitals' EHR implementation costs: What's behind the million-dollar price tags?

Numbers are meaningless without context, but those in health IT can often get trapped in a numbers game. When dollar signs related to EHR implementations are ablaze in headlines, it's easy to take those numbers at face value. Read more

3. Sharp hospital apologizes for inadvertently filming C-sections, giving recordings to lawyer

A drug diversion investigation gone wrong at Sharp Grossmont Hospital resulted in filming patient procedures in the operating room without those patients' permission. The hospital then provided some of those video clips to an attorney, which is considered a breach of medical privacy, and is now apologizing for its actions. Read more

4. St. Luke's completes Epic go-live on time, under budget

"St. Luke's University Health Network completed its enterprisewide go-live of Epic's EHR system for inpatient records and calls the project a success. Read more

5. 117M stolen LinkedIn credentials put up for sale

Four years after LinkedIn reported a data breach of user credentials, sources suggest the breach is much larger than previously thought. In 2012, hackers accessed LinkedIn and reportedly stole 6.5 million passwords. Now, the social networking platform has learned an additional data set containing more than 100 million credentials stolen from the 2012 breach is being sold on the black market. Read more

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The following hospital and health system layoffs were reported by Becker's Hospital Review in May. They are listed below, beginning with the most recent.

1. Danbury-based Western Connecticut Health Network, which includes Danbury, Norwalk and New Milford hospitals, laid off dozens of managers. Here are three things to know about the layoffs.

2. Dallas-based Forest Park Medical Center's campus in Fort Worth, Texas, shut down May 24 and its employees were laid off, according to the Star-Telegram. Court records show the hospital had 175 employees, according to the report.

3. Kingman (Ariz.) Regional Medical Center laid off 11 employees in its medical coding department after hiring a third-party to manage coding services, reports Daily Miner. Hospital officials said the layoffs are part of a strategic business decision.

4. Pocono Medical Center in East Stroudsburg, Pa., cut 55 jobs, or 2 percent of the total workforce. Here are four things to know about the layoffs.

5. The financially ailing Washington, D.C.-based Howard University Hospital plans to cut 10 percent of its workforce by June 30 as part of a restructuring plan. Neither union nor nonunion employees will be spared from the layoffs, which will also effect those in management roles, according to Washington Business Journal.

6. Boca Raton, Fla.-based Cancer Treatment Centers of America laid off 81 employees at its Zion, Ill., medical center. The layoffs represent 5.6 percent of the Zion hospital's workforce of 1,400 people, Cancer Treatment Centers of America spokeswoman Kristen Gerlach said in an email, according to the Chicago Tribune.

7. Merit Health Natchez (Miss.) reduced its workforce by 5 percent. Here are three things to know about the layoffs.

8. Farmington, Maine-based Franklin Community Health Network, which includes Franklin Memorial Hospital in Farmington, is laying off nearly two dozen employees and leaving other vacant positions unfilled. Twenty-two full-time employees have been told they are being laid off. Another 18 vacant positions will remain unfilled for a total of 40 full-time positions that are being cut, according to a WGME report. Additionally, salaries will be frozen.
While Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton continues to tout the progress of the Affordable Care Act, some say rising health insurance premiums could sink her campaign, The Hill reports.

Many health insurers are seeking double-digit premium increases this year, and many increases are larger than years prior. Senate Republicans and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump have already agreed this could help the conservative case in the election this fall. The Hill reported it expects ACA premiums will not be the most prominent campaign issue considering Mr. Trump's scattered healthcare proposals. However, premiums are certainly gaining attention and not helping Ms. Clinton's case, according to the report.

Public opinion of the law has improved since 2010 and 2014, based on Kaiser Family Foundation polls cited in the report. However, unfavorable views of the law have recently increased, due to Democrats who are unhappy the law doesn't go far enough, according to the report.

Luckily for Ms. Clinton, most of her proposed improvements to the law lean left, indicating she could recapture those voters if she is nominated to the general election.

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Police found 55-year-old Alejandro Ortega dead in the bathroom of his room at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach, Fla., on Saturday, according to the Miami Herald.

Miami Beach police arrived at the hospital about 7 p.m. on Saturday. Mr. Ortega's son, who was upset that hospital staff would not tell him where his father was, met them at the door of the hospital.

Police found Mr. Ortega dead in the blood-splashed bathroom of his room in the psychiatric health unit of the hospital.

Around the corner from the room is a TV lounge, where police said they found Mr. Ortega's roommate 23-year-old Andre Brown. When Mr. Brown saw the officers, police said he put his hands behind his back and said, "It was self defense. I had to do it."

In an arrest report, police say Mr. Brown told authorities he struck Mr. Ortega numerous times after Mr. Ortega tried to touch his penis. He hit Mr. Ortega more than 20 times before he began chocking him, according to the report.

Police arrested Mr. Brown and charged him with second-degree murder. Police found Mr. Brown had an outstanding warrant on drug charges, as well.

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Federal regulators have fined Clover Health $106,095 for misleading consumers about their out-of-network benefits.

Founded in 2012, Clover Health sells Medicare Advantage products in New Jersey. The health insurance startup provides enrollees with out-of-network benefits and lets them pay nothing for monthly premiums, copayments and generic prescriptions.

According to a May 26 notice from CMS, Clover engaged in marketing activities that misled or confused potential enrollees about their ability to always receive covered services from any out-of-network provider. Specifically, Clover's materials incorrectly stated that out-of-network providers participating in the Medicare program are obligated to accept Clover enrollees. CMS said it initially notified Clover executives of the misleading language Nov. 12, 2015.

At an insurance event Dec. 5, Clover agents/brokers incorrectly told a secret shopper sent by CMS that out-of-network providers must accept any beneficiary who is enrolled in Clover's plan. CMS subsequently reviewed the company's website and discovered additional marketing violations, such as failing to display CMS' star rating of the plan.

Clover didn't correct the marketing language and other deficiencies until Dec. 18, according to CMS.

In January and February, CMS said it received a high volume of complaints from new Clover enrollees who were denied services by out-of-network providers after being told by Clover that they could see any provider they wished.

Clover has until July 26 to request a hearing to appeal CMS' determination and the fine imposed.

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The standards used by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve new cancer drugs have been called into question for the lack of evidence supporting the fact that they can lengthen life or maintain quality of life, according to a study cited in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The paper, published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, concludes that the FDA approves cancer drugs that are not scientifically proven to extend life or maintain quality of life for cancer patients, according to the report. Instead, the FDA uses standards that rely on surrogate measures of effectiveness.

In cancer, surrogates are measures that show whether a tumor is growing or not, such as a CT scan. They do not assess quality of life or chances of survival.

When the FDA approves new cancer drugs, it can use accelerated approval or traditional approval. Accelerated approvals are based on a surrogate measure that is "reasonably likely to predict" the drug will increase overall survival, and traditional approvals are granted when a drug can produce "a favorable effect on an established surrogate for a longer or better life." However, the Mayo Clinic study argues many surrogates, such as CT scans, often do neither of these, according to the report.

Of the 25 drugs approved under the accelerated approval program between 2009 and 2014, 56 percent did not have supporting evidence that they extended life or maintained quality of life. Among the 30 drugs approved under traditional approval, 37 percent lacked similar evidence.

"I think that is indefensible," senior author Vinay Prasad, MD, an oncologist and assistant professor of medicine at Portland-based Oregon Health and ScienceUniversity, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "The FDA sets its own rules for when to use a surrogate. In a large percent of these approvals, the surrogate has never been studied. They just take it for granted."
An increasing number of medical device and pharmaceutical companies are offering a money-back guarantee to payers and providers for products that do not work as intended, reports STAT.

Many of these companies have implemented refund programs as a way to make payers and provider groups slightly more comfortable with their products' high prices, according to the article.

Medical device companies that have launched refund programs include Stryker, Boston Scientific, Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic and Titan Spine.

In the pharmaceutical arena, Cigna has signed contracts with Amgen, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Sanofi for cholesterol-lowing drugs. Should real-world patient outcomes not match the results of clinical trials, the pharmaceutical companies have vowed to give Cigna a price discount on their product.

Employing a real-world clinical approach to medical devices and drugs gives manufacturers the opportunity to stand behind the performance and cost of their offerings.
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A review has been launched into the "administration" of a multi-million pound catering contract for the Waterfront Hall which it held for more than a decade.

Mount Charles Group held the catering contract for the Belfast City Council building from 2002 right up until this year.

But it can now be revealed the Northern Ireland Audit Office (NIAO) has been contacted in regards to the contract and Belfast City Council is undergoing a review.

It is understood issues regarding the administration of the catering contract for services provided to the Waterfront Hall in previous years were brought to the NIAO's attention. As a result, it then passed that information on to Belfast City Council, which is now conducting a review.

Its believed, following the completion of the council review, the NIAO will then examine the findings before deciding if, and what, action may then be required.

The details of the review into the administration of the contract are not yet known, and it is understood the review is at an early stage.

A spokeswoman for Belfast City Council said: The NIAO has brought issues relating to the administration of a catering contract to the councils attention and, in line with normal procedures, the council is undertaking a review and will report back to the NIAO on the outcome of this review.

The contract in question is an historic one relating to the period when the council directly operated the hall, ie prior to April 1, 2016.

It is therefore not a contract that is administered by the new company that is now running the Waterfront and Ulster Halls.

As the review is ongoing, it would not be appropriate to comment in further detail at this time.

Mount Charles did not wish to comment. The firm held the lucrative catering contract with the Waterfront Hall until earlier this year, when it was revealed the multi-million pound deal was awarded to a firm with headquarters in England.

Amadeus won the contract for the conference and concert venue this year as the Waterfront unveiled its long-awaited new extension.

Belfast firm Mount Charles was named the UKs fastest growing independent food service company last year.

Mount Charles topped the Foodservice Growth Report 2015, based on a compound profit growth of 32.5% from a turnover of 25.5m. The company made a 2.1m profit in 2014.

The company, which employs 1,800 people, provides catering in scores of locations across Ireland and serves around 60,000 customers per week.

The managing director of Mount Charles, Cathal Geoghegan, told the Belfast Telegraph last year that the company is on course to double its profits to 50m over the next five years. And it intends to grow its workforce in Ireland from 1,800 at present to at least 3,000 by 2020.
Kainos only had 12 employees when Brendan Mooney first joined, but now has nearly 800

Belfast IT giant Kainos has posted pre-tax profits of 14.3m during the firm's first full year as a listed company.

The business reported revenue of 76.6m for the year to March 2016. That was up from 60.8m the previous 12 months.

And pre-tax profit rose from 11.8m to 14.3m.

Total sales in the 12 month period rose to 87.2m, up from 78.3m.

The software company is headed by Co Antrim man Brendan Mooney.

It's the first trading performance since Kainos became one of just three Northern Ireland firms to float on the London Stock Exchange, back in July last year.

Brendan Mooney, Kainos chief executive, said: "I am delighted to report another year of strong performance, with increasing levels of client demand across each of our operating divisions.

"We are very pleased with progress to date and excited by the opportunities ahead. We are seeing continued stability and improvement in core markets and we are encouraged by the emerging opportunities in the US.

"Our investment in new products is being validated by an increasing rate of customer uptake, and the feedback on the quality of our products and services remains very high.

The firm helps the healthcare industry and the Government digitalise their work, and earlier this year added more than 400 jobs to its workforce.

Chief executive Brendan Mooney, who hails from just outside Dunloy, joined Belfast-based Kainos back in 1989, when it employed little more than a dozen members of staff.
Almost 30 million people flew in and out of Ireland's main airports last year - the largest number since 2008.

Dublin was by far the busiest, accounting for almost 84% of travellers, while Cork was among the airports not to increase numbers on the previous year.

The figures from the Republic's Central Statistics Office (CSO) showed a 12.5% increase in air passengers at the main airports in 2015.

Almost 232,000 flights were handled by the five big airports, with Dublin accounting for 188,771 and Cork 17,910.

Cementing its slot as one of the world's most travelled routes, services flying over the Irish Sea from Dublin to London's Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted were the busiest.

Out of Cork, the most popular routes were to Heathrow, Stansted and Amsterdam, while in Shannon the main routes were to Heathrow, Stansted and New York's JFK.

Stansted, Luton and Liverpool-John Lennon were the most popular routes to and from Knock.

A comparison with the record 2008 numbers showed Dublin had grown its share of the 30 million passenger market from 75% to almost 84%.

Cork's fell from 10% to about 7%. Shannon was down from 9% to almost 6%.

Knock bucked the trend outside the capital, growing by 0.3% to 2.3%. Kerry still accounts for 1% of air travellers.

The CSO also said flights in and out of Ireland were most likely to be coming from or going to the UK, Spain and the US.
Farmers have blasted Boris Johnson for his unconvincing "bluff and bluster" after the leading Brexit campaigner said they would get the same level of subsidy if the UK left the EU

Farmers have blasted Boris Johnson for his unconvincing "bluff and bluster" after the leading Brexit campaigner said they would get the same level of subsidy if the UK left the EU.

The former London mayor made the claim during an interview on BBC Countryfile.

Despite saying the level of support would remain consistent, he later conceded that he could not give a firm guarantee that farmers would get the same level of subsidies from Westminster if the UK quit the union.

Asked about increased tariffs for UK exporters such as sheep and beef farmers, Mr Johnson said "that is not going to happen, in my view" - but could offer no more than his opinion.

And questioned over whether the UK would make up the loss of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidies, the Tory backbencher could offer nothing concrete. "All I can say is, I think any government would be mad not to make such a guarantee," he said.

Mr Johnson also controversially claimed the UK could leave the EU's single market but still keep full access to it - an issue that is yet to be resolved.

But South Down farmer Eamon Fitzpatrick said: "Any farmer who watched Boris Johnson come unstuck on Countryfile will have been far from impressed with the Leave campaign.

"Boris seemed like he hadn't even convinced himself with some of his arguments.

"We all know the importance of the agri-food sector to the Northern Ireland economy, the support local farming gets from the European Union and the importance of tariff-free access to the single market.

"It is becoming increasingly clear to Northern Irish farmers that when it comes to the referendum, we are stronger in."

Former NFU president Peter Kendall added: "This is typical bluff and bluster from Boris, who has failed to answer key questions that are vital to the British farming industry.

"He was unable to guarantee that farmers would receive the same support as their key competitors in the European Union.

"And he could not explain how farmers could sell tariff-free into the European Union if we left the single market."

Under the CAP, farmers receive nearly 3bn from the EU, and access to vital trade.
Energy Secretary Amber Rudd will say the intervention in the referendum campaign by the manufacturing companies is a "wake-up call".

More than 100,000 future UK manufacturing jobs would be put at risk by Brexit, according to a new report.

The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) suggests that tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs will be created over the next 15 years because of the European Union's single market and that a vote to Leave on June 23 would place them in jeopardy.

Meanwhile, manufacturing bosses are set to warn that a vote to Leave would harm the industry with the chiefs of Siemens, Airbus and GKN due to share a platform to urge voters to back a Remain vote.

Analysis by the CEBR suggests that close to one million UK manufacturing jobs are linked to trade with the EU and that just shy of 110,000 new roles will be created across the country by 2030 because of things like greater co-operation in the single market.

But supporters of Brexit have ridiculed the suggestion that future jobs would be lost in the event of a vote to quit the EU.

John Longworth, chairman of the Vote Leave Business Council, said: "These daily threats are becoming absurd.

"The jobs they refer to don't even exist - so how can they be at risk?"

The heads of Siemens, Airbus and GKN will say at a Britain Stronger in Europe event on Wednesday that future jobs would be put at risk if the UK votes to Leave the EU.

They will say that Brexit would result in new trade barriers harming investment in the UK.

The three employ some 35,000 people across the UK.

Paul Kahn, the president of Airbus Group UK, will say: "The economic disruption and uncertainty that would accompany a leave vote would inevitably impact on long-term investment decisions and, in turn, future job creation in UK manufacturing."

Energy Secretary Amber Rudd and Vince Cable, the former business secretary, are also due to attend the Britain Stronger in Europe event.

Ms Rudd will say the intervention in the referendum campaign by the manufacturing companies is a "wake-up call".

"Leading employers are saying investment and jobs are at risk if we leave Europe," she will say.

"That means future generations deprived of opportunities. It means less financial security for British families. It is just not worth the risk."

Other industry bodies have also issued warnings ahead of June 23.

The Manufacturers' Organisation, the EEF, has issued a letter from more than 100 businesses saying leaving the EU would make Britain "economically weaker" while the Manufacturing Technologies Association believes leaving would be "madness".
Emily Blunt is to be the new Mary Poppins

Emily Blunt is to follow in the footsteps of Julie Andrews as the star of a new Mary Poppins film.

The British actress will play the magical nanny in a sequel to 1964 Disney classic, which is due to be released on Christmas Day in 2018.

Mary Poppins Returns will tell the story of an older Jane and Michael Banks and Michael's three children, who are visited by Poppins in the aftermath of a "personal loss" in Depression-hit London, Walt Disney Studios said.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator and star of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton, will play a new character in the film, Jack, a street lamplighter.

The movie's director is Rob Marshall, whose previous work includes Chicago and Into The Woods, while the script is being produced by Finding Neverland writer David Magee.

Marshall said: "I am truly humbled and honoured to be asked by Disney to bring PL Travers' further adventures to the screen. The iconic original film means so much to me personally, and I look forward to creating an original movie musical that can bring Mary Poppins, and her message that childlike wonder can be found in even the most challenging of times, to a whole new generation."

PL Travers introduced the world to Mary Poppins in her 1934 book, which Disney adapted for the screen and released in August 1964.

The film, which was directed by Robert Stevenson and starred Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, won five Oscars, including Best Actress for Andrews. PL Travers' wrote seven additional Mary Poppins books, which she published between 1935 and 1988.

Blunt, 33, whose previous films include Sicario and The Huntsman: Winter's War, is currently expecting her second child with her husband, actor John Krasinski.

She will next appear on the big screen in the thriller The Girl On The Train, which opens in October.
Move over EL James... a Northern Ireland author has entered the realms of raunchy fiction with a book she wrote in just 11 days.

Fans expect Julieanne Lynch's latest work - Unbreak Me - to propel her into the world of erotic writing currently dominated by the Fifty Shades author.

The story - about a young woman who gets unwittingly caught up in an enigmatic billionaire's paradise - certainly sounds familiar, but the 38-year-old mother-of-five told the Belfast Telegraph her novel is as far away from a Fifty Shades knock-off as you could get.

"It's not erotic in the same sense as EL James' world," insisted the former South West College pupil, who has read Fifty Shades Of Grey and thinks it's "OK".

"Mine is a very intense romance novel that deals with a lot of hardships and real issues such as addiction, abuse and depression.

"And, yes, they do have erotic moments together, but not in a submissive way. It's aimed at over 18s and it's definitely not for the faint of heart."

Julieanne said that there were too many authors producing carbon copies of popular works.

"They all want to be the next Fifty Shades or the next Twilight, whereas I want my book to be original and stand on its own two feet," she said.

Unbreak Me - which is actually the prolific Lisnaskea author's 16th book - was penned 18 months ago during National Novel Writing month, an international phenomenon in November each year when people from all over the world enrol to write a 50,000-word novel.

"I thought I'd give it a shot just to see how I'd get on, and from beginning to end I had this book finished in exactly 11 days," she said.

"I'd start when I got home from the school run and write until I had to pick up the children again. I'd break in the evening - for homework, for tea, for bath and bed - and then I'd write until 1am or 2am. It was 12 hours writing each day."

This is the first romantic - and the first adult - novel from a family woman who, despite having 15 other works published, admits it has been "slow progress" trying to become a household name.

"My Shadow World series is geared for 16-year-olds and upwards but I'm not a generic writer," she said.

"I write the books that I want to write, and that I like to read. I won't stick to what's trending at the moment."

She added: "I've never written like this before. It's a beautiful story but a hard read. You will cry, you'll laugh and you'll be angry."

Julieanne admits it has been difficult to pursue her writing career financially, and she often struggles to juggle the bills at home.

But she hopes that, with Unbreak Me and other projects, things are about to turn around.

Husband Sean (42), an electrical engineer, and their five children - Kristopher (19), Kelly (15), Matthew (10), Rory (seven) and Poppy (four) - are totally supportive of her work.

"It hasn't been announced yet, but last year I signed a three-book deal with Vesuvian Media, which is a massive franchise, and a traditional house like Totally Bound, which is publishing Unbreak Me," she said.

"Two of the books are set in Northern Ireland.

"I can't name the third yet, but the first two are called Stone Cold and Beneath The Lighthouse and they're due in shops in 2017 and 2018."

Although she's not sure how much that deal is worth, she said she expects it to be "big money" because "they will be pitching it for film as well".

"Everything takes so long because my debut novel back in 2009 - Within The Shadow - was actually optioned for film in 2014 and has been in pre-production for about two years," she revealed. "They're anticipating it going before the cameras next year, so I could be in the running for a small fortune."

Julieanne did an Open University course in English literature and creative writing over six years and then briefly considered training as a journalist before becoming a "serious" full-time writer after she turned 30.
There's another romantic Hollywood flick on the block. As someone who has been reviewing the movies for almost eight years, I usually pay attention to the buzz. But I've yet to see anything quite like what I've seen around Me Before You.

Several months ago my friend and disability rights activist Dominick Evans shared his blog discussing how Me Before You presents dangerous ideologies to the general public. I read, agreed and moved on. But then someone shared the advert with me, and as I watched my blood boiled. Last week the premiere of Me Before You saw a protest by disability rights campaigners.

It's impossible to explain why this is so wrong without sharing some spoilers, so please do forgive me.

Me Before You is the story of Will (Sam Claflin of The Hunger Games), a rich, good-looking man who is left paralysed after a road accident. His family place him on suicide watch and hire Lou (Emilia Clarke of Game of Thrones) as a carer. Will promises his family six months before he opts for assisted suicide. When Lou discovers the true purpose of her employment she sets about convincing Will to live, and in the process they fall in love. At the end Will chooses to go through with assisted suicide and leaves his fortune to Lou in an effort to unburden her of his dependence on others.

On the superficial surface, this looks like a film that's enjoyable. But Me Before You is laden with the very same ableist culture that means I spend my days combating the inequalities that disabled people face. The fact that Will genuinely believes that he is better off dead than disabled is dangerous. I've had friends who have been asked in the street when their appointment with a suicide clinic is, because they've been diagnosed with a progressive terminal illness, and I've also witnessed young disabled people questioning why they are alive. Telling people like me that they should be dead is dangerous.

During her quest to convince Will that his life is worth living, Lou actually ends up writing a list of things that Will cannot do. This is an understandable reaction, but that does not mean that it's not dangerous. I can't do anything independently but think and speak, but in reality there's very little I can't do without some assistance and creative thinking.

I live with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) and I am deaf. When I was born my nine-year-old sister had just gone through the spinal surgery that saved my life. When I was little she wrote an essay for her first year of secondary school that said how much she wanted me to accept my condition. SMA took my sister just 20 days before her 15th birthday. I was just six years old. SMA has robbed me of many things. I'm fed by a tube at night, I sleep using a life support machine, and I use a wheelchair. I often refer to myself as the brain, while machines and other people make my body work. My level of dependence is so high that I have two people with me around the clock. I've spent around half of my life needing hospital treatment, and my childhood was spent learning what it means to be both sick and disabled.

I am a campaigns officer for the Muscular Dystrophy UK Trailblazers, a 600-strong network of young disabled people committed to fighting the social inequalities people like me face in everyday life. In my work I see so many examples of people experiencing attitudes that exclude them from everyday life that it disheartens me. I've heard stories of bus drivers refusing to deploy ramps for wheelchair users, taxi drivers charging well above the odds and wheelchair users experiencing hate crime.

For disabled people, ableism - the way in which non-disabled mistreat the disabled community either intentionally or unintentionally - is in their everyday life.

Disability is a social construct. I was not diagnosed with a disability, but with a condition. My disability only comes to the forefront when the man-made steps stop me from getting into a building, a person parks illegally in a blue badge parking space so I can't get out of my van, or a bus driver won't put a ramp out for me.

My life is vibrant and full. There are hardly enough hours in the day for me. I work with Muscular Dystrophy UK by day, and with my free time I'm working with my friends on Muscle Owl, a media organisation committed to sparking the social change we need in society.

Since I was 17 I've been working with the disabled community to make things better. I won the first case of disability discrimination in education in Northern Ireland. There have been many occasions when I've been turned away from restaurants. I almost got used to the fact that society just wasn't going to adapt to accept me as part of the community. I'm known to many politicians for my work to improve access to specialist healthcare for people living with neuromuscular conditions.

All my doctors agree on one thing - medicine is means to an end. I am treated to allow me to live a life. My doctors were quite possibly happier than me when I earned my first class honours degree in public relations from Ulster University, and even more chuffed when I achieved my Masters degree in communication with public relations in December last year.

Now, my days are filled with small victories that add up to progress for disabled people. We are becoming more part of society now than ever before. But there is a long way to go.

Me Before You has a worrying undertone that tells me my life is not worth living, and that at the end of the day I'm better off dead. Even I experience days where tears fall and I wonder if fighting is the right thing for me to do. Depression is a part of life for disabled and non-disabled people. But why is the Hollywood industry so focused on undervaluing my life as a disabled person? The story behind Me Before You is not the majority of our stories. Why is there no medical help for Will's depression? Surely people like me deserve that treatment so we can live and contribute to the world.

Director Thea Sharrock has been quoted saying that she didn't show hoisting, showering and toileting in the movie because she wanted to make disability more normal. She's right that it needs to be more normal, but it can't be normalised if she and others in her position continue to leave my reality on the cutting room floor. By doing this, she has left out the one thing that author Jojo Moyes got right - the dependence on others that creates an environment of zero privacy.

The permission of Hollywood to let actors "crip up" as disabled people is similar to the process of letting actors "black up" that ended decades ago. Now, sometimes a non-disabled actor is needed, like Eddie Redmayne in The Theory Of Everything, but I'm still left empty at Sam Claflin being cast where it's simply not needed, while my friends who are disabled actors can't get roles. We've had small steps towards better media representation of disability - Cherylee Houston in Coronation Street and America's Next Top Model's Nyle DiMarco, who is deaf, spring to mind. But there's a long way to go.

Disabled people have been painted as lazy benefit scroungers. I'm proud to be working from home in a job that's improving lives.

I want to see disabled people being cast as disabled characters. When books are written, I want disabled people to have clear voices. But more than that, value needs to be placed on my life as a disabled woman able to contribute to our society. At the end of the day, we learn how to treat others from the media, and the latest glossy Hollywood film is teaching dangerous ideas that I'm better off dead, regardless of good intentions.

I am not a scrounger, and I am part of the world's largest minority group. We remain the most oppressed. Maybe in five years' time things will be different, and it'll be because of a strong movement of disabled people that society as a whole will be better.
The persistent threat of cuts is felt by no one more acutely than those caring for family members or friends at home. At present, full-time carers receive only 62.10 a week. If this benefit is calculated against the new National Living Wage of 7.20 per hour, that means a family carer earns less than 40 pence an hour - exactly 37p for their invaluable round-the-clock services.

The staggering insufficiency of the allowance is further exacerbated by cutbacks in the hours of carers provided by the social services, and by inadequate respite.

National Carers Week, which starts next Monday, will highlight the challenges that carers face and recognise the contribution they make to families and communities throughout the UK.

The campaign is brought to life by the individuals and organisations who come together to organise activities and events throughout the UK, drawing attention to just how important caring is.

'I used to be earning good money, now I get 37p an hour to look after Adam'

Lynne McKenzie (59) is a full-time carer for her son Adam (25), who has Lennox Gastaut Syndrome, which causes multiple epileptic seizures daily. At six feet tall, Adam has the mental age of 18 months and requires constant vigilance. He lives with Lynne and his father John (59), a civil servant, in Ballygowan, Co Down. A former HR manager, Lynne is now secretary of the small Killinchy and District Community Carers Association support group. She has an older son, Rev Edward McKenzie (30), a Presbyterian minister based in Warrenpoint and Rostrevor. Lynne says:

I call my son 'my wee Adam' but he's six foot and I'm only five foot two. It's like looking after a big toddler, an adult with a child's mind. He has learning difficulties and behavioural problems, and his speech is limited. He has no badness in him and he can be affectionate, but these discharges in his brain make him lash out sometimes.

Adam has an intractable type of epilepsy which is resistant to medication, so he has all different types of seizures every day. If he takes medicine for one type, it will be increase the other types of seizures, so it's a vicious circle.

I had a difficult birth with Adam and I knew something wasn't right in the first year, but no one believed me. I was seen as just a paranoid mother. It was very frustrating being ignored. Then Adam had his first full-blown seizure at one-year-old and I had to give up my career to look after him.

I'd started at the bottom at Shorts Aircraft Factory when I was 16 and ended up in HR in the training department. I loved my job. It was well paid and I got to travel to the Isle of Man and on training projects, but Adam came first, and in those days, I thought I had no choice but to give up my job. The social worker at the time didn't give me any options.

I looked after Adam on my own all that time until carers started to come in to give me a hand a few years ago, and my husband does shift work now, which means he can help more. It wasn't until the carers came that I realised how much stress I'd been under all those years.

I've always looked after all his personal care and before we moved to a bungalow in Ballygowan 17 years ago, I had to sleep with him downstairs. He's very unsteady on his feet and he doesn't sleep well.

I just try to get on with it. But, before I joined the carers support group, there were days when I wouldn't get out of my pyjamas.

It was awful. We're way out in the country here - no neighbours, no bus route. I withdrew into myself. I forgot about myself.

The group helped me realise you have to help yourself, that no one else can, at the end of the day. Sometimes I feel that this isn't the way my life was meant to be. I have an older son who has done so well. Adam should be like that as well.

I get jealous when I hear of families going on holidays every year. We can't do that. We get three nights' respite a month. It's not enough.

We tend to go mad when we get the time - it's all we have to do something - anything. Go out to dinner and not waste the time. But basically we're just glad of the rest.

I have a very, very good, supportive husband. We do have our moments, because of the stress, and with Adam not sleeping at night, intimacy is non-existent. Adam doesn't understand when it's bedtime and the seizures don't stop, so we're up every night. It's exhausting but you get used to it.

The carers group has been a great outlet for me. We got a small lottery grant recently and we're over the moon. It will help gives carers a bit of respite. There is very little help out there in general. I used to earn good money. Now I get 62 a week - that's only 37p an hour, yet there is so much money wasted by social services.

They send Adam letters about job interviews and when he got one about jury service, I had to go to the doctor to get a certificate for him or we'd have got a 1,000 fine. Then they sent a psychologist out to assess him for his fitness to work, at a huge fee for her, I'm sure. They waste so much.

I tried to get back into part-time work but I had to give it up because of Adam's seizures. I really need to get out of the house. It makes me bitter. The carers come Monday to Friday now, which helps, but their time was cut from 45 minutes to half an hour because it takes two of them to lift Adam, and I did that on my own for 25 years.

John and I are 60 next year and we're going to need more help in the future. In the meantime, the carers group has given me a new lease of life. We're trying to bring in new members and I'm just happy to be able to help others like me."

See www.facebook.com/ killinchycarersgroup

The stress and strain of looking after my wife made me feel depressed and anxious

Keith Saunderson (42) is a full-time carer for his wife, Samantha (36), who has a degenerative spinal disease and kidney problems. From Derrygonelly, Co Fermanagh, Keith, a former auxiliary nurse, also looks after the couple's children, Jessica (9) , and nine-month old baby Charles. As a result of the family situation, Keith suffers from depression and anxiety, as well as back pain of his own. Keith says:

Samantha always had a bad back and it has got progressively worse. She has had two operations on her back. It affects her mobility and slows her down very badly.

We met socially in Enniskillen nine years ago and got married on February 14, 2007. She wasn't too bad back then. We were expecting a child and after that it became harder work. I had to give up my job as an auxiliary nurse at Erne Hospital and stay at home. My brother-in-law helps, but mostly it's just me.

I do all the housework and most of the cooking. Samantha tries to help as best she can, but she's now in kidney failure, which might have something to do with her second pregnancy. She has to go for tests. Dialysis is a possibility. I used to earn 1,200 a month; now I get 63 a week. We get allowances and income support, too, but it doesn't stretch too far.

The carer's allowance should be increased, but there's the talk of cuts.

It's basically a struggle at the minute, with very little respite.

Jessica loses out on play time with us and now there's the new baby. He can keep us awake. I'm up early and don't get to bed until late. It is very tiring.

We got a short break at the Embrace Retreat in Killinchy last summer. I saw an advert in the Carers Newsletter and we went, with the children, for a bit of a rest.

It was a very calm, relaxing place, and I'd a chance to clear my head a bit. There were alternative therapies, but we were happy just to tour about around the area.

There's not enough recognition given to the role of carers. There's a day out organised once a year. It's not enough; more respite should be offered. The social worker did get me a carer's grant, but I needed new tyres for the car and it had to be spent on that.

The stress and strain brought on depression and anxiety, and I've to take pain relief for my back. All I'd want for the future is better health, for the both of us.

For further information on carers' retreats/breaks in Co Down, see www.embraceholistic.co.uk

Carers say local services letting them down

In research carried out last year by a number of charities, two-thirds (65%) of family carers said that one or more of their local services was not carer-friendly.

As a result:

Six in ten carers (61%) said this lack of support had a negative impact on their health

Two-thirds (65%) of carers said the experience of local services that fail to consider or support them made it more difficult to look after the person they care for

The research found that there was huge variation in the support received by carers in their local community across a range of different services, from their local GP through to shops on the high street

Belfast Health & Social Care Trust has pledged to identify as many carers as possible during Carers Week. For further information, see http://www.carersweek.org/

Helping my aunt gave me an insight into under-appreciated role

Writer Una Brankin gives her own personal account of being a carer:

Until she was admitted to hospital last week, my aunt Bridie had Health Trust carers calling with her four times a day to administer medication and make light meals, when required. A former book-keeper and charity worker, Auntie Bridie (91) is widowed and lives alone near Portadown. Her son, an only child, died 12 years ago, and the only family she has who are able to stay overnight are her daughter-in-law, Sandy, and myself.

Helping to mind my aunt has given me an insight into the greatly under-appreciated role of carers, both professional and those providing the care within the family.

The trust's carers and family carers are woefully compensated for a crucial service. Sandy and I do our bit for free; it's the least I can do for Auntie Bridie, given that she was a second-mother to me growing up, but God help us if we were depending on government support.
NI Water says it has no concerns about drilling at Woodburn Forest having any effect on drinking water in Belfast.

In a letter to Belfast City Council, the company's chief executive Sara Venning said she was "wholly satisfied" with assurances there was no risk to the public water supply from the exploratory oil well project being undertaken by InfraStrata at the wood outside Carrickfergus.

The drilling has sparked controversy, and protests have been staged at the site.

Several councillors in Belfast expressed concern earlier this year that the exploration could impact on the city's drinking water supply. As a result the council wrote to the publicly-owned utility company.

The council is also planning to hold a special meeting to address the issue, which Ms Venning indicated NI Water will attend.

And NI Water has agreed that chief executive Suzanne Wylie will engage on the issue with other relevant councils, as well as relevant departments and agencies.

Ms Venning told Belfast City Council in her letter that no fracking had been, or would be, allowed at Woodburn.

"This work is being undertaken by an independent company, InfraStrata, under a licence awarded by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI)," she said.

"All work is subject to the approval and agreement of the relevant authorities including the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA), DETI and Forest Service. InfraStrata cannot drill a permanent well without obtaining planning permission, which is the responsibility of Mid and East Antrim Borough Council. NIEA have also issued a water order consent motion, allowing for the use of wholly conventional chemicals, in common usage throughout the world, in relation to the Woodburn site.

"A clause is included in the agreement with InfraStrata that prohibits using the technique known as hydraulic fracturing (fracking), both now and in the future."

Ms Venning said her staff was carrying out regular inspections at the site.

"I can also confirm that the drilling site is not within the catchment area of the Woodburn reservoir, which supplies water to thousands of properties, including some within the Belfast City Council area," she added.

"To provide further protection, a 'triple lock' system is in place in order to safeguard the local water catchment area - this involves securely sealing the drill shaft, amongst other measures.

"NI Water staff are also conducting regular inspections of the site to ensure that everything is being conducted as it should be."

Last month a protester was arrested at the site for allegedly obstructing workers.

The Stop The Drill protest has been backed by environmental campaigners, including Hollywood star Mark Ruffalo and human rights advocate Bianca Jagger.
The Army shooting of a father of six after the van he was driving backfired outside a police station was not necessary, reasonable or proportionate, a coroner has ruled.

Henry Thornton, 29, died almost instantly when a soldier shot him twice through the rear of his Austin works van close to Springfield Road police station in west Belfast in August 1971.

Mr Thornton, from Silverbridge, Co Armagh, and his colleague Arthur Murphy were driving to work early in the morning when the incident unfolded outside a police station that was repeatedly attacked during the Troubles.

Coroner Brian Sherrard delivered his findings at Belfast Coroners' Court on Tuesday after an inquest into the legacy killing.

He dismissed a claim by another soldier - Soldier C - that he had seen a gun being fired from the van at the police station and, said no weapon or ammunition was found in the vehicle. He said the van had simply backfired twice.

Solider C had relayed his account of a gun attack to Solider A, a member of the Parachute Regiment, who then ran down the street after the van, dropped to his knee and fired his rifle at the back of the van.

"Soldier A proceeded on the honestly held but false belief that the van's occupants had been involved in firing shots at the station," said Mr Sherrard.

The coroner said that despite his belief that shots had been fired, Soldier A should not have opened fire.

"At the time Soldier A fired the fatal shots his objective was to stop the van," said the coroner.

"He would undoubtedly have known that firing two high-velocity bullets at the driver of the vehicle was likely to result in the driver's death. There is no evidence that Soldier A considered a less forceful response to the situation than the death of the driver.

"At the time of the shooting Soldier A was not under attack."

He added: "Other options to stop or pursue the vehicle were available. In such circumstances the shooting of Mr Thornton was neither a necessary nor a reasonable nor a proportionate response to the situation Soldier A either actually encountered or thought that he encountered."

The coroner's findings were delivered in preliminary format pending a decision on whether the identity of Soldier A will be made public.

Outside court Mr Thornton's widow Mary and Mr Murphy welcomed the coroner's findings.

Mrs Thornton said: "He was taken from me, he was taken away from his six children - it's good the world has seen that he was innocent.

"I am just so glad these findings have come out - the truth is out at last, we can let him rest now."
HMS Caroline: More than 15m has been spent on restoration work to the former Royal Navy ship

HMS Caroline: More than 15m has been spent on restoration work to the former Royal Navy ship

Restorers are putting the final touches to HMS Caroline in advance of her opening as a visitor attraction this summer and for her role in the commemoration of the Battle of Jutland this week.

The light cruiser, due to open to the public tomorrow, is the only floating survivor from the sea battle that changed the course of the First World War, albeit at a terrible cost in lives on both the British and German sides.

Germany won the battle numerically, sinking more ships and exacting a heavy toll on the Royal Navy, but strategically it was a victory for Britain and her allies as the German Grand Fleet never again came out of port to do battle, giving the allies command of the seas and the ability to cut the German supply lines.
Alan Black at the inquest into the massacre

Lone survivor: Alan Black (third from left), family and friends attending the inquest into the Kingsmills massacre

Alan Black was the sole survivor of a sectarian massacre of 10 Protestant workmen in Kingsmill, Co Armagh, in 1976

Families of those killed in the Kingsmills massacre attend the long-awaited inquest

The bullet riddled minibus where ten Protestant textile workers were shot shot dead in a sectarian IRA attack near the Co Armagh village of Kingsmill in 1976

A fresh police investigation has been launched into the murder of 10 Protestant workmen four decades ago after a palm print was matched.

The print - which was found in a getaway van used by the gunmen who carried out the Kingsmills massacre - has been matched using police records an inquest heard today.

The match was made last week a counsel for the PSNI told the inquest.

He said a senior PSNI officer has been appointed to carry out a new investigation into the atrocity.

No one has ever been convicted over the atrocity which saw the workmen forced from their minibus on their way home from work at a mill in Glenanne, lined up and shot dead.

One Catholic was separated from the group and ordered to "run up the road" before the gunmen opened fire on the remaining 11 men.

Ten were killed and only one - Alan Black - survived despite being hit 18 times in the gunfire.

The developed emerged on Tuesday during the second week of an inquest into the Kingsmills massacre which is being heard by senior Coroner Brian Sherrard.

Speaking outside court victims campaigner William Frazer told the Belfast Telegraph that the relatives of the men killed at Kingsmills are delighted by the news, but question why it has taken over 40 years to match the palm print.

No one has ever been convicted over the Kingsmills massacre which took place on January 5, 1976 in a remote area of south Armagh between Bessbrook and Glenanne.

The atrocity was initially claimed by a group calling themselves the South Armagh Action Force. However the Historical Enquiries Team said they believe the IRA carried it out.

The IRA has never claimed responsibility for the atrocity, and Sinn Fein representatives have denied they were behind it.
A man allegedly kicked in the head in Belfast city centre at the weekend may have to undergo surgery for a suspected bleed to the brain, a court has heard

A man allegedly kicked in the head in Belfast city centre at the weekend may have to undergo surgery for a suspected bleed to the brain, a court has heard.

Jonathan Meniece (26), of Tennent Street in the city, is charged with inflicting grievous bodily harm in the attack at Victoria Street on Saturday night. But at Belfast Magistrates' Court yesterday, a defence lawyer said the alleged victim had confirmed he did not want to co-operate with the investigation.

However, a PSNI officer responded: "Police witnessed the assault and witnessed the defendant kick the injured party."

Seeking bail, Meniece's solicitor argued the alleged victim's attitude means the case may never proceed. He said his client should not face a lengthy period in custody, citing mental health issues. "Prison is not the place for this young man," he added.

District Judge Amanda Henderson adjourned the hearing for further information to be provided. Meniece was remanded in custody to appear again tomorrow.
Hundreds of top secret police documents about the former Kincora Boys' Home have been declassified and handed over to a public inquiry, a lawyer has revealed.

Some 26 boxes of material have been retrieved from Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) archives and given to the Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) Inquiry which is examining allegations of child prostitution, vice rings and blackmail plots at the notorious east Belfast facility.

Barrister Joseph Aiken, counsel to the HIA, said: "When the inquiry began this was all marked secret. At the request of the inquiry it has all been declassified by the PSNI and made available to the inquiry."

It has long been claimed a high ranking paedophile ring preyed on vulnerable young boys in Kincora during the 1970s.

It is further alleged the UK security services knew about the abuse but did nothing to stop it, instead using the information to blackmail and extract intelligence from the influential men, including senior politicians and establishment figures, who were the perpetrators.

The HIA, chaired by retired High Court Judge Sir Anthony Hart, is investigating whether there were systemic failings by state bodies such as the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), MI5, MI6, the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) and social services.

Mr Aiken said: "Although it is an established fact that children were abused by staff in Kincora, this inquiry in addition has to address amongst others a range of extraordinary allegations not that the state failed to prevent abuse because of missed opportunities or ineffective systems of oversight and regulation, but that it with deliberation and planning cynically orchestrated and utilised the abuse of children it was supposed to care for in order to further its own ends.

"If true, that would mean those who had the privilege and responsibility of protecting citizens compounded the pain of those who suffered as a result.

"If the allegations are no more than rumours and suspicion they have the effect of heaping further unnecessary misery on the victims of abuse in Kincora."

Kincora opened on Belfast's Upper Newtownards Road, close to Stormont's Parliament Buildings, in May 1958 and closed October 1980 in the aftermath of the sex abuse scandal.

In 1981, three senior care workers were jailed - one of whom, William McGrath, was believed to have been an MI5 agent.

The inquiry was shown a previously secret army intelligence file in which McGrath was described as an "intelligent though devious man who needs extremely careful handling".

He could be a potential "mine" of useful information, the document stated.

It also emerged that McGrath first came to the attention of the RUC at a political rally in 1966 and by 1973 the Special Branch believed he was the leader of a extremist Protestant organisation and was retaining members by threatening to expose homosexual activity which he had initiated.

Mr Aiken said the name Kincora had become synonymous with allegations of prolonged child abuse and cover-up.

Some of the material produced would be "difficult and embarrassing" for individuals and organisations, he added.

"If it is the case that the state, whether in the guise of the police, intelligence agencies or otherwise did connive, collude, orchestrate, utilise, exploit or cover up sexual abuse at Kincora, then those facts should be laid bare," said Mr Aiken.

The barrister said the inquiry would have to consider claims of state-sponsored child prostitution, paedophile rings, blackmail and cover-ups and whether or not the former head of MI6 abused boys, while he was in Northern Ireland at the request of Margaret Thatcher.

He told the three-person panel: "You will also have to consider the claim that the former head of the secret intelligence service Sir Maurice Oldfield, while being the head of the intelligence network in Northern Ireland after his retirement from the secret intelligence service, and doing that job at the request of the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whether he abused boys in Kincora."

Campaigners had hoped to have Kincora included in the nationwide child abuse probe chaired by New Zealand judge Lowell Goddard because the HIA does not have the power to compel witnesses.

However a legal challenge to overturn the Government's refusal was rejected as "premature" by a High Court judge last month.

An appeal was also turned down.

In his opening address Sir Anthony said his inquiry has had "full and voluntary" co-operation from all government departments and agencies.

However, a number of key individuals including former unionist Roy Garland and ex-Army intelligence operatives Brian Gemmell and Colin Wallace have declined to give evidence.

Sir Anthony said: "While it is for them to decide whether they wish to give evidence in person, we regret that they have adopted this position because this is their opportunity to describe in person and in public their experiences in Kincora."

Former Kincora residents are expected to take to the witness stand next week.

Outside the court, Clint Massey, who spent eight months in Kincora aged 16, said he was hopeful the HIA could expose the truth about Kincora.

"I will have my day in the sun," he said.

"I am hopeful this time. I am hearing good things in the courtroom. They do seem to have the authority to get dossiers from various departments and that gives me hope."

The HIA is now in its 15th and final module.

By the time it concludes public evidence sessions in July, more than 450 witnesses will have provided oral testimony.

Sir Anthony is expected to submit his findings to MLAs at Stormont by early next year.
Fraud squad chiefs have arrested two men in Northern Ireland in connection with a record 1.2 billion property deal.

Searches were also carried out in Co Down as part of inquiries into the sale of assets and property loans by Ireland's "bad bank", the National Assets Management Agency (Nama), to US investment fund Cerberus.

The investigation by the National Crime Agency, the UK's lead policing body, was sparked by the discovery of a 7 million offshore transfer to an Isle of Man bank.

The money was paid into an account controlled by a former managing partner of Belfast-based law firm Tughans who resigned after it was unearthed.

Tughans, which was involved in the Nama transaction as subcontractor for Cerberus's US lawyers Brown Rudnick, insisted it was not aware of the transfer.

An NCA spokesman said: "Officers from the National Crime Agency have today carried out two arrests and related searches in the Co Down area in connection with a fraud investigation. The operation is being assisted by the PSNI.

"As the investigation is continuing we are unable to comment further."

Other investigations are ongoing including by the US Department of Justice's Securities and Exchange Commission.

Parliamentary inquiries have been conducted in Stormont and Dublin amid a raft of allegations about fixer fees behind the deal.

Speaking in the Dail parliament in Dublin, premier Enda Kenny again rejected calls for a state inquiry, insisting that no allegations of wrongdoing had been made against Nama.

Responding to the arrests north of the border, he said: "If they have been arrested, I assume they have been arrested for good reason in respect of activities that would be outside the law.

"I trust that will see itself through that process and be judged before the courts."

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said Mr Kenny was like "a rabbit caught in headlights" and branded the Nama sale a "national scandal and a disgrace".

"The sale of Nama's Northern loan book has been subject of serious allegations of a cosy cartel, of insider trading, payments to the golden circle and payment of illegal fixer fees."

Nama is the so-called "bad bank" set up in Ireland at the height of the financial crisis to take property linked loans off the books of bailed-out banks.

It signed off on the Project Eagle deal in April 2014 by selling 800 property linked loans to Cerberus, a multibillion fund which boasts former US vice president Dan Quayle in its ranks.

But the sale has been dogged by controversy since allegations were first made under parliamentary privilege that some of the money in the Isle of Man account was destined for a politician.

Further revelations, also under parliamentary privilege, separately claimed 45 million had been earmarked for fixers and there were five beneficiaries of the 7 million.

All parties involved in the 1.2 billion transaction in 2014 have denied wrongdoing.

Cerberus won the auction by offering 1.241 billion for loans linked to the Northern Ireland properties when the reserve price was 1.24 billion.

Project Eagle was valued by Nama at 27p in the pound, with some assets as low as 5p in the pound.

Mr Adams said Nama had fully briefed Dublin's Finance Minister Michael Noonan on the issues - including a "totally irregular and illegal" 15 million fixer fee - but the sale of Project Eagle was never suspended.

Despite numerous investigations in Northern Ireland and the US, there has been no such inquiry in the Republic, the Sinn Fein leader told the Dail.

"In this state, the Government, the Minister for Finance and Nama have closed ranks," he said.

"This is a public interest matter. It must be fully investigated to get to the bottom of any allegations of wrongdoing and cosy cartels which have cost the citizens of this state millions of euros."

Cerberus insisted its investment is not central to the investigations, but that the role of third parties in the sale is being examined.

Mick Wallace, an Independent TD in the Republic, first raised questions about the Project Eagle sale.

"Nama insisted all along, and the Taoiseach, that there's no relationship between the sale of Project Eagle and the purchase, that's a fairytale," he said.
Loyalist Winston Rea has been arrested in connection with the murders of two Catholic workmen more than 20 years ago.

Police arrested Mr Rea, 65, in Belfast on Tuesday. He is being questioned over the killings and "other serious crimes".

Police re-opened investigations last year into the two sectarian murders in Belfast during the 1980s and 1990s.

John Benedict Devine, 37, was shot dead in front of his 13-year-old at his home on Fallswater Street, West Belfast on July 23, 1989.

The gunmen, who forced their way into his property, escaped in a blue Vauxhall Cavalier taxi.

Forty-one-year-old John Joseph Gerard O'Hara was shot at Dunluce Avenue in South Belfast on April 17, 1991.

He was working as a temporary taxi driver and had gone to to collect a passenger at about 10:15pm when he was targeted by two masked men.

They fled on foot down an entry between 124 and 126 Dunluce Avenue.

A PSNI spokesman said: "Detectives from Legacy Investigation Branch have arrested a 65-year-old man in relation to two murders and other serious crimes in Belfast in the late 80s and early 90s.

The man was arrested in Belfast this afternoon and is currently helping police with their enquiries. There are no further details at this stage.

No one has ever been charged in connection to either of the killings.

Detective Inspector Neil McGuinness said in September last year: "Both these men were innocent Catholics who were murdered for no other reason than their religion.

"Two families were left devastated; two wives lost their husband and their children lost their father at the hands of callous murderers."
Raymond Farrell with Arlene Foster at the DUP spring conference at the Roe Park Hotel in Limavady in March

A former senior Ulster Unionist has rejoined the DUP, the Belfast Telegraph can reveal.

Fermanagh councillor Raymond Farrell's move is the first defection within unionism since the Assembly election earlier this month.

DUP sources said they were confident it would gain even more recruits from across unionism.

Mr Farrell quit the UUP last October after falling out with leader Mike Nesbitt over his softening stance on gay marriage and the party's decision to withdraw from the Executive after police stated IRA members were involved in the murder of Kevin McGuigan in Belfast.

The Ballinamallard man was approached by the DUP and appeared at its spring conference recently, sitting beside Mrs Foster.

She said: "I'm delighted to welcome Raymond into the party.

"He will be an incredible asset to the Fermanagh and Omagh DUP council group and will now, as part of a larger team, be better placed to deliver for his constituents.

"New members have been joining our ranks in recent weeks from all across the unionist spectrum.

"People are uniting around our leadership.

"Those who are committed to strengthening the Union and Northern Ireland will find a warm welcome in the party."

Immediately after her election triumph - retaining the party's 38 seats at Stormont - Mrs Foster launched a push to attract like-minded unionists.

The election, in which the UUP won back the 16 seats it held at the last poll following the high-profile departures of David McNarry, Basil McCrea and John McCallister, had seen the defection of the DUP's Jenny Palmer to Mr Nesbitt's party.

She went on to win a Stormont seat in Lagan Valley.

Mrs Foster said: "People are attracted to our vison for Northern Ireland and the clarity of our policies.

"They know where we stand and recognise that we are the best political vehicle to move Northern Ireland forward."

Mr Farrell, who was a local officer in the DUP for more than 20 years before joining the UUP, denied he was a "carpetbagger".

"When I left the UUP last autumn I did not knee-jerk. I took time to consider," he said.

"Rather than be a nodding dog, is there not a place in politics today for conviction? I am not a man for populist politics and I believe Arlene Foster believes in principled politics.

"I have known her for many years, hold her in the highest regard, and there has never been a cross word between us."

An independent councillor for six months, Mr Farrell added: "It is no secret that my decision to resign from the UUP was due to the lack of leadership offered by Mike Nesbitt.

"His leadership has been characterised by populist policies and short-term manoeuvrings.

"Many of my former Ulster Unionist colleagues shared my concerns about the leadership. They were prepared to stay silent because there was a perception of resurgence.

"However, Mike Nesbitt's approach brought the UUP its worst ever Assembly election result less than one month ago."

At the time he left, the UUP accused Mr Farrell of a "litany of failures".

It said he failed to attend meetings of the Ulster Unionist Councillors Association or the party's annual conference, and he failed to contact the party leader about his concerns.

Nonetheless, the UUP also said his decision to leave was "regrettable".

Mr Farrell said he and Mr Nesbitt had come to a "parting of the ways" after the UUP leader remarked that, on same-sex marriage, the party could be on the "wrong side of history". "What he said was challenging my own convictions," said Mr Farrell.

"His remarks showed confusion - and a leader should show leadership, not confusion."

A UUP statement said: "The question of same-sex marriage remains a matter of conscience for individual members and so the policy has not changed and will not change under Mike Nesbitt's leadership."

The 54-year-old father-of-three added: "I have received a very warm welcome within the DUP and would encourage other unionists to take the same step I did."
A man who was banned from driving after killing an Irish policeman has taken to social media to boast about winning a car in a raffle.

Martin McDermott was jailed for seven years and banned from driving for 20 years for the manslaughter of Garda Gary McLoughlin in 2009.

McDermott, now 30 and originally from Raphoe in Co Donegal, drove a stolen Opel Astra car into the policeman's patrol car near Burt. He had 91 previous convictions at the time.

McDermott, who now lives in Londonderry, won his friend's white Ford Focus in a 25 per ticket friends draw.

A friends draw involves pals selling raffle tickets for items they want to get rid of.

McDermott posted pictures of the car on his Facebook Page, boasting: "Hope you all like the new wheels."

But a former friend hit out at the Donegal man.

"It's just sickening," said the ex-friend.

"He is boasting about the car knowing that he left a young man dead, and there appears to be no remorse."

McDermott's 20-year driving ban in the Republic also applies in Northern Ireland.

It is understood the PSNI are monitoring his movements.

Gardai have also applied for a European arrest warrant for McDermott.

It follows an incident in August last year in which a car was crashed near the village of Drumkeen, near Letterkenny.

McDermott was taken from the driver's seat of the vehicle to Letterkenny General Hospital to be treated for several injuries.

However, he checked out of the hospital and went to Altnagelvin Hospital in Derry for treatment before he could be interviewed by gardai.

There was uproar in March 2012 when McDermott escaped from Loughan House prison in Co Cavan.

Gardai were angry that he had been moved to the open prison just six months into his jail sentence.

The Republic's Justice Minister Alan Shatter apologised to the McLoughlin family.

McDermott was later arrested in the Galliagh area of Derry, and then jailed for four months for assaulting PSNI officers, resisting arrest and disorderly behaviour.

He tried to escape police capture by climbing a wall and running off.

While serving his sentence in Maghaberry Prison, he was fined 700 in a Londonderry court after admitting a number of motoring offences in the city in November 2009.

After he was extradited back to the Republic, McDermott walked free from Midlands Prison in June last year.

He was freed 21 months early and received just two extra weeks behind bars for his escape.
One of Britain's worst paedophiles is facing multiple life sentences for a catalogue of horrific sex crimes against Malaysian children which he bragged about on the "dark web"

A son of Sinn Fein TD Aengus O Snodaigh has been spared a criminal conviction and a possible sentence for stealing a box of Desperado beer.

Lorcan O Snodaigh (18) pleaded guilty yesterday to the theft the alcohol worth 10 (7.60) at Supervalu on Talbot Street, Dublin, on April 12, 2015.

However, the defendant was let off after donating 50 (38) to charity.

His case was heard at Dublin Children's Court because he was 17 and therefore still a minor at the time of the incident. He had turned 18 by the time the summons was issued.

Defence counsel Damian McKeone told Judge John O'Connor that O Snodaigh, from the Naas Road, Bluebell, Dublin, was pleading guilty to the charge. The defendant was accompanied to the court by his father, Sinn Fein TD for Dublin South-Central and party spokesperson on social protection.

O Snodaigh spoke to confirm he did not want the case to be dealt with before a jury in the circuit court, which has tougher sentencing powers.

Garda David Leahy told the court he had responded to a call that a security guard had detained a male in the shop. He viewed CCTV footage which showed the youth "took a box of Desperado beer and passed all points without payment".

The court heard that the teenager has eight prior convictions, including entering with intent to commit an offence, criminal damage, and six for theft, which led to him being bound to keep the peace.

Pleading with the court to spare him a conviction, Mr McKeone said that his client was drunk at the time of the incident and was remorseful.

He added that the youth, who receives a disability payment, had 50 to offer to charity.

The judge agreed that the young man has "turned it around" and accepted the donation. He marked the facts proven but struck out the case.
Up to half a million refugees and their relatives could move to Britain after 2020, a report claims

Albanians seeking to reach the UK should not be granted asylum unless there is an "extremely individual and particular reason", a Cabinet minister has said.

Chris Grayling urged the authorities to be "very vigorous" about applications from Albania as Downing Street said all asylum claims would be treated according to the rules.

His comments came as Downing Street indicated that m igrants are attempting to cross the Channel in boats because of improved security measures at the tunnel and ferry port in Calais.

On Saturday, 18 Albanians had to be rescued from an inflatable boat after it sank off the Kent coast, and immigration union officials have warned Britain's coast is facing one of its greatest ever breaches from small boats and dinghies carrying migrants.

Number 10 said additional vessels aimed at protecting the coastline would become operational in the coming months, but full deployment of the new boats will not take place until the end of next year.

A Downing Street spokesman said the increased security at Calais had led some migrants to attempt to use "more dangerous routes" to reach the UK.

"We take every necessary action to protect our border security and will continue to do so," the spokesman said.

"The important thing is that our approach is intelligence-based. So we have worked with the French government at Calais to secure the border there and since we put security measures in place we have seen a small number of migrants trying to use more dangerous routes to get to the UK."

Number 10 said a ll asylum applications made by people reaching the UK will be "processed according to the rules" and "the important thing is that we stop people attempting to use this route".

But Commons Leader Mr Grayling, who is campaigning for Brexit in the June 23 referendum, said Albanians should be treated as economic migrants because their country is pushing to join the European Union.

Answering questions after a Westminster speech, he said: "I would want us to be very vigorous about any applicant for asylum from Albania.

"Albania is a candidate country of the European Union and unless there is an extremely individual and particular reason for granting asylum for someone from Albania then I would want to have an asylum system that treated those people as economic migrants."

As part of the Government's approach, additional vessels to supplement Border Force's three cutters in UK waters will take to the sea in the coming months - but full deployment will not take place until the end of 2017.

Around half a dozen of the new patrol vessels will be deployed to help intercept attempts to smuggle dangerous weapons, drugs and migrants into the country.

Similar to but slightly bigger than standard rigid-hulled inflatable boats, these will complement the work of the cutters, working either in collaboration with them or independently.

Border Force is currently using a combination of its cutters, radar and aerial surveillance to detect and stop small craft approaching the UK.

The authorities are also working with counterparts on the Continent to " identify unlawful maritime activity, including the facilitation of clandestine entry", Downing Street said.

Fears have been raised about the possible tragic consequences of migrants attempting to cross one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.

The Downing Street spokesman said: "We are always concerned about possible deaths, which is why, for example, there are naval vessels deployed in the Mediterranean to assist with the operations there."

New maritime powers came into effect on Tuesday which will make it easier for Border Force officials to patrol the UK's coastline and tackle the smuggling of illegal immigrants into the country.

Border Force officers will have the power to board boats and to arrest people facilitating illegal migration.

On Monday, Lucy Moreton, general secretary of the Immigration Services Union, said large stretches of Britain's coastline are being left unpoliced and officials simply do not know how many people have sneaked into the country undetected.

She told the Press Association her "gut feeling" and anecdotal evidence suggest Britain's coasts are facing the biggest ever onslaught of people smugglers.

Earlier, Mr Grayling said: "I think this is a very real issue for us right now and if we leave the European Union it's going to take a bit of time before we do that.

"I think and indeed I know Theresa May thinks that we've got to take quick action this summer.

"I certainly don't want the English Channel turning into the Mediterranean with fleets of small boats coming over."
Amnesty International South Asia director Champa Patel said there is 'no question the increased violence has led to increased displacement' (AP)

More than 1.2 million Afghans have been forced to flee their homes due to violence in the past three years, Amnesty International has said.

The rights group urged the Kabul government and the international community to tackle the country's growing crisis of refugees internally displaced by war.

Those numbers are growing as the war, now in its 15th year, intensifies, Amnesty said in a report released in Kabul, adding that many of the internally displaced "live in horrific conditions on the brink of survival".

The Taliban have been waging war on the Afghan government since their regime was toppled in the 2001 US invasion.

With the withdrawal of most international combat troops in 2014, the insurgency has stepped up - the United Nations has said that, in 2015 alone, 11,002 civilians were killed or wounded, most of them by insurgents.

The report quotes Farzana, a mother of seven who has lived in a Kabul camp for internally displaced people for more than a decade, after fleeing her home in Parwan province. Since her husband left a few years ago, she has been the family's sole breadwinner.

"When you can't put food on the table for your children, it is worse than being hit with a gun," said Farzana, who was identified only by one name.

The Afghan government is failing the displaced, even in areas where the international community is involved, Amnesty said.

Pilot programmes in three conflict-torn provinces - western Herat, northern Balkh and Nangarhar on the eastern border - have stalled, it said.

But Hafiz Ahmad Miakhail, a media adviser at the Afghan refugee ministry, disputed Amnesty's numbers, saying the total number of internally displaced was closer to one million, with many affected not just by the war but also natural disasters, including floods and earthquakes.

But Champa Patel, Amnesty's South Asia director, said there is no question "the increased violence has led to increased displacement".

"The numbers that we are talking about and the groups that we are talking about in this report are all people who had to flee because of conflict, so we are not talking about natural disasters, we are not talking about returnees form Pakistan or Iran," she said.

Afghanistan has one of the highest refugee populations in the world, estimated at 2.6 million people living outside its borders. Last year, some 178,000 Afghans risked their lives on the dangerous journeys to reach European shores and apply for asylum, Amnesty's report said.

"We have no water to drink, no food to eat, no education system for our children, no electricity," said Hussain Samander, a refugee living in the Chman-e Babrak settlement in Kabul. "No-one can imagine how difficult life we have in the camp."
The ammunition depot is one of India's largest

At least 17 army personnel have died after a fire broke out at a major ammunitions depot in western India, the country's Defence Ministry said.

At least 19 other people were injured in the blaze, said ministry spokesman Nitin Wakanker.

The fire at the Pulgaon ammunitions depot started before dawn, said an official at the local police station. Mr Wakanker said that attempts to control the fire were still under way late on Tuesday afternoon.

New Delhi Television reported that about 1,000 villagers had been evacuated from around the area.

The cause of the fire was not immediately known.

Devendra Fadnavis, the chief minister of Maharashtra state, where the depot is located, told reporters that the fire had caused a "massive loss of life and property".

Mr Fadnavis said that the state government was making "every resource" available to the army to help it control the situation, and was ensuring that all local hospitals were equipped to deal with the injured who were being brought in.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that he was "pained by loss of lives" in the fire and added that he had asked the defence minister to visit the site.

The Pulgaon ammunition depot, one of India's largest, is located in Maharastra state's Wardha district.
Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko speaks with members of the press at the Ukrainian parliament in Kiev (AP)

Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko, who spent two years in Russian custody before she was released last week, has been sworn in as a member of the national parliament.

Ms Savchenko was elected in 2014 while she was in custody.

She told fellow politicians in the Rada, the parliament in Kiev, that she would it make her priority to fight for the release of other Ukrainians held in Russia. Ukraine describes them as political prisoners.

"You absolutely have to pull out every single prisoner," the 35-year old said before singing the national anthem.

Ms Savchenko had resigned from the army and was serving in a volunteer Ukrainian battalion in eastern Ukraine when she was captured by Russia-backed separatists in June 2014.

She was put on trial and convicted in March of involvement in the killing of two Russian journalists in eastern Ukraine, a charge that she has rejected.

She returned to Ukraine last week to a hero's welcome after she was pardoned by Russian President Vladimir Putin as part of a prisoner swap.

At the end of her speech, Ms Savchenko took down a poster with her picture from the rostrum, where it has been for months. She replaced it with one depicting several other people and calling for the release of "prisoners of the Kremlin".

Ms Savchenko is a member of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's party, which in February left Ukraine's governing coalition.

Her popularity could help her become an influential politician and she has said she would be willing serve her country in any capacity - including that of president.
The UK European Union in/out referendum campaign is well underway, and has only four weeks to go. We'll be polling on the EU Referendum issue right up to voting day on June 23.

The benefit of this regular scheduled polling is that it will allow us to see changes in trends and opinions as we approach EU referendum day.

This is our fourth monthly tracker poll (May 2016) of the election season so we now have a good comparison to our previous polls and also our January/February BIG100 Poll. So we can see what way the argument is trending.

Graph 1 shows the way our Northern Ireland representative opinion panel is currently intending to vote in the EU referendum - Mid-May 2016 Tracker Poll. These are the results from the total poll, balanced and weighted to be reflective of Northern Ireland as a whole.

So compared to our April 'tracker' poll 'Remain' is the same at 54.2% (actually down very slightly by 0.2%), 'Leave' has gone up by 1.2% to 35%, the Undecideds (but intending to vote) has dropped by 2.6% to 9.2%, and the 'Will not be voting' has gone from zero to 1.7%.

Graphs 2, 3, and 4 show how the unionists, nationalists/republicans, and Alliance/Green/others are currently intending to vote in the EU referendum.

So we see that compared to our April 'tracker' poll the unionists 'Leave' has gone up a sizable 6.8%, unionists 'Remain' has dropped 2.5%, and the Unionist undecideds (but intending to vote) has dropped by 5.4% to 12.2%, and there are now a small number of unionists 'Will not be voting'.

The above figures and changes among the unionists are significant as they show the continuing trend of the unionists hardening on 'Leave' - with approaching 70% of unionists now intending to vote 'Leave' in the coming June 23 referendum.

Read More

As expected nationalist/republican voters and Alliance/Green voters are still 80-90% solidly for 'Remain', as per previous polls. So the above follows the same pattern as our February, March and April 'tracker' Polls, and our January/February BIG100 poll, i.e. there is a large (very large) difference of opinion between the traditional Northern Ireland unionist and nationalist communities on this issue.

All our previous polling is showing that unionists are having much more difficulty making up their minds on this issue when compared to nationalist/republican voters and Alliance/Green voters. That trend is still there with the unionist 'Undecided (but intending to vote)' on 12.2% and the overall 'Undecided' on 9.2%.

More:

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Overall it is noticeable that the east of Northern Ireland is more for 'Remain', and the rural mid and west more for 'Leave'. Basically there is no noticeable evidence that, for example, the unionist farmers are more supportive of 'Remain', as some commentators had speculated.

Like our April Tracker poll, it is noteworthy that, on principal, a small number of nationalist/republican voters said they weren't intending to vote at all in the UK EU Referendum stating that as this was a UK-wide referendum, and they didn't consider themselves British, they would therefore not be taking part.

You can appreciate their point, as unlike the Northern Ireland Assembly election the UK EU Referendum is very much a sort of all-UK, all-British affair.

More:

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Similar to the nationalists/republicans, the Alliance/Green/others political family are very solid and unchangeable in their EU Referendum views, with between 8 to 9 out of 10 supporting 'Remain'. All the poll figures for this group have changed less than 1% either way from our March and April Opinion Panel Tracker polls.

Graphs 5 and 6 show how Northern Ireland males and females are intending to vote. Again, and as per our previous polls, we see a difference.

Proportionally males more for 'Leave', and females more for 'Remain' - and this applies across all communities, and incidentally also across all of the UK.

More:

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What do all our poll respondents think the final NI result will be?

We also ask in elections and referendum polls what our poll participants think the actual final overall total NI result will be, regardless of their own views on the issue. This is shown in Graph 7 above, and you can see that our poll respondents think nearly the same as the actual poll turned out with 27% thinking the result will be somewhere in the 55-60% Remain band. As expected when we do the Unionist vs Nationalist/Republican analysis the unionists think the result will be in the 45% to 55% Remain area, with the nationalist/republicans thinking it'll be 60% or above Remain.

EU Referendum - Reasons for voting decision: We also again asked about what were the factors that people were considering in terms of making up their minds about the EU referendum.

The main reasons for people voting 'Remain' were the same as our previous polls:

(1) NI specifically gains from the EU - business, agriculture, social programs etc. (2) UK & NI are net beneficiaries from the EU i.e. the UK gets more out than it puts in. (3) To remain in same trading block as Republic of Ireland,

In terms of those who said they were going to vote to 'Leave' here are the main factors stated in order of how popular they were indicated:

(1) Immigration - UK & NI needs more control of its borders. (2) The EU is becoming an super-state not a trading block & not democratically accountable for decisions. (3) UK is a net contributor to the EU & NI would gain from the saving.

Like our March and April Opinion Panel Tracker poll the No. 1 reason for voting 'Leave' is Immigration, and lack of border controls. However, again in this May poll (like our April poll) this reason was even further ahead of Reason No. (2), showing that Immigration/Border Controls and controlling immigration is increasingly now becoming the overwhelming reason for NI people voting 'Leave'.

In addition, the 'Undecideds' showed that the following two factors were uppermost in their minds in terms of deciding what way to vote in the referendum:

(a) NI specifically gains from the EU - business, agriculture, social programs etc. (reason to remain) (b) Immigration - UK & NI needs more control of its borders. (reason to leave)

It's key to note, that even among the 'Undecideds', and as per our previous polls immigration and border controls is an increasing concern, and is 'in a battle' with the gains that NI obtains from EU membership, i.e. in terms of the Undecideds eventually deciding which way to vote. Again, it's important to note that the majority of the 'Undecideds' come from the Unionist community.

So it looks as if Northern Ireland may be tending towards a close result with 'Remain' having the edge at the moment. Again its important to note that nearly seven out of 10 unionist voters are currently intending to vote Leave.

LUCIDTALK MONTHLY TRACKER POLLS

Methodology: Polling was carried out by Belfast based polling and market research company LucidTalk. The project was carried out online for a period of 60 Hours from 10am 17th May to 10pm 19th May 2016 (60 Hours). The project targeted the established LucidTalk Opinion Panel (1,940 members) which is balanced by gender, age-group, area of residence, and community background, in order to be demographically representative of Northern Ireland. 1,343 full responses were received, and a data auditing process was carried out to ensure all completed poll-surveys were genuine 'one-person, one-vote' responses, resulting in 1,090 responses being considered in terms of the final results.

All data results have been weighted by gender and community background to reflect the demographic composition of Northern Ireland. All data results produced are accurate to a margin of error of +/-3.0%, at 95% confidence.

All surveys and polls may be subject to sources of error, including, but not limited to sampling error, coverage error, and measurement error. All reported margins of sampling error include the computed design effects for weighting. NB In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

LucidTalk is a member of all recognised professional Polling and Market Research organisations, including the UK Market Research Society (UK-MRS), the British Polling Council (BPC), and ESOMAR (European Society of Market Research organisations). The BPC are the primary UK professional body ensuring professional Polling and Market Research standards. All polling, research, sampling, methodologies used, market research projects and results and reports production are, and have been, carried out to the professional standards laid down by the BPC.
Recently I listened to Paula Bradshaw on the radio talking about... you've guessed it... flags.

Perhaps it is the Alliance Party's obsession with flag-poles that has contributed to its electoral decline.

Yet, because of its hallmark arrogance, it attempted to use its electoral 7% to dictate to what was then the future Government in the Justice Minister discussions. Now, it sits, forlornly, beside the official Opposition.

The Alliance Party doesn't even qualify for the capital 'O' in the opposing benches.

To Naomi Long and her colleagues, I say: "Welcome to the real world."

CH

Belfast
Sinn Fein has called for voters in Northern Ireland to support remaining in the EU to protect workers' rights and EU subsidies.

Ironically, Sinn Fein opposed joining the-then EEC in 1973, and president Gerry Adams has said the EU has a "democratic deficit".

We currently see the French trade unions on strike due to EU deregulation leading to fewer rights for workers and we see huge corporatist TTIP and CETA trade deals between the EU and the USA/Canada, which may pose a threat to public services and the NHS and drive down wages.

The EU is enforcing austerity in places like Greece, and even more ironically Sinn Fein is about to implement austerity cuts in Northern Ireland.

Austerity and cuts amounted to 44bn in the last parliament, while EU membership cost the UK around... 44bn net (87bn before the rebate and money in farm subsidies etc).

Some 91.2% of Northern Ireland trade is not with the EU and 95% of UK businesses do not trade with the EU.

Voting to leave would reduce bureaucracy for these businesses and would return sovereignty and democracy to the people.

ALAN DAY

Coagh, Co Tyrone
It is a strange feeling, sitting at home by the computer, with a glass of wine in your hand, relaxing after the challenges of the week, to see filth and abuse pour into your Twitter feed.

Of course, you can just turn away from it, but that is hard. The feeling it creates is that hundreds of people you have never met hold you only in contempt.

It is easy to forget how lightly they might be expressing that contempt, how little they have to do to get at you. Once they would have had to put dirt through your letterbox, or a brick through your window. Or they would have had to go to the trouble of writing a green-ink letter, outlining your failings as a human being and the various ways in which you have waived your right to walk on God's earth. Now, however, they can do it without moving more than a finger. They can even just retweet someone else's insult.

The one that came at me in greatest number originated with Glenn Irwin, a motorcyclist and writer on the sport. He had found out that I had, some years ago, participated in training road race officials in their media relations.

Ah ha! So, O'Doherty helps them one day and snipes at them another - and all for money. So, he is a mercenary. Or times are hard.

It wasn't even a considered comment. I might have changed my mind about motorsport since I did the training. I might even have trained people I disagreed with.

Neither of these is remarkable. Neither indicts me as an unworthy person. But Glenn's unimaginative little jibe was the star piece in the concerted effort to flood my Twitter feed. I answered several times, with different people, this claim that I was somehow discredited by having been shown to have trained motorsport officials. I was wasting my time.

Liam Beckett retweeted several of these jibes too - claims that I would do anything for money. He says he didn't even read, or comprehend, the tweet which said that I should have my legs done - "or, better still, his mouth".

Maybe he didn't. The BBC clearly believes him. Maybe if the tweet had been in Urdu, or Gaelic, he would have been as happy to pass it on.

After all, his only concern was to lend his 6,000 followers to a broader campaign to harass me. And it is hard to strike back at a Twitter storm, because so many people contribute so lightly to it.

There is no point in answering them all one at a time. Many of them don't care what your answer is anyway.

On the night before the incitement to violence tweet, I sat going through the tweets that had already come in, blocking those who were most offensive, those who used swear words and those who insulted me.

These weren't people who wanted to engage, or have anything explained. They wanted only to poke me in the eye.

Not blocking them would have been like leaving my front door open, so that those who don't like me can come into my house and spit on the carpet.

I blocked about 20 people that night, more than I had ever blocked before, let alone on a single night. And that still left a lot of hostile tweeters untouched. But these were the ones who posed a question, or made a reasoned point, whether I agreed with it or not.

Some were hurt. There was a young woman who was a friend of Malachi Mitchell-Thomas and other road racers who had died.

She wanted to tell me that she was in pain, that she pined for that lovely man that she had lost and to explain why people race and take such risks.

She wrote: "My friend didn't get to fight for his life, so I'm going to fight for his memory and the sport he loved."

She wrote also: "I'm coming from a place of love for Mal, he was the best guy I have ever known. I never would have met him if it wasn't for bikes."

And she wrote also to me: "I respect your opinion to a degree, but we are all going to die. Would you rather die doing something you love, or die from a bedridden illness, or naturally of old age?"

She was angry with me and with the Nolan Show, and she accused us of using the death of her friend for our own benefit, which is a hurtful thing to hear. But she made her point well and we conversed through the Twitter storm and got somewhere.

I would not have had that encounter without Twitter and that's what it does at its best.

I also got an insight into the hurt in people close to racing, though I think she had reinforced my case for discouraging it. But she wouldn't see it that way.

She wrote: "I've now lost Mal, my uncle and my grandad has lost many friends. My friend Jamie nearly lost his life at the TT. I hate the sport because of it, but I realised that if they were to go anyway that's the way they would have wanted."

In other tweets, she talked about school and exams; so she is young and yet she is surrounded by grief brought into her life by road racing, grief on a scale that people ordinarily only experience in wartime.

The most common argument posed against me was that I knew nothing about road racing and had no right then to talk about it.

Liam Beckett and Phillip McCallen think the answer is to get me to the races, where I can meet the riders and understand better what motivates them.

I don't see how that would counter the argument that the real problem with this sport is carnage.

I will take them up on their invitations, but I also hope to talk to the riders who have themselves reached the point where they can no longer bear the risk and the continuing loss of friends. I wonder would Phillip McCallen take me to meet some of them?

Either way, I am going to be writing about this sport again and learning about it. In the meantime, it would help if those who endorse the sport would learn to share their ideas and not just to spit venom at those who raise questions.

They could learn a lot from that girl who is so routinely losing the people she loves at the races.
Facebook says that it does use handsets' microphones, but only to help them out  and theres an easy way of turning it off

Facebook is listening in on peoples conversations all of the time, an expert has claimed.

The app is using peoples phones to gather data on what they are talking about, it has been claimed.

Facebook says that its app does listen to whats happening around it, but only as a way of seeing what people are listening to or watching and suggesting that they post about it.

The feature has been available for a couple of years, but recent warnings from Kelli Burns, mass communication professor at the University of South Florida, have drawn attention to it.

Professor Burns has said that the tool appears to be using the audio it gathers not simply to help out users, but to listen in to discussions and serve them with relevant advertising. She says that to test the feature, she discussed certain topics around the phone and then found that the site appeared to show relevant ads.

The claim chimes with anecdotal reports online that the site appears to show ads for things that people have mentioned in passing.

Facebook has not yet responded to a request for comment.

At the moment, the feature is only available in the US.

When it was first introduced, in 2014, Facebook responded to controversy by arguing that the phone isnt always listening and that it never stores the raw audio when it is listening.

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Facebook says explicitly on its help pages that it doesnt record conversations, but that it does use the audio to identify what is happening around the phone. The site promotes the feature as an easy way of identifying what you are listening to or watching, to make it easier and quicker to post about whatevers going on.

If people want to use the feature that way, then they can start writing a post in the normal way. If its turned on, then it will start identifying what is being listened to or watching  at which point a little face with some soundwaves next to it will appear.

If it identifies the sound successfully, then it will show a little 1 next to the face instead  users can then click that, select the thing they are watching or listening to, and then write the rest of the update.

If your phone's microphone has trouble matching what you're listening to or watching, the room you're in may be loud or a commercial may be on, according to Facebooks help page. If this happens, tap, drag and release your screen to try a new match.

Turning off the microphone in a phones settings is relatively easy, and since it can be done at the level of the operating system, doing so will mean that Facebook cant turn it on even if it wanted to. Its done on an iPhone by heading to the apps settings, clicking through to privacy and switching the slider for microphone; on Android phones, head to settings and then privacy, and change the permissions that the Facebook app is given.

The claims come after Belgian police warned citizens not to use Facebook's Reactions tool if they valued their privacy.

Independent

Video: Jacob Applebaum: To Protect And Infect

More on privacy and surveillance
Handout photo issued by Pixium Vision of a new bionic vision system, the Iris II, which is to be tested on up to 10 British patients who have lost their sight. PA

A Star Trek-style bionic vision system is to be tested on up to 10 British patients who have lost their sight.

Regulators have granted permission for the trial to go ahead at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London.

The Iris II system developed by French company Pixium Vision uses a bio-inspired camera to stimulate a retinal implant and send image signals to the brain.

Patients don dark goggles reminiscent of the eye-wear worn by blind Star Trek lieutenant commander Geordi La Forge.

Other trials of the system are taking place in France, Germany and Austria.

The British study will include patients suffering from the conditions retinitis pigmentosa (RP), Usher syndrome, cone-rod dystrophy, and choroideremia, all of which can lead to blindness.

Consultant ophthalmologist Dr Mahi Muqit, who is leading the Moorfields trial, said: "We are excited to participate in the clinical trial of Iris II and be the first site in the UK.

"Patients with RP can now benefit from a new choice of retinal implant that may potentially further improve visual outcomes. This new clinical trial is key for ophthalmic reference centres like Moorfields to evaluate the latest technologies."

A number of competing retinal implant systems are being developed by private companies and institutions around the world.

At the heart of Iris II is a small silicon chip with 150 electrodes that is implanted on to the retina.

Expand Close Handout photo issued by Pixium Vision of a new bionic vision system, the Iris II, which is to be tested on up to 10 British patients who have lost their sight. PA PA / Facebook

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Whatsapp Handout photo issued by Pixium Vision of a new bionic vision system, the Iris II, which is to be tested on up to 10 British patients who have lost their sight. PA

A video camera integrated into the goggles sends images to a smartphone-sized portable computer, which converts them to electrical signals. These are transmitted wirelessly to the implant which in turn stimulates the optic nerve.

After surgery, patients have to learn to use the system, but with practice are able to "see" black, white and grey shapes.

No starting date has yet been set for the trial, which has been approved by UK medical device regulators the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

Tina Houlihan, chief executive of the charity RP Fighting Blindness, said: "We're always pleased to hear of new clinical trials being launched and welcome this announcement.

"Retinal implant technology is of great interest to our patient group and the progress made by researchers in the field over the past few years has been very encouraging.

"We wish those running the trial the very best of luck and look forward to learning about its outcomes."
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College is an exciting adventure  you are moving away from home, meeting new people and getting your first taste of independence. For the next four or more years, you will be learning a lot  both academic and otherwise. This knowledge will help you grow in many ways, especially as it relates to your faith. In your eagerness to start this new chapter, make sure to keep in mind some important tips that will help you make the most out of your experience, while also helping you to keep Christ front and center. Here are some essentials for every Christian college student:

Community (Its Necessary)

Building a Christ-centered community on campus is crucial for every Christian college student. Its important that you are surrounded by people who love Jesus, who are on a similar faith walk, who will encourage you spiritually. The Bible reminds us that we are put in relationships in order to encourage one another in our pursuit of God and His Kingdom. Community also challenges us to be more like Jesus. We are more like Jesus when we interact and love those around us. The Bible tells us, Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12). It is within the context of community that we are given the opportunity to discover our gifts and talents and use them to bless others.

Community is also a space where we can truly grow as followers of Christ. Get involved with Christian organizations on campus. You will find brothers and sisters in these spaces who will walk alongside you when you are in need of support, prayer, or a shoulder to cry on. Community carries you emotionally, and its important that we are around people who are willing to support us in good times, but also in hard times. .

A Local Church

It is vital that you not only find, but also commit yourself to a local church. Finding the church will be easy. Its committing yourself that can be the challenge, especially with all the distractions on campus that have the potential to pull you away from your faith. This also ties back into the community conversation. Never more are we reminded how church isnt a place, but a people than with on-campus ministries. There are some really amazing campus ministries out here that are doing powerful things in the local community and are also getting people enrolled in Christ. We arent being ourselves when we are not involved in a Gospel-centered, Christ-exalting local church.

Roommates

Dont choose isolation. In your first years of college, its important that you have the on-campus experience. This includes roommates and dorm life. Yes, roommates will keep you up way too late, and wake you up way too early. Yes, they can drive us up a wall with their habits and behaviors. But your roommates can be amazing friends and allies. They are also exactly the people God is calling you to love. Dont wait until you feel the love from them. Embrace them. Love them until you feel love for them. The Bible tells us, Love is patient, love is kind. It always protects, always trusts, always perseveres. Love never fails (1 Corinthian 13: 4, 7-8). Allow your roommates to see Christs love through you. Though you may have your issues and breakdowns, this is no reason not to love.

The Bible

This may seem like a no brainer, but the Bible is essential for every Christian college student. No matter what you face in school, Scripture has an answer for it. It also contains Gods will for our lives. That is why the Bible was given to us. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 says All Scripture is given the inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. Gods Word is totally sufficient for all our needs. As Christians, we can be totally secure in the Lord by studying the Bible because it contains Gods plan for our life. Its imperative that we engage with the Bible daily, and not lose sight of Gods message in school. It can only strengthen us.

An Openness to Learn

What you learn in college can help you grow spiritually. In fact, learning is one of the most spiritual things we can do. In college, you will be confronted by many people who disagree with you. Its easy to get confused or overly defensive in these moments but dont. What many people fail to realize is how these moments are great opportunities to bear witness to Christ. You can learn a lot from those who disagree with you. From these experiences, you can sympathize with their perspective and see things from their point of view, while also being vocal about your faith and where you stand. It is hard for those around you to respect your disagreement with them unless they feel youve understood them.

Christian students can face many challenges in school, especially as it relates to their faith identity. If youre dealing with any of these challenges, it may cause you to question your faith. Questions can show up like: Is this my faith or the faith of my parents?, What do I believe?, and Why do I believe it?. However, your college experience can reveal the quality and depth of your faith. When we find a faith community and deal with these essential questions, we have the opportunity to really strengthen our faith.

Lesli White is a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth with a Bachelors degree in Mass Communications and a concentration in print and online journalism. In college, she took a number of religious studies courses and harnessed her talent for storytelling. White has a rich faith background. Her father, a Lutheran pastor and life coach was a big influence in her faith life, helping her to see the value of sharing the message of Christ with others. She has served in the church from an early age. Some of these roles include assisting ministry, mutual ministry, worship and music ministry and church council.
A group of suspected militants are escorted into the Dhaka District and Sessions Court, May 31, 2016.

A Dhaka judge Tuesday sentenced six suspected militants to die for premediated and cold-blooded murder during a bank robbery that left eight people dead in April 2015.

Judge S.M. Kuddus Zaman of the Dhaka District and Session Court also sentenced a seventh defendant to life in prison and two others to three-year terms for their roles in the bloody robbery at the Kathgara branch of the Bangladesh Commerce Bank on the outskirts of Dhaka, lawyers said. The 11 suspects who were charged in the case included two men who were acquitted.

Defense attorney Faruq Ahmed told BenarNews that his clients planned to appeal the ruling.

My clients are innocent, Ahmed said, alleging that they had been forced to confess.

The judge nonetheless ruled that the bank robbers were members of two banned militant outfits, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), and they had planned the heist to raise money for their organizations terrorist-related activities.

The bank robbers killed the branchs manager and seven others when they burst into the bank, setting off bombs as well as stabbing and shooting customers on April 21, 2015, news reports said.

Bangladeshi authorities have suspected JMB operatives of carrying out or plotting deadly attacks against religious minorities. Separately, authorities have blamed ABT for being behind a series of murders targeting secular writers, gay-rights activists and intellectuals since February 2013.

Judge Zaman ordered capital punishment for defendants Borhan Uddin, Saiful (alias Al-Amin), Mahfuzul Islam (alias Sumon and Jamil), Md Jasim Uddin, Mintu Prodhan and Palash (alias Sohel Rana), public prosecutor Khandker Abdul Mannan told reporters.

Ukil Hasan was sentenced to life in prison and fined 5,000 taka (U.S. $63.66), while co-defendants Abdul Baten and Shahjahan Jamadar each got three-year sentences and fines of 3,000 taka (U.S. $38.19).

This incident is not only a robbery in broad daylight, [but] rather a premeditated and cold-blooded murder of eight civilian citizens, Zaman ruled.

Defendants unrepentant

The judge ruled that, based on his observations of their facial expressions and the way they behaved during the trial, none of the defendants appeared to be repentant.

The killing of eight innocent people in inhuman, cruel and crude ways warrants an urgent precedence ... That is why, I think it appropriate to hand them down exemplary punishment, Zaman said.

Seven of the defendants were members of the JMB and the others were with ABT, prosecutor Mannan said.

They committed the bank robbery to collect funds for militancy. Seven of them gave confessional statements. Except for Palash, all of the convicted persons are in the jail, he said.

Abdul Malek, who witnessed the robbery, said he supported the judges decision to hand death sentences to six of the defendants.

They are criminals. They entered the bank at broad daylight, killed people and left the scene. All of them should be hanged, he told BenarNews.

According to a security analyst, the brazenness of the crime reflected the changing face of militancy in Bangladesh.

This bank robbery is a new phenomenon in militant activities. The attack on the banks indicates that their fund supply is drying up, retired Brig. Gen. Shahedul Anam Khan told BenarNews.
An armored vehicle transporting six Bangladeshi defendants travels to the state courthouse in Singapore, May 31, 2016.

A Singaporean court Tuesday convicted four Bangladeshis of raising funds for a terror plot in their home country, marking the first time that someone will be going to prison under Singapores terrorism-financing law, reports said.

The State Court convicted Bangladeshi construction workers Rahman Mizanur, Miah Rubel, Md Jabath Kysar Haje Norul Islam Sowdagar and Sohel Hawlader after they pled guilty to charges of financing terrorism, according to news reports from Singapore.

They are likely to face punishment in Singapore as they violated Singapores domestic law, Masudur Rahman, a spokesman for Dhaka Metropolitan Police, told BenarNews on Tuesday.

The four will be sentenced later and could each face up to 10 years in prison, a maximum fine of Sg $500,000 (U.S. $362,000), or both, Agence France-Presse reported.

The four men held or handled amounts of money for financing the alleged plot, which ranged from Sg $60 (U.S. $44) to 1,360 (U.S. $988), according to the Associated Press, which cited police charge sheets.

The four were among six Bangladeshis charged on Friday under Singapores Terrorism (Suppression of Financing) Act. They were also among eight Bangladeshi construction workers who were arrested in the city-state in April for allegedly plotting to overthrow Bangladeshs government as well as target government and military officials for assassination, according to the Singaporean Ministry of Home Affairs.

Among the six who were charged on May 27 were defendants Zzaman Daulat and Mamun Leakot Ali, who pleaded not guilty at the State Court on Tuesday. The court set June 9 for a pre-trial conference in their case, the Straits Times newspaper of Singapore reported.

Singapore, which arrested the eight men under its Internal Security Act, says they were part of a militant group calling itself the Islamic State in Bangladesh (ISB).

In January, Singapore confirmed that it had deported 26 Bangladeshis with alleged links to Islamic State or al-Qaeda. Fourteen of the 26 who were sent home late last year.

Some of them are in Bangladeshi custody but others who have been freed were under police surveillance, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal told BenarNews.

A threat to Bangladeshs migrant workforce?

The conviction of the four workers tarnishes the name of countless Bangladeshis who travel abroad in search of low-skilled jobs, said the head of the Warbe Development Foundation, a local NGO that supports Bangladeshs migrant workforce.

Bangladeshi migrant workers must punish the culprits who give a bad name to the hard-working Bangladeshi workers, Syed Saiful Haque told BenarNews.

Our migrant workers are very hard working and law abiding, but a handful of them were radicalized. We have to find out how radicalism entered into the minds of the poor people. Otherwise, Bangladeshs labor market would be in jeopardy, he said.

Bangladeshs economy relies on remittances sent home from members of its migrant workforce, which comprises around 9 million people worldwide, according to the Expatriates Welfare and Overseas Employment Ministry. More than 200,000 Bangladeshis work in Singapores construction, marine and other sectors.
Demonstrators give pro-independence speeches in a housing complex after police prevented them from heading to the Papuan Legislative Council (DPRP) in Waena, Jayapura, May 31, 2016.

After officers broke up demonstrations and detained scores of protesters, police in eastern Indonesias Papua and West Papua provinces said Tuesday they would prevent pro-independence activists from rallying again.

Their aspiration is for Papua independence. [W]e told them that we will never accommodate that kind of aspiration, Jeremias Rontini, the superintendent of police in the Papuan capital Jayapura, told BenarNews, adding that his officers would block locals from holding future rallies for independence from Indonesia.

Laurenzus Kadepa, a local lawmaker and member of the Papuan Legislative Council (DPRP) who attended peaceful rallies organized in the region by the West Papua National Committee (KNPB), said demonstrators should be allowed to voice their support for Papuan independence.

On Tuesday, police reportedly prevented a crowd from marching from a local housing complex to the DPRP.

Police should know that DPRP belongs to the people, a home for everybody without exception, Laurenzus told BenarNews.

As many as 336 demonstrators were detained in Sentani and Wamena  two towns in Papua  as well as in Manado, in North Sulawesi province, while demonstrating in favor of the release of political prisoners in Papua, the Associated Press reported.

A low-level secessionist movement has simmered in Papua and West Papua, Indonesias easternmost provinces, which are among its poorest and least developed and which became part of Indonesia in 1969.

On May 2, some 1,700 supporters of the West Papua National Committee were arrested while taking part in pro-independence rallies at several locations in Papua. They were released after being questioned by police.

These demonstrations were broken up although Indonesian President Joko Jokowi Widodo had pledged to solve human rights abuses allegedly carried out in the region by the Indonesian security services and to bring prosperity to the people of Papua.

Since he took office in October 2014, Jokowi has made multiple visits to Papua and ordered the release of some political prisoners.

Blocked

According to Ones Suhuniap, the general secretary of the KNPB, police on Tuesday arrested some of its members for planning peaceful demonstrations to support the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP).

Police blocked us in a housing complex in Waena. There were five military trucks and three military patrol cars. Also, there were 15 police trucks and five police cars. Around 100 police and mobile brigade blocked our way to demonstrate, Ones told BenarNews.

Police arrested 33 KNPB members in Sentani, a town near Jayapura, before the rally began, he said.

Around 61 people were arrested in Wamena. Some of them were arrested yesterday, when they distributed fliers informing about the rally, Ones said.

In Jakarta, the director of the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute claimed that police had denied organizers of the KNPB rallied permits for staging them.

Polices decision not to give permit for a peaceful rally is uncommon. This proves that police or government discriminate against Papuans, Alghiffari Aqsa told BenarNews, adding that Indonesias constitution guaranteed the right of people to associate, to organize and to express opinions.
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HID Global, a worldwide leader in secure identity solutions, is working with Media Concepts International of Lagos, Nigeria, to deploy mobile IDs on Nigerian citizens' smartphones using the new HID Global goID platform.

Image by 123RF

The Nigerian Police is moving from paper documentations of vehicular records to e-documentations in order to create and maintain a central database for all vehicles using uniquely encoded and machine-readable smart cards, along with the new and innovative mobile IDs.

Media Concepts International partnered with HID Global to develop the groundbreaking programme in Nigeria, and together, the two companies are addressing complex government-to-citizen identification programmes throughout Africa.

Mobile IDs will be issued through the Nigeria Police through the Police Biometric Central Motor Registry (BCMR) vehicle registration card programme, which provides real-time access to vehicle/vehicle owner information via credentials and mobile readers powered by Seos technology from HID Global. The Nigerian Police BCMR is a biometrically-enabled, real-time information system designed to enhance the reliability and effectiveness of policing.

Mobile IDs work alongside secure physical ID cards to provide citizens and police with more convenience, trust, security and real-time access to information.

Tech pioneers

The Nigerian Police are pioneers in first-class global policing, leading the way in Africa in the adoption of mobile IDs and creating a differentiated reputation for the police as well as the country as a whole, said Babatope M. Agbeyo, CEO of Media Concepts International. Over the years, the Nigerian Police have continually invested in e-policing technology, especially with the Police BCMR in line with the global security trend. We are proud to help Africa set a new standard for IDs on smartphones that countries around the world celebrate and emulate.

Citizens can apply for a mobile ID at the time of vehicle registration. Once registration is complete, issuance of the mobile ID to a citizens smartphone is almost instant, which bridges the gap between registration and receipt of the physical card.

The Nigerian Police will issue smartphones as mobile readers to verify a vehicle owners ID and at the same time gain real-time access to reliable accident, crime or insurance information on the vehicle. The readers will sit in a specially designed cradle to accommodate the citizens biometrics stored on the card or mobile ID.

Mobile ID integration

Media Concepts International Limited and HID Global designed the programme so that this new offering would be integrated directly into Nigerias current enrollment process, allowing a seamless migration to mobile IDs.

The new BCMR mobile IDs use the HID goID platform, which delivers the secure infrastructure to allow citizen IDs to be safely provisioned to and authenticated on a smartphone. Rapid issuance enables the citizen to take instant possession of their vehicle registration and is particularly convenient if the citizen has more than one vehicle, as multiple IDs can be carried together on one smartphone.

The goID platform enables instant over-the-air credential provisioning and streamlined access to cloud-based government information services. All transactions related to issuing, managing and presenting mobile IDs using smartphones are secure and trustworthy with goID, ensuring that transactions are conducted in a closed-circuit environment protected by end-to-end encryption.
One of the basic human emotions you don't often see being used as a marketing tool is regret. But it is powerful: how many of us do not wonder about where the other fork in the road might have taken us?

That is something that Jeep astutely taps into with its latest TV ad for its vehicles. Ask anyone to give you some of the attributes of Jeep and you will get: tough, go-anywhere, macho.

Thats testament not only to the intrinsic qualities of the vehicles, but also to the way theyve been marketed over the years. Few of those potential buyers entranced by the Jeeps promise of freedom will not have noticed that there are one or two models in the line-up these days that can do nothing more adventurous than park on the grass next to a rugby field with the other moms taxis.

Yet, the TV ad even makes an aware petrol head like me discard that reality and think, yes, well,

maybe

Its cleverly written. It starts off by saying: No one cares what you did last night. Then goes on: It makes absolutely no difference how many places you almost went, how many risks you didnt take.

All the while, the voice runs over images of Jeeps climbing up mountains and charging through rivers and in places that scream remote!

Then it hits the nub: Because, right now, youre writing the story of your life. And when its over, you have to ask yourself: would anyone want to read it?

Its powerful. It speaks to the FOMO (fear of missing out) that characterises so many of us in this fast-paced world.

You will not miss out if you have a Jeep, because you will do things that will make your life story something worth remembering. Thats a strong marketing message, from one of the worlds strongest and most single-minded automobile brands. And it gets an Orchid.

SABCs (acting? Illegally appointed? Political hitman?) chief operating officer, Hlaudi Motsoeneng, has made a lot of waves with his Edict From On High about the 90 percent quota for local music to be played on the public broadcasters stations.

One could speculate about the possibility of this being a diversion before the local government elections; or wonder about the fact that  as disclosed by Leanne Manas on SABC 2 last week through a message from on high  Hlaudis definition of local music now includes reggae (Bob van der Marley perhaps?)

However, at the risk (yet again) of receiving hate mail, I have to say I agree with Hlaudi on the point of the imperialist conquest of South Africa.

What is it about us that something doesnt sound quite as powerful unless it is in a foreign accent  normally American or the queens English? Advertisers are the worst offenders when it comes to embracing foreignness.

Reader Sadick Mohamed fingers the latest Prudential ad, which has a sort of Scots accent. Do we think, somehow, that the Scots have a direct line to God when it comes to money? Puh-leez, as they would say in an American sitcom

For me personally, the latest offender is the Hatfield Audi group, which is running a radio ad with a woman with an ersatz American voice extolling its virtues. Seriously?

An American voice promoting a product that is quintessentially German? Come on people. It is lazy. Lazy thinking. Which will get you an Onion all the time, yall

*Note that Bizcommunity staff and management do not necessarily share the views of its contributors - the opinions and statements expressed herein are solely those of the author.*
The WeDesign2016 Conference, taking place in Durban on 8 July 2016, features Minister of Finance, Pravin Gordhan as one of the keynote speakers, joined by international speakers, Felipe Leal, immediate past Minister of Urbanism for Mexico City and Kelvin Campbell, chair of Smart Urbanism in London.

Hosted by the KwaZulu-Natal Institute for Architecture (KZNIA), the prime objective of the conference is to put the radical transformation of our cities, towns and villages at the very top of the national agenda and embed it in the popular and collective consciousness. Also on the podium is an impressive line-up of South African business and property specialists and leading practitioners in urbanism, architecture and urban planning.

It is clear that widespread, vibrant and sustainable economic growth and accessible opportunity is central to meaningful job creation, poverty reduction and narrowing of the wealth disparity gap. These are essential to attract financial investment, build social stability and significantly reduce non-renewable natural resource consumption, says Ruben Reddy, president of the KZNIA.

Conference organisation committee member, Andrew Makin from DesignWorkshop, says, Almost every South African is preoccupied with the single, important question of how things will realistically and radically improve in our country, but the answer might be in a very different place to where we are all looking.

South Africa is currently estimated to have just 0.5% economic growth, which is a generous way of saying zero. It means only one thing. Joblessness will increase, poverty will deepen, inequality will widen and social antagonisms such as unrest and crime will worsen. The future is dramatically less optimistic than it was any time between 1994 and today.

Physical distance is enemy number one of infrastructural efficiency. Idea sharing, which leads directly to innovation and job creation, public service provision and social cohesion, especially for small entrepreneurial business, could turn 0.5% to 5%. If this does not become the singe gathering nation vision of all our efforts, there is zero chance of a better future for any of us in South Africa.

Other speakers exploring the potential of a comprehensive National Spatial Revolution [NSR] in South Africa include:

Malijeng Ngqaleni, head of intergovernmental relations of The National Treasury



Musa Mbhele, deputy city manager, head of urban renewal of the City of Durban



Paul Wijgers, design leader of the Urban Design Framework for the Inner City of Durban



Edgar Pieterse, head of African Centre for Cities



Michael Deighton, md of Tongaat Hulett and president of SAPOA

By removing so many of the physical and spatial barriers between current reality and a prosperous, egalitarian, stable, safe and secure South Africa, we can radically transform into a sustainable powerhouse of economic opportunity, underpinned by cohesive social networks and celebrated in compellingly vibrant centres of unique urban cultural expression. We invite interested parties to join us on this paradigm-shifting journey, says Reddy.

For more information, click here or call Kubash on +27 (0) 31 201 7590.
In the fight against HIV and TB, South Africa is one of the first countries in the world to have embraced molecular technologies, which amplify genetic code (DNA and RNA) to rapidly identify infectious organisms.

Implementing rapid molecular technologies for TB tests that significantly reduce the time of diagnosis to two hours as opposed to six weeks, as well as molecular technologies for early infant HIV diagnosis, HIV viral load testing and CD4 testing, is part of the work currently being carried out by the University of Witwatersrands department of molecular medicine and haematology.

Life-changing technologies

These life-changing technologies implementation in South Africa and impact as a whole on global HIV and TB health will be discussed by Professor Wendy Stevens and Professor Lesley Scott at the University of the Witwatersrands faculty of health sciences 13th Prestigious Research Lecture on 14 June 2016.

Professor Wendy Stevens

Prof. Stevens is the head of department of molecular medicine and haematology in the school of pathology at Wits University. She is also the head of the national priority programme (NPP) of the National Health Laboratory Services (NHLS). Together with the national department of health, the NHLS and clinical stakeholders, Prof. Stevens put together the policy for the use of molecular technologies in South Africa - the first country to roll this out to scale. Prof Scott is the head of research and development for the NPP.

Titled "Unlocking access to global HIV and TB care through molecular diagnostics", the professors will shed light on the simple, quick, ingenious molecular technologies their teams have tirelessly worked on to use molecular technologies to improve patient care.

Given the HIV and TB co-epidemic in South Africa - where our TB-infected population has up to 65% coinfection with HIV, this is a revolution in patient healthcare that could save millions of lives.

Patients immediately identified

As a result of the use of an automated molecular diagnostic machine for TB called GeneXpert, for example, over 80% of individuals with multi-drug resistant TB, which is highly infectious, and 60% fatal, can immediately be identified. The quick turnaround for results means that patients dont go missing or infect others or die, as happened previously. In 2014, for example, approximately 9,6m people developed TB and 1,5m died globally, says Prof. Stevens.

Professor Lesley Scott

TB diagnosis can now be done at the patients bedside, irrespective of whether they are in a rural clinic or city hospital, but before such testing can be done on the machines, they must be checked that the technology is working properly. This process was almost impossible to do. Not only would it take several weeks, it also posed a severe biosafety risk because it meant transporting live organisms, sometimes over great distances, explains Prof. Scott.

Molecular technologies

Molecular technologies are also being used in HIV early infant diagnosis (EID) to determine whether the HIV virus DNA is present, and these technologies are also being used to test HIV viral loads and CD4 counts.

It is all about choosing the right technology and getting it to the right patient at the right time, says Prof. Stevens, whose team has been using molecular technologies since the 1990s for HIV testing. Today, this approach is recommended globally as the single best indicator as to whether a person is taking their HIV medication or not, or whether they have become resistant to their treatment.

With molecular technologies we can now implement highly centralised, high throughput testing and decentralised, low throughput testing in clinics and hospitals all over the country, adds Prof. Scott. This will considerably reduce the money spent on these tests while at the same time advancing, faster, simpler, more accurate testing and diagnostics in the future, potentially for any kind of disease.

Its been a tough, hard road and a huge team effort to get where we are now, she concludes.
SAN FRANCISCO - Seducing hyper-connected "Millennials" poses an increasing challenge for luxury brands, which find their markets slowing as young, sceptical consumers force them to rethink strategies.

 My Make OU  123RF.com

Goldman Sachs estimates that 92 million Americans are in the Millennial generation -- born between the early 1980s and the 2000s -- surpassing the famed cohort of postwar Baby Boomers who are now approaching a geriatric phase.

The huge pool of Millennial consumers grew up with the Internet,smartphones and a sharing economy in which owning things like cars is seen as almost unhip.

Studies show many have different expectations than their elders, who were relatively better paid and less indebted at the same point in life.

Deloitte analyst Nick Pope spoke this week at an FT Business of Luxury Summit of "a structural worry" as to whether there would be the "same level of spending in product ownership and luxury as there was in their parents' generation."

A Deloitte study targeted Millennials as an opportunity for luxury brands, but warned that they require "a high level of investment" and are more "mercurial" consumers whose brand loyalty can quickly shift.

"Their engagement with digital technology has exposed them to more sources of information, a greater range of influences, and smaller brands," the study said of Millennials.

"To attract, excite and engage Millennials will require a high level of brand investment."

Luxury-sector sales, excluding the effects of currency changes, were up only one percent last year, and similarly tepid growth is expected this year, according to global management consulting firm Bain & Company.

US jeweler Tiffany recently announced a disappointing financial forecast, and the maker of the well-known British Burberry trench coat has embarked on a money-saving plan.

"The people in the luxury space, they got very spoiled, because there was a market of people who consistently spent," Sarah Quinlan of MasterCard Advisors said on the sidelines of the FT luxury summit in San Francisco.

"That market is no longer there."

Oligarchs with lavish spending habits in oil-rich countries such as Russia and China have seen growth slowing in their countries.

It is unclear that Millennials, with their fickle and prudent spending styles, will take up the slack.

But Burberry has taken aim at those Millennials with a digital strategy cited as an example for the industry.

And LVMH, the France-based multinational luxury goods colossus, reached into the Silicon Valley talent pool last year and recruited Apple executive Ian Rogers.

Luxury brands including Burberry, Vuitton and Tiffany have taken to relying heavily on social networks such as Snapchat that are popular with young people.

Having a presence online and in social media has become a necessity for brands.

It promises to become even more important as people use smartphones while making buying decisions on the move.

Internet titans are pitching instant shopping opportunities based on time, location, interests and more.

Still, brands such as Tiffany face a problem: some young people see them as "old-world luxury" items that don't jibe with their Internet Age values and lifestyles, according to Neil Saunders of Conlumino retail research company.

Being on social networks has become a "must" in the marketing equation, but it is not enough, contended Quinlan.

"The bottom line is having something relevant that fits into their lifestyle," Quinlan said of luxury brands that court Millennials. "I don't think they've done enough to curate their brands."

The fading lure of luxury items among Millennials is "not necessarily an income problem," she contended.

Data collected by Mastercard describes consumers who choose to enhance their lives with spending on trips, dinners, outings and other experiences instead of on "stuff."

"They might buy one piece; if it's very special, it's very valuable, has a memory of a trip somewhere," Quinlan said.

Yet, Pope saw the luxury goods market as "absolutely sound," so long as brands recognize the shifts under way and offer "value enhancing" products.

Thus, companies could transform their shops into places where people can socialize and linger as they might in a coffee shop, or connect with increasingly popular historical, ethical or sustainability trends.
Most retailers recognise the importance of combining the best of digital technologies and physical stores to create a seamless and consistent customer experience across channels profitably.

There is a good reason for this. Their most valuable customers are engaging with them across all channels: store, mobile, social, and online. Some retailers find these omnichannel customers spend two to five times more than customers who purchase using only one channel.

But many retailers say it is difficult to build the right organisation to deliver their omnichannel strategy. It is easy to make mistakes, with disastrous consequences.

Consider the rough path taken by an early leader in omnichannel. The retailer recognised the need for highly aligned assortments and chose to make every merchant an omnichannel merchant, with responsibility across physical stores and digital channels. While the principle of alignment and shared vision was right, most merchants found the small digital business to be a distraction from the physical stores. Many had no experience with digital and ignored the business altogether. Digital growth stalled, even while the online market expanded 15%.

When the leadership team recognised the error, it moved quickly to reinstate a digital team, this time setting goals to accelerate digital growth considerably. However, a year later, the company found itself with highly divergent assortments, poor communication around major programmes and events, and misaligned incentives around inventory management. Growth stalled for a second year.

Where did this retailer go off course? It had twice tried to use structure to solve a problem without making the corresponding investments and clarifications in capabilities, alignment, and decision rights. By the time the retailer tackled these issues the following year, it had fallen from first place to third place among its competitors in digital sales.

This is not an unusual experience, and it highlights the dangers that retailers encounter by not making the right organisational changes required to support an omnichannel strategy. For every company that loses its place in digital sales, a rival moves up the ranks, using the disruption presented by digital retailing to gain market share.

Our analysis and work with hundreds of clients across retail sectors to navigate the omnichannel journey has helped us identify the three rules required to build a modern retail organisation.

First, be a silo buster. Many retailers have long been organised in a siloed way, often with infrequent collaboration across channel teams, or across functions such as merchandising, stores, information technology, and supply chain. This model makes it easier to run the business, but it doesnt make it easier for customers to shop seamlessly across channels.

To deliver on new omnichannel strategies and to meet the expectations of customers, retailers have no choice but to work more effectively across functions and channels. The first step is to have a clear strategy for critical omnichannel capabilities, acknowledging that those capabilities span multiple functions or channels, and require well-defined accountabilities, decision roles, and processes to co-ordinate effectively.

Take the example of "buy online, pick up in store"  or "click and collect". This capability calls for co-ordination and quick decisions across e-commerce, supply chain, and brick-and-mortar stores, as well as across planning, merchandising, and marketing functions, among others. The online channel needs to know that inventory is available in the local store.

Stores need to receive the order, reserve it for the customer, and provide great service when the customer picks it up. Supply chain and planning need to have appropriate visibility into the movement of inventory, and marketing needs to be involved to showcase the offering to customers effectively.

The second rule is to go beyond structure. Changing organisational structure alone will not give a company the muscle to develop omnichannel capabilities. All elements of a retailers operating model need to align with its strategy. This includes structure, accountabilities, governance, and essential behaviours, as well as the way people, processes, and technology are deployed.

Some omnichannel leaders have focused on designing effective processes, with clear decision roles on how functions should work together.

Others have found that co-location of people from different functions and channels helps establish learning and trust-based relationships. Some redesign metrics and incentives to encourage the right behaviours from their team. One major retailer integrated online sales into store budgets, and made store managers into "trade area managers", measuring them on sales across all channels for everyone who lives in the stores trade area.

Retailers are also defining new career paths that build cross-channel capabilities and develop the next generation of omnichannel leaders.

A caution: when companies evaluate possible operating model changes, they cannot make their choices by simply trying to replicate competitors. Operating models need to be tied to a retailers unique strategy. A company aiming to differentiate on shipping speed and reliability will have different answers than one aiming to excel on in-store experiences.

The same caution should apply when retailers decide on the capabilities they develop. There are essential capabilities, but we counsel retailers to clearly define those that will be most important to win.

A retailer that chooses to win on the basis of a highly personalised experience may invest in different data and analytics capabilities than one focused on the lowest-cost supply chain.

Success of a strategy can rest on deciding which capabilities will differentiate the company, and which will be on par with competitors.

Finally, it is important to get the timing right. Integrating too swiftly can stifle digital growth. Moving too slowly can leave a retailer stuck with disparate customer experiences across channels.

The correct choices will depend on a retailers strategy and level of systems integration and digital maturity.

In our experience, retailers at the early stages of building digital capabilities should have greater functional and channel separation to foster innovation, yet phased evolution towards a more integrated operating model is essential.

Beginner-level retailers typically have distinct cultures and metrics within channels, heavy investments in older technology, and one-to two-year investment horizons.

In contrast, expert-level retailers have more unified cultures, integrated systems and tools, and five-year-plus investment ambitions.

The radical change sweeping across the retailing world brings with it tremendous opportunities, but only for companies that are willing to reimagine organisations that are fit for the future.
While Famous Brands' insatiable hunger for acquisitions has pushed revenue higher, its investment into logistics and manufacturing operations have been the major reason behind the company's 15 consecutive years of record results.

Famous Brands CEO Kevin Hedderwick.Image credit: BDlive

In the year to end-February, the manufacturing division increased revenue 43% to R1.8bn, while operating profit jumped 43% to R247m, compared with the year-earlier period. The operating margin remained at 13.7%.

Vunani Securities small and mid-cap equity analyst Anthony Clark said on Monday the growth in manufacturing revenue and profit continued to power earnings for the largest franchisor on the JSE.

Just last week, Famous Brands announced it was acquiring French fries supplier Lamberts Bay Foods from Oceana for an undisclosed amount. Lamberts Bay Foods is one of only three local French fries manufacturers.

Famous Brands group strategic adviser Kevin Hedderwick said acquiring the manufacturer had been "a major coup" in advancing the groups goal to build capability and capacity across its logistics and manufacturing supply chain operations.

"More goods and services are made internally to trap margin. The addition of more brands just expands this push.

"But much in these results was acquisitive top-line growth, and the move they did into central kitchens, procurement, supply chain logistics  to manage their margin  has a lot to do with this growth," Clark said.

Other acquisitions in the past month alone include the 51% stake in Mexican concept restaurant Salsa Mexican Grill, and the purchase of a 51% interest in KwaZulu-Natal-based Italian concept restaurant Lupa Osteria. A total of 184 new restaurants were opened across the brand portfolio, bringing the restaurant network to 2,614, the company said.

The local restaurant environment has become extremely competitive with the added pressure of an ailing economy. Disposable income has decreased, while the number of eateries to spend it at has increased. Famous Brands services a range of living standards measures (LSM) groups. At one end, there is the quick service brands, such as Debonairs Pizza, Steers, and Fishaways. At the upper end, there are brands such as Tashas, Mythos and Mugg & Bean.

Clark said consumers in the lower to mid-end of the companys brands were taking strain, while those in higher LSM categories were proving to be resilient. The diversified portfolio of eating brand offerings was helping growth, he said.

Other JSE-listed players in the franchise business are not doing as well as Famous Brands. Data from Iress show that in the past year, Famous Brands share price has increased 5%.

In the same time frame, Tastes share price has declined 28%, while Spur Corporation has decreased 20%.

Famous Brands reported a 31% rise in full-year group revenue to R4.3bn. Operating profit rose 18% to R702m, while the operating margin was 18.4%. Headline earnings per share were up 16% to 541c. The group declared a final gross dividend of 215c per share, bringing the total cash dividend to 405c for the 2016 financial year.

Hedderwick said the "stellar results" were evidence of how the business continued to flourish despite the adverse climate.

"Famous Brands will continue to pursue further upstream manufacturing prospects and explore opportunities to grow the groups presence in the casual evening dining trade segment, as well as outside of the traditional food service sector. The board is satisfied that the platform for continued growth is firmly in place."

At the close of the JSE on Monday, the Famous Brands share price was up 3.8% to R121.45, valuing the company at about R11.7bn.
Empowerment investment company Brimstone Investment Corporation clearly has no cravings for Starbucks and Dominos Pizza.

On Monday, Brimstone reported it had sold off its 15% stake in franchise specialist Taste Holdings, which holds the local rights for Starbucks and Dominos Pizza.

Brimstone, which controls hake fishing group Sea Harvest, made its initial investment in Taste at the time of the acquisition of The Fish & Chips Co. The move is surprising, since Taste was part of Brimstones food investments, a hub that accounts for the biggest chunk of value in the empowerment company.

Brimstone chairman Fred Robertson could not be reached for comment on Monday. Speculation in the market was that Brimstone might have reconsidered the Taste investment after it became apparent it might take longer than expected to unlock value from big brands such as Starbucks and Dominos.

The costs of rolling out these brands were apparent in Tastes recently released results to end-February, which showed a major drop in earnings.

Brimstone does, though, have previous fast-food sector experience, having been invested in chicken eatery Nandos in the late 1990s during its short tenure on the JSE. The value of Brimstones stake in Taste was about R150m.

It is unlikely Brimstone exited with a meaningful profit. Even though Brimstone bought 12.4% of Taste in 2012 at 154c per share, it has followed its rights in two capital raisings by Taste at a higher price.

Brimstones annual report showed that it had last year acquired a tranche of 19.7-million shares at an average of 302c a share  markedly higher than Mondays closing price on the JSE of 255c.

This is the second small-cap investment that Brimstone, which has its biggest investments in Life Healthcare and fishing conglomerate Oceana, has sold in recent weeks. In April, the firm sold off its stake in fashion retailer Rex Trueform and holding company African & Overseas Enterprises.
As livestock farmers in drought-stricken areas struggle to keep their animals alive and grain farmers begin planning for the coming season, Shell has donated R1 million to Agri SA's Drought Relief Fund.

Mart Bouter via Wikimedia Commons - Namaqualand, Northern Cape

The funds donated by Shell will go towards supporting farmers in Springbok and surrounding communities in the Namaqualand region of the Northern Cape. This region has been severely affected by the drought and commercial, as well as small-scale farmers, are struggling to save their animals.

Johannes Moller, president of Agri SA, says they have been assisting more than 12,000 farmers and over 8,657 farm workers and community members so far this year with drought relief in severely affected areas, through the contributions received by members of the public and various companies, like Shell. All farmers are affected by the drought  commercial, game, small-scale and red meat producers. In the recent past, the Limpopo province was also declared a disaster area and now, even more donations will be required to bring relief through the winter months."

Anton Niemann, general manager sales: commercial lubricants at Shell explains, throughout Shells 113-year history in South Africa, agriculture has always been a key part of our business focus. We are extremely proud to have been associated with agriculture for all these years and we realize how important a productive and effective agriculture industry is for the well-being and food security of our country. He continues, one of our core values as a business is caring for the environment and people where we have operations. This gesture demonstrates our appreciation for the agricultural sector which has been a strategic partner to Shell SA over several years.

South Africa continues to face one of the worst droughts to hit the region in 20 years. Many small farmers are expected to go out of business as food production and prices increase. Niemann says although government has contributed a significant amount towards drought relief the public sector cannot address this dire situation alone and additional support from the private sector is crucial.
AGT Foods Africa hosted a big pulse fest on Friday 27 May 2016 at its premises in Krugersdorp. The chosen dish was "potjiekos" - a uniquely South African dish enjoyed by all.

Left to right: Ansie van der Merwe (AGT Foods Africa), Henriette Gilchrist (AGT Foods Africa), Nuala Lawlor (Trade Commissioner Canadian High Commission Trade Office) and Sandra McCardell (High Commissioner to South Africa - Namibia, Lesotho, Mauritius and Madagascar)

The AGT "Potjiekos" cook-off is part of a global initiative to promote pulses. The aim is to increase awareness, demand, utilisation and production of pulses worldwide.

A "potjie" is the perfect dish for adding pulses, i.e. chickpeas, lentils, beans and dried peas. Pulses are some of the most overlooked yet critical food sources on the planet. With South Africa facing serious water shortages, pulses need to be marketed to the South African public as a healthy, cost effective and tasty alternative to meat, or even as an addition to meat.

"Potjiekos" has been part of South Africas culture for many centuries. Its re-emergence in the late 1970s coincided with the increase in meat prices at the time and it was then that food magazines and books started publishing articles and recipes on "potjies". Fifty years later, the message needs to be even stronger to change mindsets and eat for a healthier and sustainable world. The 2016 International Year of Pulses is the single largest opportunity to increase awareness of pulses.

National Dish of South Africa - Traditional Potjie

Ingredients

1 large knob of butter or oil (30 mL, 4 tbsp)

3 onions, chopped

1 fresh chili pepper, finely chopped

3 garlic cloves, crushed

500g pack of fresh mushrooms, whole

1kg stewing beef (bone on), cut in chunks

500g mixture of sugar beans, red kidney beans, white kidney beans, haricot beans, black-eyed beans (pre- soaked overnight)

4 carrots, roughly chopped and other seasonal vegetables of your choice

12 baby potatoes

2 tins of creamed sweet corn

500mL beef stock

50mL mixed herbs

Salt and Pepper to taste

1/2 cup red wine (optional)

Method

Braise onions and mushrooms in butter and flavoured salt.

Add chili and garlic and saute for 2 minutes.

Add beef, return the lid and let it steam for 5 minutes.

Add carrots and potatoes and other vegetables. Cover and let steam for 5 minutes.

Add beans, sweetcorn, 500ml beef stock, 50mL mixed herbs and  cup red wine (optional).

Cover pot and leave to cook for 20 minutes.

Keep covered and simmer for 1.5 hours, monitoring to ensure that mixture does not dry out.

Add the fresh mushrooms about 20 minutes before serving.
This May, urbanists around the world have been celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Jane Jacobs . The American-Canadian author and activist's spirited defence of inner-city neighbourhoods inspired a generation of urban activists and place-makers. So what might Jacobs have to teach a new generation of urbanists and planners?

Jane Jacobs holds up documentary evidence at a 1961 press conference during the campaign to save the West Village. Wikimedia Commons

Much of Jacobs' legacy stems from the successful David and Goliath campaigns she led in the late 1950s and 1960s against the development plans of Manhattans master builder Robert Moses.

Her first battle, to prevent an extension of Fifth Avenue that would have torn apart her beloved Washington Square Park, was followed by a series of protracted community campaigns. These ultimately saved some of Manhattans most iconic neighbourhoods  Greenwich Village, SoHo, Little Italy  from slum clearance and demolition.

At this time, many Americans were retreating to the suburbs, and city planners  epitomised by Moses, then head of the powerful Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, which managed vast tracts of land in New York City  imposed their comprehensive city plans on neighbourhoods, with scant input from local communities.

Working under the spell of Le Corbusiers vision of the Radiant City (Ville Radieuse), planners like Moses saw themselves playing the heroic role of a citys surgeon. They justified their radical urban plans through appeals to natural or scientific principle. For Le Corbusier, automobiles were machines of circulation, the lifeblood of the 20th century; cities needed them to avoid stagnation.

World Streets

In love with the sidewalk ballet

Jacobs resisted this vision. In her first and most influential book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs attacked planners for ruining the cultures of cities. She saw the modernist vision of cities as:

 the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served.

Jacobs wrote:

When city designers try to find a design device that will express, in a clear and easy fashion, the skeleton of city structure (expressways and promenades are current favourites for this purposes) they are on fundamentally the wrong track. A citys very structure consists of a mixture of uses  We get close to its structural secrets when we deal with the conditions that generate diversity.

Instead of city spines and clean lines, she asked her readers to look more closely at what makes a street really work. She loved the intricate sidewalk ballet, a complex order that helped to maintain public safety and wellbeing through a constant succession of eyes.

The complexity of a place made it impossible to replicate.

The ballet of the good city never repeats itself from place to place, and in any one place it is always replete with new observations.

Jacobs polemic against urban planning would become its orthodoxy. Death and Life has been required reading for students of urban planning for decades. Today they learn of the failed spaces created by modernist planners and the geographies of single-use enclaves and far-flung highways they spawned.

Jacobs' campaigning inspired urban activists around the world to stage protests in their own cities. This helped usher in a new era of citizen-centric planning frameworks.

As Saskia Sassen wrote recently, it was Jacobs who first urged the need to recognise the value of place when considering the implementation of urban policies.

Is Jane Jacobs still relevant or useful?

Although Jacobs is a profoundly influential figure in 20th-century urbanism, in many respects her radicalism can feel like it belongs to another era.

The Manhattan districts she fought to preserve represent some of the most expensive real estate in the world, so its hard to disagree that a citys dense, historic core might be worth preserving. Economist Edward Glaeser talks about Jacobs Spillovers  the transfers of knowledge and activity that help to explain the generation of wealth in cities like New York and London.

Some might even ask: was Jacobs simply one of the first to fly the NIMBY flag against any developments taking place within the prized neighbourhoods they helped to gentrify?

But if we take a closer look at what Jacobs had to say  and how she said it  it becomes clear her ideas remain as radical and important as they were in the 1960s.

This is perhaps no more so than in relation to rise of the smart city.

Smart cities and the rise of a new urban science

Todays smart cities are big business, powered by the potential for big data and the internet of things to improve the efficiencies of urban systems. Smart cities offer solutions to improve transport management, make better investment decisions, improve accountability and promote transparent decision-making.

The premise is that with so much data (big data) being produced, planners, governments and researchers can better understand cities as complex systems, and make better decisions about how they are planned and managed.

This explosion of data in cities  from traffic data, through mobile communications data to sensor data capturing the behaviour of natural systems and the everyday uses of infrastructure assets  is giving rise to a new urban science.

This incorporates machine learning, predictive analytics and complexity science. Its champions  such as Mike Batty and Luis Bettencourt  argue that we are starting to see the emergence of Jacobs' sidewalk ballet in data-driven form.

But while the rise of big data and smart cities opens up possibilities for cities that were previously unthinkable, we should also be wary of the limitations.

The fine arts of urban observation

Jacobs wasnt simply claiming that cities should be understood as complex systems.

At a perhaps deeper level, Jacobs was arguing against visions of the city over-determined by the technologies that produce them: for LeCorbusier, as for Moses, the view of the city enabled by the innovation of flight helped give rise to new urban utopias like the Radiant City.

http://wearedata.watchdogs.com/

In writing Death and Life, Jacobs was also resisting the dominance of expert knowledge about a city, in favour of a democracy of lived experiences and everyday insights. She once reflected that:

 learning and thinking about city streets and the trickiness of city parks launched me into an unexpected treasure hunt.

As a new generation of planners are taught of the possibilities of a data-driven urban science, we need to remember that Jacobs' love of the sidewalk ballet also gave voice to the multiple languages, meanings, experiences and knowledge systems that underpin a vibrant urban culture.

Not all of these can be rendered by data-driven systems. Hopefully, the best insights into a citys infinite complexity wont only be produced by those trained with the skills to generate insights from big data.

Kael Greco, MIT Senseable City Lab

The data exhaust of our daily lives will increasingly shape the way cities are understood. Much work remains to be done to ensure a cities data infrastructure is valued as a fundamental public asset.

But I can hear Jacobs issuing a word of warning: dont forget to keep taking unexpected treasure hunts through city parks and keep your eyes on the street (not on your phones!). And keep listening out for different lived experiences and ways of knowing a place  not only those that can be rendered real-time as the data flows of complex systems.


Disruption, disruptors and technology are reinventing how we live our lives at home and work and exponential technologies are likely to eliminate 60% of the jobs we know today. If employers and employees do not get to grips with what this means for companies, they are not guaranteed of work in the future.

Next industrial revolution is here

Not for the first time are we experiencing a revolution that is threatening jobs and disrupting industries; think of the agricultural revolution, industrial revolution and even more recently in the technology age, how word processors obliterated the typing pool.

The next industrial revolution is here. People connected in real time by mobile phones and billions of connected sensors, are resulting in a revolution driving efficiency and productivity. Devices are getting cheaper, more powerful and more efficient which is pushing the internet into the industrial world. In this world, capital expenditure is giving way to monthly operating costs, where for example, the low cost of cloud computing allows for the growth of greenfields organisations, which means more entrepreneurship and resultant innovation.

In this tech-era, companies should measure themselves on their responsiveness, not just the traditional assets and regulatory frameworks that have secured their success in the past. Competitors of the future will likely not be the same as the past and they will be faster, cheaper and do it better than you can. There is not an industry unaffected.

Employees need to reinvent themselves too

It is highly unlikely that businesses of the future will insource all functions. The business model is likely to be a mix of own and outsourced pieces and employees will need skills in managing outsourced relationships.

On-demand skills must be mixed with full time teams in order to allow companies to rapidly scale up and down based on innovation cycles, but also to ensure they are constantly resourced with current and best-of-breed skills. In order to stay competitive, companies will need to ensure that their permanent employees stay current too.

Over 53 million Americans are already participating in the part time gig or on-demand economy. We expect this to grow over time.

Websites such as Freelancer and Upwork (which is not yet active in South Africa) have allowed employers to find skills more easily. These trends will continue. In fact over the decade ending in 2015, the only net growth in staffing in the US market was in the gig economy, primarily Uber drivers.

Reskilling for emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence/machine learning, big data, virtual and augmented reality, blockchain, robotics and the internet of things will soon be essential. Many of these technologies are coming out of a deceptive phase and becoming disruptive in the unlikeliest of industries. Robots are advising financial services clients, virtual reality is being used to solve pain issues in the medical realm and driverless cars have completed many millions of kilometres in California and Texas.

21st century skills not about reading, writing, arithmetic

Companies and individuals who want to stay relevant will need to be up to date and competent in many of these technologies. If we carry on providing broadcast education rather than training for the attributes required in the 21st century, we are doing our youth and ourselves a disservice, as they will be incompetent to cope in the workplace.

The qualities of curiosity, initiative, persistence, adaptability, leadership, social and cultural awareness are the basic foundational requirements for success in the new world of work. In addition, cross-team collaboration, creative thinking and prototyping are going to be the key attributes in a high-speed world.

Moreover, when you think that people are also starting to live longer  the current mean lifespan of 67 could well start to reach 100 over the next two decades  workers may be forced to work for longer and have to stay up to date with technology changes too.

The good news is that significant opportunities exist to grow skills outside of schools and universities, with massive online open courses (MOOCs) being offered by organisations like MIT, Coursera and iTunesU.

Proof of change

Just in case you are still not convinced that the disruption trend is here to stay and will have a significant impact on the world of work, consider the following.

Business messaging service Slack is working on bots that will replace managers roles to get updates, follow up on tasks and send information to others. This type of technology will start to erode the roles of middle managers. Expect big improvements in productivity.

Airbnb has bought a blockchain company. The reason is to build a digital reputation system, which makes ratings immutable and could be used on the site to access premium properties, or elsewhere as a form of digital ID (not unlike a credit rating). It is early days yet, but one gets a sense of how this technology will be used in future.

Many new industries will use people initially, but automate tasks as technology matures. An example is Uber and Lyft investing in self driving cars, Airbnb looking to unlock doors to rented homes using a mobile app (as against a person playing the key giver role), and online concierge services using artificial intelligence to replace humans.

We are living in very exciting times, but they are scary times for those who are not investing in their skills. Short term shedding of jobs is inevitable so standing still it just not an option when it comes to upskilling. However, there are many new opportunities being created also. Think about how Airbnb and Uber have absorbed excess capacity; imagine when excess human capacity can be economically harnessed, it will create exciting new markets. I hope you will be ready.
With the draft International Arbitration Bill soon to be tabled in Parliament, Bizcommunity asked Jackwell Feris and Jonathan Ripley-Evans, Directors in Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr's Dispute Resolution Practice, to give us some more insight as to what this means for the South African legal landscape.

Why introduce an International Arbitration Act?

International arbitration is a trans-national mechanism for the resolution of international commercial disputes between parties residing (or incorporated) in different states in a manner which avoids a foreign party from being subjected to the discretion of the courts of another state. The purpose of international arbitration is to encourage the resolution of disputes in a neutral forum, subject to the rules and procedure expressly agreed between the parties without the fear of interference from any judicial system.

Almost 18 years ago, the South African law commission recommended the adoption of an International Arbitration Act. For a number of reasons the proposed International Arbitration Act was not finalised and tabled in parliament. However due to South Africa's ever increasing need to foster and support the resolution of international commercial and/or investment disputes by multinationals or other foreign corporations doing business in South Africa, including using South Africa as the so-called "gateway" to the rest of Africa, it has become important for government to ensure that the South African legislation governing international arbitration is harmonised through the adoption of UNICTRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration ("Model Law").

The Model Law was developed by the UN in an effort to establish a uniform international arbitration system that is acceptable to all member states with different legal, social and economic systems and to contribute to the development of harmonious international economic relations.

South Africa has historically not differentiated between domestic and international arbitration and, as a result, all arbitrations in South Africa whether domestic or international are subjected to the oversight of local courts. Once the International Arbitration Act comes into force, it will be applicable to international arbitrations and the current Arbitration Act will continue to apply only to domestic arbitrations. This move is not only in line with international trends but is largely regarded as the absolute minimum requirement if South Africa is to encourage parties to resolve international disputes by means of international arbitration in South Africa.

What does the introduction of the International Arbitration Act mean for access to justice?

Whilst the promulgation of the International Arbitration Act will not directly "promote" access to justice, it will facilitate the resolution of international commercial disputes with minimal interference by the South African courts.

By limiting the grounds for interference by South African courts, foreign parties will be encouraged to resolve their disputes in South Africa and to this end the new Act may promote access to justice, albeit in respect of foreign parties. In addition, arbitration in general, by its very nature, is a more expeditious form of dispute resolution than court litigation and may in this manner, further promote access to justice.

How can arbitration bring legal cost down?

The real benefit in using arbitration as opposed to court proceedings lies in the ability to provide a swift resolution to disputes (compared to court litigation). As a result of the reduction in time taken to resolve disputes, the costs associated therewith may very well be lower than those associated with protracted court litigation. This is however not necessarily the case. In any arbitration, the parties to the dispute will be liable for not only the costs of their own representations, but also the costs of the arbitrator and the institution (if nominated) appointed for the administration of the arbitration. The costs of the arbitrator and the institution involved are not costs which a litigant would have to bear in court litigation.

What is the litigation arena like in the rest of Africa and how long will it take for them to get equivalent arbitration legislation?

In relation to international arbitration in Africa, South Africa is anything but the leader in the field. It is intended that with the International Arbitration Act, the UNICITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration will be incorporated into law, in South Africa. As things presently stand, South Africa will be the 11th country in Africa to adopt the UNICITRAL Model Law (which is largely regarded as the framework upon which many countries have based their domestic laws relating to international arbitration).

A robust international arbitration legislative framework is required in order to, amongst others, ensure that parties involved in international disputes in South Africa are not concerned with the unnecessary interference by courts in the proceedings and that international arbitration awards in South Africa are rendered effective without the need to debate the nature of thereof (whether a domestic or foreign arbitral award) when one is required to enforce such award in other legal jurisdiction. This does not necessarily mean, however, that the award will be enforced in another country. To this end, the convention on the recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards (New York convention) provides assistance in that signatories to the convention all agree to enforce foreign arbitral awards (subject to certain exclusions). South Africa is a signatory to the New York convention but not all African countries are. This in itself causes problems with enforcement in Africa.

Notwithstanding the difficulties faced with the enforcement of foreign arbitral awards in Africa, the continent is alive to the need for the advancement in this field of law and recent developments (for example in Mauritius) are evidence of the continent's commitment in the cause.

What is the best thing about these changes for South African businesses?

Once the new regime comes into force, disputants can take comfort in the fact that the South African International Arbitration regime will at least accord with international best practice and this should encourage parties to agree to the resolution of disputes by means of international arbitration, in South Africa. Being a Model Law jurisdiction for the resolution of international commercial and/or investment disputes, foreign businesses doing business in Africa may well choose South Africa as the natural choice for the seat of such arbitrations, in the event of a dispute. There is no direct benefit for South African businesses, save if such business enterprise is conducting business in the rest of Africa it may be easier to convince parties to the commercial transaction to choose South Africa as, amongst others, the seat for the resolution of any potential future dispute.

Will it require training of South African jurists?

For many years, South Africa (and Africa in general) has to lesser extent been actively involved in the resolution of international commercial disputes. There are a number of historic reasons for that which we do not intend to deal with at this stage, thus international arbitration has mostly been driven by the western world, recently also certain Asian jurisdictions. South African jurists have been practicing domestic arbitrations for many years, so the concept of arbitration is not new to our legal practitioners.

The above notwithstanding, international arbitration requires a particular skillset developed through a devoted interest and active participation in the field driving the need to upskill both practitioners and the judiciary (through training, seminars and actual exposure to such work). Such initiatives would highlight the fundamental differences between international and domestic arbitrations.

Once the International Arbitration Act is promulgated, we foresee a need for specialised court rules to be developed, guiding judges as to how they should approach matters involving international arbitration, in order to ensure that the judicial officers provide the necessary support to the development of international arbitration in South Africa (without involving the courts in a manner which acts contrary to the foundational principles of international arbitration).

Do we have enough desire to drive the change  what is the UN's view?

From a South Africa government perspective, we understand that there is a desire to ensure that South Africa adopts an international arbitration Act despite an 18 year delay in tabling the bill. In the interim however, countries such as Mauritius and Rwanda have already taken the lead by developing "centres of excellence" for international arbitration in Africa and South Africa cannot afford to be left behind in this field. From an infrastructure perspective South Africa is best place in SADC to develop a centre for excellence for the resolution of international commercial and/or investment disputes.

The UN has set the framework for the development of a Model Law for international commercial arbitration, it is for South Africa as a sovereign state to decide whether it intends conforming with international norms for the settlement of international commercial disputes. Even though the Model Law was developed almost 31 years ago by the UN it still remains relevant today for the resolution of international commercial and/or investment disputes. The Model Law is periodically revised to accord with current practices and norms, the last revision being done in 2006.

The proposed International Arbitration Act is a positive step for South Africa and demonstrates the political will from government with regard to the resolution of international commercial and/or investment disputes.
Recent reports about the South African housing sector have tended to be gloomy.

Commenting on these, John Smyth, CEO of the bond originators Multi Net Mortgages, highlighted several salient points in the latest ABSA Home Loans Review, which he described as always giving us a comprehensive and thorough picture of the current scene. Almost all of the points initially selected by Smyth reflected a less than satisfactory situation, but he then went on to express a guarded confidence in the future and gave his reasons for this.

Points Smyth believes are now relevant:

The South African GDP annualised growth rate is now growing at a dismal 0,6% and is likely to continue at that level for the remainder of the year.



At the same time the consumer price inflation is expected to be close to 7% this year, largely because of the drought and high fuel costs.



The household sector is experiencing ongoing financial pressure.

When one looks at ABSAs latest household debt and debt servicing figures in relation to incomes, said Smyth, it is clear that the South African consumer is battling. Household debt now comprises about 79% of household income, a figure that is far too high for an emerging economy  and in general, debtors are defaulting more often and taking longer to pay off their loans. Although the growth in household expenditure has slowed to only 1,6%, savings have declined noticeably and it is regrettably true that almost half of South Africas supposedly creditworthy population are black listed as regards big loans.

ABSA, said Smyth, have also made it clear that the amount of housing funded by mortgage repayments has continued throughout this year to deteriorate.

What, therefore, as Smyth sees them, are the encouraging factors in the current situation?

From a buyers viewpoint, he said, the very marked slowdown in house price growth to 4,7% this year and a projected 4,3% for 2017 will inevitably open up the market to some who right now are debarred by lack of resources. This is particularly the case in the luxury home market which flourished in 2014/2015 but is now showing close to 0% growth. Even in the popular middle segment, growth of  5% will before the end of this year create new opportunities for buyers.

Coupled to these facts, said Smyth, is a steadily growing appreciation among lower income earners and township residents of the value of home ownership.

Nowhere in South Africa have house prices fared as well and resisted downturns as effectively as they have done in the former township suburbs. Here the growth is currently up to 11.90%.

Also encouraging, said Smyth, is the surprising rise in coastal region properties, particularly those of the Cape, Southern Cape and the Hibiscus Coast (north of Durban). Here, he said, house values are growing by 8% per annum and there appears to be no end to the trend. This rise in house price growth is largely fuelled by the belief that the local government and security services in the coastal areas tend to be better than those inland.

Smyth concluded his remarks by quoting what Allister Sparks, former editor of the Rand Daily Mail and an international award winner for journalism, said at the recent Franschhoek Literary Festival.

Mr Sparks commented that South Africa had come through so many difficult periods already that it seemed to have gained an inborn resilience and an ability to ride out extremely difficult times. There can be no doubt that current times, with the economy being in such a parlous state, are difficult  but I go along with Mr Sparks in believing that we have the backbone in the country and the housing sector to overcome all these obstacles and I predict that by the end of 2018 average house price growth across all segments will again be in a marked upward trajectory.
When it comes to choosing office space, many factors have to be considered, among them pricing, flexibility and convenience.

Whether you buy or rent, Doing your homework is imperative to making the right decision when choosing office space, says Ndibu Motuang, head of commercial property at Lightstone.

First, decide on your budget, and the area in which you would like to have your premises, says Wayne Windell, managing director of Cube Workspace. Having a very clear idea of your prerequisites will help to narrow your search and lessen the time spent hunting.

Next, consider whats important to your businesss needs, says Motuang. Adequate functional amenities such as parking facilities, access to transport and conferencing facilities are some of the aspects to factor into your decision.

Free parking in the area can be vital, especially when your office space is in a built-up area and parking is at a premium. Dont find yourself paying R20,000 rental for your office space and R11,000 for parking, as there is no other option in your area, warns Ryan Joffe, CEO of Ryan Joffe Properties.

Find out if there any add-ons that as a conventional lessee you couldnt normally afford, for instance, an onsite IT specialist or conference facilities with high-tech facilities, advises Windell.

Costs of occupation

Then there are all the costs of occupation to consider, such as municipal rates and other running costs. Areas with increasing values usually mean more municipal rates. Take Sandton, Bryanston and Rosebank, for example, says Motuang. Their valuation over the past five years has skyrocketed, as newer and better buildings are erected. As a tenant, you would have to make a decision whether you can afford to be there or move to a lesser quality node, as the lease will reflect these additional costs by you paying a much higher price per m2.

Also be aware of hidden costs. Make sure that any changes prior to moving in, maintenance, operating costs and common-area costs are put into the lease, warns Windell, as these can run into the thousands.

Leasing provides much more flexibility than a mortgage. As your company grows you may need to acquire more space, and with a mortgage it can be a much more complicated process to move, as this would involve having to sell or let out the premises.

Read the fine print

When signing a lease, carefully read the fine print, Joffe advises. Ask for the inclusion of clauses that can benefit you, such as one that restricts the landlord from leasing to another business that is similar to yours. And check the termination clause closely, as you may need to terminate your lease due to loss of sales, bankruptcy or changes in the structure of the business. With a break clause in place, you will not be held liable to pay out the lease till its expiration date.

Knowing the current rental market in South Africa is important - in the past few years there has been a significant increase in good office space to lease, and rentals have not increased significantly due to this fact. If your rental has been escalating at 10% annually, it means that when you signed a lease at R150 per m2 in 2011, the monthly rental for a 200m office space would be R30,000 per month. With a 10% annual escalation it means by the end of a five-year lease, the rental costs would be R242 per m2 or R48,315 per month. That is a 61% increase from when the initial lease was signed. If you had negotiated a 6% increase per annum, you would have saved a substantial amount.
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A photo posted by Inspirato (@inspirato) on Mar 8, 2016 at 12:32pm PST
A stay in one of the air stream trailers at Old Mac Daddy in Elgin has been on my bucket list since they opened. Luckily, last week, this item on the list was satisfactorily ticked off, with a stay in the aptly named trailer: The Dream.

While in the beautiful Elgin area I thought it best to do some exploring and, with the help of the kind folk of Rabbit in a Hat PR and Elgin Valley Tourism, a tasty itinerary was set up - predominantly consisting of eating and drinking. Well, actually, only of eating and drinking - no complaints here.

I would strongly recommend exploring Elgin round about this time of year. The end of May, early June equals beautiful still days with autumnal reds and golds at every turn. We were blessed with sunny days throughout our stay, which were perfect for forest strolls or hikes to help offset the high calorie intake. The nights were breath-shockingly nippy and ideal for indulgent red wine quaffing and gourmet food scoffing in front of fireplaces. (Plus there are some great winter specials around this time of year.)

Living the dream

We did just this on our first night in Elgin at Brinny Breezes, the Old Mac Daddy restaurant. Two roaring fireplaces kept us toasty as well as hearty dishes of oxtail and mash and Durban-style chicken curry, both beautifully complemented by the cheekily named Horny Owl Shiraz.

After dinner we headed back to our dreamy trailer for an early night. Inspired by the painting of the same name by Henri Rousseau, the trailer envelops you into a densely lush green jungle mural stretching from floor to ceiling. The trailer is attached to an airy living room, bathroom and balcony all boasting amazing views of the estate and Elgin Valley.

Old Mac Daddy offers many activities, such as nature hikes, fishing, zorbing, stand-up paddling and mountain biking; however we busied ourselves with a leisurely stroll around the property before checking out, taking in Instagram-worthy views from the edge of the dam, which include a little baby beach and bar with hammocks, loungers and beanbags.

Hickory country y'all

The next stop was the charming Hickory Shack just down the road from Old Mac Daddy for an overindulgent lunch. Only a few months old, this smokehouse and restaurant is already getting foodies to take note. Utilising a cantilever pit and old-style Southern barbecue flavours, the meat is all deliciously and subtly smoked and includes an array of chicken wings, baby back ribs, beef brisket and pulled pork. I sampled ribs straight out of the smoker as well as beautifully rich and sweet beef brisket with generous sides of tomato-ey beans, corn salad, the best buttermilk mash and crispy slaw. Note: Go hungry when paying a visit to the Hickory Shack. In fact its preferable if you maybe havent eaten in a few days. The chef Mac, enthusiastically explained the smoking process to us as well as the Hickory Shack history and even allowed us to sample every unique ice cream flavour on offer. What a doll!

Autumn on a plate

Substantially stuffed, we eagerly headed off to the next venue, a check in at Cottage 1902 at the Oak Valley Wine Estate for a necessary digestive nap upon its sun-kissed king-sized bed. The cottage offers the only self-catering accommodation at Oak Valley. As the name suggests, the estate is nestled amongst an oak forest and vineyard, and also houses the lovely Pool Room restaurant, which mainly caters for breakfast and lunch; however it's open for dinner on a Friday night. Fortunately, we managed to digest our Hickory Shack mega lunch enough to take advantage of this. I sampled some of the Oak Valleys famous free-range acorn-fed pork accompanied with crunch reverberating crackling, pork-filled pancake, roasted baby carrots, sweet potato puree and apple compote. Basically, autumn on a plate - so elegantly warming and comforting.

The following day heralded the end of our two-night stay in the charming Elgin Valley; however there is one more stop you have to make when heading through or to Elgin, even if its just for padkos. We ended our Elgin experience with brunch at the Peregrine Farm Stall cafe as well as picking up a few delicacies from the farm stall before heading back to the Mother City.
SA National Space Agency (SANSA) and Airbus Defence and Space held a World Cafe event at The Innovation Hub in Pretoria. The event was the culmination of an OpenIX open innovation challenge through which over two dozen small companies, entrepreneurs and scientists developed innovative technologies and applications using earth observation data.

These respondent organisations developed a range of solutions across various industries including forestry and agriculture, urban planning, insurance, and computer gaming. The aim of World Cafe was to directly assist the entrepreneurs in further commercialising their ideas by creating relationships between these entrepreneurs and representatives of almost 40 different client and investor groups. In total, 74 stakeholders from organisations including Hollard, Absa Capital, Eskom, Tom Tom and the South African Maritime Safety Authority were on hand to discuss the merits and opportunities presented by a select group of entrepreneurs.

The World Cafe approach allowed direct, conversational exchanges between parties, much in the same way 'speed dating' introduces individuals to each other. Organisers hoped to help empower and support new entrants to the earth observation industry in South Africa, bringing to life new innovations, new products and new companies that can create lasting change in society.

Open Innovation Challenge

The winners of the original OpenIX open innovation were also announced at the event. The main prize - site visits to Airbus Defence and Spaces operations in Toulouse, France as well as introductions to Airbus Defence and Spaces global organisation - was won by Drone Clouds, who provide farmers with data and insights about plant stress to increase crop yields.

Drone Clouds

All finalists, with solutions ranging from insurance for emerging farmers, and artisanal mining to data analytics are being considered for incubation with The Innovation Hub in Pretoria. The OpenIX open innovation challenge was hosted by The Innovation Hub, together with RIIS, an open innovation consultancy in South Africa.
China is ranked as one of the countries with the worst traffic congestion in the world. In 2010, its national highway spanning 50 lanes was completely gridlocked for twelve days.

For more than six years engineer Song Youzhou has been working on a transport system that would outsmart and hopefully alleviate traffic in the country. His solution is the Transit Explore Bus, a bus that can straddle two lanes thanks to its tunnel-shaped base, designed for vehicles to drive through.

The first prototype of the design was revealed at the Beijing International High-Tech Expo back in 2010. At the same expo this year, Youzhou demonstrated how the system will work with a small-scale model of the Transit Explore Bus. The engineer says that the first prototype will be ready for testing in July or August 2016.

The bus can travel at up to 60 kilometres per hour and has the capacity to transport 1,400 commuters. Its concave base creates a tunnel that leaves the road clear for vehicles under two metres to pass underneath the carriages above. Youzhou told the Chinese press that the bus has the same function as the subway, but it costs only 16% of what a subway costs," adding that the construction time is also much shorter.

Like an electric tram, the bus will run along a track and draw power from overhead electric contact wires. If the buses were to be released onto Chinas major road networks and replace standard buses, they would not only save road space and ease congestion but they would also help to decrease the level of carbon emission pollution in the air.
Global vehicle tracking and fleet management solutions company, Ctrack and Standard Bank will be hosting the third annual TruckX exhibition and conference on 2 August 2016 at the Sandton Convention Centre with a focus on providing insights to fleet owners and operators in addressing issues faced today.

DEZALB via pixabay

TruckX has grown exponentially since its launch in 2014, with more than 700 delegates that attended last years event. This year it will again facilitate interactive panel discussions, featuring a powerful line-up of industry experts to offer businesses a one-day platform to reflect on issues critical to the industry, developments, and opportunities.

Speakers that will present at the conference include economist Dawie Roodt, chief economist for the Efficient Group, Outa chairman Wayne Duvenage and CEO of RAC Group Eugene Herbert. Popular South African comedian Joey Rasdien will be the Master of Ceremonies to lighten some of the messages.

The event will furthermore include an exhibition which will provide a platform for fleet owners to engage with companies that play a key role in the trucking and logistics sector. Current, new and innovative products, technologies and initiatives will be featured.

Topping the agenda for this years conference is analysing local and global industry trends over the last three decades, how the industry transformed and looking into the future. In-depth discussions surrounding the current economic climate and its impact on the industry will also take place, as well as concerns around the safety of truck drivers.

In the transport world, turnaround time is everything, and as such we appreciate the fact that fleet owners will take time out of their busy schedule to attend this event. Our goal is to provide insightful and relevant information that will add significant value to their day-to-day operations, said Hein Jordt, MD of Ctrack Fleet Management Solutions.

With its expertise in transport, fleet management, and renewed supplier focus, Standard Bank Vehicle and Asset Finance understands the demands and stresses for industry players, especially in the current economic and regulatory climate, said Toni Fritz, head of vehicle and asset finance, business markets at Standard Bank.
Media company eMedia Holdings was in talks to renew its contract with DStv for its 24-hour news channel, which had been on the payTV platform for more than seven years, it said on Friday. eMedia is the holding company of assets such as eSat.tv, e.tv, radio station Yfm and Sasani Africa.

123RF

The contract with DStv is coming to an end this month, but all indications were that DStv would like to enter into a new agreement and keep the news channel on its platform, said eMedia Holdings.

Although eMedia's group head of corporate affairs Vasili Vass would not go into details about the negotiations, he said the media group was "of the view that the new deal will not be significantly better than our current agreement".

The 24-hour news channel, eNews Channel Africa (eNCA), is the most-watched 24-hour news channel in SA, with a share of more than 50% of viewers who watch news, according to eSat.tv. eSat.tv's sister company e.tv has been at loggerheads with DStv owner MultiChoice over the encryption of decoders to be used for digital TV.

eMedia Holdings reported a 1.7% increase in revenue from continuing operations to R2.4bn for the year to March.

The group ended the year with a R63.6m loss attributable to the equity owners of the company, compared to a profit in the previous year of R124.8m.

The eMedia loss takes into account a loss of R144.8m for discontinued operations.

Advertising revenue at e.tv came under pressure as a result of a sharp drop in market share. The company had to review its schedule to correct the falling market share. These changes have resulted in a recovery of the channel's market share.

The recovery, however, came at considerable investment by the company in local programming, which resulted in cost of sales ending the year on R1.09bn, compared to R983m the previous year, an increase of 10.9%, the company said.

The free-to-air satellite platform OpenView has grown its users to 425,000.

Vass would not comment on when the platform was expected to be profitable. He said the platform formed part of eMedia Holdings' long-term multichannel strategy.

Source: Business Day
A $60m loan will finance capital expenditure tor Zambia's Electricity Supply Corporation's (Zesko) Lusaka Transmission and Distribution Rehabilitation Project (LTDRP) as well as provide bridge financing to facilitate new connections to the grid.

In this transaction, Standard Chartered has partnered with the US government, through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), to deliver a term loan to the energy supplier, making this one of the largest facilities that the agency has delivered within President Obamas Power Africa partnership since the campaigns launch in 2013.

Meeting a critical need

Part of our strategic plan is to improve the quality of electricity and enhance connections to the national grid, commented Zesco's managing director, Victor Mundende. USAID and Standard Chartereds support has already delivered more than 15,000 new power connections. Furthermore, some of the funds provided will be used for other scheduled power system upgrades, contributing to new and existing connections to homes and businesses across the country. Zesco remains committed to meeting its aspirations of electrifying 60% of Zambia by 2030.

USAID/Zambia mission director, Michael Yates, added, Power Africa is a broad partnership which aims to boost economic development, by providing access to electricity to homes and businesses across Africa. This is one of our largest commitments in Africa to date, and will enable us to meet a critical need for a quarter of a million Zambians and the economy as a whole.

Second Power Africa partnership

Andrew Okai, CEO of Standard Chartered Zambia, commented, By using our strengths in structuring financial solutions which promote economically enhancing partnerships and improve the lives of individuals, Standard Chartered can demonstrate our promise to be 'here for good'. This is the banks second Power Africa partnership to benefit Zambia, with the first being Standard Chartereds private equity investment in Zambian Energy Corporation.

For this Zesco/USAID partnership, Standard Chartered acted as the global coordinator, structuring bank, bookrunner, mandated lead arranger, facility agent and account bank. The international bank demonstrated its commitment to President Obamas Power Africa campaign, which was launched in 2013, by more than doubling its original commitment to $5bn
The annual AFDA Experimental Festival will take place live at its Johannesburg campus (17-18 June), Cape Town campus (15-19 June) and Durban campus (16 June) and online from 21 June to 21 July 2016.

The South African School of Motion Medium Picture and Live Performance (AFDA), listed by ID magazine as one of the top ten off-the-grid art institutions in the world will exhibit 57 new experimental films, broadcast 11 new television shows and perform 12 stage and musical productions.

The experimental festival is a unique opportunity for third year students to discover and express their artistic intent, as well as experiment with film, theatre and television craft techniques, says Garth Holmes, co-founder and chairman of AFDA.

AFDA Cape Town has opened its new 80-seat theatre, 228 on Lower Main, which will host the AFDA Live Performance Experimental Festival productions.

To follow all the experimental productions leading up to the festival  view synopses, cast and crew, posters, trailers, behind the scenes interviews and photos, go to www.afda.co.za/student-work/experimental-festival.
During the Durban International Film Festival, 21-25 June, the KwaZulu-Natal Film Commission will launch its community outreach programme to local townships, in celebration of 100 years of film in KwaZulu-Natal.

As part of the centenary, it is important that the people of the province not only celebrate the art, but also support local content and the producers who made the South African film industry the globally competitive industry it is today. The film screenings in the community will therefore be a celebration of South African cinema and an acknowledgement of the good work that is being done by South African filmmakers in telling the South African story.

We are committed to ensuring an increase in the support of local content, as that will have a positive impact on our economy and enhance the sustainability of the industry. The increase of audience participation will also be an inspiration to our filmmakers to produce content that is celebrated and appreciated by their local communities and national audiences, says Carol Coetzee, KwaZulu-Natal Film Commission CEO.

The screenings are in honour of the late Simon Mabhunu Sabela, a son of the province, a legend in film and television, who continues to be commemorated. Not only was he South Africas first recognised Black film director, but he also had a long and successful career, which saw him feature in over 34 films, both nationally and internationally.

Screen timetable

Sarafina, produced during the Apartheid era, was an important anti-Apartheid film and helped to mobilise communities around the world to oppose and overthrow the Apartheid regime. Mapantsula, also produced in the 1980s, was a political film of its time, a satirical portrayal of a small time criminal against the backdrop of Apartheid South Africa. Other screenings will be of memorable South African films that were produced in the new democracy of the country, post-Apartheid. The screenings will be open to all on a first come, first serve basis.

Date Venue Screenings Schedule 21/06/2016 Lamontville Community Hall 10am to noon & 2-4pm 22/06/2016 Chesterville Community Hall 10am to noon & 2-4pm Bat Centre 5-7pm 23/06/2016 Fashion Council  Point Waterfront 5-7pm by invite only 24/06/2016 Claremont Community Hall 10am to noon & 2-4pm KwaMashu  K Cap 10am to noon & 2-4pm 25/06/2016 Umlazi V Section Hall 10am to noon & 2-4pm Bat Centre 10am to noon

The films to be screened are Sarafina, Otelo Burning, Ayanda, Jerusalema, Yesterday, Man on Ground, Hear Me Move and Tsotsi.
BON Cloud has launched license-free content for African Broadcasters seeking China-related stories. The China-focused globally integrated content archive produces and archives video content across business, travel and culture in full HD, ready for delivery.

Following the launch of the BON Cloud media platform in August 2014, and an expansion with cooperating media partners through South and Southeast Asia, BON Cloud now reaches Africa for the first time.

As a part of the launch, BON Cloud publishes a new video series about international lives connected with China. Built as a one-stop-shop, international media solution for producers, publishers and broadcasters alike, BON Cloud, specialises in creating and distributing China-focused short video content and footage.

Now fully established, BON Cloud boasts an active database of more than 6,000 international media professionals downloading, re-editing and re-purposing BON Cloud created assets every day, resulting in the production, to date, of more than 4,200 short videos.

The purpose of BON Cloud is to provide access to fresh, professional China-related content to content acquisition professionals, editors, and producers, across Africas 54 nations, and license-free, explained Ash Bowkett, vice-president, international business development at BON Cloud. Across Africa, audiences and industry alike are showing increasing interest in China, whether as a strategic development partner, for international trading purposes, or as a holiday destination. We are strongly positioned as the only non-news China-content provider source for Africa.

While the Associated Press and Bloomberg already source culture and business content and footage from BON Cloud, hundreds of television broadcast stations and websites around the world also access the platform when they require a China story.

BON Cloud is currently being used by traditional and digital broadcasters to:

Locate broadcast-ready video content.

Obtain media packages for reproduction, including video, audio, scripts and footage.

Add extra multicultural segment value to the broadcast output.

Directly utilise the mainland China-based production services offered by the Platform ecosystem.

BON Cloud content is story-focused, diverse, high-quality and current, preferring to offer stories about China, instead of advertising or promotions. The international team driving BON Cloud is at the disposal of media organisations across Africa, ready to support the online delivery of fresh, compelling video stories whenever the broadcast need arises, according to their press release.
Ericsson has committed to developing the Ericsson Emergency Wallet, a mobile financial services solution, for deployment in the immediate aftermath of disaster or crises to support humanitarian organisations and affected populations within Africa, as well as globally.

Image by 123RF

The company revealed that the Emergency Wallet solution will be designed for use in emergency situations where financial infrastructure is lacking. It will enable the distribution and use of digital funds by relief workers and impacted populations, which can help address issues such as safety, expense and traceability that are associated with handling cash.

Many of Ericssons humanitarian partners have requested digital financial services solutions for emergency situations. There is an urgent need for an Emergency Wallet solution, as mobile financial services, including mobile money and mobile wallets, are among the quickest, safest, and most efficient ways of extending the benefits of basic financial transactions to people who need them.

David Miliband, president and CEO, International Rescue Committee (IRC) stated that: Digital payment mechanisms are essential to delivering effective cash transfers to address the large scale humanitarian needs caused by todays crises. However, only 30% of countries facing severe humanitarian emergencies have digital payments infrastructure to support scaled-up response. The IRC welcomes efforts such as the Ericsson Emergency Wallet solution to close this gap.

Ericsson presented its intentions at the World Humanitarian Summit, in support of the United Nations Connecting Business Initiative. The solution demonstrates the potential of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to transform humanitarian response.

New financial ecosystem

The solution design and prototyping is co-funded via the Level One Project from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Elaine Weidman-Grunewald, vice president, sustainability and corporate responsibility, Ericsson, says: Ericsson has a long-standing commitment to humanitarian response  for example, our employee volunteer program, Ericsson Response, has supported 40 missions in over 30 countries during the past 15 years.

In partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we are helping to build a new ecosystem that creates better opportunities for global financial inclusion. This unique combination of partners will be a powerful catalyst for bringing mobile financial services to humanitarian relief efforts everywhere.

Peter Heuman, head of M-Commerce at Ericsson adds: Ericsson Emergency Wallet builds on our expertise in deploying mobile financial services in emerging markets. The solution enables a method of money transfer that is mobile which allows for a quicker, safer and more cost-effective way for the humanitarian organizations to distribute digital aid in disaster areas.

The emergency wallet is an important part of a broader public-private commitment to the Level One Project  an effort to bring everyone into the formal economy by providing digital financial services to all.

Times of greatest need

Kosta Peric, deputy director of the financial services for the poor initiative for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, says: We recognise that Ericsson is committed to delivering a digital financial services platform to improve humanitarian response. The partnership around the Level One Project works for beneficiaries and humanitarian organisations in times of greatest need.

Launched at the World Humanitarian Summit, held May 23 to May 24, 2016 in Istanbul, Turkey, the Connecting Business Initiative is a multi-stakeholder initiative led by the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR), Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). With a focus on disaster risk reduction, emergency preparedness, response and recovery, the initiative aims to support the creation and strengthening of effective models for public-private partnerships and business engagement, and to scale and replicate those models in high-risk countries and regions.

Ericsson is also committed to working actively with Connecting Business Initiative networks globally to provide technology solutions and employee expertise in support of disaster and humanitarian response.
The International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF) is accepting applications for a reporting trip to Uganda. Women journalists with at least three years of experience and excellent English skills can apply.

Image by 123RF

A group of six women journalists will report on issues related to environmental conservation from 15-27 September, 2016.

Fellows will begin their trip in Nairobi, Kenya, where they will complete comprehensive security training and an orientation about the African Great Lakes region and focus countries. Then, they depart for a week of reporting based in Gulu, Northern Uganda, where they will have the opportunity to network with local journalists, collaborate with international peers and access a wide range of sources and sites.

The IWMF pays for fellowship-related expenses including travel, lodging, meals and fixers/interpreters, unless the fellow's news organisation wishes to assume these costs.

The deadline to apply is June 15.

Source: International Journalists Network (IJNet)
Got a question or tip? Contact us at bizmojoidaho@gmail.com.
Aung Kyaw Htwee, a Pyithu Hluttaw MP from Pauktaw Township said: It is true. He is seeking medical treatment at Pauktaw Township Hospital. The civilian, who was beaten up, arrived in Pauktaw [Town] at midnight yesterday [25 May] and has been sent to the hospital.

Police detained U Aung Thein Chay (age 37) in Kyan Khin Pike Seik Village in Pauktaw Township after his wife, Daw Hla Khin (age 37) reported him to police temporarily stationed at the in Nga/ Ya Byat Chaing Village, after the couple had a domestic dispute.

After she made the report four police officers from the outpost, including Police Lance Corporal Than Tun, allegedly handcuffed U Aung Thein Chay to a pole at a video house (where they show films to the public) and beat him up.

A family member who was accompanying U Aung Thein Chay to the hospital and did not want to be named said to Narinjara: It was a domestic dispute between a husband and a wife. The police detained and beat up the husband. The family had to give 100,000 kyats to the police for his release.

When Narinjara News contacted Pauktaw Township Police Force, Inspector Tun Thar he said: We sent a squadron to carry out security patrol in that area after a homicide took place in Nga Mae Pyin Village, which is 20-30 miles from Pauktaw Town. When the squadron arrived in Nga Ya Byat Chaing Village, U Aung Thein Chays wife came and reported to the police that her husband had been hitting her while he was drunk.

When the police tried to arrest Aung Thein Chay, he didnt allow them to arrest him and he cursed at them. I heard that he had to be arrested using violent methods. So, there was an incident where he got beaten up.

I heard that Aung Thein Chay was hospitalised after sustaining injuries. [The injuries] are not serious. We are arranging to summon the four police officers to Pauktaw and take action against them in line with police rules and regulations.

Translated by Thida Linn

Edited in English by Mark Inkey for BNI
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The Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Sunil Lanba (left) being handed over the baton by the outgoing Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral R K Dhowan, in New Delhi on May 31, 2016. A PIB Photo

NEW DELHI (PTI): Admiral Sunil Lanba on Tuesday took over as the new Chief of Naval Staff and vowed to ensure that the maritime domain of the country is safe and secure.



58-year-old Lanba, a specialist in Navigation and Direction, will have the full three-year tenure as the Indian Navy Chief.



He succeeded Admiral R K Dhowan who retired Tuesday.



"It is indeed an honour and a privilege for me to take over the command of the Indian Navy, one of the finest in the world," he said, adding that over the years, the Navy has turned into a modern and combat-ready force capable of operating in all three dimensions.



"The men and women who man the Navy are professionally trained, committed and patriotic and are committed to ensuring that our national interests are safeguarded anywhere, anytime and everywhere," he said.



An alumnus of Defence Services Staff College, Lanba is the 21st Indian to be the Navy Chief. The first two were British.



Coming in with rich operational and staff experience in a career spanning more than three decades, Lanba has served as Navigating Officer of corvette INS Sindhudurg and frigate INS Dunagiri.



He has commanded four frontline warships -- INS Kakinada (minesweeper), INS Himgiri (frigate) and INS Ranvijay and INS Mumbai, both destroyers.



He is also an alumnus of the College of Defence Management, Secunderabad, where he has served as a faculty.



Lanba has also held key staff assignments such as Fleet Operations Officer of the Western Fleet and the Chief of Staff, Southern and Eastern Naval Commands.



He was also the Flag Officer Sea Training, Flag Officer Commanding Maharashtra and Gujarat Naval Area and Commandant, National Defence College.



He was the Commander-in-Chief of the Southern Naval Command at Kochi, prior to being appointed to head the Western Naval Command. He took over as the Vice Chief on June 2, 2014.



Admiral Lanba is a recipient of the Param Vishist Seva Medal and the Athi Vishist Seva Medal for distinguished service.






ITANAGAR (PTI): In a major boost to the country's rapid airlift capability for forward operations and troop deployment, the Indian Air Force (IAF) has re-activated its strategic Advanced Landing Ground (ALG) of Mechuka in West Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh.



The ALG, which was re-activated on May 29, was non-functional since 2013 following its reconstruction work along with the ALGs of Aalo, Ziro, Tuting, Pasighat and Tezu, an official release said on Monday.



Located at an elevation of around 7,000 ft from the mean sea level, the ALG has now been reconstructed and made broader and longer with many modern facilities, it said.



Inaugurating it in presence of CCE (NEP), IAF authorities, Army authorities and local administrative authorities, Air Marshal C Hari Kumar appreciated all for successfully completing the project despite challenges like high-altitude location and difficulties in transporting materials and machineries.



Situated along the international border, Mechuka was one of the strategic locations during the Indo-China war in 1962. The McMohan Line is around 40 km from Mechuka town.



The IAF had started its operations with Dakota and Otter in 1962 in the area and subsequently the Antonov-32, popularly known as AN-32, was operated till October 2013 before the reconstruction work was started, the release said.



"People of Mechuka are very co-operative and respectable. They are the main contributors in achieving this tough task," the Air Marshal said.




LRASM is a long range, precision-guided anti-ship missile and is designed to meet the needs of US Navy and Air Force warfighters. Photo: Lockheed Martin.

ORLANDO, FLORIDA (BNS): Lockheed Martin has received a USD 321.8 million sole-source contract from the US Navy for the continuation of the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) integration and test phase.



The integration and test contract funds continuation of LRASM flight testing and integration onto the US Air Force B-1B and the US Navy F/A-18E/F aircraft. LRASM early operational capability for the US Air Force and Navy is expected in 2018 and 2019 respectively.



"The LRASM team has successfully met all requirements on an accelerated acquisition timeline in an effort to give our warfighters a much-needed robust, anti-ship capability," Mike Fleming, LRASM programme director at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, was quoted as saying in the company news release.



LRASM is a precision-guided anti-ship standoff missile leveraging Lockheed Martin's successful Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile Extended Range heritage, and is designed to meet the needs of US Navy and Air Force warfighters in an advanced anti-access/area-denial threat environment.






MUMBAI (PTI): Vice Admiral Girish Luthra has succeeded Sunil Lanba as the Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief (FOC-in-C) of the Western Naval Command.



Vice Admiral Lanba, who will proceed to New Delhi to take over as the Chief of Naval Staff Tuesday, handed over the command to Luthra at a ceremonial parade in Mumbai on Monday morning.



Addressing command officers and sailors, Lanba said securing marine time environment was on the top of list, while commanding to maintain highest faith of honour.



The enormous task of heading the command has been made possible due to the professional and whole-hearted efforts of all the command members, he said.



There is a requirement for all Navy personnel to work smart since there is manpower shortage and it is expected to continue over next few years, he said.



Lanba said during his tenure he focussed on improving the life of all marine communities.



Before taking over as Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Western Command, Vice Admiral Luthra served as the Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Southern Naval Command.



Luthra was commissioned in the Executive Branch of the Indian Navy in July, 1979.



He is an alumnus of the National Defence Academy in Pune, the Defence Services Staff College in Wellington and Naval Command Naval War College, USA.



His important staff appointments include Deputy Naval Attache to High Commission of India at London, Principal Director Naval Plans, Assistant Chief of Naval Staff (Policy & Plans), Director General of Naval Operations and Deputy Chief of Integrated Defence Staff (Operations).



Luthra was awarded Ati Vishisht Seva Medal in 2012 and Vishisht Seva Medal in 2008.


Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 31/05/2016 (2338 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Canadian acquitted of charges he faced in the United Arab Emirates has been released from prison and could leave the country as early as Wednesday, his family told The Canadian Press, calling the news an amazing surprise.

Salim Alaradi had been accused of providing supplies to groups in a foreign country without permission of the U.A.E. government and collecting donations without the governments permission.

The 48-year-old was found not guilty in the case on Monday, but wasnt immediately released, prompting his family to appeal to Ottawa to help bring him home.

Canadian Salim Alaradi and his son, Mohamed Alaradi are shown on a family vacation in the United Arab Emirates in a 2013 family handout photo. The family of Alaradi, a Canadian acquitted of charges he faced in the United Arab Emirates, says the man has been released from prison after nearly two years behind bars. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO, File

Alaradis family said his Emirati lawyer was told around 10 p.m. local time on Tuesday that the man could be picked up from an Abu Dhabi prison.

We are shocked because we didnt see this coming. This was an amazing surprise for my family, Alaradis oldest daughter Marwa Alaradi told The Canadian Press. But I ask that we remain cautious until my father is safely home with us.

Salim Alaradi is spending the night with his local lawyer and plans to leave the country as early as Wednesday, his family said, with plans to be accompanied to the airport by Canadian officials.

He is happy but his exhaustion and stress was very clear, Alaradis daughter said of her fathers state. He is very sick.

Alaradis Canadian lawyer has said the father of five plans to leave the U.A.E. and travel to Istanbul where he will meet his family and receive immediate medical treatment.

Once he is healthy enough, Alaradi and his family plan to return to their home in Windsor, Ont.

Alaradi immigrated to Canada in 1998 from the U.A.E. but returned there in 2007 to run a home appliance business. He was on vacation with his family in Dubai when he was suddenly arrested in August 2014.

At the time, he was among 10 men of Libyan origin who were abruptly detained  some of them were later released.

After being held for months without being charged, Alaradi was put on trial early this year on terrorism charges, which he pleaded not guilty to. Those charges were abruptly dropped in March and replaced with two lesser offences.

The case has drawn international attention ever since Alaradi and his co-accused were put on trial.

UN human rights experts demanded the U.A.E. immediately release the men.

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention also examined the mens cases and cited advocates for the detainees alleging that the men had been deprived of sleep for up to 20 days, beaten on the hands and legs and suffered electric shocks with an electric chair.
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OTTAWA - Health Minister Jane Philpott announced Tuesday the federal government will hold public consultations on its plan to introduce plain packaging for tobacco products.

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It's been a

Yesterday, Dublin Zoo

Read More:

And since the news of the 29-year-old silverback's death, there have been thousands of comments on their Facebook post from past visitors to the Zoo who have fond memories of the silverback but one photo in particular has captured the public's imagination.

Photographer Anthony Lynch was in the Phoenix Park last night when he noticed something in the sky just after he learned of Harry's death.

He writes:

"I was sitting in my car waiting for the sun to set behind the Phoenix monument and looking through fb when I seen that Harry the gorilla had died after years in Dublin Zoo which I happened to be outside. Maybe I'm staring at the sun too long but does anyone else see a gorilla kissing goodbye to the phoenix park monument?"

Anthony Lynch Photography/Facebook

And people are in overwhelming agreement that that's exactly what it looks like.

His photo has been liked over 50,000 times and been shared by the Dublin Zoo Facebook page, who thanked Anthony for taking the beautiful photo.

Bye, Harry.
Alexandria Fisher had a run in with mischievous bird recently.

She was enjoying a picnic in the park with her dog when a little bird hopped onto the blanket.

The ballsy little guy then started to squawk at her, apparently demanding food.

To make himself seem like even more of a tough guy, the bird then began to repeatedly chase away Alexandrias rather large dog.

Alexandria says that the bird kept it all up for about a half hour before eventually flying away.

We wont be messing with him anytime soon!
The British army shooting of a father of six after the van he was driving backfired outside a police station in the North was not necessary, reasonable or proportionate, a coroner has ruled.

Henry Thornton, 29, died almost instantly when a soldier shot him twice through the rear of his Austin works van close to Springfield Road police station in west Belfast in August 1971.

Mr Thornton, from Silverbridge, Co Armagh, and his colleague Arthur Murphy were driving to work early in the morning when the incident unfolded outside a police station that was repeatedly attacked during the Troubles.

Coroner Brian Sherrard delivered his findings at Belfast Coroners' Court on Tuesday after an inquest into the legacy killing.

He dismissed a claim by another soldier - Soldier C - that he had seen a gun being fired from the van at the police station and, said no weapon or ammunition was found in the vehicle. He said the van had simply backfired twice.

Solider C had relayed his account of a gun attack to Solider A, a member of the Parachute Regiment, who then ran down the street after the van, dropped to his knee and fired his rifle at the back of the van.

"Soldier A proceeded on the honestly held but false belief that the van's occupants had been involved in firing shots at the station," said Mr Sherrard.

The coroner said that despite his belief that shots had been fired, Soldier A should not have opened fire.

"At the time Soldier A fired the fatal shots his objective was to stop the van," said the coroner.

"He would undoubtedly have known that firing two high-velocity bullets at the driver of the vehicle was likely to result in the driver's death. There is no evidence that Soldier A considered a less forceful response to the situation than the death of the driver.

"At the time of the shooting Soldier A was not under attack."

He added: "Other options to stop or pursue the vehicle were available. In such circumstances the shooting of Mr Thornton was neither a necessary nor a reasonable nor a proportionate response to the situation Soldier A either actually encountered or thought that he encountered."

The coroner's findings were delivered in preliminary format pending a decision on whether the identity of Soldier A will be made public.

Outside court Mr Thornton's widow Mary and Mr Murphy welcomed the coroner's findings.

Mrs Thornton said: "He was taken from me, he was taken away from his six children - it's good the world has seen that he was innocent.

"I am just so glad these findings have come out - the truth is out at last, we can let him rest now."
Two men have been arrested by the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) in a fraud investigation linked to the biggest property deal ever in Northern Ireland.

Searches were carried out in Co Down in connection with the inquiry into the controversial 1.2bn (1.57bn) sale of assets and property owned by the National Assets Management Agency (Nama), to US investment firm Cerberus.

An NCA spokesman said: "Officers from the National Crime Agency have today carried out two arrests and related searches in the Co Down area in connection with a fraud investigation.

"The operation is being assisted by the PSNI.

"As the investigation is continuing we are unable to comment further."

The investigation was sparked following the discovery of a 7m (9.1m) offshore transfer to an Isle of Man bank account, which was controlled by a former managing partner of Belfast-based law firm Tughans.

Tughans, which was involved in the Nama transaction after being subcontracted by Cerberus's US lawyers Brown Rudnick, insisted it was not aware of the money movement.

Nama is the so-called "bad bank" set up by the Government to take property linked-loans off the books of bailed-out banks.

A parliamentary committee at Stormont is carrying out a separate investigation into the Cerberus deal.

All parties involved in the huge 1.2 billion transaction in 2014 have denied wrongdoing.
The Justice Minister says Dublin's gang war is an "unprecedented situation" and needs a "zero tolerance approach".

Frances Fitzgerald requested extra funding to tackle the Hutch/Kinahan feud at a Cabinet meeting this morning.

A special garda task force will be set up to tackle gangland crime with extra powers to work with Social Protection and Revenue officials.

Frances Fitzgerald wants wider powers for gardai, including the setting up of a mini Criminal Assets Bureau.

Ms Fitzgerald said: "It's making sure you have zero tolerance in relation to drug dealing on the streets.

"I want to strengthen the powers of the Criminal Assets Bureau so that they can seize assets more easily from criminals."

Sinn Fein has welcomed the 'zero tolerance' approach, with their Waterford TD, David Cullinane, saying it is necessary.

He said: "We have no difficulty whatsoever in the State and all the other resources of the State, including the resources of the Garda Siochana, being deployed to have what I call 'in your face' policing.

"I think that's justified, these people cannot operate in the way that they are."
Gardai in Dublin are appealing for the public's help in tracing the whereabouts of a missing 17-year-old Albanian national.

Antonesa Hasani, who is pregnant, was last seen in Rathfarnham on the afternoon of Sunday, May 15.
Health Minister Simon Harris has said that it is essential that people have confidence in maternity services after the deaths of two babies at Cavan General Hospital.

Two investigations have begun into the deaths of the babies last week.

It is understood one child passed away following an emergency C-Section on Wednesday, while the second infant died on Sunday.

Minister Harris said that he expects the results of the investigations as a matter of urgency.

"I think it is really important that we have these reports so that we can establish the facts," he said

"I think it would be inappropriate for me to comment further and it's also very important that we respect patient confidentiality at this very sensitive and difficult time for families.

"But it's absolutely essential that people can have confidence in their maternity services and I see a speedy conclusion of these reports so the facts can be known as a very important part of that confidence."

The hospital's maternity unit provides services for about 2,000 births a year.

The state's 19 maternity hospitals and units are required to publish statements each month on patient safety but the most up-to-date for Cavan is from last December.

It said the perinatal mortality rate was 8.3, with 120 births recorded in that month and the figures adjusted per 1,000 births, similar to the rate in the UK.

More than one third of births involved a Caesarean, the statement said.
Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald is to look for extra resources to help the Gardai tackle gangland crime.

Minister Fitzgerald will tell this morning's Cabinet meeting that the country needs so-called "saturation policing".

As part of the plan, the Minister wants to create a 'mini' Criminal Assets Bureau to clampdown on smaller offenders and target assets of a lower value - possibly as low as 1,000.

She also wants to boost the numbers of officers in affected areas and bring in new rules to catch Revenue and Social Welfare cheats.

It is understood the Taoiseach has already said that whatever resources are needed will be made available.

The move comes as a woman in her 40s is to appear in court this morning in connection with the latest gangland murder.

She is being charged with withholding information that could have prevented a serious offence, after 35-year-old Gareth Hutch was shot dead outside his home in Dublin's north inner city last Tuesday.
A man has been charged in connection with the murder of Gareth Hutch.

The 29-year-old was arrested last Tuesday and was being held at Mountjoy Garda station in Dublin.
A man has lost a number of fingers during an alleged assault in Waterford.

The incident happened at 3pm yesterday afternoon at Priory Lawn in Ballybeg.

It is being reported that he was beaten before his assailants cut off two of his fingers and his thumb with a saw or a large knife.

Gardai have found a stolen car which was used to make their getaway and they are conducting house-to-house inquiries in an effort to make an arrest.

The man, who is said to be in his 20s, was rushed to Waterford University Hospital and has since been transferred to Cork University Hospital.

Gardai in Waterford are appealing for anyone with information to contact them.
The Minister for Justice, Frances Fitzgerald, has announced new measures to tackle organised crime.

They include giving the Criminal Assets Bureau more powers and new legislation to target the proceeds of crime and a new Special Crime Taskforce to focus on gangland activities.

The Justice Minister says there will be "no let up" in the fight against gangland crime.

Under the new laws, the Criminal Assets Bureau will have the power to freeze assets immediately if they may be the proceeds of crime.

It will also be able to seize cash sums more than 1,000 if they may be connected with crime.

The Tanaiste told the Cabinet she intends to bring more proposals that would enhance garda powers to intercept communications and carry out covert surveillance.

She said: "I intend to introduce legislative measures to strengthen the powers of the Criminal Assets Bureau to make it easier to seize assets and money from criminals."

The new legislation will reduce the threshold of assets which are suspected to be the proceeds of crime that can be frozen immediately under the Proceeds of Crime Act 1996 from 13,000 to 5,000.

The prescribed sum under section 38 of the Criminal Justice Act 1994 under which cash suspected of being the proceeds of crime may be seized will be reduced from 6,500 to 1,000.

Ms Fitzgerald also proposed to update the legislation for the lawful interception of communications and for covert electronic surveillance.

The Tanaiste said: "Next week I intend to meet my colleagues from Spain, Belgium and the

Netherlands in relation to the transnational dimensions to organised criminal activity."

The Tanaiste new measures to tackle organised crime are:

CAB Power to seize property

To provide the Criminal Assets Bureau with the power to seize property quickly to prevent its removal or scattering prior to an application being made to the Courts under the Proceeds of Crime legislation for its freezing.

Between the instigation of an investigation into the proceeds of crime and the making of an application under section 2 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 1996 there is potential for criminal assets to be dissipated.

It is proposed to provide for a power of administrative restraint in those circumstances.

This will provide for the seizure and detention of goods, monies, or instrumentalities of crime which a Bureau officer has reasonable grounds for suspecting represent the proceeds of crime. Such a power shall last for a specified period after which an application under section 2 of the Proceeds of Crime Act must be made to the High Court.

Freezing and confiscation of property - threshold

Section 2(1) of the Proceeds of Crime Act 1996 requires property to be of a value no less than 13,000 before an interim order can be made by the Court. The proposed amendment will allow the measures contained in the Proceeds of Crime Act to be triggered in circumstances where the value of the property is 5,000. The provision is being introduced in support of the work of the Bureau in targeting the proceeds of crime held by middle to lower level actors in localised organised crime activity.

Seizure of cash - threshold

To lower the sum prescribed for the purposes of section 38 (Search for, Seizure and Disposal of money gained from, or for use in, criminal conduct) of the Criminal Justice Act 1994. Section 38 allows for the seizure and disposal of money gained from, or for use in, criminal conduct.

Powers under this section may be exercised by members of the Garda Siochana or an officer of customs and excise where he or she has reasonable grounds for suspecting that it directly or indirectly represents the proceeds of crime or is intended by any person for use in any criminal conduct. S.I. No. 167/1996 Criminal Justice Act 1994 (section 44) Regulations 1996 currently sets the prescribed sum for the purposes of section 38 of the Act at 6,500.

It is proposed to reduce this limit to 1,000 to enhance the powers of An Garda Siochana and the Revenue Commissioners in the seizure of cash amounts.
Sinn Fein TD Kathleen Funchion last week gave a character reference in court to a man who was convicted for assaulting a Garda and behaving in an abusive and threatening manner, writes Daniel McConnell, Irish Examiner Political Editor.

The TD, elected for the first time in February to the constituency of Carlow-Kilkenny, yesterday confirmed she gave a character witness statement on behalf of Keith Gilligan, and was in court in Kilkenny during the hearing last Thursday.

It is understood, that Gilligan, who had no prior convictions was arrested in connection with an incident during an anti-water charge protest during a visit of former Tanaiste Joan Burton to Kilkenny earlier this year.

The Kilkenny District Criminal Court convicted Gilligan on the two charges, but it is understood he is to appeal. He was convicted on two charges  one of assault on a Garda and one of behaving in a threatening and abusive manner.

Details of the case, given to the Irish Examiner, reveal that, on the charge of assault of Garda Noel Casey, Gilligan was fined 1,500 and was given 90 days to pay the fine.

On the charge of threatening and abusive behaviour, Gilligan was fined 500 and was given six months to pay it.

A Sinn Fein spokeswoman said Ms Funchion offered the statement because she had known Gilligan for a very long time.

In 2014, the then Fianna Fail justice spokesman Niall Collins lobbied a judge on behalf of a drug dealer involved in a criminal trial.

The Limerick TD admitted he made a mistake by appealing to a judge not to jail a man caught with 17,000 worth of drugs.

This story first appeared in the Read More: Irish Examiner .
"Any reasonable person" can see some of US presidential candidate elect Donald Trump's comments are "racist, sexist and misogynistic", Social Protection Minister Leo Varadkar has said, writes Fiachra O Cionnaith.

The Fine Gael cabinet member made the remarks hours after Taoiseach Enda Kenny broke his silence on the controversial Republican politician, saying his party leader was right to criticise the high-profile businessman.

Speaking after Mr Kenny told the Dail today Mr Trump has put forward "racist and dangerous" policies, Mr Varadkar said anyone following the US election race knows this to be true.

Responding to questions at a Dublin city book launch, the Social Protection Minister said "no one can be in any doubt" Mr Trump's comments have offended a large number of people.

"I think any reasonable would agree some of the comments he's made are racist, particularly in relation to latinos and also many of the things he has said are sexist. And don't show a positive attitude towards women.

"Ultimately it is up to American citizens to determine who their President is. But I know how most Irish people would vote.

"It's up to American citizens to decide who they elect as president. We will of course work with whoever Americans decide to elect as President. But I don't think there can be any doubt that many of the speeches he has made were racist and showed a very misogynistic attitude to women," Mr Varadkar said.

Read more HERE.
A Slovakian model who shot her British millionaire ex-boyfriend in Spain has been jailed for more than 15 years after she was found guilty of murder.

Mayka Kukucova, 26, was sentenced at the Ciudad de la Justicia court in Malaga two years after killing Andrew Bush at his home near Marbella on the Costa del Sol.

She told the court that the former jewellery store owner died during a violent struggle when he arrived at the house unexpectedly while she was there collecting her things.

She said she had "never meant to hurt" Mr Bush, 48, and broke down in tears when photos of his body were shown in court.

Kukucova was convicted of murder on Friday and was sentenced on Monday to 15 years imprisonment plus a further six months for breaking into Mr Bush's home.

She did not make a formal plea and prosecutors had been hoping for a 25-year sentence.

Mr Bush was well known in his home city of Bristol for his jewellery business and was previously married to former BBC Bristol presenter Sam Mason - mother of his daughter Ellie, 21.

He met Kukucova when she worked in his shop and the pair were together for two and a half years. The relationship broke down around six months before Mr Bush was killed.

Mr Bush was known for having a keen interest in cars, and it was in his Hummer 4x4 that Kukucova made her getaway on the night he died.

Days later she handed herself in to Slovakian authorities and was detained before being extradited to Spain.

On Saturday, Mr Bush's girlfriend, Maria Korotaeva, who had been waiting for him in the Hummer when he was murdered, posted a report of Kukucova's conviction on her Instagram page with the caption "Thank God".

To see this post on Instagram, click here.'
Around 1,000 NHS workers in the UK have been injured while caring for obese patients over the last five years, Freedom of Information data shows.

One nurse was signed off with neck, back and shoulder pain after having to hold a patient's breasts during an ultrasound, The Sun newspaper reported.

Another worker's cheek was bruised while washing the stomach of a 42st patient.

In other cases, a staff member at Great Ormond Street Hospital suffered a back injury lifting a 15st child and a nurse got a back sprain helping to move a 29st patient for an X-ray.

The data showed at least 923 staff were hurt caring for obese patients between 2011 and 2015.

Some of the injuries included sprained necks, hernias, kicks to the ribs, muscle tears, trapped fingers and slipped discs, the newspaper said.

It calculated that four years and seven months were lost in sick days.

Tam Fry, of the National Obesity Forum, said: "Some hospitals have been negligent in trying to get away with using standard equipment for obese people and the result is something is going to snap. These figures should send the NHS into shock."

Kim Sunley, of the Royal College of Nursing, said: "Employers need to ensure staff have the right equipment and training to reduce physical strain, particularly since the number of very heavy patients is increasing.

"Having enough available staff to help patients and other staff would also ease the physical pressures. Many nurses with back problems need time off."

Steve Tolan, head of practice at the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, said: "These new figures raise two important issues which the NHS needs to address.

"Firstly, it is critical that sufficient staff are available to provide the care and treatment bariatric patients require safely and to avoid injuries occurring. And secondly, it is essential that the NHS invests in preventative services, such as physical activity and weight management programmes, to actively reduce the growing number of people who are becoming obese in the first place."
The mayor of Paris has announced plans to create a centre to take in migrants with nowhere to go.

Anne Hidalgo said she wants the French capital to welcome those escaping war and poverty in dignity.

The centre will be located in northern Paris where hundreds of arriving migrants without a place to go often camp near subway stations.

The Socialist mayor said several times she hopes the state will be a "partner" in the project, which she said must conform to international norms for refugees.

She said Parisians have a humane duty to help the have-not travellers, adding that she is confident "the Paris population will be at our side".

Her announcement comes after the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said at least 1,000 people died or are missing and presumed dead following a string of deadly incidents in the Mediterranean Sea over the last week.

The updated IOM tally on was drawn from the accounts of survivors who were saved at sea or landed in Italy in recent days.

Figures from aid groups and Italian police had on Sunday counted at least 700 deaths from three shipwrecks over three consecutive days, but IOM pointed to other smaller incidents as well as more precise figures following interviews with survivors.

The IOM says 62 people were confirmed dead and another 971 were missing and presumed dead in nine incidents on the central Mediterranean route between Libya and Italy since May 25.

The UN refugee agency spokesman William Spindler said this year is proving to be "particularly deadly" on the Mediterranean, with some 2,510 lives lost compared to 1,855 over the same period a year ago.

Mr Spindler reiterated UNHCR's appeal to the European Union to allow for more legal pathways for refugees to reach Europe, and said it was "shameful" that the bloc had resettled fewer than 2,000 people under a plan announced last year to resettle 160,000.

He said authorities were still trying to understand the rise in deaths, even as they know the region is moving into its high season for human trafficking.

UNHCR cited unconfirmed accounts that smugglers might be trying to "maximize income" before the Ramadan holy month, which begins in the first week of June. Mr Spindler also said he had never heard of smugglers using such risky tactics as having one overloaded boat tow another one overflowing with hundreds of people.

IOM spokesman Joel Millman also pointed to a new tactic used by smugglers in recent weeks.

"Traffickers and smugglers working out of Libya are using much bigger boats now, carrying as many as 750 people, where for the last 12 months, we've been seeing a lot of smaller rubber inflatable dinghies," Mr Millman said at a Geneva news conference alongside Mr Spindler.

UNHCR said most boats leaving Libya are departing from Sabratha, west of Tripoli.

A deal between the European Union and Turkey to return migrants to Turkey has significantly dampened the migrant sea route into Europe from Turkey to Greece, which hundreds of thousands of people used last year.

UNHCR has been watching for signs that migrants may be shifting to the much longer and more dangerous Libya-Italy option.

"As of now, UNHCR has not seen evidence of a significant diversion of Syrians, Afghans or Iraqis from the Turkey-Greece route to the central Mediterranean one," Mr Spindler said.
Poland's justice minister is reviving an effort to have filmmaker Roman Polanski extradited to the US, where he is wanted in a nearly 40-year-old case.

Zbigniew Ziobro's office said he asked Poland's Supreme Court to annul a ruling in October by a court in Krakow that Polish law forbids Polanski's extradition.

Mr Ziobro, who took office late last year as part of a new conservative government, argues that celebrity status is shielding Polanski in Poland.

Polanski, who has Polish and French citizenship, lives in Paris but often visits Poland.

The director pleaded guilty in 1977 to one count of unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl during a photo shoot in Los Angeles. In a deal with the judge, he served 42 days in prison, but then fled the US.

The US has been seeking to bring Polanski back and put him before a court.

The Krakow court's decision was at odds with a Polish-US extradition agreement, Mr Ziobro's office argued in a statement. It said that, "according to the extradition agreement, the defendant should be handed over to the United States".

Last year, the Krakow judge ruling on the case found that Polanski served his punishment in confinement in the US, and later for 10 months - partly under house arrest - in Switzerland in 2009-2010 when the US unsuccessfully sought his extradition there.

He argued that US judges and prosecutors in the case violated legal procedures, broke the plea bargain in 1977, denied Polanski the right to proper defence and appeared biased.

Polanski, 83, is popular in Poland and was planning to make a film there. He grew up and studied filmmaking in the country.

His movements are restricted by an Interpol warrant in effect in 188 countries, but he has avoided extradition by travelling only between France, Poland and Switzerland, which in 2011 rejected a US request to extradite Polanski.

Mr Ziobro's move could now make Poland a risky destination for him.

Polanski won an Academy Award for best director for his 2002 film The Pianist, which he filmed in Warsaw and was nominated for his 1970s movies Chinatown and Tess.

ends

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Jan Olszewski, Polanski's lawyer in Krakow, said he had contacted the director about Mr Ziobro's decision, which they had been expecting.

He said: "The court's verdict stands and Mr Polanski is a free man. But I cannot exclude that this situation will affect his decisions as to visiting Poland."
The police officer who led the investigation into Liam Fee's death has said the two-year-old was subjected to "horrendous abuse" at the hands of his mother and her partner.

Detective Inspector Rory Hamilton praised the bravery of two other boys, whose evidence meant Liam's mother, Rachel Trelfa or Fee, 31, and Nyomi Fee, 29, were convicted of the youngster's murder.

Rachel Fee (left), also known as Rachel Trelfa, and partner Nyomi Fee

The two women had blamed another child for killing two-year-old Liam, with Mr Hamilton, of Police Scotland's major investigation team, stating: "Details of Liam's murder and the abuse carried out by the two women emerged during the course of interviews with two other boys in their care.

"During joint interviews with specially-trained detectives and officials from Fife Council, the evidence began to build towards a picture of horrendous abuse which directly contributed to the version of events being put forward by the two accused being utterly discredited.

"This was a complex, challenging and sensitive investigation which involved interviewing two young children to establish the level of abuse and neglect both they and Liam Fee had been subjected to.

"It was because of their courage that detectives were able to identify Rachel and Nyomi Fee as being responsible for a wide range of serious offences against three children."

Assistant Chief Constable Malcolm Graham, lead officer for major crime and public protection, said: "Liam's murder has had a profound effect on everyone involved in the investigation and our thoughts are with his wider family.

"The death of a child is always traumatic but the murder of a child has a terrible and lasting impact on the family, on the wider community and on the carers and professionals involved."

Matt Forde, national head of service for NSPCC Scotland, said Liam and the two other boys involved had been "the subject of the most horrific and long-term abuse by a couple who should have loved and nurtured their family, but who instead brutally murdered a child in their care".

He added: "Everyone who has followed this case will have been deeply affected by the accounts of neglect, cruelty and violence inflicted on Liam during his short and tragic life.

"The details of how this couple submitted young children to such abhorrent abuse have rightly shocked the public, yet sadly cases of abuse and neglect are taking place every day in homes across the country, damaging the futures of many children.

"Babies and young children are completely reliant on others and we all must look out for their welfare.

"We need to be alert to the signs that a child may need help and be ready to take action to protect them."

Social Work Scotland president Elaine Torrance said Liam's death was "an absolute tragedy" after he suffered "deeply shocking" abuse.

Ms Torrance said: "What makes it worse is that the abuse was carried out by the very people Liam should have been able to trust the most: his mum and his step-mum.

"Cases like these are exceptional and children dying at the hands of their parents remains a rare occurrence in Scotland.

"Parents are the primary protectors of their children and when that relationship fails and where people go out of their way to keep agencies at arm's length, children can be at terrible risk."

Fife Council will continue with a significant case review to discover if more could have been done to help Liam, she added.
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The artist of a stolen public sculpture is devastated and locals furious about the removal of "a piece of the Canberra community".

The nearly life-size statue, called Stepping Out (Lady in Pearls), was ripped away from Hughes shops at the weekend. The lady's bronze shoes and part of her legs were left standing.

All that remains of the sculpture at the Hughes shops after the lady was cut off below the knees over the weekend. Credit:Rohan Thomson

"I was angry, shocked and disappointed when I heard what happened," one of the artists, Giovanna Ianniello, said.

"It was a bit like someone had actually been taken away, like she was now a missing person."
It's been dubbed the dead heart of Canberra, but a new grants program is hoping to reinvigorate Civic as a cultural and artistic hotspot.

In the City Canberra  an advocacy group financially supported by more than 600 CBD businesses  will launch a grants program worth up to $340,000 to entice artistic, musical, cultural and awareness events and pop-ups into the centre of Canberra.
Chief Minister Andrew Barr has signalled some relief from hefty rate rises, saying increases to be announced next week will be "considerably lower" than in the past four years.

Mr Barr is also expected to deliver better news on the budget deficit, which has been heading perilously close to $500 million. Growth in the local economy  with strong improvements over a number of indicators  is boosting the budget position and should allow Mr Barr to announce a much-lower-than-expected deficit.

ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr: Stronger economy means good news for next week's budget. Credit:Rohan Thomson

Mr Barr delivers his fifth budget as Treasurer and his second as Chief Minister on Tuesday, June 7. With an election in October, it is expected to be a gentle affair and will begin a slowdown in the relentless rates increases of recent years.

In 2012, the government began a 20-year program to phase out stamp duty on house and property sales. The loss in revenue was to be replaced by rates.
Airbus believes its target of delivering 50 of its new A350 aircraft this year to customers such as Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines remains "absolutely achievable" even though it has delivered only nine of the aircraft so far.

Airbus' efforts to date have been hampered by late deliveries of essential cabin equipment like lavatories and seats that pushed back the completion dates of aircraft.

Airbus A350 deliveries have been delayed because seats and lavatories haven't arrived on time. Credit:Louise Kennerley

"What we are putting together today is a strong [northern] summer plan which will allow us to reach much higher throughput in the second half of the year," Airbus executive vice-president programs Didier Evrard told media in Hamburg on Monday.

"The target [of 50 deliveries] remains absolutely achievable but it will come with a very high level of effort from all of the A350 and industrial system to enable that because the level of disruptions we have seen with the cabin problems is very high."
A chiropractor and osteopath who allegedly wrote racist Facebook posts on the page of Nova Peris has been kicked out of the Liberal Party.

Chris Nelson, who says he was hacked and did not make two offensive Facebook posts on the page of Ms Peris, allegedly wrote that the outgoing Labor senator and Olympic gold medallist was only endorsed because she was a "black c---".

On Monday, he was arrested and charged with using a carriage service to cause offence. He was granted conditional bail and will face Gosford Local Court in late June.
Nick Xenophon usually causes headaches for Malcolm Turnbull and co. Now the fashion team at GQ Australia have witnessed his rebellious streak first hand after the independent senator refused to wear anything over $100 for a spread in the luxury magazine.

Xenophon will appear in the upcoming issue of the Gentlemen's Quarterly wearing undies from Kmart and a suit from Target as he "refused to be styled" according to a spokesperson for the publication.

Nick Xenophon wearing a Target suit in the June-July issue of GQ Australia. Credit:Jordan Graham/GQ Australia

"Nick Xenophon was exclusively photographed for the June-July issue of GQ Australia, defending his rigid $100 clothes cap for the shoot - proudly wearing a Target suit, Lowes shoes and Kmart undies."

It's a departure for GQ, where high-end designer labels are de rigueur, and subjects are usually subjected to the styling direction of renowned fashion editor Brad Homes.
It's been a busy few weeks on the local beauty pageant circuit with some old faces getting a new lease on life and new faces getting the recognition they deserve.

Maminydjama Maymuru, aka "Magnolia", will be the first Aboriginal woman to represent the Northern Territory at Miss World Australia this year.

Magnolia Maymuru: NT's Miss World hopeful. Credit:Facebook

After growing up 600 kilometres from Darwin in Yirrkala, Arnhem Land, the 19-year-old, who declined to try modelling when scouted two years ago, decided to give it a go after finishing school. She has since booked her first job and will grace the catwalk at the NT Fashion Week in October.

Miss World Australia is now run by former Miss Universe Australia director Deborah Miller. Miller has ditched the swimsuit round, beefed up the competition's alignment with children's charity Variety and plans to feature more contestants from varied backgrounds.
Crocodile traps have been shipped to a remote Queensland beach as the search for a woman feared dead after a shocking attack heads toward its third day.

Police and SES volunteers continued to comb the land and water around Thornton Beach in the remote Daintree National Park on Tuesday, looking for the body of New South Wales woman Cindy Waldron, 46, originally from New Zealand

Members of the Waldron family flew in from New Zealand to Cairns overnight to be near the search site.

"We're finding a body but we need to be there with her," father Pat Waldron told Nine News.
Police are still trying to work out how a Queensland boy came to be in a dumpster that was tipped into a rubbish truck, where he narrowly escaped being crushed to death.

The "hero" truck driver heard a tapping sound from the back of his truck on Sunday morning and stopped to check it out instead of firing up the compactor, which could have killed the boy.

Perth councils could consider fining residents for poor bin behaviour. Credit:Brian Pamphilon

More than two days on from the 12-year-old Mount Isa boy's lucky escape, Detective Sergeant David Hall still wasn't sure what the boy was doing in the bin in the first place.

He praised the truck driver for stopping, checking and calling police.
"All our milk is processed on farm into a range of cheeses, yoghurt and dairy produce and sold under our label Over the Moon Organics. We milk between 20 and 30 Jerseys, most of which we have bred ourselves. We also have around 40 milking goats," says Juliet.

Although they could not have known it, nine years ago Juliet Bateman and her husband David started on a journey that would help insulate them from the milk price war currently decimating their fellow dairy farmers.

"It had a little tin shack on it, and we bought one Jersey cow for the house and started milking her. We had ideas of growing our veggies and living the good life, everything organic. Molly, our first cow, produced way too much milk for two people. So I ended up making some cheese, and some yoghurt, and it just really snowballed from there. Then we bought a couple more cows. David was studying his MBA at the time. One of his projects was to write a business and marketing plan for a potential business. He looked at whether it might be feasible to build a commercial dairy rather than just doing it in our kitchen," explains Juliet.

At the time she didn't know of anyone else milking their own cows and making artisan cheeses on WA, which gave them an opportunity to create their own niche in organic dairy farming.

"We never planned on becoming huge, because a farm, the equipment, the fencing, the animals ... the whole infrastructure is incredibly expensive to start yourself. Fine, if you've inherited it. But to get it going from scratch, that's pretty hard. So we built it up slowly and any profits we made we just kept ploughing back in to the business."

Turns out they were really on to something. The Batemans now have 60 Jerseys, 40 of which are in the dairy and the rest are heifers and cows coming through.

"The model has worked well for us because everything we milk, we process on farm. So we're really well protected, but we set it up to be like that because, when we first started, milk prices were really bad. Dairy farms were going out of business."
The world's navigation and communication networks are at risk of being brought down by a "catastrophic avalanche" of space junk, researchers have warned.

An artist's impression of space junk orbiting the Earth. Illustration: Johan Swanepoel

The rapid build-up of space junk orbiting Earth is a serious threat to satellites, which are crucial for everything from global positioning systems and mobile phone calls to television broadcasts and weather forecasts.

And destructive junk doesn't need to be big. Chief executive of the Space Environment Research Centre Ben Greene said a thumbnail-size piece of junk travelling at 10 kilometres a second could take down a satellite.
At the same time, Aro has been peppered with abusive emails, vilified as a drug dealer on social media sites and mocked as a delusional bimbo in a music video posted on YouTube. "There are so many layers of fakery you get lost," said Aro, who was awarded the Finnish Grand Prize for Journalism in March. As Aro's experiences illustrate, Finland, a country at the centre of Russia's concerns about NATO's expansion toward its borders, has emerged as a particularly active front in the information wars. A member of the EU with an 830-mile-long border with Russia, Finland has stayed outside the United States-led military alliance but, unnerved by Russian military actions in Ukraine and its sabre-rattling in the Baltic Sea, has expanded cooperation with NATO and debated whether to apply for full membership. Public opinion is deeply divided, making Finland a prime target for a campaign by Russia. "Their big thing is to keep Finland out of NATO," said Saara Jantunen, a researcher at the Finnish Defense Forces in Helsinki, who last year published a book in Finland entitled Info-War. She said that she, too, had been savaged on social media, sometimes by the same and apparently fake commentators who have hounded Ms. Aro.

"They fill the information space with so much abuse and conspiracy talk that even sane people start to lose their minds," she added. Europe's main response so far has been to try to counter outright lies. In November, the EU launched "Disinformation Review," a weekly compendium of pro-Kremlin distortions and untruths. But facts have been powerless against a torrent of abuse and ridicule targeted at European journalists, researchers and others labelled NATO stooges. Pro-Russian activists insist that they are merely exercising their right to free speech, and that they do not take money or instructions from Moscow. The most abusive messages against Aro were mostly sent anonymously or from accounts set up under fake names on Facebook and other social media.

One of her most vocal critics in Finland, however, has openly declared his identity. He is Johan Backman, a tireless supporter of President Vladimir Putin of Russia who highlights the blurred lines between state-sponsored harassment and the expression of strongly held personal views. Fluent in Russian, Backman now spends much of his time in Moscow, appearing regularly in the Russian news media and at conferences in Russia as "a human rights defender." He also serves as the representative in Northern Europe for the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, a state-funded research group led by a Soviet-era intelligence officer. Backman, who also represents the Donetsk People's Republic, the breakaway state set up with Russian support in eastern Ukraine, denied targeting Aro as part of any "information war." Rather, he insisted that Russia was itself the victim of a campaign of disinformation and distortion conducted by the West. In a recent interview in Moscow, he said that Aro was part of this campaign and that she had tried to curtail the freedom of speech of Russia's supporters in Finland by labelling them as "Russian trolls." All the same, Backman added, her complaints about being targeted for abuse "have been very beneficial for Russia" because they have made others think twice about criticising Moscow. "She says she is a victim, and nobody wants to be a victim," he said. "This changed the atmosphere in the journalistic community."

Backman said he used his own private means to fund his activities in support of what he described as an "entirely defensive" campaign by Russia to counter Western propaganda. His activities, however, invariably follow Moscow's political and geopolitical script, particularly on NATO, which he regularly denounces as a tool for US military occupation. Aside from NATO, Backman's biggest bugbear of late has been Aro and the "Russo-phobic" tendencies that she, in his view, represents. Just days after Aro made her first appeal in September 2014 for information about Russian trolls, Backman told Russian People's Line, a nationalist Russian website, and other media that she was a "well-known assistant of American and Baltic special services." Around the same time, she received a call late at night on her mobile phone from a number in Ukraine. Nobody spoke, and all she could hear was gunfire. This was followed by text and email messages denouncing her as a "NATO whore" and a message purporting to come from her father  who died 20 years ago  saying he was "watching her." The hardest blow, Aro said, came early this year when a Finnish-language news site, MVLehti.net, which is based in Spain and mostly focuses on vilifying immigrants, dug up and published court records that showed she had been convicted of using illegal amphetamines in 2004. She had been fined 300 euros.

The website's headline: "NATO's information expert Jessikka Aro turned out to be a convicted drug dealer." It also posted photographs of Aro dancing in a slinky outfit at a nightclub in Bangkok. Backman requested and received Aro's old case file from the court shortly before the website published the documents. He denied passing them on to the site. The false claim that Aro was a drug dealer triggered an unusual open letter signed by more than 20 Finnish editors infuriated by what they denounced as the "poisoning of public debate" with "insults, defamation and outright lies." The Finnish police began an investigation into the website for harassment and hate speech. "I don't know if these people are acting on orders from Russia, but they are clearly what Lenin called 'useful idiots,'" said Mika Pettersson, the editor of Finland's national news agency and an organiser of the editors' open letter. "They are playing into Putin's pocket. Nationalist movements in Finland and other European countries want to destabilise the European Union and NATO, and this goes straight into Putin's narrative." Ilja Janitskin, the founder and head of MVLehti, who is based in Barcelona, Spain, said in response to emailed questions that he had no connection with Russia other than his surname. His political views, he said, are closer to those of Donald Trump, not Putin.
A gorilla shot dead at an American zoo wouldn't have attacked a four-year boy who fell into its enclosure, an animal behaviour expert says.

Professor Gisela Kaplan, who has worked with great apes, told radio station 3AW the 200 kilogram "gentle giant" was carrying the boy as if he was its own child.

She said Harambe was likely startled by screaming onlookers and was trying to drag the boy away.

"Gorillas don't attack. They are a peaceful species," she said.
New York has its High Line  a park built along an old elevated railway line. Melbourne's west could soon have its own 27-kilometre linear park  along the route of an abandoned sewage canal. Running from the old pumping station in Spotswood to the banks of Werribee River, Greening the Pipeline is a proposal launched on Wednesday by a western suburbs council, Melbourne Water and City West Water, the state government and VicRoads. Wyndham's Cr Peter Maynard thinks the park idea along an old sewer is a great idea. Credit:Justin McManus The sewer has lain dormant since it was taken out of use in the 1990s. Only one section of the proposed park on the sewer's course  a mere 100 metres starting in Williams Landing  has approved plans and funding to be built by Christmas.

But the group hopes the pilot will be such a success the entire pipeline eventually becomes a park.Most of the pipeline runs along the existing Federation Trail bike and walking path. It would be built along the course of the heritage-listed Main Outfall Sewer Pipeline, built in the 1890s. The planned parked would span multiple suburbs, in a corridor about 40 metres wide for most of its length. Wyndham councillor Peter Maynard said the proposal was an innovative way to deal with the old pipeline. "It's an absolutely fantastic idea," Cr Maynard. "It's on land that's not used, and the pipeline's heritage-listed so you can't knock it down and nor should you."
Last night a drone operated by private company flew in vicinity of Melbourne Assessment Prison, sending it into lock down, 3AW reports.

Corrections Victoria has confirmed - a drone hovering above a correctional facility sparked a lock down last night.

Victoria Police raised the alarm after the drone was spotted hovering near the Melbourne Assessment Centre at about 6pm.

A spokesperson for Corrections Victoria says the drone was being operated by a private company - there were only a few people in the exercise yard at the time - there was no breach but the lock-down was a precautionary measure.
A popular seafood chain accused of misleading customers by swapping "fish-of-the-day" dory fillets for cheap Vietnamese catfish is linked to notorious outlaw motorcycle gang the Mongols.

The Port Melbourne-based club, which has been the subject of recent police investigations into drugs, firearms and arson offences, is considered one of the most powerful bikie gangs in the state. Its members are already linked to businesses in the construction and tattooing industries.

Hunky Dory's signature fish and chips.

Fairfax Media can reveal high-ranking Mongol member Sherif Derias has a significant financial interest in the lucrative Hunky Dory fish-and-chip chain, which operates seven outlets across Melbourne.

While company records show no direct connection between Mr Derias and the business, police, underworld and seafood industry sources say the former body builder is "heavily involved" in the chain, which was founded by long time friend Greg Robotis.
Winter is no longer coming - it's here, but it might not feel like it yet.

The first day of winter is not going to be as cold as it was last year, and should be followed by a comfortable few days.

There was a cold start to Sunday in Perth and across the state. Southern Cross recorded -2.2 degrees. Credit:Craig Abraham

Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Stephen King said we should expect "another chilly start to the day," which will warm up to a high of 17 degrees about 1pm.

But in the early hours expect fog, possible frost and lows of 5 degrees in Melbourne, 3 degrees in the suburbs and 1 degree in the Yarra Valley, he said.
A teenage girl was subjected to sexual assaults by her 26-year-old female teacher for almost a year, West Australian police say.

The teacher faces 23 sexual assault charges, including 15 counts of sexual penetration and one count of persistent sexual conduct with a child aged under 16.

The teacher faces a spate of sex abuse charges, including rape.

Police allege the 15-year-old student was abused between July 2015 and May this year.

The offences were reported on Friday evening and the woman was arrested on Saturday.
A man has been hit by a bullet in a drive-by shooting in Hammond Park, south of Perth, in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Police were called to a residence in Bischoff Road just after 2am, after reports a man had been shot.

The man was found at a nearby address and treated by St John Ambulance.

Police want anyone who saw or heard anything suspicious in the Bischoff Road area between 1:30am and 2:15am to call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or report the information online at www.crimestopperswa.com.au.
Seoul: North Korea attempted to fire a missile from its east coast early on Tuesday morning but the launch appears to have failed, South Korean military officials told Reuters.

The launch attempt took place at around 5:20 am Seoul time (0620 AEST), said the officials, who asked not to be identified, without elaborating.

Japan put its military on alert for a possible North Korean ballistic missile launch, state broadcaster NHK reported.

Tension in Northeast Asia has been high since North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in January and followed that with a satellite launch and test launches of various missiles.
Latest News CBA-owned stockbroker acknowledges court decision relating to systemic compliance failures A total remediation of $6.5 million has been paid to affected customers

Interest rate rises weaken home borrowing power 20% fall in just six months, says broker

The corporate regulator itself has commended the head of the MFAA for quite rightly highlighting the differences in commission structures between the mortgage broking and financial planning industries.Speaking at the MFAAs Broker 2020 Series held in Sydney on Friday, ASIC senior manager, deposit takers, credit and insurers, Kevin Foo, told brokers Siobhan Hayden rightly corrected the Australian Financial Review (AFR) after it published a column claiming standards in the mortgage broking industry continue to lag those being imposed on financial planners.While we have said it previously and I have been asked to say it again, ASIC has no preconceptions as to the outcome [of the remuneration review] and there is no hidden agenda. Government and regulators have previously considered remuneration in other contexts, such as financial advice and insurance, and there are significant differences between the commission structures of financial planners and those of mortgage brokers.Your CEO, Siobhan Hayden, came out and quite rightly pointed out to the AFR the differences in remuneration between the two industries.Nonetheless, Foo said it is important to understand the remuneration practices and structures in any sector, as they are often key drivers of behaviour and culture.The press is always going to say what the press is going to say. ASIC bashing is what the press does as well.We dont know where this review is heading, it is a fact find. We have simply been asked by government to pull the information together so they can make a decision, Foo said.Defending the integrity of the mortgage broking sector against the claims made by the AFR, Hayden pointed to two clear differences between the remuneration structures of both industries.There are clear differences between the remuneration structures in mortgage broking and those in the financial planning and life insurance industries. Crucially, brokers are paid commissions by lenders; they are not paid by consumers. Commissions are also variable and reflect the cost of a mortgage, Hayden said, as reported in Australian Broker on Friday.
Latest News CBA-owned stockbroker acknowledges court decision relating to systemic compliance failures A total remediation of $6.5 million has been paid to affected customers

Interest rate rises weaken home borrowing power 20% fall in just six months, says broker

The NSW government should double the surcharge placed on foreign investors buying property in the state to improve housing affordability, an online property agency has argued.iBuyNew CEO Mark Mendel has called on the state government to mandate a 3% surcharge on foreign investors purchasing Australian real estate. Earlier this month, the prospect of applying a foreigner land tax surcharge of 1.5% in the next state budget was raised.Foreigners buying property in Australia should be paying a tax but the 1.5% surcharge that has been flagged isnt high enough, Mendel said.They should be slugged with a 3% surcharge instead. By charging foreigners a higher surcharge, this gives the ordinary Australian property buyers a fair go at purchasing their own property.A higher surcharge will also allow foreigners to help contribute additionally to communities in the areas where the tax is collected.NSW isnt the only state to up tax for overseas buyers. Last month the Victorian government increased taxes further on foreign home buyers in its 2016-17 state budget. The announcement saw the foreign investor stamp duty surcharge increase to 7%, from 3% announced in last years budget.I believe it is a fair proposition for foreign buyers of real estate, who enjoy the benefits of capital growth from the property they purchase, to help contribute to the infrastructure and liveability of the communities they are investing in via this tax proposal, Mendel said.There has not been a noticeable impact on foreign demand for Victorian real estate since [last year] and in fact the State Treasurer Tim Pallas has announced the stamp duty surcharge will rise to 7% and the land tax levy to 1.5%.There has continued to be a steady stream of foreign interest in Australian real estate despite these charges which are helping to ensure communities benefit from the best services and infrastructure.
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These Williamsburgers dont want this restaurant  no butts about it!

A local panel rejected a notorious bar owners application for a new Italian eatery on N. First Street on May 24, after a mob of angry residents argued it would end up being another party venue like the nightlife impresarios other establishments  which, among other things, sport sleazy sinks in the shape of ladies rear ends  and a bad fit for the residential area.

I find it distasteful and I think many of the woman in the community do as well, said Jenice Malecki, who lives across the street from the location between Kent and Wythe avenues and has been fighting the prospective venue for years. For men to wash their hands, theyre essentially feeling a womens derriere.

Members of Community Board 1s liquor license committee voted unanimously to reject Alexander Dimitrovs application to serve booze at his planned Mediterranean restaurant Pasta Wiz  and it isnt the first time.

In 2012, the board rejected Dimitrovs pitch to build a massive party venue in the same location  and then again when he revised the proposal as an Italian eatery  following neighbors fears it would end up like his wild Manhattan club Mehanata, where male patrons wash their hands in the offending butt basins, and pee into urinals in the shape of a womans gaping mouth.

The State Liquor Authority subsequently shot down that application, too, telling him he first needed to crack down on rowdy revelers at Mehanata  which features a bar made out of ice where patrons are encouraged to dress in old Soviet military uniforms and chug vodka, according to its website.

Dimitrov also owns a bar called Fishtales in Queens with the same washb-ass-ins, critics said.

Locals and Dimitrov clashed again in 2013, after he rented the building out as a practice space for rock bands without the right permits, according to a DNA Info report at the time.

But Dimitrov defended his new venture to the committee, saying Pasta Whiz would be a respectable noodle bar, not another party palace with risque bathroom fittings, and claimed his neighbors have been lying to keep him out.

You know you are lying about most of this stuff and you make all these complaints for no reason, he said. This is going to be a pasta place, not a nightclub.

He also accused his critics of beating up a worker he had sent out to collect signatures in support of his venture, which he presented to the committee.

But the committee was not convinced of his plans  in addition to the neighbors objections, members said his application was too vague about the eaterys layout and kitchen.

There is no real floor plan, no real kitchen plan, there is no chef, and a lack of neighborhood support, said committee co-chair Tom Burrows.

The full community board will vote on the application next, though its recommendation  like the committees  is only advisory. The State Liquor Authority ultimately decides who does and doesnt get to serve booze.
Tony France has been appointed as the supplier advisor to the Builders Merchants Federation (BMF) Board.

Mr France, who is sales director of Ibstock Brick, has worked in the brick industry for over 30 years and has held positions dedicated to serving the builders merchants sector for over 20 of them.

He attended his first BMF conference in 1994 and has represented his company at BMF regional meetings, supplier member meetings and bricks and blocks committee meetings since that time.

Mr France, who will attend his first Board meeting in July, replaces Charles Ledigo, who was elected as a full Board member in April.

Commenting on the appointment, John Newcomb, managing director of the BMF, said: We are pleased to welcome Tony as supplier advisor. He has a wealth of knowledge and experience that will serve the Board well.

Mr France added: "I'm delighted to be elected as advisor to the BMF Board and look forward to representing supplier members at this very exciting time for our industry.
On Friday 8 and Saturday 9 July, Frank Howard Tools & Fixings, based in Essex, will be hosting its annual tool show at the Chelmsford City Racecourse.

The free event will be open from 9am until 5pm on Friday and 9am until 4pm on Saturday, and will be brimming with top brands including Bosch, Makita, Festool, Paslode, Snickers and Draper.

Over 30 brands will be attending the event and each one will be showcasing the latest products and innovations from their ranges. As well as the opportunity to speak directly to representatives from each of the brands, there will be hands on demonstrations so that attendees can get to grips with the latest products on the market. There will also be some exclusive trade show deals available for those looking to pick up a bargain.

Throughout the event, Frank Howards expert team will be on hand to ensure those in attendance get the very best out of their visit. From offering advice on tools, to suggesting different techniques, the team will be sharing its knowledge with both new and current customers at the event.

Frank Howard, founder of the company, said: Our annual show gives us the chance to really connect with our wider customer base and showcase the wide selection of products we offer. With even have more big brands exhibiting at this years show, and were hoping the event will provide people with the chance to get up close and personal with the latest tools and machinery. We look forward to welcoming attendees in July.

In addition to the wide variety of trade stands at the show, there will also be a prize draw with the possibility of winning a 32" TV, PS4, Kindle Paperwhite, as well as a Makita radio. And for those whove worked up an appetite, food and drink will be on offer throughout both days.

For more information and to pre register for the event, visit: www.frankhoward.com/content.php/page/FHSHOWREGISTRATION.
New Adjacent Fest to take on Bamboozle next May in Atlantic City

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A row has broken out after the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) refused to disclose the arrangement with EDF for dealing with radioactive waste at the planned Hinkley Point C nuclear plant near Burnham-On-Sea.

The Information Commissioners office has turned down a Freedom Of Information (FoI) request for state aid arrangements between the UK and the European commission to be made public.

The FoI complainant, David Lowry, has launched an appeal, claiming it is in the public interest for British citizens to be able to judge whether their government has made the right decision about the new reactors.

Lowry, a British-based senior research fellow with the Institute for Resource and Security Studies in the US, told The Guardian newspaper: I do not believe the balance of judgment should be in favour of a foreign company, EDF Energy, who will potentially make huge multi-billion-pound financial gain from the continued non-disclosure, and hence non scrutiny, over myself as a British tax and electricity bill payer.

The government said that anyone building new reactors in Britain must manage and pay for the cost of handling waste products, unlike the existing situation where all radioactive materials are effectively dealt with through the public purse via the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.

However, although the operator must agree to take responsibility for the spent fuel and other radioactive waste, the cost is expected to be passed on to the domestic electricity user through higher bills.

Under the new arrangements, the prospective nuclear operators must enter into a waste transfer contract (WTC). Those contracts, like the one covering Hinkley, must be submitted for scrutiny by the EC under its state aid rules. It is the pricing methodology of the WTC that Lowry wished to review and which remains under wraps.

DECC turned down the original request under regulation 12(5)(a) of the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 arguing that disclosure would adversely affect international relations, defence, national security or public safety.

This argument was accepted by the Information Commissioner who believed that disclosure of the state aid discussions with the EC would adversely affect the relationship between the (UK) government and the commissions ability to work effectively together.

The commissioner acknowledged that there were strong public interest arguments in favour of disclosure but he believed there was a stronger argument for protecting the confidentiality of the material.

Lowry says he believes the real reason the government did not want to disclose the information was to save ministers from embarrassment. I think the concern is if the truth were to come out with documents being made public would adversely affect the credibility of the government submissions as their threadbare content would be laid bare for all to see, he said.

DECC declined to comment, saying it was a matter for the Information Commissioner.
THE UNSEEN INDIRA GANDHI

Through her physician's eyes

K P Mathur

Konark Publishers

151 pages; Rs 470



The belief that drives most biographies is that famous people are more than the sum of their public personas, so aspects of their personalities that are unnoticed, unseen or unimagined are as important to form a more rounded understanding of them. Libraries overflow with books on Indira Gandhi. A strong woman, an iron-fisted politician, a heroine, a villainess - every memoir, biography and even fiction has established her as a milestone in independent India's history. And yet, there will always be more books "revealing" aspects that may appear familiar but add to the present portrait.

In The Unseen Indira Gandhi, K P Mathur, a 92-year old former physician of Safdarjung Hospital who served as the doctor to "a number of senior politicians, bureaucrats and other VIPs", offers yet another bunch of anecdotes and tales from the life of Mrs Gandhi. Dr Mathur was associated with Mrs Gandhi as her personal physician for nearly 20 years till her assassination in 1984, and witnessed many behind-the-scene incidents during some of her most defining moments - the Emergency, the war with Pakistan in 1971, the death of Sanjay Gandhi and the birth of her grandchildren.

He recounts the coolness of a prime minister as the nation went to war and how the same prime minister waited agitatedly as the "Buddha smiled" in Pokhran. We are offered a glimpse of a shaken mother after she loses her son in a plane crash and how she regains her composure within weeks. The dynamics of the Nehru-Gandhi family emerge - the daughters-in-law, the uneasy truce and a matriarch's constant efforts to keep her family bonded - never in great detail but through tantalising glimpses.

The narrative is neither sensational nor overtly intimate. Rather, it is a doctor's glimpse into a politician's life - clean, clinical, formal and distant. The author, however, is a family physician and, by that merit, more intimate with India's first family than most others. He tells us how Indira Gandhi spent her Saturdays in a more relaxed fashion, reading biographies of great men, solving crosswords and playing card games after lunch.

He talks about how Maneka Gandhi, thanks to her relative youth, found it more difficult to gel with her mother-in-law and how both women kept their distance from each other. We are told how the senior Mrs Gandhi was keen, anxious even, about getting her other daughter-in-law, Sonia, more involved in "the social and cultural life of the country".

We are also given a peek into a leader who suddenly finds herself out of power, after a long and eventful stint in the hot seat. "Initially, PM felt a bit lonely after losing the elections. She had nothing to do. No files would come to her She had no office, no staff car or even a car of her own. The staff car allotted to her had been withdrawn and she had no telephone operator to help and she had forgotten the telephone numbers of friends," Mathur writes.

In The Unseen Indira Gandhi, we see her dusting her own room, ordering breakfast from South Indian Coffee House in Connaught Place, practising yoga and visiting numerous temples and religious places and meeting religious thinkers. We watch as she counts beads on the rosary of the rudraksha mala received from her spiritual guru Anandmayi Ma through trying times.

Yet, in all these, the reader will find a sense of incompleteness. Even as the doctor is present with the prime minister on the day of the secret Pokhran tests and finds Mrs Gandhi visibly agitated, the reader is not given a sense of the prevailing atmosphere in her household. The section on the Emergency has no behind-the-scenes insight to offer, as the doctor states what newspapers have maintained all these years. Sanjay Gandhi's death, however, provides some insight into the human that Indira Gandhi was, as she confides that her right arm has been chopped off. A similar human moment comes when Mrs Gandhi meets her British counterpart Margaret Thatcher and both "Iron Ladies" transform into "school girls" on vacation. Mrs Gandhi's assassination, too, is kept a low-key affair in the narrative, as the author bows out.

Infinitely more interesting are the small handwritten notes that the author adds between chapters as standalone one-page narratives. These notes - ranging from complaints of stomach ache to friendly chidings - are both a patient's queries to her doctor, as well as billets passed on to a confidant and friend. The black and white photographs of the author travelling with Mrs Gandhi similarly offer an interesting montage of the prime minister's tours.

The book nonetheless is refreshing in parts, especially when Indira Gandhi steps out of her hard shell, sometimes giggling, sometimes broken in an unexpected manner. For anyone who has not seen or felt the power of her public persona, these chinks would not amount to much. But for those who have, each single glimpse could be truly insightful.
Oral care major is fending off Patanjali, yoga guru Ramdev's ayurvedic consumer products company, by taking the fight to its doorstep.

India-specific innovations like the Active Salt Neem toothpaste are pushing up sales.

For the three months ended March, reported a four per cent sales growth, the highest in four quarters. Toothpaste sales grew three per cent in the quarter under review. This was higher than the previous three quarters.

In an analyst call last week, Colgate's India Managing Director Issam Bachaalani said its Active Salt Neem toothpaste was shaping well, with a 1.1 per cent market share nationally.

Bachaalani, who took over in October 2014, said would build its naturals portfolio with new launches in 2016-17. In 2015-16, Colgate launched two other herbal toothpastes containing clove oil and based on charcoal, which it said were doing well in modern trade. The company also launched an express pain relief gel in February 2016. Bachaalani said these innovations would continue.

He also said the number of vans making trips to rural areas had grown three times to 1,031 from 340 a few years ago. For the March 2016 quarter, rural sales contributed 35 per cent to Colgate's top line.

Analysts expect this number to increase. "Around 300 million consumers still do not use toothpaste. And in urban areas, less than 20 per cent urban households brush twice a day," Bachaalani said.

Brand investments also significantly increased for Colgate, with advertising and sales promotion expenditure touching 18.1 per cent of sales in the March quarter, up from 15 per cent in the same period a year ago. Bachaalani said this momentum would be sustained.

In the March quarter, Bachaalani said barring multi-use and low-priced packs, segments like freshness, whitening, naturals and family toothpastes had posted strong growth.

Colgate derives nearly 70-80 per cent of its Indian revenue from toothpastes and remains the leading player in the category. The Colgate stock price has moved up nearly 3 per cent in the last one week. The spike is even sharper at nearly six per cent if the price from May 23 is taken into account.

Today, the stock closed at Rs 858.80 on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), up 0.74 per cent.
As bad loans mount, the government is adopting stricter stance towards wilful defaulters. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday seized the properties of and Jewellery, one of the countrys biggest bank loan defaulters. The company owes over $1 billion to 14 public and private banks and is facing criminal investigations under anti-money laundering laws.

The probe agency has attached 16-17 properties/assets worth over Rs 172 crore. The said properties are spread across Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Surat, Kolkata and Bangalore, a top ED official told Business Standard.

The properties, mostly real estate, were attached under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). Certain plants and machinery, including collaterals kept with the banks, have also been seized. The collateral security provided by Winsome is worth just about Rs 250 crore.

ENFORCEMENT DIRECTORATE



On Tuesday seized the properties of and Jewellery



ONE OF THE BIGGEST BANK LOAN DEFAULTERS



The company owes over $1 billion to 14 public and private banks under anti-money laundering laws



PROPERTIES FROZEN



Under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), and include mostly real estate, and plants and machinery (including collateral kept with the banks).

Meanwhile, the enforcement agency has also put a requisition for Letter Rogatory (LR), seeking judicial assistance of foreign countries in probing the case, especially in Dubai. A special PMLA court is yet to issue the order for the same. An e-mail sent to Winsome in this regard did not elicit a response.

Winsome owes Rs 4,680 crore to a consortium of banks, headed by Standard Chartered Bank. Its associate firm Forever Precious Jewellery and Diamonds owes another Rs 2,121.82 crore to a set of banks, led by Punjab National Bank (PNB). This makes Winsome group the second-largest wilful defaulter after Kingfisher Airlines.

PNB alone had an exposure of Rs 1,650 crore. It is suspected that this money was diverted either out of the country or to other projects, the ED official added.

Last year, PNB filed a case with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) against and Forever Precious Jewellery and Diamonds for recovery of Rs 900 crore and Rs 747 crore, respectively. Jatin Mehta is the promoter-director of both the firms.

CBI is probing the money trail and the timeline of deterioration in the diamond firms operations and accounts, said a source close to developments.

The move was triggered after Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Raghuram Rajan wrote to the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) in April 2015, seeking stern action against the top 10 wilful defaulters of bank loans.

Starting March 2013, Winsome group started having problems in repaying the loans. The banks sent a notice to it as a wilful defaulter on October 15, 2013. In the same year, the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) referred the case to CBI for criminal investigation.

Jatin Mehta reportedly told the banks that the firms buyers in the UAE had defaulted on payments, making it impossible for him to repay the loans. According to Mehta, the buyers suffered losses of $1 billion in derivatives and commodities.

According to Winsomes 2012-13 annual report, Jordanian national Haytham Ali Salman Abu Obidah, owner of Italian Gold FZE, the main distributor of Winsome Diamonds in the UAE, introduced the Indian firm to several distributors in 2012. All of these firms were directly or indirectly connected to Obidah.

The strange nature of its so-called distributor raised several questions about Winsomes distribution network. Besides, the group used to export gold jewellery and coins to 28 entities in Dubai and West Asia that were owned by Mehta and family. All such activities of the company are now under the scanner, added the source in the Enforcement Directorate.



ALSO READ: Banks look at Winsome's customers to recover dues




An association of students, who claim to have been rejected after being offered a job by L&T Infotech, has knocked the doors of Tamil Nadu government and Deputy Labour Commissioners office.

on Tuesday clarified that it had withdrawn job offers of less than 1,000 students, not 1,500 as reported earlier.

Several affected students met Tamil Nadus infotech minister and infotech secretary along with their teachers and some local politicians on Tuesday and sought government intervention in the matter.

The minister assured the students that he would speak to . Despite repeated attempts, a comment from the IT Minister could not be obtained.

Meanwhile, said it is one of the largest recruiters of engineering students in India. While empathising with plight of the students, we clarify that L&T Infotech had issued only Letters of Intent to prospective employees and not Letters of Appointment, the company stated.

This was explicitly stated in the terms of our offer. All stakeholders were clearly aware of the terms of the letters issued by us. All actions by the company were consistent with our Letters of Intent.

The company cited poor performance of the students in the second online test, conducted in March as the reason behind withdrawal of job offers. The company said its growth and high margins will continue in the current financial year and it would continue to hire the best talent from the campuses.

The company is planning to launch a Rs 1,400-crore share sale in the coming weeks.
After selling about half a million two-wheelers through an online tie-up with Snapdeal, countrys largest two-wheeler player has launched online booking of products on its website. The 18-month-old tie-up with Snapdeal will continue but the company will also promote sales on its own platform.

The online booking facility was launched last month. The company said it is too early to share online-only sales numbers. Hero has sold 520,000 two-wheelers on Snapdeal since in December 2014. It is learnt that the company is in advanced stages of finalising tie-ups with other leading e-commerce players.

We would be generating customer awareness about the online sales feature through our social media platforms and through dealership activation programmes, said a company spokesperson.

SUCCESS PLAN Hero starts online booking of bikes on its website



Decision made after success of the tie-up with Snapdeal



520,000 two-wheelers sold on Snapdeal since December 2014



TVS Motors, Suzuki also sell two-wheelers on Snapdeal

The delivery process, warranty benefits and servicing facilities at 6,000-plus Hero touch points remain the same.

A buyer purchasing a motorcycle online gets access to the complete assortment of Heros bikes and scooters in all variants and colours, which might not always be available with a particular dealer. A buyer can book a Hero two-wheeler on the website by paying Rs 5,000. After online booking, the customer can visit the dealership to get the delivery.

Online presence is becoming critical for most auto . In May 2015, Piaggio announced sale of Vespa scooters through Snapdeal. Suzuki Motorcycles entered into a tie-up with Snapdeal in November last year. In March this year, TVS Motors also roped in Snapdeal.

are also intensifying their digital and social media engagement.

Some, however, do not see merit in tying-up with an online marketplace. Y S Guleria, senior vice-president (sales and marketing) at Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India recently said, the company is not looking at online sales in near future.

We will increase our digital footprint in a phased manner. Buying patterns suggest that people go to online for a deal or discount. A two-wheeler is not delivered at your doorstep. You have to visit the dealership to complete the formalities. Digital can only help in comparisons and better understanding of the products, he said.
(RIL) said it had signed agreements with Total SA of France for sale of its entire 76 per cent stake in Gulf Africa Petroleum Corporation (Gapco), for an undisclosed sum.RIL had bought the 76 per cent stake in 2007, with management control. Gapco has significant presence in the downstream petroleum sector in Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya. RILs foreign arm, Reliance Exploration and Production DMCC (REPD) had the 76 per cent; Fortune Oil Corporation, Mauritius, had the rest.REPDs agreement to sell its interest in Gapco is part of a joint transaction wherein both it and the minority shareholder have agreed to sell their entire respective holdings for cash. The net proceeds will be finalised on completion of the transaction, expected to be within the coming months, RIL said.The firm said Mauritius-incorporated Gapco was a holding company with subsidiaries in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda, primarily engaged in petroleum products import, beside trading, storage, marketing and supply of oil products.

It owns 260 thousand kilolitres of storage capacity and operates 108 retail outlets. The transaction is subject to regulatory nods and other closing conditions. Total said the buyout of Gapco assets would help it expand in the continent. This buyout is in line with Totals growth strategy for the distribution of products and services in Africa, aiming at expanding in fast-growing regions," said Momar Nguer, president of marketing & services. "These assets, which complement our activities in East Africa, will help us fully leverage synergies of size and build the most competitive integrated regional supply, logistics and marketing base," he added.

The main assets acquired by Total include terminals in Mombasa and Dar-es-Salaam and a network of 100 gas stations. The company said the acquisition of the assets is complementary to Total's existing operations in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania and will strengthen its logistics in the region and accelerate the growth of service station network, particularly in Tanzania. Total claims it is a leading petroleum product retailer in Africa with a network of more than 4,000 service stations. The company aims to grow its market share from 17 per cent in 2015 to more than 20 per cent.
A recent health ministry study has found dangerous amounts of toxins - lead, antimony, Di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (known as DEHP) and chromium - in cough syrup brands such as Benadryl and Alex.

It found these four heavy metals leached into the cough syrups packaged in plastic or PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles. The study found this leaching happening at room temperature.

Apart from these two cough syrups, German manufacturer Merck Biopharma's Polybion Multivitamin Syrup, and Alkem Labs' Hemfer syrup were also found with the toxins due to leaching from their respective plastic bottles. Popular antacid Mucaine Gel, manufactured by Pfizer's subsidiary Wyeth Laboratories, was also found laced with the heavy metals as well as cadmium.

The study, undertaken on the instructions of the health ministry, was conducted by the government's All India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health (AIIH&PH). In the five brands it tested, the institute found that the leaching of antimony, DEHP and chromium increased with a rise in room temperature. The leaching of lead increased in the cough syrups as the room temperature rose. On lead, the World Health Organisation (WHO) had concluded that there was no known level of safe exposure.

A spokesperson for Benadryl-maker Johnson & Johnson said: "All Johnson & Johnson products, including Benadryl Cough Formula, undergo elaborate stability testing programmes to ensure no abnormal chemicals are generated or migrated into the product. This is done with validated test methodologies at development stage as well as through our post-marketing surveillance programme. The PET (plastic) bottles themselves are selected after rigorous evaluation to confirm to international pharmacopeia standards, wherein it is verified that no hazardous chemical is extracted (migrated) into the bottle through prescribed methods."



Alkem Labs, which manufactures Hemfer cough syrup, said it conducted real-time stability study with the syrup and the results were found satisfactory and within desired specifications. "We use a third-party vendor for getting the PET bottles to package our products. The vendor selected is verified to use FDA-approved raw materials for manufacturing PET bottles. We also get a declaration from the vendor on the potential of leachability from these bottles," it added.

Alex cough syrup is manufactured and marketed in India by Glenmark Pharma. A Glenmark statement said: "Our products conform to the highest quality standards and all our manufacturing facilities are fully compliant with the CGMP regulations. We also conduct rigorous stability studies to ensure compliance with quality, safety and efficacy as per prescribed storage conditions and through the shelf life of the products. Further, we comply with laws and regulations relating to use of pet bottles." Merck Biopharma did not respond to this newspaper's queries."





A Pfizer spokesperson said: "We are not aware of this study nor have we received any communication from the regulatory agencies on this matter. All Pfizer products released in the market are in compliance with the prescribed pharmacopoeia testing specifications and regulations. Our product Mucaine Gel has a proven record of safety, quality and efficacy and remains the product of choice in its therapeutic area."



The government's top pharmaceutical committee, the Drugs Technical Advisory Board (DTAB), had accepted the institute's test results in May and recommended to the health ministry to prohibit the use of plastic-bottle packaging for any liquid oral formulations having "pediatric use, geriatric use, use by pregnant women and use by any women of the reproductive age group."



The research institute refused to demarcate safe levels of toxin intake in its report to the health ministry. "To consider a level as safe level amounts to playing with fire," the institute said. It added that instead of debating the safe intake levels, the government should focus on minimising the exposure to these "presuming no level is safe level".
Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister on Tuesday accused NDA government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi of "misusing" central investigating agencies like CBI, Income Tax department and Enforcement Directorate against political opponents.

Addressing a Youth Congress rally for empowering the Panchayati Raj Institutions representatives at Mandi, Singh accused the Central government of "misusing" Enforcement Directorate, CBI and Income Tax Department against its political opponents.

He said the Union Government had "failed to address the core issues" and problems faced by the country and was engaged only in "victimising and harassing" the political rivals.

He said that provision had been made in the 14th Finance Commission for devolution of funds for developmental works to panchayats but there was no such provision for Zila Parishads and Panchayati Samitis.

He said that he had taken up this issue personally with the prime minister and was hopeful that provisions would be made for Zila Parishads and Panchayat Samitis as well.

But, in case the Centre did not agree for this, the state government would provide appropriate funds for carrying out developmental activities.

Singh said the government had constituted 'Niti Ayog' in place of 'Yojna Ayog' and being a chief minister he was also its member but till today he was unaware about the working of the Commission.

Commenting on two years of the Modi Government, he said their claims of development had been confined only to publicity and nothing had been done on the ground level.

He claimed that the Union Government had failed to fulfill promises made during the election campaign.

Speaking on the occasion, Health Minister Kaul Singh Thakur said the state government was committed to overall development and welfare of the people of the state.
The Congress on Tuesday questioned the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on his silence over repeated attacks on African nationals across the nation from past few months.

Addressing a press conference in Delhi, Congress leader Anand Sharma said, "It is unacceptable, it is shameful. The government ought to have intervened when the first attacks took place but the situation has been allowed to deteriorate to an extent where mob lynching is taking place."

"President Pranab Mukherjee has spoken, Vice-President Hamid Ansari has spoken but the Prime Minister is silent. His silence is embarrassing now. He is the head of the leaders, the elected executive. He must speak and his government must ensure the safety of students from Africa," he further criticised.

Sharma added that India and Africa historically have a very special relationship.

"This is a land of Gandhi and Nehru who spoke of Afro-Indian solidarity. Therefore, such things happening in India is disturbing. It has effected India's image globally," Sharma said.

Meanwhile, condemning the killing of a Congo student Oliver as heinous and unacceptable, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj earlier on Tuesday said it was not a racial attack.

Swaraj held a meeting with African students and officials.

Over a dozen African nationals were attacked in Rajpkhurd village of Chhatarpur, South Delhi on Wednesday night.

It is learnt that locals objected to the free lifestyle of these men and women who stayed in the area.

There were four attacks within a span of an hour, sources said, which hint the attacks may have been organised and pre-planned.

Four men and two women have been injured in the attacks and are admitted in hospital. The Delhi Police on Friday registered four FIRs in the case.

All four complainants, in their 30s, have been residing in Delhi for past few years, police said.
Stepping up its outreach in the wake of string of attacks against African nationals, government on Tuesday, announced a slew of steps including a major sensitisation campaign even as External Affairs Minister said the killing of a Congolese youth was not a "racial crime".

Swaraj, along with her junior Minister VK Singh, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and other senior officials, met a group of African envoys and students who raised concerns over safety and security to which she assured that government was working on a "major strategy" under which an institutional mechanism will be put in place.

She also said that the government was committed to a fast-track trial in the case of killing of the Congolese Masonda Ketada Oliver and "harshest possible punishment" for the culprits.

Terming the killing of Oliver "barbaric", Swaraj, however, said, "it is not a case of racial crime as the CCTV footage shows that the local residents who tried to save Oliver were also attacked."



"The ministry will be carrying out a sensitisation campaign across the country as such incidents are bad for the image of the country. An advisory will also be issued to the states to sensitise people in the areas where there is a big number of African nationals," Swaraj said.

This was Swaraj's first official engagement in the ministry after being discharged from AIIMS on May 15 where she was admitted for three weeks due to pneumonia.

During the meeting she also thanked the African students for calling off their protest at Jantar Mantar on Tuesday following assurances by the ministry. She also appreciated the participation of African envoys at the India-hosted ccelebration last week.
The age of all doctors in the Central Health Service has been raised to 65 years with effect from Tuesday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the decision would benefit about 4,000 doctors.

The central government has decided to enhance the superannuation age of all doctors in the Central Health Service to 65 years with effect 31st May 2016, he tweeted. With this step, we retain our experienced doctors for a longer period & provide quality health services to citizens, particularly the poor, Modi added in another tweet.

There are about 4,000 doctors under the Central Health Service, according to the Health Ministry website.

Modi had announced at a rally in Saharanpur on May 26 that the Cabinet would take a decision within a week to raise the age for doctors to 65 years whether in states or government of India.

Health Minister J P Nadda said on Tuesday the step would empower the government to strengthen the health care sector. This will enable the government to retain experienced doctors for a longer period, and to provide better services in its public health facilities, particularly to the poorest, who are entirely dependent on public facilities, he said.

Health pool

It will help in providing additional doctors in the health pool of the country. This will strengthen the efforts of the ministry in conceptualising and rolling out various people-oriented schemes which need the services of doctors in implementing them, he said.

Modi had said at the May 26 rally that there was a need for more doctors across the country but it was not possible to fill the gap in two years of his government.

"There is a shortage of doctors. In government hospitals, their is 60 years in some states, 62 in some others. If adequate numbers of medical institutes were there, then we would have more doctors and would not feel the shortage. It is difficult to make doctors in two years but poor families cannot be forced to live without doctors.

"Therefore from Uttar Pradesh, I want to announce this to my countrymen that this week our government's Cabinet will take a decision and the retirement age of our doctors, whether in states or government of India, would be made 65 years instead of 60 or 62," he said.
At least 16 defence personnel, including two army officers, were on Tuesday killed in a massive fire that broke out at one of Asia's biggest ammunition depot in Maharashtra's Pulgaon that houses the largest stockpile of weapons in the country. Union Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Tuesday said there was no sabotage involved in the fire at the central ammunition depot at Pulgaon in the district but the exact cause would be known only after inquiry.

"We are not ruling out any possibility but there is no sabotage as such," he told reporters here. Fire was contained with timely help from all the concerned persons and only a complete inquiry will reveal its cause, Parrikar said.

It is too early to speculate about the cause, he added.

Parrikar, who visited the injured personnel at the Datta Meghe Medical College and Hospital at Sawangi Meghe in the district, said 130 tonnes of anti-tank mines were destroyed in the fire.

However, the 16 persons who lost their lives while trying to douse it succeeded in saving the ammunition stored in nine other sheds, the minister said.

Parrikar, accompanied by the Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag, spent more than half an hour meeting the injured personnel at the hospital



The fire which started at 1 AM at one of the sheds that housed "highly sensitive ammunition" in the high security central ammunition depot (CAD), spread over 7,000 acres, has been completely doused and the situation brought under control after an overnight operation.

"However, in efforts to douse the fire, two officers and 14 personnel (to include one Army jawan and 13 civilian fire fighting staff) lost their lives and two officers and 15 personnel (to include nine Army Jawans and six civilian fire fighting staff) were injured," Director General of Military Operations Lt Gen Ranbir Singh told reporters in New Delhi.

Loud explosions were heard one after the other as the raging firelit up the night sky.

The cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained and the Army has instituted an inquiry into the incident, Singh said.

"Actions to assess the damage are in progress," the DGMO said. The Army had earlier put the casualty at 17 which has now been revised to 16. It had also earlier said the majority of personnel killed were Defence Security Corps jawans.

Following a directive from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, who was in Pune, rushed to the spot. Army Chief Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag also visited the site.

Modi tweeted, "Pained by loss of lives caused by a fire at central ammunition depot in Pulgaon, Maharashtra. My thoughts are with the bereaved families.

"I pray that those who are injured recover quickly. Have asked RM @manoharparrikar to visit the spot & take stock of the situation", he said.

CAD, Pulgaon is located at about 115 Km from Nagpur, in Maharashtra. The depot is spread over an area of more than 7000 acres and is an important ammunition depot of the Indian Army.

Stocks including bombs, grenades, shells, assorted rifles, missiles and other explosives from various factories comes here first and is then distributed to various forward areas.

As per initial reports, the fire started in one of the sheds at approximately 0100h this morning, and immediate action was taken by the fire fighting parties and Quick Reaction Teams located in the depot by putting the fire fighting mechanism into place as per the laid down procedures.

"This restricted the fire to one shed only which contained highly sensitive ammunition," Lt Gen Singh said.

The injured personnel have been evacuated to Multi Specialty Hospital, Wardha (35 Km from Pulgaon) and are undergoing medical treatment.

The medical condition of the injured personnel is reported to be stable, the DGMO said adding Army medical teams have been moved from Pune to provide specialist medical attention.

He expressed deep condolences to the families of the brave hearts who have lost their lives while protecting and securing the important ammunition depot.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has said power distribution companies (discoms) would be made to compensate consumers for even one-hour-long outages. The warning has come in the wake of Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) issuing an order to to compensate consumers for unscheduled outages extending up to two hours.

For now, we have asked to compensate consumers for unscheduled power cuts extending up to two hours. But after six months, if there is no improvement in their power supply network, government will bring it down to one hour, he said on Tuesday.

However, the proposed compensation for unscheduled outages is unlikely to come for free. With huge costs involved in system upgrade, are likely to appeal for a tariff hike.

In the amendments suggested to the Delhi Electricity Supply Code and Performance Standards Regulations, the DERC has also asked the discoms to inform consumers about outages in advance. The regulations also suggest maximum time limit and rates for outages caused by different reasons. The compensation amount ranges from Rs 50 to Rs 100 for each day of outage.

In case of power supply failure, the licensee shall pay compensation to the affected consumer(s) by way of adjustment against current and/or future bills for supply of electricity within ninety (90) days of failure of the Licensee to meet the guaranteed Standards of Performance, said the DERC.

The DERC would also set up an ombudsman to take up consumer complaints regarding power outages and non-payment of compensation.

If the licensee fails to pay compensation, the affected consumer(s) may approach the Ombudsman. In case the claim for compensation is upheld by the Ombudsman, the compensation shall be determined by the Ombudsman at the rate of Rs 5,000 or five times the compensation payable as per Schedule-III to these Regulations or whichever is higher, reads the notice dated May 30.

Power distribution in Delhi is managed by private companies  Tata Power Delhi Distribution Limited (TPDDL), Reliance Power-promoted BSES Rajdhani Power Limited (BRPL) and BSES Yamuna Power Limited (BYPL).

Sector experts and discom officials said a lot needs to be done before such a scheme could be implemented. This whole thing needs to be monitored and there is a lot of groundwork required to improve the power network, the supply system, and the smart meters. This could easily take up 12-24 months, said a senior discom official.

According to him, unless such smart systems are installed, there would be no accountability.

For underground cabling and meter upgrade, a huge amount of investment would be required. Delhi government should ideally pay the discoms for supplying power to unauthorised colonies.



Discom officials said, if they incur system upgrade cost, the DERC would have to approve the tariff hike. You cant get world class, accountable and reliable power supply with archaic systems and technology. All this doesn't come for free, a discom executive said.
The governments latest decision to set up a Fare Fixation Committee (FFC) with the mandate to recommend revision in fares for Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) may not have come at a better time. With fares stagnant for more than six years amid rising input costs, the metro operator is struggling to wriggle out of a financial mess.

A Business Standard analysis showed annual growth in the companys total revenue dropped sharply from over 100 per cent in 2010-11 to 11 per cent in 2014-15, the latest year for which data is publicly available. DMRC reported total earning of Rs 3,562 crore in 2014-15, about 11.5 per cent more than the Rs 3,197 crore the previous year.

The slowing growth in earnings has come despite a 20 per cent jump in total route length during the period, from 161 km at the end of 2010-11 to 193 km in March 2015. The annual growth in average daily ridership also declined from 37 per cent to 8.6 per cent during the five years. Daily ridership was 2.38 million in 2014-15, from 2.19 mn in 2013-14.

The company has not registered a positive profit after tax in 10 years, except once in 2008-09. Net loss declined from Rs 413 crore in 2010-11 to Rs 90 crore in 2012-13, before rising to Rs 99 crore in 2013-14 and further to Rs 104 crore in 2014-15. However, the firm recorded an operating profit of Rs 1,123 crore for 2014-15, up 13 per cent over Rs 994 crore in previous year.

We are financially viable, though we are not able to make provision for DRF or service it, Gupta had said. DRF is meant for upkeep and replacement of assets, including rolling stock.He added that expenditure on electricity, 40 per cent of total spending, rises yearly.

Experts say DMRC is in urgent need of a fare increase. During these six years, all other costs have gone up by 70-80 per cent, said Amrit Pandurangi, senior director at Deloitte.

He added DMRC had not done badly in garnering income from non-fare revenue sources, as compared to global standards. With stagnant passenger fares, the share of fares in total revenue had dropped from 46 per cent in 2010-11 to 42 per cent (Rs 1,505 crore) in 2014-15. Consultancy, real estate and advertising revenue accounted for the rest.
Faced with a supply surplus, the Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission (KERC) has ended the earlier rule from the state government that power producers must generate at 100 per cent capacity and supply all this within the state.

Tamil Nadu, said sector officials, would issue a similar order soon. This is subsequent to the southern grid facing technical snags and outages from a mismatch between demand and supply, with lack of inter-state transmission capacity.

While Karnatakas loss-making power distribution companies (discoms) lack the money to buy surplus power, generating units complain of late payment and demand shortfall despite the mandate to run at 100 per cent capacity.

The Karnataka government had issued the earlier order, to operate at full capacity and send nothing outside the state, in September 2015 under Section 11 of the Electricity Act. That has led to the present situation, of a serious threat to grid security and public interest, said the KERC order dated Monday.

The daily state demand has reduced to 20 million units from the earlier 50 mn units. Peak demand, earlier 9,500 Mw, was 7,200-8,600 Mw from the first week of May.

Karnataka has total generation capacity of nearly 17,000 Mw, of which thermal power is 8,000 Mw, hydro is 3,600 Mw and renewable energy is 4,800 Mw. Sugar and other industrial units also sell their surplus captive power to the state grid.

The accumulated loss for Karnataka discoms as of the provisional financial accounts for 2014-15 was Rs 2,561 crore.

Generators may now apply for a no-objection certificate from KERC to sell their surplus outside the state, said an official.

Business Standard had reported earlier this month that the southern grid faced demand shortfall and over-supply, with not enough inter-state transmission capacity.

Total demand in the southern region is 34,000 Mw. The HVDC line from Jaipur in Rajasthan to Gajuwaka, near Vizag, which supplies 500 Mw, has tripped five times in the past month, said an official. As the line trips, so power transfer capacity is reduced, while demand keeps going up. The high temperatures also lead to tripping, said a power market executive.

Experts said with states freeing their generation capacity, the spot market in the south could see an uptick.

These states, rather than sourcing costly long-term power, could choose spot power at a market-determined price as needed, said one.
The lapsing of validity of 16 merchant mines in Odisha by March 31, 2020 is set to create a deficit of 66 million tonne (mt) of . Steel mills and other end use industries operating without captive ore sources are likely to be hit hard as no roadmap has been prepared for auctioning of these leases.

As per the provisions of the amended Mines and Minerals (Development & Regulation) Act, the validity of existing non-merchant mines have been extended till March 31,2020 and those of captive leases till 2030.

Major mining leases lapsing by March 2020 include the ones held by Rungta Mines, KJS Ahluwalia, Serajuddin & Co, Kaypee Enterprises, Kalinga Mining Corporation, Mid East Integrated Steel Ltd, KN Ram, RB Das, Tarini Prasad Mohanty, KC Pradhan and Lal Traders.

"There will be sharp reduction in sourcing to the tune of 66 mt as leases of 16 non-captive mines would expire by 2020. Though there are a number of mineral blocks in Odisha, many blocks are not yet explored up to the G2 level. Incomplete exploratory work in the existing leases and lack of a roadmap for auctioning of mines in 2020 will add to the demand-supply gap", said an industry source.

blocks going for auctions need to be explored at least up to G2 level as per the policy of the Government of India. Most of the mining leases expiring in 2020 have not been explored to that level.

There is an exploratory obligation on holder of mining lease as per laid down conditions in the approved mining plan under Mineral Concession Development Rules (MCDR), 1988. Rule 22 of Mineral Auction Rules 2015 stipulates to complete detailed exploration at G1 level and prepare a detailed feasibility study report, over the entire area under the mining lease, within a period of five years from the date of commencement of such mining lease.

"The state government needs to publish a roadmap for auctioning the leases which are due to expire in 2020. Moreover, the state government needs to enforce on operating leaseholders to comply with their exploratory obligations within the stipulated time", he added.

As of now, there are 47 iron and manganese ore mines with an approved EC (environment clearance) limit of 154 million tonne. Of this, there are 37 operating merchant mines of which 16 leases are due to expire by March 31, 2020 and such leases have an EC limit to produce 66 mt of iron ore. The remaining 10 are captive mines with an approved production ceiling of 53.10 mt.
Faced with a shortage of pulses and rising prices, agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh on Tuesday said the government's decision on GM pulses would depend on a green signal from GEAC or Genetic Engineering Approval Committee. GM is genetically modified.

Meanwhile, Niti Aayog member and agriculture economist Ramesh Chand supported the proposal to use GM pulses, saying that raising the Minimum Support Price (MSP) wouldn't alone boost production in the long run.

Speaking at an event organised by International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Chand said, the government needed to "rethink" the issue of GM foods. It would be like "day dreaming" to hope higher prices would increase production "without a technological breakthrough".

Currently, Bt cotton is the only GM crop allowed for commercial cultivation in India. The previous government had put a temporary ban on commercial cultivation of Bt brinjal in 2010.

At one point in time, prices of pulses were almost on a par with that of wheat and rice in India. The prices of pulses are now six times higher than that of grains. A proposal to raise MSP of pulses and other kharif crops for 2016-17 crop year (July-June) is expected to be discussed by the Cabinet soon. The agriculture ministry has proposed an increase in MSP of pulses by up to Rs 200 per quintal to encourage cultivation.

The output of pulses is estimated to be 17.3 million tonnes this year, a bit higher than 17.15 million tonnes last year. However, it is a lot lower than the record output of 19.25 million tonnes in 2013-14 crop year.

Storage capacity to be raised

The Centre has decided to add 56,800-tonne storage capacity in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Odisha.

Of this, 38,000-tonne capacity will be added in Madhya Pradesh, 12,000 tonnes in Maharashtra, and 6,800 tonnes in Odisha.

"This will help farmers in storing their crop in case of higher production rather than selling it off at throwaway prices," said Shakil Ahammed, joint secretary in agriculture ministry.

The government is also considering a new national policy on development of cold chains, for holistic infrastructure development.
The Odisha government is planning to set up a to cater to the needs of private and public sector undertakings (PSUs) in the state on public private partnership (PPP) mode.

"The government has taken a decision to have a on PPP mode for hosting servers of PSUs and IT and ITes units of the state.

As the state is poised to become an IT hub, it is imperative to have low cost storage facilities to have a complete ecosystem. It will be an Opex (operational expenditure) model", said an IT department official.

We will be discovering the modalities of setting up the by studying the best practices, he added. The project is likely to come up at Infovalley, a dedicated IT park.

In Odisha, a state data centre (SDC) with a capacity of 80 terabyte (TB) hosting 41 IT applications is operational, catering to the needs of the 21 government departments only.

With the storage space of the state data centre already been utilized, the government is planning to add another 100 TB (40 racks).

The Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) is also planning to set up a world class data centre in Bhubaneswar at an investment of Rs 60 crore. The data centre will be one of its kind in eastern India with a certification from the Uptime Institute, United States. It will be a 100 rack data centre. The passive infrastructure will be taken up with a cost of Rs 30 crore in the first phase and the balance will be invested in the second phase. With the completion of the project, public sector undertakings (PSUs), micro small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and corporates will be able to host their servers at the data centre.

As the state government has mandated that all its departments will earmark two per cent of their annual plan budget or one per cent of their overall budget (whichever is higher) for IT spending to provide services through the electronic mode, the plan to set up data centre is a step in this regard, he added.
The state government has chosen 15 banks for handling the business and deposits of the State Public Sector Undertakings (SPSUs) and State Level Autonomous Societies (SLASs).

The banks that made the grade are 11 public sector banks, two regional rural banks (RRBs), one private sector bank and the State Cooperative Bank (OSCB).

For selection of banks, the state government in consultations with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and State Level Bankers' Committee (SLBC) had finalised 15 parameters to appraise the performance of the banks. Performance of the banks in financial inclusion, especially sanctioning of loans to agriculture, MSME (micro, small & medium enterprises) and SHGs (self-help groups) or JLGs (joint liability groups) and opening of new bank branches in unbanked GPs (gram panchayats) were delineated as the key criteria.

For empanelment, the minimum eligibility score was 60 out of 100.

A bonus of five marks were given to banks managing RSETI (Rural Self Employment Training Institutes) and RRBs. SBI showed the best performance scoring 80 out of I00, followed by Indian Overseas Bank (79) and Utkal Grameen Bank (73). SBI and IOB got AA+ rating, while five other banks- UGB, UCO Bank, OSCB, Bank of Baroda, and Union Bank of India got AA rating scoring 70 and above. Gramya Bank, Bank of India and Indian Bank got A+ rating, while another five banks, United Bank of India, HDFC, Canara Bank, Allahabad Bank and Andhra bank got A rating.

HDFC Bank is the only private sector bank that met the government's eligibility criteria.

Tapan Kumar Pradhan, additional secretary, finance (Odisha) said: "In the coming years, banks showing better performance in the field of agriculture and priority sector lending as well as those providing banking services in un-banked areas will be given priority while selecting banks to handle SPSU and SLAS deposits. Submission of wrong data and failure to submit required information to the state government can result in the removal of a bank from the panel at any time."

Regardless of empanelment, if a bank opens the first bank branch in an un-banked gram panchayat, the entire government funds of that panchayat shall be parked in that bank branch.
Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), which has pegged the cost of making Pune a within the next five years at Rs 3,480 crore, is in talks with the US government's Department of Treasury to help it raise funds via issuance of bonds.

Senior officials from the Municipal Corporation said that a team from the Department of Treasury had visited Pune a week back and will soon be finalising the term of references for the contract.

Kunal Kumar, Pune Municipal Commissioner, said: "The Department of Treasury had approached the Government of India and shown interest to work with one of the smart cities in raising its bonds issue. After looking at all the States they have shown interest to work with Pune city." Kumar was addressing media after the conclusion of the first joint meeting of board members since Nitin Kareer Urban development department principal secretary took over as the chairman of Pune Development Corporation (PSCDC).

Kumar said that the Department of treasury will help in three to four areas. One, they will help in identifying the most efficient source of resource generation for both the project as well as for the Corporations future development plans. Two, they will conduct debt capacity analysis for the Corporation based on the revenue generation.

"They will also tell us the percentahe of debt that should be raised via loan, bonds etc. along with identifying new fund generations routes such as non-sovereign loan," added Kumar.

Finally, the Treasury department will also do the hand holding if the Corporation decides to raise funds via bond issuance. "This will take 5-6 months to finalise. We will also initiate talks with private players, and go ahead with the plan that will give us the best results," added Kumar.

Kareer, who today chaired the first meeting with all the board members said that the corporation will also tap into private funding.

"Despite the fact that we do not have Octroi tax the credit rating of the corporation is good.

Talks have been initiated with several organisations," said Kareer.

During the meeting, 15 projects were identified that will see implementation from next month. These projects include areas such as transportation, water supply, drainage, electricity and area development.

Pune is among the first 20 cities that were shortlisted for the smart city project by the Central Government. The SPV, Pune smart city development corporation (PSCDC), was created on March 23, is a 50:50 partnership between the State government and Pune Municipal Corporation, and will have 15 board members. Six will be from municipal corporation, four from the State government, one will represent the Central government. Two independent directors will be elected at the Central and State government levels. Kumar, will be the managing director and chief of SPV, while the PMC CEO will be the executive director of PSCDC.
Uttar Pradesh has the highest number of rural and urban at 13.6 million and 2.4 million respectively.

Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) along with Thought Arbitrage Research Institute (Tari) had conducted a study titled 'Female Labour Force Participation in India' analysing India's performance in female labour force participation (FLFP) in comparison to the rest of the world.

The study presented state-wise analysis of FLFP in four states viz. Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh selected on non-arbitrary criteria with special focus on UP, since it is India's most populous state.

The study found although there was a spurt in the number of working women in India during 2000-2005, increasing from 34 per cent of the total workforce to 37 per cent, the FLFP rate had declined thereafter and reached 27 per cent in 2014.

The gap between rural male and female labour force participation in India in 2011 stood at 30 per cent, while in urban centres the gap was more pronounced (about 40 per cent). This could be attributed to social and cultural curtailment and lack of work opportunities.

It was highlighted that in India, marriage decreases the probability of female labour force participation by about 8 per cent in rural areas and more than twice as much in urban areas.

"UP has the highest 67.5 percent of self-employed women in urban areas among the states selected for study. However, UP has the largest gap between urban and rural workers as well," Assocham general secretary D S Rawat said while releasing the study.

Of 3.317 million women employed in micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) across India, UP employed over 2,00,000.

UP has the highest absolute number of workers, both male and female viz. 49.85 million and 15.97 million respectively. However, it accounted for the largest gender gap of about 33.88 million.

Rawat said although UP had taken several initiatives, more was needed to improve health, education, training and skill building and spread awareness among women about the importance of FLFP. This could make UP achieve higher, thereby contributing to India's pursuit to gender parity and higher growth, he added.

Initiatives like Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, Make in India, Start-up India and others were a positive step in the direction to improving female labour force participation in India, noted the study.

More initiatives towards women's empowerment were needed to creating an enabling environment for increasing female employment and entrepreneurship.

The study suggested promoting skills training for women, creating employment opportunities, setting up child care centres, ensuring women safety and security in every sphere through concerted efforts of the central and state governments to boost female labour force participation.
With a focus on mass rural market, IDFC Banks Bharat Banking division is eyeing government business such as disbursal of subsidy and scholarships in a big way. It has started tying up with state governments for various schemes and is also looking to provide microfinancing.

Ravi Shankar, head-Bharat Banking, told Business Standard that has partnered with Andhra Pradesh government in the Krishna district for direct benefits transfer (DBT) through Aadhaar-enabled payment system (AEPS). Besides, the bank would look at microfinancing schemes for purchase of motorcycles, equipment and even low-cost housing.

Business in Andhra



The Andhra Pradesh government initiated DBT from May 1, starting with social security pension. It would be extended to other government entitlements and finally to the public distribution system (PDS), making PDS payments cashless Shankar said the bank uses interoperable micro ATMs that enhance last-mile financial access through digitisation. The micro ATM functions like a bank-in-a-box.

The first interoperable social security pension was drawn through an AEPS micro ATM on May 1 at Ganapavaram, Mylavaram mandal, in the Krishna district.

Nearly 32,000 pensioners will be using the micro ATM infrastructure to access their benefits in the coming days. The bank estimates over time, the concentrated coverage of banking services would touch the lives of 4.6 million citizens in Krishna district alone.

The banks micro ATM is owned and operated by women members of self-help groups approved for financial support by the government of Andhra Pradesh. This is helping promote entrepreneurship in the district, the bank said.

The micro ATM agent would cater to customers at panchayat offices (in the first few days of every month) and later from their respective residences/work areas. These micro ATMs offer all basic banking services to customers of any bank including deposits, withdrawals and transfers.

In the Krishna district, people can draw their entitlements in their neighbourhood itself, by transacting on any of the 500 micro ATMs deployed by IDFC Bank across villages.

The full package of fund disbursal under the government such as MGNREGA, pension, scholarships and cashless PDS would also be carried to other districts, Shankar said. He said IDFC Banks Bharat Banking branches would be set up in semi-urban and rural areas. They have a catchment areas of 25-30 km. We have a vision of creating large low-cost banking infrastructure.



He said their business model was different from . It is an outreach model. Officers reach out to customers and offer services at doorsteps. We are closer to microfinance organisations. Besides, we also offer customised savings product to people. We layer it with new technology. Some 35 such branches have already been set up in around nine districts of Madhya Pradesh. It has started building a network in Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka, where it has 10 branches.

Micro ATMs work like tablets which have applications developed internally and have biometrics and a printer attached to them. They are available at fixed outlets which could be kirana stores where the shop owner is the operator. The applications loaded on it allow deposit and withdrawal facility and service request. The retailer has a current account with the bank. He dispenses and accepts cash even as the customer does not need to have an account with IDFC Bank.

The micro ATMs also provide instant account opening and activation, working on multiple identifiers, including Aadhaar-based authentication, mobile numbers, debit cards and bank account numbers.
Mindful of the severe pressure on the public-sector banks (PSBs) to make provisions for bad loans and weak financials, the government has estimated a dividend payout of Rs 2,672 crore from 16 banks for 2016-17. According to the governments Outcome Budget 2016-17, eight players, including two large players  Punjab National Bank (PNB) and Bank of India (BoI) might not be in a position to pay dividend for FY17.

According to PSB executives, banks face the twin challenges of lower earnings due to muted credit growth and swelling of provisions for non-performing assets (NPAs) in 2015-16. The obligation of credit costs would continue to be high in FY17 for further slippages and old NPAs.

According to Outcome Budget for 2016-17, the other banks who might skip dividend are Central Bank of India; Indian Overseas Bank; Allahabad Bank; UCO Bank; United Bank of India; and Vijaya Bank. The finance ministry had drastically revised the amounts it could get from these banks as dividend in 2015-16.

At the start of FY16, it had estimated the figure at Rs 6,930 crore, which was later revised down to Rs 1,232 crore. It was quite a climb-down from expecting all the 21 listed PSBs to reward the majority owner to pruning the list to five lenders  State Bank of India, Canara Bank, Andhra Bank, Union Bank and Punjab & Sindh Bank.

A drive by the Reserve Bank of India to clean up bank balance sheets through recognition of stressed loans and provisions for the same changed the calculations.

Collectively, the listed public banks posted a net loss of Rs 17,671 crore for 2015-16 against a net profit of Rs 36,349 crore for 2014-15. Canara Bank, which was expected to chip in with a dividend of Rs 133 crore, booked a net loss of Rs 2,812 crore for 2015-16 against a net profit of Rs 2,702 crore in the previous year.

SBI posted a net profit of Rs 9,950 crore in FY16, down from Rs 13,101 crore in the previous year. Showing the effect of the banking regulators drive, the gross NPAs of listed banks jumped to Rs 5.81 lakh crore levels by March 2016. A major part of the bad loans comprised corporate debt.

The tally of bad loans for these banks was Rs 3,00,944 crore at the end of March 2015, according to data from Capitaline, compiled by Business Standard Research Bureau.
The Vice President of India, Shri M. Hamid Ansari has said that India maintains traditionally strong ties with Morocco and Tunisia, both important partners in Africa. He was addressing a Press Conference on board the Special Aircraft on his way to an Official Visit to Morocco and Tunisia from May 30, 2016 to June 03, 3016, today. .

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The Vice President said that India has a substantial economic relationship with Morocco on account of the large quantity of Phosphate which is imported by India and is critical for agriculture. The Vice President mentioned that there are a few other sectors where cooperation is deepening such as Automobiles, pharmaceuticals and Information Technology. He also indicated that Bollywood films might find ideal shooting locations in Morocco. India's trade with Morocco stands at more than a billion US dollars, he said. .

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Touching upon India's close ties with Tunisia, The Vice President praised the success of the democratic process in the country, speaking of how different political parties managed to work together in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. With Tunisia as well, Vice President mentioned, phosphate was an important item of trade, and there was the potential to expand economic cooperation including the presence of Indian investments. .

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Responding to a question on recent attacks on African Students in India, the Vice President said that such incidents must be condemned in the strongest terms. African students are guests in India and the government remains fully committed to their safety and security, he added. .

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On a question on India's cooperation with Morocco and Tunisia in tackling terrorism, the Vice President said that India continues to work closely to share intelligence and security related information with these countries. Sharing real-time cyber security related information is crucial in the efforts to tackle terrorism, he added. .

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Responding to a question on increasing presence of China, the Vice President said that both countries had different approaches to engaging African nations, and that India did not see itself in competition with China. The Vice President highlighted the historical connection, and the common struggle against decolonization that India shared with the African continent, and that India had always sought to partner it in the development journey, particularly in areas of Information Technology, Telecommunication, Health, etc. .

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Vice President expresses grief over loss of lives in Central Ammunition Depot fire .

The Vice President of India, Shri M.

Hamid Ansari has expressed grief over the loss of lives in Central Ammunition Depot fire, today. .

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Following is the text of the Vice Presidents message: .

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I am deeply grieved to learn about the loss of life in the fire at the central ammunition depot in Pulgaon, Maharashtra. .

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I convey my heartfelt condolences to the members of the bereaved families and pray to the Almighty to give them strength and fortitude to withstand this immense loss. I also wish speedy recovery to the injured." .

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Two Pakistani women have been arrested by the Afghan National Security and Defense Forces (ANSDF) for transferring classified documents to loyalists of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ( ISIS) terrorist group.

Both were arrested from the vicinity of Afghanistan's eastern Nangarhar province where the loyalists are active in a number of its districts.

The provincial government's media office said the women were detained in the vicinity of Kot district, an area which has been a stronghold of the terrorist group since they launched their operations in Afghanistan, reports the Khaama Press.

The documents seized from the two women included information on how to make explosive devices and other weapons.

Meanwhile, the two women are reportedly in custody of the security personnel and an investigation is underway.
The JF-17 multi-role combat aircraft is capable enough to meet Pakistan's defence requirements, a top Pakistani minister said on Tuesday.

Federal Minister for Defence Production Rana Tanveer said had a fleet of the state-of-the-art JF-17 thunder aircraft which carried all specifications of any advanced fighter jet.

He said was at the top among 10 countries having a fleet of the JF-17 lightweight, single-engine, multi-role combat aircraft, and added that the country's defence was impregnable and had the capability to meet all challenges.

Tanveer said was in contact with the US for delivery of F-16 aircraft, and in case the deal did not materialise, it would approach other countries for the purpose.

The federal minister went on to say that the country was in talks with Russia for acquiring MI-35 helicopters and expressed optimism that positive development will take place in upcoming months.

MI-35 is the upgraded version of the Russia-made MI-24 attack and transport helicopter. Several countries in the world, including India, are using the helicopter which is also called "flying tank" for its fighting capability.
The trial of Argentina star Lionel on tax fraud charges opened today in Spain in his absence just days before Argentina's first match in the Copa America against Chile.

Messi, 28, and his father, Jorge Horacio Messi, are accused of using a chain of fake companies in Belize and Uruguay to avoid paying taxes on 4.16 million euros ($4.7 million) of Messi's income earned through the sale of his image rights from 2007-09.

They have been charged with three counts of tax fraud.

The Barcelona court hearing the case adjourned the trial at around noon local time (1000 GMT) after considering preliminary legal questions because of the absence of witnesses who had been due to appear, including Messi's mother Celia Cuccitini.

The trial will resume on Wednesday at 10am (0800 GMT) with testimony from the witnesses and experts.

had planned to be in Barcelona for the start of the trial but a lower back injury he suffered during a friendly against Honduras last week prevented him from doing so, defence lawyer Javier Sanchez-Vera said.

The Argentina captain was resting in his hometown of Rosario, located 300 kilometres (185 miles) north of Buenos Aires on Monday.

and his father are due to take the stand on Thursday on the last day of the trial.

Under Spanish law, a defendant is not obliged to attend the full trial if prosecutors seek a jail sentence of less than two years.

Spanish prosecutors are seeking a jail sentence of 22-and-a-half months for Messi and his father if they are found guilty, plus fines equivalent to the amount that was allegedly defrauded.

But any such sentence would likely be suspended as is common in Spain for first offences carrying a sentence of less than two years.

The Barcelona forward and his defence team have argued that the player's father handled his finances without reporting to him, and that the striker was not aware of any wrongdoing.
Pakistan Prime Minister successfully underwent open heart surgery at a private hospital in central London on Tuesday, the premier's second cardiac procedure in five years, his family and hospital officials confirmed.

"Surgery successful by The Grace Of Almighty. The Prime Minister is off the pump now. Will be shifted to ICU in the next 60 mins or so," Sharif's daughter Maryam Nawaz said in tweets sent out on Twitter.

Minutes earlier, she said that the procedure of grafting all arteries had been completed successfully, and that the operation may take another 60 to 90 minutes.

But at 4.17 p.m. -- about four hours after the surgery began at the private clinic in central London, she confirmed that doctors had completed the operation successfully.

Hospital officials also confirmed that the open heart surgery had been completed without any complications.

"Alhamdulliah, he was very calm and in high spirits when he was taken to the operating room. He & family recited Quran before he went in for surgery," Sharif's son Hussain Nawaz told Geo News earlier.

According to family members, the prime minister spoke to his mother over telephone before going into the operation theatre prior to the surgery. Family sources said Sharif informed his mother that he was feeling well and asked her to pray for his successful operation.

Sharif, 66, left for London earlier this week for medical check-ups where his doctors decided to carry out the surgery.

The surgery was performed for "perforation of the heart", a complication from an earlier procedure in 2011, his daughter said earlier.

On Monday, the prime minister's spokesperson Musaddik Malik told reporters that Sharif would stay at the hospital for a few days after surgery and later he would be shifted home, he said.

The spokesman said they would be kept updated about the details of the prime minister's treatment as well as schedule of PM's return as to be advised by the doctors.

Special prayers were offered by people ahead of the prime minister's surgery. Even Sharif's staunch opponent and political rival, PTI chief Imran Khan wished him health and a speedy recovery.

People from all over the world, including key world leaders and notable personalities, called the prime minister before the surgery to convey their well wishes.

Turkish president Tayyab Erdogan called this morning and expressed his hope for his early recovery.

Pakistani education activist Malala Yousufzai also called the prime minister Tuesday morning and conveyed her prayers and well wishes for the prime minister and his quick recovery.

Sharif also spoke to his Indian counterpart Prime Minister Narendra Modi from London on Monday. Vikas Swarup, spokesman for India's External Affairs ministry, said on Twitter that Modi received a phone call from Nawaz Sharif, and that the Indian prime minister wished his Pakistani counterpart a speedy recovery.

Doctors have advised Sharif to take a week-long rest after his open heart surgery is completed successfully.
is in negotiations with Russia for buying its MI-35 attack helicopters and a deal could be clinched within two months, Minister for Defence Production Rana Tanveer Hussain has said.

"I hope we will be able to materialise this project (to buy MI-35 helicopters) in two months," he said while talking to reporters on Monday.

and Russia had signed a deal regarding the sale of four MI-35 attack helicopters in August last year, which was the first major defence deal between the two Cold War-era adversaries.

Soviet Russia had banned the sale of military hardware to US-allied after the Cold War period and the Afghan war in 1980s, but relations started improving after the two countries signed a bilateral defence cooperation agreement to strengthen military-to-military relations in November 2014.

Hussain also said that the JF-17 aircraft, jointly produced with the Chinese help, were capable enough to meet all defence requirements of the country.

Pakistan had a fleet of state-of-the-art JF-17 Thunder aircraft which carried all specifications of any advanced fighter jet, Hussain was quoted as saying by the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan (APP).

Pakistan was at top among the 10 countries having JF-17 fleet, he said, adding that the country's defence was impregnable and had the capability to meet all challenges.

The minister's statement about the importance of JF-17 aircraft came even as the US Congress recently refused to partially fund eight F-16 jets which US has agreed to sell to Pakistan.

JF-17 Thunder is a third-generation fighter co-produced by Pakistan Aeronautical Complex (PAC) and China's Chengdu Aircraft Industry Corporation.
Many of the world's largest internet companies, like Google and Facebook, rely heavily on advertising to finance their online empires.

But that business model is increasingly coming under threat, with one in five smartphone users, or almost 420 million people worldwide, blocking advertising when browsing the web on cellphones. That represents a 90 per cent annual increase, according to a new report from PageFair, a start-up that helps to recoup some of this lost advertising revenue, and Priori Data, a company that tracks smartphone applications.

The use of ad-blocking software has divided the online world. Supporters say it allows people to get better access to content without having to suffer through abrasive ads. Opponents, particularly companies that rely on advertising, say blocking ads violates the implicit contract that people agree to when viewing online material, much of which is paid for by digital advertising.

Mobile ad blockers, though, have become particularly widespread in emerging markets, where people are more reliant on their smartphones to use the Internet.

Already, 36 per cent of the smartphone users in the Asia-Pacific region have so-called ad-blocking browsers on their mobile devices, allowing them to remove online ads when they use the internet. In India and Indonesia - two of the world's fastest-growing Internet markets - that figure is almost two-thirds of smartphone users, according to the report.

"We found the results surprising because in the West we don't often consider what's going on in developing countries," said Sean Blanchfield, chief executive of PageFair. "It's only a matter of time until mobile ad blocking comes to the West."



Patrick Kane, chief executive of Priori Data, said greater use of the software in emerging markets was driven by attempts to minimize spending on mobile data. Ad blockers help conserve data and make websites load faster by not downloading ads on people's phones.

Still, only 4.3 million Americans, or 2.2 per cent of smartphone owners, used ad blockers - through browsers or other services - on their smartphones as of March. By comparison, 159 million people in China have installed ad-blocking software on their cellphones, the report said.

But as people in Western markets increasingly rely on smartphones to reach the Internet, the use of mobile ad blocking is expected to rise.

In June, Three UK, a British cellphone provider, will conduct an ad-blocking test across its network, allowing people to opt in to remove ads whenever they use their mobile phones. Digicel, a carrier that operates mostly in the Caribbean, has started offering a similar service.

Analysts say such efforts may breach so-called net neutrality rules, which require all online data, including intrusive ads, to be treated equally. Legal experts, though, say the use of ad blocking has yet to be challenged in courts over whether it meets net neutrality standards.

Despite this legal uncertainty, people's interest in blocking ads, particularly on their cellphones, is unlikely to wane.

"It's already used by hundreds of millions of people," Blanchfield, of PageFair, said. "You can't put the cat back in the bag."



2016 The New York Times News Service
Toshiba Corps Westinghouse Electric will relocate a planned project to build six nuclear reactors in India, said officials, bringing the first deal stemming from a US-India civil nuclear accord struck over a decade ago closer to reality.

The six AP-1000 reactors would be built in Andhra Pradesh, after the original site proposed for the multi-billion-dollar project, in Prime Minister Narendra Modis home state Gujarat, faced local opposition.

The breakthrough comes ahead of a June 7-8 visit by Modi to Washington, where he will be hosted by President Barack Obama for a final summit before the US presidential election in November, and will address both houses of Congress.

US lawmakers ratified the civil nuclear accord three years after it was struck in 2005, as part of an attempt to deepen the strategic relationship with India, but have expressed growing dismay over its failure to yield follow-on deals for US-based reactor makers like Westinghouse. One obstacle was bringing Indias liability rules into line with international norms, which require the costs of an accident to be channeled to the operator rather than the maker of a nuclear power station.

But, following the announcement of a breakthrough understanding on nuclear cooperation during Obamas visit to India in January 2015, this issue has been resolved to the satisfaction of the US government and it is down to commercial partners to agree a deal.

Analysts say resolving the land issue is a crucial step, but complex issues remain, including project financing and reaching a civil nuclear pact with Japan, where Westinghouse parent Toshiba is based. Some time before the end of the calendar year they may be able to close, said Ashley Tellis, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who was a negotiator for the George W Bush administration in the US-India nuclear talks.

India wants to dramatically increase its nuclear capacity to 63,000 Mw by 2032 to meet growing demand and restrict its reliance on fossil fuels, and has struck a series of accords with other countries to help meet that goal.

Russias Rosatom operates two reactors at Kudankulam, in Tamil Nadu, while Frances EDF (EDF PA) signed a preliminary deal with the state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) in January to build six reactors at Jaitapur, Maharashtra.

<b>East coast</b>



Central and state officials confirmed that NPCIL, which would operate the plants, had made a down payment on 2,000 acres (800 hectares) of land in the eastern coastal district of Srikakulam.

The land acquisition was stuck for over a decade, but now its coming to a conclusion, Ajay Jain, energy secretary of Andhra Pradesh, told Reuters, adding the purchase would close this year. Construction can begin in 2017.



Ninety per cent of local farmers had agreed to sell their land, they were being well compensated and no court cases were pending, Jain added. Two sources, requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, confirmed that the site was being acquired for Westinghouse, which plans to build six AP-1000 pressurised water reactors, each with a design capacity of around 1,100 megawatts. Westinghouse did not respond to requests for comment, while senior executives at NPCIL were not available.

Westinghouse Chief Execuitive Officer Danny Roderick told Reuters earlier this year that an Indian reactor deal was close, but negotiators missed a deadline to wrap it up before Obama hosted a nuclear security summit in Washington in April.

<b>Fruit farmers</b>



Westinghouse was originally offered a site at Mithi Virdi in Gujarat, on Indias west coast, but encountered opposition from local fruit farmers. A nuclear joint venture between General Electric Co (GE N) and Hitachi (6501 T) meanwhile showed no interest in Indias offer of land for a plant in Andhra Pradesh, opening that option to Westinghouse.

Andhra Pradesh has had more success in acquiring land for development than some rival states, acquiring tracts of land for a new state capital by offering farmers future plots developed for commercial or residential buildings, as well as cash, in compensation.

The state is also proposing its own land law to speed up acquisitions after Modis efforts to get a new law through parliament failed soon after he rose to power two years ago.

STARTS ROLLING
turned choppy in late trades recovering from their day's lows.



At 2:45pm, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 5 points at 26,730 and the Nifty50 was up 2 points at 8,181.



Meanwhile, the government is scheduled to announce the GDP for the fourth quarter ended March 2016 later today.



Sun Pharma was the top Sensex loser down 6% after its fourth quarter earnings were lower than street expectations.



IT exporters which had gained in the previous session eased on profit taking after the rupee firmed up against the US dollar.



Tata Motors continued to remain the top Sensex gainer up nearly 8% after robust March 2016 quarter earnings were above street expectations on the back of the performance of the companys Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) unit.



Among other shares, Aurobindo Pharma has moved higher by 5% to Rs 795 on the BSE in noon deals after the company reported 39% year on year (YoY) jump in consolidated net profit at Rs 563 crore for the quarter ended March 2016 (Q4FY16) on the back of healthy growth in net sales. Consolidated revenues grew 19% YoY at Rs 3,747 crore on YoY basis.

____________________

(Updated at 12:45pm)

After logging gains for five straight sessions, key indices have decided to take a breather today as participants booked profits at attractive and higher levels. Anticipation for March quarter GDP data due to be unveiled later today has left investors unnerved.

By 12:45 pm, the S&P BSE Sensex slipped 62 points at 26,663 and Nifty50 dipped 13 points to trade at 8,163.

The technology stocks have taken a hit today on the back of an appreciating rupee. TCS, Wipro and Infosys have dropped between 0.5%-2%.

Also, Sun Pharma is contributing the most to the losses and is down 6% as its quarter results miss the street expectations.

Utility vehicle and tractor manufacturer Mahindra & Mahindra recorded a net profit growth of 6% during the March quarter but fell short of street estimates. The stock is down 0.7%.

Oil and exploration majors are incurring losses after the recent run up. ONGC, GAIL and RIL have lost between 0.5%-2.5%.

On the flip side, Tata Motors is displaying a stellar rally and is up nearly 8% after its revenue and profit for the quarter came above street expectations on the back of the performance of the companys Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) unit. Consolidated net profit rose to Rs 5,177 crore during the quarter, up 201% from Rs 1,716.5 crore a year ago. Net sales rose 18.76% to Rs 79,926.12 crore from a year ago. The profit was the highest in seven quarters.

Other auto stocks also joined the party with Maruti Suzuki, Bajaj Auto and Hero Motocorp up between 0.8%1.5%. Auto companies are due to unveil the auto sales numbers for the month of May tomorrow.

Meanwhile, jewellery stocks edged higher on reports the government has rolled back its budget decision to apply 1% tax collection at source (TCS) on cash purchase of gold jewellery of Rs 2 lakh and above and raised the threshold to the earlier Rs 5 lakh with effect from 1 June 2016. Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri (up 6.26%), Shree Ganesh Jewellery House (I) (up 5.38%), Tara Jewels (up 4.17%), Gitanjali Gems (up 3.09%), Titan Company (up 0.96%) and PC Jeweller (up 2.13%) edged higher.

State-owned NTPC climbed 1% after it registered an annual profit of Rs 10,243 crore during 2015-16, showing a mild decline from the previous years figure of Rs 10,291 crore.

The rally continues in Coal India with the stock up 0.3% after it announced a much-awaited price hike. On average, prices of coal sold through the fuel supply agreement (FSA) route have increased 6.3%.
At least 16 people were killed, including two officers, one jawan and 14 civilian firefighting staffs, and 17 were injured on Tuesday after a fire broke out at the Central Ammunition Depot in Pulgaon, Wardha district in Maharashtra.

"The fire has been completely doused and the situation is now under control. However, in our efforts to douse the fire, two officers and 14 personnel (including one Army Jawan and 13 civilian firefighting staff) lost their lives and two officers and 15 personnel (including nine jawans and six civilian firefighting staff) were injured in the Central Ammunition Depot fire in Pulgaon," Lt. Gen Ranbir Singh (DGMO) told reporters here.

"The injured personnel have been shifted to Multi Speciality Hospital in Wardha for treatment," he added.

Lt. Gen Singh also said the medical condition of the injured personnel were reported to be stable, adding that the army medical teams have been moved from Pune to provide specialist medical attention.

He said the fire broke out at approximately 1 O' clock early this morning in one of the sheds, adding that the cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained.

"Immediate action was taken by the firefighting parties and Quick Reaction Teams located in the depot restricting the fire to one shed only, which contained highly sensitive ammunitions," he added.

Asserting that actions to assess the damage are in progress, Lt. Gen Singh said an inquiry has been ordered by the army.

"Defence Minister, Indian Army Chief and senior defence officials have visited the site to take stock of the situation," he said.

"We express deep condolences to the families of the bravehearts who have lost their lives while protecting and securing the important ammunition depot," he added.

The Central Ammunition Depot in Pulgaon is located at about 115 kilometers from Nagpur.

The depot is spread over an area of more than 7000 acres and is an important ammunition depot of the Indian Army.
Sartaj Aziz, the Pakistani foreign affairs adviser has said that Kabul and Islamabad should not allow the use of their respective territories against each other.

Aziz, during a meeting with Afghan Ambassador Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal, reportedly expressed serious concerns over the U.S. drone strikes in its country, reports the Khaama Press.

The meeting between both diplomats followed days after the Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan's Balochistan province.

Bilateral ties, the border situation the Afghan reconciliation process, and several matters of importance including the fate of Afghan peace process following the death of Mansour were reportedly also discussed between both sides.

Aziz's remarks comes as the Afghan officials have long been critizing Pakistan for allowing the insurgent groups use its soil as a safe haven to plan and coordinate attacks in Afghanistan.

The Taliban group and the notorious Haqqani terrorist network leadership councils are believed to be based in Pakistan.
Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam chief Maulana Samiul Haq has warned that Afghanistan would see a surge in violence following the ascension of new Taliban leader Mullah Haibatullah.

Speaking to Dawn after a Defence of Pakistan Council (DPC) meeting, he said that those who think Haibatullah is a mere cleric and a seminary preacher will soon see his skills as a militant commander.

But Haq has placed the blame on the United States for the rise of the new Taliban Chief and the impending violence under his regime.

"It was America that resorted to violence again; the assassination of Mullah Mansour is nothing short of murder," he added. The martyrdom of Mullah Mansour will eventually help unite all the Taliban, since everybody will realise that talking peace with the US is futile." Haq said.

But when asked whether he had any links or was in touch with the new Taliban leadership, he evaded the question, saying, "Everybody knows everybody now - this is the digital age and they are in touch with the whole ."

A resolution passed at the DPC meeting said that the US had stabbed Pakistan in the back by killing Mansour and called for blocking all Nato supplies to Afghanistan.

The meeting also slammed India over the Kashmir issue, but also blamed the Pakistani government for its efforts to develop friendly relations with India.
At least 16 bus passengers have been killed and dozens were taken hostage after the Taliban pulled them out from several buses in northern Afghanistan.

Sayed Mahmood Danish, spokesman for the governor of Kunduz province, was quoted by the Express Tribune, as saying that the Taliban shot dead 16 passengers on Tuesday.

Earlier, the United States carried out an air strike on the leader of the Afghan Taliban, probably killing him in a remote area just inside the Pakistan border in an operation.

Meanwhile, Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry told Reuters that Afghanistan must limit military gains by the Taliban and offer incentives to the insurgents to revive a faltering peace effort.
Amber Heard is likely to get away with at least 20-million-dollars from her short-lived marriage with Johnny Depp.

The 30-year-old actress who filed for divorce from the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' actor, has demanded 50 thousand dollars per month in spousal support, 12.5 thousand dollars for her legal fees, the pair's Los Angeles penthouse, the actor's Range Rover and the sole custody of their Yorkshire terriers, reports New.com.au.

While the court has only granted her a temporary possession of the now-estranged couple's house, the absence of a prenup has given 'The Drive Angry' actress a benefit of acquiring a minimum of one-half of however much their combined worth increased during their 15 months of marriage.

Heard filed for divorce on May 23, accusing the 52-year-old actor of "verbally and physically" abusing her.
A senior scientist at the Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources (NBAGR), Dr P. K. Singh, who was one of the many scientists who took part in the two-day seminar on 'Strategies for Improving Dairy Production in Tripura', has informed that to resolve the increasing demand of milk in India, the present government has emphasized on genetic improvement of indigenous cattle.

"In last 50-60 years the sincere effort for increasing the productivity of indigenous cattle has not been take up. We believed in cross-breeding and that was not sustainable aspect," said Dr Singh at the Pragya Bhavan here on Monday.

Dr. Singh added that with the socio-economic development of the people of India demands for organic products along milk of indigenous cow is on the rise to avoid health hazards caused by over use of inorganic fertilizer and chemical pesticides.

"In last 30-40 years lot of mechanization has occurred in our country therefore, the use of tractor instead of the bullock power, use of the chemical fertilizer instead of the organic manure that has caused various health hazards in human population. With the increase in the purchasing power of our India population now demand for organic produces is increasing day by day and people are ready to give more price for the organic agricultural produce as well as more price for indigenous 'deshi' (local) cow's milk," he added.

He also said that present Prime Minister Narendra Modi government, is focusing more on organic production and in saving the indigenous breeds and indigenous population of cattle.

He suggested that unlike the scenario where more than 51 percent of the total milk supplies comes from buffalos in the eastern and the north-eastern state cattle, most of them indigenous along with a small section of crossbreed, provides around 90 percent of the milk and hence there is huge opportunity for increasing the milk production by introducing genetic improvement of the aboriginal variety.

"Now we are focusing on how to further improve the milk production in the country and we are also interested in the remote areas of the country where dairy was not given proper emphasis in the past. We are interested that areas like Bihar, eastern states of the country as well as the northeast states of the country, there should be increase in milk production," he added.

"In the north and the eastern part cattle is the main source rather than the buffaloes. Buffaloes are the main source for milk production in the western and the northern states but here in the eastern and northeastern state only cattle are producing 90 percent of the total milk and we have a proportion of cattle in this area of crossbreed cattle. But majority of the cattle is non-descriptive, we are planning to describe them, to register them in new breeds and make the strategies for genetic improvement of these indigenous cattle of this area of the country," he said.

Tripura Minister for ARDD (Animal Resource Development Department), Agriculture and Tribal Welfare, Aghore Debbarma inaugurated the seminar organised by Tripura Livestock Development Agency (TLDA).

Several senior scientists from renowned dairy related research institutes like the Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources (NBAGR), Karnal and National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI), Karnal took part in the seminar aimed at improving production and reproduction of dairy animals besides exploring the possibilities of establishing frozen semen production unit in Tripura.

Other speakers at the seminar were Dr Amitabha Dasgupta, general manager of TLDA, and Tripura ARDD Minister Aghore Debbarma who stressed on raising improved variety of cattle in large scale by utilizing the technological development along with awareness of the farmer community for their economic development.

He viewed that the demand of milk in the state is gradually increasing and hence there should be initiative to increase the production of milk accordingly.
Vice President Hamid Ansari has said that India maintains traditionally strong ties with Morocco and Tunisia, both important partners in Africa.

He was addressing a Press Conference on board the Special Aircraft on his way to an Official Visit to Morocco and Tunisia which began yesterday.

The Vice President said that India has a substantial economic relationship with Morocco on account of the large quantity of Phosphate which is imported by India and is critical for agriculture.

He also mentioned that there are a few other sectors where cooperation is deepening such as Automobiles, pharmaceuticals and Information Technology.

Ansari also indicated that Bollywood films might find ideal shooting locations in Morocco and asserted that India's trade with Morocco stands at more than a billion US dollars.

Touching upon India's close ties with Tunisia, the Vice President praised the success of the democratic process in the country, speaking of how different political parties managed to work together in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.

With Tunisia as well, Vice President mentioned that phosphate was an important item of trade, and there was the potential to expand economic cooperation including the presence of Indian investments.

Responding to a question on recent attacks on African Students in India, the Vice President said that such incidents must be condemned in the strongest terms.

"African students are guests in India and the government remains fully committed to their safety and security", he added.

On a question on India's cooperation with Morocco and Tunisia in tackling terrorism, Ansari said that India continues to work closely to share intelligence and security related information with these countries. Sharing real-time cyber security related information is crucial in the efforts to tackle terrorism, he added.

Responding to a question on increasing presence of China, the Vice President said that both countries had different approaches to engaging African nations, and that India did not see itself in competition with China.

Highlighting the historical connection and the common struggle against decolonization that India shared with the African continent, Ansari said that India had always sought to partner it in the development journey, particularly in areas of Information Technology, Telecommunication, Health, etc.
Two unions representing doctors in Sri Lanka have said that it is observing a strike today in protest against the the transfer of doctors in complete violation of the existing medical transfer policy.

The island wide strike began at 8 a.m. and lasted till noon in state hospitals in all districts except Colombo, Gampaha and Kegalle districts which were affected by floods and landslides, reports the Colombo Page web site.

GMOA Assistant Secretary Dr. Samantha Ananda was quoted, as saying that the children, maternity, cancer hospitals and renal units were excluded from the trade union action while emergency units will be maintained as usual.

Issuing a statement, the doctors' union said they reached the decision due to the political interference in the appointment and transfer of doctors.

The GMOA said the discussions with the subject minister to resolve the issue were not successful and hence decided to take trade union action.

They also called for the resignation of Health Minister Dr. Rajitha Senaratne and requested the President to appoint a suitable person in his place.

The Director General of Health Services, Dr. Palitha Mahipala, dismissed the allegations levelled by the association.
In a major blow to foundation (AOL), the Green Tribunal (NGT) on Tuesday rejected its plea to pay the compensation of Rs 4.75 crore by bank guarantee, for the violation of environment norms during a cultural event organised in March.

The AOL, in its application, had stated that it is in the process of preparing a proposal laying down parameters and methodology for collection of scientific data and evidence regarding assessment of actual environmental damage, if any, and hopes to persuade NGT that, "damage, if any, is neither permanent nor irreversible but in fact remediable".

The NGT stated that the AOL foundation lacks bonafide as it did not stay on its commitment to pay the fine. The tribunal said that AOL has been engaging in multiple litigation in order to not pay the fine.

On March 9, the NGT had refused to prohibit the World Culture Festival on the banks of the Yamuna river, but slapped a fine of Rs 5 crore on the foundation for damaging the biodiversity of the ecologically sensitive Yamuna floodplains.

On May 10, the foundation had issued a clarification over a NGT notice to its founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar for his alleged remarks against the green panel, saying the allegations against the spiritual leader were 'completely false' and based merely on 'newspaper reports'.

The NGT issued a notice to Ravi Shankar for his alleged remarks, that the fine imposed by the green panel for organising an event on banks of river Yamuna was politically motivated.

The NGT had asked why contempt of court proceedings should not be initiated against him and had directed Ravi Shankar to file a reply to it latest by May 25.
A new study has found that the effects of maternal smoking could be long lasting as the early exposure to nicotine can trigger widespread genetic changes that affect the formation of connections between brain cells long after birth.

In the study, researchers from the Yale University have explained as to why maternal smoking has been linked to behavioral changes such as attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, addiction and conduct disorder.

According to a recent study, nicotine does this by affecting a master regulator of DNA packaging, which in turn influences activity of genes crucial to the formation and stabilization of synapses between brain cells.

Marina Picciotto, study's senior author and Charles B.G. Murphy Professor of Psychiatry, professor in the Child Study Center and the Departments of Neuroscience and Pharmacolog said, when this regulator is induced in mice, they pay attention to a stimulus they should ignore.

The research found that an inability to focus is the hallmark of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and other behavioral disorders, which have been linked to maternal smoking and exposure to second-hand smoke. However, scientists did not understand how early environmental exposure to smoking could create behavioral problems years later.

Picciotto further said it was exciting to find a signal that could explain the long-lasting effects of nicotine on brain cell structure and behavior.

"It was even more intriguing to find a regulator of gene expression that responds to a stimulus like nicotine and may change synapse and brain activity during development," he added.

The study is published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
The Forensic Investigation Lab at Mathura in its report says, the meat found at the home of Mohammed Akhlaq is a 'beef'.

Fifty-two-year-old Akhlaq and his son Danish were attacked by a mob at Bisada village in in September 2015 on hearing that they had slaughtered a cow.

The report states, "On the basis of chemical analysis the sample belongs to cow or its progeny."

The incident had sparked a nationwide debate over intolerance, with the opposition parties launching a full-fledged attack on the ruling government over the alleged growing intolerance in the country.

According to reports, the incident left the people shocked after a local veterinarian said that the flesh appears like mutton.

Following this, the police sent a sample of the meat from Akhlaq's home to a Mathura laboratory for forensic tests to check if it was beef.
New Delhi, May 31 (ANI): Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who finds himself increasingly isolated on the national scene in the wake of Panama Gate and American action against the Taliban, will face an acid test in Gilgit -Baltistan which is set to vote in a bye-election from Hunza on the border with Xinjiang province of North-western China.

It is a self-inflicted wound for Sharif. He has turned a routine bye-election involving around 36000 voters into a referendum on his Pakistan Muslim League Party (PML-N) by fielding a bank loan defaulter much against the wishes of local satraps, who are now arraigned against his leadership.

There 24 candidates in the fray for the Hunza seat. They include Baba Jan, a local hero who has been fighting for self-rule for Gilgit. He has been languishing in jail for several months. The seat fell vacant following the resignation of Ghazanfar Ali Khan on his elevation as the Governor of Gilgit-Baltistan.

The bye-election was originally scheduled to take place on May 28, 2016 but on Wednesday, a division bench of the Supreme Appellate Court of Gilgit-Baltistan decided to delay the ballot for three weeks in order to complete the hearing of two pending criminal cases against Baba Jan.

Ghazanfar is the Mir (Arabized form of Pir, which essentially means chief) of Hunza. Because of his close friendship with him, Nawaz gave the ticket to his son Prince Salim Ali, who is a known bank loan defaulter. The decision sparked off a revolt in the local PML unit, which had recommended a retired colonel, Ubaidullah Baig for the seat. Baig is contesting as an Independent with the tacit support of PML-N senior and G-B chief minister Hafeezur Rehman.

PML-N cadres are also upset with Ali's candidature because his mother Ghaznafar Rani Atika is a lawmaker in Gilgit-Baltistan Legislative Assembly. She was elected on a reserved seat for woman. "

"We do not want a new dynasty to raise in Gilgit", a PML N leader was quoted as saying in local media. "We do not want a father-mother-son to lord over us".

Though Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) have fielded their heavy weights, the contest is mainly triangular between Prince Salim Ali, Ubaidullah Baig and Baba Jan.

According to a survey, both Col. Ubaidullah and Baba Jan are expected to give a tough fight to Salim Khan.

To the dismay of Pakistan authorities, Baba Jan has become the most popular candidate on social media in Gilgit-Baltistan. He is not new to elections. He came second in the 2015 election to the GB Legislative Assembly on the ticket of Left leaning Awami Workers Party (AWP) and secured 4, 500 votes relegating the PPP and PTI candidates to the third and fourth positions.

Like in the 2015 election this time also, Baba Jan's campaign is being financed and managed by students, youth and women.

The 33-year-old is at present serving life sentence awarded by an Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) for his role in an agitation for compensation to the victims of a massive landslide that had created an artificial lake rendering hundreds of families homeless in the Hunza district in 2010.

Baba Jan is a strong voice against forcible occupation of 5800 square kilometers of the Gilgit territory by China and the annexation of Kohistan and Chitral into Pakistan.

"Kohistan has been integrated into Province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa even though historically it is a part of Gilgit-Baltistan", political analyst Umar Farooq points out.

Progressive parties, student and youth organisations as well as human rights organisations have been mounting pressure on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for the release of Baba Jan, describing him as "symbol of struggle" in Gilgit Baltistan. Even the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan is supporting the campaign.

Like in all elections across Pakistan, this by-poll for Hunza seat in Gilgit-Baltistan also has raised concerns over free, fair and transparent poll.

The ruling regime knows how to win elections in PoK or Gilgit-Baltistan, says Dr. Shabir Choudhry, a rights activist. "Islamabad and Rawalpindi have a long history of rigging elections in Pakistan and in their colonies of so called Azad Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan," he said in an interview.

The Awami Workers Party has already asked the Gilgit-Baltistan Chief Election Commissioner to prevent pre-poll rigging, voicing concern that G-B Governor Ghazanfar Ali Khan and his lawmaker-wife are campaign for their son Salim.

Gilgit-Baltistan which was earlier known as the Northern Areas was part of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir until Pakistan occupied the region in 1947. The area remains one of the most neglected parts of Pakistan with the people denied their fundamental rights. They are not allowed to take part in Pakistan's parliamentary elections either.

The Constitutions of 1956, 1962 and 1973 of Pakistan do not recognize Gilgit Baltistan as a part of Pakistan. Under the Provisional Constitutional Act. 1974, the PoK High Court has the right to hear all petitions concerning PoK and the Northern Areas but the Supreme Court ruled in September 1994 that the Northern Areas are part of the state of Jammu and Kashmir and not of PoK.

The Gilgit Baltistan Legislative Assembly (GBLA) was created through a Presidential order in 2009. It has a total 33 members; 24 of them elected directly and six women and three technocrats elected indirectly through party list proportional representation system.

The first election to the GBLA was held in November 2009 in which PPP bagged 14 seats. However, PML (N) dislodged PPP in the second election held in June 2015 by winning 16 seats. Thus it has been tradition that whosoever holds power in Islamabad wins the election in PoK and Gilgit Baltistan.

The views expressed in the above article are that of Mr. Surinder Kumar Sharma who is associated with the Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis, New Delhi.
Sri Lankan fast bowler Shaminda Eranga has been reported for a suspect bowling action during the side's nine-wicket defeat against England at the Riverside Stadium in Chester-le-Street on Monday.

The match officials, who handed a report to the Sri Lanka team, cited doubts about the legality of Eranga's deliveries, ESPNcricinfo reported.

The 29-year-old will now have to get his action tested at an ICC accredited centre within a duration of two weeks.

He, however, will be allowed to continue bowling until the results of the test are known.

The Test, which saw England take an unassailable 2-0 lead in the three-match series, was umpired by Aleem Dar and Sundaram Ravi, with Andy Pycroft as match referee.

Eranga, whose bowling action is found to be illegal for the first time, has not been much effective in the series against England so far as he scalped only one wicket in 47 overs he bowled.
Six militants of banned outfits Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and Ansarullah Bangla Team have been given death sentences for the bank heist of Ashulia last year that led to death of eight people.

Apart from them, one has been handed life term, two have been given three years in jail while two others of the militant groups have been acquitted as charges brought against them could not be proved, reports the Daily Star.

Those who have been slapped death sentences are Borhan Uddin, Saiful alias Al Amin, Mahfuzur Islam alias Sumon alias Jamil,

Jashim Uddin, Palash alias Sohel Rana and Mintu Prodhan.

Ukil Hasan was sentenced to life term imprisonment while Abdul Baten and Shahjahan Jamadar to three years. Mozammel Haque and Babul Sarder have been acquitted.

The order was passed by Dhaka District and Session Judges' Court Judge S.M. Kuddus Zaman in presence of the 10 convicts.

Palash alias Sohel Rana is on the run.

Last year, on April 21, a gang of 8-10 persons aged between 25 and 40 years shot dead seven people in Ashulia Industrial Area on the outskirts of Dhaka.

During the heist, they also hurled bombs and attacked bank officials, clients and locals with sharp weapons and later escaped.

One of the robbers were beaten to death while fleeing with about Tk 35 lakh after looting from a branch of Bangladesh Commerce Bank Limited in broad daylight.

Ashulia police last December, submitted two charge sheets -- one for the killings and robbery, and the other for possessing explosives.

The case lodged for possessing explosives is pending with another court in Dhaka.

During the investigation, the Ashulia police discovered involvement of thirteen people in the killings and robbery.

The mastermind of the robbery, Abdullah Al Baki, died in a shootout with law enforcers in November last year, while one of the 13 was killed by the mob.
Talentedge, an Ed-Tech firm which is the first to introduce 'live and interactive' learning in digital format, through its online programs, has teamed up with IIM Rohtak, one of the top B-schools in India, to offer students a course in the Executive Programme in Entrepreneurship.

The course will commence on 5th June 2016 and will offer students vital knowledge of the nuances of kick-starting one's own and the numerous aspects that one needs to identify in order to set up a successful venture.

The programme includes mentoring sessions and lectures from the core faculty of IIM Rohtak and other prominent entrepreneurs including Ajai Chowdhry, Co-Founder, HCL and Anuradha Acharya, CEO, Mapmygenome and Vivek Gour, Managing Director & CEO, Air Works.

The programme imparts essential knowledge of how to start one's own venture and the various facets that influence successful set up and operations and aims to provide learning that will be expedient for professionals who are entrusted with the task of setting up independent business units or P&Ls, working professionals who are in thoughts of starting a venture on their own, along with budding young entrepreneurs who wish to gain structured knowledge regarding the dynamics involved in operationalising a business opportunity.

Through Live and interactive lectures, students can attend uninterrupted sessions conducted by the eminent faculty of IIM Rohtak along with prominent entrepreneurs and investors. This programme provides a platform to the participants, to present and discuss their business plan in mentoring sessions with members of the Investor community using Talentedge's Direct to Device advantage. This allows aspiring entrepreneurs to plan their future course of action and fast track their careers without quitting their jobs via an interactive, 'better-than-classroom' learning experience that can be pursued anytime, anywhere.

Commenting on the programme, Aditya Malik, CEO & MD Talentedge said: "It gives us great pleasure to join hands with IIM Rohtak, one of the most reputed management schools in the country, to offer aspiring entrepreneurs, the right mentoring through the Executive Programme in Entrepreneurship. With Government's thrust on 'Make in India', the country's youth is enthused to channelise its talent and energy towards wealth generation by giving wings to their entrepreneurial pursuits. "

"At Talentedge, we are aiming to provide the right exposure to tap this potential. We want to make the students understand the core basics of the subjects for a more experiential kind of learning, through visual aids," he added.

On the occasion, Dr. Rojers P Joseph, faculty IIM Rohtak commented: "With this collaboration, we aim to provide young minds, a chance to delve into the nuances of entrepreneurship and its multi-faceted characteristics. With the combination of the expertise of our faculty and Talentedge's innovative and interactive technology, we aim to provide a holistic understanding of the course and all its subjects."

This programme is crafted to enable students to get much-needed practical insights through knowledge-sharing facilitated by the Industry experts and present day entrepreneurs.

Talentedge is an ed-tech firm that is changing the way India learns. The first to introduce 'live and interactive' learning in digital format, Talentedge offers courses jointly with world leading institutes and corporates.

Talentedge partners with top Indian and International institutes including IIT, IIM , XLRI, Parsons School of Design and also with renowned corporates like OLX, Viacom 18, Wizcraft, SHRM and others. Its ability to recreate classroom type interactions in the virtual world has struck a chord with over 3,00,000 individuals and corporate learners. It initiates industry relevant learning by bringing eminent subject experts into online education.
The Congress today accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of 'opportunistic moves' to target the Congress, and specifically party president Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra.

Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi said if there was any material in the allegations leveled by the BJP, the investigating agency must have proceeded long ago.

"I think we are way past the time of this kind of insinuation and innuendo. These are mere links, opportunistically made by this government along with the active involvement of some ministries," Singhvi told ANI.

"We, as Congress party is not concerned with anything coming close to this but every time this happens, from the party president to the members, everyone's name is dragged into the controversy," he added.

"That is why a clarification email was sought yesterday, where Mr. Vadra's lawyers have made clear that they have not received any legal notice from the Enforcement Directorate (ED) regarding this," Singhvi further said.

Robert Vadra, the son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, led to yet another controversy in the name of a "benami" or proxy-owned mansion in London, bought by a controversial arms dealer for him in 2009.

The Ministry of Finance has begun a new investigation into the ongoing matter.
Asserting that full support was being extended from the state government towards the tragedy at the Central Ammunition Depot in Wardha, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday said, that the major inferno has been brought under control and that the death of the defence personnel in the fire was a matter of great sadness

"We are providing whatever assistance and resources required, primarily medical assistance. I have directed the district officials to extend whatever help possible. According to the information that I have so far, the fire has been brought under control. The number of casualties in the matter is truly unfortunate," Fadnavis told ANI here.

Earlier today, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi also extended his condolences to the families of the victims and said he hope that those have been injured in the accident are given due medical care and support.

"Deeply saddened and pained to learn of the deaths of Jawans and Officers in the fire at Central Ammunition Depot in Maharashtra," he tweeted.

Meanwhile Prime Minister Narendra Modi has directed Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar to head to the site of the fire and take stock of the situation.

"I have asked the information and I have come to know that an accident has taken place and many lives have been lost. I am going to visit there and will assess the situation," Parrikar said.

Mos Defence Inderjeet Singh said that the Director General Military Operations (DGMO) will give a press conference later in the day, speaking in detail about the deadly fire.

The incident took place in the wee hours of morning today as a fire broke out in the depot storing ammunition.

15 DSC jawans and two officers were killed and 17 jawans and two officers are injured, in which some are critical.

The main site of the inferno, which is a shed which caught on fire, has been extinguished.

However, secondary fire and explosions has not been ruled out and precautions are being taken to control the fire.
At meeting held on 30 May 2016

Tilak Ventures announced that the Board of Directors of the Company at its meeting held on 30 May2016, has considered and approved the following:

1. Appointed Shaari Amit Gulecha as an Executive Director of the Company, who will hold office up to the next Annual General Meeting of the Company.

2. Appointed Hardikkumar Bharatbhai Kabariya as an Additional Director of the Company under Independent Non- Executive Category, who will hold office up to the next Annual General Meeting of the Company.

3. Took the note on Compliance done as per LODR, Regulation 2015 for the quarter ended 31 March 2016.

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Sales rise 27.59% to Rs 324.22 crore

Net profit of Hindustan Copper declined 38.76% to Rs 16.29 crore in the quarter ended March 2016 as against Rs 26.60 crore during the previous quarter ended March 2015. Sales rose 27.59% to Rs 324.22 crore in the quarter ended March 2016 as against Rs 254.12 crore during the previous quarter ended March 2015.

For the full year,net profit declined 35.56% to Rs 43.56 crore in the year ended March 2016 as against Rs 67.60 crore during the previous year ended March 2015. Sales declined 4.12% to Rs 963.48 crore in the year ended March 2016 as against Rs 1004.83 crore during the previous year ended March 2015. ParticularsQuarter EndedYear EndedMar. 2016Mar. 2015% Var.Mar. 2016Mar. 2015% Var.Sales324.22254.12 28 963.481004.83 -4 OPM %12.3720.16 -12.2912.65 - PBDT52.8067.13 -21 165.71193.30 -14 PBT19.1536.03 -47 45.3880.45 -44 NP16.2926.60 -39 43.5667.60 -36

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An agreement for Global Environmental Facility (GEF) Grant of USD 9.20 Million with the World Bank for "Efficient and Sustainable City Bus Service Project" was signed here today by Shri Rai Kumar. Joint Secretary (MI), Department of Economic Affairs on behalf of the Government of India and Mr.

Onno Ruhl, Country Director, World Bank (India) on behalf of IBRD, acting as an Implementing Agency of the Global Environment Facility. Representatives from Ministry of Urban Development and State Governments of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Chandigarh (UT) were also present on the occasion.

The total program cost is USD 113.0 million, with USD 9.20 million as grant from the GEF and USD 103.07 million from Government of India and state & city governments for funding of buses and ancillary infrastructure.

The project's development objective is to improve the efficiency and attractiveness of city bus transport and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the demonstration cities. It comprises: (i) a national capacity building component to be implemented by Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD); and (ii) city demonstration projects in the cities of Bhopal, Chandigarh, Jaipur and Mira Bhayandar.

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Appoints nominee director on board of Jain Farm Fresh Foods

Jain Irrigation Systems announced that the Board of Directors of the Company at its meeting held on 30 May 2016, has appointed Ghanshyam Dass, Independent Director of the Company as Nominee Director on the Board of Jain Farm Fresh Foods (Subsidiary of the Company) with immediate effect.

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Sales decline 7.37% to Rs 1403.49 crore

Net profit of Jain Irrigation Systems declined 22.02% to Rs 64.38 crore in the quarter ended March 2016 as against Rs 82.56 crore during the previous quarter ended March 2015. Sales declined 7.37% to Rs 1403.49 crore in the quarter ended March 2016 as against Rs 1515.10 crore during the previous quarter ended March 2015.

For the full year,net profit rose 44.26% to Rs 71.25 crore in the year ended March 2016 as against Rs 49.39 crore during the previous year ended March 2015. Sales rose 0.87% to Rs 4170.53 crore in the year ended March 2016 as against Rs 4134.60 crore during the previous year ended March 2015. ParticularsQuarter EndedYear EndedMar. 2016Mar. 2015% Var.Mar. 2016Mar. 2015% Var.Sales1403.491515.10 -7 4170.534134.60 1 OPM %17.1515.50 -15.9215.41 - PBDT149.16143.92 4 282.25269.60 5 PBT96.9099.49 -3 92.4191.12 1 NP64.3882.56 -22 71.2549.39 44

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Shares of seven jewellery retailers rose 0.88% to 6.92% at 11:01 IST on BSE on reports that the government has rolled back its decision to apply 1% tax collection at source on cash purchase of gold jewellery.

Thangamayil Jewellery (up 6.92%), Shree Ganesh Jewellery House (I) (up 5.38%), Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri (up 6.18%), PC Jeweller (up 2.13%), Gitanjali Gems (up 3.09%), Tara Jewels (up 4.17%) and Titan Company (up 0.88%) edged higher. Vaibhav Global fell 1.94%.

Rajesh Exports fell 0.29%. Rajesh Exports' net profit rose 2559.03% to Rs 76.58 crore on 16.19% decline in total income to Rs 10410.62 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. The company's net profit rose 80.54% to Rs 476.51 crore on 1.84% rise in total income to Rs 38622.63 crore in the year ended March 2016 over the year ended March 2015. The announcement was made after trading hours yesterday, 30 May 2016.

Meanwhile, the BSE Sensex was down 83.47 points, or 0.31% to 26,642.13

As per reports, the government has rolled back its decision to apply 1% tax collection at source on cash purchase of gold jewellery of Rs 2 lakh and above and raised the limit to the earlier Rs 5 lakh with effect from 1 June 2016.

Jewellers went on indefinite strike from March 2016 after the government reintroduced a 1% excise duty on gold jewellery in the Union Budget 2016-17 on 29 February 2016. Jewellers called off the strike in mid-April 2016 after the government assured the industry that it will simplify implementation of excise duty.

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Key benchmark indices edged higher in early trade. At 9:27 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 73 points or 0.27% at 26,798.60. The Nifty 50 index was currently up 20.65 points or 0.25% at 8,199.15.

In overseas stock markets, Asian stocks witnessed a mixed trend. US stock market was closed yesterday, 30 May 2016, for the Memorial Day holiday.

Closer home, the market breadth indicating the overall health of the market was positive. On BSE, 674 shares rose and 543 shares declined. A total of 56 shares were unchanged. The BSE Mid-Cap index was currently up 0.18%. The BSE Small-Cap index was currently up 0.09%. Both these indices underperformed the Sensex.

Telecom stocks were mixed. Idea Cellular (up 0.57%) and Reliance Communications (up 0.41%) edged higher. Bharti Airtel (down 2.16%) edged lower.

Bharti Infratel was down 0.73%. Bharti Infratel is a telecom tower arm of Bharti Airtel.

Tata Motors jumped 8.18% at Rs 454.95 after consolidated net profit rose 201.51% to Rs 5177 crore on 19.04% growth in revenue to Rs 80684 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. The result was announced after market hours yesterday, 30 May 2016.

The company's British luxury car unit Jaguar Land Rover's (JLR) net profit rose 56.29% to 472 million pounds on 13.18% growth in revenue to 6594 million pounds in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015.

Sun Pharmaceutical Industries (Sun Pharma) was down 3.1% at Rs 787.30. The company's consolidated net profit rose 92.71% to Rs 1713.69 crore on 16.82% growth in total income to Rs 7599.21 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. The result was announced after market hours yesterday, 30 May 2016.

Sun Pharma's Managing Director Dilip Shanghvi said that FY 2016 has been a year of consolidation for Sun Pharma. While the company has accrued targeted synergies from the Ranbaxy acquistion, it has also made commensurate investments in building the specialty business in the US, Shanghvi said. These strategic investments will help Sun Pharma drive the sustainable growth of its business, he added.

Sun Pharma's board of directors scheduled a meeting on 23 June 2016 to evaluate a proposal for buyback of equity shares of the company.

Aurobindo Pharma rose 3.17% at Rs 778.40 after consolidated net profit rose 39.4% to Rs 563 crore on 18.5% growth in total operating income to Rs 3747 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. The result was announced after market hours yesterday, 30 May 2016.

The company's earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) before forex rose 34.5% to Rs 882 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. EBITDA margin edged higher to 23.5% in Q4 March 2016, from 20.7% in Q4 March 2015.

Aurobindo Pharma's Managing Director N. Govindarajan said that the company continues its growth journey with higher number of ANDA approvals, new launches and better integration of acquired businesses. With growth coming from all business verticals, focus remains on new launches in US and improved cost efficiencies in EU, he said. In addition, Aurobindo continues to work on new businesses and differentiated technology platforms which will drive its future growth, he added.

HDFC rose 0.43% at Rs 1,235.85. The company announced that it intends to raise Rs 760 crore through private placement of senior secured redeemable non-convertible debentures. HDFC said that the debentures has issue price of Rs 1 crore each and carry coupon rate of 8.44% per annum with a tenor of 10 years. The issue opens and closes on the same day on 1 June 2016. The object of the issue is to augment the long-term resources of the company. The proceeds of the present issue would be utilized for financing/refinancing the housing finance requirements of the company. The redemption date of the issue is 1 June 2026. The announcement was made after trading hours yesterday, 30 May 2016.

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After opening with small gains, key benchmark indices entered into negative zone in morning trade. At 10:16 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 84.84 points or 0.32% at 26,640.76. The Nifty 50 index was currently down 19.90 points or 0.24% at 8,158.60.

The Sensex lost 105.62 points or 0.39% at the day's low of 26,619.98 in morning trade. The barometer index rose 111.60 points or 0.41% at the day's high of 26,837.20 in early trade, its highest level since 30 October 2015. The Nifty lost 24.30 points or 0.29% at the day's low of 8,154.20 in morning trade. The index rose 35.10 points or 0.42% at the day's high of 8,213.60 in early trade, its highest level since 27 October 2015.

In overseas stock markets, Asian stocks witnessed a mixed trend. Chinese stocks rose led by gains in financial companies amid speculation that MSCI Inc. may include yuan-denominated shares in its global benchmark indexes next month. In China, the Shanghai Composite index was currently up 2.43%. In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index was currently up 1.24%. US stock market was closed yesterday, 30 May 2016, for the Memorial Day holiday.

Closer home, the market breadth indicating the overall health of the market was weak. On BSE, 658 shares rose and 1,138 shares declined. A total of 99 shares were unchanged. The BSE Mid-Cap index was currently down 0.23%. The decline in this index was lower than Sensex's decline in percentage terms. The BSE Small-Cap index was currently down 0.5%. The decline in this index was higher than Sensex's decline in percentage terms.

Pharma stocks were mostly lower. Divi's Laboratories (up 0.68%), Cadila Healthcare (up 0.16%), Dr Reddy's Laboratories (up 0.19%), Cipla (up 0.67%) and Lupin (up 1.63%) edged higher. Wockhardt (down 1.45%), Ipca Laboratories (down 1.94%), Glenmark Pharmaceuticals (down 1.97%), GlaxoSmithkline Pharmaceuticals (down 0.72%), Alkem Laboratories (down 1.66%) and Strides Shasun (down 0.52%) edged lower.

Sun Pharmaceutical Industries (Sun Pharma) was down 4.06% at Rs 779.55. The company's consolidated net profit rose 92.71% to Rs 1713.69 crore on 16.82% growth in total income to Rs 7599.21 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. The result was announced after market hours yesterday, 30 May 2016.

Sun Pharma's Managing Director Dilip Shanghvi said that FY 2016 has been a year of consolidation for Sun Pharma. While the company has accrued targeted synergies from the Ranbaxy acquistion, it has also made commensurate investments in building the specialty business in the US, Shanghvi said. These strategic investments will help Sun Pharma drive the sustainable growth of its business, he added.

Sun Pharma's board of directors scheduled a meeting on 23 June 2016 to evaluate a proposal for buyback of equity shares of the company.

Aurobindo Pharma rose 1.54% at Rs 766.10 after consolidated net profit rose 39.4% to Rs 563 crore on 18.5% growth in total operating income to Rs 3747 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. The result was announced after market hours yesterday, 30 May 2016.

The company's earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) before forex rose 34.5% to Rs 882 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. EBITDA margin edged higher to 23.5% in Q4 March 2016, from 20.7% in Q4 March 2015.

Aurobindo Pharma's Managing Director N. Govindarajan said that the company continues its growth journey with higher number of ANDA approvals, new launches and better integration of acquired businesses. With growth coming from all business verticals, focus remains on new launches in US and improved cost efficiencies in EU, he said. In addition, Aurobindo continues to work on new businesses and differentiated technology platforms which will drive its future growth, he added.

Cement stocks were mostly higher. ACC (up 0.26%), Ambuja Cements (up 0.2%) and UltraTech Cement (up 0.07%) edged higher. Shree Cement (down 0.71%) edged lower.

Grasim Industries was down 0.07%. Grasim has exposure to cement sector through its holding in UltraTech Cement.

Tata Motors jumped 6.88% to Rs 449.50 after consolidated net profit jumped 201.6% to Rs 5177.06 crore on 18.97% growth in total income to Rs 80933.04 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. The result was announced after market hours yesterday, 30 May 2016.

Tata Motors said that the revenue growth in Q4 March 2016 reflects strong sales in all the regions for Jaguar Land Rover business namely in UK, Europe, North America, China and other Overseas markets and continued robust volume growth in medium & heavy commercial vehicles (M&HCV) segment and start of volume growth in the light commercial vehicles (LCV) segment in standalone business.

Tata Motors said that stronger operating performance in both standalone as well as Jaguar Land Rover business and lower net finance expenses partly offset by higher depreciation and amortization expenses, adverse revaluation of Euro payables and one time reserves and charges of Rs 1580 crore (166 million) for the industry-wide recall in the United States of potentially faulty airbags supplied by Takata, doubtful debts and previously capitalized investment in the Jaguar Land Rover business.

Further, exceptional items for Q4 March 2016 includes further insurance and other recoveries of Rs 555 crore on account of the vehicles damaged at Tianjin Port explosion in Jaguar Land Rover business.

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After a rangebound trade in early afternoon trade, key benchmark indices trimmed losses in afternoon trade. At 12:15 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was down 40.91 points or 0.15% at 26,684.69. The decline in the Nifty 50 index was lower than the Sensex's fall in percentage terms. The Nifty was currently down 8.05 points or 0.1% at 8,170.45. The market breadth indicating the overall health of the market was weak. On BSE, 903 shares rose and 1,471 shares declined. A total of 165 shares were unchanged. The BSE Mid-Cap index was currently down 0.01%. The decline in this index was lower than the Sensex's decline in percentage terms. The BSE Small-Cap index was currently down 0.21%. The decline in this index was higher than the Sensex's decline in percentage terms.

In overseas stock markets, European stocks witnessed a mixed trend. In Asia, Chinese stocks edged higher on speculation that MSCI Inc., the global index provider, will soon add mainland-traded Chinese stocks, so-called A-shares, in its Emerging Markets Index. In mainland China, the Shanghai Composite index settled 3.34% higher. In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index was currently up 1.31%. MSCI's inclusion of A-shares into the index will channel billions in passive asset-management money into China. On 27 May 2016, the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges announced rules on share trading suspensions, removing one potential roadblock for inclusion of Chinese A shares or yuan-denominated shares in MSCI Inc.'s global benchmark indexes. MSCI said in March a decision to include 5 percent of yuan-denominated shares in its index will depend on regulators implementing changes so that widespread halts can't happen again. MSCI will reportedly take a call in mid-June 2016 whether to add Chinese shares to its global benchmark indexes.

Japanese shares edged higher after the latest data showed industrial output in April rose for the second month. The Nikkei 225 Average closed 0.98% higher.

Reliance Industries (RIL) was down 0.64% to Rs 963.25. Reliance Exploration & Production DMCC (REPDMCC), an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of RIL, and French oil major Total S.A. have executed agreements on 30 May 2016 for the sale of the entire 76% interest held by REPDMCC in Gulf Africa Petroleum Corporation (GAPCO). GAPCO is a holding company with operating subsidiaries in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda which are primarily engaged in petroleum product import, and trading, storage, distribution, marketing, supply and transportation of oil products in East Africa. GAPCO currently operates 108 retail outlets and owns 260 TKL of storage capacity in East Africa.

REPDMCC's agreement to sell its interest in GAPCO is part of a joint transaction, wherein both REPDMCC and a minority shareholder in the company have agreed to sell their entire respective holdings for cash. The net proceeds for the sale will be finalized on completion of the transaction, which is expected to be within the coming months.

Most FMCG shares edged lower. Godrej Consumer Products (down 2.27%), Dabur India (down 2.23%), GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare (down 1.39%), Marico (down 0.67%), Bajaj Corp (down 0.58%), Britannia Industries (down 0.3%), Hindustan Unilever (down 0.29%) and Procter & Gamble Hygiene & Health Care (down 0.04%), edged lower. Nestle India (up 0.03%), Tata Global Beverages (up 0.13%), Jyothy Laboratories (up 0.67%) and Colgate Palmolive (India) (up 0.98%) edged higher.

Most capital goods shares edged lower. Reliance Defence and Engineering (down 2.31%), Praj Industries (down 1.46%), Suzlon Energy (down 1.23%), Thermax (down 1.13%), BEML (down 0.91%), Crompton Greaves (down 0.88%), Siemens (down 0.79%), Bharat Electronics (down 0.62%), Alstom T&D India (down 0.32%), Havells India (down 0.32%) and AIA Engineering (down 0.09%), edged lower. ABB India (up 0.22%), ALSTOM India (up 0.36%), Lakshmi Machine Works (up 0.48%), SKF India (up 0.64%), Bharat Heavy Electricals (up 0.79%), Punj Lloyd (up 1.86%) and Jindal Saw (up 4.19%), edged higher.

L&T was down 0.79% at Rs 1,474.65. The stock hit a high of Rs 1,488.70 and a low of Rs 1,467.95 so far during the day. L&T's wholly-owned subsidiary L&T Hydrocarbon Engineering (LTHE) today, 31 May 2016, announced a teaming agreement with engineering, construction, technical and management services firm Parsons to provide engineering and design solutions for onshore and offshore projects across the hydrocarbon, fertilizer, chemicals, and modular plant sectors in the US. LTHE and Parsons will collaborate to provide customers with conceptual engineering, feasibility studies, front-end engineering design, detailed engineering, specialty and high-end engineering, cost estimating, and engineering, procurement, and construction management services in the US.

GMR Infrastructure declined 2.78% after the company reported consolidated net loss of Rs 953.50 crore in Q4 March 2016 compared with consolidated net loss of Rs 891.90 crore in Q4 March 2015. Total income rose 27.64% to Rs 3826.37 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) margin rose to 36% in Q4 March 2016 from 29% in Q4 March 2015. The result was announced before market hours today, 31 May 2016.

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A bout of volatility was witnessed as key benchmark indices extended losses in mid-afternoon trade. At 14:16 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was down 127.11 points or 0.48% at 26,598.49. The decline in the Nifty 50 index was lower than the Sensex's fall in percentage terms. The Nifty was currently down 32.25 points or 0.39% at 8,146.25.

The Sensex lost 135.93 points or 0.5% at the day's low of 26,589.67 in mid-afternoon trade, its lowest level since 27 May 2016. The barometer index rose 111.60 points or 0.41% at the day's high of 26,837.20 in early trade, its highest level since 30 October 2015. The Nifty lost 33.70 points or 0.41% at the day's low of 8,144.80 in mid-afternoon trade, its lowest level since 27 May 2016. The index rose 35.10 points or 0.42% at the day's high of 8,213.60 in early trade, its highest level since 27 October 2015.

In overseas stock markets, carmakers led losses for European stocks after German car maker Volkswagen reported a higher-than-expected decline in net profit in Q1 March 2016. In Asia, Chinese stocks edged higher on speculation that MSCI Inc., the global index provider, will soon add mainland-traded Chinese stocks, so-called A-shares, in its Emerging Markets Index. In mainland China, the Shanghai Composite index settled 3.34% higher. In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index settled 0.9% higher. MSCI's inclusion of A-shares into the index will channel billions in passive asset-management money into China. On 27 May 2016, the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges announced rules on share trading suspensions, removing one potential roadblock for inclusion of Chinese A shares or yuan-denominated shares in MSCI Inc.'s global benchmark indexes. MSCI said in March a decision to include 5 percent of yuan-denominated shares in its index will depend on regulators implementing changes so that widespread halts can't happen again. MSCI will reportedly take a call in mid-June 2016 whether to add Chinese shares to its global benchmark indexes.

Japanese shares edged higher after the latest data showed industrial output in April rose for the second month. The Nikkei 225 Average closed 0.98% higher.

Closer home, the market breadth indicating the overall health of the market was weak. On BSE, 880 shares rose and 1,563 shares declined. A total of 158 shares were unchanged. The BSE Mid-Cap index was currently down 0.21%. The BSE Small-Cap index was currently down 0.37%. The losses for both these indices were lower than the Sensex's decline in percentage terms.

Stocks of public sector banks declined. Bank of India (down 2.78%), Syndicate Bank (down 2.44%), Indian Bank (down 2.3%), IDBI Bank (down 1.41%), Punjab National Bank (down 0.91%), Union Bank of India (down 0.82%), Central Bank of India (down 0.3%) and State Bank of India (down 0.15%) edged lower. Canara Bank (up 0.57%), Bank of Baroda (up 0.36%) and Corporation Bank (up 0.56%) edged higher.

Stocks of private sector banks witnessed a mixed trend. ICICI Bank (down 0.33%), HDFC Bank (down 0.05%) and Axis Bank (down 0.02%) edged lower. IndusInd Bank (up 0.09%), Yes Bank (up 0.83%) and Kotak Mahindra Bank (up 0.22%) edged higher.

Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha was quoted as saying today, 31 May 2016, that it was prudent for the Reserve Bank of India to continue with an asset quality review of the banks. Lenders have reported a surge in their bad loans in the six months to March after an asset quality review (AQR) ordered by the central bank. The exercise is aimed at cleaning bank balance sheets.

Auto stocks witnessed a mixed trend. Ashok Leyland (up 0.99%), Maruti Suzuki India (up 1.31%), Bajaj Auto (up 0.66%) and Hero MotoCorp (up 0.71%) rose. TVS Motor Company (down 0.95%), Mahindra & Mahindra (down 0.66%) and Eicher Motors (down 0.65%) edged lower.

Tata Motors jumped 7.59% at Rs 452.60 after consolidated net profit jumped 201.6% to Rs 5177.06 crore on 18.97% growth in total income to Rs 80933.04 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. The result was announced after market hours yesterday, 30 May 2016. Tata Motors said that the revenue growth in Q4 March 2016 reflects strong sales in all the regions for Jaguar Land Rover business namely in UK, Europe, North America, China and other overseas markets. The revenue also rose on account of continued robust volume growth in medium & heavy commercial vehicles (M&HCV) segment and start of volume growth in the light commercial vehicles (LCV) segment in standalone business.

Tata Motors said that consolidated profit before tax (before exceptional item) jumped 103.17% to Rs 5957 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015 due to stronger operating performance in both standalone as well as Jaguar Land Rover business and lower net finance expenses partly offset by higher depreciation and amortization expenses, adverse revaluation of Euro payables and one time reserves and charges of Rs 1580 crore (166 million) for the industry-wide recall in the United States of potentially faulty airbags supplied by Takata, doubtful debts and previously capitalized investment in the Jaguar Land Rover business.

Further, exceptional items for Q4 March 2016 includes further insurance and other recoveries of Rs 555 crore on account of the vehicles damaged at Tianjin Port explosion in Jaguar Land Rover business.

Steel Authority of India (Sail) fell 0.23% at Rs 42.85 after the company posted net loss of Rs 1230.93 crore in Q4 March 2016 compared with net profit of Rs 334.22 crore in Q4 March 2015. Total income declined 2.9% at Rs 11545.07 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. The result was announced after market hours yesterday, 30 May 2016.

Sail Chairman P.K. Singh said that the challenging conditions faced by domestic industry received some respite after the introduction of the conducive policy measures by government in the form of safeguard duty and minimum import price (MIP). The company is targeting to complete the balance modernization and expansion with a focus on energy saving methods, enriching product mix and introducing customer centric processes to meet the expected surge in demand of steel on account of government's emphasis on infrastructure development, Singh said.

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Steel Authority of India fell 1.4% to Rs 42.35 at 12:57 IST on BSE after the company posted net loss of Rs 1230.93 crore in Q4 March 2016 compared with net profit of Rs 334.22 crore in Q4 March 2015.

The result was announced after market hours yesterday, 30 May 2016.

Meanwhile, the BSE Sensex was down 65.19 points, or 0.24%, to 26,660.41

On BSE, so far 5.12 lakh shares were traded in the counter, compared with an average volume of 6.01 lakh shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 42.75 and a low of Rs 41.50 so far during the day. The stock hit a 52-week high of Rs 67.20 on 2 June 2015. The stock hit a 52-week low of Rs 33.50 on 12 February 2016. The stock had underperformed the market over the past one month till 30 May 2016, sliding 9.2% compared with Sensex's 4.37% gains. The scrip, however, outperformed the market in past one quarter, gaining 22.71% as against Sensex's 16.19% gains.

The large-cap company has an equity capital of Rs 4130.53 crore. Face value per share is Rs 10.

Steel Authority of India (Sail)'s total income declined 2.9% at Rs 11545.07 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. Sail witnessed all round improvement in performance. The company's sales rose 20% to a record 3.79 million tonnes (MT) in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015.

Sail Chairman P.K. Singh said that the challenging conditions faced by domestic industry received some respite after introduction of the conducive policy measures by government in the form of safeguard duty and minimum import price. The company is targeting to complete the balance modernization and expansion with a focus on energy saving methods, enriching product mix and introducing customer centric processes to meet the expected surge in demand of steel on account of government's emphasis on infrastructure development, Singh said.

Sail is a PSU steel manufacturing company. The Government of India held 75% stake in Sail (as per the shareholding pattern as on 31 March 2016).

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Shilpi Cable Technologies gained 4.05% to Rs 104 at 15:30 IST on BSE after the board of directors approved setting up of project at Abu Dhabi, UAE for manufacturing of copper products.

The announcement was made before market hours today, 31 May 2016.

Meanwhile, the BSE Sensex was down 57.64 points, or 0.22%, to 26,667.96.

On BSE, so far 87,180 shares were traded in the counter, compared with an average volume of 63,424 shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 105.10 and a low of Rs 101.10 in intraday trade.

Shilpi Cable Technologies said that the board of directors of the company approved setting up of project at Abu Dhabi, UAE through its subsidiary, having capacity of 60,000 metric tonne (MT) for manufacturing of copper products with an investment of $150 million out of which $50 million will be invested through equity and the balance $100 million will be through debt.

The board of directors also approved aquisition of 100% share of Shilpi Worldwide PTE Ltd, Singapore which is presently a step down wholly owned subsidiary of the company from company's direct wholly owned subsidiary -Shilpi Worldwide DMCC at the value of $5.3 million. After this transaction, Shilpi Worldwide PTE Ltd, Singapore shall be a direct wholly owned subsidiary of the company instead of step down wholly owned subsidiary. The proposed transaction is subject to the requisite statutory approvals.

Shilpi Cable Technologies' consolidated net profit rose 4.92% to Rs 44.37 crore on 20.33% rise in net sales ro Rs 1085.96 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. The result was announced before market hours today, 31 May 2016.

Shilpi Cable Technologies is a specialist across the varieties of cables widely used in telecom, automotive and energy segment.

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Sun Pharmaceutical Industries lost 4.15% to Rs 778.80 at 9:17 IST on BSE, with the stock sliding in early trade after the company announced Q4 March 2016 results after market hours yesterday, 30 May 2016.

Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 64.23 points or 0.24% at 26,789.83.

On BSE, so far 79,000 shares were traded in the counter as against average daily volume of 2.29 lakh shares in the past two weeks. The stock hit a high of Rs 807.70 and a low of Rs 776.10 so far during the day. The stock had hit a 52-week low of Rs 706.40 on 24 November 2015. The stock had hit a 52-week high of Rs 979 on 29 May 2015.

The large-cap company has equity capital of Rs 240.68 crore. Face value per share is Rs 1.

Sun Pharmaceutical Industries' (Sun Pharma) consolidated net profit rose 92.71% to Rs 1713.69 crore on 16.82% growth in total income to Rs 7599.21 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015.

Sun Pharma's Managing Director Dilip Shanghvi said that FY 2016 has been a year of consolidation for Sun Pharma. While the company has accrued targeted synergies from the Ranbaxy acquistion, it has also made commensurate investments in building the specialty business in the US, Shanghvi said. These strategic investments will help Sun Pharma drive the sustainable growth of its business, he added.

Sun Pharma's board of directors scheduled a meeting on 23 June 2016 to evaluate a proposal for buyback of equity shares of the company.

Sun Pharmaceutical Industries is a specialty generic pharmaceutical company and India's top pharmaceutical company.

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The World Bank Board has approved a US$ 135 million credit to support the efforts of the Government of Himachal Pradesh in modernizing and expanding the production of high value horticulture commodities.

The Himachal Pradesh Horticulture Development Project will support small farmers and agro entrepreneurs in Himachal Pradesh, to increase the productivity, quality, and their market access to selected high value horticulture commodities. Over 150,000 producers, mainly small and marginal farmers of the state will benefit from the project of which about 33 percent are expected to be women.

Given the agro climatic conditions, ability to produce for 'off-season' markets, and proximity to consumer markets gives Himachal an edge in producing high value horticulture commodities.

Today, 44 percent of the cropped area in the state is dominated by high value horticulture commodities.

However, despite the significant potential of horticulture production in Himachal Pradesh, the state faces a number of challenges which includes limited access to appropriate production technology; an entirely rainfall dependent system; high post-harvest losses, exacerbated by weak storage and marketing capabilities; weak institutional capacity for agro processing among small and medium enterprises; and lack of access to medium and long-term financial capital among others.

While the efforts of the Government of Himachal Pradesh has helped the state become one of the leading producers of fruits and off-season vegetables in the country, this project will reach out to small and marginal farmers, including women. The project will support them in acquiring the necessary technical knowledge to take full advantage of the opportunities in the horticulture sector, said Onno Ruhl, World Bank Country Director in India.

Recognizing the need for a long-term development of the horticulture sector, the Government of Himachal, through this project, plans to invest in modernizing the horticulture sector with climate resilient technology, strengthen the productive capacities of producers and their organizations, facilitate access to markets and use of financial services - in particular credit and insurance.

Addressing the current constraints will require a predictable and supportive policy environment for private sector development, better access to product and input markets, and improved access to extension and financial services for the farmers. We hope this project will help set the stage for the state to tap its full potential in the area of horticulture, said Manivannan Pathy, Senior Agricultural Specialist and World Bank's Task Team Leader for the project.

The credit is from the International Development Association (IDA) - the World Bank's concessionary lending arm with a maturity of 25 years, including a 5 year grace period.

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First-ever insurance and pandemic bonds will save lives and protect economies

The World Bank Group today launched the Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility (PEF), an innovative, fast-disbursing global financing mechanism designed to protect the world against deadly pandemics, which will create the first-ever insurance market for pandemic risk. Japan, which holds the G7 Presidency, committed the first $50 million in funding toward the new initiative.

Pandemics pose some of the biggest threats in the world to people's lives and to economies, and for the first time we will have a system that can move funding and teams of experts to the sites of outbreaks before they spin out of control, said Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank Group. This facility addresses a long, collective failure in dealing with pandemics. The Ebola crisis in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone taught all of us that we must be much more vigilant to outbreaks and respond immediately to save lives and also to protect economic growth.

G7 leaders had urged the World Bank Group to develop the initiative during their May 2015 summit in Schloss-Elmau, Germany.

Japan is proud to support the Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility, which prevents pandemics from undermining important development achievements", said Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of Japan Taro Aso. Innovative financing for crisis responses by the PEF, together with financing for preparedness and prevention in peacetime including through IDA, are important to mitigate human and social losses and to help quickly recover in the event of a crisis. It is cost-effective and should be emphasized at all stages of economic development.

The new facility will accelerate both global and national responses to future outbreaks with pandemic potential. It was built and designed in collaboration with the World Health Organization and the private sector, introducing a new level of rigor into both the financing and the response.

Recent years have seen a dramatic resurgence of the threat from emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, said Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization. WHO fully supports the Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility as a critical contribution to global health security and a crucial line of defence against high-threat pathogens.

The PEF includes an insurance window, which combines funding from the reinsurance markets with the proceeds of World Bank-issued pandemic (catastrophe, or Cat) bonds, as well as a complementary cash window. This will be the first time World Bank Cat Bonds have been used to combat infectious diseases. In the event of an outbreak, the PEF will release funds quickly to countries and qualified international responding agencies.

The insurance window will provide coverage up to $500 million for an initial period of three years for outbreaks of infectious diseases most likely to cause major epidemics, including new Orthomyxoviruses (e.g. new influenza pandemic virus A, B and C), Coronaviridae (e.g. SARS, MERS), Filoviridae (e.g. Ebola, Marburg) and other zoonotic diseases (e.g. Crimean Congo, Rift Valley, Lassa fever). Parametric triggers designed with publicly available data will determine when the money would be released, based on the size, severity and spread of the outbreak.

The complementary cash window will provide more flexible funding to address a larger set of emerging pathogens, which may not yet meet the activation criteria for the insurance window.

All 77 countries eligible for financing from the International Development Association, the World Bank Group's fund for the poorest countries, will be eligible to receive coverage from the PEF. The PEF is expected to be operational later this year.

Recent economic analysis suggests that the annual global cost of moderately severe to severe pandemics is roughly $570 billion, or 0.7 percent of global GDP. A very severe pandemic like the 1918 Spanish flu could cost as much as 5 percent of global GDP, or nearly $4 trillion.

During the past two years alone, pandemic threats have included the devastating Ebola crisis in West Africawhich crippled the economies of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and cost them an estimated $2.8 billion in GDP losses ($600 million in Guinea, $300 million in Liberia and $1.9 billion in Sierra Leone); the MERS outbreak, which took a toll on the South Korean economy; and the Zika virus that is spreading in the Americas and putting thousands of unborn children at risk.

Four global expert panels that were convened over the past year in the wake of the Ebola crisis concluded that the world must urgently step up its capacity for a swift response to outbreaks before they become more deadly and costly pandemics.

The PEF will do a number of important things to prevent another Ebola crisis:

It will insure the world's poorest countries against the threat of a pandemic.

In the event of a severe infectious disease outbreak, it will release funds quickly to the countries and/or to international responders, to accelerate the responsesaving lives and reducing human suffering.

By mobilizing an earlier, faster, better planned and coordinated response, it will reduce the costs to countries and their people for response and recovery.

It will promote greater global and national investments in preparing for future outbreaks and strengthening national health systems.

It will combine public and private resources to advance global health security, and create a new insurance market for managing pandemic risk.

The World Bank Group estimates that if the PEF had existed in mid-2014 as the Ebola outbreak was spreading rapidly in West Africa, it could have mobilized an initial $100 million as early as July to severely limit the spread and severity of the epidemic. Instead, money at that scale did not begin to flow until three months later. During that three month period, the number of Ebola cases increased tenfold. The Ebola epidemic has claimed more than 11,300 lives and cost at least $10 billion to date. International assistance has totaled more than $7 billion for Ebola response and recovery.

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At least 15 people were killed and another 19 injured, some seriously, in a major fire followed by a blast at the Central Ammunition Depot, Pulgaon, in Wardha district in Maharashtra in the early hours of Tuesday, officials said.

The casualties, including fatalities and missing persons, is expected to increase even as nightlong fire-fighting efforts continued inside the sprawling CAD.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis have expressed grief over the loss of at least two officers and 13 soldiers in the tragedy.

"Pained by loss of lives caused by a fire at Central Ammunition Depot in Pulgaon, Maharashtra. My thoughts are with the bereaved families," Modi tweeted.

The prime minister has directed Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar to visit the spot and take stock of the situation.

"News of fire at CAD, Pulgaon, is very unfortunate and disturbing. Spoke to Wardha collector and took stock of the situation," Fadnavis said on Tuesday.

The cause of the blaze is not yet known but fire-fighting operations by the defence fire brigade are underway in full swing at what is Asia's second biggest central ammunition depot.

The extent of damage to assets of defence and the exact figure of fatalities, are being ascertained, officials requesting anonymity said, even as the defence authorities ordered a probe into the incident.

Local eyewitnesses said that there were multiple explosions after a blaze due to unknown reasons at the defence depot around 1.30 a.m. on Tuesday.

Pulgaon is situated around 40 km from Wardha, the district headquarters, which is 80 km from Nagpur.

The main conflagration has reportedly been extinguished and nearby villages have been evacuated as a precautionary measure, officials said.

--IANS

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Telangana's Director General of Police Anurag Sharma on Tuesday said that Africans living in Hyderabad and elsewhere in the state "can rest assured about their safety", adding there is "no racism here".

"There is no racism here. All are equal. Still, we will take further care to ensure their safety in the wake of the attacks reported in the recent times and the concerns raised over their safety," Sharma said at a media interaction here in the wake of President Pranab Mukherjee commenting on the issue of safety of Africans in India.

The police chief asserted that the attack on 23-year-old Nigerian student Kazeem Dami in Hyderabad last week was a clear case of dispute over car parking and had nothing to do with racism as alleged by the student. "The accused in that case was arrested for assaulting on the student (Nigerian)," the DGP said.

"We have many foreign students studying or working here. We are taking care of their safety. We do not have different laws for different people. All will be governed and dealt with under the same law of the land," Sharma elaborated.

Asked if the police face problems from the Africans here, the DGP said: "We do not categorise. If problems are faced from some people, that will not be attributed to the community."

Kazeem had parked his Honda Accord car in front of the house of a neighbour. This resulted in Mohammed Gafoor, the neighbour, and some other locals attacking Dami.

The student suffered head injuries that required seven stitches. Gafoor was arrested the same day. Kazeem alleged that "some 15 Indians attacked me".

--IANS

pavan/rn/vt
Algeria and France held a security meeting in Algiers to boost their bilateral anti-terror cooperation, the media reported.

Co-chaired by the Algerian Minister for Maghreb Affairs, the African Union and the Arab League, Abdelkader Messahel, and France's National Intelligence Coordinator, Ambassador Didier Le Bret, this first-of-its-kind meeting on Monday focused on bilateral security cooperation amid the unstable regional situation, with the participation of security experts from both countries, Xinhua news agency reported.

Messahel told reporters: "During the meeting, we discussed the situation in Libya, Tunisia, the Sahel region, and the Western Sahara issue," adding that: "These issues impact our regional stability."

He noted further that "the fight against terrorism and strengthening cooperation in the field, especially through exchange of experience, was also on the meeting's agenda".

Consultations with our partners, including France, will continue as part of our efforts to restore stability to our troubled region, elaborated Mesahel.

As for Le Bret, he said the meeting presented an opportunity to exchange views on issues of common interest, including the fight against terrorism and preventing extremism.

He specified that "the meeting included the participation of all concerned departments, namely defense, foreign affairs and intelligence services, in order to merge our efforts and address issues which provoke regional instability, especially in Libya and Northern Mali."

The North African and Sahel regions have been plagued by unprecedented security and political instability in recent years.

France, concerned about securing its regional economic and political interests, views Algeria as a key partner in the fight against terrorism.

--IANS

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Bollywood celebrities like Amitabh Bachchan, Karan Johar and Satish Kaushik on Tuesday mourned the death of producer and trade analyst Vikas Mohan. They described him as a respected and wonderful human being.

Mohan, who was printer-publisher of trade magazine Super Cinema and even produced Madhuri Dixit and Akshay Kumar starrer "Aarzoo", had reportedly suffered a heart attack late Monday evening and died on Tuesday at a hospital here. His cremation will take place on Tuesday afternoon around 2 p.m here.

Megastar Amitabh Bachchan tweeted: "Vikas Mohan, senior journalist owner of Trade magazine, eminent member of film association passes away. Our prayers and condolences."

Filmmaker Karan Johar called him a "a truly respected and loved member of our fraternity... Always helpful and supportive...thoughts and prayers to the family".

Even filmmaker-actor Satish Kaushik paid condolences on the "demise of dear friend Vikas Mohan... May his soul rest in peace".

Veteran actor Anupam Kher said: "Deeply saddened to know about the demise of Vikas Mohan ji. Apart from a veteran film trade analyst, he was wonderful and helpful human being."

Filmmaker Hansal Mehta, saddened by the news of Mohan's passing away, remembered him as an "always helpful and supportive" person.

Actor Hrithik Roshan shared that Mohan was "one of the most dignified honest and respected journalist", while actress Sophie Choudry said he was "always so full of life".

Bipasha Basu: You will be missed Vikas Mohanji. RIP Strength to Amul Mohan, Anshul and family.

--IANS

dc/rb/vm
Reacting to Congress President Sonia Gandhi's 'shahenshah' jibe against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh on Tuesday launched a counter-attack, saying there was "no place for any maharani too in a democracy".

"I heard and saw on news channels what Sonia Gandhi said about our prime minister. She said this in context of cases pertaining to her son-in-law Robert Vadra. But in a democratic country, a daughter-in-law of a big family too cannot behave like a maharani (empress)," Singh said at a press conference held to showcase his ministry's achievements in the last two years.

The minister, a Bharatiya Janata Party leader, also mocked at Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi for "staging nautanki" by visiting poor people's houses.

"We are living in a time when a leader with a humble background visiting houses of poor people and staying with them does not make news; but the moment a big man does such thing by staging a "nautanki (drama)...," he said.

Earlier, talking to reporters in her parliamentary constituency Rae Bareli on Tuesday, the Congress president trained her guns on Modi and said he was a prime minister and not an emperor.

"Woh pradhanmantri hain, koi shehenshaah nahin ki janata unki saari baatein maane (he is a prime minister and not an emperor that people should be forced to abide by all his diktats)," Gandhi said.

--IANS

nd/tsb/vt
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday staged a protest outside Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's residence demanding improvement in power and water supply in the national capital.

BJP supporters, led by South Delhi MP Ramesh Bidhuri, gathered outside the chief minister's residence and raised slogans against him. The Delhi Police had to use water cannons to disperse the demonstrators.

Bidhuri said: "People of Delhi especially from unrecognised colonies and resettlement colonies voted for Kejriwal government with great hopes, but the chief minister has totally failed them."

Despite a directive of the central government, Kejriwal government has not moved a single file for approval of unrecognised colonies, he said.

"The people of unrecognised colonies have all along faced hardships, but the water and power cuts seen under Kejriwal regime have been unprecedented," he said.

Highlighting the plight of South Delhi, Bidhuri said: "South Delhi, specially Mehrauli, is almost parched. Water reaches once in three days in most of the unrecognised colonies."

He said over 155 unapproved colonies are facing worst power cuts of up to six hours a day in this hot weather.

Bidhuri also warned of a massive agitation against the Kejriwal-led Delhi government if it fails to address the issues of water and power crisis.

--IANS

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Internationally acclaimed artist and Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB) co-founder Bose Krishnamachari will curate the inaugural Yinchuan biennale in China later this year, it was announced on Tuesday.

For the biennale titled "For An Image, Faster Than Light", Krishnamachari has already chosen 40 out of the 80 international artists who will showcase their works at the Museum of Contemporary Art Yinchuan (MOCA Yinchuan) from September 9 to December 18, 2016.

The featured artists will explore a range of contemporary issues, in keeping with the breadth of Krishnamachari's creative vision and the cosmopolitan ethic that is also the hallmark of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. Among those who will take part include Ai Weiwei, Anish Kapoor, Riyas Komu, co-founder of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, and Sudarshan Shetty, curator of the 2016 edition of the Biennale in Kochi.

"This biennale in China can postulate different themes, including spiritual and social consciousness, an examination of political narratives and critical global engagement and an acknowledgment of a collective responsibility therein," said Krishnamachari.

The biennale will also see a host of cultural activities like music programmes and seminars on the various aspects of the concept note.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Yinchuan is the first contemporary museum along the Yellow River in the northwest of China and is considered among the best new museums in China.

--IANS

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Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday billed the allegations levelled against her son-in-law Robert Vadra of owning a house in London, funded by an arms dealer, as "yet another conspiracy of the BJP-led government towards Congress-Mukt Bharat".

Talking to reporters in Rae Bareli, her parliamentary constituency, Sonia Gandhi also trained her guns on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said that he was prime minister and not an emperor that people of the country should listen to all that he says.

"Woh pradhanmantri hain, koi shehenshaah nahin ki janta unki saari baatein maane," she said.

Speaking further on the allegations against Vadra, who is married to her daughter Priyanka, Sonia Gandhi said people in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) level new charges every day and demanded that if there was anything against anybody in her family, a probe should be initiated.

Such an investigation, she added, would clear the air. "Doodh ka doodh aur paani ka paani ho jayega," she exclaimed.

Senior BJP leader Kirit Somaiya on Monday sought detailed inquiry by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) into alleged involvement of Robert Vadra in the 2009 purchase of a 'benami' or proxy-owned mansion in London.

On the massive event put up in New Delhi on the completion of two years of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, Sonia Gandhi said: "Our nation is facing drought, poverty, farmers are in pain. At these times, such a 'show' is not appropriate."

The Congress chief is in her parliamentary constituency on a two-day tour.

Soon after her arrival, she inaugurated a Nagar Panchayat building built at a cost of Rs30 lakh in Dalmau. Many local Congress leaders and party workers were present at the inauguration.

--IANS

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International cigarette companies including ITC and Godfrey Phillips have implemented the rule requiring 85 percent pictorial warning, they said on Tuesday.

According to the companies, the decision was taken following the Supreme Court ruling making the new rule mandatory, even if the case was transferred back to Karnataka High Court.

"It is a welcome change to see old packets with 40 percent warnings on one side of the pack giving way to new packs with larger warnings... There was criticism against the industry that the companies had flooded the market with old stocks in the absence of any clear guideline from the government on the date by which these should be exhausted," said a statement from the companies.

"We have implemented the 85 percent pictorial warnings and now they can be seen on the new packets in the market," a company spokesman told IANS.

The implementation comes after the Health Ministry under Cigarettes and other Tobacco Products Act, 2003 (COTPA) increased the size of graphic health warnings on tobacco products from 20 percent to 85 percent. It came into effect on April 1, 2016.

The order came despite a parliamentary committee recommendation that the warnings be brought down to 50 percent of the package surface area, as it said 85 percent was too harsh on the tobacco industry.

Following the order, companies such as ITC -- India's largest cigarette making company, Godfrey Philips India, Marlboro, and Four Square as well as Red and White had stopped production from April 2 onwards and approached the court.

According to Tobacco Institute of India (TII), tobacco is an extremely important commercial crop for India as it contributes more than Rs30,000 crore in tax revenue annually besides earning about Rs6,000 crore in foreign exchange.

--IANS

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The on Tuesday sought response from the Ministry of Human Resource Development and Ministry of Law on a plea seeking uniform education syllabus for all children aged 6-14 years across India.

A division bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Jayant Nath issued notice to the ministries on a public interest litigation filed by advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, which said that discrimination in quality of education violates Articles 14 and 15 of the Constitution.

The plea said: "Right to Education under Article 21A has to be read in conformity with Articles 14 and 15 of the Constitution. There must be no discrimination in quality of education."

"The right of a child should not be restricted only to free and compulsory education, but should be extended to have equal quality education without any discrimination on the ground of a child's social economic and cultural background. Thus, a common syllabus and common curriculum is required."

The children should be provided not just free and compulsory education but also value-based uniform education, said the plea.

The plea also sought an authoritative textbook on environment, health and safety, a standard textbook on socialism, secularism and nationalism, and a reliable textbook on the aims and objectives of the Constitution having chapters on Fundamental Rights, Fundamental Duties, Directive Principles and the Golden Goals as set out in the Preamble of the Constitution for all the children aged 6-14 years.
Ukraine's former military pilot Nadezhda Savchenko, who was freed after two years in Russian prison and is now member of the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada, was given the charge of national security issues, a member of parliament said on Tuesday.

Ivan Krulko, an MP from the Batkivshchina (Fatherland) faction, said Savchenko was elected to the Rada from Batkivshchina, Tass news reported.

"She will join the Verkhovna Rada National Security and Defense Committee," he said.

Savchenko on Tuesday appeared at the parliament meeting.

The former military servicewoman said a few words of gratitude to those who contributed to her release and urged not to forget those who died in Donbass.

Savchenko on the sidelines of parliament accused her new colleagues of inactivity.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian social media have rather ambiguously taken Savchenko's first appearance in parliament, especially her singing during which she mixed up the anthem words.

On March 22, 2016, a court in Russia's southern Rostov region found Savchenko guilty of directing the pro-Kiev forces' artillery fire in southeast Ukraine that had killed two Russian journalists.

Savchenko illegally crossed the Russian border and was sentenced to 22 years in a general-security penal colony and a fine of 30,000 rubles ($440).

On May 25, the Russian president signed a decree to pardon the former Ukrainian servicewoman, who had been in custody in Russia for the past two years.

Savchenko was handed over to the Ukrainian side in exchange for two Russians, Alexander Alexandrov and Yevgeny Yerofeyev, who were convicted in Ukraine.

The former pilot was taken to Kiev onboard the Ukrainian presidential plane the same day.

--IANS

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Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar has said that Goans are "annoyed" with the behaviour, attitude and way of life of Nigerians living in the coastal state.

Speaking to IANS, Parsekar also said that he was getting complaints against Nigerians on many occasions from locals.

"The Goans in general are complaining about these foreigners. We get people from all other countries, but in general the people of Goa are very much annoyed with their (Nigerians') behaviour, with their attitude, with their way of life," Parsekar said, even as police on Monday arrested a Nigerian for allegedly raping a 31-year-old woman in Assagao village, 20 km from Panaji.

"I cannot generalise. But generally people in Goa are not happy with these people," Parsekar said, adding that he regularly hears complaints about Nigerians.

Earlier, Goa's Tourism Minister Dilip Parulekar had demanded a new law to facilitate quick deportation of Nigerians, who Parulekar claimed got embroiled in criminal cases on purpose, in order to extend their stay in India.

"Nigerians create problem not just in Goa, but in the entire country. Nigerian students come to Goa and India to study, they get an FIR filed (against them), make it a judicial matter and they try to stay in India or Goa and indulge in drugs and other unwanted things," Parulekar said on Monday.

In October 2013, over 50 Nigerians had blocked the National Highway 17 in Goa, to protest against police inaction following a murder of a Nigerian national, allegedly by a local drug cartel.

The blockade had also seen police and locals being beaten up by the protesting Nigerians, before some of the foreigners were also beaten up in retaliation by a local mob.

--IANS

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The Parkash Singh Committee report on the large-scale violence during the Jat agitation for reservation in February, has blasted the civil and police administration, particularly senior officers, for abandoning their authority which it said led to the agitation paralysing the state for days.

Damning observations have been made by the committee against officers and officials of the Haryana government and Haryana Police while highlighting the "complete failure" of the state machinery in reacting appropriately to the situation turning out of control.

The committee, headed by former Uttar Pradesh Director General of Police (DGP) Parkash Singh, which submitted its report to Haryana's Bharatiya Janata Party government earlier this month, did not mince words to point out to particular officers and even name some of them.

"One Inspector General suffered almost a nervous breakdown and suffered delusions. The government has to be very careful in posting officers to sensitive districts which have potential for trouble of any kind," the committee pointed out.

"The Committee was disappointed to find that even at the state level, the highest functionaries were almost paralysed, and the kind of guidance, direction and control one expected in such a situation was just not there. The Director General of Police remained confined to Chandigarh and was content with issuing some orders. He did not lead from the front and did not care to inspire or motivate the personnel in the field," the report pointed out.

"The Home Department was a washout. The Additional Chief Secretary (Home) could not produce before the Committee even one page of directions/instructions which he may have issued to the Deputy Commissioners or the Superintendents of Police. The Home Department remained dormant. No wonder, officers in the field felt leaderless," it stated.

The committee named the then Additional Chief Secretary (Home) P.K. Das and DGP Yash Pal Singhal for virtually abdicating authority and not leading from the front.

"Yash Pal Singal, Director General of Police, Haryana, said that he was not able to visit the districts during the riots due to his poor health those days. The DGP found time to visit the places affected by violence on 23 and 24 February. It would have been better if he had visited by chopper at least the districts worst affected while the agitation was at its peak."

"The Committee was also disappointed that the DGP did not even have video conference with the Superintendents of Police when they were battling a very critical law and order situation. A police chief is expected to lead from the front in a crisis situation. Sh. Yash Pal Singal unfortunately did not give that impression," the report stated.

Pointing out instances, the committee said: "The judicial officers in Rohtak and Jajjhar were scared of their lives. At Jajjhar, the IG Police ordered LMG (light machine gun) to be mounted in the colony to inspire confidence. The IGP Rohtak was so unnerved that he made elaborate arrangements for his own protection, forgetting his responsibility towards the people of the town."

"The Deputy Commissioner, Rohtak, was apprehensive that his own house may be attacked. The state -- in Rohtak at least -- appeared to have withered away on February 19 and 20," the report said.

Rohtak was worst affected during the violence by Jat community agitators.

"Thirty lives were lost and, on a conservative estimate, property worth Rs 20,000 crore was devastated. It is estimated that 1,196 shops were set ablaze, 371 vehicles were damaged or set on fire, 30 schools/colleges were burnt, 75 houses were set on fire, 53 hotels/marriage palaces were devastated, 23 petrol pumps were attacked and 15 religious institutions vandalised," the committee, which went around the affected districts, pointed out.

The committee clearly pointed out to the caste bias of civil and police officers in the state, which is dominated by Jats.

"The caste bias of the officers, both of the civil administration and the police, was seen inaction against rioters, connivance with the vandals, absence from duty/desertion and abetment of the hooligans. The bias was conspicuous at the level of SDM/DSP/SHOs."

"The reservation riots which convulsed the state of Haryana in February 2016 were unprecedented in their scale, dimensions and intensity," the committee stated.

Pointing out to the environmental damage during the agitation, the committee said that a total 7,232 trees were cut by the agitators to block the roads and disrupt movement of traffic. Police establishments were not spared, with 29 police station/post buildings set ablaze, and police weapons were looted.

"The Committee saw the video footage of riots at different places sent by members of the public. There are horrifying scenes of wanton destruction. You can see people coming in scores on trolleys and moving through market areas unchallenged."

"Prohibitory orders were in force but there are no policemen to intercept the marauding crowds. The youth walk into the stores or malls, loot property at will and destroy whatever they cannot carry. These gangs are in no hurry. They have all the time in the world to carry out their depredations. They know that the police would not check them, let alone arrest them or take any other action," it pointed out.

The committee regretted that even the property of Haryana's finance minister was vandalised on two consecutive days.

The committee pointed out that the authority of senior officers, including the chief secretary, had been eroded in Haryana over the years owing to politicization of civil and police administration.

"Army was utilised in a big way in Haryana. There were a maximum of 74 columns on a particular day. The presence of army did make an impact. The situation was thereafter gradually brought under control. However, there have been disturbing whispers that the rioters were not particularly scared of the army," the committee said.

"The Additional Chief Secretary (Home) of the State had no hesitation in saying that the agitators were not daunted by the presence of the Army'. This is not a happy situation and should cause us concern. One reason could be that the Army is getting over-exposed," the committee said.

Expressing its concern over the "disturbing polarization in Haryana society", the committee said that the agitation had left the Jats on one side and the remaining communities on the other.

"The kind of polarization which earlier one saw between the Hindus and Muslims is today, tragically, being witnessed among different Hindu communities, thanks to the conflicting claims over reservation," the report pointed out.

--IANS

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Indian Vice President Hamid Ansari has said that incidents of violence against African students in India must be condemned in the strongest possible terms and that the government was fully committed to their safety and security.

Ansari, who arrived in Moroccan capital Rabat on a three-day official visit on Monday, made the remarks at a press conference on board the special aircraft on his way to Morocco and Tunisia.

"African students are our guests in India and the government remains fully committed to their safety and security," he said.

The vice president said India maintains traditionally strong ties with Morocco and Tunisia, both important partners in Africa.

India has a substantial economic relationship with Morocco on account of a large quantity of phosphate imported by India which is critical for agriculture.

He said there are a few other sectors where cooperation is deepening, like automobiles, pharmaceuticals and IT.

Ansari also indicated that Bollywood films might find ideal shooting locations in Morocco. India's trade with Morocco stands at more than $1 billion.

The Vice President praised the success of the democratic process in Tunisia, speaking about the way different political parties managed to work together in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.

On a question on India's cooperation with Morocco and Tunisia in tackling terrorism, Ansari said India continues to work closely to share intelligence and security-related information with these countries.

"Sharing real-time cyber security-related information is crucial in the efforts to tackle terrorism," he added.

Responding to a question on increasing presence of China, Ansari said both countries had different approaches to engaging African nations and India did not see itself in competition with China.

The Vice President highlighted the historical connections and the common struggle against colonial rulers that India shared with the African continent and added that India had always sought to partner it in the development journey.

On arrival at the Rabat-Sale airport, Ansari was welcomed by the head of government Abdelilah Benkirane, the Moroccan news agency MAP reported.

After reviewing an honour guard, Ansari was greeted, among others, by Minister of Communication and government spokesman Mustapha El Khalfi, Minister of Culture Mohammed Amine Sbihi and minister-delegate to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation Nasser Bourita.

The Vice President is leading a large delegation of government officials and parliamentarians on the three day visit.

--IANS

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Indian Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari has arrived in Moroccan capital Rabat on a three-day official visit to the country.

On arrival on Monday at the Rabat-Sale airport Ansari was welcomed by Head of Government Abdelilah Benkirane, Moroccan news agency MAP reported.

After reviewing an honour guard, Ansari was greeted, among others, by Minister of Communication and Government Spokesman Mustapha El Khalfi, Minister Culture Mohammed Amine Sbihi and Minister delegate to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation Nasser Bourita.

The Vice President is leading a large delegation of government officials and parliamentarians on the May 30-June 1 visit.

--IANS

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will continue sending military advisers to Syria and Iraq in a fight against terrorism, Iranian Defence Minister said on Monday.

"We will help Syria and Iraq as much as we can because parts of the Islamic community have been under attack and we are defending (them)," Xinhua quoted Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan as saying.

The Islamic republic deploys military advisers to these countries in a bid to defend Islamic countries as "Islam and Muslim nations are important to us," he said.

As for the strategic city of Aleppo in northern Syria, he said, "eventually, the occupied territories in Aleppo will be liberated (from the terrorists) by the resistance front."
Islamic State is using several hundred families as "human shields" in Fallujah, Iraq, witnesses told the UN agency for refugees UNHCR. It comes just one day after Iraqi troops forced their way into the city, a stronghold of the militant group.

"UNHCR has received reports of causalities among civilians in the city centre of Fallujah due to heavy shelling, including 7 members of one family on the 28th of May," UN High Commissioner for Refugees spokesman William Spindler said during a Tuesday news briefing.

"There are also reports of several hundred families being used as human shields by IS in the centre of Fallujah," he added.

Iraqi troops forced their way into the city from three directions on Monday, capturing a police station.

IS militants fought back overnight, managing to ward off an onslaught by the army in a southern district of Fallujah, according to officers.

Fallujah, which survived some of the heaviest fighting of the 2003-2011 US-led military intervention, was the first city in Iraq to fall to IS control in January 2014. In late June, 2014, the extremists declared a caliphate in territories seized in Iraq and Syria.

But despite the apparent gains in Fallujah, Iraqi troops still have a long road ahead of them. IS still controls territory in the country's north and west, including the country's second largest city, Mosul.

--IANS

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Jharkhand Energy Secretary S.K. Rahate has proceeded on leave after being pressured to make changes to the terms of an MoU that the state government signed with Adani Power, sources said.

Signed in February, the memorandum of understanding (MoU) relates to a project to set up 1,600 MW thermal power plant in Godda district. The opposition alleged that for this the state government extended special favours to Adani Power by reducing the land price from Rs 1.25 crore per acre to Rs 13 lakh per acre.

The opposition also attacked the Raghubar Das government in the last budget session of the assembly for agreeing to make changes in the terms and conditions of the MoU with Adani Power.

Sources in the energy department said: "Adani Power wanted to make changes in the MoU terms. Energy Secretary Rahate agreed to make some changes, but was not persuaded to make others."

"The policy says that any company setting up power project has to supply 25 per cent power to the state. The company will provide a part of that at a rate fixed by the regulatory body and another at variable cost," they said.

Adani Power is seeking to scrap the part at variable cost and also wants that 25 per cent power will be supplied to the state from sources other than the project, they said.

The project is meant primarily to supply electricity to Bangladesh.

Jharkhand agreed to accept 25 per cent power from other sources, but, according to sources, Energy Secretary Rahate was resisting the demand for scrapping the variable cost.

The energy department is under Chief Minister Raghubar Das.

The controversy has cast a shadow over the project in a state where uncertainty mars other big power projects.

Last year, Anil Ambani-led Reliance Power terminated the contract for Rs 36,000 crore Tilaiya Ultra Mega Power Project (UMPP) in the state over inordinate delays in land acquisition.

The fate of another 3,960 MW UMPP at Deoghar also hangs in the balance due to land problems.

Jharkhand is facing acute power crisis this year.

--IANS

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday expressed grief over the deaths caused by a fire at Central Ammunition Depot in Wardha in Maharashtra.

Modi said he was "pained by loss of lives" and asked Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar to visit the spot.

"My thoughts are with the bereaved families. I pray that those who are injured recover quickly," Modi tweeted.

"Have asked Manohar Parrikar to take stock of the situation," he said.

At least 15 people were killed and another 19 injured in a major fire followed by a blast in the depot early on Tuesday.

--IANS

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North Korea on Tuesday fired what was believed to be a Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missile but appeared to have failed, a media report said.

"The DPRK (North Korea) launched a projectile, estimated to have been a Musudan missile, from the Wonsan area. But the launch appeared to have failed," South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff was quoted by Yonhap news agency as saying, Xinhua reported.

Late on Monday, South Korea's military confirmed that it was tracking signs of possible ballistic missile launch by North Korea.

--IANS

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A Pakistani man was arrested on Tuesday in the city L'Hospitalet de Llobregat near Barcelona for spreading jihadist propaganda, the Spanish Ministry of Interior said on Tuesday.

"The jihadist spread Daesh (Islamic State) dogma and hatred against westernised Muslim women through social media," Xinhua cited the ministry as saying in a statement.

The man had different accounts on social media which he had used to spread ideas and strategies of different jihadist groups operating in Syria and Iraq, especially Daesh.

Spain is threatened by jihadism, a phenomenon that has increased last year, according to a report by Spain's National Security Council, which was passed at a cabinet meeting on May 27.

--IANS

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Unit one of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu crossed its installed capacity and generated 1,006 MW of power on Monday, the Russian partners in the project said here.

Director for Projects in India for Russian atomic power corporation Rosatom, Vladimir A. Angelov said that the Russian side hopes that India will decide on increasing the power generation of the Kudankulam plant beyond its installed capacity in near future.

Angelov said that the next six nuclear power units that Russia is set to build in India will be of an installed capacity of 1,200 MW each.

Kudankulam's Unit one, which started commercial power generation on December 31, 2014, has an installed capacity of 995 MW, said Angelov, adding that on Monday it produced 11 Megawatts more power than its capacity.

"Yesterday the power plant generated 1,006 MW. The designed capacity is 995 MW. Actually it generated more than its installed capacity with all the same safety parameters," Angelov said told IANS here on the sidelines of Atomexpo 2016.

The unit can go upto generating 1,020 MW of power, he added.

"The existing parameters of the reactor plant make it possible to generate 1,020 MW. The director of the NPP (nuclear power plant) and the management of NPCIL (Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited) know that and we hope in near future they will take decision to increase power of the NPP unit," he said.

"It is very important that we can generate 25 MW more for the Indian people."

Talking about the agreement between Russia and India for building 12 more nuclear reactors, Angelov said the next six will have installed capacity of 1,200 MW each.

"The next six power units are going to be with 1,200 MW capacity each. We are waiting for India to identify the location for construction of the next six units," he added.

As per the bilateral Strategic Vision for Strengthening Cooperation in Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, India and Russia have plans to build and commission 12 nuclear power units in the next two decades.

(Anjali Ojha can be reached at anjali.o@ians.in)

--IANS

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An enquiry has been ordered into the massive fire that engulfed one of the Indian Army's largest ammunition depots in Maharashtra's Pulgaon early on Tuesday and left 16 dead including two officers, a top army official said.

"The cause of the fire is not yet known. Actions to assess the damage are in progress. The army has ordered an enquiry to investigate the incident," said Director General, Military Operations, Lt. Gen Ranbir Singh.

He put toll at 16 - three soldiers and 13 fire brigade staff, he said.

"The fire has been completely doused and situation brought under control. However, in our efforts to douse the fire, two officers and 14 personnel (one army jawan and 13 civilian fire fighting staff) lost their lives and two officers and 15 personnel (nine army jawans and six civilian fire fighting staff) were injured," Singh said.

"As per last reports, all the injured are stable," he added.

All the injured have been admitted to a super speciality hospital at Wardha and a team of especialised doctors from Pune has also rushed there, said the DGMO.

Singh said that the fire started in one of the sheds at approximately 1 a.m. and immediate action was taken by the fire fighting parties and Quick Reaction Teams at the depot to putting the fire fighting mechanism into place as per the laid down procedures.

This restricted the fire to one shed only which contained highly sensitive ammunition.

Spread over an area of more than 7,000 acres, Pulgaon is an important ammunition depot of the Indian Army, storing a variety of ammunition.

--IANS

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Saudi Arabia will allow non-Muslims to enter four mosques in Jeddah, local media reported on Monday.

The main purpose of the move is to allow non-Muslims to get acquainted with the Islamic civilization, Xinhua news agency quoted a media report as saying.

Saudi Arabia banned non-Muslims from entering Mecca city, which is a sacred land for Muslims around the world.

Although many Islamic countries have been allowing non-Muslims to visit mosques as tourist attractions for years, mosques in the Kingdom until now were off-limit to them.

--IANS

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Scientist and engineer, Satish Kumar Sharma took over as the new Chairman and Managing Director of Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd here on Tuesday.

He took over from K.C. Purohit, who headed the nuclear power plant operator since June 2012, in the presence of Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Sekhar Basu who is also Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy, other directors and employees of NPCIL.

Addressing the gathering, Sharma assured that safety in all aspects of nuclear power plants in India would remain his "highest priority". He solicited the coopeation of all in the company to effectively achieve the challenges in implementing Indian nuclear power programme safely and reliably, and take the organization to newer heights in the coming years.

A Distinguished Scientist of DAE, Sharma completed his engineering from Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, Bhopal in 1980 and later graduated from the BARC Training School in 1981.

He started his career at the Rajasthan Atomic Power Station 1 & 2, a harbinger of Indian Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR) Technology where he contributed immensely in different functional areas.

Later, Sharma served in several key positions in the Indian nuclear power stations, including as site director of Rawatbhata in Rajasthan before becoming Director (Operations) in 2015..

He also worked for improving the safety and reliability of nuclear power stations across the world in association with an international team of nuclear experts in World Association of Nuclear Operators, Tokyo Centre.

--IANS

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Sai Dharam Tej's latest Telugu release "Supreme" has become the first film in the actor's career to join the Rs.20 crore club.

"It's the third hit in a row for Sai Dharam Tej. Having recently completed its fourth week in cinemas, the film has raked in a share of over Rs.20 crore. It's the first film in Sai's career to have achieved this feat," trade analyst Trinath told IANS.

Directed by Anil Ravipudi, the film stars Raashi Khanna and Ravi Kishan.

"The masses lapped up the film. The climax action sequence featuring the differently abled struck a chord with everybody," Trinath said.

Producers from Tamil filmdom are reportedly in talks with producer Dil Raju to acquire the remake rights.

--IANS

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The Supreme Court on Tuesday slammed the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) for not adhering to the schedule of granting recognition to institutions and not intimating this to the APJ Abdul Kalam Technical University (APJAKTU) in Uttar Pradesh, thereby endangering prospects of the students.

"We can be exemplarily ruthless in dealing with any flouting of our order," an apex court bench of Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Justice Amitava Roy said during the hearing, indicating that it may issue 'contempt of court' notice on the concerned officers.

"You (AICTE) don't know how ruthless we can be if we realise you are hurting the future of the students of 608 institutions," Justice Roy said taking exception to leaving just eight days for the university to decide on the application by the institutions seeking its affiliation.

The bench said there was serious laxity in following the time frame, pointing out that the acted in the matter casually and didn't adhere to the calendar fixed by the court in December 2012.

The bench asked the to file an affidavit explaining the delay in intimating the APJAKTU about the recognition granted by it to 612 institutions. Of these, 608 are old and four are new.

Based on the reply by AICTE, which is the regulator of technical education in the country, the court would decide cost and damages to be imposed on it, the court said. The court gave AICTE one week's time to file the affidavit.

The apex court by its December 13, 2012 order had set a schedule for grant of recognition to institutions which AICTE failed to adhered to.

The court had then said, "Both grant/refusal of approval and admission schedule shall be strictly adhered to by all the authorities concerned including the AICTE, university, state government and any other authority directly or indirectly connected with the grant of approval and admission, and no person or authority shall have the power or jurisdiction to vary the schedule."

In the instant case, the bench extended the time till June 10 for the university to decide on the applications seeking affiliation. However, the court said that it was a one-time exception, considering the peculiarity of the case and should not be a treated as a precedent.

Appearing for the APJAKTU, Amitesh Kumar told the court that AICTE intimated the university about the recognition granted by it to 612 institutions on May 7 at 7.00 p.m., which is 25 days late than the original date of April 11.

He told the court that May 7 was a Saturday, thereby pointing out any follow-up action by the university for the processing of applications for the grant of affiliation to these institutions commenced only on May 9.

Seeking an extension of time for the processing of the applications for the grant of affiliation, Amitesh Kumar told the court that rest of the admission process would be strictly in accordance with the schedule fixed by the apex court by its judgement of December 13, 2012.
Kerala Police chief T.P. Sen Kumar, who was shunted out by the new Left Front government led by Chief mInister Pinarayi Vijayan in a high-level shake-up in the police force, on Tuesday publicly expressed his resentment over the move.

Speaking to reporters at the state police headquarters soon after the ceremonial send-off guard of honour, Sen Kumar said: "If they did not want me, I could have been informed."

Chief Minister Vijayan signed the order replacing Sen Kumar with Loknath Behra, at present in charge of the state Fire Force, late Monday night soon after he touched down from Delhi.

"My transfer is in violation of the Kerala Police Act. I know that the government can post any officer, but in any case, I am Sen Kumar and Sen Kumar cannot become Loknath Behra; and the new government wants Behra and not me," said a bitter Kumar.

In a Facebook post on Tuesday morning, Sen Kumar said, "During the last 35 years I have always kept honesty, integrity and justice and a special care for the downtrodden. I still have all my vertebras intact. I have never appeased anybody for any posting. I have always tried to be impartial and fair."

Sen Kumar was appointed by former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and had almost a year left of his tenure when he was removed from the post of the Director General of Police, Law and Order. He has been given the new post of Chairman and Managing Director of the Kerala Police Construction Corporation.

Meanwhile, Behra told reporters that he is happy with the new post and has got a few ideas to strengthen the police force.

Joining issue was Leader of Opposition and former state Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala who said that Sen Kumar was an exemplary official and that the Congress-led United Democratic Front when in power did not remove the top police officials who had been appointed by the V.S. Achuthanandan government.

--IANS

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Six militants were on Tuesday awarded death sentence by a Dhaka court for organising a bank robbery last year in which eight people were killed.

The court found nine militants, affiliated with the banned outfits Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and Ansarullah Bangla Team, guilty of murder and robbery aimed at raising funds for their operations, Xinhua news agency reported.

The court ordered the death penalty for six, life in prison for one and three-year jail terms for two others, it said.

At least 10 members of the outfits on April 21 last year robbed a branch of the state-run Bangladesh Commerce Bank in Ashulia.

They killed the manager of the bank to get the key to the vault before an alarm was raised over the loudspeaker from a nearby mosque.

The gang detonated a bomb as they fled, chased by customers and onlookers.

An angry mob later beat to death one of the robbers while they were fleeing.

On December 1 last year, Ashulia police submitted two chargesheets -- one for the killings and robbery, and the other for possessing explosives.

--IANS

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Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday backed her son-in-law Robert Vadra over the allegation that he owns a 'benami' property in London, saying the charge is a political conspiracy.

She also dared the government to investigate the allegation 'unbiasedly'.

Senior BJP leader Kirit Somaiya on Monday sought detailed inquiry by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) into alleged involvement of Robert Vadra in the 2009 purchase of a 'benami' or proxy-owned mansion in London.

Reacting to the allegations, Sonia Gandhi said: "This is also a political conspiracy. What do you mean by Congress-mukt Bharat? Everyday they give excuses and level wrong allegations."

"If this is true, then they should conduct an unbiased probe. Everything will become clear," said an angry Sonia Gandhi, who was on a two-day visit to Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh.

On the completion of two years of National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Gandhi said: "I have never seen anything like this, Modi ji is the PM, and not a Shehenshah (King)."

"Our nation is facing drought, poverty, farmers are in pain. At these times, such a "show" is not appropriate," said Gandhi, criticising Modi for organising a gala event on completion of NDA government's two years.

--IANS

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Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday strongly backed her son-in-law Robert Vadra against allegations that he owns a house in London, funded by an arms dealer, and dared the government to probe the matter "unbiasedly".

Accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of behaving like a "Shehenshah", the Congress chief also hit out at the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government for its bash held to celebrate its two years in power.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) hit back at Sonia Gandhi, saying that Vadra "has the blessings of 10 Janpath" which was the reason behind his wealth.

Sonia Gandhi, who was visiting her Lok Sabha constituency Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh, lashed out at the allegations against her son-in-law: "This is also a political conspiracy. What do you mean by 'Congress-mukt Bharat'? Everyday they give excuses and level wrong allegations."

"If this (allegation) is true, then they should conduct an unbiased probe. Everything will become clear," said an angry Sonia Gandhi.

Senior BJP leader Kirit Somaiya on Monday sought a detailed inquiry by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) into the alleged involvement of Vadra in the 2009 purchase of a 'benami' or proxy-owned mansion in London.

The Congress chief, training her guns on Prime Minister Modi, said he was prime minister and not an emperor.

"Woh pradhanmantri hain, koi shehenshaah nahin ki janta unki saari baatein maane," she said.

"I have never seen anything like this, Modi ji is the PM, and not a Shehenshah (King). Our nation is facing drought, poverty, farmers are in pain. At these times, such a 'show' is not appropriate," she said of the gala event held in New Delhi on Saturday night by the government.

The BJP said the Congress president's defence of her son-in-law vindicates the party's old charge that whatever Vadra does has the backing of the Gandhi family.

"Vadra has the blessings of 10 Janpath...That is why he has earned so much money. He can't be dubbed as a private citizen. Whatever he has done has the backing of Sonia Gandhi and Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi," BJP National Secretary Srikant Sharma told IANS.

"You can't separate Vadra from the Gandhi family. Sonia Gandhi coming out in support of Vadra has established our charges," he added.

The BJP's national media convenor said that the Congress president has been trying to "threaten" the BJP whenever there is a corruption charge against them.

"Congress has looted the nation and now they are coming out. Whenever there are corruption charges against the Congress and its family, they try to threaten us. We are not scared," he said.

On Sonia Gandhi's jibe at Prime Minister Modi that "he is the PM, and not a Shehenshah (emperor)", Sharma said, "Modi ji is a 'jan sewak'. Those who were Shehenshah are nowhere today. They were sent packing by voters in 2014."

"Those emperors are now on bail in the National Herald case involving corruption of over Rs 5,000 crore. They are in panic and in frustration," Sharma said obliquely referring to the Gandhi family.

Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh too launched a counter-attack on the Congress chief for her "Shehenshah" remark, saying there was "no place for any maharani too in a democracy".

Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma accused the NDA government of failure to take action against those allegedly involved in corruption.

"What action have they taken against the son of Chhattisgarh Chief Minister? What about the cases against the Rajasthan Chief Minister? What has happened to the inquiry on Lalit Modi? Why haven't they dismissed Eknath Khadse, their minister in Maharashtra who is facing allegations of land grabbing," said Sharma at a press conference here.

"They have levelled enough allegations. We pose an open challenge to this government to release the list of names of Congress leaders who, they say, are accused of corruption. Are they facing any case in the country," asked Sharma who is also Deputy Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha.

"They must tell the source of the thousands of crore that they have used to contest in elections," said Sharma.

Sharma also accused the government of nurturing an environment in the country that has benefited "lumpen elements".

--IANS

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The BJP on Tuesday said that Congress President Sonia Gandhi's defence of her son-in-law over allegations that he owns 'benami' property in London vindicates the party's old charge that whatever Vadra does has the backing of the Gandhi family.

"Vadra has the blessings of 10 Janpath. That is why he has earned so much money. He can't be dubbed as a private citizen. Whatever he has done has the backing of Sonia Gandhi and Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi," BJP Secretary Srikant Sharma told IANS.

"You can't separate Vadra from the Gandhi family. Sonia Gandhi coming out in support of Vadra has established our charges," he added.

Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Kirit Somaiya on Monday sought a detailed inquiry by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) into the alleged involvement of Vadra in the 2009 purchase of a 'benami' or proxy-owned mansion in London.

Reacting to the allegations, Sonia Gandhi said in Rae Bareli on Tuesday, "This is also a political conspiracy. What do you mean by Congress-mukt Bharat? Everyday they give excuses and level wrong allegations."

"If this is true, then they should conduct an unbiased probe. Everything will become clear," said an angry Sonia Gandhi, who was on a two-day visit to Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh, her Lok Sabha constieuency.

Continuing his attack on Sonia Gandhi, the BJP's media convenor said that the Congress president has been trying to "threaten" the BJP whenever there is a corruption charge against them.

"Congress has looted the nation and now they are coming out. Whenever there are corruption charges against the Congress and its family, they try to threaten us. We are not scared," he said.

Over Sonia Gandhi's jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi that "he is the PM, and not a Shehenshah (emperor)", Sharma said, "Modi ji is a 'jan sewak'. Those who were Shehenshah are nowhere today. They are in panic and in frustration."
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday met with a delegation of African students here and assured them of full security and support in India.

Sushma Swaraj, who met the African delegation at the Jawahar Bhawan here, also condemned the killing of a Congolese national M.K. Olivier on May 20 in New Delhi, but said it was not a racial attack.

She said the killing of Olivier, 29, over a minor altercation, was "not only unfortunate but painful".

"I met a delegation of African students and leaders and tried to explain that the incident is huge but not a case of racial discrimination," she said later.

"On the day the incident took place, I sought a report from the Lt Governor and I was informed that two people have been arrested," she said.

Sushma Swaraj, who has been personally monitoring the outreach to the African community, was flanked by Minister of State for External Affairs V.K. Singh and Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar during the meeting.

The killing of the Congolese national and a slew of other attacks on Africans staying in New Delhi, and a case in Hyderabad, has caused widespread anger among the community. A group of African students held a protest at Jantar Mantar on Monday.

African envoys had last week threatened to boycott the Africa Day event over the killing of the Congolese national, but agreed to attend the May 26 event after the government intervened to assuage their concerns.

--IANS

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The mortal remains of Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, who was killed in a US drone strike, were handed over to his kin in Afghanistan after a DNA test confirmed his identity, it was announced here on Tuesday.

Pakistan's Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said the body of Akhtar Mansoor was "handed over to his heirs in Afghanistan after fulfilling all legal requirements".

Earlier on Sunday, a spokesman of the Interior Ministry had said that it had been confirmed through DNA test that the second person killed in the US drone attack in Balochistan was Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Mansoor.

"It is confirmed that Mullah Mansoor was killed in the US drone strike in Noshki area of Balochistan," the interior ministry's spokesperson said.

"DNA of Mansoor matched with one of his relative who came to receive his body from Afghanistan."

The interior minister said: "The government has arrested the suspects who facilitated Mullah Mansoor in acquiring a Pakistani NIC. These include an assistant commissioner, a Risaldar-Major and several FIA and Nadra officials".

Nisar further said that a Federal Investigation Authority official assisted Mullah Mansoor's wife in acquiring the NIC.

Advisor to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz also confirmed the death of Afghan Taliban chief in Balochistan.

The drone strike was also the first in the restive province of Balochistan, considered a red-line by the Pakistani government. Authorisation for the strike came directly from US President Barack Obama.

--IANS

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Warner/Chappell Music (WCM), the global music publishing arm of Warner Music Group, and Times Music, a music label and publisher in India, have expanded their existing licensing deal to now cover several additional South Asian countries.

The deal will see Times Music exclusively represent Warner/Chappell's rich catalogue in Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka for the first time, as well as renew their existing partnership in India.

Times Music will manage the rights to Warner/Chappell's repertoire in South Asia and drive publishing and sync deals on behalf of its wide array of songwriters.

"Warner/Chappell songwriters' music knows no boundaries, and Times Music has been a fantastic partner in helping us extend their reach," Stephen Clark, Senior Vice President, Global Administration, Warner/Chappell Music, said in a statement.

"The expansion of our partnership allows us to tap into new and vibrant markets with enormous growth potential, and we look forward to further exploring South Asia with the continued help of Times Music."

Mandar Thakur, Chief Operating Officer of Times Music, shared that they are "pleased to be able to build on our success of representing Warner/Chappell's amazing songwriters in India, by expanding our work to other markets in the region".

Works by songwriters that will be looked after by Times Music include: Barry Gibb, Beyonce Knowles, Bruno Mars, Eric Clapton, Green Day, Jay Z, Kendrick Lamar, Led Zeppelin, Madonna, Muse, Red Hot Chilli Peppers and more.

--IANS

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Look at it from outside the UK, and corporate broking must seem fairly dull. Unlike global investment banking, where rivals jockey for position in ever-changing league tables, the peculiarly British business of providing free long-term advice to companies changes at a glacial pace. It has taken 10 years for J P Morgan Cazenove to lose its position as top broker to the FTSE 100, according to financial publisher Adviser Rankings. And J P Morgan is still only two mandates away from regaining its crown.

Observers of the broking business - where companies typically take on two investment banks to counsel them on the state of markets and investors - will have noticed recent upheaval. Barclays' ascent is the most notable. The UK bank has risen from an also-ran in 2010 to fifth in the most recent league table for blue-chip clients, with 20 mandates. UBS has lost sway, meanwhile. Comfortably ahead of those two banks and Morgan Stanley sits J P Morgan Caz, now narrowly behind new top dog Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

This jostling aside, little has changed. J P Morgan still has by far the largest number of FTSE 250 clients, whose combined market cap is still more than double that of Bank of America's - the same gap as in 2011. In the last six months, J P Morgan's blue-chip ranking was hurt by the changing corporate landscape. It lost one FTSE 100 mandate as BG was acquired by Shell, and two more as Aberdeen Asset Management and Smiths Group's dwindling market caps saw them dumped out of the index.

J P Morgan Caz thus remains the iceberg of UK corporate broking, even if it is melting a little around the edges. The financial crisis may have prompted some soul-searching in blue-chip boardrooms that allowed Barclays to make inroads. But the little-changing nature of broking remains as resolutely British as awful summer weather.
The future role of the United States in the world economy has been a recurring theme in the 2016 American presidential election. Republican candidate Donald Trump has called for a 45 per cent tariff on US imports from China. All of the leading presidential candidates from both parties have criticised the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a recently negotiated US trade deal with 11 Pacific Rim nations. And US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew recently warned in Foreign Affairs about a return to the "historical ambivalence of the United States towards global engagement".
In the article, "Need for better public sector oversight" (May 31), the author, Laveesh Bhandari, is right in saying that public sector undertakings (PSU) should be commercially orientated, but his suggestion to ensure this by appointing a board of independent professionals as regulator may not be apt.

The failure of PSUs arises from the lack of accountability of their board of directors. Of the 235 PSUs operational at present, about 25 per cent suffered a loss of Rs 27,360 crore in 2014-15. But no heads rolled. The unpleasant truth is that most PSU board members are political appointees and are protected by their sponsors as long as they fulfil the latter's demands. This makes such board members complacent towards their financial responsibility.

Besides, PSUs are the biggest employers in the organised sector, employing 66 per cent (about 18 million) of the workforce. This has given rise to well-entrenched trade unions, which hamper manpower shredding or the use of technology to improve productivity. When the dominant union is affiliated to the political party in power, political interference becomes an obstacle to the functioning of an organisation. This interference extends to altering wise financial decisions. Unless these inherent ills are eradicated, no amount of external oversight is likely to succeed.

Y G Chouksey, Pune



Letters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar MargNew Delhi 110 002Fax: (011) 23720201E-mail: letters@bsmail.in
The railways have little to show for themselves at the end of two years of National Democratic Alliance rule. The indication by the current railway minister, Suresh Prabhu, that some key reforms may take six or seven more months to come means that half the life of the present government will be over by the time an appropriate enabling environment for a turnaround is put in place. If any new setup needs a bit of time to produce results, then it will be time to again go to the people for a fresh mandate before there is much to show for five years' effort.
Nearly 21 per cent (nine of 42) of those in the new West Bengal ministry have criminal cases against them.

The average worth of assets of the 42 ministers was Rs 3.36 crore, said a study conducted by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), a poll watch body, and the West Bengal Election Watch, also a group of civil society activists.

The report is based on an analysis of the self-sworn affidavits of the ministers, including the chief minister. Of the nine ministers with declared criminal cases, seven fall under the category of serious cases, including attempt to murder, kidnapping and communal disharmony, the report said.

The Trinamool Congress was voted back to power for a second term in the recent Assembly elections by winning 211 of the 294 seats. In the 2011 elections, TMC had won 184 seats. This ADR report said nearly 57 per cent of the ministers (24 of 42) have assets equal to or more than a crore. The minister with the highest declared assets was Jakir Hossain from Jangipur constituency, with assets worth Rs 28.04 crore, the report said. Hossain is minister of state for labour.

A total of 15 ministers have declared liabilities, out of which the minister with the highest liabilities was Javed Ahmed Khan from Kasba constituency with Rs 30.19 crore, the report said. About 79 per cent (33 of 42) of the ministers were graduates or have higher degrees while 21 (nine of 42), ministers have education qualification of Class XII pass or below.
The fight for Rajya Sabha seats from Haryana got interesting with media baron Subhash Chandra filing nomination as an independent candidate for the second seat falling vacant from the state.

The Congress party has not fielded any candidate for the seat but former party MP and senior lawyer R K Anand also filed his nomination as an independent candidate. It was the final day for filing of nominations to the biennial elections. Polls to 57 seats becoming vacant across 15 states will be held on June 11.

Chandra claimed the support of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislators and said he had others across party lines. On Monday, state chief minister Manohar Lal had expressed hope that the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) and BJP could reach a consensus to elect candidates on both seats unopposed. However, the Om Prakash Chautala-led INLD, main opposition party in the Haryana assembly, announced support for Anand. The 72-year-old Supreme Court lawyer had unsuccessfully contested the 2014 Lok Sabha elections on an INLD ticket from Faridabad.

The BJP has already re-nominated Union rural development minister Birender Singh from one of the two seats becoming vacant. Given its strength in the assembly, the BJP will have extra votes, which could go in favour of Chandra. BJP sources in Delhi said party MLAs would vote for Chandra.

Chandra had been an aspirant for a Lok Sabha seat in the 2014 elections and had organised BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi campaign in Hisar in the run-up to the polls. He had also expressed interest in contesting the Haryana assembly polls of 2014. Earlier this year, Prime Minister Modi had formally released Chandras autobiography at an event held in the PMs residence.

Chandra is currently group chairman of the Zee TV group. In his autobiography The Z factor: My journey as the wrong man at the right time, Chandra has written about his association with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, ideological parent of the BJP, in his younger days.

Anand was accompanied by opposition head in the Haryana assembly, Abhay Chautala (INLD), with other party MLAs, for filing his nomination. Chandra went with some BJP and independent MLAs for filing his papers.

Apart from a contest in Haryana that would warrant voting with three candidates for the two seats falling vacant, voting would also be necessitated in Uttar Pradesh, with social worker Preeti Mahapatra filing her nomination. This brought the number of candidates to 12 for 11 seats falling vacant.

Voting will also be required in two seats in Jharkhand, with three candidates in the fray.

In Rajasthan, former Union minister and businessman Kamal Morarka filed a nomination as an independent candidate, supported by the opposition Congress and independent MLAs. There are now five candidates for the four vacancies, all of which BJP candidates are expected to win.

In other states with Rajya Sabha seats falling vacant, candidates are set to be elected unopposed. These include Bihar, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday slammed the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) government and spoke out for the first time in defence of her son-in-law Robert Vadra over allegations that he had a bought a benami property in London.

A transaction is considered benami (nameless or without a name) when the amount for a property that is transferred to a person or is held by him or her is paid by another person.

A combative Gandhi said, "This is a conspiracy for a Congress-free country. What is the meaning of a Congress-free India. Everyday they make new excuses. They level false charges. If there is something, there should be an impartial probe. Everything will become clear."



Gandhi, who was speaking to reporters in her constituency Raebareli, was questioned on an income-tax probe into transactions of an arms dealer and his links with Vadra. The latters firm has denied all allegations.

Sonia Gandhi did not mince her words and went onto describe prime minister Narendra Modi as shahenshah (emperor). "I have never seen anything like this. A prime minister is there, not an emperor. He is the country's prime minister. Farmers are in trouble. I do not find it appropriate (that government) shows off like this," she said.

Lashing out at the government, Gandhi said,  Modi's ministers have given him "this stature" and are busy in holding celebrations", Gandhi said deriding the Modi sarkaar's two years in office gala.

The last Parliament session, saw the BJP going all guns blazing against the Gandhi leadership on the Agusta Westland deal.

In the meanwhile, Congress Shehzad Poonawalla alleged links between BJP leader Siddharth Nath Singh and arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari. Poonawalla has written to CBI and Enforcement Directorate demanding a probe into the alleged links between the two.

Launching a full frontal attack, Congress spokesperson and senior leader Anand Sharma accused the BJP led governments dirty tricks department of being at work. Rejecting the BJP leaders defence as having social relations, Sharma went onto allege that the PMO was involved in maligning the Congress leadership.

Strongly refuting the Congress attack, BJPs Shrikant Sharma said, "the Congress chief's comments have exposed the farce that Vadra is merely a private person. It has established that he is the Gandhi family and Gandhi family is him."



Siddharth Nath Singh has refuted the connections being alleged between him and Bhandari alleging, "I didn't know that he is an arms dealer. My children and his children went to the same school. Till the raids (at Bhandari's place) I did not know about him (as an arms dealer). I came to know about it from the media and since then there has been no calls. Neither he called nor did I call him up.
City police have arrested 13 inter state thieves wanted in about 30 cases across the city, and seized valuables worth Rs 80 lakhs from them.

The valuables seized included 2kg 110 gram gold ornaments, 4kg silver ornaments, one car, 4 two wheelers and electronic equipment.

The arrests were made separately by Peenya,Rajajinagar and R T Nagar Police Stations that come under Northern Division of Bengaluru Police, a police release said.

Among those arrested was one Mohammed Khalilullah also known as Bombay Saleem, who has 32 cases against him.

He had also been to jail in the past for his involvement in cases relating to murder, theft, robbery in Bengaluru, Mumbai and Hyderabad, police said.
A key accused in the Rs 2,000-crore drug haul here has been arrested by Thane police from Uttar Pradesh near Nepal border, police said today.

Jay Mukhi, who was evading arrest since the ephedrine drug racket was busted in April this year, was spotted in Gorakhpur city of Uttar Pradesh following which a team of Thane police arrested him yesterday, Thane Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Parag Manere said.

Acting on a tip-off that Mukhi was hiding at a place in Gorakhpur near the Nepal border, the Thane police closely co-ordinated with their counterparts in Uttar Pradesh and arrested him, Manere said.

The police were just in time and nabbed him at about 10.20 AM yesterday when he was preparing to board a train from Gorakhpur to go to Nepal, he added.

The police team is at present interrogating Mukhi and he would be brought to Thane after which more details in the case would be known, the DCP said.

Thane police had unearthed the haul of around 18.5 tonne of ephedrine, worth approximately Rs 2,000 crore, by raiding the premises of Avon Lifesciences Limited in Maharashtra's Solapur district in April this year.

The lid on the drug syndicate was blown after police arrested a Nigerian drug peddler from Kalyan and recovered around 500 grams of ephedrine from him on April 10.

During probe in the case, the police came across the role of Mukhi and were on the look out for him.

Nine persons were earlier arrested in connection with the case, including a director and an operations manager of Solapur factory of Avon Lifesciences Limited, a senior police official said.

Considering the alleged involvement of international drug-baron Vicky Goswami, police were earlier also looking into the role of a former Bollywood actress who was reportedly in a relationship with him.

However, as yet no proof of her involvement had come to light, a police officer had earlier said.
Twenty one students and a teacher of a private school of Chatter village in this district were injured today when the roof of a classroom collapsed, police said.

All the injured students are from Class X.

Although the school was closed for summer vacation, the students had come to the institution to prepare for Yoga Day celebrations on June 21.

Eyewitnesses said the roof collapsed because a portion of the school building was in a dilapidated condition.

All the injured were admitted to a private hospital here, police said, adding 12 students who received minor wounds were discharged after treatment.

Jind Deputy Commissioner met the injured students in the hospital and ordered an inquiry into the incident.
An eight-year-old girl, who was sleeping outside her hut, was allegedly abducted and raped by a youth in outer Delhi's Kirari area, police said today.

The incident took place in the wee hours of Saturday when the accused, who is suspected to be a minor, allegedly gagged the girl, took her to a secluded spot near her house, and raped her.

The girl was sleeping on a cot outside her house at an unauthorised colony in Kirari area when the accused spotted her.

After the sexual assault, the accused fled the spot leaving behind the girl, who returned home on her own early morning and went off to sleep on the same cot.

It was her mother who raised an alarm after she saw blood stains on the bed sheet and rushed the girl to a hospital. The hospital authorities, in turn, called up police. After doctors confirmed sexual assault, the girl was sent for counselling.

During counselling, the girl broke down and narrated her ordeal. A case under IPC sections 363 (abduction) and 376 (rape) and relevant sections of POCSO Act has been registered at Aman Vihar police station, a senior police officer said.

CCTV footage from the locality were scanned and, in one clip, the suspected accused could be seen with the girl. He was identified and a hunt launched to nab him.

"He was arrested today and his age is being verified," DCP (Outer) Vikramjit Singh said.

The accused is a stranger to the family and lives in another lane in the same locality, police said.
A group of African students in the capital on Tuesday called off a demonstration to protest the spate of assaults against the community after the government assured them of better security.

The students said they had a meeting with officials of the Ministry of External Affairs where they were assured of security and safety. The government officials also requested them not to go ahead with their planned protest at Jantar Mantar.

"There was a high-level meeting with the Permanent Secretary of Ministry of External Affairs on Monday. He listened to our grievances and has made commitments to ensure our safety in India. Leaders of 15 African countries were also present during the meeting," the Association of African Students in India said in a statement.

It further said, "There was also a meeting with Delhi Police Commissioner and other senior officials where contact details of high level officials were shared with us and they promised us of better policing with respect to Africans".

"There was also a meeting with the African Ambassador body in which they advised us to take the path of diplomacy and hold the Indian government to their words....And also fast track justice for past cases. The parents of Congolese youth M K Olivier have also requested us to not take part in the protest," it said.

Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar had on Monday met a group of African students who raised their concerns over host of issues including better security in the wake of the killing of Congolese and cases of assaults against the community.

There has been a series of attacks on African nationals in the last few days including killing of the Congolese youth and assault on a 23-year-old Nigerian student in Hyderabad. Five persons have so far been arrested in connection with the attacks.
Taking on UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav over his dig at its president Amit Shah after he had lunch at a Dalit household today, BJP questioned as to why he is so "rattled" over it and wondered if it was due to the prospect of an impending "loss" in the next year's assembly polls.

In a statement issued here by its state chief Keshav Prasad Maurya, BJP said Shah had lunch with party worker Girja Prasad Bind and its leaders followed the tradition of staying and having meal at workers' house during travel.

"It has been our tradition and should be seen like this. Giving it a political colour is not logical at all," he said.

In a much-publicised event, Shah and other party leaders had a meal with Bind, a Dalit party activist, in Jogiyapur village in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency.

It is being seen as part of the saffron party's drive to win over Dalits, who have for the last several years now supported the Mayawati-led BSP and will play an important role in the 2017 assembly election.

Attacking BJP, Yadav said it was doing so with an eye on the UP polls and that the Samajwadi Party does not look at people through the prism of caste.

Hitting back, Maurya said, "Why is he so rattled over our president's meal at a worker's house? Dividing people on religious and caste lines has been the Samajwadi Party's culture. Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav is making such remarks as he has realised that he is losing power in 2017 and is rattled over it.
BJP chief Amit Shah today had a meal with a Dalit family in Jogiyapur village in Sevapuri Assembly segment in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency.

Shah, who was on his way to Allahabad to address a farmers' rally, took a brief halt at Jogiyapur village and had lunch with the family of Girjaprasad Bind and Ikbal Bind, who belong to the Dalit community, Sanjay Bharadwaj, BJP media-in-charge said.

The BJP chief sat on the ground with the family members and shared the meal with them, he said.

Shah was given a warm welcome on his arrival in the city by party workers.

Meanwhile, UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav hit out at the BJP leader, stating that the latter had lunch with the Dalit family with an eye on the UP Assembly polls.
Vice President Hamid Ansari today visited the historic Mausoleum of Mohammed V who was Sultan of Morocco from 1927-53.

The Mausoleum of Mohammed V is a historical building located on the opposite side of the Hassan Tower on the Yacoub al-Mansour esplanade here in the Moroccan capital.

The Mausoleum has the tombs of the Moroccan king and his two sons, late King Hassan II and Prince Abdallah.

The building is considered a masterpiece of modern Alaouite dynasty architecture, with its white silhouette, topped by a typical green tiled roof.

Its construction was completed in 1971. Hassan II was buried there following his death in 1999.

Ansari also laid a wreath at the Mausoleum and signed in Golden Book.
President Mauricio Macri has said that he will repatriate USD 1.3 million in savings from the Bahamas and use the money to buy Argentine treasury bonds because he is confident the struggling economy will recover and thrive.

Macri yesterday said the money was deposited in Merrill Lynch accounts in Switzerland and the US, but it was transferred to the Bahamas after Swiss private bank Julius Baer Group bought the Merrill Lynch overseas wealth management unit from Bank of America.

Macri, who was Buenos Aires mayor, won the presidency last year on a promise to jumpstart Argentina's economy and root out endemic corruption.

He recently set up a blind trust to handle his financial holdings in response to criticism over his role in two offshore companies that emerged in the "Panama Papers" leak.

Macri, the son of one of Argentina's wealthiest people, said the companies were family businesses and he was a figurehead without compensation.

A federal prosecutor has requested authorisation to investigate whether Macri "maliciously" omitted his role in the offshore companies in his annual tax declarations. Macri said he is open to being investigated and has nothing to hide.
Telangana Director General of Police Anurag Sharma today refuted any racial angle behind the last week's incident in the city wherein a Nigerian student was assaulted by a local resident.

"It was a dispute which occurred at spur of the moment regarding parking of a vehicle...It is not a racial incident nor (any such) intention is involved in this," Sharma told reporters here.

"...Still we assure all the communities and all the students, who come from other countries to Hyderabad and Telangana, of their safety and security," the DGP said.

"In this particular case, the accused has been arrested. All the sections of the society will get equal protection from police force and we would ensure that," Hyderabad Police Commissioner M Mahendar Reddy said.

The DGP and Hyderabad Police Commissioner were responding to queries regarding assault on a 23-year-old Nigerian student, who received head injuries after a man in his neighbourhood hit him with a rod following a dispute over car parking in Banjara Hills area here on Wednesday last.

Reacting to a query on Maoist activities in the state, the Telangana Police Chief said, "Maoist activities have come down to a large extent in the state. However, the ultras come in from neighbouring states into Telangana and we are alert and search parties are patrolling the areas in Khammam, Karimnagar and Adilabad districts bordering neighbouring states."



"Anything that is democratic is welcome...But, persons who do not believe in democracy and democratic ways we also cannot tolerate that," he warned.

Reacting to another query, the DGP said, "We do not support anybody (in police force) who is corrupt and who misbehaves...Wherever such cases have come to our notice we have taken stringent action. We do not tolerate any corruption."



A delegation led by Sharma had recently visited the UK and the US to study the best practises being adopted by the police there.

"We conducted a study tour and focus was on technology usage by police," the DGP said adding that a report will be submitted to the government in this regard.
Congress today came down hard on the government over attacks on African nationals, saying such incidents have racial overtones, and demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi break his silence on the issue.

The party also demanded Union Minister V K Singh, who made controversial comments on the issue, be "reined in" and Goa Tourism Minister Dilip Parulekar be dismissed for pitching for a strict law to deport Nigerians.

Party's senior spokesman Anand Sharma told reporters that the government should have intervened after the first incident, given the fact that the attacks had "racial overtones and one cannot be in the denial mode". He alleged the government allowed the situation to deteriorate.

He said the attacks have rattled the international community and the Prime Minister should take immediate corrective measures or else it would have adverse consequences for Indians living in African countries.

Noting that President Pranab Mukherjee and Vice President Hamid Ansari have already expressed their anguish and outrage over the attacks, Sharma said the Prime Minister should now give a "pause to his self-propaganda" and comment on it.

The government should realise that India and Africa have a special relationship as the land of Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru strove for Afro-Asian solidarity when the people of Africa were struggling against colonialism and apartheid, the Congress leader said.
Half a century after they died, the bodies of 32 Australian soldiers and their dependents, many of whom were killed in the Vietnam War, were returned home from Malaysia today.

In a sombre ceremony, their flag-draped coffins were loaded onto Australian airforce planes by a military guard of honour as a bugle sounded the Last Post.

Australia sent more than 60,000 troops to fight in the Vietnam War and 521 were killed. Soldiers were buried in the nearest Commonwealth cemetery unless their families could pay for repatriation to Australia.

"As a soldier, I am proud that the remains can be brought closer to their loved ones," said Abdullah Sani Mohamed, the Army Museum Director, who oversees Terendak Military Cemetery in Malaysia, where the Australians were buried.

He said 21 of the deceased were Australian soldiers killed in Vietnam, three had been killed in the fight against communist insurgents in Malaysia, and eight others were family members.

In 1966, Australia changed the repatriation policy so that all fallen soldiers would be taken home.

Last year, the government offered to pay for the repatriation of any soldiers buried overseas prior to the policy change, with 33 families accepting the offer.

Another body will be repatriated from Kranji Cemetery in Singapore, the Australian government said in a statement.

The remains in Malaysia were driven from Terendak Military Cemetery to Subang Airbase, west of the capital Kuala Lumpur, in white vans early today.

The caskets, draped with the Australian flag, were carried onto two waiting Royal Australian Air Force C-17 Globemaster aircraft, as top brass and officials from both countries looked on.

Family members of the deceased, including Christopher Bowtell, whose grandfather Robert Walter Bowtell died in the Vietnam War, were at the event.

"He is finally coming home," Bowtell, who also serves in the Australian army, told AFP, adding that his family were "pretty excited -- it is going to be quite an experience".

The coffins will be flown to Richmond Royal Australian Air Force Base, where families of the servicemen and civilians will gather for a ceremony Thursday.
Unfavourable weather conditions may have been behind the sudden, mysterious retreat of the mighty Mongol army from Eastern Europe in 1242, just when it seemed poised to conquer Hungary.

The sudden retreat by the Mongols has puzzled experts for hundreds of years.

The Mongol army had conquered their way out of Asia and into Russia, winning every battle they had fought. After making their way into Eastern Europe during the early 1200s, the army abruptly turned back to Russia, never to return.

Some have suggested it was Mongol politics, while others have maintained that armies in the Eastern Europe were putting up much more of a fight than the Mongols had expected.

In a new study, the researchers suggest that the reason might be much more mundane - simple bad weather.

Ulf Buntgen from the Swiss Federal Research Institute and Nicola Di Cosmo from the Institute for Advanced Study in the US studied tree ring data from Hungary and historical records, which showed that the weather during the time of the Mongol invasion was not well suited for an army travelling on horseback.

According to them, horses used by the Mongols survived by eating the grasses that were plentiful in Asia and Russia - grasses that were healthy and strong due to several years of good weather.

However, tree ring data, and some evidence in historical writings suggest that the winter of 1242 caused widespread freezing, 'Phys.Org' reported.

During spring, when the Mongols arrived, the snow melted and flooded the part of Hungary that sits at low elevations.

Melting ice and snow would have puddled, preventing the grass for growing very well that spring, leaving little for the horses to eat.

The water also made the land muddy, making travel very difficult. As a result, Mongols simply decided against progressing further because it did not seem worth the trouble, researchers suggest.

The study was published in the journal Nature.
Rating agency Fitch today said that telecom giant Airtel to may not bid for premium 700 Mhz band spectrum in the upcoming auction due to its high price and limited availability of devices.

"We do not expect Bharti to bid in the upcoming auction of 700 MHz in India, given the high indicative price for this spectrum, limited device availability and the company's ownership of alternative spectrum (1800MHz/2300MHz) to roll out 4G services," Fitch Ratings said in a statement.

The government is preparing for next round of spectrum auction in July in which airwaves worth Rs 5.66 lakh crore will be put up for sale.

Telecom Commission has approved a record high base price of Rs 11,485 crore per Mhz for the 700 Mhz band. If all available radiowaves under this get sold at the Trai-suggested price, it alone will yield a whopping Rs 4 lakh crore.

Fitch Ratings has "affirmed Bharti Airtel's long term foreign currency issuer default rating and senior secured rating at BBB-", the agency said in a statement.

It also affirmed the same rating for Bharti Airtel International (Netherlands) BV's bonds. This entity manages Bharti Airtel's Africa operation.

The credit rating indicates ability of a company to pay back debt. While AAA ratings denotes highest credit quality, BBB is granted for good credit quality indicating that expectations of default risk are currently low.

Fitch said that it also does not expect Bharti to make



another large debt-funded acquisition given management's commitment to sell non-core assets to reduce debt.

The company has been in acquiring spree with most recent being broadband wireless spectrum of Aircel for Rs 3,500 crore.

Recently Bharti Airtel acquired spectrum of Videocon and Augere too.

Fitch, however, projected capital expenditure of Bharti Airtel to be around Rs 22,000-23,000 crore in current fiscal.

"Which includes its core capex of Rs 20,500 crore and around Rs 2500 crore for spectrum payments. The core capex includes investments to improve its 3G/4G networks to compete effectively against Jio and to reduce the frequency of call drops," Fitch said.

The rating agency said that during FY2016, Airtel received about Rs 10,500 crore from sale and lease back of towers in eight African countries.

"During financial year 2017, we expect Bharti to receive net proceeds from assets sales, including about Rs 4,500 crore from the sale of towers and African operations for Rs 5,800 crore. It will likely use these funds to pay for its spectrum acquisition from Videocon Ltd and Aircel Ltd for Rs 7,000 crore," Fitch said.
Opposition BJP today alleged "financial irregularities" in construction of International Convention Centre in the state capital and demanded a high- level inquiry into the multi-crore project.

BJP Parliamentary Board leader Sushil Kumar Modi said the project, conceived on the lines of Delhi's Vigyan Bhawan, was approved during the NDA government in Bihar, but the foundation stone of the centre with a seating capacity of 5,000 was laid by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on February 8, 2014.

Sushil Modi, who is also Leader of Opposition in Bihar Legislative Council, told reporters that DDF Consultant, which was entrusted with architectural and structural details of the project, had prepared a detailed project report (DPR) of the centre at the heart of the state capital.

"The consultant had presented a revised estimate of the project at Rs 490 crore. After it was queried by Building Construction Department (BCD) about revising estimate from the original one, the company could not give a satisfactory reply and when it was threatened that it would be debarred from bidding it gave a second revised estimate of the project at Rs 587.68 crore," he said.

BCD is at present with Tejaswi Yadav, who is Deputy Chief Minister of the state and son of RJD chief Lalu Prasad.

Following this, DDF Consultant was debarred from making bid in any project of Bihar on January 7, 2015, Sushil Modi, who was Deputy Chief Minister during the NDA rule, said.

But, merely after 20 days of taking oath of grand secular alliance government, the state government started calling work of the debarred company as satisfactory and on January 6, 2016 lifted the debar clause from it, he alleged.

"What happened that the state government which had earlier black listed the company on the ground of irregularities freed it from being debarred within a month of swearing of the new government after Bihar poll?" he asked.

"The consultant should be again put into black list and a high level probe be ordered into the episode," he demanded.

The BJP leader also asked why the department of Road Construction held by Tejaswi Yadav was without a Principal Secretary after senior IAS officer Sudhir Kumar retired in March end and was appointed chief advisor in the same department.
In the wake of indictment of top state officials by the Prakash Singh Committee on the Jat quota agitation, former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda today said the BJP government was using them as "scapegoats" to hide its own failure to control the situation.

He said the government should apologise for its "complete failure to control the situation", which resulted in loss of life and damage to property.

"Top-level officers, right up to Home Secretary and DGP have been indicted. Some Deputy Commissioners, DSPs and other officials too have been indicted. These departments are headed by Ministers of the Government. The overall responsibility lies with the Chief Minister," Hooda said.

The former two-time CM said the BJP government had made officers and officials "scapegoats", without accepting that it was their failure which caused the situation to go out of hand.

"So many lives were lost. Property on such large scale was damaged. People are still running around for compensation. Shouldn't the BJP government accept its failure and apologise to the people of Haryana," Hooda told PTI over phone when asked to comment on the Prakash Singh Committee report.

Hooda, who was in his hometown Rohtak today, said that he was yet to go through the full report.

"But what I can say is that the BJP government in the state is using its officers as shield to escape its own failure," he said.

He demanded a probe by a Supreme Court judge into the large-scale violence during the Jat quota agitation, which claimed 30 lives.

"Why this stir took a violent turn? What was the conspiracy? People need to know that. People of Haryana want to know the truth, which is why we again reiterate our demand for a probe by a Supreme Court judge in the large scale violence during the stir," he said.

He also alleged the Government had set up the Prakash Singh Committee on Jat stir violence only to "divert" public attention from its failure to control the situation.
Protesting "water crisis" and "lack of civic facilities" in unauthorised colonies, particularly those in South Delhi, BJP activists on Tuesday staged a demonstration outside Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's residence.

"South Delhi, especially Mehrauli and beyond, is almost parched with water reaching once in three days in most unauthorised colonies as well as villages," BJP South Delhi MP Ramesh Bidhuri, who was leading the protest, said.

Alleging that the power outages and water crisis witnessed in Kejriwal regime were "unforeseen", he said 155 unauthorised colonies in South Delhi were facing "worst" power cuts of up to six hours.

"Despite the centre's directive, the Kejriwal government has not moved a single file for approval of unauthorised colonies or to start basic civic services for the residents living there," Bidhuri claimed.

The BJP MP warned that the inhabitants of unauthorised colonies in South Delhi will launch an agitation against Delhi government if their problems remain un-addressed till the end of June.
Government bonds (G-Secs) declined on selling pressure from banks and corporates and the overnight call money rates also ended lower owing to subdued demand from borrowing banks amid ample liquidity in the banking system.

The 7.59 per cent government security maturing in 2026 slipped to Rs 100.7850 from Rs 100.8650 previously, while its yield inched up to 7.47 per cent from 7.46 per cent.

The 7.88 per cent government security maturing in 2030 eased to Rs 100.9975 from Rs 101.0325, while its yield edged up to 7.76 per cent from 7.75 per cent.

The 8.27 per cent government security maturing in 2020 fell to Rs 103.15 from Rs 103.1750, while its yield moved up to 7.35 per cent from 7.34 per cent.

The 7.59 per cent government security maturing in 2029, the 7.61 per cent government security maturing in 2030 and the 7.68 per cent government security maturing in 2023 were also quoted lower to Rs 99.19 and Rs 99.54 and Rs 100.50, respectively.

The overnight call money rates finished lower at 6.25 per cent from Monday's close of 6.35 per cent. It resumed higher at 6.55 per cent and moved in a range of 6.60 per cent and 6.25 per cent.

Meanwhile, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), under the Liquidity Adjustment Facility (LAF), purchased securities worth Rs 87.85 billion in a 13-bids at the overnight repo auction at a fixed rate of 6.50 per cent as on today, while it sold securities worth Rs 32.32 billion from 24-bids at the overnight reverse repo auction at a fixed rate of 6.00 per cent as on May 30.
IAS officer Neeraj K Pawan and RAS officer Anil Kumar Agrawal, who were arrested by the Anti-Corruption Bureau of Rajasthan in connection with a bribery case involving Rs 1.5 crore, were today remanded to police custody till June 4.

The accused, who were arrested yesterday, were produced in a special court of Anti-Corruption Bureau where the magistrate remanded both of them to police custody, IG ACB V K Singh said.

He said the other three accused Ajeet Soni, Deepa Gupta and Joji Varghese, who were arrested on May 18, are already under remand and will be produced before the court by ACB tomorrow.

The ACB had on May 18 busted an alleged nexus between senior officers, including Pawan, and a middleman in the office of National Health Mission of Medical and Health Department.

An FIR was registered on May 17 by the complainant and raids were conducted at 18 premises on May 18.

The complainant, whose identity has not been disclosed, had allegedly given over Rs 1.5 crore as bribe to the main accused, Ajeet Soni, in the last few months to get work orders worth Rs 7 crore.

Soni used to allegedly collect bribes in form of consultancy fees from firms in return of getting them tenders from the department in collaboration with the officers.

He allegedly distributed the bribe among the officers, including former Additional Mission Director, National Health Mission Neeraj K Pawan, Additional Director IEC Anil Kumar Agrawal, Chief Accounts OfficerDeepa Gupta and store keeper Joji Varghese.

Soni, Gupta and Varghese were arrested on May 18 whereas Pawan and Agrawal were questioned for few days before their arrest yesterday.

"Soni used to influence the tender process in connivance with the officers. He became consultant to firms which work for the NHM and helped in getting tenders allotted to them in lieu of hefty amount.Since the tenders were awarded by him, Pawan was a strong suspect," Singh said.

Pawan, a 2003 batch IAS officer, was last posted as Commissioner in the Agriculture Department and he along with Agrawal were placed under Awaiting Posting Orders (APO) status on May 19 after the ACB's action.
With the arrest of five persons, police on Tuesday claimed to have busted a gang which used to allegedly rob commuters with the help of a call centre cab driver.

The alleged gang leader, Dinesh Kumar, after dropping the call centre employees, used to pick up commuters to Gurgaon. His other gang members posed as co-passengers.

"They used to rob people in areas in south Delhi, including AIIMS, Ashram Chowk, Sarai Kale Khan, Lajpat Nagar, and allegedly committed as many as 22 robberies in a short span," Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch) Ravindra Yadav said.

The commuters were robbed of cash and other valuables and dropped at secluded places in Noida, the Delhi-Noida- Flyover and Tuglaqhabad Fort areas.

All the members of the gang were arrested from Delhi-NCR region in the last two days, police said.
The Chennai Port Trust as part of eyeing larger revenues in handling container vessels, has undertaken dredging at a cost of Rs 30 crore allowing larger ships to dock in the Eastern coast, a top official said today.

"Chennai Port Trust has become the first deep port Trust. It can handle vessels with 15.5 metres draft. No port has got this much deep draft facility in India. Total cost for this project is Rs 30 crore," Chennai Port Trust Chairman Cyril C George told reporters.

Elaborating about the plans under Mission Resurgence taken up by the Port, he said it would be able to handle vessels with tonnage of 8,000 TeU (twenty foot equivalent units) container ships and had already managed vessels with 7,800 TeUs tonnage facility from January.

Detailing about the performance of the Port in the last year, he said the port handled cargo of 50.06 million tonnes in 2015-16, a marginal dip of 52.54 million tonnes in previous year due to decrease in the traffic.

"Though the cargo handling has been less, the financials were stronger with net surplus of Rs 42.20 crore recorded in 2015-16 from Rs 23.09 crore in 2014-15," he said.

George said the Chennai Port Trust today signed a MoU with Southern Railway to optimise Rail throughput of automobile traffic for export through Chennai Port.

"It is aimed to facilitate transportation of automobiles from Walajabad to Chennai Port," he said.

The port has signed with a private player for transport of goods from Bengaluru to Chennai and trains are operated twice a week.

"We have now signed another MoU with company from Hyderabad. This will help us transport goods between Chennai and Hyderabad. We are expecting the service to begin from June 11," he said.
The head of Egypt's press syndicate and two board members have been arrested and charged with "publishing false news" and "harbouring" journalists wanted by authorities, officials said.

Egypt's journalists union chief Yehia Qalash, Secretary- General Gamal Abdel-Reheem and Undersecretary Khaled El-Balshy were taken into custody yesterday.

Prosecutors referred them to trial after they were formally charged with spreading false and harbouring journalists wanted by authorities for allegedly inciting protests. They were earlier questioned by the prosecutors.

The three persons, who will now stand trial on Saturday, had refused to pay bail, saying their arrest was illegal as the law does not ask for bail on the charges of 'spreading false news'.

Qalash demanded an independent judge to take over the case but the prosecution rejected his demand, according to a statement by the union.

However, the three were later released after the bail of 10,000 Egyptian Pound (USD 1,126) was paid anonymously against their will. The union denounced the payment of the bail and called for an urgent general assembly.

Many journalists also protested in front of the union in support of Qalash and the two board members.

The three leaders are facing charges of harbouring journalists Mahmoud El-Sakka and Amr Badr, who work for the 25 January opposition site, and spreading false by publishing an article which said that over 40 policemen stormed the union office early this month to arrest the two journalists for spreading false news.

The move against the three persons came less than a month after Qalash called for a presidential apology over an alleged police raid seeking to arrest two journalists who had taken refuge inside the union office here.
The Sino-Indian deadlock over a UN ban on JeM chief Masood Azhar and others may end if India resubmits its application focussing on evidence against him than attempting to "censure" Pakistan, BJP MP today said here after talks with Chinese officials.

"My impression is that India can expect cooperation from China on the issue of declaring Masood Azhar, leader of Jaish-e-Muhammad, as terrorist who should face trial in India, if India in the UN concentrated more on him than seeking to censure Pakistan as a sponsor of terror," Swamy told PTI.

Swamy, who is here on a pilgrimage to Kailash-Manasarovar in Tibet, said he is visiting China in an individual capacity as an "old friend" but with the knowledge of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other senior ministers of his cabinet.

The BJP leader said "as a tactical move it would (be) prudent (to) resubmit the complaint in UN which was blocked after China put a technical hold."



"Based on what I learnt here, I will be very surprised if China continues to obstruct once it is limited to hard evidence," said Swamy after meeting Wang Guo Qing, Director of the foreign affairs committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Committee, and Wu Hailong, President of the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs (CPIFA).

He said the applicationsubmitted by India in UN was more Pakistan-centric than Azhar. "I think for the limited purpose it was submitted which was to get UN sanctions,the report should be resubmitted," he said.

"I assume the Chinese would find it difficult to say no, once the report is limited to hard evidence. In fact it would (be a) good idea if there is pre-UN trilateral consultation between India, China and Pakistan," he said.

China, which previously blocked India's attempts to get a UN ban on Mumbai terror attack mastermind and LeT commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, also put a hold on listing of Azhar as global terrorist for his role in the Pathankot attack.

The issue has cast a shadow on bilateral ties as India has expressed disappointment over China's actions while the two countries are seeking a way out to end the impasse.

The issue also figured in the just concluded visit of President Pranab Mukherjee.

Swamy suggested India, China and Pakistan trilateral talks to address the issues of cross border terrorism.

He said Prime Minister Modi is working hard to resume dialogue with Pakistan, but the "problem is that we can only talk to the constitutional authority in Pakistan which is the Prime Minister, who do not seem to have a final word. The army seems to have veto along with the ISI and Mullahs."



"China being a friend of Pakistan can help peace in South Asia by encouraging the constitutional authorities to assert their authority. If China convenes a tripartite meeting on India-China-Pakistan on issue of terrorism because terrorism from Pakistan is no longer a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan any more. It is also trilateral issue as terrorists from Pakistan also go to (Muslim-majority) Xinjiang," he said.

Swamy claimed that China also recognises that terror emanates from Pakistan's soil even though it do not admit openly because of its friendship.

"You can say I am confident that our government would welcome such a trilateral meeting on terrorism because terrorists from Pakistan are going to both India and China. My expectation our government will welcome," he said.

"I intend to urge the Prime Minister to consider this as an initiative when he comes here for G20 meeting," Swamy said.

Modi is expected to attend the G20 meet scheduled to be held in the Chinese city of Hangzhou in September.

Asked if China is open to such a proposal, he said, "I think China will find it very hard to refuse such a proposal from India based on my conversations here."



"In my opinion China is already an observer country in SAARC. So they have a legitimate role to play in helping SAARC solving it problems. Now the problem of terrorism not only affects India, they are not going to be umpires but also affected parties. India and China are affected parties from terror based in Pakistan," he said.

"We should be able to get Pakistan to comply to many things if we have trilateral meeting. They will find it very difficult to say no China," he said.

Swamy, accompanied byIndianCharge d'affaires Bala Bhaskar, yesterday visited the China Tibetology Research Centre here which has no links with India despite collaboration with 22 other countries.

This is first time an Indian official delegation has been invited to the centre which focusses on research on Tibet, Swamy said and proposed collaboration between the centre and Indian Council of Cultural Research.

Today he metChinese Vice Finance Minister Shi Yaobin and discussed India's concerns over rapidly increasing trade imbalance between the two countries which touched about $48 billion last year.

Swamy proposed cross border economic cooperation and people-to-people contacts in Tibet besides a chair on Hindu religion in Tibetan university and chair on Mahayana Buddhism in an Indian university.

He also welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping's proposal to allow more Indian pilgrims to Kailash-Manasarovar through the new Sikkim route which was opened last year.

The proposal to allow more than the previously agreed 250 people was conveyed by Xi during his meeting Mukherjee.

China has organised Kailash yatra for about 35 years without interruption despite problems in the bilateral ties, he said.
Extending its rally for the second straight session today, shares of Claris Lifesciences surged 8 per cent, after the company received the Establishment Inspection Report (EIR) from the US health regulator for its manufacturing plant near Ahmedabad.

Shares of the company jumped 8.07 per cent to settle at Rs 218.20 on BSE. During the day, it surged 16.34 per cent to Rs 234.90.

The stock had gained 20 per cent in the previous session also.

Claris Lifesciences has "received the EIR for its manufacturing facility located near Ahmedabad, wherein the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) has concluded that the inspection stands closed and the facility was found to be acceptable," Claris Lifesciences said in a filing to BSE yesterday.

The USFDA had conducted audit at Claris' manufacturing facility in May, 2015, it added.

"The company had taken appropriate steps to address the observations it had received from these audits," Claris said.

Having received the EIR from the USFDA potentially clears the path for the company to receive product approvals (ANDA) for the USA, it added.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has issued directions for the release of Diwali bonus of sanitation employees of East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) soon.

The move came after a delegation of sanitation workers recently met the chief minister and apprised him about their Diwali bonus being pending since 2015. EDMC was unable to release their bonus due to funds crunch.

"The Chief Minister has directed release of Diwali bonus worth around Rs 8.5 crore of safai karamcharis of EDMC. The bonus was pending since 2015," an official said.

Delhi Commission for Safai Karamcharis (DCSK) had last week brought this matter to the notice of the CM after receiving grievances over non-payment of salary and bonus.

Till May 26, Delhi government has released Rs 614.41 crore to the three municipal corporations in the city for the first quarter of 2016-17.

Government has released Rs 324.77 crore to NDMC, Rs 118.81 crore to SDMC and Rs 170.83 crore to EDMC.
Congress today latched on to Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar's attack on courts to target Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his team accusing them of "deliberate confrontation" with the judiciary.

Noting that the Congress is concerned over the "confrontationist path", party's senior spokesman Anand Sharma wanted "motormouth" ministers to be "reined in", insisting that conflict with judiciary was "not healthy" for the system laid down by the Constitution.

At the AICC briefing, Sharma accused the Prime Minister of being "patronising" to the chief justice and judges. "Undermining the judiciary is not a happy thing in a democracy," he said, adding Modi should have responded when Chief Justice T S Thakur broke down during a recent function over the issue of shortage of judges.

"Telling them which petition to entertain is not the job of PM. In a constitutional democracy, there is a clear demarcation of responsibility of all three organs," he said.

Besides, Sharma attacked Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for targeting the judiciary through his "tyranny of the unelected" remarks and wondered whether judges have to run for elections.

He claimed that future appointments in courts are being delayed despite a huge shortage of judges and high pendency of cases because government is "undermining" judicial system.

He also claimed that the government is "angry" because the proposal to have a National Judicial Appointments Commission for judicial appointments was rejected by the apex court.

Taking a jibe at Parrikar, Sharma said the minister "who does not understand Constitution, is busy giving advice to courts".

Yesterday, Parrikar had made some critical comments at the judiciary claiming some of its directions are "senseless".

"I was reading report about Mercedes Benz company. They have stopped the investment in India because they say the decisions of the court are beyond the limit of understanding," Parrikar had said.

"(They say) we don't understand the logic of banning diesel vehicle. We understand that you can ban diesel vehicle which is polluting but what is the point in banning a diesel vehicle which may not pollute or less polluting than the petrol vehicle," he had said.
BJP National Secretary Sidharth Nath Singh today rejected Congress' charge of having links with a controversial arms dealer and accused it of dragging his name to "digress" from Robert Vadra issue.

Singh said he knew the dealer, whose premises were searched by the IT department, as their children have gone to the same school.

"My association is social and unlike Robert Vadra who is under investigation for controversial acquiring of a London house. Moreover, Congress has alleged that I have made in a short period 450 calls to the defence dealer. The same is factually incorrect and nowhere near reality.

"However I am open to any investigation which is welcome ... Congress party, rather than answering questions on Vadra's alleged home in London, is dragging my name with him, so as to digress from the main issue. To put the record straight, let me admit I know him socially to the extent that our children have gone to the same school," Singh said in a statement.

reports today quoted from purported papers seized by the IT department during searches last month on the arms dealer's premises that allegedly led to a trail of emails between Vadra and his assistant on the one hand and the dealer's aide on the other regarding the purchase of a London house for approximately Rs 19 crore in 2009 which was subsequently said to have been sold.

Vadra's legal firm has denied that he owned the London property directly or indirectly. It also denied that Vadra had any business ties with the arms dealer or his aide.
The CIC today directed Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's office to consider a uniform policy for providing compensation to the families of government employees who die on duty.

Information Commissioner Sridhar Acharyulu emphasised that there should be no discrimination between the compensation given to a soldier and a doctor. He pointed out that Delhi government had enhanced the compensation to uniformed men who lose their lives on duty to Rs 1 crore.

He directed the Public Information Officer of the Chief Minister's Office to put all related files and papers before the Chief Minister and the Deputy Chief Minister to help them consider a uniform policy of providing compensation to families of government employees, including doctors, killed on duty.

"On April 1, 2015 the Delhi government announced: 'The policy will cover officers of Delhi Police, personnel of armed forces and paramilitary forces hailing from Delhi, personnel from other forces serving Delhi government, civil defence and home guards'," he said.

After the order, Delhi has become the state paying the highest compensation to families of uniformed personnel killed while on duty, he said.

"It is not clear whether the policy of the Delhi State covers a doctor's family to get compensation for his death due to disease. Like a police officer, a doctor is also risking life by exposure to deadly diseases, which is no less than facing bullets," Acharyulu said.

The Information Commission was hearing the plea of Anita Singh whose son Dinesh Kumar Singh was a Senior Resident (Anaesthesia) at Chacha Nehru Bala Chikitsalaya. Dinesh died on March 3, 2015 because of exposure to swine-flu while on duty.

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The family was not paid compensation and Public Grievance system (PGMS) rejected their grievance petitions thrice.

"No policy can discriminate life of a doctor from that of a soldier for purposes of compensation. Deadly disease like swine flu is as worse as a killing assailant. If there is no such security measure, it is difficult to give moral strength to young doctors to treat suffering citizens," Acharyulu said.

He said it was the duty of the state to form a uniform policy to provide compensation to families for unforeseen death of employees during service, and inform the people about it.

"In this case, the young doctor's family has the right to know whether they are entitled to compensation. If so, why not one crore rupees as given to an officer killed on duty? The state has to explain reasons for not treating a doctor on par with police," the Information Commissioner said.

The Commissioner further noted that the CMO chose to transfer the RTI request to three departments instead of informing the appellant about their policy or reasons for absence of policy.

Acharyulu said not only the family of the deceased doctor, the entire population legitimately expects a uniform policy from the CMO.

"Besides, appellant has a right to know why a family's claim is rejected by a PGMS," he said.

Acharyulu stated that the Public Grievance Management System suffers from two serious deficiencies; the given password does not work and even if it works, the status of rejected will be revealed without giving any reasons.

"If the password does not work, the applicant hits an iron wall and he can do nothing. Even if he could open the status report, he does not have reasons for rejection and he has no way to secure the reasons," he added.
A Haryana-cadre IAS officer has been placed under suspension by the state government following his conviction by a CBI court for amassing disproportionate assets to the tune of Rs 3.36 crore.

Sandeep Garg, a 1991-batch officer, was convicted by a special court in Delhi on April 23 under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988.

CBI, after a probe, had said that the officer had acquired the assets between January 1999 and April 2004.

Garg, who was then Regional Director in Anti-adulteration Cell, was convicted along with his father Swami Sharan Garg, brother Rajeev Garg and two friends.

According to the charge sheet, the assets included a plot in Haryana, four flats in Delhi, besides bonds and shares.

The "court of special judge (P.C. Act), CBI, New Delhi vide its order dated 23.04.2016 has convicted Sandeep Garg,... under sections 13(2) r/w 13(1)(e) of Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. Now therefore, Sandeep Garg, IAS is hereby placed under suspension by an order of the Competent Authority with effect from April 23, 2016...," a Haryana government release said here yesterday.
Delhi Commission for Women has issued notices to Delhi government and Delhi Police to know about the efforts made by them to combat human trafficking.

In its notice issued to the Directorate of Prosecution, DCW has sought information regarding number of FIRs registered with respect to human trafficking along with their copies, total number of cases pending prosecution as on date along with number of cases decided and the number of convictions and acquittals in this regard in 2015, a DCW statement said.

In the notice issued to the Women and Child Development Department, the Commission has sought to know the status of the survey on women sex workers, which was to be undertaken for forming up a draft rehabilitation policy for trafficking victims and sex workers.

It also sought to know the status of the proposal for the construction of residential schools for children of sex workers and to facilitate their admission into the same.

The Commission sought information on the possibility of video conferencing facilities for trafficked victims, as discussed in the State Level Coordination Committee meeting on combating trafficking seven months ago, it said.

The Commission has issued a notice to Delhi Police seeking details on the status of nominating a Senior Officer to head the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit (AHTU) and receive intelligence inputs directly regarding the same.

The Commission has also sought year-wise data of the past three years, till date, as to how many girls or women have been rescued, with FIR numbers and brief case details where girls were rescued but no FIR was filed subsequently.

"Trafficking is growing in Delhi. Sincere and immediate steps need to be taken by both the central and state governments to stop the same," DCW chairperson Swati Maliwal said.

Further, in the meeting of the State Level Coordination Committee on Combating Trafficking, it was decided that the Health Department will set up a mobile dispensary at GB Road and extend the opening hours of the existing dispensary.

A notice has been issued regarding issue of health cards to sex workers in GB Road, Delhi's red light area, the statement added.

The new name has been derived from the existing law



called Immoral Trafficking (Prevention) Act, 1956. This follows objections raised by NGOs which said the draft did not clearly mention whether it was a proposal for a new law or an amendment of the existing one.

There is now a proper definition of trafficking which was earlier missing. The definition derives from Section 370 of Indian Penal Code.

It states, "A person is said to commit trafficking in person if he (a) recruits,(b) transports, (c) harbours, (d) transfers,(e) receives,(f) restrains,(g) buys, (h) sells, or (i) trades a person or persons or causes or abets any of these acts, or participates in the same in any manner whatsoever for the purpose of exploitation."



It also keeps the role of AHTU intact instead of creating a parallel system under an all new District Anti-Trafficking Committee as mentioned in the draft made public in May.

Changes have also been made to state that rehabilitation will take place under the Juvenile Justice Act, which has robust mechanisms for providing shelter to victims rescued. The reference to JJ Act, 2015 was missing earlier.

There are also several new propositions. The proposed legislation now has an additional criteria of "aggravated trafficking" with stricter punishment for offences under 17 different categories including trafficking of children, transgenders, exposing the victim to HIV/AIDS or where the offence results in pregnancy.

Under Section 36 there is a proposal for compensation for victims. There are also rules for protection of witnesses and victims.

This amended draft will be taken up for a fresh round of consultations next month. These consultations with stakeholders will be held in four different states. The first of these will take place on August 2 in New Delhi.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today launched a mobile app through which city traders can register themselves with the VAT department of Delhi government, a move that is aimed at encouraging them to boost its tax collection.

At a programme here, Kejriwal said through the 'DVAT M SEWA' app, traders won't be required to submit application for registration at the department's office and all they have to do now is to fill the form online. There is also no need for VAT inspector's visit at their business premises.

"This mobile application will ensure VAT registration within 24 hours of filing request. We have finished inspector raj by introducing several initiatives to benefit traders," he told reporters here.

He claimed that BJP is not the party of traders but Aam Aadmi Party which takes care of them even after coming to power.

"In the past one year, we have taken several decision for the welfare of traders which includes ending of inspector raj, reduction of VAT rates on several things. Traders, who were under the impression that BJP was supporting them, have now realised that BJP was just for seeking their votes.

"Aam Aadmi Party is the only political party which takes care of traders even after coming to power," Kejriwal added.

VAT Commissioner S S Yadav said that the 'DVAT M SEWA' mobile app will ensure ease of doing business in the national capital.

"Due to this app, VAT inspector's visit at traders' business premises will not be required, instead they will have to upload a picture of their business premises in the app only," he added.
- Denmark will punish preachers who give their approval to criminal acts such as violence and bigamy, and will ban foreign "hate preachers" from entering the country, the government said today.

"For several years it has been discussed whether we can do anything about certain religious preachers undermining democracy, basic freedoms and human rights, and integration," Denmark's Minister for Ecclesiastical Affairs, Bertel Haarder, said in a statement.

"We have now shown that we can," he added.

The new rules will make it a criminal offence for preachers to give their "explicit approval" to criminal acts -- such as killings, rape and bigamy -- as part of religious education, which will be punishable with a fine or up to three years in prison.

Denmark will also establish a public list of preachers "with views and values contrary to fundamental Danish values" who will be banned from entering the country.

If they are EU citizens, who enjoy freedom of movement within the bloc, they will be put on a separate "observation list" which will not be open to the public.

The government said the measure had the backing of a majority of lawmakers and is set to put the proposals to parliament after the summer break.

Critics said the new rules risk having unintended consequences.

Extremist views "do not disappear because you ban them. Instead there is a risk that they become more exciting and appealing because they are prohibited," Pernille Skipper, spokeswoman for the leftist Red-Green Alliance, told daily Jyllands-Posten.

Earlier this year a Danish documentary series titled "The mosques behind the veil" prompted a heated debate after using a hidden camera to show how some imams in the country supported illegal practices such as the stoning of women and corporal punishment of children.

The documentary was controversial, with some Danish Muslims claiming it painted an unfair picture of the country's mosques, while others said it reflected real problems that needed to be addressed.
Describing Donald Trump as a "demagogue", one of the world's top scientists, Stephen Hawking today said he has failed to understand the rise of the presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee, who he said seems to "appeal to the lowest common denominator".

The author of "A Brief History of Time" was asked in an interview whether his knowledge of the universe meant he could explain the controversial American businessman-turned- politician's mass appeal.

"I can't," 74-year-old Hawking replied.

"He is a demagogue who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator," he said.

The University of Cambridge professor, who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 1963 but went on to become one of the world's most famous scientists, gave his thoughts on Trump and more in an interview to ITV .

The Trump campaign did not immediately reply to a message requesting comment, CNN reported.

Hawking is not the first British public figure to make comments critical of the 69-year-old real estate billionaire.

Trump's comments on Islam on the campaign trail -- including a claim that Britain has a "massive Muslim problem" -- have provoked a backlash in the UK, with British Prime Minister David Cameron and London Mayor Sadiq Khan among the many politicians weighing in against.

British parliamentarians even debated a potential ban on Trump from the UK -- which was triggered by a public petition -- for alleged hate speech over his comments.

Hawking, who has previously joked about his dismay at the US presidential race, also weighed in on the Brexit issue, saying he hoped Britons voted to remain in the European Union when a referendum is held on the issue next month.

"Gone are the days we could stand on our own, against the world. We need to be part of a larger group of nations, both for our security, and our trade," he said.

"There are two obvious reasons why we should stay in. The first is that it promotes the mobility of people. Students can come here from EU countries to study, and our students can go to other EU universities," he said.

"More importantly, at the level of research, the exchange of people enables skills to transfer more quickly, and brings new people with different ideas. Without this exchange we would become more culturally isolated and insular, and ultimately more remote from where progress is being made.
Uttar Pradesh government today approved the Detailed Project Report (DPR) of the Metro Rail Project in Varanasi.

The approval was accorded during a state cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav in which a host of other important decisions were also made, an official spokesperson said here.

In the DPR, prepared by RITES, an Indian railway Undertaking, two corridors of 29.23 km length have been proposed, of which one will be of 19.35 km between BHEL to BHU and another of 9.885 km between Beniyabagh to Sarnath.

17 stations between BHEL and BHU have been proposed while there would be nine stations between Beniyabagh and Sarnath.

The estimated cost of the project would be Rs 13,133 crore.

The cabinet also decided to implement Samajwadi Yuva Swarojgaar Yojna aimed at providing employment to educated unemployed youths. A provision of Rs 40 crore has been made for implementation of the scheme in the current fiscal.

The spokesperson said the cabinet decided to popularise Samajwadi Kisan and Sarvhit Beema Yojna, which would benefit around nine crore families. Under this educated unemployed youths would be appointed as Samajwadi Beema Mitra.

The cabinet also approved a proposal to hike financial assistance to rape victims from Rs two lakh to Rs three lakh, and to acid attack victims from Rs three lakh to Rs five lakh.

It approved a proposal to select Mahindra Defence Systems Limited for implementation and technology and of 'Dial 100 project' under which a centralised police control call centre will set up for the entire state.

Proposals to construct a 'bhajan sandhya sthal' at Ayodhya, and to re-construct a 'parikrama path' and 'bhajan sandhya sthal' at Chitrakoot were also approved



The cabinet also decided to give a pension of Rs 500 per month to artisans under Samajwadi Hastshilp Pension Yojna.
A photo of a dead migrant baby pulled from the Mediterranean was published by a charity hoping to force European leaders to grant migrants safe passage, after hundreds were presumed to have died at sea last week.

The baby in the photograph was not identified, but the German non-governmental organisation Sea-Watch said the infant was found in the water last week after a wooden boat carrying 350 migrants capsized off the Libyan coast.

The photo shows the baby, its eyes closed with blue-tinged lips, in the arms of a rescuer. Many of the migrants had already drowned when the rescue boat arrived, the humanitarian group said, without giving a specific number.

Sea-Watch said urgent action was required from European Union leaders to prevent more migrant deaths, as Europe faces its worst migrant crisis since World War II.

"If we do not want to see such pictures we have to stop producing them," Sea-Watch said in a statement released with the photo yesterday.

"In the wake of these disastrous events it becomes obvious that the calls by EU politicians to avoid further death at sea, sum up to nothing more than lip service."



The image was released after a deadly week in the Mediterranean, with 700 feared dead and several small children reportedly drowned in a series of boat accidents as thousands continue to attempt the deadly sea crossing to Europe in rickety vessels from the Middle East and Africa.

Many of those who have died at sea trying to reach European shores were children. The image of a drowned three-year-old Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi washed ashore on a Turkish beach last year stunned the world.

"These accidents will not stop... A policy forcing people on the boats will always lead to such pictures. We think that solely the establishment of new systems ensuring legal and safe entries to EU can finally lead to an ending of this humanitarian tragedy," added the statement.

Sea-Watch justified the publication of the photograph saying that such images "have to be acknowledged by the European society as the tragedies are the consequence of EU foreign policy".

Over one million migrants, many refugees escaping conflict in Syria and other states, arrived in Europe in 2015, with almost 200,000 arriving so far this year by land and sea routes.

The influx has caused concern in some conservative EU societies, boosting right-wing parties and prompting the bloc to negotiate a controversial deal with key transit country Turkey to stem the flow of migrants.
Essar today said that SNN Builders has completed the acquisition of its residential project in Bangalore for Rs 490 crore.

"With the completion of the transaction, SNN Builders now takes over Essar's IBROX Real Estate Development Pvt Ltd, the company that owns the Water's Edge project and will take responsibility to complete and deliver the project within a revised schedule," Essar said in a statement.

The final transaction price also includes customer liabilities, it added.

The 8-acre project is being built in two phases and will comprise five 40-storey towers. The project entails construction of 2 million sq ft and is likely to generate revenues of Rs 1,200 crore.

Recently, Essar has also signed an another definitive agreement with RMZ Corp to sell its Equinox Business Park in Mumbai, a sprawling commercial property, for Rs 2,400 crore.
Five labourers were injured when a fire broke out in a cattle feed manufacturing unit at Ikolaha village, 50 km from here on Khanna-Malerkotla road today.

All the injured persons were working on a machine when the incident took place, police said.

The cause of the blast is yet to be ascertained, SHO Khanna Sadar police station, Bhupinder Singh said.

However, the fire was controlled in time.

The injured were identified as Baldev Singh, Hans Raj, Balwinder Singh, Gurmeet Singh and Ravinder Singh.

Three of them who were stated to be critical were rushed to a Ludhiana hospital.
Four radicalised Bangladeshi supporters of the Islamic State terror group were today convicted by a Singapore court for raising finances to launch terror attacks back home, becoming the first to be prosecuted under the country's tough terrorism act.

The four men - Rahman Mizanur, Miah Rubel, Jabath Kysar Haje Norul Islam Sowdagar and Sohel Hawlader Ismail Hawlader - pleaded guilty to one and two counts each of providing or collecting hundreds of dollars.

The convicts, employed in the local construction and marine industries, face up to 10 years in jail and are expected to be sentenced on June 21.

Ringleader Mizanur, 31, pleaded guilty to two of four charges against him. The remaining two charges will be taken into consideration during sentencing, according to a 'Channel Asia' report.

The four were part of a group of six charged under the Terrorism (Suppression of Financing) Act (TSOFA) - this is the first time the Act has been used for prosecution.

Mizanur had set up the group called Islamic State in Bangladesh, in March this year after developing a "liking" for the dreaded ISIS terror group.

The court heard that Mizanur had tried to join ISIS three times, but was unable to obtain a visa allowing him to travel to Turkey and Algeria.

He travelled to Singapore to find work instead, and recruited his five co-accused, four of whom pleaded guilty alongside him.

The prosecution said that Mizanur's dream was still to join ISIS and become a fighter to destroy disbelievers' activities through an armed struggle.

The group met regularly to discuss waging an armed jihad to fight against non-believers.

They agreed that when they returned to Bangladesh, they would "find and kill" non-believers, the prosecution told the court.

In January this year, the four had taken an oath that they would follow Abu Bakar al-Bagdadi, the leader of ISIS, until their deaths, the court heard.

Another accused Zzaman Daulat, who was also part of the group charged last week, denied the charges against him.

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Daulat, who was the "security council" of the group, said he did not know the money he contributed would be used for terrorism activities.

"I contributed Singapore dollar 200 but I did not know how the money would be spent. I did not know the money would be spent for terrorism," Daulat told court via an interpreter.

The men had intended to join Islamic State as foreign fighters, but upon realising it would be difficult to travel to Syria, focused their plans closer to home, Singapore's Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) had said.

Based on investigations, the group had identified several possible attack targets in Bangladesh, and possessed documents on weapons and bomb-making, as well as ISIS and al Qaeda radical material, it said.

The group had also planned to recruit other Bangladeshi nationals working in Singapore, it added.

A sixth man - Mamun Leakot Ali, who took over as leader of the group after Mizanur was arrested in March - had denied the charges against him at a hearing last week.

If found guilty of financing terrorism, the men could be jailed up to 10 years, fined up to Singapore dollars 500,000 per charge, or both.

Another two men, Sohag Ibrahim and Islam Shariful, both 24, will be dealt with separately.

They were listed as witnesses in the case this morning against the five men.
At least four people were killed in central Nigeria in two days of violence over an alleged blasphemy by a Christian trader against Prophet Mohammed, residents told media today.

Abdullahi Sallau said a Muslim mob killed one person on Sunday and three yesterday in the town of Pandogari in Niger state "following blasphemous remarks by a Christian against the Prophet".

One of those killed was Methodus Chimaije Emmanuel, the 24-year-old who posted comments on his Facebook page, said Sallau, who lives in the town. His account was supported by another local.

Emmanuel, whose parents were from Nigeria's mainly Christian south but who was born and raised in Pandogari, had gone into hiding following the post but was found.

"The crowd took the law into their hands and mobbed him to death despite the revulsion expressed by his parents over the online comments," Misbahu Malami, who lives locally, told AFP.

Soldiers and police have made arrests and imposed an overnight curfew to restore calm after crowds went on the rampage, looting shops, burning a church and demanding the suspects' release.

Sallau said soldiers opened fire and killed three while three others were injured. The military said one of the dead was a member of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps.

Army spokesman Major NC Agwu confirmed that Emmanuel was killed by a mob "on (the) allegation of posting a blasphemous statement about Prophet Mohammad on the social media".

Soldiers "quickly intervened and restored law and order while a dusk-to-dawn curfew was imposed in the town" but the mob yesterday took over a major road, prompting further deployments, he said.

"Regrettably, one church, one house and a shop were burnt while 25 other shops were looted following the violence," added Agwu.

Prophet Mohammed is the most revered figure in Islam and blasphemy against him is punishable with death under Islamic law.

Previous allegations of blasphemy against the Prophet have seen deadly sectarian clashes before in Nigeria, which is almost evenly split between Muslims in the north and Christians in the south.

In 2002 riots broke out in the northern city of Kaduna between Muslim and Christian residents over a planned Miss World pageant to which many Muslims were opposed.

The riots were fuelled by comments in a Nigerian newspaper article. Days of violence left more than 200 people dead.

In 1987, hundreds were killed in the town of Kafanchan, also in Kaduna, following an alleged blasphemy by a Christian evangelist.

In January this year, an Islamic court in the northern city of Kano sentenced a Muslim cleric to death for blasphemy after comments he made last year sparked violent protests.
Four militants of Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO), including an 'area commander' and a 'deputy area commander', were arrested and a cache of arms and ammunitions recovered from them by a joint team of army and Assam Police in Kokrajhar district.

According to a Defence release a joint search was launched last night and four KLO militants were apprehended from Kalipukhri village.

The apprehended militants included the area commander of Kokrajhar, Mridul Roy alias Surjakoch, and the deputy, Dhananjay Roy alias Dhorkha.

The other two militants have been identified as Kanak Roy and Konu Jeet Roy.

The team also seized four pistols, three hand grenades, few rounds ammunitions, some documents and extortion notices, the release added.
Four prisoners of Sada sub-jail allegedly poisoned a fellow inmate for not shelling out protection money after which they were booked, police said today.

Prisoner Milton George, who is serving one-year jail term at Sada sub-jail near Vasco town, was admitted to Goa Medical college yesterday afternoon after he complaint of severe headache, a senior police official said today.

The incident took place when the inmate was getting ready to be shifted to another cell yesterday.

A case has been booked with Mormugao police station, the officer said, adding that George, in his statement told the police that the four jail inmates "forced" him to drink phenyl when he refused to pay them Rs 50,000 as a protection money.

The complainant has named two accused while he does not know the names of the other two, he said.

Inspector General of Prisons Elvis Gomes said an inquiry has been ordered into the incident.

Sada sub-jail was recently in after tribal anti- mining activist Ravindra Velip had complaint that he was assaulted by four people inside the jail premises.
The fourth tranche of Sovereign Gold Bond (SGB) scheme, which has received a lukewarm response so far, will be launched by June-end and trading in these instruments will begin within the next couple of months.

"We are working on that (SGB). Hopefully, it should hit the market by end of next month," Reserve Bank of India Deputy Governor H R Khan told reporters here today.

SGB, which is aimed at reducing the demand for physical gold, has not been receiving good response from investors and the government has been trying to improve the scheme to make it more attractive.

There were some issues with regard to demat of the gold bonds which were being resolved, Khan said.

On a question on trading of the gold bonds, he said, "it should happen in the next couple of months".

The third tranche of SGB, which was launched on March 8, received a lukewarm response with the government getting a subscription for 1,128 kg gold, amounting to Rs 329 crore - less than the half it got in the previous round. There were around 64,000 applicants.

In the second tranche (January 18 to 22), about 3.16 lakh applications were accepted for a total subscription of 2,872.3 kg of gold amounting to Rs 746.80 crore.

During the first tranche issued in November 2015, 62,169 applications were accepted for a total subscription of 915.95 kgs amounting to Rs 246.20 crore by banks and post offices.

The government had so far received subscription for Rs 4,916.253 kg of gold amounting to about Rs 1,322 crore.

The SGB scheme was launched in November, 2015 with an objective to reduce the demand for physical gold and shift a part of the domestic savings used for purchase of gold, into financial savings.

Earlier in the month, Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das reviewed the progress of the gold bond scheme as well as the gold monetisation scheme.

It was decided to ask the banks to put concerted efforts to market the twin gold schemes with a view to help the government to achieve the objectives of the schemes.
French firm Technip has signed a preliminary contract worth more than USD 500 million (557 million euros) to rebuild a major oil drilling platform off the coast of Libya, officials said today.

Technip signed the letter of intention in Paris with Mellitah Oil and Gas, a joint venture between Libya's National Oil Corporation and Italy's Eni.

The drilling platform lies in the offshore Bahr Essalam oil field, 100 kilometres from the capital Tripoli.

"The project demonstrates the desire of French companies to contribute to the petroleum sector, the backbone of the Libyan economy," France's foreign ministry said in a statement.

Libya has the largest oil reserves in Africa, estimated at 48 billion barrels, and rebuilding the energy sector is a top priority for the new UN-backed unity government.

Since the 2011 civil war that brought down long-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi, production has fallen from around 1.5 million barrels per day to 300,000.
Goans, who obtained Portuguese nationality by registering their names in that country's Central Registry, may lose Indian citizenship with a high- level central panel recommending action against them as per Indian law.

The inter-ministerial committee, headed by Additional Secretary in the Home Ministry B K Prasad, has recommended that the issue of citizenship of such persons should be decided as per the Citizenship Act 1955 and Citizenship Rules 2009.

The panel was set up by the central government following a letter of the then Governor of Goa, B V Wanchoo, and the then Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar (currently Defence Minister), who had informed that around four lakh Goans have registered their names in Portugal's Central Registry of Births, Marriages and Death.

As per Portuguese law, those who register their names in the Central Registry automatically become a Portuguese national and a citizen of European Nations.

However, such a person cease to be an Indian citizen as per the Citizenship Act 1955.

There have been allegations that several public servants, including MLAs and MPs, have registered their names in the Central Registry, which they claim has not been done by them or done without their knowledge.

After going through various deliberations, evidences and records available, the inter-ministerial committee felt that if any question arises as to whether, when and how any citizen of India has acquired the citizenship of another country, it should be determined by provisions of Citizenship Act 1955 and Citizenship Rules 2009.

The panel recommended that the issue of citizenship of such persons will be decided by an authority designated by the central government after receiving representations, enquire upon, in just, fair, reasonable and transparent manner and submit the report along with recommendations to central government for necessary action.

Portugal recognises dual/ multi nationality while India does not. This situation has given rise to serious problems relating to nationality and citizenship such as non-surrender of Indian passports on acquisition of Portugal nationality, illegal stay in India, violation of Foreigners Act or registration by a third party without consent or knowledge of the person concerned.

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Those Goans who registered their names in Portugal's Central Registry automatically become Portuguese citizens, allowing them to travel and buy property there and also in EU countries.

The inter-ministerial committee suggested that whosoever has acquired Portuguese passport automatically became citizen of Portugal and cease to be an Indian citizen.

To determine nationality status of all such persons who were born before December 20, 1961, when Goa became independent from Portuguese rule, in the territories comprising the Union Territory of Goa, Daman and Diu, an order called the Goa Daman and Diu (Citizenship) order 1962 was issued through a notification dated March 28, 1962.

According to the aforesaid notification, every person, who or either of whose parents or any of whose grandparents was born before December 20, 1961 in the territories now comprised in the Union Territory of Goa, Daman and Diu became a citizen of India on that day, if the person did not opt to retain the citizenship or nationality which he had immediately before December 20, 1961.

Subsequently, many Goans who became citizenship of India as per Goa, Daman and Diu (Citizenship) order 1961 registered their birth in the Central Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths in Lisbon, Portugal.
Hamas authorities in the Gaza Strip executed three men for murder today, the attorney general said, signalling more could follow despite appeals from the United Nations for a halt.

The three men were put to death behind closed doors at dawn.

"To achieve public deterrence and curb crime, the competent authorities carried out at dawn today, May 31, 2016 execution rulings against three of those convicted of shocking murders," a statement from the attorney general said.

In theory all execution orders in the Palestinian territories must be approved by president Mahmud Abbas, who is based in the occupied West Bank.

But Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, no longer recognises his legitimacy, and the Attorney General in Gaza Ismail Jaber recently announced that the authorities there would carry out the executions without Abbas's backing.

Xavier Abu Eid, an adviser to Abbas, condemned the executions on Twitter.

The UN envoy for the Middle East had previously called on Hamas to abandon the planned executions.

"I urge Hamas not to carry out these executions," Nickolay Mladenov told the UN Security Council last week.

Human Rights Watch also condemned the use of the death penalty, with its Israel and Palestine director Sari Bashi calling it "particularly egregious to execute defendants sentenced in Gaza, whose court system is rife with coercion, torture and compromised procedures."



The attorney general's statement announcing the executions said they had all been given a fair trial.
Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar today said his government has decided to celebrate 'International Yoga Day' on June 21 as 'Yog Utsav' in the state.

He announced that a programme would be organised in Panchkula from June 12 to June 14 where yoga training would be imparted as a part of the 'Utsav'.

Khattar was reviewing preparations for International Yoga Day celebrations through video conference here with all deputy commissioners in the state.

Haryana Health Minister Anil Vij was also present in the meeting, an official release said.

The chief minister said that a national-level programme of International Yoga Day will be held in Chandigarh on June 21 in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be the chief guest.

During the meeting, the deputy commissioners apprised Khattar that apart from 100 participants from each district that would participate in the national-level programme at Chandigarh, 5000 to 10,000 participants of their respective district would take part in district-level programme.

Khattar directed the deputy commissioners to ensure installation of big LED screens in their respective areas so that the people could also perform yoga while watching the Prime Minister on screen and listen to him.

It was apprised in the meeting that yoga training camps would be organised at block-level in the state for panchs and sarpanches besides other elected representatives and administrative officers from June 1 to 3.
The Delhi High Court today asked the Centre to inform it whether there was a "uniform syllabus" for all the children aged 6-14 years across the country.

A bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Jayant Nath asked the counsel appearing for the Centre to take instruction on the issue and posted the matter for hearing on August 16.

The court's direction came on a plea seeking a direction to Central government to "provide common syllabus and common curriculum to all the children aged 6-14 years".

The plea, filed by advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, also sought a direction to the Centre "to provide an authoritative textbook on 'Environment, Health and Safety' and 'Socialism, Secularism and Nationalism' for the children aged 6-14 years and a standard textbook having chapters on fundamental rights, fundamental duties, directives principles and the golden goals as set out in the Preamble..."



It further claimed that the prevailing education system under Article 21A of the Constitution was "inconsistent".

"The right of a child should not be restricted only to free and compulsory education, but should be extended to have quality education without any discrimination on the ground of a child's economic, social and cultural background," the plea said, adding, "There must be no discrimination in quality of education".

It said that the Right to Education Act envisages not only free and compulsory education but also equitable quality education having a common syllabus and common curriculum to all the children aged 6-14 years.

"Uniform education system would ultimately eliminate disparity and discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth and lead to equality of status and of opportunity in all matters in spirit of Preamble of the Constitution," it said.
The Delhi High Court today sought a response of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on a plea seeking quashing of an Assistant Professor's appointment for allegedly committing "plagiarism".

A bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Jayant Nath also issued notice to the University directing them to file their reply on the allegation made in the plea on appointment of Gous Mashkoor Khan, Assistant Professor in Turkish, at JNU.

"Notice. Short affidavit be filed by JNU regarding the allegation made against him (Khan) in the writ petition," the court said and fixed the matter for August 31.

The court's direction came on a plea by M Arshad Parvez, who alleged that Khan, Assistant Professor, Centre for Turkish School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies at JNU, was not "eligible" for the post.

Parvez, who did his BA (Honours) in Turkish language and literature from Jamia Millia Islamia in the year 2015, further alleged that Khan "plagiarized the literature work in Turkish Language and published the same in 2012 with a title as 'A new approach to Turkish language learning'."



The petitioner sought a direction to "constitute a high- level fact-finding committee for fixing the responsibilities of the intellectual plagiarism committed by Khan".

He also sought a direction to University Grants Commission to "constitute a high-powered committee as a permanent mechanism to effectively prevent the serious issue of the plagiarism in academic circle and universities".
The Bombay High Court has rejected a plea of Food Corporation of India (FCI) challenging the property tax imposed on its godowns in suburban Poisar and Magathone by Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai.

FCI, a government of India enterprise, had contended that it only occupies the godowns which are owned by the union government and such properties are exempted from local taxes.

However, the division bench of Justices C V Bhadang and Abhay Oka did not agree.

FCI had challenged the property tax demand with respect to the godowns by MCGM, terming it as illegal.

It contended that the union government acquired the land admeasuring3,47,903sqyardsatvillagePoisarand another piece of landadmeasuring1,65,074sqyardsatMagathone and built godowns for storage of foodgrains.

After FCI was established, it started using them.

Under Article 285 of the Constitution, as the lands and godowns in respect of which property tax is levied are the properties of the government of India, they should be exempted from state or local taxes, FCI argued.

But the HC rejected this contention and said if FCI had not paid the propertytax yet, it would have four months to pay up. During this period, the civic body shall not take any coercive action for recovery of tax, the court added.
Speed seems to be the latest mantra for Railways as it has roped in Germany to undertake feasibility study for running high speed trains on the southern corridor.

"It was decided at a meeting today with the high level German delegation that Germany will conduct feasibility study on Chennai-Bangalore-Mysore section for running high speed train. Germany will also bear the expenditure for the study," said a senior Railway Ministry official.

Besides, Railway officials also discussed with the German team about raising speed on one of the existing line to 200 km per hour, he added.

Led by State Secretary of Germany's Transport and Digital Infrastructure Ministry Michel Odenwald, the German delegation met Railway Board Chairman A K Mittal and senior officials here to discuss various issues involving running high speed train, raising speed on the existing track and redevelopment of stations.

Railways also requested Germany to undertake a study of one station for renovation/redevelopment.

Railways has earmarked 400 stations to be redeveloped as smart stations with added passenger amenities involving private players.

Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu had visited Germany to discuss cooperation between the two countries in the rail sector. Besides, Prabhu also had a meeting with German rail industries to offer investment opportunities in the rail sector in India.

The German expertise in the field of high speed rail, increasing speed of existing routes, station development, multi modal logistics terminal and automobile logistics are of interest to India.
Ivory Coast's former first lady Simone Gbagbo goes on trial today for crimes against humanity, but rights groups acting as plaintiffs in the case have pulled out, blasting the proceedings as flawed.

The wife of ex president Laurent Gbagbo has already been handed a 20-year jail sentence for "attacking state authority" over her role in post-election violence in 2010 that left more than 3,000 people dead.

Accused of involvement in rights abuses against supporters of her husband's rival Alassane Ouattara to keep Gbagbo in the presidency, she faces allegations of crimes against prisoners of war, crimes against the civilian population and crimes against humanity.

But yesterday three rights groups, representing nearly 250 victims, said they would refuse to take part in the trial of the woman once known as the "Iron Lady" because of doubts over its "credibility".

"Our lawyers have not had access to all stages of the procedures -- how can they defend their case?" the head of one of the groups, the Ivorian League of Human Rights, told AFP.

Pierre Kouame Adjoumani said the trial lacked "relevance", adding that Simone Gbagbo "is accused of crimes against humanity, something she could have only done through an organised group -- so why is only she being judged?"



The trial is taking place in Ivory Coast's commercial hub Abidjan, where the 66-year-old former first lady is being held.

It opens just five days after the Supreme Court rejected her final appeal against the 20-year sentence she was handed last year in her first trial.

Ivory Coast, the world's top cocoa producer, suffered months of bloodshed after Laurent Gbagbo and his supporters refused to accept defeat to Ouattara in a 2010 election.

The violence was ultimately halted by an international military intervention under a UN mandate, led by former colonial power France, and the Gbagbos were arrested in April 2011.

Ouattara won a second presidential term in October in the nation's first peaceful vote for more than a decade.

Laurent Gbagbo is currently on trial for crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
Shah Rukh Khan might be known as a doting father to his three kids but the superstar believes he indulges them more than needed.

The 50-year-old actor says he is a proud father to Aryan, 19, Suhana, 16 and toddler AbRam, who celebrated his third birthday last week.

From taking the little one to IPL matches to playing host to his daughter's friends, SRK's love for his children is not hidden from his fans and the actor says he loves to spoil the kids.

"I am a very indulgent father. In fact, I am over indulgent. I spoil them a lot," the "Fan" told reporters here at the launch of KidZania, a global indoor theme park.

The Delhi/NCR branch of KidZania comes three years after Shah Rukh launched the park in Ghatkopar in Mumbai. The Bollywood star co-owns the theme park.

When asked whether AbRam is fond of rides and if the actor would bring him to KidZania, Shah Rukh said, "I think AbRam would love to come here. When I thought of making this (KidZania), I wanted to do it for my kids but by the time it got made, they grew up. So, now, I would love to get AbRam here. But first I will take him to the Ghatkopar one."



For the actor, bringing such an experience for kids to India is a matter of pride and he said this endevour stands as most special among all the ventures that he has forayed into.

"I am very proud of this. The Mumbai one has been doing great and that encouraged me to bring KidZania to Delhi/NCR. In fact, this one is far bigger than the other park. I am sure kids and families will love it.

"Out of everything that I have ever done, this is what I am most proud of, that I have done something for children."



Shah Rukh intends to open the park in Chennai, Benguluru and of course Kolkata, a city the "Dilwale" star shares a special bond with.

"We will take it to Chennai and Benguluru and Kolkata too... The process takes time as we need a huge place and its entrance and exit should be safe for kids.

"Also training of the staff is an important task as families will leave their children with the people here. But these are long term plans which we will fulfill slowly and gradually."



Shah Rukh added he wants KidZania to be affordable for all stratas of society and has joined hands with a couple of NGOs to enable children from poor families experience KidZania.

The "Chennai Express" star arrived at the launch in style, walking the ramp with a few kids, who were dressed in their future dream avatars. He also interacted with them, answering their questions about his childhood and his dreams as a child.

During the endearing interaction, Shah Rukh revealed that as a child he wanted to become either an army officer or a teacher.

Concluding the event on a filmy note, Bollywood's romance king mouthed dialogues from his 2012 drama "Jab Tak Hai Jaan" as young girls and women cheered on and also obliged his male fans in the crowd by speaking a few lines from the teaser of his upcoming action thriller "Raees".
A team of 36 newly-inducted Indian Administrative Service officers has visited Sri Lanka to get first-hand knowledge of administrative practices in the neighbouring country.

They visited Sri Lanka as part of the foreign exposure component of the IAS induction programme, Indian High Commission here said today.

The programme in Sri Lanka was conducted and coordinated by Sri Lanka Institute of Development Administration (SLIDA).

The visit was aimed at exchange of best administrative practices between India and Sri Lanka.

The visit from May 22-26 was also an opportunity for furthering bilateral understanding and deepening cooperation between the two important administrative structures of India and Sri Lanka.

As part of their visit, the IAS officers interacted with various government departments and ministries in Sri Lanka.

The officers were given a presentation by the Board of Investment on the state of the economy and possible areas of cooperation and investment.

They visited schools, secretariats, divisional offices, and the Central Provincial Council.

The IAS officers interacted with officials at different levels of the Government of Sri Lanka to obtain a comprehensive understanding of Sri Lankan administration.

The visit enabled the IAS officers to gather a holistic view of Sri Lanka.
Seeking German investment in India's infrastructure sector, Urban Development Minister on Tuesday said the partnership between the two countries "should and will flourish" as he invited participation of its business community in India's "urban renaissance".

"Indo-German partnership should and will flourish. You will be able to see for yourself the winds of change in India. We are very keen to develop the sectors where you are strong. We need your involvement," Naidu said while addressing a conference on '100 Indian smart cities conference' here.

He said India is at the "threshold of rapid urbanisation" and is among the "fastest urbanising societies" of the world and is projected to be more urban than rural by 2050.

"With 17% of people living in urban areas at the time of independence, urbanisation increased to over 31% in 2011 and set to reach 40% by 2030," he said, adding that this demographic transition brings along with it "serious challenges and opportunities too".

The High Powered Expert Committee of Indian Government in 2011 has estimated investment requirement for urban infrastructure over the 20-year period (2012-31) at over $650 billion and operation and maintenance (O&M) cost at over $330 billion.

The total urban infrastructure requirement works out to about $1 trillion over a 20-year period.

Naidu listed out various initiatives, including smart city mission, Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) and Swachh Bharat Mission for addressing the "huge" gaps in urban infrastructure.

Noting that Germany is already assisting in development of Bhubaneswar, Kochi and Coimbatore as smart cities, he said, "My visit is to explore more investment assistance for remaining smart cities."



Highlighting the potential of various shemes, he said the investment in the proposed 100 smart cities works out to USD 40 billion by 2020, while the total outlay under AMRUT is USD 8 billion over five years for 500 cities and estimated cost of implementation of Clean India Mission in Urban areas is USD 10 billion.

He said government will also introduce Public Utility (Resolution of Disputes) Bill later this year for dispute resolution in infrastructure related construction projects, public private partnership (PPP) and public utility contracts.

Stressing that an essential feature of "Urban Renaissance is 'green' development", the minister said, "This we will learn from Germany's leadership in environmental-friendly and sustainable urban development".

Earlier, Naidu and German Minister of Nature Conservation, Forests, Building and Nuclear Safety, Barbara Hendrics, inaugurated the three-day conference.

Leading global companies, policy makers and experts are attending the meet being organised to highlight investment opportunities in India's Smart City Mission.
India today said it wanted to make Morocco the hub for its economic activities in the African region as the two countries sought to inject fresh momentum in bilateral ties with Vice President Hamid Ansari holding wide-ranging talks with the Moroccan Prime Minister.

Two MoUs on cultural cooperation and institutional training were signed after Ansari met Moroccan Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane and delegation-level talks were held between the two sides.

"We reviewed all aspects of our expanding cooperation. Morocco is crucial to us for food security as it is the main supplier of phosphate which is crucial for agriculture," Ansari said as the two leaders jointly spoke to the media.

Five Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs) had been finalised between India and Morocco for improving bilateral relations but only two could be signed.

The MoUs on Cultural Exchange and Institutional Training for Foreign Service officers were signed, Secretary Economic Relations Amar Sinha said at a media briefing.

Sinha said the MoUs relating to other three areas of cooperation -- Water Resources, Television Broadcasting and Education -- have been finalised but "could not be signed due to technical issues".

Sinha said the Vice President conveyed to the leadership that the Indian government would like to look at Morocco and expand its economic activities since the two countries have a trade of USD 350 million.

"We would like to use Morocco as a hub for our economic activities in the African region," Sinha quoted the Vice President as saying during the talks.

The Moroccan Prime Minister said India is an important partner for them, India's Ambassador to Morocco Dinesh Patnaik said.

"The two agreed to make the relations more dimensional for increased cooperation," Patnaik said.

Both the sides stressed on the need for injecting fresh momentum in bilateral relations. Morocco said that they need to look into the issues of political stability, economic development and human resources development, Sinha said.

Ansari said India appreciates Morocco's support for India's candidature for the UN Security Council.

The two sides identified new areas of mutual cooperation which included information technology, the Vice President said, adding that the MoUs signed will be beneficial for both countries.

He said that India was very happy to receive the King of Morocco Mohammed VI, who came to India last year for the Indo-Africa Summit.

The Vice President said on behalf of the Indian government he invited Prime Minister Benkirane to visit India.

Benkirane said Morocco sees India as a friend. "We will work together for a common future for the Mediterranean region."



He said the two countries will also work in engaging jointly in efforts towards counter-terrorism.

Benkirane indicated he may visit India this year.

Briefing the media, Sinha said, "We are not looking at short-term cooperation as far as Institutional training of Foreign Service officers is concerned."



"Moroccan diplomats would come to India for one year while Indian diplomats would also visit Morocco," he said.

Sinha said the Vice President during his interaction with the Prime Minister held discussions on bilateral issues and decided to increase cultural exchanges.

He said on the issue of terrorism both shared their perception on the need to exchange information.

Sinha said Information Technology is another area which the Vice President highlighted and the Prime Minister Benkirane evinced keen interest in the issue.

He said India will be setting up a Centre of Excellence on IT that will be set up by C-DAT, which will take special care of linking IT to the industry.

Sinha said that India will also train Moroccans in various other fields like English speaking and e-governance, including creating data base of 33 million population of Morocco like the Aadhaar scheme in India.

"We told them about the benefits of Aadhaar in DBT and other programmes," he said.

Speaker of the House of Representatives Rachid Talbi Alami and the Speaker of the House of Councillors Abdelhakim also separately called on the Vice President



"Our MPs sought to know about obstructions etc to which they said that they do not face such things as Houses are for formation of laws," Sinha said.

Both the Speakers stressed the need for formation of Joint Parliamentary Forum to which the Vice President said that back home he would discuss the issue with the Speaker.

The Vice President has invited both the Speakers to visit India.

Asked about the extradition treaty between the two countries, Patnaik said it was not there but Morocco has always been helpful.

"Even without an extradition treaty Morocco had extradited a wanted criminal of Karnataka some time back," the Ambassador said.

He said that most countries today need intelligence from Morocco as this was the country which also helped in cracking the Paris bomb blast case.

Ansari's trip here is the first high-level visit to the African country after Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee went there in 1999.

Besides his wife Salma Ansari, the Vice President is accompanied by Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilizers Hansraj Gangaram Ahir, four members of Parliament and senior officials.

On June 2, Ansari will head to Tunisia for a two-day visit at the invitation of Prime Minister Habib Essid.
India and today launched the India- Chamber of Commerce and Industry (IMCCI) here to accelerate the pace of economic development between the two countries.

The chamber was jointly launched by visiting Vice President Hamid Ansari and Moroccan Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane at a function here.

Speaking on the occasion, Ansari said that a Chamber of Commerce and Industry did not exist because "we took things for granted".

He said that the world is changing and it has become a globalised world.

"We do need bodies like the IMCCI," he added.

Ansari said, "It is a testament to the growing importance of commercial engagement between our two countries".

He said that the IMCCI should focus on the requirements of both sides.

An official spokesman said that bilateral trade between the two countries stood at USD 1.26 billion in 2015 with Indian exports forming roughly 25 per cent of the trade volume.

He said that has emerged as a favoured destination for investments by Indian firms adding that Indian companies have cumulatively invested more that $320 million in Morocco, including in the flagship project, the Indo-Maroc Phosphore SA joint venture.

The last two decades of economic growth have also strengthened India's private sector and it is keen to expand its global operations, the spokesman said.

Earlier in the evening, Ansari visited the Mohammed VI Imam Training Centre which promotes the values of moderate Islam and is actively working on ideologies and beliefs.

The Centre trains a large number of preachers from the Arab world besides Africa, including women.
An association of manufacturers of well-known 'Indori Namkeen' (savouries) today said prices have increased by 12.5 per cent this year due to rise in production cost.

Babulal Jain of 'Namkeen-Mishthana Nirman Evam Vikreta Kalyan Sangh' told PTI "the high quality items which were selling at Rs 160 per kg last year, are now priced at Rs 180 per kg".

He said that rise in the cost of ingredients, fuel as well as the increased labour cost forced the manufacturers to hike the price.
The Indian School of Business (ISB) plans to attract potential students from Africa and the ASEAN region, as a part of its larger strategy to enhance the international diversity.

ISB said it sees these countries as an untapped talent pool that has the potential to contribute to the leadership needs of emerging economies and the world.

In a statement, ISB also said competition to get into the one-year Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGP) was intense this year with the school seeing a 28 per cent increase in applications compared to the previous year.

It has admitted record number of students to the PGP Class of 2017 across its two campuses in Hyderabad and Mohali making it the largest class at any management school in India offering a one-year programme.

ISB's PGP has seen the fastest growth over the years from a class size of just 128 students in 2002 to 905 now, it said.

Dishan Kamdar, Deputy Dean, Programmes at ISB said, "ISB continues to attract the best of experienced professionals from across the world wanting to join the flagship programme to improve their growth prospects."



Interest for admission into ISB also increased on account of a strong placements season earlier in the year with the Class of 2016, which graduated in April, receiving a record 1,149 offers.

The students witnessed an increase of 128 per cent in their pay packages on average when compared to what they were drawing before joining ISB, the statement said.

ISB said it has decided to start accepting GRE scores as a part of its Admissions criteria applicable for those who wish to join the Class of 2018 (academic year 2017-18). This will allow ISB to further strengthen the diversity in the PGP and attract aspirants from pure sciences and liberal arts.
Opposition Congress in Jammu and Kashmir today criticised the state budget, alleging it lacks vision or direction to steer the state out of the "economic problems".

"The budget presented by Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu yesterday has no vision or direction to deal with economic problems of the state," party MLA Nawang Rigzin Jora said during general discussion on the budget proposals in the state Assembly here.

The Congress leader also hit out at the Finance Minister for raking up the provident fund mismanagement over the past 30 years in the state.

"You were the economic advisor to two Chief Ministers (Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and Ghulam Nabi Azad from 2002 to 2008). Why did you not make the suggestions (on managing provident fund) then?" Jora said.

In his budget speech, Drabu criticised the way the provident fund of government employees was handled in the past saying it was a classic case of "Ponzi game".

Jora said the government should move beyond a few small steps taken for the welfare of women folk and introduce gender budgeting in the state.

"When I said move beyond constructing toilets and police stations (for women), I did not mean to say that don't do these things. The government should have gone for gender budgeting. Fifty per cent of your population is women. Create a cell in the planning department and make 50 per cent fund allocation for women in the budget," he said.

The Congress leader also criticised the power budget, saying the government should have focused on utilising the substantial amount from Rs 80,000 crore package announced by the Prime Minister for development of Jammu and Kashmir, for setting up new power projects in the state.

"Why not take Rs 20,000 crore from the PMDP and set up three or four new power projects with 1000 megawatt capacity each in the state?" he said.

Jora alleged that the state was "cheated" in the package announced by then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for Jammu and Kashmir in 2004.

"We were cheated last time. Out of the Rs 25,000 crore package, Rs 14,000 crore were taken by NHPC in the name of Jammu and Kashmir," he added.

Jora also asked the state Finance Minister to roll back the five per cent hike in the levy on Aviation Turbine Fuel, saying it would make air travel to Kashmir much more expensive.

"Kashmir is not the only place that people can visit. You have to make the place affordable for tourists to come here. More and more people today travel by air and you cannot make it more expensive by hiking the ATF levy," he added.

Devinder Rana of National Conference also criticised the budget proposals saying it was just a jugglery of words.

"The issue of PF and investigation cost for police was just a diversionary tactic," he said.

Rana said if the Finance Minister believed that the Provident Fund was a 'Ponzi game', why did he put the Dearness Allowance instalment of the employees in this fund.
Upbeat about India's economic growth potential, Japan Government sponsored fund JOIN today said it is keen to explore investment opportunities in the country's infrastructure space.

Japan Overseas Infrastructure Investment Corporation (JOIN) CEO Takuma Hatano after meeting Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) would play a very important role for India's infrastructure development.

"We should consider how we could work together with the NIIF, namely what we needed firstly is to find the good candidate project. Then we could work together based on a particular project," Hatano said when asked if JOIN is exploring investment opportunities in NIIF.

He said Japanese institutions are looking at government-backed institutions like the NIIF to park their fund. The government holds 49 per cent in NIIF and is looking for investors for the remaining stake in the Rs 40,000 crore fund.

JOIN, Hatano said, has recently met IDFC and other Indian companies.

"Of course India's macro-economic performance is very excellent, but when it comes to private investment from Japan to infrastructure, this is one of the very challenging investments," he said.

Stating that infrastructure investment takes a long time to give returns, He said, this is the right time to make Japanese investment in India.

JOIN is the government-private sponsored fund in Japan that specialises in overseas infrastructure investment, according to its website.

The company supports in building infrastructure through PPP arrangements. It works in collaboration with Japanese companies, banks, institutions (JICA, JBIC, NEXI, etc.) and the government.

Earlier in the day, Jaitley also met Government Pension Investment Fund President Norihiro Takahashi and assured of good returns on investments in India.
The Bihar ruling JD(U) today questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP for nominating "mining mafia" Gopal Narayan Singh as the party's candidate for Rajya Sabha polls from Bihar.

"...Both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP have completely been exposed with the nomination of mining mafia Gopal Narayan Singh for Rajya Sabha poll from Bihar," JD(U) chief spokesman Sanjay Singh told reporters.

"Gopal Narayan Singh has 28 cases against him including those of attempt to murder, robbery, forgery, under arms act, mining act etc. PM and the BJP president Amit Shah should explain as to why a mining mafia has been given a ticket," he said.

Gopal Narayan Singh, who was formerly BJP's state unit president, today filed nomination papers for Rajya Sabha, along with two other party who filed for Legislative Council.

Singh, who was accompanied by party leader and national spokesman Ajay Alok, said Gopal Narayan Singh has been booked under mining act and various sections of IPC including section 307 (attempt to murder), section 353 (assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty), section 337 (causing hurt by act endangering life or personal safety of others).

Alleging that PM's "actions do not match his words", Alok said the Modi government in its first Cabinet decision had asked the Law Ministry to prepare a roadmap to complete the trials of charge-sheeted MPs within a year and if it was not possible, then there should be a provision to debar the such legislators from voting inside the House.

Earlier, when question regarding cases pending against BJP RS nominee was asked to senior party leader Sushil Kumar Modi he had brushed it aside saying "one dozen cases due to political rivalry have been foisted on me too."



In his 'Mann Ki Baat' programme aired on May 22, 2016, the PM talked of protecting the environment but "to my utter surprise, Singh was given ticket who is facing 16 (out of 28) cases of environmental violations," Alok said.

Both the spokesmen, especially Sanjay Singh, who is generally critical of Sushil Modi, today heaped praise on him saying that he (Sushil), politics apart, would have been far better candidate than Gopal Narayan Singh in Bihar's interest.
Accusing Lt Governor Najeeb Jung of acting as a "puppet" of the Centre, AAP today alleged he was not clearing the Delhi government's proposal to regularise 17,000 guest teachers in state-run schools at the behest of BJP.

Demanding that Jung should clear the proposal "without any changes", the party also accused BJP of trying to implement "anti-people Gujarat model" by not regularising people on contract and not letting the LG take any decision on the matter.

"The LG is the Centre's representative and does not take any decision without its consultation. The BJP-led central government is not interested in letting him clear the proposal. He is sitting on it since January and when we asked him about the delay in clearing the proposal, he responded saying he is taking an opinion from Solicitor General.

"He should stop acting as a puppet of the Centre. The LG has no right to delay the matter by raising legal queries as there is a Supreme Court order on this. We demand that the proposal be cleared without any changes," Ashutosh said.

Sources in the LG office had said the government had sent the proposal to the LG office on April 28 and it has been sent to the Additional Solicitor General for legal advice after consultation with Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia.

Citing the Supreme Court order pertaining to contract workers between Umadevi Vs the State of Karnataka, Ashutosh said the experience should be considered while recruiting and the government can give concession in this.

As per the proposal, guest teachers will be given priority while applying for permanent jobs. They will be also given priority on the basis of their experience, exams and age.

"The LG is dilly-dallying the proposal on the pretext of giving weightage to experience even when it is not under his purview. This proves that the Centre is not keen to provide benefit to 17,000 families," Ashutosh said.

Regularising guest teachers was one of the points mentioned in AAP's election manifesto.

Last week, Sisodia, who also holds the Education portfolio, had written to Jung raising the issue.

Ashutosh said the Centre is trying to implement the Gujarat model as over 2 lakh contract teachers are yet to be made permanent in the state.

Dilip Pandey, convenor of the AAP's Delhi unit said BJP was playing "dirty politics" over the issue and it should instead get the proposal cleared from the LG.

He said guest teachers had played an important role in holding summer camps organised by the Delhi government.
Larsen & Tourbo Hydrocarbon Engineering (LTHE) today said it has inked a pact with Parsons to provide engineering solutions in Americas.

LTHE and Parsons will collaborate to provide conceptual engineering, feasibility studies, front-end engineering design, specialty and highend engineering, cost estimating and engineering, procurement and construction management services in the Americas.

"L&T Hydrocarbon Engineering, a leading engineering and construction company and a wholly-owned subsidiary of L&T, announced a teaming agreement with Parsons to provide engineering and design solutions for onshore and offshore projects across the hydrocarbon, fertiliser, chemicals, and modular plant sectors," the company said in a statement.

"LTHE's broad range of offerings across the hydrocarbon spectrum coupled with Parsons' strong programme management capabilities in the Americas will provide a compelling value proposition to the customers," said Subramanian Sarma, CEO & MD of LTHE.

Mike Walsh, who serves as the Group President of Parsons added, "L&T Hydrocarbon Engineering's high-value engineering center based in Mumbai and their hydrocarbon expertise, combined with Parsons' well-established customer relationships, project management and risk management skills, and oil and gas experience in the Americas, provide comprehensive solutions for our customers."



Larsen & Toubro is an Indian multinational engaged in technology, engineering, construction, manufacturing and financial services with USD 16 billion in revenue. It operates in over 30 countries.
Actress Lindsay Lohan has made her first public appearance since she reportedly became engaged to Russian boyfriend Egor Tarabasov.

The 29-year-old actress attended a private screening of Disney sequel "Alice Through the Looking Glass" at London's Bulgari Hotel with the shipping heir, reported Contactmusic.

The "Mean Girls" star wore a black and white Temperley London dress with black platform sneakers, while Egor rocked the casual look with a white T-shirt and denim jacket.

Lohan also posed for photos with her boyfriend, alongside fashion designer Alice Temperley, who designed her outfit.
At least 16 defence personnel, including two Army officers, were today killed in a massive fire that broke out at one of Asia's biggest ammunition depot in Maharashtra's Pulgaon that houses the largest stockpile of weapons in the country.

The fire which started at 1 AM at one of the sheds that housed "highly sensitive ammunition" in the high security central ammunition depot (CAD), spread over 7,000 acres, has been completely doused and the situation brought under control after an overnight operation.

"However, in efforts to douse the fire, two officers and 14 personnel (to include one Army jawan and 13 civilian fire fighting staff) lost their lives and two officers and 15 personnel (to include nine Army Jawans and six civilian fire fighting staff) were injured," Director General of Military Operations Lt Gen Ranbir Singh told reporters in New Delhi.

Loud explosions were heard one after the other as the raging firelit up the night sky.

The cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained and the Army has instituted an inquiry into the incident, Singh said.

"Actions to assess the damage are in progress," the DGMO said. The Army had earlier put the casualty at 17 which has now been revised to 16. It had also earlier said the majority of personnel killed were Defence Security Corps jawans.

Following a directive from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, who was in Pune, rushed to the spot. Army Chief Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag also visited the site.

Modi tweeted, "Pained by loss of lives caused by a fire at central ammunition depot in Pulgaon, Maharashtra. My thoughts are with the bereaved families.

"I pray that those who are injured recover quickly. Have asked RM @manoharparrikar to visit the spot & take stock of the situation", he said.

CAD, Pulgaon is located at about 115 Km from Nagpur, in Maharashtra. The depot is spread over an area of more than 7000 acres and is an important ammunition depot of the Indian Army.

Stocks including bombs, grenades, shells, assorted rifles, missiles and other explosives from various factories comes here first and is then distributed to various forward areas.

As per initial reports, the fire started in one of the sheds at approximately 0100h this morning, and immediate action was taken by the fire fighting parties and Quick Reaction Teams located in the depot by putting the fire fighting mechanism into place as per the laid down procedures.

"This restricted the fire to one shed only which contained highly sensitive ammunition," Lt Gen Singh said.

The injured personnel have been evacuated to Multi Specialty Hospital, Wardha (35 Km from Pulgaon) and are undergoing medical treatment.

The medical condition of the injured personnel is reported to be stable, the DGMO said adding Army medical teams have been moved from Pune to provide specialist medical attention.

He expressed deep condolences to the families of the brave hearts who have lost their lives while protecting and securing the important ammunition depot.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today said there should be a debate on subjects of state funding of elections, electoral reforms and financial reforms.

In her maiden address to the state Assembly post her spectacular return to power, the chief minister said state funding of elections would curb use of black money in polls.

"So much is being said about use of black money in elections. We would like to have a debate on state funding of elections, electoral reforms and financial reforms. If there is state funding of elections the use of black money will stop," Banerjee said.

In an indirect dig, she said that the "festival of democracy" gets fulfilled when everybody can participate in it. "It can't be achieved by imposing curfew."



Banerjee called for leaving all poll season bitterness behind and work unitedly towards development of the state.

"Come, let us all work together for the development of the state. Let us all create an example by working together. I congratulate those who have won. Especially those who have won for the first time," she said.
Elephant attacks continue to claim lives in Chhattisgarh's Korba district as another villager was trampled by a wild jumbo taking the death toll to six in the region this month.

The local forest authority has sought permission to tranquilise two 'rogue' tuskers in order to shift those to another place or kill the pachyderms if necessary.

"Mukhiram Manjhwar (45) was attacked by the jumbo last night while he was sleeping in front of his house at Pidiya village under Kartala forest range," Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) of Korba Forest Division Vivekanand Jha said.

Dori (Mahua fruit) was kept in front of the victim's house and a jackfruit tree was also there. Prima facie it appears that pachyderm was attracted by the smell of Mahua or jackfruit, the DFO said.

So far six villagers, including two women, were killed by three rogue tuskers at separate places in Kartala and Kudmura forest ranges of Korba division this month.

An elderly woman, Samudribai Rathiya, was killed yesterday morning near Charmar village in Kartala forest range when she had gone to pick Mahua fruits.

"Of the three rogue tuskers, one has now joined its herd while two others are still venturing alone in the forests. After monitoring the activities of the elephants for the past few days, we have become certain that the animals have gone rogue," Jha said.

In a letter to Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (wildlife), we have sought his direction into the matter. Besides, permission has also been sought to tranquilise the two tuskers and shift them to other region or kill them if necessary keeping in view the welfare of people, he said.

"The chances of human-animal conflict increases in this season as villagers go in the forest to pluck tendu leaves and pick mahua fruits. After the recent incidents, the villagers have been advised to take precautions and stay alert," the DFO said.

Moreover, Van Samiti (forest committees) have been asked to organise meeting with villagers to discuss the situation and take necessary precautions, Jha added.

The thickly forested northern Chhattisgarh, comprising Surguja, Korba, Raigarh, Jashpur and Korea districts, are notorious for incidents of human-elephant conflict.

The region has witnessed killings of several people and damages to houses and crops by rogueelephantsin the last few years.
World number one Novak Djokovic dropped the first set of his French Open last-16 clash against Roberto Bautista Agut before heavy rain came to his rescue today.

The top seed, chasing an elusive first title in Paris and a career Grand Slam, came onto Court Philippe Chatrier with light rain still falling.

Only 37 minutes of play was possible but in that time, the Serb star was broken three times while carving out two breaks of his own.

The 29-year-old will cross the USD 100 million career prize money barrier if he makes a 10th Roland Garros quarter-final.

But having lost the first set 6-3, he would have been relieved to leave behind the ghostly show court where just a smattering of spectators, huddled beneath umbrellas, braved the miserable chill.

Tuesday's schedule had already been delayed by an hour after Monday's programme was washed away, the first such wipeout in 16 years.

Djokovic had a 4-0 career edge over 14th seed Bautista Agut going into Tuesday's match and won their last clash on clay in Madrid for the loss of just three games.

He had even broken serve in the first game Tuesday after an opening point played out over 30 strokes.

The heavy conditions were also playing into the hands of the underdogs elsewhere on Tuesday in last-16 ties.

On Court Suzanne Lenglen, Tsvetana Pironkova of Bulgaria reeled off all six games played to overturn a 6-2, 3-0 deficit against second seed Agnieszka Radwanska in a match suspended on Sunday night.

Pironkova took the second set 6-3 before play was halted 10 minutes before action on Chatrier was stopped.

On Court One, sixth-seeded Simona Halep was leading Samantha Stosur 5-3 on Sunday but the Australian roared back Tuesday to take the first set 7-6 (7/0).

Stosur was 3-2 up with a break when play was halted.

Austrian hope Dominic Thiem was 5-2 ahead against Spain's Marcel Granollers on Court Two.

Later Tuesday, if conditions allow, defending women's



champion Serena Williams will play Elina Svitolina of Ukraine.

Andy Murray, the second seed, was due to play his quarter-final against Richard Gasquet on Chatrier although that was likely to be put back until Wednesday.

French Open organisers were also looking at taking another financial hit as rain continued to swamp Paris.

Tournament director Guy Forget said that Monday's washout would lead to a loss of around two million euros.

However, with weather conditions set to improve from Wednesday, Forget was reluctant to suggest that the men's final would be pushed back to the third Monday.

"That's looking at the really dark scenario. We're not that bad yet," he said.

"But eventually if they have to play two matches in a row, they will do it. If they have to, I guess they will do it, as well."



The men's final has only been played on the third Monday on two occasions -- in 1973 and 2012 when Rafael Nadal defeated Djokovic.
The body of mountaineer Subhas Pal, who had died on Mount Everest, was brought to Kolkata today.

Pal had passed away while climbing down the peak of the mountain earlier this month.

The state government had sent a team in Kathmandu to coordinate all relief and rescue operations of climbers from the state.

The government has extended all support to the family of the deceased climber.
The body of Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour, who was killed in a US drone attack in Pakistan this month, had been handed over to his relatives in Afghanistan after fulfilling all legal requirements.

In a statement, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan today said the body of Mansour was "handed over to heirs in Afghanistan after fulfilling all legal requirements".

Mansour was killed in a US drone attack on May 21 in troubled Balochistan province.

Earlier, Pakistan had said DNA test will be performed to establish the identity of the man killed in the drone attack.

On Sunday, an interior ministry spokesman had said that it had been confirmed through DNA test that the second person killed in the drone attack in Balochistan was former chief of Afghan Taliban Mullah Mansour.

He said the confirmation was made after conducting a DNA test of Mansour's body and matching it with the DNA of a close relative of the Taliban chief - who had come to claim the body.

"DNA of Mansour matched with one of his relative who came to receive his body from Afghanistan," he had said.
Gulf Arab states grappling with lower oil revenues today formed a new agency to tighten economic cooperation in the region.

The Economic and Development Affairs Authority "will boost coherence, integration and coordination between member states in all economic and development sectors," the Gulf Cooperation Council said in a statement after a summit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

The GCC was founded in 1981 to more deeply integrate the Gulf countries, but analysts say progress has been slow.

The collapse of global oil prices has forced the Gulf monarchies to make unprecedented fuel and energy subsidy cuts and plan to introduce indirect taxation. They have also scaled back spending on large projects.

Oil prices have fallen from more than USD 100 a barrel in early 2014 to around half that level.

The newly formed body "will look into matters such as completing the customs union and the common market of the GCC states", Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told a conference after the summit.

He said the authority "can solve these issues urgently and effectively" to promote cooperation.

No decision has been made on when to start using a single Gulf currency, which has been mooted for years, GCC Secretary General Abdullatif al-Zayani said.

After a summit with the GCC in Riyadh last month, US President Barack Obama said the six-nation GCC will establish a "high-level economic dialogue" with the United States.

It will "focus on adjusting to lower oil prices, increasing our economic ties and supporting GCC reforms", Obama said.

Along with Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter and largest Arab economy, the GCC includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Emirs and kings of the Gulf also decided to hold an annual summit with the British prime minister "to strengthen and intensify cooperation", Jubeir said.

With the United States and France, Britain is a major weapons supplier to Saudi Arabia.

French President Francois Hollande last year became the first Western leader to attend a GCC summit, which was held in the Saudi capital.
West Bengal's new Director General of Police Surajit Kar Purkayastha, who took charge today, said his focus would be on modernisation of the force to meet new challenges.

"The police is facing new challenges everyday, both traditional and non-traditional. We have to train our force to meet these challenges and modernisation also has to be done," Purkayastha said after taking over as the state police chief.

He said the ability of the force has to be increased and there should be more capacity building of personnel.

"Our job is to serve all sections of society," he said.

G M P Reddy handed over the charge to Purkayastha at the state secretariat Nabanna earlier.
Renewed clashes between pro-government forces and Iran-backed rebels killed at least 38 people in Yemen during the past 24 hours, loyalist military sources said today.

The latest fighting comes despite an ongoing ceasefire and UN-brokered peace talks in Kuwait that began in April.

Battles raged in Bayhan, on the border between Shabwa province in the south and Marib in the east.

There was also fighting in Sarwah, an oil-rich area west of Marib, the sources said.

At least 23 rebels and 15 soldiers were killed in both areas, the same sources said.

Bayhan is the only part of Shabwa province still controlled by the Iran-backed rebels, who on Tuesday retook positions seized by loyalists during the past two days, the military sources said.

Fierce fighting in Bayhan on Sunday claimed the lives of 48 fighters, a senior military officer has said.

Meanwhile, media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said that "sniper fire" from the Huthi rebels killed Yemeni journalist Abdullah Azizan while he was covering the clashes in Bayhan on Sunday.

Azizan worked for the local marebpress.Net website.

Forces loyal to President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi are backed by a Saudi-led coalition that began a military campaign against the rebels in March 2015.

Loyalists, backed by coalition firepower, managed to drive rebels out of Shabwa and four other southern provinces last summer.

More than 6,400 people have been killed in Yemen since the coalition began its campaign against the rebels who have controlled the capital Sanaa since September 2014.
said today it will introduce plain packaging on tobacco products, joining a growing list of countries planning similar measures despite the threat of legal action from the industry.

The move, which coincides with 'World No Tobacco Day', means cigarettes must be sold in drab boxes plastered with health warnings and gruesome pictures of smoking-related disease.

Associate Health Minister Sam Lotu-Iiga said that the measure targeted one of the most powerful tools used to get young people hooked on tobacco.

"Twelve New Zealanders die prematurely every day from smoking-related illnesses, each of these deaths is preventable," he said.

first proposed plain packaging in 2013, saying it would "remove the last remaining vestige of glamour from these deadly products".

But it was put on hold pending the outcome of tobacco giant Philip Morris' legal action against the Australian government, which pioneered the introduction of plain packets in 2012.

The lawsuit failed last December and since then a number of countries, including Britain and France, have passed legislation on the issue.

Numerous other countries, including Canada, Singapore, Belgium and South Africa have announced plans to follow suit, according to data from the Canadian Cancer Council.

With momentum building, the World Health Organisation has made "Get Ready For Plain Packaging" the slogan of this year's World No Tobacco Day.

Prime Minister John Key admitted the fact that so many countries were adopting the packing had emboldened his government to ignore the threat of legal action from Big Tobacco.

"They may well take a case against the government, but the advice we have been getting over time now has been that the risks of them being successful... Is reducing," he told reporters.

The New Zealand ban is not immediate. There is a two-month consultation, after which, Lotu-Iiga said that recommendations on implementation would go to the government later this year.

British American Tobacco NZ said it remained "strongly opposed" to plain packaging and reserved the right to take legal action.

"BATNZ hopes that the government will review all the evidence and be cautious about progressing a measure that has failed in Australia," it said in a statement.

A study commissioned by the Australian government found tobacco use dropped 14.4% in the two years after Canberra's world-first ban was introduced.

The Maori Party, which first proposed plain packaging in New Zealand, said smoking rates among the indigenous population were well above average and the ban was long overdue.
In a breather to the municipal corporations in the capital facing shortage of vehicles, the National Green Tribunal today directed the Delhi government to register new diesel vehicles, conforming to BS-IV norms, for garbage disposal and handling of municipal waste.

The green panel directed the municipal corporations to "condemn and dismantle" the vehicles which are over 10-years old and ordered that the new vehicles should be fitted with Global Positioning System (GPS) system.

"In case of corporations...They are permitted to replace the existing diesel vehicles which are 10 years old by new vehicles for carrying of municipal solid waste and other waste...All the new vehicles bought by the corporations shall be compliant to BS-IV norms," a bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar said.

It also made it clear that the municipal corporations would not use the new vehicles for any other purposes besides garbage disposal and carrying of waste.

The order came on the plea filed by advocate Balendu Shekhar, appearing for East Delhi Municipal Corporation, who had sought permission to buy 45 diesel-run vehicles for garbage management as registration of new diesel vehicles above 2000cc is banned in Delhi.

Citing "immediate necessity", the civic body had asked NGT to give it clearance for buying 15 front-end loaders, 15 tippers and 15 tractors with trolleys.

Besides EDMC, South Delhi Municipal Corporation had also sought directions to the Delhi government to register new diesel vehicles, conforming to BS-IV norms, which it plans to buy for garbage disposal.

The plea moved by SDMC contended that the green panel last year had banned registration of new diesel vehicles as well as re-registration after 10 years.

Later, the apex court also banned registration of diesel- run SUVs and cars having engine capacity beyond 2000 cc in Delhi and National Capital Region till March 31.

Due to this, the transport department was not registering the newly procured vehicles which conform to BS-IV norms and not re-registering the old vehicles, it had said.
Keen to shed the "outsider" tag, Union Minister Nirmala Seetharaman today promised to learn Kannada and protect interest of Karnataka, as she filed her nomination for the June 11 biennial elections to fill four Rajya Sabha seats from the state.

Speaking to reporters after filing her nomination on the last day to enter the fray, Seetharaman, the Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, said she will ensure Karnataka's interest in the Parliament.

"I have filed the nomination as BJP karyakarta, with Yeddyurappaji, other state leaders and Ananth Kumarji being there. I'm fully confident (of win)," She said.

"I will take care of interest of Karnataka in everyway. I'm going to be a servant here being sent by honourablePrime Minister who calls himself Pradhan Sevak. I will be alsoa sevak, and because I will have to represent Karnataka,I will make sure that the interest of Karnataka will beensured in the Parliament," she added.

Seetharaman was accompanied by BJP state President B S Yeddyurappa, Union Minister Ananth Kumar and Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Jagadish Shettar among others.

To a question, she said "I will learn Kannada, I know a little bit now, but I will learn to speak inKannada."



Amid mounting public pressure including protests byKannada groups against renomination of Union Urban developmentMinister Venkaiah Naidu from Karnataka, BJP CentralElection Committee decided to field Seetharaman in his place. Naidu will be contesting from Rajasthan.

A social media campaign was launched against Naidu's re-nomination on the ground that he had not done enough for Karnataka from where he secured three Rajya Sabha terms, and that he did not even learn Kannada.

To a question on Naidu, Seetharaman said "Venkaiah Naiduji is a very senior leader of our party, a former President, we all respect him. He has done his best, we will continue the tradition... Interest of Karnataka is safe in the hands of BJPand being led by Yeddyurappaji all of us will do our maximum best," she added.

Three Congress candidates including former Union ministers Jairam Ramesh, Oscar Fernandesand former IPS officer K C Ramamurthy and B M Farooq of Janata Dal (Secular) had yesterday filed their nominations.

Congress' decision to field third candidate,Ramamurthy, has given tense moments to JD(S), which needs fiveadditional votes to see its candidate through, as it has 40 members.

But to the JDS' discomfiture, five of its MLAs, including Zameer Ahmed, havereportedly decided to back the third candidate of Congress.
Maharashtra BJP today denied that there was discontent among party workers over Pravin Darekar being nominated for polls to state Legislative Council.

"There are no discontent among party workers. The atmosphere is jubilant and everyone is excited for upcoming Rajya Sabha and MLC elections," state BJP unit chief Raosahab Danve said here.

He was asked if there was any discomfort among leaders and party workers in the wake of Darekar being made one of the nominees for polls to 10 MLC seats.

Darekar, a former MNS leader recently quit the party after his name surfaced in alleged co-operative bank scam and later joined BJP.

On allegations levelled against Darekar, Danve said, "Such accusations are common in political life. Until and unless it is proven guilty (by court), he is not guilty."



Darekar today filed his paper for the MLC elections.

Danve said as of now five candidates have filed their nomination for MLC elections.

They are Sadabhau Khot, Vinayak Mete, Surjit Singh, Praveen Darekar and R N Singh.

Meanwhile, Danve when asked to comment on controversy surrounding state revenue minister Eknath Khadse, chose to evade the question, saying, "We are here to talk on filing of papers (nomination) and there is excitement among party workers.
Normal rainfall is expected in most districts in Tamil Nadu, while four districts including Coimbatore would receive deficit rainfall during the South West Monsoon from June to September, says a TNAU study.

Normal Rainfall (+19 per cent from mean seasonal rainfall) is expected in Ariyalur, Chennai, Cuddalore, Dindigul, Dharmapuri, Erode, Karur, Kancheepuram, Kanyakumari, Krishnagiri, Madurai, Namakkal, Perambalur, Pudukottai, Salem, Sivagangai, Thanjavur, Theni, Tirunelveli, Tuticorin, Tiruchirappalli, Nilgiris, Tiruppur, Tiruvallur, Tiruvannamalai, Villupuram, Vellore and Virudhunagar.

Deficit Rainfall (-19 per cent to -59 per cent from mean seasonal rainfall) is expected in Coimbatore, Nagapattinam, Ramanathapuram and Tiruvarur districts, according to a data released by Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU).

Tamil Nadu is a rain shadow area to South West Monsoon, nearly 32 per cent of the total annual rainfall of the state is received from this monsoon, Director of Crop Management C Jeyanthi and Professor and Head, Agro Climate Research Centre, TNAU, S Paneerselvam told reporters here today.

Farmers of Dharmapuri, Krishnagiri, Salem, Nilgiris and Kanyakumari are benefited from this seasonal rainfall to take up strategic farm decisions, they said.

District level rainfall forecast for the Southwest monsoon over Tamil Nadu was developed at the Centre, based on the Southern Oscillation Index of summer season and Sea Surface Temperature values of Pacific and Indian Oceans using Australian Rainman International V.4.3.Software, Jeyanthi said.

The historical rainfall data collected from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University Stations were used to represent the district rainfall information.

In the absence of data from research station in a particular district, data from Rainman software were used, they added.
Union Minister Jitendra Singh today said India is not afraid of any threat by Pakistan's nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan and that "we are prepared to tackle everything".

"We are not afraid of any such threat and we are prepared to tackle everything," Singh told reporters, reacting to Khan's remarks that Pakistan could target New Delhi anytime.

He said that the central government has taken cognisance of the threat made by the Pakistan nuclear scientist.

"Nuclear armed Pakistan has the ability to target Delhi in five minutes," Khan had said while addressing a gathering on the 18th anniversary of Pakistan's first nuclear test.

Replying to a question regarding the return and rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits, Singh said the central government under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi was committed to honourable return and rehabilitation of the community.
Oman, which hosted nearly 3 lakhs Indian travellers in 2015, is expecting 15-20 per cent rise in footfalls this year, mainly backed by the wedding destination, and MICE (meetings, incentives, conferencing, exhibitions) segment.

"We have received 2,99,022 tourists from India in 2015, which is 17 per cent growth from 2014. With growing interest in the wedding destination and MICE segments, we are expecting 15-20 per cent growth in travellers visiting from India in 2016," Oman Tourism Ministry, India Representative, Lubaina Sheerazi told PTI here.

She said Oman targets high-end, evolved, neo-educated travellers from India, who are looking for a destination filled with natural beauty and provides authentic Arabian experience.

"Our target segment from India mainly consists of families, couples, business and weddings. And we mostly look at age group between 25-65 years," she added.

Meanwhile, Oman is set to become a major regional centre for MICE, for which the country's Tourism Ministry has established a new Convention Bureau.

"The objective of the Bureau is to support the international and local organisations in hosting their events and cater to their requirements. The main aim is to promote Oman as an ideal destination for the MICE tourism sector," Oman Tourism Ministry Director General of Tourism Promotion Salim Al Mamari said.

Oman saw a growth of 17.7 per cent in total international visitor numbers in 2015 to 2.4 million.

The Arab country has an ambitious new tourism strategy and plans to increase the number of international visitor to 5.3 million by 2040.
Videsh Ltd (OVL), the overseas arm of state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) has signed a pact with the trading arm of Azerbaijan's state energy company SOCAR (State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic) to foray into oil trading.

To begin with, OVL's share of oil from the Azeri, Chirag and Guneshli (ACG) group of fields in Azerbaijan will be traded through the new venture.

BP-operated Azeri-Chirag-Deepwater Guneshli (ACG) field is located about 100 km east of Baku and is the largest oilfield in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian basin.

It produced an average 634,000 barrels per day (31.3 million tonnes in total) oil in 2015. OVL has 2.72% stake in the field which it had bought from US energy firm Hess for about $1 billion.

The memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed on May 27 at Geneva, the company said in a statement.

"The objective of the MoU is to explore possibilities of joint marketing of OVL's crude oil portfolio by leveraging SOCAR trading's experience in oil trading," it said.

The MoU was signed by S P Garg, Director (Finance), OVL and Arzu Azimov, CEO, SOCAR.

Initially, both parties agreed to initiate discussion on Joint Marketing Agreement in respect of OVL's equity crude from ACG, Azerbaijan.

"Based on the performance of this agreement both parties will mutually agree to optimise price realisation of other crudes from OVL's portfolio either through joint marketing or joint venture route," it said.

OVL has 36 projects in 17 countries including Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Libya, Mozambique, Myanmar, Russia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, Vietnam and New Zealand.

It currently produces 165,000 barrels of oil and oil equivalent gas per day and has a total oil and gas reserves of about 632.65 million tons of oil equivalent as on March 31.

SOCAR trading is the international marketing and development arm of SOCAR. SOCAR trading was incorporated in December 2007 with a mandate to market Azeri barrels produced from the ACG field and other surrounding fields in Azerbaijan.
A top former Pakistani official was arrested today for his alleged involvement in the issuance of National Identity Card to Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour who was killed in a US drone attack, becoming the fifth official to be arrested in the high-profile case.

National Database and Registration Authority's (NADRA) former assistant director Ghulam Muhammad Bugti was arrested by Federal Investigation Agency for his suspected involvement in the issuance of identification papers to the Taliban chief.

Mansour was killed in a US drone attack on May 21 in troubled Balochistan province.

Officials recovered a Pakistani identity card and passport under the fake name Wali Muhammad from the site of the attack, prompting interior minister Nisar Ali Khan to announce that those who helped the Taliban chief get the documents will be punished.

An official said Bugti was arrested by FIA for his role in issuing the ID card in 2002. Bugti retired in 2007.

Bugti has been shifted to FIA's regional office for interrogation.

"The scope of investigation is being widened," an unnamed FIA officer was quoted as saying by the Dawn.

Earlier, FIA arrested former assistant commissioner Qila Abdullah Rafiq Tareen for verifying Mullah Mansour's passport, in addition to three NADRA officials in Qila Abdullah and provincial capital Quetta for issuing Mansour's NIC.

"All officials are being probed and will be punished according to the law," the official said.
A Pakistani driver has been arrested and charged in a court here for blackmailing an Indian couple after secretly filming them getting intimate in his limousine while honeymooning in Dubai.

The driver, identified only as MS, has been accused of blackmailing the two honeymooners whom he filmed getting intimate in the tinted cabin of his limousine while he was driving them around the city.

The Indian newlyweds were visiting Dubai on a four-day honeymoon when the 28-year-old driver secretly filmed them.

He later sent a message to the husband on WhatsApp to try to extort Dirhams 2,000 (about Rs 36,500) from him. He sent the clip he had of the couple to the husband and threatened to circulate it on social media sites, a court was told yesterday.

The Pakistani man pleaded guilty to charges of blackmail and breaching others' privacy by using technology, the Khaleej Times reported.

The incident, as told by the defendant himself during the course of investigation, happened in February.

The driver said he filmed the couple getting intimate by using his mobile phone.

He dropped them at their destination and later in the evening on the same day he sent the husband a message, blackmailing him.

The accused was arrested by police officers when he went to meet the husband two days later at the hotel to collect the money.

The husband's friend, an Indian businessman, said, "As I learnt from my friend, the car was tinted. But later my friend got a call from the driver asking him for a sum of money or to give him his wife or he would circulate the clip online."



They went together to the police station and lodged a complaint against the driver. "I followed up on the complaint later and met the accused at the hotel as my friend left the country then."



Prosecutors accused the suspect of molesting the couple, blackmailing them and abusing the telecommunication system.
Police in northern Greece say a Pakistani man is being treated in hospital after being shot at a makeshift camp for migrants and refugees near the border with Macedonia.

The 19-year-old man, whose injury was described as not life-threatening, was hospitalized early today and told police he had been attacked by another Pakistani migrant who hasn't been identified, authorities said.

About 300 people are staying at the makeshift camp that sprung up near the border last week after the government cleared a huge settlement in the area.

Also today, four Syrian men were hospitalized with minor injuries after a fight broke out at a government shelter for migrants in northern Greece.

More than 50,000 migrants and refugees remain stranded in Greece following European border closures earlier this year.
Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik today dedicated 200 hostels for dalit and tribal students and launched a programme for distribution of 20,000 forest land documents among beneficiaries here.

Education is the only means for tribals and dalits to join the mainstream of the society, Patnaik said, adding "Odisha is the leading state in the country for providing education to the students of backward communities. My government always gives priority to the education of the tribal and dalit students of the state."



The government has set up more than 1600 schools and constructed more than 5000 hostels for the students belonging to the "downtrodden" section and has also implemented Akankhya and Anwesha schemes to provide opportunity to about 26,000 SC, ST and dalit students to study in public schools in urban areas, he said.

The government has set up 10 Kalinga Model Residential Schools for poor students of and backward communities in the state. "Classes would begin in these schools from 2018," he said.

Inaugurating the forest land patta distribution, Patnaik assured the beneficiaries that they would be included in all social security programmes.
Poland launched a fresh bid today to extradite Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski to the United States to face sentencing over a 1977 case of statutory rape.

Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro announced he has appealed to the Supreme Court to overturn an October ruling that Polanski should not face extradition, saying no-one should be above the law.

"He is accused of a terrible crime against a child, the rape of a child," Ziobro, who is also prosecutor general, told Polish public radio.

"Were he a teacher, a doctor, a plumber or a painter, I'm sure any country would have extradited him to the United States long ago."



The announcement appears to be part of what the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) government, which took office after October elections, touts as a moral revolution in strongly Catholic Poland.

Polanski is still wanted by the United States for sentencing over the 1977 statutory rape of Samantha Gailey after a photoshoot in Los Angeles.

He was arrested after Gailey, now Geimer, accused him of forcing her to have sex after drugging her.

She was 13 at the time. Polanski was 43.

He pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a minor, or statutory rape, avoiding a trial, but then fled the country fearing a hefty sentence.

Jerzy Stachowicz, a lawyer for the 82-year-old French-Polish director, told AFP that Ziobro's decision was not a surprise.

"We were expecting this. Ziobro had previously announced he was going to do this," he said.

He also confirmed that "Polanski is currently not in Poland", without disclosing his current whereabouts.

Ziobro's move is an attempt to reverse an October ruling by a court in the southern city of Krakow which ruled that Polanski should not be sent to the United States, a decision prosecutors agreed was "justified".

"Had Poland accepted the US extradition request, it would have violated the rights of Mr Polanski and at the same time, the European Convention on Human Rights," judge Dariusz Mazur said at the time.

The Krakow court was fiercely critical of the original US investigation into the filmmaker's case, saying the US judges and prosecutors had flouted "the rules of a fair trial".

And one of his lawyers at the time said the decision "ends



the legal proceedings" against Polanski.

The Polish Supreme Court can either uphold the decision not to extradite Polanski or send the case back to a lower court.
Archaeologists in China have established that Chinese were stargazers from ancient times after studying pottery relics dating back 5,000 years, the earliest physical evidence of astronomy ever discovered.

Experts at a museum in the central Henan Province have been sorting through pottery pieces decorated with drawings of the sun, the moon, constellations, solar halos and even comets.

The relics date from the New Stone Age and were found at Dahe Village, in the suburb of Zhengzhou, capital of central China's Henan Province, which is known for the oracle bones discovered in the late 19th century.

"They are the earliest physical evidence of astronomy ever discovered in China, and we believe more will be uncovered here," Hu Jizhong, curator of the Dahe Village Relics Museum was quoted as saying by state-run Xinhua agency.

Archaeologists believe the star decorations reflect the close links between astronomy and agriculture.

"They watched closely changes in the stars to see if or how they would affect the harvest. They discovered regular patterns and recorded them to show their awe of nature or the heavens," Hu said.

But the stars were also part of the aesthetics of the time.

"Our research shows the people here lived free of hunger, having plenty of food, such as sorghum, millet, fish and fowls, so they could contemplate the beauty of life on their pottery. Besides stars, we can also see birds, fish, flowers and trees," he added.

The museum is home to thousands of pieces of the pottery discovered since the 1970s with more than 30 different patterns.

"The world of our ancestors some 5,000 years ago was not all survival, struggle and hardship. It had a bright side with beauty, wisdom and hope," Hu said.
Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad today visited widows of Vrindavan Ashram in Mathura district to issue Aadhaar numbers to them, calling it a "high watermark" of Digital India.

"Creating Aadhaar for widows of Vrindavan, one of the most neglected section of society, is a high watermark of Digital India under leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. I keep doing a lot of other works, but this is one of the most important moments of my life," Prasad said here.

Till date, 15.2 crore Aadhaars have been generated in Uttar Pradesh, which is 72 per cent of the projected population of 21.12 crore in the state in 2015.

In Mathura district, 18.44 lakh Aadhaars have been generated, which is 68.5 per cent of the projected population of 26.93 lakh of the district in 2015.

"Issuing them Aadhaar reinforces that Digital India is for the poor and underprivileged. They (widows of Vrindavan Ashram) now have a digital identity. All governmental benefits will go into their account directly. They can enjoy benefits of public distribution scheme, Jan Dhan Yojana and others," Prasad said.

He said the success of Aadhaar is a proof that governance can be improved through technology.

In 2015-16, the government transferred Rs 61,000 crore to 30 crore beneficiaries.

He added that 3.5 crore duplicate beneficiaries were weeded out and over Rs 15,000 crore were saved in 2014-15 under the direct benefit transfer scheme.

The minister also said the government is working on a mobile application that will give access to over 1,000 services from the Centre and state governments and will be launched by December 2016.
President Pranab Mukherjee today paid a brief visit to the city to attend a family programme at Howrah.

After arriving at the N S C Bose Airport, the President left for Howrah where he attended a programme at a close relative's place.

Mukherjee spent 1 hour 15 minutes at the relative's house at Kasundia area. He did not speak to the media persons present there.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee met the President at the RCTC Helicopter Ground.

Earlier, Governor K N Tripathi, state Agriculture Minister Purnendu Bose and other officials received the President at the airport.

He left in the afternoon.
Union ministers Maneka Gandhi today said the government has provided uniform to all Anganwadi workers besides their promotion after 10 years of service as she insisted their services should not be misused.

"We have extended several benefits to Anganwadi workers such as promotion after 10 years of service, uniform to all workers," the Union Minister for Women and Child Development said here.

She said all state governments have been instructed not to misuse the services of these workers for other works.

Earlier this month, Maneka had said Anganwadi workers have been "misused" by way of being made to work extra hours and even attend political meetings or greet VIPs.

She was here with her Cabinet colleague Mahesh Sharma to attend functions to mark the Modi government's two years in office.

MoS Culture and Tourism Sharma said, under the Mrida Swasthya Prabandhan Yojana, the previous government had spent only Rs 36 crore during two years while the present government has spent Rs 453 crore during the same number of years.

He said Rs 100 crore have been provided by the Ministry of Culture for 350th birth anniversary celebrations of 10th Sikh Guru, Gobind Singh.

150th birth centenary of Lala Lajpat Rai is also being celebrated, he said.

Sharma said under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, 17,000 toilets were constructed in Punjab in the past two years and Moga, Ludhiana, Bathinda districts have performed better as far as implementation of the scheme is concerned.

Under Jan Dhan Yojana, 48,67,473 bank accounts were opened in Punjab and Rs 1580.98 crore deposited, he said, according to an official release.

In the health sector, an "AIIMS-level hospital" will be established at Bathinda and renovation of medical colleges of Amritsar and Patiala are being undertaken, he added.

Sharma said 20,000 LPG connections were provided to BPL families in the state and under PM Gram Sadak Yojana 1,282 km of road length have been constructed.
As the LDF government face differences in its own ranks over the Athirappilly hydro- electric project, Kerala Power Minister Kadakampally Surendran today said no project would be implemented ignoring the sentiments of people.

However, he said the state needed mega power projects to meet the growing demand for energy.

Addressing a meet-the-press programmes here, Surendran said the government would proceed with any project only after holding detailed discussions and reaching a consensus.

"The government is not for any controversy. We will go ahead only after arriving at a consensus among various stakeholders including environmentalists. But, for the state's growth, mega power projects are necessary... No project would be implemented ignoring the sentiments of people," he said.

Surendran was referring to the protests by Congress and others and differences expressed by LDF partner CPI over the government favouring implementation of the project in ecologically sensitive Athirappilly.

Various environment activists and groupsespecially 'Chalakkudy River Samrakshana Samithi', the outfit which campaigns for the conservation of river Chalakkudy where the proposed Athirappilly hydel project is to come, have already come out against the government's move to revive the project.

The long pending hydro-electric project has come into focus now after Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan pitched for it during his recent New Delhi visit.

Stating that the government was not "stubborn" in implementing any project, Surendran said "What we said was only our approach to the project. But we will take a decision only after taking into account the limitations of the state and after a detailed discussion with the public society."



The Minister also said the state could not go forward in the coming years with the minor power projects producing meagre two or three megawatt.

Detailing the present power situation in the state, he said the demand was increasing by about 60 per cent annually whereas the generation was not increasing correspondingly.

"What Kerala needed is mega power projects with less investment cost," he said.

New Leader of the Opposition in the assembly Ramesh Chennithala had yesterday said a public debate over the project was necessary to form a consensus.

Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh has criticised Vijayan's move to push the long pending project, terming it a "perfect recipe for ecological disaster".

(REOPENS MDS 2)



Surendran said the government would also take steps to tap the renewable energy sources like wind and solar.

A 200-megawatt solar park in Kasaragod district would be commissioned and produce at least 50 megawatt by the year end



"The agenda of the LDF government is to address the stalemate in the production and transmission in the power sector," he said.

As part of this, the government would prepare a master plan to complete in a time-bound basis the work on a 400 KV transmission line, 'Edamon-Kochi', to draw power from Kudankulam Nuclear Power station in neighbouring Tamil Nadu, he said.

The project had been delayed due to the protest among rubber growers in certain areas against erecting transmission towers, the Minister added.
Expressing the Centre's willingness to convert the East Coast Road from Chennai to Kanyakumari as a National Highway, Union Minister of State for Road Transport and Shipping Pon Radhakrishnan today sought the cooperation of the state government for the project.

Addressing a meeting, organised in connection with the Narendra Modi government's two-year anniversary celebrations here, he said the Centre was ready with Rs 10,000 crore for the project.

"Unfortunately the Tamil Nadu government is not giving its approval for the project," he said.

He also said the Centre was willing to set up an All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Tamil Nadu, but if it should come up in Madurai, the state government should provide land.

The Centre planned to convert 70 km stretch from Karaikudi-Pattukottai-Thanjavur section and 109-km stretch Srivilliputhur-Sivakasi-Tiruchuli-Parthibanur as NH.

Work on Madurai-Dhanushkodi stretch was going on, he said.

The National Highways Authority was implementing road projects to the tune of Rs 10,138 crore in the state and had allocated Rs 30,000 crore for road development works.

The Centre would also focus on ferry service to Puducherry and its cost was low and it would also reduce pollution. It would cost only 30 paise per person per km for the ferry service, while train and road services would cost several times more.

He reiterated that Colachel port in Tamil Nadu would be one among the big new ports to be created in India at a cost of Rs 21,000 crore.

Under Setu Bharatham Project, 1,500 bridges would taken up for repair and reconstruction at a cost of Rs 30,000 crore.

A 7,000 km stretch of border roads covering the entire country would be taken up.

He urged his party men to enroll more people under various insurance schemes and other schemes so that government would get encouraged to announce more schemes for the benefit of the poor.

Radhakrishnan said economic corridor road had been completed from Kolkata to Vijayawada, and would be taken up from Vijayawada to Kanyakumari. Sanction for Vijayawada to Chennai corridor had already been given, he said.

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Radhakrishnan expressed confidence over "Jallikattu" (taming the bull) being organised in the state as it was a sport symbolising Tamils' bravery.

At the meeting, HRD Minister Smriti Irani said success of "Jan Dhan Yojana" proved that people had trust in the NDA government, and were willing to deposit their hard earned money with the banks.

The previous government had ignored requests of downtrodden people like those belonging to Narikurava Community, to add them in the scheduled tribe list, she alleged and referred to a Narikurava Woman Selvarani's speech thanking the NDA government for including them in the list.

The government was also committed to providing one crore homes for people in the rural areas, she said, adding, insurance premium for farmers has been brought down to two per cent from 25 per cent.
A former US soldier known as Rambo has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for conspiring in a plot to kill a Drug Enforcement Administration agent. Joseph Hunter was sentenced today by US District Judge Laura Taylor Swain in Manhattan.

The 51-year-old, 20-year Army veteran cried as he apologized for his crimes.

Showing some leniency, the judge credited Hunter for an honorable military career that led to numerous commendations. But she said his "grave and serious" crimes warranted stern punishment.

Hunter was brought to the United States in 2013 to face conspiracy charges. Prosecutors say he led two other ex-soldiers an American and a German in an USD 800,000 plot to kill the agent in Liberia.

Hunter pleaded guilty after his arrest in the sting operation.
A rare, endemic and endangered species of wild citrus fruit having medicinal properties which was so far reported only from Meghalaya, has now been found in a remote village of Manipur.

A team of field biologists and researchers of Centre for Conservation of Nature and Cultivation of Science (CCNCS), Manipur, reported the species 'citrus indica' commonly known as Indian Wild Orange from Dailong village in Tamenglong district earlier this month.

"The species is considered to be the most primitive and ancestors of all cultivated citrus fruits in the world and endemic to north-east India. Earlier the species was reported only from Nokrek Biosphere Reserve in the Garo Hills of Meghalaya," said lead researcher and environmentalist R K Birjit Singh.

The species is known to local villagers as 'Biurengthai' and is known to have medicinal properties.

After a biodiversity assessment and research programme, the team of experts have asked Manipur Biodiversity Board for declaring Dailong village as one of the key biodiversity heritage site of Manipur.

"It is blessed with an extraordinary living laboratory, some of the last and healthiest tropical forest left in the entire region of north-east India," Singh said.

Rongmei tribes of Dailong and other villages of Tamenglong district were conserving forest in the form of sacred groves known as 'Raengan', which is a precursor to all conservation activities of all the tribes in the hill districts of Manipur.

S Khonachand Singh, assistant professor, department of Botany, Imphal College, N Sony Meetei, Asst professor, Dept of Zoology, Moirang College and Kh Brajesh Singh, wildlife filmmaker were part of the research team.
Medical services at all six government college hospitals in Rajasthan were affected as nearly 4,000 resident doctors went on strike in protest against the decision to send their answer scripts for evaluation to other states, prompting state government to announce stern action against them.

The strike began last night, hitting the functioning of hospitals associated with the colleges.

Health Minister Rajendra Rathore held a meeting with officials and directed them to terminate the admission in PG of those in-service resident doctors who are on strike and give admission to the students in waiting list against their seats.

"This is a stubborn attitude of the resident doctors and will not be tolerated. Therefore appropriate action against them is being taken," the minister told reporters here.

The resident doctors who are doing their PG and are in government service will have to face action, he said.

Admission in PG of such in-service doctors in all six government medical colleges will be terminated and they will be called at the medical and health directorate. Admission would be given to students in waiting list in the first year of PG against the termination of such resident doctors, he said.

Similarly, Rathore also gave directions to give posting within three days to more than 1,200 newly-appointed doctors to help tide over the crisis.

He also directed officials to make alternative arrangements to normalise the situation in the hospitals.

Vice President of Jaipur Association of Resident Doctors, Akash Mathur, said the students should have been informed earlier about the government's decision to send answer sheets to other states for evaluation.

"Only few days are left for the examination and the authorities should have informed us at least six months ago so that we could prepare accordingly. Instead of sending copies to other states, the government should improve the academic standards," he said.

Principal Secretary Medical Education Mukesh Sharma said that it was necessary to follow the guidelines of the Medical Council of India with regard to examination.
Limited (RIL) has sold its stake in African fuel retailer GAPCO (Gulf Africa Petroleum Corporation's) to Total SA of France for an undisclosed sum.

Total SA, which is already a leading retailer of petroleum products in Africa, will acquire Gulf Africa Petroleum Corporation's (GAPCO) assets in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, sources said.

RIL had in September 2007 bought a clutch of fuel stations and storage facilities in one of the fastest growing regions in Africa.

Gulf Africa Petroleum Corporation is a holding company incorporated in Mauritius with affiliates in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. RIL's overseas arm Reliance Exploration & Production DMCC, owns 76% stake while Fortune Oil Corporation, Mauritius has the remaining.

Total SA has acquired two logistical terminals in Mombasa, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, as well as a retail network of around 100 service stations.

The acquisition will complementary to Total's existing operations in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania and will strengthen its logistics in the region.
Shares of IT services firm Rolta came under heavy selling pressure today, falling by over 8 per cent following concerns over rating downgrade.

The stock dived 8.30 per cent to settle at Rs 71.80 on BSE. During the day, it dropped 9 per cent to Rs 71.25.

At NSE, it plunged 8.54 per cent to close at Rs 71.75.

On the volume front, 6.21 lakh shares of the company changed hands at BSE and over 27 lakh at NSE during the day.

S&P Global Ratings has lowered its long-term corporate credit rating on Rolta India to 'CCC-' from 'B+'.

B rating indicates that the obligor currently has the capacity to meet its financial commitment on the obligation whereas CCC rating means the obligation is currently vulnerable to non-payment and is dependent on favourable business, financial and economic conditions.

S&P Global Ratings has also lowered long-term issue rating to 'CCC-' from 'B+' on senior unsecured notes issued by Rolta Americas and Rolta.

"We lowered the rating on Rolta because the company missed a USD 6.8 million interest payment on its 10.75 per cent 2018 unsecured notes. We are also uncertain of the company's ability to meet its interest payment," S&P Global Ratings credit analyst Ashutosh Sharma said.

The payment was due on May 16, 2016.

"We understand that Rolta intends to make the payment within the 30-day grace period ending June 15, 2016. However, we do not have any information on the company's current liquidity position, which seems to have unexpectedly deteriorated," he said.
National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has recommended Rs 5 lakh relief to the family of a Dalit boy killed in a mysterious blast at a police officer's official residence in Uttar Pradesh.

Master Mukesh, alias Chotu Panika, was 15 years old when he was sent by his parents with a police officer to help him in his domestic chores and also pursue studies with his support.

The incident had occurred on August 7, 2011 when Mukesh was cleaning the residence of a station officer in the campus of Police Station Obra in Sonebhadra district of Uttar Pradesh, an NHRC statement said.

The parents of the boy did not raise any suspicion over the incident but the issue was not only about knowing the exact reason behind the blast but also the age of the boy who was employed as a domestic aid by a government servant possibly against the provisions of Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, the Commission said.

During the course of a series of notices to the concerned officers of UP government and responses received, the age of the boy was eventually confirmed as being 15 years and one month at the time of the incident as per a school certificate but the reason of the blast still remained a mystery.

"The Commission found it very strange that the police authorities could not gather any forensic evidence to find out the cause of explosion in a government house in which a boy was killed," NHRC said.

The Commission said it could not accept reports that nobody responsible for the blast could be identified and charged sheeted.

"It also could not accept the stand of the District Magistrate, Sonebhadra, that it was not possible to grant any monetary relief to the family members of the deceased," the Commission said while asking the DGP, UP to conduct an inquiry in the matter through a responsible agency and ascertain the actual cause of explosion and the persons behind it.

He was also directed to inquire how the young boy was engaged in performing such a work which took his life and take appropriate action against the guilty. He was told that all those concerned must be examined.

Further, the Chief Secretary of the state government was directed to consider granting monetary relief to the victim's family as he lost his life in an explosion while working in a government accommodation.

In response, the Chief Secretary said the inquiry of the incident has been handed over to CB, CID and that the state government has no objection to grant relief.

Therefore, the Commission recommended that Rs 5 lakh be paid as relief to the next of kin of the deceased. The state government has been asked to submit proof of payment and a status report of the inquiry returnable within six weeks.
North Korea apparently failed with an attempted missile launch today, the latest in a series of setbacks for a ballistic weapons programme that aspires to threaten the US mainland.

South Korea's defence ministry detected the dawn launch effort, which Japan condemned as an unacceptable and "provocative" act.

The ministry declined to speculate on the missile type, but military sources cited by local media said it was a powerful, medium-range "Musudan" that has already undergone three failed launches this year.

UN resolutions ban North Korea from any use of ballistic missile technology, although it regularly fires short-range missiles into the sea off its east coast.

Today's effort came with tensions still running high on the divided Korean peninsula following the North's fourth nuclear test in January and long-range rocket launch a month later.

"We believe that it was a failure," said Jeon Ha-Gyu, spokesman for the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff



"As to why and how it failed, we are in the process of analysing that," Jeon told a press briefing.

"We are maintaining a strong defence posture with potential further provocations by the North in mind," he added.

In April, the North failed three times to test fire a Musudan, which has an estimated range of anywhere between 2,500 and 4,000 kilometres.

The lower range covers the whole of South Korea and Japan, while the upper range would include US military bases on Guam.

"North Korea's repeated ballistic missile launches are serious, provocative acts against the international community, including Japan," Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida told a regular press briefing.

"We absolutely cannot accept this," Kishida said.

First unveiled as an indigenous missile at a military parade in Pyongyang in October 2010, the Musudan has never been successfully flight-tested.

The three failures in April were seen as an embarrassment for the Pyongyang leadership, coming ahead of a ruling party congress in May that was meant to celebrate the country's achievements.

South Korea's Yonhap agency quoted official sources as saying Tuesday's missile may have exploded on its mobile launcher.

"The explosion is presumed to have inflicted serious injuries on personnel in the immediate vicinity," Yonhap said.

During the party congress, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un personally extended an offer of military dialogue with the South aimed at easing tensions.
Filmmaker Satish Kaushik is all set to return to direction with a biopic based on a man from Uttar Pradesh, who was declared dead by the government.

The director said the untitled project is currently in the scripting stage and will go on floors by this year end.

"My next is going to be about this man, Lal Bihari, who was declared dead by the government. It is a true story. I had bought the rights to make the film on him around 2004-2005 but during those days not many biopics were being made," Kaushik told PTI.

"He took nearly 14 years to prove that he was alive. So that is why he is called Lal Bihari Mritak. The story fascinated me," he added.

Kaushik, who last helmed "Gang of Ghosts" in 2014, feels it is the best time to make the film as cinema is undergoing a change.

"Now, I am excited to revisit the subject. Today, cinema is changing and we have scope to tell different kind of stories. My film is a black comedy, it is a funny story."



The 60-year-old "Tere Naam" director says his film will not be a "star" centric project and is still looking to lock the right cast.

"I can't reveal all of that (casting) yet. We are still in the process of looking for actors to play the part. To make it real, we would want someone fresh, unique. This will not be a 'star' film," he said.
Saudi Arabia intercepted a ballistic missile fired from Yemen the military coalition supporting the Yemeni government against rebels said.

It was the second missile launch from Yemen yesterday since UN-brokered peace talks began in Kuwait on April 21 between the Huthi Shiite rebels and the government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.

The Saudi-led Arab coalition in March last year began air strikes and other military aid in support of Yemeni forces resisting the Huthis who had seized much of the country and are backed by Saudi Arabia's regional rival Iran.

Fighting has continued despite a ceasefire that paved the way for the talks in Kuwait.

The Huthi rebels are allied with elite troops loyal to Yemen's former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The missile launches are designed to "sabotage efforts of the international community to make the peace negotiations a success," the Saudi-led coalition said in a statement.

Saudi Arabia has deployed Patriot missile batteries to counter tactical ballistic missiles which have been fired occasionally during the war.

The coalition warns that it could retaliate if such strikes continue.
A 40-year-old security guard was shot at allegedly by four robbers in the city, police said today.

SHO Ashok Shishodia said that four persons barged inside a housing complex site near Bamheta village last night to steal iron bars.

In a bid to foil the robbery attempt, security guard Jai Bhagwan Sharma, raised an alarm and challenged the robbers with the help of his fellow guard Sanjiv Kumar.

When the robbers failed in their loot bid, they allegedly fired at Sharma and fled from the spot.

Thereafter, the guard was rushed to a hospital where he is still undergoing treatment, the SHO said.

An FIR has been registered under sections 379 (theft), 307 (attempt to murder) IPC against four unidentified assailants upon the complaint of the guard, who had a narrow escape in the incident.

Acting on a tip, police nabbed all the four accused. Rafiqe and Sakru were held yesterday and Nanhey and Akhtar were arrested from a petrol pump today, the officer added.
Sri Lanka Navy has arrested seven Indian fishermen along with their trawler for allegedly poaching in Sri Lankan waters, the Navy said here today.

Seven Indian fishermen were arrested yesterday by the Navy and the Sri Lankan Coast Guards northwest of Talaimannar in northern Sri Lanka.

The arrested fishermen were handed over to the Mannar Fisheries Inspector for further action, the Navy said in a statement.

The arrest came on the first day of fishermen resuming their work after the end of a 45-day-long annual fish breeding season ban on fishing using mechanised boats.

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena, during his visit to India on May 13, had discussed the issue of problems faced by Indian fishermen in his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Shilpi Cable Technologies today said it will invest USD 150 million (Rs 1,010 crore) for setting up of a plant for manufacturing copper products in Abu Dhabi, UAE.

In a BSE filing, the company said its board has approved "setting up of project at Abu Dhabi, UAE through its subsidiary, having capacity of 60,000 MT for manufacturing of copper products with an investment of USD 150 million".

It added that it will invest USD 50 million through equity and the balance USD 100 million will be through debt.

The board also approved acquisition of 100 per cent share of Shilpi Worldwide PTE Ltd, Singapore which is presently a step down wholly owned subsidiary of the company.

"The company shall buy 100 per cent of the shares of Shilpi Worldwide PTE Ltd, Singapore from the company's direct wholly owned subsidiary -Shilpi Worldwide DMCC at the value of USD 5,303,947," it added.

After this transaction, Shilpi Worldwide PTE Ltd, Singapore shall be a direct wholly owned subsidiary of the company instead of step down wholly owned subsidiary. The proposed transaction is subject to the requisite statutory approvals.
A Spanish court sentenced a former Slovakian swimwear model today to 15 years in jail for murdering her millionaire British ex-boyfriend at his home two years ago.

A jury at the court in the southern city of Malaga on Friday found Maria Kukucova, 26, guilty of killing Andrew Bush, 48, by shooting him twice in the head and once in the shoulder.

It said Kukucova was "obsessed" with Bush and was "driven by a state of passion" when she shot the former jewelry store owner.

Kukucova was upset by the end of her romantic relationship with Bush as well as over the "loss of social status and lifestyle", the jury added.

During the week-long trial, Kukucova told the court that she had never meant to harm Bush, and had acted in self-defence during a violent struggle at his home in the Mediterranean town of Estepona, near Malaga, on Spain's Costa del Sol.

The presiding judge sentenced Kukucova to 15 years in prison for Bush's murder. She was also jailed for six months for breaking into his home.

The judge also ordered Kukucova to pay 160,000 euros in compensation to Bush's daughter and 40,000 euros to his sister.

State prosecutors had sought a 20-year jail sentence for Kukucova while lawyers representing Bush's family had asked for 27 years if she was found guilty.

The murder happened on April 5, 2014 when Bush returned from a trip to Britain to his home in Estepona with his new girlfriend.

Prosecutors said Kukucova, who had been waiting inside the house without Bush's permission, shot him because she became jealous after seeing him with another woman.

After the killing, Kukucova fled to Slovakia. She turned herself in to police four days after the murder and was extradited to Spain.
Congress President on Tuesday attacked the government over the celebrations of two years of NDA government and described Prime Minister Narendra Modi as "Shahenshah" (emperor).

"I have never seen anything like this. A Prime Minister is there, not an emperor. He is the country's Prime Minister. There is so much poverty in the country. There is drought. Farmers are in trouble. I do not find it appropriate (that government) shows off like this," she told reporters.

Gandhi said Modi's ministers have given him "this stature" and are busy in holding celebrations".
Terming as absurd the comments by Congress President Sonia Gandhi describing Prime Minister Narendra Modi as "Shahenshah", Union Minister Jitendra Singh today said her remarks amounted to "sacrilege of democracy" and disregarded the mandate of people.

"That sounds very absurd," Singh told reporters here when asked about Gandhi's remarks in which she had attacked the Centre over the celebrations of two years of NDA government.

"To make remarks like this not only amounts to sacrilege of the democracy but it amounts to disregarding the mandate of people and also disrespecting the preference shown by the people of this country in favour of the Prime Minister," said Singh, Minister of State in Prime Minister's Office.

On charges against Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra, the Minister said law will take its own course.

"For a party which is totally centred and totally based on family lineage, any threat which they perceive to family interest is perceived by them as national interest. Time has come when people of this country will force them to make a course correction," Singh said.

reports today quoted from purported papers seized by the IT Department during searches last month on an arms dealer's premises that allegedly led to a trail of emails between Vadra and his assistant on the one hand and the dealer's aide on the other regarding the purchase of a London house for approximately Rs 19 crore in 2009 which was subsequently said to have been sold.

Vadra's legal firm has denied that he owned the London property directly or indirectly. It also denied that Vadra had any business ties with the arms dealer or his aide.
South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said attempted to launch an unidentified missile at about 5:20 a.m. local time but that it is presumed to have failed.

The JCS says it is further analysing the situation, and gave no other immediate details.

The apparent launch failure comes amid tensions over recent nuclear and missile progress that has outsiders worried is closing in on its goal of a nuclear missile that can hit mainland America.

South Korea has also rejected recent overtures to talk, part of what some analysts see as an attempt to start dialogue meant to win the impoverished country aid.
A North Korean missile launch likely failed today, according to South Korea's military, the latest in a string of high-profile failures that tempers somewhat recent worries that Pyongyang was pushing quickly toward its goal of a nuclear-tipped missile that can reach America's mainland.

South Korea's Yonhap agency said in an unsourced report that the missile was a powerful mid-range Musudan, which, if true, would make it the fourth failure by the North to conduct a successful test launch of the new missile, which could potentially reach far-away US military bases in Asia and the Pacific. Seoul defence officials could not immediately confirm the report.

The South's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in statement that the North attempted to launch an unidentified missile early in the morning from the Wonsan area, but likely failed.

The military is analysing what happened and had no other details.

Despite recent failures, there has been growing outside worry over North Korea's nuclear and missile activity this year, which includes a nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket test in February that outsiders see as a test of banned long-range missile technology.

The most recent launch follows Seoul's rejection of recent Pyongyang overtures to talk, part of what some analysts see as an attempt by the North to start a dialogue meant to win the impoverished country aid.

In April, North Korea attempted unsuccessfully to launch three suspected powerful intermediate-range Musudan missiles. Musudan missiles have a potential range of about 3,500 kilometers, which would put US military bases in Guam within their striking distance.

South Korea believes the North does not yet possess a missile capable of hitting the US mainland, but the North is working on that technology.

Before April's suspected launches, North Korea had never flight-tested a Musudan missile, though one was displayed during a military parade in 2010 in Pyongyang.
The South China Sea disputes should be resolved through bilateral talks between China and the countries concerned rather than being subject to external forces, a leader of Sri Lanka's ruling party said today.

Kabir Hashim, General Secretary of ruling United National Party, made the remarks during his meeting with Song Tao, head of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

"Regional affairs should be settled through consultations among those directly concerned, rather than being subject to external forces," Hashim was quoted as saying by state-run Xinhua agency.

China claims all most of all of the South China Sea.

The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have counter claims on the area.

China has been seeking support to its stand for bilateral settlement of issues as a tribunal appointed by UN Convention on Law of Seas (UNCLOS) geared up to deliver its judgement.

China has boycotted the tribunal.

Beijing says over 40 countries back its stand.

Hashim said China is a significant force to maintain regional peace and development and Sri Lanka believes the CPC and the Chinese government will play a more active role in this regard.
Ed-Tech firm Talentedge today said it has joined hands with IIM Rohtak to offer an executive programme in entrepreneurship.

The programme includes mentoring sessions and lectures from the core faculty of IIM Rohtak and other entrepreneurs like HCL Co-founder Ajai Chowdhry, Mapmygenome CEO Anuradha Acharya and Air Works MD and CEO Vivek Gour, a company release said.

"We want to make the students understand the core basics of the subjects for a more experiential kind of learning, through visual aids," Talentedge CEO and MD Aditya Malik said.

* * * * * *



ISB to expand outreach in African and ASEAN countries * As a part of its larger strategy to enhance the international diversity, ISB plans to expand its international connect to attract potential students from Africa and the ASEAN region.

"ISB sees these countries as an untapped talent pool that has the potential to contribute to the leadership needs of emerging economies and the world," the B-school said in a release.

ISB witnessed a 28 per cent increase in applications for Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGP) Class of 2017 and has admitted record number of students (905) to the PGP Class of 2017 across its two campuses in Hyderabad and Mohali.

* * * * * *



Swift India appoints Kiran Shetty as CEO * Swift India today said it has appointed Kiran Shetty as its Chief Executive Officer.

The appointment, effective immediately, will see Shetty head up Swift India's operations and business lines, the company said in a statement.

Swift India, a financial information messaging platform, is a joint venture with the country's top lenders.

**********



DCM net profit at Rs 15.41 crore



* Textile maker DCM Ltd has reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 15.41 crore for the quarter ended on March 31.

The company had posted a net profit of Rs 17.70 crore in the January-March period, a year-ago.

Its consolidated net sales during the quarter under review were at Rs 226.70 crore. The same were at Rs 246.72 crore in the corresponding quarter, DCM said in a BSE filing.

Meanwhile, the company informed that due to scheme of amalgamation of DCM Engineering with DCM, "the figures for the current year/quarter are not comparable with the corresponding figures of the previous year/quarter".

Share of the company DCM were trading at Rs 87.00 per scrip on BSE, down 1.86 per cent from previous close.

Rubique ties-up with over 54 financial institutions



* Online loan disbursal platform Rubique has tied up with more than 54 lending financial institutions.

These include Bajaj Finance, ICICI Bank, Indiabulls Housing Finance, Induslnd Bank, Manappuram, Reliance Commercial Finance and Hinduja Leyland Finance.

Rubique has disbursed loans worth over Rs 310 crore since starting operations in October 2014.

"The growing number of financial institutions on our platform indicates that there is a growing acceptance for Rubique amongst them. The main reason to forge an association with us is the value they see in our business proposition," Rubique Founder and CEO Manavjeet Singh said in a release.

*******



Dena Bank launches digital platform to open accounts * Dena Bank, has launched the 'Dena Easy Tab Banking', a digital convenience to open an account with the bank on its 79th Foundation Day.

The bank also introduced a point of sale (PoS) digital platform for its customers enabling those using GPRS hand-held devices, mobile and contact-less PoS devices.

Dena Bank will shortly commence wallet and Unified Payment Interface (UPI) applications, it further added.

"The Tab Banking App will help the bank personals to reach out to the customers at his work place, home for account opening and deliver other banking services thereby bringing banking conveniences to all its customers", Dena Bank Chairman and MD Ashwani Kumar said.
Tata Motors-owned luxury car manufacturer (JLR) broke the half a million mark for the first time in its history as per its latest vehicle sales results released this week.

The company said in its full-year results for the 2015-16 fiscal year released yesterday that its vehicle retail sales had risen 13 per cent to 521,571.

" has produced and sold more cars than at any time in our history. We are now the largest automotive manufacturer in the UK and our vehicles have received more than 140 awards across the range for design, technology, safety and environmental sustainability," said JLR CEO Dr Ralf Speth.

"During this fiscal year, we have delivered sustainable, profitable growth and introduced new models - such as the Discovery Sport, Jaguar XE and XF - that have redefined their market segments. Furthermore, we are on track to deliver even more sensational products that will underpin the future performance of the business," he noted.

The combination of an increased demand for new models, solid growth in markets including Europe, North America and the UK helped support full-year financial revenues of 22.2 billion pounds, up 342 million pounds on the previous 12-month period, the report said.

"Profit before tax was 1.56 billion pounds after an exceptional charge for the Tianjin Port explosion of 157 million pounds (net of insurance and other expected recoveries to date) with strong free cash flow of 791 million pounds after total investment spending of 3.14 billion pounds.

"Profit before tax was down from 2.6 billion pounds last year, primarily reflecting market conditions during the first half of the year - especially in China, model mix and continued investment," JLR said in a statement.

JLR also unveiled plans to invest in the region of 3.75 billion pounds during the 2016-17 fiscal to support continued, sustainable, profitable growth in the future.

This will include the expansion of global production capacity, new technologies and new vehicles, such as the Jaguar F-PACE and the Range Rover Evoque Convertible that will unleash the potential of both brands in the future.
A 17-year-old girl was allegedly gangraped by five persons, including two minor boys, at a village in Raigarh district of Chhattisgarh, following which all the accused have been held, police said today.

After the incident that took place last week, the victim had tried to end her life by consuming pesticide. Currently, she is in a critical state and undergoing treatment at a private hospital in Raigarh, according to police.

Three of the accused -- Mohan Sahu (50), Mahesh Sahu (25) and Gulshan Chandra (21) -- have been booked under IPC section 376 (g) (gang-rape) and Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO)Act.

"The incident had taken place on May 23 at Uchh Bhatti village, located around 65 kms away from the district headquarter, when the victim was at home along with her elder sister," City Superintendent of Police (CSP) Satyendra Pandey said.

However, the crime came to light yesterday only when the minor girl was admitted to Raigarh district hospital in a serious condition, he said.

"The victim's parents are labourers and had gone to a different state for work. On the night of May 23, the accused Mohan Sahu stormed into the victim's house along with his four friends and locked her elder sister in a room and then took turns to rape the girl," he said.

The accused fled from the spot after committing the crime, he said.

"Following the incident, the girl tried to commit suicide by consuming pesticide on the same night, but was admitted to Sarangarh hospital by her neighbours, who rushed to her house after hearing her screams," Pandey said.

When the girl's condition deteriorated and she developed infection in her kidneys, she was shifted to a private hospital, where the doctors informed the police about the case, the CSP said, adding, her statement was recorded.

"Based on her statement, a case been lodged with Kosir Police Station against the accused," he said.

The girl is undergoing treatment at ICU and her condition is said to be critical, the CSP said.
A Thai court today sentenced two military men to jail for orchestrating an attack on villagers who were blockading a gold mine, a lawyer said, a rare ruling in favour of such activists.

Residents of Nanonbong in the northeastern province of Loei have waged a decade-long struggle against the mine, operated by the Thai company Tungkum Ltd, which they say pollutes the environment and damages health.

The company has responded by filing at least 19 lawsuits against them, according to rights groups, including charges of criminal defamation against a 15-year-old girl.

In May 2014, a week before the coup that brought the current military regime to power, Nanonbong villagers said they were mobbed and beaten by over 100 armed men while they were blocking the road to the mine.

Today, a provincial court sentenced Poramet Pomnak and Poramin Pomnak, a retired army officer and his son who is still an officer, to two and three years in prison respectively for their involvement in the attack, the community's lawyer told AFP.

The pair was also ordered to pay compensation to some of the victims.

"In the verdict, the judge mentioned that the two suspects hurt villagers to clear the way for transporting minerals," lawyer Sor Rattanamanee Polkla told AFP.

"I hope that this verdict will make authorities more careful in the future," she added.

The ruling is a rare departure from the impunity often granted to soldiers in a country where the military routinely intervenes in local and national politics.

Nadia Hardman, a legal adviser who observed the trial on behalf of the International Commission of Jurists, welcomed the ruling but urged a deeper investigation into others involved in the attack, which left at least a dozen injured.

"We are disappointed that only two people were indicted and found guilty," she told AFP.

She said over 100 community members gathered peacefully outside the courthouse this morning and handed out flower chains to police officers.

"It was quite an extraordinary gesture," she added.

Earlier this month, the Thai government announced it would shut down gold mining across the country, an unexpected move in a country where profit often takes precedence. The current regime has pushed through a string of controversial environmental projects.

Thailand is considered one of the world's most dangerous places for environmental activists. More than 80 activists -- many of them fighting for land rights -- have disappeared or been murdered since the early 80s.
The additional special judge for CBI cases G Sunitha here today sentenced three persons including a former official of the Bank of Maharashtra to five years's simple imprisonment in a case of fraud.

A CBI release here said the court convicted Gujjula Venkata Shiva Reddy, former manager of Rajahmundry branch of the BOM; Krishnaswamy Sridhar and Sri Krishna Rao Ananda Rao.

The court also imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh on each of them.

According to the CBI, in 2001, Reddy entered into a conspiracy with Sridhar and Rao, and sanctioned them a loan of Rs 30 lakh by using forged documents against the security of an FCNR (Foreign Currency Non Resident) deposit of USD 5,07,000 of two Non Resident Indians from Jakarta, Indonesia, without the NRI persons' consent.

All three were convicted for cheating and criminal conspiracy.
Tamil film comedian Senthil, who campaigned actively for AIADMK during the May 16 assembly polls, today lodged a complaint with the City Police Commissioner seeking action against those who had spread rumours through social media and Whatsapp that he was dead.

The actor told reporters that he was upset over the message on Whatsapp.

"Many people contacted me and informed me about the message that has spread to different areas," he said.

Police should take action against such rumour-mongers, the actor added.
Noted trade analyst and producer Vikas Mohan passed away following a heart attack at a hospital here this morning.

Mohan, who was in his 60s, was admitted at the Criti Care Hospital.

"He was in the hospital for last few days. He was in critical condition since the time he was in hospital. He passed away today morning due to heart attack," sources said.

Mohan was a well-known trade analyst who had produced Akshay Kumar-Madhuri Dixit starrer film "Aarzoo".

His cremation will take place at around 2 PM today.

Following the of his demise, megastar Amitabh Bachchan and "TE3N" film director Ribhu Dasgupta cancelled a media interaction.

Also, the "Housefull 3" team cancelled their visit to Indore today for promotions.
Police today arrested two persons who, posing as policemen, extorted money from young couples, especially college students, who visited beaches and parks, and one of them attempted suicide after being detained.

The duo was identified as I Gopi (30), a native of Srikakulam district, and K Jagadish (20), a resident of Vizianagaram district.

The two often visited beaches and parks in the city, and on spotting young couples, would click their pictures or shoot videos, police said.

Later, they would approach the couples and introduce themselves as policemen in plainclothes. Gopi and Jagadish would threaten to expose the couples by informing their parents or family members and demand money (Rs 500-2,000 from each of them) for deleting the videos and photos.

DCP (Crime) T Ravi Kumar Murthy said police arrested the duo after receiving a complaint against them. Gopi has also been involved in two theft cases.

Meanwhile, Gopi attempted suicide in the Arilova Police Station, where he was detained last night.

The DCP said Gopi complained of stomach pain following which cops gave him a strip of ten Pantocid-L tablets. Gopi, however, consumed all the 10 tablets in an attempt to end his life and fell sick.

He was rushed to a hospital, where his condition is said to be stable.
US-based Uber today met Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in Bangalore and discussed several issues, including Karnataka's latest regulations on cab aggregators.

"Had a great conversation with Smt @nsitharaman on how Uber can be a part of #NammaBengaluru's urban mobility story," Uber Bangalore said in a tweet.

While the details of the meeting were not available, sources said Karnataka's latest norms for cab aggregators that were notified in April were discussed.

The company has raised concerns over the norms.

Uber GM (South) Bhavik Rathod met the minister and discussed urban mobility solutions in Bangalore and Uber's role in it, they added.

According to reports, the transport authorities of the city



had said that many aggregator companies have not obtained licensed from authorities and violating norms.

Many cabs of Uber and Ola have been seized in the city in the last few months.

According to a source here, the ministry has assured the company to take up their issues with the concerned authorities.
Survivors' accounts now indicate the dangerous Mediterranean Sea crossing from Libya to Italy claimed at least 880 lives in the last week as unseaworthy, overcrowded smuggling boats capsized and sank under the weight of their human cargo, the UN refugee agency said today.

The deadliest known tally in over a year could foreshadow disasters ahead in the next few months during the region's traditional summer-fall spike in human trafficking as the weather and water grow warmer.

UNHCR spokesman William Spindler said this year is proving to be "particularly deadly" on the Mediterranean, with some 2,510 lives lost compared to 1,855 in the same span a year ago.

International organizations had reported Sunday that over 700 migrants and refugees had perished in three Mediterranean shipwrecks on three straight days last week. Further interviews with traumatized survivors who were brought to Italian ports prompted UNHCR to increase the estimated number of dead from those wrecks and others.

Saying UNHCR has "better figures now," Spindler cited new estimates that about 100 people died in a shipwreck Wednesday, some 550 others died in another capsizing Thursday and a third sinking on Friday left 170 others missing and presumed dead.

UNHCR said survivors who landed in Augusta, Italy, over the weekend indicated that 47 other migrants were missing at sea in a separate incident after a raft carrying 125 migrants deflated.

"Eight others were reported separately to have been lost overboard from another boat, and four deaths were reported after fire on aboard another," UNHCR said.

Spindler said authorities were still trying to understand the jump in deaths, even as they know the region is moving into its high season for human trafficking.

UNHCR cited unconfirmed accounts that smugglers might be trying to "maximize income" before the Ramadan holy month, which begins in the first week of June. Spindler also said he had never heard of smugglers using such risky tactics as having one overloaded boat tow another one overflowing with hundreds of people.

Joel Millman, spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, also pointed to a new tactic used by smugglers in recent weeks.

"Traffickers and smugglers working out of Libya are using much bigger boats now, carrying as many as 750 people, where for the last 12 months, we've been seeing a lot of smaller rubber inflatable dinghies," Millman said at a Geneva conference alongside Spindler.

UNHCR said most boats leaving Libya are departing from Sabratha, west of Tripoli.
The intensity of fire at the ammunition depot in Maharashtra's Pulgaon that left 16 security personnel dead and several others injured today was so high that people in the villages around were woken up to a loud noise with their houses shaking.

The window panes and tiled-roofs of houses in the villages were shattered and the residents felt as if they were being rattled by an earthquake and many ran out in panic.

They said they saw flames raging at the site of the mishap with smoke billowing to the skies.

Pravin Savarkar, who along with his wife and aged mother ran to safety, told PTI that the intensity of the fire and blast was such that utensils in their house were thrown off the shelves.

Some of the villagers, particularly the elderly residents, calmed others as they could guess what was happening as similar incidents had taken place at the depot earlier also.

Today's was the third major incident in the Central Ammunition Depot in Pulgaon, one of Asia's biggest ammunition storehouses.

Similar incidents had also occurred in 1989 and 1995, but no loss of life was reported though ammunition worth crores of rupees were then destroyed.

The fire at the ammunition depot, situated between hillocks on either side, came as a shock to the residents of Agargaon, Pipri, Nachangaon and Magejhari villages.

Magejhari is the closest village to the depot with a population of 1,500 people, Nachangaon has about 2,500 residents, Agargan - 3,500 and Pipri has a population of 800.

A youth, who lives in the the depot quarters, said as soon as the fire occurred, most of the villagers ran out of their houses and spent time till dawn in great anxiety.

The district administration, police and fire brigade personnel reached the site within a short time.

But the fire and the blast in the stores were so huge that it damaged two four-wheelers and a fire brigade vehicle inside the complex.

Inspector General of Police, Nagpur Range, Ravindra Kadam also rushed to the ammunition depot, but he and his subordinates were not allowed to enter the complex.

Kadam later visited the injured personnel at Sawangi Meghe hospital where they were being treated.

He said that the toll may go up from 16.

The deceased include two Army officers - Major M Manoj, who is Chief Security Officer with the ammunition depot and Colonel Randheer Pawar from Kolhapur, sources said.
Dassault Aviation is ready to sign a contract with India at any moment, but the ball is in India's court, chief executive Eric Trappier told French daily Les Echos in an interview published on Tuesday.

The Indian defence ministry said in April protracted talks to buy 36 French Rafale fighter jets were nearing the finish line.

"We are ready to conclude (the sale) at any moment, the ball is in the Indian government's camp," Trappier was quoted as saying.

Asked about reports in Indian media that a bank guarantee was required for the deal, he said that was not the case since the deal was already guaranteed by the French state.

Asked about business jets, Trappier said: "Business jets are a good barometer of the global economy, and, this year, it will be difficult."
By Douglas Busvine and Rupam Jain

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Toshiba Corp's <6502.T> Westinghouse Electric will relocate a planned project to build six nuclear reactors in India, said officials, bringing the first deal stemming from a U.S.-India civil nuclear accord struck over a decade ago closer to reality.

The six AP-1000 reactors would be built in Andhra Pradesh, after the original site proposed for the multi-billion-dollar project, in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state of Gujarat, faced local opposition.

The breakthrough comes ahead of a June 7-8 visit by Modi to Washington, where he will be hosted by President Barack Obama for a final summit before the U.S. presidential election in November, and will address both houses of Congress.

U.S. lawmakers ratified the civil nuclear accord three years after it was struck in 2005, as part of an attempt to deepen the strategic relationship with India, but have expressed growing dismay over its failure to yield follow-on deals for U.S.-based reactor makers like Westinghouse.

Graphic: Nuclear power plants in India http://tmsnrt.rs/1PeVudR

One obstacle was bringing India's liability rules into line with international norms, which require the costs of an accident to be channeled to the operator rather than the maker of a nuclear power station.

But, following the announcement of a "breakthrough understanding" on nuclear cooperation during Obama's visit to India in January 2015, this issue has been resolved to the satisfaction of the U.S. government and it is down to commercial partners to agree a deal.

Analysts say resolving the land issue is a crucial step, but complex issues remain, including project financing and reaching a civil nuclear pact with Japan, where Westinghouse parent Toshiba is based.

"Some time before the end of the calendar year they may be able to close," said Ashley Tellis, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who was a negotiator for the George W. Bush administration in the U.S.-India nuclear talks.

India wants to dramatically increase its nuclear capacity to 63,000 MW by 2032 to meet growing demand and restrict its reliance on fossil fuels, and has struck a series of accords with other countries to help meet that goal.

Russia's Rosatom operates two reactors at Kudankulam, in Tamil Nadu, while France's EDF signed a preliminary deal with the state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) in January to build six reactors at Jaitapur, Maharashtra.

EAST COAST

Indian central and state officials confirmed that NPCIL, which would operate the plants, had made a down payment on 2,000 acres (800 hectares) of land in the eastern coastal district of Srikakulam.

"The land acquisition was stuck for over a decade, but now it's coming to a conclusion," Ajay Jain, energy secretary of Andhra Pradesh, told Reuters, adding the purchase would close this year. "Construction can begin in 2017."

Ninety percent of local farmers had agreed to sell their land, they were being well compensated and no court cases were pending, Jain added.

Two sources, requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, confirmed that the site was being acquired for Westinghouse, which plans to build six AP-1000 pressurised water reactors, each with a design capacity of around 1,100 megawatts.

Westinghouse did not respond to requests for comment, while senior executives at NPCIL were not available.

Westinghouse CEO Danny Roderick told earlier this year that an Indian reactor deal was close, but negotiators missed a deadline to wrap it up before Obama hosted a nuclear security summit in Washington in April.

FRUIT FARMERS

Westinghouse was originally offered a site at Mithi Virdi in Gujarat, on India's west coast, but encountered opposition from local fruit farmers.

A nuclear joint venture between General Electric Co and Hitachi <6501.T> meanwhile showed no interest in India's offer of land for a plant in Andhra Pradesh, opening that option to Westinghouse.

Andhra Pradesh has had more success in acquiring land for development than some rival states, acquiring tracts of land for a new state capital by offering farmers future plots developed for commercial or residential buildings, as well as cash, in compensation.

The state is also proposing its own land law to speed up acquisitions after Modi's efforts to get a new law through parliament failed soon after he rose to power two years ago.

(Additional reporting by Tommy Wilkes; Writing by Douglas Busvine; Editing by Mike Collett-White)
Quoting a couplet of Mirza Ghalib, Microsoft's India-born CEO Satya Nadella on Monday asked entrepreneurs from India to be bold and offered the platform of the US-based technology giant for their ventures.

Nadella, who met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad among others here today, is on his third visit to India since taking over as head of the world's top technology company.

Quoting Ghalib's famous lines, Nadella said, "Hazaaron khwahishen aisi ke har khwahish pe dam nikle, Bahut niklay mere armaan, lekin phir bhi kam nikle".

Encouraging youngsters in the audience at an event here to be bold and ambitious, he said, "I learn something new (from these Ghalib lines)... There are so many layers in there... My interpretation of that is... it's not just your dreams being fulfilled, it is your ability to dream that is worth dying for. It is a source of inspiration."

Nadella said Microsoft's mission "is to empower every person and organisation on the planet to achieve more.

"It's not about celebrating our technologies. It's about celebrating technologies that you all in India create. In fact, I want us to be the platform creators that foster the ingenuity of what is happening in India."

In his meeting with Modi, Nadella discussed "various issues pertaining to the IT sector".

Earlier in the day, Nadella met Prasad and discussed how Microsoft's contribution to the government's Digital India initiative can be enhanced.
India is looking to start a "significant" fund that will invest in distressed loans held by lenders, Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said on Tuesday, as regulators strive to clean-up non-performing loans in the struggling sector.

"We will have a significant stressed assets fund," Sinha told reporters on the sidelines of a event by credit ratings agency CRISIL in India's financial capital, Mumbai.

"We expect a variety of funds - stressed debt fund, special situations fund, and NIIF (National Investment and Infrastructure Fund) - to then participate in equity investment in these stressed assets," he also said.

Sinha added details were still being finalised.

He also said it was prudent for the Reserve Bank of India to continue with an asset quality review of the banks. Lenders have reported a surge in their bad loans in the six months to March after an asset quality review ordered by the central bank.


BSE, Asia's oldest stock exchange, plans to sell up to 30 per cent stake in its much-awaited initial public offer (IPO), which is expected to hit the market this financial year.

The exchange plans to file draft papers with capital markets regulator Sebi in July. BSE (formerly known as Bombay Stock Exchange) has already appointed Edelweiss Financial Services as the lead merchant banker and AZB & Partners and Nishith Desai Associates as legal advisors to the issue.

The exchange will hold an annual general meeting (AGM) on June 24 to seek shareholder's approval for the listing. Earlier this month, BSE's board, which was addressed by Sebi Chairman UK Sinha, discussed the IPO. The total size of the issue will not exceed 30 per cent, according to a notice of AGM.

The IPO could be a combination of an offer for sale and fresh issue, for up to a maximum of 30 per cent of the post-issue issued equity share capital of the company, subject to regulatory requirements, it added. BSE has also proposed to create an advisory committee that would consist of selling shareholders for transparency in the listing process.

"In order to ensure complete transparency and fairness of the decision making process that would affect the participation of existing shareholders of the company and the equity shares tendered by the shareholders as a part of the offer for sale, it is proposed to create a committee that would consist of selling shareholders and/or their representatives," the notice noted.

The exchange said in March that it plans to come out with its initial share-sale program in the next six-nine months. The announcement came after receiving in-principle approval from Sebi for listing. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) notified amendments to the Stock Exchanges and Clearing Corporations regulations on January 1.

The new rules are aimed at making it easier for stock exchanges to list their shares through an IPO. Soon after the amendments, the exchange had sought approval for launching the IPO, saying it is in compliance with all the requirements for listing. It has been seeking nod to get listed for a long time, but necessary clearances were not forthcoming on one issue or the other.

While BSE is open to the idea cross-listing - listing shares on a rival exchange platform-its competitor National Stock Exchange (NSE) has been pitching hard for either self-listing or direct supervision by Sebi, and not by a rival exchange in case of cross-listing. Presently, Multi Commodity Exchange of India is the only listed bourse in the country.


Tata Motors on Tuesday said it has entered into a partnership with Automotive Skill Development Council (ASDC) for a collaborative skill development programme in the automotive sector.

A Memorandum of Understanding has been signed with the government of India recognised skill council to help Tata Motors' skill development centres across its six plants in India, the company said in a statement.

The company's skill centres will comply with competency levels of the NSQF (National Skills Qualification Framework), it said adding the objective of the partnership is impart and enhance industry-ready occupational skills to youths.

Commenting on the association, Tata Motors Chief Human Resources Officer Gajendra Chandel said: "We are keen to see the Indian automotive industry becoming globally competitive with Tata Motors playing a significant role."

The corporate partnership of Tata Motors with ASDC is a step towards reaping India's demographic dividend by enhancing employability within India as well as in other countries and also contribute to government's aggressive plans under the Skill India Mission towards 'Kaushal Bharat Kushal Bharat', he added.

"Through this collaboration with Tata Motors, the expectation would be to propagate the industry's own ASDC certification among the youth who wish to make a career in the exciting field of automobiles," ASDC Chief Executive Officer Sunil Chaturvedi said.

The programme will comprise modules based on the skills for design, engineering, manufacturing, automobile production, sales and service as well in various support functions with a focus on quality, productivity, dexterity, discipline and safety, the company added.
It was announced today that a number of Credit Unions across the country are launching a new debit card to be made available to more than 350,000 members.

This is the first time a debit card offering has been developed and launched by a group of Credit Unions for their members.



The Credit Unions involved have come together to form a not-for-profit organisation, DCG Card Services, to manage the product. Participating Credit Unions include Gurranabraher, First South, Cork, Tullamore, Mullingar, Waterford, St Canices Kilkenny, Navan, Tralee, Health Services Staff, Mitchelstown and Ballinasloe.



The new debit MasterCard facilitates contactless payment and supports fully electronically enabled accounts, on-line access and transaction facilities and a mobile app for managing finances on the go. Roll-out of the new card will begin in June.



This follows a recent REBO (Credit Union Restructuring Board) survey which revealed that 84% of members wanted a debit card from their Credit Union, extensive measures were taken to address this demand.

The eleven Credit Unions involved worked on the development of a more complete banking package as an alternative to the banks current accounts.

The new debit MasterCard offers this more comprehensive banking package which is managed and controlled by Credit Unions. The card is supported by MasterCard and is accepted anywhere the MasterCard logo is displayed worldwide.



Chairperson of DCG Card Services and CEO of Tralee Credit Union, Fintan Ryan said, "Our members need a greater level of flexibility to suit their lifestyles. With demanding work and life commitments, many of our members are finding it increasingly difficult to make it into their Credit Union to access their funds."

He added, "This debit card will give members that flexibility. It works fluidly with our existing CU Online and CU Anywhere mobile app services. We are delighted to now offer such a complete and comprehensive service for our members."

Source: www.businessworld.ie
At Business World, getting our corporate message online is one of our primary concerns.

We like to shout about the written content services we offer. This includes blogs, SEO rich news articles, bespoke news feeds and management level editorials.

Here at Business World, we like to keep an eye on the diverse factors that can help a website stay near the top of search results. This is both for ourselves and for the clients that we offer content services to.

Factors such as timely updates of fresh content and SEO rich text all increase traffic to your website.

Client services

We support a wide range of clients offering a range of written content services.

We support companies in the ever expanding financial services sector, clients in the FMCG arena and state / semi-state organisations in the financial regulatory industry.

We draw on our specialised pool of writers, journalists and business marketers to create a bespoke plan for your businesses written content needs.

Latest clients

One of the latest clients to come on board, a multi-national financial company, had very specific requirements for their online written content needs they required;

A Website update  We evaluated and re-wrote key written components of the clients website. Ensuring all content was relevant, up to date and SEO compliant was fundamental to this process.

2-3 blogs posts per week  Well written, thought provoking blogs that contained rich, relevant SEO content.

A news feed  General financial news aimed at both the clients employees and customers, covering a broad range of financial news across World, EU, Irish and FX (Foreign Exchange).

Tailored news feed content - In addition to the wide ranging news content the client required specific news stories that encompassed the Agriculture, FDI (Foreign Direct Investment), Technology and (Irish) Export Markets to support their online presence.

Business World

Here at Business World, we can help your company / organisation deliver your corporate message with SEO rich content. We can direct your written content across blogs, news feeds and news articles. We have a wide range of experience across the financial, regulatory, commercial and industrial sectors.

We benefit from a team of journalists, writers and marketers that can shape your message via the content and deliver it across your online platforms. We are experts in creating content and getting it out there whilst at the same time improving your SEO scores.

Need help creating great content? Let Business World show you what we can do!
The Dublin Port Riverfest 2016 has been launched by the Dublin Port Company today.

The premier sailing and maritime festival is now in its fourth year and will be taking place on North Wall Quay between the Samuel Beckett Bridge and the 3Arena from June 4-6.

It is expected to attract an estimated 65,000 visitors over the three days, providing a 1 million boost to the local economy.



Visitors will experience a variety of activities and attractions both on and off the water. Six tall ships and four schooners will open for the public to visit free of charge.

Wakeboarding demonstrations, free tours of the Jeanie Johnston Ship, tug boat dances and river kayaking, as well as pirate themed activities, sniffer dog demonstrations, fun fair attractions and a food and craft fair will all contribute to the carnival on the quayside.

This year, there will also be a Liverpudlian presence at Dublin Port Riverfest and an Irish presence at Liverpools Riverfest in the spirit of a new partnership being developed between the two port cities.



Three major cruise ships will arrive at Dublin Port on the first day of the festival - The Boudicca, Le Boreal and Caribbean Princess all arrive on Saturday, June 4, bringing an additional 6,500 overseas visitors to sample the festivities during their stay.



Furthermore, the Cruise Europe Conference kicks off today (May 31  June 2) at The Gibson Hotel in conjunction with Dublin City Council. Over 200 delegates will attend from leading cruise destinations across Europe, including all the major cruise lines and service suppliers to the cruise industry worldwide. This is the first time for the event to take place in Dublin, providing an opportunity to showcase the city as a leading cruise tourism destination.



Dublin Port will also host the European Sea Ports (ESPO) Annual Conference (June 2-3) at Dublin Castle. Attracting a further 300 delegates, this years conference will focus on ways to improve the efficiency of maritime transport and ports. In closing the event, EU policy makers will present their views on the issues raised and enter into a final debate with attending port authorities, while American economist Jeremy Rifkin will give a keynote address on the theme of A Third Industrial Revolution and a Zero Marginal Cost Society.



Chief Executive of Dublin Port, Eamonn OReilly says, "Im delighted to see Riverfest in its fourth year and growing from strength to strength. The festival promises something for absolutely everyone to enjoy. Set against the backdrop of the River Liffey, the Samuel Beckett Bridge and North Wall Quay, Riverfest is a uniquely Dublin experience."

He added, "The sight of tall ships and schooners on the quayside is always welcome and provides a beautiful reminder of the heritage and history of Dublin Port. I would encourage everyone in the city and from further afield to come along and enjoy the spectacle and fun of Riverfest this year."

Source: www.businessworld.ie

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LOGAN  A judge has ordered Jason Relopez to serve one-year in jail and undergo sex offender treatment for admittedly raping two women. The 27-year-old spoke only briefly and would not look at either of the victims, while they spoke in court.

Relopez was sentenced in 1st District Court after previously accepting a plea agreement, pleading guilty to assaulting and raping the two women. The former Sigma Chi fraternity member was arrested in July after a woman reported he raped her multiple times while she was attending a party at the fraternity house, near Utah State University. A second woman later said she also was sexually assaulted while the two were doing homework in her residence.

Both victims spoke during the sentencing hearing Tuesday morning. The first one called Relopez a disturbed man and said that on the night she was raped, he told her he was going to win because he was stronger than her. She told the court how he kept telling her she was a good person as he repeatedly raped her.

The victim turned and looked directly at Relopez as she said, I am a good person. She explained that she came forward and reported the rape for all the women who have been a victim of sexual assault.

The second victim described living in fear and said there were no words to describe what rape is and what it did to her. She told the court, Relopez deserved a harsher sentence because she believed that he will rape more women in the future.

Judge Brian Cannell said he appreciated both women sharing their statements in court. He became emotional, explaining that he never had the opportunity to raise daughters in his family. He said if he had though, he hoped they would have the same type of courage that the victims showed.

Relopez spoke only briefly, admitting to raping both women. He told the court, his actions were inexcusable and marred his character for life.

Judge Cannell said if it wasnt for the previously arranged plea agreement, he would have sent Relopez to prison. He called his actions repugnant and abhorable.

Under conditions of the amended agreement, Judge Cannell sentenced Relopez to serve 12-months in jail and then undergo treatment at the Northern Utah Community Correctional Center.

As part of the conditions, Relopez can retake a PPG test, that determines the likelihood of reoffense, and be released early from jail if the results show he is low risk. However, if the results show moderate or high risk, he would be sent to prison.

Sentencing was previously postponed after the first PPG test came back with an invalid result. Judge Cannell said if that happened again, he would consider it a failed result and send Relopez to prison.

<hr /><p style=text-align: center;>will@cvradio.com
Russias Armed Forces are conducting a series of exercises in Central Asia ostensibly designed to reassure regional allies that Moscow will assist in the face of an insurgency or incursion led by the Taliban or the terrorist organization calling itself the Islamic State (ISIS). However, these exercises are increasingly demonstrating the Kremlins intention to reassert Russias security role in Central Asia, while some features of such military exercises are also betraying increasingly sophisticated Russian technology and warfare capabilities, and consequently a widening gap with the countrys allies in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

BACKGROUND: Poisk 2016, staged in Tajikistan on April 18-22, was the first of its kind for the CSTO, focusing on rehearsing the joint use of intelligence and reconnaissance capabilities to assist in countering an ISIS incursion. Poisk 2016 illustrates Moscows contingency planning for an ISIS-linked security crisis within a CSTO member state and its response options, while testing intelligence assets, planning for future operations and strategic-operational mobility for the rapid insertion of forces, and using advanced networked technology among the Russian component.

Poisk 2016 was split between the Lyaur and Mogab training ranges near Dushanbe. The exercise involved 1,500 personnel, four helicopters, artillery and Military Transport Aviation (Voyenno Transportnoy Aviatsii  VTA) aircraft. Poisk 2016 was conducted under the direction of Russias Central Military District (Tsentralnyy voyennyy okrug TsVO). The mainstay of the force grouping was provided by Russia, while smaller numbers were sent from Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan; around 600 Russian servicemen were from the 201st Base in Tajikistan. In terms of troop numbers and hardware deployed the exercise was comparatively small. Its uniqueness lies in the exercise concentrating on joint intelligence and reconnaissance operations to support a CSTO response to a crisis in Tajikistan. Marking the first CSTO combat support exercise, the Russian top brass made claims about the capabilities it demonstrated on the CSTOs behalf. CSTO Joint Staff Chief, Colonel-General Anatoliy Sidorov, claimed: Despite the distance of CSTO member state military units, upon the political decision in case of a real threat the CSTO collective response forces will help the country which has appealed to the CSTO in a day.

The exercise was attended by Tajikistans Defense Minister Lieutenant-General Sherali Mirzo, CSTO Secretary-General Nikolay Bordyuzha, TsVO Commander Colonel-General Vladimir Zarudnitsky, and Colonel-General Anatoliy Sidorov, as well as Russian command elements from the 201st Base. The exercise scenario envisaged an incursion across the Afghan-Tajik border by a well-armed militant group, launching an attack on a humanitarian aid convoy. Forces were dispatched to collect intelligence, conduct reconnaissance and facilitate the neutralization of the militants. Reports of the appearance of black flags used by the hypothetical militants left little doubt that the exercise planners had ISIS in mind. The group, finally located, was destroyed using Russian assault helicopters and BM-21 (Grad) Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS). Poisk 2016 focused on enhancing collective military intelligence capabilities, improving the system for collecting, analyzing and disseminating timely intelligence. Although joint intelligence and reconnaissance operations were central to the exercise, the leading force elements were Russian military intelligence officers, or GRU Spetsnaz from the elite Airborne Forces (Vozdushno Desantnye Voyska  VDV).

IMPLICATIONS: Strategic-operational mobility relied upon Il-76 to move Russian forces and specialist intelligence equipment. AN-124-100 Ruslan transport aircraft carried two Mi-8AMTSh assault transport helicopters with equipment from Tolmachevo Novosibirsk airbase to Dushanbe airport. Troops and equipment were therefore rapidly airlifted to the exercise area, speeding up the deployment timings. The two Mi-8AMTSh were joined by two Mi-24 attack helicopters.

Among other tasks during Poisk 2016, they conducted low altitude flights in mountainous areas, inserting troops and supporting units during the exercise. Given its overall intelligence and reconnaissance tone, the use of teams operating in small numbers is consistent with utilizing the Mi-8AMTSh platform, with a troop transport capacity of up to 34.

Military personnel involved in the exercise were not drawn from units normally associated with CSTO exercises. Russian GRU Spetsnaz appears to have led the exercise and provided training to allies. While military media referred to Russian Spetsnaz, no mention was made of the Special Operations Forces (SOF) formed in 2013 under a separate command, though such SOF personnel were used in operations in Syria. It also appears that Central Asian counterparts involved in Poisk 2016 were frequently reduced to mere observers, either of GRU Spetsnaz demonstrating sophisticated technology, or kinetic parts of the exercise simply being conducted solely by Russian servicemen. The entire five-day exercise was directed from the National Defense Management Center (Natsionalnyy Tsentr Upravleniya Oboronoy  NtsUO) in Moscow, with the command of TsVO and local command and control (C2) through a mobile unit operating in the suburbs of Dushanbe. Similar to the conduct of Russian operations in Syria, the NTsUO played a pivotal role in the C2, and points to the network-enabled aspects of the exercise.

Also mirroring Russias operations in Syria, which involved intelligence coordination with coalition partners in Baghdad, the exercise saw the formation of a Joint Intelligence Control Point (Obyedinennyy punkt upravleniya razvedki  OPUR). Staff in the OPUR decided on the organization and conduct of intelligence and reconnaissance missions in the zone of responsibility for the deployed force grouping. During the exercise, this was Russian-led and saw GRU Spetsnaz working closely with Belarusian counterparts to fulfil various intelligence related tasks, with target coordinates sent to the OPUR for analysis and dissemination.

At the tactical-operational level, Russian military personnel were equipped with the Intelligence Communication and Control Complex (Kompleks Razvedki Pravleniya i Svyazi  KRUS) Strelets. The KRUS Strelets is a component of the soldier equipment system Ratnik which is being introduced into elite Russian units. Currently the KRUS Strelets has been procured by Russian SOF, GRU Spetsnaz and other elite units including peacekeeping formations. This domestically produced system enables the individual serviceman to be networked, as part of an integrated intelligence and communications system. Strelets involves networking C4ISR, extending into detection of targets, aiming and targeting, and providing data for small arms use. The latest generation Strelets-M is compatible with Russian military equipment including reconnaissance, surveillance, targeting systems, radar, range finders, and unmanned aerial vehicles.

CONCLUSIONS: While the concept of staging such a specialist exercise was agreed by the CSTO council of defense ministers, it is clear Russian forces, doctrine, approaches to warfare and advanced technology dominated Poisk 2016. The use of KRUS Strelets-M in the execution of numerous tasks including targeting, coupled with the commands involved in running the exercise, denoted advances in Russian network-centric warfare capability. These features are in stark contrast to the capacity of allied militaries to conduct such operations, and the exponentially widening gap between elements of Russias Armed Forces and CSTO allies must cause concern to Moscow.

Russias experience of conflicts in Ukraine and Syria suggests the Kremlin may be ready to consider limited intervention in Central Asia if the security situation deteriorates to overstretch local capacities. Although operations could be placed under the umbrella of the CSTO, in real terms this would only be a veneer, as the type of capabilities Russia can offer far eclipse those of the host nations. Poisk 2016 is also part of the Kremlins efforts to convince regional capitals that during any future security crisis, they can and must look only to Moscow for assistance.

AUTHORS BIO: Roger N. McDermott is an Affiliated Senior Analyst, Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen and an Advisory Scholar: Military Affairs, Center for Research on Canadian-Russian Relations (CRCR) Georgian College Ontario, Canada.

Image Attribution: www.eurasianet.org, accessed on May 31, 2016
Meet My Hood: Reiherstieg, Hamburg

Published on May 31, 2016

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Welcome to Hamburg's up-and-coming island, stomping ground of workers, students, artists and immigrants alike. Is such a place even possible? The Reiherstieg neighbourhood seems to have mastered this balancing act. What's life like in a district that's so difficult to classify and whose future is so unpredictable? We take you on a whistle-stop tour.

"Ah, Wilhelmsburg! Thats the neighbourhood that's spend the last few years refusing to become hip and trendy..." That was the first comment I received from a Hamburg local when I told him I was moving to the Reiherstieg district. Although my first reaction was to laugh, I now must admit I have a similar impression. Alongside many, many others.

Wilhelmsburg, including the Reiherstieg neighbourhood in the west, was formerly home to dock workers. Before long, the cheap rent also began attracting student and migrant populations. The area still preserves some of its "ghetto" reputation, which clings on in the neighbourhoods dingiest corners or in areas experiencing social problems. Certain residents from "the other side" of the city have never even set foot on Germany's biggest inland island. Though it owes much of its fame to the now closed "Soul Kitchen", an empty factory transformed into an alternative cultural hub thanks to the 2009 movie of the same name by Fatih Akin.

But less and less people seem perturbed by such prejudices and the districts migrant population keeps on growing, helped along by municipal policy initiatives. Besides low prices, the island is also attractive due to its proximity to the city centre and its status as a convenient transport hub. It's just ten minutes from the Hauptbahnhof (central station) by S-Bahn and commuting is made easy thanks to the number 13 bus: affectionately called "the wild 13" by residents. It's always overcrowded, and it's not uncommon to hear a dozen languages shouting over each other during the roller coaster ride.

Some residents on the other side of the Elbe, also find their small-town dreams come true upon visiting the island, more relaxed than it's big-city counterpart "next door". Others appreciate the multikulti atmosphere in which you can find a Bulgarian grocery alongside a doner kebab house and a Portuguese speciality restaurant. Meanwhile, health food shops have been thrown into the mix, accompanying the ever-present fear of the g-word (gentrification), a long-standing concern of established residents and landowners.

Many just like Wilhelmsburg's unpredictability: some students transformed a trailer into a mobile sauna, christened the "Tinderbox". Former factories propose new events for the party animals every weekend, and the old Flakbunker now hosts an exclusive coffee house. When faced with this rich mixture seemingly in constant flux, there is only one thing to do  dive in and explore. But do it soon. Because tomorrow Wilhelmsburg may well have changed once again

How much does it cost?

The Faces

Don't miss out on...

Kaffeeliebe: (Cafe), Am Veringhof 23a

Cafe Pause (Cafe & Bar), Industriestrae 125-131

Room with a vju (Cafe in the former Flakbunker), Neuhofer Strae 7

TurTur (Bar & Pizzeria May to October and Club & Bar October to May), Am Veringhof 13

Backerei Kizmet (Turkish Bakery), Fahrstrae 22

Zunderbuchse (Sauna), on the move

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This article is part of cafebabel's project: Meet My Hood. The goal is to discover unknown neighbourhoods in the biggest European cities. Be a part of it, wherever you are!

Story by Franziska Bauer

Translated from Meet My Hood: Reiherstieg, Hamburg
GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES Principal Xavier Barrera of Gregory-Portland Junior High School grabs a cupcake from students on the last day of classes on Thursday in Portland. Barrera is retiring after 46 years with Gregory-Portland Independent School District.

SHARE GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES A student from Gregory-Portland Junior High School hugs Principal Xavier Barrera on the last day of classes on Thursday in Portland. Barrera is retiring after 46 years with Gregory-Portland Independent School District. GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES Principal Xavier Barrera of Gregory-Portland Junior High School talks to students on the last day of classes on Thursday in Portland. Barrera is retiring after 46 years with Gregory-Portland Independent School District. GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES Notes made by students are placed on a wall for Principal Xavier Barrera of Gregory-Portland Junior High School on the last day of classes on Thursday in Portland. Barrera is retiring after 46 years with Gregory-Portland Independent School District. GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES Principal Xavier Barrera of Gregory-Portland Junior High School leaves messages student yearbooks on the last day of classes on Thursday in Portland. Barrera is retiring after 46 years with Gregory-Portland Independent School District.

By Beatriz Alvarado of the Caller-Times

PORTLAND  Xavier Barrera recalls a time when smartphone use didn't have to be regulated at schools.

But now, after 46 years of working with students at Gregory-Portland ISD, he stood among a junior high crowd during their lunch break with a sign in hand that read, "Phones today: Yes."

Besides it being the last day of school for him and the teens, they were allowed to use their phones on Thursday "because they helped keep the cafeteria tables clean."

Times have changed since Barrera was hired by the district as a music teacher in 1967, the retiring junior high principal said.

"The biggest change has been change," Barrera said. "Dealing with the district's growth and keeping up with the times has been the biggest challenge."

Barrera's worked with every superintendent in Gregory-Portland ISD's history. The Texas A&I  now Texas A&M University-Kingsville  music major graduate started his career at the district as a student teacher. He's served in many capacities, including educator and supervisor, executive director of operations and director of curriculum. He's spent the past 10 years of his career as the junior high's principal.

He said he never second guessed choosing the profession.

"This is what was chosen knowing well what came with it," he said.

He will be missed, to say the least.

Gregory-Portland Junior High's cafeteria walls were plastered with heartfelt messages for the retiring principal.

Almost every student that came across Barrera during the last day of school asked him to sign their yearbook.

"The faculty, staff and students trust (Barrera). We trust he always has our best interest in mind," said Rosemary Vaseliades, the school's assistant principal. "He takes care of us and we will miss that."

Thelma Martinez, the school's 27-year veteran custodian, echoed the sentiment. She and a co-worker have their own assigned parking spaces and are often reminded their role at the school is appreciated and critical to the school's operation, she said.

"(Barrera) always tells us we run the school," Martinez said. "We've never had a boss like that."

Gabe Alvarado, former assistant principal at Tuloso-Midway Middle School, will take the helm at a time when the district plans to build a new middle school. That school is slated to open in the next five years. Alvarado will lead merging grades between Gregory-Portland Intermediate School and the junior high.

"Those are big shoes to fill," Vaseliades said.

Barrera retired once before about 13 years ago, but was asked to come back. He worked as a substitute administrator for the elementary campus and disciplinary alternative education program two years before he took on enough responsibilities to get him back on the payroll. He could have politely declined, but said the "great kids and staff" drove him back and the love for the work led him to stay more than a decade longer.

"It was just great to be back," he said.

This time, he suspects retirement will stick. His last day with the district will be June 16.

Twitter: @CallerBetty
Contributed photo Members of the Veterans Band of Corpus Christi and the Funky Rock Jazz Band gather in front of the USS City of Corpus Christi. The local veterans performed Monday at Pearl Harbor during the decommissioning ceremony of the submarine.

SHARE Caller-Times File USS City of Corpus Christi crew greets the crowd while the vessel traveled under the Harbor Bridge in 1983. Caller-Times File Councilwoman Betty Turner (left) and Mayor Luther Jones look through a scope in the USS City of Corpus Christi in 1983.

By Natalia Contreras of the Caller-Times

The Veterans Band of Corpus Christi performed more than 3,600 miles from home.

Their mission? Giving a proper send off to a submarine named for the band's hometown.

The invite to perform at Pearl Harbor this weekend for the decommissioning ceremony for the USS City of Corpus Christi was humbling. Even more impressive was the outpouring of support the group of veterans received to fund their trip, band members said.

Ram Chavez, the band's founder and director, said about 42 members, including the Funky Rock Jazz Band, and their spouses attended the ceremony in Hawaii this past weekend.

"We will honor our city, the USS City of Corpus Christi and the citizens who made it possible for the veterans band to make this performance," Chavez said in a news release before their trip.

The group arrived at Pearl Harbor on Friday and the Funky Rock Jazz Band performed for the submarine's crew on Saturday. The Veterans Band performed at the ceremony on Monday. The group is due back on Thursday. They are set to perform on Friday at the Lexington Museum on the Bay to mark the Battle of Midway anniversary.

The trip's cost was estimated at about $80,000, which required the help of Corpus Christi residents and many others.

Many of the donations came from individuals as far away as Wisconsin, Tennessee, Kentucky, New Mexico, California and Germany.

The USS City of Corpus Christi was first commissioned in 1983 and named after the city because of its long association with the Navy. It returned to Pearl Harbor Feb. 12 after its final deployment, a five-month cruise into the Indo-Asia-Pacific region.

The warship served in the Cold War and the Global War on Terror, according to a news release from the Commander Submarine Forces Pacific Public Affairs Office.

Chavez said the band was contacted in November by the submarine's commanding officer, Travis Petzoldt, and his wife about the performance. The band, which has been together three decades, performed in several fundraiser concerts in Corpus Christi leading up to the trip.

The Veterans Band of Corpus Christi has played at national ceremonies including the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and two Presidential Inaugural Parades in Washington D.C., Chavez said.

Twitter: @CallerNatalia
SHARE

Claude V. D'Unger

Too early to start placing blame

Before we string up the mayor and City Council over the water boil issue, there are a bunch of questions which need to be answered. It was the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality that issued the water boil advisory. The first question is why. The TCEQ is not the heavy here but their decision needs to be understood. Purportedly, disinfectant or chlorine levels were low in city water. How low? Was it five or 95 percent off? What is the trigger percentage? Was the water in the system a suitable environment for bacterial growth? The original problem started in Flour Bluff when a lower than normal level of chlorine was encountered. No E. coli was detected. Why was it decided that the entire city be subjected to a water boil advisory? The city's water infrastructure is no doubt in need of upgrading due to age and other factors but little is known about the rule(s) which dictate and guide water boil advisories. How old are they? Can they or should they be revised? Other than boiling, are there other means of purifying water in kitchens and businesses? Probably. It's way too early to be thinking about council retribution.
| BY Lynchy |

UPDATED TO INCLUDE THE TVC  Chrysler will put to air its new TVC for the Chrysler 300 tonight during the State of Origin Grand Final on the Nine Network.

The TVC, via agency CumminsRoss Melbourne, celebrates Chryslers American heritage and the new Chrysler 300s luxury design.

The 60-second television spot features a glamorous couple preparing for a 1960s themed party who drive to the event in their Chrysler 300, with iconic style motifs from the period prominent throughout the commercial.

Sam Tabart, director of marketing for Fiat Chrysler Group Australia, said the campaign is closely linked to the original Chrysler 300 advertising from the 1950s and 1960s.

Says Tabart: The 300 was an American icon developed in the 50s and remains iconic today. Its American motoring at its best with class and style in abundance. Timeless, classic design thats otherwise missing from the segment in this market.

The new Chrysler 300 will be available in Australia from September 2012. The advertising campaign for the vehicle will run across online, TV and outdoor media.

Agency: Cummins Ross, Melbourne

Creative Team: Sean Cummins , Jason Ross, Steve Callen

Agency Producer: Susannah George

Group Account Director: Magdalina Triantafyllidis

Integration Manager: Andrew Stone

Director of Marketing for Fiat Chrysler Group Australia: Sam Tabart

Advertising Manager: Sandra Kirwan

Production Company: The Directors Group

Director: Ben Hodson

DOP: Stefan Duscio

Executive Producer: Craig Griffin

Music: Mark Rivett  Song Zu
| BY Ricki Green |

Full service agency, Ikon Communications, has announced the appointment of Chris Ernst (pictured) as national head of performance, based in Brisbane.

Leading a team of more than 20 performance specialists, Ernst is charged with growing the agencys performance product and ensuring every aspect of the digital strategy is fully integrated into clients marketing strategies.

Ikons chief operating officer, David Gerrie, said in the past 12 months Ikon had successfully expanded its unique decentralised performance team model and was delivering the best outcomes for its clients, especially in the sophisticated categories of retail, travel and wagering.

Says Gerrie: The agency is driven by performance and focuses on creating campaigns that integrate into the overall marketing mix to work on many levels  engaging, informing, converting and ultimately performing.

Chris skillset is vital to where we are going as an agency and as an industry, and we are delighted to have him on-board.

Ernst joins Ikon from Reprise where he spent six years in both Sydney and London offices most recently as general manager, client advisory, Australia, overseeing both client relationships and delivery of performance solutions.

Prior to his time at Reprise AU, Ernst was with Reprise UK leading key accounts Coca-Cola and AB InBev (Budweiser, Stella Artois, Becks), devising strategies across Paid Search, SEO and Social Media and driving new business opportunities for the agency.

Says Ernst: Im excited to lead a talented and passionate team of performance specialists and look forward to working with the team and wider business to deliver innovative and creative performance campaigns for an exciting roster of clients.

Ikon offers a nimble and agile culture which complements how I work. The agency is fully prepared to grasp developments in this fast changing industry and run with them. Thats exciting and Im looking forward to being part of the agencys future.
| BY Ricki Green |

Sydney-based creative agency Banjo has lured creative veteran Bruce Matchett to join the agency as a partner and executive creative director, as the agency adds new clients Ausgrid and Destination NSW.

Matchett returned to Australia earlier this year from Singapore, where he was creative head of SapientNitro.

At Banjo he joins founding partners Ben Lyttle and Andrew Varasdi, who started the agency in 2008.

Says Varasdi: Bruce has had an incredible influence on Banjo in a very short time, and has been instrumental in our recent new client wins. He is not just a world-class creative, hes also at the forefront of the digital platform and his background in Australia means he truly understands this market.

Previously in Australia, Matchett held senior creative roles at JWT, Ogilvy and Saatchi & Saatchi. He has also held the role of chief creative officer at JWT India.

Says Matchett: Its great to be back in Australia and winning new business with the talented team of Andrew and Ben. Clients are drawn to the energy and passion in an agency like Banjo and I am having a wonderful time being a part of it.
Food

By: Cook Britain

With layers of airy sponge and sweet buttercream balanced by decadent coffee and walnut flavours, this cake is simply divine.

Read More
Monday, May 30, 2016 at 11:41PM

To celebrate its first year, Google has officially released the free original quality storage for Nexus users on Google Photos. This means you dont need to let Google compress your image to fit 16-megapixel resolution requirement to not count against your Google storage. Other new features coming to Google Photo include new sorting methods for photos within an album (including newest first, oldest first, and recently added). Contrast and Exposure controls are also coming to Google Photos soon.

Source: Android Community
Tuesday, May 31, 2016 at 12:54PM

The big ASUS announcements at Computex 2016 in Taiwan revolve around the ZenFone and the ZenBook. But spotted on the showroom floor are VR headsets the Taiwanese brand didnt even mention. It seems to be built to go against the Samsung Gear VR but it has a nicer leather strap reminiscent of the ZenWatch and shiny metal-like body. Its said to be coming next year but not much is known about it. The VR headset is 5.7 inches wide diagonally and is speculated to fit the newly launched ZenFone 3 devices.

Like the Gear VR, it has a touchpad and buttons on the side. And as Gizmodo points out, it looks like ZTEs own VR headset, which is being made with Googles Daydream VR platform. We cant help but wonder if this VR is being developed for said platform. We have to wait a while to find out more about this mysterious VR headset.

Source: Gizmodo
"The ACT government will continue to advocate for the reversal of Commonwealth government to cuts to funding for the EDO, which has not been restored by the Commonwealth government," he said.
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Panjab university has decided to implement choice based credit system (CBCS) from the next academic session. The CBCS will be introduced across all departments of the university.

The university has worked out on modalities and guidelines to implement choice based credit system (CBCS). The new system allows students to take a course of their choice based on their interest. Students can select courses from the given core, elective, minor or soft skill options. Thus, the system aims at focusing on student-centric education by enabling them to choose interdisciplinary course.

Central Varsities Assure To Implement Choice Based Credit System

A member of the committee, who was speaking to Indian Express said "The choice-based credit system adds a new dimension to academics for the students. Students can take up courses from across disciplines and develop on their credits at the same time. For instance, a student can now choose to take up a course in economics while studying physics, or take a course in social sciences while pursuing environmental science. Keeping this in mind, a new curriculum has been drafted for all the university departments to benefit the students."

As of now, the CBCS will be introduced across all departments of the Punjab University.

Implementing the same in all of its affiliated colleges has not been decided. Modalities and guidelines about introducing CBCS in its affiliated colleges will be discussed at Panjab University College Development Council meeting, which will be conducted in the month of June.
A loyal Tesla customer has slammed the electric car company with a Lemon Law suit, claiming safety issues with various features of his Model X.



The safety complaints are about the automated front doors of the vehicle, the Autopilot system and other features.

Barrett Lyon claims that the doors have slammed shut on his wife and flung open in their garage, leading to damage on them and their property. The doors do some weird, wicked things, Lyon said in an interview. If you get in and slide sideways and accidentally tap the brake, the drivers side door slams shut on your leg. Thats not a very nice thing to have happen to you.

According to his complaint, the powered doors on the Model X are opening into cars and other obstacles too. He also says that the Autopilot semi-autonomous driving feature on his car is extremely dangerous in the rain. It causes the car to swerve into different lanes.

The complaint goes on stating that the touch screen freezes repeatedly, the second row seat causes drivers seat to fold forward and the auto park feature does not work 90 percent of the time.

Lyon says that both of his other two Teslas, a Roadster and a Model S, have not given him any trouble so far, unlike the Model X which has been a disappointment for him. Its parked. We dont drive it. Its basically a really fancy car decoration.

This is not the first time we hear about Tesla facing quality control issues with the Model X, with the company even issuing a recall back in April to replace a faulty locking hinge for the third row of seats.

According to CNS, Lyon is seeking a full refund, including registration fees plus damages for breach of warranty and the California Lemon Violations. Its become clear to me that the car wasnt ready for consumers, he said. The service center is completely unprepared for the kind of problems theyre having.

PHOTO GALLERY
Toyotas Prius hybrid hatch has topped the relevant charts over at Consumer Reports by returning a measured 52 mpg combined.



This result crowns the latest Toyota Prius as the car with the best gas mileage ever to be recorded by CR, knocking off the original Honda Insight hybrid from the top spot after staying there since 2000.

Powered by a hybrid powertrain that pairs a 97hp 1.8-litre petrol engine with a 71hp electric motor for a combined total of 121hp, the Prius uses the same recipe as the previous generations, only better.

Toyota made small upgrades to various parts of the car, from the aerodynamics to the energy efficiency, with all of them contributing to the Prius great results at the pump.

More specifically, fuel economy was measured at 59mpg (4.0 l/100km) on the highway and 43mpg (5.5 l/100km) on the city course, leading to the combined 52mpg (4.5 l/100km) figure, remaining impressively close to the official EPA-rated 54/50/52 (city/highway/combined mpg).

VIDEO
Cold and unsettled weather that blew in with the long weekend finally seems to have passed.

But not without one last punch Sunday evening that brought strong winds and even hail to parts of the Okanagan.

Travellers on Highway 97C were met with thunder, lightning and heavy rain between Merritt and West Kelowna. At the Merritt Visitors Information Centre, dime-sized hail covered the parking lot about 4 p.m.

Meanwhile, waves crashed on Okanagan Lake and trees swayed violently in the wind.

Despite the turbulent weekend, residents woke to sunshine, Monday.

A high of 22 C is forecast today, and temperatures are expected to reach 28 C on Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday will see a chance showers, with a mix of sun and cloud for Friday and a high of 28 C.

By the weekend, we're back into the thirties, with a forecast high of 33 C on Saturday and 34 C on Sunday.

Last weeks cool temperatures and rain helped with the fire danger rating. It dropped from high to very low or low in the Central Okanagan. While some areas are still rated moderate, the majority of the Southern Interior is now rated at low risk.
Photo: Contributed

UPDATED: 1:10 p.m.

The folks up at Big White have a strange search on their hands.

They are desperately seeking one or more people who play the alpenhorn for the ski resort float in the Fat Cat Childrens Festival on June 11.

Perhaps best known for its role in the Ricola commercial, the highly recognizable "alpine horn" was once used for communication in mountainous regions.

I am sure we should be able to find someone in the Central Okanagan that plays one of these bad boys, said Big White vice-president Michael J. Ballingall.

The resort's Kristian de Pont said Big White's float is being imagined as an alpine scene with wildflowers. The alpenhorn would be the centrepiece.

Big White had a float in the Fat Cat parade last year, but wants to one-up itself this time around.

"We're trying to do it bigger and better," said de Pont, adding the resort is offering a "treat" to whoever can point them toward an alpenhornist.

They've already put in a call with Okanagan Symphony Orchestra.

If you or someone you know plays the alpenhorn, contact de Pont at 250-491-6170 or [email protected]
Photo: Contributed

RCMP are confirming the arrest of Jayne Heideck who was wanted in connection with an arson in Quebec.

Const. Jesse ODonaghey says Heideck remains in custody at the Kelowna detachment following her arrest at about 10 a.m. Monday.

The arrest took place in the 3100 block of Lakeshore Drive.

Montreal police issued the arrest warrant for Heideck after an arson fire at Canadas only gender confirmation clinic.

The Centre Metropolitain de Chirurgie caught fire at 8:45 p.m. on May 2. Police originally investigated the possibility of a hate crime, but have since ruled that motive out.

Kelowna police are working with officers in Montreal.
Photo: Getty Images

An Alberta man is facing new charges and is now without a car after taking a joyride through Lake Country.

On Saturday May 28 at 6:20 p.m., a member of the RCMP Integrated Road Safety Unit was conducting a speed enforcement operation along Highway 97 in Lake Country when the officer stopped a white 2010 Audi R8.

The officer determined that the vehicle had been travelling in excess of 210 km/h in the posted 100 km/h zone along Highway 97, near the Pelmewash Parkway.

Kelowna RCMP Const. Jesse ODonaghey says weather and roadway conditions were not ideal at the time of the traffic stop, as it was raining lightly and the roads were wet.

RCMP would like to take this opportunity to remind motorists to slow down, especially on wet roads and in bad weather conditions says ODonaghey.

High-risk driving behaviours, like speeding, increase your chances of crashing and put yourself and others at risk of sustaining serious injury.

The driver of the vehicle was charged under the Motor Vehicle Act for excessive speed.

The Albertan was served with a violation ticket for $483 and his vehicle was towed to the impound lot for seven days.
Photo: Contributed

Hunting out of season cost a Kelowna man his rifle and his hunting licence for three years.

Demetre Antoniou was found guilty on May 25 of hunting, trapping or wounding wildlife out of season.

Along with the loss of his rifle and hunting privileges, Antoniou was also fined $2,000. A bulk of that will go to the Habitat Conservation Trust Fund.

B.C. Conservation officers say the incident occurred last November.

Officers say Antoniou killed a mature moose, when only immature moose were in season.

He was found guilty of only one count under the Wildlife Act.

Conservation told Castanet a conviction such as this sets a precedent to other hunters who might hunt illegally but dont believe they will face consequences.
Photo: Contributed

At 19 years old, Caleb deBoersap had an epiphany  a realization that there had to be more to life than personal pursuits.

DeBoersap was a typical North American teen collecting material objects in the pursuit of happiness, but the more he chased what he thought was happiness, the more empty he felt.

My whole life has always felt like the pursuit of one selfish goal or another, he said. After living like this for so long, each goal I achieved felt less and less noteworthy. There was always something bigger, something better. Yet my conscience always berated me for living such a lifestyle while others' main goals were just food, shelter and education - things which I had always taken for granted.

DeBoersap came to the conclusion he could live without many of the things he once thought were so important  a conclusion that would change the course of his life.

On May 12, deBoersap boarded a plane for Queretaro, Mex. where he would volunteer to work in an orphanage.

So committed was he to his decision, he did not purchase a return ticket.

Deciding to leave behind the comfort of the Okanagan and the life he knew was a long process, with lots of self doubt, but it was a decision he was determined to make.

Daily these children amaze me, living without so many things that I once may have considered crucial living conditions, said deBoersap. But of course they also need help, and that is the reason I came to Mexico.

DeBoersap said many of the older children will soon be starting high school via long-distance learning, but they lack the necessary computers to get the education they seek.

To help out deBoersap has started a Go Fund Me page to raise money to purchase the necessary computers.

All of the money raised in this campaign is intended for computers, computer software and other equipment to jumpstart an education for these children, as well as a small portion for my own basic essentials like food, as an unpaid volunteer living here for five months, he said.
Photo: Okanagan Spirits.

Hopefully, Justin Trudeau likes to tipple.

Trudeau has said thanks to Vernon-based Okanagan Spirits for a bottle of huckleberry liqueur sent to the prime minister a few months after the Liberals swept to power in Ottawa.

The berries are picked wild in the mountains, said company president Tony Dyck.

In a short letter to the award-winning distillery that arrived this week, Trudeau called the gift "thoughtful" and wished the company continued success.

Okanagan Spirits has won a number of awards for its liquor and liqueurs and was named distillery of the year during last year's World Spirits Awards.

It is not the first time Trudeau has had a gift from the company.

He was given a bottle during a stop in Vernon a few years ago, said Dyck.
Photo: Jon Manchester

A man who was recently sentenced to five years behind bars for a savage sucker punch in Kelowna in September 2014 had been issued a deportation order from Canada five years before the attack took place.

Steven Edward Kollie was sentenced to a five-year prison sentence last week for an aggravated assault that put a man in a coma and left him with significant brain damage.

After Kollie served 22 months in jail for a different assault in 2006, a removal order was made against him in 2009, as he was labeled a permanent resident who is inadmissible to Canada for serious criminality.

The Canada Border Services Agency has confirmed that Kollies removal order is still in effect  though he will be serving out his sentence in Canada.

Read more.
Photo: The Canadian Press

Henry Velasquez wants to return to the place where his home once stood  someday, but not yet.

Residents are being allowed to return in stages this week, a month after a voracious wildfire destroyed 10 per cent of Fort McMurray in northern Alberta and forced the evacuation of the entire city.

But Velasquez, a chemical engineer, will be hanging back in Calgary with his wife, Olga, and son Tomas, 3.

He's just not ready for the emotional punch of seeing what's left of their townhouse in the Stone Creek neighbourhood at the north end of town.

In July or August, he'll re-evaluate, he said.

"I just want to go there before they start the demolition of everything, because I just want to see where my house is, see if there is at least one memory that I could rescue from what we have," he said through tears.

"The most simple, the most small thing that I could recover from that, it will be such a treasure for me and my wife."

In Ian Seggie's apartment in the Timberlea neighbourhood, there's still a bag of trash waiting to be taken out and a pot of soup ready to be heated on the stove.

"The eerie part for me is that everything is frozen in time," he said from Calgary, where he's been staying since May 3, when more than 80,000 people were ordered out of the city.

Officials have warned returning residents that it won't be business as usual in Fort McMurray. They've been advised to bring with them two weeks worth of food, water and prescription medication as crews continue to work to get basic services restored.

Seggie made arrangements with an Edmonton grocery store to have perishable food pre-frozen. He plans to pick it up on his way to Fort McMurray and load it into coolers.

He doesn't know whether he'll stay once he goes up on Thursday.

"If the air quality goes to crap, I'm not sticking around," he said. "I need to get back and get my place dealt with, just to have a look and search things out. And if I stay, I stay."

Kevin Lewis is anxious to get back into his apartment in Thickwood, a relatively undamaged neighbourhood that's slated to reopen on Friday.

Lewis has been unable to run his transportation brokerage business since the evacuation and he figures he's lost some $40,000 over the last month.

"I definitely need to get to work," Lewis said from Lac La Biche, Alta., a small town about 2 1/2 hours southeast of Fort McMurray that's taken in thousands of evacuees.

Lewis knows it's a possibility that smoke damage may have rendered his place uninhabitable.

"If it's not really livable there yet, I could at least be able to grab my computers and I'll be able to work."

Jim Mandeville, senior project manager with Mississauga-based FirstOnSite Restoration, has been in Fort McMurray since May 8 to help critical businesses such as banks, grocery stores and pharmacies get running again.

Dozens of FirstOnSite workers have been working long days disposing of spoiled food, cleaning ventilation systems and removing smoky odours from upholstery and carpets.

Mandeville said provincial and municipal officials aren't underplaying how challenging it will be for residents to return.

"When they say to bring 14 days worth of food and water, they mean it. And when they say people with respiratory conditions shouldn't come up here, they mean it  and they have a really good reason why," he said.

"It is not a clean, safe, normal environment that you're walking into."
Photo: DEA

Ecstasy is becoming popular again in the European Union, with online sales and targeted marketing helping to drive the revival among a new generation of users, the EU drug agency said Tuesday.

MDMA, also known as ecstasy, has returned as "a common stimulant of choice for young people," the agency said in its annual report on drug trends in the 28-nation bloc.

Ecstasy first established itself in the illegal drug market in the 1990s, but its use declined at the end of the last decade amid poor drug quality and adulteration.

Officials are concerned about a "dramatic increase" in the potency of some new ecstasy tablets, Paul Griffiths, the agency's scientific director, told a news conference. Also, young ecstasy users may be "more naive" about the potentially fatal risks of overheating and dehydration when taking ecstasy.

Griffiths said producers and traffickers are using "sophisticated marketing techniques" to sell more ecstasy. They include tablets that glow in the dark and others that are manufactured for specific events, such as festivals.

Authorities believe most ecstasy in the EU is produced in or around the Netherlands, the Lisbon, Portugal-based agency said.

Despite ecstasy's return its use is still dwarfed by the popularity of cannabis. That remains the EU's biggest-selling drug in money terms with an estimated annual retail value of 9.3 billion euros ($10.3 billion) in 2013, the last year for which full figures are available. The retail market for illicit drugs in the EU was at least 24 billion euros in 2013, the agency said.

Heroin sales are estimated to be the second-highest, at 6.8 billion euros, followed by cocaine at 5.7 billion euros. Sales of MDMA are believed to total almost 700 million euros.

Cannabis offences, mostly involving use or possession for personal use, account for close to three-fourths of all drug-related offences in the EU.

The agency said online drug sales appear to be growing, representing an "important new challenge for drug policy."
Photo: The Canadian Press

A fire broke out at a major ammunition depot in western India on Tuesday, killing at least 17 army personnel, the Defence Ministry said.

At least 19 other people were injured in the blaze, said ministry spokesman Nitin Wakanker.

The fire at the Pulgaon ammunitions depot started before dawn, said an official at the local police station, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media. The army said that by evening the fire had been completely extinguished.

New Delhi Television reported that about 1,000 villagers had to be evacuated from the area soon after the blaze started.

The cause of the fire at the ammunition depot, one of India's largest, was not immediately known.

Devendra Fadnavis, the chief minister of Maharashtra state, where the depot is located, told reporters that the fire caused a "massive loss of life and property."

Fadnavis said the state government was making "every resource" available to the army to help it respond to the situation, and was ensuring that all local hospitals were equipped to deal with the injured.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that he was "pained by loss of lives" and had asked the defence minister to visit the site.
Photo: Royal Newfoundland Constabulary

Wildlife officers had an unusual ride-along in one of their trucks after finding a baby moose under a stairwell in St. John's, N.L.

The animal became trapped in an outdoor porch stairwell of a home in the city's east end after getting separated from its mother.

Wildlife officers removed the moose, but police say he was too small to ride in the bed of their truck.

So, he hopped into the back seat.

The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary joked on Twitter that officers caught the "little fella trying to break into an east end home" and then placed him in the car where "this babe is riding shotgun (well not quite)."

Police posted pictures of the moose in the stairwell and curled up at the officer's feet in the wildlife truck, adding that the animal's mother could not be found.
Photo: The Canadian Press

Survivors' accounts now indicate the dangerous Mediterranean Sea crossing from Libya to Italy claimed at least 880 lives in the last week as unseaworthy, overcrowded smuggling boats capsized and sank under the weight of their human cargo, the United Nations refugee agency said Tuesday.

The deadliest known tally in over a year could foreshadow disasters ahead in the next few months during the region's traditional summer-fall spike in human trafficking as the weather and water grow warmer.

UNHCR spokesman William Spindler said this year is proving to be "particularly deadly" on the Mediterranean, with some 2,510 lives lost compared to 1,855 in the same span a year ago.

International organizations had reported Sunday that over 700 migrants and refugees had perished in three Mediterranean shipwrecks on three straight days last week. Further interviews with traumatized survivors who were brought to Italian ports prompted UNHCR to increase the estimated number of dead from those wrecks and others.

Saying UNHCR has "better figures now," Spindler cited new estimates that about 100 people died in a shipwreck Wednesday, some 550 others died in another capsizing Thursday and a third sinking on Friday left 170 others missing and presumed dead.

UNHCR said survivors who landed in Augusta, Italy, over the weekend indicated that 47 other migrants were missing at sea in a separate incident after a raft carrying 125 migrants deflated.

"Eight others were reported separately to have been lost overboard from another boat, and four deaths were reported after fire on aboard another," UNHCR said.

Spindler said authorities were still trying to understand the jump in deaths, even as they know the region is moving into its high season for human trafficking.

UNHCR cited unconfirmed accounts that smugglers might be trying to "maximize income" before the Ramadan holy month, which begins in the first week of June. Spindler also said he had never heard of smugglers using such risky tactics as having one overloaded boat tow another one overflowing with hundreds of people.

Joel Millman, spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, also pointed to a new tactic used by smugglers in recent weeks.

"Traffickers and smugglers working out of Libya are using much bigger boats now, carrying as many as 750 people, where for the last 12 months, we've been seeing a lot of smaller rubber inflatable dinghies," Millman said at a Geneva news conference alongside Spindler.

UNHCR said most boats leaving Libya are departing from Sabratha, west of Tripoli.

A deal between the European Union and Turkey to return migrants to Turkey has significantly dampened the migrant sea route into Europe from Turkey to Greece, which hundreds of thousands of people used last year.

IOM and UNHCR have been on watch for signs that migrants may be shifting to the much longer and more dangerous Libya-Italy option.

"As of now, UNHCR has not seen evidence of a significant diversion of Syrians, Afghans or Iraqis from the Turkey-Greece route to the central Mediterranean one," Spindler said.

He reiterated UNHCR's appeal to the EU to allow for more legal pathways for refugees to reach Europe, calling it "shameful" that the 28-nation bloc had resettled fewer than 2,000 people under an EU plan announced last year to resettle 160,000.
Photo: The Canadian Press

The director of the Cincinnati Zoo says it remains safe for its 1.6 million annual visitors despite a weekend tragedy in which a gorilla was fatally shot to protect a four-year-old boy who had entered its exhibit.

Thane Maynard, however, said a review is underway to determine any improvements that can make the zoo safer.

The male western lowland gorilla named Harambe was killed Saturday by a special zoo response team that feared for the boy's safety. Video taken by zoo visitors showed the gorilla at times appeared to be protective of the boy but also violently dragged him through the shallow moat.

Maynard said the decision to kill the gorilla was the right one. He said the gorilla was agitated and disoriented by the commotion during the 10 minutes after the boy fell. He said the gorilla could crush a coconut in one hand and there was no doubt that the boy's life was in danger.

Jack Hanna, host of "Jack Hanna's Into the Wild," said the zoo made the right call by shooting the gorilla. Hanna said he saw video of the gorilla jerking the boy through the water and knew what would happen if the animal wasn't killed.

"I'll bet my life on this, that child would not be here today," Hanna told WBNS-TV.

In an interview with Boston television station WFXT, conservationist and television host Jeff Corwin suggested that the boy's family should shoulder some of the blame, saying "zoos aren't your baby sitter."

"I don't think this happened in seconds or minutes. I think this took time for this kid, this little boy, to find himself in that situation. Ultimately it's the gorilla that's paid this price," he said.

A Cincinnati police spokesman said no charges against the parents were being considered. A spokeswoman for the family said Monday they had no plans to comment.

"I do think there's a degree of responsibility they have to be held to," said Kate Villanueva, a mother of two children from Erlanger, Kentucky, who started the "Justice for Harambe" page and attended a Monday vigil for the gorilla outside the Cincinnati Zoo. "You have to be watching your children at all times."

The Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas, where Harambe spent most of his life, said its staff is deeply saddened by the gorilla's death. Harambe was sent to Cincinnati less than two years ago in hopes he would eventually breed with gorillas there.

Jerry Stones, facilities director at Gladys Porter Zoo raised Harambe since birth and has worked with the gorilla's family since they first entered the U.S., the Brownsville Herald reported. He spoke Monday about his relationship with Harambe.

"He was a character. . He grew up to be a beautiful, beautiful animal, never aggressive and never mean," Stones said, according to the newspaper. "He would tease the heck out of people and would do things to irritate you just like some kids."

Stones said he would take Harambe home with him when the gorilla was a baby and let him sleep on his bed, according to KRGV-TV.

There are critics of the zoo's decision to kill Harambe. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said the zoo should have had better barriers between humans and the gorillas.

Maynard said the atmosphere following the incident is "very emotional."

"Not everyone shares the same opinion and that's OK," he said. "But we all share the love for animals."

Maynard said the zoo has received messages of support and condolences from around the world, including from other zoo directors and gorilla experts. He said zoo visitors have been leaving flowers at the exhibit and asking how they could support gorilla conservation.
Photo: Wayne Moore - Castanet File Photo

There's nothing like being first out of the gate.

Kelowna-Lake Country MLA, Norm Letnick will seek a third term when B.C. voters go to the polls next spring.

Letnick, the provincial agriculture minister, has been acclaimed by the Liberal Party to run again in the Kelowna-Lake Country riding.

Service to my community is more than a single action  its a lifetime privilege, said Letnick.

And now, as a new grandfather, I have even more motivation to make sure the needs of all my constituents are strongly represented in Victoria, for their benefit and to benefit our next generation.

Letnick was first elected to the legislature in 2009, and was re-elected in 2013.

Together, we have accomplished a lot, but we still have more work to do, said Letnick.

I look forward in the coming months to working with residents on their priorities as I prepare to fight again for Kelowna-Lake Country interests in Victoria.

B.C. voters go to the polls May 9, 2017.
Photo: CTV

A Lower Mainland organized crime gang has moved into Kamloops.

RCMP say during a recent crackdown on drugs and violence, the presence of The Wolfpack gang was confirmed.

Because of ongoing investigations into the individuals and groups who are using violence as a means of dominating the drug territory in the Kamloops area, the RCMP has executed a number of search warrants locally and seized substantial amounts of drugs and weapons, said Cpl. Jodi Shelkie.

Kamloops RCMP's Targeted Enforcement Unit and Crime Reduction Unit have worked on the case.

The Wolfpack is based in the Lower Mainland and has established a faction in Kamloops, bringing illicit drugs, firearms and violence with them, police say.

Through these investigations into the local Wolfpack faction, Kamloops RCMP linked a male in a Surrey residence to illicit drugs and a cache of weapons, said Shelkie.

On May 28, police executed a search warrant on the Surrey residence with the assistance of the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit and an Emergency Response Team.

Drugs seized in the bust included several hundred manufactured pills, including oxycodone and what appeared to be fentanyl, four ounces of cocaine and about seven pounds of marijuana.

A long rifle and about $25,000 in cash were also seized.

Michael Alexander Ross, 27, was arrested at the residence and has been charged with three counts of possession for the purpose of trafficking and one count of possessing a firearm when prohibited.

RCMP continue to investigate the gang, said Shelkie.
Domestic assaults are a large portion of the cases dealt with by the victims assistance program, run out of the North Okanagan RCMP detachment.

According to January-March quarterly figures, the program dealt with 163 new files during that time period with 111 female clients and 52 male. Of those, 33 were new clients from family violence.

The program supports people following violent or intrusive incidents in their lives.

We offer emotional and practical support to victims and survivors of crime, including helping them through the criminal justice system  coping with paperwork, victim impact statements and accompanying them to court, said Anita Eilander, victim's assistance program manager at the North Okanagan detachment.

Domestic assaults cases are often passed on, at some point, to other support groups, said Eilander, who adds the program supports victims of various crimes.

We also work a lot with assault, break and enters, forcible confinement, homicide, missing persons, many types of cases.

Victims and Survivors of Crime Week runs May 29-June 4.
Photo: Contributed

More than 100 Army Reservists, veterans, and their guests gathered on Mission Hill this past evening of Friday, 27 May, as the British Columbia Dragoons celebrated their annual Spring Ball. The formal, black tie and red jacket event was held in partnership with Mission Hill Family Estate, whose proprietor Anthony von Mandl made the winerys panoramic views and award-winning Terrace Restaurant team available to the regiment as a gesture of his support for the Canadian Army and the British Columbia Dragoons in the Okanagan Valley.

For more than a century the Dragoons have often marked the end of a training year with a bash like this one, a custom dating back to 1908. A century ago, a gala like this Fridays might have been held in the Vernon Opera House, and before the First World War these events typically represented the key social highlight of the year in the pre-radio and pre-television Okanagan Valley. Interrupted completely during the World Wars and often kept low-key over the past decade amid the regiments high rate of overseas deployments to Afghanistan, this Fridays event was a well-received revival of an Okanagan tradition.

Welcomed to Mission Hills courtyard by the Kalamalka Highland Pipe Band and the winerys absolutely stunning views of Okanagan Lake and its surrounding vineyards and mountains, dinner was served in the winery, with dinner courses paired with wine by Executive Winery Chef Chris Stewart. Dinner music played throughout the early evening, courtesy of the Band of the 15th Field Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery, while dancing continued into the night with 17-piece Dreamland Band at the regiments Kelowna armoury.

Captain Jeff Daley

British Columbia Dragoons
Photo: Contributed

Salmon Arm police have identified human remains found earlier this month as that of Christopher Allbury.

Allbury's body was found May 20 along an unused steep footpath between 6th Street NE and Lakeshore Drive.

The investigation to date has ruled out foul play as being a factor in the 70-year-old Salmon Arm mans death. The Salmon Arm RCMP will continue to assist the BC Coroners Services investigation into Allburys death.
Photo: Contributed

Some provincial funding relief for the Vernon school district has been welcomed by Secretary Treasurer Sterling Olson, but he has some questions too.

The provincial government is redirecting $382,586 in administrative savings back to School District 22.

The funding is part of a $25-million province-wide initiative that sees all districts receiving funds from administrative savings.

We're always happy to receive additional money in the school district, said Olson. It would be nice if it's ongoing, but it appears to basically be relief for the 2016/17 school year.

Olson points out that the release states school districts will not have to pay their share of $25 million worth of provincial charges this year.

It's quite different if its an ongoing thing, said Olson. The board has budget guidelines it must follow for programs and services to be put in place. The funding must be sustainable for at least three years.

Olson said it will be up to trustees to decide how to spend the funds and he will be looking for direction when the matter comes up at next month's board meeting.

Meanwhile, it has been announced the North Okanagan-Shuswap school district will receive $302,206 in redirected funds.

"The district is appreciative of the flexibility being provided by the Ministry regarding this previous cost pressure," said Superintendent Glenn Borthistle. "We will need a bit of time to determine how this will apply to the 2016/17 budget, with the final plan to be approved by the board."


Photo: Contributed

It's boating season and the police want to make sure everyone is safe on the water.

Starting July 4, RCMP volunteers will be working with the North Okanagan RCMP Marine Unit to conduct the voluntary vessel safety pre-check at the Paddlewheel Park boat launch.

Pre-launch inspections check all items required under the Canada Shipping Act along with regulations governing pleasure crafts. After the voluntary check is completed, a document is presented to the operator and can be provided to RCMP marine patrols.

This initiative will help speed up our checks on the water, said Const. Steve Scott, one of the RCMP members patrolling the lakes around Vernon. This is a preventative and teaching measure that not only assists the RCMP members on the water, but gives the vessel operator the opportunity to correct any deficiencies they might have prior to starting out on the water.

There are significant fines for violations under the Canada Shipping Act, including failure to have the required pleasure craft license on board ($250 fine plus administration costs), or operating a vessel with safety equipment not in good working order or not readily accessible and available for immediate use ($200 fine plus administration costs).

Some boating offences can result in fines to both the operator of the boat and to the person who allowed the operation of the boat, such as allowing someone under the age of 16 to operate a personal water craft.

RCMP members and volunteers remind boaters to follow the rules of the Canada Shipping Act for everyones safety. Ensure there is a spotter while towing a skier, knee boarder or anyone behind the boat. Boat operators should not consume liquor while operating their boats on the water.
Photo: Contributed

France's top administrative court has ordered that a dead man's frozen sperm be transferred to Spain so that his widow can be inseminated.

The couple, who used to live in France, wanted to have a child but the husband died last year. His widow, who then returned to Spain, her home country, asked the French administration to allow her to use the sperm.

Using a dead man's sperm for insemination is illegal in France, but in Spain the procedure is authorized within 12 months following the death.

The French Council of State ruled Tuesday that in this "very particular situation," applying French law would have "disproportionate consequences."

The husband had explicitly given his consent before his death to allow his sperm to be used.
Photo: Facebook - BC Chamber of Commerce

UPDATE: 2:40 p.m.

Chamber and business leaders from across the province are in Kelowna this week for B.C.s largest business policy forum: the BC Chamber of Commerce Annual General Meeting and Conference.

The BC Chamber AGM is hosted in a different community every year and is held to bring together about 200 Chamber delegates to vote on new business/economic policies.

Policies are then adopted to become part of the BC Chambers advocacy agenda.

This year, at least 55 proposed policies are up for consideration.

Our policy development process canvasses the best and brightest ideas from business leaders right across B.C. Once again this year, this unique grassroots process has delivered some excellent policy recommendations to help enhance B.C. as a business jurisdiction, says Maureen Kirkbride, interim chamber CEO.

This year's Kelowna event started Sunday and wraps up Tuesday.

Members have so far passed several policies including those that call for a study to collect and analyze citizenship and residency data on all B.C. real estate.

We need to bring facts and data to the heated debates that currently surround B.C.s real estate market, explains Kirkbride.

And while the B.C. governments recent move to require the collection of citizenship and residency data in real estate transactions is a step in the right direction, it wont deliver sufficient facts with any speed. Given the impact that B.C.s high real estate costs have on British Columbians and B.C. businesses, were pushing for a full study of ownership data so that were all working from a basis of facts as we look for solutions to B.C.s real estate challenges.

Policies were also instituted to support B.C. wineries.

B.C. wineries, while largely agricultural operations, are currently taxed at a light industry rate rather than the much-lower farm rate. Our network is calling for some tax relief for wineries, to better enable them to invest in their businesses and grow. As wineries are key catalysts of the tourism industry, this move would also promote broader regional benefits, says Kirkbride.

And a further policy was voted in that would call for taxation on short-term rental stays, such as those through Airbnb.

The sharing economy brings exciting new opportunities for British Columbians, but we need to ensure that appropriate taxes are collected on these new business models. In the case of short-term rentals, we also need to ensure an equal playing field for our existing hotels and other tourism businesses as they try to compete with newcomers who, for now, arent paying tax, says Kirkbride.

Other policies voted into force so far include:

Equitable Hospital Capital Taxation for British Columbia

Reviewing Regional District Accountability

Customer Produced Power Improving BC Hydro Policy

Real Estate, Citizenship and Residency Data Collection, Analysis and Reporting

Small Business Benefits from Simplifying the MSP Tax System

Taxation of Short Term Residential Rental Units

Protecting Old Growth Rainforest to the Economic Benefit of Tourism Based Communities

The Need for a Renewed Softwood Lumber Agreement

Supporting B.C.s Land-Based Wineries, Cideries and Distilleries

Addressing the Housing Crunch Through Increasing Supply

Affordable Rental Housing and a Fluid Labour Market

The Costs of Retail Crime

Draft versions of these proposed policies are available online here; they may not be identical to the versions passed, due to amendments made on the policy floor.

The BC Chamber represents more than 125 Chambers of Commerce and 36,000 businesses of every size, sector and region of the province.
Photo: The Canadian Press

About 45.8 million people around the world are trapped in modern slavery, a charity said Tuesday  almost a third more than it estimated two years ago.

The Walk Free Foundation's Global Slavery Index said that India has by far the largest number of modern slaves, 18.35 million, followed by China with 3.39 million and Pakistan with 2.13 million.

North Korea was found to have the highest per capita rate of modern slavery, with 4.37 per cent of its population affected.

The report  launched at a London event hosted by actor Russell Crowe  ranked 167 countries by the number of people affected by practices included forced labour, debt bondage, forced marriage and sexual exploitation.

The total of 45.8 million is 10 million more than the group estimated in its last report in 2014.

Walk Free Foundation chairman Andrew Forrest said the level of slavery hadn't necessarily increased, but more data was available.

"My gut feeling is that it is actually increasing still and it will be a year or two before it turns around," he said. "But it is going to turn around, the way the world is waking up to it.

"We're going to look back on 2016, 2015, and see that's where it all started to change, that's where India started to move aggressively against slavery," he said.

He urged nations to follow the lead of Britain, which has passed a tough law against modern slavery, with penalties of up to life imprisonment for keeping people in servitude.
Photo: Contributed

Thirty-three new licensed childcare spaces are being funded for families in Enderby.

A provincial grant of $424,000 is going to the Enderby Preschool Society for the new spaces. They include 25 for children ages three-to-five, as well as eight other spaces for multi-age children at the Enderby Preschool and Out of School Program at 102 Meadow Crescent.

Access to quality childcare is extremely important to young families to provide peace of mind as they look to advance their careers or re-enter the workforce, said Shuswap MLA Greg Kyllo. In a growing economy, working families depend on childcare providers to help youngsters transition to school.

We are so pleased to be awarded this grant as it will allow us to support families in Enderby and the surrounding area by providing much-needed year-round childcare for children up to age 12, said Cheryl Heidt, Enderby preschool manager of care. We will offer 33 affordable, quality childcare spaces in addition to our existing preschool and before- and after-school programs.

Parents will now be able to work, go to school or fulfil personal needs with peace of mind knowing their children are well cared for in our licensed early-learning centre.

Last November, the B.C. government encouraged childcare providers to apply for funding.

The new spaces are part of governments commitment to support the creation of 13,000 new spaces by 2020.
Photo: Flickr - File photo

A Pittsburgh man who robbed a bank with a fake bomb made out of phone wires, duct tape and a sex toy has been sentenced to 1 1/2 to 3 years in prison.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports an Allegheny County judge sentenced 36-year-old Aaron Stein on Tuesday after rejecting requests for leniency, including house arrest.

The judge says he couldn't tell the community Stein's case warranted only house arrest.

"It can't be that simple," he said.

Stein pleaded guilty in March. He says he robbed the PNC Bank in Crafton last June because he was desperate after losing $9,000 he'd invested to cover his approaching honeymoon.

His attorney says desperation drove him to don an Iron Man mask and used the fake bomb to threaten tellers.
Photo: Contributed

The federal government's controversial bill on assisted dying has sailed through the House of Commons, approved by a vote of 186-137.

It now heads into choppier waters in the Senate, where many senators are pushing for amendments.

It is all but certain the bill will not be passed by Monday, the day the ban on assisted dying is formally lifted.

Senators are expediting the bill, taking the usual step of inviting Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould and Health Minister Jane Philpott to testify before the entire Senate on Wednesday.

However, senators must still debate the bill at second reading, send the bill to committee to hear from some half a dozen witnesses, consider possible amendments and debate and vote on the bill a final time.

Given all that, Conservative Senate leader Claude Carignan said the bill will not be put to a final vote until the end of next week at the earliest.
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YEREVAN, MAY 31, ARMENPRESS. A brief, partial lockdown at the White House was lifted on Monday after a metal object tossed over the fence was tested and determined not to be dangerous, the U.S. Secret Service said, reports Reuters.

President Barack Obama was at the White House during the incident.

An individual threw the object over the north fence of the complex, Secret Service spokesman Shawn Holtzclaw said in an emailed statement.

That person was apprehended without incident, he said.

"All protective sweeps of the metal object were met with negative results. The White House has returned to normal operations," Holtzclaw said.

The north side of the White House was placed on a security lockdown for a couple of hours after the incident, which took place on the U.S. Memorial Day holiday.

Reporters were not allowed to leave the White House compound through its northwest gate and flashing lights from emergency responders could be seen nearby.

Obama had visited Arlington National Cemetery earlier in the day as part of the annual commemoration for armed services members.
YEREVAN, MAY 31, ARMENPRESS. In a meeting with visiting U.S lawmakers, Israeli PM Netanyahu expressed high optimism over normalization of ties with former close ally Turkey, sources say; crucial meeting between negotiating teams expected to be held in Europe next week, reports Haaretz.

However Netanyahu said the previous level of relations, which were present 10 years ago, should not be expected, nevertheless the normalization of ties will contribute to both sides.

A top Israeli official told Haaretz the only obstacle in the negotiations with Turkey is the fact that Israel demands Turkey to shut down the representation of Hamas in Istanbul.
Seamless Alignment and Integrated Learning Support (SAILS), a program designed by Chattanooga State Community College in 2012 that is now employed statewide, has increased college readiness in Tennessee by providing college remediation courses in English and math to high school seniors. Completing SAILS in high school enables students to graduate ready for college-level coursework.

Danny Wilson, the principal of South Pittsburg High School in Marion County, has long supported the SAILS Program. This year, South Pittsburg High experienced remarkable success in their SAILS classes, as they reported graduating 100 percent of their seniors as college-ready in reading, writing, and math. This impressive accomplishment was made possible through the instruction and facilitation of math teacher, Tim Bible and English teacher, Stephanie Lewis. Mr. Bible believes that one of the most powerful aspects of the program is the differentiation with the self-paced, online course. He said, I had 30 students in my class and every single student was working on a different mathematical concept. It made for a very busy class, but no students were sitting and waiting on others.

South Pittsburg guidance counselor, Lynn Cooper, another major proponent of SAILS, commented on the overall impact of the program: It is wonderful to see students graduating at college readiness levels. This increases their probability for success in postsecondary studies significantly.

SAILS Tennessee served close to 16,000 students this year and is projected to serve 17,000 students in 282 high schools during the 2016-2017 academic year. Tennessee residents can expect to hear more about the SAILS Project and its rising success of college students served by this program. For more information, contact SAILS Tennessee at sailstennessee@chattanoogastate.edu or call 423-697-3397.
Graphic showing sustainability aspects for measuring and evaluating the performance of manufacturing processes. A new international standard created by a public-private team led by NIST guides manufacturers with a formal method for characterizing their processes to achieve environmental goals.

Anyone who's ever covered a wall with sticky notes to clearly map all of the steps in a process knows how valuable that exercise can be. It can streamline workflow, increase efficiency and improve the overall quality of the end result. Now, a public-private team led by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has created a new international standard that can "map" the critically important environmental aspects of manufacturing processes, leading to significant improvements in sustainability while keeping a product's life cycle low cost and efficient.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, manufacturing accounts for one-fifth of the annual energy consumption in the United States--approximately 21 quintillion joules (20 quadrillion BTU) or equivalent to 3.6 billion barrels of crude oil. To reduce this staggering amount and improve sustainability, manufacturers need to accurately measure and evaluate consumption of energy and materials, as well as environmental impacts, at each step in the life cycles of their products.

However, making these assessments can be difficult, costly and time consuming, as many manufactured items are created in multiple and/or complex processes, and the environmental impacts of these processes can vary widely depending on how and where the manufacturing occurs. Additionally, the data collected are often unreliable, frequently not derived through scientific methods, and do not compare well with those from other types of manufacturing processes or from processes at different locations.

These issues are beginning to be addressed through a recently approved ASTM International standard for characterizing the environmental aspects of manufacturing processes (ASTM E3012-16). The guide provides manufacturers with a science-based, systematic approach to capture and describe information about the environmental aspects for any production process or group of processes, and then use that data to make informed decisions on improvements. The standard is easily individualized for a company's specific needs.

"It's similar to using personal finance software at home where you have to gather income and expenditure data, 'run the numbers' and then use the results to make smart process changes--savings, cutbacks, streamlining, etc.--that will optimize your monthly budget," said NIST systems engineer Kevin Lyons, who chaired the ASTM committee that developed the manufacturing sustainability standard.

"We designed ASTM E3012-16 to let manufacturers virtually characterize their production processes as computer models, and then, using a standardized method, 'plug and play' the environmental data for each process step to visualize impacts and identify areas for improving overall sustainability of the system," Lyons said.

For their next step, Lyons and his colleagues on the ASTM sustainability committee plan to define key performance indicators (KPIs)--metrics of success--for manufacturing sustainability that can be fed back into the E3012-16 standard to make it even more effective.

"In the long term, we'd also like to establish a repository of process models and case studies from different manufacturing sectors so that users of the standard can compare and contrast against their production methods," Lyons said.

Through a collaboration with Oregon State University, NIST held regional industry roundtables in Boston, Chicago and Seattle to learn how best to introduce the benefits of the sustainability standard to U.S. manufacturers, especially small- and medium-size firms. A report about those meetings will be published later this year.
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn said he has taken a "large position" in Allergan, backing Chief Executive Officer Brent Saunders in what the drugmaker said it doesn't believe will be an activist role.

In 2013, Icahn helped place Saunders in the top spot at Forest Laboratories -- which less than a year later was bought by what's now Allergan. Icahn said he's "very supportive" of Saunders, who eventually joined Allergan and helped orchestrate a planned $160 billion acquisition by Pfizer. That deal fell apart after the U.S. government proposed tax rules that would have decreased the benefit of the acquisition.

"We have recently acquired a large position in Allergan and are very supportive of CEO Brent Saunders," Icahn said in a statement Tuesday. A representative for Icahn wasn't immediately available to comment on the size of the investment. The activist investor often takes stakes in companies to agitate for changes in strategy or management.

In announcing the Allergan position, he made clear he backs Saunders's leadership.

"We have every confidence in Brent's ability to enhance value for all Allergan shareholders," he said. He did not express interest in pushing for any sort of change at Allergan -- at least not yet -- in his statement.

After the collapse of the Pfizer deal, Allergan is at a crossroads. The drugmaker is in the process of selling its generics business to Teva Pharmaceutical Industries for about $40 billion, a deal that, last week, Saunders reiterated should close within the first half of this year. With the cash from that transaction, Allergan will pay down some debt, buy back shares, and gain the ability to do more mergers.

Saunders has more recently backed away from the idea of doing the type of large-scale deals he's been famous for, saying in recent weeks that he is "very comfortable" with Allergan's organic growth potential. While he's open-minded to transformational deals, doing tuck-in deals to bolster existing product lines are more of a priority.

Allergan shares rose less than 1 percent to $237.46 at 1:04 p.m. in New York. The company said it welcomed the investment.

Allergan "has no reason to believe that this investment was made for purposes of influencing the actions of management or control of the company," the company said.

While Icahn has expressed his support for Allergan's management, he's done the same at other companies and then agitated for change nonetheless. After disclosing an Apple stake in August 2013, Icahn said he "could not be more supportive of you, the existing management team, the culture at Apple and the innovative spirit it engenders" in a letter to Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook.

Icahn then pushed Cook to return more of the company's ballooning cash pile to investors. The iPhone maker stepped up its share buybacks and increased dividends, helping to fuel a 38 percent share rally in 2014. That petered out in 2015, when Apple shares declined 4.6 percent. He said in April that he exited the position.

Icahn has been a frequent investor in the drug industry. At Forest, he fought for five years with CEO Howard Solomon, who had run the company for more than three decades and had planned to possibly hand over control to his son. Icahn managed to get a foothold on the board, eventually triumphing over Solomon to name Saunders to lead the drugmaker. Less than a year later, Forest had a $25 billion deal with Allergan, then called Actavis.

Icahn has also invested in Biogen, at the time known as Biogen Idec, along with Amylin Pharmaceuticals Inc. and others.

Cynthia Koons contributed
An Eva Air Boeing 747 taxies past an All Nippon Airways jet at Hong Kong International Airport in 2011. EVA Air is launching nonstop service to Taipei, Taiwan, from O'Hare International Airport. (Laurent Fievet / AFP/Getty Images)

EVA Air will start flying nonstop from Chicago's O'Hare International Airport to Taipei, Taiwan, in early November.

A Chicago Department of Aviation spokeswoman said Taipei is a new destination for travelers at O'Hare. There is no service from Midway Airport to Taiwan or mainland China.

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Starting Nov. 3, EVA will leave O'Hare at 12:20 a.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and land at Taipei's Taoyuan International Airport at 6 a.m. the next day.

A North America-bound flight will leave Taoyuan on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays at 7:50 p.m. and arrive in Chicago at 7:40 p.m. the same day.

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The airline said it plans to offer daily flights from Chicago to Taipei starting May 2017.

By year-end, EVA said it will offer 76 flights a week between North America and Taipei.

The city of Chicago said the new EVA Air flights will help it reach its goal of hosting 55 million annual visitors by 2020. Other newly added international service from Chicago include China Eastern Airlines beginning nonstop service to Shanghai, as well as Icelandair's service to Reykjavik, Iceland. O'Hare's existing carriers have increased the number of flights to destinations in Finland, Ireland, Italy, Panama and Turkey, the city said.

byerak@tribpub.com

Twitter @beckyyerak
YEREVAN, MAY 31, ARMENPRESS. EU leaders, obsessed with the idea of instant and total integration, failed to notice that ordinary people, the citizens of Europe do not share the Euro-enthusiasm, Armenpress reports, President of the European Council Donald Tusk said during the 40th anniversary of European People's Party (EPP).

Disillusioned with the great visions of the future, they demand that we cope with the present reality better than we have been doing until now. Today, Euro-scepticism, or even Euro-pessimism have become an alternative to those illusions. And increasingly louder are those who question the very principle of a united Europe, he stated.

The spectre of a break-up is haunting Europe and a vision of a federation doesn't seem to me like the best answer to it, Tusk said.

As the President of the European Council I want to start an honest and open debate on the subject, Tusk highlighted.
Presence Health secured a $528.1 million short-term loan from JPMorgan Chase last week, buying time as the largest Catholic hospital network in Illinois attempts to resuscitate itself.

The 11-hospital system, based in Chicago, will use debt to pay off loans that it received from seven banks in 2013, including JPMorgan. Terms of the short-term loan, known as a bridge loan, were not available.

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Presence violated the financial conditions of the bank loans after reporting an unexpected loss of $186 million last year.

The hospital chain was talking with the banks to amend the terms of the 2013 debt when JP Morgan offered the bridge loan, said CEO Michael Englehart. He said the bridge loan gives the health system time to restructure all of its debt, which stands at about $1.1 billion.

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"The bridge loan was by far the better solution for Presence Health," Englehart said.

The new borrowing is a step in the right direction for Englehart's turnaround plan, considering Presence's creditworthiness is on the low end of investment grade, said Richard Ciccarone, president and CEO of the bond analysis firm Merritt Research Services.

Englehart is trying to stabilize Presence's financial picture after the loss. About half of the loss was due to a poor collections system, which forced the hospital chain to write off some bills because they were too old to collect.

Part of Englehart's plan to return Presence to health is to slash costs. It plans to eliminate 700 positions by the end of the year, including 250 layoffs.

According to unaudited first-quarter results, operating losses, including $5.2 million in turnaround costs, were $25.8 million, which was better than the hospital had forecast.

asachdev@tribpub.com

Twitter @ameetsachdev
The Mark Twain Hotel is being redeveloped and preserved under the Chicago Single-Room Occupancy Preservation Ordinance. (Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)

A developer has purchased the historic Mark Twain Hotel in Near North, with ambitious plans to renovate the rundown Art Deco building but keep it as affordable housing.

The NHP Foundation, a New York-based nonprofit, paid $21 million this month for the 152-unit building and plans to spend at least $15 million to fix it up, making it one of the first major redevelopment projects under Chicago's Single-Room Occupancy Preservation Ordinance.

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Getting the shabby, 84-year-old SRO hotel shaped up without displacing its needy tenants is a challenge for developers, and perhaps a blueprint for the rehab of similar properties.

"This is a historically significant property that's been neglected for a long time," said Mecky Adnani, vice president of acquisitions and development at the NHP Foundation. "We want to comprehensively rehabilitate the property and fully reposition it while continuing to serve the same population that it has served in the past."

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There are about 65 SROs in Chicago, a number that has dwindled in recent years as properties have changed hands and been converted into higher-priced apartments, taking thousands of affordable units out of the market. The privately owned buildings, many of which have fallen into disrepair, provide de facto affordable housing to some of the city's poorest residents.

Approved in 2014, the SRO preservation ordinance was designed to slow redevelopment of the buildings into market-rate housing. It requires owners looking to sell to spend at least six months trying to find a buyer who would maintain the properties as affordable housing. SRO owners can bypass the requirement by paying a preservation fee of $20,000 per unit.

The city has received notices of intent to sell from 11 SRO properties since January 2015, according to Chicago Planning Department spokesman Peter Strazzabosco. Two buildings have finalized redevelopment terms to be preserved as SROs  the Mark Twain Hotel and 2611 N. Sawyer Ave. in Logan Square.

Located near a recently renovated CTA Red Line station at the southwest corner of Clark and Division streets, the Mark Twain Hotel is an anomaly in the neighborhood, with cramped residential units above low-rent retail that includes a payday loan store, a currency exchange, several empty storefronts and a 7-Eleven.

The Sinclair, a 35-story luxury apartment building developed by Chicago-based Fifield, is rising on the northwest corner where a Jewel once stood. The $230 million tower is expected to open next year.

Without the ordinance, the Mark Twain likely would have given way to similar high-end housing, Adnani said.

"If it wasn't for the ordinance, the owner would have sold the Mark Twain two years ago," Adnani said. "They had bids, and we came in right on time."

Designed by architect Harry Glube, the 58,000-square-foot Mark Twain features ornate white terra cotta decoration over beige brick. The facade also features blaring signs for Mr. Gyros and AmeriCash Loans, among others.

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The hotel, which opened in 1932, has a checkered history that includes at least two people leaping to their death, and a third breaking both legs and an arm after jumping from a fifth-floor window, according to Chicago Tribune archives.

Current apartment rents run about $650 per month, and the building is near full occupancy, Adnani said. Tenants do not use housing vouchers, and for some, the Mark Twain Hotel and other SROs represent a last resort before homelessness.

"Essentially we are providing a public service," said Eric Rubenstein, an owner of three SROs and executive director of the Single Room Housing Assistance Corp., a nonprofit organization that represents dozens of Chicago SROs. "We are housing people without costing the taxpayers."

Post-renovation, rents in the building will likely rise to $1,200 to $1,300 a month, but the goal is to have the vast majority of residents pay far less.

NHP is looking to use government funding mechanisms such as low-income housing tax credits, tax-exempt bonds and project-based subsidies, which restrict the property to low- and middle-income residents. The property will also apply for historic tax credits to preserve the facade.

The initial phase is being supported by the city with $749,000 in tax credits, Strazzabosco said.

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The Mark Twain Hotel is the first SRO redevelopment and the first major project in Chicago for NHP, a 27-year-old organization that has 6,200 affordable housing units in 14 states.

Stuart Boesky, CEO of Pembrook Capital Management, provided a $17 million bridge loan, enabling NHP to close on the Mark Twain acquisition. He said NHP's experience with government funding options was crucial to getting the Mark Twain project off the ground.

"It takes a developer that has a particular expertise with government programs to pull this off," Boesky said.

NHP has approached the Chicago Housing Authority, looking to get project-based subsidies for 90 percent of the units, which would limit the rent to 30 percent of household income for qualified low- and middle-income tenants. The rest of the units would be unrestricted, to ensure that no current tenants are displaced, Adnani said.

The CHA has not received an application from NHP but has previously provided project-based voucher support for a number of SRO properties across the city, Strazzabosco said.

Beyond the facade restoration, NHP's plans for Mark Twain include a new community room, a roof deck, upgraded building systems and new bathrooms, with kitchens added to each unit.

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No less important will be upgrading the 9,000 square feet of retail space and tenants, Adnani said. "We're working with retail brokers who are going to help us strategize," she said. "We don't want the property to have the negative image that it has had."

NHP is already looking at its second major Chicago project  a Lincoln Park SRO that is under contract and in the due diligence process. Adnani declined to identify the property.

She is hoping the Mark Twain renovation will not only reveal a hidden architectural gem, but also change the way people see SRO housing.

"Maybe the neighborhood preferred this beautiful piece of property be demolished and a tower go there," Adnani said. "But obviously there are people who don't believe that should be the case, including us."

rchannick@tribpub.com

Twitter @RobertChannick
UnitedHealthcare will stop offering Affordable Care Act plans in Illinois in 2017. It is pulling out of most states. (Andrew Harnik / AP)

UnitedHealthcare will stop offering Affordable Care Act plans in Illinois in 2017, the Tribune confirmed Tuesday.

The departure of the insurance company will reduce the number of coverage options for consumers in 27 counties.

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UnitedHealthcare announced in April that it would pull out of nearly all of the ACA exchanges because of heavier-than-expected losses from covering a population that turned out to be sicker than it expected. The ACA plans, which the company offered in 34 states this year, are a small share of UnitedHealthcare's total business.

At the time, the company didn't disclose if it would remain in Illinois and the state Insurance Department also declined comment on the insurer's status on the exchange, known as Get Covered Illinois.

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On Tuesday, UnitedHealthcare disclosed on a website dedicated to insurance brokers that it plans to offer on-exchange plans in only three states  Nevada, New York and Virginia. A company spokeswoman confirmed that it will withdraw from the Illinois exchange.

Illinois members will have access to their benefits through the end of the year. The change does not affect the company's group insurance business or Medicare plans.

Also, the company said its Harken Health subsidiary, which started offering ACA plans on a limited basis this year in Illinois and Georgia, will stay on those exchanges next year. The broker website indicated that Harken will expand to Florida in 2017.

UnitedHealthcare had about 795,000 exchange enrollees at the end of the first quarter, but the company did not break down the total by state.

At the end of last year, UnitedHealthcare had nearly 22,000 individual members in Illinois, less than 4 percent of the state market, according to Mark Farrah Associates, a health industry data aggregator and web publisher. In 2015, the company only offered plans in Cook County.

asachdev@tribpub.com

Twitter @ameetsachdev
Margarita pitchers saturated with sugar or watery lager dressed up with lime are too often the typical go-tos when you're meeting friends for tacos. Especially when we're talking about a good taco  a soft, elastic tortilla stuffed with savory protein and bright salsa, sprinkled with cotija cheese, cilantro or crunchy radishes  you deserve something better.

Whether you're classing it up with wine, playing it cool with something nonalcoholic or indulging in tequila's smokier sibling, mezcal, up your taco drinking game with these drinks at these four spots.

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Basica beer at Cruz Blanca a new restaurant / brew pub, 900 West Randolph Street in the West Loop. (Phil Velasquez)

Beer at Cruz Blanca Rick Bayless' newest spot is everything a taco lover could want: flame-kissed meat, housemade tortillas and a slew of golden beers that are as much an event as the primal plating of tacos. Headed up by brewer Jacob Sembrano, the brewpub is home to an interesting lineup of nontraditional European-style beers, in particular three iterations of the light French biere de garde. The La Guardia Ambar  an amber-hued brew made from Mexican hominy  goes particularly well with the carne asada, thanks to its medium-body, healthy suds and toasty, nutty notes. You won't find IPAs on this menu, but the dry-hopped Smoke Alley, a wheat ale that's light in body with a hit of smoke and hops, is a fine match for your tacos too. Cruz Blanca, 904 W. Randolph St., 312-733-1975, www.rickbayless.com/restaurants/cerveceria-cruz-blanca.

Wine at Summer House Santa Monica With its clean-yet-boho, Cali-cool vibe, Summer House serves light, beach-friendly fare that evokes the Golden State's rightful obsession with freshness. On the taco front, you'll find line-caught mahi mahi served with cumin-scented rice, charred tomato salsa, guacamole and tortillas. This dish gives the humble taco a deliciously modern upgrade, so put down that Dos XX and listen up: Wine director Ryan Arnold suggests two wine pairings for the textured, meaty mahi mahi. "I'd seek out wines that are low alcohol, crisp and citrusy, and play a nice supporting role to really let the fish shine." Arnold's Old World pick, Ameztoi's txakoli, hails from northern Spain. "Minerality, salt and citrus with a little effervescence make this one of my favorite pairings." For a taste of Cali, Arnold also offers up a sauvignon blanc from Stolpman Vineyards, from Santa Barbara's Ballard Canyon region. Summer House Santa Monica, 1954 N. Halsted St., 773-634-4100, www.summerhousesm.com.

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Mezcal at La Mez Agave Lounge Mezcal has been having a moment, with the opening of a few cocktails dens dedicated to the smoky spirit. La Mez, in the basement of River North's Mercadito, boasts more than 75 styles of the agave-based spirit. Start with the pollo tacos (chicken marinated with garlic and the Mexican herb epazote, topped with corn hash, onions, a poblano-tomatillo mojo sauce, avocado and shallots), and pair it with a funky cocktail from Dylan Stewart, head mixologist for both spaces. He infuses Peloton de la Muerte mezcal with dried chanterelle mushrooms and plantains for four hours, then mixes the infusion with Lillet Blanc, honey, lemon and celery bitters, yielding a complex drink that is earthy and smoky, a perfect foil to the sweet corn in the taco. La Mez Agave Lounge, 108 W. Kinzie St., 312-329-9555, www.mercaditorestaurants.com/chicago/

Aguafresca at Antique Taco Want a nonalcoholic option? Light and fruity, aguafresca is the answer to salty, savory tacos. Translated simply as "fresh water," it's a blend of pureed fruit, water, sugar and a hit of citrus that's popular throughout Mexico and Central America, though you're just as likely to find it at taco stands and food carts in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. At Antique Taco in Wicker Park, seasonal aguafresca (right now, blackberry) is always on the menu, with a bright, healthy dose of lemon juice to cut through fatty carnitas or lift up earthy cumin-dusted lamb tacos. Antique Taco, 1360 N. Milwaukee Ave., 773-687-8697, www.antiquetaco.com

jbhernandez@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @joeybear85






Chicago actress Gina Rodriguez won an acting Golden Globe last year for her work on "Jane the Virgin." (Kevin Winter / Getty Images)

A New York teen had a red-carpet experience at prom last week, thanks to Chicago native Gina Rodriguez.

The "Jane the Virgin" star let Buffalo student Jessica Casanova wear the strapless Badgley Mischka gown she wore to the Golden Globes last year when she won the award for best comedic actress in a TV series.

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"Gina's dress made me feel like a princess and it gave me chills knowing that it was something that came from her heart and I cherish that very much," Casanova told E! News. "I wish I could give her a big hug and tell her how much I love her. She will always have a special place in my heart."

The idea unfolded in January, when Casanova tweeted Rodriguez, 31, about wearing the off-the-shoulder Zac Posen gown Rodriguez donned for the Golden Globes this year.

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Rodriguez, who grew up in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood on the Northwest Side and attended St. Ignatius College Prep, responded that she doesn't own that dress but owns her 2015 gown and "maybe we can make this happen."

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Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 126 Woody introduces the gang to a homemade spork toy with self-esteem issues in "Toy Story 4." Read the review. (Pixar / AP)
Timely treatment is critical to limiting damage from strokes. With the advent of telestroke systems, more people than ever have access to quick treatment. (iStock)

In September, Willie Frank Blackburn of Washington, Ga., a rural city of 5,000 people, had just left his auto shop when his tow truck slid off the road. Police officers who happened to be nearby found him slurring his speech and acting unlike the person they knew. His daughter, the director of nursing at Wills Memorial Hospital, a 25-bed acute care facility, knew he was showing signs of a stroke.

RELATED: TRENDING LIFE & STYLE NEWS THIS HOUR

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Blackburn was brought to the hospital by paramedics who called ahead because they understood that time plays an important role in the recovery of stroke victims. The telemedicine stroke team was ready for his arrival. Within minutes he'd had a CT scan. A cart with a mobile two-way camera that enables observation and has the ability to transmit scans was set up between Wills and Augusta University Medical Center, a major stroke facility where highly trained neurologists, usually not found at rural hospitals, are always on duty.

After looking at the scan and the patient, the experts at Augusta determined that Blackburn had had an ischemic stroke and instructed the Wills staff to inject tPA (tissue plasminogen activator), the only FDA-approved treatment for ischemic strokes. It dissolves clots and allows blood to flow to a brain that is being deprived of oxygen.

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Once his condition stabilized, Blackburn was transferred for further care to Augusta.

"The neurologist there told me that, had my father not received tPA so quickly, the damage from his stroke would have been devastating and irreversible," says Angie Vickery.

Timely treatment is critical to limiting damage from a stroke. If Blackburn had needed to be transported to a major stroke center, lack of oxygen would have had several more hours to destroy brain cells and wreak havoc. Telestroke systems allow patients in rural and other remote areas to be assessed and receive treatment quickly.

A stroke occurs when a blood vessel that carries oxygen and blood to the brain is blocked. An ischemic stroke occurs when a clot obstructs the flow of blood to the brain; a hemorrhagic stroke occurs when a blood vessel ruptures and prevents blood flow to the brain; and a transient ischemic attack (TIA) or ministroke, occurs when blood flow is temporarily obstructed.

According to the American Stroke Association, symptoms of stroke include sudden numbness in the face, arms or legs or on one side of the body, sudden confusion and trouble speaking, sudden trouble seeing, sudden trouble walking or symptoms of dizziness or loss of balance and coordination, and sudden severe headaches with no known cause.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says stroke is the fifth leading cause of death for Americans and the leading cause of long-term disability. Every year, almost 800,000 Americans have a stroke and 130,000 of those people die. One out of every 20 deaths in the U.S. is the result of a stroke. Of total yearly strokes, the CDC says 87 percent are ischemic strokes that can be treated by injecting tPA.

The American Stroke Association says that, if administered within three to four hours, tPA can improve the chances of recovery. That's one reason it's important to identify the signs of stroke quickly and get a patient to a hospital in time. With the advent of telestroke systems, more people than ever have access to quick treatment that would otherwise not be available.

At Augusta University, Dr. David Hess is the chairman of the department of neurology at the Medical College of Georgia and a designer of a telestroke system known as REACH, a platform that reaches out to rural and underserved Georgian hospitals without stroke specialists.

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Doctors can log on to a secure system from anywhere and connect directly to a rural hospital for a videoconference. If appropriate, depending on what the imaging shows, experts determine a tPA dose, which works only if the stroke is ischemic and if the drug is injected intravenously within three hours of the onset of symptoms.

"Two million brain cells die every minute during a stroke," warns Hess, stressing the urgency of time.

Telestroke was conceived in 1999 and is now part of mainstream care for patients with acute stroke. Hess says the main push for the use of telestroke was and is to increase the appropriate injection of tPA in patients with acute ischemic stroke. Hospitals with fewer than 100 beds usually don't have a neurologist on staff or the proper intensive care capabilities. Often, patients are treated with tPA and then transferred to a larger "hub" hospital.

Dr. Michael Mullen, director of the telestroke program at the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Neuroscience Center, a facility known as a "hub" hospital, says that, although stroke is common, there is a limited amount of expertise in the area.

Stroke experts  those trained in neurology and vascular neurology  tend to be clustered at large medical institutions. He says his program works best with smaller hospitals that do not have local stroke expertise and where Penn's neurological specialists can help ensure that the highest possible care is available 24/7.

Mullen's colleague Christopher Ware is the medical director who oversees the telestroke program at Chester County Hospital, one of the University of Pennsylvania's smaller "spoke" community hospitals. He says that a National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke study, published in 1995, showed tPA improved outcomes for stroke victims; before that, doctors would only learn the outcome of a stroke by watching and waiting.

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Now, for patients who are appropriately identified and who reach treating physicians within a three- to four-hour window, tPA can reverse clotting and lessen potential damage.

"Effective therapies do exist for stroke, but they are time-dependent," says Mullen. "Patients need to recognize the symptoms and quickly call 911, while providers need to facilitate the best possible outcomes."

Barbara Sadick is a freelancer.

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Julia Rohan, owner of Rover-Time Dog Walking & Pet Sitting, and her husband, Mark Vanderhoff, play with their 1-year-old son, Archie, at their North Side home. (Michael Tercha / Chicago Tribune)

Julia Rohan was still in her hospital bed, recovering from a cesarean section, when she returned to work.

The owner and founder of Rover-Time Dog Walking & Pet Sitting had planned to step away from direct client contact during her maternity leave.

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But she realized just a few hours after giving birth that her first baby  her company  couldn't flourish without her help.

"I had two people who needed my guidance to keep everything afloat," says Rohan, whose son just turned 1.

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Though she'd planned to go back to work part-time after having her son, Rohan soon was clocking 60 hours a week.

Between 1997 and 2013, the number of female-owned companies increased by 59 percent, and today more than 8.6 million businesses in the United States are owned by women, according to a 2013 American Express report.

Julia Rohan, center left, owner of Rover-Time Dog Walking & Pet Sitting, holds a meeting with her walkers, including Matt Attfield, left, and Rebekah Trombley, in the basement office of her North Side home. (Michael Tercha / Chicago Tribune)

But while these women are taking the lead in business ownership, they're finding it difficult to take a break from their companies to have a child. For many, being a business owner and a mother is a burden because they feel they have it all but can't enjoy any of it.

Even if they can give themselves maternity leave, some owners say taking 12 weeks away can be a death sentence for a business.

Still, research has shown that taking more maternity time is one of the top five wishes for do-overs for women with MBAs, said Laraine Zappert, clinical psychologist and author of "Getting It Right," a book about women, work and wellness.

"Even the most career-committed woman sometimes wish they had allowed themselves more time before returning to work," Zappert said.

Rohan said she loved her job but became resentful because she felt her company was tearing her away from her baby during those first three months.

"It drastically affected my relationship to my job," she said. "The business I had was my first baby, but to fall so out of love with it was very difficult, and to shift this back and to make myself love it again was hard."

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Rohan said she felt she was going through a trauma when she returned to work soon after her son's birth but did so to keep her company afloat.

"I'm happy that I could have a business to return to, but I realized that I needed to work on my relationship with my business," Rohan said.

Resentment about not being able to take time off to care for a newborn can linger for years, which is why female leaders need a plan, said Allyson Downey, CEO and a founder of weeSpring, an online shopping platform for parents, and author of "Here's the Plan."

"I think open, candid conversations about who will be handling what is crucial," Downey said. "I talked to a pair of female entrepreneurs who had so much resentment simmering beneath the surface of their relationship." Downey said one of the co-founders of the company was worried that all the burden would be placed on her after her business partner became pregnant. She said she was fearful about speaking not being supportive.

Downey suggested inviting the entire team to share concerns and fears.

Julia Rohan, center right, owner of Rover-Time Dog Walking & Pet Sitting, holds a meeting with her walkers in the basement office of her North Side home. (Michael Tercha / Chicago Tribune)

"Be proactive in initiating those conversations, and work together to develop a plan that'll leave them feeling confident in your absence," Downey said.

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She said that the upfront investment of time is worthwhile because it will help avoid resentments on both ends.

Tiana Kubik, who co-owns TK photography with her husband, said that she didn't take maternity leave with her first child 3 1/2 years ago and worked from the hospital.

"It was just doing what we had to do to keep our business going," she said.

But, Kubik said, it will be different with her second child, due in October.

She now has a studio manager, administrative support and a plan: Most of her work duties will shift to the studio manager.

Still, Kubik thinks she won't be completely removed.

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"I'm sure I'll still be doing something, but I just won't have to be in the front lines," she said.

Stepping away from an important position may sound scary to a business owner, but it's a great opportunity to send a message to your company, said Amanda Brown, executive director of the National Women's Business Council.

"It sends a strong message about who you are and the values that you have and the culture that you want to create in your business," Brown said. "I have spoken with many women who have actually taken extended leaves from their CEO roles with the specific intent of serving as a leader and a role model within that organization."

And, perhaps, as a leader and a role model to their children too.

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YEREVAN, MAY 31, ARMENPRESS. Doctor in political sciences, professor Garik Keryan says Turkey, dissatisfied with the EU, tries to normalize its relations with Russia. There are preconditions for the normalization of the Turkish-Russian relations, and it is connected with the several political processes after the downing of the Russian plane.

He said Turkey downed the Russian plane and received the Western support instead of it, and also there were promises to receive 3 billion Euros to solve the refuge issue. Moreover, there were also promises for Turkish citizens to travel to Europe without visa.

Later Turks were dissatisfied with the given promises and the elimination of visa regime, and thus, the promises were not made and Turkey changed its mind. And, this is connected also with a number of economic processes. In particular, Russia and Turkey mutually applied economic sanctions. As a result, a number of economic sectors of Turkey were affected. Now Turks have a lot to think about, whether it was worth to believe in the Western promises and had such losses, Keryan stated.

From the other side, Russia saw that the West wants to frozen Turkey-Russia relations in order to close the southern road for Russia and to isolate it from the Middle-Eastern developments.

Russia, trying to normalize relations with Turkey, in fact, wants to crack the West-Turkey tandem. Taking into account this, we see that new reformation of political interests is taking place. Thats why I will not be surprised with the normalization of Russian-Turkish relations, Keryan stated.

He added that in any case Turkey will revise the cooperation formats with the West which are directed against Russia.

Professor was unable to say what impact the possible normalization of Russian-Turkish relations can have on the regional developments. He said first of all we should wait to see what stage this normalization process will reach.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu announced that Ankara wants to create a working group for the normalization of the Russian-Turkish relations.

Earlier Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia wants to restore its relations with Turkey despite the Su-24 incident.

The relations between Russia and Turkey became tense in 2015 when Turkish air forces downed the Russian Su-24 plane.

Russia applied several sanctions against Turkey.
An Illinois Department of Corrections van carrying Drew Peterson arrives at the Randolph County Courthouse in Chester, Ill., on May 23, 2016. (Nuccio DiNuzzo / Chicago Tribune)

CHESTER, Ill.  Drew Peterson slouched in his chair at the defense table and rested his head on his left hand, his face dispassionate and devoid of emotion as the judge read aloud the jury's verdict that found Peterson guilty of trying to hire a hit man to kill the prosecutor who put him in prison for murder.

Clad in baggy black trousers and a yellowed prison-issue white shirt at least one size too large, the former Bolingbrook police officer's muted reaction was the opposite of the persona he displayed nearly a decade ago when he garnered international headlines with his oafish behavior after the disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson.

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Cassandra Cales, sister of Stacy Peterson, addresses the media following Drew Peterson's murder-for-hire conviction May 31, 2016. (Matt Walberg/Chicago Tribune) (Chicago Tribune)

He shook his attorney's hand and filed out of the courtroom flanked by massive prison guards in black fatigues, mouthing something unintelligible at Stacy's sister, Cassandra Cales, who smiled uncomfortably as she stared him down.

It took the jury only about an hour to find Drew Peterson guilty of solicitation of murder and solicitation of murder for hire. The verdict was a victory not only for the intended victim, Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow, but also for Cales.

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"You know, this just put another nail in his coffin and now, obviously, I hope he sees that he's never getting out of jail," Cales said outside the courthouse in downstate Randolph County. "Karma's catching up with him. He's, you know, gonna stay in prison forever."

Cales would not reveal what Peterson said to her as he left the courtroom, but said she still holds hope that the mystery of her sister's disappearance one day will be solved.

Peterson, 62, faces up to 60 years in prison when he is sentenced in July. The sentence would start after Peterson's 38-year prison term for the 2004 murder of his third wife, Kathleen Savio.

Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow speaks to the media following Drew Peterson's conviction on charges he tried to hire a hitman to kill the prosecutor. (Matt Walberg/Chicago Tribune) (Chicago Tribune)

The heart of the state's case  which was co-prosecuted by the Illinois attorney general's office and Randolph County State's Attorney Jeremy Walker  was hours of secretly recorded conversations between Peterson and Antonio "Beast" Smith, the fellow Menard Correctional Center inmate Peterson tapped to find someone to kill Glasgow.

The recordings, made over two weeks in November 2014, captured Peterson's statements that he believed Glasgow abused the law to prosecute him and was unethically manipulating the legal system to obstruct his appeal. He told Smith that with Glasgow dead, his appeal would be nearly guaranteed to succeed and the prosecutor's assistants wouldn't have the guts to charge him with Stacy's disappearance.

But Peterson was unaware that Smith, 25, had tipped off authorities to the plan and agreed to wear a wire, which caught Peterson exulting over the idea of Glasgow's murder.

As part of his ruse, Smith told Peterson he had arranged for his uncle to kill Glasgow by Christmas 2014.

"I told him what you said, that it's the green light on, that basically go ahead and kill him," Smith said in a Nov. 15, 2014, recording. "That's what you wanted, right? ... It ain't no turning back."

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"OK, alright. I'm in," Peterson responded. "From the first time we talked about it, there was no turning back. ... If I get some booze in here, we'll celebrate that night."

That exchange left no doubt about Peterson's intentions, Assistant Attorney General Steve Nate told the jury Tuesday during his closing argument.

"He said it, he meant it and he's guilty," Nate said.

But Peterson's defense attorney Lucas Liefer said the recordings were nonsensical prison talk and pointed out that Peterson never directly said on the recordings that he wanted Glasgow killed. He also said Smith, serving time for attempted murder, was unreliable and a liar.

"This case is wrought with inconsistency and incomplete evidence," Liefer told the jury.

Stacy Peterson's disappearance in 2007 prompted Glasgow to reopen a probe into Savio's death, which was originally ruled an accident after she was found dead in her bathtub. No one has ever been charged in Stacy Peterson's disappearance. Drew Peterson is the only suspect in the case, authorities have said.

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On the recordings, Peterson told Smith he believed his wife was still alive  which Liefer tried to use to show the jurors that Smith was lying when he testified last week that Peterson told him he had killed her.

Liefer said the state's case hinged on the word of a man who was later paid about $3,000 by the FBI  "a lying snitch, who is so unreliable that it's embarrassing the state paid him money."

He argued prosecutors, eager to get a second crack at Peterson, were willing to work with Smith, who had been transferred from Menard to another facility in Pontiac where he made enemies for informing on correctional officers.

"It had nothing to do with doing the right thing," Liefer argued. "He (Smith) had to get out of Pontiac, and he didn't know what else to do. He was a rat caught in a trap, and he had to get out."

Smith testified the payments were made to replace property he lost when he was transferred to federal custody after wearing the wire on Peterson.

Walker said Smith  who is serving the remainder of a 40-year sentence for crimes including attempted murder  has a challenging future in the prison system.

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"You think he's ever going to sleep with both eyes closed again? There's no way," Walker argued. "Because he crossed the biggest line there is: He wore a wire on a fellow inmate in a maximum security prison."

For his part, Glasgow said he hoped Peterson's conviction would give pause to any other inmate who might want to seek revenge on a prosecutor.

"I think (Walker's) last statement... said it all," Glasgow said outside the courthouse. "A prosecutor has a right to go home and sleep soundly and not worry about getting a bullet in his head after he's done his job."

And Glasgow vowed that he would prosecute Peterson in connection with Stacy's disappearance if the evidence warrants.

"If we get to the point where we think we can prove that beyond a reasonable doubt, I won't hesitate to move forward," he said. "I have always had the philosophy (that) if I have a provable murder case against a defendant, I'm bringing it no matter what."

mwalberg@tribpub.com

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Portrait of Alexandra Haeger Estes, president and chairwoman of Haeger Industries, Inc., stands among the bricks used to stack pottery in the kiln cars at their East Dundee facility on May 12, 2016. After 145 years in business, Haeger is closing its doors this summer. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune)

The line still runs at Haeger Potteries, rolling out hundreds of casserole dishes, pizza stones, egg cookers and other pieces of ceramic bakeware each day, not to mention the fanciful art that made Haeger's name decades ago.

But a month or so from now, the machines will stop, the 2,000-degree kiln will go cold and about 50 people will have to find other work as the East Dundee company's 145-year run comes to an end.

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President Alexandra Haeger Estes, great-granddaughter of founder David Haeger, said foreign competition, postrecession consumer frugality and changing tastes sealed the company's fate. It's a common tale for many American manufacturers, but unlike the makers of more prosaic goods, Haeger promises to leave a vibrant legacy.

It has produced thousands of different ceramic knickknacks over the years, from homey cookie jars to commemorative liquor bottles to the world's largest hand-thrown vase. It has made glazed roosters fit for a country kitchen and stylized bulls suitable for a Hefneresque bachelor pad.

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The curios are vivid, striking and not particularly expensive, and they have stirred a collector's market that is likely to endure long after the company shuts down. To some, the pieces are reminiscent of a more hopeful time, when America's burgeoning middle class had the money and aspiration to buy things for no reason other than beauty.

"They were trying to establish a sense of style," said Joe Paradis, a North Carolina author who has co-written two books about Haeger pottery. "The (World War II-era) stuff was pretty flamboyant and colorful. The color of the glazes and the sensuality and flamboyance and exaggeration of the designs appealed to a lot of people."

According to the company history, Haeger began in 1871 when David Haeger bought out a brickmaker perched along the Fox River, a location that gave it ready access to the riverbank clay it needed for its products.

Alexandra Haeger Estes, president and chairman of Haeger Industries, speaks about the history of her family's business in East Dundee, Ill. She also speaks about helping find work for all of the company's loyal employees, including 76-year-old Larry Behm who has been with the company since 1959. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune) (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)

The timing was fortuitous: Not long after Haeger set up shop, the Great Chicago Fire turned many of the city's wooden buildings to ash, sparking a ravenous demand for brick. Yet after a few decades of pumping out building materials, Edmund Haeger, David's son, decided to take the company in a new direction.

Starting with simple flowerpots, Edmund Haeger turned the firm to the business of decor. A small museum, housed in the factory store, shows some of the company's early efforts: ebony vases, cobalt tea kettles and celery-colored candlesticks, all coated with a luminous glaze and priced for the fledgling homeowner.

"That was what we always aimed for  to make beautiful pottery affordable for everyone," Haeger Estes said.

But it was the arrival of a designer named Royal Hickman in 1938 that elevated the company to a more prestigious plane. Hickman added an art deco flair to his pieces, including a sleek stalking panther that become the company's unofficial mascot.

"The popularity was when Royal Hickman was there," Paradis said. "He pretty much made the company. Most of the designs that were exciting were done by him."

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Hickman left in 1944, but his template remained as Haeger responded to new interior design trends, trying to match its products with the evolving public taste. For a long time it kept up the pace  until pottery itself fell out of favor.

"The artware business has been eroding over the past 20 years, I suppose, with foreign competition and people's buying habits changing," said Terry Rosborough, the company's vice president of manufacturing. "They're not buying vases and ceramic figurines and so forth to put in their house to help decorate. That's not the decorating trend these days."

Haeger began to emphasize more practical goods such as bakeware, which today constitutes the bulk of its 15,000-piece-per-week output. One recent morning, a worker laid a slab of brown clay on a die press, and 135 tons of pressure later, out came an "egg cooker"  a two-chambered bowl used for poaching.

The clay would be dried, trimmed, sponged, glazed and sent through the 220-foot-long kiln before it would be done. Rosborough said that like many products Haeger manufactures today, the egg cookers were made to order for a retailer, which would sell them under its own name.

Yet even that change of direction wasn't enough to protect the company against cheaper imports and the Great Recession's lingering parsimony. After years of struggle, the company said last month that it would close at the end of May.

But that announcement actually breathed new vitality into Haeger. Customers besieged the company store, standing in line for hours and almost stripping it bare. The company started making more art objects to keep up with demand and pushed back the factory's closing for another month (the company store likely will remain open for a few weeks after that).

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The collectors' market also has pepped up since the announcement. John Magon, a Madison, Wis., resident who owns 70 pieces, said he has seen asking prices on eBay go from $30 or $40 to as much as $400.

Larry Behm, 76, who has worked at Haegar Industries for the past 57 years, tends to the bake ware from the hot room at Haeger Industries in East Dundee on May 12, 2016. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune)

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Magon's collection includes drama masks, Asian-influenced figurines and plenty of stylized animals, including a lion that once prowled his grandmother's mantle. He sticks to the mid-century period, from the 1940s to the 1960s, but said he expects the value of some newer pieces to climb, too.

"Haeger demanded your attention," he said. "It was bold, it was fun to look at, and either you loved it or you didn't. Most people loved it."

While the company's wares seem likely to enjoy a long existence, the factory is another matter. East Dundee Village President Lael Miller said he would like to see another ceramic company take it over; failing that, he said, the buildings could be redeveloped as condo lofts or simply knocked down to make way for riverfront housing.

As for the employees, Haeger Estes said the company was trying to find them work with local companies. She considers them artists, doing by hand what most other companies have mechanized, and said their pride was evident in the final product.

"A lot of people treasure the pieces they've had from their grandparents and so on, and I hope that continues," she said. "I hope people today pass it on, particularly now that there is no more. One hundred and forty-five years, four generations of family  it's pretty amazing in today's world. I don't think you're going to see the likes of it again, ever."

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Twitter @JohnKeilman
Former police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, second from left, and current Superintendent Eddie Johnson, second from right, chat at the City Club of Chicago on May 31, 2016. (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune)

Coming off a violent Memorial Day weekend, Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson stuck to familiar themes in a speech Tuesday to the City Club of Chicago, bemoaning the senselessness of all the shootings, the department's fractured relationship with the community and the broken judicial system that is too much a revolving door for the most dangerous criminals.

Johnson also lamented a gang culture that sinks its hooks into youngsters in Chicago's most dangerous neighborhoods "almost at birth," he said.

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"So by the time they're 12, their destiny is set," he told a few hundred civic leaders. "It's either prison or death."

Since Mayor Rahm Emanuel named him superintendent in a surprise move in March, Johnson has been emphasizing that the department knows who the violent offenders are but needs the help of the criminal justice system to keep them locked up for longer periods.

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To that point, he later told reporters that fully four-fifths of the 69 shooting victims over the Memorial Day weekend were on the "strategic subject list"  a list of about 1,400 known gang members believed to be most prone to violence, compiled by the department using a computerized algorithm. Six died of their injuries.

Where shootings occurred Memorial Day weekend in Chicago

On a day the city agreed to pay $2 million to settle a lawsuit by two whistleblower cops, Johnson also told reporters he's working with the department's Bureau of Internal Affairs on a way to make it easier for officers to report misconduct against colleagues. Stopping short of specifics, he said "a big penalty" would be assessed against officers found to harass another cop for reporting misconduct.

"We want officers to report misconduct or inappropriate behavior, but we don't want them to be ostracized by their colleagues," he said.

In addition to touching on Chicago's violence problem, Johnson talked about how the Police Department is trying to rebuild trust with the community following the release six months ago of the video of a white Chicago police officer shooting black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times.

Toward that end, officers on all three watches in two police districts  Austin on the West Side and Shakespeare on the Northwest Side  will be the first equipped with body cameras by next week, he said.

Johnson briefly addressed the Memorial Day weekend violence, calling many of the shootings "random with no rhyme or reason."

"I wish we could track the number of crimes we prevented, but we can't," he said.

An additional 88 sergeants and 13 lieutenants will hit the streets next week, he said, "giving us more supervision and leadership where it's really needed."

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The 28-year police veteran recounted the litany of challenges facing the department on the violence front  weak gun laws in neighboring states, an endemic gang culture, social media fueling rivalries, broken homes and premature parents.

"Teenagers with kids and no education produce more teenagers who have kids, and the cycle continues," he said.

He decried a judicial system that's "broken and overwhelmed," saying many violent criminals serve less than half their sentences while nonviolent offenders are too often locked up "for longer than they deserve or we can afford."

Warning: Video contains strong language. Police officers and residents gather after Memorial Day weekend shootings in North Lawndale, the Near West Side, East Garfield Park and Irving Park. (John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune) (Chicago Tribune)

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He also spoke of the dangers of social media stoking the violence, referring to young people who "taunt each other, brag about their crimes and dare others to confront them."

Johnson recalled how he recently invited the mother and uncle of 15-year-old Michael Westley, killed by Chicago police in 2013, to his fifth-floor office at police headquarters to watch surveillance video recovered as part of the investigation. The video didn't capture the shooting itself, but it showed the teen running from officers in the Englewood neighborhood.

Police have said Westley had pointed a gun at an officer, but the teen's mother has called for an FBI investigation into the shooting.

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"For a few moments we both walked in each other's shoes," Johnson told the audience. "I experienced her pain at the loss of her son, and she experienced the pressure and uncertainty of the police officers in the video.

"There was no finger-pointing or blame," he said. "There was simply three people watching the same video hoping for some resolution and realizing that there are no clear or easy answers to our problems."

jgorner@tribpub.com

Twitter @JeremyGorner
YEREVAN, MAY 31, ARMENPRESS. The USA has surrendered its status as the worlds most competitive economy after being overtaken by China Hong Kong and Switzerland, according to the IMD World Competitiveness Center.

The sheer power of the economy of the USA is no longer sufficient to keep it at the top of the prestigious World Competitiveness Ranking, which it has led for the past three years, says the IMD Press Release.

The IMD World Competitiveness Center, a research group within IMD business school, has published the ranking each year since 1989 and it is widely regarded as the foremost annual assessment of the competitiveness of countries.

The 2016 edition ranks China Hong Kong first, Switzerland second and the USA third, with Singapore, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway and Canada completing the top 10.

Professor Arturo Bris, Director of the IMD World Competitiveness Center, said a consistent commitment to a favourable business environment was central to China Hong Kongs rise and that Switzerlands small size and its emphasis on a commitment to quality have allowed it to react quickly to keep its economy on top.

The USA still boasts the best economic performance in the world, but there are many other factors that we take into account when assessing competitiveness, he said.

The common pattern among all of the countries in the top 20 is their focus on business-friendly regulation, physical and intangible infrastructure and inclusive institutions.

A leading banking and financial center, China Hong Kong encourages innovation through low and simple taxation and imposes no restrictions on capital flows into or out of the territory.

It also offers a gateway for foreign direct investment in China Mainland, the worlds newest economic superpower, and enables businesses there to access global capital markets.

China Hong Kong and Singapore aside, however, the research suggests Asias competitiveness has declined markedly overall since the publication of last years ranking.



Taiwan, Malaysia, Korea Republic, and Indonesia have all suffered significant falls from their 2015 positions, while China Mainland declined only narrowly retaining its place in the top 25.

The study reveals some of the most impressive strides in Europe have been made by countries in the East, chief among them Latvia, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia.

Western European economies have also continued to improve, with researchers highlighting the ongoing post-financial-crisis recovery of the public sector as a key driver.

Meanwhile, 36th-placed Chile is the sole Latin American nation outside the bottom 20, while Argentina, in 55th, is the only country in the region to have improved on its 2015 position.

Each ranking is based on analysis of over 340 criteria derived from four principal factors: economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency and infrastructure.

Responses from an in-depth survey of more than 5,400 business executives, who are asked to assess the situation in their own countries, are also taken into consideration.

Professor Bris said: One important fact that the ranking makes clear year after year is that current economic growth is by no means a guarantee of future competitiveness.

Nations as different as China Mainland and Qatar fare very well in terms of economic performance, but they remain weak in other pillars such as government efficiency and infrastructure.

Data gathered since the first ranking was published more than 25 years ago also lend weight to fears that the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer, said Professor Bris.



Since 1995 the world has become increasingly unequal in terms of income differences among countries, although the rate of increase is now slowing, he said.



The wealth of the richest countries has grown every year except for the past two, while the poorer countries have seen some improvement in living conditions since the millennium.



Unfortunately, the problem for many countries is that wealth accumulation by the rich doesnt yield any benefits for the poor in the absence of proper social safety nets.



Innovation-driven economic growth in poorer countries improves competitiveness, but it also increases inequality. This is obviously an issue that demands long-term attention.
A desperate search for a 7-year-old Japanese boy who was intentionally abandoned in remote woods continued Tuesday as rescuers admitted that they have found no signs of the missing child.

The search zone - a mountainous area near Nanae-cho, Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan's four main islands - is isolated, dense and home to wild bears, locals told the Japan Times.

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Fears about the child's safety intensified after rescuers found fresh bear droppings in the area, prompting two hunters to join the search party, according to Agence France Presse.

Despite the difficult terrain, rescuers have begun to express frustration about their startling lack of progress after four days of searching.

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"We just have too little information about how the boy would have acted after being left alone," local fire department rescuer Satoshi Saito told AFP. "He must have been able to walk around himself, but we are having a difficult time projecting which route he would have taken and how far."

Alone in the forest, the child had no food or water and has endured heavy rains at night, according to AFP.

It only took several minutes for Yamato Tanooka to vanish after his parents abandoned him by the side of the road to teach the misbehaving boy a lesson.

By the time his parents came looking for him, the child was missing.

"The parents left the boy in the mountains as punishment," a police spokesman told the Japan Times. "They said they went back to the site immediately, but the boy was no longer there."

Hokkaido police said the child went missing around 4 p.m. (3 a.m. Eastern time) on Saturday, according to CNN. Two hours later, the boy's parents called police and told them that the child had disappeared on a day trip while the family scavenged for wild vegetables, CNN reported.

Takayuki Tanooka, the boy's 44-year-old father, eventually admitted that the family's story was fabricated and that his son had actually been left behind as punishment for throwing rocks at cars along a road in the area, the Japan Times reported. Tanooka told a local reporter that he could not initially admit to authorities what he had done, according to the paper.

"I was not able to ask for [a search] with a reason of punishment," he told TV Asahi, according to CNN. "I thought it might be taken as a domestic violence."

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Police said a search party of more than 150 officers and firefighters has been looking for the boy, who was wearing navy shorts, a black pullover and red sneakers at the time of his disappearance, according to CNN.

The northern side of the road on which the boy was left slopes toward Mt. Komagadake, which rises just over 3,700 feet, according to AFP.

"Unless he started climbing the mountain, he would have hit a main road after walking for two-three kilometers in any other direction," Saito told AFP.

Video footage shows dozens of searchers tramping through dense forest and thick foliage while a helicopter buzzes overheard, according to AFP. Overnight, the news service reported, rescuers moved through the search zone holding torches and calling out the boy's name.

"I feel very sorry for my child," the father told an NTV reporter. "I am so sorry for causing trouble for many people."

The area where the child was last seen is home to wild bears, according to the Times.

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Mitsuru Wakayama, a spokesman for the nearby town of Nanae, told the Times that the area is used as a shortcut by locals - but not often, because of how precarious it can be.

"Not many people or cars pass by, and it gets totally dark as there are no lights," Wakayama said. "It's not surprising to encounter bears anywhere in the area."

With police still deciding whether the parents will face charges related to child abandonment, many critics are calling for the parents to face repercussions, according to the Times.

"This is not punishment but abuse!" one Twitter post read.

"The parents are so stupid that I am speechless," another said.

The Associated Press reported that the boy's father expressed remorse in an interview with the public broadcaster NHK and other TV stations: "I regret what I did to my child," he said.

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The Washington Post
Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee in the upcoming U.S. presidential election, has faced an unusual amount of criticism from foreign leaders -- in large part because of his combative tone and unorthodox policy suggestions. This week, however, he found an unlikely international voice of support - in North Korean state media.



State outlet DPRK Today published an editorial on Tuesday that called the business mogul a "wise politician" and said he could be good for North Korea. "There are many positive aspects to Trump's 'inflammatory policies,'" the author of the article wrote, according to a translation from NK News. "Trump said he will not get involved in the war between the South and the North, isn't this fortunate from North Korea's perspective?"



The author of the editorial also dismissed Hillary Clinton, Trump's likely Democrat rival in the presidential race, calling her "dull" and warning that she hopes to use the "Iranian model to resolve nuclear issues on the Korean Peninsula."





It's an unusual change in tone for North Korean state media, which has largely avoided talking about the U.S. election directly. The article claims to have been written by a guest contributor -- Han Yong Mook, who is introduced as a Chinese North Korea scholar -- but the fact that it was published by a notoriously patriotic outlet may well suggest that the ideas contained within it are likely to hold serious sway within Pyongyang.



Trump has made several recent comments about U.S. policy toward the Korean Peninsula. In an interview with The Washington Post's editorial board in March, Trump had argued that the U.S. defense deal with South Korea was not fair, adding, "We're reimbursed a fraction of what this is all costing." In a subsequent interview with The New York Times, Trump had suggested he would withdraw U.S. troops from South Korea if elected, noting that Seoul may need to build its own nuclear weapons to protect itself. Trump then told Reuters in May that he would be willing to speak to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. "I would speak to him, I would have no problem speaking to him," Trump said.

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Such comments had caused concern in Seoul, with JoongAng Ilbo, one of South Korea's biggest newspapers, dubbing Trump's ideas "myopic." North Korean officials also had appeared to be initially confounded by his comments. During an interview with CNN in April, one Pyongyang-based official said Trump's comments about nuclear proliferation were "totally absurd and illogical." Later, North Korea's ambassador to Britain said his country had no interest in talking with Trump, calling the candidate's overtures "the dramatics of a popular actor."



Han Yong Mook writes, however, that North Korea should welcome Trump's proposals, suggesting that they could help Pyongyang achieve its goal of removing U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula. "Yes do it, now," the editorial reads. "Who knew that the slogan 'Yankee Go Home' would come true like this? The day when the 'Yankee Go Home' slogan becomes real would be the day of Korean Unification."
As press reports show, some people with disabilities have already begun to protest the new movie, "Me Before You," which opens Friday in the U.S. The primary objection concerns the essential plot point about which romantic partner's life counts for less, the young able-bodied woman's or the young and severely disabled man's. Guess who draws the short straw?

As a severely disabled man myself  I was born with spinal muscular atrophy, a progressive neuromuscular weakness that renders me quadriplegic  I'm loath to give this movie any additional publicity. But the timing of the release could not be any more disturbing. Just a week after, on June 9, California's so-called Death with Dignity law takes effect. The repercussions of this ghoulish juxtaposition are positively frightening.

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The law  styled after its predecessors in Oregon and Washington  permits physician-assisted suicide in the nation's most populous state, under strict regulatory controls. Nothing to worry about, supporters say. It applies only to those with terminal conditions who have been thoroughly evaluated by medical professionals.

I wish I could believe it. But all the safeguards in the world are nothing against the power of Hollywood to influence sentiments.

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To me, one of the biggest dangers of these right-to-die measures isn't the specter of pathological "angel of mercy" types performing unsolicited euthanasia. Nor is it the fear of penny-pinching health-management organizations pushing to move their most expensive patients off the books by denying coverage for ongoing maintenance meds in favor of a quick exit  though these are real worries, too.

No, my deepest concern is for the newly disabled or not yet well-adjusted or well-supported disabled who will be unduly seduced into relieving their relatives  and themselves  of the burden of living with a chronic condition. In short, the hazardous risk in movies like this is that it romanticizes and glamorizes an early exit for those who already feel marginalized, who feel they are living on borrowed time.

In this right-to-die climate, we're forced to defend our right to live, albeit as expensive, high-maintenance disabled folks.

It may sound paranoid to worry about people being improperly influenced to have suicidal ideas. But as people like me know too well, the pressures already exist. When I go for my annual checkup with my gastroenterologist, for example, before I'm even shown to the waiting room I'm inevitably confronted with, "Do you have an advance directive or living will?" I understand that medical offices must defend themselves against lawsuits, but all the G.I. doc is going to do is tap on my belly and ask a few questions. Nothing even remotely connected with a life-threatening procedure is on the agenda.

OK, that may be only a minor annoyance. But eight years ago when I was hospitalized with internal bleeding and septicemia, the surgeons wouldn't operate until my wife confirmed I was "full code"  meaning I had expressed a desire to undergo every measure possible to preserve my life. In other words, should they even bother trying?

Why is such questioning necessary? Shouldn't life-saving be the default? Granted, it all worked out. Yet combining such hurdles with the blatant subtext of "Me Before You"  which is based on Jojo Moyes' 2012 novel of the same name  only makes people like me feel we have to justify our preference not to commit suicide. In this right-to-die climate, we're forced to defend our right to live, albeit as expensive, high-maintenance disabled folks.

Make no mistake: Quadriplegia is hard, and it can be tempting to give up. Like Will Traynor, the paralyzed heartthrob in the movie (played by nondisabled actor Sam Claflin), I rely on constant assistance from paid aides and family members. It's nearly impossible to find a job, let alone a restaurant or store without steps or with an accessible restroom. It's a good thing I'm positively bursting with self-confidence and know I do want my life to continue. But how many of those who are struggling to maintain self-esteem, who feel unsure of their right to exist, possess the courage and sheer chutzpah to withstand the invidious message that they're better off dead? That the world might be better off without them taking up space?

This certainly isn't the first portrayal of a disabled person's suicide as a romanticized and noble sacrifice, and you can bet it won't be the last. It's a well-worn cliche of a saccharine fantasy. But from a disability perspective it's nothing short of an offensive stereotype. Hollywood has been widely criticized for under- or misrepresenting women, ethnic minorities and the LGBTQ community; isn't it about time it was brought to task for perpetuating primitive and potentially life-threatening prejudices about the disabled?

We shouldn't be impelled to feel guilty for our needs or coerced into resolving them through suicide. It's a matter of achieving life with dignity, not death with dignity. And in a civilized world, welcoming and accommodating all people will always be a better option than urging some to get out of the way.

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Ben Mattlin lives in Los Angeles and is the author of "Miracle Boy Grows Up: How the Disability Rights Revolution Saved My Sanity."
YEREVAN, MAY 31, ARMENPRESS. Spokesperson of the Investigative Committee of Armenia Sona Truzyan confirms the arrests of 3 military officials on May 30.

They were arrested for different criminal charges. They are suspected of various wrongdoings. In one case  accepting poor quality supplied goods, in another case  according to preliminary data, procurements with exaggerated expenses, she said.

The arrested are: Major-General Mels Chilingaryan, Colonel Armen Margaryan, Colonel Mher Papyan.
YEREVAN, MAY 31, ARMENPRESS. The Defense Ministry of Armenia informs that overnight May 30-31 the Azerbaijani side opened sporadic irregular shots from various caliber weapons in the Armenian-Azerbaijani state border.

The Ministrys announcement reads: Overnight May 30-31 the situation was calm in the Armenian-Azerbaijani state border.

The Azerbaijani side fired sporadic irregular shots from various caliber weapons in the northeastern direction of the border.

The Armenian Armed forces control the border situation and confidently carry out their military tasks.
Nearly 10,000 residents gathered under cloudless skies Monday at the 97th annual Arlington Heights Memorial Day parade.

For Greg Padovani, a U.S. Army veteran and chairman of the Veterans Memorial Committee of Arlington Heights, the picture-perfect weather and happy crowds of local families was a welcome change from the 2015 event, when severe storms forced the cancellation of the parade.

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"With the beautiful weather, I'm thinking to myself, 'just pinch me,'" said Padovani, who helped orchestrate the roughly 3,000 participants in the parade, which included hundreds of veterans, marching bands from John Hersey and Buffalo Grove high schools, and scores of local scouting groups.

The parade also featured a visit from U.S. Army Sgt. Jason Smith, 30, who lost his legs while serving in Afghanistan, and who has forged close ties with Hersey students, who have raised money and helped build handicapped-accessible homes for two veterans in their hometowns in Tennessee, Padovani said.

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Led by Rear Admiral Stephen Evans, the parade's grand marshal, the first wave of marchers in the parade featured members of the U.S. military, including those in active duty, the reserves, and veterans, Padovani said.

The parade ended at Memorial Park at 110 W. Fremont St., where 1,000 residents attended an 11 a.m. ceremony, which honored the 58 fallen military heroes from the village, 37 of whom died in service during World War II.

"Back when it started in 1919, the parade was just a way to bring people to the park for the village's Memorial Day ceremony," Padovani said. "This year's Memorial Day in Arlington Heights was a really nice day for a whole lot of people. But for nine families who lost their sons, and who attended our ceremony, they are so appreciative of our town, and it means so much to them that we still remember."

kcullotta@tribpub.com

Twitter @kcullotta
The dragon boats will race during the day June 11 and 12. (Festival of the Fox / Handout)

The No. 1 question Vanessa Bell-LaSota hears is, "Why the name change?"

Previously known as the Pride of the Fox Riverfest, the four-day event held annually in Pottawatomie Park in St. Charles is now known as the City of St. Charles Festival of the Fox.

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The change in moniker came about when the Pride of the Fox board revisited the original mission statement from 1983, which was "To put on a family event centered on St. Charles' greatest asset, the Fox River, and our longest tradition, the dragon boat races that will bring vitality to local business and support the St. Charles community and economy."

"I added the dragon boats to it, that wasn't in the original statement, but the idea was to bring vitality central to St. Charles and support the community," said festival coordinator Bell-LaSota, who has worked on the event in some capacity for more than a decade. "So we looked at each venue (and asked), was it delivering on that mission? How was it supporting the community or celebrating our history? We thought, what is the essential of Riverfest? Easy, the river."

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All events will be held at Pottawatomie Park this year. She pointed out that the park is celebrating its 100th anniversary.

"Over the years, we found it would be great to weatherproof the event," she said. "It's funny, I Googled our own event and I came up with  there's a lot of river fests across the nation. It's not a unique name to our event. And in St. Charles, Missouri, there's an article with the headline 'St. Charles river fest draws hungry crowds despite soggy riverfront.' And I thought, that actually happened the last three years at Riverfest. We got a little soggy. So as a team, we looked at that too and thought, 'How can we weather-proof this event?' That was the other ingredient, to create a more weather-proof event."

So, what happens if it rains? There are two pavilions in the park, plus a shelter plan in place with the City that would move the festival activities into other community buildings, she said.

"We can control that with one venue. We can't with six, seven, and we've been up to nine venues," she said.

The linchpin of the event for the last 25 years has been the Chinese dragon boats. The races will run from 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. June 11 and from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. June 12.

On each of those mornings, there will be an "Awakening the Dragon" ceremony in full costume 30 minutes before the races begin.

"It excites the paddlers and it's fun to watch," she said.

Speaking of paddlers, this year the dragon boat races boast a record number of teams, Bell-LaSota said. "Mayor Ray (Rogina) is a huge fan of the dragon boats  so we have him doing a ribbon cutting June 11 at 8:45 a.m."

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The festival will have a distinct Chinese flair this year, she said. There will be a new mascot, a dragon, to be named by community voting. The St. Charles History Museum will provide kids with a free dragon craft in the pavilion.

The first 100 kids will receive a free Chinese dragon kite and kite-flying lessons, she said. Battery-operated Chinese lanterns will be handed out at the family movie night June 11.

"All of these elements are starting to build on the cultural aspects of the dragon boats," she said.

Back as always is the Wonder Lake Water Ski Show at 1 p.m. June 12, along with about many other activities in the park during the festival, she said.

Running June 11 and 12 is Picnic in the Park, featuring giant-sized games like Connect Four and a giant Nerf bulls eye, she said, plus two martial arts schools offering activities for kids.

Health-minded vendors will sell organic soda and iced tea along with healthy snacks, she said.

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"There are no funnel cakes. This is going be a nice, fresh approach to a picnic in the park," she said.

On June 11, a 20-foot inflatable movie screen will be positioned on the historic amphitheater area of the park, she said, and "Finding Nemo" will be shown for free at dusk. That's when the Chinese lanterns will be passed out.

From noon-2 p.m. June 10, at the carnival site on Route 31 between Cedar and State streets, is an event for kids with special needs and their families, she said. The rides will be open and there will be free food.

The carnival hours are 5-10 p.m. June 9 and 12-10 p.m. June 10-12.

Other events include a community stage where local groups will perform throughout the festival.

The Hobie Kayaks will be on hand offering free rides, she added.

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There will be no craft show or business vendors, unless they are event sponsors setting up activities for families, she said.

"We want this to be the signature event for the summer for our community," she said. "We hope people can take fun, peace and enjoyment from this event, because that is what it is all about."

Annie Alleman is a freelance writer.

City of St. Charles Festival of the Fox

When: June 9-12

Where: Pottawatomie Park, 8 North Ave., St. Charles

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Tickets: Free

Information: 630-802-8824 or go to festivalofthefox.com
Crowds gather for a Memorial Day pre-parade program and rededication of the Grand Army of the Republic Memorial Museum Monday in downtown Aurora. (Linda Girardi / The Beacon-News)

Aurora honored and remembered fallen soldiers during Memorial Day observances Monday with the reopening of the Grand Army of the Republic Memorial Museum.

"It is a solemn day as we remember those who served their country, fought and died to preserve our freedom," Aurora Mayor Tom Weisner said.

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Patriotism filled the streets during a pre-parade program staged across from the GAR Memorial Hall at 23 E. Downer Place in downtown Aurora.

Weisner and others reflected on the national holiday and the rededication and ribbon-cutting ceremony. The GAR Memorial Hall Post 20 was completed in 1878 and funded by contributions from Aurora residents as a memorial to area veterans of the Civil War.

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"While it is a solemn day, it is also a joyous day," Weisner.

Military personnel on the reviewing stage during Monday's Memorial Day parade in downtown Aurora. (Linda Girardi / The Beacon-News)

The mayor said the GAR Hall is a "beautiful artifact of history" worthy of preserving. "In so many other cities across the country these buildings have disappeared. We have honored our history by having made a nearly 20-year effort to preserve the building," he said.

Weisner said the GAR Memorial Hall gave Civil War veterans a place to go and perhaps "a place to forget" the heartache of the war but it is now open for future generations to honor their sacrifices.

The occasion brought out about 30 members from the 36th Illinois Infantry Regimental Historical Association in full military uniform and several representatives of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War of Sheridan Camp # 2 who are descendants of Civil War soldiers.

The $3.5 million GAR project required major interior restoration and stabilizing of the exterior of the building, as well as restoration and creation of exhibits for the Angel Room main display area.

The building was closed in 2001 due to structural concerns and reconstruction efforts began in three phases, said Daniel Barreiro, chief community services officer.

The Waubonsie Valley High School Marching Band was among several high school bands in Monday's Memorial Day parade in downtown Aurora. (Linda Girardi / The Beacon-News)

Rena Church, director and curator of Aurora's public arts, said the GAR Hall is one of city's beloved and historical landmarks but it is also a place of art where visitors can admire the stained glass, sculptures, and stencils on the ceilings.

"You will see these features and the efforts of many people who worked hard to bring them to their former glory," Church said.

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Jo Fredell Higgins, GAR Commission chairwoman, recognized members of the commission who "served unfailingly and with purpose" to complete the project.

The rededication also marked the 150th anniversary of the founding of the national Grand Army of the Republic veterans organization in 1866.

General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, proclaimed in 1868 that the 30th of May be designated for decorating the graves of soldiers who died in the war.

The 36th Illinois Infantry Regimental Historical Association during Monday's Memorial Day parade in Aurora. (Linda Girardi / The Beacon-News)

The parade featured veteran organizations, including the Roosevelt Aurora Post 84, Amvets Post 103, Waidley VFW 468, the GAR Commission Post 20, the Fox Valley Marines and vintage jeeps. An Aurora Police Department patrol SUV was the first unit in the parade, followed by the Aurora Police Department Honor Guard and Special Response Team. The Aurora American Legion Band drew applause from parade-goers, as did several high school marching bands.

Gina Martinez, of Aurora, was accompanied by her husband, Rafael, and two daughters, Natalia, 7 and Isabella, 9.

"This is a day filled with emotion," Martinez said. "I think of the bravery of our fallen soldiers and the families who lost loved ones because they fought for us in war. The day is both heartwarming and bittersweet," she said.

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Linda Girardi is a freelance reporter for the Beacon-News.
YEREVAN, MAY 31, ARMENPRESS. The Southern Corps of the Russian Armed Forces reports the Russian Navy has increased its presence in the Caspian and Black Seas.

The official statement says the Russian Navy conducted military exercises in the Caspian and Black Seas by overall being active for 2300 days, which is 1,7 times more than last year.

The successful trainings were partly possible due to the presence of new submarines and warships in the Navy.
Lil Ed & The Blues Imperials perform June 9 in the Rooftop Summer Music Series at Joliet Area Historical Museum in Joliet. The band consists of James Pookie Young (from left), Mike Garrett, Lil Ed Williams and Kelly Littleton. (Photo courtesy of Paul Natkin) (Paul Natkin / Photo Reserve)

Whether one is a die-hard Ed Head, a fan of the blues or a lover of live music, Lil' Ed & The Blues Imperials deliver.

The band is next up in the Rooftop Summer Music Series, performing June 9 at Joliet Area Historical Museum.

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"They should come see me if they're looking for a house-rocking band, they're ready to party and they like to enjoy the blues, feel the nature of the blues and have a good time. That's what we're about," said Lil' Ed Williams, guitarist and vocalist for Lil' Ed & The Blues Imperials.

Marking nearly 30 years together, the band also consists of Williams' younger half-brother bassist James "Pookie" Young, guitarist Mike Garrett and drummer Kelly Littleton.

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Lil' Ed & The Blues Imperials have racked up accolades from the Blues Music Award for band of the year in 2007 and 2009 to the Living Blues Award for best live performer in 2011, 2012 and 2013.

"We're going to be basically having a good time," Williams said.

"I'm going to do the best I can. I know that. You might see some walking around, some backbends. If it gets good enough, I might even turn a flip or something."

Williams went from working as a buffer 10 hours a day at Chicago's Red Carpet Car Wash and performing at small blues bars to playing in front of 100,000 people at Chicago Blues Festival in 2008 and on international concert stages.

"When I first actually started performing, this was a thing to do after my day job, which was the car wash. I loved performing. I know I enjoyed it, but I didn't think that I was going to go this far with it," Williams said.

"The blues is a part of my life, a part of me, a part of my soul. It's interesting. It's lively. It's happy and sad. It's just a part of what we do for everyday living."

Signed to Chicago-based Alligator Records since 1986, Lil' Ed & The Blues Imperials are working with label president and founder Bruce Iglauer on a follow-up to 2012's "Jump Start." The new release could be out by September.

"That's another reason to come," said Williams of the Joliet gig. "I will be playing some of that material because I like to get my fans' opinions as well. It's going to be a great time."

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The seventh year of the Rooftop Summer Music Series, which benefits the museum's educational and programming departments, also features M&R Rush July 14, Soul Motion Aug. 11, Strung Out Aug. 26 and Righteous Hillbillies Sept. 8.

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Jessi Virtusio is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.

Lil' Ed & The Blues Imperials

When: 7:30 p.m. (6:45 p.m. doors) June 9

Where: Joliet Area Historical Museum, 204 N. Ottawa St., Joliet

Tickets: $10 general public; $8 museum members and students; seating limited; registration encouraged

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Information: 815-723-5201, Ext. 222 (Mike Brick) or www.jolietmuseum.org

Etc.: part of the Rooftop Summer Music Series; museum galleries and exhibits open from 6:45-10 p.m.
YEREVAN, MAY 31, ARMENPRESS. Former Defense Minister of Armenia Vagharshak Harutyunyan says the Vienna meeting was the political victory of the Armenian side.

There is no need to separate military or political victory, no matter we had lost territories or not, which, of course, is not good. We should assess this meeting from the military-political point of view since, regardless of our territorial losses, our army prevailed during the April war: we actually thwarted the Azerbaijani armys plan and proved that despite the large expenses of the Azerbaijani army, it did not become stronger and failed. The military solution of the Karabakh conflict is a closed topic for Azerbaijan, he stated.

He said it is important that the lost territory is not populated and has no military significance. Of course, having lost territories is not good, however, everyone should understand and trust the Army. Many people say they should go and return the territories, however, what can be achieved from this? I am confident that our army will develop a respective plan on time and will implement it, Harutyunyan said.

Referring to the question why Azerbaijan agreed to participate in the meeting, former Defense Minister said: The aim of the Azerbaijani attacks were these negotiations, since they hoped with such means the Minsk Group would make a proposal of giving Nagorno Karabakh to Azerbaijan, however, they did not reach their goal, and Azerbaijan was forced to take part in this meeting and agreed over the installation of ceasefire mechanisms, Minister said.

Overnight May 1-2 Azerbaijan unleashed large-scale military operations along the entire length of the Nagorno Karabakh line of contact. After four-day war the Azerbaijani armed forces were thrown back having 300-400 human and military equipment losses. The ceasefire agreement was reached on April 5 in Moscow by the Chiefs of the General Staff of the Armenian and Azerbaijani Armed forces. And the meeting between the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan was held on May 16 in Vienna.
Orland Park wrong to ban video gambling

The Village of Orland Park's elected officials believe the ordinance banning video gambling is appropriate for inside the village limits. It's funny that the village says it would create the "potential for corruption, impact on the cost of law enforcement, regulatory difficulties and is not family friendly environment for our citizens and children." Really now? Every person that plays these machines knows very well that not once have we ever seen a need for police, and children are not allowed to play. And, regulatory issues are in black and white in the gaming laws for Illinois. The village and the establishment all get a percentage and it is all computerized, so where is the corruption?

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The lost revenue from this restriction could have been used to give each property taxpayer a rebate at the end of the year. Every day, we see a home going up for sale, and a very high percentage of the reason is they are moving due to very high property taxes. With Illinois having the worst credit rating and being number two in the country for property taxes, we have to wonder why we stay.

I just figured it out  it is the Italian beef sandwiches, the great pizza and, let's not forget, the great City of Chicago were more people get shot every day than any other place in the United States.

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Bob Mittler, Orland Park

Kudos for 'One Skate' fundraiser

I would like to commend and thank Jordan Moeller for once again organizing "One Skate at a Time" event to benefit the One Step at a Time camp for children with cancer.

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Five years ago, Jordan began this event upon hearing of his teacher Deborah Swanson's niece, Julia Fischer, who at the age of 10 was battling germ cell cancer. Julia, along with other young people fighting to conquer cancer in all of its forms, attend the camp. I admire their courage, strength, patience, faith and hope. Julia will be entering her fourth year of nursing in the fall.

I am the great-aunt of Deborah Swanson and the great-great-aunt of Julia Fischer. This generosity of spirit shown by Jordan warms my heart and reinforces my belief in our young people in a world burdened by so many ongoing issues.

The event was held at the Southwest Ice Arena on May 14. Performances by skaters from around the state invited by Jordan, a trained skater himself, delighted the enthusiastic and supportive audience. Over $10,000 was raised for Children's Oncology Services Inc. of Chicago.

Congratulations on a job well done and God bless them.

Marlene Jeziorski, Oak Lawn

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What's on your mind?

The Daily Southtown welcomes letters to the editor. Email them to letters@southtownstar.com and include your name, address and phone number. Only your name and the town you reside in will appear with the letter. Please keep a letter to no more than about 200 words. The Southtown is not responsible for the accuracy of the opinions expressed in letters to the editor.
Senate President John Cullerton, center, and House Speaker Michael Madigan address the media after meeting with Gov. Bruce Rauner on the last day of the legislative session in Springfield on May 31, 2016. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune)

After what happened recently, it's more clear than ever that Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan has no fear of what Gov. Bruce Rauner could do to his members this fall. And Madigan has even less fear of what his members could do to him.

As you certainly know by now, Madigan lumped together a $40 billion appropriations plan with what the governor's budget office says is a $7.5 billion hole in it. The budget office claims the bill would require a 5.5 percent personal income tax rate to sustain and the state comptroller estimates would create $15 billion in backlogged bills and an eight- to nine-month payment delay.

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Madigan's move was at least partially designed to put Republicans on the defense yet again this fall for voting against their local schools and colleges, facilities and various government programs.

Republican threats to tie Madigan's "most unbalanced budget in Illinois history" around his members' necks did not phase him. Madigan's own polling reportedly shows Donald Trump doing pretty well everywhere except Cook County, and that didn't budge him. And just about all of Madigan's most politically vulnerable members voted for the highly controversial legislation  another very clear signal that his political side doesn't care a whit about Rauner's threats to retaliate.

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Yes, the Republicans have their "Bad King Madigan" bogeyman, the Democrats concede, and the Republicans used it again in tens of thousands of robocalls targeted at seven House Democratic incumbents. The calls claimed that the members backed, "Speaker Mike Madigan's job-crushing, $1,000 tax hike on Illinois families," which would also "increase Illinois' debt by $7 billion and force record-high income tax rates."

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The Republicans also released results of a statewide "flash poll" conducted which they claim validates their planned messaging against Madigan and the Democrats this fall. Seventy-four percent of the 884 voters who responded to the Victory Phones poll said they opposed, "a budget that would spend $7.2 billion more than what the state takes in and force a 47 percent tax increase on all Illinoisans." Another 57 percent said they opposed a "state budget that includes a half-billion-dollar Chicago Public School bailout." Seventy-one percent said "rank-and-file Democrats should break with the speaker and work with the governor to balance the budget, even if it means compromising on issues favored by labor unions." And 61 percent said they'd be less likely to vote for a legislator who, "voted for a budget with a $7 billion deficit that would force income tax rates over 5.5 percent."

To the Republicans, those are slam-dunk issues that will resonate strongly with voters. The Democrats, they say, simply don't understand the public's mood. They believe they have the Democrats exactly where they want them, and that Madigan has ironically put them in that position by passing the unbalanced budget and refusing to negotiate on the governor's economic reforms that Rauner claims will help revitalize the state's economy.

But Madigan's side points to Rauner's ever-tanking poll ratings as proof they can use him against Republican candidates, and they'll toss in Donald Trump wherever the presidential candidate is unpopular.

And while voters always say they want a balanced budget, they almost always recoil when told what that would actually entail. Details of the $7.5 billion in cuts which "the Trump/Rauner Republicans demanded" via the governor's expected veto will make for some grisly campaign advertisements. The Senate Democrats did pretty much just that to the Republicans during the last presidential campaign cycle and picked up seats despite raising the income tax by 67 percent  which is a big reason why the governor has twice now refused to submit a truly balanced budget. Once the Republicans vote against overriding Rauner's budget veto for the second year in a row, they'll be on the record for huge cuts.

The governor has said for more than a year that Madigan's Democrats privately tell him they're ready to work with him. But there's little evidence that they'll work with Rauner at the expense of crossing Madigan. Just the opposite, in fact. They could've killed that budget bill and changed the course of Illinois history by forcing Madigan to the bargaining table, but they stuck with their guy.

Madigan was in a good mood as he dined recently with some of his members. Gov. Rauner was also said to be at peace. With an all-out political war all but certain, they could come to terms with it and steel themselves for the future.

Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and CapitolFax.com.
Support local restaurants: This is about going out to restaurants. I really like the Big Skillet Restaurant on McLean Boulevard in Elgin. Friendly waitresses, and even the busboys say hi to you. They get it done right. I also like Villa Bleu Restaurant and Tavern in Fox River Grove that has been open since 1933. It's an old supper club that my dad used to visit during the 1950s. I would like to talk about some mom and pop restaurants because I'm a mom and pop type of guy. These are great local restaurants that residents should patronize.

Wrong priorities: I'm so glad the Justice Department is taking the time and resources to go after the state of North Carolina over the transgender washroom issue, but they don't give a hoot about the sanctuary cities that continue to let in illegal aliens and criminals. They have to get their nose in about the washrooms.

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Wondering about workshops: I noticed in today's newspaper that School District U46 is going to hold workshops for immigrant families. This is for emotional problems when these people can't go back to countries outside the United States to visit families. Why don't they call it as it is? They are illegal immigrants. Why are we spending all this money on illegal immigrants? District U46 is taking us down the drain with taxes. I'm getting fed up with this stuff.

Question about Trump: Why are there so many people who do not want to see Donald Trump as president? Is it because he's not a politician or because he won't run the country like a politician? He is surely qualified.

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Commons not compatible for canines: This is regarding Algonquin Commons going dog-friendly. Talk about stupid. You'll have water bowls outside the stores that are pet friendly, so dogs will drink from the same bowls and share diseases. Then you say the pets have to be free of fleas. Who is going to check for that? I'm a dog lover. I have three dogs, but I'm not going to bring them to the mall to drink out of those water bowls.

Keep women's washrooms just for females: I am outraged at the tactics of our "justice department." I am one of millions of straight women and girls in the United States. Our rights are being trampled on just because a bunch of boys/men who feel they are female want to shower, dress, undress and urinate with females. That is a reason to take away the rights of millions of women? I don't think so. It doesn't surprise me that our current president gave his approval to the lawsuit. I wonder which of his daughters he is protecting. We are not going to tolerate this action. As a member of the World War II generation and a great-grandmother, I'm ashamed that our rights and protections are being trampled upon so easily.

Garbage weight restriction: The company that picks up garbage in Aurora left a pile of garbage in front of my home and in front of a home down the street. I had a special sticker on it. The company never fulfills its agreement. Do you still want us to pay them on time? When would Mayor Weisner like to pick up the garbage since the company won't? I found out that garbage companies cannot pick up anything that weighs over 50 pounds. My husband was out there helping the garbage men lift garbage. You didn't publicize this. What a rip-off.

Digging up the past: The Democrats are at it again. It took 20 reporters from the Washington Post to dig up manure from Donald Trump's past. Are they going to check on Hillary Clinton too? This is character assassination. Remember, we all mature with age.

Turned off by Trump: If you should meet a highly opinionated person with no facts to back up his arguments, you can rest assured he's a Donald Trump supporter. Trump has no platform on anything. He talks about saving money, but he will spend money on everything.

Washroom worries: I'm calling about the directive from the Justice Department about the transgender situation in the washrooms. Some people think that these transgenders are going to cause a problem. I'm not so concerned about them doing something, but what happens when a female who identifies as a male goes into the men's washroom and confronts bullies? Or what about a man dressed up as a woman going into the women's washroom? We don't know who is really legitimate or who just wants to cause a problem.

Questioning need for police force: Let's be realistic. Does the Village of Pingree Grove really need a police force? All they do is sit by the Outpost Bar & Restaurant along Route 20 and write tickets all day. I haven't gotten a ticket yet, but I'm sure that time will come. That's not the job of a police force to just write tickets all day. If that's all there is for them to do, that's proof they don't need a police force.

Remembering Bill Shaw: While I was at the Elgin History Museum, I was sorry to hear about Bill Shaw. I grew up in Barrington Hills and graduated in 1962 from Barrington High School. Bill Shaw was one of my teachers. He was a real mentor and a fantastic guy. He saw me at a restaurant 30 years ago. He remembered me. He never forgot his students. If you had a problem in life, he would work it out with you. I saw him again at a function at the museum. We talked a long time. I was sorry to hear that he passed. I wish his wife well. He was a great teacher.

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Editor's note

Speak Out is a reader-generated column of opinions. If you see something you disagree with or think is incorrect, please tell us. Call us at 312-222-2460 or email couriernews@tribpub.com. Please include "speak out" in the subject line.
YEREVAN, MAY 31, ARMENPRESS. Chairman of the Eurasian Economic Commission Tigran Sargsyan announced that a decision was made to start negotiations with Serbia over the common trade regime during the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council session.

Today a decision was made by the EAEU states to start negotiations with the Republic of Serbia over the common trade regime, Sargsyan stated.

Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin invited the heads of the EAEU states to hold the next meeting in Moscow in December, RIA Novosti reported.
The Hinsdale American Legion Post 250 kicks off the Memorial Day procession down Third Street. (Mike Mantucca / Pioneer Press)

On a sunny and warm Memorial Day in Hinsdale, the community honored U.S. servicemen who lost their lives in battle.

Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts, including those from Hinsdale Troops 8, 10 and 52, and Downers Grove Troop 89, and the Hinsdale Central High marching band formed a procession on Third Street to Washington Street. Families followed as the procession moved north across the railroad to the front lawn of Memorial Hall.

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Hinsdale's American Legion Post 250 hosted a ceremony there, with Village Trustee Robert Saigh, a U.S. Army veteran, representing the village, Carol Baurmann, president of the Hinsdale American Legion Auxiliary, and Mickey Straub, the mayor of Burr Ridge.

People saluted or held their hands over their hearts as the U.S. flag was quickly raised to the top of the flagpole in front of Memorial Hall and then slowly lowered halfway down the pole. Tradition calls for the flag to fly at half-mast until noon on Memorial Day, when it then should be raised to the top of the flag pole.

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The Hinsdale Chorale brought patriotic emotion to the event by singing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," "America the Beautiful" and other songs.

The guest speaker was Matthew D. James, who was named commanding officer of the U.S. Coast Guard Station Calumet Harbor in May. James, who has served more than 20 years in the Coast Guard, was stationed at Sandy Hook, N.J. during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and later in the Northern Arabian Gulf during the Iraq invasion.

He named the individual Coast Guard members he knew who died in service. Many people have friends and family members they think of on Memorial Day, James said.

"We must keep their memories alive," he said.

But people can serve their country and their communities without putting on a uniform or going off to war, James said.

Parents stood on the lawn, some in the shade of the trees, while their children sat on the lawn or in strollers.

The Winterfield boys, James, 11, Andrew, 9, and Graham, 6, and their friend John Coyner, 11, sold lemonade, brownies and cookies from a folding table set up to raise money for the Wounded Warrior Project. They made the cookies with the help of their grandpa, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force, their mother said.

Veterans placed a wreath and hung a blue star service banner in the foyer of Memorial Hall, which was built with private donations to honor Hinsdale's fallen servicemen, at the urging of the town's women, said Joseph Craig, adjutant of Post 250.

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The ceremony concluded with the playing of taps and a rifle salute. Single red and yellow roses were offered to people as they left.

kfornek@pioneerlocal.com

Twitter @kfdoings
In 2014, 40 bats were found to have rabies throughout the state of Illinois. (Roadell Hickman, Associated Press)

A dead bat found inside a home in La Grange has tested positive for rabies.

The bat was found inside a house in the 400 block of South Edgewood Avenue on May 24. The Cook County Department of Animal and Rabies Control subsequently informed the village of La Grange that the bat had tested positive for rabies.

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The notice from the animal control department also states that the bat was determined to be rabid by the Illinois State Public Health Laboratory. It advises that anyone exposed to or bitten by a bat should contact a doctor. It also recommends that anyone taking a dog, cat or ferret outside should have it on a leash to keep it from coming into contact with wild animals.

Rabies is a deadly disease caused by a virus that attacks the central nervous system, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health. The virus is present primarily in the saliva, brain tissue and spinal fluid of a rabid animal. It can affect all mammals.

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Donna Alexander, administrator for the Cook County Department of Animal Control and Rabies Control, said the bat determined to have rabies was the fourth found in Cook County this year.

"It's a concern because rabies is a fatal disease, but we talk about common sense approaches to controlling it," she said.

Alexander said residents should make sure there are no holes or openings in their homes that bats could squeeze through. She noted that bats can get into openings as small as one-eighth of an inch.

"People should caulk around drain pipes and any entryway to their house," she said.

They also be sure their pets, especially cats that might think its a mouse, are vaccinated against rabies.

Cynthia and Richard Schilsky, who live on Edgewood Avenue, said they had received notification that a rabid bat had been found on their block.

"A lot of people on this block have pets and small children. That's a concern," Richard Schilsky said.

The village's website recommends that if anyone finds a dead bat inside their home should place a bucket over it to safely contain it (in the event that it is stunned and not dead) and then call Cook County Animal and Rabies Control at 708-974-6140. According to the village, the number is staffed 24/7 and a Cook County Animal Warden will respond within 1-2 hours. This is the only circumstance in which the county will come out and collect the bat, according to the village.

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If a resident finds a live bat inside their home, the village recommends opening a window to let it return outdoors. The resident may also call 911 and the La Grange Police Department will assist with getting the bat to leave the house.

If a bat is alive outside, leave it alone, the village advises.

If a resident finds a dead bat outside, the village recommends using a shovel with work gloves to scoop the bat into a garbage bag. Residents may dispose of the bag with their regular household garbage. They can also can call the Department of Public Works to collect it.

The most important thing in all situations is to not touch the bat, the village advises.

According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, more than 7,000 animals per year  -most of them wild  have been diagnosed as having the disease in the U.S. since 1995.

The public health department also reports that in 2014, the most recent year that statistics are available, two rabid bats were found in Chicago, four rabid bats were found in suburban Cook County, and six were found in DuPage County.

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The county with the most number of rabid bats in 2014 was Will County, which had 11. The total number of bats with rabies found throughout the state was 40 in 2014.

amannion@tribpub.com

Twitter triblocalam
YEREVAN, MAY 31, ARMENPRESS. EEC Chairman Tigran Sargsyan says the EAEU will cooperate with China taking into account the EAEU interests.

The 4th meeting of the heads of the EAEU states was held on May 31 in Astana with the participation of the Presidents of Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

We have discussed the trade and economic cooperation development ways with China, this cooperation plays a significant role for our member states. The EEC will start the negotiation process within the given mandate. We will develop these relations first of all taking into account the interests of our states economic entities, EEC Chairman said during the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council session.

He said they will regularly hold consultations. We will take necessary steps in order to make the Chinese market open for our enterprises, he stated, reports RIA Novosti.
Anne Ryan deliveredthe student reflection for the Fenwick High School graduation ceremony on May 27. (Brian Jackson / Chicago Tribune)

The seniors of Fenwick High School's Class of 2016 celebrated their last night as Friars in style during the school's commencement ceremony May 27.

Taking place at the University of Illinois at Chicago Forum, the event was headlined by guest speaker and Class of 1999 graduate Cortney Hall of WGN news.

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The graduating class included two National Merit College Scholarship award winners, two National Hispanic Recognition finalists, three Evans scholarships, 99 Illinois state scholars and 178 presidential scholars, according the David Himmel, the school's director of marketing communications.

Himmel added that, to date, 205 members of the Class of 2016 have been awarded more than 770 scholarships from 132 colleges, universities and foundations. Approximately 70 percent of the graduating class has received direct academic recognition in the monetary amount of more than $36 million.

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2016 also marked the 20-year anniversary of Fenwick's first co-ed graduating class.

sschering@pioneerlocal.com

Twitter: @steveschering
YEREVAN, MAY 31, ARMENPRESS. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says Russia is not going to be the first to take the initiative of normalizing relations with Turkey, but it is ready to discuss the respective requests with Ankara, Armenpress reports, RIA Novosti informs.

They were severely affected, thats why they want to find ways for reconciliation and suggest to create committees, Lavrov said during an interview to kp.ru.

We stated that Turkey must apologize and compensate the losses caused by the military crime. Russian President Vladimir Putin said we are ready to discuss (Ankaras request), but first of all Turkey must do what it is ought to do, Lavrov stated.
Protesters line the beach that borders BP property and chant, "BP must go" in a recent protest. (Jim Karczewski / Post-Tribune)

Did anyone get a whiff of that noxious odor that had recently wafted across parts of Northwest Indiana?

I envisioned area residents dressed in head-to-toe hazmat suits running around their neighborhood carrying "Ghostbusters"-like metal canisters while sniffing into the air to follow the wandering odor. The visual alone made me chuckle but I know this is a serious problem for those communities.

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Several residents complained about burning throats and watery eyes. Environmental officials scrambled to find its source, later determining the odor came from an unidentified industrial business in East Chicago.

The Indiana Department of Environmental Management is still investigating the issue, and offering a number for residents to call to report the odor. (That number is 800-451-6027, Ext. 24464.)

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The odor was described as a mixture of rotten eggs, chemical solvents and petroleum, which could describe any other air-quality day in north Lake County. When I drive through certain parts of East Chicago, Hammond and Whiting, especially with out-of-town visitors, we can't believe people choose to live near all that industry.

It's one thing to get used to, say, constant trains that run near your home and shakes the pictures on your wall. It's another thing to get used to noxious odors from industry near your home.

The former example is annoying to our lifestyle. The latter example is potentially dangerous to our health. Yet here we are, living along a smokestack skyline while trying to capture the American dream, agreeing to the century-old trade off in this area of possibly compromised health for a little bit of wealth.

Where do we draw the line in our historic sand between economic stability and environmental stewardship? Between living the dream and suffocating in a pipe dream? Between residing on East Street and breathing easy?

This is our shoreline tug-of-war that's been pulling us apart since U.S. Steel first set up shop in Gary in 1906, and other plants, factories and industries made the Lake Michigan shoreline their home.

Last month, a group of protesters demonstrated outside the BP's Whiting Refinery, urging a transition to more renewable sources of energy, such as wind and solar, according to an Associated Press story.

Such protests  this one as part of a global campaign  aren't a surprise. And it was deemed a success as a non-violent civil action to raise awareness in this area. Did it rally support here? Yes, but not as much as I had hoped for.

You'd think that we, as longtime area residents, would welcome such demonstrations because it's our health possibly at risk. Not so much, it seems.

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There are two major factors at work here. First, many of us are living like the proverbial frogs in the stovetop pot of water. We've been slowly simmering in this environment, we tend to forget that we may be boiling ourselves alive.

This is why when some out-of-town guests visit Northwest Indiana, especially northern Lake County, they instinctively frog-jump out of here. They immediately see, feel and smell the stench of industrialization and they act accordingly. They leave for what they feel are safer lily pads.

Second, we purposely remain here because those local industries are paying us to do so. Some workers are paid handsomely, so much so that they can afford to live in communities far away from their workplace. Others are paid just enough to keep them toiling around in that pot of boiling water.

Last month's protest got the headlines, but I was more interested in the comments of Sylvia Corpus Stewart, of Whiting. According to that AP story, she protested the protesters and instead supported BP.

Why would she do this? To show her stance for heavy crude oil as a dependable energy source? To side with Big Oil and heavy industry, which has faced much opposition in recent years? To oppose outsiders coming to this area to protest our way of life?

Of course not.

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The woman said she has relatives who work inside the BP refinery. Those family members depend on BP paychecks. End of debate. I understand this stance.

My son works in a local steel mill with, at times, dangerous working conditions. Do I want him working there every day, with potential peril on a daily basis? No. Do I want him earning a steady and admirable income in life? Yes.

This is our cap-and-trade conundrum along the casual coast, where heavy industry meets heavier rationalizations. We cap our health and environment concerns for the trade-off of steady money and putting food on the table for our families.

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All of us know that living inside this industrial park we call Northwest Indiana may endanger our health to some degree. We look the other way and whistle through the cemetery of fears.

No, most of us may not chat about hazardous issues during swanky dinner parties, power-lunch outings, or with out-of-town visitors. But deep down, we know.

That's why we prefer to not capture such noxious reminders of our trade off, unlike the local officials who are asking residents to capture, or report, that noxious odor.

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As I've noted before in this column space, we've been blowing smoke in our own eyes for decades, selling our souls and possibly our lives for the American pipe dream. Still, with several family members who worked in local mills, I understand this trade off all too well.

Most of us want only a sample of the dream, even if it results in watery eyes, burning throats and noxious rationalizations.

jdavich@post-trib.com

Twitter @jdavich
The Census says 6,000 or so people live in Westville and based on the several occasions we have motored through the joint, it's a likable Hoosier town with typical Hoosier folks and typical Hoosier appetites. Yes, charming and good-natured would apply.

But every few years so, the residents there must put up with the U.S. Census, data aggregators and demographers who apply civic judgments.

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Westville has been labeled the "dumbest town in Indiana." It's not the sort of title a town celebrates with parades and corncob eating contests. Westville does not stage an annual "Densest Miss Indiana Pageant." Or have a "Dumbest Pickles" booth at the LaPorte County Fair.

Plus, that title can't possibly be accurate or fair as long as Martinsville, Oolitic and Brazil still exist. And the title of "Dumbest Town" is as imprecise as it heartless because demographic data do not show towns are dumb; they show the people living in the towns are dumb.

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So how did charming, affable Westville get thumped with the dumb stick?

The first relevant fact is that Westville has been trapped for decades in a bureaucratic quagmire not of its making. It might actually be one of the state's smart towns.

In truth, there are not 6,000 residents in Westville and never have been. If you lived there you'd know that, but demographers and Census takers are unburdened with intuitive instinct. There are only 3,000 actual humans living in Westville's homes, condos and apartments. The other 3,000 are stationed more or less permanently in the state Westville Correctional Hoosegow.

A quirk in Census rules requires that "place of residence" for prison inmates is their prison cell. The federal government has been trying for 100 years to find a better way to count and assign inmates, without much success.

In some cases, counting inmates as local population gives a town and legislative district more gerrymandered clout and more government money.

In 2010, late Gary Mayor Rudy Clay wanted all of Gary's dispersed prison inmates to count as hometowns residents, so Gary's population could rise by 700. Indiana's law actually rejects counting inmates as residents in a prison because it's not a legal residence, which is a function of choice.

As an example of undue clout, Marion County (Indianapolis) has less than 14 percent of Indiana's population, but more than 29 percent of the state's prisoners are from Marion County.

In actuality, Westville should not even be counted. The lists' rules require population of 5,000 to be valid.

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Data and Census aggregators  Zippia and Wallethub, for example  use only two categories to determine the relative intelligence of towns based on comparative educational levels: How many local residents over age 15 have not graduated from high school, and how many dropped out of school.

Because about 80 percent of high school students graduate nationally, the bar seems low which means clunking your civic chin on the bar is not a good outcome.

Westville is Indiana's "Least Smart" city with 27.9 percent non-diploma-owning residents which is awful. But it also has a staggering 42.3 percent who dropped of out school.

How can one town have that percentage of dropouts and still function as sentient and civilized?

The answer is that it can't. But there's nothing dumb about Westville at all.

Westville High graduates 95 percent-plus of its students and many go to Purdue North Central already packing college credits.

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So 3,000 actual Westvillians are not uneducated, even though the town resiliently pops up on pop culture lists when travelers look for a nice place to settle. The real Westville population has jobs. Raises children. Owns homes.

Post Tribune Twice-weekly News updates from Northwest Indiana delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

The other 3,000 are in state prison, a fact to which demographers seem astoundingly oblivious. Being in prison is clear evidence of unsmart life choices  dropping out of school, for example  that produce bad results.

Maybe education by itself does not prevent a life of crime, but it probably helps.

All of this neither helps Westville's reputation much, nor improves female Westvillian chances of finding a date there. The Census says lists 4,136 men in town and 780 adult women. Good odds? Sorry. Most of the men aren't dating girls these days.

Thus, charming Westville has a more-than-plausible method for countering the libel against it. On the other end of the list, Munster, Lowell, Dyer and St. John all make the "Top 10 for Indiana Smarts."

On the other hand, Lake Station (4th worst) East Chicago (6th) and Hammond (10th) all have dubious graduation records.

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David.Rutter@live.com
With the scope and penalties of Chinas social credit system being further clarified in 2021, legal and regulatory compliance has become more important than...
YEREVAN, MAY 31, ARMENPRESS. Armenia and Iran have strategic relations and Iran is interested in expanding and developing bilateral relations, Justice Minister of Iran Mostafa Pourmohammadi told in a meeting with Armenian PM Hovik Abrahamyan.

As Armenpress was informed from the press service of the Government of Armenia, Prime Minister of Armenia Hovik Abrahamyan received Justice Minister of Iran Mostafa Pourmohammadi on May 31. The sides discussed the process of Armenian-Iranian joint projects, as well as prospects for developing bilateral and multilateral economic relations.

Hovik Abrahamyan stated that in the recent years the relations between the governments of the two countries dynamically develop which is mainly resulted by mutual high level visits. The Armenian PM mentioned that Armenia is deeply interested in developing multidimensional cooperation with Iran, a centuries old friendly country for Armenia.

In this context the Iranian Minister highly appreciated the role of the Armenian community in Iran in deepening and strengthening the friendship between the two states.

Referring to regional issues, the sides highlighted the preservation of peace, stability and security in the region.
An ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) patient donated his new book "Unstoppable: Writing Life With Eyes" to Inner Mongolian primary and middle school students on May 30, in Beijing, ahead of International Children's Day, which falls on June 1 and International ALS Day on June 21.

Wang Jia poses for photos with people empathetic to his condition in Beijing on May 30, 2016. [Photo by Chen Boyuan / China.org.cn]

It is the second book by Wang Jia, a 33-year-old patient, written with only his subtle eye movements indicating word choice; his first book "There Is No If in Life" was published in 2012. The book donation means to encourage students to persevere despite lifes many difficulties.

ALS is a specific disorder that involves the death of neurons. It is characterized by stiff muscles, muscle shrinkage and gradually worsening weakness. ALS is one of the three currently incurable diseases in the world, apart from cancer and HIV/AIDS.

Patients of ALS usually have difficulty speaking, swallowing, and eventually breathing. In China, ALS is also referred to as "gradual freezing man syndrome." The recent world popular ice bucket challenge reflects the world's growing awareness of the sufferers of this disease.

Contrary to the craze of the ice bucket challenge, the sufferings of ALS patients, along with their families, friends and people who take care of them, are seldom made public. The book donation may in part spread the message that the necessary attention given to ALS patients is so much more than soaking oneself with icy water.

The China Soong Ching Ling Foundation (CSCLF) is the society that brought Wang together with the needy students in Taipusiqi County of the Xilingol League in Inner Mongolia. The CSCLF set up a special ALS fund named after Wang Jia in November 2012 and henceforth increased financial support for those who suffered the same disease and pain.

Tang Jiuhong, director of the Department of Funds at CSCLF, acknowledged Wang's exceptional perseverance as he carries on in life. "Wang is interpreting in his own way the unique value and honor of one's life, and such a spirit is capable of inspiring everyone," she said.

In handing over the books to students together with CSCLF vice chairman Jing Dunquan, Tang said the book's title "Unstoppable" is a good choice, and is suitable for motivating students.

The number of ALS patients in China is estimated at 200,000, but the actual number is feared to be much higher.
Virgin Australia, Australia's second-largest airline, announced on Tuesday a 13-percent share of its company has been sold to Chinese firm HNA Aviation Group, in an attempt to force its way into the growing Chinese travel market.

The deal, initially worth up to 115 million U.S. dollars, will include a clause to increase HNA's share in the airline to 19.99 percent over time, and would allow the coordination of timetables, code-sharing agreement and frequent flyer programs with HNA's major airlines including Hainan Airlines and Tianjin Airlines.

The agreement opens the door for Virgin to begin flights to China amid the growing demand on direct travel routes between Australian and Chinese major cities.

Virgin Australia chief executive officer John Borghetti said creating an agreement with HNA was common sense for Virgin, as China was Australia's fastest growing inbound travel market, with the number of Chinese visitors to Australia set to double to two million annually by 2025.

"The alliance will see us leverage the opportunities offered by China as well as the synergies of HNA's comprehensive aviation supply chain," Borghetti said on Tuesday.

"(Virgin Australia will) look to introduce direct flights between Australia and China and co-operate on commercial functions including code-sharing, frequent flyer programs, lounge access and promotion of tourism and business travel."

HNA Aviation flies more than 77 million passengers annually, with more than 700 routes between 200 destinations on offer.

The news comes as Virgin continues to battle with a second straight full-year loss, the airline earlier this month announces a reduction of 5 percent of its domestic capacity in order to keep the airline in the black.

The eventual 20 percent stake in the airline would one day replace the 26 percent stake which Air New Zealand currently holds in the airline, after Air New Zealand announced it would sell down, or exit completely, its stake in the Australian airline.
The Port of Darwin [Photo/Landbridge.com.cn]

The Chinese company which purchased the 99-year leasing right for the Port of Darwin announced on Tuesday an 18-million-U.S dollar expansion of its operations, just months after taking control of the port.

Landbridge Group, owned by Chinese billionaire Ye Cheng, said it would be expanding its operation in Darwin, with a one-km extension of its quay line among the planned upgrades.

The multi-million dollar development would "expand cruise ship facilities", as well as "meet future increases in cargo volumes in the areas of dry bulk exports, liquid bulk imports, live cattle and container and general cargo throughput," the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

Darwin Port chief executive officer Terry O'Connor said the plan would eventually "quadruple the size of the existing container yard."

The Northern Territory's Chief Minister Adam Giles told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Tuesday that he welcomed the news of Landbridge's plan as it would increase capacity for extra cruise and cargo routes coming into Australia's far north.

"It is in line with what we wanted to occur with an investor for the port. One of the reasons we pay a lot for goods and services that come over our port, is that our port is not big enough," Giles said.

Giles said Landbridge's plan would also provide a major boost for tourism in the region, allowing the government to show off little-known attractions such as the Kakadu national park.

"To expand the cruise ship terminal to be able to take two cruise ships... to see a new terminal itself, the dredging that'll go on, these are big investments in tourism, which government could never, ever afford to do," Giles said.

Landbridge signed the 99-year lease on the port in October, 2015.
Former Zurich Insurance boss Martin Senn. [Photo/Zurich Insurance's official account on Twitter]

Former Zurich Insurance boss Martin Senn has committed suicide six months after leaving the company under a cloud, a tragedy that comes less than three years after Zurich's finance chief took his own life.

Senn, 59, shot himself at his family's Alpine resort home in Klosters, Swiss newspaper Blick reported. He had quit as chief executive of Zurich in December following a series of profit warnings and a botched takeover of British rival RSA.

"Martin Senn's family has informed us that Martin committed suicide last Friday," the company said in a statement yesterday, adding it was "stunned and deeply shaken."

His death follows the suicide of Zurich's finance chief Pierre Wauthier in August 2013, which brought into sharp focus the pressures facing senior corporate executives in Switzerland and elsewhere.

Wauthier, 53, killed himself after writing a suicide note addressed "To whom it may concern" in which he described becoming demoralised by what he called a new, more aggressive tone at Zurich under then-Chairman Josef Ackermann.

Ackermann, a former head of Deutsche Bank, denied any wrongdoing but quit soon after Wauthier's death.

Weeks before Wauthier's death, Swisscom Chief Executive Carsten Schloter had taken his own life.

Senn had been CEO since 2010 at Zurich, which he joined after stints with Swiss banks in Asia. He was married to a Korean musician and had two grown children.

Acquaintances, who asked not to be named given the sensitivity of the situation, described him as withdrawn and reclusive following his departure from the company, which Zurich said at the time was by mutual agreement.

"He wasn't doing so well," a former colleague said, but added that Senn had not given the impression of being suicidal.
Jin Liqun, president of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, speaks at the annual board meeting of the Asia News Network held at China Daily in Beijing, May 31, 2016. [Feng Yongbin / chinadaily.com.cn]

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) will grow its membership to nearly 100 countries and regions by the end of the year, making it a truly international financial institution with the mission of promoting multilateral benefits for all members, AIIB President Jin Liqun said on Tuesday.

Up to 30 countries are waiting to join the AIIB and about 20 of them have expressed "firm commitment", Jin said.

The AIIB chief was speaking to about 30 editors from major Asian media outlets gathered in Beijing for the annual board meeting of the Asia News Network held at China Daily.

Jin's comments also came ahead of the bank's first annual meeting to be held on June 25 and 26 in Beijing. Governors and representatives from the bank's 57 founding members will attend the meeting.

Jin said the bank will soon deliver the first batch of infrastructure projects, which will all be carried out in the Asian member countries. It will also expand its funding for projects in non-Asian countries soon, in particular the countries with strong economic ties with Asia, he added.

"It is gratifying to see that geographically it covers a broad area," Jin said, noting that the bank will announce the second and third batches of the projects by the end of the year.

The AIIB has been recruiting top talents globally for its operation since it officially opened in January. Jin said the bank will soon appoint a Japanese national to serve a senior position at the bank.

Jin stressed the inclusive nature of the bank, saying that the bank should be a platform for cooperation and coordination for all players in international economic arena instead of being simply a financial instrument for infrastructure projects.
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There are now more than 500 million 4G users in China thanks to government measures, a minister told a conference Tuesday.

China owns the world's largest 4G network with more than 2 million 4G base stations, Industry and Information Technology Minister Miao Wei told the First Global 5G Event in Beijing.

The country's mobile Internet users processed more than 4 million terabytes of data last year, 103 percent more than the previous year, according to Miao.

China has formed a 5G R&D team to research and test the technology with a view to commercialize it by 2020.
Henan province has adopted a policy allowing single children to take paid leave of up to 20 days a year to look after parents who are age 60 or older and hospitalized. Residents and experts alike hailed the move as a way to embrace the country's rapidly aging population.

Some, however, said enforcement of the regulation, which took effect on Friday, could be a problem and the policy might pose challenges for smaller companies.

Hua Huiping, a 53-year-old retired worker in Pingdingshan, Henan, who suffers from hypertension, said she is glad to hear of the regulation.

"My daughter is working in Zhengzhou and very busy," she said. "We know it would be difficult for her to ask for a leave from her company. I hope the policy will change that."

Wang Lili, a researcher at the China Research Center on Aging, said that with people living longer in China, the country's single-child generations will face heavier pressure, since such couples must simultaneously look after two pairs of parents and their own children.

"The policy is a good beginning and will play a positive role in promoting family-based elder care in Henan province and in China," she said.

"It may be very difficult to enforce the regulation without supporting measures, as many enterprises may not be willing to follow the regulation, considering the costs.

"The government can take some incentive measures to encourage enterprises to follow the regulation, such as a preferential tax policy," she said.

Huang Yuliang, chairman of the Zhengzhou Orchard Commune Animation Co, said he believed the additional paid leave could hurt smaller enterprises.

"It's good and a duty for people to care for their elders, but there's the rub  how can we find backup staffers if a department chief takes weeks off?"

China dropped its decadeslong one-child policy on Jan 1, encouraging all couples to have a second child.
[File photo]

Li Gang (pseudonym), a 29-year-old sales manager, plans to terminate his five-year working experience in Shanghai and look for a job in Kunshan, a neighboring city in Jiangsu Province, where he can reunite with his girlfriend and purchase a flat which is more affordable than one in Shanghai.

Amid the third job hunting fair held in Jiangsu Province on May 28, many people showed their willingness to move to the second-or-third-tier cities even though it may lead to a reduction of their salaries.

Xu, another job hunter in the fair, said he is considering returning to his hometown in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, to take care of his family and stay away from the skyrocketing housing prices in the real-estate market in Shenzhen.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, despite the diminishing growth rate of housing prices in Shanghai in April, compared with that in March, the growth of prices remain robust, up around 28 percent year on year. Meanwhile, the prices in Shenzhen saw an annual growth of 42.4 percent.

Last year, the number of permanent residents in Shanghai had for the first time during 15 consecutive years dropped by 1.5 percent to about 9.8 million, which was officially explained as a result of the current industrial restructuring that had driven away a certain number of blue-collar technicians.

The media predicted that, with the rapid rise of housing prices, the tendency to leave big cities will continue as white-collar workers are living with mounting pressure.
YEREVAN, MAY 31, ARMENPRESS. Germanys Green Party Co-chairman Cem Ozdemir of Turkish descent has commented on the resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide to be discussed this week in Bundestag. Ozdemir believes that on June 2 the parliamentary factions of Germany will approve the resolution elaborated jointly by themselves.

Referring to Erdogans proposal to set a special commission on examining historical facts, Ozdemir assessed it as senseless.

Armenpress reports, citing Ermenihaber, addressing Ankara, Ozdemir stated that Turkey has to clarify its expectations over the Armenian issue. According to the politician it was a wrong step to sign the Zurich protocols and then step back from them and Turkey leads a zigzag policy in this relation.

In the end the Co-chair of the Greens added that his mother used to bring the example of Kyutahia regions leader, who opposed the Armenian deportation. Ozdemir urged everyone to acknowledge what has happened. He also added that deliberately harming others is not typical for the Islam his mother taught him.

In 2005, Germany's parliament adopted a resolution recognizing the Armenian massacres, deportations and ethnic cleanings by the Ottoman Empire in 1915. However, in the Bundestags decision, the term Armenian Genocide was avoided, and instead "massacres of Armenians" was used. In March of 2015, the President of the German Parliament Norbert Lammert said: "what happened in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War in front of the whole world, was genocide. And it was not the last genocide of the 20th century. "

On April 24, before the Bundestag hearings, Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier announced that he supports those MPs, who are in favor of calling the mass killings of Armenians Genocide. On April 23, during the ceremony in the Berlin Cathedral dedicated to the memory of the Armenian Genocide, German President Joachim Gauck used the term Genocide in his speech.
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File photo of a tourist climbing up a tree. (Photo/Xinhua)

China has issued a new regulation to blacklist tourists and tourism service providers with inappropriate public manners.

Tourism service providers who insult, assault or threaten their clients or perform other behaviors which lead to adverse social influences will be added to a tourism behavior record system, according to the China National Tourism Administration.

The regulation also takes aim at misconduct by Chinese tourists, including unlawful behaviors at home and abroad, undermining public order and good morals, which will also be added onto the blacklist.

Ill-behaved tourists will be recorded for offenses for:

-acting inappropriately on public transport

-damaging private or public property

-disrespecting local customs

-sabotaging historical exhibits or engaging in gambling or illegal sexual activities

-destroying the environment or violating the protection of wildlife

-disrupting the public order at tourist resorts.

Entries to the blacklist will be kept valid from three to five years if the offenders break the law. Those who exhibit improper behaviors will be kept on the blacklist for one to three years.

The regulation comes after a blacklist system was established to target inappropriate tourist behaviors in China in May last year.

The new regulation has added other potential targets, including tour guides and other tourism service providers to the blacklist system.

The regulation comes amid growing concerns about the bad behaviors of Chinese tourists and tour guides.

Earlier in February this year, five Chinese airlines signed a joint statement against passengers who misbehave, such as those who disrupt air traffic order.

A database is shared among the airline companies.

Those on the blacklist are subject to limited services.
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Iran will continue sending military advisers to Syria and Iraq in a fight against terrorism, Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan said on Monday.

"We will help Syria and Iraq as much as we can because parts of the Islamic community have been under attack and we are defending (them)," Dehqan was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency.

The Islamic republic deploys military advisers to these countries in a bid to defend Islamic countries as "Islam and Muslim nations are important to us," he said.

As for the strategic city of Aleppo in northern Syria, he said that "eventually, the occupied territories in Aleppo will be liberated (from the terrorists) by the resistance front," Dehqan added.

Iran, a major regional ally of the Syrian and Iraqi governments in their fight against the militant groups, has repeatedly announced the presence of its military advisors in both countries.
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Four civilians killed, 19 other people, including five police officers, injured in bomb attack at a police vehicle on Monday in southeastern Silopi district of Sirnak province of Turkey, Dogan News Agency reported.

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants placed explosives under manhole cover and detonated with remote control while a police vehicle was passing, the agency reported.

In a separate incident, two police officers were killed, another injured on Monday in a bomb attack by the PKK members in eastern Van province, according to Dogan News Agency. The bomb was exploited by remote control targeting an armored police car.

Since a two-year cease-fire between the government and the PKK disintegrated last July, Turkish security forces have launched a major campaign against the group in southeast Turkey, leaving over 450 government soldiers and over 3,700 PKK members dead.

Ankara accused the PKK of waging a separatist war since 1984. The group is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.
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British Prime Minister David Cameron launched the Remain Campaign's battle bus in London Monday, with newly-elected London Mayor Sadiq Khan at his side.

Cameron welcomed Labour Party mayor Khan to the rally. The two men have agreed to put their differences aside, during they campaign for Britain to stay in the EU.

Khan said: "There are many things on which the prime minister and I will disagree. But what's really important is when it's in Londoners' interests for the mayor and the government to work closely together, we will work closely together."

Khan told the rally that more than 500,000 jobs in the British capital depend on the country being a member of the EU.

As well as unveiling the battle bus, Cameron and Khan revealed a "five point guarantee card" listing what they say Britons will get if they vote to Remain.

Their card promises full access to the EU's single market, protection of workers' rights, "a safer Britain", Britain maintaining its "special status" within the EU, the option to say no to EU aim of "ever-closer union".

The Vote Leave camp shuffled their alternative pack of cards showing the consequence of a remain vote. This included the mush disputed claim that Britain is sending 350 million pounds (512 million U.S. dollars) a week to the EU, and a warning that the free movement of people across the EU will continue.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair has also joined the campaign, saying if Britain quits the EU, it will cause an enormous economic problem.
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Beijing will pressure Washington over maritime issues during the upcoming annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue, as the United States' increasing military presence in the South China Sea is among China's major concerns, officials said.

China will bring up topics related to its major concerns, including the Taiwan question, Tibet and maritime security, and it will respond to the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue, which the US is expected to raise, two sources familiar with the matters said on condition of anonymity.

The two countries have differing pursuits on major issues at the strategic level. However, the two still have many common interests, they said.

Whether it is on the South China Sea issue or on the Korean Peninsula issue, the two countries have a shared security goal to maintain regional stability, they said.

Beijing announced on Monday that the annual dialogue will take place in Beijing on June 6 and 7.

China hopes to "properly tackle differences" alongside the US, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said.

The dialogue, which started in 2009, has become the highest-level, regular bilateral communication channel for the world's two largest economies to compare notes on key issues concerning diplomacy, security and economy.

Observers noted that the eighth dialogue will be the last to be co-chaired by President Barack Obama's administration.

On the economic track, Nathan Sheets, US undersecretary of the Treasury for international affairs, reaffirmed on May 24 the Obama administration's commitment to reaching a bilateral investment treaty agreement before Obama's presidency ends.

Sources also said that China will urge the US to provide a level playing field for Chinese investment. China's investment in the US in the first quarter of this year is expected to be more than double that of the first quarter of last year, according to the National Committee on United States-China Relations, based in New York.

Ruan Zongze, vice-president of the China Institute of International Studies, said the South China Sea issue will be brought to the table because it has affected the two-way ties, and the US has been "undermining regional stability" while "rebalancing to Asia" in the past two years.

Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation.
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The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Tuesday fired what was believed to be a Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missile but appeared to have failed, Yonhap news agency reported on early Tuesday.

"The DPRK launched a projectile, estimated to have been a Musudan missile, at about 5:20 a.m. local time from the Wonsan area in northeastern DPRK. But the launch appeared to have failed. "South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff was quoted by Yonhap as saying.

South Korea's military confirmed Monday that it was tracking signs of possible ballistic missile launch by the DPRK and has made complete preparations for possible launches.

If confirmed, it would mark the DPRK's 4th test-firing of a Musudan missile after the first launch on April 15 and two launches on April 28. However, all of the four test-firings ended as failure.

The Musudan missile, known to be capable of hitting part of the U.S. territory such as Guam and the outer reaches of Alaska, has been deployed by the DPRK since 2007.

The missile is considered especially threatening as it is fired from a mobile launcher, making it hard to detect and track in times of military conflicts. It can also carry a nuclear warhead.
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Russian airstrikes targeted positions of the Jaish al-Fateh rebels in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib on Monday night, a military source said.

The Russian strikes targeted bases and other positions of the Jaish al-Fateh, including several jihadi factions, mainly the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front, said the source on condition of anonymity.

In retaliation, Jaish al-Fateh shelled the last remaining government-loyal towns of Kafraya and Foa in Idlib countryside, with no more details so far emerging yet about the losses.
YEREVAN, MAY 31, ARMENPRESS. An agreement of a visa free regime is planned to be signed between the Governments of Armenia and Iran, Armenpress reports the issue of approving the document is included in the agenda of the Armenian Governments June 2 session.

According to the justification, the signing of the document stems from the necessity of fostering bilateral relations and strengthening mutually beneficial trade and economic ties between Armenia and Iran.

Citizens of Armenia and Iran can spend 90 days in the other country without visa.

Foreign Ministry of Armenia supports signing the mentioned agreement.
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The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) appeared to have failed in its fourth test-launch of an intermediate-range Musudan ballistic missile after its dialogue overtures on military matters were repeatedly dismissed by South Korea, Seoul's military said Tuesday.

An official at South Korea's defense ministry told Xinhua on the phone that the DPRK tried to test-fire one unidentified missile at about 5:20 a.m. local time from its Wonsan area in its east coastal region.

The official said the test-launch was estimated to have failed, adding that Seoul's military is analyzing details. He noted that South Korea's military has been maintaining complete preparedness for possible launches of additional missiles.

According to a South Korean government official, cited by Yonhap news agency, Seoul's military believed that it was the Musudan ballistic missile which is known to be capable of hitting part of the U.S. territory such as Guam and the outer reaches of Alaska.

The DPRK test-launched three Musudan missiles this year alone, two on April 28 and one on April 15 each, but all of the three test-firings were believed to have failed as the missiles exploded in mid-air or crashed in waters several seconds after lift-off.

The April 15 launch was the DPRK's first known test-firing of the intermediate-range ballistic missile. Pyongyang has allegedly deployed the Musudan missiles since 2007.

The missile is considered especially threatening as it is fired from a mobile launcher, making it hard to detect and track in times of military conflicts. It can also carry a nuclear warhead.

As all of the three test-firings ended as failure, the DPRK was widely expected here to conduct another test-launch to prove its nuclear-tipped ballistic missile technology.

The South Korean government official was quoted by Yonhap as saying that the fourth launch appeared to have failed as the missile was estimated to have exploded on its mobile launcher even before take-off.

South Korea's military estimated that the DPRK had deployed an unspecified number of Musudan missiles on the Wonsan area, which were closely tracked and monitored by military authorities of South Korea and the United States.

The fourth test-launch was in line with top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un's order on March 15 to test a nuclear warhead and ballistic rockets capable of carrying the warhead "in a short time."

After the seventh ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) congress that last four days through May 9, the DPRK repeatedly made dialogue overtures toward South Korea to talk about military matters in order to defuse tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Seoul, however, rejected the proposals as Pyongyang failed to mention its willingness to denuclearize. South Korea held fast to its position that no dialogue will be held with the DPRK unless Pyongyang shows its denuclearization will through sincere actions.
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A delegation led by a senior official of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), left Pyongyang on Tuesday for a three-day visit to China.

Ri Su Yong, head of the delegation, is a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea. He is vice chairman of the party's Central Committee and the director of the party's International Department.

Ri served as the country's foreign minister from April 2014 to May 2016 before he was elected into the Political Bureau of the party at the party's national congress.
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A senior official of the Communist Party of China (CPC) held talks with a visiting delegation from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Tuesday.

Song Tao, head of the International Department of the CPC Central Committee, held talks with the delegation, which was led by Ri Su Yong, a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK).

Ri is also vice chairman of the WPK Central Committee and director of the party's International Department.

The DPRK side gave a briefing on the seventh WPK congress, which was held in early May.

Both sides agreed that they highly value the China-DPRK traditional friendship, and that the exchanges and cooperation between the two parties should continue to be strengthened.

They also expressed willingness to consolidate and develop China-DPRK relations, and support regional peace and stability.

The two sides also exchanged views on other issues of shared interest.

Tuesday was the first day of a three-day visit to China by the DPRK delegation.
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Russia's foreign minister says President Vladimir Putin's planned trip to China will give "powerful impulse" to ties between the two nations.

Speaking Tuesday at a Moscow conference, Sergey Lavrov described expanding ties with China as a priority in Russia's foreign policy.

"We are certain that President Putin's visit to China planned for June will give a powerful impulse to the multifaceted strategic Russian-Chinese partnership and will favor further the realization of its inexhaustible, truly inexhaustible potential".

The Chinese representative at the Russian-Chinese Friendship Committee Dai Bingguo also spoke at the conference, stating that relations between the two countries have never been better.

Putin is set to visit China in June on a trip intended to further boost cooperation on energy and other areas.
The MV Rabaul Queen was a passenger ship owned by the company Rabaul Shipping in Papua New Guinea. She was built in Japan in 1983 and brought to PNG in 1998, plying regular weekly route between Buka, Rabaul, Kimbe and Lae.

WHEN she opened her eyes, Grace Kunsei saw that her right leg was stuck into a fire escape door and that door wouldnt open. She pulled with all her might, but it just wouldnt budge.

Nearing the end of her 20 hour journey from Kimbe to Lae, the Rabaul Queen capsized in the early hours of 2 February 2012 and sank four hours later. Twelve crew members and an estimated 350 passengers were aboard.

It is possible though, and Grace thinks this is so, that there may have been more than 500 passengers on the vessel. It was the worst tragedy to have happened in PNG waters.



Grace was 18 years old at the time and was about to start Grade 12 at Lae Secondary School. She was travelling back to Lae with her younger sister Amethyst, 13, after visiting their grandparents during the Christmas holidays.

They left Kimbe on Wednesday 1 February 2012 at 1 pm. It had not stopped raining since the weekend.

When they got on board Rabaul Queen, it was packed with passengers, especially students from Bougainville, New Ireland, East New Britain and other who boarded at Kimbe wharf. The weather was appalling and waves started rocking the ship as soon as they left Kimbe.

Because the ship was overloaded, Grace, Amethyst, two female cousins and an uncle were outside on Deck B. They put down their bags but there was no space to sit, so they stood.

The rain was torrential and the ship was tossed around at the mercy of the sea. Men, women, boys and girls were seasick. Grace and her relatives stood on the deck staring at the angry waves.

After they left Bulu Point, there was no land in sight. There was only the dark curlingwaves, monstrous waves, hitting the ship from all sides, swivelling it off its course as, with mounting fear, the passengers struggled to keep their balance.

Grace and everyone on Deck B were wet from head to toe as the sea came pouring over the deck. They held rails, ladders, doors, whatever they could. Inside the people were packed like sardines in a can.

After passing Siassi Island at 1 am Thursday, the waves eased somewhat and the rain ceased. Grace and her sister squatted next to their bags and tried to get some sleep in the last hours before daybreak.

At 5 am the sky cleared but the sea was still rough. Everyone on the ship was weak and tired. Many now slept. Grace was awake looking out at the clear sky and the angry waves.

At around 5:50, Graces uncle wanted to chew betel nut, so she got a nut from her bag with lime and mustard. When she turned to walk towards him, he called her name and told her to walk safely.

Grace tried to catch what he was saying when a massive wave hit the right side of the ship, pushing the left side underwater.

Grace was swept her off her feet and held the side rails for dear life, thinking the wave would come and go. But the water kept pouring in and she realised the ship was going down.

She felt she was being pushed by ten hands on her face and then felt her uncles hands on hers as they held the iron rail to steady themselves. Then her uncle pushed her out of the ship and the current swept him away. That was the last time she saw him.

Grace was drawn back towards the ship by the force of the ocean and something hit her on the back and she found herself being washed along the steps that led to Deck A. She opened her eyes trying to see where she was, when the current sucked her into its coiling force and washed her away again.

When she opened her eyes again, Grace saw that her right leg was stuck in a fire escape door which wouldnt open. She pulled with all her might, but the door wouldnt budge. The thought that the ship might sink made her force out her leg and she felt the knee cap break. There was nothing else in Graces mind except she must not go down with the ship.

She swam away from the ship swallowing salt water and the slimy oil that covered the seas surface. There were people everywhere calling to their loved ones and friends, all of them covered in black oil. The waves kept rolling separating people and washing them away. Grace could hear the terrible sounds of people drowning.

A few metres away, Grace saw her little sister, Amethyst, and called out to her to swim towards her. But the sound of men and women screaming, children crying, the wind howling and the rumble of the waves meant Amethyst did not hear her call.

Grace saw a life raft being washed towards her. She held it and told a Bougainvillean boy to stand on her shoulders and climb aboard. He got in and pulled Grace up and then she pulled in his sister. But it was difficult to balance because the raft was upside down.

People were still screaming but Grace and the others couldnt help them because the mountainous waves made rescue impossible.

Gradually more people clambered on top of the upside down raft and the huge waves kept coming.

Around 4 pm, MV Moi Summer, an ocean liner owned by a shipping company in German, came alongside. Ropes were thrown down to the liferaft and the men tied them to the sides of the raft to steady it.

The ships crew threw down huge nets and rope ladders for the survivors to climb. And finally they were safe and were given water, fruit, food, coffee, cigarettes, clothes, bath towels, soap and chocolate.

There were 113 survivors on Moi Summer and they were brought to Lae the next morning, Thursday.

Grace was put in an ambulance with three other women and taken to Angau Hospital. She had swallowed a lot of oil and sea water, her right pelvic bone was fractured and she had a broken knee cap.

She was in hospital for six weeks during which her parents and fellow church members prayed continuously and cared for her unconditionally. Grace recovered.

The following year, she went back to complete her schooling.

Amethyst survived, and came out of the ordeal unharmed.

Peter Sharp, the owner of Rabaul Shipping never compensated the victims. He said the tragedy happened because God willed it and it had nothing to do with him.

He has not compensated any survivor or the relatives and families of those who perished or are missing.

The PNG government gave K3,000 to each survivor to start their lives again. Grace spent her money on hospital bills and medication. Grace was interviewed a couple of times by the police, but nothing has been done.

Grace is now happily married and has a son named Philip. She works as a penciller at the Kina Betting shop in Lae.

She has never forgotten the most tragic day of her life. She sees it clearly in her mind every time someone talks about it.

She will remember it for the rest of her life.
A pedestrian walks past an advertisement for China Life Insurance in Beijing, China, Oct 29, 2013. [Photo/IC]

China Life Insurance Group Co, the country's largest insurer, has taken a sizable but undisclosed stake in a landmark New York office block, in a deal worth $1.65 billion.

The insurer is believed to be the largest investor in the Manhattan building, at 1285 Sixth Ave, in a transaction led by US developer RXR Realty LLC, according to media reports.

The purchase marks the latest high-profile property move by a Chinese company, in a trend experts said is being fueled by the desire to hedge against the risks of a slower Chinese economy and the yuan's depreciation.

"It is a reasonable move by China Life, given the expectation of a strong dollar and the sound economic recovery in the United States," said Grant Ji, executive director of capital markets for northern China at CBRE Group, a US commercial real estate company.

The 167,220 square meters Sixth Ave site houses tenants include UBS Group AG and the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.

Ji said trophy properties in prime locations such as New York and London are considered ideal targets for Chinese insurers, as they offer low-risk investments that generate stable yield.

Property deal tracker Real Capital Analytics told The Wall Street Journal recently that Chinese companies have been the most-active investors in the US since the start of the year, buying 47 properties worth $9.3 billion.

The China Life purchase also comes at a time when Chinese insurers have been suffering a significant decline in profits and investment returns, due to the sharp volatility of the A-share market.

"More life insurers are becoming interested in investing in foreign real estate to earn stable rental yields and to diversify their investment portfolio," said Sally Yim, senior vice-president at global rating agency Moody's Investors Service Inc.

"China Life's overall real estate holding is still small, so despite the illiquid nature of this kind of investment, we believe the risk is manageable," Yim said.

China Life was thumped by a 57.2 percent fall in net profit to 5.22 billion yuan ($793 million) in the first quarter of the year. Its investment return also dropped by 4 percent to 3.7 percent, during the period.

Last year, the company and its domestic rival Ping An Insurance Co jointly invested in a $500 million development project in Boston's Seaport District, both their first moves into the US property market.
The company logo of Dalian Wanda Commercial Properties Co Ltd is displayed at a news conference on the company's annual results in Hong Kong, China, March 24, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin's Dalian Wanda Group Co is offering HK$34.5 billion ($4.4 billion) to buy out its Hong Kong-listed property unit, as it seeks a higher valuation for the business on mainland stock exchanges.

Wanda will pay HK$52.80 for each Hong Kong-traded share of Dalian Wanda Commercial Properties Co, the company said in a statement on Monday, 10 percent higher than an earlier offer of at least HK$48 and 3 percent higher than its last trading price of HK$51.25 before trading was halted on April 22. The shares, which have traded in Hong Kong for less than two years, fell to HK$49.25, down 1.5 percent after resuming trading on Monday.

Wang, who controls Wanda Commercial's Beijing-based parent, said that the unit was "substantially undervalued" and he wanted to proceed with the privatization. The billionaire has been seeking investors to help purchase as much as 14.41 percent of the shopping-mall operator and re-list it in the Chinese mainland, according to a document sent to prospective backers.

Going-private deals that aim to relocate overseas share listings to Shanghai or Shenzhen have been under the spotlight, after the mainland's stock regulator voiced concerns such transactions could flood its market. Wanda's transaction is pending shareholder and regulatory approvals, according to the statement.

In its pitch to investors, Wanda cited an average valuation of 29 times estimated full-year earnings for mainland listings, based on four companies engaged in managing free trade zones and industrial parks. Wanda Commercial was trading at about 6.4 times before trading was halted in April, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Wanda will proceed with plans to buy out the property unit after considering whether to scrap the deal in the wake of regulatory concerns, people familiar with the matter said.
Samson held on to his dads army helmet a bit longer than usual, not wanting to let go, but Regina held him back. Never wanting to let go had to be ignored this afternoon.

Their sons Samson, two, and Martin, one, stood beside her as she carried their three-week old daughter Keziah close to her heart and bade her man goodbye.

Regina was proud of him but her heart moaned with anxiety and a feeling of emptiness gripped her at the uncertainty of what lay ahead.

HORACE Marco Maino was 26 when he left on a windy September afternoon in 1996.

They say tears are the raindrops from the storm inside, but Regina did not cry.

That afternoon, husband and father 810160 Corporal Horace Marco Maino boarded a special flight out of Port Moresby with his comrades from Alpha Company, 1st Royal Pacific Island Regiment, bound for the war-torn island of Bougainville.

The conflict was into its eighth year and peace was on the agenda as negotiations continued with leaders of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA). A ceasefire seemed likely.

At Taurama Army Barracks, Cpl Maino, section commander of 1RPIR A COY, was deployed with his company to man the post at Siara Junction Camp in north-west Bougainville.

On 23 October 1996, as ceasefire talks continued, Maino led his company into a rebel stronghold to meet with a BRA leader as part of the peace negotiations.

He never returned to Siara Junction camp.

His rifleman, 811502 Pte Jimmy Jula, along with 810828 Pte Raymond Waia, who were with him that afternoon, also disappeared.

Months passed, but Cpl Maino, Pte Jula and Pte Waia were never seen again.

Back at Taurama, the pride that once held Reginas tears intact at the base of her heart burst open and darkness enveloped her world. Pure agony ruled all elements of her emotions.

She wanted that disappearance to be a bad dream from which she would soon awake.

Her heart begged, pleading that it was a mistake, that there was message coming soon which would say they have been found.

Regina believed that one day soon there would be an unexpected knock on the door, she would open it and there he would be, standing there, probably bearded and rugged like in the movies.

When I interviewed her for this story, Reginas eyes glistened with tears and her lips trembled as she struggled to find words to describe the soreness, loneliness and despair that ate into her heart.

The months turned to years and that knock never came. Then finally in 1998, the three soldiers were declared killed in action.

Regina felt nothing more but pain as she and her three children began their unknown walk into a future without their father.

In mid-2000, Regina found a job with the Nongorr & Associates law firm as a legal secretary. She is still there today.

The three children turned into adults as Regina, who never married again, grew grey flowers in her hair and continued to hope deep inside that this man would one day come home to lie among his own people at Sohe in Oro Province.

Her prayers were answered. In October 2010, the remains of the three men were discovered in the custody of ex-combatants in the Hahon and Kunua areas of Bougainville.

Clearance was granted with the cooperation of the Autonomous Bougainville Government and the ex-combatants. This led to a successful forensic examination of the remains by the Australian Defence Force which confirmed that it was Cpl Marco Maino who lay at Kunua.

In 2013, the PNG national government issued instructions that the remains be recovered and repatriated.

At around 2 pm on Sunday 21 June 2015, the long wait that hovered like dark clouds over Regina and her children melted into the juddering sound of the chartered Air Niugini Fokker 100 as it touched down at Jacksons Airport, Port Moresby, after the two-hour flight from Bougainville.

On board were the remains of Cpl Horace Marco Maino, Pte Jimmy Jula and Pte Raymond Waia.

Regina stood beside Samson, now 22, and studying information technology, Martin, 21, who works with Pride Furniture, and Keziah, 20, who cuddled her three-month-old baby girl just as she had been cuddled as her father left on that September afternoon in 1996.

As the plane slowly approached the PNGDF air transport wing, Regina felt a sudden gust of wind that softly touched her face before rustling through her greyish white hair. It felt like a hand she knew.

She smiled amidst the tears that ran freely down her cheeks as she welcomed her man home after 19 years.
Workers at a coalmine in Huaibei, Anhui province. [Photo/China Daily]

Four major coal companies are to raise the price of their coal ready for shipment at ports by 10 yuan ($1.5) per ton during June.

Shenhua Group Corp, China Coal Energy Group Co Ltd, Datong Coal Mine Group and Inner Mongolia Yitai Group Co Ltd revealed the move on Friday.

According to a report by Citibank China analysts Jack Shang and Claire Jie Yuan, the decision is part of the government's ongoing effort to limit national coal production, which could eventually result in as much as 20 percent added to the price by the end of the year.

Coal being imported at the Qinhuangdao Port in Hebei province to be used for electricity generation is expected to rise from the current 376 yuanas of May 25to 450 yuan per metric ton, they said.

Market makers had been expecting price hikes for some time, with many suppliers stockpiling at ports waiting to ship at higher prices.

Stocks at five major ports in the north of the country, including Qinhuangdao, Caofeidian and Tianjin, stood at 14.97 million tons as of May 27, up 1.81 million tons from the same period in April.

The government has set a target of reducing domestic production capacity by 16 percent by the end of this year, and reducing the number of operational annual working days at mines from 330 to 276 days.

The State Council, China's Cabinet, said in February it hoped to cut coal production by 500 million tons in the next three to five years, or around 9 percent of total domestic capacity.

To achieve that, estimates are that 300 State-owned coal mines with production capacity of 300 million tons, and 4,000 small-scale mines with production capacity of 40 million tons, could be shut.

Already significant capacity has been cut in areas such as Shanxi province, China's largest coal-producing area, which has seen a 21.3 percent fall in the year to April.

According to the Shanxi statistics bureau, local coal mining companies with annual revenues of more than 20 million yuan churned out 58.2 million tons of raw coal last month.

"Limiting the operational working days is a precaution against a wave of bankruptcy across the industry.

"Together with other measures, this will be strictly carried out over the next few quarters," said Sheng.

Citibank estimated China's raw coal production capacity this year could decline by 9 percent, while actual demand will slow less dramatically, by about 3.4 percent.
The manager of Jinhua Partytime Latex Art and Crafts Factory wears a mask of US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as he poses and gestures a victory sign while sh owing products to reporters at his factory's showroom in Jinhua, Zhejiang province. [Photo/Agencies]

As Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton battle it out for the front-door keys to the White House, it appears some Chinese manufacturers are even cashing in on the growing frenzy surrounding the once-every-four-year US election bandwagon.

Search the key word Trump on AliExpress, an online shopping site under Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, and as many as 546 results pop up, ranging from T-shirts with the Republican candidate's portrait, to badges, hats and flags emblazoned with his campaign slogan Make America Great Again.

Statistics provided by the site, which allows shoppers from around the world to buy small quantities of goods at wholesale prices, show the keywords Donald Trump have been used as a search 26,612 times on personal computers and mobile devices since early February.

"Hillary Clinton", however, has been searched just 3,888 times during the same period, with most purchases in both cases being made on home turf.

One US AliExpress buyer posted a photo of himself wearing a Trump T-shirt, with the feedback, "go Trump! Little small, but I luv it".

The Hillary items, it has to be said, are a little more feminine.

Apart from the routine unisex T-shirts, one Chinese manufacturer has even launched a Love Hillary 2016 bracelet. The most flattering feedback for that so far?: "Nice and cute".

AliExpress said hats are its best-sellers among both sets of supporters, followed by T-shirts, masks and flags.

A salesman surnamed Chen from Guangdong province-based XYL Metal Crafts Co Ltd said his firm has shipped around 5,000 Trump lapel pins to the US, for instance, mainly through Alibaba.com, a site dedicated to linking Chinese wholesalers with buyers around the world.

"We have no idea how the buyers are going to use the pins. But it's been good business for us," he said.

However, not all purchases represent loyal support for the respective candidates.

Qingdao Wellpaper Industrial Co Ltd said sales of its Donald Trump toilet paper have been rising rapidly since mid-February.

The product, branded Dump with Trump, is printed with the very man's pouting face on it.

"At the start, orders were for around 100 rolls a time, but now we're getting orders for 5,000 rolls," a saleswoman from the Shandong-based company said. She added her company has taken 50 orders for the Trump toilet paper.

There are Hillary versions of the customized loo roll toobut only around eight orders have been taken for those, she said.
Ground staff tow in a Boeing 737 jet after landing at King County International Airport in Seattle, Washington. [Photo/Agencies] Airlines acquire more planes to carry passengers from new economies

The skies above Asia are set to get more crowded during the next 20 years, as airlines acquire more planes to fly increasing numbers of passengers from developing economies. That timing couldn't be better for aircraft leasing company BOC Aviation Ltd.

BOC Aviation, an arm of Bank of China Ltd, is scheduled to debut on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Wednesday after raising HK$8.7 billion ($1.1 billion) in an initial public offering. The company sold new and existing shares at HK$42 apiece, in Asia's second-biggest IPO this year, and it plans to use the proceeds to help pay for new planes.

As airlines serving the Asia-Pacific region move to triple their fleet, they're finding it can be cheaper to lease jets instead of buying them from Boeing Co or Airbus Group SE. And for BOC, the leasing business can be more lucrative than running an airline, helping explain why conglomerates led by Hong Kong billionaires Li Ka-shing and Cheng Yu-tung are entering the field.

"The Chinese are getting into leasing as they see huge potential in their own market, as well as Asia Pacific," said Shukor Yusof, founder of Endau Analytics in Malaysia. "They are flush with cash."

The share offer has attracted such investors as Boeing and sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corp, according to terms of the deal obtained by Bloomberg.

Airlines in Asia will fly more than 16,000 planes within 20 years, almost tripling the current number, according to estimates by Boeing. BOC Aviation, the biggest lessor in the region, has 270 planes, underscoring the growth prospects in what is set to be the world's largest aviation market.

In the past 30 years, the number of aircraft owned by operating lessors jumped 11 percent annually, according to Singapore-based Phillip Capital Pte. That's double the pace of growth in the commercial fleet, where 40 percent of jets are leased.

At the end of last year, BOC Aviation had 241 planes on order.

"In Asia Pacific, we're seeing very good demand for aircraft," said Robert Martin, chief executive officer of the Singapore-based company, said. "When we talked to investors, what they said to us is that they really want an Asian champion to come to the market."

The leasing business traditionally was dominated by companies including General Electric Co-backed GECAS and ILFC. A new breed of Asian companies are coming in to challenge them. Among them are BOC and Sumitomo Corp-backed RBS Aviation.

"There is no reason Asian growth should not be married with Asian financing," said Will Horton, a Hong Kong-based analyst at the CAPA Center for Aviation.

"Dominance and forcing a pivot away from North America and Europe can follow."

BOC Aviation's customers include IAG SA's Vueling Airlines SA, Iberia, Southwest Airlines Co, Aeroflot PJSC, EVA Airways Corp, Singapore Airlines Ltd's India affiliate Vistara and WestJet Airlines Ltd, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

BOC Aviation is poised to benefit from rising demand in China, India and Southeast Asia, where higher incomes prompt more people to fly. India was the fastest-growing air travel market last year, expanding more than 20 percent, according to Montreal-based IATA. That compares with 10 percent for China and less than 5 percent for the United States.

BOC Aviation purchases aircraft from manufacturers and then leases them to airlines for a monthly fee. After a certain period, the airline returns the aircraft, which typically is leased to another carrier.

Support from Bank of China makes financing cheaper by providing low-cost capital, giving BOC Aviation a "sharp competitive edge", said Fan Guohe, an analyst at Phillip Capital, in a research note.

BOC's cost of debt was about 2 percent in 2015, the lowest among its publicly traded peers, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

Based on its IPO price of HK$42, it will trade at 1.6 times book value, or "well in excess of currently listed lessors", said George Ferguson, an analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence, in a research note.
TAIYUAN - Coal output in Shanxi province, China's largest coal-producing region, was down 21.3 percent year on year in April as local authorities moved to cut capacity.

Local coal mining companies with annual revenues of more than 20 million yuan ($3.1 million) churned out 58.2 million tons of raw coal last month, the provincial statistics bureau said Monday.

The northern region faces severe overcapacity as the country's economy slows.

Last year, the coal mining industry in Shanxi reported a massive loss of 9.4 billion yuan, or roughly 10 yuan per tonne of coal.

Last month, local coal mines were ordered to operate below 84 percent of production capacity. Many mines were ordered to halt production or stop construction.

The Shanxi provincial government said earlier this month that it would stop approving new coal mining projects and slash coal production capacity by over 100 million tons in the years leading up to 2020.
A Beechcraft King Air C90GTx aircraft manufactured by Textron Aviation Inc, stands on display at the Singapore Airshow held at the Changi Exhibition Centre in Singapore, Feb 16, 2016. [Photo/CFP]

China's demand for versatile utility aircraft capable of freight transportation will increase dramatically in the near future as the country invests huge money in infrastructure development in its remote regions, according to a leading industry executive.

"There is a greater demand than ever before for freight transportation in China, following the country's focus on developing economic belts and expanding infrastructure across rural areas," said Bill Schultz, senior vice-president for business development in China of Textron Aviation Inc.

Textron, a leading US general aviation business whose product line includes the iconic Beechcraft, Cessna and Hawker brands, aims to boost its mainland presence to fulfill the increased demand in China, as more local customers have been turning to its portfolio of turboprop aircraft, according to Schultz.

"Small cargo aircraft are essential for connecting to main air cargo centers and to facilitate the rapid transportation of mission critical items such as food, documents, pharmaceuticals and medical equipment," he said.

Textron, along with its Chinese joint venture, Cessna-AVIC Aircraft (Shijiazhuang) Co Ltd, held a conference in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province, last week to explore the future development of air cargo in China.

"We hope to reach out to the aviation, transport and delivery industries to address how leaders in these industries can serve the needs of the growing and changing air cargo market in China," said Schultz.

The company has already seen a fast growth in the Chinese market, with deliveries of the Cessna Caravan single-engine utility turboprops having increased nearly 80 percent in the country after establishment of the Shijiazhuang facility three years ago.

In 2015, the company delivered 20 Caravan aircraft in China, which sparked a new segment in the country's aviation market by giving operators greater access to remote locations, according to Schultz.

Textron has two joint ventures in Chinaone in Shijiazhuang in Hebei province and the other in Zhuhai in Guangdong, focusing on development of various types of aircraft.

Its Shijiazhuang facility, a joint venture between Cessna Aircraft Co and China Aviation Industry General Aircraft Co, began delivering cargo aircraft in December 2013, while the Cessna-AVIC Zhuhai base focuses on development of private jets and turboprop airplanes.

"Each of the two ventures supports different industries, allowing us to cover the overall increased general aviation market," he said.

There are currently 253 private jets running in China, with the number forecast to grow sevenfold from 2012 to 2032, according to company estimates.

Schultz said the company wants to expand its cooperation with Chinese counterparts in the future, as the country has outlined an ambitious plan to build more than 500 general aviation airports by 2020.

"We will expand our cooperation as the market grows. There might be more joint ventures to come in the next three to five years," he said.
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd has ceased online sales of medicines on its Tmall platform, citing changes in government regulation.

Tmall has received a notice from the China Food and Drug Administration's (CFDA) Hebei province branch, requiring "urgent control measures relating to drug products".

In a statement on Tuesday, website management said they would cooperate and stop the online medicine retail business on the third-party platform.

The new regulations come as a surprise as an increasing number of e-commerce companies plan to tap into the online sales of over-the-counter medicines. The CFDA did not elaborate on the reason why sales were halted.

An industrial insider, who refused to be named, said the regulation did not only apply to Tmall. Other e-commerce companiesinvolved in selling drugs on third-party platforms, such as Yhd.com, are expected to receive similar orders from local food and drug authorities.
Jia Wei, founder of LKKER, speaking at the LKKER Conference in Ningbo, Zhejiang, on May 30, 2016. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

"Creating the impossible" through the digital age has been the idea trumpeted during a global innovate design conference in Zhejiang.

The two-day LKKER Conference, held in Ningbo from Monday, gathered creative minds in design, finance, IT and investment from across the globe. They discussed the value of business in the internet era.

During a series of speeches, LKKER's founder Jia Weialso the founder of LKK, a Beijing-headquartered creative design companyshared his concept on "imagination economy".

"LKKER aims to serve as a creative platform for socialized products where users can participate in crowd innovation and designers (can) work with the company of their families," Jia said.

Jia believes the Conference model can make product innovation more effective, and at a lower cost. He says the future weighs heavily on people's interests, driven by imagination economy.

Economist Wu Xiaobo speaking at the LKKER Conference in Ningbo, Zhejiang, on May 30, 2016. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Economist Wu Xiaobo told the Conference the world of the future would likely be a perceptual, but also rational, platform.

He says the Internet will become an infrastructure in our lives that is cheap and fast.

"LKKER conference aims to maximize the possibility of the platform's ability," he said.

Li Wanqiang, co-founder of Chinese smartphone-maker Xiaomi Corp and also behind the establishment of LKKER, says LKKER's mode is the inevitable path to sharing innovation as the world moves towards a sharing economy.

"Other innovative firms will surface if it weren't LKKER," he said.

"We hope to create more impossible on this designer platform, just like how on-demand mobility (ODM) service Didi Chuxing changed the transportation industry."

Li Wanqiang, co-founder of Xiaomi Corp (left), Jia Wei, founder of LKKER (middle), and Wu Sheng, founder of Context Lab, answer questions at the LKKER Conference in Ningbo, Zhejiang, on May 30, 2016. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] 'New Species' plan

Another plan discussed at the conference - "new species" - links together every new thought, product category and business model through people's needs.

Co-founder Wu Sheng says it can generate new business value.

According to Wu, 'new species' does not have to be tangible. It can be new smart products, a new value chain, even a new service experience  anything that can lead an industry trend can be defined as 'new species'.

In the time when all things are connected, the plan aims to realize business value, help enterprises with their business model reforms and help designers create super products based on users' need. It defines a new lifestyle and puts imagination in products.

The plan was experimented before its launch. LKKER and Context Lab created popular products such as Changba, a mobile karaoke app which attracted 300 million users.

The plan called upon experts in industries such as IT, creative investment, data analysis and e-commerce to recruit partners in technology, resources and internet traffic. After careful selection, examination and design, the plan will be made a reality through imagination.

The plan attracted more than 1600 companies since its launch on May 10.

Wu says the plan will not only generate multiple business models, but also maximize the imagination space of the 'new species' future through ecological business construction.
A Chinese investor walks past a screen displaying prices of shares (red for price rising) at a stock brokerage house in Nanjing city, East China's Jiangsu province, May 31, 2016. [Photo/IC]

China's stocks jumped the most in two months on Tuesday as investors bet that MSCI will add mainland shares to its index for the first time next month and Chinese top leaders' speech on Monday boosted their confidence.

The Shanghai Composite Index surged as much as 3.34 percent to close at 2916.62 points on Tuesday. Nine securities firms, including Western Securities Co and Shanxi Securities Co, climbed by the daily limit as the top performer in the market.

The Shenzhen Component Index rose 4 percent, while the ChiNext startup index climbed by 4.92 percent.

"Investors are now betting China shares will be included into the MSCI Emerging Market index," said Liu Shiwei, a partner at Shanghai-based Great Rain Investment.

The odds that mainland Chinese stocks will be included in MSCI's indexes got a boost after the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges on Friday published rules restricting trading halts, a bane of foreign investors that was used to shut down half the stock market amid a $5 trillion selloff last summer.

The largest China-focused exchange traded fund denominated in the yuan currency drew its biggest daily inflows in the past year on Monday.

Liu Jipeng, dean of capital finance institute at the China University of Political Science and Law, said Chinese top leaders' speech on Monday shored up investors' confidence.

In a show of unprecedented importance, both President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang on Monday addressed an event combining three top-level science conferences attended by 4,000 scientists and science officials. They pledged greater commitment to the research and application of science and technology.
The longest-serving current member of Congress is backing Eric Kingson in the 24th Congressional District race.

Kingson's campaign distributed an email over the weekend informing supporters that U.S. Rep. John Conyers, the dean of the House of Representatives, has endorsed the Syracuse University professor and Social Security expert.

Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, has previously worked with Kingson on issues related to Social Security.

Kingson said Conyers was one of three members of Congress who spearheaded a letter in 2010 informing President Barack Obama that if the Bowles-Simpson commission's budget proposal included cuts to Social Security it would be "dead on arrival."

"My past experience working with Eric to help stop cuts to Social Security proves to me that he has both great policy knowledge and a keen sense of how to actually make change," Conyers said in a statement. "I believe he will be an effective legislator and I would be thrilled if he joined me in the House of Representatives."

Conyers is the latest member of Congress to endorse Kingson in the 24th Congressional District's Democratic primary.

Earlier this month, Kingson was endorsed by U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Like Conyers, Grijalva worked with Kingson, who co-founded Social Security Works, to preserve Social Security and expand benefits.

"I think it says that I'm a known quantity among a fair number of members of Congress and that they respect the work that we all do with Social Security Works, and continue to do," Kingson said.

Kingson is running in a three-way race for the Democratic nomination. His opponents are Colleen Deacon, U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's former central New York regional director, and Steve Williams, a Syracuse-area attorney.

The winner of the June 28 primary will face U.S. Rep. John Katko, a freshman Republican, in the general election.

The 24th Congressional District includes all of Cayuga, Onondaga and Wayne counties, plus the western portion of Oswego County.
French retailer Carrefour SA launched a distribution center in Dongguan, Guangdong province, on Tuesday, to facilitate its business expansion in South China.

Thierry Garnier, president and chief executive officer of Carrefour China, said the company will bring new business formats, including the online-to-offline business and convenience stores, and set up more hypermarkets in new cities.

"Launching the distribution center will be of key importance to a long-term strategic development in China," Garnier said.

The Dongguan facility became Carrefour China's fifth distribution center across the country and the sixth will open in mid-June, according to Garnier.

The Dongguan center, with the first phase covering an area of 21,000 square meters, will provide full support to the 30 Carrefour stores in Guangdong, Hainan and Fujian provinces.

"Carrefour China is transformed into a 'multi-format' and 'multi-channel' business, following a new development strategy introduced last year," said Garnier.

The French retail giant has more than 200 hypermarkets across China and has launched O2O business in Shanghai and Beijing.

"We will open more hypermarkets in central and western regions of China, thanks to China's large population and fast urbanization, and launch more convenience stores, or community stores, in big cities in the near future," Garnier said.
Jin Liqun, president of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, speaks at the annual board meeting of the Asia News Network held at China Daily in Beijing, May 31, 2016. [Feng Yongbin / chinadaily.com.cn]

The President of the fledgling Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank Jin Liqun has used a famous quote from British author Jane Austen to hit back at skepticism about China's motivation for creating a multilateral financial institution.

"Skepticism must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure," Jin saidreplacing "selfishness" in the original quote, with "skepticism".

The AIIB chief shrugged off suspicion and misconception about the AIIB, saying the bank intended to use its performance to earn international trust and credibility.

"You cannot talk people into believing no matter how nice the words you have, just forget about it (convincing people), do your job," he said.

The bank chief was speaking in Beijing with a group of senior editors from major Asian media outlets, at the annual Asia News Network meeting.

Jin said China had no intention to challenge the existing international financial order, and that the creation of the AIIB was not a threat to other multilateral development banks.

He said The AIIB was already working seamlessly with other major players, including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, to co-finance infrastructure projects globally.

While the United States and Japan have declined to join the AIIB, Jin said countries could work together, regardless of bank membership.

"The door has been open and will remain open," Jin said, adding that Japanese companies and the US would be treated equally and with fairness while operating the AIIB.

"We do not reject ideas from anybody, which will be good for AIIB and members," he said.

When asked about whether the AIIB would invest in new technology, Jin said the bank had no interest in replacing the role of venture capital.

"It is not fair to spend the shareholders' money on something dubious. We will apply the new technology but we will not invest in it," Jin said.

But the bank chief said the AIIB would, in the future, expand its investment in physical infrastructure projects to sectors such as education, health care and urban planning and management.
Jin Liqun, president of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank

Membership to rise from 57 to nearly 100; first projects to be announced this month

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank will earn international trust and credibility through its performance, the bank's President Jin Liqun said on Tuesday.

Jin dispelled mistrust and skepticism about China's motivation for creating the multilateral financial institution.

He said the bank will see its first group of infrastructure projects by the end of June and will raise the ceiling on its membership numbers from 57 to nearly 100 countries and regions this year.

While the United States and Japan have declined to join the AIIB, Jin said countries can work together regardless of whether they are members of the bank, which will soon appoint a Japanese national to serve in a senior position.

"The door has been open and will remain open," he said, adding that Japan and the US will be treated equally and fairly by the AIIB.

In a rare meeting, Jin sat down with a group of senior editors from major Asian news outlets to discuss the mission and operation of the China-led bank.

"The first batch of projects will speak volumes for the AIIB," Jin said, adding that the bank will unveil the second and third group of projects by the end of the year.

Jin's remarks came ahead of the bank's first annual meeting on June 25 and 26 in Beijing. Governors and representatives from its 57 founding members will attend.

In his discussions with the editors from the Asia News Network, Jin used a quote from English author Jane Austen to hit back at skepticism about China's motivation for creating the bank.

"Skepticism must always be forgiven, you know, because there is no hope of a cure," Jin said, replacing "selfishness" in the original quote, with "skepticism".

He shrugged off suspicion and misconceptions about the bank, saying it has no intention to challenge the international financial order or to pose a threat to other multilateral development banks.

The bank is working seamlessly with international institutions, including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, to cofinance infrastructure projects, he said.

Jin said priority will be given initially to Asian member countries when it comes to funding infrastructure projects. But the bank will seek to expand its investment scope to non-Asian countries with strong economic ties to the continent and will look beyond the geographic boundaries of China's Belt and Road Initiative.

In addition to funding infrastructure projects, the bank will finance sectors including education, healthcare and urban planning and management, Jin said.

He also said the bank is not interested in taking a venture capital role by investing in new technology  underscoring the rational and cautious approach of the bank's investment philosophy.

Jin said the projects being eyed by the bank must be financially sustainable, environmentally friendly and socially acceptable.

John Nery, editor-in-chief of Inquirer.net, a Philippine media outlet, said Jin gave a clear presentation of the AIIB and addressed some of the most common misconceptions about the bank.

"I found him to be a very articulate and learned man. I think the AIIB is in very good hands," he said, adding that he looked forward to the announcement of the bank's first projects later this month.

Chen Mengwei contributed to this story.

lixiang@chinadaily.com.cn
Daniel Zhang, who took over as CEO of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd last year, said in his first public speech that the company will have employees from all over the world from a wide range of backgrounds. [Photo provided to China Daily]

A recent media article lamented that not many Chinese corporate executives have risen to the top of overseas multinational corporations like, say, their India-born counterparts.

As an Indian, I'm aware that most of my compatriots and Indian media evince deep interest in, and even bask in the reflected glory of, Indra Nooyi who leads PepsiCo, Satya Nadella who heads Microsoft Corp and Sundar Pichai who pilots Google Inc.

Many other Indians hold high-level positions in foreign companies. For instance, India's Nikesh Arora is the president and COO of Japan's SoftBank Corp, an investor in China's Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

Similarly, American, Brazilian, German and French executives lead, or have led in the past, companies of other countries. Why, Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, is an Irish-Canadian. You can't add too many Chinese names to that list.

Is China missing the essence of globalization? That set me thinking. Not about the reasonsthey are, by now, well-known: Chinese executives are English-challenged, not familiar with Western culture, content with high pay and career growth opportunities at homebut about Chinese MNCs.

In the past two decades, many Chinese companies have gone global through a variety of routes: listing on overseas bourses, subsidiaries outside China, exports, M&As, and so on. Many more are itching to conquer the world.

But, not many Chinese companies (as distinguished from Chinese subsidiaries of overseas companies) have foreign executives at their top. I could recall only one exceptionex-Googler and Brazilian Hugo Barra, vice-president of Xiaomi Corp, a Chinese smartphone maker.

A senior Chinese colleague hazarded a guess about the reasons. Until recently, most big Chinese corporations were State-owned or State-controlled enterprises. Even many private sector companies were pioneered by former top executives of SOEs.

My guess is it's only in this millennium that China has truly become a global story from the perspective of talented professionals.

Change takes time, but things will change. Perhaps, by 2025, most Chinese companies will realize that in our globalized world, they can't simply not hire foreign talent.

Similarly, talented professionals the world over seeking opportunities to express themselves, will realize they can ill-afford to overlook Chinese companies as potential future employers, given their growing size, influence and ambition.

Things have already started moving in that direction. For instance, a few companies, and institutions like universities and think-tanks, already boast foreign talent.

Who knows, if Xiaomi's CEO Lei Jun abdicates like Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft had done in the past, and if Barra sticks on with Xiaomi for a few more years, he may well emerge as the Chinese tech major's first non-Chinese CEO.

Or, perhaps, Alibaba, the poster child of Corporate China, will win laurels in this respect too. Last fortnight, it launched the Alibaba Global Leadership Academy, a seemingly irresistible English-based full-time program to attract, hire and train talent from across the world.

The 16-month training, which will start in September at its corporate headquarters in Hangzhou, will offer competitive salary, accommodation, benefits and perks to 30 candidates to be selected from a global pool. The plan is to hire 100 talented people a year eventually.

Daniel Zhang, who took over as Alibaba CEO last year, said this in his first public speech: "We'll have employees from all over the world that look different from each other. We've to take the time to understand them, to understand their habits, cultural differences and way of thinking. This is how we become truly an international company."

Alibaba Vice-President Brian Wong, whose brainchild is AGLA, sees the new hires eventually becoming "a critical component of our globalization leadership team".

Alibaba's website says Wong wants more international staff in Hangzhou to help "internationalize" its headquarters, "whether by promoting the use of English or the sharing of new ideas and perspectives from those from abroad".

"We want people who come out of the program to be the businessmen and women of this new era, well versed in e-commerce with a particular sensitivity to what will soon be the world's largest economy, China."

Wong may have just stopped short of saying that Alibaba is pioneering a change in Corporate China's mindset and preparing to groom its first foreigner CEO.
Hostesses hold Ascend P7 smartphones, launched by Huawei Technologies during a presentation in Paris. [Photo/Agencies]

Shenzhen's top government official has challenged claims that a number of top technology firms were ready to move their headquarters out of the booming southern metropolis.

Xu Qin, mayor of Shenzhen, said that Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and ZTE Corp have assured him that their headquarters and research and development centers would stay in the city.

However, the firms do intend to transfer some of the manufacturing operations to nearby cities, including Dongguan.

"Huawei has told the government in an official letter that it would not move its headquarters and research and development center out of Shenzhen. So did ZTE," Xu said.

Xu's remarks were in a response to recent reports that Huawei would move to the neighboring city of Dongguan, citing high costs in Shenzhen.

And he explained that the shift of some manufacturing operations "was part of the company's strategic plans, which are in accordance with government policy to optimize the local industrial structure".

Xu made the remarks at an international forum in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, on sustainable urban development within the context of the Belt and Road Initiative.

The event was attended by a number of foreign presidents and prime ministers, as well as high-ranking officials from Chinese and international industrial organizations.

In an earlier statement, Huawei said it would be a normal business practice to adjust the responsibility of different entities by relocating part of its business to other cities.

"Huawei has been setting up all kinds of branches and research institutions across China and even in overseas markets since a couple of years ago to better support the company's global expansion," said the statement.

Huawei, which realized 395 billion yuan ($60.8 billion) in revenue last year, set up a manufacturing company in Dongguan's Songshanhu Industrial Park in 2012 and it has since increased its investment in the city, which is about a one-hour drive from Shenzhen.

According to Xu, more than 17,000 manufacturers have been closed in the past five years in Shenzhen, due to the local authorities' plan to upgrade industries.

"The manufacturing businesses being closed were not of high quality, they were not competitive in the global market, and they consumed a great deal of energy," Xu said.

ZTE has planned to move its processing and manufacturing businesses for mobile devices to Heyuan, a city about 170 kilometers from Shenzhen.

Shenzhen will become a global innovative center in the years ahead by investing more in research and development in the technology sector to attract more high-end domestic and foreign businesses, Xu said.
ZTE Corp introduces ZTE VR headset on May 26, 2016 during the company's new flagship Axon 7 launch event held in Beijing. [Liu Zheng/chinadaily.com.cn]

Chinese tech company ZTE Corp unveiled a brand new mobile-driven virtual reality (VR) headset on May 26, taking on the group lead by Samsung and Huawei in the mobile VR market.

Priced at 531 yuan ($80), the product is believed to be the company's answer to Samsung Gear VR, and it will let the company's new flagship Axon 7 users experience VR at a cheaper price, a big factor in the price sensitive market.

Nearly one and half month ago, one of ZTE's competitors -- Huawei - unveiled its mobile VR headset, which will be able to function with the company's newly launched flagships -- P9 and P9 Plus.

Compared with Huawei P9's 1,920 x 1,080 pixels display solutions, ZTE Axon 7 is a more pixel-dense phone with a 2K AMOLED screen, which will theoretically provide a smoother watching experience when you move your head with the wearable device displaying motion images about two inches from your eyeballs.

According to ZTE, the company is poised to become one of the first VR headset manufacturers to be compatible with the Google Daydream VR platform announced earlier this month at the tech giant's worldwide developers' conference -- Google IO 2016.

Although Google has not announced any detailed regulations for its "Daydream" platform, rumors have indicated that 4K display resolutions is a must for smartphones to demonstrate high-quality-required VR content in the future.

People test Samsung Gear VR glasses at their stand during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain February 23, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

The industry pioneer Samsung recently showcased 5.5-inch 4K display for mobile VR usage during the annual Display Week held in San Francisco.

Given that the industry will lure more phone makers to participate in VR, will it be a new selling point that will stimulate the market or a new concept that will fulfill their users' experiences?

Todd Richmond, director of advanced prototypes at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies, expressed his optimism about the mobile VR's future. He said in an interview with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers this March: "VR/ augmented reality is likely to develop into the next smartphone -- it will replace a smartphone or incorporate its features, but it will take 10 years."

Kevin Curran, head of the British Ulster University's Ambient Intelligence and Virtual Worlds Research Team, agreed that there's still a long way to go for VR equipment to become must-have. Curran said: "After experiencing a long period of development, VR may become standard smartphone interface, the two being combined is not impossible."

Clay Bavor, vice president of virtual reality at Google, introduces Daydream during the Google I/O 2016 developers conference in Mountain View, California May 18, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

Tan Ying, industry analysis of market research company GfK China, told China Daily that the reasons behind the smartphone-driven VR investment fever are the relatively low tech threshold to access the terminal device mass production and the potential stimulation that enables to boost the sales of the existing smartphone production lines."

"VR is one of the future trends that's still in its early days and requires years of improvements to become mature. It cannot replace smartphones overnight," said Ying.

From both the supply side and demand side of the mobile VR, "the smartphone-driven VR goggles will become a proper market access point for companies to educate their VR early adapters and it is a low-cost and efficient approach as most of the domestic buyers are not hardcore console players who are willing to purchase a high-end VR device," said Ying. "The cost is a big worry for users."

Ying said that a group of small VR manufacturers will not survive in near term and the market may witness a slowdown in the coming two years until a well recognized technology matures and user-friendly products pop up in the market.
HANGZHOU - Sixty-six Chinese medicinal herbs have been added to the European Pharmacopoeia, an authoritative reference work for quality control of medication.

This means there are clear quality standards for Chinese herbs exported to Europe, which help the drugs gain wider acceptance in foreign markets, according to Professor Dr. Gerhard Franz, Chairman of the TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) Working Party of the European Pharmacopoeia.

He made the remarks on Sunday at an international conference on TCM's future, which was held in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province.

He said the herbs have undergone strict examination and discussion and been approved by all 37 signatory states.

The listed Chinese herbs, including ginseng, account for nearly a third of all herbs in the pharmacopoeia. The professor said their goal is to include at least 300 commonly used Chinese herbs.

Exports of traditional Chinese drugs have been impeded by misuse and substitutions for similar plants, as well as contamination by heavy metals and microbial insecticides.

Xu Runlong, deputy head of Zhejiang's health and family planning commission, said due to lack of quality standards, China's TCM industry lags far behind its counterparts in Japan and the Republic of Korea in foreign markets, adding that modern technology and ideas must be applied in developing TCM.
LHASA - The population of wildlife living in Mount Qomolangma nature reserve has continued to grow in recent years, researchers said.

Last year, more than 10,000 domesticated sheep, goats, yaks and cows were killed by wild animals in the reserve, said Phurjung, deputy head of Mount Qomolangma Nature Reserve management bureau.

Wolves, lynxes and snow leopards are the main culprits, he said.

"Wolves and lynxes attack animals like sheep and goats, while snow leopards hunt yaks and cows for food," he added.

The losses account for about one percent of all the animals that live in the three-million-hectare nature reserve.

"The loss is not that big, but as the number of wild animals grow, there is likely to be more losses of livestock," Phurjung said.

Wildlife protection measures including a hunting ban have led to a rapid growth of the wildlife population in Tibet. The regional forestry bureau said the number of wild animals is about 30 percent more than 20 years ago.

The Tibetan government offers a small compensation to herders and farmers for losses incurred by protected wild species like brown bears or snow leopards.
Henan has become the first and only province to allow adults without siblings to take 20 days off work each year to care for their sick parents age 60 and older. The regulation was approved on Friday.

"My parents have diabetes, and live far from my workplace. As the only child, I felt sorry about not taking care of them."

Ru Xiaoqi, middle school teacher in Nanjing, Jiangsu province

"People in one-child families have to take care of their parents, their children, and even their grandparents, which is really difficult."

Yang Xue, advertisement company employee in Baotou, Inner Mongolia autonomous region

"The implementation of the one-child policy in the past three decades makes care for the elderly a serious issue for people like me."

Niu Kunwei, design major in Wuxi, Jiangsu province

"I wish the regulation would be expanded nationwide."

Zhou Xin, journalism major in Changchun, Jilin province

COMPILED BY CHINA DAILY
Five years ago, there was debate in the Chinese scientific community over the country's funding system that allotted money according to the impact of the journals in which researchers publish their work.

An obsession with impact turned the research community into a "vanity fair", said Chinese chemist Wang Naixing in the prominent scientific journal Nature in August 2011.

Now the professors have ended their discussion, not because the environment is moderating, but because publishing in top scientific journals has become so common among Chinese researchers that, even many postgraduate students are joining the ranks.

Fu Qiaomei, a 32-year-old researcher at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has published 10 papers in two of the best-known journalsScience and Natureincluding four published during her doctoral studies. But academic titles and research funding was not her major interest.

"For me, publishing in top journals proves my research potential, which helps me establish a reputation among my peers at home and abroad and thus helps my future research," she said.

Recognition by international peers means more chances to speak at or attend academic conferences.

"Selection of projects is of crucial importance. If you want to publish a paper in Cell, Nature or Science, you have to choose an academic issue of deep concern, and one that you can solve faster than other teams in the world," said Shi Yi, an associate research fellow from the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In the team Shi works for, four people have published papers in Cell, Nature and Science during their doctoral studies.

Shi credits Gao Fu, director of the laboratory and Shi's doctoral supervisor, who was working at Oxford University before returning to China in 2004, for giving young researchers a chance.

"Professor Gao trains us with a broader vision to research hot issues, and provides better experimental facilities in the lab that allow us to make our ideas tangible. So the students have a better chance to internationalize our work," he said.

According to a survey released by China University Evaluation, a Shenzhen-based third party college evaluation agency, Chinese universities published more than 300 papers in Cell, Nature and Science in 2015, with Tsinghua the top ranking Chinese university, with 60 papers.

The figures do not include more than 100 research institutes affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which are also high-yielding institutes for top journals.
On June 14, countries around the world celebrate the 12th annual World Blood Donor Day. It is one of only eight official global public health campaigns led by the World Health Organization. This worldwide observance aims to promote voluntary non-remunerated blood donation, celebrate donors and inspire new generations to give blood. The theme of this years campaign is blood connects us all.

What Americans may not realize is that maintaining a stable blood supply in the United States can be challenging at times. Especially in the summer months, vacation plans and summer activities often cause donors to be less available to give. Further, 20 percent of all blood donations in the United States come from students. Many schools are where blood drives are held are out of session during the summer months, which makes it an especially difficult time to collect enough blood to meet the demands of hospitals.

The need for blood is constant. Blood is not like a drug that can be stored for a long period of time. It has a short shelf life: Most red blood cell units must be used within 42 days, while platelets only have a five-day shelf life. The American Red Cross is the largest single supplier of blood and blood products in the United States, collecting approximately 40 percent of the blood supply, and distributing it to about 2,600 hospitals and transfusion centers nationwide. In the New York-Penn Blood Services Region, which covers New York state and a portion of western Pennsylvania, we must collect 5,000 pints every week to ensure the 87 hospitals we serve have the blood they need to care for patients.

During the summer months of June, July and August, on average, about two fewer donors schedule an appointment to give blood at each Red Cross blood drive than what patients need. We can overcome this seasonal challenge if at least two more people above whats expected come out to give blood at each drive this summer.

Blood connects us all. Every time you give blood, you are connected with up to three people whose lives could be saved by your donation. You have a chance to do something life-changing and momentous this summer. To help ensure a sufficient supply for patients in need, the Red Cross urges eligible donors to choose their day to donate blood or platelets.

Here are some upcoming blood drives in the area:

 2 to 7 p.m. Monday, June 6: Family Video, 48 E. Genesee St., Auburn

 1 to 6 p.m. Wednesday, June 8: Union Springs Fire Department at Cayuga Lake National Bank, 257 Cayuga St., Union Springs

 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday, June 9: Skaneateles Community Center, 97 State St., Skaneateles

 7:30 to 11:30 a.m. Saturday, June 11: Holy Family Church, 85 North St., Auburn

 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday, June 14: Auburn Community Hospital, 17 Lansing St., Auburn

 11:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Thursday, June 16: St. Marys Church, 15 Clark St., Auburn

 2 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, June 28: Fingerlakes Mall, 1579 Clark St. Road, Auburn

Help us save lives by choosing your day and making an appointment by calling (800) REDCROSS, visiting redcrossblood.org or downloading our new blood donor app on your smartphone.
A stylish living room converted from a scraped bus is seen in this photo taken on May 29, 2016. Dozens of disused public transport buses in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, have been transformed into gorgeous guest rooms, as a camping alternative to attract more visitors at a local scenic spot.[Photo/VCG]
Departments and ministries under the State Council, China's cabinet, have responded to a wide range of public concerns during the past week by implementing an e-commerce tax policy, introducing more social insurance pilot programs, making it possible to use municipal transit cards in different cities, and commenting about the employment pressure facing new graduates.

The Ministry of Finance addressed concerns about the taxation of purchases made from e-commerce businesses by introducing a new tax policy. The policy will be applied to purchases made since April 8 and is aimed at leveling the playing field so that e-commerce platforms and traditional retailers and importers are treated similarly.

Under the new rules, retail goods purchased online will no longer be treated as personal postal articles but will now be handled, for taxation purposes, as imported goods. As a result, purchasers will have to pay relevant tariffs, import VAT and consumption tax.

The ministry said on Wednesday that the new rules will not be applied to some specific items until next year, to give the relevant parties enough time to adapt.

The new rules will not be applied to goods including cosmetics, baby formula, medical instruments and special food purchased before May 11, 2017.

In response to concerns about the progress of implementing a social insurance registration program, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said a total of 27 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities are on course to join the pilot program. It said that, by the end of this year, areas participating in the pilot program are expected to cover half of China.

All pilot areas are required to conduct a comprehensive census and report to the central government. It is part of an effort to eventually achieve full nationwide social insurance registration, the ministry said.

In response to concerns about pressure on fresh college graduates, some of whom have been reported to be earning less than migrant workers, the ministry responded by announcing that the average level of income of new grads in recent years has steadily increased, although it noted that income does vary among graduates with different majors and degrees.

The ministry agreed that the salaries of some fresh college graduates are barely sufficient to cover their basic living costs, while other, capable graduates have been able to secure offers from employers that are many times more than the average starting salary of graduates.

The ministry noted that neither extreme reflects the overall scenario of the group. Data from the ministry show that the average monthly income of migrant workers last year was around 3,000 yuan ($462), which was much lower than the salaries of better-educated college graduates.

The Ministry of Transport said on Thursday that, by the end of this year, all residents will be able to use their local municipal transit cards, more commonly known in China as yikatong, in more than 100 cities. The cards can be used to pay for public transit, including buses, subways, taxis and even to pay tolls on expressways.

In the past, they usually only worked in the cities where they were issued.
Ten tourists with an average age of nearly 60 put on school uniforms and carry school bags to visit a theme park in Changsha city, the capital of Central China's Hunan province, May 28, 2016, in the run-up to Children Day on June 1. Liu Zhihua, a participant, said he never played in amusement park or celebrated Children's Day in his childhood, so he wanted to make up for that regret through the activity. [Photo by Yang Huafeng/China News Service]
Airspace for private airplanes to be increased to 3,000 meters; flight plans to be streamlined

His company was flying high in 2013 when it sold 30 small civilian aircraft, Liu Liangjun recalls, but 2015 has seen the business hit turbulence.

"It's caused by the macro environment. Investment in general aviation has slowed due to the overall economy," said Liu, general manager of Changsha-based GALink Aviation Technology.

Following a surge of investment in general aviation around 2013, some investors, he said, have shut their general aviation companies. "Some lack the money that came from their main businesses to continue funding their general aviation branch, and some just cannot overcome the low returns which are common in the initial period of a general aviation company," said Liu, who has been in the industry for more than a decade.

But a new guideline for the aviation industry was released by the State Council, the cabinet, on May 17 that is expected to "give the industry a shot in the arm", Liu said.

The guideline, for all aircraft, excluding military and commercial jets, is "the first of its kind", according to Yu Yi, an associate professor of general aviation at the Civil Aviation Management Institute of China.

Previously, general aviation was classified in official documents as a sector of the civil aviation industry, but this time it was singled out, indicating the importance that the authorities have attached to the industry, he said.

According to the executive meeting of the State Council on May 4, China hopes to make the general aviation industry "a new economic growth point". The guideline is part of the initiatives that the nation has adopted to push forward the supply-side structural reform, which will bring about a significant upgrade of the industrial structure and productivity.

The guideline aims to build a friendly environment for general aviation investors and eventually create a market worth more than 1 trillion yuan ($153 billion) by 2020. The number of general aircraft is expected to exceed 5,000, with annual flight hours exceeding 2 million.

To achieve that target, the guideline targets problems that have hindered the industry's development, including slow progress in the opening of low-altitude airspace and a shortage of airports.

Among the measures, efforts will be made to facilitate building more airports, bringing the total number to more than 500 by 2020. These airports are expected to cover all prefecture-level cities, major agriculture-producing and forest areas and at least half of the top-class tourist attractions.

The document opens low-altitude airspace for general aircraft "under 3,000 meters", instead of under 1,000 meters, as in previous government documents. Gao Yuanyang, director of the General Aviation Industry Research Center under Beihang University, called it "a breakthrough", because the airspace under 1,000 meters had been regarded as too low by industry insiders.

The guideline also simplifies and streamlines the procedures that small aircraft need to go through before taking to the sky.

Yu, from the civil aviation management institute, explained that previously general aviation operators needed to submit flight plans to both the civil aviation authority and Air Force for approval one day ahead of their flight.

But in the new plan, the time for submitting flight plans varies according to different airspaces involved. Some flights only need to submit plans four hours before takeoff. For flights in certain designated airspaces, operators need to report their flight plans to authorities just one hour before takeoff.

Meanwhile, airspace authorities are required to reply to applicants within two to three hours after a flight plan is submitted. In the past, the reply could come one hour before the flight was scheduled to take off, aviation operators said.

The experience of some general aircraft users in the past few years was "not good", according to Liu from GALink Aviation Technology.

"The feedback from many customers showed they couldn't fully enjoy the private plane they purchased because of lengthy approval procedures, lack of airports and the high cost of maintenance," he said.

"Despite the high costs, they could only make a few flights a year. For some, private planes became a burden. But, I believe, the private ownership of small aircraft is actually key to the general aviation market in China."

He urged a more detailed plan for implementation to be released as soon as possible.

Yu, from the civil aviation management institute, said the guideline will boost the use of light aircraft for sightseeing flights, urban public services such as police patrols, firefighting and medical assistance, and short-haul transportation in areas where ground travel takes much longer.

Luo Xu, branding director of Zhengzhou-based Henan Soaring Aviation Corp, said that through the guideline the government "provides a wide space for industry players to use their imagination and picture how they can use low-altitude airspace".

"Just as the real estate industry, at its peak, boosted more than 100 relevant industries, the general aviation industry is also expected to become a huge engine for growth," he said.

Compared with the United States, whose general aviation sector includes 220,000 aircraft, 600,000 pilots and 15,000 airports, China has room to grow, bu it has "immeasurable prospects", he said.
David Nabarro, the special adviser of the Secretary-General on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Climate Change, delivers a speech at the symposium for the implementation of the United Nations' 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development held in Nyingch city, the Tibet autonomous region on May 30, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

A symposium for the implementation of the United Nations' 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was held in Nyingch city, the Tibet autonomous region on Monday.

The symposium, jointly held by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the United Nations System in China, attracted more than 100 Chinese and foreign participants.

It opened with a video message from the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

"This snowy plateau of Tibet is the epitome of harmony between material and ecological advancement that we pursue in our effort for sustainable development with Chinese features," said the minister.

He added that as this is the first year of implementation of the UN's sustainable development goals, it was crucial for countries around the world to seize every opportunity and translate their commitments into actions, turning goals into results.

The opening session was followed by a video message from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who said China had demonstrated great leadership and made remarkable commitments to advance the 2030 agenda.

"China's 13th Five-Year Plan has integrated the 2030 agenda to reflect the SDGs in the country's overall social, economic and environmental planning," said Ban.

David Nabarro, the special adviser of the Secretary-General on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Climate Change, noted China's achievements in lifting more than 400 million people out of poverty between 1990 and 2015.

"Implementing the 2030 agenda for sustainable development and promoting human development is the top of our agenda at this high-level symposium, we expect it to come up with creative and innovative solutions," said Nabarro.




Liang Xide, 80, poses for an undated fashion photo with a suitcase in Shenyang, capital of Northeast China's Liaoning province. [Photo by Motion Studio ]

There was a time being a model was a thing to be ashamed of

In the summer of 1994 Su Mang rode a bicycle half-way across the city looking for the office of a magazine in a hutong in the Xidan area of Beijing.

The office was inside a courtyard, and Su, 22, needed to hoist her bicycle on to her shoulder and carry it across a threshold to gain access.

At the time she was studying the traditional Chinese instrument the guzheng at the China Conservatory of Music, but what really appealed to Su's ear was words - she wanted to write. In that quest she had been rejected by a few publishing houses.

So this day, in a sense of desperation, she was calling on the offices of Trends, which had been running for barely a year. During her interview with the magazine's founder and editor-in-chief, Wu Hong, she fell off her chair, she says. So she was surprised when he agreed to take her on.

Su thus became Trends' eighth staff member, and as with many reporting debutants in those days, she found that getting her foot in the door did not deliver her to the high altar of journalism. Instead her duties included cleaning, cooking and answering readers' letters, but she did get the chance to do some writing for the magazine too.

In those days only a handful of Western fashion houses had entered China, and when it came time to interview brand managers and designers, her trusty bicycle was at her service. Attending a show on a cold winter's night demanded something a little better and, wearing a dazzling dress - which was borrowed - she could often be seen on Beijing street corners waiting for a taxi.

In early spring in 1997, nearly three years after joining Trends, Su had risen through the ranks and was assigned to go to New York to meet Helen Gurley Brown, the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine, with which Trends' owners hoped to form a partnership.

"Every morning Brown (then in her mid-70s) arrived at the office very smartly dressed and absolutely switched on," Su says. "In China it was extremely rare for a woman of that age to dress up like that every day and to be so committed to her work."
E-commerce has had a huge flow-on effect in China's economy and society

Staying in the good graces of butchers was a matter of survival in China in the early 1980s, for it was they who decreed who among their customers got the best cuts.

"Fatty meat was at the top of everyone's shopping list because people were so desperate to get some oil," says Jiang Meifeng, 58, of Xi'an, Shaanxi province.

Those were the days when there was a strict rationing system, shoppers being required to buy food and other daily necessities with coupons.

"Even if you had a bit of money it was slim pickings because everything was in such short supply," Jiang says.

Compare that with today, when the range of choice seems almost limitless, particularly as e-commerce continues to revolutionize the way people go about their everyday business.

Jiang, who is now retired, can, smartphone in hand, order whatever meat - domestic or imported - she desires from an overflowing pool of goods online. Not only that, but the curt take-it-or-leave-it butcher and his ilk have been replaced by cyber salespeople who are wont to address her as "dear" and send out all manner of jovial emoji to keep her loyal.

As China's retail industry has modernized it has gone through various reincarnations, the most notable being individual stores turning into chain stores and department stores turning into shopping malls. However, for James Roy, principal at China Market Research Group, the most remarkable change has occurred in the past five years: the arrival of e-commerce and its hearty embrace by hundreds of millions of Chinese.

"It is a completely disruptive change as e-commerce provides constant access to a limitless choice of goods while a brick-and-mortar store is constrained by its opening hours and location - which means it can only cover a certain radius - and its shelf space," says the Shanghai-based Roy, who has been a specialist researcher of China's retail industry for 10 years.

Taobao is the supreme example. The online marketplace run by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group sells everything from stamps to furniture, and from cars to overseas islands. And it is not only those in big cities who can enjoy shopping online, but also those in small villages. In fact, even as you read this, folks who work for the e-commerce major JD.com are likely to be working on drone delivery technology that they hope will help those in rural areas receive purchases faster.

At the heart of the online sales surge in China are the seemingly boundless range of goods and the internet technology that puts it all within ready grasp of buyers. As with anything to do with the internet in China, the numbers are apt to set your head spinning. In just five years the value of online shopping in the country has grown nearly five-fold, to 3.83 trillion yuan ($587.5 billion), last year, the China E-Commerce Research Center said in a report published a fortnight ago.

As many as 460 million Chinese shopped online last year, the center in Hangzhou said, and their spending accounted for 12.7 percent of overall retail transactions in China, almost triple the figure four years ago.
Children whose parents work away from home in urban areas pose for a photo before their one-day trip to historic monuments in their village in Huaibei city, East China's Anhui province, May 22, 2016. The visit made them proud of their hometown and enriched their horizon. [Photo/VCG]
BEIJING - Former assistant foreign minister Zhang Kunsheng has been put under investigation for graft, the Supreme People's Procuratorate said in a statement on Tuesday.

The statement said Zhang is subject to "coercive measures" - which may include summons by force, bail, residential surveillance, detention and arrest.

Zhang was expelled from the ruling Communist Party of China earlier this month. A report filed at the time said he was found to have flouted Party codes of conduct by joining private clubs, accepting gifts and money and trading power for sex.

He also used his post to seek benefits for other people, and is suspected of accepting bribes for these favors, the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said then.
TAIPEI - Fifty-two Taiwan residents have been arrested in Turkey for alleged fraud, said Taiwan authorities on Tuesday.

Taiwan received a report from Turkish police on Monday that the 52 people were arrested in Izmir in western Turkey.

According to Turkish police, the suspects allegedly installed monitoring cameras near ATM machines to steal people's passwords.

Dozens of Taiwan telecom fraud suspects have been arrested in Kenya and Malaysia this year.
A new boat launch is in the works for Emerson Park, which Gary Duckett, Cayuga County's superintendent of parks and trails, hopes will be ready for next spring.

The launch is meant to replace the current one, which is made of wood pilings and a wooden deck over the top.

"Over the years the wood has sunk into the muck and started to rot and deteriorate," Duckett said. "The wood decking is becoming uneven and we don't want anyone to get hurt, so that's why we want to get it replaced."

The projected $285,000 launch is covered by a combination of grants from New York state and $105,000 will be contributed by the county. But that will not be new monies from taxpayers.

Instead, the county's share will be coming out of a special account generated from Emerson Park's excess boat launch and parking fees, Duckett said.

So far, the county has hired Trowbridge Wolf Michaels Landscape Architects and Beardsley Design to work on the design and engineering of the project. The firms have surveyed the area and conducted test borings to determine where the bedrock is.

Duckett said they are looking at potentially using quarry stone or concrete as the main materials, with some sort of bumper for the boats so they won't hit the wall.

"Right now, they're looking at all the options, and they're looking at the cost of each option," Duckett said. "Then they're going to come up with a recommendation."

There are also plans to include another walkway around the launch.

Duckett said he is meeting with city officials to potentially get permission to lower Owasco Lake levels once construction begins. He said they would be looking to lower the lake level approximately two feet, which would significantly reduce the cost of the work.

He hopes construction can begin the late fall so that by early spring next year boaters can use the new launch.
The Foreign Ministry on Tuesday urged all concerned parties to "jointly champion regional peace and stability" on the Korean Peninsula after Seoul said the Democratic People's Republic of Korea had launched a missile earlier in the day.

An official at the Republic of Korea's defense ministry told Xinhua news agency on the phone that the DPRK tried to test-fire an unidentified missile at about 5:20 am local time from the Wonsan area on its east coast.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a Tuesday news conference in Beijing that the United Nations Security Council has made clear its response to the DPRK ballistic missile issue.

Currently, the situation is "of great complexity and sensitivity" and it is hoped that all the concerned parties should "jointly champion the regional peace and stability", Hua added.

The DPRK test-launched three Musudan missiles this year, two on April 28 and one on April 15, but all of the three test-firings were believed to have failed as the missiles exploded in mid-air or crashed in water several seconds after blast-off.

The April 15 launch was the DPRK's first known test-firing of the intermediate-range ballistic missile. Pyongyang has allegedly deployed the Musudan missiles since 2007.

Xinhua contributed to this story.
Participants, including a number of former foreign prime ministers. presidents and business leaders, take a group photo during the annual Imperial Springs Forum, which was held in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province, over the weekend. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

A number of former politicians and business leaders reached a consensus in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province, to build harmonious cities under the framework of Chinas Belt and Road Initiative.

The participants agreed to develop cities along the Belt and Road, which was proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping to foster closer ties between China and countries and regions involved, in a environmentally-friendly way and to strengthen regional cooperation.

The consensus was reached after the annual Imperial Springs Forum, which was held over the weekend in Guangzhou and attended by more than 100 representatives. These included some former foreign prime ministers, presidents and business leaders.
An annual report into language use found that "incorrupt" and "Internet Plus" were the most popular buzzwords last year among Chinese in discussions of domestic issues.

When people were talking about international issues, however, "terror" and "anti-terror" were the most popular phrases, according to the Education Ministry report released today.

"Popular words reflect people's interests and show what they care about in any given year. Those words also record social developments," said Yang Erhong, a professor at Beijing Language and Culture University.

The report, which was first published in 2006 and is now in its 11th edition, also identified 10 new words or phrases coined in 2015. One such phrase  parade blue  refers to the clear blue skies that appeared in Beijing ahead of the Sept 3 military parade marking the 70th anniversary of victory in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, as various measures were taken to curb air pollution.

"New words have shown new concepts and trends in 2015, showing changes in people's interests and attitudes. New words reflect the year's linguistic and social changes," Yang said.

The top 10 most popular words and phrases last year included the 70th anniversary of the Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, Internet Plus, refugee, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Xi-Ma meeting and Tu Youyou.

Tian Lixin, head of language affairs at the Ministry of Education, said that the popular phrases demonstrate a comprehensive picture of people's lives in China.

The most popular words in 2015 include:

The 70th anniversary of the Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression: 2015 marked the 70th anniversary of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression

Internet Plus: a new notion brought by Premier Li Keqiang in 2015, seen as a sign of the government's increasing emphasis on the internet industry

Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank: initiated by President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang in 2013 as an international financial institution, the bank aims to support building infrastructure in the Asia-Pacific region. It was envisioned to promote interconnectivity and economic integration in the region and to cooperate with existing multilateral development banks.

Xi-Ma Meeting: President Xi Jinping and former Taiwan leader Ma Ying-jeou met and had face-to-face talks in Singapore on Nov 7, 2005. The meeting was the first between leaders from both sides of the Straits since 1949 - 66 years. It was hailed as a milestone for cross-Straits relations and a breakthrough in leaders' communication.

Tu Youyou: the first Chinese woman to win the Nobel Prize, she also is China's first Nobel Prize winner in medicine.
Premier Li says neighbors must 'optimize common interests, manage differences'

Premier Li Keqiang, accompanied by China Daily Publisher and Editor in Chief Zhu Ling (right), meets Suthichai Yoon of Nation Multimedia Group of Thailand and other Asia News Network executives in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Tuesday. FENG YONGBIN / CHINA DAILY

China does not intend to assume a role as Big Brother, but instead seeks to build a community of a shared future with all its neighbors, Premier Li Keqiang said in Beijing on Tuesday.

"There are no grounds for China to become a superpower, and neither does China have the intention to be one," Li said.

"China has a long way to go to realize modernization. It needs a stable regional and peaceful international environment, and China is committed to safeguarding that environment."

The premier made the remarks while answering a question from Suthichai Yoon, chief adviser of Nation Multimedia Group, at the Great Hall of the People on Tuesday during a meeting with a delegation from 21 Asian media outlets. The media representatives gathered in Beijing for the two-day annual board meeting of the Asia News Network.

The ANN, founded in 1999, is one of the world's biggest media alliances. It comprises leading, mostly English-language news groups with a combined readership of at least 14 million.

Zhu Ling, publisher and editor-in-chief of China Daily, is the acting chairman of the ANN for 2015-16.

The event coincides with China Daily's 35th anniversary, which falls on Wednesday.

Li said that even if China can realize modernization in the coming decades, Beijing will not seek hegemony, and nor will it bully any country, however small that nation is in terms of population or landmass.

Just as a person might accidentally bite his lips, it is only natural that neighbors will have differences, the premier emphasized, but the key is to address such disparities in a calm, diplomatic way.

"I firmly believe that our era is one that needs peace and cooperation," he said. "The common interests among China and its neighbors are way greater than disparities, and we can always optimize the common interests and better manage our differences."

Endy M. Bayuni, editor-in-chief of The Jakarta Post, said he was very impressed that Premier Li answered all of the questions, which Bayuni described as serious and tough ones.
Visiting Togo President Faure Gnassingbe called on Monday for a peaceful resolution of the South China Sea issue through direct dialogue, a Foreign Ministry official said.

"African countries, including Togo, have issued declarations for relevant parties to resolve disputes through peaceful dialogue in accordance with bilateral agreements," said Lin Songtian, the ministry's Africa Department director.

Gnassingbe is in China on a state visit from Sunday to Thursday. During his talk with President Xi Jinping, he reiterated his government's stance on the South China Sea, Lin said.
Wider participation of overseas exhibitors and buyers, more intensive international events and stronger support from global organizations are making the China Beijing International Fair for Trade in Services, also known as CIFTIS, an increasingly internationalized gala for the world's service industry.

For the first time, CIFTIS has a guest of honor country. The United Kingdom has become the first guest of honor country "to show the organizer's recognition that the UK is a strong power in the service industry and its expectation of Sino-UK cooperation in service trade", said Ma She, deputy director-general of the Department of European Affairs at China's Ministry of Commerce, at a theme day event on Saturday.

He said the UK is China's second-largest trade partner and investment source and destination in the European Union while China is the UK's third-largest trade partner.

"The cooperation in the service trade has become an emerging force driving the two countries' business and trade relationship over the recent years," said Ma, adding that the bilateral trade volume in service increased 35 percent in 2015 despite a 3 percent drop in commodity trade.

Martyn Roper, minister and deputy head of mission at the British embassy to China, said in a keynote speech at the event that the UK wants to "support China on its journey of economic change" that is rebalancing toward the service sector.

He said the UK welcomes the opening-up of the service sectors of science and technology, the internet, finance, culture and education, tourism and healthcare in Beijing, as the city has been a national pilot for opening the service industry in all six areas.

"Services are growing faster than manufacturing, and the sustainable growth in China presents real opportunities for UK businesses," he said. "More competition will mean more choice for consumers and help Chinese companies become even more competitive at home and abroad."

Roper said the UK has gone through a similar transition to China - from an economy that was heavily reliant on manufacturing to one that is now supported by services.

At the CIFTIS, the UK booth highlights its advanced sectors such as finance, healthcare, design, education and technical services.

Strong presence

The fair has attracted nearly 400 overseas exhibitors, an increase of more than 40 from the last session in 2014. It also has four international organizations as new partners - the World Intellectual Property Organization, the International Trade Centre, the World Trade Point Federation and the World Trade Centers Association.

Fourteen countries and regions participated in the fair for the first time, including the Czech Republic, which highlighted sectors including tourism, finance, e-commerce and creative industries.

Czechia Weddings and Meetings, a Czech company specializing in event planning, does not consider it important to attract large numbers of customers in China. Instead, it focuses on the quality of the services it provides to those who are interested, said Michaela Bezvodova, an account director of the company.

The company has just started business in China, primarily offering services online and cooperating with travel agencies, but may open offices in China in the future, Bezvodova said.

The company is highlighting its European-style wedding services at the fair. Although it has much experience in the business, it has had to make adjustments to cater to Chinese customers. There are cultural differences between the two countries but both cultures are open, said Bezvodova's colleague Denisa Morgensteinova.

Philip Kanyoonzi, first secretary at the embassy of Uganda in China, said Uganda has many opportunities in all sectors of the service industry, such as tourism, medical care and transportation, to partner with China.

"Uganda is open to all investments, especially in the service field," he said. "We have a very good investment environment, providing quite a number of incentive packages that will attract Chinese investment."

He said there are already many Chinese projects in Uganda, and he expects to introduce his country and its resources to more Chinese investors at the CIFTIS. The embassy and Ugandan companies would organize promotional campaigns in China after the fair.

zhangzhao@chinadaily.com.cn

The United Kingdom has become the first guest of honor country for a China Beijing International Fair for Trade in Services. Photos By Wang Zhuangfei / China Daily Left: Visitors watch an intelligent robot . Right: A company gives gifts to attendants who have scanned the fi rms QR code.

(China Daily 05/31/2016 page12)
A scene from "Malan Flower" performed at China National Theatre for Children. [Photo/CRIENGLISH.com]

A classic children's drama "Malan Flower" is returning to the stage of the China National Theatre for Children at the start of June to celebrate the theater's 60th founding anniversary.

Recalling Chinese stories where hard work leads to happiness, it features diligence of a young girl named Xiao Lan who is happily married to the god of flowers, Ma Lang.

Created in 1956, the drama "Malan Flower" has undergone several adaptations.

But the main cast behind the scenes told a press conference held in the Beijing-based theater that the upcoming version is not just a repeat of past performances but a totally new creation. New in-theater 4D effects are included in the updated drama to create a vivid backdrop with a forest full of vitality.

Related:

Int'l Children's Day celebrated in Beijing

TFBOYS in CCTV Children's Day Gala
Tibet Short Documentaries consist of 30 documentaries ranging from 4 to 6 minutes. The series bring you to the daily lives of farmers, herdsmen and city dwellers and let you sip their moments of happiness. The documentaries showcase the enchanting sceneries in the snow land and the charm of local culture. Tibet today is stretching its arms to welcome visitors from all corners of the world.

Related:

Thangka Village in Karma Valley

Purang costume in Ngari

For more Tibet Short Documentaries, click here
Zhao Huiping, 54, who has been with Rongbaozhai for more than 30 years, finishes the process of printing while duplicating an artwork. [Photo by Feng Yongbin/China Daily]

Rongbaozhaiwhich means "a room with glorious treasures"has been in the woodblock printing business for more than 100 years. And it specializes in reproducing the works of Chinese masters on a very small scale using very special techniques. Wang Kaihao reports.

In a hutong area of Liulichang in the south of Beijing, the smell of ink dominates thanks to the stationery stores and shops selling traditional Chinese paintings and calligraphy.

Rongbaozhai, which stands out in a lane with facades reflecting ancient architecture, is a sanctuary for the capital's literary fans.

Founded in 1672 as a paper store, Rongbaozhai took its current namewhich means "a room with glorious treasures"in 1894. It launched its woodblock printing business two years later. Xiao Gang, 57, is the seventh generation practitioner.

He spreads several sheets of papers in front of him like one does when one is doing animation.

But he is not doing animation, but preparing a facsimile of painting guru Qi Baishi's (1864-1957) work.

"Each time I add a detail (to the work I am duplicating), I use a separate sheet," he says referring to a process called tracing.

For color printing, registration is used to correlate overlapping colors on one single image. There are many different styles and types of registration, many of which use the alignment of specific marks.
SONG CHEN/CHINA DAILY

In a joint statement issued during US President Barack Obama's visit to Vietnam, the two countries vowed to strengthen their security and defense cooperation, and the US announced it was lifting its decades-long ban on weapons sales to Vietnam and promised to help boost the Asian country's military maritime power.

These moves are aimed at increasing the US' military presence in the Asia-Pacific and elevating its capability to intervene in regional security affairs.

To elevate the US' capability to communicate and coordinate with Asia-Pacific countries is part of Obama's "rebalancing to the Asia-Pacific" strategy. During his visit to Japan, Obama visited Hiroshima, making him the first sitting US president to visit one of two Japanese cities the US dropped an atomic bomb on during World War II. The visit was viewed as a goodwill gesture made to Japan and a step toward closer ties with Japan. However, Obama's visit to Hiroshima upset the Republic of Korea and others.

And despite its self-evident push to attract other countries to participate in its efforts to contain China, the visit to the two Asian countries may fail to achieve this aim. The increased military presence of the US in the Asia-Pacific, especially in the South China Sea, and its exclusive Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement economic strategy have heightened the concerns of many countries.

However, as far as Vietnam is concerned, its inclusion in the TPP is unlikely to lead to it abandoning the negotiations for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership or the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

Due to its exclusive rather than inclusive "national interests", the US' rebalancing strategy does not have a bright future. The US should know that any move against globalization and the trend of peace and development will get nowhere.
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP)  The chancellor of New York's public university system says the next school year will be her last at the helm.

Nancy Zimpher announced Tuesday her exit plan from the State University of New York system that she has led for seven years.

SUNY Board Chairman H. Carl McCall says a national search for her successor will begin soon. He credited Zimpher with making SUNY a national model of higher education and positioning the 64-campus system as an economic engine in the state.

The 69-year-old Zimpher says she will spend her final year as chancellor focused on increasing college completion, improving teacher preparation programs and securing an extension of SUNY 2020, a program of tuition increases and investment in SUNY.
A worker at a steel company in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, in January 2015. The steel sector will reduce capacity by 100 to 150 million metric tons in five years, according to China's top economic planner. [Photo/China Daily]

China resolutely opposes an investigation by the US International Trade Commission into complaints of alleged trade secret thefts by 40 Chinese steel companies, and should encourage its firms to legally defend themselves, said China's Commerce Ministry on Friday. Beijing Youth Daily commented on Monday:

United States Steel Corp, which launched a complaint under Section 337 of the main US tariff law, is seeking to halt nearly all imports from China's largest steel producers and trading houses. This is not the first time that the West has given Chinese steel companies a difficult time in recent months. Earlier this year the European Union imposed a series of tariffs on steel products manufactured in China.

Why Chinese steelmakers often fall prey to trade protectionism and exclusion has a lot to do with their enormous output which accounts for approximately half of the global steel output. With the domestic market saturated, they have doubled their exports as the renminbi has devalued and Western economies have increased their demand for steel products as they slowly but steadily recover from the 2008 global financial crisis.

However, the United States, in particular, has certain political concerns about China's steelmakers, whose products account for only 7 percent of the total steel imports by the US.

It tends to blame China, the world's largest steelmaker, for the uncompetitiveness of US companies. Especially with a dog-eat-dog presidential election underway, such a blame game is often used to help the candidates to win more votes, and the elections are often followed by a rise in trade protectionism.

Therefore, on the one hand, the Chinese government should encourage and instruct its firms to defend their legal rights in accordance with relevant WTO rules. On their part, Chinese steelmakers need to make sure their products meet requirements, and the overcapacity in the domestic industry needs to be eliminated.
Wang Shanshan, a 27-year-old mother of two, opened an online cosmetic shop on WeChat, where she has nearly 5,000 followers. She checks delivery orders at home in Huai'an city, Jiangsu province on Jan 31, 2015. [Photo/IC]

Some e-commerce stores pay people to write five-star comments to promote their business. The practice is detrimental to the domestic e-commerce industry, says Beijing News:

The booming of e-commerce in China has multiple causes. Online shops can sell goods at cheaper prices because they do not need to pay rent; more importantly, their trading record is more transparent as a customer can see what previous buyers have to say.

If the trade record of an online shop is found to be falsified that will deal a fatal blow to trust, which is the basis of the online business. When people lose trust in online shops, online commerce will in turn wither.

But reports show that whole chains of falsehood have been formed, with thousands of people making a living by writing comments for online shops. The shops have to pay these writers and thus they have to make more money from consumers to pay them.

The e-commerce supervisors must pay more attention to this problem. Just imagine one day we may no longer dare to trust online shops and our shopping experience will go back to how it was in the 1990s.
US President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visit the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, with Washington Monument in the background April 27, 2015. Abe is on a week-long visit to the US. [Photo/Agencies]

Though US President Barack Obama visited Hiroshima on Friday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has no plans to pay a reciprocal visit to Pearl Harbor.

The sneak attack Japan launched on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor dragged the United States into World War II. And for many people in Japan, that military operation heralded the beginning of the war's Asiatic-Pacific theatre.

Pearl Harbor is as sensitive a place for Japan's leaders to set foot as Hiroshima and Nagasaki are for US presidents.

Many people in the US took their president's presence in Hiroshima as an apology in itself.

Although Obama did not utter the word "apology" for the Little Boy and Fat Man, the benign-sounding names given to the atomic bombs his country dropped on the two Japanese cities in 1945, his carefully worded speech did all that Japan wants.

While mourning the dead and talking about wars in general, Obama missed an opportunity to go straight to the core of "that terrible war" Japan started.

The attention went to Obama's agenda of nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament that helped earn him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009.

He said the bombing on Aug 6, 1945 "demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself". He said "how easily we learn to justify violence in the name of some higher cause". And he said Hiroshima and Nagasaki should be known as "the start of our own moral awakening".

The Abe administration did not ask for US contrition, as it might put the onus on Japan to atone for attacking Pearl Harbor and invading a large part of Asia.

The Asahi Shimbun said under the Japan-US Security Treaty, Tokyo has not really attempted to make Washington understand the meaning of the atomic bombings.

"If we Japanese want to accuse the US military of inhumanity, we simply cannot turn our eyes from the inhumanity of our own wartime armed forces," the newspaper said pointedly.

Obama and Abe then highlighted the Japan-US alliance and friendship.

While the Obama administration deepens its diplomatic and military investment in East and Southeast Asia, it needs the help of allies. And Japan can't wait to serve as the vanguard in the US' rebalancing to Asia. On Saturday, Abe offered Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena two patrol vessels as part of the two countries' maritime security cooperation.

Many A-bomb survivors, who are now of advanced years, say they forgive but not forget.

This is exactly what China's war victims want to tell Japan.

In Hiroshima, Obama said the memory of the morning of Aug 6, 1945 must never fade.

The memories of the eight years when China experienced the obscenities of Japan's invasion will last forever, not for hatred but as a warning that the war should not be repeated.

In an interview with the Nikkei Asian Review, Naoyuki Agawa, a scholar with the Kyoto-based Doshisha University, recommended that the Japanese prime minister quietly visit Pearl Harbor and bow. He also hoped that there will be trust between the leaders of Japan, China and the Republic of Korea, so that someday a Japanese leader can visit places like Nanjing.
A student from Yangzhou University demonstrates against smoking during a street campaign in Yangzhou, Jiangsu province, in December, 2015. [Photo by Meng Delong / For China Daily]

Eighteen months ago, I was thrilled whenin the same weekBeijing adopted a law to make all indoor public places in the city 100 percent smoke-free; and the State Council, China's cabinet, published draft national regulations to enact a ban on smoking in public places across the country. Finally, I thought then, China is getting serious about addressing a problem which kills two Chinese people every minute, and in doing so, takes an enormous toll on China's health system and economy.

On World No Tobacco day, one year after the excellent Beijing smoke-free law came into effect, there is much to celebrate: enforcement of the Beijing law has been strong, compliance rates good, public support extremely high, and Beijingers breathing easier as a result. Beijing has shown it can be done.

However, I am sad to say progress on the national law has not been so positive. In fact, I am bitterly disappointed. A range of very problematic loopholes in the draft law have appeared: smoking would be permitted in individual offices, as well as other public places like restaurants, bars, hotels, and airports. Not even hospital campuses would be entirely smoke-free.

Including these exemptions in the national smoke-free law is a very bad idea, for several reasons. First, they would be utterly contrary to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), which China's National People's Congress, the top legislature ratified in 2005. The treaty is crystal clear that preventing exposure to carcinogenic second-hand smoke requires a 100 percent smoke-free environment. There is no safe level of exposure, so there can be no exceptions. Anything less than 100 percent smoke-free simply will not work: thus, the current draft regulations will be about as useful for protecting health as a bucket with a giant hole in the bottom is for collecting water.

Second, a weak national smoke-free law would be inconsistent with the 2013 joint Communist Party-State Council Notice (the joint policy by the General Office of the Communist Party of China's Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council on promoting smoke-free public places, issued in December 2013), which urged government officials to take the lead in promoting smoke-free public places. Exempting leaders' offices from the smoking ban would seem to create a culture of privilegeswhile putting the health of others at risk.

Sadly, it is clear that the vested interests of the tobacco industry have been able to corrupt the national law discussions with a series of superficially compelling yet completely false argumentsmany of which we have heard before, around the world.

For instance, the industry is arguing that a strong tobacco control law would hurt the economy. This is completely untrue. This law is about protecting the vast majority of Chinese peoplewho are non-smokersagainst the terrible harms of second-hand smoke. International evidence shows that effective smoke-free laws are an economic plus: they reduce the enormous costs of tobacco use and second-hand smoke for individuals, businesses and society.

The industry is also arguing that enforcement will be difficult across China, so a lesser smoke-free law will be easier to enforce. Again, completely untrue. A smoke-free law full of loopholes will be more difficult to implement, as experience the world over has shown. China's neighbour, Russia, has had very good experience in enforcing its strong smoke-free law. The easiest law to enforce is one that is simple, and that everyone understands.

There are 1 million reasons not to accept the tobacco industry's arguments: that's the number of people who are killed by their products in China every year. It would be a travesty if vested industry interests are allowed to wreck the possibility of a law designed to protect health.

The exemptions that have appeared in the draft law, which are against the legally binding WHO FCTC, must be removed. If the law is adopted in its current form, I fear it would do great damage to China's international standing, just when Shanghai is preparing to host a major international conference on health promotion later this year.

Yet, a strong national smoke-free law would be one of the greatest steps forward for public health in China that we have ever seen. And it would place China among the world's leaders in standing up for the health of its people. Healthy China needs a strong, 100 percent smoke-free national law.

The author is the WHO's Representative in China.
A Wuxi Rib Cook-off drew dozens of people from 14 countries and regions to show off their cooking skills on May 29.

The contestants, from the US, Canada, France, Italy, South Korea, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Laos, Rwanda, Malaysia and Taiwan, were chefs, homemakers, overseas students and teachers in Wuxi.

Marco Polo's Journey Ribs, My Mama's Ribs, Elder Brother's Ginseng Ribs, Texas-style Ribs, Grandma's Hakka Fried Pork, Old-style Taiwanese Stewed Ribs all told twelve styles of ribs, stewed or roasted, fried or steamed, sweet or salty, spicy or sour, to excite five judges' and 120 audience members' taste buds.

Actually, food is not only just food. It may also be an embodiment of emotion.

Philippe Aizpurua came to China from France because of his wife, a midwife in Wuxi Baijia Maternity Hospital. The couple, who have been married for 29 years, always cook, travel and ride together to enjoy their life in a foreign land.

My Mama's Ribs adopted a home-made sauce, which has been passed down through three generations; therefore, the dish is full of mama's love.

Frenchman Sylvain Benoit named his dish "screaming ribs" as he always cooks accompanied by four screaming and crying kids. He confesses that he enjoys the process very much.

Finally, Texpats' Texas-style Ribs, Rwanda's Akabenzi's Pork and Molto Bene's Marco Polo's Journey Ribs were voted into the top three places.

The Wuxi Rib Cook-off, sponsored by the information office of the Wuxi municipal government, the bureau of commerce of the Wuxi municipal government and the Guolian Group, was one of a series of external activities called "Love in Wuxi". It intends to globally showcase the livable citys exciting charm.

Currently, there are 12,000 expats working and studying in Wuxi, and around 300,000 international people visit the city every year.

Videos

Zhuzhu Team's Laos Pork Ribs

Rwanda's Akabenzi Pork

Spice Babes's My mama's Ribs

Les BN's French Ribs

The Laobans' Sweet and Spicy Ribs

Cuisine Map's Old-style Taiwanese Stewed Ribs

Molto Bene's Marco Polo's Journey

Family Foodies' Grandma's Hakka Fried Pork

Korean Elder Brothers Team's Sun Ribs

Chinese team's Sweet and Sour Ribs

Wuxi Baijia's Cotelettes Castraises

Texpats' Texas Style Ribs
Cambodia and China's Macao Special Administrative Region sign deal on tourism development and cooperation.[Photo/Xinhua]

Cambodia and China's Macao Special Administrative Region on Monday reached a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on tourism development cooperation.

The deal was inked between Cambodian Tourism Ministry Secretary of State Tith Chantha and Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture of Macao Alexis Tam Chon Weng under the presence of Cambodian Tourism Minister Thong Khon and former Macao chief executive Edmund Ho Hau Wah, vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

According to the MoU, the two sides would focus on "human resources development in tourism and exchange mutual visits."

The Chinese side would provide scholarships to Cambodian government officials and students to study in the major of tourism in Macao, said the MoU, which is valid for three years.

Also, the two sides would promote mutual tourism destinations, it added.
Rai de Souza, 22, suspected of being involved in the gang rape of a teenage girl, with a video of the assault circulated widely on social media, is escorted at the Police Station for crimes against minors in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, May 30, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

RIO DE JANEIRO - Brazil's police launched an operation on Monday to successfully capture six men wanted for their alleged involvement in gang raping a 16-year-old girl on May 21, a case which has shocked the South American country.

The police indicated via a press release that the operation also aims to discover and retain the computers and cellphones of those who are accused of participating in the rape which took place in the Sao Jose Operario neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro's western area.

The rape case has shocked the Brazilian public after the teenager was sexually assaulted by 33 men in a populous area in western Rio de Janeiro.

The victim had been attending a party in the area along with her boyfriend and some friends before the incident happened, according to information given by authorities to local news portal Veja.

The case came to light after several of the rapists spread photos and videos of the teenager while she was being abused.

The girl was allegedly drugged when all this was happening and has no memory of the incident. The next day when the girl awoke "naked and bloody" she began to realize what must have happened.

After the event the girl went missing until a neighbor returned her to her home on May 25. As of yet, no more details have been given of the victim's disappearance.

During an interview with national television network Globo broadcast on Sunday evening, the girl said she felt humiliated at the police station where she gave her statement.

"Even the (police) representative blamed me," said the 16-year-old while adding "he tried to incriminate me, as if I was to blame for being raped."

The police department removed the representative from the case due to the complaints presented.

The teenager, with a 3-year-old son, will join the Protection Program for Children and Adolescents. Out of fear, the young mother has also left her home with her family and they are all currently under police protection.

The case has opened up the debate surrounding sexual violence in Brazil where in 2014 over 47,000 cases of rape were reported to the police. This equates to one rape every 11 minutes, according to the Brazilian Public Safety Annual from 2014. Many of these cases went unpunished.
Migrants disembark from the Italian Navy vessel Vega at the Reggio Calabria harbor, southern Italy, May 29, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

ROME - Around 13,000 migrants have been rescued and more than 700 are feared to have died at sea in the southern Mediterranean over the past week, Italian media said on Monday.

Two major incidents took place off the Libyan coasts on Wednesday and Thursday, the latter claiming the highest death toll, including dozens of women and children, according to organizations assisting survivors.

At least 45 people died in a third disaster that took place on Friday, when 629 migrants were rescued and brought to the southern port of Reggio Calabria by the Italian navy ship Vega.

The ship also brought to land 45 bodies recovered, including that of three children aged two months to two years, 36 women, and six men, ANSA news agency said on Monday.

The survivors included 419 men, 138 women and 72 minors from Eritrea, Libya, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Senegal, and Somalia, according to ANSA. Two suspected human smugglers were reportedly arrested by Italian police once they were brought to land.

Meanwhile on Monday, police cleared a makeshift camp near Italy's northern border with France for reasons of public hygiene and security. A local bishop said later in the day that he was in talks with local authorities to negotiate permission to set up a tent camp in the parking lot of a seminary.

Many charity groups are at work in Italy to help the EU naval mission EUNAVFOR MED and EU borders agency Frontex deal with tens of thousands of migrants who keep departing from the Libyan coasts.

From May 1 to 29, 18,788 migrants have landed in Italy, according to figures of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The number was lower compared to the 21,235 arrivals registered over the same period last year. Overall, 46,714 have arrived since the beginning of 2016, compared to 47,463 over the same period last year, UNHCR said.

Italian authorities have repeatedly called for more support from the EU to tackle the migrant crisis. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said in a statement on Monday that despite the continuous arrivals, the numbers are "about the same" as last year and that there are no huge or unsanitary camps in Italy.

Renzi called for helping the migrants in their home countries, with cooperation and a different model of development aid.
The logo of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is seen at its headquarter building in Beijing January 17, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

The European Investment Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank signed a framework of cooperation on May 30 to broaden cooperation to support investment in strategically important projects, seek to jointly finance projects and increase cooperation in countries where both institutions are active.

"I am delighted to sign this framework of cooperation with the European Investment Bank as a sign of our expanding partnership in addressing the monumental infrastructure financing needs around the world," said Jin Liqun, president of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

"AIIB was created with the goal of promoting regional cooperation and partnership in addressing development challenges, and we no doubt have a strong partner in EIB. Through joint efforts we can be a steadying force in this complex global economic environment and create enduring positive development outcomes," he said.

Werner Hoyer, President of the European Investment Bank, says that international financial institutions play a crucial role supporting long-term investment that improves crucial infrastructure, supports job creation and improves lives.

"I look forward to working together with President Jin and his team to address challenges that no single institution can overcome alone, such as tackling climate change, ensuring sustainable transport and providing clean water. The framework signed today will enable more effective cooperation between our respective institutions," he said.

The EIB and the AIIB have already established a strong track record of cooperation, including through the sharing of technical and financial expertise. The new framework, which was signed by President Jin and President Hoyer at the AIIB's headquarters in Beijing, will build on this cooperation, including through streamlining the joint financing of projects and ensuring regular dialogue between the two institutions.

EIB President Hoyer is currently on a five-day official visit to China, the focus of which is strengthening the EIB's partnership with China on addressing Climate Change. The EIB is the world's largest lender for climate related investment and the global leader in issuing green bonds.
HIT: To the events that took place throughout the Cayuga County-area to commemorate Memorial Day and offer a fitting tribute to the servicemen and servicewomen who gave their lives for our country.

From quiet services in rural cemeteries to bold displays of patriotic parades in downtowns, there was no shortage of holiday observances in our area.

This doesn't happen without a strong community sense of the importance of honoring Memorial Day's meaning, and it certainly doesn't happen without many volunteers willing to give their time to plan and run the events.

Thanks to all who made these gatherings happening, and of course, thanks to all of our veterans, past and present.

MISS: To the potential for state bureaucracy to rear its ugly head in southern Cayuga County.

Clarity Connect, an internet service provider that has just recently rolled out high-speed service to under-served areas in its territory, has notified a group of customers in Ledyard that there's a possibility of service going down for up to four months.

The issue is the discovery of an improperly placed utility pole. The pole is in an unsafe location, so it's important that it be moved. But the problem is that unless the company can reach a deal with a nearby property owner for an easement, the state's permitting process for a new pole could take up to four months.

New York has touted its efforts to role out broadband service to rural areas; it should certainly be able to expedite a pole permit review in the name of good government.

HIT: To another successful downtown Auburn community event.

Majorpalooza opened up the downtown festival summer season on Sunday with a daylong celebration of local music, food and drink, along with plenty to do for kids of all ages.

This event raises valuable funding for a range of local causes, and it's great to see how much it has grown through the years.
MANILA -- On World No Tobacco Day, the World Health Organization (WHO) in the Western Pacific continues its call for governments, civil society and other partners, to support the implementation and promotion of the use of plain packaging as a tobacco control measure.

Tobacco is one of the leading risk factors for noncommunicable diseases. One out of three smokers in the world450 million smokerslives in the Western Pacific Region. Half of the men in the Region smoke, with nearly half of children regularly exposed to deadly second-hand smoke. Every 30 seconds, a life is lost to tobacco-related disease.

"Plain packaging is a good public health measure because it prevents tobacco companies from using packaging as an effective marketing tool," said Dr Shin Young-soo, WHO Regional Director for the Western Pacific. "Australia has paved the way and is the first country in the world to mandate plain packaging for tobacco products. This example can be followed to reduce the attractiveness and appeal of tobacco products to consumers. International solidarity is therefore vital to overcome the challenges of tobacco and reverse its dreadful effects," said Dr Shin.

The impact of plain packaging

Studies have shown that plain packaging decreases the appeal of tobacco products, restricts use of the pack as a form of advertising and promotion, limits misleading packaging and increases the effectiveness of health warnings. In December 2012, Australia's pioneering laws on tobacco plain packaging came into full effect. Since then, all tobacco products must be sold in drab dark brown packaging with large graphic health warnings that depict the health consequences of smoking, without logos or other advertising or promotion features.

WHO recommends that plain packaging be implemented as part of a comprehensive approach to tobacco control that includes comprehensive bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship and other packaging and labelling measures, such as health warnings.

Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Fiji, Kiribati, Malaysia, Mongolia, New Zealand, the Philippines, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Viet Nam, have adopted the use of graphic health warnings, which require tobacco manufacturers to display pictures on cigarette packs showing the harmful effects of smoking. Just this month, the Lao People's Democratic Republic adopted a new law for graphic health warnings covering 75% of the front and back sides of the pack, while Vanuatu's new law covers 90%.

Studies carried out after the implementation of pictorial package warnings consistently shows that pictorial warnings significantly increase people's awareness of the harms of tobacco use. Only 42 countries, representing 19% of the world's population, meet the best practice for pictorial warnings, which includes the warnings in the local language and cover an average of at least half of the front and back of cigarette packs. Most of these countries are low- or middle-income countries.

Tobacco use in the Western Pacific Region

Tobacco use is one of the biggest contributors to the epidemic of noncommunicable diseases in the Western Pacific Region. Of WHO's six regions, the Western Pacific Region has the most number of smokers at 450 million and nearly half of all children in the Region are exposed to second-hand smoke. Tobacco smoke contains more than 4000 chemicals, of which 70 are known carcinogens. Globally, second-hand smoke causes an estimated 600 000 deaths. Moreover, the tobacco epidemic also threatens to undermine other public health gains and hamper economic growth and development in the Region.
SEOUL - The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) appeared to have failed in its fourth test-launch of an intermediate-range Musudan ballistic missile after its dialogue overtures on military matters were repeatedly dismissed by the Republic of Korea, Seoul's military said Tuesday.

An official at the ROK's defense ministry told Xinhua on the phone that the DPRK tried to test-fire one unidentified missile at about 5:20 am local time from its Wonsan area in its east coastal region.

The official said the test-launch was estimated to have failed, adding that Seoul's military is analyzing details. He noted that the ROK's military has been maintaining complete preparedness for possible launches of additional missiles.

According to a government official of the ROK , cited by Yonhap news agency, Seoul's military believed that it was the Musudan ballistic missile which is known to be capable of hitting part of the US territory such as Guam and the outer reaches of Alaska.

The DPRK test-launched three Musudan missiles this year alone, two on April 28 and one on April 15 each, but all of the three test-firings were believed to have failed as the missiles exploded in mid-air or crashed in waters several seconds after lift-off.

The April 15 launch was the DPRK's first known test-firing of the intermediate-range ballistic missile. Pyongyang has allegedly deployed the Musudan missiles since 2007.

The missile is considered especially threatening as it is fired from a mobile launcher, making it hard to detect and track in times of military conflicts. It can also carry a nuclear warhead.

As all of the three test-firings ended as failure, the DPRK was widely expected here to conduct another test-launch to prove its nuclear-tipped ballistic missile technology.

The ROK's government official was quoted by Yonhap as saying that the fourth launch appeared to have failed as the missile was estimated to have exploded on its mobile launcher even before take-off.

The ROK's military estimated that the DPRK had deployed an unspecified number of Musudan missiles on the Wonsan area, which were closely tracked and monitored by military authorities of the ROK and the United States.

The fourth test-launch was in line with top DPRK leader Kim Jong-un's order on March 15 to test a nuclear warhead and ballistic rockets capable of carrying the warhead "in a short time".

After the seventh ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) congress that last four days through May 9, the DPRK repeatedly made dialogue overtures toward South Korea to talk about military matters in order to defuse tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Seoul, however, rejected the proposals as Pyongyang failed to mention its willingness to denuclearize. the ROK held fast to its position that no dialogue will be held with the DPRK unless Pyongyang shows its denuclearization will through sincere actions.
The Chinese engineer injured in a bomb attack in southern Pakistan has recovered and returned to the company's compound after medical treatment, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

Immediately after the incident on Monday, the Chinese embassy in Pakistan and the consulate general in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, urged the Pakistan government to investigate the case as soon as possible, spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular news conference.

China has called on the Pakistani authorities to take measures to protect the safety of Chinese companies and staff, and Pakistan police are investigating the case, she added.

According to a report by Reuters, responsibility for the attack was claimed by a little-known separatist group based in the southern province of Sindh. The small roadside device exploded in a suburb of Karachi.
The children of royalty and politicians around the world are used to the spotlight since birth. With International Children's Day coming on June 1, let's take a look at some of the cute pictures of these privileged kids.

The Spanish Royal Family attends Easter mass at the Palma de Mallorca Cathedral, March 27, 2016. The two princesses Leonor and Sofia were in an Easter mood as they wore Spring pastel colors. [Photo/IC]
One of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's highest-profile officials, career diplomat Ri Su-yong, held talks with a senior Chinese official in Beijing on Tuesday.

Song Tao, minister of the International Department of the CPC Central Committee, met with the DPRK delegation led by Ri, according to a statement released on the department's website.

It was the first visit by a top DPRK official to China since the DPRK conducted a series of nuclear tests and missile launches defying sanctions by world powers early this year. The details of Ri's visit were not immediately available.

The DPRK side gave a briefing on the 7th congress of the ruling DPRK Workers' Party, which was held in early May.

Both sides agreed to cherish the traditional friendship between the two countries and enhance communications between the Communist Party of China and the DPRK Workers' Party, the statement said.

The two sides also agreed to make joint efforts to strengthen and develop the China-DPRK relationship and boost regional peace and stability, the statement said.

Ri Su-yong, served as the DPRK's foreign minister from April 2014 until he was named a member of the Politburo during the recent Worker's Party congress.
Editors attend the opening of the new Asia News Network website at China Daily in Beijing on Tuesday during the news organizations annual board meeting. The new website can be found at asianews.network. WANG ZHUANGFEI / CHINA DAILY

The board of the Asia News Network elected on Tuesday Zaffar Abbas, editor of the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, as the 21-member alliances new chairman for 2016-17.

ANN editors also launched the organizations new website after the board meeting in Beijing, which was hosted by China Daily.

Im thrilled that ANN members elected me and Dawn as the new chairman, Abbas said.

I think there is huge potential in this organization, and if we organize ourselves right  from sharing the news to other endeavors  we can do wonders with quality journalism out of Asia.

Abbas will take over as chairman from China Daily publisher and editor-in-chief Zhu Ling.

The next board meeting will be held in Islamabad, Pakistan, next year. The date has yet to be set.
The following editorial appeared in the Star Tribune on Thursday, May 26:

A State Department audit has found that Hillary Clinton violated department rules in her use of a home email server and failed to properly preserve federal records as secretary of state. That is troubling in itself for someone so close to becoming her partys nominee for president. But even more troubling is Clintons refusal to be interviewed about her practices by government officials.

Allegations of bias from the Clinton camp are futile and should be dropped. This was no GOP witch hunt. It was a review directed by Clintons own successor, John Kerry, a fellow Democrat. Three previous secretaries of state willingly submitted to interviews about their own practices: Colin Powell, Madeline Albright and Condoleezza Rice, as well as Kerry.

Its bad enough that Clinton continually refuses news interviews on the topic, but to decline to talk with the inspector general charged with investigating her conduct, even as she is asking Americans to elevate her to this nations highest office, is unconscionable. In fact, the inspector general with whom she refused an interview was appointed by President Obama.

Clinton remains under FBI investigation, and she has said she will cooperate. But of course, there are consequences to refusing the FBI. Its unclear why Clinton has dragged this out to the point that it is tainting her candidacy and feeding already rampant doubts about her trustworthiness. Clinton has been in government far too long not to know the need for properly preserving federal records. She also knows that she was supposed to surrender all department-related emails upon leaving office, yet its taken two years to obtain them. Clinton must assure voters that this is not the way she would conduct business in the White House.

Importantly, the audit also notes that the inspector general could find no evidence that Clinton received approval from the departments legal adviser to use a private email server, even though Clinton has said she had permission. Instead, a director reportedly told State Department staff members that they were to support the Secretary and never to speak of the Secretarys personal email system again.

There is only one way for Clinton to make this go away. She must cooperate quickly and completely with government officials and answer questions fully. With less than six months until Election Day, Clinton should want to dispel the cloud that hangs over her candidacy.

The Supreme Court speaks loudly for fair trials

The following editorial appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Wednesday, May 25:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to let stand an egregious violation of a citizens right to a fair trial. In a 7-1 ruling, the Supreme Court agreed with defense attorneys for Georgia death row inmate Timothy Tyrone Foster that prosecutors kept blacks off his jury, in clear violation of his rights.

Foster was convicted three decades ago by an all-white jury of murdering a white woman. His lawyers were able to petition successfully for the prosecutions notes that laid bare its strategy of peremptory strikes and challenges against all of the potential black jurors. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative who is often criticized for being naive about the impact of race on American life, agreed that prosecutors were motivated in substantial part by race. Georgia argued that there was no evidence that Foster was ever discriminated against, despite being convicted by an all-white jury and even after the prosecutors notes were made public.

When the case was argued before the Supreme Court last fall, Justice Elena Kagan commented it seemed as clear a violation as a court is ever going to see. It was a hint of what the justices said this week, with Justice Clarence Thomas as the lone dissenter. Without explaining his logic, the courts only black justice said he would have deferred to the state judges who rejected Fosters claims. Justice Thomas sees no discrimination here. Fortunately, he is a minority of one.

The Supreme Court ordered the case returned to state court, where Fosters lawyers will call for a new trial. The courts decision doesnt take away lawyers ability to use peremptory strikes or limit its prerogative to reject jurors, but it is clear that the highest court in the land wont look kindly upon a jury decision that looks like naked bias and racial discrimination.

Impeaching IRS chief wont solve anything

The following editorial was written by Bloomberg View editors:

Pity John Koskinen, who agreed to take one of the worst jobs in America and is now being punished for it.

In 2013, President Barack Obama asked Koskinen to take over at the Internal Revenue Service amid budgetary chaos, deteriorating morale and a simmering scandal. House Republicans, still angry about that scandal  and about the concept of taxation generally  are now trying to impeach him.

Their case is weak, and the ultimate loser in this sorry spectacle wont be Koskinen.

Start with the scandal. An inspector general report in 2013 found that IRS employees had been improperly scrutinizing conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. This was wrong, and blame was duly apportioned. The agencys boss resigned, a top deputy retired, and the director of the offending unit was placed on leave and declared in contempt of Congress. Half a dozen congressional committees vowed to fumigate every pixel of offending detail. One managed to produce an 8,000-page report. The Justice Department investigated (and found no evidence of criminality).

But you have to get up pretty early in the morning to outfox the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, the committees chairman, has made a professional specialty of berating civil servants. He appears to view Koskinen  who, recall, joined the agency after this scandal  as obstructing further investigation.

The specific allegations Chaffetz has adduced hardly add up to high crimes and misdemeanors. At worst, they portray mild bureaucratic ineptitude. And removing Koskinen from office stands no chance in legislative reality. Nothings shaking on Shakedown Street, as they used to say.

Actually impeaching Koskinen  a punishment not invoked against an executive-branch appointee since Ulysses S. Grant occupied the White House  probably isnt the objective anyway. The point is to embarrass the IRS. And congressional Republicans have already done a fine job of that by slashing the agencys budget while helping to vastly expand its responsibilities, with predictably frustrating results.

Taxpayers, in other words, are the ones who ultimately suffer when Congress ignores more pressing business in favor of needlessly antagonizing the IRS. Theyre also the ones footing the bill for 8,000-page reports and shambolic impeachment proceedings.

Why did far-right populist almost become president?

The following editorial appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Wednesday, May 25:

In elections that Americans may examine closely for parallels and to understand what is going on in Europe, Austria on Sunday elected a harmless Green Party candidate president over a less-harmless far-right candidate. The margin was excruciatingly close, just 30,000 votes.

The first round of voting last month eliminated candidates of the two main parties, the center-left Social Democrats and center-right Peoples Party. They have ruled the Central European country of 8.6 million off and on since the end of World War II.

The two candidates remaining were Alexander Van der Bellen, former leader of the Green Party, and Norbert Hofer of the right-wing Freedom Party, the FPO. Van der Bellen won with 50.3 percent of the vote, only after mail-in ballots were counted on Monday.

Voters from the defeated centrist parties spared Austria the embarrassment of electing a far-right populist as head of state (though the nations chancellor is the more powerful political position). Hofers Freedom Party is anti-Muslim, likes Russian President Vladimir Putin, opposes migration and doesnt like the EU, which Austria joined in 1995.

It is likely that reaction to mainly Muslim migrants from the East are what helped FPO boost its vote so drastically, even though there are only 90,000 or so asylum seekers remaining in Austria. The current government first followed German Chancellor Angela Merkels open-door policy. Then, in the face of opposition, it shifted to border closures and asylum quotas. And while the Austrian economy is relatively healthy and its citizens have a comfortable life, economic inequality is on the rise. A general sense of discontent contributed to the defeat of the old-guard centrist parties.

Europe watched these elections with some apprehension. Hungary and Poland already have right-wing governments. The Austrian election was a worrisome close shave.
(Photo : Getty Images) A Chinese city has imposed ban on students from tearing up textbooks or yelling in hallways to cope with exam pressure.

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A Chinese city has banned high school students from tearing up their textbooks or yelling in hallways to cope with exam pressure. The ban comes just week before the National College Entrance Examination (NCEE) or Gaokao examination.



Every year millions of high school Chinese students take the NCEE, which is a mandatory exam for getting admission in higher education institutions in China. The exam, which lasts for nearly nine hours. is spread across over two days and is treated as a make-or-break exam by millions of Chinese students.



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The pressure to crack the exam is so high that over the years some students have resorted to unconventional practices like tearing up textbooks in school compound or yelling in hallways. These practices allegedly help students to relieve exam pressure.



The fresh ban imposed by the Xiamen Education Bureau seeks to end such unconventional practices among Chinese students. In an online post, officials from Xiamen Bureau called for more 'healthy ways' to cope with exam pressure.



Over the years, the NCEE has been criticized for developing unhealthy competition among students. Critics say this unhealthy competition has paved the way for unrealistic stress and even suicidal thoughts among Chinese students. Reports of Chinese students desperately resorting to cheating and unethical practices to pass the exam has also frequently emerged in the media.



To relive students from pressure, critics often cite the example of many Chinese celebrities who have flanked the NCEE exam but still made it big in their life. The most cited example is Jack Ma, founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba. Jack Ma appeared for NCEE twice and is said to have failed in both attempts.



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Tagschina, Gaokao Exam, National Higher Education Entrance Examination, NCEE Exam China
(Photo : Getty Images) Microsoft has come under criticisms in China for promoting automatic upgrade to Windows 10.

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Chinese users are complaining about Microsoft's aggressive strategy to push users to upgrade to its latest operating software, Windows 10, according to Chinese state media.



Microsoft is facing heavy criticism in China over the company's assertive stance in pushing users to upgrade to its latest operating system. Some Chinese users have voiced theirirritation after their computers inadvertently upgraded to Windows 10 without their approval or maybe because they overlooked an on-screen notification.



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Microsoft started to push Windows 10 upgrades aggressively to Chinese users earlier this month. Microsoft did this by pre-scheduling the free upgrade. An on-screen notification will warn users of the impending upgrade. However, the notification only offers a limited cancel option which can be easily overlooked. There is a red X button located on the upper-right corner of the notification box, but instead of cancelling the operating, it authorized the upgrade to begin at the allotted time, according to China Daily.



Microsoft is still in hot waters in China, as the company is facing an anti-trust investigation which has been going on for more than two years. Despite this hurdles, Microsoft has been able to score some major deals with the China's largest defense conglomerate which agreed to market and sell Windows 10 to Chinese government agencies.



Additionally, Microsoft was able to strike a deal with Chinese tech giant Baidu to distribute Windows 10 upgrade in China in exchange for making the search engine the default option on the Internet browser Edge, according to Computer World.



Internet Society of China legal advisor Zhao Zhanling told Xinhua, China's official news agency, that: "The company has abused its dominant market position and broken the market order for fair play."



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TagsMicrosoft, Windows 10, china, Microsoft China, Windows 10 China, Windows 10 upgrade, Free Windows 10 upgrade
(Photo : Mark Kolbe/Getty Images) A gorilla was shot dead to save a young boy at the Cincinnati Zoo.

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Staff at the Cincinnati Zoo have come under criticisms after killing a 17-year-old male western lowland gorilla named Harambe to save the life of a 4-year-old boy who fell into the animal's enclosure.



Justice for Haramble



Many netizens are saying that the 17-year-old male gorilla did not deserve to be shot and killed. A visitor recorded the horrifying moments when the four-year-old boy was dragged by Haramble in the enclosure. Observers have said the hulking ape seemed to be protecting the little child as it placed a gentle hand behind his back, NBC News reported.



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Not willing to gamble anything, the staff of Cincinnati Zoo shot the 450-pound gorilla after it dragged the boy away from the screaming crowd. Netizens have pointed out that Harambe was not actually dragging the boy to kill him, but instead was moving the boy away from the screaming tourists.



Lack of Parental Supervision



Netizens are also pointing out that the parents of the boy are to blame for what happened. Many have expressed unhappiness over the fact that an endangered animal had to be put down because of careless parenting. Some netizens have linked this to an incident in a zoo in China about a week ago when two lions were killed after a suicidal man crept into their enclosure.



Many are questioning why tranquilizers were not used in both instances in place of live bullets.



More than 60,000 people have signed a petition, calling for the boy's mother to be held accountable for the death of Harambe.



The 4-year-old boy was taken to a local hospital after the incident. No information has been disclosed about his condition. However, there is no indication that he sustained any fatal injuries.



What's your stand about the whole incident? Hit us with your comments below. Meanwhile, check out the video captured by one of the visitors.







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TagsCincinnati Bengals, Boy Falls Into Gorilla Enclosure, Gorilla Killed To Rescue Kid, #JusticeForHaramble
(Photo : Getty Images) In this undated handout photo provided by Chrysler, a 2003 Jeep Liberty Renegade stands on display.

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The China-made Jeep Renegade subcompact crossover has been officially launched with prices ranging between 141,800 yuan ($21,500) and 178,880 yuan ($27,100), according to Forbes.



The locally-made Renegade is based on FCA's Small Wide 4x4 platform that supports the Fiat 500X and Fiat 500L, which are also likely to be manufactured in the country soon.



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The Renegade is available with a turbocharged 1.4-liter T-Jet petrol engine paired with a seven-speed DCT. Its engine features a 148 horsepower and 230 Newton meter output. An added four-wheel drive version and a 168 horsepower 2.0-liter petrol engine will also appear in the lineup later.



The locally-produced vehicles were made in Jeep's new factory in Guangzhou City. It is managed by GAC Fiat, otherwise called Guangzhou-Fiat, which is a partnership between Guangzhou Automobile Corporation and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.



Currently, the Renegade is produced in three different factories in three countries, namely, Brazil, China, and Italy.



Other than the Renegade, the GAC Fiat joint venture also manufactures model cars such as Jeep Cherokee, the Fiat Viaggio, and the Fiat Ottimo on its plant in Changsha City in Hunan Province.



Meanwhile, earlier this month, Jeep reported that it has seen growing sales in China after it decided to produce domestically. This has also saved the company from paying a 25 percent tariff on imports.



"To transition into a local player really did come at an important time for us. We are now able to position our vehicles where competitors were positioned," Mike Manley, head of Jeep's global brand, said.



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(Photo : ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images) 'Haixun 31' (C), the largest patrol vessel in South China Sea, prepares to depart from the port for search and rescue mission for the missing Malaysian Airline flight on March 9, 2014 in Beijing, China.

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Amid the on-going South China Sea dispute involving a number of countries, a recent report revealed that a certain proof that the Philippines never had jurisdiction over the islands has been found.



Based on an 1899 map published by geographer J Martin Miller, Xinhua reported that the disputed islands "have never been Philippine territory."



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The map, which was part of the book "The Twentieth Century ATLAS and Illustrated World" and was purchased by Chines-American Zeng Yingjing at a flea market in New York in 2015, reportedly shows the "boundary of the US possession in the Philippines," as agreed at the 1898 Treaty of Paris.



In the middle of the South China Sea dispute, the report further narrated that the Philippine boundaries on the map "clearly lie out of" the South China Sea islands, including the Nansha Islands and the Huangyan Island.



"All the islands that the Philippines claims are not within the boundaries that were mapped out in this book," Zeng told the news outlet. "They have no right to say that the South China Sea islands belong to them."



Back in September 2015, Kalayaan municipality mayor Eugenio "Jun" Bito-onon shared with The Diplomat his views relative to this international concern. Kalayaan is composed of six islets located in Spratly Islands in the disputed South China Sea which is controlled by the Philippines.



"I think the best move that President Aquino did was the filing of the arbitration case," Bito-onon commented about how the present Philippine administration handles the issue. "I fully appreciate and support the filing of the arbitration case to once and for all resolve the issues and problems. I believe it will provide permanent solutions to the messy situation that we are in today."



What could be the impact of the 1899 map to the South China Sea dispute?







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Tagschina, Philippines, South China Sea, spratly islands, South China Sea Dispute
(Photo : Olivier Douliery/Getty Images) U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter has said that China is isolating itself through its actions in the South China Sea.

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China has said that it is not interested in any form of Cold War after U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter stated that Beijing is building a "Great Wall of self-isolation" through its actions in the South China Sea.





China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying commented on the remarks of Carter during a daily press briefing on Monday. She said that Carter's comments at the U.S. Naval Academy reflected the mentality of Americans as well as "American-style hegemony."



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"Indeed, some people on the American side have physically entered the 21st century while mentally remaining in the Cold War era," Hua stated.



Hua said that China is not interested in being part of any form of Cold War or playing a role in a "Hollywood movie written and directed" by a person from the armed forces of the United States. China does not fear and will counter any actions that threaten and undermine her security and sovereignty, she added.



U.S. Defense Secretary Carter made the comments about China while discussing Beijing's stance on the South China Sea dispute. Carter also accused China of hacking U.S. companies. He was speaking in front of graduating officers at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.



Carter noted that different countries are also voicing their concerns over the South China Sea dispute. He said during his speech that the U.S. is concerned China's military presence and constructions projects in the disputed waters.



The tension between the U.S. and China has heightened in the last few weeks especially after the U.S. lifted its arms embargo on Vietnam. Vietnam is one of the claimant countries the South China Sea dispute. Beijing has warned the United States not to play any part in the dispute or risk worsening the matter.



Other claimant countries in the contested South China Sea territory are Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan, and the Philippines.



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TagsCold War remark, United States, china, South China Sea Dispute, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, hollywood, military officials
(Photo : JTB Photo/UIG via Getty Images)) A search is ongoing for a 7-year-old boy who went missing on a mountain in Hokkaido, Japan.

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A seven-year-old boy is still missing in a forest in Japan after he was dropped off by his parents as a punishment for misbehaving. A search goes on for the youngster in a forest in northern Japan.



The boy, identified as Yamato Tanooka, has been missing since late Saturday afternoon. Around 150 rescue workers have been deployed to search for him in the wooded area on Hokkaido. Hokkaido is the northernmost island of Japan's four main islands. The forest is known to be home to wild bears.



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The Hokkaido Police Department said in a statement that the parents initially told the authorities that their son disappeared while they were out picking wild vegetables. However, they alter admitted that they made him get out of their car and left him behind. They were apparently trying to discipline the boy for misbehaving. The boy was reportedly throwing rocks at people and cars while playing at a river earlier in the day.



The father returned to the area where the seven-year-old boy was left behind but found out that his child was gone. The boy's father said in a statement that he regrets what he did to his child. He noted that he did not tell the truth to the police at first because he thought it was embarrassing to ask for help to look for his child after what happened.



Officials have not released a statement regarding what they think happened to the child or if there is any evidence available indicating that the child is still alive or might have been killed by bears.



Police officials are still deciding whether or not the parents will be charged with child abandonment.



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TagsJapan, forest, Hokkaido, seven year old boy, missing, misbehaving, discipline, parents
(Photo : Getty Images) China's President on Monday sent a formal congratulatory message to Philippines new President Rodrigo Duterte.

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President Xi Jinping on Monday sent an official congratulatory message to the Philippines' President-elect Rodrigo Duterte, saying that China hopes to get its relations with the Philippines back on track. The relationship between both countries has been severely affected by their dispute the South China Sea.



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"The friendly, stable and healthy development of Sino-Philippine relations accords with the basic interests of both countries and both peoples," Xi said in his message. "(I) hope both sides can work hard to push Sino-Philippine relations back onto a healthy development track."



Beijing and Manila are currently awaiting a ruling on the South China Sea case by the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in the Hague, Netherlands. The case was initiated by the Philippines in 2014 to settle the longstanding territorial dispute in the South China Sea. China has already stated that it would not accept the judgment by the tribunal court.



However, the pressure on Beijing is growing with a host of international leaders assembled at the recently concluded G7 Summit issuing a strong statement against China. G7 leaders called on China to abide by international laws to settle maritime disputes in the Asia Pacific region.



Rodrigo Duterte's overtures towards China



During his election campaign last month, Duterte said that he is willing to engage in bilateral dialogue with China to resolve the South China Sea dispute.



Duterte's moderate stance towards China is a breakaway from the confrontational policy adopted by outgoing President Benigno Aquino.



The popular opinion currently among Chinese analysts and experts is that under Duerte's government, the Philippines will follow a more moderate and restrained policy with regards to South China Sea issue.



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TagsXi Jinping, Rodrigo Duterte, Philippines, China and Philippines
(Photo : Getty Images/Guang Niu) China's underwater lab is expected to be used for both military and civilian purposes.

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China is expanding its military capabilities to counter the US in the region. After months of building its base in the South China Sea, Beijing has now decided to deploy nuclear submarines to the Pacific Ocean. This is the first time that China will deploy nuclear arms to the area.



China has defended its decision, stating that extraneous pressure makes this move necessary to solidify its position. Speaking at a press conference, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said, "China's construction in the South China Sea came later than other countries' illegal activities in the region." The country has not provided a timeline for the deployment.



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According to a recent report delivered by the Pentagon to the US Congress, "China will probably conduct its first nuclear deterrence patrol sometime in 2016." However, this is not the first time that this prediction has been made. China has been working on ballistic missile submarine technology for more than three decades. However, no actual deployment has been made so far owing to technological and policy issues.



The deployment of nuclear submarines to the South China Sea will require handing over the missiles and warheads to the Navy, and this will have far-reaching implications. China and the US are currently at loggerheads over the latter's actions in the South China Sea.



Last Tuesday, two Chinese fighter jets, and a US spy plane almost collided near Hainan island. China has four of its Jin-class ballistic missile submarines stationed there. It is also in the process of constructing a fifth missile submarine.



The Chinese government has repeatedly accused the United States of destabilizing peace and increasing tensions in Southeast Asia. China has cited the United States' presence in the region as "the real source of danger for Sino-US military safety at sea and in the air."



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TagsSouth China Sea, Nuclear Armed Submarine, china, China Nuclear Submarine South China Sea
(Photo : Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images) An Xbox One and its controller on display at the Microsoft Xbox booth during the Electronics Expo 2013 at the Los Angeles Convention Center on June 11, 2013 in Los Angeles, California.

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The list of Xbox One backwards compatible games continues to grow with the recent discovery of new EA titles that have appeared in recent searches on Amazon.



Although there has so far been no confirmation yet from either Microsoft or Amazon regarding the "leaked" EA games, there may be reason to believe that these titles are being lined up for the backwards compatibility feature, reported the Express.



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What is interesting though is that these titles have been, or will be, released as Xbox 360 digital codes.



According to the Express, that there seems to be no other reason to sell the titles "unless there is a larger, more active audience that would be interested to purchase them."



Aside from the five EA games that have been discovered on Amazon, it is expected that another highly-popular title, "Skate 3," will be added to the list Xbox One backwards compatible games.



Similar to "Call of Duty: Black Ops," "Skate 3" is among a selected number of Xbox 360 classics, which Microsoft promised to release via the Xbox One backwards compatibility update way back in 2015.



Skate 3 has garnered over 30,000 votes on Microsoft's official feedback page, placing it a far second behind top choice "Call of Duty: Black Ops 2."



In fact, "Skate 3" has reportedly been re-rated by Korea's Game Rating Board.



The request for re-rating was filed on May 18 and approved on May 27.



This is definitely good news for Xbox One gamers, as this development suggests that "Skate 3" will be released before E3, where it is likewise expected that bigger games will be announced for the expanding backwards compatible program.



In the meantime, Microsoft has already set varying release dates for other Xbox 360 games from EA, which are scheduled to be rolled out in June, while the rest as set to be launched during E3.



So far, new digital game codes for the following titles have been released: "Dragon Age II," "Fight Night Round 4," "Burnout Revenge," "Fable Anniversary" and "Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit."



Last week also saw the addition of seven new games to the growing list of Xbox One backward compatible games, which include "XCOM: Enemy Unknown," "DuckTales: Remastered," "Hexic 2," "Magic 2012," "Domino Master," "Unbound Saga" and "SSX."







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(Photo : Getty Images/ChinaFotoPress) Dalian Wanda's $4.4 billion offer could be the biggest take-private deal in the history of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

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China's Dalian Wanda group has increased its bid to USD $4.4 billion to buy out its Hong Kong-based Dalian Wanda Commercial Properties. The group plans to delist from Hong Kong and take the unit private. The group may decide to relist the company in Shanghai for better valuations. The current offer is 10 percent higher than the initial offer made on March 30.



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The bid is yet to receive the approval of the company's shareholders and regulatory authorities. Under this deal, the property group, along with a few other companies such as Ping An Insurance Group and China Railway Group, will purchase all the shares of Dalian Wanda Commercial Properties.



Dalian Wanda Commercial Properties was listed in Hong Kong in December 2014. Despite its solid debut, the company shares saw a lull in their pricing due to concerns about its future performance. The company has already applied to be relisted in Shanghai. However, there are over 700 companies waiting to be listed on the exchange. Chinese authorities are particularly vigilant about companies coming back to the domestic exchanges after a stint abroad.



In a filing made with the Hong Kong Exchange, the group stated that it "has noted the recent media reports on possible policy changes in [China] relating to companies delisting overseas and returning for an A share."



The offer is the biggest buyout deal in the history of the exchange, beating Alibaba's proposal worth USD $2 billion to take its Hong Kong-traded unit private in 2012.



Dalian Wanda Group claims that Hong Kong-listed shares are "seriously undervalued."



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(Photo : OCEARCH) Katharine, the great white shark's last location was in Daytona Beach and Palm Coast in Florida.

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The great white shark known as Katharine could possibly be pregnant, and is now returning to Florida. If confirmed, the giant shark is scheduled to give birth to about 14 pups that can measure around 4.5 feet in length each.



According to the founder of shark tracking group OCEARCH, Chris Fischer, these baby sharks will come out and will be on their own from then on.



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Since 2013, a satellite transmitter has been attached to Katharine's dorsal fin, when she was spotted by a team from OCEARCH in Cape Cod in southern Massachusetts. The latest signal sent back from this transmitter was received from May 29, pinpointing her location near the border of Florida and Georgia. Around 7:01 A.M. local time, the shark is already swimming around Daytona Beach and Palm Coast.



Katharine has been a remarkably interesting specimen to monitor, as Fischer reveals that during the first two years of tracing her routes, researchers say that this vicious marine animal was only about 14 feet and two inches long and weighs 2,300 pounds.



However, last year, the female shark did not return to Cape Cod where marine biology experts believe that she could be breeding since she has grown into a mature adult, and could possibly be pregnant.



Currently, Fischer and team have not yet determined the exact location of Katharine at this time where they are expecting for the shark to return to Cape Cod during the fall, that can indicate a cycle of her migratory route. For mature females, this cycle can continue for about two years.



Katharine's past locations from 2014 reveal that she had migrated from the Florida Keys to the Gulf of Mexico, making her the first known Atlantic great white shark to complete such a route, where she also returned to her breeding ground in Cape Cod earlier this year.



Last year, Katharine did not return to Cape Cod, where her satellite transmitter revealed that the shark stayed near the offshore waters of Nova Scotia in Canada, suggesting that she could be undergoing a gestation period of 18 months.



This year during mid-March, her transmitter sent a new signal from the offshore waters of eastern Norfolk Virginia Beach and by the middle of last month, she was already in South Carolina. The team estimated that this great white shark travelled a total of 28,814 miles in a span of three years.



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TagsGreat white shark, katharine great white shark, Florida, cape cod, sharks, shark migratory routes, US, pregnant katharine shark
Workers maintain the production line at the Zhong Tian (Zenith) Steel Group Corporation on May 12, 2016 in Changzhou, Jiangsu. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

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Despite economic headwinds, China added about 4.43 million jobs from January to April of this year, in line with the Chinese government's target of creating more than 10 million new urban jobs in 2016.



An official at the ministry of human resources and social security told reporters that China's job market indicators have stayed within a reasonable range, despite a series of weak economic data.



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"The job market has remained basically stable," said Vice Minister Xin Changxing at a press conference in Beijing.



Xin added that skills positions, with experience of sophisticated techniques increased during the first four months of the year while demand from labor-intensive industries decreased.



The Chinese government has considered creating more jobs as a top government priority as millions of current workers stand to lose their jobs due to redundancy caused by mergers and acquisitions.



The latest employment data serves as a breather for the series of data that showed China's economy continues to experience a slowdown.



Analysts were also concern that fewer jobs could be created in the country as more Chinese enterprises and investors look abroad for their expansion plans due to the slowdown in the domestic market.



Earlier, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang called for more efforts to ensure that college graduates will get employment and that their opportunities will not be lowered.



Li instructed local authorities to make employment a serious task in light of downward pressure on the economy.



In an instruction to a teleconference on the issue of job creation for college graduates, Li said support policies to widen employment channels should be improved, and reforms should be deepened to clear obstacles for graduates in starting businesses.



Official government data showed that the country's registered unemployment rate stood at 4.04 percent in urban areas at the end of the first quarter. The rate was lower than the 4.05 at the end of last year.



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(Photo : Sam Greenwood/Getty Images) Two alligators were found to devour human remains on Monday.

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Police in South Florida on Monday recovered a human body which was being eaten by two alligators in the Southwest Ranches. Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission assisted officials in retrieving the corpse.



Dead Body Found in South Florida



According to Davie Police Captain Dale Engle, officials recieved a call from fishermen who spotted the alligators eating what they suspected to be human remains. Upon reaching the scene, officials discovered the reptiles feasting on a corpse which appeared to have been there for a while.



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The Washington Post reports that the human remains were found on a canal bank in Southwest Ranches, around 15 miles from Fort Lauderdale. A large alligator and a smaller one were found devouring the corpse.



After scaring them away, officers from Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission assisted police in recovering evidence from the water. As a safety precaution, officers were armed with AR-15s to ensure the safety of the divers.



Officials reportedly recovered the body by 10 p.m. However, investigations into the cause of death is still ongoing.



Unknown Identity





The identity of the victim is yet to be found. However, according to Carol Lyn Parrish, the corpse was male. It is still unclear how the body ended up in a canal on the edge of the Everglades.



The age or race of the victim is still unknown. The Broward County Medical Examiner will conduct an autopsy.



Officials continue to investigate the death and the person's identity. If the alligators indeed killed the man, the Commission will go back and recover it.



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Church buys city park land to preserve cross monument; atheists offered 20-times the purchase price 31 May, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , |

PORT NECHES, Texas (Christian Examiner)  A Methodist church in Texas has purchased a small plot of land from the city of Port Neches so a small Latin cross monument in a public park there will not have to be removed.

City leaders agreed to the sale of the land where the cross has stood for 45 years to First United Methodist Church to avoid an almost certain lawsuit from the litigious Wisconsin-based atheist group known as the Freedom from Religion Foundation.

The controversy over the concrete block cross in the park began last year when FFRF complained that the presence of the cross violated the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which forbids an establishment of religion. In some instances, however, such monuments  which have stood for decades  are considered important for their cultural or historical value.

I would say it's a win-win situation for everybody involved. ... Folks were concerned about having the church on public property. It's no longer on public property. At the same time the church is not dismantling it.

For instance, in Van Orden v. Perry in 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled a Ten Commandments monument could remain on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol because of its long-standing historical importance.

Crosses seem to be different in the eyes of the court, even when supporters argue that the white Latin cross is a traditional memorial commemorating valor and sacrifice. But churches and private organizations seem to have found a workaround  purchasing the land on which the crosses sit.

That practice began in 2015 when the U.S. Department of Defense agreed to the sale of a $1.4 million tract of land on which the Mount Soledad Veterans Memorial stood atop a hill in San Diego. The property, including the 27-foot-tall white cross, was sold to the private Mount Soledad Memorial Association and the cross was allowed to remain.

In the case of the Port Neches cross, the church got a much better deal. It was able to buy a 20 x 20 parcel of land around the cross for $100.

That angered the Wisconsin atheist group. Its leaders, Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, quickly fired off a letter to the city's mayor, Glenn Johnson, offering 20 times as much for the land.

"We are prepared to offer $2,000 for the same parcel," the letter from FFRF said.

Later, in a public announcement of its desire "to be generous to [the] Texas town," FFRF said it was concerned that the city was penalizing itself by not accepting a larger sum for the land and that it might still be violating the law by allowing "a sweetheart deal" for the land  that is, engaging in the sale of the land without a formal bidding process. However, under Texas state law, park land may be sold by a municipality without a formal review process if the amount of land is less than one acre.

FFRF claims that if the purpose for the sale of the land was merely to save the cross, it is still invalid and the process is not closed.

But that isn't the case, according to the city's attorney, Phillip Brent. He told the Port Arthur News that the matter is closed and the church is now responsible for maintaining the 400-square-foot plot of land.

Rebecca Markert, senior staff attorney with FFRF, said she and the atheist group expect the city to place a marker at the site notifying visitors that the cross is on private property.

The Beaumont Enterprise reported, however, that the church  while it will maintain the property  has no plans to place a fence around the cross of to make the area look any different than the remainder of the park. It also said it has no plan to place a sign there making everyone aware that the cross is on church property, rather than on property owned by the city.

"Our plans are to leave it as-is," Wesley Welborn, the church's pastor, told the paper.

"I would say it's a win-win situation for everybody involved," Welborn said. "Folks were concerned about having the church on public property. It's no longer on public property. At the same time the church is not dismantling it."
The Taliban has reportedly attacked several buses traveling in Afghanistan. Nine people were killed, and 35 abducted.

The Associated Press reports that the attack took place in Afghanistans unstable northern province of Kunduz. The buses were reportedly traveling from the Kabul, the capital.

The governors spokesman, Mahmood Danish, stated, "There is still no report on the fate of the remaining hostages with the Taliban.

Although the Taliban did not immediately take responsibility for the attack, authorities attribute the violence to them. The Taliban is becoming increasingly active in northern Afghanistan.

In addition to attacking the buses in the northern part of the country, the Taliban reportedly attacked the eastern province of Ghazni, where a bomb blast killed one and wounded 12. They also carried out attacks in the southern province of Helmand where the number of casualties is not yet known.

Karim Atal, head of the provincial council in Lashkar Gah, stated, "If the central government doesn't come up with a strong security plan, we will witness of the city's fall to Taliban.

Photo courtesy: Thinkstockphotos.com

Publication date: May 31, 2016
Over 340,000 evangelical Christians filled the streets of Sao Paulo in Brazil for the largest "March for Jesus" on May 26, which is also an annual event that draws believers from hundreds of churches around the country.

The Reborn in Christ Church has been organizing the event for the last 24 years. This year, large crowds rallied behind 10 sound trucks and walked for about 3 miles to the downtown square in "the largest Christian event on Earth" where religious music concert played through the whole day until late at night.

The official website of the event provided live news coverage of people marching, raising their hands in worship, and praying. The website also featured live tweets, snapchat coverage, and live videos.

"We can say that March for Jesus is an event for the family! It's the biggest popular manifestation on world! It's the people of God's party," said Bishop Fernada Hernandes Rasmussen at the event. "We have to celebrate that we have freedom to show our faith! March day is an opened skies day. Is living the happiness, that is Christ salvation in us!"

Until the 1970s, only about 5 percent of Brazilians were Protestant evangelicals, but their numbers have grown to 22 percent of the population in five decades. Each year about 14,000 new churches open around the country.

The "March For Jesus" revival worked to sow seeds in countries to as far away as in Africa. Dr Nico Landman from Mount Zion Church in Johannesburg started "Africa March for Jesus," after he attended the event in Brazil in 2013.

"The seed was dropped in my spirit to take this march to Africa," Landman said.

"I quickly realized that the Jesus March was more than just an event. I truly believe that this movement of God is not just a demonstration and display of Kingdom unity, but also a prophetic proclamation that we belong and represent an unshakable kingdom, where Jesus Christ is uplifted as our Lord and King."

Churches from all denominations and school groups were invited to take part in the "Africa March for Jesus" to be held on June 11 in Mount Zion, Beulah Park, Johannesburg, South Africa.

In the US this year, two mass prayer events were also organized -- one on the West Coast and another on the East Coast -- on April 9. One was held in Washington DC, and the other in Los Angeles, as the organizers for the two events hoped to form a "Bridge of Prayer" across the country.

In Washington, the event was held at the Lincoln Memorial that reached about 30,000 pastors from different denominations and ethnicities. The purpose of the gathering was to specifically target pastors around the country through radio and TV, and involve them in deep prayers for the nation.The event was broadcast live at United Cry website..

In Los Angeles on the same day, 110th anniversary of the Azusa Street Revival was celebrated at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for Azusa Now, where as many as 100,000 people from different ethnicities, background, denominations gathered for a day in 15 hours of nonstop worship, and prayed for spiritual and social revival in the US.
A Muslim mob set fire to seven Christian homes in southern Egypt, and stripped an elderly woman over her son's alleged affair with a Muslim woman.

The 70-year-old woman was stripped naked and made to walk through the streets, and flammable projectiles were thrown at homes of Christians in Al-Karm village in Minya province which has the highest percentage (35%) of Christians in Egypt.

Her son who was rumored to be having a relationship with a Muslim woman had already fled the village with his wife and children a day before the attack.

A Member of Parliament and lawyer, Dr Ihab Ramzi, said that the tracts had been distributed in the village, calling for harming Christians in the area. Those tracts were delivered to police as well, but they took no action.

Police responded about two hours after the incidence, but the crowds had already disbursed by then. A top Orthodox Coptic Church cleric, Anba Makarios, said in a local TV interview that the mob was given "ample time" to wreak havoc on the villagers.

"No one did anything and the police took no preemptive or security measures in anticipation of the attacks," Makarios said on Dream TV. "We are not living in a jungle or a tribal society. It's incorrect for anyone to declare himself judge, police and ruler."

He said that the woman filed a complaint with the police only five days later, because she was not able to "swallow the humiliation." An official statement describing the woman's abuse was also signed by the cleric.

"They burned the house and went in and dragged me out, threw me in front of the house and ripped my clothes. I was just as my mother gave birth to me and was screaming and crying," the woman told Reuters.

The news angered the Coptic Christian community, and they have asked President Abdel Fatah Sisi to apologize to the woman.

"When a woman was stripped naked at Tahrir Square, President Sisi visited in hospital and apologized to her," Fady Youssef, the chair of the Coalition of Egypt, told a Al Nabaa.

"The Coptic woman is in no way inferior to the woman from Tahrir Square. It's her right to get an apology from the President on behalf of the Egyptian people for what this bunch of criminals did to her."

The president has condemned the attack and ordered investigation into the incidence and indict those responsible for the attack. He has also directed the local authorities to repair and rebuild the ruined homes from state funds.
Sudan continues to arrest local Christian pastors on ambiguous and little proven charges, ranging from espionage to undermining national security.

Last week, National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) re-arrested Rev. Kuwa Shamal, after releasing him in January following his brief detention in December, according to World Watch Monitor.

Shamal, head of Sudan Church of Christ (SCC) missions, was first detained on December 18 but released three days later. He was asked to report to the NISS everyday from 8 am to midnight until January 16. No legal reasons were given for the routine of lengthy interrogation by NISS, which resumed again in February.

Pastor Hassan Abduraheem Taour of SSC was also arrested with Rev. Shamal in December, but has not been released since, and faces charges of "undermining national security." He was even denied access to his lawyer.

This month, NISS released another pastor after detaining him for about six months. Telahoon Nogosi Rata of Khartoum Bahri Evangelical Church was incarcerated on December 13. However, no legal charges were framed against him. Rata was put in prison over suspicions of befriending a foreign missionary.

Under the Sudanese constitution, detainees cannot be held for more than 45 days without trial, but apparently all the regulations were flouted by authorities during periods of pastors' imprisonment.

Since South Sudan separated from Sudan in 2011, its northern neighbour has stepped up its campaign against Christianity. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir pledged to adopt a strict version of sharia law and only give recognition to Islamic culture after the country's breakup.

In April 2013, government said that it will not give churches licenses to erect new structures, and many of the churches which belonged to South Sudan were razed to the ground.

In June 2015, a group of young women were arrested by Sudan's Sharia police for wearing pants and exposing their arms in dresses. One of the girls was sentenced to 40 lashes. Her lawyers appealed and her case was dismissed by court after an international outcry and lobbying.

The best remembered incidence of persecution against Christians was in 2013. Meriam Ibrahim, a Christian, was arrested for marrying a Christian man, when she was pregnant with her second child. Her father was a Muslim and her mother a Christian. Her father had left her family when she was 6 years old. Sudanese court deemed Ibrahim's marriage as adultery because her father was a Muslim. She was sentenced to 100 lashes and put on a death row, subject to her recanting of her faith. However, she refused to change her faith despite pressure from authorities.

"Faith means life. If you don't have faith, you are not alive," Ibrahim said in an interview in September 2014. She added that faith was her "only weapon" in tough times.
Christian families in the US can adopt and care for children from other countries of the world, to be able to share their love and care with them for four to six weeks this summer, through an initiative by international hosting group Force for Christ.

This year, the international hosting program by the group aims to open American Christian homes for children from Malawi, who can spend the summer knowing the Word of Christ through loving families.

Chad LaForce of the Christian non-profit explains that "hosting is where an orphan child from another country comes and stays for a period of between four to six weeks with a Christian family in the United States. And so we facilitate that whole process."

The group said that in Malawi people there have to deal with problems such as poverty, starvation, malaria, and high HIV rates. The country has thousands of orphans, many of whose parents succumbed to such harsh conditions.

"A lot of their twenty-and-thirty-something-year-old parents, many many of them die. So you have thousands of orphans without an orphanage, without any infrastructure. Often times without food. Literally with just the shirt on their back," LaForce said.

American families will be given training and tips in Malawi culture and language, so that they can build thriving relationships with the children they will care for about two months. The hosting group said that most of the children know English, but they are also accompanied by a translator.

Force for Christ hopes that when Christian families host orphans, they will also be able to share the Gospel with them, and love the orphaned child the way God loved us.

Christians who are interested in caring for the young and have a room are invited to be part of the hosting program.

The non-profit reported on its website that orphaned children have 50 percent chances of survival by the time they reach the age of 16. Of those who live to see their 20th birthday, about 60 percent fall into prostitution or crime, and many others become addicts. The group also said that about 10 percent of orphans who have never experienced a healthy family grow up as depressed individuals and are likely to commit suicide by their 18th birthday.
Two Christian military veterans are on a cross-country bicycle tour and mission to raise awareness about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Michael Priddy and David Allison are a part of God-centered ministry Mighty Oaks that conducts six-day programs to help veterans and military personnel suffering from PTSD to gain strength from God and turn their lives around.

They want to raise $1 million through their bike journey, which started from Squaw Valley, California on April 28, and will end at Quantico, Virginia, covering a distance of 2,700 miles.

Mighty Oaks has seven locations around the country, where spiritual and psychological needs of military personnel are addressed through the message of Gospel.

"The suicide rate is 22 a day. As well as the divorce rate of most combat veterans is upwards of 80 percent. Most people don't know that. I think if more people knew about that they would be up in arms about it. They would want a solution for it," Marine vertan Michael Priddy says.

Mighty Oaks Warrior Program helps veterans and military personnel to come out of PTSD, by knowing the will of God for their lives.

"This program saved my life and changed my life," Priddy said. "If I didn't go to this program and be shown by men just like me that we can change. I am not sure where I would be today."

"I destroyed my marriage, I destroyed my relationship with my kids. I came home facing divorce and kids that didn't want to have anything to do with me," Priddy told GB Tribune.

"Our veterans today, they're told they're broken... There is healing. And they can live a purposeful life again," says Priddy.

"It's just the gospel of Jesus Christ and the healing power that can only come from Him and when the men decide to accept Christ," Priddy told the Christian Post. "It is just that instance when you make that decision and that instance that you get it and finally submit and fall to the altar and say, 'Ok God, do with me what You will.' That is the thing that starts the healing process."

The Marine vet shared that earlier this year, his biking partner and fellow veteran, David Allison, completed the Mighty Oaks program in Sacramento.

Shortly after that, Allison, an Army veteran who also served 30 years as a policeman, came up with the idea of launching a bike tour to serve struggling military personnel and raise money for Mighty Oaks' Sacramento outpost. Allison then recruited Priddy, who came on board with the project.

"Our hopes during our journey are to reach as many people as we can and get the word out about this program and hopefully get help for these veterans that are suffering with PTSD through the Mighty Oaks Program," Allison said.

"Its not one of those things that people talk about freely. But its fair to say that its hard not to suffer some of the effects of it when you deal with abnormal situations whether that's in combat or anybody that sees something out of the norm," says Allison.

They ride through different towns and meet other veterans at Churches and VFWs (Veterans of Foreign Wars), and speak to them about the message they are carrying.

"Our vision is to provide restoration and hope to the men and women who have selflessly given so much of themselves in service to our country," their website says.

To learn more about the program or to donate, click on the link provided by No Man Rides Alone: http://theeternitychallenge.com/donate/
"I prayed every day that I would be able to return home. But one year passed, and God did not answer my prayer. Then I started wondering, 'Does God want me to remain here?' And in the letter that I received from my mother, she said, 'I think this is the time you need faith like Daniel's.' A faith that can say, 'Even if he does not.'"

Then he prayed, "Now let not my will be done, but yours. I want to be used by you." And after that, everything changed. The prison guards who were keeping watch over him were no longer his 'oppressors,' but 'lost sheep' to whom he needed to share God's love. That allowed him to begin conversations with the guards, and one by one, they started to open up.

This is the testimony of Kenneth Bae, a Korean American missionary who was detained after visiting North Korea in November of 2012 and was released two years later. Bae shared his experiences while being detained and the need to pray for North Korea at a reunification prayer meeting at Seoul Myungsung Presbyterian Church on May 30.

Prior to his detainment, Bae had visited North Korea often and had been a part of a group called 'Gideon's 300 soldiers' out of a desire that the world would pray for North Korea. He had a conviction that change would come one day sooner if he could pray inside of North Korea. Then, a mistake led to the exposure of his identity to the North Korean government, and ultimately, to his detainment.

"At first, I was filled with worry, anxiety, and guilt," shared Bae. "But I was able to find peace again. It was out of the faith that God will protect me and that he will never leave me."

"After that, I just told them the truth about everything. Who I am, and why I came to that country. They didn't believe, but the voice of God saying, 'The prayer of one person can change a nation,' continued to ring louder inside of me," Bae said.

Bae received a 15-year sentence to labor on charges of attempting to subvert the government. He had to endure harsh labor from morning to night. And he was taken to the hospital due to malnutrition. The one thing that helped him to endure, Bae said, was the Lord. He said it was then that he was able to deeply realize the meaning of the oft-said confession, "Jesus is the only hope."

"The prison guards' evaluation of me would often go something like, 'hardworking and faithful.' It's because I would not be lazy in my work even when they didn't supervise me, and that's because I had this sincere desire that these people who have never even heard the name of Jesus would be able to see at least a shadow of who he is," he said. "I held on to my identity. I would remind myself, 'They may think of me as a criminal, but I'm here to be a light, to shine Christ's love.'"

It wasn't just the labor that made things difficult for Bae. According to him, North Korean officials would come everyday and tell him, "No one remembers you. You won't be able to return home." Bae was told this even two days before he would be released. He recalled that he had to wrestle every day to believe in God's voice, telling him, "I will not forget you."

"One day, a North Korean asked me, 'Is God really alive?' And I said, 'Yes, he is.' And he asked, 'Then why are you still here?' I responded, 'Maybe God has a different plan. It might be because of you. To tell you about God.'"

Bae was released in November of 2014. And he is praying even more for North Korea now than he had been before. One realization that came deeply to him during his time of detainment was that God has never forgotten him, and never will forget him, at any moment. And because of that, Bae said, he does not want to forget North Korea. And he urges the many people that he meets to remember and pray for North Korea.

"For me, it was only two years, but for them, they may have to live their whole lives trapped in that place, never knowing God," Bae said. "Please pray for them. What they need more than physical or material help is your sincerity. We must love them first, just as Christ loved us first. Please do not forget. Do not forget them, and do not forget the missionaries who are detained there while trying to share Christ."

And before he ended his testimony, he left the audience with a question that one of the prison guards asked him.

"We're the guards, and you're the criminal, but why do you look happier?"

This article has been translated. For the original in Korean, visit kr.christianitydaily.com.
I had the privilege or reading a pre-release version of "God Shines Forth: How the Nature of God Shapes and Drives the Mission of the Church." Here are 20 quotes from the book, which you should pick up.
Pastor Bent (Benjamin) Altschul of Great Among The Nations Returns to Cornerstone Christian Television Network's 'Real Life' Program and Declares God's Groundswell Revival

Contact: Great Among The Nations , 310-338-1021WALL, Penn., May 31, 2016 / Christian Newswire / -- Recently huge numbers of people are flocking around a political awakening that is filling the landscape of cities in our nation. The United States' presidential election cycle, lead by Republican Nominee, Donald Trump, is in center stage of this movement. But Pastor Altschul's message about Matthew 25, and the parable of the ten virgins, gives insight to God's mysterious eschatological steps and takes us a step further.According to Pastor Altschul, "This great awakening movement is not just serendipitous; but there is a spiritual message that comes with it. This country is God's property and it is designed to deliver the message of the Blessed Hope; first to our nation, then to the entire world. It will not be another 'church revival' as spoken commonly in religious circles. On the contrary, it is outside of the common religious interpretations of events that have been prophetically forespoken for this particular generation we live in today."For over 30 years, the forefront of Pastor Altschul's teaching has been about the events surrounding the rapture of God's people. Pastor Altschul is a Jewish Christian who committed more than 50 years focusing on Bible prophecy, offering an informed Jewish/Christian, messianic, perspective and has an extensive background in the historical study of Biblical prophecy.About Pastor AltschulHaving escaped the perils of WW II's Holocaust as an infant, Pastor Altschul was saved from Nazi death camps by being smuggled in the middle of the night on a Danish fishermen's boat across the Nazi patrolled waters to safety in Sweden. Then, miraculously he overcame incredible odds arriving in America, alone and turning $100 into millions by starting his own college textbook publishing business. In 1984, God caused Pastor Altschul to enter into full-time ministry that he has faithfully continued ever since. Great Among The Nations' website is www.gatn.org Click here for brief rapture message by Pastor Bent Altschul in Vienna, Austria (0 m 46 s) Click here for Cornerstone Christian Television 'Real Life' Interview with Pastor Bent Altschul (8 m 42 s) Click here for Pastor Altschul's biographical video, "The Great Awakening with Pastor Bent Altschul" (29 m 07 s)
LCMC Cambodia Partners with ALWM, ILT for the 5 Year Challenge



ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., May 31, 2016 /



Pastor Samuel Chim, Service Coordinator for LCMC Cambodia, has led mission in Cambodia for 20 years, establishing 50 house Churches, 9 Congregations, and 5 major regional projects.



Some of Pastor Chim's work includes establishing a floating school for 500 impoverished children, digging wells throughout the country to ensure clean water, and training pastors for mission work.



LCMC Cambodia is partnering with ALWM to create mission experiences for groups and congregations in the west and to raise awareness and support for the needs of Cambodian Christians and the Christian communities there.



ALWM, founded in 2007 by Pastor Bill Moberly, works to call, mobilize, equip, and network congregations for effective global outreach.



LCMC Cambodia is joining together with ALWM, ILT, and Lutheran Asian Ministries (LAM) to establish a new model for seminary training throughout Southeast Asia, including Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, and Vietnam. School for Asian Lutheran Theology, or S.A.L.T., is a project of ILT to establish training centers throughout Asia for the training of pastors and church leaders.



The 5 Year Challenge is a call to individual Christians as well as Christian Churches and Organizations in LCMC United States to strengthen their resolve to support Global Missions and to be part of pushing LCMC Cambodia into a new era of mission and evangelism.



To learn more about the 5 Year Challenge, visit



To find out more about S.A.L.T., visit



To see an informational video about LCMC Cambodia and the 5 Year Challenge, go to



To find out how you or your congregation can support LCMC Cambodia in the 5 Year Challenge, contact Pastor Chris Conner, S.E. Asia Coordinator for Awakening Lives to World Mission, at

Share Tweet Contact: Pastor Chris Conner, Awakening Lives to World Missions , 620-225-4812, revcjconner@gmail.com ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., May 31, 2016 / Christian Newswire / -- Albuquerque Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ, Cambodia, has partnered with Awakening Lives to World Missions (ALWM) and the Institute for Lutheran Theology (ILT) to expand and strengthen Christian Mission in the Southeast Asian Country.Pastor Samuel Chim, Service Coordinator for LCMC Cambodia, has led mission in Cambodia for 20 years, establishing 50 house Churches, 9 Congregations, and 5 major regional projects.Some of Pastor Chim's work includes establishing a floating school for 500 impoverished children, digging wells throughout the country to ensure clean water, and training pastors for mission work.LCMC Cambodia is partnering with ALWM to create mission experiences for groups and congregations in the west and to raise awareness and support for the needs of Cambodian Christians and the Christian communities there.ALWM, founded in 2007 by Pastor Bill Moberly, works to call, mobilize, equip, and network congregations for effective global outreach.LCMC Cambodia is joining together with ALWM, ILT, and Lutheran Asian Ministries (LAM) to establish a new model for seminary training throughout Southeast Asia, including Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, and Vietnam. School for Asian Lutheran Theology, or S.A.L.T., is a project of ILT to establish training centers throughout Asia for the training of pastors and church leaders.The 5 Year Challenge is a call to individual Christians as well as Christian Churches and Organizations in LCMC United States to strengthen their resolve to support Global Missions and to be part of pushing LCMC Cambodia into a new era of mission and evangelism.To learn more about the 5 Year Challenge, visit www.alwm.org , Awakening Lives to World Mission.To find out more about S.A.L.T., visit www.ilt.org , the Institute of Lutheran Theology.To see an informational video about LCMC Cambodia and the 5 Year Challenge, go to www.vimeo.com/168483946 To find out how you or your congregation can support LCMC Cambodia in the 5 Year Challenge, contact Pastor Chris Conner, S.E. Asia Coordinator for Awakening Lives to World Mission, at revcjconner@gmail.com or 620-225-4812.
home Faith Church of the Holy Sepulchre restoration begins

The major restoration of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre had finally began.

According to The Telegraph, scaffolding welding steel supports were put up by workers on Sunday, commencing the effort to restore the place where Jesus is believed to have been buried before his resurrection.

This is seen as a historic moment, marking the rather rare cooperation between the Greek Orthodox priests, the Franciscans, and the Armenians. The three main denominations of the Holy Sepulchre have had a tense history, their fighting of which have sometimes resulted to physical altercations.

The shrine, built in the 19th century over the cave which is believed to have been Jesus' tomb, stands under the church's dome, supported by a metal frame. The structure, according to The New York Times, is 206 years old while the support is 69 years old.

The marble slabs have shown signs of weakening over the years, in part due to the huge number of visitors. During the restoration process, the shrine will be dismantled and rebuilt. The parts that are deemed fragile will be replaced, but the slabs that can still be preserved will be cleaned. The dome's support will likewise be reinforced.

The project, funded by the three main denominations as well as from private and public donations, was initiated upon the urging to the Israeli government after which the Orthodox decided to negotiate with the two other groups. An agreement was reached in March, and the three pledged to shoulder one-third of the $3.4 million renovation cost. A Greek bank also contributed $57,000 for the scaffolding.

At the moment, visitors are still allowed to enter and a steel canopy had reportedly been erected over the entrance to protect them from any possible falling debris. The eight-month long project is expected to be finished by early 2017.
home US Death penalty constitutional challenge rejected by U.S. Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to hear an appeal asserting that the death penalty violates the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment filed by a Louisiana man convicted of fatally shooting his pregnant former girlfriend.

Two of the eight justices, liberals Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said they would have accepted the case, repeating concerns about the death penalty's constitutionality they raised in a different case last year.

The justices, who have sharply disagreed among themselves over capital punishment, declined to consider the appeal brought by Lamondre Tucker, who was sentenced to death for the 2008 murder of 18-year-old Tavia Sills in Shreveport. Sills, nearly five months pregnant, was shot three times and her body was dumped in a pond.

Tucker, who is black, had argued in part that black males had an increased likelihood of being convicted of murder and sentenced to death in Louisiana's Caddo Parish due to endemic racism.

At the time of Tucker's conviction, a Confederate flag, symbol of the pro-slavery Southern states that lost the U.S. Civil War that ended in 1865, flew outside the county courthouse, his lawyers said in court filings.

Breyer wrote that Tucker "may well have received the death penalty not because of the comparative egregiousness of his crime, but because of an arbitrary feature of his case, namely geography."

"One could reasonably believe that if Tucker had committed the same crime just across the Red River in, say, Bossier Parish, he would not now be on death row," Breyer said.

Breyer's comments echoed similar remarks he made in June 2015 when the court upheld Oklahoma's lethal injection procedures.

The shorthanded court has steered clear of taking major cases since the February death of Justice Antonin Scalia, but even at full strength may not have accepted this one.

There is no indication the court is any closer to taking a case that would challenge the death penalty directly, with the court's two other liberals, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, not joining Breyer's opinion. Four votes are needed for the justices to hear a case.

The pregnant Sills had told Tucker she believed he was the father. Later testing showed Tucker, 18 at the time of the murder, was not the father. The fetus did not survive.

The Supreme Court left in place a September 2015 Louisiana Supreme Court ruling that rejected Tucker's legal arguments and upheld his conviction and death sentence.

In the United States, 31 states have the death penalty and 19 do not.
home World Egypt president promises justice for elderly Christian woman subjected to public humiliation by Muslim mob

A mob in Egypt had taken it upon themselves to strip an elderly woman naked and parade her down the streets. In response, the country's president vowed that the people responsible will be brought to justice.

"We are all one and the law must take its course," said President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi on Monday, expressing that such acts of violence divide the people of Egypt.

According to The Telegraph, the mob's violence was sparked by rumors that the woman's Christian son had an affair with a Muslim woman. Her son managed to flee with his wife and kids on May 19, and she and her husband appealed to the police for fear of being targeted. A mob of about 300 came to their house the next day, looting the elderly couple's home and setting it ablaze, along with six other houses belonging to Christians.

"They burned the house and went in and dragged me out, threw me in front of the house and ripped my clothes," the woman told Reuters. "I was just as my mother gave birth to me and was screaming and crying."

According to local Coptic leader Bishop Makarios, no one did anything during the attack and the police did not take any security measures before it happened. He also said it took them two hours to respond to the mob's violence. By then, the woman had already been assaulted.

The president released an earlier statement condemning the attack and ordering the authorities to bring those responsible to justice. He also told the local authorities to have the damaged properties rebuilt in a month's time, the expenses to be shouldered by the state.

The event took place in the village of Al-Karm in Minya province, south of Cairo.
Ancient mosaic discovered in Church of the Nativity

An ancient mosaic hidden for centuries has been uncovered in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity.

An eight-foot tall angel was found by a team working on the restoration of the fourth century church, which was built by the Emperor Constantine and his mother Helena in 339 AD over what is believed to be the place of Jesus' birth.

It is revered by many Christians as a place of spiritual and cultural significance.

The angel is one of seven to decorate the walls of the church, and was found on the north wall between the fourth and fifth windows. According to the National Geographic, other mosaics made from glass, mother-of-pearl and local stones depict Jesus, his disciples, and his mother, Mary.

The restoration  the first of its kind on the church since the 15th century  began in September 2013 and has so far cost around $10 million dollars. The project began following the UN cultural agency UNESCO listing the church as an endangered world heritage site in 2012.

Before the project the roof was in urgent need of repair, and leaks had ruined a significant number of mosaics and paintings. The roof has now been structurally repaired, and treasured art works restored to their former beauty. A mosaic floor is also in the process of being uncovered.

The church is one of the top tourist attractions in the region, but the number of visitors has slowed since tensions rose last October.

Palestinian presidential advisor on Christian affairs, Ziad al-Bandak, told National Geographic that the resotoration project is about preserving Christian heritage.

"In Iraq we are witnessing the destruction of holy places," he said. "We are trying to protect the cradle of Christianity."
Bachelors behind bars: 13 women gain degrees from Christian college while in prison

Thirteen women serving time in a Louisiana jail have earned bachelor degrees from a Baptist college.

Five years since the initiative was inaugurated, the first 13 women from the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women (LCIW) have graduated with bachelor degrees awarded by New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary's (NOBTS) Leavell College.

"God is a redeemer who takes what is broken and fixes it, who takes what is hopeless and restores it, who is able to take lives and circumstances and transform them into something good and beautiful," said NOBTS president Chuck Kelley.

"We are here because we know God is a redeemer."

LCIW is a maximum and a minimum security prison housing more than 900 female offenders.

This is the first time the degree programme has been offered to women, however NOBTS has been offering a similar programme for men for 20 years. There are currently 30 graduates from Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola serving as "missionaries" in other institutions.

"I don't know what God will do with you or through you, but I know He has plans," said Kelley.

"Get ready. Get busy. God has something He wants to do."

In his speech, he likened the women's journey to the biblical account of Joseph, who was sold into slavery. Although his brothers meant it for harm, God used it for good.

"We're here because we believe in you," said Kelley.

"And we believe that the power of your life given in ministry to others can make LCIW, and the wide world beyond, a different place."

Kristi Miller, assistant warden and director of the programme, told the graduates "This is an academic accomplishment, but that's not why I'm most proud.

"I'm proud of you walking in a manner worthy of your calling... You are making a difference in the lives of the women here," she said.
Caught on camera: The moment a drone collides with ancient cathedral

A drone enthusiast was using his device to capture aerial pictures of an ancient cathedral, reportedly in the Netherlands, when the battery of his remote controlled aircraft fell below its required charge.

At this point, the owner lost control and the drone went onto auto pilot and attempted to fly itself back to earth.

As the camera continued to roll, the drone crashed straight into the steeple.

The video currently has over 10,000 views on youtube.

Anthony Ter Host, the owner of the DJI Phantom 3 Advance, described the event on Youtube:

"Trying to film the church, but lost signal and Return to Home was activated. It tried to fly back to the Home Point, but there was something in the way and crashed."

Its camera caught images of the town as it circled around the steeple of the cathedral before apparently making a bee-line for it, ending seconds before the device smashes into the brick tower.

Ter Host is not alone in having crashed his remote-controlled device.

In February this year, a man was arrested after he crashed his drone into the Empire State Building in New York.

There is an entire website dedicated to reporting domestic drone-related accidents in America, which has a live-feed of newly-reported accidents.
Christian school stands by biblical values despite risk of losing U.S. federal funding

Can you stand up for your Christian values at a time when they're increasingly being threatened by the forces of the left? A private Christian school in Wisconsin is doing just that.

The St. John's Lutheran School, Pre-K through 8th grade church-affiliated learning institution in Baraboo, Wisconsin chose to assert its duty to mould students based on Christian values, although it faces the risk of losing funding from the federal U.S. government.

The school, which currently has 147 students and 10 teachers, maintained that while its doors are open to homosexual or transgender individuals, it still has the right to discipline the young minds it is moulding if they commit sinful behavior that violates the teachings in the Holy Bible.

The educational institution, which gets federal funding to provide subsidised school lunches and bus services, formalised this policy in its parent handbook earlier this year.

"No matter where we are, our students will want to reflect Christian conduct," the school said in the document, as quoted by CBN News.

The school administrators also specified standards of immoral behavior, which included "scandalous conduct on or off campus which is a serious violation of Christian behavior (including premarital sex, homosexuality, use of illegal substances)."

The school's principal, Craig Breitkreutz, also wrote a letter to parents recognising that the educational institution protects students against discrimination. He however maintained that the school's primary responsibility to uphold Bible teachings.

"If we cannot legally refuse students who are struggling with homosexuality or gender identification, we must maintain our right to hold to the truths of God's Word," he said.

Breitkreutz further explained that the school can accomplish this goal in two ways.

"First, we have revamped our admissions policy to include the handbook agreement as well as religious orientation for all new students," the school principal said.

"Second, we have revised our discipline policy to more specifically state which behaviors are not acceptable and can lead to dismissal," he added.

However, not everyone was pleased with the school's decision to stand up to God's Word. The Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, for instance, filed a discrimination complaint against the school.

"The letter informed parents about issues related to gender identity and sexual orientation and said that the school was requesting birth certificates for students to enrol. It makes clear that the school does not intend to allow [homosexual] students to attend," the group said in its complaint.
Gender Wars: California state bills could be 'Armageddon' for Christian colleges

Could conservative Christian colleges in the US be forced to hire gay staff and accept transgender students? Could someone who was originally a biological male end up being roommates with a woman? Those are the questions exercising the finest legal minds in California at the moment with the passage through the state legislature of two bills. Together, they amount to what conservatives say is an attack on religious liberty.

The transgender issue is really a thing in the US at the moment, isn't it?

Yes, oddly enough. North Carolina seems to be the focal point as it has passed legislation widely believed to be discriminatory, but other states are also pushing back against the Obama administration's drive for inclusivity. Conservative evangelicals have been at the forefront of attempts to make transgender people use lavatories appropriate to the gender on their birth certificates.

So Christians are in the firing line for pro-equality advocates?

That might well be argued, some might think. There are two bills going through California's legislature at the moment. Critics says they represent an extraordinary attack on religious freedom, while supporters argue they are aimed at protecting the rights of minorities.

And what's in these bills?

Assembly Bill 1888 would bar colleges from receiving state financial aid for their students on the basis of their "sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression". At present institutions with a religious foundation are allowed to opt out of anti-discrimination legislation on the basis of 'Title IX' exemption.

Senate Bill 1146 narrows the protections offered to Christian colleges down to coursework dealing specifically with religious education. It also requires institutions claiming Title IX exemption to display their reasons for doing so prominently throughout their campuses, to publish them on their websites and include them in induction programmes.

So this 'Title IX' exemption isn't really worth much?

The promoters of the California bills aren't arguing with Title IX as such, they just want to cut off state funding to institutions that have it in place. That's potentially a huge problem. According to one conservation law firm, Advocates for Faith and Freedom, the legislation "would essentially cripple colleges by forcing them to implement gay-friendly protections on campus or lose state and federal financial aid for students". It says: "The punitive laws would undermine federal protections that have long exempted religious colleges from adopting anti-discrimination laws that violate the tenets of their faith.

That does sound serious.

Advocates for Faith and Freedom cites an unnamed pro-family watchdog group as warning that "their passage would usher in Armageddon for those seeking higher education from a biblical perspective".

But does the biblical perspective mean we should discriminate against people?

Some would argue no, but it's not quite that simple. Conservative Christian colleges would argue that there are plenty of places where gay and transgender people can get an education, but that they ought to be free to run their institutions according to their values. So in its application for a Title IX exemption, for instance, Fresno Pacific University, a Mennonite foundation, says it has accepted gay students who are willing to abide by its values and it "affirms the dignity of all human beings regardless of gender". However, it adds: "In keeping with our biblical beliefs regarding the morality of actions, we cannot in good conscience support or encourage an individual to live in conflict with biblical principles in any area, including gender and gender identity."

That seems perfectly reasonable, if that's what they believe.

Quite, but what the California legislature has to decide is whether Californian tax dollars should be used to support institutions that discriminate against Californians, whether it's on religious grounds or not.

Ah.

Indeed. So from a moral point of view, this is about the limits of freedom. There's an English proverb that says, "He who pays the piper calls the tune." In this case, some California lawmakers want to use the state's financial muscle to impose a particular orthodoxy on religious institutions whether they like it or not. Their supporters say people shouldn't be disadvantaged because of their sex or gender. Their opponents say there should be room for religious dissent in a liberal society, even if it costs the taxpayer money.

So where does it go from here?

If California does vote these bills through it's a very significant move. But it would be in keeping with the way the general tide is running at present. The Obama administration has sought to protect transgender students by warning that schools would have to agree not to discriminate against them in order to get federal funding. Conservative Christian institutions may be in for a difficult time.

Follow Mark Woods on Twitter: @RevMarkWoods
German bishop calls for Islam to be taught in schools to prevent radicalisation

The head of the Protestant Church in Germany has called for Islam to be taught in state schools to prevent radicalisation of young Muslims.

Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm told the Heilbronner Stimme newspaper that teaching Islam in schools nationwide would give Muslim pupils a chance to take a critical approach to their own religion.

The hope is that this would make them impervious to the "temptation of fundamentalists".

Bedford-Strohm said all faiths in Germany must be compatible with the country's democratic constitution.

"Tolerance, religious freedom and freedom of conscience must apply to all religions," he said in the interview, published on Friday.

He said Islamic associations in Germany should be responsible for these courses and hoped they would organise themselves to be a 'clear partner' for the German state.

Seven of Germany's 16 federal states offer some form of Islamic religion classes in their schools, similar to the Catholic and Protestant religion classes they have traditionally had.

Germany has about 4 million Muslims, about 5 per cent of the total population.

There has been a sharp rise in right-wing sentiment in Germany since Chancellor Angela Merkel adopted an open-door policy towards migration, allowing more than one million refugees and migrants into the country. The policy has hardened German attitudes towards migration and Merkel has since adopted a tougher approach.

This has fuelled the rise of anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany, which maintains that Islam violates the constitution and wants a ban on minarets and face veils.

Figures released yesterday showed there has been an increase in crimes related to extremist right-wing activity in Germany. In 2015 there were 23,000 attacks, according to the BBC, a 35 per cent increase on the year before.

Addtional Reporting by Reuters.
Iran bans pilgrims from Hajj amid spat with Saudi Arabia

Iranian pilgrims will be barred from participating in the annual Islamic Hajj pilgrimage, according to authorities.

Iran accused Saudi Arabia of "sabotage" and failure to guarantee pilgrims' safety as it announced its Shi'ite Muslims would not attend the religious festival. In return Saudi Arabia, which oversees the pilgrimage to Mecca, accused Iran of effectively depriving its citizens of the religious duty.

The spat has escalated after hundreds of Iranians died in a crush at last year's Hajj. The Saudi government subsequently cut diplomatic ties with Iran when its Tehran embassy was stormed in January after the Saudi execution of a Shi'ite cleric.

The dispute has provided another arena for discord between the conservative Sunni Muslim monarchy of Saudi Arabia and the Shi'ite republic of Iran, which back opposing sides in Syria and other conflicts across the region.

"Due to ongoing sabotage by the Saudi government, it is hereby announced that... Iran's pilgrims have been denied the privilege to attend the haj this year, and responsibility for this rests with the government of Saudi Arabia," Iran's Haj and Pilgrimage Organization said in a statement carried by state media.

Saudi media earlier said an Iranian delegation had left the kingdom after the second attempt to reach a deal failed. Saudi Arabia has blamed Iran for the impasse.

"Saudi Arabia does not prevent anyone from performing the religious duty," Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir said at a news conference with visiting British foreign secretary Philip Hammond.

"Iran refused to sign the memorandum and was practically demanding the right to hold demonstrations and to have other advantages... that would create chaos during Hajj, which is not acceptable," al-Jubeir added.

Iranian culture minister Ali Jannati said the issue of ensuring the safety of the pilgrims was paramount for Tehran following the death of hundreds of Iranian pilgrims last year.

"The Saudi government deliberately acted in a way to prevent Iranian pilgrims from... attending Hajj this year," Jannati told Iran state television.

Eight months after the last Hajj, Saudi Arabia has still not published a report into the disaster where more than 700 pilgrims were killed, the highest death toll at the annual pilgrimage since a crush in 1990.

Additional reporting by Reuters.
Iraq: Hundreds of displaced children make their First Communion in refugee camp

Hundreds of displaced Iraqi children made their First Communion on Friday in a makeshift camp in Erbil, Iraq.

Four hundred and seventy children living in Erbil's Aishty 2 camp for the displaced are making their First Communion in three groups between May 27 and June 10.

There are 5,500 people living in the makeshift Aishty 2 camp, the majority of whom - more than 2,000 - are children.

The children and their families are mostly from the city of Qaraqosh, where they fled Islamic State. All those making their First Communion are from the Syriac-Catholic rite, according to Catholic News Agency.

Qaraqosh was the Christian capital of Iraqi Kurdistan before it was attacked during the night on August 6 2014.

First Communion is the Catholic rite of passage which commemorates the person's first reception of the sacrament of Holy Eucharist.

Friday's mass was performed by Syriac-Catholic Archbishop of Mosul, Yohanno Petros Moshe, in a church built in the camp.

The church, which now has capacity for 800 people, was initially a tent erected when the Christian refugees first arrived in the camp. It now serves as the Aishty camp's main church, which is so large it is divided into three different sectors.

In March, four deacons were ordained into the new parish serving the camps who now work with refugees full time.
ISIS news: Terrorist group now using social media to sell captured girls turned sex slaves

The Islamic State (ISIS) apparently is now using social media to sell captured girls and women online in another possible indication of the terrorist group's financial woes brought about by the sustained military operation of anti-ISIS forces.

The photo of a woman around 18 years of age, "with olive skin and dark bangs that droop onto her face'' was posted last May 20 on Facebook with a caption: "She is for sale,'' the Washington Post reports.

"To all the bros thinking about buying a slave, this one is $8,000," says Abu Assad Almani, who attributes himself as an ISIS fighter, according to the report.

The same man posted a second image showing "a pale young face with weepy red eyes'' with a caption: "Another sabiyah [slave], also about $8,000. Yay, or nay?"

"What makes her worth that price? Does she have an exceptional skill?" one correspondent asks about the second woman, the Post reports.

"Nope," Almani answers. "Supply and demand makes her that price."

The photos have been taken down by Facebook.

Social media sites recently used by ISIS fighters have included "numerous" accounts of the buying and selling of sex slaves, as well rules for how to deal with them, according to the Post.

But the May 20 Facebook posting is the first instance of pictures being used in the sale of sex slaves, it adds.

The organization Human Rights Watch, citing estimates by Kurdish officials in Iraq and Syria, says ISIS holds about 1,800 women and girls, just from the capture of Yazidi towns alone, according to the Post.

"The longer they are held by ISIS, the more horrific life becomes for Yazidi women, bought and sold, brutally raped, their children torn from them," Skye Wheeler of Human Rights Watch tells the Post.

Meanwhile, an ISIS militant who was filmed two years ago bragging about buying ''green and blue-eyed'' slave girls has been captured by Iraqi Kurd forces, reports the Mirror.

In the video footage that was reportedly taped in 2014, the ISIS fighter is seen negotiating the price of Yazidi girls with traders, and bragging about paying $500 for those blue-eyed girls who are 15-years old.

Reports say that ISIS members usually sell girls and women in exchange for a Glock pistol. Buyers are apparently willing to pay depending on the looks and if the girl, upon verification, is to their liking.
ISIS tries to sell sex slaves on social media

Islamic State is starting to sell captured women on social media as "sex slaves", according to new reports.

The Washington Post reports that an IS fighter Abu Assad Almani, believed to be a German man who has joined the terror group in Syria, advertised a young woman for sale at $8000 on Facebook.

Almani wrote on May 20: "To all the bros thinking about buying a slave, this one is $8,000." He also posted a different image of a pale woman, adding: "Another sabiyah [slave], also about $8,000. Yay, or nay?"

Facebook acted quickly to delete the account and the photograph but it was verified by Memri.

The Washington Post reports IS fighters have recently posted details on social media about buying and selling sex slaves, and discussed issues such as whether it is acceptable to have sex with prepubescent children - the answer given is "yes" - and the rules around beating slaves.

Steven Stalinsky, of Memri, told the Washington Post: "We have seen a great deal of brutality, but the content that ISIS has been disseminating over the past two years has surpassed it all for sheer evil. Sales of slave girls on social media is just one more example of this."

The photograph did generate some debate from the terrorist's friends, but not over the morality of posting it.

They were more concerned to find out whether she was worth the asking price.

"What makes her worth that price? Does she have an exceptional skill?" asked one.

According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), as many as 2000 women and girls, mostly Yazidi, are being held as sex slaves by IS, which has defended the practice as Islamic.

HRW has catalogued terrible abuses perpetrated against these women. The charity recently reported the case of Sari, who lost her son aged 12 and daughter aged 10 to IS and was then taken with her two younger children to a farm and ordered to convert to Islam where she was bought by a Saudi Arabian IS fighter called Abu Aris al-Tusi.

She was then sold three more times, each time by a man who raped her. One beat her children. She finally got away after her family found her on the internet, where her owner had advertised her for sale. He had made her wear make-up for the photograph. Her family paid him for her return.

According to ZeroHedge, the financial stress IS is operating under means the terror group now pays a substantial bonus to fighters who own a sex slave.
Kenya: Atheists society suspended after Christian protests

An extraordinary row has broken out over the legal recognition of an atheists society in Kenya.

The Atheists in Kenya group was legally registered on February 17 and claims 115 members. It is the only atheists society in Kenya and claims to be the most "vibrant" one in Africa.

However, after protests by the Kenya National Congress of Pentecostal Churches (KNCPC), the attorney general ordered the suspension of the registration at the end of April. The group will remain suspended "until the propriety, legality and constitutionality of the registration is determined by the Supreme Court", said Githu Muigai's statement.

KNCPC vice chair Stephen Ndichu said: "As people who believe in God, we register our disgust to the [attorney general] for the way he has casually and in utter contempt been handling religious issues.

"He has now touched the nerve of every person of faith by registering a society that denies the existence of God."

He called for the attorney general's resignation, saying: "We ask the AG to quit office with immediate effect. We cannot have a legal advisor to the government who misleads the state on matters of religions. Freedom of worship is a constitutional obligation of every Kenyan, it should not be misrepresented for the interests of few individuals in the country."

Muslim leader Abdullahi Abdi also criticised the registration, saying: "We are a people of faith. We are now opening up to ideas that promote immorality through erosion of our values anchored on religion."

According to Kenya's Standard, society president Harrison Mumia said: "This group has no relation to devil worshiping, freemasonry, satanism. We do not intend to indulge in any sexual perversions, drug abuse or any other outlawed indulges. This is a party by atheists in Kenya and for atheists. We want to bring atheists together and only people above 18 are eligible to join."

Kenya is 82.5 per cent Christian. Its constitution guarantees freedom of religion but its preamble acknowledges "the supremacy of the Almighty God of all creation" and concludes "God bless Kenya."
More than 45 million people trapped in slavery

More than 45 million people are trapped in slavery around the world according to the latest Global Slavery Index.

The report offers the most accurate insight into global slavery so far and highlights a dramatic increase in the number of people in servitude from previous estimates. Authored by the Australian-based human rights group Walk Free Foundation, the study found a 28 per cent increase in the number of slaves from a previous estimate of 35.8 million in 2014 to 45.8 million.

North Korea was found to have the worst rates of slavery with one in every 20 in servitude, or more than four per cent of its 25 million population. The report said there was "pervasive evidence that government-sanctioned forced labour occurs in an extensive system of prison labour camps". It added: "North Korean women are subjected to forced marriage and commercial sexual exploitation in China and other neighbouring states."

Out of the 45.8 million slaves, 58 per cent occurs in just five countries. India was found to have the highest overall number of slaves with 18.35 million followed by China with 3.39 million and Pakistan with 2.13 million. However the report acknowledged India had made "significant progress in introducing measures to tackle the problem".

The report said: "It [India] has criminalised trafficking, slavery, forced labour, child prostitution and forced marriage. The Indian government is currently tightening legislation against human trafficking, with tougher punishment for repeat offenders. It will offer victims protection and recovery support."

The survey said it represented 44 per cent of the population through 42,000 interviews across 23 countries. As well as measuring the scale of slavery, the Walk Free Foundation also assessed government's responses to slavery and said "significant progress" had been made since the 2014 report.

The UK and the US were named among the countries taking the strongest action against slavery. Andrew Forrest, chairman and founder of the Walk Free Foundation, called on other governments to follow the UK's example and introduce legislation at least as strong as Britain's Modern Slavery Act. He added that organisations must be held to account for slavery in their supply chains.

"Leaders of the world's major economies must bring the power of business to this issue, by requiring a focus on supply chain transparency," said Forrest.

"I believe in the critical role of leaders in government, business and civil society," he added. "Through our responsible use of power, strength of conviction, determination and collective will, we all can lead the world to end slavery."

However the data showed that 11,700 people are still estimated to be enslaved in the UK. Louise Gleich, a human trafficking expert for the charity CARE, said the figures were "shocking" and should serve as a "serious wake up call to people everywhere".

She said: "Modern slavery exists and it is rife."
Muslims converting to Christianity in Saudi Arabia, despite intense persecution

Forced to live in secret, Christians in Saudi Arabia are being supported in their faith online.

Islam is the state religion of Saudi Arabia, where the legal system is based on Sharia law. Courts regularly impose severe physical punishments, including the death penalty, for apostasy, and non-Muslim places of worship are prohibited.

According to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), Saudi Arabia "remains uniquely repressive in the extent to which it restricts the public expression of any religion other than Islam".

The government prosecutes, imprisons and flogs individuals for dissent, apostasy, blasphemy and sorcery, and imposes "systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom".

It's not only religious people who are targeted. A law enacted in 2014 equates atheism with terrorism. The legislation bans "calling for atheist thought in any form, or calling into question the fundamentals of Islamic religion."

There are, however, some 1.4 million Christians living in the country. According to a study earlier this year, 4.4 per cent of Saudi Arabia's population identifies as Christian  up from less than 0.1. per cent (50 people) just over 100 years ago in 1910.

The majority of these Christians are expatriates or migrant workers, but according to persecution charity Open Doors, Saudi natives are also turning to Christianity.

The charity is supporting Mohammed (name changed), a secret believer who converted after learning about Christianity through an online discipleship course. He made contact with Christians in another Middle Eastern country, and then spent a week there  going to church for the first time, and attending Bible studies.

After a few days he was asked who Jesus was. "He is my Saviour, my God", was Mohammed's reply, and he was baptised, returning to Saudi Arabia with a Bible.

He knows no other Christians in his home country, but receives continued support online.

Saudi Arabia ranks 14th on Open Doors' list of countries where Christians are most persecuted. According to the USCIRF, the government has made "improvements in policies and practices related to freedom of religion or belief", but "it persists in restricting most forms of public religious expression inconsistent with its particular interpretation of Sunni Islam".

Human rights groups have heavily criticised the relationship the US and UK each hold with Saudi Arabia. Amnesty International last week called for an investigation after evidence emerged that illegal British-made cluster bombs had been used in Yemen by a coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Old adversaries join to commemorate Jutland centenary

The hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Jutland has been marked with a service at St Magnus' Cathedral in Kirkwall, Orkney.

The cathedral is the most northerly in the British Isles and the closest to the only battle between the British and German Grand Fleets of the First World War.

The service was led by the minister of the cathedral, Fraser MacNaughton. He was joined by the Royal Navy's chaplain of the fleet, the Venerable Ian Wheatley, and a German naval chaplain.

It was attended by the Prime Minister, David Cameron, and the First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon.

German President Joachim Gauck was also present, with the Princess Royal representing the British Royal Family. The Duke of Edinburgh had been expected to attend but was unwell. His son-in-law Vice-Admiral Sir Tim Laurence, said: "He just has a minor ailment and I think at his age it would be unwise to go and stand in a windswept cemetery for a long period at that stage."

Representatives of all the other nations connected to the battle  Australia, Canada, Ireland, Japan, Malta, New Zealand and South Africa  were at the cathedral. A Royal Marines band paraded through Kirkwall to the service.

Thousands of ceramic poppies were installed at the cathedral and a specially commissioned piece of music by the late Master of the Queen's Music, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, who lived on Orkney, was performed.

Descendants of those who fought at the battle also attended the commemorations, which drew to a close at the cemetery on the island of Hoy where 450 servicemen are buried.

A service also took place on HMS Duncan at Jutland Bank, the site of the battle.

The Battle of Jutland was claimed as a victory by both the British and German navies. It was fought in darkness and fog over two days in a series of engagements. While the Royal Navy lost more ships and men  14 sunk and 6,097 deaths  than the German, at 11 ships sunk and 2,551 lives lost, the German navy retreated to port and did not venture out for the rest of the war. Its failure to break the British blockade that would starve Germany into surrender represented a huge strategic defeat.

Admiral Jellicoe, described by Winston Churchill as "the only man who could lose the war in an afternoon", has been blamed  most historians say unfairly  for being over-cautious in not pursuing and destroying the German fleet. Many of the British losses have been put down to gunnery practices in which safety was sacrificed for speed.
Pope Francis tells children to embrace refugees, saying, 'Migrants are not a danger  they are in danger'

Pope Francis recently met with about 400 school-age children in southern Italy and urged them to welcome and embrace the migrants who have been crossing into their country, saying they have nothing to fear from these foreign strangers.

The meeting was billed by Vatican officials as a "summit on the migrant emergency," Breitbart and WND report.

"Migrants are not a danger  they are in danger," the pope told the children. He then called on the children to repeat after and with him: "They are not a danger  they are in danger."

Pope Francis also invited the children to recite a Hail Mary prayer out loud with him, to honour the young refugees from war-torn countries who have died at sea while trying to reach more hospitable shores.

The pope showed the children the life jacket of a 6-year-old Syrian girl who drowned in her family's quest for freedom.

"[A rescue worker] brought me this life jacket and, crying, he said, 'Father, I failed. There was a girl in the waves, but I could not save her. All that was left was her life jacket'" Pope Francis said, waving the jacket to the children, ABC News reports.

Speaking to the children directly, the pope said, "I don't want to upset you. But you are brave and you know the truth. They are in danger, many children ... they are in danger. Think about this girl. What was her name? I don't know, a child without a name. Each of you must give her the name you want to. She is in heaven. She is watching over us."

Pope Francis also recalled the biblical story of the Good Samaritan, telling the children that they should be like the Good Samaritan by welcoming the migrants as if they are their brothers and sisters, according to Breitbart.

He suggested that people who don't take care of others with a welcoming attitude are guilty of hypocrisy.

The pope also pointed out that strangers aren't necessarily dangerous and bad, telling the children not to fear the migrants just because they have different skin colour. He said they and the migrants are children of the same Father.

The children who met the pope live in Calabria, a region of Italy that has seen as influx of migrants from Africa.
Pope meets YouTube vlogging stars in Rome

Pope Francis has admitted he is a bit of a personal disaster when it comes to the world of online communication, but he knows how to win over the world's top YouTube vloggers.

The Pope entertained 11 of the best-known YouTube stars in Rome, including the UK's "sprinkle of glitter" Louise Pentland.

And while Pope Francis might not be ready to vlog on his own channel just yet, he has already set up an "Ask Pope Francis" website where he is inviting questions members of the public, with answers to be published in a book.

YouTube's official blog reports that building bridges can start with a simple conversation, and over the past 11 years, creators from around the world have used the platform to express themselves, encourage new perspectives and inspire solidarity within global fan bases.

"We want to continue empowering people to come to YouTube to tell stories and form connections that encourage empathy and understanding between diverse communities," YouTube said.

"That's why today 11 international YouTube creators met with Pope Francis, who cares deeply about bringing young people together. This first-of-its-kind dialogue took place during the VI Scholas World Congress, which the Pope created to encourage peace through real encounters with youth from different backgrounds."

The YouTube creators, with more than 27 million subscribers globally between them, were from 10 different countries: Louise Pentland (UK), Lucas Castel (Argentina), Matematica Rio (Brazil), Hayla Ghazal (United Arab Emirates), Dulce Candy (US), Matthew Patrick (US), Jamie and Nikki (Australia and Sudan/Egypt), Greta Menchi (Italy), Los Polinesios (Mexico) and anna RF (Israel).

During their hour-long conversation with the Pope, they talked about immigration, gender equality, loneliness and self-esteem and greater respect for diversity.

YouTube said: "We're inspired by the many conversations these creators have sparked throughout their YouTube journeys. To hear more about what they discussed at the Vatican today, tune in to each of their channels for personal videos in the coming weeks. We hope to continue helping people share their stories  the more we can all understand, the more we can come together as a global community."

The YouTubers then joined the Pope at the Scholas conference in the Synod hall in the Vatican. Scholas is a programme based in Argentina set up and promoted personally by Pope Francis.

Scholas works with young people aged between 15 and 18 from all over the world and of all faiths, not just Christian. The annual three-day conference in Rome is to enable young people analyse the problems facing their separate nations, give testimony through art, and facilitate interaction through the latest digital technologies. The object is to work for peace and integration. This year's was the first one attended by the YouTubers.

Hollywood stars at the conference included the actor George Clooney and his wife Amal Clooney, the actress Salma Hayek and the actor Richard Gere.

Pentland posted on Instagram:
Richard Dawkins 'simplistic at best, dishonest at worst', says Christian apologist

Richard Dawkins' arguments are "simplistic at best, dishonest at worst", according to a leading apologist for the Christian faith.

Simon Edwards, a speaker for the Zacharias Trust, spoke to Christian Today in response to comments made by the eminent atheist professor in a Q&A on Reddit. In response to a question on "why is the atheist religion so violent?" Dawkins said anyone who thinks atheists are violent don't know what violence means.

"There is no atheist religion. And 'violent'? Did you say 'violent'? Oh yes, I was forgetting. All those atheists beheading people, setting fire to them, cutting off their hands, cutting off their clitorises.

"If you think atheists are violent you don't know what violence means."

However Edwards told Christian Today the rhetoric suggested that "lurking within every religious believer is a potential terrorist and if we get rid of religion, the world will be a safer place.

"But attempting to lump all religious people into the one category is simplistic at best, dishonest at worst. I don't know many thoughtful people who would agree that Osama Bin Laden and Mother Theresa belong in the same moral category of persons simply because they were both religious?"

Edwards went on to say hundreds of millions more deaths had been caused by irreligion than any religious worldview.

"Sixty million perished in China under Mao Zedong and Marxism, for example, while Stalin accounted for more than 15 million lives in Russia. So too, Pol Pot's deadly regime in Cambodia involved a systematic attempt to wipe religion from society. The evidence is clear: states which officially adopt atheism as an ideology end up oppressing people."

Dawkins, an Oxford professor and author of numerous books including The God Delusion, went on to say: "Anyone who believes that what is written in a holy book is true even if the evidence is against it is dangerous."

On this Edwards agreed. "I would agree that blindly accepting anything, anyone or what any book says is an unreasonable and potentially dangerous approach to life. However, when it comes to the Bible and the life and resurrection of Jesus Christ, there is a multitude of historical evidence to support that what it says is true.

"Secondly, it's important to remember that not all religions are the same. To determine whether religion really is the chief motivating factor for violence, we need to ask if those who are causing it are acting in keeping with their worldview or in violation of it?"

Edwards pointed out Jesus had not sought political power and taught followers to "turn the other cheek".

He said: "Yes, violence has been committed in the name of Jesus, however Christians would be the first to hold their hands up and say that violence as a tool is certainly not a true reflection of what Jesus came to say and accomplish. Jesus taught that we should love our neighbour. He even taught that we should love our enemies!"
Sudanese pastor re-arrested in ongoing 'campaign to harrass' Christians - CSW

A Sudanese pastor who was arrested in December 2015 and subsequently released has been re-arrested, according to Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW).

Rev Kowa Shamal, a minister of the Sudan Church of Christ, was originally arrested by Sudan's National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) in December 2015 alongside his colleague Rev Hassan Abduraheem and Christian activist Talahon Nigosi Kassa Ratta.

Shamal was released in January 2016. In February conditions were added to his release, forcing him to report to NISS on a regular basis. He was also made to hand over his passport, laptop and other personal items, according to CSW.

On May 24, he reported to NISS as usual, but was arrested and his case is now with the prosecutor.

"We are deeply concerned by the re-arrest of Reverend Kwa Shamal. The Reverend has complied for months with NISS's requirement that he reports daily to their offices, even though he had not been charged with any crime," said CSW chief executive Mervyn Thomas.

This follows the transfer of Abduraheem from the detention of NISS to the Attorney General's custody on May 9.

Lawyers have confirmed that a criminal investigation has been initiated against Abduraheem, who may be charged with national security crimes, and that Shamal has been added to the investigation.

The lawyers expressed concern at the conditions the two were being kept in, reportedly in small rooms with intermittent electricity and limited ventilation.

"His treatment and that of Reverend Abduraheem are indicative of a government campaign to harass and restrict the rights of the Christian community," said Thomas.

"These developments and the ongoing detention of Reverends Abduraheem and Shamal also raise concerns regarding Sudan's compliance with fair trial principles, articulated in the 2005 interim constitution and the country's international obligations."

Both pastors were arrested at their homes. Although family members were given no reason, the pastors were among those who have objected to churches being bulldozed. Shamal's church in Hai Thiba Al Hamyida was demolished in the summer of 2014. Ratta, a member of Sudan Evangelical Presbyterian Church, has campaigned against the confiscation of church buildings.

"We urge the authorities to end the judicial harassment of the Christian community and to uphold the right to freedom of religion or belief for every citizen. We also call on the Sudanese authorities to rectify any derogation from constitutional and international fair trial principles and ensure that the men are detained in a safe and habitable environment," said Thomas.
U.S. appeals court rules in favour of transgender student in bathroom case

A U.S. federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday in favour of a transgender student who sued her school for discrimination after she was barred from using the boys' restroom.

Transgender student David Grimm, 17, born female but who identifies herself as male, won the case at the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which sent the case back to a lower court.

Grimm sued Gloucester County School Board for sex discrimination under the 1972 Title IX Act. A lower court threw out her case, but she appealed.

She said she started using the boys' restroom in December 2014 after being granted permission by the school principal.

"I'm not a girl. I'm not using the girl's restroom," Grimm said, according to the Christian News Network.

She was first allowed to use the nurse's room but it was a three-minute walk from class. She then asked the principal to allow her to use the boys' restrooom.

The school district drew up a policy that students must use restrooms according to their biological sex or else use a private bathroom.

Grimm filed the suit with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

"By excluding Gavina transgender boyfrom the boys' restrooms because the school board does not deem him to be 'biologically' male, the school board, under color of state law, has treated and continues to treat Gavin differently from similarly situated students based on his gender," the suit read.

District Court Judge Robert Doumar ruled against Grimm last September, saying "Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex and not on the basis of other concepts such as gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation."

ACLU appealed the case.

"At the heart of this appeal is whether Title IX requires schools to provide transgender students access to restrooms congruent with their gender identity," the appeals court ruled. "We conclude that the department's interpretation of its own regulation . . . as it relates to restroom access by transgender individuals, is . . . to be accorded controlling weight in this case."

The lower court will rehear Grimm's case.

The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) opposed the ruling. "Protecting students' privacy while using the restroom, showers, or locker rooms and not forcing them to share intimate settings with members of the opposite sex is not only legal, it's an important duty of officials who watch over our children," it said.
When secularism becomes sacred: The attack on free speech and why it's dangerous for Christians

Jesus would be banned from preaching at universities today, according to an eminent Oxford professor.

Speaking at the Hay Festival, Timothy Garton Ash warned against the erosion of free speech in Britain today. He said the public should stand up against the trend for "so-called safe spaces" and the "salami-slicing" of free speech in universities.

On the latter, he referred to the government's 'Prevent' strategy aimed at combating extremism, even of the non-violent kind. He told his audience: "Now non-violent extremists? That's Karl Marx, Rousseau, Charles Darwin, Hegel, and most clearly Jesus Christ, who was definitely a non-violent extremists. The Home Office wouldn't want him preaching on campus.

"This is a real threat I think to free speech and one we have to fight back against."

But he also warned against "no-platforming", an increasing tendency in British universities, which denies people whose views are deemed objectionable the space to argue them. He cited Germaine Greer, who faced a backlash from students at Cardiff University over her comments about transgender women (they aren't really women, she said).

Garton Ash was saying something really important. Christians need to be saying it too, but we also need to be hearing it.

In a recent lecture at the Manhattan Institute reported by the Christian Post, Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, argued that there is a "new religion" of "fundamental social justice" sweeping across American campuses.

He says causes like combating racism and homophobia have become "sacred", meaning it's difficult to have honest conversations about them.

""There is no nuance, you cannot trade off any other goods with it. So if you organise around fighting racism, fighting homophobia, fighting sexism, again all good things, but when they become sacred, when they become essentially objects of worship, fundamentalist religion, then when someone comes to class, someone comes to your campus, and they say the rape culture is exaggerated, they have committed blasphemy."

Both Haidt and Garton Ash are defenders of the right to offend, to be counter-cultural, to argue the unpopular and disturb the consensus. They are standing up against those who want to silence one side of a debate because it's assumed the argument is settled and that the other side is so dangerously obnoxious they shouldn't even be heard.

They're absolutely right, and Christians should be standing right alongside them, for two reasons.

First, denying people the right to speak openly doesn't mean they won't gain a hearing. It means their beliefs will be shared in pubs and in homes, in random conversations, on social media, among like-minded people. And because these people are like-minded, views that are wrong and dangerous won't be challenged and laughed at. They'll grow and spread, until there's a revolution.

Second, no-platforming certain views means that a government or an institution has taken it upon itself to decide what's orthodoxy and what isn't. It becomes an arbiter of truth. Germaine Greer's treatment is one example. And once that happens, there's no safety for anyone.

Now, we should just admit that Christians are in an embarrassing position here. For centuries, in many countries, we have sought to control public debate through blasphemy laws. In most historically Christian countries these are a dead letter even when they have not been explictly repealed. But now, many Christians feel that the boot is on the other foot. The new 'religion' of which Haidt speaks has become an anti-liberal sacred cause. It's not that it is opposed to religion as such, like 20th-century Communism, but it is ferociously opposed to religion that challenges its orthodoxy on matters like sex and the value of human life. Some things are becoming unsayable, or are heard only as an attack on what decent people all know to be true. Best to beware of religion; it isn't nice.

So Christians need to be very vigilant in standing up for free speech, for our own sakes. However, there are two problems to face.

One is that this can make conservative Christians in particular look distinctly unloveable, as though they are deliberately arguing for the right to be offensive. An example of this is the campaign in support of James McConnell, the Belfast pastor who was charged with making grossly offensive comments about Islam in a sermon broadcast over the internet. He was found not guilty on the grounds that his comments failed to qualify as grossly offensive. They were, however, offensive, and McConnell arguably misused his freedom of speech. To be legally free to say something doesn't mean we should feel morally free to do so.

Second: freedom is indivisible. Christians need to be as zealous in defending the freedom of others as we are in defending our own. We cannot expect to be exempt from criticism or to be able to call upon the law to defend us.

But there's a third question, too. Churches can themselves become 'safe spaces', where certain questions can't be asked and certain views aren't welcome. There is a body of orthodox Christian doctrine which is rightly to be taught and believed in every congregation. But what the Church  and society in general  has learned about free speech is that no one, in the end, loses by it. Every voice needs to be heard, every idea needs to be established, every individual's insight has value.

Follow Mark Woods on Twitter: @RevMarkWoods
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This past weekends Space City Comic Con at NRG Center was heavily touted from the outset for an appearance by nearly two dozen cast members from the hit FX biker show Sons of Anarchy, Star Trek and others.

Over the course of the weekend, rumors began to permeate social media of long lines to meet guests, long lines to enter the convention hall, and members of the Sons of Anarchy cast being less than pleased with their compensation for attending the event and poor planning all around.

A few bloggers wrote about what they heard and saw. Although some of those claims havent been substantiated, they seem a bit too universal to be explained away easily.

Cosplay mainstay Ava Jade's blog post went viral over the long weekend as well.

RELATED: Space City Comic Con attracts fans, families, and cosplayers to NRG Center

Some cast members, including Kim Coates, Ryan Hurst and Mark Boone Junior, used salty language to express frustration on Twitter with the events organization but also showed gratitude for the fans who stuck around to meet them all.

Coates described what happened as a complete breakdown by upper management and also hinted at issues with lodging in the area.

Actress Kristen Renton expressed regret over what she called an "interesting" weekend for the fans.

"Sons of Anarchy" cast members that made it to Houston dined together at a Mortons steakhouse, according to a photo posted by cast member Kenny Johnson.

To compound problems for fans, parking was an issue for many as high school graduation ceremonies at nearby NRG Stadium created a limited number of parking spots for convention goers. Parking was $12 per vehicle.

One of the promoters of Space City Comic Con, George Comits, spoke to the Houston Chronicle on Tuesday, giving a description of events that included Sons of Anarchy actor Charlie Hunnams alleged fiery behavior, an unruly personal bodyguard of Hunnams, and an angry confrontation inside Comits' office on Friday.

Reports of police being called during the supposed confrontation couldn't be confirmed by either the Houston Police Department or the Harris County Sheriff's Office. It's possible that on-site security may have been called.

Hunnam was contracted to be on site from Friday afternoon until Sunday afternoon to meet with fans, sign autographs and pose for pictures.

The actor, who played Jax Teller on the show, was all smiles and laughs in photos posted on social media from the event.

An issue with compensation appears to have made things go south for Hunnam and his entourage. There have been allegations of checks bouncing, which Comits attempted to explain as errors on Hunnam's part.

Reps for Hunnam didnt respond to a request for comment on Tuesday to get his side of Comits story.

Comits said that it was suggested that he leave the NRG facility on Sunday morning after there were threats of physical harm to him from members of the Sons of Anarchy camp, but didnt specify who.

We had a couple of volunteers walk off from their posts after being berated by fans after members of the Sons of Anarchy cast  including Hunnam  didnt arrive for a scheduled panel, says Comits, adding that the unpaid volunteers decided they couldnt take the stress.

FROM APRIL: Judge refuses to stop Space City Comic Con over name flap

The VIP ticket holders who feel slighted by Hunnam leaving the convention are having their money refunded, he says, but due to the Memorial Day holiday it might take longer to process those repayments. Some fans on social media told stories of paying nearly $2,000 for VIP experiences to the event, which obviously didnt go as planned.

Event ticketing group ShowClix has also apparently begun refunding fans for tickets they purchased for photo opps that could not be honored.

Still, some are saying that they are mulling over taking legal action against the convention organizers.

There is an internal battle, Comits says, including word that hes been removed from the conventions chain of command. Comits says that, as hes a majority shareholder, he cant be removed by a minority shareholder.

Meanwhile, another member of the Space City Comic Con management team, Johnny Steverson, says that Comits was given a no-confidence vote by board members on Friday. Comits disputes this.

Steverson said Tuesday afternoon that the Space City Comic Con camp was preparing a longer statement to the public about what occurred over the weekend.
Overheard at the May 28 opening of Killen's Burgers in Pearland when a line to get in wrapped around the building.

Customer: "What have you created, Ronnie?"

Ronnie Killen: "A monster."

Apparently a very enticing monster. On its opening day  coinciding with National Burger Day  Killen's Burgers was mobbed with a line that started two hours before the store opened at 11 a.m. Workers were busy gussying up the store (the space is the former Killen's Steakhouse) until minutes before Killen ushered in the first guest, Mike Stockman and his 10-year-old son, Robert. Stockman, who went to elementary school and junior high with Killen, said he had hoped to be somewhere near the front of the line when he arrived on opening day. But he was the first.

"I think it'll be exceptionally good," he said before his burger arrived. After he ate Stockman and son left with smiles on their faces.

There were a lot of smiles Saturday when the first customers tore through the menu that included burgers, grilled chicken sandwich, fried chicken club sandwich, hot dogs, crinkle-cut fries, regular French fries, sweet potato fries, onion rings and fried cheese curds. The curds are a nod to his friend, Houston Texans defensive end J.J. Watt. The curds also top the #99 Burger, named for Watt, that consists of two 10-ounce patties with Wisconsin yellow cheddar, Nueske's bacon, and served with a side of Wisconsin cheese curds (a tribute to Watt's home state).

Later in the afternoon on opening day Watt made an appearance at Killen's Burgers where a large photograph of him in Texans uniform hangs near the front counter.

The restaurant was closed the remainder of Memorial Day weekend and Killen hoped to reopen to the public on Tuesday. But the store needed some additional work and a Killen's representative said it may open for regular business later this week.
A shooting early Tuesday morning left one man dead and another wounded as they walked along a street in northeast Houston.

The gunfire erupted about 2 a.m. in the 9200 block of North Wayside near Record, said Arnauld Semmelrock, a homicide investigator with the Houston Police Department.
Police are searching for a man accused in the shooting death of a woman Friday at an apartment complex in west Houston.

Wilfredo Olla, 33, is charged with murder in the shooting, which occurred about 7:10 p.m. at 7000 Westview, according to the Houston Police Department.
Clear Brook High School senior Gabby Perez-Lozano wants a career that draws on her knack for solving problems and fits her habit of helping others.

She mixed those qualities last summer when she worked with another teen to create a device to provide more mobility for people with arm injuries than a sling.

"I'm happy solving problems, especially ones that someone else has," she said. "It feels humanitarian."

Perez-Lozano, 18, is heading this fall to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh as a biomedical engineering major.

She thought of the brace with Lessley Hernandez, a senior at Harmony Science Academy-West Houston in Katy, after they met at Carnegie Mellon's Summer Academy for Math and Science last summer in Pittsburgh. Perez-Lozano's sister, Mariana, attends the university.

"It was more like a cast at first but we wanted to make it better so we could help people with things like paralysis," said Hernandez, who describes Perez-Lozano as patient, calm and creative.

"She likes to sit down and work with you to build an idea up," Hernandez adds. "It's special to have someone with that kind of trust and respect in you."

The brace allows people with an arm injury to move the wrist and rotate the shoulder while keeping the rest of the arm at a 90-degree angle.

The duo put the brace together from scratch, primarily with materials they bought from Target.

Hernandez, 17, and Perez-Lozano still hang out. They've even thought of more ideas to continue to improve the brace.

A sheet of metal connects a water bottle covered in black mesh to a silver Seirus glove. A small black motor allows a hand in the glove to move around instead of being immobilized like it might be in a sling. The brace slips on top of a colorful Under Armour sleeve for extra comfort and is secured by crisscrossing Velcro straps.

Perez-Lozano, who said she'd like to make braces and prosthetics professionally, said it took close to a week to put the prototype together, which was created as a project for the program.

"I'm a natural perfectionist, but it's also about learning. When you can't readily see a solution, the challenge is about being open to new ideas," she said. "We changed the brace idea like five times before finishing it."

Perez-Lozano talks about how she and brother Alfredo enjoyed Lincoln Logs as children. It was an early opportunity for her to experiment with structure while learning how to assemble things and then explore how to do it more creatively.

Perez-Lozano, said it was her brother, who is a civil engineer in Austin, and sister who helped foster her interest in engineering. An all-state choir alto, Gabby saw engineering as the path most intellectually stimulating and emotionally satisfying, despite her love for singing.

"I also didn't want to take something that alleviated stress and make it a stressor," she added.

Perez-Lozano said that as a high school freshman, she wanted to pursue a career in music. As in engineering, she approaches music technically, explaining how she reads and interprets music to understand the notes as well as the underlying emotion in a song.

Still, even singing became a stressor for her, after she failed to earn all-state honors as a junior last year.

"She became more determined, rather than dejected," said Jon Marcum, Clearbrook's choir director, "That allowed her to continue to mature as a musician, which in turn gave her the skills she needed to make state this year."

Marcum described Perez-Lozano as hard-working and attentive.

"She is involved in many things and manages to do them all well," he said. "Her best quality is that she is positive and encouraging to everyone around her."

Perez-Lozano has tutored fellow students in subjects like Spanish, calculus and algebra. She's also helped them in English, a language she couldn't speak when she first started school as a child.

She graduates in a June 3 ceremony at Clear Creek ISD's Challenger Columbia Stadium.

A self-described bad-joke aficionado, Perez-Lozano eventually wants an internship with a company that makes prosthetics or develops biomechanical equipment.

"I just like thinking of the mechanics of things," she said. "As long as I can work with and for people."
Missouri City resident Erika Richie's activism on behalf of LBGT adults and children began in August 2014 with a band concert.

Richie's seventh-grade child was a trumpet player in Fort Bend ISD's Dulles Middle School honors band. For performances that year, the boys had to wear tuxes. The girls had to wear dresses. Richie's child, who was born female, didn't want to wear a dress.

That's when he came out as transgender.

Two years later, and after dozens of band concerts in which he wore a tuxedo, 13-year-old Landon Richie has socially transitioned to a boy at school.

Though Erika Richie is a self-described introvert, she's starting advocating for LGBT adults and children.

She is an administrator for a Facebook support group for mothers of transgender sons and blockwalked last fall in support of the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, a measure defeated by Houston voters that would have banned discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Now, Richie and fellow Dulles Middle School parent Januari Leo have started an effort to expand Fort Bend ISD's nondiscrimination statement to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression.

Since April, Richie and Leo, with the help of ACLU community organizer Caroline Duble, have organized student volunteers to speak at district board meetings, encouraging the board to put discussion of a policy change on a meeting agenda.

"We've been quite fortunate that Landon hasn't experienced any barriers," Richie said. "But we feel we have to speak up for the children who don't have support at school or at home."

Fort Bend ISD prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, national origin and disability.

It doesn't specifically refer to sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression, though it does include "any other basis prohibited by law" in its statement of nondiscrimination.

The district protects LGBT students through an extensive anti-harassment policy, which prohibits harassment based on a students' actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity, as well as regarding other characteristics such as race and gender.

But while race and gender are repeated in Fort Bend ISD's statement of nondiscrimination, definition of discrimination, gender identity and sexual orientation are not.

Fort Bend ISD officials and board president Kristin Tassin say the district's policy is enough.

"I feel like the board's current policy is a strong policy that is written broadly to ensure that all students who might be dealing with issues of gender orientation and identity are protected from bullying and harassment," Tassin said in an email message.

But discrimination is different and often more subtle than harassment, argues Rebecca Robertson, legal and policy director of the Houston-based America Civil Liberties Union of Texas.

Discrimination could include a teacher persistently refusing to refer to students by their preferred name or gender pronoun, Robertson said.

Another example, she said, could be administrators banning a student from attending a dance with a same-sex date.

Elkins High School senior Nicholas Singleton spoke to the board saying that officials at that school did not permit the campus's Gay Straight Alliance to use rainbow colors on promotional posters when other student groups didn't have the same restrictions.

Fort Bend ISD said it has no record or prior knowledge of the incident.

According to guidelines released jointly in May by the U.S. departments of education and justice, discrimination could include not permitting students to use locker rooms or bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity.

That directive has sparked heated disagreements over the issue on a Facebook page for district parents.

LGBT students are protected from discrimination by the U.S. Department of Education, which has historically interpreted federal Title IX provisions - which prohibits discrimination based on sex - to include transgender students.

The state lacks any policy explicitly prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression.

So, in a district like Fort Bend ISD, LGBT students have limited options to address or prevent discrimination in their schools short of filing a suit with the U.S. Department of Education, Roberts said.

Those suits often take years to resolve, she said.

But a local policy expressly banning discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression would mean that complaints of discrimination from LGBT students could be resolved on a school or district level, Roberts said.

That's what Richie and Leo are seeking.

"We want to be preventative," Leo said. "We want administrators and teachers to have clear guidance and clear training on how to work with LGBT students."

Most area school districts, including Katy ISD and Lamar CISD, don't include sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression in their nondiscrimination policies.

Houston ISD trustees unanimously included such students in the district's statement of nondiscrimination and definition of discrimination in 2011.

Pasadena ISD's statement of nondiscrimination and definition of discrimination include actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. The policies of Aldine ISD include sexual orientation.

To change Fort Bend ISD's policy, the board president or superintendent would have to place the item on a meeting's agenda at least 72 hours in advance.

Two board members could also request an item be placed on the agenda.

At an April 25 board meeting, Landon Richie said he didn't face discrimination when he socially transitioned to a boy beginning in August 2015, the start of his eighth-grade year at Dulles Middle School.

Erika Richie said she and her husband worked with a school counselor and the principal to make accommodations for Landon, ranging from use of locker rooms to telling teachers to refer to Landon by the correct gender pronoun and his new name.

The school also quickly addressed any instances of bullying from other students, Richie said.

Richie doesn't have any complaints about the process.

But that doesn't mean a more inclusive nondiscrimination policy isn't necessary, Landon Richie said at the April meeting.

"With the reassurance an inclusive nondiscrimination policy brings, students can get more out of a school experience," he said.

The district last approved its nondiscrimination policy in July 2014.

Though trustees have been reviewing board policy over the past year, its nondiscrimination policy isn't on the board's schedule because it was approved less than two years ago, Tassin said.

The board hasn't discussed the issue as a whole, Tassin said.

The issue of transgender students' use of bathrooms sparked conflict on a Facebook page for district parents after the U.S. departments of education and justice's joint guidelines, with some parents questioning if the guidelines jeopardize rights to privacy in locker rooms and bathrooms for students who are not transgender.

Duble hopes the policy will be expanded by the start of the 2016-17 school year. She, Richie and Leo plan to continue contacting board members throughout the summer.

Richie said she'll advocate for a policy change for as long as it takes.

"Things move slowly," Richie said. "And so we are willing to be in it for the long haul, and to help educate along the way."
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Whoever wins the runoff for Missouri City's council at-large Position 2 will assume office during a time of growth and change.

Incumbent Chris Preston will square off against former council member Cynthia Gary for the seat. The runoff resulted after none of the candidates in the May 7 election, which included Susan Soto, acquired 50 percent plus 1 of the vote, said John Oldham, elections administrator for Fort Bend County.

In an election that drew slightly more than 11 percent of voters, Preston won 37.41 percent, or 1, 840 votes, in the Position 2 race while Gary secured 31.47 percent, or 1,548 votes.

The winner will get a two-year term in the city government, which has six council members and a mayor.

Missouri City is in the midst of change. Houston Community College is planning to build a campus on Texas Parkway next to City Hall, and the city is attempting to form a 501(c)3 nonprofit group affiliated with its parks and recreation department to help raise money for projects.

Gary, 57 is a former educator who held the District B council seat in 2007 and previously served on the Fort Bend ISD board after being appointed in 2012.

Gary said she supports the HCC campus as well as Park 8Ninety, a 120-acre business park being built by at Beltway 8 and U.S. 90A.

"HCC will bring businesses to the city. It's also going to be a benefit to the residents who are thinking of going back to start their education or continue their education," she said. "The business park will increase tax revenue for the city and possibly lower property taxes for homeowners."

Preston, 29, is a business owner, according to the city's website, and is seeking his second term on the council. Attempts to reach him for comment were unsuccessful by presstime.

Gary said her platform is about uniting the city.

"It's important that we work to bridge the gap that exists in the city. I want us to become one people, one city where we identify with the city we live in," Gary said. "Missouri City is a place to be proud of.

"When I talk to people who live in Pearland or Sugar Land, they say they live in Pearland or Sugar Land. But a lot of times, when I speak to people in Missouri City, they'll identify and say, 'I live in Riverstone or Sienna,' " Gary said. "I want more of the community coming together."

According to the city's website, Preston graduated from Morehouse University with a bachelor's degree in political science. A bio on the website lists his goals as including strengthening schools, creating safer neighborhoods and fostering economic prosperity.

Early voting is through June 7. Visit www.fortbendvotes.org for polling locations.
Katy ISD critic-turned-trustee George Scott agrees that he brings something unique to the district's tightly run board.

Scott has spent more than three decades building a reputation as a watchdog who vigorously questions the school board's fiscal decisions and transparency.

But that's exactly why he believes he will have success as a trustee after narrowly defeating longtime incumbent Joe Adams in the election for Position 1.

"I've been preparing for this race my whole career," said Scott, who was scheduled to be sworn in May 31. "It seemed like the perfect storm. I don't dislike Joe, but Joe became a symbol of the things that have gone wrong in public education."

After initial results from the May 7 election showed him defeating Adams by three votes, a May 24 recount affirmed the win, with Scott winning by six votes, 1,479-1,473.

Adams had been on the board since 1989, defeating opponents nine times before this election. With Scott, voters indicated a desire to elect a trustee not afraid to shake things up.

But the victory also illustrates a divide in Katy over those who are comfortable with how the district's leadership has operated and those who think an independent voice is needed.

Scott vows to challenge a status quo that he said has long existed in Katy ISD boards, saying trustees have become too influenced by Superintendent Alton Frailey on their decisions.

"I've been a very strong critic, but my goal is to try and work with the other board members," Scott said. "Can we agree that the district can do better job with communication to the media and public? Can we hold the superintendent more accountable? I want those talks to be professional."

Scott spent years as a senior researcher and president for a nonprofit public policy firm named Tax Research Association, which no longer exists.

He also served for years as a media liaison of the Harris County Appraisal District, as well as the Harris Health System's board of managers.

He was publisher of The Katy Times newspaper from 1983-86 and has lived in Katy since the 1980s. His wife is a district teacher.

Scott ran for the board in 1986 and lost.

He once talked of creating a "shadow board" to critique the Katy ISD board and district. The group's main focus would have been to "use public data to take aim at the district's use of high-stakes testing." But that project didn't happen because of lack of funds.

Katy ISD has drawn community criticism at times, such as when it stopped taping work-study meetings around the time public-comment periods were moved from regular meetings to those sessions.

The board eventually reinstated the taping.

Scott's main strategy to win, he said, was to rely on the Internet.

He operated a website, www.georgescottrepoorts.com, as a platform to post blogs and articles regarding his campaign.

He also ran a Facebook page where he regularly published posts related to the election.

Scott would pick random times and days to sit with his computer for hours and give any kind of update he could, including videos of himself talking and thoughts on his trustee race.

In the weeks leading up to Election Day, Scott spent hours knocking on doors and phoning people for support.

"I don't think Joe understood I was running a serious campaign," Scott said. "He took it for granted."

He spent most of his campaign funds on online advertisements.

By the campaign report filed eight days before Election Day, Scott had spent $3,493 on the campaign, with $1,649 coming from personal funds.

Adams had spent $246 on printed advertisements out of $1,200 raised, according to a report for the same period.

Scott began receiving endorsements from former district employees, and eventually, county officials.

"He is going to stand up for taxpayers," said Harris County Precinct 3 Commissioner Steve Radack, who has known Scott for decades and has raised concerns about how traffic problems could result from KISD's decision to build its new $62.5 million stadium next to its existing one.

"Scott is not shy. He will not back down, and if he has a question, he will ask it," Radack said.

"He will take this board position extremely seriously. It was a grassroots campaign, but he's also been around a long time. He's well-known."

During the campaign, Adams argued that experience on the board mattered more and that the district's high ranking was proof of an already well-run board.

"We are disappointed that we didn't win the election, but we had 27 years on the school board, and I'm very proud of my time on the school board," Adams said.

"Katy ISD is a great school district. I think the future there is bright. I don't think anything changed (with voters). People are happy with the district. But many people tend not to vote, and we saw that on Election Day."

Adams owns remodeling and window-blinds companies in Katy.

He said he would volunteer at the district and does not know if he will run for a board position again.

In his 27 years on the board, Adams saw Katy ISD grow by more than 53,000 students to an enrollment of 73,000.

His tenure spanned the terms of three superintendents and included the opening of 41 of the district's 60 schools.

When asked if the board could co-exist with Scott, board president Charles Griffin didn't say much.

"I am honored to have served with Joe for the last four years. He has done a great job leading this district and providing for our students," Griffin said in an email message. "We as a board look forward to (Scott's) involvement in keeping the district a great place for our students and our community."

Scott is preparing for his first days on the board much like he said he has prepared for any position he's held - by studying.

A passionate note-taker, he has kept 15 black, 4-inch binders for some time that are stuffed with information from the district such as its performance on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, as well as a long list of information requests he's filed to Katy ISD.

Scott wants to prove his critics wrong.

"I want to surprise people who think I'm going to be a loose cannon," Scott said, "with how respectful I'm going to be while being consistent with my principles."
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About seven years ago, officials from the University of Houston System and the Katy Area Economic Development Council began discussing a vision for a large campus in Katy.

That plan is finally coming together. The university is purchasing 46 acres for a campus on the northeast corner of the Grand Parkway and Interstate 10.

The campus will provide significantly more space and programs than the landlocked University of Houston System campus in Cinco Ranch, which will close in the fall.

The project is happening as rapidly growing Katy is targeted for other opportunities for higher education.

"We were always going to be limited to a small number of students in Cinco Ranch," said Richard Phillips, the university's associate provost for outreach and community engagement. "We recognized a need for expansion in higher education. Where we are right now down Mason Road has become primarily residential. Where we are going to be (with the new campus) will be much more accessible to people and significantly better."

The campus could open as soon as fall 2018 but more likely at some point in 2019, Phillips said. It will open with a 60,000-square-foot building with others to follow, and another 12 to 14 acres could be purchased.

Enrollment is envisioned as eventually reaching 8,000 to 10,000, more than three times what the 37,000-square-foot Cinco Ranch building holds.

About seven years ago, then-state Sen. Glenn Hegar began a committee in Katy to study higher education needs in the area, according to Phillips, who chaired the group.

The Katy Area EDC helped the group conduct a growth study to back up a request for funding from the Legislature to build a campus.

Last year, the Legislature approved $46.8 million to purchase the land and construct the campus. The cost alone for the land, which is owned by Parkside Capital, a land-investment company, is $13.8 million. The university's board of regents approved the purchase on May 19.

The Katy area is expected to increase by more than 230,000 residents to approximately 550,000 in 20 years.

"For our community to continue its economic success and growth, it is important that we have a work force which boasts employees with strong educational background," EDC President/CEO Lance LaCour said in an email message. "Adding enhanced UH curriculum and degree programs to our area will go a long way toward achieving that. Additionally, companies looking to locate or expand in our area often look at the educational opportunities available as part of the site-selection process."

Other higher education institutions in the area include Houston Community College and Strayer University, a Virginia-based private college.

The Cinco Ranch campus mostly offers business-related classes. The planned campus will offer that and also concentrate on engineering classes, Phillips said.

"There's a need for employees trained in engineering in that area with the Energy Corridor nearby," Phillips said. "We met with energy industry leaders out there, and they gave us their input."

The university's plan, Phillips said, looks much like the healthcare industry, where hospitals are rising in suburban areas as growth surges and businesses look for a way to help customers with shortened travel times. Phillips said the university is plotting out possible sites for other suburban locations.

An undetermined temporary location will be leased for classes until the new campus is ready.

Once the land deal is finalized, the university will move forward with a design first and then construction while creating a list of programs for the new campus.
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Signing a letter of intent is usually reserved for those highly sought after star athletes, who after months of courting, commit to the college of their choice.

However, the Spring Independent School District has added a different twist with 28 graduating seniors signing letters of intent to return to the district as teachers when they earn their degrees and teaching certification.

"We've had plenty of students who've come back to teach in the district, but we've never done anything like this," said Karen Garrison, Spring ISD's communications director.

The 28 seniors, most of whom wore the college T-shirts where they will begin their collegiate careers, have been pursuing an education career pathway at their perspective high school campuses.

Deeone McKeithan, Spring ISD's chief of human resources, worked with Cynthia Williams, the district's director of career technology and education, to launch what the district hopes will be an annual event.

"As a district, we are dedicated to growing our own, and as a part of our plan we believe this signing day is so very important to us, as well as it is to you," he said.

The education career pathway program was introduced at Carl Wunsche Sr. High School when it opened in 2006, and has since expanded to all of the SISD high schools.

While in the program, students are prepared for roles related to planning, managing and providing education training services. Starting in the ninth grade, students in the program are exposed to classroom leadership, some pedagogy, and through a relationship with Junior Achievement are given the opportunity to intern as a classroom teacher at several Spring ISD elementary and middle schools.

McKeithan said this program, as well as partnerships with universities, such as the partnerships recently approved with Texas A&M University and Prairie View A&M University, help the district find and train future teachers.

"We understand that this rich talent pool sits in the classrooms we have today," he said.

Eboni Jenerette, Spring ISD's 2016 Rookie Teacher of the Year and a Spring ISD alumna, could relate to the seniors and presumably future teachers being recognized.

"Teachers don't just teach contentThe art of teaching comes with listening to your students, honoring your students, giving them what they need and meeting them on their levelA piece of peace in a world of chaos. That is your responsibility," she said. "It will not always be easyYou are prepared for this. Your district made you for this."

By signing the letter of intent, students who plan to become educators have until May 2021 to achieve their goal. During the course of obtaining their degree and becoming certified teachers, they will receive preferential placement in the district's student teaching program, as well as the needed observation hours for becoming certified.

Upon being certified, those former students would then be offered employment as new teachers.

"We are really excited to be able to do that because at your graduation, you know that you can come back home and that we will have a spot for you," McKeithan said.

Wunsche High School senior Jasmine Jolivette will start her journey to become a teacher at Texas A&M University this fall.

Jolivette, who aspires to be a second-grade teacher in Spring ISD, remembers playing school when she was a little girl.

"I used to play with my stuffed animals and give them assignments," she said. "My younger brothers had to participate, too. But it was fun for me."

Jolivette said hearing the comments from Jenerette, and knowing that she was once where they were inspired her to do her best and follow her dream.

Janelle Davis, Jolivette's mother, feels her daughter has been on the path of being a professional educator for most of her life, and is convinced she will be one of those special teachers everyone remembers.

"She has wanted to be a teacher since she was in the second grade," Davis said. "She has three younger brothers, so I thought she'd be tired of kids, but she loves it. Kids are just attracted to her."
What was supposed to be a straightforward land sale to raise funds so families could maintain their community at Northwoods Catholic School in Spring turned into a fiery legal battle between a parent, a priest and the nonprofit educational foundation that owns the land.

Litigation has been pending for more than a year with parties filing petitions, motions and notices for hearings, and the school's students will no longer be able to attend the 17-year-old campus. Parents and employees were told that it would close by the end of May.

"There are two priorities, to finish the school year strong and make sure we get that done and the kids continue to receive a good education, and the second one is to make sure they have a landing place for next year, and that's a little more difficult," said Jim Fair, the Legionaries of Christ director of communications and public relations for North America. The Legionaries of Christ is an international Catholic order that financially supported the school in Spring. Northwoods Catholic School is operated under the philosophy and methodology of the Legionaries, and the school's priests are from the Catholic order.

But the legal battle is heating up. On May 2, the Harris County 165th District Court reset the trial date from July 25 to April 3 for the Northwoods land dispute after all parties agreed to postpone the trial.

Parent turns plaintiff

Robert Pinard, was a Northwoods parent and the president and CEO of Houston-based Pinard Home Health Inc., which has provided in-home medical and non-medical services to patients in Harris and Montgomery counties for 13 years. Its office off Stuebner Airline Drive is about 10 minutes from the Catholic school, where his daughter attended.

After becoming aware of the school's financial strain and desire to shave off some of its 50 acres in late 2014, Pinard and his attorney attempted to negotiate a deal for raw land with Northwoods Educational Foundation Inc., a nonprofit that retains the school's real estate interests.

On Feb. 15, 2015, Pinard was named president of his fifth registered company with the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts - Houston-based Pinard Development LLC - as he made his foray into land development.

But delays arose in preparing all the necessary paperwork, and the contract wasn't executed by the foundation's board. Pinard already sunk money into the real estate endeavor. So, he filed a lien against the property and petitioned the court on May, 19, 2015, for legal fees, and lost profits of about $3 million, according to Pinard's court petition, since he completed work "based on the representations and promises of Fr. Daniel Massick and approval by NEF of the transaction."

Dispute over land deal

Pinard claims that the foundation entered into a contractual agreement for 8.5 acres for about $2.5 million in addition to some legal, land surveying and development work. Pinard also claims that Massick, Northwoods Catholic School's president at the time, agreed to the transaction and promised to execute the documents.

"NEF is in breach of its agreements with plaintiff. Plaintiff has fully performed the work and is ready, willing and able to make payment, but NEF has refused plaintiff's funds and is benefiting from plaintiff's work," Pinard's attorney alleged in court documents.

The foundation claims no contract existed and that the board never approved or signed any deal.

"Of utmost importance, at all material times, Pinard knew that no letter of intent nor contract was ever approved or executed by the board, nor executed by the president of NEF - at any time. Even if they had been properly approved and executed, the draft letters of intent presented to the priest did not have a legal description of the land at issue, and thus could not constitute a binding contract for the sale of land," Northwoods foundation's attorney stated in a 20-page counterclaim against Pinard Development.

According to Harris County Clerk filings, Northwoods Educational Foundation submitted an updated declaration of covenants, conditions, restrictions and easements on April 7, 2015, for the purpose of permitting "compatible commercial use on a portion of the property, and in order to provide for the enhancement and preservation of the value, desirability and attractiveness of the property, and the continuation of the education goals of the school." It was signed in March of 2015 by an out-of-town director, Michael Basson, and notarized in the state of Georgia before making it back to Harris County.

Permitted commercial operations on the property, which would have included the 8.5 acres in dispute, would have included retail, restaurant or office development.

Pinard's company claimed that it incurred "substantial" cost to survey the land, dig a pond for water retention and detention on the adjacent 17 acres owned by the Catholic school foundation and cover legal fees to create restrictive covenants and a property owners association. No records of the covenants were filed under Pinard Development with the county clerk.

The foundation doesn't see eye-to-eye on Pinard's development work. It claimed that Pinard, "without notice or permission," hired a bulldozer operator in late February of 2015 to move dirt around, creating "an unsightly pool" that flooded the school's parking lot during heavy rainfall, according to allegations made in the foundation's counterclaim. It also goes on to claim that Pinard and the foundation's attorney for the land sale, Bradley Rapp, allegedly conspired to sue it and "grab the land."

Rapp is the registered agent on four of Pinard's registered companies, including Pinard Development, Pinard Home Health Inc., Pinard Medical Supply Inc. and Pinard Rehabilitation Inc., according to records with the state comptroller.

Massick, who came to Houston from Italy in 2014, would have been responsible for executing any land sale as the school's president. Massick is named as a co-defendant in Pinard's lawsuit for an alleged attempted "extortion" of a $95,000 donation to the school as a way to supposedly expedite final contract documents for board approval.

Attorneys for Pinard Development, Northwoods foundation and Massick did not return calls as of presstime.

Since the original petition was filed in the spring of 2015, Pinard has switched attorneys twice and tacked on the Legion of Christ Inc. as a defendant.

Northwoods Catholic School is not associated with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston. Massick is a priest in the Legionaries of Christ Catholic order.

Reconciliation efforts

In the last month, Pinard and the Northwoods foundation have come to the negotiating table for only part of the dispute.

Pinard agreed to lift the property lien.

In exchange, the foundation agreed not to prosecute or seek damages from Pinard Development for filing an allegedly fraudulent lien.

The binding agreement doesn't address the money Pinard lost, legal fees and damages on both sides, and other claims of alleged fraudulent activity from either parties.

Pinard and the foundation have about a year to find an amicable agreement before turning to a jury trial set for April 3.

All the while, legal fees have racked up over disputed land that's under a soon-to-be defunct school.

The Galveston-Houston archdiocese sent out an internal memo to Catholic schools in the region asking them to open their arms to employees and students of the Northwoods community.

The Northwoods community is expected to split between St. Edwards Catholic School off Spring Stuebner Road, St. Anthony of Padua Catholic School in The Woodlands, St. Anne Catholic School in Tomball and Frassati Catholic High School in Spring.

"While it's sad for the school to close, it's not that it's not made a positive contribution. I hope people will hold that as a consolation," Fair said.

History in the courts

Pinard is no stranger to taking his case to the courts. As the founding president of a longstanding medical services provider, he has had legal run-ins with companies and individuals.

In the last two years alone, 11 lawsuits were filed in district and county courts in Harris County on behalf of Pinard Home Health Inc., for which he is the sole officer and director, according to records with the state comptroller's office. Of those cases, nine were Medicare reimbursement disputes with health insurance providers. Four cases are pending, six were removed to potentially be re-filed in federal courts and one was dropped.

Pinard Home Health is involved in an ongoing legal dispute with an auditor at the Texas Workforce Commission who requested Pinard's personal bank account number and statements, personal bills and personal 2013 federal tax returns during the business audit of the company in 2014, according to court documents. The Texas Attorney General's Office is representing the defendant, Anne Arndt. A trial was set for January.

Another pending case is for alleged debt, contract fraud and misrepresentation by Northwest Operating Company LLC against Pinard Home Health, according to court documents.

The twelfth and final legal dispute is between Pinard Development and the Northwoods foundation.

In all, Pinard's companies have sought monetary relief from the courts of up to $6.75 million in addition to damages and legal fees, according to court records with the Harris County and district courts.

Pinard Home Health's attorney did not return calls by presstime.

Northwoods Educational Foundation has been involved in one legal dispute in Harris County civil and district courts.
The prime suspect in a fatal home invasion shooting on Sunday is in custody, Houston police said Tuesday.

Julius Merchant, 18, is accused of shooting 59-year-old David Macias at the victim's home in the 6000 block of Ettrick.
As some residents continue to rebuild after the devastating 2015 Memorial Day floods, high water wreaked havoc in the Houston area during the holiday weekend again this year.

The Brazos River continued rising on Memorial Day and into Tuesday, causing delayed flooding in the wake of last week's 20-inch rainfall northwest of Houston.
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Jan Crouch, co-founder of Trinity Broadcasting Network, the world's largest religious television network, died Tuesday after suffering a massive stroke. She was 78.

Crouch and her husband, the late Paul Crouch, launched their television empire with a single California station in 1974. Narrowly avoiding financial collapse in its first weeks on the air, the network grew into an around-the-clock programmer, reaching millions worldwide with a broad range of Christian offerings.

In one recent year, the New York Times reported, the network gleaned $93 million in tax-free viewer donations. Additionally, the network gained $64 million for sale of air time and $17 million in investment income.

"Laurie and I have just watched the transition of our precious mother from this world to the next; watched her step into the presence of Jesus and into her heavenly reward," Matt and Laurie Crouch said in a statement. "Jan Crouch, known around the world as 'Mama Jan,' has gone home."

Paul Crouch died in 2013.

Despite the network's uncertain financial beginning, its eventual success guaranteed the couple a lavish lifestyle. Writing in the New York Times in 2012, Erik Eckholm reported the Jan and Paul Crouch owned his-and-her mansions in a gated California community and in Florida, where Jan Crouch also operated the Holy Land Experience theme park.

"Janice Crouch, called 'Mama' on the air, is known for her pink-tinged wigs, which look like huge swirls of cotton candy, and for talking emotionally about the Lord's blessings," Eckholm wrote. "Mr. Crouch, or 'Papa,' is relentlessly upbeat as he quotes flurries of Bible verses on signature programs like 'Praise the Lord.'"

The couple's prosperity gospel occasionally drew criticism from established theologians.

"Prosperity theology is a false theology," R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, told the Times. "TBN has been a huge embarrassment to evangelical Christianity for decades."
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Assault charges have been dropped against a surgeon at Houston Methodist Hospital after a Montgomery County grand jury declined Tuesday to indict him.

Dr. Rafael Lugo, 49, had been charged with assault of a family member, a felony, in December for allegedly breaking the finger of his then-girlfriend, former KHOU news anchor Christine Haas, while trying to keep her from leaving his home.

His lawyer said Tuesday by email that the doctor will continue in his practice.

"Dr. Lugo is eager to continue to provide exceptional medical care to his patients in the surrounding community as well as spending quality time with his family and friends now that this situation is behind," said attorney Douglas Atkinson. "Dr. Lugo appreciates the hard work of the Montgomery County grand jury in ensuring that justice was served."

Lugo, a licensed physician since 1999, works at Houston Methodist and Houston Methodist Willowbrook, according to his medical license.

In court records, prosecutors said Haas and Lugo got into an argument on Dec. 8, and she tried to leave with her bag. Authorities accused Lugo of grabbing the bag in her hand, which has looped around her left ring finger, which was dislocated in the struggle. The former newswoman went through surgery to repair the damage and was left with three permanent screws.

The surgeon had denied that he broke his former fiancee's finger. He told investigators she slammed it in a door.

Haas said her doctor called the police when he saw her dislocated and broken finger.

"After my doctor called police about this injury, Rafael and I maintained that this injury happened because of an argument that got out of control - in which he didn't want me to leave," she said in an emailed statement. "And the grand jury agreed that he did not intend to break my finger."

She said the charges "rocked" their families, especially their children from earlier relationships.

"The good news from this, from my personal perspective, is that I have gotten closer to God and learned what's most important in life and I pray everyday for everyone involved, especially our children," she said in the email.

Since grand jury proceedings are secret, it is unclear what evidence grand jurors heard before handing down the no-bill, which effectively dismisses criminal charges against the doctor.

Haas left Houston in 2012 to work for a television station in San Diego. She later moved to Austin, where she worked at KTBC before leaving to start her own public relations business.

If convicted of the second-degree felony, Lugo could have faced a maximum of 20 years in prison.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Lugo filed a petition for expunction of records, which was approved on Sept. 22, 2016, by the Montgomery County District Clerk.
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The Houston Police Department on Tuesday said they're still not completely sure why 25-year-old Dionisio Garza III chose a car wash in west Houston as the location to go on a shooting spree Sunday.

On Tuesday, police told media gathered at Houston police headquarters, located at 1200 Travis, that Garza fired off 212 rounds before a SWAT team sniper took him down at a car wash at 13210 Memorial Drive. Police said Garza had areas to hide behind at the shooting location, which is their lead reason so far as to why he may have chosen that area.

"He had access to three corners and his back to a fence," said Lt. John McGalin. "That's the only thing we can surmise. Why he chose that location, there doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason."

THE SUSPECT: Police ID gunman as military vet

Garza's family told police that he wasn't "feeling right" and may have suffered from depression. Garza, a veteran who served in Afghanistan, was exploring the possibility of moving from California to Houston, looking for work and spending time with friends.

Police said Garza left California on Wednesday and arrived in Houston on Saturday.

By 4 p.m. Saturday, he could not be reached by phone by family or friends.

Officers suspect Garza spent Saturday night at Memorial Tire and Auto, near the car wash. Police said they found random writings on paper taped to the walls of the tire shop that seem to indicate Garza was going through a "mental health crisis." Officers would not disclose what was included in the writings.

However, it was previously reported that Garza was railing against homosexuals, Jews and Walmart.

Police believe Garza acted alone and he is not part of any terrorist organization. John Wilson, who lives near the scene of the shooting, was initially believed to be a second suspect. Police determined after interviewing him that Wilson did not know Garza. Wilson was trying to help police and was shot in the leg by Garza.

On Sunday, Garza approached the car wash and shot Eugene Linscomb in the neck with a pistol, police said. Linscomb died at the scene.

Garza then returned to the tire store to get an AR-15, officers said. He opened fire, striking six people, in addition to Linscomb.

"He was shooting at passing cars and shot at arriving police officers," McGalin said. "He struck two officers."

Garza's shooting struck a line at a gas station next to the tire shop, setting the gas station on fire.

HPD received calls about Garza at 10:15 a.m. Sunday. Officers were dispatched to the scene at 10:17. By 11:10 a.m., Garza was shot by a SWAT sniper. The sniper fired off four shots from the roof of a residence that had a direct line of sight to Garza, police said.

THE WEAPONS: Suspect was armed with an AR-15 and a pistol

Police found a military backpack in the area of the shooting spree. Inside were several documents, including Garza's birth certificate, and ammunition. HPD Interim Chief Martha Montalvo said due to miscommunication between units, the bag was left at the scene.

When the bomb squad arrived, they did a controlled detonation of the bag, since some of the contents inside it caused concern. Montalvo said the backpack should have been collected as evidence and police are investigating why it was left behind.

She said police have interviewed the shooting victims.

"I want to stress this investigation is still evolving. We have plenty of witnesses we still need to interview," Montalvo said. "We still have plenty of evidence to review."

Police are investigating if Garza's guns were obtained illegally.
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A certain type of Texan is freaking out about haboobs again. Summer must be here.

The freakout is not caused by the arrival of the massive dust clouds. Instead, each year a furor seems to arise about the meteorological terms Arabic origins.

The National Weather Service in Lubbock warned on Facebook of a haboob approaching the local airport. A few commenters  who seemed to harbor a touch of xenophobia  didnt like the use of the Arabic-borne word.

Sharla Southerland Hamil wrote: In over 50 yrs of my life that had been a sand storm. We live in Texas which is in the US not the middle east.

Brenda Daffern didnt hold back in her attack on the NWS: In Texas, nimrod, this is called a sandstorm. We've had them for years! If you would like to move to the Middle East you can call this a haboob. While you reside here, call it a sandstorm. We Texans will appreciate you.

Katie Smiths comment took on a more conspiratorial tone:

Do we care if the rest of the world laughs at a Texan???? It has been a sandstorm all of my life and only became a Haboob in the last 8 years!!

In a way, Smiths point of view is easy to understand. The word seemed to explode into our collective consciousness in the past decade, thanks certainly in part to the rise of the Internet and the age of Internet outrage.

But haboob, as meteorologist Dan Satterfield pointed out, has been around for some time. Satterfield referred to a 1925 paper in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society called "Haboobs."

Satterfield brought this up in 2014  another time a Lubbock forecasters use of the word haboob set off viewers. The New York Time wrote about an outcry in Arizona, where one resident wrote the local Phoenix paper to say: I am insulted that local TV news crews are now calling the kind of storm a haboob. How do they think our soldiers feel coming back to Arizona and hearing some Middle Eastern term?

Many of our favorite weather terms (and much of English in general) come from other languages. The Washington Post helpfully points to El Nino, tornado and tsunami as examples.

After all that back-and-forth over the last several years, most people seem to have a handle on the use of the term haboob as well. On the Lubbock NWS Facebook page, a Texas woman named Teresa Mayfield Jackson explains the difference between a haboob (a quick moving wall of dirt) and a dust storm (a longer lasting swirling bowl of dust).

Its the most liked comment on the page.
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For Texans, it probably already feels like hurricane season started months ago. Flooding has devastated parts of the state thanks to frequent heavy rains in April and May.

The good news is that the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration predicts a near normal hurricane season, which lasts from June 1 (Wednesday) to November 30. That prediction portends 10 to 16 named storms in the Atlantic this year.

LOOKING BACK: The great hurricane of 1900 in photos

Two of those storms have already materialized.

For the first time since 1955, a hurricane formed in January. Hurricane Alex came and went during the first month of 2016. Tropical Storm Bonnie brought heavy rains to the East Coast this week.

The United States has not endured a direct hit from a major hurricane in several years (not since Hurricane Sandy hit the Northeast in 2012). Oh yeah, the bad news: A big strike to Houston however could bring widespread destruction and unprecedented destruction.

SEE MORE: Astronaut photo shows Brazos River overflowing

A story earlier this year by investigative nonprofit ProPublica explained in vivid and chilling detail how ill-prepared the area is for the next big hurricane. (The article also points out how lucky the city was to avoid a dead-on blow from Hurricane Ike in 2008, and how officials did little to improve the situation since then). The recurrent flooding these days seems to foreshadow that issue as well.

If a storm hits the region in the right spot, "it's going to kill America's economy," Pete Olson, a Republican congressman from Sugar Land, told ProPublica. The city contains crucial U.S. industries and a billion dollar petrochemical complex and resides near a large,body of water. That combination perhaps make Houston the most vulnerable place in the country to a powerful hurricane.

Heres hoping to another hurricane season where Houston comes out on unscathed. And heres hoping to better preparedness by the city in the future.

See the gallery above for a look at the worst hurricanes to ever hit Texas
AUSTIN -- Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday continued his campaign against the controversial Iran nuclear deal, urging fellow governors nationwide to ignore President Obama's suggestion to lift economic sanctions.

In a two-page letter, issued after he met in Dallas with Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer, Abbott urged his colleagues in other states to strengthen existing sanctions, much as he has proposed that the Texas Legislature approve when it comes into session next January.

In the letter, he calls the Iran Deal "foolhardy" because Iran "has consistently and blatantly flouted the terms of previous international agreements" and already has conducted "long-range ballistic missile tests in defiance of United Nations resolutions."

"I strongly oppose the Iran Deal because it undermines the national security of the United States and its strategic allies abroad -- especially our most important Middle East ally, Israel, " Abbott stated in the letter, labeling Iran "the world's top state sponsor of terrorism."

"Entering into an agreement with a country that consistently calls for 'death to America' and articulates anti-Semitic policies is short-sighted and ignores geopolitical realities."

Abbott said the Iran Deal "does not eliminate Iran's ability to obtain a nuclear warhead -- much less completely and permanently dismantle its nuclear capability. Expecting Iran to actually adhere to the deal is equally foolhardy."

The governor said he will ask the Legislature to strengthen its current sanctions by prohibiting local governments in Texas from investing in Iran or doing business with Iran, and to require all state entities not to do business directly or indirectly with Iran.

Under current law, state pension funds and most agencies are prohibited from investing in Iran or doing business with Iran.

No immediate word on what other states think about the Abbott request.

There was also no immediate comment from the White House, which did not comment previously when Abbott publicly blasted the deal and then criticized Obama's suggestion in April that states should consider lifting their sanctions now that the federal government has done so.

Also on Tuesday, Abbott -- who met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pledged to continue his opposition to the Iran deal during a visit to Israel several months ago -- signed on to support an initiative of the American Jewish Committee to have governors oppose efforts to boycott, divest assets or sanction Israel.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced Tuesday that he has asked the attorney general to opine on the legality of Fort Worth Independent School District's new policy regarding transgender students.

Patrick, an ardent critic of the school system for the last three weeks, said the Forth Worth superintendent had "thrust" him into what has become a national debate about which bathrooms transgender school kids can use by instituting a policy without input from the community.

Patrick is asking Attorney General Ken Paxton for a legal opinion on whether Superintendent Kent Scribner violated Chapter 26 of the Texas Education Code by permitting school personnel to withhold information from parents. He also is asking whether Scribner's adoption of the policy without a school board vote or public comment is illegal.

Patrick also is advising school superintendents against setting policies adhering to the federal government's recent instructions to allow transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice. The federal government has warned denying students access to a bathroom that corresponds to their gender is a violation of Title IX for sex discrimination and could warrant the federal withholding of education funding.

The advice from Patrick will go out to school district superintendents in the form of a letter this week.

Outside the Capitol, parents of transgender kids and advocates countered Patrick's opposition to transgender children using the bathroom that best suits them, likening the lieutenant governor's rhetoric to bullying and arguing Fort Worth ISD acted in accordance with state law.

"I'm here to tell Dan Patrick, you, specifically you, are endangering my child's life because you have now told everyone in the state of Texas that it's OK to harass my child, it's OK for the school district to stop supporting him, and I want you to know my child has had no issues with his school. They have been supportive, he goes to the boy's bathroom. Everything is perfectly fine," said Ann Elder of Friendswood, mother of a transgender boy.

Patrick's announcement comes less than a week after Paxton sued the federal government on behalf of what has grown to 12 states challenging the administration's instructions that schools allow transgender students to use the bathroom that best fits their gender identity.
Hundreds of people attended a Memorial Day Service honoring deceased United States servicemen and women at the Houston National Cemetery Monday, May 30, 2016, in Houston. Colonel Patrick M. Brown, Assistant Division Commander for the 100th Training Division (O/S) at Ft. Knox, Kentucky, gave the Memorial Day address. Brown's military career spans more than 29 years of Army Reserve service.

In addition to Brown's remarks, the event featured a parade of colors and wreaths by numerous local Veterans' organizations, ROTC units, and Boy and Girl Scout troops. All Boy and Girl Scout organizations in southeast Texas were invited to attend.
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.
WYMORE  Speaker Charlotte Endorf will present a program, The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley on June 6 at 6:15 p.m. at the Wymore Senior Center, 815 West D.

This presentation is made possible by Humanities Nebraska, the Nebraska Cultural Endowment, and the Wymore Senior Center as part of the HN Speakers Bureau.

Charlotte Endorf is an author and professional speaker, and Free Little Library steward. Endorf brings the legend of Annie Oakley to life to all ages in costume. She traveled to six states in five months in 2015 to learn more about Annie Oakley, and now tells this female sharpshooter's story.

The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley is one of about 300 programs offered through the Humanities Nebraska Speakers Bureau. Speakers available include scholars, writers, musicians, storytellers and folklorists on topics ranging from pioneer heritage, to ethics and law, to international and multicultural issues, making it the largest humanities speakers bureau in the nation.

Speakers are available to any non-profit organization in Nebraska. Each program lasts 30 minutes to an hour, plus a question-and-answer period.

For information detailing the available speakers and guidelines for booking them, go online to www.humanitiesnebraska.org (speakers section), or call Humanities Nebraska at 402-474-2131, or email info@humanitiesnebraska.org.
Thirteen state senators criticized Gov. Pete Ricketts on Monday for not recognizing or respecting the nonpartisan nature of the Legislature when he calls out senators who are Republicans for not "always obey(ing) his wishes" or those of the GOP party platform.

Five of the senators who signed the joint statement are Republicans.

On Tuesday, a 14th senator, Kate Bolz of Lincoln, said her name also should have been on the list.

Ricketts chastised more than a dozen senators who are Republicans by name at the GOP state convention earlier this month for not supporting him or the party platform on various issues and casting votes to override his vetoes.

"Many of those he chastised were in the audience," the 13 senators noted.

"The governor's list included educators, business owners, lawyers, doctors and farmers.

"All of them are well-known and respected conservatives elected by the people to obey their own convictions and principles, not the governor's," the 13 senators stated.

In his address to the Republican convention, Ricketts argued for the need to "elect platform Republicans" to the Legislature.

That declaration, Monday's joint statement suggested, presumably means "those who vote as the party platform commands."

The state constitution provides for a one-house legislature that is non-partisan in nature, the statement noted.

"Individually, we are Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians and independents," the senators wrote. "Together, we are the singular Nebraska Legislature -- an institution which operates through collaboration and expertise to uphold its distinct powers and privileges to create laws and policies.

"Governor Ricketts believes political party trumps principle," the joint statement declared.

"Our non-partisan unicameral Legislature has lasted for 80 years and, barring the will of the people for a new legislative experiment, we will not surrender our non-partisan and constitutional duties.

"We support the Nebraska constitution and not any particular political party."

Responding to the senators' statement, Ricketts said he respects the separation of powers between the executive and the Legislature, but believes "it is appropriate in a public forum for the governor, or anyone else, to point out the public votes cast by legislators."

"The collective will of the voters is greater than the will of any elected official," the governor said.

Sens. Kathy Campbell of Lincoln, Colby Coash of Lincoln, Laura Ebke of Crete, Mike Gloor of Grand Island and Bob Krist of Omaha were Republicans who signed the letter.

Sens. Tanya Cook, Burke Harr, Sara Howard and Heath Mello, all of Omaha, were joined by Sens. Adam Morfeld and Patty Pansing Brooks, both of Lincoln, and Sen. Kate Sullivan of Cedar Rapids, as signators who are Democrats.

Bolz is also a Democrat.

Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha, a registered independent, also signed the letter initiated by Harr.
Veterans of all branches of the military gathered with their families at the Evergreen Home Cemetery in Beatrice on Memorial Day to honor the men and women who have died in service.

Those who have shared sons and daughters, near and far ... on this day may we continue to remember their lives, their sacrifice, the hope that they continue to distill in us and the joy they can only give to the love in their country and home, the Rev. Mark Schutt, who gave the invocation and benediction at Mondays service, said in his opening remarks.

Before Schutt's invocation, a Flag Ceremony was presented by Roy Miller and Herman Hofeling, with The Veterans Club conducting a firing squad at the end. Major Daniel Benes, branch chief for the Nebraska National Guard, gave the Memorial Day Address in front of the crowd of around 100 people.

Benes was first assigned to Beatrice as a platoon leader in 1996, he told the crowd as the hot sun bathed the cemetery. Benes acknowledged the towns commitment to the military.

Im honored to be here in Beatrice, which has had a rich history for serving the armed forces, Benes said. Beatrice, population of 12,000, would see seven killed and 12 wounded in their first battle of WWII.

Seated among the crowd were many who served in the military over the years, including men and women from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and Marines.

We pause here today to honor those that have made the ultimate sacrifice so that we can enjoy the freedoms that we have today, Benes added. Nebraskans have paid a high price for freedom.

After the Memorial Day Address, several military organizations participated in a wreath laying ceremony as one member each of the American Legion Auxiliary, Veterans of Foreign Wars Auxiliary, Disabled Americans Veterans Auxiliary, and the Daughters of Civil War Veterans laid down a wreath to mark the occasion.

The Beatrice Community Concert Band provided music throughout the service, playing the "Star Spangled Banner" and "My Country Tis of Thee."

Its appropriate to honor the fallen and never forget, said former Marine Ron Kapustka, who said he was moved by the service. It can be a sad day because you think of the people youve lost and where you would be without them.
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond (Crown, 432 pp., $28)

Harvard sociologist Matthew Desmonds Evicted, an ethnographic portrait of eight poor households in Milwaukee, should call readers attention, as the author sees it, to the fact that millions of Americans are evicted every year because they cant make rent and that fewer and fewer families can afford a roof over their head. For Desmond, evictions are a core feature of the housing market, an event that invites depression and illness, compels families to move into degrading housing in dangerous neighborhoods, uproots communities and harms children. Certainly such conclusions can be drawn from Desmonds richly drawn account, which tells the stories not only of those facing eviction in Milwaukee (where, he says, some 16,000 evictions occur annually) but also of those doing the evictingthe owners and managers of properties.

Evicted has attracted wide attention, most of it positive, and many of its admirers will endorse Desmonds analysis and his call to make housing a basic right, provided by government through financial support to both tenants and owners. But the authors unflinching, richly detailed narrative suggests other conclusions. One might note, for example, that drug use is destroying lives and neighborhoods, that marriage has disappeared from the lives of the poor, that reliance on income-support programs has made low-income households expert at obtaining benefits rather than working and saving, and that eviction is a symptom rather than the cause of such thingsand, finally, that eviction may be simultaneously tragic and a last line of defense in the maintenance of a tenuous social order in low-income neighborhoods.

Evicted is an important book that provides an unvarnished account of the lives of the troubled and disorganizedsome would say vulnerablepoor. It is thick with detail in the participant-observer tradition of sociology (Desmond took up residence among the families about whom he writes) and represents a new installment in a tradition dating back to Jacob Riiss How the Other Half Lives (1890) and continuing through Edward Banfields The Unheavenly City (1970) and a lesser-known but equally important book, Joseph T. Howells Hard Living on Clay Street (1972). One can find passages to admire on almost every page of Desmonds book. Consider this introductory portrait of the College Mobile Home Park, a poor white trailer home compound in South Milwaukee, and its manager, Lenny:

Lenny knew the druggies lived mostly on the north side of the trailer park, and the people working double shifts at restaurants or nursing homes lived mostly on the south side. The metal scrappers and can collectors lived near the entrance, and the people with the best jobssandblasters, mechanicscongregated on the parks snobby side, behind the office, in mobile homes with freshly swept porches and flowerpots . . . Lenny tried to house the sex offenders near the druggies, but it didnt always work out.

The households whose stories Desmond returns to time and again, providing his narrative framework, struggle to find money to pay their rentwhether in the trailer park or in the black ghetto of North Milwaukee, the other focus of Evicted. Desmond writes of Arleen, raising two sons on her own: The rent was $550 a month, utilities not included. The rent would take 88 percent of Arleens $628-a-month welfare check. When the inevitable evictions do occur, the circumstances are poignant. Larraine stood outside, silently looking on. The movers carried out her chair, her washing machine, her refrigerator, stove, dining table. . . . Her things were headed to Eagle Storage.

But much more is involved in the ongoing crises of the families Desmond portrays than insufficient income to pay rent. The story of one trailer park resident, Scott, a former nurse whod earned some $88,000 a year before falling into a drug habithe began draining the opioids from the pain patches of his hospital patientsmakes this clear. Eventually, Scott loses his nursing license. Desmond writes of Scott and a couple in the trailer park, whod been evicted.

Scott had gotten high with Pam and Ned shortly before the received their eviction notice and had moved in a hurry . . . Scott figured Ned and Pam got what was coming to them. In his old life, before the fall, he might have been more sympathetic. But he had come to view sympathy as a kind of naivete, a sentiment voiced from a certain distance by the callow middle classes. They can be compassionate because its not their only option, he said of liberals who didnt live in trailer parks. As for Ned and Pam, Scott thought their eviction came down to their crack habit, plain and simple. Heroin Susie agreed with him. Theres a common denominator for all evictions, she said. I almost got evicted once. Used the money for other things.

That Desmond can summon a phrase as apt as sympathy as a kind of naivete and not see it as self-referential is among the frustrations of this bookbecause drugs and a range of other bad decisions and bad behaviors number among the most common causes for the looming evictions of his characters. Lamar, desperately trying to pay his back rent by painting his apartment despite having two prosthetic legs, turns out to have lost his legs when he used crack in an abandoned house, and became trapped inside during a freezing Milwaukee winter. After jumping out, he woke up in the hospital to find his legs had been amputated. He relies on Supplemental Security Income checks. Doreen fears the eviction of her household, which includes three adults and five children, but she nonetheless discourages her pregnant daughter Natasha from marrying the father of her child, despite the fact that Malik had been acting extra-dependable since learning he was going to be a dad, pulling double shifts, saving money, bringing Natasha food and looking for an apartment for the three of them. Why? The truth was that Doreen and Patrice [another adult daughter] didnt expect much from Malik not because of anything he had done but because of their own experiences with men. Patrices and Natashas fathers had left Doreen; Ruby and C.J.s daddy was in prison. . . .Said Patrice: We didnt have a daddy. My kids dont have no daddy. And your kids dont need no daddy. And if Natasha were to leave the household, safety-net benefitssuch as public assistance and food stampswould leave with her.

It may be true, as Desmond says, that the majority of poor renting families in America spend over half of their income on housing and at least one in four dedicates 70 percent to paying the rent and keeping the lights on. But it is also true that only 4 percent of public-housing households are comprised of two parents and children. Paths to housing affordability that dont include subsidy checks do exist.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Desmonds book is the appreciation he shows for his antiheroes: landlords to the poor such as Sherrena, the black, former fourth-grade teacher who, along with her husband Quentin, built a modest empire of 36 apartments on Milwaukees north side. Sherrena had a lot of bills: mortgage payments, water charges, maintenance expenses, property taxes. Sometimes a major expense would come out of nowherea broken furnace, an unexpected bill from the cityand leave her close to broke until the first of the month. . . . There was no hedging in this business. When a tenant didnt pay $500, her landlord lost $500. When that happened, landlords with mortgages dug into their savings or their income to make sure the bank didnt hand them a foreclosure notice. Collecting rent is a face-to-face matterno easy task in poor neighborhoods. At times, Quentin must don a hoodie and head out to collect payment by means unspecified.

As much empathy as he demonstrates for Sherrenawho does find herself nearly broke at one pointit never quite occurs to Desmond that landlords, in addition to being clever, bottom-of-the-pyramid entrepreneurs, also serve as enforcers of a frayed social order. Among those whom this thorough, embedded sociologist never bothers to interview are the neighbors of the evicted. Who would like to live next door, say, to Lamar, who appears to spend most of his time in card games in groups smoking blunts (pot)? Who would like to live next door to Kamala and her boyfriend, who join the card game, leaving their children alone on an upper floor? When one child knocks over a lamp, the house burnsevicting everyone, as it were. Desmond is deaf to the fact that even the Obama-era Justice Department recognizes the social value of tenant screening. You need to require sufficient and verifiable income, says the coordinator of Milwaukees Landlord Training Program. If they say they are self-employed, well, drug-dealers are self-employed. Screening and evictions, denounced by Desmond, send the same constructive message, one that Bill Clinton once espoused: work hard and play by the rules. Those who struggle to do so find themselves endangered by those who dontespecially the ones who live next door. That evictions are so widespread may say something about housing markets, as Desmond believesbut it also says something about our current social norms.

Having painted such a nuanced picture of the disorganized poor, Desmond, in his concluding chapter, moves with frustrating glibness to his solution: income-based housing vouchers. The idea is simple, he concludes. Every family below a certain income level would be eligible for a housing voucher. In effect, Desmond would make available the public-housing subsidy arrangement to all those who qualify. The family would dedicate 30 percent of their income to housing costs, with the voucher paying the rest. To raise the billions that such a policy would require, he suggests ending such homeowner benefits as the mortgage-interest deductiona good idea on its own merits, since the deduction distorts housing prices. But that doesnt mean that a vast expansion of housing vouchers would be practical or positive. It never occurs to Desmond that the current requirement that public-housing tenants pay 30 percent of their incomes in rent discourages work, since the more one earns, the more one will pay. Nor does he recognize that an income cutoff for voucher households could discourage marriage, since a couples combined income might disqualify them from benefits. Implicitly, he assumes that poverty is a permanent, structural feature of the economy, and that the rest of us should strive, as best we can, to make the poor comfortable. This is bleak pessimism masquerading as compassionate liberalism.

Desmond, moreover, seems credulous in assuming that his proposed remedy would work. Does he really believe that the troubled souls whom he describes so vividly would always be able to come up with the required 30 percent for rent? And can he be confident that landlords who receive a guaranteed government-rent payment each month will remain diligent about repairs? His understanding of historic housing policy is shaky. He suggests that public housing was originally intended to serve the poor, which is untrue. It got started, during the New Deal, to serve working-class tenants, who would maintain their dwellings by paying rent. If they couldnt pay, they facedyes, eviction.

Desmond does highlight policy problems that cry out for fixes. Tenants who make their rent payments only to find their landlords havent made mortgage paymentsand face bank foreclosureshould not be evicted. When police come out to a home where a boyfriend is beating the mother of his children, the woman should not face eviction because the home is judged a public nuisance. It may be, too, that local housing codesDesmond describes Milwaukees as overly strictshould be reviewed with an eye toward lowering housing costs without compromising safety.

Desmonds book makes clear how a combination of forces has led to the persistence and growth of the disorganized poora group long recognized as distinct from those simply down on their luck. Edward Banfield wrote at length of the problems of present-oriented people; many of the characters in Evicted fit that description. Larraine spends her entire monthly food assistance allotment, for instance, on a single meal of lobster tails. In making the case that private housing markets exploit the vulnerable, Desmond cites Jacob Riis and his portraits of Lower East Side tenement conditions. He might have done better to turn to pioneer sociologist Robert Hunter, who, in his classic Poverty (1904), makes an important distinction between the poor and paupers. For the poor, Hunter cared deeply. There are great districts of people who are up before dawn, who wash, dress and eat breakfast, kiss wives and children, and hurry away to work or to seek work, Hunter wrote. The world rests upon their shoulders; it moves by their muscle. . . . But the world is so organized that they gain enough to live upon only when they work; should they cease, they are in destitution and want.

Others, Hunter writes, become dependent on alms. . . .There are in all large cities in America and abroad, streets and courts and alleys where a class of people live who have lost all self-respect and ambition, who rarely, if ever, work, who are aimless and drifting, who like drink, who have no thought for their children, and who live more or less contentedly on rubbish and alms. Hunter would have recognized such people in Desmonds brilliant and disturbing rendering of their lives. He would not have approved of Desmonds policy solutionand nor should we.

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Toward the end of his life, the great and not altogether high-minded press baron Joseph Pulitzer sought to advance the idea that journalism should become a profession, akin to law or accounting, but devoted to the public interest. He lived in an age of concentrated wealth and technological disruption. He feared for the health of American democracy. He thought well-trained reporters could help protect the voting public from lies and corruption. And so he endowed Columbia Journalism School to secure his plan for education, and he endowed the Pulitzer Prizes to recognize excellence in journalistic practice.

Very few visions of philanthropic influence work out as well as Pulitzers did. At their centennial the Pulitzer Prizes have remarkable cultural purchase. Among other things, they assure winners that the first sentence of their obituary will contain a ring of nobility, whatever else may follow. In journalism, Pulitzer winners continue to offer annual peer-reviewed models of excellence and innovation that inspire reporters and editors to dig deeper and think bigger. Yet in this latest age of concentrated wealth and technological disruption, there are reasons to be worried about the durability of Pulitzers vision in the area where his journalism career originated: local reporting on public integrity.

Pulitzer was a self-invented immigrant from Hungary. Although The New York World became his flagship paper, his newspapering career began in Mark Twain country, in political mud-slinging, frontier St. Louis, soon after the Civil War. Once, when a subject of his reporting on corruption came to his office to object, Pulitzer shot him. (The victim survived.) His vision of journalism was popular and locally rooted.

American newspaper companies have shed tens of thousands of newsroom jobs since 2007, undermined by digital innovation, the rise of social media, a severe recession, and shortsighted management. In a stunningly brief period, the number of salaried reporters turning up regularly at statehouses, zoning boards, school boards, and courthouses has collapsed. As David Simon, the former Baltimore Sun reporter who created The Wire, told a Senate committee inquiring into the future of news in 2009: The next 10 or 15 years in this country are going to be a halcyon era for state and local political corruption. It is going to be one of the great times to be a corrupt politician. Seven years later, almost half of states have no newspaper with even one dedicated reporter in Washington to cover their congressional delegation or their states stake in federal budgeting. Between 2003 and 2014, the number of newspaper statehouse reporters fell from just under 500 to about 300, according to the Pew Research Center.

In many important respects, journalism is recovering from the shocks of 2009 and 2010. Nonprofits and digital startups are hiring, collaborating, and producing deep, groundbreaking work. Reporters are coding, deploying sensors, and crunching dataadapting to public purpose the very technologies that blew up newspaper business models. National papers like The New York Times and The Washington Post are investing heavily in growth and change.

This renewal has been reflected in recent years in who wins Pulitzers and in the kind of work that is honored. In 2015, remarkable video reporting was a big part of the Timess winning Ebola entry. That year, The Wall Street Journals winning entry in the investigative category turned on computer-driven analysis of one of the largest data sets ever obtained by a news organization, concerning Medicare costs. International and national reporting in the public interest is changing, but it is robust and influential.

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In many cities and towns between the coasts, the strains caused by economic disruption have been more persistent. Too many small and mid-sized communities have not replaced the lost jobs involving day-to-day professional watchdog reporting. Given the amount of shrinkage, it is remarkable that Pulitzer juries and the Pulitzer Board still honor so much great local work. In 2007, Brett Blackledge of The Birmingham News won a Pulitzer for investigative reporting for a jaw-dropping series about cronyism and corruption in Alabamas two-year college system. In 2008, David Umhoefer of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel worked for six months and hired outside financial experts to show how cronies had abused public pension rules to award themselves large unearned retirement incomes. The Florida Sun Sentinels ingenious investigation of deadly speeding by off-duty police, which won the gold medal for public service in 2013, was one of the most impressive examples of local work in years. If the Pulitzers are a proxy for journalisms health, these examples certainly signal resilience.

Yet the Prizes also show signs of strain. Last year, the wonderfully titled Daily Breeze, a tiny paper in Torrance, California, won for local reporting about corruption on the school board. When the Prize was announced, however, it emerged that one of the reporters on the project had left the newsroom for a university communications job because he found he couldnt make ends meet. Whether it is off a beat or assigned to a dedicated project team, work of this depth and impact takes time and money and requires editors to be patient at a time when digital traffic metrics and the hyper-speed of social media are calling all newsroom hands to pitch in. How many shrunken newsrooms from Bakersfield, California, to Portland, Maine, are in a position to invest in and champion such work today?

The New York Times has won just over a fifth of all Pulitzer Prizes awarded to newspapers between 2009 and 2015; in the preceding seven years, it won less than 15 percent. The Times is a great, well-resourced paper. Yet a winner-take-all ecology of excellence in journalism would be anathema to Joseph Pulitzer. So would a Prize that became a private trophy for bicoastal professionals.

The Pulitzer Prizes cannot fix the recent losses in local journalism, but as they evolve into the next century, their stewards will have to think about how to help address the hole in the heart of American journalism, to lift up, as Pulitzer wrote, the idea of work for the community, not for commerce, not for ones self, but primarily for the public.

It was 3am and Steve Coll was lying on the marble floor of his bedroom in New Delhi, battling a debilitating stomach bug, when the phone rang. Coll picked up, dreading an urgent assignment. Instead, it was an editor at The Washington Post calling to tell him that he and a co-writer had won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting. Coll had begun his career at the Post five years earlier in the Style section. He wanted to be a foreign correspondent, so his editors sent him to New York to cover Wall Street. He and David A. Vise shared the beat, reporting on insider trading and publishing a series on the Securities and Exchange Commission. By summer, Coll was on his way to South Asia, where he immersed himself in his new beat. The SEC series didnt make the Posts cut for Pulitzer submissions, so Colls editor decided to enter it himself. In February, Vise reached Coll in Pakistan to tell him they were finalists. Coll was thrilled, but soon turned his attention to a raucous democratic revolution in Nepal. The Prize vanished from his mind until the night he learned hed won. I realized that if I interpreted this the right way, as a beginning, not an ending, I could let it help me continue in all the ways I really wanted to continue, Coll says. I would still have to earn it every day, but it just created some forgiving space.

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Steve Coll has been Dean of Columbia Journalism School since 2013. A former president of the New America Foundation, he is also a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he writes on politics, national security, and the media. He is the author of seven nonfiction books, a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and a former reporter, foreign correspondent, and senior editor at The Washington Post.
The best way to understand the enduring greatness of Anthony Shadid is to begin with the words of Anthony himself, so heres something he wrote after his first Pulitzer and after his second Pulitzer, at a time when he was considering the life that reporting had given him and who he had become. Its from his memoir, House of Stone, a copy of which I keep on my desk, always nearby, in part because of the writing and in part because of what happened after he wrote the following eight paragraphs.

Then came March, when I found myself in a town in Libya whose name I had never previously bothered to remember. Soldiers for a government crumbling but still forceful had taken me and three fellow reporters captive at a makeshift checkpoint. Bullets ricocheted around us. The soft dirt popped as they entered the earth. I had run, then stumbled on a sand berm, every muscle in my body taut. Minutes passed, and I found myself on my knees next to a simple one-room house where a woman clutched her infant child. Both cried uncontrollably. Soldiers trained their guns on us, beat us, stripped us of everything in our pockets, forced us to lie face down. One, slighter than the others, surged toward me. Youre the translator! he screamed. Youre the spy! Seconds went by, but it felt far longer, and another soldier approached. Rage flared from his eyes. He shoved my face in the dirt. Shoot them, the soldier said calmly in Arabic. As I lay motionless on the ground, I sensed something familiar, a feeling I recalled from Ramallah where, years before, I had lain under a cemetery-gray sky, waiting to die from a bullet wound in my back. I recalled it from Qana in 2006, where the people had cried, Slowly, slowly! as Lebanese soldiers, Red Cross workers, and volunteers dug with hoes, shovels, and their bare hands, searching for pieces of lost lives. I had felt it in Baghdad in 2003, when the mother of Lava Jamal, whose mauled torso was pulled from the wreckage of an American bombing, vomited at the sight of her daughters severed head. I remembered it from Marjayoun, where I came upon a house on a hill whose grandeur had given way to insult. It was emptiness, aridity, hopelessness, the antithesis of creation, imagination. We ended up in jail the next day, in a city called Sirte, on the Mediterranean. I suppose there are worse prisons in the Arab world. This one was relatively cheerful, painted yellow. My colleagues and I were handcuffed and left in a basement cell on ratty mattresses with a bottle to urinate in, a jug of water, and a bag of sticky dates. Tahrir Square seemed far away. Graffiti of devout prisoners were scratched into the wall. God bring us relief, one line read in a plea to the Almighty. Scrawled next to it in tiny letters was a more intimate aside: My beloved Firdaus. By morning, we had been transferred to a military airport, where the beatings were worst. Blindfolded and bound with plastic handcuffs, I was hit by the butt of a gun to the head. I staggered and waited for the next blow, and the next, and wondered how many there might be. As I sat in the plane that took us to the capital, Tripoli, I panicked as the restraints dug into my wrists and numbed my swollen hands. When a man approached me, hearing my cries for help over the drone of the cargo planes engines, I turned my head, waiting for another fist to land. I couldnt see his face, but as he leaned toward me, I could feel his breath on my ear. Im sorry, he whispered. Sign up for CJR 's daily email The next day, in Tripoli, shortly before Turkish diplomats negotiated our release and drove us from Libya, we sat in a lavish office as an urbane Foreign Ministry official chatted with us. His small talk suggested embarrassment, and I forgot everything he said, save a few words he quoted to my colleague in idiomatic British English. They were two lines from a poem by William Butler Yeats: Those that I fight I do not hate, / Those that I guard I do not love. I hated him, though. I hated the billboards I saw as I left the country after a week in captivity, the propaganda of a regime that did not deserve to be mourned. Forty-one Years of Permanent Joy, read one slogan superimposed over a sunburst. Democracy Is Popular Rule, Not Popular Expression, read another. I hated what this had cost. I wanted to go home . . .

Those are the eight paragraphs, and every time I reread them I wonder how many among us know enough to be able to write the sentence: I suppose there are worse prisons in the Arab world. And has there ever been a better use of the phrase: relatively cheerful? The greatness of Anthony, though, has less to do with the accumulated knowledge in those paragraphs than what happened next.

He went back to the story.

In that decision is where, to me, he stands apart, and I dont mean that as an easy sentiment. Its so much more complicated. Going back troubled him, and it also made him happy. It allowed his work, and it ended his work, and whether he did it out of need, or just a desire, its a decision that remains as unknowable as any involving the mysterious parts of any human heart. Why did he go back? Why did he keep going back? I think about it, often, and in the end, there is only the uncertainty that comes when you only have facts to work with.

He was blindfolded and bound and beaten and heard someone say, Shoot themthose are the factsand he went back.

Before that, too many times to count, he felt the true fright of a bomb blast, from which no one ever quite recovers, and he went back after those.

He was shotno one ever recovers from that, either, I imagineand went back after that.

He went back, and his stories kept coming, and you can read any of them and know that he was the best kind of reporter and writer: He knew how to ask questions and hear any kind of answer; he knew the value of silence and the power of understatement and the effects of juxtaposition and the need for compassion, but only so much of it; he knew the right way to write the sentence, Im sorry, he whispered, as well as the importance of the preceding sentences.

Plenty of other reporters and writers know such things; the Pulitzers are testament to that. The difference is that Anthony was one of the few to go back and back and back, and if you are a reporter and want to be as great as the great Anthony Shadid, thats the one thing above all that you need to keep in mind. While others talk admiringly, or, worse, romantically, about such things as your bravery and your commitment to the story, you go, and then, even though you know what it means to have goneI wanted to go homeyou go back.

Two years into the war in Iraq, then-Washington Post Managing Editor Phil Bennett asked David Finkel to write about President George W. Bushs central foreign policy initiative: democracy promotion. It couldnt have felt bigger or more abstract or more intimidating, Finkel recalls of the assignment, for which he would win a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting in 2006.

He started looking for a US government program he could watch from beginning to end. But what program? And where? It had to be in the Middle East because democracy promotion was tied to security, and the threat of the moment was Islamic terrorism. Finkel felt drawn to Yemen, Osama bin Ladens ancestral home. The US government funded only a few programs there, and one aimed at helping sheiks resolve tribal conflict captured his imagination.

At a gathering of tribal leaders in Yemens capital, he met Rabea al-Okaimi, a sheik from al-Jawf, a poor, remote area riven by blood feuds. Al-Okaimi offered to take Finkel to al-Jawf, but only if he was willing to hear what residents really thought about America. To me, the best journalism is journalism that feels like an act of understanding, Finkel says. In al-Jawf, he met people who had never seen an American and people who wanted to kill Americans. He brought that story home, along with the story of democracy promotion in all its complications, from the best of intentions in Washington, DC, to the best of intentions in a place as far from Washington as can be imagined.

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David Finkel is the national enterprise editor at The Washington Post and the author of two books about war: The Good Soldiers and Thank You For Your Service. Among his honors are a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting in 2006 and a MacArthur Foundation genius grant in 2012.
Janet Cooke entered the acre-square newsroom of The Washington Post wearing a red wool suit and a white silk shirt. It was her first day of work. She was two hours late. Shed gotten lost walking the three blocks from her hotel.

It was the third day of 1980, the beginning of a new chapter for this 25-year-old black woman whose upper-middle class parents had sent their daughters to the finest white prep schools but insisted upon living close to their roots in Toledo. As Cooke made her way down the long aisle through the desk pods of the Metro Section, heads turned. Editors and reporters noted the shortness of her pleated skirt, the apparent self-possession of her gait, the length of her acrylic fingernails. In this post-Watergate era of big stories, star reporters, and creative tension, most members of the Metro staff were young and well-pedigreed, true believers in the power of the fourth estate, captained by historys own Bob Woodward, who was trying his hand for the first time as an assistant managing editor. Deep inside the Beltway, in the heart of the nations political culture, the Posts was a newsroom like all othersand like no other, a distinct creature of the city it covered, rife with intrigue and machination. The customary greeting among its 900 staffers, working just blocks from the White House: Whats the gossip?

At the moment, clearly, it was Janet Cooke.

Six months earlier her resume had crossed Ben Bradlees desk. The legendary executive editorknown for his silver hair and salty language, his friendship with JFK, and his willingness to stand behind aggressive reportinghad taken up a red grease pencil and circled Phi Beta Kappa, Vassar, and Black Journalists Association. At a time when the newspaper business was just beginning a journey toward workplace diversity, here was a twofer, a highly talented black woman with an impressive resume. Bradlee passed Cookes information to Woodward, with the message that the young Toledo Blade reporter should be recruited before The New York Times or the networks scooped her up.

On September 28, 1980, nearly nine months and 52 bylines after her first day at the Post, Jimmys World was published on the front page. Cookes story, about an 8-year-old heroin addict, created an instant sensationthe 1980s equivalent of going viralreprinted around the country and around the world. As DC Mayor Marion Barry and city health and police officials hustled to find the child and prosecute his guardian-tormentors, the Post stood fast behind its First Amendment right to protect its reporter from having to reveal the boys whereabouts. For this, the paper was heavily criticized, especially by black residents in the then-majority African-American city. Where journalists saw a blockbuster story, with bright writing and a deep social impact, civilians saw a child in need, and activists saw a captivating example of the black mans burden. Jimmy was never found.

On April 13, 1981, Cooke was awarded a Pulitzer. She won after the well-intentioned Pulitzer committee, enthusiastic about both Cookes story and the possibility of awarding the first Pulitzer in journalism ever to an African-American woman, juggled her entry from the local-news category to the feature-writing category in order to assure her a prize.

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Cooke was a warning shot. It was a harbinger of all kinds of journalistic scandals to come.

Proud of its former employee, the Toledo Blade quickly prepared a story. It went to press at 8am. Later that morning, according to an exhaustive investigation by Post ombudsman Bill Green, Blade editors read biographical sketches of the Pulitzer winners that moved over the Associated Press wire. The sketches were based on the resumes submitted with the entries. The Blades bio for Janet, taken from its own personnel records, differed considerably. On her Pulitzer resume, according to Post accounts, Cooke claimed to have graduated magna cum laude from Vassar College and to have received a masters degree from the University of Toledo. From what the Blade knew, shed attended Vassar only for her freshman year and received a bachelor of arts from the University of Toledo. Blade editors alerted the wire service.

Sometime after 3 in the afternoon, Bradlee and Managing Editor Howard Simons received simultaneous phone calls. An AP editor wanted Simons. The assistant to the president of Vassar wanted Bradlee. Both callers were asking about Janets resume.

Take her to the woodshed, Bradlee ordered, according to Green.

For nearly 11 hoursin various offices and conference rooms at the Post, in the Capitol Hilton bar, and even in City Editor Milton Colemans car as the two drove around Southeast DC looking for Jimmys houseJanet was alternately interrogated, cajoled, comforted, pressured, and flattered by Bradlee, Woodward, Simons, Coleman, and others.

Finally, at 1:45am, Cooke confessed to Woodwards Deputy AME David Maraniss. There is no Jimmy and no family, she said, according to Maraniss. It was a fabrication. I want to give the prize back.

Disgraced, the Post returned the Pulitzer. (The prize was re-awarded to Teresa Carpenter of The Village Voice.)

The paper absolutely changed that moment, says Donald E. Graham, the Posts publisher at the time, scion of the family that owned and ran the paper for eight decades, until its sale in 2013 to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

And from that moment forward, journalism changed, too. Cooke became infamous, the first in a line of publicly exposed fabulists including Stephen Glass of The New Republic, Jayson Blair of The New York Times, and Jack Kelley of USA Today.

Cookes transgressions rocked the foundations of trust the press had built since the post-World War II blossoming of the information age. After centuries of Fleet Streeters, muckrakers, and yellow journalists, the public had welcomed Walter Cronkite into their living rooms; the crusading work of journalists had freed America from a bad war and a crooked presidency. All over the country, reporters were busy ferreting out corruption of all kinds. Now, suddenly, with Cooke, the press had fallen from grace.

Cookes case also came to symbolize myriad other issues and transgressions in both journalism and the world at large, including the use of unnamed sources, minority recruitment, newsroom ethics, resume fraud, and the tendency of some writers, operating in the genre known as creative nonfiction, to take license in the pursuit of more literary work.

The Janet Cooke fabrication was shocking because it came at a time when most people respected newspapers and respected what we now call the media, says Howard Kurtz, a media critic and former Post staffer.

Cooke was a warning shot, Kurtz says. It was a harbinger of all kinds of journalistic scandals to come.

In the interest of disclosure, I know Janet Cooke.

The day she first appeared in the Post newsroom, I was 23, a former copy boy two years into a reporting job on the Metro staff.

Back then, the Metro staff was considered a training ground. In a newsroom stocked with legends like Bradlee and Woodward, we were known as the kids, even though most of us were in our late 20s and 30s. I was a bit on the young side; most of the other staffers had been interns out of the Ivy Leagues or star writers at other papers before coming to Metro. Also in the mix were a dozen or so women and minorities hired into two-year internships, a pipeline to newsroom diversity.

It was a heady time in the newspaper business, a golden age when the news budget was flush and the media carried a sheen of importance and invincibility. The Posts own Woodward and Carl Bernstein had inspired a crowded field of young reporters to join the business in the interest of wearing the white hat of the publics right to know.

We were a tight-knit group, competitors and comrades both. We played co-ed touch football on Sundays on a field just north of the Washington Monument. (Even Woodward played on occasion. Maureen Dowd, then at The Washington Star, had nice speed and a good pair of hands.) We partied together at Woodwards Georgetown manse, at Maranisss suburban house, at various bars all over town.

But most of all, we worked. Everyone had dark circles under their eyes, everyone was always rushing around, stumbling over themselves to find what our absolute leader, Bradlee, liked to call a Holy Shit story. We wanted the brass ringassignment to a special project that would showcase our talents and win an award; promotion to the National or Foreign or Style staff; a book or movie contract. Given our boss and role model, anything seemed possible.

At the same time, we were true believers in the standards set by Woodward and Bradlee. There was a star system, yes. There was creative tension, yes. But at the same time, we knew that shortcuts and screw ups or questionable information would not be tolerated. The idea of fabricating a quote, much less a character or an entire story, was unimaginableakin to sinning in church.

In a letter confirming that her Prize-winning story was in essence a fabrication, Cooke also submitted her resignation. (Note: Cooke incorrectly cited September 28, 1981, as her storys publication date. The correct date is September 28, 1980.)

Into this swirl came Janet Cooke, fresh from her hometown Toledo Blade. I met her late one night at her desk in the Weekly section, to which shed been assigned. A zoned supplement to the paper, it was known as a training ground for affirmative-action hires and a dumping ground for older relics on their way to retirement. To the black members of the Post staff, the Weeklies were known as the Ghetto.

By the end of February, Cooke and I had begun dating. While we lasted officially only until June, our relationship continued in fits and starts for another yeara painful, exhilarating, 20-something psychodrama, during which time the Jimmy story was produced.

After the Pulitzer was returned, I was suspected of collaborating with Cooke on Jimmys World, my name having been found on the edit trail of the Posts computer system. From the beginning, part of our relationship involved my services as an informal reader, not unusual among colleagues in any newsroom. Several times I made suggestions on Jimmys World for style and flow; countless other times I read drafts for suggestions and support.

The truth is, I had my suspicions about the story from the beginning, but I couldnt bring myself to flat-out ask Janet if Jimmy was real. Im not sure I wanted to know. To some extent, I suspected myself of being jealousthe piece had award-winner written all over it. In my favor was the fact that, months before the Pulitzer announcement, I voiced my concerns about the article to two older and respected reporters, Patrick Tyler and Joe Pichirallo, who formed one of Woodwards pet investigative teams. After the Pulitzer was returned, Woodward grilled me twice over two days. Had I something to confess, I surely would have.

In 1996, following Janets return to the states after living in France for more than a decade, she decided to tell her story. She spoke to me at length for a piece published in GQ, entitled Janets World, the only substantial interview Cooke ever gave. The story details Cookes difficult upbringing and her lifelong use of lies as a coping mechanism, primarily against the exceptionally high expectations and inflexible rules of her parents, her father particularly. It also documents her difficulties navigating the racial politics of the dayby some accounts, Jimmys World would never have happened if not for the good intentions of those who thought their role was to level the playing field for minorities.

Thirty-five years since the Pulitzer was awarded and returned, interest in Cooke and her storya cautionary tale at once so singular and so universalhas not waned.

Nearly every semester I get calls from reporters, producers, and journalism students seeking to track down Cooke for an interview. Most journalism schools offer some form of ethics course as part of their curriculum. I suspect all of them mention Cooke somewhere in the syllabus.

The influence of Cookes transgressions runs through the corpus of modern journalism like blood through the circulatory system, leaving no area untouched. Racial and sexual diversity in the newsroom. The use of unnamed sources. The responsibility of editors to question reporters storiesshould all writers be considered guilty until proven accurate? The responsibility of writers to fact-check their own stories. The pressures of working on deadline and being judged by ones output. The perils of literary journalism. And the perils of human frailtywhat responsibility does an institution have to look beyond a persons resume and into his or her psyche?

What caused Janet to do what she did was personal, says Walt Harrington, a former longtime Post staffer and editor and a colleague of Cookes who went on to teach journalism at the University of Illinois. As it happened, the organization pushed a flawed person into [something she couldnt handle]. Its like taking a person whos weak and encouraging them to do something that theyre not equipped to resist. But at the same time, any system should be thoughtful about that kind of person.

I am nominally in touch with Cooke via email. I dont think I will betray her trust by reporting that she is living within the borders of the continental United States, within a family setting, and pursuing a career that does not primarily involve writing.

While I faithfully forward all requests for interviews, Cooke consistently declines to speak further of her role in the Pulitzer scandal. Clearly it has taken a toll.

What more is there for anyone to write? she said in response to my email about this story. And then she added, in her typical droll fashion, Essentially, Ive spent the last 30 years waiting to die.

Knowing her as I do, she was only half kidding.

Beyond Cookes personal storyof an ambitious and talented but flawed young woman who dreamed of covering the White Houseis the larger one, the unintended effect of her transgressions. Not only did she fabricate; she won the Pulitzer. Not only did she lie; she did so in the grandest fashion, on the biggest stage, and in the process disgraced her employers, pulling the wool over some of the brightest eyes in the business.

And if someone could do that right under the noses of Bradlee and Woodward and company, how could any reporter ever be trusted again?

Beautifully written and well-researched, Jimmys World was a perfect storm of a storya compelling combination of writer and subject matter and the politics of the day. It described an 8-year-old on heroin and the drug trade around him. The story ran about 2,100 words, starting on the front page, a little long for a standard newspaper feature but short compared to investigative projects that were in vogue. The article included Cookes reporting about the citys burgeoning heroin trade, the emergence of the Golden Crescent in Asia as a major producer, and the impact of drugs on the community, years before the crack epidemic made this a common theme.

At the heart of the piece was a fourth-grader who lived in a heroin shooting gallery with his mother and her boyfriend, a drug dealer named Ron. And every day, Ron or someone else fires up Jimmy, plunging a needle into his bony arm, sending the fourth-grader into a hypnotic nod, Cooke wrote.

The piece comes to a chilling end with Jimmy receiving his heroin fix as the reporter watches. The needle slides into the boys soft skin like a straw pushed into the center of a freshly baked cake. . . . Pretty soon, man, Ron says, you got to learn how to do this for yourself. 

For the Post, the Cooke debacle was a tremendous jolt to the whole place, says former publisher Graham. We, the Post collectively, didnt at first know how to respond. It seemed to me at the time that the best answer was first and foremost changing the way we hired people so that we were much more careful about reviewing what they said in their resume.

All over the country, reporters were busy ferreting out corruption of all kinds. Now, suddenly, with Cooke, the press had fallen from grace.

For the late Ben Bradlee, says his biographer, Jeff Himmelman, there was some real anguish about it. He felt like he had let the Grahams down, who had shown so much faith in him through Watergate. It was their paper and he didnt catch this, and he knew he didnt catch it, and there were a lot of other people who should have caught it, too, but it was his name at the top. . . . By far this was the big black eye of his career.

In a larger way, Graham says delicately, after the Cooke affair, something very fundamental began to shift in the Posts and other newsrooms. Previously, there was a tendency to trust your reporters, Graham says.

The audacity of Cookes fabrication broke this bond of trust, both with editors and with readers. Suddenly, the institution known for bringing down liars and shining light on injustice was itself revealed to be a transgressor against the truth. As a reporter at the time, at the Post or anywhere else, you could feel the door slam. Before Cooke, we journalists wore the capes of crusaders who could do no wrong.

Today we face a different public perception. The line from Watergate, in 1972, to Cooke in 1980, to the vehicular death of the UKs Princess Diana in 1997for which journalists were blamedstretches a mere 25 years. Today, in the minds of many, the word journalist connotes invasive tabloid headlines and paparazzi.

Probably the biggest change wrought by the Cooke affair was the way reporters were allowed to use and manage unnamed sources. Prior to Cooke, reporters were trusted, the way Woodward was with Deep Throatnobody asked for his identity. In the months following the Cooke affair, however, that practice began to change, recalls Jim Romenesko, a longtime observer of journalism. In the years to come, Romenesko posted on his site a number of memos from newspapers, including USA Today, declaring a new policy in which reporters were required to share the identities of unnamed sources with an editor. This practice remains an industry standard.

In a larger sense, there was a fundamental change in newsrooms. Before Cooke, newsrooms were more like the movies, peopled by a collection of committed, rogue oddballs. Since then, journalism has become more homogenized and standardized, more corporate, more rule-driven, though this has been due in part to economics. In sum: After Cooke, it was still cool to be a reporter, but it was also a little tainted. One of us had flown too close to the sun. All had been burned.

What more is there for anyone to write? she said in response to my email about this story. And then she added, in her typical droll fashion, Essentially, Ive spent the last 30 years waiting to die. Knowing her as I do, she was only half kidding.

Harrington also points out that after Cooke, newspapers worked harder to be open with readers. For investigative series, literary recreations, or controversial stories, more column inches were devoted to source citations and explanatory editors notes.

Another result, says Romenesko, was the rise of the era of the ombudsman at newspapers. The Posts own Bill Green, with his evenhanded account of the Posts failings in the Cooke affair, helped spark the trend. With the dual missions of advocating for the community of readers and functioning as a newspapers internal moral compass, ombudsmen served to ease the trust issues that the Cooke affair literally and symbolically raised with the public. Even without ombudsmen, newspapers today put an ever greater emphasis on community relations, some of which can be traced to the post-Cooke efforts to quell community outrage.

For African-American journalists, say some, there was yet another layer of damage done. In a way, elements of Cookes story are similar to the stories of many others. There is no better way to say it: Efforts at leveling the playing field are appreciated by those served. But the navigation is both tricky and somewhat embarrassing for the beneficiaries, many of whom are highly accomplishedif not, they wouldnt have come to anyones attention in the first place.

For all the glamour and prestige that Janet supposedly brought in with her to the Post, they put her straight into the Ghetto, says Courtland Milloy, a columnist for the Post and the only pre-Cooke-era staffer still working at the paper. With all her credentials, Janet still went straight to the Weekly. That was just very telling to me.

What happened with Cooke was a disappointment to African-American journalists, says Julianne Malveaux, a political commentator and past president of Bennett College, a historically black liberal arts college for women. It was a hit. We all took it on the chin.

People were excited when she got a Pulitzer and then [when it was returned], people were like, someone had pulled a rug out from under you, Malveaux says. It basically eroded the integrity of a cadre of African-American journalists who do street reporting. It made people look at people of color, and African Americans in particular, with more scrutiny. Janet Cooke gave white folks permission to be skeptical about black people in the newsroom.

Malveaux notes the perception that anytime an African American screws up, especially in the area of integrity, it essentially slimes all African Americans. When a white guy screws up, like Stephen Glass, it doesnt slime on white people. They just say, okay, he was a jerk, and people move on.

For this reason, Malveaux says, she tries to remember that there was a troubled black woman at the center of the storm.

In the end, Im still concerned for Cooke. She made a major journalistic mistake, but shes a human being and deserves to be seen through that prism. She had great writing chops but she used them the wrong way.

Regardless of Cookes personal story or actual intentions, her transgressions signaled the beginning of a radical change in the role of the media in American life. We live now in an age when no one fully trusts the media.

One reason were even still talking about what happened in 1981, Kurtz says, is because Janet Cooke was to the news business what Vietnam and Watergate were to political establishments.

Cooke returning the Pulitzer, he adds, was the moment that public trust gave way to cynicism. . . . Each subsequent episode tarnishes us all.

JIMMYS WORLD

by Janet Cooke

September 28, 1980

Jimmy is 8 years old and a third-generation heroin addict, a precocious little boy with sandy hair, velvety brown eyes and needle marks freckling the baby-smooth skin of his thin brown arms. He nestles in a large, beige reclining chair in the living room of his comfortably furnished home in Southeast Washington. There is an almost cherubic expression on his small, round face as he talks about lifeclothes, money, the Baltimore Orioles and heroin. He has been an addict since the age of 5. His hands are clasped behind his head, fancy running shoes adorn his feet, and a striped Izod T-shirt hangs over his thin frame. Bad, aint it, he boasts to a reporter visiting recently. I got me six of these. Jimmys is a world of hard drugs, fast money and the good life he believes both can bring. Every day, junkies casually buy heroin from Ron, his mothers live-in-lover, in the dining room of Jimmys home. They cook it in the kitchen and fire up in the bedrooms. And every day, Ron or someone else fires up Jimmy, plunging a needle into his bony arm, sending the fourth grader into a hypnotic nod. Jimmy prefers this atmosphere to school, where only one subject seems relevant to fulfilling his dreams. I want to have me a bad car and dress good and also have me a good place to live, he says. So, I pretty much pay attention to math because I know I got to keep up when I finally get me something to sell. Jimmy wants to sell drugs, maybe even on the Districts meanest street, Condon Terrace SE, and some day deal heroin, he says, just like my man Ron. Ron, 27, and recently up from the South, was the one who first turned Jimmy on.Hed be buggin me all the time about what the shots were and what people was doin and one day he said, When can I get off? Ron says, leaning against a wall in a narcotic haze, his eyes half closed, yet piercing. I said, Well, s, you can have some now. I let him snort a little and, damn, the little dude really did get off. Six months later, Jimmy was hooked. I felt like I was part of what was goin down, he says. I cant really tell you how it feel. You never done any? Sort of like them rides at Kings Dominion . . . like if you was to go on all of them in one day. It be real different from herb (marijuana). Thats baby s. Dont nobody here hardly ever smoke no herb. You cant hardly get none right now anyway. Jimmys mother Andrea accepts her sons habit as a fact of life, although she will not inject the child herself and does not like to see others do it. I dont really like to see him fire up, she says. But, you know, I think he would have got into it one day, anyway. Everybody does. When you live in the ghetto, its all a matter of survival. If he wants to get away from it when hes older, then thats his thing. But right now, things are better for us than theyve ever been. . . . Drugs and black folk been together for a very long time.

Mike Sager was working the night shift as a cops reporter when Janet Cooke was hired at The Washington Post. He would wander the newsroom waiting for a suitable crime to occur and Cooke would often stay late struggling with a particular story. Before long, Sager was invited to sit down at Cookes keyboard to offer some writing advice. Thus began Sagers romance with a young woman who would spark the most tumultuous event in Pulitzer history. Cooke was desperate to escape the second-tier Weekly staff and thought her path off might be a story she was working on about a new type of heroin roiling the city. One outreach worker told Cooke that an 8-year-old boy was being treated, jolting Cooke into a desperate hunt for him. The search went on for weeks as Cooke grew frantic, panicked, and scared. At one point an editor told her she didnt have to use the childs name, which eventually led her to a fateful thought: She could simply make the whole thing up. It was midnight on one of Sagers nights off when he was awakened by a call from Cooke. I found the kid, she told him. His name is Tyrone.

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Mike Sager is a bestselling author and accomplished magazine writer. A former Washington Post staff writer and Rolling Stone contributing editor, he has been an Esquire writer-at-large for 19 years. He is the founder of TheSagerGroup, a boutique publishing house.
In the wake of widely publicized incidents of alleged police misconduct and officer-involved shootings, more and more cities around the country are equipping their police officers with body-worn cameras. But something else is happening, too: State lawmakers are setting new rules about who gets access to all that footage.

The debate over how to treat body-cam footage under sunshine laws raises questions about how to balance police accountability and the privacy interests of ordinary citizens. It also carries the risk that the hoped-for benefits of the cameras wont be realized, if access is restricted too much. Both themes were in play in recent debates in the Midwest.

Earlier this month, the Missouri legislature passed a bill that would permit only body-cam video taken in public spaces to be accessed by the general public; footage taken in private places would be accessible only to those captured in the footage, their families, or their legal representatives. The bill, which would also bar access to body-cam and dash-cam videos while an investigation is ongoing, is awaiting Gov. Jay Nixons signature.

Lawmakers in Kansas went even further, exempting all body-cam (and dash-cam) footage from mandatory disclosure under the state open-records law, just as South Carolina did last year. People who are recorded by police videos, and their families and attorneys, will be able to view the footage. But anyone else, including journalists, would have to go to court and argue that release is in the public interest. Gov. Sam Brownback signed the measure into law earlier this month. (Ironically, it was passed along with a reform that expanded the states open-records act to include emails sent on private servers for public businessa move that transparency advocates cheered.)

Despite the new restrictions, media groups in both states say the outcomes could have been worse. Doug Crews, former executive director of the Missouri Press Association, pointed out to the Associated Press that legislators had pushed for barring access to all footage last year.

In Kansas, attorney Max Kautsch, who represents the states press association, said a legislative proposal filed last year would have deemed all footage confidentialwith no legal avenue for media or the general public to obtain it. But, he says, a judicial committee convened last summer to evaluate that bill ultimately agreed that would go too far. Under the committees proposal, which would provide the basis for the bill signed this month, the state law will now provide bases for both non-disclosure of video footage by law enforcement and a court challenge to such non-disclosure, Kautsch wrote in a blog post.

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Should it be better? Yeah, it should be better, Kautsch told CJR. This is sort of a middle ground.

Kautsch credits a police lobbyist with helping to find compromise in Kansas, restrictive though the bill is. In the debate over access to the recordings, however, media groups and transparency advocates can find themselves in opposition to law enforcementand police tend to have sway in the legislatures. What I see at the state level is that the police lobby is stronger than the press lobby, says Chad Marlow, advocacy and policy counsel at the ACLU.

But the proliferation of body-cams also raises some hard questions about privacy that can cause differences of opinion among transparency advocates. For example, when University of Missouri professor Melissa Click was fired earlier this year, school officials cited not just her altercation with a student videographer but also a separate incident, captured on a body-cam, in which she cursed at police during a heated campus demonstration. That footage became public when it was obtained via a records request by the Columbia Missourian. (Because the incident occurred in a public place, the video would have been accessible under the new law, too.)

In Marlows view, the release of the Click video is contrary to the purpose of body-cams, which is to document police behavior. In that case, its capturing a person engaging in constitutionally protected speech, and then they get punished for it, he said. The idea isnt to create a record of everybodys behavior in public.

Missouris new bill attempts to address privacy concerns by simply barring release of video taken in nonpublic spaces. But from Marlows perspective, this solution is both too restrictive and does too little to protect citizens from unwarranted exposure: Video of an officer-involved shooting that takes place in a private home, for instance, would be a closed record, unless a court rules otherwise, while video of a trivial but embarrassing moment in a public space would be an open record.

The ACLU, which advocates both for privacy and transparency, has crafted model body-cam legislation that attempts to balance transparency and privacy concerns. Under the ACLU bill, body-cam video would be deleted after six months and exempt from public disclosure unless it meets certain criteria, such as use of force or events leading up to a felony arrest. The group has praised measures that became law last year in Oklahoma and Illinois which bear similarities to the model legislation.

In other states, meanwhile, laws about access to body-cam footage are ambiguous. Thats the case in Iowa, where the issue is currently the subject of a legal battle. After a police officer accidentally shot and killed a Burlington, Iowa, woman in January 2015, the local newspaper The Hawk Eye joined the family of the deceased in appealing to the states public information board to obtain the complete body-cam footage of the incident.

The board ruled in favor of the petitioners in December, and has appointed a special prosecutor to argue before an administrative judge for release of the footage. But the case could drag on for months, or even years, if there is an appeals process.

Meanwhile, the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, an advocacy coalition founded by media groups, has urged state lawmakers to follow the example of Illinois, where footage may be released only when it shows use of force, discharge of a weapon, or death. This approach provides a reasonable balancing of privacy and accountability, the councils executive director, Randy Evans, told The Des Moines Register.

Not all transparency advocates agree that police cameras should be treated as a special category. In December, researchers at Yales Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic argued in a white paper that existing freedom-of-information laws are sufficient to protect citizens privacy, and that state legislatures should not enact any restrictions on body-cam access.

But Kathleen Richardson, a longtime advocate in Iowa who was Evanss predecessor at the Freedom of Information Counciland, who, as a member of the state public information board, voted in favor of releasing the Burlington videosays the cameras raise privacy concerns that are worth addressing.

Many of us are starting to realize that even though in most cases there is public interest in the release of video there is a lot of sensitive information involved, Richardson said. Given the nature of the records here, the sensitivity of the information, and also the fact that this can be published immediately and seen all over the world. it behooves us as a society to have a broader discussion.

Sometimes, of course, these legitimate concerns may be exploited to prevent the release of video that should be public. For journalists, one takeaway is that they cant realistically expect unfettered access to body-cam video. Reporters will have to be judicious about how they use the footageand be prepared to put up a fight to get it.

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Deron Lee is CJRs correspondent for Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska. A writer and copy editor who has spent nine years with the National Journal Group, he has also contributed to The Hotline and the Lawrence Journal-World. He lives in the Kansas City area. Follow him on Twitter at @deron_lee.
Martin Senn, the Zurich Insurance Group AG chief executive officer who stepped down in a December reshuffle, has committed suicide, the company said in a statement on Monday. He was 59.

The family informed Zurich Insurance that Senn had taken his own life on Friday, according to the statement. We are profoundly shocked by the news of the sudden death, the company said.

Senn was found in his holiday house in Klosters, a Swiss ski resort, Blick newspaper reported. The cantonal police of Grisons wouldnt confirm the death but said officers had been deployed on Friday in connection with Senn.

Huge Loss

This is a huge loss; Martin Senn was an amazing person, said Martin Naville, CEO of the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce, where Senn had served as president. Human beings are hard to understand but we have to accept his decision.

Senn in December acknowledged setbacks in the months before his departure after higher-than-expected claims at the general-insurance unit forced the company to abandon a takeover bid for RSA Insurance Group Plc. The company later announced an overhaul of the general-insurance business.

During Senns five years as CEO, Zurich Insurance rose about 19 percent and paid out record dividends of 17 Swiss francs a share. In his biggest acquisition, he bought a 51 percent stake in Banco Santander SAs insurance division for $1.67 billion in 2011. Two years later, Chief Financial Officer Pierre Wauthier committed suicide and Josef Ackermann quit.

Conservative Approach

Senns conservative approach helped Zurich Insurance perform well during the financial crisis, when he was the chief investment officer, said Andreas Schaefer, an analyst at Bankhaus Lampe. Zurichs asset side never caused any problems and the company did well compared with its peers, he said. Schaefer has a hold rating on the stock.

Mario Greco, the former CEO of Italys Assicurazioni Generali SpA, assumed Senns role in March. UBS Group AG CEO Sergio Ermotti was set to take over as president of the chamber of commerce in June.

Senn started at Zurich in 2006 as CIO and became CEO in 2010. He joined from Switzerlands biggest life insurer, Swiss Life Holding AG, and held several positions at Credit Suisse Group AG.

When he was 26, Senn became treasurer of the Hong Kong branch of Schweizerischer Bankverein, today known as UBS Group AG.

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.
Drones may be a game changer for claims investigations and processing, said Kevin Quinley, founder and principal of Quinley Risk Associates. In a Claims Insights podcast interview with Claims Journal, he discussed the transition in the use of drones from strictly military operations to a variety of commercial applications.

Amazon is just one of many companies considering the use of drones to deliver packages. Law enforcement agencies already use drones for a variety of functions, like wildfire and traffic management and bridge inspections.

Dominos UK tested pizza delivery in London and there is a pizza maker in Russia that has been delivering pizzas by drone since 2014.

Quinley said hobbyists have expressed a huge interest in drones as evidenced by the huge sales of the unmanned aerial systems this past holiday season.

He described four main areas of impact that drone technology will have on the claims industry. These include:

On scene investigation and accident reconstruction. Surveillance and the monitoring disabilities. Claims settlements. New forms of insurance coverage for drones.

Currently, the cost of sending adjusters to investigate accident scenes is high but could be alleviated by the use of drones in the claims process. In addition, the ease of rapid deployment is another benefit. The information obtained by the drones could help determine liability and confirm injury, Quinley said.

Drones also have a role in fighting insurance fraud through possible surveillance of bodily injury/workers compensation claimants.

With drones, this could arm adjusters with discreet ways to gauge the physical activity of claimants who claim disability to either verify or impeach disability claims, Quinley said.

Their ease of use will aid in reducing an insurers reliance on investigative firms surveillance vans.

I could see drones refining the fraud fighting ability of insurance companies and claims people, said Quinley.

Drones can also be used to speed up claim settlements. Insurers could deliver settlement checks to policyholders and claimants resulting in quick turnover of files.

The insurance market has been cautious in response to the growth in commercial and personal use of drones, Quinley said.

There are liability risks, like the potential for drones to drop out of the sky and because they fly at low altitudes, there is the risk of a drone crash possibly causing property damage. In addition, Quinley expects lawsuits relating to drone use alleging invasion of privacy.

There is reason to be concerned about the safety of drones, Quinley said, citing examples here and in the UK. In Virginia, a videographer was fined $10,000 for operating a drone recklessly while recording a promotional video for the University of Virginia campus. In Germany, a drone crash landed at the feet of Angela Merkel, he said.

Quinley expects the plaintiffs bar to become interested in drone technology. Its only a matter of time before it becomes a new sub specialty for personal injury attorneys, he said.

He expects they will take advantage of both negligence and product liability claims against drone operators and manufacturers.

There is a silver lining, he said. While there is risk, it creates opportunity for insurers to create new policies for both first party and liability coverage.
In the last few years, hail damage lawsuits have crowded Texas courts. Using the same model employed in the Lone Star state, hail damage litigation is beginning to impact other states where large hail events have occurred, including Colorado, Oklahoma and Minnesota.

Colorado, in particular, has seen a significant uptick in insurance claims and suits relating to hail damage. One reason is that Colorado, like Texas, has favorable consumer protection laws. In fact, Colorado allows contractors to file bad faith lawsuits against insurance companies resulting from disputes on a claim, according to Steven Badger, a Dallas-based partner with Zelle LLP.

Thats similar to the situation giving rise to all the lawsuits in Florida, he explained.

Florida recognizes a formal assignment of benefits that allows insureds to assign claim benefits to the contractor. In Colorado, the contractor is considered a party with an actual remedy under the bad faith statute when the carrier doesnt fully pay for the alleged roof repairs, Badger said.

In addition, Colorado is seeing increasing use of the appraisal process, with increasing abuses during the process by certain public adjusters. professional appraisers and attorneys, Badger said.

Interestingly, we are seeing a significant influx of individuals from Florida getting involved in Colorado claims and appraisals, Badger said. For whatever reason, most of the disputed claims and appraisals that we are working on for our clients in Colorado involve individuals from Florida.

This may be due to minimal hurricane activity in Florida in recent years, as well as the fact that Texas already has a ripe market of appraisers, public adjusters and policyholder attorneys, he said; whereas Colorado does not.

Its a market where they can come in from Florida and set up shop, he said.

Badgers firm has taken an aggressive and vocal stance on behalf of the insurance industry in not only defending hail litigation, but also in responding to improper conduct by those involved in the claims and litigation process. Recently, Badger filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of a group of homeowners against a North Texas roofing contractor alleged to be involved in improper claims handling conduct.

Several of Badgers articles on the subject have been published by Claims Journal.

In one article, he offered several possible solutions to the problem in Texas. He said these same solutions can be applied in other states as well.

One idea that would be applicable anywhere is to mandate the use of Class 4 hail rated roofing products in areas of severe hail exposure. There are products out there that are more hail resistant and would not fail in small hail events, Badger said.

In fact, Underwriters Laboratories recently submitted a proposal to the International Building Code drafters, proposing a revision to the codes that would require hail rated products in areas of severe hail exposure, he explained. That proposal was voted down as a result of overwhelming opposition from roofing contractor and roofing manufacturer trade groups.

Another solution is stronger enforcement in the various states of what I call the no negotiate statutes that prohibit contractors from involving themselves in the insurance claims process, Badger said. Most states already have statutes or insurance regulations in place that prohibit such conduct, but unfortunately the conduct remains rampant.

Contractors routinely act on behalf of building owners in negotiating insurance claims. Laws in place prohibiting such conduct should be enforced.

If the barrage of hail damage lawsuits continues, there is the possibility that insurers will exclude these type of claims, Badger said.

Its something thats already happening, he said. In Hidalgo County, where there were over 10,000 lawsuits filed after the 2012 hailstorms, at least two major insurers have completely pulled out of the market. We will continue to see this market response wherever hail lawsuits are proliferating.

Badger said he wouldnt be surprised to see a Texas Hailstorm Insurance Association created, much like the windstorm insurance association.

Will it happen? It could. But Id sure like to see another solution to this crisis, and that can be achieved by restoring some balance and fairness to claims and litigation process, he said.

If we could address the problems without changing any laws or having to restrict coverage, that would be ideal, Badger stated.

Badger said that he doesnt see that happening in this current climate.

One positive trend in the right direction is that courts are beginning to take notice, he said.

There are federal judges writing opinions clearly indicating that they understand whats happening in these lawsuits and they dont like it, he explained. To bring an end to this problem without legislative action or policy form changes will require assistance from the courts, from the Texas Department of Insurance, from the State Bar of Texas and from local criminal authorities.

As a result of the articles Badger has written on the subject and his recent class action lawsuit filing, he has had numerous communications with investigators from the Texas Department of Insurance, the State Bar of Texas and a couple of local district attorneys.

They are paying attention to the complaints being filed and are beginning to take action against illegal conduct, said Badger.

Badger recommended that insurers facing an onslaught of hail damage lawsuits seeking damages that are clearly not covered should stand by their policy forms and applicable law.

They need to break the model where a public adjuster or lawyer knows that if they can get someone to sign a contract allowing them to file a lawsuit, all they have to do is file the suit and the insurance carrier will pay something regardless of merit. That model has to come to an end, explained Badger. Also, the carriers need to spend the time to root out the illegal conduct going on in some of these claims and report that bad conduct to the authorities.

These days, Badger has a team of coverage attorneys spending their days defending hail damage lawsuits.

Thats allowing me to spend all of my time in focusing on addressing the fraudulent and illegal conduct we are seeing, he said. This includes the class action we just filed against a roofing contractor for the unauthorized practice of public adjusting, reporting building owners to the authorities for fabricating replacement cost invoices and working with reputable lawyers who are bringing lawsuits against other lawyers for illegal case running.

While it may all seem negative, Badger said he is encouraged by the calls of support he has received from reputable contractors who are tired of dealing with fellow contractors that illegally waive deductibles; from experienced public adjusters tired of new entrants into their industry who have no desire to actually adjust and settle a claim, but just want to get their matters into the hands of a lawyer; and from real policyholder attorneys who are ashamed to see what is happening within their ranks.

Everyone knows there is a problem in Texas and that the problem is spreading to other states, Badger said. We just havent agreed yet on the solution to the problem.
When going in for a medical procedure, you probably want to be certain the doctors instruments are clean. Following a recent turnabout by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, that certainty may be a little harder to come by.

Six months ago, the regulator said a machine tied by a U.S. Senate report to a deadly superbug outbreak should be taken off the market as soon as possible to protect public health. Twice. But the machine, which uses water, disinfectant, and sound waves to clean certain surgical instruments, remains in use for some of those instruments after FDA officials backed down. And no one is saying precisely why.

The FDA ordered a small Ivyland, Pa.-based company called Custom Ultrasonics Inc. to take its 2,800 System 83 Plus machines out of service. The automated washing machines are used across the U.S. to clean endoscopes, devices with a light and camera on one end for probing inside your body. A specialized type of endoscope known as a duodenoscope, used to look in tiny crevices of the small intestine, has proven particularly hard to clean and was linked to antibiotic-resistant infections at hospitals over the last few years.

The use of Custom Ultrasonics equipment was one of several factors that likely contributed to dangerous infections spread by inadequately cleaned duodenoscopes, according to a report issued this year by Senate Democratic staff investigating the incidents. Up to 350 patients may have been infected at dozens of hospitals since 2010, according to separate documents released in April by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The exact number is difficult to ascertain because reporting of cases has been spotty, though more than a dozen patients who were infected subsequently died. Not all outbreaks occurred at hospitals using Custom Ultrasonics machines, and the company has previously denied in court filings that its machines are unsafe or contributed to patient injury or death.

In its November 2015 correspondence with the company demanding a recall, the FDA raised concerns about the devices compatibility with disinfectants, whether it works with duodenoscopes, and whether it properly eliminates microorganisms from water. In pulling back that recall demand, the regulator now says its working with the company to ensure that the machines are validated in a timely manner, according to agency spokeswoman Deborah Kotz. Validated means the company has to prove the devices work as advertised. In the meantime, the machines can still be used to clean instruments including most endoscopesjust not duodenoscopes, she said. The reversal was based on information provided by the company, Kotz said, without elaborating. We have nothing more to share on this at this time.

With the new FDA position, Custom Ultrasonics said in a notice posted on its website that it will send hospitals a label to affix to the washers. The label warns users not to use the machines to clean duodenoscopes.

Robert Blanchard, director of product management and sales for Custom Ultrasonics, said in an e-mail that the company declined to comment on the FDA letters.

Intricate Design

The problem with duodenoscopes, used in more than a half-million procedures in the U.S. each year, is that they have an intricate design making them particularly difficult to clean. An expert panel convened by the FDA last May concluded the devices arent reliably safe. In August, the agency recommended additional cleaning protocols to reduce risk of infection, including repeat washing, testing for contamination, or using a gas called ethylene oxide to sterilize the instruments. One model of scope made by Olympus was recalled for repair in January.

The FDAs scrutiny of Custom Ultrasonics predates the recent outbreaks. Inspections as far back as 1991 found significant violations of federal rules meant to ensure quality manufacturing and timely reporting of patient harm, according to a 2006 complaint filed by federal prosecutors in Philadelphia. Similar violations were evident in inspections in 1992, 1995, 2005, and 2006, according to the lawsuit. Thirteen patients tested positive for hepatitis C after being treated with endoscopes cleaned by Custom Ultrasonics System 83 Plus machine, according to court filings (over a period of time that wasnt specified). The company learned of the infections in 2004 and was required by law to report them to the FDA within 30 days, prosecutors said, but didnt do so for more than two years.

Custom Ultrasonics disputed the allegations in its answer to the complaint. To defendants knowledge, its devices as manufactured have never been found to have caused or contributed to any patient injury or death, the companys attorney wrote. Further, the safety of products manufactured by Custom Ultrasonics has never been at issue.

Consent Decree

The government lawsuit led to a consent decree in January 2007 that remains in force, and was the legal basis for the latest recall. (Custom Ultrasonics didnt admit any wrongdoing as part of the agreement.) Under its terms, the company was initially barred from making or selling the devices. A few months later, however, the FDA found that it was complying with the decree and allowed it to resume operations on a limited basis.

But in 2012, the FDA ordered a recall of the System 83 Plus devices because of recurring violations of the law and consent decree, according to the agencys recent directive to the company. After another inspection, the FDA reiterated its recall order, and wrote that the company must pay damages under the consent decree. In April 2015, the regulator found that the company hadnt validated several aspects of its machine, including water filtration, compatibility with disinfectants, and that it fully cleans duodenoscopes, the same issues (PDF) raised in the most recent recall.

Two bluntly worded letters dated Nov. 12, 2015 (PDF) and Jan. 29, 2016 (PDF) indicated that, given the companys lengthy regulatory history, merely trying to fix the machines wouldnt suffice. The first letter instructed the company to recall all of them, at its own expense, and figure out how hospitals could transition from the System 83 Plus as soon as possible. The second letter (PDF) said the companys response to the first letter was insufficient because it only offered to correct the machines rather than to remove those devices from use. The agency wrote, in bold text, FDA orders Custom Ultrasonics to immediately recall all System 83 Plus devices by removing them from use.

FDA officials called the companys response inadequate eight times in an eight page letter. The regulator threatened to impose a daily fine starting on Feb. 8 if Custom Ultrasonics didnt comply.

Then, some weeks later, the FDA backed off.

The tenor of the two letters made the agencys turnaround puzzling, said Mark Duro, director of sterile processing operations at New England Baptist Hospital in Boston.

In the 20 years that Ive been in the business, Ive never seen a recall get changed like that, said Duro. His hospital doesnt use Custom Ultrasonics equipment, but he said he remembers when the FDA determined in 2009 that a similar machine wasnt cleared for use because it didnt work as advertised. That time, the agency didnt back down. We were forced to buy new devices, Duro said.

Expensive Machine

Replacing a cleaning machine can cost tens of thousands of dollars and put a ton of hospitals in a world of hurt, Duro said. Its not clear how many hospitals are still using Custom Ultrasonics devices. Nine out of 16 U.S. hospitals that had superbug cases linked to duodenoscopes were identified in the Senate staff report as using Custom Ultrasonics machines to clean them. Only one of the hospitals, Hartford Hospital in Connecticut, said it immediately replaced the machines with other models after the recall.

A spokeswoman for UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh said the hospital complies fully with any such recalls it receives, declining further comment. A spokeswoman for Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia said the Senate report was incorrect and that the hospital never used Custom Ultrasonics.

Four hospitals where (according to the report) an estimated 86 patients were infected with superbugs declined to answer whether Custom machines were still being used to clean their endoscopes, which is still permitted under the FDAs current ruling. They include New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York; UMass Memorial Hospital, in Worcester, Mass.; Advocate Lutheran General Hospital, in Park Ridge, Ill.; and Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, N.C.

Two hospitalsUCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles and Massachusetts General Hospital in Bostonsaid they are in the process of switching to other vendors. Both said they have already put stricter measures in place for the hard-to-clean duodenoscopes linked to the outbreaks.

Lawrence Muscarella, a former director of infection control for Custom Ultrasonics who left in 2013, said the FDAs change of course appears to be sending the wrong message, that it may reward a regulated company for not complying with an order to remove a censured device for all U.S. hospitals. Muscarella said patients should know if the hospital theyre being treated at is using equipment that has raised safety concerns: Its okay for hospitals to do that, provided the patient is told of this, so patient is aware of the care that theyre getting.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
A citizens group and homeowners who have recently suffered repeat flood damage sued Houston in federal court Wednesday, alleging the city backed improvements at a commercial development they say were made without putting in adequate drainage.

Residents Against Flooding and five individuals filed the suit against Houston and two quasi-governmental authorities created at the turn of the century to better infrastructure around the Memorial City complex.

The plaintiffs claim the authorities reneged on promises to build concrete-walled drainage ponds that would have eased the flooding as roads, storm sewers and even part of Interstate 10 were widened in an area already built up with big-box stores, a hospital, offices and condos.

As a result, hundreds of homes in the Memorial City area have suffered repeated and horrific flooding, the suit says. It claims a violation of the plaintiffs constitutional rights to due process and against unreasonable seizure of property. It does not seek damages, but rather relief, including ordering necessary flood-control measures and naming a special master to oversee them.

People whose homes never before flooded have been inundated three times since 2009, residents say, most recently on April 18. That catastrophe claimed eight lives and causes tens of millions of dollars in damage. People feel unsafe in their own homes. They live in fear of each and every rainstorm, the lawsuit says.

The suit faults the special reinvestment zone that the plaintiffs allege was created to benefit private developer MetroNational, which owns a big chunk of properties within the zone and whose lawyers drew up the papers that helped create it.

The plaintiffs seek a moratorium on new commercial developments of more than 5 acres in the zone until the special master or the court deems they do not increase flood risks.

MetroNational is not a defendant. Its former president, Jim Jard, said last week that he didnt believe there was an engineer in town who would find that the improvements had caused the flooding.

Activists blame worsening flooding in metropolitan Houston on unrestrained development that has swallowed up well over 15,000 acres of water-absorbing wetlands since 1992. They accuse developers, engineers and builders of leveraging cozy relations with politicians to skimp on flood-prevention measures.

Mayor Sylvester Turner, who was elected in December, said Wednesday that he had not yet read the lawsuit. But he rejected accusations of political favoritism.

I cant sit here and say that we have favored one group over another, he told reporters at his weekly news conference. People are angry, They dont want their homes flooded, two, four, six, seven times. I got that  But instead of fighting a lawsuit, lets put our efforts into trying to mitigate the risks of flooding.

Turner has named a flooding czar, a civil engineer and former city councilman, but has yet to announce specific measures. He said he planned to visit Washington in June to lobby members of Congress for more than $300 million in federal aid to help lessen the ravages of flooding in the fourth-largest U.S. city.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- If Cleveland's proposed $15-an-hour minimum wage comes to pass, the city will tie with Seattle for the highest minimum wage in America, two local economists told members of Cleveland City Council Tuesday.

But unlike Seattle's new wage, which is being phased in and won't hit the $15 benchmark for small businesses until 2021, Cleveland's would be all at once - imposed on any business with more than 25 employees, beginning in January.

The effect could be devastating for some Cleveland business owners, faced suddenly with the challenge of supporting a payroll that has grown by 85 percent, said Bill Kosteas, chair of the economics department at Cleveland State University, and Albert Sumell, associate professor at Youngstown State University.

The economists were invited by Council President Kevin Kelley to address council on the implications of legislation proposing the new wage. Cleveland currently does not have a citywide minimum wage; the state's is $8.10 per hour.

The Service Employees International Union, through a newly formed local group called Raise Up Cleveland, had collected enough signatures of Cleveland voters to compel council to introduce the legislation earlier this month. If council votes down the ordinance or adopts an amended version, the petitioners have the option of putting the original language on the ballot for Cleveland voters.

Two weeks ago, a group supporting the initiative, including SEIU 1199 President Becky Williams and former State Sen. and former Cleveland Councilwoman Nina Turner, appeared during a council hearing and urged members to consider the economic inequality that plagues the black community. The top 20 percent of Cleveland income-earners collect 53 percent of the overall income earned in the city, Williams said, and less than 10 percent of the overall income goes to the bottom 40 percent.

On Tuesday, Kosteas and Sumell, said they are troubled by three aspects of the proposal that could negatively impact Cleveland's economy:

1) The magnitude of the increase. The state's minimum wage is $8.10 an hour. A minimum wage increase of this size has never been done anywhere in the world. Cleveland's proposal would boost the city's minimum wage to 84 percent of the median hourly wage of the entire Cleveland-Elyria metro area. Some research suggests that local economies cannot sustain a minimum wage above 60 percent of the median income.

2) The geographic scope of the increase. Boosting Cleveland's minimum wage -- not the rest of the metro area or the state - would create an uneven playing field. For a firm with 100 employees making minimum wage, that would translate into an additional $1 million in payroll costs a year.

Many of Cleveland's jobs are in production - an industry that is not geographically tied to its customer base and can easily pick up and move to a neighboring suburb that follows the state's minimum wage.

3) The compressed timeline. Every city that has instituted minimum wage increases has done so over a period of time, to give employers a chance to adjust and minimize losses. Business owners are more inclined to overreact by laying off workers or cutting hours if the wage hike is all at once.

"There are certain occupations in Cleveland where 70, 80 or 90 percent of the workers would be impacted," Kosteas said. "And that sounds great if that were the end of the story. But you know that's not the end of the story. Any employer faced with the prospect of having to pay everyone a significant wage increase will have to think long and hard about doing business in the city."

In addition to Seattle, California and New York recently have adopted plans to ease into statewide minimum wage increases of as much as $15 over a period of years. But Sumell said Cleveland's proposal is unprecedented.

"From my perspective, as someone who has read the research - it's too high, it's too soon, and it's too limited of a geographic area," Sumell said.

Council members who spoke during the hearing expressed conflicting views on the proposal.

Councilman Mike Polensek said he would not support the wage hike unless it were statewide. He told the group of supporters congregated in the committee meeting room that they were putting council members in an unfair position - asking them to choose between the interests of multiple sectors of their constituencies.

Polensek said he has heard from several small business owners in his ward, who could not survive the wage increase, and he does not want to see more disinvestment on the city's Northeast Side.

Councilman Jeffrey Johnson said he supports a wage increase and believes that paying workers more will stimulate the local economy. He wondered aloud if it's "time to shock the system by having the city lead" on the issue.

Councilman Kerry McCormack pointed out that losing businesses to neighboring suburbs would not only hurt the city, but also would prohibit some Clevelanders, who rely on public transportation or travel on foot, from keeping their jobs at those companies.

Councilman Zack Reed said that, although he prefers a phased in approach, the city's working poor deserve a raise. And he chastised CEO's who make 1,000 times more than their rank and file.

Kosteas cautioned Reed on his rhetoric and pointed out that most of Cleveland's entrepreneurs run small businesses they built from scratch and sometimes are just breaking even. Among them, Kosteas said, were his own immigrant parents.

"My parents came to this country with nothing and they got to the point where they provided really good jobs for a couple dozen people," he said. "The vast majority of firms in the city are small- to medium-sized companies. And I would hate for us to cause harm to them because we're not acknowledging those simple facts."
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A probable act of terrorism is once again dominating the news. Following the Russian airliner that was bombed out of Egypts skies several months ago, reports appeared about the downing of an Egyptian plane, this one carrying 66 people from Paris to Cairo. Some wreckage has been found, but initial indications point to jihadist extremism as the culprit behind the destruction and deaths.

If you want to discover the root cause of this systemic problem, I recommend a book called Inside Jihad, written by a friend of mine named Tawfik Hamid. Tawfik was an Egyptian medical doctor. Thirty years ago, he was recruited into a radical Islamic group called Jammaa Islameia. The leader of this group, Al-Zawahiri, went on to found Al-Qaeda. Fortunately, Tawfik grew disillusioned with the ruthless ideology. His first assignment was to bury an Egyptian policeman alive. Suddenly, he had an awakening in his conscience, quickly left, and now forcefully rejects and courageously denounces such radicalism.

In his book, Tawfik traces the process by which persons are so radicalized that they regard other human beings as infidels, even as sacrificial targets of religious observance. I remember talking to Tawfik a number of years ago about the psychological dynamic that would lead someone to do such grave harm to others, assuming it must be a bizarre need for affirmation or self-actualization. He said, Jeff, youve got it all wrong. It is the process of dulling the conscience through a twisted form of strict religious observance.

He further identified the problem as Petro-Islam. The world's materialistic desire for oil has inadvertently funded the emergence of a narrow sect in Islam called Wahhabism. The book examines the darker aspects of this theological strain, and traces the process as to how violence in the name of God becomes a form of worship. It is irrational, and ISIS is the latest brand.

I wrote to you a few weeks ago about my experience in China. One morning, as I woke up and went to exercise, I saw Tawfik on the television in the hotel. He is a highly courageous man who found new life and is consistently speaking out to the world. His lifes work is to revive a narrative of thought within Islam that rejects religious violence and looks instead to a spirituality of harmony and peace.

In America we have the most advanced weaponry, the most dynamic economy and the most opportunity in the world, despite our difficulties. However, military force alone will not eradicate this problem. It is men like Tawfik and others who are building bridges and confronting the desperation of this type of violence that will help us bring about stability in the world.

At the moment, there seems to be little hope for the Middle East. In times like these, I reach back to an earlier experience. When I was a younger man, I spent time in the Sinai dessert in the place where Israel and Egypt fought the 73 war. On a twisted pile of concrete and rubble, which is an all too familiar scene now in the Middle East, there was a spray-painted sign both in Arabic and English: Here was the war, here is the peace.
United States Postal Service

Five postal carriers were charged in federal court with delivering marijuana to a drug dealer.

(John Harper/cleveland.com)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Five Cleveland mail carriers face federal marijuana charges for delivering marijuana to a drug dealer, according to a federal indictment unsealed Monday.

Devon Blake, 25, Rashon Blake, 25, Tamika Embry, 32, Aaron Kelly, 28, and Dartagnan Mitchell, 28, all face charges of conspiracy, accepting bribes and marijuana distribution.

The quintet worked with Kevin Collins for several months in 2015 to establish a method of delivering the drugs, according to charging documents.

The mail carriers gave Collins their work schedules and their postal routes. Collins would then have packages with marijuana shipped to addresses on their routes on the days the carriers were scheduled to work, the documents say.

The carriers delivered the packages to Collins instead of the addresses on the packages, and Collins would pay them for their services, court documents say.

The defendants are considered public officials under to federal law.

A grand jury handed up the indictment on Wednesday. It was unsealed Monday, following the arrests of Embry and Kelly. Both pleaded not guilty to Magistrate Judge William Baughman and were released on bond.

The other three defendants were issued summonses, according to U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Mike Tobin.

Collins pleaded guilty in March to drug charges. According to a plea agreement, he is cooperating with the federal government.

A spokesman for the Postal Service's Office of Inspector General said in an email Monday that Mitchell resigned in March. The other four are suspended pending hte outcome of the criminal case.

Charles Fleming, Kelly's federal public defender, declined to comment. Gretchen Holderman, Embry's appointed attorney, said she did not yet know enough about the case to comment.

It was not immediately clear whether the other defendants had attorneys.

If you wish to discuss or comment on this story, please visit Tuesday's crime and courts comments section.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Seven Hills man pleaded guilty Monday to federal drug charges following his October arrest alongside a then-Brooklyn mayoral candidate and the son of the Parma Heights mayor.

Alfonso Yunis, 42, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and two counts of distribution of oxycodone. Chief U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. will sentence him Aug. 23.

Under a plea agreement he reached with prosecutors, Yunis faces a prison sentence of between two and two-and-a-half years, his attorney Craig Weintraub said. Prosecutors have also agreed to drop eight other drug charges.

Yunis, then-Brooklyn Law Director Scott Claussen and attorney Brian Byrne were arrested in October after a drug squad raided Yunis' Broadview Road home. Weintraub described Claussen and Byrne, the son of Parma Heights Mayor Mike Byrne, as users, while Yunis was their friend and the one who supplied them with drugs.

Weintraub said that "we are satisfied that we reached a very reasonable resolution." His client is free on bond.

Claussen and Byrne, who also have a law firm together on Detroit Avenue in Cleveland, entered deferred prosecution agreements in January in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court. Their felony drug charges will be dropped if they complete a drug-treatment program and a period of community control.

Claussen was a candidate for Brooklyn mayor at the time of his arrest. He lost to city council President Katie Gallagher. He was replaced as law director by Kevin Butler.

A criminal complaint says that a U.S. Postal Inspector employee began investigating Yunis in September after discovering that a package sent from a Las Vegas resident contained oxycodone.

Investigators tracked several packages mailed to Yunis that contained drugs. They arrested Yunis after placing a tracking device in a package and waited for him to open it, the complaint says.

Agents went to Yunis' home after he opened the package, and found him, Claussen and Byrne cutting up prescription pills with credit cards.

Agents found pills, paraphernalia and nearly $10,000 in cash at Yunis' house. Yunis admitted to agents that he, Claussen and Byrne were shaving oxycodone pills to bake them and remove the extended-release components so they could snort it, the complaint says.

If you wish to discuss or comment on this story, please visit Tuesday's crime and courts comments section.
LORAIN, Ohio -- Investigators said three attempted abductions in Lorain are "closely tied" to the May 21 abduction of a Cleveland girl and the attempted kidnapping of a girl from her Elyria bedroom in February.

"We find it hard to believe that these cases are mere coincidences," Lorain police Lt. Ed Super said Tuesday. "This isn't something we deal with everyday. To have these cases happen so close together suggests they are closely tied together."

Forensic evidence from the May 21 abduction of a 6-year-old Cleveland girl matched evidence from an Elyria home where a 10-year-old girl said an unknown man tried to pull her through her bedroom window in February, FBI Special Agent in Charge Steve Anthony said at the news conference Friday.

Both girls gave police a similar description of the man.

Lorain City Schools locked down its buildings after a man tried to grab several girls in three separate abduction attempts the same morning as the attempted abduction in Elyria. Another Lorain girl reported a man in a ski mask outside her bedroom window.

Investigators believe the cases are closely related, but there was no physical evidence in Lorain. An arrest in Cleveland and Elyria is key to solving the Lorain cases, Super said.

"Without forensic evidence, we don't have anything that definitely ties the cases together," Super said. "Once Cleveland and Elyria are able to make an arrest, that will give us more to work with."

Elyria police Capt. Chris Costantino said police and the FBI worked together on the February case, but he wouldn't go into details of the evidence because the investigation is ongoing. With the FBI involved in both cases, they were able to quickly find the link between Elyria and Cleveland, he said.

"They determined a link in the two cases through forensics Friday," Costantino said. "They called a press conference immediately to get the word out."

Cleveland is about 35 miles from Elyria and Lorain, which border each other.

"We now know this man moves beyond Cuyahoga County," Anthony said at Friday's press conference. "Think beyond Cleveland."

Here's a look back at the three cases:

Cleveland

A man took the 6-year-old Cleveland girl in the early morning of May 21 from inside her home on the city's West Side. She was held for about 17 hours at a home before someone dropped her off near Lyric Avenue and West 140th Street.

The girl said the bedroom in which she was held had pictures of moose, grass and trees on the walls. Police believe the walls are covered in wallpaper, Anthony said.

Authorities do not yet know if the house is in Cleveland or in another city.

She described him as a white man about 5 feet 10 inches tall with light brown hair, a trimmed beard and at least one tattoo, according to Cleveland police.

Elyria

A 10-year-old Elyria girl told police a man grabbed at her legs and tried to pull her out of her bedroom window around 3:45 a.m. Feb. 25 in the 600 block of Furnace Street.

The man told the girl to cooperate and he wouldn't hurt her or her family, police said. She broke free and ran to her father's bedroom for help.

The victim's father told police that someone had removed a ladder from his yard and placed it against the house beneath his daughter's window.

The girl said he was a white man in his 30s with brown eyes. He was wearing a black hoody tied tightly around his face.

Lorain

Lorain City Schools locked down all its buildings the same day while police searched for a man who tried to grab several girls on their way to school.

The man grabbed a girl by the arm, made threatening comments, and punched her twice about 6 a.m. Feb. 25 near Washington Avenue and West 9th Street, Lorain police said.

The girl screamed and ran away. Neighbors heard the screams and saw a man running on West 8th Street, Lorain police said.

A man fitting the same description exposed himself and followed a girl into a yard in the area of Oberlin Avenue and West 8th Street more than an hour later, police said. He ran west on West 8th Street.

The man grabbed another girl from behind about 20 minutes later near West 18th Street and Oakdale Avenue. He ran east on West 18th Street.

The girls said he was a a white man in his mid 20s to mid 30s. He's 5-feet 10-inches tall. He was wearing a black jacket with a hood, dark jeans, dark shoes, dark gloves, and possibly a black ski mask-type mask covering face.

Anyone with information about the cases are asked to contact the Elyria Police Department at 440-323-3302 or the Cleveland FBI Office at 216-522-1400.

If you wish to discuss or comment on this story, please visit our crime and courts comments section.

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CLEVELAND, Ohio -- No, National Donut Day is not a "made-up" holiday to sell cakes.

The national celebration on Friday, June 3, has its roots in World War I, when the Salvation Army "Donut Lassies" volunteered to serve the cakes to troops on the French front.

The official holiday dates back to 1938, when the Salvation Army in Chicago created it as a way to honor the WWI Lassies and feed the needy during the Great Depression.

Today, National Donut Day remains a Salvation Army fundraiser in Chicago. Around the rest of the country, it's just a tasty treat - though you can donate to SA at http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/usn/donut_day

Here are 10 Cleveland places to mark the sweet holiday -- from free cakes to local classics.

Laura DeMarco, The Plain Dealer

National Donut Day: 10 shops and deals to celebrate in Cleveland

By Laura DeMarco, The Plain Dealer

No, National Donut Day is not a made-up holiday to sell cakes.

The national celebration on Friday, June 3, has its roots in World War I, when the Salvation Army Donut Lassies volunteered to serve the cakes to troops on the French front.

The official holiday dates back to 1938, when the Salvation Army in Chicago created it as a way to honor the WWI Lassies and feed the needy during the Great Depression.

Today, National Donut Day remains a Salvation Army fundraiser in Chicago. Around the rest of the country, it's just a tasty treat  though you can donate to SA at http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/usn/donut_day

Here are 10 Cleveland places to mark the sweet holiday -- from free cakes to local classics.

Don't Edit

Laura DeMarco, The Plain Dealer

Krispy Kreme

Krispy Kreme, 6907 Pearl Road, Middleburg Heights: Get one free glazed donut per person Friday at the Southland Shopping center bakery, the only Krispy Kreme in Northeast Ohio. (Chuck Burton, The Plain Dealer)

Don't Edit

Laura DeMarco, The Plain Dealer

Becker's Donuts

Becker's Donuts and Bakery, 22088 Lorain Road, Fairview Park, 29603 Lorain Road, North Olmsted, other area locations: Started by the Becker brothers in 1946, just after they returned home from World War II, this chain at one time numbered 13 locations. Dozens of varieties range from French crullers to cake donuts and filled treats. Don't miss the peanut cake donuts, or divine Bavarian cream. (David Petkiewicz, cleveland.com)

Don't Edit

Laura DeMarco, The Plain Dealer

Jack Frost Donuts

Jack Frost Donuts, 4960 Pearl Road, Cleveland: Since 1937, this compact donut shop on the corner of Pearl and Fulton roads has been redefining the very concept of donuts. These fresh-baked-daily treats aren't just filled or glazed, they are ornate, decadent and oh-so-creative mini-cakes topped with mounds of frosting and other delights, from their coconut German Chocolate Donut to the Cherry Danish Donut and more. (Laura DeMarco, The Plain Dealer)

Don't Edit

Laura DeMarco, The Plain Dealer

Royal Donut

Royal Donut, 5759 State Road, Parma: A retro diner straight outta the 1950s known for their tasty cakes and strong coffee. A popular hangout with locals, cops and the after-Mass crowds from State Road's many churches. (David Petkiewicz, cleveland.com)

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Laura DeMarco, The Plain Dealer

Entenmann's

Entenmann's: The bakery chain is offering a chance at free donuts for a year on their website  http://www.entenmanns.com -- where you can also donate to the Salvation Army, the original "Donut Lassies."

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Laura DeMarco, The Plain Dealer

Peace, Love and Little Donuts

Peace, Love, and Little Donuts, 3786 Rocky River Drive, Cleveland: This teeny but colorful shop at Kamm's Corners is what you would get if Peter Max made sweets  little, trippy, colorful donuts. The half-sized donuts come in "far out" frosted varieties, "groovy" sugar-topped donuts or their fantastic "funkadelic" donuts. The latter is the best, amazing little treats like the key lime pie donut, the chocolate covered pretzel donut, the S'mores and raspberry lemonade donuts made-to-order while you watch. The space is as colorful as the treats, decorated with Beatles, Rolling Stones and other classic rock images on the wall and a floor made out of old Cleveland show posters. (Laura DeMarco, The Plain Dealer)

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Laura DeMarco, The Plain Dealer

Giant Eagle

Giant Eagle: Buy 6 donuts, get 6 free on Friday at bakeries inside the grocery chain. (Giant Eagle)

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Laura DeMarco, The Plain Dealer

Amy Joy Donuts

Amy Joy Donuts, 5211 Mayfield Road Lyndhurst and

6633 Mayfield Road, Mayfield Heights: Founded in 1952, family-owned Amy Joy is known for their creative, small-batch donuts. Summer specials include apple fritters for $1 from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday. Plus, get a glazed donut or scoop of ice cream for just 33 cents during Happy Hour, 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday through Friday. (Peggy Turbett, Plain Dealer file)

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Laura DeMarco, The Plain Dealer

Spudnut Donuts

Spudnut Donuts, 650 Prospect St., Berea: With roots that go back to Salt Lake City in 1946, the Berea Spudnut Donuts opened in April 1949, one of the first franchises in the nation. Originally on Front Street, the sweet shop moved to Prospect in 1976. There are more than 30 varieties of glazed, sprinkled and filled donuts. Don't miss the Coconut Cream. (David Petkiewicz, cleveland.com)

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Laura DeMarco, The Plain Dealer

Stan's Northfield Bakery

Stan's Northfield Bakery, 9395 Olde 8 Rd., Northfield Center: This family-owned Polish bakery founded in 1961 features dozens of favorites of donuts and paczki, from glazed to buttermilk frycakes and poppyseed-filled. (David Petkiewicz, cleveland.com)
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A central Ohio man has been arrested and charged with rape after Polaroid photos of him engaging in sexual acts with a child were discovered in a tote bag donated to a Columbus thrift store.

(File photo)

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A central Ohio man has been arrested and charged with rape after Polaroid photos of him engaging in sexual acts with a child were found at a Columbus thrift store.

Gary Sovie, 48, of Ashville, is charged with one count of rape of a child under 13 years old in Franklin County Municipal Court, court records show. He was arraigned Tuesday morning and held on $150,000 bond.

The Polaroid photos were discovered inside a tote bag donated to a Salvation Army store in Columbus, NBC4 reports. The photos were quickly connected to Sovie when pieces of his mail were also found in the bag.

Sovie was arrested within three days of the discovery, ABC6 reports. Grove City police said Sovie admitted that he was the man seen in the photos, and that the photos were taken in 2000. The child seen in the photos was 18 months at the time of the incident.

"I am a sick person. That was me. Just put a bullet in my head," Sovie told detectives, according to a police report obtained by NBC4.

Investigators are looking for other victims, saying that it's not likely Sovie would have discontinued his behavior, according to ABC6.

Sovie is slated to appear in Franklin County court June 6 for a preliminary hearing, court records show.

I just talked to Grove City Ohio Police. They're looking for more victims after they say Gary Sovie raped 18mo girl and donated pics to Salvation Army. Posted by Lisa Rantala on Tuesday, May 31, 2016

If you would like to comment on this post, please visit the cleveland.com crime and courts comments section.
cleveland police car.jpg

Cleveland police are searching for an 18-year-old man charged in connection with a fatal shooting.

(File photo)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Cleveland man is accused of gunning down a 20-year-old man in his own driveway.

Andre Bello Jr., 18, is charged with aggravated murder. He is not in custody and a warrant was issued Saturday for his arrest.

The shooting happened about 9 p.m. Friday in the 8900 block of Kenmore Avenue.

Bello shot Edward Martin III, 20, several times, according to police. Neighbors called 911 and reported hearing gunshots.

Officers arrived and found Martin lying in the driveway. He was taken to University Hospitals Case Medical Center, where he died.

Martin's death, and the Saturday shooting death of Daryl Brown, 30, bring Cleveland's homicide count to 39 this year.

Brown was shot in the buttocks about 1:30 am. on East 69th Street and and Chambers Avenue in Cleveland's South Broadway neighborhood, police said.

If you would like to comment on this story, please visit our crime and courts comments section.
CLEVELAND, Ohio - A federal arbitrator has found that the Cleveland school district requires teachers to suffer too serious an injury if assaulted by a student for some disciplinary actions to kick in.

Arbitrator Nels Nelson ordered the district earlier this month to drop a policy that requires a teacher to be incapacitated, be at risk of dying, or suffer disfigurement or prolonged pain from an assault for a student to be removed from the school and placed in another.

District officials say that neither the policy or Nelson's recent ruling affect other district rules that require a suspension - or more - if a student injures a teacher or other staff.

But Nelson agreed with the Cleveland Teachers Union that the district is not correctly handling longstanding contract provisions that require students to be transferred to another school if they assault a teacher and cause "serious physical, psychological or emotional harm."

That requirement is designed to protect teachers from violent students. It can also be waived by a teacher and the union if they believe a student no longer poses a danger.

Nelson ruled that the district policy, which it imposed last fall, sets an unfair standard for an injury to be considered "serious." Until then, there was no specific definition.

He specifically agreed with the union's contention that hitting a teacher and leaving a bruise would not necessarily qualify as "serious" harm under the new district policy. And he noted that district attorney Wayne Belock even conceded as much in testimony.

Nelson also said most people know the difference between minor injuries that don't need medical care and severe ones ones that are disabling and need medical treatment. "Serious" ones fall somewhere in between, but the district leapt over that step, he said.

"The district's definition of serious injuries corresponds most closely to "severe" injuries rather than "serious" injuries," he ruled.

See the full ruling below.

The dispute between the district and union is not over a specific assault case, but over how student altercations with teachers are handled overall. In the 2014-15 school year, 153 students were transferred to other schools for assaulting under the contract rule, according to the district.

The union filed its grievance after the district sent a memo to principals in the fall detailing which assaults to categorize as "serious." With this specific definition of "serious, the number of transfers fell to 49 in the first half of this school year. Final numbers for the year, which just finished, were not available Friday.

That memo stated:

"In order to constitute serious physical, psychological, or emotional harm, the CTU member must suffer either:

1) physical harm that carries a substantial risk of death;

2) physical harm that involves either permanent incapacity or substantial temporary incapacity;

3) physical harm that involves permanent disfigurement or serious temporary disfigurement;

4) physical harm that involves substantial suffering or prolonged or intractable pain;

5) psychological illness that would normally require hospitalization or prolonged psychiatric treatment; or

6) emotional injury that is so severe that a reasonable person would be unable to cope adequately with the mental distress."

Even without a test case, CTU President David Quolke told The Plain Dealer, the union immediately objected.

"Stopping bad policy was important," Quolke said."CTU takes assaults on our members very serious. Had the district been successful with their ludicrous position I can only imagine what type of assaults would have been denied."

He continued: "Parents and students want safe and orderly schools. If a child had been beaten by another student and the district policy was that the child wasn't assaulted because there wasn't a substantial risk of death or permanent disfigurement I believe parents, educator and the community would be outraged."

District spokesperson Roseann Canfora said Quolke is overstating the issue and that the language in question only applies to the teachers' contract - not whether the district treats assaults seriously.

"Under the Code of Conduct the student is subject to serious consequences of discipline including suspension or expulsion," Canfora said. "The issue raised by the CBA (Collective Bargaining Agreement) is whether the student is also subject to the additional consequence of a mandatory transfer to another school."

She said imposing that extra penalty can be a serious problem for families if it splits siblings between multiple schools or if it creates transportation problems. She called a mandatory transfer "double jeopardy" for a student, for all but the most serious cases.

"Considering the importance of avoiding any unnecessary interruption of a child's education, minor injuries are more likely to result in suspension of a student but not as likely to be considered 'serious enough' to warrant a transfer of the student to another school," Canfora said.

The district also says that it needed a policy for all schools because principals were classifying some minor incidents as "serious" and forcing students out of school - even without any injuries as all.

"For example, a second grader was transferred from a school for throwing crayons and art supplies at other students even though it appears that there was no reported injury to the teacher," the district said in a written statement. "An 11th grader was transferred for throwing a beaker of cold water on a teacher. In another situation a student was transferred when a teacher broke up a fight among some seventh graders but reported no injury."

So the district looked to how Ohio Revised Code defines serious incidents to come up with its policy.

As for the union's contention that giving a teacher a black eye should clearly be considered "serious," the district said it can't immediately make that determination.

"Whether a punch in the face causing a bruise is a serious injury could depend on whether it was a preschooler or a 12th grader, as well as the size and location of the bruise," Canfora said. "The hypothetical example used by Mr. Quolke simply does not have enough information to determine this question in the abstract."

The arbitrator disagreed with using Revised Code to define this policy, noting that they have different purposes. ORC defines cases in which people can be sent to prison, he noted, while the worst that can happen under the contract is that students can be sent to another school.

The district has since rescinded the policy. The district and union disagree over whether the district followed Nelson's order in a timely manner or it had to file a complaint in court to force action.
Cleveland police tape

An armed robber stole a Kyrie Irving jersey off a man's back during an armed robbery

(File photo)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- An armed robber stole a Kyrie Irving jersey off the back of a 22-year-old Maple Heights man.

The robbery happened about 11:50 p.m. Sunday on East 93rd Street at Benham Avenue, according to police reports.

The man told police he got out of his car when two men walked up to him. One of the men pulled out a black handgun and told the man: "You know what this is," police reports say.

The gunman told him to give him the keys to his 2003 Ford Taurus and his wallet. He then told the man to take off the Irving jersey he was wearing.

Once they got the jersey, the robbers jumped into the man's Taurus and drove away. The man walked to the Cleveland Police Fourth District Headquarters to report the incident.

No arrests have been made.

If you would like to comment on this story, please visit our crime and courts comments section.
CHARDON, Ohio -- Geauga County may be known for maple syrup, buggies and Republicans, but a few Democrats see the county seat as fertile ground for their party.

Democratic activist Matt Rolf has called an inaugural meeting of the Chardon City Democrats for 7 p.m. on June 7 at Heritage House, 111 E. Park St. on the Square. His press release says, "Agenda includes planning and organization for the fall election and beyond."

Local political organizations are common in many Northeast Ohio communities, but not in Geauga, where both parties work mainly through countywide organizations.

Still, Rolf said in an interview that incorporated Chardon, like most other U.S. cities, leans more Democratic than does the surrounding countryside, so it might pay for the party to focus locally.

"A lot of people share Democratic values in the city of Chardon," he said.

Recent numbers bear him out a little. The last time around, Democrats Barack Obama, Sherrod Brown and Ed Fitzgerald each did about four to five percentage points better in Chardon than countywide.

Perhaps Democrats are more liberal in Chardon than countywide. In this spring's Democratic presidential primary, Bernie Sanders edged the more moderate Hillary Clinton locally, 240 to 210, while losing countywide, 4,223 to 3,606. Of course, there's no teasing out primary voters who cross party lines.

Rolf isn't worried about Sander's edge here. "The Republicans have nominated someone who's extraordinarily polarizing in Donald Trump, and I don't think the Democrats are going to have any trouble uniting behind their presidential nominee."

Republicans dominate Geauga County offices, and some of this year's races lack Democratic challengers. Still, some Democrats have won non-partisan races for Chardon City Council, though Rolf lost such a race last year.

Chardon Mayor Nancy McArthur doubles as chair of the Geauga County Republicans. She says of the Democratic group's rise, "That's fine. We're a pretty strong Republican county. Probably, they feel they can't make any inroad with the county positions. Maybe they think they make some inroads in the city."

Rolf says it would be up to the new group to decide whether to endorse city candidates. He mainly wants to boost Democratic turnout in statewide races. "People don't discount your vote as a Democrat because you're from Geauga County."

Rolf says politics are growing more local again. "Democrats are moving away from a ton of TV ads. People are realizing that you have to get down to the grass roots to make an impact."

For more information, call Rolf at 440-226-8040.
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- When lawyers for death row inmate Tyrone Noling go before the Ohio Supreme Court this morning, they will ask justices to level the playing field for their client - and all others sentenced to death in Ohio - by providing the same opportunity for access to DNA testing as people convicted of lesser crimes.

Not only does his case have the potential to change state law, for Noling, the outcome could well be a matter of life and death.

Convicted in 1996 of a double murder in Portage County's Atwater Township, Noling has maintained his innocence for more than two decades.

"I didn't do it," the 23-year-old told the judge before he his sentencing. "Someday, maybe someday, the truth will come out."

Noling, now 44, and his defense team, led by attorneys from the Ohio Public Defenders Office, believe one way to find "the actual perpetrator" is through state-of-the-art DNA testing.

In 1990, the bodies of Bearnhardt Hartig and his wife Cora, both in their 80s, were found in their kitchen, riddled with bullets.

Prosecutors never produced a murder weapon and they presented no physical evidence linking Noling to the crime.

Instead, the state relied on the testimony of three alleged accomplices who placed Noling inside the Hartig home. They described him pulling the trigger as well as seeing the smoking gun in his hand as he fled the scene.

Within a year of Noling's conviction, each member of that trio had signed affidavits saying they lied to save their own skins. They said they were responding to threats and promises made to them by an investigator for the Portage County prosecutor's office.

For the last 19 years, Noling, with those recantations in hand, has been fighting for a new trial.

He has other evidence, including a statement made to police, unearthed by a public records request in 2009, from a teen named Nathan Chesley.

Chesley told police during the investigation into the Hartig murders that his foster brother, Daniel Wilson, had confessed to killing the couple. Wilson was executed in 2009 for the 1991 murder of Carol Lutz in Lorain County.

Other suspects have emerged in the years since Noling's conviction, as well.

But connecting those alternate suspects to the crime, say Noling's lawyers, can't happen without sophisticated DNA testing, and that's where the Ohio Supreme Court comes in.

If you are a prisoner who is not on death row in Ohio and you ask for DNA testing in your case, and that request is denied, you are entitled to appeal that denial.

But if you are a prisoner on death row and your request for DNA testing is denied, you don't have the right to automatically ask the court of appeals to review your case and decide whether the trial court was wrong in denying you access to that powerful forensic tool.

Instead, you have to ask the Ohio Supreme Court to hear your case, something it has only done a handful of times - Noling's case being one of the rare exceptions to the rule.

"Ohio must do everything in its power to be sure it does not execute an innocent man," said assistant state public defender Carrie Wood, who will be arguing Noling's appeal before the Ohio Supreme Court. "The gaps in Ohio's appeals process must be fixed. ... Giving individuals whose lives are at stake less court review is nonsensical as well as patently unconstitutional."

Noling is not alone in thinking he should be entitled to the same appellate review as as everyone else. Former Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro thinks so, too.

"When the Ohio Supreme Court hears Noling's case, it can extend justice far beyond his individual example," he wrote in a Plain Dealer guest editorial last week. "Wrongful conviction is not only a moral issue; it's also a matter of protecting the public from potentially dangerous criminals. If there are innocent defendants in our prisons or even on our death row, we must use every available tool to locate them and correct injustice. Ensuring equal DNA testing rights for all prisoners would be an important step in the right direction."

If Noling prevails, he likely will be allowed to take his case to the 11th District Court of Appeals, where his team will argue, among other things:

That the shell casings from the murder weapon be run through a federal database to see if the murder weapon is linked to other crimes or a specific perpetrator. That was never done.

That those shell casings, as well as ring boxes found opened in a bedroom drawer, should also be tested for DNA. This also was never done.

How important is access to high quality DNA testing?

"DNA testing has exposed wrongful convictions," Pertro wrote in that same editorial. "Nationwide, from 2000 to 2010, according to the National Registry of Exonerations, there have been an average of 21 DNA exonerations per year. Noling's lawyers argue that of 56 exonerations in Ohio, 10 have resulted from DNA testing."
Patrick Ethridge Editor and Publisher Follow Patrick Ethridge Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today

In recent weeks, I have had the privilege of welcoming hundreds of Third District veterans participating in hero flights to Washington, D.C.

We can never adequately repay the debt we owe them, but I have been honored to express a small token of our appreciation by taking them onto the House floor and showing them around the U.S. Capitol.

Because of their service to this country, we have the opportunity to gather and thank our military heroes in the capital city of the free world.

As I greet these brave Nebraskans, I am mindful of those who fought beside them but never came home. Each year, as we observe Memorial Day, we remember and honor all the brave men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice to preserve our freedom.

In the midst of the Cold War, President Ronald Reagan delivered his 1982 Memorial Day address at Arlington National Cemetery. As he said of the fallen:

Our first obligation to them and ourselves is plain enough: The United States and the freedom for which it stands, the freedom for which they died, must endure and prosper.

Their lives remind us that freedom is not bought cheaply. It has a cost; it imposes a burden. And just as they whom we commemorate were willing to sacrifice, so too must we, in a less final, less heroic way, be willing to give of ourselves.

It is this, beyond the controversy and the congressional debate, beyond the blizzard of budget numbers and the complexity of modern weapons systems, that motivates us in our search for security and peace. War will not come again, other young men will not have to die, if we will speak honestly of the dangers that confront us and remain strong enough to meet those dangers.

Now, in 2016, we again face a dangerous world with the rise of radical Islam and continued aggressions by countries such as Iran, Russia and North Korea. We need an honest dialogue about ways to confront real threats to our nation.

On May 18, the House passed the National Defense Authorization Act, also known as NDAA, for Fiscal Year 2017. The bill authorizes the funding our men and women in uniform need to fulfill their missions and keep our military equipped.

President Obama vetoed last years NDAA, despite its passage with significant bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate. Our country cannot afford for the president to again put our troops and our national security at risk, especially in light of his mounting foreign policy failures and passivity toward both our allies and those who wish to do us harm.

The House also passed the Fiscal Year 2017 Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations bill. This legislation provides the funding to equip military personnel, house military families and maintain our bases and health care facilities. It also funds veterans programs, including much-needed improvements to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

As we continue to work on legislative solutions, my caseworkers are available to help any Third District veterans who need assistance with the VA. Please call my Grand Island office at 308-384-3900 to speak with my caseworkers about any issues you are facing with the agency.

Memorial Day is a dedicated time for us to honor those who gave their lives in defense of our great country. Mindful of their memory, our nation must keep its commitment to all who serve and have served by ensuring our military is fully prepared to confront the threats in our world today.
Ohio AFL-CIO targets Donald Trump

A look at one of the fliers the Ohio AFL-CIO is distributing to members as it aims to paint presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump as an organized labor foe.

(Courtesy of the Ohio AFL-CIO)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Organized labor is launching an attack on Donald Trump.

"Donald Trump: Dangerous. Divisive. Unfit to be president," reads the headline on fliers the Ohio AFL-CIO will begin circulating among 2,200 local unions this week.

Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has targeted the working-class and made opposition to international trade deals a cornerstone of his White House campaign. The wealthy New York businessman's message has appealed in primary season to blue-collar voters, including those in traditionally Democratic areas of Ohio and other battleground states.

"The messages in the fliers represent the overall message the AFL-CIO will be communicating to working people across the country," said Ohio AFL-CIO spokesman Mike Gillis. "This is the first salvo, with an aggressive campaign to follow this summer and fall as we seek to educate both union members and non-union members about Donald Trump's record and why working people should be gravely concerned with the prospects of a Trump presidency."

The fliers call out Trump for a variety of business practices and political positions. One takes him to task for using undocumented Polish immigrants decades ago in the development of Trump Tower in Manhattan. (Trump has said he was unaware of their legal status.)

Other fliers rap Trump for outsourcing - several products in marketed in his name are made in other countries - and for praising Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's efforts to weaken unions.

"Trump: Another rich businessman who doesn't care about working people," some fliers say.

There's also a flier that refers to Trump, who is known for making provocative comments about women, as a sexist. "Trump: An insult to working women," reads the flier's tagline.

Gillis said the Ohio AFL-CIO represents about 500,000 workers in the state.
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Cleveland police officers dressed in riot gear will not be able to wear body cameras if protests turn violent during the Republican National Convention.

(Lisa DeJong, The Plain Dealer)

Cleveland dismisses concerns over RNC preparations and schedules a news briefing to give a detailed overview. Food caterers and florists aim to impress convention organizers. Donald Trump supporters are campaigning in Amish country. Read on in today's Ohio Politics Roundup, brought to you by Robin Goist, filling in for Henry J. Gomez.

Quelling concerns: Cincinnati and Greensboro, N.C. have said that they will not be sending officers to help with the Republican National Convention, with Greensboro citing concerns over Cleveland's readiness, but city officials disagree, cleveland.com's Mary Kilpatrick writes.

Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams and other city officials dismissed the concerns on Friday, saying that the police force will receive adequate resources and support. Officials also added that the two outside police agencies were speculating because they did not have access to Cleveland's plans to secure the city or accommodate visiting officers.

The city also announced Friday that it will hold a comprehensive presentation Tuesday morning regarding its security preparations, cleveland.com's Jane Morice writes. Mayor Frank Jackson and representatives from Cleveland police, fire, EMS and the city jail will attend the 11 a.m. meeting at City Hall, according to Friday's news release.

No body cameras, no problem? Police officials announced Friday that because of logistical issues, many Cleveland police officers will not be wearing body cameras if protests turn violent during the RNC, cleveland.com's Cory Shaffer writes.

Since the cameras cannot attach to riot gear, the department has said that officers will use other methods to record police interactions. Cleveland police spokeswoman Sgt. Jennifer Ciaccia said, "We are confident with the operational plan we have in place that we will capture any interaction/encounter with a citizen during the RNC."

Representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association have both spoken out against this decision.

Police get pepper sprayed: In anticipation of the RNC, officers from 13 Northeast Ohio police departments traveled to Canton last week for free pepper spray training courses, cleveland.com's Rachel Keck writes. After a morning of classroom-style lessons, the officers took turns being sprayed for about five seconds with MACE pepper spray.

With their eyes closed for 15 to 20 minutes, they also had to navigate their way out of the room, up two flights of stairs, and outside. Click here to watch Keck's video.

Jailhouse beds: The Cuyahoga County Jail at the Justice Center will have 200 beds available for arrests during the RNC, cleveland.com's Karen Farkas writes. Cleveland will pay the county up to $250,000 to house "fresh arrests" made by Cleveland Division of Police related to the convention. Additionally, the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court and Cleveland Municipal Court will keep their dockets clear during the convention.

Don't come out and play? The Cleveland Metroparks rejected a request Thursday from a New York anti-war activist to camp and host a concert at Edgewater Park during the RNC, cleveland.com's Mark Naymik writes.

John Penley sought permission earlier this month to set up a camp site for demonstrators, but the Metroparks told him that they have not allowed camping at Edgewater Park since 2013. In an email to cleveland.com, Penley said he is encouraging activists to use Edgewater Park during its open hours and then sleep outside the park.

Florists and foodies: Five caterers and six florists, many based in Northeast Ohio, hoped to impress convention organizers at Quicken Loans arena last Thursday, The Plain Dealer's Debbi Snook and Roxanne Washington write. "Each was recently approved to do business at the gathering by the convention committee. Now they must snag contracts with state delegations and other groups representing legislators, media and lobbying organizations."

5 percent alcohol, 100 percent American: With a red, white, and blue label and all-American ingredients, "Paletriotic" American Pale Ale is being rolled out for the RNC, cleveland.com's Marc Bona writes. The collaboration between Platform Beer Co. and Heinen's will be a part of a one-day fest of 50 craft beers that represent the 50 states.

Trump targeting Amish country? Since they can't read his tweets or watch his television appearances, a group of Donald Trump allies is leading a campaign to turn out the Amish to vote for the presumptive GOP nominee, Politico's Katie Glueck writes.

"Amish PAC," a group with ties to Ben Carson and Newt Gingrich, plans to use billboards and newspaper ads to encourage Amish people in the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Ohio to vote for Trump. The group faces an uphill task, however, since only about 10 to 15 percent of Amish vote in presidential elections.

Get Battleground Briefing, our FREE politics newsletter, delivered to your inbox: Sign up here. Tips or links? Send here. Follow along on Twitter: @HenryJGomez.
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Ohio has asked a federal judge in Columbus to hold off enforcing an order that the state not eliminate voting during Golden Week, the week when voters could both register to vote and cast an in-person absentee ballot.

(Marvin Fong, The Plain Dealer)

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Ohio has asked a federal judge in Columbus to hold off enforcing an order requiring the state to allow voting during Golden Week, when voters can both register to vote and cast an in-person absentee ballot.

U.S. District Judge Michael Watson last week struck down a state law that eliminated Golden Week, ruling that the 2014 law violates both the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. That law shortened early voting from 35 days before an election to 28.

Husted said then that the state would appeal the ruling.

In its filing Monday, the state argues that returning to 35 days of early voting now would create hardship for county boards of election prepping for August's special election date. That would require early voting start June 28.

"The short time frame for compliance and the possibility of a different voting schedule in the November general election risks harm to both local election officials and Ohio voters," lawyers for the state argued in their motion.

You can read the motion below. Mobile users click here.

The state asks that Watson's order restoring Golden Week not be enforced for either the August special election, the November general election and perhaps as long as the case takes to work its way through the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Husted, in a statement, said elimination of Golden Week had broad bipartisan support and that eliminating it reduced a growing potential for voter fraud.

"Golden Week had become both an administrative problem and a voter integrity issue," Husted said. "Out-of-state voters were illegally registering to vote and casting ballots during this time period."

Watson's ruling last week came in a case initially filed last year by the Ohio Organizing Collaborative. The Ohio Democratic Party and Montgomery and Cuyahoga county parties later took over the lawsuit and challenged several election laws passed by the GOP-controlled General Assembly. Watson upheld all other laws.

In 2014 the American Civil Liberties Union challenged the law on behalf of the Ohio chapters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and League of Women Voters and several African-American churches. A federal district court judge struck down the law, but the state was granted a stay.

The court agreed with the ACLU's argument that eliminating Golden Week resulted in less opportunity for black voters to participate in the political process than other voters. Census surveys and anecdotal evidence showed black voters were more likely than white voters to cast ballots early and in-person.

Watson, a George W. Bush appointee, cited that case in his opinion.
Tomer Avidor-Reiss

Tomer Avidor-Reiss, a biologist at the University of Toledo, has federal funding to take his scientific research on sperm cells into the practical realm to help infertile couples.

(Daniel Miller, University of Toledo)

WASHINGTON - The federal government is betting that scientists at an Ohio university can help the world understand sperm better.

Women might cheer this news.

Put away those prurient thoughts. This is about fertility and infertility, the latter of which can prompt couples to pursue expensive, uncomfortable treatments -- treatments that demand more from the woman than the man -- in a quest to conceive a baby. Yet to paraphrase a University of Toledo cellular biologist: It just might be the man's fault.

"The men almost have no consequence for that, and the women have to go through all these treatments," associate professor Tomer Avidor-Reiss said.

With government funding, Avidor-Reiss, who came to Toledo from Harvard in 2012, and a team of his graduate students hope to take sperm science from their laboratory to fertility clinics. Through better analysis and advances in technology, they might be able to help couples and their doctors better understand and treat the reasons for infertility.

The National Science Foundation, an independent federal agency that promotes the progress of science, this month awarded Avidor-Reiss a $50,000 grant for the project, called the "quantitative diagnosis of sperm quality." This follows federal grants of about $1 million over the last few years that Avidor-Reiss and assistants got for related scientific research, which led to better understanding of the molecular structure and mutations of sperm cells.

As a share of federal spending on reproductive health research, this expenditure barely registers as a blip. But it's an area where the National Science Foundation sees promise.

Here's why Avidor-Reiss and others have hope.

The problem:

One of six to eight couples is infertile, according to medical literature and fertility clinics. Yet the causes of infertility, or the inability to achieve pregnancy, can be poorly understood, with about 20 percent of infertile couples unable to attribute it to either the man or the woman. Couples try various treatments and regimens, relying on whatever glimmer of hope or even folk remedies they can find. And many find success.

But treatment can be expensive and is seldom covered by insurance. Treatment also tends to focus on the woman and her eggs rather than the man, Avidor-Reiss says, because too little has been known about the man and his sperm cells.

It's complicated

That's changing - to a point. Fertility clinics and scientists know a number of issues may underlie a man's infertility. The problem could be sperm density, volume, the sperm's power to move to the egg, or its shape.

Yet some variables are still poorly understood. Advances are being made, however, by scientists such as Avidor-Reiss and his graduate students into the study of the sperm's cellular structure, at a level made possible by computer-powered lab equipment. (The research was first conducted with fruit flies, whose DNA is suitable for this kind of study.) As a result, an old assumption -- that low sperm count is to blame for infertility in some cases -- may not hold true. A 5 percent volume may even be sufficient, Avidor-Reiss said in a telephone interview.

"What we have discovered in the past 20 years is that the sperm is more than just a bag for the DNA," he sad.

The challenge is to take the newest knowledge and harness it into a reliable male-fertility test. Right now, "everybody is doing the same test," Avidor-Reiss said. "The problem with this test is there is no predictive power."

This is where the National Science Foundation grant, and a man named Noman Rapino, come in.

The grant

Avidor-Reiss's latest grant is from the National Science Foundation's I-Corps division. I-Corps stands for Innovation Corps. The foundation describes it on its website:

"While knowledge gained from NSF-supported basic research frequently advances a particular field of science or engineering, some results also show immediate potential for broader applicability and impact in the commercial world. Such results may be translated through I-Corps into technologies with near-term benefits for the economy and society."

The guru

I-Corps grants pair researchers who have promising scientific results with experienced entrepreneurs and business mentors. Norman Rapino is the mentor in this particular relationship. Rapino, who holds a master's degree in business and a doctorate in chemistry, is executive director of the University of Toledo's Center for Innovation, working to help the university's best research find a home in the commercial world.

Rapino is realistic.

"Statistically, things have a hard time making the transition from the lab to the real world," he said. But he added, "I think the underlying science is strong. Making it into the market is a journey. And he's into that journey now."

The product

So what will the end product be? A machine? A testing protocol?

It's too early to even say, Rapino said. Avidor-Reiss has been working on the science, and "he has identified places where this can have an impact," said Rapino. "He has a sense of where it can be used, and the I-Corps project focuses on where that particular market is."

Once that is better established, the project can turn to how best to deliver a product, a test kit or a set of procedures.

Helping humans -- and livestock

For now, Avidor-Reiss describes the product as a technology -- one to improve diagnosis and better predict success in reproduction.

Human fertility labs could clearly benefit, but so could farms that breed livestock through artificial insemination. The technology could provide a diagnostic tool to assess agricultural productivity, and sperm banks could use it to predict the quality of the sperm they sell, says an abstract of the scientist's grant award.

This may still be a long shot. Dr. James Goldfarb, chief of the reproductive endocrinology and infertility division at University Hospitals of Cleveland, said he doesn't know Avidor-Reiss's work but has seen promising tests come and go.

But there's merit to what the Toledo biologist is doing, Goldfarb said, acknowledging a need for better data on male infertility. Avidor-Reiss's work, he said, sounds like "a noble undertaking."

"We'd love to see it succeed, that's for sure," Goldfarb said.
Strongsville Middle School 2.JPG

The new Strongsville Middle school is still under construction on Pearl Road, behind the closing Center Middle School. At least one provision in the new Strongsville teachers contract addresses the closing and consolidation of some district schools.

(Bob Sandrick, special to cleveland.com)

STRONGSVILLE, Ohio - Raises given to Strongsville teachers will cost the school district about $470,000 a year in 2016 and 2017, and $320,000 in 2018, under a new three-year collective bargaining agreement the school board approved last week.

However, the district could save between $305,000 and $490,000 a year through other contract provisions, according to schools Superintendent Cameron Ryba.

Ryba said it might seem the district is spending a lot on pay increases but he added that 80 percent of the district's funding goes toward salaries and benefits. The percentage has remained steady over several years.

"About eight years ago it was 92 percent, so 80 percent is a good range for a school district," Ryba said.

Strongsville teachers will receive raises of 1.5 percent this year and next year, and a 1-percent increase in 2018, under the new agreement. It's the first multi-year contract for teachers since April 2013, following the rancorous eight-week teachers strike.

The new agreement comes as teachers in Cleveland and Westlake contemplate strikes of their own.

In addition to yearly salary increases, the new Strongsville teachers contract will:

Remove medical insurance caps. Under the old contract, teachers participating in the district's wellness program paid 15 percent of their health insurance premiums but no more than $200 a month for a family and $100 a month for a single person. Under the new contract, teachers must pay 15 percent of their premiums - period - which will translate to $105 a month for singles and $262 for families. If premiums rise, so will the teacher contributions. Ryba said removal of premium caps will save the district about $170,000 a year.

Change the qualification for severance pay. Previously, teachers needed just one year of service in Strongsville to receive severance pay if they left the district. Now, they will need at least 15 years. The district will save about $45,000 a year with this change, Ryba said.

End the retirement incentive. Under the old contract, teachers retiring during their first year of eligibility received an extra $39,000, paid over three years. The idea was to encourage older teachers to retire so the district could hire younger teachers for less pay. But Ohio's State Teachers Retirement System is changing its rules so that eventually teachers will have to be older, and accumulate more years of service, to receive pensions. Meanwhile, Strongsville teachers have become younger, with an average of 15 years of service, so the retirement incentive no longer benefits the district. Ryba said that once teachers are three years into retirement - without the retirement incentive -- the district could save $275,000 that third year.

Tighten rules for personal leave. Previously, teachers could take personal leaves in any time increment - even one hour - and for just about any reason. From now on, the minimum leave is a half-day, and teachers can take leave only to take care of certain matters, like family and household emergencies, they can't address during regular off hours. Teachers can't use leave for vacation or recreation.

Update teacher evaluation parameters. The district evaluates teachers partly on performance and partly on student growth. Under the new contract, students will have to show more growth than under the previous contract.

Require teacher meetings during the school day. Teachers meet in teams to discuss instruction, curriculum and student progress. The meetings are a significant part of the district's improvement plan. Until now, teachers met at their own discretion. Now, the teachers must set aside a time to meet every week during the school day.

Finalize schedule for K-8 elective courses. Previously, art classes met once a week for 70 minutes, and music and physical education classes met twice a week for 40 minutes. Next year, each of the three courses of study will meet every three days for 45 minutes. The schedule is evolving due to the closing of Zellers and Drake elementary schools and the consolidation of Center and Albion middle schools.

Set ground rules for the next teacher negotiations. The district and teachers have agreed to the same ground rules as this time around. For example, each side was allowed to bring a maximum of five issues - not including salary and benefits - to the table, and their negotiating teams consisted of local officials, not outside attorneys and unions.
CROCODILE MARAKAI

A saltwater crocodile reportedly dragged away a woman as she swam at a beach Sunday night in the Queensland state of Australia.

(Mark Baker, Associated Press file photo)

QUEENSLAND, Australia -- A woman on a trip to celebrate the end of her friend's cancer treatment was dragged away by a saltwater crocodile as the women swam at a beach Sunday night.

The BBC reports Cindy Waldron, 46, was with friend Leeann Mitchell, 47, at Thornton Beach near Cairns when the attack occurred at about 10:30 p.m. The women were in waist-deep water.

Witnesses reportedly heard Waldron scream, "A croc's got me, a croc's got me!"

Mitchell tried to pull Waldron away from the crocodile but was unsuccessful. Waldon has not been seen since.

Warren Entsch, an official with the North Queensland MP, says the victim is at fault for the attack, according to inquisitr.com.

The area where the women were swimming was near a creek that offers crocodile-spotting tours, Entsch says.

"You can't legislate against human stupidity," Entsch says. "This is a tragedy but it was avoidable. You can only get there by ferry and there are signs there saying watch out for the bloody crocodiles. If you go in swimming at 10 o'clock at night, you're going to get consumed."

On average, two people per year are killed by crocodiles in Australia.
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China's tax authorities have rolled back on their new cross-border sales tax program in an attempt to avoid a pile of problems.

If implemented, the new rules would have meant tighter customs treatment and higher tax rates on overseas goods sold on Chinese e-commerce sites, which previously allowed shoppers to buy imported goods via cross-border e-commerce zones on a special parcel tax rate. However, when China imposed the stricter tax system last month, social media was filled with pictures of heaps of abandoned foreign purchases at Shanghai Pudong Airport as travelers attempted to avoid the tax fines. Shanghai customs later said that the posts were falsified rumors "spread by e-commerce companies and consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-retailers" in order to pressure policymakers, China's official Global Times reported. However, it looks like the pressure might have worked.

Last week, China's General Administration of Customs (GACC) announced a one-year postponement for some of the new tax policies in 10 e-commerce pilot zones, including Tianjin, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Zhengzhou, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Fuzhou and Pingtan.

Concerns of an e-commerce slowdown

A plane flies above the Shanghai Pudong International Airport. hxdyl | iStock/360 | Getty Images

While news headlines were focusing on the adjustment of tax rates, the Chinese government also published the List of Products Eligible for cross-border E-commerce, known as the "Positive List" -- this is what has made the difference.

Under the previous new rule, Chinese regulators brought in a series of changes, such as demanding approvals for special foods, cosmetics and medical devices, significantly raising the regulatory bar for imports through e-commerce. Fearing the new list would quickly drag down the growth of China's e-commerce industry, a GACC spokesperson said the one-year suspension could facilitate a smooth transition of the tax policy and enhance a healthy development of cross border e-commerce in China, according China's official Xinhua News Agency. It looks as though those fears were justified. Data for the first week after the new rules took effect showed a more than 60 percent fall of cross-border e-commerce orders for pilot zones such as Shenzhen, Zhengzhou, Ningbo and Hangzhou. Particularly, as few as 3 percent of the goods in the Zhengzhou pilot zone were able to meet the new positive list, China's Central Television reported. Meanwhile, tax rate and transaction limit changes still apply. Purchases exceeding 2,000 yuan ($307) for a single transaction in cross-border retail and 20,000 yuan ($3,075) for yearly transactions per person are now levied a full general trade tax. So now, Chinese e-commerce businesses have been given a brief reprieve. But the question now is - what happens after one year?

"China to normalize cross-border businesses"

The tax rules were implemented to eliminate the price advantage for Chinese e-commerce on overseas purchases. Some analysts argue that heavier tax burdens for foreign brands will make them rethink their strategy in the Chinese market.

"Let's remember, this tax change takes place in a context, a context with extraordinary amount of good news," said Frank Lavin, Chairman and chief executive of e-commerce platform Export Now. "Alibaba's numbers are record-high. It passed Walmart, becoming the largest retail outlet in the world, and international brands are responding." Lavin believed the new tax system is a clear message that the Chinese government is trying to normalize its cross-border process. "What the Chinese government is doing is fitting in the trend," Lavin told CNBC. "I think what we are really looking at is to tell the foreign brands: 'If you are serious about the Chinese market, you've got to move into the Chinese market. Put your warehouse in China, put your goods into China legally, and set up your e-commerce stores and offline stores appropriately."

Worries of Chinese consumers

For many Chinese consumers, all they care is whether or not the new tax policies will impact their Daigou experience.

The grey market of Daigou - a Chinese term translated as "buying on behalf" - has been a major channel for Chinese shoppers to buy luxury goods that are heavily taxed in mainland China. Through overseas Daigou agents, products can be brought back to China in person or by mail without declaring at customs or paying import duties. Daigou is not a risk-free business. Once caught by the customs authorities, both agents and consumers could face smuggling charges, resulting in large fines, or even jail sentences. However, it seems to be a risk that many are willing to take. "The demand for overseas purchases is huge," said Jan Qu, 30, a part-time Daigou agent based in New York. "Cheaper prices are just one reason. Many Chinese shoppers also have doubts in the quality of domestically-made products and that's why they are buying overseas." Despite occasional punishments, law enforcement towards Daigou has been relatively loose, helping this grey market boom in recent years. Daigou sales contributed by Chinese shoppers, although saw a decline since 2014 partially due to China's economy slowdown and corruption crackdown, is now estimated to be worth 43 billion yuan, or roughly 38 percent of all luxury sales in mainland China, according to a report by Bain & Company. And China's flourishing e-commerce sites and social media, such as Alibaba-backed Taobao, China's twitter-like Weibo and the Tencent-backed Wechat, are all helping this grey industry to get bigger. "I have clients on all Taobao, Weibo and Wechat," said Qu. "Buyers on Taobao are more suspicious because they don't trust me, but clients on Weibo and Wechat are mostly introduced by friends so they wouldn't worry too much." While Chinese shoppers are big spenders overseas, brick and mortar stores in China have been losing profits, weakening China's efforts to boost domestic consumption and resulting in a big loss of the government's tax revenue. In 2014, cross-border e-commerce and overseas purchases reached hundreds of billions of yuan, while the personal postal article tax generated just 1.3 billion yuan for the government. The tougher tax rules on cross-border e-commerce purchases - even though they are now a year away - have made many Daigou agents worried about stricter airport customs checks.

"Daigou will remain popular until..."
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Despite constant concerns that Hong Kong is losing its edge to mainland and regional rivals, the city has reclaimed the title of the world's most competitive economy, according to the IMD World Competitiveness Center. The annual survey of 61 jurisdictions around the world pushed the city up one place to the top for 2016, saying Hong Kong had "encouraged innovation through low and simple taxation and imposed no restrictions on capital flows". In a separate report on competitiveness released yesterday by Beijing's top think tank, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), Hong Kong lost out to Shenzhen for the second year in a row. IMD surveyed more than 5,400 business executives on four main factors  economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency and infrastructure  while the CASS survey focused on innovation, among other factors.

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Hong Kong claimed the top spot in the 2012 IMD rankings, but lost it to the United States for the next three years. Singapore, which ranked fourth in the same survey, was the only other Asian entrant in the top 10 this year. IMD director Professor Arturo Bris said the city's efforts to create a business-friendly environment had been central to its ability to defy regional challenges. Bris said Hong Kong was also valued as a gateway for foreign direct investment in the mainland, "the world's newest economic superpower", enabling business there to access global capital markets. More from the South China Morning Post :



Hong Kong private hospital sent baby home with potentially fatal infection, couple claim

Anger after HSBC demands right to 'snoop' into safe deposit boxes of Hong Kong customers

Wall and roof collapse at historic former Central Police Station raises safety and heritage preservation fears In contrast, the US "was no longer able to maintain its dominance", falling to third in this year's survey, behind Switzerland.

Despite the city's grim economic outlook, Hong Kong was helped to the top of the list by worse conditions in other economies, analysts said. "Hong Kong is doing relatively OK ... Many other places are facing much deeper troubles," Baptist University associate finance professor Billy Mak Sui-choi said.
Foreign companies eager to sell products in India must also create jobs in the country, Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told CNBC in an interview, amid efforts by tech giant Apple to win approval to open its own retail stores in Asia's third-largest economy.

Apple's application  aimed at boosting sales in India and countering a slowdown in China  has yet to be approved, as India typically requires single-brand retailers to source at least 30 percent of their raw material needs from local suppliers.

Jaitley said the thought process behind the rule, which was put in place by the previous United Progressive Alliance coalition, was sound.

"Speaking for myself, I feel it was based on good rationale, and the rationale behind the policy was, when somebody eyes such a large market, obviously job creation also is something the government of India is concerned with," Jaitley said.
Southeast Asia is suffering from the worst drought in more than 50 years but the issue looks set to fall off the agenda at a key meeting of the region's political and financial leaders this week. The two-day World Economic Forum (WEF) for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) kicks off in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday, with heads of state from various ASEAN member countries, including Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia slated to attend.

Cracked earth sits next to a pool of water at the dried up Mae Jok Luang reservoir in Chiang Mai, Thailand, on April 23, 2016. An El Nino-induced drought across Thailand is parching crops, leading market forecasters to reduce their production estimates. Taylor Weidman | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The big topics on this year's official program include economic growth, trade, digital innovation, infrastructure, and gender rights. But in a region where the bulk of citizens rely on agricultural income, food security and weather challenges were noticeably absent from the agenda. "Tackling the impact of drought in Southeast Asia is not on the WEF agenda and needs to be addressed at ASEAN ministerial meetings to galvanize an ASEAN policy response," said Rajiv Biswas, Asia-Pacific chief economist at IHS Global Insight, in an e-mail to CNBC. The weather phenomenon known as El Nino has created a crippling heat wave and water shortages across the region, with temperatures hitting well above 40 degrees Celsius. That threatens dire economic losses for the ASEAN countries, with rice output plummeting in top producers Thailand and Vietnam, which has seen around 230,000 hectares of rice ruined so far this year, Reuters reported. As a result of the drought, the International Grains Council estimates a 9 percent drop in global rice stocks to 473 million tons this year, from 479 million tons in 2015. During an informal meeting at last week's World Humanitarian Summit, ASEAN ministers committed to conducting a thorough study on the situation to come up with solutions and preventive measures. But economists like Biswas argue governments need to give higher priority to policy responses to mitigate the impact of future droughts.

Whats needed

As climate change threatens resource security and availability, investment into research and development can't be ignored, according to Matthew Morell, director-general of the International Rice Research Institute. "From 2010-2015, over 95 percent of funding for rice research came from non-ASEAN governments, mostly from the West," he stated in a recent report. "ASEAN should seize the opportunity to drive the next Green Revolution and secure its own future food needs through increasing funding support for agriculture R&D." Policymakers must also focus on boosting agricultural productivity, researchers at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University warned in a note last week. "The ASEAN region collectively has about 69 million hectares under arable agriculture and 44 million hectares under semi-permanent crops like palm oil and rubber but overall, the ASEAN per capita arable land area is 0.12 hectare, among the smallest in the world."

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Donald Trump wants to deport millions of immigrants and erect a wall, funded by Mexico, along the southern border. But people have been doing cross-border trade for decades along the Rio Grande River in the Southwest. And if there were such a wall, what would happen to local U.S. economies just north of Mexico? For some insight, the McAllen, Texas region is a good place to start, with an area population of roughly 831,000 and growing. McAllen's economic fate is tethered to the Mexican city of Reynosa to the south.

A maquila economy

We live here on the border. We have friends and families on both sides. Keith Patridge McAllen Economic Development Corporation

U.S. Border Patrol boat patrols along the Rio Grande (Mexico on left, U.S. on right) near McAllen, Texas. Getty Images

The maquiladoras  or maquilas, for short  are Mexico-based factories that are run by foreign companies, enjoy tax breaks and produce and export goods, a legacy of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The first maquilas were established decades ago and have become fixtures in the border economy. The factories create export revenue and jobs. Workers in Mexico in turn travel north to McAllen to shop and access goods and services including health care. The McAllen region, in fact, boasts five hospitals and a high birthrate. Young parents mingle with "winter Texans," mostly seniors who swoop in for warmer weather and spend millions a year locally. Some other facts about McAllen and the local economy:

Every increment of 10 percent growth in maquila-related economic activity in Reynosa leads to 6.6 percent total employment in McAllen, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

to 6.6 percent total employment in McAllen, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. With its steady stream of visitors flowing from Mexico, McAllen wasn't hit as hard by the Great Recession. As the U.S. economy retreated, shoppers from Mexico kept coming and spending.

Roughly 200 global companies have some footprint in the McAllen-Reynosa region. With over 120,000 manufacturing jobs, workers make computer chips, telecom components, motor boats, bowling balls, medical equipment and more.

Given the proximity to Mexico, McAllen is also a major gateway for agricultural products entering the U.S. on trucks. Between McAllen and Reynosa, "We are one city that happens to have a river running through it, not much different than most communities," said Keith Patridge, president and chief executive of the McAllen Economic Development Corporation. "It's just that our river, you have to cross through immigration and customs every time you go back and forth," Patridge said. "But it doesn't stop the flow of families. It doesn't stop the flow of commerce."

And portions of McAllen already feature a fence. In 2006, President George W. Bush signed the Secure Fence Act, which mandated the construction of 670 miles of fence along the U.S.-Mexico border including McAllen. The fence is laid out in unconnected segments of varying miles. "Everybody is talking about, 'You gotta build a wall.' Bottom line, we've just adapted," said Patridge. "We live here on the border. We have friends and families on both sides."

McAllen's roots can be traced to a private ranch in the late 19th century. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson deployed 20,000 soldiers from New York to help quell border disturbances, and the region began to grow. The city today runs primarily on three major clusters  the government, health services and retail trade. And more than 91 percent of McAllen's population is Hispanic, according to Dallas Fed data. McAllen's median age is 29.2, nearly five years less than the state, according to Fed data. And many young families are having babies. The local population has been growing 3.1 percent on an annualized basis.

Keith Patridge is president and chief executive of the McAllen Economic Development Corporation. Source: McAllen Economic Development Corporation

And babies mean hospitals. Nearly 19 percent of McAllen's workers are in the health-care industry. The local joke goes, "Don't drink the water." Those children go to school. Some 58 percent of all city government employees work for elementary and secondary schools. Government workers in total make up the largest share of McAllen's workforce at nearly 23 percent. Another key driver is shopping, including retail tourism. Retail trade employs more than 15 percent of McAllen's workers. La Plaza Mall in McAllen is a big draw in the Rio Grande Valley. Shoppers come from as far as Monterrey, Mexico's third-largest metro area, which is 150 miles southwest of McAllen. "About one-third of McAllen's retail activity can be attributed to Mexican shoppers," said Roberto Coronado, senior economist at the El Paso branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Adding to the population mix are seasonal residents from midwestern states and Canada, with an average age of 71. These winter Texans spent nearly $710 million locally in 2014, according to Fed data. Their household spending is up nearly 35 percent since 2006. The larger point is that McAllen's economy has expanded and diversified to embed itself in many populations and economies in the U.S. and Mexico.

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But this is an election year. And immigrants and border towns can be explosive issues not lost on Trump. Hereached a delegate majority for the Republican nomination last week, and has made his wall idea a cornerstone of his campaign. And yes, you can argue manufacturing jobs in Mexico should be anchored in the U.S. in the first place. But even noneconomists know manufacturing plants and jobs chase cheap labor around the globe. There's no geographic loyalty.

Jobs and NAFTA

And even the trajectory of McAllen and the region haven't been bump-free. Maquilas in Mexico have also lost some work over the years to cheaper labor in Asia, including China. More recently as wages in China have risen, some economists see some "near shoring" of work back to Mexico that would allow manufacturers to save on transportation costs, given the shorter distance to U.S. markets. The broader context is the North American Free Trade Agreement. NAFTA, which went into force in 1994, scrapped many tariffs between the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Critics from both the right and the left charge the agreement has hurt manufacturers, reduced jobs and eroded labor conditions.

But in this political vortex, scrappy McAllen has proven it can not only survive  but thrive amid the ebbs and flows of the global economy. McAllen unemployment in the 1980s, pre-NAFTA, was some 28 percent. Unemployment now is around 4.6 percent. Companies in McAllen-Reynosa are "buying components, products from the U.S. side, which means that they are supporting jobs in McAllen and in the U.S.," says Patridge. Other Texas border cities including El Paso, Laredo and Brownsville exhibit similar economic integration with manufacturing activity in northern Mexico, says Coronado.
The popularity of mobile applications may be waning overseas but they remain relevant in India, the CEO of an Indian messaging app provider told CNBC on Tuesday.

Speaking at the sidelines of the RISE 2016, a technology conference in Hong Kong, Kavin Bharti Mittal of messaging platform Hike said in a market such as India, where data usage remained relatively expensive, companies that could combine multiple services into a single app can make a big difference.

"This is very powerful because one more app becomes one more contact in your address book," said Mittal.

Founded in 2012, Hike offers a range of services on its app  users can send messages, share photos, videos and music and have an interactive timeline. Other features include sending stickers, a compact feed of the latest news and a hidden mode to protect privacy.

Mobile app usage has slowed in recent years as users grapple with a plethora of options. Research firm IDC said earlier this month that it expects to see slower growth in both application install volumes and direct revenue over time.
Current tests require finger-prick blood collection and laboratory screening but, in contrast, dogs are portable and rapid, said senior lecturer James Logan in a post on the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine's blog.

Alongside Durham University, researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the NGO organization Medical Detection Dogs and the Medical Research Council Unit in the Gambia, Africa, are hoping dogs will lead the way to non-invasive testing that can detect malaria and be used on large numbers of samples at a time.

The foundation  formed by the Microsoft founder and his wife in 2000 - has focused much effort in finding a cure for malaria and is now funding the ground-breaking research with a $100,000 grant looking at how the animals' sharp sense of smell could save thousands by sniffing out the disease early on.

Dogs could be used to detect malaria in the future, according to new research from the U.K.'s Durham University that is being backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

"We know that dogs can successfully detect certain types of cancer, and can even be trained to warn people with diabetes when their blood sugar levels are higher or lower than a specific range," said Logan.

Another benefit of using canines is transportability  dogs are much more portable than lab kits, and can be used on the ground without laboratories. If the research proves successful, dogs could also be used at ports of entry for screening travelers.



"Work in our own laboratory, and elsewhere, suggests that infection with malaria can alter a host's smell. Pilot studies have also shown that distinctive chemicals can be detected in the breath of malaria-infected individuals. If dogs could sniff out the odor clues to identify people with malaria, they could be a new and valuable way of detecting the disease," said Logan.



The research, currently in its very early stages, will collect urine and sweat samples from 400 Gambian children, including a proportion known to have malaria. The children will be asked to wear nylon socks for 24 hours, which will be used together with skin swabs to provide the sweat samples, according to the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.



The dogs will then be trained to distinguish between positive and negative samples using odor clues.



Malaria, a tropical disease spread by mosquitoes, is a huge global health threat that can often be deadly, especially for pregnant women and young children. There were an estimated 214 million malaria cases and 438,000 deaths in 2015 - 90 percent of those in Africa, according to Durham University.


Getty Images

The wealth of information on the internet has made us less curious about the physical world, the CEO of British start-up Blippar told CNBC, adding that its app is designed to reignite interaction with the world that surrounds us. Blippar founder Ambarish Mitra told CNBC at RISE 2016, a technology conference in Hong Kong, that the company was trying to provide real-time information on everything - from cereal brands and cars to even rapper Snoop Dog. "The worldwide web is an isolated window, which happens to be on your phone, or on your computer and you sometimes access it with questions and answers," he said. "[But] the world at arm's length remains undiscovered and unexplained."

That's where Blippar  or the act of 'Blipping'  came in. Users point their smartphone cameras at an object or its identification code and the app, powered by artificial intelligence, would recognize and provide information about the product. For example, if users pointed at a coffee mug, Blippar's app would tell them about the nearest coffee shops or the closest store to buy a new set from.

Blippar said, there were around 12 billion "blippable" product codes from more than 1,000 brands, including legacy names such as Procter & Gamble , Unilever and Pepsi . Key to reigniting human curiosity in the physical world were education and literacy, according to Mitra. It involved teaching people  particularly the large number of users who were coming online in the developing world  the right kind of decision-making skills.

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In a trendy part of Manhattan known more for art galleries than car dealerships, Cadillac is taking the next step in its efforts to revitalize its brand image and reach a new audience. On Wednesday, the automaker will open the doors to its new Cadillac House, a space that's part art gallery, part coffee shop  but no parts dealership. Instead of serving as a hub to sell cars, the ground-floor location in New York City's SoHo neighborhood is meant to introduce the brand to certain affluent shoppers who may not have have previously had an interest in its cars. "We think that people who are luxury consumers, people who are tech innovators, people who are from the fashion world, the creative spirits that make our cosmopolitan society so interesting all will find something of interest here," said Johan de Nysschen, president of Cadillac.

A Cadillac on display at Cadillac House in New York City. Meghan Reeder | CNBC

When General Motors agreed to move Cadillac's world headquarters from Detroit to New York City in 2014, de Nysschen stressed the need for executives to think about the brand in different terms. For decades, it struggled to break its image as an iconic American brand that had fallen out of touch with trendsetters. That image was reflected in sales that continually lagged other luxury automakers since the late 1980s. Though the brand has recently regained some of its momentum, its sales are down 12.4 percent so far this year. "The current generation of Cadillac product has never been as good in the entire history of the brand, but we also know that it's about intangible perceptions and those we keep building and enforcing day by day," de Nysschen said. "The priority is not about about sales volume, it's about the business," he said, explaining that includes the nature of the brand's customers.
Danish politicians are attributing "simple mathematics" to the reason why they will cut off the Queen's grandchildren's yearly allowance once they come of age, according to a media report.

Currently, all eight of Queen Margrethe II's grandchildren receive some sort of state funding. However, politicians from Denmark's ruling party, Venstre, are examining each individual's eligibility, reported the U.K.'s Independent newspaper.



"Simple mathematics dictate that there needs to be some sort of limit. Otherwise within a few generations there will be several hundred princes and princesses who need an annual salary," said Venstre Party spokesperson Jakob Elleman-Jensen, according to the Independent, citing the Danish newspaper Politiken.



The Venstre Party was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.
A trader works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Check out which companies are making headlines before the bell:

ConAgra  ConAgra and activist investor JANA Partners amended their existing cooperation agreement, with the foodmaker's board agreeing to nominate JANA designees Bradley Alford and Timothy McLevish as directors. The agreement also retains various standstill provisions for JANA. Separately, a Barron's article said ConAgra shares could rise up to 30 percent, as the food company sells businesses, improves existing brands, and lowers expenses.

Westar Energy  Westar, the largest electric utility in Kansas, is being bought by Great Plains Energy , the parent of Kansas City Power & Light. The deal is worth $8.6 billion in cash and stock, or about $60 per share, about 13.4 percent above Friday's close.

Verizon  Details of the tentative deal between the telecom giant and its unions have been released, with the pact giving pay raises of more than 10 percent and includes 1,400 new jobs.

Starbucks  The coffee chain announced a rollout of a new portfolio of cold coffee beverages, which will become the foundation for a new "cold bar" at Starbucks stores.

Medtronic  The medical products maker reported adjusted quarterly profit of $1.27 per share for its latest quarter, 1 cent a share above estimates. Revenue also came in above forecasts. However, Medtronic does see fiscal 2017 profit of $4.60 to $4.70 per share, largely below the consensus estimate of $4.70 a share.

Micron Technology  Baird upgraded the chip maker's stock to "outperform" from "neutral," based on improving profit margins, a better cost structure, and price stabilization in the memory chip market, among other factors.

Viacom  Viacom independent directors say they will fight any attempt to remove them from the media company's board of directors, should controlling shareholder Sumner Redstone attempt to oust them. The board members wrote a letter to shareholders, also saying the assertion that Redstone is mentally competent is "inexplicable."

TransDigm Group  TransDigm will join the S&P 500 after the close of trading on Thursday. It will replace drug maker Baxalta , which is being acquired by Shire . TransDigm is a maker of aircraft components.

Volkswagen  Volkswagen surprised analysts by reporting an increase in first-quarter profit. The automaker earned $3.8 billion for the quarter, up slightly from a year earlier. Consensus forecasts had called for a 17 percent drop in the wake of the company's diesel emissions scandal.

Mondelez  Mondelez is developing more mobile apps based on its products following the success of an Oreo cookie-themed game. That game has been downloaded approximately seven million times since it was introduced 3 years ago.

Alibaba  The China-based e-commerce company told vendors to stop selling drugs on its Tmall website because of government rule changes in China.

Oracle  Oracle and Hewlett Packard Enterprise head to court today in a dispute over Oracle's alleged role in the decline of Hewlett-Packard's hardware business prior to the spinoff of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HP Inc.

Apple  Apple may extend its iPhone model update schedule to every three years, according to an article in Japan's Nikkei newspaper.

Celator Pharmaceuticals  Celator will be bought by Jazz Pharmaceuticals for $30.25 per share in cash, or about $1.5 billion. That represents a nearly 73-percent premium over Friday's close for Celator shareholders.

Monsanto  The agricultural chemicals and seeds maker may get an improved buyout bid from Germany's Bayer as soon as this week, according to the Sunday Times. Monsanto rejected Bayer's $122 per share offer last week.

Williams Cos.  Williams has told Energy Transfer Equity that it is open to considering a new bid from its rival pipeline company, in an effort to end a legal dispute between the two over terms of their previously struck $20 billion takeover deal.
It's been one year since the first warnings of the Zika virus were reported in Brazil. Since then, the virus, which is carried and spread by mosquitoes, has migrated north. Recently, it was reported that there are 500 cases of Zika in the United States. While none of those cases originated in the U.S. (they were all contracted while traveling to Latin America), over 200 of those cases are pregnant women.

Zika is particularly dangerous for pregnant women. While Zika very rarely causes severe side effects for those directly infected, it can cause serious and deadly birth defects in the womb. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a travel warning for pregnant women to avoid areas where Zika is prevalent, and soon that could include many of our states. The National Institutes of Health announced this weekend that the Zika virus, and the mosquitoes carrying it, could be in the United States as soon as next month.






Worried you'll never be able to retire?

If you're a millennial, you're not alone, according to a global survey of adults aged 20 to 34 by Manpower Group, a staffing company. Faced with big piles of student debt, pricey housing and sluggish wage growth, many young adults doubt they'll be able to retire like much of their parent's generation. More than a third expect to work well into their 70s. About 1 in 8 said they figure they'll have to work until they die.



Among the countries surveyed, millennial retirement expectations are lowest in Japan, where more than a third of young adults say they plan to work until the end of their lives.



Those expectations are in stark contrast to the working history of their parents' generation. While more than a third of Japanese millennials expect to work for the rest of their lives, fewer than 1 in 5 of their parent's generation is working past the age of 65.

In the U.S., millennials are somewhat more optimistic about quitting work at some point, with only 12 percent seeing retirement out of reach. Just 17 percent of American boomers aged 65 or older are still working. In Spain, France, Germany, Italy and Greece, roughly 15 percent or fewer millennials have given up on the idea of retiring. That may be because, among those currently aged 65 or over, roughly 5 percent or fewer are still working.

Millennials are already working hard, with nearly three-quarters reporting that they work more than 40 hours a week. About a quarter say they're holding down more than one paid job.

And while they may have doubts about retiring for good, millennials plan to take breaks from work as they get older. Some 61 percent of women  and just 32 percent of men  expect to take time off for the birth of a child. Millennial women are also more likely than men to cite child care and caring for a parent or relative as a reason for taking a break from work. It's not clear from the survey whether millennials plan to work forever because they want to or because they think they'll have to for financial reasons.
Epsteins most popular plaything on his island was teenager Virginia Roberts.

While the American news media turn all their firepower on Donald Trump, from the way he talks to his supporters to the way he verbally vanquishes his opponents, Trump's likely presidential opponent Hillary Clinton continues to play her worn-out "gender card" without much squawking from news reporters.However, Mrs. Clinton's pandering to females has opened the door to a renewed interest in the sexual behavior of her husband former President Bill Clinton, who famously used the body of a White House intern as his own private amusement park in the Oval Office. In fact, last week MSNBC morning news program "Morning Joe" with anchor Joe Scarborough discussed a story involving allegations of Bill Clinton dalliances with teenagers in the Caribbean.A perfect example of U.S. media amnesia is a news story being covered overseas or by Internet news/commentary web sites regarding allegations that former President Bill Clinton frequently visited one of his super-rich pals, convicted pedophile and professional cad Jeffrey Epstein, at his so-called "orgy island."A teenager who slept with a number of Epstein's guests claims that she saw the former U.S. Commander in Chief arrive at Epstein's sexual-fantasy island with two teenaged girls from New York City. According to the now 31-year-old woman, she was a bright-eyed teenager at the time she met former President - now wannabe First Gentleman - Clinton, and she is quick to admit she did not personally have sex with him, but that other youngsters her age were provided to him.Virginia Roberts, who has accused the ultra-wealthy Epstein of turning her into a "sex slave" while still a teenager, has told European and Internet reporters that Jeffrey Epstein forced her and other teens to have sex with his powerful guests. She claims that Clinton stayed in one of the many villas on Epstein's U.S. Virgin Islands estate, where sex orgies were as common as handshaking."I remember asking Jeffrey, 'What's Bill Clinton doing here?' kind of thing, and he laughed it off and said, 'Well, he owes me a favor,' " Roberts told her lawyers in deposition. "He never told me what favors they were."Roberts says she was introduced to Epstein by Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of disgraced British media mogul Robert Maxwell . In 1991, Maxwell's lifeless body was mysteriously found at sea after going missing from his yacht. British news outlets claimed he was billions of dollars in debt at the time."Slick Willie" - the nickname given to Clinton by conservatives - was accompanied by two of Epstein's "regulars and two young girls that I could identify," Roberts claimed.she said.Bill Clinton took repeated trips on the private passenger jet owned by Epstein with a porn movie actress identified in Epstein's records under an entry for "massages," according to flight logbooks obtained by Gawker. The logs also allegedly revealed that Clinton had flown about a dozen time with a woman who federal prosecutors had investigated as a woman who recruited underage girls for Epstein's "kiddie stable" and that she acted as a possible co-conspirator" in his sex crimes Several law enforcement officers who specialize in sex crimes and pedophilia believe this whole sexual-fantasy-island is a perfect example of political hypocrisy.scolds former detective and sex crimes unit member Isabel Cortez.Det. Cortez added.According to Epstein's flight manifest, Clinton flew on the billionaire's private Boeing 727, which actually had a special bedroom for kinky.she claimed.said Roberts.While the Clinton surrogates jumped into their "damage-control mode" and attacked yet another in a long list of "bimbo eruptions," Roberts frequently told reporters and talk show hosts that she never had sex with that man... Bill Clinton. She also openly stated that she had not witnessed him having sex with anyone.But the stunning young woman said she was involved in group sex with Epstein, British royal family member Prince Andrew, as well as eight other teen girls. And she did call Epstein "a pimp for his prominent pals" and that he would brag about gathering information on people such as Bill Clinton is case he needed to blackmail them later, Roberts alleged in a new affidavit.she added.
In light of continue developments, primarily since 2008, there exists in these United States a Legal System that operates on a proved Two Tiered approach to justice rendered that primarily benefits Democratic Elites and Woke Ideological Virtue Signalers, and their co-dependent wards, to the expressed exclusion of normal hardworking American citizens: What is your suggestion in remedying this widespread injustice and, if not corrected, its existential outcome for our Constitutional Republic?

Complete overhaul the Department of Justice and their enforcers - the FBI - to reflect a far more honest justice system to keep patriots remaining calm.

Disband the FBI, and request that congress investigate all unethical and non patriotic practices to partially right the wrongs of a distrusted and politically weaponized "Department of Justice."
Ron Paul, the libertarian who ran for president three times, said Tuesday he could possibly support Donald Trump "if he argued for the free market."

"But this is jokingly," Paul told CNBC's "Squawk Box." "Most people have rolled over and said, 'Yeah, we complained two months ago about tariffs, but he probably wasn't serious about it.' We don't know what he's serious about. Now, I think a tariff war would be horrible right now."

Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, has said he would place a 45 percent tariff on Chinese goods in his attempts at making "America great again."
First, the decline in oil prices has played a major role. The Russian economy is still very dependent on oil prices. Even though Russia's central bank has moved to a floating-exchange-rate framework, Russia could not avoid the recession, given the 50-percent drop in oil prices. The ruble depreciation buffered the shock but could not have shielded the economy completely.

Second, Western sanctions reinforced the impact of the decline in oil prices. If not for the sanctions, the Russian government, banks, and corporations could have borrowed their way out of the crisis (especially given that the overall external debt was not large).

Third, the Russian economy was not in good shape even before 2014. The post-Great Recession recovery ran out of steam already in 2013. After reaching pre-crisis GDP level in mid-2012, Russian economic growth started to slow down. By early 2014, the Russian economy started to stagnate with the growth rate oscillating around zero.

How did this happen? In his December 2013 address to Parliament, President Vladimir Putin was clear: Russia's economic problems were driven by internal, not external, factors.


Small business job growth declined in May following three months of strong gains, according to a new report.



The Paychex IHS Small Business Index declined this month to 100.59, down 0.18 percent from April. A reading above 100 indicates growth.

"Given the steady results of the past several months, it appears small businesses were not able to maintain the same level of employment growth in May," Martin Mucci, president and CEO of Paychex, said in a statement.

For the year, small business employment growth remains positive. The index is up 0.22 percent in the first five months of 2016 versus the same period last year.
Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce is bottled at the Huy Fong Foods plant in Irwindale, California.

The city of Irwindale, California, is suing Huy Fong Foods, again.

The San Gabriel Valley Tribune reported that the city claims in the lawsuit filed last week that the sriracha maker owes $427,086.76 in unpaid fees, which Huy Fong had agreed to pay in lieu of taxes.

"Because we had this odor issue where all five of the City Council members unanimously declared us a public nuisance, without real basis, I feel that Huy Fong Foods is being treated unfairly, so I stop the contributions," founder and CEO David Tran said in a statement to CNBC.
The fight around first amendment issues are real and very much topical. The recent developments in the Gawker/Hulk Hogan case where it was revealed that Peter Thiel, a silicon valley billionaire, has been secretly funding these lawsuits only further highlights the complicated relationship between the media and Silicon Valley.

Media watchers were quick to castigate Thiel for using his extensive wealth to fund these lawsuits. They worry that billionaires now have a blueprint to go after media organizations that publish stories they do not like. Some think that Silicon Valley denizens unlike Hollywood and New York celebrities are not used to a questioning and critical press corps and expect the press to be pliant advocates of their agenda.

The reality is more complicated than that.


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Hillary Clinton canceled campaign events scheduled for New Jersey this week to head to California. And with good reason. Clinton is likely to lock down the Democratic nomination on June 7 no matter what happens in the Golden State. But the last thing the front-runner wants is for the final headline of the night  and the big headline the following morning  to be that she lost the final big primary in the most populous state in the nation to Bernie Sanders. Should Clinton lose  and some polls now suggest the race is tightening  it would embolden Sanders and his ardent supporters to refuse to concede the nomination until the convention.

Hillary Clinton Steve Marcus | Reuters

They would likely argue that Clinton only "clinched" the nomination when super delegates are counted and that those delegates could look at polls showing Sanders faring better against presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump as a reason to switch sides. Sanders himself said over the weekend that he would not concede the nomination no matter what happens in California because he could still convince super delegates to switch sides. "I think you know there's been some discussion that some of the media is going to say the campaign is over, she is the nominee on Tuesday night after the votes come in from New Jersey  that's not accurate," Sanders said. "She has received obviously a whole lot of super delegate support, no question about that. A lot more than I have. But super delegates don't vote until they're on the floor of the Democratic convention. That's when they vote." But Sanders' argument would become far more strained if he loses both New Jersey and California next Tuesday night and Clinton hits the 2,383 delegates she needs while riding a wave of fresh momentum and positive headlines. "Clinton wins California, hits magic number for nomination" is a much better headline than "Clinton limping to nomination, falls to Sanders in California."
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Hillary Clinton will ultimately reap the benefits of Bernie Sanders' momentum after a tough race for the Democratic presidential nomination, former U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr. said Tuesday. The Democrat and Morgan Stanley managing director offered his assessment after Clinton canceled campaign stops in New Jersey to stump in California, where Sanders is attempting to upset the former secretary of state in the state's primary next week. Clinton has a commanding lead over Sanders, but the Vermont senator has kept the pressure on the front-runner in a bid to gain leverage and push his progressive agenda at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in July.



Despite continued division among Democrats, Ford said Clinton has an attractive message on key issues important to Sanders supporters, such as the Supreme Court, climate change and income inequality. "When Bernie Sanders does get out of the race, the energy that he has generated, it's hard to imagine it going anywhere but to Hillary Clinton," Ford told CNBC's "Squawk Box." "Now will there be some Bernie Sanders supporters who will demand more? Of course. That happens in every presidential race, including on the Republican side," he said. Ford noted that some Republicans are still urging an independent conservative to run against presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump. On Sunday, Bill Kristol, Weekly Standard editor and a leading voice in the "Never Trump" movement, tweeted that there would be a "strong" independent candidate. Read the Tweet here.

"If a third-party candidacy does materialize, I can't imagine how that doesn't help Hillary Clinton in the fall," Ford said. Kellyanne Conway, CEO and president of The Polling Co., said Clinton is struggling to fight a two-front battle against Sanders and Trump. The Republican added that Clinton remains unable to settle on a message. "This woman ought to get a refund on her focus groups, because  it's practically June and she's still struggling to find a good message," she told "Squawk Box."
SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher will step down from that role on June 30, 2017. Zimpher on April 15 installed Dr. Danielle Laraque-Arena as the 7th president of Upstate Medical University in a ceremony at the Nicholas J. Pirro Convention Center at Oncenter. (Eric Reinhardt / BJNN file photo)

ALBANY, N.Y.  State University of New York (SUNY) Chancellor Nancy Zimpher announced she will end her tenure as chancellor on June 30, 2017.

She revealed the news in a letter to the SUNY community posted on the state universitys website on Tuesday.

Zimpher has served as the systems 12th chancellor since June 2009, according to her biography on the SUNY website.

A national search for SUNYs next chancellor will begin soon, H. Carl McCall, SUNY board chairman, said in a news release.

McCall praised Zimphers leadership and the collective impact it has had on higher education nationally as well as SUNY students, faculty, and staff, the states communities and its economy.

SUNYs work is far from done, and Zimpher intends to stay focused on several key initiatives over the next year, she said in the SUNY release.

Those issues include increasing access, completion, and success for all students and fulfill our promises of quality, affordable higher education and economic development for every family, business, and community across New York, said Zimpher.

Prior to her work at SUNY, Zimpher served as president of the University of Cincinnati, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and executive dean of the Professional Colleges and dean of the College of Education at Ohio State University, according to SUNY.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com
The Missourians Opinion section is a public forum for the discussion of ideas. The views presented in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Missourian or the University of Missouri. If you would like to contribute to the Opinion page with a response or an original topic of your own, visit our submission form
Synthetic hair problems lead MU grad to create banana-based product

Ciara Imani May wasn't expecting to develop a protective hairstyle product when she studied business at MU. But that's exactly what she's done.
Best of Business 2022: Learn Who Won Our 15th Annual Reader Poll

Local professionals chose their favorite business and professional services, products, healthcare, dining and more. Find out who their top picks are.
April 22, 2016 - Judge Larry Potter announces his intent to deliberate before giving a written ruling on arguments during a hearing in Environmental Court on the constitutionality of the 47 Crips gang injunction. (Jim Weber/The Commercial Appeal)



SHARE May 31, 2016 - Lovell Stringfellow, 72, (top) watches her granddaughter Kiera Stringfellow, 6, (bottom) outside their apartment on Dunlap near Mosby Tuesday afternoon. Environmental Court Judge Larry Potter ruled the Dixie Homes Murda Gang/47 Neighborhood Crips gang injunction is not unconstitutional. Potter did not agree with lawyers argument that it was unconstitutional to ban alleged gang members from associating with each other in public in a court-ordered safety zones. (Mark Weber/The Commercial Appeal)

By Katie Fretland of The Commercial Appeal

Shelby County Environmental Court Judge Larry Potter on Tuesday rejected constitutional arguments against a court order that bars gang members from publicly associating with each other.

Lawyers for Earnest Williams and Joe McKnight argued last month against orders that prohibit gang members from standing, walking, driving or appearing together in the view of the public, with an exception for attending school or a place of worship.

"The law serves the legitimate government purpose of protecting neighbors from organized criminal activity in a limited geographical area, not enhanced punishment by association," Potter said.

The Tennessee Legislature included gangs in the state's nuisance statute in 2009. Memphis' first injunction was ordered in 2013 against the Riverside Rolling 90's.

"The order is narrowly tailored to make criminal activity more difficult and neighbors safer," Potter said. "The defendants may still have a hearing on whether or not they should be subject to the order."

Potter heard arguments April 19 from attorneys over injunctions that prohibit members of the Dixie Homes Murda Gang/47 Neighborhood Crips and FAM Mob from associating with each other in court-ordered safety zones.

Violating the orders is a C misdemeanor punishable by 30 days in jail, a maximum $50 fine, or both.

Assistant Public Defender Barbara Sidelnik argued on behalf of Williams that the injunction is unconstitutional, overly broad and vague. She said the order involves conduct protected by the Constitution and "creates a direct and substantial burden on intimate associations, especially as applied to (Williams), whose brother is also enjoined under the same order."

According to an affidavit, detectives observed Williams May 6, 2015, standing on a front porch in the 800 block of Faxon Avenue with three other men in violation of the Dixie Homes Murda Gang/47 Neighborhood Crips injunction. The injunction covers an area bounded by Jackson to the north, Thomas to the west, Poplar to the south and Interstate 40/240 to the east.

McKnight's case stems from safety zones set up December 2014 at the Frayser apartment complexes of Ridgecrest and Greenbriar where members of the FAM Mob cannot associate in public. McKnight became subject to the injunction, wrote attorney Joseph Crone

Assistant District Attorney Colin Campbell argued that injunctions are a way for citizens to take back their communities.

"All of these actions are an effort to support the citizens by reclaiming their community and having the ability to fully enjoy and use the land, parks and community around them," Campbell said.

Lovell Stringfellow, 72, who lives in the Dixie Homes Murda Gang/47 Neighborhood Crips safety zone, said Tuesday she and her 6-year-old granddaughter, Kiera Stringfellow, can't go down the steps outside their apartment without running into gang activity.

"It's the people who don't even live around here that are out there," she said.

On nearby Cochran Place near Poplar, Clara Mason, 61, walked with her 2-year-old great-grandson Semaj Davis, who rode a blue and white mini-BMW.

Mason said she supports the injunction. People are "fighting all the time" and "driving crazy up and down the street," she said.

"Do what you got to do," she said. "It's time for it to stop."

Further north on Cochran, 18-year-old Justin Jackson said he does not believe people should be arrested for congregating together.

Jackson said some people might have gang affiliations simply from growing up around gangs.

"Some people are trying to turn their lives around," he said.

Standing beside Jackson, 18-year-old J.D. Scott said people gathered together "just chilling" should not be arrested.

"It's a free country, right?" Scott said.
Gov. Bill Haslam (AP Photo/Erik Schelzig)

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By Richard Locker of The Commercial Appeal

NASHVILLE  Gov. Bill Haslam expressed concern last month when the Tennessee legislature approved a bill to cut the state's Hall income tax rate this year and to eliminate it entirely in 2022  but he signed the bill into law on May 20, without any public comment on his change in view.

But the governor told reporters in Knoxville Tuesday he received assurances from legislative leaders that lawmakers would cut state spending to make up for the revenue lost from eliminating the tax if overall state revenues decrease to the point that spending cuts are needed.

"I told the legislature my concern was they were promising to cut taxes without promising to make commensurate expense cuts, and if the economy slowed down and revenues didn't continue where they are, then that would be a problem. Their leadership assured me that if that time came, they would make the appropriate adjustments," Haslam said in a brief question-and-answer session with reporters after a speech to the Knoxville Rotary Club.

The Hall tax generated $304 million in fiscal year 2015: $198 million for the state and $106 million for cities and counties. Senate bill 47, which lawmakers approved in April, cuts the Hall tax rate from 6 percent to 5 percent for tax year 2016, declares that it is the legislature's nonbinding "intent" that it be reduced by 1 percentage point per year, and eliminates it effective with tax year 2022.

The governor also said the reduction and ultimate loss of Hall tax revenue by cities and counties who share in its proceeds didn't weigh heavily into the decision to approve the bill. Since the Hall income tax on certain dividend and interest income was enacted in 1929, its proceeds have been divided between the state and local governments, with 5/8ths flowing to the state's general fund and 3/8ths to the city or county where the taxpayer resides.

That formula favors the most populous cities and counties and its most affluent suburbs where more people who own stocks and bonds live. For example, the top local government recipients of Hall income tax revenue in fiscal year 2015 were Memphis $14.8 million, Nashville $14.6 million, Knoxville $10 million, Brentwood $4.2 million, Chattanooga $4.17 million, Franklin $3.7 million, Knox County $3.3 million, Germantown $3.1 million, Cleveland $2.2 million and Belle Meade, $2.1 million.

Some local governments rely entirely on revenue from state-shared taxes like the Hall income tax and levy no local taxes like property taxes and local sales taxes.

Haslam said that from the state's perspective, the Hall tax was never really fair because some communities were better able to rely on it than others. "Some local communities just happen to do really well because they have a lot of people who paid it, whereas a similar community wasn't getting anything," he said.

When the legislature was considering the bill, the debate was over how much to cut the tax rate immediately and when to repeal it entirely. Lawmakers discussed reducing it to 5.5 percent, 5.25 percent or 5 percent before settling on 5 percent, effective with the current year. And they discussed making future rate reductions contingent on certain levels of growth in other state revenue, before approving the complete repeal in 2022 combined with the "legislative intent" for annual reductions until then.

As final legislative action neared in mid-April, the governor's Finance Commissioner Larry Martin and Deputy to the Governor Jim Henry appeared before the House and Senate finance committees to encourage lawmakers to leave future cuts to future legislative sessions depending on the state's needs at the time.
Hot Springs National Park was established in 1921 to protect 47 mineral springs used in therapeutic baths for a variety of ailments. (AP Photo/Beth Harpaz)

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By Associated Press

HOT SPRINGS, Ark.  The National Park Service on Monday paid tribute to its first ranger ever killed in the line of duty, unveiling a monument to him in Hot Springs not far from where he was gunned down in 1927 while apparently searching for bootleggers.

A bronze plaque and a park ranger hat mounted on a 3-foot-tall boulder now stands along the southwestern edge of Hot Springs National Park to honor Ranger James Alexander Cary.

"In keeping with his life and service and sacrifice, we felt that Memorial Day would be a fitting time to pay tribute to his legacy," park superintendent Josie Fernandez told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. "This is an appropriate and solemn thing to do.

Cary was 31 when he was killed and was known to search West Mountain for bootleggers and alcohol. It's believed he was watching crates of liquor he had found earlier and was shot when he tried to arrest the bootleggers, according to Tom Hill, curator for the Hot Springs National Park museum.

"These guys were hiding their stash on federal property, and Ranger Cary was trying to stop that," Hill said.

Hill said Cary probably went to West Mountain on the afternoon of March 12, 1927, and when Park Superintendent Joseph Bolten noticed that the U.S. flag had not been taken down for the evening at the park's headquarters, he sent officers to look for Cary.

Cary's body was found the following morning.

Six men were eventually tried for Cary's death, but no one was convicted, Hill said.

Cary's son, James Orvis Cary, was 5 years old at the time and said he doesn't remember that day.

Now 94 and living in Dallas, Cary said he does remember the struggle the family went through afterward.

"We had a hard time," said Cary. "My mother spent a lot of time and money trying to figure out who killed him.

"I remember it was a bootlegging kind of town," he said.

The monument faces West Mountain and the area where Cary was killed, park Superintendent Fernandez said.

"With this memorial, Ranger Cary will continue to ever watch over us."
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By Daniel Connolly of The Commercial Appeal

Russell Dyer, the Collierville school system's second-in-command, said Tuesday morning he will become director of schools in Cleveland, Tennessee, near Chattanooga, once contract details are confirmed.

"Both professionally and personally, I'm excited about what's happening," Dyer said. "But at the same time, it's definitely bittersweet."

Dyer, 41, was principal of Bon Lin Middle School in Bartlett and Collierville High School before becoming chief of staff in the new Collierville municipal school district in 2014. He is the second-ranking official in the school system and often works closely with Superintendent John Aitken as well as the school board.

Collierville school board Chairman Mark Hansen said Aitken had entrusted Dyer with a lot of the operations of the school system. "We used to joke he's not chief of staff, he's chief of stuff."

He predicted Dyer will do a good job in Cleveland and said his departure is a loss for the Collierville schools. "He's really just a good guy and very steady, very steady guy. He's not prone to get excited about things. He handles things calmly and thoughtfully, which is exactly what you want in a person in that position.

"I told John (Aitken), it's kind of like a really good basketball coach, head coach. You have assistant coaches that you bring along, and at some point you know they're going to fly out of the nest."

Dyer said his application process in Cleveland was well known to others in the Collierville school system. "I've been in constant communication with the superintendent and executive staff so they've known what's going on. ... I'm definitely not leaving because I'm mad at somebody or somebody has run me off. "

The Cleveland Daily Banner newspaper reported last week the city's Board of Education offered Dyer the job.

With about 5,600 students in the 2014-2015 school year, the Cleveland City Schools system is smaller than Collierville's system, which had roughly 8,000 students that year. Cleveland's student body is also much poorer, according to state data: about 70 percent of Cleveland students were classified as "economically disadvantaged," compared to about 15 percent in Collierville.

Dyer said he's accepted the district's offer pending finalization of the contract. He plans to start July 1.
Civil rights activist James Meredith grimaces in pain as he pulls himself across U.S. 51 after being shot in Hernando, Miss., on June 6, 1966. Meredith was leading the March Against Fear to encourage voting rights when he was shot. He completed the march from Memphis to Jackson, Miss., after treatment.

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By Ron Maxey of The Commercial Appeal

Centenary United Methodist Church, in collaboration with Germantown United Methodist Church, will host "A Call to Courage" June 25 to commemorate the completion of James Meredith's march from Memphis to Jackson, Mississippi, in 1966.

(Panel discussion to look at impact of historic Meredith march)

The event will be at Centenary, 584 E. McLemore Ave. in Memphis. It will include a voter-registration drive, a civil rights exhibit and a program from 10 a.m. until noon.

Meredith, 82, is expected to attend and make brief remarks, followed by a panel discussion moderated by Charles McKinney, chairman of Africana studies and associate professor of history at Rhodes College. Aram Goudsouzian, chairman of the history department at the University of Memphis, will offer the keynote address.

The program is the second announced area event commemorating the 50th anniversary of Meredith's "March Against Fear," during which Meredith was felled by a gunman along U.S. 51 near Hernando, Mississippi, on the second day of the march. Prominent civil rights leaders picked up for Meredith, and the march was completed in Jackson with a rally attracting more than 15,000 June 26.

An event at the Hernando Public Library on Monday evening will feature a panel discussion marking the march's beginning.

"In commemorating the 50th anniversary of James Meredith's March Against Fear, I am reminded that the goals of that march are still the same for us today," Rev. Deborah Smith, pastor of Centenary, said.

Rev. James Lawson, Centenary's pastor at the time of the march, was one of the civil rights leaders who kept the march going after Meredith was wounded.

The event is free and open to the public. For more information, visit acalltocourage.org.
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By Clay Bailey of The Commercial Appeal

We have an update from the Suburban, Up-To-The-Second, Not-Breaking-News-Desk.

DATELINE: WHATABURGER TOWN. The folks at Whataburger have weighed in on the debate regarding the hamburger outlets lack of presence in Memphis/Shelby County/Mid-South/Tennessee, and its not good news.

See the companys response at the end of the Whataburger section of the column.

We dont get a ton of mail or phone calls about Outside the Loop. Well, there was that one guy who left the voicemail saying: Yeah, Bailey. Youre right. Your column is an idiot column. Youre an idiot.

I kept that one. Just as a reminder that the job is to inform, not to please everyone. Well, and maybe for a sense of enjoyment.

Anyway, the communication lines busted open starting last Thursday with the online version of the column at commercialappeal.com and then on Monday with the weekly compilation of the previous weeks versions in the print edition.

There was a bit of buzz about Germantown abandoning plans to return red light cameras. But the biggest reaction was to a notation that Whataburgers aint nowhere among all the fast food options in the Mid-South area.

One thing we know in our business is readers are interested in the opening new eating joints -- Krispy Kreme in Bartlett; rumors of a Chick-fil-A. One and Only building across from Agricenter or a number of possibilities on the Collierville Town Square. Oh, and Krystals (I forgot to mention its absence in the Germantown Parkway corridor).

Restaurant news is one of the reasons our food writer Jennifer Biggs has one of the most popular columns at the newspaper.

Anyway, well look into the dreams of Whataburger and the nightmare of red light cameras in Germantown -- so scary some think every device on a traffic signal crossbar is designed to catch violators.

So, lets get going.

ANYWHERE IN SHELBY COUNTY, PLEASE

SO? WHAT ABOUT WHATABURGER?: We noted the absence of Whataburger last week, and a number of people jumped on board to wonder why.

And share memories.

I had one last year in Texas, and it brought back memories of eating at the Whataburger on Frayser Blvd. near Watkins, former Germantown Fire Chief Dennis Wolf said on Facebook.

We need at least one Whataburger. Fortunately, I spend about 1 week/month in Texas so I treat myself to breakfast or lunch at Whataburger, Michael Kenty said in an email that included a picture of the sign (above).

At least during the tourist season, from the time they open the doors to the time they close, the Whataburger in Destin has a waiting line, P.J. Trenthem of Germantown, later adding: How do you contact the corporate office?

One person recalled the great burgers at the location on Raines Road east of Elvis Presley Boulevard. Alas, I believe that was a Lot-O-Burger at Frost Top, which was just as famous for its root beer served in frosty mugs from a beer barrel-looking device.

That'll open up a whole new set of memories.

Meanwhile, Greg Hollified said if someone would start an online petition to coax Whataburger to the area, he would readily sign it.

As for Whataburger? Their representatives sent the following statement when asked about the possibility of coming to Memphis...

We love hearing that we have so many fans in Memphis. While were not currently pursuing any locations in Tennessee, were proud to offer exceptional food and service at our more than 790 locations across 10 states. We hope our Memphis fans will think of us the next time theyre in one of our markets.

Almost 800 locations across 10 states and Whataburger can't find a need for one in Memphis.

Pitiful. Just pitiful. Bless their hearts.

GERMANTOWN

NO, REALLY. THERE ARENT ANY CAMERAS OPERATING: Every time we write about the absence of red light cameras in Germantown, the same questions arise: What about those cameras at the such-and-such intersection?

First, let me assure you (based on the city saying it, of course), Germantown has scrapped its electronic enforcement. In fact, they havent worked in several years. The recent news is city officials are not moving forward with plans for installing the devices at three new locations.

Despite the assurances, someone routinely notes they see photographic devices at other intersections. This time it was the signal in Old Germantown on Poplar Pike, the one to the west and a third at Poplar Pike at Hacks Cross.

Wonder what they are going to do with them? one caller said in a voicemail.

And every time, we remind readers that the single lens-lookin eyes hanging on the metal bars stretching across the streets (similar to the ones shown above) are not red light cameras or enforcement contraptions.

This explanation from City Engineer Tim Gwaltney:

"The cameras at the intersections are 'detection' cameras, they are not 'enforcement or red light running cameras'. Just as the name implies, the cameras detect traffic. Best example I can provide is left-turns arrows. When cars are lined up in a left-turn lane, the camera detects those vehicles, then triggers the green arrow at the appropriate time."

Again, NOT ENFORCEMENT CAMERAS!

So, actually, they dont plan to do anything with those monitors through Old Germantown to Hacks Cross.

But dont feel badly. One of the first people several years ago to ask me about those cameras was an editor.

SHORT TRIPS

COLLIERVILLE

DYER DEPARTURE: Colllierville reporter Daniel Connolly has a story on Russell Dyer preparing to take a new job as the superintendent of the Cleveland (Tenn.) City Schools. Dyer has served as Collierville Schools chief of staff since the municipal district opened.

He will update the story later today.

According to the Cleveland Daily Banner, Dyer will replace former director Dr. Martin Ringstaff, who was fired in February for conduct unbecoming a director of schools.

GERMANTOWN

TOP TEACHER: Reporter Jane Roberts had a story last week on Humanities Tennessee naming Houston High teacher Michael Robinson one of its six outstanding educators.

BARTLETT

AT LAST: Remember that traffic signal at Altruria and Memphis-Arlington Road that has been in the works for years? Plans are to have it functioning by today.
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Germantown motorists and other residents of Greater Memphis who drive through the suburb are, if not exactly rejoicing, likely are pleased by the city's decision to discontinue its use of red-light enforcement cameras.

The decision came after a review by Germantown's police and engineering departments, which determined the cameras "would have marginal positive impact." Among the discoveries was a study in March determining "no correlation between crashes at these intersections over the previous four years and red light running."

That is a key point to consider because the cameras have been promoted nationally as a way to encourage motorists to drive safely and obey traffic laws.

Unfortunately, that message has been somewhat hurt by some officials, including some former and current members of the Memphis City Council, who push the cameras as a way to raise revenue.

That raises a question about whether some local governments are more interested in enriching municipal general funds or the bottom lines of the companies that install and operate them, rather than safety.

To Germantown's credit, its officials emphasized safety as the reason for having the cameras. The city's administrator, Patrick Lawton, said Germantown will continue to review crash sites and, if the need arises, consideration would be given to bringing the cameras back.

In the past, we have used this to space to express skepticism about the effectiveness of the cameras. That wariness is due, in part, to a lack of consensus about whether the cameras really increase safety.

A 2005 study by the Federal Highway Safety Administration took a more exacting look at the safety claims. The study found there was a decrease in T-bone collisions, countered by an increase in rear-end collisions. The study said red-light cameras only should be considered after other traffic engineering solutions have failed at problem intersections.

Critics of the cameras, such as the National Motorists Association, a drivers advocacy group, maintain that red-light safety is based more on proper timing of yellow lights that, if set properly, automatically reduce violations, which lowers the number of accidents.

Shortening the length of yellow lights, which some cities have been accused of doing, generates more accidents because drivers slam on their brakes to avoid a citation, increasing the chances of a rear-end collision.

The Chicago Tribune conducted a study, released in 2014, that found that city's camera program, billed as the nation's largest, was responsible for increasing some types of injury crashes while decreasing others.

Like most people, we are not against people driving safely. Motorists who blow through red lights are a public safety hazard. But promoting red-light cameras as an effective public safety tool, when there is no clear consensus that they are, does not imbue public confidence.

The confidence shrinks even more when the cameras also are promoted as revenue generators and motorists begin noticing that yellow lights do not hold as long.
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By Michael Gerson

WASHINGTON  For those of us with a certain political bent and background, this is the most depressing moment of all. The best of the GOP  Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan, the intellectually serious reformicons who have called attention to issues of poverty and the need for Republican outreach  are bending their knee to the worst nominee in their party's history. Ryan drags himself slowly. Rubio eventually went with a quick Band-Aid pull. But the largest political choice each man has made this year will be one of the worst mistakes of their careers.

How do I know this? It doesn't require fortune-telling.

The same week that Rubio offered to speak on Trump's behalf at the Republican convention, the presumptive nominee declared the 1993 suicide of Vince Foster to be "very fishy," especially given Foster's "intimate knowledge of what was going on" with the Clintons. And Trump attacked the Republican governor of New Mexico, Susana Martinez, for allowing Syrian refugees to be "relocated in large numbers" to her state. "If I was governor," he said, "that wouldn't be happening."

This is Trump on his best behavior, trying (once again) to act "presidential." A previous column I wrote, examining Trump's penchant for conspiracy thinking on issues from vaccination to the death of Antonin Scalia, appeared on the same day that Trump implicated Hillary Clinton in Foster's death. One challenge of detailing Trump's lunacy is the need for hourly updates. His allegation in the Foster case involved the exploitation of a personal tragedy, amounting to the mockery of a family's loss. It revealed a wide streak of cruelty.

The attack on Martinez demonstrated another less-than-desirable leadership quality. Trump's charge against her had nothing to do with refugee policy. During her time as governor, just 10 Syrian refugees have been relocated to New Mexico. Trump was attempting to punish Martinez because she has been noncommittal about endorsing him.

In making judgments about people, Trump's primary measure is not ideological or even political. He likes people who support him and disdains people who don't. So Martinez and liberal Sen. Elizabeth Warren are lumped in the same category of lese-majeste. It doesn't matter that Martinez is known as an effective Republican governor. Trump demands the unity of adulation. He is incapable of magnanimity.

And this meanness of spirit is also applied to some of the most vulnerable people in the world. Trump's mention of refugees was a subterfuge, but still a damaging one. To score his political point, Trump chose to heap disdain on a few people  vetted for years before arrival  who seek the protection of America after a terrible ordeal. Can you imagine, say, Ronald Reagan attacking women and children fleeing violence and oppression? They would more likely be used as an inspiring speech illustration. For Trump, the bully, a trickle of refugees is another chance to kick the weak.

Republicans are testing out a theory. "What Trump is doing," argues Peter Wehner of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, "is exactly what Rush Limbaugh and others have been begging Republican presidential candidates to do  to run a brutal, scorched-earth, anything-goes campaign. They now have their man." So, is the nation longing for more invective, more viciousness, more accusations of scandal and conspiracy? A strong plurality of voters in Republican primaries seemed to agree. We will now see how the national electorate responds. As a starting move, Trump has accused Bill Clinton of rape and intimated that the Clintons are guilty of murder. It is hard to imagine going lower from here, but Trump will surely manage.

Some Republicans keep expecting Trump to finally remove the mask of misogyny, prejudice and cruelty and act in a more presidential manner. But it is not a mask. It is his true face. Good Republican leaders making the decision to support Trump will end up either humiliated by the association, or betrayed and attacked for criticizing the great leader. Trump leaves no other options.

Here is the problem in sum: Republicans have not been given the option of choosing the lesser of two evils. The GOP has selected someone who is unfit to be president, lacking the temperament, stability, judgment and compassion to occupy the office. This is a terrible error, which has probably cost conservatives a majority on the Supreme Court. But the mistake was made by Republican primary voters in choosing Trump  not by those who can't, in good conscience, support him.

Michael Gerson's email address is michaelgerson@washpost.com.
After laying dormant for quite some time, Microsoft has announced that it is getting back into directly investing in startups. Microsoft Ventures has been overhauled, though its not clear why Microsoft has decided to get back into investing  or if the company is in it for the long haul.

Nagraj Kashyap, the corporate vice president of Microsoft Ventures, laid out his vision for the investing arm in a blog post Monday, saying that the fund will be used to support early-stage companies and help Microsoft be more involved in new technology developments.

Microsofts existing series of startup accelerators, and its BizSpark program to offer discounts on software, will be rolled into a new Microsoft Accelerator organization. For larger business partnerships and acquisitions, Microsoft will rely on a different team. This version of Ventures is supposed to fill in a gap Microsoft left open when it stopped directly investing in companies.

Kashyap said that Microsoft is interested in a wide variety of technologies, especially cutting-edge companies focused on complementing and accelerating the global transition toward using the cloud.

"Companies developing product and services that complement Azure infrastructure, building new business SaaS applications, promoting more personal computing by enriching the Windows and HoloLens ecosystems, new disruptive enterprise, consumer productivity, and communication products around Office 365 are interesting areas from an investment perspective," Kashyap said.

Kashyaps pitch isnt the first time that the company has tried to be a part of the investing ecosystem. That started in 2012 with the launch of the Bing Fund, an investment fund aimed at getting developers to use special tools from Microsofts search engine.

In 2013, that morphed into Microsoft Ventures, which included a venture investing arm, along with the company initiatives that are being rolled into the Microsoft Accelerators.

One of the risks of taking money from Microsoft is that the company may still decide to compete with a startup that it invests in. Take the case of SkyGiraffe, a company that makes tools to enable everyday employees to build mobile apps using company data. Its currently facing competition from Microsofts PowerApps product, despite being the first investment from Microsoft Ventures when it was introduced in 2013.

SkyGiraffe CEO Boaz Hecht said that hes happy to see Microsoft get back into investing, but that he doesnt expect to work together with the Ventures arm at the moment.

"Our paths may cross with them again in the future given the core technologies we are both focusing on, but at this point we see them more as a competitor than a partner," Hecht said in an email.

Microsoft is far from the only tech giant with an investing arm. Kashyap himself came to Microsoft Ventures after spending 12 years at Qualcomm Ventures. Google parent company Alphabet has both GV and Google Capital under its purview, while Intel, Salesforce, and others also offer funding to investors.

Right now, the company hasnt funded any firms as part of the new Microsoft Ventures push, but Kashyaps blog post would seem to indicate that theres at least more news coming from Microsoft Ventures in the near future.
The wait for Intel's Kaby Lake chip will end in the third quarter this year, as the first PC with the 7th Generation Core chip was announced at Computex.

Kaby Lake, the successor to Intel's Skylake Core processor chips, will be in the Asus Transformer 3 tablet. The device is much like Microsoft's Surface Pro 4, and will ship in the third quarter starting at US$799, according to a blog entry on Microsoft's website.

The Transformer 3 was among a gaggle of PC and phone products announced by Asus at Computex. No other Kaby Lake PC has been announced yet, but expect Lenovo, HP, Dell and others to follow suit.

Intel hasn't yet announced details of Kaby Lake, and a company spokesman declined to share further information about the chip. He also said the company won't talk about the chip in detail at the trade show in Taipei.

Intel's current 6th Generation Core chips are based on the Skylake architecture, and Kaby Lake will be the successor. Kaby Lake has the underpinnings of Skylake, and like all chip upgrades, is expected to be faster and more power-efficient.

On devices containing Kaby Lake chips, Microsoft will not support versions of its OS prior to Windows 10.

Kaby Lake is the third Core chip design to be built with the 14-nanometer production process, and was added as Intel strayed from its traditional model of releasing two Core chip designs for each production process improvement. Manufacturing issues caused Intel to delay a move to the 10-nm process, and it added Kaby Lake to continue delivering yearly chip upgrades.

The Transformer 3, which has a 12.6-inch screen, gives some insight into what top-line Kaby Lake PCs may look like. The tablet PC has a Thunderbolt 3 port, which can drive two 4K displays and doubles as a USB C connector.

Intel has been looking to integrate the controller for that inside its chipset, and also to improve integrated graphics on its chips.

The screen on the Transformer 3 displays images at a resolution of 2880 x 1920 pixels, compared to 2736 x 1824 pixels on Microsoft's Surface Pro 4. According to Asus, the Transformer 3 weighs 695 grams and is 6.9 millimeters thick. A keyboard can be attached to turn the device into a laptop. The device has a 13-megapixel camera and can hold an SSD up to 512GB in capacity, and up to 8GB RAM.

The primary competition to Kaby Lake will be AMD's chips based on the Zen architecture, which will first appear in gaming PCs by year end, and desktops and laptops next year.

Asus announced other Transformers at Computex.

The Transformer 3 Pro tablet also has a 12.6-inch screen, but is thicker than the Kaby Lake Transformer, at around 8.35 millimeters, and heavier, at 798 grams. It has a Skylake chip and can be fully loaded with up to 16GB of memory and 1TB of SSD storage. It will ship in the third quarter, starting at $999. It has USB-C (including Thunderbolt support), HDMI and USB 3.0 ports, and a fingerprint reader.

The Transformer Mini tablet, with a 10.1-inch screen, will also arrive in the third quarter, although Asus won't yet say at what price.

There's a new laptop too: The ZenBook 3 is 11.9 millimeters thick, weighs 910 grams and has a 12.5-inch screen. It will ship in the third quarter starting at $999.
Contrary to scattered reports, Microsoft has not backpedaled from its latest aggressive tactic to boost Windows 10 adoption.

Accounts claiming that Microsoft has only now introduced a new warning dialog are incorrect: That secondary notice has been part of Microsoft's campaign since at least the first week of May -- before word spread about the company's unusual interpretation of a click on the red "X" in the upper-right corner of a notification that a pre-scheduled upgrade to Windows 10 was imminent.

Since at least March 23, and probably as far back as February, Microsoft has been defining a click-the-X as approving the scheduled upgrade, rather than the expected behavior of ignoring the notice and closing the window. Microsoft's interpretation of clicking the X runs counter to its own design rules.

Some reports, including one in Forbes last week, claimed that Microsoft had "buckled under public and media pressure" and added a new notice to the pre-upgrade process. That notice, according to a Microsoft support document, was "based on customer feedback," confirms the time of the scheduled upgrade, and "provides you an additional opportunity for cancelling or rescheduling the upgrade."

But Microsoft has not bent to criticism: The additional dialog has been part of the campaign since early May, when Computerworld first examined the support document. That was approximately two weeks before reports of the click-the-X trick multiplied.

Forbes quoted a Microsoft statement that said, "Based on customer feedback, we've also added another notification that confirms the time of the scheduled upgrade and provides the customer an additional opportunity for cancelling or rescheduling the upgrade." That was virtually the same wording as that used by the support document, including the phrase "based on customer feedback."

So while the Redmond, Wash. company may have revised the campaign to give users one last opportunity to reject the upgrade, it did so long before the negative news stories and blog posts appeared last week.

Anecdotal accounts of users affected by the new upgrade campaign have been widespread.

After Computerworld's May 16 story on the click-the-X dilemma, reader Brad File reported that he had been victimized by the tactic. "I clicked on the red X to get rid of the Windows upgrade notice and went to the kitchen for a snack," File wrote in an email. "When I returned, the upgrade had forcibly started. The real problem is that the installation failed, and my computer is [now] unable to boot."

But organized criticism has not appeared.

Change.org, a popular online petition website, shows no recent activity on the subject of Microsoft's Windows 10 upgrade strategy.

One petition demanding that the company stop pushing Windows 10 launched six months ago, but has collected fewer than 60 signatures, a puny number when compared to others that have targeted the new operating system. For example, a petition begun in October 2015 that asked Microsoft to let customers delay or ignore feature and functionality updates has collected nearly 6,400 signatures.

The free Windows 10 upgrade offer will expire July 29, after which Microsoft may disable the "Get Windows 10" (GWX) app that it planted on millions of Windows 7 and 8.1 PCs last year. GWX was responsible for the scheduled upgrade notifications users have encountered.
It's not your average company that can trace its origins back to a 19th-century Russian czar, but then, Sberbank is no average financial institution.

Established through a decree by Emperor Nikolai I in 1841, Sberbank is Russia's oldest bank and has played a long and storied role in the nation's history. Today, with more than 16,000 branches in all 83 constituent entities of the Russian Federation -- traversing 11 time zones -- it serves roughly 70 percent of the Russian population.

Therein lie the roots of the bank's very modern challenge.

Whereas once virtually all transactions were conducted in person during office hours and on bank premises, the arrival of the Internet turned that pattern on its head. No longer constrained by branch operating schedules or the on-site availability of bank officers, customer-service demands skyrocketed as consumer expectations extended 24/7.

To wit: Roughly a decade ago, Sberbank had to handle 30 or so transactions per second; today, it's more like 3,000 to 4,000 transactions, said Mikhail Khasin, the bank's senior managing director.

"The problem we faced is one that's common to any tier one bank in the world," Khasin said. "The development of digital channels over the last 10 to 15 years has resulted in a dramatic increase in workload."

'The systems couldn't cope'

Also contributing to the increase is the sheer number of transactions being executed. It's not so much that more money is being exchanged overall, Khasin explained. Rather, consumers are breaking down many kinds of expenditures into smaller increments across a much larger number of transactions.

"Say a consumer used to pay $100 a month to top up their mobile phone," he said. "Today, they may spend $2 or $3 per day."

More transactions means yet more workload. By late 2014 it had become clear: "The systems built 15 years ago couldn't cope," Khasin said.

Traditionally, the obvious solution would be a hardware upgrade. And under traditional banking conditions -- including periods of time when no branches are open, so no transactions need occur -- there would be ample time for the batch processing and maintenance that go along with that approach.

In this era of round-the-clock banking, however, that kind of solution didn't make sense, Khasin said.

Sberbank also hoped to achieve better integration across its various products and services. Typically, banks have had a series of vertical software stacks, Khasin said, one for payments, for example, another for mortgages. With the advent of the Internet era, clients began to want access to all their products in the same place.

"It's a huge effort to build an integration layer that interacts with all these platforms and provides a client-centric view," he said.

Many financial-services offerings today are also packages that cross product boundary lines, making integration even more important.

As smaller, nimbler banks increasingly emerged with more flexible IT, the pressure was on to implement something different. Inspiration came from technologies that had supported the rapid growth of Internet giants like Facebook and Google.

"They grew from startups and never had the money for big mainframes, so usually they bought small machines," Khasin said. "When they grew, they bought more."

With similar scalability in mind, Sberbank zeroed in on in-memory data grid technology, through which data structures reside in RAM and are distributed among multiple commodity servers. Often aimed at big data applications, in-memory computing promises new levels of performance and scale on standard, inexpensive hardware.

'It will be a client-centric architecture'

Numerous vendors offer such technology, including big names such as SAP and Oracle, and Sberbank spent the better part of 2015 conducting pilot tests. At the end of that year, it settled on GridGain Systems' In-Memory Data Fabric platform. The first pieces of its new technology recently came into production.

GridGain offers clustering and compute capabilities, database-agnostic data processing and a real-time streaming engine as well as Hadoop acceleration. It can connect multiple data sources -- including relational and NoSQL databases -- with Java, .NET and C++ applications in a distributed, massively parallel architecture for high-speed access and processing.

So far, Sberbank has implemented a grid of three "nodes," or machines, for processing payments using GridGain's in-memory technology and industry-standard hardware. Performance and time to market are among the top benefits Khasin cites. Horizontal scalabililty is limited only by the number of nodes in place, and performance has increased by at least a factor of 10, Khasin said. Hardware costs, meanwhile, are minimal.

Training has also been less of an issue than it might have been for Sberbank because GridGain's software is based on open-source Apache Ignite technology, and has been openly worked on by a large community, Khasin said. Hundreds of the bank's 5,000 or so software developers have been trained in using GridGain, and now they're contributing back to the community as well.

Among the biggest challenges Sberbank has faced so far is the newness of in-memory technology and the relative lack of expertise on the market in implementing it. The size of the bank's implementation -- ultimately encompassing several petabytes of data -- makes that challenge even tougher.

As the implementation scales, there's still more work to be done on a fault tolerance layer, Khasin said. But he has no doubt the technology is the wave of the future.

"Banks are usually conservative, but everybody believes this is the right direction," he said. "Otherwise, you spend all your IT budget on hardware upgrades."

Sberbank was so pleased with the initial results it saw that it became an investor in GridGain early this year. Over time, it plans to expand its three nodes to hundreds.

"It will be a client-centric architecture where every client with all his data and products will live on a particular node on the grid," Khasin said. "It's all in memory, and there's always a single version of the truth for all client and transaction data."
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Write-In Voting And Political Protest

By William John Cox

31 May, 2016

Countercurrents.org

With the increasingly likelihood of a presidential contest between the generally despised Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, millions of angry voters are considering protesting the lineup by either sitting out the election or writing in alternatives. With almost one-third of all eligible voters already failing to participate in elections, a greater abdication of voting responsibility in an election between the lesser of two evils could lead to a tyranny of the minority. On the other hand, by carefully writing in the names of their true choices, voters can exercise the only power available to them. If sufficiently widespread, such a protest could have a lasting effect on the course of the Nation, including the abandonment of the two major political parties and the emergence of newmore relevantalignments.

The beauty of a massive write-in protest vote is its bipartisan appeal. There may be as many "Never Trump" Republicans unwilling to hold their noses and vote for Donald Trump, as there are progressive Democrats who are proclaiming "Bernie or Bust" in their opposition to Hillary Clinton. Even those voting for Libertarian and Green Party presidential candidates, in states where they are not qualified, might consider doing so by writing in their choices. The only problem is thatwith the control of voting left up to the states by the Constitution and with tabulation taking place on the local and county levelmost write-in votes would not be counted.

Under state laws, political parties must "qualify" for their candidates to be listed on the ballots and counted. The two major parties are qualified in every state, but the Libertarian Party candidates will appear on the ballots in only 33 states, the Green Party in 21, and the Constitution Party in 13.

By definition, the names of write-in candidates are not listed on ballots; however, interested candidates must still file various forms of paperwork in 35 states for their votes to be counted, and seven states do not allow write-in votes for presidential candidates. While permitted in the remaining eight states, votes for write-in candidates may not be counted or reported by local registrars.

Even after the end of this year's political conventions and the statutory period to qualify for the ballots in individual states, steps could still be taken by alternative candidates, such as Bernie Sanders or an establishment Republican, to register a willingness to accept write-in votes in those states where they are permitted.

All of this could change with the enactment of the U.S. Voters' Rights Amendment (USVRA), which will finally guarantee that every citizen has the right to cast effective votes in all elections. In addition, the USVRA mandates a national, hand-countable paper ballot in all federal elections, allows write-in candidates for all federal offices, and requires that all such votes be counted. Moreover, for presidential elections, the ballots would list the 12 most critical questions facing the Nation, compelling all candidates to actually address the true issues. The People would be better informed and empowered to make their own national policyand to elect representatives most qualified to carry out their policies.

A national policy referendum, in conjunction with presidential elections, would create broad federal guidelines, rather than binding laws. Elected representatives would be expected to carry out the policies and direction of the People, and could be held accountable if they fail to do so.

Rather than responding to billions of dollars in negative advertising about the inadequacies of opposition candidates, a barrage of slick promotional propaganda concealing those deficiencies, and misleading party platforms, voters in the 2016 election should have the power to create policy for themselves. They should decide whether international trade pacts should be approved; the cap on Social Security withholding taxes should be eliminated; a supplemental national retirement system should be enacted; space-solar energy should be generated to energize the national highways in lieu of a reliance on polluting petroleum products; and whether the crumbling national infrastructure should be repaired and upgraded.

The People should have a direct say about whether the war on drugs should end and private prisons should be prohibited. Those most affected by domestic policies should decide whether everyone has a right to national health care; whether paid maternity leave should be provided; women should have the freedom of choice in childbearing; and everyone should have the right to marry whomsoever they chose. Voters who are smart enough to earn a paycheck and pay taxes are certainly qualified to decide if a national minimum wage should be guaranteed; all existing student loans should be forgiven; the right to education extended through college; and whether military spending should be reduced.

Instead of an income tax disproportionally imposed on salaried workers and small business owners, the People should have the right to decide whether government initiatives are to be paid for by a tiny tax on the movement of all money in the economy, including stock and currency transactions and the financial manipulations of all banks, insurance companies, and other corporations. In doing so, the burden of taxation would be lifted from those who work the hardest and shifted to those who profit the most from our economy.

Those who founded the United States and drafted its Constitution did not trust the vast majority of its citizens to vote. They left voting questions up to the states and established the Electoral Collegerather than a majority vote of the Peopleto elect the president and vice president.

At first, only white males owing sufficient property were permitted to vote, but slowly over the years, others have been allowed to participate. These rights are fragile and can be taken away at the whim of state legislaturesas is being done by the widespread enactment of voting suppression schemes, such as voter identification laws.

The USVRA will eliminate the Electoral College and implement a national popular vote for the offices of president and vice president. It also establishes a uniform presidential primary, limits the length of campaigns, requires universal voter registration, and outlaws voter suppression. Finally, it declares that corporations do not have constitutional rights and that campaign contributions are not the same as free speech.

If America is to continue as a representative democracy, it must transform its government into one that actually represents and cares for those who elect itrather than the corporations and financial elites who are now paying for election campaigns and bribing the candidates. The USVRA provides a constitutional basis for the transformation of the United States government; however, the energy to compel its enactment will come from the incredible power of the pen literally held in the hands of the People.

William John Cox, a retired public interest lawyer, is the author of "Transforming America: A Voters' Bill of Rights.








The EUs War On Refugees Is Repeating The Disasters Of The War On Drugs

By Dan Glazebrook

31 May, 2016

Countercurrents.org

The EUs war on people smuggling, escalated last week by David Cameron, appears to be modelled on the failed war on drugs  and a new House of Lords report shows it is already producing the same disastrous results.

On 19th April 2015, the sinking of a single refugee boat off the coast of Lampedusa led to the drowning of over 700 people. By the end of the month, an estimated 1300 had drowned in the same way, making it the deadliest month on record in the Mediterranean refugee crisis. The tragedy was the direct result of a successful British-led campaign to end the Italian search-and-rescue operation Mare Nostrum, which had prevented such mass drownings before its closure in October 2014. Those events led to a public outcry and pressure to restart search-and-rescue operations; but resisting such pressure, on 23rd April 2015 the European Council instead adopted a British-drafted resolution vowing to undertake systematic efforts to identify, capture and destroy [refugee] vessels. The EU was giving notice that its response to the refugee crisis would no longer be based on humanitarian commitments, but on military force. It was, not coincidentally, a proposal originally made by the British fascist Nick Griffin five years earlier.

I wrote at the time that such a policy suffered all the basic economic flaws of the disastrous three-decades long war on drugs, and would lead to the same devastating results. Focusing on bombing supply without addressing demand, as any economics student could tell you, will push up prices, whilst concentrating the trade in the hands of the most ruthless and militarized providers. As a consequence, it would make the trade deadlier and more profitable but would not reduce it, as demand would remain unaffected. This has been precisely the outcome of the war on drugs, as the murder toll in Mexicos Jalisco province  100,000 in the eight years  grimly demonstrates. And, as a House of Lords report earlier this month shows, the same results are starting to emerge from the EUs war on migration.

The EUs Operation Sophia entered into its second phase  the capture and destruction of refugee boats  last October. Since then, according to European border agency Frontex, it has destroyed 114 vessels and arrested 69 suspected smugglers. This is supposed to act as a deterrent to people smugglers, thereby limiting the opportunities for would-be refugees to flee to Europe. It has not worked. As noted by the House of Lords EU Committees report, The mission does not in any meaningful way deter the flow of migrants, disrupt the smugglers networks, or impede the business of people smuggling on the central Mediterranean route. The arrests that Operation Sophia has made to date have been of low-level targets [and] there are also significant limits to the intelligence that can be collected about onshore smuggling networks from the high seas. There is therefore little prospect of Operation Sophia overturning the business model of people smuggling, its stated goal. Indeed, whilst the numbers crossing the Mediterranean did decline by 9% between September 2015 and January 2016, this was probably due solely to the opening up of the Balkans route into Europe. Since then, as border controls have been stepped up in the Balkans, the numbers crossing the Mediterranean have again grown, with three times as many thought to have crossed from Libya to Italy in March 2016 than March 2015.

That the EUs military campaign would not deter refugee flows was entirely obvious to the witnesses interviewed by the House of Lords Committee, given that the policy does nothing to address the demand for people smuggling services. The opening sentence of the report was a quote from Peter Roberts of the Royal United Services Institute that migrants in boats are symptoms, not causes, of the problem. Another witness, Steve Symonds of Amnesty Internationals Refugee and Migrant Rights Programme, agreed: If you do not have an answer to the situation of those people, we are sceptical about the mere targeting of the smugglers, adding that the conflicts from which refugees were fleeing were becoming more protracted and intractable and they are spreading. Summing up, the Committee wrote: We conclude that a military response can never, in itself, solve the problem of irregular migration. As long as there is need for asylum from refugees and demand from economic migrants, the business of people smuggling will continue to exist and the networks will adapt to changing circumstances.

Whilst unable to reduce the numbers crossing the sea, however, Operation Sophia has had an effect on those crossings: it has made them more dangerous. In the words of the House of Lords report, The smugglers have adapted. Lieutenant General Wosolsobe said that the mission had forced the traffickers to amend their business model: the more expensive wooden or fibre-glass boats were no longer used, as they represented a significant financial loss when they were destroyed. Instead, smugglers and traffickers are bulk-buying inflatable rubber craft from China. These have less carrying capacity and are more limited by sea conditions; in other words, they are more unsafe. In summary, they wrote, the destruction of vessels has simply caused the smugglers to shift from using wooden boats to rubber dinghies, which are even more unsafe. In addition, Camerons plans to return fleeing refugees to war-torn Libya is likely to escalate the death toll even further. On this proposal, made earlier this year, migration expert Professor Brad Blitz commented: Its just outrageous. Libya is a country that is divided, which cannot guarantee human rights, which has produced hundreds of thousands of displaced peopleIf the concern is to prevent deaths, as [Cameron] has said, then really he should be promoting safe passage, rather than diverting people so that they have to seek longer and more dangerous routes.

The Committee also heard evidence that the EUs militarized approach is changing the business model of refugee transport in other ways. According to Edward Hobart, the Migration Envoy for the British Foreign Offices Europe Directorate, although there was plenty of activity that [was] in the grey market or illegal or irresponsible, at the moment there were no large-scale organised crime groups. This, however, was likely to change. Said the report: Mr Hobart did see a likelihood of an increase in criminal activity. He explained that a symptom of better control  at the border, will be an increased opportunity for organised crime. As EU borders become more challenging to navigate, migrants will be more likely to turn to smugglers to facilitate their illegal crossings. Criminal gangs, that is, are likely to be boosted, not deterred, by Operation Sophia. And in an ominous hint of what is to come, Lieutenant General Wosolsobe referred to one incident in which armed men had prevented the destruction of a boat. As the non-violent providers are put out of business, this is likely to become increasingly common. Just as the war on drugs has concentrated the trade in the hands of the most violent paramilitary groups, so too the war on refugees will put nonviolent groups out of business whilst ensuring that only the best armed will thrive.

And these groups will find themselves amassing ever greater profits: noted the report, Mr Symonds was sceptical of the EUs efforts to barricade its external border. Analysis had shown that stronger policing of the EUs external borders had effected only the movement of ever larger numbers of people around different routes by different journeys, usually at greater danger and cost to them, so of greater profit to smugglers.

In Latin America, this combination of concentrating the trade in the hands of violent gangs, and increasing their profits, has given drug smuggling groups the financial and military muscle to buy police protection for their activities. In Mexico, for example, where the drug war has been massively stepped up since 2007, Drug Trafficking Organisations have operated.with near total impunity in the face of compromised security forces whilst official corruption is widespread. The quotes are from official US Embassy cables.

Again, the EUs military approach is likely to have the same effects on the refugee transport business in Libya, entrenching corruption and providing the most violent paramilitary groups with the financial means to buy themselves police protection. The report noted that smugglers are part of the fabric of Libyan political and economic life. Mr Patrick Kingsley, Migration Correspondent, Guardian Media Group, explained that smugglers are often connected to militias, have important roles to play in their local communities, and provide quite a lot of money to the local community. The people at the top are going to be protected to some extent, even by people who are major players in Libyan politics.

In sum, then, the House of Lords is clear on the results of Operation Sophia: it has failed to deter migration, increased the risk of death for refugees, and is militarizing the trade whilst boosting its profits. The likely result will be a growth in the political and economic power of the most violent paramilitaries currently involved in the trade.

So why did David Cameron last week announce an escalation in the militarization strategy? Speaking at the G7 conference in Japan, he promised to send another warship to join Operation Sophia, this time hoping to extend its mission into Libyan territorial waters.

Does he not have access to the House of Lords report? Is he completely ignorant of the devastating consequences of the war on drugs? Does he lack even a schoolboy level understanding of the basic economic laws of supply and demand? The English ruling class, from India to Iraq, have always presented themselves as essentially well-meaning buffoons when it comes to foreign policy; absent-minded imperialists who, with the best will in the world, end up bumbling into the destruction of entire regions due to their misguided commitment to the civilizing mission or to faulty intelligence. Personally, I dont buy it.

More likely is that Cameron is pursuing this seemingly counter-productive strategy for two reasons: to justify the re-occupation of Libya, and to facilitate the boosting of his chosen death squads of the so-called Libya Dawn. Already British special forces are fighting alongside Libya Dawn, the paramilitary force at war with the elected government based in Tobruk. MI6 and the CIA learnt in the 1980s that facilitating the mujahadeens takeover of the regions heroin trade was a great way to allow their allies to fund themselves outside of Congressional approval. It looks like Cameron is planning to repeat the trick for the Libyan death squads people smuggling business.

Dan Glazebrook is author of Divide and Ruin: The Wests Imperial Strategy in an Age of Crisis

This is an extended version of an article that originally appeared at RT.com








Tolerance And Framework Of Islamic Democracy

By G.Asgar Mitha

31 May, 2016

Countercurrents.org

Whereas knowledge breeds humility among great people,Ignorance breeds arrogance among little people---an opinion by this author

Thus far, the image of Islam has been one of extremism, intolerance and terrorism. That certainly is not what Islam means. It means peace. So what has happened that this religion has been so vehemently tarnished? Historically all great religions have gone through this phase, predominantly by the misrepresentations by the clergy who have exploited the illiterate and impoverished followers. In the past half century Muslim clerics too have misrepresented Islam starting with those who've been exposed to Wahhabi teachings and fundings through their madressas (religious schools) in Saudi Arabia. Thousands of such madressas then sprung up in Pakistans cities, towns and villages giving rise to the vulnerable students known as Taliban. Pakistani political leaders picked the cue and bowed to the will of the masses giving rise to political Islam.

In 1974, a violent campaign, led mainly by the Majlis-e-Ahrar-e-Islam and Jamaat-e-Islami, began against the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Pakistan, on the pretext of a clash between Ahmadis and non-Ahmadis at the railway station of Rabwah (district of Chiniot, province of Punjab, Pakistan). This campaign resulted in several Ahmadi casualties and destruction of Ahmadiyya property, including the desecration of mosques and graves.

As a result of pressure from this agitation, legislation and constitutional changes were enacted to criminalize the religious practices of Ahmadis by preventing them from claiming they are Muslim. These changes primarily came about due to the pressure of the Saudi King at the time, King Faisal bin As-Saud, according to Dr Mubashar HassanNOTE, Prime Minister Bhutto's close confidant at the time. Pakistan's parliament adopted a law that declares Ahmadis non-Muslims.

On 26 April 1984, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, then President of Pakistan, issued the anti-Ahmadiyya Ordinance XX,[22] which effectively prohibited Ahmadis from preaching or professing their beliefs.

Myself and a friend recently visited the Ahmaddi mosque in Calgary and were cordially greeted and given explanation of the Ahmadi Muslim faith. We also heard the mid-day afternoon (duhr) call to prayers(adhan). Many misconceptions that have been created as a result of political animosity were cleared with my own understanding of the faith, not only as a result of the visit but through my own research verification following the visit. This does not mean that I've adopted the faith (mine is none other than Islam). So what is Ahmadiyya belief and how is it different from Islam? Except for a very few deviations of no great significance, they're Muslims and no one has any rights to condemn the faith without knowledge.

One thing is certain that it is a peaceful movement significantly different than Wahhabism that is based on intolerance. Islam - through the Holy Quran and the teachings of all the prophets preaches tolerance and encourages the seeking of truth and knowledge. Ahmadi Muslims believe that there cannot be a conflict between the word of God and the work of God, and thus religion and science must work in harmony with each other. Ahmadis follow the five pillars of Islam (which includes Shahada or Faith i.e. Unity of God and Muhammad as the last Messenger of God) and the six articles of belief and as such they're Muslims. There are, however, a few deviations but such exist in every Islamic sect or in every religion. There is no basis that such deviations should be used as means of condemnation that Ahmadis or any other Islamic sects are non-Muslims.

Zafarullah Khan (besides Dr. Abdus Salam) has been among the most talented of Pakistanis- a nationalist. He hails from an Ahmadi family. It'd be prudent for Muslims, specially Pakistanis, to conduct an unbiased research to understand Ahmadiyya faith and discard their misunderstandings created by illiterate clergy and two of the most biased leaders of Pakistan who themselves least understood Islam and used it for their political aspirations. Both leaders (Zulfiqar Bhutto and Zia-ul-Haq) met their fates - one at the end of a rope and the other in mid-air.

As Pakistan's first Foreign Minister, Zafarullah Khan addressed the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan in the days leading up to the passing of the Objectives Resolution. The Objectives Resolution, which combined features of both Western and Islamic democracy, is one of the most important documents in the constitutional history of Pakistan. It was designed to provide equal rights for all citizens of Pakistan, regardless of their race, religion or background.

It is a matter of great sorrow that, mainly through mistaken notions of zeal, the Muslims have during the period of decline earned for themselves an unenviable reputation for intolerance. But that is not the fault of Islam. Islam has from the beginning proclaimed and inculcated the widest tolerance. For instance, so far as freedom of conscience is concerned the Quran says "There shall be no compulsion" of faith...  Muhammad Zafarullah Khan, Addressing the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, c. 1949

In 1954, Zafarullah Khan became a Judge at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, a position he held until 1961. He was the Vice-President of the International Court of Justice from 1958 to 1961. Between 1961 and 1964, he was Pakistan's Permanent Representative at the United Nations. From 1962 to 1964, he was also the President of the UN General Assembly. He later rejoined the ICJ as a judge from 1964 to 1973, serving as President from 1970 to 1973. He died in Lahore, Pakistan in 1985 at the age of 92.

Islamic democracy is a political ideology that seeks to apply Islamic principles to public policy within a democratic framework. Islamic political theory specifies three basic features of an Islamic democracy: leaders must be elected by the people, subject to sharia (religious legal system) and committed to practicing "shura", a special form of consultation (national assembly) practiced by Prophet Muhammad, which one can find in various hadiths, with their community. Countries which fulfil the three basic features include Iran, Pakistan and Malaysia. Note: Many western and Muslim jurists agree that countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan are not part of Islamic or western democracy.

Asma Jehangir, Human Rights activist - AHMADIS HAVE IT THE WORST- on Rabwah Times, speaking at the Hudson Institute on May 18, 2016 and moderated by Hussain Haqqani, former Pakistani Ambassador to the US.

https://www.rabwah.net/ahmadis-have-it-the-worst-asma-jahangir/

NOTEVideo of Dr. Mubashar Hassan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfmdDlTCtPU on why Saudi Arabia pressured Bhutto to declare Ahmadis as non-Muslims

Gulam Asgar Mitha was born in Bombay, India just prior to partition. He has worked as a Process, Project and Technical Safety Engineer in Qatar, Kuwait, Paris, USA and Libya. He's now currently retired since the past 2 years and continue to live with my family in Calgary, Canada.










PeoplesAlliance For Democracy And Secularism (PADS) Condemns Fundamentalist Violence In South Asia

By PADS

31 May, 2016

Countercurrents.org

The past few years have seen an alarming increase in violent attacks on the democratic rights of ordinary people all over South Asia. Fundamentalist groups are attacking and/or killing people whom they perceive to be challenging their beliefs, or 'hurting their sentiments'. For the past two years India has had a Central government that has fraternal relations with fundamentalist Hindutva groups that are widely perceived to be sympathetic to or involved in violence. There is no lack of revenge-filled rhetoric from representatives of and/or allies of the ruling dispensation. Cattle traders have been attacked and killed in the name of protecting cows. A man was killed in his home because of rumours that he was eating beef. Three well-known elderly intellectuals: Dr Dabholkar, Dr Panasare and Prof Kalburgi were murdered for holding views on religion that displeased certain fanatics, and more than a year later the police have not tracked down the culprits. Localised violence against ordinary citizens of minorities, and oppressed strata continues.

The past year has also seen brutal attacks in Bangladesh. Islamist fundamentalist forces have expanded their target beyond secular authors and bloggers. The most recent killings have involved academics who may have promoted folk music, gay rights activists, student activists and ordinary Hindu and Buddhist citizens of Bangladesh. Citizens of Pakistan have been facing fundamentalist violence for many decades. Even provincial governors and ministers have been killed by extremists. The most recent attacks have been on a polio vaccination center, a university, gatherings of religious minorities and sects within Islam, and on human rights activists, lawyers, and trans-genders.

Religious fundamentalists are on rampage in all the countries in South Asia. Their ideas and organizational methods are no secret. They do not believe in the equality of all citizens, nor that people have a right to differing beliefs. They do not respect the ideal of a non-violent and/or legal resolution of conflicts. All countries of South Asia now have popularly elected governments, which do at least pay lip service to democracy. Every attack produces popular revulsion, and in many cases has led to protests in solidarity with the victims. If fundamentalist violence continues despite this, we must conclude that the entire region is faced with deep political crisis.

It would seem that the authorities all over South Asia have stopped protecting citizens against fundamentalist violence. Instead of catching the killers, the Bangladesh government is arresting bloggers under Section 57 of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Act. After the murder of secular blogger Nazimuddin Samad, the Bangladesh Home Minister remarked that 'no one has the right to attack religious leaders and that the bloggers writings will be scrutinized by the government'. In India, while cattle traders are being killed, BJP-led state governments are criminalising cow slaughter, indicating that for them that protecting cows is more important than upholding the criminal justice system as regards human beings.

The degradation of Indian justice over the years, and especially under the current government, indicates the criminalization of the polity and a creeping ideological coup detat against the Constitution. The violent assaults upon the JNU president by pro-BJP lawyers inside court premises in Delhi in February; the fact that numbers of witnesses in the Ajmer Dargah (2007) and Samjhauta (2007) blast cases have rapidly turned hostile; that the chief public prosecutor in the Malegaon blast case stated that the NIA asked her to go soft on the accused  all this indicates that the Modi government wishes to encourage the criminal conduct of members of the Hindutva political fraternity. The turn-around by the NIA in the Malegaon blast case and asking for the acquittal of Sadhavi Pragya and others, is the latest and most obvious face of this degradation. They have gone so far as to accused the late IPS officer Hemant Karkare of fabricating evidence against Hindutva activists  an allegation that has shocked retired and serving members of the police officer cadre.

Communal bias in the functioning of the police, investigative agencies, prosecution and lower judiciary is an alarming phenomenon. This degradation creates an environment in which violent fundamentalist forces feel safe and secure. But we should remember that such violence does enjoy some popularity and/or silent complicity. The political culture of South Asia appears to be moving towards the normalization of violence, especially violence in the name of religion. The countries of the region have suffered much sectarian violence in the past, including the violence and forced migrations of 1947, and communal killings since then. Mass culture has deep patriarchal and caste-related roots. Economic, political and geo-strategic developments in the entire region have not led to more humane institutional arrangements, but rather, pushed these societies in an anti-democratic direction. Such changes have variable causes in the different countries of the region. India possesses a constitution, which despite its flaws, remains democratic in its basic structure. This statute is under attack from a section of the ruling elite. A focus on the independence of the judiciary and upholding of the rule of law are essential components of the struggle to resist fascism and to defend democracy. This struggle will need to be carried out at various levels, inside families, mohallas, educational institutions, and through popular protests and mobilizations.

Democratic forces also need to address the relationship of the neo-liberal economic order with the recent regressive turn. The collapse of public education and the shift towards commercialized education has encouraged the spread of religion-based educational activity among marginalized communities and the poor. Marketisation of education also encourages depoliticisation of those who can pay for it. The same is true of privatisation of health, disaster relief or social welfare. The neo-liberal political economic order is an attack on the rights of citizens to education, health, employment benefits and self-organisation.

Democratic and secular forces of South Asia cannot remain content with demanding incremental advances, rather it is time to stop a dangerous slide. People of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Nepal need to begin a cooperative dialogue for the cultural isolation of fundamentalist and revengeful ideas; the political isolation of authoritarian forces and for democratic unity at the broadest level. The defence of democracy in India includes struggle against patriarchy, caste oppression and for the economic welfare of workers, self employed persons and peasants. The struggle against fundamentalism needs to develop a vision of popular democracy that goes beyond the market-driven logic of neo-liberalism, and that is grounded in the principle of the political equality of every citizen.

Email: info-pads@lycos.com












Obama Continues To Ignore Pleas To Free Puerto Rican Political Prisoner Oscar Lopez Rivera

By Matt Peppe

31 May, 2016

Countercurrents.org



Thousands of people marched in Harlem calling for the release of Puerto Rican political prisoner

Oscar Lopez Rivera in May 2015. Photo by Matt Peppe.

Two and a half months ago, asked by award-winning playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda about imprisoned Puerto Rican nationalist Oscar Lopez Rivera - whose only crime, according to Nobel Peace Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, is "conspiracy to free his people from the shackles of imperial justice" - President Barack Obama told the Hamilton creator that he "had [the case] on his desk." Miranda, whose parents hail from Puerto Rico, used his invitation to the White House to bring up the issue of Lopez Rivera's continued incarceration, which is of tremendous importance to Puerto Ricans. Both on the island and in the diaspora, freedom for the 73-year-old political prisoner enjoys overwhelming popular support and has united people across the political spectrum.

Sunday marked the 35th anniversary that Lopez was imprisoned. He was convicted in 1981 of "seditious conspiracy" for trying to overthrow the U.S. government by force, as well as minor charges including possession of firearms and transporting stolen vehicles across state lines. Lopez was acussed of holding a leadership position in the FALN (Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional Puertoriqquena), a Puerto Rican nationalist organization, which he did not admit to but did not dispute. The group claimed responsibility for a series of bombings in Chicago and New York during the 1970s and 1980s, though as the Chicago Tribune noted the bombings were carried out "to damage property rather than persons" and the FALN "were out to call attention to their cause rather than to shed blood."

Lopez was never personally tied to any bombing or any other act of violence that resulted in the death or injury of any person. Undoubtedly, if the government possessed any evidence of his participation in, or organization of, a violent act they would have charged him with it in court. But they merely charged him with conspiracy to commit sedition, the same political charged used by the apartheid South African government to convict Nelson Mandela two decades earlier. Lopez has now served seven more years in prison than Mandela did before being freed and becoming South Africa's first post-apartheid President.

Thousands of people gathered Sunday in San Juan to mark the 35th anniversary of Lopez's imprisonment and demand his release. Marchers chanted "Obama, listen to me! We want Oscar free" and "We don't want this board, we want to be free," according to Fox News Latino.

The later slogan references the stipulation in the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability (PROMESAS) Act that would create a financial control board made up overwhelmingly of members from outside the island and not appointed by representatives elected by Puerto Ricans. The board would be vested with power over all fiscal decisions, effectively overriding Puerto Rico's own elected representatives. The bill was passed by a House committee on Wednesday and is expected to draw a vote in the full chamber next month. It has the support of leadership in both the Republican and Democratic parties in Congress as well as the Obama administration.

But Puerto Rican Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla and much of the Puerto Rican public are opposed to what they see as an overt imposition of colonialism by allowing unelected technocrats not representative of - or accountable to - the Puerto Rican people to hold veto power over spending decisions, and even decrease the minimum wage.

Lopez himself opposes the financial control board, telling El Nuevo Dia in a phone interview (prison officials denied the newspaper's request for an in person interview): "This is a problem created by Washington. The problem is in Washington and Wall Street. The people of Puerto Rico should not accept it. No Puerto Rican should doubt that we can solve our own problems... We need for them to respect our right to self-determination and not depend on the crumbs that Washington gives us."

Obama's answer to Miranda about whether he would grant Lopez a pardon or commutation suggests a sense of urgency. If the matter is indeed "on his desk," he presumably intends to take swift action on it. However, this is clearly not the case. Both Obama's record as having issued fewer pardons than almost any President in history, and his years of refusing to attend to Lopez's case in particular, attest to Obama's indifference to the unjust detention of prisoners by the government he leads.

Since being elected seven years ago, Obama has been directly presented with appeals to free Lopez Rivera from three fellow Nobel Peace Laureates, Puerto Rico's non-voting member of Congress, Puerto Rico's current governor and foreign presidents. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro even publicly offered to release opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez if Obama released Lopez Rivera. Yet the Obama administration has maintained its silence.

Last week, three Puerto Rican American members of Congress - Luis Gutierrez, Nydia Velazquez and Jose Serrano, along with Puerto Rico's Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi - revealed that they had sent a letter to Obama in February calling on him to grant clemency to the man who has now spent nearly half his life behind bars without ever being charged with an act of violence.

After months without receiving a response, the legislators decided to go public to try to put pressure on Obama to recognize the will of virtually all of Puerto Rico and issue a pardon.

"You know how much this means to us, because we have personally expressed it to you. To our understanding, there is no legimitate criminological objective in continuing the imprisonment of this 73 year old Puerto Rican, when his country and others that value human rights clamor for his liberation," they revealed that they wrote to the President.

Two and a half years ago, I argued that Obama's refusal to free Lopez was emblematic of the propensity of the U.S. government to ignore the political demands of the Puerto Rican people and solely use the colonial relationship to pursue the perceived economic and strategic interests of the ruling class:

"Without any representation in Congress or a vote in Presidential elections, Puerto Ricans have their political rights subjugated to the U.S. government. Even on an issue as popular among Puerto Ricans as the release of Oscar Lopez, they have no recourse to participate in the political process at the federal level. There is no indication that Obama intends to even respond to Lopezs clemency plea, much less grant it. In his speech at Nelson Mandelas funeral, Obama said that 'around the world today, men and women are still imprisoned for their political beliefs.' The overwhelming opinion among Puerto Ricans is that this description applies precisely to Lopez. The disregard that Obama has shown for recognizing the will of Puerto Ricans to free Oscar Lopez demonstrates the uphill challenges Puerto Ricans face to shed their second-class status and obtain equal rights. If the President refuses even to grant a simple pardon, what chance do Puerto Ricans have of the U.S. government acting on the 2012 referendum and allowing them to achieve self-determination?"

The question of why Puerto Ricans would believe that anyone in the U.S. government respects their opinions or their political desires should be more urgent than ever. We are in the middle of another campaign season, which for many Americans is seen as an opportunity for them to participate in the political process by voting in elections. However, for Puerto Ricans it is another reminder that while they are American citizens, they are denied the right given to Americans in the states to select Congressional representatives and take part in the Presidential election.

The policies that will be decided after the election at the federal level will apply to Puerto Ricans, though they will have had no role in choosing those policies and no way to voice their dissatisfaction at policies they oppose by voting out those who supported them.

The only way Puerto Rico can recover from its economic and debt crisis, as Lopez Rivera said in his interview with El Nuevo Dia, would be to achieve sovereignty and self-determination. This would grant them the ability to prioritize local business and the needs of the population, and free them from being merely a captive market for U.S. products and a source of cheap labor for U.S. corporations.

But any promise that the 2012 referendum, in which a 54% majority rejected the current colonial status, had of achieving this has disappeared. The U.S. Congress, which must approve any change in Puerto Rico's political status, has not given any indication it will even consider doing anything to end the "Commonwealth" colonial status that Puerto Ricans voted against.

On the contrary, Puerto Ricans are being presented with the prospect of a financial control board that is a blatant affront to the idea that people should rule themselves, and a reminder of their powerlessness as colonial subjects.

The fact that Oscar Lopez Rivera still sits unjustly in a prison cell is proof that the voices of Puerto Ricans simply do not matter to first-class American citizens on the mainland who hold power.

Matt Peppe writes about politics, U.S. foreign policy and Latin America on his blog. You can follow him on twitter.












A Tale Of Two Vehicles: Sadhvis Motorcycle And Rubinas Car



By Ram Puniyani

31 May, 2016

Countercurrents.org

Can there be two type of Justice delivery system in the same country? This question came to ones mind with the U turn taken by NIA in the cases related to terror acts in which many Hindu names were involved. Now the NIA in a fresh charge sheet (May 13, 2016) has dropped the charges against Pragya Singh Thakur, has lightened the ones against Col Purohit and others. Along with this new line of NIA is that Hemant Karkares investigation in these cases was flawed and that it was ATS which had got the RDX planted in Purohits residence to implicate him in this case. The implication is that all this was being done at the behest of previous UPA Government.



A brief recap is in order. Maharashtra in particular and many other places in the country were witness to acts of terror. The first major attention to this phenomenon took place when two Bajrang Dal activists were killed while making the bombs in the house of one RSS worker Rajkondawar (May 2006). There was a saffron flag flying atop the house and a board of Bajrang Dal was put up in front of the house. At the site of bomb explosion fake moustaches, beard and pajama-Kurta were also found. This was followed by many other blasts, Parbhani, Jalna, Thane, and Panvel etc. In most of these case police investigated on the lines in which generally Muslims were blamed for such acts. After every act of blast few Muslims young men were arrested who were later; after long grueling court cases; were released as no evidence was found against them.



The Malegaon blast in which Sadhvis role came to surface; took place in 2008. In the blasts those returning from Namaj (prayers) were killed and many injured. Following this the usual suspects, Muslims, were arrested. Then while investigating the cases the Maharashtra ATS Chief Hemant Karkare found that the motorcycle used for the blast belonged to Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, ex- ABVP worker. The trail of investigation led to Swami Dayanad Pande, Retd. Major Upadhyay, Ramji Klasnagra, Swami Aseemanand amongst others. They all belonged to the Hindu right wing politics. There was lots of evidence in the material recovered. One of the helpful evidence came in the form of the legally valid confession of Swami Aseemanand. This confession was made in judicial custody in presence of a Magistrate.



In the confession Swami spilled the beans and said that after the Sankat Mochan blast of 2002, they had decided that bomb will be replied by bomb. He was then looking after the VHP work in Dangs. He gave the detailed narrative of the whole process in which all the people were investigated and became part of the charge sheet of NIA.



When Karakare was investigating the case and many of Hindu names started coming under the shadow Bal Thackeray wrote in Saamna that we spit on the face of Karakare. Narendra Modi; then CM of Gujarat; called him Deshdrohi (Anti National). Advani also reprimanded Karkare. Feeling the heat of this pressure from Hindutva political outfits Karkare went to meet his professional peer Julio Rebeiro. Rebeiro. Rebeiro has a record of high level of professional integrity. Rebeiro appreciated his painstaking work. Karkare asked that what should be the stand of a person like him when facing such a heat from politicians. The senior officer told him to honestly do the work and ignore these insinuations.



Meanwhile the global terror phenomenon hit Mumbai. On 26/11 ten terrorists, armed to the teeth attacked Mumbai. On this occasion Karakre got killed. There is a strong controversy about this killing also. The then minority affairs Minister A. R. Antulay said that there is terrorism plus something else which is behind the killing of Karakare. Narendra Modi who had earlier called Karkare as Deshdrohi landed up in Mumbai and wanted to give a cheque of Rs. one Crore to widow of Karkare, she refused to accept the amount.



After Karkares death the investigations continued on the lines laid down by him. The charge sheet was ready and all the involved were to be tried for acts of terror. Meanwhile Government changed at the center and the NIA adopted the line which has led to the present situation where the efforts to release Sadhvi are marching with intimidating speed. The change in the line got reflected in the statement of Public Prosecutor, Rohini Salian. She stated that she was told to go soft on these cases. As she refused to toe this, she was sacked.



One recalls that in Mumbai 92-93 violence over one thousand people died. This carnage was followed by the bomb blasts in which over two hundred people died. As far as the communal carnage is concerned not many got severe punishments, no death penalty- no life imprisonment. In the cases of bomb blasts many have been given death penalty and many more life imprisonment. One of the people undergoing life imprisonment is Rubina Memon. Her crime, she owned the car which was used to ferry the explosives. She never drove the car with explosives.



Sadhvi owned the motor cycle used for Malegaon blasts; she will be out from the prison soon. Rubina owned the car; she will be in prison all her life. In Mumbai carnage so many died. No severe punishment to anybody. So many severe punishments in bomb blast case!



So where does our democracy stand at the end of all this? It seems two type of justice delivery systems are out there in the open. While shrill debates on TV will defend Sadhvi and blame Karkare for faulty investigation, the people in Malegaon are protesting furiously and planning to go to the court against the change in the stance of NIA. Two political parties seem to be preparing to save the honor of Karakare and press for sincere examination of the evidence collected by him.



One hopes the guilty will be punished and innocents will be protected. But this seems a bit too much to expect in current scenario!

Ram Puniyani was a professor in biomedical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, and took voluntary retirement in December 2004 to work full time for communal harmony in India. He is involved with human rights activities from last two decades.He is associated with various secular and democratic initiatives like All India Secular Forum, Center for Study of Society and Secularism and ANHAD. Response only to ram.puniyani@gmail.com












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By Len Wells, Special to the Courier & Press

A Wayne County, Illinois sheriff's deputy has been jailed on a preliminary charge of domestic battery.

Illinois State Police arrested 36-year-old Larry Lee Rankin of rural Fairfield at the Wayne County Sheriff's Department around 9:30 p.m. Monday.

Wayne County Sheriff Mike Everett said Rankin is accused of battering his wife during an altercation Monday evening.

Everett said Rankin has been suspended without pay pending the outcome of the case. As part of Illinois' domestic violence laws, authorities seized all firearms from Rankin's home.

Everett said Rankin was not on duty at the time of the alleged incident. Everett added that the incident was first reported to a friend of the alleged victim who alerted Illinois State Police.

Rankin has been an employee of the Wayne County Sheriff's Department since April 2003, beginning his law enforcement career as a corrections officer. Besides serving as a deputy, Rankin is also a member of the Illinois Law Enforcement Alarm System SWAT team.

Rankin remains in the White County Jail at Carmi, Illinois, pending the filing of formal charges and setting of bond.
SHARE Robert C. Dalzall's plane. Robert C. Dalzall

By Richard Gootee of the Courier and Press

Kentucky authorities are searching for a missing personal plane and pilot that didn't return to the Owensboro Regional Airport as scheduled Monday.

Kentucky State Police identified the missing pilot as Owensboro resident Robert C. Dalzell Jr, 70. Dalzell was supposed to return from the Falls of Rough airport, which is in Grayson County, Kentucky, Monday morning, but the plane went missing.

Dalzall is described as a white male who is about 5 feet, 5 inches and 175 pounds with gray hair and hazel eyes. His plane is a fixed-wing 2012 Green Aero Criquet Bogota, with a tail number N429BB, according to a state police news release. The plane left Falls of Rough at about 11:20 a.m., and Dalzall's last cell phone ping was at 11:32 a.m. That ping put his location about five miles from the airport.

The Kentucky Civil Air Patrol has dispatched two planes to search for Dalzall and his aircraft, according to a Tuesday morning news release.
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By Mark Wilson of the Courier and Press

The owner of a leaky tank that spilled 200 gallons of oil into a Posey County ditch last week said an unknown, abandoned line contributed to the mess.

"Basically, it acted as a drain," Chuck Robinson said on Tuesday.

Cleanup on the spill continues this week. No drinking water was affected by the spill, said Courtney Arango, a spokeswoman for the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.

"It was a fairly significant amount of oil that leaked out," she said.

Robinson, president of, and a partner in, Indiana Oil Company Inc., said the leak originated from a tank the company owns near Lower Mount Vernon and Darnbush roads. He said the well and tank were purchased in November from Flowline Specialties, a defunct Henderson, Kentucky, company whose owner died.

"It is a shame that it happened. We are very upset that this occurred and we are trying to make it right," Robinson said.

While the containment system for the tank captured the oil, Robinson said the oil still found its way into an unused, broken-down pipe that caused it to drain to a wooded area.

He said about 200 gallons of oil escaped the tank's firewall  a dirt berm designed to contain the volume of the tank should it spill  and drained into a ditch in Marrs Township.

Robinson said the leak happened when a valve on the tank apparently broke on its own. He said he had been unaware of the abandoned line that carried the oil into the ditch until the spill occurred.

The ditch flows between residential neighborhoods and through the 34-acre Marrs Township Community Park.

"The smell is horrible," said Christine Seifert, the Marrs Township trustee.

She said the park is frequently used by area residents as well as the Saint Philip All Girls Softball Association.

Robinson said his company became aware of the spill last Wednesday or Thursday and moved quickly to begin containing it. He said a dam was built in the ditch at the park to contain the oil but let the clean water flow free beneath it and that the cleanup was being coordinated with state environmental officials.

He estimated cleanup was about 80 percent complete but would likely continue through the week, with additional remediation lasting at least another month.

Indiana Petroleum Contractors, the field arm of Robinson Engineering  a separate company also owned by Robinson  is doing the cleanup.

"I just want to make sure they return the park to better shape than before," Seifert said.

She said she walked the scene last week after discovering the spill by accident when she went to the park to talk to maintenance staff. Instead, she found cleanup crews and equipment working on the spill.

Arango said oil-covered vegetation along the banks will be cut down to the dirt and removed.

She said the spill was reported last Wednesday by a private citizen to the Posey County Health Department, which in turn reported it to IDEM's spill hotline and emergency response personnel were on site working with the owner's contractors to stem the spill by Wednesday night.

After the site is remediated, IDEM will review what happened to determine if any enforcement actions should be taken against Indiana Oil Company, Arango said.

A search of IDEM records by the Courier & Press uncovered no past notices of violation against Indiana Oil Company or Flowline Specialties.
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Brandon Harris

Boonville

President Barack Obama's visit to Hiroshima, Japan, was the first such visit by a U.S. president in office. The visit has a historical background and a present meaning; it will have a pacifist facade while the U.S. prepares for imperialist war. Obama's visit comes nearly 71 years after one U.S. atomic bomb in one flash destroyed 60 percent of the city and its people.

The final victims of World War II were the 100,000-plus Japanese people killed instantly by atomic bombs in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Along with them were 30,000 Koreans the Japanese army had forced to work there, plus another 100,000 people who died slowly from radiation poisoning.

The U.S. did not have to use an atomic bomb to force Japahn's surrender in 1945 and therefore end World War II for good. The war in Asia was nearly over. Washington's purpose for using these terrible weapons was to intimidate the Soviet Union.

We now need to work to reduce nuclear weapons throughout the world. The U.S. needs to dismantle all of its nuclear weapons and the working class need to fight all forms of military and economic aggression throughout Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.
Data center News

Court Rules Dell, Silver Lake Shortchanged Shareholders 20 Percent In 2013 Buyout

Matt Brown

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When Dell Chairman and CEO Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners took Dell Inc. private in 2013 for nearly $25 billion, they underpaid by more than 20 percent and now may have to pay as much as $15 million to investors who opposed the buyout, a Delaware judge has ruled.



The ruling comes as the expected closing date for Dell's pending acquisition of EMC approaches. The more than $60 billion transaction -- the largest in the history of the IT industry -- is expected to close by the end of October.



One partner executive said he sees the ruling as not much of an impediment to Dell in its move toward acquiring EMC. "It doesn't really give me any pause," said Michael Gray, director of network operations at Tewksbury, Mass.-based Dell partner Thrive Networks. "A juggernaut is a juggernaut. The lawsuit, I think, is just a way to get some more money out of Dell."



[Related: Resurgent VMware Stock Pulls Value Of Dell's EMC Acquisition Higher]



"Worst case scenario, say they don't get the EMC deal done," Gray said. "Even then, both companies press on, and I'd be more concerned about EMC than Dell, honestly. Dell has so much more opportunity, there's still so much they can go out and do. It may erode some confidence, but I don't think anyone can stop this train. The more time that goes on, the more likely [the merger] is to happen. They've already got so much time invested in the deal, they're going to take it to the finish line."



Delaware Vice Chancellor Travis Laster filed his 114-page opinion in the long-running dispute Tuesday, ruling that the fair value of Dell's stock at the time of the buyout was $17.62 per share rather than the $13.75 per share the company and its private equity partners paid.



The suit was brought by investment funds about two years ago as a so-called appraisal case. The appraisal strategy allows investors to realize a price increase in a transaction by voting against it and later arguing in court that the deal was worth more than what the buyers paid.



Shareholders in this case argued that Dell, facing mounting competition in the PC market, was on track for a turnaround and was worth more than twice what Dell and Silver Lake paid in the buyout.



Laster previously disqualified the 27 million shares held by T. Rowe Price from the case, leaving Illinois-based hedge fund Magnetar Capital as the largest holder of Dell stock seeking an "appraisal." With 3.8 million shares, Magnetar could collect about $15 million plus interest, although Dell has the opportunity to appeal the ruling.

A Dell spokesman Tuesday declined to comment on the case.



Attorneys for Dell's lead firm in the case, Richards, Layton & Finger, as well as Magnetar's firm, Grant & Eisenhofer, did not respond for requests for comment Tuesday.

In a recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Dell and its holding company Denali Holding acknowledge that an unfavorable ruling in the appraisal case "could have a material adverse effect on the company's results of operation and liquidity."



Still, the ruling puts Dell on the hook for far less than it could've been required to pay, and the company has the right to appeal. In the same SEC filing, Dell estimated that the total amount it could have been made to pay in the case might have reached $593 million, plus $72 million in interest.

Regardless, the ruling comes as Dell prepares to take on as much as $49.5 billion in debt to finance its acquisition of EMC. As it did in the 2013 buyout, Dell has a plan to pay down that debt aggressively in the first couple of years after the acquisition closes.



The buyout used $13.9 billion in debt between Dell and Denali. Since that time, Dell has brought down its debt load some $3.1 billion, and Denali has reduced its burden by $5.1 billion, according to regulatory documents.
Storage News

NetApp's New Ontap 9 Features Virtual Storage Array, Improved Flash Optimization

Joseph F. Kovar

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NetApp today unveiled the latest version of its Ontap operating system, which it claims will simplify customers' storage architectures and prepare them for flash storage optimization.

The new version, called Ontap 9, includes a virtual appliance that can run on commodity server hardware and in the cloud, and is ready to take advantage of new 15-TB SSDs launching next month, said Adam Fore, director of product solutions and marketing for the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based storage vendor.

NetApp has officially renamed its operating system Ontap, which is a simplification of the previous name, Clustered Data Ontap, A big change in Ontap 9 over previous editions is the removal of much of the complexity involved in deploying it, Fore told CRN.

[Related: Q&A: NetApp CEO Kurian Explains Strategic Tech Shift, Discusses Cisco Relations As Dell, EMC Combine]

Ontap 9 is optimized for NAS or Fibre Channel before it's shipped so it can be quickly optimized for specific workloads including VMware, Oracle, Microsoft SQL, or Microsoft Exchange at the customer site, Fore said.

"For instance, if the customer uses it in a VMware environment, it automatically connects to vCenter to set everything up," he said. "So after plugging it in, the time to deploy data is about 10 minutes, including some cabling elements. Next week, we'll have a video showing this."

John Woodall, vice president of engineering at Integrated Archive Systems (IAS), a Palo Alto, Calif.-based solution provider and long-time NetApp channel partner, said the new simplification promised by Ontap 9 is most welcomed by customers.

"It's worthy of some bubbly," Woodall told CRN. "We already did five customer NDA presentations in the last couple weeks."

Woodall said the idea of a 10-minute deployment is in-part marketing speak, but in many situations, Ontap 9 will allow it.

"For customers deploying Oracle, SQL, virtual desktops, and so on, things can be configured with the storage before it's shipped," Woodall said. "When it arrives, just cable it up and deploy it, and the configuration is done automatically."

NetApp's Fore said one major new capability is Ontap Select, a software-defined technology that allows Ontap 9 to be deployed on any VMware-qualified commodity server hardware. Up to four instances of Ontap 9 can be configured in VMware virtual machines and connected in a high-availability solution.

NetApp is also offering a new licensing scheme with Ontap Select. Customers can purchase it at certain capacity points - for instance 100 TBs - and receive an unlimited number of licenses to access that capacity, Fore said.

NetApp will be the first storage vendor to integrate new 15-TB Samsung SSDs when they become available in June in part because of the agility of the Ontap architecture, he said. "There's no need to change the architecture to support the new drives," he said. "No one else can say that."

While Ontap 9 continues to support in-line deduplication and compression, the operating system adds a new in-line compaction, Fore said. In-line compaction squeezes data into the 4-KB blocks common to NetApp storage to save even more space. After data reduction, a 2U storage solution with 12 high-capacity SSDs can store over 1 petabyte of data, Fore said.

Combining the new high-capacity SSDs with NetApp's data reduction technologies means that flash storage will cost less than 10,000-rpm SAS hard drives this year, Woodall said.

"So if there's a workload that was slated to deploy on 10K SAS hard drives, customers can now use NetApp all-flash FAS storage instead," he said. "This will reduce the data center footprint, reduce power use, and reduce the amount of management and tuning needed. So we can really start thinking about an all-flash data center sooner than later."

For protecting data, NetApp's Ontap 9 introduces RAID-TEC, or triple erasure coding. With RAID-TEC, up to three spinning disks or SSDs can be lost without impacting capacity or performance, Fore said. "With the latest large-capacity drives, the rebuild times can be really long," he said.

Ontap 9 also now includes NetApp's SnapLock software-based WORM (write once, read many) technology, which allows customers to set a time during which data cannot be deleted or modified to protect it for auditing and compliance purposes.
Virtualization News

Resurgent VMware Stock Pulls Value Of Dell's EMC Acquisition Higher

Matt Brown

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VMware's share price is clawing its way back up from its February lows, and it's bringing the value of Dell's acquisition of EMC along with it.



But while that may be good news for investors, Mark McKeever, principal at Tempe, Ariz.-based solution provider Microage, told CRN VMware's share price roller coaster has had a noticeable impact on his business.



"It explains some of what I see," McKeever said. "We felt a constriction in the marketing funds available to us, and if you're trying to preserve value, and you're cutting expenses, then marketing is a good place to do it. All those dollars are worth multiples to them later."



[Related: VMware Exec: Container Technology Isn't Threatening To Us, It's Actually An Opportunity]



Microage partners with Dell, EMC and VMware, among others.



McKeever said Microage's VMware business "really flattened out. It was a big disappointment. It's not at the run rate I'd like it to be at, even though we've put a lot of effort into it. We know you're trying to spend less, but how can you possibly wait so long to let us know what the marketing [funding] is? We have to plan it, and it's been late the last few quarters."

Dell and VMware did not respond to a request for comment before publication time.

According to some analyst reports, buyers of VMware shares have been becoming more aggressive than sellers, and the majority of analysts rate VMware a "buy" or "hold," while very few still rate the stock a "sell."

Since early March, VMware stock has been slowly regaining its momentum, and it has pushed the price of Dell's EMC acquisition back above $60 billion. By noon Tuesday, VMware stock was trading at $60.05 per share. That number would put the price tag on Dell's acquisition of EMC at nearly $62.4 billion, and it was trending higher.



On Oct. 8, the last day of trading before Dell announced its plan to acquire EMC for $67 billion, VMware had a market capitalization of more than $33 billion, and its stock was trading at $81.78 a share. By mid-February, VMware's market cap was less than $20 billion and its stock was trading below $45 a share, prompting Dell to warn investors that the decline would impact the final price of the EMC merger.



VMware is 80 percent owned by EMC. Denali Holding, the holding company for Round Rock, Texas-based Dell, agreed to pay $24.05 a share for EMC, and that price is locked. As part of the deal, Denali will also give EMC shareholders 0.111 share of a Denali tracking stock tied to VMware's performance. The value of the tracking stock fluctuates with VMware's share price.



When the acquisition was announced, VMware's $81.87 stock price provided for a tracking stock worth about $9.10 a share. At its low point in February, the tracking stock was worth little more than $5.10 a share.



The acquisition, the largest in the history of the IT industry, is expected to close before the end of October. The transaction is yet to be approved by Chinese regulatory authorities and EMC shareholders.


The Reasons: Bigger, Better, And Aimed At The Future

The planned merger of Hewlett Packard Enterprise's Enterprise Services unit into CSC will not only create a $26 billion solution provider powerhouse, but is also aimed squarely at where the business of technology services is heading, the CEOs of both firms said last week.

CSC's Mike Lawrie and HPE CEO Meg Whitman announced the deal on each company's earnings call last week, stating that the merger will create a company that will focus on next-generation solutions, such as cloud and mobility.

The resulting new entity will have an estimated 5,000 clients across 70 countries and achieve first-year cost savings of $1 billion, according to CSC.

"This merger truly moves the combined businesses into the upper echelon of global IT services players," Lawrie said.

What 10 things do you need to know about the deal? Read on.

Get all of CRN's DXC Technology coverage here.
Intel Talks Kaby Lake At Computex

Intel made a splash at this week's Computex tech confernce in Taipei, focusing on its forthcoming Kaby Lake chips, which will succeed the 14nm Skylake architecture released last fall. Solution providers expect that the new architecture refresh will yield smaller and faster CPUs, which will ultimately lead to more PC sales.

A year ago, Intel said it was delaying its 10nm Cannonlake microarchitecture, which represents a "tock" in Intel's "tick-tock" schedule.

Intel will delay the Cannonlake microarchitecture and instead offer a new microarchitecture that is a 14nm derivative of Skylake, dubbed Kaby Lake. Intel said at Computex this week that Kaby Lake would become available by the end of the year. While the full specifications for Kaby Lake have not yet been released by Intel, a few important details will be critical for partners. Here's a look at some of the biggest.
MSC Cruises is posed to remain the dominant pan-European brand with an annual passenger capacity of more than 4 million by 2026 based on current ship orders and deployment, according to the 2016-2017 Cruise Industry News Annual Report.

The second largest pan-European brand will be Costa Cruises with an estimated annual market capacity of 1.6 million, followed by Germanys AIDA and TUI Cruises with 1.5 million and nearly 700,000, respectively.

The estimated combined market capacity of the Carnival Corporation brands will be 3.9 million.

The total estimated European market capacity will be more than 10 million passengers, compared to 6.6 million last year.

Factors that could affect the overall market growth and brand positioning would be pending orders that have not yet been announced and the possible move of more ships to China.

For 2016, MSCs estimated European market capacity is 1.5 million passengers compared to 1.1 million for Costa as that brand has deployed more of its ships China.

About the Annual Report:

The Cruise Industry News Annual Report is the only book of its kind, presenting the worldwide cruise industry through 2025 in 350+ pages. Statistics are independently researched. Learn more by clicking here.

The report covers everything from new ships on order to supply-and-demand scenarios from 1987 through 2021+. Plus there is a future outlook, complete growth projections for each cruise line, regional market reports, and detailed ship deployment by region and market, covering all the cruise lines.

Order the 2016-2017 edition today.
Ann Bednarz's story on the best cities for finding a new job got me thinking about the past few articles Ive written on college graduates and job searching. Yes, thousands of students are graduating from college and entering into the work force, in tech anyhow. There are also thousands of students graduating from high school, which means thousands of students are off to college, and a new cycle of high school seniors will soon be applying to colleges and universities across the country.

How do they choose the best college with the most progressive and innovative programs that will prepare them to enter into the cybersecurity workforce?

In order to give those students the knowledge they need to make the most informed decision, Ive connected with university leaders and students who can speak to the attributes of different programs and the offerings that current students find most valuable.

Gerry McCartney, vice president and CIO, Purdue University and director of Purdues Pathmaker Internship Program, talked to me about the successes he has seen in helping bring students and companies together.

If you're like Cisco, Intel, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, or ISAC then your organization is already one of the program's corporate partners (and I'd love to hear from you!). Some of you who attended this years RSA conference might have attended Intel Security's Senior Vice President Chris Young's talk about Purdue's program.

The gist of the program seems brilliantly simple. Companies or government entities opens a SOC or NOC that is then staffed by Purdue students who are in training for cybersecurity. The students, who are also employees of the entities, gain hands-on experience in tandem with their course work at the university.

The companies are locating here because we have 38,000 students, about 13,000 of whom are in preparation for engineering or engineering-related degrees, said McCartney.

One constraint for enterprises large and small is finding the qualified candidates they need to fill the jobs gap. For those larger organizations who can afford to build a SOC in West Lafayette, Ind., Purdue has an abundance of learners eager to get involved and learn in new ways.

[ ALSO ON CSO: Beyond technology: non-technical jobs in cybersecurity ]

"We are producing these folks. It starts here. Pathmaker is this ideal combination of while you are getting your actual education that your academic program is preparing you for, you are getting the hands-on experience, working and learning the things that are practical in the work place," said McCartney.

Most of us know someone who graduated with a degree in history to go work at an accounting firm. Or the English major who became a vice president at a hedge fund. For many students past and present, a lot of their degree course work isnt constructive toward the degree program they are pursuing. For some, their degree has little or nothing to do with what turns out to be their life's vocation.

Pathmaker aims to change that for the cybersecurity degree candidates at Purdue.

Whether the experience serves solely as a means of developing skills or it turns out that the hosting entity wants to make the student a full-time offer, the opportunity is arguably mutually beneficial and has the potential to surpass what one can acquire through traditional classroom learning.

The interns are direct employees of the organization, so students who need to work don't have to flip burgers or dish out sundaes, like I did at Friendly's during my undergrad years. What's more important is that the internship allows students to realize whether their interest is indeed a real passion.

"The students do actual technical work, while earning pay that is higher than they would receive at typical fast-food or retail jobs, and many choose to work for the companies when they graduate," said McCartney.

Certainly there are other universities that are being equally as innovative in trying to help close the cybersecurity jobs gap, which is great because the cost of these partnerships, said McCartney, "Can be somewhat of a bite for small companies."

Many young folks, though, are more attracted to the younger, smaller, more entrepreneurial companies. The more smaller and mid-sized organizations are able to take advantage of establishing these partnerships with universities, the more well-rounded and prepared the next generation of professionals will be to conquer the future challenges of cybersecurity.

What was your internship experience? Connect with me to be a part of this weekly series that looks at the universities to consider for those who are in the process of doing college tours.
Owners of WordPress-based websites should update the Jetpack plug-in as soon as possible because of a serious flaw that could expose their users to attacks.

Jetpack is a popular plug-in that offers free website optimization, management and security features. It was developed by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com and the WordPress open-source project, and has over 1 million active installations.

Researchers from Web security firm Sucuri have found a stored cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability that affects all Jetpack releases since 2012, starting with version 2.0.

The issue is located in the Shortcode Embeds Jetpack module which allows users to embed external videos, images, documents, tweets and other resources into their content. It can be easily exploited to inject malicious JavaScript code into comments.

Since the JavaScript code is persistent, it will get executed in users' browsers in the context of the affected website every time they view the malicious comment. This can be used to steal their authentication cookies, including the administrator's session; to redirect visitors to exploits, or to inject search engine optimization (SEO) spam.

"The vulnerability can be easily exploited via wp-comments and we recommend everyone to update asap, if you have not done so yet," said Sucuri researcher Marc-Alexandre Montpas in a blog post.

Sites that don't have the Shortcode Embeds module activated are not affected, but this module provides popular functionality so many websites are likely to have it enabled.

The Jetpack developers have worked with the WordPress security team to push updates to all affected versions through the WordPress core auto-update system. Jetpack versions 4.0.3 or newer contain the fix.

In case users don't want to upgrade to the latest version, the Jetpack developers have also released point releases for all twenty-one vulnerable branches of the Jetpack codebase: 2.0.7, 2.1.5, 2.2.8, 2.3.8, 2.4.5, 2.5.3, 2.6.4, 2.7.3, 2.8.3, 2.9.4, 3.0.4, 3.1.3, 3.2.3, 3.3.4, 3.4.4, 3.5.4, 3.6.2, 3.7.3, 3.8.3, 3.9.7, and 4.0.3.
A recent test of pre-installed updater software on 10 laptops showed that every single one had security problems.

"We went and bought about 10 laptops," said Darren Kemp, security researcher at Duo Security. "And every single vendor had their own piece of software to perform software updates, including the Microsoft Signature Editions, and they were all pretty terrible."

For example, some laptop manufacturers weren't using encryption in their updaters.

"We found exploitable vulnerabilities in every vendor," he said.

We found exploitable vulnerabilities in every vendor.

Darren Kemp, security researcher at Duo Security

There was one updater that was pretty secure, he added, on a Lenovo laptop. But that same laptop also had a second updater installed, which had no security features whatsoever.

The Dell laptop had a high-risk vulnerability related to certificates. Asus and Lenovo each had a high-risk vulnerability that could have resulted in arbitrate code execution, while Hewlett Packard and Acer each had two.

"The nature and the type of vulnerabilities is that they are easy to find and easy to exploit, in most cases," Kemp said. "It doesn't require a lot of technical wizardry to find and exploit these vulnerabilities. They're very easy to target."

Laptop manufacturers build their own, proprietary updaters to update the software that they install on the machines, such as their proprietary management and support tools.

"Right now, the Microsoft updater is used to update only Microsoft software and approved drivers," Kemp said, forcing manufacturers to build their own.

However, the main function of the proprietary updaters is to update all the bloatware that they pre-install on their machines -- bloatware that itself has been linked to many security vulnerabilities.

"It seemed with some of these vendors, that even they had difficulty tracking their systems and who had what where," Kemp said.

Enterprises can build their own clean images, that they know and trust, for the laptops they issue to employees, he said.

Laptops running Microsoft "Signature Edition" systems are intended to be free of third-party bloatware. However, proprietary software updaters and support packages are often still present on the machines.

Companies can also move to thin clients such as the Chromebook, that run a stripped-down operating system and a browser.

"It is absolutely a solution to that problem because of the hardening features and ease of management," said Kemp.

The researchers tested laptops running Windows 8.1 or Windows 10, in both out-of-box configurations and after pending updates were applied. The 10 laptops were the Lenovo Flex 3, the HP Envy, the Microsoft Signature Edition of the HP Stream x360, the UK version of the Lenovo G50-80, the UK version of the Acer Aspire F15, the Canada version of the Dell Inspiron 14, the Microsoft Signature Edition of the Dell Inspiron 15-5548, the Asus TP200s and the Microsoft Signature Edition of the Asus TP200s.

Duo Labs recommended that vendors harden their updaters through consistent use of TLS, implement manifest signing, and perform proper validation of Authenticode signatures.
GREENWICH  The U.S. Postal Service is rolling out new technology to protect letter carriers from dog bites.

The new program uses mobile scanners, which postal workers carry for package deliveries, to indicate if a postal customer has a dog. And when customers visit the USPS website to schedule a package pickup at their home, the form asks if a dog lives there with them.

Nationally, there was a 13 percent increase in dog bites to letter carriers from 2014 to 2015, with 6,549 carriers attacked last year.

The number of attacks is growing because there are more dogs  70 million  than ever in American homes, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association. The concentration is highest in suburban locations like Greenwich.

Everyone has a dog now. And were going to the door now more than ever, said interim Greenwich Postmaster Maria Kresmery.

The new technology will let letter letter carriers know which properties have dogs, and note other potential hazards like loose steps or broken pavement.

Carriers are also getting additional training and education, including tips on self-defense and body language.

This is important, Kresmery noted, Dog bites are pretty scary.

The USPS Washington headquarters released the data to promote National Dog Bite Prevention Week, May 15-21.

Attacks have little to do with breed or size or even temperament, according to the veterinary group. They have to do with interactions. A stranger entering a yard or porch sparks a dogs protective instincts. If the stranger then extends a package, a dog may see the motion as threatening to its owner.

Bottom line: Any dog can bite.

Upswing in assaults

The Postal Service has data showing the number of attacks reported last year by 4,018 municipalities nationwide. Houston had the most attacks, 77, followed by San Diego and Cleveland, each with 58, and Chicago and Dallas, each with 57.

Greenwich has experienced some close calls in recent years with dogs behaving aggressively with letter carriers, Kresmery said.

Stamford Postmaster Jeff Salamon said training was a valuable way to prevent dog bites. Last year was an improvement from 2014, when there were three attacks. There have been none so far this year, Salamon said.

So our plans are working, he said.

The Postal Service asks homeowners to do two things:

Secure your dog in another room before opening the door to a carrier. Dogs sometimes break through screens and even glass to defend the home.

Teach children not to receive mail from a carrier in front of a dog.

The other thing to know is that if a carrier feels threatened by your dog, your mail or packages may not be delivered and you may be asked to pick up your things at the post office. If your dog is loose and acting threatening, your next door neighbors mail and packages will not be delivered either.

For all their risk taking, letter carriers are still not the most frequent victims of dog attacks.

Who gets hurt

There are 4.5 million Americans bitten each year, with about one in five requiring medical attention, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Half of the victims are children, who are more likely to be severely injured. Children most often are attacked by dogs they know.

The second most-attacked group is senior citizens, followed by letter carriers.

National statistics show more American households  some 43 million  have dogs than have children under 18. Most dogs have no formal training and, because their owners are often at work all day, they spend a good amount of time with little to do, creating boredom and stress.

The veterinary association warns that a wagging tail does not always mean a dog is happy. It may signal nervousness. Dont pet a dog without asking the owners permission, the group advises. Dont pet a dog through a fence, or one that is off leash, or one that seems to want to be alone. Avoid reaching for a dog that is eating, sleeping or playing with a toy.

Dont assume a dog that was friendly in the past will be so again, or that one acting friendly with someone else will be so with you. Even if a dog approaches you, avoid prolonged eye contact, quick movements and high-pitched or loud sounds.

Staff writer Robert Marchant contributed to this report.

angela.carella@scni.com; 203-964-2296;
STRATFORD  Michael Singh has become something of a local Don Quixote. He has unsuccessfully sought the seat of just about every political figure in Stratford over the years, and now he is pointing his lance in the direction of Joe Gresko.

Gresko, a Democrat, is the newly minted legislator who represents Stratfords 121st House district, elected just four months ago to fill the unexpired term of the late Terry Backer.

Singh took out papers at Town Hall on Tuesday to wage a primary battle against Gresko.

Officials said if Singh collects the necessary 271 signatures, he would face off against Gresko in an Aug. 9 primary. If Singh wins, he will appear on the ballot in November as the Democratic candidate for the 121st House seat.

I guess it must be my turn, Gresko said when he was contacted by telephone. He has staged primaries against Councilman Wali Kadeem, (former) Councilwoman Stephanie Philips; he has attempted to stage a primary against Terry Backer and (former Town Councilman) Jason Santi as well.

Singh has tried to unseat others as well over the years. Attempts to contact him by email and telephone Tuesday were unsuccessful.

Singh last held office in 2002, when he served District 2 on the Town Council. At that time, he was the councils majority leader.

Singh, 50, who came to the U.S. with his family from his native Jamaica at age 2, resigned from the council after it was discovered he was not a United States citizen. He took the citizenship oath in 2005 and was aided in the effort by a former state representative, the late George Doc Gunther.

The year 2002 was a topsy-turvy one for the council. That was the year that Democrat Robert David of District 10 resigned, too, after he purchased a new home out of his district.

We had to move, he said. Our family was getting bigger.

Singh has made attempts now and then to re-enter the political arena. In 2007, he lost a primary challenge to Emma Brooks, who had been nominated by the Democratic Town Committee to run for the District 4 seat on the Town Council, representing the South End.

Singh has tried to qualify for the ballot as a petition candidate for mayor, council and state senator. Perhaps his most audacious challenge effort came when he attempted to knock then-Democratic Mayor James Miron off the ballot for the 2009 election, one that was handily won by Mayor John Harkins, a Republican.

jburgeson@ctpost.com
New startups should fully understand that running out of money is one of the primary reasons that businesses fold shortly after a launch. This scenario is a proven statistic, but startups can avoid joining the ranks of failed businesses by being smart about how they spend their startup capital.

Related: 3 Rules About Cash Flow That First-Time Business Owners Need to Know

And that's crucial: Trying to run a business without carefully managing cash flow is like trying to paddle upstream without an oar: youre not likely to make it to your destination. Even if you do, youll be so exhausted you wont have the strength to go on.

So, instead, take steps to ensure your business will be healthier. Make sure you're rowing in the direction of profit by following these 10 tips on how to manage your startups money.

1. Know when youll break even.

Knowing the point at which youll break even wont necessarily impact your cash flow, but it will give you goals to strive for and a ready-made target for forecasting where your cash should go in order to reach that goal.

If you focus on that goal, and the milestones you have to hit to reach the break-even point, youll be smarter about how you spend your startup capital along the way, and will budget accordingly.

As Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos, says, Chase the vision, not the money. The money will end up following you.

2. Keep your eye on cash-flow management.

You need to avoid focusing too heavily on profit. While that may sound like a contradiction to my first point, its far from it. You look at your profit and break-even point in order to set benchmarks -- but you still need to maintain focus on cash-flow and spending. That doesnt change just because you cross over into profitability.

Every month isnt enough, says Derek Flanzraich of Greatist. Nearly every week Im checking both my personal and business finances.

Related: Why Your Business Needs Cash-Flow Yoga

3. Always maintain a cash reserve.

Every startup should expect shortfalls. They happen to everyone, even with the best plans in place. But your survival likely will depend on how you traverse those shortfalls. Having cash reserves for those lean times lessens the blow, the stress and the distractions, and allows you to stay focused on growing your business.

4. Manage funds better.

Unless you absolutely have to (which is rare), you shouldnt handle the money for your business. That includes tracking it and handling your accounting. Hire an accountant or CFO to tackle this task for you. If you cant bring on the extra help, designate a trusted employee to be a cash-flow monitor.

You can simplify this process by using a service and software platform like InDinero.com, which provides accounting software to make cash management easier. The service also provides access to accountants, CPAs and tax specialists who will work diligently to help your company grow. Having access to tax specialists is especially important to your cash flow, since theyll make sure you stay on track with deadline dates for filing your business tax returns, to avoid penalties and interest.

5. Collect receivables immediately.

Try to make any invoices due immediately and limit the use of net terms longer than 15 days. If you can do so, delegate the task of keeping an eye on receivables and customer follow-up to get money in as quickly as possible.

6. Offer discounts to collect payments earlier.

If you dont want to wait for normal net terms to pay out, then offer your customers a discount if they pay early. If employees are dealing with collections, then make sure you have guidelines that state their eligibility for discounts; and then enforce those standards strictly.

7. Extend payables where you can.

While you want to bring payments in as quickly as possible, work with your suppliers and vendors to get the best deal you can and extend payables to net 60 or more, if possible.

8. Spend only on essentials.

Part of your forecasting model should give you a strong view of the necessary expenses that are coming down the pipe. Outside of the most essential purchases, you want to minimize spending and eliminate costs that arent essential to your operation until youre profitable.

9. Be smart about hiring.

I often see advice in this area that says something like, Dont hire until you absolutely need to. Thats fair advice to a point, but Im more apt to recommend smart hiring. If you can recruit top talent, a highly skilled worker is likely to be able to tackle the work of two or more mediocre employees.

Youll probably spend a little more in salary or benefits to get that top talent, but that amount is still bound to be less than youd spend on multiple employees covering the same task who make more frequent mistakes.

Another outcome is that they may quit on you, forcing you to start over. According to the University of California-Berkeleys Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, it costs an average $4,000 to hire an employee. So, be smart about whom you recruit if you must hire someone.

The secret to successful hiring is this," says Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce. "Look for the people who want to change the world,

10. Make the best use of technology.

Always back up your files and cash-flow spreadsheets, to secure cloud storage. Not only will this keep your data secure from local file corruption or data loss/theft, but it will also make it easier for you to gain access from anywhere you have an Internet connection.

Related: The Top 4 Cash Flow Forecasting Mistakes

This is another situation where accounting software can come in handy.

Related:



Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
Netflix did it. So did Facebook. And as state and local laws are updated, more companies will follow. In short: It looks like generous paid parental leave policies are here to stay. After all, fully 21 percent of large U.S. corporations offered paid maternity leave in 2015, up from 12 percent in 2014, according to a 2015 report published by the Society for Human Resources.

Related: 10 U.S. Companies With Radically Awesome Parental Leave Policies

So, the trend seems to be set: Employers are moving toward offering more and more paid parental leave, but the unanswered question here is, how much is the right amount? Should employers extend their policies to six weeks? Four months? Unlimited?

The answer isnt universal. The right amount of leave will vary from company to company, depending on the amount of employees, the workload, the working culture and more. How do employers know whats right for them?

Heres where to start:

1. Evaluate the law.

Finding the right amount of parental leave to offer isnt entirely up to the employer. The law has a say, too. But regulations vary from state to state and even city to city -- and theyre changing.

In April, San Francisco became the first U.S. city to require six weeks of fully paid leave for new parents. In addition, the state of California increased the amount employees earn while on paid family leave. New York State also passed a new family leave policy requiring 12 weeks of paid leave to care for an infant or other family member, or to relieve pressure when a family member is called into military service.

That said, the laws are quickly changing and are confusing: Employers can easily slip into noncompliance because they arent aware of the regulations. In fact, 21 percent of those surveyed in the 2014 National Study of Employers said they were required to comply with the Family and Medical Leave Act but did not actually offer 12 weeks of unpaid or paid leave for at least one type of covered leave.

So, where to start? When reevaluating your company's parental leave policies and deciding what is best for your organization and employees, start by knowing the minimum requirements.

Look at local, state and federal laws to ensure that you're compliant and will avoid penalties and complaints from employees.

2. Estimate the cost.

Employees want more leave time, and they want a relationship between their work and personal lives. As it is, 1,000 full-time employees in the United States and Canada surveyed by Virgin Pulse in 2015 rated work-life balance as the number one way companies can show employees they care; 40 percent said they wished their employers cared more about this balance.

Still, its not that simple. There are costs to consider. Employee salaries are already budgeted for, but if these employees are on parental leave, and thus not doing their jobs, other costs loom -- to account for lost productivity, compensation for other workers for overtime, the hiring of temporary workers to replace those on leave and more.

Related: Did Mark Zuckerberg Really Take 'Paternity Leave?'

To get a sense of these costs, look at the length and frequency of parental leaves employees have taken in the past. Can your business afford to extend the policy? Can it afford not to?

In a 2013 study of Californias family leave law, women were much more likely to still be working nine to 12 months after giving birth when they've been offered paid leave -- instead of having quit while they were pregnant. These results suggest that paid leave policies can help to retain talent.

Weigh the costs of paid leave policies, then, with the potential costs of losing an employee. Find a middle ground that your business can afford, and one that employees will be happy with.

3. Gauge workloads.

Evaluating the needs of employees on parental leave is a good place to start, but what about the employees who remain in the office? How long can they realistically pick up the slack?

When considering new paid parental leave policies, look at how responsibilities will shift when an employee leaves. Will they be split among the team? Will a temporary worker need to be hired? Look at current workloads and determine how much extra work employees will be able to handle, and for how long.

To help ease the burden of extended parental leave policies for employees in the office, consider adding resources and tools that make work easier. For example, recognition platforms like Workplayce can help motivate employees taking on extra responsibilities and keep their spirits high while team members are on leave.

The platform assists teamwork, with improved communication, instant peer feedback and contests that encourage performance. That way, even if an essential employee is on leave, team members can still function at their best.

Weigh the interests of those who take leaves, and those still in the office. Finding a balance is critical to keeping all employees happy and healthy.

4. Analyze workforce needs.

Parental leave policies need to be realistic, but they also need to be the right fit for employees. What do employees want? Does the policy make sense for their lifestyles?

Although thinking about employee needs sounds simple, its a task that's often overlooked. In a survey of more than 800 full-time U.S. employees conducted by Globoforce in November of last year, 47 percent of respondents said they didn't think their company leaders cared about or were actively trying to create a "human" workplace.

Related: Why Entrepreneurs Should Support Nationalized Parental Leave

Don't let this be the story at your company. Create a workplace that values employees and gives them the time they need. That way, everyone wins. Employees will happy, and employers will have loyal and productive team members.

Related:

How to Calculate the Right Parental Leave Policy

Tech Companies Should Pave the Way to Better Parental Leave Policies

San Francisco Becomes First U.S. City to Mandate Paid Parental Leave



Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
This article originally published on April 9, 2015.

Giving yourself permission to walk away from your company can be difficult. But if you cant do it for yourself, do it for your staff: When you take vacation time, youre setting a good example.

The problem is that we dont see executives take time off. The indirect message [to employees] is that they shouldnt take time off either, says Sara Canaday, an Austin-based leadership consultant and author of YouAccording to Them: Uncovering the Blind Spots That Impact Your Reputation and Your Career.

One employee of a small company (who asked not to be named) describes working for a boss who didnt like to travel and never took more than a long weekend off. She really thought that it was outrageous for us to want a weekor more, God forbid!at a go, she says.

Demonstrating to your staff that there is life outside of work can be a major morale booster that adds significant value to your company. So book that getawaybut before you do, give a thought to the employees who will be holding down the fort while youre gone, and who may not have the resources for the kinds of escapes youre able to afford. What kind of message are you giving them as you walk out the door?

A boss whos taking that dream vacation may be thinking its something that others should aspire to, Canaday says. But where the buck stops is that you dont want to flaunt it. People dont need to know the details.

If youre generally a thoughtful and respectful leader, your staff is likely to cut you slack if you return to the office bubbling with stories about your perfect holiday. If youre not normally boastful, then people are going to be much more inclined to say, Wow, he or she just really wants to share, rather than think youre rubbing it in their faces, says Melody Wilding, a New York City-based therapist who focuses on workplace issues.

And if you honor the lives employees lead outside the office (for example, by refraining from emailing or phoning them during off hours), they will be equally supportive of your taking time for yourself.

Schedule your time off far enough in advance for your staff to take necessary action to prevent bottlenecks while youre gone. Let them know under what circumstances they should contact you. And when you get back, meet with key members of your team to let them catch you up on where things are, rather than sashaying back in and immediately wresting control back from whoever had it in your absence.

Of course, if you are walking out the door without a thought about how your staff manages without you, you might be wise

to use this time for some serious soul searching.

Youve checked out emotionally and mentally, Wilding says, and its time to reevaluate what youre doing, at the very least.

More wheels up

Lower oil prices should help grease the wheels of U.S. business travel this year. According to a report from the Global Business Travel Association, air travel prices are expected to decline 0.9 percent in 2015a nice change from the 4 percent increase projected at the end of 2014.

The boost in discretionary income from the decline in gas prices should help drive total spending on U.S. business travel in 2015 up 6.2 percent to a record $310.2 billiona positive domestic note in the midst of a weak economic outlook for Europe and Asia.

Related:

How to Vacation Like a Boss

Why You Really Need to Unplug While on Vacation (Infographic)

Vital Travel and Health Tips for the Suitcase Entrepreneur



Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
WESTPORT  An alert liquor store clerk help lead police to the arrest of four for using phony credit cards.

On Friday at 7:20 p.m., Westport Police Department received a report from Castle Wine & Spirits that four individuals were purchasing merchandise with what were believed to be fraudulent credit cards.

According to police, when confronted by store personnel, these individuals fled in a red Mazda bearing Maryland license plates.

The vehicle was spotted traveling westbound on Post Road East in the area of the Sherwood Island Connector shortly after the report was broadcast. The car was pulled over by patrol units after making a left turn onto the Sherwood Island Connector. All four suspects were in the vehicle and were positively identified as the ones who were at Castle Wine & Spirits a short time earlier. They were found to be in possession of a number of fraudulent credit cards as wells as several bottles of liquor.

Police arrested Monty Payne, 35, of Queens, NY was charged with: Larceny in the 6th Degree, Conspiracy to Commit Larceny in the 6th Degree, two counts of Forgery in the 3rd Degree, Forgery in the 2nd Degree, 22 counts of Unlawful Completion or Reproduction of a Credit Card, Criminal Impersonation, Identity Theft in the 3rd Degree, and Illegal Use of a Credit Card. Payne is being held on a $100,000 bond. Ariana Burton, 23, of Hammond, Louisiana was charged with: Larceny in the 6th Degree, Conspiracy to Commit Larceny in the 6th Degree, 22 counts of Unlawful Completion or Reproduction of a Credit Card, and Illegal Use of a Credit Card. Burton is being held on a $25,000 bond. Tamara Magee, 21, of Ponchatoula, Louisiana was charged with: Larceny in the 6th Degree, Conspiracy to Commit Larceny in the 6th Degree, 22 counts of Unlawful Completion or Reproduction of a Credit Card, Illegal Use of a Credit Card, Identity Theft in the 3rd Degree, Forgery in the 2nd Degree, and Criminal Impersonation. Magee is being held on a $25,000 bond.Kathyling Pena, 35, of Brooklyn, NY was charged with: Larceny in the 6th Degree, Conspiracy to Commit Larceny in the 6th Degree, 22 counts of Unlawful Completion or Reproduction of a Credit Card, and Illegal Use of a Credit Card. Ms. Pena is being held on a $25,000 bond.
ANSONIA  Theres the flagpole flying the U.S., West Point and U.S. Navy flags. And a statue outside the small picket fence, showing a soldier kneeling next to his fallen comrade.

And theres the sign in front with the words: Duty, Honor, Country.
Pa. is about to vote. Here's what to know about voting and ballot access in 2022
New hearing same result: Death sentence for murder at Lake prison

Allen Cox's case has been making its way through the court system for years. Now he is heading back to death row.
The power suit has moved out of the office and onto the street in a variety of colours with the celebrity support of Julia Roberts and Cate Blanchett.

by Damien Woolnough
After 18 Albanians were picked up off the Kent coast trying to enter Britain in a rubber dinghy, the Channel has been dubbed the New Mediterranean. How long before we are waking up to this . . ?

Here is the Shipping Forecast, issued by the Met Office, on behalf of Her Majestys Maritime and Coastguard Agency, at 00.15 hours Greenwich Mean Time on Tuesday 31st May, 2016.

There are warnings of Albanians in the English Channel. The general synopsis at one-eight-four-seven: 14 miles south of Folkestone, high probability of landings, drifting slowly West and filling, expected Dymchurch, by 06.00.

Some 18 Albanians were picked up off the Kent coast trying to enter Britain in a rubber dinghy, leading the Channel to be dubbed the 'New Mediterranean'

Viking: Low, 250 miles north-east, flotilla of Somalis spotted leaving Hamburg, moving steadily and deepening in the direction of Aberdeen, due Sunday.

Forties, Dogger: High chance of Iraqis, pretending to be Syrians, seen clinging to Lilos near North Sea oil rig, estimated time of arrival, somewhere between Bridlington and St Andrews, approximately 19.30 hours Saturday, immediately after Strictly Come Dancing.

Humber: Six to gale eight, occasionally severe to gale nine. Shipping advised to be on alert for Del Boys Uncle Albert bearing migrants to Hull and back in decommissioned fishing vessel.

Cromarty, Forth, Burney: Heavy rain, forming in West of Scotland, turning to drivel later. Strong winds, veering six to seven, bringing hot air balloon full of alleged refugees to Holyrood. Watch out for mild cant, becoming extreme hypocrisy later. Disturbances expected outside Clansman, Craiglang, 21.30 hours.

Fisher, German Bight, Tyne: Convoy of Afghans on makeshift rafts built out of wooden pallets, located West, moving rapidly towards Cullercoats and Whitley Bay, believed to be in Dire Straits by low tide, expected Spanish City 0450 hours. Rain, then showers, moderate to good.

Fair Isle: Strong possibility of Ukranians veering Westerly, five to eight, bearing South, in upturned Lada four-door saloon, made seaworthy by sealing door-frames with chewing gum, arriving off the coast of Scarborough sometime during the Alan Ayckbourn festival.

THE PRINCE OF WAILS Those of us who warn about the creeping Islamification of Britain are routinely accused of being alarmist. So what are we to make of this photograph of Prince William, second in line to the throne, apparently praying to Mecca before taking to the polo field in Windsor at the weekend? Has he converted to Islam already? And how long before were all singing Allah Save The Queen?

Humber, Thames: Heavy influx of Palestinians, pretending to be Kurds, moving through Mediterranean heading North West, due to arrive Kingston upon Hull Thursday 07.50 hours, moderate to severe chance of asylum claims.

Yarmouth Harbour: Fine and pleasant day. Cabin boy on a sailing lugger reports sighting previously believed to be shoal of herring now confirmed as hundreds of illegal immigrants wearing rubber rings, roped together and being towed by jet-ski, last seen drifting North by North East in close proximity to offshore windfarm. High to severe chance of drowning, somewhere between Dover and the Faroe Islands.

Walmington-on-Sea: Syrian migrant, pretending to be an Iraqi, arriving by paraglider from Calais, south-west six, nine nine eight, falling quickly, apprehended on promenade by local volunteer defence force and escorted to church hall. Wind light, sea moderate to rough, were all doomed. Only three patrol boats to cover 7,700 miles of coastline. Dont panic!

THERESA MAY'S SPEECH Thick-as-Bisto Theresa May made a speech at the beginning of the Brexit campaign in which she laid out the case for leaving the EU - but then for cynical reasons of personal advancement declared that she was going to vote Remain. I am reliably informed that at a recent meeting of her Maidenhead constituency association, there was only one person out of 200 in favour of staying. And that was May herself. Yet still she fancies herself as leadership material, in the Margaret Thatcher mould. Forget it, Theresa. My moneys on Priti Flamingo.

Trafalgar: Easterly, four or five, drizzle turning to showers, sporadic, occasionally heavy. Speedboat containing assorted economic migrants from North Africa located heading towards Thames Estuary at 25 knots, one-thousand-and-seven, rising rapidly, expected docking Newham late Thursday, 21.50 hours. Accommodation being arranged by East London Central Mosque and Pixie Balls-Cooper.

Wight, Portland: Choppy conditions, medium to good, becoming moderate to rip-roaring bonkers after a few pink vodkas. Forecast for Cowes Week: several captains detained by River Filth attempting to smuggle illegal immigrants ashore, pretending they were crew.

Channel light vessel automatic: 11- to-four, chances excellent, no coastguard for 200 miles in any direction, seas calm, ideal for people-smuggling. Suggest small marinas on South Coast, little to no policing expected, 12 grand per head.

Plymouth: Three-to-one favourite, seven-to-one the field, extreme likelihood of jihadists returning from Islamic State, open water from St Malo and Roscoff. Chance of detection slight, possibility of conviction zero to three parts of Rockall.

Fastnet, Sole: Intermittent squalls, choppy. Squadron of pedalos believed to be carrying asylum seekers from Kosovo, departed Marseille Wednesday, sighted South West by South, visibility good, continuous progress into British costal waters, arrival Tiger Bay, Cardiff, estimated 14.36 hours Saturday. Legal Aid aware.

Lundy: 25 or six to four, force ten from Navarone. Klingons on the starboard bow. Giant inflatable banana carrying three dozen migrants being towed at high speed towards Bristol Channel. Royal Navy aircraft carrier dispatched, but unable to intercept due to complete lack of aircraft.
How much more evidence does the Government need that Britains border security is a shambles before deciding to do something about it?

There have been no fewer than four official warnings since 2010 that small ports and airports around the country are an open door to illegal migrants, terrorists and criminals.

While officials have been concentrating on stopping migrants coming through Calais on lorries, ferries and trains, countless minor harbours, airfields and marinas have been virtually unpoliced.

There have been no fewer than four official warnings since 2010 that small ports and airports around the country are an open door to illegal migrants, terrorists and criminals (stock image of migrants)

This year alone, the Chief Immigration Inspector David Bolt said checks at these points were rare, risk assessment was poor and there was no systematic collection of information.

The police had earlier expressed real anxiety about the terror threat and Lord Carlile  former independent reviewer of terror legislation  spoke of a crack in national security.

Yet with breathtaking complacency, the Home Office insisted the risk was not currently assessed as being significant.

How ridiculous that assessment has been made to look in the last week, with boatloads of migrants rescued off the Kent and Sussex coast and Calaiss chief coastguard saying the Channel was fast becoming the new Mediterranean.

Meanwhile, it was revealed that the Border Force has just three boats to patrol 7,700 miles of coastline. Amid the furore, the Navy has now offered to deploy a warship in the Channel, though quite how that would help remains unclear. It smacks of gesture politics.

As the Mail reported yesterday, immigrants have been arrested recently at several small coastal towns from East Anglia to Devon. Who knows how many more sneaked in undetected and what their motives were for coming here?

Its the first responsibility of any government to ensure the safety of its people, which includes careful monitoring of who comes in and out of the country. As the referendum campaign has shown, migration is voters number one concern.

A cavalier approach to border control will do nothing to allay their fears.

A very odd couple

What a difference a few weeks makes in the fickle world of politics.

Only last month, the Prime Minister stood up in the Commons and accused Sadiq Khan  then Labours candidate for London mayor  of consorting with Islamic extremists. Mr Khan snapped that Mr Cameron was part of a nasty, dog-whistling campaign against him.

Yet miraculously the two men have now become best friends, sharing a platform yesterday to launch a five-point guarantee card supposedly explaining what wed gain by remaining in the EU.

Only last month, the Prime Minister stood up in the Commons and accused Sadiq Khan  then Labours candidate for London mayor  of consorting with Islamic extremists

The card is about as convincing and genuine as their new-found friendship.

It claims Britain would be safer and more stable in the EU, we would have full access to the free market, workers rights would be protected and we would be exempted from ever-closer union.

What it doesnt say, of course, is that full access to the free market also means accepting unlimited free movement of EU citizens, making a mockery of any attempt to control immigration.

No mention either that Europe remains in turmoil over the migrant crisis and the eurozone is still on the brink of recession, so the real danger to safety and stability may be staying in rather than leaving.

The so-called exemption from ever-closer union is so vague as to be meaningless and the idea that we need Brussels to tell us how to protect workers rights is, frankly, an insult to the intelligence.
The American comedian Henny Youngman once joked: When I read about the evils of drink, I gave up reading.

A dose of this kind of irreverent scepticism is needed when considering the Governments latest official guidelines on safe drinking, which appear to be based more on killjoy puritanism than hard science.

The panel of experts that produced the guidelines in January recommended the safe drinking limits for men should be cut to the existing level for women of just 14 units per week (the equivalent of only seven pints of beer)  a draconian halving of the previous guidelines, which had stood for 20 years.

The panel of experts that produced the guidelines in January recommended the safe drinking limits for men should be cut to the existing level for women of just 14 units per week

The panels proposal was eagerly taken up by Chief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies, an expert in blood disorders, but not alcohol. That probably explains why she appeared not to question the panels views that cancer lurks in every drink, and there is no safe level of alcohol intake.

Temperance

The new guidelines provoked an outcry, for by recommending that men and women should restrain themselves to 14 units, they not only failed to recognise the alcohol-processing differences between the sexes, but also blithely ignored a wealth of evidence pointing to the benefits of moderate alcohol consumption.

The extreme nature of both the new advice and Dame Sallys grim language provoked concerns that the panel had been motivated by a narrow, censorious political agenda rather than a genuine determination to improve public health.

Now, those suspicions have been dramatically confirmed by revelations about the disproportionate influence wielded on the panel by the anti-alcohol lobby.

According to news reports yesterday, four of the key figures involved in producing the guidelines were members of the Institute of Alcohol Studies (IAS), a pressure group that has its roots in the Temperance movement, being partly funded by Alliance House Foundation, an organisation that advocates total abstinence from drinking.

Among IAS supporters drawing up the new guidelines was Professor Petra Meier of Sheffield University, the de facto academic headquarters of Britains anti-alcohol lobbyists. Another leading figure on the advisory panel was Sir Ian Gilmore, chairman of the Alcohol Health Alliance.

As a liver specialist, Gilmore does have professional knowledge of alcohol and health; however, the fact he only sees the casualties of alcohol in his work, and not its beneficiaries, has to my mind given him serious tunnel vision about alcohols harms.

The new guidelines provoked an outcry

In the past 15 years he appears to have made it his lifes work to demonise alcohol by exaggerating its health dangers and condemning anyone who manufactures it.

I say this as a science writer and journalist who has intensely researched the effects of alcohol on health and rigorously combed through thousands of scientific papers  many in prestigious medical journals  while writing on the subject.

But I am not the only one to have made this observation. Speaking of the panels workings, one scientist who wanted to remain anonymous said there has been a drive by temperance activists to demonise alcohol in the same way as cigarettes.

Januarys new weekly-unit guidelines were a triumphant step on the path to the ultimate goal: to suppress alcohol usage by employing the same legal means as with tobacco, such as health warnings on bottles.

I kid you not; Ive attended two parliamentary committee meetings in the past month where this Prohibitionist end-game was made abundantly clear.

But comparing tobacco and alcohol is nonsense. It just shows how warped their thinking is.

Tobacco is a genuinely dangerous substance with no health benefits whatsoever beyond the transient ability to relax its users.

Booze is totally different. It is a rather strange paradox: at very high intakes, alcohol can be harmful like tobacco, but at lower levels  even quite substantial intakes  its dangers plummet.

For example, female heavy smokers have a 25 times increased risk of lung cancer, but heavy women drinkers have hardly more than a doubling in risk of breast cancer. That is about the same as mens extra risk of bladder cancer from drinking tap water as opposed to bottled water.

Yes, the water from your tap is carcinogenic because of chlorine residues it contains. And when have you ever heard Dame Sally warning us off our kitchen taps? She doesnt because the benefits of drinking clean chlorinated water outweigh the cancer risks.

The same principle is true with alcohol. At moderate intakes, it has been found to have beneficial effects  often on a par with pharmaceutical drugs, according to many studies.

I am not advocating that everyone should go out and get sloshed, for heavy alcohol use is clearly dangerous. But Dame Sally was indulging the worst kind of nannyish finger-wagging when she told MPs recently she wanted women to ask themselves, each time they reached for a glass of wine, if they wanted to increase their risk of cancer.

Its true  drinkers do run some some small extra risks of cancer, but these are vastly outweighed by alcohols benefits in preventing todays three major health threats: heart disease, diabetes and dementia.

That explains why drinkers on average live longer than non-drinkers  even non-drinkers with healthy lifestyles.

Benefits

But any suggestion that alcohol might have net health benefits would be a disaster for the lets-treat-alcohol-just-like-tobacco brigade. Which is why they have to suppress any good news about booze. Hence Dame Sallys recent declaration that alcohols health benefits are an old wives tale.

At very high intakes, alcohol can be harmful like tobacco

A substantial number of medics had always loathed the previous, far more flexible guidelines, formulated in 1995 by a group of impartial civil servants. These officials had looked calmly at medical studies and rightly concluded that a draconian stance would be absurd, given the well-documented evidence for the advantages of drinking, which they alluded to in their Sensible Drinking Guidelines.

But this objective, evidence-based approach incensed drink-obsessives in the medical establishment who branded the guidelines a boozers charter, falsely saying Whitehall was in the pockets of the drinks industry.

Over the subsequent two decades, while the scientific evidence for alcohols health benefits has become more firmly established, the anti-alcohol campaigners have kept quiet about this research, choosing only to publicise the very few medical studies that deny any benefit. (Incidentally, many of these studies have been heavily criticised by the international community of alcohol experts.)

Curiously enough, doctors havent always been like this. Astonishingly, NHS hospitals once had booze in their drugs trolleys  they carried sherry, wine and Guinness for patients, because doctors recognised that alcohol had genuine healing powers.

Ambiguous

Even in Prohibitionist U.S. in the Twenties, doctors were allowed to prescribe alcohol as a medicine.

Today, other European countries, less in the grip of dogmatism than Britain, have a much less repressive outlook. In Spain, the guidelines allow for the consumption of 35 units a week, yet the country has a far higher level of life expectancy than Britain.

On average, a man drinking half a bottle of wine an evening will live seven more years than an abstainer. The ideal intake for women is roughly half that, because they cant process alcohol as efficiently as men.

And the downsides of alcohol consumption have been exaggerated. Drink-related liver deaths are comparatively rare, accounting for just 6.7 of the 200,000 who die every year in the South-East of England, a similar death rate to that for playing sport.

Nor, contrary to Dame Sallys scare-mongering, is there much evidence of a powerful connection between cancer and alcohol. U.S. alcohol expert Dr Samir Zakhari described the evidence for a link between breast cancer and drink as ambiguous and confusing.

On the other hand, several studies have shown that alcohol can actually reduce the risks of several cancers, such as those of the kidney, thyroid and blood.

So the idea alcohol is a carcinogen cannot be correct  it prevents cancer as well as causes it.

Perhaps Dame Sally and her friends should consider this conumdrum . . . over a bottle of health-giving plonk.
Split down the middle: Former Teletubbies Laa-Laa and Dipsy are in the Leave camp while Po and Tinky Winky firmly with Remain

DAY 1: A leading Brexit campaigner quotes figures showing that sales of socks will tail off if Britain remains in the EU, spelling disaster for British sock manufacturers.

Horrifying though it is to ordinary Britons, sandals worn without any socks whatsoever are the norm all over Europe, says John Redwood MP in a major speech at Umbrage village hall. And draconian EU legislation to ban the wearing of socks with sandals will bring misery to countless millions.

DAY 2: Chancellor George Osborne hits back at Redwoods warning of Sockageddon by releasing Treasury figures showing that sales of socks will soar after a new EU ruling.

Recent European guidelines advise children and senior citizens to wear socks whenever they find their feet growing chilly in the winter. This comes as a real shot in the arm for UK sock exporters, he declares in a major speech to a small but influential group of East Midlands sock-wearers.

Meanwhile, a new poll reveals that the great EU debate is having an unprecedented effect on British families, with up to 64 per cent of all family members either feeling drowsy or nodding off within two and a half minutes of any mention of the words remain or leave.

DAY 3: Former London Mayor Boris Johnson wades into the Great Sock Debate.

Mussolini wore socks, he says as he puffs his way round a Brexit Fancy Dress Fun-Run dressed as a banana, alongside former Chancellor Norman Lamont, who has come as a leprechaun.

DAY 4: At an emergency conference under the banner of Snug as a Bug: A Vision for Socks at the London School of Economics, historian and Labour MP Tristram Hunt counters Boris. He argues that Mussolini wore socks only when he wasnt sleeping, while Winston Churchill led Britain in thick woollen socks 24 hours a day.

On the BBCs Six OClock News, a reporter questions four passers-by outside a supermarket in Drabness, asking their views on the export of kitchen fittings to the Far East, bearing in mind the current EU ruling PX10946, subsection 5b.

I wouldnt like to say, one way or the other, says Daphne, 46.

Nor me, agrees Jeff, 32.

And now its back to you in the studio, says the reporter.

DAY 5: A leading pollster reveals that, after listening to both sides of the argument, 65 per cent of the British people are still unclear about how socks will be affected by a vote to leave or to stay, while the remaining 35 per cent are extremely unclear.

These figures tell us that the great British public has not fallen for the thoroughly disgraceful anti-sock propaganda put out by the Brexit campaign, concludes Remain campaigner Lord Heseltine.

On the contrary, argues leading Brexiteer Chris Grayling, Its a triumph for common sense  and a victory for socks and their wearers.

DAY 6: The Remain camp leaks a photograph of Chris Grayling hypocritically wearing no socks. It is believed to have been taken on an undisclosed beach last summer by a person or persons unknown.

'Sockageddon': Will George Osborne and John Redwood clash after figures show that sales of socks will tail off if Britain remains in the EU

A clearly embarrassed Grayling releases a statement through his lawyer. This is an unwarranted invasion of my privacy. I plan to have a few days off to consider my future. My wife and family are standing by me. I would ask the media to respect our privacy at this difficult time.

In headline news, former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell reveals that she is still undecided as to which way she will vote in the Referendum, while the four former Teletubbies are split down the middle, with Laa-Laa and Dipsy in the Leave camp and Po and Tinky Winky firmly with Remain.

DAY 7: On Radio 4s Any Questions, junior Transport Minister Sue Dreary claims that a Leave vote could mean that anything up to 27 million commuters forced to roller-skate to work, unable to afford any petrol. She further estimates that, as a result, our NHS will no way be able to cope with the consequent 95 per cent rise in broken ankles.

But tough-talking UKIP Shadow Chancellor Ken Sausage is having none of it. Figures prove that every household in the country will be at least two million quid better off once weve ditched Europe, he declares. Rising to three million quid, for households with a conservatory.

Former London Mayor Boris Johnson claims that William Shakespeare would vote Leave, and so would Jane Austen. Theres no reference in any of their works that shows they supported a Common Agricultural Policy, he says. End of Argument.
An unnamed benefactor has bought 100,000-worth of the tickets to the Queen's birthday celebrations

When David Cameron declined to fund the Queens 90th birthday celebrations, HMs eldest grandchild, promotions expert Peter Phillips, 38, spied an opportunity  a June 12 public picnic in the Mall, with tickets costing 150. Now an unnamed benefactor has bought 100,000-worth of the tickets to distribute free and save royal blushes. Some of the Queens favourite charities  to which the majority of tickets had been allocated  indicated that some of their members couldnt afford them. My royal source says: Why 150? Big-name sponsors are covering almost all of the running costs. The BBC fees should cover some gaps and the security is funded by the taxpayer. A breakdown of finances might be interesting. And arent we entitled to know how much Peter Phillipss company is getting?

Sharing a pro-EU platform with Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, David Cameron announces: Hes the son of a bus driver. Im the son of a stockbroker, which isnt quite so romantic! But it is a trifle patronising, isnt it?

Sharing a pro-EU platform with Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, David Cameron announces: Hes the son of a bus driver. Im the son of a stockbroker, which isnt quite so romantic!

Tv sexpot Carol Vorderman, 55, dislikes Chris Evanss new Top Gear show on BBC2, remarking on social media: Sorry, switching off. Ms Vorderman spotted Jeremy Clarkson, 56, meeting a BBC executive in a Mayfair hotel last year after the latter was sacked by the Corporation. Clarkson told her afterwards: They have just offered me my job back and I said no.

The Pope is the latest, globally-recognised figure to be pictured with actor George Clooneys photogenic (and previously unknown) wife, Amal, 38

The Pope is the latest, globally-recognised figure to be pictured with actor George Clooneys photogenic (and previously unknown) wife, Amal, 38. His Holiness is pictured gazing admiringly at her while shaking Clooneys hand. Since marrying Clooney, the likes of Prince Charles, Hillary Clinton and David Cameron, along with Hollywood stars Julia Roberts and Jodie Foster, have queued to bathe in her limelight. Doesnt our nonagenarian monarch deserve an Amal photo opportunity soon?

The PMs latest gimmicky enterprise tsar, pug-like Lord Sugar, 69  who did the same non-job for Gordon Brown  exchanges insults with his regular sparring partner, broadcaster Piers Morgan, 51. Sugar had Tweeted: I have to say Donald Trump put on a really good fight. Quite amazing. Theres a chance he is going to be the President. To which Trump pal, Piers, responds in his customarily civil fashion: You snivelling little worm, Sugar, trying to jump on the Trump Train after abusing him for 10 months. Sugar: Its stating facts, you t****r. I suggest a Sugar/Morgan TV insult-a-thon. After the kiddies 9pm watershed.
Everything from ice cream to burger buns to croissants have gone black

and cafes are created hip new black coloured food

Forget the rainbow craze, food is now going goth.

The latest trend hitting Instagram is all about crossing to the dark side. Foodies are getting on board food died black, with everything from burgers to macaroons being subjected.

Social media is being flooded with snaps of black food, with trend setters eager to get their hands on something dark to post it online.

Going goth: The newest foodie trend is dying food black,with everything from macarons (above) to bread going dark

Alternative: Restaurants and cafes are jumping on the trend, with Melbourne bakery Lune making a squid ink and cumin croissant

Fancy food: One French restaurant makes puffed rice crackers with squid ink as an entree

Hot dog! Many places are now using charcoal or squik ink to make black buns for hot dogs or burgers

Many users are currently going crazy over a new black ice cream being produced at New York based Morgenstern's Finest.

The flavour, called coconut ash, is created using charcoal, coconut flakes, coconut milk and coconut cream. It has been described in taste as similar to a vanilla ice cream.

Dying burger buns black is also big, with many cafes using squid ink to dye the buns black. It's gotten so popular that big chains are doing black buns, including KFC in Australia.

Not that new: Squid ink has been used in pasta (above) for many years, but is now moving into other recipes

Ashy: Ice cream and ice cream cones are another sweet treat going dark. One New York-based ice creamery is making a coconut ash ice cream using charcoal

However using squid ink to dye a food dark and give it slight taste is not new. Squid ink pasta has been common in Italy for quite some time.

It is new for the ink to be used in food other than pasta or rice. One Melbourne cafe has created a squid ink and cumin croissant, breaking down the barriers between sweet and savory.

It's not just squid ink being used either. Black sesame and seaweed can also give food a black appearance

Appetising? It's not just squid ink that is used to make food turn black. Charcoal, black sesame and seaward are also used in recipes

Would you drink that? It's not just food either. A UK drinks company called blk makes 'fulvic enriched mineral water' which is jet black in colour (above)

Yum: Whilst some of the food looks slightly odd, others like black cheesecake ice cream (above) is much more enticing

It goes beyond Brooklyn hipster too. One restaurant in Indonesia called Black Pempek calls themselves the 'pioneer of black charcoal in Indonesia' and has a number of black dishes.

A UK beverage company called blk makes 'fulvic enriched mineral water' which is jet black and comes in a clear plastic bottle.
Jazmina Daniel, also known as Miss Jazmina D on Instagram, has shot to fame for her incredible lip art skills.

The Sydney-based make up artist regularly shares her stunning creations with her 762,000 followers - her work often inspired by popular movies and characters.

Most recently, Jazmina showed off a beautiful Finding Dory themed look with her followers, in a nod to the upcoming movie.

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Finding Dory: Jazmina Daniel, also known as Miss Jazmina D on Instagram , has shot to fame for her incredible lip art skills

Follow the Yellow Brick Road: In a tribute to the Wizard of Oz, Jazmina also recreated a lip look inspired by the main characters and the Yellow Brick Road complete with sparkling red nail polish

Part of your world: She also showed off a glittering The Little Mermaid scene featuring a large moon and Ariel

The base colour was created using different shades of blue before Jazmina painted little orange fish, a sparkling reef and a very accurate Dory on her bottom lip.

In a tribute to the Wizard of Oz, Jazmina also recreated a lip look inspired by the main characters and the Yellow Brick Road complete with sparkling red nail polish.

Jazmina used blue and green shades to create a sky and grass before adding tiny poppies, a sparkling green Oz cityscape and black silhouettes representing the Tinman, the lion, the scarecrow and Dorothy.

Cityscape: The Sydney-based make up artist regularly shares her stunning creations with her 762,000 followers - her work often inspired by popular movies and characters

Impressive: Another popular looks of Jazmina's is her mesmerising holographic lip art

Galaxy lip: Earlier in 2016 Jazmina rocked a 'Night Sky' look after being inspired by a fellow make up artist

Eye popping: Another look included a 'caviar hot pink ombre' look where her top lip was stamped with tiny black lip beads and the bottom lip rocking an eye-popping hot pink colour

Another look included a 'caviar hot pink ombre' look where her top lip was stamped with tiny black lip beads and the bottom lip was painted with an eye-popping hot pink colour.

Jazmina has shared videos of her technique on her new YouTube channel and recently showed how she made her impressive 'rainbow drippy lip art.'

Her psychedelic look was made up of layered sparkling lipsticks and a dripping purple colour at the base.

All eyes on me: Jazmina has shared videos of her technique on her new YouTube channel and recently showed how she made her impressive 'rainbow drippy lip art'

Hair, lips and nails: Jazmina has also been known to match her make up with her hairstyle

Glam in glitter: 'I wasn't going to post this but I really love this glitter it's so pretty so I thought, hey why not!!' She wrote next to a simple yet striking glitter lip

Mermaidesque: Jazmina's creations are all bold, colourful and glittery - many of them simple yet striking

Other popular looks of Jazmina's include mesmerising holographic lip art, a glittering The Little Mermaid scene featuring a large moon and Ariel and 'Marble Print' lips created using pink lipstick and a gold pencil.

'I wasn't going to post this but I really love this glitter it's so pretty so I thought, hey why not!!' She wrote next to a simple yet striking glitter lip created using black lipstick and multicoloured pieces of glitter.

Earlier in 2016 Jazmina rocked a 'Night Sky' look after being inspired by a fellow make up artist.
It was for the 'European Emergency Medical Services' congress

From christenings to conferences, and birthdays to anniversaries, Crown Princess Mary has clocked up an impressive number of diary events this May.

But neither her charitable nature nor her wardrobe were flagging, as she showcased so effortlessly on the last day of the month.

The 44-year-old Australian-born princess attended the opening ceremony of the 'European Emergency Medical Services' congress in Copenhagen as a patron.

She wore a floral Ralph Lauren dress, Chanel quilted bag and a pair of Christian Louboutin stiletto heels for the occasion, where she made the opening speech and walked through stands displaying emergency response devices.

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Stunning turn: Princess Mary attended the Opening Ceremony of the 'European Emergency Medical Services' congress wearing a floral Ralph Lauren dress (pictured), a Chanel quilted bag and Christian Louboutin heels

Busy diary: I has been a busy month for the Princess who might with a delighted little girl who was the spitting image of her daughter Josephine

Event occurences: She made the opening speech as patron (left), and walked through the stands on which there were emergency response devices (right)

This stylish appearance, however, is just one of ten or more public appearances the Crown Princess has made this month, never putting so much as a sartorial foot out of place in the process.

Towards the beginning of the month she attended celebrations for King Carl XVI Gustaf's birthday wearing a gold, modern headpiece instead of a tiara like her fellow Royals.

Several days later, she reverted to her classic wardrobe roots, when she donned a navy blue dress and brooch at the official opening of the European Conference IDAHO Forum at the Admiral Hotel in Copenhagen.

Grand tour: Princess Mary was the patron of the event - this is just one of many stylish appearances the 44-year-old Royal has made this month

Branching out: Towards the beginning of the month, Mary attended celebrations for King Carl XVI Gustaf's birthday wearing a gold, modern headpiece instead of a tiara like her fellow Royals (pictured)

Here comes the bride: She later donned a bridal-inspired cream gown and bouquet of flowers at the Royal Danish Yacht Club's 150th anniversary (pictured)

Inspiring mentor: Princess Mary introduced an anti-bullying programme, Free of Bullying, on behalf of the Mary Foundation this month - she sported a pair of fashion-forward navy trousers by Julie Fagerholt Heartmade

Who could forget her bridal-inspired cream gown and bouquet of flowers at the Royal Danish Yacht Clubs 150th Anniversary?

As something she had previously worn in 2009 on a state visit to Vietnam, Princess Mary showcased her impeccable ability to freshen up an old piece, as she donned a pale pink flower on her shoulder and a gold rectangle clutch paired with matching heels.

Other appearances this month have shown off the Princess's modern approach to fashion, as well as her dedication to her countless charitable commitments.

Over the second half of the month, she has been heavily preoccupied with the Women Deliver conference in Copenhagen, which focused on women's rights and health.

Cool and classic: She opted for a navy blue dress and brooch at the official opening of the European Conference IDAHO Forum at the Admiral Hotel in Copenhagen (pictured)

Impassioned speaker: She later wore trousers when she called on governments to do more for women's rights at the Women Deliver conference

MARY'S MONTH OF MAY 2 May - King Carl XVI Gustaf's birthday celebrations. 11 May - Official opening of the European Conference IDAHO Forum at the Admiral Hotel in Copenhagen. 15 May - Royal Danish Yacht Clubs 150th Anniversary. 16 May - Women Deliver opening reception. 18 May - Speech at Women Deliver conference on women's rights. 19 May - Appearance with Prince Frederik at the National Olympic Committee and Sports Confederation of Denmark at the Bella Centre in Copenhagen. 25 May - Free Of Bullying programme launch on behalf of the Mary Foundation. 26 May - Prince Frederik's 48th birthday. 27 May - Prince Oscar of Sweden's christening. 30 May - Opening ceremony of the 'European Emergency Medical Services' congress in Copenhagen.

Among speeches, meetings, and events, she turned out no less than five varied and brilliant outfits during the week-long event.

Opting for a striking cobalt blue jumpsuit at the opening party, she proved she is not afraid to take wardrobe risks, later wearing a navy dress and green brooch she previously sported last year.

The Princess also rocked a fashion-forward pair of navy trousers by Julie Fagerholt Heartmade when she introduced an anti-bullying programme, on behalf of the Mary Foundation.

She also wore another pair of trousers and a jacket, when she delivered an impassioned speech calling on governments to do more for women's rights at the conference.

After celebrating the 48th birthday of Prince Frederik last week, and stunning in a black and white summer dress at the christening of Prince Oscar of Sweden the next day, one can only hope Mary has a holiday coming up and the chance to take a break from the limelight - not that she seems to need it.

Who ever said being a princess was easy?

Loving couple: Princess Mary and Prince Frederik attended the Women Deliver conference together

Opening event: For the opening party of the Women Deliver conference, Princess Mary wore a cobalt jumpsuit that was only visible as one when she moved (pictured)
In a world where everyone with an Instagram account and a camera phone thinks they're a food photographer, it takes a lot to stand out on social media.

But standing out is just what Instagrammer The Hungry Gentleman has done.

Rather than the standard food blogger shots, Kevin, who runs the account, chooses to do things a little differently. He takes photos holding food in his hand, and adds graphics to the shots showing what each ingredient is.

Drool: Instagrammer The Hungry Gentleman has shot to fame on social media with his mouthwatering pictures of food

More than a mouthful: The account posts pictures of food with graphics explaining each element of the item

Concrete jungle: The creator of the account, named Kevin, is a chef himself and based in New York City

Eat me: He travels the world and photographs the food he eats. In recent times he has travelled to California and Australia

Generally photos show a square speech bubble with the name of the food item and where it's from. Kevin then labels each part of the food, as well as what shoes he's wearing in the shot.

The young Thai man lives in New York but travels all over the world. He describes his account as 'where Anthony Bourdain meets Kanye West', and his Instagram description reads that he is a 'chef, shoe fanatic, & unintentional food blogger from NYC.'

He takes photos of everything from cult foodie items, like the rainbow bagels that went viral earlier in the year, to places he just stumbles across when out and about.

Sweet shoes: Kevin is also a huge fan of designer shoes, sporting Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Marc Jacobs, Christian Louboutin and Balenciaga kicks in different photos

Fries with that? The chef describes his Instagram account as 'where Anthony Bourdain meets Kanye West'

'Unintentional food blogger': Kevin

Colourful and cool: Kevin posts photos of everything from viral food like the rainbow bagels at The Bagel Store in New York to things he makes himself

Sometimes the food is shown whole, other times he cuts it in half to display the insides of things like pies, bagels and burgers.

He also seeks out certain foods for particular days. For example on Transgender Day of Visibility, he photographed a rainbow bagel, and on International Burger Day got himself a blackbeard burger.

He seems to equally share both sweet and savory food, and also occasionally shares food he's made himself, like a double peanut butter and jelly burger he created.

Yum: Sometimes food is cut in half to show the incredible insides, other times posted whole

On it: Kevin also posts special photos to commemorate days like national burger day (above)

Rising star: He has more than 20,000 followers on Instagram and is gaining more every day

This strategy has made him very popular on social media, gaining over 30,000 fans in a short amount of time.

Kevin is currently in Australia, sharing pictures of his food adventures Down Under. He's visited places like On It Burger and Lune Croissanterie in Melbourne, as well as Sydney food spots Laduree and Mr Crackles.
It was a celebrity secret which became a must-have in every woman's handbag.

Now just months after Chinese buyers caused a baby formula shortage, it has been revealed that supplies of Lucas' Papaw ointment faced the same problem.

Chinese beauty enthusiasts are the latest to fall in love with the product, with A Current Affair claiming that pharmacists are limiting transactions of the product to just two tubes per person.

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Beauty essential: Chinese consumers fell in love with Lucas' Papaw ointment in early 2016 causing a shortage in Australia

Papaw pandemonium: Lucas' Papaw has denied claims that they are again running low of supplies

Lynette Swinglehurst, manager of the Queensland family-owned business, told Daily Mail Australia that Lucas' Papaw discovered earlier in 2016 that wholesalers were illegally shipping the product in bulk to China, causing supplies in Australia to be diminished as a result.

'We found that some of the big chemists in Melbourne wouldn't take our supplies out of the cling wrap and instead would pack it up with baby formula and Miralax and ship it to China,' she said.

The 105-year-old Australian cosmetic giant were forced to limit the amount they supplied to those wholesalers sending it to China, in an effort to ensure their product stayed on Australian shores.

'There was a shortage just after Christmas because when we came back form the holidays our suppliers had put in huge orders, the likes of which we'd never had before,' Ms Swinglehurst said.

'We thought it was Chemist Warehouse selling it for $3 and because they were selling it so cheap that people were buying up.'

But with Chinese demand booming, wholesalers enforced the impact of the shortage onto Australian buyers, with some pharmacies limiting the number of the famous red tubes and tubs each customer could buy.

'We rang all our wholesalers and said "This is against what we do, you may even get caught sending it to these countries, wed like you to keep it on the shelves in Australia. It's an Australian product and we want them to use it over anyone else",' Ms Swinglehurst said.

Medical benefits: Lucas' Papaw was initially used as a medicinal product for boils, stings or removing splinters before it became popular with make up artists and celebrities. It is now also enjoyed in Asian countries such as China, Thailand and Taiwan

Ensures quality: Lucas' Papaw Ointment state on their website the product uses pharmaceutical grade petroleum jelly

Supplies of the famous red tubs and tubes of Lucas' Papaw ointment are now back to normal levels, something that wouldn't have been possible had the manufacturer not taken a stand.

'We had to limit the amount you sold to wholesalers and they in turn limited how much they sold,' she said.

'I dont want people think to were sending it to China and not giving it to Australians first.'

Ms Swinglehurst said that because Lucas' Papaw was a pharmaceutical product, it could be sold in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Taiwan, but was not registered in China.

Shortage: Baby formula was in fierce demand in late 2015, with supermarket shelves running dry as Chinese consumers bought in bulk

Supermarkets were forced to ration the amount of tins of baby formula sold per customer, due to a shortage

Running low: Wholesalers sent boxes of Lucas' Papaw to China alongside baby formula and MiraLAX

'Were not allowed to sell it in countries without approval and registration from a therapeutic goods administration, because Lucas' Papaw is actually a medicinal product,' she said.

'But regardless, we dont have a problem with supply at all now.'

Ms Swinglehurst said that since Lucas' Papaw had stopped the flow of their product into China, manufacturers had began to sell copycat products using their design image.
The video has already been viewed 24,000 times by Ms Zisser's followers

She has uploaded a video of her latest food challenge with mousse

Nela Zisser, 23, from New Zealand, is a model and competitive eater

We've become used to seeing New Zealand-born model and unlikely competitive eater, Nela Zisser, in front of an intimidatingly large table of food which she then quickly devours.

From six burritos in 12 minutes, to 22 Big Macs in less than an hour and a fried breakfast including 20 large eggs, a kilogram of bacon, six sausages, four muffins, mushrooms and tomato chutney, in 42 minutes - the size six model certainly knows how to put away a plate of food.

But this latest trick, which the 23 year-old calls the 'Epic Strawberry Mousse Challenge' might just be the most impressive yet.

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Epic Strawberry Mousse Challenge: New Zealand-born model and competitive eater, Nela Zisser (pictured), has a new challenge

Impressive feat: This latest endeavour sees the size six beauty down a huge bowl of strawberry mousse

Uploaded to her YouTube channel on May 23, the video shows Ms Zisser speeding her way through a huge bowl of strawberry mousse.

It's an uncomfortable but fascinating watch.

Towards the beginning of the clip, Ms Zisser fills the giant glass bowl with six cans of Chef de Can strawberry mousse she was sent by the New Zealand-based company (she explains that she is not being paid to advertise them in her video).

Full on: It's an uncomfortable, but oddly fascinating watch

YouTube famous: The challenge sees Ms Zisser demolish a huge bowl made up of six cans of strawberry mousse

She then begins to spoon the sugary mixture into her mouth at a rate of knots, and while she occasionally seems to struggle, such as when she throws her hair back for a break, she goes on to finish the bowl in just four minutes and three seconds.

'I'm actually pretty happy with that time,' Ms Zisser explains directly after eating the bowl of strawberry mousse.

'Considering I thought it would take me a lot longer just because of all the air and mousse [sic]. But it was actually pretty easy and it tastes really good so that probably helped.'

The video has already been viewed more than 24,000 times, and it is accompanied by over 100 disbelieving comments.

Time frame: She does this in just four minutes and three seconds (pictured)

Hard at times: At times, Nela Zisser appears to struggle, but she never stops eating

In the past, Nela Zisser has spoken about how best she prepares for a spot of competitive eating.

While some might think the svelte 23 year old might eat as little as possible in order to go into the challenge hungry, she said that she in fact eats as much as she can in order to stretch her stomach:

Basically you just need to eat enough the day before to kind of get your stomach stretched,' she said previously, adding that she won't eat much after a big feed, preferring to stay still and avoid movement.

Personal best: She says: 'Considering I thought it would take me a lot longer just because of all the air and mousse. But it was actually pretty easy and it tastes really good so that probably helped' [sic]

Amazing skill: The video has already been viewed more than 24,000 times, and it is accompanied by over 100 disbelieving comments

Social media star: Nela Zisser even uploaded a snap to Instagram of the challenge

Previous challenges: In the past, Nela Zisser has demolished a fried breakfast including 20 large eggs, a kilogram of bacon, six sausages, four muffins, mushrooms and tomato chutney, in 42 minutes (pictured)

Stomach stretch: And in the past, she has spoken about how she prepares for a challenge, confessing she eats as much as possible in order to stretch her stomach

While some have been quick to judge the size six competitive eater and say that she must be causing some bad long-term effects to her health, Ms Zisser has said:

In one of our labs we tested our blood pressure and our lung capacity, and I actually had the best one in the class so I think Im okay.
With the amount of childhood allergies increasing across Australia, it comes as no surprise that drastic safety measures are being taken.

But while many preschools have commonly banned items such as peanuts, others have taken it further by banning playdough and pasta necklaces due to gluten allergies and coeliac disease.

Parents have raised concerns about the banning of these items online, claiming that preschools who choose to ban these items are taking their precautions too far.

Taking it further: While many Australian preschools have commonly banned items such as peanuts, others have taken it further by banning playdough and pasta necklaces due to gluten allergies and coeliac disease

Options: But not all have chosen to ban the items, with Lutwyche Windsor Kindergarten and Preschool in Queensland offering unique alternatives like gluten-free playdough instead... despite it being more expensive

But not all have chosen to ban the items, with Lutwyche Windsor Kindergarten and Preschool in Queensland offering unique alternatives instead.

Louise Allison, the admin officer for the kindergarten and preschool, told Daily Mail Australia that the industry is more cautious now than ever.

'We tend to ask parents not to bring nuts but when it comes to playdough we offer a gluten-free playdough due to a number of children having coeliac disease,' Mrs Allison said, who has worked in the industry for 22 years.

Safety first: Pasta necklaces have also been banned from the activity list in some preschools, along with egg cartons, yoghurt containers and polystyrene meat trays

WHAT ARE THE MOST COMMON CAUSES OF ALLERGIC REACTIONS? The most common causes of allergic reactions in young children are food. In particular: - Egg - Cow's milk - Peanut - Tree nut - Soy - Wheat - Fish - Shellfish - Sesame Other causes are bee or other insect stings ( wasps, Jack Jumper Ants), medication and latex (rubber). Source: Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne

'It is a lot more expensive though and does go off quite quickly but it's a safe alternative... much better than banning it altogether.'

'We don't use empty toilet rolls for craft here though. We can't use them... it's nice that they have been donated and all but you don't know where they have been.'

Pasta necklaces have also been banned from the activity list in some preschools, along with egg cartons, yoghurt containers and polystyrene meat trays.

But despite the increasing list of banned items across the country, Mrs Allison believes that education is the answer.

'We try to educate more than ban,' she said.

'You can insulate a child from things at kindy but at school you can't be sure every child has washed their hands or won't have peanut butter so if they have severe allergies that can be a real problem.

'For example we have chickens here and they lay eggs... so the children who are allergic to eggs we then educate them on how to handle them.'

They also make sure to advise parents on all allergies and ask them to offer alternatives for birthday cakes.

Mrs Allison said safety measures have been boosted in most areas... from sunscreen applications two hours after arrival and strict hat rules to excursions where there are two children to every one adult.

Not safe: 'We don't use empty toilet rolls for craft here though. We can't use them... you don't know where they have been,' admin officer for Lutwyche Windsor Kindergarten and Preschool, Louise Allison, said

'You don't want them to be wrapped in cotton wool but you do need to be careful as well. They are allowed to climb but if they fall, they fall on a soft surface. We allow them to play but we make sure we do playground checks for branches,' she said.

According to The Courier Mail, some preschools are also offering 'toy cakes' to children which are made up of a pile of toys topped with a battery-operated candle.

'Whatever happened to letting kids be kids?' one mother told the paper. 'For those who choose to live that lifestyle, why should our children have to miss out?  I just think people are taking things far too far these days [sic].'

According to The Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne, Lutwyche Windsor Kindergarten and Preschool's take on allergies is the correct one.

'Banning of products that contain the allergen is NOT recommended,' they advise.

Education is more important: 'Banning of products that contain the allergen is NOT recommended,' the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne advises

'Banning will not succeed in creating an "allergy free zone". It is difficult to achieve a 100 per cent ban, for a variety of reasons.

'For example, product labels can be confusing, parents of non-allergic children may not comply with the ban, and lastly, staff and students become complacent.

'Food containers or packages that contain the allergen should not be used. Parents of children with anaphylaxis can help by checking art/craft products for hidden ingredients, as they are often more aware of terms used.'

Preschools are also advised to have separate tables for arts and crafts and food.

Keep them apart: Preschools are also advised to have separate tables for arts and crafts and food

'Where this is not possible, tables must be cleaned thoroughly between uses,' they advise.

Parents have had a mixed reaction on social media, including mothers of children who suffer from severe allergies.

'Being an allergy parent is hard, being an allergy kid is even harder. I think it's wonderful that these centres are making small changes that means that these kids can be included in activities that others take for granted,' one woman wrote.

'It makes perfect sense...!!! spare a thought for highly allergic children whose lives are at risk... as a parent I don't mind making exceptions to cater to those poor children [sic],' another agreed.

Others disagreed.

'How ridiculous!! The reason so many kids have these allergies is because they are wrapped in cotton wool and not exposed to anything!' One woman wrote.
The most unpopular baby names of 2016 have been revealed, and there are some surprises.

Pregnancy and baby information site BabyCentre has released a list of the most unpopular names so far this year, with Angela and Bertram topping the list.

The list revealed that despite a recent resurgence in old-school names like Ezra and Adeline, many of the names would be considered too traditional.

Going down: The most unpopular baby names of 2016 have been revealed, and there are some surprises

Unfashionable: Pregnancy and baby information site BabyCentre has released a list of the most unpopular names so far this year, with Angela and Bertram topping the list

For boys, names like Bertram, Cecil, Clarence, Horace and Nigel were all very unpopular, proving old-school isn't always cool.

For girls, the names were less traditional, with Angela, Carol, Joanne, Sheila, Elaine and Yvonne becoming very untrendy.

Surprisingly, some names that were quite popular in the last couple of decades made the list, like Derek, Geoffrey, Sally and Joanne.

McDreamy won't do: For boys, names like Bertram, Cecil, Clarence, Derek (pictured Patrick Dempsey as Dr Derek Shepherd) Horace and Nigel were all very unpopular, proving old-school isn't always cool

BabyCentre's Managing Editor Sarah Redshaw said that baby names becoming more and less popular over time is common.

Its inevitable that as some names rise in popularity, others fall out of fashion. The question is will they die out completely, or experience a revival in the future,' she explained.

The changes do mean that if parents want to give their child a unique name they know what isn't common this year.

Uncool: For girls, the unpopular names were less traditional, with Angela, Carol, Joanne, Sheila, Elaine and Yvonne becoming very untrendy

Widespread: BabyCentre's Managing Editor Sarah Redshaw said that baby names becoming more and less popular over time is common

'If new parents want to make sure their baby has a name that stands out from the crowd this year, they should look to names like Paula, Debra and Elaine that were popular in the 60s, 70s and 80s for girls,' Ms Redshaw said.

BabyCentre compiled the list and decided upon the most unpopular names by looking at which names hadn't had any registrations so far in 2016.

Whilst it's not a perfect situation, it does give some idea on how names fall in and out of fashion over time, as someone with the name Lauren - popular in the late 80s and early 90s - can attest.

MOST UNPOPULAR BOYS NAMES Bertram Cecil Clarence Clive Cyril Dean Dennis Derek Duncan Ernest

MOST UNPOPULAR GIRLS NAMES Angela Beverley Carol Debra Diane Donna Doris Elaine Joanne Maureen
A quirky couple with a very dark sense of humour staged their engagement pictures to look like they were hiding a corpse.

Shi Jaramillo, 27, and fiance Patrick Reetz, 37, from Austin, Texas, planned the murder-themed shoot to represent their undying devotion to one another.

Horror film fan Shi, who works in telecommunications sales, said that they plumped for a theme that reflected their personalities, rather than a cliched romantic shoot.

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Shi Jaramillo, 27, and fiance Patrick Reetz, 37, from Austin, Texas, planned a murder-themed engagement shoot to represent their undying devotion to one another

The couple leave bloody handprints on each other's faces as they pucker up

She said: 'We're a little bit different and didn't want anything like that. When we told our photographer he said: "'You guys are twisted, this is awesome".

'My fiance teaches anatomy and I love horror, and we thought "what's the craziest thing you could test someone with other than the location of a body?''.'

Patrick said: 'The theme was PG 13 horror, the easy route would have been matching button ups holding hands on the beach, but I am not one to go the easy route.

'While Shi was the brain child of the whole affair, I suggested the minor subtleties like the knife behind the back and in a way what we did was satirising traditional engagement photos.'

Shi posed with a knife behind her back to 'satirise' traditional engagement photos

Showing off the ring: The couple used liberal lashings of fake blood to set the gorey scene

Criminal minds: The couple don black rubber gloves for their murder themed shoot

'Shi is a genius, she's beyond beautiful and so creative. We literally do everything together other than work, so it made sense to show that in our photos - she's my best friend'

Photographer pal Asha Poyzer captured the unorthodox set for the couple in Zilker Park last month.

He said: 'When I first heard about the theme I thought it was definitely a little out there, but I knew it would be a lot of fun and offer some unique engagement shots.

'I'm sure that along with all the people who'll like it there will definitely be some who find it far out and maybe a bit gross.

Patrick said his fiance was the brains behind the shoot and came up with the most outrageous ideas

A bloody rag hangs out of Patrick's back pocket, while Shi clutches a stained ampersand

'We spent a lot of time giggling - it's hard not to when your hauling a "dead body" along Austin's greenbelt!''

Shi revealed that the couple, who met on OkCupid, attracted funny looks while they posed for photos with a knife and a make-shift corpse made of a doll and sheets.

She said: 'It was quite funny - we went on this very busy trail and then wandered off into the woods for three hours and forgot to take anything to clean ourselves with afterwards.

The couple met on a dating site over a year ago and Patrick proposed in Costa Rica

The couple's invitations refer to guests as 'accomplices' and ask if they will help bury the bodies

'There we were covered in fake blood walking down this busy trail. People were waving and saying hello because they're so nice in Texas.

'Eventually we found a mini water fountain to clean ourselves off.'

Despite the blood and gore of their shoot, Shi and Patrick's engagement was a more traditional affair with Patrick popping the question in Costa Rica.

Shi said: 'The proposal was very romantic and happened while we were on holiday after dating for a year and eight months.

'After we ate at a restaurant overlooking the ocean we went for a walk and he got down on one knee.

'He had to ask me twice as I thought: "'Is this really happening to me?''.'

The loved-up pair are set to marry in August and have carried the murder theme through to their invites.
A spate of disgruntled customers have taken to Twitter after receiving pairs of freakishly long jeans from online retailer ASOS.

The British fashion giant appears to have been sending the 'oversized' denims in error, with some people claiming their orders are as much as 8 inches too long - however ASOS insist it's a simply 'new menswear style' that is designed to gather around the ankle.

George Riggall, 20, from Leicester, expressed his amusement this week after his 32in indigo jeans arrived so long they covered his entire feet.

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ASOS customers have taken to social media to share hilarious pictures of their extra-long jeans. Twitter user Alex wrote: 'Something tells me asos sent me the wrogg size jeans @ASOS_HeretoHelp (sic.)'

George Riggall, 20, from Leicester, expressed his amusement this week after his 32in indigo jeans arrived so long they covered his entire feet. He said: 'I dont know who would fit these jeans. Probably nobody!'

'Pretty sure these aren't 32in lengeth @ASOS,' the estate agent wrote, alongside two pictures of his delivery. In one, he lay them down alongside a 'normal' pair of jeans which appeared to be around half the size.

Luckily, George appeared to see the funny side. 'I opened them and I was stood with my mum and she just started crying with laughter,' he told BuzzFeed.

'We couldnt believe what Id been sent, I was baffled  I dont know who would fit these jeans. Probably nobody!'

Despite ASOS asking George for returns information, he added: 'I might keep the jeans for fun now.'

Hannah Cook wrote: 'Ordered some petite jeans & these arrived. Length 36"! I'm only 4'11" - 8 inches too long for me.' She shared a picture of herself holding up a pair of the jeans, which reached all the way up to her chin

Esme, from Northamptonshire, shared a picture of herself holding up some extra-long jeans, writing: 'hmmm'

George wasn't the only one receiving inexplicably long jeans from the fashion site.

Earlier this month, Twitter user Hannah posted a picture of a man holding up a pair as tall as his shoulders, writing: 'Think someone at hq got his order wrong.. never ever seen a pair of jeans so long.'

Fellow Twitter user Alex found himself in the same boat, writing: 'something tells me asos sent me the wrogg size jeans (sic.)'

Esme, from Northamptonshire, also shared a picture of herself holding up some extra-long jeans, simply writing: 'hmmm.'

Earlier this month, Twitter user Hannah posted a picture of a man holding up a pair as tall as his shoulders, writing: 'Think someone at hq got his order wrong.. never ever seen a pair of jeans so long'

New fashion? ASOS say the jeans are a new menswear style called 'Super Skinny Stacker Jeans'

Hannah Cook wrote: 'Ordered some petite jeans & these arrived. Length 36"! I'm only 4'11" - 8 inches too long for me.' She shared a picture of herself holding up a pair of the jeans, which reached all the way up to her chin.
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Fashion shows have always been high flown affairs combining the cream of society, style royalty and trend-setting stars.

But a very different type of royalty lined the front row today at the latest Dior show staged in Blenheim Palace - where 58 years ago, Princess Margaret joined her host the Duchess of Marlborough in welcoming the French fashion house to the stately home for the second time.

More than half a century later and the front row in the stately home was packed with musicians and film stars including Alexa Chung and Mick Jagger's ex-wife Bianca, as well as Princess Diana's niece Lady Kitty Spencer and Tatler cover girl Lady Amelia Windsor.

The unveiling of the Dior 2017 spring/summer cruise collection was a starry night of style and aristocratic eccentricity that harked back to those iconic shows held in the historic halls when the Queen's sister watched Christian Dior unveil his couture show in 1954 and then was guest of honour when Yves Saint Laurent took over the label in 1958.

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Christian Dior returned to Blenheim Palace to showcase its 2017 Cruise collection. Bella Hadid was one of the models on the catwalk

Christian Dior came to Blenheim in 1954 to showecase his winter couture collection to raise money for the British Red Cross

Princess Margaret (centre) was the guest of honour at the Duchess of Marlborough's Red Cross fundraiser in 1954, with the then Duke of Marlborough sitting on her left

Held in aid of the Red Cross, around 600 guests paid five guineas each to watch the showcase of over 100 pieces from the winter collection in the setting of the stately home.

The entire proceeding was repeated a second time at Blenheim in 1958 under the watchful eye of its indomitable chateleine the Mary, the Duchess of Marlborough, a year after the designer died of a heart attack while holidaying in Italy and a young talent called Yves Saint Laurent was helming the label.

And while extravagant ballgowns were the name of the day in the 1950s, there was a much more contemporary feel to proceedings this time around.

Although the occupations of Britain's aristocracy appeared to be represented in the fox hunting motif printed on the catwalk, which also decorated dresses, tops and skirts.

Photographs of the two shows from the 1950s capture models showcasing designs that capture the elegance of Dior's post-war New Look.

An iconic shot sees a model strut along the catwalk in a tailored green off-the-shoulder cocktail dress, while Red Cross nurses stand in a line against the wall.

While extravagant ballgowns were the name of the day in the 1950s, there was a much more contemporary feel to proceedings this time around although a fox hunting print made a reference to classic aristocratic hobbies

Models showcased delicate wildflower prints that could have been inspired by the Oxfordshire countryside, teamed with patent leather Victorian-style lace up boots

While none of the Royal Family were present in the audience this time round, Princess Diana's niece Lady Kitty Spencer was one of guests on the front row along with Lady Amelia Windsor, whose great-great grandfather is George V

Models and A-list stars descended on the 18th century stately home in Oxfordshire earlier today

Princess Margaret, who described one of her Dior dresses as her favourite, watched proceedings from a comfortably fringed armchair, flanked by the Duchess on one side and the Duke of Marlborough on the other.

However, tonight's guests had to make do with folding seating in rows along the catwalk as they watched model-of-the-moment Bella Hadid, who four weeks ago was flaunting her figure in thigh-high boots at the Met Ball in New York.

The rising star announced yesterday that she is the new face of Dior make-up as the brand seeks to tap into her social celebrity.

She made her first outing in her new role in gothic-style eye shadow and a dark flower-detailed skirt and blouse.

Miss Hadid wrote on a social networking site yesterday: So beyond excited to announce that I am the new ambassador and face for Dior Make-up!

Princess Margaret is pictured chatting to the then Duchess of Marlborough, who invited Dior to show his collection at Blenheim in 1954

Christian Dior himself puts the final touches to one of the ball gowns that featured in the 1954 WInter couture collection

Red Cross nurses were also in the audience at 1958 collection designed by Yves Saint Laurent, with Princess Margaret as guest of honour again glad in a stylish hat and fur stole

Princess Margaret is given a guard of honour by Red Cross nurses as she enters Blenheim Palace on November 11, 1954, as she enters the historic home ahead of the Duchess of Marlborough (right)

The Duchess of Marlborough is captured in a tete a tete with legendary designer Christian Dior when she hosted him in Blenheim in 1954

What a dream come true. Cant wait for the show today at Blenheim Palace.

And rather than timeless elegance, the fashion label served up an array of looks referencing their design past but also nodding to more contemporary styles, with Bella taking to the catwalk in a black cape blouse with puffball sleeves paired with a floral skirt.

The Dior design team said the new collection was meant in part to show 'the conversation between France and England'.

In fact, some of the pieces made references to British hunting styles, and countryside elegance, but overall the effect was more French than English.

Models wore lace up heels with ridged gold block heels or creeper soles and mixed and matched prints and stripes as well as sheer fabric, wool and linen - all while carrying strappy practical rucksacks and handbags

The collection saw a blend between the new and the old, with tailored jackets and chunky boots all featuring on the catwalk; and even though the stately setting didn't stop the members of the FROW from whipping out their phones to film everything

Clashing prints of varying style and colour adorned skirts and dresses such as this spaghetti-strap number

Many of the pieces showed the classic Dior silhouette and workmanship, with tulip skirts paired with embellished cape tops and jackets.

Models and A-list stars arrived at the 18th century stately home in Oxfordshire earlier today in a fleet of limousines for a show full of opulent patterns and prints.

The prints from this latest collection could have been taken from the walls of Blenheim itself. A Medieval-inspired fox hunt print was a motif that featured on several of the dresses and was reflected on the carpet that run along the runway.

The accessories added a modern touch, with clunky boots, skyscraper heels and boxy handbags. Models wore their hair slicked back, while thick eyeshadow gave a gothic look to contrast against the lady-like dresses.

Puffed shoulders were another strong design element, as well as heavily embellished tops with Eighties-style power silhouettes

One model showed off a stylisd floral-print coat dress paired with a skirt, leather boots and patent leather rucksack

A patent leather trench coat perfectly bridges the gap between the modern and classic Dior design

Blenheim, traditionally the residence of the Duke of Marlborough, is one of England's grandest palaces and was the birthplace of wartime leader Winston Churchill.

His grandson Randolph Churchill, who attended the show, said: 'I wouldn't have missed it for the world,' said Randolph Churchill, Winston's great-grandson, after the models had paraded through the stately home's library.

'For Dior to come back to Blenheim and put that sparkle makes it a great occasion. There were so many happy, excited faces.'

Standing next to a display of dresses first shown by Christian Dior at the 1954 show, Randolph said it was inspiring to see the classics of an earlier era.

Classic floral tea dresses were another nod to the British heritage look, while models wore their hair swept back into tight high ponytails

A fox hunt motif features on this jumper (left) teamed with a white skirt and leather bag; a yellow top worn with an orange skirt and tweed trousers makes an eye-catching ensemble (right)

One of the highlights of the show was this buttercup yellow silk dress cut cleverly that it pleats and drapes perfectly

'Today's collection was cutting edge, enlightening,' he said. 'These older ones are simple classic piece, everything you could ever want.'

Former model and human rights activist Bianca Jagger said the theme of interplay between France and England was particularly relevant as the June 23 referendum on British membership in the European Union nears.

'I love the idea of a dialogue between France and the UK,' she said.

'It's so fitting at the moment when we would like to stay in Europe. It's important at all levels, cultural, economic, fashion. I just think we are all part of Europe and we want to stay together.'

Mod-style knitwear was paired with silk dresses to complete the country-inspired look - although the uniformly dark eyeshadow gave the beauties on the catwalk a rather gothic look

An obi-style built cinches this black stylised floral print dress with embellished sequined neckline

The Dior 2017 cruise collection was given a spectacular setting with a statue of Queen Anne in the background

Trench cocoon coats (left) were a nod to Dior's classic past; a blue coat with wide ruched sleeves and a piping detail had 1950s elegance

A printed silk dress also in the collection featured a rip and blue vine print (left); a white jacket was teamed with a black top over print trousers and lace up patent boots (right)

The collection featured an array of prints in the moodily-lit space in the historic stately home where Winston Churchill was born

The collection, starring Bella Hadid (second left) aimed to look at both British and French influences

Bianca Jagger, who was famous for marrying Mick in a white tuxedo, wore the item again with a cream camisole, white skirt, socks and ballet pumps (left); Although Alexa Chung's ensemble (right) looks rather busy she managed to guess the styling ethos of the catwalk with clashing textures and prints all teamed with heavy boots

Gemma Arterton (left) showed off a flared leg trouser with top that didn't quite meet over her bosom for the event; Emma Roberts (right) opted for an off-the-shoulder navy satin with a textured silver bag and studded ankle-strap heels

Lord Edward Spencer-Churchill, a son of the Duke of Marlborough, poses with Kimberley Hammerstroem, model Eva Herzigova, her partner Gregorio Marsiaj and Lady Alexandra Spencer-Churchill, sister of the current duke, attend as Christian Dior showcases its spring summer 2017 cruise collection at Blenheim Palace

The collection featured a series of adorned leather bags like this one covered in tags, leather zips handles (left); A print slouchy shoulder bag is covered with a subtle print and decorated with orange ribbons (right)
They are known to share a tight knit, sisterly bond, and it seems that Crown Princess Victoria and Princess Madeleine's daughters are growing up to be just as close.

Proud mother Princess Madeleine of Sweden shared adorable snaps of the cousins giggling and hugging on her Facebook page as the pair enjoyed Prince Oscar's christening on Friday.

Official portraits of the big day have also been released by the Swedish royal family, showing the young prince with family members including King Carl XVI Gustaf and his uncle Prince Carl Phillip.

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Princess Estelle of Sweden (left) cuddles up to her cousin Princess Leonore in an adorable snap shared on Facebook by Princess Madeleine of Sweden

Prince Oscar with his parents and sister and aunts Princess Madeleine (left), uncle Prince Carl Philip and aunt Anna Westling Soderstrom, Prince Daniel's sister

Princess Madeleine was given the honour of being chosen as one of the baby Prince's five godparents at the ceremony, which took place at the Royal Chapel in Stockholm on Friday.

She shared a photo of Princess Estelle, four, giving her younger cousin Leonore, two, a protective cuddle.

And another image shows the younger princess covering her mouth with her hands and giggling as the pair share a joke.

Princess Madeleine captions the images: 'My sister and I are blessed as mothers of these two sweet little girls who adore each other.'

Proud grandfather King Carl XVI Gustaf also got his moment in the spotlight, posing solo with his daughter and her two children

The family with Prince Oscar's godparents: Family friend Oscar Magnuson, Princess Madeleine, Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark, Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway and Prince Daniel's friend Hans Astrom

Princess Victoria and her husband Prince Daniel with their children Oscar and Estelle

Official photos of Oscar, who was born on 2 March, with his adoring family have also been released to mark the special occasion.

The 13-week-old Prince was pictured with his parents Crown Princess Victoria, 38, and Prince Daniel and his sister Princess Estelle.

Another photo showed the family with Oscar's uncle Carl Philip and aunts Princess Madeleine and Anna Westling Soderstrom, Prince Daniel's sister.

The younger princess covers her mouth with her hands and giggling as cousin Princess Estelle makes her laugh

Princess Madeleine said that she and her sister Crown Princess Victoria are 'blessed' to be mothers to their 'sweet little girls' who are growing up to be very close

Proud grandfather King Carl XVI Gustaf also got his moment in the spotlight, posing solo with his daughter and her two children.

Naturally, Oscar was also pictured with his five godparents: Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark, Princess Madeleine, Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway, Prince Daniel's friend Hans Astrom and Oscar Magnuson who is also a family friend of the royals and King Carl XVI Gustaf.

The prince - whose full name is Oscar Carl Olaf - wore a traditional christening gown for the ceremony on Friday.

Crown Princess Victoria beamed with pride following the ceremony at the Royal Chapel in Stockholm

Prince Oscar wore a traditional christening gown, while his mother stunned in a white broderie anglaise dress

Princess Estelle was a mini me of her mother, dressed in a dainty white gown with a miniature version of her mother's fascinator fastened to her hair.

Also joining the celebrations today were Estelle and Oscar's cousins Princess Leonore and Prince Nicolas, accompanied by their parents Princess Madeleine and her husband Christopher O'Neill.

The children's grandparents, King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden, were also present today.

New parents Prince Carl Philip and Princess Sofia left baby Alexander at home during the ceremony

Crown Princess Mary of Denmark and Crown Prince Haakon of Norway

Prince Carl Phillip of Sweden was accompanied by his wife Princess Sofia for the ceremony. However, absent from the proceedings was there newborn son Prince Alexander who was born just last month.

Crown Princess Mary of Denmark looked elegant in a monochrome dress and matching hat as she was joined by Crown Prince of Norway Prince Haakon to wish the family well.

The service was conducted by archbishop Antje Jackelen, and assisted by bishop Johan Dalman and chaplain Michael Bjerkhagen.

Oscar later appeared on his mother's arm before a crowd outside the palace where fans snapped photos and a 21-gun salute rang out.

He is third in line to the throne after his mother and 4-year-old sister, Princess Estelle.

In 1980, Sweden changed its constitution to allow the eldest heir to inherit the throne, regardless of gender. Before that, female heirs were excluded.

Victoria's father, Carl XVI Gustaf, has been king since 1973. The Swedish royal family's duties are ceremonial.
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There's a new retail temple for London's super-rich to worship at as Christian Dior prepares to open its glitziest store yet in London's Mayfair.

The four-floor palace, set to open its doors on Friday, is likely to prove manna from heaven for the capital's biggest spending consumerists.

In a honeyed building at 160-162 New Bond Street, the House of Dior's latest store pushes the boundaries of boutique shopping with an interior that looks more like a world-beating museum.

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A store with a little Je ne sais quoi...and plenty of couture credentials: New Bond Street in Mayfair will feel a little more Parisian on Friday when Dior opens its new four-floor superstore

The new boutique calls upon some of the world's most de riguer designers and artists; this floral print is the work of Mark Quinn

A grey stone interior, designed by Peter Marino, has an art gallery feel to it

It is the design handiwork of celebrated New York architect Peter Marino and boasts a grey stone interior, dramatic abstract sculptures and neo-Louis XVI furniture. Among the artists displaying their work on the walls of this shopping wonderland are Marc Quinn and sculptors Tony Cragg and Rado Kirov.

The House of Dior is effectively a superstore for the super rich and will bring together the company's key offerings including womenswear, jewellery, homeware, perfume and Dior Baby.

The city's male fashionistas will undoubtedly love the Dior Homme boutique on the ground floor which offers a Sur Mesure (made to measure) service.

For those who want to browse without the distraction of other mortals, there are VIP spaces galore including three private salons.

Exhibits: The building could pass as a fashion museum with male fashionistas served on the ground floor with a made to measure service from Dior Homme

A light-drenched marble stairwell with gold banisters is the store's showpiece and interlinks the different departments. An abstract metal sculpture by Rado Kirov dominates the space between one of the floors

Light and shade: A new conservatory has been added to the historic New Bond Street properties

A perfume that really says you: The DIor perfumerie will create bespoke fragrances for clients

Delicate artworks depicting cherubs on clouds cover the wall in the perfumerie section of the store

Images of London fill one of the corner windows on the grandiose marble staircase

Time to stand and stare: Artworks and sculptures by celebrated artists from around the world feature throughout

Designer kids: Baby Dior will sell couture for newborns and children and has its own specialist department. Right, the carefully styled interior is based on the traditional Parisian townhouse hotel

There is a homely feel to the decor, with garments hanging next to fireplaces in living rooms

It's all about the interiors, dahling! The Dior Home store is sure to be a hit with well-heeled homeowners

Eye-eye! Limited edition handbags have been created by artist Marc Quinn to celebrate the store's opening

A 'light-drenched stairwell' with gold bannisters will let clients step from department to department in style.

Should one's feet ache from pacing up and down the silk carpets, there's refreshment in the shape of teas inspired by the Houses fragrance collection.

In a statement released on its website, the company explained the influences behind the new boutique, saying: 'Tradition and abstraction combine harmoniously through a mastery of motifs and colours.

'The stone interior is softened with silk carpets and furniture in the neo-Louis XVI style to evoke the atmosphere of a Parisian hotel particulier.'

The architect behind it, Marino, has a long-standing relationship with the upmarket fashion goliath and received the Chevalier de lOrdre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture for his work across the globe.

Has anyone told them about the English weather? A minimalist display of shades from the new store

Coffee table and frocks: A few colourful children's dresses hang in a beautifully-designed living room setting

The Dior Homme boutique on the ground floor will offers a Sur Mesure (made to measure) service

The store will bring together the brand's key offerings including womenswear, jewellery, homeware, perfume and Dior Baby

A photograph shows the spectacular shop floor reflected in the glass ceiling as VIP guests look around

The architect behind the flagship store, Peter Marino, has a long-standing relationship with the upmarket fashion goliath

To mark the store's opening, Dior has also announced that it has produced a 'limited-edition selection of iconic Lady Dior bags' which carry a floral print bloom by artist Marc Quinn.

The fashion house has long since had a love affair with the UK capital, one that is no doubt bolstered by the city's status as the home of the super-rich, with Middle Eastern clients proving particularly lucrative to luxury brands.

Christian Dior himself admired English culture and once paid the biggest of compliments to UK women, writing in his memoirs: 'When an English woman is pretty she is prettier than a woman of any other nationality.'

There's a shoe emporium for the discerning male customer featuring the latest of the fashion house's footwear

Celebrities who want to retreat away from their fellow shoppers can head to private salons for more personal shopping

An aerial shot reveals the scale of the new flagship store, which will hope to attract the world's super-rich
Size 22 model Tess Holliday is just a few weeks away from giving birth, and the expectant mom spent her Memorial Day weekend flaunting her baby bump in a two piece swimsuit.

The 30-year-old, who is nine months pregnant, took to Instagram on Monday to share a photo of herself cooling off in a Los Angeles rooftop pool as she balanced a red Solo cup on top of her stomach.

'Showing off my #babybump skills. Bikini by @torridfashion #38weeks #babyhollidayontheway,' she captioned the image, which sees her modeling a black bandeau top and black and hot pink striped bathing suit bottoms.

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Total talent: Tess Holliday took to Instagram on Monday to share this playful snapshot of herself as she balance a red Solo cup on her baby bump

Feeling peaceful: Tess, who is 38 weeks along, spent Memorial Day weekend at a rooftop pool in Los Angeles with her friend, make-up artist Priscilla Ono

In the playful snapshot, Tess' hands are held in the air as she stays focused on balancing her drink on her stomach.

The plus-size star kept her auburn hair pulled back in a tight bun an accessorized her swimsuit with pink sunglasses and oversized gold earrings.

Tess was joined by her friend, make-up artist Priscilla Ono, during her relaxing day at the rooftop at TenTen Wilshire, and the two were filmed with their hands on the pool's steps as they kicked their legs and splashed the water behind them.

Priscilla also took to Instagram to post a picture of them posed in the water as they both flashed peace signs for the camera.

Fun in the sun: The size 22 model also shared a video of her and Priscilla splashing around in the pool

'Memorial Day pool party with my babe @tessholliday #GirlPower #PoolDaze,' Priscilla captioned the playful image.

Tess, who has been facing ongoing criticism about her size since she announced she was pregnant with her second child, undoubtedly enjoyed her relaxing pool day after weeks of insisting that her weight is not harming her unborn child in any way.

Just a few weeks ago, Facebook came under fire for initially denying Australian group Cherchez la Femme's request for an advertisement featuring a photograph of a bikini-clad Tess to promote its latest body positive event, called Feminism and Fat.

The social networking app said it wouldn't allow the group to promote their event because the picture of Holliday 'violates Facebook's Ad Guideline's by promoting an idealized physical image'.

Under fire: Facebook recently apologized for denying a request for an advertisement featuring Tess (pictured) because the image was against their 'health and fitness policy'

Putting it out there: The 30-year-old proudly showed off her bump in another nude image posted to Instagram earlir this month as she hit back at critics who claim her weight could harm her baby

However, after significant social media backlash and media coverage, Facebook apologized and said the rejection of the ad was 'an error'.

And in an interview with ET earlier this month, Tess hit back at critics who insist her weight is a danger to her unborn child, claiming that her doctor had just given her a clean bill of health.

'I literally saw my OB/GYN yesterday and everything's fine,' she said.

She added: 'He's happy. Everything's fine and I'm fine.'

Tess also discussed with the publication her decision to post nude photos on social media, despite the criticism she ultimately receives from online trolls.

All good: Tess said that her OB/GYN has given her the all clear, adding that 'he's happy. Everything's fine and I'm fine'

Proud of her body: Tess, recently posed for a nude photoshoot while seven months pregnant, taking to Instagram a few weeks ago to share one of her nude portraits

'The more they don't want to see things like that or are criticizing my body, the more I want to do it,' she said. 'Since you are complaining about my covered-up photo, I am going to give you a nude photo to make you even angrier.'

Her latest racy snap appeared on her Instagram on a few weeks ago, featuring the pregnant mom displaying her bump at 37 weeks and poking fun at people who tell her: 'I can't tell you're pregnant.'

She wrote in the snap's caption: 'I will continue to live unapologetically, to thrive in this body, prove the naysayers wrong and laugh at the ignorance.'

It's just the latest instance that Tess has bared her bod for her fansand criticsas she previously shed her clothes while seven months pregnant to pose stark naked for a sultry new photoshoot celebrating her size 22 figure.

Tess proudly took to Instagram on to share a nude photo of herself, which was taken last month during her shoot with The Telegraph.

Celebrate good times! Tess and her fiance Nick Holliday had a combined housewarming and baby shower earlier this month

Take that! Tess shared this photo to hit back at body-shaming critics last month as she insisted that she and her baby are healthy

When captioning the portrait, Tess used a quote from her interview with the British publication, writing: 'What I want to say to you is that when people told me I couldnt model, I would always think, Ive literally had some of the s****est things happen to me and survived them, so me being a model is not the most ridiculous thing that I have had happen to me. Ive never taken no for an answer.'

Tess ended the message using her famous hashtag #effyourbeautystandards, which she started using in 2012 to fight society's beauty ideals.

Despite her critics, Tess has been enjoying her pregnancy, and earlier this month she threw a tropical-themed baby showerwhich doubled as a housewarming partyand invited her nearest and dearest to come celebrate with her and her fiance Nick Holliday.

The social media star, who was born Ryann Hoven, is already a mom to a ten-year-old son, Rylee, whom she had with a previous boyfriend she no longer speaks to.
If stepping up your braid game wasn't already on your summer to-do list, it will be after you scroll through the dreamy Instagram account, Aurora Braids.

Run by two young sisters from Mathisdalen, Norway, Linda and Mia Charlotte Snvis Bech, age 24 and 14, the feed features whimsical braided creations that are fittingly photographed against the snowy, mountainous and wooded backdrops of their pastoral hometown.

On posts of baby's breath-studded fishtail braids, cascading Dutch plaits and ribbon-woven French crown braids, comments from their 200,000 followers frequently contain numerous Heart Eyes emojis.

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Braid goals: Hailing from Norway, sisters Mia (left), 14, and Linda Snvis Bech (right), 24, create whimsical braided hairstyles and post them to their Instagram account, Aurora Braids

Plaits, please: The duo, who've racked up over 200,000 followers on Instagram in two years, released a book this spring titled, Eventyrlige Fletter og Frisyrer (or Fairy Tale Braids and Hairstyles) with nearly 70 tutorials

'As most girls, we learned how to braid when we were young. However, it wasn't until about five years ago that we learned how to create more intricate braids when we came across YouTube videos,' Linda told FEMAIL. 'That's when we started experimenting with different styles as well, and we became obsessed with braiding.'

The long-haired siblings first began posting their styles to Instagram two years ago, with a YouTube channel featuring how-tos following a year later. Already they've released a book, Eventyrlige Fletter og Frisyrer (translation: Fairy Tale Braids and Hairstyles), that contains nearly 70 step-by-step tutorials, as well as a companion app, Flette (or, 'Braids').

Their book and app are currently only available in Norwegian (though the pictures are very detailed), but with so many International fans, it seems it will only be a matter of time before English versions hit shelves.

Ethereal accents: Many of the siblings' creations contain embellishments like butterfly crowns (as seen on Mia here), seashells, flowers and ribbons, making them look as though they have stepped out of a fairy tale

Inspiration: The girls look to shows and movies like Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings for ideas

In addition to fellow vloggers, Linda said that she and Mia find inspiration from Instagram, Pinterest, movies like Lord of the Rings and television shows like Game of Thrones.

'Mia loves messy, boho hairstyles, which usually includes a fishtail. I really like messy hairstyles as well, but I also really love to do soft, romantic bridal hairstyles,' said Linda.

Because the styles are so detailed - they are often made up of several types of braids and include embellishments such as flowers, seashells, ribbons or crowns - the girls either work on each other or on their middle sister, Elise.

'Easy hairstyles normally take between five to 20 minutes to do, while more intricate hairstyles that require some hair prep beforehand can take up to an hour or more,' said Linda.

While Mia's red hair is naturally thick, Linda, who has fine blonde hair, often wears clip-in hair extensions. To achieve even more volume and texture, they'll curl or crimp their hair prior to braiding.

Snowy scenes: Linda (pictured here) and Mia photograph their work in their scenic hometown of Mathisdalen

Get the looks: The sisters post how-to videos for some of their detailed styles on their YouTube channel, which has more than 16,000 subscribers

Long and luscious locks: To keep their hair healthy, Linda told FEMAIL that the sisters wash it just once a week with sulfate-free products

Given their impressive level of talent, we weren't surprised to find out that they also take the compelling photos that fill their Instagram feed. The key to nailing the shots, Linda said, is lighting.

'We love to take pictures outside before or after the sun sets because the light is flattering during this time of the day. We also always try to make sure that our backgrounds look nice and are free of clutter.'

To keep their hair photo-ready, Linda said that they both try to only shampoo and condition once a week using products that are sulfate-free.
The meme created by the website Truth Theory labels a peaceful forest an 'antidepressant' and an actual antidepressant as 's**t'

A woman who has struggled with mental illness is hitting back at an 'irresponsible' and 'false' meme that stigmatizes mental disorders by shaming people for taking antidepressants or other medications instead of mediating or embracing nature.

Jenni Chiu, a writer and activist from the San Francisco Bay Area, penned a powerful Facebook post that warns of the dangers of stigmatizing mental illness after she came across a meme that labels a peaceful forest an 'antidepressant' and an actual antidepressant as 's**t'.

'There were several years of my life where I was on a cocktail of meds (prozac was one of them) and they literally kept. me. alive,' she wrote. 'Depression and anxiety are mental illnesses. Not all illness can be cured with fresh air and sunshine.'

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Irresponsible? Writer Jenni Chiu penned a powerful Facebook post that warns of the dangers of stigmatizing mental illness after she came across this meme

Fighting back: The blogger from San Francisco Bay Area argued that she couldn't think of a 'worse way to raise awareness' for mental health issues

Jenni explained that May is Mental Health Awareness month, and she couldn't think of a 'worse way to raise awareness' that with that 'irresponsible image' that she saw posted on the Earth. We are one. Facebook page and created by the site Truth Theory.

'I find the top part of this image to be absolutely true,' she continued. 'Meditating outside, breathing fresh air, taking a break from the blue light of my electronics - that all helps my brain and body tremendously.'

However, Jenni went on to say that she finds the bottom half of the meme 'to be stigmatizing and extremely harmful to those who struggle with mental illness', calling the message 'irresponsible and false'.

Although the self-proclaimed 'tree hugger' said she has felt the positive energy that comes along with spending time in nature, she candidly admits that she has also relied on antidepressants to battle her mental illness.

'Sometimes chemical imbalances in the brain need to be supplemented,' she explained. 'It may not be the answer for everybody, but it is definitely a lifesaver for some.'

Arguing: Although she agrees that meditating helps her mentally and physically, Jenni said it is irresponsible to suggest that nature can replace antidepressants for those suffering from severe mental illness

Ending the stigma: Jenni revealed that she has struggled with mental illness in the past

And while Jenni agreed that it is possible that some medicines are over prescribed and simple lifestyle changes can improve your mental health in some capacity, she argued that you should never describe a drug that 'could keep someone from wanting to die' as 's**t'.

'If you manage your mental illness by taking medication, I am proud of you,' she said.

The Mommy Nani Booboo blogger went on to say that she is also proud of those who are considering talking to their doctors about starting medication, weaning off their prescriptions, or changing medications entirely, as long as they are getting help.

'When you are drowning and someone throws you a life preserver, you take it,' she noted.

She added: 'Anyone telling you not to grab that life preserver is a d**k...and if you accidentally kick them in the face while you're paddling your way out of the stormy waters, no big deal...

Survival method: The writer said the 'cocktail of meds' she was on helped keep her alive

Words of encouragement: Jenni said she is proud of anyone who is trying to overcome his or her mental illness using antidepressants

'Tell them to go stop the bleeding with the warm breeze outside.'

Jenni's message has been shared more than 27,000 times and received thousands of comments, with many praising her for helping to put an end to the stigmatization of mental illness.

Sometimes those "s**t" pills bring you back to where nature means something again. Grateful I had help when I needed it,' Sarah Kirkconnell wrote, while Katherine Pouliot added: 'Nature doesn't cure everything. Wish it did!'

And Micah Enoch Long admitted that Jenni's words actually changed his line of thinking.

Metaphor: The writer compared using antidepressants to being offered a life preserver when you are drowning

Wise words: Jenni's message has been shared more than 27,000 times since it was posted last week

'To be totally honest, I agreed with this meme without really thinking it through,' he wrote. 'Your argument, Jenni, made me think ... I 100 per cent agree with you that if they help someone get through a rough time without killing themselves, they are using them properly.Thanks for that reminder.'

Jenni's message has become so popular that fans asked her to create a corresponding video reiterating the message she wrote in her original post.

The three-minute clip has been viewed more than 26,000 times since it was posted on Friday, and it received similarly positive comments.

'I am in tears watching this. I needed this today, Chantelle Harrison wrote. 'I'm bipolar which requires meds, I have PTSD, anxiety, OCD and fibromaylgia.

'Everyday is a struggle which no one can see, feel or understand. Unless you've been there. My meds allow me to still be here, to fight another day. Thank you. Thank you.'
A 21-year-old groom agonizes over losing his virginity to his 18-year-old bride in a preview for a new series about young married couples.

George, 21, from Riverton, Utah, is one of several stars of FYI's latest series Teenage Newlyweds, which follows him and his bride, 18-year-old Halie from Mesa, Arizona, in the lead up to and early days of their marriage.

In a clip for the debut episode, which airs tonight, George opens up to his friend about 'being intimate' with Halie for the first time as they share a drive, saying that 'sex is a big mystery'.

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Nerves: 21-year-old George from Riverton, Utah, talks about his worries over his wedding night with his bride Halie, 18, from Mesa, Arizona, in a preview clip for FYI show Teenage Newlyweds, which debuts tonight

Talking it out: George talks to his friend during a drive about how he heard that girls 'sometimes' cry after the first time

Young love: Halie, 18, from Mesa, Arizona, pictured on her wedding day with George, 21, decided to marry her husband after spending just two weeks together

'We haven't talked in depth. I'm kind of nervous for that,' the young man explains to his pal.

He adds that: 'The only real sex talks I've had is with my friend who's also getting married who's never had sex.'

George met his bride-to-be during a mission for the Mormon church, and the pair decided to wed after knowing each other just two weeks.

When his friend remarks that the first time having sex is supposed to be 'a huge buzzkill', George responds that: 'I heard sometimes they cry.'

He adds: 'Cause a lot of times it's not what they're expecting.'

But according to his younger bride in the first episode, marriage is simply 'the right thing' for the pair of them.

Talking about how they met in the first episode, The Weddings, Halie said she first met George when he was working as a missionary at her church.

Many questions: George confesses that the only 'real sex talks' he has had have been with a friend 'who's also getting married who's never had sex'

Reality stars: The Mormon couple are one of three on the new FYI television show Teenage Newlyweds, which premieres tonight

Smitten: Halie, pictured, said she first met George when he was working as a missionary at her church

When Halie was in Utah at Christmas, she invited George to dinner with her and her family when she said they 'just kind of clicked'.

She added: 'We spent around two weeks together, I just kind of looked at him one day and I looked at him one day and I said "I kind of want to marry you...

'A big reason we didn't wait to get married, we both wanted it, why would we wait?'

She added: 'There are people who say I'm too young or he's too young. OK, well that's your opinion but we know for us it's the right thing for us.'

However, George admitted that sex was a factor: 'A big part of our religion is that we don't have any sexual relationships outside of marriage...We're young people who like each other a little bit and so things happen...

'People try to put everybody into one category and they try to say there's this age where you're ready to get married, you can't say that. I might not even be ready to be married but you just go for it.'

Since their marriage, which actually occurred in September, Halie and George said they have 'learned a lot'.

'I guess Halie and I dated completely long distance. It was four months of just visiting each other and then we got engaged so we had a lot of getting to know each other to do,' George told Fox411.

Husband and wife: University of California students Brenda, 19, and Travis, 20, pictured on their wedding day, show early signs of friction

Contrasting: The couple, pictured, have differing views on gay marriage and abortion

'We talked a lot but hadn't spent a substantial amount of time together so I've learned a lot about Halie since we get married, about how she handles problems and stress. It's not bad, it's great.'

Halie said married life has been a steep learning curve but that George is 'a lot cleaner' than she had thought he would be.

She said: 'When we were dating, it was kind of just like being on vacation together. But now that we're together all the time, we're working, we have school, and we still have fun together, but we're learning how to handle all these different things going on in our lives.'

One couple featured on the show, University of California students Brenda, 19, and Travis, 20, show early signs of friction over differing views on God, gay marriage and abortion and even go to a marriage counselor.

Meanwhile, Emma and Joey, 19 and 21, from Dallas, Oregon, experience dramas on their wedding day after forgetting their marriage licence and are followed as they look to buy their first home.

In the first episode, Brenda and Travis, who study in Irvine, California, admitted they knew early in their relationship that they had big ideological differences but after one year of dating still decided to get engaged.

He said: 'For them [his parents] the biggest deal was "does she love God?" and that was my biggest deal too.'

Sweethearts: Emma and Joey, 19 and 21, pictured, from Dallas, Oregon, met at high school

Surprise: Joey proposed to Emma, pictured, on her 18th birthday

Committed: Emma, pictured, said she wants to marry him because 'he always makes me laugh' and she has 'always wanted to have a husband'

Travis, who does not believe in sex before marriage, said: 'She's more liberal and I'm more on the conservative side...

'I never thought I'd get married in the middle of college but then if you don't want to have sex until you're married you want to get married.'

In the show they are seen having heated debates about gay marriage and abortion after rape and when they go to counselling after their marriage Travis admits that he threatened to leave Brenda.

Joey proposed to Emma on her 18th birthday after they met at high school.

Emma said she wants to marry him because 'he always makes me laugh' and she has 'always wanted to have a husband'. She added: 'I'm an only child and not a person that likes to be alone.'

Joey, who said they were both virgins when they met, said: 'I want to marry Emma because I don't really like anybody else.'
Overweight patients have caused at least 923 injuries in the last five years (stock image)

At least 1,000 NHS staff have been injured while caring for obese patients in the past five years, new figures show.

The NHS figures, obtained through a Freedom of Information request, showed there were 923 staff who were hurt while caring for obese patients between 2011 and 2015.

Injuries include muscle tears, sprained necks, hernias, slipped discs, kicks to the ribs and trapped fingers.

Hospitals paid tens of thousands of pounds in compensation to workers who sued over injuries.

Among the staff injured were a physiotherapist who won 25,000 after tearing her shoulder while caring for an overweight patient.

Marsha Fernihough, 57, was awarded the payout by Warwickshire NHS primary care trust after suffering a torn shoulder caring for the 20st man.

Another staff member suffered a bruised cheek after they were struck in the face by a 42st patient's stomach while washing them.

And a nurse complained of neck, back and shoulder pain after having to hold a patients large breasts during an ultrasound,The Sun reports.

Elsewhere, an employee at Great Ormond Street Hospital suffered a back injury lifting a 15st child and a nurse was left with back sprain after helping to move a 29st patient for an X-ray.

In another case, a paramedic suffered back strain when trying to get a 25 to 30 stone patient of the back of her ambulance.

She claimed health and safety regulations had been breached by failing to undertake risk assessment from bariatric patients.

They denied liability but later settled for a six-figure sum when she took action through Thompsons solicitors.

It is estimated the true extent of injuries is likely to be much higher as nearly half of the NHS trusts did not record how staff injuries occurred.

Patient related injuries led to four years and seven months being lost in staff sick days, the newspaper reports.

Tam Fry, of the National Obesity Forum, said he was not surprised by the number of injuries to staff but said he was disappointed more preventative measures were not taken.

'Some hospitals have been negligent in trying to get away with using standard equipment for obese people and the result is something is going to snap,' he said.

'These figures should send the NHS into shock.'

Injuries have included neck, back and shoulder tears, slipped discs and hernias and are responsible for four years and seven months being lost in staff sick days

The World Health Organisation has warned obesity levels across Europe are soaring.

Currently 59 per cent of British women are overweight, including 26 per cent who are obese. And 70 per cent of men are overweight, with 26 per cent obese.

Nearly three-quarters of British men and two-thirds of women will be too heavy in the next 15 years.

It is critical that sufficient staff are available to provide the care and treatment bariatric patients require safely and to avoid injuries occurring Steve Tolan, Chartered Society of Physiotherapy

Kim Sunley, of the Royal College of Nursing, said many nurses were taking time off as a result of back problems, caused by patients

'Employers need to ensure staff have the right equipment and training to reduce physical strain particularly since the number of very heavy patients is increasing,' she said.

Steve Tolan, head of practice at the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, said the new figures raised two issues the NHS should address.

'Firstly, it is critical that sufficient staff are available to provide the care and treatment bariatric patients require safely and to avoid injuries occurring,' he said.

'And secondly, it is essential that the NHS invests in preventative services, such as physical activity and weight management programmes, to actively reduce the growing number of people who are becoming obese in the first place.'
A schoolgirl with an 'insect bite' on her face was left fighting for her life after doctors diagnosed it as a rare form of cancer.

Emma Payton, from Stockport, Greater Manchester, developed the lump during a family holiday to Egypt.

Upon arriving home her mother Tracey took her to the GP who believed Emma, who is now 10, had a blocked saliva gland.

But to the family's horror an MRI scan eventually revealed she had rhabdomyosarcoma - a rare soft tissue cancer wrapped around her cheekbone.

Emma Payton, now 10, had a lump on the side of her face which her family believed was an insect bite (left). But scans revealed it was actually a 3cm cancerous tumour wrapped around her cheekbone (right)

Emma had a nine-hour operation to remove the tumour, with part of her cheekbone also removed. She had a bone and muscle graft from her neck to reconstruct her cheek, before undergoing months of chemotherapy

Emma underwent facial surgery - in which part of her cheekbone was cut out and reconstructed - as well as chemotherapy.

However, she also needed proton beam therapy - a type of radiation which can more accurately pinpoint and kill tumours - that is not available in the UK.

As a result, the family were forced to travel to Oklahoma for life-saving treatment.

Mrs Payton, a teaching assistant, said: 'We went on holiday to Egypt when she was eight. On the first day I was putting sun cream on her face and found a lump on her right cheekbone near her ear.

'We didn't think anything of it. She said she had had it for ages and it didn't hurt, so we weren't overly concerned. It was just like an insect bite.

'You couldn't really see it but it was rock hard, like a pebble, the way that swollen insect bites can sometimes be. It was about the size of a marble. I just thought she'd been bitten in the night.'

WHAT IS RHABDOMYOSARCOMA? Fewer than 60 children are diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma in the UK each year. Most of them are younger than 10 years old. It's more common in boys than girls. These tumours develop from muscle or fibrous tissue and can grow in any part of the body. The most common areas of the body to be affected are around the head and neck, the bladder, the testes, the womb or the vagina. Sometimes tumours are also found in a muscle or a limb, in the chest or in the abdominal wall. If the tumour is in the head or neck area, it can occasionally spread into the brain or the fluid around the spinal cord. The causes of rhadomyosarcoma are unknown but research is going on all the time. Children with certain rare genetic disorders, such as Li-Fraumeni syndrome, have a higher risk of developing rhabdomyosarcoma. The most common symptom is a lump or swelling. Source: Macmillan

The family were sent to the GP, who referred them to the dentist.

Then, Emma had an ultrasound at the facial unit at Wythenshawe Hospital, followed by an MRI scan and finally a fine needle biopsy.

Mrs Payton continued: 'It was so rare that it took a while to work out what was wrong with her.

'When we found out it was cancer my legs were like jelly. Emma was outside the room with the play worker when the consultant told us.

'I thought, "No, it can't be. This is our child." My heart broke into a million pieces.'

The tumour was 3cm long and wrapped around her cheekbone when she was diagnosed - but as it had been caught early it hadn't spread to anywhere else in her body yet.

Mrs Payton said Emma was 'petrified' when her family told her she had cancer.

She said: 'I didn't want her to be scared of the word cancer. She is a big Harry Potter fan, so I told her cancer was just a word people are scared of, like Voldemort.'

Emma had a nine-hour operation to remove the tumour, with part of her cheekbone also removed.

She had a bone and muscle graft from her neck to reconstruct her cheek, before undergoing months of chemotherapy.

Mrs Payton said the treatment really took its toll on her daughter.

She said: 'Emma had her operation in January 2014. It left a big scar down the side of her face and she has a dent in her cheek where they removed some muscle mass.

'During chemotherapy, she would sometimes go grey and have no energy.

The operation left a big scar down the side of Emma's face as well as a dent in her cheek where doctors removed some muscle mass

During chemotherapy, Emma lost her hair and and had no energy. Yet she desperately wanted to carry on at school, and managed 54 per cent attendance

'She had to give up swimming lessons and dancing, but she desperately wanted to carry on at school.

'She managed 54 per cent attendance that year.'

After chemotherapy, Emma was told she would need proton beam therapy - and would have to travel to a cancer centre in Oklahoma for the treatment.

Mrs Payton said: 'When we found out she would need to go to Oklahoma, I laughed initially because I thought it was a joke.

'Her criteria ticked all the boxes for the NHS to pay for it, and a charity paid for our flights.'

Mrs Payton says Emma, pictured during treatment, gets embarrassed if people call her brave. She said: 'She sees herself as a normal kid who happened to get cancer. She always just got on with it'

Despite her bravery, Emma sees herself as a normal girl and is now back at school full time doing her SATs. She is pictured receiving a 'Little Stars' award for her bravery (left) and recovered (right)

While conventional radiotherapy uses high energy beams of radiation to destroy cancerous cells, often damaging surrounding tissue, proton beam therapy aims radiation directly at the tumour.

Because it is so highly targeted it means it can avoid healthy tissue, particularly tissues and organs behind the tumour.

Along with her mother, her father Phil, sister Holly and twin brother Ben, she flew to Oklahoma for eight weeks, where she had 23 sessions of the therapy.

Then, she had a two final chemotherapy cycles - and was overjoyed to be declared in remission.

When we found out it was cancer my legs were like jelly. I thought, 'No, it can't be. This is our child.' My heart broke into a million pieces. Tracey Payton

In the cancer centre in Oklahoma, the family were introduced to the tradition of patients ringing a bell when they finished their treatment.

Mrs Payton said: 'There's a poem hanging on the wall next to the bell. It's so moving to see and everyone crowds around.

'Back in Manchester, I showed the ward manager a video of the bell-ringing and asked if we could provide one to them to say thank you.

'We presented it to them on the day Emma finished her treatment in April 2014.'

For the first year after her treatment, Emma had an MRI scan and chest X-ray every three months to check the cancer has not returned - and still has them once every four months.

The family have been sending bells to hospitals around the UK to help other families celebrate the end of their loved ones' treatment.

She said: 'We now sent out 59 bells to hospitals. There are lots in the UK, including six at Great Ormond Street Hospital. It's our way of saying thank you and allowing other patients to celebrate their progress.

'We went to Florida last year with the charity When You Wish Upon a Star.

'It was like a light at the end of the tunnel. Emma's illness had affected the whole family.

'Don't get me wrong, I would sit in the shower and sob, but she never knew that. We never let her see that side of us.'

The lump was discovered while Mrs Payton was putting sun cream on her daughter's face. Thankfully it was caught so early it had not spread. Emma (centre) is pictured with her sister Holly and twin brother Ben

In Oklahoma, where Emma received targeted proton beam therapy treatment not available in the UK she rang a bell at the end of her treatment. Touched by this tradition, she is introducing bells to UK hospitals

Despite her bravery, Emma sees herself as a normal girl and is now back at school full time and doing well, her mother said.

She said: 'Emma gets embarrassed about it now, if people tell her she is amazing or brave. She sees herself as a normal kid who happened to get cancer. She always just got on with it.

'She's just completed her year six SATs and is doing well. She knows children who have died of cancer, so she knows her own situation could have been very different.

'But she is so active and just loves life.'
She later needed major reconstructive surgery to rebuild her nose

Salve ate away at her nose and left her with a huge unsightly crater

Decided to use black salve - an alternative therapy - instead of surgery

Woman was diagnosed with a treatable skin cancer on her nose

A woman was left with a huge gaping hole in her nose after using an alternative treatment she thought would would cure her skin cancer.

A truly gruesome video documents what happens after she rubbed black salve - an ointment which burns and destroys skin tissue - onto her face and forehead.

Within a few days of applying the paste, horrifying inch-wide black and green scabs appeared as the salve ate away at the skin.

She was left with an unsightly crater in her nose - through which she could draw air - and needed major reconstructive surgery to rebuild it.

An unnamed woman has shared the horrific photographs of what happened after she used an alternative treatment called black salve to treat her skin cancer (left). Giant black and green scabs formed on her face where the paste ate away at her skin, eventually leaving her with huge craters in her face and needing surgery

The video was created by World's Greatest Medical who came across the woman after she shared her story on an internet forum discussing remedies for skin cancer.

Since it was uploaded to their channel in March it has been viewed by more than three-and-a-half million people.

Black salve is a paste is used on moles, scars and skin cancer that was popular in the early 1900s.

It contains sanguinarine  derived from bloodroot  and is often mixed with zinc chloride, working as a corrosive.

The product is commonly classified as an escharotic - a paste which burns and destroys skin tissue and leaves behind a thick, black scar called an eschar.

The U.S.Food and Drug Administration has listed it as a 'fake cancer treatment' and is actively trying to ban it.

WHAT IS BLACK SALVE? Black salve is a paste is used on moles, scars and skin cancer that was popular in the early 1900s. It contains sanguinarine  derived from bloodroot  and is often mixed with zinc chloride, working as a corrosive. The product is commonly classified as an escharotic - a topical paste which burns and destroys skin tissue and leaves behind a thick, black scar called an eschar. The U.S.Food and Drug Administration has listed the product as a 'fake cancer treatment' and is actively trying to ban it. In the UK, the British Skin Foundation says there is 'no evidence' black salve can treat skin cancer.

In the UK, the British Skin Foundation says there is 'no evidence' black salve can treat skin cancer.

Writing in an internet forum discussing cancer treatment, the women said had been diagnosed with a basal cell carcinoma, the most frequently occurring type of skin cancer.

It is highly treatable and hardly ever deadly - and she was advised she needed Mohs micrographic surgery.

This is a technique where the thin layers of the tumour are progressively removed until only cancer-free tissue remains.

But worried the procedure would leave her with scarring, the woman decided to opt out and 'go the natural route' by using black salve instead.

She said: 'I applied to nose, and to forehead, where I knew I had another undiagnosed spot.

'I knew what it was as it felt and behaved just like my prior two basal cell carcinomas.'

A few days later she reported her face had swelled up and sought advice on the same forum.

She said: 'I looks like a boxer at the end of a long fight.My left eye is almost swelled shut. Is this normal?'

The woman was left with a gaping crater in her nose and her nasal cartilage visible after applying the paste

She added she was in so much agony she has to take ibuprofen as well as the hydrocodone - a strong prescribed painkiller - she was already taking regularly.

She said: 'I was getting worried about so much swelling, wondering if I need to succumb to a "real" doctor to make sure it's not an allergic reaction?'

A few days later she shared a photograph in which huge black scabs had appeared on her nose and forehead where she had applied the salve.

I am sickened and freaked out. The salve went completely through my nose down to my nasal passages

In one picture - not for the squeamish - she can be seen pulling the scab away from her nose as it has come loose.

She said: 'Unfortunately, I must be of those cases that ends up with a much worse case than most people experience.

'The eschar is still attached to my nose, but it's loose enough that tonight, I could pull the top part away enough to see that my worst fear/outcome is going to be my reality.

Three weeks after applying the salve, the black scab has fallen off her nose, leaving her with a gaping pit in her face, through which she could draw air.

She said: 'I can see my nose cartilage underneath the eschar, and I can even pull air through the top/front area of my nose if I completely clog my nostrils.

The woman said: 'It's going to be an open PIT, exposing my nasal cartilage and nasal passages to the WORLD!!! What do I do now?'

The woman had major reconstructive surgery to repair her nose, and shared the shocking image of the result

'To put it bluntly, there is no skin left under the eschar to regenerate NEW SKIN outward from the center of the eschar pit???!!

'It's going to be an open PIT, exposing my nasal cartilage and nasal passages to the WORLD!!! What do I do now?'

She said she was 'sickened and freaked out' and regretted her decision to use black salve.

'Yes, I have had the 'Holy ****, what have I done??!! thought...) I'm past it, because what's done is done. I have to move forward now,' she said.

'Understandably, as you can imagine, I am sickened and freaked out by my personal revelation tonight - that the salve went completely through my nose down to my nasal passages....'

The woman was forced to have major reconstructive surgery to repair the massive hole in her nose, and shared the shocking image of the result in the forum.

Despite losing half her nose, it is not clear if the cancer remains or if it was removed.

Previously, dermatologists have warned black salve is dangerous - and doesn't cure skin cancer as the cells are likely to return.

Dr Erin McMeniman, a dermatologist in Brisbane said: I think black salve is used a lot more commonly than we realise.

Patients are often quite secretive about where they get it from, but dermatologists often end up seeing cases where there are major complications.
A Star Trek-style vision system is to be tested on patients in Europe who have lost their sight.

The technology is based on a technique known as 'neuromodulation' in which electricity from a chip stimulates the nervous system to restore sight.

The revolutionary system, called Iris II, is being commercialised by French company Pixium Vision.

Today, it was announced that regulators have been granted permission for the trial to go ahead on 10 patients at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London.

Other trials of the system are taking place in France, Germany and Austria.

The British study will include patients suffering from the conditions retinitis pigmentosa (RP), Usher syndrome, cone-rod dystrophy, and choroideremia, all of which can lead to blindness.

Scroll down for video

Goggles that could help the blind see have come a step closer to reality. The technology is based on a technique known as 'neuromodulation' in which electricity stimulates the nervous system to restore sight.

The technology is based on a technique known as 'neuromodulation' in which electricity from a chip stimulates the nervous system to restore sight

Consultant ophthalmologist Dr Mahi Muqit, who is leading the Moorfields trial, said: 'We are excited to participate in the clinical trial of Iris II and be the first site in the UK.

'Patients with RP can now benefit from a new choice of retinal implant that may potentially further improve visual outcomes.

A number of competing retinal implant systems are being developed by private companies and institutions around the world.

At the heart of Iris II is a small silicon chip with 150 electrodes that is implanted on to the retina.

A video camera integrated into goggles sends images to a smartphone-sized portable computer, which converts them to electrical signals.

These are transmitted wirelessly to the implant which in turn stimulates the optic nerve.

HOW DOES IT WORK? A surgeon first implants a small silicon chip with 150 electrodes on the retina. When the patient puts on the system's dark glasses, an integrated video camera sends images to a portable computer. A connected 'pocket processor' converts that recording into an infrared image, which the goggles will then beam into the eye. Pulses activate electrodes in the implant, and the optic nerve carries images to the brain.

After surgery, patients have to learn to use the system, but with practice are able to see black, white and grey shapes.

No starting date has yet been set for the trial, which has been approved by UK medical device regulators the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

Retinal implants that restore some sight when in the blind are already available, but their quality isn't good enough to work in many real-world conditions.

Pixium Vision's solution, however, claims it has been able to restore the sight of rats to a level equivalent to 20/250.

This would allow the wearer to see the largest line of letters in an opticians test.

The company claims it may be able to get its final product to restore vision to 20/120, which would be a huge leap forward in vision quality.

A surgeon first implants a small silicon chip with 150 electrodes on the retina. When the patient puts on the system's dark glasses, an integrated video camera sends images to a portable computer. A connected 'pocket processor' convert that recording into an infrared image, which the goggles will then beam into the eye

A new trial of the system is due to begin next year by Australias Bionic Vision. The cost for the system is expected to be around 100,000 euros (72,000 or $111,200), plus surgery

Second Sight, the company that got FDA approval for the first visual prosthesis two years ago, currently offers patients about 20/1300 vision.

To use the gadget a surgeon must first implant a small silicon chip with 150 electrodes on the retina.

When the patient puts on the system's dark glasses, an integrated video camera sends images to a portable computer.

A connected 'pocket processor' converts that recording into an infrared image, which the goggles will then beam into the eye.

Pulses activate the electrodes in the implant, and the optic nerve carries the images back to the brain.

Following surgery, patients have to train their brains to interpret the new images, which are seen in variations of back, white and grey.
Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu will return to the upper house from Andhra Pradesh

The BJP has ensured Rajya Sabha berths for the high-performing ministers in PM Narendra Modi's government.

Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu will return to the upper house from Andhra Pradesh, as the BJP has been assured support from its ally the Telugu Desam Party (TDP).

BJP office-bearer Anil Jain has lost his Rajya Sabha berth to journalist MJ Akbar, who will come from Madhya Pradesh.

Manic Monday for telecom ministry

Telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had a busy Monday as he addressed a presser and also had a meeting with India-born CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella.

Nadella had to wait for the meeting in the evening as the minister was addressing the press conference to highlight the achievements of his ministry.

Nadela also called on PM Narendra Modi and discussed partnership initiatives like Digital India.

Sonia to take a call on Gogoi

Sonia Gandhi is expected to take a final call on whether to name former three-term Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi as Congress legislative party leader in the new assembly.

State in-charge CP Joshi has met the 26 newly-elected lawmakers of the party and has given his report to Sonia, said sources.

Since the Congress lost Assam to BJP, there have been murmurs of protests, suggesting change in the state unit.

Congress planning session in June

After its recent rout in the Kerala and Assam elections, the Congress may hold a brainstorming session in June to prepare a plan for the road ahead.

The session could be held in Himachal Pradesh or Uttarakhand.

A tactical re-think has been called for in party circles since the 2014 Lok Sabha polls in which the Congress was reduced to just 44 seats in a House of 543.

Kejriwal looks to Japan for help

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not the only one to take Japanese help to acquire trains on elevated rails - Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal has now followed suit.

On Monday the Japanese ambassador to India, Kenji Hiramatsu, was at Delhi Secretariat to discuss common ground between Delhi and Japan.

The focus was on creating Dedicated Elevated Bus Corridors in the city to ease traffic congestion.
The Modi government is making arrangements to courier sacred Gangajal (Ganga water) to people's doorsteps.

India Post, the countrys oldest courier service run by the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, could soon offer subscribers the option of dispatching Ganga Jal by postman.

Telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, who rolled out the plan, said that the department of posts can also use e-commerce platforms to send Ganga Jal.

Holy water: BJP spokesperson Anil Baluni said Ganga jal "is in huge demand in Indian families".

I used to get several requests asking me if with the vast network of India Post, Ganga water could be delivered at doorsteps. I have directed the Department of Posts to utilise the e-commerce platform and make arrangements for providing pure Gangajal from Haridwar, Rishikesh to people. They have assured me that they will take proactive steps to address this cultural need, Prasad said.

The holy initiative by the ministry has received huge applause.

BJP spokesperson Anil Baluni, who belongs to Uttarakhand (where the Ganga originates), welcomed the proposal.

This is a very welcome initiative by the ministry. Ganga jal is in huge demand in Indian families. But many people could not source it from Rishikesh or Haridwar. Now, with this initiative, even people at faraway places would be able to get the holy water.

The minister said parcel revenue at post offices has increased by 80 per cent during the NDA regime by delivering e-commerce products.

If a postman can deliver mobile phones, sarees, jewellery, apparels, then why not Ganga water?

Prasad said that even the CAG has said in its report that the Speed Post courier service of the Indian Post is the best courier service in the country.

He added that the department's speed post revenue has increased from Rs 1,372 crore in 2013-14 to Rs 1,600 crore in 2015-16, and cash on delivery collections for e-commerce parcels has increased from Rs 100 crore to Rs 1300 crore in the same period.

Speaking about the efforts of India Post in the banking sector, Prasad said: Today, core banking network of post offices is more than that of State Bank of India. SBI has 1,666 core banking branches while 22,137 post offices now have core banking facility, Prasad said.

Prasad said the ministry is determined to empower postmen working in both rural and urban areas.

By the end of this year all postmen in urban centres will be given smartphones, and hand-held devices will be provided to postmen in 1.3 lakh rural post offices by March 2017. Four thousand hand-held devices have already been given. This move will help in financial inclusion. It will be a moving ATM. Postmen of urban centres will get smartphones. We will provide (smartphones) by end of this year, Prasad said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modis ambitious bullet train project between Mumbai and Ahmedabad could be built on a fully-elevated corridor, it has emerged.

For this to happen, the Japanese consultants will need to give the go-ahead to the Rail Bhavans request for a route review before work begins.

Top Rail Bhavan officials confirmed that the Indian government wants the entire 508-km corridor to be built on an elevated stretch to avoid any legal and environmental hurdles over land acquisition.

Shinkansen bullet trains are considered to be among the fastest in the world

PM Modi, who has been pushing his ministers to speed up the big-ticket projects, has encountered legal barriers in several states.

Top Railway Board officials told Mail Today that anticipating a possible derailment of the bullet train project because of legal issues, they have asked the Japanese government to "revise and reassess the feasibility of doing away with constructing the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail (HSR) link on embankment and building it entirely on an elevated corridor".

The government wants to know the cost implications of this idea.

A senior Railway Board official said: Constructing the elevated corridor will save the Centre the hassle of land acquisition. For an elevated corridor, compensation amount to land owners will be little. Also, it will ensure speedy execution of the project.

More than 440 rail projects have already been stuck over land acquisition. According to a CAG report of 2015, this has resulted in cost over-run of Rs 1.07 lakh crore.

The Railways also faced major hurdles in acquiring land for its ambitious dedicated freight corridors, which will significantly decongest the railway network and increase the speed of passenger trains.

Rail Minister Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu has announced that the bullet train will start running in 2023. But if both the Indian and Japanese governments agree to the idea of an elevated corridor, the deadline could also be advanced, say Rail Bhavan officials.

The Detailed Project Report (DPR) submitted by Japan to the Rail Ministry has proposed that 25 per cent of the construction should be an elevated corridor, with 64 per cent of the work on the surface (mostly embankments), and 6 per cent as tunnels. This includes the 21-km under-sea tunnel between Thane creek and Virar in Mumbai.

However, the rail ministry has proposed to the Japanese government that it might explore the feasibility of converting the entire route running through 12 stations into an elevated corridor.

If the Japanese authorities find the proposal feasible, the DPR will be revised, an official said.

The difference in the project cost would only be Rs 7,000 to Rs 8,000 crore. Construction of the elevated corridor will be costlier per km, but the government may save on the cost of land acquisition and delay overruns."

India is also closely watching China, which has managed to bring down its construction costs by going elevated. To put the project in the fast lane, the Rail Bhavan is also urging its Japanese counterparts to appoint a design consultant soon.

According to the MoU between India and Japan, the loan agreement will be signed by December 2016, after which Japan will go ahead with fund disbursal by mid-2017.

The appointment of design and general consultants for the project can only happen after that.

The construction work is scheduled to begin by 2018. But the Railways officials are in no mood to sit idle for nearly a year.

India has asked Japan to appoint the consultants before the loan agreement is signed and facilitate a grant of Rs 1,500 crore towards fees (the total consultancy charge being nearly Rs 3,000 crore) for consultants to get the work started. This will advance work by at least a year.

The pressure to save time is also because the project is not without a few engineering challenges.

Pioneering projects like the Kashmir Rail Link had posed many problems, delaying them by years. Railway officials on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad HSR route are readying for a similar challenge in constructing the undersea tunnel in Mumbai. But this time, India has with it Japanese experience and expertise in constructing tunnels under the seabed.
On the night of January 15, 2014, former Delhi law minister and AAP leader Somnath Bharti raided the house of some Ugandan women in Malviya Nagar in order to bust a drug and prostitution ring.

That is when the national Capital made global headlines and earned widespread infamy for being racist.

In the past week that title has come back to haunt Delhi, with people of African origin seething in pain and anguish over the recent turn of events.

Relatives of Congolese national Masonda Ketada Olivier, who was allegedly beaten to death, leave the Delhi Embassy of the Democratic Republic of the Congo

The brutal murder of a young Congolese man, Masonda Ketada Olivier, in Vasant Kunj on May 20 and subsequent attacks on Africans have jolted the otherwise shy and inhibited community.

However, the MEA has promised the family of the Congolese national a speedy trial in the case and the prosecution of all those responsible for the crime.

This was conveyed by a senior official of the External Affairs Ministry (MEA), who met Olivier's family members at the airport on their arrival.

He also informed them that the government of India will bear all expenses related to transporting Olivier's mortal remains, MEA spokesperson Vikas Swarup said.

He said that the bereaved family have thanked the Indian government for its assistance.

They were told that External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has ordered a speedy trial in the case.

The Indian government has promised Masonda's family speedy justice in the wake of his shocking murder

As of now, Swaraj and her office are busy trying to soothe the African embassies. But there is no consoling the Africans living in Delhi, who are facing daily harassment on the streets.

Ingim Dozie, a 30-year-old saloon owner in Mehrauli, has been living in Delhi since 2013. The Nigerian moved to get treatment for his grandmother, who is a severe diabetic.

I still havent been able to adjust myself to the whistles, hoots and racial slurs, which are hurled on us time and again, he says.

Only a few days back, I was walking towards my shop, which is in a dark alleyway. Some men began laughing and calling me, habshi. I was later told its the Hindi word for monkey.

One of his customers, Jave from Cameroon, faced a similar harrowing experience.

I was on my way to Hauz Khas. A woman and her child were approaching the road from the other side. Both looked at me with fearful eyes. Then the lady stooped and said something in her sons ear, after which he started running away from me. I have no idea what she told him.

I am sad to see children being fed with lies and rumours about us. We are human beings. We dont eat babies or kidnap them. Why do you have to poison their minds? said the anguished 20-year-old.

Another recurrent problem is being friends with Indian women.

A large number of Africans used to live in Khirki village, South Delhi - but many from the community have migrated elsewhere thanks to negative attention (Picture for representation)

Gotham from Tanzania says: I was beaten up for just smiling and saying hello to a local woman. We have known each other as neighbours for some time and she had no objections. Nobody even asked her if she had a complaint. I was just punched in my face.

He added: African people are an open society. We dont segregate our women as another race. I am not sure why Indian men behave like this.

In Khirki Village and Extension, south Delhi, where AAPs ex-law minister conducted his midnight raid, most Africans have left.

A storeowner, Ajay Saini, said: Earlier, they were all over. There was a street named Nigerian Gali, because of their dominating presence. Now, 90 per cent of them have left. They have all dispersed to Sangam Vihar, Neb Sarai, and other areas.

But not everyone agrees the African fraternity are victims.

Local businessman Ajay Gautam heartily praises Bharti's actions, and condemns the media for portraying the incident in a biased manner.

We were the victims here, he insists.

They would party all night and play loud music. We have seen them carrying packets of white powder, most certainly drugs; their women would be out in skimpy clothes at 2am. There is a vast difference in their culture and ours. How do you expect us to tolerate this?

The few remaining African women have a different story, however.

Rose Dungham said: I have changed my dressing habits. I understand sensitivities. But I suppose the taunts dont depend on the clothes I wear. They are mostly because of my black skin colour.
When Amy Gault needed to change the name on a plane ticket, she expected to pay a small admin fee.

But she never dreamed Flybe would try to charge her 329 - more than double what she had paid for the flight in the first place.

Amy, her husband Marcus, and their two children, Dorothy, 13, and George, 11, had been invited to stay in a villa near Bordeaux in France for a week in July by another family who have two sons.

Shocked: The Gault family from Banbury, Oxfordshire, were outraged at the cost of changing a name on a flight

Worried her daughter would be lonely without another girl to play with, Amy told Dorothy she could bring a friend from school. Then, in February, she booked five tickets from Birmingham to Bordeaux at 160 per person.

However, earlier this month her daughter fell out with her friend. To avoid any awkwardness, Amy decided the best thing to do was to refund the friend who no longer wanted to go, let Dorothy invite someone else and change the name on the flight.

In the small print of her booking confirmation it said Flybe would charge a 40 admin fee to change a name on a ticket - 80 for a return flight.

Amy, 43, a beautician from Banbury, Oxfordshire, says: 'It wasn't ideal, but no parent wants to take a miserable child on holiday. I thought I'd just have to pay the 80 and be done with it.'

But when Amy called to update the details on the ticket, she was told she would have to pay 329 to change the name.

As well as the 80 admin fee, Flybe wanted an extra 249 because the airfares had increased since she first booked her tickets three months earlier, and she had to cover the difference.

When Amy wrote to Flybe to demand an explanation, the airline replied saying: 'In order to make a name change on the booking, the process we need to follow is to delete the existing passenger from the list and to book new flights for the new person.

'Therefore, fares between the flights differ, as we take the prices from the fare based on the day of the amendment.'

It added: 'The procedure for a name change is complicated and, most of the time, an expensive process, as each person who is booked on to the flight needs to pay separately all of the taxes. Additionally, we need to avoid frauds of any kind which this process can cause.'

Fees: Flybe wanted an extra 249 because the airfares had increased since Amy first booked her tickets

Amy claims the entire process took under ten minutes.

She says: 'I am just so disgusted. I don't care if it is somewhere buried in the terms and conditions.

'I fail to understand how they can justify charging 329 when it's the same seat, just with a different bottom on it.'

But eye-watering fees for changing the name on a plane ticket are not uncommon. Most airlines allow passengers to correct minor spelling mistakes or typos on tickets free of charge.

You are also typically given a grace period of around 24 to 48 hours after you have booked to change the name on a ticket.

But after this, if you want to transfer a plane ticket into someone else's name, it becomes very expensive.

Some airlines - British Airways, for example - will not allow you to transfer a ticket to a different person at all.

You have to cancel the ticket and rebook - and hope the airline takes pity on you and refunds some of the money you have paid.

Others, such as budget airlines Jet2, Monarch and Ryanair, allow you to change the name on a ticket but charge 70, 100 and 110 respectively for a return journey.

Some airlines, including Jet2 and Flybe, then also charge passengers extra if fares have gone up since they originally booked their ticket.

This is where it can start to get incredibly expensive, as Amy found out.

For example, say you booked flights costing 200. A month later someone in your party drops out and you want to change the name on their ticket.

If the price has risen just 10 per cent, you'd have to pay the difference of 20 plus the fixed admin fee. However, if prices fall you don't get a refund.

Airlines argue that high admin fees and extra charges for price changes are vital in discouraging touts. If the cost of changing a name was low, customers could simply buy cheap tickets in bulk and sell them on at a premium without penalty.

Airlines also claim they have to make costly security checks on every customer booked to fly - and if the passenger changes they have to do these checks again.

Bob Atkinson, travel expert at price comparison website TravelSupermarket, says: 'How airlines can justify completely different and varying charges in the modern day is unacceptable.

'Airlines should all have a clear policy of allowing minor and obvious name changes for errors within a short window of making the booking, free of charge.

'Past that, a small fee to change the passenger name along with any difference in the fare is reasonable to protect the airline from those looking to make money from ticket purchases.'

A spokesperson for Flybe says: 'This rule is in place to prevent individuals not licensed to sell air tickets buying the lowest fares in advance and selling them on illegally for a higher fare for profit.

'An individual name or itinerary change requires a substantial amount of manual work both by the call centre and our back office departments.'
Approach: RIT is chaired by Lord Rothschild

Shares in investment giant Alliance Trust have jumped after yesterday revealing it has been approached by a rival about a possible tie-up.

The Dundee-based company said Jacob Rothschilds RIT Capital Partners has approached with an informal proposal for a merger of the two companies.

RIT is chaired by Lord Rothschild, the fourth baron of the Rothschild family, which owns 21 per cent of the firm.

In early trading this morning, Alliance Trust shares were 3.6 per cent, or 18.5p higher at 527.0p.

RIT Capital shares were down 1,2 per cent, or 20p at 1,599p.

RIT Capital said today that the discussions over a merger are at a 'preliminary stage'.

The company said: 'The possibility of combining the two companies for the benefit of both sets of shareholders is at a very preliminary stage of consideration.

'Further analysis and discussion will determine whether such an outcome is indeed in the best interests of shareholders and can be achieved.'

Combined, the two investment trusts would be worth 5billion and would manage more than 5billion of savers cash. Alliance manages 2.7 billion of assets while RIT Capital Partners manages about 2.4 billion.

Alliance Trust yesterday told shareholders that an unsolicited approach had been received but that no detailed terms had yet been provided about a potential deal.

The 128-year-old investment company also revealed that it had called in advisers for a strategic review of the company, following a number of significant changes which have already taken place.

Alliance Trust has been under pressure from activist investors who have criticised its performance and the pay packets of senior staff.

Following pressure from activists, including US-based Elliott Advisors, the trust underwent a change of leadership with chief executive Katherine Garrett-Cox stepping down earlier this year.

Alliance said it is undergoing a review to continue the process of development. In a statement it said: The company wishes to thoroughly explore all options available to it for the long-term benefit of shareholders and therefore expects the strategic review outcome may not be determined for some months.

It added: The board will incorporate any formal merger proposal received from RIT into its strategic review, alongside the other options being considered.

Alliance Trust said that following the approach it is now in an offer period so will suspend share buy backs. Under the City Code on Takeovers and Mergers, RIT Capital Partners has 28 days  until June 27  to announce a firm intention to make an offer.
There is a prize more cherished by the EU remain camp than any celebrity endorsement or statistic purporting to show Brexit would trigger an apocalypse. Its the elusive younger voter.

While 18-34 year olds are least likely to vote of any age group, if they did they would be most likely to vote to remain, polls suggest.

The latest from Ipsos Mori found 68 per cent of young people were in favour of remaining, versus 42 per cent of over 65s.

The desperate scramble for youth votes has led in the past week to desperate pleas from David Cameron, Sadiq Khan  and a cringe-worthy advert telling young people to take time out of ravin, chattin and roamin to try out some votin.

Voter turnout has plummeted among younger votes but has remained steady among over 65s, the figures from the British Election Study reveal

But since when have young people not voted?

Throughout history students have so often been behind major political change: the angry ones fighting for reform, protesting, leading riots, still imbued with the idealism that can often be eroded over time.

Does that zeal not translate into voter turnout, is the decline in young voters a recent phenomenon - or is my view a total misconception in the first place?

Voting figures shed some light. Although there are no official figures for turnout by age group, there is a long-running academic survey by the British Election Study, which provides reasonably consistent survey-based data from 1964 onwards.

I compared the turnout figures for 18-24 year olds against those for voters aged 65 plus.

They reveal that older people have always been a bit more likely to vote. However what it surprising is how much starker this divide has become in recent years.

In 1992, turnout for younger versus older voters was 67.3 per cent versus 79.2 per cent. Then in 1997  the year of the New Labour landslide  the youth vote fell off a cliff with the turnout of just 54.1 per cent while the older vote remained reasonably buoyant at 77.7 per cent.

The youth vote has been low ever since, while the turnout of older voters has remained steady.

So what has gone wrong?

A former researcher for the think tank the IPPR believes its the product of a vicious cycle.

Young people dont see things in the political system that serve them in some way and so they are less likely to vote, he says.

Then politicians know that younger people are less likely to vote, so they are less likely to come up with policy directed towards them. And so it continues.

A study from the IPPR of the 2010 spending review found that those who did not vote in the 2010 general election faced cuts worth 20 per cent of their annual household income, compared to 12 per cent of those who did not vote.

It found 16-24 year olds faced cuts to services worth 28 per cent of their annual household income, compared to ten per cent for those aged 55-74.

Seen in this light it may come as no surprise that tuition fees have been rising as pensioners have enjoyed a 'triple lock' on their state pensions, and non means-tested benefits such as free public transport, TV licence and cash towards energy bills.

Professor of British Politics at Cardiff University Pete Dorey adds that voting is often a matter of habit, one that is much more likely to be instilled in older generations. For an older person who always votes, it is less of an effort or decision to do so in any particular election.

Cringin: The advertising campaign designed to encourage young people to vote to remain in the EU referendum

He adds: Younger people are more likely to be disillusioned with politics and less likely to identify with a mainstream party than older voters.

They also might not feel some of the key issues are as relevant to them yet  such as taxation, or health or pensions.

Surveys often show that older voters in general have greater loyalty to a particular party  theyve found a party allegiance and require less of a compulsion therefore to go out and vote for them.

Poll Would Britain be better off in or out of the EU? In Out Would Britain be better off in or out of the EU? In 16244 votes

Out 60553 votes Now share your opinion





He speculates that the decline in younger votes in 1997 could have been because Tony Blair's victory looked like such a dead cert that those not in the habit of voting might not have felt the need to make an especial effort to do so.

He adds that it is understandable the referendum camps will try to target these voters but the danger is that they feel theyre being 'patronised by grown-ups' if theyre singled out in that way.

And what about the angry, young people  am I just harking back to a golden age that no longer exists?

Glenn Gottfried at Ipsos Mori suggests that that age may not even have existed. There was an interesting study a few years ago that showed young people were less likely to support the Vietnam war than older people.'

Perhaps the politically active do exist, but that stereotype masks the overwhelming norm. There will be a proportion of 18-24 year olds who are, but their peer group as a whole just isnt,' Gottfried adds.

However the historical voting data shows that although theres always been a gap between younger and older voters, it was never this bad.
A palatial three floor condominium is to become Manhattan's most expensive home, retailing at a staggering $250 million.

The 220 Central Park South apartment has 16 bedrooms, 17 bathrooms, five balconies and a massive terrace.

The enormous condo will encompass floors 50 through 53 and will span 23,000 square feet, according to The Real Deal.

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Billionar's Row: A luxury 90-floor apartment skyscraper called 'One57,' left, rises above all other buildings overlooking Central Park, while a crane sits atop ongoing construction for a new condominium skyscraper at 220 Central Park South

Uptown luxury: Those prices eclipse a previous, high-profile sale of $88 million for a penthouse just a walk away at 15 Central Park West

The novelty is the prestige of living in sleek, breathtaking skyscrapers with 360-degree views of New York City

Other penthouses lie on the 45th and 46th floors and will be selling for $100 million each.

The Robert A.M. Stern-designed limestone tower now has 116 units including 116 units that range from $1.35 million to $3.76 million.

A swath of new multi million dollar 'trophy apartments' are springing up along Central Park South, now Manhattan's most salubrious street, dubbed 'billionaire's row'.

The line up of a half-dozen new superluxury skyscrapers are home to some of the world's most expensive apartments.

One penthouse on the 89th and 90th floors of a skyscraper near Carnegie Hall that went for more than $100 million seems almost a bargain compared to what will appear next year in a high-rise being built on Central Park South: a 23,000-square-foot, four-story apartment offered at $250 million.

The multi-million dollar question is: Who can afford to buy these places?

'These are the trophy buildings of our era, and the foreign buyer clearly fuels this very, very high-end condominium tower market,' says John Burger, a broker for such properties with the Brown Harris Stevens real estate firm.

The novelty is the prestige of living in sleek, breathtaking skyscrapers with 360-degree views of New York City, thanks to advanced engineering that allows residential buildings to stay skinny while soaring to dizzying heights.

Coming in 2018 is the Central Park Tower at 111 West 57th St., which at 1,438 feet aims to become the tallest residential edifice in the western hemisphere.

The 54-story tower at 520 Park Ave.  also set for a 2018 completion  will be what its architect, Robert A.M. Stern, describes as 'an elegant spear of asparagus rising out of the ground.'

On the financial front, such properties often serve as a 'safe haven' for investors from turbulent regions of the world with shaky economies, says Richard Jordan, vice president of global markets for Douglas Elliman, New York's largest residential real estate brokerage.

Several real estate experts credit former billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg (pictured left with partner Diana Taylor) for pushing city rezoning laws that allowed these to be built in previously restricted areas.

Stunning views: These properties are helping push up already record-breaking real estate prices, with a current average of $2 million for a Manhattan apartment.

'They believe in the U.S. market, they love New York and they like privacy,' Jordan says.

Other global buyers consider these properties as 'the new Swiss bank account'  a discreet, private way of stashing away a fortune, says Burger.

The $250 million mansion in the Manhattan sky is the prize property in the 70-story building that is still under construction at 220 Central Park South.

Monthly common charges will be more than $45,000, with annual taxes of about $675,000, the documents show.

For most New Yorkers, there's a downside to the exclusive real estate phenomenon. These properties are helping push up already record-breaking real estate prices, with a current average of $2 million for a Manhattan apartment.

The most expensive New York condo went for $100.5 million in 2014  the penthouse in the 90-story One57 high-rise where many owners are wealthy Russians.

Other residents at 15 Central Park West include Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein (right) also lived at 15 Central Park West and Sanford Weill (left with wife Joan) sold his $88 million penthouse there to a Russian mogul

Those prices eclipse a previous, high-profile sale of $88 million for a penthouse just a walk away at 15 Central Park West.

That was sold in 2012 to a Russian mogul by Sanford Weill, the American financier and philanthropist who had purchased the apartment four years earlier for half that. Other residents included Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez.

'That $88 million sale triggered the sense that there was this yet-to-be-harvested, nine-digit New York housing market,' says Jonathan Miller, an independent appraiser. 'We started to see a frenzy of $100 million listings  what I call aspirational pricing.'

In addition, new high-rises are even sprouting in Queens and Brooklyn. Several real estate experts credit former billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg for pushing city rezoning laws that allowed these to be built in previously restricted areas.
A man who murdered his parents is set to inherit half of their $1.1 million estate.

Brett Anthony Smith, 35, bludgeoned his father, Coles executive Michael John Smith, and his mother Kim Melina Smith, to death at their home in Vermont, Melbourne, in December 2011.

This week the Victorian Supreme Court ruled that Smith would inherit half of his parents' fortune as he was found not-guilty of their murder due to mental impairment, The Australian reported.

Brett Anthony Smith murdered his parents in their home (pictured) in December 2011

Michael Smith (pictured left and right) and his wife Kim were found dead in their home in Melbourne's east still wearing their pyjamas December 2011. Their son Brett was found not guilty due to mental impairment

Smith suffers from from chronic paranoid schizophrenia, and is in the Thomas Embling mental facility in Melbourne.

In their wills, Mr and Mrs Smith had split their estate between their two children, Brett and his sister Alexis.

The case was before the court after Smith's former partner Kylie Burgess applied on behalf of their daughter Nikita, seven, for the estate.

Smith had been fighting to keep his daughter from inheriting the money and intended to leave her the estate when he died, saying his daughter had 'no special relationship' with her grandparents.

The Victorian Supreme Court (pictured) has ruled Smith will inherit half of their $1.1million estate

Ms Burgess testified that her daughter did in fact share a close relationship with them and said they had bought Nikita clothing and visited their Ocean Grove home when they moved away from Smith.

But due to the 'on and off' relationship between Smith and Ms Burgess they had never actually lived in the same house, The Australian reported.

Smith agreed to compromise with his sister, Alexis, which gave Nikita a small sum of the estate in exchange for avoiding an expensive trial.

The question of whether Smith should inherit the estate came before Victorian Supreme Court last week after his former partner, Kylie Burgess, applied on behalf of their daughter, Nikita, seven

The 35-year-old was diagnosed with chronic paranoid schizophrenia and refused to believe his parents had died at the time of his trial in 2013  telling doctors he was in regular contact with them, according to The Australian.

Smith was judged capable of understanding and participating in this case unlike his trial in 2013 when he was found unfit.

At the time Smith had believed his chromosomes were unique and that he had holy blood.

He had also believed the trial was a conspiracy planned by his parents who were both terrorists, reported The Age.
There was an outbreak in 2014 that began with an infected child at Disneyland that led to 140 confirmed cases but no deaths

A woman in Washington died from measles last spring, the first death from the disease in the US for 12 years

who was already vaccinated that first caught the disease from the infected inmate

An outbreak of measles that began with an inmate at a federal detention center for immigrants in central Arizona has now grown to 11 confirmed cases.

Seven of those infected are inmates at the Eloy Detention Center, and four are workers at the facility, Pinal County Health Services spokesman Joe Pyritz said.

The privately-run facility has stopped accepting new detainees or releasing those currently held there.

State and county health officials said they're working to stop new transmissions by isolating patients, vaccinating people detained in the privately-run facility and trying to identify people who were at locations the four infected workers visited.

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A measles outbreak in Arizona has been traced back to an immigrant inmate at Eloy Detention Center (above)

The outbreak began when an infected inmate was brought to the facility and spread the disease to a worker, who had been vaccinated but caught it anyway.

Health officials put out the first warning of the initial two cases last Thursday.

They have identified 14 locations in Pinal and Maricopa counties where the infected workers may have exposed other people, including stores, restaurants and a tribal casino. The locations can be found here.

The Arizona Department of Health Services is working with county officials to try to identify people exposed outside the facility.

They're also urging people who may have visited any of the identified locations to come forward and be alert to measles symptoms, which include fever, red, watery eyes, cough and runny nose and is followed by a rash that is red, raised, and blotchy.

The rash begins on the face at the hairline and moves down the body and may last five to six days.

'People who have a rash and fever must call their health care provider or emergency department before going to let them know they may have measles,' Dr. Cara Christ, director of the state health department, said in a statement.

'It is vital to help stop the further spread of the disease.'

Measles is a highly contagious, vaccine-preventable viral illness and symptoms can appear up to 21 days after exposure.

Vaccination prevents about 95 per cent of cases, Pyritz said, and the low numbers currently seen in a facility that can house more than 1,500 detainees shows that it is effective. The first worker who was sickened was vaccinated, Pyritz said.

'There are a lot of people who have been exposed, and then we've had a few breakdowns' in immunity, Pyritz said.

'Not many, but a few.'

A woman in Washington died from measles last spring in the first measles death in the U.S. since 2003.

The Washington outbreak followed an outbreak of measles at Disneyland in California late in 2014, which sparked an intense debate across the nation about mandating vaccinations for schoolchildren, which some parents oppose.
Donald Trump has said he wants to have a 'showbiz'-filled Republican National Convention in Cleveland, but he's also going to have to contend with a number of party no-shows.

Fox News is keeping tabs of the GOP's who's who who've decided against showing up at the Trump-led confab.

Most notably, every single living GOP presidential nominee, save for the 92-year-old Bob Dole, who plans to stop by the convention briefly to attend an event for his law firm, won't attend.

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With Donald Trump at the top of ticket Republican mainstays have said they'll be skipping this summer's Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio

Mitt Romney (right), the GOP's last presidential nominee, has said he won't attend the summer convention, while House Speaker Paul Ryan (left), the last VP candidate, is trying to come to an understanding with Trump

Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, doesn't plan to show up.

Out of the Republican party elders, he's probably been the most vocally against Trump's ascent, even giving a 'state of the race' speech in early March, where he referred to The Donald as a 'phony' and 'fraud.'

Bob Dole, the Republicans' 1996 presidential nominee, will attend the Republican National Convention this summer for a short period of time

The 2008 nominee, Sen. John McCain, also won't come. McCain is locked in a tight re-election fight in a state filled with Hispanic voters. He's been put in an awkward position with the party's new standard bearer calling Mexicans 'rapists' and vowing to build a border wall between the United States and Mexico.

Both Presidents Bush also won't attend after Trump's blistering primary campaign against former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the son of President George. H.W. Bush and brother of George W. Bush.

Early on, Trump labeled Jeb Bush a 'low energy' candidate, an apt description that plagued the candidate throughout the campaign.

From the U.S. Senate, Trump's former rival Marco Rubio said he would attend.

'I want to be helpful,' Rubio said recently on CNN.

Sen. Ted Cruz, another one of Trump's top primary campaign rivals, has yet to say whether he'll be seen in Cleveland.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who's also facing a tough re-election campaign, said she'll be staying home.

'I've got a lot of work to do in New Hampshire, I have my own re-election and I'm going to be focusing on my voters in New Hampshire,' she told CNN.

Additionally, Sens. Richard Burr, R-N.C., Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Jerry Moran, R-Kan., Roy Blunt, R-Mo. and Mark Kirk, R-Ill., don't plan to come to Cleveland reported McClatchyDC.

The House may have even more hold-outs, Fox News reported, with Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., telling the Hill Newspaper that he and 10 other conservatives won't attend.

The Republicans' 2008 nominee Sen. John McCain won't be attending the 2016 convention. He's up for re-election in a state where some of Donald Trump's policies may not play well with voters

'I've decided not to go to Cleveland,' Mulvaney said. 'I'm going to stay home and work.'

Fox News found that Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval and Wyoming Gov. Matthew Mead won't be attending as well, while South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley  an up-and-coming star in the GOP who originally endorsed Rubio  says her attendance is up in the air.

'The absences won't hurt Trump's ability to unite the party,' Republican strategist Ron Bonjean told Fox News. 'But he must keep his focus now on Hillary Clinton and avoid getting into fights with other Republicans that may not agree with his pending nomination.'
A death row inmate sentenced to death in 1985 for murder and rape is appealing his conviction by arguing the Mormon church interfered in his trial.

Douglas Lovell, 58, has been counseled by Mormon bishops in prison and he wanted them to testify as character witnesses after he was granted a new trial last year.

But Mormon officials were concerned the bishops' testimony could make it seem like church representatives approved of a murderer.

As such they told members to either keep testimony brief or prevented them from testifying at all, it has been alleged.

Douglas Lovell, 58, has been counseled by Mormon bishops in prison and he wanted them to testify as character witnesses after he was granted a new trial last year

One mentor tearfully asked not to be called as a character witness when a high-ranked member cautioned him against it, Lovell said.

Lovell's lawyers claim that kept the jury from seeing how sorry he was for his crime, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.

His attorney, Samuel Newton, said: 'The church, out of concern for its policies, pressured witnesses not to testify or cooperate with Mr. Lovell.

'And put witnesses in the position of having to disobey their church leaders to support Mr Lovell.'

But the church said Lovell's lawyers agreed to any restrictions on testimony.

Lovell is appealing the outcome of his 2015 trial in which jurors sentenced him to be executed for the 1985 murder and rape of Joyce Yost.

He wants a new evidence hearing to question witnesses and show his trial court lawyers failed him by not raising enough objections to the church interference.

Mr Newton said: 'He was saddened that the church, institutionally, took steps to limit or prevent these bishops from testifying on his behalf at his trial and on appeal.

'He is hopeful that the church will, if the Supreme Court grants his motion for remand, allow these former leaders to fully testify about their love for Mr Lovell, the changes they have observed in him and their belief that he could succeed in society.'

Lovell is appealing the outcome of his 2015 trial in which jurors sentenced him to be executed for the 1985 murder and rape of Joyce Yost

Prosecutors said Lovell followed Yost to her driveway and raped her in 1985, then spent four months plotting to kill her to prevent her from testifying against him.

Lovell broke into her home with a knife after his plans to hire a hit man fell through.

He ignored her begging, drugged her and drove her to a canyon where he strangled her, stomped on her neck and buried her in leaves, prosecutors said.

Lovell pleaded guilty to killing Yost in 1993 to avoid the death penalty, but a judge imposed it anyway after Lovell failed to fulfill a condition of the plea deal and find her body.

He cooperated in a search, but she was never found.

The Utah Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 2010, ruling he was not informed of his right to a presumption of innocence and a public trial.
Rhonda Audisho, 17, died on Monday night in a car crash in Sydney's west

A 17-year-old P-plater who died after crashing into the front yard of a house in western Sydney was 'skylarking' with another car when she died, it has been claimed.

Rhonda Audisho was found dead in the Toyota Corolla on Monday night shortly before 8pm after rolling the car onto a lawn in Wetherill Park.

She was travelling with two other teenagers, a 14-year-old boy and 17-year-old girl, at the time of the crash.

The group was driving with another group who were in a different car though police say they were not racing when the crash took place.

Whether the group were 'skylarking', i.e. messing around while driving, as suggested by Nine News, is not clear.

CCTV footage moments before the crash shows them driving down the residential street one after the other.

The 14-year-old male passenger of the Toyota Corolla was taken to Liverpool Hospital with minor injuries but no one else was injured.

Friends of Rhonda, who worked at McDonald's, paid tribute to her on Monday morning as an 'amazing' and 'happy' girl.

'My beautiful friend. Words cannot explain how broken I am right now, waking up to the worst news of your passing last night.

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'I saw you driving yesterday and you looked so happy.' said one friend. Another described the young McDonald's worker as 'an amazing friend'.

'Such a lovely soul taken too soon,' said another of the 17-year-old. According to The Herald Sun, the teenager's family is devastated 'beyond words'.

The girl's car rolled in to the front yard of a house in Wetherill Park in Sydney's west on Monday night

'She has a younger sister and she is not holding up well. Rhonda was a beautiful soul and a really outgoing person.'

NSW Police said it was speaking to the youngsters for more information. 'It is believed the Toyota may have been was travelling with a Black Mazda 3, being driven by a 19-year-old woman, with two passengers aged 15 and 16.

'The driver and the occupants of the Mazda have been spoken to by police and inquiries are continuing.'

A spokesman for the force added that 'the incident may not have been street racing related.'

'A number of avenues of inquiries are being investigated to determine the circumstances surrounding how the crash occurred,' they said.

Two other teenagers who were travelling with her at the time have not suffered serious injuries. Above, police at the scene
French trawlers are smuggling migrants halfway across the English Channel and then dumping them in flimsy boats to finish the crossing, it was claimed last night.

They use the cover of legitimate fishing trips to take them to within sight of the British coastline.

The fishermen, who are paid 1,000 per migrant, then force them to complete the perilous trip themselves in tiny dinghies through strong currents in one of the worlds busiest shipping lanes.

Last night Bernard Barron, head of the Calais coastguard, warned that it would be only a matter of time before the migrant deaths in the Mediterranean were replicated in the Channel.

The development comes after coastguards intercepted a sinking dinghy carrying 18 Albanians trying to reach the Kent coast at the weekend

The development comes after coastguards intercepted a sinking dinghy carrying 18 Albanians trying to reach the Kent coast at the weekend. And a fortnight ago, a large inflatable was found near the shoreline packed with up to 30 life jackets  but no passengers were found.

Investigators are also trying to establish if two Iranian migrants who were picked up a mile off the Kent coast in an 8ft rubber dinghy last month were taken halfway by smugglers.

Last night a French fishing industry source told the Daily Mail the practice of dropping off migrants within two miles of the UK coast was more common than people think.

He said: The fishermen are paid about 1,000 a migrant, so if you manage to get 20 or 30 on to your boat you can make a lot of money.

There are hundreds of tiny harbours along Normandy and Brittany and the coastguard cannot watch them all. Some feel the risk of getting caught is low enough to make it worthwhile. They know that the coastguards from Britain and France do not have enough resources to check every fishing boat.

Martyn Underhill, police and crime commissioner for Dorset, has been sounding the alarm over the practice since a French gang was jailed last December for smuggling 130 illegal immigrants into the UK via beaches near Weymouth and Plymouth.

Martyn Underhill, police and crime commissioner for Dorset, has been sounding the alarm over the practice since a French gang was jailed last December

That trial was the start of the warnings, but these werent heeded, and now the problem is just getting worse, he said. We are seeing more and more cases. We really have no idea how many people are getting through.

It is only a matter of time until we get a tragedy like we are seeing in the Mediterranean. The Home Secretary needs to invest more money into this area of policing. It has been stripped to the bone.

New smuggling routes into the UK have opened up following the introduction of tougher French security measures around the Calais ferry terminal and Eurostar train tunnel. These two spots remain the favourite routes for migrants who live in the squalid Jungle camp near the port, where 7,000 are currently living.

Yesterday Mr Barron urged Britain to increase Channel patrols. He said: My biggest fear is that the kind of tragedies we see in Greece or Italy will begin to be repeated here.

A Calais government source added: For a number of months, attempts by groups of migrants to cross the Channel by boat have been observed.

Many take place at night, on dangerous boats, and with those in charge not having the slightest idea about how to navigate, or how to make sure the crossings are safe.

It is an extremely worrying development, and one that could end in disaster.

We have increased maritime patrols in response to this problem, and would urge the British to do the same.
The Prime Minister yesterday unveiled a five-point guarantee card of pledges hell honour if Britain votes to stay in the EU.

The card  modelled on Tony Blairs series of election pledges in 1997  said Britain would retain full access to the single market and would see workers rights protected.

It would also mean that the European Arrest Warrant would be retained, that the UK would have a special status in Europe and that there would be economic stability.

David Cameron and Sadiq Khan unveiled five pledges for if Britain stays in the EU during a Bank Holiday Monday campaign rally but they have been dismissed by Vote Leave

The guarantees were unveiled by David Cameron and Sadiq Khan at a Remain rally in London. But they were dismissed by the Leave campaign, which said workers rights were a matter for the British Parliament and the idea of a special status was pure spin.

Leave campaigners added that a Remain vote would mean food prices would stay high and Britain would continue to have little control over its borders.

They came up with their own list of guarantees they claimed would apply if Britain votes to stay in the EU on June 23.

Vote Leave chief executive Matthew Elliott said: If people vote to stay, they are voting for the free movement of people from Europe to the UK, permanently. British business will continue to be strangled by EU regulation.

If we Vote Leave on June 23 we take back control of our money, our borders and our democracy. Thats the safer option for our future.

Leave campaigners said a Remain vote would mean food prices would stay high and Britain would continue to have little control over its borders (Pictured, Boris Johnson at a Vote Leave rally)

City grandee raps No10 'propaganda'

A City grandee last night launched a blistering attack on David Camerons campaign to remain in the EU, dubbing it corrupt.

Robert Hiscox, who chaired Lloyds of London insurer Hiscox for 43 years until 2013, also savaged George Osbornes Treasury for publishing illegal propaganda.

His comments echo those of Tory peers Nigel Lawson and Norman Lamont, who railed against this months Treasury analysis that predicts a severe economic shock as a result of Brexit. Mr Hiscox said: The part the Government has played in the debate is astonishing.

A City grandee launched a blistering attack on David Camerons campaign to remain in the EU, dubbing it corrupt' (Pictured, Mr Cameron and London Mayor Sadiq Khan at a Vote Remain rally)

Their corrupt statements and illegal propaganda pouring out is something to behold, especially the Treasury document.

He added that City institutions supporting Remain form part of an elite acting in their own interests. All the experts coming out for Remain are all part of the elite, from Goldman Sachs downwards, theyve all bought into it, its for their own self-interest, he said.

Why do we want to have millions of rules delivered by an unelected tyrannical elite in Brussels?

It is the first time he has shared his views on the EU since signing an open letter supporting Brexit alongside more than 300 other business leaders.

Mr Hiscox added that his company, currently based in Bermuda for tax and regulatory purposes, may move back to the UK if Britain exits the EU.

He said: We dont want to bring it back while were in the EU. If we leave, then it depends on the domestic regime whether we come back or not, but its possible.

Cambridge Dons: We back Brussels

Hundreds of Cambridge academics have signed a letter arguing that Britain should stay in the European Union because of the benefits it offers universities.

More than 300 professors and scholars lent their names to the letter, which points out that British universities are significantly helped by support and funding from the EU.

The letters 307 signatories represent a cross-section of faculties. It was published on the website of the Cambridge for Europe campaign, whose supporters include local Labour MP Daniel Zeichner, former Cabinet minister Charles Clarke and Dr Julie Smith, a Cambridge academic specialising in European politics.

Hundreds of Cambridge academics have signed a letter arguing that Britain should stay in the European Union because of the benefits it offers universities (file photo)

The letter insisted British universities receive a more than proportionate share of funding from the EU, and said that despite accounting for only 12 per cent of the EUs population, the UK is home to 22 per cent of European Research Council grant-holders.

The campaigners also pointed out that young Britons can access EU scholarships, and stressed the importance of free exchange of ideas... that is made possible by free movement of academics in Europe.

It is not the first time academics have expressed opposition to Brexit. Two months ago, 150 Royal Society fellows warned quitting the EU would prove a disaster for UK science because we now recruit many of our best researchers from continental Europe.

n Britain needs to stay in the European Union to protect its economy, security and scientific research programmes, Stephen Hawking has claimed.
Actor Tim Roth (pictured) says Tony Blair should be jailed for his role in the Iraq War

He has starred in plenty of Hollywood crime dramas.

But ahead of his new BBC film, actor Tim Roth has called for former Prime Minister Tony Blair to be thrown in jail.

Roth, 55, plays Reg Keys in a BBC One biopic about the anti-war campaigner, whose son Tom was one of the 179 British serviceman to be killed during the Iraq War.

Speaking ahead of the airing of Reg next week, Roth said: Ive always felt that Blair should be hauled off in handcuffs and put in Wormwood Scrubs, I think thats where he belongs.

I have very low expectations of Tony Blair. I think hes profited from the death of Regs son and the Iraq War. I have nothing but contempt for him.

In the film, Roth, famed for his roles in Quentin Tarantino gangster movies Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, recreates Mr Keys dogged campaign against the former Prime Ministers decision to send British troops to join the US in toppling Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Mr Keys son was one of six Royal Military Police officers murdered in Al Majar, Iraq in June 2003.

Deeply suspicious of the legitimacy of the Blair governments intervention in Iraq, Mr Keys campaigning resulted in him standing against Mr Blair as an independent candidate in the former Prime Ministers Sedgefield constituency in the 2005 general election.

Roth criticised Mr Blair for his refusal to apologise to the bereaved relatives of dead and injured servicemen who were involved in the Iraq War

He said: I would like to think he will see this film, I would like think he could find within himself some sort of guilt and recognition that would help him find the words to make some kind of apology.

On a personal level, if it was my boy, I would want an apology, but I dont see it coming.

If a handshake or a moment of recognition did come, I would put money on it being in front of a camera, it would have nothing to do with privacy or dignity at all.
and fire was brought under control

No one was

A number of people were evacuated after a furniture factory went up in flames in Sydney's inner west overnight.

Firefighters were called to the blaze in Sydney's inner west suburb of Marrickville at about 9.45pm on Monday after receiving multiple triple zero calls.

No one was injured in the 'large scale fire,' but the front wall of the furniture factory collapsed and firefighters worked well into the night to bring the blaze under control.

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A number of people were evacuated after a furniture factory went up in flames in Sydney's inner west overnight (pictured)

Firefighters were called to the blaze in Sydney's inner west suburb of Marrickville at about 9.45pm on Monday

No one was injured in the 'large scale fire' on Monday night but a number of people were evacuated from the adjoining factory

Police returned to Rich Street on Tuesday morning and established a crime scene to investigate the cause of the fire.

People were evacuated from the adjoining factory during the blaze as emergency services feared the fire may spread and about 16 fire trucks were on the scene.

'The fire had a significant element of risk with significant structural collapse,' Fire and Rescue NSW Superintendent Adam Dewberry said, according to The ABC.

'Firefighters have also worked hard to contain the fire to stop it spreading to adjoining tenants in the building as well.'

Police returned to Rich Street on Tuesday morning and established a crime scene

People were evacuated from the adjoining factory during the blaze as emergency services feared the fire may spread

'The fire had a significant element of risk with significant structural collapse,' Fire and Rescue NSW Superintendent Adam Dewberry said

'Firefighters have also worked hard to contain the fire to stop it spreading to adjoining tenants in the building as well'

No one was injured in the 'large scale fire' on Monday night but a number of people were evacuated from the adjoining factory
The 66-year-old hiker who went missing along the Appalachian Trail in 2013 was still alive weeks after the search for her was suspended.

Geraldine Largay, 66, wrote her final entry in a journal she kept on August 18, 2013. The search for her using volunteers was called off on July 30, 2013, according to the Portland Press Herald.

The Maine Warden Service began recruiting searchers with Maine Association of Search and Rescue certification on July 31, 2013 to look due to the challenging terrain.

Her notebook, body and campsite were found in 2015 by a forester working on a contract for the U.S. Navy.

Geraldine Largay, 66 (left and right with husband George) died in 2013 after getting lost on the Appalachian Trail in Maine. It is believed she was alive weeks after the search party was called off

In a journal entry written on August 6, 2013, Largay wrote:

'When you find my body, please call my husband George and my daughter Kerry.

'It will be the greatest kindness for them to know that I am dead and where you found me  no matter how many years from now.

'Please find it in your heart to mail the contents of this bag to one of them.'

Inside the bag was her cellphone and the journal.

Maine Bureau of Warden Service released pages from Largay's journal, including the one from August 6, 2013, last week.

However, it is unclear how accurate the dates Largay used as she had been lost since July 22, 2013 and it is unknown how she was tracking time.

Largay began hiking almost 1,000 miles of the Appalachian Trail back in summer 2013 alongside nurse and friend Jane Lee, who had agreed to accompany her, the Morning Sentinel reports.

The pair were met by Largay's husband, George, at various pre-arranged stops so he could bring them supplies and occasionally take them to a motel for a shower and a night indoors.

Largay's relatives today hit back at that characterization of her, saying she was experience and lucid right up until she died

But around two months into the hike, Lee was forced to leave in order to go home and tend to a family emergency, leaving Largay by herself.

On June 23 she failed to meet up with her husband at a stop along the Franklin-Somerset county line, and witnesses reported last seeing at a lean-to on Poplar Ridge.

Interviewed after Largay went missing, Lee revealed that she 'had a poor sense of direction' and while she had packed a compass, she didn't know how to use it.

She added that 'that George did not know the extent of Geraldines inability to deal with the rigors and challenges of the trail'.

A doctor also revealed that she was taking anxiety medication and that, without out it, she was prone to having panic attacks.

While George insisted that his wife was a good hiker, he did later admit to an investigator that 'Gerry was probably in over her head,' the report says.

However, since the 1,500-page document was published earlier this week, the family have hit out at what they see as an unfair portrayal of Largay.

A statement, issued to the Boston Globe by a spokesman, said: 'Gerry was doing exactly what she wanted to do.

'Shed hiked a thousand miles - after 200 miles of training hikes the year prior - and as the wardens report indicates, she was lucid and thinking of others, as always, until the end.

'Her final days were a testament to her bravery, resourcefulness, and her faith.'

Elsewhere the report revealed that Largay had survived for more than three weeks after getting lost before dying of lack of food and exposure.

Despite one of the largest search efforts in Maine's history, Largay's remains would not be found for another two years still inside her sleeping bag in her tent (pictured)

The report into her death concluded that Largay died from lack of food and exposure more than three weeks after wandering off the trail and being unable to find her way back

She attempted to text her husband after getting lost, but the messages never went through because of poor reception.

According to the New York Times, one of the texts read: 'Lost since yesterday. Off trail 3 or 4 miles. Call police for what to do pls.'

Wardens believe Largay went to higher ground in an attempt to get better signal before making camp on a raised knoll.

Her kit, which included a tent, Mylar blanket and rain gear were all used during her almost month-long ordeal.

Officers are also filmed examining her possessions, which were all contained in resealable bags

Perhaps most distressing was the discovery of her journal, which contained a heartbreaking final request, dated August 6: 'When you find my body, please call my husband George and my daughter Kerry'

That is the same kit seen in Animal Planet reality series, North Woods Law, as the crew captured the moment Largay's remains were uncovered by Maine wardens.

The October 2015 footage, acquired by InsideEdition.com, shows a visibly shaken Maine Warden officer pulling back the tarpaulin of Largay's tent to see her remains, which were inside her sleeping bag, underneath.

Officers are also filmed examining her possessions, which were all contained in resealable bags.

Her driver's license is shown to the camera, giving confirmation, if any was needed, that this was Largay's final resting place.

Warden Kris Maccabe, who was at the scene, told the camera: 'There's nobody that wanted to bring her home more than we did. I really feel for the family.'

Following her disappearance, the Warden Service launched one of the largest and most extensive search operations in its history in order to try and track her down.

The search area covered 23 square miles and involved teams of wardens and volunteers scouring the terrain.

Authorities believe Largay wandered off the Appalachain trail in order to relieve herself, but got lost and was unable to find her way back. Phone records show she tried to text her husband, but had no signal

At one point a dog crew led by wardens came within 100 yards of her campsite, according to the Portland Press Herald, but her remains were not discovered.

Wardens say the fact that the remains were inside a sealed tent likely meant the dogs were unable to pick up on her scent.

The area where she was discovered was described as being so densely forested that only trained wardens had been allowed to search there.

The property where Largay's body was recovered is part of a U.S. Navy's survival skills training facility.

The Navy uses the area for its Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape program and as such it is remote and not easily accessible.
Graduates are facing fewer job vacancies and lower pay amid a slowdown on the employment front, according to a new report.

Jobs site Adzuna said there was an 8% fall in graduate jobs in April compared with the same month a year ago, down to 12,850.Average entry-level advertised salaries reached a 30-month low of 23,309, a study found.

Cambridge and Oxford were the best cities for graduate jobs, while general vacancies were also said to be strong in Guildford, Reading, Exeter and Winchester.

Jobs site Adzuna said there was an 8% fall in graduate jobs in April compared with the same month a year ago, down to 12,850.Average entry-level advertised salaries reached a 30-month low of 23,309, a study found

The worst places for jobseekers were said to be Sunderland, Hull, Middlesbrough and Belfast, with around three candidates per vacancy.

Doug Monro, co-founder of Adzuna, said: In university libraries across the UK, students are filling in the job forms and crossing their fingers, but they might need more than luck this summer. Graduate vacancies are falling and new joiners are facing one of the toughest job markets in recent times.

Many graduates may feel like its a rough deal right now. Graduate pay has fallen drastically from 2013 levels, and talks of rising tuition fee hikes next year will only add to this feeling.

Unfortunately, fewer roles does inevitably mean more competition to find a first job, but graduates may have the upper hand in the long-term. Many of these schemes contain a long-term investment in development and fast-tracking to managerial positions.
He insisted barriers were secure, asking: 'Do you know any four-year-olds? They can climb over anything'

These are the parents of the four-year-old boy whose 15-feet fall into the gorilla exhibit moat in Cincinnati Zoo resulted in the death of 17-year-old silverback gorilla, Harambe.

Seen here for the first time is mother Michelle Gregg, 32, who has four children by father Deonne Dickerson, 36, a man who, Daily Mail Online can disclose, has a lengthy criminal history.

Criminal filings against Dickerson stretch over a decade and include burglary, firearms offences, drug trafficking, criminal trespass, disorderly conduct and kidnap.

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Mom and dad: Deonne Dickerson and Michelle Gregg are the parents of the four-year-old boy who fell into the gorilla enclosure housing Harambe on Saturday at Cincinnati Zoo

In 2006 he was sentenced to one year behind bars for a drug trafficking conviction.

But in numerous pictures posted on Dickerson's Facebook site in recent years he appears to have turned his life around to become the proud father of four.

Indeed, the majority of his postings to the social media site are updates of his children and his working life.

In others pictures he has uploaded his friends congratulate him and Michelle on the birth of their fourth child last January.

Together: Michelle Gregg and Deonne Dickerson at home

Cleveland based Dickerson is from Atlanta, Georgia and studied at Cuyahoga Community College, Ohio and now works as a sorter at a Cincinnati industrial equipment supplier.

Gregg is currently the administrator at a Cincinnati pre-school.

She has been the subject of sharp criticism following the incident that saw zoo staff shoot dead Harambe who, according to new video footage, may have been protecting rather than threatening the child after he crawled through a barrier and fell into the gorilla's enclosure.

Many social media commenters have criticized her and Dickerson and said they should be held accountable.

A Cincinnati police spokesman said no charges were being considered. A spokeswoman for the family said on Monday they had no plans to comment.

'I do think there's a degree of responsibility they have to be held to,' said Kate Villanueva, a mother of two children from Erlanger, Kentucky, who started the 'Justice for Harambe' page and attended a vigil on Monday at Cincinnati Zoo for Harambe.

'You have to be watching your children at all times.'

More outraged animal lovers took to social media declaring the western lowland gorilla's life was unnecessarily taken, and more than 290,000 have already joined 'Justice for Harambe' which place the blame squarely on the boy's parents.

Ian Redmond, the chairman of the Gorilla Organization, told CNN : 'When gorilla or other apes have things they shouldn't have, keepers will negotiate with them, bring food, their favorite treats, pineapple or some kind of fruit that they don't know and negotiate with them.'

Primatologist Julia Gallucci said: 'The gorilla enclosure should have been surrounded by a secondary barrier between the humans and the animals to prevent exactly this type of incident.'

A special zoo response team shot and killed a 17-year-old gorilla named Harambe to protect a four-year-old who fell in the enclosure. But new video footage shows the two briefly holding hands (pictured)

The clip shows Harambe standing guard in the corner of the moat (left, with the boy behind Harambe), and witnesses said the gorilla looked like he was trying to protect the boy from panicked bystanders (right)

The boy's mother wrote a Facebook post saying her son suffered a concussion and a few scrapes. She defended her role as a parent and called the incident an accident

Earlier on Sunday, police said prosecutors could choose to indict the parents, but Cincinnati Police Lieutenant Stephen Saunders later said he was not aware of any intention to do so.

Soon after the incident, Michelle Gregg, the mother of the boy, posted a message on Facebook saying: 'I want to thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers today. What started off as a wonderful day turned into a scary one.

'For those of you that have seen the news or been on social media that was my son that fell in the gorilla exhibit at the zoo. God protected my child until the authorities were able to get to him.

'My son is safe and was able to walk away with a concussion and a few scrapes... no broken bones or internal injuries.

'As a society we are quick to judge how a parent could take their eyes off of their child and if anyone knows me I keep a tight watch on my kids. Accidents happen but I am thankful that the right people were in the right place today.'

The family also released a statement on Sunday saying they had taken their boy home from the hospital.

It read: 'We are so thankful to the Lord that our child is safe. He is home and doing just fine. We extend our heartfelt thanks for the quick action by the Cincinnati Zoo staff.

'We know that this was a very difficult decision for them, and that they are grieving the loss of their gorilla. We hope that you will respect our privacy at this time.'

The zoo shot the beloved animal after he dragged the boy through the water and up out of the moat, but many say he was simply trying to protect the child

Deidre Lykins was also at the zoo when she saw the boy drop into the enclosure.

She described how Ms Gregg was calling out for her son and had just been next to him when he disappeared.

Then she had to stop her husband from going in to try and rescue him.

But she insists Ms Gregg is not at fault, and wrote on Facebook: 'This mother was not negligent and the zoo did an awesome job handling the situation!

'This was an open exhibit! Which means the only thing separating you from the gorillas, is a 15 ish foot drop and a moat and some bushes!'

This comes as new video footage of Harambe the gorilla suggests he was trying to protect a four-year-old boy who fell into the zoo enclosure just minutes before the 400-pound animal was fatally shot.

Many are placing the blame squarely on the parents of a four-year-old boy

The small child said he wanted to get in the water before the incident, to which his mother, who was also watching several other children, replied: 'No, you're not, no, you're not,' according to one witness

Some said Harambe appeared to be guarding and defending the boy, but video footage also showed him dragging the four-year-old in the water

The clip shows Harambe standing guard over the boy in the corner of the moat, and the two even share a brief moment holding hands.

Witnesses said the gorilla was acting protectively in the tense situation, which may have been aggravated by panicked onlookers who screamed as they watched from above.

Cincinnati Zoo Director Thane Maynard confirmed the boy was not under attack, but called it a 'life threatening situation' where the gorilla was 'agitated', 'disoriented', and 'behaving erratically'.

During a press conference on Monday afternoon, Maynard supported the animal response team's decision to kill Harambe, and said: 'Looking back we would make the same decision.'

The huge gorilla was about six times stronger than a man, Maynard added, and was confused and disoriented.

'This is an animal (that) with one hand, I have seen take a coconut and crush it,' he said.

The zoo said tranquilizing the animal was not an option because a dart could have startled the already-agitated creature, causing it to act aggressively before the sedative kicked in.

Maynard also insisted the zoo's barriers were secure, saying: 'We all need to work to make sure our families are safe. Do you know any four-year-olds? They can climb over anything.'

The incident, which was captured on a cell phone camera, has sparked an outcry of emotion, with thousands of mourners branding it a 'senseless death'.

A mother who was at the zoo said she tried to stop the child, who authorities believe crawled past the railing and fell 10 feet into the gorilla's habitat, where he spent more than 10 minutes.

Cheryl Flaherty, of Cincinnati, left, comforted a fellow mourner during a vigil outside the Cincinnati Zoo on Monday

During Monday's press conference, Maynard supported the animal response team's decision to kill Harambe, and said: 'Looking back we would make the same decision'

'I tried to prevent it, I tried to grab him and I just couldn't get to him fast enough,' Brittany Nicely told WHIO.

According to Nicely, the gorilla was acting protectively towards the boy and did not exhibit any threatening behavior.

A newly released video shows Harambe standing over the boy in the corner of the moat, appearing to shield him from the screaming crowd above.

The animal then dragged the boy by the leg, but the two shared a surprisingly tender moment when the four-year-old reached for Harambe's arm and the two briefly held hands.

According to the fire department incident report, the gorilla was 'violently dragging and throwing the child', WLWT reported.

But Nicely contradicted the account, saying: 'What the first responders saw, I'm just not sure...They said he was violently throwing the child around, which seems crazy to me.

'They have a picture of the boy sitting in front of the gorilla moments before they shot him.'

Harambe's death has sparked an outcry of emotion, with thousands of mourners branding it a 'senseless death' (pictured, Monday's vigil)

Some blamed the zoo for its response and questioned whether the exhibit should have been surrounded by more secure barriers

Kim O'Connor told WLWT she heard the boy talking about getting into the water before she heard a splash, followed by frantic yelling when onlookers realized he was inside the enclosure.

According to O'Connor, the gorilla looked like he was trying to protect the boy from panicked bystanders who may have aggravated the tense situation.

'I don't know if the screaming did it or too many people hanging on the edge, if he thought we were coming in, but then he pulled the boy down away further from the big group,' she said.

Harambe later dragged the four-year-old out of the moat before he was fatally shot with a rifle while the boy was still between the animal's legs.

The zoo director confirmed the gorilla did not appear to be attacking the child, but he described it as 'an extremely strong animal in an agitated situation'.

'You're talking about an animal that's over 400 pounds and extremely strong. So no, the child wasn't under attack but all sorts of things could happen in a situation like that. He certainly was at risk,' Maynard told WLWT.

But the zoo director insisted the barriers were secure, saying: 'Do you know any four-year-olds? They can climb over anything' (pictured, a boy placing flowers outside Gorilla World in the zoo)

The zoo's Gorilla World has been closed since Saturday, but authorities are hoping to reopen by next weekend. Flowers and commemorative notes were also left outside the zoo (pictured)

He added: 'We all need to work to make sure our families are safe' (pictured, a mother and a child visit a bronze gorilla statue outside the Gorilla World exhibit Monday)

During a press conference on Monday, Maynard said Harambe was 'behaving erratically', before adding: 'The child wasn't just being endangered, but dragged around by the ankle and hurt.'

He explained that tranquilizing the gorilla, which could have taken several attempts, would have left the boy in danger since the effect would not have been immediate.

He also said in a statement released Sunday: 'The impact from the dart could agitate the animal and cause the situation to get much worse.

'We are heartbroken about losing Harambe, but a child's life was in danger and a quick decision had to be made.'

He supported the zoo's dangerous animal response team for their decision to kill Harambe, and said: 'They made a tough choice and they made the right choice because they saved that little boy's life.'

During Monday's press conference, Maynard said he wasn't there to 'point fingers' but said: 'We all need to work to make sure our families are safe.'

'We're the ones who took the loss on this- you can trust me, a lot of people expressed concerns, but it doesn't affect anyone as much as the people at the zoo.

'This is a very big loss to the zoo- not just an emotional loss, but a loss to a key conservation and breeding program.'

Brittany Nicely (left and right) said she tried to stop the child from going into the enclosure but couldn't grab him in time. She then tried to calm the boy's mother has the chaos unfolded

The zoo celebrated Harambe's birthday on Friday, just one the day before he died (left). Many questioned whether the zoo could have used a tranquilizer first, but Maynard said it could have had the opposite effect

On Monday, the zoo director insisted the horizontal barriers were secure and said: 'We take safety very seriously and we are keenly interested in improvement.

'Any of us could climb over barriers if we choose. As I said, you can lock your car or lock your house, but if someone wants to get in, they can.'

He cited the incident last week in Chile, where a man with a suicide note in his pocket stripped down and broke into a lion enclosure at the Santiago Zoo where he was mauled before two of the animals were shot dead.

The animal response team at Cincinnato Zoo had practiced drills and 'table top discussions' after the incident, without realizing they would be facing a similar scenario on Saturday.

While safety measures are being evaluated, Maynard said the gorilla exhibit is expected to reopen next weekend without citing specific security improvements.

Harambe (right) was raised at the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas (left) before he was moved to Cincinnati in 2014. He is a western lowland gorilla, which the World Wildlife Fund deemed critically endangered

Zoo director Maynard noted it was the first time the team had killed a zoo animal in such an emergency situation, and he called it 'a very sad day'.

He said said in a statement: 'The Zoo security team's quick response saved the child's life.

'We are all devastated that this tragic accident resulted in the death of a critically-endangered gorilla. This is a huge loss for the Zoo family and the gorilla population worldwide.'

Jerry Stones, who worked at the Gladys Porter Zoo, in Bronwsville, Texas, where Harambe lived before he was transferred in 2014, said he was devastated by the news.

Stones, who raised the gorilla, told the NY Daily News: 'It tore me a new one. An old man can cry, too. He was a special guy in my life. It's a sad day for us.'

He added: 'He grew up to be a pretty, beautiful male. He was very intelligent. His mind was going constantly. He was just such a sharp character.'

Western lowland gorillas are deemed critically endangered by the World Wildlife Fund, but Maynard said Harambe's death would not be the end of his lineage, since viable sperm was stored at the zoo.

Gorilla World has been closed since the incident on Saturday, although Maynard said it was expected to reopen by next weekend. The rest of the zoo has been open as usual.

In March, two curious polar bears at the zoo wandered into a behind-the-scenes service hallway through an open den door, but never left a secondary containment area.

The zoo said the 17-year-old female Berit and the 26-year-old male Little One, entered an 'inappropriate' area but remained contained and were never loose or a threat to the public.
Beau Biden, who was the former state attorney general and National Guard Major, died a year ago of brain cancer at age 46

Joe Biden expressed his gratitude for the outpouring of community support over the last two years

New Castle headquarters will now be called the Major Joseph R 'Beau' Biden III National Guard/Reserve Center

The Bidens attended the Delaware National Guard's ceremony that unveiled new signs naming its headquarters after former state attorney general and National Guard Major Beau Biden.

The New Castle headquarters will be called the Major Joseph R 'Beau' Biden III National Guard/Reserve Center.

Vice president Joe Biden and his family attended the ceremony where the signs were unveiled on Memorial Day.

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The Bidens attended the Delaware National Guard's ceremony that unveiled new signs naming its headquarters after former state attorney general and National Guard Major Beau Biden. Vice president Joe Biden holds hands with his wife, Jill (left), and his daughter-in-law Hallie Biden (right)

Biden and his family attended the ceremony where the signs were unveiled on Memorial Day. Biden rests his hand on a plaque after the Guard unveiled the new signs naming the headquarters after his son

The New Castle headquarters will be called the Major Joseph R 'Beau' Biden III (left) National Guard/Reserve Center. Joe Biden (pictured right with his son) was the final speaker at the ceremony and he expressed his gratitude for the outpouring of community support over the last two years

Gov Jack Markell joined the Vice President and others in recalling Beau Biden and his legacy.

'True heroism is remarkably sober, undramatic. It's not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost but the urge to serve others at whatever the cost,' Markell said, according to the Delaware Public.

'And these words spoken by Arthur Ashe eloquently describe the passions of the man we celebrate today.'

Major General Frank Vavala was among those remembering Beau Biden before the unveiling of the new signs.

He said Beau Biden was 'truly a beautiful soul' and 'undoubtedly the most morally upright person' that he'd ever known.

Vavala added that Beau had 'no fear to express himself in terms of endearment'.

'He would always tell me unabashedly in all errant encounters that he loved me, and I loved him.'

Joe Biden was the final speaker and he expressed his gratitude for the outpouring of community support over the last two years, according to the Delaware Public.

Major General Frank Vavala was among those remembering Beau Biden before the unveiling of the new signs. He said Beau Biden was 'truly a beautiful soul' and 'undoubtedly the most morally upright person' that he'd ever known

Biden (left) said he's looking forward to another dedication in Kosovo where a boulevard is being named in Beau's honor for his time as a rule of law adviser there after its war in the late 90s

Beau Biden enlisted in 2003 and deployed to Iraq in 2008 for a year with the 261st Theater Tactical Signal Brigade. He earned the Legion of Merit and Bronze Star and later served two terms as Delaware's attorney general. He died a year ago of brain cancer at age 46

'The thing he was most proud of was wearing uniform,' Biden said. 'So on behalf of the whole family - particularly Hallie and Natalie and Hunter - I want to thank all of you for remembering our Beau today, particularly his brothers and sisters in uniform.'

Vice President Biden also read the last two lines of the poem Invictus that he used to read to his kids: 'I'm the master of my fate, I'm the captain of my soul.'

Biden said he's looking forward to another dedication in Kosovo where a boulevard is being named in Beau's honor for his time as a rule of law adviser there after its war in the late 90s, according to the Delaware Public.

The center recognizes Beau Biden's service in the Guard for over a decade.

He enlisted in 2003 and deployed to Iraq in 2008 for a year with the 261st Theater Tactical Signal Brigade.

Biden earned the Legion of Merit and Bronze Star and later served two terms as Delaware's attorney general.
A 25-year-old Army veteran allegedly suffering from PTSD has been identified as the suspect in Sunday's mass shooting in Houston.

Dionisio Garza III from San Bernardino County, California, has been named as the man behind the gun attack that left two people dead and six wounded.

He served four tours of duty in Afghanistan and was discharged from active duty in 2014, and doesn't appear to have a criminal history.

Army veteran Dionisio Garza III from San Bernardino County, California, has been named as the man behind the gun attack that left two people dead and six wounded in a Houston suburb on Sunday

He served four tours of duty in Afghanistan and was discharged from active duty in 2014, and doesn't appear to have a criminal history. But his father believed he may have been suffering from PTSD

Reports suggest he went on a rampage with a high-powered AR15 rifle and shot at bystanders before police gunned him down.

Pictures from the scene also show police patrol cars riddled with bullet holes.

He killed 56-year-old Eugene Linscomb and critically injured father Byron Wilson, who police say was trying to fight back and stop the deadly attack.

Authorities said Wilson had a concealed carry permit and fired at the suspect. He was shot three times in the process.

He is expected to survive.

Although no motive has been given, the veteran has recently expressed anti-government sentiments, according to KHOU.

His father told Click 2 Houston: 'We have not received confirmation, but I strongly suspect. I really believe this is a PTSD thing.

'On the internet he met some people or some people that believed like him.'

His father added that he decided to move to Houston to meet others who thought the United States was on the brink of collapse.

Byron Wilson (pictured with his wife and son) was a Good Samaritan who fought back against the suspect in a bid to stop the shooting

Reports suggest he went on a rampage with a high-powered AR15 rifle and shot at bystanders before police gunned him down. Pictures from the scene also show police patrol cars riddled with bullet holes

A car crashed into a boat near the gas station where the deadly shooting took place on Sunday

'He was rambling off about the economy collapsing, you know,' his father added.'And that something was going to happen by Monday, that kind of stuff. Of course you look back now and there were signs.'

He last spoke to his son on Saturday and could sense that something was wrong.

In 2013, a woman believed to be Garza's mother wrote on Facebook that she had spoken her son on the phone.

He told her that five of his fellow troops had died in Afghanistan over the weekend.

Reports suggested he left a military backpack at the scene filled with personal papers, documents and bullets.

One bullet hit a gas pump, sparking a fire. Dozens of cars were hit by stray bullets, narrowly missing drivers who were passing through the quiet residential area

Police returned to the scene to retrieve it on Monday. The SWAT team are said to have detonated it next to the gas station which burst into flames after the attack.

Gunshots were first heard at 10.15am in west Houston, Texas, on Sunday.

When officers arrived, the suspect turned their fire to the police and began showering bullets, seemingly at random, across the streets.

One bullet hit a gas pump, sparking a fire. Dozens of cars were hit by stray bullets, narrowly missing drivers who were passing through the quiet residential area.

At 12.30pm, Linscomb was shot dead in his car as a bullet burst through the window.

During the shooting, two officers were shot - one in the hand and one in his body but survived thanks to his bulletproof vest.

Another three civilians were also shot and wounded. All of them are expected to survive.

The suburban street where the attack took place was blocked off for most of Sunday as police investigated what happened

There were initial reports of two gunmen, but police later confirmed that Wilson was a Good Samaritan who was fighting back.

He was wounded but is expected to survive.

Garza is even believed to have fired at a police helicopter.

One motorist showed how a bullet burst through his passenger window, blew through two seats and out another window - as he sat in the driver's seat.
Ruby Wax said her two grown-up daughters and son often ask what they were like at certain ages and she can't recall

Ruby Wax has admitted she missed her children growing up because she was constantly on the phone.

The comedienne and mental health campaigner said her two grown-up daughters and son often ask what they were like at certain ages.

But she confessed to a literary festival audience that she simply cannot remember much about their childhoods because she was too distracted.

Technology had conspired with the internet and advertising to hijack our attention, she said.

She told the Hay Festival: 'I missed my kids' childhoods. They're always saying to me 'what was I like when I was four or seven?' and I can't remember because I was on the telephone. I spent the whole time on there.'

Miss Wax has three children, Marina, 27, Maddy, 22, and Max, 24, with her husband, director Ed Bye, whom she met while starring in Girls on Top with Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders.

The 63-year-old, who has written a book, A Mindfullness Guide for the Frazzled, does recall telling her children to leave her alone while she was on the phone.

'They would tell me their hamster had died and I would go 'yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm here, take some money, go get him cremated'. I missed the whole thing,' she said.

Miss Wax, who has battled depression throughout her life, spoke emotionally of taking up mindfulness because she felt she had let down her children.

She added that she still struggles to tear herself away from technology to give enough attention to her family.

'Sometimes I catch myself. I'm halfway emailing, halfway listening to my kids. You get that overview and think you know I have a choice here,' she said.

'Sometimes I manage to get the computer lid down and really listen to my children.'

She added: 'The most flattering thing you can do for another human being is give them your full attention.'

But technology itself is not to blame, according to Miss Wax, who is completing a master's degree in mindfulness at Oxford University.

She said: 'The problem is not the technology, it's that none of us can shut it down. We're slaves to this stuff.

'Gandhi told us there was more to life than speed but he didn't tell us what. This could be why we're frazzled.

'We put technology there it didn't drop from a meteorite. Thank god for technology. You can b**** about technology and the planet but unless we fix ourselves it's over.;

Wax claimed that technology had conspired with the internet and advertising to hijack our attention (file photo)

She added: 'We aren't equipped to pay attention you have to practice it. We've become experts in distractions.

'The web and advertising know how to distract us, they know how to hijack our attention. The definition of happiness is when you can focus on what you want to focus on.'

The comedienne now promotes mindfulness techniques as a way of dealing with stress and focusing on each moment in life.

She added that technology could be a way of educating young people on mental health and cognitive techniques.

'Give them [teenagers] games where you don't get more points if you kill the guy but if you outfox him,' she said.

She also claimed it was more important for children to be learning emotional intelligence in schools than actual academic achievement.
Restaurant has become inundated with business since the alleged murder

Tourists are visiting the restaurant to try to Vietnamese iced coffee she had

Newlywed Ms Salihin died after foaming at the mouth and collapsing

The 27-year-old allegedly put cyanide in her coffee at Olivier Grand Cafe

Travellers are flocking to the Jakarta cafe where an Australian student allegedly poisoned her friend's iced coffee with cyanide to try the drink themselves in what has become a ghoulish new tourist attraction.

Jessica Kumala Wongso is accused of slipping the substance in to the drink she ordered for Wayan Mirna Salihin at the Olivier Grand Cafe in Jakarta on January 6.

Ms Salihin began foaming at the mouth after one sip of the cafe's 'Vietnamese coffee' and died on her way to hospital.

As her accused killer awaits trial in Indonesia, tourists are visiting the cafe in their droves to sample to try the drink themselves and take photographs inside.

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Tourists are flocking to Olivier Grand Cafe in Jakarta to sample the same Vietnamese iced coffee drank by Wayan Mirna Salihin before she died by alleged cyanide poisoning. Above, one diner shares a photograph of the beverage during their visit

Business at the restaurant is so booming diners must now make reservations or risk waiting four hours for a table, some claimed.

Many took photographs of their visits to share on tourism websites and social media and joked about the looming case against Wongso.

'Coffee without cyanide,' said one diner as she uploaded a photograph of the cafe's now infamous Vietnamese iced coffee.

Another said they had to book in advance for a table with the restaurant becoming 'far more crowded' as a result of the scandal.

'We had the infamous Vietnamese iced coffee which was alright. The place was pretty busy so I guess no bad effects from the "murder case"' said another.

Wongso ordered the drink for Ms Salihin after arriving at the restaurant an hour before her in January.

Jessica Kumala Wongso (above being escorted by police) is accused of slipping the poison in to her friend's iced coffee in January

Wayan Mirna Salihin sipped from the coffee and began foaming at the mouth and convulsing. She died en route to hospital

The women met up at the cafe in central Jakarta (above) on January 6 with another friend

She was seen handling the beverage on CCTV footage before her friends arrived, according to local media.

The 27-year-old was arrested on January 30, some three weeks after meeting her friend at the cafe. She denies one count of pre-meditated murder.

Last week the Attorney General's office revealed it had been given assurances by the Indonesian government that if Wongso would not face the death penalty if found convicted.

'The Indonesian Government has given an assurance to the Australian Government that the death penalty will not be sought nor carried out in relation to the alleged offending,' it said in a statement issued to Fairfax Media.

The scandal has not put diners off visiting the cafe, with even more flocking to it now to sample to coffee Ms Salihin was drinking when she died. Above, a review by one guest who described the drink as 'infamous'

Other visitors have shared photographs of the coffee on social media. It is alleged Wongso ordered the drink for her friend and slipped the poison in it before she arrived

Another diner claimed she was told she may have to wait four hours for a table at the now bustling restaurant

The case has boosted the cafe's profile to no end with diners now required to book in advance for a table

Ms Salihin (seen above during another outing) began foaming at the mouth and convulsing after drinking the coffee

The women studied in Sydney together before graduating in 2008. Ms Salihin returned to Indonesia while Wongso stayed in Australia for several more years to work

Jakarta police spokesman Awi Setiyono however argued no such promise could be made and that the decision would lie with the judge in the case.

'Even the president cannot say that, let alone Krishna Murti. Look, it is not certain that she will get the death penalty, the trial hasn't even started.

'Just wait and we will see what the judges decide,' he said. Australian Federal Police are now assisting with inquiries.

Wongso, a permanent resident in Australia, studied with Ms Salihin at the Billy Blue College of Design in Sydney and at Swinburne University of Technology.

They graduated in 2008 but Wongso remained in Sydney to work. She returned to Indonesia sometime afterwards but the pair had grown distant, it was claimed by local police.

At the time of Ms Salihin's death she had recently married husband Arief Soemarko.

The 27-year-old woman denies killing her friend and has vowed to clear her name by helping police

It was previously alleged Wongso might have been jealous of her friend who was recently married (above on her wedding day with other friends)

Wongso said she wanted to help her late friend's family discover 'who was behind' her death

She participated in a police reenactment of the alleged killing at the cafe earlier this year (above)

A consultant called in by local police in March to help unravel the case alleged that Wongso, who did not attend their wedding, had been driven to murder by 'revenge and jealousy'.

'A possible motive is some kind of jealousy and revenge,' Kirdi Putra told ABC's 7.30.

Wongso denies killing her friend and has vowed to clear her name. She previously took part in a police reenactment of their meeting at the Olivier Grand Cafe, returning to the scene in an orange jumpsuit and police guard.

Her lawyer, who is also her uncle, has called in to question an autopsy apparently commissioned by police which found 15 grams of cyanide per litre in her system.

In March Wongso said she wanted to help her friend's family discover 'who was behind all of this'.
They said they had gone out looking many times since she vanished

A man has been arrested after a 24-year-old woman he met online was found in a shallow grave.

Lashawn Johnson has been charged with murder after the remains of Angela Russo were discovered buried near her burnt-out car in Maricopa, Arizona.

She had been missing since April 19 when the pair met up after connecting on a dating website.

The Maricopa Police Department said in a news release Sunday that officials found 'significant evidence of foul play' when they found Russo's body.

Lashawn Johnson (mugshot left) has been arrested after the body of Angela Russo (right), a girl he met online, was found in a shallow grave in Maricopa, Arizona

Diana Schalow, Russo's mother, has said Russo didn't know Johnson and was going on a date to get to know him.

She told KPHO/KTVK: 'Very difficult to put into words. It's probably the most excruciating pain.

She added: 'It does actually give us a slight bit of closure. You go to sleep with different pain but at least, we've gone searching for her so many times.

'Am I surprised? No,' Schalow added. 'I was saddened. I was hoping it was going to end differently

Johnson was charged with murder on Monday. He was already behind bars for other, unrelated charges.

A statement was posted on the Find Angela Russo Facebook page. It read: 'The family of Angela Russo is devastated by the reality of her murder.

She had been missing since April 19 when the pair met up after connecting on a dating website. The Maricopa Police Department said in a news release Sunday that officials found 'significant evidence of foul play' when they found Russo's body

'While the arrest of Lashawn Johnson by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office provides some relief and closure, the family has suffered greatly since Angela went missing on April 19th.

'The family is grateful for the generous outpour of love and support for Angela and the family. They request that their privacy be respected during this time of mourning.

'The family continues to work closely with law enforcement and prosecuting officials as they work to effect justice.'
The parents of a dead man whose fiance was successful in her legal bid to have his testicles removed from his body will oppose the decision.

Tony Deane, 34, passed away unexpectedly in a Queensland hospital in April and his fiance Leith Patteson, 42, said it would be 'the greatest honour' if she could still have his baby.

The couple were engaged after a month of meeting online in September 2015 and were trying conceive after Mr Deane moved from New Zealand to Toowoomba to be with Ms Patteson.

Ms Patteson successfully applied to the Supreme Court to have his sperm removed just one day after his death, but a lawyer for Mr Deane's parents said they will oppose the decision after only finding out 'the application was being made within a few hours prior to the courts actually being convened to hear the decision,' The ABC reported.

Tony Deane (pictured left) passed away unexpectedly in a Queensland hospital in April and his fiance Leith Patteson (right) said it would be 'the greatest honour' if she could still have his baby

The couple were engaged after a month of meeting online in September 2015 and were trying conceive after Mr Deane (pictured) moved from New Zealand to Toowoomba

'The uncertainty associated with it has caused them significant distress and both the parents are receiving ongoing counselling in New Zealand in order to assist them to cope with this very stressful time of their lives,' lawyer Bill Munro said.

Several friends presented evidence in court supporting the couple's desire to have a child together and said they were 'ecstatic' each time they thought they may be pregnant.

Mr Deane's parents have since returned to New Zealand with their son's body and were shocked by Ms Patteson's decision.

'There was very little time for anyone to consider their position at all,' Mr Munro said.

Last week, Ms Patteson said she cared for the 34-year-old when he was battling a blood disease unrelated to his death.

'He was an absolute gentleman  I think if you got to be the mother of his child and they got his personality you would be a very lucky mother,' she told The Courier Mail.

Ms Patteson successfully applied to the Supreme Court to have his sperm removed from his testes, but a lawyer for Mr Deane's (pictured with relative) parents said they will oppose the decision

Ms Patteson hopes to use his sperm to get pregnant via in-vitro fertilization, or IVF. The sperm will be stored at a fertility clinic until she is ready (stock image)

She said she came up with the idea to harvest his sperm while he was in a Queensland hospital on life support and decided to make some calls.

'It would be the greatest honour I could have to carry on such a wonderful man, everything about him that was so special and wonderful,' she said.

Justice Martin Burns granted the request to remove the testicles but said another application must be made before the sperm was used.

He said this would give Ms Patteson the chance to think about whether she really wanted to go through with her pregnancy.

In the meantime, the man's testicles will be stored at an IVF facility.

IVF is a process by which a woman's eggs are fertilised by sperm in a laboratory setting which mimics pregnancy.
A horrific car accident on the Gold Coast in Queensland has left one woman dead, and her older sister facing criminal charges.

Candice Chmieluk, 29, and her sister Sammy-Jo, 24, were spending time together at the Currumbin Surf Life Saving Club on Sunday before deciding to leave at about 5.30pm, the Gold Coast Bulletin reported.

Just minutes after they left the club they were involved in a car accident at Palm Beach which forensic police say is one of the worst they have ever seen.

Candice was driving the car when the terrifying accident unfolded. She has undergone routine tests for drugs and alcohol but police couldn't confirm the results today.

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Sammy-Jo Chmieluk, left, with her older sister Candice, right. The sisters were involved in a car accident on Sunday afternoon in Palm Beach on the Gold Coast

Sammy Jo was killed instantly, she was a passenger in the vehicle when it collided with a pole

Investigations suggest Candice lost control of the vehicle and it ploughed into a pole.

The Jeep the young women were travelling in split in half as it collided with the pole, then moments later the wreckage burst into flames. Police say 'excessive speed' was a factor in the accident.

Sammy-Jo died on impact but witnesses were able drag Candice from the tangled wreckage.

Candice, pictured, was removed from the wreckage by witnesses before it burst into flames

Sammy-Jo, pictured, was unable to be saved. She was on holiday from Armidale and had been spending time with her sister before the accident

'All we could see was this tiny pod of fire that slowly got more explosive,' an unnamed witness told news.com.au.

'There were a few explosions and then some screams from people.

'One woman was screaming for dear life at the top of her lungs.

'Everyone did a good job getting here really fast but it was too late.

'I've never seen anything like it, it's the worst I've ever seen.'

Police have credited the onlookers for their quick thinking, and Inspector Karen Shaw from Queensland Police told Channel Nine the incident 'could have been a double fatality'.

Sammy-Jo, pictured died on impact, family from Armidale admit they're devastated and are still trying to come to terms with the news

The car was completely crushed by the crash which left Candice in the Gold Coast University Hospital with serious injuries

Candice could face criminal charges following the accident which killed her sister

She is suffering from serious injuries from the accident, put paramedic Ricky Arnold said she was conscious when emergency services arrived.

'She was in shock and couldn't really talk to us,' he said.

Candice was taken to the Gold Coast University Hospital shortly after the accident.

The Gold Coast Bulletin reported that friends and employees at the club told the girls not to leave in the car.

A relative who lives in Armidale, where the girls grew up, says the family are distraught and 'trying to come to terms with the news'.

The force of the accident left glass, plastic and twisted metal strewn across the street. Among the debris a child's dummy and a P-plate could be seen.

A bouquet of flowers has been left at the site. Sammy-Jo was on holiday from Armidale to see both of her older sisters and their families.
Just imagine that you are a parent and one of your daughters cuts the hair off the Barbie dolls belonging to her younger sister. Cue screaming, shouting and tears before bedtime. But its the kind of thing that happens in families, isnt it?

In later years the crew-cut Barbies will be chuckled about over Sunday lunch. Do you remember when . . .

But now imagine someone else learns about the Barbie incident  during a seemingly casual conversation with that hurt younger sister, say.

Being watched: The one million children in Scotland will be checked over by 'state guardians' as part of new laws in Children and Young People (Scotland) Act that comes into force from August

This person is not a relative or friend but an official appointed by the state, without your permission, and allowed to gather information about you and your children  in secret, if it is deemed necessary  and circulate it among other state agencies such as the police and social services.

It so happens that this snooper doesnt possess the sense of proportion or humour that is essential when addressing the issue of warring children. This hacking-off of synthetic blonde locks appears a bit odd to our state guardian. Disturbing, in fact.

So, this government-appointed busybody opens a file on you and your family and enters a remark: Older girl exhibiting signs of aggression against younger. Doll disfigurement may indicate deeper issues of anger management within family unit.

And suddenly it isnt just about Barbie dolls any more.

George Orwell understood this kind of thing: how the state, always wary, always contemptuous of the people it claims to represent, forever seeks to exercise control over them.

Knowledge is power  and what better knowledge can one have of a person than that pertaining to the inner workings of their family?

It just so happens that Nicola Sturgeon cut the hair off her sisters Barbies during a childhood spat, according to that sibling, Gillian. The First Minister of Scotland denies the allegation but adds that if she did it  and its an if   she would have had provocation.

She (Gillian) behaved the way younger sisters tend to behave, but I love her dearly, said Miss Sturgeon.

Being British, and lovers of liberty and privacy, we are all glad that Miss Sturgeon never merited a mention in some state dossier for her alleged Barbie-barbering.

The SNP, led by Nicola Sturgeon, has introduced a law that indeed creates a state guardian for every one of Scotlands one million young people under the age of 18

But the leader of the Scottish National Party does not return the compliment.

Incredible as it seems, the government she leads  newly re-elected, though short of an overall majority in the Scottish Parliament  has introduced a law that indeed creates a state guardian for every one of Scotlands one million young people under the age of 18.

The Children and Young People (Scotland) Act comes into force in August but is already being trialled across Scotland. If it is seen as a success, inevitably there will be those who will argue for it to be introduced south of the border.

For children under five, this so-called Named Person will be their health visitor; for older children the most likely candidate is their head teacher. These Named Persons are just like the one in the scenario above.

Intelligence-gatherers, imposed on each and every family by the State, they are able to mould perceptions  often in secret  of the families allotted to them.

There is no right of appeal against their findings  indeed, no automatic right to know what those findings are  and no way to prevent their judgments spreading out into the state bureaucracy via a soon-to-be-created mass database.

The idea is that these people will provide a single point of contact for those concerned about a child, including its parents. No longer will a boy or girl in distress be allowed to fall between the cracks created by different agencies.

But this is a benign interpretation of something regarded by opponents as profoundly sinister in its ambition and scope.

Among others, doctors and dentists will be compelled to surrender information on youngsters in a move that tears down the concept of patient confidentiality.

Taxi drivers, too, if they are employed on council contracts to transport children, will be compelled to relate anything of interest.

This SNP-inspired McStasi is not there simply to stop harm coming to children. Its remit, according to the legislation that has given it life, is to promote child wellbeing.

In that single, elastic word lies the danger of this project. Because when a Named Person is looking to improve the life of a child, as opposed to saving him or her from abuse and death, there is no end to how he or she may interfere in family life.

Instead of focusing on a few exceptionally vulnerable children, the wellbeing test will make every child in Scotland a potential target for official intervention.

Doctors and dentists will be compelled to surrender information on youngsters in a move that tears down the concept of patient confidentiality as part of the scheme

The Named Person scheme shows how government has lost any sense of the family as an important private institution, says Stuart Waiton, a lecturer at Abertay University and vocal opponent of the scheme.

Trust, loyalty and privacy, in their warped eyes, are transformed into secrets being hidden behind closed doors.

Already, a bizarre edifice of wellbeing indicators has been trialled in areas the length and breadth of Scotland.

Named Persons will inquire into how childrens bedrooms are decorated, how much television they watch and whether they can ride a bicycle at a certain age. It is a bureaucrats dream, with its own brand of patronising jargon, such as its goal of GIRFEC (Getting It Right For Every Child) so that every child is SHANARRI  Safe, Healthy, Achieving, Nurtured, Active, Respected, Responsible, Included.

There is even a SHANARRI song to be sung by Scotlands hapless youth  one that would make Chairman Mao proud. Hello sunshine, hello blue sky / S-H-A-N-A-R-R-I (repeat) / Were safe and were happy and achieving . . . And on and on.

The 60 million of taxes so far wasted on this drivel is surely only a drop in the ocean of what will be spent.

People in the rest of the UK have heard little of the Named Persons scheme, hence the waves made by an edition of Question Time on BBC1 earlier this month. Chairman David Dimbleby spoke for sensible people everywhere when he described the scheme as stranger and stranger.

Named Persons are already exhibiting a disturbing zealotry in their pursuit of failing parents.

'Stranger and stranger': David Dimbleby spoke for sensible people everywhere when he spoke about the scheme during a recent edition of Question Time

Take Michael (not his real name), an academic at a Scottish university. His two youngest children were removed from his home after his estranged wife claimed she had suffered domestic abuse at his hands. But the boys were later returned to him by a court. Once a stain is made you cant erase it and these mechanisms begin, says the foreign-born lecturer.

Unbeknown to him, a family record was kept by his childrens health visitor, a Named Person, for 18 months. It chronicled every minor issue, from runny noses to thumb-sucking. There were 70 pages of comments, but when Michael finally discovered its existence and won his battle to get hold of a copy, much of it was redacted.

My colleagues at university thought it was a document from the former Soviet Union, he says.

It has radically affected my perception of Scotland. I had some naive view that Scottish democracy was different and better, but the Scottish system is highly authoritarian. It is horrible.

Rebecca Cheeseman collided with the Named Person scheme when her daughter became an alleged victim of a crime and a social worker called at her home. It was concluded that her daughter had made up the allegation and there must be some underlying reason, possibly affecting her wellbeing.

We discovered that medical details about my daughter, my husband and me had been shared with the social worker by way of a health visitor, she says.

The health visitor was the Named Person for my sons and had recorded, among other things, that I had suffered from postnatal depression following the birth of my daughter in 1998, which was wholly irrelevant, as was a remark about my husbands current health condition.

The Cheesemans made a complaint and were later vindicated by a council tribunal.

They have put us through hell for 18 months and havent even apologised, Rebecca says. With wellbeing as the criteria, anything can trigger one of these behind-the-scenes enquiries.

Also chilling is the case of a dentist in Aberdeenshire whose staff have been pressured by Named Persons to release information on young patients.

These callers are pushing quite hard for information, he says. They want to know the date of the last check-up and what level of decay was found, that kind of thing.

Named Persons will be able to inquire into how childrens bedrooms are decorated. They will also assess how much television youngster's watch and whether they can ride a bicycle at a certain age

When we say we need (parental) permission to comply with the request, it often becomes quite aggressive. They say: You are being deliberately obstructive. You dont need the parents permission any more because we are acting as Named Persons. 

Even taxi drivers are feeling the pressure, too.

The training officer for Scottish Borders Child Protection Committee has already warned cabbies contracted by the council to transport children around the rural area that they must relay relevant information gleaned from their young passengers.

Youve got to tell us because its a legal duty, says training officer Jim Terras.

So how did the Scots  inheritors of the Enlightenment  come up with this dystopian nightmare?

Well, it was given to them by the English. And in particular those arch-meddlers in New Labour.

Social engineering was the order of the day in the Blair era, and the idea  expressed in its policy Every Child Matters  was that if you intervened early in a childs life, you could stop it ending up jobless, or in prison, or dead at the hands of an abusive parent. Even the Conservatives are prone to a bit of social engineering; witness David Camerons argument that every aspiring parent should attend parenting classes.

But SNP policymakers developed this philosophy into an even more invasive policy. Its Every Child Matters on steroids.

Scotlands Faculty of Advocates, the equivalent of the Bar Council in England, argues that in passing the Act the government at Holyrood has confused a policy with a law. You cant legislate for a childs happiness, it says, and you shouldnt try.

The Scottish legislatures lack of a revising second chamber, weak committee system and sheep-like SNP members allowed the Named Persons clause to remain in the Act and be passed into law  aided by an Opposition that failed to pick up on the peril.

The Scottish people, however, are beginning to wake up to the dangers. Polls show that a majority are opposed to the scheme, and it is thought the SNP may have lost its majority in this months election due to this disquiet.

There is also a continuing legal challenge by a coalition of church and other groups called No2NP. The Supreme Court in London is being asked to rule the legislation unlawful on grounds that the Scottish Parliament has exceeded its powers and contravened the European Human Rights provision protecting the right to private and family life. A decision is expected soon.

Experts such as veteran social worker Maggie Mellon point out that the scheme hinders rather than helps the cause of child welfare.

Jenny Cunningham says there is a world of difference between parental behaviour that puts children at risk and that which the state does not deem acceptable

This new concept of wellbeing draws in every child in the country, she says. So instead of having a few blips on your radar screen to monitor  the real danger cases  you now have thousands of blips obscuring the true picture.

We are now asking questions like, Is a child taken to church too often or not often enough? Are they made to do too much homework or not enough? Are they going to bed too early or too late?

Bloody hell! Leave families alone. They have done quite well over the years  much better than the state, which makes a lousy parent.

Jenny Cunningham, a paediatrician working in Glasgow, reinforces the point, saying: There is a world of difference between parental behaviour that puts children at serious risk of abuse or neglect and behaviour that does not match up to the states expectations.

Even proposed Named Persons are unhappy. Teachers have said they will not act as such during holidays, and more than half of health visitors surveyed by Unison are opposed to the scheme.

These professionals are being asked to take on what is potentially a huge extra workload for no extra money. Head teachers in particular could find themselves swamped by multiple demands for information from agencies and parents.

One teacher tells me: It is absolutely essential that we forge close working relationships with parents. If we start contacting them to say we have heard their child has missed an appointment at the dentist, that relationship will immediately break down.

Faced with this growing backlash, Miss Sturgeon has begun to back-pedal, describing the scheme as an entitlement not an obligation. But the Act says nothing about choice.

This policy is widely supported by leading childrens charities and welfare organisations, as well as by the Scottish Police Federation, says a Holyrood spokesman. It is a policy which is aimed at protecting childrens wellbeing, and is about supporting, not diminishing, the role of parents.

Rachel McIntyre begs to differ.

On a wet evening this week, the child carer attended an anti-Named Person roadshow in Kilmarnock with her six-year-old son Calvin. Miss McIntyre, 29, is a single parent  a category that tends to attract attention from Named Persons.

Calvin and I might be a small unit but were a strong one, she says. To find out that somebody could be making decisions about Calvin without me knowing, I dont like that.

This is like Big Brother is watching you.

Simon Calvert of the Christian Institute, a main backer of No2NP, puts it simply: The Named Person scheme is a Civil Service tick-box approach to family life, patronising parents, over-assessing children and trampling on peoples right to confidentiality.

Do these experts ever stop to ask themselves how the family has managed to function for millennia without them?
Mother-of-one says children must be dragged into

The mother-of-one and stepmother-of-three claims children have to be dragged into participating in real life, rather than left in front of screens

They're regularly used by mothers in desperate need of some peace and quet.

But there is a danger that iPads are isolating children from the real world, according to actress Salma Hayek.

The mother-of-one and stepmother-of-three claims children have to be dragged into participating in real life, rather than left in front of screens.

She added that there is a danger that older mothers, who are often exhausted, are beginning to use iPads and similar technology as an easy method of entertaining children.

Hayek said it was essential that children are made to join in with family life for fear of them becoming isolated otherwise.

You have to drag children into participating in real life, she told Red magazine. It takes a lot of work and mummies are very tired because most of us work and life is exhausting, especially if you are an older mom like me, but you have to make the effort.

And if you have a smart child, its harder.

Now its so easy to just entertain them [with a screen], and you dont have to go through the complaining for an hour about dragging them places.

Drag them, and make them a part of your life. Its about the human connection, and the things they can learn from participating in life. Otherwise, isolation starts to happen.

Hayek said she now takes her own daughter, Valentina, nine, on work trips around the world in an attempt to keep her away from technology.

Mexican-American former model Hayek won critical acclaim for her breakthrough role as Mexican painter Frida Kahlo in 2002s Frida.

She was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar and has since starred in a number of films, including last years fantasy-horror Tale of Tales alongside French actor Vincent Cassel.

She is married to French billionaire Francois-Henri Pinault, the chief executive of Kering  owner of brands including Gucci and Alexander McQueen.

Salma Hayek with billionaire husband Francois-Henri Pinault on Sunday in Vatican City




A Labour politician who was married to two women at the same time and describes Israel as a terrorist state, has been appointed to oversee equality in Birmingham the Mail can reveal.

Councillor Waseem Zaffar has been selected as the new cabinet member for Transparency, Openness and Equality for Birmingham City Council  tasked with ensuring it is being fair and honest.

This is despite his questionable attitudes towards women and his anti-Semitic views.

New role: Councillor Waseem Zaffar (left, pictured with former Labour leader Ed Miliband) has been selected as the new cabinet member for Transparency, Openness and Equality for Birmingham City Council

Honored: Mr Zaffar is awarded an MBE by Prince Charles in recognition of his charity work

The Labour politician and magistrate married teacher Ayesha Imdad in a lavish Islamic ceremony in 2014 while still being married to his first wife, Faraz Begum, we revealed last year.

The Mail has now discovered videos of Mr Zaffar, 34, online, describing the Zionist Israeli government as terrorists at a pro-Palestine demonstration.

At the rally, at which he is one of the lead speakers, he shouts: If you want to know what extremism and terrorism is, you go and look at what the Israelis are doing to those civilians in Palestine.

He calls on crowds - who repeatedly chant Israel is a terrorist state - to stand up in solidarity against something that can only be described as state supported terrorism by this Zionist Israeli government.

At the event on 25 July 2014, other unknown speakers call on local Labour MP, John Spellar, to step down for being a Zionist.

The Labour politician and magistrate married teacher Ayesha Imdad (pictured together) in a lavish Islamic ceremony in 2014 while still being married to his first wife, Faraz Begum

Mr Zaffar, pictured (left) with Labour grandee Lord Peter Mandelson, has questionable attitudes towards women and anti-Semitic views

The crowd then chants John Spellar shame on you. Mr Zaffar is out of focus in the footage, so it is not known if he joined in the chants against his fellow Labour politician. Mr Spellar wished not to comment.

Mr Zaffars comments will raise further questions about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, which last month suspended MP Naz Shah and ex-London mayor Ken Livingstone following their anti-Semitic comments.

MPs and campaigners last night called for Mr Zaffar to be removed from his new post and suspended from the Labour Party.

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said: This is outrageous  while other people have been kicked out of the Labour party for holding these kinds of views, Waseem Zaffar has been given a cabinet job.

Labour promised to root out anti-Semitism, but as every day passes it looks more and more like the party is determined to sweep it under the carpet.

MPs and campaigners last night called for Mr Zaffar (pictured with London Mayor Sadiq Khan) to be removed from his new post and suspended from the Labour Party

Mr Zaffar is pictured with Bethnal Green and Bow MP Rushanara Ali. The councillor has thrown his weight behind several womens rights campaigns

Board of Deputies of British Jews Vice President Mar van der Zyl said someone with such inflammatory and divisive views should never have been appointed to such a role and called for Mr Zaffars suspension.

Mr Zaffar walked out on his first wife, British national Miss Begum, 37, in 2010 and sent her a controversial Islamic divorce in the post without any warning.

He obtained the document  which is not recognised under English law - from an imam operating from a terraced house in Birmingham.

Such documents - which are rarely issued and frowned upon by most Muslims - can be obtained by men without the knowledge or consent of their wives from specific mosques or Sharia courts.

A man simply states talaq  meaning I divorce thee  three times.

This was confirmed by Birmingham imam, Moulana Bostan Quadri, who told the Mail he gave Mr Zaffar such a document.

A Labour politician who was married to two women at the same time and describes Israel as a terrorist state, has been appointed to oversee equality in Birmingham (pictured) the Mail can reveal

He said in broken English: Throughout the Muslim world, it is unanimously that way ... if some Muslim man want to give the divorce to his wife, he can.

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said: This is outrageous'

Meanwhile, Mr Zaffar married Mrs Imdad in an Islamic ceremony in 2014, attended by several Labour politicians, including MP Jack Dromey, the husband of former deputy leader of the Labour Party, Harriet Harman. Mr Zaffar and Mrs Imdad are still married and now have a baby together.

Despite having now finally been granted an official divorce from her ex-husband, Masters student Miss Begum said she still cannot speak to the Mail for legal reasons.

Mr Zaffars actions appear to be starkly at odds with his public persona.

The councillor for the Lozells and East Handsworth ward in Birmingham - who is often photographed with celebrities and Labour politicians such as Ed Miliband and David Blunkett - has thrown his weight behind several womens rights campaigns.

At one Asian womens engagement event in 2013, he claimed: I came to politics to ensure a fair and equal society.

And in 2012, he even declared on his website: I have never and will never support sharia law in this country.

He also recently wrote a post on his website about how theres no place for anti-Semitism, not in Birmingham, not anywhere.

A Labour spokeswoman said Mr Zaffars views are not shared by the Labour Party and Cllr Zaffar has been reminded of his responsibilities as a Labour councillor.
The 33-year-old man who was shot dead at a college reunion held at $3.35million mansion listed on Airbnb has been described as a wonderful parent and a generous man.

Keivan Heath, a father of two, was shot at a Lynnfield, Massachusetts, home early Sunday morning and was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Heath was the father of a 13-year-old boy and an infant son who just turned one.

'He would give you the shirt off his back. Excellent father,' said Heath's mother Sharon to Fox25

'You just turn my grandkid into another statistic. Look at your kid if you have any, think about how they would feel if it was your kid.'

Keivan Heath (pictured), a 33-year-old father of two, was shot dead at a Lynnfield, Massachusetts, mansion party

Heath was a father to a 13-year-old son and a one-year-old infant and was considered an 'excellent father' by his family

She told the news station she wanted her her son's killer to know: 'You broke my heart. You took my child away.'

Information about a suspect has not be released by Massachusetts State Police detectives or Lynnfield Police.

Authorities said Heath was discovered by officers responding to reports of gunfire at the home around 3am on Sunday.

Homeowner Alex Styller, 49, rented the home to a group of people who said they planned to hold a small college reunion at the 5,000 sq ft residence - which rents for $1,400 a night.

Keivan Heath, 33, was shot dead when a party at this $3.35million listed on Airbnb got out of hand this weekend

Homeowner Alex Styller, 49, rented the home to a group of people who said they planned to hold a small college reunion at the 5,000 sq ft residence - which rents for $1,400 a night

Authorities said Heath was discovered by officers responding to reports of gunfire at the home around 3am

One neighbor said the party started around 11am on Saturday and that girls in bikinis and college-aged partygoers could be seen entering the house

Styller was informed of the shooting at the home, which is currently on the market, from his real estate broker around 7.30am Sunday.

He found that the six bedroom mansion had been left a 'big mess' and discovered a bullet hole in the kitchen, Styller told the Boston Globe.

Styller said he was not certain where exactly in - or outside - of the home the shooting may have happened.

One neighbor said the party started around 11am on Saturday and that girls in bikinis and college-aged partygoers could be seen entering the house, they told CBS Boston.

Police have not revealed what led up to the shooting and the investigation remains ongoing. No arrests were made as of Sunday evening.

Homeowner Alex Styller, 49, rented the home to a group of people who said they planned to hold a small college reunion at the 5,000 sq ft residence - which rents for $1,400 a night

Styller said he was not certain where exactly in - or outside - of the home the shooting may have happened

Styller said he thought the planned reunion would include up to 20 people. Instead police informed him that anywhere from 60 to 100 people were at the home that night

Styller added that the renters were planning to pay professional cleaners to take care of the mess

Styller said he thought the planned reunion would include up to 20 people. Instead police informed him that anywhere from 60 to 100 people were at the home that night.

Paper plates, plastic cups and utensils were strewn about the street of the house, which is protected by a wrought-iron gate and requires that guests be buzzed in, according to the Boston Herald.

The home, which is 15 miles away from downtown Boston, is described online as being in one of the 'safest areas' in Massachusetts.

Styller said he believes the renters, aged 34 to 40, did not know the shooter or the victim and that they were 'very nice, very polite' people who were 'in shock'.

'They are very sorry and they feel extremely bad about what happened,' he told WCVB. 'They didn't expect this to turn out this way.'

Styller added that the renters were planning to pay professional cleaners to take care of the mess.

The property has been owned by Styller, who had the home built on site, since 2003.

He said he has been renting the home on the weekends for corporate retreats and family reunions for years and has only had positive experiences.

And Styller said he has no plans to stop renting it out in the future.

'I just continue to believe,' he said, 'That most of the people are great, wonderful, trustworthy, responsible, reliable people and individuals.'
Controversial Queensland MP Bob Katter has called for crocodile shooting safaris after a likely fatal crocodile attack, but he has been slammed on social media for his comments.

Cindy Waldron, 46, from New South Wales, is missing after being taken by a crocodile during a late-night swim on Sunday night in far north Queensland. Leichhardt MP Warren Entsch blamed 'human stupidity' for the attack.

However, Mr Katter did not agree and tweeted that 'croc shooting safaris can put nature Back-in-Balance', along with a picture of him on top of a crocodile holding a knife above its head.

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Queensland MP Bob Katter has called for crocodile shooting safaris after Cindy Waldron, 46, was taken by one on Sunday night in far north Queensland

He again called for crocodile culls in far north Queensland, reports The Brisbane Times.

'I can't believe that Warren Entsch is attacking the people over this. Defending crocodiles instead of people is stupid,' he said.

'And I'd like to get Mr Entsch to swear on the Bible that he hasn't been in a river or creek in north Queensland. The crocs would take one look at him and they'd be licking their lips.'

However, Mr Katter's comments were criticised on social media with one Twitter follower preferring a 'Katter safari' instead.

Ms Waldron (pictured), 46, who lives in Lithgow in New South Wales is still missing, after going for a night-swim in crocodile infested waters on Sunday with childhood friend, Leann Mitchell, 47, from Cairns

Mr Katter said that 'defending crocodiles instead of people is stupid', and wanted a croc cull

Others on social media however were in favour of a 'Katter safari' instead

Rather than shooting safaris one person tweeted 'don't go night swimming with crocs' instead

It was also pointed out that the crocodiles main predators were dinosaurs

One twitter user agreed with 'animal libbers' and believed than anyone swimming in crocodile infested waters should get a 'Darwin award'

Ms Waldron was swimming with her friend, Leeann Mitchell, 47, at Daintree, north of Cairns around 10pm when the crocodile attack took place.

The pair had waded in to waist-deep water in an area known to have a high population of crocodiles, and as the woman was dragged away her friend tried desperately to free her from the creature's clutches.

Ms Waldron's last words before she disappeared were 'a croc's got me', Channel Nine reported.

Ms Waldron, from Lithgow, and Ms Mitchell, from Cairns, were childhood friends from Hamilton, in New Zealand, reported the NZ Herald.

Ms Mitchell had reportedly recently undergone chemotherapy for cancer.

Emergency services are pictured at the scene on Thornton Beach following Sunday's attack

The general consensus was that the incident should be expected if people go swimming in these rivers

Mr Katter did have some supporters when it came to the crocodile issue though

Mr Katter tweeted that 'croc shooting safaris can put nature Back-in-Balance'

Ms Mitchell's cousin, Alan Frost, told the NZ Herald that Ms Mitchell was unhurt in the incident at Thornton Beach, in Daintree.

He said she was recovering in Mossman Hospital.

'She has got good friends around her,' Mr Frost said. 'Leeann is a really good person, she has some really good support around her.'

In the meantime, Federal MP Warren Entsch has said the attack must not spark a hysterical debate about crocodile management in his electorate, instead blaming 'human stupidity'.

'You can't legislate against human stupidity,' he told AAP on Monday.

'This is a tragedy but it was avoidable. There are warning signs everywhere up there.'

The crocodile suspected of carrying out the attack on Sunday is pictured near Thornton Beach six months ago

The pair were swimming at Thornton Beach at Daintree (pictured), an area with a high crocodile population

There are crocodile warning signs on the side of the Daintree River near where the attack took place

Mr Entsch said he feared the attack might spark a reactive debate about how to manage crocodiles, but people must remember the attack happened inside a national park in an area where visitors are warned about the dangers.

'Let's not start vendettas. It's hard enough for some families to make a quid up there in the Daintree, showcasing crocs in their environment,' he said.

'People have to have some level of responsibility for their own actions.'

Federal MP Warren Entsch has said the attack must not spark a hysterical debate about crocodile management in his electorate. Pictured is a sign along the Daintree River

Earlier Senior Constable Russell Parker revealed details about the struggle which saw the 46-year-old taken away by a crocodile.

'Her 47-year-old friend tried to grab her and drag her to safety and she just wasn't able to do that,' he told ABC radio.

A search and rescue is currently underway for the missing woman. If fears about the woman's fate play out, it will be the second fatality involving a crocodile in a fortnight.
An animal behaviour expert believes Harambe the gorilla, who was shot dead when a four-year-old boy fell into his zoo enclosure, was 'investigating, not attacking' the child, which it understood was 'defenceless'.

The 180kg, critically endangered western lowland gorilla, was killed by officials at Cincinnati Zoo in the U.S. just one day after his 17th birthday after the boy climbed through barriers and fell 4.5 metres into the enclosure on Saturday.

Professor Gisela Kaplan, an animal behaviour expert at the University of New England, told The Daily Telegraph she didn't believe the boy was in danger.

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Cincinatti Zoo staff shot Harambe after he dragged the boy through the water, but many say he was simply trying to protect the child

Footage taken from another visitor shows the gorilla grabbing on to the boy's shirt. Many are placing the blame squarely on the parents of a four-year-old boy, who investigators believe crawled through a railing barrier

University of New England animal behaviour expert Professor Gisela Kaplan

Children weren't normally a threat according to Prof Kaplan, who said dominant gorillas like Harambe were protectors of their group and that the primate would have been investigating the strange new situation.

'The silverback wouldve understood that it was a defenceless small child. They would not normally attack, they are not an aggressive species (and) in the wild Im certain the boy wouldnt have been killed,' she said.

'If he was going to attack he wouldve warned him first. The first thing they do is charge and beat their chests and as far as I know that didnt happen.'

Bondi Vet Dr Chris Brown has also spoken out about the gorilla's death, suggesting in a Facebook post there could have been other ways to deal with the situation which wouldn't have resulted in killing the animal.

'The killing of 17 year old gorilla Harambe after a four-year-old boy fell into his enclosure at Cincinnati Zoo has left many of you asking whether such a drastic move was really necessary...,' he wrote on Monday.

Deonne Dickerson and Michelle Gregg (pictured) are the parents of the four-year-old boy who fell into the gorilla enclosure housing Harambe on Saturday at Cincinnati Zoo

A special zoo response team shot and killed a 17-year-old gorilla named Harambe (pictured) that grabbed and dragged a four-year-old boy who fell into its gorilla exhibit moat, the Cincinnati Zoo's director said

Bondi Vet Dr Chris Brown (pictured) has weighed in on the discussion surrounding the shooting of a gorilla called Harambe after a child climbed into the animal's enclosure in a zoo in the U.S.

Dr Chris Brown took to Facebook to comment on the killing of Harambe and the nature of lowland gorillas

Social media users expressed their grief at the loss of the gorilla's life due to human mistakes

People have reacted angrily to the news of Harambe's death, many blaming the child's parents for the incident

'Western lowland gorillas like Harambe are classified as critically-endangered in the wild and behaviourally are renowned for being relatively placid, unless provoked.

'So were other non-lethal measures an option?', Brown continued.

The Bondi Vet went on to explain the other ways the situation could have been handled, but also admitted 'the zoo staff were placed in an awful situation'.

He also said if the child had been properly supervised, there wouldn't be a need to even have the conversation.

Many commenters outraged by the situation have echoed the vet's sentiments, placing blame on the parents for not adequately supervising their child.

The incident, which was captured on cell phone, sparked an outcry of emotion as mourners called it a 'senseless death'.

The zoo's Gorilla World will be closed until further notice. Flowers and commemorative notes were left at a gorilla statue in the zoo on Sunday
He said former assistant treasurer Josh Frydenberg also couldn't answer

'This is obviously a 'gotcha' moment. It's not my portfolio,' she told Mitchell

She said she was 'aware' of retirement scheme but could not

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has had a self-confessed 'gotcha' moment after failing to answer questions on the Coalition's superannuation policy during a live radio interview.

Ms Bishop was asked about the government's Transition To Retirement scheme by 3AW radio presenter Neil Mitchell and while she said she was 'aware' of the scheme, was unable to elaborate as 'it's not in my portfolio'.

'Well, Neil, this is obviously a 'gotcha' moment,' she said on Tuesday morning.

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Foreign Minister Julie Bishop (pictured) has had a self-confessed 'gotcha' moment after failing to answer questions on the Coalition's superannuation policy live on air

Mitchell asked the Foreign Minister how the scheme works, saying a 15 per cent tax will be placed on those earning $70,000.

Ms Bishop responded saying she has been 'briefed' and told 96 per cent of people are 'either better off or not affected by it'.

'I suggest you have a closer look at the briefing, because that is clearly wrong minister,' he said during the 3AW interview.

'If you don't understand Transition To Retirement, then you can't see that.

'The Transition To Retirement scheme affects somewhere between 80,000 and 500,000 people and its putting a 15 per cent tax on them'.

Ms Bishop said she has been 'briefed' and told 96 per cent of people are 'either better off or not affected' by the Transition To Retirement scheme

Ms Bishop was asked about the government's Transition To Retirement scheme by 3AW radio presenter Neil Mitchell (pictured)

'Neil, we have now put in place a far more effective superannuation scheme and there have been changes, but they're necessary,' Ms Bishop said

Ms Bishop said Assistant Treasurer Kelly O'Dwyer assured her that was not the case.

'Neil, we have now put in place a far more effective superannuation scheme and there have been changes, but they're necessary,' she said.

Mr Mitchell made mention to when he asked former assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg about the same scheme and had a similar response.

'My problem is the government is saying four per cent of fat cats - that is untrue,' he said.

'When I asked Josh Frydenberg he doesn't know, I ask you - former Shadow Treasurer - you don't know'.

'This is where you're hitting average people, not the fat cats, the average people'.

Ms Bishop said she does not agree the everyday Australian will be affected under the scheme and Mr Mitchell suggested they move the conversation on.

Ms Bishop said she does not agree the everyday Australian will be affected under the scheme and Mr Mitchell suggested they move the conversation on

Mr Mitchell made mention to when he asked former assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg (pictured) about the same scheme and had a similar response
Police in Queensland began digging around a creek off a roadside in Carole Park on Tuesday after new evidence from a 'credible witness' in the suspected murder of Sharron Phillips 30 years ago.

Ms Phillips, then 20, disappeared on May 8, 1986 and detectives believe she was murdered.

The young shop assistant was last seen at about 11pm at a telephone box near the Wacol Railway Station after her car apparently ran out of fuel on nearby Ipswich Road.

Sharron Phillips was 20 years old when she went missing on May 8, 1986 - police began digging a section off a roadway at Carole Park in Queensland on Tuesday as they explore new evidence

Queensland Homicide detectives along with forensic officers commenced excavation of land at Carole Park in Ipswich following information provided to police regarding the suspected murder of Sharron Phillips in 1986

More than 100 cubic metres of soil will be moved after a witness came forward with new information which has police confident of a breakthrough in the 30 year murder mystery

Queensland Police hope new information from a witness will lead them the remains of missing woman Sharron Phillips, after she disappeared from the south-west Brisbane suburb of Wacol in 1986

'We're looking for Sharron's remains  the information is specific that she has been buried out here,' Acting Detective Superintendent Damien Hansen of the Homicide Group told reporters at the scene.

'The area that we are interested in is the drains that go under the roadway here.'

They began excavating a section of the roadway at Cobalt Street in the Ipswich suburb of Carole Park, about 19 kilometres south-west of Brisbane, on Tuesday morning.

The Ipswich City Council owned land is being dug up after a tip off, with investigators particularly focused on drains at the site.

Some 100 cubic metres of soil will be removed from drains during the search, which is expected to last about a week.

Detective Superintendent Damien Hansen said the tip-off was credible.

'The aspects of what they say have been verified in a lot of detail from previous investigations,' he said at the site on Tuesday.

'We had not spoken to this person previously ... the person has come forward because of their conscience.'

Detectives and forensic teams converged on a creek in the Ipswich suburb of Carole Park on Tuesday

Homicide detectives with assistance from forensic officers and local police organised the excavation of land following information provided to them regarding the suspected murder of Sharron Phillips in 1986

Ms Phillips, then 20, disappeared on May 8, 1986 and detectives believe she was murdered. A new witness has come forward telling public her remains are buried in the area around Cobalt Street

A large-scale excavation has begun at the site: An inquest was held two years after Sharron Phillips' disappearance - several suspects have been brought in but nobody charged

Ms Phillips went to the nearby army barracks to make a phone call but was turned away, and was later seen waiting for her boyfriend after using a public phone.

Investigators are seeking possible remains at the site, which is located just five kilometres from where she was last seen.

The cold case took a shock twist earlier this month when three of her siblings called for police to investigate their father's alibi.

Police said a 'credible witness' came forward with information about the remains of murdered shop assistant Sharron Phillips in 1986. The informant claims her body was dumped in drains off Cobalt Street in the Ipswich suburb of Carole Park

They also called for police to search a block of bushland next to their parents' home at Riverview.

However, Det Supt Hansen said investigators hadn't received information specific enough to warrant a search of that area.

A $250,000 reward remains on offer for anyone who provides information leading to an arrest and conviction.

'We have confirmed previously that any new evidence or information provided to us that could further our investigation would be followed up and investigated accordingly,' added Supt Hansen.

An inquest was held two years after her disappearance - several people have been questioned over the cold case but no charges have ever been laid.

Queensland Police have begun excavating a road after new evidence into the murder of Sharron Phillips




A woman is recovering after a herd of javelinas attacked while she was walking her dogs.

The victim, who has not been identified, was out in Fountain Hills, Arizona, on Friday when the pack of wild pigs, also known as collared peccaries, ran at her.

She lost her balance and fell. That's when the animals started biting her arms and neck.

A woman is recovering after a herd of javelinas (file pictured) attacked while she was walking her dogs in Fountain Hills, Arizona

The woman's husband and a neighbor ran over and pulled the woman away, Tucson News Now reported.

The woman underwent surgery and remained hospitalized Friday night. One of the dogs also needed surgery.

She has since been released from hospital and is recovering.

Amy Burnett, a Game and Fish, told AZ Central: 'We are fortunate that the attack was not worse.

'Attacks by javelina on humans are rare, but when they happen, public safety is our main concern.

All six of the animals were put down after the horrifying incident.

Javelinas are becoming an increasing problem in the neighborhood as residents keep leaving out food.

Arizona's Game and Fish Department reports that javelinas can be very aggressive, and will even walk right up to someone's front door.

The woman underwent surgery and remained hospitalized Friday night, Burnett said. One of the dogs also needed surgery (pictured)
Yet another law enforcement officer has fallen victim to thieves in San Francisco after an FBI agent's car was broken into and his gun and badge stolen in the city's popular Alamo Square.

The unnamed agent reported to police that his .40-caliber Glock 27, badge and FBI credentials were all stolen Sunday afternoon.

He is just the latest in a string of thefts from law enforcement officials over the past year that have seen a total of seven guns taken - two of which were later used in homicides, SF Gate reported.

Stolen: A .40-caliber Glock 27 like the one pictured was stolen from the unnamed agent, along with his FBI badge and credentials from his car in San Francisco Sunday. Six other police guns were stolen in the past year

The break-in occurred at around 12:30pm just one and half blocks away from the city's 'Painted Ladies', a series of colorful houses.

Police spokesman officer Carlos Manfredi said no other information was available Monday afternoon.

This marks the seventh gun to have been taken from a law enforcement official in the San Francisco area in the past year - with two of those thefts having fatal consequences.

On June 27, 2015, a .40-caliber handgun was stolen from the vehicle of a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) ranger parked in downtown San Francisco.

That was the same gun that illegal immigrant Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez used to shoot Kate Steinle on July 1 of that year, as she walked along a San Francisco pier.

Her parents are now suing local police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) - whom she blames for not deporting Lopez-Sanchez - as well as the BLM.

Lopez-Sanchez claims that he found the gun underneath a bench on the pier, wrapped in a T-shirt.

And a gun stolen from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in September 2015 was used to kill San Francisco muralist Antonio Ramos on September 29 while he worked on an Oakland mural.

Daylight: The gun was stolen in broad daylight just blocks away from these houses, known as 'Painted Ladies'. Three such thefts occurred in the first three months of 2016 - with a total of five guns going missing

In the first three months of 2016, at least one gun was stolen from a law enforcement officer each month.

On March 25, an SF sheriff's deputy lost his gun and bulletproof vest when they were stolen from his home near Visitacion Valley when it was ransacked early in the morning.

The burglars took not just the officer's 9mm Glock handgun, which had been stored in a lockbox, and his and ballistic vest, but also two loaded magazines, a duty belt and a police-issue off-duty wallet flat badge.

They also took a department-issued radio, which the police were able to disable remotely.

On February 19, an ICE officer lost his gun - a loaded Black Heckler & Koch P200sk .40-caliber handgun - in Ingleside after he left it on top of his car before driving off.

And in January three FBI handguns and an agent's badge were taken from a locked and alarmed vehicle in the Bay Area.

A $5,000 reward was offered for the two .40-caliber Glocks and .45-caliber unspecified handgun.
An aspiring rapper charged for a deadly shooting at a T.I. concert in New York has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and is claiming he was the victim.

Roland (Troy Ave) Collins' lawyer said his client should be treated like the 'real victim', even though there is video of him shooting at patrons during a gig at Irving Place on Wednesday. The footage also seems to show him shooting himself in the leg.

The chaos that unfolded in the middle of the event led to one man being shot dead and three others, including a 26-year-old model, being wounded.

Police say his charges could be upgraded to murder if ballistics tests confirm that he was the one who shot Ronald McPhatter dead.

Collins is being held without bail.

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Roland (Troy Ave) Collins (pictured) has been charged with attempted murder following the deadly shooting at a T.I. concert in New York last week

His lawyer said his client should be treated like the 'real victim', even though there is video of him shooting at patrons (circled in red)

He was pushed into Manhattan Criminal Court on Monday in a wheelchair with a white bandage wrapped around his leg.

According to the New York Daily News, Collins' lawyer Scott Leemon told the judge: 'What really happened here is Mr Collins here is the real victim.

'The person who was killed at this event, he died a hero. He (McPhatter) was his bodyguard. He wasn't shot by Mr Collins. He was a lifelong friend.'

'This 11 seconds of video that the NYPD released, it doesn't say what happened before, it doesn't say what happened after. The scientific evidence will show he didn't shoot himself.

'This was another rush to judgement. In this case he's the victim and should be treated like the victim.'

Police say his charges could be upgraded to murder if ballistics tests confirm that he was the one who shot Ronald McPhatter (left and right) dead

Collins (right) reportedly had a 'beef' with fellow rapper Maino, who was performing earlier in the evening. Maino has slammed the claims and said the pair have had a 'great' working relationship

Assistant DA Christine Keenan told the judge: 'This defendant is on video coming out of the VIP room where the individuals were shot.

'He had the gun in his hand and was seen firing that gun in the direction of fleeing patrons.'

His security guard, Ronald McPhatter, 33, was shot dead.

Christopher Vinson, 34, was shot in the chest and is now in stable condition.

Collins allegedly shot himself in the leg with a 9mm handgun during the gun battle.

He was arrested on Thursday at a Manhattan hospital.

Model Maggie Heckstall, 26, was in the VIP section at Irving Plaza on Wednesday when a gunman burst in and opened fire.

A stray bullet struck the model in the leg and she was taken to hospital, but she claims cops tried to interview her in the back of an ambulance.

T.I. (pictured next to Anderson. Paak just before the deadly shooting) was not involved in the violence

Collins regularly tweeted about guns, and once said he would 'rather accidentally get a b***h pregnant than catch a gun charge'.

In another tweet, he wrote: 'U shouldnt Carry A Gun If u are scared 2 Use It. You'll only end up hurting yourself or a Innocent Person Real Talk.'

He also posted: 'Man i jus had a Nightmare that i got arrested with a Gun, i was mad upset.'

Collins also wrote that he was regularly told as a child to not carry a weapon, but other tweets about firearm laws suggest he was against restrictions on gun ownership.

The CCTV footage appears to show him firing a gun after entering the backstage with two other men.

In separate cell phone footage, gunshots are heard before men and women are seen running and ducking for cover. One woman is heard screaming: 'My leg, my leg!'
A soldier who died far from home 73 years ago and was believed lost forever has finally been returned to his family in the U.S. - where he will be buried with full military honors.

Pfc James B. Johnson, of Poughkeepsie, New York, died in 1943 in the Gilbert Islands deep in the Pacific Ocean during the fearsome Battle of Tarawa.

He was buried there in a makeshift military cemetery and in 1949, officials declared that his body would never be recovered. But they were wrong, The Maritime Executive reported.

Lost: James B. Johnson of Poughkeepsie, New York, was killed in 1943, during the Battle of Tarawa in the Pacific Ocean's Gilbert Islands. His body was thought to be lost forever, but was rediscovered in 2015

Vital: The battle for the island was strategically essential, but saw the deaths of 1,000 U.S. servicemen like these men, seen in a file photo. Johnson was identified through a series of tests, including DNA tests

In November 1943 Johnson was assigned to Company K, 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines, 2nd Marine Division, and sent to the island of Betio, in the Tarawa Atoll of the Gilbert Islands.

His mission - and that of his comrades - was to take the island from the Japanese. They encountered strong resistance from the moment they landed on November 20.

For three days the battle raged across the tiny, 0.59 square-mile island, during which approximately 1,000 American servicemen were killed and 2,000 wounded before the Japanese army was routed.

Though it came at a terrible cost, the victory was vital to the success of America in the Pacific theater, as it provided a base for attacks against the Japanese army on the Marshall and Caroline Islands.

Johnson was one of many killed during the first day of the three-day conflict, according to the Department of Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

He and the other men killed there were buried in battlefield cemeteries on the island, which now belongs to the country of Kiribati.

That's where many remained until 1946 and 1947, when remains recovery operations on the island retrieved the bodies of many servicemen - but not Johnson.

His remains were declared to be irretrievable on February 28, 1949, by a military review board.

But in June 2015, History Flight, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to finding and repatriating the bodies of American servicemen who died abroad, discovered a burial site.

There they found the remains of 35 US Marines, which they turned over to the government shortly afterward.

Military scientists then used DNA tests - linking Johnson to a nephew - and dental analysis, chest radiograph comparison and anthropological comparison to confirm his identity.
The animal activists were detained but it is unclear if they were arrested

Secret Service stepped in to protect the senator who was unharmed

An animal rights group claimed responsibility for the

Members of an animal rights group rushed the stage at a Bernie Sanders rally in Oakland on Monday, causing Secret Service to jump in and protect the presidential candidate.

Sanders is campaigning in California ahead of the primary of June 7.

While speaking on Memorial day, at least four activists were detained by police when they attempted to get on the stage with the Vermont senator.

Secret Service hugged a flustered Sanders to get him out of the way of the activists who stormed the stage.

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Bernie Sanders (pictured) was giving a speech in Oakland, California, when protesters rushed the stage he was speaking on

An animal right's activist group took responsibility for rushing the stage, which saw at least four people detained

The Democratic presidential candidate was uninjured and resumed speaking as the activists were taken away.

Zach Groff, believed to be a member of the group Direct Action Everywhere, was quoted by KRON 4 as saying:

'Over a dozen animal rights activists with the network Direct Action Everywhere just rushed the stage of a Bernie Sanders Rally outside Oakland City Hall in California, demanding the candidate promise action to secure legal rights for nonhuman animals.'

Chris Zachos, of San Francisco, wears a homemade Democratic presidential candidate at the Oakland rally

Secret Service were forced to step in and tackle the protesters while ensuring the Vermont senator's safety

Secret Service agents arrest a woman after multiple people climbed a barricade and approached Democratic presidential candidate

The identities of those who rushed the stage was not immediately made available and it is unclear if they were arrested or released

The identities of those who rushed the stage was not immediately made available.

It is also unclear if they were released or arrested after trying to get on stage with Sanders.

The senator began receiving Secret Service security in February, early into the primary season as he began to challenge Hillary Clinton for the nomination.

After the events of Monday night in Northern California, Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said: 'It was handled professionally by the Secret Service.'

In March a protester also stormed the stage at a Donald Trump rally in Dayton, Ohio.

Secret Service also had to step in to protect the presumptive Republican nominee.

The senator began receiving Secret Service security in February early into the primary season as he began to challenge Hillary Clinton
Bikie members are believed to be assisting officers with their inquiries

A 30-year-old man was taken to hospital with a gunshot wound to his arm

The incident occurred on Tuesday and is believed to be bikie-related

A man was taken to hospital with a gunshot wound after shots were fired into a home during a drive-by shooting believed to be linked to bikies.

Police were called to the residence in Hammond Park, a southern suburb of Perth, at around 2.15am on Tuesday.

Paramedics assisted a 30-year-old male victim who was found at a nearby address with a gunshot wound to his arm, reported The West Australian.

Forensics Officers and the Canine Unit are investigating a drive-by shooting in Hammond Park, a southern suburb of Perth

A 30-year-old male was shot in the arm during what is believed to be a bikie related incident

The Gang Crime Squad, Forensics Officers and the Canine Unit were called to scene to investigate the incident which may be gang related.

A nearby resident told The West Australian seeing bikie members was common in the area but he never felt unsafe.

'It woke me up but I didn't go outside, then about an hour later I heard all these cars turning up,' Simon said.

'Once every couple of weeks you hear loud bikes going up the street, but we feel completely safe.'

Members of bike gangs are reportedly assisting police with their inquiries.

The victim was taken to hospital by St John Ambulance, his injury is not life threatening.

Police are urging anyone with information to contact Crime Stoppers.

The man was shot on Tuesday morning at around 2.15am, he is recovering in hospital and is not suffering from a life-threatening injury
More than 45million men, women and children globally are trapped in modern slavery, far more than previously thought, with two-thirds in the Asia-Pacific, a study has revealed.

Research led by a group set up by Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest, suggested that there were 28 percent more slaves around the world than estimated two years ago.

The report said India had the highest number of people trapped in slavery at 18.35million, while North Korea had the highest incidence (4.37 percent of the population) and the weakest government response.

A new report on modern slavery found North Korea (pictured) had the highest incidence of slavery - 4.37 per cent of the population - and the weakest government response

The details were revealed in the 2016 Global Slavery Index, a research report by the Walk Free Foundation, an initiative set up by mining magnate and philanthropist Forrest in 2012 to draw attention to the issue.

It compiled information from 167 countries with 42,000 interviews in 53 languages to determine the prevalence of the issue and government responses.

It found that there were 28 per cent more slaves than estimated in 2014, a revision reached through better data collection and research methods.

Modern slavery refers to situations of exploitation that a person cannot leave because of threats, violence, coercion, abuse of power or deception.

They may be held in debt bondage on fishing boats, against their will as domestic servants or trapped in brothels.

Research led by a group set up by Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest, suggested that there were 28 percent more slaves around the world than estimated two years ago

Some 124 countries have criminalised human trafficking in line with the UN Trafficking Protocol and 96 have developed national action plans to coordinate the government response.

However, Forrest said more robust measures were needed.

'We call on governments of the top 10 economies of the world to enact laws, at least as strong as the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015, with a budget and capability to ensure organisations are held to account for modern slavery in their supply chains, and to empower independent oversight,' he said.

'I believe in the critical role of leaders in government, business and civil society. Through our responsible use of power, strength of conviction, determination and collective will, we all can lead the world to end slavery.'

In terms of absolute numbers, Asian countries occupy the top five for people trapped in slavery. Behind India was China (3.39 million), Pakistan (2.13 million), Bangladesh (1.53 million) and Uzbekistan (1.23 million).

Malaysian police exhume dozens of graves found in a series of remote human-trafficking camps along the Thai border last year

As a percentage of the population, Uzbekistan (3.97 percent) and Cambodia (1.65 percent) trailed North Korea, which the study said was the only nation in the world that has not explicitly criminalised any form of modern slavery.

The report also tracked actions and responses to the problem, with governments at the forefront including the United States, Australia, and a host of European nations including Britain, Portugal and Norway.

Those with the weakest action included Iran, Hong Kong and China.
The remains of 32 Australian servicemen who died in the Vietnam War and who were buried in Malaysia are finally coming home.

Coffins containing the remains, each draped with an Australian flag, were loaded onto a military plane at Subang Air Base in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday morning, as they make the journey to their final resting place.

The 32 servicemen and civilians who were buried in Malaysia's Terendak Military Cemetery, along with the first Australian to die in the Vietnam War, who was buried in Singapore's Kranji Cemetery, are being returned to Australia under the government-funded program.

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Australian military personnel carry coffins during a repatriation ceremony for Australian soldiers at Subang military air base in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on Tuesday

The journey home for the Australian soldiers will be the largest single repatriation ceremony in Australia's history

Malaysia soldiers carried coffins draped with Australia flags to the tarmac, where Australian troops carried them aboard two Royal Australian Air Force C-17 Globemaster.

Families of the servicemen and civilians will gather for a private service at the Richmond Royal Australian Air Force Base on Thursday morning, before 33 hearses make their way to western Sydney, followed by burial in their home states.

'The repatriation is about remembering those who fought, endured and died to serve to their country,' NSW Detective Superintendent Gavin Dengate said on Monday.

He said the Malaysian government had tended the graves at Terendak with respect, but their location in the middle of a military base meant family access was restricted.

The remains are being brought home in one of the largest single repatriations in Australia's history

Decades after the end of the Vietnam war and the brutal fight against communists insurgency in Malaysia, the remains of 24 Australians soldiers and eight dependents are returned home

The Australian soldiers, many who were casualties during the Vietnam War, were buried in Malaysia along with some dependents

Before January 1966, Australia's policy was to bury soldiers killed in battle in foreign countries in the nearest Commonwealth war cemetery.

'As 2015 marks 50 years since the arrival of combat troops and the escalation of Australian involvement in Vietnam, it is right and proper that we honor their service with this gesture,' then Prime Minister Tony Abbott told Parliament in May last year.

In May last year, former Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced that the government would pay for the repatriation of 36 Australian servicemen and dependents from Malaysia and Singapore.

The families of 33 service men and dependents accepted the offer.

The bodies of 32 Australian service personnel and their dependents were buried in the Commonwealth War Cemetery at the Terendak Camp, Melaka state in early 1960s

Former Prime Minister, Tony Abbott offered to pay for the repatriation of 36 Australian servicemen and dependents. The families of 33 Australians accepted the offer

Senior Malaysian and Australian Military officials pay their last respects during the ceremony

A repatriation ceremony will be held at Parramatta CBD in western Sydney on Thursday

Malaysian honor guards carry coffins with the remains of Australian soldiers and dependents

The program means Australians killed in the Vietnam War will now receive equal repatriation treatment, following non-retrospective changes to the law in 1966 that stipulated bodies of battlefield casualties be returned to Australia for burial, the Department of Veterans Affairs says.

After Thursday's private ceremony at the Richmond air base, police will form a green light corridor to allow the procession of 33 hearses to pass through the Parramatta CBD and western Sydney.

The public will have the opportunity to pay their respects and view the funeral procession as it passes through Parramatta between 12.45pm and 1.15pm.

'We want the community to commemorate the occasion safely, and are reminding everyone to be respectful at all times,' Supt Dengate said.

Reinterment services will take place across the country in the coming weeks.

Australia deployed more than 60,000 military personnel to the Vietnam conflict between 1962 and 1973, of whom 521 were killed.

The graves which remain at Malaysia's Terendak Military Cemetery will continue to be looked after by the Office of Australian War Graves.

The graves which will remain at the cemetry in Malaysia will continue to be cared for by the Office of Australian War Graves

Australian Military personell carry coffins with the remains of their soldiers and dependents into a Royal Australian Air Force C-17 Globemaster aircraft
Kenneth Alan Amyx (pictured), 45, allegedly posted two photos of his murdered girlfriend, 43-year-old Jennifer Streit-Spears, to Facebook on Sunday

A Texas man is accused of murdering his girlfriend and posting pictures of the grisly scene to Facebook.

Kenneth Alan Amyx, 45, allegedly posted two photos of the murder to the Facebook of his girlfriend 43-year-old Jennifer Streit-Spears on Sunday.

The first showed Steit-Spears' dead body. The second showed a man's face, police believe is Amyx's, covered in blood.

The caption read 'Please pray for us', according to the New York Daily News.

Streit-Spears' sister saw the pictures and called police, who had to force their way into the couple's apartment.

Inside they found Streit-Spears stabbed to death and Amyx alive with knife wounds police believe were self-inflicted, according to CBS11.

Amyx was arrested and taken to the Collins County Jail.

A friend of Steit-Spears saw the picture and was horrified by the gruesome images.

'The pictures were not clear although they were extremely scary I just started to reach out to our mutual friends to see if they've heard anything,' Fran Stamey told CBS11.

The images stayed on Facebook for nearly 36 hours and took multiple attempts by the family to have removed.

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Jennifer Streit-Spears (pictured) was found dead from multiple stab wounds and Amyx also had knife wounds believed to be self inflicted

Pictures of Steit-Spears' dead body remained on Facebook for about 36 hours after multiple complaints from family

Streit-Spears sister, who told The Daily Dot she wished to remain anonymous, said she was given limited options to have the pictures taken down.

'I did ask them to remove it several times. They told me I could block Jennifer if I didn't like what she posted and gave me other similar options,' she told The Daily Dot.

A spokesperson for Facebook defended their actions to CBS11, saying graphic photos are not a violation of Facebooks policy and even though they were flagged, they could not be removed until monitors determined Spears profile was hacked.

Amyx was previously convicted of ongoing sexual abuse of a child under age 14 in Rockwall County, as well indecent exposure to a child in Dallas County, according to inmate records.

Amyx has been charged with murder and his bond is set at $600,000.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has been confronted by student protesters during a visit to the Lowy Cancer Research Centre at the University of New South Wales.

Mr Turnbull was faced with a number of protesters holding banners as he left the centre, just after he received a much warmer welcome and got a 'big hug' from a young patient inside.

Another photograph taken at the scene showed a woman who was part of the University Action Collective attempt to evade police and make her way towards the Prime Minister.

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Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has been confronted by student protesters (pictured) during a visit to the Lowy Cancer Research Centre at the University of New South Wales

The young woman appeared to be stumbling as an officer reached out towards her in the picture.

Mr Turnbull was drastically more popular inside the cancer research centre, with six-year-old Lulu Demetriou taking a shine to the Prime Minister and even giving him pictures she had drawn.

The Prime Minister was in the middle of a sentence when the six-year-old slapped him in the face with one of her pieces of paper, showing just how excited she was to give him the drawings.

And Lulu wasn't afraid to boss him around when he sat down to colour in with her.

One woman appeared to stumble as she dodged police (pictured) and approached the Prime Minister in Sydney

As Mr Turnbull left the centre, a number of protesters were seen holding a banner and shouting at him as he walked past

She got annoyed when he chose the same colour twice.

'Pink! You did this colour.'

When Mr Turnbull got up to leave, she jumped up and gave him a huge hug.

'You're a big hugger,' he said.

Malcolm Turnbull greets a student during his visit to the Lowy Cancer Research Centre at the University of New South Wales in Randwick, Sydney

Mr Turnbull was much more popular inside the centre, and even received a 'big hug' from a young patient

'She's really taken a liking to you,' her mother, Josi, told the Prime Minister.

'It's mutual,' he replied.

The Prime Minister promised to hang all her artworks in his Canberra office.

'I'll treasure that, I'll put that in my office.

Six-year-old Lulu Demetriou (front, holding a piece of paper) was thrilled to meet the Prime Minister and show him her drawings

The six-year-old was so excited to show Malcolm Turnbull her drawing she shoved it in his face as the Prime Minister was speaking

'I'll have a whole gallery, a Lulu gallery.'

Lulu suffers from neuroblastoma after being diagnosed at just eight months old.

She's undergone chemotherapy, surgery, transplant, radiation and an immunotherapy trial but has not responded to treatment.

Her prognosis remains uncertain.

Lulu gave her drawing to Mr Turnbull, who promised to hang the sketch in his office

Mr Turnbull has pledged $20 million to combat childhood cancer through the Zero Childhood Cancer Initiative.

Children diagnosed with cancer will have a tissue sample taken and analysed to determine their genetics and the best treatment to improve their chances of recovery and survival.
A jaw-dropping moment of road rage was captured on camera Monday after a man drove his car into - and over - a motorbike coming back from a Memorial Day bike ride for veterans.

Joe Calderazzo, a Navy veteran, was making his way through Lutz, Florida, with a group of fellow motorbike enthusiasts when a driver allegedly ran one of them off the road at around 5:30pm.

They caught up with him and began a loud argument which was filmed by an unnamed man in a car nearby. But the footage takes a shocking turn when the driver apparently attacks the bikers with his car, WTSP reported.

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Sudden: The video shows Navy veteran Joe Calderazzo (in black cap, left) and his passenger suddenly being run over by the car, which had been parked moments before. He and the driver had been arguing just before

It happens so quickly it's hard to take in: The silver sedan is parked to the side of - and just behind - the motorbike, on which Calderazzo and a female companion are sitting.

Suddenly it darts forward and to the right, dragging the bike's two riders down.

'Oh, s***!' one of the spectators shouts as the silver car's front lifts up and it rides up over the bike, its tires squealing on the asphalt.

As the first wheel of the car passes over the bike and the second hits it, the vehicle underneath bounces and bucks.

Thankfully, both Calderazzo and his passenger have been thrown clear of the bike, and can be seen getting up quickly as the silver car drops back down to the asphalt and peels off.

Both were injured in the incident.

'I thought the guy was trying to kill us obviously,' Calderazzo later told WTSP from hospital, where he was getting his leg checked.

'You know, you don't know what's going through your mind. Is he going to put the car in reverse? Is he going to turn around? Is he going to stop and pull out a gun? You don't know what's going on.'

Police later caught up with the driver, who they say is Robert Paul Vance, 31, of Land O'Lakes, Florida - a repeat traffic offender.

He has been charged with a hit-and-run, a moving traffic violation and aggravated battery.
A woman is dead and another was seriously injured after a car plummeted 200ft off a cliff in Hawaii.

The white 2016 Ford Explorer crashed into a rock wall in Maui on Monday and fell down to onto lava rocks below, killing a 37-year-old woman from Haiku.

A passenger, also 37, was taken to hospital in a critical condition, KHON 2 reported.

A woman is dead and another was seriously injured after a car plummeted 200ft off a cliff in Hawaii. Horrifying pictures show the wrecked car by the sea as firefighters try to pry the woman out of the car

Firefighters had to walk down to the crash site and then were seen at the bottom of the cliff prying the women out of the car manually.

Horrifying pictures show the wrecked car by the sea.

A helicopter was also seen hovering over the crash site helping the fire fighters try and save the woman.

The road is well known for its sweeping views of the northeast coast of the island.

Driving along the stretch of road is one of the most popular tourist activities.

Police are now investigating what happened.

It is the eighth traffic death on Maui this year, compared to four at the same point last year.

Video courtesy HawaiiNewsNow
A national website set up to help renters avoid bad properties and losing their rental bonds has exposed creepy landlords, and houses with rats, rotting floorboards, mouldy ceilings and dodgy wiring.

Australia's worst property rentals are being exposed on a number of sites on which disgruntled tenants can air their disgust at the treatment they have received from landlords and real estate agents.

Pictures obtained by Daily Mail Australia showed one ceiling below a roof leaking so badly that amid the mould there was live fungi growing through the holes.

Apart from vermin, leaking roofs, exposed and illegal wiring, renters also experienced problems like neighbours doing all night burnouts on the street and and having a lease terminated the week you are due to give birth.

An alive field of fungus can be seen growing on this ceiling where a leaking roof has caused mould and then the fungus to grow through the holes and cracks in a substandard rental house exposed by a conumer site for renters, Don't Rent Me

Rust and mould caused by water damage in a rental house is a common problem complained about by tenants who are using a consumer website to expose nightmare properties for fellow renters to avoid

Apart from exposed pipes and broken polumbing (pictured) renters also experienced problems like neighbours doing all night burnouts on the street and and having a lease terminated the week you are due to give birth

The water damage to the cupboard under the sink (pictured) is just one of the problems encountered by renters around Australia and which are now being exposed on consumer sites

Sites like Don't Rent Me has a 'Wall of Shame' for tenants to review their property and warn others about the bad rental experience, using a five (negative) star rating.

Launched by Anthony Ziebell, dontrentme.com/au lists the worst suburbs in Australia for trying to get a rental bond back due to either the property's bad consition or a diffficult landlord or agent.

The suburbs worst affected by bond related issues include Randwick NSW, Southport Queensland, Morphett Vale in South Australia, Frankston Victoria and Quinns Rock and Shelley in Western Australia.

Women suffered the most - 78 per cent - problems in getting their bond back, and 47 per cent of those women were between 25 and 44 years old.

A Queensland renter moved into a house where she and her child were severely bitten by bed bugs (pictured) but when she complained the landlord paid for just two exterminators which didn't clear the infestation

This bathroom bench has suffered severe mould and buckling from water damage, a very common problem in rental properties that are substandard and are being exposed on consumer websites

Notoriously hard to get rid of bed bugs living in a Queensland rental property bit a woman (above, left) and her child (above, right) but when she complained the landlord told the woman she must have brought them with her

Cockroaches (pictured) are a common complaint in rental properties around Australia as are rats and other pests

On Mr Ziebell's site, a poster calling himself Steve Stormlord complained about a house in an eastern Melbourne suburb, which was just a bungalow in the back yard of the landlord's house with no electricity and everything running off a powerboard.

Steve said 'Living off powerboard for 10 mnths. Still charges full rent($190)per week and charges bills ontop. Does not do repairs and also makes resident do his lawns ontop of payments.Perves on residents.Slum Conditions. Total Creep'.

A house in a western Sydney suburb was damaged, had termites and, 'a birds nest in the kitchen wall, mould every where, no back fence or clothes line' and the anonymous renter warned 'Don't move here, it's not worth the heart ache and loss or damages to your property'.

The renters at a house on the Gold Coast say the the biggest issue was the owners of their rental, who would drive past each week and send emails telling them to mow the lawn (they mowed it every two weeks).

One property in a southern Perth suburb suffered 'continued flooding' so that every time it rained 'it would flood with water running down walls, curtains, electrical fittings and through the doors

Another 'terrible' home in a country town in inland NSW was rented by Edward, who posted that it had 'mould in the ceiling, extensive damage throughout and that the real estate agent 'promise to fix all issues but never did

A house in a western Sydney suburb was damaged, had termites and, 'a birds nest in the kitchen wall, mould every where, no back fence or clothes line' and the anonymous renter warned 'Don't move here, it's not worth the heart ache

'They knew I was pregnant and terminated our lease the week I was due to give birth. Real estate pleaded to let us stay for 3 months just until baby was born and to give us time to look for a house.

'They refused, we were out and they put the units up for rent as soon as we were out and jacked rent up an extra $100 a week.'

Another 'terrible' home in a country town in inland NSW was rented by Edward, who posted that it had 'mould in the ceiling, extensive damage throughout and that the real estate agent 'promise to fix all issues but never did, now they are threatening court for loss of rent ... no-one can live in these conditions'.

Renters Sandy and Trish Gardiner moved into a NSW Central Coast house only to find illegal power connections and exposed pipe fittings.

Their house flooded trough the rear door each time it rained, and was 'always wet and mouldy in kitchen and bedroom cupboards and up the walls.

A Queensland mother rented a house only to find it infested with bed bugs, whose excrement a pest exterminator identified on her mattress (bottom) and vermin in her baby's bassinet (top)

Horses and witches hats in the yard of a Perth property which one renter described as 'the worst property I have ever rented in any country' with constant flooding, disgusting carpet and a serious mould problem

Out in the yard there was another problem, they wrote: 'CARPORT COULD COME DOWN ANY DAY DUE TO NEGLECT'.

At another Central Coast address, Amanda had a bad experience moving into a house on which 'the weatherboard on all of the front was melted because the garage burned down 3 months prior due to faulty wiring'.

'I'd signed the lease with the promise of repairs being done promptly but to no avail. I've applied for so many houses and been declined and 3 years it took them to replace a lot of melted weatherboard.

'The front door has paint chipping and bubbling off and has a whole panel you can push your arm through the wood.

'None of the floorboards are sealed and have dust constantly being blown through. I had to hire my own electrician for a safety report to confirm my suspicions of faulty wiring that didn't meet standards.'

One Syndey renter described this property as 'a really terrible house' with a blocked sink, a strong musty smell and dirty carpet'

Amanda had a bad experience moving into this Central Coast house on which 'the weatherboard on all of the front was melted because the garage burned down 3 months prior due to faulty wiring

Amanda received an electric shock while showering, after which Ausgrid came out 'to tell me all my taps were live electric'.

'The guttering in all but the front is rusted out and hanging down off the sides of the house including the shed.

'I have no back screen door at all. There is paint chipping off the ceiling in the kitchen and some walls.

One unnamed tenant complained that their house was 'riddled with rats, roaches' and that 'the roof is tarped due to five massive rust holes'

'There is no ventilation in the bathroom or the toilet and the louvre windows are so old and rusty they won't open for the air either.

'The clothesline has 3 wires to hang from. Just had the toilet replaced (well the top part because apparently the cracks in the bottom are fine).

'My electric bills are $1500 every 3 months. They've done some repairs because I've threatened tribunal but I'm honestly scared of another real estate not renting to me because of it.

'They've fixed a half standing vanity, crumbling shower tiles, some wiring issues, weatherboarding, and not much else at all.'

On the Gold Coast, Brenda had a bad experience when she rented a leaking house with a clapped out dishwasher and the 'rudest, nastiest most condescending' property agent who refused to get anything fixed and tried to slug her with two years of water bills when she moved out.

Another site called landlordwatch.blogspot charted the battles between tenants and property owners of real estate agents, including the epic battle by one woman who moved into a property with bed bugs.

She was bitten and her child was also attacked. The landlord paid for a pest controller on two occasions, but then refused to pay for any further treatments.

On the Gold Coast, Brenda had a bad experience when she rented a leaking house with a clapped out dishwasher and the 'rudest, nastiest most condescending' property agent who refused to get anything fixed

A tenant complained this house had termites, a bird's nest in the wall, mould and no clothes line

Tenants of this property allegdly found illegal power connections and exposed pipe fittings and a car port that 'could topple over any day now'

The woman spoke to neighbours, who confirmed the the previous tenant had complained of bed bugs, and to previous tenants of the adjoining unit who also had bed bugs.

A pest controller confirmed that a photograph of beds in the house had 'bed bug excrement' on it.

Bugs were also a problem at a house reviewed on dontrentme.com/au in a bayside suburb of Brisbane.

The tenant's complaints erupted into an online slanging match between the renter and the landlord who was also the agent.

The unnamed tenant complained that the house was 'riddled with rats, roaches' and that 'the roof is tarped due to five massive rust holes'.

The house also had asbestos and the 'electrics were faulty' with 'a live wire exposed', 'plus all of the furniture i have lost due to flooding'.

The owner/agent responded to 'deny all false maliscios [sic] vexatious false claims', saying the 'house is safe' and that the tenant 'stole furniture from landlord' worth thousands and left 'rental arrears and unpaid water bils' and 'evidence of drug use' in the home.

One property in a southern Perth suburb attracted several bad reviews from different tenants or prospective renters who inspected it.

An anonymous renter described it as 'the worst property I have ever rented in any country' and complained of absent gutters and 'continued flooding' so that every time it rained 'it would flood with water running down walls, curtains, electrical fittings etc'.

'Mould was also a huge problem. I also had to wait for over 6 months for a new cooker which I never received. I spent a fortune on new lights and wooden floor.

'The original carpet was disgusting due to prior flooding so I got this replaced with wooden floor ... a week later the wooded floor was ruined!

'I would go through approx 5 light bulbs a week in one room alone so I paid for better and safer lights.

'This house should be avoided at all cost.'

Beverly complained about a foul smelling house in Melbourne's eastern suburbs which she claimed was haunted.

Mould and water damage on this ceiling (pictured) was a constant theme in the complaints by renters posted on a website Don't Rent Me which aims to help consumers

While many renters complained of water damage (above) , one woman said her rental 'was filthy, and had a pungent smell. It was also haunted'

'This house was filthy, and had a pungent smell. It was also haunted! I hired a Clairvoyant to cleanse the house & she told me some of the history, as in a death of a baby & later a suicide. When I checked the details with the landlord, she was 100% correct!. The landlord is a scumbag too.'

When Jason rented a house in a western Sydney suburb for his disabled fiancee, the couple took a 'substandard' property because the market was 'cut throat'.

But when she moved in , the couple found that the street was rev head's dream, with constant trail bike and car burnout activity, as well as fire starting.

'A P plater in a light coloured VT Commodore does burnouts out the front as well as his mate in a white Commodore ute.

'They happily mount the curb while doing doughnuts at the T intersection out the front of this property.

'Other P platers also park out front of this property at night where they let off fireworks and start fires in the park.

'They leave rubbish all over the road and in the front yard also smashing glass in the gutter of the property. My two cars have been keyed numerous times while parked at this property.

'Police attended property numerous times due to break ins. The back door was broken twice the second of which it was never repaired and still broken when we happily departed this property.

'The back fence is completely destroyed on one side. Property manager ... recommended my fiance whom suffers debilitating migraines and epileptic seizures to carry out repairs herself.

'My future father in law carried out more repairs than management at our own costs just to avoid the humiliation of speaking to the property manager.'
Photos show moments of people spending time near loved ones remembering those who made ultimate sacrifice

of the holiday many people visit cemeteries and memorials to visit those who died in service to US

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Touching photos show the true meaning of Memorial Day as men, women and children honor their loved ones who lost their lives while serving their country.

Memorial Day, which is celebrated on the last Monday of May, is marked in ceremonies and celebrations around the US to commemorate the men and women who died while in the military service.

In observance of the holiday, many people visit cemeteries and memorials, and volunteers often place American flags on each grave site at national cemeteries.

Photographers across the US captured the precious moments of people spending time near their loved ones as they reflect on those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

These captivating photos taken at Arlington National Cemetery and other ceremonies and celebrations across the US honor those who perished while fighting on behalf of the US.

An Iraq War veteran sits and drinks a beer beside the symbolic graves of fallen friends, Sgt Eric Snell and Pfc Michael Pittman, both from his former unit, the 1st Infantry Division, at the Arlington West Memorial on Memorial Day in Santa Monica, California

Christian Jacobs touches a photograph of his US Marine father, Christopher Jacobs, while visiting his grave on Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington

A woman sits at the edge of the field of United States flags displayed by the Massachusetts Military Heroes Fund on the Boston Common in Boston, Massachusetts

Jeff Lee of Lantana, Florida, leans against the gravestone of his father, Frank Lee, during a Memorial Day ceremony at the South Florida National Cemetery in Lake Worth, Florida, May 2013

Andi Schorr grieves at the grave of her husband Sergeant First Class George Joseph Schorr. Schorr served two tours of duty in Vietnam and died in 1979 of cancer

Angela Spraul and her four-year-old daughter Ava sit at the grave of her husband John Spraul, US Navy, who died February 28, 2013, at Section 60 on Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery, May 2015

A young woman lays down on the grave of US Marine Corps Lance Corporal Noah Pier on Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery. Pier was killed February 12, 2010 in Marja, Afghanistan

Ricky Parada sits at the grave of his little brother Cpl Nicolas D Paradarodriguez who was killed in Afghanistan, at Section 60 on Memorial Day. Section 60 is reserved for veterans of the Iraq War. This photo was taken in May 2012

Two-time Memory Champion and US Navy veteran Ron White pauses to reflect for a moment as he adds the names of over 2,000 fallen military personnel who served in the war in Afghanistan to a fifty-foot wall at Chase Field in Phoenix, Arizona, May 2013

US Army soldiers Rick Kolberg (left) and Jesus Gallegos embrace as they visit the graves of Raymond Jones and Peter Enos on Memorial Day

US Army soldier Matt Weber is embraced by Jenny Fleming as he visits the grave of Jason Arnette

Christian Jacobs, four, of Hertford, NC, lies on the grave of his father, Christian James Jacob, during Memorial Day celebrations at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, May 2015

Nathaniel Marley, four, salutes the graves of service men and women as well as his grandpa as he is taught to pay respect and say thank you by his father, US Army veteran Bruce Marley, of San Diego

A woman walks past graves during Memorial Day celebrations at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, May 2015
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A heavy downpour across Sydney has left unprepared office workers scrambling for cover as residents prepare for an entire week of wet weather.

After an unusually warm and dry autumn, with some parts of New South Wales climbing up to five degrees above the average minimum, Sydneysiders are bracing themselves as a coastal trough settles in, just in time for the first day of winter on Wednesday.

But Sydney is not the only city to encounter damp conditions, with Melbourne recording the wettest month since the middle of last winter and parts of Brisbane documenting the coldest May morning in 16 years after an icy chill swept through on Monday.

A heavy downpour across Sydney on Tuesday afternoon left unprepared office workers scrambling for cover (pictured)

Sydneysiders are bracing themselves as a coastal trough settles in, triggering continuous showers for the next seven days

Parts of Queensland and South Australia experienced their share of showers on Tuesday afternoon, with a pair of troughs stretching from central Australia, according to Weatherzone.

Melbourne documented its coldest morning in nine months and at Laverton, Melbourne Airport and Viewbank, the temperature was below one degree.

'It has really cooled off in the last week with temperatures around the mid-teens which is probably what you'd more expect for the end of May," Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Rod Dickson told AAP on Tuesday.

Rainfall has also been above average for most of Victoria with 57mm of rainfall by the last day of the month.

The city remained relatively dry throughout the day after the frosty morning.

This man, caught in the unexpected dumping of rain, used his briefcase to try and remain relatively dry

Photos taken in the CBD on Tuesday show office workers on their lunch hour trapped in an unexpected downpour

Showers and a maximum average of 19 forecast until Monday across Sydney

On Monday, Sydneysiders shivered through its coldest May morning in almost three decades at 1.7 degrees sub-zero

Some city dwellers were lucky to have umbrellas with them as they dashed for cover on Tuesday afternoon

May will still go down as another warmer-than-average month for Melbourne and the city is expected to stay dry until Saturday.

Sydney residents have not had as much luck, with showers and a maximum average of 19 forecast until Monday.

Photos taken in the CBD on Tuesday show office workers on their lunch hour trapped in an unexpected downpour. Many were seen holding briefcases over their heads in an attempt to stay dry.

On Monday, Sydneysiders shivered through its coldest May morning in almost three decades at 1.7 degrees sub-zero. But meteorologists do not expect it will be any colder than -1.7 degrees for the rest of the week.

Sydney residents are currently preparing for an entire week of wet weather as a coastal trough settles in

Melbourne (pictured) documented its coldest morning in nine months, but then cleared and remained relatively dry throughout the day after the frosty morning

Sydney residents have not had as much luck, with showers and a maximum average of 19 forecast until Monday

FORECAST: WHAT THE WEATHER LOOKS LIKE AROUND AUSTRALIA SYDNEY Wednesday : Min 13, Max 18. Showers Thursday : Min 12, Max 19. Showers Friday : Min 12, Max 19. Shower or two Saturday: Min 14, Max 19. Showers Sunday: Min 13, Max 21. Shower or two BRISBANE: Wednesday : Min 13, Max 24. Possible shower Thursday: Min 13, Max 23. Shower or two Friday : Min 14, Max 24. Showers Saturday: Min 16, Max 24. Showers Sunday: Min 15, Max 24. Shower or two ADELAIDE Wednesday : Min 10, Max 18. Partly cloudy Thursday : Min 10, Max 17. Partly cloudy Friday : Min 9, Max 17. Partly cloudy Saturday : Min 10, Max 18. Mostly sunny Sunday: Min 11, Max 18. Shower or two DARWIN Wednesday : Min 24, Max 34. Mostly sunny Thursday : Min 24, Max 34. Mostly sunny Friday: Min 24, Max 34. Mostly sunny Saturday: Min 24, Max 33. Sunny Sunday: Min 24, Max 33. Partly cloudy MELBOURNE Wednesday : Min 7, Max 16. Party cloudy Thursday : Min 6, Max 16. Partly cloudy Friday : Min 6, Max 16. Partly cloudy Saturday: Min 7, Max 16. Possible shower Sunday: Min 10, Max 15. Shower or two

CANBERRA Wednesday : Min 4, Max 14. Shower or two Thursday : Min 2, Max 16. Partly cloudy Friday : Min 3, Max 15. Some rain Saturday: Min 5, Max 15. Showers Sunday: Min 6, Max 15. Shower or two PERTH Wednesday : Min 8, Max 21.Sunny Thursday : Min 9, Max 21. Sunny Friday : Min 10, Max 22. Showers developing Saturday: Min 12, Max 18. Morning shower Sunday: Min 9, Max 18. Cloudy

HOBART Wednesday : Min 8, Max 21.Sunny Thursday : Min 4, Max 14.Sunny Friday : Min 4, Max 14. Mostly sunny Saturday : Min 5, Max 15. Shower or two Sunday : Min 9, Max 16. Possible shower

Across Brisbane, Monday was the coldest May morning since 2006 at 4.5 degrees and up to 25 millimetres of rain is expected to fall over the weekend, according to The Courier Mail.

The average maximum temperature for Brisbane is forecast to stay around 24 degrees.

Perth and Adelaide may experience showers over the coming weekend but will remain dry and sunny throughout the week.

Hobart will also stay dry, but overnight temperatures will plummet to four degrees and early morning frost will develop.

Rain is also forecast for every day except Thursday in Canberra for the coming week.

On Monday, Sydney woke to frost as western Sydney shivered through its coldest May morning in almost three decades. Pictured: water frozen from a dripping tap and is surrounded by frost at New England in NSW

Melbourne documented its coldest morning in nine months and at Laverton, Melbourne Airport (pictured) and Viewbank, the temperature was below one degree
Jurors hearing the case against Sydney investment banker Oliver Curtis accused of using insider-trading windfalls of $1.433 million to fund a lavish lifestyle have started their deliberations.

Mr Curtis, 30, faced a NSW Supreme Court trial after pleading not guilty to a charge of conspiracy to commit insider trading.

It is alleged Mr Curtis used confidential information given to him by former Orion Asset Management employee and high-school friend John Hartman between May 2007 and June 2008 to trade on the stock market.

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Jurors hearing the case against Sydney investment banker Oliver Curtis (left with his wife) accused of using insider-trading windfalls of $1.433 million to fund a lavish lifestyle have begun their deliberations

The jury deciding the case retired to consider its verdict over the case against Mr Curtis, who is married to public relations queen Roxy Jacenko, on Tuesday afternoon.

On Monday, Mr Curtis's defence counsel urged the jury to reject the Crown case against him.

Mr Curtis's defence counsel reiterated his innocence, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

He faces up to five years in jail if he is found guilty.

Mr Curtis, 30, faced a NSW Supreme Court trial after pleading not guilty to a charge of conspiracy to commit insider trading. He is married to public relations queen Roxy Jacenko

Ms Jacenko (right with her mother, Doreen) has been a regular fixture at her husband's trial

Mr Curtis's former best friend, John Hartman (pictured), was the prosecution's star witness

The 30-year-old is accused of trading in financial instruments known as CFDs, or contracts for difference, based on information Mr Hartman supplied via Blackberry PIN messages.

In his final address to the jury, Mr Curtis's defence council Murugan Thangaraj, SC, said his client acted like an innocent man as he had bought a BlackBerry for Mr Hartman on his own credit card rather than using cash.

Mr Thangaraj also said the transaction was linked to Mr Curtis's work address proving again that it was an innocent action.

'It's like someone robbing a bank, going up to a CCTV [camera], waving and leaving their address behind,' Mr Thangaraj said.

'That suggests there's nothing sinister about it. Mr Curtis behaved as someone who was not involved in this alleged serious criminal conspiracy.'

Hartman was previously sentenced to 15 months imprisonment for his own inside dealing charges, but he received a discounted sentence for agreeing to give evidence against Mr Curtis.

In his final address to the jury Mr Curtis' defence council Murugan Thangaraj, SC, said his client acted like an innocent man. Pictured again is Ms Jacenko (right) with her mother

Oliver Curtis and Roxy Jacenko as they leave the Supreme Court on Tuesday

Mr Curtis (left) has pleaded not guilty to the charge and the Crown must prove the charge beyond reasonable doubt

Mr Curtis's (left) defence counsel urged the jury to reject the Crown case against him

Mr Thangaraj asked the jury to consider if Mr Hartman was then acting in 'self interest'.

He urged the jury to reject the Crown case as it just did not 'make sense'.

The St Ignatius' College Riverview old boys made $1.43 million betting on shifts in share prices between mid-2007 and 2008.

But the Crown alleges the pair used confidential information to accrue the profits acquired by Mr Hartman while he was an equities dealer at investment firm Orion Asset Management in Sydney.

Mr Curtis has pleaded not guilty to the charge and the Crown must prove the charge beyond reasonable doubt.
Footage of the arrest was shown on ABC's 7.30 program last May

A former NSW primary school teacher has been jailed for trying to arrange to meet a 14-year-old girl in Brisbane for sex.

The Courier Mail reports that Peter Bosma, 51, appeared in Brisbane District Court and was sentenced for grooming a child under 16, and using a carriage service to procure a child under 16 to engage in sexual activity.

In April last year the primary school teacher started chatting to an undercover police officer posing as a 14-year-old girl on a dating website. He was arrested the following month at a fast food outlet in Brisbane where he had arranged to meet her.

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Peter Bosma was arrested in May 2015 after a police undercover operation that was captured by by ABC's 7.30 program

Bosma met 'Ashleigh'  the undercover police officer - on adult online dating service Mingle2.com. He then chatted to her on Skype and via texts for six weeks. Before his arrest he spoke to her on the phone as well.

The court was told she told him she was 14 and still attending school, while he told her he was a 50-year-old man.

He said: 'That shouldn't be a problem. What's age if there's a connection?'

When questioned about his preference for young girls he said: 'There's something innocent and fresh about them.'

He was given a two-year sentence, with release on parole after three months for grooming a child under 16

Crown prosecution also stated that Bosma explained in full details oral sex and orgasm to Ashleigh. He tried to then encourage her to discuss sex and masturbate.

He also called her 'sweetie, cutie, babe and honey', and told her she turned him on and asked if she felt horny.

Bosma was given a two-year sentence, with release on parole after three months.

The former teacher believed he had been in contact with a 14-year-old girl - instead it was a female detective from Queensland Police

Footage of the moment the former primary school teacher was arrested last May in Brisbane in the undercover police sting was captured by ABC's 7.30 program.

Bosma entered the fast food restaurant and approached a female undercover detective who was dressed as a teenager.

He was immediately handcuffed by several undercover police who were waiting in place at the restaurant and taken away.
Supermarket giant Coles has been underpaying workers across the country, the Fair Work Commission has ruled.

The ruling handed down in Melbourne on Tuesday by the commission said Coles' controversial pay agreement with the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees' Association (SDA) failed to meet the 'better off overall' test - known as BOOT.

Almost 80,000 workers are covered under the award.

It found workers would be better off under the industry awards. Part-time and casual workers are the most disadvantaged under the Coles deal.

Supermarket giant Coles has been underpaying almost 80,000 workers across the country, the Fair Work Commission has ruled

'For some employees, particularly those who work primarily at times which attract lower penalty rates under the agreement when compared to the award, the loss in monetary terms is potentially significant,' the FWC's ruling read.

'Taking into account all of these matters we are not satisfied that the Agreement passes the BOOT.'

The hearing came about after part-time worker Duncan Hart - a shopping trolley collector at a store in Queensland - launched action against Coles and his union last year.

In his submission to the commission, Mr Hart claimed some workers were thousands of dollars worse off than they would be under the standard industry award.

As a result of the commission's finding, Coles could be forced to renegotiate agreements with as many as 77,000 workers who are currently covered by the Coles enterprise bargaining agreement.

The supermarket giant was given 10 days to address to failings identified in the report, and also offered up potential 'remedies' to the EBA's faults.

The commission ruled Coles' controversial agreement with the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees' Association (SDA) failed to meet the 'better off overall' test

Coles has been given 10 days by the commission to 'remedy' the failings identified in the report

'In our view, the failure to pass the BOOT could be remedied by an undertaking that provided for an adjustment in payments to employees who work a sufficiently high proportion of penalty shifts as to suffer a financial disadvantage,' the report read.

'Such an undertaking would ensure that those employees who are rostered for a proportionately high number of penalty hours have their wages adjusted to ensure that they will not be paid less than the Award in a relevant pay period.

'Alternatively, an undertaking which limits that number of penalty hours worked by employees, could potentially also address our concerns.'

A Coles spokesman told Daily Mail Australia the current deal had been good for workers.

'Over the past 12 years, Coles' workplace agreements have consistently delivered wage rises ahead of inflation, at the same time as we have lowered prices for our customers,' the spokesman said.

'Coles' current agreement was approved by the Fair Work Commission in 2015. It delivered an average increase of 3 per cent in base rates, maintained penalty rates from the previous agreement and brought six complex agreements into a simple, easy to understand document.

'Coles has constructively engaged in the Fair Work Commission's process and will respond to [Tuesday]'s decision in due course.'

The ruling could have ramifications beyond Coles.

Last month, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that pay negotiations between Australia's second supermarket giant Woolworths and its workers had stalled while the Coles case was ongoing - because the outcome could affect the talks.
British security services may have known that children were being abused at a notorious boys' home in Belfast and used the information to blackmail the paedophiles, a public inquiry heard today.

The Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry will investigate whether the State helped to 'connive, collude, orchestrate, utilise, exploit or cover up' years of abuse at the Kincora Boys' Home in the 1970s.

The hearing was told today that the name 'Kincora' had become synonymous with claims of abuse and official cover-ups.

It has long been alleged that a high-ranking paedophile ring operated out of the former boys' home during the 1970s.

Abuse: It has long been claimed that a high-ranking paedophile ring operated at Kincora Boys' Home, pictured

It is also claimed that the UK security services knew about the abuse but did nothing to stop it, instead using the information to blackmail the influential men involved, including senior politicians, to get information from them.

In 1981, three senior care workers at Kincora were jailed for abusing boys - one of whom, William McGrath, was believed to have been an MI5 agent.

Barrister Joseph Aiken, counsel to the long-running inquiry, said: 'Although it is an established fact that children were abused by staff in Kincora, this inquiry in addition has to address, amongst others, a range of extraordinary allegations.

'Not that the State failed to prevent abuse because of missed opportunities or ineffective systems of oversight and regulation but that it, with deliberation and planning, cynically orchestrated and utilised the abuse of children it was supposed to care for in order to further its own ends.

Victim: Clint Massey, a former resident of the home, pictured outside the public inquiry today

'If true, that would mean those who had the privilege and responsibility of protecting citizens compounded the pain of those who suffered as a result.

'If the allegations are no more than rumours and suspicion, they have the effect of heaping further unnecessary misery on the victims of abuse in Kincora.'

The HIA inquiry was set up by the government of Northern Ireland in 2014 to examine harrowing allegations of physical, emotional and sexual abuse at state- and church-run institutions between 1922 and 1995.

It is being chaired by retired High Court judge Sir Anthony Hart, who is sitting alongside senior social workers Geraldine Doherty and David Lane.

In his opening address, Sir Anthony said a number of state bodies including the Royal Ulster Constabulary, MI5, MI6 and the Northern Ireland Office would be examined.

The inquiry has received 'full and voluntary' co-operation from all government departments and agencies, he added.

Sir Anthony said: 'Not only have we been able to inspect the material they have provided at our request, which includes material that we were able to identify from the material already provided by them that might also be relevant, but we are going to examine the relevant material during these public hearings.'

However, a number of individuals including unionist Roy Garland, ex-Army intelligence officer Brian Gemmell, and former Army officer Colin Wallace have refused to give evidence.

Sir Anthony said: 'While it is for them to decide whether they wish to give evidence in person, we regret that they have adopted this position because this is their opportunity to describe in person and in public their experiences in Kincora.'

Inquiry: The panel is handling claims of historic abuse in institutions across Northern Ireland

Campaigners had hoped to have Kincora included in the nationwide child abuse probe chaired by judge Lowell Goddard, which will have the power to compel witnesses.

However, a legal challenge to overturn the Government's refusal was rejected as 'premature' by a High Court judge last month.

The HIA is now in its 15th module and, by the time it concludes public evidence sessions this summer, more than 450 witnesses will have provided oral testimony.

Sir Anthony is expected to submit his findings to the Northern Ireland Assembly by early next year.

Speaking outside the court, Clint Massey, who spent eight months in Kincora aged 16, said he was looking forward to giving evidence next week.

'I will have my day in the sun,' he said.
8,645 poppies and forget-me-nots, representing each sailor who died in the Battle of Jutland, were cast out to sea

Another service was later held at a cemetery where Royal Navy sailors were buried during the First World War

Duke of Edinburgh and the Queen were seen boarding a plane at Aberdeen airport following weekend at Balmoral

Princess Anne also paid tribute, representing the Royal Family after Prince Philip pulled out on doctor's advice

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Thousands of flowers have been cast out to sea as dignitaries and descendants pay tribute to the British and German sailors who lost their lives during the Battle of Jutland.

Each poppy and forget-me-not - the German flower of remembrance - signifies one of the 8,645 men who were killed during the largest naval battle of the First World War.

Princess Anne was joined by David Cameron, Nicola Sturgeon and German President Joachim Gauck as she attended a memorial service at St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall, Orkney, this morning. A second service at Lyness Cemetery on the island of Hoy, where sailors were laid to rest during the war, was held this afternoon.

The Princess Royal was representing the Royal Family in place of the Duke of Edinburgh, who cancelled his trip to Orkney on the advice of his doctor. Prince Philip and the Queen were seen boarding a plane at Aberdeen Airport today following a weekend at Balmoral in the Scottish Highlands.

Their son-in-law Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence, who is married to Princess Anne, said Prince Philip has 'a minor ailment' and was 'very frustrated' to miss out on the centenary commemorations today.

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Princess Anne and German President Joachim Gauck walk past the sweeping poppy display as they leave St Magnus Cathedral

David Cameron and Nicola Sturgeon leave the cathedral following a moving service remembering those who died in the Battle of Jutland

Prince Philip boards a plane at Aberdeen Airport after a weekend at Balmoral. He pulled out of the Jutland service on a doctor's advice

Princess Anne, David Cameron and Nicola Sturgeon stand during the memorial service at St Magnus Cathedral earlier today

David Cameron, President Joachim Gauck, Princess Anne and Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence at a service at Lyness Cemetery

David Cameron's message read: 'Remembering those who served and paid the ultimate sacrifice at sea. They will never be forgotten'

The band of the city of Kirkwall march through streets lined with residents paying their respects following the service this morning

German President Joachim Gauck, left, and Princess Anne leave St Magnus Cathedral following a moving memorial service

Hundreds of supporters gathered on the streets of Kirkwall to pay their respects to the more than 8,500 sailors who lost their lives

The band of the Royal Marines marched through the streets of Kirkwall following the memorial service this morning

German President Joachim Gauck stopped to admire the ceramic poppies, shown in a display titled: 'Poppies: Weeping Window'

German President Joachim Gauck walks past sailors following the memorial service at St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkfall, Orkney

Some 300 people gathered on the streets of Kirkfall to mark 100 years since the battle. Pictured, Princess Anne and Joachim Gauck, right

HMS Kent (right) sails alongside SMS Schleswig-Holstein in Scapa Flow before a service at Lyness Cemetery, on the island of Hoy

HMS Caroline is pictured moored in the Titanic Quarter today. The ship is the last surviving boat from the 1916 Battle of Jutland

A group of Sea Cadets prepare for a service on HMS Caroline, which was docked in Belfast earlier today

On May 31, 1916 the Royal Navy clashed with German warships in a 36-hour battle off the coast of Denmark's Jutland Peninsula. Some 250 vessels took part, although roughly one in 10 were sunk by the end of June 1.

Both nations claimed victory: Germany because of the 6,094 British losses compared to the 2,551 men it sacrificed - but Britain had seriously weakened the enemy's naval capability.

Orkney was chosen to host the commemorations because the British Grand Fleet set out for the offensive from the island's Scapa Flow base naval base.

This morning hundreds of bystanders lined the streets of Kirkwall to pay their respects. Thousands of ceramic poppies, first displayed at the Tower of London, have been installed at St Magnus - Britain's most northerly cathedral.

Diary readings from officers onboard the Jutland battleships were read and highlighted the excitement sailors felt heading to battle unaware of the number of deaths that would hit both sides.

Engineering technician Thomas Hughes read from the diary of Lieutenant Commander John Croome onboard HMS Indomitable.

He described the call to battle: 'On a calm summer's evening of 30th May, just about cocktail time, the Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Jellicoe in the Iron Duke, hoisted the momentous signal, 'QP' or in plain language, 'Raise steam for Fleet Speed and report when ready to proceed!'

'Though we had received the same order many times before, it never failed to raise a thrill of wild excitement in the expectation that this time perhaps, 'Der Tag' as we had called it had dawned at last.'

Commander Mathias Rix read from SMS Derfflinger Commander Georg von Hase's diary.

Nicola Sturgeon, Lord-Lieutenant of Orkney Bill Spence, David Cameron and Defence Secretary Michael Fallon at Lyness Cemetery

David Cameron lays a wreath at the memorial at Lyness Cemetery, on the island of Hoy, where some of the Jutland fallen are buried

Prime Minister David Cameron, German President Joachim Gauck, the Princess Royal and Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence at the service

German President Joachim Gauck, Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence, the Princess Royal and Admiral Sir Philip Jones lay wreaths

President Joachim Gauck and Princess Anne united as they paid tribute to the thousands of Germans and Britons who died

Dignitaries including David Cameron, Princess Anne and German President Joachim Gauck at the service in Lyness cemetery today

President Gauck waves to sailors on board German frigate 'Schleswig-Holstein' during the commemorations in Scotland today

German President Joachim Gauck, pictured centre, looks across the North Sea at the German frigate 'Schleswig-Holstein'

He said: 'I went to my cabin, lay down for a siesta, watched the blue rings from my cigar, and dreamed of battle and victory.

'If only it came to gunnery action this time! My whole career seemed so incomplete, so much of a failure if I did not have at least one opportunity of feeling in battle on the high seas what fighting was really like. Blow for blow, shot for shot, that was what I wanted.'

The role Orkney played in the First World War was also recognised during the service with readings from the diary of Margaret Tait, a Kirkwall resident at the time. Her relative Ellie Sinclair read an extract from 1915.

It said: 'I went down to see the ships in the bay as I was told there were more ships coming and going to Kirkwall at present than comes and goes to the ports of London.

'It was a lovely sight, the ships stretched right across the Bay as far as Finstown, and were all lighted up making it look like a miniature town.'

A message from the Duke of Edinburgh was carried in the order of service for the commemorations.

It read: 'There was, understandably, public disappointment with the result, but there is no doubt it was fought with the highest courage and determination under the most difficult and challenging circumstances.

'Whatever the judgement on the outcome, the commemoration of the centenary of the battle is focused on the endurance and gallantry of all those who took part, on both sides, and particularly on those who lost their lives.

Nicola Sturgeon with Obed Mlaba, centre, South Africa's High Commissioner to the UK, and Brigadier General Mahlobo at Lyness Cemetery

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon attends the service at Lyness Cemetery on the island of Hoy, to mark the centenary of the Battle of Jutland

Sailors take part in a service at Lyness Cemetery on the island of Hoy, to mark the centenary of the Battle of Jutland

David Cameron (left) and Admiral Sir Philip Jones (right) lay wreaths at the war memorial in Lyness Cemetery

The Royal Marines Band Service takes part in a service at Lyness Cemetery on the island of Hoy, where fallen sailors are buried

From left to right, Princess Anne, German President Joachim Gauck and Prime Minister David Cameron, at the service at Lyness Cemetery

David Cameron shakes hands with a uniformed sailor from the Royal Navy following the service at Lyness Cemetery on the island of Hoy

Pipers take part in a service at Lyness Cemetery on the island of Hoy, Orkney, where sailors were buried during the First World War

Prime Minister David Cameron meets gardeners from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission after the service at Lyness Cemetery

PRINCE PHILIP SEEN BOARDING A PLANE HOME FROM BALMORAL AFTER IT IS REVEALED HE HAS A 'MINOR AILMENT' Prince Philip is suffering from a 'minor ailment' that means he could not attend the Battle of Jutland commemorations, his son-in-law said today. Vice-Admiral Sir Tim Laurence, who is married to Princess Anne, said the Duke of Edinburgh is 'fine' but that 'at his age it would be unwise to go and stand in a windswept cemetery for a long period' of time. Buckingham Palace announced yesterday that Prince Philip, who turns 95 next week, was pulling out of the engagement 'following doctor's advice'. He understood to have no plans to cancel any other forthcoming engagements, and has not attended hospital. The Duke of Edinburgh and the Queen boarded a plane at Aberdeen airport today following a weekend together at Balmoral. The prince was seen holding on to the handrails as he entered the plane, but otherwise appeared to be in good health. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were pictured arriving Aberdeen airport after spending a weekend at Balmoral Castle Prince Philip, who turns 95 next week, used the handrails to help pull himself up as he boarded the plane at Aberdeen airport Philip, who is set to play a central role in the Queen's 90th birthday celebrations, pulled out of his commitments today on medical advice Speaking to Sky News outside St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkfall today, Sir Tim Laurence said: 'He's very frustrated and disappointed that he can't be here and we're all very sad that he won't be with us. 'He's fine. He just has a minor ailment and I think at his age it would be unwise to go and stand in a windswept cemetery for a long period at that stage.' The setback comes just more than a week before a busy run of royal festivities marking the Queen's official 90th birthday. The Duke is due to join the royal family at a service of thanksgiving at St Paul's Cathedral, Trooping the Colour and a street party on The Mall. Philip's next publicised engagements are on Thursday when he is set to attend a reception and take the salute at Sound Retreat on Horse Guards Parade in London as Colonel-in-Chief of The Rifles, and visit a Veterans Aid hostel. Wearing a coral coat and headscarf, the Queen was seen boarding the plane with the help of a group of minders One of the Queen's beloved corgis is carried on to the plane as the royal couple prepare to fly back from Aberdeen airport On Friday, he is due to hold the World Fellowship's 29th Annual Dinner at Windsor Castle, and a reception for the Chartered Society of Designers at St James's Palace on June 8, before attending the cricket on the first day of the England v Sri Lanka Test Match at Lord's on June 9. On his 95th birthday on Friday June 10, as Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, he will preside over a conference at Buckingham Palace attended by the Colonels of the Regiments of the Household Division. The day also coincides with the start of the Queen's official birthday commemorations when the royals will gather at St Paul's Cathedral to mark the life and service of the nation's longest reigning monarch - ahead of a weekend of celebrations. During the Diamond Jubilee in 2012, the Duke was admitted to hospital the day after braving cold, wet and windy conditions on the royal barge during the River Pageant on the Thames. He missed the Jubilee concert and a service at St Paul's after being treated for a bladder infection.

'War may be senseless and the Battle of Jutland may have been inconclusive, but there can be no doubt that their sacrifice was not in vain.'

Mr Cameron, who gave a reading during the service, said in the order of service that it was a reminder that the First World War was not only fought in battlefield trenches.

He said: 'The strategic importance of Scapa Flow cannot be overstated and it is therefore highly symbolic that today the stark and striking beauty of the Orkney Islands provides the backdrop to our commemorations.'

He added: 'It is very moving that we are joined today by the descendants of some of those who served at sea during the war. They have their own special reasons for wanting to be a part of today's commemorations.

'We stand together with them to pay our profound respects to their ancestors and to ensure that the events of a hundred years ago will be remembered and understood in a hundred years' time.'

A candle of remembrance was lit and wreaths were also laid at the cathedral, while a specially-commissioned piece of music by the late composer and Orkney resident Sir Peter Maxwell Davies was performed.

For relatives - some who travelled more than 10,000 miles - it was a day of reconciliation .Stephen Burton, 55, travelled from Melbourne, Australia, to remember his two great-uncles, Robert and George, who died onboard the sunk HMS Indefatigable.

In Belfast, Prince Michael of Kent delivered a speech celebrating the restoration of the last surviving vessel from the Battle of Jutland

Band of The Royal Marines Scotland plays at the Belfast ceremony, which honoured the 10,000 Irish sailors who served in World War One

An aerial view of the newly restored HMS Caroline in Belfast, the last surviving vessel from the Battle of Jutland

Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, spoke at a service marking the Battle of Jutland at the Marine monument in Laboe, Germany

He said: 'It was very moving and really opened my eyes. It was a real privilege to sit among people who have had descendants in a similar situation.No-one really wins a war - the ongoing pain and suffering of war continues for a long time, but I think this goes some way towards reconciling that.

'It was a special event and something I felt I needed to have been at. My family have a long association with the military through my grandfather and my father who served in World War Two.'

A crowd of about 300 people who gathered outside the cathedral and watched the service on big screens applauded loudly after listening to a specially-commissioned piece of music by the late composer and Orkney resident Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.

Michael Mulford, whose father Mark survived the battle, was delighted to see many young people involved in the service.

The 69-year-old said: 'One hundred years ago the buzz word was 'der tag', meaning 'the day' - the day that the two greatest navies in the world would go head to head to kill each other and find out who was the best navy in the world.

'Today the descendants of those people stood shoulder-to-shoulder, British and German, and we sang together, we prayed together and the message of today is of peace and reconciliation, and let's hope we never lose that.

Princess Anne, sitting next to her husband Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence, listens to the memorial service at St Magnus Cathedral

David Cameron said in the order of service that it was a reminder that the First World War was not only fought in battlefield trenches

An view of those gathered for the service at St Magnus Cathedral, where speakers read diary entries from World War One sailors

Some descendants of those who died at the Battle of Jutland travelled more than 10,000 miles to attend the service, pictured

The Kirkwall Pipe Band played on the green outside the cathedral before the service, watched by hundreds of gathered bystanders

A crowd of about 300 people gathered outside the cathedral and watched the service on big screens (pictured)

The Royal Marines Band Service played before the memorial service, which was attended by dignitaries and descendants of fallen soldiers

The dramatic display of ceramic poppies titled 'Poppies: Weeping Window' will remain at St Magnus Cathedral until June 12

'We should always remember and I've found it touching over the last few days to notice that young people have cottoned on to the events and realised that it's now in their hands and up to them how long peace and reconciliation lasts, and one hopes it will be forever.'

A message from the Duke of Edinburgh was carried in the order of service for the commemorations.

It read: 'There was, understandably, public disappointment with the result, but there is no doubt it was fought with the highest courage and determination under the most difficult and challenging circumstances.

'Whatever the judgement on the outcome, the commemoration of the centenary of the battle is focused on the endurance and gallantry of all those who took part, on both sides, and particularly on those who lost their lives.

'War may be senseless and the Battle of Jutland may have been inconclusive, but there can be no doubt that their sacrifice was not in vain.'

Mr Cameron, who gave a reading during the service, said in the order of service that it was a reminder that the First World War was not only fought in battlefield trenches.

He said: 'The strategic importance of Scapa Flow cannot be overstated and it is therefore highly symbolic that today the stark and striking beauty of the Orkney Islands provides the backdrop to our commemorations.'

The band of the Royal Marines play outside the Kirkwall cathedral where a Battle of Jutland memorial service was held this morning

German President Joachim Gauck, left, Princess Anne and Lord Lieutenant of Orkney Bill Spence following the memorial service

Residents and tourists gathered on the streets of Kirkfall to remember the more than 8,500 sailors who died in the Battle of Jutland

Royal Navy personnel marched passed hundreds of bystanders who watched the memorial service on large screens outside the cathedral

Nicola Sturgeon and David Cameron stood side-by-side at the service, remembering the some 6,500 British sailors who lost their lives

Princess Anne salutes outside the cathedral. The Princess Royal stepped in after Prince Philip pulled out of the engagement yesterday

Royal Navy servicemen stand outside St Magnus Cathedral, where descendants and dignitaries gathered to remember the fallen

David Cameron and Nicola Sturgeon have paid tribute to those who gave their lives to protect Britain during the First World War

He added: 'It is very moving that we are joined today by the descendants of some of those who served at sea during the war. They have their own special reasons for wanting to be a part of today's commemorations.

'We stand together with them to pay our profound respects to their ancestors and to ensure that the events of a hundred years ago will be remembered and understood in a hundred years' time.'

A candle of remembrance was lit and wreaths were also laid at the cathedral, while a specially-commissioned piece of music by the late composer and Orkney resident Sir Peter Maxwell Davies was performed.

A second service was held at Lyness Naval Cemetery on the island of Hoy, where the Prime Minister, German president and Princess Anne laid wreaths at the Cross of Sacrifice.

About 450 Royal Navy servicemen were laid to rest at Lyness during the First World War, including 37 who died at Jutland.

Representatives of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission escorted relatives to the graves to plant in each of them a small wooden cross bearing a poppy.

Those gathered at the service heard gun salutes from HMS Kent and observed a two-minute silence before the ship's bell of HMS Calliope was sounded.

Paying their respects: Prime Minister David Cameron and Nicola Sturgeon arrived together ahead of the memorial service in Orkney today

Dignified: Princess Anne and German President Joachim Gauck admire the striking poppy display as they enter the cathedral

Moving: Pipers perform outside St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall, Orkney, ahead of a commemoration of the Battle of Jutland this morning

Dramatic tribute: Thousands of ceramic poppies have been installed at the cathedral as part of the centenary commemorations

Commonwealth War Graves Commission vice-chairman Sir Tim Laurence said: 'We remember those who died, whether in British or German ships.

'We also remember those who were wounded and those whose lives would be forever altered by their experiences.

'This cemetery is a place where sailors buried their comrades, where they honoured their own.

36 HOURS WHICH LEFT 8,645 DEAD: BATTLE OF JUTLAND IN NUMBERS Sailors fought for 36 hours over May 31 and June 1, 1916, off Denmark's Jutland peninsula. 6,094 Britons lost their lives in the battle. Another 2,551 were killed on the German side. More than 1,000 others were injured. A total 249 warships were involved, with 150 British and 99 German vessels. The ships carried more than 100,000 sailors, making Jutland the largest naval battle in history. Of these, 25 were sunk during the battle. Fourteen were from the British Grand Fleet - including HMS Invincible and HMS indefatigable - and 11 from the German High Seas Fleet. Four Victoria Crosses were awarded after the battle. Source: the Royal Navy Museum.

'Some of the British casualties of Jutland were brought back to Scapa Flow and lie here. But there are German graves here too - former enemies now united and at peace.'

There will also be a remembrance service at sea where British and German naval representatives will scatter poppies and forget-me-nots - the German flower of remembrance - into the North Sea at Jutland Bank.

The Government said the commemorations will remember all those who lost their lives while also paying tribute to the role of the Royal Navy and the Orkney Islands in the 1914-18 conflict.

Orkney Islands Council vice-convener Jim Foubister said: 'We are proud to be hosting the UK's national commemoration of the Battle of Jutland.

'It is fitting that the Jutland commemorations will draw to a close among the graves of some of those who made the ultimate sacrifice for their countries a century ago.'

First World War Minister David Evennett said: 'It is right that we remember the thousands who lost their lives during the biggest naval battle of the First World War. My own grandfather fought at Jutland and was lucky enough to have survived and he never forgot the bravery of the young men who served alongside him.

'Today on the Orkney Islands we also remember the role Scotland played in housing the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet.'

Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport John Whittingdale said: 'The Battle of Jutland was the most brutal naval battle of the First World War and it is important that we remember the thousands who lost their lives at sea and commemorate the heroism of all who served one hundred years ago.'

Commemorative events marking the Jutland centenary have previously been held at Rosyth and South Queensferry on the Firth of Forth, from where the Battlecruiser force set sail ahead of the battle on May 31 1916.

Solemn: Uniformed Royal Navy servicemen pay their respects outside the cathedral, next to the moving display of ceramic poppies

Rear Admiral John Weale and Prime Minister David Cameron, left. Right, Mr Cameron with First Minister Nicola Sturgeon in Kirkwall today

German President Joachim Gauck arrives at the service to remember those who lost their lives, including 2,500 of his countrymen

United: British and German military bands played to the dignitaries and the hundreds of bystanders who lined the streets of Kirkwall

Nicola Sturgeon, David Cameron, Princess Anne and German President Joachim Gauck take part in a minute's silence before the service

Princess Anne, left, speaks to German President Joachim Gauck, centre, as they arrive at the cathedral for the memorial service

Members of Kirkwall City Pipe Band perform outside St Magnus Cathedral ahead of the commemorations this morning

Letters of Royal Navy sailor, 19, reveal how he survived the Battle of Jutland by smearing himself in oil to stay warm when the battleship he was on sank

Fight for survival: Peregrine Dearden

Remarkable letters written home by a teenage Royal Navy sailor reveal how he survived the horrors of the Battle of Jutland.

Peregrine Robert Dearden was a 19-year-old midshipman when his vessel, the Queen Mary, was blown up by German gunfire during the largest naval battle of the First World War.

The ship was torn apart by the blast and quickly sank to the depths of the North Sea. All but nine of the 1,265 crewmen on board lost their lives.

Dearden was one of those who survived the devastating 36-hour battle, which took place off the coast of Denmark 100 years ago today.

The New Zealand-born sailor was later picked up by a German destroyer and spent the remainder of the war as a prisoner.

The sacrifice made by Dearden and others will be remembered today in a series of commemorative events to mark the battle's centenary.

Princess Anne, David Cameron and German President Joachim Gauck are expected to join descendants at a Cathedral service in Orkney before later laying wreaths at a war memorial.

In poignant letters back to his mother and his former school, Cheltenham College, Dearden revealed how a combination of luck and initiative led to his survival.

Transcripts of the accounts form part of the Imperial War Museum's 'Lives Of The First World War' online archive.

Writing to his mother five days after the battle, Dearden described how the Queen Mary 'sank rapidly' following a 'terrific explosion' just an hour-and-a-half into the exchange.

He wrote: 'As soon as in the water I swam clear and astern of the ship about 30 yards when she suddenly blew up completely. I was luckily sucked under water and so all the wreckage chuck about did not come with its full weight on my head. I held my breath for a long time and at last came to the surface. I started looking around for something to support me as much as possible.'

In a letter to Cheltenham College Junior School, in which he thanked the headmaster for 'having so kindly remembered me', Dearden said his decision to strip off before he entered the water might have saved his life.

'I took off all my clothes before jumping in while everyone else went in with all their clothes and boots on which I am afraid was a great difficulty to them when once in the water,' he wrote.

Unlike many of his comrades, Dearden was also sent out to see without one of the Gieve waistcoats, which doubled as an inflatable life-jacket. This twist of fate also likely led to his survival.

He told his mother: 'As you know I never had a Gieve waistcoat and am now glad I had not... The people with Gieve waistcoasts on were the first I noticed to drown as they were held a little too high out of the water and when they became weak their heads fell forward in the water.'

As he watched his fellow crewmen sink beneath the waves and lose their lives to a secondary explosion, Dearden had the wherewithal to protect himself from the crippling cold.

Peregrine Robert Dearden was a 19-year-old midshipman when his vessel, the Queen Mary, was blown up by German gunfire during the largest naval battle of the First World War (illustrated in a drawing above)

To his mother: 'The surface of the water was simply covered with oil fuel which tasted and smelt horribly (my presence of mind) I smothered myself all over with it which I really think saved my life as the water was frightfully cold.'

Those who lived through the initial trauma clung on to wreckage floating on the surface, willing a British ship to come to their rescue. Some 30 minutes after entering the sea, the men thought their prayers had been answered when a British destroyer came within some 'twenty five to thirty yards'.

But their hopes were soon dashed. The ship only saved 'three midshipmen and 15 men' before changing course.

'It nearly drove me frantic when she steamed off,' Dearden wrote. 'She would not even leave her whaler behind to pick up the remaining fifteen or twenty of us in the water, although I shouted to them to do so.

The Queen Mary was torn apart by the blast and quickly sank to the depths of the North Sea, and all but nine of the 1,265 crewmen on board lost their lives (illustrated in a drawing above)

'Afterwards it was terrible seeing everyone else collapse and drown and I had not the strength to help any of them.'

He added to his headmaster: 'It was very depressing all the time hearing the cries for help from various men in the water who must have completely lost their nerve, poor fellows.'

Dearden was eventually picked up by a German destroyer, and he was 'very well treated'.

His granddaughter Belinda Scott, 57, will be among the descendants attending the commemorations in Orkney today.
The devastating fire has destroyed parts of Fort McMurray in Alberta

They link arms and dance from side to side to boost morale in the country

300 firefighters sing and dance after arriving to battle huge blaze in Canada

This is the touching moment 300 South African firefighters broke into song and dance after arriving in Canada to help tackle a devastating fire which has covered 1.4 million acres.

The volunteers, including about 60 women, had just landed at Edmonton International Airport - close to where the wildfire destroyed parts of Fort McMurray in Alberta.

It continues to burn out of control and the brave workers - dressed in yellow uniforms - immediately started to sing solider songs from their native country in order to boost morale.

The video captured the moment a man, thought to be one of the members in charge of the group, shouted 'let's give them a song!'

The firefighters instantly responded and began to clap and move from side to side while singing at the top of their lungs.

They had just flown from Johannesburg O.R. Tambo International Airport and seemed to be in high spirits as they prepared to help fight the fire which has destroyed that part of the country.

The firefighters, from South Africa's Working on Fire Programme, linked arms and danced as astonished Canadians looked on.

Their journey marked the largest number of wildland firefighters ever brought into Canada.

The 300 firefighters linked arms and broke into song to boost morale as they landed at Edmonton Airport in Canada

They had arrived to help tackle the devastating fire which has affected 1.4 million acres of land in Fort McMurray

The firefighters began dancing after a man - thought to be in charge - said 'Let's give them a song!'

They hope to try and battle the huge wildfire which has displaced more than 80,000 people and has been been raging in the city for around one month.

A total of 2,054 firefighters have been dispatched to the remote northern oil sands region - an area that holds the world's third largest oil reserve - to keep the flames at bay.

They have been assisted by 88 helicopters, 256 pieces of heavy equipment and 25 air tankers.

Linton Rensburg, a Working on Fire spokesman, said South Africa heeded Canada's call for help because of the 'long-standing relationship' between the two countries.

This mission is the biggest non-military deployment of South Africans to help a foreign country.

They will battle the huge wildfire which has displaced more than 80,000 people and has been been raging in the city for around one month

The firefighters instantly responded and began to clap and move from side to side while singing at the top of their lungs

Khomt Alucie, one of the firefighters who made the journey, said the group has only known each other for a day and singing is how they bond.

She told CBC News: 'It gives us moral courage, it gives us teamwork. If we become tired in the fire we sing.

'It's not something you practice, it's in the soul.'

The closest the fire is actively burning to the outskirts of Fort McMurray is just over 15 miles away.

The fire near Fort McMurray has been raging for about one month

A satellite photograph shows the devastation caused by the fire which started on May 1

Some 100,000 residents of Fort McMurray and nearby towns and oil camps, are meanwhile planning their return home starting June 1, almost a month after being ordered to evacuate.

Authorities warned in a statement: 'You are returning to a community that was profoundly affected by a wildfire.

'Services that you are used to or rely on may be limited for some.

'If you're driving back, consider arriving with basic necessities to last for up to 14 days including food, drinking water and prescriptions.'

Oil workers also are starting to return to facilities north of the city this week to restart oil production.
He spoke to a soldier from Bath while in Morocco before he

An appeal has been launched after a British teenager failed to return from a holiday in Morocco.

Connor Jarvis, 19, was due to return home to Bath, Somerset, from a solo trip to Marrakech on Saturday night but was not on board his flight.

Avon and Somerset Police said Mr Jarvis's disappearance is out of character and officers are appealing for him to get in touch.

Connor Jarvis (pictured), 19, was due to return home to Bath, Somerset, from a solo trip to Marrakech on Saturday night but was not on board his flight

'His disappearance is out of character and concern is growing for his whereabouts,' a force spokesman said.

'We now understand that while in Morocco, Connor met and spoke to a soldier who is from the Bath area. He was heading for an eight-day trip to the Atlas Mountains.

'We are keen to speak to this man who might have information to help our inquiries. We would like anyone who may know of the soldier to contact us.'

An appeal has been launched after a British teenager failed to return from a holiday in Marrakech (pictured)

His worried sister also took to Facebook to appeal for information.

Dental nurse Casey Sian Jarvis wrote: 'Feel absolutely lost! The feeling of helplessness is horrible!

'Anyone who knows any soldiers from the bath area that has been training for the army in Marrakech please let me know! And ask them to get in touch!'

Connor is white, 5ft 10ins tall, of medium build with short dark brown hair.
A British man who fell into a gorilla enclosure as a young boy has defended Cincinnati Zoo for shooting dead a great ape in order to save a three-year-old's life.

Levan Merritt was five years old when he slipped into the pen at Jersey Zoo and was knocked unconscious, only to be saved by a giant male named Jambo who protected him from the other gorillas.

However, despite his own positive interaction with the powerful beasts, he reluctantly backed the decision of zoo bosses to kill 17-year-old Harambe on Saturday.

Deja vu: Saturday's incident at Cincinnati Zoo, left, revived memories of Levan Merritt falling into the gorilla enclosure at Jersey Zoo in 1986, right

The gorilla was shot after a child crawled into his enclosure and started 'playing', prompting fears that the boy's life could be in danger.

Mr Merritt, 35, today described how the shocking footage brought back memories of his own close shave in 1986, and said that the threat to the boy justified the zoo's actions.

'Watching the American video brought it all back,' he told The Sun. 'I felt for the boy but also felt for the gorilla.

'Did they have to kill it? Well, he wouldn't have known his own strength compared to a child, having lived in captivity and never touched a human infant.

'And he does grab the boy and drags him into the water at a terrifying speed. The four-year-old is tiny and could easily have been injured. So they made the correct decision to save the boy's life.'

Terror: Mr Merritt, pictured with his wife Amanda, backed the decision of zoo bosses to shoot Harambe the gorilla

Safe: When Mr Merritt fell in to the enclosure he was protected by a male gorilla named Jambo

However, his mother Pauline disagreed with him and said that Cincinnati Zoo should have made greater efforts to avoid harming its own animals.

'I don't think he should have been killed,' Mrs Merritt told ITV's This Morning. 'The keeper should have got in to try to get the gorilla away and then get the boy out. No way he should have been killed.'

The incident in Cincinnati had a very different ending to Mr Merritt's experience, because he was protected rather than threatened by Jambo.

In the wake of what happened at Jersey Zoo Jambo, an 18st silverback, became nationally famous and was commemorated after his death by a statue at the attraction.

Mr Merritt, from West Sussex, repeatedly went back to Jersey to visit Jambo and built up a strong bond with the gorilla.

Threat: Although Harambe appeared to be playing with the young boy on Saturday the child is thought have been in serious danger

Parents: Deonne Dickerson and Michelle Gregg have been criticised over the incident

In the wake of the Cincinnati Zoo shooting, both zoo chiefs and the boy's parents have been heavily criticized for allowing the child to get into the enclosure.

Michelle Gregg, the mother of the four-year-old, defended herself saying: 'Accidents happen but I am thankful that the right people were in the right place.'

Mr Merritt described how his parents blamed themselves when he fell into Jambo's pen, but insisted that it was his own fault because he was 'always wandering off'.

The shooting of Harambe has sparked a global outcry, with many arguing that the zoo was wrong to kill the gorilla and should have tried to save the boy using non-lethal means.

However, director Thane Maynard insisted that the child was in a 'life-threatening situation' because the ape was 'behaving erratically'.

He also said that handlers could not have tranquillized Harambe because the animal would have become agitated for several minutes before he was knocked unconscious.
A group of asylum seekers sexually assaulted numerous women at a free concert in Germany at the weekend in attacks similar to those carried out in Cologne on New Year's Eve.

Three Pakistani men are already under arrest after 26 women filed complaints that they had been improperly touched, fondled and groped during the festival in the city of Darmstadt.

Police have said the number of complainants could rise.

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All the complainants said they were 'surrounded' before being 'touched and fondled' improperly at the annual free Schlossgrabenfestes music festival (file picture of the event)

Between two and three more men are still being sought by police as victims receive counselling and authorities try to cool down rising tensions against migrants in general.

The incident had similarities to the attacks in Cologne on December 31 - when a number of young women were targeted in the concourse of the city's main railway station.

All the complainants said they were 'surrounded' before being 'touched and fondled' improperly at the annual free Schlossgrabenfestes music festival.

The three arrested men are aged between 28 and 31 and are Pakistanis seeking asylum in Germany. All have been charged with sexual crimes as the hunt continues for their accomplices.

The incident had similarities to events in Cologne (pictured) on December 31 - when a number of young women were targeted in the concourse of the city's main railway station

Media reports said that more women are expected to come forward to file criminal complaints after they were groped at the festival on Sunday where around 100,000 people were in the crowds over the four-day event.

Ever since the events in Cologne there have been numerous reports of migrants sexually attacking German women, but many of them turned out not to be true.

But the Darmstadt victims all came forward independently to tell graphic tales of the assaults which quickly led to the arrest of the men.

The Pakistanis will face deportation to their homeland if found guilty when brought before the courts.




A North Korean ballistic missile is believed to have exploded on its launch pad today in its latest botched test firing.

Official sources said the blast is thought to have severely injured personnel working close to the medium-range weapon.

It is the latest in a series of setbacks for a ballistic weapons programme that aspires to threaten the US mainland.

A man watches a TV news program reporting about a missile launch by North Korea at the Seoul Train Station in South Korea. The North Korean missile launch likely failed on Tuesday, according to South Korea's military

South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted official sources as saying the missile may have exploded on its mobile launcher.

'The explosion is presumed to have inflicted serious injuries on personnel in the immediate vicinity,' Yonhap said.

South Korea's defence ministry detected the dawn launch effort which Japan condemned as an unacceptable and 'provocative' act.

The ministry declined to speculate on the missile type.

But military sources cited by local media said it was a powerful, medium-range 'Musudan' that has already undergone three failed launches this year.

UN resolutions ban North Korea from any use of ballistic missile technology, although it regularly fires short-range missiles into the sea off its east coast.

Tuesday's effort came with tensions still running high on the divided Korean peninsula following the North's fourth nuclear test in January and long-range rocket launch a month later.

'We believe that it was a failure,' said Jeon Ha-Gyu, spokesman for the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff

'As to why and how it failed, we are in the process of analysing that,' Jeon told a press briefing.

'We are maintaining a strong defence posture with potential further provocations by the North in mind,' he added.

A man watches a TV news program reporting about North Korea's missiles at the Seoul Train Station in Seoul

In April, the North failed three times to test fire a Musudan, which has an estimated range of anywhere between 1,550 and 2,500 miles.

The lower range covers the whole of South Korea and Japan, while the upper range would include US military bases on Guam.

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said: 'North Korea's repeated ballistic missile launches are serious, provocative acts against the international community, including Japan.

'We absolutely cannot accept this,' Kishida said.

First unveiled as an indigenous missile at a military parade in Pyongyang in October 2010, the Musudan has never been successfully flight-tested.

The three failures in April were seen as an embarrassment for the Pyongyang leadership, coming ahead of a ruling party congress in May that was meant to celebrate the country's achievements.

A picture released from North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Monday shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un visiting the construction site of the medical oxygen factory in Pyongyang

During the party congress, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un personally extended an offer of military dialogue with the South aimed at easing tensions.

The proposal was repeated several times by the North's military, but Seoul dismissed all the overtures as insincere 'posturing' given Kim's vow at the same congress to push ahead with the country's nuclear weapons programme.

In recent months, North Korea has claimed a series of technical breakthroughs in developing what it sees as the ultimate goal of that programme - an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to targets across the continental United States.

They included miniaturising a nuclear warhead to fit on a missile, developing a warhead that can withstand atmospheric re-entry, and building a solid-fuel missile engine.

It also hailed the successful test of an engine specifically designed for an ICBM that would 'guarantee' an eventual nuclear strike on the US mainland.
Students found with the drinks at the academy will have them confiscated

Blames them for classroom violence and bed wetting among youngsters

A head teacher has banned energy drinks - blaming them for classroom violence, bed wetting and youngsters falling asleep in class.

Melvyn Lynch sent a letter to every parent at the 1,000 pupil Forfar Academy, Tayside, in Scotland, saying any youngster found with drinks such as Red Bull, Rock Star and Monster will have them immediately confiscated.

He said some pupils were even downing cans of the caffeine drinks for breakfast.

Head teacher Melvyn Lynch (pictured) sent a letter to parents at Forfar Academy in Tayside, Scotland, explaining that youngsters caught with energy drinks will have them confiscated

The ban takes immediate effect on the pupils' return from the bank holiday weekend today.

'There is certainly a group for whom this is their first drink of choice, and for some a can of high energy drink is their breakfast,' he said.

He blames the drinks as a 'contributory factor' in bad behaviour which has resulted in some youngsters being excluded.

Mr Lynch said he hoped the move would encourage parents to have a conversation about high caffeine products.

In his letter to parents, the rector warned of health risks.

He claimed consumption can lead to insomnia, anxiety issues, headaches, nausea, heart palpitations, abdominal pain, type 2 diabetes and bed-wetting.

The letter stated: 'Rather than helping pupils stay alert they can result in young people falling asleep during the day due to problems with sleep at night time.

'It is our opinion that there drinks are a danger to the health of our young people and that they contain no nutritional benefits.

'In additional to these health risks, we are also extremely concerned about the effect these drinks are having on the behaviour of our young people.

'They can cause conflict with staff when pupils are advised that they should not be consuming these drinks in classes.

Any pupil found with the drinks will have them confiscated and Mr Lynch asked parents for their full support

'Moreover, we have also had occasions where pupils who have consumed energy drinks have been involved in more serious incidents that have led to exclusion.

'Whilst energy drinks are not solely to blame for this indiscipline, we believe that they are a contributory factor.'

Any pupil found with the drinks will have them confiscated and Mr Lynch asked parents for their full support.

This comes amid tougher government guidelines on the drinks.

The new sugar tax - which will raise around 520million a year - was announced by the Chancellor in his Budget in March and aims to stamp out high sugar intake.

However it was labelled a farce this week as it emerged that many super-sweet drinks - such as a Starbucks hot chocolate - will not be hit by the levy.

And The British Soft Drinks Association calls for high-caffeine soft drinks not to be promoted or marketed to under-16s.

Its guidance says: 'Latest reviews of the scientific evidence suggest that children can be more susceptible to the stimulant effects of caffeine than adults because of their lower body mass and because, unlike many adults, they are not used to it on a regular basis.

'On a precautionary basis, therefore, the soft drinks industry suggests that high caffeine content soft drinks should not be consumed by children.

'However, this does not mean that the drinks are unsafe.

Mr Lynch said he hoped the move would encourage parents to have a conversation about high caffeine products

'Parents should decide what is right for their families.'

An Angus Council spokesman confirmed energy drinks are not sold in any of the county's schools - and said it supports action that helps young people lead a healthier lifestyle.

He said: 'While a decision on their consumption on school grounds would be a matter for individual schools, we support moves that provide our young people with the relevant information about what they are consuming, enable them to make informed choices and allows them to lead healthier lifestyles.'

NHS Tayside has banned the sale of all high-sugar drinks on their premises since 2008 and warned high caffeine products can cause excitability, irritability, nervousness or anxiety.

A spokeswoman said: 'Cutting down on sugary drinks which contain no nutritional benefits is one of the most important ways of reducing sugar intake.

'People can try sugar-free varieties drinks or better still, water.'

'In the UK, many high caffeine drink manufacturers already include advice on the unsuitability of energy drinks for children and pregnant women due to the high-caffeine content.'
Donald Trump joined Twitter after a seven-minute pitch by a man who said it could help him sell more of his business books.

Peter Costanzo, 51, is the man who helped turn Trump into @RealDonaldTrump - the mogul's handle on the platform.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee has used it to pump out insults, political attacks and self-promotion to more than 8.5 million followers.

But the billionaire's foray into the world of social media began with a much simpler purpose: making money.

Peter Costanzo (left), 51, convinced Donald Trump to join Twitter in 2009 while doing marketing for the billionaire's book 'Think Like A Champion'. Costanzo came up with the handle @RealDonaldTrump (right)

Costanzo crossed paths with Trump in 2009 while working for the publishing company putting out the businessman's book, 'Think Like a Champion.'

Twitter, which began in 2006, was still in its infancy at the time. But Costanzo, the company's online marketing director, thought the mogul could use it to connect with more people - and increase sales.

Costanzo was given seven minutes to make his pitch to Trump - 'not five minutes, not 10,' Constanzo said - in a boardroom at Trump Tower in Manhattan.

The room appeared to be the same one used on Trump's reality television show.

Trump liked what he heard that day.

'I said, "Let's call you @RealDonaldTrump - you're the real Donald Trump,"' Costanzo said. 'He thought about it for a minute and said, "I like it. Let's do it."'

Costanzo helped coordinate Trump's Twitter account over several months and worked on the billionaire's official Facebook page too, often sending out messages for him.

He credited Trump with being an early adopter of the service and says he believes Trump understood its potential.

'He seemed very excited about the idea of being able to reach people so directly,' Costanzo said. 'I think he immediately got it.'

Trump's office confirmed the outlines of Costanzo's account. Costanzo now works as digital and archival publishing manager for The Associated Press, a position that is separate from the news department.

Twitter, which began in 2006, was still in its infancy at the time. But Costanzo (pictured) thought it would help Trump reach a broader audience - thus selling more books

Costanzo was given seven minutes to pitch the idea in a boardroom at Trump Tower in Manhattan. Trump (pictured in Washington, DC on Sunday) agreed to join Twitter afterwards

Costanzo's moniker for Trump on Twitter may have survived but the early days of the businessman's account bear little resemblance to the current iteration, which frequently drives news in the White House race.

During the roughly eight months when Costanzo was in charge of the burgeoning Trump Twitter account, each missive was carefully crafted by the publishing company or the businessman's office.

Trump got final approval before Costanzo pressed 'Tweet'.

Most of the messages were quotations from the book, a collection of Trump lessons on life and business.

One early tweet reads: 'My persona will never be that of a wallflower  I'd rather build walls than cling to them.'

Sometimes Trump would send word through an associate that he wanted to offer a holiday greeting. His retweets were rare then.

Now, Trump starts firing off messages early in the morning and often continues past midnight. He'll shout out tweets for aides to type during the day and take over himself at night. Spelling and grammar are sometimes amiss, and exclamation points are plentiful.

Trump frequently retweets messages from other people's accounts, something he's admitted 'gets me in trouble'.

He faced particular criticism for retweeting an unflattering photo of former rival Ted Cruz's wife and has since said he wished he hadn't done that.

Costanzo, who no longer has any role with Trump's Twitter account or books, says he's marveled at the following his most famous client has built on social media.

When someone ashed whether he had any Twitter advice for Trump now, Costanzo said: 'He seems to be doing just fine without me.'
An increasing number of swimming pools in Sweden are offering gender-segregated hours in order to encourage more women to visit.

The rise in women-only swimming hours has been linked to the growing Muslim population in Sweden, which has sparked fierce debate and has been criticized by the government.

Sweden's Discrimination Ombudsman has launched an investigation into whether the women-only hours is violating equality law by discriminating against men.

Criticised: More public swimming pools in Sweden are offering 'women-only' hours, an increase which has been linked to the growing Muslim population in the country in recent years (stock image)

Women-only hours at public swimming pools is not a new phenomenon in Sweden and has been around for decades, but this is the first time it has been linked to the rising Muslim population.

Its has been advocated as a safe space for girls and women who may not be comfortable with showing their bodies in swimwear, or are of conservative beliefs rooted in a number of different religions, including Islam.

Public pools in a number of Stockholm suburbs have been offering gender-segregated swimming hours since the late 90s, however women-only access is now believed to increase in popularity as a result of the rise in immigration.

It is gender-segregation for religious reasons which has sparked the current debate, with Sweden's Minister for Democracy slamming the initiative last month.

'To claim in the name of religion that you have the right that different parts of society - for example swimming pools, buses and trains - should adapt to your right to believe in what you wish, that is taking things too far,' Alice Bah Kuhnke told SVT last month.

Anti-men: Sweden's Discrimination Ombudsman has launched an investigation into whether the women-only hours at swimming pools is violating equality law by discriminating against men

She added that she believes that rules that women and men should swim together in public swimming pools in Sweden is 'a victory after many years and generations of gender-equality struggle'.

In the wake of the recent debate, the occurrence of women-only hours at swimming pools has been reported to the Swedish government's Discrimination Ombudsman.

An investigation has been launched to clarify whether gender-segregated hours at swimming pools are in agreement with Swedish discrimination law.

'We follow the debate and the news feeds and feel that there is a need to clarify this,' Per Holfve, Discrimination Ombudsman administrator told Mitti.se last week.

'The basic rule of the law is that gender discrimination is forbidden, but if there is a justified means, there can be exceptions made in an appropriate way.'
A man is fighting for his life in hospital after a shark tore part of his leg off while he was surfing at a beach south of Perth only hours after reports of a great white shark lurking nearby.

Ben Gerring, 29, was pulled from the water at a popular surf break in Falcon, near Mandurah, after a shark attacked him from behind just before 4pm on Tuesday.

Other surfers paddled him back to shore after he was heard screaming for help and seen being pulled under the water. Mr Gerring was given CPR for around 20 minutes on the sand and his severed leg was wrapped in a towel before two ambulances arrived,Seven News reported.

A rescue helicopter was on standby but Mr Gerring was loaded into an ambulance and rushed to Peel Health Campus with life threatening injuries, but not before paramedics reportedly instructed witnesses with children to look away.

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Ben Gerring, 29, is fighting for his life in hospital after a shark tore part of his leg off while he was surfing at a beach south of Perth only hours after reports of a great white shark lurking nearby

Mr Gerring was given CPR for around 20 minutes on the sand and his severed leg was wrapped in a towel before two ambulances arrived and he was transported to hospital with life threatening injuries

Once Mr Gerring's condition stabilised he was transferred Royal Perth Hospital.

According to Seven News, the man lost a lot of blood but was conscious when he was put in the ambulance as scores of concerned witnesses looked on.

Ian Barker bravely jumped into the water to help save the victim after around 15 other surfers made it to shore when screams of a shark filled the air.

'There were two blokes still out the back and I paddled out to him, they needed a hand,' he told Seven News.

'That's when I saw this fella, he was very pale. They had him propped up on a surf board and they were paddling him in.'

Mr Gerring was pale and had lost a lot of blood by the time he was pulled on to shore by local surfers

A rescue helicopter was on standby but the man was loaded into an ambulance and rushed to Peel Health Campus with life threatening injuries

He said his leg had been severed and was placed in a towel on the beach.

Nathan Hondros of the Mandurah Mail has told of the 'desperate scenes' he witnessed after the surfer was pulled from the ocean, WA Today reported.

'We've got the bloke out of the water, he seems to have lost a leg from above the knee and it looks like ambulance crews are trying to revive him.. it's not looking good,' he told 6PR.

A local shopkeeper said two men came frantically running from the sand asking for ice and claiming a surfer had his leg 'fully' bitten off at around 4pm

A local shopkeeper said two men came frantically running from the sand asking for ice and claiming a surfer had his leg 'fully' bitten off.

According to Perth Now, a local shopkeeper said two men came frantically running from the sand asking for ice and claiming a surfer had his leg 'fully' bitten off at around 4pm.

Western Australia Police attended the scene and said the man is believed to be 29-years-old. It was earlier reported the victim was 17.

Surf Life Saving WA said a three-and-a-half metre great white shark was spotted on Tuesday morning at Pyramid Beach, around five kilometres south of where the attack took place.

Council rangers have closed a section of the beach amid concerns the shark could still be in the area.

The species of the shark involved is not yet known.
Katie Couric apologized over a controversial documentary on gun rights after an editor inserted eight seconds of dead air to make firearms supporters appear 'stumped' after the journalist asked them a challenging question.

Couric, 59, was executive producer for the film 'Under The Gun' where she interviewed members of the Virginia Defense League, who are pro gun rights.

The film looked at the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting where gunman Adam Lanza shot dead his mother before murdering 20 children and six further adults inside the elementary school. Lanza then killed himself.

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Katie Couric, pictured, was forced to apologize after an edit in her documentary into firearms made it look like pro-gun activists were speechless after she asked them whether convicted felons should be allowed weapons

Couric, left, said the edit was made by Stephanie Soechtig, right, who included the dead air for 'dramatic effect'

All but one of these children were murdered by Adam Lanza on Friday December 14, 2012 in Sandy Hook

Couric's film 'Under The Gun', pictured, has been criticized over the editing techniques used during the feature

According to CNN, during the documentary, Couric asked the activists: 'If there are no background checks for gun purchasers, how do you prevent felons or terrorist from walking into, say, a licensed gun dealer and purchasing a gun?'

The question is followed by eight seconds of dead air where the members of the group look at each other while considering their answer.

However, the activists responded to the question immediately according an audio recording of the interview.

The dead air had been inserted by the film's director Stephanie Soechtig.

In a statement on the film's website, Couric said she takes 'responsibility for a decision that misrepresented an exchange' she had with the Virginia Citizens Defense League.

The documentary was praised critically, but pro-gun activists complained about its accuracy

The film's editing team added an eight second pause following an answer for 'dramatic effect'

She said: 'When I screened an early version of the film with the director, Stephanie Soechtig, I questioned her and the editor about the pause and was told that a "beat" was added for, as she described it, dramatic effect", to give the audience a moment to consider the question.

'When VCDL members recently pointed out that they had in fact immediately answered this question, I went back and reviewed it and agree that those eight seconds do not accurately represent their response.'

Following the controversy, Couric released the full transcript of the exchange.

In the film, Couric asked the group: 'If there are no background checks, how do you prevent ... I know how you all are going to answer this, but I'm asking anyway. If there are no background checks for gun purchasers, how do you prevent felons or terrorists from walking into, say a licensed gun dealer and purchasing a gun?'

One of the men replied: 'Well, one, if you're not in jail then you should still have your basic rights and you should go buy a gun.'
Anyone who sees Natasha is urged to contact the Fawkner Police Station

She was last seen in Heidelberg West at around 4am on Monday, 30 May

The teenager is 36 weeks pregnant and is due to give birth in three weeks

A heavily pregnant teenager has gone missing from a Melbourne suburb, just three weeks before she is due to give birth.

Natasha Boko, 14, was last seen in Heidelberg West at around 4am on Monday, 30 May.

The teenager is 36 weeks pregnant as is three weeks off her due date according to concerned friends and family on social media.

Heavily pregnant Natasha Boko (pictured), 14, as gone missing from a Melbourne suburb, just three weeks before she is due to give birth

The 14-year-old was seen wearing a black jumper, black leggings and Nike shoes before she went missing.

She is described as being 150cm tall, of medium build with brown eyes, fair hair and a fair complexion.

Victoria Police report that the pregnant teenager regularly travelled to the central business district of Melbourne.

She could also potentially travel to Heidelberg West, Eltham and Craigieburn.

Anyone who sees Natasha is urged to contact the Fawkner Police Station on 9355 6000.

Family and friends have raised their concerns on social media over the welfare of the young mother-to-be

The 14-year old was last seen in Heidelberg West at around 4am on Monday, 30 May. She was seen wearing a black jumper, black leggings and Nike shoes before she went missing
Roman Polanski is facing a new extradition battle over his historic child rape charges in the US.

The Oscar-winning director pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with 13-year-old Samantha Geimer in 1978 but had fled the United States in 1978 on the eve of sentencing.

In October, a Polish judge denied a request to extradite Polanski to the US - arguing that the request had legal flaws and that the 82-year-old had already served 42 days in jail under a deal with a Los Angeles judge.

Now Poland's tough new justice minister has called on Poland's Supreme Court to annul the ruling.

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Poland's justice minister on Tuesday revived an effort to have Roman Polanski (pictured earlier this month in Poland) extradited to the US, where he is wanted in a nearly 40-year-old case involving sex with a minor

Zbigniew Ziobro, who also became Poland's chief prosecutor after the country's new, staunchly conservative government merged the two posts, argues that it was the director's celebrity status in Poland, where he grew up, that had prevented him from being extradited in the past.

'I've decided to file an appeal in the Supreme Court against the ruling ... in which the ... court decided not to extradite Mr Polanski to the US in a situation when he's accused of and wanted for ... a rape of a child,' Ziobro told Poland's state radio.

'If he was just a regular guy, a teacher, doctor, plumber, decorator, then I'm sure he'd have been deported from any country to the US a long time ago,' he said.

Polanski's lawyer Jan Olszewski told Polish broadcaster TVN24 said that given Ziobro's previous comments, his decision was 'not surprising.'

'I guarantee that if there were no factual arguments on our side, Polanski's (celebrity) status itself would not protect him from extradition.'

Now Poland's tough new justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro (pictured) has called on Poland's Supreme Court to annul the ruling

Ziobro had backed Polanski's extradition at the hearing last October, saying: 'Pedophilia is an evil that must be pursued. We can't shield anyone from taking responsibility for an act as despicable as abusing a minor.'

The Krakow court's decision was at odds with a Polish-U.S. extradition agreement, Ziobro's office argued in a statement.

It said that, 'according to the extradition agreement, the defendant should be handed over to the United States.'

The director pleaded guilty in 1977 to one count of statutory rape for having sex with a 13-year-old girl during a photo shoot while at Jack Nicholson's house in Los Angeles.

Victim Samantha Geimer revealed that Polanski first plied her with champagne, and sleeping pills before raping and sodomizing her at Jack Nicholson's home.

Samantha says she first met Polanski, then 43, early in 1977, a month before the rape. A mutual friend had approached her mother, Susan, about Polanski photographing her daughter for French Vogue. (The magazine later denied making any such commission.)

Describing the sexual assault, she said that he had begun taking pictures of her before persuading her to strip and get in the Jacuzzi in just her panties and giving her a Quaalude.

'He puts his camera down and says hes getting in,' she writes. 'Hes getting in. Im fine with taking off my top...But this? No,' she wrote in her book The Girl.

'I want out. Now,' she recalls. 'How f*****g stupid could I be? Its a hard thought to hold on to. The water is hot, and the steam is rising into the night. I knew this wasnt right.'

'This man had a reputation as a great lover. The problem is, he was not my great lover. I could have been any girl, as long as I was female and as long as I was young.

Samantha Geimer (left) who was assaulted by Roman Polanski (right) in 1977 after a photo session when she was just 13, was 'very pleased' with the Polish court's decision last year to deny the extradition request

Victim: Polanski asked Samantha to join him at Jack Nicholson's house for a French Vogue photo shoot

'He holds my arms at my sides and kisses me,' she claims. 'And I say, "No, come on", but between the pill and the champagne its like my own voice is very far away.'

She said at that moment she had feigned an asthma attack, and told Polanski she needed to go home. Instead, he guided her by her shoulders into a bedroom.

She was so intoxicated by the alcohol and the Quaalude, Polanski didnt even need to use force, she recalls.

She knows she told him to stop at least twice but, as she acknowledges, Hollywood names such as Polanski get used to no one saying no.

He performed oral sex on her, raped her and then, after discovering she was not on the Pill, sodomized her, she claims.

'And thats when I check out. I go far, far away. There is a sense of complete and utter emptiness.'

She recalls getting dressed and going out to the car to go home while Polanski stopped to chat with Anjelica Houston who was dating Jack Nicholson at the time.

Tears streamed down Samanthas face as Polanski drove her home. He has always denied their encounter was anything but consensual, claiming in his autobiography they had been making love.

Out now: The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski book cover

Polanski was later brazenly told writer Martin Amis in an interview that everyone wants to f*** young girls.

And in his autobiography, he gleefully admitted seducing teenage girls at a nearby finishing school as he recuperated in the Alps from his second wifes murder.

When Geimer returned home, her parents discovered topless photographs the director had taken of their daughter during a test-shoot and, eventually, called the police.

Anxious to spare her a trial, her lawyer arranged a deal allowing Polanski to admit the lesser charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.

He spent 42 days in state prison for a psychiatric examination, but his lawyers say they then learned that Laurence Rittenband, the case judge, intended to renege on their agreement not to give Polanski any more jail time. Terrified he could be imprisoned for decades, the director took a one-way flight to London and then on to Paris. He has not returned to America since.

Polanskis movements are restricted by an Interpol warrant in effect in 188 countries, but he is avoiding extradition by remaining only in France, Poland and Switzerland.

The United States filed the extradition request in January 2015.

US officials have regularly pressed for his extradition, to no avail, and tried to have him arrested when he travelled to Warsaw for the opening of a Jewish museum in October 2014.

In 2009, he was arrested in Zurich on a U.S. warrant and placed under house arrest. He was freed in 2010 after Swiss authorities decided not to extradite him.

Polanski has said he doubts the extradition application will be granted but he will comply with the legal proceedings.

He testified for a marathon nine hours at the first closed-door hearing on February 25.

His lawyers argued that U.S. judges and prosecutors in the case violated legal procedures, broke the plea bargain in 1977, denied Polanski the right to proper defense and appeared biased.

In November, Polish prosecutors argued there were no legal grounds for the extradition to go ahead, despite a statute of limitations on child sex crimes under Polish law.

Geimer has made clear she believes Polanski's long exile has been punishment enough.

She said she had been 'very pleased' with the decision last year not to extradite the director.

'I believe they did the right thing and made the right decision given all the facts,' Geimer said. 'Since I'm well aware of how long this has been going on, I'm very pleased and happy.'

Geimer said the media attention during four-decade long saga has caused trouble for her and her family.

'Everyone wants to use the most sensational words they can,' she said. 'It's unpleasant to be talked about in those terms.'

She also said she hopes Polanski's family can have a bit of closure after 40 years.

'I'm sure he's a nice man and I know he has a family and I think he deserves closure and to be allowed to put this behind him,' she said. 'He said he did it, he pled guilty, he went to jail. I don't know what people want from him.'

She added that she had recovered from the incident 'a long time ago' and even felt a 'kinship' with Polanksi 'having been through this.'

'He has apologized to me, he has treated me kindly and with respect, and I'm unaware that he's ever done anything untoward to anyone else.'

Ziobro, a member of the ruling, conservative Law and Justice party, is hoping to overturn that ruling and push ahead with the US extradition.

If successful, Polanski, could face a lengthy prison sentence in an American jail.

Jan Olszewski, Polanski's lawyer in Krakow, where the filmmaker has an apartment, told The Associated Press he had contacted the director about Ziobro's decision, which 'we had been expecting.'

'The court's verdict stands and Mr. Polanski is a free man,' he said. 'But I cannot exclude that this situation will affect his decisions as to visiting Poland.'

Paris-born Polanski, 83, has Polish and French citizenship. He lives in Paris but often visits Poland, where he is popular and is preparing to make a film.
A passenger has filmed the moment smoke began to billow from a plane after it caught fire just moments before take off.

The United Airlines flight was due to take-off from Tampa International headed for Houston when a tire blew and the pilots had to slam on the brakes.

One passenger Robert Lewis captured the moment smoke and fire began to burn just after the plane skidded due to the aborted take-off.

A passenger filmed the moment fire trucks raced to the United Airlines flight he was travelling on which caught fire moments before take-off

As he points his camera out of the aircraft's window, a fire truck can be seen approaching the fire.

He says: 'Oh my God, we are going to die.'

And in later footage posted on Twitter, Mr Lewis shows one of the wings of the plane and the wheels underneath covered in foam to douse the flames.

Meanwhile other passengers spoke of their horror after the pilot had to abort take off.

Firefighters doused the plane in foam after one of the tires blew out, causing a fire and the aborted take-off

Nobody was injured and there had been 131 passengers and six crew on board the Boeing 737

Himanshu Parikh told Fox13: 'Just on the final point where it would life, that's when it boomed.

While Katerina Karsant added: 'I always do my cross before takeoff. Just as I finished doing my cross we felt the plane go down and skid.'

Airport officials then sent firefighters who were at the scene in just one minutes, and eventually the passengers were evacuated from the aircraft section by section.

They were taken back to the terminal and were re-booked on to later flights.

The United Airlines flight was due to take off from Tampa International, pictured, headed for Houston when take off was aborted due to the burst tire

Nobody was injured and there had been 131 passengers and six crew on board the Boeing 737.

The plane was then taken to a hangar so it can be examined by United airlines to determine what caused the tire to blow.
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Blending perfectly into the background, this hidden leopard shows all its cunning as it prepares to launch a surprise attack on a herd of impala.

The big cat is barely visible in pictures taken moments before it jumped into action to take down its prey in Kruger National Park, South Africa.

But the predator is then seen leaping out from its hiding place catching one of the startled animals in mid-air as it tries to bound away.

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Spot the leopard! The big cat chose the perfect hiding place as it lay in wait for the herd of impala at South Africa's Kruger National Park

In the run-up to the ambush, the large impala herd can be seen nervously grazing on the plain before one of the animals breaks away from the group.

At this point, the sneaky leopard pounces, emerging from nearby bushes to grab its dinner before dragging it away to devour.

Photographer Mario Paul captured the images during a trip to the wildlife reserve.

The big cat is barely visible in pictures taken moments before it sprung into action to take down its prey in Kruger National Park, South Africa

But the predator is then seen leaping out from its hiding place catching one of the leaping animals in mid-air as it tries to bound away

Dinner time: The leopard quickly drags the impala away before feasting on its prey behind some rocks in Kruger National Park

He said: 'Although one is looking for leopard, it is always a surprise to find one. When I saw him move into those reeds I knew he was planning an ambush attack on an unsuspecting victim.

'I knew we would need to have a lot of patience as there were no prey animals in sight. We waited for an hour for the kill to happen and we were ready for it.

'He was waiting for any unsuspecting victims who would come down to drink will have to pass by very close to him and they will never be able to spot him.

In the run-up to the ambush, the large impala herd can be seen nervously grazing on the plain before one of the animals breaks away from the group

Revealed: The cunning leopard had concealed itself in a bush just yards from the impala who were already on high alert

On the prowl: The leopard could be seen padding around close to the impala before launching its spectacular attack

Take down: Photographer Mario Paul captured the dramatic images during a trip to Kruger National Park and waited for an hour for the ambush to unfold

'Furthermore the wind was blowing quite hard and in the perfect direction which was away from where the potential prey would come thus making him literally invisible.

'After the kill, we couldn't believe what we just witnessed. We and the other vehicle were the only ones to witness it, but we were the only ones to see the complete hunt from finish to start.

'An experience that will be remembered forever. It wasn't a good ending to the love story of the impala but that is raw nature.'

Satisfied: After its feed the leopard took a breather, reclining in the sunshine after spending hours stalking the herd of impala
A shopper was left shocked when he found what he thought was a chicken head in a 3 box of fried wings he bought from Tesco.

Alex Bax, 26, from Stepney, east London, was disgusted when he pulled out the piece of chicken and saw what he thought was a beak on it.

Mr Bax, a roofer, immediately threw the box away, which he had bought from Tesco Express near Borough railway station in South East London for his lunch.

Alex Bax, 26, from Stepney, east London, was disgusted when he pulled out a piece of chicken from a 3 box from Tesco and saw what he thought was a beak (pictured)

Mr Bax (pictured), a roofer, immediately threw the box away, which he had bought from Tesco Express near Borough railway station in South East London for his lunch

He said he would never shop there again and complained to the store online - but Tesco later confirmed that a 'chicken technologist' inspected it and found it was actually a 'misshapen wing'.

Mr Bax said: 'I was about two chicken wings in and when I looked down and saw it.

'I could make out where the eyes should be and a bit of a beak and I was like 'what the f**k is this?'.

'It looked like a chicken head and that put me right off my food so the whole box went straight down the rubbish shoot and into the skip.

'It's put me off Tesco's chicken wings - at least for a while.'

But a member of Tesco's social media team saw the funny side of the fowl complaint and instead responded with her own pun-filled reply.

The Tesco customer service assistant said: 'Well, I've been running round like a headless chicken trying to hatch a plan for this one.

'I suspect there's been a little fowl play here, looks like we've been caught with egg on our face.

Tesco's social media team saw the funny side, writing: 'I suspect there's been a little fowl play here, looks like we've been caught with egg on our face

'Our staff work around the cluck to ensure egg-cellent quality but it seems we've tried to wing it. I am surprised to see the wings haven't turned out all they've cracked up to be.

'Cheers chick.'

Alex saw the funny side of the cock-up and even posted his own pun, claiming that Tesco's response was an 'egg-cellent reply (that) cracked me up'.

And a Tesco spokesman later confirmed that Alex's find was not a chicken head but instead a misshapen wing.

The spokesman said: 'We should have made it clear, it's not a chicken head.. We've double checked with our chicken technologist and that's not possible.
An American man charged with murder over the killing of four of his relatives has gone on trial in the Czech Republic.

Prosecutors say the suspect, Kevin Dahlgren, 23, fatally stabbed his cousin, her husband and their son, and later killed another son  possibly finishing him off using a stone.

The killings happened during a visit by Dahlgren to the Czech city of Brno on the morning of May 22, 2013. Authorities say he apparently tried to burn three of the bodies.

Dahlgren refused to testify Tuesday at the regional court in Brno.

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Kevin Dahlgren, 23, is led into a Czech courtroom where he is being tried for the murder of four of his relatives

Prosecutors say Dahlgren stabbed and beat his cousin, her husband, and the couple's two sons to death in 2013

After the killings, Dahlgren allegedly tried to burn three of the bodies in the basement of the family house in Brno

Dahlgren refused to testify Tuesday at the regional court in Brno. He faces 15 years to life in a Czech prison if convicted of the four murders

After the May, 2013 killings, authorities say Dahlgren returned to the United States with blood-spattered shorts in his luggage. The blood was found to match the DNA of the victims

Dahlgren's parents, pictured, were present in court Tuesday. Their son is accused of killing his cousin and her three family members

Dahlgren, of Palo Alto, California, was detained at Washington Dulles International Airport as he returned from the visit on the day after the killings.

He was extradited to the Czech Republic last year - the first American to be extradited to the European Union member state.

In a 2013 extradition complaint, Assistant United States Attorney Patricia Haynes wrote that, according to Czech investigators, the four victims 'died of multiple stabbing, chopping and cutting wounds, particularly to the head and neck.'

Left to right: David, 16, Filip, 25, and Martin Harok, 55, were killed along with Veronika Harokova, the wife of Martin and mother of David and Filip. Harokova was the cousin of the alleged killer, Kevin Dahlgren

This undated photo provided by the Czech police shows US citizen Kevin Dahlgren, who is on trial for murder

The scene of a crime is barred with police tape on May 23, 2013 in Brno, Czech Republic, where four family members were murdered

The bodies of Martin Harok, 55, his wife Veronika Harokova, 46, and their children Filip Harok, 25, and David Harok, 16, were found on the evening of May 22, 2013, in the family house.

Three of the bodies were discovered in the basement, concealed under smoldering blankets, allegedly set on fire by Dahlgren. The fourth body was discovered upstairs.

Earlier that day, a cleaning lady said she arrived at the house to do her job, but was hindered by Dahlgren, who spread his arms in the doorway and told her 'there would be no cleaning that day,' according to the extradition complaint.

Dahlgren boarded a plane from Vienna, Austria on the day of the killings, and when he arrived in the United States the following day he was carrying in his luggage 'a blood spattered pair of shorts,' Haynes wrote.

The blood was later found to match the DNA of the victims.
Raw cocoa gives rush of endorphins, relaxes muscles and boosts energy

Chocolatier has invented device that allows you to snort powder on the go

One club boasts of 'nights where natural high vibes roam wild and free'

Clubbers are turning to a new high to sweeten their party experience  chocolate.

A new craze of snorting lines of cocoa is sweeping through Europe's clubs, with dedicated events now offering it in place of alcohol and drugs like cocaine and ecstasy.

At one monthly party in Berlin, ravers keep dancing until dawn just from the buzz of raw chocolate taken in drink, pill or powdered form.

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Sweet night out: A new craze of snorting lines of cocoa is sweeping through Europe's clubs as revellers seek out healthy and legal ways of getting a euphoric rush when they go out partying. Pictured: Belgian chocolatier Dominique Persoone snorts powdered cocoa from a device he invented to dispense the chocolate on the go

Candy kicks: At one monthly party in Berlin (not pictured), ravers keep dancing until dawn just from the buzz of raw cocoa taken in drink, pill or powdered form

Lucid from Alchemy Eros boasts of giving clubbers 'a dynamic gathering... where music, dance and natural high vibes roam wild and free'.

It adds: 'We do not serve alcohol, but this does not make us 'anti' anything.

'We have local artisans and culinary adventurers serving various high vibe medicines such as raw Cacao, super-food smoothies, herbal concoctions, vegan cuisine and much more.'

Advocates say raw cocoa is far more potent than previously believed.

It first provides a rush of endorphins into your bloodstream which can fuel feelings of euphoria, especially when coupled with dance music.

The chocolate also contains high amounts of magnesium which relaxes your muscles.

A recent study by London's Kingston University on cyclists also found that chocolate can make you go faster and further.

It is thought that epicatechin, a plant chemical particularly abundant in dark chocolate, gives the body a boost by widening the blood vessels.

Sniffing an opportunity: Belgian chocolatier Dominique Persoone made the device for a Rolling Stones party in 2007. But the concept has taken off and been used by culinary innovators such as Heston Blumenthal at his restaurant The Fat Duck. It has now gone one step futher migrating from the dinner table to the dance floor

This speeds oxygen supply to the muscles, allowing them to make the most of the precious fuel.

Its use in clubs appears to be booming to such an extent a chef has invented a 35 device so you can conveniently snort the powder on the go.

Belgian chocolatier Dominique Persoone made the device for a Rolling Stones party in 2007.

But the concept has taken off and been used by culinary innovators such as Heston Blumenthal at his restaurant The Fat Duck.

Diners are given a special mix of Dominican Republic or Peruvian cocoa powder mixed with raspberry, ginger and mint to snort.

But this practise has now migrated from the dinner table to the dance floor as clubbers increasingly seek out healthy and legal ways of escaping from the rigours of life.

Morning Gloryville, a rave company that organises dance parties from London to New York, stocks Lucid's bar with cacao drinks and pills.

Lucid organiser Ruby May says she mixes 18lbs of cocoa for the night with honey, agave syrup and cinnamon to give users an even more aromatic experience.

She told OZY: 'It's like a smooth, sensual hug in a cup.'

How to guide: Users fill two spoons with the powder which is fixed to a trigger mechanism. A push of the lever then fires the chocolate up either nostril

With Mr Persoone's device, users pack the powder into two small spoons fixed to a trigger mechanism.

They then hold the device close to their nose and press the lever, sending it shooting up their nostrils.

The tattoo-clad 46-year-old said: 'The mint and the ginger really tinkle your nose. Then the mint flavour goes down and the chocolate stays in your brain.

'It has taken him years to develop the perfect snorting powder as early experiments with pure cocoa powder revealed it was too dry.

Before he hit on the tingling sensation of mint and ginger, he was using a mix which contained chili.

'It's a very bad idea,' he said in an interview earlier this year.

The chocolate shooters, which sell for 45 (30) each, have been exported to Russia, India, Canada, Australia and the United States.

The packaging bears a warning against excessive sniffing, but Persoone insists it is safe.

He was inspired by the role of the nose when tasting food and, he says, a certain idea of fun.

He added: 'The mentality when you think about sniffing is: 'Oh it's kinky, guys who do that stuff.'
Remains belonging to the murdered son and daughter of Russia's last Tsar could finally be buried alongside the rest of their family, it has been reported.

Nicholas II was killed by firing squad alongside his wife and their five children in 1918, a year after he was forced to abdicate the throne by Bolshevik revolutionaries.

The couple's remains were uncovered alongside three of their children in 1991 but it was not until 2007 that the apparent burial place of son Alexei and daughter Maria was discovered.

Murdered: Tsar Nicholas II and wife Alexandra (centre) with their children (clockwise, from left) Maria, Olga, Tatiana, Anastasia and Alexei. The remains of Maria and Alexei could finally be buried with their family

Relatives: DNA taken from living relatives, including Prince Philip (left), was used to confirm the remains belonged to the Romanovs. Pictured right, Nicholas II, who was murdered by firing squad in 1918

DNA taken from living relatives, including Prince Philip, was used to confirm their identities. However doubts have remained, particularly regarding those allegedly belonging to Alexei and Maria.

Now following fresh tests, the remains of Alexei and Maria could finally be laid to rest alongside their family, according to Historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of The Romanovs: 1613-1918.

According to the Guardian, Mr Sebag Montefiore told the Hay Literary Festival: 'All of this is happening now and we are waiting on tenterhooks.

'Are they going to be reburied? Are these two children going to be added to the others? What is going to happen?'

He said he thought Vladimir Putin would arrange for the event to coincide with the 1917 centenary. The Russian leader believes he is part of a sacred destiny linked to the Romanovs, he added.

For three hundred years, millions of Russians considered the House of Romanov a living embodiment of the Russian nation, and believed the tsar was appointed by god to rule the empire.

Cracking the code: The remains of Alexei (pictured) could finally be buried alongside his family

This came to an end in 1917, when Emperor Nicholas II was forced to abdicate his throne and he and his family were exiled to western-Russia by the Bolshevik revolutionaries that overthrew him.

On July 17, 1918, the Russian royals were marched into a cellar and shot by a firing squad on the orders of Soviet Union founder Vladimir Lenin. Their bodies were later buried in mineshafts the Ural Mountains.

The remains of Nicholas II, 50, his wife Alexandra Fyodorovna, 46, and their three daughters, Olga, 22, Tatyana, 21, and Anastasia, 17, were unearthed in a mass grave near Ekaterinburg in 1991.

They were discovered alongside the bones of four of their servants: Yevgeny Botkin, 53, Anna Demidova, 40, Aloizy Trupp, 62, and Ivan Kharitonov, 48.

They were interred in a crypt in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in royal capital St Petersburg in 1998.

Nine years later, more remains were found at another site 43 miles away. These were believed to be Nicholas II's children, Alexei and Maria, who were just 13 and 19 when they were murdered.

Unearthed: The skulls of Nicholas II (left) and his wife Alexandra, which were dug up in a Russian field in 1991

Russian criminal investigators used DNA, including that belonging to Prince Philip, a relative of the family, to confirm the bones did belong to the royal children.

The Duke of Edinburgh is the great-great grandchild of Queen Victoria, who was the grandmother of Tsaritsa Alexandra Feodorovna.

However the findings were disputed by the Russian Orthodox Church and some Romanov descendants, who refused to bury the children with the rest of the family until further tests were carried out.

Doubts also emerged over whether the first set of remains did in fact belong to the royal family and last year, Putin ordered for them to be exhumed and for further tests to take place.

In September, it was confirmed that the second set belonged to Alexei and Maria. Two months later, it was proved beyond doubt that Nicholas II, Alexandra and their children were buried in the Urals.

Genetic material taken from the jaw bone of Nicholas II matched a bloodstain on a shirt he wore when he was injured during an assassination attempt in Japan in 1891.

Meanwhile Alexandra's DNA matched the blood of the female descendants of Queen Victoria, who was her grandmother. Scientists maintain the first round of tests were sufficient.

While it was announced in September 2015 that Alexei and Maria would now be buried at the same cathedral as their family, a service has yet to take place.
Desperate ISIS militants have rounded up 100 youths in Fallujah and punished them for not growing beards - as the terror group continues to lose ground to Iraqi forces entering the city.

The kidnappings were part of a mass arrest of young people at the newly built al-Nazizah market in the west of Fallujah.

News of the arrests comes as Iraqi troops battling their way into the city repelled a four-hour counter-attack by ISIS in the south of the city.

News of the arrests comes as Iraqi troops battling their way into the city repelled a four-hour counter-attack (pictured) by ISIS in the south of the city

An ISIS fighter takes aim during battle with Iraqi forces and their allies west of Fallujah. Militants in the city reportedly rounded up 100 youths in Fallujah and punished them for not growing beards

ISIS militants used tunnels, deployed snipers and sent six explosives-laden cars to hit the Iraqis but they were destroyed before reaching their targets, officers said

Majid al-Juraisi, a tribal leader in the city, is quoted by Iraqi News as saying: 'Today, ISIS elements carried out a campaign of mass arrests of young people in al-Nazizah market, the new market near the railway bridge west of the city and the center of Fallujah. The number of young people that were arrested by ISIS amounted to about 100 youths.'

'The reasons for the detention are them having not grown their beards and the lack of support for the ISIS elements in the city.'

Troops first moved into the southern edges of the militant-held city yesterday with the help of US-led coalition air strikes.

Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, has been under ISIS control for more than two years and is the last major city in western Iraq still under control of the Sunni extremist group

The militants still control patches of territory in the country's north and east as well as the country's second largest city, Mosul

The attack started at dawn in the Nuaimiya area where Iraqi troops captured almost 85 per cent of the ground the previous day, two officers with the special forces told the Associated Press on Tuesday.

ISIS militants used tunnels, deployed snipers and sent six explosives-laden cars to hit the Iraqis but they were destroyed before reaching their targets, the officers said.

Iraqi forces suffered casualties, but the officers did not give details.

ISIS 'KILLING THEIR OWN WOUNDED FIGHTERS WITH LETHAL INJECTIONS' ISIS extremists are using lethal injections to kill their own wounded fighters, it has been claimed. Up to eight fighters returning injured from the front line in Fallujah have been given toxic injections in the city's hospital, a source told IraqiNews.com. The source said the injection contained a substance that 'causes the heart to stop suddenly'. 'ISIS killed the wounded members due to its inability to deal with the large number of wounded fighters that will have a negative psychological effect on the other fighters,' the source added. Earlier today, a 40-year-old woman reached by NRC inside Fallujah painted a dire picture of conditions. 'The stocks in the hospitals are running low. There is no medicine for ordinary people. The doctor is affiliated with IS and he refuses to help ordinary people,' the aid group quoted her as saying. 'Instead of providing adequate treatment, doctors often simply amputate a patient's arms or legs if they are in pain. There are no anaesthetics left in the hospitals.'

Nuaimiya is a sprawling mainly agricultural area in Fallujah's south and Monday's push into it was the first attempt by Iraqi forces to enter the city after focusing on dislodging the militants from surrounding areas to tighten the siege.

Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, has been under ISIS control for more than two years and is the last major city in western Iraq still under control of the Sunni extremist group.

The militants still control patches of territory in the country's north and east as well as the country's second largest city, Mosul.

The US-led coalition and Iranian-backed Shiite paramilitary forces are helping the Iraqi army in the battle to retake Fallujah.

An ISIS fighter can be seen aiming a machine gun through a window. Another militant holds a string of bullets

The Iraqi counter-terrorism forces are leading the assault on Fallujah, slowly moving up from the southern edge. ISIS fighters are seen firing through a gap in a wall

The fight is expected to be long and protracted, given that ISIS militants have had more than two years to dig in

But the fight is expected to be long and protracted, given that ISIS militants have had more than two years to dig in.

Tunnels - similar to those found in other territory long held by IS - have already been discovered in the north-eastern outskirts of Fallujah.

The Iraqi counter-terrorism forces are leading the assault on Fallujah, slowly moving up from the southern edge.
The man survived the shocking incident but suffered multiple injuries

The incident was captured on a CCTV camera in the Chinese garage

The force throws him into the air where he completes a full flip

Mechanic is working on a tyre when it suddenly explodes in front of him

This is the astonishing moment a mechanic was catapulted into the air after a truck tyre exploded right in front of him.

The worker was propelled into the air so forcefully that he did a full flip before landing on his back.

Dramatic CCTV footage at the garage in China shows the moment the man bent down to start working on the tyre.

But within seconds it explodes and throws him into the air as another man enters the garage in a red truck and runs over in shock.

The worker survived the incident but suffered multiple injuries, and his clothes were left in tatters.

CCTV footage shows the worker bend down and start to work on the truck tyre in China

Tyres can explode if they are over-inflated and pressure builds up inside the rubber.

An expert said: 'Although not common, it is a very dangerous accident.

'The pressure in the truck tyre built up inside and made a blow-out inevitable.

'The metal rings of the tyre also shot upwards.

'Mechanics should always take special measures when involved in such a job, using either a wire cage or safety straps.'

But it suddenly explodes and the force catapults him into the air

The man was thrown with such force that he completed a full flip before landing on his back on the concrete floor
Swimwear model Mayka Kukucova has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for the murder of her British businessman ex-boyfriend Andrew Bush.

The Slovakian, 26, was also jailed for six months for breaking into his Costa del Sol home.

Judge Ernesto Carlos Manzano also ordered Kukucova to pay Mr Bush's 21-year-old daughter Ellie 122,000 and his sister Rachel 30,500 to compensate their loss.

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'Murderous cow': Swimwear model Mayka Kukucova (left) has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for the murder of her British businessman ex-boyfriend Andrew Bush (right)

Infatuation: Kukucova dated the miilionaire jeweller  nicknamed the 'King of Bling'  for two and a half years after he gave her a job in one of his Gold Trader shops in Bristol

Kukucova was convicted of both crimes last Friday by a jury following a four-day trial. She could have been jailed for a maximum 22 years.

She shot Mr Bush dead on April 5, 2014 as he arrived at his villa near Estepona for a romantic break with his new, younger, Russian girlfriend Maria Korotaeva, 23.

Prosecutors said she was upset after the millionaire jeweller ended their two-and-a-half-year relationship in November 2013 and flew into a jealous rage after seeing him arrive with his new love.

The sentence was delivered by writing in a 17-page document.

The two years she has spent in custody since her arrest will be taken into account in determining her release date.

The judge indicated he believed Mr Bush's death was essentially a crime of passion by accepting as an extenuating circumstance that Kukucova had acted in a 'passionate state of mind'.

But the judge said he was taking into account the fact she had no previous criminal record and had made a 'heartbroken apology' when she was given the right to a last court address after the unanimous 9-0 verdict by the jury.

Eduardo Martinez Martin, the lawyer for Mr Bush's daughter and sister, said: 'It is apparent the judge wanted to be magnanimous with her.

'We were happy with the murder verdict, but were expecting a sentence closer to 20 years.'

Mr Bush's ex-wife Sam Mason, Ellie's mother, was not available for comment.

Kukukova's defence lawyer Carlos Larranaga confirmed he would be appealing.

He said: 'I disagree with the jury's verdict. We accept this was a homicide but not a murder and we say there are circumstances which modify my client's legal responsibility.'

Heartbroken: Maria Korotaeva (left and right), the girlfriend of a British expat millionaire who was shot dead by his insanely jealous swimwear model former flame, has said she feels sorry for the murderer

Compassion: Miss Korotaeva (right with Mr Bush) said she felt sorry for the murderer, who she faced in court for the first time since that shocking night in 2014 when he was shot dead as they returned to his Spanish villa

The appeal, expected to argue Kukucova acted in legitimate self-defence and 'insurmountable fear' in line with her trial claim that Mr Bush attacked her first, will be lodged within the next ten days.

It will be decided by judges in Granada. The British businessman's convicted killer went on trial last Monday.

She insisted she never wanted to harm him but shot him during a fight after he attacked her and then threatened her with a gun.

He was shot three times, twice in the head and once in the shoulder, with a .38 revolver which the jury ruled she placed in his hand to make it appear he had committed suicide before fleeing the crime scene.

She drove off in his 60,000 Hummer which she abandoned nearby after telling Ms Korotaeva to get out of the vehicle 'because Andrew had given her permission to take it to the airport.'

She was arrested days later and extradited to Spain to face charges after fleeing to her homeland with a boyfriend who answered her call for help and flew to Madrid to pick her up.

Tears: Mayka Kukucova reacts in court after being found guilty last Friday following a four-day trial

Ms Korotaeva, who testified at the trial, said she was outside the house when the shots went off after running out to the car when she saw Mr Bush's ex waiting for them inside in her pyjamas.

Jurors decided Kukucova had reduced her victim's chances of defending himself by gunning him down unexpectedly as he returned to his house after going out to his Hummer where Ms Korotaeva was waiting and trying to calm her down.

But they didn't support Mr Martinez's argument she had deliberately sought to increase Andrew Bush's suffering, meaning Kukucova could not be sentenced to the maximum 25 years for murder under the Spanish penal code in force at the time of the crime.

Kukucova was portrayed in court as an immature obsessive who stalked her former boyfriend after he ended their relationship.

After the guilty verdicts were announced last week, Mr Bush's ex-wife, Sam Mason, savaged Kukucova for the damage she had caused.

She tweeted: 'Twenty years for the murderous cow. Hope she rots. At no stage has she apologised to my girl. Blaming Andy, low life scum.'

Speaking to the Mirror, she said: 'I'm so glad this long, arduous journey is finally over. My heart is with our darling daughter, my brother, sister and mother-in-law.

'No sentence would be enough for the complete devastation she has caused our family.'

The former BBC Bristol presenter tweeted on Thursday a photo of herself and Mr Bush after giving birth to Ellie now aged 21.

She said: 'Daddy and daughter. How can any1 ruin this? Verdict tomoz. My dear girl,no daddy. Heartbroken forever.'

Speaking after the trial, Mr Bush's daughter, Ellie Mason-Bush, vowed to do everything she can to make her father proud.

She said after Kukucova was found guilty she visited his grave in Spain and told him: 'We've done it for you dad... we've finally got justice for you.'

But Miss Korotaeva said she felt sorry for the murderer, who she faced in court for the first time since that shocking night in 2014.

'She was sobbing the whole time, she has actually started to believed her own lies. She has lost everything and I pity her,' she told The Sun on Sunday.

She said the model had changed so much that she couldn't believe it was her when the pair's eyes met.

'She was beautiful but now she is fat and has spots on her face. I looked at her and thought 'just let her go home'.'

Mr Bush's ex-wife Sam Mason (pictured) said the family and their daughter were 'devastated' by his death

Sam Mason's message on Twitter about today's court verdict where she calls Kukucova 'low life scum'

The former BBC Bristol presenter tweeted on Thursday a photo of herself and Andy after giving birth to Ellie now aged 21

Now the family are just left to rue the day the jeweller set eyes on the seductive swimwear model four years ago.

He gave Kukucova a job in one of his Gold Trader Shops in Bristol  and she struck gold.

Just 22 years old, she was less than half the age of the loan shark pawn broker, who was known to his customers as the 'King of Bling'.

But their relationship quickly became turbulent as she threw tantrums, flew into jealous rages and constantly checked his computer and mobile phone.

When he dumped her  and began dating an even younger model  she spiralled out of control, shooting him dead at his Spanish villa.

Mr Bush was never a man to keep a low profile.

The former body builder, who worked out with a personal trainer twice a week, wore designer labels and had a permanent tan, lived in the sleepy Welsh market town of Chepstow.

But his five-bedroom home, which he bought in 2002 for 320,000 near Chepstow racecourse in rural Monmouthshire, was not discreet.

It was surrounded by a seven-feet high wall, had electronic gates, reinforced steel shutters on all the windows and doors, security cameras and even Rottweiler guard dogs.

On paper Bush did not appear to be a millionaire.

He officially had four businesses but three of them were dormant and his only trading company Bigwig Enterprises barely broke even. His 2013 accounts showed profits of 21,040.

However, according to news reports, two of his shops in Bristol were targeted by armed raiders, who made off with 500,000 in jewellery and diamonds.

Ellie Mason-Bush, 21, said after her father's ex-flame was found guilty of murdering her father she visited his grave in Spain and told him: 'We've done it for you dad... we've finally got justice for you'

Justice: In a statement outside court in Malaga, Mr Bush's daughter Ellie (pictured left holding his sister Rachel's hand), said: 'She's finally got a little bit of what she deserves after what she's put this family through'

He always walked around town with a couple of minders.

He also had a fleet of expensive cars  including a red convertible Ferrari and a grey Lamborghini  as well as a top-of-the-range Hummer, which he kept at his Spanish villa in the seaside village of Cancelada, on the coastal strip near Malaga once known as the Costa del Crime.

Spanish police say he did not have a criminal record.

During the 1990s, he met Ms Mason, a news presenter for ITV's HTV channel in Bristol, who was two years his junior.

They had daughter Ellie in 1994. The couple split up a few years after her birth but remained friends. She has now moved to Yorkshire.

It was after they separated that Bush developed a penchant for younger women: he began dating Kukucova, his sales assistant in 2012 but the relationship was far from smooth-sailing.

His daughter Ellie, who worked part-time for her father, says that Kukucova was 'extremely insecure' and 'could not control her anger'  she was even jealous of his relationship with his daughter.

'She was always worried about him being with other women,' Ellie told the Mail on Sunday in an interview after his death. 'He couldn't leave the shop to get a coffee without her following him. She would check his computers as soon as he walked away and go through his phone all the time.'

Her erratic behaviour began to seriously worry his family when they visited Dubai in September that year to celebrate Ellie's 18th birthday.

Killer: Mayka Kukucova, 26, was convicted of murdering Mr Bush six months after he dumped her - and found love with another, younger woman

Enraged: But her erratic behaviour quickly began to worry his family, and came to the fore on a holiday to celebrate the businessman's daughter Ellie's 18th birthday in Dubai

On one occasion she threw a temper tantrum in a Dubai shopping mall. 'We were out shopping and there were loads of things Mayka wanted to buy,' said Ellie. 'But Andy said: 'No.' She went into a blind rage, screaming, and threw a handbag at him.

'She did it purposely to hurt him and then stormed off. We didn't see her for a few hours. It was a common thing.'

Towards the end of the holiday, she even destroyed Bush's laptop. 'She stamped all over it,' said his sister Rachel, who also worked in his shops. 'Then she put it underneath a tap and put it back in the case.

'When we got back to England, Andy realised but he tried to ignore it. He thought he could change her. Mayka cannot control her anger.

'She was like a little child. It was regular behaviour every time we were together.

'I was in hospital once and she pretended that the taxi crashed on the way so that everyone was asking if she was OK when she got there. But there was no taxi crash.

'She has to be the main attraction.'

Kukucova was even jealous of his relationship with his family  she told his sister that she was 'jealous that Andy has got a daughter' and she removed all the family photographs from his house.

'I said to Andy: 'Where have the pictures gone?',' said Rachel. 'She had taken them. She's not stable.'

In September 2013, Kukucova went even further: Bush arrived at his house to find her handcuffed with a pillow over her head. She claimed that she had been overpowered by armed burglars.

Violence: The jeweller's daughter and sister looked on in horror one night on the trip to Dubai as she flew into a blind rage, screaming at him and then threw a handbag at him

Rages: Bush bundled her into a taxi and sent her back to the hotel room where they were staying where she is said to have put his Apple computer under a tap in revenge for their row

Police were called but there was no appeal for witnesses, no description of the gang and no Crimewatch reconstruction. The family suspected her from the outset because the alleged robbery took place shortly after the couple had rowed  Kukucova had hid his passport to stop him going to the Middle East on business.

'The robbery came at a time when their relationship was basically over,' added Ellie. 'She was psychotic. I said to her: 'You're mental. You need to be locked up.'

'She suddenly became very clingy and would say: 'Oh, Andy, I can't sleep at night, I'm so scared.' It was all very strange. She was the only person in the house when it happened.'

The following month, the couple finally broke up but Kukucova did not take the split well. She posted a series of videos on YouTube featuring the couple kissing and hugging - including screen grabs of loving text messages they had exchanged set to Celine Dion music. She implored her ex-lover to 'forget everything bad' saying: 'Days without you don't have meaning' and 'Let's be together forever.'

But by Christmas she had been replaced in Bush's affections by Maria Korotaeva, a Russian student he met at a branch of Costa Cafe in Bristol. She was a human resources student at the University of the West of England, who was just a year older than his daughter.

New love: As he moved on from his relationship with Kukucova, the successful father-of-one met Russian Maria at a branch of Costa Cafe in Bristol, studying human resources at the University of the West of England

Stalked: By this time, Bush had a restraining order out against his former lover - but Maria, who is only a year older than his daughter, claims possessive Kukucova was tracking him using the Find My Friends phone app

By then Bush had taken out a restraining order against his ex-lover but Maria believes that she was still tracking him after finding the Find my Friends app on his mobile phone.

'I saw the App because I would often use his phone, but he had no idea what it was,' she said in an interview with The Sun after his death.

'The email address used to activate it wasn't his. The only explanation is that she set it up when they were together. Andy told me to delete it, so I did.'

It is Maria's photographs on Facebook and Instagram of the couple together which, police believe, pushed Kukucova over the edge.

She found her opportunity when the couple decided to have a romantic getaway to celebrate their fifth month anniversary at his Spanish villa.

On the way to Bristol airport, Bush presented Maria with a 10,000 diamond ring, saying he wanted to discuss 'something important' that night. But, the conversation never took place.

When they arrived at the villa in the early hours of April 5, 2014, laughing and 'talking about how much we loved each other', they were greeted by his spurned lover, who was lying in wait.

'As soon as Andy switched on the lights I knew there was something wrong,' Maria added. 'There were bras and knickers hanging on a clothes rack in the entrance. My heart started thumping  I had a feeling someone was in the house.

'I followed Andy in and there was a suitcase on the floor with a pair of stilettos inside. I turned and went upstairs. When I got to the top I could see her. She looked calm and stayed very still, like a rock.

'The image will haunt me for life. She stood there, staring at me. She had her hair down and was wearing pyjamas  tiny shorts and a little flimsy vest top. I could just see her silhouette. I screamed and ran out of the house.'

New model: Bush split with Kukucova in October 2013. By Christmas, he and Maria were an item, but the Russian, now 22, claims Kukucova was a dark shadow over the early stages of their romance

Murder scene: Her ex-lover's body was found in a pool of blood at the villa (pictured) by Ms Korotaeva, who watched Kukucova calmly walk out the house and demand the keys to the car, before fleeing the scene

After sitting in the 60,000 Hummer for a few minutes, Bush emerged and told her: 'It's OK darling, don't worry. Call the police and tell them to come now.' But her battery was dead. 'I decided that he'd be able to sort it out,' she added. 'So I waited.'

Within minutes Kukucova had shot her boyfriend three times with an Italian-made .38 Amadeo Rossi revolver  one shot hit him in the arm; the others in the head. The police are uncertain where she got the gun, as the serial numbers had been sawn off.

'I could hear shouting and then I heard a bang, then another bang-bang,' she said. 'I thought it was something being thrown down the stairs, maybe a TV or the luggage.

'Then Mayka came out of the house. She had the keys and said: 'Get off the car.' She was so calm that it sends chills down my spine. I was furious. I didn't think Andy would give her the keys.

'But when she told me he wanted me to go inside and see him, I decided that he was desperate to get her away from the villa. Mayka said: 'Andy wants to speak to you, he is in the toilet.'

'So I got out and started to walk to the door. Then the car sped off and I realised the front door was closed. I shouted for Andy to let me in but there was no answer.'

After trying in vain to get into the villa, Maria charged her mobile at an outdoor socket. She then called Bush's sister Rachel and the police.

'I started praying: 'Please God let him be alive. I don't care what else, just let him be alive'.'
Denmark may abolish the right for the Queen's grandchildren to claim a state-funded salary, as politicians argue it goes against 'simple mathematics'.

Currently, all eight of Queen Margrethe II's grandchildren by her two sons Crown Prince Frederik and his younger brother Prince Joachim, are entitled to a state-funded salary once they turn 18.

As the clan grows older, Danish politicians are debating whether it is financially viable to pay all of the royal grandchildren from the public purse.

Losing money: Crown Prince Frederik, Princess Isabella, Queen Margrethe of Denmark, Prince Christian, Prince Henrik, Prince Vincent, Crown Princess Mary and Princess Josephine are pictured last year

It has been suggested that Crown Prince Frederik's oldest child, Prince Christian, would continue to be eligible for a state-funded salary, while his three younger siblings and his four cousins would not.

The issue is up for debate as the oldest son from Prince Joachim's first marriage - Prince Nikolai - turns 18 next year.

'Simple mathematics dictate that there needs to be some sort of limit,' Venstre party spokesman Jakob Elleman-Jensen told Danish newspaper Politiken.

'Otherwise within a few generations there will be several hundred princes and princesses who need an annual salary.'

Unlike the British, the Danish royal grandchildren are currently set to receive a state-funded salary from the age of 18 regardless of whether they carry out official royal duties or not.

Currently, all eight royal grandchildren are entitled to a state-funded salary, an issue is up for debate as the oldest, Prince Nikolai, pictured centre with the Royal Family in 2014, turns 18 next year

The British Royal Family is funded by a combination of the Sovereign Grant, which replaced the annual Civil List payment and three other grants in 2011, and money from the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall.

The Sovereign Grant is taken from the revenues generated by the Crown Estate, a portfolio of properties and investments which is neither government property nor part of the Queen's private estate.

The Queen's grandchildren and spouses - including Prince William, Prince Harry, Princess Eugenie and Princess Beatrice - are paid when they carry out official royal duties.

According to an annual review released by Clarence House last year, Prince Charles spent a total of 2.9m out of the Duchy of Cornwall's purse to fund the official activities of Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge.
Johnny Depp partied until 2am with a mystery brunette in a Swedish hotel bar after reports that he will not face prosecution for assaulting his estranged wife Amber Heard.

The star looked relaxed as he drank cocktails, laughed with friends and chatted with the stunning female friend at the 8,000-a-night hotel in Stockholm.

It came after claims in the US that he will not be prosecuted for allegedly throwing an iPhone at the 30-year-old actress, which prompted her to file for divorce.

Depp and his entourage had the bar at the city's Grand Hotel opened specially after closing time, following a sell-out gig with Depp's band The Hollywood Vampires.

Meanwhile Ms Heard broke her silence to accuse Depp's lawyers of smearing her and saying she was 'a hero' who was simply a victim of domestic abuse.

Partying: Johnny Depp was spotted out drinking in Stockholm until 2am with a mystery brunette, following a sell-out gig in the Swedish capital with his band The Hollywood Vampires

Company: It follows reports that police are not investigating claims of domestic abuse made against him by his ex-wife Amber Heard, after officers were called to their L.A. home on the night of May 21

Relaxing: Depp, 52, is reported to have spent most of his band's European tour hiding out in his room, after Heard filed divorce papers against him last week

Outing: Depp and is entourage arrived in the bar at 1am, as it was closing and other guests were leaving, but it was opened again specially for them

The 52-year-old star, who has been hiding out in his room for much of the band's European tour so far, emerged from his top-floor suite at 1am.

The bar at the Grand Hotel was closing and other guests were leaving when Depp arrived, but staff re-opened especially for the star and his party.

They stayed for an hour, with Depp and the mystery woman, who was joined by two friends, standing close together and talking intimately at the bar.

An observer said: 'The brunette in the picture was embracing Johnny's shoulder when he talked to members of the band.

'They stood really close and talked for a long time at the bar. They seemed to have a good time. She was standing next to him the whole time I saw him at the bar. The brunette was there with a couple of friends, but Johnny only talked to her. He seemed to enjoy her company.'

Meeting the crowds: Johnny Depp appeared in better spirits today as he left the Stockholm hotel where he has been staying and signed autographs for fans who had gathered

Meet and greet: The star spent time posing for selfies and shaking hands in a sign that his mood is lifting following claims he will not be prosecuted

Relief: Depp, 52, is now on his way to Denmark but took time to sign autographs as he left his Swedish hotel. He had been partying until 2am in the bar

In a further sign that his mood has lifted, Depp left Sweden in a blaze of publicity today, signing autographs, posing for selfies and grinning at the crowd.

Drummer Matt Sorum told MailOnline: 'We had a great night here in Stockholm. Everyone enjoyed themselves - Johnny is doing fine as well.'

By contrast his estranged wife Amber Heard today broke her silence to release a bitter statement accusing Depp of 'relentlessly' pursuing her and insisting she is a 'simple domestic abuse victim'. The statement described her a 'a hero'.

SWEDISH BLOGGER, 21, MEETS JOHNNY DEPP WHILE HAVING LUNCH Starstruck: 21-year-old fashion blogger Desiree Nilsson skipped Johnny Depp's security to bag a chat (and a photo) with the Hollywood star This is the mother of one who skipped past Johnny Depp's security in Stockholm to meet the Hollywood superstar. Fashion blogger Desiree Nilsson, 21, told MailOnline, 'I was having lunch at Grand Hotel. I became very interested when I heard that Johnny Depp was coming down to the lobby. 'He is such a gorgeous and beautiful man. His security detail told me that I could not get near him. But when Johnny came down the escalator I waved at him and he said to his detail 'stop, let me talk to her'.' But the pretty blonde was unable to ask the star her most pressing questions as he was more interested in grilling her. 'He wanted to know what my name was, how it is spelled and how old I was,' she said. Although she did get to tell him her favourite film is Depp's 2001 drug fueled biopic 'Blow'. Thankfully, the star approved. 'He said 'good choice, I love that movie', she revealed. 'He struck me as a warm and kind person who seemed to enjoy himself. Johnny said that he had loved his visit in Stockholm and that he and the band wants to come back soon. 'Before he left the lobby I told him that I admire him and that he is beautiful. He then gave me a long and warm embrace before he left and said goodbye.' Desiree said she was having lunch in the hotel when she heard Johnny Depp was coming downstairs - she waved at him past his security detail and he told them he wanted to talk to her The blonde beauty also managed to meet Johnny Depp's bandmate Alice Cooper (pictured) when they were in Sweden. Their band the Hollywood Vampires celebrates 1970s rock played Stockholm on Monday night Advertisement

Lawyers for Ms Heard said she had not given a statement to police before now because she had wanted to keep the matter private - and accused Depp of using her silence against her to try to claim he was innocent.

Depp has strongly denied allegations he hurt his wife.

Samantha Spector wrote: 'As the result of Amber's decision to decline giving an initial statement to the LAPD, her silence has been used against her by Johnny's team.

'Amber did not provide a statement to the LAPD in an attempt to protect her privacy and Johnny's career.

'Johnny's team has forced Amber to give a statement to the LAPD to set the record straight as to the true facts, as she cannot continue to leave herself open to the vicious false and malicious allegations that have infected the media.

'Amber has suffered through years of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of Johnny.'

Drinks: The mystery woman was at the bar with two friends, but Depp spoke mainly to her throughout the night

Private: The group were out celebrating a sell-out show in Stockholm as part of a European tour, but Depp is understood to be keeping himself hidden away for the most part

Celebration: Depp arrived at the bar of the 8,000-a-night hotel at about 1am and it was kept open for him and his party

It went on: 'In domestic violence cases, it is not unusual for the perpetrator's playbook to include miscasting the victim as the villain.

'In reality, Amber acted no differently than many victims of domestic violence, who think first of the harm that might come to the abuser, rather than the abuse they have already suffered.

'Amber can no longer endure the relentless attacks and outright lies launched against her character in the Court of Public Opinion since the tragic events of May 21st.

'With her statement Amber hopes to give the LAPD the opportunity to conduct an accurate and complete investigation into the events of that evening and before.

'If that occurs, and the truth is revealed, there is no doubt that Amber's claims will be substantiated beyond any doubt, and hopefully Johnny will get the help that he so desperately needs.'

An observer said: 'They stood really close and talked for a long time at the bar. They seemed to have a good time.'

Depp appeared to be in better spirits, coming down to the bar as it was closing and staying until 2am

The brunette was seen standing next to Depp as he socialised with bandmates and other friends, and the pair seemed to get on

The statement was made after claims that Depp would not face prosecution, because Ms Heard had not made a statement to police straightaway. TMZ also claimed that LAPD did not find evidence of an assault.

The lawyers then accused Depp's legal team of planting vicious smears while they had tried, they claimed, to keep the matter out of the media.

'We took the high road. Unfortunately, Johnny's team immediately went to the press and began viciously attacking Amber's character.

'Amber is simply a victim of domestic violence, and none of her actions are motivated by money.

'Amber is a brave and financially independent woman who is showing the courage of her convictions by doing the right thing against Johnny's relentless army of lawyers and surrogates.

'The Family Law Court is not going to be influenced by misinformation placed in the social media based on anonymous sources. Amber is the victim. Amber is a hero.'

Past: Amber Heard and Johnny Depp are now embroiled in a war of words following her petition for divorce last week

Legal: Amber Heard (pictured) was granted a restraining order against Depp due to domestic abuse claims, which he denies

Security around the Alice in Wonderland actor has been ramped up, with eight bodyguards accompanying him as he arrived in the country ahead of the band's performance at Stockholm's Grona Lund amusement park.

Security guards were overheard in the hotel lobby saying 'we've got to protect Johnny at all costs', and deciding he should use the same entrance as Justin Timberlake when he visited earlier this month.

They then ushered him onto a boat which sped towards the amusement park where the band played to a crowd of 30,000.

But a crew member told MailOnline: 'He is always keeping to himself. Ordering room service and never spends time with the band.'

Another crew member said: 'We have all been told not to talk about Johnny for obvious reasons. He is under a lot of stress at the moment and talk about him might affect the band.'

The band - which also features Alice Cooper and Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry - faced calls for a boycott of their concert in Stockholm under the twitter hashtag #ImWithAmber.

Meanwhile new details have emerged about the alleged assault, with police officers reporting that they found no evidence of domestic abuse when called to the couple's home on the night of May 21.

According to officers called to the couple's L.A. home, Heard didn't mention being hit by the actor and they found no evidence of any injuries or bruises.

Celebrity: Johnny Depp jumped on board a boat to sail to his concert at Grona Lund amusement park in Stockholm, Sweden, last night, where they played to a crowd of some 30,000 people

Taking refuge: The 52-year-old has checked into a suite on the top floor of Stockholm's best hotel, which charges 8,000 a night

'We don't know how she obtained that,' said an L.A. Police Department source quoted on website TMZ, referring to a bruise on Heard's face that she claimed was caused by Depp hitting her with his phone.

'There was no evidence of any crime.'

LAPD Officer Drake Madison confirmed police had responded to a 'domestic incident radio call' at the home on May 21, but that there was no ongoing investigation.

'The person reporting the crime did not insist on a report and no report was warranted. A crime did not occur so the officers left the scene and left a business card,' he told the website.

Meanwhile, two members of Depp's security team claim the actor was six metres away from Heard when she screamed for him to stop hitting her.

Jerry Judge and Sean Bett, both members of Depp's security detail, were allegedly standing in the entrance to the couple's home when Heard's screams reached them.

They say they entered the room 'within a second', according to TMZ, and saw Depp in the kitchen and Heard on the sofa in the living room.

In court documents, Heard alleges she 'lived in fear' of Depp during their 15-month marriage and constantly worried he could return to their Los Angeles condo to 'terrorise me physically and emotionally.

Concern: A crew member told MailOnline Depp has been hiding away in his room: 'He is always keeping to himself. Ordering room service and never spends time with the band' but last night he came down to the bar in a sign his mood has lifted

Friends: Depp is currently on a European tour with the band, which also features Alice Cooper and Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry

Heard filed a domestic violence restraining order at the Superior Court of California County of Los Angeles on Friday, along with lawyer Samantha Spector.

In court documents, she claimed Depp's 'long-held and widely-acknowledged public and private history of drug and alcohol abuse' gave him a 'short fuse'.

She added he 'is often paranoid and his temper is exceptionally scary for me', and that she was the victim of multiple domestic incidents during their marriage.

Heard was pictured laughing and smiling with her neighbour and friend of 13 years Raquel Pennington in L.A. on Saturday evening, following a four-hour meeting with Heard's lawyer.

Pennington has also filed court documents in support of Heard's statement, claiming Heard texted her for help on the night of May 21.

According to their statements, Pennington used her own body to shield Heard from Depp's attack as he used a wine bottle to smash personal items of Heard's.

Boycott: Johnny Depp is spotted out in Stockholm, where he is playing with his band The Hollywood Vampires, yesterday as attempts to boycott the gigs continue on social media

Rockstar: The band has faced calls for a boycott under the twitter hashtag #ImWithAmber. Pictured, the famous actor plays guitar on stage in Stockholm today with fellow rockers Alice Cooper and Joe Perry

Claims: Depp has been accused of attacking his ex-wife Amber Heard, 30, with an iPhone at their L.A. home on the night of May 21

Silence: Director Jonas Akerlund and former Hollywood Vampires drummer Matt Sorum, pictured right, refused to talk about Depp's troubles

Uproar: The row which allegedly ended with Johnny Depp (pictured this weekend) throwing his phone at wife Amber Heard, according to court documents filed by Heard and her friend Raquel Pennington

In the days following the alleged attack, Heard was pictured with a bruise on her face that she claimed had been caused by Depp throwing his iPhone at her.

But friends and family of Depp continue to come to his defence - including his daughter Lily-Rose and ex-wife Vanessa Paradis.

'My dad is the sweetest and most loving person I know, he's been nothing but a wonderful father to my little brother and I, and everyone who knows him would say the same,' wrote the 17-year-old on Instagram.

To accompany her defiant message, she posted a touching photograph of herself as a toddler holding hands with a youthful looking Depp.

It was on Lily-Rose's 17th birthday, on Friday, that her father became headline news after Heard filed for divorce citing abuse.

Smiles: Amber Heard (pictured smiling outside court after filing for divorce) stands to get $20million in a divorce settlement with Johnny Depp, legal experts claim

French actress Paradis has also insisted the actor is 'sensitive and loving' and dismissed the domestic violence claims in a note obtained by TMZ.

'In all the years I have known Johnny, he has never been physically abusive with me and this looks nothing like the man I lived with for 14 wonderful years'.

A representative for Depp, who denies the allegations, said in a statement on Thursday: 'Given the brevity of this marriage and the most recent and tragic loss of his mother, Johnny will not respond to any of the salacious false stories, gossip, misinformation and lies about his personal life.
A brave female shop assistant managed to fend off a knife-wielding robber after she started attacking him and his accomplice in rage.

The woman, who asked not to be named, had opened the optician practice for one of the robbers who was pretending to be a customer in Ho Chi Minh in southern Vietnam.

CCTV footage in the shop shows the woman looking for a pair of glasses with her back to the man.

The robber then grabs her neck and smothers her mouth so she is unable to scream as he tries to steal her iPhone.

The man held a knife as he almost got the woman in a headlock while she attempted to break free.

She refused to hand over her phone and a short struggle followed until she managed scream as loud as she could.

The man immediately let her go and ran out of her shop to try and meet up with his accomplice.

However as he attempted to flee, she chased after him - still screaming - and knocked him and his friend of their motorbike.

The armed robber pretends to be a customer and asks about a pair of glasses

As the female shop assistant turns her back, the man pounces on her and grabs her by the neck

Other shopkeepers and people in the area ran over, forcing the men to escape on foot.

Their motorbike, which had apparently been stolen earlier in the day, was left lying on the ground where it was seized by police who are investigating the incident.

The shop assistant was shocked but not injured.

He places his hand over her mouth to prevent her from screaming so she wouldn't attract attention

But she refuses to let him steal anything and manages to break free before screaming for help
He described how he covered himself in oil to survive the freezing water

Dearden was later captured and wrote to his mother from German camp

Fight for survival: Peregrine Dearden

Remarkable letters written home by a teenage Royal Navy sailor reveal how he survived the horrors of the Battle of Jutland.

Peregrine Robert Dearden was a 19-year-old midshipman when his vessel, the Queen Mary, was blown up by German gunfire during the largest naval battle of the First World War.

The ship was torn apart by the blast and quickly sank to the depths of the North Sea. All but nine of the 1,265 crewmen on board lost their lives.

Dearden was one of those who survived the devastating 36-hour battle, which took place off the coast of Denmark 100 years ago today.

The New Zealand-born sailor was later picked up by a German destroyer and spent the remainder of the war as a prisoner.

The sacrifice made by Dearden and others will be remembered today in a series of commemorative events to mark the battle's centenary.

Princess Anne, David Cameron and German President Joachim Gauck are expected to join descendants at a Cathedral service in Orkney before later laying wreaths at a war memorial.

In poignant letters back to his mother and his former school, Cheltenham College, Dearden revealed how a combination of luck and initiative led to his survival.

Transcripts of the accounts form part of the Imperial War Museum's 'Lives Of The First World War' online archive.

Writing to his mother five days after the battle, Dearden described how the Queen Mary 'sank rapidly' following a 'terrific explosion' just an hour-and-a-half into the exchange.

Peregrine Robert Dearden was a 19-year-old midshipman when his vessel, the Queen Mary, was blown up by German gunfire during the largest naval battle of the First World War (illustrated in a drawing above)

He wrote: 'As soon as in the water I swam clear and astern of the ship about 30 yards when she suddenly blew up completely. I was luckily sucked under water and so all the wreckage chuck about did not come with its full weight on my head. I held my breath for a long time and at last came to the surface. I started looking around for something to support me as much as possible.'

'SUDDENLY THERE WAS A TERRIFIC EXPLOSION' TERRIFYING MOMENT THE QUEEN MARY WAS DESTROYED In this excerpt of a letter to the headmaster of his former school, Cheltenham College Junior School, Peregrine Dearden described the first moments after he realised the Royal Navy ship the Queen Mary had been struck: 'Suddenly there was a terrific explosion in the foremost part of the ship and all our lights went out leaving us in complete darkness. 'I was sent out on top of my turret, the after one, to see what had occurred. 'But for what seemed a very long time and which was really I suppose only half a minute I could see absolutely nothing and had to put on my respirator as smoke was pouring into the turret... 'I took off all my clothes before jumping in while everyone else went in with all their clothes and boots on which I am afraid was a great difficulty to them when once in the water. 'As soon as I reached the water I started to swim clear of the ship but had only got about 15 yards away when there was a second terrific explosion, immediately following which, I was sucked down under water....'

In a letter to Cheltenham College Junior School, in which he thanked the headmaster for 'having so kindly remembered me', Dearden said his decision to strip off before he entered the water might have saved his life.

'I took off all my clothes before jumping in while everyone else went in with all their clothes and boots on which I am afraid was a great difficulty to them when once in the water,' he wrote.

Unlike many of his comrades, Dearden was also sent out to see without one of the Gieve waistcoats, which doubled as an inflatable life-jacket. This twist of fate also likely led to his survival.

He told his mother: 'As you know I never had a Gieve waistcoat and am now glad I had not... The people with Gieve waistcoasts on were the first I noticed to drown as they were held a little too high out of the water and when they became weak their heads fell forward in the water.'

As he watched his fellow crewmen sink beneath the waves and lose their lives to a secondary explosion, Dearden had the wherewithal to protect himself from the crippling cold.

To his mother: 'The surface of the water was simply covered with oil fuel which tasted and smelt horribly (my presence of mind) I smothered myself all over with it which I really think saved my life as the water was frightfully cold.'

Those who lived through the initial trauma clung on to wreckage floating on the surface, willing a British ship to come to their rescue. Some 30 minutes after entering the sea, the men thought their prayers had been answered when a British destroyer came within some 'twenty five to thirty yards'.

But their hopes were soon dashed. The ship only saved 'three midshipmen and 15 men' before changing course.

'It nearly drove me frantic when she steamed off,' Dearden wrote. 'She would not even leave her whaler behind to pick up the remaining fifteen or twenty of us in the water, although I shouted to them to do so.

The Queen Mary was torn apart by the blast and quickly sank to the depths of the North Sea, and all but nine of the 1,265 crewmen on board lost their lives (illustrated in a drawing above)

'Afterwards it was terrible seeing everyone else collapse and drown and I had not the strength to help any of them.'

He added to his headmaster: 'It was very depressing all the time hearing the cries for help from various men in the water who must have completely lost their nerve, poor fellows.'

Dearden was eventually picked up by a German destroyer, and he was 'very well treated'.

His granddaughter Belinda Scott, 57, will be among the descendants attending the commemorations in Orkney today.

A service is being held at the UK's most northerly cathedral in Kirkwall, Orkney, where Mr Cameron and German President Joachim Gauck are expected to attend.

36 HOURS WHICH LEFT 8,645 DEAD: BATTLE OF JUTLAND IN NUMBERS Sailors fought for 36 hours over May 31, 1916 and June 1, 1916, off the coast of Denmark's Jutland peninsula. 6,094 Britons lost their lives in the battle. Another 2,551 were killed on the German side. More than 1,000 others were injured. A total 249 warships were involved, with 150 British and 99 German vessels. The ships carried more than 100,000 sailors, making Jutland the largest naval battle in history. Of these, 25 were sunk during the battle. Fourteen were from the British Grand Fleet - including HMS Invincible and HMS indefatigable - and 11 from the German High Seas Fleet. Four Victoria Crosses were awarded after the battle. They were given to Major Francis Harvey, Commander Barry Bingham, Commander William Loftus Jones, and 15-year-old Boy First Class Jack Cornwell, who died from his injuries in the days after Jutland. Source: the Royal Navy Museum.

The Princess Royal will represent the Royal family at the memorial at St Magnus Cathedral where thousands of ceramic poppies have been installed in tribute to the war dead and a specially-commissioned piece of music by the late composer and Orkney resident Sir Peter Maxwell Davies will be performed.

The Duke of Edinburgh who was due to attend will now not join events in Orkney following doctor's advice.

Descendants of those who fought at Jutland have been invited to join the commemorations, which will continue with a service at Lyness Cemetery on the island of Hoy - the final resting place for more than 450 service personnel who died in the war, including sailors killed at Jutland.

The cemetery stands close to Scapa Flow, from where the British Grand Fleet set out for the Jutland Bank to repel German forces attempting to break a British blockade.

Almost 250 ships took part, creating a scale of battle that has not been seen since.

Both nations claimed victory - Germany because of the 6,094 British losses compared to the 2,551 men it sacrificed - but Britain had seriously weakened the enemy's naval capability.

There will also be a remembrance service at sea where British and German naval representatives will scatter poppies and forget-me-nots - the German flower of remembrance - into the North Sea at Jutland Bank.

The Government said the commemorations will remember all those who lost their lives while also paying tribute to the role of the Royal Navy and the Orkney Islands in the 1914-18 conflict.

Orkney Islands Council vice-convener Jim Foubister said: 'We are proud to be hosting the UK's national commemoration of the Battle of Jutland.

'It is fitting that the Jutland commemorations will draw to a close among the graves of some of those who made the ultimate sacrifice for their countries a century ago.'

Commemorative events marking the Jutland centenary have previously been held at Rosyth and South Queensferry on the Firth of Forth, from where the Battlecruiser force set sail ahead of the battle on May 31 1916.
Drew Peterson, the former Chicago police officer, was found guilty of trying to hire someone to kill the prosecutor who helped convict him in his third wife's death.

Peterson was convicted of trying to hire someone while in prison to kill Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow, who helped convict Peterson in 2012 of killing ex-wife Kathleen Savio eight years earlier.

Prosecutors said Peterson believed that with Glasgow dead, he could win an appeal of his conviction.

Jurors reached the verdict Tuesday afternoon after deliberating for little more than an hour.

Peterson sat hunched over, his head leaning on his left hand with his elbow on the defense table as the verdict was read by the judge. He showed no visible reaction to the verdict.

Peterson is currently serving a 38-year sentence in ex-wife Kathleen Savio's death and now faces up to 60 more years in prison.

Former Bolingbrook, Illinois police officer Drew Peterson has been found guilty of trying to hire someone while in prison to kill former Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow

Peterson is charged with solicitation of murder for hire and solicitation for murder after allegedly trying to hire someone to kill Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow, above in 2013, while Peterson was in prison

Stacy Peterson (pictured) was just 19 and 26 years younger than her husband when they married. She mysteriously vanished in 2007. Her body has never been found

On Tuesday, prosecutors said prison recordings of Peterson speaking with a fellow inmate prove he wanted the prosecutor killed.

The inmate, Antonio Smith, worked with authorities to record his conversations with Peterson in November 2014.

Smith told Peterson he had arranged for his uncle to kill Glasgow by Christmas 2014.

'I told him what you said, that it's the green light on, that basically go ahead and kill him,' Smith said in a November 15, 2014, recording. 'That's what you wanted, right?... It ain't no turning back.'

'OK, alright. I'm in,' Peterson responds. 'From the first time we talked about it, there was no turning back... If I get some booze in here, we'll celebrate that night.'

The exchange left no doubt about Peterson's intentions, prosecutor Steve Nate told the jury Tuesday during his closing argument.

'He said it, he meant it, and he's guilty,' said Nate, of the Illinois attorney general's office, who collaborated with prosecutors in Randolph County.

But Peterson's defense lawyer, Lucas Liefer, says Peterson never explicitly says in the recordings that he wanted Glasgow killed and said the recordings were nonsensical prison talk.

He also said Smith, serving time for attempted murder, was unreliable and a liar.

'This case is wrought with inconsistency and incomplete evidence,' Liefer told the jury.

Prosecutors say Peterson believed that with Glasgow dead, he could win an appeal of his conviction.

Peterson is serving a 38-year sentence in Savio's death and is now likely to receive another 60 years after being convicted in this murder-for-hire case.

Target: Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow was Peterson's target. For it was Glasgow, who helped convict Peterson in 2012 of killing his third wife, Kathleen Savio, eight years earlier

Peterson has been found guilty of trying to hire someone to kill the prosecutor who helped convict him in his third wife's death

Peterson was already in jail on a 38-year prison sentence for the murder of his third wife Kathleen Savio (pictured)

Peterson's animus toward Glasgow extended beyond his role in helping put him behind bars, according to testimony and evidence presented.

On secret recordings, Peterson blames Glasgow for efforts to revoke Peterson's $79,000 annual police pension, prosecutors say.

He also says Glasgow is the reason that Peterson's son, Stephen, lost his job at the Oak Brook Police Department over what authorities said were the younger Peterson's efforts to obstruct the investigation into Savio's death.

After Peterson's conviction, Glasgow called him a 'coward' and a 'thug' who would 'threaten people because he had a gun and a badge.'

Glasgow testified that he listened to about 15 minutes of the Peterson wiretap.

'The word 'kill' wasn't used, but the implication of kill was there,' Glasgow testified during the trial.

'Based on 36 years of experience in law enforcement, from my listening of the tape, it was clear to me there was going to be my demise.'

Peterson has been in jail since 2012 when he was convicted of drowning his third wife, Kathleen Savio in the bathtub, eight years before.

On March 1, 2004, Ms Savio was discovered by a neighbor face down in her dry bathtub, her thick, black hair soaked in blood and a two-inch gash in the back of her head.

The death of the 40-year-old aspiring nurse was initially deemed an accident.

After Peterson's fourth wife, 23-year-old Stacy Peterson, vanished in 2007, Savio's body was exhumed, re-examined and her death reclassified as a homicide.

Peterson had divorced Savio a year before her death. His motive for killing her, prosecutors said, was fear that a pending settlement would wipe him out financially.

Authorities have said they believe Stacy Peterson is dead and that Drew Peterson is a suspect, but he hasn't been charged in that case.

Peterson was 26 years older than his fourth wife, Stacy, when they married, only eight days after his third divorce was finalized.

When her sister called the police reporting Stacy's disappearance, Peterson said that she had called him several days before and said that she left him for another man. Her car was found at the airport.

Stacy Peterson's family hoped a conviction in Savio's murder could lead to charges against Drew Peterson in Stacy's disappearance.

Stacy's pastor, Neil Schori, testified she told him that her husband got up from bed and left their house in the middle of the night around the time of Savio's death.

Before his 2009 arrest, the glib, cocky Peterson seemed to taunt authorities, suggesting a 'Win a Date With Drew Contest' and then, after his arrest, 'Win a Conjugal Visit With Drew Contest.'

He is currently serving 38 years for murder and is not due to be released until May 2050 when he will be well into his nineties.

Peterson revealed in 2013 that he lived in fear of being killed behind bars.

According to a letter to his lawyer at the time, he was not adapting well to his new home.

'I'm in a cell the size of a broom closet, peeling paint, rusting fixtures, I have no TV or anything and I haven't been out since I got here,' he wrote to his former attorney Joel Brodsky in one letter.

'Prison is all the nightmarish things that one would think.'

Peterson's 2012 trial was the first in Illinois history where prosecutors built their case on hearsay thanks in part to a new law, dubbed 'Drew's Law,' tailored to the case.

The hearsay, prosecutors said, let his wives 'speak from their graves' through family and friends.

The hearsay - any information reported by a witness not based on the witness' direct knowledge - included a friend who said Savio told her Peterson once put a knife to her throat and warned her: 'I could kill you and make it look like an accident.'

Savio so feared for her life that she kept a knife under her mattress.
An Iraqi immigrant who said he was gay when claiming asylum in Austria has been jailed for sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl at a swimming pool.

Appearing in court this week, the 36-year-old insisted that he is homosexual and that the contact with the child was his first experience of a sexual relationship with the opposite sex.

He reportedly came to Austria 13 years ago and had no previous convictions before he was arrested over the attack on the schoolgirl in the changing rooms of the public swimming pool in the Huetteldorf area of Vienna.

The 36-year-old Iraqi was arrested after the attack on the schoolgirl in the changing rooms of the public swimming pool in the Huetteldorf area of Vienna (pictured), Austria last year

The attack happened in July last year where he met an old friend who was with her daughter, and they spent the afternoon and the evening together.

The woman was a single parent, and according to the girl when he was visiting, he had sexually assaulted her and then told her not to say anything to her mother.

The next day they had arranged to go swimming together, where he carried out another assault.

When quizzed by the court he claimed that the girl seemed much older than she really was.

He said that the incident was the first time that he had had any experience of a sexual relationship with the opposite sex, and that he had no idea why the idea had come into his head. He told the court: 'It just happened'.

He said: 'I thought she looked so big, I thought she must be at least 17 or 18.'

A lawyer acting for the victim said that she had to receive psychological counselling because of the sex attack.

As well as being jailed for 15 months, with 10 months suspended, he was also ordered to pay her more than 1,500 in compensation.

He was also ordered to attend a psychotherapy course designed and ordered to avoid any contact with children.




A little girl whose head swelled to three times its normal size has made a 'miraculous' recovery - and has even now celebrated the birth of a baby brother.

Doctors believed Roona Begum, from a village in northeastern India, wouldn't live past her first birthday after she was born with an extreme form of hydrocephalus - when fluid builds up on the brain.

But thanks to emergency surgery to reduce the circumference of her head from a staggering 37in to 23in, Roona will celebrate her fifth birthday in November.

Shocking: This is Roona Begum in 2013, after she was born with a condition that caused fluid to build up on her brain and her skull to grow to three times its usual size

Remarkable: In what her parents have described as a 'miracle', Roona has survived and was even able to celebrate their birth of her new baby brother

Family: Roona's parents were told by doctors that she would not survive, but to their delight their daughter's condition has continued to improve. They described it as 'beautiful' to see her bonding with her little brother Akhtar, who is now five months old

Concern: Roona's parents, Abdul (left) and Fatema (right) were worried about having another child after the stress they went through over Roona's condition - but they say it's good for them to know that baby Akhtar will be able to 'take good care of his sister when they are older'

Her parents, Abdul and Fatema Rehman, have put the remarkable recovery down to their daughter bonding with her new little brother Akhtar.

'We were definitely worried about having another child but it was important for us to think about Roona and make sure she has company,' Abdul, 23, told MailOnline, from their home in the village of Jirania, in the state of Tripura.

'It's good to know that our second child is normal and well. We are relieved.

'We are contented with what we have now and I feel happy knowing Akhtar will take good care of his sister when they are older.'

Roona first hit international headlines in 2013, when Norwegian students Jonas Borchgrevink and Nathalie Krantz started an online campaign and raised almost 25,000 towards her treatment.

Doctors at Fortis Hospital in Gurgaon, outside Delhi in northern India, drained around 10 litres of excess fluid from her brain cavity over seven operations while she spent 105 days in hospital.

Treatment: At the age of just three years old, Roona had to spend 105 days in hospital and undergo numerous surgeries to remove some 10 litres of liquid from around her brain and to reconstruct her skull

Bleak: Due to the extent of the damage to Roona's skull, doctors at Fortis Hospital in Gurgaon, outside Delhi in northern India, still didn't believe she would survive the drastic surgery

Help: Norwegian students Jonas Borchgrevink and Nathalie Krantz started an online campaign in 2013 and were able to help raise almost 25,000 towards Roona's treatment

They were also able to carry out reconstructive surgery to reduce the size of her skull, which had grown to accommodate the excess cerebrospinal fluid filling Roona's head.

Roona was still not expected to survive the surgery but, much to the delight of her parents, she is now crawling and often attempts to communicate and play with her brother Akhtar, who is now five months old.

'Roona still can't do much, but now her little brother tries to play with her,' said her mother Fatema, 25.

'He holds her hand and plays with her. He tries to communicate with her and she responds to him equally with smiles and giggles. It's so beautiful to see the two bonding.

'Roona loves to interact. She loves to see people talking to her and trying to play with her and wants more. She is extremely social and wants people to pay her attention.

'She even responds by turning her head when we call her name.'

Difficult: Roona's condition put a lot of pressure on her parents, as she was able to do very little for herself. Now, however, she can crawl around and sit up by herself, and has even started to communicate

Worry: Roona's father confessed that 'there is no better feeling than when she calls out our names', and he is confident that his daughter's condition is continuing to improve. Pictured, Roona in 2013

Extreme: At its largest, Roona's skull swelled to a staggering 37 inches due to the vast amount of liquid pressing on her brain

Her father, a labourer who earns just Rs 4,000 (40) is also confident that Roona's health is improving.

'She is doing fine,' he said. 'The pain she suffered in the past led to constant tears in her eyes, which is not the case anymore.

'It is absolutely amazing to see her happy and lively.'

'She shakes her hands and feet when she is excited and cries when she's hungry. She shouts 'mummy' and 'daddy' and then we forget all our worries and problems.

'There is no better feeling than when she calls out our names.'

Roona and her family have come a long way from the days when the toddler would be mocked and insulted by their neighbours, and the family had little reason to believe she could ever recover.

Recovery: As her condition has gradually improved, Roona's parents have noticed her appetite improve and she now eats dal and rice given to her by her mother

Communication: Roona has now developed to such an extent that she can communicate with her parents, including by shaking her hands and feet when she is excited and crying when she's hungry

Future: After believing for so long that Roona could not survive, her parents are thrilled with her progress and now hope that one day she will be able to go to school and live a normal life

'I can't even think of those days now,' said Abdul.

'I remember the time one person told us to leave our daughter at an orphanage; my wife was devastated and she told them so.

'My wife and I had also hoped she would get better one day. And I am glad that day came and awful comments stopped. People now express only love and concern towards her.'

Fatema continued: 'The help we received was a message sent by god. I am certain she is a blessing on this earth.

'She survived even when doctors thought she would not. It was certainly a miracle. My happiness is to see her alive and cheerful.

'I only hope to see her getting better so that she can live a life filled with dreams and aspirations.'
A drunken fashion designer who has made clothes for celebrities and royalty hit an air stewardess as she was ordered off a flight to Dubai after a foul-mouthed outburst at a passenger.

Leena Romu, 63, who has worked for iconic British fashion designers Vivienne Westwood, Catherine Walker and Anthony Price, struck Lisa O'Keefe in the back as she was led off the Virgin plane.

Romu, from Acton, north London, who now designs bridal and evening gowns, has now been convicted of assault after the incident at Heathrow airport, fined 105, and ordered to pay with 300 costs and a 20 victim surcharge.

Fashion designer Leena Romu, 63, (left) who has made clothes for celebrities and royalty hit an air stewardess Lisa O'Keefe (right) as she was ordered off a flight to Dubai after a foul-mouthed outburst at a passenger

Ealing Magistrates Court was told that Ms O'Keefe had spotted Romu boarding the flight on December 20 with bottles of duty free alcohol, and noted she was unsteady on her feet as she stepped onto the aircraft.

She bumped into the bulkhead and nearly fell into another passenger's lap before getting into a row with a father travelling with his young son.

He told her to stop swearing and when ordered off the plane Romu shouted at him: 'Shut up. It's your f****** fault.'

'She stumbled into the bulkhead of the aircraft, was unsteady on her feet and the passengers behind her told me they thought she had been drinking,' said Ms O'Keefe.

'She was asking one passenger where her seat was and nearly fell into the lady's lap. The father of a young boy was asking her to refrain from using foul language.'

Ms O'Keefe said a colleague detected alcohol on Romu's breath and she was told to leave the plane (file photo) at Heathrow

Ms O'Keefe said a colleague detected alcohol on Romu's breath and she was told to leave the plane.

'She was shouting in my ear that she was going to sue Virgin and me and I got a shove, slap between my shoulder blades.

'It felt like the heel of the hand between my shoulder blades and she said: 'I didn't hit you, I pushed you.'

'Two hours into the flight I said to my colleagues: "I think she's really hurt me" and after going to sleep I couldn't move my neck and saw a physio for six sessions.'

Mr. Bhavin Patel, prosecuting, told the court the row escalated with Romu asking Ms O'Keefe: 'What do you mean?' and 'What are you trying to say?'

Staff told first-time offender Romu, who while working for other design houses has worked on clothes for members of the Royal Family as well as creating costumes for the Harry Potter film franchise, they had concerns she was well enough to fly.

'She was becoming more unreasonable and it was having an effect on other passengers and Ms O'Keefe went to speak with the captain,' Mr Patel said.

Another passenger described Romu as 'angry' and said she deliberately barged into the stewardess.
Hedge funds and investment banks have commissioned their own exit polls to get an on-the-day look at the EU referendum - meaning they can make trades based on results no one else knows.

The TV broadcasters have ruled out doing a conventional exit poll on the referendum because the unique nature of the poll makes it impossible to do accurately enough.

But the decision of City firms to purchase their own research could mean market movements on polling day give an indication of the likely result.

Election rules allow exit polls to be conducted on polling day so long as the results are kept secret until voting ends at 10pm.

Hedge funds and investment banks have reportedly commissioned private exit polls to feed them real time data during polling day. No nationwide opinion poll has been ordered by the broadcasters

One pollster told the Financial Times: 'Hedge funds have asked for exit polls and for hourly polls on the day.

'Banks are certainly commissioning polls for their own consumption that are never released.'

Another pollster told the paper: 'We are also being asked if we will do polls on the day. People in the City are wanting a head start.'

The cost of a basic exit poll starts at around 500,000 - far less than the potential profits to be gained by correctly predicting the market impact of the referendum results.

Currency markets are expected to move sharply following the results - particularly if Britain backs Brexit.

Such a result is thought likely to drive the pound down toward parity with the euro. Trades on the day of the referendum could suggest intelligence on the likely outcome.

City traders responded to the latest polling data by slightly easing support toward the Leave campaign.

Markets are expected to move sharply following the EU referendum but private exit polling on the day could trigger shifts which give an indication of the result

A regular 'barometer' of city traders last week showed an 81 per cent expectation of a Remain vote. Today, this fell back to 77 per cent as traders bet more on a Brexit.

Matt Brief, Head of Dealing at IG Group, which runs the barometer, said: 'Traders have clearly felt that the REMAIN price was starting to look overvalued.

'This price move shows there are still many more twists and turns to run in the lead up to the vote.

'These week's sees the start of the many television debates with David Cameron and Michael Gove appearing on Sky News on Thursday and Friday evenings.

'Their performances along with the continued publication of polling data is likely to influence future trading patterns.'

VOTE REMAIN TO PROTECT THE UK AND EUROPE FROM GETTING WEAKER, BUSINESS CHIEFS WARN More than 50 chairmen and chief executives today warned against quitting the EU because of the damage it would do to both the UK and Europe. The members of the European Round Table of Industrialists - which counts Vodafone boss Vittorio Colao and Rolls Royce chief Ian Davis among its members - said the 'unravelling' of Europe would hit the economy. In a letter to the Financial Times, they said: 'While respecting the decision of the people of the United Kingdom, we believe that a Europe without the UK would be weaker, just as the UK itself would be weaker outside Europe. 'We believe the case for Europe has never been stronger.' The group argued the EU's size gave it 'tremendous' bargaining power as it negotiated trade deals with other parts of the world. The letter from the ERT follows similar interventions from other business groups urging Britons to back continued EU membership.

Poll surge for Brexit as record breaking EU immigration figures drive public fears over the numbers coming to Britain

Record breaking levels of migration to Britain from the EU appears to have handed a polling surge to the Brexit campaign with just three weeks to the referendum.

The latest ORB survey reveals the Leave campaign is just five points behind - a significant shift from the previous result which gave Remain a 13 point lead.

Last Thursday, official migration statistics revealed the numbers of people coming to Britain from inside the EU had matched the all time high of 184,000 and Brexit campaigners have warned the figures demonstrate the lack of control Britain has over its borders.

The latest ORB poll showed Remain holding a five point lead over Leave - but the gap has closed significantly from the firm's previous results and Sir Lynton Crosby has cited a focus on immigration as a reason

Analysing the results for the Daily Telegraph, Sir Lynton Crosby said the increased discipline shown by the Brexit camp in recent days had helped drive the results.

The strategist - who steered David Cameron's Conservatives to a majority election win last year - praised an 'increasing focus on lack of control over immigration and associated message discipline'.

Sir Lynton had slammed the Out campaigns - including the main Vote Leave group and smaller campaigns such as Leave.EU - for infighting and confused messages.

Other polling results out today reveal continued confusion among Labour voters about Jeremy Corbyn's position on Brexit.
A former Uber driver yelled 'This is for my Syrian brothers, I'm going to spill your blood' as he tried to decapitate a Tube passenger with a blunt knife and attack four others in a 'brutal' attack, a court heard today.

Somalia-born Muhiddin Mire, 30, attacked musician Lyle Zimmerman, 56, at Leytonstone Underground station on December 5 and lashed out at anyone else who got in his way, the Old Bailey heard.

The jury was told Mire was 'motivated by revenge' for the bombing of Syria, and after the attack police found images of ISIS hostages having their throats cut and a graph of US and coalition air strikes on his phone.

The 'random' attack in the east London station's busy ticket hall was captured on shocking CCTV footage as well as on the mobile phone of a member of the public, and the jury was warned the resulting footage was 'shocking'.

An onlooker famously responded: 'You ain't no Muslim bruv' - words which became a tagline for news reports, Jonathan Rees QC, prosecuting, told the court.

Opening the trial, Mr Rees told how Mire, a former taxi driver on benefits, launched a brutal attack on 'wholly innocent' stranger Mr Zimmerman, who was dressed distinctively in cowboy boots and hat and was carrying a mandolin.

Mire is seen approaching Mr Zimmerman at Leytonstone station. The footage, from CCTV, was shown to the jury at the Old Bailey today

Mr Rees said: 'It is plain that the defendant had identified Mr Zimmerman as his intended target.

'As he followed him down the stairs, the defendant can be seen on the CCTV footage reaching into the inside pocket of his jacket with his right hand.'

Footage of the incident showed Mire attacking the musician from behind in the ticket hall with a bread knife in his hand. The victim managed to break free but was chased around the area near the ticket barrier.

Somalia-born Muhiddin Mire, pictured, has admitted attacking Mr Zimmerman but denies attempted murder

Mire repeatedly struck out at his head with a knife before grabbing hold of Mr Zimmerman and forcing him to the floor.

He then began to kick the victim to the body and head while passenger Louise McGuinness shouted at him to stop.

Mire told her: 'This is for telling me to stop' before kicking Mr Zimmerman even harder, then another passenger stepped forward to intervene he was punched in the face.

Mire then bent over the motionless Mr Zimmerman and lifted up his top half to 'saw at' his neck, the court heard.

CCTV footage showed Mire attacking Mr Zimmerman, who had a guitar on his back and was carrying another instrument case

Mr Rees said the knife was 'relatively blunt' and had broken away from the handle, meaning it was 'much harder to cut into the victim's neck.'

The prosecutor said: 'At the end of the assault, when Mr Zimmerman was lying motionless and defenceless on the floor of the ticket hall, the defendant crouched over him and quite deliberately began to cut Mr Zimmerman's throat with a knife blade.

'Mercifully, Mr Zimmerman survived the ordeal because, although he suffered three jagged wounds to the front of his neck, none of them caused any damage to any of the major blood vessels in that area.'

Instead of running off to protect himself from the defendant, Mr Bielinski took out his mobile phone and began to record the defendant's actions at some considerable risk to himself Jonathan Rees QC

The incident continued as Mire made his way up to street level where he came across a 'remarkably brave' Polish man, Daniel Bielinski, and his girlfriend, Justyna Was.

He lashed out with the blade, but Mr Bielinski dodged out of the way and a Lithuanian security guard, Andrius Sabaliauskas, tried to intervene to calm him down.

Mr Rees said: 'What happened next was extraordinary.

'Instead of running off to protect himself from the defendant, Mr Bielinski took out his mobile phone and began to record the defendant's actions at some considerable risk to himself.

'The events he recorded were dramatic. In short, after the defendant had stopped pursuing Mr Bielinski, he walked back into the subway where he lashed out with the knife blade towards various other Tube passengers who were either emerging from or going into the station.

'One of those individuals, a man by the name of Andrius Sabaliauskas, also showed great courage in seeking to engage with the defendant and calm him down.'

Mr Bielinski continued to film events until police arrived and tasered Mire, and the mobile phone video also captured the defendant saying 'If you're Muslim you get bombed' and 'I'm going to attack your civilians.'

The jury were shown footage of the attack (pictured). Prosecutor Jonathan Rees QC said the attack was 'wholly unprovoked'

Mire can be seen grappling with Mr Zimmerman, who was described as a 'distinctive figure'

Muhiddin Mire, 30, from Leytonstone is accused of trying to kill a 56-year-old musician at Leytonstone Tube station (pictured) on December 5 last year

Mr Rees said: 'It provides an indication as to what motivated the defendant to attack random strangers with a knife.

'It appears he was motivated by revenge for what was occurring in Syria.

'The download of his phone revealed that he had images stored on his phone that included a graph showing numbers of US and coalition force air strikes on ISIS and images of hostages apparently taken just before they were executed by having their throats cut.'

The court heard Mire accepts he used the knife and has pleaded guilty to wounding Mr Zimmerman with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and to attempting to wound four other Tube passengers.

But Mire denies the charge of attempted murder and the jury was told they must decide if at the time of the attack, Mire intended to kill Mr Zimmerman.

The court heard he was born in Somalia and came to Britain as a young boy with his brother and sister.

Mire is pictured arriving in a prison van for his first appearance at Westminster magistrates court. He denies attempted murder

At the time of the attack, he was living in a one-bedroom council flat, not far from the Tube station and was receiving unemployment benefit.

Mire had lost his job as a minicab driver for Uber, and had a history of mental illness dating back to 2006, when he was admitted to hospital after he 'lost touch with reality' in a psychotic episode.

'His thought was very disordered, and he exhibited delusions of a persecutory, religious and grandiose nature,' the court was told.

A month before the incident, on November 4, Mire's GP had referred him to the mental health access team at Thorpe Coombe Hospital in Waltham Forest, because he was suffering from 'paranoid delusions' that he was being followed and monitored by people from MI5 and MI6.

The doctor said Mire felt 'very depressed and suffered from anxiety and panic attacks' and had stopped working because of the delusions.

But he failed to attend an appointment on December 1 and launched his attack three days before the re-arranged visit.

One of the caretakers on the estate where he lived had seen him wearing traditional Muslim clothing rather than his normal jeans and t-shirt just over two weeks before the attack.

His brother and uncle had booked a trip for him to fly back to Somalia alone on December 6, but the attack happened a day earlier.

Police at the station in the days after the incident. The court was told that officers later found images of ISIS hostages having their throats cut and a graph of US and coalition air strikes on Mire's phone

The graphic CCTV images played to the court, showed Mr Zimmerman - whose face was blacked out - moving slightly as he lay face down beside the ticket barrier, as Mire, in a hat and green jacket, knelt on his back and began sawing at his neck.

Mire had travelled on the tube into King's Cross and then out to Stratford, close to the Westfield shopping centre, in East London, on the day of the attack before heading back to Leytonstone.

He was on the same train as Mr Zimmerman, who was described as a 'distinctive figure' dressed in cowboy boots and a hat, carrying an amplifier in one hand and a mandolin in the other, with a guitar strapped on his back, listening to music on his iPhone.

Mr Zimmerman was followed by Mire from the tube who was said to have already identified him as his target and was reaching inside his jacket for the knife.

The knife had a black handle and a silver blade with a serrated edge and looked like a small bread knife, the court was told.

'As Mr Zimmerman approached the ticket barrier with his Oyster card at the ready, the defendant attacked him from behind,' Mr Rees said.

'The attack was wholly unprovoked and nothing of any significance had passed between the two men beforehand.'

Mire, who is 6ft 3ins tall, allegedly grabbed his victim from behind around the neck, swung him around and threw him off his feet.

'When the victim was on the ground, the defendant began to kick him repeatedly to his body and head.'

When one passenger tried to intervene, Mire punched him in the face and when another begged him to stop, he allegedly kicked his victim harder, saying: 'This is for telling me to stop.'

The knife broke in the attack but Mire recovered it and crouched over the motionless victim, lifting up the body.

Mr Rees said: 'The knife appears to have been relatively blunt. One witness recalls hearing the victim's flesh rip as the blade was drawn across the throat.'

When Ms McGuinness, shouted: 'Stop you a*******' Mire allegedly told her she would be next.

Mr Zimmerman was left lying in a pool of blood in the ticket office and was treated by a junior doctor who was on his way home.
Michael Hsu, 24, was arrested last week after three women caught him spiking his date's drink at a Santa Monica, California restaurant

The man accused of an attempted date rape that made national headlines has been identified.

Michael Hsu was arrested last Thursday after a group of three friends said they noticed him spike the drink of his date at a Santa Monica, California restaurant.

The 24-year-old was taken into custody at the restaurant and booked on charges of drugging with intent to commit a felony.

As of Tuesday morning, he was still being held at the Santa Monica Police Department Jail on $1million bail. He is also due in court later Tuesday for a hearing.

The three women who claim to have busted Hsu on Thursday recounted their tale on Facebook the day after the incident, creating a meme that has been shared more than 110,000 times.

The picture shows the three women in a Charlie's Angels stance with the line 'Don't roofie someone on our watch'.

Sonia Ulrich, Marla Saltzer and Monica Kenyon were out for dinner at FIG restaurant when they say they noticed the man pour something into his companion's drink as they shared a bottle of wine.

In their Facebook post titled 'GUESS WHO STOPPED A RAPE LAST NIGHT?! THESE GALS!', Sonia details what happens.

Jezebel reported a manager at the restaurant corroborated the women's story.

Sonia wrote on Facebook: 'Monica, Marla and I were at Fig at the Fairmont for their delicious happy hour ('Fig at 5.' Treat yourself).

Good Samaritans Sonia Ulrich (center), Marla Saltzer (right) and Monica Kenyon (left) later wrote about the incident in a Facebook post, and created this meme of themselves which has been shared more than 110,000 times online

'I was going on about something and saw Monica staring behind and making a funny face. I stopped. "What's going on?" After a few second she said, "That guy just put something in her drink".'

Hsu allegedly slipped something in the woman's drink while she was in the bathroom so Sonia raced to the lady's room to tip off the unsuspecting victim.

Sonia waited by the bathroom sink for the woman to exit the stall and when she did she confronted her.

'Hey! Um, this is kind of weird, but, uh, we saw the guy you were with put something in your drink,' Sonia said she told the woman.

She responded: 'Oh My God.'

The post continues: '(She was) shocked, kind of numb, so I babbled "Yeah, my girlfriend said she saw him put something in your drink and we had to say something. Woman to woman...you know. We had to say something. How well do you know that guy?"

'I was expecting to hear "We just met", but I got: "He's one of my best friends".'

Monica Kenyon (pictured) is the woman who allegedly saw Hsu pour a substance in a woman's drink

Marla Saltzer (left) alerted a server and manager at FIG in Santa Monica, who allegedly reviewed security footage and saw Hsu pouring something in the woman's drink. Sonia Ulrich (right) penned the Facebook post and confronted the woman when she got up to use the bathroom

The woman told Sonia she had known Hsu for a year and a half and that they worked together.

When the two walked back to their tables Marla was speaking with a server to get a manager involved.

A manager at Fig then approached the table and the woman ordered a sparkling water from him.

The manager told the three women because he had not witnessed anything himself he was unable to do anything.

Sonia wrote on Facebook: 'The poor woman had to sit through 40 more minutes, sitting across from "one of her best friends" knowing that he was trying to drug her.

The women praised staff at the FIG at the Fairmont (pictured), who were quick to jump in and help prevent a dangerous situation

'Marla noticed him several times chinking his glass to hers to get her to drink. She played it cool. Mostly, I believed, just stunned.

'The staff wanted to jump in and dump the glass, dump him, do something!

'I was going through fantasies of walking up and demanding he drink the tainted glass of wine.'

The manager then came by the man and woman's table and said one of the 'computers was down' and there would be a slight delay in bringing them the bill.

Next, Sonia claims Santa Monica Police Department officers walked in and told Hsu to go with them.

Allegedly, Hsu followed them without hesitation.

'The head of security came by and said that because we notified them immediately, they were able to go back and review the footage from the security camera.

'They got him on tape. They had proof of him drugging this girl. They took the glass away as evidence.

'They kept us for statements. We asked the girl if she had a ride home,' Sonia wrote.

The woman tells Sonia, Marla and Monica that Hsu drove and her car is at his house.

Sonia then writes that multiple people approached their table to tell them they knew someone who had been drugged and thanked them for speaking up.
An internationally renowned graffiti artist who travelled from New York to Melbourne purely to tag trains and buildings has been jailed for six months, while his girlfriend remains on the run.

Jim Harper and his partner Danielle Bremner - who go by the pseudonyms Utah and Ether and have been dubbed the 'Bonnie and Clyde' of the graffiti world - have left their 'writings' across the globe.

But earlier this month Harper, 31, was arrested in Fitzroy and brought before the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Thursday, facing eight separate charges relating to graffiti and assault.

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Internationally renowned graffiti artist Jim Harper (right), who travels the world tagging train's and walls with his girlfriend Danielle Bremner (left), has been jailed for six months

The pair, who work under the pseudonyms Utah and and Ether and have been dubbed the 'Bonnie and Clyde' of the graffiti world, flew in to Melbourne earlier this month

Harper (pictured), whose tag is Ether, was sentenced to six months imprisonment for graffiti related offences including; criminal damage, attempted robbery and possessing a controlled weapon

Victoria Police said Harper caused almost $2500 worth of damage when he allegedly defaced trains at Bayswater, Williamstown, Kensington and Pakenham.

The 31-year-old was also accused of trying to steal a phone from someone, who he allegedly punched.

The American national was sentenced to six months imprisonment for graffiti related offences including; criminal damage, attempted robbery and possessing a controlled weapon.

He was also ordered to pay Metro trains $1595.80 in compensation.

Police were quick to use the case as a warning to other graffiti artists thinking of travelling to Melbourne with the aim of vandalising the city's walls and trains.

'Our message to these offenders is that we will not tolerate this behaviour, and there are consequences when you are prosecuted,' Acting Inspector David Cochrane said in a statement.

'We have a strong intelligence network and investigative capability which means we know who you are and why you are entering our state.'

Danielle Bremner, or Utah, covers her face as she stands by one of her artworks on a train in Lisbon, Portugal

Utah and Ether's infamous works can be seen spray painted on walls and trains in over thirty countries

The pair admit that they have had to develop a criminal skill set to gain access to some of the trains

Utah and Ether's infamous works can be seen spray painted on walls and trains in over thirty countries across five continents, in cities such as Buenos Aires, Paris, Milan, New York and Tokyo.

In an interview with The Hundreds, the couple boasted about their criminal skill sets.

'Each system and each spot is unique, and as such, figuring out how to paint each system and each spot (bypassing sensors, avoiding cameras and security) requires a skill set far beyond simply knowing how to use a can of spray paint,' the couple explained.

'The act of cutting a fence or breaking into an airshaft is equally (and oftentimes more) rewarding for us than the actual finished product of graffiti.'

The mysterious pair also said the illegality of graffiti was what gave their artworks 'meaning'.

'For us, the most important aspect of graffiti is its illegality, and the vitality and energy thats inherent to illegal graffiti,' they said.

'The act of cutting a fence or breaking into an airshaft is equally (and oftentimes more) rewarding for us than the actual finished product of graffiti,' the couple said
A former nightclub promoter convicted of trafficking ice and ecstasy will not serve any jail time so she can care for her 11-week-old son.

Bonnie-Rae Atkinson, 22, was handed a suspended sentence of three-and-a-half years on Tuesday for selling drugs to clubbers at Brisbane club Secrets on Ann in 2014, according to The Courier Mail.

The 22-year-old mother of one, who also ran promotional agency for models, pleaded guilty to 10 drug charges, including two charges of street-level trafficking.

Bonnie-Rae Atkinson, 22, (pictured) was handed a suspended sentence on Tuesday for trafficking ice and ecstasy while working as a nightclub promoter at Secrets on Ann in Brisbane in 2014

Atkinson's lawyer told the court that the recent birth of her son (pictured), who is 11 weeks old, is her motivation to stop selling and taking drugs

It is believed that Atkinson had 10 customers while working at Secrets on Ann (pictured)

Just 11 weeks before her sentencing this week, Atkinson gave birth to her son, Chance.

Atkinson's lawyer told the court that her son is her motivation to stop selling and taking drugs, according to The Courier Mail.

Justice John Byrne told Atkinson that he hoped Chance would help her change her life and warned her of the powerful lure of drugs.

'The sad fact is, when presented with a choice between a child or drugs, drug-dependent people choose the drugs almost every time,' Justice Byrne said.

It is believed that Atkinson had 10 customers at the time of her arrest and police found more than $6,500 in her apartment.

Officers said they found text messages on her phone arranging drug sales.

Atkinson, (pictured) who also ran promotional agency for models, pleaded guilty to 10 drug charges, including two charges of street-level trafficking
French police officers investigating Google as part of a tax-fraud probe had to work completely offline and were even banned from uttering the company's name, in order not to alert the global internet giant.

Police renamed Google 'Tulip' during the investigation and to ensure they stayed completely under the radar, the team only used computers for word processing software.

Around 100 police officers, five magistrates, 25 computer experts and about 100 tax officials entered Google's Paris offices at dawn last Tuesday as part of a probe into 'aggravated tax fraud' and money laundering.

French investigators 'never uttered the word "Google"' during the year-long investigation and avoided the Internet ahead of last week's dawn raid on the internet giant's Paris offices (pictured)

'We decided to never utter the word "Google", to give the firm another name, and we worked on this case fully offline for nearly a year,' Eliane Houlette, the financial prosecutor,told French radio according to Bloomberg.

'We worked with computers, but pretty much only with word processing. The name "Tulip" came up because the mother ship was registered in the Netherlands.'

Ms Houlette added that analysis of data seized by investigators in last week's raid could possibly take years.

'We need to analyse (the data) ... (it will take) months, I hope that it won't be several years, but we are very limited in resources'.

Google, which said it is complying fully with French law, is accused of owing the French government 1.2billion in unpaid taxes.

Probe: Police officers pictured leaving the Paris offices of Google after the dawn-raid as part of a tax fraud investigation last week

Last week's raid was part of EU officials' attempt at cracking down on big businesses avoiding tax, with companies such as Apple, Amazon, Fiat and Starbucks in the firing line.

'We respect French legislation and are fully cooperating with the authorities to answer their questions,' a Google spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

A source close to the matter said in February that French authorities believe the Californian group owed 1.6 billion in back taxes.

Its European operations are headquartered in Ireland, which has some of the lowest corporate tax rates in Europe.

The PNF said the probe, launched in June 2015, aimed to 'check' whether Google Ireland Limited, 'by not declaring part of its activity carried out on French territory... has failed in its tax obligations, notably in terms of company tax and value-added tax'.

Google France received a 'notification' of the investigation back in March 2014, which did not give any precise figures.

Italy has demanded more than 200million from Google, which is accused of perpetrating tax fraud there for years.

It has been raided by French authorities before, in June 2011, during an investigation into transfers to its Irish headquarters.
A man has died after jumping into a creek to rescue his pet dog.

Alexander Ross, 68, was walking his dog near Pennypack Creek near Philadelphia, when the dog either jumped or fell into the water.

Authorities say the man went in after his beloved pet in an attempt to save it, but he ended up losing his footing and was quickly swept away by the fast-moving current.

Police say witnesses who were fishing nearby reported seeing the body floating in the creek a short time later, at around 9:30 a.m. Monday.

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Swept to his death: 68-year-old Alexander Ross drowned in Pennypack Creek after heading into the water to try and rescue his dog, which was later found waiting loyally by his car

Responding firefighters could not reach the victim, so the police's marine unit was called out.

Police recovered the body and the man was officially pronounced dead at the scene around 10am.

The victim's dog was later found at his owner's car.

Philadelphia Police Lt. Dennis Rosenbaum told ABC 6: 'A female showed up at the park and stated that her dog, that her husband takes walking every day, was sitting by her car, but he (her husband) was nowhere to be found. And it was later determined to be him in the creek.'

Firefighters were unable to reach the man's body as it was seen floating down the creek, so a marine unit had to be launched

Lt. Rosenbaum says, 'The dog was wet. We don't know if the dog went into the water and he went in to get the dog, or he fell into the water. But obviously, it's a tragic accident.'

Investigators warn that the creek can be deceiving with accidental drownings every year, especially during summer months.
A protester who was arrested after taking a photo of a policeman she believed groped her has been vindicated following a year-long court battle that revealed another officer tampered with evidence.

Simone Renae White was charged with assault after Senior Constable John Wasko alleged the 41-year-old social worker raised her elbow at him during a protest opposing Reclaim Australia at Martin Place, in Sydney's CBD, in July last year, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

But Ms White argued her breasts had been groped by an officer and turned around to take a photograph of him before Snr Const Wasko grabbed her around the neck and another officer deleted the image.

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Simone Renae White (centre) was charged with assault in July last year after Senior Constable John Wasko (right) alleged the 41-year-old raised her elbow at him during a protest at Martin Place

The charges against Ms White were dropped at Sydney's Downing Centre Local Court on Tuesday and a magistrate demanded NSW Police cover her $13,400 legal costs as the investigation into the assault was found to be 'improper', according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

The court heard that the case relied solely on Snr Constable Wako's testimony as there was no CCTV or police footage that supported his claims against Ms White.

Magistrate Geoffrey Bradd said security footage did capture Snr Constable Wako pushing Ms White in the back before she tried to take a photo of an officer on her phone.

Ms White's barrister argued that this proved the picture was deleted, adding the officers involved had it 'perverted the course of justice'.

'The only reason why [the photo] would be deleted would be to make it more difficult for the complainant to say something in court,' Phillip Boulten SC said.

Police and protesters clashed at the anti-racism counter rally in Martin Place last year

Police had warned that criminal, anti-social or dangerous behaviour would not be tolerated at the protests

The alleged indecent assault against Ms White was not caught on film (Pictured: police and protesters in Martin Place)

Mr Bradd agreed that this indicated police had deleted the image and therefore tampered with evidence.

The alleged indecent assault against Ms White was not caught on film, however Mr Bradd added that evidence presented to the court - which included medical records stating the protester had bruising to her breast and injuries to her neck - 'strongly indicates' that it did, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

An image of Ms White was posted on social media by her solicitor Lydia Shelly with the caption: 'This is what Justice looks & feels like!'

An image of Ms White was posted on social media by her solicitor Lydia Shelly with the caption: 'his is what Justice looks & feels like!'

She told the Sydney Morning Herald that her client had been wrongly treated as a criminal during the proceedings and that it should be noted it is not an offence to protest or take photos of police if you do not obstruct their duties.

A NSW Police spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia the matter was being investigated.
The general election race is tightening up, with the newest NBC News/SurveyMonkey tracking poll showing Donald Trump just two points behind his likely Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

As of this morning, Trump is supported by 45 percent of the electorate, compared to Clinton's 47 percent support.

Trump moved up 2 points in the past week, drawing nearly even with the Democrat whose support remained the same, in the survey that has a margin of error of 1.2 percent.

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Donald Trump (left) is gaining on Hillary Clinton (right) who still involved in a primary fight for her party's nomination. This week Trump increased his support by 2 points, leaving him just 2 points behind the Democrat

While both Democrats are ahead of Donald Trump, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders continues to poll much more strongly against the presumptive Republican nominee

Sen. Bernie Sanders is devoting his time and energy to winning California, the state with the remaining largest delegate haul. He continues to out--poll Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump

This new poll is in line with the Real Clear Politics average of national polls, which has Clinton up over Trump by just 1 percent.

Clinton is desperately trying to wrap up her primary fight against rival Bernie Sanders, but the Vermont senator hasn't signaled he has any intention of dropping out until all the votes are cast.

Sanders is making a last-ditch push this week, concentrating his efforts on California, the biggest delegate prize left for the Democrats, with 475 pledged delegates at stake.

Voters in the Golden State head to the polls a week from today, with constituents from Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota joining them.

A week later Democrats in Washington, D.C. will vote, finally wrapping up the primaries.

Sanders has long made the argument, especially aimed at Democratic superdelegates, party insiders who get to cast a vote at the Democratic National Convention, that he'd be stronger in a general election fight.

While today the general election race looks close, Hillary Clinton could see a bounce in the polls once she finally defeats rival Bernie Sanders

Donald Trump has been gaining ground as he locked up his party's nomination weeks before the Democratic race will conclude

The new polling data from NBC News/SurveyMonkey again shows Sanders out-performing Clinton.

He receives 52 percent support to Trump's 40 percent support.

Team Clinton has made the argument that the former secretary of state has had to face a two-sided attack, vying for her party's nomination while getting hit with Trump and Republican attacks.

Past precedent indicates that her numbers will get a bounce once she's finally put Sanders away, though the New York Times points out that Clinton's only on track right now to bring on between 55 to 72 percent of Sanders' supporters, many of whom are much-needed independent voters.

Regardless, the Cook Political Report's Charlie Cook argued in the National Journal this week that Clinton will see an improvement once she becomes her party's presumptive nominee.

'It is exceedingly unlikely that Clinton will beat Trump by a wide margin because of her high negatives and the intense partisanship that has gripped the nation, but the probabilities still are in her favor,' Cook wrote.

'We are beginning to focus on a November electorate that is broader, more diverse, and considerably more moderate, in both ideology and temperament, than the one that selected Donald Trump,' he continued.

'Chances are high that these voters will behave much differently than the ones in the GOP primaries,' Cook added.
A 9/11 hero who was diagnosed with leukaemia - which was brought on by his efforts following the terror attack on the World Trade Center - has found a stem cell donor after a worldwide search.

New York police officer Greg Holgerson was told a stem cell donation was his best hope of survival and Sue Harrison, from Northampton, was found to be a perfect match.

The pair had been exchanging letters following the transplant in 2014 and finally had a chance to meet earlier this month.

Mr Holgerson said: 'It was an unbelievable moment to finally meet Sue in person and give her a big hug - she's my hero.

'It's impossible to find the words to sum up what she has done for me and family. 'Thank you' just doesn't seem enough. Put simply, if it wasn't for her I might not be here today.

'I feel lucky to have a donor but I'm even more fortunate to have Sue because she is so lovely. It's been amazing to share our different sides of the story and to show her the impact her donation has had. She feels like part of the family now.'

New York police officer Greg Holgerson with Sue Harrison, after the British woman saved the life of the 9/11 hero by performing a transatlantic stem cell donation

The pair embrace after they finally met this month which the police officer described as 'unbelievable'

Mr Holgerson, 42, had been a police officer for a year-and-a-half before the 2001 attack. He had been off-duty when the attack happened, and was called in to help.

'We watched it on TV and when the second plane hit we knew something really wasn't right and it might be an attack,' he said.

'It was scary - you had the two planes but you didn't know if there were going to be more.

'About 5pm they sent us over to relieve the guys who were there. We saw all the terrible destruction but we had to secure the area and help with the recovery in any way we could.

'Everyone there was covered in dust and debris. It looked like it was snowing, it was just surreal. I was born and raised in New York and it was heartbreaking to see. There were so many innocent lives taken.'

Twelve years later he was diagnosed with blood cancer, which his doctors linked to his work in the aftermath of the attack.

'When I was told it was leukaemia I was devastated. I had two small children and I was only 39 years old. It was all new to me and you think the worst,' he said.

'As someone who was involved in 9/11, I heard there were a lot of people getting sick but it didn't really cross my mind that it might happen to me or why I was sick.

'When I first went into the hospital they knew I was a police officer and they asked me if was I down at the World Trade Center on the day and the following days and they told me about the link between the two. You see more and more people that were down there getting sick - it's not a coincidence.'

Mr Holgerson said: 'It was an unbelievable moment to finally meet Sue in person and give her a big hug - she's my hero'

The police officer said: 'When I was told it was leukaemia I was devastated. I had two small children and I was only 39 years old. It was all new to me and you think the worst'

After undergoing several courses of chemotherapy he went into remission but a year later the cancer returned and he was told his best hope was to find a stem cell donor.

Ms Harrison, 52, signed up to the Anthony Nolan register in the 1980s when she was in her early twenties.

She said: 'I signed up after I met my husband Robert, who lost his mother to leukaemia sadly when there wasn't a register around to help. I just thought why not? It didn't involve too much effort from me and it seemed like a worthwhile thing to do. I put my card in the drawer and just completely forgot about it.

'It was a real shock to hear I was a match so many years later. I was surprised by how few people actually get a match so it was very special.'

Mr Holgerson was diagnosed with leukaemia which doctors believe was brought on by his efforts following the terror attack on the World Trade Center

Strict anonymity rules usually mean that donors do not have the chance to meet recipients for at least two years after a transplant has taken place, the Anthony Nolan blood cancer charity said.

After exchanging letters for two years, the pair finally met this month.

Ms Harrison said: 'It was very emotional to meet Greg, I can't imagine what he's seen and been through, it just seems so unfair that he got his cancer through helping others.
Eurocrats 'obsessed' with the goal of a European superstate forget the people of Europe are not interested in the idea, the EU Council president admitted today.

Donald Tusk said the EU had 'failed to notice' the goals of its officials differed widely from the ambitions of the people in different member states.

Mr Tusk's intervention came hours before Chris Grayling, a leading Vote Leave campaigner and cabinet minister, warned the 'special status' claimed by David Cameron for Britain in the EU would not protect the country from further integration.

Mr Grayling said the Lisbon Treaty, signed by Gordon Brown, was worded so loosely it was open to interpretation and expansion by officials and European judges.

European Council President Donald Tusk, pictured with David Cameron at last week's G7 summit in Japan, has admitted the 'utopian' ideal of an integrated Europe is not shared by many European citizens

The Commons leader warned such expansion had already taken place over benefits policy and at a speech in London warned against it happening again to the NHS and social protection.

Speaking last night in Brussels, Mr Tusk said that today's generation of EU politicians was responsible for creating 'a utopia of Europe without nation states.'

He told a meeting of his EPP Christian Democrat group that 'obsessed with the idea of instant and total integration, we failed to notice that ordinary people, the citizens of Europe do not share our Euro-enthusiasm.'

Instead, movements and ideas turning against the ideals of a more united Europe are becoming ever more popular.

Mr Tusk said perfect European unity and integration might not be the answer.

'The spectre of a breakup is haunting Europe and a vision of a federation doesn't seem to me like the best answer to it,' he said.

'Disillusioned with the great visions of the future, they demand that we cope with the present reality better than we have been doing until now.

'Today, Euroscepticism, or even Euro-pessimism have become an alternative to those illusions.'

As European Council president, Mr Tusk has major powers to drive the debate and he said that he now wants 'an honest and open debate on the subject.'

He is due to convene a meeting of the European Council, including all 28 leaders of the member states, days after Britain's referendum.

Commons leader Chris Grayling today urged voters to make their referendum choice based on what the trading bloc would become not only on its state today

Mr Grayling today warned voters should make their choice based on what the EU would turn into and not just the current situation.

Despite acknowledging Britain had a series of secure 'opt-outs' from EU rules, such as on the euro and borderless travel, he said: 'On everything else we have no opt out. We are subject to every law introduced by the EU and in the eurozone. On banking and financial services.

BOTTOMS UP! PUB CHAIN PRINTS 200,000 BEER MATS TO REMIND DRINKERS TO BACK BREXIT Pub company JD Wetherspoon has printed 200,000 beer mats bearing a hard-hitting message arguing for the UK to leave the European Union. The beer mats will be available in the company's 920 pubs across the UK In the run-up to the June 23 referendum. The message draws attention to governance issues with senior staff at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and asks why UK voters should trust the views of its managing director, Christine Lagarde, who has voiced her support for the Remain group. The beer mat has a message on both sides, which is signed by Wetherspoon founder and chairman Tim Martin, pictured above, a strong believer in leaving the EU. Mr Martin said: 'The Government has paraded a number of financial institutions in front of the public, who have, in my view, grossly distorted our financial prospects in the event of a Brexit. 'Corporate governance at the IMF is clearly out of control and Christine Lagarde would have been obliged to resign at any normal plc or institution until the matters in question were resolved. 'The UK public have been asked to rely on her comments by both George Osborne and David Cameron in the forthcoming referendum and she must now answer the questions on the beer mats and others that the public may have.'

'On business regulation. And on EU social policy, on the so-called social Europe, we have no opt out.

'So we have a new list of EU social policies which will deepen integration across the eurozone.

'But these will be EU laws passed in the normal way.

'There is no other method of doing so right now. And we have no opt-out from them.'

He added: 'The Lisbon treaty itself is a huge part of the problem.It is vaguely worded, and gives both the commission and the European court of justice free rein to expand their brief and take over competences from the member states.

'Its already happened.

'Under the treaty individual countries are supposed to be responsible for social security.

'But the European court decided that the free movement rights of the European citizen were more important, and now the EU controls more and more aspects of our benefit system.

'A treaty we signed in good faith is being rewritten by a court whose president made a speech saying the job of the European commission is to resist Euroscepticism.'

In other campaigning today, Business Secretary Sajid Javid today hit the campaign trail to warn Brexit would hurt thousands of small businesses.

Mr Javid, who has been criticised for appearing to change his mind on the EU, warned it was a 'dangerous' misconception to believe small firms would not be hurt by a vote to leave.

Speaking in Birmingham, Mr Javid said small firms were the 'backbone of our economy' and the livelihoods of millions of workers could be put at risk if the country breaks from Brussels on June 23.

He cited analysis by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) estimating that 8 per cent export to the EU and a further 15 per cent are in the supply chains of other businesses that export to the EU.

Mr Javid said: 'Make no mistake: if we vote to leave the EU, small businesses will be hit hard.

'You may have heard the myth that only massive multinationals want us to stay in the EU; that small businesses want out; that hardly any small firm exports to the EU, so leaving it won't be such a big deal.

'That's just plain wrong.'
The arm will be forensically examined to see if it belongs to one of the men

They failed to return from a fishing trip off Coral Bay in Western Australia

A human arm has been found by police divers during a search for two missing fishermen.

Andy Hinds, 57, and Nigel Kitchen, 50, have been missing since Sunday night after failing to return from a fishing trip off Coral Bay on the northwest coast of Western Australia.

The gruesome discovery was made by Divers on a charter boat who found the arm on the sea floor near Bills Bay, which is near the Coral Bay town.

Nigel Kitchen, 50, (left) and Andy Hinds, 57, (right) have been missing since Sunday after failing to return from a fishing trip

The arm will be forensically examined to see if it belongs to one of the men, say police, and it may take several days for results including whether it was lost in a shark attack.

Earlier on Tuesday, the discovery of numerous items from the missing boat floating on the water raised fears the boat had capsized.

Police believed they had also located part of the hull of the 8.2m fishing boat.

They later confirmed on Tuesday afternoon that the debris was not from the missing vessel.



Mr Kitchen from Port Kennedy and Mr Hinds from Cooloogup were members of a Rockingham fishing club and were on a holiday with friends.

The gruesome discovery was made by Divers on a charter boat who found the arm on the sea floor near Bills Bay (pictured) near the Coral Bay town (stock image)

Police say the arm will be forensically examined to see if it belongs to one of the men and it may take several days for results including whether it was lost in a shark attack

Police, State Emergency Services volunteers and numerous locals have been looking for the two men since they went missing on Sunday, but there is no sign of them

Police, State Emergency Services volunteers and numerous locals have been looking for the two since they went missing on Sunday, but there was still no sign of them.

The West Australian reports that a sea search is concentrating on the Yalobia Passage with a police boat and Volunteer Marine Rescue boats
Five men have proved the power of team effort after they moved a car that was blocking a driveway in St Petersburg.

A video shows the group using sheer strength to haul the vehicle out of the way of a white van that was waiting in the driveway.

By the end of their impressive efforts there was just enough room for the van behind to pass.

The video showed a group of men lifting the car in St Petersburg, Russia

The five men grip the grey vehicle from the sides and the back so the van behind it can pass

The clip starts with the five men holding the vehicle from the sides and back.

With a combined effort they begin lifting it in stops and starts across the road.

The short footage ends with the car moved just far enough for the van to get past.

With a combined effort they begin lifting it in stops and starts across the road

The short footage ends with the car at a 90 degree angle from its original space

It is not the first time people have lifted a car to get out of a tricky situation.

Last year a video captured the incredible moment pedestrians came to the rescue of a stricken cyclist after she ended up pinned to the ground by a car.

CCTV footage showed more than a dozen passers-by muscle in together to lift the white Hyundai off the trapped female after she was ploughed down by a sleepy motorist.

The car could be seen hitting her as she cycled in Liuzhou City in Chinas northern region of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous.

At that point, almost 20 bystanders rushed to the woman's aid.

Together, they clung to each side of the car and eventually lifted it enough to create room for the woman to free herself.

It comes as last year a group of pedestrians rushed to lift a car off a trapped woman in Liuzhou City in China
Her kidneys started failing and her eyes were completely swollen shut.

But a California puppy who was stung by over 150 Africanized honey bees on Friday has managed to survive the attack.

Elli, a seven month old dog from La Habra Heights, was stung in her backyard after a swarm of bees is suspected of escaping from a neighbor's yard.

'There was just hundreds and hundreds of them just swarming around,' Elli's owner, Chad, told CBS Los Angeles.

Lucky to be alive: Elli, a seven month old dog from La Habra Heights, was stung in her backyard after a swarm of bees is suspected of escaping from a bee hive in a neighbors yard

Severe: Elli was bitten so severely that her eyes swelled shut. A vet removed 155 stingers from her

Responsible: The bees are believed to have escaped from this hive in the neighbor's yard. The neighbor is believed to be a bee keeper

Swarm: This bag shows the 155 stingers that were removed from Elli by the vet

Chad added: 'They just keep attacking and attacking, even when I was down the street,' Chad said.

Finally, a neighbor was able to cover himself up well enough that he could get through the swarm to Elli and help her out of danger.

'It was just very sad,' said Chad.

Elli was rushed to the pet hospital, where a vet removed 155 stingers.

'What they said was that her kidneys started to fail, and they stung her -- as you see -- in eyes and her eyes were pretty much swollen shut,' said Chad.

'I'm happy she's alive': Elli's owner Chad described the moment the swarm of bees surrounded his dog

Chad said he did not know his neighbor was a beekeeper. A large bee hive could be seen in the neighbor's yard.

Chad also said it was fortunate there were no children around at the time of the attack.

A local beekeeper told CBS that, given the aggressiveness of the bees, they were likely Africanized honey bees, which are illegal in La Habra Heights.

'I'm happy that she's out [of the hospital] alive,' said Chad.

'She's doing better and doing well. That's all I care about.'
An adorable three-year-old girl who took a stroll with a baby white rhino told her mother she was 'teaching him how to walk next to me'.

The cute video, which was filmed at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in central Kenya, shows the girl get incredibly close to the endangered animal.

During the footage, Ringo the rhino edged towards the child who quickly moved away in surprise before regaining her composure.

She was reassured when the man filming the clip told her that she was safe because Ringo 'can't see' that well.

The youngster can be heard saying in the video: 'Mum, I just teach him how to walk next to me (sic).'

Her comment drew laughs from others who were walking in front of the baby rhino.

The little girl added: 'He was walking towards me - I just saw him.'

The little girl was walked with the baby rhino, called Ringo, at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in central Kenya

A man replied: 'Uh oh.' Before he added: 'It's OK, he can't see real good. I'm walking backwards, so you guys should keep walking.'

Ringo then came just inches from the camera as it continued to walk next the group, who spoke in North American accents.

The Ol Pejeta Conservancy is a 90,000-acre not-for-profit wildlife conservancy in Kenya's Laikipia County.

It is situated on the equator west of Nanyuki, between the foothills of the Aberdares and Mount Kenya and is a three-hour drive from the capital Nairobi.

During the footage Ringo edged towards the delighted youngster who briefly moved away in surprise before being reassured that he couldn't see that well

The three-year-old could be heard in the video clip telling her mother that she was teaching RIngo 'how to walk next to me'

An Ol Pejeta Conservancy spokesman said: 'In Ol Pejeta, children get an incredible chance to meet Ringo the rhino.

'They get up close and personal with him and learn about wildlife and conservation.

'This is the future. Only if we teach our children to respect and appreciate animals will we be able to turn the tide of extinction.
Salvation Army donation bins are being raided after hours by thieves who have been captured on camera stuffing clothes into their luxury sedans.

The charitable organization has released security footage of people pulling up to charity bins across Melbourne and sorting through items left for those in need, according to Channel 7.

A group of men can be seen picking up pieces of clothing and folding the items they like before throwing the rest back on the ground and driving off in a BMW.

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Salvation Army security cameras have captured groups of people  some driving luxury cars (pictured)  pulling up to Salvation Army charity bins across Melbourne and stealing items left for those in need

A woman is seen carrying a large suitcase left at the store as a police car rushes down the street in front of the store (pictured)

Major Paul Hateley said the rampant theft and dumping of rubbish in the charity bins is costing the organization millions of dollars

A woman is also seen carrying a large suitcase left at the store as a police car rushes down the street in front of the store.

'Please don't steal from anybody, but particularly don't steal from the poor, because that's really what they're doing,' Major Paul Hateley with the Salvation Army said.

Major Hateley told Channel 7 that the rampant theft and dumping of rubbish in the charity bins is costing the organization millions of dollars.

'Each year we're spending $6 million dollars nationally on dumping fees whereby people have just left their rubbish.

'Any income we don't get into the store is less income we can put into our programs.'

A man is also seen carrying a large bag he has filled with clothing away from the store in the middle of the night
ISIS has released new images of its oldest fighter - an 81-year-old Chinese grandfather - in a desperate bid to boost morale with the terror group which is on course to lose Fallujah.

Muhammed Amin is said to have once been a member of the minority Muslim Uighur in Xinjiang, an autonomous territory in north west China once known as Turkestan.

But ISIS, currently battling to maintain control of its Iraqi stronghold of Fallujah, claim he left his home country with his family after seeing a video of his jihadi son being killed in Syria.

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ISIS has released new images of its oldest fighter - an 81-year-old Chinese grandfather - in a desperate bid to boost morale with the terror group which is on course to lose Fallujah

Muhammed Amin is said to have once been a member of the minority Muslim Uighur in Xinjiang, an autonomous territory in north west China once known as Turkestan

In new pictures, the ageing extremist can be seen holding a hand gun and posing in front of a camera with another unidentified man.

It comes as ISIS fighters launched a series of desperate counter attacks as Iraqi forces continued to advance on Fallujah.

But more than 75 of the jihadists were killed when the attack was repelled, it emerged today.

Inside the city, panicked extremists were reported to have rounded up about 100 young men while other fighters branding residents 'cowards' for not backing their cause.

The release of pictures of Amin could be seen as being an attempt to boost morale among ISIS ranks.

Last year he featured in a propaganda video released by the extremists in which he said: 'I was subjected to oppression in Turkestan at the hands of the Chinese... for 60 years.'

'I made hijrah (religious journey) accompanied by my four grandsons, my daughter and my wife.'

Filmed holding an AK-47 in some scenes and at the controls of heavy artillery in others, the elderly jihadi, who was dressed in fatigues, said he trained but was not currently fighting.

ISIS, currently battling to maintain control of its Iraqi stronghold of Fallujah, claim Amin left his home country with his family after seeing a video of his jihadi son being killed in Syria.

The release of pictures of Amin could be seen as being an attempt to boost morale among ISIS ranks. He is pictured here in a propaganda video last year

'I came to Islamic State and went to training camp despite my old age,' he added. 'I went to training camp and I crawled, I ran and I rolled.

'I did almost everything and ended training camp well. After receiving a weapon I asked permission to participate in battle, but he didn't give me permission so I am presently in ribat (base).'

The jihadi, who says he was a imam in China, says Muslims face oppression in his home country.

ISIS 'KILLING THEIR OWN WOUNDED FIGHTERS WITH LETHAL INJECTIONS' ISIS extremists are using lethal injections to kill their own wounded fighters, it has been claimed. Up to eight fighters returning injured from the front line in Fallujah have been given toxic injections in the city's hospital, a source told IraqiNews.com. The source said the injection contained a substance that 'causes the heart to stop suddenly'. 'ISIS killed the wounded members due to its inability to deal with the large number of wounded fighters that will have a negative psychological effect on the other fighters,' the source added. Earlier today, a 40-year-old woman reached by NRC inside Fallujah painted a dire picture of conditions. 'The stocks in the hospitals are running low. There is no medicine for ordinary people. The doctor is affiliated with IS and he refuses to help ordinary people,' the aid group quoted her as saying. 'Instead of providing adequate treatment, doctors often simply amputate a patient's arms or legs if they are in pain. There are no anaesthetics left in the hospitals.'

The video, believed to have been filmed in Syria, cuts to scenes inside one of the terror group's schools, where children sit inside a classroom wearing hats bearing the recognisable ISIS logo.

In 2015, Chinese officials claimed Muslims from Xinjiang were travelling to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS - before returning home to take part in plots against the communist rule.

Authorities in the western region said they were planning to strengthen a crackdown on terrorism and extremism in the area, home to the minority Muslim Uighur, some of whom want their own independent state.

China has previously expressed concerns about the rise of ISIS, fearing it will fuel unrest and violence in Xinjiang, where some seek to set up an independent state called East Turkestan.

Filmed holding an AK-47 in some scenes and at the controls of heavy artillery in others, the elderly jihadi, who was dressed in fatigues, said he trained but was not currently fighting

The jihadi, who says he was a imam in China, says Muslims face oppression in his home country

Xinjiang has seen repeated violence, as members of the Muslim Uighur have bristled under what they say is repressive Chinese government rule.

Beijing has previously blamed the violence on Islamic militants with foreign connections who are seeking an independent state in Xinjiang, but has offered little evidence and ignored calls for independent investigations.

Uighur groups say police have used indiscriminate deadly force against people protesting the government's policies in the region.

Attacks blamed on Uighurs have also occurred in other parts of the country, including a car which plowed into Beijing's Tiananmen Gate in 2013, killing five people.

Many of the group, who have traditionally followed a moderate form of Islam, have also begun adopting practices more commonly seen in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan, such as full-face veils for women in the face of the crackdown.
A former Miss Turkey has been convicted of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after posting a satirical poem on her Instagram.

Merve Buyuksarac, 27, was handed a 14-month suspended sentence after an Istanbul court found her guilty of insulting a public official.

Her conviction came amid deepening concerns that the country is swaying toward an increasingly authoritarian form of rule.

Guilty: Former Miss Turkey Merve Buyuksarac (left) was handed a 14-month suspended sentence for 'insulting' President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after posting a satirical poem on her Instagram

Ms Buyuksarac's lawyer, Emre Telci, said he would file a formal objection to the verdict and appeal her case at the Strasbourg, France-based European Court of Justice.

Ms Buyuksarac, who was crowned Miss Turkey in 2006, was briefly detained last year for sharing a satirical poem from the weekly humour magazine Uykusuz on her Instagram account in 2014.

The Master's Poem, which was shared by Buyuksarac, satirically criticises Erdogan through verses adapted from the lyrics of Turkey's national anthem.

Prosecutors deemed it to be insulting to Erdogan, who was still prime minister at the time.

Ms Buyuksarac, who works as an industrial designer and writer, has denied insulting Erdogan.

'Found it funny': Buyuksarac (pictured, right, with a friend) has denied insulting Erdogan with the poem

Anger: Dozens of protesters gathered to vent their fury earlier this year at the Cumhuriyet newspaper in Turkey, which included cartoons and articles from Charlie Hebdo's latest 'survivor' edition

Since becoming president in 2014, Erdogan has filed close to 2,000 defamation cases under a previously seldom-used law that bars insulting the president. Free speech advocates say the law is being used aggressively to silence and intimidate critics.

The trials have targeted journalists, academics and even schoolchildren. Coupled with a crackdown on opposition media and journalists, the trials have sounded alarms over the erosion of rights and freedoms in a country that was once seen as a model of Muslim democracy.

Erdogan caused an uproar last month when, on the basis of an archaic German law that criminalizes insulting foreign heads of state, he went after a German comedian who mocked him in a profanity-packed poem.

'These insult trials are being initiated in series, they are being filed automatically,' Telci told The Associated Press by telephone after the verdict.

'Merve was prosecuted for sharing a posting that did not belong to her. My client has been convicted for words that do not belong to her.'

Thousands of others also posted the poem, which is a satirical adaptation of the Turkish national anthem. It did not mention Erdogan by name, but alluded to a corruption scandal that allegedly involved his family.
Jeffrey Craun Jr., 26, was arrested Sunday night and charged with murder

The Staunton resident died after being shot with a crossbow, officials said

dead in the driveway of a Fishersville home

A Virginia man was arrested Sunday for allegedly killing another man with a crossbow.

Jeffrey A. Craun Jr., was held on a second-degree murder charge for allegedly killing a 26-year-old man in Fishersville, according to jail records and local news reports.

Officials said Zachary A. Porter, a Staunton resident, was found face-down in the driveway of a home on Jericho Road around 10am Sunday.

Jeffrey A. Craun Jr., 26, left, is accused of killing Zachary A. Porter, 26, right, with a crossbow on Sunday

Zachary Porter was described by his friends as loving and funny. He was found dead Sunday in the driveway of a Fishersville, Virginia home

Craun, 26, was arrested later that night and booked into Middle River Regional Jail early Monday morning, jail records show.

He is scheduled for a bond hearing Tuesday afternoon.

Craun's rap sheet includes multiple convictions for hunting without a licence, and a misdemeanor conviction for marijuana possession, the News Leader newspaper reported.

In a stream of condolences left on Porter's Facebook page, his friends described him as loving and funny.

'He was strong, and kind, and loving. He smiled at everyone, even when they didn't deserve it. He loved everyone, even after they screwed up,' one mourner wrote.

'He was such an awesome guy in school and so funny he would always have me rolling in class...he will be missed by many,' a woman who said she was one of Porter's former classmates wrote.
Amber Heard has claimed she never wanted to report her alleged abuse at the hands of Johnny Depp but says she was forced to go to police to stop smears against her.

Heard filed for divorce from Depp earlier this week, alleging she 'lived in fear' of her husband of 15 months and that he had been abusive throughout their marriage.

She claims that after a blazing row earlier this month, she was left with a bruised face after the actor threw an iPhone at her head.

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Amber Heard has hit back at claims by comedian Doug Stanhope that she was manipulative and threatened to blackmail Johnny Depp

Police were called out to the couple's home in LA and it is believed that Heard did not mention being hit by Depp and officers found not evidence of injuries of bruises.

Now in a statement released by her lawyers, they claim that Heard had at first declined to give a statement to the LAPD but was later forced to so she could 'set the record straight'.

A statement from Heard's lead attorney Samantha F Spector and her co-counsel Joseph P Koenig said: 'As the result of Ambers decision to decline giving an initial statement to the LAPD, her silence has been used against her by Johnnys team.

'Amber did not provide a statement to the LAPD in an attempt to protect her privacy and Johnnys career.

'Johnnys team has forced Amber to give a statement to the LAPD to set the record straight as to the true facts, as she cannot continue to leave herself open to the vicious false and malicious allegations that have infected the media.

Heard was seen laughing and hugging a female friend on Saturday as she left the office of her divorce attorney

The actress and her lawyer Samantha Spector appeared at the Superior Court of California County of Los Angeles on Friday, where she filed for a domestic violence restraining order

Stanhope said Depp's 'closest circle' of friends all shared similar views about Heard, but had been too scared to tell him out of fear that he would subsequently push them away

'Amber has suffered through years of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of Johnny.

'In domestic violence cases, it is not unusual for the perpetrator's playbook to include miscasting the victim as the villain.'

The lengthy statement then goes on to explain that Heard is acting no differently to any domestic abuse victim and she can no longer endure 'relentless' attacks on her character.

It adds: 'With her statement Amber hopes to give the LAPD the opportunity to conduct an accurate and complete investigation into the events of that evening and before.

JOHNNY DEPP PARTIES UNTIL 2AM WITH MYSTERY BRUNETTE IN HOTEL BAR Johnny Depp who was spotted partying until 2am with a mystery brunette in a Swedish hotel bar while on tour with his band Johnny Depp partied until 2am with a mystery brunette in a Swedish hotel bar after reports that he will not face prosecution for assaulting his estranged wife Amber Heard. The star looked relaxed as he drank cocktails, laughed with friends and chatted with the stunning female friend at the 8,000-a-night hotel in Stockholm. It came after claims in the US that he will not be prosecuted for allegedly throwing an iPhone at the 30-year-old actress, which prompted her to file for divorce. Depp and his entourage had the bar at the city's Grand Hotel opened specially after closing time, following a sell-out gig with Depp's band The Hollywood Vampires. The 52-year-old star, who has been hiding out in his room for much of the band's European tour so far, emerged from his suite at 1am. Depp and his entourage had the bar at the city's Grand Hotel opened specially after closing time, following a sell-out gig with Depp's band The Hollywood Vampires The bar was closing and other guests were leaving when he arrived, and it was opened just for him and his party. They stayed for an hour, with Depp and the mystery woman, who was joined by two friends, standing close together and talking intimately at the bar. Security around the Alice in Wonderland actor has been ramped up, with eight bodyguards accompanying him as he arrived in the country ahead of the band's performance at Stockholm's Grona Lund amusement park. Security guards were overheard in the hotel lobby saying 'we've got to protect Johnny at all costs', and deciding he should use the same entrance as Justin Timberlake when he visited earlier this month. They then ushered him onto a boat which sped towards the amusement park where the band played to a crowd of 30,000. But a crew member told MailOnline: 'He is always keeping to himself. Ordering room service and never spends time with the band.'

'If that occurs, and the truth is revealed, there is no doubt that Ambers claims will be substantiated beyond any doubt, and hopefully Johnny will get the help that he so desperately needs.

'From the beginning it has been Amber's desire to keep this matter as private as possible, even though LAPD officers responded to a 911 call made by a third-party.

'The LAPD officers viewed not only the disarray that Johnny had caused in the apartment but also the physical injuries to Ambers face.'

The lawyers also dismissed claims that Heard filed for divorce on the day Depp attended the premiere for Alice Through The Looking Glass, and said it was the day after.

Comedian Doug Stanhope has come to the defense of Johnny Depp, claiming Amber Heard had told the actor she was going to leave him and threatened to lie about him publicly 'in any and every duplicitous way' if he did not agree to her terms

Heard (picturd with Stanhope, his girlfriend Bingo and Depp) filed for divorce from the Pirates of Carribean actor earlier this week, alleging she 'lived in fear' of her husband of 15 months and that he had been abusive throughout their marriage

The statement continued: 'We sent a letter to Johnny's counsel team the next morning making it clear we wanted to keep this matter out of the media.

AMBER HEARD: HER STATEMENT IN FULL As the result of Ambers decision to decline giving an initial statement to the LAPD, her silence has been used against her by Johnnys team. Amber did not provide a statement to the LAPD in an attempt to protect her privacy and Johnnys career. Johnnys team has forced Amber to give a statement to the LAPD to set the record straight as to the true facts, as she cannot continue to leave herself open to the vicious false and malicious allegations that have infected the media. Amber has suffered through years of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of Johnny. In domestic violence cases, it is not unusual for the perpetrator's playbook to include miscasting the victim as the villain. In reality, Amber acted no differently than many victims of domestic violence, who think first of the harm that might come to the abuser, rather than the abuse they have already suffered. Amber can no longer endure the relentless attacks and outright lies launched against her character in the Court of Public Opinion since the tragic events of May 21st. With her statement Amber hopes to give the LAPD the opportunity to conduct an accurate and complete investigation into the events of that evening and before. If that occurs, and the truth is revealed, there is no doubt that Ambers claims will be substantiated beyond any doubt, and hopefully Johnny will get the help that he so desperately needs. From the beginning it has been Amber's desire to keep this matter as private as possible, even though LAPD officers responded to a 911 call made by a third-party. The LAPD officers viewed not only the disarray that Johnny had caused in the apartment but also the physical injuries to Ambers face. We filed the Petition for Dissolution of Marriage at the very end of the day on Monday May 23rd and we did not serve Johnny with the Petition at the premiere of Alice Through the Looking Glass that evening. We sent a letter to Johnny's counsel team the next morning making it clear we wanted to keep this matter out of the media. We then held off requesting a domestic violence restraining order as we knew that Johnny was out of the country. We took the high road. Unfortunately, Johnny's team immediately went to the press and began viciously attacking Ambers character. Amber is simply a victim of domestic violence, and none of her actions are motivated by money. Amber is a brave and financially independent woman who is showing the courage of her convictions by doing the right thing against Johnny's relentless army of lawyers and surrogates. The Family Law Court is not going to be influenced by misinformation placed in the social media based on anonymous sources. Amber is the victim. Amber is a hero.

'We then held off requesting a domestic violence restraining order as we knew that Johnny was out of the country.

'We took the high road. Unfortunately, Johnny's team immediately went to the press and began viciously attacking Ambers character.

'Amber is simply a victim of domestic violence, and none of her actions are motivated by money.

'Amber is a brave and financially independent woman who is showing the courage of her convictions by doing the right thing against Johnny's relentless army of lawyers and surrogates.

'The Family Law Court is not going to be influenced by misinformation placed in the social media based on anonymous sources. Amber is the victim. Amber is a hero.'

However, there are claims in the US that Depp will not be prosecuted for allegedly throwing the iPhone at the 30-year-old actress, which prompted her to file for divorce.

According to officers called to the couples L.A. home, Heard didnt mention being hit by the actor and they found no evidence of any injuries or bruises.

We dont know how she obtained that, said an L.A. Police Department source quoted on website TMZ, referring to a bruise on Heards face that she claimed was caused by Depp hitting her with his phone.

There was no evidence of any crime.

Meanwhile, the statement comes just hours after her lawyers also dismissed claims by comedian Doug Stanhope that she was manipulating and threatening to blackmail Depp calling them 'unequivocally false'.

Stanhope leapt to the defence of Depp, claiming Heard had told the actor she was going to leave him and threatened to lie about him publicly 'in any and every duplicitous way' if he did not agree to her terms.

Stanhope said he was inspired to speak out after watching Depp get 'murdered' on social media after pictures of Heard with a bruise on her face, that she alleged was caused by Depp, appeared online and her allegations became international headlines.

But now Heard has issued a statement through her lawyer Peter Sample, hitting back at Stanhope and accusing him of 'muckracking'.

Mr Sample told The Wrap: 'The allegations against Ms Heard are absolutely and unequivocally false.'

The statement also said that the claim of blackmail 'has no basis in reality and is nothing but the typical celebrity muckracking for profit.'

He also called Stanhope's claims defamatory and outrageous.

The statement was issued after the comedian said the minute he heard the actress' allegations against Deep he 'knew it was bulls***t', he wrote in a guest column for The Wrap .

Stanhope said that he and his girlfriend Bingo were at Depp's house just before the alleged assault happened, and immediately noticed his sullen mood.

The couple had assumed it was because the actor's mother had passed away the day before, but said Depp revealed he was also concerned about Heard.

'He opened up in the most vulnerable of ways,' wrote Stanhope. 'That Amber was now going to leave him, threatening to lie about him publicly in any and every duplicitous way if he didn't agree to her terms.'

'Blackmail is what I would imagine other people might put it, including the manner in which he is now being vilified.'

Stanhope said it was at that moment that the couple decided to come clean to their friend about the suspicions they had long held about his wife, who the comedian dubbed a 'manipulative a*****e'.

'We'd watched it build like this before they were married,' Stanhope wrote. 'We'd watched her manipulate and f**k with him for years.'

'We have watched Amber Heard f*** with him at his weakest,' Stanhope wrote. 'Or watched him at his weakest from being f****d with for the entire time we've known him.'

Photographs of the bruising on Heard's face, which she claims was inflicted by Depp, were presented to Los Angeles Superior Court

Heard was crying as she left a courthouse in downtown Los Angeles on Friday following a morning hearing for a restraining order petition against estranged husband Johnny Depp

Heard's face was bruised during her entry into a divorce court Friday. She says Depp caused the injury when he threw an iPhone into her face during the May 21 incident

Stanhope said Depp's 'closest circle' of friends all shared similar views, but had been too scared to tell him out of fear that he would subsequently push them away.

'We didn't want to be thrown out of the circle for saying The Emperor was being Stripped of His Clothes,' Stanhope said.

The comedian said he almost expected Depp to ask him to leave his home on Saturday after he finally shared his true thoughts.

'But I wasn't seeing Johnny Depp,' Stanhope wrote. 'I saw a naked Emperor. And we told him to get dressed.'

Other friends of Depp's also came clean that day, Stanhope said, and the actor was 'dumbstruck' but thanked them for their honesty.

'He still pronounced his love for Amber,' Stanhope wrote. 'But was presciently aware that she was going to pull off some kind of ruse to f*** him over.'

That night the police would arrive at Depp's home for a domestic dispute. The next day it was all over the news.

Depp, pictured here in Lisbon, where he was touring with band Hollywood Vampires Friday, lost his mother on May 20. Heard had been comforting him on May 21 when he turned nasty, she said

Close family: Lily-Rose's defense for her father came after her mother Vanessa also defended him. Pictured: A recent Instagram photo of Johnny Depp and Lily-Rose (left). Vanessa and Johnny in 2005, then still married

'Everything Johnny had told us that she'd been threatening had actually come to be,' Stanhope wrote. 'It blew up in the news, raced through the internet like a plague and blew up on Twitter. People are swarming with torches on social media.'

Stanhope said he had initially been weary of publicly defending his friend, scared people would accuse him of trying to gain more fame by attaching his name to the scandal of the day.

'[But] I realized not saying s**t to defend him is a far worse crime of ego,' Stanhope said. 'To leave a friend hanging so you don't look like a suck-up.'

Stanhope said he is not an apologist but a witness to the fact that Depp 'got used, manipulated, set up and made to look like an a*****e'.

Heard was seen on Saturday emerging for her legal team's office after a four-hour meeting in Los Angeles.

In court documents, Heard details Depp's alleged violence during their 15-month marriage, saying she worried that he could return to the LA condominium they shared to 'terrorize me physically and emotionally.'

The actress and her lawyer, Samantha Spector, appeared at the Superior Court of California County of Los Angeles on Friday, where she filed for a domestic violence restraining order.

Defiant: Lily-Rose Depp posted this throwback photo of her father to defend him against abuse claims. She also wrote a touching testimony, calling him a 'wonderful father' and 'the sweetest most loving person I know'

Depp was not in court for the filing. Instead, the star was playing with his band, the Hollywood Vampires, at the Rock in Rio Lisboa festival.

The first incident she documents in the court files is said to have occurred on her 30th birthday, on April 21 this year, after Depp turned up late to the gathering at their Broadway home 'inebriated and high'.

A representative for Depp said in a statement on Thursday; 'Given the brevity of this marriage and the most recent and tragic loss of his mother, Johnny will not respond to any of the salacious false stories, gossip, misinformation and lies about his personal life.
What came first, the Chicken or the Two Egg? The answer is the Alaska town of Chicken came before the Florida town of Two Egg, by about 30 or so years.

They are among the country's long list of odd-named places. In Pennsylvania you'll find Intercourse, Virginville and Blue Ball. In Louisiana, if you've had too much of Moonshine, you can always visit Cut Off.

The list goes on: Weed in California, Uncertain in Texas, Eek in Alaska and Butts County, Georgia.

Some names, like Santa Claus, Indiana, have created a major tourist industry.

Others, like Two Egg, are dots on the map that get the occasional visitor curious about the name, but offer little besides a road sign - and even the sign regularly went missing until it was riveted in place.

'It used to be one of the most stolen signs in the state of Florida,' said Marcus Pender, whose grandfather owned a gas station and general store where trading eggs for goods led to the town name. 'I even got a couple myself in the day.'

But what is the background to a few of the peculiarly named places in the United States?

What's in a name? The name of Blue Ball originates from a hotel, built more than two hundred years ago. Intercourse, Pennsylvania is in the heart of the Amish Country and is named after two major roads that crossed

TWO EGG, FLORIDA

Located about 70 miles northwest of Florida's capital, Tallahassee, Two Egg is a small farming community where people used to trade eggs for goods at the general store.

A sign welcomes motorists to the town of Two Egg, Florida. Located about 70 miles northwest of Tallahasee, Two Egg is a small farming community where people used to trade eggs for goods

'People would come in and trade two eggs for meat and cheese,' said Pender.

The store is no longer open, but people can still buy Two Egg cane syrup at a farm down the road.

CHICKEN, ALASKA

Doug Devore runs a website devoted to this small mining town near the Canadian border.

He says in 1902, locals planned to call the town Ptarmigan after a chicken-like bird they often ate. But they worried people would spell ptarmigan wrong, so they named it Chicken instead.

Goldrush town: Worried people would be unable to spell the name of the local grouse that lives in the area, the locals settled on Chicken instead

Most visitors stop here on tour buses headed elsewhere, but some people make a special trip.

'There are some people who are just obsessed with weird town names,' Devore said.

One of the few remaining gold-rush towns in Alaska, Chicken has no phone service, no electricity and its population fluctuates between 17 and 37.

SANTA CLAUS, INDIANA

Melissa Brockman, executive director of the Spencer County Visitors Bureau, says Santa Claus was supposed to be named Santa Fe, but another Indiana town already had that name.

The story goes that in the 1850s, families gathered to come up another name on a snowy Christmas Eve. Sleigh bells were heard outside and children shouted, 'Santa Claus!' And so the town was named.

A Santa Claus figure stands in front of the Post Office in Santa Claus, Indiana. The name of the town created a major tourist industry

Santa Claus has fewer than 2,500 people and no fully operating traffic signal, but 1 million people visit each summer and hundreds of thousands of requests arrive in December from people who want their Christmas cards postmarked 'Santa Claus.'

UNCERTAIN, TEXAS

Stories vary about how this Louisiana border town got its name, says Randie Canup, owner of the Hoot 'n Holler guest cottage.

One is that when the city applied for incorporation, it hadn't picked a name, so 'uncertain' was written on the form and it stuck.

But Canup thinks the true story dates to the 1800s, when a steamship delivered goods to Caddo Lake ports.

Location, location, location: Shipping labels that peeled off ended up giving the town a name to be sure of

Shipping labels often peeled off in the humidity, and those boxes were marked 'uncertain' and left at the final stop  which became known as Uncertain.

With a population of about 100, tourists far outnumber residents. Cell phone coverage and Internet access are spotty but there's fishing, birding and scenery.

'When people come here, some of what they do is nothing. They just want the quiet,' Canup said.

BUTTS COUNTY, GEORGIA

The town is named after Capt. Samuel Butts, who died in 1814 during the Creek War.

A radio station owner tired of people cracking jokes about the county suggested a name change at some point but local business owner Henry Kitchen started a 'Save Our Butts' campaign with T-shirts and bumper stickers.

A water tower is seen in Butts County, Georgia. Named for Capt. Samuel Butts, who died in 1814 during the Creek War, residents at one point suggested a name change. But a local business owner started a 'Save Our Butts ' campaign and saved the name

With the name now safe, a popular bumper sticker reads 'Keep Our Butts Clean'. The water tower in Butts County welcoming visitors driving in from I-75 proclaims 'Welcome to beautiful Butts County.'

WEED, CALIFORNIA

Abner Weed ran a lumber mill at the base of Mount Shasta in 1897, which is where the city's name came from.

That doesn't make it immune to marijuana jokes - there are tons of 'I Love Weed' souvenirs to be found around town.

Not what you think: The town of Weed gets its name from the founder of the local lumber mill and pioneer Abner Weed, who discovered that the area's strong winds were helpful in drying lumber

Even the local brewery, Mt. Shasta Brewing Company, plays it up - and got in trouble when the federal government objected to bottle caps that read: 'A Friend in Weed is a Friend Indeed. Try LEGAL Weed.'

LOVELADIES, NEW JERSEY

When the U.S. Life Saving Stations were established on Long Beach Island back in the 1870's, they were usually given names, and there was a great deal of discussion on what to name Station Number 114.

It was finally named after an island in the bay owned by Thomas Lovelady, a hunter and sportsman.

The small community has had several other names through the years.

The town in New Jersey is named after an island in the bay owned by Thomas Lovelady, a hunter and sportsman

The railroad stop had been called Club House, and around the time of World War II it acquired the name of Long Beach Park.

Then in 1952, the area officially became Loveladies, keeping the name originally given to the site.

TIGHTWAD, MISSOURI

The tiny hamlet of Tightwad has a population of 64. The small town southeast of Kansas City was named after the postmaster was cheated in a watermelon deal at the local store in the early 1990s.

Simply out of spite, he took advantage of his privilege as town postmaster and renamed the town Tightwad.

Very tight lender: The town of Tightwad, Missouri, famous for Tightwad Bank

Retaining that moniker to this day, the major attraction in the town is the humorously named Tightwad Bank, which is Federally insured and ironically classified as 'well capitalized'.

NO NAME, COLORADO

If parsimonious town names don't do it for you then why not take a stroll through No Name, Colorado, if you can find it.

Sandwiched conveniently between No Name Canyon and No Name Creek, the town with no name began after the major Interstate 70 was built.

An official with the Department of Transportation noticed that the area did not carry a sobriquet on the map and wrote 'No Name' for Exit 119.

No Name nowhere: Stuck between No Name Canyon and No Name Creek the residents of No Name are proud of their town's history

Inspiring the local community with its absurdity the name stuck and when later the residents were offered the opportunity to change to a more traditional designation the community chose to remain nameless.

ELEPHANT BUTTE, NEW MEXICO

The plight of a nameless town in Colorado is brought into perspective when one is faced with a fork in the road that offers Truth or Consequences as one destination and Elephant Butte as the other.

Seemingly caught between a double dare or a herd of escaped circus performers you would be forgiven for scratching your head.

Elephant Butte: One of New Mexico's top tourist destinations is at the other end of the highway from Truth or Consequences

In fact the name Elephant Butte refers to a volcanic cone that slightly resembles the animal's silhouette in the middle of a reservoir that is a favorite vacation spot in the state of New Mexico.

RABBIT HASH, KENTUCKY

Named following an 1847 flood that washed everything in the town bar the prolific rabbit population away, the rebuilding residents had to dine on the floppy eared survivors for years afterwards.

So much so that they named their town after what had become their staple meal - Rabbit Hash.

Staple diet: Named following a flood in the 1800's the rabbit hash was all you could eat in the town for years

NIMROD, OREGON

For sheer silliness the town of Nimrod, Oregon has it covered.

Named after a mighty biblical hunter, the town welcomes thousands of tourists each year looking to have their picture taken under the welcome sign.

After many attempts to steal it, Nimrodians have now taken to having their sign bolted down.
A nurse complimented a colleague on her 'lovely tits' and said she wanted to kiss her nipples, a tribunal heard today.

Lois Henry also told a colleague 'you like my black a*** don't you' and thrust herself between his legs at Green Park Care Home in Warrington, the Nursing and Midwifery Council heard.

She is also accused of lacing another employee's cup of tea with vinegar and laxatives.

Zeena Begum, for the NMC, told the tribunal how Henry made a series of remarks about her colleague's breasts at the Brampton Lodge Nursing Home last October 3.

Nurse Lois Henry (pictured) complimented a colleague on her 'lovely tits' and said she wanted to kiss her nipples, a tribunal heard today

Henry allegedly greeted the woman with 'hello big tits' before telling her she thought her breasts were 'lovely', then made kissing noises as she said she would like to kiss them.

'This was an ongoing theme that made the colleague feel uncomfortable,' said Ms Begum.

Ms Begum told the hearing how Henry poured lactulose and vinegar into a colleague's cup of tea at the Green Park Care Home in January 2014.

'A member of staff has seen Henry go to a cabinet in the kitchen area and pick up vinegar.

'They are not sure if the vinegar was put in the tea but they have seen the lactulose.

'The lactulose was taken out by the registrant and poured into a cup of tea.'

Later the same day Henry walked into the staff area where other colleagues were sat chatting and asked why she wasn't part of the 'cosiness', it was said.

When no one replied she said: 'You're just like that Irish w***** and that little dwarf,' the hearing was told.

A female colleague told her to keep her opinions to herself and Henry allegedly said: 'Shut up you ugly robbing scouse c***.'

also told a colleague 'you like my black a*** don't you' and thrust herself between his legs at Green Park Care Home in Warrington, the Nursing and Midwifery Council heard

When a male colleague objected to her behaviour she grabbed both of his ankles, opened his legs and 'thrust' her body between them, the hearing was told.

Henry allegedly said: 'You like my black a*** don't you' and 'you don't love me do you, tell me that you love me.'

'She then threw herself onto his lap and refused to get off,' said Ms Begum.

Henry stopped when a resident with Alzheimer's told her that her language was inappropriate, the panel heard.

Henry, who is present at the hearing in Stratford, east London, is charged with putting vinegar and laxatives in a cup of tea, acting in a physically and sexually inappropriate manner, using inappropriate language in front of residents and using racist/offensive language.

She admits to making kissing noises at a colleague but denies all other charges.
See more of the latest North Korea news at www.dailymail.co.uk/northkorea

A British teenager has hacked North Korea's version of Facebook just days after it was launched.

Andrew McKean, 18, from Scotland, gained access to the site by correctly guessing the login and password were set to 'admin' and 'password'.

The college student was then able to take control of the page and promptly changed the advertising boxes so they read: 'Uh, I didn't create this site just found the login.'

'Was easy enough': A British teenager has hacked North Korea's newly created account on Facebook clone phpDolphin (above) after correctly guessing that the login and password were set to 'admin' and 'password'

He said he also had the ability to delete and suspend users, change the site's name, censor certain words and see everyone's e-mails.

The teenager could also see that the site, which was hosted in North Korea, had been called 'Best Korea's Social Network.'

He considered re-directing the page to anti-North Korean website but didn't go through with it, he told Motherboard.

The revelation will be hugely embarrassing for the hermit nation which fiercely tries to control information and manipulate its image on the world stage.

Mr McKean said he tried his luck on the site after reading an article on the Motherboard website last week about the newly created account on Facebook clone phpDolphin.

Leak: The hack will be hugely embarrassing for North Korea and its leader Kim Jong Un (pictured) who fiercely tries to control information and manipulate the hermit nation's image on the world stage

He noticed that the default credentials for an administrator were 'admin' and 'password' so he tried those on the North Korean site.

He said: '[It] was easy enough. I don't know why, but I just wanted to check if it worked.

'After all, this Facebook clone site was new and not much had been done to it.'

The website was offline on Wednesday.

It comes as North Korea suffered another humiliating failure in its attempts to fire a ballistic missile after its latest weapon apparently exploded on the launch and injured several personnel.

South Korea's defence ministry detected the dawn launch effort which Japan condemned as an unacceptable and 'provocative' act.

The ministry declined to speculate on the missile type.
Dishonest: Zoe Phoenix, 41, pictured at Manchester Crown Court, claimed handouts for nine years based on her being an unemployed single mother

A benefits cheat mother-of-four who swindled taxpayers out of 140,000 has avoided jail and will be allowed to pay it back over 27 years.

Zoe Phoenix, 41, claimed handouts for nine years based on her being an unemployed single mother - but she failed to declare that her partner Peter Sims, 50, had moved in with her.

The beautician from Manchester, who has four children aged ten, 16, 20 and 23, was fraudulently claiming housing benefit and income support as well housing tax support.

She fraudulently claimed 144,364.69 from 2005 to 2014, but walked free from court with a 12-month suspended sentence and a requirement to do 200 hours of unpaid work.

Phoenix admitted three counts of dishonestly failing to notify of a change in circumstance but she said she was now working as a beautician and was paying back around 100 a week.

She was overpaid so much that it will take her more than 27 years to pay it back at her current rate - without counting any potential interest.

An investigation found that her partner Mr Sims had been seen taking the children to school, carrying groceries into the house and a car registered in his name was outside regularly.

Her social media accounts contained dozens of photographs of her enjoying the high life on nights out and posing in revealing dresses.

Richard Littler, prosecuting, told Manchester Crown Court: Zoe Phoenix claimed benefits as a single parent from March 16, 2000 to 2014.

'She claimed for four, three and two dependent children and made the claim on the basis that she was single and had no other income apart from child benefits and tax credits.

The money was transferred into a bank account. She was sent letters reminding her to notify of any change of circumstances. She had lived with her partner, Peter Sims, from at least July 2005 until the case was closed in July 2014.

On January 14, 2008 and January 23, 2009 visits were made to her address to check her circumstances were unchanged and she remained an unemployed single parent. By her own admissions she was already living with her partner but didnt declare this at the time.

Beautifican: Phoenix (pictured) fraudulently claimed 144,364.69 from 2005 to 2014, but walked free from court with a 12-month suspended sentence and a requirement to do 200 hours of unpaid work

In July 2014 she was asked whether she understood the roles and factors that might affect them (benefits) and she demonstrated a clear understanding.

She admitted that Peter Sims had lived with her since July 2005, the date shown on Mr Sims bank details. Her son was born later that year, the second child of a relationship with Peter Sims.

A period of surveillance was carried out in 2013 and during that period he was seen to enter and leave on at least 49 occasions, driving the children to school and carrying groceries into the house so it would appear that he was clearly a resident at that address.

Two vehicles were also routinely parked outside, one which was registered to Mr Sims.

The court heard Phoenix was not fraudulently receiving the money from the outset of her claiming history because when she first begun receiving state handouts, she was doing so legitimately.

Alex Langhorn, defending, said Mr Sims was living at the house but not financially contributing. He added: The reality of the situation is that this is a woman who, having claimed benefits, buried her head in the sand and thought this was the way to deal with things.

Online profile: Phoenix's social media accounts contained dozens of photographs of her enjoying the high life on nights out and posing in revealing dresses

She has four children who are ten, 16, 20 and 23. They were far younger when this started. When Mr Sims would come and go he would not provide anything for them.

He was present in the physical sense. He occasionally helped out with the utilities but that was the extent. This is a lack of consequential thinking rather than an attempt to defraud the state.'

Its the people that do this that give the people that need benefits a bad name Judge Andrew Jefferies QC

Mr Sims said she had expected an immediate jail term and that her mother, father and eldest daughter were going to have supported her younger children should this have happened.

Sentencing her, Judge Andrew Jefferies QC, said: Youre now 41 years of age and a woman of good character who for the last ten years has been receiving income support, council tax and housing benefits. Your circumstances changed and you didnt notify the relevant authorities. Its the people that do this that give the people that need benefits a bad name.
told inquest he had no experience in hostage situations

Primary negotiator 'Peter' said he felt let down by police during the inquest

Images of the makeshift Lindt Cafe siege negotiation room shows the tiny space with just one phone used to negotiate with the gunman.

The pictures, obtained by 7 News, show the phone the hostages struggled to call, a police report of the gunman Man Haron Monis and a surrender plan written on a business card.

The plan reads: 'Turn left go down the hill - will be met by uniform police.'

The primary negotiator who sat in the cramped quarters at the New South Wales Leagues Club during the siege revealed in the inquest that he felt let down by police.

Images of the makeshift Lindt Cafe siege negotiation room shows the tiny space with just one phone used to negotiate with the gunman

Identified only as 'Peter', the senior sergeant told the inquest that he had just five hours sleep after a busy shift before returning to work at 7am on the day of the siege.

He spoke directly with hostages who were conveying Monis' demands. These demands were then passed on to senior commanders.

'Peter' said that police had failed to pass along information that may have been important in gaining leverage with the gunman.

He referred to once instance where he never heard back from commanders about Monis' demand to switch off some Christmas lights in Martin Place.

The negotiation team also was never told about Monis' demand to have the ABC broadcast that Australia was under attack by Islamic State.

They only realised after a Facebook post from one of the hostages was read out on radio station 2GB.

Pictures show that police report on gunman Man Haron Monis who was killed when police stormed the cafe

Pictured is the 'surrender plan' that police had in mind for Man Monis which was written on a business card

The primary negotiator worked in cramped quarters at the New South Wales Leagues Club (pictured) during the siege

Hostages are pictured running from the Lindt cafe during the siege in December 2014. The lead negotiator has revealed to an inquest he had no previous hostage situation or counter-terrorism experience

The senior sergeant told the inquest on the 2014 siege that he is 'not real good with technology', after being asked about missing recordings of conversations between negotiators and hostages

The primary police negotiator had previously told the inquest that he never before worked in a hostage situation.

He revealed that he had no counter-terrorism experience, other than role playing with colleagues.

The senior sergeant, had undertaken four weeks of formal training as a negotiator in 2004 and two subsequent weeks in 2005 and 2006.

He told the inquest on the 2014 siege that he is 'not real good with technology', after being asked about missing recordings of conversations between negotiators and hostages, made in the early hours of the deadly event.

Images of the makeshift Lindt Cafe siege negotiation room shows the tiny space with just one phone used to negotiate with the gunman Man Haron Monis (pictured)

The recordings, which have never been found, cover a period up until 1.16pm on the day of the siege, during which the negotiation team worked from a 4WD, before moving to the cramped office at the nearby NSW Leagues Club.

The officer said he had not used a dictaphone before the siege, and could not remember what it looked like or what type it was. He later handed two dictaphones to a colleague.

'I'll let you know, I'm not real good with technology,' he said.

Police ultimately stormed the cafe shortly after 2am on December 16, 2014 after Monis shot cafe manager Tori Johnson in the back of the head.

Hostages Katrina Dawson and Monis were killed when police stormed the cafe.

The inquest continues.
A former stripper has been charged with the cold case murder of her fiance who mysteriously disappeared from his home more than a decade ago.

George Templeton, 38, was last seen leaving the house he shared with his fiancee Robyn Lindholm, 32, and his teenage son in north suburban Reservoir, north of Melbourne, in May 2005.

The father of five, who was in a six-year relationship with Lindholm when he went missing, has not been seen since.

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George Templeton, 38, (right) was last seen in 2005 leaving the house he shared with his fiancee Robyn Lindholm (left) who has been charged with his murder

The former stripper has been charged with the murder of her fiance who disappeared more than a decade ago

On Tuesday, homicide squad detectives charged a 43-year-old Ravenhall woman over the death of Templeton. She is expected to face the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Friday.

In 2005, police conceded he may have not wanted to be found but held grave concerns because he had not used his mobile phone or bank accounts and had been looking forward to a prepaid Queensland holiday with his fiancee.

Lindholm, who was out visiting a friend when Templeton left, allegedly received a text message from him about 2.40am the next day but was not able to contact her partner.

She claims the couple had dinner with a friend at home the night before Templeton left and he appeared happy. He was not seen again.

At the time of his disappearance, Lindholm made an emotional plea for information to help find Templeton, who had a criminal record.

Last year, Lindholm pleaded guilty for arranging her lover to murder another ex-fiance in December 2013

The body of Wayne Amey (left) was found in 2013 and George Templeton (right) has not been seen since

Last year, Lindholm pleaded guilty for arranging the murder of her ex-fiance Wayne Amey, 54, whose beaten and stabbed body was found in central Victoria in December 2013.

Mr Amey, a gym owner, and Lindholm met at a business lunch in 2003 where Lindholm was working as a stripper.

Their friendship developed into a romance and he proposed but in 2011, the relationship had turned sour and the following year Mr Amey took an intervention order out against Lindholm.

She then arranged for her new lover Torsten Trabert to kill Mr Amey after their engagement ended in 2012
The only surviving brother of three British fighters who joined the revolution in Syria says he hopes his dead siblings have attained martyrdom and are in paradise.

Amer Deghayes, 22, is the oldest of three brothers from Brighton who fought for the al-Qaeda linked group Jabhat Al Nusra.

Amer left his hometown in 2013 and was joined by Abdullah, 18, and Jaffar, 17, the following year.

But both were killed just a few months after their arrival - Abdullah by a sniper in Lakatia in April 2014 while Jaffar died fighting six months later.

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Soldier: Amer Deghayes (left), 22, who left Brighton to join the revolution in Syria spoke to American journalist Bilal Abdul Kareem (right) in an interview in which he said he hoped his dead brothers have attained matyrdom

Brothers: Amer Deghayes (centre) was the first of his family to leave for Syria, telling his parents he wanted to be an aid worker. Brother Abdullah (front left) and Jaffar (front right) followed soon after but were both killed in the fighting

During a 40-minute live interview posted on Facebook the American journalist Bilal Abdul Kareem asked Amer whether he regretted the deaths of his brothers.

'You spent your entire life with your brothers, you loved them,' he said.

'Do think it was it worth it that they should come? Knowing what you know now what would you have done things differently?

Amer, who is believed to fighting with jihadists near Aleppo in northern Syria, said: 'If their intentions were right then what they received, and what they will receive, is worth more than they had before and is worth more than what they have provided.'

There is greatness of a martyr, someone who kills themselves or sacrifices themselves in the path of Allah. Briton Amer Deghayes, 22

He explained that the believed if his brothers 'were killed in the path of Allah' then they both will have 'found paradise', adding: 'There is greatness of a martyr, someone who kills themselves or sacrifices themselves in the path of Allah.'

All three brothers are nephews of Omar Deghayes, the former Guantanamo prisoner, who lost an eye during his captivity at the US naval base in Cuba.

Amer denied that his uncle's treatment at the hands of the Americans and Britain had affected his decision to travel to Syria.

He told Kareem: 'The effect it had on me made me more aware that the war on terror is really a war on Islam. It made we look more into the Western governments' attitudes towards Muslims and the mujahideen [jihadists].

'But I don't see the relationship between him being in Guantanamo and tortured and what is happening in Syria.'

Belief: Amer (pictured) is believed to be fighting with jihadists near Aleppo, in northern Syria, in an effort to topple the regime of President Bashar al-Assad

Leaving: Jaffar Deghayes was spotted leaving Gatwick Airport for Syria with three other men from the Portsmouth area

Youngsters: The three Deghayes brothers when they were children. Amer's two younger brothers both followed him to Syria to join the revolution but were killed in the fighting

Amer said that he now regards Syria as home and that he didn't want to return to the UK.

'The worst nightmare, which I have had few times, is where I am home [in the UK] and not able to have this honour to come here [to fight jihad].'

While he acknowledged that he had been trained to fight by Jabhat al Nusra he no longer regarded himself as aligned to the al-Qaeda terror group.

'I'm not fighting for any particular group, I'm fighting for justice and the people of sham [Syria]'.

He emphasised that his goal was the toppling of the Assad regime which was being propped up by Russian military support.

According to Amer the recent advancements made by the regime forces in the north of the country had been halted by the mujahideen.

Heartbreak: The brothers' father, Abubaker, left Brighton to follow his sons to Syria in an effort to bring Amer back to the UK, after the two youngest were killed

Killed: Amer explained that the believed if his brothers Abdullah (left) and Jaffar (right) 'were killed in the path of Allah' then they both will have 'found paradise'

Family: All three brothers are nephews of Omar Deghayes (pictured), the former Guantanamo prisoner, who lost an eye during his captivity at the US naval base in Cuba

Loss: Both of Amer's younger brothers were killed in the fighting in Syria, after they left Brighton to help topple the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Pictured, Amani Deghayes (left) and Zohra Zewawi, the sister and mother of Omar Deghayes

'The spirits are high. Ever since the entrance of Russia there was big test on the mujahideen. A large effort with the help of Russia.

'They did advance a little bit but what that caused is that it spread them more thin...and right now the mujahideen moved them back close to where they moved to before. And soon it will be the advancement of the mujahideen.'
More than 150 travellers with horses and caravans took over the steps of a crown court in protest today as a gang were jailed for kidnapping two men and keeping them as slaves.

Holding up placards and banners, the protesters were demanding the release of release of Patrick Joseph Connors, 59, his son Patrick Dean Connors, 39, nephew William Connors, 36 and son-in-law Lee Carbis, 34.

The gang was convicted of kidnapping Michael Hughes, 46, and another man, 'Mr K', and forcing them to perform forced or compulsory labour last week, and were today jailed for a total of 27 years when they appeared at Cardiff Crown Court.

More than 150 travellers with horses and caravans took over the steps of a crown court in protest today as a gang were jailed for kidnapping two men and keeping them as slaves

The protesters were demanding the release of release of Patrick Joseph Connors, 59, (left) his son Patrick Dean Connors, 39, (right) and two other men

Patrick Joseph Connors's nephew William Connors, 36, and son-in-law Lee Carbis, 34

But the protesters - who plastered 'not guilty' posters up around Cardiff and wore specially-made t-shirts, compared treatment of the family to that of Nelson Mandela.

They sang and chanted, while children rode on horses and in carts, and protest songs blared from a speaker system set up on the steps.

Patrick Joseph Connors' sister Eileen Cassidy, 53, said: 'This is not just for travelling people but for everyone that needs justice.

The protesters - who plastered 'not guilty' posters up around Cardiff and wore specially-made t-shirts, compared treatment of the family to that of Nelson Mandela

They sang and chanted, while children led around horses and in carts, and protest songs blared from a speaker system set up on the steps

Despite the protests, the gang was jailed for a total of 27 years when they appeared at Cardiff Crown Court

'Like Nelson Mandela was done wrong. They saw him right in the end. God rest his soul, it was a bit late but he still got justice in the end as well.

'We'll never give up. Our lawyers are in shock, they cannot believe this has happened.

'We want to appeal but most of all we want an acquittal. At the end of the day that is what I think should happen to my brother, nephews and nephew-in-law.'

The trial, which took place at Cardiff Crown Court, was told Patrick Joseph Connors headed the violent family who forced the two homeless men to live and work in 'atrocious conditions' for up to 26 years, paying them as little as 10 a day.

The demonstrators said they wanted the men, who were convicted last week, to be aquitted

Protesters on the steps of Cardiff Crown Court today as they demanded the men be freed

Connors - along with sons Patrick Dean Connors and William Connors - made the men sleep in sheds and caravans without heating or running water.

A court heard the two victims were put to work as labourers for tarmacking and general building - and threatened with violence if they tried to escape.

Victim Mr Hughes was allegedly just 19 when he was taken in by the Connors gang before being made their slave - and was only freed after 26 years a slave.

He was kept along with the other man who can only be identified as 41-year-old 'Mr K'.

Many of the demonstrators wore t-shirts with the men's faces on them, and held up banners and placards

The protesters on the steps of Cardiff Crown Court today as the men were jailed

The pair managed to escape the Connors' gang once each - but were quickly hunted down and beaten as punishment at the family property in Cardiff, South Wales.

Patrick Joseph Connors, Patrick Dean Connors and William Connors, all of Rumney, Cardiff, were all found guilty of forcing Michael Hughes and 'Mr K' to undergo forced labour.

Both Patrick Dean Connors and Carbis, from Trowbridge, Cardiff, were found guilty of one charge of kidnap, but Carbis was cleared of the forced labour charges.

Patrick Joseph Connors was also found guilty of eight charges of actual bodily harm and four of conspiracy to kidnap. He was jailed for 14 years.

Patrick D Connors was sentenced to 6 and a half years, William Connors jailed for 4 years and Carbis for 2 and a half years.

Demonstrators ride past the court building in a horse and cart, waving a placard
A 25-year-old nurse managed to survive a shocking fall while hiking by herself in Arizona after being trapped at the foot of a cliff - injured and unable to move - for 28 hours.

Amber Kohnhorst, from Rochester, Minnesota, was driving to a commitment in Utah when she stopped at a bed and breakfast in Cane Beds and left for the Rose Cliffs trail around 4:30 p.m. on Friday, May 20.

Kohnhorst, an experienced hiker, chose a 'simple' trail as a quick sunset hike before planning to call it an early night, however she soon lost her way and didn't know how to get back down the steep summit she had ascended.

Survivor: Amber Kohnhorst, an experienced hiker, lost her footing trying to get down a cliff in Arizona on May 20 and fell 100 feet onto a ledge. She took this photo of herself while waiting to be rescued

Kohnhorst, from Rochester, Minnesota, was driving to a commitment in Utah when she stopped at a bed and breakfast in Cane Beds and left for the Rose Cliffs trail around 4:30 p.m. on Friday, May 20

Scene: It wasn't until 7pm the following night - about 28 hours after Kohnhurtst had fallen - that she heard a rescue helicopter up above

'I couldn't find my footsteps and that's when my brain went into panic mode. I tried calling 911 right away but I had no cellphone service so I needed to find my way down,' Kohnhorst told Fox 13.

That's when Kohnhorst tripped and fell an estimated 100 feet, landing on the edge of the 800 feet cliff.

Kohnhorst suffered a major back injury in the fall and blacked out.

She woke up sometime during the night and could not move. Fortunately she had packed a whistle, which she started blowing, but there was no one to answer her calls.

'I couldn't lay flat and every time I moved I screamed and with that I blew my whistle hoping someone could hear me but I was in the middle of nowhere,' Kohnhorst said.

Kohnhorst eventually fell back asleep.

In the morning, she started at her whistle again, but no one heard her.

She then decided to start writing goodbye letters in her cellphone - which had no service - and also took a photo of herself lying on the ledge.

'I wrote letters to my parents. I'm sorry. I'm trying to blow my whistle. I've fallen. That was going to be my goodbye,' Kohnhorst said.

Recovering: Kohnhurst fractured her back in three places, crushed her pelvis and broke her nose

Part of her ear was also torn off, however Kohnhurst has undergone surgery and is making a great recovery

Back at the bed and breakfast where Kohnhurst had checked in, staff realized her bed had not been slept in and her rental car remained parked out front where she had left it.

The owners contacted the Mohave County Sheriff's Office, who sent out a search crew.

It wasn't until 7pm, about 28 hours after Kohnhurtst had fallen, that she heard a rescue helicopter up above.

She immediately started blowing her whistle as loud as she could.

'I knew this was my one chance to be rescued,' she said. 'If they found me I lived. If they didn`t find me, I don`t know.'

Bouncing back: Doctors are pleased with the way that Kohnhurst, a nurse, is recovering from the fall

Kohnhorst was out for a short hike on Rose Cliffs Trail on Friday, May 20 when she fell from a rock ledge

A rescuer was able to rappel down to Kohnhurtst, who was then hoisted up by the helicopter.

She was then taken to Dixie Regional Medical Center in St. George, Utah.

Kohnhurst fractured her back in three places, crushed her pelvis and broke her nose.

Part of her ear was also torn off, however Kohnhurst has undergone surgery and is making a great recovery.

'Yes this week has been hard but I have to remember I`m alive,' Kohnhorst said.

Brave: Kohnhorst had surgery to put pins in her tailbone and she broke her back, but shes alive

Kohnhurst was on her way to Utah to volunteer at the Best Friends Animal Society when she fell.

She still hopes to be able to help out the society once she is better.

'Since childhood, animals and the outdoors have played a vital role in Amber's life,' says the blurb on Kohnhurtst's

'As a nurse in the Cardiovascular Surgical ICU at the Mayo Clinic, Amber's dedication to caring for others is apparent to anyone who meets her.

'This trip gave her the ability to combine these passions and give back to the animals that she cares so much about.'
The body of a missing girl was found inside an abandoned apartment building in Houston late Monday night and a teen suspect has been charged with her murder.

Karen Perez, 15, was found dead under the kitchen sink inside an abandoned apartment in a complex that's located in the 1600 block of Avenue, Tim Miller of Texas Equusearch told KTRK.

The teen girl was last seen at South Houston High School on May 27.

Surveillance video from a taqueria nearby the school shows her walking into the restaurant followed by two young men.

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Tragic: Karen Perez (pictured above), 15, was last seen on May 27 at South Houston High School and allegedly disappeared while walking home. Her body was found late Monday night in an abandoned apartment building

Her body was found under the kitchen sink inside in one of the abandoned apartments in the complex (pictured) that's located in the 1600 block of Avenue N near the high school

According to KTRK, witnesses say one of those young men was a friend to the girl, while the other was her ex-boyfriend.

Perez was not heard from again after she left the taqueria.

Police arrested a juvenile suspect on Tuesday and later charged him with her murder.

It's unclear if one of the young men pictured on surveillance video with Perez is the juvenile suspect arrested by police.

It's unclear how the teen was killed or what type of weapon was used.

The teen's family was told of the discovery of her body Monday night.

Her aunt, Maria Perez, said the complex where her body was found needs to be torn down.

'Everybody knows that when they skip (school), they come here to this property, and it's so dangerous and I can't believe nobody has (done anything about it),' she told KTRK.

The teen's family was told of the discovery of her body Monday night. Authorities are waiting for an autopsy to determine the cause of death and to officially confirm the body found is Perez (pictured)

Authorities are waiting for an autopsy to determine the cause of death.

The teen girl was in the ninth-grade at South Houston High School.

Several students from the school have taken to social media to offer their condolences.

A Twitter user named Suzette wrote: 'Prayers go out to the family and loved ones of Karen Perez during this difficult time.'

'Gonna (sic) miss you a lot baby girl.. See you in the after life R.I.P. Karen Perez,' a Twitter user named Mariel wrote.

Another person on the site named Alexx wrote: 'R.I.P Karen Perez. You'll Be Truely (sic) Missed.'

South Houston Police are asking anyone with information to please call the department at 713-944-1910.
Former Minister David Mellor is locked in a court battle over the 30million profit which he and his business partners made on a property deal.

The ex-politician and his collaborators sold a piece of land to a company which later collapsed, before buying it back again a few years later, the High Court has heard.

After the consortium was given planning permission to build a housing estate on the property, they sold it on to a major developer at a large profit.

Now an Italian count who previously invested in the site has launched legal action against Mr Mellor and his partners, alleging that they failed in their duty to maximise returns for those who put money in to the scheme.

Battle: David Mellor, pictured with his wife Lady Cobham, is being sued by an Italian businessman

Mr Mellor and Charles Balfour - heir to the title once held by Prime Minister Arthur Balfour - are being sued by Giovanni Capodilista, a 72-year-old aristocrat and socialite.

This month they failed in an attempt to have the case thrown out by the High Court, and they could face a trial to decide if they must repay some of their profits.

The lawsuit revolves around a patch of land at Sandford Farm, near Reading, which was formerly a landfill site and has now been turned into a housing estate.

It was bought in 2005 for 9million by a company with which Mr Balfour and his business partner Douglas Maggs were involved.

Soon afterwards, the land was sold on for 12.25million to Sandford Farm Properties Limited, a Jersey-based firm promoted by Mr Balfour and Mr Maggs, while Mr Mellor, 67, received a 500,000 'consultancy fee'.

The pair then promoted the property as an investment vehicle, enticing wealthy individuals with a promise that the land would turn a profit once planning permission was granted.

Claim: Count Giovanni Capodilista, pictured with his wife and Princess Michael of Kent, says he is owed part of the profits from a property deal

Property: The dispute revolves around Sandford Farm, pictured, a former landfill site which later became a housing estate

One of the investors was Courtwood Holdings, a company owned by Mr Capodilista who is a specialist fund manager.

When the company failed to secure planning permission by 2009 it ran out of money and was wound up having fallen behind on debt repayments.

At that point, Mr Maggs advised the receivers of SFPL to sell Sandford Farm on to WDL, another company which was owned by him, Mr Mellor and Mr Balfour.

He claimed that unless the sale was the only way to avoid delaying the planning process, which would have risked rendering the land almost worthless, the court heard.

WDL secured the deal to buy the property for 15million in June 2009 - two months before the Government ruled that Sandford Farm could be redeveloped as a residential estate.

A year later, the holding company was able to sell the land to Taylor Wimpey, one of Britain's largest building firms, for 27million, with the 12million profit being divided between its two owners.

Politician: Mr Mellor was a Minister in John Major's Cabinet before being forced to resign in 1992

Mr Mellor and his partners were also promised a share of the profits to be gained from developing the site, with an estimated 18million expected to be paid to the three men.

Mr Capodilista alleges that the sale of Sandford Farm to a company controlled by the three men, 'leaving behind' the other investors in SFPL, was a breach of their duty to him.

He argues that WPL owned the property 'on trust' for the collapsed firm, and that the profits from its sale should therefore go to him and the other SFPL investors.

Mr Mellor, Mr Balfour and Mr Maggs do not deny benefiting from the deal with Taylor Wimpey, but insist that they have not kept any funds from Mr Capodilista or other investors.

The former Tory MP served as Chief Secretary to the Treasury and Secretary of State for National Heritage under John Major in the 1990s.

He was forced to resign in disgrace in 1992 after having an affair with actress Antonia de Sancha, but has since built a second career as a businessman and broadcaster.
Ministers are tripling the number of boats to patrol Britain's coastline after 18 Albanian migrants were rescued from the Channel - but they won't be fully operational until the end of 2017.

Downing Street said around half a dozen new Border Force vessels will be deployed as the Government steps up measures to stop people trying to enter the UK in small boats.

Security at Britain's borders has come under increased scrutiny after two Britons were charged with conspiring to smuggle in non-EU migrants at the weekend.

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Around half a dozen more Border Force vessels will be deployed by the Home Office, but Downing Street said today they won't be fully operational until the end of 2017. Above, one of Britain's three current Border Force vessels is pictured in Dover port following the rescue mission of 18 Albanians found in an inflatable boat that had sunk in the Channel over the weekend

Number 10 said there were an increasing number of people using 'more dangerous routes' to enter the UK - including in smaller craft - because of improved security measures at the tunnel and ferry port in Calais.

Currently, Britain deploys just three 'cutters' to patrol more htan 7,000 miles of coastline and also relies on a combination of radar and aerial surveillance to detect illegal entries.

In the wake of the UK coastguard's rescue mission on Saturday, authorities are introducing new powers today to crack down on people trafficking over the Channel.

Among the measures is a deployment of around half a dozen more patrol vessels  but Downing Street admitted they won't be in full deployment until the end of next year.

Immigration officials have warned Britain's coast is facing one of its greatest ever breaches from small boats and dinghies carrying migrants.

A spokesman for the Prime Minister said today: 'We take every necessary action to protect our border security and will continue to do so.

'The important thing is that our approach is intelligence-based. So we have worked with the French government at Calais to secure the border there and since we put security measures in place we have seen a small number of migrants trying to use more dangerous routes to get to the UK.'

The issue has played into the EU referendum debate and this morning leading Brexit Cabinet minister Chris Grayling insisted the UK should not be granting asylum to Albanians seeking to reach Britain by boat.

They should only be given refuge in Britain if there is an 'extremely individual and particular reason,' he said.

Mr Grayling urged the authorities to be 'very vigorous' about applications from Albania as Downing Street said all asylum claims would be treated according to the rules.

Answering questions after a Westminster speech, he said: 'I would want us to be very vigorous about any applicant for asylum from Albania.

'Albania is a candidate country of the European Union and unless there is an extremely individual and particular reason for granting asylum for someone from Albania then I would want to have an asylum system that treated those people as economic migrants.'

Fears have been raised about the possible tragic consequences of migrants attempting to cross one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.

The Downing Street spokesman said: 'We are always concerned about possible deaths, which is why, for example, there are naval vessels deployed in the Mediterranean to assist with the operations there.'

New maritime powers came into effect on Tuesday which will make it easier for Border Force officials to patrol the UK's coastline and tackle the smuggling of illegal immigrants into the country.

Border Force officers will have the power to board boats and to arrest people facilitating illegal migration.

Last night ministers were accused of 'staggering complacency' for ignoring a string of warnings that Britain's small ports are an easy target for people smugglers.

Four reports, the most recent last week, have sounded the alarm over lax border controls. But the Government claimed the threat was not currently assessed as being significant.

Concerns about the vulnerability of Britains coastline were raised in two reports in 2010 and 2011 by John Vine, the then independent inspector of borders. Both found small ports were at risk from people smugglers.

Then in January, Chief Inspector of Borders David Bolt highlighted how a large number of small boats arrive each year from outside the EU with no checks being carried out by border guards.

His damning report said: Border Force recognised that its knowledge of the threats and risks associated with GM [general marine - or small boats] was poor and needed to improve.

Reacting at the time, the Government said: The risk of people smuggling into the UK via GA/GM [general aviation/general maritime] is not currently assessed as being significant. Mr Bolts warning was repeated in his annual report for ministers, published last week.

The issue has played into the EU referendum debate and this morning leading Brexit Cabinet minister Chris Grayling (pictured making a speech in Westminster this morning) insisted the UK should not be granting asylum to Albanians seeking to reach Britain by boat

As far back as 2008 Lord Carlile, the then independent reviewer of terror laws, raised concerns about small aircraft which fly into and out of British airspace every day.

The Home Office insisted last night it remained vigilant to changes and pledged to strengthen our response should the risk picture change. But yesterday Mr Vine, his predecessor as independent borders inspector, accused ministers of ignoring warnings about the threat. He warned lives would be lost unless more resources were ploughed in to stop migrants trying to reach the UK on boats. Mr Vine said he found the issue wasnt a major priority when he raised concerns in the past.

On Monday, Lucy Moreton, general secretary of the Immigration Services Union, said large stretches of Britain's coastline is being left unpoliced and officials simply do not know how many people have sneaked into the country undetected.

THE FOUR WARNINGS...AND HOW MINISTERS DISMISSED CONCERNS Border fears: Ex-boss John Vine On the South West and Wales: Staff raised concerns that some of the smaller ports in the region were not staffed and there was a risk that potential immigration offenders were not being detected. John Vine  July 2010 On Northern Ireland and Scotland: Very little risk-assessment work was performed on the threats and risks posed by small airfields and harbours and it was unclear who had responsibility for this area. John Vine  May 2011 Border Force recognised that its knowledge of the threats and risks associated with general maritime was poor and needed to improve ... [It] should put processes in place to capture, enhance and analyse information, including evidence of criminal activity. David Bolt  January 2016 Levels of knowledge and understanding of the threats and risks [of general aviation and maritime] remain generally poor. Coverage of GM [general maritime] was poor in large part because of the absence of information about GM arrivals, over which Border Force had little immediate control. David Bolt last month The risk of people smuggling into the UK via [general aviation and general maritime] is not currently assessed as being significant. Home Office response to Mr Bolts report

She told the Press Association her 'gut feeling' and anecdotal evidence suggest Britain's coasts are facing the biggest ever onslaught of people smugglers.

An RNLI crew member who helped rescue 20 people from a boat off the coast of Kent has warned that anyone who tries to cross the Channel ill-equipped is 'in danger'.

A lifeboat crew recovered 18 Albanians - including two children - and two British people from the English Channel after their inflatable boat began to sink on Saturday night.

Trevor Bunney, who was part of the lifeboat rescue team, told the BBC that the small white inflatable boat was adrift and taking in water in the 'choppy sea'. One woman had the first signs of hypothermia.

He said: 'It could potentially become a bigger problem and it's always a concern.

'Like I said before, anyone who tries crossing the Channel ill-equipped are putting themselves in danger.'

Two British men were remanded in custody charged with immigration offences after the rescue off Dymchurch, Kent.

Mr Bunney's account of the recovery came as it was reported that the Government responded to a review of its border and immigration functions by saying that the risk of people smuggling via the country's coastlines was not 'significant'.

A report by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration published in January this year covering February to July 2015 assessed that there was 'no systematic collection of information about any aspect of General Maritime' and compliance by captains with legal requirements to report who they had on board was 'poor'.

In the Home Office's response, it said: 'The risk of people smuggling into the UK via General Aviation/General Maritime is not currently assessed as being significant, however we remain vigilant to changes in methods and the measures outlined will strengthen our response should the risk picture change.'

Keith Vaz chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, told The Times: 'The Government has been very, very lax.

'We warned them as soon as they put in extra security at Calais that the problem would disperse to other parts of France, Belgium and Holland.

'That is exactly what has happened.'

The criticism follows warnings from Lucy Moreton, general secretary of the Immigration Services Union, and former head of the Royal Navy Lord West.

Ms Moreton said Britain's coastline was facing one of its biggest ever breaches of borders as an unprecedented number of small boats and dinghies smuggle in migrants while Lord West said the country was at risk from traffickers and terrorists because of the lack of boats that patrol UK waters.

A poll for The Daily Telegraph by ORB showed that support for the Leave campaign in the EU referendum has risen by four percentage points to 46% of definite voters, while the Remain camp is on 51 per cent.
The mayor of Paris has announced plans to build proper refugee housing in the French capital to try to combat the many makeshift camps which keep popping up across the city.

Paris police have been battling the makeshift camps for months, with new illegal sites being built at the same rate they as existing ones are being evacuated and torn down, costing the authorities both time and money.

Mayor Anne Hidalgo has been forced to admit defeat in the fight against the shanty towns, saying Tuesday that the current situation is no longer 'tenable'.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, pictured last month, has announced plans to build a refugee camp in northern Paris, after months of struggling with constant tearing down of illegal shanty towns that keep being rebuilt

She pointed to the example of a camp that had sprung up in the north of Paris in the past few days where 800 illegal and legal migrants are living.

The Socialist mayor said several times she hopes the state will be a 'partner' in the project, which she said must conform to international norms for refugees.

She said Parisians have a humane duty to help refugees and migrants, adding that she's confident 'the Paris population will be at our side.'

City authorities are 'assessing different sites' for their suitability to host a camp 'as soon as possible', Ms Hidalgo told a press conference.

She said the Paris camp would be inspired by the one created at Grande-Synthe in northern France, which was built to take in refugees from the notorious Jungle camp in the northern port city of Calais.

Repeat performance: French riot police were forced to evict hundreds of migrants after a shanty camp was built by the Stalingrad metro station for the third time in two months

Out of control: Mayor Anne Hidalgo admitted that Paris needs a proper refugee camp as the current situation in the capital is no longer 'tenable'

Makeshift migrant camps have become an issue of growing concern for Paris authorities in the past year.

Last month, French police tore down and evicted 500 migrants from an illegal camp under the Stalingrad metro in east Paris for the third time in two months.

In March, nearly a thousand people were removed from the camp, which had mushroomed in the wake of the destruction of the Jungle camp in Calais.

The migrants, mostly from Sudan, Eritrea and Afghanistan, were housed in emergency shelters.

About 400 people were evacuated on March 7 and taken to shelters, but the camp quickly reformed.
connoisseur to remove the top with pliers or prize them out with a claw hammer

Screwing into the top of the cork also allows any wine

We've all done it - lost the corkscrew just as friends or family are about to pop round to share a bottle of wine or two.

But don't panic, these wine hacks will allow you and your favorite tipple to be reunited before you can say Chardon-yay!

The first uses something everyone should have at home - the simple toothbrush.

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Bottled inspiration: YouTuber Jordan O'Brien revealed the 'wine hacks' in his new video which include opening a bottle with just a toothbrush

Get a handle on things: Using the toothbrush handle, and a little brute force, jam the cork back inside the bottle for a messy - but effective - technique

Using the toothbrush handle, and a little brute force, jam the cork back inside the bottle for a messy yet effective technique.

'It takes a little elbow grease but if yore really determined, you can get your wine,' said Youtube star Jordan O'Brien who is demonstrating his top three techniques in a video for Mode.com.

The method requires more tools but thankfully, a lot less effort.

Using a screwdriver, insert a screw deep into the wine cork. Once it's secure simply grasp the top of the screw with a pair of pliers and pull - the cork should pop right out with it.

The method requires more tools but thankfully, a lot less effort. You will need a screwdriver, screws and pliers

Screw loose: Using a screwdriver, insert a screw deep into the wine cork. Make sure the screw reaches near the bottom the cork

Teasing it out: Once it's secure simply grasp the top of the screw with a pair of pliers and pull - the cork should pop right out with it

His final method, a variation to the second, requires a second screw to be screwed into the top of the cork, while this time a claw hammer is used to prize off the top.

'Use some wiggling motion, it really helps,' O'Brien advises. 'Hopefully this helps you get through your wine fiasco.'

But, if you are less likely to have a claw hammer than you were to have a corkscrew in the first place, then don't fret.

Even a simple shoe can be used for desperate wine aficionados.

Just remove the metallic wrapping that covers the cork and place the bottle into your footwear so that its bottom sits on the insole, at the heel, and the side is snug against the back (dont use a shoe with any kind of heel or one without some cushioning).

His final method, a variation to the second, and requires a second screw to be screwed into the top of the cork

Hammer home the point: Once both screws are in, use the back of a claw hammer to prize out the cork - and enjoy your tipple

Other tips include drilling a hole in the cork, then feeding through some string with a knot in the end before pulling up, pushing a key into the cork at a 45 degree angle or using a tube from a bike pump

Place the bottom of the shoe against a brick wall or tree to create a 90-degree angle then, while carefully holding the bottle in place, start banging gently. After a few knocks, the cork should have risen up enough for you to twist it out with your hands.

This is because the banging motion repeatedly forces the wine against the cork at high pressure, forcing the cork to slowly work its way out of the bottle.

Apparently the uncouth move is particularly popular among restaurateurs and sommeliers.

Other tips include drilling a hole in the cork, then feeding through some string with a knot in the end before pulling up, pushing a key into the cork at a 45 degree angle or using a tube from a bike pump to make the cork rise.
The wife of the founder of Bikram yoga has ensured she will not be sued in any pending lawsuits and will keep their luxury homes and cars as part of their divorce settlement.

Rajashree Choudhury, 50, filed for legal separation, 31 years after she tied the knot with 69-year-old yoga master Bikram Choudhury.

It came after at least six women have accused the fitness guru of sexual assault with lawsuits pending against him.

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Rajashree Choudhury (right) filed for legal separation 31 years after she tied the knot with yoga master Bikram Choudhury (right). Bikram Choudhury has been accused of sexual assault on six separate occasions since 2013

Now it has emerged that after their divorce was finalised earlier this month, Mrs Choudhury will not pay for any of his alleged misdeeds.

According to TMZ, if she is sued over any of the allegations against him, as part of their settlement, he will have to pay any money she would owe.

The gossip site also added that Mrs Choudhury will keep the former couple's homes in Beverly Hill and Los Angeles as well as a Ferrari, Mercedes 550 and a Bentley.

The only property Choudhury got as part of the settlement was the home in Hawaii.

It was revealed last year that the couple were to split and in legal documents, she asked for spousal support and staked her claim in properties in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles and Honolulu, among other assets.

Bikram Choudhury, pictured here in one of his Bigram yoga classes, has denied all sexual assault claims. His wife sited irreconcilable differences as a reason for the split in legal documents

The couple have two adult children together, a son and a daughter.

Meanwhile Choudhury strongly denied all accusations of sexually assaulting multiple students after the claims emerged.

He first spoke out about about the accusations in February, when he said women love him so much he wouldn't need to rape them to get sex.

'I never assaulted them,' he said as he spoke to CNN . 'The answer is I feel sorry for them... They're entranced by somebody - lawyers.'

As of April, Bikram Choudhury, who pioneered the practice of working out in a room heated to 105F, had his name attached to 720 yoga schools in 220 countries. Chelsea Clinton, Madonna and Demi Moore are among his followers.

Choudhury told CNN that his success means he would never need to assault anyone.

In legal documents for the separation, Rajashree Choudhury asks for spousal support and staked her claim in properties in Beverly Hills (pictured above), Los Angeles and Honolulu, among other assets

'Women likes me. Women loves me,' he said. 'So if I really wanted to involve the women, I don't have to assault the women.'

When asked how his wife of more than 30 years had responded to the accusations, Choudhury became emotional.

'My wife never look at me anymore,' he said.

'Twenty-four hours a day, I work harder than any human being in this Earth... and this is my reward? I'm a rapist? Shame [on] your Western culture.'

Since 2013, six women have stepped forward to accuse him of unwanted sexual advances, and studios have started to drop his name, signalling that his empire is crumbling.
A family from Maryland are demanding answers after their beloved family pet was found dead at the side of a busy road, despite the dog being checked into a boarding kennel.

Hugo, an Italian mastiff that was just one year old was found dead at the side of the road more than ten miles from where he was supposed to have been looked after by professionals.

Kayla Roman now says her family are distraught at the loss of her companion, as well as the Hugo's litter-mate, Sasha, who is apparently grieving the loss of her furry friend

Killed: Kayla Roman's Cane Corso, named Hugo, was found dead by the side of the road a dozen miles from the boarding kennels where she had left her pet just three days earlier

Caring: For several days, Kayla says that she and her family had checked by phone on all three dogs' status

Unclear: Kayla says after sitting waiting in a room for 40 minutes, an employee gave her two leashes but not the third belonging to her dog Hugo. Staff claimed the 100-pound dog had jumped over the fence and left

Ms. Roman said a family emergency meant she had to board her three dogs at the Axiom Pet Resort for several days.

After dropping off three dogs at the resort, she told NBC that would call to check on them every day, however last Sunday, May 22, she got the feeling that something was wrong.

Upon visiting the resort, she was presented with just two of her three pooches which she claimed were both very lethargic, and one of which had a limp.

Upon speaking with a manager at the resort, she was told that her third dog, that weighs 100 pounds, had climbed a fence and escaped.

Unwell: After leaving the Axoim kennels, Kayla took her dogs to an animal emergency care facility, which admitted both remaining pets overnight

Found: Incredibly, someone had seen Hugo laying by the sound of the road days earlier, however he was some 12 miles from the boarding kennels and had died from his injuries

Answers: Kayla says she just wants to know what happened. An animal control officer is also investigating the case

She contacted the police to tell them of her fears and frustration at the treatment she had received and headed to the vet so her others dogs could be looked over.

'You would trust someone with your dogs, who are loving, sweet, innocent,' Ms Roman said to WJLA. 'When I saw them injured, I immediately started crying, because I didn't know.'

While at the vet, she was shocked to learn that just days earlier someone else had spotted the body of her missing dog fitting Hugo's description on the side of Route 301, more than a dozen miles away from the kennels.

Ms. Roman and her family went straight to the location to see for themselves and found the remains of the gentle giant.

Axiom managers have been in touch with DailyMail.com to explain that Hugo escaped after a worker left a gate open overnight.

They say that any employees involved have been fired, and that there was nothing 'malicious' in what happened.

In a statement, the company states: 'A door which allows dogs to access their individual outdoor space from the inside was left open overnight. From there the dog had to either jump out of his outdoor kennel space, or somehow manipulate the latch. From there we assume the dog either squeezed through a narrow opening found between our fence and shed, or jumped over the fence as a few bags of mulch were stacked up by the fence.

'The employee responsible was terminated, all vet bills were imminently paid by us and we are deeply saddened by this event as we fully understand that dogs really are members of our family.'

Ms. Roman, meanwhile, has taken to Yelp to share news and post an account of her frustration over what happened.

'I lost it and I'm still lost! It crushed my heart and devastated my whole family including his twin sister, Sasha. It's not right after three whole days somehow I have two injured dogs and one deceased dog,' she wrote.
The former partner of a woman feared dead after being taken by a crocodile during a late-night swim had to deliver the devastating news to her parents as it's revealed she was only in the water for 60 seconds before she vanished.

Cindy Waldron, 46, had been visiting her childhood friend Leeann Mitchell, 47, in north Queensland when the pair decided to go swimming off Thornton Beach on Sunday night.

The photographer, from Lithgow in central NSW, was celebrating Ms Mitchell's end of cancer treatment with a break in the Daintree National Park, north of Cairns.

The pair were walking arm-in-arm in knee-deep water along the beach shortly after dinner when Ms Mitchell claims she felt something brush past her leg.

'They'd only been in the water for no more than a minute (before the attack),' Senior Constable Russell Parker said, according to The Australian.

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Ms Waldron, from Lithgow in New South Wales' east, was in north Queensland to support her childhood friend

Cindy Waldron (left), 46, was swimming with her friend, Leeann Mitchell (right), at Daintree, north of Cairns, about 10pm on Sunday. Ms Mitchell had just undergone a bout of chemotherapy

Ms Waldron's New Zealand-based parents Pat and Heather Waldron are planning to travel to Queensland as authorities continue the search for any sign of her.

'We need to be there on the ground to show that we are there, that we care,' Mr Waldron told the NZ Herald from their Tauranga home.

'Our darling girl is gone.'

Ms Waldron and Ms Mitchell were childhood friends in Hamilton in New Zealand.

Ms Mitchell's cousin, Alan Frost, told the New Zealand Herald she was unhurt in the incident after the pair waded waist-deep into the water that was known to have a high population of crocodiles.

Despite Ms Mitchell's desperate efforts to free her friend from the predator's clutches, Ms Waldron was dragged away as she screamed, 'a croc's got me, a croc's got me', 9News reported.

Ms Mitchell, who had felt something brush past her leg just moments before the attack, is now recovering in Mossman Hospital.

'She has got good friends around her,' Mr Frost said.

'Leeann is a really good person, she has some really good support around her.'

Emergency services are pictured at the scene on Thornton Beach today following Sunday's attack

Ms Mitchell's cousin, Alan Frost, said she was unhurt in the incident at Thornton Beach, in Daintree, after the pair of friends waded waist-deep into the water that was known to have a high population of crocodiles

The crocodile suspected of carrying out the attack on Sunday is pictured near Thornton Beach six months ago

The pair were swimming at Thornton Beach at Daintree (pictured), an area with a high crocodile population

There are crocodile warning signs on the side of the Daintree River near where the attack took place

RECENT CROCODILE ATTACKS IN QUEENSLAND * May 29, 2016 A 46-year-old woman is snatched and dragged under water during a late-night swim with a friend at Thornton Beach in the Daintree National Park. Her friend tried in vain to save her. * March, 2016 Cooktown sailor Graham Clark fended off a crocodile with a piece of wood after it latched onto the side of his boat at the town's harbour. The 70-year-old was woken by barking fox-terrier Laddie. * December 2, 2015 Snorkelling off the coast of Lizard Island at night, Noosa man Mick Curwen was bitten on the arm by a 2.5m crocodile. He managed to shock the reptile by shining his torch in its eyes before frantically swimming to shore. * April 13, 2015 An elderly golfer was attacked at a Port Douglas course owned by Clive Palmer. The 70-year-old man disturbed a crocodile in a waterway at the 11th hole of the Palmer Sea Reef Golf Course and suffered puncture wounds. * March 9, 2011 A fisherman suffered a broken leg after being struck by a four-metre croc at Weipa in the Gulf of Carpentaria. The 28-year-old clung to mangroves before another fisherman was able to fight it off. * February 5, 2011 A north Queensland man was swimming at a popular watering hole near Weipa with his two daughters when a crocodile latched onto his arm. He punched it several times in the head before it let go. * February 8, 2009 Five-year-old Jeremy Doble was taken on the banks of the Daintree River in Cairns. He was playing with his older brother when he followed the family's dog into the water. * September 30, 2008 Vietnam veteran Arthur Booker, 62, was killed while checking a crab pot on the Endeavour River near Cooktown. Two weeks later remains were found in the stomach of a 4.3m crocodile.

Following the attack, federal MP Warren Entsch said the attack must not spark a hysterical debate about crocodile management in his electorate.

'You can't legislate against human stupidity,' he told AAP on Monday.

'This is a tragedy but it was avoidable. There are warning signs everywhere up there.'

Mr Entsch said he feared the attack might spark a reactive debate about how to manage crocodiles, but people must remember the attack happened inside a national park in an area where visitors are warned about the dangers.

'Let's not start vendettas. It's hard enough for some families to make a quid up there in the Daintree, showcasing crocs in their environment,' he said.

'People have to have some level of responsibility for their own actions.'

On Monday, Senior Constable Russell Parker revealed details about the struggle which saw the 46-year-old woman taken away by a crocodile.

'Her 47-year-old friend tried to grab her and drag her to safety and she just wasn't able to do that,' he told ABC radio.

'They had been walking along the beach and they've decided to go for a swim... [it was] probably a very nice, clear night, but obviously [they] may not have been aware of the dangers.

'We believe they were visiting the area and weren't local to it.'

Ms Mitchell then ran to a nearby business to raise the alarm, and was taken to hospital suffering shock and grazes.

Queensland Ambulance service said she was extremely traumatised, having watched her friend being pulled out into the ocean.

A search and rescue is currently underway for the missing woman - who is originally from New Zealand - after an extensive search on Sunday and Monday found no trace of the victim.

Acting Inspector Ed Lukin said the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection organised for traps to arrive on Tuesday afternoon.

'We expect to have them in the water, tide dependent, between 5 and 7pm tonight and they'll be on the water as well until 2am,' he said.

If fears about the woman's fate play out, it will be the second fatality involving a crocodile in a fortnight.

On May 17, Noel Ramage, 72, drowned after a crocodile reportedly overturned the boat he and his mate were in while crabbing near Gunn Point, about 40km northeast of Darwin.

The Victorian man was trapped under the capsized tinnie and drowned while his 72-year-old friend hurled spanners and spark plugs at the croc in a desperate bid to keep it at bay.

The friend was trapped in muddy mangroves for three hours before he was rescued.

Federal MP Warren Entsch has said the attack must not spark a hysterical debate about crocodile management in his electorate. Pictured is a sign along the Daintree River
Police and prosecutors are investigating the zoo which shot Harambe the gorilla - and the federal government has received a formal complaint about its safety record.

Animal rights activists have made Cincinnati zoo the subject of a formal complaint to the United States Department of Agriculture and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA) following the shooting of the silverback gorilla after a four-year-old child fell into his enclosure.

Stop Animal Exploitation NOW (SAEN) alleges several potential violations of the Animal Welfare Act, which regulates animal exhibitors and is intended to safeguard both animals and zoo visitors.

It highlighted a recent safety breach at the zoo, when two polar bears escaped their enclosure and got into a service hallway.

Separately, prosecutors have asked police to look into the death.

Some said Harambe appeared to be guarding and defending the boy, but video footage also showed him dragging the four-year-old in the water

The zoo shot the beloved animal after he dragged the boy through the water and up out of the moat, but many say he was simply trying to protect the child

The clip shows Harambe standing guard in the corner of the moat (left, with the boy behind Harambe), and witnesses said the gorilla looked like he was trying to protect the boy from panicked bystanders (right)

A special zoo response team shot and killed a 17-year-old gorilla named Harambe to protect a four-year-old who fell in the enclosure. But new video footage shows the two briefly holding hands (pictured)

The zoo was cited after the breach in March this year, prompting the campaign group to say that it raised questions over its approach to safety.

Michael Budkie, the spokesman for SAEN, said: 'If this enclosure had been constructed adequately a four-year-old child could not have penetrated it.

'This wasn't someone who came in with grappling hooks and ropes. You tell me. If a four-year-old child can get through the barrier is that a safe barrier?'

The group's complaint centers on the killing of Harambe being the second incident within just over ten weeks.

On 17 March 2016 the USDA cited the zoo when two polar bears  'Little One' and 'Berit' - escaped their enclosure and entered the zoo's Bearline service hallway.

The discovery was made by a keeper when she entered the hallway to be confronted by a female bear about 30 feet away.

The shooting team and veterinary staff were notified by security and both bears were darted and ultimately safely returned to their enclosure.

The USDA found human error to be to blame after it was established that two doors were left open by the keeper.

In its report, the USDA warned that the incident 'could have resulted in human injury or death' and noted that this was a repeat citation.

The zoo has also previously been cited for their Eastern black and white colobus monkey enclosures that were found to be rotting and in a poor state of repair  in some sections planks of wood were completely worn away.

Budkie said: 'What happened this weekend made it very clear, the barriers are not adequate to keep people out of the enclosures.

'It is clear that the Cincinnati Zoo has violated the Animal Welfare Act. It is also clear that the Cincinnati Zoo has had previous citations for violations.

'One was a repeat citation for a facility which is rare.'

He described the zoo's recent history as illustrative of 'a pattern of violating federal laws'.

'We will be calling for the maximum penalty which is a $10,000 fine [for each offense],' he said.

Escaped: Male polar bear Little One (right) and female Berit (left) managed to get out of their enclosure because of two doors left open in error. The USDA said human life could have been harmed

Mom and dad: Deonne Dickerson and Michelle Gregg are the parents of the four-year-old boy who fell into the gorilla enclosure housing Harambe on Saturday at Cincinnati Zoo

He warned that, if successful in all aspects, the fine for the zoo could run into tens of thousands of dollars.

The move has the potential to shift the focus of concern about the incident back to the zoo, from the child's parents, Deonne Dickerson and Michelle Gregg.

Gregg, 32, was looking after the four-year-old boy when he somehow got through the barriers around the gorilla enclosure and fell in the moat.

The boy's father is Deonne Dickerson, 36, a man who has a lengthy criminal history.

During Monday's press conference, Thayne Maynard supported the animal response team's decision to kill Harambe, and said: 'Looking back we would make the same decision'

Cleveland based Dickerson is from Atlanta, Georgia and studied at Cuyahoga Community College, Ohio and now works as a sorter at a Cincinnati industrial equipment supplier.

Gregg is currently the administrator at a Cincinnati pre-school.

Call today: Michael Budkie of Stop Animal Exploitation NOW said the zoo should be investigated by federal authorities

She has been the subject of sharp criticism following the incident that saw zoo staff shoot dead Harambe who, according to new video footage, may have been protecting rather than threatening the child after he crawled through a barrier and fell into the gorilla's enclosure.

Many social media commenters have criticized her and Dickerson and said they should be held accountable.

A prosecutor's office says police are investigating the circumstances surrounding the four-year-old's entrance into the enclosure and the gorilla's death.

The Hamilton County prosecutor's office said Tuesday that police will confer with prosecutors after their investigation is complete.

Cincinnati police said over the weekend that no charges were planned. However, spokeswoman Tiffaney Hardey says police are reviewing the matter and continuing to gather information.

Some people have contended there should be child endangering charges against the parents while others want the zoo held responsible.

'I do think there's a degree of responsibility they have to be held to,' said Kate Villanueva, a mother of two children from Erlanger, Kentucky, who started the 'Justice for Harambe' page and attended a vigil on Monday at Cincinnati Zoo for Harambe.

'You have to be watching your children at all times.'

More outraged animal lovers took to social media declaring the western lowland gorilla's life was unnecessarily taken, and more than 290,000 have already joined 'Justice for Harambe' which place the blame squarely on the boy's parents.

The zoo has already defended its decision to shoot Harambe.

Cincinnati Zoo director Thane Maynard said the boy was not under attack, but called it a 'life threatening situation' where the gorilla was 'agitated', 'disoriented', and 'behaving erratically'.

During a press conference on Monday afternoon, Maynard supported the animal response team's decision to kill Harambe, and said: 'Looking back we would make the same decision.'

The huge gorilla was about six times stronger than a man, Maynard added, and was confused and disoriented.

'This is an animal (that) with one hand, I have seen take a coconut and crush it,' he said.

The zoo said tranquilizing the animal was not an option because a dart could have startled the already-agitated creature, causing it to act aggressively before the sedative kicked in.

Maynard also insisted the zoo's barriers were secure, saying: 'We all need to work to make sure our families are safe. Do you know any four-year-olds? They can climb over anything.'

Tanya Espinosa, a spokeswoman for the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, said Tuesday there wasn't an investigation open yet, but that the service will 'be looking into this incident'.
Tony Award-winning actor Bryan Cranston is giving some help to a fellow 'Breaking Bad' star who is running for local office in New Mexico.

Cranston and comedian George Lopez are teaming up to solicit votes for Steven Michael Quezada, who played a DEA agent on the hit AMC-TV series and who is now running for county commissioner in Bernalillo County.

Cranston, who played high school teacher and methamphetamine producer Walter White, has backed Quezada on a mailer sent out to Bernalillo voters, while Lopez and actor Dean Norris, who also appeared as a DEA agent on 'Breaking Bad,' have lent their voices on robo calls.

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Bryan Cranston, left, is backing Steven Michael Quezada in his race for county commissioner in Bernalillo County, New Mexico

Quezada, 53, said he is running because he wants to fight poverty. He is currently a school board member for Albuquerque Public Schools

'Steven was great in "Breaking Bad," but he thrives as a community leader. He will fight for more education funding, fight to keep this community safe, and fight to bring much needed jobs to the community,' Cranston is quoted as saying in the mailer, which features his photograph.

'Fighting poverty - that is why I am running. That's the major issue and a problem we are having throughout the county,' said Quezada, 53, a lifelong Albuquerque resident who currently occupies a seat on the city's board of education.

Quezada grew up poor and wants to bring that experience with him into office, he told Daily Mail Online.

'I am that poor kid. And I think it's time for me to sit at the table and help make decisions,' he said in a phone interview.

Quezada played Drug Enforcement Administration agent Steven Gomez on the hit AMC-TV series 'Breaking Bad,' which ran from 2008 to 2013

Quezada, left, is also getting help from fellow 'Breaking Bad' actor Dean Norris, center, and comic George Lopez, right, who lent their voices on robo calls

Quezada said he hopes to help New Mexico capitalize on its growing film and television industry. 'Breaking Bad,' for instance, was largely shot on location in Albuquerque.

As for his own acting career, Quezada said he will barely have to put it on hold if he wins the June 7 primary vote.

'I mostly do guest spots, and that's it. I'll spend four or five days on a shoot. Then I'm done and it's back to reality.'

Quezada is married and has three daughters, aged 15, 19, and 21.
Five teenagers have been arrested for vandalizing their rival high school in Arlington, Texas with offensive and racist graffiti in a senior prank.

Christian Joeckel, Ryan Westbrook, Hayden Honolka, Cameron Bodenstab, and Ethan Sigmond, are accused of the vandalism at James Martin High School.

'Whites only' was spray painted over a water fountain, and 'trans only' was painted over a men's bathroom door, prompting Arlington Police Department spokesman Chris Cook to say there were 'several disturbing racial and gender overtones'.

Five teenagers were arrested for vandalizing their rival high school in Arlington, Texas. Christian Joeckel (pictured) admitted to spray panting 'whites only' and 'trans only' messages

Ryan Westbrook (left) Hayden Honolka (right) wrote similar messages that included 'F*** Martin' in the senior prank thought to be a retaliation for their school's parking lot getting painted last year

Cameron Bodenstab (left) and Ethan Sigmond (right), both 18, said their role in the prank was confined to painting the jungle gym green, which is their school's color

The boys are charged with state felonies for causing about $20,000 in damage to school property, with more serious consequences if a grand jury decides they should be indicted for a hate crime

All five are students at Arlington High School. Joeckel, Westbrook and Honolka are 17, while Bodenstab and Sigmond are 18.

Joeckel admitted to spray panting a penis, and both the 'whites only' and 'trans only' messages, WFAA reported.

Westbrook and Honolka wrote similar messages that included 'F*** Martin', while Bodenstab and Sigmond said their role in the prank was confined to painting the jungle gym green, which is their school's color.

The boys were trying to pull off a senior prank and may have acted in retaliation for an incident last year, when Arlington High School's parking lot was painted, one student said.

But now the boys are charged with state felonies for causing about $20,000 in damage to school property, with more serious consequences if a grand jury decides they should be indicted for a hate crime.

'They were pretty remorseful. I dont think they gave a lot of thought to the ramifications,' Cook said.

Under the current charges, the students could face several months in jail, WFAA reported.
Increasing numbers of Jews are fleeing from the suburbs of Paris saying they no longer feel safe amid rising anti-Semitism in France.

About 8,000 French Jews moved to Israel in 2015, according to Israeli figures, in a year that a jihadist gunman linked to the Charlie Hebdo attackers killed four people in a kosher supermarket in the French capital.

France has the largest Jewish population in Europe, estimated at 500,000 to 600,000 people.

Half of them live in the Paris region but their numbers have declined steadily over the past 15 years, researchers say.

Increasing numbers of Jews are fleeing from the suburbs of Paris saying they no longer feel safe amid rising anti-Semitism in France (file picture)

France has the largest Jewish population in Europe, estimated at 500,000 to 600,000 people (file picture)

Jerome Fourquet of polling firm IFOP says the change started around 2000 following a fresh surge of violence between Israel and the Palestinians, known as the second intifada.

With France also home to Europe's largest Muslim community, which counts around five million members, the bloodshed in the Middle East unleashed a wave of unrest, particularly in the Paris region which saw a surge in anti-Semitic acts and threats, he says.

One man, Alain Benhamou, said he walked into his apartment near Paris in July 2015 and saw the words 'dirty Jew' scrawled on the wall and decided then that it was time to leave.

It was his second such break-in in less than three months and the 71-year-old no longer felt welcome in Bondy, a Parisian suburb he had called home for more than 40 years.

'Until the years 2000-2005, the town was nice and quiet, with 250 to 300 Jewish families and synagogues full on the Sabbath,' Benhamou says.

'Now, only about a hundred Jewish families remain.'

Benhamou is part of a growing number of French Jews who have effectively become internal refugees, fleeing insecurity and seeking protection in numbers in an atmosphere they say is increasingly hostile, and often expressed in relation to conflict in the Middle East.

He moved a few miles south to Villemomble, where there is a larger and more established Jewish community.

Benhamou still lives within the sprawling Seine-Saint-Denis department that sits northeast of the capital and combines run-down immigrant ghettos with trendy new gentrified business districts.

About 8,000 French Jews moved to Israel in 2015, according to Israeli figures, in a year that a jihadist gunman linked to the Charlie Hebdo attackers killed four people in a kosher supermarket (pictured) in the French capital

In the last 15 years, it has gone from being one of France's most densely-populated Jewish areas to what the community now considers 'one of the lost territories of the Republic'.

'The Jewish community is expected to disappear from here,' Benhamou says.

In nearby Raincy, Rabbi Moshe Lewin shares Benhamou's pessimism, fearing he could be one of the last Jewish leaders in Seine-Saint-Denis.

'What upsets me is that in some areas of France, Jews can no longer live peacefully, and that just five minutes from my home, some are forced to hide their kippas (skullcaps) or their Star of David,' he admits.

What upsets me is that in some areas of France, Jews can no longer live peacefully Rabbi Moshe Lewin

Even areas with a strong Jewish population, such as Sarcelles to the north, still have major problems.

Francois Pupponi, the Socialist mayor of Sarcelles, says many Jewish residents come to him for help with stories of being assaulted or having swastikas daubed on walls outside their homes.

Some have been caught in 'extremely violent situations' that in some cases required families to be 'urgently rehoused', says Pupponi.

He become aware of 'a phenomenon of internal migration' about five or six years ago, which he says 'is getting worse'.

Nonetheless, Jews from elsewhere still see Sarcelles as a relative haven. New arrivals now find 'a much stronger police and institutional presence' than before and 'they can live out their Judaism here in safety,' says Pupponi.

Among the newcomers is Eva Sandler, the widow of Rabbi Jonathan Sandler who was killed in an Islamist shooting attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse in 2012.

Other areas have also seen an influx of new arrivals.

Even areas with a strong Jewish population, such as Sarcelles to the north, still have major problems (file picture)

Many say the heart of the Jewish community is no longer Sarcelles but in Paris' western 17th district which has now taken over the moniker of 'Little Jerusalem'.

Now in his 60s, Robert moved there a decade ago with the northwestern neighbourhood's Jewish population reflected in the wealth of eateries selling kosher foods, from specialised sweet shops to sushi bars.

'Because anti-Semitism is growing, we try and stick together to avoid it,' admits Robert, who did not want to give his surname.

Community group the Consistoire Israelite has taken note of the shift in centre of gravity and is currently building a Centre for European Judaism in the neighbourhood which is slated to open next year.

But across the city in the eastern neighbourhood of Saint-Mande, the wind appears to have changed.

Formerly known for its large Jewish community with two synagogues and a community day care centre, the district has been badly hit by the deadly hostage-taking at the kosher supermarket in January 2015.

'There were about 12 or 13 Sainte-Mande residents among (the hostages),' recalls local mayor Patrick Beaudouin.

'It had a huge psychological impact.'

He said dozens of families had since left the area, deciding it was best 'to spread out, to be less visible'.

For now, most French Jews have preferred to cluster in towns and neighbourhoods where they know a large Jewish community already exists.

But that decision to flock together brings about its own problems.

'We are creating ghettos,' Pupponi says. 'We are aware of that.'

The solution, he says, would be 'to achieve social and ethnic integration in all neighbourhoods.'
The op-ed urged South Korea not to pay the Americans to pave the way for a troop withdrawal and

Donald Trump is getting a thumbs up from North Korea.

An editorial in the state media outlet DPRK Today suggested that the election of the presumptive Republican nominee could pave the way for reunification to the Korean peninsula and make the North Korean slogan, 'Yankee Go Home,' come true.

Trump's proposal to hold direct talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un earned him the compliments 'wise politician' and 'far-sighted presidential candidate' from the editorial writers, according to NKNews.org.

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Donald Trump is getting high marks from a North Korean state-run media outlet, which suggested that The Donald's election could get the country closer to unifying with South Korea

Donald Trump has said he'd like to see America's allies pay more for defense overseas. North Korea applauded this idea and urged South Korea not to give Americans the money

'In my personal opinion, there are many positive aspects of ... Trump's "inflammatory policies,"' wrote Chinese North Korean scholar Han Yong Mook.

'Trump said, "he will not get involved in the war between the South and the North," isn't this fortunate from North Koreans' perspective?' Mook argued.

Donald Trump has said he'd be interested in talking directly to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un

Trump has also argued that countries like South Korea should be paying more for American protection.

If countries like South Korea didn't pay up, a President Trump would theoretically remove Americans troops from the region, a move North Korea readily welcomed.

'Yes do it, now ... Who knew that the slogan "Yankee Go Home" would come true like this?' the editorial read, according to NKNews.org.

'The day when the "Yankee Go Home" slogan becomes real would be the day of Korean Unification,' it continued.

The piece even went as far as encouraging Seoul not to hand over money to the U.S.

It also pushed American voters not to select a 'dull' Hillary Clinton, who will likely be the Democratic nominee, though continues to be wrapped up in a primary fight with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

'The president that U.S. citizens must vote for is not that dull Hillary  who claimed to adapt the Iranian model to resolve nuclear issues on the Korean Peninsula  but Trump, who spoke of holding direct conversation with North Korea,' the editorial urged.

NKNews.org talked to several experts about the 'odd' editorial, who said the piece indicated more of a willingness to talk to Washington, if it's led by Donald Trump.

'He's the Dennis Rodman of Americans politics quirky, flamboyant, risk-taking. At the moment he's also an outside.' the director of Foreign Policy in Focus Jeff Feffer told the publication.

'But Pyongyang is hoping that he'll be elected (and follows through on his pledges) or that his pronouncements will change the political game in the United States and influence how the Democratic party and mainstream Republicans view Korean issues.'

Another resesarcher, who's not a fan of Trump, called the editorial 'very striking.'

'Admittedly it is not exactly Pyongyang speaking, or at least not the DPRK government in an official capacity, but it is certainly Pyongyang flying a kite, or testing the waters,' said Aiden Foster-Carter of the University of Leeds.
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Thousands of visitors will arrive in Berlin for the city's 2016 airshow which will feature some of the most advanced military and civilian aircraft currently available.

More than 200 aircraft will be on display, many of them performing test flights above the crowds, including Second World War-era Messerschmitt Me 109 fighter and an Me 262, the first production jet aircraft.

Vintage aircraft fans will also see a DC-3 'candy bomber' which took part in the Berlin Airlift and helped save the city from starvation.

Airbus will be displaying its A400M heavy-lift aircraft tat the Berlin Air Show, pictured today practicing its routine at Schoenefeld

The massive transport aircraft can carry up to 25 tonnes of cargo or more than 100 paratoopers and operate out of rough landing strips

Airbus will also be demonstrating their new A350-XWB, which is a twin-engined, wide-bodied long-haul aircraft

Already in Berlin is the Boeing 747-400 jumbo jet dubbed 'Ed Force One' flown by Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickenson. The band are playing tonight before departing the airport tomorrow - during the middle of the air show.

Dickenson will take off with his band and 12 tonnes of equipment tomorrow at around 2pm.

According to the organisers, the first two days of the airshow are for industry insiders while Friday and Saturday are open to the public.

Volker Thum of the German Aerospace Industries Association said: 'We are eagerly anticipating a highly innovative and forward-looking ILA 2016 that will enable all visitors to experience the fascination of aviation and space flight at first hand.

Iron Maiden's Boeing 747-400, will take off tomorrow afternoon after the band plays Berlin tonight with Bruce Dickenson in command

As well as manned aircraft, there will be a number of unmanned drones, such as this Heron TP created by IAI and Airbus Defence

The German Bundesweher helicopters, pictured, will be on display during the four-day air show starting tomorrow morning in Berlin

'Once again the programme of flying displays is an integral part of the ILA, and as usual there will be plenty to see this year, with 200 aircraft on the ground and in the air. We are expecting more than 1,000 exhibitors from 37 countries.

'The ILA is already established as one of the worlds largest and most important trade shows for the aerospace industry. It is synonymous with innovation, and it also takes an in-depth look at a number of issues of vital importance for the future success of our industry in the face of worldwide competition, such as sustainability, digitalisation, Industry 4.0 and 3D printing.'

Airbus will be promoting its new twin-engined, long-haul, wide-bodied A350 XWB at the show. The aircraft contains a greater proportion of carbon fibre components than any other passenger jet.

The A320neo will also be seen, which Airbus claim is the quietest jet in the Lufthansa fleet.

Several display teams will also take part including the Royal Navy's Black Cats helicopter display team.

Among the jets taking part in the displays later this week will be this pair of German Eurofighter attack jets

The airshow is only open to trade delegates for the first two days, but members of the public can visit on Friday and Saturday

These German Eurofighters were being prepared in advance of several displays planned above Schoenfeld airport over the next four days

Among the aircraft on display over the next four days is this massive Antonov 178 jet transport from Ukraine

Members of the German Bundeswehr, pictured, will be involved in displays involving the various aircraft during the air show

One of the displays will show how quickly the A400m can be loaded and unloaded with troops and equipment to demonstrate flexibility

More than 200 aircraft including military and civilian will be displayed between Wednesday morning and Saturday afternoon
to be with Rocco. She also has a daughter Lourdes, 19, son David, 10, and daughter Mercy, 10

Rocco Ritchie was spotted out with a friend in Manhattan on Tuesday morning just days after arriving back in the city from London.

Madonna's 15-year-old son grabbed some coffee before heading back to his mother's massive compound, located in the city's Upper East Side neighborhood.

He touched down in the Big Apple on Saturday night after a lengthy custody battle between his mother and father, director Guy Ritchie, that began as the result of the teenager's wishes to stay in London.

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Rocco Ritchie was spotted getting iced coffee with a friend in New York City on Tuesday morning

Rocco was dressed for the hot weather in a pair of cargo jeans and a short-sleeve shirt as he sipped on some iced coffee with his friend

The teenager laughed at something his friend said during their outing

It is the first time Rocco has been spotted in the city since returning from London

The 15-year-old was later seen slipping back into his mother Madonna's massive Upper East Side compound

Rocco was dressed for the hot weather in a pair of cargo jeans and a short-sleeve shirt as he sipped on some iced coffee with his friend.

After grabbing the coffee just a few blocks away from his mother's home, he and his friend slipped back in through the front gate.

He was all smiles as he arrived at John F. Kennedy airport on Saturday night, carrying his skateboard as he exited the terminal and got into a waiting car.

It is not known if Madonna is currently staying at her New York City home or is attending to other professional obligations.

She recently wrapped her worldwide Rebel heart Tour in March, which earned her a reported $170million in revenue.

The custody battle between Madonna, 57, and her ex-husband, 47, erupted in December when it was revealed that Rocco was refusing to fly home to be with his mother.

Madonna appeared in New York Supreme Court just days before Christmas where she revealed that her son wanted to stay with his father in London despite her insistence that he return to Manhattan.

The judge in the case ruled that Rocco must return to the United States by the following month.

At this same time, Madonna filed an order in London under international child abduction laws asking that Rocco return home.

Rocco returned to Manhattan on Saturday night following a lengthy custody battle between his mother and father, Guy Ritchie

Madonna, 57, filed court papers in December asking that her son return to New York from London , where he was staying with his father

All parties involved reached an agreement earlier this year but details were not revealed and sealed by the court (Rocco arriving in NYC on Saturday night above)

Madonna traveled to London in January and April (above) to be with Rocco. She also has a daughter Lourdes, 19, son David, 10, and daughter Mercy, 10

The teenager did not return the next month either, choosing to stay with his father and his new stepmother, Jacqui Ainsley, despite missing school.

Madonna during this time posted photos of the boy on her social media accounts writing about her love for him while sources began to claim that Rocco had grown tired of his mother's strict parenting and preferred spending time with his more laid-back father.

Ritchie continued to refuse to return Rocco, leading to Madonna eventually travel to London to visit the boy in late January.

Madonna and her ex finally had their day in court in March, where a judge ruled the two would privately work together to figure out a custody arrangement for their son.

The following month Madonna traveled back to London to see her son.

A source told DailyMail.com after the trip: 'Since Madonna's return to London, things have taken a definite turn for the better.

'Guy dropped Rocco at his mum's and they had a good chat before he went off to skate with his friends.
A onetime decorated U.S. Army sniper instructor known as Rambo was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for a conspiracy to kill a DEA agent, in a case that was described as 'ripped from the pages of a Tom Clancy novel'.

Joseph Hunter, 51, made a 'dishonorable choice' to join a conspiracy to plot to kill a DEA agent and informant and a cooperating witness in Liberia in 2013, as well as recruiting others for assassination assignments.

He pleaded guilty after being caught in a sting operation mounted with the help of his former boss, Paul Le Roux, an international criminal kingpin who turned government snitch after being arrested in 2012.

Joseph Hunter, 51 (pictured being arrested in Thailand in 2013) was sentenced Tuesday to 20 years in prison for conspiring in a plot to kill a Drug Enforcement Administration agent

Upon being charged back in 2013, prosecutors said his racket could have been 'ripped from the pages of a Tom Clancy novel'. Pictured: In 2012 being escorted by police in Thailand

Hunter was to be paid $100,000 while two snipers he recruited were to be paid $700,000, prosecutors said.

The others  a former U.S. Army soldier and an ex-German soldier  were both already sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Upon being charged back in 2013, federal prosecutor Preet Bharara said his racket could have been 'ripped from the pages of a Tom Clancy novel.'

And speaking Tuesday he told NBC in a statement: 'The sentencing of Joseph Hunter, an admitted contract killer, convicted drug trafficker, and ringleader of trained assassins, ends another chapter in a chilling criminal case that spanned the globe.'

His was a choice that betrayed society and the honor and trust that this country invested in his military career U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain

U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain called his crimes 'grave and serious' and said post-traumatic stress syndrome could not earn him leniency.

'His was a choice that betrayed society and the honor and trust that this country invested in his military career,' Swain said.

Still, she showed leniency, sentencing him below the minimum of 25 years sought by prosecutors but above the 10 years requested by the defense.

A recording relayed in court documents show the former sniper instructor telling his crew about past exploits and boasting about past exploits, including 'bonus work' or assassinations.

Hunter is heard saying: 'When we did it, we did it all' and describes how they 'hand grenaded people's houses' and 'put a man in the ocean and shot at him'.

An excerpt from Joseph Hunter's letter to US District Court Judge Laura Taylor Swain ahead of his sentencing

Hunter had admitted to the conspiracy in the federal indictment but in a plea for leniency, tried to portray himself as a victim of his ex-boss, programmer-turned-outlaw Paul Le Roux (left and right)

Hunter and his coworkers arrests occurred in Phuket, but authorities say Hunter and his gang ranged all over Southeast Asia trafficking drugs

He continued: 'We smuggled gold. We smuggled weapons...We took weapons from Jakarta to the Philippines on the ship.'

Hunter had admitted to the conspiracy in the federal indictment but in a plea for leniency, tried to portray himself as a victim of his ex-boss, programmer-turned-outlaw Paul Le Roux.

He said he had been unwittingly 'drawn into a criminal organization with guise of legal employment' and had been 'threatened, manipulated and set up crimes he did not commit'.

Hunter was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army in July 2004 as a sergeant first class after 20 years.

But prosecutors said in court papers that since 2009, he had participated in numerous murders, shootings and torture for an international drug group and then bragged to others that 'it's easy to kill.'

When he spoke in court Tuesday, Hunter cried and blamed his crimes on forgetting 'to place God at the forefront of my thoughts and actions.'

He said he was ashamed and embarrassed but 'forever grateful' for those who remained supportive, including a sister, who dabbed her eyes with tissues as she watched the proceeding.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara (pictured in 2013 announcing his charges, sais: 'The sentencing of Joseph Hunter...ends another chapter in a chilling criminal case that spanned the globe'

'I have shamed them, a good family, good friend,' he said.

Lawyers in the case said his Army service included training soldiers in marksmanship and tactics, five years of classified missions and five years as a drill instructor at Fort Knox, Kentucky.

Afterward, he did private security for firms during two tours of Iraq.

Defense lawyers said he had received numerous awards, including a certificate presented by President George W. Bush, the Global War on Terrorism Medal and the Kentucky Colonel, awarded by his home state.

After leaving the Army, Hunter passed the entrance exam to join the New York Police Department but did not pursue it because he thought it would be too expensive to raise a family of four in New York, according to court papers.

So the family settled in Owensboro, Kentucky, and he worked over a year as a classification treatment officer in Kentucky. The judge said he strayed into sniper work for the money.

Hunter was brought to the United States in 2013 to face conspiracy charges.
Family planning and contraception are not for Muslim families.

So says President Erdogan of Turkey in his latest pronouncement, urging Muslim women to hurry up and have more children.

It appears they are listening. If you look at the Turkish population over the last 50 years, it is a straight line graph rising exponentially from under 30million in 1960 to nearly 80million by 2010.

Target: Family planning and contraception are not for Muslim families, says President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey in his latest pronouncement, urging Muslim women to hurry up and have more children

Erdogan has even set women a target of four children: One child is loneliness, two is rivalry, three is balance and four is abundance.

Gordon Ramsay must be his pin-up.

Men are encouraged to mate with multiple wives and Turkish women are reminded their first role is popping out eggs like a battery hen serviced by a shared cock. All in an attempt to send the Muslim population soaring.

My first priority might be my children. But in order to make them my problem, not someone else's, my first role is that of provider.

I have a simple principle on childbirth.

I chose to have my children. Other taxpayers didnt. They should not be penalised for my decisions. I pay for their home, health and schooling.

When it comes to Turkey, you might be tempted to tell me to keep my big nose out. Their family-planning policies are not my business.

But you see, they are about to become my business and yours. Turkey is incoming.

As part of the deal for stopping migrants crossing from Turkey into Greece, we have all but promised visa-free travel inside the Schengen Zone to the entire Turkish population.

Migrants arrive on a Greek coastguard patrol boat into the port of Mytilene in Lesbos, following a rescue operation in a part of the Aegean Sea between Turkey and Greece in February

This deal, or act of blackmail as I prefer to call it, will open up the EU to 80 million Turks.

And as we all know, tracking or repatriating individuals that have already arrived in Europe is not of concern or consequence.

We have also committed 6billion of European funding to Turkey over the next five-year period.

They are about to become my business and yours. Turkey is incoming

Meanwhile, in a cunning sleight of hand, Turkey simply encourages Syrian and other migrants to turn left instead of right and make the crossing via Libya.

Given 700 people died in the Med this week alone, the flow of people has not stopped. Using their Samsung Migrant Satnav, people are simply selecting a new, more dangerous route.

When Turkey achieves visa-free travel inside the EU, its irresponsible attitude to family planning becomes our problem pretty fast. Our maternity units will bear the brunt of catching these babies.

And undoubtedly, as the push towards ever-closer union continues, we will find ourselves finding homes and schools for this exploding population as well.

Looking around Birmingham and Leicester, the percentage of Muslims in the under-five age group is almost twice as high as in the general population. Almost a tenth of babies in England and Wales are Muslim. When you consider only 4.5 per cent of the UK is Muslim, the changing face of Britain is made starker.

Given 700 people died in the Med this week alone, the flow of people has not stopped. Migrants are pictured being rescued at sea in this photograph released yesterday by the Italian Navy Marina Militare

If you are at an age where you are no longer fighting for school places for your child, let me open your eyes to exactly where we are at.

Our primary schools are full. Bursting with classes of almost 40 kids.

Parents often cannot get a place in any of their preferred schools.

Our primary schools are full. Bursting with classes of almost 40 kids. Parents often cannot get a place in any of their preferred schools

Official figures point to a shortfall of 10,000 places in four years, and thats based on our current population growth. If it rockets exponentially, hundreds of thousands of children could be without formal education.

We are stealing from budgets meant for repairs to pay to extend cramped spaces to squeeze in more people.

I have stood in a full primary classroom and wanted to weep. Youd have to be desperate to learn to stand even a chance. High achievers become baby-sitters for the badly behaved.

I am horribly glad my kids are just ahead of this fortunate to be taught in class sizes of ten to 12.

I have no doubt private schools will be clawed back into the state school system to create more space, dismantling everything parents and dedicated heads worked hard to build.

You might try to argue we are not in the Schengen Zone, so we are protected. But as 18 illegal Albanians arrived in an inflatable off the Kent coast on Sunday, I am not reassured.

The boat believed to have been carrying 18 Albanian migrants who needed rescuing off the Kent coast

We know European migrants get into the UK by fair means or foul, in inflatable boats or lorries.

It isnt just the young men with their mobile phones to whom you should turn your attention. Its the women with small children and another on the way. Operation Sophia was named after a baby born to a Somali woman in August on board a rescue ship, for goodness sake.

Migrants are willing to send small, unaccompanied children ahead of them, to try to secure a place for their family in Europe. Like a worm on a fishing line, thrown out hopefully into murky waters, chancing one life to catch opportunity for the others.

Women are the new people traffickers. Smugglers in an illicit trade of human cargo of a more personal kind, dramatically changing the demographics of the West

We've seen migrants dangle their babies over the side of their rickety boat off the coast of Italy, threatening to drop them if the Italians turned their boat back to Libya.

Women are the new people traffickers. Smugglers in an illicit trade of human cargo of a more personal kind, dramatically changing the demographics of the West.

President Erdogan is not hiding his intentions: I will say it clearly, we need to increase the number of our descendants.

To what end? Until babies are just disposable items? Spares lives to be discarded along the way?

As another picture emerges of a baby drowned in the Med, what are we supposed to do? Shed more tears? Listen to the lectures of Aylin Kurdis father telling us we arent doing enough to help? A man, lest we forget, who let his wife and son drown in the Med but somehow managed to save his own skin.

No. No. No.

Stop the boats. Stop the flow of migrants into our country. And stop making British nationals compete for school and doctors places with a population who, according to President Erdogan, have no understanding or acceptance of birth control and family planning.
A tiny cup dismissed as a 'dusty old pot' and kept in a university cupboard for 30 years has fetched 3.6million at auction.

The four inch (10cm) tall vessel was put into storage in 1984 at Staffordshire University and forgotten about after being on display since the Second World War.

But during a clear-out last year the blue and white cup was rediscovered after staff noticed it sitting in an unlocked cupboard 'cluttering up' a corridor.

The four-inch (10cm) tall vessel was put into storage in 1984 at Staffordshire University and forgotten about after being on display since the Second World War

University staff were left stunned when it turned out to be a Stem Cup from the Ming Dynasty

And university staff were left stunned when it turned out to be a Stem Cup from the Ming Dynasty dating back to 1425.

It bears the six-character mark of the fifth emperor of the Ming dynasty, Xuande and features a fearsome five-clawed dragon flying amongst flames.

On Tuesday the cup went on sale in Hong Kong where it was estimated to sell for between 1.9 million and 3.9 million.

It was eventually sold for a total of 41,600,000 HKD (3.6million) and was bought by a Chinese private collector at the sale in Hong Kong.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University, Rosy Crehan said: 'This is a fabulous result for the University of Staffordshire, it will allow us to care and display the Thornhill Collection for future generations to enjoy.

During a clear-out last year the blue and white cup was rediscovered after staff noticed it sitting in an unlocked cupboard 'cluttering up' a corridor

Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Staffordshire University, Rosy Crehan with the Stem Cup

'The funds raised will allow the remaining 269 pieces of Chinese Oriental Ceramics to be curated, conserved and enjoyed in a specially designed Ceramic Education and Research Facility.

'This is something Ernest Thornhill always hoped for and I am pleased that we will now be able to make his dream come true. '

It had been part of a collection of more than 270 pieces which was donated to the then North Staffordshire Technical College in 1944 by London pharmacist Ernest Thornhill.

Professor Flavia Swann, Head of Art and Design History at the university, who had catalogued the collection in the 1970s, quickly realised the significance of the find.

Prof Swann said the antiques were only rediscovered after the head of the Ceramic Technology Department said: 'I've got some dusty old pots cluttering up my corridor, would you like to have a look?'

She added: 'They were just in unlocked cabinets with sliding doors that when you slide them back they literally fell out to the floor. Nothing broke fortunately.'

Pharmacist Mr Thornhill, who lived in Clapham, London, donated it along with 275 other pieces of his Asian ceramics collection to stop it being destroyed in The Blitz.

Staffordshire University decided to sell the historic Chinese relic after its discovery last year in a bid to fund a secure display for the rest of the collection.

Ling Zhu with the 600-year-old china cup which was valued in excess of 4 million and was sold at auction

The four-inch tall vessel was put into storage and forgotten about at Staffordshire University after being donated during the Second World War

The remaining collection is now stored at a secret location in Wolverhampton and proceeds will be used to help build a new national ceramics centre.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the university Rosy Crehan said: 'It is clear from the bequest that Ernest Thornhill intended his collection to be used as a study resource.

'However the value of the entire collection has increased significantly in recent years to the point where the university is not able to house and display it securely.

'The only reason for selling is so that we can raise the funds to do that.'

The Stem Cup has since been shown around the world ahead of its sale in Hong Kong by auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull.

Lee Young, Head of Asian Art at the auctioneers, said before the auction: 'I am in a privileged position to be charged with selling an item of such historical importance.

'We have assembled a dedicated specialist team comprised of some of the leading lights in Asian art to ensure the best possible outcome is achieved.'

Antiques Roadshow expert Steven Moore, 49, who is a creative director at Burleigh pottery, in Middleport, Staffordshire, added: 'This is one of the greatest unseen collections of Chinese porcelain in the country.

'It covers every era of Chinese porcelain, with some dating back thousands of years.
A billionaire Saudi businessman has lost the third round of a legal fight with his former Pirelli calendar model ex-wife in an ongoing divorce battle over his 4billion fortune.

Sheikh Walid Juffali wanted the Supreme Court to analyse his dispute with Christina Estrada after a High Court judge ruled against him earlier this year and appeal judges then dismissed an appeal.

But Supreme Court justices have refused to consider the case - saying Dr Juffali's challenge raises no 'arguable point of law'.

Billionaire Saudi businessman Sheikh Walid Juffali has lost the third round of a legal fight with his former Pirelli calendar model ex-wife Christina Estrada (pictured together) in an ongoing battle over his 4billion fortune

A lawyer for Ms Estrada said the former model hopes agreement can be reached on her cash claim. Frances Hughes said Ms Estrada (pictured) hopes a settlement will 'provide security for herself and their daughter'

Dr Juffali, who is in his early 60s, had mounted a diplomatic immunity defence after Ms Estrada, who is in her 50s, made a claim on his estimated 4billion fortune.

He said London-based Ms Estrada was prevented from suing him in an English court because he had immunity through his post as permanent representative to the International Maritime Organisation for the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia.

Mr Justice Hayden had rejected his claim in February following a hearing in the Family Division of the High Court in London.

The judge concluded that the tycoon's appointment was 'an entirely artificial construct' designed to defeat court jurisdiction.

Dr Juffali then challenged Mr Justice Hayden's decision at a Court of Appeal hearing in London in March.

But three appeal judges dismissed that challenge.

Lord Dyson, the Master of the Rolls, who headed the Court of Appeal panel, said he thought that Mr Justice Hayden had been wrong to hold that (Dr Juffali) was not 'entitled in principle to immunity' from Ms Estrada's claim.

But Lord Dyson added: 'The judge was entitled to conclude on the facts that (Dr Juffali) is not entitled to immunity because he is permanently resident in the UK and the claim does not relate to any official acts performed by (Dr Juffali) in the exercise of his functions.'

Judges have heard that the pair met and married in 2001 and separated in 2013. They have a daughter who is in her early teens.

Dr Juffali, who is in his early 60s, had mounted a diplomatic immunity defence after Ms Estrada (pictured), who is in her 50s, made a claim on his estimated 4billion fortune

Judges have heard that the pair (pictured) met and married in 2001 and separated in 2013. They have a daughter who is in her early teens

A lawyer representing Ms Estrada has said the former model hopes agreement can be reached on her cash claim.

Frances Hughes, a senior partner at Hughes Fowler Carruthers, said Ms Estrada hopes a settlement will 'provide security for herself and their daughter'.

In February, a court heard claims from Ms Estrada that she cannot manage with only one butler and two maids.

She said at the time her ex-husband had cut the number of staff at her 100m mansion house near Windsor Castle.
Lesley Pumford was with her husband, Dr Chris Pumford, when she fell over the edge of the cliff top next to the couple's countryside home at Kinneff in Aberdeenshire

A dental practice owner who died after plunging off a cliff has been named by police.

Lesley Pumford was with her husband, Dr Chris Pumford, when she fell over the edge of the cliff top next to the couple's countryside home at Kinneff in Aberdeenshire.

Mr Pumford was also seriously injured in the tragedy and taken to hospital after coastguards were called out to the scene at about 1.30am on Friday.

The mother-of-one, who originally lived in the Glasgow area, owned Dental Inspirations with her husband, a surgery specialising in cosmetic dentistry in Cults, a plush suburb of Aberdeen.

She worked as the practice director and had helped the business win two local Trend magazine awards for Best New Business in 2012 and winner of the Best Health Clinic.

Police were still investigating the tragedy on Tuesday and described her sudden death as 'unexplained'.

The dental practice, Dental Inspirations, said it had been a 'very difficult' time for their family.

A spokeswoman said: 'Dental Inspirations can confirm that Dr Chris Pumford and his wife Lesley were involved in an accident on Friday, May 27, as a result of which, Lesley passed away.

'Chris has sustained serious, but not life threatening injuries, and remains in hospital.'

The couple lived at Whistleberry House which is based at the edge of a field close to the spot where Mrs Pumford fell off the cliff.

She was believed to have moved up to the Aberdeenshire area from Glasgow, where she had lived with her 21-year-old daughter Courtney, a few years ago.

The mother-of-one, who originally lived in the Glasgow area, and her husband (pictured together) owned Dental Inspirations, a surgery specialising in cosmetic dentistry in Cults, a plush suburb of Aberdeen

Dental practice director Lesley Pumford, 44, has been named as the woman who died after falling from a cliff near Kinneff. Her husband, Dr Chris Pumford, was also seriously injured in the incident (pictured together)

The cliffs which Lesley Pumford fell over the edge of next to the couple's countryside home at Kinneff

Her daughter graduated with a degree in pharmacy at Dundee University last year.

The keep fit enthusiast was heavily involved in the dental practice and in her spare time enjoyed long walks with her husband and their dog Ssal.

Dr Pumford graduated in dentistry from Glasgow University in 1995 and later underwent further training in London, Dallas and Boston.

The couple lived at Whistleberry House which is based at the edge of a field close to the spot where Mrs Pumford fell off the cliff

However, Mr Pumford was placed under a series of restrictions when he was called before a disciplinary panel in May last year.

No details of the allegations against the principal dentist were made available to the public but he was told that he would have to undergo indirect supervision if carrying out any implant work.

This meant he would have to have a meeting with a clinical supervisor to discuss the work after it was completed.

The General Dental Council (GDC) also told him to advise the organisation if he was working as a dentist in the UK or had applied for work abroad.

It was also Mr Pumford's responsibility to disclose the council's conditions to any prospective employer, local authorities and health boards.

His wife helped organise fundraising events for a seriously ill baby boy after moving to Aberdeen several years ago.

Rennie Maritz was diagnosed with a rare type of brain tumour after he fell ill in August 2011 at the age of one.

He was the first baby in Scotland to be diagnosed with the life-threatening Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma condition.

Celtic, Rangers and Aberdeen FC all pledged generous donations for the fundraising event which was held in Aberdeen.

But the boy died from the condition.

Police are still trying to establish what caused the accident which led to Mrs Pumford's death.

A police spokesman said: 'Police Scotland can confirm the identity of the woman who was found dead in the Whistleberry Castle area of Kinneff on Friday May 27, 2016 as 44-year-old Lesley Pumford who was local to the area.

'Her death remains unexplained and enquiries into the circumstances are ongoing.'

Mr Pumford (pictured) was also seriously injured in the tragedy and taken to hospital after coastguards were called out to the scene at about 1.30am on Friday

Police and coastguard at the scene near Kinneff after Lesley Pumford fell from the cliff and died

Police are still trying to establish what caused the accident which led to Mrs Pumford's death
McCoy's attorney said she posted the pictures to shame the victim

Victim shut down the Facebook account after resetting her password

McCoy sent them to her own phone, then posted them to girl's Facebook page and changed her password so they could not be removed

Prosecutors say she found nude pictures on 15-year-old girl's phone

Michelle Renee McCoy, 49, has been sentenced to a year in prison for

Michelle Renee McCoy, 49, of Carl Junction, was sentenced to a year in prison on Tuesday

A Missouri woman who posted nude photos of a 15-year-old girl on Facebook has been sentenced to a year in federal prison.

Michelle Renee McCoy, 49, of Carl Junction, was sentenced Tuesday for possession of child pornography, The Kansas City Star reported.

Prosecutors say McCoy, an acquaintance of the girl, found the pictures on the girl's phone.

McCoy sent them to her own phone then posted them on the girl's Facebook page.

She also changed the password so the victim couldn't remove the pictures.

Eventually the girl was able to shut down the Facebook account after resetting her password.

McCoy admitted to police who showed up at her home that she had the phone, but refused to give it to them.

They returned with a warrant and collected the phone along with the rest of McCoy's electronic devices.

McCoy's attorney said his client posted the pictures to shame the victim and teach her a lesson.

He asked that she receive probation because she was not a typical child pornographer.

'What Mrs. McCoy did was mean and stupid,' her attorney said in a written sentencing memorandum.

'She has been punished already in a variety of ways, including lifetime registry as a sex offender. Prison will not erase the victim's embarrassment or hurt.'

Prosecutors asked for a three-year prison sentence, saying the victim was humiliated.

'The victim was subjected to the humiliation of having all of her friends and family, some of who were minors themselves, viewing the sexually explicit photographs,' federal prosecutors said in a sentencing memorandum.

Back in February, McCoy pleaded guilty in a plea agreement before U.S. Magistrate Judge David P. Rush to possessing child pornography.




A 16-year-old Kansas girl has been sentenced to nearly 16 years in prison after she stabbed her younger sister to death.

Sierra Neihaus was sentenced Tuesday in Saline County, Kansas. She pleaded no contest in March to amended charges of second-degree murder, felony theft, and two counts of interference with law enforcement.

Prosecutors found Niehaus, who was 14 at the time, fatally stabbed her 13-year-old sister, Galazia, at the family's rural home on August 1, 2014.

Chillingly, just weeks before the murder, Sierra asked her friends on Facebook to suggest what she would most likely be arrested for.

A friend suggested she might beat someone up and then be arrested for assault. Little did they know, she was capable of far far worse.

Sierra Neihaus, left, was sentenced to 16 years in jail for killing her sister, Galazia, who was 13 at the time

Galazia (pictured here) was brutally stabbed. The judge in the case called it 'one of the more brutal murders the court had ever seen'

Describing the fatal stabbing of Galazia Niehaus as 'one of the more brutal murders this court has seen,' Judge Patrick Thompson imposed the longest sentence he could under state sentencing guidelines for the crimes Sierra Niehaus committed.

Attorney Julie Effenbeck, who represented Niehaus, said during the proceedings that Niehaus' family was asking the judge for 'mercy and leniency.'

She asked Judge Thompson to impose the sentences to be served all at one time in consideration of her young age and that 'this is an unusual situation that no one has yet been able to explain.'

Niehaus was originally charged with first-degree murder which would have carried a 50-year penalty, but Niehaus' parents, who were also the parents of the victim asked for a much shorter term.

The judge wanted to charge Sierra (pictured here) with first degree murder and give her 50 years in jail, but her parents pleaded for mercy

Chillingly, Sierra Niehaus posted this on her wall just weeks before the murder. A friend suggested she might beat someone up and then be arrested for assault. Little did they know, she was capable of far far worse

The judge imposed a 16-year sentence with prosecutors arguing the term was much-reduced from the usual mandatory 50-year sentence.

Judge Thompson said that because of the 'particularly aggressive, brutal and violent' nature of the murder he must consider Niehaus a danger to the community.

He imposed a sentence that was as long as guidelines allowed for someone with no prior criminal record.

Galazia was a student at Ell-Saline Middle School.

At the time of her death, her friends flooded twitter with grief.

'This is so depressing so sad. I can't believe this. It's so unreal. She was such a Beautiful girl. RIP Galazia Niehaus,' tweeted one friend.
His new wife is battling three other Democrats for his c

A Florida politician who was involved in a widely publicized bigamy case with his ex-wife has married the woman who is running for his congressional seat.

U.S. Representative Alan Grayson married Dr Dena Minning, 45, Sunday evening in Melbourne Beach, Florida.

'Rep. Alan Grayson and his wife Dr. Dena Grayson had a small, private wedding ceremony Sunday evening, with friends and family in attendance to celebrate their union, in the Florida beach town where Dena grew up,' Grayson's campaign press secretary Brook Hines said in a statement, according to Florida Politics.

The former Miss Minning quickly changed her last name on both of her Twitter and Facebook accounts to Grayson.

Happy couple: U.S. Representative Alan Grayson married Dr Dena Minning, 45, Sunday evening in Melbourne Beach, Florida. He shared the above photo to from their wedding day on the beach on Facebook on Tuesday

On Monday, she shared the above photo to Facebook and wrote: 'My handsome, brilliant, and amazing husband, Alan Grayson!!'

She is currently running for his congressional seat, as he is leaving the house to run for Marco Rubio's vacated U.S. Senate position. Above her campaign photo is pictured

On Monday, she took to her Facebook page to post a photo of them smiling together and wrote: 'My handsome, brilliant, and amazing husband, Alan Grayson!!'.

The politician, who is leaving the U.S. House to run for Marco Rubio's vacated U.S. Senate position, shared a photo from their wedding day on the beach alongside a Maya Angelou poem on Facebook on Tuesday.

The pair had been reportedly dating since 2014, prior to when his previous marriage to Lolita Grayson was annulled.

They had been married for almost 24 years until he discovered that she was still married to someone else.

At the time, the Democrat and highly successful trial lawyer, said Lolita's marriage to Robert Carson was not dissolved until 1994 in Broward County, Florida.

The pair had been reportedly dating since 2014, prior to when his previous marriage to Lolita Grayson (pictured above with Alan) was annulled. They had been married for 24 years before it was annulled

At the time, he said Lolita's marriage to Robert Carson was not dissolved until 1994 in Broward County, Florida. Pictured above is John Edwards (left), Alan Grayson, Lolita Grayson and their daughter Skye in 2005

The former couple have a 16-year-old, a 14-year-old and 10-year-old twins, as well as an adult child together.

The bigamy case was highly publicized, as they accused each other of several allegations including assault, bizarre and aggressive behavior.

Last June, in court papers he said that he should be the sole decision-maker for the children's education, medical issues and activities because Lolita Grayson is unwilling to communicate with him on those matters.

He accused Lolita Grayson of being abusive to the children, using money designated for child support for her own use and inadequately taking care of the children.

It's unclear if he won custody over their children or not.

The new Dr Grayson is battling against at least three candidates for her husband's position and will appear on the August 30 Democratic primary ballot.

According to Politico, the new marriage might give her a campaign a boost in the fight for Congressional District 9, as she has not done much campaigning against her competition state Sen. Darren Soto, Susannah Randolph and Valleri Crabtree.

The new Dr Grayson (left) is battling against at least three candidates for her husband's (right) position and will appear on the August 30 Democratic primary ballot

In 2000, she earned dual degrees, a doctorate in biochemistry and a doctor of medicine from Washington University in St Louis.

According to Florida Politics, Dena Grayson has never practiced as a physician despite serving a medical residency at the University of California-San Francisco School of Medicine in 2000-01.

In addition, she does not have a medical license, but started a company called MedExpert Consulting that has developed a number of biologic, patented and experimental drugs for cancer, Ebola and cholesterol.

Last fall her campaign financial disclosure report indicted that she earned more than $300,000 a year from the company.
Shocking footage shows thick black smoke billowing from a large chemical factory in China after it suddenly erupted into flames.

The plumes of smoke that rose high into the air could be seen from miles away as fire crews attempted to battle the blaze on the ground.

It is not yet known what caused the fire, which broke out in a factory in the Xiaoting District of Yichang, a city in the Hubei Province.

Plumes of thick black smoke rose high into the air as fire crews attempted to battle the blaze on the ground

The massive fire broke out at around 3.10pm today, but no explosion was heard prior to the blaze

But reports allege that the flames may have been ignited by a possible chemical leak at the factory.

Local officials are currently investigating the definite cause of the fire.

According to reports by Chinese state-run media, the structures belong to the Yuchang Zhongxing Chemical Co Ltd.

The fire broke out at around 3.10pm today, but no blast was heard prior to the blaze.

Rescuers were quickly sent to the factory and firefighters have been working to bring the flames under control.

Reports allege that the flames may have been ignited by a possible chemical leak at the factory

Rescuers were quickly sent to the factory and firefighters have been working to bring the fire under control

No casualties have yet been reported, either from the factory or any surrounding civilian buildings.

But locals have been staying away from the vicinity for fear of a possible chemical explosion.

The dramatic footage from Yichang has brought back memories from last August when a massive chemical explosion in the eastern coastal city of Tianjin rocked the country.

The incident caused 797 injuries and 173 deaths, among which were dozens of firefighters.
The defense attorney who represented Casey Anthony has furiously denied outrageous accusations made against him by a private investigator who worked on the famous murder case.

Jose Baez appeared on Fox & Friends Tuesday morning and said there was absolutely no truth to claims that Ms Anthony told him she had killed her daughter Caylee or that he and his client had a sexual relationship following statements made by Dominic Casey.

Mr Casey stated in an affidavit filed with United States Bankruptcy Court in the Middle District of Florida Tampa Division: '[On] Saturday, July 26, 2008, Baez had told me that Casey (Anthony) had murdered Caylee and dumped the body somewhere and, he needed all the help he could get to find the body before anyone else did.'

Mr Casey also claimed in the affidavit that Ms Anthony traded sexual favors with Baez to cover her legal fees.

Baez, who hired Mr Casey, said during his appearance: 'I took a chance on him, and unfortunately I'm paying for it today.'

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Shut it down: Jose Baez (pictured on Tuesday), who represented Casey Anthony when she was charged with murdering her daughter Caylee, says he never slept with his client

Attorney and client: Dominic Casey made the shocking claim about Baez and Ms Antony (pictured after being released from jail in July 2011) in an affidavit filed with United States Bankruptcy Court in the Middle District of Florida Tampa Division

Baez shot down as many of Mr. Casey's claims as he could at the top of his appearance, saying; 'One, El Chapo did not finance Casey Anthonys defense. Two, I did not have an inappropriate relationship with Casey.

'Three, drug traffickers did not kidnap Caylee and take her to Colombia. Four, she never told me that she murdered her child and where the body was. And five, the post office is not involved in Caylee Anthony's disappearance.'

He later said of Mr. Casey , who he claims worked for free on the case for three years; 'He'd better pray to the god of punk wannabe private eyes that some U.S. attorney in Tampa does not see these transcripts and decides to charge him with perjury.'

Baez made that comment when noting that much of what Mr. Casey said in his affidavit is different from what he said at trial.

Watch the latest video at <a href="http://video.foxnews.com">video.foxnews.com</a>

Ms Anthony was found not guilty of killing her daughter Caylee in 2011 after a two-month trial that enraged the nation.

The two-year-old girl went missing in June 2008 and her skeletal remains were later found in a bag near her home in December of that year.

Mr. Casey claimed in his affidavit that on September 5, 2008, Ms. Anthony was scheduled to sit down for a television interview but told Baez she did not want to do it, leading him to cancel with the network.

That is when Mr Casey claimed Baez, who is married, told him: 'You now owe me three b*** j***.'

Later that month there was another incident Mr Casey claims when he arrived at Baez's office and saw Ms. Anthony naked.

'This time she ran from his private office, through the conference room to the hallway,' Mr Casey claimed in the affidavit.

'That night, I told her that she cannot allow [Baez] to continue engaging in this behavior. Casey told me she had not money for her defense. I reminded her that Baez had more than enough money from the network he sold the photographs to pay for her defense,' said Mr Casey.

'Casey apologized and assured me it would not happen again.'

Victim: Mr. Casey claimed that Baez also told him that Ms. Anthony killed her daughter Caylee (pictured)

In court: Baez, who hired Mr Casey (pictured in June 2011 during the trial), said: 'I took a chance on him, and unfortunately I'm paying for it today'

Mr Casey also spoke about the recovery of Caylee's body later in the affidavit, claiming that Baez had suggested the baby would likely be found in the swamp where investigators did eventually discover her body.

'Baez had already told me on Saturday, July 26, 2008, that Casey had murdered Caylee and dumped the body somewhere,' claimed Mr. Casey.

'He also suggested to me that if I could gain access to the swamp on Suburban Drive without being seen, to do so because it could be the place that Casey had dumped Caylee's body.'
Oxford students have been letting off steam after their final exams with the traditional explosion of Champagne, shaving foam and party string.

The tradition of 'trashing' clearly endures despite successive attempts by the proctors of Oxford to clamp down on it and even impose fines.

The tradition started in the 1990s, a few years after Prime Minister David Cameron, Chancellor George Osborne, Home Secretary Theresa May, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond and former Mayor of London Boris Johnson all graduated.

A student is covered in foam and party string and holds a bottle of Cava after taking his final exam at Oxford University today

Currently 26 per cent of MPs have a degree from Oxford or Cambridge, half the Cabinet have an Oxbridge degree and 50 per cent went to private schools.

The high jinks of trashing have caused controversy over the years.

Three years ago the celebrations were described by university proctors as a disgrace because students left behind rotten food, vomit and broken glass.

But it pales into insignificance compared with a University of Oregon fraternity which was suspended this week after its members allegedly trashed a campsite at Shasta Lake in northern California, leaving behind piles of litter, faeces and beer bottles and abandoning dozens of tents.

A student grins as she is covered in foam and party string. Students say in their defence that they are simply blowing off steam after working hard for three years

A student is covered in foam and party string as she emerges from Oxford University today
Other allies to participate in Ankara's show of force included Azerbaijan, Germany, Qatar, Pakistan and Poland

Helicopters carried out mock raids, ships were deployed to a beach head and explosions

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Turkey has carried out its largest-ever multinational military exercise with an astonishing display of land, sea and air drills over the Aegean Sea and coastal region of Izmir.

Featuring 860 personnel from eight countries, the drills saw military jets, landing ships, drones, howitzers and tanks combine to form a display of military power on the Turkish coast.

Attack helicopters carried out mock night-time raids, de-mining vehicles set off controlled explosions on land, and military equipment was delivered to the ground via the sea and air.

A massive explosion erupts in the Izmir district of Turkey after combat helicopters hit their targets during the huge military exercise

A combat plane drops ammunition during the exercise, which saw eight countries militaries take part in a co-ordinated live drill

Soldiers inside an armored vehicle are pictured in action during the so-called Efes-2016 Combined Joint Live Fire Exercise

Combat helicopters pass over a structures built at a live fire ground near the Turkish coastal city of Izmir today

Helicopters collect soldiers after landing in a field during the drills, which saw 860 military personnel participating

A target area is destroyed in a massive explosion after it is struck by missiles fired by attack helicopters

A missile fired from above is seen detonating a section of land as the live fire drills were watched by observers from 79 countries

The nations participating in the event included Saudi Arabia, Germany, the United States, Azerbaijan, Britain, Qatar, Pakistan and Poland.

According to hurriyetdailynews, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and observers from 79 different countries attended the live exercise.

The drills, which are due to end on June 4, come as the region remains mired in fierce political tensions while the war and refugee crisis in Syria and Iraq rages next door.

NATO member Turkey is part of the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS in Syria and is also a vocal opponent of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. However, Russia backs Assad - putting the two countries in conflict - but says it also supports the Syrian Kurds in the struggle against ISIS.

Relations between Ankara and Moscow hit their worst point in recent memory after Turkey shot down the Russian plane over Syria last year, prompting a raft of sanctions from Russia.

Moscow has accused Ankara of hindering Kurdish forces in their battle against ISIS and of using the fight against terrorism as a pretext to crack down on Kurdish organisations in Syria and Turkey.

Snipers hide in shrubs while wearing camouflage gear during the drills which were led by NATO member Turkey

Two Turkish soldiers charge up a hill with their weapons drawn while three huge landing ships are visible in the background

Participants are seen watching the exercises from the safety of a set of marquees erected on a nearby hillside

A combat helicopter opens fire while flying through the air above Izmir and the Aegean Sea today

Observers and members of the press film the proceedings from the vantage point of a hill while a helicopter flies overhead

A Turkish soldier is seen crawling through the dirt during the exercises which were the biggest joint military drill in Turkey's history

Combat jets dropped missiles during the live-fire exercises, which were held amid increasing tensions centering on Turkey

Warships are seen forming a beach head and deploying tanks and ATVs onto the sand in this dramatic picture

The warships were tasked with deploying additional troops and equipment while observers from dozens of countries watched on

The exercises, called 'Efes-2016', started at May 4 and will be finished on June 4. They are aimed at training members in combined and joint operations

The military drills took place in the Izmir district of Turkey, which is located on its western coast by the Aegean Sea

Among the nations taking part in the exercise were the U.S, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Poland, Germany, Qatar and Azerbaijan
More that 2,500 migrants have drowned in the Mediterranean already this year - a 35 per cent rise on last year's figures recorded at the same point.

The shocking figures were announced by migration officials who revealed they are unable to take into account the potentially hundreds more that drown in undetected boats.

Despite this year's deal with Turkey that has decreased attempts of migrants to cross to Greece, mainly African migrants are continuing to try to cross the more dangerous 'central Mediterranean' route from Libya to Italy, which has claimed the lives of more than 880 migrants in the last week.

Drowned: A baby drowned when the wooden boat capsized last Friday. More and more women and children are making the perilous journey

Rescued: Aid agencies say smugglers are using riskier tactics to increase the amount of people that cross

As the warmer weather hits, aid officials say even more people will attempt to make the hazardous crossing

And the numbers are only set to rise according to UN refugee spokesman William Spindler who said this year has already been 'particularly deadly'.

As the weather improved and the seas grow warmer more and more migrants are anticipated to attempt to make the trip.

Aid officials said it also suggests that Libyan smuggling gangs are using even riskier tactics than before to profit from the torrent of those desperate to reach the safety or perceived economic security of Europe.

According to William Spindler some survivors told his agency that some Libyan smugglers appeared to be trying to earn extra cash before the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which begins next week.

Spindler also noted new and risky tactics from the smuggling gangs who use one boat overloaded with hundreds of people to tow another packed boat without an engine.

The second boat sank Thursday - the most deadly capsizing last week - and carried mostly Eritreans, according to the IOM.

IOM spokesman Joel Millman said traffickers could be also cutting prices to draw in new migrants - mostly from elsewhere in Africa - and have recently been seen using bigger boats that can carry up to 750 people. Over the last year 'smaller rubber inflatable dinghies' were more prevalent on the smuggling route, he said.

Two Eritreans who were among the hundreds of shipwreck survivors brought to Italian ports - were haunted by the fact that so many women and children had been on their capsized boat and did not survive

Two Eritreans who were among the hundreds of shipwreck survivors brought to Italian ports - were haunted by the fact that so many women and children had been on their capsized boat and did not survive.

'I started to cry when I saw the situation and when I found the ship without an engine. There were many women and children,' said 21-year-old Filmon Selomon who plunged into the sea to save himself.

'Water was coming in from everywhere, top, bottom.'

'The children were crying and the women,' said Habtom Tekle, a 27-year-old Eritrean. 'At this point I only tried to pray. Everybody was trying to take the water out of boat.'

Up until last week, only 13 migrant crossing deaths had been recorded in May in the southern Mediterranean

Some 24 sub-Saharian migrants were rescued by Navy Rescue when they try to reach the Spanish coast

The International Organization for Migration, citing what could be a record weekly death toll on the Mediterranean by its count, said Tuesday that 62 people were confirmed dead and another 971 were missing and presumed dead in nine separate deadly emergencies since May 25 on the Libya-to-Italy sea route.

IOM spokesman Joel Millman said up until last week, only 13 migrant crossing deaths had been recorded in May in the southern Mediterranean.

Spindler gave the following estimates: about 100 people died in a shipwreck Wednesday; some 550 others died in another capsizing Thursday, the one that the two Eritreans survived; and a third sinking Friday left 170 others missing and presumed dead.

The discrepancy between the agencies stems largely from Wednesday's sinking: IOM now estimates that 250 people died in that incident. Like UNHCR, it had originally estimated about 100 deaths.

UNHCR said shipwreck survivors who landed in Augusta, Italy, over the weekend indicated that another 47 migrants were missing at sea after a raft carrying 125 migrants deflated. It said eight others were lost overboard from another boat and four deaths were reported after fire on a separate vessel.

IOM said nearly 19,000 migrants arrived by sea to Italy in May - more than twice the figure in April but less than the 21,221 arrivals in the same month a year ago

Spindler, speaking alongside Millman, said authorities were still trying to understand the jump in deaths, even as they know the region is moving into its high season for human trafficking.

Those factors appear to mean that more people were dying even as fewer were coming.

IOM said nearly 19,000 migrants arrived by sea to Italy in May - more than twice the figure in April but less than the 21,221 arrivals in the same month a year ago.

A deal between the European Union and Turkey to return migrants has significantly dampened the key route into Europe from Turkey to Greece, which hundreds of thousands of people used last year. That has left international refugee agencies watching for signs that migrants may be shifting to the much longer and more dangerous Libya-Italy option.

'As of now, UNHCR has not seen evidence of a significant diversion of Syrians, Afghans or Iraqis from the Turkey-Greece route to the central Mediterranean one,' Spindler said.

He reiterated UNHCR's appeal to the EU to allow for more legal pathways for refugees to reach Europe, calling it 'shameful' that the 28-nation bloc had resettled fewer than 2,000 people under an EU plan announced last year to resettle 160,000.




Cincinnati police have now clarified that and verified that the boy is three

Zoo officials and police first reported the boys age was four

He insisted barriers were secure, asking: 'Do you know any four-year-olds? They can climb over anything'

Zoo director said Harambe was 'disoriented' and tranquilizer would have taken too long with the possibility of agitating the animal even more

This is the three-year-old boy who fell into a gorilla enclosure, prompting zookeepers to kill the animal who grabbed him.

Isiah Dickerson was with his mother Michelle Gregg at Cincinnati Zoo, Ohio, when he somehow made his way through a barrier, into a moat - and was lifted up by Harambe.

Within minutes the 17-year-old 450lb silverback was killed by zookeepers who feared for Isiah's safety.

But the decision has sparked a backlash, with calls for the boy's parents to be prosecuted.

Isiah is recovering from minor injuries and his mother has not been seen at the Cincinnati home where she lives.

His father, Deonne Dickerson, 36, has also not been seen since the killing of the gorilla. He was not with his partner and their four children at the time.

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Family: Isiah Dickerson is seen with his mother Michelle Gregg, 32, and his father Deonne Dickerson, 36. The couple have four children.

Doting: Isiah Dickerson with his father Deonne. The family released a statement saying that he was not badly injured and thanking God for his help

Close: Deonne Dickerson, his partner Michelle Gregg and their children, including Isiah

Mom and dad: Deonne Dickerson and Michelle Gregg are the parents of the three-year-old boy who fell into the gorilla enclosure of Harambe on Saturday at Cincinnati Zoo

Soon after the incident, Michelle Gregg,32, posted a message on Facebook saying: 'I want to thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers today. What started off as a wonderful day turned into a scary one.

'For those of you that have seen the news or been on social media that was my son that fell in the gorilla exhibit at the zoo. God protected my child until the authorities were able to get to him.

'My son is safe and was able to walk away with a concussion and a few scrapes... no broken bones or internal injuries.

'As a society we are quick to judge how a parent could take their eyes off of their child and if anyone knows me I keep a tight watch on my kids. Accidents happen but I am thankful that the right people were in the right place today.'

Together: Deonne Dickerson has a past history of violent crime. He now lives in Cincinnati with partner Michelle Gregg and together they have four children

The family released a statement on Sunday saying they had taken their boy home from the hospital.

It read: 'We are so thankful to the Lord that our child is safe. He is home and doing just fine. We extend our heartfelt thanks for the quick action by the Cincinnati Zoo staff.

'We know that this was a very difficult decision for them, and that they are grieving the loss of their gorilla. We hope that you will respect our privacy at this time.'

The family have been subject to death threats. They are not facing a police investigation.

The zoo, however, is and is also now the subject of a complaint to the United States Department of Agriculture, which regulates safety for animals and visitors.

The boy's father has a significant criminal history, with offenses including burglary, firearms offences, drug trafficking, criminal trespass, disorderly conduct and kidnap.

In 2006 he was sentenced to one year behind bars for a drug trafficking conviction.

But in numerous pictures posted on Dickerson's Facebook site in recent years he appears to have turned his life around to become the proud father of four.

Indeed, the majority of his postings to the social media site are updates of his children and his working life.

In others pictures he has uploaded his friends post congratulate him and Michelle on the birth of their fourth child last January.

Cleveland-based Dickerson is from Atlanta, Georgia studied at Cuyahoga Community College, Ohio and now works as a sorter at a Cincinnati industrial equipment supplier.

Gregg is currently the administrator at a Cincinnati pre-school.

She has been the subject of sharp criticism following the incident that saw zoo staff shoot dead Harambe who, according to new video footage, may have been protecting rather than threatening the child after he crawled through a barrier and fell into the gorilla's enclosure.

Many social media commenters have criticized the boy's parents and said they should be held accountable. A Cincinnati police spokesman said no charges were being considered. A spokeswoman for the family said Monday they had no plans to comment.

'I do think there's a degree of responsibility they have to be held to,' said Kate Villanueva, a mother of two children from Erlanger, Kentucky, who started the 'Justice for Harambe' page and attended Monday's vigil. 'You have to be watching your children at all times.'

More outraged animal lovers took to social media declaring the western lowland gorilla's life was unnecessarily taken, and more than 4,000 have already joined the 'Justice for Harambe'.

A special zoo response team shot and killed a 17-year-old gorilla named Harambe to protect a three-year-old who fell in the enclosure. But new video footage shows the two briefly holding hands (pictured)

The clip shows Harambe standing guard in the corner of the moat (left, with the boy behind Harambe), and witnesses said the gorilla looked like he was trying to protect the boy from panicked bystanders (right)

The boy's mother wrote a Facebook post saying her son suffered a concussion and a few scrapes. She defended her role as a parent and called the incident an accident

Ian Redmond, the chairman of the Gorilla Organization, told CNN : 'When gorilla or other apes have things they shouldn't have, keepers will negotiate with them, bring food, their favorite treats, pineapple or some kind of fruit that they don't know and negotiate with them.'

Primatologist Julia Gallucci said: 'The gorilla enclosure should have been surrounded by a secondary barrier between the humans and the animals to prevent exactly this type of incident.'

Others are placing the blame squarely on the boy's parents.

More than 115,000 people have signed a Change.org petition calling for the mother and father to be 'held accountable for their actions of not supervising their child'.

One Twitter user wrote: 'So a beautiful, innocent gorilla has to die because neglectful parents can't control their kids? Mankind sucks :( #Harambe #CincinnatiZoo'

Another user Chris Dasauchoit tweeted: 'Beautiful animals sadly paying for utter human stupidity and negligence with their lives. #Harame #CincinnatiZoo.'

The zoo shot the beloved animal after he dragged the boy through the water and up out of the moat, but many say he was simply trying to protect the child

Deidre Lykins was also at the zoo when she saw the boy drop into the enclosure.

She described how Ms Gregg was calling out for her son and had just been next to him when he disappeared.

Then she had to stop her husband from going in to try and rescue him. But she insists Ms Gregg is not at fault, and wrote on Facebook: 'This mother was not negligent and the zoo did an awesome job handling the situation!

'This was an open exhibit! Which means the only thing separating you from the gorillas, is a 15 ish foot drop and a moat and some bushes!'

This comes as new video footage of Harambe the gorilla suggests he was trying to protect a three-year-old boy who fell into the zoo enclosure just minutes before the 400-pound animal was fatally shot.

Many are placing the blame squarely on the parents of a three-year-old boy

The small child said he wanted to get in the water before the incident, to which the mother, who was also watching several other children, replied: 'No, you're not, no, you're not,' according to one witness

Some said Harambe appeared to be guarding and defending the boy, but video footage also showed him dragging the three-year-old in the water

The clip shows Harambe standing guard over the boy in the corner of the moat, and the two even share a brief moment holding hands.

Witnesses said the gorilla was acting protectively in the tense situation, which may have been aggravated by panicked onlookers who screamed as they watched from above.

Cincinnati Zoo Director Thane Maynard confirmed the boy was not under attack, but called it a 'life threatening situation' where the gorilla was 'agitated', 'disoriented', and 'behaving erratically'.

During a press conference on Monday afternoon, Maynard supported the animal response team's decision to kill Harambe, and said: 'Looking back we would make the same decision.'

He also insisted the zoo's barriers were secure, saying: 'We all need to work to make sure our families are safe. Do you know any four-year-olds? They can climb over anything.'

The incident, which was captured on a cell phone camera, has sparked an outcry of emotion, with thousands of mourners branding it a 'senseless death'.

A mother who was at the zoo said she tried to stop the child, who authorities believe crawled past the railing and fell 10 feet into the gorilla's habitat, where he spent more than 10 minutes.

'I tried to prevent it, I tried to grab him and I just couldn't get to him fast enough,' Brittany Nicely told WHIO.

According to Nicely, the gorilla was acting protectively towards the boy and did not exhibit any threatening behavior.

A newly released video shows Harambe standing over the boy in the corner of the moat, appearing to shield him from the screaming crowd above.

The animal then dragged the boy by the leg, but the two shared a surprisingly tender moment when the three-year-old reached for Harambe's arm and the two briefly held hands.

According to the fire department incident report, the gorilla was 'violently dragging and throwing the child', WLWT reported.

But Nicely contradicted the account, saying: 'What the first responders saw, I'm just not sure...They said he was violently throwing the child around, which seems crazy to me.

POLICE AND PROSECUTORS MOVE ON HARAMBE'S DEATH Police and prosecutors are investigating the zoo which shot Harambe the gorilla - and the federal government has received a formal complaint about its safety record. Animal rights activists have made Cincinnati zoo the subject of a formal complaint to the United States Department of Agriculture and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA) following the shooting of the silverback gorilla after a three-year-old child fell into his enclosure. Stop Animal Exploitation NOW (SAEN) alleges several potential violations of the Animal Welfare Act, which regulates animal exhibitors and is intended to safeguard both animals and zoo visitors. It highlighted a recent safety breach at the zoo, when two polar bears escaped their enclosure and got into a service hallway. Separately, prosecutors have asked police to look into the death. The zoo was cited after the breach in March this year, prompting the campaign group to say that it raised questions over its approach to safety. Michael Budkie, the spokesman for SAEN, said: 'If this enclosure had been constructed adequately a four-year-old child could not have penetrated it. 'This wasn't someone who came in with grappling hooks and ropes. You tell me. If a four-year-old child can get through the barrier is that a safe barrier?' The group's complaint centers on the killing of Harambe being the second incident within just over ten weeks. On 17 March 2016 the USDA cited the zoo when two polar bears  'Little One' and 'Berit' - escaped their enclosure and entered the zoo's Bearline service hallway. Escaped: Male polar bear Little One (right) and female Berit (left) managed to get out of their enclosure because of two doors left open in error. The USDA said human life could have been harmed The discovery was made by a keeper when she entered the hallway to be confronted by a female bear about 30 feet away. The shooting team and veterinary staff were notified by security and both bears were darted and ultimately safely returned to their enclosure. The USDA found human error to be to blame after it was established that two doors were left open by the keeper. In its report, the USDA warned that the incident 'could have resulted in human injury or death' and noted that this was a repeat citation. The zoo has also previously been cited for their Eastern black and white colobus monkey enclosures that were found to be rotting and in a poor state of repair  in some sections planks of wood were completely worn away. Budkie said: 'What happened this weekend made it very clear, the barriers are not adequate to keep people out of the enclosures. 'It is clear that the Cincinnati Zoo has violated the Animal Welfare Act. It is also clear that the Cincinnati Zoo has had previous citations for violations. 'One was a repeat citation for a facility which is rare.' A prosecutor's office says police are investigating the circumstances surrounding the three-year-old's entrance into the enclosure and the gorilla's death. The Hamilton County prosecutor's office said Tuesday that police will confer with prosecutors after their investigation is complete. Cincinnati police said over the weekend that no charges were planned. However, spokeswoman Tiffaney Hardey says police are reviewing the matter and continuing to gather information.

'They have a picture of the boy sitting in front of the gorilla moments before they shot him.'

Kim O'Connor told WLWT she heard the boy talking about getting into the water before she heard a splash, followed by frantic yelling when onlookers realized he was inside the enclosure.

According to O'Connor, the gorilla looked like he was trying to protect the boy from panicked bystanders who may have aggravated the tense situation.

'I don't know if the screaming did it or too many people hanging on the edge, if he thought we were coming in, but then he pulled the boy down away further from the big group,' she said.

Harambe later dragged the three-year-old out of the moat before he was fatally shot with a rifle while the boy was still between the animal's legs.

The zoo director confirmed the gorilla did not appear to be attacking the child, but he described it as 'an extremely strong animal in an agitated situation'.

'You're talking about an animal that's over 400 pounds and extremely strong. So no, the child wasn't under attack but all sorts of things could happen in a situation like that. He certainly was at risk,' Maynard told WLWT.

During a press conference on Monday, Maynard said Harambe was 'behaving erratically', before adding: 'The child wasn't just being endangered, but dragged around by the ankle and hurt.'

He explained that tranquilizing the gorilla, which could have taken several attempts, would have left the boy in danger since the effect would not have been immediate.

Brittany Nicely (left and right) said she tried to stop the child from going into the enclosure but couldn't grab him in time. She then tried to calm the boy's mother has the chaos unfolded

The zoo celebrated Harambe's birthday on Friday, just one the day before he died (left). Many questioned whether the zoo could have used a tranquilizer first, but Maynard said it could have had the opposite effect

He also said in a statement released Sunday: 'The impact from the dart could agitate the animal and cause the situation to get much worse.

'We are heartbroken about losing Harambe, but a child's life was in danger and a quick decision had to be made.'

He supported the zoo's dangerous animal response team for their decision to kill Harambe, and said: 'They made a tough choice and they made the right choice because they saved that little boy's life.'

During Monday's press conference, Maynard said he wasn't there to 'point fingers' but said: 'We all need to work to make sure our families are safe.'

'We're the ones who took the loss on this- you can trust me, a lot of people expressed concerns, but it doesn't affect anyone as much as the people at the zoo.

'This is a very big loss to the zoo- not just an emotional loss, but a loss to a key conservation and breeding program.'

On Monday, the zoo director insisted the horizontal barriers were secure and said: 'We take safety very seriously and we are keenly interested in improvement.

'Any of us could climb over barriers if we choose. As I said, you can lock your car or lock your house, but if someone wants to get in, they can.'

He cited the incident last week in Chile, where a man with a suicide note in his pocket stripped down and broke into a lion enclosure at the Santiago Zoo where he was mauled before two of the animals were shot dead.

The animal response team at Cincinnato Zoo had practiced drills and 'table top discussions' after the incident, without realizing they would be facing a similar scenario on Saturday.

While safety measures are being evaluated, Maynard said the gorilla exhibit is expected to reopen next weekend without citing specific security improvements.

Harambe (right) was raised at the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas (left) before he was moved to Cincinnati in 2014. He is a western lowland gorilla, which the World Wildlife Fund deemed critically endangered

Zoo director Maynard noted it was the first time the team had killed a zoo animal in such an emergency situation, and he called it 'a very sad day'.

He said said in a statement: 'The Zoo security team's quick response saved the child's life.

'We are all devastated that this tragic accident resulted in the death of a critically-endangered gorilla. This is a huge loss for the Zoo family and the gorilla population worldwide.'

Jerry Stones, who worked at the Gladys Porter Zoo, in Bronwsville, Texas, where Harambe lived before he was transferred in 2014, said he was devastated by the news.

Stones, who raised the gorilla, told the NY Daily News: 'It tore me a new one. An old man can cry, too. He was a special guy in my life. It's a sad day for us.'

He added: 'He grew up to be a pretty, beautiful male. He was very intelligent. His mind was going constantly. He was just such a sharp character.'

Western lowland gorillas are deemed critically endangered by the World Wildlife Fund, but Maynard said Harambe's death would not be the end of his lineage, since viable sperm was stored at the zoo.

Gorilla World has been closed since the incident on Saturday, although Maynard said it was expected to reopen by next weekend. The rest of the zoo has been open as usual.

In March, two curious polar bears at the zoo wandered into a behind-the-scenes service hallway through an open den door, but never left a secondary containment area.

The zoo said the 17-year-old female Berit and the 26-year-old male Little One, entered an 'inappropriate' area but remained contained and were never loose or a threat to the public.
The residents of an island off the coast of Finland thought the country was being invaded when they spotted soldiers carrying guns - but it was their own bungling army.

Residents of Kamsholmen, just to the east of Helsinki, were spooked when they saw men in uniforms carrying guns and rucksacks.

But it turns out a night-time training exercise had gone wrong and the troops had either come ashore on the wrong island or forgot to let the locals know their plans.

Finnish soldiers taking part in a training exercise are pictured. Finland has not been at war since World War II, when it fought with the Germans against the Soviet Union and later against the Nazis

Bjarne Winbergia told the Ilta-Sanomat newspaper a large boat docked near his house and unloaded a group of uniformed men carrying rucksacks and what looked like guns.

When they disappeared into a nearby forest Mr Winberg jumped into his own boat, sailed to the mainland and called the emergency services, thinking he was tipping them off about the enemy.

'Of course I was scared,' he tells the paper.

But it turned out the whole thing was part of the Finnish Army's Operation Viela spring training exercises.

Finnish soldiers were spotted on Kamsholmen, to the east of the Finnish capital Helsinki, sparking panic among some residents

The Ostnyland newspaper said a Finnish defence spokesman said Kamsholmen was not meant to be part of the exercise at all but other reports suggested it was but the army had simply forgotten to inform residents.

Finland's Gevalia brand of coffee - which has long been marketed as being ideal for hosting unexpected visitors - spotted a PR open goal.

The company said it would send free packs of Gevalia to all those affected by 'unexpected military guests' on the island.
Hillary Clinton was endorsed today by California Gov. Jerry Brown, but not before the Democrat heaped praise on her rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

'I have closely watched the primaries and am deeply impressed with how well Bernie Sanders has done,' Brown wrote in a release announcing his decision.

'He has driven home the message that the top one percent has unfairly captured way too much of America's wealth, leaving the majority of people far behind,' Brown continued.

Brown even went so far as to say that Sanders' bid for the presidency reminded the California Democrat of his last run for the White House in 1992.

'I attempted a similar campaign,' Brown reminded voters, who might also recall that his plans were thwarted by one Bill Clinton in a brutal Democratic primary.

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Hillary Clinton (left) got an endorsement today from California Gov. Jerry Brown (right) ahead of the state's primary next Tuesday, potentially putting to bed a 24 year feud between Brown and the Clintons

Bernie Sanders, talking to reporters after today's health care event in Emeryville, California, said Gov. Jerry Brown's endorsement was just the establishment siding with Hillary Clinton as usual

Bill Clinton (left) and Jerry Brown (right) didn't get along with each other when they both ran for the White House back in 1992. The primary started what would become a 24-year-old feud

Brown annoyed the Clintons by staying in the race through the California primary and withdrew during the Democratic National Convention in New York City that summer.

He had spoke about many of the issues that today Sanders' holds dear, while sounding a little Trump-ian too.

'Tonight, one out of every five of our children is in poverty,' Brown said at the 1992 Democratic National Convention. 'Millions of their parents are laboring for $425 an hour.'

'Men and women who have worked their whole lives are sitting idle as smug custodians of global finance move their jobs to Mexico,' Brown said.

He also boasted about limiting his campaign donations to $100 and having a 1-800 number to get people of diverse incomes involved in the political process.

But putting those Sanders' comparisons aside, Brown argued that Hillary Clinton 'convincingly made the the case that she knows how to get things done and has the tenacity and skill to advance the Democratic agenda.'

The latter part of Brown's announcement suggests that he sided with Clinton because of the electoral reality.

'Voters have responded by giving her approximately 3 million more votes  and hundreds more delegates,' Brown pointed out.

'If Clinton were to win only 10 percent of the remaining delegates  wildly improbable  she would still exceed the number needed for the nomination,' he continued.

'In other words, Clintons lead is insurmountable and Democrats have shown  by millions of votes  that they want her as their nominee,' Brown added.

California Gov. Jerry Brown (middle) ran against Bill Clinton (left) for the Democratic nomination in 1992 and alleged that Clinton was throwing government business to Hillary Clinton's Arkansas law firm

Brown announced he was boarding the Clinton train after a 24-year feud with the prominent political family that was at its most heated throughout 1992.

At one Democratic primary debate Brown suggested that Bill Clinton was giving government business to Hillary Clinton's law firm in Little Rock, Arkansas.

'He is funneling money to his wife's law firm for state business,' Brown alleged. 'It's the kind of conflict of interest that's incompatible with the kind of public servant we expect,' Brown also said.

Bill Clinton didn't hold back his anger.

'I don't care what you say about me, but you ought to be ashamed of yourself for jumping on my wife,' Clinton said, finger pointing.

'You're not worth being on the same platform as my wife,' the future president added.

Now, however, Brown is on the same side as Clinton's wife.

'This is no time for Democrats to keep fighting each other,' Brown argued today. 'The general election has already begun. Hillary Clinton, with her long experience, especially as secretary of state, has a firm grasp of the issues and will be prepared to lead our country on day one.'

Sanders, whose devoted practically all of his resources on the outcome of California, dismissed the governor's endorsement of Clinton as the establishment-as-usual.

'I will tell you that in every state that we have gone into, we have taken on the entire Democratic establishment, whether the governors, or senators, with one exception in Oregon, mayors,' Sanders began.

'And you know what? We have won 20 states. So it's not surprising to me that we will have the Democratic establishment supporting Hillary Clinton,' Sanders said.

'But you know what? I'd rather have these guys than the Democratic establishment,' Sanders continued, referring to those he just spoke to at an event that was billed as a 'heath care press conference' with National Nurses United.

Sanders didn't answer any questions on the main stage of the event.

Instead local reporters chased him down and he boasted, 'I think we're gonna win here in California.

When it was pointed out to the candidate that Brown had said nice things about Sanders, the Vermont senator complimented him back.

Well I like Gov. Brown, Sanders interjected, though didn't say much about the 1992 comparison.

'I really have not heard what the governor has to say. And I like Jerry Brown,' Sanders told reporters, including one from the local CBS affiliate KCBS.

'But people can make their own choices,' Sanders said.
During an already combative press conference Tuesday about his fundraising for veterans charities, Donald Trump took his disdain for one reporter especially far  calling him 'a sleaze.'

The unlucky target of Trump's ire, Tom Llamas of ABC News, had asked him if his January claim of raising $6 million  he announced a lower total, $5.6 million, on Tuesday  indicated that he has 'a problem with the truth.'

'No, I raised almost $6 million. Some of it didn't come through, but more money is coming through,' Trump insisted, predicting that the long-term total will be 'over $6 million.'

But however many millions he directed to charity, Trump objected to being questioned instead of praised.

'What I don't want is, when I raise millions of dollars, [to] have people say  like this sleazy guy right over here from ABC, he's a sleaze in my book,' he said, pointing at Llamas.

Trump and Llamas have crossed swords in the past over the ABC newsman's questions about deportation of illegal immigrants.

'SLEAZE'! Donald Trump attacked ABC News reporter Tom Llamas on Tuesday during a press conference called to detail $5.6 million in veterans charity fundraising Trump had organized this year

'RESPECTFUL AND RESPECTED': ABC News stood by Llamas as he asked Trump whether falling short of the $6 million he claimed to have raised in January meant he had 'a problem with the truth'

'Why am I a sleaze?' Llamas shot back.

'You're a sleaze because you know the facts and you know the facts well,' the billionaire presidential candidate replied before backing away from the podium so New Hampshire state Rep. Al Baldasaro, the public face of his veterans outreach, could speak.

Llamas had begun by complimenting Trump on his own contribution to the veterans fund, saying that 'writing a $1 million check is incredibly generous.'

'But the night of that Iowa fundraiser, you said you had raised $6 million. Clearly you had not. Your critics say you tend to exaggerate  you have a problem with the truth. Is this a prime example?'

Trump's suggestion that some of the money 'didn't come through' may be a signal that the $6 million total he announced at a rally that he held instead of participating in a Dex Moines, Iowa debate was accurate at the time.

ABC News defended its star reporter on the Trump trail on Tuesday, with a spokesperson telling DailyMail.com: 'Tom is one of the best journalists in the country. He is also one of the most respectful and respected.'

Trump, however, had choice words after the press conference for both Llamas and his employer.

HEARTBURN: Trump complained Tuesday that no good deed goes unpunished

During an off-the-record discussion in Trump's office following the Trump Tower lobby presser, the presumptive Republican nominee went on the record to explain why he called Llamas 'a sleaze.'

'He's just a very inaccurate reporter. He's not a good professional. He doesn't have what it takes. And he writes very inaccurately,' Trump told DailyMail.com. 'He's got an axe to grind.'

'And by the way, ABC  of all of them  they treat me terribly. No matter what I do, on ABC, it's always bad.'

He predicted that the network would negatively portray his fundraising for veterans, including a $1 million check he wrote personally to one charity, in a negative light because his January announcement of $6 million didn't line up with the $5.6 million he publicized on Tuesday.

The campaign history between Trump and Llamas goes back to August 2015 when Llamas defended Univision host Jorge Ramos after Trump had Ramos ejected from a press conference for being combative and shouting questions out of turn.

The episode left some with the view that Ramos had crossed the line between journalist and activist on the thorny questions Trump has raised about the future of U.S. immigration policy.

'THANKS JORGE': Llamas and Univision host Jorge Ramos have had each other's backs in a series of campaign clashes with Trump

TOSSED: Trump had his security chief Keith Schiller (tall, standing at left) eject Ramos (shorter, left) after he went on a press-conference stemwinder about illegal-immigration and deportations last August

Others saw Trump as condescending and dismissive to a representative of a Spanish-language network whose viewers he should have been courting.

Days earlier Trump had demanded an apology from ABC for a 'fraudulent' news report about his immigration proposals.

Llamas had reported that Trump was 'vowing to deport all 11 million undocumented immigrants.' Trump preferred, at the time, to focus on deporting 'gang members and criminals.'

That followed a media scrum outside a courthouse where Trump was arriving for jury duty.

During ABC's 'Good Morning America,' Llamas was seen questioning Trump about his vision for immigration enforcement.

'How would you do it?' he demanded. 'What would you tell a child of an undocumented immigrant? What would you tell that child born in the U.S.?'

That same month Llamas berated Trump for his use of the term 'anchor babies'  a conservative term of art that refers to children born in the U.S. to illegal immigrant parents, 'anchoring' the adults to U.S. soil and hampering efforts to deport them.

IN DEMAND: Trump took questions from reporters and called them 'unbelievably dishonest' in the same event

GOT WHAT IT TAKES? Trump clobbered Llamas as a substandard journalist after the press conference, telling DailyMail.com that he 'writes very inaccurately'

'That's an offensive term! People find that hurtful,' Llamas challenged Trump during a press conference preceding a town hall event in New Hampshire.

'You mean it's not politically correct, and yet everybody uses it?' Trump shot back. 'You know what? Give me a different term.'

'Look it up in the dictionary. It's offensive!' came Llamas' retort.

Trump held firm: 'I'll use the word "anchor baby." Excuse me! I'll use the word "anchor baby!"' he said.

In Tuesday's press conference at Trump Tower in New York, Trump hammered the 'dishonest' political press, calling some 'disgusting.'

Attacking CNN correspondent Jim Acosta, Trump said: 'I've watched you on television. You're a real beauty!'
Four young sisters have been killed after their eight-seater SUV, which was carrying 11 people, crashed on the Florida I-95.

The girl's mother Latorya Brown, 34, had been driving the overloaded 2006 Dodge Durango on Monday evening when a tire burst - sending the car spinning off the highway in Brevard County.

Several passengers were thrown from the car and over a 30-foot barrier wall as the SUV crashed and flipped multiple times.

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Four young sisters have been killed after their eight-seater SUV, which was carrying 11 people, crashed on the Florida I-95 (pictured left, is Jasmine, and right is 'Ludda' Cruz)

The girls where killed when their mother's overloaded 2006 Dodge Durango's tire burst - sending the car spinning off the highway (left is 'Boosie' and right is Amunya Cruz)

Amunya Cruz, 15, Niashia Cruz, 13, and Nadia Cruz, 10, were all pronounced dead at the scene. Today, authorities announced that a fourth sister, Jasmine Cruz, whose age has not yet been released, has also died.

Brown has since been released from the hospital with minor injuries as Florida Highway Patrol troopers continue to investigate the deadly crash and how many of the passengers were wearing seat belts.

The 11 family and friends in the vehicle were on their way back to home to Leesburg.

'We're still trying to sort out everything. The mother was so upset. We had to tell her that four of her children had died,' Kim Montes, spokeswoman for Florida Highway Patrol, told Florida Today.

A toddler, who had been strapped into a car seat, was found on the other side of the highway's sound barrier after first responders hear the youngster crying in the distance.

'We heard him crying and found him on the other side of the (sound barrier),' Trooper Steven Montiero said. 'It's a miracle.'

The girl's mother Latorya Brown, 34, (pictured) has since been released from the hospital with minor injuries

She is believed to have lost control after the tire malfunction and the car flipped over several times

Three girls under the age of 18 were killed in a single car crash on Interstate 95 after a vehicle carrying 11 people suffered a tire malfunction

Four passengers were ejected from the vehicle, one of whom was a young boy who had been thrown over the sound barrier wall while in his car seat. He landed in the backyard of a house (pictured) and was only found when troopers heard him crying

The baby, who had landed in the back yard of house, remains in a critical but stable condition.

'We're talking a very violent crash with multiple people injured and taken to hospitals in different counties. Some of them were not wearing seat belts,' said Montiero, a spokesman for Florida Highway Patrol, the agency investigating the deadly crash.

'Right now we are not (looking) at any kind of criminal charges for the mother. There may be some traffic related charges, but nothing criminal.

'She was the mother of the three children who were killed. It's very tragic,' he said, speaking before authorities announced that a fourth daughter had also died.

Emergency services discovered the mangled vehicle a few feet away from the barrier.

'The mother is a wonderful person, a good mother. It's just horrible,' said family friend Gigi Riley.

'Nothing but good good things to say about Latorya Brown and her beautiful girls. Let our prayers bombard Heaven on her behalf,' she added on Facebook.

Bonnie Medina wrote: 'Tragedy has struck our community yesterday, words can't even touch what this family is going through.

I couldn't fathom the pain of loosing a child, I can only pray for them as they have now lost 4 of their precious girls.'

The interstate was shut down for several hours following the fatal crash, reported WESH.

Montiero said that the car likely had at least six rear passenger seats with two up front, meaning there was 'a mess up in numbers'.

He added: 'Obviously someone was not belted. We're going to begin to look into that and determine what kind of charges will go from there.'
A man who attempted to rob a bank by brandishing a sex toy as a weapon has been sentenced to three years in prison.

Aaron Stein, 36, crafted a fake bomb out of phone wires, duct tape and a vibrator when he tried to hold up the Crafton PNC Bank last June 15 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Stein reportedly told the court he had been stressed out at the time because he had made a poor investment and needed to pay for his upcoming wedding and child support payments, according to The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

They do: Aaron Stein (above with wife Connie Capiotis) robbed a bank in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania last June to pay for his upcoming wedding

Poor choice: The young father (left with son, right in mugshot) made a fake bomb out of duct tape, phone wires and a vibrator

Stein told Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Anthony Mariani that he had made a risky investment into foreign currencies which cost him close to $10,000 shortly before the attempted robbery.

His wife he said was not aware he had lost the money or of his plan to rob the bank.

Stein, who has a young son, was pulled over shortly after robbing the bank of an undisclosed amount of money and immediately admitted to the crime.

He was released from jail 18 days after his arrest and allowed to get married to his now wife, Connie Capiotis.

The couple had been hoping he would be able to serve out his sentence under house arrest, but the judge ruled against that request.

In addition to his 18 to 36 months in state prison, Stein will also be on probation for three years following his release.

Capiotis also spoke at her husband's sentencing, telling the judge; 'I had the option to walk away from Aaron because of his crime. Most people expected me to.
The family of a child judo champion who died after taking a lethal cocktail of drugs watched on as the man who supplied her with crack cocaine walked free from court.

Gina Jackson, 26, had a bright future in the sport, having won British open competition and Greater Manchester Youth Games titles.

But she was forced to give up when she developed curvature of the spine at 12 before undergoing a series of horrific operations.

Austin Barnes (pictured left in court today) walked free after receiving a suspended sentence despite having been found to have supplied Gina Jackson (right) with drugs

In her twenties, Miss Jackson began taking amphetamines and cocaine to cope.

Tragically, she was found dead at Austin Barnes' home in Bromley Cross, Bolton, on September 11 last year.

Barnes, who met Miss Jackson at a party before messaging her on social media, was charged with being concerned in the supply of crack cocaine following her death and pleaded guilty when he appeared before magistrates.

The court heard how Barnes, 30, dialled 999 when he woke to find Miss Jackson dead in his bed.

Toxicology tests revealed she died after taking drugs including heroin, diazepam, crack cocaine, anti-depressants and amphetamine, which led to a 'complex reaction'.

Needle marks were found in her arms. But her father, Daniel Jackson, insisted she had never injected heroin.

Barnes refused to comment when interviewed by police. Mobile phone evidence showed the pair had talked about buying and taking diazepam and crack cocaine together.

The court heard they smoked crack cocaine, which they bought together, before going to bed at 3am.

Barnes called 999 the next afternoon after finding Miss Jackson, from Breightmet, unresponsive.

Mitigating, Martin Pizer said Barnes was 'acutely aware of the tragedy of that night' and 'felt responsible in many ways'.

'He will carry that burden with him for the rest of his days,' he added. Deputy Circuit Judge Elliot Knopf said he understood Barnes' sentence would 'seem unsatisfactory' to Miss Jackson's family, but insisted he had to follow guidelines.

'No sentence I could pass would bring Miss Jackson back,' he added. 'The court has to deal with matters in accordance with principle - dispassionately.

Daniel Jackson, Ms Jackson's father, said the suspended sentence handed down to Austin Barnes was 'weak'

Her heartbroken father told the inquest that the last time he had seen his daughter was when they watched a film together at the family home in Long Lane (pictured)

'I don't think a few months in custody would meet the needs and requirements of the public.'

Barnes was made the subject of a drug rehabilitation programme and will have to obey an eight-month electronically-monitored curfew from 7pm to 7am.

Outside court, Miss Jackson's father Daniel blasted the 'weak' sentence. He said: 'I'm gutted, really disappointed. It's ridiculous, he's walked away with a slap on the wrist, yet my daughter is dead.

'He's been given a second chance. Gina wasn't. The sentence should have been a lot worse.'

Mr Jackson said more needed to be done to combat drug use, which he said 'destroys families and communities'.

He said his daughter 'only used drugs occasionally to mask her physical and emotional scars', adding: 'She wasn't a drug addict, she hated drugs.'

She became vulnerable and easily influenced. She got mixed up in drug culture Gina Jackson's father Daniel

Mr Jackson said she 'drifted' into drug use after her depression spiralled.

'The change in her was heartbreaking,' he said. 'The surgeries robbed her of her confidence. She became vulnerable and easily influenced. She got mixed up in drug culture.

'The impact of the drugs and other people's actions has destroyed my family's faith in a lot of people.'

Mr Jackson said his family was desperate for an explanation of what happened the night before her death.

'We're looking for some consolation,' he said. Mr Jackson said his daughter was 'always honest' about the drugs she took, insisting she had never used heroin.

'I don't know how heroin got into her system by injection,' he told the court.

Experts said it was impossible to know whether Miss Jackson injected herself with the drug, or someone else did it.

He said the impact of Miss Jackson's death on mother Yvonne was 'still too much for her to bear'.
The advertising watchdog has banned ad for British clothing brand Jack Wills, which used 'sexualised images and text' which was not appropriate for young people.

It featured images of young men and women in their underwear drinking, dancing and cavorting on a bed and the text read 'Midnight mischief' and 'Whatever your choice, you can be sure it's what's underneath that counts'.

The ads were sent out as a direct mailing in February as part of their spring catalogue.

The ASA said that although the target age group was over 18 there was a danger that younger teens would see the ads

Another page showed a shirtless male model on a bed with a woman, and a young woman wearing a bra.

Jack Wills said the brand was aimed at 18- to 24-year-old university students and not younger teenagers.

They pointed out the catalogue was sent in a sealed, opaque paper envelope and the website had an under-18 restriction for signing up to receive communications.

These images were deemed too strong for under-18s by the Advertising Standards Authority

Jack Wills denied the images were sexualised and said they did not imply sexual activity.

But the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said younger teens might have access to the ad directly or indirectly and the images were likely to appeal to them because they portrayed a lifestyle to which they might aspire.

It said the images and text were sexually suggestive rather than simply flirtatious.

The ASA said: 'Because we understood that younger teenagers could have both direct and indirect access to the catalogue, and because we considered the images and text were sufficiently sexualised to be inappropriate for that audience, we concluded that the ad was irresponsible and that it breached the Code.'
This is the emotional moment a frantic mother was reunited with her young son after he ran away from home and sparked a huge man hunt.

Rio Ulett, 11, was returned to his family home in Manchester by police on Tuesday afternoon after friends and family had spent the day desperately trying to find him.

The schoolboy had left his home and met up with a friend, nine-year-old Lovelle Taylor-Hibbert, and the pair spent the night sleeping out in the Openshaw area of the city.

Happy to be home: This is the emotional moment frantic mother Jane Sutcliffe was reunited with her young son Rio Ulett after he ran away from home and sparked a huge man hunt

Reunited: Rio Ulett, 11, was returned to his family home in Manchester by police on Tuesday afternoon after friends and family had spent the day desperately trying to find him

Police launched a large scale hunt for the two boys, who were last seen on Monday afternoon in Levenshulme.

Frantic family members joined the search scouring the streets for the two schoolboys as darkness fell on Monday night.

When they failed to return home on Tuesday morning, Rio's mother Jane Sutcliffe made a desperate plea for his safe return.

Rio and Lovelle were eventually found safe and well by police on Tuesday afternoon. Both were later returned to their respective homes.

Family and friends anxiously waited by the roadside outside Rio's home just before the youngster was returned home.

As he clambered out of the police car his mother rushed forward to embrace him.

Ms Sutcliffe said: 'I'm so relieved to have him home. I was so worried.'

The 33-year-old thanked members of the public for their help in finding the youngsters.

Disappearance: The schoolboy had left his home and met up with a friend, nine-year-old Lovelle Taylor-Hibbert, and the pair spent the night sleeping out in the Openshaw area of the city

Rio and Lovelle were eventually found safe and well by police on Tuesday afternoon. Family and friends anxiously waited by the roadside outside Rio's home just before the youngster was returned home (pictured)

Police launched a man hunt for the boys, who were last seen on Monday afternoon. Rio's street is pictured

She said: 'He went to Openshaw and slept out. We had an argument so that's why he didn't come home.

'The two boys stayed together. There was not a scratch on him, he was just a bit upset.

'I just want to say thank you to everyone who helped search for him and helped us while he was missing.'

Police leading the investigation to find the two young boys said the public response to the appeal had been 'overwhelming'.

A spokesperson for Greater Manchester Police said: 'Rio and Lovelle have been found safe and well.
Kenneth Amyx, 45, claimed he and his girlfriend, Jennifer Streit-Spears, 43, had a suicide pact

The Texas man accused of murdering his girlfriend Sunday and posting pictures of the grisly scene to Facebook had made a suicide pact with the victim, he claimed during police interrogation.

Kenneth Alan Amyx, 45, told police he and his girlfriend, 43-year-old Jennifer Streit-Spears, had agreed to stab each other to death with knives.

But Streit-Spears became weak from blood loss during the gruesome process and could not go through with her end of the deal, Amyx told police according to an affidavit released Tuesday.

When police arrived in the woman's apartment, alerted to her condition because of a pair of pictures posted to Facebook - one of which reportedly showed Amyx's face smeared in the woman's blood - officers found the couple lying naked and bleeding on the floor.

Amyx was on top of Streit-Spears, and was holding a knife in his right hand. Another knife was under him, the Dallas Morning News reported.

As Amyx was being transported to hospital, he reportedly lamented: 'Oh I killed her, oh I lost her. Ill never get her back,' begging a paramedic to 'Just kill me.'

He told interrogators the couple had first decided to run away together, because Amyx was wanted on outstanding warrants for continuous sexual assault of a child under 14 and indecency with a child.

But instead, the lifelong friends, who had been dating for four months, agreed on a suicide pact, the Morning News reported.

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Jennifer Streit-Spears (pictured) was found dead from multiple stab wounds and Amyx also had knife wounds believed to be self inflicted

Amyx said the couple had been drinking before he made the first cut, to the back of his girlfriend's neck. Next, they took turns cutting each other.

He said Streit-Spears told him 'she was cold and she said hit it hard (cut her harder),' the affidavit stated.

When he did so, 'blood came out all over' and the woman was left so weak he had to resort to stabbing himself by grabbing her hand, which still held a knife.

Apart from uploading the pictures of himself and Streit-Spears to Facebook with the caption 'Please pray for us,' he also sent a picture in a text message to his girlfriend's mother.

He also called his own father and said 'This is Ken. I love you. Weve cut our throats,' before hanging up, the Morning News reported.

Streit-Spears' sister saw the Facebook pictures and called police, who had to force their way into the couple's apartment.

Pictures of Steit-Spears' dead body remained on Facebook for about 36 hours after multiple complaints from family

A spokesperson for Facebook defended their actions, saying graphic photos are not a violation of Facebooks policy and even though they were flagged

Amyx was arrested and taken to the Collins County Jail.

A friend of Steit-Spears also saw the pictures and was horrified by the gruesome images.

'The pictures were not clear although they were extremely scary I just started to reach out to our mutual friends to see if they've heard anything,' Fran Stamey told CBS11.

The images stayed on Facebook for nearly 36 hours and took multiple attempts by the family to have removed.

Streit-Spears sister, who told The Daily Dot she wished to remain anonymous, said she was given limited options to have the pictures taken down.

'I did ask them to remove it several times. They told me I could block Jennifer if I didn't like what she posted and gave me other similar options,' she told The Daily Dot.

A spokesperson for Facebook defended their actions to CBS11, saying graphic photos are not a violation of Facebooks policy and even though they were flagged, they could not be removed until monitors determined Spears profile was hacked.
Bernie Sanders renewed his assault on the Democratic Party today, blasting party leaders for allowing the party to lose touch with the constituencies it supposedly represents.

'The message to the Democratic leadership is that the Democratic Party is be the party of working people, and young people and the middle class, they've got to open up the doors,' Sanders proclaimed in Santa Cruz on Tuesday afternoon.

He told a screaming audience, 'You are the future of this country, and you want to help shape that future.

'And the Democratic Party has got to be a party that's more than candidates going to wealthy people's homes to raise outrageous sums of money.'

Sanders' opponent, Hillary Clinton, was on the opposite coast holding fundraisers today to pad her general election pockets as he continued his bus tour of Northern California.

SALTY SANDERS: Bernie Sanders renewed his assault on the Democratic Party today, blasting party leaders for allowing the party to lose touch with the constituencies it supposedly represents. He told a screaming audience, 'They'e gotta open up the doors! You are the future of this country

The U.S. Senator who is not affiliated as a lawmaker but is running for president as a Democrat told several thousand people gathered to hear him speak this afternoon that the national party 'has got to be you.

'The Democratic Party has to be the party of working families, of young people, of low income people.'

Sanders said if he wins the Democratic nomination and becomes the top figurehead in the party, he will 'reach out to working families, not to Wall Street contributors.'

The progressive senator later took Clinton to task directly for taking money from Wall Street and for having Super PACs as he mocked politicians who say, 'Oh those contributions are not going to impact me.'

'Well then why is Wall Street and other special interests contributing to your campaign?' he asked.

Sanders was especially chagrined on Tuesday afternoon when he spoke to 3,425 supporters inside Santa Cruz's Kaiser Permanente Arena, which was at max capacity with 2,023 wannabe attendees still outside, the facility said.

He told his supporters that his campaign is taking on 'the entire Democratic establishment, taking on the financial establishment and Wall Street,' and if he wins the last nine contests, 'we're gonna be marching into the Democratic convention' with the 'momentum and even march out with the Democratic nomination.'

'That requires us to understand we've got an uphill fight. but as I look around, I think we've got a lot of fighters here who are not afraid,' he said.

An independent himself until a year ago, Sanders likes to tout his appeal to non-traditional Democrats and Americans who feel they've been disenfranchised by the two-party system.

In Santa Cruz, Sanders asked how many of his audience members had been to a Democratic Party meeting before.

A smattering of hands shot up.

Sanders estimated that from his vantage point, they amounted for about three percent, and lit into the Democratic Party for not making a greater effort to bring the rest of his supporters into the fold.

If he's the nominee, Sanders said, 'We're gonna have primaries that are wide open so that anybody can vote,' he told them.

The current system for selecting a nominee is 'absurd,' the underdog presidential candidate declared.

It allowed Clinton to lock up more than 400 delegates before anybody else had entered the race and eight months before the first ballots were cast.

'That is an absurd system and together we're gonna chance that system,' he said.

His political revolution a week away from upheaving the 2016 race or suffering a devastating defeat, Sanders spoke with urgency on Tuesday in California after laying off Clinton and the Democratic Party for most of last week.

He warned his supporters that next Tuesday, June 7, the day of the New Jersey and California primaries, as well as four others, the media will say Clinton is the presumptive Democratic nominee because of her superdelegate support.

She's less than 100 delegates away from winning the race when their convention votes are included in her tally. The media will say 'the nominating process is over, Secretary Clinton has won,' he said.

'That is not true,' he added. 'I think the Democratic National Committee will tell you that is not factually correct.'

Sanders told his supporters, 'The truth is, unless I am very, very mistaken, no candidate - not Hillary Clinton not Bernie Sanders - will have received the number of pledged delegates' necessary to win the nomination outright.

'Neither candidate will have received the requisite number of pledged delegates that he or she needs to become the Democraic nominee,' Sanders said. 'What that means is that te superdelegates will be the people who determine who the nominee is.'

His political revolution a week away from upheaving the race or suffering a devastating defeat, Sanders was especially salty on Tuesday afternoon as he spoke to 3,425 supporters inside Santa Cruz's Kaiser Permanente Arena, which was at max capacity with 2,023 wannabe attendees still outside

His crowd booing, Sanders said to the superdelegates, 'take a hard look at which candidate and which campaign can beat Donald Trump.'

The Democratic Party at large is in agreement that 'Trump would be a disaster for this country.'

'It seems to me that the superdelegates...have an 'enormous decision' to make a decision about which candidate would be the strongest against Trump, he surmised.

Polls show it would be him, Sanders pointed out.

Superdelegates need to ask themselves 'which candidate has the momentum' and the 'excitement to bring people out?' he said.

With his name on the ticket, Democrats will win the White House and retake the Senate, Sanders contended.

'So I say to the superdelegates, take a look at what goes on in this gymnasium today, the thousands of people who are here.
Hillary Clinton's former chief of staff discussed the Democratic hopeful's secret email server with the IT aide who set the system up, but can't talk about it because she's now Clinton's lawyer.

Aide-turned-attorney Cheryl Mills testified for five hours on Friday as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit launched by the conservative group Judicial Watch, which has been trying to get access to Clinton's emails during her tenure as secretary of state.

But Mills' attorney Beth Wilkinson shut lines of questioning down from Judicial Watch's lawyer Ramona Cotca arguing that something the former chief of staff learned after the fact as an attorney is not in the legal case's scope.

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Hillary Clinton's former chief of staff Cheryl Mills later became the former secretary of state's attorney, meaning that much of what Mills learned while representing Clinton is privileged

Hillary Clinton - shown giving a press conference in March 2015 about the email scandal - is having her top aides deposed as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit started by conservative group Judicial Watch

In her testimony, Mills talked about serving in the Clinton White House and then leaving Washington, D.C. for New York to work for the Oxygen Network and then New York University.

She later worked for Clinton when the New York senator was running for the White House in 2008.

Mills recalls thinking she'd return to NYU when Clinton, the incoming secretary of state, asked her to serve as chief of staff, something the former White House lawyer said she couldn't refuse.

At State, Mills was both chief of staff and also a counsel to Clinton, but a policy wonk, not the secretary of state's legal representation.

It wasn't until after the State Department, that Clinton made Mills her lawyer.

And according to her testimony, that's when she found out about her boss' secret server.

Mills was asked about her familiarity with Bryan Pagliano, a former Clinton IT aide who has immunity in an ongoing investigation into Clinton's emails by the FBI, which is separate from the Judicial Watch civil case.

'I know I spoke with Mr. Pagliano about the setup of the server during the period in which I was representing Secretary Clinton, which would have been two thousand  which would have been post her departure from the State Department,' Mills offered in her testimony.

'At least that's my best recollection,' Mills added.

Cotca asked if that would have been post-February of 2013, when Clinton handed the reins over to the current Secretary of State John Kerry.

'Yes,' Mills replied.

'Was he working for the Clintons at the time that you spoke to him about the about the setup of the server?' the Judicial Watch attorney continued.

Lawyers for Judicial Watch want to know information about the setup of Hillary Clinton's secret email server, which Cheryl Mill's attorney argued on Friday is privileged because Mills later became Clinton's lawyer

At that point, Wilkinson  wife of former 'Meet the Press' host David Gregory stepped in with an 'objection.'

Mills testified that she didn't have a 'technological background' and thus wouldn't have had conversations about the server 'until the time period where I was representing Secretary Clinton.'

That, Mills lawyer argued, meant that the information was privileged.

'I'm representing Ms. Mills, as we know, and she represents Hillary Clinton as her personal lawyer,' Wilkinson argued. 'And you are now asking about work she has done for Hillary Clinton as her lawyer.'

'And it is beyond the scope of permissible discovery, and so I am instructing her not to answer,' Wilkinson said.

And with that, Mills didn't answer the question.

The Daily Caller counted 15 separate lines of questioning that Wilkinson batted down.

Mills also pointed to the highly controversial Benghazi attack, on Sept. 11, 2012, as a reason for why some of the public records requests were a mess.

The aide, according to the Washington Times, said there was 'a lot going on.'

'The secretary was not only transitioning, there had been a  we had lost our first ambassador in quite some time, and we were stepping through the sets of issues associated with that,' Mills said.

'And she, too, had fallen ill, and there  and there had been a period of time where we were obviously navigating a whole set of issues in that space,' Mills continued.
A schoolboy was sexually assaulted by a man on a train while on his way to school and fought off his attacker.

The attack took place on a city-bound Alamein train in Melbourne about 8.15 am last Tuesday.

The 17-year-old boy was standing in the second carriage near the rear exit doors when he was sexually assaulted by the man between Hawthorn and Burnley stations.

A schoolboy was sexually assaulted by a man on a Melbourne train while on his way to school and fought off his attacker. Pictured is a stock image

He pushed his attacker away and yelled at him.

Victoria Police's transit detectives are investigating the incident and are appealing for information about it.

They believe the incident would have caught the attention of other passengers.

The man is described as Caucasian, aged in his 60s, about 185cm tall, of medium build and had a pot belly.

He had receding grey hair and was wearing a charcoal grey suit, white shirt and carrying a brown satchel bag.
A charity has supplied more tents in a bid to improve the living conditions of around 150 Albanian migrants who have been camping at the foot of the cliffs near Dieppe on the northern coast of France.

With The Jungle camp at Calais having been demolished by bulldozers and heightened security at the entrance to the Channel Tunnel, large numbers of migrants are switching their attention to other cross-Channel ports, such as Dieppe.

Humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders says the Albanian migrants are hoping to board a ferry heading to Britain.

 Slide me  The migrants arrived in their own tiny tents (left), which offered little protection from the elements but now they have proper tents, donated by Doctors Without Borders, which give them far greater protection

Doctors Without Borders spokesman Daniel Barney said they had arrived at the camp on Wednesday to try and improve the living conditions for the migrants after storms ravaged their flimsy tents.

Mr Barney said heavy rain and wind also dislodged stones from higher ground in recent days - hitting the migrants' tents and putting them in danger.

They have providing around 20 extra tents for the group.

The migrants set up tents in a new makeshift camp along the storm-hit cliffs near the port of Dieppe, with donations from Doctors Without Borders

Channel 4 News found the men sleeping in tents on the coast outside the town.

They claimed their tents had been hit by rocks which had fallen onto them from the cliffs.

Asked what he was looking for Landi, 20, told reporter Paraic O'Brien: 'Not something special. Just going to work every day, go back home, talk to my friends on the internet. Nothing special.'

Channel 4 News reported that people smugglers were charging at least 7,000 to smuggle migrants across the Channel.

O'Brien also spoke to one Albanian migrant in Dieppe who had been deported from Southampton.

Members of the international medical charity Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, help migrants set up in a new makeshift camp under the cliffs

Channel 4 later reported that Dieppe's town council had offered to let the migrants stay in the town's train station overnight.

At the weekend a boat carrying 18 Albanian migrants, including two children, was rescued off Dymchurch in Kent after getting into difficulties.

Two British men have been charged with immigration offences in connection with the Dymchurch boat.

A member of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) helps the migrants set up a new tented camp near Dieppe

John Vine, a former independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, said he feared desperate migrants would die soon in the English Channel, trying to reach Britain.

The Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo has also announced a new camp for migrants is to be opened in the north of the French capital in the next six weeks.

Hundreds of migrants are sleeping rough in Paris, having made their way there from Italy, Spain or Greece.

Two British men have been charged with immigration offences in connection with the Dymchurch boat.
A man who sliced his face open with a chainsaw while working on his farm has miraculously survived by driving himself to hospital after 'tying his head together' with bandages in his car.

Bill Singleton, 68, was working on his property in Ballarat, about 100 kilometres west of Melbourne, when he lost control of his chainsaw on May 6, according to the Herald Sun.

Mr Singleton desperately made his made to his car and started driving to the nearest hospital because he was unable to call for an ambulance after slicing his tongue in half.

A shocking x-ray image shows the damage a man did to his face after slicing into his head with a chainsaw

The grandfather's fight for survival didn't end when he pulled into the hospital car park, with the 68-year-old saying he almost passed out and had to force himself to get back up.

'I was two thirds of the way there and things started to spin, the lights went dark... I dropped to my knees and was on all fours,' he told the newspaper.

Mr Singleton was quickly airlifted to the Royal Melbourne Hospital, after staff looked at his wounds and saw he had cut into his face as far back as his wisdom teeth.

But luckily, the chainsaw stopped just a centimetre short of his carotid artery and larynx, according to the Herald Sun.

Bill Singleton, 68, was working on his property in Ballarat, about 100 kilometres west of Melbourne, when he lost control of his chainsaw on May 6 (stock image)

The 68-year-old was airlifted from Ballarat to the Royal Melbourne Hospital for surgery (stock image)

An x-ray of of the 68-year-old's head shows the huge hole that was cut into his face by the chainsaw.

A large gap is visible in the x-ray, while it is also possible to identify where the teeth knocked out by the blade had been.

One of the surgeons who worked on Mr Singleton said if he had hit his carotid artery with the saw, he in all likelihood would have died.

One of the surgeons who worked on Mr Singleton at the Royal Melbourne Hospital said if he had hit his carotid artery with the saw, he in all likelihood would have died (stock image)

'If he got that carotid artery in the paddock, the freeway of the arteries, he'd probably be dead,' Professor Alf Nastri said.

'When a chainsaw grabs, it grabs and goes deeper. It was not dissimilar to treating a gunshot wound.'
An arsenal of weapons has been seized during raids on a suburban home, including a military grade hand grenade, guns and knives.

Police executing a firearms warrant stormed the Edithvale, Melbourne house on about 3pm Tuesday and seized a large number of guns, bullets, knives, a hand grenade, a spear gun and a crossbow as well as cannabis.

Three people were arrested including a 52-year-old Edithvale man who was charged with a slew of weapons and proceeds of crime offences, and a 50-year-old woman was charged with possessing cannabis.

The police raid on Tuesday saw officers seize a large arsenal of weapons including a crossbow and a hand grenade

Guns and ammunition were among the items seized from the house in Melbourne's south east

Elliot Cox, a neighbour, said the situation was 'surreal' and 'pretty dangerous' given those raided had a hand grenade

A neighbour in the area of south-east Melbourne, Elliot Cox, told 9 News: 'It's pretty surreal actually... he had a live grenade in his house. So I don't exactly know what he had planned to do with that but it's pretty dangerous'.

The 52-year-old was charged with possessing ammunition, prohibited weapons, explosives, a category A firearm, possessing and trafficking cannabis and recklessly dealing with the proceeds of crime.

He was remanded in custody and is due to appear in court on Wednesday.

A 26-year-old man was interviewed and released pending further inquiries, while the woman, 50, was charged with possessing and using cannabis and was bailed to appear in court on July 29.

Nine News approached the home on Wednesday morning but a woman at the property decline to speak with them.

Three people were arrested following the raid during which a range of weaponry and ammunition were seized

A crossbow and a spear gun were also taken from the property during the Tuesday raid
A contractor has been charged over stealing gold bars and coins worth more than $75,000 from the Perth Mint.

It is alleged the 27-year-old Carramar man succumbed to temptation when he took the gold bars during his short employment.

He was arrested and charged by the WA Police Gold Stealing Detection Unit with stealing as a servant, but further charges are expected to be laid, police said.

A contractor has been charged over stealing gold bars and coins worth more than $75,000 from the Perth Mint (pictured)

It is alleged the 27-year-old Carramar man succumbed to temptation when he took the gold bars during his short employment

The Perth Mint said its sophisticated security measures almost immediately identified the breach, which was an isolated incident and swiftly contained.

The man is due to appear in the Perth Magistrates Court on June 24.

No customers' precious metals were affected, the mint said.

Established in 1899, the Perth Mint was originally built to refine gold mined in Western Australia and turn it into sovereign coins.

It remained under British ownership until 1970 when control passed to the state government.

Established in 1899, the Perth Mint was originally built to refine gold mined in Western Australia and turn it into sovereign coins
The body of the vegan university lecturer who died climbing Mount Everest has been returned to her family in Melbourne.

Maria Strydom's remains arrived in Melbourne late on Tuesday after she suffered altitude sickness and died on the way down the mountain in the company of her husband Rob Gropel on May 20.

Fundraising efforts to help pay for the repatriation and funeral of the 34-year-old reached almost $24,000 by Wednesday morning.

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The body of Maria Strydom, who died to altitude sickness climbing Mount Everest on May 20, has been returned to her family in Melbourne (Dr Strydom pictured with husband Robert Gropel)

Fundraising efforts to help pay for the repatriation and funeral of the 34-year-old reached almost $24,000 by Wednesday morning

Dr Strydom's sister Aletta Newman told AAP her body arrived in Melbourne late on Tuesday as the family prepares to make funeral arrangements.

Money raised over the past seven days will help Dr Strydom's family cover costs associated with her death and the rest will be donated to charity.

Dr Gropel, a vet, has since said he 'blames himself' for her death after leaving her behind to climb the summit himself.

He continued up the mountain while his exhausted wife held back after deciding she was not well enough to reach the top.

After a failed attempt to encourage her to keep going, he went ahead alone with her permission to complete the climb but said it 'wasn't special' because she had been left behind.

A tearful Dr Gropel (above) told Channel Seven's Sunday Night program he felt responsible for his wife's death

By the time they reunited at a lower camp he too had become unwell with altitude sickness. His 34-year-old wife died the following day as they made their way down the mountain.

Appearing on Channel Seven's Sunday Night, he said it was 'natural' that he felt responsible for her death.

'Because I'm her husband it's my job to protect my wife and get her home and it's just natural for me to blame myself,' he wept.

Recalling his decision to continue despite his wife's ailing condition, Dr Gropel said she encouraged him to complete the challenge.

'I didn't want to separate from her, I wanted her to keep going. I also understood that she was just very exhausted.

'I asked, 'Do you mind if I go on?' and she said 'you go on, I'll wait for you here.''

They were in the 'death zone' - the area between the summit and Camp 4 - when Dr Strydom became too unwell to continue.

Dr Strydom's sister Aletta Newman told AAP her body arrived in Melbourne late on Tuesday as the family prepares to make funeral arrangements

Dr Gropel said he and his wife began their summit bid on Friday May 20 in clear weather, departing from Camp 4, but at the South Summit at nearly 8,000 metres, Dr Strydom slowed, stricken with illness

After he reached the summit and descended back to where she was and the pair staggered around for hours before returning to Camp 4 for oxygen and medicine.

WHAT IS ALTITUDE SICKNESS? 'Altitude sickness' refers to the group of potential dangers faced by high altitudes, and is also known as 'mountain sickness'. It is caused by gaining altitude too rapidly, which doesn't allow the body enough time to adjust to reduced oxygen and changes in air pressure, and causes hypobaric hypoxia (a lack of oxygen reaching the tissues of the body). In severe cases, fluid builds up within the lungs, brain or both. Symptoms of the illness include: headaches, lethargy, a lack of coordination, nausea, dizziness, vomiting, and insomnia. Source: Better Health Victoria

The following day they began their descent down towards Camp 3 and his wife appeared to be in improved health.

She suddenly collapsed and died around two hours from the site.

Arnold Coster, who organised the trip they were taking part in, explained how she may have finally succumb to exhaustion.

'You have to traverse and that's difficult, because you have to balance. She slipped, she fell in the rope.

'I think that was too much for her, and that's why she died - from exhaustion.

'Her husband tried to retrieve her, but that was all too late.'

Dr Gropel is still struggling to come to terms with what happened in those final moments.

'She was feeling strong, she was walking, I mean she was short-roped because she was still quite weak, but she was walking fine, very slowly but fine,' he said, according to Yahoo News.

They finally stumbled to Camp 4 and received much-needed oxygen and medicine, but they would have to make it to Camp 3 to be in reach of rescue teams

Earlier, Dr Gropel said he hadn't thought about anything but retrieving his wife's body from the mountain and getting her back to Australia

'I'm just trying to be strong, I'm learning to cope and block out what causes sort of, breakdowns, and trying to get the job done of bringing my wife home,' Dr Gropel earlier said

'She was talking, I had her back and I don't know what happened.'

Dr Strydom's body was recovered from Mount Everest and taken to the Nepali capital of Kathmandu on Friday.

Earlier, Dr Gropel said he hadn't thought about anything but retrieving his wife's body from the mountain and getting her back to Australia.

'I'm just trying to be strong, I'm learning to cope and block out what causes sort of, breakdowns, and trying to get the job done of bringing my wife home,' he told the ABC.

'All I am thinking is I want to get her home.'

In a moving tribute to his wife he described her as 'the perfect person', describing their many other happy mountaineering trips.

The rescue operation to retrieve her from the mountain was 'superhuman', he said.

'It was a superhuman effort, she was without oxygen for 20 hours ... because of the length of time it took her, and took us to get her down, and it ran out.

'She was my motivation idol, my hero, she was a very strong advocate for women, she was the perfect person.'

Her body would have been brought down more quickly if it weren't for a bout of severe weather, said sherpas involved in the climb.

Dr Maria Strydom died on May 20 near the summit of Mount Everest after succumbing to altitude sickness

'She was my motivation idol, my hero, she was a very strong advocate for women, she was the perfect person,' Dr Gropel earlier said of his wife (seen above during a different climb)

Dr Gropel was airlifted to hospital in Kathmandu on Monday to receive treatment for altitude sickness but was discharged (pictured) on Monday after his parents Heinz and Patricia arrived
Brexit would pave the way for an immigration revolution to slash numbers arriving from the EU, leading Out campaigners pledge today.

Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Priti Patel say they will insist on a tough Australian-style points system to finally meet the Tory pledge to cut net immigration to below 100,000.

In a statement they attack David Camerons dismal record on the issue, warning that Britains EU membership means we dont have control over who comes here.

Michael Gove (left) and Boris Johnson (right) have attacked David Cameron's record on immigration and pledged to create a Australian-style points system if the UK votes for Brexit

Instead, they promise that if the country votes Leave on June 23, they will push for a points-based immigration scheme by 2020.

Migrants could settle here only if they have skills needed by the economy. It would mean a ban on jobless arrivals from the EU  something originally promised by the Prime Minister, but thwarted by Brussels.

If we implement these principles, for the first time in a generation it will be possible for politicians to keep their promises on immigration, the statement says. In other developments in the Brexit debate:

Former Treasury minister Andrea Leadsom warns in the Daily Mail that George Osbornes national living wage is a huge draw for migrants that is fuelling uncontrolled immigration from within the EU;

Two polls suggested the Leave campaign has moved ahead of the Remain side;

It emerged a new fleet of border patrol vessels will not be fully in place until 2018, with ministers also facing criticism for axing a deal for spy planes to help spot illegal immigrants;

CCTV images from Dymchurch, Kent, suggested the coastal resort is now a gateway for people-smugglers;

Pro-Brexit Cabinet minister Chris Grayling warned there was a danger the Channel could take over from the Mediterranean as the focus of the migrant crisis;

Mr Gove and Mr Johnson said Brexit would allow the Government to scrap VAT on fuel, cutting 2billion from bills.

Employment minister Priti Patel (left) and senior Labour MP Gisela Stuart (right) also say the UK cannot cope with net immigration from the EU and have backed Mr Gove and Mr Johnson's campaign

The Out campaigners statement today says: The automatic right of all EU citizens to come and live and work in the UK will end, as will EU control over vital aspects of our social security system.

They add: Those seeking entry for work or study should be admitted on the basis of their skills without discrimination on the ground of nationality  economic migrants will have to be suitable for the job in question. For relevant jobs, we will be able to ensure that all those who come have the ability to speak good English.

Such a system can be much less bureaucratic and much simpler than the existing system for non-EU citizens.

If we implement these principles, for the first time in a generation it will be possible for politicians to keep their promises on immigration Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Priti Patel and Gisela Stewart

The initiative is the clearest sign yet that Mr Johnson, Mr Gove and Miss Patel are drawing up an alternative programme for government in the event of a Leave vote  suggesting they believe Mr Cameron would have to accept their agenda if he continued as PM. A source close to the three senior Tories last night said the aim of the new system would be to cut net migration from 333,000 a year to the tens of thousands.

Immigration has dominated the referendum debate since last week, when official figures confirmed Mr Cameron has no chance of hitting his target to reduce numbers below 100,000 while in the EU.

The Office for National Statistics figures showed the number of EU migrants coming to Britain under freedom of movement rules hit 270,000 last year. They included a record 77,000 who came without a job offer, despite a pledge by the Prime Minister to outlaw the practice.

Net EU migration  taking into account the number of EU citizens who left the UK  stood at 184,000. Overall net migration, including arrivals from outside the EU, was 333,000 in the year to December  the second highest figure on record.

At present, Britain is powerless to stop EU migrants travelling here to work, except when they are deemed a threat.

AUSTRALIA'S SYSTEM THAT GETS RESULTS Australia's tough immigration points system is credited with bringing numbers under control while ensuring the countrys economy can access the skills it needs. The system, formalised in 1989, runs two separate programmes  one for economic migrants and another for refugees and asylum-seekers. Visas for skilled workers are points-tested according to the need for their skills. Extra points are awarded for factors such as experience, qualifications and age. For the year 2013/14, Australia capped the number of non-humanitarian immigrants at 190,000  including the dependants of skilled workers. In that period Australia also welcomed approximately 20,000 people under its Humanitarian programme. Migrants entering the country on employer-sponsored visas are not points-tested.Australia also imposes health requirements for migrants, designed to minimise public health risks and the burden on the countrys health system, including the access to treatment for existing citizens. Those seeking a permanent visa must undergo a medical examination, including a chest X-ray and an HIV test. Only those with TB are automatically barred from receiving a visa, but officials assess other cases to judge their likely impact on Australia. Britain is 94,060 square miles and has a population of around 65million people. By contrast Australia, which has a population of 24million people, is 2.9million square miles. It is the fifth largest country in the world and is roughly 30 times the size of the UK.

Pictured are migrants queuing for clothes in a southern part of the 'Jungle' migrant camp, where thousands have massed in recent months as they try to make their way into Britain

Under Brexit supporters proposals, all budding migrants would have to apply for a visa, and only those who meet strict skills criteria  including a good command of English  would be allowed to come here to work. Sources said that, as in Australia, the total would be limited by an annual cap.

Existing EU migrants who have settled here would be allowed to stay. Irish citizens would not be affected. The Out campaigners say Brexit would also enable a change in the law to allow criminals and extremists to be deported to the EU.

Mr Johnson, Mr Gove, employment minister Miss Patel and senior Labour MP Gisela Stuart say the UK cannot cope with net immigration from the EU on the current scale, which adds a population equivalent to Oxfords each year.

This puts particular strain on public services, they say. Class sizes will rise and waiting lists will lengthen if we dont tackle free movement. As the euro crisis continues, more people from southern Europe will want to escape unemployment and austerity in their countries by coming to the UK. Their arrival will put further strain on schools and hospitals.

WE'RE 'OBSESSED' WITH INSTANT INTEGRATION ADMITS EU'S TUSK The EU is obsessed with total integration despite widespread public opposition, Donald Tusk admits The EU is obsessed with total integration despite widespread public opposition, European Council president Donald Tusk admitted yesterday. More must be done to prevent European voters looking for radical and brutal political alternatives, he told a conference to mark 40 years of the European Peoples Party  the largest group in the European Parliament. Voters in Austria last month narrowly avoided voting in Europes first far-Right political party since the Second World War. Speaking in Luxembourg, Mr Tusk said: Obsessed with the idea of instant and total integration, we failed to notice that ordinary people, the citizens of Europe, do not share our Euro-enthusiasm. Disillusioned with the great visions of the future, they demand that we cope with the present reality better than we have been. He said the spectre of a break-up is haunting Europe, and a vision of a federation doesnt seem to me the best answer to it. He spoke as leading Leave campaigner Chris Grayling warned that voting for the EU as it stood was not an option because a United States of the Eurozone was inevitable. He said: There has to be a single government structure for the eurozone. There will be no reformed European Union, British style.

The statement adds: It was Government policy that EU migrants should have a job offer before they come here. The Government failed to achieve this during the renegotiation of our membership.

On BBC Twos Britain And Europe: For Richer Or Poorer? last night, Mr Johnson claimed the referendum was a struggle between normal people who want to take back control and an elite that does very well out of the EU.

Todays pledge is likely to unnerve Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne, who are keen to move the debate on from migration.
A Chinese baby who was compared to an alien by media due to his rare skull defect has been given life-changing surgical corrections.

The eight-month-old boy, from China's Jiangsu province, had his skull cut open and bones reshaped in the four-hour-long operation in order to treat his condition, named craniosynostosis.

Doctors had planned the surgery in detail using a 3-D printed model of the child's skull - so that the baby will look more like this parents, reported People's Daily Online.

Life-threatening: Eight-month-old Jia Jia (pictured) from China was born with an abnormally-shaped skull

Successful operation: Doctors cut open his head and had his bones reshaped. Jia Jia was seen before (left) and after (right) the four-hour-long surgery

Craniosynostosis is a rare condition that causes a child's skull plates to fuse together.

The illness leads to intracranial pressure, which could prompt headaches, blurred vision and breathing problems.

According to the People's Daily report, the baby, known by his nickname Jia Jia, had been diagnosed craniosynostosis shortly after his birth due to his abnormally shaped head.

The child is from Jiangsu in eastern China, but he recently received the four-hour-long surgery in the nearby city of Shanghai, which has better medical resources than his home province.

CRANIOSYNOTOSIS - RARE ILLNESS CAUSES ABNORMALLY-SHAPED HEAD Crainosynotosis is a rare condition which causes a baby to be born with an abnormally-shaped skull. A child's irregularly-shaped head can cause headaches, learning difficulties and eye problems. Most symptoms develop later in childhood and usually result from increased pressure within the skull. The condition is usually diagnosed after a doctor conducts a visual examination of the skull, although further tests may be necessary.



Why does it happen? Craniosynostosis is the result of premature fusion of different sections of the skull. It means the skull is unable to grown in affected areas. As one area of the skull is restricted, other parts of a baby's head 'overgrow' to compensate and limit the pressure developing around the brain. The lack of growth in some areas and compensatory growth in others, often leads to an altered head shape.



How common is the condition? Craniosynostosis is rare, affecting around one in every 1,800 to 3,000 children, according to NHS Choices. Three of every four cases affects boys.



Treating craniosynostosis The primary treatment for the condition is surgery. The procedure can be carried out during the first year of your baby's life, or delayed until later in childhood. Most children recover well from the operation and the appearance of their skill improves significantly. However, around one if 15 children may have on-going problems with their skull's development as they get older. In these cases, often the child will need further surgery to correct changes as they age. Source: NHS Choices

Pioneer technology: Surgeons used a 3-D printed life-size model of Jia Jia's head to help plan the operation

Life-changing: The technology enable doctors to plan where and how to make the incisions in details

Bao Nan, a director at Shanghai Children's Medical Centre and the chief surgeon of Jia Jia's operation, said 3-D technology had given them unprecedented help.

Doctor Bao said he and his colleagues had made a life-size model of Jia Jia's skull before cutting open his head and reshaping the skull.

The team had made a step-by-step plan of the operation on the 3-D model, including where and how to make the incisions on Jia Jia's head.

The surgeon said every case of craniosynostosis is unique, and in a traditional operation doctors are only able to see the exact shape of the skull after they cut open the patient's head.

He added that the 3-D model had also enabled the doctors to re-shape his head in a way that allowed his facial features to look like his parents' as much as possible.
A university student has been accused of taking upskirt photographs of a young woman at a Shanghai subway station, and incriminating evidence posted to social media.

The incident took place as the photo-taker and victim were about to board a Line 2 train at the Shanghai Metro's Century Avenue station on Friday, according to People's Daily Online.

Weibo user 'Phillipa Vans' posted images of the man in an orange shirt caught in the act, and other users quickly identified him as a student from a university in Shanghai.

Odd: The man in the orange shirt was caught taking photos up the woman's skirt (right) after approaching her

Guilty? Weibo user 'Phillipa Vans' posted images of the man caught in the act, as incriminating evidence

The man's alleged actions were not noticed by the victim herself but Weibo commenters raised their outrage and condemned his actions retrospectively.

One user wrote: 'If he was just queuing, he should have left more space and should not have stood so closely to the woman. Will anyone with a normal mind hold a mobile phone like this?'

Another, 'RUANMIN_', added: 'No matter if he was taking the pictures or not, he should not have stood so closely to the woman, it was not polite.'

The post went viral across China and has since received 2,000 shares and over 6,500 comments.

However others doubted the credibility of the photographs, saying it was difficult to confirm whether the man was taking upskirt shorts or merely holding his phone in a strange way.

A user said: 'If he were really to take upskirt pictures, he would have done it in a crowded train, not doing it so openly.'

Another said: 'It might just be a misunderstanding. In the future it's better to catch him on the spot and check his mobile phone. If he was really doing something bad, then you can have him arrested on the spot.'

A group even went as far as to criticise the photographer for not taking more action.

No action: Some commenters on Weibo criticised the poster for not confronting the sneaky photo taker, centre

Threat: Shanghai Institute of Technology condemned the unacceptable behaviour of one of their own students

'Tang liao liao' wrote: 'Why didn't this Weibo user go up to stop the man, but took a picture of his behaviour instead?'

In a statement released on May 28, Shanghai Institute of Technology the man is one of their students.

It said on Weibo: 'Our university has noticed the Weibo post shared by Phillipa Vans today and confirm that the man in the picture is a student of our school.

'Our school will actively work with the police to investigate and deal with the matter. Our university strongly condemn any secret filming in subway.'

The Shanghai transport police confirmed they have launched an investigation into the allegations.

In April 2014, a man was detained for 5 days for taking upskirt photos on the Shanghai Metro.
The introduction of larger parking spaces designed 'just for women' in China has seen local authorities accused of sexism and misogyny.

Eight spaces in the Tonglu highway car park in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, east China, have been painted pink and made 1.5 times bigger than usual spaces to 'accommodate female drivers'.

To top it off, each space is finished with the symbol of a woman in a skirt, also painted in bright pink according to a report by People's Daily Online.

Disgrace? Eight 'female spaces' in a Hangzhou car park in China have been painted pink and made wider

The highway director said the places were for 'female drivers whose driving skills are not superb' and argued he had seen many women need help from security guards to park in the usual places.

He added that the local government were strongly considering adding to the number of new spaces, saying they had been popular with women drivers so far.

The new spaces have drawn heavy criticism on Chinese social media, with accusations of inherent sexism being quickly denied by the highway authority.

User 'Haishu KAIMO_jijiji wrote': 'This is discrimination [against women] as well as men who can't drive well - because if they might need a parking space like this, they are banned from using it.'

'You miao shao' argued: 'This is to open insult to say that all women are poor drivers. These parking lots plant the idea into people's subconscious. Why don't they call them 'new drivers' parking spaces?'

However, others argued that the move was in fact a thoughtful gesture by the local government, put in place to help out women who struggle with parking.

'Lun wu cang min' wrote: 'Feminists are so hard to deal with. When you take care of them, they will say it's discrimination; when you don't take care of them, they will also say it's discrimination.'

'Nie zi jia xi' added: 'This is indeed a creative and kind gesture, but it's labelled discrimination. In this case, anything can be labelled under discrimination.'

This was backed up by Virginia Tan, founder of Lean In China, a women's empowerment organization, who perhaps surprisingly supported the scheme.

Sexist? In 2012 an underground shopping centre car park in Tianjin, north-east China, courted controversy

Specially designed: The car park also included extra wide bays, added lighting, and female parking attendants

Controversial: The carpark spaces included pink wall paint and the use of hazard bumpers to reduce accidents

She told Qianjiang Evening News: 'This is a step forward  society is adapting to some needs of women.'

However, many female commenters continued to insist that they had seen plenty of male drivers around the city of Hangzhou who were just as bad at parking.

In 2012 an underground shopping centre car park in Tianjin, north-east China, courted controversy by introducing 'Ladies Only' parking areas, decked out with pink walls, girly decors and hazard bumpers to reduce accidents.

The car park also included extra wide bays, added lighting, and female parking attendants to give guidance if required.
Chinese villagers have expressed their outrage after fragments of a space craft crash-landed near their homes and caused damage.

Residents witnessed large pieces of a rocket tumble to the ground precariously close to homes in the remote town Tianzhushan, Shanxi province, north China.

The debris fell during the launch of the Ziyuan-3 geological mapping satellite around midday on May 30, and residents said the heavy falling equipment could have put local lives in danger.

Odd: The debris fell to earth after the satellite launch in Tianzhushan, Shanxi province, north China on May 30

Wreck: The launch equipment from the Ziyuan-3 mapping satellite fell to earth on a busy road and grassland

Absurd: The villagers of Tianzhushan have accused the government of failing to take them into consideration

Villagers say they heard a loud bang when a large portion of the launch craft, measuring more than six feet wide, clattered to the ground on a busy main road running through the town.

Other pieces fell to earth on nearby shrub land, not far from where residents were walking.

Local authorities were alerted to the incidents and dispatched officers to collect the debris, claiming it as protected property of the state.

The villagers of Tianzhushan have accused the government of failing to take them into consideration and said the wreckage had the potential to cause serious casualties.

Their outrage was compounded when it emerged that aerospace officials were reportedly completely aware of where the launch vehicle wreckage was projected to land.

Danger? A loud bang was heard when a large portion of the launch craft, measuring 6ft wide, clattered down

Clear-up: Local authorities were alerted to the incidents and dispatched officers to collect the debris

In August last year, also in Shanxi province, a huge chunk of a satellite engine detached accidentally from the launch and crashed through the roof of a man's two-storey house, narrowly missing him.

The government was forced to give the homeowner hefty compensation for the damage after retrieving the piece of equipment from the ground floor of his house.

The villager said he heard a boom 'loud enough to rattle the windows' before discovering that disaster had unfortunately struck.
European regulators have given the green light for a British drug firm to produce the world's first gene therapy treatment for children.

GlaxoSmithKline was given approval by the European Commission to provide the treatment to children with a rare immune disorder - which can be fatal for those affected.

The treatment, called Strimvelis, is the first stem cell gene therapy to treat children with severe combined immunodeficiency - commonly referred to as 'bubble boy' syndrome.

The European Commission has given approval for British drug firm GlaxoSmithKline to produce the world's first gene therapy treatment for children. GSK will produce Strimvelis, the first stem cell gene therapy to treat patients with severe combined immunodeficiency caused by adenosine deaminase deficiency (ADA-SCID)

HOW DOES IT WORK? The treatment works by using stem cells obtained from the childs own bone marrow. Once the cells are extracted they are tweaked with DNA for a working copy of the enzyme introduced. These stem cells are then reintroduced to the patient, who should then be able to produce their own working copies of the immune enzyme. Trial data have shown a 100 per cent survival rate for children receiving Strimvelis up to three years after the treatment.

The disease is caused by caused by adenosine deaminase deficiency (ADA-SCID).

This is when the body doesn't produce a key enzyme in maintaining the immune system, leading to the build up of toxins.

As a result, children affected by the disease are unable to fight off everyday infections.

Around 15 children a year in Europe are affected by ADA-SCID and the treatment will help those for whom home and stem cell donor is not available.

The treatment works by using stem cells obtained from the childs own bone marrow.

Once the cells are extracted they are tweaked with DNA for a working copy of the enzyme introduced.

These stem cells are then reintroduced to the patient, who should then be able to produce their own working copies of the immune enzyme.

Trial data have shown a 100 per cent survival rate for children receiving Strimvelis up to three years after the treatment.

GlaxoSmithKline will provide Strimvelis, the first ex-vivo stem cell gene therapy to treat patients with ADA-SCID - commonly referred to as 'bubble boy' syndrome

WHAT IS BUBBLE BOY SYNDROME? ADA Severe Combined Immune Deficiency (ADA-SCID) is sometimes known as bubble baby disease. The name refers to the fact that children born with it have immune systems so weak they must live in germ-free environments, or in a 'bubble'. Around 15 children a year in Europe are affected by ADA-SCID and the treatment will help those for whom home and stem cell donor is not available.

Following the approval, children will receive Strimvelis at the Ospedale San Raffaele, a university hospital in Milan.

Martin Andrews, head of GSK's rare disease unit, said: 'Today's approval is the result of many years' work with our collaborators in Milan and is the next step towards bringing life-changing treatment to patients with ADA-SCID and their families.

'This is the start of a new chapter in the treatment of rare genetic diseases and we hope that this therapeutic approach could also be used to help patients with other rare diseases in the future.'

ADA-SCID is caused by inheriting a faulty gene from both parents and because the children cannot fight infections, they develop severe and life-threatening illnesses.

Without treatment, it is usually fatal within the first year of a sufferer's life.

Professor Alessandro Aiuti, clinical research coordinator at San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy, said: 'This innovative, individualised treatment approach uses a patient's own gene modified stem cells to correct the root cause of the disease.
In just two years, people will be able to send packages to Mars.

Elon Musk's SpaceX plans to send an unmanned spacecraft to the red planet as early as 2018.

And according to a recent update prices for adding payloads to the journey will start at 42 ($62) million.

The company has updated its space launch price list, adding the option for a 'payload to Mars' carried by both its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets.

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SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket lifted off (pictured) from Cape Canaveral on Friday, carrying a satellite for Asia. The company plans to start offering a service to send payloads to Mars as early as 2018, with prices starting at 42 ($62) million for the Falcon 9 rocket

HOW MUCH WILL IT COST? The first SpaceX price list was published earlier this year, with prices for two sizes of rocket going into a two different types of Earth orbit. In a recent update, the company has upped its prices for geosynchronous orbits by 1.3 per cent, along with increasing the load the rockets can carry. The Falcon 9 rocket will carry up to 8.860 lbs (4,020 kg) for 42 ($62) million. The Falcon Heavy will transport 29,980 lbs (13,600 kg) to the red planet for 62 million ($90 million).

Musk, a billionaire entrepreneur who helped to found Tesla Motors and PayPal, started SpaceX in 2002 with the goal of slashing launch costs to make Mars travel affordable.

The first SpaceX price list was published earlier this year, with prices for two sizes of rocket going into two different types of Earth orbit.

In a recent update, the company has upped its prices for geosynchronous orbits - an orbit that always remains above the same place on Earth - by 1.3 per cent, along with increasing the load the rockets can carry.

The update also included an addition of the 'Mars payload' option for both rockets.

This is the first time any space company has offered the service of sending cargo to our neighbouring planet.

The Falcon 9 rocket will carry up to 8.860 lbs (4,020 kg) for 42 ($62) million, while the Falcon Heavy will transport 29,980 lbs (13,600 kg) to the red planet for 62 million ($90 million).

The prices are listed on the company website as part of a 'standard payment plan'.

SpaceX will launch the first payload delivery service to Mars in 2018. The camera on board Esa's Mars Express has captured stunning images of Mars in the last few days. On Monday evening the red planet was shining brighter than any star or planet in the night sky

The first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket, shown on its launch pad, has been successfully landed four times this year, once on land and three times on water. The launch and landings are getting Musk one step closer to its even bigger goal, landing an unmanned capsule on Mars

'SpaceX offers competitive pricing for its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch services,' the website says. 'Modest discounts are available, for contractually committed, multi-launch purchases.'

The company notched up another victory last Friday when it managed to safely land its Falcon 9 rocket for the fourth time, after it had deposited an Asian communications satellite into distant orbit.

This was the third time SpaceX managed to successfully land the first stage of its Falcon 9 rockets on water, having landed two earlier this year.

It has also succeeded once once on land, when their first successful landing occurred at Cape Canaveral in December.

It was also the second time it has landed a rocket on the ocean platform after a launch to geostationary transfer orbit, which is much further than the low-Earth orbit altitude at which the International Space Station circles the globe.

This launch and landing gets Musk one step closer to its even bigger goal, landing an unmanned capsule on Mars.

SpaceX plans to make that launch in 2018, although the Falcon Heavy rocket that will carry the company's Dragon capsule to will not have its first test flight until later in 2016. Nasa, which is aiming for a human mission to Mars in the 2030s, said it will provide technical support for SpaceX's first foray, known as Red Dragon

Nasa released a detailed outline last October, of a plan to send humans to Mars (pictured). SpaceX 'could provide valuable entry, descent and landing data to Nasa for our journey to Mars, while providing support to American industry,' Nasa said in a statement

SpaceX plans to make that launch in 2018, although the Falcon Heavy rocket that will carry the company's Dragon capsule to will not have its first test flight until later in 2016.

Nasa, which is aiming for a human mission to Mars in the 2030s, said it will provide technical support for SpaceX's first foray, known as Red Dragon.

The company will use its Falcon Heavy lift vehicle to carry a specially designed Dragon 2 spacecraft to Mars, then land said capsule vertically on the red planet, firing thrusters to brake its descent.

SpaceX 'could provide valuable entry, descent and landing data to Nasa for our journey to Mars, while providing support to American industry,' Nasa said in a statement.
When it comes to the future of Russias transport network it may be a case of anything you can do, we can do better.

Russian rail experts have revealed the country is ready for its own version of Elon Musks Hyperloop, in the form of a magnetic levitation train which could shuttle passengers and cargo at speeds of 1,200 km per hour (745 mph).

According to Russian news site RBC, the network would link Western Russia to the Far East and the northern reaches of the enormous country.

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When it comes to the future of Russias transport network it may be a case of anything you can do, we can do better. Russian rail experts have revealed the country is ready for its own version of Elon Musks Hyperloop (artist's impression pictured)

THE RUSSIAN HYPERLOOP Russian rail experts have revealed the country is ready for its own version of Elon Musks Hyperloop, in the form of a magnetic levitation train which could travel at 1,200 km per hour (745 mph). Head of the St Petersburg Railway Innovation Development Centre, Anatolyi Zaitsev, said that while the project would cost the West an estimated $21bn (14bn), Russia could achieve the technological feat with half the budget - at just $12-13bn (8bn). The first section of the network would link St Petersburg to Moscow in order to transport cargo the 400 miles (640 km) from the Baltic Sea terminals.

Head of St Petersburg Railway Innovation Development Centre, Anatolyi Zaitsev, said that while the project would cost the West an estimated $21 billion (14bn), Russia could achieve the technological feat with half the budget.

The cost of this project by Western standards is $21bn, according to our standards, it is just about half as much, that is $1213bn, Mr Zaitsev told RBC.

He added: In this initial phase of the work we are at the expense of private investors  and have demonstrated magnetic levitation  we can lift any weight.

Zaitsev, who is the Federations former rail minister, confirmed that the first section of the network would link St Petersburg to Moscow in order to transport cargo the 400 miles (640 km) from Baltic Sea terminals.

Earlier this month, Russias minister for transport, Maxim Sokolov, said the Federation is ready for such large scale projects. The minister told Russian media that a prototype design for the concept was revealed two years ago.

From Bratislava to Budapest, which takes about two hours to drive or five hours on trains, it would take 10 minutes on Hyperloop. To Kosice, a distance of 250 miles, would take only 25 minutes

The Russian project would see the implementation of a large scale super-speed transport system, like that being designed and tested in the US by Elon Musk's firm (illustrated), which could shuttle passengers and cargo around at speeds of up to 750 mph

The Russian minister confirmed that developments such as the Russian Hyperloop-style project could form a key part of the government's transport strategy up to 2030.

In 2014, state-owned Russian Railways reportedly signed a deal to develop a magnetic levitation train line for transporting freight containers.

The Hyperloop is a proposed method of travel that would transport people at 745mph (1,200km/h) between distant locations.

It was unveiled by billionaire head of Tesla and SpaceX Elon Musk in 2013, who said it could take passengers the 380 miles (610km) from LA to San Francisco in 30 minutes - half the time it takes a plane.

According to designs, the system is essentially a long tube which has had the air removed to create a vacuum.

Russian rail experts have revealed the country is ready for its own version of Elon Musks Hyperloop, in the form of a magnetic levitation train which could travel at 1,200 km per hour (745 mph). the first section of the network would link St Petersburg to Moscow (pictured) in order to transport cargo the 400 miles (640 km)

Elon Musk's Hyperloop design (illustrated) would run in a vaccuum tube, and be capable of transporting people at 745mph (1,200km/h) between distant locations. The system is still a concept, but initial testing and prototype building is ongoing in the US

The tube is suspended off the ground to protect against weather and earthquakes. Passengers would sit in either individual or group pods, which would then be accelerated with magnets.

Earlier this year, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) met with Slovakian government officials to finalise and sign an agreement which would see the transport system brought to Europe.

They are looking to build a local Hyperloop system, with the vision of creating future routes connecting Bratislava with Vienna, Austria and Budapest, Hungary.

According to Wired, Dirk Ahlborn, head of HTT, wants the first stage to be complete by 2020.

But the company has not secured funding yet, and the project is expected to cost $200-300 million (141  211 million).
The internet is a powerful tool, and the ability to spread information so quickly to such a huge audience can often have unfortunate consequences.

Social networking sites have often been used by terrorist organisations to relay messages and entice hatred against certain individuals or groups.

But now technology companies - including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube - have come together to try and combat this, by signing a code of conduct to combat hate speech online.

Social networking sites have often been used by terrorist organisations to relay messages and entice hatred against certain individuals or groups. But now tech giants have come together to try and combat this, by signing a code of conduct to combat hate speech online

TWITTER, FACEBOOK AND GOOGLE SUED OVER HATE SPEECH The new agreement comes just a few weeks after three of the companies were sued for how they deal with hate speech. In April a French Jewish youth group sued Twitter, Facebook and Google over how they monitor hate speech on the web. The lawsuit was filed at a Paris court by the Jewish youth group called UEJF. The group claimed the companies deleted only a small number of posts flagged as hateful, threatening or promoting violence.

The European Union has reached an agreement with some of the world's biggest social media firms on ways to combat the spread of hate speech online.

Under the terms of a code of conduct, the firms have committed to 'quickly and efficiently' tackle illegal hate speech directed against anyone over issues of race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin.

Among the measures agreed with the EU's executive arm, the firms have said they will establish internal procedures and staff training to guarantee that a majority of illegal content is assessed and, where necessary, removed within 24 hours.

The US firms insisted that following the EU rules would not compromise freedom of speech.

They have also agreed to strengthen their partnerships with civil society organisations who often flag content that promotes incitement to violence and hateful conduct.

The European Commission and the firms have also agreed to support civil society organisations to deliver 'anti-hate campaigns.'

The European Union has reached an agreement with some of the world's biggest social media firms on ways to combat the spread of hate speech online. Under the terms of a code of conduct, the firms have committed to 'quickly and efficiently' tackle illegal hate speech

THE CODE OF CONDUCT: WHAT THE COMPANIES WILL DO Under the agreement, the companies' promises include doing the following: Have clear and effective processes to review notifications regarding illegal hate speech on their services. Review the majority of valid notifications for removal of illegal hate speech in less than 24 hours. Educate and raise awareness with their users about the types of content not permitted under their rules and community guidelines. Provide information on the procedures for submitting notices. Encourage the provision of notices and flagging of content that promotes incitement to violence and hateful conduct at scale by experts. Provide regular training to their staff on current societal developments and to exchange views on the potential for further improvement. Intensify cooperation between themselves and other platforms and social media companies to enhance best practice sharing.

'The internet is a place for free speech, not hate speech,' said Vera Jourova, the EU commissioner responsible for justice, consumers and gender equality.

She added the code of conduct, which will be regularly reviewed in terms of its scope and its impact, will ensure that public incitement to violence or hatred has 'no place online.'

The firms themselves say there's no conflict between their mission statements to promote the freedom of expression and clamping down on hate speech.

Facebook's head of global policy management Monika Bickert urged the company's 1.6 million users to use the site's in-built reporting tools in the event they find content they consider unacceptable.

Successive terror attacks in Europe, like the Brussels terror attacks at Zaventem Airport (pictured) and a metro station, underlined the need to tackle online extremism and hate speech, according to the Commission

'Our teams around the world review these reports around the clock and take swift action,' she said.

Twitter, which has been at the centre of much of the hate speech that's spread online over the past few years, says it will continue to tackle the issue 'head-on' along with partners in industry and civil society.

'We remain committed to letting the Tweets flow,' said Twitter's European head of public policy Karen White.

'However, there is a clear distinction between freedom of expression and conduct that incites violence and hate.'
Mars is among a group of planets and moons in our solar system considered promising candidates for hosting, or having once hosted, alien life.

But signs of this life in the solar system may be harder to find than previously thought.

Any relics left over on the surface of the planet are likely to have been wiped out by powerful space radiation, according to new research.

Our neighbouring planet Mars could have been covered in vast salty oceans (artist's impression pictured) that would have been ideal for life to form. According to a new study, the signs of this life might be more difficult to find than previously thought, because of the harmful effects of space radiation

WHAT THE STUDY FOUND Amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, are one of the signs researchers are hoping to find. Previous research suggested amino acids could survive for up to 1 billion years under Martian conditions - when looking at amino acids on their own. The researchers mixed the amino acids with a kind of rock found on Mars and studied the effects of radiation. They found 'the destruction rate of amino acids in silicate powder mixtures is dramatically higher than in pure dry amino acid mixtures.'

Mars is considered two of the most likely places for signs of past life to be found in our solar system because it is the planet that most closely resembles our own.

The red planet once hosted vast oceans on its surface, which is considered one of the most vital properties necessary for life to thrive.

But new research is suggesting signs of this life might more difficult to find, because they could be destroyed by the harsh radiation in space more quickly than previously thought.

Amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, are one of the signs researchers are hoping to find.

Previous research suggested amino acids could survive for up to 1 billion years under Martian conditions.

But Dr Alexander Pavlov, space scientist at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, and colleagues conducted new research and found the majority of amino acids were likely to be destroyed in 20 million years.

The 'search for the extinct life on Mars is based on the assumption that some original complex organic molecules would be able to survive for hundreds of millions - billions of years in the ancient Martian outcrops' according to the study.

WHAT ARE THESE COSMIC RAYS? The Earth is constantly bombarded by high energy particles like protons, electrons and atomic nuclei. These particles make up the so-called 'cosmic radiation'. These 'cosmic rays' are electrically charged, and are hence strongly deflected by the interstellar magnetic fields that pervade our galaxy. This means the path they have travelled through the cosmos to reach us is so random that we have no idea what made them, so they have baffled scientists for more than a century. The Earth's thick atmosphere acts as a shield from the rays. But modern Mars has a thin atmosphere and Europa has virtually no atmosphere at all. Both worlds are bombarded by high levels of radiation, which could spell doom for any fossils that may have once existed on the worlds' surfaces. The Earth is constantly bombarded by high energy particles like protons, electrons and atomic nuclei. These particles make up the so-called 'cosmic radiation'. These 'cosmic rays' are electrically charged, and are hence strongly deflected by the interstellar magnetic fields that pervade our galaxy

'More than 80 percent of the amino acids are destroyed for dosages of 1 megagray, which is equivalent to 20 million years,' Dr Pavlov said during a presentation at a conference, according to Live Science.

'If we're going for ancient biomarkers, that's a very big problem.'

Mars' ocean is thought to have existed around 3.4 billion years ago, when life was first starting to form on our own planet.

But Dr Pavlov's team mixed the amino acids with rocky material similar to that found on Mars, and found all the amino acids were degraded by radiation in as few as 50 million years.

This means Mars rovers would have to dig deeper to find amino acids that might have been shielded from the radiation.

'We are extremely unlikely to find primitive amino acid molecules in the top 1 metre [3.3 feet] [of the crust], due to cosmic rays,' Dr Pavlov said. 'It would be critical to provide missions with 2-metre [6.6 feet] drilling capabilities, or chose landing sights with freshly exposed rocks.'

Mars rovers like Nasa's Curiosity, shown, will have to dig deeper to find amino acids that might have been shielded from the radiation. Future missions would have to have 6.6 feet (2 metre) drilling capabilities, or chose landing sights with freshly exposed rocks, the researchers have said

RADIATION ON EUROPA A separate study focusing on Jupiter's moon Europa also concluded the surface of the moon is an unlikely place for signs of life to survive. Simulating the conditions on Europa's surface, the researchers found the moon's radiation dosages were comparable to those on Mars. Simulations suggest microbes found in some of Earth's harshest environments would survive no more than 150,000 years in the top 3.3 feet (1m) of Europa's icy crust.

A separate study focusing on Jupiter's moon Europa also concluded the surface of the moon is an unlikely place for signs of life to survive.

Simulating the conditions on Europa's surface, the researchers found the moon's radiation dosages were comparable to those on Mars.

'Radiation is going to play a major role at Europa in the top few meters  actually, dare I say, dozen meters  of Europa's surface,' said Luis Teodoro, a planetary scientist at Nasa's Ames Research Center in California, speaking at the same conference.

He said his simulations suggest microbes found in some of Earth's harshest environments would survive no more than 150,000 years in the top 3.3 feet (1 m) of Europa's icy crust.

Organic biomarkers buried within 3.3 feet (1 metre) of the surface would last only 1 to 2 million years, he said.

'If we want to put a lander on the surface of Europa to check if life is there, we most likely are going to see something destroyed  mangled materials, mainly organics  from this huge dosage of radiation,' he said.

With a liquid layer located just a few miles underground, the ground on Europa refreezes where an impact happens, creating a fractured terrain with young scars on its plains, as seen in this image
They are among the most mysterious objects in the universe as the irresistible pull of their gravity allows nothing, not even light, to escape.

But new research has suggested that black holes may in fact merely be holograms.

This is according to theoretical physicists who have developed a new way of estimating the chaotic states that exist beyond the event horizons of black holes.

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Black holes may not be the three dimensional objects that many physicists believe them to be and may instead be a holographic projection from a flat surface (artist's impression of non-rotating black hole pictured)

THE HOLOGRAPHIC PRINCIPLE The holographic principle claims gravity in the universe comes from thin, vibrating strings. These strings are holograms of events that take place in a simpler, flatter cosmos. The principle suggests that, like the security chip on your credit card, there is a two-dimensional surface that contains all the information needed to describe a three-dimensional object - which in this case is our universe. The theory claims that data containing a description of a volume of space - such as a human or a comet - could be hidden in a region of this flattened, 'real' version of the universe. In a black hole, for instance, all the objects that ever fall into it would be entirely contained in surface fluctuations, almost like a piece of computer memory on contained in a chip. In a larger sense, the theory suggests that the entire universe can be seen as a 'two-dimensional structure projected onto a cosmological horizon' - or in simpler terms, a projection.

Their calculations suggest that although these powerful celestial bodies are though to have three dimensions, they may in fact be two dimensional projections.

Their results are consistent with a theory known as the holography hypothesis, which suggests the universe itself may be a two dimensional surface that we cannot see.

In a black hole all the objects that fall into it would be entirely contained in fluctuations in this surface.

The researchers say their work, which is published in the journal Physical Review Letters, could allow scientists to gain new insights into the gravitational states that exist within a black hole.

Dr Daniele Pranzetti, a physicist at the Max Planck Institute for Theoretical Physics in Munich, Germany, said: 'We were able to use a more complete and richer model compared with what done in the past, and obtain a far more realistic and robust result.

'This allowed us to resolve several ambiguities afflicting previous calculations.'

To conduct their calculations, the researchers used a phenomenon known as quantum gravity to examine the entropy, or disorder, that exist in black holes.

Previous work by scientists such as Professor Stephen Hawking have suggested the entropy of a black hole is proportional to its area but not its volume.

Quantum gravity assumes the fabric of space-time is made up of grains known as quanta and explores the effects of gravity at these tiny scales.

The researchers were able to construct calculations that looked at the gravitational impacts that collections of these quanta, known as condensates, together would have.

It could provide a way of modelling what may lie at the heart of black holes according to the behaviour of the gravity they produce.

The work by Dr Daniele Pranzetti and his colleagues suggests that black holes conform to something known as the Holography Principal, which states that the universe itself may be a holographic projection (illustrated)

Dr Pranzetti said: 'The idea at the basis of our study is that homogenous classical geometries emerge from a condensate of quanta of space introduced in a Loop Quantum Gravity in order to describe quantum geometries.'

Their findings were found to support the holographic hypothesis, Dr Pranzetti added.

This could mean that all the information needed to understand the structure of black holes is actually contained on a two dimensional surface - physicists just need to know how to translate it.
Spooky photos show two monks returning to the derelict ruins of Rievaulx Abbey near Helmsley, North Yorkshire

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These ghostly pictures show monks returning to the derelict ruins of an abbey 500 years after it was pulled down by Henry VIII.

The men can be seen walking around the grounds of Rievaulx Abbey, near Helmsley in North Yorkshire, which was once one of the richest and most spiritually significant abbeys in England - before it was destroyed on the orders of the king and Thomas Cromwell in 1538.

The crumbling ruins - which were visited by Father Joseph and Brother Bernard - stand out as they sit against the leafy background of the North York Moors.

The two men stand in the middle of the ancient abbey with a prayer book while the vast building looms over them

This abbey was one of more than 800 monasteries closed by Henry VIII but the ruins later became a centre for the Picturesque art movement in the 18th century

THE DISSOLUTION OF THE MONASTERIES - AND WHY HENRY VIII DID IT The dissolution of the monasteries was one of the key features of Henry VIII's reign. Henry broke with the Catholic Church in Rome after his wish to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon - who had failed to give him a male heir - was refused by the pope. It was then that he set up the Church of England and began to take over monasteries, as they were seen as a cornerstone of Catholicism. Between 1536 and 1540, Henry took charge of more than 800 monasteries, abbeys, nunneries and friaries. By destroying the monastic system, Henry took in all its wealth and property whilst removing its Papist influence. Many monasteries were sold off to landowners, others were taken over and became churches and some were left for ruin. A few monks who resisted were also executed - but those who surrendered were paid or pensioned off. Some of the funds gained from the closures financed new institutions, including Trinity College in Cambridge and Christ Church in Oxford.

The Cistercian monks read from a 500-year-old prayer book as they wondered around the shell of the ancient building.

And now many previously unseen artefacts from the abbey have gone on display in a new museum, including a half-tonne lead bar stamped with Henry's emblem  all that remains of the abbey's roofs and windows.

The exhibition also includes the imposing screen from the church which has been reassembled for the first time and serves as the centrepiece to the new English Heritage museum.

Other interesting exhibits include medieval stone carvings, chess pieces and gold coins which tell the story of the rise and dramatic fall of the first Cistercian abbey in the north of England.

Dr Michael Carter, senior properties historian for English Heritage, said: 'Rievaulx Abbey is one of the most important abbeys in England - and the setting one of the most beautiful.

THE IMPORTANCE OF RIEVAULX Historians believe Rievaulx Abbey, near Helmsley in North Yorkshire, is key in understanding the Cistercian reform - when monks of the order sought a simpler life. Following the decision to close the abbey in 1538, by Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell, the abbey was sold to Thomas Manners, the Earl of Rutland. It was slowly decommissioned, with the windows and roof torn down and the lead melted down. The site before being left as ruins until its eventual restoration in the 1900s.

'It was a place of huge spiritual significance for the country - two of its abbots were venerated as saints - and one utterly transformed by dramatic upheavals under Henry VIII.

'Our new museum now does justice to the abbey's whole story, showcasing its most important artefacts, many of which have never been seen before.'

The new museum - which is part of a 1.8 million investment in the abbey by English Heritage - tells the story of how Rievaulx was founded in 1132 and grew to become one of the most powerful and spiritually renowned centres of monasticism in Britain.

At its peak in the 1160s, the abbey was home to a community of more than 600 men.

Many of the ruined buildings that are visible today and which are visited by thousands of people every year, were constructed by Aelred, abbot from 1147 to 1167, who became the most prominent religious figure of his day in England.

This abbey was one of more than 800 monasteries closed by Henry VIII but the ruins later became a centre for the Picturesque art movement in the 18th century.

Rievaulx Abbey, near Helmsley in North Yorkshire, was one of the richest and most spiritually significant abbeys in England in the 16th century

Father Joseph and Brother Bernard John (right) visited the ruins of Rievaulx Abbey in North Yorkshire, which was destroyed by Henry VIII

These eerie photographs show the pair of Cistercian monks wondering around the historic ruins, which are set against the background of the North York Moors

Cistercian monks Father Joseph and Brother Bernard John (right) read from a 500-year-old prayer book as they visit the ruins of Rievaulx Abbey in North Yorkshire

Historians believe the site is important in understanding the Cistercian reform - when monks of the order sought a simpler life

Rievaulx Abbey (pictured) near Helmsley in North Yorkshire, was suppressed by Henry VIII in 1538 before being decommissioned by the Earl of Rutland. Now a number of previously unseen artefacts have gone on display for the first time in almost 500 years in a new museum

Historians believe the site is important in understanding the Cistercian reform - when monks of the order sought a simpler life.

Following the decision to close the abbey in 1538, by Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell, the abbey was sold to Thomas Manners, the Earl of Rutland.

It was slowly decommissioned, with the windows and roof torn down and the lead melted down. The site before being left as ruins until its eventual retoration in the 1900s.

Rievaulx Abbey, near Helmsley in North Yorkshire (located on map), was a key abbey in England before it was decommissioned in 1538

HENRY VIII  THE DOMINEERING MONSTER OF A MONARCH WHO BROKE WITH ROME AND CHANGED THE COURSE OF ENGLAND'S CULTURAL HISTORY Henry VIII (pictured) famously married a series of six wives Henry VIII was a domineering king who broke with Rome and changed the course of our England's cultural history. He ruled England for 36 years (1491-1547) and famously married a series of six wives in his search for political alliance and a healthy male heir. His desire to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, without the approval of the pope led to him creating the Church of England. Out of all of his marriages, two ended in annulment, two in natural deaths and two were beheaded for adultery and treason. His predecessors had tried and failed to conquer France, and even Henry himself mounted two expensive, yet unsuccessful attempts. He was known to self-medicate, even going as far as making his own medicines. A record on a prescription for ulcer treatment in the British Museum reads: 'An Oyntment devised by the kinges Majesty made at Westminster, and devised at Grenwich to take away inflammations and to cease payne and heale ulcers called gray plaster'. The king was also a musician and composer, owning 78 flutes, 78 recorders, five bagpipes, and has since had his songs covered by Jethro Tull. He possessed the largest tapestry collection ever documented, and 6,500 pistols. While most portraits show him as a slight man, he was actually very large, with one observer calling him 'an absolute monster'. He died in 1547 - on his 56th birthday - while heavily in debt, after having such a lavish lifestyle that he spent far, far more than taxes would earn him. His nine-year-old son, Edward VI, succeeded him as king but died six years later. Mary I - his daughter - then took the throne and spent her five-year reign steering England back towards Catholicism His other daughter Elizabeth I was Mary's successor, and re-instated her fathers religious reforms.

Cistercian Monks Father Joseph and Brother Bernard John (not in picture) read from a 500-year-old prayer book as they visit the ruins of Rievaulx Abbey in North Yorkshire

Following the ruling by the Tudor king and Thomas Cromwell the abbey was sold to Thomas Manners, the Earl of Rutland, at which point the windows and roof were torn down and the site developed into an ironworks

Among the artefacts are a lead fother - a half-tonne bar stamped with Henry VIII's emblem - which was made from lead from the abbey's roof (pictured)

Included in the artefacts are jet and bone chess pieces, dating from the 11th to 12th centuries, which have gone on display for the first time in nearly 500 years in a new museum

Among the artefacts recovered from Rievaulx Abbey near Helmsley in North Yorkshire are gold coins (pictured) which tell the story of the rise and dramatic fall of the first Cistercian abbey in the north of England
Users can generate 10 to 12 watts during an hour-long hour walk - enough electricity to charge four smartphones

The US Marines are testing radical new pants that will give them 'power on the go'.

Called PowerWalk, this light-weight, leg-mounted design harvests energy from the natural action of walking.

Users can generate 10 to 12 watts while wearing the device and after an hour-long walk, they can create enough electricity to charge four smartphones.

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Called PowerWalk, this light-weight, leg-mounted design accommodates full range motion while harvesting energy through the natural action of walking. Users can generate 10 to 12 watts during an hour-long walk, which converts into enough electricity to charge four smartphones

HOW DOES IT WORK? With every stride, PowerWalk's on-board sensors analyze the user's gait using Bionic Power's proprietary control software and determines when to generate the most power with the least effort. A gearbox transforms the knee's rotational speed to a higher speed for efficient power generation and a generator converts the mechanical power into electricity. Then a 'state-of-the-art power-conversion' circuit converts the electricity for battery charging which gives proves the charge for Li-ion or NiMh batteries. Users can generate 10 to 12 watts while wearing the device and after an hour-long walk, they can create enough electricity to charge four smartphones.

PowerWalk is the brainchild of Canada-based Bionic Power, which developed the exoskeleton to help reduce the number of batteries soldiers need to carry on missions to provide more space for essential field gear.

'A soldier typically carries 16-20lbs in batteries on a 72-hour mission,' says Noel Soto, U.S. Army Systems Engineer at the Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center.

'If a soldier can generate power with wearable energy-harvesting devices, it means we can not only reduce the weight on his or her back, we also minimize the unit's reliance on field resupply, making it possible for us to extend the duration and effectiveness of a mission.'

A gearbox transforms the knee's rotational speed to a higher speed for efficient power generation and a generator converts the mechanical power into electricity.

Then a 'state-of-the-art power-conversion' circuit converts the electricity for battery charging which gives proves the charge for Li-ion or NiMh batteries.

Compared to traditional batteries, PowerWalk produces a smaller environmental footprint, reduces the need for soldiers to carry backups and has fewer logistical challenges associated with battery replacement and resupply.

In addition to providing on-the-go power, PoweWalk reduces muscle fatigue during downhill walking, lowering the risk of knee injury.

'Military organizations around the world are looking for ways to take weight off the backs of their troops,' says Yad Garcha, Bionic Power's Chief Executive Officer.

'Wearing one of our PowerWalk harvesters reduces battery weight while providing continuous life-saving power in the field for communications, navigation and optics.'

A gearbox transforms the knee's rotational speed to a higher speed for efficient power generation and a generator converts the mechanical power into electricity. Then a 'state-of-the-art power-conversion' circuit converts the electricity for battery charging which gives proves the charge for Li-ion or NiMh batteries

Compared to traditional batteries, PowerWalk produces a smaller environmental footprint, reduces the need for soldiers to carry backups and has fewer logistical challenges associated with battery replacement and resupply. In addition to providing on-the-go power, PoweWalk reduces muscle fatigue during downhill walking

'That's a pretty compelling value proposition for military decision makers.'

Bionic Power received a $1.25 million contract from the Office of the Secretary of Defense to supply low-volume production unites of its PowerWalk under the Joint Infantry Company Prototype (JIC-P) Program  among its existing contracts with the U.S. Army.

Joint testing of the device under the recent contract will begin with the Marine Corps and Army early to mid-2017.

With every stride, PowerWalk's on-board sensors analyze the user's gait speed and terrain using Bionic Power's proprietary control software and determines the best timing and resistance to generate the maximum amount of power with the least amount of user effort

'Field trials play a crucial role in helping us determine future small unit power programs for both the Marine Corps and the Army,' says Eric South, Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division (NSWCDD) technical lead for JIC-P.

'We need data and direct feedback from base exercises in order to develop the technologies and systems that will get our troops to power independence, the point at which they are generating and managing as much power as they are consuming.'

These field trials also play an important role in helping Bionic Power prepare for volume production.

The US Marines has been testing exoskeletons that transforms soldiers into 'Iron Man', such as the Human Universal Load Carrier (pictured), which allows soldiers to carry up to 200 pounds for over 12.4 miles on a single battery charge. But PowerWalk will provide soldiers with electricity while on field missions

'Every military customer has different requirements for the PowerWalk, from technical specifications for batteries and connectors to the way the camouflage looks on the padding,' says Garcha.
It is billed as 'the worlds first truly smart phone' - and will set you back $16,000.

The Solarin phone features specially developed ultra secure software alongside a body made by watchmakers.

It even offers a special 'ultrasafe'mode with a button on the back, allowing users to be sure they are communicating securely.

The Solarin phone features specially developed ultra secure software alongside a body made by watchmakers. It even offers a special 'ultrasafe'mode with a button on the back, allowing users to be sure they are communicating securely.

SOLARIN SPECS Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor 23.8-megapixel camera Laser autofocus and four-tone flash Front facing flash 5.5 IPS LED 2k resolution screen Fingerprint sensor and 'secure button'

The handset, unveiled in London today, was developed by Sirin labs and will only be sold via its website and stores in Mayfair and Harrods.

The firm said the phone is aimed at 'the international business person who carries a lot of sensitive information but doesnt want to compromise on usability, quality or design.'

We do not accept that price drives whats available in technology. With Solarin, we break the rules. Moshe Hogeg, President and Co-founder of Sirin Labs, said.

The firm said it has spent over two years developing the phone in Sweden and Tel Aviv.

It uses software from Zimperium to encrypt data.

Cyber-attacks are endemic across the globe,' said Tal Cohen, CEO and Co-founder of Sirin Labs.

'This trend is on the increase. Just one attack can severely harm reputations and finances. Solarin is pioneering new, uncompromising privacy measures to provide customers with greater confidence and the reassurance necessary to handle business-critical information.

A security switch on the back of the handset puts it into a shielded mode, showing the user apps for fully encrypted calls and messages.

The firm claims it includes 'the most advanced privacy technology, currently unavailable outside the agency world' and worked with KoolSpan to integrate chip-to-chip 256-bit AES encryption, the same technology that militaries around the world use to protect their communications, offering the strongest possible mobile privacy protection worldwide.

Activated by the unique Security Switch on the back of the handset, the phone enters a shielded mode, presenting an exclusive suite for fully encrypted calls and messages.

The beam forming audio and state-of-the-art sound system uses three bass-boosted speakers, all linked through a smart amplifier to maximise volume but control distortion, producing a clear unsullied sound.

The firm said it has spent over two years developing the phone in Sweden and Tel Aviv.

It uses software from Zimperium to encrypt data.

It also boasts a 23.8-megapixel camera, with laser autofocus and industry-leading four-tone flash, plus a front facing flash and 5.5 IPS LED 2k resolution screen

The beam forming audio and state-of-the-art sound system uses three bass-boosted speakers, all linked through a smart amplifier to maximise volume but control distortion, producing a clear unsullied sound.

Exceptional audio and vision capabilities feature highly on our target audiences wish list. SIRIN LABS audio and vision engineers fixated on exceeding expectation, turning to experts to develop a new benchmark for smart phone speaker systems and unparalleled striking screen intensity, Cohen said.

It boasts a metal matrix composite chassis  typically used in the aerospace industry for its absolute rigidity  to incorporating titanium panels for structural strength, Gorilla Glass 4 and a leather back panel.

Designed by world renowned industrial designer Karim Rashid, the firm said it was 'meticulously assembled by engineers more used to making the worlds finest watches'.

It boasts a metal matrix composite chassis  typically used in the aerospace industry for its absolute rigidity  to incorporating titanium panels for structural strength, Gorilla Glass 4 and a leather back panel.

Every single design decision and material choice was based on performance and functionality. The product you hold today unites the very best of the world stage. Our network of extraordinary partners is the culmination of our unwavering focus on quality, not cost, regardless of complexity.Fredrik Oijer, VP Product, SIRIN LABS

SOLARIN is available online, at SIRIN LABS first store in Mayfair (34 Bruton Place), London from 1 June and Harrods, Knightsbridge from 30 June.
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Windsor is a place we should all visit from time to time, because this is such a pretty town.

The noise of aircraft coming and going at nearby Heathrow might bother some of us (presumably the Queen has grown used to it) and the flow of tourists could grate, but to dip in for a night is thoroughly recommended.

No need to worry about the neighbours: The Castle Hotel occupies a splendid position in the centre of Windsor

The Castle Hotel is the place to stay, and if you can get a room on the third floor overlooking the High Street then you wake to views of the castle, with Sir Christopher Wren's Guildhall (where Charles and Camilla were married) in the foreground.

The hotel is part of the MGallery by Sofitel group (itself part of Accor), but the chain mentality is not particularly evident.

We walk in off the street without having made a booking.

This gives a chance to negotiate vigorously with an engaging young Hungarian on reception.

She puts us in a superior room at the 'classic room' rate - with a request that we post something agreeable on TripAdvisor after our stay. Cheeky!

It's a large, restful room, with muted colours, two windows and a smart bathroom.

Everything is immaculate, as though the decorators have just left.

Downstairs, we bump into Marco Pierre White in the bar and he's everywhere in the restaurant.

Too much, actually.

The black-and-white photographs of the one-time godfather of modern cuisine seem to be trying desperately hard to impress, especially when everyone knows Marco has long since hung up his chef whites in favour of advertising stock cubes.

Even so, the Castle's Marco Pierre White steakhouse does a good job, and we're impressed by the enthusiastic and attentive service.

Happy birthday, Your Majesty: The Queen might have no need for the hotel, but it's right on her doorstep

There's no room in the main restaurant, so we sit near the fire in what used to be the lobby.

It's like being in our own private dining room.

We ask for the lights to be dimmed, and everything seems right with the world.

There's just time in the morning to wander around town.

The Queen was devastated when her castle caught fire in 1992, but to the untrained eye it looks better than ever.

Long may it, and Her Majesty, continue.
Our tour leader, a former South Wales police chief inspector, gave us the sort of pep-talk that I could really appreciate. 'The only thing to remember is that beer, wine and food in Italy carries no calories, so eat and drink what you want; the walking is just an add-on to the holiday.'

Then we all introduced ourselves - a 15-strong group, nine of whom were already acquainted.

We had arrived a couple of hours earlier at a rustic farmhouse retreat perched on a mountain balcony high above the slumbering Bay of Salerno and the fairy lights of Amalfi.

Some sort of perfection: Positano is one of Italy's most picturesque locations - and a walker's dream

Over the decades, a motley crew of friends has gathered to walk together as a way of keeping in touch. It had, though, been a while since our last sortie. Age and creaking knees meant hiking sticks were much in evidence as we set out on our first stroll the next morning.

Encouraged by the heady perfume of wild mint and fennel and serenaded by buzzing bees, we managed to stretch our six-mile loosener to five hours.

Forestry tracks and rocky ridge paths led us through sweet chestnut and oak forests to sweeping views of Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples.

Our second walk was no longer, but more strenuous. It involved a knee-jarring descent of 2,658 steps cut into precipitous limestone cliffs towards the Bay of Salerno where yachts and cruisers fanned out along the most romantic coastline on earth.

Eventually reaching level ground, Nigel, our tour leader, guided us through the tourist flotsam of Amalfi into a labyrinth that led to his secret restaurant hideaway, El Teatro, where we lunched on heaving seafood platters and aubergine parmigiana.

Afterwards, we wandered down to the beach for a swim and a mooch around the shops before the bus did the uphill slog back to our base.

Our most ambitious walk began with a stroll along a sun-baked mountain ridge for what seemed like an eternity before we finally turned our back to the coast and descended into the Valle delle Ferriere State Nature Reserve, via a cool forest trail beside tumbling waterfalls and a carpet of delicate pale cyclamen.

Towards the end of every walk a moment arrives when you can't wait for the finishing line. And after six hours, Eddie, a faithful member of our walking group, signalled that moment had arrived with his wry comment that it was 'just long enough to be torture'.

The pumice-stone paths we'd trodden underfoot all week eventually led us to their source, Vesuvius, and Europe's most famous ruins at Pompeii.

At the site entrance we hired a guide, who provided an informative two-hour tour of the vast ruins, before there was a downpour and we retreated to the busy on-site cafe for lunch.

Later, we stared out at the endless sepulchral-white tower blocks of Naples standing like the tombstones of a vast cemetery, an eerie reminder of the fate endured by the region's inhabitants during the great eruption of AD79.

All our walks had been building to the grand finale, the legendary 'Walk of the Gods', often cited as one of the world's ten great coastal hikes.

Striding the high ridge from Bomerano to Positano, the sheer drops had me gasping and my heart racing (I'm not great with heights), but I was equally gripped by the beauty of the precipitous, crumbling ruins, the tracery of terraced vines and boats bucking like twigs in the bay.

In Positano, I floated on my back, staring up at the restaurant terraces and shops stacked on the hillside like the tiers of a wedding cake. I looked up at the clouds stippling the sky and then across the sun pools on the sea that led to the three islands known as The Sirens.Like Odysseus, I turned my back to them. It was time to return to the farmhouse, pack my bag and say ciao to my friends for another year or two.
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Mingling with the rich and famous, travelling to exclusive, exotic locations and being gifted 4,000 (3,043) tips - working as a superyacht hostess sounds like the dream job.

But beneath the glamorous image, life on a luxury vessel is actually more challenging than many might imagine, with 18-hour working days, demanding guests and months spent away from home, according to former hostesses who spoke to MailOnline Travel.

Two elite yacht workers have lifted the lid on the highs and lows of a life at sea and seeing up close how the other half lives.

Hostess Sarah Begbie (right) said that although she had the time of her life on her yacht (left), it was actually a lot harder than many people imagine, with 18-hour days, fussy rich guests and months spent away from family

Stewardess Sarah Begbie set sail for a superyachting lifestyle in southeast Asia back in 2014

Sarah spent a year and a half living aboard a luxury vessel, voyaging to countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Burma

Australian stewardess, Sarah Begbie set sail for a superyachting lifestyle back in 2014, when her boyfriend, who worked on board a 164ft Trinity yacht, said his company was looking for staff.

The then 23-year-old spent the next year and a half living aboard the luxury vessel, voyaging to countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Burma.

The wealthy yachting set that Begbie encountered yearned for exotic destinations and had a taste for new experiences, often decadent, she explained.

'The private chef cooked for both guests and crew, and food was of the highest standard. We once had a guest import organic Japanese Kobe beef for $11,000 (7,517) and bring Louis Roederer Cristal champagne,' Begbie told MailOnline Travel.

The hostess said that when the clock struck midnight it was her job to produce ice cream, brownies and toasted sandwiches to curb guests' late night food cravings.

She said that partying with clients at night wasn't really done as the hostesses would have to be up before sunrise. But added: 'If they are offering you shots of vodka to ease the pain, one can hardly say no?'

Sarah says they were given access to some of the most incredible places in the world, with their backyard regularly consisting of crystal clear waters and deserted white beaches

When Sarah had free time, she was able to use the yacht's water toys to go wake boarding, surfing and stand up paddle boarding

As a hostess, Begbie's duties involved keeping rooms on the yacht pristine, as well serving all food and alcohol for up to 16 - often demanding - guests.

Begbie said: 'I could have never predicted the type of hard work I was in for.

'I usually started at 6am, and we would normally do 16-18 hour days - and I mean not sitting down for more than two minutes at a time, literally working the whole time.'

While the yacht was vast, with six bedrooms for crew and seven guest bedrooms, Begbie said her living quarters were less than impressive.

Describing it as 'jail cell' size, she said the couple had to take it in turns to change while the other sat on the king-sized bed as floor space was so limited.

But they spent little time in their rooms as they were given access to some of the most incredible places in the world, with their backyard regularly consisting of crystal clear waters and deserted white beaches.

'During time off and breaks it was amazing. We were also able to utilise the water toys - wake boarding, surfing and stand up paddle boarding,' she said.

Living costs were minimal, as Begbie didn't have to pay for accommodation and made over AUD$4,500 (2,210) per month.

When she had free time, the young worker enjoyed a similar high life to her guests, staying in five-star resorts, dining in amazing restaurants and jetting off on holidays paid for with her hard-earned cash.

As far as romantic dalliances with guests were concerned, Begbie said that most group's brought their partners on board. She explained: 'There were a lot of single girls that came on board but it was very much known they were for the men on board.

'The single men that came on and were interested in me were let down when they found out I had my boyfriend on board!'

During her time off, the young worker lived a luxurious lifestyle staying in five-star resorts and dining in amazing restaurants

While the perks certainly dazzled the yacht hostess, she did struggle with being away from her family and loved ones, especially during events such as birthdays, and Christmas.

'The guests were really considerate of this,' she said. 'On my birthday, for example, I was spoilt by them with an Armani watch and an all expenses paid dinner at a restaurant of my choice.'

Bethany Silcox, who worked as a superyacht stewardess for three years, shared similar experiences where a chance to sample the luxuries of life was coupled with tough, long hours of work.

'The longest day I had was 25 hours continuously on my feet and the longest stint I did at sea was 40 consecutive days without stepping foot on land,' she told MailOnline Travel. 'We rarely had time for lunch so would snack on what was available to keep us going.'

After university, Silcox trained at the UK Sailing Academy then decided to take a hostess job to explore the world and experience once-in-a-lifetime opportunities while getting a healthy pay packet.

'I worked on four different yachts for a variety of Asian businessmen, Middle Eastern royalty and often had Russian oligarchs as charter guests,' she said.

'Two of those were charter yachts. One cost $1million (683,407) per week to charter and the other 35,000 (26,636) per week, before provisioning and fuel.'

Bethany Silcox worked as a superyacht stewardess for three years after training at the UK Sailing Academy

Bethany worked on four different yachts for a variety of Asian businessmen, Middle Eastern royalty and often had Russian oligarchs as charter guests

On one occasion the hostesses' duties involved acting as 'rent a friends' to the owners' adult children at clubs like VIP Rooms in St Tropez, where they would drink 6,000 (4,565) bottles of alcohol

Silcox says she was never lonely, as the larger ships often had up to 36 crew, which made her feel like a member of a close-knit family.

With such a large team they were capable of holding enormous events on board the yacht.

'We hosted some really big parties with over 500 guests,' she said.

'We helped raise the atmosphere of parties on board when required and were even taught Arabic style dancing by some of the guests,' Silcox added.

On one occasion the hostesses' duties involved acting as 'rent a friends' to the owners' adult children at clubs like VIP Rooms in St Tropez, where they would drink 6,000 (4,565) bottles of alcohol.

Silcox was paid around 4,000 (3,043) per month, which included all expenses, two return flights home a year and 60 days paid holiday - although she said she burnt through her salary when they were moored up in some of the world's most exclusive and expensive locations.

'My biggest tip was 4,000 for a one-week charter,' Silcox said. 'As there was 36 staff on board the total tip left by the guest was 144,000 (109,569).'

'I had a friend who received a 17,000 (12,935) tip for a two week trip which was the largest I heard of.

'Other highlights of working on board included an all-access pass to the Monaco Grand Prix, a flight over The Palm, Dubai by sea plane and guests such as Prince Albert of Monaco, Will Smith and Antonio Banderas on board.'

Bethany was paid around 4,000 (3,043) per month, which included all expenses, two return flights home and 60 days paid holiday

Even though yacht guests are used to the finer things in life, Silcox found their tastes weren't always high-brow.

'Despite being silver service trained, it wasn't uncommon to serve fried chicken and chips to royalty.

'The strangest thing I ever served was toasted sandwiches with cream cheese and Pringle crisps as a midnight snack! Actually, the strangest thing I ever served was a dog from a solid silver bowl.'

While visitors on board may have craved simpler dishes, their cabin standards were extremely high.

Silcox said: 'I created a highly detailed photographic reference book for interior set up - every item had an exact place but every time we set sail we would have to stow everything for safety and return it to its rightful position once in port.'

When the yacht hostess left behind her sea-faring lifestyle and eventually started work back in London, she was living in a flat share with one other girl.

'Having been used to having loads of people around me for the previous three years I actually found starting out in London more lonely,' she said.
A 'drunk' passenger who 'kept banging her head when she sat down' was removed from a Thomas Cook flight to Belfast from Lanzarote.

The plane, which had 200 passengers on board, was preparing to take off from Lanzarote Airport, when the captain took the decision to halt the flight.

A female passenger, and a man who was travelling with her, were escorted off the plane that was set to fly on to Belfast International Airport.

A Thomas Cook Airbus A320 was delayed out of Lanzarote Airport after a 'drunk' woman had to be removed from the aircraft (file photo)

Speaking to Donegal Now, one passenger on the plane alleged that the woman was in a 'drunken' state.

'She was just in front of me, and she kept banging her head when she sat down in the plane,' said the eyewitness.

In line with security procedures, all the passengers and their luggage had to be removed from the plane, and flight TCX8229 departed the Spanish airport just over an hour late.

The Irish newspaper reports that 'several passengers had noted the condition of the woman during the boarding process, and that 'she appeared very unsteady on her feet'.

The Airbus A320 landed in Belfast at 1.56am yesterday (Monday) morning.

The nationality of the woman or the man travelling with her has not been disclosed.

A spokesperson for Thomas Cook told MailOnline Travel: 'We're extremely sorry to our customers who were delayed and made every effort to make up time during the flight home.

'A female passenger was removed from the aircraft prior to departure. The safety of our passengers and crew is our top priority and we don't tolerate disruptive behaviour on our flights.'

MailOnline has contacted Spanish police for comment.

Passengers and luggage were taken off the plane at Lanzarote Airport as the flight was delayed by an hour

Last week MailOnline reported on how hundreds of passengers have been arrested on suspicion of being drunk on a plane or at a UK airport in the last two years, figures reveal

At least 442 people were held between March 2014 and March 2016, in police statistics obtained by a news agency.

Cases include drunk passengers accused of attempting to open the doors of a plane, smashing a window and banging on the outside of the cockpit.
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These incredible snaps giving a glimpse inside the world's largest cave will take your breath away.

With the eerie green glow inside the mystical, echoing cavern, Vietnam's Han Son Doong cave looks like it could be on the edge of the world.

The huge cave - large enough to fit a 40-storey skyscraper - is so massive that it has its own climate, and clouds even form inside it.

These incredible snaps give a glimpse inside the world's largest cave, Vietnam's Han Son Doong, and will take your breath away

With the eerie green glow inside the mystical, echoing cavern, the cave looks like it could be on the edge of the world. Pictured are tents set up for the night

An explorer looks round at the spectacular cave, which takes a half day's trek to reach, through stunning jungle peppered with butterflies

It's not a trip for the faint-hearted - it takes a half day trek through a stunning jungle peppered with butterflies and a journey through knee deep rivers to finally get to the entrance of the colossal cave.

Adventurous explorers must also pass through the third largest cave in the world, Hang Ev cave - used as a location for the Peter Pan blockbuster.

The stunning snaps were taken by Swiss photographer Urs Zihlmann, during a five-day trip to Ke Bang National Park in the Quang Binh province, central Vietnam.

Zihlmann had gone on a special photographic tour of the cave with more than 40 eager snappers, after being inspired by pictures in National Geographic.

The stunning snaps were taken by Swiss photographer Urs Zihlmann, during a five-day trip to Ke Bang National Park in the Quang Binh province, central Vietnam

Only 450 visitors are allowed to tour the cave each year, with only one operator offering the experience. Oxalis Adventures, who work closely with the Vietnamese government, aim to ensure a sustainable future for the crumbling cave

Explorers climb through the huge, dark chamber, which is said to be extremely slippery. Zihlmann described being inside as 'unearthly'

Zihlmann, 35, said: 'I was very lucky to be able to go on a guided tour of the cave.

'As we approached the entrance, clouds were rising from the cave into the surrounding forest - we had to descend 262ft down a steep wall, using harnesses and ropes.

'Standing on the slippery ground in a huge, dark chamber, you begin to realise how amazing it is.

'You feel very small as a human being in this enormous, underground paradise - it has such an unearthly beauty.

'It felt like being in another world.

'Less people have seen the inside of Son Doong than stood on the summit of Mount Everest.

'It's a natural wonder at its best!'

The only operator allowing adventurers to experience the cave is Oxalis Adventures, who work closely with the Vietnamese government to ensure a sustainable future for the crumbling cave.

Tours of the cave are limited to 450 visitors each year.

Compared to the gigantic cavern, the explorers look extremely tiny. Zihlmann visited the cave on a special photographic tour of the cave with more than 40 eager snappers
Hundreds of Eurostar passengers were stranded in Paris overnight after a holidaymaker tried to board a London-bound train with a souvenir war artillery shell.

The man had obtained the war relic - which is not allowed on Eurostar trains - from a site in Northern France and did not declare it to customs officials when he arrived at a checkpoint at Gare du Nord station yesterday.

The station was evacuated as a precaution after the shell was found in his bag, and Britons who were trying to get home after the Bank Holiday weekend faced hours-long delays or had to wait until this morning due to a knock-on effect and planned engineering work last night.

Eurostar passengers faced lengthy delays after Paris' Gare du Nord station was evacuated

A Eurostar passenger complained on Twitter about a fellow traveller whose 'fake bombshell' caused the delay

Passenger David MacLean told MailOnline his train arrived in London three hours behind schedule

A Eurostar spokesman told MailOnline Travel: The delays yesterday were caused by some memorabilia which had been brought back from the war sites in Northern France.

This is relatively common, and there are lots of signs at check-in where we ask passengers not to do this.

On this occasion someone had done so without declaring it to customs, so there was an evacuation whilst this was checked.

'The object was found when all bags were scanned, as part of the regular check-in procedure.'

A passenger who was caught up in the delay tweeted that a traveller had tried to board a train with a 'fake bombshell'.

Passenger David MacLean told MailOnline Travel his train left more than two hours late and arrived at Londons St Pancras station three hours late.

He said: We were among the lucky ones as I believe a lot of others were stranded in Paris overnight.

MacLean said an employee on his train announced that the evacuation was due to a customer or customers trying to bring World War Two relics on board.

The man did not declare the war relic to customs officials at Paris' Gare du Nord station yesterday (file image)

THIS HISTORY BUFFS WHO ARE CAUSING COSTLY DELAYS FOR EUROSTAR Eurostar passengers trying to leave France with decommissioned artillery shells or other war memorabilia have caused significant problems at Paris' Gare du Nord station, which serves more than half a million people a day. There have been a number of incidents where relics from World War One and World War Two have been discovered in passengers' bags, resulting in partial or complete evacuations of the station and delays for travellers. A live artillery shell was even taken to Gare du Nord by a British couple in July 2010. Passengers are banned from bringing souvenir artillery shells and other military relics on board Eurostar trains. The shells are regularly dug up in farmers' fields and can easily be purchased at flea markets or shops, or online, for around 50 or more. The objects are listed under 'prohibited and restricted items' on Eurostar's website, but passengers either aren't aware of or ignore the rules. In May 2015, after two shells were intercepted within 12 hours at Gare du Nord and Gare du Lille Europe stations, an official with SNCF, France's national railway, told the BBC that such incidents were happening 'fairly regularly'. He said: 'It's always Brits. We have to teach them that it has to stop, the Eurostar has the same controls as Heathrow.' Regarding the ban, Eurostar's website states: 'If youve been to visit one of the commemorative First World War sites, youve probably noticed that you can buy certain military relics from this era as souvenirs. 'Keep in mind, though, that certain items on offer are, for safety and security reasons, strictly prohibited from travelling on a Eurostar train. 'In accordance with Article 215 of the French Customs Code, youll be at risk of arrest, prosecution and a substantial fine if you attempt to travel with any historical weapons, munitions or explosive devices, either within your luggage or carried on you. 'Such restrictions are also applied to carrying military shells and cartridges (even if they appear to be empty). 'These items are a potential danger to yourself and all others in the vicinity where theyre carried. They have also been the cause of frequent station evacuations and significant travel delays when detected. 'We will also disregard any certification from sellers of such items claiming that they have been de-activated and are therefore harmless. The police will deal with each detected item in the same way.'

Angry travellers were forced to stand in long queues at Gare du Nord as they waited to find out when they would be able to board a train, and complained of a lack of information.

Eurostar cancelled the last two trains of the night and brought in a special service to bring stranded passengers back to London.

MacLean said organisation at Gare du Nord was poor and no one explained what was happening.

He added: We just stood in a queue looking at the departure boards telling us the trains were delayed because of a suspicious package found earlier in the day. That was the total of the information.

After waiting a couple of hours in line a Eurostar employee walked down the line asking anyone with a ticket for the 20.07 train to follow him.

We followed and got upstairs to the Eurostar checking hall and passport control and security, and after more queuing got onto a train.

After further waiting time we departed. The journey after that was fine other than for a 20-minute stoppage not too far out of Paris to allow traffic to free up.

MacLean said his train arrived in London shortly after 12:20am today.

He said: As you can imagine with 900 passengers disembarking it was extremely busy.

Eurostar announced they had laid in some extra taxis but it would not cover everyone. They said if you get a taxi keep the receipt and apply for compensation in three days time.

I feel for those who were stranded as it was a horribly wet day and night in Paris and I am sure finding hotels would not have been easy.

Jak May, 24, told the Evening Standard he spent more than 200 to book himself, his partner and two friends into a hotel on the outskirts of Paris.

He told the newspaper: 'The communication has been appalling. We had to beg Eurostar officials to talk to us in English. It was like they were scared to give out any information at all.

'I personally think whoever is trying to bring the shell back is beyond disrespectful especially with how tense Paris is at the moment. As a group we saw the heightened police presence and were genuinely worried.'

The Eurostar spokesman said there was a knock-on effect as a result of the evacuation in the afternoon and maintenance work planned on the French high-speed line.

That meant the final two trains of the day were cancelled.

The spokesman said: Staff were on hand to book hotels and taxis where necessary, and an extra train has been planned today to help people travel as soon as possible.

Yesterday's incident capped a weekend of frustration for British holidaymakers, who also faced severe petrol shortages in France due to strikes at fuel depots and refineries.

Further problems are expected this week when rail workers go on strike on Wednesday and Thursday, resulting in severe cuts to national and regional services, in protest of labour reforms and pay.

Paris' metro and suburban services will be affected from Thursday when workers walk off the job.

Additional rail strikes are planned throughout June as France hosts millions of tourists from England, Northern Ireland and Wales and other countries for the Euro 2016 football tournament.

Airline passengers may be affected by labour action as well.

Air traffic controllers and other airport workers have been encouraged to walk off the job from Friday to Sunday, and Air France workers have voted to hold a week-long strike, likely in June, although dates have not been announced.

With the first match of Euro 2016 less than two weeks away and fears that the tournament could be a target for terrorists, France is under a heightened state of security.
These charming beach huts with prized views of the English Channel, North Sea or other bodies of water are vying to be named the best in Britain.

Beach huts are a symbol of the British seaside, and some owners have taken theirs to the next level by designing pretty exteriors or transforming the interior into a cosy space to escape the rat race.

This years champion will receive 1,000 and the opportunity to meet TV star Phil Spencer, who is leading the contests judging panel.

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This beach hut at Dovercourt, Essex, features French doors, an outdoor deck and a pink interior

The entrants include a hut in Mersea, Essex, with a delightful seaside theme featuring a mermaid on the wall

Pink is the theme of this inviting beach hut in Dovercourt, Essex, which has a sink and hob

TV personality Phil Spencer meets Jane Ashmore, whose hut in Essex was crowned the winner in 2015

Towergates national Beach Hut of the Year competition is in full swing, with nominations being accepted until 8 June.

Its likely that the competition will be stiff as there are more than 20,000 beach huts scattered across Britains coastline.

The entrants so far include a hut in Mersea, Essex, with a delightful seaside theme featuring a mermaid on the wall, and one at Haylind Island which has decorative maps on its ceiling.

Others feature colourful designs and outdoor space where guests can unwind over food and drinks.

Nominations are being accepted until 8 June (pictured: a beach hut on Mersea Island, Essex)

Yellow features in the interior and exterior of this beach hut, called Lazy Sunday, at Sheringham, Norfolk

A nautical theme, including maps on the ceiling, welcomes guests at this hut at Hayling Island, Hampshire

This colourful interior is found at the Boho Beach Hut at Hove Esplanade, East Sussex

Spencer, host of Location, Location, Location and other property programmes, will visit the winner and present a 1,000 cheque and plaque.

The winner will also receive a years free beach hut insurance and 500 for their beach hut association.

Spencer said in a statement: Being a judge in last years competition was a lot of fun so Im back to help find the nations best beach hut of 2016.

Last year the competition was fierce and Im hoping, and expecting, this year will be even more popular.

Beach huts are an enduring part of British life, so its right that we celebrate them with this competition.

Emma Watson, from Towergate, said judges have noticed a fascination for 1950s retro charm that seems to have brought a new affection for the humble hut.

The top 10 will be announced on 19 June and the public will then get its chance to vote for their favourite.

Last years winner, a hut called Betty, owned by Jane Ashmore, was praised for its retro design and the charitable role it plays within the community.
Bec and George Douros welcomed Archie into the world in October ending their heartache after suffering a miscarriage.

And on Monday, former Block contestant Bec revealed she was made to feel uncomfortable on a flight while breastfeeding her seven-month-old son when a female passenger shot them disapproving glances.

Taking to Instagram, Bec expressed her anger writing: 'A big f**k you to the lady sitting next to me who rolled her eyes and said I should have done that BEFORE I got on the flight.

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Hitting back: Former Block star Bec Douros revealed she was made to feel uncomfortable on a flight while breastfeeding her seven-month-old son when a fellow female passenger shot her disapproving glances

'A massive thank you to the other lady who kindly swapped her window seat so I could finish feeding Archie,' she went on.

'I should have told that old bag she left her reading glasses on her seat, but I thought to myself she really should have put them away BEFORE she rushed ahead of everyone to get off the flight.'

She called for breastfeeding to be normalised in public and added the hash tags 'glad that is over' and 'good luck finishing your book tonight.'

First flight without dad: Bec shared a snap of Archie waving out of the window mid flight before the passenger glanced disapprovingly at her for breastfeeding him

Since taking to Instagram on Monday, Bec's post has solicited 3,648 likes an comments from supporters.

One follower wrote: 'I actually thought it was normal to breastfeed on a flight so they stay quiet.

'You should have asked her if she would rather he scream in her ear then she would be deaf and blind!'

New show: Bec and George are poised to star in the Love Shack

Another wrote: 'As a fellow BF mumma I'm so glad you stuck to your guns and kept on feeding.

'I will feed my 7 month old when SHE needs to be fed, not when it's convenient for EVERYONE ELSE!!!! Keep on boobin' Mumma!'

Archies birth comes three years after Bec and George suffered a miscarriage at seven weeks in mid-2012.

Moving forward: Archies birth comes three years after the duo tragically suffered a miscarriage at seven weeks in mid-2012

While it was a devastating time, the pair previously admitted that they believe everything happens for a reason.

Today she dotes on her lookalike son posting snaps almost daily of him documenting his growth and latest habits on Instagram.

Bec and George won the hearts of Australian audiences were crowned The Block Sky Highs Favourite Couple in 2013.

Since filming wrapped up, they havent put down the hammer and nails and the couple, who have been together for 12 years, are poised to host new show Love Shack which will see them will take on the challenge of renovating a crumbling 1970s beach front shack in Tasmania.
She's the model whose incredible body could sell anything from a bikini to a pant suit.

And Elyse Knowles is flaunting her good looks once again in the hottest styles for the Autumn/Winter season.

The 24-year-old sizzles in a pinstriped blazer as she flaunts her ample cleavage in a sultry new photo shoot.

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Sizzling: Elyse Knowles, 24, shows off her incredible physique and ample cleavage in a pinstriped pant suit for a new fashion shoot

The model's look is completed with matching flared pants and an oversized leather belt to accentuate her tiny waist.

Elyse's beach babe locks have been sleeked back with product, with the ends left to cascade down her shoulders naturally.

Her makeup was kept simple to show off her flawless bronzed complexion, with just a hint of eyeshadow highlighting her piercing blue eyes.

Flashy: The blonde beauty showed off her ample assets in the blazer, while her tiny waist was accentuated with a leather belt

Flawless: Elyse's striking features were on show as she smouldered for the camera, rocking sleeked back hair and a glossy pout

The Melbourne model's signature brows have been primped to frame her face perfectly.

Elyse showed she can rock the 1970s denim trend like a seasoned professional in a pair of flared jeans and a patched denim jacket.

The colour palette was continued throughout the outfit with a pair of pale blue leather slides and a blue-and-white striped shirt.

Blue jean baby: Elyse showed she can rock the 1970s denim trend like a seasoned professional in a pair of flared jeans and a patched denim jacket

Fit and fab: The Instagram star's toned arms were showcased in a white singlet top teamed with matching trousers

The fitness enthusiast's toned arms were showcased in a white singlet top teamed with matching trousers.

Elyse proved she can work all angles and trends as she models various silhouettes and textures.

The gorgeous model has just arrived home from a work trip to Fiji, where she put her good looks to work in a Bras N Things shoot.

Rock chic: Elyse proved she can work all angles and trends as she models various silhouettes and textures

All black everything: Elyse showed off her edgier side in a pair of pleated trousers and a boxy cropped top, teamed with a pair of leather slides

While there, she shared a sexy Instagram photo from on set, posing alongside models Nathalie Darcas and Gigi Midgley.

'Stuck in Fiji with these sexy muffins @natdarcas @gigimidgley shooting for @brasnthings_ #wishyouwerehere #neverwanttoleave #heaven (sic),' the blonde beauty captioned the snap.

Elyse has developed a huge online fanbase by flaunting her remarkably fit physique on Instagram, where she has 544,000 followers.

White hot: Another look from the shoot showed the blonde beauty master the art of layering

Stunning: The globetrotting beauty began modelling at age 10 and she has since had notable success

She recently revealed to Daily Mail Australia that she maintains her petite frame by exercising 'at least once a day'.

She also admitted her tips and tricks for exercising while travelling, saying: 'I travel with a skipping rope and runners' she said.

'When you travel you can't take your whole fitness regimen with you, so I literally have my stop watch on my phone and I skip and I jump on things. Or I do push-ups and burpees, I use whatever I have in my hotel room.

The globetrotting beauty began modelling at age 10 and she has since had notable success.

Her feats include being named this year's Face of AW Chadstone, the 2015 Rolex GP Ambassador and launching her own Evrryday fashion label last year.
She was recently at the center of a brawl between two men.

And on Sunday, Shanina Shaik showed her allegiance to fiance DJ Ruckus.

More than one week after the international DJ, otherwise known as Greg Andrews, clashed with the Australian model's ex-boyfriend Tyson Beckford in a New York City nightclub, Shanina was spotted showering her current squeeze with kisses during a steamy Miami getaway.

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Smitten: Shanina Shaik enjoyed a steamy Miami getaway with fiance DJ Ruckus on Sunday

Dressed in a black bodysuit and a long flowing leopard-print skirt, the 25-year-old Victoria's Secret model appeared happy and relaxed while dining at a beachfront restaurant with Ruckus.

The couple exchanged a few laughs while gazing deeply into each other's eyes and at one point they locked lips during a passionate embrace.

A fresh-faced Shanina affectionately placed her hand around her 32-year-old boyfriend's neck before leaning in for more kisses.

True love: The engaged couple shared a passionate embrace while dining at a Miami restaurant

The smitten pair appeared to be completely unaware of their surroundings as they showered each other with affection.

The outing comes days after the Melbourne beauty denied speculation of a love triangle after it was reported that the men were fighting over her.

Shanina made it clear on Twitter that her relationship with 45-year-old Tyson is well and truly over.

Full of jokes: The Victoria's Secret model had her man in fits of laughter

'Well I only know of one man and he fights for me #GoDJ,' she tweeted alongside a screenshot of a New York Post report of the club brawl.

Ruckus, who began dating the brunette stunner early last year, is said to have exchanged words with her ex at Manhattan hot spot Up And Down before the matter escalated outside.

'Tyson [got] off his bike, still with his helmet on and [started] confronting Ruckus, and then they went back and forth until the doorman called the cops,' a source told the Post.

Still going strong: Shanina made sure to flash her diamond sparkler while leaving the restaurant with her fiance

Old flame: Shanina previously dated model/actor Tyson Beckford before they split last year

Tyson began an on-an-off relationship with the Make Me a Supermodel runner-up in 2008 after having met her on set of the Australian reality show.

The pair split in 2015 shortly before the IMG model moved on with Ruckus, who happens to be the cousin of famed rock musician Lenny Kravitz.

In December, Shanina and Ruckus announced their engagement although they have not publicly revealed a wedding date.
A Midsummer Night's Dream

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Queen Titania snogged Queen Hippolyta. A randy Demetrius groped his love-rival, Lysander. Playwright Peter Quince had a sex-change. Even Snug the carpenter ended up smooching with one of the male extras.

When screenwriter Russell T. Davies, the creator of shows like Queer As Folk and Cucumber, decided to adapt Shakespeares magical comedy A Midsummer Nights Dream (BBC1), he saw possibilities that required a little rewriting. In his version, the whole play turned on one punchline, when lovelorn Helena gazes on the romantic chaos around her and exclaims: Oh hell! I see you are all bent.

Davies, of course, was taking the line out of context, but that was no different to just about every other scrap of dialogue, as he butchered the text of the Bards best-known, most-loved tale down to a muddled 90 minutes.

Russell T Davies butchered the text of the Bards best-known, most-loved tale - starring Maxine Peake as Queen Titania - down to a muddled 90 minutes

Snippets from half-a-dozen other plays were thrown into the mix, as well as telly catchphrases  Matt Lucas, as Bottom, loudly reprised his Little Britain gag, Im a lady! Thats not in the First Folio.

And the ending got a radical rewrite, as fascist dictator Theseus (John Hannah) collapsed and died. Had he been poisoned? Was it a heart attack, brought on by a malevolent fairy? Perhaps he choked on the original text.

For the first 30 minutes, Davies was back in the universe of Doctor Who, the classic sci-fi serial he revived for the BBC in 2005. Theseuss palace in Athens looked like a dalek was lurking round every corner. Neo-Nazi emblems hung from the walls and were blazoned over the floors.

Stormtroopers with blasters scowled from behind shining black visors. Hannah stroked the epaulettes of his uniform, while his flunkeys brandished iPads. Everyone seemed to be waiting for a blue police box to materialise, and a wiseacre in a floppy hat and long knitted scarf to emerge.

The most efficient way to pare down the play to an hour-and-a-half would have been to ditch all that. A Midsummer Nights Dream starts slowly, all exposition and in-jokes. The story we love doesnt begin until Act Two, when the fairy rulers Oberon and Titania have an almighty row, and bad-boy Puck is despatched to play a practical joke on the Queen.

Snippets from half-a-dozen other plays were thrown into the mix, as well as telly catchphrases  Matt Lucas, as Bottom, loudly reprised his Little Britain gag, Im a lady!

Davies didnt alter that part of the production, and so it was spell-binding. The enchanted forest and its sprites were modelled on the great modern fantasy movie Pans Labyrinth  with his rams horns and smouldering skin, Oberon (the menacing Nonso Anozie) was more demon than fairy king.

Maxine Peake made a terrifying Titania, with tattoos running over her scalp. And Lucas was a delight as the innocent, preening Bottom, too self-satisfied to notice hed grown a pair of furry ears. But Davies couldnt stay true to the spirit of the play for long, and soon he was rewriting the plot.

We returned to the Doctor Who set, where Theseus was keeping Hippolyta in a strait-jacket  until she burst free, sprouted rainbow wings and emerged from her cocoon.

As she flew off with Titania, the fairies tore up the Nazi banners and turned them into ribbons. Elaine Paige as Mistress Quince beamed at everyone, and Snug (the comedian Javone Prince) snuggled a stormtrooper. What a gay play!

An Immigrant's Guide To Britain

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Other British traditions were being ripped to shreds on An Immigrants Guide To Britain (C4), a gloating look at how refugees and migrants are undermining the culture that offered them safe haven. A malicious Pole called Kamil mocked our reluctance to complain by setting up a coffee stall and serving hot drinks laced with Tabasco and chilli. Even when he stirred them with his finger, no one protested.

An Immigrants Guide To Britain was a gloating look at how refugees and migrants are undermining the culture that offered them safe haven

Then a Hungarian woman marched round Shepherds Bush, trying to engage locals in conversation: no one wanted to chat, until she mentioned the weather, and then people wouldnt shut up.
She unveiled her delicate hip tattoo in December - the phonetic spelling of Sanity in red ink.

And Kylie Jenner's choice of tattoo appears to have inspired her best pal Hailey Baldwin, as the model exhibited a sweet inking in the same place in a social media post.

On Sunday, she shared a series of provocative bikini snaps with her 62 million Instagram followers - including the tattoo snap in which they were ringing in Memorial Day.

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'Baby tats: Kylie Jenner's choice of tattoo appears to have inspired her best pal Hailey Baldwin, as the model exhibited a sweet inking in the same place in a social media post

The sizzling snap racked up 130,000 likes in half an hour, but Hailey soon deleted it although Kylie was clearly proud of their assets as she kept the snap of social media.

Kylie, joined by her sister Kendall, uploaded the fleshy close-up from their encounter, which shows the two socialites standing inches apart and modeling tattoos on their hips, and captioned it 'baby tats'.

The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star has a tattoo on her right hip that says 'sanity', written out in the letters of the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Meanwhile Hailey has a tattoo of the word 'gente', which means 'people' in Portuguese and honours her Brazilian heritage.

See Kylie Jenner updates as she shows off her shapely derriere in a sexy Instagram selfie

Girl-on-girl: On Monday model Hailey uploaded this provocative bikini shot with Kylie Jenner

Fun in the sun: Kylie shared a poolside chat with (L-R) model Cami Morrone, sister Kendall, pal Lauren Perez and Hailey, captioning the photo 'girls, girls, girls'

Kylie also uploaded a photo showing her and Hailey spending some quality time at the pool with big sister Kendall, model Cami Morrone and their gal pal Lauren Perez.

The teen, who has recently split from rapper boyfriend Tyga, was keen to keep the boys at bay, she captioned the photo 'girls, girls, girls.'

Cami later uploaded a shot showing the five beauties resting their hands on each other's per posteriors.

Unfortunately for Hailey, she appears to have burped or coughed just as the camera snapped.

Squad goals: Kylie and her crew rested their hands on each other's peachy rears, only to have Hailey burp or cough as the camera snapped

Throughout the day Kylie and Hailey broke away from the group to enjoy some selfies and time away from the girls.

Kylie uploaded a series of Snapchats that showed off her tiny frame and stunning decolletage.

Despite frolicking in the water, her make-up game was on point, as she wore a bit of pink lippie, lashings of mascara and just the right amount of kohl eyeliner.

Alone time: Kylie broke away from the pack to upload a series of Snapchats that showed off her tiny frame and stunning decolletage

Stunning: Despite frolicking in the water, Kylie kept her make-up on point, wearing a bit of pink lippie, lashings of mascara and just the right amount of kohl eyeliner

However, Hailey did make time for the boys, stepping away to snap a fun pic with a male friend and actor and rapper Jaden Smith.

Jaden slipped into a pair of denim overalls, which he wore asymmetrically, giving the impression of a high fashion shoot.

After their exciting afternoon, Hailey uploaded a shot of her cooking for the group, along with the caption: 'penne alredo by yours truly'.

Fun in the shade: Hailey made time for the boys, stepping away to snap a fun pic with a male friend and actor and rapper Jaden Smith
Not only does she look like an angel, but she certainly performs deeds like one also.

The 35-year-old Victoria's Secret model gave back to her native Brazil as she paid a visit to a non-profit art gallery in Rio de Janeiro on Monday.

The brunette beauty was spotted checking out the art installations and even chatting it up with other patrons in the space.

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Back home: Alessandra Ambrosio was spotted back in her native Brazil while out and about in Rio de Janeiro on Monday

The statuesque supermodel also made a visit to one of the slums on the hills called 'Pavao-Pavaozinho.'

She reportedly conversed and listened to the stories of a few locals, which got her emotional.

Alessandra showed her support for the organization by donning a white T-shirt that said Team Rio, tucked in her light blue, torn jeans by Mother Denim.

On-the-go: The 35-year old visited a non-profit art gallery

In conversation: Ambrosio seen chatting it up by the art intallations

Artsy: She definitely showed an appreciation for the fine art in the local gallery

The model returned home over the weekend where she attended the Louis Vuitton 2017 cruise collection in Rio.

The fashion show was held at Oscar Niemeyer's Niteroi Contemporary Art Museum on Saturday.

The beauty also spent time with old friends like model and television host Fernanda Motta, posing in the water in her one-piece, cut out bikini and feeling at ease in her hometown.

Out and about: The statuesque supermodel also made a visit to one of the slums on the hills called 'Pavao-Pavaozinho'

Keeping it casual: She wore a white T-Shirt with 'Team Rio' emblazoned on it with ripped jeans

Photo opportunity: She proudly posed for photos

The mother-of-two has been on-the-go recently with appearances in London and France for Cannes Film Festival.

She recently attended the premiere of her latest film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles where she plays Will Arnett's girlfriend.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows is set to premiere June 3, 2016.

So angelic: On the same day she was spotted peering from a balcony at her hotel
She stunned at the recent TV Week Logies in a floral two-piece gown.

But glamorous Channel Ten presenter Natalie Hunter went for a casual look as she attended the fan screening of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows in Melbourne on Sunday.

Channeling her inner turtle in a green-coloured leather jacket, the blonde beauty looked chic as ever as she posed on the red carpet with her husband Jordan Bannister.

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Laid-back chic: Channel Ten presenter Natalie Hunter went for a casual look as she attended the fan screening of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows in Melbourne on Sunday

Natalie completed her ensemble with a white crew-neck blouse, a pair of light denim jeans and a green purse that matched her jacket.

She kept her makeup look fresh and feminine with an application of peach-hued blush, a dramatic winged eyeliner and a slick of dark pink lipstick.

Her makeup was styled in loose waves and was parted neatly on the side.

Trendy! Natalie completed her ensemble with a white crew-neck blouse, a pair of light denim jeans and a green purse that matched her jacket

Jordan was clad in a laid-back ensemble consisting of a blue marl T-shirt layered underneath a check-print shirt with ripped jeans.

Also attending the film's Melbourne screening was star Wil Arnett, who spoke exclusively to Daily Mail Australia about how he prioritises his family above his high-flying career.

'Its good to be busy, Im fortunate to have a lot of opportunities,' he said.

Family first! Also attending the film's Melbourne screening was star Wil Arnett, who spoke exclusively to Daily Mail Australia about how he prioritises his family above his high-flying career

'I'm no different from anybody else in that whatever job you have you start with family and you make sure they come first and everything else is gravy.'

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph about his family last week, the Arrested Development actor said: 'As one gets older I have come to the point where I am happy with who I am and what Im doing.'

'Once I had kids, it really put everything into perspective and everything I do is geared towards that... Im only as happy as my kids are.'
She's been hitting big screens across the country as the waspish Lady Susan Vernon in the acclaimed film Love & Friendship.

But Kate Beckinsale appeared a world away from her character as she attended the Lady Dior party, held at the Audley pub in Mayfair, London on Monday.

The 42-year-old actress looked effortlessly elegant in a dark blue fitted dress teamed with a pair of matching peep toe heels.

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Elegant: Kate Beckinsale looked a world away from her Love & Friendship character as she attended the Lady Dior Party in London on Monday

She accessorised with a black rigid clutch and some understated gold earrings.

While her long brunette tresses were worn in a relaxed wavy style partially pulled back to frame her flawless complexion.

Kate appeared in high spirits and was happy to pose for photographs before she attended the exclusive event.

The star has been busy of late as she has been promoting her most recent film, based on the Jane Austen novel, Lady Susan, directed by Whit Stillman.

Windswept: The 42-year-old actress sported an effortlessly elegant dark blue fitted dress teamed with a pair of matching peep toe heels

Last week the actress revealed her shock at being told to 'work out' if she wanted to win a role in the 2001 Hollywood action movie, Pearl Harbour.

She recounted that the movie's director, Michael Bay, said she may need to shed the pounds if she wanted to bag her breakout role as Lieutenant Evelyn Johnson.

Appearing on Friday night's Graham Norton show, Kate explained: 'I dont think I fitted the type of actress Michael Bay, the director, had met before.

'I think he was baffled by me because my boobs werent bigger than my head and I wasnt blonde.

Refined: She accessorised with a black rigid clutch and some understated gold earrings

Composed: Her long brunette tresses were worn in a relaxed wavy style partially pulled back to frame her flawless complexion

Ready for a drink? Kate looked ready to hit the bar when she got inside the venue - but looked no less glamorous than she did outside the pub

PVC princess: Mad Men actress Kiernan Shipka wore stunning burgundy leather trousers

Blonde beauty: Juno Temple went for a Nineties inspired look with a funky pink top and black ra-ra skirt

Stunning ensemble: Lucie De La Falaise looked incredibly chic in an abstract giraffe print

Fashionistas: Emma Roberts and Russian model Daria Strokous looked sensational at the glitzy bash

All black everything: Lady Kitty Spencer and Sai Bennett look dazzling in all black looks

'Id just had my daughter and had lost weight but was told that if I got the part Id have to work out and I just didnt understand why a 1940s nurse would do that.

'And then, when we were promoting the film, Michael was asked why he had chosen Ben (Affleck) and Josh (Hartnett) he said, "I have worked with Ben before and I love him and Josh is so manly and a wonderful actor".

'And then when he was asked about me, hed say, "Kate wasnt so attractive that she would alienate the female audience".

A stand-out performance: Kate Mara and Kiernan Shipka both stunned in their stylishly simply ensembles, with Kate opting for white and Kiernan choosing a red and black combo

Channeling Alice? Luther star Ruth Wilson went for a dark look, possibly channeling her anti-hero character Alice, in a sparkling blazer

Cheers: (L-R) Lady Kitty Spencer, Sai Bennett and Lucie de la Falaise were all toasting the fashion house

Another fashion contrast: While Kate went for high-necked black number, Haley Bennett opted for a pure white plunging dress

'He kept saying it everywhere we went and we went to a lot of places.'

The film, which documented the Japanese Navy's military strike against the US in 1941, was Kate's first major role and saw her play Nurse Lt. Evelyn Johnson.

It was only her second part in a major Hollywood film - after 1999's Brokedown Palace, which saw her and Claire Danes co-star as teenagers jailed in Thailand on drug-smuggling charges.

Not quite a Horror Story: Emma Roberts looked immaculate and serene as usual, rocking a biker chick chic look

Screen siren: Sipping on a drink, the actress looked oozed an effortless glamour

Alabaster beauties: Elena Perminova and Daria Strokous were also in attendance, both rocking sensational looks
As clouds begin to cast their shadows over the city of Sydney more frequently and the temperature drops, it's clear summer is well and truly over.

And PR maven Roxy Jacenko certainly appeared to be feeling the chill on Tuesday as she headed for the New South Wales Supreme Court.

The 34-year-old wife of businessman Oliver Curtis clutched a takeaway coffee cup tightly as she walked briskly into the building where her husband's insider trading trial continued.

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Feeling the chill: Roxy Jacenko clutches a coffee cup tightly while heading into the Supreme Court in Sydney on Tuesday (pictured with her mother Doreen)

Standing by her husband during his trial into a claim of insider dealing, the mother-of-two was once again spotted looking stylish in Miu Miu.

Keeping to her preference for black while supporting her husband, Roxy was the epitome of chic in the thigh-skimming dress decorated with a bow around the hips.

She wore a chain bag and two toned patent Gianvito Rossi heels that fasten around the ankle as she made her way into the courthouse clutching Oliver's hand tightly.

Meanwhile, Oliver kept to this theme of navy blue and looked sharp in a fitted suit and maroon tie.

Deja vu: The 34-year-old PR queen donned the exact same ensemble and heels to court two Mondays ago

Fashion show: Roxy feels comfortable in Miu Miu, it seems, since she wore the same designer threads and shoes two Mondays ago to attend court

Although Oliver is at the centre of the hearing, it is more Roxy's glamorous looks that have attracted photographers' attention.

The sophisticated blonde has paraded a range of designer outfits ranging from Louis Vuitton to Mary Katrantzou and Christian Dior dress over the past two week as the trial rolls on.

But it seems the LBD from Miu Miu is the number Roxy feels most comfortable in since she wore it two Mondays ago to attend court paired with the exact same shoes worth $1,000 AUD.

Standing by her husband: Oliver was dapper in navy blue and prosecutors allege he conspired with his former best friend to commit an insider trading offence between 1 May 2007 and 30 June 2008

Holding court: Although Oliver is at the centre of the hearing, it is more Roxy's glamorous looks that have attracted photographers' attention

The long sleeve garment features a conservative high neck and a leather belt around the hips before flaring out mid thigh.

Prosecutors allege Roxy's husband Oliver conspired with his former best friend to commit an insider trading offence between 1 May 2007 and 30 June 2008.

The alleged offence netted the pair a reported $1.433 million, prosecutors told the Supreme Court on Wednesday a week before the last.

Just prior to jury selection, the 30-year-old pleaded not guilty to the charge telling Justice Lucy McCallum and potential jurors: 'Not guilty, your honour.'
Charlie Hunnam almost played Christian Grey in the worldwide phenomenon 50 Shades Of Grey.

And it's no wonder as the handsome 36-year-old showed off his muscular physique while enjoying a stroll in LA with his longtime girlfriend.

The Sons of Anarchy star was spotted running errands in West Hollywood along with his family and girlfriend Morgana McNelis.

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Looking dapper: Charlie Hunnam showed off his muscular physique while enjoying a stroll in LA with his longtime girlfriend

The group enjoyed their morning eating breakfast before indulging in a little shopping trip.

It looked as though Charlie had purchased a carpet from one of the stores as he had an employee load it up into his trunk before leaving.

The Newcastle-born actor wore a pair of denim jeans and a grey sweater as he strolled around the city.

Feeling peckish? The group enjoyed their morning eating breakfast before indulging in a shopping trip

He teamed his outfit with a stylish grey newsboy hat and a pair of black and white trainers.

Meanwhile Charlie has been busy with several acting projects recently.

His film Knights of the Roundtable: King Arthur is currently in post-production.

In a hurry? The Newcastle-born actor wore a pair of denim jeans and a grey sweater as he strolled around the city

The feature film - directed by Guy RIchie - will be a version of the classic Sir Lancelot story.

He has a film coming out later this year titled The Lost City of Z.

The James Gray directed film is set in 1925, where the legendary British explorer Percy Fawcett ventured into the Amazon jungle in search of a fabled civilization and never returned.

The stellar cast includes Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson and Sienna Miller.

In demand actor: Meanwhile Charlie has been busy with several acting projects recently. His film Knights of the Roundtable: King Arthur is currently in post-production

Earlier this month Charlie was forced to defend his relationship with his longtime girlfriend after some fans took to social media to berate her.

He said: 'It has been brought to my attention that there is a group of immature girls posting a large number of hard messages aimed at my long time girlfriend,' he wrote. 'I would respectfully ask you to stop doing this.'

In a strongly worded letter he had a friend post online on his behalf, he said: 'If you want to talk s***, talk s*** about me. Leave her out of it.'
Kiss Bang Love is based on the idea that a single kiss can be lead hopeful singles on the path to lasting romance.

But it would seem that Tuesday night's 'winner' Shana Mooyman, 26, has in fact been on television before, having featured in the ABC documentary series Flying Miners in 2014.

Two years before winning the heart of tradie Geordie on Seven's dating show, the model spoke about her job in the mining industry - and revealed she was 'planning a family' with an ex-partner.

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She's got previous: It would seem that Tuesday night's 'winner' Shana Mooyman, 26, has in fact been on television before, having featured in the ABC documentary series Flying Miners in 2014

As stated in her Twitter bio, where she goes under the name 'Shana Louise', the 26-year-old beauty appeared in the factual show about Australia's Fly In Fly Out (FIFO) mining sector.

In a press kit from two years ago, it was claimed Shana was 'in the process of buying her third house' with then-boyfriend Mark, also a FIFO.

It was also stated that 'the couple (was) planning to have a family' but she admitted the time spent working away from partners, families and friends was a 'real drawback'.

'I'd like to see where this goes': Geordie had no idea he was sharing a kiss with best friend Bronwen during the blindfold test - and later said 'That's hands down probably the best'

Past life: Two years before winning the heart of tradie Geordie, Shana spoke about her past job in the mining industry in ABC documentary Flying Miners - and revealed she was 'planning a family' with an ex-partner

It is unclear when Shana and Mark's relationship ended, but on Kiss Bang Love it was claimed she no longer works in the mining industry.

Meanwhile, she was picked by carpenter Geordie, 27, to join him for a romantic holiday to Noosa, Queensland on Tuesday after sparks flew during their blindfolded kiss 'test'.

She gushed: 'That was exciting! I feel, like, the adrenaline of being blindfolded mixed with not knowing what you're doing or who you're kissing... It's next level!

TV career: As stated in her Twitter bio, where she goes under the name 'Shana Louise', the 26-year-old beauty appeared in the documentary about Australia's Fly In Fly Out (FIFO) mining sector

'There was a lot of tongue which was good because I like the tongue. (There) may have been a little bit of a nibble.'

Geordie's decision to begin a relationship with Shana was an unexpected twist, as much of the episode was devoted to his growing romance with Bronwen, 25.

Bronwen and Geordie had been close pals since high school but she recently developed feelings for him and was invited to take part in the show by a mutual friend.

She said: 'I've never really thought about Geordie that way all through high school but as time's gone on I can can see myself interested in him. He's definitely my type.'

She was left devastated by Geordie's decision and confessed: 'Rejection's not easy to handle. If you're getting rejected by someone you don't know it doesn't hurt as much.

'But when it's someone you've known for a while it can sting,' she concluded.

Kiss Bang Love airs Tuesday nights at 8.40pm on Channel Seven

Geordie chose to go on holiday with Shana after they enjoyed a 24-hour date in rural Victoria together

Quite the difference: Shana's sultry appearance on Kiss Bang Love contrasted wildly to her days as a miner
She's made a living flaunting her famous curves on the runway and in campaigns for Victoria's Secret, Bonds and Seafolly.

So Shanina Shaik was doing what she does best when she flaunted her partially submerged figure in a revealing selfie on Tuesday.

The 25-year-old model showed off her pert posterior in a black G-string bikini bottoms while enjoying a dip in an endless pool overlooking Miami Beach.

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That's cheeky! Victoria's Secret model Shanina Shaik shows off her pert posterior in a G-string bikini as she poses in a pool overlooking Miami Beach

Leaning up against the pool's edge, Shanina proudly flashed her incredible beach-honed figure while her dark wet tresses fell over her shoulders.

She captioned the cheeky picture: End of day.

Shanina, whose mother is of Lithuanian descent while her father boasts Pakistani and Saudi Arabian heritage, also added the hashtag memorial weekend to the daring post.

Unsurprisingly, the shot was liked more than 5,000 times and generated plenty of positive feedback.

Time to relax: The model has been enjoying some down time in the sun and sand with her fiance DJ Ruckus, real name Gregory Andrews, after strutting her stuff at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia, in Sydney

One fan wrote: Stunning.

Another added: Booooooooty.

The model has been enjoying some down time in the sun and sand with her fiance DJ Ruckus, real name Gregory Andrews, after strutting her stuff at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia in Sydney recently.

It appears the duo, who got engaged in January during a romantic trip to the Bahamas, attended a friend's wedding while in the holiday hot spot.

Flaunting her figure in a tangerine gown, Shanina cuddled up to the dapper looking DJ Ruckus.

She wrote alongside the picture: 'Guests of Amanda + Robert Sorrentino.'

Genetically blessed couple: It appears Shanina and her fiance have been in Miami enjoying a friend's wedding

Controversey: A week earlier, Shanina found herself in a bit of controversy after DJ Ruckus and her ex-boyfriend Tyson Beckford reportedly got into a fight in front of the Up & Down nightclub in Manhattan

A week earlier, Shanina made headlines after DJ Ruckus and her ex-boyfriend Tyson Beckford reportedly got into a fight in front of the Up & Down nightclub in Manhattan.

According to TMZ, the musician flipped off Tyson and the rivals then took their argument out into the street.

The website reported that the fight was violent and bloody, with Tyson on top of Ruckus beating him up as one of the DJ's friends began punching Tyson in the head.

A doorman called the cops, but when they arrived the men were gone and no arrests were made.

Shanina dated Tyson, a former Ralph Lauren model, on-and-off over a six-year period before calling it quits last year.
She tied the knot with her husband Dane Rumble during a romantic ceremony in 2014.

Now two years on, model Nikki Phillips and her hubby are celebrating their wedding anniversary in style.

The pair jetted off to the popular holiday destination of Bali last week, and have since been sharing endless picture perfect images across their social media accounts.

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Life's a beach: Model Nikki Phillips jetted off to popular holiday destination Bali last week to celebrate her wedding anniversary with husband Dane Rumble and has been sharing endless bikini snaps of herself

In one snap Nikki dared to go topless, whipping her bikini top off as she posed in a pair of tiny Daisy Dukes.

She captioned the cheeky post: 'Monday  the only time this day isn't hated is when on holiday!! #bali #balibest #holiday #beach #cheeky #holidaymood #bali.'

Moments before sharing the revealing image, Nikki kicked back in a royal blue strapless bikini with a cocktail.

Racy: In one snap Nikki dared to go topless, whipping her bikini top off as she posed in a pair of tiny Daisy Dukes

Cocktail hour: Moments before sharing the revealing image, Nikki kicked back in a royal blue strapless bikini with a cocktail

The big blue: She posed in a sporty strapless bikini with black trim

Think pink: She also modelled a similar suit in pink and light blue

With the beverage firmly in hand, Nikki beamed for the camera as she let her sea-salt locks fall naturally in front of her face.

'Every hour is cocktail hour when you're on holiday #theungasan #sundaysbeachclub #holiday @seafollyaustralia,' she wrote in an accompanying caption.

While her social media has been flooded with bikini-clad images of herself, Nikki did manage to find a spot for a happy snap of her and her hubby - the only one since they touched down in Bali.

The photo captured the loved-up duo walking hand-in-hand up a steep sand embankment along the backdrop of the crystal blue sea.

Relaxing: Earlier in the week, she was pictured kicking back on a large inflatable swam

There he is! While her social media has been flooded with bikini-clad images of herself, Nikki managed to find a spot for a happy snap of her and her hubby - the only one since they touched down in Bali

'Happiness is being with you and not having to set an alarm for the next day!' she wrote alongside it.

During her trip, Nikki also shared a photo of the couple's hotel room and their double bed, which had been festooned with rose petals in the shape of the words 'happy 2nd anniversary'.

She also made sure to share a tribute to her man by posting a photo taken during their beachside nuptials.

'Two years today! 730 days of constant smiles, contentment and pure happiness. Out of all the love stories, ours is by far my favourite. Love you to the moon and back,' she gushed.

Celebrating: The pair are currently celebrating their second wedding anniversary

'Afternoon delights': Nikki has also been indulging during her holiday, enjoying an ice-cream on one occasion as she took in the views
It has a release date that is not so far, far away.

But Disney bosses are apparently so alarmed at how bad the new Star Wars spin-off movie Rogue One is that they have ordered four weeks of expensive reshoots in a bid to salvage the project.

After the money-making bonanza that was The Force Awakens, they are reportedly shocked at the poor quality of the new film, which takes place shortly before the original Star Wars and features delicate English starlet Felicity Jones as a tough-talking maverick pilot.

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So much for her summer holidays: Rogue One star Felicity Jones will doubtlessly be required on-set after it emerged Disney had ordered four weeks of reshoots

A source told Page Six: 'The execs at Disney are not happy with the movie, and Rogue One will have to go back into four weeks of expensive reshoots in July.

And it seems up-and-coming director Gareth Edwards, best known for 2014's Godzilla, is the person being fingered for the blame.

According to the insider, 'Gareths work on the first Godzilla shows he can handle a big studio blockbuster.

'But Rogue One has fallen short of what JJ Abrams did with Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens. So Disney has ordered reshoots.'

'Disney wont take a back seat, and is demanding changes, as the movie isnt testing well.'

See Star Wars Rogue One updates as 'Disney chiefs ordered four weeks of reshoots'

Disturbance in the force: Despite the ostensibly exciting story of the Rebel Alliance seizing the plans of the Death Star audiences are said to be far from impressed

Girl power: Felicity's character Jyn Erso is going to show the male Rebel pilots how it should be done

Given how JJ's effort is hardly a work of cinematic high art, and more of a high octane remix of the first Star Wars than anything remotely original, the fact the new film has failed to reach the same standard is surely alarming for fans of the beloved franchise.

The plot reportedly sees resistance fighters embark on a daring mission to steal the plans for the Death Star before it can be used to enforce the Emperors cruel rule.

The new film will see the fledgling Rebel Alliance working to steal the plans for the Death Star before the weapon of mass destruction can be used by the Galactic Empire to enforce the Emperor's rule.

Even Jar Jar Binks could have done better: Director Gareth Edwards supposedly turned in a disappointing cut

Run Forest: Unfortunately for Oscar-winner Whitaker he has been hired to add gravitas to the popcorn flick

Felicity, 32, who is best known for turns in costume dramas such as Brideshead Revisited and appearing alongside Russel Brand in Shakespearean adaptation The Tempest, was a surprise choice to star as the lead in the space opera.

She managed to beat off the likes of Tatiana Maslany and both Rooney and Kate Mara for the coveted role.

Other big names appearing in the movie, which is scheduled for a December 16 release, include Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker, Hannibal star Mads Mikkelsen and Diego Luna.
Spider-Man may have joined The Avengers in the Marvel cinematic universe.

But the man who plays Iron Man is already chummy with the web-slinging youngster.

Robert Downey Jr attended producer Joel Silver's annual Memorial Day party at his home in Malibu on Monday as he brought along his youngest son Extron dressed in a superhero getup.

Doting dad: Robert Downey J. attended producer Joel Silver's Annual Memorial Day party at his home in Malibu on Monday

The 51-year-old actor dressed casually in a graphic T-shirt, maroon sweats and a checkered button up while his four-year-old son donned a Spider-Man rashguard, shorts and swimcap.

Robert has played Iron Man - who is also known as Tony Stark - in six films, including Iron Man 1, 2 and 3, as well as in The Avengers and its sequel, and in Captain America: Civil War.

The movie star will soon be stepping back into the Iron Man costume for Spider-Man: Homecoming, which is currently in pre-production with a release date of July 7, 2017.

For the beach party, the movie star sported a graphic T-shirt with a red and white patterned collared shirt.

The father of three wore sweat bottoms with red sneakers, topping it off with a grey newsboy cap and brown tinted sunglasses.

Keeping a close eye: The 51-year-old dressed casually in a graphic T-shirt, maroon sweats and a checkered button up while his four--year-old son Exton donned a Spider-Man T-shirt

Keeping it casual: For the beach party, the Iron Man actor sported a graphic T-shirt with red and white patterned collared shirt

Robert, who sported a scruffy face, wore a silver bangle as well as his wedding band.

His youngest son appeared to be having a great time while his dad kept a close eye; Exton paired the Spider-Man top with a red cap and matching hued bottoms.

After spending time playing on the beach together, the doting dad carried his exhausted son in his arms and headed home.

Having a blast: The dad of three wore sweat bottoms with red sneakers, topping it off with a grey newsboy cap and brown tinted sunglasses

Ready for a nap: After spending time playing on the beach together, the doting dad carried his exhausted son in his arms as they headed home

On Monday afternoon, Robert shared a photo of an American flag to his 8.8 million Instagram followers, captioning the snap: 'Happy Memorial Day, everyone!'

Adding: 'Take some time to eat good food, laugh with your family, and remember those who sacrificed their lives for you to be able to do those things.'

The Sherlock Holmes star has two children, Exton and one-year-old daughter Avri with his wife Susan.

He is also father to 22-year-old son Indio with his ex-wife Deborah Falconer.

Thankful: On Monday afternoon, Robert shared a photo of an American flag to his 8.8 million Instagram followers, captioning the snap: 'Happy Memorial Day, everyone'
PR boss Roxy Jacenko's glamorous fashion throughout her husband Oliver Curtis' insider trading trial has been at the centre of attention with photographers.

But it was the 34-year-old's mother Doreen who gave the businesswoman a run for her money in the style stakes as they stepped outside the Supreme Court of New South Wales, during tea break on Tuesday.

Roxy wore a long-sleeved Miu Miu dress with two-toned Gianvito Rossi heels, while Doreen sported a military style Balmain jacket, which retails for a staggering $3,333.

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Like mother, like daughter: Roxy Jacenko and her mother Doreen were spotted outside the Supreme Court of New South Wales in high-end designer outfits on Tuesday

Doreen's Hermes Birkin handbag is worth around $12,000, while her equally stylish daughter's Chanel bag retails for around $7,500.

Roxy's chic outfit was completed with a pair of aviator sunglasses.

Meanwhile, Doreen accessorised with a pair of ultra-modern Dior sunglasses, worth around $600.

Stylish: Roxy wore a black Miu Miu dress with a Chanel bag, while her mother sported a $3,333 Balmain jacket and an Hermes Birkin bag worth around $12,000

While accompanying her husband over the past few weeks, Roxy has sported an array of stylish ensembles.

On Tuesday last week, she showed off her sartorial style in a bright floral printed mini-dress from Mary Katrantzou, which retails for a whopping $2,835.

The petite PR boss, who runs her own lucrative Sydney-based company Sweaty Betty PR, paired the feminine frock with a pair of $1,800 Azzedine Alaia stilettos, an item favoured by the likes of Kim Kardashian.

Showing her support: Roxy has been standing by her husband during his trial into a claim of insider dealing

Standing by her man: Roxy was spotted arriving at the court with her husband Oliver Curtis earlier in the day

Meanwhile on Monday last week, she stepped out in a black dotted Christian Dior dress.

Prosecutors allege Roxy's husband Oliver conspired with his former best friend to commit an insider trading offence between 1 May 2007 and 30 June 2008.

The alleged offence netted the pair a reported $1.433 million, prosecutors told the Supreme Court on Wednesday a week before the last.

Just prior to jury selection, the 30-year-old pleaded not guilty to the charge telling Justice Lucy McCallum and potential jurors: 'Not guilty, your honour.'
She's one half of the most controversial couple on Channel Seven's series Seven Year Switch.

But before she shot to reality television fame, Tallena was an aspiring model whose portfolio included racy swimsuit pictures.

Sporting a yellow bikini top and skimpy animal-print bottoms, the 28-year-old is seen flaunting her curves for the beachside shoot.

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Professional poser: Years before she found fame from Seven Year Switch, Tallena was an aspiring model whose portfolio included racy bikini pictures like this one

Sprawled across the sand, Tallena, who is now a flight attendant, works the camera angles as she shows off her toned stomach.

Another shot shows the reality star playfully pull at her platinum blonde tresses as she poses in the skimpy bikini.

Tallena tied the knot with Brad after they appeared on the experimental television show that saw four couples switch partners in a desperate attempt to save their relationships.

Beach bunny: The flight attendant looked right at home in front of the camera as she flaunted her toned stomach and cleavage in the bikini shoot

They were originally scheduled to marry in February but Tallena admitted they had to postpone their special day due to a lack of funds.

Early in the series she admitted that the couple hadn't been intimate for 11 months, stating: 'It is more of a friendship at the moment.'

On the controversial show, Brad's selfish and controlling tendencies came to light after it was revealed the 28-year-old takes his fiancee's engagement ring off her every time they fight.

Controlling: On the controversial show, Brad's selfish and controlling tendencies came to light after it was revealed he takes his fiancee's engagement ring off her every time they fight

He also admitted to refusing to spend more than $1,000 on the couple's wedding ceremony, despite purchasing a second TV set for himself worth $3,000 and also owning a luxury car and flash jet ski.

According to Woman's Day magazine, the pair, who have been dating since 2014 after meeting on Tinder, wed in Queensland last week while surrounded by 70 family and friends.

The couple confirmed they had said their 'I dos' on Wednesday after sharing an image from their big day on social media.

Official: The pair confirmed they had tied the knot on Wednesday after sharing an image from their big day just days after the Seven Year Switch finale - the experiment that saved their relationship

The delay: Brad and Tallena were originally meant to get married in February, however Tallena admitted that they had to postphone their special day due to a lack of funds

The image showed the pair dressed in their wedding attire.

Tallena looked flawless in a strapless white gown, which hugged tightly around her torso before flaring into an A-line shape.

Brad sported a black tuxedo which he matched with a white button-up shirt and a black bow-tie.

'The best day of our lives! My best friend, my rock, my happiness  #sevenyearswitch #wedding #love #bestfriends #strength #picoftheday #loveyou #happiness #beautifulday,' the image was captioned.
They're said to have 'undeniable chemistry' as they act opposite each other in The Wrong Girl.

And Jessica Marais and her co-star Ian Meadows appeared to share an intimate moment while on the set in Melbourne on Tuesday.

The Rush actor placed his arm on the small of her back in-between takes, after which the 31-year-old Marais was seen puffing on an unhealthy cigarette.

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On set: Jessica Marais was seen puffing on am unhealthy cigarette while on the set of The Wrong Girl in Melbourne on Tuesday

It is unclear whether her character on the upcoming Ten series is a smoker.

To keep warm against the winter chill, the Logie-winning actress wore a camel-coloured down coat complete with fur-lined hood, with blue jeans cuffed to reveal bleach white sneakers.

Marais said she's loving life in her new role, and she spoke to OK! magazine about her new-found happiness earlier this month.

Comforting: She and her co-star Ian Meadows appeared to share an intimate moment as he placed his hand on her back

Chemistry: An unidentified source reportedly told Woman's Day earlier this month the pair have 'undeniable chemistry'

'I love going to work every day,' she said.

'It's a completely different thing to Love Child and I'm just having a blast working with such a great cast and crew.'

Not only is work going well for the former Packed To The Rafters star, but she is said to have 'undeniable chemistry' with her co-star Meadows.

An unidentified source reportedly told Woman's Day earlier this month: 'Theres a definite spring in Jesss step. Who knows if anything will come of it, but its so nice to see her smiling again.'

'I love going to work every day': The actress said she is loving her new role

The actress has had a year of ups and downs, having won the Silver Logie Award for Best Actress in Love Child.

On the flip side, she announced that she and her fiance James Stewart were calling it quits on their relationship last year.

They share one daughter, Scout, who turned four on May 9.
Charlotte Crosby has revealed she recently suffered an ectopic pregnancy, after falling pregnant with ex-boyfriend Gary Beadle's child.

The Geordie Shore star opened up in an emotional interview with Heat magazine - which has now been revealed in a video - confessing that the devastating incident happened last month while he was away filming Ex On The Beach, and that she was rushed to hospital for an operation.

The 25-year-old reality TV star, who had been filming Geordie Shore: Big Birthday Battle at the time, said she wasn't even aware she was pregnant at first, and that she though the pain was down to a heavy period.

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Shock: Charlotte Crosby has revealed she recently suffered an ectopic pregnancy, after falling pregnant with ex-boyfriend Gary Beadle's child in an emotional interview with Heat magazine

'I thought I had a really bad period because I was bleeding and cramping - I can't describe the pain, it was awful,' Charlotte explained, adding that it felt like she was 'being stabbed in the side'.

She also explained that things were also going really well between herself and Gaz, despite the on-off nature of their tempestuous relatoinship.

'We'd had a couple of fall-outs, but we were the closest we'd ever been,' she claimed, as she revealed he was due to jet off to Thailand to film the MTV programme after the pain began, which came with - she said - bleeding that was not at all like a normal period.

See more Geordie Shore cast news as Charlotte Crosby reveals she was rushed to hospital

Emotional: Charlotte couldn't hold back the tears as she spoke of her horrific ordeal

Speaking out: 'I thought I had a really bad period because I was bleeding and cramping - I can't describe the pain, it was awful,' Charlotte explained, adding that it felt like she was 'being stabbed in the side'

Emergency: She couldn't stop the flow of her tears as she revealed the doctors made her go for emergency surgery after coping with the pain for a week

Charlotte then divulged that she had actually come off her contraceptive pill - not by choice, but because she hadn't had the time to renew the prescription - and took a morning after pill, but too late.

It was when she arrived at the St John and Elizabeth Hospital in London, after being rushed to their A&E department that she found out she was pregnant, and doctors told her she was lucky to be alive.

'I didn't know what the hell was going on and I was in so much pain,' she explained. 'Then the X-ray showed how much damage had been caused. Because I'd left it a week, it'd torn open my fallopian tube and I was bleeding internally. He said: 'If you'd have left it any longer, you could have died.''

Things are going well: Charlotte and Gary have had a famously tempestuous romance, but things have been looking up for them lately - however, he was away in Thailand filming Ex On The Beach as she was rushed to hospital

In love: The Geordie Shore co-stars had been working on their romance of late, but they are currently not together due to his alleged infidelities

Charlotte - who was described as being in floods of tears during the emotional interview - had to be rushed for an emergency operation after testing positive for pregnancy, adding that she 'collapsed' after being put into a wheelchair to be taken to theatre.

An ectopic pregnancy is when a fertilised egg implants itself outside of the womb, usually in the fallopian tube, meaning a baby is unable to develop and leaving the mother's health in danger.

While there is a chance of conception again, it is advisable for the woman to wait a while due to damage caused in the fallopian tube.

Charlotte also confessed that she is now in fear that she won't be able to have children following the distressing ordeal.

In hospital: Last month, Charlotte shared a series of snaps from her hospital bed while suffering from a mystery illness - at the time, she did not reveal the reason for being in there

Gift: Another of Charlotte's social media snaps from her hospital stay in April saw her cradling a bouquet of flowers

Back in April, Charlotte shared a series of pictures from her hospital bed after being signed off work with a mystery illness.

She was forced to take time off work - including filming for Geordie Shore and also a book signing for her weight loss tome Live Fast Lose Weight - due to being unwell.

At the time, a statement released by her representative read: 'Due to ill health Charlotte Crosby has been signed off from work by her Doctor.

'Therefore all events have been postponed. We will reschedule as soon as possible. We apologise for any inconvenience caused'.

Recovery: A statement released in April by Charlotte's rep confirmed she had been signed off work

Prior to the announcement, Charlotte had hinted she was feeling poorly over social media with array of telling posts.

On Sunday morning Charlotte tweeted: 'You really couldn't write this past week I've had........ Wow'.

Meanwhile on the previous day, she wrote alongside an emoji of a hospital: 'In need of some good news today.'

The former Celebrity Big Brother star appeared in good spirits while in hospital, though, as she kept her fans up to date with her recovery.

And on Tuesday, as her revelation about the ectopic pregnancy came to light, Charlotte posted an uplifting quote on her Instagram page.

The message read: 'She refused to let it break her. She faced tragedy, she felt pain and it only made her stronger.'

Charlotte and Gary are currently not seeing each other, amid claims that she had 'banned' him from attending the Geordie Shore anniversary party last week following his alleged infidelities.

Motivational: As the news broke about her ectopic pregnancy, Charlotte shared a motivational message on her Instagram page

Charlotte has since blasted him on Twitter in the wake of the revelation, as fans have rallied around her, many in shock at him 'abandoning' her through her ordeal.

She retweeted a post made by one user on the social networking site, which read: '@karenirvine77 @Charlottegshore @GazGShore I really don't understand anything... I thought he cared about her.'

The reality TV star added, blasting her ex: 'He fooled us all.....Sadly what I have realised is that has only ever been for the cameras.'

While Gaz has not yet responded to the news on Twitter, he posted hours before it broke, sharing a cryptic message that read: 'Wow at what I just heard.... No more sitting back... No more being quiet... Going to be an interesting week...'

And fans were quick to respond to this post, many attacking him for his actions following the ectopic pregnancy.

One wrote: '@dancinqueen199 he knew about it and still s***ging girls poor Charlotte gaz is gonna say something on this blame Charlotte probs x.'

Another added: '@karenirvine77 @dancinqueen199 always makes up lame excuses!! Can't wait to see what he pulls out of his a** now!'

Read the full interview with Charlotte in heat magazine, on sale now.

Hitting back: On Tuesday, Charlotte hit back at Gaz after fans accused him of abandoning her

Standing up for Charlotte: The star's fans responded to a tweet made by Gaz on Monday night, in in support of Charlotte
She broke up with her long term beau, Evan Peters, just a few weeks ago.

And Emma Roberts certainly showed him what he was missing as she attended the Lady Dior party in London on Monday.

The 25-year-old cut a chic figure for the event as she teamed her pretty white dress with a leather biker jacket that gave her a seriously rock and roll edge.

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Glamorous! Emma Roberts, 25, cut a chic figure for the event as she teamed her pretty white dress with a leather biker jacket that gave her a seriously rock and roll edge

Emma looked lady-like in the ethereal gown, which fell in neat pleats around her calves in elegant waves of chiffon.

But the actress couldn't resist showing off her darker side as she rounded off her look with a cropped black jacket that featured intricate zip detailing and embellished shoulder pads.

She continued to coordinate her considered look in the footwear department as she slipped on a pair of patent black heels that laced elegantly up her leg with a fetching bow.

Elegant: Emma looked lady-like in the ethereal gown, which fell in neat pleats around her calves in elegant waves of chiffon

But despite her monochrome theme, Emma made sure to add a pop of colour to her ensemble as she toted a vibrant scarlet clutch bag and exhibited her freshly-dyed, flame coloured hair.

Emma combed her newly auburn hair in to a sophisticated centre parting that framed her flawless features, and styled her locks in loose Hollywood waves that cascaded down over her shoulders.

She also maintained her high-glamour status with perfectly contoured skin that showed off her impossibly high cheekbones and a slick of dusky pink lipstick.

Moving on: Emma later took to Instagram as she posed in a new outfit at London Victoria, alongside the caption: 'All aboard @dior #DiorCruise'

Refined: Other guests at the event included Kate Beckinsale, who looked effortlessly elegant in a dark blue fitted dress teamed with a pair of matching peep toe heels

Other guests at the event included Kate Beckinsale, who looked effortlessly elegant in a dark blue fitted dress teamed with a pair of matching peep toe heels.

The actress had already been in the captial promoting her new film, Love & Friendship, where she plays the waspish Lady Susan Vernon.

Mad Men actress, Kiernan Shipka, also made an appearance and stood out from the crowd in a pair of burgundy leather trousers.

Dior hosted their party at the Audley pub in Mayfair to mark the opening of their 2017 resort collection at Blenheim Palace.

The show, which is due to take place on Tuesday, will be the third time that the designers will have used the stately home to showcase their work.
His rough but loyal manner, un-PC ways and propensity for a good old hiding made his DCI Gene Hunt the stand-out character in Life On Mars alongside the man out of time, Sam Tyler.

And it seems that Philip Glenister, the man behind the Manchester hardman, is keen to see the duo back on the beat in a Hollywood spin-off of the award-winning drama.

Speaking about the possibility of bringing back his beloved character with a Hollywood outing, the actor, 53, revealed that he'd been 'talking' to co-star John Simm (Sam) and they both be 'up for it'.

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Hunt for Hollywood? It seems that Philip Glenister, the man behind Life On Mars' iconic Gene Hunt is keen to see the character back on the beat in a Hollywood spin-off of the award-winning drama

Speaking about the possibility of resurrecting the comical yet endearing partnership between himself and John's character, Philip revealed both of the actors had been talking about making a movie.

When quizzed about the prospect of a return of Life On Mars by The Radio Times, he exclaimed:'Oh, yeah. I'd do it. Yeah, you bet.'

And the London-born star revealed that it's something he and John have already been talking about, explaining: 'John and I were talking about it a while ago, and I think he'd be up for it.

'Maybe to do a Life On Mars movie in some form, if we could find an angle - I think we'd be up for that, for sure.'

Back on the beat: Speaking about a possible Hollywood outing for his character, the actor, 53, revealed that he'd been 'talking' to co-star John Simm (Sam Tyler) and they both be 'up for it'

Philip became a household favourite during his stint as the irascible and self-styled sheriff of Manchester, Gene Hunt.

Appearing in all 16 episodes of Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah's '70s themed cop drama, the character also went on to appear in sequel, Ashes To Ashes.

In Life On Mars DCI Sam Tyler finds himself sent back in time from the modern day to 1973 (a time he remembers from childhood) where he finds himself working on the beat as Gene's number two.

'John and I were talking about it a while ago, and I think he'd be up for it': Quizzed about the prospect of a return of Life On Mars, he explained it was something both actors would be very interested in doing

Blast from the past: In Life On Mars DCI Sam Tyler finds himself sent back in time from the modern day to 1973 (a time he remembers from childhood) where he finds himself working on the beat as Gene's number two

Struggling to come to terms with what has happened to him - possibly a coma, time travel or purgatory - Sam finds himself working both with and against Hunt and his team.

A similar accident sees Keeley Hawes as Alex Drake (nicknamed Bolly) sent back to the 1980s where the team are still together (mostly) underneath Gene in London.

Ashes To Ashes enjoyed similar critical success to Life On Mars, and saw Philip utter the immortal line 'Fire up the Quattro', when referring to the iconic red Audi Quattro the team used.

Sadly the Quattro might not make an appearance in any Sam and Gene big screen capers, as the car was a product of the '80s and the duo were always seen tearing around Manchester in a Ford Cortina.
She is currently in Florida celebrating Memorial weekend - but it seems for Shanina Shaik there is no rest for the wicked, even when on holidays.

The 25-year-old Victoria's Secret model showed off her svelte shape in workout clothes as she squeezed in a gym session with her fiance DJ Ruckus in Miami on Tuesday afternoon.

Not skipping a beat as she kept up with her fitness grind, the Australian beauty showed off her slender figure as she made her way to Anatomy Gym in South Beach.

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Keeping up appearances! Shanina Shaik showed off her svelte shape in workout clothes as she squeezed in a gym session with her fiance DJ Ruckus in Miami on Tuesday afternoon

Proving she clearly works hard to maintain her fit model physique, the Melbourne-born model opted for black leggings and a loose purple singlet which she paired with a matching crop top

Slinging a leather bag over one shoulder, the runway regular finished her sporty look with some black sneakers as she blasted music from her earphones.

Shanina appeared to forgo makeup as she pulled her long raven locks off her face into a high ponytail to expose her natural flawless complexion.

The striking beauty who is of Lithuanian, Pakistani and Saudi Arabian heritage, kept her eyes hidden beneath a pair of rounded sunglasses as she made her way from her car into the venue.

No rest for the wicked! The Melbourne-born model opted for black leggings and a loose purple singlet which she paired with a matching crop top for the casual outing

Earlier in the day, Shanina showed off her enviable figure in a revealing selfie, as she posed in the pool overlooking Miami Beach in a cheeky black G-string.

Leaning up against the pool's edge, the slender beauty proudly flashed her pert posterior while her dark wet tresses fell over her shoulders.

She captioned the cheeky picture: End of day.

The model has been enjoying some down time in the sun and sand in Miami with her fiance DJ Ruckus, real name Gregory Andrews, after strutting her stuff at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia in Sydney recently.

That's cheeky! Earlier in the day, the Australian beauty showed off her pert posterior in a G-string bikini as she posed in a pool overlooking Miami Beach

Time to relax: The model has been enjoying some down time in the sun and sand after strutting her stuff at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia, in Sydney earlier this month

The duo, who got engaged in January during a romantic trip to the Bahamas, attended a friend's wedding while in the holiday hot spot.

Flaunting her figure in a tangerine gown, Shanina cuddled up to the dapper looking DJ Ruckus.

A week earlier, DJ Ruckus reportedly got into a late night fight over Shanina, with her former partner Tyson Beckford, outside the Up & Down nightclub in Manhattan, New York, according to TMZ.

Tyson, a former Ralph Lauren model, had dated the beautiful model on and off since 2008. But the couple finally called time on their relationship last year.

Tyson wasn't best pleased when DJ Ruckus, who has a residency at Hakkasan Las Vegas, got with his ex just a couple of months later.

Standing by his girl: A week earlier, DJ Ruckus reportedly got into a late night fight over Shanina, with her former partner Tyson Beckford, outside the Up & Down nightclub in Manhattan, New York, according to TMZ

A slanging match is said to have erupted with the 32-year-old DJ flipping off the 45-year-old model turned actor, sources told TMZ, and they took it out to the street.

The website reported that the fight was violent and bloody, with Tyson on top of Ruckus beating him up as one of the DJ's friends began punching Tyson in the head.

A doorman called the police, however by the time they got there the men were gone and no arrests were made.
Cat Deeley looked beautiful as she arrived in London on Monday after a long-haul flight.

The TV favourite cut a seriously chic figure as she touched down at Heathrow Airport after jetting in from Los Angeles, alongside husband Patrick Kielty and their five-month-old son.

The 39-year-old stunner kept it casual while flaunting her post-baby body, flattering her long, slender pins with a pair of skintight blue skinny jeans, teamed with a loose blouse and textured blazer slung over the top.

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Glam mum: Cat Deeley looked gorgeous as she arrived at London's Heathrow Airport on Monday along with husband Patrick Kielty

Her glossy blonde mane was styled to perfection despite the 11-hour journey, her golden locks bouncing gently on her shoulders.

The So You Think You Can Dance? presenter - who gave birth to her first child in January - finished her jet-set look with a pair of strappy metallic flat sandals and shades on her face.

Comedian Patrick, 45, followed behind, cutting a far more casual figure, both of the parents with their hands free as a nanny followed behind them clutching their baby boy.

Hands-free: The new parents were joined by a nanny, who carried their five-month-old son through the terminal, giving them a bit of a break

Glowing: The 39-year-old present kept it casual while flaunting her post-baby body, flattering her long, slender pins with a pair of skintight blue skinny jeans, teamed with a loose blouse and textured blazer

Their arrival at the UK's biggest airport came after the famous family unit were spotted departing from LAX on Sunday evening, with Cat cradling her little one as they made their way through the terminal.

The British beauty went make-up free for her trip, looking every inch the glowing new mum, while her funnyman partner kept things casual in a suede bomber jacket.

Cat was completely radiant as she strutted through the airport looking low-key and lovely, an appearance that she maintained when touching down in London.

Hours earlier...: Cat was at the helm of her clan as she clutched her five-month-old son while strutting through LAX airport on Sunday before jetting to the UK

Happy families: The British beauty went make-up free for her trip, looking every inch the glowing new mum, while her funnyman partner, 45, kept things casual in a suede bomber jacket

Legs eleven: Cat, who is the host of US show So You Think You Can Dance, looked completely radiant as she strutted through the airport looking low-key and lovely

Cat went make-up free for her jaunt yet exhibited a flawless complexion which would no doubt be the envy of any new mum as she looked fresh and stunning.

Her flawlessly highlighted blonde locks were styled into billowing waves which framed her face perfectly while falling from a centre parting.

Following on was handsome Patrick who cut an edgy figure in a brown suede bomber jacket with a black crew neck T-shirt layered underneath.

Daddy cool: She sported an abstract animal print blazer boasting muted brown and khaki hues, which gave the look a muted feel yet gave a fashionable edge

Mummy dearest: Cat went make-up free for her jaunt yet exhibited a flawless complexion which would no doubt be the envy of any new mum as she looked fresh and stunning

Cat certainly had the glow that comes with motherhood, and she has said she's 'besotted with the baby.'

'People keep asking me if I've been hitting the gym, but I haven't! I think breastfeeding is key and it's worked well for me,' the British blonde recently told Closer magazine.

'Add to that running around after a new baby and you don't need to work out.'

Blonde beauty: Her flawlessly highlighted blonde locks were styled into billowing waves which framed her face perfectly while falling from a centre parting

Cat and the Irish comedian - who wed in Rome four years ago - have yet to release the name of their bundle of joy.

'Hey Now...That moment when you decide to rename your first born @jeffreytambor,' Patrick joked in a May 9 tweet while posing alongside the hilarious Arrested Development star.

The five-time Emmy nominee will next host the 13th season of So You Think You Can Dance: The Next Generation, which premieres Monday on Fox.

Nameless: Cat and the Irish comedian - who wed in Rome four years ago - have yet to release the name of their bundle of joy
She admitted last year that she was desperate to relocate back to Australia following a ten-year stint living in the US.

And it appears Teresa Palmer has begun the transition back Down Under as she touched down in Adelaide with her son Bodhi, husband Mark Webber and her stepson Isaac Love on Tuesday.

Having announced she was expecting baby number two on Saturday, the 30-year-old clutched her first born tightly as she made her way through the terminal, covering her growing baby bump.

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All in the family! Newly pregnant Teresa Palmer touched down in Adelaide on Tuesday with her son Bodhi, husband Mark Webber and her stepson Isaac

The mother-of-two had dressed down for the occasion, wearing a pair of black skinny jeans and a large grey knitted coat.

Adding further comfort, she styled her look with a pair of slip-on sneakers, and accessorised with a brown felt hat.

Meanwhile her husband cut an even more relaxed figure, opting for Nike track pants, a dark grey jersey top and sneakers.

Back for good? She admitted last year that she was desperate to relocate back to Australia following a ten-year stint living in the US

Casual: The mother-of-two had dressed down for the occasion, wearing a pair of black skinny jeans and a large grey knitted coat

Happy news! Teresa announced recently she was expecting baby number two

On Saturday, Teresa took to Instagram to announce her pregnancy, sharing a snap of her placing her hands on her belly as she stood in the ocean.

'And just like that my heart grew bigger. Welcoming baby number 2 in to the family. Can't believe our little Bodhi is going to be a big brother!' Teresa wrote in the caption.

Isaac is Mark's son from a previous relationship.

Family: Isaac is Mark's son from a previous relationship

Snuggling: Her first born, who turned two this year, snuggled into his mother's shoulder as they walked past a fountain near the airport

Airport attire: Meanwhile her husband cut an even more relaxed figure, opting for Nike track pants, a dark grey jersey top and sneakers

Speaking to TV Week last year, she said she was excited to settle back in her native country.

'We're going to be spending half our time in Australia and half our time in Los Angeles,' she said.

Teresa went on to add: 'Adelaide is very laid-back and chilled, so it's just a nice contrast to the crazy life we lead in LA.'

The model explained that she would be moving in to her 'father's property' in Adelaide, South Australia.

Back home: The model explained that she would be moving in to her 'father's property' in Adelaide
They had an eventful visit, meeting the Pope at the Vatican.

And on Monday it was time for George and Amal Clooney to depart Rome in style - with the couple spotted boarding their private jet.

Amal looked stunning in an elegant 1960s inspired coat dress as she followed her handsome husband out of the Italian sunshine and on board.

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Nice ride! On Monday it was time for George and Amal Clooney to depart Rome in style - with the couple spotted boarding their private jet

The couple were seen chatting to a member of staff as their bags were loaded onto the private jet.

Amal kept cool behind some chic shades, while George was seen carrying his laptop on board.

The 38-year-old human rights lawyer looked typically flawless in her coat dress while her movie star husband, 55, was wholly more casual as they caught their flight out of Rome.

See George Clooney news as he and wife Amal depart Rome after meeting with the Pope

Simply stunning: Amal looked stunning in an elegant 1960s inspired coat dress as she followed her handsome husband out of the Italian sunshine and on board

What a trip: George broke out a big smile as he talked to airport staff before heading on board

Amal, famed for her graceful style, showed off a mass of leg in her thigh-skimming coat which boasted intricate brocade detailing.

Her long legs were the focus of the look as she remained relatively demure and covered upon the rest of her slender, model-like figure.

A demure suede court shoe was in-keeping with the graceful style on the ensemble, with just a slight heel boosting her already phenomenally statuesque height.

She shielded her flawlessly made-up face with the assistance of huge round lens sunglasses which once again looped in with the stunning theme of the ensemble.

Stunning stars: Amal and George looked as though they were still on a high from their religious experience as they stepped out of their Rome hotel on Monday

Elegance: The 38-year-old human rights lawyer looked typically flawless in an elegant 1960s inspired coat dress while her movie star husband, 55, was wholly more casual

Stunning duo: The pair walked hand in hand, displaying their close bond

Golden girl: Amal, famed for her graceful style, showed off a mass of leg in her thigh-skimming coat which boasted intricate brocade detailing

Off they go: Amal oozed elegance as she stepped out in her golden look

Amal clutched a hat box as she piled into a car while departing their hotel ahead of the flight, potentially holding the stunning hat she was sporting the day before for her big meet with the Catholic leader.

In a contrast to his wife's super elegant look, George was sporting a promotional T-shirt from Casamigos Tequila brand paired with light coloured jeans.

He pulled on suede brown shoes while shielding his world famous face with a trendy pair of sunglasses.

During an Italian date night the previous evening, Amal stunned in a shimmery silk off-the-shoulder dress gathered into a loose knot above the knee, as she headed out to dinner with George.

Hat box: Amal clutched a hat box as she piled into a car, potentially holding the stunning hat she was sporting the day before for her big meet with the Catholic leader

Ever the gent: George held the door open for his beautiful wife as the headed into the car

Different locations: George and Amal looked as though they were headed to different venues in their contrasting looks

Amal completed her futuristic look with matching gold heels and a small clutch bag.

Wearing her trademark glossy chestnut hair in loose waves, the Lebanese-British lawyer kept her make-up minimal, donning red lipstick, while George looked dapper in a dark suit with a black shirt underneath.

The twosome looked quite the power couple as they headed to dinner in the Italian capital.

Heading in: The couple still seemed enamoured with one another as they headed into the car

A bite of the apple: George was weighed down with Apple products as he headed into the people carrier

One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor: He pulled on suede brown shoes while shielding his world famous face with a trendy pair of sunglasses

Strutting their stuff: It is indisputable that the pair make a very good looking duo

Making their way: The duo kept things low-key despite their movie star status

Power couple: Amal went from demure to girl about town as she headed out to dinner with George in Rome on Sunday evening

Versatile: The lawyer stunned in a silk off-the-shoulder dress gathered into a loose knot above the knee, featuring diagonal metallic stripes

Going strong: George held his wife of two years protectively, as she navigated the traditional cobbled streets in her killer heels

George held his wife of two years protectively, as she navigated the traditional cobbled streets in her killer heels.

Earlier in the day the duo attended a seminar led by the Pope called 'Un Muro o Un Ponte' at the Paul VI Hall in Vatican City.

Amal looked demure in a black long-sleeved Versace lace dress which fell above the knees, along with nude shoes and a black head piece.

Ocean's 11 star George looked smart in a navy suit and tie and a crisp white shirt.

Ever the gentleman: George, 55, looked dapper in a dark suit with a black shirt underneath

More than just a pretty face: Wearing her trademark glossy chestnut hair in loose waves around her face, the Lebanese lawyer kept her make up minimal, donning red lipstick

Demure: Earlier in the day the duo attended a seminar led by the Pope at the Paul VI Hall in Vatican City

The event aimed to promote work by global educational initiative organisation Scholas Occurentes which works with young people all over the world, and highlighted the plight of migrants attempting to reach Europe.

Pope Francis awarded medals to Richard Gere, George Clooney and Salma Hayek for their contributions.

'Important values can be transmitted by celebrities,' said one of the organisers, Lorena Bianchetti, adding that the actors had agreed to be ambassadors for one of the foundation's arts projects.

Meeting the Pope: Pope Francis awarded medals to Richard Gere, George Clooney and Salma Hayek for their contributions

On Sunday Pope Francis held an emotional meeting with hundreds of children on Saturday, including a Nigerian boy whose parents drowned in a shipwreck, and told them migrants 'are not dangerous, but in danger'.

The meeting followed a surge in migrant traffic this week between Libya and Italy, with more than 14,000 saved from overcrowded boats since Monday and three consecutive days of shipwrecks in which hundreds may have died.
Myleene Klass has come in for criticism after viewers of her new single mums documentary accused the TV star of not 'knowing the struggle' despite her claim to be 'proud to be in this club'.

She was also blasted for 'patronising' single mothers in 'Myleene Klass: Single Mums On Benefits'.

One viewer, Tina Carruthers, took to Twitter and wrote: 'Really don't think rich myleene klass is the ideal person to speak to unemployed single mums.'

Lindsay Mack added: 'Celebrity millionaire single mum with a nanny visits struggling single mums to compare notes #myleenesinglemums'.

Role of her lifetime: Myleene Klass has revealed her pride at being a single mum to her daughters Ava, 8, and Hero, 5

Myleene Klass has come in for criticism on Twitter (pictured) after viewers of her new single mums documentary accused the TV star of not 'knowing the struggle' despite her claim to be 'proud to be in this club'

Another tweet read: 'Oh yes myleene you are EXACTLY the same as those single dads .. They've all get 11 million quid in the bank too', while one user wrote: 'Yes but Myleene was worth a lot of money when she had her babies. Therefore she doesn't know the struggle.'

It came after the TV star revealed her pride at being a single mum to her daughters Ava, 8, and Hero, 5. She made an appearance on ITV's Lorraine on Tuesday morning to promote her new documentary.

Speaking to guest host Fiona Phillips, Myleene revealed what an eye opening experience it was to meet fellow single parents, who she hopes will change people's perception.

Myleene has been a single mother to her girls after her husband Graham Quinn walked out of the marital home in 2012, just six months after they married.

During her candid talk on Lorraine, the star admitted that she remembers hearing the term 'single mum' and thinking about all the negative connotations that came with it, but has since become fiercely protective of the term.

'(Mum) is the most powerful word in the world and we still don't use it in the way it deserves to be... we always say "Do I look a bit Mum?"'

New project: The TV star made an appearance on ITV's Lorraine on Tuesday morning to promote her new documentary 'Myleene Klass: Single Mums On Benefits'

She added that when she started talking to fellow single parents 'there is that understanding. You know what that persons done to be there... You have a real sense of achievement.'

Myleene admitted she was shocked to find out during filming for her new show that the average single mum is 37, while 25 percent of families in Britain are being raised by a single parents.

She added that she was keen to dispel the myth that all 'teenager mums are on benefits'.

'Teenagers can't get those benefits as they're seen as children in the eyes of the state, so already those parameters have moved.'

On a mission:Speaking to guest host Fiona Phillips, Myleene revealed what an eye opening experience it was to meet fellow single parents, who she hopes will change people's perception

Dressed to impress: Myleene looked stunning for her busy morning of promo for the show

Emotional: The star excitedly took to Twitter in between interviews, sharing a heartfelt post about her own journey as a mother

The star added how proud she is of her documentary, explaining that: 'You're all in this club together. But let me tell you, I'm proud to be in this club, to have membership of this club.'

Myleene looked stunning for her busy morning of promo for the show, dressing up in a Self Portrait lace frock, which showed off her fab figure.

The star excitedly took to Twitter in between interviews, sharing a heartfelt post about her own journey as a mother.

The bveauty dressed up in a Self Portrait lace frock, which showed off her fab figure

All in the details: Myleene toughened up the look with a leather jacket that and over-sized crocodile print handbag

Sprightly: The TV personality seemed in high spirits as she giggled on her way into the BBC TV studios

The statistics: Myleene admitted she was shocked to find out during filming for her new show that the average single mum is 37, while 25 percent of families in Britain are being raised by single parents

'4 years ago, I became a single mum and this is the first pic I posted as I stepped into the unknown with my girls...' she told her fans, adding a photo of her foot next to her two daughters'.

'Filming this documentary opened my eyes to the full extent of the stigma that surrounds single mums. The stories many had to tell were of courage, strength and unity. I hope you watch without prejudice,' she added.

The documentary 'Myleene Klass: Single Mums On Benefits' airs on ITV Tuesday at 9pm.
The wait is nearly over for Harry Potter fans across the country, as the West End show is set to debut in just a matter of days.

And the cast has finally been revealed, as the actors set to play Harry Potter's son, Albus, and wife, Ginny, have been announced.

Pictures released on Tuesday show the family together for the first time as they pose ahead of the play's preview next week.

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Magic moment! Sam Clemmett (centre) announced that he would be playing the role of Albus Severus Potter in Harry Potter And The Cursed Child, alongside Jamie Parker (left) and Poppy Miller (right)

Sam Clemmett took to Twitter on Tuesday to announce that he will be taking on the highly anticipated role of Albus Severus Potter, with a cheerful statement that read: 'Thrilled to announce I will be playing Albus Severus Potter in @HPPlayLDN :D'.

The talented 22-year-old has already starred in major productions such as Foyle's War.

However, in new play Harry Potter And The Cursed Child, Sam will be playing the main part of Harry and Ginny's middle child, Albus Severus Potter, as he copes with his family's huge legacy and starts school at Hogwarts

Meanwhile, actress Poppy Miller, who will play Ginny Weasley in the West End production was seen to bare a striking resemblance to her younger counterpart, played by Bonnie Wright in the films.

All grown up! Sam Clemmett has been selected to play the mature version of Albus Severus Potter in the upcoming West End production

New generation: The play centres around Albus and how he copes with his family's huge legacy as he starts school at Hogwarts

The drama takes place 19 years after Harry left Hogwarts and became a hard-working member of The Ministry Of Magic.

The world famous wizard will be played by 36-year-old Jamie Parker, an original member of Alan Bennetts History Boys cast at the National Theatre, while Paul Thornley has been cast as Ron Weasley and Poppy Miller as Ginny.

Ron, his hair now receding, is married to Hermione  a part won by Noma Dumezweni, 45, who was born in Swaziland to South African parents fleeing apartheid.

Big boots to fill! The world famous wizard will be played by 36-year-old Jamie Parker (left), an original member of Alan Bennetts History Boys cast at the National Theatre

Time for change: Reactions to the first cast announcements, made back in December 2015, caused a stir among some dedicated fans of the original series

Reactions to the first cast announcements, made back in December 2015, caused a stir among some dedicated fans of the original series, because the actors did not appear to show a likeness to the film's actors.

Originally, Harry, Hermione and Ron were made by Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint and these are the faces that the following have come to recognise and associate.

Speaking about the reaction for the first time on Friday, Noma told The Guardian: 'I didn't realise the emotional effect. Not on me, but on other people. That's why I talk about it as a privilege and a responsibility.'

Similar: Poppy Miller bears a striking likeness to the younger Ginny Weasley, who was originally played by Bonnie Wright

Popular! The play broke a West End record after selling some 175,000 tickets in just 24 hours

Despite breaking a West End record after selling some 175,000 tickets in just 24 hours, a number of fans were still unable to purchase tickets.

As a result, The Cursed Child is officially will be available to buy in two versions: a Special Rehearsal Edition using the script performed in the play's previews, before being replaced later by a Definitive Collector's Edition.

The last book in JK Rowling's series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, ended 19 years after the Battle of Hogwarts, as Harry waved his two eldest children off to the wizarding school.

The Cursed Child will pick up from that moment, focusing on Harry as a frazzled Ministry of Magic civil servant and his middle child Albus Severus, who is struggling under the weight of the family's legacy.

This will be the first tale in the Harry Potter series not to be penned by Rowling.

The two-part play has been written by Jack Thorne, although it has been based on an original idea by Rowling, Thorne and the stage play's director John Tiffany.

The play will preview at London's Palace Theatre on June 7, 2016 and will open officially on July 30.

The stage play will run into 2017, which marks the 20th anniversary of the UK publication of the very first book, Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone.
They've been the undisputed king and queen of FM breakfast radio since they were first teamed together back in 2005.

But popularity for KIIS' controversial duo Kyle Sandilands and Jackie 'O' Henderson appear to be waning ever-so-slightly.

The latest ratings see the pair drop their audience share by 1.4 per cent, falling to a total of 9.9, though they have managed to stay on top for now.

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Falling from grace? KIISFM's controversial duo Kyle Sandilands and Jackie 'O' Henderson appear to be waning ever-so-slightly

Meanwhile, 2DayFM Hit 104.1's Rove McManus and Sam Frost have gained some ground, picking up .3 per cent to a 3.3 share.

Nova too have experienced in increase in their share, with breakfast pair Ryan 'Fitzy' Fitzgerald and Michael 'Wippa' Wipfli gaining 1.1 points to a 7.4 per cent share.

Though the reasons for Kyle and Jackie's tumble are not totally clear, the pair have experienced some unfavourable press in recent weeks.

Gaining some ground: 2DayFM Hit 104.1's Rove McManus and Sam Frost picked up .3 per cent in audience share

Following an interview with former Friends star Matt Le Blanc and Top Gear host Chris Evans, Kyle called the actor an 'a**hole' for giving chilly answers to his line of questioning.

'Do you guys believe that you can pull a chick if you have a good car?' was one, while 'What do you guys think of those hanging tags in the car, you know, the air freshener things?' was another.

In April, the duo landed themselves in hot water after a recent phone prank segment called 'Wong Number' involving two Chinese restaurants.

Rocky start: The duo have struggled with ratings, falling at the bottom of the pile in surveys since debuting on air in November last year

A petition was launched by co-founder for the Asian Australian Alliance Erin Chew, after the hosts called the two restaurants, placing fake orders and then leaving the restaurant owners to speak to one another on the line, which unsurprisingly led to much confusion.

'Their main motivation was to humiliate hard working mum and dad businesses for the sake of improving their ratings at the expense of a few cheap laughs and jokes about being Chinese,' said Erin on the petition page.

Last month, Kyle and Jackie had demonstrated another slip, losing 1.2 points to a total audience share of 11.3 per cent.

In stark contrast, the first survey of 2016 had Kyle and Jackie jumping to a 12.5 per cent from 10.1, taking out the top Sydney FM breakfast spot yet again.
She's known for her understated yet chic style.

And Kate Mara looked remarkably pretty and elegant as she attended the star-studded Lady Dior party hosted by DIOR in London on Monday.

The enviably youthful-looking 33-year-old American actress kept it classy in her monochrome ensemble for the swish soiree, which also saw the likes of Kate Beckinsale, Emma Roberts and Mad Men star Kiernan Shipka in attendance.

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Style winner: Kate Mara looked remarkably pretty and elegant in a chic white mini dress and blazer as she attended the star-studded Lady Dior party hosted by DIOR in London on Monday

The House Of Cards star donned a thigh-grazing white mini dress - complete with a stylised swirly pattern across the front - and teamed it with a crisp black blazer.

And, despite the summery time of year, she opted to add some extra layers to her ensemble with a pair of semi-sheer black tights, the hosiery actually working to draw attention to the star's shapely pins.

Showing that she's a low-maintenence kind of girl, Kate completed her outfit with a pair of shiny black flat brogues and a small boxy clutch bag with a silver sheen.

Understated: Showing that she's a low-maintenence kind of girl, Kate, 33, completed her outfit with a pair of shiny black flat brogues and a small boxy clutch bag with a silver sheen

The girlfriend of British actor Jamie Bell wore her cropped russet locks teased into a slightly wavy style, her long fringe pulled over to the side of her face, and she worked an elegantly simple beauty look, her features accentuated with just a touch of nude make-up.

Elsewhere at the 'do, Kate Beckinsale looked truly sensational in a figure-hugging blue dress with peep-toe heels, the Hollywood star oozing serious sex appeal.

While her long brunette tresses were worn in a relaxed wavy style partially pulled back to frame her flawless complexion.

Elegant: Kate Beckinsale cut a seriously glam and sexy figure as she showed up to the DIOR bash, in a figure-hugging navy dress

Refined: The British actress accessorised with a black rigid clutch and some understated gold earrings as she posed inside the soiree

And actress Emma Roberts opted for a slightly funkier look for the designer party, teaming an ethereal white dress with a black leather jacket.

Mad Men's Kiernan Shipka worked a fashion-forward pair of shiny burgundy skinny trousers teamed with an eye-catching red jumper and heels.

Meanwhile, House Of Cards actress Kate recently returned from a loved-up getaway with her hunky boyfriend Jamie in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

The duo have now officially been dating for a year, but speculation of romance circulated since the promotional tour of 2015's Fantastic Four.

Fashionista: Emma Roberts combined her ethereal white dress with a funky black biker jacket

PVC princess: Mad Men actress Kiernan Shipka wore stunning burgundy leather trousers teamed with a ravishing red jumper

They sparked engagement rumours this March when she arrived at Paris Fashion Week wearing a ring on her fourth finger.

Denying reports, Jamie and Kate simply told E! News 'no' when asked if he had popped the question just under a year into their relationship.

She played the Sue Storm to his Ben Grimm alongside co-stars Miles Teller and Michael B. Jordan and the acting pair have rarely been seen apart ever since.

Formerly married to American actress Evan Rachel Wood, Jamie is father to their two-year-old son, though the couple split in May 2014, 19 months after they wed.

Kate has also been married before, but her relationship with actor Max Minghella also wrapped up in 2014, after four years.
Ronnie Wood has become a father again at the age of 68, as his wife Sally Humphreys has welcomed their twin girls.

The Rolling Stones rocker's partner gave birth to their first children together on Monday evening, and their new arrivals have been confirmed in a statement from the star's representative.

'Ronnie & Sally Wood are delighted to announce the birth of their twins Gracie Jane (6lb) & Alice Rose (5.7lb),' the statement read.

Congratulations! Ronnie Wood, 68, and Sally Humphreys, 38, welcomed their twin girls on Monday - Gracie Jane and Alice Rose

'The girls arrived on 30 May at 22:30 and all are doing brilliantly. The babies are perfect.'

The smitten pair - who have been married since 2012 - have eagerly been awaiting the arrival of their babies, and earlier on Monday evening the musician shared a snap of himself ahead of the impending birth.

Showing him smiling into the camera along with his dog, he wrote: 'Waiting #38weeks+.'

Sally was reportedly expecting to give birth to her daughters - Ronnie's fifth and sixth children - in June.

'Waiting': On Monday, the Rolling Stones rocker shared an Instagram snap as he revealed he was 'waiting' for the baby at 38 weeks

The couple were last pictured together on May 20 sharing a kiss in the street, with Sally's burgeoning baby bump on show.

Their tender moment in public came just days after Ronnie shared his excitement about the birth 'in the next few weeks'.

Sally was top-to-toe in a dark shades, keeping comfortable in flat boots while he dressed in his characteristically cool fashion.

The rocker wore a purple blazer with an open charcoal shirt and multiple chain necklaces and kooky slipper shoes to the image.

Ronnie took to Twitter in his excitement, last week to say: 'I'm getting excited about the arrival of my twin girls sometime in the next few weeks.'

Sharing a kiss: Ronnie was seen planting a kiss on his pregnant wife Sally's as they were pictured sharing a romantic moment on the streets of London last week

Sweet kiss: Sally showed off her burgeoning baby bump - she was reportedly due to give birth in June

Excitement is building: Ronnie and Sally were getting excited about becoming parents together

Ronnie has only recently returned from Cuba where he was touring with The Rolling Stones again but it wrapped up with good time to spare until he becomes a father for the fifth and sixth time in two months.

He recently revealed the band's excitement in an interview with HELLO! magazine, explaining: 'The Rolling Stones are all thrilled. Keith [Richards] loves kids, so he's excited, and Mick [Jagger] keeps telling me to give him a year and then he'll be our nanny so now we're calling him 'Nanny Mick'.'

'The Stones are one big family. It's all about the kids. In this tour, everyone's been there: (Sir Mick's children) Jade, Karis, James, Lizzy, Gabriel, Lucas and Georgia May; Patti and Keith's girls (Theodora and Alexandra) and Charlie's granddaughter Charlotte.

Expanding the family: The couple are expanding their family, which already includes his four children

'My girls will be two more added into the mix. I hope my girls will be coming on tour with me for years to come.'

Ronnie is already a father of four to children from previous relationships. He has a son Jesse, 39, with his first wife Krissy Findlay, who he divorced in 1978.

Jesse is now wed to TV/radio presenter Fearne Cotton and the couple have two children together.

Ronnie and his second wife Jo Wood wed on January 2 1985, but divorced in 2009.

He then went on to have two children Leah, 37, and Tyrone, 32, with Jo, as well as adopting her son Jamie, 41, from a previous marriage.

Sally and Ronnie began dating in 2012 after meeting at her place of work, the Theatre Royal, nine years beforehand.

It was a whirlwind romance as they tied the knot at the Dorchester Hotel just six months after they started a relationship and, although she is younger than one of his eldest son and is the same age as his daugher Leah, she has inherited four stepchildren and nine grandchildren.

Bigger brood: This will be child number five and six for the Rolling Stones rocker

Meanwhile, Ronnie previously revealed he is keen for his Rolling Stones bandmate Sir Mick to 'sing lullabies' to his daughters.

He told BANG Showbiz: 'Mick told me he's a good nanny after one year so he can come and sing lullabies to them ...

'It's going to be great fun in June, I'm expecting two baby girls, Sally and I are really excited and I can't wait to be rocking them to sleep and changing their nappies and going through it all again.'

The musician's four other kids are as excited about the babies, with Tyrone adding: 'I can't wait to meet my little sisters, I'm ecstatic about it. I've already got them Jellycat rabbits, they're little soft lovely rabbits for babies.'

And Ronnie claims it was Rod Stewart - who is a father of eight - who inspired him to have more children at his age.

He said: 'Yes, the person who incited this riot is Rod. As soon as I met Sally, he was on at me to propose. Then, as soon as we got married, he started telling us we had to have babies. He and Penny [Lancaster; Rod's wife] have been complete mother hens since we first told them.'
She's not shy about showing off her stunning figure on Instagram.

And Chantelle Connelly looks to be going all out for her 2017 calendar, hitting Morocco earlier this month to snap a series of sizzling shots for her fans.

The Geordie Shore beauty was seen posing up a storm in skimpy swimwear before stripping naked and showing off her pert derriere on the sun dappled beach.

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Baring all! Chantelle Connelly is giving her fans a treat for her 2017 calendar, as she stripped naked for the racy beach shoot

The reality star gives the likes of Kim Kardashian a run for her money in her raunchy shoot.

The brunette posed completely naked, showing off her bronzed curves as she knelt on the beach and pouted for the camera.

Another shot saw Chantelle breaking out a dramatic pose against a cliff, again showing off her derriere which this time was clad in a skin tight white bodysuit.

On the Shore! Another shot saw Chantelle breaking out a dramatic pose against a cliff, again showing off her derriere which this time was clad in a skin tight white bodysuit

Away from the beach, the Geordie Shore favourite used a white jeep as a prop, slipping into a neon pink bikini as she sat seductively on the bonnet.

The star also had no qualms about stripping off outside a glass building, wowing in just a pair of skimpy bikini bottoms for one topless pic.

Speaking to The Sun recently, Chantelle revealed she wants to have another boob job.

Work it: Away from the beach, the Geordie Shore favourite used a white jeep as a prop, slippin into a neon pink bikini as she sat seductively on the bonnet

She confessed: 'I've just got big t*ts that I want to look better.

'I don't follow the crowd. I'm not all about the big t*ts, I'd rather they look little and classier,' she continued.

The former stripper reportedly told the publication that she splashed out 21,000 on operations before the last series, but is still keen to change her look as she revealed her preparations to undergo a nose job and have her teeth done.

Not shy! The reality star even stripped topless and posed against the glass front of a building for one shot

'It's something I've always wanted, even back before the Shore, back when I was a kid. Every time I get my make-up done I contour the f**k out of my nose,' she added.

Chantelle follows in a long line of Geordie Shore girls, including Holly Hagan, Chloe Ferry, and Charlotte Crosby, who have raced to the hands of surgeons to adjust their appearance.

The MTV stars have racked up a bill worth thousands of pounds in a bid to change their looks, particularly Charlotte, 25, who has forked out around 20,000 on a list of surgeries, including lip fillers, botox and nose reshaping.
Her ex-husband Professor Green appeared to take a swipe at her appearance while she was out in Monaco with new boyfriend Hugo Taylor over the weekend.

But Millie Mackintosh will not be letting the controversy get to her anytime soon as the 26-year-old reality star brushed off the recent adversity with a series of stunning Instagram posts.

Seemingly unfazed by her former flame's remarks, the former Made in Chelsea star first shared a snap of herself clad in a red dress from her collection.

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Defiant: Her ex-husband Professor Green appeared to take a swipe at her appearance while she was out in Monaco with new boyfriend Hugo Taylor over the weekend but Millie Mackintosh brushed off the recent adversity with a series of stunning Instagram posts

Standing against an idyllic backdrop that was a marina in Monaco, where she has been celebrating the 30th birthday of her new man, Millie flaunted her enviably lithe legs in the scarlet number.

The garment boasted a cross-over design around the torso before billowing out into a pretty, flowing skirt.

Proving she is still committed to business as usual, Millie wrote alongside the snap: 'My #millieSS16 broderie anglaise dress will be hitting my website this week along with other new arrivals'.

Gorgeous: Millie also shared a stunning selfie taken during a photoshoot on Tuesday

And the pretty snaps just keep on coming as the clothing designer shared a gorgeous selfie following her return to England on Tuesday.

Taken while on a photoshoot, Millie looks down coyly at the ground while having her hair styled.

Millie recently went public with her relationship with boyfriend Hugo, who she dated prior to her relationship with Professor Green, real name Stephen Manderson.

On Saturday the duo were snapped enjoying some steamy PDAs as they rekindled their relationship in Monaco.

Going public: Millie was pictured with boyfriend Hugo Taylor in a romantic Instagram photo in Monaco on Sunday, as she finally confirmed their romance... just days after her divorce was finalised

Their refreshed romance was widely-rumoured ever since she and her estranged husband announced they were calling it quits three months ago.

The reality star-turned-fashionista looked sensational in a stunning black mini dress while kissing her 30-year-old beau while they took in the rays in the south of France.

When Professor Green and Millie announced the end of their relationship, they claimed they were parting on good terms and that they had reached the decision mutually and amicably.

However, on Sunday night - hours after the pictures of Hugo and Millie were published - the Just Be Good To Green hitmaker seemed to take a dig at her on Twitter, writing: 'money really can't buy you class can it'.

The rapper then followed up the tweet with: 'London's Gurning'.
She's not one to slack when it comes to putting in the gym time.

And Georgia Kousoulou, who is currently soaking up the rays in Mexico alongside boyfriend Tommy Mallet, flaunted the enviable results of her active lifestyle with a bikini-clad selfie on Tuesday.

The TOWIE star, 24, sizzles as she stands and captures a snap of her enviable physique while posing in the mirror of her hotel room, the Hard Rock Riviera Maya, in a mismatched two-piece.

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Sizzling: She's not one to slack when it comes to putting the time in at the gym and Georgia Kousoulou, who is currently soaking up the rays in Mexico alongside boyfriend Tommy Mallet, flaunted the enviable results of her active lifestyle with a bikini-clad selfie on Tuesday

The reality star showcases her toned torso and ample assets in a khaki bandeau bikini top, while flattering her curvaceous hips in stringy patterned bottoms, both of which are from the upcoming collection of her swimwear range.

'I decided to do a little mix & match .. Tie bottoms & tops coming soon to @summerdreamsbygk,' she captioned the snap.

Georgia followed the shot with a picture of herself and beau Tommy looking in full holiday mode as they sip on cocktails straight from pineapples, the Essex native once again showing off her taut stomach, though this time in a black two-piece.

Sheer bliss! Georgia followed the shot with a picture of herself and beau Tommy looking in full holiday mode as they sip on cocktails straight from pineapples

Exhibiting her extensive swimwear collection, Georgia also wraps a sheer black maxi skirt around her waist as she smiles alongside a casually-clad Tommy.

Her latest influx of snaps come just a short while after she turned heads one again in an eye-poppingly revealing black bikini and matching skirt, making the most of her ample assets.

Wearing her blonde locks slicked back, the reality star looked happy and relaxed as she posed with boyfriend of one year.

Popping out: Georgia has showcased a number of styles from her collection during her getaway

Beach bunny: Georgia showed off a peach strappy bikini with a sheer chiffon wrap

Maintaining her glamour for the pool, Georgia went for bold lashes and nude lipstick, while Tommy showed off his toned tattooed chest and funky blue sunglasses.

The couple, who have been dating for almost two years, both shared the same picture to their Instagram accounts, with Tommy- who celebrated his 24th birthday on Sunday, captioning the picture with heart emojis.

The Essex duo jetted over to Mexico's exotic Riviera Maya on the Caribbean coast last week, to celebrate Tommy's birthday in style.

Romantic getaway: The Essex duo jetted over to the Riviera Maya on the Caribbean coast last week, to celebrate Tommy's birthday in style

And they were keen to keep their followers updated on their romantic getaway.

Georgia modelled a sizzling range of bikinis from her own line, revealing that she was celebrating Tommy's birthday on English and Mexican time.

'Someone's birthday tomorrow kisses in the sea', she wrote on Instagram on Saturday alongside a snap of the blonde duo kissing in the swimming pool.

Solid: Despite not being engaged yet, the couple have talked openly about wanting a Greek-Irish themed wedding

Later on she shared a selfie wearing her hair in a high bun and a black vest, next to Tommy who wore a matching white t-shirt and cap, writing: 'It's my @tommy_mallet birthdayyyyyyyy ( UK time ) so he gets 2 birthdays woohoo! Happy birthday to my  I'm so excited to be celebrating in Mexico. I love you more everyday .. My best friend ! My teammmmm.'

And Georgia made sure she spoiled the birthday boy, arranging an intimate candle-lit dinner on the beach as a surprise.

Looking good: Georgia has been making every day a fashion moment during her holiday

Wearing a blue printed playsuit and her hair in a high sleek half bun, the sizzling couple looked happy as they toasted his special day with champagne.

The reality star appeared to be feeling sentimental, sharing another throwback snap of the pair with the caption:

'Our first picture taken in Ibiza.. Everyone doubted us , saying we wouldn't last.. Look at us now planning our future together.. Love you more everyday . Happy birthday my  @tommy_mallet'.

The couple have been dating for 20 months, and spoke to OK! earlier in the year about their romance.

Well have a big Greek and Irish-themed wedding,' Tommy told the magazine.

Loved up: Georgia modelled a sizzling range of bikinis from her own line, revealing that she was celebrating Tommy's birthday on English and Mexican time

'You get to smash plates, do some mad Greek dancing and pin 50 notes on each other!

And whilst they have the ITVBe reality show to thank for their blossoming romance, the loved-up pair explained they had to work extra hard on their relationship in order to avoid the dreaded TOWIE curse that has broken up so many of their friends.

It only puts pressure on you if you allow other people to get involved, Tommy said.

'The curse is going on personal appearances and cheating on your girlfriend, but I havent done that.

Now I dont have girls coming up to me and trying to stick it on me, they all just say how much they love us together,' he said.
She's an award winning commediene who portrays some of Australia's most beloved characters.

But it would appear Magda Szubanski's new found literary acclaim has gone to her head, or at least she jokes it has.

Appearing on The Project on Tuesday night, the 55-year-old was asked by host Waleed Aly if she's changed her opinion on television presenters now that she's 'a writer.'

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Too funny! It would appear Magda Szubanski's new found literary acclaim has gone to her head, or at least she jokes it has

'Do you look at us TV plebs a bit more sneeringly now?' The Gold Logie winning host asked Magda.

'I always did,' Magda replied jokingly before adding, 'Nothing has changed, even when I was one of you.'

Despite writing an award-winning memoir, titled Reckoning, it would appear she hasn't lost her sense of humour.

'No, it's still me. Don't get excited,' she continued.

See The Project updates as Magda Szubanski jokes about looking down on TV presenters

Special appearance: Appearing on The Project on Tuesday night, the 55-year-old was asked by host Waleed Aly if she's changed her opinion on television presenters now that she's 'a writer'

'I always did,' Magda replied jokingly before adding, 'Nothing has changed, even when I was one of you'

When asked by co-host Fifi Box about it felt to have Reckoning so well received her peers and the public, the Kath and Kim star had a typically amusing response.

'It feels amazing, it does puff up your ego and then you feel terribly hollow,' she replied. 'But, really, the awards, the only thing about them is if you can use them to put them to some good use.'

Magda then went on to add that she intends to use her platform to defend other writers who will be affected by proposed changes to copyright laws.

'It feels amazing, it does puff up your ego and then you feel terribly hollow,' she replied when asked by co-host Fifi Box about it felt to have Reckoning so well received her peers and the public

Good times: The Kath and Kim star had co-host Peter Helliar in fits of laughter

On Monday night Magda opened up to A Current Affair host Tracey Grimshaw about her struggle with depression, which she has faced for most of her adult life.

She said coming to terms with her sexuality was a major contributing factor to her depression, something that both her parents also suffered from.

'Mine was also the sexuality thing definitely, that was terrifying to me, absolutely terrifying,' Magda told the program.

Speaking out: Magda then went on to add that she intends to use her platform to defend other writers who will be affected by proposed changes to copyright laws

'And I was probably 5 or 6 when I first started to realise... When I was growing up it was an absolute bloody trauma.'

Last week, the Melbourne-based actress celebrated after winning Book of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards for her memoir.

Taking to Instagram to share her joy as she proudly held up her trophies, writing: 'OH MY EFFING GOD!!! I JUST WON #BOOKOFTHEYEAR #abiaawards2016 I nearly fainted!! Thank you MUM DAD FAMILY FRIENDS ABIA.'

Revealing: On Monday night Magda opened up to A Current Affair host Tracey Grimshaw about her struggle with depression, which she has faced for most of her adult life

Winner! Last week, the Melbourne-based actress celebrated after winning Book of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards for her memoir

Nothing to hide: She told ACA coming to terms with her sexuality was a major contributing factor to her depression, something that both her parents also suffered from








He may have just scooped 250,000 after winning Britain's Got Talent.

But magician, Richard Jones said that he has no plans of giving up the day job and will be returning to his post in the army.

The 25-year-old appeared on ITV's This Morning alongside WWII prisoner of war, Fergus Anckorn, who inspired his winning trick.

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Humble: Richard Jones said that he has no plans of giving up the day job and will be returning to his post in the army despite winning BGT

However, speaking of life after his triumph, Richard told viewers: 'I love my job in the army so I'm going to carry on doing that.'

And he was determined not to let his new found fame go to his head as he added: 'It's a very busy time of the year. I hope to stay in the army and I'm living the dream on both fronts at the moment.'

Richard dressed smartly for the television appearance as he donned his professional black and gold uniform and styled his hair into a perfectly formed quiff.

See more BGT news as winner Richard Jones reveals that he will stay in the army

Future plans: Richard admitted that he 'loves' his job in the army and hopes to return soon

Dream team: The 25-year-old appeared on ITV's This Morning alongside WWII prisoner of war, Fergus Anckorn, who inspired his winning trick

Dapper duo: Richard dressed smartly for the television appearance as he donned his professional black and gold uniform and styled his hair into a perfectly formed quiff

And Fergus couldn't have looked happier to be by his side as he sported a huge smile, alongside the many medals that adorned his well-tailored blazer.

The 97-year-old looked a figure of youth as he sat on the This Morning sofa in a pair of chinos and a red and white checked shirt, and he showed off his playful side with a bold patterned tie in hues of navy and red.

The Army bandsman, 25, wowed the judges and left the audience in tears with his final sleight-of-hand, in which he used a deck of cards to tell the moving story of Fergus Anckorn, the Second World War veteran known as 'the conjurer of the River Kwai'.

Proud: Fergus couldn't have looked happier to be by his side as he sported a huge smile, alongside the many medals that adorned his well-tailored blazer

Inspiration! The 97-year-old looked a figure of youth as he sat on the This Morning sofa in a pair of chinos and a red and white checked shirt

The Saturday night finale saw Mr Jones 'paint' a picture of Mr Anckorn, 97, on the back of nine playing cards which he laid out in front of the judges.

Mr Jones, who is still a serving member in the Household Cavalry used his final appearance to tell the story of Mr Anckorn, revealing he was the inspiration behind his magic career.

Mr Jones asked judge Amanda Holden to sign a playing card before ripping it up, setting it alight and magically restoring it - the 'favourite' trick performed by Mr Anckorn while he was a prisoner of war.

Show-stopping: The Army bandsman, 25, wowed the judges and left the audience in tears with his final sleight-of-hand, in which he used a deck of cards to tell the moving story of Fergus

Winning moment: The magician was overwhelmed with emotion when he found out her had taken the crown

He explained how Mr Anckorn performed magic tricks for the other prisoners as a way of keeping morale high, and for the guards as a way of getting more food.

The veteran is now the longest-serving member of the Magic Circle.

The final part of Mr Jones' trick saw him shuffle a deck of cards and spread them out across the judges' table, miraculously revealing an image of Mr Anckorn in his uniform during the war.

Winning combination: The Saturday night finale saw Mr Jones 'paint' a picture of Mr Anckorn, 97, on the back of nine playing cards which he laid out in front of the judges

As the performance reached its finale, Mr Jones, who appeared in uniform, whisked away the backdrop of the Union flag to reveal Mr Anckorn standing on the stage.

The magician later wept as he was crowned the winner of the talent show, telling hosts Ant and Dec: 'It's been an amazing experience to spend time with such talented people.'

Richard has been handed a 250,000 prize and will perform at the Royal Variety Performance.
Stephanie Davis' pregnancy announcement stunned the showbiz world.

Yet Marnie Simpson's reaction went beyond shock as she admitted in her latest column for Star magazine that she thought the former Hollyoaks actress was lying with her baby news.

The 24-year-old Geordie Shore beauty spoke out about the soap starlet, 23, in light of her divulging she was expecting her first child with CBB co-star Jeremy McConnell.

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Girly girls: Marnie Simpson's reaction went beyond shock as she admitted in her latest column for Star magazine that she thought the former Hollyoaks actress was lying with her baby news

Stephanie and her Irish beau were thrown into a tumultuous relationship after they met in Celebrity Big Brother in January, leading to a host of make-ups and break-ups.

After months of turmoil, the Liverpool-born beauty made the shock announcement that she was expecting Jeremy's child and vowed to raise the tot alone if he would not step up.

Now Marnie has weighed in on the drama, just a week after she revealed Jeremy made a move on her via Twitter - by sending her a romantic rose emoji.

She said: 'I can't get my head around Steph being pregnant. I thought it was a lie! I wish her all the luck in the world. I hope it's not too hard and she hasn't made a mistake.'

Outspoken: The 24-year-old Geordie Shore beauty spoke out about the soap starlet, 23, in light of her divulging she was expecting her first child with CBB co-star Jeremy McConnell

Up close and personal: Stephanie and her Irish beau were thrown into a tumultuous relationship after they met in Celebrity Big Brother in January, leading to a host of make-ups and break-ups

Strong statement: Marnie has proved she has very strong opinions

Jeremy, who has earned a reputation as a womaniser after being swarmed with accusations of cheating since they started their romance, was next in Marnie's firing line.

She added: 'Jez should step up, but I don't think he's prepared for this. He's f**ked now, no girl's going to go near him.'

Marnie's views on the scenario will no doubt comes as another blow to Stephanie after Marnie's revelation that Jeremy had approached her on Twitter.

Smiley: Now Marnie has weighed in on the drama, just a week after she revealed Jeremy made a move on her via Twitter - by sending her a romantic rose emoji

Upsetting: Marnie's views on the scenario will no doubt comes as another blow to Stephanie after Marnie's revelation that Jeremy had approached her on Twitter

Jeremy is said to have sent her a flirty message following one of his many breakups from Stephanie.

Marnie told the publication: 'After they broke up, he (direct messaged) me on Twitter with the rose emoji. He tried his luck, but I told him he was barking up the wrong tree!

'I feel bad for her (Stephanie). I think she's a nice girl and I thought Jeremy was a nice boy, but I feel he's proved everyone wrong. Steph should stay strong and ditch Jeremy.'

All gone: When Marnie came to blows with Jasmine Lennard, the row naturally erupted in quite a spectacular fashion, after the latter accused the former of making a move on her beau

Marnie's comments came shortly before she became embroiled in a bitter war of words with model Jasmine Lennard after the Geordie stunner reportedly followed Jasmine's boyfriend on Twitter.

The South Shields-born beauty was left aghast when the model accused her of having a 'fat a*s' - a claim she retaliated to with a smouldering naked selfie.

Jasmine is dating DJ Cristian MJC, who she met during her 2015 stint in Big Brother and she now claims Marnie followed him on Instagram in a bid to pursue a romantic relationship - allegations she made in a lengthy Twitter tirade.

As the battle raged on between the pair many blows were dealt yet it seems one sentiment particularly riled Marnie - when Jasmine hit out her weight.

At war: The Geordie Shore star was left aghast when the model, 30, accused her of having a 'fat a*s' - a claim she retaliated to with a smouldering naked selfie

The London based model wrote: 'I'm not into body shaming but if she's gonna come at me like that she could sure lose a few pounds.

'@MarnieGShore that cheeseburger and guess what i'ma still be skinny and pretty after. May i suggest some salad for your fat a*s?'

Marnie, who is known to share racy selfies, then went on to share her defiant response with her 790,000 Twitter followers as she wrote: 'Cannot believe I got told I was fat by another woman yesterday. I am happy with my size & I'm sorry I'm not a size 0'.

Attached with the snap was a sexy nude shot of her taken in a mirror, in which all that protected her modesty was strategically placed emojis including lips and red crosses.
They formed a close bond playing siblings on Packed To The Rafters many years ago.

And it seems Jessica Marais and Hugh Sheridan still share a really strong bond.

The actors shared who are both set to star in upcoming Australian dramas, The Wrong Girl and House Husbands respectively, cosied up together for a tactile snap which Hugh shared to Instagram on Tuesday, as they practised their lines for their new shows together.

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Back together again! Jessica Marais and Hugh Sheridan cosied up together for a tactile snap which Hugh shared to Instagram on Tuesday, as they practised their lines for their new shows together

In the sweet photo, Jessica cuddles up to Hugh's neck as the pair smile for the camera.

The duo seem to have been playing around with filters on Snapchat, as Hugh's face was masked with a dog's ears and nose.

'We just finished learning all our lines for our shoots tomorrow... All I can say is you're gonna [sic] love Jess' new show,' Hugh penned underneath the cute snap.

He also added the hashtags: 'It's a hit,' and 'so proud.'

Two weeks ago the pair uploaded a similar shot as they used Snapchat to superimpose a floral crown on their heads.

Very cute: Two weeks ago the pair uploaded a similar shot as they used Snapchat to superimpose a floral crown on their heads

Jessica, who has been working on Channel Nine's Love Child, will front The Wrong Girl alongside actress Asher Keddie.

The new drama, which will be based on Zoe Foster Blake's novel by the same name, will tell the story of a love triangle between two best friends, Lily and Simone, and a chef, Jack.

Jessica said she was a fan of the novel before the show came about.

'I have for a long time admired Zoe Foster Blakes engaging and entertaining books and I cant wait to play the lively and relatable character that is Lily,' she said according to Channel Ten.

Meanwhile, Hugh is set to make a return to the small screen after spending the last year focusing on his music career, joining the cast of House Husbands in 2016 for the shows fifth season.

Hugh will play Nick Gazecki, the new specialist music teacher at Napean South.

His character is reportedly well received by the students at the school, however he is set to clash with one parent in particular, Lewis Crabb played by Gary Sweet.

Back to where it all began: Jessica and Hugh starred together on the popular drama series Packed To The Rafters on network Seven

The actor is excited about the forthcoming role and in a statement released from the Nine Network said: 'I feel very lucky to join the extraordinary team who have created this show'.

'I'm pumped to get on set and rock with the cast  I hear theyre a lot of fun,' he added.

Jessica and Hugh starred together on the popular drama series Packed To The Rafters on network Seven.

Playing siblings, Hugh starred as Ben Rafter, while Jessica played Rachel Rafter, with both winning Logie Awards for their roles.

In 2009 Hugh received the award for Most Popular New Male Talent, and in 2010, 2011 and 2012 he won for Most Popular Actor.

While Jessica won Most Popular New Female Talent in 2009.
She walked away with a Silver Logie at this year's TV Week Logie Awards.

But it seems Melina Vidler can hold her own working alongside her big name co-stars on the hit Channel Seven series 800 Words.

Speaking to Sydney Confidential, the 22-year-old said that despite working with Packed To The Rafters star Erik Thomson, she isn't intimidated by his impressive resume of work.

Not scared: Speaking to Sydney Confidential , Melina Vidler said that despite working with Packed To The Rafters star Erik Thomson, she isn't intimidated by his impressive resume of work

I don't freak out or get nervous around celebrities, Erik's like a mate,' Melinda told the publication.

The blonde beauty also had nothing but praise for her on-screen father.

'The great thing about Erik is that he's a leader,' she said. 'He makes sure we work as a team.'

I don't freak out or get nervous around celebrities, Erik's like a mate,' Melinda said. Erik Thomson (C) plays her on-screen father in the hit drama. Also pictured with Benson Jack Anthony (R) who plays her brother

Melina plays teenager Shay Turner in the hit drama and also opened up about the stress she suffered filming the high school scenes.

'I got anxiety going to that school and doing those scenes. It was like going back to high school days,' Melina continued.

'It was like "Nooooo, my life is so much better now." '

Winner! Earlier this month, Melina won her first Logie Award, picking up the gong for Most Outstanding Newcomer for her role on 800 Words

The former model also said she was significantly taller than her supposed classmates and found it 'bizarre' to be towering over 14-year-old while wearing a school uniform when shooting her scenes.

Earlier this month, Melina won her first Logie Award, picking up the gong for Most Outstanding Newcomer for her role on 800 Words.

The second series is currently being filmed in New Zealand and will air later this year.
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A majority of catwalk shows tend to be hosted in the fashion capitals of New York, Milan, Paris and London.

However, Christian Dior has decided to shake up the fashion calendar by hosting their Cruise 2016/2017 presentation in the stunning, historic surrounds of Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire on Tuesday evening.

Leading the glamour was homegrown Hollywood star Kate Beckinsale, who showed off a hint of flesh in a fun, black and white cutaway dress as she joined a host of stars in the grand stately home.

Fashion royalty: Hollywood star Kate Beckinsale, who showed off a hint of flesh in a fun, black and white cutaway dress, as she arrive at the Christian Dior Cruise 2016/2017 show at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire

Well heeled: The 42-year-old teamed her flirty ensemble with a pair of towering Christian Louboutin heels

The mother-of-one, 42, teamed her ensemble with a pair of towering black Christian Louboutin heels, with her brunette locks tied back in a high ponytail.

Once inside the grand room where the show was taking place, Kate landed a coveted front row spot next to Canadian singer The Weeknd, who was supporting his girlfriend Bella Hadid, who was one of the models.

During the show, Kate took to Instagram to share some photos of the event, having only joined the social media network two weeks ago.

Hollywood glamour: Kate Mara (left) showed off her legs in an unusual sequinned and lace mini dress, while Elizabeth Olsen went for a similar hemline in a baby blue number

Chic in cream: Daisy Lowe dazzled in an off-white shift dress that hugged her slender curves whilst she added some height in block heels

Stars in her... feet: Emma Roberts looked cute in a navy mini dress and star patterned heels

Speaking about the photo-sharing site to Magic Radio recently, she enthused: 'What Ive realised is people build up an idea of who you are, very often on the parts that you play, and then just seeing you poncing down the red carpet. I suddenly thought that doesnt feel very accurate.

'At least the upside of social media is that youre controlling a bit of whats going out there about you, and its not just somebody elses idea. That seems kind of fun at the moment. If it becomes horrible, I will immediately stop. But so far its been very nice and connecting with people you havent seen for a while who actually pop up on there.'

Also representing the Hollywood set were actress Elizabeth Olsen, Emma Roberts and Kate Mara, who had specially travelled to the UK for the show.

Model behaviour: Supermodel Eva Herzigova looked striking in a floor-length blue and white stripped gown with sheer overlay

Blue-tiful: Eva sheathed her fantastic figure in swathes of billowing baby blue and cream chiffon whilst she elongated her frame in silver courts

Loved-up: Eva looked happy and content with her beau Gregorio Marsiaj, resting lovingly on his shoulder

Date night: The supermodel brought her Italian businessman husband Gregorio Marsiaj

Coveted spot: Kate sat in the front row next to Canadian singer The Weeknd, who was supporting his model girlfriend Bella Hadid, who was appearing on the catwalk

Fantastic Four star Kate, who is dating English actor Jamie Bell, showed off her legs in an unusual sequinned and lace mini dress, with her short hair styled in cute plaits.

Avengers actress Elizabeth, 27, went for a similar style in a baby blue sequined dress, which she teamed with a pair of simple black pumps and clutch bag.

Meanwhile, Scream Queens star Emma kept it simple in a navy off-the-shoulder mini dress, which she paired with some star-patterned heels with ankle straps and a silver handbag.

So give me the goss on Bella? Kate looked happy chatting to the singer as they waited for the show to start

Splash of colour: Former Bond girl Olga Kurylenko went for a simple black dress, brightening up her look with an orange bag and metallic heels, while Yasmin Le Bon toughened up her look with a leather jacket and carried a bright yellow clutch

Supermodel Eva Herzigova looked striking in a floor-length blue and white stripped gown with sheer overlay, with her blonde hair styled in an old school Hollywood glamour look.

While many of the celebrity guests were wearing sequinned and lace pieces from the Dior range, some of the stars went for more muted black palettes.

Former Bond girl Olga Kurylenko wore a simple black dress with scoop neck, giving her ensemble a splash of colour with a mini orange handbag and metallic heels.

Suits up: Actress Gemma Arterton (left) looked sleek in a green co-ord and tan heels, while model Erin O'Connor (right) wore a pair of black trousers and striped sequin top

Famous offspring: Lady Kitty Spencer - niece of the late Princess Diana, looked lovely in an unusual black, white and red dress, while actress Riley Keough swamped her frame in a blue maxi dress and red duster coat

Sassy in sequins: Vinyl star Juno Temple dazzled in multi-coloured sequins and black lace, while TV presenter Alexa Chung opted for a bold multi-layered black, nude and orange sequinned mini and boots

Pale is interesting: Model Arizona Muse wore a flirty satin skater dress (left), while Bianca Jagger went for a pale colour palette

Meanwhile, model Yasmin Le Bon went for a rockier vibe in a leather jacket over a floor-length sheer number and carried a bold yellow clutch with embellishments.

Olga was in good company with fellow Bond girl and her Quantum Of Solace co-star Gemma Arterton, who went for a green co-ord set.

Representing the aristocracy was Lady Kitty Spencer - daughter of Earl Spencer and niece of the late Diana, Princess Of Wales - in a black, red and cream dress.

Catwalking: American model Bella Hadid was one of the more famous faces to showcase the new collection

Pump up the volume: Never Let Me Go actress Ella Purnell's slim frame was swamped by her billowing red poppy dress

What a setting: The Avengers actress poses beside a piece of one of the stately home's impressive art collections

Glitz and glamour: Elena Perminova dazzled in a black plunging top that she teamed with a sparkling silver hued skirt and suede court heels

Blenheim Palace has a long history with the fashion house as Christian Dior was invited to present his couture by then then-Duchess of Marlborough in 1954.

The late Princess Margaret was among the guests who watched models showcase over 100 pieces from Dior's winter collection in the setting of the 18th century stately home.

A further Dior fashion show took place at Blenheim in 1958, a year after Christian died of a heart attack while holidaying in Italy.

Fashion talks: (L-R) Ella, Sai Bennett, Alexa, Stella Tennant and Erin

Prime position: Eva and Juno take their seats ready to check out the Cruise 2016/2017 presentation

Mingling: English actress Gemma looked like she was enjoying catching up with Kate on the F-ROW

English rose: Kate showed off the full effect of her stunning dress

Family legacy: Blenheim's owner Lord Edward Spencer-Churchill, Kimberley Hammerstroem, Eva, Gregorio and Lady Alexandra Spencer-Churchill

Back in black: Mad Men star Kiernan Shipka looked lovely in a pair of tailored black trousers that she teamed with a satin top which featured a bedazzled peplum hem adding another chic element to her ensemble

Crammed in: The stars were tightly packed into the front row as they checked out the new collection

Lovely ladies: Gemma Arterton, Riley Keough and Emma Roberts turned heads in their colourful ensembles

Going hell for leather: Peter Marino rocked a biker look in head to toe leather whilst Yasmin Le Bon kept things more simple in a fitted jacket

Moving in royal circles: Lady Kitty talks to Lady Amelia Windsor - granddaughter of the Queen's cousin, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent

Colourful: Ella, Alexa and Erin certainly went for very different looks for the show

Three of a kind: (L-R) : Iman Perez, Amelia Windsor and Daria Strokous dazzled in their chic and tailored ensembles

All aboard! Arizona Muse acted as conductor for the day as she donned a captain's hat to pretend she was driving a train

Wowing in white! The model dazzled in a cream dress that nipped in at her tiny waist before flaring out in a flattering full skirt

Model moment: Arizona Muse, Olga Kurylenko, Elena Perminova and Daria Strokous all seemed in good spirits as they tried on the hat

Cruising: Elizabeth Olsen seemed in good spirits as she enjoyed a glass of bubbly on the train

All aboard! Daria Strokous seemed to be getting into the swing of things as she donned the conductor's hat

Sitting pretty! Susie Bubble, Princess Elisabeth von Thurn and Sabine Getty dazzled as they took to their seats

Making an entrance: Jamie Campbell Bower showed up in a tailored navy coat and fitted suit as he headed into the bash

Arriving in style: Fleets of luxury vehicles lined the entrance as the celebrities arrived in their droves

Packed to the rafters: A host of fashionistas had made the journey out to Oxfordshire to watch the show in its striking setting

The models were given an extra long catwalk in one of the grandest rooms in the stately home

History repeating: French designer Christian Dior previously hosted a fashion show at Blenheim Palace in 1954, which was attended by the late Princess Margaret

Colourful: The models take a final walk down the carpet at the climax of the show
She was in Italy to attend the wedding of her close friend Laura Simpson, according to People.

But ahead of the nuptials at the Borgo Stomennano Hotel in Tuscany, Italy, Jennifer Lawrence was spotted enjoying a bit of sightseeing with friends in Monteriggioni on Friday.

She was spotted alongside friend Aziz Ansari, 33, his brother Aniz, and a few other companions as they strolled through the picturesque town.

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Away from the limelight: Jennifer Lawrence took a break from X-Men press over the weekend as she went sightseeing in Monteriggioni, Italy ahead of her friend Laura Simpson's wedding

In good company: The actress explored the picturesque town along with friend Aziz Ansari and his brother, as well as a few others

Jennifer wore a flattering, patterned sundress which featured a low-cut V-neck front and short sleeves.

It cinched in at the Oscar winner's stomach to highlight her trim figure, but also featured a loose-fitting, billowy top.

The skirt of the stylish dress ended with a trendy, red geometric pattern, and Jennifer coupled it with a pair of peep toe, black leather sandals.

See Jennifer Lawrence updates as she looks chic sightseeing in Italy with Aziz Ansari

Laid-back: Jennifer looked stylish in a short-sleeved, patterned dress with featured a form-fitting skirt that highlighted her toned stomach

Hat's off to her: The blonde beauty accessorized her look with a stylish, wide-brimmed grey hat as well as a pair of round-framed sunglasses

She covered up her choppy, bleached blonde tresses - which were styled straight - with a wide-brimmed, grey hat.

The Hunger Games star hid her eyes behind a pair of gold, round-framed sunglasses, and kept her make-up simple.

She carried a large, black leather clutch, and looked to be in good spirits while sightseeing with friends.

Low-key: Jennifer was joined by friend and Master of None star Aziz who looked laid-back in a maroon, short-sleeved T-shirt, navy blue trousers, and tan shoes

Coordinating: The Oscar winner dressed up her look with a pair of black leather peep toe sandals, and carried a large, black leather clutch

Jennifer was joined by good friend and Master of None star Aziz, who dressed casually in a maroon, short-sleeved shirt and navy blue trousers.

The Parks and Recreation alum coupled those with a pair of tan boots, hiding his eyes behind a pair of trendy, black sunglasses.

The pair were both in Italy to attend Laura's wedding, a friend Jennifer has known for almost ten years.

Look at this! The star and one of her friends seemed intrigued by something on her phone as they walked through the scenic town

What a view! Jennifer and her crew were surrounded by idyllic views as they walked through Monteriggioni, Italy

The actress even brought her as her date to the 2014 Oscars, making headlines as she used her for support after tripping on the red carpet.

And the celebration comes as a reprieve for Jennifer, who has been busy promoting X-Men: Apocalypse, which hit theaters Friday.

She reprises her role as Raven/Mystique in the film, which also stars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Nicholas Hoult, and Game of Thrones' Sophie Turner.

Quick change: The actress later showed off her platinum blonde tresses as she enjoyed a drink with a friend during her Italian getaway
This model still has a little way to go until she meets her little boy but she is really enjoying the pregnancy process.

On Tuesday, Candice Swanepoel shared a stunning photograph of her changing shape.

Posting the image to Instagram, the 27-year-old Victoria's Secret model proudly held her hand above her exposed bump as she posed somewhere in Upstate New York.

Magical moment: Candice Swanepoel shared a stunning photograph of her changing pregnancy shape as she traveled in Upstate New York on Tuesday

The catwalk star captioned the sepia image: 'The magical business of making a new life.'

And the image certainly had a magical feel to it too, with the blonde beauty looking like a wood nymph.

In the photograph, Candice is wearing a long flowing white skirt by Meadow with a cropped gypsy top and no bra.

The outfit was perfect for showing off her baby bump which suggested she was far more pregnant than she actually is.

My Not so little boy  A photo posted by Candice Swanepoel (@angelcandices) on May 17, 2016 at 9:44am PDT

Baby on board: The 27-year-old model (pictured earlier this month) is only around five months along so hashtaged the photograph 'halfway'

Candice tagged the picture with '#halfway' meaning she is around five months along.

The model has revealed previously that she is expecting a little boy with her fiance, Brazilian male model, Hermann Nicoli, 33.

The supermodel and Hermann met in Paris when she was only 17 and the couple got engaged last August.
She's known for her quirky fashion choices.

And Alexa Chung displayed her idiosyncratic fashion credentials again as she attended the Christian Dior Cruise show at Blenheim Palace on Tuesday.

The 32-year-old model stunned in a Dior creation comprising an intricately patterned skirt and an orange and black sequinned top.

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Quirky: Alexa Chung displayed her idiosyncratic fashion credentials as she attended the Christian Dior Cruise show at Blenheim Palace on Tuesday

She completed her offbeat look with a pair of black patent leather boots, showing off her long toned legs.

Her long brunette tresses were worn in a relaxed tousled style and pulled back to highlight her stud earrings and flawless complexion.

Alexa appeared in high spirits at the fashion show at the grand stately home and was happy to pose for pictures.

Elegant: The 32-year-old model stunned in a Dior creation comprising an intricately patterned skirt and an orange and black sequinned top

Last week, the model was guest of honour at Canadian fashion designer Erdem Moraliouglu's dinner party in Venice.

Meanwhile, Kate Beckinsale was also at Blenheim, looking radiant in a fun, black and white cutaway dress and a pair of towering Christian Louboutin heels.

Other stars representing the Hollywood set at the show were actresses Elizabeth Olsen and Kate Mara, who had specially travelled to the UK for the show.

Fashion talks: (L-R) Ella Purnell, Sai Bennett, Alexa, Stella Tennant and Erin O'Connor

Coveted spot: Alexa had a prime position on the front row for the show

Blenheim Palace has a long history with the fashion house as Christian Dior was invited to present his couture by the then Duchess of Marlborough in 1954.

Princess Margaret was among the guests who watched models showcase over 100 pieces from Dior's winter collection in the setting of the 18th century stately home.

A further Dior fashion show took place at Blenheim in 1958, a year after Christian died of a heart attack while holidaying in Italy.

Talented trio: Alexa was joined by teen actress Ella and veteran model Erin on the F-ROW

Fashion royalty: Hollywood star Kate Beckinsale, who showed off a hint of flesh in a fun, black and white cutaway dress, as she arrive at the Christian Dior Cruise 2016/2017 show

Hollywood glamour: Kate Mara (left) showed off her legs in an unusual sequinned and lace mini dress, while Elizabeth Olsen went for a similar hemline in a baby blue number




She's known for her simple understated style.

But Kate Mara pulled out all the stops as she attended the star-studded Dior show at the historic Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire on Tuesday.

The 33-year-old actress turned heads in a glitzy lace and sequin mini-dress, which featured a pretty beaded blue hemline, before changing her look for the afterparty.

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Glitz and glamour: Kate Mara pulled out all the stops as she attended the star-studded Christian Dior show at the historic Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire on Tuesday

True blue: Kate switched her dazzling sequin dress for chic blue number under a Smythe blazer at the Dior Cruise afterparty at Loulou's London

The House Of Cards star wore her brunette hair tucked into the nape of her neck, sporting an intricate french braid on one side.

Keeping her make-up simple, the star showed off her luminous complexion, sporting a pink lip and smokey eyes.

Kate accessorised her white and silver dress with a matching box clutch and black pumps featuring a silver heel and opted for delicate ear cuffs and a selection of slim rings.

Later on, she went all out to make a statement by switching up her outfit for another show-stopper for the Dior Cruise afterparty.

Dressing up: The 33-year-old actress turned heads in a glitzy lace and sequin mini-dress with a beaded blue border

Glam squad: The House of Cards star wore her brunette hair tied up at the nape of her neck, sporting an intricate french braid style as she posed alongside actress Gemma Arterton

She swapped her glitzy lace and sequin mini-dress she wore at the fashion show earlier, for a chic blue high-necked mini dress at the afterparty at Loulou's London.

Kate looked stylish in her blue minidress which featured a Victoriana high neck with intricate white and blue detailing.

She showed off her toned legs in her flirty ensemble which she wore with a pair of futuristic style silver pumps.

A smart black Tuxedo jacket by Smythe was thrown over her shoulders to smarten up her outfit further.

Take two: The brunette beauty put her best foot forward in a pair of silver pumps as she stepped out later that evening

On Monday, she attended the Lady Dior party hosted by DIOR in London alongside Kate Beckinsale, Emma Roberts and Mad Men star Kiernan Shipka.

In keeping with her signature understated style, Kate looked chic in a monochrome ensemble.

The actress donned a thigh-grazing white mini dress, teaming it with a crisp black blazer and matching tights.

Showing that she's a low-maintenance kind of girl, Kate completed her outfit with a pair of shiny black flat brogues and her favourite boxy clutch bag.

The sister of Rooney Mara is currently dating English actor Jamie Bell, after they met on set of Fantastic Four in 2015, although he was not present at the Dior show.

Signature style: On Monday she attended the Lady Dior party hosted by DIOR in London, donning a thigh-grazing white mini dress and teamed it with a crisp black blazer and black tights

Power couple: Kate is currently dating English actor Jamie Bell, after they met on set of Fantastic Four in 2015, although he was not present at the Dior show

Blenheim Palace has a long history with the fashion house as Christian Dior was invited to present his couture by then then-Duchess of Marlborough in 1954.

Princess Margaret was among the guests who watched models showcase over 100 pieces from Dior's winter collection in the setting of the 18th century stately home.

A further Dior fashion show took place at Blenheim in 1958, a year after Christian died of a heart attack while holidaying in Italy.
She stars as the leading lady in the latest film by acclaimed director Nicolas Winding Refn.

And Elle Fanning, 18, certainly looked every inch the star for The Neon Demon UK premiere at London's Picturehouse Central on Tuesday night.

The actress put on a dazzling display in a glamorous sheer Elie Saab gown with jewel-encrusted detailing for the occasion, perfectly complementing the lavish surroundings.

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Dazzling: Elle Fanning, 18, certainly looked every inch the star for The Neon Demon UK premiere at London's Picturehouse Central on Tuesday night

While the psychological-thriller may be filled with dark undertones, there was nothing but joy on the night of the premiere with Elle flashing a brilliant smile.

The starlet wore her sleek golden tresses in a neat side-parting with her locks resting on her shoulders.

Elle applied a touch of rosy colour to her cheeks and a slick of glossy lipstick to ensure she looked glamorous from head to toe.

Leading lady: The actress put on a dazzling display in a glamorous sheer gown with jewel-encrusted detailing for the occasion, perfectly complementing the lavish surroundings

Star attraction: While the psychological-thriller may be filled with dark undertones, there was nothing but joy on the night of the premiere with Elle flashing a brilliant smile

Class act: The starlet wore her sleek golden tresses in a neat side-parting with her locks resting on her shoulders

Creative forces: She was joined by the film's Danish director Nicols Winding Refn for a snap beside the railings

Strike a pose: She twirled for the cameras to reveal her gown's plunging back

Acclaimed: The controversial film, which also stars Christina Hendricks and Keanu Reeves, received its debut at the 69th Cannes International Film Festival earlier this month

She twirled for the cameras to reveal her gown's plunging back and was joined by a suited and booted Refn for a snap beside the railings.

Joining Elle at the glitzy premiere were Billie JD Porter, Camilla Elphick and Joe Alwyn.

Danish director Refn has described The Neon Demon as allowing him 'to be reborn as a 16-year-old girl.'

Pulling no punches: Refn has described The Neon Demon as allowing him 'to be reborn as a 16-year-old girl'

Classy: Camilla Elphick looked chic in a patterned white top tucked into a high-waisted navy skirt

He told Deadline: 'I believe theres a 16-year-old girl in every man, and in my situation certainly I felt it was time to make a film about my version of it.

'I wasnt born beautiful, but my wife is and I have very beautiful kids, so I thought it could be interesting to make a film about what it was like being beautiful and the world that you walk into, which is a very obsessive world.

'Its a stock that continues to go up and even in our mythology, we define masculinity with strength and beauty with power.'

Eye-catching: Billie JD Porter rocked a monochrome ensemble made up of stars

The controversial film, which also stars Christina Hendricks and Keanu Reeves, received its debut at the 69th Cannes International Film Festival earlier this month, and critics openly booed with some even leaving the screening due its graphic nature.

According to IMDB, Elle plays 'Jesse, an aspiring model who moves to Los Angeles where her youth and vitality are devoured by a group of beauty-obsessed women who will do whatever it takes to get what she has.'

It's the third consecutive film directed by the Danish 45-year-old to compete for the festival's Palme d'Or prize after Only God Forgives and Drive.
She's starred in the highest-grossing film of the year so far.

And Elizabeth Olsen, 27, lent her Hollywood might to Christian Dior's lavish Cruise Collection fashion show at the historic Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire on Tuesday.

The Captain America: Civil War star sported a frock worthy of such a fashion-centric event with its eye-catching detailing ensuring the beauty stood out from the crowd.

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Stunning: Elizabeth Olsen, 27, lent her Hollywood might to Christian Dior's lavish Cruise Collection fashion show at the historic Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire on Tuesday

Her bejewelled short sleeves added a touch of colour to her look, while the white lace detailing of the main body looked elegant.

The thigh-skimming number was finished off with a black and white teardrop piece with small cutouts teasing a glimpse of flesh.

Elizabeth complemented the dress with a pair of modest black heels and a matching clutch. Her wavy golden locks fell freely from a middle parting and she sported a classy application of make-up.

A vision of beauty: Her bejewelled short sleeves added a touch of colour to her look while the white lace detailing of the main body looked elegant

Glowing: Her wavy golden locks fell freely from a middle parting and she sported a classy application of make-up

She flashed a gorgeous smile as she posed in the historic venue's corridors, seemingly impressed with the period artwork on the walls.

The American joined English actress Juno Temple, 26, inside the palace. The Other Boleyn Girl actress wore a pretty floral frock with a similar chest piece design to Elizabeth.

The venue, Blenheim Palace has a long history with the fashion house as Christian Dior was invited to present his couture by then then-Duchess of Marlborough in 1954.

Happy! She flashed a gorgeous smile as she posed in the historic venue's corridors, seemingly impressed with theperiod artwork on the walls

Princess Margaret was among the guests who watched models showcase over 100 pieces from Dior's winter collection in the setting of the 18th century stately home.

A further Dior fashion show took place at Blenheim in 1958, a year after Christian died of a heart attack while holidaying in Italy.

Leading the way on the catwalk was the newly announced face of Dior Beauty Bella Hadid, 19.

Gal pals: The American joined English actress Juno Temple, 26, inside the palace. The Other Boleyn Girl actress wore a pretty floral frock with a similar chest piece design to Elizabeth

She was dressed in a floral skirt and a caped black blouse that featured clusters of sequins and puffball sleeves.

Bella also made skyscraper heels look like light work on the carpet catwalk, delivering her signature walk in pretty lace-up footwear.

And before she hit the runway, she posted on Instagram: 'What a dream come true,' she added. 'Can't wait for the show today at Blenheim Palace  @dior #happiness #cruise.'

Made up: With dark eye make-up, the brunette was almost unrecognisable
He is best known as Dr Frasier Crane in the hit sitcoms Cheers and Frasier.

But Kelsey Grammer looked more English gent - like his latest on-screen character Sir Charles Bunbury in Breaking The Bank - on Tuesday as he attended the film's premiere in London.

The 61-year-old actor sported a dapper navy blazer over a crisp blue shirt and a pair of smart black trousers.

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Dapper: Kelsey Grammer looked more like his latest on screen character Sir Charles Bunbury in Breaking The Bank on Tuesday as he attended the film's premiere in London

He completed his polished outfit with a pair of formal black patent leather shoes, which complemented his pressed slacks.

Kelsey was joined for the premiere at Leicester Square's Empire by his co star Tamsin Greig, who plays Sir Charles's wife Penelope in the comedy.

The Episodes actress looked elegant in a pale blue floor length gown and accessorised with a sparkling silver clutch and a matching bangle.

Her dress was embellished with shimmering sparkling details that complemented her bag and covered her decolletage.

All smiles: The 61-year-old actor sported a dapper navy blazer over a crisp blue shirt and a pair of smart black trousers

Stunning: Kelsey's wife Kayte Walsh also turned up to support her husband and wowed in a plunging black dress

Imagine seeing you here! Kelsey was joined for the premiere by his co star Tamsin Greig, who plays Sir Charles's wife Penelope in the comedy, at Leicester Square's Empire

Kelsey's wife Kayte Walsh also turned up to support her husband and wowed in a plunging black dress.

Adding some star dust to the proceedings was Queen guitarist Brian May who rocked a dressed down look of a dark black coat and white Adidas trainers.

He was in high spirits and posed for pictures with his actress wife Anita Dobson of EastEnders fame.

Smart: Kelsey completed his polished outfit with a pair of formal black patent leather shoes, which complemented his pressed slacks

Classy: The Episodes actress looked elegant in a pale blue floor length gown and accessorised with a sparkling silver clutch and a matching bangle

Glamorous pair: Adding some star dust to the proceedings was Queen guitarist Brian May

Anita looked smart in an all black ensemble comprising a knee length coat, suede boots and and an off the shoulder bag - she added a grey scarf for a splash of colour.

Breaking The Bank sees ruthless US and Japanese banks trying to take over Tuftons - a beleaguered two hundred-year-old British banking house run by Kelsey's character, Sir Charles.

It will hit screens from June 3.

Happy: The stars were joined by Sonya Cassidy who plays Annabel in the new film

Famous faces: Kelsey and his co-stars were laughed and were happy to pose for pictures on the red carpet

Surprise! The trio looked momentarily startled as the were snapped before the premiere got underway
They were once united on the big screen for 2008's Quantum Of Solace.

But on Tuesday night, fashion brought Bond Girls Gemma Arterton and Olga Kurylenko back together as they both attended the Dior Cruise Show 2017 held at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire.

High glamour was the order of the day and the brunettes certainly delivered, in matching metallic heels and plunging numbers.

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Bond of brothers: Bond Girls Gemma Arterton (left) and Olga Kurylenko (right) were reunited on Tuesday night as they turned out for the Dior Cruise Show 2017

English rose Gemma plumped for a feminine spin on tailoring in an ivy-coloured trouser suit with featured a peplum top.

In a 1940s-military fashion, the top had large chest pockets and a wide collar, while the legs were wide at the ankles.

She relied on her effortless beauty and left her long bob glossy in curls and a natural-looking pink shade on her lips.

Looking lithe: She looked gorgeous in glittering heels to offset her military green ensemble

Natural: She relied on her natural beauty with minimal make-up to dress up her look

Dressed up: She joined the guests inside Blenheim Palace on Tuesday night

Ladylike look: Her outfit was military-inspired with a peplum top updating the image

Her female counterpart made the most of colour accents to set off a little black dress, cleverly accessorising with bright orange.

The devil was in the detail when it came to her knee-length number, since it featured a keyhole back and embroidery across her shoulders instead of the front.

Olga also capped off the sophisticated image with a tangerine lipstick, sealing her status as a front row fashion queen.

Devil is in the detail: Olga wore her pattern in the back of her little black dress

Colour pop: With a tangerine lipstick and an orange handbag, she offset the look with bursts of colour

Colour clash: On her feet, the actress wore metallic blue shoes that divided up the image

Better known for their acting flair, the duo famously shared the big screen eight years ago, alongside 007 Daniel Craig.

Made In Dagenham actress Gemma played Strawberry Fields, while French beauty Olga portrayed Camille.

As her next project, it was announced at Cannes Film Festival that Olga is joining the cast of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.

Meanwhile Gemma is currently starring as Nell Gwynn on the West End stage, at the Apollo Theatre in London.

Photogenic: English rose Gemma cut a sophisticated figure as she posed for pictures

Elegant: Gemma oozed elegance in her tailored and structured ensemble

Front row queen: On the front row, she stood out as one of the best dressed

With the fashionistas: Joining a fashion crowd, Gemma lent star power to the event

In the fashion set: She would be one of the guests eager to see Dior's Cruise collection

Front row fan: The stage star is currently appearing in a West End show

Actresses: She sat beside American actress Kate Mara (right)

Glamorous: Gemma looked equally as chic as she headed into the afterparty wearing a large camel coat over her khaki ensemble that complemented her tan heels
Her ex-boyfriend Jake Hall was allegedly stabbed in a Marbella club in the early hours of Monday morning.

But hours before the incident, Chloe Lewis, 25, stepped out in the popular Spanish resort for a night with a gal pal looking happy and carefree.

The Essex native was all smiles as she sauntered through the warm Mediterranean night in a plunging pale blue playsuit with two delicate clasps securing her modesty.

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Stepping out: Chloe Lewis, 25, stepped out in Marbella on Sunday night in pretty pale blue playsuit hours before her ex-boyfriend Jake Hall was allegedly attacked in the city's Aqwa Mist club

The TOWIE star sported an enviable tan while her toned pins looked in fine shape as she walked in her strappy beige heels.

She accessorised with a quilted cream clutch, a dainty choker and large hoop earrings for her night on the town.

Her brunette tresses were full of volume as the result of some expert back combing, and she emanated a radiant glow with glossy pink lipstick enhancing her plump lips.

Toned and tanned: The Essex native was all smiles as she sauntered through the warm Mediterranean night in a plunging pale blue playsuit with two delicate clasps securing her modesty

Gal pals: Chloe happily posed with her glamorous pal for the cameras before they headed off with their arms around one another

Sartorially in sync: Chloe accessorised with a quilted cream clutch, a dainty choker and large hoop earrings for her night on the town

Chloe happily posed with her glamorous pal for the cameras before they headed off with their arms around one another.

Later that night, Jake was rushed to hospital following an altercation at the Aqwa Mist club at 3.25am.

A spokesman for a local emergency services confirmed police and paramedics had been called to a nightspot in Puerto Banus at 3.25am on Monday to reports a man had been attacked with a bottle.

Shocking: Chloe's ex-boyfriend Jake Hall (pictured last year) was allegedly stabbed in a Marbella club in the early hours of Monday Morning

Dressed to impress: Her brunette tresses were full of volume as the result of some expert back combing and she emanated a radiant glow with glossy pink lipstick enhancing her plump lips

She said that when ambulance workers arrived the victim had already been taken to the Costa del Sol hospital nearby where he was placed in intensive care.

A spokesman for the reality TV star told MailOnline: 'We can confirm that Jake is currently receiving hospital treatment.

'He is stable and hoping for a speedy recovery but has requested privacy at this time.'Hospital sources said he was in intensive care, but could not immediately say why and could not comment on reports that his kidney was at risk.



Officers from a unit specialising in investigating violent crime were asked to take a statement from him after doctors said he was well enough to be questioned.

A representative for Chloe declined to comment on the story.
He's been busy filming for his latest film Fifty Shades Darker this week.

But that didn't stop Jamie Dornan spending some quality time with his wife Amelia Warner as they enjoyed a date night in Vancouver on Tuesday.

The 33-year-old actor rocked a stylish casual look with a pair of grey jeans teamed with a white T-shirt and finished off with a pair of on trend matching trainers.

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Loving husband: A busy filming schedule didn't stop Jamie Dornan spending some quality time with his wife Amelia Warner as they enjoyed a date night in Vancouver on Tuesday

He carried his dark jacket by his side on the warm evening and accessorised with an understated watch and a pair of brown sunglasses.

Amelia wore a dark red summer dress with matching sandals and also clutched her light denim jacket.

Completing her outfit she added a black quilted leather bag on a gold chain and a similar pair of glasses to her husband's.

The couple appeared in high spirits and smiled as they walked through the Canadian city where filming is underway for Jamie's latest movie.

Cute couple: The 33-year-old actor rocked a stylish casual look with a pair of grey jeans teamed with a white T-shirt and finished off with a pair of on trend matching trainers

Relaxed: Amelia wore a dark red summer dress with matching sandals and also clutched her light denim jacket

On Monday, the star was seen on set with cast and crew members filming an important interior scene.

Rita Ora, 25, was spotted in costume and was joined by Dakota Johnson, 26, to shoot scenes for the erotic drama.

Jamie looked dapper in a white shirt and dark tie as he emerged from a black vehicle.

The hunky actor also showed off his impressive gym-honed arms while wearing a smart navy polo shirt.

Busy filming: On Monday the star was seen on set with cast and crew members filming an important interior scene
Single Mums On Benefits (ITV)

Rating:

Party Pensioners: Sex, Drugs And Bingo (C5).

Rating:

After the debacle of Top Gears relaunch with Chris Evans at the weekend, you can expect a frenzy of efforts to shore up the show  F1 drivers dropping by, budget splurges on foreign jaunts, fanfare visits from Matt LeBlancs Hollywood friends . . .or even his Friends.

One thing you wont see is former M&S model Myleene Klass as the glamorous new presenter. She proved in Single Mums On Benefits (ITV) that she cant master the crucial Top Gear technique of talking while changing gear  in fact, she can barely drive at all.

Shameless: Myleene met Birmingham mother-of-eight Marie, who is bringing up her brood at the publics expense, in her documentary Single Mums on Benefits

Myleene also interviewed Rhiannon during the documentary but they were vaguely uninformative

Lurching through morning traffic while she interviewed Welsh mother-of-three Rhiannon, Myleene was waving her hands around, and looking anywhere but the road.

She seemed to drift out of her lane as another driver drew alongside, horn blazing.

Myleene held up her hands to apologise, tried to wave to the car behind as well, and appeared to blunder straight over a junction. This one-off documentary was trying to change our preconceptions about single mothers, but it didnt do much for stereotypes about women drivers.

It certainly didnt alter anybodys ideas about Myleene Klass. She opened with some home video of her and her two daughters  Myleene in a bikini in the paddling pool, Myleene swimming in a bikini, Myleene sun-bathing in a bikini. Shes mostly famous, if you havent guessed, for wearing a bikini on a reality show.

SMART HOMES OF THE WEEK The gay dads on In The Club (BBC1) live in a converted loft with a 1,500 fridge thats painted to look like modern art. Divorced father Ray has marble walls and scatter cushions galore. These characters might be hopeless parents, but theyre great at interior design.

After every ad break, we saw her being a celebrity supermum, at work or at home. She had a little cry about how tough life could be, but made it plain that no broken marriages were going to hold her back. The subtext was: if Myleene can be this wonderful, why cant every mum?

In fact, as a spot-check in a shopping precinct revealed, a great many can. Just about every woman Myleene stopped was either a single mum, or the daughter of one.

But if Myleene had taken their word for it, she wouldnt have had a show, so she set off to meet someone who was a shamelessly Bad Mum  Birmingham mother-of-eight Marie, who is bringing up her brood at the publics expense.

Benefits is a very easy option, Marie declared. You have your baby and send off the form. Maries great fear is that Government cuts mean the free money will dry up, and then her grandchildren wont have anything to live on. Its reassuring to know that even feckless scroungers worry about the future.

Party Pensioners: Sex, Drugs And Bingo showed women hoping to become a celebrity sex object in their old age

We learned nothing about what possessed this unmarried woman to have so many children. Myleenes idea of a tough question was: Is this your youngest?

She was just as gentle with the teenage mums, and the IVF mother who had gone-it-alone in her 30s. Their interviews were vaguely uninformative. But we did discover that Myleene is very good at plaiting little girls hair, so that was lovely.

Being a supermum is a doddle, compared to becoming a celebrity sex object in your 60s, as fame-hungry Jane Buckle, 62, was finding out on Party Pensioners: Sex, Drugs And Bingo (C5).

Janes ambition was to be as famous as Beyonce, the most famous person on the planet, by doing erotic dances and rapping in the pubs around Hungerford, Berkshire. So far, this plan was not working too well, despite the routine with the whip and the rubber snake.

Being a wannabe is a hard life, she pouted, before posing for the cameras with her ankles wrapped round the back of her head.

But there was hope. Stripper Lynn was 20 years older than Jane, and getting work as a burlesque performer in Londons gay clubs. With a fluffy bunny tail on her bottom and not much else, she whirled her tassels at the boys  the act went down a storm.
Hardliner Lieberman sworn in as Israel defence minister

Israeli ultra-nationalist Avigdor Lieberman assured he supported the creation of a Palestinian state after being sworn in as defence minister despite outrage over his appointment to the powerful post.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's choice of the hardline Lieberman to head the defence ministry has caused alarm among moderates in Israel and has been openly questioned by the United States.

His nomination was approved by the 120-seat Knesset, or parliament, by a vote of 55-43 with one abstention. Twenty-one lawmakers were absent for the ballot.

Former Israeli foreign minister and ultra-nationalist MP Avigdor Lieberman is seen during a session of the Israeli parliament on May 30, 2016 Menahem Kahana (AFP)

In a speech after taking office, the 57-year-old former foreign minister and ultra-nationalist who heads the Yisrael Beitenu party sought to calm fears his appointment will add to unrest in the region.

"I listened to everything you [the Prime Minister] said and I absolutely agree with every word, including two states for two peoples," he said.

He also praised Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's recent proposal to revive stalled peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, saying it had "created a genuine opportunity".

"We must try to pick up the gauntlet," he said, referring to the Arab Peace Initiative, which he said had "some very, very positive elements".

Netanyahu -- who has been accused of forming the most right-wing government in Israeli history -- was forced to resolve a last-minute dispute with another party in order to bring Yisrael Beitenu into his coalition.

The Knesset vote gives him a 66-seat majority in the assembly.

Speaking alongside Lieberman after the vote, Netanyahu also referred to "positive elements" in the Arab League's peace initiative of 2002, which was relaunched in 2007. The plan offers Israel the recognition of Arab nations if it withdraws from the Palestinian territories.

"We are willing to negotiate with the Arab states revisions to that initiative so that it reflects the dramatic changes in the region since 2002, but maintains the agreed goal of two states for two peoples," Netanyahu said.

- US raises 'legitimate questions' -

Netanyahu's pact with Yisrael Beitenu, which also gave the nationalist party control of the ministry of immigrant absorption, drew criticism both inside Israel and abroad.

Lieberman has pledged harsh measures against Palestinian "terrorists" in the past, and pushed for the expansion of settlements in the West Bank.

He has however promised to act in a "responsible" manner while in office.

The United States said the new coalition raised "legitimate questions" about the commitment of Netanyahu's government to a two-state solution with the Palestinians.

In the wake of the agreement, Environment Minister Avi Gabbay of the centre-right Kulanu party announced his resignation, saying: "I do not think it is right... to form an extremist government."

Lieberman's predecessor Moshe Yaalon, from Netanyahu's Likud party, resigned as defence minister on May 20, warning of a rising tide of extremism in Likud.

Netanyahu's bid to expand his coalition also reopened other fissures in his government, including with the religious nationalist party Jewish Home party.

On Sunday evening, he reached a compromise with Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett on the latter's demand for the creation of a military liaison position in the government's security cabinet.

Bennett says such a post is needed to avoid security cabinet members being kept in the dark about important developments.

Under the compromise brokered by Health Minister Yaakov Litzman of the United Torah Judaism alliance of ultra-Orthodox parties, security cabinet members will receive frequent personal briefings from the National Security Council as an interim measure.

While some analysts say such a change is needed, Bennett's demand is also seen by some as manoeuvring ahead of the next general election, which is due by 2019 at the latest.

Bennett is widely seen as aspiring to replace Netanyahu.

Israeli soldiers patrol a street in the northern West Bank village of Salem, east of Nablus, during an operation to arrest wanted Palestinians early on May 30, 2016 Jaafar Ashtiyeh (AFP)

Newly-appointed Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman (C), the head of hardline nationalist party Yisrael Beitenu, is congratulated by MPs after he was sworn in during a Knesset session on May 30, 2016, in Jerusalem Menahem Kahana (AFP)
North Korea missile launch failed, says South Korean military

North Korea apparently failed with an attempted missile launch Tuesday, the latest in a series of setbacks for a ballistic weapons programme that aspires to threaten the US mainland.

South Korea's defence ministry detected the dawn launch effort, which Japan condemned as an unacceptable and "provocative" act.

The ministry declined to speculate on the missile type, but military sources cited by local media said it was a powerful, medium-range "Musudan" that has already undergone three failed launches this year.

The UN bans North Korea from any use of ballistic missile technology, although it regularly fires short-range missiles into the sea off its east coast Ed Jones (AFP/File)

UN resolutions ban North Korea from any use of ballistic missile technology, although it regularly fires short-range missiles into the sea off its east coast.

Tuesday's effort came with tensions still running high on the divided Korean peninsula following the North's fourth nuclear test in January and long-range rocket launch a month later.

"We believe that it was a failure," said Jeon Ha-Gyu, spokesman for the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"As to why and how it failed, we are in the process of analysing that," Jeon told a press briefing.

"We are maintaining a strong defence posture with potential further provocations by the North in mind," he added.

US military officials on "strongly" condemned the failed launch attempt.

"These actions, and North Korea's continued pursuit of ballistic missile and nuclear weapons capabilities, pose a significant threat to the United States, our allies, and to the stability of the greater Asia-Pacific," said the statement from the US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM).

"We call on North Korea to refrain from actions that further raise tensions in the region and focus instead on taking concrete steps toward fulfilling its international commitments."

In April the North failed three times to test-fire a Musudan, which has an estimated range of anywhere between 2,500 and 4,000 kilometres (1,550 to 2,500 miles).

The lower range covers the whole of South Korea and Japan, while the upper range would include US military bases on Guam.

"North Korea's repeated ballistic missile launches are serious, provocative acts against the international community, including Japan," Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida told a regular press briefing.

"We absolutely cannot accept this," Kishida said.

First unveiled as an indigenous missile at a military parade in Pyongyang in October 2010, the Musudan has never been successfully flight-tested.

The three failures in April were seen as an embarrassment for the Pyongyang leadership, coming ahead of a rare ruling party congress in May that was meant to celebrate the country's achievements.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted official sources as saying Tuesday's missile may have exploded on its mobile launcher.

- Dialogue offer -

"The explosion is presumed to have inflicted serious injuries on personnel in the immediate vicinity," Yonhap said.

During the party congress, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un personally extended an offer of military dialogue with the South aimed at easing tensions.

The proposal was repeated several times by the North's military, but Seoul dismissed all the overtures as insincere "posturing" given Kim's vow at the same congress to push ahead with the country's nuclear weapons programme.

Following Tuesday's attempted missile test, the South Korean Foreign Ministry said Pyongyang was wilfully defying the warnings of the international community.

"North Korea will face even stronger sanctions and isolation if it doesn't end its provocations," spokesman Cho June-Hyuck told reporters.

"The government will review necessary countermeasures through talks with our allies," he added.

The UN Security Council imposed its toughest sanctions to date on the North following the January nuclear test.

In recent months, North Korea has claimed a series of technical breakthroughs in developing what it sees as the ultimate goal of its nuclear weapons programme -- an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to targets across the continental United States.

The claimed achievements included miniaturising a nuclear warhead to fit on a missile, developing a warhead that can withstand atmospheric re-entry and building a solid-fuel missile engine.

The North also hailed the successful test of an engine specifically designed for an ICBM that would "guarantee" an eventual nuclear strike on the US mainland.

Outside experts have treated a number of the claims with scepticism, while acknowledging that the North has made significant strides in upgrading its nuclear arsenal.

North Korean missiles Adrian LEUNG, John SAEKI (AFP)

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un personally extended an offer of military dialogue with the South aimed at easing tensions at a party congress KNS (KCNA/AFP)
Pentagon chief heads to Asian summit as nations fret over South China Sea

US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter departed Tuesday for an Asian security summit in Singapore, where Beijing's military expansion across the South China Sea likely will once again dominate discussions.

Regional neighbors are fretting over what they see as China's expansionism as it rushes to exert sovereignty over the waterway, a major global shipping route believed to be home to large oil and gas reserves.

China is using dredgers and other tools to convert low-lying ocean features and sandy blips into military bases.

The guided missile destroyer USS William P. Lawrence transits the Philippine Sea in March MC2 Andrew P. Holmes (Navy Media Content Operations (NMCO)/AFP/File)

A Pentagon report this month said China has added more than 3,200 acres (1,300 hectares) of land to the seven features it occupies in the Spratly Islands archipelago.

The so-called Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual meeting in Singapore, will see defense ministers, military chiefs and defense experts from the Asia-Pacific region and beyond discuss regional security issues.

Aside from the South China Sea, delegates are expected to focus on the growing threat of Islamic terrorism in the region and North Korea's nuclear program.

Since becoming President Barack Obama's fourth Pentagon chief in February 2015, Carter has taken a forceful tone on Beijing's South China Sea construction.

He criticized the drive at last year's Shangri-La meeting and on Friday, Carter said China risks creating a "Great Wall of self-isolation."

"Countries across the region - allies, partners and the unaligned - are voicing concerns publicly and privately at the highest levels," Carter said.

The United States has conducted several "freedom of navigation" operations where it pointedly ignores China's claims of sovereign exclusion zones around the islands by closely flying or sailing past.

Carter's trip will see him first visit an Army base in Arizona.

He had also considered meeting his Japanese counterpart Gen Nakatani during a visit to Japan, but the two decided to meet in Singapore instead, a US defense official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The official said the meeting would have been too politically sensitive, given the furor surrounding the arrest of a former US Marine on Okinawa in connection to the death of a 20-year-old woman who had been missing since late April.

A series of crimes including rapes, assaults and hit-and-run accidents by US military personnel, dependents and civilians have long sparked local protests on the crowded island.

Carter and Obama were quick to condemn the crime and offer "regret."

Carter "made the decision to not visit Japan on this trip given that he and Minister Nakatani are already planning to meet in Singapore as well as other scheduling concerns," Pentagon spokesman Commander Gary Ross said.

While in Singapore, Carter will be joined by senior US military leaders, including Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson and the commander of US Pacific Command, Admiral Harry Harris.
New Zealand backs plain packaging for cigarettes

New Zealand said Tuesday it will introduce plain packaging on tobacco products, joining a growing list of countries planning similar measures despite the threat of legal action from the industry.

The move, which coincides with World No Tobacco Day, means cigarettes must be sold in drab boxes plastered with health warnings and gruesome pictures of smoking-related disease.

Associate Health Minister Sam Lotu-Iiga said the measure targeted one of the most powerful tools used to get young people hooked on tobacco.

New Zealand will introduce plain packaging on tobacco products, selling them in drab boxes plastered with health warnings and gruesome pictures of smoking-related disease Marty Melville (AFP)

"Twelve New Zealanders die prematurely every day from smoking-related illnesses -- each of these deaths is preventable," he said.

New Zealand first proposed plain packaging in 2013, saying it would "remove the last remaining vestige of glamour from these deadly products".

But it was put on hold pending the outcome of tobacco giant Philip Morris' legal action against the Australian government, which pioneered the introduction of plain packets in 2012.

The lawsuit failed last December and since then a number of countries, including Britain and France, have passed legislation on the issue.

Numerous other countries, including Canada, Singapore, Belgium and South Africa have announced plans to follow suit, according to data from the Canadian Cancer Council.

With momentum building, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has made "Get Ready For Plain Packaging" the slogan of this year's World No Tobacco Day.

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key admitted the fact that so many countries were adopting the packing had emboldened his government to ignore the threat of legal action from Big Tobacco.

"They may well take a case against the government, but the advice we have been getting over time now has been that the risks of them being successful... is reducing," he told reporters.

The New Zealand ban is not immediate. There is a two-month consultation, then Lotu-Iiga said recommendations on implementation would go to the government later this year.

British American Tobacco NZ said it remained "strongly opposed" to plain packaging and reserved the right to take legal action.

"BATNZ hopes that the government will review all the evidence and be cautious about progressing a measure that has failed in Australia," it said in a statement.

A study commissioned by the Australian government found tobacco use dropped 14.4 percent in the two years after Canberra's world-first ban was introduced.

The Maori Party, which first proposed plain packaging in New Zealand, said smoking rates among the indigenous population were well above average and the ban was long overdue.

"It is also a message to international tobacco companies that New Zealand will not be intimidated by threats of legal action," co-leader Marama Fox said.
Crocodile safaris urged after Australia attack

An outspoken Australian politician Tuesday called for crocodile-shooting safaris to help control their numbers in the wild, after a woman was taken by one of the feared reptiles while swimming.

As authorities searched for the missing 46-year-old woman off a beach in far north Queensland, independent MP Bob Katter urged authorities to take action against the animals.

Katter said crocodile numbers in northern Queensland state, where the predators have been protected since the 1970s, were "exploding".

Saltwater crocodiles have become more common in northern Australia since they were declared a protected species in 1971 William West (AFP/File)

"I've long called for crocodile culls in Far North Qld and believe crocodile hunting safaris could be a solution," he wrote on his Facebook page.

"Nature has a balance and the balance is completely out of whack. We can put nature back in balance if we have shooting safaris."

The issue raised its head after two women taking a dip in shallow water at Thornton Beach in the Daintree National Park on Sunday night were the victims of a suspected crocodile attack.

One woman felt something brush her leg and then saw her friend dragged away, reportedly crying out: "A croc's got me, a croc's got me!" The woman has not been seen since, despite an extensive search.

Crocodiles are known to haunt the waterways of northern Queensland, and the area near Thornton Beach is a known habitat of the reptile, prompting much debate about the wisdom of a late-night swim.

Grahame Webb, who has worked in crocodile conservation for decades, said some waters were too dangerous to plunge into, no matter how inviting.

"When you're in a national park -- and dangerous animals are part of the attraction -- it just really is misadventure," he told AFP.

"People say, 'Let's just do it, it looks so nice' (but) you just don't swim in those sort of areas."

Crocodiles, he added, "can see perfectly well on a moonlit beach".

Saltwater crocodiles have become more common in northern Australia since they were declared a protected species in 1971. They are estimated to kill an average of two people each year.

Several hundred are culled every year in the Northern Territory, neighbouring Queensland state, to protect the public and livestock.

But the Australian government knocked back the idea of trophy hunts in 2014, with Environment Minister Greg Hunt saying they risked "cruel and inhumane" behaviour.

Webb said there was a need for officials to be "horribly pragmatic" about crocodile management.

"You can't sugarcoat the management of crocs, you've just got to be horribly pragmatic. Crocodiles are the biggest killers of other crocodiles anyway."
Top North Korea official visits China in bid to mend ties

A top North Korean official made a rare visit to China on Tuesday in an apparent attempt by Pyongyang to mend frayed ties with its powerful neighbour.

China is North Korea's largest trading partner and has been its key diplomatic protector for decades. But relations have soured following Pyongyang's internationally-condemned nuclear tests, with Beijing supporting UN sanctions against its isolated neighbour.

The visit by Ri Su Yong, vice chairman of the North's ruling Workers' Party and former foreign minister, came even as South Korea said Tuesday the North had tried and failed to launch a powerful new medium-range missile.

North Korean official Ri Su-yong (C) arrives to meet UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the United Nations in New York last year Kena Betancur (AFP/File)

The attempted launch is the latest in a series of setbacks for a ballistic weapons programme that aspires to threaten the US mainland.

UN resolutions ban North Korea from any use of ballistic missile technology, although it regularly fires short-range missiles into the sea off its east coast.

Ri Su Yong met Chinese official Song Tao, head of the international department of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee, to brief him on the North's once-in-a-generation party congress, according to the CCP.

North Korea held its first party congress for nearly 40 years in early May, formally endorsing leader Kim Jong-Un's policy of expanding the country's nuclear arsenal.

The lack of any official Chinese representation at the congress was viewed as a sign of friction between the two traditional allies.

"Both sides pledged to cherish the traditional friendship, strengthen exchanges and cooperation," the website of the CCP's international department said of Tuesday's visit.

Kim has not visited China since coming to power and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping has not visited Pyongyang.

But the North Korean leader watched the local Sobaeksu basketball team beat China's Olympic squad in three matches on Monday, Pyongyang's official news agency reported.

Kim "expressed great satisfaction over the successful game", it said.

China's official Xinhua news agency said Ri would visit for three days as part of a delegation.

He is the highest-ranking North Korean official to visit China since last year, when Kim Jong-Un's close aide Choe Ryong Hae attended a military parade in Beijing to mark the 70th anniversary of Japan's defeat in World War II.
Japan rescuers struggle with lack of clues for missing boy

The search for a seven-year-old Japanese boy missing since his parents abandoned him in a bear-inhabited forest was proving frustratingly difficult due to a lack of clues, a rescuer said Tuesday.

As the search continued for a fourth day on Japan's main northern island of Hokkaido, two hunters joined more than 100 rescuers, police and local town officials after they found fresh bear droppings in the area, heightening concerns for the safety of the child.

But they have found no clues to the whereabouts of Yamato Tanooka, who has been missing since Saturday after his parents made him get out their car on a mountain road as punishment for misbehaving.

Map locating Nanae in Hokkaido, Japan where authorities are searching for a boy who has been missing since Saturday John Saeki (AFP)

The parents originally told police their son had got lost while they were out hiking to gather wild vegetables -- but later admitted they were angry and tried to punish him because he had thrown stones at cars and people.

"We just have too little information about how the boy would have acted after being left alone," local fire department rescuer Satoshi Saito told AFP by telephone, expressing frustration at the lack of progress so far.

"He must have been able to walk around himself, but we are having a difficult time projecting which route he would have taken and how far."

The parents told police they abandoned Yamato on a road, bounded on both sides by thick mountain forests, but quickly returned only to find him missing.

On the northern side of the road is a slope of Mount Komagadake, with an altitude of 1,131 metres (3,710 feet).

"Unless he started climbing the mountain, he would have hit a main road after walking for two-three kilometres (1.2-1.9 miles) in any other direction," Saito said, adding that there are no witnesses.

The child was alone in the forest, reportedly with no food or water as heavy rain fell at night.

Footage showed scores of officers clawing through overgrown forest and tall bushes.

The boy was wearing a black jacket, navy blue pants and red sneakers when he disappeared.
Four Bangladeshis plead guilty in Singapore to terrorist financing

Four Bangladeshi guest workers who pleaded guilty to raising finances for an alleged Islamist terrorist plot in their homeland were convicted by a Singapore court on Tuesday and could face up to 10 years in jail.

The men, aged 26 to 31, were brought to court in three armoured vehicles and became the first to be prosecuted under a Singapore law specifically targeting terrorism financing.

They will be sentenced at a later date.

An armoured vehicle transporting Bangladeshi guest workers convicted of terrorist financing arrives at court in Sinagpore Roslan Rahman (AFP)

In court, the men were dressed in purple overalls with the word "detainee" emblazoned across their chests and backs, shackled at the hands and feet and closely watched by members of the elite Gurkha unit of the Singapore police.

Court documents said the men contributed, collected or possessed funds for the alleged plot ranging from Sg$60 ($44) to Sg$1,360.

For involvement in terrorist financing, the men face up to 10 years in jail, a maximum fine of Sg$500,000 ($362,000), or both.

Singapore, which depends heavily on Bangladeshis and other foreign workers in the construction sector, considers itself a potential target of extremists because of its strong military ties with the United States.

It was the second group of Bangladeshis rounded up in Singapore since 27 were arrested in late 2015, also over alleged plots in their homeland. All have since been deported.

State prosecutors say the second group's leader Rahman Mizanur, 31, had repeatedly tried to join the Islamic State (IS) group but was unsuccessful because he could not get visas to Turkey or Algeria. He then went to Singapore as a construction worker.

A fifth worker, Zzaman Daulat, 34, pleaded not guilty, along with a sixth man, and both will now go to trial.

"I know I contributed $200 but I didn't know it'll be used for terrorism," Zzamat said through a court interpreter.

The five were among eight Bangladeshis held since April under Singapore's tough Internal Security Act.

Items seized from them included manuals on bomb-making and how to use a 0.50 calibre sniper rifle, along with a list of Bangladesh government and military officials allegedly targeted for attack, Singapore's home affairs ministry said.
Poland in new bid to extradite Polanski

Poland launched a fresh bid Tuesday to extradite Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski to the United States to face sentencing over a 1977 case of statutory rape.

Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro said he had appealed to the Supreme Court to overturn an October ruling that Polanski should not face extradition, saying no-one should be above the law.

"He is accused of a terrible crime against a child, the rape of a child," Ziobro, who is also prosecutor general, told Polish public radio.

Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski is still wanted by the US for sentencing over the 1977 statutory rape of Samantha Geimer after a photo shoot in Los Angeles Janek Skarzynski (AFP/File)

"Were he a teacher, a doctor, a plumber or a painter, I'm sure any country would have extradited him to the United States long ago."

The announcement appears to be part of what the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) government, which took office after October elections, touts as a moral revolution in strongly Catholic Poland.

Polanski is still wanted by the United States for sentencing over the 1977 statutory rape of Samantha Gailey after a photo shoot in Los Angeles.

He was arrested after Gailey, now Geimer, accused him of forcing her to have sex after drugging her.

She was 13 at the time. Polanski was 43.

He pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a minor, or statutory rape, avoiding a trial, but then fled the country fearing a hefty sentence.

- Ruling by August -

Supreme Court spokesman Krzysztof Michalowski told AFP that a ruling was expected by August, with an exact date for the hearing to be set in June.

Polanski will not be required to show up in court and is free to visit Poland without fear of arrest pending the verdict, he added.

The court can either uphold the decision not to extradite Polanski or send the case back to a lower court.

Jerzy Stachowicz, a lawyer for the 82-year French-Polish director, said Ziobro's decision was not a surprise.

"We were expecting this. Ziobro had previously announced he was going to do this," he said.

He also confirmed that Polanski was currently not in Poland, without disclosing his current whereabouts.

Ziobro's move is an attempt to reverse an October ruling by a court in the southern city of Krakow which ruled that Polanski should not be sent to the United States, a decision prosecutors agreed was "justified".

"Had Poland accepted the US extradition request, it would have violated the rights of Mr Polanski and at the same time the European Convention on Human Rights," judge Dariusz Mazur said at the time.

The Krakow court was fiercely critical of the original US investigation into the film-maker's case, saying the US judges and prosecutors had flouted "the rules of a fair trial".

And one of his lawyers at the time said the decision "ends the legal proceedings" against Polanski.

- 'Avoid double standards' -

Fearing arrest, Polanski declined to travel to Hollywood in 2003 to receive an Oscar for best director for his harrowing Holocaust-drama, "The Pianist" -- one of his eight Academy Awards.

He currently lives in France with his wife, actress Emmanuelle Seigner, but often visits Poland where his family has roots.

Ziobro said he wanted to "avoid double standards" that would afford the director special treatment.

"Everyone is equal before the law," he said, accusing "social elites and part of the liberal media" of supporting Polanski.

"Does this mean that an eminent artist is free to rape or commit other vile crimes, while a simple Kowalski (the Polish equivalent of Smith) must be severely punished?"

Born in Paris in 1933 to Polish Jewish parents, Polanski's family was torn apart by the Holocaust after returning to live in Poland before World War II.

He was eight when the Nazis arrested his parents in Krakow's Jewish ghetto -- sending them to concentration camps from which his mother never returned -- and forcing him into years of wandering with other children.

He survived and went on to win acclaim in Hollywood for his 1962 feature debut in Poland, "Knife in the Water", an erotic thriller about a couple inviting a switchblade-toting hitchhiker onto their yacht.

He arrived in Hollywood in 1968 to shoot his first big international hit, "Rosemary's Baby".

Tragedy shattered Polanski's life again the following year when his heavily-pregnant wife, the model and actress Sharon Tate, and four friends were brutally slaughtered in the director's mansion by cult leader Charles Manson and his followers.

Samantha Geimer, pictured, accused Polanski of forcing her to have sex after drugging her when she was just 13 Kenzo Tribouillard (AFP/File)

Polanski's lawyers Jerzy Stachowicz (L) and Jan Olszewski represent him at the regional court in Krakow in October 2015 JAnek Skarzynski (AFP/File)
Hamas executes three in Gaza, drawing UN condemnation

Hamas authorities in the Gaza Strip executed three Palestinian men for murder on Tuesday, the attorney general said, drawing condemnation from the United Nations.

The three, who were not named and whose cases were unrelated, were put to death by firing squad behind closed doors, security sources said.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) said, however, that two of them were hanged and the third was shot.

Members of Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas' security forces patrol an area along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt in April 2016 in Rafah Said Khatib (AFP/File)

"To achieve public deterrence and curb crime, the competent authorities carried out at dawn on Tuesday, May 31, 2016 execution rulings against three of those convicted of shocking murders," a statement from the attorney general said.

Rupert Colville, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, condemned the executions which he said occurred "despite serious and widespread concerns that international fair trial standards were not respected".

The European Union, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International all also condemned the killings.

In theory, all execution orders in the Palestinian territories must be approved by president Mahmud Abbas, who is based in the occupied West Bank.

But Hamas, the militant Islamist group that runs Gaza, no longer recognises his legitimacy, and Gaza attorney general Ismail Jaber recently announced that the authorities there would carry out the executions without Abbas's backing.

Hamas and Abbas's Palestinian Authority agreed a unity deal in April 2014 which was supposed to lead to a joint technocratic government, but the accord was never fully implemented and they remain at loggerheads.

The UN statement said that the failure to get Abbas's backing for the executions was a breach of Palestinian law.

Sari Bashi, Israel and Palestine director at HRW, said Hamas authorities had been under pressure to act because of perceptions of increased crime in Gaza, including a number of grisly murders of civilians.

"This is an attempt by the government to show they are doing something," she told AFP, "but killing criminals is not going to decrease crime."

"These people were convicted in a judicial system where torture and coercion are common," she added.

The attorney general said the three had been given a fair trial.

- 'Example to others' -

Jaber had initially said he wanted executions to be carried out in public, and it was unclear if this would happen in the future.

At the time of the attorney general's announcement last week, 13 men, most convicted of murder connected to robberies, were awaiting execution.

The last public executions in Gaza were during the 2014 war with Israel when a firing squad from Hamas's armed wing shot dead six alleged collaborators with Israel.

They were executed in front of Gaza City's main mosque following prayers.

Mkhaimar Abusada, professor of political science at Gaza's Al-Azhar University, said the reintroduction of the death penalty would be popular in the Palestinian enclave.

"Gaza is very much a tribal society, meaning people believe in revenge for tribal or familial reasons," he told AFP.

"In order to avoid people taking the law into their own hands the best (route) is through government or the judicial system."

On the streets of Gaza, which has been blockaded by Israel for 10 years and has an unemployment rate of almost 45 percent, opinion about the executions was mixed.

"Whoever kills people should be killed as an example to others," said Nahed al-Luh, in his 60s.

But Amin Abed, 25, called the executions "illegal" because "Hamas didn't deal with the Palestinian Authority and the president didn't ratify the verdicts".

According to the PCHR, nine death sentences were passed in Gaza in 2015 and two in the West Bank, run by the Palestinian Authority (PA).

So far this year, around 10 more people have been sentenced to death in Gaza.

Palestinian law allows the death penalty for collaborators, murderers and drug traffickers.
Number of Afghans fleeing war doubles to 1.2 mn, says Amnesty

The number of people internally displaced by war in Afghanistan has doubled since 2012 to 1.2 million, Amnesty International said Tuesday, citing government neglect and a lack of international attention.

In its report entitled "My children will die this winter: Afghanistan's broken promise to the displaced", the rights group warned that a lack of basic services had pushed many of those uprooted from their homes to the brink of survival.

"While the world's attention seems to have moved on from Afghanistan, we risk forgetting the plight of those left behind by the conflict," Champa Patel, Amnesty's South Asia director, said in a statement.

Amnesty International reported deplorable conditions in Afghan camps for internally displaced people, with a lack of food, water and healthcare Aref Karimi (AFP/File)

"Even after fleeing their homes to seek safety, increasing numbers of Afghans are languishing in appalling conditions in their own country, and fighting for their survival with no end in sight."

Civilians are increasingly caught in the crosshairs of Afghanistan's worsening conflict as the Taliban step up their annual spring offensive, launched last month against the Western-backed Kabul government.

As of April 2016 a "staggering" 1.2 million people had been displaced internally, the report said. In 2012 the number stood at almost 500,000.

Amnesty reported deplorable conditions in Afghan camps for internally displaced people, with a lack of food, water and healthcare.

"Even an animal would not live in this hut, but we have to," it quoted Mastan, a 50-year-old woman living in a camp in Herat, as saying.

"I would prefer to be in prison rather than in this place: at least in prison I would not have to worry about food and shelter."

Farzana, another woman in a camp in Kabul, said: "When you can't put food on the table for your children, it is worse than being hit with a gun."

Amnesty implored the international community and the Afghan government to do more to address the desperate situation.

"All parties that have been involved in Afghanistan over the past 15 years have a responsibility to come together and make sure that the very people the international community set out to help are not abandoned to an even more precarious fate," said Patel.

"Afghanistan and the world must act now to end the country's displacement crisis, before it is too late."
Iraq faces tough IS resistance on Fallujah fringes

Iraqi forces faced tough resistance from the Islamic State group Tuesday as they attempted to enter the centre of Fallujah, where there were mounting fears for thousands of trapped civilians.

A day after announcing a push into the jihadist stronghold, forces led by Iraq's elite counter-terrorism service had some way to go before retaking the city.

After thrusting toward Fallujah from three directions on Monday, their biggest advance was from the south, where they pushed into the suburb of Naimiyah.

Pro-government forces fire a rocket during an offensive to retake the city of Fallujah, from the Islamic State (IS) group Ahmad Al-Rubaye (AFP)

Lieutenant General Abdelwahab al-Saadi, the overall commander of the Fallujah operation, said IS fighters mounted a fierce counter-attack on the area early on Tuesday.

"There were around 100 fighters involved, they came at us heavily armed but did not use car bombs or suicide bombers," he told AFP.

Saadi said Iraqi forces in the area, which also include police and army units, were eventually able to repel the attack, killing 75 jihadists.

He did not give a figure for losses on the pro-government side.

Officers said US-led coalition and Iraqi air support was instrumental in repelling the attack and added that ground forces had now resumed their advance.

The Pentagon said the Fallujah offensive was "tough".

"The past two days have shown" that IS "intends to put up a fight for it," said spokesman Jeff Davis.

Fallujah, which lies on the Euphrates River west of Baghdad, was lost from government control months before IS swept across large parts of Iraq in June 2014 and is an emblematic bastion for the jihadist group.

Iraqi forces have been sealing off Fallujah for months and those still in city -- IS fighters and civilians alike -- have nowhere to go.

- Families used as 'shields' -

Anbar capital Ramadi was almost levelled when Iraqi forces retook it a few months ago but many more civilians -- most estimates say around 50,000 -- are trapped inside Fallujah.

The UN's refugee agency (UNHCR) spoke of "reports of several hundred families being used as human shields by ISIL (IS) in the centre of Fallujah."

UN deputy representative to Iraq Lise Grande described the reports as "credible" and said the families being pushed into the city centre were at "extreme risk".

A Fallujah resident contacted by AFP by telephone said many civilians were now eager to see the security forces recapture the city but that there was fear of what the jihadists might do as defeat loomed.

"There is some discontent among the people because we haven't seen the Iraqi forces enter the centre yet," said the resident, who gave his name as Abu Mohammed al-Dudaim.

"Their treatment of the people is getting worse and worse every day. There is a feeling of panic among them it seems.

"Dash is angry because they don't feel supported," he said, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

"Yesterday, they were rounding up young men from several parts of the city -- we think maybe around 100 of them -- and taking them to an unknown location," he said.

Officers in the Iraqi forces say IS has been forcibly recruiting men and ever younger boys to man its defence.

A 40-year-old woman reached by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NARC) inside Fallujah painted a dire picture of the conditions.

"The stocks in the hospitals are running low. There is no medicine for ordinary people. The doctor is affiliated with IS and he refuses to help ordinary people," the aid group quoted her as saying.

"Instead of providing adequate treatment, doctors often simply amputate a patients arms or legs if they are in pain. There are no anaesthetics left."

- 'Need for safe exits' -

Thousands of civilians have escaped IS-controlled areas since the start of the operation to retake the city on May 22-23 but nearly all of them were from outlying areas.

The 50,000 civilians still believed trapped in the city centre would have to dodge IS booby-traps and incoming shelling from pro-government forces to reach safety.

"People who managed to flee have told us of extreme hunger and starvation. We haven't been able to see this for ourselves or assist people inside the town, and we are extremely concerned about the full extent of the terrors unfolding there," said Nasr Muflahi, the NRC's Iraq director.

IS has come under mounting pressure on the battlefield in recent weeks, with Kurdish forces also gaining ground in the north in a two-day operation that wound up on Monday east of Mosul, the jihadists' other urban bastion in Iraq.

On the back foot in Iraq, IS has tried to retain the initiative in neighbouring Syria with an offensive against non-jihadist rebels in the north of Aleppo province along the Turkish border.

That fighting, which the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said intensified on Tuesday, has also trapped tens of thousands of civilians.

"The situation is absolutely unsustainable and unacceptable for this population," said Pablo Marco, regional head of Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

Fallujah is expected to give Iraqi forces one of their toughest battles yet but the Islamic State group has appeared weakened in recent months and has been losing territory consistently over the past year Ahmad Al-Rubaye (AFP/File)

Iraq: the battle for Fallujah Valentina Breschi, Thomas Saint-Circq (AFP)

Abu Shiab and his family escaped to the Alexanzan camp for displaced people on the outskirts of Baghdad, after fleeing the Iraqi offensive to retake the city of Fallujah Sabah Arar (AFP)
Australia war dead repatriated from Malaysia

Half a century after they died, the bodies of 32 Australian soldiers and their dependents, many of whom were killed in the Vietnam War, were returned home from Malaysia Tuesday.

In a sombre ceremony, their flag-draped coffins were loaded onto Australian airforce planes by a military guard of honour as a bugle sounded the Last Post.

Australia sent more than 60,000 troops to fight in the Vietnam War and 521 were killed. Soldiers were buried in the nearest Commonwealth cemetery unless their families could pay for repatriation to Australia.

Australian military personnel pay their last respects during a repatriation ceremony at the Royal Malaysian Airforce base in Subang, on May 31, 2016 Manan Vatsyayana (AFP)

"As a soldier, I am proud that the remains can be brought closer to their loved ones," said Abdullah Sani Mohamed, the Army Museum Director, who oversees Terendak Military Cemetery in Malaysia, where the Australians were buried.

He said 21 of the deceased were Australian soldiers killed in Vietnam, three had been killed in the fight against communist insurgents in Malaysia, and eight others were family members.

In 1966, Australia changed the repatriation policy so that all fallen soldiers would be taken home.

Last year, the government offered to pay for the repatriation of any soldiers buried overseas prior to the policy change, with 33 families accepting the offer.

Another body will be repatriated from Kranji Cemetery in Singapore, the Australian government said in a statement.

The remains in Malaysia were driven from Terendak Military Cemetery to Subang Airbase, west of the capital Kuala Lumpur, in white vans early Tuesday.

The caskets, draped with the Australian flag, were carried onto two waiting Royal Australian Air Force C-17 Globemaster aircraft, as top brass and officials from both countries looked on.

Family members of the deceased, including Christopher Bowtell, whose grandfather Robert Walter Bowtell died in the Vietnam War, were at the event.

"He is finally coming home," Bowtell, who also serves in the Australian army, told AFP, adding that his family were "pretty excited -- it is going to be quite an experience".

The coffins will be flown to Richmond Royal Australian Air Force Base, where families of the servicemen and civilians will gather for a ceremony Thursday.

This year also marks half a century since the Battle of Long Tan, which took place in August 1966 and was Australias costliest day in the Vietnam War, with 18 soldiers killed.
Robot home-help and virtual reality at Taiwan's Computex

A knee-high robot designed to help around the house ended up serenading Taiwan's president as Asia's largest tech trade show kicked off Tuesday in Taipei.

The Computex fair comes as Taiwan looks to tech innovation as a way out of economic stagnation, seeking to diversify its reputation as a hardware hub best-known for manufacturing chips.

Organisers are hoping that new zones dedicated to smart living and start-ups will breathe new life into the show, as well as Taiwan's tech industry, which is increasingly under pressure from international rivals including China.

The Asus Zenbo robot steals the show as it serenades Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen (L) at the Computex computer exhibition on May 31, 2016 in Taipei Sam Yeh (AFP)

On the first day it was a small white robot called Zenbo from Taiwanese brand Asus -- traditionally a notebook and smartphone maker -- which drew the biggest crowds.

The voice-controlled, English-speaking robot is billed as a home-help, able to read receipts for the elderly and recite children's stories as well as carrying out tasks around the house.

Introduced to Taiwan's new president Tsai Ing-wen, who opened the show, Zenbo was seemingly on its best behaviour, saying it wanted to be "just like" her when asked what it would like to do when it grew up.

"Do you think I can be the first robot president one day?" it added.

Tsai then asked the robot to play some music to her, although it took several goes to make herself understood before it pumped out some dance tunes.

In her opening speech, Tsai said her new government would promote Taiwan as Asia's "Silicon Village", focusing on talent-building and research and development.

Computex comes weeks after the CES Asia tech show in Shanghai, launched last year, putting extra pressure on the fair.

"There's been a lot of conferences that have been trying to get their foothold in Asia, particularly China," said Bryan Ma, a technology industry analyst at market intelligence provider International Data Corporation (IDC).

While many "key parts" of the tech industry are still in Taiwan, said Ma, market leaders will also have an eye on other big shows.

Computex has put virtual reality (VR) -- an emerging industry where Taiwan hopes to position itself as a trailblazer -- at the heart of this year's fair.

"In the computing space, we haven't had fun for a while," said L.Z. Wang, managing director of semiconductor company AMD Taiwan.

"VR is going to bring back demand and development that will encourage people to refresh their PCs."

Taiwan's ailing HTC phone brand saw queues of people waiting to try its new Vive headsets, which were linked to five different experience games, including one in which users lie on a moving chair and simulate flying over New York.

Struggling PC maker Acer also displayed a new line of VR-ready computer -- Predator -- expected to hit the market as early as July.

The global market size of virtual reality products may reach $5.1 billion this year and is projected to more than double to $10.9 billion in 2017, according to Taipei-based market intelligence provider TrendForce.

The Zenbo, a voice-controlled, English-speaking robot, can serve as a home-help, read receipts for the elderly, and tell children's stories, its Taiwanese makers say Sam Yeh (AFP)
Nigeria's president to visit restive oil region

Muhammadu Buhari will this week make his first visit as president to Nigeria's oil-producing south, which has been riven by an upsurge in violence from militants, his office said Tuesday.

Attacks on pipelines and other infrastructure have cut Nigeria's oil production to some 1.4 million barrels per day, exacerbating revenue shortfalls caused by the global slump in crude prices.

But a media aide to Buhari said the president would travel to Ogoniland in Rivers state to flag off a long-awaited clean-up of the area, which has been affected by oil spills.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has vowed to keep a controversial amnesty programme for Niger delta militants Leon Neal (AFP)

"All things being equal, the president will be in Ogoniland on Thursday for the historic clean up of the area," the aide told AFP.

In August 2011, a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report said Ogoniland may require the world's biggest-ever clean-up.

Environmental devastation to farming and fishing in the area has for many come to symbolise the tragedy of Nigeria's vast but squandered oil wealth.

Decades of crude production filled the pockets of powerful government officials and generated huge profits for oil majors but corruption and spills left the people with nothing.

Neglect and pollution fanned local resentment and anger, prompting militant groups to take up arms against the government in the 2000s. Attacks on oil facilities and personnel were frequent.

The violence was ended in 2009 when the government introduced an amnesty programme. But a new group calling itself the Niger Delta Avengers has renewed attacks since the beginning of the year.

Sporadic bombings of key pipelines run by Nigerian subsidiaries of Anglo-Dutch group Shell, US firm Chevron and Italy's Eni, as well as the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.

On Monday evening, the group warned in an email and in a statement on its website that more devastating attacks were to come.

"To the international oil companies and indigenous oil companies, it's going to be bloody this time around," it said.
Bahrain upholds death sentences for attack on police

A Bahraini appeals court Tuesday upheld death sentences for three Shiites convicted of killing three policemen in a bombing in the Sunni-ruled Gulf kingdom in 2014, a judicial source said.

The court also upheld life sentences for six other defendants convicted over what was the deadliest attack on security forces since a Shiite-led uprising was crushed in 2011.

A seventh defendant previously sentenced to life in jail did not appeal because he remains at large, the judicial source said.

Bahraini protesters run for cover during clashes with riot police in Diah, on the outskirts of Manama, in March 2014 Mohammed Al-Shaikh (AFP/File)

A policeman from the United Arab Emirates was among the three officers killed in the Shiite village of Diah in March 2014.

He was the first foreign officer killed since Saudi-led troops and police were deployed to Bahrain to support its crackdown on the Arab Spring-inspired protests.

Another Manama court on Tuesday jailed seven Bahrainis for life and sentenced three others to 15 years in prison after convicting them of forming and financing a "terrorist group".

They were also convicted of possessing explosives and training in the use of weapons, General Prosecutor Ahmed al-Hammadi said.

Another was jailed for three years on similar charges, Hammadi said in a statement.

The court ordered the citizenships of all 11 Bahrainis in the second case to be revoked, he added.

Bahrain, which lies across the Gulf from Shiite Iran and is home to the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, has been rocked by unrest since it quelled the Shiite-led protests demanding political reforms in 2011.

On Monday, a court more than doubled the jail sentence against opposition leader Sheikh Ali Salman, in a ruling that his bloc warned risked stoking fresh unrest.
Indonesia detains protesters in insurgency-hit Papua

Indonesian police briefly detained hundreds of pro-independence demonstrators in Papua on Tuesday, the latest round-up of protesters in the insurgency-hit eastern region.

Police said demonstrators staged rallies calling for the release of political prisoners and for an organisation representing Papuan resistance groups to be given full membership of a regional trade and security body.

A low-level insurgency has simmered for decades in resource-rich Papua, with Jakarta keeping a tight grip on the region through a heavy military and police presence.

Papuanese students and activists hold a pro-independence rally in Jayapura on May 31, 2016 Hafizh Daffa (AFP)

Papua police chief Paulus Waterpauw said that around 300 people, some in traditional tribal dress, were briefly detained as they were demonstrating in Jayapura, the capital of Papua province, and several other cities without a permit.

"These people were supporting groups who demand Papuan independence, and they did not have permits to stage a protest," he told AFP.

He said the demonstrators were rounded up and addressed by police and local politicians before being released.

Victor Yeimo, from pro-independence youth group the West Papua National Committee, said that the demonstrators had requested a permit to stage a protest but police refused.

"This is a peaceful act and the right to express our opinions is protected by law -- why do the police always try to stop us?" he said.

Earlier this month 1,200 pro-independence demonstrators were briefly detained in Papua to stop rallies planned to mark the anniversary of Indonesia taking control of the region from former colonial power the Netherlands in 1963.

Tuesday's demonstrators were calling for the release of dozens of Papuan separatists jailed for committing treason for acts such as raising the pro-independence "Morning Star" flag and taking part in anti-government protests.

They were also demanding that the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) -- an umbrella body representing resistance groups in the Papua -- be given full membership of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG), a trade and security body.

Indonesia last year joined the group as an associate member, but the ULMWP was only given observer status.
I.Coast's ex first lady on trial for poll bloodbath

Ivory Coast's feisty former first lady Simone Gbagbo went on trial Tuesday for crimes against humanity in what many see as a litmus case for justice in the west African country.

The hearings into the 66-year-old's role in post-election carnage in 2010 is expected to last a month with at least 25 witnesses testifying.

Security was tight as a smiling Gbagbo, in an elegant red and white floral dress and sporting her trademark braids, was led in and seated in a red chair opposite the bench.

Ivory Coast's former first lady Simone Gbagbo attends her trial at the Abidjan Justice Court on May 31, 2016 Issouf Sanogo (AFP)

Nicknamed the "Iron Lady", she is accused of planning and directing rights abuses against supporters of her husband's presidential rival to try to maintain Laurent Gbagbo in power at all costs.

He was finally defeated at the polls however and is currently also facing trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

More than 3,000 people died in the bloody post-poll violence which petered out only after the arrest of the Gbagbo couple in 2011, when troops stormed the bunker where they had taken refuge in the nation's main city, Abidjan.

Simone Gbagbo faces allegations of crimes against prisoners of war, crimes against the civilian population and crimes against humanity.

For several hours her lawyers contested the court's competence, arguing that since war crimes and crimes against humanity had only been added to the Ivorian penal code in March last year, she could not be tried for incidents that went back to 2011.

After a recess the accusations were read out in court.

"I do not recognise these events," Gbagbo declared.

Outside the court house 30 people proclaimed their support for Gbagbo.

- 'Pivotal moment for justice ' -

This is her second trial in Ivory Coast where she is being held behind bars in Abidjan after a 20-year conviction for "attacking state security".

Witnesses have accused her of personally distributing arms to death squads that operated in Abidjan during the five-month conflict but she has repeatedly denied this.

Human Rights Watch said the trial "could be a pivotal moment for justice" in the world's top cocoa producer, a beacon of stability in restive west Africa until a 1999 coup that was followed shortly after by years of low-level civil war.

The decade of strife and last wrenching months of violence between pro- and anti-Gbagbo supporters have left deep divisions in a nation still seeking reconciliation.

The trial opened just five days after the Supreme Court rejected the former first lady's final appeal against the 20-year sentence she was handed last year.

"Simone Gbagbos trial  the first in Ivory Coast for crimes against humanity  should be an opportunity for victims of pro-Gbagbo forces to learn the truth about her alleged role in abuses," Jim Wormington, west Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch said.

One of her lawyers, Mathurin Dirabou, has described the charges against her as "fanciful".

"These accusations have been created to please certain parts of the international community. It's a pity. Enough is enough," he added.

- 'Operational justice system' -

The ICC in The Hague had issued a warrant for Simone Gbagbo's arrest, but Ivorian authorities refused to hand her over, saying she would face a fair trial at home.

The decision was seen as a snub to the ICC, with President Alassane Ouattara saying he would "not send any more Ivorians" to The Hague as his country has an "operational justice system".

Ouattara has faced accusations of selective justice, with critics saying he is bent only on prosecuting crimes by pro-Gbagbo forces in 2010-2011 and is ignoring those committed by his own camp. He rejects the allegations.

On Monday, three rights groups pulled out of Simone Gbagbo's trial because of doubts over its "credibility".

"Our lawyers have not had access to all stages of the procedures -- how can they defend their case?" the head of one of the groups, the Ivorian League of Human Rights, told AFP.

The trial resumes Wednesday.

Then Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo, pictured with his wife, Simone in Yaounde in 2001 Issouf Sanogo (AFP/File)
Ten dead as Biafra anniversary turns bloody

At least 10 people were killed during protests by pro-Biafra campaigners as they marked the anniversary of the start of Nigeria's civil war, police said on Tuesday.

Activists wanting a separate state for the Igbo people in the southeast were commemorating the 49th anniversary of the declaration of an independent Republic of Biafra on May 30, 1967.

The civil war that followed lasted until January 1970 and left more than one million people dead, many of them from starvation and disease.

Odumegwu Emeka Ojukwu led the breakaway Republic of Biafra from 1967-1970

Police said officers opened fire because members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) movement shot at security forces deployed to monitor the protests.

But IPOB spokesman Anayo Chukwu-Okpara denied the claim and said at least 35 members of the group were killed in the commercial hub of Onitsha in Anambra state.

An Anambra police spokesman told AFP "five corpses were recovered" in Onitsha while in the capital of neighbouring Delta state, Asaba, the police said five protesters were killed.

"We had to deploy our officers to ensure that the protest was peaceful but we were surprised that the people turned violent," said Delta police spokesman Charles Muka.

There was also violence in the capitals of Imo, Ebonyi, Abia and Rivers state, he added.

- IPOB claims -

IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu has been in custody since his arrest last October on charges of treasonable felony, which has sparked protests demanding his release.

The government has repeatedly refused to release him despite several court rulings granting him bail.

Kanu's brother, Prince Emmanuel Kanu, said of the Onitsha protest: "We are not armed, we only came to remember people who died between 1967 to 1970, that was just our crime to open fire on us.

"What happened on Sunday night at the ground we were supposed to use for the remembrance day, on that evening they opened fire, they shot about 20," he said.

He said on Monday during the march, 16 people were killed and 56 people were injured.

"They blocked everywhere and all of a sudden they started shooting at us, they shot 56 people, who are injured."

- Police crackdown -

Federal police chief Solomon Arase on Tuesday said any IPOB member found with a firearm would be arrested and tried, while those held in connection with police deaths would be charged with murder.

The police "will continue to diligently work towards eliminating any threat to internal security", he added.

Since Kanu's arrest, positions have hardened on both sides. President Muhammadu Buhari, a former military ruler, has publicly stated he "will not tolerate" any threat to Nigeria's unity.

IPOB members told AFP recently that armed police and soldiers released tear gas and shot "indiscriminately" at crowds with live ammunition at previous protests.

There have also been allegations the dead were buried in mass graves and of disappearances.

Similar claims have been made against the military in its response to unrest involving Shiite Muslim protesters in the northern city of Zaria last year and in the Boko Haram conflict in the northeast.

Human Rights Watch described the latest clashes as "a wake-up call to urgently de-escalate the situation" and called for a "credible judicial investigation" to determine what happened.

"In this context of escalating tensions in southeast Nigeria, government security forces should ensure they take reasonable steps to protect security and avoid excessive use of force in controlling public demonstrations," said HRW's Mausi Segun.

"Leaders of the protest groups should redouble their efforts to inform demonstrators to act peacefully and to condemn those who do not," she added in an emailed statement
National hero bid for Indonesia's Suharto sparks anger

A proposal to transform Indonesia's former leader Suharto, one of the 20th century's most brutal dictators, into a national hero sparked anger Tuesday from rights activists and netizens.

General Suharto led Indonesia with an iron fist for 32 years and his military-dominated rule was marked by severe repression and corruption.

But in recent years there has been growing disillusionment in Indonesia with democracy, which was introduced following Suharto's 1998 downfall, leading some to look back on his regime with nostalgia.

Suharto ruled Indonesia from 1967-1998 Agus Lolong (AFP/File)

Indonesia is currently governed by the Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) alongside President Joko Widodo, but critics point to weak decision-making and a new breed of corrupt politicians.

The name of Suharto, who died in 2008, has been nominated as a potential candidate to a government committee tasked with naming the country's national heroes, said Jimly Asshiddiqie, the body's deputy head.

The Golkar party, which was Suharto's political vehicle during his time in power, put him forward.

But prominent human rights group Imparsial condemned the move.

"I don't think this is right because Suharto is accused of having violated human rights during his regime," said its executive director Al Araf.

Netizens were also angered, with Twitter user Yunantyo saying: "What's the purpose of having the 1998 May reform movement, if Suharto is going to be awarded the title national hero?"

At least 500,000 people were killed in anti-communist massacres in the run-up to Suharto's rule.

Many activists also went missing during Suharto's regime.

Indonesia appoints national heroes every November. Suharto's name has been suggested before, although he has never been picked.

Those wanting to rehabilitate the reputation of the former leader praise him for bringing stability and overseeing an economic boom after Indonesia's painful birth pangs that followed Dutch colonial rule.
New Yemen clashes kill 38 rebels, loyalists

Renewed clashes between pro-government forces and Iran-backed rebels killed at least 38 people in Yemen during the past 24 hours, loyalist military sources said on Tuesday.

The latest fighting comes despite an ongoing ceasefire and UN-brokered peace talks in Kuwait that began in April.

Battles raged in Bayhan, on the border between Shabwa province in the south and Marib in the east.

More than 6,400 people have been killed in Yemen since the Saudi-led coalition began its campaign against the Huthi rebels in 2014 Mohammed Huwais (AFP/File)

There was also fighting in Sarwah, an oil-rich area west of Marib, the sources said.

At least 23 rebels and 15 soldiers were killed in both areas, the same sources said.

Bayhan is the only part of Shabwa province still controlled by the Iran-backed rebels, who on Tuesday retook positions seized by loyalists during the past two days, the military sources said.

Fierce fighting in Bayhan on Sunday claimed the lives of 48 fighters, a senior military officer has said.

Meanwhile, media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said that "sniper fire" from the Huthi rebels killed Yemeni journalist Abdullah Azizan while he was covering the clashes in Bayhan on Sunday.

Azizan worked for the local marebpress.net news website.

Forces loyal to President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi are backed by a Saudi-led coalition that began a military campaign against the rebels in March 2015.

Loyalists, backed by coalition firepower, managed to drive rebels out of Shabwa and four other southern provinces last summer.
Pakistan PM's open heart surgery successful: daughter

Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif successfully underwent open heart surgery in London on Tuesday, his daughter said.

It was the 66-year-old premier's second major cardiac medical procedure in five years.

"Surgery successful by The Grace Of Almighty," his daughter Maryam Nawaz Sharif said on Twitter.

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has undergone his second major cardiac medical procedure since 2011 Handout (Pakistan Press Information Department/AFP/File)

"All arteries successfully grafted," she told her nearly two million followers.

She posted a picture of Sharif lying in an intensive care unit bed with his eyes closed and said he was "stable".

The London hospital where the procedure was carried out was not officially named.

Sharif's surgery lasted around four hours, according to his daughter's tweets.

He is expected to stay in hospital for around a week to recover before travelling home.

A senior Pakistani government official told AFP at the weekend that Sharif, one of Pakistan's richest men, was paying all expenses from his own pocket and "none of the state expenditures are involved".

"It may take little over a week for the prime minister to recover and travel back to Pakistan," the official added.

A statement issued by his office in Islamabad on Saturday said he was being assisted by his secretaries and would be being kept abreast of day-to-day matters.

Sharif took power in a landslide in a May 2013 general election, for the third time since 1990.

Sharif has a power base rooted in Pakistan's richest and most populous province, where he is known as the Lion of the Punjab.

He has been under pressure since the so-called Panama Papers leak linked his family to a series of offshore companies.

The premier insists his family has done "nothing wrong", saying the claims had been investigated twice, decades ago, under the tenure of former military ruler Pervez Musharraf.

The leaked papers claim his children owned London property through an offshore company.
Dalai Lama says 'too many' refugees in Europe

The Dalai Lama said in an interview published Tuesday that Europe has accepted "too many" refugees, and that they should eventually return to help rebuild their home countries.

"When we look into the face of every single refugee, especially the children and women, we can feel their suffering," said the Tibetan spiritual leader, who has himself lived in exile for over half a century.

"A human being who is a bit more fortunate has the duty to help them. On the other hand, there are too many now," he said, according to the German translation of the interview in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

The Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 Ben Stansall (AFP/File)

"Europe, for example Germany, cannot become an Arab country," he added with a laugh, the daily reported. "Germany is Germany.

"There are so many that in practice it becomes difficult."

The Dalai Lama added that "from a moral point of view too, I think that the refugees should only be admitted temporarily".

"The goal should be that they return and help rebuild their countries."

Germany last year took in 1.1 million people fleeing war and misery in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries, but the flow was reduced sharply by the decision of Balkan countries to close their borders to people travelling through Turkey and into northern Europe.

The Dalai Lama also said in the interview, conducted in Dharamsala, seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile in northern India, that he hopes to one day return to Tibet.

"Maybe in a few years," said the 80-year-old. "If an opportunity for my return arises, or at least for a short visit, that would be a source of great joy."
Bahrain frees female activist and toddler son

Bahraini authorities on Tuesday released on "humanitarian" grounds opposition activist Zainab al-Khawaja, who had been imprisoned with her toddler son since March, a public prosecution official said.

The Bahraini Shiite mother, who also holds Danish nationality, had been convicted of insulting King Hamad by ripping up a picture of him, and had chosen to keep her 17-month-old son with her in jail.

Judicial authorities ordered "the suspension of the sentence" for Khawaja and another defendant identified as Irena Bogotova who had been jailed with her four-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Sayed said in a statement.

Bahraini human rights activist Zainab al-Khawaja was jailed for insulting King Hamad by ripping up a picture of him Mohammed Al-Shaikh (AFP/File)

They were released "considering their humanitarian situation and in the interests of their children," he said.

Bogotova is reportedly Russian, but no details have been given about her case.

Zainab al-Khawaja is the daughter of prominent rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, who is serving a life sentence for plotting to overthrow the Sunni regime.

The Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) has said Khawaja was jailed for three years and one month on charges including tearing up the monarch's picture and insulting a police officer.

Her sister Maryam, co-director of the GCHR, confirmed on Twitter that Khawaja "is officially out and on her way home to her (other) children".

The foreign ministry said earlier in May Khawaja would be freed with another foreigner for "humanitarian" reasons, adding that their release was the result of a follow-up into the situation of inmates with foreign citizenship held in criminal cases.

Foreign Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa said during a press briefing with visiting US Secretary of State John Kerry in April that Khawaja would go home.

"We're certainly aware of the reports of her release." US State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters in Washington.

"As you know, we've consistently raised her case, so we welcome the news in the reports."

Brian Dooley of the Washington-based Human Rights First said in a statement that "while it is better that" Khawaja and her son "are out of rather than in prison, this is no major breakthrough for human rights, (and) no indicator of fundamental reform".

"If the Bahraini government is interested in serious reform it will immediately organise a mass release of political prisoners," he said.

Tiny but strategic Bahrain, home base of the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, remains deeply divided after authorities crushed a month-long, Shiite-led uprising that called for reforms in March 2011.

Dozens of activists are serving lengthy jail terms, including Sheikh Ali Salman -- the leader of Bahrain's main opposition bloc Al-Wefaq.

An appeals court on Monday increased his jail term on charges of inciting violence to nine years from the original four.

In Washington, Kirby said the United States was "deeply concerned" by the extended sentence.

"We understand now that another appeal may be available in this case," he said.
Media groups expressed outrage Wednesday at Philippine president-elect Rodrigo Duterte's endorsement of killing corrupt journalists, warning his comments could incite more murders in a nation already one of the world's most dangerous for reporters.

Duterte, who won last month's elections in a landslide after pledging to kill tens of thousands of criminals, told reporters on Tuesday there was justification for killing journalists who took bribes or engaged in other corrupt activities.

"Just because you're a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you're a son of a bitch," Duterte said when asked how he would address the problem of media killings in the Philippines after a reporter was shot dead in Manila last week.

Philippines' president-elect Rodrigo Duterte told reporters on Tuesday there was justification for killing journalists who took bribes or engaged in other corrupt activities Manman Dejeto (AFP)

The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines described the comments as "appalling". It conceded there were corruption problems in the industry but said these did not justify murdering reporters.

"He has also, in effect, declared open season to silence the media, both individual journalists and the institution, on the mere perception of corruption," the NUJP said in a statement.

The Philippines is one of the most dangerous nations in the world for journalists, with 176 murdered since a chaotic and corruption-plagued democracy replaced the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos three decades ago.

Speaking at a press conference in his southern hometown of Davao to introduce his cabinet on Tuesday night, Duterte suggested the majority of those victims were partly to blame.

"Most of those killed, to be frank, have done something. You won't be killed if you don't do anything wrong," said Duterte, who will be sworn into office on June 30.

- Journalist 'deserved to die' -

Duterte also raised the case of Jun Pala, a journalist and politician who was murdered in Davao in 2003.

Gunmen on a motorcycle shot dead Pala, who was a vocal critic of Duterte. His murder has never been solved.

"If you are an upright journalist, nothing will happen to you," said Duterte, who has ruled Davao as mayor for most of the past two decades and is accused of links to vigilante death squads.

"The example here is Pala. I do not want to diminish his memory but he was a rotten son of a bitch. He deserved it."

Duterte added he knew who the killer was.

Luis Teodoro, deputy director of the Manila-based Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, described Duterte's comments as "distressing" and said they sent a signal to would-be killers that it was okay to murder in certain circumstances.

"When you say corrupt journalists can be killed, that is a very clear message," Teodoro told AFP.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists also condemned Duterte's remarks.

"What he has done with these irresponsible comments is give security officials the right to kill for acts that they consider defamation," CPJ's Southeast Asian representative, Shawn Crispin, told AFP from Bangkok.

And Reporters Without Borders called for journalists in the Philippines to boycott Duterte's press conferences until he apologised.

Adding to the public relations nightmare for Duterte, the distraught widow of the Manila journalist killed last week appeared in front of reporters asking how Duterte could imply her husband was corrupt.

"He had only 200 pesos ($4) in his wallet when he was killed," a sobbing Florabel Balcoba told reporters.

Duterte's spokesman Salvador Panelo insisted Duterte's comments had been taken out of context, and urged reporters to look at the president-elect's body language to understand his comments.

"He is against all illegal killings. He will pursue the criminals to the ends of the Earth in accordance with the law and in accordance with the constitution," Panelo said.

One of the world's deadliest attacks against journalists took place in the Philippines in 2009, when 32 journalists were among 58 people killed by a warlord clan intent on stopping a rival's election challenge.

More than 100 people are on trial for the massacre, including many members of the Ampatuan family accused of orchestrating it. Panelo was the Ampatuans' defence lawyer until last year.
Trump showboats attacks on 'dishonest' US media

Donald Trump stepped up his assault on the US media Tuesday, branding the political press "dishonest," calling one journalist "a sleaze" and promising more such attacks if elected US president.

The former reality TV star, prolific on Twitter with two million more followers than Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, has dominated coverage of the 2016 presidential cycle like no other by calling personally into television shows and frequently holding court at press conferences broadcast live nationwide.

The New York tycoon, who was dismissed as a joke when he launched his campaign, annihilated 16 rivals in the race to sew up the Republican nomination and is trailing Clinton by just a few percentage points in recent polls.

US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks about his support for veterans at the Trump Tower on May 31, 2016 in New York Jewel Samad (AFP)

But on Tuesday, he laid into the press at Trump Tower in New York for questioning his claim to have raised $6 million for veteran charities on one night in Iowa last January after skipping a Fox News Republican debate.

The presumptive Republican nominee announced that he had given $5.6 million, reading out the names of more than 40 charities who received funds, including $1 million he donated personally to the Marine Corps - Law Enforcement Foundation.

Trump attacked the media for appearing intent on finding fault rather than gushing over his apparent generosity, and said he expected additional donations to tip the figure over $6 million.

"The press should be ashamed," he hectored. "I have never received such bad publicity for doing such a good job."

He addressed a male CNN political journalist as a "real beauty" and pointed to Tom Llamas, who covers the Republican race for ABC News, saying: "You're a sleaze because you know the facts and you know the facts well."

"Should be an interesting week," Llamas tweeted in response.

The presumptive Republican nominee also called Bill Kristol, editor of neoconservative magazine "The Weekly Standard" and fierce critic "a loser."

- A problem in November? -

When asked if this is what it would be like covering a Trump White House, the candidate fired back: "Yeah, it is," having batted aside any suggestion that he needed a thicker skin to become commander-in-chief.

"I'm going to continue to attack the press," said the 69-year-old father of five. "I find the political press to be unbelievably dishonest."

Al Baldasaro, a retired Marine and Republican in New Hampshire's state house of representatives, leapt to Trump's defense dressed in a Trump campaign hat.

"I think the liberal media -- and I have been dealing with you a long time -- need to get your head out of your butt, focus on the real issues," he said.

But outside Trump Tower, former military personnel from the group "VetsVsHate," which campaigns against anti-Muslim bigotry, said the Republican candidate must never become president.

"I am opposed to everything Donald Trump stands for," said Jake Maier, a Marine Corp veteran from New Jersey who said he would be voting for Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders in his state primary next week.

"We will not let Donald Trump use veterans as props for his agenda for hate and fear," Maier told AFP.

Trump has routinely attacked reporters on Twitter he considers biased, most notably Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, until they reconciled with a face-to-face interview, broadcast earlier this month.

In March, The New York Times reported that Trump had earned close to $2 billion worth of media attention in the form of news and commentary about his campaign, nearly three times that of Clinton.

Jeanne Zaino, professor of political science at Iona College in New York, said Trump's attacks on the media had served him well in the Republican primary but warned they could backfire in a general election.

"Trump has really gotten a lot of traction out of calling out the media. His supporters really do not like the media," she said.

But stepping up his attacks may also see independents or moderates increasingly question his temperament to be president.
Netanyahu dusts off old peace plan after uproar over new govt

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken of reviving a long-dormant Arab peace initiative with the Palestinians, amid questions over whether he is sincere or trying to fend off international critics.

Netanyahu made his comments late Monday at the swearing in of his new hardline Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman, forming what many analysts call the most right-wing government in Israeli history.

Lieberman is detested by the Palestinians, and foreign governments have expressed concern over his appointment to the powerful post.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) and new Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman give a joint press conference at the Knesset in Jerusalem on May 30, 2016 Meanhem Kahana (AFP)

Both Netanyahu and Lieberman have repeatedly sought to address such concerns, saying they are committed to a two-state solution.

Netanyahu went a step further on Monday, saying an Arab League-endorsed peace initiative dating to 2002 "includes positive elements that can help revive constructive negotiations with the Palestinians".

"We are willing to negotiate with the Arab states revisions to that initiative so that it reflects the dramatic changes in the region since 2002, but maintains the agreed goal of two states for two peoples," Netanyahu said.

His comments come after Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said two weeks ago that there was now a "real opportunity" for an Israeli-Palestinian deal that could lead to warmer ties between his country and Israel.

Egypt and Jordan are the only two Arab nations with a peace deal with Israel. Israel has also seen improved ties and security cooperation with Cairo in recent months as part of the fight against Islamic State group jihadists.

UN Middle East envoy Nickolay Mladenov welcomed Netanyahu's comments, saying "this opportunity should not be missed and must be followed up with concrete and timely action".

- Eye on Obama -

But Netanyahu's comments come with the veteran premier under pressure over a French plan to hold an international peace conference, which Israel strongly opposes and the Palestinians support.

There is also speculation that US President Barack Obama could seek a UN resolution on the conflict -- or at least allow one to pass without vetoing it -- before he leaves office in January.

"There has been a feeling in the (prime minister's) office for a while that they are worried what will happen in the UN, that maybe the Americans will let a resolution go through that would be difficult for Israel," said Jonathan Rynhold of the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies.

As for the French initiative, a first meeting of foreign ministers from a range of countries -- without the Palestinians and Israelis present -- is due to take place on Friday in Paris.

An international conference including the Israelis and Palestinians would then be held before the end of the year.

"Netanyahu is very aware, as is Lieberman, that they have formed a right-wing coalition, and therefore the international community will be very distrustful, so they have gone out of their way to say something positive about the Arab peace initiative and to publicly say that they back a two-state solution," Rynhold said.

"That is a way of signalling to the international community: we are not as bad as you think we are."

- Opportunity or smokescreen? -

If a peace effort were to move forward on the basis of the Arab proposal, Israel would no doubt seek a list of changes.

The proposal essentially calls for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories and resolve outstanding issues with the Palestinians, leading to the creation of a Palestinian state, in exchange for normalised relations with Arab countries.

While some accused Netanyahu of creating a smokescreen by mentioning the old initiative, others said that, whatever his motivation, progress should not be ruled out.

"This is an opportunity," said Shmuel Sandler, a professor of international politics at Israel's Bar Ilan University.

"He has now two years where he doesn't have to worry about elections (if his coalition lasts its full term), so he might have a chance of moving ahead."

Sandler said that "the question is whether the other side will come forward. Will he have a partner?"

Palestinian leaders argue that years of negotiations with the Israelis have not ended the occupation. They have focused on pursuing their cause through international bodies, and strongly back the French plan.

"If the Israeli government is serious, it must take measures on the ground to prove its commitment to a two-state solution," said Nabil Abu Rudeina, spokesman for Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

"The first of those measures is the end to the occupation of the Palestinian territories."
Libya unity govt allies capture IS-held towns

Fighters allied with Libya's UN-backed unity government have captured two coastal towns from the Islamic State group in an advance towards its bastion Sirte, a spokesman said on Tuesday.

The Petroleum Facilities Guard overran Ben Jawad and Nofiliya as they thrust westwards along the Mediterranean coast from their base in Libya's eastern oil ports, the spokesman for the force said.

Five people were killed and 18 wounded in Monday's fighting, sector commander Colonel Bashir Buthefira said.

French Foreign minister Jean-Marc Ayrault (R) meets with UN's special envoy on Libya Martin Kobler on May 31, 2016 in Paris Francois Guillot (AFP)

"Our forces have taken control of Nofiliya and are now advancing towards Harawa" about 75 kilometres (45 miles) east of Sirte, he said on Tuesday.

Sirte was the home town of slain dictator Moamer Kadhafi and, since seizing it in June last year, IS has turned it into a recruitment and training camp.

Western governments fear the jihadists could use Sirte's port and airport as a springboard for attacks in Europe.

But they have called for any offensive against the IS stronghold to be carried out under the auspices of the unity government installed in Tripoli since March 30 for fear that rival operations could play into the jihadists' hands.

The unity government has gradually asserted its control over key state institutions, but it still faces a rival administration with its own army in the east.

Both sides are pushing towards Sirte, prompting the UN's special envoy on Libya to call on all armed groups to unite against IS.

"The fight against Daesh, which is the number one enemy, must be a Libyan fight and a united fight," said Martin Kobler, using an Arabic acronym for IS.
Kenya to close world's largest refugee camp 'by November'

Kenya is to send Somali refugees in the world's largest camp back to their war-torn country or third nations by November, the interior minister said Tuesday.

The sprawling Dadaab camp on the Kenya-Somalia border hosts some 350,000 refugees, the vast majority of whom fled Somalia's more than two-decade long conflict.

Kenya said earlier this month it would shut down the camp, and set up a team to explore how it could be achieved.

The sprawling Dadaab camp on the Kenya-Somalia border hosts some 350,000 refugees, the vast majority of whom fled Somalia's more than two-decade long conflict Tony Karumba (AFP/File)

"I want to inform the world that the decision to close Dadaab camp is final," Interior Minister Joseph Ole Nkaissery said after receiving the team's report.

"We hope to close the camp latest by November this year."

Nkaissery said the report would be shared with the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.

"On our side, we will prepare security and ensure it is done in the most humane way," he added, noting the report was "very clear on the timelines" to ensure refugees left.

"But this is a UNHCR exercise, we are just there to help them to get the refugees back."

Charities and the UN have voiced dismay at the closure plan, while rights groups have warned that forcibly repatriating refugees would break international law.

Experts had cast doubt on whether a move to close the camp would be legal.

"It would cause a huge humanitarian crisis, plus sending Somali refugees back would mean violating international conventions," Anne Hammerstad of the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent in England and an expert on refugee issues told AFP earlier this month.

Nairobi has also bemoaned the high cost of maintaining Dadaab, even though the international community, via the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), covers most costs.

Earlier this month, the UNHCR voiced "profound concern" over any move to shut Dadaab, while hailing Kenyas "extraordinary role over the years in hosting refugees." The country is currently home to some 600,000 refugees.

Victor Nyamori, Amnesty International's refugee affairs officer in Kenya, said earlier this month that he was "totally opposed" to the closure but agreed that "in a sense, we agree with Kenya, the international community does not do its part".

Kenya's plan to close the camp was revealed ahead of an international humanitarian summit in Istanbul, as well as before a visit to Kenya by the head of the UN refugee agency and the expiry in September of a 2013 deal on Somali refugees between Nairobi, Mogadishu and the UNHCR.

Analysts said it was a means for Kenya to put the issue back on the international agenda at a time when attention is focused on the migrant crisis in Europe.
Chief of W. Sahara Polisario independence group dead

The Polisario Front which demands the Western Sahara's independence from Morocco said its secretary general Mohamed Abdelaziz died on Tuesday "after a long illness", Algeria's APS news agency reported.

Abdelaziz, who was in his late 60s, had led the Algeria-backed Polisario since 1976 after the group was founded three years previously to struggle for independence for the former Spanish colony.

APS said he had been suffering from lung cancer, but the Polisario gave no further details on the circumstances of his death.

Secretary General of the Polisario Front Mohamed Abdelaziz looking on during an interview with AFP in Madrid on November 14, 2014 Pierre-Philippe Marcou (AFP/File)

"This is a great loss for the Sahrawi people", Polisario official Mohammed Keddad told AFP.

"He sacrificed his life for the liberation of Western Sahara. He embodied the wisdom and a sincere and firm commitment to its liberation", he added.

Polisario leaders were meeting and a statement was expected later, an official said.

The movement has declared 40 days of mourning to honour its late chief.

Abdelaziz would be buried in "liberated territory", behind the defensive wall erected by Morocco, a Polisario leader said.

"The date will depend on preparations currently under way," he said.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has also decreed eight days' national mourning, state television reported.

It said a cabinet meeting he chaired on Tuesday began with a minute's silence in tribute to the independence leader.

The United Nations has been trying to broker a Western Sahara settlement since 1991 after a ceasefire was reached to end a war that broke out when Morocco deployed its military in the territory in 1975.

Local Sahrawi people are campaigning for the right to self-determination, but Morocco considers the territory to be part of the kingdom and insists its sovereignty cannot be challenged.

- Educated in Morocco -

In March this year, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon met Abdelaziz and also said he would spare no effort in trying to find a political solution in the Western Sahara.

When he met Ban at a refugee camp in Tindouf in Algeria, Abdelaziz appeared to be in poor health.

The Polisario website did not give a date of birth for Abdelaziz.

Morocco says he was born in 1946 in Marrakesh in the kingdom where he is seen as a traitor, but APS said he was born in 1948 in Smara in Western Sahara.

A man of the desert, he spent much of his life with Polisario fighters or Sahrawi refugees at camps in the Tindouf region of southwest Algeria.

He was from the Reguibi, one of the three Sahrawi tribes, and was educated in southern Morocco, where his father was in the Royal Moroccan army.

In the late 1960s, Abdelaziz first met Sahrawi nationalist militants in Rabat and Casablanca, at Moroccan universities.

With Mustapha Sayed El Ouali, he became a founder of the Polisario Front in May 1973 and one of its main military leaders.

Speaking Arabic, French and Spanish in addition to the Sahrawi Hassanya dialect, Abdelaziz was as comfortable in a traditional blue gandoura robe as in a Western suit or plain military fatigues with no badges of rank.

Repeated bids by United Nations mediators to hold a referendum on self-determination for the Sahrawis in the vast desert but mineral-rich territory have failed.

In 2007, Morocco proposed a plan for autonomy under its sovereignty, but this is rejected by the Polisario Front which demands a referendum on self-determination.

"The Sahrawi people will keep fighting," the Polisario's Keddad said on Tuesday.

"Mohamed Abdelaziz's qualities will light the way for the completion of the liberation of Western Sahara."

A mural depicting Polisario Front leader Mohamed Abdelaziz is seen at the People's Liberation Army museum on March 3, 2016 Farouk Batiche (AFP/File)
Iraq forces fear protracted IS last stand in Fallujah

The tightening siege of Fallujah is trapping jihadists in the city and Iraqi fighters predict that the Islamic State group could make a longer and bloodier last stand than usual.

By the time Iraqi forces picked their way through a dense network of roadside bombs and booby traps and reached the hearts of Ramadi and Tikrit last year, most enemy fighters had vanished.

While many of IS's most senior commanders, including the foreign leaders, are reported to have fled Fallujah, Iraqi troops expect to encounter more than a small residual IS force.

Pro-government forces fighters celebrate in the al-Sejar village, in Iraq's Anbar province, on May 27, 2016 Ahmad al-Rubaye (AFP/File)

As the elite counter-terrorism service (CTS) began to creep into Fallujah, the tens of thousands of other forces who have been shaping the battlefield finished sealing off the city.

On Monday, a force led by the Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force cut off Fallujah from Jazirat al-Khaldiyah, an area to the west which IS has been transiting through to reach its other positions across the country.

"This time is different... because now they have no routes along which to bring in supplies and reinforcements or to escape," said Mohammed Salem, a senior Hashed officer involved in the operation near Saqlawiya.

"It could result in this battle dragging on though," he said.

Saif Salem, a member of the Furqat Imam Ali Shiite militia, just returned from the front line, caked in yellow dust from head to toe.

"Daesh (IS) are besieged. They can't escape at this stage. Their only option is a suicide holdout," said the young fighter from Najaf.

"This is what we face now but our morale is high and theirs is fragile. They want to drag us into the city in order to try to leave by blending in with the population," Salem said.

Abu Wahib, the top IS commander for the whole province of Anbar, in which Fallujah is located, was killed in a US-led coalition air strike on May 6.

A few days later, a commander described as the group's military leader in Fallujah, Maher al-Bilawi, was also killed.

- IS 'not that strong' -

A resident in the city contacted by phone told AFP there was sense of panic among jihadists, who have been rounding up men and ever younger boys, presumably as forced recruits to beef up their defence of Fallujah.

Besieged or not, David Witty, a retired US army special forces colonel, said he expected IS, a Sunni extremist group, to put up more of a fight than it did for other cities.

"After all, this place has been a symbol since 2004 of Sunni resistance to both the Baghdad government and the US," he said.

"If IS is unable to retain (Fallujah), it could be a significant psychological blow to the organisation," said Witty, a former advisor to CTS.

It was in Fallujah in November 2004 that Al-Qaeda in Iraq, a previous incarnation of the Islamic State group, inflicted some of the worst losses on the US military since the Vietnam War.

It took 10,000 highly trained US forces equipped with the best technology more than six weeks to gain the upper hand back then.

As the jihadists lost areas around Fallujah and elsewhere in Anbar in recent weeks, some fighters have regrouped inside their old stronghold.

Estimates vary but at least 1,000 IS fighters are believed to be hunkering down inside Fallujah, including in a network of tunnels, waiting for Iraqi forces to walk into the mousetrap.

By the time Iraqi forces had fully retaken Ramadi, the capital of Anbar, early this year, much of the city had been levelled.

Yahya Rasool, spokesman of the Joint Operations Command in charge of the fight against IS, does not believe IS fighters are willing or able to make a heroic last stand.

But there are an estimated 50,000 civilians left in Fallujah and that could also be a slowing factor in the battle, he said.

"Daesh are not that strong," he told AFP. "Their spirit is broken, but the priority that was made clear to us in the armed forces is to preserve the lives of civilians and the city's infrastructure."

Iraqi forces help families near al-Sejar village, in Iraq's Anbar province, after fleeing the city of Fallujah, on May 27, 2016 Ahmad al-Rubaye (AFP/File)
Two US troops injured in Iraq, Syria during IS attacks

Two US troops were wounded over the weekend in separate Islamic State attacks in Iraq and Syria, Pentagon officials said.

The casualty in Syria marks the first time an American soldier has been injured in that country since military advisors deployed there at the end of last year.

Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said the soldier was wounded by "indirect fire" -- a term that typically refers to rocket or artillery fire -- north of Raqa, the jihadists' de facto capital.

Syrian Democratic forces and an armed man in uniform identified as US special operations forces (C) are seen in the village of Fatisah in the northern Syrian province of Raqa on May 25, 2016 Delil Souleiman (AFP/File)

The Iraqi incident occurred near in northern Iraq near the city of Erbil, also by indirect fire, Davis said.

He stressed the troops was "not on the front line" and "were not engaged in active combat."

But Defense Secretary Ashton Carter later told reporters that "of course" the troops were in fact in combat.

President Barack Obama has repeatedly assured the American public there would be no US combat boots on the ground in Iraq or Syria, but troops are edging ever closer to the front lines, leading many to question what constitutes "combat" versus simply advising local partner forces.

The United States has sent more than 200 special forces personnel to northeastern Syria to advise and assist rebels fighting the Islamic State group.

American soldiers are focusing on aiding the Syrian Democratic Forces, a coalition dominated by the Kurdish militia YPG.
Philippines' Duterte calls China's Xi 'great president'

Incoming Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte on Tuesday described China's Xi Jinping "a great president", in another hint that frosty relations between the Asian neighbours could soon warm.

Duterte heaped the praise on Xi in a news conference in response to questions about a message the Chinese president sent to congratulate him on winning this month's election.

But the longtime mayor of the southern city of Davao, who has been criticised for lacking foreign policy experience, appeared unsure of Xi's title.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, pictured on April 28, 2016, wrote to incoming Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte after his victory, a standard diplomatic tradition for heads of state Kenzaburo Fukuhara (AFP/File)

"I was honoured, receiving a congratulatory message from a great president, uh prime minister," Duterte said.

The Chinese foreign ministry said Monday that Xi wrote to Duterte after his victory, a standard diplomatic tradition for heads of state.

China's official news agency Xinhua reported that Xi hoped the two sides would "get bilateral relations back on the track of sound development".

Chinese-Philippine ties soured during the six-year term of outgoing President Benigno Aquino, whose government sued China before a United Nations tribunal over its claims to most of the South China Sea.

A ruling is expected in the coming weeks, with the Philippines' response to it likely to be left to Duterte, who takes office on June 30.

In contrast with Aquino, Duterte has said he is willing to engage China in bilateral talks on the issue. Yet he has also played to nationalist sentiment by saying he would ride a jet ski to plant a Philippine flag on disputed islands in the sea.

Duterte also emphasised on Tuesday that he would not be fully reliant on the United States, the Philippines' former colonial ruler and most important military ally.
UN alarmed about Iraqi families used as 'human shields'

The United Nations raised alarm Tuesday concerning the fate of 300-400 Iraqi families rounded up by Islamic State (IS) group jihadists, possibly for use as human shields in the battleground city Fallujah.

UN officials have received "credible reports that families are being concentrated into the center of the city by Daesh and they are not allowed to leave these concentration points," said UN deputy representative to Iraq Lise Grande, using a term for the IS group.

"That would suggest that Daesh could be using them or may intend to use them as some kind of human shield," she told reporters.

Iraqi families are pictured near al-Sejar village, in Iraq's Anbar province, after fleeing the city of Fallujah, on May 27, 2016, during a major operation by Iraqi forces to retake the city of Fallujah from the Islamic State (IS) group Ahmad al-Rubaye (AFP/File)

"They are at extreme risk if there is a military confrontation."

Iraqi forces launched an offensive a week ago to recapture Fallujah, which became an IS group stronghold after its fighters seized the city in January 2014.

The United Nations has raised concerns with the Iraqi government, which has slowed down the pace of its operation to try to protect the trapped families.

The government is "fully aware" of the need to protect civilians during the assault, Grande said.

"The operation is moving more slowly than it might otherwise," she added.

Only 5,000 civilians of the 50,000 trapped in the city have managed to escape, many of whom walked for hours and came under fire as they fled, Grande said.
CHAPPAQUA, N.Y. (AP)  Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has marched in her hometown Memorial Day parade in a New York City suburb.

Clinton waved and smiled from the procession in Chappaqua (CHAP'-uh-kwah), accompanied by husband Bill Clinton and New York's Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo.

A friendly crowd cheered and many waved Clinton campaign signs. The Clintons have marched in the parade before, and resident Kelly Aidekman says she views them "as if they were any other neighbors."

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton waves as she walks in a Memotial Day parade Monday, May 30, 2016, in Chappaqua, N.Y. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)

Another resident, John Nadler, held a sign supporting Clinton's Republican rival, Donald Trump. Nadler says he wants "to let people know that there's more than one choice."

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton waves as she walks in a Memotial Day parade Monday, May 30, 2016, in Chappaqua, N.Y. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)

Firefighters salute as a Memorial Day parade passes Monday, May 30, 2016, in Chappaqua, N.Y. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, her husband former President Bill Clinton, and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo walked in the parade. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)

A supporter of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and a Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump supporter hold signs as they attend a Memorial Day parade Monday, May 30, 2016, in Chappaqua, N.Y. Clinton and her husband former President Bill Clinton, along with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, walked in the parade. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
Stripper who fled US before assault trial is caught overseas

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. (AP)  A stripper who fled the U.S. more than six years ago on the eve of her trial for armed assault of a fellow exotic dancer has been apprehended in the Dominican Republic.

Authorities announced Monday that former Providence, Rhode Island, resident Katherine Pimental was arrested last week and returned to Massachusetts, where she's facing charges stemming from a July 2007 stabbing.

The 35-year-old Pimental is accused of attacking a fellow dancer at a Dartmouth strip club, leaving her with severe injuries to her face and arm. Pimental didn't show up for court in December 2009 on the day her trial started.

Pimental is due Tuesday in Fall River Superior Court to face charges connected to the stabbing and bail-jumping charges.
Holder: Snowden did 'service,' but should still be punished

WASHINGTON (AP)  Edward Snowden performed a "public service" in stoking a national debate about secret domestic surveillance programs, but he should still return to the U.S. to stand trial, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in a podcast released on Monday.

As a National Security Agency contractor, Snowden leaked classified details in 2013 of the U.S. government's warrantless surveillance of its citizens before fleeing the country. He now lives in Russia and faces U.S. charges that could land him in prison for up to 30 years.

In a podcast interview with CNN political commentator David Axelrod, Holder said that Snowden had grown concerned that the domestic spying programs weren't providing a "substantial" return of useful intelligence even before even before he revealed the secrets.

FILE - In this March 4, 2015, file photo, then-Attorney General Eric Holder speaks at the Justice Department in Washington. Holder says Edward Snowden performed a "public service" in stoking a national debate about secret domestic surveillance programs, but that he should still return to the U.S. to stand trial. Holder spoke with CNN political commentator David Axelrod in a podcast released May 30, 2016. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Axelrod is a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, while Holder served as attorney general from 2009 to 2015.

"We can certainly argue about the way in which Snowden did what he did, but I think that he actually performed a public service by raising the debate we engaged in and by the changes that we made," Holder said. "Now, I would say doing what he did in the way he did it was inappropriate and illegal."

Holder said Snowden's leaks harmed American interests abroad and put intelligence assets at risk.

"He's got to make a decision," Holder said of Snowden. "He's broken the law. In my view, he needs to get lawyers, come on back and decide what he wants to do  go to trial, try to cut a deal."

He said Snowden should have to face consequences for his actions, including prison time.

"But in deciding what an appropriate sentence should be, a judge could take into account the usefulness of having that national debate," Holder added.

Snowden has repeatedly said he would be willing to return to the United States if the federal government would provide him a fair trial. However, Snowden says he is concerned that under federal espionage laws he would not allow him to present a whistleblower defense, arguing in court he acted in the public interest.

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The Latest: Swimming halted after suspected shark attack

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. (AP)  The Latest on a suspected shark attack at a Southern California beach (all times local):

12:15 p.m.

Officials are keeping thousands of Memorial Day beachgoers out of the water as they search miles of popular Southern California shoreline for a shark they believe attacked a swimmer.

In this Sunday, May 29, 2016, photo, people stand on the beach at Corona del Mar beach in Newport Beach, Calif. Thousands of Memorial Day beachgoers were kept out of the water Monday as lifeguards searched miles of popular Southern California shoreline for a shark they believe attacked a swimmer the day before. (Cindy Yamanaka/The Orange County Register via AP) MAGS OUT; LOS ANGELES TIMES OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT

Tara Finnigan, city of Newport Beach spokeswoman, says the woman received large bite marks on her upper torso and shoulder and was bleeding heavily Sunday at Corona Del Mar State Beach. Her condition wasn't immediately available.

The Newport Beach Fire Department's Marine Operations Division says it suspects a shark attack, but there were no witnesses or reported shark sightings.

Chief Lifeguard Rob Williams says they're searching the water again Monday, with police in a helicopter assisting.

People were welcome on the beachfront and pier, but those entering the water were asked to return to the shore.
Police: Man shot by officers refused to leave truck

CLINTON, N.C. (AP)  Authorities say a man shot to death by police after holding a shotgun for 20 minutes in a North Carolina parking lot told officers he was not coming out of his pickup truck.

Clinton Police said Monday in a news release that their officers went to the Burger King parking lot after a 911 call from someone who said a man asked him to call police.

Police Chief Jay Tilley says officers spoke with the man for 20 minutes. The chief says several officers fired at 53-year-old John Coffey when he opened his door early Sunday and pointed the gun at police. Tilley says Coffey was white.
The Latest: An emergency landing with assist from motorists

PASCAGOULA, Miss. (AP)  The Latest on a small plane's emergency landing in south Mississippi on Interstate 10 (all times local):

4 p.m.

The pilot of a small airplane that landed on Interstate 10 in south Mississippi said he lost power as he was approaching Gulfport and didn't have enough altitude to try to glide back to Mobile.

Rodney McKnight Jr. told reporters at the scene near Biloxi that he took off from Auburn, Alabama, and planned to spend Memorial Day in Gulfport when the single-engine plane developed problems.

A motorist who witnessed the landing told WLOX-TV that the pilot was able to effectively signal to motorists using up and down movements that he needed to land. Sarah Washburn said drivers slowed down and McKnight landed the plane down on the highway and was able to guide it off the road.

No injuries were reported.

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2:30 p.m.

A single-engine airplane has made an emergency landing on Interstate 10 in south Mississippi's Jackson County.

Mississippi Highway Patrol Capt. Johnny Poulos tells The Associated Press the landing is believed to have occurred around 12:30 p.m. Monday in the eastbound lanes of I-10, near Biloxi. No injuries were reported.

The landing happened near Mile Marker 48 between the heavily traveled D'Iberville and Ocean Springs exits. Poulos said troopers were directing traffic and awaiting Federal Aviation Administration officials. He said the pilot, whose name has not been released, reported losing power.

The plane did not strike any vehicles and the pilot was able to maneuver it over to the shoulder.
Puerto Rico debates consequences of paying off debt

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP)  Puerto Rico's budget director says the U.S. territory cannot pay off its debt and provide essential services at the same time.

Luis Cruz Batista spoke Monday during a public hearing in which Puerto Rico legislators debated a proposed $9.1 billion budget.

He warned that nearly 3,500 public employees would have to be laid off in part if the island were required to meet all its debt obligations. Cruz said other scenarios include reducing the work week and making deeper cuts to the health, public security and education sectors.

The proposed budget sets aside only $209 million to help pay interest tied to a $2 billion debt payment due July 1.
LA war memorial covered up after graffiti vandalism

LOS ANGELES (AP)  A pair of Marines on leave from their base in California's high desert answered the Memorial Day call on Monday, bringing dozens of American flags to try to dress up a vandalized Vietnam War memorial until it can be repaired.

The wall, adjacent to a Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus yard in the city's Venice Beach section, was tagged earlier in the week. Metro officials said Monday they had hoped to work with community volunteers to clean it up quickly but discovered it was too badly damaged.

"We were initially hopeful that the graffiti could be removed without damaging the memorial, but Metro's contractor says the damage is too extensive," the agency said in a statement.

Former U.S. Marine Jon Scudder, left, watches as a Metropolitan Transit Authority worker prepares to cover a vandalized Vietnam War Memorial in the Venice area of Los Angeles on Monday, May 30, 2016. The Los Angeles memorial honoring prisoners and those missing in action during the Vietnam War has had to be covered with tarp on Memorial Day after authorities determined it was too badly damaged by graffiti to be quickly repaired. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)

Metro workers instead covered it with a tarp until it can be repaired.

That's when Pfc. Joseph Dudley showed up with a friend and the flags, arriving from the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, California, where he's stationed.

"Me and my buddy, we were down in Venice Beach with my parents for the weekend and we heard what happened so we bought $100 worth of flags and are just down here to try to hang them up. Just to kind of give back to the people who are on the wall," he said.

The memorial, dedicated in 1992, contains the names of 2,273 prisoners or soldiers missing in action from the Vietnam War. It was spray-painted from one end to the other with large graffiti tags. Metro officials said many of its names will have to be re-inscribed.

"All of a sudden for this to happen after almost 30 years is just appalling," said construction contractor Jon Scudder, himself a Marine veteran.

Scudder had hoped he and other volunteers could repair it by Monday, but now they'll have to wait.

"It's like putting graffiti on the wall in Washington," he said of the national Vietnam War Memorial. "You just don't do that. I don't what's going on in people's minds."
Physicist Stephen Hawking baffled by Donald Trump's rise

LONDON (AP)  Renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking may have a good grasp of the workings of the universe, but he says he can't understand Donald Trump's popularity.

Hawking tells ITV's "Good Morning Britain" show Tuesday that he has no explanation for the success of the presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee.

"He is a demagogue who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator," Hawking says in prerecorded comments to be broadcast when the show airs at 6 a.m. London time (0500 GMT, 1 a.m. EDT) Tuesday.

FILE - In this file photo dated Wednesday Aug. 29, 2012, British physicist, Professor Stephen Hawking speaks during the Opening Ceremony for the 2012 Paralympics in London, Wednesday Aug. 29, 2012. Hawking was interviewed on British TV Monday May 30, 2016, saying UK should stay inside the European Union because of its support for research, and he cannot fathom the popularity of presumptive candidate for U.S. president Donald Trump, saying he "seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, FILE)

Hawking , who speaks through a computer system operated with his cheek, also made a plea for British voters to choose to remain in the European Union in the June 23 referendum.

He said it is important not only for economic and security research but also to further scientific research.

Hawking says: "Gone are the days we could stand on our own, against the world. We need to be part of a larger group of nations, both for our security, and our trade."
Chicago gets some pension relief as Rauner veto overridden

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP)  Chicago taxpayers will save $1 billion on police and fire pension costs in the short term under a law the General Assembly approved Monday after some House Republicans bucked their governor, who had railed against it as a ridiculous expansion of the Illinois' growing pension hole.

The House voted 72-43 to override Gov. Bruce Rauner's veto of the savings plan, which trumps state law that required the city to pump $4.62 billion into retirement accounts for police officers and firefighters through 2020.

The huge payments could have forced a $300 million property tax increase, Mayor Rahm Emanuel had warned. But Rauner countered that shorting payments will cost an extra $18.6 billion in interest during the next 40 years.

FILE - In this May 26, 2016, file photo, Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner meets with local community leaders in Springfield, Ill. The Illinois Senate turned back Gov Rauner's veto of a five-year pension-savings plan for Chicago Monday, May 31, 2016, bucking the conservative governor on protests that Democrats are broadening the pension abyss. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman File)

The House quickly followed the Senate in reversing the first-term governor, a businessman who has pounced on the issue of Illinois' woeful pension funding  in municipal as well as state accounts  since he was a candidate.

The city's police and fire funds are $12 billion short of what's needed to cover current and future obligations. Chronic underfunding over the decades is largely to blame, as it is responsible for the $111 billion shortfall Illinois faces in its state-employee accounts. Rauner saw the legislation as another means of delaying the pain accompanying fiscal balance.

"Clearly, those who supported this measure haven't recognized what happens when government fail to promptly fund pension obligations," Rauner said in a statement.

The legislation was approved in the House last year with 65 votes  six short of the number needed for a veto override. But Monday, some Republicans jumped to the Democratic mayor's aid Monday. Arlington Heights Republican Rep. David Harris said Emanuel inherited the mess from his predecessor and already raised property taxes by $500 million just to catch up on underfunded pensions.

"Not a penny for public works, not a penny for infrastructure improvement," Harris said. "That's a tough thing to do and I give him credit for that."

The Democratic-controlled Senate voted 39-19 earlier Monday to OK the plan unions endorse. The Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 and Chicago Firefighters Union Local 2 backed the plan they had negotiated with Emanuel.

"We in the city agreed to step up and finally do our part to responsibly fund these pensions," Emanuel said in a prepared statement.

The plan would reduce Chicago's required pension deposits to police and fire retirement funds by $1 billion, to $3.63 billion, and stretches the timeline from 2040 to 2055 for the funds to meet a level of funding equal to 90 percent of what they need to cover current and future payouts.

Despite the blow to Rauner, many GOP lawmakers stayed the course.

"At some point, you're going to have to take fiscal responsibility for your own actions," Naperville Republican Rep. Grant Wehrli said. "Chicago, raise your taxes."

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The bill is SB777.

Online: http://www.ilga.gov

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Contact Political Writer John O'Connor at https://twitter.com/apoconnor . His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/john-oconnor

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This story has been updated to correct that Chicago's previous property tax increase was $500 million.

FILE - In this May 20, 2016, file photo, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, responds to a question during a news conference in Chicago. The Illinois Senate turned back Gov. Bruce Rauner's veto of a five-year pension-savings plan for Chicago Monday, May 31, 2016, bucking the conservative governor on protests that Democrats are broadening the pension abyss. Emanuel in a statement praised the override, saying the legislation resulted from months of negotiation among the unions and the city. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, File)

FILE - In this March 17, 2016, file photo, Illinois Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, speaks to lawmakers while on the Senate floor in Springfield, Ill. The Illinois Senate turned back Gov. Bruce Rauner's veto of a five-year pension-savings plan for Chicago, Monday, May 31, 2016, bucking the conservative governor on protests that Democrats are broadening the pension abyss. .(AP Photo/Seth Perlman, File)
Fire erupts during Memorial Day banquet at American Legion

PHILADELPHIA (AP)  Authorities say a blaze erupted during an annual Memorial Day banquet at an American Legion post in Philadelphia and required more than 100 firefighters to get it under control.

Banquet attendee George Mondschein tells The Philadelphia Inquirer (http://bit.ly/1THBb59 ) that dinner was finishing up Monday when the commander announced that there was a fire in the dumbwaiter.

Fire Commissioner Adam Thiel says firefighters worked 2 hours to get the blaze under control. He says the cause is under investigation.

Philadelphia firefighters work to put out a fire at the American Legion Post 396, Monday May 30, 2016, in Philadelphia. There were no reports of injuries. (Tom Gralish/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) PHIX OUT; TV OUT; MAGS OUT; NEWARK OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT

Mondschein says his old Boy Scout troop held its meetings at the post. He says it kept him off the streets, but "now it's burned up."

He says he wishes he and the other attendees had grabbed mementos from the building on their way out.

Only a firefighter suffered a minor injury.

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Information from: The Philadelphia Inquirer, http://www.inquirer.com

Philadelphia firefighters work to put out a fire at the American Legion Post 396, Monday May 30, 2016, in Philadelphia. There were no reports of injuries. (Tom Gralish/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) PHIX OUT; TV OUT; MAGS OUT; NEWARK OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT

James Murphy, center, gives a back pat to John Clark, 75, as they talk with Kime Powell as Philadelphia firefighters work to put out a fire at the American Legion Post 396, Monday May 30, 2016, in Philadelphia. There were no reports of injuries. (Tom Gralish/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) PHIX OUT; TV OUT; MAGS OUT; NEWARK OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT

People watch as Philadelphia firefighters work to put out a fire at the American Legion Post 396, Monday May 30, 2016, in Philadelphia. There were no reports of injuries. (Tom Gralish/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) PHIX OUT; TV OUT; MAGS OUT; NEWARK OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT
Haiti panel recommends throwing out results of disputed vote

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP)  A special verification commission on Monday recommended throwing out the disputed results of Haiti's first-round presidential election because it appeared to be tainted by significant fraud.

Commission President Pierre Francois Benoit said there were far too many "zombie votes" and other problems in the Oct. 25 presidential balloting to be considered legitimate. He said some tally sheets from polling stations had fingerprints that appeared to be from a single person.

"We recommend that the presidential election be done over," Benoit said on the grounds of the National Palace, where the commissioners handed over their report to Haiti's interim president.

The president of the verification commission Francois Benoit speaks during a ceremony in the national palace, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, May 30, 2016. The commission recommended throwing out the disputed results of last years first-round presidential election because it appeared to be tainted by fraud. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

The commission, which was installed a month ago by caretaker President Jocelerme Privert, said they audited a random sample of 25 percent of the roughly 13,000 tally sheets from polling stations seeking to verify the results as well as to explore allegations of rampant fraud.

Benoit said it appeared electoral fraud was masterminded at a "high level."

The final decision whether to redo the election will have to be made by a reconfigured Provisional Electoral Council, known by its acronym CEP. The current members were sworn in earlier this year, replacing a council that was repeatedly accused of corruption.

"The CEP now has to finish the work to have a good election," Privert told reporters at the ceremony Monday night.

The council had been scheduled to announce a new date for a three-times postponed presidential runoff Tuesday. But CEP chief Leopold Berlanger said Monday night that the electoral council would now plan to issue an electoral timetable June 6.

Berlanger made no immediate comment on the recommendation that the October presidential results be thrown out.

Privert has repeatedly said Haiti cannot restart balloting without first building confidence in the electoral machinery.

U.N. peacekeepers and Haitian police could be seen on streets around the National Palace compound. After the commission's announcement, Port-au-Prince's downtown appeared calm and there were no signs of political unrest.

In recent days, several foreign embassies have warned their citizens in Haiti that the release of the panel's report and the scheduled Tuesday announcement of a new election date could lead to civil unrest across the country.

Jean Pierre, a Port-au-Prince resident who has a small wedding photography business, said he was hopeful that Haiti's political class would accept the findings and move on.

"Whenever their protesters take to the streets and burn tires and smash cars it just takes the country backward," he said on a street corner.

There was no immediate comment from Jovenel Moise, the first-place finisher in the October presidential vote. The Tet Kale party candidate was hand-picked by previous President Michel Martelly and was the beneficiary of a relatively well-financed campaign.

International monitors who observed Haiti's Oct. 25 presidential balloting have said results putting Moise in the leading position for a two-candidate runoff appeared to be a genuine reflection of the voters' will.

But the tally was immediately rejected by local observer groups and virtually all the other candidates, most notably the No. 2 finisher, Jude Celestin. He called the results showing Moise with nearly 33 percent of the votes a "massive fraud," and many civil society groups expressed concern about the legitimacy of the vote.

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David McFadden on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dmcfadd

Interim President Jocelerme Privert, left, receives the election report from the president of the verification commission Francois Benoit, at the national palace in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, May 30, 2016. The commission recommended throwing out the disputed results of last years first-round presidential election because it appeared to be tainted by fraud. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)
Abe to put off tax hike to mute shocks to faltering economy

TOKYO (AP)  Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is due Wednesday to announce he is postponing a sales tax hike to help nurture along Japan's economic recovery.

After repeatedly insisting he would go ahead next year with the increase in the national sales tax to 10 percent from the current 8 percent, Abe decided the risk of yet another economic downturn was just too high.

Japan has the world's third-largest economy. Growth has stalled, however, as the population has begun shrinking and aging and manufacturers moved overseas to tap into faster growing markets.

FILE - In this May 27, 2016 file photo, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe speaks at a press conference at the G-7 summit in Shima, central Japan. Parliament was due to vote later Tuesday, May 31, on a no-confidence motion against Abe put forward by opposition parties. But the Liberal Democratics' strong majority means they lack the votes to get it passed. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi, File)

Abe has championed a barrage of monetary easing meant to vanquish deflation, which tends to discourage corporate investment and consumer spending. So far the strategy has made only limited progress.

The tax increase due in April 2017 is likely to be delayed until October 2019, after Abe leaves office.

While the decision will help the Liberal Democrats in an upcoming election for the upper house of parliament, it has raised questions over whether the "Abenomics" economic strategy has failed.

Abe easily weathered a no-confidence motion introduced by opposition leaders Tuesday, thanks to the Liberal Democratic Party's strong majority in parliament.

But opposition party leaders lashed out, accusing Abe of using concern over slowdowns in China and other emerging economies as a smoke screen for the failings of his own policies.

"Prime Minister Abe should immediately step down," said Katsuya Okada, head of the Democratic Party, one of four opposition parties that submitted the no-confidence motion. "He mishandled economic policy, and his Abenomics has failed."

With Japan's public debt at nearly 240 percent of its GDP, putting the nation's accounts in order is an urgent priority. Economists and finance ministry officials say the tax needs to rise to 20 percent or more as costs of caring for the country's aging population soar.

But those favoring a delay argue the recovery is too weak to endure a fresh hit to consumer spending from a tax hike that could actually cause government revenues actually contract.

The last time Japan raised its sales tax, to 8 percent from 5 percent in April 2014, the economy sank into recession. Growth has been uneven since then, and Abe initially opted to postpone the increase to 10 percent, originally set for October 2015, to April 2017.

By again postponing the tax hike again, Japan risks having its credit downgraded. However, most of its debt is owned by domestic investors unlikely to dump their holdings of Japanese assets.

The delay is raising questions over how to finance government spending commitments due to be paid for by tax increase, including payments of stipends to low-income pensioners, subsidies for elder care and scholarships, and pay increases for nursing and childcare workers.

Abe reportedly rejected the idea of dissolving the lower house of Parliament and holding a snap election in July, when Japan is due to hold a vote for the less powerful upper house.
South Korea says North Korea missile launch likely failed

SEOUL, South Korea (AP)  A North Korean missile launch likely failed on Tuesday, according to South Korea's military, the latest in a string of high-profile failures that somewhat tempers recent worries that Pyongyang was pushing quickly toward its goal of a nuclear-tipped missile that can reach America's mainland.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported that the missile was a powerful mid-range Musudan. If true, that would make it the fourth failed attempt by the North to conduct a successful test launch of the new missile, which could potentially reach far-away U.S. military bases in Asia and the Pacific.

Yonhap, citing an unidentified government source, said the missile exploded at a mobile launch pad as soon as a launch button was pressed. The report, if confirmed, suggests the missile may have even failed to lift off. Yonhap did not say how its source obtained the information.

A man watches a TV news program reporting about North Korea's missiles at the Seoul Train Station in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. A North Korean missile launch likely failed on Tuesday, according to South Korea's military, the latest in a string of high-profile failures that tempers somewhat recent worries that Pyongyang was pushing quickly toward its goal of a nuclear-tipped missile that can reach America's mainland. The letters read on top left, "North Korean missile launch likely failed." (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

Seoul defense officials said they could not immediately confirm the report.

The South's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in statement that the North attempted to launch an unidentified missile early in the morning from the eastern coastal town of Wonsan, but that it likely failed. JCS officials said later Tuesday they were analyzing what happened but released no other details.

Despite recent failures, there have been growing worries about North Korea's nuclear and missile activities this year, which includes a nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket launch in February that outsiders saw as a test of banned long-range missile technology.

The most recent launch follows Seoul's rejection of recent Pyongyang overtures to talk, part of what some analysts see as an attempt by the North to win concessions from its rivals.

In April, North Korea attempted unsuccessfully to launch three suspected powerful intermediate-range Musudan missiles. All the missiles exploded in mid-air or crashed, according to South Korean defense officials.

South Korean officials believe the missile launches follow an order from the country's leader Kim Jong Un in March to conduct tests of a nuclear warhead and ballistic missiles capable of carrying such warheads. That order was thought to be part of Pyongyang's reaction to annual South Korea-U.S. military drills that it sees as an invasion rehearsal.

Musudan missiles have a potential range of about 3,500 kilometers (2,180 miles), which would put U.S. military bases in Guam within their striking distance. South Korea believes the North does not have a functional long-range missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland, but the North is working on that technology.

Before April's suspected launches, North Korea had never flight-tested a Musudan missile, although one was displayed during a military parade in 2010 in Pyongyang.

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Associated Press writer Kim Tong-hyung contributed to this report.

In this Monday, May 30, 2016 photo, Japan Self-Defense Force members walk near PAC-3 missile interceptors deployed to prepare for a possible North korean missile, at the Defense Ministry in Tokyo. A North Korean missile launch likely failed on Tuesday, according to South Korea's military, the latest in a string of high-profile failures that tempers somewhat recent worries that Pyongyang was pushing quickly toward its goal of a nuclear-tipped missile that can reach America's mainland. (Muneki Yajima/Kyodo News via AP) JAPAN OUT, MANDATORY CREDIT
Police raid drug-infested 'Bronx' in Colombia's capital

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP)  The streets of Colombia's largest open-air drug market look like a war zone following a police sweep through one of Bogota's most dangerous neighborhoods.

More than 2,500 riot police officers and heavily armed soldiers participated in a raid that began Saturday in the capital's "Bronx" area, nicknamed for its comparison to the troubled New York neighborhood.

New Mayor Enrique Penalosa decided to clamp down on the district in response to complaints of brazen drug consumption and crime in plain view and just blocks from the presidential palace.

Police officers break into slot machines looking for drugs and weapons in the area known as El Bronx in downtown Bogota, Colombia, Monday, May 30, 2016. Thousands of police officers accompanied by city officials raided early Saturday the area plagued by drug addicts and prostitution. According to Bogotas Major Enrique Penalosa dozens of underage girls who were forced into sexual servitude by gang members were rescued, during the raid. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

More than 1,000 people, many of them homeless crack addicts, were removed and offered treatment. Authorities also rescued 136 minors, some of them possibly used as child prostitutes, and turned them over to the state welfare agency.

Julian Quintana, head of the judicial police, said 11 people were arrested and large amounts of cocaine, marijuana and a highly addictive crack-like substance called basuco were seized.

Police also located a 100-meter-long hidden passageway running under a building overrun by squatters that was used by criminal gangs to smuggle drugs, weapons and possibly even kidnapping victims in and out of the neighborhood.

"The Bronx will never again be an independent republic of crime where city officials and agents of order can't circulate freely," Penalosa said as he outlined plans to provide better lighting and clean up the neighborhood.

The Bronx has long been a major embarrassment and symbol of abandonment by the state. Authorities have tried to neutralize the neighborhood in the past, most recently three years ago, but to no lasting effect.

On Monday, police wearing surgical masks to keep out the stench of human excrement escorted journalists through the desolate neighborhood. Streets were littered with furniture and trash  evidence of a fierce street clash when police swept into the neighborhood unannounced just after dawn Saturday.

Not everyone welcomed the intervention. Dozens of people removed from the Bronx relocated to a nearby plaza and have been burning stores and fighting with police using gasoline bombs and rocks.

A police officer walks past smashed slot machines in the area known as El Bronx in downtown Bogota, Colombia, Monday, May 30, 2016. Thousands of police officers accompanied by city officials raided early Saturday the area plagued by drug addicts and prostitution. According to Bogotas Major Enrique Penalosa dozens of underage girls who were forced into sexual servitude by gang members, were rescued during the raid. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

Police officers stand in front of a mural depicting the late drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, in the area known as El Bronx in downtown Bogota, Colombia, Monday, May 30, 2016. Thousands of police officers accompanied by city officials raided early Saturday the area plagued by drug addicts and prostitution. According to Bogotas Major Enrique Penalosa dozens of underage girls who were forced into sexual servitude by gang members were rescued, during the raid. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

Police officers stand in the area known as El Bronx in downtown Bogota, Colombia, Monday, May 30, 2016. Thousands of police officers accompanied by city officials raided early Saturday the area plagued by drug addicts and prostitution. According to Bogotas Major Enrique Penalosa dozens of underage girls who were forced into sexual servitude by gang members, were rescued during the raid. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)
Wal-Mart needs to grow overseas, and China's the big prize

SHENZHEN, China (AP)  Zhong Guoyan sifted through piles of fish at a Wal-Mart in Shenzhen, one of China's largest cities. She studied the fins, to make sure they were bright red and firm. She peered at the eyeballs  were they bulging?

"I like when the products are fresh, and the quality is good," she said. "When I come here, I have a look. If it's good, then I will buy it. If it's only cheap, I won't buy it."

In American Wal-Marts, customers are not offered the opportunity to fondle their fish. But America is not China, as the world's biggest retailer has learned. If the Arkansas-based company wanted to win over foreign consumers like Zhong, it would have to shed some of its American ways, and cater to very different customs and conventions that are fast changing.

In this Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2015, photo, a worker prepares cooked ducks for sale at a Wal-Mart in Shenzhen, in southern China's Guangdong province. If Arkansas-based Wal-Mart wants to win over foreign consumers, it has to shed some of its American ways, and cater to very different customs and conventions. China is the ultimate prize. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

In the U.S., Wal-Mart conquered the marketplace by offering "everyday low prices" to penny-pinching, bulk-buying customers, but Chinese shoppers have good reason to look for quality first, bargains second after scandals involving tainted and mislabeled food. And Chinese shoppers seek fresh food daily because their tiny refrigerators don't give them room to stock up.

Zhong eventually tossed a couple of fish into a plastic bag  a small victory in this massive retailer's struggle to build an international empire.

The stakes are high: Wal-Mart can't count on much sales growth from its U.S. business  it's facing challenges at home with intense competition from online leader Amazon.com and dollar stores, which offer low prices and convenience  so the retailer is depending more on its operations overseas.

China, the world's most-populous country, is the ultimate prize. Right now, it represents just 3 percent of Wal-Mart's global sales of $478.6 billion, according to estimates from IBISWorld, a research firm. And the company has just over 400 stores in China, compared with more than 5,000 in the U.S. But the Chinese grocery market, already the world's largest at $1.1 trillion a year, is expected to grow to nearly $1.5 trillion in just the next four years, says IGD, a global consumer products research firm.

"China remains a strategic market for our future," Doug McMillon, CEO of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. recently told investors.

Getting the food business right is critical for Wal-Mart. Shoppers buy groceries more often than anything else. If Wal-Mart can get them in the door to buy food regularly, perhaps they will visit more frequently for items like pajamas and coffee makers  and eventually become loyal online customers, too.

Still, markets in China and elsewhere in the world will not surrender to Wal-Mart, just because it's Wal-Mart. In particular, global players like Wal-Mart have found that food retailing doesn't cross borders easily because it's a largely local business. After struggling on its own in China, Britain's Tesco PLC decided two years ago to team up with China Resources Enterprise, a state-owned company. Wal-Mart has also taken some lumps.

Overall international sales growth has been uneven, dropping 9.4 percent last year largely because of the strong dollar. And while Wal-Mart's overseas business had a strong start to this year, it faces long-term challenges. Wal-Mart gave up in Germany and South Korea, abandoning those markets back in 2006 in the face of tough competition. It's closing 10 percent of its stores in Brazil. And it's locked in a price war in the United Kingdom, slugging it out with no-frills German discounters Aldi and Lidl.

Overseas, Wal-Mart lacks the scale to squeeze local suppliers on price as it does in the U.S. It also faces nimble competitors who are entrenched in foreign markets. It has not always found it easy to duplicate its bedrock strategy of constant bargains outside the United States.

But Wal-Mart has learned over the years from its missteps, discovering that it can't just impose its culture on the world, that it needs to adapt to local ways, that patience does pay off.

In countries like Mexico, Canada and Japan, Wal-Mart has won shoppers over time. After the setbacks in Germany and South Korea, the company established a team to ensure it does a better job integrating international acquisitions, while avoiding the impulse to force employees overseas to adopt all its ways. In Chile, it launched a corporate culture campaign and worked closely with suppliers to coax them into its way of doing business. It's using its global clout to find and import products from around the world, catering to increasingly sophisticated and demanding middle class consumers.

Wal-Mart also has come to realize that it can thrive without being the biggest player in every market, says Bryan Roberts, global insights director at TCC Global, a London-based marketing consultancy for grocery retailers. But the company also knows that it needs to succeed in China, now the company's fourth largest international market by sales. And he believes it will do just that.

"Wal-Mart," Roberts says, "is a very determined organization."

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WINNING OVER PICKY CONSUMERS

Except for the signs, most Americans wouldn't recognize a Wal-Mart in China. At a store in Shenzhen, shoppers sniff bins of rice or use tongs or their hands to examine the piles of local sausage, whole chickens and pigs' feet. Nearby, tanks brim with live fish, frogs and crabs.

Americans may like to touch products, but in China, many want to buy live fish, or smell the meat.

"It has to smell like fresh blood," said Lina Wang as she examined loose pork.

Meanwhile, Huang Xiulian stood at a nearby Snickers display, studying the expiration date and where the candy was produced.

In the massive, unruly Chinese market, some competitors have cut corners, mislabeling products or even selling tainted foods. The risks have made Chinese consumers unusually wary: If a carton of milk or a piece of fish seems too cheap, Chinese shoppers wonder if it's safe. If items stay on sale day after day, they worry if there's something wrong with them.

Sean Clarke, CEO of Wal-Mart China, based in Shenzhen, previously worked in Britain, Japan, Germany, and Canada. China, he says, "is easily the most challenging market to operate."

"There is a huge level of distrust in this market," Clarke says. "Is it fresh? Is the price right?"

Although China still has plenty of bargain-conscious shoppers, overplaying the price message can also "alienate the increasingly affluent middle-class shoppers, less sensitive on price but (who) value more the quality and assortment of merchandise," says Jason Yu, general manager of Kantar Worldpanel China, which specializes in research on Chinese shopping habits.

In particular, Wal-Mart had a difficult time promoting "everyday low prices"  promising the lowest prices on a basket of goods every time consumers shop. Early on, Wal-Mart undermined its own claims for consistently low prices by running lots of short-term promotional gimmicks.

Then some rivals poached the "everyday low price" message, confusing customers. Wal-Mart scrambled to find the right slogan. In 2010, it switched to "Low Prices." Two years later, it trotted out "Worry Free"  a message that employs the Chinese characters for "save, heart, price," implying quality and reassuring shoppers who worry that deals will expire before they get to the store.

"Worry Free" is Wal-Mart's key weapon to lure shoppers: 85 percent of the discounts in the Wal-Mart stores in China now last anywhere from four weeks to six months, said Clarke. Unlike in the U.S., Wal-Mart had to build trust by spelling out in signs how long the low prices last.

The company's message: Efficiency and good management, not cutting corners, make everyday low prices possible.

When Wal-Mart came to China, it was slow to tailor its offerings to local tastes. Southern Chinese like rice. Northern Chinese like noodles. Folks from Hunan like their chili peppers. The Cantonese crave chicken feet.

Realizing its mistake, Wal-Mart gave local managers more leeway to run their businesses. For example, it let them decide when hot deli food was past its sell-by date and gave them free rein in ordering from different local suppliers.

But that approach backfired, leading to a series of food-safety violations. In one particularly embarrassing episode, Wal-Mart had to recall donkey meat  a delicacy in China  after DNA testing showed it contained traces of fox meat. The misstep came at a time when Chinese consumers were especially wary, because tainted baby formula had sickened hundreds of thousands of infants.

In response, Wal-Mart slashed nearly two-thirds of its 20,000 suppliers, including food. Now, Wal-Mart knows exactly where each product comes from. Wal-Mart also took back some of the responsibilities from local managers, though they are allowed to decide on such issues as whether meat should be loose or packaged in their stores.

Wal-Mart increased its investment in food safety. It broke new ground in China by adding mobile testing labs that go around from store to store in both the Southern and Eastern regions of China, checking for pesticides on vegetables and fruits. It's using handheld devices in South China to check temperatures of meat products.

"It's quality first," Clarke said, "and then we will have the lowest price."

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GAINING CONTROL OVER SUPPLIERS, COSTS

In America, Wal-Mart consistently delivers low prices to shoppers largely because it has the clout  25 percent of the U.S. grocery business to force suppliers to do things the Wal-Mart way. That means cutting costs to the bone. In return, the suppliers enjoy steady demand from Wal-Mart, so they don't have to spend so much on advertising or worry about staffing their factories.

Wal-Mart's pull is so strong that more than 1,500 suppliers have opened offices near its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas.

But replicating that model has proven tough overseas, partly because it takes time to work with new suppliers to cut costs. In Brazil, for instance, it's still a work in progress after two decades.

In China, things are tougher still. Wal-Mart accounts for just 2.3 percent of the overall grocery market. In fact, the top 10 grocery retailers in China account for just 18.5 percent of the market, says Euromonitor International, a global market research firm. Suppliers are scattered, too. Ninety-five percent of all products Wal-Mart sells in China are supplied by local companies. It's tough for retailers to have influence over their network of Chinese suppliers.

The Chinese supply chain is also notoriously inefficient. For years, Wal-Mart and other foreign companies haven't dealt directly with their suppliers, working mostly instead through a labyrinth of middlemen who handle distribution. One supplier could potentially have 100 distributors, handling delivery to just three or four stores. Wal-Mart would have to work with each distributor.

Wal-Mart had been making some efforts in centralizing its food distribution. But it didn't get serious about breaking up the system until three years ago. It decided to cut out, or at least reduce, the middlemen and route as many goods as possible through 20 of its own distribution centers. It built 11 centers for fresh food, and increased its packaged-food distribution centers from five to nine. Now, 85 percent of packaged goods is being sent through distribution centers. For fresh food, that figure is about 50 percent.

Wal-Mart says it was a challenge to convince many suppliers to unravel their way of doing business. But by eliminating the go-betweens, Wal-Mart could negotiate directly with suppliers and knock down costs  often by 10 percent to 12 percent, says Lesley Smith, senior vice president of the supply chain at Wal-Mart China and the woman behind the move.

The change also gives Wal-Mart more control over the quality of the food being sent to its stores and the efficiency with which it gets to them. Before the switch, only about 75 percent of orders would actually reach Wal-Mart stores; now 95 percent do. Before, it took three days for products to arrive; now it takes a day and a half, Smith says.

Nestle S.A., for instance, used to go through 81 Chinese distributors to reach 400 Wal-Marts. Now it's using Wal-Mart's national distribution network, which it says is resulting in fresher quality of goods at the store, higher sales and lower costs.

Another supplier, Beijing-based noodle and flour maker Cofco, is also coming to appreciate the Wal-Mart way. In 2003, it started supplying 11 Wal-Marts. Now it's selling to 398. Wal-Mart demands that state-owned Cofco keep prices low and stable.

"At first, we had concerns, especially when the raw material costs had some ups and downs," says Cofco general manager Liu Hongwei says.

But Cofco has learned to be more efficient. And Wal-Mart stocks Cofco products in the busiest parts of the stores and markets them under the "worry free" slogan. Cofco sales to Wal-Mart rose 40 percent last year, compared to 10 percent to 20 percent increases for other customers.

Liu says he negotiates prices with his other customers every two weeks. With Wal-Mart? Twice a year.

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FIGHTING COMPETITORS

Often, Wal-Mart enters new markets by acquiring competitors, but that doesn't guarantee success. Buying the top player, as it did in Chile and Mexico, seems to work best.

In Chile, Wal-Mart's intense marketing paid off. Chileans are so sold on Wal-Mart's supercenter, Lider, that they believe the gap between its prices and rivals is twice what it actually is.

But in the United Kingdom, Wal-Mart's Asda and traditional British supermarkets like Tesco and Sainsbury's are all being undercut by the rapidly expanding Aldi and Lidl chains. In response, Asda is stepping up sustained price cuts and joined the European Marketing Distribution, which pools the buying power of 250 supermarket chains.

In vast China, Wal-Mart competes with a swarm of regional rivals.

At first Wal-Mart and France's Carrefour had China's big-box retail business pretty much to themselves. But Chinese rivals, learning fast and exploiting close ties to local suppliers, erased their lead.

Wal-Mart landed in China in 1996, a year behind Carrefour, opening two stores in Shenzhen  a Wal-Mart supercenter and a Sam's Club. They were the first foreign retailers to offer the big-box shopping experience, which offers everything from clothing to food. That's a big change from traditional wet markets and mom-and-pop stores filled with counterfeit goods. After investing in a Taiwanese-owned retail chain in 2007, Wal-Mart became China's biggest super-sized store chain and expanded its lead for over the next two years.

But Wal-Mart and Carrefour were hobbled. The government restricted foreigners to opening three stores per city. But even after China dropped the store limit in 2001, Wal-Mart and other foreign retailers have faced unfavorable treatment. Government officials have investigated the foreign retailers' pricing and highlighted their food scandals.

Meanwhile, local and regional competitors quickly closed the gap. The local players can sometimes undercut Wal-Mart prices because they have closer ties to local suppliers and can negotiate better deals, says Kantar's Yu in Shanghai.

Wal-Mart insists its share of the big-store sector has increased three years in a row. But Euromonitor says Wal-Mart's market share has fallen steadily since peaking at 11.6 percent in 2009. By last year, Wal-Mart held 9.6 percent of the market, good for No. 3.

Wal-Mart closed about 30 lackluster stores, but it has spent millions to renovate 50 it thinks are promising. Last year, it announced that it plans to add 115 stores by 2017, bringing the total store count to 530. It's concentrating in markets where it's already established, including the west, central China and its stronghold in the south.

From the start, Wal-Mart has had some advantages, including its global clout. It's able to stock its shelves with foreign imports and sell them at a bigger discount than its rivals can. And it's been pressing that advantage in the wake of a changing consumer mindset. Three years ago, Wal-Mart imported 212 containers of products into China. Last year, it imported 2,800, including milk sold under its Asda brand  popular with the exploding ranks of middle-class Chinese who can afford to buy better goods.

But, Wal-Mart faces another challenge in China, and it is not from other big box stores.

Across the globe, shoppers who are increasingly shifting away from buying at big stores and toward buying online or at small stores. But in China, that trend is more dramatic. It has overtaken the U.S. as the world's biggest online marketplace.

That's meant declines in traffic at Wal-Mart and other big-store rivals, both local and foreign. So Wal-Mart is expanding offerings at its website, which is run by Yihaodian, a Chinese startup Wal-Mart fully took over last year. And it's blending its online services with its own stores and adding hubs in key cities to deliver goods to shoppers' homes.

Sissy Xiao, a journalist, represents the future. Xiao had her hands and nose in the bins of rice at a Wal-Mart store in Beijing. She compared the scents. Her elderly mother was elsewhere in the store, buying food.

Xiao, however, was not planning to take any home. She'll do her shopping later, online.

"I am spending less time at big stores," Xiao says. "I usually buy things online. It's more convenient."

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AP Business Writer Paul Wiseman reported from Washington, D.C.

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Follow Anne D'Innocenzio at http://www.Twitter.com/adinnocenzio

Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/anne-dinnocenzio

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Follow Paul Wiseman at https://twitter.com/PaulWisemanAP

His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/paul-wiseman

In this Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2015, photo, a worker yawns as another arranges various meats at a Wal-Mart in Shenzhen, in southern China's Guangdong province. If Arkansas-based Wal-Mart wants to win over foreign consumers, it has to shed some of its American ways, and cater to very different customs and conventions. China is the ultimate prize. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

In this Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2015, photo, a shopper uses a net to catch live fish on sale at a Wal-Mart in Shenzhen, in southern China's Guangdong province. In American Wal-Marts, customers dont get to fondle their fish. But America is not China, as the worlds biggest retailer has learned. If the Arkansas-based company wants to win over foreign consumers, it has to shed some of its American ways, and cater to very different customs and conventions that are fast changing. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

In this Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2015, photo, a woman smells rice on sale at a Wal-Mart in Shenzhen, in southern China's Guangdong province. If Arkansas-based Wal-Mart wants to win over foreign consumers, it has to shed some of its American ways, and cater to very different customs and conventions. China is the ultimate prize. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

In this Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2015, photo, shoppers, including Zhong Guoyan, right, buy seafood at a Wal-Mart in Shenzhen, in southern China's Guangdong province. When I come here, I have a look, Guoyan said. If its good, then I will buy it. If its only cheap, I wont buy it. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

In this Monday, Nov. 9, 2015, photo, shoppers pass by a van used for food safety testing outside Sam's Club in Shenzhen, in southern China's Guangdong province. Wal-Mart broke new ground in China by adding the mobile testing labs that go from store to store in both the southern and eastern regions of China, checking for pesticides on vegetables and fruits. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

In this Monday, Nov. 9, 2015, photo, laboratory workers test samples in a van used for food safety testing outside Sam's Club in Shenzhen, in southern China's Guangdong province. Wal-Mart broke new ground in China by adding the mobile testing labs that go from store to store in both the southern and eastern regions of China, checking for pesticides on vegetables and fruits. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

In this Monday, Nov. 9, 2015, photo, a lab worker reaches for vegetable samples in a van used for food safety testing outside Sam's Club in Shenzhen, in southern China's Guangdong province. Wal-Mart broke new ground in China by adding the mobile testing labs that go from store to store in both the southern and eastern regions of China, checking for pesticides on vegetables and fruits. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

In this Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2015, photo, vendors wait for customers at a wet market in Shenzhen, in southern China's Guangdong province. Wal-Mart landed in China in 1996, opening two stores, a Wal-Mart supercenter and a Sams Club, in Shenzhen. They were the first foreign retailers to offer the big-box shopping experience, which offers everything from clothing to food. Thats a big change from traditional wet markets. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

In this Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2015, photo, Sean Clarke, CEO of Wal-Mart China, speaks during an interview near "Worry Free Fresh" slogans at a Wal-Mart in Shenzhen, China. Worry Free is Wal-Marts key weapon to lure shoppers: most of the discounts in the Wal-Mart stores in China now last anywhere from four weeks to six months, said Clarke. Unlike in the U.S., Wal-Mart had to build trust by spelling out in signs how long the low prices last. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
Wal-Mart's Sam's Club: A bright spot in China

SHENZHEN, China (AP)  Wal-Mart's Sam's Club took a gamble in China almost two years ago. It changed the way it sells meat and fish, putting them in packages instead of letting Chinese shoppers physically inspect cuts of meat or live fish in tanks the way they're used to.

The new approach is paying off.

The affluent Chinese customers Sam's Club attracts are well-traveled and used to the way shopping works in the West.

In this Monday, Nov. 9, 2015, photo, shoppers visit a Sam's Club in Shenzhen, China. Wal-Mart has 800 of the members-only stores worldwide, and four of the top 10 are in China. The No. 1 Sams Club is in Shenzhen, a status its enjoyed since 2008. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

"I really trust the store," said Huang Liu, who shops here once a week. She doesn't mind that the meat or seafood is packaged: "Even though it's not live, it is very fresh."

That move is counter to the rest of the Wal-Mart experience in China where its namesake stores highlight live crabs and frogs as well as piles of fish with bulging eyeballs. That's because many Chinese want to touch and feel the products as a way to determine they're fresh. That's different from the U.S. where customers prefer products packaged. But in many ways, the world's wealthy shoppers are perhaps more similar to each other than their own countrymen. And Wal-Mart sees this move to introduce more Western ways of merchandising in China as a way to attract high-income shoppers like Liu.

Wal-Mart Sam's Club is also expanding its array of foreign imports and spicing up the offerings with eye-catching fancy TVs. That strategy has helped turn Sam's Club stores into Wal-Mart's biggest success in China.

Wal-Mart has 800 of the members-only stores worldwide, and four of the top 10 are in China. The No. 1 Sam's Club is in Shenzhen, a status it's enjoyed since 2008. The company plans to add seven or so Sam's Clubs to the 13 now in China by 2017, offsetting sluggish sales at its namesake store.

Wal-Mart's Sam's Club is just starting to focus on wooing the affluent in the United States as a way to set itself further apart from its namesake stores, which generally cater to lower-income shoppers. It hopes to lure well-off American shoppers to Sam's Club and away from industry leader Costco Wholesale Corp., which has consistently beat the U.S. clubs on a key sales measure. Sam's Club is opening stores in wealthier areas in the U.S. and improving its food brands.

In China, Sam's Club has a big advantage. It faces no direct rivals in the club business. Costco has only a small presence in China; it's launched an online store with China's online giant Alibaba.

Still, it's a big feat to convince the Chinese to purchase food in bulk; many Chinese shoppers like to buy a little at a time every day. And to keep track of what's selling  and to ensure better quality control in the wake of food scares  Wal-Mart wanted to persuade customers to buy pre-packed goods.

Andrew Miles, chief operating officer at Sam's Club China, admitted he was a bit nervous about the switch to all packaged meat and seafood. Customers liked it, though some still like to open up boxes of fruit and other items to check their quality.

So Sam's Club decided to make the changes slowly. It first used transparent bottoms of the meat and fish packaging and then switched to opaque ones.

Sam's Club is also bringing in more foreign imports, such as top quality roasted seaweed from Korea and apple pie from the Netherlands, and packaging them under its warehouse private brand Member's Mark.

Sam's Club shoppers' habits are changing. They used to shop every day for fresh food; now they shop every 10 days and spend more, Miles says. That's compared to Wal-Mart shoppers who now go to a Wal-Mart store in China five times a month.

Sam's Club also highlights some eye-catching items to set the upscale tone. On a recent tour of the top-performing Shenzhen store, a reporter spotted an LG 105-inch 5K-TV for 768,888 yuan (about $117,200). Nearby, a female worker was showing a customer how to use a clothing steamer from Laurastar that's priced at 28,888 yuan ($4,400). It comes with free four-hour training.

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Follow Anne D'Innocenzio at http://www.Twitter.com/adinnocenzio

Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/anne-dinnocenzio

In this Monday, Nov. 9, 2015, photo, a woman walks out from a Sam's Club in Shenzhen, in southern China's Guangdong province. Wal-Mart has 800 of the members-only stores worldwide, and four of the top 10 are in China. The No. 1 Sams Club is in Shenzhen, a status its enjoyed since 2008. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

In this Monday, Nov. 9, 2015, photo, a worker measures the temperature of Australian beef on display at a Sam's Club in Shenzhen, China. Over the past two years, Sam's Club has changed the way it sells meat and fish, by putting them in packages, instead of letting customers physically inspect the products. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

In this Monday, Nov. 9, 2015, photo, Andrew Miles, chief operating officer at Sams Club China, right, listens as Anna Duan, general manager of Sam's Club in Shenzhen's Futian District, displays a package of one of the store's best-selling items, Jujube fruit, at a Sam's Club in Shenzhen, China. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
Wal-Mart steps up online efforts in China as a key to future

SHANGHAI (AP)  Wal-Mart's tiny warehouse in eastern Shanghai doesn't look like much. But it's a key part of the company's strategy to win over grocery customers in China who are fast heading online.

Inside, on a recent visit, a reporter found six-packs of toilet paper and bottles of oil on the concrete floor next to piles of boxes filled with other groceries. In the corner, a Wal-Mart employee punched orders into a computer. Moped drivers whizzed in and out, loading up goods to be delivered to apartment buildings within a few miles.

It's one of 250 hubs that Wal-Mart's Yihaodian e-commerce venture owns and operates in 200 cities, mostly concentrated in eight key cities like Shanghai and Beijing. All offer quick delivery of groceries.

In this Thursday, Nov. 12, 2015, photo, a Yihaodian delivery man, at right, delivers his goods to a customer, Ms. Huang, in Shanghai. I seldom go to the shopping mall or supermarket. Mainly online, said Huang. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

How quick? Within three hours in some places for 100 to 150 items; overnight in others that extend to several hundred thousand grocery items.

Wal-Mart has been stepping up its efforts to get a bigger share of China's overall online business, which now has surpassed the U.S. and dominates globally. Last July, four years after buying a minority stake, the world's largest retailer took full control over Yihaodian, founded in 2008. But Wal-Mart's overall online share is tiny in China, and some analysts say it's going to be hard to close the gap with the big Chinese giants like Alibaba and JD.com.

Where Yihaodian has 250 hubs, Alibaba has 14,000 in rural China alone that act as pick-up stations. And as of late March, JD.com had a total of nearly 6,000 delivery and pickup stations in 2,493 counties and districts across China.

"It will be very difficult for Wal-Mart to catch up in e-commerce," says Jason Yu, general manager of Kantar Worldpanel China, which specializes in research on Chinese shopping habits.

Wal-Mart is behind for many reasons. Most of these Chinese retailers have been online for years, and they understand the nuances of Chinese shopping behavior. Wal-Mart's online business has also been hobbled because it did not have full control over the Chinese venture.

Online, Wal-Mart has just 1.6 percent of China's overall online market, ranking it as No. 6, well behind No. 1 powerhouse Alibaba 46.9 percent and second-ranked JD.com's 20.1 percent, according to Euromonitor International, a global research firm. And the Chinese online giants and a swarm of smaller online food players are nibbling at Wal-Mart's food business.

Wal-Mart's goal is to be among the top three overall by expanding the number of hubs and blending its online services with its stores. Last year, it launched an app that lets shoppers order online and pick up the goods at the store in several southern cities including Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Dongguan. It's also focusing on high-quality goods at low prices. And so as it expands its offerings, it's highlighting imported food to cater to middle class shoppers looking for premium goods.

Wal-Mart is using food as a key strategy to get online shoppers to buy more frequently. If they become loyal food shoppers, they'll more likely buy other things like TVs and laptops. Getting its online business right is critical for Wal-Mart's overall success in China as the retailer, along with other big store rivals, wrestle with traffic declines at their stores.

In a country where shoppers like to feel and touch their vegetables, it may seem odd that online food shopping is taking off. But after some highly publicized food safety scares, the Chinese are increasingly turning to online food retailers whose quality they trust. And for a growing number of working city dwellers who are time-starved, this offers the most convenient solution.

"I seldom go to the shopping mall or supermarket. Mainly online," said one Yihaodian customer, who would only identify herself as Ms. Huang. She was taking delivery of several flavors of melon seeds and other snacks at around 12:30 p.m. on a recent week day. She spent 270 yuan ($41.68 U.S.) and had placed the order at 10:06 p.m. the night before, according to Wal-Mart records.

Online sales in China hit $307 billion in 2013, reached $589.2 billion last year and should exceed the trillion dollar mark by 2019. By comparison, in the U.S., online spending hit $334 billion last year and is expected to generate $480 billion by 2019, Forrester says. China has more than a billion people, compared with 300 million in the U.S.

Nearly half of Chinese shoppers, or 46 percent, are already buying groceries online for home delivery, compared to 25 percent globally, according to a consumer poll of 30,000 online respondents by Nielsen, a market research firm. The survey tends to skew to a younger and more affluent base. That figure is 47 percent for the U.S. The Chinese also are increasingly likely to shop by phone: 47 percent of traffic to the Yihaodian site comes from mobile devices, up from 28 percent two years ago. Likewise, 64 percent of Yihaodian orders are made from mobile devices, up from 14 percent over the same time period.

Shoppers demand top-quality goods online. That's a big difference from a few years ago, when they turned to the Internet to find the cheapest goods, says Wang Lu, president and CEO of Wal-Mart Global eCommerce in Asia, who took over the helm of Yihaodian last year. Yihaodian is also working with Wal-Mart's global sourcing team to deliver South African grapefruit, Chilean apples and other distinctive imports. In fact, 32 percent of its shoppers now buy imported goods, with the top three in dairy, biscuits and snacks like chips and seaweed. They're also focusing on fresh food and dumplings.

For same-day delivery, Yihaodian offers 250,000 products in eight cities, and next-day delivery in more than 200 cities. It's also expanding its assortment of goods online. Now, Yihaodian carries about 11 million products, with 90 percent of customers buying beverages and other foods. And it is finding ways to customize product offers to individual shoppers, using app messages and other forms.

So while Yihaodian has challenges ahead on its home turf, it has much to teach the mothership.

Three months after Wal-Mart fully took over Yihaodian, the Chinese venture sent an elite team of 20 people to Wal-Mart's e-commerce headquarters in San Bruno, California. They spent a week with their American counterparts, sharing their experience.

When it comes to online sales, China is "several years ahead ... of the United States," said Wal-Mart's Wang Lu.

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AP Business Writer Paul Wiseman reported from Washington, D.C.

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Follow Anne D'Innocenzio at http://www.Twitter.com/adinnocenzio Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/anne-dinnocenzio

Follow Paul Wiseman at https://twitter.com/PaulWisemanAP His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/paul-wiseman

In this Thursday, Nov. 12, 2015, photo, a Yihaodian delivery man leaves for his rounds in Shanghai. Wal-Mart is accelerating its online efforts in China after taking full control of the Chinese e-commerce venture called Yihaodian. Wal-Mart is using food as a key strategy to get online shoppers to buy more frequently. If they become loyal food shoppers, theyll more likely buy other things like TVs and laptops. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

In this Thursday, Nov. 12, 2015, photo, Yihaodian delivery men prepare for work in Shanghai. This hub is one of 250 that Wal-Mart's Yihaodian venture operates in China. All offer quick delivery of groceries. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

In this Thursday, Nov. 12, 2015, photo, a Yihaodian delivery man leaves for his rounds in Shanghai. Wal-Mart is accelerating its online efforts in China after taking full control of the Chinese e-commerce venture called Yihaodian. Wal-Mart is using food as a key strategy to get online shoppers to buy more frequently. If they become loyal food shoppers, theyll more likely buy other things like TVs and laptops. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
Wal-Mart seeks overseas success by going native in China

SHENZHEN, China (AP)  Zhong Guoyan sifted through piles of fish at a Wal-Mart in Shenzhen, one of China's largest cities. She studied the fins, to make sure they were bright red and firm. She peered at the eyeballs  were they bulging?

"When I come here, I have a look," she said. "If it's good, then I will buy it. If it's only cheap, I won't buy it."

In American Wal-Marts, customers don't get to fondle their fish. But America is not China, as the world's biggest retailer has learned. If the Arkansas-based company wants to win over foreign consumers, it has to shed some of its American ways, and cater to very different customs and conventions that are fast changing.

In this Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2015, photo, a worker prepares cooked ducks for sale at a Wal-Mart in Shenzhen, in southern China's Guangdong province. If Arkansas-based Wal-Mart wants to win over foreign consumers, it has to shed some of its American ways, and cater to very different customs and conventions. China is the ultimate prize. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

Zhong eventually tossed a couple of fish into a plastic bag  a small victory in Wal-Mart's struggle to build an international empire.

The stakes are high: The company can't count on much growth in the U.S.  it's facing challenges at home with intense competition from Amazon.com and dollar stores  so the retailer is depending more on its operations overseas.

China is the ultimate prize. The Chinese grocery market, already the world's largest at $1.1 trillion a year, is expected to grow to $1.5 trillion in sales in just the next four years, says IGD, a global consumer products research firm.

"China remains a strategic market for our future," Doug McMillon, CEO of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. recently told investors.

Getting the food business right is critical for Wal-Mart. Shoppers buy groceries more often than anything else. If Wal-Mart can get them in the door to buy food regularly, perhaps they will visit more frequently for items like pajamas and coffee makers  and eventually become loyal online customers, too.

The company has taken some lumps trying to cross borders in food retailing. Overall international sales growth dropped 9.4 percent last year largely because of the strong dollar. And while Wal-Mart's overseas business had a strong start to this year, it faces long-term challenges. Wal-Mart gave up in Germany and South Korea in 2006. It's closing stores in Brazil.

Overseas, Wal-Mart lacks the scale to squeeze local suppliers on price as it does in the U.S. It also faces nimble competitors. And it has struggled to duplicate its bedrock strategy of constant bargains.

But Wal-Mart has learned over the years from its missteps, discovering that it needs to adapt to local ways and that patience pays off.

In Mexico, Canada and Japan, it's won shoppers over time. In Chile, it launched a corporate culture campaign and worked closely with suppliers to coax them into its way of doing business.

"Wal-Mart," says Bryan Roberts of the London retail consultancy TCC Global, "is a very determined organization."

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WINNING OVER PICKY CONSUMERS

In the unruly Chinese market, some competitors cut corners, mislabeling products or even selling tainted foods. The risks have made Chinese consumers unusually wary.

Sean Clarke, CEO of Wal-Mart China, based in Shenzhen, previously worked in Britain, Japan, Germany, and Canada. China, he says, "is easily the most challenging market to operate ... There is a huge level of distrust."

Wal-Mart had a difficult time promoting "everyday low prices"  promising the lowest prices on a basket of goods every time consumers shop.

Some rivals poached the "everyday low price" message, confusing customers. Wal-Mart scrambled to find the right slogan. In 2012, it introduced "Worry Free"  implying quality and reassuring shoppers who worry that deals will expire before they get to the store.

The company's message: Efficiency and good management, not cutting corners, make everyday low prices possible.

The message has sometimes been muddled. When Wal-Mart came to China, it was slow to tailor its offerings to local tastes. Realizing its mistake, Wal-Mart gave local managers more leeway to run their businesses.

But that approach backfired, leading to a series of food-safety violations. In one particularly embarrassing episode, Wal-Mart had to recall donkey meat  a delicacy in China  after DNA testing showed it contained traces of fox meat.

In response, Wal-Mart slashed nearly two-thirds of its 20,000 suppliers. Now, Wal-Mart knows exactly where each product comes from. Wal-Mart also took back some of the responsibilities from local managers and increased its investment in food safety. It introduced mobile testing labs that check for pesticides on vegetables and fruit and employed handheld devices to check temperatures of meat products.

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GAINING CONTROL OVER SUPPLIERS, COSTS

In America, Wal-Mart has the clout  25 percent of the U.S. grocery business to force suppliers to do things the Wal-Mart way. That means cutting costs to the bone. In return, the suppliers enjoy steady demand from Wal-Mart, so they don't have to spend so much on advertising or worry about paying extra costs to staff their factories to meet unexpected peaks in demand.

In China, things are tougher. Wal-Mart accounts for just 2.3 percent of the grocery market. Ninety-five percent of all products Wal-Mart sells in China are supplied by local companies.

The Chinese supply chain is also notoriously inefficient. For years, Wal-Mart and other foreign companies didn't deal directly with their suppliers, working mostly instead through a labyrinth of middlemen.

Three years ago, Wal-Mart decided to cut out the middlemen and route as many goods as possible through 20 of its own distribution centers.

By eliminating the go-betweens, Wal-Mart could negotiate directly with suppliers and knock down costs  often by 10 percent or more.

The change also gives Wal-Mart more control over the quality of the food being sent to its stores and the efficiency with which it gets to them. Before the switch, only about 75 percent of orders would actually reach Wal-Mart stores; now 95 percent do.

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FIGHTING COMPETITORS

Wal-Mart landed in China in 1996, a year behind Carrefour, opening two stores in Shenzhen a Wal-Mart supercenter and a Sam's Club. They were the first foreign retailers to offer the big-box shopping experience, which offers everything from clothing to food. After investing in a Taiwanese-owned retail chain in 2007, Wal-Mart became China's biggest super-sized store chain and expanded its lead for the next two years.

But local and regional competitors quickly closed the gap, sometimes undercutting Wal-Mart prices because they have closer ties to local suppliers and can negotiate better deals.

Wal-Mart insists its market share for the big-store sector has increased over the past three years. But Euromonitor says Wal-Mart's market share has fallen to 9.6 percent (No. 3 in the market) after peaking at 11.6 percent in 2009.

Wal-Mart last year announced plans to add 115 stores in China by 2017, bringing the store count to 530. It's concentrating in markets where it's already established, including its stronghold in the south. And it has given up on about 30 lackluster stores.

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart faces another challenge in China, and it is not from other big box stores.

Across the globe, shoppers are increasingly buying online or at small stores. But in China, that trend is more dramatic. It has already overtaken the U.S. as the world's biggest online marketplace.

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AP Business Writer Paul Wiseman reported from Washington, D.C.

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Follow Anne D'Innocenzio at http://www.Twitter.com/adinnocenzio

Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/anne-dinnocenzio

Follow Paul Wiseman at https://twitter.com/PaulWisemanAP

His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/paul-wiseman

In this Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2015, photo, a shopper uses a net to catch live fish on sale at a Wal-Mart in Shenzhen, in southern China's Guangdong province. In American Wal-Marts, customers dont get to fondle their fish. But America is not China, as the worlds biggest retailer has learned. If the Arkansas-based company wants to win over foreign consumers, it has to shed some of its American ways, and cater to very different customs and conventions that are fast changing. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

In this Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2015, photo, vendors wait for customers at a wet market in Shenzhen, in southern China's Guangdong province. Wal-Mart landed in China in 1996, opening two stores, a Wal-Mart supercenter and a Sams Club, in Shenzhen. They were the first foreign retailers to offer the big-box shopping experience, which offers everything from clothing to food. Thats a big change from traditional wet markets. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
Animal rights activists disrupt Sanders rally in Oakland

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP)  A group of animal rights activists briefly interrupted a Bernie Sanders rally in Northern California when they jumped barricades and tried to rush the podium.

Sanders' security stopped the protesters before they could reach the Democratic presidential hopeful, who was addressing supporters at Frank Ogawa Plaza at Oakland's City Hall Monday.

Video of the incident shows two bodyguards immediately surrounded Sanders while nearby security personnel quickly handcuffed the protesters and escorted them out of the rally, even carrying one of them by the legs and arms.

Secret Service agents remove a man from the crowd during a campaign rally for Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., at Frank Ogawa Plaza in Oakland, Calif., on Monday, May 30, 2016. A group of animal rights activists briefly interrupted the Sanders rally in Northern California when they jumped barricades and tried to rush the podium. Sanders' security stopped the protesters before they could reach Sanders, who was addressing supporters at the rally and continued his speech within minutes of the disruption. (Anda Chu/Oakland Tribune via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Sanders continued his speech within minutes of the disruption.

Earlier Monday, Sanders joined actor Danny Glover and San Francisco Supervisor Jane Kim for a conversation at the historic Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland.

Secret Service agents restrain two women during a campaign rally for Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., at Frank Ogawa Plaza in Oakland's City Hall, Calif., on Monday, May 30, 2016. A group of animal rights activists briefly interrupted the Sanders rally in Northern California when they jumped barricades and tried to rush the podium. Sanders' security stopped the protesters before they could reach the Democratic presidential hopeful, who was addressing supporters. (Anda Chu/Oakland Tribune via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks during a campaign rally at Frank Ogawa Plaza at Oakland's City Hall, in Calif., on Monday, May 30, 2016. A group of animal rights activists briefly interrupted the Sanders rally in Northern California when they jumped barricades and tried to rush the podium. Sanders' security stopped the protesters before they could reach the Democratic presidential hopeful, who was addressing supporters and continued his speech within minutes of the disruption. (Anda Chu/Oakland Tribune via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Chris Zachos, of San Francisco, wears a homemade Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., suit while attending a Sanders campaign rally at Frank Ogawa Plaza at Oakland's City Hall, in Calif., on Monday, May 30, 2016. (Anda Chu/Oakland Tribune via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks during a community conversation at the Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland, Calif., on Monday, May 30, 2016. (Anda Chu/Oakland Tribune via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT
Kiwi Kieran Foran ruled out for NRL season in Australia

SYDNEY (AP)  Parramatta captain Kieran Foran has been ruled out of the remainder of the National Rugby League season because of a shoulder injury, another serious setback for the struggling Eels.

Foran, the New Zealand playmaker who has had a troubled run for Parramatta this season since moving Manly, was three games into a comeback when he left the field during Monday's 20-18 win over Newcastle because of a damage to his left biceps tendon. Parramatta said Foran would need surgery.

Foran initially had a hamstring injury and then spent time in a rehabilitation facility following the breakup of a long-term relationship.
Chinese transgender man fights for job equality

BEIJING (AP)  A 28-year-old transgender man who goes by the name of "Mr. C" has become the public face of the fight for job equality in China, where sexual and gender minorities are only beginning to emerge from virtual invisibility.

The man, who keeps his real name secret to protect his parents' privacy, is fighting his dismissal from a medical testing center in court and is seeking a ruling stating that no one should be discriminated against on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.

"On my shoulders I am carrying the hopes of many, many people," said Mr. C, who's been both praised and insulted since filing the country's first suit against transgender job discrimination earlier this year.

In this May 18, 2016, photo, a transgender equal rights supporter who goes by the name of "Mr. C" pauses during an interview in Beijing. The 28-year-old transgender man, who keeps his real name secret to protect his parents privacy, has become the public face of the fight for job equality in China, where sexual and gender minorities are only beginning to emerge from virtual invisibility. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

"Many people are working toward (employment equality). I cannot let them down. There are many members in our group who are unwilling to or dare not step forward, but they are watching."

While still relatively conservative, Chinese society has grown gradually more accepting of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people in recent years, particularly among the younger generation. That's encouraged some members of sexual and gender minorities to come forward and demand their legal rights, with mixed results.

In 2014, a Beijing court ruled "conversion therapy" intended to change gays' sexuality to be illegal. A court in the central province of Hunan shot down an attempt by a gay couple to register their marriage in April.

Although never specifically outlawed, alternative expressions of sexuality were frowned upon following the 1949 establishment of the communist People's Republic, which associated them with the corruption and decadence of the former imperial regime. Those caught up in police raids could be jailed on charges of hooliganism or even executed during particularly severe crackdowns.

In 2001, however, the Chinese Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. Police raids on LGBT gatherings largely came to a halt, as long as they remained low-profile. Empowered by the internet and social media, LGBT groups in different cities began networking, leading to calls for strong legal protections.

China has no law addressing employment discrimination, and efforts are ongoing to enact laws protecting minorities in the workplace.

A recent United Nations Development Program survey found that only about 5 percent of sexual and gender minorities in China choose to come out in public, and that the workplace can become especially awkward and unpleasant after they do so.

"The findings are clear. Sexual and gender minority people in China still live in the shadows," said the report, which drew on findings from a two-month survey of more than 30,000 people conducted in late 2015.

Many LGBT respondents complained of losing jobs through discrimination, and thus had lowered their career hopes and had less desire to acquire new skills, according to the report.

Li Yinhe, a prominent Chinese sexologist, said transgender people in particular are more likely to face workplace discrimination because of how they look and dress. "It's harder for them to disguise themselves," Li said.

Given the prevailing sentiments, Mr. C's case has brought important public scrutiny to long-ignored issues, Li said.

As in Western countries, the business community, rather than the government, is leading the way in China in pushing for equal opportunity, said Steven Bielinski, who has organized social events in Beijing and Shanghai to connect employers with members of the LGBT community.

"Here in China I think the LGBT business issue has just reached a tipping point," Bielinski said. "More and more companies are thinking about what the LGBT community means for business in terms of talent and market."

A job fair in Shanghai on a May weekend attracted a total of 34 companies  twice as many as the year before including Chinese car-hailing app Didi Chuxing, the career site Kanzhun.com, and multinationals such as 3M, Citigroup and the Boston Consulting Group.

It also was the first time that Chinese companies made an appearance, Bielinski said.

Despite the interest, Bielinski cautioned against being too optimistic. Organizers declined to allow Associated Press journalists to attend the fairs out of privacy concerns.

"It's just the start," Bielinski said.

Building on that momentum, Mr. C hopes to nudge the government toward recognizing and protecting LGBT rights.

Born female, Mr. C grew up in the southwestern province of Guizhou, a more conservative environment than the eastern cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. He didn't even come across the term "transgender" until age 21, when he finally was able to best describe his gender identity.

After graduating from college in 2010, Mr. C continued to appear as a woman when applying for jobs. That all changed in 2013, when he began dressing as a man, wearing a buzz cut and growing a mustache.

In 2015, he applied for a sales job with Ciming Health Exam Center in the provincial capital of Guiyang, but was let go at the end of the eight-day tryout. He believes he was dismissed because of his gender expression, but the company argued his job performance had been substandard.

Mr. C took the dispute to a local labor arbitration panel, which ruled in early May that his dismissal had been legal, while ordering Ciming to pay him $62 in back wages.

Days later, Mr. C filed his case in a local court, which has yet to put it on the docket.

"Now I place my hope with the law," he said. "I will do whatever I can do to fight to the end."

In this May 18, 2016, photo, a transgender equal rights supporter who goes by the name of "Mr. C", pauses during an interview in Beijing. The 28-year-old transgender man, who keeps his real name secret to protect his parents privacy, has become the public face of the fight for job equality in China, where sexual and gender minorities are only beginning to emerge from virtual invisibility. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

In this May 20, 2016, photo, a transgender equal rights supporter who goes by the name of "Mr. C", left, talks with fellow supporter Waltz Lu as he prepares a speech on transgender workplace discrimination in Beijing. Mr. C, 28, who keeps his real name secret to protect his parents privacy, has become the public face of the fight for job equality in China, where sexual and gender minorities are only beginning to emerge from virtual invisibility. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

In this May 20, 2016, photo, a transgender equal rights supporter who goes by the name of "Mr. C", right, waits with fellow supporter Waltz Lu to cross a street in Beijing. Mr. C  who requested his real name to be withheld to protect his parents' privacy  has become the public face of the fight for job equality in China, where sexual and gender minorities are only beginning to emerge from virtual invisibility. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

In this May 20, 2016, photo, a transgender equal rights supporter who goes by the name of "Mr. C", left, talks with fellow supporter Waltz Lu as he prepares a speech on transgender workplace discrimination in Beijing. Mr. C - who requested his real name to be withheld to protect his parents' privacy in a conservative town - has become the public face of the fight for job equality in China, where sexual and gender minorities are only beginning to emerge from virtual invisibility. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Swollen river feeds flooding near Houston as residents flee

RICHMOND, Texas (AP)  Residents of some rural southeastern Texas counties were bracing for more flooding along a river that reached a record high Tuesday as more rain was expected in the coming days.

Large swaths of suburban communities southwest of Houston were underwater and hundreds of people were evacuated from their homes before the Brazos River reached 54.37 feet in Fort Bend County, just two years after it had run dry in places because of drought.

National Weather Service meteorologist Charles Roeseler said the 54.37 feet at Richmond early Wednesday was not yet the crest and the river was expected to slowly rise even more overnight.

A Travis County Sheriff's Office Deputy looks at a truck that was swept away in a flood and recovered from a pond in southern Austin, Texas, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. Searchers are continuing to look for a missing person. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

An additional 1 to 3 inches of rain expected later this week could keep the Brazos in major flood stage into the weekend.

"I'm scared," said Abigail Salazar, standing in knee-deep water outside her home in Richmond, where she was retrieving personal belongings after the city issued a voluntary evacuation advisory. "My kids ask me in the morning, 'Ma, what happened? The water is here.'"

During four days of torrential rain last week, at least six people died in floods in Texas.

Scott Overpeck, a National Weather Service meteorologist, said that the Brazos will recede in the coming days but that its levels will remain high for up to three weeks, in part because water will need to be released from swollen reservoirs upriver.

"There's so much water on the Brazos that it's going to take a long time to drain through the whole river and drain out into the Gulf of Mexico," Overpeck said.

Four of the six people killed in flooding were recovered in Washington County, which is between Austin and Houston, County Judge John Brieden said Monday. Lake Somerville, one of the Brazos reservoirs, was "gushing uncontrollably" over the spillway and threatening people downriver, he said.

About 40 people were rescued Sunday and Monday from low-lying homes in a flooded neighborhood of Simonton, a Fort Bend County community of about 800 residents. The county had set up a pumping system to divert the water from the neighborhood, but it was overpowered by the flooding, county spokeswoman Beth Wolf said.

Wolf said any additional rain in the region would be a problem.

"The ditches are full, the river's high, there's nowhere else for that water to go," she said.

In the Fort Bend County city of Rosenberg, which is next to Richmond, about 150 households were evacuated and city officials were coordinating with the county's office of emergency management to have rescue boats in place, city spokeswoman Jenny Pavlovich said.

Heavy rains moved across the Dallas-Fort Worth area on Tuesday. In Hood County, southwest of Fort Worth, several roads were washed out and authorities performed about 15 water rescues, including from homes and vehicles, said Sheriff Roger Deeds. He says they were still trying to determine how many homes flooded.

Elsewhere, authorities were searching for the body of an 11-year-old boy who fell into a creek in Wichita, Kansas, and is presumed dead. Relatives have identified the boy as Devon Dean Cooley, who disappeared Friday night.

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Associated Press writer Jim Suhr in Kansas City, Missouri, contributed to this report.

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This story has been corrected to reflect that it's not clear whether the six people who died in flooding were killed along the Brazos and that the 54.37 measure on the Brazos was taken early Wednesday.

Irene Martinez, who lives near the Brazos River, leaves her flooded home Sunday, May 29, 2016, in Richmond, Texas. Martinez lives there with her two sons, and they are evacuating because the river is exprected to rise another several feet. (Jon Shapley/Houston Chronicle via AP)

Responders with Texas Search and Rescue search for a flood victim in a pond near SH 130 and FW 812 in Austin, Texas, Tuesday May 31, 2016. National Weather Service meteorologists predicted the Brazos River would crest at 53.5 feet by midday Tuesday in Fort Bend County. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman via AP)

The Brazos River has exceeded its banks and is flooding nearby properties Sunday, May 29, 2016, in Rosenberg, Texas. (Jon Shapley/Houston Chronicle via AP)

Sixth Street is impassible due to rising flood waters from the Brazos River Sunday, May 29, 2016, in Rosenberg, Texas. (Jon Shapley/Houston Chronicle via AP)
Judge doesn't trust Arizona sheriff to fix some problems

PHOENIX (AP)  A judge presiding over a racial profiling case against an Arizona sheriff said Tuesday that he doesn't trust the sheriff's office to fix some of the problems involved in a recent contempt-of-court ruling against the famously defiant lawman.

U.S. District Judge Murray Snow said he doesn't think Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office can conduct adequate internal investigations into allegations of wrongdoing by employees, including a decision to prolong immigration patrols for months after the court ordered the practice stopped.

"I don't have confidence anymore in the direction of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office," Snow said at a hearing.

Protestors carry signs in protest of Sheriff Joe Arpaio outside the federal courthouse in Phoenix, Ariz. on Tuesday, May 31, 2016. A federal judge will hold a hearing Tuesday to examine ways to address the Maricopa County sheriff's contempt-of-court violations in a racial profiling case. Arpaio was found in civil contempt two weeks ago for disobeying court orders in the profiling case, including letting his immigration patrols continue after the judge ordered them stopped. (AP Photo/Brian Skoloff)

The judge convened the session to discuss possible punishment after his May 13 finding that Arpaio was in civil contempt for ignoring his orders. The decision could lead to a criminal contempt case involving possible fines or jail time.

Several dozen anti-Arpaio activists protested outside the courthouse during the hearing.

The protesters chanted "Arrest Arpaio, not the people" and played music for more than four hours. They also carried signs and pulled a giant balloon caricature of the sheriff around the sidewalk.

The profiling case that Arpaio lost three years ago prompted contempt-of-court proceeding after Snow accused the sheriff and some of his aides of violating court orders. It also has resulted in a bruising review of the sheriff's internal investigations, which have been criticized as being fraught with biased decision-making and conflicts of interest.

Snow has not yet imposed punishments but is expected to order an overhaul of the agency's internal affairs investigations and create a fund to pay damages to Latinos who were illegally detained when Arpaio ignored the order to stop the patrols.

Snow also raised the possibility of holding a new round of contempt-of-court hearings to force the sheriff's office to do more to overhaul of the agency's policies and practices. The overhaul is aimed at guarding against future racial profiling.

An official hired to monitor the sheriff's office on behalf of the judge has said the agency is unacceptability slow in carrying out the court-ordered overhaul. Snow raised the possibility of imposing fines and jailing sheriff's officials who drag their feet in making the changes.

Arpaio was slumped back in a chair throughout most of Tuesday's hearing. He rested his cheek on one of his fists as he watched lawyers make arguments to the packed courtroom in Phoenix.

Snow said he wants to throw out the agency's inadequate internal investigations into officer misconduct and have someone else re-examine the allegations and impose discipline. He rejected Arpaio's bid to retain his power to reverse discipline in those cases.

Lawyers argued over whether Arpaio should have to pull money from his own pocket to help taxpayers compensate hundreds the Latinos who were illegally detained.

The judge sided with Arpaio's foes in saying he's inclined to accept that a person should be paid $1,500 for the first hour of an illegal detention.

But the judge was skeptical about a proposal that says illegal detentions longer than one hour would cost the county $1,000 for each 20-minute increment. Instead, the judge said he's willing to accept $200 for each additional 20 minutes.

The judge was incredulous at the suggestion by Richard Walker, a lawyer for Maricopa County, that taxpayers aren't financially responsible for the consequences of letting the immigration patrols continue.

Snow asked Walker whether he was suggesting that no one should be ordered to pay the victims, even though the sheriff clearly ignored the order.

"No, not at all," Walker said, explaining that Maricopa County will agree to compensate victims only for unintentional violations.

Taxpayers have spent $41 million in the profiling case over the past eight years, covering legal fees, training for officers, a staff to monitor Arpaio's office on the judge's behalf, and other costs. Another $13 million is set aside for the coming year.

The county hasn't estimated the potential costs for compensating Latinos pulled over in violation of the order, but a county official has said he personally believes the figure would be over $1 million.

The lawyers who won the profiling case say Arpaio should be required to pull $300,000 out of his own pocket to help compensate Latinos who were illegally detained.

The sheriff's attorneys, in turn, said Arpaio is willing to contribute $100,000 to a Hispanic civil rights organization and publicly acknowledge his contempt violations.

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AP writer Beatriz Costa-Lima contributed to this report.

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Follow Jacques Billeaud at twitter.com/jacquesbilleaud. His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/jacques-billeaud.

Protesters display a giant balloon caricature of Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio outside the federal courthouse in Phoenix, Ariz. on Tuesday, May 31, 2016. Arpaio is appearing before a federal judge to examine ways to address the Maricopa County sheriff's contempt-of-court violations in a racial profiling case. Arpaio was found in civil contempt two weeks ago for disobeying court orders in the profiling case, including letting his immigration patrols continue after the judge ordered them stopped. (AP Photo/Beatriz Costa-Lima)

FILE - In this Dec. 18, 2013, file photo, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio speaks at a news conference at the Sheriff's headquarters in Phoenix. A federal judge will hold a hearing Tuesday, May 31, 2016, to examine ways to address the Maricopa County sheriff's contempt-of-court violations in a racial profiling case. Arpaio was found in civil contempt two weeks ago for disobeying court orders in the profiling case, including letting his immigration patrols continue after the judge ordered them stopped. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)

Protestors carry signs in protest of Sheriff Joe Arpaio outside the federal courthouse in Phoenix, Ariz. on Tuesday, May 31, 2016. A federal judge will hold a hearing Tuesday to examine ways to address the Maricopa County sheriff's contempt-of-court violations in a racial profiling case. Arpaio was found in civil contempt two weeks ago for disobeying court orders in the profiling case, including letting his immigration patrols continue after the judge ordered them stopped. (AP Photo/Brian Skoloff)

FILE - In this Wednesday, May 25, 2016 file photo, protesters rally in front of Maricopa County Sheriff's Office Headquarters in Phoenix. Arizona taxpayers could be paying out to compensate hundreds of Latinos who were illegally detained when Sheriff Joe Arpaio rounded them up in past immigration patrols. A federal judge will hold a hearing Tuesday, May 31, 2016, to examine ways to address the Maricopa County sheriff???s contempt-of-court violations in a racial profiling case. Sheriff Joe Arpaio was found in civil contempt two weeks ago for disobeying court orders in the profiling case, including letting his immigration patrols continue after the judge ordered them stopped. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)

An activist leads chants with protesters outside the federal courthouse where Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio is appearing before a judge, on Tuesday, May 31, 2016, in Phoenix, Ariz. A judge considering penalties against Maricopa County Sheriff Arpaio for contempt-of-court violations involving a racial profiling case suggests taxpayers likely will foot the bill for the lawman's intentional disobedience. U.S. District Judge Murray Snow was holding a hearing Tuesday to examine responses to the civil contempt violations of Arpaio that included letting his immigration patrols proceed 18 months after the judge ordered them stopped. (AP Photo/Beatriz Costa-Lima)

Protestors carry signs in protest of Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio outside the federal courthouse in Phoenix, Ariz. on Tuesday, May 31, 2016. A federal judge will hold a hearing Tuesday to examine ways to address the Maricopa County sheriff's contempt-of-court violations in a racial profiling case. Arpaio was found in civil contempt two weeks ago for disobeying court orders in the profiling case, including letting his immigration patrols continue after the judge ordered them stopped. (AP Photo/Brian Skoloff)

An activist leads chants with protesters outside the federal courthouse where Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio is appearing before a judge, on Tuesday, May 31, 2016, in Phoenix, Ariz. A judge considering penalties against Maricopa County Sheriff Arpaio for contempt-of-court violations involving a racial profiling case suggests taxpayers likely will foot the bill for the lawman's intentional disobedience. U.S. District Judge Murray Snow was holding a hearing Tuesday to examine responses to the civil contempt violations of Arpaio that included letting his immigration patrols proceed 18 months after the judge ordered them stopped. (AP Photo/Beatriz Costa-Lima)
Two Utah sisters grew up in the same bedroom, went to the same college, worked for almost a decade at the same company and have visited over 50 countries side by side.

Now every three weeks, they sit together in matching chairs and chat as their bodies are pumped full of chemotherapy drugs.

Sharee Page, 34, and Annette Page, 36, were recently diagnosed with breast cancer within about two weeks of each other, a coincidence that doctors say is extremely rare.

But that coincidence has meant they can face the disease like they have nearly every other aspect of their lives as a team.

'Wow, talk about a huge blessing,' said Annette Page, who lives five minutes from her sister in northern Utah. 'Who gets to go through something so hard with their best friend, their sister?'

A special bond: Annette Page, left, and her sister Sharee Page, pose for a photograph at Sharee's home during an interview, in Farmington, Utah. The two sisters are now battling breast cancer together

The two sisters (Annette is pictured) received the diagnosis within about two weeks of one another, a coincidence that doctors say is extremely rare, but gives them the chance to undergo chemotherapy together

My other half: The sisters do everything together and have even visited 50 countries around the world as a pair

Finding the funny side: Sharee, who works for a time-management company and is single, likes to joke that men have a thing for bald women

The 'Page Sisters,' as some of their friends like to call them, found out soon after their diagnosis that they have the BRCA2 gene, a mutation that puts a woman at a much greater risk for breast and ovarian cancers.

BRCA mutations, which stands for breast cancer susceptibility gene, are most commonly found in women of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, although some northern European populations also have a higher risk of inheriting one of the mutated genes.

Adam Cohen, a doctor at the University of Utah's Huntsman Cancer Institute, said the gene can increase the risk of breast cancer tenfold. But Cohen said he has never seen two siblings diagnosed within weeks of one another.

'It's not uncommon to have somebody with breast cancer and BRCA2 mutation and whose sibling develops breast cancer,' he said. 'But doing it within two weeks is certainly very uncommon.'

In late March, after discovering a large lump in her left breast, Annette Page was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer. The news prompted Sharee Page to get herself checked, and the same doctor soon diagnosed her with Stage 2 breast cancer.

Annette works for a nutritional supplement company. 'Attitude means everything when you're trying to get through cancer. You can worry about everything that could go wrong, but we've turned that around', she says

The sisters found out soon after their diagnosis that they have the BRCA2 gene, a mutation that puts a woman at a much greater risk for breast and ovarian cancers

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO HAVE A BRCA MUTATION? The BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes produce proteins, which suppress cancerous tumors. The proteins help to repair DNA damaged by the disease, and therefore play a role in ensuring the stability of the cell. When either of the genes mutate, or alters, such that its protein is not made or does not function correctly, the damaged DNA may not repair properly. As a result, cells are more susceptible to genetic alterations that can lead to cancer. Specific inherited mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes has been linked to an increased risk of female breast and ovarian cancers. The mutations account for around 20 to 25 per cent of hereditary breast cancers and five to 10 per cent of all breast cancers. The mutations also account for around 15 per cent of ovarian cancers.

'Had she not been diagnosed, I don't think I would have caught mine for six months to a year,' Sharee Page said.

Every few weeks, the sisters meet at their mother's house so that she can drive them to their chemotherapy appointment at Davis Hospital. After the six-hour session, they experience a myriad of matching chemo side effects, including nausea, bloody noses, neuropathy and headaches.

Their bodies react to the medicine in a nearly synchronized fashion. Both are unable to eat food for almost two weeks. Exactly 10 days after treatment, they break out in a rash.

'It's nice to know that someone knows exactly what you're going through,' Sharee Page said.

The women, who are part of a devout Mormon family, have four other siblings. One of their sisters also recently tested positive for the BRCA2 gene. But she does not have cancer, so she plans to get a double-mastectomy.

Cohen said that course of preventative treatment is sometimes recommended for someone who has the mutation and is cancer free. Actress Angelina Jolie, for instance, had a double mastectomy and her ovaries removed after testing showed she carried a similar mutation.

Standing up to cancer together: Sharee and Annette Page (right to left) are both fighting cancer together, and they're trying to put humor into that fight

Blessing in disguse: 'Had she not been diagnosed, I don't think I would have caught mine for six months to a year', Sharee Page said

The family has a long history with breast cancer, as the sisters' grandmother and great-grandmother both died of the disease.

The siblings' mother, Susan Page, is a survivor of throat and mouth cancer who also has the BRCA2 gene. She said she cried for days after she found out that two of her children had cancer.

'You spend your whole life, even before they're born, trying to protect them and make sure they're safe and try to keep them healthy,' she said. 'And then something like this happens.'

The sisters now go to the same doctor for joint appointments, and they help each other get through the especially difficult days. When Sharee Page's hair started falling out soon after she started chemo, Annette Page shaved it all off for her.
Amid heavy clashes in Fallujah, fears rise for civilians

CAMP TARIQ, Iraq (AP)  As Iraqi forces pressed an offensive Tuesday to dislodge Islamic State militants from Fallujah, conditions are worsening for tens of thousands of civilians trapped in the city, and a leading aid group raised alarm over an unfolding "human catastrophe."

IS fighters launched a fierce counterattack on the southern edge of the city, slowing the progress of the elite Iraqi counterterrorism troops, and the militants reportedly corralled civilians into a single neighborhood for use as human shields.

With an estimated 50,000 civilians still inside Fallujah, humanitarian groups renewed calls on both sides to open safe corridors for noncombatants to flee  an action that seems unlikely because it would require negotiations between IS and the Iraqi forces to agree on a cessation of hostilities. In addition, Iraqi authorities want to prevent IS fighters from escaping the city by melting into the fleeing civilian population.

Iraqi counterterrorism forces face off with Islamic State militants on the southern edge of Fallujah, Iraq on Tuesday, May 31, 2016 a day after launching an operation of the militant-held city with the help of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes. (AP Photo/Osama Sami)

Iraqi forces repelled the four-hour counterattack a day after entering the southern part of Fallujah with the help of U.S.-led airstrikes. The dawn attack unfolded in the Nuaimiya area, most of which was captured by Iraqi troops on Monday, two special forces officers told The Associated Press. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

IS militants used tunnels and snipers, and targeted Iraqi forces with six explosives-laden cars that were destroyed before they reached their targets, the officers said. Iraqi forces suffered casualties, but no details were given.

The clashes subsided by Tuesday afternoon, but the officers said progress was slowed by roadside bombs the militants left behind. The troops also paused to destroy tunnels in the area. Since Monday, 106 militants have been killed, the officers said.

The push into Nuaimiya, a sprawling agricultural area, was the first attempt by Iraqi forces to enter Fallujah, which fell to IS in 2014. In recent days, Iraqi forces had focused on expelling the militants from outlying areas to tighten a siege on the city, which is 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Baghdad.

The Sunni majority city was the first in Iraq to fall to IS and is the last major urban area controlled by the extremist group in western Iraq. The Sunni-led militants still control the country's second-largest city, Mosul, in the north.

The U.S.-led coalition and Iranian-backed Shiite militia forces are helping the Iraqi army in the offensive. But the fight is expected to be protracted because the militants have had more than two years to dig in, hidden bombs are believed to be strewn throughout the city, and the presence of trapped civilians will limit the use of supporting airstrikes.

"A human catastrophe is unfolding in Fallujah," said Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council.

Only one family managed to escape the town Monday, he said. Since the offensive began more than a week ago, 554 other families have fled areas surrounding Fallujah.

"Warring parties must guarantee civilians safe exit now, before it's too late and more lives are lost," Egeland added. A lack of food, medicine, safe drinking water and electricity is "pushing families to the brink of desperation," the NRC said.

At a briefing in Geneva, the spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency, William Spindler, cited figures by Iraqi authorities that said 624 families  about 3,700 individuals  have fled in the past week.

The UNHCR "understands another 500 men and boys over 12 years old are held for security screening," which can take five to seven days, Spindler said.

"We understand some 27 men were released" on Monday, he said.

The 56-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation  the world's largest body of Muslim-majority countries  expressed "deep concern" about the safety of civilians in Fallujah. In a statement, the group's head also reiterated its opposition to sectarian violence and expressed support for the Iraqi government.

Some Sunni lawmakers in Iraq have accused the security forces of using indiscriminate force and say the Shiite militias have committed abuses against civilians in mainly Sunni towns and cities. The security forces and the militias deny the accusations.

The government-sanctioned umbrella group of mostly Shiite militias is not taking part in the current push into Fallujah, officials said, adding that the task is being handled solely by the elite counterterrorism force.

___

Associated Press writer Sinan Salaheddin in Baghdad and Aya Batrawy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.

Smoke rises as Iraqi counterterrorism forces face off with Islamic State militants on the southern edge of Fallujah, Iraq on Tuesday, May 31, 2016 a day after launching an operation of the militant-held city with the help of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes. (AP Photo/Osama Sami)

Iraqis gather water in a neighborhood in central Fallujah, Iraq as Iraqi counterterrorism forces battle Islamic State militants on the southern edge of the city on Tuesday, May 31, 2016. A leading aid group raised alarm over the unfolding "human catastrophe" here, where an estimated 50,000 people remain trapped as the fight intensifies and renewed calls on warring parties to open up safe corridors for civilians to flee.(AP Photo)

An Iraqi woman gathers water in a neighborhood in central Fallujah, Iraq as Iraqi counterterrorism forces battle Islamic State militants on the southern edge of the city on Tuesday, May 31, 2016. a leading aid group raised alarm over the unfolding "human catastrophe" here, where an estimated 50,000 people remain trapped as the fight intensifies and renewed calls on warring parties to open up safe corridors for civilians to flee.(AP Photo)

Iraqi counterterrorism forces fix their armored vehicles and load their weapons during a break in fighting outside Fallujah, Iraq, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. The elite troops repelled a four-hour attack by the Islamic State group in the city's south a day after first moving into the southern edges of the militant-held city with the help of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

Iraqi counterterrorism forces fix their armored vehicles and load their weapons during a break in fighting outside Fallujah, Iraq, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. The elite troops repelled a four-hour attack by the Islamic State group in the city's south a day after first moving into the southern edges of the militant-held city with the help of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

A man walks in a neighborhood in central Fallujah, Iraq as Iraqi counterterrorism forces battle Islamic State militants in the southern part of the city on Tuesday, May 31, 2016. The elite troops repelled a four-hour attack by the Islamic State group in the city's south a day after first moving into the southern edges of the militant-held city with the help of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes. (AP Photo)

Smoke rises from a neighborhood in central Fallujah, Iraq as Iraqi counterterrorism forces battle Islamic State militants in the southern part of the city on Tuesday, May 31, 2016. The elite troops repelled a four-hour attack by the Islamic State group in the city's south a day after first moving into the southern edges of the militant-held city with the help of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes. (AP Photo)

In this image posted on a photo sharing website by an Islamic State militant media arm on Monday, May 30, 2016, a military vehicle burns as IS fighters battle Iraqi forces and their allies west of Fallujah, Iraq. Iraqi forces battling their way into Fallujah repelled a four-hour attack by the Islamic State group in the city's south on Tuesday, a day after first moving into the southern edges of the militant-held city with the help of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes.(militant photo via AP)

In this image posted on a photo sharing website by an Islamic State militant media arm on Monday, May 30, 2016, an IS fighter battles Iraqi forces and their allies west of Fallujah, Iraq. Iraqi forces battling their way into Fallujah repelled a four-hour attack by the Islamic State group in the city's south on Tuesday, a day after first moving into the southern edges of the militant-held city with the help of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes.(militant photo via AP)

In this image posted on a photo sharing website by an Islamic State militant media arm on Monday, May 30, 2016, an IS fighter fires his weapon during clashes with Iraqi forces and their allies west of Fallujah, Iraq. Iraqi forces battling their way into Fallujah repelled a four-hour attack by the Islamic State group in the city's south on Tuesday, a day after first moving into the southern edges of the militant-held city with the help of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes.(militant photo via AP)

In this image posted on a photo sharing website by an Islamic State militant media arm on Monday, May 30, 2016, IS fighters battle Iraqi forces and their allies west of Fallujah, Iraq. Iraqi forces battling their way into Fallujah repelled a four-hour attack by the Islamic State group in the city's south on Tuesday, a day after first moving into the southern edges of the militant-held city with the help of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes.(militant photo via AP)

In this image posted on a photo sharing website by an Islamic State militant media arm on Monday, May 30, 2016, IS fighters prepare to battle Iraqi forces and their allies west of Fallujah, Iraq. Iraqi forces battling their way into Fallujah repelled a four-hour attack by the Islamic State group in the city's south on Tuesday, a day after first moving into the southern edges of the militant-held city with the help of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes.(militant photo via AP)

In this image posted on a photo sharing website by an Islamic State militant media arm on Monday, May 30, 2016, IS fighters battle Iraqi forces and their allies west of Fallujah, Iraq. Iraqi forces battling their way into Fallujah repelled a four-hour attack by the Islamic State group in the city's south on Tuesday, a day after first moving into the southern edges of the militant-held city with the help of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes.(militant photo via AP)

In this image posted on a photo sharing website by an Islamic State militant media arm on Monday, May 30, 2016, smoke rises as IS fighters battle Iraqi forces and their allies west of Fallujah, Iraq. Iraqi forces battling their way into Fallujah repelled a four-hour attack by the Islamic State group in the city's south on Tuesday, a day after first moving into the southern edges of the militant-held city with the help of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes.(militant photo via AP)

An Iraqi counterterrorism forces soldier perches on a berm during clashes with Islamic State militants on the southern edge of Fallujah, Iraq on Tuesday, May 31, 2016 a day after launching an operation of the militant-held city with the help of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes. (AP Photo/Osama Sami)

Iraqi counterterrorism forces face off with Islamic State militants on the southern edge of Fallujah, Iraq on Tuesday, May 31, 2016 a day after launching an operation of the militant-held city with the help of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes. (AP Photo/Osama Sami)
Tokyo museum exhibits Issey Miyake's constant innovations

TOKYO (AP)  Although he's behind one of the biggest fashion brands to come out of Japan, Issey Miyake detests being called a fashion designer. Maybe a designer, even a sculptor, but not that frivolous, trend-watching, conspicuous consumption known as fashion.

What he has pursued since he started in the 1970s is more timeless. His down-to-earth clothing is meant to celebrate the human body. And it's anyone's or everyone's body  any race, build, size or age.

"The work of Miyake Issey," at the National Art Center in Tokyo, is a moving journey through his creative mind. The show includes his signature pleats that transform usually crass polyester into chic. In another corner, mannequins are connected by a roll of fabric to highlight his A-POC, or "a piece of cloth," series that began in 1998. A-POC uses computer technology in weaving to create apparel at the same time fabric is being produced.

Pieces of designer Issey Miyake's collection are displayed at the National Art Center in Tokyo, Japan, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. Although hes behind one of the biggest fashion brands to come out of Japan, Issey Miyake detests being called a fashion designer. Maybe a designer, even a sculptor, but not of that frivolous, trend-watching, conspicuous consumption known as fashion. What he has pursued since he started in the 1970s is more timeless. His down-to-earth clothing is meant to celebrate the human body. And its anyones or everyones body _ any race, build, size or age. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

Again and again, the exhibit drives home Miyake's basic concept of a single piece of cloth, be it draped, folded, cut or wrapped, but he does not see the exhibit as a "retrospective," says Midori Kitamura, president of Miyake Design Studio and the exhibit's producer.

"He is always forward-looking," Kitamura said, wearing a black Miyake sweater top that can be cut at the collar and sleeves along perforated lines, and a miniskirt that ruffles like a flower at her hip. "Trying to catch up with him is the story of my career."

One stark piece aptly called "colombe," or "dove," is rectangular, white monofilament fiber resembling soft plastic. It doesn't use a single stitch but snaps on in a brushstroke of a swirl.

Miyake has taken inspiration from a variety of cultures and societal motifs, as well as everyday items  plastic, rattan, "washi" paper, jute, horsehair, foil, yarn, batik, indigo dyes, wiring.

The exhibit starts with a row of figures donning his early but already powerful works. A jersey body-wear evokes tattooing with images of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, who died in 1970, the year it was created. His collaboration with Japanese painter Tadanori Yokoo depicts monkeys and foliage in vibrant psychedelic hues on a flowing robe.

Another poignant part of the exhibit highlights the pleated Olympic uniforms for various countries designed by Miyake. In 1992, he was commissioned to design the official uniform for Lithuania, which had just gained independence from the Soviet Union.

Miyake got Japanese material maker Toray to provide the fabric, Japanese sporting goods company Mizuno to handle the production and Polytex of Thailand to do the pleating. Ten more uniforms were created by Miyake in the 1990s, and another 10 for the current exhibit.

"Issey Miyake's garments of his entire career have been displayed in the grand setting of the National Art Center, Tokyo, as innovative works of art, as they deserve to be," said John Carpenter, curator of Japanese art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, who saw the exhibit during a recent visit to Tokyo.

"The imaginative exhibition design and abstract sculptured mannequins by Tokujin Yoshioka add another brilliant artistic dimension," Carpenter added, referring to the figures wearing the clothes at the exhibit that are artworks in themselves.

Over the years, Miyake has shown a knack for collaborating with people outside his genre, such as designer Yoshioka, furniture and interior designer Shiro Kuramata, photographer Irving Penn, choreographer and director Maurice Bejart, pottery maker Lucie Rie, Ballet Frankfurt and the gymnastics team of Aomori University in northern Japan.

Born in Hiroshima in 1938, Miyake was a star as soon as he hit the European runways. His brown top, which combined the Japanese sewn fabric called "sashiko" with raw silk knit, was splashed on the cover of the September 1973 issue of Elle magazine.

Miyake was also a pioneer in gender roles, asking feminist Fusae Ichikawa in the 1970s, when she was in her 80s, to be his model, sending the message that garments must be comfortable and express the natural beauty of real people.

"Designing is like a living organism in that it pursues what matters for its well-being and continuity," Miyake writes in the book published for the exhibit. "My work's touchstone phrases are: Making Think, Making Things and Making Reality."

Miyake's approach so brings the spiritual to the mundane question of what to wear, one even wonders if it might free one's soul, bringing to mind the elements, like water, fire, air and the earth, at once futuristic high-tech and handmade primordial.

But Miyake avoids the trap of getting pretentious. One great look he approves of is the T-shirt and jeans. The exhibit includes his version of the gorgeously faded pair of jeans.

Benjamin Lee, a Tokyo-based photographer who has taken Miyake's portrait as well as those of writer Haruki Murakami and visual artist Yayoi Kusama, believes Miyake is a true innovator, creating art works with clothes. Yet he exuded warmth in person and they laughed together, Lee recalled.

"I was left with the impression of meeting someone special, who understood people very well, and how fashion can make everyday living more interesting and comfortable," he said.

"The work of Miyake Issey" runs through June 13. His office says overseas exhibitions have not been decided.

___

"The Work of Miyake Issey" exhibit online: http://www.nact.jp/english/exhibitions/2016/miyake_issey/

Follow Yuri Kageyama on Twitter at https://twitter.com/yurikageyama

Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/yuri-kageyama

Designer Issey Miyake's collection is displayed at the National Art Center in Tokyo, Japan, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. Although hes behind one of the biggest fashion brands to come out of Japan, Issey Miyake detests being called a fashion designer. Maybe a designer, even a sculptor, but not of that frivolous, trend-watching, conspicuous consumption known as fashion. What he has pursued since he started in the 1970s is more timeless. His down-to-earth clothing is meant to celebrate the human body. And its anyones or everyones body _ any race, build, size or age. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

Pieces of designer Issey Miyake's collection are displayed at the National Art Center in Tokyo, Japan, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. Although hes behind one of the biggest fashion brands to come out of Japan, Issey Miyake detests being called a fashion designer. Maybe a designer, even a sculptor, but not of that frivolous, trend-watching, conspicuous consumption known as fashion. What he has pursued since he started in the 1970s is more timeless. His down-to-earth clothing is meant to celebrate the human body. And its anyones or everyones body _ any race, build, size or age. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

Pieces of designer Issey Miyake's collection are displayed at the National Art Center in Tokyo, Japan, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. Although hes behind one of the biggest fashion brands to come out of Japan, Issey Miyake detests being called a fashion designer. Maybe a designer, even a sculptor, but not of that frivolous, trend-watching, conspicuous consumption known as fashion. What he has pursued since he started in the 1970s is more timeless. His down-to-earth clothing is meant to celebrate the human body. And its anyones or everyones body _ any race, build, size or age. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

Pieces of designer Issey Miyake's collection are displayed at the National Art Center in Tokyo, Japan, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. Although hes behind one of the biggest fashion brands to come out of Japan, Issey Miyake detests being called a fashion designer. Maybe a designer, even a sculptor, but not of that frivolous, trend-watching, conspicuous consumption known as fashion. What he has pursued since he started in the 1970s is more timeless. His down-to-earth clothing is meant to celebrate the human body. And its anyones or everyones body _ any race, build, size or age. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

Designer Issey Miyake's collection is displayed at the National Art Center in Tokyo, Japan, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. Although hes behind one of the biggest fashion brands to come out of Japan, Issey Miyake detests being called a fashion designer. Maybe a designer, even a sculptor, but not of that frivolous, trend-watching, conspicuous consumption known as fashion. What he has pursued since he started in the 1970s is more timeless. His down-to-earth clothing is meant to celebrate the human body. And its anyones or everyones body _ any race, build, size or age. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

Designer Issey Miyake's collection is displayed at the National Art Center in Tokyo, Japan, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. Although hes behind one of the biggest fashion brands to come out of Japan, Issey Miyake detests being called a fashion designer. Maybe a designer, even a sculptor, but not of that frivolous, trend-watching, conspicuous consumption known as fashion. What he has pursued since he started in the 1970s is more timeless. His down-to-earth clothing is meant to celebrate the human body. And its anyones or everyones body _ any race, build, size or age. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

Pieces of designer Issey Miyake's collection are displayed at the National Art Center in Tokyo, Japan, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. Although hes behind one of the biggest fashion brands to come out of Japan, Issey Miyake detests being called a fashion designer. Maybe a designer, even a sculptor, but not of that frivolous, trend-watching, conspicuous consumption known as fashion. What he has pursued since he started in the 1970s is more timeless. His down-to-earth clothing is meant to celebrate the human body. And its anyones or everyones body _ any race, build, size or age. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

The title of the Issey Miyake exhibition is displayed at the National Art Center in Tokyo, Japan, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. Although hes behind one of the biggest fashion brands to come out of Japan, Issey Miyake detests being called a fashion designer. Maybe a designer, even a sculptor, but not of that frivolous, trend-watching, conspicuous consumption known as fashion. What he has pursued since he started in the 1970s is more timeless. His down-to-earth clothing is meant to celebrate the human body. And its anyones or everyones body _ any race, build, size or age. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

Pieces of designer Issey Miyake's collection are displayed at the National Art Center in Tokyo, Japan, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. Although hes behind one of the biggest fashion brands to come out of Japan, Issey Miyake detests being called a fashion designer. Maybe a designer, even a sculptor, but not of that frivolous, trend-watching, conspicuous consumption known as fashion. What he has pursued since he started in the 1970s is more timeless. His down-to-earth clothing is meant to celebrate the human body. And its anyones or everyones body _ any race, build, size or age. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

Pieces of designer Issey Miyake's collection are displayed at the National Art Center in Tokyo, Japan, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. Although hes behind one of the biggest fashion brands to come out of Japan, Issey Miyake detests being called a fashion designer. Maybe a designer, even a sculptor, but not of that frivolous, trend-watching, conspicuous consumption known as fashion. What he has pursued since he started in the 1970s is more timeless. His down-to-earth clothing is meant to celebrate the human body. And its anyones or everyones body _ any race, build, size or age. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)
AP FACT CHECK: Some Clinton email misstatements

ST. LOUIS (AP)  Over the months, Hillary Clinton misstated key facts about her use of private email and her own server for her work as secretary of state, the department's inspector general reported this week.

According to the findings, she claimed approval she didn't have and declined to be interviewed for the report despite saying: "I'm more than ready to talk to anybody anytime." Scrutiny of her unusual email practices appeared to be unwelcome, despite her contention those practices were well known and "fully above board."

A look at some of Clinton's past claims about her unusual email set-up and how they compare with the inspector general's findings:

FILE - In this Sept. 7, 2015, file photo, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Over the months, Clinton misstated key facts about her use of private email and her own server for her work as secretary of state, the departments inspector general reported this week. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)

CLINTON: "The system we used was set up for President Clinton's office. And it had numerous safeguards. It was on property guarded by the Secret Service. And there were no security breaches."  March 2015 press conference.

THE REPORT: Evidence emerged of hacking attempts, though it's unclear whether they were successful.

On Jan. 9, 2011, (asterisk)an adviser to former President Bill Clinton notified the State Department's deputy chief of staff for operations that he had to shut down the server because he suspected "someone was trying to hack us and while they did not get in i did.,nt (sic) want to let them have the chance to."

Later that day, he sent another note. "We were attacked again so I shut (the server) down for a few min."

The following day the deputy chief emailed top Clinton aides and instructed them not to email the secretary "anything sensitive."

Also in May 2011, Clinton told aides that someone was "hacking into her email," after she received a message with a suspicious link, the new audit report said.

The Associated Press has previously reported that, according to detailed records compiled in 2012, Clinton's server was connected to the internet in ways that made it more vulnerable to hackers. It appeared to allow users to connect openly over the internet to control it remotely.

Moreover, it's unclear what protection her email system might have achieved from having the Secret Service guard the property. Digital security breaches tend to come from computer networks, not over a fence.

___

CLINTON: "What I did was allowed. It was allowed by the State Department. The State Department has confirmed that."  AP interview, September.

THE REPORT: "No evidence" that Clinton asked for or received approval to conduct official government business on a personal email account run through a private server in her New York home. According to top State Department officials interviewed for the investigation, the departments that oversee security "did not  and would not  approve" her use of a personal account because of security concerns.

Clinton has changed her account since the report came out. On Thursday, she told CNN "I thought it was allowed. I knew past secretaries of state used personal email."

Colin Powell was the only secretary of state who used personal email for work, but not to the extent she did, and he did not use a private server.

___

CLINTON: "It was fully above board. Everybody in the government with whom I emailed knew that I was using a personal email."  AP interview, September.

CLINTON: "The people in the government knew that I was using a personal account . the people I was emailing to on the dot gov system certainly knew and they would respond to me on my personal email."  NBC News interview, September.

THE REPORT: According to the findings, it's unclear how widespread knowledge was about Clinton's use of a personal account. Though Clinton's use of a private email was discussed with some in her agency, senior department officials who worked for her, including the undersecretary responsible for security, said they were not asked to approve or review the use of her private server.

The officials also said they were "unaware of the scope or extent" of her email practices, even though Clinton exchanged hundreds of thousands of messages with people in government from her personal account.

___

CLINTON: "In the fall, I think it was October of last year (2014), the State Department sent a letter to previous secretaries of state asking for help with their record-keeping, in part because of the technical problems that they knew they had to deal with. And they asked that we, all of us, go through our e-mails to determine what was work-related and to provide that for them."  NBC News, September.

THE REPORT: While it's true that the State Department requested records from former secretaries of state in November 2014, the report says the department raised concerns about Clinton's compliance with federal record-keeping laws years earlier, and the attention did not appear welcome.

Two employees in the Office of Information Resources Management discussed concerns about her use of a personal email account in separate 2010 meetings. One of the employees stressed in one of the meetings that the information being transmitted needed to be preserved to satisfy federal records laws.

They were instructed by the director of the department "never to speak of the Secretary's personal email system again," according to the report.

___

CLINTON: "I think last August I made it clear I'm more than ready to talk to anybody anytime.  CBS News interview in May.

THE REPORT: Clinton declined through her lawyer to be interviewed for the report. Four other secretaries of state participated: John Kerry, Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell. She now says: "everything I had to say was out there."

But she has said she will speak to the FBI as part of a separate criminal investigation into possible security breaches related to her private server.

In October, she testified about the issue before the House committee investigating the 2012 Benghazi attacks.

___

Lerer reported from Las Vegas.

___

Follow Catherine Lucey and Lisa Lerer on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/catherine_lucey and http://twitter.com/llerer
4 Bangladeshi men convicted of terror financing in Singapore

SINGAPORE (AP)  Four Bangladeshi workers held on suspicion of planning attacks linked to the Islamic State group in their own country were convicted of financing terrorism by a court in Singapore on Tuesday.

Prosecutors said the men, who pleaded guilty, had raised money to buy firearms to launch attacks in Bangladesh. They are to be sentenced on June 21 and face a maximum sentence of 10 years in jail and a fine of 500,000 Singapore dollars ($362,260).

Two other workers have pleaded not guilty. Their trial dates have not been set.

This undated photo released by the Ministry of Home Affairs shows Rahman Mizanur, one of four Bangladeshi men convicted in a Singapore Court on Tuesday, May 31, 2016, in Singapore. Mizanur and the three other men held on suspicion of planning attacks linked to the Islamic State group in their own country were convicted of financing terrorism by a court in Singapore on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Ministry of Home Affairs)

The men have been detained since April under Singapore's Internal Security Act, which allows for detention without trial in cases where public safety is threatened.

The Ministry of Home Affairs has said the group's suspected leader, Rahman Mizanur, possessed guides on making weapons and bombs, as well as radical material from the Islamic State group and al-Qaida that he used to recruit the others.

Rahman, 31, arrived at Singapore's State Court on Tuesday with his arms and legs shackled, surrounded by a heavy police guard. He pleaded guilty and was convicted of two charges of financing terrorism, by inviting group members to contribute funds and handling the money to facilitate plans.

Prosecutors said in court that Rahman told the group that money was needed to purchase food, arms and weapons like knives and pistols, and that everyone had agreed to contribute part of their salary.

Police charge sheets said they had contributed to, held or dealt with money for the alleged plans, with amounts ranging from 60 to 1,360 Singapore dollars.

Two other Bangladeshi men who were detained in April have not been charged and will be dealt with separately, officials said.

In January, Singapore said it had arrested and deported 26 Bangladeshi construction workers for forming a religious study group that spread the ideologies of al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.

The three other men convicted were Miah Rubel, Muhammad Jabath Kysar Haje Norul Islam Sowdagar, and Sohel Hawlader Ismail Hawlader.

This undated photo released by the Ministry of Home Affairs shows Muhammad Jabath Kysar Haje Norul Islam Sowdagar, one of four Bangladeshi men convicted in a Singapore Court on Tuesday, May 31, 2016, in Singapore. Sowdagar and the three other men held on suspicion of planning attacks linked to the Islamic State group in their own country were convicted of financing terrorism by a court in Singapore on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Ministry of Home Affairs)

This undated photo released by the Ministry Of Home Affairs shows Miah Rubel, one of four Bangladeshi men convicted in a Singapore Court on Tuesday, May 31, 2016, in Singapore. Rubel and the three other men held on suspicion of planning attacks linked to the Islamic State group in their own country were convicted of financing terrorism by a court in Singapore on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Ministry of Home Affairs)
Active-shooter drills help schools prepare for the worst

CARMEL, Ind. (AP)  "Lockdown, lockdown, lockdown. This is a drill."

With those seven words, calmly announced over the intercom system, an eerie silence overtook a bustling elementary school of 650 students in suburban Indianapolis. Lights were turned off and blinds shut. In some classrooms, doors were barricaded with small desks and chairs.

From start to finish, the "intruder drill" at the Forest Dale Elementary School in Carmel took about 10 minutes  an exercise now as routine at the school as a fire drill. What might sound terrifying to some parents has become the norm in many schools nationwide after a rash of school shootings.

In this May 6, 2016, photo, Forest Dale Elementary School principal Deanna Pitman, right, and Carmel, (Ind.) police officer Greg DeWald welcome students as they return to the school following an intruder drill at the school in Carmel, Ind. More and more, schools these days are conducting active-shooter drills. A government report found that more than two-thirds of the school districts surveyed conduct active shooter exercises. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

More than two-thirds of school districts surveyed by the U.S. Government Accountability Office conduct "active shooter" exercises.

Some schools make their drills very realistic, simulating the sounds of gunshots and using smoke and fake blood. In one case, armed police officers with weapons drawn burst into a Florida middle school, terrifying staff and students alike.

Staff and teachers are usually given a warning that drills will happen.

GAO investigators said one district noted "the difficulty of striking a balance between providing knowledge and inciting fear, particularly at schools with younger children."

Between 2000 and 2013, there were 25 shootings at U.S. elementary and secondary schools, resulting in 57 deaths, according to the FBI.

These numbers include the shooting at Connecticut's Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 when an intruder gunned down 20 first-graders and six educators.

Students at Forest Dale began participating in twice-a-semester intruder drills even before Sandy Hook.

"We do fire drills, but we don't expect there to be a fire. When you get on an airplane, they talk to you about all sorts of safety procedures, but not because they expect the plane to crash, but because you just need to know, just in case," said D.J. Schoeff, a school resource officer in Carmel and a regional director with the National Association of School Resource Officers.

But Forest Dale's drills don't have the effects and props that have drawn criticism elsewhere.

Playing the role of intruders, Forest Dale Principal Deanna Pitman and Police Officer Greg Dewald walked the halls, jiggled the doorknobs of darkened classrooms, checking for unlocked doors. A staff assistant in an office watching a monitor used the intercom to broadcast the location and description of the intruders, so staff and students could choose how to respond.

"Mrs. Pitman is wearing a green blouse today and Officer Dewald is wearing khaki pants with his policeman's jacket," the assistant said. "Consider what you would do if they were in the fifth-grade pod."

Fifth-graders scattered from a hallway, leaving notebooks and pencils strewn across the carpeted floor as they fled inside a classroom. At the other end of the school, youngsters streamed outside in lines of two with their teachers to designated safe locations.

Students had no advance warning of the drill. Teachers were told there would be a drill, but they didn't know what kind or when.

Inside the school, all went mostly according to plan. No children were stranded in hallways. Doors were locked. Only the head of one little child could be seen peeking out from under a desk. The child quickly popped back under the desk as Pitman walked by a classroom window.

Outside school, one class went to the wrong safe spot  a "lessons learned" moment for future drills, Pitman said.

"We had a little bit of concern from parents when we first started the drills," Pitman said after the students were back to class. "I think it was more of the unknown, and not necessarily anxiety over lockdown and intruder drills. Once they know what the teachers are saying to the kids, we don't really get a lot of pushback."

Not all schools feel the same way about the drills, and some security experts are cautious about them.

"Practice your lockdowns and diversify when you do those, different times of the day, and keep your focus on the other types of threats and day-to-day security issues without getting a tunnel vision focus on active shooters," said school safety consultant Ken Trump.

Many schools across the country don't have enough security cameras to capture the entire campus for potential threats, Trump added.

He said exiting the building can be risky if there truly is an intruder because of the uncertainty about whether there could be accomplices outside waiting. "You are leaving secure areas and evacuating into  you don't know what," said Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services in Cleveland.

But a school psychologist, Dr. Melissa Reeves, says schools need to be prepared and conduct age-appropriate exercises like the Forest Dale drill. It's the more realistic simulation drills with props that worry Reeves.

"We do not light a fire in the hallway to practice fire drills, so why do we feel the need to bring in a fake gun, people screaming and people with makeup that looks like blood?," said Reeves, a psychologist at a pre-K through 12 school in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the president-elect of the National Association of School Psychologists. "There are other ways we can train staff members and students to be prepared."

Jennifer Cassidy, who has a second-grader and fifth-grader at Forest Dale, says her kids never come home talking about the intruder drills.

"I don't think that's because they are traumatized or freaked out. I think they just think it's just another part of school," she said. "At first I felt like, "I don't understand why we have to do these.' Then, after Sandy Hook, I was glad we do these, and I feel completely different about them."

In this May 6, 2016, photo, Justin Kay, a 5th grade teacher at Forest Dale Elementary School in Carmel, Ind., makes an announcement of the school's public address system of an "intruder drill." More and more, schools these days are conducting active-shooter drills. A government report found that more than two-thirds of the school districts surveyed conduct active shooter exercises. From start to finish, the intruder drill at the Forest Dale Elementary School in Carmel took about 10 minutes _ an exercise now as routine at the school as a fire drill. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

In this May 6, 2016, photo, books and supplies litter the floor as a class evacuated the area during an intruder drill Forest Dale Elementary School in Carmel, Ind. More and more, schools these days are conducting active-shooter drills. A government report found that more than two-thirds of the school districts surveyed conduct active shooter exercises. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

In this May 6, 2016, photo, Forest Dale Elementary School administrative assistant Heather Fellabaum tracks an "intruder" and announces their whereabouts via the schools public address system as the school holds a intruder drill in Carmel, Ind. More and more, schools these days are conducting active-shooter drills. A government report found that more than two-thirds of the school districts surveyed conduct active shooter exercises. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

In this May 6, 2016, photo, students at Forest Dale Elementary School gather outside the school during an intruder drill in Carmel, Ind. Had this not is been a drill, students would of continued to a designated safe location away from the front of the school. More and more, schools these days are conducting active-shooter drills. A government report found that more than two-thirds of the school districts surveyed conduct active shooter exercises.(AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
After decades, 32 Australians' remains return from Malaysia

SUBANG AIR BASE, Malaysia (AP)  The bodies of 32 Australian service personnel and their dependents, many of them killed during the Vietnam War, were handed over by Malaysian soldiers to their Australian counterparts Tuesday. Australian officials say it's among the biggest single repatriations in the nation's history.

The remains handed over at Subang military air base had been interred for decades at Terendak Military Cemetery in Malaysia. Malaysia soldiers carried coffins draped with Australia flags to the tarmac, where Australian troops carried them aboard two Royal Australian Air Force C-17 Globemaster aircraft.

Malaysian officials said 21 of the deceased were Australian soldiers killed in Vietnam and three others died in the fight against communist insurgents in Malaysia. The remaining eight consisted of two wives and six children of Australian military personnel who died from accidents or sickness, they said.

CORRECTS TO MALAYSIAN MILITARY PERSONNEL Malaysian military personnel carry a coffin during a repatriation ceremony for Australian soldiers at Subang military air base in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. The Australian soldiers, many who were casualties during the Vietnam War, were buried in Malaysia along with some dependents. (AP Photo/Vincent Thian)

The bodies, plus one additional set of remains from Singapore, are to arrive in Sydney on Thursday. After a formal military repatriation ceremony that will include some veterans who served with those killed, a private memorial service will be held.

The Australian government offered a year ago to repatriate 36 Australian servicemen and dependents from Malaysia and Singapore. The families of 33 servicemen and dependents accepted that offer.

Before January 1966, Australia's policy was to bury soldiers killed in battle in foreign countries in the nearest Commonwealth war cemetery.

"As 2015 marks 50 years since the arrival of combat troops and the escalation of Australian involvement in Vietnam, it is right and proper that we honor their service with this gesture," then Prime Minister Tony Abbott told Parliament in May last year.

Australia deployed more than 60,000 military personnel to the Vietnam conflict between 1962 and 1973, of whom 521 were killed.

Australian military personnel carry coffins during a repatriation ceremony for Australian soldiers at Subang military air base in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. The Australian soldiers, many who were casualties during the Vietnam War, were buried in Malaysia along with some dependents. (AP Photo/Vincent Thian)

Australian military personnel carry a coffin during a repatriation ceremony for Australian soldiers at Subang military air base in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. The Australian soldiers, many who were casualties during the Vietnam War, were buried in Malaysia along with some dependents. (AP Photo/Vincent Thian)
Roadside bombs kills 6 soldiers in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula

EL-ARISH, Egypt (AP)  Egyptian security and hospital officials say a roadside bomb has struck a military armored vehicle in the restive northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, killing six soldiers.

The officials say the attack on Tuesday also wounded six other soldiers. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which bore the hallmarks of the Islamic State group, which is fighting army and security forces in northern Sinai.
Kuwait sentences 3 royal family members for insulting judges

KUWAIT CITY (AP)  A Kuwait criminal court has sentenced three members of the royal family to five-year prison terms each for insulting judges.

The royals and four other co-defendants were sentenced Monday. They were initially accused of insulting Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmed Al Jaber Al Sabah and fabricating videos incriminating high-ranking judges.

The former head of Kuwait's National Security Office Athbi al-Fahad Al Sabah, who is the ruler's nephew, is among those convicted.

The 122-page ruling, obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday, references phone logs from the WhatsApp messaging service of the defendants planning to publish anonymous Twitter posts sharing fabricated videos of judges receiving bribes.
Mediterranean Sea disasters leave more than 1,000 dead

GENEVA (AP)  The treacherous Mediterranean Sea crossing from Libya to Italy claimed the lives of at least 1,083 migrants over the past week  mostly because barely seaworthy smuggling boats foundered and sank despite calm seas and sunny skies, a migration agency said Tuesday, citing new accounts from survivors.

The staggering death toll could foreshadow more disasters in coming months as the region gears up for the traditional summer-fall spike in human trafficking as the weather improves and seas grow warmer. Aid officials say it also suggests that Libyan smuggling gangs are using even riskier tactics to profit from the torrent of people desperate to reach the safety and economic promise of Europe.

Making matters worse, the tally is only from the capsizings or shipwrecks known to authorities, who acknowledge they don't have precise information on how many people are being jammed into unsuitable vessels and swallowed up by the vast waters of the southern Mediterranean.

This undated image made available Monday, May 30, 2016 by the Italian Navy Marina Militare shows migrants being rescued at sea. Survivor accounts have pushed to more than 700 the number of migrants feared dead in Mediterranean Sea shipwrecks over three days in the past week, even as rescue ships saved thousands of others in daring operations. (Italian Navy via AP)

Two Eritreans among the hundreds of shipwreck survivors brought to Italian ports last week described being haunted by the number of women and children on their capsized boat who did not survive. They could still hear the cries of the children as the ship sank Thursday, they said.

"I started to cry when I saw the situation and when I found the ship without an engine. There were many women and children," said 21-year-old Filmon Selomon who plunged into the sea to save himself. "Water was coming in from everywhere, top, bottom."

"The children were crying and the women," said Habtom Tekle, a 27-year-old Eritrean. "At this point I only tried to pray. Everybody was trying to take the water out of the boat."

The International Organization for Migration said Tuesday that 62 people were confirmed dead and another 971 were missing and presumed drowned in nine separate emergencies since May 25 on the Libya-to-Italy sea route.

William Spindler, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency, told reporters in Geneva that this year was already proving to be "particularly deadly" on the Mediterranean, with some 2,510 lives lost compared to 1,855 over the same period a year ago.

IOM spokesman Joel Millman told The Associated Press that last week's toll was the largest in a single week since mid-April of last year, when 1,226 people drowned or went missing, most in two deadly sinkings.

In the deadliest of last week's shipwrecks, 500 people remain missing after a boat without an engine capsized on Thursday as it was being towed by another boat loaded with some 800 people, the agency said. A day earlier, a sinking left some 250 people missing and five confirmed dead. By Saturday, 45 people were confirmed dead and 215 missing in a shipwreck off Reggio Calabria, Italy.

Six smaller incidents left another 68 people dead or missing last week, IOM said.

Spindler gave a somewhat lower toll, saying UNHCR estimates that at least 880 people were believed dead. He noted such estimates were an inexact science and UNHCR figures tend to be "conservative."

The discrepancy between the two agencies' counts stems largely from the May 25 sinking: IOM now estimates that 250 people died. Like UNHCR, it had originally estimated about 100 deaths.

Frederico Soda, who heads IOM's Mediterranean office in Rome, said the increase in those making the deadly crossing was due "in part, to better weather, and in part to the use of bigger wooden boats that can carry more people than the rubber boats" used last year.

"During the last few days we have had major accidents involving unsafe wooden boats," he said. "This also explains the increase in the number of migrants dead or missing: One accident can result in hundreds of fatalities."

Among other possible factors for the high number of fatalities, survivors have told UNHCR staffers that some smugglers in Libya appeared to be trying to earn extra cash before the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which begins next week.

Spindler also noted new and far riskier tactics. Until Thursday's capsizing, he said, he had never heard of smugglers using an overloaded boat carrying hundreds of people to tow another vessel that had no engine and was packed with hundreds more. IOM said that boat carried mostly Eritreans.

Millman said traffickers could also be cutting fare prices to draw new migrants, mostly from elsewhere in Africa.

Those factors appear to mean that more people were dying even as fewer were coming.

IOM said nearly 19,000 migrants arrived in Italy by sea in May  more than twice the figure in April but less than the 21,221 arrivals in the same month a year ago.

A deal between the European Union and Turkey to return migrants has significantly dampened the key route into Europe, from Turkey to Greece, which was used by hundreds of thousands of people last year. That has left international refugee agencies watching for signs that traffickers may be shifting to the longer, more dangerous Libya-Italy route.

"As of now, UNHCR has not seen evidence of a significant diversion of Syrians, Afghans or Iraqis from the Turkey-Greece route to the central Mediterranean one," Spindler said.

He reiterated UNHCR's appeal to the EU to allow more legal pathways for refugees to reach Europe, calling it "shameful" that the 28-nation bloc had resettled fewer than 2,000 people under an EU plan announced last year to resettle 160,000.

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Sarah El Deeb contributed from Pozzallo, Italy.
The Latest: Paris to create center to take in migrants

GENEVA (AP)  The Latest on Europe's migration crisis (all times local):

5:20 p.m.

The mayor of Paris has announced plans to create a center to take in migrants with no place to go, saying she wants the French capital to welcome those escaping war and poverty in dignity.

In this photo taken Sunday, May 29, 2016 migrants attend to disembark from the Italian Navy Vega vessel, in Reggio Calabria, southern Italy, after being rescued in the Mediterranean Sea off the coasts of Libya. Survivor accounts have pushed to more than 700 the number of migrants feared dead in Mediterranean Sea shipwrecks over three days in the past week, even as rescue ships saved thousands of others in daring operations. (AP Photo/Adriana Sapone)

The center will be located in northern Paris where hundreds of arriving migrants without a place to go often camp near subway stations. Mayor Anne Hidalgo said the exact site would be announced shortly.

The Socialist mayor said several times she hopes the state will be a "partner" in the project, which she said must conform to international norms for refugees.

She said Parisians have a humane duty to help the have-not travelers, adding that she's confident "the Paris population will be at our side."

Her plan to open a center for homeless in the Bois du Boulogne beside a chic neighborhood caused a ruckus.

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4:55 p.m.

Greek authorities say an 18-year-old man has been injured during a fight between migrants in a makeshift camp in the country's main port of Piraeus, near Athens.

The coast guard said Tuesday the migrant was taken to hospital with apparently non-life-threatening injuries, and four other migrants were detained on suspicion of involvement in the fight. No further details were available.

Earlier Tuesday, police in northern Greece said a Pakistani man was taken to hospital after being shot at a makeshift camp for migrants and refugees near the country's border with Macedonia.

And four Syrian men were hospitalized with minor injuries after a fight at an official shelter for migrants in northern Greece.

More than 50,000 migrants and refugees remain stranded in Greece following European border closures earlier this year.

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4:45 p.m.

Hungary's foreign minister says the European Union must protect its borders or "Europe is not going to be able to overcome" the challenge of migration.

Foreign Minister Peter Szijarto says Hungary will continue to "protect her own borders," and that solidarity within the EU means "you comply with international regulations and that you stop the flow of illegal migration."

He spoke Tuesday during a visit to Denmark.

Hungary has set up three transit zones after the country greatly stemmed the flow of migrants toward Western Europe with razor-wire fences on its borders with Serbia and Croatia. Denmark has stepped up controls on its southern borders with Germany.

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4:05 p.m.

A 25-year-old firefighter has confessed to an arson attack on a German home for asylum-seekers, saying he thought of all refugees as criminals.

The man told the Hagen state court, as his trial for attempted murder opened Tuesday, that he set fire to gasoline in the attic of the home in October over fears about burglaries, thefts, violent crimes and sexual attacks, the dpa news agency reported.

The fire only smoldered and none of the seven Syrian refugees living in the home were harmed.

The firefighter, whose name wasn't released in line with German privacy laws, said it was never his intention to harm anyone and that now he finds asylum seekers "awfully nice."

No pleas are entered in the German system and confessions can help mitigate sentences.

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3:45 p.m.

The International Organization for Migration says at least 1,000 people have died or are missing and presumed dead following a string of deadly incidents in the Mediterranean Sea over the last week.

The updated IOM tally on Tuesday was drawn from accounts from survivors who were saved at sea or landed in Italy in recent days.

Figures from aid groups and Italian police had on Sunday counted at least 700 deaths from three shipwrecks over three straight days, but IOM pointed to other smaller incidents as well as more precise figures following interviews with survivors.

The IOM says 62 people were confirmed dead and another 971 were missing and presumed dead in nine incidents on the central Mediterranean route between Libya and Italy since May 25.

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1:45 p.m.

Czech police say they have broken up an international criminal network that was producing and distributing forged Lithuanian documents for migrants in European Union countries.

Police spokesman Pavel Hantak says 10 suspects from former Soviet republics were arrested across the Czech Republic. Five of them were from Ukraine but he didn't specify the nationality of the others.

In a statement on Tuesday, Hantak said the forged documents  passports, IDs and driving licenses  were transported by the group from Lithuania, where they were produced, to the Czech Republic and other EU countries.

Hantak didn't given details about the migrants, saying only that they didn't qualify to stay in the EU.

He says seven migrants using such forged documents were arrested in the Czech Republic.

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1:30 p.m.

Prosecutors in Sicily have announced the arrests of 16 suspected smugglers who were aboard a boat carrying nearly 900 migrants that was rescued without incident over the weekend.

Authorities said Tuesday migrants identified the suspects during more than 24-hours of questioning. One was identified as the navigator and the others as aides who helped keep order and fuel the engine.

Prosecutor Michelangelo Patane said passengers also recounted that only the smugglers were given life jackets, and that they paid between 500 and 1000 euros ($556 and $1,112) to take the risky voyage. Many said they were previously held for four to six weeks in houses in Libya and were fed only once a day.

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1:10 p.m.

Police in northern Greece say a Pakistani man is being treated in hospital after being shot at a makeshift camp for migrants and refugees near the border with Macedonia.

The 19-year-old man, whose injury was described as not life-threatening, was hospitalized early Tuesday and told police he had been attacked by another Pakistani migrant who hasn't been identified, authorities said.

About 300 people are staying at the makeshift camp that sprung up near the border last week after the government cleared a huge settlement in the area.

Also Tuesday, four Syrian men were hospitalized with minor injuries after a fight broke out at a government shelter for migrants in northern Greece.

More than 50,000 migrants and refugees remain stranded in Greece following European border closures earlier this year.

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12:25 p.m.

Police in the southwest German city of Darmstadt say they are investigating allegations that young women were groped during a weekend music festival and have arrested three asylum-seekers from Pakistan.

The allegations from 18 women that they were surrounded by groups of men and groped are reminiscent of similar attacks on a much greater scale in Cologne on New Year's Eve, which were blamed largely on foreigners. Those attacks prompted the government to tighten laws governing foreigners committing crimes.

Darmstadt police told the dpa news agency Tuesday that they had arrested three Pakistani asylum-seekers, ranging in age from 28 to 31, and were searching for two to three more believed to have been involved in the Saturday night incidents.

Some 400,000 people attended the four-day open-air music festival.

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12:10 p.m.

The U.N. refugee agency says survivors' accounts indicate that shipwrecks and capsized boats have claimed at least 880 lives over the last week in the Mediterranean.

UNHCR spokesman William Spindler said Tuesday this year is proving to be "particularly deadly" on the Mediterranean, with some 2,510 lives lost compared to 1,855 in the same span a year ago.

Authorities and international organizations had previously reported some 700 migrants and refugees had perished in Mediterranean shipwrecks over three days last week, the deadliest known tally in over a year.

Spindler reiterated UNHCR's appeal to the European Union to allow for more legal pathways for refugees to reach Europe, and said it was "shameful" that the bloc had resettled fewer than 2,000 people under a plan announced last year to resettle 160,000.

An Afghan woman stands behind the broken head of a statue at the west terminal of an abandoned old airport which is used as a shelter for over 3,500 migrants, in southern Athens, on Monday, May 30 ,2016. The government has been moving migrants from makeshift camps into organized shelters and the Greek government said Monday they will continue to clear the Greek- Macedonian border area over the next few days. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)
Libya: France announces $500 million upgrade for oil site

PARIS (AP)  French company Technip has signed a preliminary $500 million deal to upgrade a key Libyan oil facility, along with Italy's Eni and Libya's state oil company.

The move is part of French diplomatic efforts to boost Libya's fragile unity government. The signing in Paris on Tuesday comes as Libyan forces are fighting to push back Islamic State extremists, who have seized territory amid political turmoil.

The head of Libya's National Oil Corporation met in Paris with French executives, and oversaw the signing of the letter of intent to upgrade a platform at the Bahr Essalam oil field north of Tripoli with an aim of producing 12.6 million barrels a day.
Indonesia detains hundreds demanding release of prisoners

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP)  Indonesian police on Tuesday detained more than 300 demonstrators who were demanding the release of political prisoners in restive Papua province, a rights group said.

Veronica Koman of the Jakarta-based Indonesian Legal Aid Institute said about 40 separatists are currently jailed in the province. A low-level insurgency for an independent Papua has continued since the region was transferred from Dutch to Indonesian rule in the 1960s.

Koman said peaceful protests occurred in the towns of Sentani and Wamena, and in Manado, the provincial capital of North Sulawesi. A total of 336 demonstrators were detained, she said.

Local police spokesman Lt. Col. Patridge Renwarin confirmed that rallies took place in Sentani and Wamena. He said a total of 207 demonstrators were interrogated before being released in the two towns.

"We just questioned them because many joined the rallies without being aware of their intention," Renwarin said.

He added that more than 1,000 people also demonstrated in Jayapura, the provincial capital of Papua, but said they dispersed peacefully.
Couric takes blame for 'misleading' pause in gun documentary

WASHINGTON (AP)  Katie Couric has reversed course and taken responsibility for an edit that misrepresents the response of gun rights activists to a question she poses in a new documentary.

The segment in "Under the Gun" shows nearly 10 seconds of silence after Couric asks the activists how felons or terrorists could be prevented from purchasing a gun without background checks.

Audio of the exchange leaked last week reveals an almost immediate response to the question.

FILE - In this May 12, 2016, file photo, Katie Couric attends the premiere of her documentary, "Under The Gun", hosted by The Cinema Society in New York. Couric has taken responsibility for what she calls a decision that misrepresents the response of gun rights activists to a question she posed in the documentary. (Photo by Christopher Smith/Invision/AP, File)

Couric writes in a message on the film's website that she regrets not raising her initial concerns about the segment "more vigorously."

Director Stephanie Soechtig told The Washington Post last week that the pause was so viewers could consider the question.

Couric said then that she supported Soechtig's statement and was "very proud of the film."
Kenya president meets South Korean president for trade talks

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP)  South Korea's President Park Geun-hye met Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta Tuesday and discussed the trade imbalance between the two countries on the second day of her three-day visit to Kenya.

Park is in Kenya, East Africa's largest economy, to improve trade between the two nations which currently favors South Korea. Kenya is the third leg of her African tour which started with Ethiopia and Uganda. She received a 21-gun salute and a military guard of honor when Kenyatta received her at State House.

Park is travelling with a delegation of more than 200 who include businessmen and government officials, according to South Korea's ambassador to Kenya Young Dae Kwon.

South Korea's president Park Geun-hye, centre left, is greeted by Kenyan President, Uhuru Kenyatta, centre right, at Nairobi State House Nairobi, Kenya, Tuesday May 31, 2016. South Korea's president has arrived in Kenya for a two-day state visit during which she is expected to discuss business and trade opportunities, the first such visit by a South Korean president. (AP Photo/Sayyid Abdul Azim)

Bilateral agreements in security, health, agriculture, information technology, trade and culture will be signed in the tour, he said.

At the meeting President Kenyatta said there is need for the two governments strengthen cooperation such as energy, integrated rural and urban development and human development. Kenyatta said there has been steady growth in volume of trade between the two countries, according to a statement from his communication office. He said the trade balance is in favor of South Korea and that the gap can be reduced by allowing more Kenyan products to access the South Korean market.

"These include cut flowers, coffee, black tea, and fresh produce such as mangoes, avocadoes, pineapples among others, which are world class products and are traded in international markets," said Kenyatta. "We believe that an increase of exports would improve trade relations between our countries."

He noted that the Kenyan government is eager to enter a memorandum of understanding of cooperation in electric power and nuclear energy development with the government of South Korea.

South Korea President Park Geun-hye, left, watches the Kenyan Air Force soldiers during an honor guard welcoming ceremony at the Nairobi State House in Nairobi, Kenya, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. Park arrived in Kenya for a two-day state visit during which she is expected to discuss business and trade opportunities, the first such visit by a South Korean president. (AP Photo/Sayyid Abdul Azim)

South Korea's President Park Geun-hye, in green jacket, inspects guard of honor at Nairobi State House, Nairobi, Kenya, Tuesday May 31, 2016. President Park is in Kenya for a two-day state visit during which she is expected to discuss business and trade opportunities. (AP Photo/Sayyid Abdul Azim)

South Korea's President Park Geun-hye, center, and Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta, right, stand to inspect guard of honor at Nairobi State House Nairobi, Kenya Tuesday May 31, 2016. President Park is in Kenya for a two-day state visit during which she is expected to discuss business and trade opportunities. (AP Photo/Sayyid Abdul Azim)
Police: Houston shooter fired 212 rounds

HOUSTON (AP)  An Army veteran of two Afghanistan tours who killed one person and wounded several others during a weekend rampage fired 212 rounds from his military-style rifle before a SWAT officer fatally shot him, police said Tuesday.

"Suffice to say, after he fired 212 rounds, he was prepared," police Lt. John McGalin said of ammunition carried by 25-year-old Dionisio Garza III, of Rancho Cucamonga, California.

McGalin said Garza was armed with an AR-15 rifle and a pistol and likely was experiencing a "mental health crisis" when he opened fire Sunday morning at a Houston auto detail shop, using the pistol to kill a customer, then retrieving the rifle and spraying the west Houston neighborhood, motorists and then police with gunshots.

A C=constable car with a shot-out window remains at the scene where Houston police were investigating a shooting, Sunday, May 29, 2016, in Houston. A man came into an auto detail shop and began shooting, killing a man known to be a customer and putting a neighborhood on lockdown before being killed by a SWAT officer, police said. Several people were shot and injured. (Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle via AP)

"He was suffering from some depression, I guess you could say," McGalin said. "His family indicated he wasn't feeling right. And he left to come here to hang out with some friends and to try to find some work."

Garza's relatives have said he was haunted by his Afghanistan deployment.

Six people were wounded, including two officers and three motorists. McGalin said the sixth person wounded, John Wilson, 30, who initially on Sunday was considered a possible suspect in the outburst, was a nearby resident who armed himself after hearing all the gunfire and intended to try to assist in stopping Garza.

"He got outgunned, realized he was in a bad situation, tried to leave and was shot in the leg by the suspect when he tried to get to safety," McGalin said. "He was coming out to help. He didn't think very wisely, made a bad choice and got himself into a bad situation."

Wilson and the three other wounded civilians were hospitalized in stable condition. The two officers were released earlier.

Patrol vehicles were left bullet riddled and a police helicopter was hit with at least five shots.

McGalin said investigators believed Garza selected both the location and his victims at random. Detectives said he broke into an adjacent tire store late Saturday afternoon, then emerged Sunday morning with a pistol and shot 56-year-old Eugene Linscomb, a customer who had arrived moments earlier at the auto detail shop.

"Why he selected that location, there seems to be no rhyme or reason to it," he said. But McGalin said it appears Garza felt safe at that spot "due to his military training."

"He had access to three corners. He was backed up against a fence so he didn't have to worry about anybody coming from behind him. It was just a location he felt safe doing this. And that's the only thing we can surmise at this point in time until something different comes along," McGalin said.

He said detectives found some "random writings" at the tire store where Garza spent Saturday night but declined to elaborate.

"It doesn't appear to be a terrorism link to this or anything like that," he said. "It just appears to be someone who was in a mental health crisis."

Acting Police Chief Martha Montalvo said the investigation "is still evolving," with numerous witnesses yet to interview and evidence to examine.

She credited residents who called Sunday and then "opened up their homes to allow us to do what we had to do."

Police declined to be specific, but it appeared the SWAT officer who killed Garza nearly an hour after the shooting began was stationed more than 100 yards away at one of those homes.

"In my mind, they're heroes and averted what I believe could have been more casualties," Montalvo said.

Garza spent four years in the Army, receiving his discharge in 2014, according to Pentagon records released Tuesday. During that time, he served two tours in Afghanistan, the first from December 2009 to November 2010 and the second from December 2012 to August 2013. Assigned to infantry, he reached the rank of sergeant in December 2011.

"I think he was haunted by everything that he saw there and he experienced there," his stepmother, Cathy Garza, told ABC News. "I think it changes you. I don't know how you can go through what he went through and see what he saw and not have it change you or have it affect you."

Garza's family told Houston television station KPRC that something snapped in him following the two tours in Afghanistan and that his condition worsened in recent weeks.

"Just in the last two weeks it progressively got worse," said his father, Dionisio Garza. "It was not the same boy that we raised. Not the loving uncle, the loving brother.

"Something snapped. It wasn't him anymore. I'm not making excuses. No excuses. I know he did this, but it wasn't him anymore. My son was broken."

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Associated Press reporter Juan A. Lozano contributed to this story.
NATO chief says Warsaw summit comes at 'critical time'

WARSAW, Poland (AP)  A NATO summit set for Warsaw in July comes at a "critical time" as the alliance deals with Russian assertiveness and the threat of terrorism amid other challenges, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday.

Stoltenberg was speaking following talks with Poland's Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz, who said that four battalions are to be stationed in Poland and in the three Baltic states, giving the region a greater sense of security. A battalion typically has between 300 and 800 troops.

They were discussing preparations for the July 8-9 summit, which is to decide how many additional NATO troops will be deployed on the eastern flank, and where exactly. Concerned over Russia's actions, Poland has been seeking a significant, permanent NATO presence on its territory and the region.

Members of the Polish Army military police anti terrorist squad train freeing hostages from a hijacked bus, at a bus depot in Warsaw, Poland, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. The excercise was a part of preparations for the upcoming NATO summit in Warsaw in July. (AP Photo/Alik Keplicz)

Stoltenberg said the summit comes amid a "more assertive Russia, intimidating its neighbors, and changing borders by force," violence in North Africa and the Middle east and terrorism, cyberattacks and ballistic missile proliferation.

He said NATO is responding by "implementing the biggest reinforcement of our collective defense since the end of the Cold War."

In Moscow, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Meshkov said Russia will take measures in response to an increased NATO military presence close to its borders, but did not give details.

"We have to ensure the security of our state," Russia's TASS agency reported Meshkov as saying.

NATO's enhanced presence already includes a significant increase in the number of troops ready for quick reaction, speeding up decision-making and holding a greater number of major international military exercises, like Anaconda-16, which will involve some 30,000 troops in Poland in June.

Members of the Polish Army military police anti terrorist squad train detaining 'hijackers', at a bus depot in Warsaw, Poland, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. The excercise was a part of preparations for the upcoming NATO summit in Warsaw in July. (AP Photo/Alik Keplicz)

Members of the Polish Army military police anti terrorist squad train during a simulated attack of terrorists near the National Stadium in Warsaw, Poland, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. The exercise was a part of preparations for the upcoming NATO summit in Warsaw in July. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

Members of the Polish Army military police anti terror squad train during a simulated attack of terrorists near the National Stadium in Warsaw, Poland, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. The exercise was a part of preparations for the upcoming NATO summit in Warsaw in July. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

Members of the Polish Army military police anti terror squad exercise the arrest of hijackers, near the National Stadium in Warsaw, Poland, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. The exercise was a part of preparations for the upcoming NATO summit in Warsaw in July. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

Members of the Polish Army military police anti terror squad exercise the rescue of hostages from a hijacked bus, near the National Stadium in Warsaw, Poland, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. The exercise was a part of preparations for the upcoming NATO summit in Warsaw in July. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

Members of the Polish Army military police anti terrorist squad train freeing hostages from a hijacked bus, at a bus depot in Warsaw, Poland, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. The excercise was a part of preparations for the upcoming NATO summit in Warsaw in July. (AP Photo/Alik Keplicz)

Members of the Polish Army military police anti terror squad train the arrest of attackers near the National Stadium in Warsaw, Poland, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. The exercise was a part of preparations for the upcoming NATO summit in Warsaw in July. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)
Denmark moves to ban clerics with anti-democratic views

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP)  Denmark's government says it has secured support from lawmakers for its plan to ban foreign clerics with anti-democratic views from entering the Nordic country.

Danish minister for church affairs Bertel Haarder said Tuesday a majority in the Parliament backs creating a list of so-called "hate preachers" from outside the European Union who would be denied entry into Denmark. That paves the way for the government to submit a bill to Parliament for formal approval. No date was immediately set for a vote.
Bleisure in Shenzhen: Art district oasis in Chinese megacity

SHENZHEN, China (AP)  With its anonymous sprawl of skyscrapers and factories linked by busy highways, the southern Chinese manufacturing megacity of Shenzhen might not appear at first to be the best place to do some sightseeing during a business trip.

Yes, the city is a magnet for foreign business travelers, many of whom come expressly to visit factories and meet suppliers, but it's still far off the beaten tourist path. And that makes any effort to discover local attractions more rewarding than prowling the cliched and overpriced nightspots of neighboring Hong Kong or jostling with the crowds at the shopping malls and historical sites of Beijing and Shanghai.

On a recent trip to Shenzhen from my base in Hong Kong, I discovered the tranquil charm of OCT Loft, a cluster of old factory buildings that's been converted into an art and design zone.

In this Friday, April 22, 2016 photo, disused factory equipment such as an industrial press are repurposed as pieces of public art in the OCT Loft as a reminder of the area's industrial past in Shenzhen, China. For business travelers to the southern Chinese manufacturing megacity of Shenzhen, a visit to OCT Loft, an art and design zone, provides a welcome antidote to Shenzhen's fast-paced hyper-urban intensity. (AP Photo/Kelvin Chan)

A visit to OCT Loft, located in the Nanshan neighborhood, was a welcome antidote to Shenzhen's hyper-urban intensity. I took a cab from downtown and 20 minutes later, as we left the wide main road, high-rise tower blocks gave way to narrow streets lined with leafy trees and bicycle paths.

The district's low-rise buildings are filled with design studios, architects' offices, art galleries, bars and restaurants. There's a Starbucks, but thankfully that was the only multinational franchise around.

Finding your way around is easy thanks to metal maps set into the walkways. Buildings are helpfully denoted by simple combinations of letters and numbers: A4, B3.

Disused pieces of factory equipment painted bright red were set up on the pathways as a reminder of the area's recent industrial past. An oversized machine press stood on a walkway paved with skinny red bricks. Nearby were two rustic cafes, their outdoor seats hidden by an array of potted plants and shaded by mature trees, and I stopped at one of them for a glass of iced lemon tea.

The district is also a great place to see contemporary art. Murals adorn walls and the sides of buildings; paintings and sculptures are on display at galleries; and big exhibitions are held at OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, or OCAT. (The current show, "Digging a Hole in China," runs until June 26 and features video and other multimedia works by 12 Chinese artists on the concept of land.)

It was almost time to head back to Hong Kong. But first, I treated myself to a slice of a slice of cheesecake (20 yuan; $3) at SE Artspace, a minimalist space in white and gray, where a lounge version of "Every Breath You Take" by The Police playing in the background. Art and photo books lined shelves on the wall and were piled on top of a Chinese cabinet by the front door.

OCT Loft itself is part of a wider tourist district that includes theme parks and hotels known as Overseas Chinese Town. The state-owned company that runs it also operates an ecotourism resort called OCT East on the other side of the city. There's also a shopping district called OCT Bay.

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If You Go...

OCT LOFT: By subway, the closest station is Qiaocheng East but you'll still have to walk about half a kilometer (a third of a mile). By cab, point your driver to the map at the Guide section at www.octloft.cn .

OCAT: ocat.org.cn/index.php/home?lang=en

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Follow Kelvin Chan at twitter.com/chanman

In this Friday, April 22, 2016 photo, bicycle wheels form part of an artwork in front of a cafe in the OCT Loft district of Shenzhen, China. For business travelers to the southern Chinese manufacturing megacity of Shenzhen, a visit to OCT Loft, an art and design zone, can provide a welcome antidote to Shenzhen's fast-paced hyper-urban intensity. (AP Photo/Kelvin Chan)

In this Friday, April 22, 2016 photo, people stand in front of an ivy-clad building in the art and design zone OCT Loft in Shenzhen, China. For business travelers to the southern Chinese manufacturing megacity of Shenzhen, a visit to OCT Loft can provide a welcome antidote to Shenzhen's fast-paced hyper-urban intensity. (AP Photo/Kelvin Chan)

In this Friday, April 22, 2016 photo, a mural adorns a wall in the art and design zone OCT Loft in Shenzhen, China. For business travelers to the southern Chinese manufacturing megacity of Shenzhen, a visit to OCT Loft can provide a welcome antidote to Shenzhen's fast-paced hyper-urban intensity. (AP Photo/Kelvin Chan)
German NGO Cap Anamur founder Rupert Neudeck dies at 77

BERLIN (AP)  Rupert Neudeck, the co-founder of Germany-based humanitarian aid group Cap Anamur, which helped to rescue more than 10,000 Vietnamese "boat people," has died, the organization said. He was 77.

Neudeck, a former journalist who founded the Cologne-based organization with his wife Christel in 1979 in response to the Vietnamese refugee crisis, died Tuesday in Germany. Further details weren't being released at the family's request, the organization said.

Following the Vietnamese crisis, Cap Anamur expanded to provide humanitarian aid globally, focusing on medical care and education.

FILE - This April 8, , 2014 file picture shows the co- founder of humanitarian aid group Cap Anamur Rupert Neudeck, in Cologne. Rupert Neudeck,is photographed in Berlin. Rupert Neudeck, the co-founder of Germany-based humanitarian aid group Cap Anamur, which helped to rescue more than 10,000 Vietnamese boat people, has died Tuesday May 31, 2016, the organization said. He was 77. (Oliver Berg/dpa via AP,File)

In 2004, it clashed with the Italian government when it tried to dock in the country after rescuing 37 Africans from the Mediterranean. It eventually landed in Sicily after a three-week standoff, but the boat was immediately seized and most of the refugees were deported.
Thai authorities remove more tigers from Buddhist temple

BANGKOK (AP)  Wildlife officials have removed more of the 137 tigers kept in a Buddhist temple that operated as an admission-charging zoo and is suspected of illegally trafficking in the animals, Thai authorities said Tuesday.

The director of Thailand's Wildlife Conservation Office, Teunjai Noochdumrong, said 40 tigers were tranquilized and removed in two days. They are being taken to government animal shelters elsewhere in the country.

She said they hope to move 20 tigers a day, or more if the weather is cool.

Wildlife officials carry a sedated tiger on a stretcher at the 'Tiger Temple' in Kanchanaburi province

Teunjai said the temple in western Kanchanaburi province is still admitting tourists, but her personnel are warning visitors of the possible dangers of being present during the moving process. There are 300 government employees at the site, including 80 veterinarians.

Animal rights activists have long accused the temple of mistreating the tigers. The government suspects the monks have been involved in illegal breeding and trafficking of the animals.

The monks had turned back previous attempts to take the tigers away, and continued to resist Monday morning. But they relented that afternoon after police obtained a court order to carry out the action.

"There was some resistance from the community, they didn't understand why we were taking them (the tigers) from the temple when they look so peaceful and fine at the temple," said Teunjai. "We tried talking to them, explaining to them that the tigers belong to the country."

The monks still don't understand, but at least did not put up physical resistance, she said.

Wildlife officials in Thailand on Monday began removing some of the 137 tigers held at a Buddhist temple following accusations that the monks were involved in illegal breeding and trafficking of the animals
OAS chief calls for emergency meeting to evaluate Venezuela

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP)  The head of the Organization of American States called Tuesday for an emergency meeting of regional governments to evaluate Venezuela's respect for democracy, a move that could lead to the country's suspension from the hemispheric body. President Maduro responded by saying he would take action against his country's opposition-controlled Congress.

OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro said Venezuela had suffered "grave alterations of democratic order" and called for a vote on the matter in the coming weeks, possibly to coincide with the group's annual meeting next month in the Dominican Republic.

Socialist-ruled Venezuela could be suspended from the Washington-based OAS if two-thirds of its 34 member states voted that the country's leadership has gravely undermined democracy. The last time that occurred was in 2009, when Honduras was suspended following the military's removal of President Manuel Zelaya.

FILE - In this June 15, 2015 file photo, the new secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS), former Uruguay Foreign Minister Luis Almagro, speaks to the general assembly in the Hall of the Americas at the OAS in Washington. Almagro has called for an urgent meeting of the Permanent Council of the hemispheric organization to analyze whether Venezuela has suffered an alteration of constitutional order. The announcement was published on the OAS website on Tuesday, May 31, 2016. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

Almagro has been feuding with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who responded Tuesday by calling for a "national rebellion" to fight what he said is international aggression. Maduro said Almagro had overstepped his authority and undermined the very principles of the OAS by trying to dictate policies to a sovereign nation.

"Almagro, stick your democratic charter wherever it fits. Venezuela must be respected," Maduro told a rally of transport workers who support the government.

Maduro has accused Almagro of working with Venezuela's opposition and the U.S. government to undermine his administration. Almagro has called Maduro a petty dictator.

Venezuela's opposition-controlled congress formally asked for OAS intervention earlier this month. On Tuesday, Maduro threatened to take action against the institution, accusing it of committing treason by meddling in the country's international affairs.

Tensions have been building in deeply polarized Venezuela as the economy continues to fall apart and the ruling party blocks the opposition from legislating in congress and holding marches in downtown Caracas.

The country saw weeks of bloody street protests in 2014 followed by formal talks between the two sides, which broke down and were never reinitiated.

Last week, a group of former presidents held secret meetings in the Dominican Republic with Venezuelan officials and Maduro's opponents. The two sides did not meet face-to-face, but the fact that the mediators passed messages between them was major news in Venezuela.

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Dozens in Russia imprisoned for social media likes, reposts

TVER, Russia (AP)  Anastasia Bubeyeva shows a screenshot on her computer of a picture of a toothpaste tube with the words: "Squeeze Russia out of yourself!" For sharing this picture on a social media site with his 12 friends, her husband was sentenced this month to more than two years in prison.

As the Kremlin claims unequivocal support among Russians for its policies both at home and abroad, a crackdown is underway against ordinary social media users who post things that run against the official narrative. Here the Kremlin's interests coincide with those of investigators, who are anxious to report high conviction rates for extremism. The Kremlin didn't immediately comment on the issue.

At least 54 people were sent to prison for hate speech last year, most of them for sharing and posting things online, which is almost five times as many as five years ago, according to the Moscow-based Sova group, which studies human rights, nationalism and xenophobia in Russia. The overall number of convictions for hate speech in Russia increased to 233 last year from 92 in 2010.

In this family handout photo taken on Sept. 25, 2010 and provided by Anastasia Bubeyeva, her husband Andrei Bubeyev looks on at the Volga river in Tver, Russia. Bubeyev is one of dozens of rank-and-file social media users who have been sentenced to time in prison for online hate speech. (Anastasia Bubeyeva/ Family Handout photo via AP)

A 2002 Russian law defines extremism as activities that aim to undermine the nation's security or constitutional order, or glorify terrorism or racism, as well as calling for others to do so. The vagueness of the phrasing and the scope of offenses that fall under the extremism clause allow for the prosecution of a wide range of people, from those who set up an extremist cell or display Nazi symbols to anyone who writes something online that could be deemed a danger to the state. In the end, it's up to the court to decide whether a social media post poses a danger to the nation or not.

In February 2014, when Ukraine was in the middle of a pro-European revolution, President Vladimir Putin signed a bill tightening penalties for non-violent extremist crimes such as hate speech. In July of that year, three months after Russia had annexed the Crimean Peninsula, he signed a bill making calls "to destroy" Russia's territorial integrity a criminal offense punishable by up to five years in prison. The new amendment makes the denial of Russia's claims on Crimea an even greater offense if the statement is made in the press or online, even on a private social media account.

Many of the shares that led to the recent rash of convictions were of things critical of Russia's involvement in Ukraine.

This was true of the articles and images shared by Bubeyeva's husband, a 40-year-old electrician from Tver, a sleepy provincial capital halfway between Moscow and St. Petersburg.

"Andrei Bubeyev thinks that he was charged as an example so that other ordinary citizens would be discouraged from expressing their opinion," said his lawyer, Svetlana Sidorkina.

Bubeyev spent a lot of time online, sharing links to various articles on his VKontakte page and engaging in political debates on local news websites, his wife says.

In spring 2015, he left town to work on a rural construction site. After investigators couldn't get through to him on the phone, they put him on a wanted list as an extremism suspect. When Bubeyev stopped by to visit his wife and young son at their country cottage, a SWAT team stormed in and arrested him.

His wife now lives alone with their 4-year-old son in a sparsely furnished apartment on the ground floor of a drab Soviet-era apartment block. After her husband was arrested, Anastasia Bubeyeva, 23, dropped out of medical school because she couldn't find affordable day care for her child, who still wears an eye patch for an injury he suffered when he bumped his head during the raid.

Several months after his arrest, Bubeyev pleaded guilty to inciting hatred toward Russians and was sentenced to a year in prison. His offense was sharing articles, photos and videos from Ukrainian nationalist groups, including those of the volunteer Azov battalion fighting Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Among them was an article about the graves of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine and a video describing Russia as a "fascist aggressor" and showing Russian tanks purportedly crossing into Ukraine.

Less than two weeks after the verdict, Bubeyev was charged again. This time, he was accused of calling for "acts of extremism" and "actions undermining Russia's territorial integrity." He had shared the picture of a toothpaste tube and also an article under the headline "Crimea is Ukraine" by a controversial blogger, who is in jail now, calling for military aggression against Russia.

"He was interested in politics, read the news, shared things, but he did it for himself. It was like collecting newspaper clippings," his wife said. "His page wasn't popular  he only had 12 friends. He couldn't have aimed to coerce anyone into anything."

The new charges were soon followed by a damning report on local television station Tverskoi Prospekt. The program showed an anonymous blogger complaining about social media users who voiced their support for Ukrainian troops and were "ready to back a coup in Russia and take up arms and kill people as the Nazis did." The television report claimed that the blogger's complaint had prompted the prosecution of the electrician.

On May 6, Bubeyev was convicted and sentenced to two years and three months in prison.

Also this month, a court in the Caspian Sea city of Astrakhan sentenced a man to two years in prison for his social media posts urging Ukrainians to fight "Putin's occupying forces."

In December, a court in Siberia sentenced a man to five years in prison for "inciting hatred" toward residents of eastern Ukraine in his video posts. In October, a court in southern Russia sent a political activist to prison for two years for an unsanctioned picket and posts on social media criticizing Putin and calling for southern Russia to join Ukraine.

The articles, photos and videos that landed Bubeyev in prison were posted on his page on VKontakte, Russia's most popular social media network with 270 million accounts.

VKontakte founder Pavel Durov sold the site and fled Russia in 2014, claiming that he had come under presser from the security services for VKontakte to disclose personal data of the users of a group linked to a protest movement in Ukraine. The company is now controlled by the media holding of Kremlin-friendly billionaire Alisher Usmanov.

Alexander Verkhovsky, director of the Sova group, says roughly half of the convictions of hate speech online are about posts on VKontakte, which he said might be because its administration might be easier for the Russian police to deal with than that of foreign-owned social media.

Bubeyev's defense claimed that the privacy settlings on his account made the articles he shared available only to him and his 12 friends. Sidorkina, his lawyer, said she has no explanation for how the security services found his posts unless they received the credentials to his account from VKontakte.

VKontakte declined to comment when contacted by The Associated Press.

Russia faced a surge of racially motivated attacks against Central Asian migrant workers in the 2000s, but the crime rates dropped drastically after dozens of neo-Nazis got lengthy prison sentences for extremism.

Rights activists and lawyers who have worked on extremism cases say the drop in violent hate crimes sent police and investigators scrambling to prosecute people for non-violent offenses to show a solid record of tackling extremism.

The Moscow-based Center for Economic and Political Reform said in a 23-page report on extremism law released this month that most convictions for this type of crime resulted in fines or a few days in custody, with the aim of boosting the crime statistics.

But as tensions with neighboring Ukraine heated up, courts across Russia began to hand out more and more prison sentences for hate speech, the report said.

Many of the hate speech convictions do deal with dubious content, but the severity of the punishment doesn't seem to correspond to the level of public danger posed, said Verkhovsky of Sova.

"These cases are very arbitrary because there are lots more people out there who have done the same thing. Such enforcement of the law does not address or combat radical activities," he said. "No one knows where the red line is: It's like roulette."

In this family handout photo taken on Wednesday, April 6, 2011 and provided by Anastasia Bubeyeva, Andrei Bubeyev and his wife Anastasia pose for picture on a boat sailing along the Volga River in Tver, Russia. Bubeyev is one of dozens of rank-and-file social media users who have been sentenced to time in prison for online hate speech. . (Anastasia Bubeyeva/ Family Handout photo via AP)
Summer reads include local favorites and national hits

NEW YORK (AP)  When customers at Indigo Books in Johns Island, South Carolina, ask for a good beach read, Mary Alice Monroe's "A Lowcountry Wedding" is an obvious choice. Not only does Monroe live nearby, her book is set along the South Carolina coast.

"It's a surefire hit," says Indigo owner Linda Malcolm, who also recommends Louise Penny's upcoming "A Great Reckoning" and John Sandford's "Extreme Prey."

With summer approaching, bookstores are offering local favorites and national hits, faraway adventures and stories quite close to home.

At Books & Books in Coral Gables, Florida, store owner Mitchell Kaplan recommends John Dufresne's latest Wylie Coyote detective caper, "I Don't Like Where This is Going," calling it a "hilariously inventive and funny whodunit." Kaplan also likes the latest novels from James Grippando, James W. Hall, and Brad Meltzer, and puts in a word for Florida's Carl Hiaasen, whose books "we read anytime of the year."

Barnes & Noble, where outlets range from Gulfport, Mississippi, to the heart of Manhattan, provided a list of reads featured at stores around the country. Suggestions include Richard Russo's "Everybody's Fool," his sequel to the acclaimed "Nobody's Fool," and Louise Erdrich's "LaRose," along with novels that actually take place on a beach, among them Dorothea Benton Frank's "All Summer Long" and Nancy Thayer's "The Island House."

"Everyone has their version of the beach whether they are going to the lake, the park or dreaming of the beach so 'beach reading' is more a place of mind than literal from our perspective," explains spokeswoman Mary Ellen Keating.

At Forever Books in St. Joseph, Michigan, where you can see Lake Michigan just by stepping out the back door, store owner Robin Allen cites the best-selling "The Second Life of Nick Mason," by crime writer and Michigan native Steve Hamilton and Mary Kubica's popular "Don't You Cry," a thriller set in a Michigan harbor town more than a little like St. Joseph. She also likes Jessica Brockmole's "At the Edge of Summer," noting that "anything with the word 'summer' in the title does really well."

On Cape Cod in Massachusetts, manager Val Arroyo of the Brewster Book Store says that she likes to recommend the historical fiction of Sally Cabot Gunning, whose "The Widow's War" is set in colonial Cape Cod. Elin Hilderbrand is another perennial best-seller and her upcoming novel, "Here's to Us," takes place on the nearby island of Nantucket. Arroyo also has hopes for Yaa Gyasi's "Homegoing," which begins in Ghana in the 18th century and continues into the present.

"It's just so beautifully written, and it's by a first-time author, which I love," she said.

Some stores take you right to the water, but don't quite lead you in. At Small World Books, on the Venice boardwalk in California, store owner Mary Goodfader says that customers are as likely to be poets as beachgoers. The current top seller is a classic indoor read, Don DeLillo's chilly "Zero K."
Close ally of former Czech leader convicted of fraud

PRAGUE (AP)  A Czech appeals court has ruled that a close friend and adviser of former Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek is guilty of fraud and sentenced him to four years in prison.

A lower court in February gave Marek Dalik five years in prison. He was accused of asking for 18 million euros ($20.1 million) in 2007 at a meeting with managers from Steyr, an Austrian unit of U.S. General Dynamics Corp. In exchange, Dalik promised to use his influence to save a $1.3 billion deal for the company.

A previous government signed a deal with Steyr in 2006 to deliver armored vehicles.

Topolanek's government canceled the deal in 2007, saying Steyr had breached the contract, but later signed a different deal.
Doctors describe shark bite wound after California attack

LOS ANGELES (AP)  The semi-circular shark bite stretched from Maria Korcsmaros' shoulder to her pelvis, with teeth marks visible in the shredded flesh of her arm and torso.

Korcsmaros was training for a half-triathlon over the weekend off the coast of Newport Beach, California, when she "felt something hit her," said Dr. Phillip Rotter of Orange County Global Medical Center, where she was treated after the attack.

Surgeons repaired the massive wound with a shape that Rotter described as "obviously a mouth."

In this Sunday, May 29, 2016, photo, a lifeguard warns beach goers to stay out of the water at Corona del Mar beach in Newport Beach, Calif. Thousands of Memorial Day beachgoers were kept out of the water Monday as lifeguards searched miles of popular Southern California shoreline for a shark they believe attacked a swimmer the day before. (Cindy Yamanaka/The Orange County Register via AP) MAGS OUT; LOS ANGELES TIMES OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT

"You could see individual marks from individual teeth," he added.

The 52-year-old Korcsmaros also suffered fractured ribs, lung lesions and damage to the muscles and skin of her upper arm and abdomen. She was expected to survive, but it was too early to know whether she will regain full use of her arm.

The bite likely came from a large great white shark, said marine biologist Chris Lowe, director of Shark Lab at California State University, Long Beach.

Though difficult to draw a definitive conclusion, he said a large single bite suggests the shark is over 10 feet long. A white shark  also known as a great white  would be the most likely candidate lurking in Southern California waters, he added.

Scientists believe the white shark population off California has been growing, Lowe said.

"This is the sort of thing we expect to see increase," Lowe said of the attack. Still, he pointed out that such attacks remain rare.

Korcsmaros was swimming in a wetsuit just outside buoys marking a protected swimming area near a boat route. Lifeguards in a boat who saw her struggling about 100 yards offshore found her gushing blood, doctors and fire officials said.

They saw the last part of the attack and knew she didn't get hit by a boat or watercraft, said Rob Williams, chief lifeguard of the Newport Beach Fire Department's Marine Operations Division.

Lifeguards pulled her from the water, and she was rushed to the emergency room, where she appeared alert and "remarkably calm," Rotter told reporters at the hospital.

The press conference got interrupted when someone in the audience apparently fainted as doctors described Korcsmaros' wounds.

Lifeguards and city officials have been unable to locate the shark that bit the mother of three but still moved to protect beachgoers. They kept thousands of people out of the water over the holiday weekend and searched miles of shoreline for the animal.

One stretch of shoreline that was closed immediately after the attack was reopened on Tuesday afternoon, but the beach where the attack took place remains closed.

Surfers, swimmers and others were allowed to return to a mile-long stretch of water from Balboa Pier to a surfing spot known as the Wedge, Newport Beach spokeswoman Tara Finnigan said.

The ocean remains off limits from Corona del Mar State Beach, where Korcsmaros was attacked, to Crystal Cove State Beach.

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AP writer Christine Armario contributed to this report.

A possible shark sighting at Corona del Mar State Beach closes the shoreline on Sunday, May 29, 2016. Lifeguards shut down the beach on Sunday after a swimmer was pulled injured from the water with bite marks in a possible shark attack, authorities said.(Cindy Yamanaka/The Orange County Register via AP)

In this Sunday, May 29, 2016, photo, a lifeguard warns beach goers to stay out of the water at Corona del Mar beach in Newport Beach, Calif. Thousands of Memorial Day beachgoers were kept out of the water Monday as lifeguards searched miles of popular Southern California shoreline for a shark they believe attacked a swimmer the day before. (Cindy Yamanaka/The Orange County Register via AP) MAGS OUT; LOS ANGELES TIMES OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT
A teenage boy sneaked into the cargo hold of an Emirates passenger plane in China and made it all the way to Dubai before being apprehended.

The Dubai-based airline said the stowaway was found in the cargo hold of Flight EK303 from Shanghai on May 27.

It is thought the 16-year-old boy, identified by his surname Xu, wanted to make a living by being a beggar in Dubai.

Stowaway identified as 16-year-old Xu from Sichuan, China, hid in the cargo-hold of an Emirates flight for nine hours from Shanghai to Dubai

An Emirates spokesman told MailOnline Travel: 'Emirates can confirm that on 27 May, a stowaway was found in the cargo hold of flight EK303 from Shanghai to Dubai.

'We are co-operating fully with authorities in Dubai and as this is a police matter we are unable to comment further at this time.'

The airline did not give any details on the identity or condition of the stowaway, who had been in the cargo-hold for more than nine hours.

China's state news agency Xinhua reported that the stowaway was a boy from Bazhong in Sichuan, south-west China.

He made the risky journey on the Airbus A380 because he had heard that beggars in Dubai could earn 470,000 Yuan (49,465) a month, according to the agency.

According to Xinhua, the boy said: 'Dubai has gold all over the floor. It's possible to pick up lots of money. Even as a beggar, you can make 470,000 Yuan a month.'

The boy reportedly believed that he could make a lot of money begging in the Emirates, prompting him to make the risky journey

The stowaway also reportedly said that the cargo-hold was very comfortable except that there was no food or drink.

Xu thought that it wouldn't matter if he was caught by the police as he's underage, according to the report, adding that he heard prisoners get treated very well in Dubai.

Xinhua reported that the consulate has sent staffers to the airport to learn more about the situation.

Local lawyer Jinlong indicated that Xu is unlikely to be prosecuted and that an investigation into the incident could take between two to three months, according to the report, after which he will be deported.

Once back in China, Xu will be blacklisted from Dubai for life.

Xu is currently being detained by Dubai Airport Police pending further investigation.
Philippine president-elect offers bounties for drug lords

MANILA, Philippines (AP)  The Philippine president-elect said Tuesday he will pay bounties to police or military officials who capture suspected drug lords "dead or alive," adding that there is enough reward money to leave "100 persons dead."

Rodrigo Duterte said he will pay up to 3 million pesos ($64,000) for every drug lord that officials turn in, adding that the bounties would be financed by left-over campaign contributions.

The targets, he said, will include anti-narcotic agents who are secretly involved in the drug trade and jailed crime suspects who manage to continue their drug dealing. He said only crime suspects who put up a resistance would be killed.

"I'm not saying that you kill them but the order is dead or alive," Duterte said in a televised news conference in Davao, the southern city where he has been mayor for many years.

Duterte, 71, whose six-year term starts June 30, won an overwhelming election victory on a promise to eradicate crime and corruption in the country within six months, a feat police officials say will be difficult to achieve. He told the news conference that the anti-drug crackdown is starting "now."

A former prosecutor, Duterte said he stressed his seriousness in his anti-drug campaign to an official who will be appointed to a law enforcement agency.

"I said, 'I'll put you there on one condition, that if you have an agent who is messing around with drugs and it comes to a fight, I want you to kill him personally,'" Duterte said, adding he promised the official he would get the largest bounty if he does that.

He said military forces will be harnessed in the war against drugs. Army and police units will check on each other to punish personnel involved in drugs, and special forces could be deployed in jails to make sure inmates who continue to deal in drugs will "no longer be standing," he said.

Duterte, who has stayed in Davao city since the May 9 election, introduced a number of his Cabinet appointees at the news conference, including officials who have served under previous presidents, former college classmates, close political allies, and a handful of left-wing activists.

Duterte's bold approach to crime and public threats to kill criminals have resonated among Filipinos long exasperated with crime, but have sparked alarm among human rights groups and pro-democracy advocates, who fear Duterte may resort to strongman tactics.

Addressing criminals, Duterte warned: "Do not destroy my country because I will kill you, do not destroy the youth of the land, our children, because I will kill you."

Duterte also said many journalists have been killed in the country because they were involved in corrupt deals and turned against people who had paid them off. He did not cite any evidence or provide details, but said he knew one radio commentator who was killed in Davao city because he was "rotten."

Asked to comment on unsolved killings of journalists in the country, he said many of those slain were paid to take sides on issues or had overly criticized people who couldn't tolerate personal attacks.

"Just because you're a journalist (doesn't mean) you're exempted from assassination if you're a son of a bitch," Duterte said. "Your freedom of expression cannot help you if you have done something wrong with the guy."

The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines immediately condemned Duterte's remarks.
Justice Dept. pushes back against Texas judge's sanctions

WASHINGTON (AP)  The Justice Department pushed back Tuesday against a Texas judge's demand that its lawyers attend an ethics course, saying the sanction is inappropriate and that complying with it could cost the government and taxpayers millions of dollars over the next few years.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, who earlier blocked President Barack Obama's immigration executive action, ordered legal training this month after saying he was misled by Justice Department attorneys about whether the government had begun implementing one of the proposals. He wrote in his May 19 order that "for whatever reason, the Justice Department trial lawyers appearing in this court chose not to tell the truth" and that such conduct was "certainly not worthy of any department whose name includes the word 'Justice.'"

In a response Tuesday, the Justice Department said that it "emphatically" disagrees with Hanen that any of its lawyers acted in bad faith or with the intent to deceive. The government asked the judge to put his order on hold so that federal lawyers can seek review of it.

Justice Department lawyers are already generally required to complete at least four hours of professionalism training a year, and imposing additional ethics-training requirements on more than 3,000 department attorneys could cost up to $1.5 million this year alone in direct expenditures and lost productivity, and nearly $8 million over five years, said lawyers for the federal government.

"The sanctions ordered by the Court far exceed the bounds of appropriate remedies for what this Court concluded were intentional misrepresentations, a conclusion that was reached without proper procedural protections and that lacks sufficient evidentiary support," the Justice Department wrote.

A telephone message left with the office of Hanen, who serves in Brownsville, Texas, was not immediately returned.

The dispute centers on statements made by Justice Department attorneys to the court during a legal fight over Obama's executive action on immigration, which would shield roughly 4 million people from deportation and make them eligible to work in the United States. Hanen last year issued a preliminary injunction that halted those measures after Texas and more than two dozen other states sued.

During the course of the case, Justice Department attorneys told Hanen that one key part of Obama's actions  an expansion of a program that protects young immigrants from deportation if they were brought to the U.S. illegally as children  had not taken effect.

But federal officials later revealed they had given more than 108,000 people three-year reprieves from deportation and granted them work permits under the program. Justice Department attorneys had previously insisted the reprieves were granted under 2012 guidelines, which weren't stopped by the injunction.

The Justice Department told Hanen on Tuesday that there's insufficient evidence to show that the government withheld information or intentionally deceived the judge or the states.

Hanen had also ordered that federal officials provide a list of the individuals who were mistakenly given the three year reprieves and that this information could be given to officials in states where these immigrants live. But the Justice Department is objecting to that demand, saying Tuesday that it would require the Department of Homeland Security to improperly produce personally identifiable information.

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Ex-employee of Israeli PM's wife wins abuse case against her

JERUSALEM (AP)  A former employee of the wife of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has won a court case against her alleging mistreatment, Israeli media reported Tuesday.

The verdict is a new setback for Sara Netanyahu, who has been repeatedly accused of abusive behavior toward household staff.

Channel 2 TV and other outlets said Jerusalem's labor court awarded Guy Eliyahu $30,000 in damages on Sunday. Eliyahu claimed Mrs. Netanyahu had behaved abusively toward him, yelling and making unreasonable demands.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. Tuesday, May 31, 2016. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty, Pool)

Amit Hadad, a Netanyahu family lawyer, said the allegations were "false" and "disconnected from reality."

Also Sunday, police reportedly recommended indicting Mrs. Netanyahu for allegedly misusing state funds and excessive household spending.

The Netanyahus have long faced scrutiny over their spending and have fended off accusations their lifestyles are out of touch with ordinary Israelis.
Many brands opt out of Milan men's runway shows this year

MILAN (AP)  The Milan Fashion Week men's calendar is full of holes. Zegna, Calvin Klein, Cavalli, Costume National, Ermanno Scervino and Bottega Veneta are among the fashion houses that have opted not to do runway shows in June.

Carlo Capasa, head of the National Chamber of Italian Fashion, said Tuesday that fashion brands are experimenting with their strategy and using menswear to do it.

Capasa said he expects the shifts to presentations instead of runway shows will "give energy to fashion week" because "we are questioning ourselves."

Carlo Capasa, head of the National Chamber of Italian Fashion, gestures during a news conference in Milan, Italy, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. The Milan Fashion Week calendar for menswear is full of holes. Zegna, Calvin Klein, Costume National, Ermanno Scervino, Bottega Veneta, Brioni all have opted not to do runway shows in June. Capasa, said Tuesday that fashion brands are experimenting with their strategy and using menswear to do it. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
Western Sahara independence movement leader Abdelaziz dies

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP)  Mohamed Abdelaziz, the head and co-founder of the Polisario Front independence movement in the Western Sahara, died Tuesday after a long illness, the group said. He was in his late 60s.

The Polisario Front ordered a 40-day mourning period, after which it said a new secretary-general will be chosen.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika also declared a week of mourning for the Polisario leader, whose group is based in Tindouf, in southern Algeria.

FILE - This Thursday, Nov. 12, 2015 file photo shows Polisario Front's Secretary General Mohamed Abdelaziz listening to a question during a news conference in Madrid, Spain. The head of the independence movement in the Western Sahara, Mohamed Abdelaziz, has died after a long illness, the Polisario Front said in a statement. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco, File)

The death of Abdelaziz, leader of the Polisario Front for four decades, comes at a time of growing tensions over the fate of the Western Sahara. The Polisario Front has fought for four decades for independence for the vast, mineral-rich territory on Africa's Atlantic coast, which was annexed by Morocco after Spain withdrew in 1975.

Morocco now considers the territory its "southern provinces" and has pumped funds into the area's development over the years. Morocco is also becoming increasingly assertive on the topic with the United Nations, which has worked for years to help settle the issue of Western Sahara's status.

Abdelaziz was born in 1948 in Smara, which is now in Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara, and led the Polisario Front, which he helped found, since 1976, according to Algeria's state-run APS news agency.

The issue of Western Sahara has prompted new friction between two North African neighbors, Morocco and Algeria. Algeria supports the Polisario Front, and like numerous other African countries recognizes the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic it defends.

The Moroccan government has proposed wide-ranging autonomy for the region, but the Polisario Front insists on self-determination through a referendum for the local population  as called for in U.N. resolutions.

Morocco expelled most U.N. civilian staff in April after U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon used the word "occupation" to refer to the situation following a March visit to a camp for Western Sahara refugees in southern Algeria during which he met with Abdelaziz.

In April, a top member of the Polisario Front, Bachir Mustafa Sayed, warned that war is possible over the disputed territory if the U.N. Security Council fails to set a timetable for a vote on self-determination.

Abdelaziz warned in a letter to the U.N. secretary-general that Morocco will have "a green light to a military aggression" unless the Security Council imposes "real and direct pressure" on Morocco to restore the U.N. mission's work. He warned that the Saharawi people in Western Sahara will defend their rights in the face of aggression "by all legitimate means, including armed struggle."

The Polisario had mounted a desert war against Morocco after the territory was annexed.

Ban called Abdelaziz "a central figure in the search for a resolution of the Western Sahara conflict," according to a statement released by the U.N. spokesperson. Ban said he "looks forward to continuing to work to help the parties to achieve a mutually acceptable political solution" providing for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara.

Issandr El Amrani, North Africa Project Director with the International Crisis Group, said the impact of Abdelaziz' death on the U.N. contingent was unclear in the immediate future "but it adds uncertainty at a time when the mission is under pressure."

El Amrani noted the saber-rattling tone among some Polisario activists in the absence of a diplomatic breakthrough.

"The next Polisario leader will have to contend with that sentiment," El Amrani said.

The Polisario Front has appointed the head of the movement's National Council, Khatri Adduh, as interim Polisario leader.

In the refugee camps of Tindouf, Saharawi blogger Mohamedsalem Werad described the overall atmosphere on Tuesday as quiet, sad and uncertain. "Many people are expecting all kinds of scenarios," he said.

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Elaine Ganley reported from Paris. Samia Errazzouki in Ouarzazate, Morocco, contributed to this report.

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This story has been corrected to change the spelling of the interim Polisario leader's last name to Adduh instead of Abdouh.
Suggestions for summer reading

Here are some other suggestions for that summer read on the beach, at the park, on the train or plane, or wherever you find yourself wanting to turn a page to escape.

"One True Loves: A Novel" (Washington Square Press,) by Taylor Jenkins Reid

A young woman named Emma finds love again with Sam after losing her husband, Jesse, in a helicopter crash. Just when things seem too perfect, Jesse resurfaces. Emma is torn between her old life and love and her new one. Author Taylor Jenkins Reid is so talented at creating characters you believe in, it's hard to root for one scenario over another. This is what makes "One True Loves" so compelling.

This book cover image released by Washington Square Press shows "One True Loves," a novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid, released on June 7. (Washington Square Press via AP)

"The Girls" (Random House,) by Emma Cline

A lonely, self-conscious teen named Evie is drawn into a cult like the Manson family of the 1960s. The story examines how a so-called "normal" girl would end up in a cult. "The Girls" by Emma Cline is a dual narrative showing Evie's teenage seduction into this bizarre world and then Evie's life decades later as an adult, when she's tried to put the past behind her.

"Dear Fang, With Love" (Knopf,) by Rufi Thorpe

Lucas, an absentee father, reconnects with his teenage daughter, Vera, after she's diagnosed as being bipolar after having an episode at a party. Unsure of how to handle the daughter he barely knows and how to be a parent, Lucas whisks Vera away to Lithuania to heal. It's the first time they've spent any real time together and we learn about fathers and daughters, mental illness and how the past can affect the present in Rufi Thorpe's "Dear Fang, With Love."

"Monsters: A Love Story" (G.P. Putnam's Sons,) by Liz Kay

Stacey, a recently widowed mother from Omaha who is a moderately successful poet, is contacted by A-list actor Tommy who wants to turn one of her works into a movie. The two embark on a romance that on paper should never work but the two can't resist each other. "Monsters: A Love Story" by Liz Kay follows the pair as they try to make sense of what's happening between them.

"Falling" (Berkley,) by Jane Green

Jane Green already has a following of loyal readers that will gobble up any of her offerings, but some are calling "Falling" her best yet. It's about Emma, from the upper crust of British society, who moves to Westport, Connecticut, to find herself and start over. She falls in love with her landlord and an emotional roller coaster ensues.

"The Outliers" (HarperCollins,) by Kimberly McCreight

"The Outliers" by Kimberly McCreight is about a young woman named Wylie who sets out to save her best friend from some sort of mysterious trouble with the help of her best friend's on-again, off-again boyfriend. This novel reads like a psychological thriller and mind game.

"Maestra" (G.P. Putnam's Sons,) by L.S. Hilton

The first in a trilogy series, "Maestra" by L.S. Hilton follows Judith Ashleigh, who works at an art gallery in London by day and a champagne bar at night. She uncovers an art forgery conspiracy and her life goes down a dangerous, erotic path. Already a hit in London, the book is being adapted into a film.

This book cover image released by Random House shows, "The Girls," a novel by Emma Cline. (Random House via AP)

This book cover image released by Knopf shows, "Dear Fang, With Love," a novel by Rufi Thorpe. (Knopf via AP)

This book cover image released by G.P. Putnam's Sons shows, "Monsters: A Love Story," by Liz Kay. (G.P. Putnam's Sons via AP)

This book cover image released by Berkley shows, "Falling," by Jane Green, available on July 19. (Berkley via AP)

This book cover image released by HarperCollins shows "The Outliers," by Kimberly McCreight. (HarperCollins via AP)
Carl Icahn says he bought a stake in Botox-maker Allergan

NEW YORK (AP)  Activist investor Carl Icahn says he bought a "large" stake in Botox-maker Allergan and said he's supportive of the company's CEO, Brent Saunders.

Icahn did not disclose how much of a stake he bought.

"We have every confidence in Brent's ability to enhance value for all Allergan shareholders," Icahn said on his website .

Allergan acknowledged the investment Tuesday and said that it has "no reason to believe" that Icahn wants to influence management or control the company.

The investment comes more than a month after the Irish company and U.S. drugmaker Pfizer scrapped plans to combine in a $160 billion deal. The tie-up was killed after the Treasury Department created rules aimed at blocking American companies from moving corporate addresses overseas to reduce U.S. taxes.
Trump super PAC's new political guru must wait to do work

WASHINGTON (AP)  A super PAC's decision to hire a former Donald Trump campaign operative comes with a caveat: He can't immediately do all that much, in a period when there is so much to be done.

Stuart Jolly served as the now-presumptive Republican presidential nominee's national field director until April 18. On Tuesday, the group Great America PAC announced he was coming aboard as its national adviser for "general political and fundraising activities."

Jolly's hiring may boost the credibility of a group that has so far struggled to land major donations. But Federal Election Commission rules require Jolly to wait 120 days to begin helping the super PAC with political advertising strategy.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump answers questions during a news conference in New York, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. A super PAC supporting Donald Trump is hiring a former operative from the Trump campaign. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

That "cooling off" period for Jolly ends in mid-August.

Great America's statement about his hiring hints that the group is going to keep Jolly from political work at first, as required by federal regulators.

"Stuart will give us valuable counsel in the coming months and then help lead our political team in the final critical weeks of the campaign," said Eric Beach, a California-based fundraiser who in February started Great America with Bill Doddridge, the chief executive officer of the Jewelry Exchange.

Jolly acknowledged in an interview that he has "a lot of limitations as to what I can do at first." But he said he will focus on reaching out to donors and pitching Great America as the go-to big money group for Trump.

That could be a tough assignment. Wealthy donors who want to help Trump in his race against likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton are getting mixed signals  starting with the candidate himself  as to where to send their checks. Trump has repeatedly said super PACs are "corrupt."

Still, Great America and several other pro-Trump groups persist. Doug Watts, who was communications director for Trump rival-turned-advocate Ben Carson, recently started another super PAC, called the Committee for American Sovereignty.

Adding to the confusion, Carson  a high-profile Trump ally  recently spoke on a Great America conference call, and Trump has praised Ed Rollins, its lead strategist. However, as recently as April 27, the Trump campaign sent a "disavowal notice" to the FEC about Great America, and Trump's friend and informal political adviser Roger Stone continually disparages the group on social media.

Great America had raised about $1 million through the end of April. That's not enough to cover all of its planned expenses, leaving it more than $200,000 in the hole.

The group has taken an unusual approach to raising money.

Traditionally, super political action committees go after big money because they face no contribution limits. By contrast, the candidates' campaigns are limited to $2,700 per donor, per election.

Yet Great America has raised a majority of its money from people giving $200 or less. Just 6.3 percent of its contributions are coming from donors giving more than $200, according to campaign finance documents through April 30.

In television ads meant to generate fundraising, Great America asks Trump supporters to dial a telephone number. Those callers are told a pledge of $50 to $75 would be used for "building the financial and grassroots organization needed to win the White House."

Likewise, in emailed fundraising solicitations last week, Great America asks for a "generous contribution of $25, $50, $75, or even $100 or more" to the super PAC.

That means Great America is potentially cannibalizing from the same pool of donors who could be giving to the Trump campaign directly.

The campaign is specifically going after small contributors via a fundraising account called the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, which will split those gifts 80 percent to 20 percent with the Republican National Committee. An email seeks donations of $35.

Jolly said he sees one of his first tasks as to land bigger donors  which would help make Great America more of a traditional super PAC.

"These guys are way ahead of everyone else," Jolly said. "To me it was a no-brainer to join them."

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NPR ombudsman has issues with funding by pro-Iran deal group

WASHINGTON (AP)  National Public Radio should consider avoiding grants such as one the Ploughshares Fund provided for coverage of the Iran nuclear agreement and related issues, the radio network's ombudsman said. The White House recently identified Ploughshares as a group that helped sell the multinational deal to a skeptical public.

The ombudsman's report was published on NPR's website last week, following an Associated Press story about a $100,000 grant Ploughshares gave the network last year. The money supported "national security reporting that emphasizes the themes of U.S. nuclear weapons policy and budgets, Iran's nuclear program, international nuclear security topics and U.S. policy toward nuclear security," according to Ploughshares' 2015 annual report.

Ploughshares also funded reporters and partnerships with other news outlets, according to its website. That raised questions about journalistic independence after Ben Rhodes, President Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser, described how the White House set up an "echo chamber" of organizations, experts and even friendly reporters to advocate for the deal that curtailed Iran's nuclear activity and U.S.-led economic sanctions on Tehran. Rhodes credited Ploughshares for its help in a New York Times magazine profile about him.

FILE -In tis April 15, 2013, National Public Radio (NPR) headquarters in Washington. NPR should consider avoiding avoid grants such as one the Ploughshares Fund provided for coverage of the Iran nuclear agreement and related issues, the radio networks ombudsman said. The White House recently identified Ploughshares as one group it asked to help sell the multinational deal to a skeptical public. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

NPR ombudsman Elizabeth Jensen said no coverage was skewed.

"NPR did not accept money to report favorably on the Iran deal. There was no pay for play," she wrote on May 27.

But Jensen said breakdowns in procedures created a perception problem.

She pointed to a March 2015 story on a nuclear conference hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, part of the Ploughshares-led coalition backing nuclear diplomacy with Iran. The piece, which did not disclose NPR's relationship with Ploughshares, quoted two other experts whose organizations "received funding from Ploughshares to advocate for the deal or were working in that coalition." Ploughshares' president, Joseph Cirincione, also was interviewed.

NPR is reviewing its disclosure safeguards, Jensen's report said, but she suggested further action. Whereas Gates Foundation money funds an NPR education blog and the MacArthur Foundation supports international and investigative reporting, she called Ploughshares' grant different.

"In this case, NPR's money came from one side of a very partisan debate on a specific issue to fund reporting on a specific topic. And the money was not from a sponsor who in exchange would get on-air credit; in this case the sponsor money was going directly to support the reporting," Jensen wrote.

"In the case of grants such as the one from Ploughshares, which are intended to fund reporting on specific, highly controversial issues, my suggestion is that NPR consider not accepting them in the future if they contain such specific language."

Ploughshares started supporting NPR in 1984. It has done so regularly since 2005. Ploughshares annual reports show $700,000 in grants to NPR over the last decade.

Jensen examined 254 on-air newsmagazine stories about the Iran deal since 2015. Almost half were "neutral," about the negotiations or the agreement's later implementation. The other stories featured 160 people speaking in favor of the accord and 102 against. NPR spoke twice each to Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a leading opponent, and many congressional critics.

One such critic, Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., said he repeatedly asked NPR to be interviewed about the Iran deal last year, but to no avail. The network initially said it had no record of Pompeo's requests. It later said it canceled a scheduled August interview with Pompeo.

Jensen's report said NPR canceled because it had too many other interviews booked. Later that week, NPR interviewed Sen. Chuck Schumer, the most prominent Democratic lawmaker to oppose the deal.

"That was by far the more important story, since the vast majority of Democrats supported the president in voting for the deal," Jensen said.
Capitol Hill Buzz: McConnell dishes on Obama, conservatives

WASHINGTON (AP)  President Barack Obama is condescending. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid veers from friendly in private to nasty before TV cameras. And one of Washington's leading conservatives backstabs fellow Republicans.

Those portrayals come from a new book by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. It's unsurprising he'd characterize them that way, but doing so in public is unusual for the famously circumspect six-term Kentucky Republican.

Notably absent from the index and a discussion of the infamous 2013 partial government shutdown: Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who once said McConnell had lied and has had a chilly relationship with him.

FILE - In this May 24, 2016 file photo, Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell of Ky. speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. President Barack Obama is condescending. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid veers from friendly in private to nasty before TV cameras. Those portrayals come from a new book by McConnell. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

Obama "talks down to people, whether in a meeting among colleagues in the White House or addressing the nation," McConnell writes in "The Long Game," a memoir being published this week. He says Obama is like the student "who exerts a hell of a lot of effort making sure everyone thinks he's the smartest one in the room."

Reid, with whom McConnell has had numerous epic clashes, is "thoughtful, friendly and funny" in person but in public is "bombastic and unreasonable, spouting things that are both nasty and often untrue." McConnell writes that Reid's remark during a 2007 Iraq debate that the war was lost topped the list of "all the insensitive and regrettable" Reid comments.

Some of McConnell's sharpest descriptions are of some conservatives, notably former Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., who now heads the conservative Heritage Foundation.

As senator, DeMint was "almost submissive" at meetings and never confronted colleagues, but "wouldn't blink at the opportunity to bad-mouth them" to reporters, McConnell writes.

McConnell says it was "utterly irresponsible for anyone to call themselves a true conservative" and have thought the GOP could use a federal shutdown to force Obama to abandon his prized health care law in 2013. The tactic failed and while McConnell describes those responsible, he names no one  including Cruz, the recently unsuccessful GOP presidential hopeful and a major tactician of that shutdown effort.

Reid spokeswoman Kristen Orthman declined to comment, but forwarded an article from Politico in which Reid called McConnell's descriptions "fairly classless."

The White House and Heritage Foundation did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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A federal lawsuit that House Republicans filed against a portion of President Barack Obama's health care law is reverberating anew back where it started.

House Republicans said Tuesday that a deposition a former IRS official gave in May to investigators from the House Ways and Means Committee show the administration knew it was sidestepping the Constitution in financing part of the health law.

Democrats say the deposition, released last week, shows that administration officials differed over the proper way to pay for the program. They say the committee's investigation is simply the latest GOP effort to undercut a law they've long despised.

In May, a federal judge ruled the administration is unconstitutionally financing a $175 billion, 10-year part of the law. In it, the government subsidizes lower deductibles and co-payments for millions of lower-earning people under the health care law.

Republicans claimed Congress had not approved money specifically for that program. The administration argues the law provides the funds automatically, and is expected to appeal the ruling by U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer.

House Republicans say that since 2015, they've been investigating how the administration decided it didn't need annual approval of the money from Congress.

As part of that, committee investigators subpoenaed testimony from David Fisher, former senior adviser to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. Democrats, citing worries that Republicans would release only segments of Fisher's testimony, released the entire 73-page transcript last week.

The transcript shows that Fisher described a 2014 meeting at which administration officials discussed how the program would be paid for. His testimony provides ammunition for both sides.

Fisher testified he believed there was "no linkage" between the subsidies and the government's authority to automatically finance some programs without annual congressional approval. But he said the "strong majority" of other advisers at the meeting disagreed with him.

"They circumvented the law," House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Tuesday in an interview on WTAQ radio in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Michigan Rep. Sander Levin, top Democrat on the Ways and Means panel, said the investigation's purpose is "political and nothing else but to try to undermine" Obama's health law.

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AP National Writer Hillel Italie in New York contributed to this report.

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Woman pulls casket for miles for mental health awareness

TRENTON, N.J. (AP)  A woman is walking 80 miles while pulling a casket from her home to the state Capitol to raise awareness of mental health issues, including suicide and addiction.

Greta Schwartz set out on her three-leg journey Monday and plans to arrive Wednesday.

The 48-year-old has a backpack of water and is storing food in the wooden casket she is pulling behind her with a strap fastened to her waist.

As a truck belches smoke, Greta Schwartz, of Seaville, N.J., pulls a casket as she walks along route 206, from southern New Jersey to Trenton Tuesday, May 31, 2016, in Tabernacle, N.J. Schwartz, who got the idea for the walk after attending a discussion on mental health, addiction and suicide from former U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy last year, hopes to arrive at the Statehouse on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)

The casket has the word "revolution" printed on its lid. It also bears the names of about 70 people to whom Schwartz had a personal connection who have killed themselves. It has two wheels at the narrow end to help Schwartz pull it.

"I can't just sit around," she said. "This is happening. I have over 70 names. That's just people I have a connection with. Not even strangers."

She said her son knew two students at Ocean City High School who killed themselves in 2014 and 2015.

About a dozen people came out of their homes along a residential stretch during her walk, shared their stories involving suicide and wrote their loved ones' names on the casket, she said.

"It's really just unbelievable," said Schwartz, whose feet are blistered after the first 40 or so miles.

Schwartz, who owns the Red Sky Cafe in Seaville, put her theatrical experience as a former actor in New York City to work after attending a discussion on mental health from former Rhode Island U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy, who spoke in November at Stockton University.

Kennedy, the son of late Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, now lives in Brigantine and has been a political advocate for mental health issues.

Schwartz said Kennedy told the audience the only way to make a change was to be loud.

"I'm not a professional in the field. I'm just a mom with experience," Schwartz said. "So my goal in this is to use this election year to really get people to talk about it."

Schwartz walked from Seaville to Hammonton on Monday and was headed from Hammonton to Mount Holly on Tuesday. She'll set out Wednesday for Trenton.

Suicide is the 10th-leading cause of death in the U.S., according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

The national suicide rate was about 13 per 100,000 people in 2014, the latest year when statistics were available, according to the foundation. New Jersey tracks lower than the national average at about eight per 100,000, according to the foundation.

The state operates a suicide prevention hotline and website.

Greta Schwartz, of Seaville, N.J., pulls a casket as she walks along route 206, from southern New Jersey to Trenton Tuesday, May 31, 2016, in Tabernacle, N.J. Schwartz got the idea for the walk after attending a discussion on mental health, addiction and suicide from former U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy last year. The casket bears the names of about 70 people Schwartz had a personal connection to who have committed suicide. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
The Latest: Exec says he paid Hubbard to open doors

OPELIKA, Ala. (AP)  The Latest on the ethics trial of Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard (all times local):

4:00 p.m.

The president of an education curriculum company says that he paid Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard $7,500 a month to open doors with legislative leaders across the country  but not in Alabama.

Mike Hubbard and Susan Hubbard walk to the Lee County Justice Center to start the second week of the ethics trial of Alabama Speaker Mike Hubbard on Tuesday, May 31, 2016, in Opelika, Ala. (Todd J. Van Emst/Opelika-Auburn News via AP, Pool)

Edgenuity President Michael Humphrey testified that he thought Hubbard could get him meetings with legislative leaders in other states, given his background as a legislator and someone familiar with college sports.

Asked about his company's consulting contract with one of Hubbard's companies, Humphrey said the speaker did not work on issues in Alabama.

Prosecutors have accused Hubbard of using his positions as speaker and state Republican Party chairman to make money and solicit financial favors. Hubbard has maintained his innocence and said the transactions were legal.

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12:45 p.m.

The retired director of the Alabama Ethics Commission said Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard was repeatedly cautioned that he could not use his office to financially benefit himself or his business clients.

Jim Sumner testified Tuesday in Hubbard's trial on 23 counts of ethics violations. He faces up to 20 years in prison for each count and immediate removal from office if convicted.

Sumner said Hubbard often sought advice about his work for private companies. He said he and general counsel Hugh Evans told Hubbard the arrangements were OK as long as he didn't use his office to benefit himself or his clients financially.

Sumner said they gave the advice so frequently that they called it "the drill."

Prosecutors have accused Hubbard of using his positions as house speaker and state Republican Party chairman to make money and solicit financial favors. Hubbard has maintained his innocence.

___

4:17 a.m.

Testimony is set to resume in the ethics trial of Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard after the long holiday weekend.

Prosecutors have indicated that on Tuesday they will call a number of influential lobbyists and company owners as witnesses. Prosecutors say Hubbard asked them to make investments in his printing company or help him find business clients.

Hubbard is accused of using his position as GOP chairman and house speaker to generate $2.3 million in work and investments for his companies. Defense lawyers argue the transactions were legal and involved legitimate work.

Business Council of Alabama President Billy Canary, the daughter of former Gov. Bob Riley and others are expected to testify.

The trial is expected to last three weeks.
Already hurting for doctors, Louisiana could lose even more

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP)  Bahnsen Miller understands the challenges  and the damages  of Louisiana's budget woes firsthand. You can't ignore them if you've been in one of the state's doctor training programs, constantly at risk of calamity.

The 31-year-old internal medicine doctor ran into questions about financial stability and watched Louisiana lose top talent to its neighbors as he recruited people to train at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in the state's capital. The general surgery program lost applicants who went out of state because of the uncertainty, he said.

"Most residents stay in the state where they train, so if we lose a student, say, to Mississippi or Alabama for residency, there's a good chance they're not going to come back to Louisiana," said Miller, one of the hospital's chief residents last year.

In a Friday, May 6, 2016 photo, LSU medical student Felicia Venable, left, examines a patient as fellow students and medical residents observe during daily rounds at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, La. Louisianas deep, persistent budget troubles are endangering the future of medical training programs. Proposed cuts to hospitals could damage the stream of new doctors for a generation, in a state that has chronic shortages of health care workers and some of the worst health care outcomes in the nation. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Louisiana's deep, persistent budget troubles are endangering the future of medical training programs. Proposed cuts to hospitals could damage the stream of new doctors for a generation, in a state that has chronic shortages of health care workers and some of the worst health care outcomes in the nation.

And just the chatter about the financial threats is already having ripple effects, with other states' doctor-training programs cherry-picking some of Louisiana's top talent.

"The dean of the School of Medicine tells me almost daily he's getting calls from students saying, 'Is this really where I need to train? Should I stay here or should I go someplace else?'" Larry Hollier, chancellor of the LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, told state senators.

At Our Lady of the Lake, doctors-in-training make rounds as usual, checking patients, diagnosing ailments and selecting treatments. They ignore the question marks about their future as much as they can, trying to disregard the legislative haggling that threatens their programs.

"It does kind of make you think about where you should go, whether staying is worth it or not," said Kevin Francioni, 24, a third-year LSU medical student training there.

In the final days of their regular legislative session, Louisiana's lawmakers are grappling with a $600 million budget shortfall and trying to determine where to levy the cuts. Not only are the LSU health sciences centers in New Orleans and Shreveport threatened with direct reductions, but perhaps more critically, the safety net hospitals that care for Louisiana's poor and uninsured patients  and in which medical students train  also are on the chopping block.

At risk, according to Hollier, the New Orleans health sciences center chancellor, is nothing less than the decimation of health care in the state.

For new doctors who will spend three to seven years training in residency programs, choosing Louisiana can be a gamble.

"Some people are saying, 'Are we going to make it?'" said Carine Nzodom, 31, in her second year of a four-year psychiatry residence program at Our Lady of the Lake.

Only a few years ago, LSU ran a statewide charity hospital system that primarily took care of the poor and uninsured patients around Louisiana. That provided the bulk of training sites for medical students.

Former Gov. Bobby Jindal began privatizing that system in 2013, handing the facilities over to private managers, shuttering some hospitals and moving safety net services to other private hospitals. Our Lady of the Lake took over most of those safety net services in one such deal, and LSU's charity hospital in Baton Rouge shut down.

Few dispute the system has improved, with expanded services, shorter wait times and a broader mix of patients with which medical students train. But that comes with rising costs. Amid budget gaps, lawmakers question the spending.

Hospital managers say without enough money, they could walk away from their contracts, leaving not only patients but also the doctors who train with them in the lurch. Gov. John Bel Edwards is trying to renegotiate the deals.

If a safety net hospital deal craters and some of the training programs shut down, Louisiana could feel effects for decades.

"I think the legislative body doesn't have the appreciation of how close we are to total dismantling of the educational programs of future physicians," said Scott Wester, CEO of Our Lady of the Lake, where 192 residents train.

If Louisiana has fewer residency slots, doctors go elsewhere. Once a state loses the federally-allocated slots, other states scoop them up, making it almost impossible to recapture them.

Health and Hospitals Secretary Rebekah Gee, a medical doctor, outlined the risks to lawmakers: If the state loses some of its 1,900-plus residency positions, "we permanently lose capacity to train doctors in the state."

Eighty-one percent of Louisiana is federally designated as a health professional shortage area for primary care, according to the state health department. The state ranks in the bottom tier nationally for a list of health issues, with high rates of cancer, obesity and diabetes.

Lawmakers are crafting a budget for the financial year that begins July 1 before the legislative session ends June 6. But that won't settle the uncertainty. Edwards, a Democrat, is calling lawmakers immediately back for a special session on taxes, in hopes of raising money to stave off cuts, including those to hospitals.

Hospital leaders said they may have to ration care or rethink their deals with the state if they don't get more than the $1 billion in financing proposed.

To Miller, the budgetary decision has stark consequences.

"This isn't just about the indigent or just about training," he said. "This is about the future of health care in Louisiana."

___

Follow Melinda Deslatte on Twitter at http://twitter.com/melindadeslatte

In a Friday, May 6, 2016 photo, medical residents and medical students take turns shaking the hand of patient Irvin Motton, 84, after visiting him during their daily rounds at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, La. Louisianas deep, persistent budget troubles are endangering the future of medical training programs. Proposed cuts to hospitals could damage the stream of new doctors for a generation, in a state that has chronic shortages of health care workers and some of the worst health care outcomes in the nation. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

In a Friday, May 6, 2016 photo, Dr. Shane Prejean talks with patient Irvin Motton, 84, during daily rounding with a group of medical residents and medical students at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, La. Louisianas deep, persistent budget troubles are endangering the future of medical training programs. Proposed cuts to hospitals could damage the stream of new doctors for a generation, in a state that has chronic shortages of health care workers and some of the worst health care outcomes in the nation. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

In a Friday, May 6, 2016 photo, medical residents Wes Penn, left, and Cameron Collier, center, go over patient information with medical students before their daily rounding at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, La. Louisianas deep, persistent budget troubles are endangering the future of medical training programs. Proposed cuts to hospitals could damage the stream of new doctors for a generation, in a state that has chronic shortages of health care workers and some of the worst health care outcomes in the nation. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

In a Friday, May 6, 2016 photo, medical residents Dr. Wes Penn, right, and Dr. Cameron Collier, center, walk with medical students down a hallway during their daily rounding at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, La. Louisianas deep, persistent budget troubles are endangering the future of medical training programs. Proposed cuts to hospitals could damage the stream of new doctors for a generation, in a state that has chronic shortages of health care workers and some of the worst health care outcomes in the nation. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

In a Friday, May 6, 2016 photo, LSU medical student Felicia Venable, left, examines a patient as fellow students and medical residents observe during daily rounds at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, La. Louisianas deep, persistent budget troubles are endangering the future of medical training programs. Proposed cuts to hospitals could damage the stream of new doctors for a generation, in a state that has chronic shortages of health care workers and some of the worst health care outcomes in the nation. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

In a Friday, May 6, 2016 photo, LSU medical student Felicia Venable, left, briefs fellow students and medical residents on a patient they are visiting during daily rounds with a group of medical residents and medical students at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, La. Louisianas deep, persistent budget troubles are endangering the future of medical training programs. Proposed cuts to hospitals could damage the stream of new doctors for a generation, in a state that has chronic shortages of health care workers and some of the worst health care outcomes in the nation. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

In a Friday, May 6, 2016 photo, Dr. Shane Prejean, left, goes over patient information with left to right, LSU medical students Felicia Venable, Kevin Francioni, medical residents Dr. Cameron Collier, and Dr. Wes Penn, during daily rounding at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, La.Louisianas deep, persistent budget troubles are endangering the future of medical training programs. Proposed cuts to hospitals could damage the stream of new doctors for a generation, in a state that has chronic shortages of health care workers and some of the worst health care outcomes in the nation. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
'Jurassic Park' paleontologist retiring from museum he built

BOZEMAN, Mont. (AP)  Jack Horner, the paleontologist who discovered the world's first dinosaur embryos and found that dinosaurs had nests and cared for their young, is leaving the Montana museum he spent decades filling with fossils from across the globe.

Horner, 69, Is one of the best known dinosaur researchers in the world. Michael Crichton based the character Alan Grant on Horner in the 1990 book "Jurassic Park," and Steven Spielberg brought Horner on as a technical adviser on all of the "Jurassic Park" movies  and Horner did it without a college degree and with dyslexia.

From his base at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, and before that with Princeton University, Horner discovered a dozen dinosaur species, the first dinosaur eggs in the Western Hemisphere, and provided proof of the theory of their close relation to birds. He built the Museum of the Rockies from eight dinosaur specimens when he started working there 34 years ago to more than 35,000 today.

In a Saturday, May 21, 2016 photo, Jack Horner smiles as he sits under Montana's T Rex in the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Mont. The museum hosted "Jack Horner Family Day" ahead of Horner's retirement this summer after leading the museum for 34 years and establishing himself as one of the most famous paleontologists in the world. (AP Photo/Matt Volz)

As he ponders a state of semi-retirement, he plans to turn his attention back to education by teaching a class on imagination and creative thinking at Chapman University in California.

His struggles with dyslexia caused him to flunk out of college multiple times and initially hindered his ability to raise money for research because the grant applications had to be signed by an advanced-degree holder. He still reads at a third-grade level, and claims to have written more books than he's read.

Horner solved one funding crisis by seeking $10,000 from the Ranier Brewing Company, whose beer he and his team drank. Princeton, his employer at the time in the late 1970s, balked and gave him the money instead.

"So Ranier Brewing Company gave us 100 cases of beer for the summer," he said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

That summer in 1979 would result in one of his most important discoveries  dinosaur nests on what was later called Egg Mountain in Montana. He found the site less than a mile from where he had discovered the fossils of young dinosaurs a year earlier.

"That one square mile out there is the richest dinosaur site in the world," he said.

Little was known then about juvenile dinosaurs, and with the finds, Horner's career path was set. The money came pouring in from the National Science Foundation and from other grants. The head of the Museum of the Rockies, tired of seeing Horner take the valuable specimens out of Montana, hired him as the museum's paleontologist.

After that, Horner led as many as nine crews in a single digging season from Montana to Mongolia, and he started building what would become one of the largest tyrannosaurus rex and triceratops collections in the world.

Horner for the last several years has been working on the chickenosaurus, or dino-chicken. His idea is to revive dormant dinosaur DNA found in chickens to give them some traits of their ancestors, such as a long tail.

Horner said work continues on that project, and he will likely set up a laboratory for it in California, but his focus is being pulled to other things, as well. He has five books in the works, including an autobiography. He said he is helping Microsoft develop an app, but declined to speak about it in any detail.

He also won't give up dinosaur hunting. The University of Washington is planning to open its new Burke museum, and Horner has agreed to be a part-time research associate to help fill the museum up with dinosaurs.

The Museum of the Rockies is overflowing with dinosaur fossils after 34 years of Horner as its curator of paleontology. A planned expansion will allow the museum to bring its vast collection under one roof, but there won't be any room for him to bring in anything new to work on, he said.

"I filled this place up. There's no reason to just stay," Horner said. "I would just be  what do you call it  resting on your laurels or something?"

The Museum of the Rockies, which is a part of Montana State University, hasn't found a new curator yet. Members of Horner's team who will remain in Bozeman say he will be difficult to replace, but the museum is strong enough now to stand on its own.

"We may have a lag while we get re-established with a new curator, but I don't see us diminishing and going away," said Jamie Jette, who worked with Horner for 18 years.

For his part, Horner is most interested in applying his approach to paleontology to the education system. He made his most famous discoveries because he was unafraid to take a hammer to a dinosaur egg when everybody else thought eggs were too precious to crack, he said.

"I made a discovery because I had a hammer," Horner said. "That kind of thinking is basically what I made my career on."

In this Saturday, May 21, 2016 photo, Bob Harmon describes the modifications to "Big Red," the truck he and Jack Horner used on dinosaur excavations since the early 1990s in Bozeman, Mont. Harmon displayed the truck as part of "Jack Horner Family Day" hosted by the Museum of the Rockies to mark Horner's retirement this summer after leading the museum for 34 years. (AP Photo/Matt Volz)
Family of 3 Americans slain in Serbia demands justice

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP)  The family of three American citizens killed during fighting in Serbia in 1999 said Tuesday the Balkan country's prime minister has failed on his promises to bring the suspects to justice despite repeated pledges to do so.

The Bytyqi brothers Illy, Mehmet and Agron  left their New York pizza business to fight with ethnic Albanian rebels against Serbia's rule in Kosovo. They were arrested at the end of the clashes when they strayed into central Serbia. Their bodies were discovered in a trash-filled mass grave in 2001.

In an email to The Associated Press, the family's lawyers said "despite repeated requests, the Bytyqi family has not been given updates on any future plans to move the case along." They said Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic "has lied multiple times to the family of three murdered American citizens. He should be held accountable."

Asked to comment, a government official said, "we have been working on the case." He spoke on customary condition of anonymity.

Bytyqi representatives claim numerous flaws in the investigation.

"Witnesses have not been given clear signals that they will be protected. No charges have been filed. Suspected war criminals, however, are faring much better," they said.

They claimed the prime suspect in the case remains a key security adviser to Vucic and Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic and their populist Progressive Party.
Ex-Chicago-area officer found guilty in murder-for-hire plot

CHESTER, Ill. (AP)  Jurors on Tuesday found former suburban Chicago police officer Drew Peterson guilty of trying to hire someone to kill the prosecutor who helped to convict him in the killing of his third wife.

Peterson was convicted of trying to hire a fellow inmate's uncle while in prison to kill Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow, who helped convict Peterson in 2012 of killing ex-wife Kathleen Savio eight years earlier. Prosecutors say Peterson believed that with Glasgow dead, he could win an appeal of his conviction

The jury deliberated for about an hour before finding Peterson guilty of solicitation of murder for hire and solicitation of murder. Peterson, 62, is serving a 38-year sentence in Savio's death and faces up to 60 more years in prison.

FILE - In this Feb. 20, 2013 file photo, Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow leaves a courthouse in Joliet, Ill., during a hearing in Drew Peterson's request for a new trial. On Tuesday, May 31, 2016, jurors in Chester, Ill., found Peterson guilty of trying to hire someone to kill Glasgow, who helped to convict him in the killing of his third wife. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green, File)

While the verdict was read, Peterson sat and listened with his head resting on his left hand.

Several jurors declined to comment.

During closing arguments Tuesday, prosecutors said prison recordings of Peterson speaking with a fellow inmate prove he wanted Glasgow killed.

"It's the defendant's own words that prove him guilty beyond reasonable doubt," said Steve Nate of the Illinois attorney general's office, which assisted Randolph County prosecutors with the case.

Peterson's fellow inmate, Antonio "Beast" Smith, wore a wiretap for prosecutors, and jurors heard hours of Smith's recorded conversations with Peterson at Menard Correctional Center in November 2014. Smith testified last week that Peterson enlisted him to help kill Glasgow.

Nate pointed to a specific section of secret recordings in which Smith tells Peterson that he gave his uncle the go-ahead to kill Glasgow.

"OK, all right, I'm in," Peterson, a former Bolingbrook police sergeant, responded. "From the first time we talked about it, there was no turning back."

Peterson's defense lawyer, Lucas Liefer, told jurors his client never explicitly says in the recordings that he wanted Glasgow killed. Liefer called Smith unreliable and said Smith asked for a shortened prison term in exchange for help with the Peterson case.

"This case is wrought with inconsistency and incomplete evidence," Liefer said.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said in a statement after the verdict was read that "the evidence was clear that the defendant plotted from jail to solicit the murder" of Glasgow.

Glasgow issued a statement saying that rather than accept responsibility for killing Savio and serve his sentence, Peterson broke the law again.

"Today a jury once again has held him accountable for his unlawful actions," he said.

Savio's death was initially deemed accidental. Glasgow reopened the case after the 2007 disappearance of Stacy Peterson, Peterson's 23-year-old fourth wife. Peterson was never charged in her disappearance but told the informant he worried that Glasgow would eventually do so.

As Peterson left the courtroom Tuesday, he glanced at and said something unintelligible to Stacy Peterson's sister, Cassandra Cales, the Chicago Tribune reported.
The Latest: Some beaches open after California shark attack

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. (AP)  The Latest on a shark attack in Southern California (all times local):

4:45 p.m.

A stretch of California shoreline that was closed after a weekend shark attack has been reopened, but the beach where the attack took place remains closed.

A possible shark sighting at Corona del Mar State Beach closes the shoreline on Sunday, May 29, 2016. Lifeguards shut down the beach on Sunday after a swimmer was pulled injured from the water with bite marks in a possible shark attack, authorities said.(Cindy Yamanaka/The Orange County Register via AP)

Newport Beach spokeswoman Tara Finnigan said Tuesday that surfers, swimmers and others were allowed to return to a mile-long stretch of water from Balboa Pier to a surfing spot known as the Wedge.

The ocean remains off limits from Corona del Mar State Beach to Crystal Cove State Beach  the stretch where a 52-year-old woman was bitten by a large shark while swimming on Sunday.

___

3:15 p.m.

A marine biologist says a woman was likely bitten by a large great white shark while swimming off a Southern California beach.

Shark Lab director Chris Lowe at California State University, Long Beach, said Tuesday it's difficult to draw a definitive conclusion without seeing the bite suffered by the 52-year-old woman on Sunday off Corona Del Mar State Beach.

But he says a large single bite suggests the shark is over 10 feet long, and a white shark  also known as a great white  would be the most likely candidate.

Lowe says scientists believe the white shark population off California has been increasing. More sightings have been reported over the past four years.

Still, he noted that shark attacks remain rare events.

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11:45 a.m.

Surgeons say they have repaired a very large single bite wound on a 52-year-old woman who was attacked by a shark in Southern California over the weekend.

Doctors at Orange County Global Medical Center said at a Tuesday press conference that the wound extended from the victim's shoulder down to her pelvis.

Dr. Humberto Sauri says Maria Korcsmaros was alert and remarkably calm when she came to the emergency room with multiple cuts and fractured ribs. She's expected to survive.

Officials say the mother of three was training for a half-Iron Man competition when she was attacked Sunday off Corona Del Mar State Beach. The beach is still closed Tuesday.

The hospital press conference was interrupted when someone in the audience apparently fainted as doctors described the wounds.

____

8 a.m.

A hospital official has confirmed that a shark attacked a woman who received large bite marks while swimming in Southern California.

Jeff Corliss, a spokesman with Orange County Global Medical Center, said Monday that the woman's injuries are consistent with a shark bite. Corliss tells the Orange County Register (http://bit.ly/25wmahs ) that she's expected to survive.

Officials are meeting Tuesday to decide whether to reopen Corona Del Mar State Beach, which was closed to swimmers and surfers on Memorial Day after Sunday's attack.

The woman, who was swimming in a wetsuit, was bitten on her upper torso and shoulder and was bleeding heavily after a lifeguard boat spotted her in distress.

Hospital officials will discuss the woman's condition at a news conference planned for late Tuesday morning.
Talk about finding the best prom dress ever.

Jessica Casanova, 17, of Buffalo, New York, recently went to her senior prom in the black Badgley Mischka gown Gina Rodriguez wore to the 2015 Golden Globe Awards.

Gina wore the gown when she won for her CW show Jane the Virgin and wowed audiences with the strapless body-hugging design.

Dreams come true! Jessica Casanova, 17, right, holding hands with her prom date Nathan Cohen in Buffalo, N.Y. Casanova wore the black Badgley Mischka gown that actress Gina Rodriguez wore to the 2015 Golden Globe Awards (Barbara Darois via AP)

Casanova initially asked Rodriguez over Twitter for the Zac Posen gown that Rodriguez wore to this year's Golden Globes but the actress didn't have that one available, so she said she could borrow the one she wore last year instead.

The teen's mom spoke with Rodriguez's publicist, who sent the dress in February.

Rodriguez's goodwill didn't end there. She also paid for Casanova's alterations to replace the zipper with corset strings.

Picture perfect: Rodriguez wore the gown at the 72nd annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills in 2015

And she sent Casanova a personal video wishing her well, saying: 'I love you, I'm so proud of you. I'm so excited for you. Dance like no one's watching, have the time of your life. Enjoy every single moment. Make smart decisions and let loose, girl. You look beautiful.'

Casanova watched the video as she got into her limo and said she almost cried the makeup off her face.

'Gina's so beautiful inside and out,' she said.

Casanova does have to return the dress and hopes another girl gets the same opportunity to wear it to her prom.

Casanova initially asked Rodriguez over Twitter for the Zac Posen gown that Rodriguez wore to this year's Golden Globes but the actress didn't have that one available, so she said she could borrow the one she wore last year instead
Clinton scores prized endorsement from Gov. Jerry Brown

LOS ANGELES (AP)  Hillary Clinton landed a coveted endorsement from California Gov. Jerry Brown Tuesday, patching up a strained relationship between the two Democrats as she seeks to deliver a final blow to Bernie Sanders' campaign.

Clinton heads into California and the other end-of-the-line primaries June 7 with the Democratic nomination virtually locked up  she needs just 71 delegates to reach the required threshold at the party's summer convention in Philadelphia. But Sanders is staging boisterous rallies across the state and running TV ads in hopes of delivering an upset that he says would strengthen his claim to the nomination, despite the numbers.

While Clinton's campaign has been looking to California as the triumphant conclusion to her primary run, her lead appears to have vanished in recent days. Polling last week showed a race that's nearly tied.

FILE - This May 18, 2016 file photo California Gov. Jerry Brown gestures during a community event in Sacramento, Calif. Brown is endorsing Hillary Clinton just a week before the state's June 7 primary. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli,File)

Clinton is still expected to lock up the nomination before the polls close in the Golden State, but a loss in California would amount to a deeply symbolic wound in a state she carried in the 2008 presidential primary against then-Sen. Barack Obama. It would also encourage Sanders to make good on his promise to remain in the race until the party convention in July, hampering Clinton's ability to unify her party and sending her limping into the general election.

While the state has a pronounced Democratic tilt, a Clinton defeat could also embolden Republicans who would love to see her have to defend ground in a state that hasn't sided with a Republican presidential candidate since 1988.

At this point, Clinton is eager to devote her time and money to the campaign against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. But the unexpectedly tough race in California, and her determination to win it, is highlighted in her upcoming schedule  starting Thursday, she's planning events for five consecutive days. She's also running a series of ads targeting black, Latino and Asian-Americans in the state, spending cash she'd hoped to conserve for spots going after Trump.

"I'm feeling very positive about my campaign in California," Clinton said in an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday. "We are working really hard. I want to cover as much of the state as I possibly can."

With Brown's blessing, Clinton has the support of virtually every major Democrat in California.

In a written statement, the governor stopped just short of saying Sanders should step aside. Instead, he called Clinton's lead "insurmountable," pointed out she had amassed about 3 million more votes than Sanders and argued it was urgent for Democrats to begin focusing solely on Trump.

He said Clinton "has convincingly made the case that she knows how to get things done and has the tenacity and skill to advance the Democratic agenda.

"This is no time for Democrats to keep fighting each other," Brown wrote. "The general election has already begun."

Brown and Clinton's husband, former President Bill Clinton, were bitter rivals in the 1992 presidential contest. During the campaign, Brown at one point said Bill Clinton was becoming "the prince of sleaze."

In one Democratic debate, Brown accused Bill Clinton, then Arkansas' governor, of funneling state business and money to his wife's law firm. The Clintons strongly denounced the accusations.

And at the party's national convention that year, Brown supporters chanting "Let Jerry speak" twice interrupted remarks by Hillary Clinton at a California delegation meeting.

The governor's campaign had similarities to Sanders' outsider bid  a point made by Brown in his endorsement of Clinton. As a candidate in 1992 he railed against America's "corrupted" politics, a line that echoes in Sanders' daily assaults on the intersection of big money and government. Brown called his outsider bid "a cause ... a movement," another line often heard from Sanders in reference to his campaign.

Brown's late-coming endorsement has a practical side. Trump's attacks on the validity of climate change would undercut one of the pillars of Brown's agenda  global warming.

Recent polling finds Clinton is in a virtual tie with Sanders in California; a year ago, by comparison, the Vermont senator registered in single digits in the state. In stop after stop, Sanders has argued that a big win in California would open a pathway to the nomination.

Sanders held rallies in the Democrat-rich areas of Northern California Tuesday  Santa Cruz and Monterey.

___

Lerer reported from Washington.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton sits with her husband former President Bill Clinton as they attend a ceremony after walking in a Memorial Day parade Monday, May 30, 2016, in Chappaqua, N.Y. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
PICTURED: Shopping at a Chinese Wal-Mart

Except for the signs, most Americans would not recognize a Wal-Mart in China.

Chinese shoppers can be seen sticking their hands in big bins of rice or sometimes sticking their noses in those bins. There are tanks brimming with live frogs and fish. And there are mounds of loose meat, including pigs' feet.

The world's largest retailer is making a push to gain more market share in the second-biggest economy, especially in China's fast growing online retail sphere.

In this Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2015, photo, a woman smells rice on sale at a Wal-Mart in Shenzhen, in southern China's Guangdong province. If Arkansas-based Wal-Mart wants to win over foreign consumers, it has to shed some of its American ways, and cater to very different customs and conventions. China is the ultimate prize. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

Here is a photo gallery of the shopping experience at a Chinese Wal-Mart.

In this Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2015, photo, a shopper uses a net to catch live fish on sale at a Wal-Mart in Shenzhen, in southern China's Guangdong province. In American Wal-Marts, customers dont get to fondle their fish. But America is not China, as the worlds biggest retailer has learned. If the Arkansas-based company wants to win over foreign consumers, it has to shed some of its American ways, and cater to very different customs and conventions that are fast changing. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

In this Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2015, photo, a worker prepares cooked ducks for sale at a Wal-Mart in Shenzhen, in southern China's Guangdong province. If Arkansas-based Wal-Mart wants to win over foreign consumers, it has to shed some of its American ways, and cater to very different customs and conventions. China is the ultimate prize. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

In this Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2015, photo, shoppers, including Zhong Guoyan, right, buy seafood at a Wal-Mart in Shenzhen, in southern China's Guangdong province. When I come here, I have a look, Guoyan said. If its good, then I will buy it. If its only cheap, I wont buy it. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

In this Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2015, photo, Zhong Guoyan leaves after paying for her fish at a Wal-Mart in Shenzhen, in southern China's Guangdong province. When I come here, I have a look, Guoyan said. If its good, then I will buy it. If its only cheap, I wont buy it. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

In this Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2015, photo, shoppers buy fish on sale at a Wal-Mart in Shenzhen, China. In American Wal-Marts, customers dont get to fondle their fish. But America is not China, as the worlds biggest retailer has learned. If the Arkansas-based company wants to win over foreign consumers, it has to shed some of its American ways, and cater to very different customs and conventions that are fast changing. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
Feds: Ex-Barclays PLC director gave stock tips to plumber

NEW YORK (AP)  A former Barclays PLC director has been arrested on charges he illegally fed stock tips to a New York plumber in exchange for cash and home renovations.

Steven McClatchey was freed on bail after an initial appearance in Manhattan federal court. His lawyer declined to comment.

Prosecutors say McClatchey used inside information about mergers and acquisitions to tip his friend, Gary Pusey. The government says Pusey made about $76,000. Pusey pleaded guilty Friday to conspiracy, securities fraud and wire fraud.

Prosecutors say McClatchey and Pusey were close friends who owned boats docked in a Long Island marina. They say the men spent most Saturdays on their boats, at the marina, or playing pool and watching sports.
Dior returns to Blenheim Palace for Cruise show

BLENHEIM PALACE, England (AP)  Dior returned Tuesday to England's Blenheim Palace to unveil its Cruise collection in glamorous surroundings that evoked the distinctive days of Christian Dior and Yves Saint Laurent.

The show brought a modern, sassier Dior back to the site of earlier triumphs in 1954 and 1958, when shows attended by Princess Margaret introduced austere, post-war Britain to the style and beauty of French fashion at its finest.

Blenheim, traditionally the residence of the Duke of Marlborough, is one of England's grandest palaces and was the birthplace of wartime leader Winston Churchill.

Models display creations during the Dior Cruise 2017 fashion show at Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire in England, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

"I wouldn't have missed it for the world," said Randolph Churchill, Winston's great-grandson, after the models had paraded through the stately home's library. "For Dior to come back to Blenheim and put that sparkle makes it a great occasion. There were so many happy, excited faces."

Standing next to a display of dresses first shown by Christian Dior at the 1954 show, Randolph said it was inspiring to see the great works of an earlier era.

"Today's collection was cutting edge, enlightening," he said. "These older ones are simple classic pieces, everything you could ever want."

Lady Rosemary Muir, daughter of the 10th Duke of Marlborough and a maid of honor at Queen Elizabeth II's coronation in 1952, was perhaps less impressed by Tuesday's show.

"It's difficult for me to equate what I saw today to what I saw in 1958," she said diplomatically.

Asked which show she preferred, she said: "'58."

Tuesday's gala drew a host of celebrities, including Kate Beckinsale, Elizabeth Olsen, and Kate Mara, with many traveling from London to the Blenheim Palace area in a specially chartered train with elegant, restored cars from the 1950s and earlier.

The Dior design team led by Lucie Meier and Serge Ruffieux said the new collection was meant in part to show "the conversation between France and England"  to reflect the long cultural and fashion interplay between the two countries, which have often traded trends.

Indeed, some of the pieces made references to British hunting styles, and countryside elegance, but overall the effect was more French than English  except for the extensive use of the Beatles, who dominated the soundtrack with the song "Because" from Abbey Road.

Many of the pieces showed the classic Dior silhouette and workmanship. There were velvets and silks in Asian and African prints and bold patterns and embroideries.

Dior offered a new twist on its signature bow, leaving it undone in the front of many outfits, looking like elegant ribbons adding movement and gaiety to the scene. Some of the full-length gowns featured plunging necklines, while some of the shorter dresses had a more slouchy look.

Former model and human rights activist Bianca Jagger said the theme of interplay between France and England was particularly relevant as the June 23 referendum on British membership in the European Union nears.

"I love the idea of a dialogue between France and the U.K.," she said. "It's so fitting at the moment when we would like to stay in Europe. It's important at all levels, cultural, economic, fashion. I just think we are all part of Europe and we want to stay together."

Actress Emma Roberts took a more practical view: She loved the handbags.

Models display creations during the Dior Cruise 2017 fashion show at Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire in England, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Models display creations during the Dior Cruise 2017 fashion show at Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire in England, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

A model displays a creation during the Dior Cruise 2017 fashion show at Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire in England, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Models display creations during the Dior Cruise 2017 fashion show at Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire in England, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Models display creations during the Dior Cruise 2017 fashion show at Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire in England, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Models display creations during the Dior Cruise 2017 fashion show at Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire in England, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Models display creations during the Dior Cruise 2017 fashion show at Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire in England, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Models display creations during the Dior Cruise 2017 fashion show at Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire in England, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

A model displays a creation during the Dior Cruise 2017 fashion show at Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire in England, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Models display creations during the Dior Cruise 2017 fashion show at Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire in England, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

A model displays a creation during the Dior Cruise 2017 fashion show at Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire in England, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Models display creations during the Dior Cruise 2017 fashion show at Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire in England, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Models display creations during the Dior Cruise 2017 fashion show at Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire in England, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
The university is the target of two San Diego lawsuits and one in New York

Also shows students were encouraged to take advantage of housing crash

Students were told not having money was never a reason for not enrolling

They were told not to let student's 'take control' of the

The book reveals aggressive tactics used to get students to spend money

Trump University gave employees detailed instructions on how to entice people to enroll in its real estate seminars, it has been revealed.

From targeting people making at least $90,000 a year and choosing words of flattery that are most persuasive to picking music for the gatherings - The O'Jays' 'For the Love of Money' - many tactics have been brought to light.

The 'playbooks' for the now-defunct business owned by Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, were unsealed Tuesday in a class-action lawsuit by customers who say they were defrauded.

Last Friday, a judge who has earned Trump's scorn sided with attorneys for The Washington Post who argued that the public had a right to know what was previously confidential.

The documents outline how employees should guide customers through 'the roller coaster of emotions' once they have expressed interest.

The Trump University 'playbook' was unsealed on Tuesday revealing strategies the now defunct company used to entice students

The university's employees were told to target people making at least $90,000 a year and to use words of flattery

'The motivation that they experienced can die quickly as the realities of their daily lives take over. It is our job to rekindle that motivation ... to make them once again see the potential of achieving their dream,' according to a 'sales playbook.'

A 2009 playbook quotes a Yale University study that found the most persuasive words in the English language are: you, new, money, easy, discovery, free, results, health, save, proven, guarantee and love.

'They share three characteristics: they are simple, familiar and dramatic.'

'The words "I noticed" have a powerful subconscious effect on people because they send a subliminal message to them that they stood out in the crowd, that they are attractive or charismatic or that they impressed you,' the playbook continues. 'People love recognition and attention.'

Trump University offered a three-day seminar for $1,495, using it as a springboard to sell more expensive 'Trump Elite' packages for up to $34,995 a year.

'You don't sell products, benefits or solutions  you sell feelings,' according to the sales playbook.

Trump University's core customers are identified in the documents as male heads of households between 40 and 54 years old with annual household incomes of at least $90,000, a college education and a net worth of more than $200,000.

One way to identify buyers is to ask what they do for a living. 'Let them know that you've found an answer and a way for them to change their lifestyles.'

Employees were told not to let students take control of conversations and they were not allowed to take the reasoning the students didn't have enough money as an excuse

Trump's university also gave seminars on how students could take advantage of foreclosures during the housing crash

During one-on-one conversations, 'you may begin with some small-talk to establish rapport but do not let them take control of the conversation', a playbook reads.

'You must be very aggressive during these conversations to in order to push them out of their comfort zones.'

'If they complain about the price, remind them that Trump is the BEST!! This is the last real estate investment they will ever need to make.'

For those who have hit credit limits, employees are told to suggest they dip into savings or identify other 'seed capital'.

'Money is never a reason for not enrolling in Trump University; if they really believe in you and your product, they will find the money,' a playbook reads.

The university also offered a business seminar program created a class to teach students how to cash in on U.S. mortgage foreclosures during the housing crisis.

Trump University promised in 2009 that its 'Fast Track to Foreclosure Investing' would teach students how to take advantage of the crisis, according to university documents unsealed last week in a lawsuit against the now-defunct program.

The release will likely stoke criticism from the campaign of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, who last week accused her likely rival in the November 8 presidential election of having cheered on the 2008 housing crash as an investment opportunity.

Employees were instructed to tell students who hit credit limits they should dip into savings or figure out another payment

A spokeswoman for Trump's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment, although Trump reacted to Clinton's criticism last week, saying: 'What am I going to do? I'm in business.'

A Trump University advertisement released in the case said one of its free investor workshops would explain how to 'Cash in on one of the greatest property liquidations in history!'

Trump University instructors were to teach students how to 'capitalize without harm' and find ways for 'sellers to move on without shame,' according to a December 2008 summary of the seminar.

An earlier 2007 memo to enrollment counselors stated that about 1.5 million U.S. homeowners would face foreclosure that year and laid out how they should advise students to seize the 'tremendous opportunity' to purchase properties at 'major discounts' in 'hot markets' such as Arizona, Florida and Texas.

Trump University is the target of two lawsuits in San Diego and one in New York that accuse the business of fleecing students with unfulfilled promises to teach secrets of success in real estate.

Plaintiffs contend that Trump University gave seminars and classes across the country that were like infomercials, constantly pressuring customers to buy more and, in the end, failing to deliver.

Trump has maintained that customers were overwhelmingly satisfied with the offerings  a point that his attorneys repeated after the documents were unsealed.

The documents included testimony from several satisfied customers.

'Much of the unsealed evidence, including declarations and surveys from former Trump University students, demonstrates the high level of satisfaction from students and that Trump University taught valuable real estate information,' said Jill Martin, vice president and assistant general counsel for The Trump Organization.

'Trump University looks forward to using this evidence, along with much more, to win when the case is brought before a jury.'

The documents show meticulous attention to details such as seating at seminars.

Room temperature should be set no higher than 68 degrees, and music should be The O'Jays 'For the Love of Money.'

At a rally in San Diego on Friday, Trump accused U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who ordered the documents unsealed, of being 'hostile' and a 'hater of Donald Trump', and raised questions about his ethnicity (pictured here in Washington, D.C. on Memorial day weekend)

Employees are told to avoid speaking with the news media.

'Reporters are rarely on your side and they are not sympathetic,' a 2010 playbook reads.

The six-year-old case in San Diego is scheduled to go to trial shortly after the November presidential election.

Trump has railed against U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who ordered the documents unsealed.

At a rally in San Diego on Friday, he accused the judge of being 'hostile' and a 'hater of Donald Trump,' and raised questions about his ethnicity.

'The judge, who happens to be, we believe, Mexican, which is great, I think that's fine,' Trump said of Curiel, who was born in the U.S.
Veteran Clinton aide cites email server talks in testimony

WASHINGTON (AP)  A veteran aide to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said she discussed Clinton's private email server with a technical aide who helped set up and run the system, according to a court deposition released Tuesday by a conservative legal group.

Longtime Clinton aide Cheryl Mills acknowledged in five hours of testimony last week that her conversations with the technical aide, Bryan Pagliano, took place after Clinton stepped down as secretary of state in 2013.

Mills, who was Clinton's chief of staff at the State Department and later her private attorney, told lawyers for the legal group Judicial Watch that she spoke to Pagliano several times about the setup of Clinton's email system. But Mills' lawyers declined to allow Mills to speak in detail about Pagliano's work or whether he was working at the time for either Clinton or her husband, former President Bill Clinton. Judicial Watch has sued the State Department for access to public records about Clinton's use of private emails in her public job.

FILE -In this Sept. 3, 2015, file photo, Cheryl Mills speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington. A court deposition released by a conservative legal group shows that Mills, a veteran aide to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton discussed Clinton's private email server with a technical aide who helped set up and run the system. Mills said in five hours of testimony that the conversations took place after Clinton stepped down as secretary of state in 2013. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

Pagliano has reportedly cooperated with the FBI in its separate probe of Clinton's emails but last year refused to testify to a congressional committee about his work on the email server, which was installed in the basement of the Clinton's home in Chappaqua, N.Y.

Clinton has said publicly that she is willing to talk with the FBI in its investigation, but said Tuesday in an interview with MSNBC that the agency has not yet scheduled a session with her.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said Tuesday that the extended session with Mills and her attorneys provided more information "about her email system, about its impact on FOIA (public records searches) and the fact that Ms. Mills was talking with Mr. Pagliano about this system after she left the State Department."

Much of the session, however, devolved into legal objections and sparring between lawyers for Mills and the legal group over how much she could relate without veering away from careful legal limits imposed by both sides.

Mills did say she recalled speaking with Pagliano, who worked both as a private technical consultant to Clinton and as a special State Department aide during Clinton's tenure, as far back as 2008  a period when Pagliano was still working as an aide for Clinton's unsuccessful 2008 presidential try. Mills did not characterize the discussions and said she could not recall in detail any discussions at the time about the set-up of Clinton's email server.

Mills also said she had expected that all the emails that she received from and sent to Clinton's private email addresses would have been preserved and archived by State officials because her messages originated from the State Department's email system.

"It was my impression that when she emailed, because it was her practice to email people on their State accounts when she was doing State business, that any of those communications would be captured and maintained by the State Department system," Mills said.

On Tuesday Clinton said she never instructed any of her aides to "hide the fact that I was using a personal email ... it was obvious to many people," she told MSNBC.
Hiker's decision to stay put was the right one _ at first

PORTLAND, Maine (AP)  An Appalachian Trail hiker who died after getting lost in the woods of Maine did the right thing by setting up camp to wait for help, officials say. But the guidance evolved into a gray area, they said, after she went a week without being rescued.

People who're lost are commonly advised to stop moving, said Rita Hennessy of the National Park Service.

"When you realize you're lost, and nothing looks familiar, then stop, don't panic, and stay put," said Hennessey, program manager for the national trail system.

In this July 22, 2013 photo provided by Dorothy Boynton Rust, hiker Geraldine Largay, of Brentwood, Tenn., poses at the Poplar Ridge Shelter on the Appalachian Trail in Maine. A report released Wednesday, May 25, 2016, by the Maine Warden Service said Largay, known as Inchworm, got lost after leaving the trail that day. Documents show she survived at least 26 days after getting lost. She kept a journal of her ordeal and ultimately resigned herself to the idea she was going to die, and it could be years before her remains were located. They were found in October 2015. (Dorothy Boynton Rust via AP)

That's exactly what 66-year-old Geraldine Largay of Tennessee did in July 2013 when she left the Appalachian Trail to use the bathroom and became disoriented.

She had most of the items on hikers' "10 essential" list. She had food, water, shelter, maps, a compass, several lighters, a whistle and cellphone, meaning she was equipped to survive in the woods while awaiting rescue from hundreds of searchers. Her husband also knew her hiking route.

Lost hikers usually are found within a couple of days under such circumstances.

In Largay's case, she was unable to communicate with her phone, and searchers missed her campsite, which was hidden in a heavily wooded area more than 3,000 feet from the trail. Her body was recovered in October. Details of her ordeal were included in documents released last week.

Much of her harrowing ordeal was documented in a journal she kept.

Evidence indicates Largay tried to start a fire, which would've increased her visibility, officials said. No one heard her whistle.

Whether to stay put for a search that stretches longer than a few days depends on the hiker, said Cpl. John MacDonald, spokesman for the Maine Warden Service.

"Each individual is going to have their own idea on survival. Some people may choose to stay in one spot. Some people may choose to charge on," he said.

Added Hennessy: "I just wonder what goes through your head after a week of not being found. Do you still make that judgment of staying there?" she said.

David Field, a retired University of Maine forest resources professor and officer in the Maine Appalachian Trail Club, compared advice to hikers to stay put to that given to boaters to stay with an overturned boat rather than to swim to safety.

But, he said, it becomes a gray area if land is nearby, hypothermia is a concern or the area is too remote to be found. In Largay's case, she might've saved herself by abandoning the stay-put rule and following a nearby stream downhill to safety, Field said.

By all accounts, Largay was well equipped and was at least average in her abilities after putting more than 800 miles under her belt over several months.

One thing that might have saved her was a global-positioning device that she'd left behind in a motel room, the Warden Service said. While there was no cellphone signal, the GPS still would've worked, potentially firing off a message with coordinates after she became lost.
Is the hoverbioard set for a comeback?

Months ago, the powered scooters, which balance themselves but don't actually 'hover'  largely vanished from the U.S. market after they exhibited a distressing tendency to burst into flame.

Now Segway hopes a new 'mini' version of its transporter will corner the market - and be safe for consumers to use.

Scroll down for video

Segway hopes a new 'mini' version of its transporter, with a new 'steering stick' will corner the market and be safe for consumers to use.

HOW IT WORKS Segway's MiniPro adds a steering stick  a vertical padded bar in the middle of the board. Pushing one way or the other with the inside of your legs turns the board. If you're a skier, it's like carving around a mogul. Getting on isn't any more difficult than jumping on a skateboard.

On Wednesday, Segway, which also makes the eponymous upright scooter beloved by mall cops and airport security, will begin taking Amazon pre-orders for a new hoverboard, the MiniPro.

Although the boards won't actually ship until July, it's a significant step, given that Amazon, Walmart and other retailers dumped the products months ago after videos of burning hoverboards went viral.

The MiniPro and other new scooters have passed new safety standards designed to prevent fires.

But that doesn't mean they're completely safe  nor that manufacturers like Segway can overcome their enormous image problems.

Few consumer products have zoomed in from nowhere, only to literally crash and burn, as quickly as hoverboards did.

Produced by little-known companies, the scooters shot to prominence late last year after a host of celebrities from Justin Bieber to Jamie Foxx were seen riding on them.

Small manufacturers in China, which can quickly clone popular products, flooded the market with lookalikes.

Then came the fires and embarrassing falls by the likes of Kendall Jenner and Mike Tyson.

Florida congressman Carlos Curbelo tweeted a post-Christmas picture of his arm in a sling with the message, '#hoverboard is for kids. My daughter got it. I ended up in @BaptistHealthSF.'

The MiniPro and other new scooters have passed new safety standards designed to prevent fires.

Since last August, the Consumer Product Safety Commission counts at least 62 hoverboard-related fires and an estimated 7,200 falls that required emergency-room visits.

It's still investigating 13 hoverboard makers, including Chinese companies such as Yooliked and Keenford Ltd. Many municipalities, airports and college campuses still ban the gadgets.

Turning all that around will be a challenge. Brand consultants point to the incredibly damaging nature of safety issues: Chipotle is still recovering from a 40 percent drop in sales after federal investigators probed the chain's E. coli outbreak last year.

On the other hand, hoverboards' earlier problems were mostly associated with no-name brands, making it possible for more reputable manufacturers to establish a better safety record, says Laura Ries, an Atlanta-based brand consultant.

Segway's MiniPro adds a steering stick  a vertical padded bar in the middle of the board.

Segway, which also makes the eponymous upright scooter beloved by mall cops and airport security, will begin taking Amazon pre-orders for a new hoverboard, the MiniPro, today.

That's what Segway, now a subsidiary of Beijing-based Ninebot , is counting on.

Its solution starts with safety certification by UL (formerly Underwriters Laboratories), a venerable Northbrook, Illinois, firm that tests everything from toasters to outlet extenders.

Among other tests, UL submerged the MiniPro in water, dropped it on concrete from a height of three feet and disassembled it to ensure its wiring wouldn't cause a short.

Several other manufacturers, including Razor USA, a private California company known for its kick scooters, have also received UL certification, and plan to relaunch hoverboards in the U.S. market soon.

The next step for Segway: making hoverboards easier to ride.

Your typical board is little more than a skateboard turned sideways, with a large wheel on each end.

Leaning forward causes you to accelerate; leaning back slows you down or starts a backward roll. (Gyroscopes and electronics keep the board upright.)

In this May 27, 2016, photo, company representative Zach Servideo demonstrates Segway's new self-balancing scooter, the MiniPro, in downtown Los Angeles. The MiniPro is going on sale on Amazon, Wednesday, June 1, 2016. Hoverboards are attempting a comeback in the U.S., months after videos showing them bursting into flame went viral.

Signs prohibiting hoverboards hang in the Hudson Yards subway station, Tuesday, May 31, 2016, in New York.

Segway's MiniPro adds a steering stick  a vertical padded bar in the middle of the board.

Pushing one way or the other with the inside of your legs turns the board. If you're a skier, it's like carving around a mogul.

Getting on isn't any more difficult than jumping on a skateboard.

Segway says the stick makes its board more of a 'personal transporter' similar to its classic upright, handlebar-equipped Segway.

It plans to lobby local governments to reclassify the MiniPro in order to sidestep existing hoverboard bans in some subways, universities and airports, says Brian Bucella, Segway's vice president of marketing and business development.

Hoverboards, however, may still have more hurdles to clear.

The federal product-safety commission says it's looking into whether the scooters need to have settings that adjust to the rider's weight before zooming forward, back and turning in order to reduce the number of falls.
Winterbourne View scandal families urge PM to shut 'outdated care units'

Families of victims of the Winterbourne View scandal have written to the Prime Minister demanding he shuts outdated care home institutions.

In an open letter they express "anger" at the "painfully slow lack of change" five years after abuse at the former private hospital near Bristol was exposed in an undercover BBC Panorama documentary.

A recent report revealed that some 3,500 vulnerable people with learning disabilities are still languishing at inpatient units despite a Government pledge to close them in the wake of the Winterbourne View scandal.

Winterbourne View residential hospital

Now five years after the documentary was broadcast, families of some of the victims are demanding action.

They wrote: "Dear Prime Minister,

"We the families of people abused at Winterbourne View hospital write to express our anger at the lack of change five years on from the day that Panorama exposed what happened to our loved ones.

"Despite clear commitments and plans from Government and the NHS, today, around 3,500 people, including over 160 children, are still stuck in places like Winterbourne View; often hundreds of miles from home, and at risk of abuse. Lives have even been lost.

"The rate of change has been painfully slow, and people with a learning disability and their families continue to suffer as a result. Government and the NHS must end this outdated model of hospital care and tackle the inappropriate use of restraint, seclusion and anti-psychotic medication, which is devastating lives."

The letter has been signed by Steve Sollars, Ann Earley, Wendy Fiander and Claire and Emma Garrod, whose family members were all residents at Winterbourne View.

It is supported by Dr Margaret Flynn, the author of the Winterbourne View serious case review, Jan Tregelles, chief executive of Mencap and Vivien Cooper, chief executive of The Challenging Behaviour Foundation.

Ann Earley, whose son Simon Tovey was abused at the hospital, said: "It was only when we were visited by two of the Panorama team that I learned of what had happened to Simon and fellow residents of Winterbourne View.

"They told us Simon had been subjected to abuse and they had footage and documentary evidence to prove it.

"I'll always remember seeing the footage - the disbelief. I was utterly speechless to see the cruelty, the physical abuse, the mental torture and the systematic nature of it all.

"Five years on Simon is thankfully doing a lot better. He is living in his own house and has become a central part of his community.

"Simon is now safe and living a full and happy life. All this, and his package of care now costs about half as much as it did when he was at Winterbourne View.

"I am devastated that five years on from Winterbourne View people with a learning disability are still stuck in inpatient units like Simon was, and families are still forced to battle a system of care that is outdated.

"It breaks my heart every time I see a photo of someone who is shut away, far from home or hear the distressed voice of a parent.

"After everything that Simon went through, after all the things that have been said by those in power, it is unforgivable that things have not changed for so many people."

Meanwhile, figures from the Learning Disability Census 2015 revealed that of the 3,000 patients receiving inpatient care who were included in the census:

:: 72% had received antipsychotic medication, yet only 28.5% were recorded as having a psychotic disorder.

:: 1,670 had experienced one or more incidents (self-harm, accidents, physical assault, restraint or seclusion) in the three months prior to census.

:: Average length of stay in an institution is 4.9 years.

:: 670 people are 100km (62 miles)or more from home, an increase of 17% on last year.

Ms Tregelles and Ms Cooper said people with learning disabilities and their families had "endured nearly five years of failure" by the authorities.

"Despite all the promises, reports and action plans since Winterbourne View, the number of people with a learning disability in inpatient units has not changed, and it is appalling that the number of children in these places has increased over the last year," they said.

"Many of these are far from home at increased risk of abuse and neglect, with their families still fighting to bring loved ones home.

"NHS England recently announced a three-year closure programme. This means that the right community-based support should be being developed for people with a learning disability and behaviour that challenges.

"But it means nothing until families see change on the ground.

"It is vital there is action now for the people currently stuck in these units, and those who are being inappropriately medicated and restrained.

"The Panorama expose of Winterbourne View created a rare opportunity to focus attention on tackling these outdated services, which are failing people with a learning disability and their families and to get care right.

"We cannot, must not, waste any more time."

An NHS England spokeswoman said: "We have seen significant increases in the numbers of people both being discharged from hospital and having their care and treatment reviewed in the last year.

"We know, however, that progress up to now hasn't been quick enough and we sympathise with the frustrations expressed.
Brussels reforms will dictate NHS rules, Chris Grayling warns

Brussels will "start to set the rules for the NHS" as part of a move towards deeper integration that will kick in if the UK votes Remain, Chris Grayling will warn.

The pro-Brexit Cabinet minister will claim major reform plans are being kept deliberately under wraps during the campaign but will go "full steam ahead" if Britain opts to stay in on June 23.

"If we vote to remain in the EU then it would be EU rules that would determine our minimum wage, EU rules that would say how our pensions work," he will say in a speech in London.

Leave campaigner Chris Grayling says Brussels will "start to set the rules for the NHS" in Britain remains in the EU

"It would be EU rules to govern our skills system and even EU rules that would tell us how health services should work."

Pro-EU campaigners were right to promise reform, he will say, "but the inevitable reform that is coming our way is very different to what they are claiming".

Mr Grayling will reject rivals' claims that Brexit campaigners would seek to weaken social protections once the UK was no longer bound by Brussels rules.

"Let me make clear that I do not want to see social rights and protections diminished if we vote to leave the EU," he will say.

"The point, however, is whether it is for the EU or for the people of the United Kingdom to control our rights and protections."

Labour's campaign has focused heavily on Brussels' role in reinforcing workers' rights, accusing Tories of wanting to water them down.

"We have a new list of EU social policies which will deepen integration across the eurozone. But these will be EU laws passed in the normal way," he will say.

"There is no other method of doing so right now. And we have no opt out from them.

"Many of these measures will be things we already do well; some may be measures we would want in the UK. The point is that it should be up to us to control what happens to the NHS, to workers' rights and to social protection and control over these areas should not lie with Brussels.

"So when there are new EU rules on pensions, skills and health, they will apply to us too. It means the EU starting to set the rules for our NHS. With no opt-out. And millions more people able to access our free at the point of delivery service as countries like Albania, Serbia and then Turkey join the EU.

"And this is why we are not at all exempt from Ever Closer Union. Because the nuts and bolts of integration will come from new EU laws passed under the terms of the Lisbon Treaty."

Other plans will be kept quiet until after the referendum, he will say.

"We know the (European) Commission is on its best behaviour right now. Everyone in Brussels is under strict instructions not to rock the boat. Frankly I am surprised that they have even started the consultation on the Social Pillar.

"But the decision to delay anything controversial in Brussels until after our referendum is an open secret there. Legislation is being held back. The budget is being held back. The EU institutions are in lock down until the British decision is done and dusted.

"If we vote to remain, the plans move full steam ahead."

Michael Gove and Boris Johnson, meanwhile, identified where they would seek to spend some of the cash Vote Leave says would be saved by quitting the EU - on cutting VAT from fuel bills.

The campaign has made the ability to boost NHS spending the centrepiece of its pitch to voters.

But in an article for The Sun, the senior Tories - and Vote Leave chairwoman, Labour's Gisela Stuart - said some could be used to scrap the tax imposed by a Conservative government in 1993.

The least wealthy are hit particularly hard," they wrote.

"The poorest households spend three times more of their income on household energy bills than the richest households spend. As long as we are in the EU, we are not allowed to cut this tax.
45 million people worldwide 'trapped in modern slavery'

More than 45 million people around the world are trapped in modern slavery - a third more than previously thought, a major new report has found.

They are being trafficked and forced to work as prostitutes, domestic servants or enslaved in debt bondage and compelled to toil away in factories and farms, according to the study.

The Global Slavery Index for 2016 found that every corner of the globe is affected by slavery, but Asia is the worst offender.

Russell Crowe speaks at the Global Slavery Index launch at the Shard in London

The highly secretive country of North Korea had the highest prevalence with 4.37% of its population enslaved, followed by Uzbekistan at 3.97% and Cambodia with 1.65%.

India has the highest number of modern slaves with an estimated 18.35m followed by China with 3.39m and Pakistan with 2.13m.

The report hailed the UK as having "led the world" in its anti-slavery strategy. The 2015 Modern Slavery Act toughened up laws and increased the sentence for the worst offenders to life imprisonment.

Andrew Forrest, chairman and founder of the Walk Free Foundation, which compiled the report, urged world leaders to follow Britain's example.

Speaking ahead of the report's launch in London later on Tuesday, he told the Press Association: "One of the reasons why we chose to launch the Global Slavery Index 2016 in London was because of the leadership which Britain has made on the modern slavery issue.

"The Modern Slavery Act 2015 led the world and we are seeing this having a real impact in how companies and countries behave. We feel very strongly that if this leadership is adopted by the nine other major economies of the world then the world would be a much safer place."

The report found that 45.8m men, women and children are modern slaves - 10m more than the last survey in 2014.

Mr Forrest said the rise was down to better and more data, although he said he also believes the number of those enslaved is increasing.

He said: "It isn't necessarily that fact that slavery has increased, we can't prove that, what we can prove is that the metrics of visibility, the hard data, is better.

"Although my gut feeling is that it is actually increasing still and it will be a year or two before it turns around. But it is going to turn around, the way the world is waking up to it."

The Home Office estimates that around 13,000 are in modern slavery in Britain. Out of these people, the largest proportion is from Albania followed by Nigeria and Vietnam, but many are British nationals, often teenage girls groomed and then forced into sex work.

While the report singles Britain out for praise, it warned that conviction rates remain low and immigration rules tying migrant domestic workers to their employers leave them more vulnerable to exploitation.

Fiona David, head of research at the Walk Free Foundation, an Australian-based NGO, said the refugee crisis sweeping through the Middle East and Europe has left people vulnerable to traffickers.

But she stressed that many people entrapped in slavery in Britain are themselves British.

She told the Press Association: "The first thing to note is that modern slavery is not always of migrants, we have seen here in the UK some of the highest profile slavery cases have involved enslavement of British people or commercial exploitation of children who are themselves British.

"But of course, people moving in highly distressed situations have many risk factors. It is too early to say yet whether that is impacting on our estimates, I think we will see the results of that flowing through into the next global slavery index."

She said there is "huge variety" in the response of governments to tackle modern slavery, with some rich countries such as the Qatar failing to take adequate action.

"This is an issue that every country has a responsibility to act on, every country could do more", she said.
Average speed cameras on 50 stretches of UK highways

Average speed cameras are monitoring drivers on more than 250 miles of Britain's roads, according to a new study.

Fifty stretches of highways were found to have the cameras, with 12 systems installed last year alone.

Research for the RAC Foundation by Road Safety Analysis revealed that the sections covered a range in length from just a quarter of a mile on London's Tower Bridge to 99 miles on the A9 between Dunblane and Inverness.

Law of averages: Average speed camera checks cover a total of 263 miles of UK roads in varying lengths, from a quarter of a mile on Tower Bridge to parts of a 100 mile stretch of the A9 in Scotland

The first section of road to become permanently managed by average speed cameras was on the A6514 ring road in Nottingham in 2000.

Since then a total of 256 miles of road have been given the same treatment.

One of the reasons for the growth is the fall in the cost - from around 1.5 million a mile in the early 2000s to about 100,000 a mile today.

The devices are often used on a temporary basis during roadworks, but those were not included in the study.

Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, said many motorists viewed fixed speed cameras as "more about raising revenue for the Treasury than saving lives", while those that measure average speeds had "greater potential to bring drivers on side".

But he added that more research was required to find out whether the frequency of crashes had been reduced since the average speed cameras were installed.

"Average speed cameras are becoming a more common fixture on Britain's roads," he said.
Court battle over six-year-old boy missing in Afghanistan

A six-year-old boy who was born in Afghanistan and is never thought to have set foot in Britain is at the centre of a taxpayer-funded family court dispute between his separated Afghan parents.

The boy's parents left him with an uncle in Afghanistan when he was a month old, judges in London have heard.

They then travelled to England - and subsequently separated.

The boy's mother wants him brought back from Afghanistan

The boy's mother now wants the boy brought to England, and has launched legal action.

Her estranged husband says their son has disappeared from the uncle's home - and his whereabouts are unknown.

A judge has concluded that the father knows where the boy is.

Now the father has been ordered to provide information about the boy's whereabouts.

Detail of the case has emerged in a written ruling on the latest round of litigation by Mr Justice Peter Jackson.

The judge said he had analysed evidence at a private hearing and he said no-one involved could be identified.

Lawyers had told Mr Justice Jackson that both parents lived in England and were "habitually resident" in the UK.

Both had the "benefit of publicly-funded lawyers", the judge heard.

Lawyers for the boy's mother had asked Mr Justice Jackson to order the father to "give information" about the boy's whereabouts and "general circumstances".

The father was against any order.

His lawyers said the "investigation" into the boy's "situation" was in the hands of Afghan authorities - and they said a judge in England should not "seek to take over".

Mr Justice Jackson agreed to make the order the mother asked for.

The judge said the boy was "not known" to have "been present in this country at any stage".

He said the circumstances of the case were "highly unusual" - and he said the order he had made was unprecedented.

But he said the answer lay in England.

"The solution to this deeply troubling situation lies in this country because it is here that the father resides," said the judge.

"It is only by this court exercising its powers that a remedy is likely to be available."
Liam Fee murder case review will be 'thorough and comprehensive'

A significant case review into the death of a toddler murdered by his mother and her civil partner will be "thorough and comprehensive", a child protection body has said.

A probe is under way into the circumstances leading up to the death of Liam Fee after the convictions of his mother Rachel Trelfa or Fee, 31, and her partner Nyomi Fee, 29.

During their seven-week trial, a number of witnesses told the High Court in Livingston they had raised concerns about the toddler's health and wellbeing with social services.

Liam Fee was found dead at a house near Glenrothes in Fife on March 22 2014 (PA/Police Scotland)

Dougie Dunlop, vice chair of Fife Child Protection Committee, described the death as a "tragedy" and said the body would reflect on the case "to see whether there is any scope for improvement".

The couple had denied killing Liam, blaming his death on one of two other young boys also in their care.

A jury of eight women and six men took about 10 hours to find them guilty by majority of assault and murder, and of attempting to defeat the ends of justice by trying to blame his death on one of the young boys.

They were also unanimously convicted of a catalogue of abuse towards the two boys, including imprisoning one in a home-made cage and tying another naked to a chair in a dark room with snakes and rats.

The couple, originally of Ryton, Tyne and Wear, will be sentenced on July 6 at the High Court in Edinburgh.

During the trial, childminder Heather Farmer, who looked after Liam at her home in Fife from July 2012 until January the following year, said she had called the Scottish Childminding Association and the Care Inspectorate over fears the toddler was being hurt by someone.

The toddler started at the Sunshine Nursery in Kirkcaldy in March 2013 but staff noticed injuries and by June had contacted social services with their concerns.

Patricia Smith, who knew the couple, said she contacted social workers after seeing them outside a shop in Fife in September 2013 and noting that the toddler looked ''deathly''.

The court also heard from Karen Pedder, a team manager with child protection at Fife Council, who dealt with concerns about Liam in 2013 and admitted he had dropped ''off the radar''.

A social worker and police officer were sent to the couple's home in January that year but a ''plausible'' explanation was given that Liam had ''bumped his head'' and there was no criminal action taken.

The social worker dealing with the case then went off sick in April and it was not looked at again until there was a contact made by the nursery in June.

Liam was found dead a t his home near Glenrothes on March 22 2014 with heart injuries similar to those found on road crash victims after a severe blunt force trauma to his chest and abdomen.

Pathologists found more than 30 external injuries on the toddler's body and fractures to his upper arm and thigh.

Responding to the verdicts, Mr Dunlop said: "Liam's death was a tragedy that has left everyone deeply shocked and saddened.

"The Chief Officers' Group have already commissioned a significant case review into all the circumstances leading up to Liam's death.

"We want to provide reassurance that this independent review will be thorough and comprehensive."

He said work on the first phase of the review, looking at information available from the files, records, and policies and procedures that were in place before Liam's death, had already started.

A second phase will take into account any new information that has come to light during the trial.

Prosecutor Alex Prentice QC told the court the women were guilty of "unyielding, heartless cruelty" and had shown "callous indifference" to Liam's suffering.

The jury heard there was an escalation of violence towards the toddler leading up to his death, which included the couple failing to get help for him when they knew he had a broken leg and fractured arm.

Instead of taking him to hospital, they Googled terms such as "how do you die of a broken hip," "how long can you live with a broken bone?" and "can wives be in prison together?"

They tried to shift the blame for the death onto the boy of primary school age, who they claimed had been acting in a sexualised way towards Liam.

The youngster initially admitted he had "strangled" the toddler but later changed his story, and it became clear that suffocation was not the cause of death.
Decision to play in the rain at French Open leaves players fuming

Agnieszka Radwanska and Simona Halep accused the French Open of not caring about the players after b oth women were knocked out in the fourth round after being made to play in the rain.

Radwanska led Tsvetana Pironkova by a set and 3-0 when play was halted on Sunday, but lost 10 games on the resumption and was eventually beaten 2-6 6-3 6-3.

She said a previous hand injury meant the heavy conditions made it impossible for her to play her game.

Bulgaria's Tsvetana Pironkova upset Agnieszka Radwanska to reach her first French Open quarter-final

"I had surgery a few years ago and I couldn't really play in those conditions, end of story," said the second seed.

"I'm just so surprised and angry that we have to play in the rain. I mean, it's not a 10,000 tournament (the lowest level of professional tennis). It's a grand slam. How can you allow players to play in the rain? I cannot play in those conditions.

"I don't know who allows us to play in these kind of conditions. I don't think they really care what we think. I think they care about other things, I guess."

Roland Garros witnessed its first total washout in 16 years on Monday and organisers were clearly desperate to avoid the same situation for a second successive day.

The rain was not as heavy on Tuesday, but was persistent.

The players resumed their matches just after midday and played for nearly 40 minutes before being taken off once more. There followed another two-hour delay before the matches were called again, despite the ongoing drizzle.

Halep had led Sam Stosur 5-3 on Sunday but, like Radwanska, was on the back foot from the start on Tuesday and went down 7-6 (7/0) 6-3.

The sixth seed and 2014 finalist said: "I cannot comment about the conditions, I have no words. It was impossible to play, in my opinion. And to play tennis matches during the rain, I think it's a bit too much.

"No one cares about the players, in my opinion. I don't care that I lost the match today, but I was close to getting injured with my back, so that's a big problem. But, like I said, no one cares. We have just to go and play.

"The court was not good. The balls were wet, completely wet during the match. I felt some pain in my back, in my Achilles. Sam was stronger and she played better today, and these conditions I think are good for her because she has a lot of topspin."

Asked why she thought play continued despite the conditions, Halep said: "Maybe they are scared because the days are going on and they don't play matches.

"But it's not our fault. It's not their fault. But the decisions were not, I think, the best. I didn't feel sure on court, safe on court."

Organisers will fully refund fans that came on Monday, but, because two hours of play - almost exactly - was possible on Tuesday, no refunds can be claimed.

Press Association Sport has contacted the French Tennis Federation and is awaiting a response.

Several men's fourth-round matches were also affected. David Goffin and Ernests Gulbis took matters into their own hands and refused to continue their match, while Dominic Thiem also walked off during his contest with Marcel Granollers.

Asked if she could have done the same, Halep said: " I'm not that kind of person and I will never do that."

Stosur was beaten in the final by Francesca Schiavone in 2010, but had not been beyond the fourth round here since 2012.

The Australian, who now plays world number 102 Pironkova, said of the conditions: "I know what it feels like out there and I know it was raining for the first time we went out today, but the court was okay for the most part.

"I don't think Simona was complaining about it. We're told to play, we play. If it gets too wet, you've got to say something. But it was fine for us."

Pironkova is renowned as a dangerous player on fast surfaces, particularly grass, but her run to the last eight has been a complete surprise.

The Bulgarian, who had never previously been beyond the third round at Roland Garros, joins American Shelby Rogers to make it two players ranked outside the top 100 in the last eight.
UK must keep supporting manned space flight, says Tim Peake

British astronaut Tim Peake has taken one small step into the world of astro-politics by urging the Government not to stop supporting manned space flight.

Speaking from the International Space Station, Major Peake said it was "vitally important" for the UK to stay involved with human missions.

A decision will be taken at the next European Space Agency (ESA) ministerial council in Lucerne, Switzerland, in December.

Tim Peake has lived and worked on the space station for almost six months, and is due to return to Earth on June 18

If the UK pulls the plug on its contribution to ESA's manned space programme it is unlikely the agency will send any more British astronauts into space.

Britain became part of the programme for the first time after agreeing to donate funds at a ministerial meeting in 2012. This was followed by a further pledge at the last of the biennial meetings in 2014.

In total Britain has contributed 49.2 million through the UK Space Agency.

Major Peake, who was taking part in an ITV News question and answer session streamed on Facebook, said: "It was ground-breaking for the UK to join the human space flight programme in 2012 at the European Space Agency ministerial (meeting).

"I certainly hope that this will pave the way for the UK's continual involvement in human space flight. I think it's vitally important. What we're doing now is we're looking ahead not just to the International Space Station which has a life out to 2024, maybe slightly longer, but we're looking at lunar exploration missions and going to Mars as well.

"The UK needs to be involved right now if it wants to play a serious role in human space flight missions into the future."

Major Peake, who has lived and worked on the space station for almost six months, is due to return to Earth on June 18.

Responding to other questions, he described the "remarkable" mission as a "dream come true".

"The whole experience has been everything I hoped for and even more," he said. "No words can really describe what it's like to experience a rocket launch, to go into space and see that first sunrise as you orbit the planet."

But he confessed there were some aspects of life in space he would not miss, such as artificial lighting and the constant hum of air conditioning systems.

He was looking forward to being "out in the fresh air" back on Earth.

The most hazardous parts of the mission were the launch, performing a space walk, and the landing, said Major Peake.

"The landing is definitely not a trivial event," he added.
Leeds contenders

President Massimo Cellino is looking to appoint his sixth Leeds manager in two years after sacking Steve Evans on Tuesday.

He has already been turned down by lower-league bosses Darrell Clarke and Karl Robinson, and must now convince someone that it is a job worth taking.

Here, Press Association looks at some of the candidates.

Garry Monk is being linked with the Leeds job

Garry Monk

The new bookmakers' favourite, former Swansea boss Monk would be a real coup for Leeds given his standing in comparison to those who have turned the job down and the state of ongoing chaos at the club.

Many felt he was harshly treated when sacked by Swansea last season, but as a manager with Premier League experience, would want heavy assurances that Cellino would not meddle - something that cannot be guaranteed.

Neil Lennon

The Northern Irishman is out of work after leaving Bolton following a tortuous campaign. Wanderers had all sorts of off-field problems and Lennon was never able to manage with the same kind of freedom he had at Celtic.

He may fancy an easier return to the dugout but, having managed on the biggest stage, may fancy the challenge.

Ivan Juric

The 40-year-old Croatian has just guided Crotone to Serie A and has long been linked with the Leeds job. He would fit Cellino's model of the owner having a heavy influence on team affairs, but may prefer a crack at Italy's top flight.

Gianluca Festa

The former Middlesbrough defender first became known to Leeds fans when Cellino tried to get him to sit on the bench alongside former boss Brian McDermott. He observed training sessions and nearly took charge of a game against Huddersfield.

Since then, he has managed at Cagliari and Como and is a long-time friend of Cellino.

Dougie Freedman

The Scot - who had a successful loan spell with Leeds as a player - is out of work and available, and was pictured at a number of Leeds' end-of-season games.
Heavy air strikes on Syria's Idlib kill and injure dozens -monitor

BEIRUT, May 31 (Reuters) - Heavy air strikes in Syria's rebel-held city of Idlib on Monday evening killed and injured more than 150 people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The war monitor said it believed the planes were Russian.

At least seven strikes hit the western Syrian city, it added. Some struck the area where the national hospital is located, the war monitor said, noting that it did not think the strikes hit the hospital itself.
Egypt journalist union chiefs charged with harbouring wanted colleagues

CAIRO, May 30 (Reuters) - Egyptian prosecutors on Monday ordered the head of the journalists union and two board members to be tried on charges of harbouring colleagues wanted by the law, judicial sources said, a move that drew condemnation from rights groups.

The trial of Yehia Qalash, Khaled al-Balshy, and Gamal Abdel Rahim will begin on Saturday at a Cairo misdemeanours court, the judicial sources said.

The charges of harbouring fugitives and spreading false news about a police raid of the union premises carry a maximum sentence of three years in jail, according to a legal expert. The prosecutors have not said what sentence they will seek.

The journalists' lawyer Sayyed Abou Zeid told Reuters they denied the charges, which relate to a May 2 police raid on the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate to arrest two opposition journalists who had sought shelter from arrest inside.

Qalash and the union condemned the arrests of Mahmoud El Sakka and Amr Badr, which sparked protests from journalists, and issued a statement two days later demanding the interior minister be sacked.

Union officials said at the time that police had stormed the building for the first time in its 75-year history. The interior ministry denied that but confirmed police had arrested Sakka and Badr, who work for the opposition website Bawabet Yanayer and were wanted on criminal charges.

Monday's decision to charge the journalists come as authorities try to quell rising dissent against President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

Thousands of demonstrators called on April 15 for "the fall of the regime", a slogan from the 2011 uprisings that ended Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule. Police dispersed smaller protests two weeks later and arrested scores of people.

Amnesty International urged the authorities to drop the charges.

Qalash and his colleagues initially went to a Cairo police station for questioning on Sunday and were unexpectedly charged and ordered to pay bail of 10,000 Egyptian pounds ($1,126.15) each, Abou Zeid and another union board member said.
Nigeria's Buhari to visit restive Niger Delta region this week

By Felix Onuah and Anamesere Igboeroteonwu

ABUJA/ONITSHA, Nigeria, May 30 (Reuters) - Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari will on Thursday visit the Niger Delta region, rocked by attacks on oil and gas facilities, for the first time since taking office a year ago, an official said on Monday.

The visit was announced as the Niger Delta Avengers militant group, which has claimed a string of recent attacks, issued a warning to oil firms in the southern region that their "facilities and personnel will bear the brunt of our fury," according to a statement.

Buhari said on Sunday said the government would hold talks with leaders in Nigeria's main oil-producing region to address their grievances, in a bid to stop a surge in pipeline attacks.

Buhari will visit a Niger Delta area called Ogoniland to launch a much-delayed programme to clean up areas heavily polluted by oil spills, said the government official who asked not to be named.

Residents in the southern swamp areas, where oil giants such as Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron operate, have for years complained about the oil industry's pollution and about economic marginalisation by the government.

Some have taken up arms, and a surge in attacks on energy installations has cut Nigeria's oil output to a 20-year low.

A militant group called Niger Delta Avengers, which staged several attacks in recent weeks, has accused Buhari, a Muslim from the north, ignoring local problems by having never visited the Christian region in the south.

"To the international oil companies and indigenous oil companies, it's going to be bloody this time around," the group said in a statement late on Monday. It did not elaborate.

Local officials and Western allies such as Britain have told Buhari that moving army reinforcements to the Delta region would not be enough to stop the attacks and that the population's grievances should be dealt with.

On Thursday, Oil Minister Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu said an amnesty programme for former militants, signed in 2009 to quell a previous insurgency, needed to improve.
Attempted North Korea missile launch fails - South Korean official

SEOUL, May 31 (Reuters) - A North Korean missile launch attempt early on Tuesday morning appears to have failed, a South Korean military official told Reuters.

The launch attempt took place at around 5:20 a.m. Seoul time (2020 GMT), said the official, who asked not to be identified, without elaborating. South Korea's Yonhap News Agency said the attempted launch appeared to have been of an intermediate-range Musudan missile.
U.S. oil prices rise on start of summer driving season

By Henning Gloystein

SINGAPORE, May 31 (Reuters) - U.S. oil prices were lifted early on Tuesday by the start of the peak demand summer driving season, although international fuel markets were weighed down by rising output in the Middle East, which mostly serves Asian customers.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil futures were trading at $49.50 per barrel at 0042 GMT, up 17 cents from their last settlement.

Demand in North America is set to pick up along with the official start of the U.S. summer driving season this week, triggering a cut in the amount of open short crude positions that would profit from falling prices.

"Investor positioning points to further support for commodity prices as bearish bets continue to be reduced," ANZ bank said on Tuesday.

The amount of outstanding managed short crude positions of U.S. WTI crude futures fell to its lowest level this year last week.

International oil markets, however, were hit by a rise in Middle Eastern crude exports, most of which go to Asia.

Brent crude oil futures were trading at $49.65 a barrel, down 11 cents from their last close.

Iraq will supply 5 million barrels of extra crude to its partners in June, industry sources familiar with the issue said, joining other Middle East producers by lifting market share ahead of an OPEC meeting this week.

Iraq, which is the second-largest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, had already been targeting record crude export volumes from southern terminals next month of 3.47 million barrels per day.
China's Xi says hopes to get Philippines ties back on track

BEIJING, May 31 (Reuters) - China hopes to get relations with the Philippines back on track, President Xi Jinping has told new Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, after ties were affected by an increasingly bitter spat over territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Xi sent a message to Duterte late on Monday congratulating him on his formal election victory, and said the two countries had a long history of friendly exchanges and a deep traditional friendship, China's Foreign Ministry said.

"The friendly, stable and healthy development of Sino-Philippine relations accords with the basic interests of both countries and both peoples," Xi was quoted as saying in the ministry statement.

Both countries had the responsibility to deepen cooperation, he said.

"(I) hope both sides can work hard to push Sino-Philippine relations back onto a healthy development track," Xi said.

China and the Philippines are locked in a territorial dispute in the South China Sea, a strategic waterway through which $5 trillion worth of ship-borne trade passes every year. Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims.

Tension between the Philippines and China has risen as an international tribunal in the Hague prepares to deliver a ruling in the next few months in a case lodged by Manila in 2013.
Attempted North Korea missile launch fails - South Korea

By Ju-min Park

SEOUL, May 31 (Reuters) - North Korea attempted to fire a missile from its east coast on Tuesday but the launch appears to have failed, South Korean officials said, in what would be the latest in a string of unsuccessful ballistic missile tests by the isolated country.

The launch attempt took place at around 5:20 a.m. Seoul time (2020 GMT), said the officials, who asked not to be identified. They did not elaborate.

Tension in Northeast Asia has been high since North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in January and followed that with a satellite launch and test launches of various missiles.

Japan put its military alert on Monday for a possible North Korean missile launch.

"North Korea shows no sign of abandoning the development of nuclear missiles and so we will continue to work closely with the U.S. and South Korea in response and maintain a close watch," Japanese Minister of Defence Gen Nakatani told a media briefing.

North Korea appeared to have attempted to launch an intermediate-range Musudan missile, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency said.

North Korea attempted three test launches of the Musudan in April, all of which failed, U.S. and South Korean officials have said.

Yonhap quoted a South Korean government source as saying the missile was likely to have exploded at about the time it lifted off from a mobile launcher.

China, North Korea's only major ally, called for the cessation of any action that would exacerbate tension.

"The situation on the peninsula remains complex and sensitive," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a briefing when asked about the launch.

"We think that all sides should avoid any actions that further worsen tensions."

China has been angered by North Korea's nuclear and missile tests and signed up to tough U.N. sanctions against its reclusive neighbour in March.

North Korean state media did not mention any missile launch.

A Pentagon statement said that a failed North Korean intermediate-range ballistic missile launch had been detected, but did not pose a threat to North America.

"We strongly condemn North Korea's missile test in violation of UN Security Council resolutions, which explicitly prohibit North Korea's use of ballistic missile technology," the Pentagon statement said.

IN A RUSH?

The North's flurry of weapons technology tests came in the run-up to the first congress in 36 years of its ruling Workers' Party this month, where young leader Kim Jong Un consolidated his control.

Tuesday's launch appears to have been its first missile test since then, and experts said it was unusual to test-fire a missile so soon after a failure.

The South Korean military said the successive tests could stem from Kim's order in March for further tests of nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles.

"They must've been in a rush. Maybe Kim Jong Un was very upset about the failures," said Lee Choon-geun, senior research fellow at South Korea's state-run Science and Technology Policy Institute.

North Korea has never carried out a successful launch of the Musudan missile, which theoretically has the range to reach any part of Japan and the U.S. territory of Guam.

The North is believed to have up to 30 Musudan missiles, according to South Korean media, which officials said were first deployed in around 2007.

"It could have cracks and something wrong with the welding," Lee said of possible causes for the latest failure. "But deployment before test-firing these to complete development seems unusual."

The attempted launch took place near the east coast city of Wonsan, one of the South Korean officials said, the same area where previous Musudan tests had taken place.

Separately, the international department of China's Communist Party said diplomat Ri Su Yong, one of North Korea's highest-profile officials, visited China on Tuesday, meeting the department's head, Song Tao.

The two expressed a desire to increase cooperation between their parties and work hard to promote regional peace and stability, the department said in a brief statement.

There was no indication of any link between the missile launch and Ri's visit.
Pumas lock Lavanini to miss France, Italy tests due to ban

WELLINGTON, May 31 (Reuters) - Argentina lock Tomas Lavanini will miss test matches against Italy and France next month after he was sent off in the Jaguares' 29-22 Super Rugby loss to the Kings on Friday.

Lavanini was given a two-week suspension by southern hemisphere rugby's governing body (SANZAAR) after he was sent off by referee Nick Briant for a dangerous charge in the first half of the match in Port Elizabeth.

The 23-year-old could have missed the Pumas' entire June schedule after SANZAAR judicial officer Michael Heron indicated Lavanini's poor disciplinary record warranted an additional week suspension.

Heron said Lavanini had already been cited three times and received a yellow card for "similar dangerous play".

"Because of his previous conduct and repeated offending, I indicated I would add a week to the suspension (to three weeks)," Heron said in a statement.

"Given his remorse, cooperation and early plea, I was prepared to reduce that by one week to a resulting suspension of two weeks (covering two matches) and I gave that indication."

Lavanini, who was suspended for one week earlier this season for dangerous play, will miss the Pumas' tests against Italy on June 11 and France on June 18. He is free to play the second test against France on June 25.

Fellow Argentina international Ramiro Herrera, who was sent off for a similar offence shortly after Lavanini on Friday, was suspended for one week and will miss the Italy match.

Japan lock Hitoshi Ono will miss his country's clash with Canada in Vancouver on June 11 after he was cited following the Sunwolves loss to the ACT Brumbies on Saturday.

Ono, who has played 96 tests, was cited for striking an opponent with his head in the 66-5 loss in Canberra.

Heron said the entry point for suspension was four weeks, but given the nature of the contact he had reduced that to two. Ono's previously perfect disciplinary record had warranted a further cut to one week, he added.

Super Rugby will resume on July 1.
Haiti commission recommends scrapping disputed election results

By Joseph Guyler Delva

PORT-AU-PRINCE, May 30 (Reuters) - Haiti should abandon a flawed election and start from scratch, a commission set up to re-examine first round results said on Monday, a decision that could trigger protests and further delay the vote for the Caribbean country's next president.

The commission was established under the government of interim president Jocelerme Privert, who took office after protests led to a runoff being scrapped. The politically volatile nation has been without an elected president since February.

The commission's findings are not binding and it is the electoral council that must decide whether to follow its advice.

"The presidential election should be organized all over again, because the whole election system screwed up," said Francois Benoit, a former foreign minister who led the commission.

Privert urged the provisional electoral council to make good use of the report and emphasized the decision was not his to make.

Benoit said the commission sampled 25 percent of polling station results in the October first round and found that almost a third could not be traced in the system. In many cases it appeared the same finger print had cast multiple votes.

"We cannot blame the problems on a particular candidate but there was massive fraud," he said, defending the commission's work as "scientific."

Several foreign embassies have warned in recent days that the commission's finding could lead to protests and instability, although the capital's streets were quiet on Monday night.

The party of the last elected president, Michel Martelly, whose candidate Jovenel Moise won the October vote and thus has the most to lose if the election starts again from scratch, was quick to accuse the commission of bias.

"We reject the conclusions of the commission just as we rejected the creation of the commission itself," said the PHTK party's spokesman Guichard Dore.

"The committee is an instrument in the hands of Mr. Privert and his allies to fulfil their partisan political will."
Australian miner eyes second bonanza with Canadian iron ore bet

By Susan Taylor

MONTREAL, May 31 (Reuters) - An Australian mining veteran who made investors billions with a shrewd bet on coal in Mozambique is aiming for another big score with Canadian iron ore, even as a global gush of new supply threatens to depress already slumping prices.

Champion Iron Chief Executive Michael O'Keeffe is laying the groundwork to restart Bloom Lake mine in northern Quebec's metals-rich Labrador Trough.

Champion bought Bloom Lake last year for only C$10.5 million ($8.04 million) after Cliffs Natural Resources, which paid $4.9 billion for it in 2011, put the unprofitable mine into creditor protection.

Champion will have its work cut out. The spot iron ore price <_.IO62-CNOMB> is sputtering at $51 a tonne, down from an all-time high of about $190 in 2011, as an already oversupplied market absorbs ore from new mega-mines.

Best known for turning Riversdale Mining from a coal explorer in Mozambique with a market cap of A$7 million ($5 million) into a producer that Rio Tinto acquired for nearly A$4 billion in 2011, O'Keeffe says he's "measured and controlled" - anything but a gambler.

"I pride myself on being able to pick the bottom," he said in an interview with Reuters.

Rio, however, wrote off its investment in Riversdale a few years later and fired its CEO over the failed venture.

O'Keeffe, who moved his family to Montreal, doesn't see the market recovering quickly. That gives Champion the time to develop mine and processing plans, he said, that will reduce costs and boost annual production to 7.5 million tonnes from 6 million tonnes.

Pilot studies have already shown new processing equipment could help boost recovery rates to 80 percent from about 70 percent when the mine last operated, he added.

The timing and pace of any restart will likely be decided at year-end, he said, a call that boils down to costs.

NOT TIME FOR NEW MINES

There are few companies anywhere making concrete plans to start producing iron ore.

"Now is not the time to start new mines. Now is the time to work what is already up harder," said Nev Power, chief executive of Fortescue Metals, the world's No. 4 producer.

The "Big Three" - Rio, BHP Billiton and Vale - have been slashing costs to squeeze out higher-cost rivals.

Separately, Australia's 55-million-tonne Roy Hill mine, combined with Vale's development of a 90-million-tonne expansion, S11D, in Brazil, may add more than 10 percent to the global sea-borne iron ore supply, said Clarksons Platou Securities analyst Jeremy Sussman.

"In order to balance the market, we'll need to see high-cost production come offline. And that's going to be painful," he said.

Iron ore from the remote Labrador Trough gets a premium for its high 66 percent concentration, versus the 62 percent standard, but is disadvantaged by its distance from the Chinese market.

Australia's government forecasts a price of $55 per tonne next year, so "what we have to then ensure, is that our costs of delivering to China are below $55," O'Keeffe said.

That's far from Bloom Lake's 2014 cash production cost of $81 and the largest miners' current cost of about $30 a tonne.

"They're going to have their hands full," said Clarksons' Sussman, noting that Bloom Lake was in the top quartile for costs.

O'Keeffe said company spending has been cut "significantly" and the mine is now free from costly rail and port access agreements. It could also benefit from planned government investments in that infrastructure.

Sandy Chim, the chief executive of neighboring miner Century Iron, said O'Keeffe is "brave" to bet on an uncertain market.

"It is courageous to put it forward," Chim said. "I like to see people take the first move in a particular area that we're in. It would be good to have somebody being a catalyst."

($1 = 1.3066 Canadian dollars)
China shares jump on rising foreign interest; Hong Kong benefits

SHANGHAI, May 31 (Reuters) - China stocks jumped to a three-week high on Tuesday, with financials leading a broad rally as investors bet that MSCI will add mainland shares to its index for the first time next month.

The blue-chip CSI300 index rose 2.6 percent, to 3,147.13 points by the lunch break, while the Shanghai Composite Index gained 2.4 percent, to 2,891.15 points.

Such excitement on the mainland - rarely seen over the past month - spilled into Hong Kong, where main indexes rose more than 1 percent.

The CSOP FTSE China A 50 ETF - the largest offshore exchange-traded fund that enables direct foreign investment to Chinese shares - saw a net capital inflow of about 2 billion yuan ($303.9 million) on Monday, the largest single-day inflow in the past year, the ETF's manager announced after the market close.

"We are very pleased to see the return of global institutional investors to the Chinese A-share market," Ding Chen, CEO of CSOP Asset Management Ltd, said in an e-mailed statement.

In another sign of rising foreign interest in mainland shares, there was a net inflow of 2.4 billion yuan on Monday into the Chinese market through the north-bound leg of the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect, the biggest one-day inflow in 1-1/2 months.

"Investors are now betting China shares will be included into the MSCI Emerging Market index," said Wu Kan, head of equity trading at investment firm Shanshan Finance.

The excitement around the index publisher's decision next month is injecting some life into a market suffering from torpor and seeking a sense of direction, Wu added, although he also cautioned that the rally could be short-lived.

Shares rose across the board, with financial, IT and consumer shares, leading the gains.

In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index added 1.2 percent, to 20,885.57 points, while the Hong Kong China Enterprises Index gained 1.6 percent, to 8,762.45.

($1 = 6.5821 Chinese yuan)
Saudi says intercepts and destroys ballistic missile from Yemen

DUBAI, May 31 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has intercepted and destroyed a ballistic missile fired from Yemen and a Saudi-led military coalition said in a statement late on Monday it may be forced to reconsider a truce that has been place since April.

Saudi state news agency SPA quoted the statement as saying that the missile, the second such strike this month, was destroyed in mid-air without causing any casualties. The air force also destroyed the platform from which the missile was fired, it said.

Saudi Arabia, leading a coalition of Arab states, intervened in Yemen in March last year mainly with air strikes to try to restore President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Houthis, backed by forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, had advanced on Hadi's temporary headquarters in the southern city of Aden, forcing him to flee the country.

The war has killed more than 6,200 people and displaced more than 2.5 million people.

The Houthis describe their capture of the capital, Sanaa, in 2014 and their advance on Aden as part of a revolution against corruption and to end attacks by al Qaeda. They have accused the Saudi-led coalition of violating the truce with air strikes.

The Houthis and Yemen's Saudi-backed exiled government are currently engaged in peace talks in Kuwait aimed at ending the 14-month-old war and easing a humanitarian crisis in the Arabian Peninsula's poorest country.

The U.N.-sponsored talks have so far yielded few results.

SPA gave no details on the target or the type of missile used. However, the agency said the Saudi-led coalition warned it would not sit idle against any further violations of the truce, which began on April 10.

"The coalition command, through this statement, assert that violating the truce by the Houthi militia and its supporters and the targeting of the kingdom's lands ... would force the coalition to reconsider the feasibility of this policy (of self restraint)," SPA said.
In Egyptian village, attack on Christian grandmother fuels anger

By Ahmed Aboulenein and Omar Fahmy

ALKARM, Egypt, May 30 (Reuters) - Soad Thabet's house no longer has a door. Inside, its walls are blackened with soot and a television lies shattered on the floor. The remains of a red nightgown stand out among the ashes.

Thabet, 70, describes being dragged outside by Muslim villagers and stripped naked in the dirt roads of Alkarm, the Egyptian village where she spent her most of her adult life.

Her crime? Her son, a married Christian, was rumoured to have had an affair with a married Muslim woman. The woman has since denied the affair took place on national television.

"They burned the house and went in and dragged me out, threw me in front of the house and ripped my clothes. I was just as my mother gave birth to me, screaming and crying," Thabet told Reuters a week after the attack.

Orthodox Copts like Thabet, who make up about a tenth of Egypt's 90 million population, are the Middle East's largest Christian community. They have long complained of discrimination in the majority-Muslim country.

Sectarian attacks occur so frequently in Egypt that they rarely attract wide publicity. But Thabet's ordeal, the public humiliation of an elderly woman, prompted an outcry among Copts and led to the case becoming national news.

"If it were just a burning we could handle it, but what can we do about what happened to the woman? How can you compensate for this insult?" Ishak William, Thabet's neighbour and relative, told Reuters at his house in Alkarm.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has denounced the Alkarm attack, which underlines that Copts remain vulnerable three years after he took power and pledged to unite the country following years of political turmoil.

Sectarian violence often erupts on the back of rumours about inter-faith romances or suspicions that Christians are building churches without the required official permission.

Homes are burned, crops are razed, churches are attacked and, occasionally, Copts are forced to leave their villages, say human rights groups and residents of the southern province of Minya, home to Egypt's largest Christian community.

Then come the reconciliation sessions, processes informally backed by the government that see local Coptic priests and Muslim clerics attempt to mediate a communal peace without resorting to the legal system.

Christians interviewed by Reuters said the sessions often end with them making concessions, such as agreeing that certain families leave town or that the church not bear a visible cross, while those who perpetrated the attacks often go unpunished.

Muslim residents and religious officials say the informal process helps broker compromises to avoid a cycle of escalation and retribution.

Copts often go along with it to avert more trouble.

But the latest attack has left a new bitterness among the Copts of tiny Alkarm, in the agricultural hinterland of Upper Egypt. This time, they say, reconciliation is not enough.

"We answer to the law, not to reconciliation sessions. Whoever did this must be held accountable," said William.

'PEOPLE WON'T HAVE IT'

Thabet's ordeal led to the Diocese of Minya releasing a statement demanding justice. The attack subsequently drew condemnation from the government and Al Azhar, Cairo's ancient centre of Islamic learning.

"We have people getting killed and there is no one answering for it, money stolen, houses looted, girls kidnapped ... and we bear it all and let it pass, but now there is escalation," Bishop Makarios, the highest Coptic church official in Minya, told Reuters by telephone.

"We get told, take reconciliation because it is better for you than other bad scenarios and people are simple and just want to live in peace, but this time people won't have it."

Since the case went public, 15 men have been detained in connection with the violence and will be investigated, according to security sources.

Before then, said William, the attackers were freely walking around the village.

Neighbours who witnessed the incident told Reuters it took place on May 20, when a group of Muslim men set fire to seven Christian homes and stripped the grandmother naked in the street after rumours of her son Ashraf's inter-faith affair.

Ashraf fled with his wife and children on May 19 after receiving threats, said William. His parents went to the police, fearing for their lives, said Ishak Ibrahim of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. The mob burned down their house the next day, Ibrahim and several local residents said.

The Governor of Minya initially denied the attack took place in comments to local media. On May 26, after it became public, Tarek Nasr, said it was a "minor incident."

Nasr did not respond to repeated attempts to reach him on his mobile phone. He visited Alkarm on Friday, after Sisi denounced the attack.

"What is happening in Egypt is unacceptable and must never happen again ... anyone who made a mistake no matter how many they are, will be held accountable," Sisi said during a speech at the opening of a housing project on Monday.

On Friday, a joint delegation of Cairo-based Muslim and Coptic clerics visited Alkarm, where several armoured vehicles and dozens of police patrolled the streets. Local Copts refused to meet them.

'LOCKED OURSELVES IN'

With deep scars visible on his head, face, and arm, Ishak Yakoub, a Copt who lives next door to Thabet, says he almost died the night the grandmother was attacked and wants the law to take its course and put an end to what he sees as mob justice.

"I heard gunfire so I got out of the house and stood at the doorway. People advised me to get back inside, so I did and locked the door. I climbed up on the roof and saw smoke coming from her house so I called the fire department," he said.

"I came back down and found they had broken in and were in my house. One of them hit me on the head but I don't know with what, then they dragged me onto the street and beat me."

Yakoub later found Thabet hiding in the home of a Muslim neighbour. He took her to his house.

"When I heard what they did, that a woman was stripped naked in the street, I took her to my room and we locked ourselves in," says Yakoub's wife, who declined to be named.

Umm Magdi, the Muslim neighbour who sheltered Thabet, played down the incident as "threats from silly youths".

"My son came in with (Thabet) and told me to dress her. She came into my house and I dressed her. I told her to sit but she wouldn't ... it was like she didn't feel safe with me," Umm Magdi said.

"I've known her all my life and lived by her side like a sister. She's Christian and I'm Muslim but I won't take sides."

Thabet, wearing a black gown and headdress and looking shaken, appeared in an online video on Friday, saying: "I didn't ask for anyone's help. I forgive them."

But Copts from Alkarm said forgiveness would not prevent future attacks.
Fire, blast at Indian arms depot kills at least 16

NEW DELHI, May 31 (Reuters) - A huge fire swept through one of India's biggest ammunition depots on Tuesday, triggering an explosion and killing at least 16 people trying to douse the flames, government officials said.

Firefighters battled through the night to bring flames that soared into the sky under control at the depot in Pulgaon, 600 km (373 miles) from the city of Mumbai.

The dead included three soldiers and 13 civilian fire fighters, the defence ministry said in a statement, while 17 people were injured.

The fire, which started after midnight in a shed storing ammunition, forced the evacuation of thousands of nearby villagers, regional official Shailesh Nawal said.

Among the soldiers killed were two officers who had rushed to the site when the fire broke out, and had gathered people along the way to help fight the flames and stop ammunition from igniting, Brigadier Sandeep Bhalla told Indian television.

"Once they were fighting the fire, the explosion must have taken place and they all died," he said.

The cause of the fire was not known, the defence ministry said, adding that the army had ordered an inquiry. It was the latest of several fires at Indian arms depots in recent years.

The Pulgaon depot, spread over 2,800 hectares (7,000 acres), is a store for various types of ammunition, explosives and missiles, media reported.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Twitter that he was pained by the loss of lives and had asked Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar to visit the site.
German retail sales post surprise fall in April

BERLIN, May 31 (Reuters) - German retail sales dropped by 0.9 percent in April, their second consecutive fall, casting some doubt over expectations that consumer spending will propel growth in Europe's largest economy as foreign trade weakens.

The volatile indicator, which is often subject to revision, confounded expectations in a Reuters poll for a 0.9 percent rise on the month, data from the Federal Statistics Office showed on Tuesday. The data for March was revised down to a decline of 1.4 from a previously reported fall of 1.1 percent.
PRESS DIGEST - Bulgaria - May 31

SOFIA, May 31 (Reuters) - These are some of the main stories in Bulgarian newspapers on Tuesday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

-- Bulgaria ranks third in the list of most attractive outsourcing destinations in the world and is first in Europe, President Rosen Plevneliev said at the opening of the new outsourcing centre of Telus International in the central city of Plovdiv. (24 Chasa, Capital Daily)

-- The chief prosecutor of Sofia prosecution has resigned from his post citing health reasons a month before the European Commission sends experts to inspect the work of Bulgarian prosecution and help improve its efficiency. (Capital Daily, 24 Chasa, Duma, Trud)
Poland to appeal court decision not to extradite Polanski to U.S.

By Wiktor Szary

WARSAW, May 31 (Reuters) - Poland will appeal a court decision not to extradite filmmaker Roman Polanski to the United States over a 1977 child sex conviction, Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro said on Tuesday, reigniting a long legal battle.

The United States requested Polanski's extradition from Poland after he made a high-profile appearance in Warsaw in 2014. The Oscar-winning filmmaker lives in Paris but also has an apartment in Krakow in southern Poland and visits regularly.

A Polish court rejected the request in October last year, and the prosecutor's office initially said it would not appeal the decision.

But since then, Poland's new, staunchly conservative government of the Law and Justice (PiS) party has merged the posts of justice minister and prosecutor general, giving it more direct control over prosecution.

Zbigniew Ziobro, who assumed the newly merged post, has been a vocal critic of the court's decision not to extradite the filmmaker, saying Polanski's celebrity status had helped him escape justice.

"I've decided to file an appeal in the supreme court against the ruling ... in which the ... court decided not to extradite Mr Polanski to the U.S. in a situation when he's accused of and wanted for ... a rape of a child," Ziobro told Poland's state radio.

"If he was just a regular guy, a teacher, doctor, plumber, decorator, then I'm sure he'd have been deported from any country to the U.S. a long time ago," he said.

Speaking to private broadcaster TVN24, Polanski's lawyer Jan Olszewski said that given Ziobro's previous comments, his decision was "not surprising."

"I guarantee that if there were no factual arguments on our side, Polanski's (celebrity) status itself would not protect him from extradition."

CAUSE CELEBRE

The case of the Polish-born Polanski, now 82, remains an international cause celebre nearly four decades after the crime, with some demanding harsh punishment and others urging that extradition efforts be dropped.

Polanski pleaded guilty in 1977 to having sex with a 13-year-old girl during a photo shoot in Los Angeles. He served 42 days in jail after a plea bargain but later fled the United States fearing a lengthy jail time if the deal was overruled.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office has long insisted that Polanski remains a fugitive and subject to immediate arrest in the United States because he fled the country before sentencing. It says his case cannot be resolved until he returns to California to face justice.

In 2009, he was arrested in Zurich on a U.S. warrant and placed under house arrest. He was freed in 2010 after Swiss authorities decided not to extradite him.
New Zealand opposition aims to mount joint challenge in 2017 poll

WELLINGTON, May 31 (Reuters) - New Zealand's opposition Green Party and the Labour Party announced a pact on Tuesday to find ways to mount a joint challenge to the government of Prime Minister John Key at a general election expected next year.

The parties will cooperate in offering New Zealanders an alternative, they said in a joint release. Key's National Party has been in government since 2008.

At the 2014 election, National won 47 percent of the vote, while the Labour Party won 25 percent and the Green Party won 11 percent.

The 2017 election, which has not yet been called, is expected to take place sometime around September.

"We are a vote for change," said Metiria Turei, co-leader of the Green Party, which stands for ecological sustainability and social responsibility.

It was time for change, said Andrew Little, leader of social-democratic Labour.

"When I was elected Labour leader I made it clear that we would not go into another election without strong cooperation with like-minded parties to change the government," Little added.

The two parties have agreed to cooperate in parliament and investigate a joint policy or campaign in the runup to the poll. They did not say what strategies they would deploy to improve their vote percentages at the next election.

Little's popularity hit a new low in a poll published last week, with just 8.9 percent of respondents choosing him as their preferred prime minister, Newshub-Reid Research said.

It was his lowest ranking since becoming party leader.
Bangladesh sentences six militants to death for bank robbery

DHAKA, May 31 (Reuters) - A court in Bangladesh sentenced six Islamist militants to hang on Tuesday for a bank robbery on the outskirts Dhaka in April that left nine people dead, prosecutors said on Tuesday.

The gang killed the branch manager of state-run Bangladesh Commerce Bank to get the key to the vault and made off with 700,000 taka ($8,900), detonating crude bombs as they fled.

Eight people were killed by the attackers and one robber was chased and beaten to death by customers and bystanders.

The court also sentenced another man to life imprisonment and two others to three years in jail. Two other suspects were acquitted.

The verdict came amid a surge in Islamist violence in the majority-Muslim nation of 160 million people. Militants have targeted liberal bloggers, academics and members of religious minorities, killing several since early last year.

Police said the bank robbery was carried out by members of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, a banned militant group that has laid low since six of its leaders were hanged in 2007.

Dozens of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen members have been arrested and at least five, including the mastermind of the robbery, have been killed in shootouts since November, as security forces intensified a crackdown on militants fighting to impose strict Islamic law, or sharia, on the moderate Muslim nation.
New Saudi energy minister shows he takes OPEC seriously

By Alex Lawler, Rania El Gamal and Reem Shamseddine

VIENNA, May 31 (Reuters) - For OPEC watchers, every little detail matters.

When the oil producer group holds its half-yearly meetings, what time the ministers arrive in Vienna, how they speak and which hotel they stay in - anything will be analysed in an attempt to predict its policies.

So it was seen as a sign that new Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih takes OPEC seriously when he turned up in the Austrian capital on Monday, three days before the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries' upcoming discussions.

But Falih will have little opportunity to see fellow ministers ahead of Thursday's meeting. Many of them, including those from Iran and Venezuela, won't show up in Vienna until midday or even late on Wednesday.

For veteran OPEC watcher Gary Ross, founder of New York-based consultancy PIRA, that signals expectations should be low as far as OPEC policy is concerned.

"These guys are not exactly getting along these days," Ross said. "OPEC is becoming far less important. We are entering an era when market management will be non-existent".

OPEC last decided to change output in December 2008, when it cut supply amid slowing demand due to a global financial crisis. By contrast, between 1998 and 2008, OPEC made 27 changes to output.

For decades, Saudi Arabia, Vienna-based OPEC's largest producer and de facto leader, had a preferred range for oil prices and, if unhappy, would try to orchestrate a group-wide production cut or increase.

But a technology-driven spike in non-OPEC output such as that of U.S. shale and growing fuel efficiency led Riyadh to conclude that the era of fast oil growth might be ending.

In the past two years, Riyadh has stuck to a strategy of fighting for market share, thinking that pumping more oil now at low prices is better than producing less in the future.

"We think continuity will carry the day at the June OPEC meeting in Vienna. The only real uncertainty is how divisive the meeting will be and how much discord will be put on public display," said Helima Croft, head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets.

FIGHT FOR SHARE

Unlike his predecessor, Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi, Falih has a much larger portfolio overseeing energy, industry, mining, atomic power and renewables.

On Tuesday, Falih visited OPEC headquarters to meet Secretary-General Abdullah al-Badri, staying for 90 minutes in a clear display that despite being a busy man, he has time for the producer group.

"There are times when you need OPEC and when you don't. You only need OPEC when you have major oversupply and OPEC doesn't want prices to crash any further," Ross said.

Oil prices have recovered to around $50 per barrel in recent weeks from their lowest in a decade of $27 per barrel in January - but are still far below the $115 seen in June 2014.

Prices crashed after Saudi Arabia increased production to an all-time high to fight for market share with higher-cost producers, including U.S. shale firms.

The drop in prices also badly hurt fellow OPEC members, with production declining from Nigeria to Venezuela.

Iraq and Iran, however, kept pushing production higher as Baghdad sees recent investments by oil majors pay off and Tehran regains market share after the lifting of some Western sanctions in January.

Falih's ultimate boss, Saudi Deputy Crown Price Mohammad bin Salman, has said Saudi Arabia may raise production further if other members don't restrain their output increases.
A bar as a national monument? New York's LGBT landmark vies for honor

By Gina Cherelus

NEW YORK, May 31 (Reuters) - The New York bar known as the birthplace of the gay pride movement could become the country's first national monument honoring LGBT rights under a plan to be considered by President Barack Obama.

The Stonewall Inn in Manhattan's Greenwich Village was the site of a 1969 police raid that touched off riots and ignited a long struggle to bring lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people into the mainstream and guarantee their rights.

A year after the Stonewall riots, activists staged the country's first gay rights parade. The event has evolved into LGBT Pride Month, which begins Wednesday, with parades and street parties around the world that draw millions of people of every sexual orientation.

To honor that legacy, Obama is being asked to designate the tavern and adjoining Christopher Park as a national monument, the second highest recognition in the U.S. National Park Service. U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, several members of Congress and local and state officials have strongly endorsed the effort.

Stonewall is already a National Historic Landmark and both inn and park are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Melissa Sklarz, a transgender rights activist, was among those attending hearings in Manhattan this month to push for the national monument status.

"It was great for me to be able to stand up for my part of the community, that LGBT includes trans women and it's important that that voice be heard," she said.

NEW FIGHT FOR LGBT RIGHTS

The proposal has its critics. Some of them say national monuments should honor war heroes or the Founding Fathers, not a symbol of gay rights.

"A monument to sin?" said Franklin Graham, the Christian evangelist continuing the work of his famous father Billy Graham. "That's unbelievable," he added in a Facebook post this month.

The proposal to elevate Stonewall coincides with a contentious national debate over protections for transgender people that is considered the next frontier in the fight for LGBT rights after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage last year.

The recent battle between North Carolina lawmakers and the Obama administration over bathroom access for transgender people suggests that equality issues that came to the fore in 1969 are yet to be fully resolved.

Back in the 1960s, police raids on gay bars were common. But when officers arrived at the Stonewall Inn, in the early hours of June 28, 1969 to clear the bar and make arrests, patrons decided to resist, according to witnesses. It was a galvanizing event, ultimately destroying the tavern.

Now, the reconstructed Stonewall is a low-lit, two-level space decorated inside with wooden floors, high-rise bar stools, mirrored walls and televisions playing music videos from artists like Rihanna and Enrique Iglesias.

With its trademark brick exterior, blood-red neon sign and rainbow flags, the tavern continues to attract people from all over the world.

For Fred Etree, who at 77 years of age still works as a bartender at Stonewall after nearly 50 years, the memories of the riots are vivid.

"I was in there dancing with my friends Frank and Charlie when the cops came in and we heard everybody screaming," Etree recalled. "They came in nasty."

As patrons were being led outside and loaded into police vans, a crowd of several hundred people gathered in the park across the street. Eventually bottles and other objects were thrown at police and violence erupted. Tactical officers were called in to clear the streets and days of unrest followed.

OBAMA'S LGBT LEGACY

For Obama, the monument designation in his last year in office could solidify his legacy as a defender of LGBT rights.

While he started his first term opposed to gay marriage, he came out in favor of it before his re-election in 2012. In the battle over transgender rights, he asked all U.S. public schools this month to allow all students to use the bathroom of their choice, a non-binding directive that conservatives have vowed to resist.

His administration has also sued North Carolina, saying limits on bathroom access are a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. But state lawmakers say the law, which limits people to using the bathroom of their gender at birth, protects women and girls from predators. Eleven other states are suing the administration for an overreach of power on the issue.

A White House spokeswoman said the president is aware of "the overwhelming support" for the monument proposal from Greenwich Village residents and the LGBT community. But she would not say when he would make a decision or what he is leaning toward doing.

Down in the Village, proponents say making the Stonewall a monument would send a powerful message to states opposing transgender rights.
German For Min says unclear if Russia sanctions will be renewed

BERLIN, May 31 (Reuters) - German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Tuesday it was no secret that some EU states were sceptical about extending sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine crisis and it was unclear if the 28-nation bloc would decide to renew them.

"The sanctions are there to ensure a political solution. I don't know what the European Council will decide on Russia sanctions," Steinmeier told reporters.

The energy, financial and defence sanctions against Russia, introduced over Moscow's role in the conflict in Ukraine, expire in July.
Nigeria's Barkindo frontrunner to become OPEC secretary-general

VIENNA, May 31 (Reuters) - OPEC is likely to choose Nigeria's Mohammed Barkindo, a former head of state oil firm NNPC, as the next secretary-general of the producer group, three sources with knowledge of the matter said on Tuesday.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has been looking for a replacement for Libya's Abdullah al-Badri, who was elected acting secretary-general in December until the end of July after serving full terms.

Barkindo led the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation from 2009 to 2010.
Russia's Rosatom completes upgrade of Bulgarian nuclear reactor

SOFIA, May 31 (Reuters) - Rusatom Service, part of Russian state nuclear agency Rosatom, has completed an upgrade needed to extend the life of one of the reactors at the Kozloduy nuclear plant in Bulgaria, the company said on Tuesday.

Bulgaria has begun a 360 million euro ($401.33 million)upgrade of its two, Soviet-made nuclear reactors to ensure they can operate safely for another 30 years. Extending the life of the plants is part of Bulgaria's efforts to avoid an unpopular increase in electricity prices.

The Kozloduy plant, by the Danube river on the border with Romania, has two 1,000 megawatt reactors that produce about 30 percent of Bulgaria's electricity, which is one of the country's cheapest sources of power.

Sofia has hired a consortium led by Rosatom divisions Rosenergoatom and Rusatom Service and French energy company EDF to carry out the upgrades.

Rusatom Service said technical work on Unit 5 at the Kozloduy plant was complete and it would soon provide documentation which would enable the energy regulator to extend the Unit's licence.

Rusatom Service, which is also working on upgrade of the other reactor, Unit 6, said the work would take place during its annual maintenance period.

"We are meeting all deadlines in line with the schedules for activities on Unit 5 and Unit 6 of Kozloduy nuclear plant", the first deputy general director of Rusatom Service, Dmitriy Pashevich, was quoted as saying at an energy forum in Moscow on Tuesday.
Russia denies it conducted fatal air strikes on Syria's Idlib

MOSCOW, May 31 (Reuters) - Russia on Tuesday denied its planes had conducted air strikes overnight against the Syrian rebel-held city of Idlib, which the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said had killed 23 people.

"Russian planes did not carry out any combat missions, to say nothing of any air strikes, in the province of Idlib," Igor Konashenkov, a Russian Defence Ministry spokesman, said in a statement.

The Observatory had earlier said the air strikes targeted a number of positions in the city, one of them next to a hospital. Seven children were among the dead, Observatory Director Rami Abdulrahman said.

The Turkish foreign ministry said the strikes had killed more than 60 civilians and complained in a statement about what it said were the "indefensible" crimes of the Russian and Syrian governments.

Konashenkov called the Observatory's allegations "a horror story" of the kind he said it had disseminated in the past and said such pronouncements should be regarded with greater scepticism.
Technip signs $500 mln Libya oil platform deal

PARIS, May 31 (Reuters) - French oil services company Technip signed on Tuesday a deal worth $500 million with a consortium that includes Libya's National Oil Company (NOC) and Italy's oil and gas major ENI to refurbish an offshore oil platform.

Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the signing was crucial to show that foreign firms were starting to return to do business in a country hit by over five years of conflict.

"This is for the Libyans and gives them a chance to increase production, distribute resources and create jobs," Ayrault said after a signing ceremony in Paris.

The platform is for the Bahr Essalam oil field about 100 kilometres off Tripoli.

The NOC aims to restore oil production after a U.N.-backed unity government arrived in the capital in March with the hope of ending Libya's prolonged political crisis, and bring together warring factions.

Oil production rose above 300,000 barrels per day in May, far from the 1.6 million bpd level achieved before Muammar Gaddafi was ousted in 2011.
Marketing in Communist-ruled Cuba: from guerrilla to mainstream?

By Sarah Marsh and Nelson Acosta

HAVANA, May 31 (Reuters) - For half a century after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution, Cuba's marketing was limited to patriotic propaganda and its most ubiquitous brand was not Coca-Cola but late revolutionary hero Ernesto "Che" Guevara, daubed on walls across the island.

Now, market-style reforms to expand the private sector mean a blossoming of small businesses from cobblers to barbers and bars seeking to haul in customers.

Havana streets that used to be pitch dark at night are lit up by neon signs advertising restaurants or spare rooms in private homes.

"It was unknown territory, going through the steps of opening up a business, where promotion is key," said Erick Carballo, 26, who opened a beauty salon in Havana last August.

Outside, a sign reads "Kerabana" in blue and the walls inside are painted cheerful orange. Mirrors create an airy feel while flyers list the prices of manicures and waxes.

In a stark sign of the change, Martin Sorrell, the fast-talking boss of the world's biggest advertising group WPP , gave aspiring creatives a master class on the industry and how they can develop it on the communist-run island.

He brandished data, graphs and drawings of wine labels to explain the value of brands to a rapt audience that grew up insulated from the 20th century's branding revolution.

"Cuba has amazing beaches, and produces excellent rum. But many other countries have beaches and make rum. So the question is 'why Cuban?'" asked Sorrell. "The answer, again, is investment in the brand."

But tourists who see the absence of gaudy hoardings as boosting the appeal of its graceful cities and rolling countryside should not worry just yet.

Local firms' tight budgets and a lingering distrust of capitalist consumerism in Cuba means agencies such as WPP, which last year became the first global communications group to set up shop here, are unlikely to make big money any time soon.

Businesses can only advertise on their own premises and Havana's handsome architecture is still free of billboards. Along roads, pictures of Castro or "Che" and slogans like "Homeland or death" remain the norm.

Newspapers and broadcast media are state-controlled and do not run commercial spots. Only the state and its joint ventures with foreign firms like Havana Club rum are running integrated advertising campaigns, mainly abroad.

Restricted and expensive Internet access means few businesses, even those in the tourism sector generating dollar revenue, can afford to advertise on the web.

So, young Cuban designers are coming up with "guerrilla" means of promotion, like offline apps, tee-shirt branding and commercials on El Paquete, a package of often-pirated media delivered across Cuba on USB sticks.

In one video, surgeons wearing face masks lean over, apparently operating on a client. Yet the patient is a broken phone, not a human, and the ad is for the "Cellphone Clinic".

'VIRUS'

All areas of marketing here are new. Before the reforms, businesses like Carballo's beauty parlor existed but were illegal, so they did not market themselves and hid in shabby living rooms.

State-run restaurants and shops faced no competition so made little effort to differentiate.

"Marketing is tricky for us in Cuba because we did not grow up in a world of supply and demand," Carballo said.

Cuba will likely try to keep advertising low-key and consumerism in check.

"The most important thing is that marketing does not invade our daily space," said Sergio Pena Martinez, head of the Institute of Design that teaches marketing, Cuban-style. He compared ads in the United States to a "virus."

Cubans need information to make informed decisions about what restaurant to go to for example but they do not need adverts interrupting television or radio, endlessly generating more consumer wants, he said.

Some of the old guard already feel things have gone too far.

"Our country has turned into a store of adverts and signs," grumbled Roberto Gomez, a 78-year old Communist Party member. "I would never have imagined this."

So far, several global communications agencies have assigned teams to Cuba but only WPP has opened up. It has yet to announce any business deals.

Experts say there is scope for the big agencies to step up marketing of Cuban-foreign joint ventures in rum, cigars and tourism. The government will also likely need market research as it seeks to boost exports and foreign investment to revitalize the moribund economy.

"The pace is set by the government, we can't really take many initiatives on our own," Sorrell said in an interview, adding that talks with Havana were "very constructive".

Marketing may itself become a revenue earner in a country with a highly educated workforce and low salaries. Freelance designer Fidel Lezcano, 28, said around 60 percent of his business came from abroad. Most recently, he designed a website for a Mexican craft store.

Still, designers face challenges, such as Internet access. A decent connection at home costs as much as $500 a month, so Lezcano works on his laptop at an open-air Wi-Fi hotspot.

But in a country that some believe has the highest number of artists per capita in the world, they hold an ace card.
Microsoft CEO visiting China as anti-trust probe nears third year

BEIJING/SINGAPORE, May 31 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp chief executive Satya Nadella is in Beijing this week, a company spokesman said on Tuesday, as China's anti-trust investigation of the U.S. software titan nears its third year.

Nadella is expected to meet government officials to discuss the probe, a source familiar with the matter said.

His visit is the second over the past month to China by a high-profile U.S. technology executive after Apple Inc chief executive Tim Cook's mid-May visit in a bid to reinvigorate sales. Cook met China's Vice Premier Wang Yang on May 17.

Microsoft is one of several foreign firms to have come under scrutiny as China seeks to enforce a 2008 anti-monopoly law, which some critics say is being used to unfairly target overseas businesses.

Revenues earned in the country for the firm also have come under pressure, as China seeks to replace western tech products with those manufactured locally.

The State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC), one of China's anti-monopoly regulators, conducted raids on Microsoft in mid-2014 relating to the anti-monopoly law.

The investigation relates to compatibility, bundle sales, and file verification issues related to Windows and Office software, according to Microsoft.

Nadella is no stranger to China. He visited in September 2014, after news of the investigation broke. At a meeting with a top regulator in Beijing at that time, Nadella promised to cooperate fully with authorities in their investigation. (http://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-china-idUSKCN0HN0EQ20140928)

But in a sign that the matter still had not been resolved, SAIC said in January that it had requested Microsoft to explain some issues that came to the fore from digital data obtained as part of an anti-trust probe.

A spokesman for Microsoft declined to confirm whether Nadella is meeting with government officials and said his China visit will include attending a Microsoft Developer day and Tsinghua Management School event.

He is a member of the advisory board of the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University, which counts President Xi Jinping among its alumni. Nadella hosted Xi at Microsoft's campus in Seattle in September when the Chinese president visited the United States for a week-long trip.

The Information Office of the State Council, China's cabinet which oversees SAIC, did not immediately respond to questions.

Nadella's visit also comes as Microsoft prepares to shut down its MSN China portal in June.
Native Americans move to frontlines in battle over voting rights

By Mica Rosenberg

BELCOURT, North Dakota, May 31 (Reuters) - Elvis Norquay, a member of the Chippewa Indian tribe, has lived most of his 58 years on North Dakota's remote Turtle Mountain reservation and says he's never had a problem voting.

That was before 2014, when he hitched a ride with a friend to cast a ballot in local and congressional elections and was turned away. Embarrassed, he asked why he couldn't vote. He was told he lacked proper ID under new state requirements. He has no phone, no current driver's license and his tribal ID lacks a street address.

"When we left, my friend said, 'that's not right'," said Norquay, who has lived on disability since 2002 in a rural county near the Canadian border.

Norquay is among a growing number of Native Americans embroiled in court battles over changes to voting laws that could influence the outcome of some tight races in the November 2016 presidential and congressional elections.

While the Native American population is small nationally, lawsuits involving tribes over voting problems have proliferated since the Supreme Court struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, a signature legislative achievement of the 1960s civil rights movement.

North Dakota is one of 17 states that have new voting restrictions in place since the last presidential contest, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.

Many of these changes have sparked lawsuits and accusations that black, Hispanic and other minority voters could be disenfranchised.

Five federal lawsuits involving Native Americans have been filed since the Supreme Court decision, including three this year alone.

Suits in North Dakota, Utah, South Dakota and Arizona claim new voting rules passed in majority Republican states are discriminatory and could reduce voting by tribal members, who tend to back Democrats. A suit in Alaska, for example, claimed the state violated federal rules by failing to translate voting materials for tribal voters.

The tribes say changes to voting rules in those states disproportionately affect Native Americans, an allegation the states and counties deny.

The Native American vote is not big enough to flip a safe Republican state such as North Dakota into the Democrat column in this year's presidential election, but Native Americans are a growing proportion of the population and a majority in some counties where increased voter turnout in recent years has tipped the balance in some congressional races.

In many states, the number of Native Americans is growing faster than the population as a whole. Between 2000 and 2010, the Native American population rose by 26.7 percent to 1.1 million, compared to 9.7 percent growth in America's overall population, census data showed.

Recent changes to voting laws, such as North Dakota's new voter ID law, are part of "a much broader, deliberate, and concerted effort by Republicans to reduce turnout among particular groups of voters on election day," said Pratt Wiley, head of voter protection issues at the Democratic Party in Washington.

"Those voters are more vulnerable today than they were before the Supreme Court invalidated a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in 2013," he said of Native Americans.

Republicans deny that voting law changes passed by Republican-dominated legislatures are discriminatory and say they are intended to reduce fraudulent votes.

"These are popular common sense laws to protect elections from fraud," said Lindsay Walters, national spokeswoman at the Republican National Committee.

TRIBAL ID CARDS

At issue in North Dakota are revisions pushed largely by Republican state legislators in 2013 and 2015 to a 2003 state elections law that eliminated a provision that had allowed people without proper identification such as Norquay to vote if they were recognized by a poll worker or if they signed an affidavit swearing to their identity.

Norquay and six other members of his tribe sued the secretary of state in January in U.S. District Court in North Dakota. They said they were refused the right to vote in November 2014 because many old tribal IDs such as Norquay's don't list a current residential address.

It says some tribal members can't afford a new tribal ID or struggle to obtain proper identification because there are no state offices that provide driver's licenses on the reservations.

Richard McCloud, chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, said widespread unemployment and poverty among tribal members meant that some struggle to afford the $10 needed to obtain a new tribal card.

"Ten dollars is three pounds of hamburger and some macaroni for a family," said McCloud at the tribe's headquarters on the reservation of about 4,274 people a few miles (km) south of the Canadian border.

"Maybe it's no big deal if you work, but it's a big deal to people that don't have access to $10," he said.

North Dakota's secretary of state, Al Jaeger, the only defendant in the suit, said in an interview that the law is not discriminatory and simplifies the voting process in the only state in the country that does not require voters to register ahead of an election. He said his office has spent heavily on ad campaigns to educate voters about what IDs are accepted.

Jaeger's deputy, Jim Silrum, said the ID requirements are not a barrier for the 97 percent of state residents with driver's licenses, an accepted form of ID, so the number of people affected by the changes is miniscule. Those with no driver's license, can get a non-driver state ID allowed at the polls from the motor vehicle department for free.

Jaeger and Silrum said they could not respond directly to an assertion in the lawsuit that residents on reservations have to travel long distances to obtain a state ID.

LITTLE EVIDENCE OF FRAUD

Republican state Representative Jim Kasper from Fargo repeated his party's argument that the changes were aimed at reducing the risk of voter fraud, but Silrum said there was little evidence of such irregularities. In the 2012 presidential election, there were only nine cases of people voting twice, but that was because they used the same ID rather than a lack of proper identification, he said.

State Representative Kylie Oversen, a Democrat from Grand Forks, said the changes could alter tight elections in favor of Republicans. She said Republicans pushed for the bill after Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012 by less than 3,000 votes.

In sparsely populated states such as North Dakota, with just 739,000 people, congressional elections have been decided by just a few thousand votes.

Rolette County, surrounding Norquay's reservation, is one of two counties in the state where about 75 percent of the population is Native American. Those two counties were the only places in North Dakota that gave President Barack Obama more than 70 percent of the vote in 2012.

After the changes in the ID law were implemented in North Dakota, voter turnout in Rolette County dropped by more than 12 percentage points between the 2010 and 2014 mid-term elections, more than any other county in the state, election data from the secretary of state's office shows.

"What has happened is the Native American vote has become something that can tip elections," said Jean Schroedel, a professor at Claremont Graduate University in California who studies Native American voting.

The Native American Rights Fund, a non-profit law firm representing Norquay and other members of his tribe in the lawsuit against the state, plans to file a motion by June 30 requesting that the court invalidate the changes to the ID law ahead of November's election, according to court documents.
Deutsche Boerse could become target if LSE deal fails -CEO

FRANKFURT, May 31 (Reuters) - Deutsche Boerse could become a takeover target if its planned $30 billion tie-up with London Stock Exchange were to fail, the German exchange operator's chief executive said.

Chicago-based rival CME Group, whose $33 billion market capitalisation is twice that of Deutsche Boerse's, could become a suitor, Carsten Kengeter told the ICFW Frankfurt international business journalists' club.

"I don't really think this will crystallise at the moment but they could articulate it if our merger (with LSE) is unsuccessful," Kengeter said in remarks released on Tuesday.

In 2013, CME had sent out feelers on a deal that were rebuffed by Deutsche Boerse, sources familiar with the situation have told Reuters.

CME declined to comment.

Deutsche Boerse and LSE aim to win shareholder backing for their merger in July and hope to have regulatory approval in time to close the deal in the first quarter of 2017.

Since taking the top job at Deutsche Boerse last June, Kengeter has been restructuring the exchange operator to bring more dynamism to the group, which has slipped down the rankings of global players over the last ten years as rivals merged.

Kengeter said they had looked at all the possible combinations in the world for Deutsche Boerse over the last year and the merger with LSE Group proved the most valuable.

But should the LSE deal fail, Deutsche Boerse would need to look around for other partners, Kengeter said.

There is still a chance that Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange Inc could return to disrupt the merger, after it shelved the idea of launching a rival bid for LSE earlier this month.

Takeover rules in Britain prevent ICE from renewing an approach for six months.

"The ICE now has the chance to prepare itself if it wants to step back onto the stage in November," Kengeter said.

FRANCE

Kengeter also said Paris-based exchange operator Euronext was using the French government to attack the Deutsche Boerse and LSE deal.

France's Finance and Economy ministers have said the Deutsche Boerse-LSE merger raises potential competition issues and could have an impact on prospects for financing the real economy in France and Europe.

"The French state has a 6 percent stake in Euronext, so a certain conflict is visible," Kengeter said at the ICFW event.

Euronext, which operates the Paris bourse as well as stock exchanges in Amsterdam, Brussels and Lisbon, joined forces with the New York Stock Exchange in 2007. The combined group was bought in 2013 by Intercontinental Exchange, which then sold off Euronext.

Euronext has a market capitalisation of about 2.7 billion euros ($3.01 billion), according to Thomson Reuters data, and no clearing operations of its own.

"When it comes to exchanges, Paris has met a fate you would not necessarily describe as positive," Kengeter said.

The combination of LSE and Deutsche Boerse would link Frankfurt and London, Europe's biggest capital market hub. It would also enhance volumes in Deutsche Boerse's clearing and settlement business and securities custody services.

Kengeter said the French exchange operator would be pleased to have such a link to London. "Paris would celebrate if our project were to fail," he said.
Six men sentenced to death in Bangladesh for bank heist blamed on militants

By Ruma Paul

DHAKA, May 31 (Reuters) - Six men were sentenced to death in Bangladesh on Tuesday for killing eight people during a bank robbery in Dhaka last year that police blamed on Islamist militants, the public prosecutor said.

Although no group claimed responsibility for the robbery, police blame two outlawed groups, Ansarullah Bangla Team and Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, which have been active in a recent surge of Islamist militant violence in Bangladesh.

Since early last year, almost 30 people have been killed in militant attacks, some of which were claimed by Islamic State and al Qaeda. The government denies either network has a presence in Bangladesh, blaming home-grown groups instead.

Public Prosecutor Khandaker Abdul Mannan said the defendants had confessed to being members of Ansarullah Bangla Team and Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen during the trial.

"They committed a heinous crime. They killed innocent people," Mannan told reporters outside the court after the sentencing.

The men were sentenced to death by hanging. One suspect was still on the run, Mannan said. Another man was sentenced to life imprisonment and two others were handed three-year jail terms. Two more were acquitted.

The gang set off crude bombs as it fled a branch of state-run Bangladesh Commerce Bank on the outskirts of Dhaka, the capital, with takings of 700,000 taka ($8,900). They had killed the manager to get the key to the vault.

Of the nine people killed, one was a robber who was chased and beaten to death by customers and bystanders.

Defence lawyer Faruq Ahmed said his clients would appeal the verdict and that they had been denied justice.

"The video footage of the robbery was not produced before the court," he said.

The authorities blame Ansarullah Bangla Team for a series of attacks since February last year in which five atheist bloggers, a publisher and two gay rights activists were hacked to death.

The hardline Islamist groups want to impose strict Islamic law on Bangladesh, whose population of 160 million are mostly moderate Muslims.

The government has launched a security crackdown that has seen dozens arrested. At least five Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen members, including the alleged mastermind of the robbery, have been killed in shootouts since November, according to the police.
With the most slaves globally, India improves response to the scourge: study

By Nita Bhalla

NEW DELHI, May 31 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - India has the most slaves in the world with over 18 million people trapped in debt bondage, forced into marriage, sold to brothels or born into servitude, according to a global slavery index, which noted an improved government response to the issue.

Forty percent of the world's estimated 45.8 million slaves are in India, although the scourge exists in all 167 nations surveyed by the Australian-based group Walk Free Foundation.

Fiona David, head of global research at Walk Free, said while estimates of slavery had risen by 15 percent in India from the previous figure due to better data collection, government efforts to curb such exploitation had also improved.

"The incidences of slavery in 2016 is larger than we thought. This doesn't necessarily mean the numbers have gone up since the last Global Slavery Index, but more because of a greater improvement in our measurements," David said.

"But what is new is that the Indian government is taking really exciting steps to bring all the different pieces of legislation together into one anti-trafficking act. It's a huge step forward."

The index found that India with a population of 1.3 billion had the largest number of slaves in absolute terms at 18.35 million, followed by China, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.

India however ranked fourth in the index in terms of prevalence of slavery as a percentage of the population - at 1.4 percent - after North Korea, Uzbekistan, Cambodia.

FORCED MARRIAGE, CHILD SOLDIERS

The third edition of the index was based on interviews U.S. pollster Gallup conducted with about 42,000 people globally - 14,000 of them in India.

All forms of slavery were prevalent in India, it said, including inter-generational bonded labour, forced child labour, commercial sexual exploitation, forced begging, forced recruitment into non-state armed groups and forced marriage.

Respondents admitted to being made to work to repay a loan taken by themselves or another family member.

Girls and women described being forced or duped into prostitution by traffickers and brothel owners, many of them locked in a room and repeatedly raped.

Domestic workers spoke of a lack of freedom, long working hours, little or no wages and physical and sexual abuse. Street beggars said they were made to beg by organised criminal gangs.

The report said a preference for sons in India had led to the widespread, yet illegal practice of aborting female foetuses - resulting in fewer females in some parts of the country and fuelling the trafficking of girls and women for brides.

"It is reported that in some instances, girls are forced into marriage and then used as unpaid labourers - local day labourers cost $140 for a season but a bride can cost only $100 as a once off payment," the Global Slavery Index report said.

In Indian states such as Kashmir, Jharkhand, Assam, Odisha and Chhattisgarh, children were being forcibly recruited by opposition groups as informers or trained to fight, it noted.

GOVERNMENT RESPONSE IMPROVES

The index, which also rates government response to tackling slavery based on support for victims, a strong criminal justice system and effective coordination and accountability, said India's response had improved.

It upgraded India's rating, praising efforts a national policy on domestic workers, the introduction of a new anti-trafficking law and an online platform to find missing children.

India unveiled a draft of its first-ever comprehensive anti-human trafficking law on Monday which focuses on greater protection for victims and provides for special courts.

The proposed law also provides for more shelters for victims as well as a fund to help them rebuild their lives, and calls for a special investigative agency to boost convictions.

David said this was a critical step towards curbing modern day slavery in India, but stressed that implementation was key.
UK to boost border security to prevent migrants crossing English Channel

LONDON, May 31 (Reuters) - Britain is investing in extra patrol boats and surveillance to try to prevent migrants crossing the English Channel, a spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron said on Tuesday.

Twenty people, including 18 Albanians, were rescued from the Channel over the weekend after their inflatable boat started taking on water.

Last year, extra fencing, cameras and police were deployed at the French terminal of the channel tunnel after passenger and freight services were severely delayed by migrants trying to stow away to Britain.

"We have taken measures at Calais which have improved the situation there: it is clear that people are now trying different routes and we will look to cut those off," Cameron's spokesman said.

"We take every necessary action to protect our border security and will continue to do so."

The government has said the Border Force, which currently has three vessels, will get extra patrol boats to help tackle smuggling of weapons, drugs and migrants. The first batch will be in place in the coming months, it said, but declined to specify how many boats that would include.

Border Force officers have been given extra powers to stop, board, divert and detain vessels and make arrests, and three maritime hubs will also be set up to improve intelligence.

"Our intent is to prevent people attempting to cross the Channel ... we are taking steps to improve our ability to combat them," the spokesman said.

Immigration is a key part of the debate over Britain's European Union membership ahead of a June 23 referendum.
Denmark will punish advocating criminal acts, ban "hate preachers"

COPENHAGEN, May 31 (Reuters) - Denmark will punish preachers who encourage criminal acts and blacklist "hate preachers" from Denmark, the government said Tuesday, after a documentary about imams advocating illegal acts sparked nationwide controversy in February.

The documentary showed hidden camera footage of imams in Danish mosques advocating the corporal punishment of children, stoning and whipping unfaithful spouses and requiring women to have sex with violent spouses.

"We will criminalize the sanctioning of punishable acts in religious education," said the church and culture minister, Bertel Haarder. Doing so would not compromise the Danish constitution or international conventions, he said.

"We have parallel societies in Denmark that unfortunately do great damage, especially to young people," he said, noting that Islamic State get more fighters from Denmark than any country apart from Belgium.

A list of persons known for preaching hate speech will also be made public, and the will be banned from entering Denmark. EU citizens will be put on a separate watch list.
With Africa trip, Turkey's Erdogan aims to quash influence of Islamic cleric

By Orhan Coskun and Tulay Karadeniz

ANKARA, May 31 (Reuters) - When Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan visits Uganda and Kenya this week, he will be seeking not only to increase trade but to stamp out the influence of an Islamic cleric whose network was long an instrument of Turkey's soft power in Africa.

Ankara officially declared the Hizmet organisation of preacher Fethullah Gulen, which claims millions of followers worldwide, a terrorist group this week, stepping up pressure on a movement Erdogan once looked to for help in spreading Turkish cultural influence and commerce overseas.

Erdogan now accuses his former ally of building a "parallel state" through followers in the police, judiciary, media and business, and of using it to try to overthrow him, allegations which Gulen denies. The president has made eradicating the Hizmet movement a top priority at home and abroad.

"This network organises itself swiftly in the countries it goes to by using Turkey's name and power, and opportunities are offered to it as a result," a senior Turkish official said ahead of Erdogan's departure for Uganda on Tuesday.

"Through these trips, it will be explained that this is a terrorist organization harmful to Turkey and that Turkey does not support it," the official said.

Erdogan has long described Hizmet as a terrorist grouping, but the formal designation by cabinet puts it on a par with Kurdish militants confronting the Turkish army and Islamic State fighters operating in the country.

The Hizmet movement had for decades underpinned Turkish efforts to deepen foreign ties, especially in the assertive opening to Africa, the Middle East and Asia after the Islamist-rooted AK Party founded by Erdogan took power in 2002.

Its schools, including close to a hundred in sub-Saharan Africa alone, have been a source of influence and revenue for the movement and paved the way for Turkish commercial interests to gain a foothold in new markets. Sons and daughters of political elites have been educated in their classrooms.

But differences between Erdogan and Gulen began to emerge over issues including a peace process with Kurdish militants in Turkey's southeast, and came to a head in December 2013 when police and prosecutors seen as sympathetic to Gulen opened a corruption investigation into Erdogan's inner circle.

Authorities have since taken over Gulenist media companies, seized a bank and purged police and judiciary of presumed followers. They have also taken their battle overseas, pressuring governments to shut down Hizmet schools and seeking Gulen's extradition from the United States, where he lives in self-imposed exile.

"We consider the Gulen network a national security threat and the issue of their influence regularly comes up in our discussions with African leaders among others," a source in Erdogan's office said. "The president will presumably convey this message to his counterparts over the coming days."

BATTLE FOR INFLUENCE

It is a struggle for influence with significant implications in trade as well as political relations.

Turkish exports to Africa have grown more than sevenfold since the AKP came to power, rising to $12.5 billion last year from $1.7 billion in 2002, with textiles, food, construction and infrastructure services among the key sectors.

Instability in the Middle East and economic weakness in Europe, Turkey's traditional export markets, have made trade with Africa all the more important. But Ankara faces new rivals like China, India and Brazil as it seeks to carve out influence on a continent long dominated by former colonial powers.

"The African continent is a big opportunity for Turkey because there are many problems in the Middle East ... affecting Turkey's economic projects," said Fouad Farhaoui of the Ankara-based USAK think-tank.

Uganda and Kenya were particularly important to Turkey in part for their energy, agriculture and infrastructure needs, where Turkish firms have expertise, Farhaoui said, but also because of Kenya's role in regional security.

Turkey is a key ally of the Somali government as it tries to rebuild after more than two decades of conflict, with Erdogan the first non-African leader to visit in nearly 20 years when he went there in 2011. Good relations with Kenya, also trying to secure Somalia's stability, are vital for that Turkish effort.

A second Turkish official acknowledged that the question of Gulen had become a thorn in relations with some African states, but said Turkey would continue to seek the closure of Hizmet schools and their replacement with Turkish state-backed institutions. A government source said there was at least one Hizmet school in Uganda and four in Kenya.

The schools are generally very well equipped and funded and teach a secular curriculum in English.

The deputy head of the Journalists and Writers Foundation (GYV), a Gulen-affiliated group which has spoken on behalf of the Hizmet movement in the past, said previous efforts to close institutions had caused a backlash in Africa and met with limited success.

"African government officials send their kids to these schools ... They have their own intelligence and allow the schools accordingly," Deputy Chairman Erkam Tufan Aytav said.
Greece arrests group trying to smuggle migrants abroad

ATHENS, May 31 (Reuters) - Greece has arrested a group of men who tried to smuggle a dozen migrants abroad in a truck from a port city connecting Greece to Italy, the coast guard said on Tuesday.

The four Greek nationals, including the driver, were arrested early on Monday "for forming a criminal group, for facilitating the transfer of undocumented foreigners abroad and for exposing them to danger," the coast guard said.

The 12 migrants, who Greek media said were Somali and Iraqi, were also arrested. The Athens News Agency said the truck had set off from the northern city of Thessaloniki, Greece's second-biggest, and was discovered in the western port city of Igoumenitsa.

In previous years, hundreds of migrants made desperate - and often unsuccessful - attempts to board ferries to Italy from Igoumenitsa as well as from the port of Patras further south by hanging on to the underside of cargo trucks.

That changed in 2015 when about a million migrants and refugees, mostly Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis who arrived in Greece from Turkey, took the easier overland route to western and northern Europe through Greece's border with Macedonia.
Philippines president-elect says won't rely on United States

By Neil Jerome Morales

DAVAO CITY, Philippines, May 31 (Reuters) - Philippines President-elect Rodrigo Duterte said on Tuesday his country would not rely on long-term security ally the United States, signaling greater independence from Washington in dealing with China and the disputed South China Sea.

The Philippines has traditionally been one of Washington's staunchest supporters in its standoff with Beijing over the South China Sea, a vital trade route where China has built artificial islands, airstrips and other military facilities.

Duterte, the tough-talking mayor of Davao City who swept to victory in a May 9 election, has backed multilateral talks to settle rows over the South China Sea that would include the United States, Japan and Australia as well as claimant nations.

He has also called on China, which claims most of the sea, to respect the 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone granted to coastal states under international law.

Asked by reporters if he would push for bilateral talks with China, Duterte replied: "We have this pact with the West, but I want everybody to know that we will be charting a course of our own.

"It will not be dependent on America. And it will be a line that is not intended to please anybody but the Filipino interest."

Asked about Duterte's comments at a State Department briefing, Daniel Russel, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, said the United States had "no problem whatsoever" with bilateral talks among the South China Sea claimants.

Russel noted that some disputes in the South China Sea were by their nature multilateral and could not be resolved on a bilateral basis, but added "those that can, we're all for it."

Duterte made his comments as he was unveiling his cabinet line-up a day after a joint session of Congress declared him the election winner. He formally takes over as president on June 30.

Key ministerial appointments went mainly to conventional choices, a decision likely to allay nerves among foreign and domestic investors about a lurch away from reforms that have generated robust economic growth.

They also may point to a bid to resolve differences over the South China Sea.

The Philippines, Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia and Taiwan have overlapping claims to waters rich in oil and gas and through which trillions of dollars' worth of trade pass each year.

Duterte's pick for foreign secretary, Perfecto Yasay, has sounded a conciliatory note.

"I don't think that there is another way of resolving this dispute except talking to each other," Yasay told reporters this week. "We certainly would like to make sure that we are able to resume bilateral talks because these are necessary."

NOT SO CLEAR CUT

Muddying the picture somewhat was the choice of Nicanor Faeldon, a former marine who led a coup bid about a decade ago, as head of the customs bureau, the country's second-largest agency in terms of revenue.

In December, Faeldon took a group of Filipino protesters to a disputed island in the South China Sea that is held by the Philippines, triggering an angry response from Beijing.

Before Duterte's election, the Philippines also took the dispute to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, although China does not recognise the case. A ruling is expected in the coming weeks.

"I am waiting for the arbitration," Duterte said of the process, when asked about investment prospects with China.

"It will impact on us in so many fronts ... I would like to wait for this, then, with the advice of the cabinet, I might be able to proceed. But you know, I am not ready to go to war. It will just result in a massacre."

Duterte, 71, named a former school classmate, Carlos Dominguez, as finance minister, and an economics professor, Ernesto Pernia, as economic planning minister.

"I can assure you they are all men of integrity and honesty," Duterte said in Davao, where he was mayor for more than two decades before being elected president.

Dominguez, who was mining and farm minister in two previous governments, hails from a wealthy family that has interests in real estate and hotels, while the U.S.-educated Pernia is a former lead economist for the Asian Development Bank.

"We are very excited about this cabinet," said Perry Pe, president of the Management Association of the Philippines. "They will hit the ground running from the first day."

Duterte's defiance of political tradition has drawn comparisons with U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

His "man-of-the-people" demeanour tapped into voters' disappointment at the ruling elite's failure to tackle poverty and inequality despite average economic growth of more than 6 percent under President Benigno Aquino.

Duterte condones execution-style killings of criminals, shudders at the thought of wearing a tie or socks, and has vowed not to work until after noon when he becomes president.
Fear for civilians as IS halts Iraqi army at gates of Falluja

By Maher Nazeh and Saif Hameed

CAMP TARIQ, Iraq, May 31 (Reuters) - Islamic State fighters halted an Iraqi army assault on the city of Falluja with a counter-attack at its southern gates on Tuesday, while the United Nations warned of peril for civilians trapped in the city and used by militants as human shields.

The Iraqi army's assault on Falluja has begun what is expected to be one of the biggest battles ever fought against Islamic State, with the government backed by world powers including the United States and Iran, and determined to win back the first major Iraqi city that fell to the group in 2014.

A week after Baghdad announced the start of the assault, its troops advanced in large numbers into the city limits for the first time on Monday, pouring into rural territory on its southern outskirts but stopping short of the main built-up area.

Baghdad describes the assault to retake the city as a potential turning point in its U.S.-backed campaign to defeat the ultra-hardline Sunni Muslim militants who rule a self-proclaimed caliphate across much of Iraq and Syria.

Falluja, where U.S. troops fought the biggest battles of their own 2003-2011 occupation against Islamic State's precursors, is the militants' closest bastion to Baghdad, believed to be the base from which they have waged a campaign of suicide bombings on the capital less than an hour's drive away.

Retaking it would give the government control of the main population centres in the fertile Euphrates River valley west of the capital for the first time in more than two years.

But the assault is also a test of the army's ability to capture territory while protecting civilians. Although most of Falluja's population is believed to have fled during six months of siege, 50,000 people are still thought to be trapped inside with limited access to food, water or healthcare.

"HUMAN CATASTROPHE UNFOLDING"

"A human catastrophe is unfolding in Falluja. Families are caught in the crossfire with no safe way out," said Jan Egeland, Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, one of the organisations helping families displaced form the city.

"Warring parties must guarantee civilians safe exit now, before it's too late and more lives are lost," he said.

The United Nations said there were reports that the militants were using several hundred families as human shields in the city centre, a tactic they have employed in other locations in Iraq. It said 3,700 people had managed to escape the city in the past week.

"Most people able to get out come from the outskirts of Falluja. For some time militants have been controlling movements, we know civilians have been prevented from fleeing," said Ariane Rummery, spokeswoman for UN refugee agency UNHCR.

"There are also reports from people who left in recent days that they are being required to move with ISIL within Falluja," she said, using an acronym for Islamic State, also known as ISIS or Daesh.

Soldiers from Iraq's elite Rapid Response Team stopped their advance overnight about 500 meters (yards) from the al-Shuhada district, the southeastern part of city's main built-up area, an army commander and a police officer said.

MILITANTS DUG IN

"Our forces came under heavy fire, they are well dug in in trenches and tunnels," said the commander speaking in Camp Tariq, the rear army base south of Falluja, 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad.

Reuters journalists in the area could hear explosions from artillery shelling and air strikes from a U.S.-led coalition supporting the Iraqi forces.

A staff member of Falluja's main hospital said it received reports of 32 civilians killed on Monday. Medical sources had reported that the death toll in the city stood at about 50 -- 30 civilians and 20 militants -- during the first week of the offensive which had yet to involve street fighting.

Foreign aid organisations are not present in Falluja but are providing help in camps to those who manage to exit.

Falluja is the second-largest Iraqi city still under control of the militants, after Mosul, their de facto capital in the north that had a pre-war population of about 2 million.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the assault on Falluja on May 22 after a spate of bombings that killed more than 150 people in one week in Baghdad, the worst death toll so far this year. A series of bombings claimed by Islamic State also hit Baghdad on Monday, killing more than 20 people.

In Washington, U.S. officials said the Falluja operation would take time to complete, without giving a timetable.

"The Falluja offensive is tough ... They have faced a lot of heavy fighting in the past couple of days, machine gun fire, artillery fire, not to mention the constant threat of IEDs," Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said on Tuesday.

POLITICAL PRESSURE ON ABADI

The worsening security situation in the capital has added to political pressure on Abadi, a member of Iraq's Shi'ite majority who is trying to hold a ruling coalition together in the face of public protests against an entrenched political class.

He has called for politicians to set aside their differences and rally behind the army during the Falluja offensive.

Shi'ite militia groups backed by Iran are also taking part in the offensive against Islamic State, but are holding back from participating in the main assault on Falluja to avoid inflaming sectarian tension.

Reuters journalists saw hundreds of Shi'ite militia fighters rallying at one location near Saqlawiya, a village north of Fallluja still under IS control.

The United States is leading a coalition conducting air strikes in support of the Iraqi government offensive, and says it is having success in rolling back Islamic State.

In neighbouring Syria, U.S. forces have also aided mainly Kurdish fighters who have seized territory from the militants, as has the Russian-backed government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Falluja has been a bastion of the Sunni insurgency that fought both the U.S. occupation of Iraq and the Shi'ite-led Baghdad government that took over after the fall of dictator Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, in 2003.
Turkey counts cost of conflict as Kurdish militant battle rages on

By Daren Butler

ISTANBUL, May 31 (Reuters) - Turkey's conflict with Kurdish militants, said to have killed more than 5,000 people since July, has also destroyed at least 6,000 buildings that will cost approaching 1 billion lira ($340 million) to rebuild, according to a government estimate.

Large swathes of towns in the mainly Kurdish southeast have been devastated by daily shelling, blasts and gunfire in battles that are still raging, even as President Tayyip Erdogan says the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) is in its "death throes".

Turkish warplanes struck overnight at PKK gun positions and shelters in Semdinli by the border with Iraq and Iran, the army said. The fighting, at its most intense in two decades, resumed after a two-year-old ceasefire collapsed last July.

A day earlier, roadside bombs killed at least six people in two attacks on security forces in the southeast. Air strikes in northern Iraq's Metina area have killed 14 PKK fighters since last Wednesday, the army said.

As fighting continued, the government of new Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said 6,320 buildings, or 11,000 dwellings, had been destroyed in five areas alone: Sur in Diyabakir, Silopi, Cizre and Idil in Sirnak province and Yuksekova in Hakkari.

"We now face a process of planning reconstruction and repairing damaged houses," Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said after a cabinet meeting on Monday, estimating the cost of rebuilding in the areas at 855 million lira ($290 million).

Lawmaker Dengir Mir Mehmet Firat of the pro-Kurdish HDP was dismissive of the reconstruction plans in ancient places like Sur and Cizre, where the "historic fabric had been wiped away".

"They are deluding themselves and trying to cover up their crimes," he told Reuters. "If they are think they can win over the local people like this they are wrong. The destruction of these towns has caused an emotional rupture."

MOSQUES AND CHURCHES DAMAGED

Some 338 civilians, including 78 children, have died in the conflict since last summer, and curfews violated the rights of 1.6 million people, Turkey's Human Rights Foundation said. Ankara says 355,000 people have migrated to other parts of Turkey.

"These are the last death throes of the separatist terror group," Erdogan told a crowd waving Turkish flags and chanting "damn the PKK" in the Aegean coastal city of Izmir overnight.

Military sources say 5,000 PKK militants have been killed since the conflict resumed, around half in southeast Turkey and half in northern Iraq, where the PKK has bases. They put the death toll for Turkish security forces at around 500.

The PKK, designated a terrorist group by Turkey and its Western allies, launched its insurgency in 1984 and more than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

Alongside destruction of housing, nine mosques and two churches in Sur alone have suffered damage, a local official told journalists taken under escort to the area on Tuesday.

The 500-year-old Kursunlu mosque's facade is pockmarked by gunfire, its interior burned out and sandbags in its windows testament to fighting there, a Reuters witness said.

The Roman-era basalt walls which surround Sur district were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in July 2015. Weeks later, the armed conflict was reignited.
REUTERS SUMMIT-Poland says lifting Russia sanctions now would weaken EU authority

By Wiktor Szary and Pawel Sobczak

WARSAW, May 31 (Reuters) - The European Union must not ease sanctions on Russia until the so-called Minsk peace agreement is fully implemented, as this would weaken the bloc's position in its relations with Moscow, Poland's Deputy Foreign Minister Konrad Szymanski told Reuters.

Szymanski's comments come amid suggestions that the EU may begin to ease its sanctions on Russia later this year.

While diplomats in Brussels expect the 28-nation bloc to extend the sanctions, which were introduced over Moscow's role in the conflict in Ukraine and expire in July, they also say that intensifying high-level contacts with Russia two years after it annexed Crimea from Ukraine may signal a thaw.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker's plans to meet President Vladimir Putin in June in Russia. Juncker wrote to Putin in November suggesting closer trade ties between the EU and the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union.

Moscow may have also given EU states advocating sanctions relief more arguments by last week returning to Kiev jailed Ukrainian military pilot Nadezhda Savchenko in a prisoner exchange welcomed by Western politicians.

"The sanctions on Russia were imposed not because of Nadezhda Savchenko's capture, but because of a much wider problem, linked to Russia's aggression on Ukraine," Szymanski said at the Reuters Eastern Europe Investment Summit in Warsaw, in comments authorised for release on Tuesday.

"We cannot afford to back down in this process, which has to last longer, and which may bring about a moderation of the Russian position. We would undermine this whole experiment, this attempt to influence Russia in this way."

"The European Union's authority ... in the future depends on the successful influencing Russia through sanctions," Szymanski said.

A former Soviet satellite, Poland has been a vocal critic of Russia's actions in Ukraine, and has repeatedly called on NATO to station troops on its territory in response to what it sees as Moscow's renewed assertiveness in the region.

Germany and France, on the other hand, want dialogue to avoid a further worsening of ties with Moscow, Europe's main energy provider. Germany's foreign minister said on Tuesday it was "no secret" that some EU countries were sceptical about extending the sanctions.
Peru's illegal gold miners back Fujimori's vow to end crackdown

By Mitra Taj

HUEPETUHE, Peru, May 31 (Reuters) - In this wildcat gold mining town in the Peruvian Amazon, the boom is over.

A government crackdown on illegal mines at the end of a decade-long gold rush has shuttered restaurants, quieted the town's muddied streets and slowed the flow of migrants from poor Andean towns seeking the jungle's riches.

But the residents of Huepetuhe, whose town square is dominated by a golden statue of a muscular miner, see a shimmer of hope in presidential election front-runner Keiko Fujimori's promise to decriminalize the makeshift mines at the heart of the region's economy.

Fujimori says she will repeal laws aimed at protecting the environment that ban the use of dredges and heavy machinery by miners in rivers and wetlands. She is also offering miners cheap credit and tax exemptions while they form tax-paying businesses.

The pledge is part of Fujimori's strategy of locking in support from key groups by promising specific reforms, helping give her a lead of more than 5 percentage points over rival Pedro Pablo Kuczynski ahead of the run-off election on Sunday.

"I'm going to vote for Keiko, but only because of that proposal," said Ronald Vizarreta, a 29-year old clerk who buys gold directly from miners on a muddy road between Huepetuhe and the ravine where the work.

Vizarreta said he has long opposed Fujimori and the right-wing populist movement she has steered since her father and authoritarian former president Alberto Fujimori was imprisoned for crimes committed during his 1990-2000 government.

But unless Fujimori wins, Vizarreta said, corrupt police will continue to hunt for bribes in Huepetuhe backed by a raft of government controls, from fuel rations to bans on mercury. "Everything is illegal now."

Wildcat miners in Huepetuhe and other towns in the remote rainforest region of Madre de Dios said President Ollanta Humala betrayed them by lumping them together with the hardened criminals who now control a flourishing black market for gold instead of folding them into the legal economy as promised.

Authorities have blown up machinery in dozens of raids on illegal mining camps and seized more than a tonne of suspicious gold from export companies during Humala's term.

"No one ever came to teach us how to mine sustainably," said Luis Elsin, a 26-year-old miner who migrated to Huepetuhe when he was 16. In 2014, police destroyed Elsin's $2,000 investment in two motors that helped him pump river beds for flecks of gold.

Elsin said he now loses one day a week lining up at multiple fueling stations to evade the region's 10-gallon-per-person daily cap on gasoline purchases. He also plans to vote for Fujimori on Sunday.

'PERSECUTED'

Humala aggressively courted wildcat miners at the last election in 2011, helping him narrowly defeat Fujimori during her first presidential bid. She took the lesson to heart.

"Today they're persecuted, they're under investigation, and unfortunately at times they can't even buy their most essential tool - dynamite," Fujimori said recently, flanked by representatives of Peru's more than 400,000 small-scale miners.

She called Humala's bid to formalize wildcat miners a failure. Of more than 70,000 who signed up in the government's program, less than 1,000 now run legal operations - and none in the region of Madre de Dios.

But environmentalists say Fujimori's proposal gives a free pass to miners who have already destroyed 100,000 hectares (247,105 acres) of rainforest and polluted Amazonian rivers with so much mercury that local fish are no longer safe to eat.

Despite the crackdown, miners continued to expand deeper into nature and indigenous reserves, and regularly threaten and attack park rangers, said Victor Hugo Macedo, an official in Madre de Dios with Peru's park system.

"What we don't want is this, what's happening in Madre de Dios," Kuczynski told Fujimori at a presidential debate as he held up an aerial photo of rainforest pocked with illegal mining pits. "That's going to happen in multiples if you follow through with what you say."

Kuczynski, a 77-year-old former prime minister and Wall Street investor, has proposed creating a state-controlled bank to offer wildcat miners a competitive price for their ore if they can show they adhere to environmental and labor standards.

Fujimori denies she will let miners expand unfettered in the Amazon and promised new legislation within 100 days if she becomes president.

But she has said little about how she plans to safeguard the environment. She promised new technologies to curb the use of mercury, widely used to separate flecks of gold from dirt and rock, and an "aggressive reforestation" program for Madre de Dios. Her adviser Jose Carlos Ramirez said it would involve timber and agricultural concessions on degraded land.

Easing restrictions on wildcatters would likely boost gold production from Peru, the world's sixth biggest supplier.

In the first three months of 2016, wildcat miners in Madre de Dios produced an estimated 5.5 tonnes of gold, nearly as much as output from Peru's biggest legal mine, Yanacocha, according to data from the energy and mines ministry.

But a lack of clarity on what is in store after Humala's term ends on July 28 worries Swiss refiner Metalor Technologies SA.
Panic over a label on a toy box caused a delay on a flight from Cyprus to Israel when an aircraft cleaner thought it was a warning of a bomb.

The Aegean Airlines flight, bound for Tel Aviv from Larnaca, was searched by police at the Cypriot airport on Tuesday after a cleaner found a label with the word 'booba' on it in the Latin alphabet.

'Booba' means doll in Hebrew, which the maintenance man mistook for the word 'bomba', or 'bomb' in Greek.

An Aegean Airlines plane had to be searched by police after a cleaner mistook the Hebrew word 'booba', meaning doll, for the Greek word 'bomba', which means bomb

Larnaca Airport police searched the aircraft but no explosives were discovered.

'Cyprus' civil aviation authority checked it and there was no problem. There was a small delay, but the alarm was lifted immediately,' an Aegean Airlines spokeswoman said in Athens.

Europe is on high alert for terrorism and this incident is the latest in a long line of recent security scares in the aviation industry.

On May 23, a Turkish Airlines aircraft at Istanbul's main airport was evacuated and searched after a note threatening a bomb attack was found on board.

All 134 people, including the crew, who had been on board the flight from Ataturk Airport to the central Turkish city of Kayseri disemarked, a spokesman said at the time.

Another plane was later arranged for them and the bomb threat was later revealed to be a hoax.

A spokesperson confirmed there was a 'small delay' for passengers flying out of Larnaca airport due to the bomb scare (file photo)

On May 5 a furious passenger on board a holiday flight from the Canaries sparked 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 that took off from Tenerife en route to the Spanish mainland.

Spanish newspapers reported he caused a commotion when stewards would not serve him a beer.

He then claimed he had a bomb that 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.

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: 'The crew of this flight from Tenerife to Santiago (May 5) requested police assistance upon landing at Santiago after a passenger became disruptive in-flight, who was removed and detained by police.
Deadly week in Mediterranean as smugglers pack boats before Ramadan - UNHCR

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA, May 31 (Reuters) - At least 880 migrants and refugees died trying to cross the Mediterranean last week, the U.N. refugee agency said on Tuesday, amid speculation that people smugglers may be trying to maximise their income before Ramadan begins.

This year is proving to be particularly deadly, with 2,510 lives lost in shipwrecks and capsizes, compared with 1,855 in the same period in 2015, UNHCR spokesman William Spindler said.

Nearly 204,000 people have made the perilous crossing to reach Europe so far this year, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said.

Citing reports from survivors interviewed in Italy, it said smugglers may be trying to maximize income their before the start of the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast from dawn to dusk. Ramadan is expected to begin around June 6 or 7.

"At the moment smugglers are packing people on boats that are barely sea-worthy and that in many cases are not meant to make the crossing. So what happens is that as soon as they depart from the shore they call for rescue and then the rescue services come and rescue them," Spindler told a briefing.

"In fact, it's a race against time to get there before these boats sink, and on some occasions they get there too late."

The Italian coastguard has rescued 14,000 people and is coordinating search and rescue operations with vessels of other countries, Spindler said.

The flow has dropped between Turkey and Greece since an agreement in which Turkey has agreed to help stop illegal migrants reaching Europe in return for accelerated EU accession talks, visa liberalisation, and financial aid.

Boats departing from the shores west of Tripoli in Libya often carry more than 600 people and are sometimes towed by larger fishing boats, a dangerous practice, Spindler said.

"The North Africa-Italy route is dramatically more dangerous: 2,119 of the deaths reported to far this year have been among people making this journey, making for odds of dying as high as one in 23," Spindler said.

Sub-Saharan Africans crossing from Libya are mostly Nigerians and Gambians, but also include Somalis and Eritreans fleeing war or persecution.

"We need to crack down on smugglers but simply doing that is not going to work if we don't offer people an alternative. The reason why so many people are taking to sea in these conditions is that they have no choice," Spindler said.

"Whether they want to come for economic reasons to Europe or whether they are fleeing war and persecution, there is no other legal alternative open to them."

European countries agreed last year to re-locate 160,000 asylum seekers from Greece and Italy, but fewer than 2,000 have been relocated, figures show.
California governor endorses Clinton, calls Trump dangerous

WASHINGTON, May 31 (Reuters) - California Governor Jerry Brown on Tuesday endorsed Hillary Clinton for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, saying it was the only way to keep Republican Donald Trump out of the White House.

"I have decided to cast my vote for Hillary Clinton because I believe this is the only path forward to win the presidency and stop the dangerous candidacy of Donald Trump," Brown said in a letter to California Democrats and independents posted online.

Brown, a popular Democrat who has steered the nation's most populous state on a centrist path, praised Clinton's rival, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, but noted that she had won about 3 million more votes and hundreds more delegates.

"In other words, Clinton's lead is insurmountable and Democrats have shown - by millions of votes - that they want her as their nominee."

California is the biggest prize of the six states that hold presidential nominating contests on June 7, with 475 delegates.

Clinton has secured 2,310 delegates, 73 short of the number needed to clinch her party's nomination for the Nov. 8 election.

As he noted in his letter, Brown himself waged a populist presidential campaign in 1992, losing to then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, with themes similar to many espoused by Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist.

Running on the slogan "We the People," Brown railed against the influence of money in Washington and said politicians were "bought and paid for."

But Brown said Democrats need to stop fighting each other so they can focus on beating Trump, who he said presents a danger to immigrants, the environment and world peace.

"The stakes couldn't be higher. Our country faces an existential threat from climate change and the spread of nuclear weapons. A new Cold War is on the horizon," Brown wrote.

"Hillary Clinton, with her long experience, especially as secretary of state, has a firm grasp of the issues and will be prepared to lead our country on day one."
A former director at Barclays bank has been arrested by authorities in the U.S. accused of giving a plumber insider tips in return for a new bathroom.

Steven McClatchey, 58, was charged in a criminal complaint filed in Manhattan federal court with conspiracy, wire fraud and securities fraud after the plumber, Gary Pusey, secretly pleaded guilty on Friday and agreed to co-operate with authorities.

McClatchey, who worked at the British bank in its Manhattan offices from December 2008 to December 2015, was arrested on Long Island, where he lives.

Former Barclays bank director Steven McClatchey, who has been arrested by authorities in the U.S. accused of giving a plumber insider tips in return for a new bathroom

He was released later in the day following a court hearing.

The charges were announced by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who has overseen an insider trading crackdown that has resulted in 102 people being charged and 78 being convicted since 2009.

That push has suffered recent setbacks following a 2014 appellate ruling that limited the scope of insider trading laws, resulting in charges being dropped or dismissed against 14 defendants.

According to the complaint and a related U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit filed on Tuesday, McClatchey was responsible for tracking all potential deals involving the bank.

He began tipping Pusey, a friend he met through boating, as early as 2013, enabling the plumber to execute trades ahead of merger announcements involving 11 companies, including Forest Oil Corp and PetSmart Inc.

McClatchey, who worked at the British bank in its Manhattan offices, pictured, from December 2008 to December 2015, was arrested on Long Island, where he lives

In exchange, Pusey paid thousands of dollars in cash to McClatchey, sometimes placing cash in a gym bag that McClatchey brought with him to a marina in Freeport, New York, and provided free bathroom remodeling services, authorities said.

While Barclays was not identified by name in court papers, the bank confirmed it was the British investment bank that had employed McClatchey.

In a statement, Barclays said it has cooperated fully with authorities, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the SEC 'since learning about this incident involving a former employee.'
Carl Icahn acquires 'large position' in Allergan, backs CEO

May 31 (Reuters) - Billionaire investor Carl Icahn said on Tuesday he had acquired a "large position" in Botox-maker Allergan Plc and that he was very supportive of Chief Executive Officer Brent Saunders.

Shares of Allergan rose 0.8 percent to $237.85 in mid-morning trading.

Icahn, who did not disclose details of the stake, said in a statement on his website that he was confident in Saunders' ability to enhance value for all Allergan shareholders. (http://bit.ly/1UatnIM)

Allergan has "no reason to believe that this investment was made for purposes of influencing the actions of management or control of the company," spokesman Mark Marmur said in an emailed statement.

Saunders has come close to Icahn before. Saunders became CEO of Allergan after it was bought by Actavis, where he had been CEO, and then changed its name. Saunders had moved into the top spot at Actavis from the CEO job at Forest Labs, which Actavis acquired.

Icahn had a Forest Labs stake and was agitating for change when the company's long-time management ceded control and Saunders took the CEO job in 2013. Icahn said he sold the Forest position when the company changed hands.

Allergan is near to closing the sale of its generic business to Teva Pharmaceutical Industries. Once that happens, Saunders has said the company will be able to make acquisitions of more than $1 billion. Allergan needs to pay off more debt before it will make even bigger deals, he has said.

The move comes a few months after Allergan's plans to be bought by Pfizer fell apart. In that so-called "inversion" deal, Pfizer would have moved its headquarter to Dublin, where Allergan is based, in order to lower the taxes it pays in the United States.

Icahn, who launched a $150 million political action committee advocating tax reform to eliminate such deals, had said the Pfizer-Allergan tie-up would result in the loss of the country's 10th largest company to Ireland.
African envoys say Egyptian called sub-Saharan Africa "dogs and slaves"

NAIROBI, May 31 (Reuters) - Egypt has become embroiled in a dispute with African diplomats after they accused an Egyptian official of referring to "dogs and slaves" in remarks about sub-Saharan Africa at a United Nations conference in Nairobi.

The diplomats sent a formal complaint to Kenya's foreign ministry after the alleged remark at the U.N. Environmental Assembly last week, Yvonne Khamati, chairwoman of the African Diplomatic Corps Technical Committee, said on Tuesday.

Egypt's foreign ministry said it had no evidence of any such remarks by a Cairo official and would investigate, adding that it rejected "flimsy accusations against the Egyptian state and people that cast doubt on its African identity."

Khamati, a Kenyan diplomat who wrote the letter, said the remark was made following a disagreement on resolutions involving Gaza.

"During our consultations with Egypt, the head of the Egyptian delegation and current President of AMCEN dismissed our concerns by informing that they would speak in their sovereign capacity and to that extent, referred to Sub-Saharan Africa as DOGS AND SLAVES, in Arabic," said the letter dated May 29.

The term AMCEN in the letter, which has been circulated widely on social media, refers to the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment.

In its statement, the Egyptian foreign ministry said: "It is completely unacceptable to make the mistake of generalising and making flimsy accusations against the Egyptian state and people that cast doubt on its African identity."

It asked Cairo's embassy in Nairobi to "a strongly worded statement ... expressing Egypt's rejection and censure for this breach of authority" by Khamati and demanded to see the official minutes of the meeting.
Tax hike delay signals Japan giving up on fiscal reform

By Leika Kihara

TOKYO, June 1 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is essentially giving up on fiscal reform by postponing a sales tax hike for two and a half years, putting Japan's credibility on the line and heightening the risk of a credit downgrade that could lift corporate borrowing costs.

With the central bank's massive bond buying hammering yields near zero, few in the market expect the tax delay to trigger an immediate bond sell-off and a dangerous spike in the cost of financing Japan's massive public debt.

But a second delay in less than two years - expected to be announced by Abe at a Wednesday news briefing - is a major setback for Japan's drive to get its fiscal house in order, and makes it nearly impossible to achieve a target of turning its budget deficit into a surplus by the 2020 fiscal year, analysts say.

The world's third-biggest economy barely averted recession in the first quarter, and analysts expect only feeble growth, if any, this quarter as weak emerging market demand and slow wage growth weigh on exports and consumption.

"It's become clear Abe is not so serious about fiscal discipline," said Masamichi Adachi, senior economist at JPMorgan Securities Japan. "The budget balance target was considered ambitious to begin with and now looks to be given up or pushed back until a few years later."

Some analysts say Abe is effectively abandoning the tax hike by delaying it to October 2019 as he's unlikely to still be in office then. His term as head of the ruling party, and thus premier, expires in September of that year.

"It's essentially a freezing of the tax hike plan," said Katsutoshi Inadome, fixed income strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley. "It might be interpreted as a message that Abe won't implement fiscal reform during his tenure."

CREDIT RISK

Standard & Poor's, which cut Japan's sovereign rating to A+ last year, said it made "some sense" for Abe to delay the tax hike given anaemic economic growth. But it warned that Japan needs to speed up structural reforms given the limited space to deploy fiscal or monetary stimulus.

If Japan keeps dragging its feet on fiscal reform it may face a sovereign rating cut that pushes up the cost of overseas funding for some companies, according to SMBC Nikko Securities.

"A two-notch cut to A- would mean the ceiling for corporate bond ratings would be set at that level. Corporate funding conditions may worsen as a result," it said in a research note.

Japan's government debt, at nearly 250 percent of GDP, is the biggest among major industrialised nations as tax revenues fall short of meeting ballooning social welfare costs for a rapidly ageing society.

Raising the sales tax is considered crucial to reining in debt, but has been a taboo for politicians. After an increase to 8 percent from 5 percent in April 2014 tipped Japan into recession, Abe postponed a further hike to 10 percent planned for October 2015 for 18 months.

Mindful of the need to reassure markets that Japan is serious about fixing its finances, its leaders including Abe have maintained a pledge to turn the primary balance - the budget balance net of interest payments - into surplus by 2020.

But achieving the target has been a challenge even without the tax hike delay. A government estimate shows the budget balance would be 6.5 trillion yen ($58.6 billion) in the red in fiscal 2020 even if the economy expands a nominal 3 percent.

Analysts say that's an unrealistic assumption for an economy that posted nominal growth of just 1.6 percent in 2014 and 2.5 percent in 2015.

MORE 'GROWTH' SPENDING?

Finance Minister Taro Aso said on Tuesday Japan will stick to the budget target even if the tax hike is delayed, a move that could shave roughly 5 trillion yen off annual tax revenues.

But the government is unclear on how to do this.

Lawmakers are opposed to slashing spending on childcare and subsidies to low-income pensioners, which were to be paid for by revenues from the tax hike. The government is even considering deploying fresh spending of up to 10 trillion yen to spur growth.

Abe's solution seems to be to keep reflating growth in the hope that rising corporate profits would lead to higher tax revenues - enough to plug the gap left by delaying the sales tax hike.

"Without growth, it's impossible to achieve fiscal consolidation," said Etsuro Honda, an economic adviser to Abe. "The budget target could still be achieved as long as GDP expands to the full and consumer sentiment stabilises, which would offset the blow from the 2019 sales tax hike."

With global headwinds intensifying and the yen's rebound clouding the outlook for corporate profits, however, even advocates of Abe's reflationist policies have their doubts.

Delaying the tax hike runs counter to the basic principle of the three arrows of "Abenomics" - bold monetary easing, flexible fiscal policy and a growth strategy - said Takatoshi Ito, a Columbia University professor who is among the most prominent Japanese economists supportive of Abe's policies.

"The second arrow is flexible fiscal policy, not aggressive fiscal spending. That means Japan needs to focus on restoring fiscal health," he said.

"When you need short-term fiscal stimulus you deliver it. But I wonder whether that's really necessary now."

($1 = 110.9800 yen)
GRAINS-Wheat falls as U.S. weather improves; corn, soy slip

By Mark Weinraub

CHICAGO, May 31 (Reuters) - U.S. wheat futures sank 2.9 percent on Tuesday, on track for their biggest daily decline in four weeks as forecasts called for improving harvest conditions for the winter crop good weather for spring wheat development.

"Drier weather begins to develop in the southern Plains starting this weekend to improve harvest conditions," Commodity Weather Group said in a note to clients. "Weekend rains and additional chances in the next two weeks are continuing to ease dry spots for now in spring wheat areas."

Corn and soybean futures fell on pressure from technical selling after overnight strength failed to push prices above highs hit late last week.

Both corn and soybeans were on track to post monthly gains, the second in a row for corn and the third in a row for soybeans. Wheat was set for its first monthly loss since February.

The most-active soybean contract on the Chicago Board of Trade was up 5.1 percent for the month. Corn has gained 4.0 percent in May, while wheat was down 4.0 percent for the month.

At 10:26 a.m. CDT (1526 GMT), CBOT July wheat futures were off 12-3/4 cents at $4.68-3/4 a bushel. Prices had shown strength during overnight trading before hitting resistance as they neared high end of the 20-day Bollinger range.

CBOT July corn was down 5-1/2 cents at $4.07-1/4 a bushel and CBOT July soybeans fell 4-1/2 cents to $10.82 a bushel.

Concerns about the size of the harvest in both North and South America limited the selling in soybeans.

"We have seen supply shocks in Argentina. It will be really crucial to see how the U.S. crop shapes up and the market will be sensitive to any issues with the weather," said Phin Ziebell, agribusiness economist at National Australia Bank.

"What impact will La Nina have on the U.S. soybean crop? That is the big questions on everyone's mind."

The Argentine shortfalls were boosting demand for U.S. supplies.

The U.S. Agriculture Department on Tuesday morning said private exporters sold 213,000 tonnes of U.S. soybeans to unknown destinations, 73,000 tonnes for 2015/16 delivery and 140,000 tonnes for 2016/17.
Poor Brazil crop whets investor appetite for robusta coffee

By David Brough

LONDON, May 31 (Reuters) - A potentially disastrous Brazilian harvest has whetted investors' appetite for robusta coffee, causing speculators to ditch well-established short positions and go long.

Traders have reported expectations of a sharp drop in Brazilian robusta, or conillon, output due to a second straight year of drought, driving up physical premiums far above those of competing producers.

"The new conillon crop is universally accepted to be a very poor one, with estimates ranging between 10 and 13 million 60-kg bags," a London trader said.

"Yield is expected to be generally very poor as well."

Traders said conillon output last season, also hard hit by drought, was some 15-15.5 million bags, and was around 18 million in the previous year.

Brazil is the world's top coffee producer. It mostly produces arabica, a higher quality type of beans than robusta, which is largely used in instant coffee. The country's arabica crop, grown in different areas to robusta, has been abundant and of high quality this year.

European physical coffee traders quoted new crop conillon at around $250 over July futures, compared with around $40 over for robusta from top grower Vietnam, and $120 over for Indonesian supplies.

Physical traders believe that much of the latest robusta crop will remain in Brazil, the world's second largest coffee consumer, as it is uncompetitive on the international market.

The expected shortage of Brazilian robusta was a factor driving some investors to shift from a net short to a net long position in ICE robusta coffee futures earlier this month, traders said.

In the latest Commitments of Traders (COT) data released by the ICE exchange on Monday, robusta coffee speculators cut their net long position by just 5 lots to 10,957 lots as of May 24.

Robusta coffee speculators switched to a net long position of 9,413 lots as of May 10, adding 8,269 lots, according to ICE exchange COT data.

"Some of the managed money funds have been sold the idea that there will be a robusta shortage this year," a senior London-based broker said.

Some traders referred to risks that a La Nina weather phenomenon, following El Nino, could bring a drought to Brazil, potentially damaging next year's robusta harvest.

Traders also cited concerns over dry weather affecting other major robusta producers, such as Vietnam and Indonesia.

Carlos Mera, a senior commodity analyst with Rabobank, said no major robusta exporter was expected to have an optimal crop due to drought, including Vietnam, Indonesia and India, as well as Brazil.

He said recent rains had broken a long dry spell during the inter-crop period in Vietnam, but the damage to crop development made him rule out any chance of a record robusta crop there.
Erdogan warns Germany ahead of Armenian genocide vote

By Tulay Karadeniz and Noah Barkin

ANKARA/BERLIN, May 31 (Reuters) - Turkey's president warned Germany on Tuesday that its plans to declare the 1915 mass killing of Armenians a genocide would damage bilateral ties, raising new concerns about an EU-Turkey migrant deal championed by Chancellor Angela Merkel.

German lawmakers are expected to approve a symbolic resolution on Thursday that labels the killings of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman forces "genocide", a description that Turkey strongly rejects.

The vote had been scheduled to take place over a year ago, on the 100th anniversary of the massacre, but Merkel's allies in parliament pushed it back repeatedly out of concern that it could hurt relations with Ankara.

Now they have run out of time and may be wishing they had let the vote take place sooner.

The opposition Greens have pushed the resolution onto the agenda at an extremely awkward time for Merkel, the driving force behind an agreement between the EU and Ankara that has helped slash the number of illegal migrants entering Europe.

The deal has eased political pressure on Merkel at home. But it has been under a cloud since its strongest proponent in the Turkish government, Ahmet Davutoglu, was pushed out as prime minister this month. Since then, President Tayyip Erdogan has questioned aspects of the agreement and some of his allies have even threatened to unleash a new wave of refugees on Europe.

In comments to reporters before he left for an official visit to Africa, Erdogan lashed out at those who he said were trying to "deceive" Germany over the 1915 events, without accusing anyone in particular.

"If Germany is to be deceived by this, then bilateral diplomatic, economic, trade, political, and military ties - we are both NATO countries - will be damaged," he said.

The comments came after he spoke to Merkel by telephone to express his concern about the resolution. Sources in both capitals said Erdogan had initiated the call.

GERMAN HISTORY

The resolution, which is formally supported by Merkel's conservative bloc, the centre-left Social Democrats and the Greens, uses the word "genocide" in the headline and text.

"The fate of the Armenians is exemplary in the history of mass exterminations, ethnic cleansing, deportations and yes, genocide, which marked the 20th century in such a terrible way," it reads.

The resolution also touches on the "inglorious" role of the German Empire, a military ally of the Ottomans, because it did nothing to stop the massacre.

Turkey argues that the there was no organised campaign to wipe out the Armenians, who are Christian, and no evidence of any such orders from the Ottoman authorities.

Cem Oezdemir, a leader of the Greens with Turkish roots, told Reuters he had experienced weeks of personal attacks from Turkish nationalists on social media and via email because of his role in championing the resolution.

"It wasn't our goal to hold this vote now," Oezdemir said. "But the timing is not that important. The Bundestag is doing this because this is also a part of German history. The Ottoman and German empires were essentially brothers in arms."

The vote coincides with deepening public scepticism in Germany towards Turkey and Erdogan in particular. Critics accuse Merkel of going soft on Ankara over human rights because of her desire to stem the flow of migrants.

Last month she drew fire for allowing German prosecutors to look into charges against a comedian who mocked Erdogan in a crude poem. The comedian, Jan Boehmermann, has accused Merkel of serving him "up for tea to a highly strung despot".

Merkel and other top ministers are expected to vote for the resolution, although some, including Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, have questioned the wisdom of it in public.

Some officials fear it could stir tensions with the roughly 3 million people of Turkish origin who live in Germany.
OPEC oil output falls from near-record in May on Nigeria outages

By Alex Lawler

VIENNA, May 31 (Reuters) - OPEC's oil output fell in May from near a record high, a Reuters survey found on Tuesday, as attacks on Nigeria's oil industry and other outages outweighed increases in Iran and Gulf members.

A rise in supply from Saudi Arabia plus Iran suggests the group's top producers remain focused on market share, following the failure of an initiative in April between OPEC and non-OPEC producers to support prices by freezing output.

With OPEC meeting in Vienna on Thursday, outages are effectively achieving the supply restraint on which producers could not agree. Those disruptions are supporting oil prices , which are close to 2016 highs, and the rally has reduced the urgency of any new attempt at deliberate supply curtailment.

"There is a tiny chance of a bullish surprise but as things stand right now, the odds are the continuation of OPEC's market-share policy," said David Hufton, of oil brokers PVM.

Supply from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries fell to 32.52 million barrels per day (bpd) this month, from 32.64 million bpd in April, according to the survey, based on shipping data and information from sources at oil companies, OPEC and consultants.

OPEC output has surged since the group abandoned in 2014 its historic role of cutting supply to prop up prices, in a shift led by Saudi Arabia. There are more indications, however, that some producers are struggling to maintain supply.

May's biggest decline occurred in Nigeria due to militant attacks on the country's oil industry. The disruption has pushed output to its lowest in more than 20 years.

Libyan output declined further due to a blockage of shipments from the port of Hariga. Loading difficulties and other problems made a further dent in Venezuela's supply, sources in the survey said.

Iraq, the fastest source of OPEC production growth in 2015, also pumped less as power outages limited southern exports, which in April were at a near-record.

Of the countries boosting output, Iran managed a further increase after the lifting of Western sanctions in January.

At 3.55 million bpd, Iranian output has more than matched the 3.50 million bpd it pumped at the end of 2011 before sanctions were tightened, according to Reuters surveys. However, any further rises will be smaller, sources said.

"Getting back to pre-sanctions output was not a problem," said a source familiar with Iranian thinking. "Getting beyond that will be harder."

Saudi Arabian output edged up to 10.25 million bpd, compared with 10.15 million bpd in April, the survey found.

"Exports are higher," said an industry source who monitors Saudi output. "But production is not really changing very much."
HSBC cutting 'dozens' of senior jobs in investment bank - sources

By Anjuli Davies and Lawrence White

LONDON, May 31 (Reuters) - HSBC has begun cutting senior posts in its investment banking division in a cull that could lead to dozens of staff worldwide losing their jobs, according to sources with direct knowledge of the cuts.

HSBC began informing staff in its global banking and markets division in London last week, one of the sources said, with a further round of cuts this week expected to affect around 10 senior people in the unit.

A spokesman for HSBC declined to comment.

The latest round of job cuts at Europe's biggest bank shows new co-chief of global banking Matthew Westerman is making his mark, two of the sources said.

HSBC announced in February that Westerman would be joining from Goldman Sachs to become co-head of global banking in its investment bank, alongside Robin Phillips. The bank announced at the same time it would enlarge the global banking unit by merging its capital financing business into it.

Capital financing, which helped companies raise funds by debt and equity offerings, had become a separate unit under Spencer Lake in a prior reorganisation in 2013.

Its integration back into the banking division has resulted in a number of duplicated and overlapping roles that are now being eliminated to cut costs, the sources said.

HSBC said last June it would slash nearly one in five jobs, as Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver seeks to combat sluggish growth across the lender's sprawling empire.
One in three Germans in favour of EU exit - survey

BERLIN, May 31 (Reuters) - Almost a third of Germans would vote in favour of their country leaving the European Union, a survey published on Tuesday showed, indicating widespread scepticism towards Europe among citizens of the bloc's biggest member.

Historically ardent Europeans, disenchantment towards the EU has grown among Germans with many uneasy about the influx of more than one million migrants last year and angry at having to bail out Greece in the debt crisis.

The YouGov poll for Germany's Handelsblatt newspaper found that only 54 percent of Germans supported staying in the EU, while 29 percent would want to leave the bloc if a referendum were held on membership.

Britons will vote on June 23 over whether to remain part of the EU. Two polls published on Tuesday showed that those campaigning for Britain to leave the bloc had moved ahead.

More than half of those surveyed in Germany and Sweden wanted Britain to remain a member of the EU, against only 42 percent of French respondents.

If Britain were to vote for a Brexit, the majority of those surveyed think it would trigger a domino effect with other countries deciding to leave too, the survey, conducted between May 19 and 24, found.

Asked who profited the most from EU membership, respondents in Britain said Germany, compared to those in Germany and France who saw Greece as the biggest winner.
Argentina seeks closer ties to Latin America's Pacific trade bloc

BUENOS AIRES, May 31 (Reuters) - Argentina said on Tuesday it was seeking closer ties with a Latin American trading bloc comprised of Chile, Colombia, Peru and Mexico, a further sign of President Mauricio Macri's determination to move away from protectionist policies.

Macri, who won the presidency late last year on a pro-business platform, has overturned capital controls and cut export taxes, and indicated a keen desire to build trade relationships with countries like the United States and Britain.

He has asked that Argentina be accepted as an 'observer' of the Pacific Alliance and will travel to southern Chile next month for the bloc's annual summit, said a spokesman for Argentina's foreign ministry.

"That is the first step," the spokesman said. "Afterwards we will have to see what happens."

The inclusion of Argentina in the Pacific Alliance, even as an observer, would appear to be a good fit, as its members have generally been strong advocates of free trade.

"The president has a clear objective to start working hard on a real alliance with the Pacific countries," Foreign Minister Susana Malcorra told La Nacion, a local daily newspaper.

Argentina is already a member of the Mercosur trade bloc with Brazil, Venezuela, Uruguay and Paraguay. That group has been led in recent years by leftists, including former Argentine president Cristina Fernandez, and riven with internal tensions.

The foreign ministry spokesman, however, said Macri's move "in no way" implied he was seeking to distance Argentina from Mercosur.

But Macri's election and a political change in Brazil, where pro-business centrist Michel Temer has taken over from suspended leftist President Dilma Rousseff, signal an opportunity to move forward with intra-regional trade, analysts say.

"Political winds have shifted in Mercosur," said Jason Marczak, a Latin America analyst at the Washington-based Atlantic Council.
Afghan Taliban kill nine, kidnap 20 bus passengers, army rescues 140 others

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, May 31 (Reuters) - Taliban insurgents killed nine people and kidnapped 20 others when they held up three buses in northern Afghanistan on Tuesday, while the remaining 140 passengers had to be rescued by Afghan forces, the local deputy police chief said.

The attackers stopped the buses on a road and ordered the passengers out, shot dead nine of them and kidnapped the rest, said Massoum Hashemi, deputy police chief of Kunduz.

"The Taliban have brutally killed nine civilians and taken about 20 with them," Hashemi said.

Afghan forces then rescued the remaining 140 passengers, he said.

The Taliban, who are waging a bloody insurgency to topple the foreign-backed government of President Ashraf Ghani, said they killed six and took 20 members of the Afghan security forces with them.

"After we searched the buses, we detained 26 police and army personnel in civilian clothes with evidence," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement.

"Six were killed after trying to escape and the rest are in our custody," Mujahid added.

The police in Kunduz did not confirm if security forces were among the kidnapped or killed, but Sher Aziz Kamawal, a senior police official, said those killed may have been government employees who were carrying identity cards.

A campaign of kidnappings against Afghanistan's Hazara ethnic minority has become a source of tension, fueling concern about sectarian violence. The Hazara are Shi'ite Muslims who are considered heretics by the hardline Sunni Taliban movement.

Since persecuting Hazaras and other minorities during their rule in the 1990s, the Taliban have largely avoided specifically targeting Shi'ites.

But a rise in Afghanistan in the number of militants claiming allegiance to Islamic State, a hard-line Sunni movement that emphasises purging Shi'ites and is a rival to the Taliban, has coincided with a number of attacks on Hazaras.

The brief capture by the Taliban of Kunduz last year was a major blow to Ghani's government.
Leader of Western Sahara independence movement dies after illness

ALGIERS, May 31 (Reuters) - The long-standing leader of Western Sahara's independence movement, Mohamed Abdelaziz, died on Tuesday after more three decades of war and diplomatic struggle for the disputed territory with Morocco.

Abdelaziz, 68, the Polisario Front's secretary general and president of its self-declared Sahrawi Republic, had suffered from a long illness, the movement's Sahara Press Service and Algeria's state news agency said.

His death came at a sensitive time for the Western Sahara dispute. Morocco earlier this year expelled part of a United Nations peace-keeping mission from the territory following a disagreement with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Ban's press office issued a statement expressing his sadness at the death of Abdelaziz, whom he met earlier this year during a visit to the region.

"Mr. Abdelaziz was a central figure in the search for a resolution of the Western Sahara conflict," the statement said.

Morocco took over most of the territory in 1975 from colonial power Spain, but the Polisario Front began a guerrilla war for Abdelaziz's Sahrawi people, saying the desert region in northwest Africa belonged to them.

Polisario has been based in Algeria since a U.N. ceasefire in 1991 halted the conflict. But a dispute over a referendum on the area's future has left it in a deadlock for years.

Algeria's government declared eight days of mourning after Abdelaziz's death was announced. Polisario rules state that the movement's assembly president takes over for 40 days after which an extraordinary session will be held to choose a new leader.

Abdelaziz, who lived in the Sahrawi refugee camp in southern Algeria, had led the Polisario though a period of struggle and into the U.N.-backed truce. Since 1991, the dispute has been frozen over how to hold the referendum.

Many younger Sahrawi are demanding progress after years in the camps in the Tindouf region of Algeria, exerting a pressure that the Polisario's new leadership will have to manage.

Polisario representatives say Morocco put the ceasefire at risk by expelling U.N. staffers and trying to scuttle the referendum, including on the question of independence. Morocco has offered an autonomy plan as the only way forward.

The U.N. statement said Ban wanted to help the parties "to achieve a mutually acceptable political solution, which will provide for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara."
Two U.S. service members injured in Iraq, Syria -Pentagon

WASHINGTON, May 31 (Reuters) - Two U.S. service members were injured over the weekend, one each in Iraq and Syria, a Pentagon spokesman said on Tuesday.

"They were not on the front lines, they were not engaged in active combat, but they were hit in both cases by indirect fire and suffered injuries," Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said.

The United States has authorized 4,087 troops in Iraq and 300 in Syria.

Since December, Iraqi forces trained by the U.S. military and backed by coalition air strikes have taken back territory from Islamic State, which seized swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter told reporters in Huachuca, Arizona, that the injuries were a result of combat.

"Yes of course ... these people were in harms way as part of the campaign plan execution to defeat ISIL," Carter said in response to a question.

Davis did not say to which branch of the military the injured belonged, but said they were carrying out advise and assist duties.
Combative Trump says he raised $5.6 million for vets, bashes media

By Emily Flitter and Jonathan Allen

NEW YORK, May 31 (Reuters) - U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Tuesday detailed $5.6 million in contributions he raised for military veterans, and staged a fiery news conference where he attacked reporters for questioning him for months about the money.

Appearing at Trump Tower in Manhattan, the billionaire accused the media of failing to give him credit for raising the funds at an event in January in Iowa.

His tirade, in which he called one reporter "a sleaze" and sarcastically described another as a "real beauty," overshadowed what otherwise should have been an upbeat event for the presumptive Republican nominee.

"The press should be ashamed of themselves," he told reporters gathered before him. "You make me look very bad. I've never received such bad publicity for doing a good job."

While Trump has long had an adversarial relationship with the media, questions about the donations to veterans touched a raw nerve with him as he tries to build a conservative base ahead of the Nov. 8 general election.

Reporters have been persistently asking whether Trump in fact raised all the money he said he had in January and why it took so long to hand donations over to veterans groups.

A number of veterans groups listed by Trump on Tuesday as recipients confirmed they had received the donation as listed, ranging from $25,000 to, in one case, $1.1 million, which went to the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation.

Some of the donations arrived in February or March, some as recently as last week around the time a critical article appeared in The Washington Post. The money arrived in the form of a check from the Donald J. Trump Foundation.

"We received a $75,000 gift early last week from the Trump Foundation, it was not restricted or earmarked in any way," said Katherine Fritz, director of development at America's Vetdogs.

Trump's criticism of the media dashed the hopes of some Republican leaders who want him to tone down his rhetoric and become more magnanimous now that he has sealed the Republican presidential nomination.

The Washington Post said Trump only handed over a personal donation of $1 million last week - four months after announcing it - once the newspaper started asking about the money.

Trump said the news coverage of his veterans group donations had been close to libelous. Asked whether he would maintain an adversarial stance with reporters if elected president, Trump said: "Yeah, it's going to be like this."

A reporter told Trump he seemed resistant to the kind of scrutiny that comes with the office of U.S. president.

But Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary for President George W. Bush, said the news media should stop fretting about how Trump treats them.

"My advice to the press: Stop interviewing yourselves about Trump's attack on the press. Don't worry about it. Just do your jobs and be fair," he said.

The contretemps took place on the same day documents were disclosed from a lawsuit involving Trump University, a now-defunct education program that ran a real estate training program.

Trump has attacked the presiding judge as hostile to him.

The university documents showed Trump University created a special class to teach students how to cash in on U.S. mortgage foreclosures when the United States was struggling with an entrenched housing crisis in 2009.

CLINTON POLL LEAD

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton sought to take advantage of Trump's discomfort over the media scrutiny he has faced. She told CNN that Trump's tendency to attack his critics "is a recipe for gridlock in Washington."

Clinton defended her own policy toward dealing with the news media, saying she has conducted 300 interviews this year alone. Unlike Trump, she rarely holds news conferences. Her last one was last December.

Clinton leads Trump by 11 percentage points in the latest Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll. According to the May 27-31 survey of likely voters, 46 percent support the former U.S. secretary of state while 35 percent back Trump.

California Governor Jerry Brown on Tuesday endorsed Clinton for the Democratic nomination, saying it was the only way to "stop the dangerous candidacy of Donald Trump."

At his news conference, Trump also bristled at the possibility that Republicans opposed to him might run a third-party candidate as an alternative to Trump or the expected Democratic nominee Clinton.

He said a leader of that effort, Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard magazine, "looks like such a fool."

"Let me tell you these people are losers," said Trump, adding that a third-party candidacy would guarantee Clinton wins the White House and deny Republicans the chance to put conservatives on the Supreme Court.

"What you're going to do is lose the election for the Republicans and therefore you lose the Supreme Court," he said.

Trump read out a list of veterans' organizations that had received money from the January event, which he attended instead of participating in a Fox News-sponsored candidates' debate. He said the money was benefiting 41 groups and that the total cash raised could climb as more comes in.

He turned the microphone over briefly to Al Baldasaro, a Trump supporter and a veteran from New Hampshire who also skewered the news media, saying reporters should "get your head out of your butt, focus on the real issues."
After Brexit: Roadmap for a leap in the dark

By Alastair Macdonald

BRUSSELS, May 31 (Reuters) - Dawn, Friday, June 24. The votes are in. The British have spoken in their EU membership referendum and they want out. It is a scenario European leaders are now planning for in earnest while praying it never happens.

Secret meetings in Brussels and across Europe reveal huge uncertainty, officials and diplomats familiar with the proceedings say, over what would follow a vote that British Prime Minister David Cameron calls a "leap in the dark" -- and also no little concern about what happens if Britain stays on.

This is a rough roadmap to Europe after June 23, based on conversations with many diplomats and officials, few of whom speak of it in public for fear of inflaming debate in Britain:

DAY 1 - FRIDAY, JUNE 24 - THE THREE R'S - OR MORE

Polls close at 10 p.m. (2100 GMT). No mainstream exit polls are planned but overnight counts should give a result by around the time the midsummer sun is coming up over Brussels.

Aside from the result itself, there are already several big imponderables. Cameron says he will notify the EU "immediately" if Britain is leaving. But he may take at least a few days. If he has lost he will be under huge pressure from his divided Conservative party to resign. He might also be, even if he wins.

Money markets will be volatile. The Bank of England and European Central Bank, with global allies, are assumed to have contingency plans to deal with a "Brexit shock" to sterling.

Expect joint statements from EU founders Germany and France and from EU institutions. Look for a mantra of Three Rs: Regret - at losing nearly a fifth of the EU economy and more of its military and global clout; Respect - for the will of the British people; and Resolve - to forge ahead with European integration.

"The show must go on," one senior EU official said.

There may be a fourth message. Call it Reprisal, perhaps, though Britons should not take it personally; warnings of woe for those leaving will aim to discourage others from following suit. "Don't try this at home," was how one senior EU diplomat summed up the idea. There may be an element of spite, too.

Some Europeans, sotto voce, may also feel Relief. Some in France fret at British blocking of federalist ideas and fear a British vote to remain could unleash a new push for a free-market EU.

DAY 3 - SUNDAY, JUNE 26 - RALLYING ROUND THE EU FLAG

After a Brexit vote, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker will chair an emergency meeting of the executive's "college" of 28 commissioners, including Britain's Jonathan Hill, officials say. The Commission will be responsible for negotiating the divorce settlement between London and Brussels.

EU officials insist there is no "Plan B" in place for Brexit. But, recalling the same denials during last summer's narrowly avoided Grexit during the Greek debt crisis, one speaks of a "Room B", where a fire-fighting team of EU lawyers and experts will be ready. "The idea is to have everything ready for Monday," the EU official said.

The start of a new week on global financial markets will see investors and voters demanding answers on where Britain and the EU are heading. Expect both to offer assurances of orderly talks, while nothing changes immediately, for firms or citizens.

DAY 5 - TUESDAY, JUNE 28 - "DAVID, ARE YOU LEAVING NOW?"

A 24-hour EU summit is scheduled. After a Brexit vote, his political career may be over but Cameron would likely stay on at least until his deeply divided party elects a successor. He would be expected to appear for dinner in Brussels. Big question - would he notify summit chair Donald Tusk that he is triggering Article 50 of the EU, the legal basis for Britain to leave the Union? In London, pro-Brexit would-be successors may try to play for time.

Until Britain declares its hand, the EU would stall, though many would be impatient to make clear there will be no new talks to try and keep it in. If Cameron secures a referendum win, the summit will discuss quickly enacting the reform package he won in March to give Britain a special deal to stem EU immigration.

DAY 6 - WEDNESDAY, JUNE 29 - "PLEASE WAIT OUTSIDE, DAVID."

Day Two of the summit and, if it is to be Brexit, leaders of the 27 other states will confer without Cameron in the room - a pattern Britons will have to get used to. Article 50 sets a two-year limit on divorce talks. The EU must fill a Britain-sized hole in its budget and reassure millions of EU citizens living in Britain and Britons on the continent of their future rights.

EU leaders, notably Germany and France, may push for a quick show of unity on more integration. Divisions between Berlin and Paris on managing the euro zone probably rule out a big move on that front before both hold elections in 2017. Closer EU defence cooperation, without sceptical Britain, may be revived. A major EU security policy review is already on the summit agenda.

Other initiatives, aimed at blunting Marine Le Pen's far-right, eurosceptic bid for the French presidency in 2017, could include a push to stimulate job creation, especially among the young.

"Brexit or not, we have to think about what comes next," French Finance Minister Michel Sapin told Reuters. "France will speak. Germany expects us to. We'll need to ... work together and not alienate the others from a Franco-German initiative."

The Council of EU leaders must give the executive Commission a negotiating mandate. Some in Britain see exit discussions lasting longer than two years. But an extension requires an EU unanimity that few in Brussels expect.

Some suggest talks with Britain on its future trade terms can run in parallel to the exit talks. Juncker, who spoke to reporters over lunch in Paris on Tuesday, ruled that out: "After the two years, we'll negotiate relations with a blank slate," he said.

FROM DAY 7 - NOTHING (AND EVERYTHING) CHANGES; HELLO ESTONIA

After a Brexit vote, all EU laws apply in Britain until two years after London starts the process to leave. Then none would apply. Meanwhile, British lawmakers sit in the EU parliament, Hill in the Commission, thousands of Britons would go on working as EU civil servants and British ministers sit in EU councils. But they will have no real voice and Britain plans to renounce its EU presidency in the second half of 2017; Estonia would come forward to start its first stint in the chair six months early.

Some also see heavy pressure to exclude British MEPs from a say on EU laws and to deprive Hill, a Cameron appointee, of his sensitive portfolio overseeing financial services regulation.

Whatever the referendum's outcome, a host of other EU plans, shelved for fear of alienating British voters, will come out of cold storage, including energy-saving rules to limit the power of toasters and kettles. Dealing with the fallout from a Swiss referendum on EU migration and a Dutch rejection of the EU trade deal with Ukraine will get back on track, as will a review of the EU's seven-year budget.

If Britain votes to stay in, some, notably in France, fear a new British-led push to free up EU markets and rein in regulation. Others doubt that Cameron, if he survives at all, would have much appetite for deeper EU engagement amid post-referendum Conservative blood-letting.

A post-Brexit relationship between Britain and the EU is the great unknown. Many EU leaders, wary of eurosceptic voters at home, are determined Britain cannot have access to EU trade and financial markets if it wants to keep out EU workers. "All four freedoms, or none," is how EU officials refer to free movement of goods, services, capital and labour in the EU treaty. Others put it more even starkly: "Out means out."

New trade barriers would hurt both sides' economies. But the EU fears a political "domino effect" would cost more long-term. Brexit would "break a taboo", Juncker says: "If others open the door, inspired by the British model, we'll see a stream of referendums, depriving the European project of all credibility."

END OF THE ROAD?

Leaders have much else on their plates to distract them from negotiating with Britain, including Russia, the euro, jobs and refugees. London may have other priorities, too, not least the likelihood europhile Scotland would bid again to break away.

There is a "Brussels consensus" that Britain would face a chilly future, cast out after two years to perhaps talk its way back later into some kind of trade access in return for many of the things -- notably free migration from inside the bloc and contributions to the EU budget -- which Brexit voters want to end. But cautious diplomats do not rule out surprise turns.
In rare compromise, Nigerian emerges as frontrunner for OPEC boss

VIENNA, May 31 (Reuters) - A Nigerian oil technocrat has emerged as frontrunner to take the top job at OPEC, with members seeing Mohammed Barkindo as what would be a rare compromise candidate to lead the group amid rising tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Barkindo has been a key face of the Nigerian oil industry for the past decade, during which various governments tried and effectively failed to reform national oil company NNPC.

Today, Nigeria has alongside Venezuela become one of the main victims of oil's price collapse, with the country's output declining sharply due to militant attacks on pipelines and infrastructure.

OPEC is likely to choose Barkindo, a former head of NNPC, as the next secretary-general of the producer group, three sources with knowledge of the matter said.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has since 2012 been looking for a replacement for Libya's Abdullah al-Badri, who was elected acting secretary-general in December until the end of July after serving full terms.

However, Barkindo's appointment was by no means certain and Badri's tenure could yet be extended by another six months, some sources said.

Rivalries between OPEC heavyweights Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq have so far prevented the group from choosing candidates proposed by those countries.

OPEC oil ministers meet on Thursday in Vienna. The consensus of all members - which in the past has sometimes been elusive - is required for the appointment of a new secretary-general.

Barkindo led the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation from 2009 to 2010 and served as acting secretary-general of OPEC in 2006 after the original Nigerian nominee, junior oil minister Edmund Daukouro, took over the rotating OPEC presidency.

Barkindo also served on OPEC's economic commission and held various high-ranking positions during a career at NNPC that spanned over two decades.

He was deputy managing director of the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Company, a joint venture between NNPC, Shell Gas BV, Total and Eni.

He was also head of NNPC's London office, managing director of NNPC's oil and gas trading division, and an NNPC group executive director.

"He's a reasonably safe pair of hands and good for a more administrative role like secretary-general. He also knows the ropes at OPEC from when he was Lukman's (right-hand man)," a senior industry source with close ties to Nigeria said.

Rilwanu Lukman was influential in Nigeria's oil industry for many years. He served as oil minister during military rule and later as secretary-general to OPEC and special adviser on oil to former president Olusegun Obasanjo.

"Don't expect any fireworks, either positive or negative," the industry source said.
EU cautions governments against banning Uber, Airbnb

By Julia Fioretti and Eric Auchard

BRUSSELS/LONDON, May 31 (Reuters) - European Union governments should not ban services like home-rental site Airbnb or ride-hailing app Uber except as a last resort, the EU says in new guidelines, seeking to rein in a crackdown on the "sharing economy".

In guidelines seen by Reuters, the European Commission said any restrictions by EU member states on these new online services should be justified and proportionate to the public interest at stake.

"Total bans of an activity constitute a measure of last resort that should be applied only if and where no less restrictive requirements to attain a public interest can be used," the draft document says.

In the case of room-renting sites like Airbnb, the Commission said banning short-term lets of apartments "appears difficult to justify" when limits on the maximum number of days apartments can be rented out would be more appropriate.

The guidelines will come as good news for the likes of Uber and Airbnb, which have faced outright bans or restrictions in some cities as established industry players complain of unfair competition.

Airbnb, founded in 2008, and Uber, launched a year later, both grew up in the hot-house San Francisco Internet scene and almost from the start have faced regulatory battles across the United States, and, more recently, around the world.

Both have become favourite targets of local officials and rival trade groups in Europe, with its tradition of strong social oversight.

In the "sharing economy", customers use the Internet to contract services such as ride-sharing, where amateur drivers displace professional taxis, or home-sharing, which reduces hotel demand.

"These services can fall within several sectors, falling under the regulatory burden of all of them," the Commission said.

A case in point is Uber, which considers itself merely a digital service connecting drivers and passengers as opposed to a transport service, which would make it subject to more onerous rules on driver qualifications, road rules and insurance.

The EU's highest court is set to rule later this year or next on whether Uber is a transport company or a digital service.

LOCAL SKIRMISHES

Associations of taxi drivers have staged high-profile protests against Uber in France, Britain, Portugal, Spain and many other European countries since 2014.

Last year, French prosecutors staged a high-profile raid of Uber's Paris offices in a showdown over whether the company was violating a law to curtail online taxi services.

Uber suspended its UberPOP service, which relies on non-professional drivers, in Brussels last October after a court ordered it shut down.

The company reintroduced its service in Madrid in March after beating a hasty retreat from the market in 2014 following a court ruling against it.

Airbnb has faced loud criticism from city officials in Barcelona and Paris over its impact on local housing markets.

On May 1, Berlin officials implemented one of the world's toughest clampdowns on Airbnb. City officials have promised to reject 95 percent of requests by landlords to rent out places on a short-term basis.

City officials have received more than 500 legal complaints over the murky provisions of the new law. A Berlin court on June 8 is handling the case of German Airbnb competitor Wimdu, which filed suit over the new regulation.
Even though the BJP criticises Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi for his momentary display of love for the Dalits, the former too is doing exactly the same. With an eye on the forthcoming Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Punjab Assembly elections early in 2017, BJP president Amit Shah on May 30 had a meal with Girjaprasad Bind and Ikbal Bind's family, who belong to the Dalit community, in Jogiyapur village in Sevapuri Assembly segment. Jogiyapur falls under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Lok Sabha constituency of Varanasi.

Suddenly, and of late, Shah has developed a special sense of bonding for the Dalits, who constitute 17 per cent of the population in UP. The BJP's vote share was 42 per cent in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls as against 15 per cent in the Assembly polls in 2012.

On May 11, the BJP president had taken a holy dip along with saints, retired bureaucrats and police officials, mostly from the Dalit community, as part of "Samrasta Snan (a holy bath for social harmony)" at Valmiki ghat of Kshipra river during Simhastha in Ujjain. This was followed by Shah felicitating the saints and having a community meal with them. With symbolism galore, Valmiki is identified with the Dalit author who had written the Ramayana and it is also a Dalit community in several parts of the country.

Amit Shah taking holy dip named "Samrasta Snan" (dip for social harmony) with Dalits in Ujjain. Photo: AP

Dining with the Dalits came under spotlight for the first the time after Mayawati, a Dalit herself, was the Uttar Pradesh chief minister and Rahul Gandhi was attempting to poach her Scheduled Caste (SC) votebank. He would visit Dalit families, have meals with them and even spend a night at their place - be it the house of house of Chedi Pasi in Barabanki district in September 2009 or of Kunjilal in Jhansi district in October 2012.

While Mayawati fumed at Rahul's adventures, the BJP mocked him saying it did not believe in publicising visits of its leaders to the houses of Dalit families. "I do not look at (Bhimrao) Ambedkar in a political perspective. When I decided to have dinner at a Dalit household in Mhow (birthplace of the Dalit icon) during my visit to Indore for the party National Council, I put the condition that there would be no media presence, no photographers... We believe in achieving Ambedkar's dream of development for all not through speeches or by engaging in political drama but by accepting it as life's conviction," the then BJP president Nitin Gadkari (presently Union roads transport and highways minister) had said.

However, Shah is engaging in exactly what his predecessor had expressed his dislike for. On his way to Allahabad from the Varanasi Airport to address a rally, Shah made a small halt at Jogiyapur village in Sevapuri Assembly segment of Varanasi parliamentary constituency to share the meal with a Dalit family.

But, as they say, politics is the art of possible. The BJP hopes to wean away the Dalit votes of the BSP to repeat 2014 Lok Sabha polls. The BJP had won 71 of the 80 parliamentary seats in UP, while the BSP could not even open its account. It was obvious that the Mayawati's support base had shifted allegiance to the BJP.

Interestingly, on the one hand the BJP is aggressively wooing the Dalits, and on the other, Shah himself has declared that the Samajwadi Party (SP) will be the main challenger in UP. As the Akhilesh Yadav government is facing anti-incumbency, the BJP is trying to portray itself as the alternative to the ruling SP.

The BJP would also like to see a repeat of the polarisation of votes witnessed during the parliamentary elections in the aftermath of Muzaffarnagar communal riots. No wonder then, the party celebrated two years of Modi government in communally-sensitive Saharanpur on May 26.

As against Shah, Modi has been seen interacting with the Dalits on a regular basis, giving an impression that he is genuinely concerned about this socially backward and deprived section of the society.

On April 20, 2015, he laid the foundation stone of Dr Ambedkar International Centre at Janpath in the capital. On November 14, 2015, he inaugurated BR Ambedkar Memorial in London. The Maharashtra government is transforming the building where Ambedkar lived in London into an international memorial-cum-research centre. Parliament observed Constitution Day on November 26, 2015 during the Winter Session and a special discussion was held on Ambedkar.

On December 6, 2015, the Prime Minister released two commemorative coins, as part of the 125th birth anniversary year celebrations of Ambedkar. The coins, of "ten-rupee" and "one hundred and twenty-five rupee" denomination, were issued on the Mahaparinirvan Divas (death anniversary) of Babasaheb Ambedkar. On March 21, 2016, he laid the foundation stone for a memorial of Ambedkar in New Delhi, which will cover the important aspects of his life. Finally, on April 14, the birth anniversary of Ambedkar, Modi visited Mhow near Indore in Madhya Pradesh, the birthplace of Ambedkar.
LONDON - England - Responding to Sajid Javid's visit to Birmingham today and to the publication of research by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills on businesses which export to the EU, John Longworth reveals multiple inconsistencies.

John Longworth, Chair of the Vote Leave Business Council said:

I agree with what Sajid Javid used to say about the EU  before he changed his mind for reasons we can only guess at. EU rules damage all British businesses, and smaller businesses in particular  and hold us back from trading freely with the rest of the world.

These Government figures are extremely questionable. The reality is that only 6% of British firms export to the EU, but 100% are caught up in red tape and costs from Brussels. If we Vote Leave and take back control of our economy, our businesses will thrive.

I hope that Sajid Javids priority is not his political career  rather than helping British businesses.

Latter day pro-Brussels campaigner Sajid Javid used to say that the EU damaged the British economy.

The claim that 1.2 million SMEs export to the EU or are in the supply chain of businesses which do export to the EU is based on dubious assumptions and false statistics.

Their main calculation is based on an extrapolation  they simply assert that 60% of businesses (those not registered) will act in a similar way to the other 40% (those that are registered).

Latter day pro-Brussels campaigner Sajid Javid used to say that the EU damaged the British economy.

Today, Sajid Javid claims that: Britains small businesses are stronger, safer and better off in Europe. If we leave the EU, small firms are on the front line and thats a gamble with peoples livelihoods Im not willing to take. Small businesses are the backbone of our economy. Lets not break that backbone with a leap into the dark.

This is in stark contrast to his previous claims from just a few weeks ago: As Ive said before, a vote to leave the EU is not something Im afraid of. Id embrace the opportunities such a move would create and I have no doubt that, after leaving, Britain would be able to secure trade agreements not just with the EU, but with many others too.

In 2013, Javid said that: If the British people decide the decision is they want to leave the European Union, then that isnt something Id be afraid of. Id embrace the opportunities that would create.

In November 2015, he said: Currently costs of EU outweigh benefits. Unless we get major reform, nothings off the table. Nonetheless, Javid today backs the pro-EU campaign despite the Prime Ministers failure to achieve reform.

Last year, Javid claimed that: The likely effect of many of Brussels current proposals will be to damage the UKs prospects for growth. That was John, speaking in 2011. We dont want a situation where smaller firms are saddled with poorly thought-out EU regulations which impede their ability to grow. So said Katja in 2013. The European Parliaments decision  is bad for business  it will make it harder for firms to grow and export across Europe. That was Sean McGuire, your man in Brussels, in a statement made 4 years ago. These are all valid complaints, all concerns I share. Theyre exactly the kind of points the CBI should be making to defend the interests of its members.

He also claimed that: We must be unafraid to say that we could walk away if Brussels refuses to compromise.

The claim that 1.2 million SMEs export to the EU or are in the supply chain of businesses which do export to the EU is based on dubious assumptions and false statistics.

This claim is based on tenuous research from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

The note uses data which excludes 60% of British companies. It does this by wrongly extrapolating data from the ONS Annual Business Survey (ABS) to unregistered businesses. The note states that: unregistered businesses they are assumed to behave in the same way as the smallest category of registered businesses. The ABS produced estimates for just 2.05 million enterprises in 2014. In 2014, there were 5.24 million businesses in the UK. This means the study has no hard evidence for 60% of British companies.

BSE is therefore being extremely misleading when they claim this data is comprehensive. In the BSE press release, the pro-EU campaign claims that the reason these estimates diverge so much from previous published estimates is because those estimates exclude the very large number of the smallest businesses, including non-employers, which dont have to register to pay VAT, and are therefore underestimates. In contrast, these new figures are drawn from the entire business population, over 5 million businesses, and are therefore a more comprehensive estimate. This is false, since the BIS data simply assumes unregistered businesses behave as registered businesses do.

The note inaccurately claims that HMRC data show that 82% of SME exporters export to the EU and 78% of exporters export to the EU. This claim is said to derive from data published by HMRC in November 2015. It is important to note that, once again, These estimates do not cover all businesses. They do not cover unregistered businesses. The data show that 110,807 (59.9%) businesses exported to the EU, and 74,077 (40.1%) businesses exported outside the EU. The data also show that 106,596 (62.9%) SMEs exported to the EU and 62,845 (37.1%) SMEs exported to the rest of the world.

The note itself accepts its figures are indicative estimates. BIS admits that: this paper brings together data from a variety of sources many of which use populations and definitions that do not entirely align, requiring certain assumptions to be used. Therefore the results should be considered indicative estimates.

The pro-EU Britain Stronger in Europe (BSE) campaign is now relying on estimates which contradict previous figures published by the BSE campaign.

BSE claims on its website that: 200,000 UK businesses trade with the EU.

This amounts to just 3.7% of the UKs 5.39 million businesses and includes those businesses which import from the EU as well as export to countries in the EU

Nonetheless, the campaign today cites Government estimates that 8% of UK SMEs export to the EU. This amounts to 430,000 SMEs, over double the figure cited by BSE.

The publication of the research relied on today is an attempt to circumvent purdah by the Government.

The Business Secretary today relies on research that was sneaked onto the Government website on 23 May.

The Governments intention was clearly to use this material exclusively during the last twenty eight days of the campaign: hence BSE refer to the Business Secretary using new figures.

This is an attempt to circumvent statutory purdah rules which prevent the Government publishing material during the final twenty days of the campaign which relates to the referendum.
LONDON - England - Chris Grayling MP, Leader of the House of Commons, delivered a speech today at Vote Leave on the risks of staying in the EU, and what lies ahead if we vote to 'remain' on 23 June.

For the past few weeks you have been hearing regularly from the Remain campaign about how they believe we should stay in a reformed European Union.

This morning I want to set out for you the reasons that they are right about the fact that the European Union is going to reform, but how the inevitable reform that is coming our way is very different to what they are claiming.

The Remain campaign keep challenging us about what they call the risks of leaving the European Union. This morning I want to set out for you in detail the risks of staying in, and what lies ahead of us if this country votes to remain in the EU on June 23rd.

And I want to stress very clearly to the people of this country that on June 23rd they are not voting on staying in, or leaving the EU as it is today. They are voting for or against being part of the EU as it must become over the next decade. And that new look EU will be very different.

The seminal moment for the European Union came seventeen years ago with the creation of the single currency. In my view the countries that joined the euro created the economic equivalent of the San Andreas fault. They tried to create a single economy in a geographic area where there was no single government, no common culture or commonality of performance, and where the traditional escape valves when things went wrong in underperforming nations simply disappeared.

So the countries of Southern Europe ran up massive deficits, leading the life of Riley off the back of a strong currency, whereas in the past the drachma and the lire would have fallen sharply on the exchange markets, forcing those countries back to a degree of rectitude. At its simplest, the Greeks didnt pay their taxes, retired at 55 and hoped someone else would pay the bill. And in the end they did  the Germans, the European Central Bank, and the IMF stepped in to prevent an all-out collapse.

But you cant go on doing that. In a single currency area, if things look doubtful, the wealthy transfer all their money to safe havens in places like Frankfurt. The run on local banks brings them down, and the resulting collapse affects all. So no rescue is not an option.

Thats where the Eurozone finds itself now. And it cannot carry on that way. Theyve managed to stabilise things once, but its hard to see how they could withstand another major shock.

But theres no easy solution either. You cant just kick a country out of the Eurozone without creating that massive collapse either. If Greece had been forced out of the Euro, it would have been left with a devalued currency, unable to afford to pay its Euro-denominated debts. It would have defaulted and left massive losses across the continent.

So the inevitable future is beginning to take shape. As my former Government colleague, the former UK Foreign Secretary William Hague once said, the Euro is like a burning building with no exits.

They have to make it work.

And that means political union. There is no other way. There has to be a single Government structure for the Eurozone. There has to be a United States of the Eurozone.

The plans are already taking shape. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, her deputy Wolfgang Schauble, the Italian Finance Minister, the French President Francois Hollande, the Speakers of the biggest Eurozone Parliaments, the Presidents of the big EU institutions have all called for political union.

Its not idle chatter. Its become a recurring theme of speeches, articles and interviews across the European Union.

Political Union means, according to Hollande, a Eurozone Parliament, a common budget and a common cabinet. Inevitably it means giving up independent nation status. Its not an excess of Europe but a shortage of it that threatens us, hes said.

Angela Merkel has said: We need more Europe, we need not only a monetary union, but we also need a so-called fiscal union, in other words more joint budget policy,

And we need most of all a political union  that means we need to gradually give competencies to Europe and give Europe control, she added.

Last summer the Italian Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan called for a common budget and a common unemployment insurance scheme, perhaps even an elected eurozone parliament alongside the existing European Parliament and a euro zone finance minister.

Then the Five Presidents Report, produced by the Presidents of the European Commission, the Council, the Parliament, the Central Bank and the Eurogroup started to set out what would happen in much more detail and with a clear timeline over the next ten years, aiming to complete the work by 2025. The report is very broad ranging and all-encompassing.

Progress must happen on four fronts: first, towards a genuine Economic Union that ensures each economy has the structural features to prosper within the Monetary Union. Second, towards a Financial Union that guarantees the integrity of our currency across the Monetary Union and increases risk-sharing with the private sector. This means completing the Banking Union and accelerating the Capital Markets Completing Europes Economic and Monetary Union 5 Union. Third, towards a Fiscal Union that delivers both fiscal sustainability and fiscal stabilisation. And finally, towards a Political Union that provides the foundation for all of the above through genuine democratic accountability, legitimacy and institutional strengthening. All four Unions depend on each other.

Its a view shared in many of the national parliaments of the Eurozone. Last September the Speakers of the Parliaments of Italy, German, France and Luxembourg combined to agree a vision statement for the future of the Eurozone and the EU. It called for a rapid progress of integration, and a broad ranging one at that. They recommended that.

The ongoing integration process should not be limited to the field of economic and fiscal matters, or to the internal market and to agricultural policy. It should include all matters pertaining to the European ideal  social and cultural affairs as well as foreign, security and defence policy. 

Now each time I talk about this renewed drive towards integration in this campaign, those on the Remain side tell me it will never happen, that there is no political support for it, that it is just a scare story, and in any case we wont be affected.

Well let me tell them how wrong they are.

The process is already under way. And we will be affected whether we like it or not.

The Commission in Brussels is now embarking on a process that will lead to much deeper integration than we have even seen before now. Dont believe me? Then listen to the man driving this next stage of change. Jean Claude Juncker. In his so-called State of the Union Speech last autumn.

As part of these efforts, I will want to develop a European pillar of social rights, which takes account of the changing realities of Europes societies and the world of work. And which can serve as a compass for the renewed convergence within the euro area.

This European pillar of social rights should complement what we have already jointly achieved when it comes to the protection of workers in the EU. I will expect social partners to play a central role in this process. I believe we do well to start with this initiative within the euro area, while allowing other EU Member States to join in if they want to do so.

Fine, so it only applies to the Euro member states. So we arent affected. Are we? Well actually we are

The Social Pillar consultation was launched in Brussels in February. Its clear where it is designed to end up.

The pillar of social rights should be a self-standing reference document, of a legal nature, setting out key principles and values shared at EU level., it says.

And the Commission has set out the areas covered by the process.

Among these are many areas where we already have protection or would want better protection in the UK.

They include:

 A right to minimum pay;

 Minimum measures to ensure awareness of rights and access to justice;

 Access to lifelong learning and skills; and

 Access to basic social services, including health care.

Let me make clear that I do not want to see social rights and protections diminished if we vote to leave the EU.

The point however is whether it is for the EU or for the people of the United Kingdom to control our rights and protections.

If we vote to remain in the EU then it would be EU rules that would determine our minimum wage, EU rules that would say how our pensions work, it would be EU rules to govern our skills system and even EU rules that would tell us how health services should work.

But thats the Ever Closer Union that we are supposed no longer to be part of.

And this package is only for the Eurozone.

So whats the problem.

Well Ladies and Gentlemen, the problem is this.

We have an opt-out from the Euro.

We have an opt-out from the Schengen Area

We have an opt-out from some Justice and Home Affairs measures.

But on everything else we have no opt out. We are subject to every law introduced by the EU and in the Eurozone.

On banking and financial services.

On business regulation.

And on EU social policy, on the so-called Social Europe, we have no opt out.

So we have a new list of EU social policies which will deepen integration across the Eurozone. But these will be EU laws passed in the normal way. There is no other method of doing so right now. And we have no opt-out from them.

Many of these measures will be things we already do well; some may be measures we would want in the UK. The point is that it should be up to us to control what happens to the NHS, to workers rights and to social protection and control over these areas should not lie with Brussels.

So when there are new EU rules on pensions, skills and health, they will apply to us too. It means the EU starting to set the rules for our NHS. With no opt-out. And millions more people able to access our free at the point of delivery service as countries like Albania, Serbia and then Turkey join the EU.

And this is why we are not at all exempt from Ever Closer Union. Because the nuts and bolts of integration will come from new EU laws passed under the terms of the Lisbon Treaty.

The Lisbon Treaty itself is a huge part of the problem.

It is vaguely worded, and gives both the Commission and the European Court of Justice free rein to expand their brief and take over competences from the member states.

Its already happened. Under the Treaty individual countries are supposed to be responsible for social security. But the European Court decided that the free movement rights of the European Citizen were more important, and now the EU controls more and more aspects of our benefit system. A treaty we signed in good faith is being rewritten by a Court whose president made a speech saying the job of the European Commission is to resist Euroscepticism.

So what happens now then?

Well, nothing until after June 23rd. We know the Commission is on its best behaviour right now. Everyone in Brussels is under strict instructions not to rock the boat. Frankly I am surprised that they have even started the consultation on the Social Pillar now.

But the decision to delay anything controversial in Brussels until after our referendum is an open secret there. Legislation is being held back. The budget is being held back. The EU institutions are in lock down until the British decision is done and dusted.

But if we vote to remain, the plans move full steam ahead.

And just remember. This is not a political flight of fancy. They have no choice. The Eurozone cannot be confident of its survival unless they follow down this road. It was the Italian Finance Minister last year who said a move straight towards political union is the only way to ensure the survival of the common currency.

And Britain? What happens to us?

Our influence will diminish.

Our sovereignty will diminish.

Our ability to look after our own national interest will diminish.

There will be no reformed European Union, British style.

Instead we will be subject to most of the integration that the Eurozone is poised to embark upon whether we like it or not. We will have little or no say in what they decide is necessary to pursue their goal of political union.

Ladies and Gentlemen, that is not for us.

I want us to live in an independent sovereign country. I want us to take back control of our democracy.

If we all want that, there is no alternative for us. On June 23rd we have to Vote Leave.
LONDON - England - In a letter to the Prime Minister, Michael Gove, Boris Johnson and Gisela Stuart have asked the Prime Minister to confirm that if people choose to vote 'In', that they are voting for unlimited EU immigration permanently.

They argue that there is a basic lack of democratic consent for what is taking place. Voters were promised repeatedly at elections that net immigration could be cut to the tens of thousands. This promise is plainly not achievable as long as the UK is a member of the EU and the failure to keep it is corrosive of public trust in politics.

Dear Prime Minister,

GETTING THE FACTS CLEAR ON THE RISKS OF REMAINING IN THE EU

We all agree that its vital everyone is clear about the facts in the EU referendum.

There are real risks in remaining in the EU and every citizen needs to be aware of these in coming to a balanced decision about how to vote on 23 June.

We would be grateful if you could confirm a series of facts about the free movement of people which is a critical element of continued EU membership. Agreement on these facts will enable us all to have a fully informed debate.

We already agree on some basic principles.

We all agree that migration brings many benefits to Britain  culturally, socially and economically. We all agree that our economy benefits from the arrival of new people with great talent and special skills. We all agree that Britain has a proud tradition of offering refuge to those fleeing persecution which must be upheld. And we all agree that if we are to continue to benefit from migration then the public must be reassured that we have control over who comes here.

But our membership of the EU means we dont have control.

As you know, this week the Office for National Statistics published migration statistics for 2015. Last year 270,000 people came to this country from the EU. Net migration overall was 184,000. That means we are adding a population the size of Oxford to the UK every year just from EU migration. This puts particular strain on public services.

We are particularly concerned about the impact of free movement in the future on public services. Class sizes will rise and waiting lists will lengthen if we dont tackle free movement. As the euro crisis continues, more people from Southern Europe will want to escape unemployment and austerity in their countries by coming to the UK. Their arrival will put further strain on schools and hospitals.

Last year, 77,000 jobseekers from the EU came to the UK. Its Government policy that EU migrants should have a job offer before they come here. But the EU did not agree to letting the UK implement that policy during the renegotiation of our membership.

Its not just the strain on public services which gives rise to cause for concern. We are all committed to improving wages for working people. But continued free movement for jobseekers will place considerable pressure on the wages of low paid British workers in the event of a vote to remain in the EU. This is good for some of the multinationals funding the IN campaign. It is not good for British families struggling to make ends meet.

And the current EU approach to immigration isnt just bad for us economically, it is also bad in security and humanitarian terms.

There is a direct security concern for all of us because the European Court of Justice can interfere with our ability to deport criminals and others whose presence here is not conducive to the public good. The case of Abu Hamzas daughter-in-law underlined the way EU institutions fetter our ability to deport convicted criminals.

Perhaps most worrying of all, the EUs policies are failing in humanitarian terms. The tragic scenes unfolding in the Mediterranean underline how badly the European Union is handling population movements and migration pressures. People smugglers and organised criminals are exploiting this situation and the EU is failing to tackle this trade in human misery.

If we remain in the EU the situation is only likely to get worse. The European Court of Justice can use the Charter of Fundamental Rights to overturn decisions of elected politicians on asylum policy. It is now in charge of how we implement the crucial 1951 UN Convention on Refugees. We need a new approach on refugees but the EUs institutions stand in the way.

There is also the basic lack of democratic consent for what is taking place. Voters were promised repeatedly at elections that net immigration could be cut to the tens of thousands. This promise is plainly not achievable as long as the UK is a member of the EU and the failure to keep it is corrosive of public trust in politics.

Given the publics desire for the facts ahead of the referendum, we would like you to confirm the following facts:

A vote to remain is a vote to maintain permanently the EU Treaty principle of free movement of people.

A vote to remain is a vote to ensure that we must admit economic migrants from the EU, whether or not they have a job offer.

A vote to remain is a vote to affirm the European Court of Justices ultimate authority over whether we can remove persons whose presence in the UK is not conducive to the public good  in this and other respects we do not control our borders.

A vote to remain is a vote to leave the European Court of Justice able to use the Charter of Fundamental Rights to strike down decisions of the UK Government and Parliament about asylum and immigration policy.

A vote to remain is a vote for the UK to continue supporting the EUs failed policies to deal with the tragic crisis in the Mediterranean.

We think that it is fundamentally important that immigration policy has democratic consent. We believe that the safer choice is to Vote Leave on 23 June and ensure that the public can vote for those who determine Britains immigration policy.

We look forward to your response.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Gove, Member of Parliament for Surrey Heath

Boris Johnson, Member of Parliament for Uxbridge and South Ruislip

Gisela Stuart, Member of Parliament for Birmingham Edgbaston
BOSTON - USA - There is pride amongst extreme feminists around the world as new studies reveal news that being a feminist can result in a hairy chest.

These women want to be men so much that eventually the body takes over and some of their characteristics become more masculine. They somehow start to grow hairy chests through a sudden increase in testosterone production. The hair usually grows in between their breasts and in some cases over the actual mammary glands. The new phenomenon only pertains towards feminists, especially the really militant ones, professor Dean R. Harold, who is overseeing the MIT study on Feminism, told New Scientist magazine.

Jane Tremende, 36, a militant feminist from Boston said: We all know that feminism is the belief that both sexes will become equal by focusing solely on one of them, and that, I as a feminist, am here to tell you that I have a very hairy chest and am proud of it.

The study research paper collated data from over 30,000 feminists during a ten year period from all walks of life, and concluded the terrifying results only last week.

Since then there have been dozens of feminist groups cropping up showing off their hairy chests to all and sundry.

We are not attractive to men anyway, so growing a hairy chest empowers us as women. We want to be men so much, we are better than men actually, but we really, really want to be like them, Ms Tremende added.

So what started the hairy feminist chest phenomenon?
Some of the best decisions Jeremy Ryant has made in his life have been unexpected ones.



For example, the Political Science major (with a minor in International Development Studies) never expected to end up overseas working on food security issues for an international NGO conglomerate. But when a teaching assistant pitched the idea of applying for a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Scholarship, he put his name forward on a whimand three weeks later was on a plane to Uganda for the entire summer.



The Winnipeg native didnt expect to end up at Dalhousie in the first place. It was only when his father suggested Dal, nearly at the last minute, that the idea of heading east took root.



Its been a great experience, says Jeremy. Its a place that fits me well.



The one thing Jeremy always expected to do, though, was swim. With the Dal Tigers, he has been an AUS (Atlantic University Sport) All-Star, a nine-time AUS medalist, a four-time Academic All-Canadian, and the recipient of both the AUS and CIS (Canadian Interuniversity Sport) community service awards. Hes been president of Dalhousies Varsity Council and keenly involved in many of the Tigers charity and community initiatives.



Ive always thought the role of the student athlete is about more than going to train and compete, kicking around a ball or swimming in a pool, he says. Its really tripartite: its about succeeding in your sport, in your community and in your academics.



In the classroom, Jeremy has developed a keen interest in Canadian governmental institutions, completing an honours thesis on the federal cabinet. This summer hell be working as an intern on Parliament Hill before heading to law school.



I might do a masters or a PhD down the road, he says, but Im really interested in public law and human rights law, seeing how I can take my interest in social justice and community work and use a law degree to forward those ambitions.


RCom is migrating all its CDMA customers to the 4G network in phases and those who want to opt out will be disconnected.

New Delhi: Telecom operator Reliance Communications on May 31 said it expects to cut down its debt by 75 per cent through merger of MTS, Aircel and sales of mobile towers.

"Integration of MTS business with RCom is on track. We expect to complete the integration in August. We expect to make announcement with respect to Aircel merger anytime in June. Once we complete the Aircel transaction, we will go for the tower deal," RCom CEO for Consumer Business Gurdeep Singh said today during a conference call.

"With completion of these deals, we expect RCom's debt to reduce by 75 per cent."

RCom's net debt at the end of March 2016 stood at Rs 41,362.1 crore. RCom and Aircel have extended discussion period for the possible merger of the two till June 22. Singh said discussions are in advanced stages.

RCom and Aircel talks, if successful, would lead to a combined entity holding 19.3 per cent of the total spectrum allocated to the industry -- the highest by an entity. The new entity, which is in the works, would hold spectrum across all allocated bands -- 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz and 2300 MHz -- for 2G, 3G and 4G services.

RCom also expects approval from the government for spectrum liberalisation in four circles -- Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan -- by tomorrow. The company has paid over Rs 1,200 crore for liberalising spectrum in these circles. DoT has already approved liberalisation of RCom's CDMA spectrum in 17 out of 22 telecom circles.

The company is using liberalised CDMA spectrum to offer 4G service to its customers. RCom is migrating all its CDMA customers to the 4G network in phases and those who want to opt out will be disconnected.

"The current licence requires us to give 30-day notice to customers if we are closing a service. We gave the notice to them in first week of April. Those who do not want to move, they will be switched off today.

By June, most of them will be switched off," RCom President Punit Garg said. RCom consolidated net profit in the last quarter of ended March 31, 2016 declined by about 22 per cent at Rs 177 crore from Rs 228 crore a year ago.
The programme will comprise modules based on the skills for design, engineering, manufacturing, automobile production, sales and service as well in various support functions with a focus on quality, productivity, dexterity, discipline and safety.

New Delhi: Tata Motors on May 31 said it has entered into a partnership with Automotive Skill Development Council (ASDC) for a collaborative skill development programme in the automotive sector.

A Memorandum of Understanding has been signed with the government of India recognised skill council to help Tata Motors' skill development centres across its six plants in India, the company said in a statement.

The company's skill centres will comply with competency levels of the NSQF (National Skills Qualification Framework), it said adding the objective of the partnership is impart and enhance industry-ready occupational skills to youths.

Commenting on the association, Tata Motors Chief Human Resources Officer Gajendra Chandel said: "We are keen to see the Indian automotive industry becoming globally competitive with Tata Motors playing a significant role."

The corporate partnership of Tata Motors with ASDC is a step towards reaping India's demographic dividend by enhancing employability within India as well as in other countries and also contribute to government's aggressive plans under the Skill India Mission towards 'Kaushal Bharat Kushal Bharat', he added.

"Through this collaboration with Tata Motors, the expectation would be to propagate the industry's own ASDC certification among the youth who wish to make a career in the exciting field of automobiles," ASDC Chief Executive Officer Sunil Chaturvedi said.

The programme will comprise modules based on the skills for design, engineering, manufacturing, automobile production, sales and service as well in various support functions with a focus on quality, productivity, dexterity, discipline and safety, the company added.
The six AP-1000 reactors would be built in Andhra Pradesh, after the original site proposed for the multi-billion-dollar project, in Gujarat, faced local opposition. (Representational image)

New Delhi: Toshiba Corp's Westinghouse Electric will relocate a planned project to build six nuclear reactors in India, said officials, bringing the first deal stemming from a US-India civil nuclear accord struck over a decade ago closer to reality.

The six AP-1000 reactors would be built in Andhra Pradesh, after the original site proposed for the multi-billion-dollar project, in Gujarat, faced local opposition. The breakthrough comes ahead of a June 7-8 visit by Modi to Washington, where he will be hosted by President Barack Obama for a final summit before the US presidential election in November, and will address both houses of Congress.

US lawmakers ratified the civil nuclear accord three years after it was struck in 2005, as part of an attempt to deepen the strategic relationship with India, but have expressed growing dismay over its failure to yield follow-on deals for US-based reactor makers like Westinghouse.

One obstacle was bringing India's liability rules into line with international norms, which require the costs of an accident to be channeled to the operator rather than the maker of a nuclear power station. But, following the announcement of a "breakthrough understanding" on nuclear cooperation during Obama's visit to India in January 2015, this issue has been resolved to the satisfaction of the US government and it is down to commercial partners to agree a deal.

Analysts say resolving the land issue is a crucial step, but complex issues remain, including project financing and reaching a civil nuclear pact with Japan, where Westinghouse parent Toshiba is based. "Some time before the end of the calendar year they may be able to close," said Ashley Tellis, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who was a negotiator for the George W. Bush administration in the US-India nuclear talks.

India wants to dramatically increase its nuclear capacity to 63,000 MW by 2032 to meet growing demand and restrict its reliance on fossil fuels, and has struck a series of accords with other countries to help meet that goal. Russia's Rosatom operates two reactors at Kudankulam, in Tamil Nadu, while France's EDF signed a preliminary deal with the state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) in January to build six reactors at Jaitapur, Maharashtra.

EAST COAST

Indian central and state officials confirmed that NPCIL, which would operate the plants, had made a down payment on 2,000 acres (800 hectares) of land in the eastern coastal district of Srikakulam. "The land acquisition was stuck for over a decade, but now it's coming to a conclusion," Ajay Jain, energy secretary of Andhra Pradesh, told Reuters, adding the purchase would close this year. "Construction can begin in 2017."

Ninety percent of local farmers had agreed to sell their land, they were being well compensated and no court cases were pending, Jain added. Two sources, requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, confirmed that the site was being acquired for Westinghouse, which plans to build six AP-1000 pressurised water reactors, each with a design capacity of around 1,100 megawatts.

Westinghouse did not respond to requests for comment, while senior executives at NPCIL were not available. Westinghouse CEO Danny Roderick told Reuters earlier this year that an Indian reactor deal was close, but negotiators missed a deadline to wrap it up before Obama hosted a nuclear security summit in Washington in April.

FRUIT FARMERS

Westinghouse was originally offered a site at Mithi Virdi in Gujarat, on India's west coast, but encountered opposition from local fruit farmers.

A nuclear joint venture between General Electric Co and Hitachi meanwhile showed no interest in India's offer of land for a plant in Andhra Pradesh, opening that option to Westinghouse.

Andhra Pradesh has had more success in acquiring land for development than some rival states, acquiring tracts of land for a new state capital by offering farmers future plots developed for commercial or residential buildings, as well as cash, in compensation.

The state is also proposing its own land law to speed up acquisitions after Modi's efforts to get a new law through parliament failed soon after he rose to power two years ago.
Mumbai: With the implementation of the Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) Fund, reinforced by the Real Estate Regulatory Agency, foreign investment funds are shifting their investments to annuity income bearing assets like malls, warehouses, office parks, etc as against the earlier preference for residential projects.

Over the years, residential projects have attracted maximum inflow of foreign investment. In 2015-16, more than 70 per cent of the investment from FIIs was in the residential real estate sector.

In the last fiscal, foreign PE funds invested $2.77 billion in the real estate sector, which was predominantly in the form of equity investment in large projects. Local institutions and NBFCs have funded projects, but more in the form of structured debt than equity.

However, said Deep Kantawala, group CFO and head investment advisory, ICS Group, We see the trend changing with the advent of REITs, wherein there is a gradual change in the investment landscape from pure debt to equity.

An REIT is a company that invests in income-producing commercial property or mortgages and often trades on major exchanges like a stock. REITs provide investors with an extremely liquid stake in real estate.

One of the key issues, which was faced by the real estate sector and hindering the development of annuity bearing assets earlier, has been limited avenues for exits, he said.

But with the advent of REIT, Mr Kantawala said there will be an unlocking of value for the developers of such asset class. In fact with a surge in demand, there will be more quality yield-bearing assets which will get developed. This bodes well for the creation of large physical assets, which are required for the growth, he said.

Mr Kantawala said that there is in excess of 300 million sq.ft. of commercial space, which are REIT-compliant. These assets, which are primarily located in the top eight cities, would be worth more than $40 billion.

Asked if REIT required any changes, he said the law should bring within its preview the bureaucracy and they need to be made equally accountable to ensure that permissions and approvals are provided within prescribed time-frames.
Imtiaz Ali along with his team flew to Budapest to finalise locations for his next film starring Shah Rukh Khan and Anushka Sharma. However, its not just Budapest where the film will be shot.

Imtiaz will shoot across a minimum of five exotic locations in Europe. Says a source, Imtiaz will take his film over five European countries. The films setup and locations will be such that the audiences will be thrilled to see it on the big screen. All the formalities regarding the shooting permission are underway and everything will be in order before the film goes on the floors.

Shah Rukh, who had discussed this film with Imtiaz long before the latters Tamasha went on floors, had said at the time that he would be able to work on the project only after June. Meanhwile, Anushka is also wrapping up her home production. Once the shoot starts in July, both the actors will dedicate their time solely to this project before taking on any other work.
Apparently, the last conversation between Rahul and Pratyusha showed they were "intensely in love with each other".

New Delhi: The Supreme Court today declined to quash anticipatory bail of actor-producer Rahul Raj Singh, accused of abetting the suicide of 24-year-old TV actress Pratyusha Banerjee, saying the last conversation between the two shows they were "intensely in love with each other".

A vacation bench of justices P C Ghose and Amitava Roy refused to entertain the petition of Pratyusha's mother Soma Bannerjee saying there was no strong and compelling ground to cancel the anticipatory bail granted to Singh.

"The last conversation between the two shows that they were intensely in love with each other. Without any strong and compelling grounds, anticipatory bail cannot be cancelled. If the probe agency finds during investigation that it is a case of section 302 (murder) of IPC and accused needs to be taken into custody, it can move to High Court," the bench said.

The court said that there was no suicide note also to attribute any role to the accused. Counsel for Pratyusha's mother said that custodial interrogation of Singh is required, as there are discrepancies in the investigation and he may tamper with evidence. The bench, however, dismissed the petition as withdrawn.

Earlier, this month, the mother of the TV actress, who was found dead at her residence in Mumbai in mysterious circumstances, had moved the apex court seeking to cancel anticipatory bail granted by the Bombay High Court to Singh.

In her plea, she had said that Singh should be taken into custody as the investigation is still on in the case and there is likelihood that evidence could be tampered by him. It was contended that there were several deep injury marks on the body of the deceased and panchnama had several discrepancies.

The High Court had on April 25 granted anticipatory bail to Singh who has denied the allegations levelled against him. The police had earlier filed a report before the High Court in which it had alleged that Singh, who was staying with Pratyusha at a flat in Goregaon in Mumbai, used to assault her and borrow money from her.

The 'Balika Badhu' fame actress was found hanging at her residence in Goregaon on April 1 and was rushed to a hospital by Singh in Andheri where she was declared dead.
Mumbai: Kamal Haasans fans are waiting patiently for the actors Sabash Naidu, where for the very first time well see the actor sharing the screen space with his daughter Shruti Haasan.

Wasting no further time, Shruti joined her father in Los Angeles. The actress took to her official Twitter account and shared her excitement by tweeting, All set to head to Los Angeles! Excited to begin the new project with my father and excited to go back to sunny California.

All set to head to Los Angeles !!!! Excited to begin the new project with my father and excited to go back to sunny California !!!  shruti haasan (@shrutihaasan) May 29, 2016

Kamal Haasan had recently announced Sabaash Naidu in Tamil and Telugu and Sabaash Kundu in Hindi, which is being directed by TK Rajeev Kumar.

The film will mark the coming together of Ilaiyaraaja and Kamal after a gap of 11 years, and it is for the first time that Shruti Haasan will share the screen with her father, while also playing his daughter!
Those who have been to theatres lately to watch the recent Rosshan Andrrews-Bobby-Sanjay combo creation School Bus cannot just easily forget the cheerful, little Ajoy who stole the hearts of hundreds of kids and elders alike. Akash Muraleedharan, who played the role of Ajoy is resounding with happiness over the release of his first movie .

When kids are at the centre of a film, it is mostly loud. But then School Bus is just that typical kind of movie that would be appealing to people of all age groups.

On a different note, the young and sizzling debutante Karthika Muraleedharan is busy romancing Dulquer Salmaan, in the upcoming Amal Neerad movie. The dashing and vivacious actress was throbbing with energy and excitement over her first entry into the reel world.

One may wonder how these two are connected. Be ready for the surprise  these two debutants are the children of noted cinematographer C. K. Muraleedharan, the man behind the lens of Bollywood blockbusters 3 Idiots, PK and Agent Vinod.

The brother-sister duo is happy over their grand entry into Mollywood, especially Akash, who got a chance to work with his father in School Bus. A class VIII student of JBCM International School, Mumbai, Akashs chirpiness and excitement reflect in his gab. I was the least bit interested in movies. It was by chance that Rosshan uncle found me while he was searching for Ajoy. He wanted an innocent and fresh face and chose me, Akash says.

About the role, he says, Ajoy is a kind-hearted boy though people mistake him for a mischievous and spoilt kid. Though Akash was nervous about acting at first, the whole crew made him feel very comfortable. My friends and teachers supported me very much. My grandmother talked to me over the phone on the first day of the shooting. I am getting very good responses too, he smiles as he speaks.

While Karthika is extremely proud of her brothers acting debut, she was very much delighted to share the screen with her favourite actor Dulquer Salmaan. Currently pursuing graduation from Srishti School of Arts, Bengaluru, she is also active in theatre. Who knows, perhaps the children will make a bigger name for themselves than their famous dad.
After Brahmotsavam flopped, superstar Mahesh Babu has agreed to do another film with the films producer to help recover losses. Paidipalli Vamshi may direct the film.

Says a source: Director Vamshi had narrated a story to Mahesh Babu long back. Now the two might work with Brahmotsavams producer, Mahesh is currently committed to director A.R. Murugudoss and once thats over, he might start working for the new film.

The superstar had earlier done the same for 14 Reels when 1, Nenokkadine didnt do well at the box-office. He had done Aagadu to compensate, but that didnt do well either.
The museum is home to thousands of pieces of the pottery discovered since the 1970s with more than 30 different patterns. (Photo: Representative image)

Beijing: Archaeologists in China have established that Chinese were stargazers from ancient times after studying pottery relics dating back 5,000 years, the earliest physical evidence of astronomy ever discovered.

Experts at a museum in the central Henan Province have been sorting through pottery pieces decorated with drawings of the sun, the moon, constellations, solar halos and even comets.

The relics date from the New Stone Age and were found at Dahe Village, in the suburb of Zhengzhou, capital of central China's Henan Province, which is known for the oracle bones discovered in the late 19th century.

"They are the earliest physical evidence of astronomy ever discovered in China, and we believe more will be uncovered here," Hu Jizhong, curator of the Dahe Village Relics Museum was quoted as saying by state-run Xinhua news

agency.

Archaeologists believe the star decorations reflect the close links between astronomy and agriculture.

"They watched closely changes in the stars to see if or how they would affect the harvest. They discovered regular patterns and recorded them to show their awe of nature or the heavens," Hu said.

But the stars were also part of the aesthetics of the time.

"Our research shows the people here lived free of hunger, having plenty of food, such as sorghum, millet, fish and fowls, so they could contemplate the beauty of life on their pottery. Besides stars, we can also see birds, fish, flowers and trees," he added.

The museum is home to thousands of pieces of the pottery discovered since the 1970s with more than 30 different patterns.

"The world of our ancestors some 5,000 years ago was not all survival, struggle and hardship. It had a bright side with beauty, wisdom and hope," Hu said.
After pictoral warnings Health Ministry is in talks with HRD Ministry to introduce messages related to ill effects of consumption of tobacco in schools. (Photo: Representational image)

New Delhi: After increasing the size of pictorial warnings on tobacco products, the Health Ministry is in talks with HRD Ministry to introduce messages related to ill effects of consumption of tobacco in schools.

Health Ministry officials said that although the idea is not to bring a separate chapter in textbooks, the warnings can either be on textbook covers or in form of posters which could be distributed to schools so that they can put it up.

"The idea is not a chapter in a textbook. The idea is to introduce these things through warnings etc to make students aware. There are two-three options. What can happen is either the back cover or inside cover can have these messages.

"We can separately give posters to all the schools so that they can put it up in their campuses. Things like that are under consideration and talks are presently going on," a senior Health Ministry official said.

Union Health Minister JP Nadda had recently said that the idea behind this is to "catch them young" so that the children are aware of the ill effects of consumption of tobacco.

The Health Ministry through its notification has made it mandatory for tobacco products to carry larger pictorial warnings covering 85 per cent of the packaging space.

The Health Ministry's notification of September 24, 2015, for implementation of the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Packaging and Labeling) Amendment Rules, 2014, that came into force on April 1 prescribe larger pictorial warnings on tobacco products.

On the eve of World No Tobacco Tobacco Day, World Health Organisation (WHO) on Monday said that the use of tobacco continues to be a major public health issue across South East Asian region including India as it kills on an average around 150 persons every hour.
After a biodiversity assessment and research programme, the team of experts have asked Manipur Biodiversity Board for declaring Dailong village as one of the key biodiversity heritage site of Manipur.

Kolkata: A rare, endemic and endangered species of wild citrus fruit having medicinal properties which was so far reported only from Meghalaya, has now been found in a remote village of Manipur.

A team of field biologists and researchers of Centre for Conservation of Nature and Cultivation of Science (CCNCS), Manipur, reported the species 'citrus indica' commonly known as Indian Wild Orange from Dailong village in Tamenglong

district earlier this month.

"The species is considered to be the most primitive and ancestors of all cultivated citrus fruits in the world and endemic to north-east India. Earlier the species was reported only from Nokrek Biosphere Reserve in the Garo Hills of

Meghalaya," said lead researcher and environmentalist R K Birjit Singh.

The species is known to local villagers as 'Biurengthai' and is known to have medicinal properties.

After a biodiversity assessment and research programme, the team of experts have asked Manipur Biodiversity Board for declaring Dailong village as one of the key biodiversity heritage site of Manipur.

"It is blessed with an extraordinary living laboratory, some of the last and healthiest tropical forest left in the entire region of north-east India," Singh said.

Rongmei tribes of Dailong and other villages of Tamenglong district were conserving forest in the form of sacred groves known as 'Raengan', which is a precursor to all conservation activities of all the tribes in the hill districts of Manipur.

S Khonachand Singh, assistant professor, department of Botany, Imphal College, N Sony Meetei, Asst professor, Dept of Zoology, Moirang College and Kh Brajesh Singh, wildlife filmmaker were part of the research team.
Rubi Ray who has also topped in the subject of chemistry incorrectly answered when asked a basic question about the subject. (Credit: Twitter)

Most people would agree that a lot needs to be done to improve the educational system in India. There have been plenty of reports in the news about alleged cases of rampant cheating particularly in the state of Bihar. This has led the authorities to clamp down on malpractices during exams that perhaps resulted in less than 50 per cent of students clearing the class 10th board exams this year. But this Bihar political science topper's interview will leave you perhaps as confused about the syllabus as she was.

A video posted by India Today shows Rubi Ray, the political science topper in Bihar, apparently unable to answer even basic questions about her subject. The girl from Hajipur who was interviewed by a news reporter is heard saying that she thought her subject was about cooking. She has reportedly scored 444 marks out of 500 in the subject.

Meet Bihar topper in 'Political Science' who thinks that the subject is about 'cooking' #ITVideohttps://t.co/4sXTCBzAcZ  India Today (@IndiaToday) May 31, 2016

Another student, who had aced in the subject of chemistry, had reportedly even said that he thought that aluminium was the most reactive element in the periodic table even though the correct answer to that question is: fluorine.

The video clip managed to tickle the funny bone of quite a few people with many going on Twitter to express their amusement.

She is the harry topper of Bihar.  https://t.co/JFb4GpuOds  Tintin AAP Ka (@goutamsahoo1983) May 31, 2016

Bihar standard. Cl 12 topper says Pol Sc deals with the art of Cooking.He is right. 2day politicians r only cooking scams 4 self n family  Arvind Mahajan (@ArvindMahajan10) May 31, 2016

The intw of Bihar Board topper being showing on @aajtak is the true reality of education in Bihar. Investigate and break nexus....  Spaceman Spiff (@anshulz) May 30, 2016
Hyderabad: The AP government has brought to the notice of the Centre that Sections 50, 51 and 56 of the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014  which have triggered a row over sharing commercial tax earnings between the state and TS  are against the principles of natural justice and has demanded amendment to these sections.

AP wants everything to be shared in the ratio of population. However, the TS government is disputing this on the ground that the Telangana region contributed a major chunk of commercial taxes in undivided AP but only a minor amount was spent in Telangana while most funds were diverted to the Seemandhra region.

APs argument is totally unfair. Its a known fact that Telangana region contributed a major share to undivided AP's tax kitty for several decades towards commercial taxes. But only a portion of that amount was spent in Telangana while the rest was diverted to Seemandhra region. We are not demanding AP to pay back that amount to TS. What we want is that after bifurcation, the traders in the respective states should pay their taxes to the respective governments as per the AP Reorganisation Act, said S. Venugopala Chary, special representative to TS government in New Delhi.

Mr Venugopala Chary has already taken up the issue with the Centre and has lodged a strong protest over AP seeking amendment to the Act to collect arrears.

He said the AP government, which has threatened to approach the courts on this issue, is now trying to bring pressure on the Centre to amend the Act knowing that their argument will not stand legal scrutiny.
Union Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar visits the injured jawans at a hospital after a major fire in Central Ammunition Depot at Pulgaon (Photo PTI)

Mumbai: A major fire broke out at the countrys largest ammunition bunker, the Armys Central Ammunition Depot (CAD) at Pulgaon, near Wardha, Maharashtra, at about 1 am Tuesday, killing 16 people and injuring 17.

According to an Army spokesperson, two officers, one jawan and 13 civilian fire-fighting staff lost their lives. Ministry of defence (MoD) sources told this newspaper that three of the 15 injured were in critical condition.

The CAD is the second-largest ammunition depot in Asia and occupies almost 7,000 acres. After the incident, Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag and defence minister Manohar Parrikar visited the spot and Army HQ ordered an inquiry.

Sources said the fire may have been caused by the extremely hot weather.

A total of 130 tonnes of ammunition, worth almost Rs 100.44 crore, was destroyed, sources said.

Infographic

The fire, which started in one of the sheds that housed highly sensitive ammunition, was first detected by soldiers on night duty who immediately set off the fire alarm and tried to put out the blaze, resulting in injuries to a few soldiers.

As a precautionary step, the residents of 10 villages in the vicinity were evacuated as the civil authorities feared the fumes from the exploding ammunition could affect them.

...in efforts to douse the fire, two officers and 14 personnel (one Army jawan and 13 civilian fire-fighting staff) lost their lives and two officers and 15 personnel (nine Army jawans and six civilian fire-fighting staff) were injured, the Director-General of Military Operations, Lt. Gen. Ranbir Singh, told reporters in New Delhi. Loud explosions were heard as the raging fire lit up the night sky.

Residents of the adjoining villages of Muradgaon, Agorgaon, Yashgaon, Nagjhari and Pimpri were evacuated to the Nagar Parishad school in Devlai and Zilla Parishad school in Digdo.

Security at risk: The accident was the latest to hit the Indian armed forces
CHENNAI: Pro-Islamic groups in Tamil Nadu have warned that Wahabism and preaching of ISIS fundamentals have been gaining ground in Tamil Nadu through a section of mosques.

In a recent communique to state police and also in their recent congratulatory message to Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa last week, Ahlus Sunnath Wal Jamaths Federation (ASWJF) belonging to Sufi persuasion, a peaceful majority among Muslims along with Tamil Nadu Waqfs protection council has alleged that extremist Wahabis and Deobandis have infiltrated into managing committees of a few Chennai-based Dargahs and Masjids and are promoting ideologies of 34 banned organisations.

The shrines, graves, Madrasas, Khanwahs and masjids constructed by followers of saints are under threat and these structures are embodiment of Hindu- Muslim unity, said Syed Ali Akbar, organiser, Ahlus Sunnath Wal Jamaths Federation.

Recalling last years incident, where two youngsters were deported to Chennai from Turkey after the foreign police found them giving suspicious statements during interrogation expressing wish to join ISIS, a police officer said, Since the Shirk Eradication conference conducted early this year in Trichy, the divide between the TN Muslims is widening, and we are watching the activities of both the pro-extremist groups and hardcore Hindutva promoters to ensure peace, the officer said.
The tribunal directed the secretaries of all states to submit affidavits within three weeks

New Delhi: The National Green Tribunal said on Tuesday that there was no plan to extend the ban on diesel vehicles prevailing in the national capital and Kerala to other cities. The panel said it would first examine the data received from different states on pollution levels in various cities.

The tribunal directed the secretaries of all states to submit affidavits within three weeks naming the two most polluted cities within their territory, total population and vehicle density in each district.

We are not banning any vehicle. We have asked state governments to submit a report on the pollution levels in various cities. Let that data come... and (we will) decide accordingly, a bench hea-ded by NGT chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar said.

The observation came after Additional Solicitor General Pinky Anand, appearing for the ministry of heavy industries, asked the bench not to extend to other cities the ban on registration of vehicles beyond 2000cc. She said it was having an adverse effect on growth in the automobile sector.

Senior advocate A.M. Singhvi, appearing for Society of Indian Autom-obile Manufactures, opp-osed the idea of extending the diesel ban to other metros and said diesel was not the only source of pollution.

The bench pointed out that it had listed burning of waste, dust emission from other sources and vehicular pollution. Let that data come to us and then we will hear the matter in detail, it said.

Green body sees red over AOL

The National Green Tribunal on Tuesday junked the Art of Livings (AOL) plea seeking its nod to accept the environment compensation, slapped for damaging Yamunas biodiversity, as bank guarantee instead of payment of balance amount of Rs 4.75 crore.

The green panel also slapped a fine of `5,000 on Sri Sri Ravi Shankars AOL for filing such application which lacks bonafide and directed it to pay the remainder amount in one week.

A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar rapped the AOL foundation for not depositing the amount despite assurance granted to the tribunal.

The green panel on March 9 had refused to prohibit the three-days World Culture Festival, held by AOL between March 11 and 13, but slapped a fine of Rs 5 crore on the foundation for damaging biodiversity and aquatic life of Yamuna.

Later on March 11, Art of Living had moved a plea seeking four weeks time for depositing the amount after which the tribunal allowed the foundation to deposit Rs 25 lakh on that day and granted three weeks time period to pay the balance amount.
Lucknow: Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday dared the Modi government to investigate the allegations that her son-in-law Robert Vadra owned a benami mansion in London, and said that charges against him were part of a political conspiracy.

Every day, they (BJP) level baseless allegations. If there is any truth, they should hold an impartial inquiry and the facts will be there for all to see. Doodh ka doodh, pani ka pani ho jayega (separate grain from chaff), she said while replying to questions in Rae Bareli on Tuesday.

Mrs Gandhi was responding to senior BJP leader Kirit Somaiyas demand for a detailed inquiry by the Enforcement Directorate into the alleged involvement of Mr Vadra in the 2009 purchase of a proxy-owned mansion in London.

On the functions to mark completion of two years of the Modi government, the Congress president said, I have never seen anything like this  Modi ji is the Prime Minister and not a Shahenshah (emperor).

The nation is facing drought, poverty and farmers are in pain. At these times, such a show of celebration is not appropriate, the Congress president added.

Sonia slams BJP for Congress-mukt jibe

Congress president Sonia Gandhi said that NDA ministers had given Prime Minister Narendra Modi the stature of shahenshah. Speaking at Rae Bareli, Mrs Gandhi also slammed the BJP slogan for a Congress-mukt Bharat.

What do they mean by this? They keep hurling allegations at us without any truth, she said and added that the allegations against her family and party were a part of this campaign.

Mr Vadra has been mired in controversies since his land deals in Haryana and Rajasthan, transacted when Congress was in power in the two states. The matter came to light before the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, giving BJP campaign fodder.
Those officers responsible for changing the date fixed by us must learn lesson of their life, says Bench

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday pulled up the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) for not complying with the directions on schedule for grant of affiliation to technical institutions and said such an inaction will endanger the prospects of students.

A vacation Bench of Justices P.C. Ghose and Amitav Roy told counsel for AICTE if our orders are not obeyed we can be exemplarily ruthless. We will not allow anyone to tinker with our orders. Those officers responsible for changing the date fixed by us must learn lesson of their life. You (AICTE) put students life at risk. After your reply we may fine you for not meeting the deadline and damage caused to students.

The bench was hearing an application by Abdul Kalam Technical University in UP complaining about the AICTE not adhering to the schedule.
New Delhi: With China blocking India's bid at the United Nations to proscribe Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar, government on Wednesday said it is exerting diplomatic pressure to remove the "technical hold" and get a ban imposed on him.

Minister of State for External Affairs V K Singh told the Lok Sabha that India has also told China that there cannot be selective approach when it comes to terrorism.

Read: Training camps organised by terror groups in country: Govt

Last month, China had blocked India's bid at the UN to ban Azhar, the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief and mastermind of the Pathankot terror attack.

During Question Hour, Singh said the move to ban Azhar is on "technical hold" at the UN. "Hum zor dal rahe hai (we are putting pressure)" through diplomatic channels to ensure that it is done away with, he noted.

Read: Venkaiah Naidu questions China UN veto on Masood Azhar

China is among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) and has veto powers. The others are France, Russian Federation, the UK, and the US.

The UN had banned the JeM but India's efforts for a ban on Azhar after the 2008 Mumbai terror attack also did not fructify as China did not allow the ban.

On reforms at the UN, Singh said the expansion in both permanent and non-permanent category of its membership would be an essential element of the reforms at the UNSC.

Referring to the four permanent member countries, Singh said "hamari baat ko samarthan karte hain (they support our demand for reforms)."

On China, he said the country understands India's position and is of the view that India should have the opportunity to do good work at the UN. "We are seeking enough support" for UNSC membership and leaders of the country who visit overseas raise this issue, Singh said and noted that reforms in the UN is a long process.

Read: India seeks ban on Masood Azhar, gives dossier to UN Sanctions Committee

In a written reply, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said a large number of countries have supported India's initiatives for reform of the Security Council, as well as endorsed India's candidature for permanent membership. "This has been expressed in various forms and fora including in bilateral discussions with the Government of India," she said.

"Government is of the view that early reforms of the Security Council is an essential element in the overall effort to reform the UN in order to make it more broadly representative, efficient and transparent and thus to further enhance its effectiveness and the legitimacy and implementation of its decisions," Swaraj said.

A series of initiatives involving bilateral and multilateral platforms continue to be taken in pursuance of permanent membership in an expanded UNSC, she said.

"India is also actively engaged in the ongoing Inter-governmental Negotiations on UNSC reforms at the UN and is working alongside other reform oriented countries through the G-4 (India, Japan, Brazil and Germany) and the L.69 (a cross regional grouping of developing countries) groupings," she added.

To another query, she said that India is not a member of the '1267/1989/2254 ISIL (Da'esh) and Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee' since the country is not member of the UNSC. The 15 members of the UNSC are the members of this committee.

"A 10-member 'Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team' (Monitoring Team) comprising of independent experts, assist the Sanctions Committee. Depending on the vacancies available, India and all other member states may forward nominations of their nationals to serve on the Monitoring Team for which selections are made by the UN Secretariat," Swaraj said.
Site of World Culture festival organised by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's Art Of Living foundation on the flood plain of Yamuna River in New Delhi. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Thursday said that if the Art of Living (AOL) foundation doesn't pay the penalty of Rs 5 crores to the Delhi Development Authority by tomorrow, it could revoke clearance for the three-day World Culture Festival. "Art of Living has time till tomorrow to pay Rs 5 crore fine and if there is any breach, law will take its own course," the tribunal said.

The green tribunal also asked the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) to issue a proper direction to the AOL with regard to disposal of municipal waste.

NGT, meanwhile, refused to give an urgent hearing to a fresh plea seeking stay on the event on the ground that it did not have the requisite permission from fire authorities and police.

Earlier in the day, Ravi Shankar told a news channel that he would rather go to jail than pay the fine imposed by NGT. We have not done anything wrong we will go to jail but not pay a penny, said the spiritual leader.

Read: Will go to jail but wont pay a penny: Sri Sri on NGT fine

The NGT on Wednesday gave its consent for the event, but imposed a penalty of Rs 5 crores on the Art of Living Foundation for damaging the environment.

A bench headed by NGT chairperson Swantanter Kumar on Wednesday asked the Ministry of Environment and Forests to file an affidavit and spell out why no environmental clearance is needed for raising temporary structures.

For the reason of delay and lapses on the part of the applicant in approaching the Tribunal, and for the reason of fait accompli capable of restoration and restitution, we are unable to grant prayer of prohibitory order, the bench observed.

Read: NGT gives reluctant nod to Sri Sri event, Art of Living fined Rs 5 crore

As per documents placed on record it is evident that flood plains have been drastically tampered with and ramps, roads, compaction of earth, pontoon bridges and other semi-permanent or temporary structures were constructed without the requisite permission of the concerned authorities, including ministry of water resources, it added.

The direction came after the counsel appearing for the Ministry of Environment and Forests said that they have found no debris when an expert team visited the site. The counsel added that as per Environment Impact Assessment notification 2006, no environment clearance is needed for temporary structures.

Read: SC junks plea seeking to stop Sri Sris World Culture Festival

The AOL had earlier announced later that it would appeal against the NGT order as its chief, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, tweeted that he was not satisfied with the verdict.

Read: Sri Sri defends mega event, says 'eco stability' has been maintained

Warning the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) and Delhi Pollution Control Committee to not issue such orders in future, a fine of Rs 5 lakh and Rs 1 lakh, respectively, was slapped on the civic bodies for failing to perform their statutory functions.

Read: Why different rules for 'ostensible God': Congress on Sri Sri

Earlier, President Pranab Mukherjee cancelled his plan to attend Sundays valedictory session.
New Delhi: After a show of bravado, Art of Living chief Sri Sri Ravi Shankar bowed before the NGT and agreed to comply with its order to pay the interim compensation of Rs 5 crore for environmental damage to the Yamuna flood plains due to the World Culture Festival.

The National Green Tribunal court asked the foundation to pay Rs 25 lakh on Friday while giving them three weeks to pay the remaining Rs 4.75 crore.

The NGT also took strong exception to Ravi Shankars defiance when he said he would rather go to jail than pay Rs 5 crore and said: When a man of his stature makes such statements, it hits the very rule of law. If anybody hurts the image of the tribunal, he will be taken to rule of law (sic).

Rs 5 crore is not a penalty, says NGT

Art of Living chief Sri Sri Ravi Shankar bowed before the NGT and agreed to comply with its order to pay the interim compensation of Rs 5 crore.

The AoL counsel, on the other hand, tried to blame the media, claiming that the gurus remarks were made in a different context and they had no intent to disregard the conditions imposed by the Tribunal.

To the foundations plea before the NGT bench, headed by chairperson Swatanter Kumar, that they were a charitable organisation and should be given more time to generate Rs 5 crore, the court asked them to pay Rs 25 lakh immediately, failing which the Rs 2.5 crore sanctioned to it by the ministry of culture would be attached.

The Bench, however, clarified that the amount of Rs 5 crore be treated as environmental compensation, and not as penalty. We are only concerned with compliance of its (the courts) directions with regard to the pollution of the river Yamuna during the course of the event.

Certainly, adherence to the rule of law is the duty not only of the government but of every citizen of the country. The rule of law is the very foundation of the administration of justice system, the bench said, adding, If the rule of law is undermined, it raises a challenge not only for the justice delivery system, but even to the capability of the government to enforce.
New Delhi: Congress members in Rajya Sabha on Monday again raised the issue of Vijay Mallya, who has allegedly defaulted on over Rs 9,000 crore bank loans, and demanded that the industrialist be brought back to India, along with former IPL chief Lalit Modi.

Congress members trooped in the Well and raised slogans half way through the Zero Hour after its member Pramod Tiwari raised the issue. The party had raised the issue last week also.

Tiwari, while raising the matter, claimed that the beleaguered industrialist was elected to the Rajya Sabha with BJP support.

Deputy Chairman P J Kurien said Tiwari's notice on the Mallya issue has not been accepted by Chairman Hamid Ansari.

He also said that the matter should be referred to Ethics Committee of Rajya Sabha.

However, Congress members kept raising slogans like 'Vijay Mallya, Modi Ko Wapas Lao, Wapas Lao' from the Well.

Amid their slogan shouting, some other members raised their Zero Hour mentions. The House was adjourned for a few minutes due to the din, just before the start of Question Hour at noon.
Beijing: India and Pakistan should resolve the issue over Masood Azhar through "direct" and "serious consultations", China on Tuesday said, weeks after blocking India's bid in the UN to ban the JeM chief that generated negativity in bilateral ties.

"We encourage all parties related to the listing matter of Masood Azhar to have direct communication and work out a solution through serious consultations," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said in a written communication to PTI here on the issue which drew serious protests from New Delhi over Beijing's last minute move to block its bid to slap a UN ban on Azhar.

Read: China again blocks Indias bid at UN for ban on Masood Azhar

Replying to a question about whether there is any change in China's stand on the issue after a number of top Indian officials conveyed India's strong concerns over the move, Hua said as per the rules of the UN Committee on counterterrorism, the relevant countries should have direct talks.

In addition to Hua's comments, Chinese officials expressed confidence that the issue will be resolved as Beijing is also in touch with Islamabad on the issue.

Read: China sticks to its guns on Masood Azhar issue

Her comments came as Foreign Secretaries of India and Pakistan held talks in New Delhi today, in which India raised the Azhar issue.

While External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj took up the issue with her counterpart Wang Yi on the sidelines of Russia, India, China (RIC) Ministers meet in Moscow on April 18, it was raised by Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar with his Chinese counterpart the same day in Beijing.

Read: Love thy neighbour: Chinese diplomats response to Masood Azhar issue

The issue was subsequently raised by National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi during the just-concluded 19th round of India-China border talks.
Around 1,000 villagers living close to the depot have been evacuated for safety. (Photo: ANI)

Nagpur: At least 20 security personnel, including two Army officers, were killed on Tuesday in a massive fire that broke out at one of Asia's biggest ammunition depot in Maharashtra's Pulgaon that houses the largest stockpile of weapons in the country.

Two officers, including a Lieutenant Colonel, and 15 Defence Security Corp (DSC) jawans were among those killed in the blaze that started around 2 am, an Army officer said.

Also, at least 19 security personnel were injured in the fire that has spread to a number of sheds that houses ammunitions, bombs and other explosive items. Some of them with burn injuries are in a critical condition, he said.

Video footage showed the raging fire lighting up the night sky. The injured were evacuated to the nearby military hospital in helicopters. Hundreds of families of nearby villages have been evacuated, officials said.

"The main fire at one of the sheds has been extinguished. The situation is being stabilised. Secondary fire and explosions is in the process of being controlled," the Army officer said refusing to go into the reasons of the fire.

Several fire engines were pressed into service to douse the fire. Army has ordered an inquiry into the incident.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi called on Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar to take stock of the situation.

Read: Modi condoles deaths in fire at army depot, asks Parrikar to take stock

Pained by loss of lives caused by a fire at central ammunition depot in Pulgaon, Maharashtra. My thoughts are with the bereaved families.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) May 31, 2016

I pray that those who are injured recover quickly. Have asked RM @manoharparrikar to visit the spot & take stock of the situation.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) May 31, 2016

Congress President Sonia Gandhi expressed shock and deep anguish at deaths of jawans and officers in the fire.

"Extending her condolences to the family members of the deceased, Smt. Gandhi hoped that the injured were being taken care of and ample efforts were being undertaken to limit and control damage," the party said in a statement.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh too condoled the loss of lives in the accident. My heart goes out to the families of the officers and jawans who lost their lives in the fire accident at Ammunition depot in Pulgaon,he tweeted.

My heart goes out to the families of the officers and jawans who lost their lives in the fire accident at Ammunition depot in Pulgaon.  Rajnath Singh (@BJPRajnathSingh) May 31, 2016

I pray for the speedy recovery of those who got injured in Pulgaon fire. My condolences to the bereaved families, he said.

I pray for the speedy recovery of those who got injured in Pulgaon fire. My condolences to the bereaved families  Rajnath Singh (@BJPRajnathSingh) May 31, 2016

Calling the incident very unfortunate, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said, We have suffered huge loss of lives and property. I have directed district officials to extend whatever help possible, he added.

The central ammunition depot at Pulgaon is India's biggest ammunition depot as stocks including bombs, grenades, shells, assorted rifles and other explosives from various factories comes here first and is then distributed to various forward areas. Pulgaon is 110 kms from Nagpur.

"I am given to understand that Defence Minister will be visiting the site and this itself is an evidence of how serious and concerned is the Central government. My heart goes out to the families of jawans and officers killed and injured in the incident. The nation stands by them," Minister of State in the PMO Jitender Singh said.
Over the course of the last few months, many of these youths have been questioned by the NIA and let off after nothing serious was found against them. (Photo: AP)

New Delhi: 400 to 500 Indians have become attracted to the idea of joining the Islamic State (IS), according to latest estimates by the government and intelligence agencies.

According to a report, the men who are mostly youngsters, interact regularly on the internet, make efforts to get in touch with someone from ISIS and seek ways to travel to the region in Iraq and Syria held by the outfit.

Read: DC exclusive: Andhra Pradesh student in Texas identified in ISIS video

At present, the government believes that ISIS has limited sway with Indian Muslims. But the 500-odd Indians who are 'attracted' to ISIS have kept intelligence agencies, state police departments and National Investigation Agency (NIA) on their toes.

Read: Court extends period of probe against 3 ISIS sympathisers

Over the course of the last few months, many of these youths have been questioned by the NIA and let off after nothing serious was found against them. They are given counselling as part of an effort to deradicalise them. Officials say that those who were earlier attracted to Jaish-e-Mohammad, Indian Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Toiba, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen and other outfits seem to be gravitating to ISIS.

Intelligence agencies say that the reason so many youth are finding ISIS attractive is a combination of political factors and ideology. Many believe that the west has inflicted atrocities upon Muslims for a long time. They also feel that only an ISIS-led Caliphate can provide a remedy to the social malpractices in the world today.

However, Indian men attracted towards ISIS don't have many grievances with the system in India. "Our assessment is these men are not bearing feelings of revenge against the Army, security forces or India as such. Many are getting everything - education, jobs and freedom to move anywhere," an intelligence expert was quoted as saying.

The youth come from several states, including Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Delhi. They use web-based calling, messaging and chat apps like Trillion, Live, Tango, KIK, Nimbuzz, Voxer, Talkray, GroupMe, Viber, Hike, KaKao Talk, IM+ and many others apart from Facebook and Twitter.

So far, Indian agencies have arrested 49 IS recruits, before they could either travel to Syria/Iraq or carry out lone-wolf attacks in India. The youth under suspicion are being tracked in real time and law enforcement agencies continue to intervene before an act of violence or travel to ISIS territory is attempted.

The NIA busted a module recently, led by one Muddabir Sheikh where 18 members were held for ISIS related activities. The agency is expected to file its first two charge sheets against the module in the first week of June.
Varanasi: As part of his plan to woo the Dalits ahead of the UP assembly election in 2017, BJP president president Amit Shah on Tuesday had meal with a Dalit family in one of the village in Sevapuri Assembly segment under Prime Minister Narendra Modi Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency.

Read: BJP not celebrating, only giving report of work to people: Amit Shah

Shah, who was on his way to Allahabad to address a farmers' rally, took a brief halt at Jogiyapur village and had lunch with the family of Girjaprasad Bind and Ikbal Bind, who belong to the Dalit community, Sanjay Bharadwaj, BJP media-in-charge said.

Read: Amit Shah steers clear of controversial issues for UP Assembly polls

Shahs rally comes four days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose Saharanpur in western Uttar Pradesh to mark two years in office, virtually launching the BJPs campaign in the massively important state.

Several senior party leaders have been in Allahabad, where the BJPs executive will meet on June 12 and 13, reviewing the preparations for the rally.

The BJP clearly wants to dispel the notion that it is a party which provides little space to Dalits, who constitute 17% of the population in UP.

Earlier this month, the BJP chief took a holy dip with Dalit sadhus in Kshipra river at Kumbh in Ujjain.
Union Minister for Health said the move would will help in providing additional doctors in the health pool of the country.

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday approved the proposal of extending the retirement age of all doctors of the Central Health Service to 65 years.

The proposal made by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare will be effective from May 31, 2016.

This will enable the Government to retain experienced doctors for a longer period, and to provide better services in its public health facilities, particularly to the poorest, who are entirely dependent on public facilities.

Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare J. P. Nadda stated that this step will empower the Government to strengthen the healthcare sector in the country.

"It will help in providing additional doctors in the health pool of the country," he said.

Nadda added that this will strengthen the efforts of the Ministry in conceptualising and rolling out various people-oriented schemes which l need the services of doctors in implementing them.
Condemning the government's approach in the matter, Kanhaiya said that the government wanted to perpetually function in a denial mode. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union ( JNUSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar urged the nation to come out in large numbers and join the African students for the 'March for Justice' at the Jantar Mantar in the national capital on Tuesday.

Condemning the government's approach in the matter, Kanhaiya said that the government wanted to perpetually function in a denial mode, adding that the attack on the African students showed the racial discrimination that was taking root in this country.

Read: Congo man's killing: Sushma assures speedy trial; to meet African students

"All that the spokesperson for the state has to say is that it is a 'minor issue'. It is shameful that the government takes this issue so lightly when diplomats from 42 African nations boycotted the weeklong celebration of Africa Day, hosted by the Indian government as a sign of protest against renewed 'racism and Afro-phobia'," he added.

Kanhaiya further stated, that the government wanted to turn the citizens of the nation into an unthinking and blindly following mob with intolerant attitude.

"The BJP-RSS government continues to attack the cultural ethos of this nation that promotes unity in diversity and welcoming people from diverse background and through these attacks, they pose a very serious threat to the very constitution of this country," he added.

Further escalating attack, Kanhaiya asked the government to stop turning the people of the country into a crowd and stop propagating ideas, which promote discrimination on the basis of colour, caste, religion and regions.

In the wake of the recent attacks on the African nationals, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj is set to meet African students on Tuesday to assure them of their safety and security in India .

The Indian Government had Monday assured the family members of African national Masunda Oliver, who was brutally killed in the national capital, that speedy trial would take place in the case and all the three accused would be prosecuted as per law of the land.

Birender Yadav, Joint Secretary ( West Africa ), who met the family members of Oliver at the airport, offered his heartfelt condolences and informed that the Indian government would bear all the expenses to dispatch his mortal remains back to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

A week after the killing of a Congolese man in the national capital that stirred a diplomatic row and instigated violence against Indians in Congo, four attacks on African nationals by the residents in Chattarpur were reported on Friday.

Five people were arrested by the Delhi Police in connection with the four attack incidents on the African nationals on Sunday. The African nationals had sustained minor injuries in the attack that took place in South Delhi 's Mehrauli area on Friday.

The accused have been arrested are identified as- Babu (32), Kunal (20), Om Prakash (24), Rahul alias Rocky (24) and Ajay (25). The police are carrying out search operations to nab the other accused persons.

On Sunday, Swaraj spoke to Rajnath Singh and Delhi Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung about the attacks and said she was assured that the culprits would soon be arrested.
The family of Ikhlaq, who was beaten to death by a mob, at Bishada in Dadri. (Photo: PTI/File)

New Delhi: In a new twist to the Dadri lynching case, a freshly conducted forensic test has revealed that the meat found in 50-year-old Mohammad Akhlaqs home was beef. This test contradicts an earlier report that said the meat found in his fridge was mutton.

According to reports, the new forensic test was conducted at a laboratory in Mathura after police sent it samples of the meat found in Akhlaqs freezer. The Mathura forensic lab report states that the meat sample recovered from victim's house belongs to cow or it's progeny.

Read: Meat recovered from Akhlaq's house mutton, not beef: Forensic reports

However, last year, in December, reports said that the sample was from a goat progeny. A veterinary officer in his report said, "Prima facie it seems that meat found in Dadri lynching victim's house belongs to goat progeny."

On September 28, a crowd of around 200 persons, largely youngsters, attacked the house of Akhlaq, a resident of the Bisada village in UP after rumours were spread in the village that a cow has been slaughtered and beef was stored in his house.

The victim's relatives had claimed that only goat meat had been kept in the house and an announcement made in a local temple that a cow has been slaughtered led to the violence by the mob.

"Dadri police said mutton, now you are saying it is beef. This is all politics," said Akhlaq's brother Chand Mohammad. "This report(of Mathura lab) has come after six months. At that time, a report(of Veterinary department) had also come, but it didn't say the same thing. We don't know what they have done and what they have done with it?," he added.

Read: Dadri heat reaches United Nations

While the slaughter of beef is illegal in Uttar Pradesh, the consumption of the same is not banned.

The incident drew sharp condemnation from parties across the country and led to widespread outrage. The matter even reached the doors of United Nation, with UP minister Mohd Azam Khan writing a letter to the secretary general of the UN last year, asking him to impress upon the Union government of India to stick to international agreement and allow secularism and plurality to flourish in the country.
The ban on sale of large diesel cars and sport utility vehicles with engines of two litres or more was first imposed in December. (Representational image)

New Delhi: Amid the see-sawing developments over the much debated upon diesel car ban in several states in the nation, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Tuesday gave three weeks time to all states to furnish a report on the pollution levels in their worst affected cities.

The next hearing in the matter is on July 11, in which all states will have to present data on vehicular population, pollution from dust and the two most polluted cities in their respective states to the NGT.

During the hearing on Tuesday, Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Pinky Anand told the NGT that about eight per cent FDI under 'Make in India' has come from the auto industry and that the sector also generates employment opportunities.

Read: Ban on large diesel vehicles a transient phase, says Jaitley

"We don't want the industry to suffer, which is why the government has brought fuel guidelines. The whole idea is that people must prosper. The NGT passed an order but the same was stayed by the High Court. There aren't enough evidences to show that diesel vehicles are causing more pollution," Anand told the media here after the hearing.

Anand, who is representing the Centre in the matter, asserted that there must be a broad plan for a long, short and medium term to curb pollution.

The Auto manufacturers Association also conveyed to the NGT that vehicular pollution was not the sole cause of pollution and that cars above 2000 cc were not the major source.

Earlier, the NGT bench after hearing a petition filed by Lawyers Environmental Awareness Forum (LEAF) ordered that diesel vehicles over 10-year-old may not be allowed to ply in six cities, including Thiruvananthapuram, Kothamangalam, Thrissur and Kozhikode.

The bench also directed the traffic police to take action and charge a fine of Rs. 5,000 as environment compensation from defaulters.

The petition had demanded toxic gases by the old diesel vehicles such as lorries and buses should be immediately curtailed and a strict rule should be brought for it.
New Delhi: In wake of the recent attacks on the African nationals, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj is set to meet African students to assure them of their safety and security in India.

The Indian Government had yesterday assured the family members of African national Masunda Oliver, who was brutally killed in the national capital, that speedy trial would take place in the case and all the three accused would be prosecuted as per law of the land.

Birender Yadav, Joint Secretary (West Africa), who met the family members of Oliver at the airport, offered his heartfelt condolences and informed that the Indian government would bear all the expenses to dispatch his mortal remains back to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Expressing "deep" concern over attacks on African nationals here, President Pranab Mukherjee had yesterday said it is "not tolerable" as India's relationship with African countries is close, and always we considered.

Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju earlier in the day had dubbed the recent attacks as 'unfortunate'.

Rijiju said the government will try its best to avoid such episodes in the future.

"After what has happened with the African students in Delhi, we are holding regular meetings to come up with ways to sensitize the local populace," Rijiju said.

"Arrests have already been made and the foreign ministry is also looking into the matter along with us. I also had a meeting with the Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh to discuss the same," he added.

A week after the killing of a Congolese man in the national capital that stirred a diplomatic row and instigated violence against Indians in Congo, four attacks on African nationals by the residents in Chattarpur were reported on Friday.

Five people were arrested by the Delhi Police in connection with the four attack incidents on the African nationals on Sunday. The African nationals had sustained minor injuries in the attack that took place in South Delhi's Mehrauli area on Friday.

The accused have been arrested are identified as- Babu (32), Kunal (20), Om Prakash (24), Rahul alias Rocky (24) and Ajay (25). The police are carrying out search operations to nab the other accused persons.

On Sunday, Swaraj spoke to Rajnath Singh and Delhi Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung about the attacks and said she was assured that the culprits would soon be arrested.

"They assured me that the culprits will be arrested soon and sensitisation campaign will be launched in areas where African nationals reside," she tweeted.
Visakhapatnam: In a demonstration of Indias Act East policy and Indian Navys increasing footprint and operational reach, Indian Naval Ships Satpura and Kirch under the Command of the Flag Officer Commanding Eastern Fleet, Rear Admiral S.V. Bhokare, have arrived at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam on a four day visit, as part of deployment of the Eastern Fleet to the South China Sea and Western Pacific on Monday.

Another two Indian Navy ships Sahyadri and Shakti have arrived at Subic Bay in Philippines on a three day visit. During the visit, the Indian Navy ships will have professional interaction with the Vietnam Peoples Navy towards further enhancing co-operation between the two forces.

In addition, calls on senior government and military authorities, sporting and cultural interactions and sharing of best practices, aimed at strengthening ties and mutual understanding between the two Navies, are also planned.

The visiting ships are also likely to conduct exercises with the Vietnam Peoples Navy, aimed at enhancing interoperability in communication as well as Search and Rescue procedures, post departure from Cam Ranh Bay.

INS Satpura is commanded by Captain A.N. Pramod and INS Kirch is commanded by Commander Sharad Sinsunwal. INS Sahyadri is commanded by Captain K.S. Rajkumar and INS Shakti is commanded by Captain Gagan Kaushal.

Bilateral relations between India and Vietnam are characterised by strong bonds of friendship based on cultural, religious and economic ties dating back to 2nd Century AD. The influence of Indian civilisation speaks of the deep rooted historical linkages between the nations.

The Indian Navy has had extensive interactions with Vietnam Peoples Navy, particularly in the field of training, repairs, maintenance and logistics support aimed at capacity building.

Reciprocal port visits, high-level delegations and training exchanges have bolstered naval cooperation between the two countries. The last visit by an Indian Navy ship to Vietnam was in October 2015, when Sahyadri berthed at Da Nang.
New Delhi: Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday challenged the government to "conduct an inquiry if they have proof whether her son-in-law Robert Vadra owned a house in London through an arms dealer. She dared the government to order an impartial probe if there is something in which she said the truth will come out.

On a visit to her Parliamentary constituency, Gandhi was asked by newsmen on reports citing a probe by Income Tax department into transactions of an arms dealer and his links with Vadra, especially with regard to ownership of a house in central London.

"This is a conspiracy for Congress-free country. What is the meaning of Congress-free India. Everyday they make new excuses. They level false charges. If there is something, then there should be an impartial probe. Everything will become clear," she said.

News reports quoted from purported papers seized by the IT department during searches last month on the arms dealer's premises that allegedly led to a trail of emails between Vadra and his assistant on the one hand and the dealer's aide on the other regarding the purchase of a London house for approximately Rs 19 crore in 2009 which was subsequently said to have been sold.

Read: BJP hits back at Sonia over Vadra's defence, Shahenshah remark

On Monday, senior BJP leader Kirit Somaiya sought a detailed inquiry by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) into the alleged involvement of Vadra in the purchase of the proxy-owned mansion in London in 2009.

Read: Probe Robert Vadras benami property in UK, says BJP

Somaiya wrote a letter to the ED Director, Karnal Singh, in this regard and sought a detailed probe into the matter. The BJP leader in his letter quoted media reports saying that a benami or proxy-owned property in London by Vadra.

The media report quotes a government report stating that alleged arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari is holding a house at 12 Ellerton House, Bryanston Square, London, said Somaiya in his letter.

Vadra, however, denied the charges. Vadras lawyers have said he does not own directly or indirectly, a house  as quoted in media reports as No. 12, Ellerton House, Bryanston Square, London  and that Vadra and his assistant have not enter-ed into any transaction of a financial nature with Sanjay Bhandari and are not even aware that Bhandari is involved in any defense transaction.
15 DSC jawans and two officers were killed and 17 jawans and two officers are injured. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday called on Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar to take stock of the deadly inferno at the Central Ammunition Depot in Wardha, Maharasthra, in which 15 Defence Security Corps (DSC) jawans and two officers were killed.

"I pray that those who are injured recover quickly. Have asked RM @manoharparrikar to visit the spot & take stock of the situation. Pained by loss of lives caused by a fire at central ammunition depot in Pulgaon, Maharashtra . My thoughts are with the bereaved families," the Prime Minister tweeted.

Read: Maharashtra: 17 killed in fire at Army's biggest ammunition depot

Echoing similar sentiments, Congress President Sonia Gandhi expressed shock and deep anguish at deaths of jawans and officers in the fire.

"Extending her condolences to the family members of the deceased, Smt. Gandhi hoped that the injured were being taken care of and ample efforts were being undertaken to limit and control damage," the party said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has said that the fire has been brought under control.

"It is an unfortunate incident and we have suffered huge loss of lives and property. I have directed district officials to extend whatever help possible," Fadnavis told ANI.

The incident took place in the wee hours of morning on Tuesday as a fire broke out in the depot storing ammunition.

15 DSC jawans and two officers were killed and 17 jawans and two officers are injured, in which some are critical. The main site of the inferno, which is a shed which caught on fire, has been extinguished.

However, secondary fire and explosions has not been ruled out and precautions are being taken to control the fire.
The question worrying many now is how the government intends to deal with the apparent discrepancy between English speaking students and those less skilled in the language to give all of them an equal chance at cracking NEET.

For twenty years, Karnataka has granted licenses only to Kannada medium schools. The effect is now becoming glaringly visible  government-run schools and PU colleges have shown consistently poor results in comparison to private English-medium schools, and the difference in pass percentage stands at a whopping twenty percent. Now, with single entrance tests, such as NEET for admission to medical college, increasingly becoming the norm, whither Kannada-medium students?

As students get ready to write the National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET) in July for seats in private medical colleges, those from schools offering the state syllabus continue to worry if they will be at a disadvantage when appearing for it as compared to those from CBSE and ICSE schools, which follow a superior syllabus.

While their fears on this count may be largely unfounded as they go on to study the NCERT syllabus in their PU courses, which often levels the playing field, their medium of instruction could, however, pose a problem going by academicians. Pointing out that most, who do their schooling in Kannada, find it harder to opt for science subjects in their PU courses, they believe the medium of instruction plays a big role in the career choices of students. .

"Many students, who feel their English is not good enough, are afraid to pursue science after school. Even if they are doing as well in the subject as any English medium student, they prefer to take either arts or commerce in PUC, says an officer of the education department, noting that the top PU ranks in science are almost always bagged by students from the more developed southern part of the state while the honours are shared by students across the state in arts and commerce courses.

Students from backward areas hesitate to go in for science because of their poor English language skills. The medium of instruction should be blamed for this, he says.

Some believe the confidence of Kannada medium students often takes a beating as they don't always perform as well in their PU courses as those from English medium schools. They point to this year's II PUC final exams, where of the 2,87,655 Kannada medium students, who appeared for it, only 1,34,877 or 46.89 per cent cleared it.

On the other hand, of the 3,48,713 English medium students, who wrote the examination, 2,29,136 or 65.71 per cent passed it. Moreover, districts where a larger number of English medium students wrote the examination, recorded the highest pass percentage in the II PU final examination, they note. Districts like Dakshina Kannada, Udupi, Kodagu, Bengaluru and Uttara Kannada, where students wrote the examination in English, had a pass percentage of over 80 per cent, but the districts of North and Hyderabad Karnataka, where Kannada medium is more popular, had a far less pass percentage.

The question worrying many now is how the government intends to deal with the apparent discrepancy between English speaking students and those less skilled in the language to give all of them an equal chance at cracking NEET, which will be the only admission test nationwide for entry to private and and state- run medical and dental colleges from next year.

Higher level exams need broader study

Interestingly, the gap between rural students, who often study in the Kannada medium, and their English savvy urban counterparts in not very high in the SSLC examination. But Mr. Rakesh T Shetty, a lecturer in a composite college, has an explanation for this.

The SSLC examination pattern is different from that of II PUC. SSLC students don't need to depend on learning resources other than their textbooks. But at the II PU level, students cannot depend on just one textbook and need to refer to many books. Rural students always face a problem here as their lack of English skills becomes a barrier," he explains. Many in the PU department tend to agree.

According to them hundreds of Kannada medium students, who get a distinction in the SSLC examination, find it difficult to match the performance in their PU courses. There are multiple reasons for this. But a serious effort is required to bridge this gap," adds an officer.

Pointing out that around 3,000 government schools across the state are facing threat of closure because of declining admissions, Ms. Parimala Bhat, an academic researcher, believes this only reflects the growing demand for English medium schools. Every student wants to study in the English medium for a good career. This is the reality. The mother tongue versus English debate should not find a place here. The government must respond to what parents want," she adds.

Agreeing, Mr. Chalapathi S, an academician, notes that most students, who excel in the PU examination, are from private schools offering quality education in the English medium. Marks may not be everything in life. But it is important to have a good score from a career perspective. The onus is on the state government to do the needful and give students of its schools a better deal," he underlines.

State needs to introspect: Dr. Veena Bhat, academician

Kannada medium stops at the SSLC level as most state PU colleges, including the government- run, offer education in the English medium. The transition from Kannada medium in schools to English in PU is no easy task.

The reality is few students, who have studied in Kannada medium till their SSLC, feature in CET, JEE, JEE advanced or CLAT as goodlanguage skills are required to appear for these tests. But whenever such issues are raised the state government becomes emotional in its response.

This problem is not confined to Karnataka alone, but is found in Tamil Nadu too The fact is the country is moving towards the one nation-one test concept.

So if we force any one language on students they could have a problem when competing at the national level. There are reports that over 3,000 government-run Kannada medium schools are facing a closure because of shortage of students. This trend should force the state government to introspect on its policies. But no one is ready to accept the reality.
On March 9, the NGT had refused to prohibit the World Culture Festival on the bank of Yamuna, but slapped a fine of Rs. 5 crore on the foundation for damaging biodiversity of the ecologically sensitive Yamuna floodplains. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has ruled that Sri Sri Ravi Shankars Art of Living Foundation (AOL) must pay Rs 4.75 crore as fine for the World Culture festival held on the banks of the river Yamuna, rejecting its appeal that the money they owed be treated as a bank guarantee and that it should apply towards creating a biodiversity park.

The green panel also slapped a fine of Rs 5,000 on AOL for filing such application which "lacks bonafide" and directed it to pay the remainder amount in one week.

A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar rapped the AOL foundation for not depositing the amount despite assurance granted to the tribunal.

Read: Art of Living pays Rs 25 lakh fine now, the rest in 3 weeks

The AOL, in its application had stated that it is in the process of preparing a proposal laying down parameters/methodology for collection of scientific data/evidence regarding assessment of actual environmental damage, if any, and hopes to persuade NGT that, "damage, if any, is neither permanent nor irreversible but in fact remediable".

Read: Sri Sri event: Pay fine or we'll revoke clearance, NGT tells Art of Living

The NGT stated that the AOL Foundation lacks bonafide as it did not live up on its commitment to pay the fine. The tribunal said the AOL has been engaging in multiple litigations in order to not pay the fine.

The Art of Living had been allowed to go ahead with the three-day "World Culture Festival" on the banks of the river Yamuna on the condition that it would pay a Rs 5 crore penalty for damage to the area's delicate ecosystem. The organisation paid Rs 25 lakhs initially and promised to pay the remainder later.

The Art of Living used the order of the court to hold the event and then went back on its commitment," the National Green Tribunal said on Tuesday, adding that the organisers have tried multiple legal cases "in order not to pay the fine" as a result of which the "conduct of the foundation has been called into question."

The World Culture Festival had been held on the Yamuna floodplains from March 11 to 13. It was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi though president Pranab Mukherjee dropped out after the controversy erupted.

The festival first came under the scanner of National Green Tribunal after a set of petitions were filed demanding its cancellation over concerns of potential permanent damage to the riverbed.

Environmentalists had accused organisers of ripping up vegetation and ruining the river's fragile ecosystem by damaging its bed and disrupting water flows.

Responding to the order, the Art of Living Foundation said that it might consider approaching the Supreme Court. They claimed that we left the site in better condition than we found it.

On March 9, the NGT had refused to prohibit the World Culture Festival on the bank of Yamuna, but slapped a fine of Rs. 5 crore on the foundation for damaging biodiversity of the ecologically sensitive Yamuna floodplains.

On May 10, the foundation had issued a clarification over a NGT notice to its founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar for his alleged remarks against the green panel, saying the allegations against the spiritual leader were 'completely false' and based merely on 'newspaper reports'.

The NGT issued a notice to Ravi Shankar for his alleged remarks, that the fine imposed by the green panel for organising an event on banks of river Yamuna was politically motivated.

The NGT had asked why should not contempt of court proceedings be initiated against him and has directed Ravi Shankar to file a reply to it latest by May 25.
Lucknow: BJP president Amit Shah, on Tuesday, had lunch with a Dalit family in Sewapuri block in Varanasi as a part of the BJPs campaign to connect with the poor and downtrodden sections of society.

Accompanied by a group of senior and local party leaders, Mr Shah had lunch at the home of Girja Prasad Bind in Jogiyapur village. Jogiyapur is a Bind-dominated village in Varnasi which is Prime Minister Narendra Modis Lok Sabha constituency.

Binds belong to the Most Backward Caste (MBC) groups and have been demanding an inclusion in the scheduled caste category. The village has over 100 Dalit families. The menu included nenua ki sabzi (sponge guard cooked in a way that is peculiar to Varanasi), parval ki sabzi, dal, rice and rotis. However, when it came to water, Mr Shah opted for bottled mineral water.

The food was served in steel plates and the BJP president and others were seated on the ground for the meal. Before the meal, Mr Shah was given a traditional welcome that included aarti and showering of flower petals by the women. He was offered jaggery and water and then a round of pakoras.

Mr R.K. Patel, a local BJP leader who had coordinated the event, told this correspondent that only 17 people had joined Mr Shah for the lunch and the food was cooked by the women in the Bind family.

We did not bear the expensesit was the Bind family that had requested to host the lunch. We only provided some plastic disposable plates and kulhads (earthen cups) for the event, Mr Patel said.

After the meal, Mr Shah met the women of the house  Kiran Devi, Reeta Devi and Manorama  and thanked them for the food, adding that it was a delicious meal. Kiran, who led the cooking team, was delighted and said that this was the first time that she was meeting a big politician.

Girija Prasad Bind was equally thrilled when he said, I am happy that the BJP president accepted my invitation and visited my house. This is the first time that a senior leader has come to the village.

Mr Shah stayed for about an hour at Jogiyapur and then left for Allahabad.

Earlier he was given a rousing reception by the local leaders at the airport and along the way to the Jogiyapur village.

The Bahujan Samaj Party reacted sharply to the event. Ms Mayawati said that while the BJP had turned a blind eye to the desecration of a statue of late Kanshi Ram in Gurugram, the party president was doing political dramebazi by having lunch at the house of a MBC family.
TRS candidates D. Srinivas and Capt. V. Laxmikantha Rao speak to the media after filing their nomination papers on Tuesday.  DC

Hyderabad: With the Telugu Desam deciding not to field a fourth candidate with the support of defected YSR Congress MLAs, elections for the four Rajya Sabha seats from AP and two from TS will be unanimous.

All eyes were on the TD till the stroke of 3 pm on Tuesday, the time process of filing of nomination papers ended, waiting to see whether the party was ready for large-scale management of Opposition MLAs.

Fielding a fourth candidate could have been risky, since sometimes the outcome may go against the ruling party candidates due to cumbersome voting procedure.

The TDs decision has paved the way for all the four candidates from AP Union railway minister Suresh Prabhu (BJP), Union minister of state for science and technology Sujana Chowdary and former minister T.G. Venkatesh (TD), and Venumbaka Vijay Sai Reddy (YSRC)  to be declared elected at the end of scrutiny of papers on June 1. The last day of withdrawal of nominations is on June 3.

Infographic

Mr Vijay Sai Reddy took the precaution by asking his wife Sunanda Reddy to file a set of nomination papers. She would be withdrawing her nomination after scrutiny. This would be the first time the YSRC would be represented in the Rajya Sabha. However, the TDs strength in the Upper House would remain at six (both TS and AP).

The three TD-BJP alliance candidates filed their papers on Tuesday with K. Satyanarayana Rao, the Returning Officer; all of them told the media that they would strive for the well-being of the AP people and to get justice for the residuary state.

Infographic

With regard to TS, former ministers D. Srinivas and Capt V. Laxmikantha Rao filed their papers on behalf of the party before S. Raja Sadaram, the Returning Officer. Since no other nomination papers were filed, they will declared elected on June 3.

Both candidates vowed to work hard to usher in Bangaru Telangana as promised by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao. The TRS strength in the Rajya Sabha is set to rise to three.
New Delhi: Hitting back at Sonia Gandhi for her defence of son-in-law Robert Vadra, BJP on Tuesday said it has exposed the "farce" that he was merely a private citizen and took a dig at her over her 'Shahenshah' jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying people had sent the emperors packing in the 2014 polls.

It also mocked the Congress chief's dare to the government to order a probe into the accusations against Vadra, saying the opposition party has dubbed such enquiries as vendetta earlier.

"The Congress chief's comments have exposed this farce that Vadra is merely a private citizen. It has established that he is the Gandhi family and the Gandhi family is him. When we do probe, then Congress quickly dismisses it as vendetta. BJP wonders why she is so rattled over some questions being asked about Vadra over some media reports.

"Those who behaved and ruled like 'Shahenshah' were sent packing by voters in 2014. Those emperors are now on bail in the National Herald case involving corruption of over Rs 5000

crore. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that he is 'Pradhan Sewak' and he has been serving people," its national secretary Shrikant Sharma said.

Sonia Gandhi had assailed the Modi government over charges against Vadra, calling it a part of a conspiracy of levelling "false allegations" in its bid for a "Congress-free" India.

She had also dared the government to order an impartial probe and attacked it over the celebrations of two years in office, describing Modi as "Shahenshah". On a visit to her Parliamentary constituency, Gandhi was asked by newsmen on reports citing a probe by Income Tax department into transactions of an arms dealer and his links with Vadra, especially with regard to ownership of a house in central London. "This is a conspiracy for Congress-free country. What is the meaning of Congress-free India. Everyday they make new

excuses. They level false charges. If there is something, then there should be an impartial probe. Everything will become clear," she said.

News reports today quoted from purported papers seized by the IT department during searches last month on the arms dealer's premises that allegedly led to a trail of emails

between Vadra and his assistant on the one hand and the dealer's aide on the other regarding the purchase of a London house for approximately Rs 19 crore in 2009 which was subsequently said to have been sold.

Vadra's legal firm has denied that he owned the London property directly or indirectly. It also denied that Vadra had any business ties with the arms dealer or his aide.
Hyderabad: While YSRC MLAs are camping in Kerala and Goa, ahead of the June 11 Rajya Sabha polls in AP, Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidus discussions with defected YSRC MLAs in Vijayawada on fielding a fourth candidate has heated up the political scene.It is not confirmed whether or not the TD has decided to field a fourth candidate.

The YSRC has stepped up its criticism and said that TD had indulged in horse-trading to buy MLAs for the fourth candidate though it doesnt have the numbers.

Though the YSRC is expressing confidence over party general secretary Vijay Sai Reddy winning the RS seat, the party is now tense over the moves in the TD camp. On Monday, Mr Vijay Sai Reddy and senior leader Ummareddy Venkates-warlu met Chief Electoral Officer Bhanwaralal and sought some clarifications.

We had some doubts over forms and had sought clarification. We have fielded Mr Vijay Sai Reddy as we have enough strength. On the other hand the TD has no numbers for the fourth candidate that they are trying to field, he said.

YSRC MLA A. Ramakris-hna Reddy alleged that the TD had conspired to spend Rs 40 crore to buy MLAs for the fourth seat. They even bought a mandal parishad leader for Rs 3 crore. We have evidence and we will release it at an appropriate time," he said.

A TD source said about 20 YSRC MLAs in two batches had gone to Kerala and Goa. Those who had announced that they would stand by the party and its leader Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy are still in town. Only those who were vulnerable were taken to the camps, he said.

The TD move on the fourth candidate is said to be to keep the Opposition YSRC on tenterhooks. About 17 MLAs who had defected from the YSRC met Mr Naidu in Vijayawada and discussed strategy. Sources said he asked them whether they would get more MLAs into the party.
Vijayawada: The state government has started almost a last minute search for buildings for housing the heads of departments (HoD)s, with the fast-approaching deadline of June 27 for beginning governance from Vijayawada city.

The authorities are hurriedly looking at suitable buildings, offering rents from Rs 18 to Rs 30 per sq foot, but accommodation is not available in the city.

The various government departments need nearly 50,000 sq feet of space, while most buildings have only 5,000 sq feet: office space for the HoDs remains an unsolved issue.

The officials of the state government, including Revenue and Municipal departments, are now supervising the finalization of buildings and rental issues.

According to officials, the state government has already readied almost 10 lakh square feet of space in various parts of the city.

The special teams are currently searching for space in seven mandals, from the stretch of Kan-kipadu-Ibrahimp-atnam-G Konduru-Gan-navaram-Nunna, to accommodate 110 HoD offices.

Several departments have already submitted their space requirement details to officials.

Only the Revenue de-partment requires 75,000 sq feet, every department needing anything from a minimum of 10,000 sq feet to 25,000 sq feet.

Departwent-wise requirements come to more than 50 lakhs sq feet while the officials say that 25 lakh-30 lakh sq feet of space is sufficient.

But the biggest buildings, with more than 5,000 sq feet of space, number very few within city limits and a majority of the departments are asking the government to provide space under one roof.

Vijayawada Builders Association president Gadde Rajalingam said that the government should select vacant buildings close to engineering colleges in the city for this purpose so that the departments could get space under one roof.

AP housing department project director V Sarat Babu said that the special teams were on the lookout for the right buildings in the seven mandals.

The director said that they were uploading information on the space available on the website so that officials from the various departments could make a selection.
In the context of a nation, organic change is always in the making. It is slow but steady, whereas sudden paradigm changes happen when either organic churning reaches the tipping point or a strong leadership takes charge. In Indias case, it is the latter that can be credited with the change we see around us these days. Take the example of Make in India. Didnt we all know about its importance to our job creation agenda all this time, but its only in the last 18 months that a sense of urgency has crept in at all levels to make this goal a reality.

The same set of businesses, bureaucrats and people are now in a rush to contribute towards it. They want to be productive and are intolerant of obstacles in their path. But this is also a tenuous situation as the very leadership that gave them the reason to act can quickly turn into a dart board if governance in the country is not fixed with speed. This is something which cannot be done gradually.

Besides bureaucratic reforms, there are many other ways to improve governance. First, we need to identify what to discard from the system; second, before discarding something, it needs to be identified as having no utility; third, we need to identify if a certain process is indeed needed to make things work better; and fourth, we need to salvage a good initiative from the grip of bad administrators.

Continuing with the example of Make in India, lets make it easier to understand some of these examples.

Discard immediately what does not work: The Narendra Modi government is already repealing many obstructive laws. This is a commendable step and is likely to have a positive impact on governance, but there are other irritants too that need to be tackled. An apt example would be to discontinue with the civilian template in defence procurement. The General Financial Rules, that are a compendium of general provisions to be followed by all government offices while dealing with matters of a financial nature, cannot be the same for defence and civil procurement as the needs of the two are vastly different. Dhirendra Singh, chairman of the Committee on Facilitating Make in India in the defence sector, puts it succinctly when he says that financial rules for procurement of wheat cannot work in the case of a multi-role aircraft. It really doesnt need more elaboration and its high time that we sorted this out.

Discard that which has outlived its utility: One of the first things that come to mind is the general opinion across the board that District Industries Centres as institutions have not only outlived their utility but have also become heavy-handed. If experts and practitioners feel alike on this point, then why are the states so reluctant to do away with them?

Follow all processes to make things work: We have been talking about MSMEs as the backbone for Make in India, but without a strategic roadmap based on the areas where India is competitive. Formulating such a roadmap will help to identify the MSMEs, develop strategic clusters of MSME and focus on their growth in a planned manner. Lets take another example. It is recognised that the defence sector is a crucial one for boosting domestic manufacturing but we dont even have a national security doctrine. How can we ever know the strategic defence equipment requirement if we dont know what our strategy should be?

Salvage good initiatives from the grip of bad administrators: Land is one of the most underutilised assets for Make in India. In the past it has been a controversial issue as well. But instead of getting into controversies we would do well by first managing it better by bringing the National Land Records Modernisation Programme on track. The programme was created in 2008 with the aim of having conclusive titles, but eight years later it suffers from underutilisation of funds. Isnt this an example of a good initiative being wasted because of bad governance?

In addition, its also important to add that we must implement the recommendations that we already have. The National Manufacturing Plan of 2012 deals with the strategies for accelerating growth of manufacturing in India in the 12th Five-Year Plan and beyond. This document is a useful one in that it focuses on implementation. It also identifies that poor planning and inadequate consensus are the main reasons why India lags behind in manufacturing. The plan articulates sector-wise recommendations that focus on implementation. We must revisit this document and its recommendations and evaluate the progress that we have made.

Ultimately, it will be strong political will that can change things, and fortunately we seem to have that in Narendra Modi. His leadership has also expedited the organic change, but one thing that he needs to do more is to empower other relevant ministries as well and bring in a culture of outcomes, which is what had been envisaged in 2005 when we implemented the system of outcome budgeting. Many years later, it seems to have only sub-optimally worked. We need to revive this mechanism for a longer sustainable solution, and who better than the Prime Minister himself to champion this cause?
Apple hopes to expand its retail presence in India, one of the world's fastest-growing smartphone markets, at a time when sales in the United States and China have slowed.

The Indian government on Monday said it was discussing Apples foreign direct investment application that seeks a waiver from a local sourcing rule.

Nirmala Sitharaman, commerce and industry minister in the cabinet, told reporters her ministry would discuss the issue with the finance ministry.

The finance ministry's foreign investment promotion board (FIPB), which clears foreign direct investment applications, has asked the iPhone maker to sell at least 30 percent locally sourced goods if it wished to open shops in India.

Apple hopes to expand its retail presence in India , one of the world's fastest-growing smartphone markets, at a time when sales in the United States and China have slowed.

India last year exempted foreign retailers selling "state of the art" or "cutting edge technology" from the sourcing rule, which states that 30 percent of the value of goods sold in a shop should be made in India .

A panel set up by Sitharaman's ministry had favoured waiving the sourcing requirement for the U.S.-based phone-maker.

But a government official, with direct knowledge of the FIPB decision, said Apple's request was turned down as it failed to provide any material "on record" to back it.

"We took a line that we wouldn't mind waiving off the local sourcing norm for Apple's high-end products," said Sitharaman.

"(The) finance ministry has taken a different line. We will talk to them."

The FIPB decision is a setback for Apple, whose chief executive Tim Cook met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi about a week ago. The trip was supposed to set the stage for the U.S.-based company's expansion in India .

Sitharaman said she was not in favour of relaxing rules for Apple to sell refurbished second-hand phones in India .

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Ansari is on a five-day visit to two North African countries - Morocco and Tunisia. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: Vice President Hamid Ansari has condemned the string of assaults on African nationals in India as "despicable", saying they are "our guests" and should be looked after in the wake of "violation of law and order".

Read: African students call off protest after govt assurance

Interacting with media on board his special aircraft before arriving in the Moroccan capital, Ansari said, "Attack on anyone - whether own person or guest, it is despicable."

Read: Congo man's killing: Sushma assures speedy trial; to meet African students

"Nobody or no government can say anything differentcondemning all types of violence," he said. He said, "They (Africans) are our guests. We have to look after them in the wake of violation of law and order."

Describing India's ties with African countries as "good", Ansari said, "We greatly value our relationship with African countries and we always stood by them."

"Even before 1947 we talked of decolonisation of Africa," he said, adding that the stand of the previous UPA government and the present NDA government has been no different.

Ansari is on a five-day visit to two North African countries - Morocco and Tunisia - as part of efforts to build on diplomatic gains from the India-Africa summit held in New Delhi in October last year.

The Vice President said India attaches great importance to Africa, and in that context he was undertaking the trip to Morocco and Tunisia.

There has been a spate of attacks on African nationals in the last few days including killing of a Congolese youth in the national capital and assault on a 23-year-old Nigerian student in Hyderabad.
Abidjan: Ivory Coast's former first lady Simone Gbagbo goes on trial on Tuesday for crimes against humanity, but rights groups acting as plaintiffs in the case have pulled out, blasting the proceedings as flawed.

The wife of ex president Laurent Gbagbo has already been handed a 20-year jail sentence for "attacking state authority" over her role in post-election violence in 2010 that left more than 3,000 people dead.

Accused of involvement in rights abuses against supporters of her husband's rival Alassane Ouattara to keep Gbagbo in the presidency, she faces allegations of crimes against prisoners of war, crimes against the civilian population and crimes against humanity.

But on Monday three rights groups, representing nearly 250 victims, said they would refuse to take part in the trial of the woman once known as the "Iron Lady" because of doubts over its "credibility".

"Our lawyers have not had access to all stages of the procedures how can they defend their case?" the head of one of the groups, the Ivorian League of Human Rights, told AFP.

Pierre Kouame Adjoumani said the trial lacked "relevance", adding that Simone Gbagbo "is accused of crimes against humanity, something she could have only done through an organised group so why is only she being judged?"

The trial is taking place in Ivory Coast's commercial hub Abidjan, where the 66-year-old former first lady is being held.

It opens just five days after the Supreme Court rejected her final appeal against the 20-year sentence she was handed last year in her first trial.

Ivory Coast, the world's top cocoa producer, suffered months of bloodshed after Laurent Gbagbo and his supporters refused to accept defeat to Ouattara in a 2010 election.

The violence was ultimately halted by an international military intervention under a UN mandate, led by former colonial power France, and the Gbagbos were arrested in April 2011.

Ouattara won a second presidential term in October in the nation's first peaceful vote for more than a decade. Laurent Gbagbo is currently on trial for crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
After being arrested by Italian police, Mary was repatriated to Nigeria's southern Edo state in 2001, but she was rejected by her family and left feeling like a failure. (Representational Image)

Abuja/Dakar: A promising student who dreamed of going to university, Mary was 16 when a woman approached her mother at their home and offered to take the Nigerian teenager to Italy to find work.

Pushed to go by her family who hoped she would lift them out of poverty, Mary ended up being trafficked into prostitution.

Her voice faltering, Mary described three years of being forced to sell her body, beatings, threats at gunpoint and being made to watch as a 14-year-old virgin was raped with a carrot before being sent on to the streets of Turin in northwest Italy.

After being arrested by Italian police, Mary was repatriated to Nigeria's southern Edo state in 2001, but she was rejected by her family and left feeling like a failure.

"I returned with nothing," Mary, now 35, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation from Benin city in Edo. "I hated myself."

While Mary's ordeal ended 15 years ago, a soaring number of Nigerian girls like her are being trafficked to Europe - mainly Italy - and forced to sell sex by gangs taking advantage of the chaos caused by the migrant crisis, anti-slavery activists say.

Thousands of women and girls are lured to Europe each year with the promise of work, then trapped by huge debts and bound to their traffickers by a religious ritual - the curse of juju.

"The victims are getting younger as girls, mainly those in rural areas, are more likely to focus on the positive stories of those who made it to Europe and didn't end up in prostitution," said Katharine Bryant of the Walk Free Foundation rights group.

She spoke ahead of the launch of the third Global Slavery Index, which found Nigeria has the world's eighth highest number of slaves - 875,500 - and is a key source country for women trafficked to Europe and sold into sex work.

Bound By Juju

More than nine in 10 of the Nigerian women trafficked to Europe come from Edo, a predominantly Christian state with a population of about 3 million, according to the United Nations.

While Edo is not among the country's poorest states, its history of migration to Italy has fuelled locals' hopes of easy money in Europe - leaving people vulnerable to traffickers, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) says.

Before going to Europe, women and girls must sign a contract with traffickers to finance their move, racking up debts of up to $100,000. They then must seal the pact with a juju ritual.

"I was taken to a native doctor's shrine, and told to bite the neck of a chicken to add its blood to a concoction made with bits of my hair and fingernails, and my underwear," Mary said.

This belief in black magic means victims fear they or their family may fall ill or die if they do not pay off their debts.

Most of the women and girls know they will have to sell sex but are pressured by their families and deceived by traffickers, said Nigeria's anti-human trafficking agency (NAPTIP).

Many have no idea they will live under the control of older "madams" and be forced to work for several years to clear their debts, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Madams, who make up almost half of traffickers in Nigeria, are mostly former victims who target others in order to escape prostitution - perpetuating a cycle of exploitation, the UNODC said in its latest global report on human trafficking.

Migrant Crisis

Traffickers and gangs in Nigeria are now exploiting Europe's migration crisis - moving girls to lawless Libya, before crossing the Mediterranean to Italy on flimsy, overloaded boats, said Bryant from the Walk Free Foundation.

More than 5,600 Nigerian women and girls arrived in Italy by sea last year, up from 1,200 in 2014, and at least four in five were trafficked into sex work, the IOM said.

At least 1,250 Nigerian women have landed in Italy this year, up from 373 for the same period in 2015, IOM data shows.

Traffickers also take victims to Europe by plane, using forged documents and flying via other West African countries to avoid suspicion, said Mikael Jensen of the UNODC.

British airports such as Gatwick are increasingly used as entry points by Nigerian trafficking gangs with forged documents, Spanish police said earlier this year.

"Many traffickers are careful with their goods, they don't want to risk them on a dangerous sea crossing," Jensen said.

About 3,770 migrants and refugees died in 2015 crossing the Mediterranean, making it the deadliest year on record for those fleeing conflict and poverty, according to the IOM.

Re-Trafficked

Human trafficking by Nigerian organised crime gangs is one of the greatest challenges facing police forces across Europe, according to the EU's law enforcement agency Europol.

A lack of coordination between European states and Nigeria is allowing traffickers to act with impunity, said Kevin Hyland, who was appointed Britain's first anti-slavery chief in 2014.

"There has been some progress, but it's been a piecemeal plan, and responsive rather than proactive," Hyland said.

Nigerian anti-trafficking official Arinze Orakwe said more European nations should criminalise the purchase of sex to curb the number of Nigerians trafficked into prostitution in Europe.

"If nobody is buying, nobody will sell," said the official at NAPTIP, which has rescued some 1,340 victims in Nigeria over the past year, and works with NGOs to support them.

The Women Trafficking and Child Labour Eradication Foundation (WOTCLEF) clothes and feeds victims, provides counselling and attempts to reunite them with their families.

"But sometimes families are hostile, and not interested in getting them back," said WOTCLEF coordinator Veronica Umaru.

Disillusioned by her parents' disappointment at her return home, Mary hoped to go back to Italy before being referred to Girls' Power Initiative, a Nigerian NGO that housed her, trained her to run a business and encouraged her to help other victims.

Yet Mary says many former victims have been re-trafficked to Italy, and fears not enough is being done to stop traffickers or persuade women and girls not to go abroad and into prostitution.

"Girls today, unlike me, know exactly what they are in for when they agree to go to Italy to work," Mary says tearfully.

"But they do not understand the trauma they will face."
Texas: In a horrifying incident, a Texas man has been accused of killing his girlfriend and uploading the pictures of her dead body on Facebook.

According to a New York Daily News report, the accused identified as Kenneth Alan Amyx, 45, posted two pictures of his murdered girlfriend, Jennifer Streit-Spears on Facebook.

The first picture showed Jennifer's dead body with the caption that read, "Please pray for us" while the other one showed a man's face covered in blood which is believed to be Alan Amyx.

Jennifer's sister saw the horrific pictures on Facebook and informed the police who had to forcefully barge into the couple's house.

Upon entering the house, police officials found Jennifer's lifeless body lying on the floor and Alan Amyx alive with a few knife wounds, which police believe to be self-made.

Jennifer's sister had requested Facebook to take down the images but the social networking giant refused it saying that it did not violate their terms and conditions.

"I did ask them to remove it several times. They told me I could block Jennifer if I didn't like what she posted and gave me other similar options," the victim's sister was quoted as saying by The Daily Dot.

Defending the social networking website, a spokesperson said that graphic photographs were not a violation of Facebook's policy and that they could not be removed unless the victim's account was hacked.

Alan Amyx has been arrested and detained at the Collins County jail. He has also been charged previously with sexual assault of a 14-year-old. A trial of the case is currently being heard at the Rockwall County Court.

Alan Amyx has been charged with first degree murder and is held on a bond of USD 600,000.
Malaysia soldiers carried coffins draped with Australia flags to the tarmac, where Australian troops carried them aboard two Royal Australian Air Force C-17 Globemaster aircraft. (Photo: AFP)

Subang Air Base(Malaysia): The bodies of 32 Australian service personnel and their dependents, many of them killed during the Vietnam War, were handed over by Malaysian soldiers to their Australian counterparts Tuesday. Australian officials say it's among the biggest single repatriations in the nation's history.

The remains handed over at Subang military air base had been interred for decades at Terendak Military Cemetery in Malaysia. Malaysia soldiers carried coffins draped with Australia flags to the tarmac, where Australian troops carried them aboard two Royal Australian Air Force C-17 Globemaster aircraft.

The bodies, plus one additional set of remains from Singapore, will arrive in Sydney on Thursday. After a formal military repatriation ceremony that will include some veterans who served with those killed, a private memorial service will be held.

The Australian government offered a year ago to repatriate 36 Australian servicemen and dependents from Malaysia and Singapore. The families of 33 service men and dependents accepted that offer.

Australia has only repatriated the remains of its war dead killed in foreign countries since January 1966. But 25 Australian soldiers killed in Vietnam before the policy change were left buried in Malaysia and Singapore, despite their families' objections.

"As 2015 marks 50 years since the arrival of combat troops and the escalation of Australian involvement in Vietnam, it is right and proper that we honor their service with this gesture," then Prime Minister Tony Abbott told Parliament in May last year.

Australia deployed more than 60,000 military personnel to the Vietnam conflict between 1962 and 1973, of whom 521 were killed.
A court to investigate cases of child labour, child slavery and child marriage is urgently needed amid the current refugee crisis, Brown said at a media briefing ahead of a meeting with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. (Representational Image)

New York: An international court should be set up to punish those responsible for child labour and other forms of abuse against children, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the United Nations on Monday.

A court to investigate cases of child labour, child slavery and child marriage is urgently needed amid the current refugee crisis, Brown said at a media briefing ahead of a meeting with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The proposed children's court was among several recommendations Brown brought to the UN as head of the Global Citizenship Commission, a group of political leaders and academics focussed on human rights.

Such a court would have the power to oversee cases requested by children and issue legally binding rulings, the group said in a lengthy report.

"We need, in a sense, a civil rights struggle by and on behalf of children because their rights have been neglected in the international community," said Brown.

Children account for half of the world's displaced people, he said.

Some 168 million children - one in ten globally - can be classified as child labourers, according to the International Labour Organization.

The children's court would be similar to the International Criminal Court, based in The Hague in the Netherlands, that hears cases of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Last week, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) called for child refugees in Europe to be better protected from traffickers.

"When so many children are displaced, the first priority has to be to ensure that children's rights are protected," Brown said.

A million migrants, many fleeing Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other nations in conflict in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, have poured into Europe through Greece since last year.

The Global Citizenship Commission includes such members as Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei and Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum.

The group also recommended revisions to the veto process among nations that are permanent UN Security Council members and reform of the way UN refugee aid is funded.
Germany's main opposition leader Sahra Wgenknecht has her face covered with cream after activists threw a cake at her during a party congress in Magdeburg, Germany on Saturday. (Photo: AP)

Berlin: A German opposition leader has had a cake shoved in her face at a party meeting, an apparent protest against her position that not all refugees can come to Germany.

An activist threw the cake Saturday at Left Party parliamentary co-leader Sahra Wagenknecht in Magdeburg, a local news agency reported. A group calling itself "Anti-Fascist Initiative 'Cake for Misanthropists'" distributed flyers pointing to Wagenknecht's refugee comments as the motive.

Wagenknecht has highlighted limits to Germany's ability to take in migrants, saying that "not all refugees can come to Germany." That has put her at odds with others in her party.

The Left Party is the biggest opposition group in the German Parliament but has seen its support slip as the nationalist Alternative for Germany party woos protest voters.
Berlin: Four people died and several more were injured in southern Germany after violent storms with torrential rains caused severe flooding, authorities said on Monday.

One of those killed was a 13-year-old girl who was hit by a train on Sunday while seeking shelter from the rains under a railway bridge.

A boy, 12, who was with her was not physically injured but had to receive trauma counselling, said police in the southern city of Aalen.

In Schwaebisch Gmuend near the city of Stuttgart, a volunteer firefighter died on Sunday trying to rescue a man trapped in a shaft of a flooded railway station, municipal authorities said.

The man who was trapped was also presumed dead although neither body has been recovered, according to local police.

In Weissbach, just to the north, a 60-year-old man died in a flooded underground garage on the same day.

The regional authorities in the state of Baden- Wuerttemberg put the number of injured at around 10. A number of people had to be rescued from cars trapped in the floods.

National news agency DPA said a river broke its banks in Braunsbach, destroying one house and damaging several others.

Eyewitnesses posted videos on social network sites showing cars being carried away by the floods and crashing into shop windows.

The head of one rural district in Schwaebisch Hall, Michael Knaus, said that more rain fell in the space of a few hours than normally falls over several months.

State authorities said that as many as 7,000 firefighters, police and rescue workers were called out in some 2,200 incidents.
Police said they were investigating whether the perpetrators also robbed the women in the latest attacks at a four-day open air music festival in the western city of Darmstadt. (Representational image)

Berlin: German police have arrested three Pakistani suspects as 18 women have reported becoming victims of sexual assaults at music festival, authorities said on Tuesday.

The mostly young women said they were encircled and groped by groups of men on Saturday night in ways that recalled a spate of mob attacks at chaotic New Year's festivities in Cologne.

Police said they were investigating whether the perpetrators also robbed the women in the latest attacks at a four-day open air music festival in the western city of Darmstadt.

Initially three women had filed charges, leading to the arrests of the three men, Pakistani asylum seekers aged 28 to 31, and another 15 women have come forward since.

Police said they were searching for another two or three men and said in a statement that "the women have reported that they appeared to be men from the South Asia region".

The Cologne attacks -- committed in a crowd of mostly Arabic and North African men -- appalled Germany and sharpened public concern about the arrival of over one million mostly asylum seekers last year, most from the Middle East.

In the inflamed debate, far-right groups railed against "sex jihadists" and "rapefugees".
The suspect first denied killing the woman, but after eight hours of interrogation, confessed to killing her. (Photo: Facebook)

Rome: A Rome university student was burned alive by her ex-boyfriend after she left him, authorities said Monday, a slaying one investigator called the most atrocious crime he has seen in his career.

Sara Di Pietrantonio, 22, died before dawn Sunday after Vincenzo Paduano, 27, set her car afire, prosecutor Maria Monteleone told reporters. He then chased her after she ran out of the car, setting her ablaze when he caught up with her, authorities said.

Investigators said her attacker used a cigarette lighter to set Di Pietrantonio's face on fire after dousing her with alcohol.

"I can say that in 25 years in this work I have never seen something so atrocious," said Luigi Silipo, the lead police official in the investigation.

Paduano was being held for investigation of premeditated murder, Monteleone said. The suspect first denied killing the woman, but after eight hours of interrogation, confessed to killing her, Silipo told reporters.

Paduano "didn't accept being abandoned' by the woman, Monteleone said. 'He organized, he planned the aggression,' the prosecutor said.

Silipo said the suspect walked off his job as a security guard about 3 a.m. and waited outside the home of Di Pietrantonio's current boyfriend. Then, after the woman left the home and drove off by herself, Paduano drove off, eventually forcing her car to the side of the road, he said.

"He got into her car, and after an argument, doused the car (interior) with a small bottle of alcohol, and doused Sara, too," Silipo said. "She ran out, he torched the car, caught up with her, and after about 100 meters" set her ablaze, leaving her to die "in an atrocious manner," the police official said.

A surveillance camera in the area captured some of the events, including at least two cars that passed by while the woman screamed in vain for help as she tried to flee, authorities said.

Monteleone made what she said was a fervent appeal to citizens to help such women, "not to look the other way." She added that if passers-by had helped, the woman's life might have been saved.

She also encouraged women "not to keep hidden any threatening behavior by those who insist they love you, but it's not that way."

Italian women's advocates have been trying to change mentalities in a country where men often turn violent when a women breaks off a relationship. One such champion for women to be more assertive in protecting themselves is an Italian lawyer whose face was mutilated in an acid attack ordered by her ex-boyfriend. She courageously testified at the ex-boyfriend's trial.

Sounding a call Monday to Italian woman to denounce threats by men to police was Chamber of Deputies President Laura Boldrini.

The parliamentary leader said a change in cultural mentality was needed, starting in early childhood classrooms. Women "must understand that those who should be ashamed are the violent ones, not the women who suffer threats," Boldrini said.
The Pakistani man pleaded guilty to charges of blackmail and breaching others' privacy by using technology, the Khaleej Times reported. (Photo: Pixabay)

Dubai: A Pakistani driver has been arrested and charged in a court here for blackmailing an Indian couple after secretly filming them getting intimate in his limousine while honeymooning in Dubai.

The driver, identified only as MS, has been accused of blackmailing the two honeymooners whom he filmed getting intimate in the tinted cabin of his limousine while he was driving them around the city.

The Indian newlyweds were visiting Dubai on a four-day honeymoon when the 28-year-old driver secretly filmed them. He later sent a message to the husband on WhatsApp to try to extort Dirhams 2,000 (about Rs 36,500) from him. He sent the clip he had of the couple to the husband and threatened to circulate it on social media sites, a court was told on Monday.

The Pakistani man pleaded guilty to charges of blackmail and breaching others' privacy by using technology, the Khaleej Times reported.

The incident, as told by the defendant himself during the course of investigation, happened in February.

The driver said he filmed the couple getting intimate by using his mobile phone.

He dropped them at their destination and later in the evening on the same day he sent the husband a message, blackmailing him.

The accused was arrested by police officers when he went to meet the husband two days later at the hotel to collect the money.

The husband's friend, an Indian businessman, said, "As I learnt from my friend, the car was tinted. But later my friend got a call from the driver asking him for a sum of money or to give him his wife or he would circulate the clip online."

They went together to the police station and lodged a complaint against the driver. "I followed up on the complaint later and met the accused at the hotel as my friend left the country then."

Prosecutors accused the suspect of molesting the couple, blackmailing them and abusing the telecommunication system.
Seven Indian fishermen were arrested on Monday by the Navy. (Photo:PTI)

Colombo: Sri Lanka Navy has arrested seven Indian fishermen along with their trawler for allegedly poaching in Sri Lankan waters, the Navy said here on Tuesday.

Seven Indian fishermen were arrested on Monday by the Navy and the Sri Lankan Coast Guards northwest of Talaimannar in northern Sri Lanka.

The arrested fishermen were handed over to the Mannar Fisheries Inspector for further action, the Navy said in a statement.

The arrest came on the first day of fishermen resuming their work after the end of a 45-day-long annual fish breeding season ban on fishing using mechanised boats.

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena, during his visit to India on May 13, had discussed the issue of problems faced by Indian fishermen in his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The issue has cast a shadow on bilateral ties as India has expressed disappointment over China's actions while the two countries are seeking a way out to end the impasse. (Photo: AFP)

Beijing: The Sino-Indian deadlock over a UN ban on JeM chief Masood Azhar and others may end if India resubmits its application focusing on evidence against him than attempting to "censure" Pakistan, BJP MP Subramanian Swamy on Tuesday said here after talks with Chinese officials.

"My impression is that India can expect cooperation from China on the issue of declaring Masood Azhar, leader of Jaish-e-Muhammad, as terrorist who should face trial in India, if India in the UN concentrated more on him than seeking to censure Pakistan as a sponsor of terror," Swamy said.

Swamy, who is here on a pilgrimage to Kailash-Manasarovar in Tibet, said he is visiting China in an individual capacity as an "old friend" but with the knowledge of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other senior ministers of his cabinet.

The BJP leader said "as a tactical move it would (be) prudent (to) resubmit the complaint in UN which was blocked after China put a technical hold."

Read: India exerting diplomatic pressure to ban Masood Azhar: government

"Based on what I learnt here, I will be very surprised if China continues to obstruct once it is limited to hard evidence," said Swamy after meeting Wang Guo Qing, Director of the foreign affairs committee of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Committee, and Wu Hailong, President of the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs (CPIFA).

He said the application submitted by India in UN was more Pakistan-centric than Azhar. "I think for the limited purpose it was submitted which was to get UN sanctions, the report should be resubmitted," he said.

"I assume the Chinese would find it difficult to say no, once the report is limited to hard evidence. In fact it would (be a) good idea if there is pre-UN trilateral consultation between India, China and Pakistan," he said.

Read: India, Pak should have direct talks on Masood Azhar, says China

China, which previously blocked India's attempts to get a UN ban on Mumbai terror attack mastermind and LeT commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, also put a hold on listing of Azhar as global terrorist for his role in the Pathankot attack.

The issue has cast a shadow on bilateral ties as India has expressed disappointment over China's actions while the two countries are seeking a way out to end the impasse.

The issue also figured in the just concluded visit of President Pranab Mukherjee.

Swamy suggested India, China and Pakistan trilateral talks to address the issues of cross border terrorism.

He said Prime Minister Modi is working hard to resume dialogue with Pakistan, but the "problem is that we can only talk to the constitutional authority in Pakistan which is the Prime Minister, who do not seem to have a final word. The army seems to have veto along with the ISI and Mullahs."

"China being a friend of Pakistan can help peace in South Asia by encouraging the constitutional authorities to assert their authority. If China convenes a tripartite meeting on India-China-Pakistan on issue of terrorism because terrorism from Pakistan is no longer a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan any more. It is also trilateral issue as terrorists from Pakistan also go to (Muslim-majority) Xinjiang," he said.

Swamy claimed that China also recognises that terror emanates from Pakistan's soil even though it do not admit openly because of its friendship.

"You can say I am confident that our government would welcome such a trilateral meeting on terrorism because terrorists from Pakistan are going to both India and China. My expectation our government will welcome," he said.

"I intend to urge the Prime Minister to consider this as an initiative when he comes here for G20 meeting," Swamy said. Modi is expected to attend the G20 meet scheduled to be held in the Chinese city of Hangzhou in September.

Asked if China is open to such a proposal, he said, "I think China will find it very hard to refuse such a proposal from India based on my conversations here."

"In my opinion China is already an observer country in SAARC. So they have a legitimate role to play in helping SAARC solving it problems. Now the problem of terrorism not only affects India, they are not going to be umpires but also affected parties. India and China are affected parties from terror based in Pakistan," he said.

"We should be able to get Pakistan to comply to many things if we have trilateral meeting. They will find it very difficult to say no China," he said.

Swamy, accompanied by Indian Charge affaires Bala Bhaskar, yesterday visited the China Tibetology Research Centre here which has no links with India despite collaboration with 22 other countries.

This is first time an Indian official delegation has been invited to the centre which focusses on research on Tibet, Swamy said and proposed collaboration between the centre and Indian Council of Cultural Research.

Today he met Chinese Vice Finance Minister Shi Yaobin and discussed India's concerns over rapidly increasing trade imbalance between the two countries which touched about USD 48 billion last year.

Swamy proposed cross border economic cooperation and people-to-people contacts in Tibet besides a chair on Hindu religion in Tibetan university and chair on Mahayana Buddhism in an Indian university.

He also welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinpings proposal to allow more Indian pilgrims to Kailash-Manasarovar through the new Sikkim route which was opened last year.

The proposal to allow more than the previously agreed 250 people was conveyed by Xi during his meeting Mukherjee. China has organised Kailash yatra for about 35 years without interruption despite problems in the bilateral ties, he said.
It was the first major defence deal between the two Cold War-era adversaries. (Photo: AP, representational image)

Islamabad: Pakistan is in negotiations with Russia for buying its MI-35 attack helicopters and a deal could be clinched within two months, Minister for Defence Production Rana Tanveer Hussain has said.

"I hope we will be able to materialise this project (to buy MI-35 helicopters) in two months," he said while talking to reporters in Islamabad on Monday.

Pakistan and Russia had signed a deal regarding the sale of four MI-35 attack helicopters in August last year, which was the first major defence deal between the two Cold War-era adversaries.

Soviet Russia had banned the sale of military hardware to US-allied Pakistan after the Cold War period and the Afghan war in 1980s, but relations started improving after the two countries signed a bilateral defence cooperation agreement to strengthen military-to-military relations in November 2014.

Hussain also said that the JF-17 aircraft, jointly produced with the Chinese help, were capable enough to meet all defence requirements of the country.

Pakistan had a fleet of state of the art JF-17 Thunder aircraft which carried all specifications of any advanced fighter jet, Hussain was quoted as saying by the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan (APP).

Pakistan was at top among the 10 countries having JF-17 fleet, he said, adding that the country's defence was impregnable and had the capability to meet all challenges.

The minister's statement about the importance of JF-17 aircraft came even as the US Congress recently refused to partially fund eight F-16 jets which US has agreed to sell to Pakistan.

JF-17 Thunder is a third-generation fighter co-produced by Pakistan Aeronautical Complex (PAC) and China's Chengdu Aircraft Industry Corporation.
Pakistan earlier said that it did not see Iran's Chabahar port as a rival and that it was in fact exploring the possibility of developing links with Gwadar.

Lahore: A former Pakistani defence official has said that the alliance between India, Afghanistan and Iran was a security threat to Pakistan, adding that that he feared that Pakistan is going into isolation.

"In view of the regional and global environment, I see Pakistan falling into an abyss of isolation primarily because of its own mistakes and partly due to the hostile policies of other states," former defence secretary retired Lieutenant General Asif Yasin Malik said.

According to Dawn, Malik blamed the situation on the 'dysfunctional Foreign Office' and the absence of a full time foreign minister.

Pakistan's Foreign Office also views the Chabahar port positively with Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz saying at a press conference earlier on Thursday that Pakistan did not see Iran's Chabahar port as a rival and that Pakistan was in fact exploring the possibility of developing links with Gwadar.

At the event earlier, retired Lt-Gen Nadeem Lodhi said the existence of such a 'formidable bloc' in the neighbourhood had 'ominous and far reaching implications' for Pakistan.

He feared the three-nation bloc will affect Pakistan's plans for regional economic integration, restoration of internal peace and maintenance of peaceful borders.

"It will also affect CPEC timelines. We need to break out of this encircling move with help from friends... diplomatic manoeuvres and by forging a strong deterrence," he said, adding that of the three countries, Iran is most likely to pay heed to Pakistani concerns.

He suggested Pakistan use China's influence for fixing problems. "Iran must not be further alienated and its interests in CPEC should be developed," Lodhi said.

He said that the defence and strategic relationship with China should be formalised instead of an unwritten understanding.

Other speakers also deliberated on national security and asked the government to broaden its conception of challenges and risks and to respond to them proactively.

Air University Registrar Ghulam Mujadid said that the eminence of security in national priorities is reflected in the four military takeovers in the country and the 'ascendancy of military in political, internal and foreign policy decision making'.

"Pakistan needs to correct this strategic myopia. A survivalist mindset about national security dominates the political discourse and continues to be the central pillar in Pakistan's strategic calculations," he said.
BJP MP Subramanian Swamy has now demanded that the Enforcement Directorate expedite the probe against Vadra. (Photo: PTI)

Beijing: BJP MP Subramanian Swamy on Tuesday asked the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to speed up the inquiry against Robert Vadra over allegations that he has acquired a "benami" property in London.

"I think the case is already under investigation by the ED and it is only a matter of time before a case is registered for summoning of Vadra", Swamy, who is in while on his way to Kailash Manasarovar yatra in Tibet, said.

Read: It's a conspiracy, says Sonia Gandhi on Robert Vadra's 'benami' house in UK

"There is no doubt Vadra has property in London through benaamis," he said referring to reports in the media today that the government has begun a new investigation against Vadra to determine if a controversial arms dealer bought a "benami" or proxy-owned mansion in London for him in 2009.

Read: Probe Robert Vadras benami property in UK, says BJP

Vadra's legal firm has denied that he owned the London property directly or indirectly. It also denied Vadra has any business ties with an arms dealer or his aide.
At least 17 security personnel, including two Army officers, were today killed in a massive fire that broke out at one of Asia's biggest ammunition depot in Maharashtra's Pulgaon that houses the largest stockpile of weapons in the country.



Two officers, including a Lieutenant Colonel, and 15 Defence Security Corp (DSC) jawans were among those killed in the blaze that started around 2 AM, an Army officer said.



Also, at least 19 security personnel were injured in the fire that has spread to a number of sheds that houses ammunitions, bombs and other explosive items. Some of them with burn injuries are in a critical condition, he said. Video footage showed the raging fire lighting up the night sky.



Following a directive from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, who is in Pune, has rushed to the spot. Army Chief Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag has alsoheaded for the site.



Modi tweeted, "Pained by loss of lives caused by a fire at central ammunition depot in Pulgaon, Maharashtra. My thoughts are with the bereaved families.

"I pray that those who are injured recover quickly. Have asked RM @manoharparrikar to visit the spot & take stock of the situation", he said.



The injured were evacuated to the nearby military hospital in helicopters.

Hundreds of families of nearby villages have been evacuated, officials said.



"The main fire at one of the sheds has been extinguished. The situation is being stabilised. Secondary fire and explosions is in the process of being controlled," the Army officer said refusing to go into the reasons of the fire.



Several fire engines were pressed into service to douse the fire. Army has ordered an inquiry into the incident.



The central ammunition depot at Pulgaon is India's biggest ammunition depot as stocks including bombs, grenades, shells, assorted rifles and other explosives from various factories comes here first and is then distributed to various forward areas. Pulgaon is 110 kms from Nagpur.



"I am given to understand that Defence Minister will be visiting the site and this itself is an evidence of how serious and concerned is the Central government. My heart goes out to the families of jawans and officers killed and injured in the incident. The nation stands by them," Minister of State in the PMO Jitender Singh said.



Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said there has been "large scale destruction" of lives and what was kept in the ammunition depot.








A group of African students in the national capital today called off a demonstration to protest the spate of assaults against the community after the government assured them of better security.





The students said they had a meeting with officials of the Ministry of External Affairs where they were assured of security and safety. The government officials also requested them not to go ahead with their planned protest at Jantar Mantar.



"There was a high-level meeting with the Permanent Secretary of Ministry of External Affairs yesterday. He listened to our grievances and has made commitments to ensure our safety in India. Leaders of 15 African countries were also present during the meeting," the Association of African Students in India said in a statement.



It further said, "There was also a meeting with Delhi Police Commissioner and other senior officials where contact details of high level officials were shared with us and they promised us of better policing with respect to Africans".



"There was also a meeting with the African Ambassador body in which they advised us to take the path of diplomacy and hold the Indian government to their words....and also fast track justice for past cases. The parents of Congolese youth M K Olivier have also requested us to not take part in the protest," it said.



Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar had yesterday met a group of African students who raised their concerns over host of issues including better security in the wake of the killing of Congolese and cases of assaults against the community.



There has been a series of attacks on African nationals in the last few days including killing of the Congolese youth and assault on a 23-year-old Nigerian student in Hyderabad. Five persons have so far been arrested in connection with the attacks.




As the LDF government face differences in its own ranks over the Athirappilly hydro- electric project, Kerala Power Minister Kadakampally Surendran today said no project would be implemented ignoring the sentiments of people.



However, he said the state needed mega power projects to meet the growing demand for energy.



Addressing a meet-the-press programmes here, Surendran said the government would proceed with any project only after holding detailed discussions and reaching a consensus.



"The government is not for any controversy. We will go ahead only after arriving at a consensus among various stakeholders including environmentalists. But, for the state's growth, mega power projects are necessary... no project would be implemented ignoring the sentiments of people," he said.



Surendran was referring to the protests by Congress and others and differences expressed by LDF partner CPI over the government favouring implementation of the project in ecologically sensitive Athirappilly.



Various environment activists and groups especially 'Chalakkudy River Samrakshana Samithi', the outfit which campaigns for the conservation of river Chalakkudy where the proposed Athirappilly hydel project is to come, have already come out against the government's move to revive the project.



The long pending hydro-electric project has come into focus now after Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan pitched for it during his recent New Delhi visit.



Stating that the government was not "stubborn" in implementing any project, Surendran said "What we said was only our approach to the project. But we will take a decision only after taking into account the limitations of the state and after a detailed discussion with the public society."



The Minister also said the state could not go forward in the coming years with the minor power projects producing meagre two or three megawatt.



Detailing the present power situation in the state, he said the demand was increasing by about 60 per cent annually whereas the generation was not increasing correspondingly.



"What Kerala needed is mega power projects with less investment cost," he said. New Leader of the Opposition in the assembly Ramesh Chennithala had yesterday said a public debate over the project was necessary to form a consensus.



Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh has criticised Vijayan's move to push the long pending project, terming it a "perfect recipe for ecological disaster".



Surendran said the government would also take steps to tap the renewable energy sources like wind and solar.



A 200-megawatt solar park in Kasaragod district would be commissioned and produce at least 50 megawatt by the year end. "The agenda of the LDF government is to address the stalemate in the production and transmission in the power sector," he said.



As part of this, the government would prepare a master plan to complete in a time-bound basis the work on a 400 KV transmission line, 'Edamon-Kochi', to draw power from Kudankulam Nuclear Power station in neighbouring Tamil Nadu, he said.



The project had been delayed due to the protest among rubber growers in certain areas against erecting transmission towers, the Minister added.
Hitting back at Sonia Gandhi for her defence of son-in-law Robert Vadra, BJP today said it has exposed the "farce" that he was merely a private citizen and took a dig at her over her 'Shahenshah' jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying people had sent the emperors packing in the 2014 polls.



It also mocked the Congress chief's dare to the government to order a probe into the accusations against Vadra, saying the opposition party has dubbed such enquiries as vendetta earlier.



"The Congress chief's comments have exposed this farce that Vadra is merely a private citizen. It has established that he is the Gandhi family and the Gandhi family is him. When we do probe, then Congress quickly dismisses it as vendetta. BJP wonders why she is so rattled over some questions being asked about Vadra over some media reports.



"Those who behaved and ruled like 'Shahenshah' were sent packing by voters in 2014. Those emperors are now on bail in the National Herald case involving corruption of over Rs 5000 crore. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that he is 'Pradhan Sewak' and he has been serving people," its national secretary Shrikant Sharma said.



Sonia Gandhi had assailed the Modi government over charges against Vadra, calling it a part of a conspiracy of levelling "false allegations" in its bid for a "Congress-free" India. She had also dared the government to order an impartial probe and attacked it over the celebrations of two years in office, describing Modi as "Shahenshah".



On a visit to her Parliamentary constituency, Gandhi was asked by newsmen on reports citing a probe by Income Tax department into transactions of an arms dealer and his links with Vadra, especially with regard to ownership of a house in central London.



"This is a conspiracy for Congress-free country. What is the meaning of Congress-free India. Everyday they make new excuses. They level false charges. If there is something, then there should be an impartial probe. Everything will become clear," she said.



News reports today quoted from purported papers seized by the IT department during searches last month on the arms dealer's premises that allegedly led to a trail of emails between Vadra and his assistant on the one hand and the dealer's aide on the other regarding the purchase of a London house for approximately Rs 19 crore in 2009 which was subsequently said to have been sold.



Vadra's legal firm has denied that he owned the London property directly or indirectly. It also denied that Vadra had any business ties with the arms dealer or his aide.



Sharma claimed that the government's mega publicity drive was not a "show-off" as alleged by her but a "campaign" to share its "successes" with people as it was necessary for the ruling party to tell masses that it had succeeded where Congress had "failed".



The party of emperors, he said in a swipe at Congress, now ruled merely over 5 per cent of the country's population.



While Congress has launched a "disinformation" campaign against the Modi government, it has launched its campaign based on "facts", he said. The government has zero tolerance against corruption, he said, asking Gandhi to not issue "threats".



"I have never seen anything like this. A Prime Minister is there, not an emperor. He is the country's Prime Minister. There is so much poverty in the country. There is drought. Farmers are in trouble. I do not find it appropriate (that government) shows off like this," Gandhi had said.


Keen to shed the "outsider" tag, Union Minister Nirmala Seetharaman today promised to learn Kannada and protect interest of Karnataka, as she filed her nomination for the June 11 biennial elections to fill four Rajya Sabha seats from the state.





Speaking to reporters after filing her nomination on the last day to enter the fray, Seetharaman, the Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, said she will ensure Karnataka's interest in the Parliament.



"I have filed the nomination as BJP karyakarta, with Yeddyurappaji, other state leaders and Ananth Kumarji being there. I'm fully confident (of win)," She said.



"I will take care of interest of Karnataka in every way. I'm going to be a servant here being sent by honourable Prime Minister who calls himself Pradhan Sevak. I will be also a sevak, and because I will have to represent Karnataka, I will make sure that the interest of Karnataka will be ensured in the Parliament," she added.



Seetharaman was accompanied by BJP state President B S Yeddyurappa, Union Minister Ananth Kumar and Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Jagadish Shettar among others.



To a question, she said "I will learn Kannada, I know a little bit now, but I will learn to speak in Kannada."



Amid mounting public pressure including protests by Kannada groups against renomination of Union Urban development Minister Venkaiah Naidu from Karnataka, BJP Central Election Committee decided to field Seetharaman in his place. Naidu will be contesting from Rajasthan.



A social media campaign was launched against Naidu's re-nomination on the ground that he had not done enough for Karnataka from where he secured three Rajya Sabha terms, and that he did not even learn Kannada.



To a question on Naidu, Seetharaman said "Venkaiah Naiduji is a very senior leader of our party, a former President, we all respect him. He has done his best, we will continue the tradition... interest of Karnataka is safe in the hands of BJP and being led by Yeddyurappaji all of us will do our maximum best," she added.



Three Congress candidates including former Union ministers Jairam Ramesh, Oscar Fernandes and former IPS officer K C Ramamurthy and B M Farooq of Janata Dal (Secular) had yesterday filed their nominations.



Congress' decision to field third candidate, Ramamurthy, has given tense moments to JD(S), which needs five additional votes to see its candidate through, as it has 40 members.



But to the JDS' discomfiture, five of its MLAs, including Zameer Ahmed, have reportedly decided to back the third candidate of Congress.
The Sino-Indian deadlock over a UN ban on JeM chief Masood Azhar and others may end if India resubmits its application focussing on evidence against him than attempting to "censure" Pakistan, BJP MP Subramanian Swamy today said here after talks with Chinese officials.



"My impression is that India can expect cooperation from China on the issue of declaring Masood Azhar, leader of Jaish-e-Muhammad, as terrorist who should face trial in India, if India in the UN concentrated more on him than seeking to censure Pakistan as a sponsor of terror," Swamy told PTI.



Swamy, who is here on a pilgrimage to Kailash-Manasarovar in Tibet, said he is visiting China in an individual capacity as an "old friend" but with the knowledge of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other senior ministers of his cabinet.



The BJP leader said "as a tactical move it would (be) prudent (to) resubmit the complaint in UN which was blocked after China put a technical hold."



"Based on what I learnt here, I will be very surprised if China continues to obstruct once it is limited to hard evidence," said Swamy after meeting Wang Guo Qing, Director of the foreign affairs committee of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Committee, and Wu Hailong, President of the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs (CPIFA).



He said the application submitted by India in UN was more Pakistan-centric than Azhar. "I think for the limited purpose it was submitted which was to get UN sanctions, the report should be resubmitted," he said.



"I assume the Chinese would find it difficult to say no, once the report is limited to hard evidence. In fact it would (be a) good idea if there is pre-UN trilateral consultation between India, China and Pakistan," he said.



China, which previously blocked India's attempts to get a UN ban on Mumbai terror attack mastermind and LeT commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, also put a hold on listing of Azhar as global terrorist for his role in the Pathankot attack.



The issue has cast a shadow on bilateral ties as India has expressed disappointment over China's actions while the two countries are seeking a way out to end the impasse.



The issue also figured in the just concluded visit of President Pranab Mukherjee. Swamy suggested India, China and Pakistan trilateral talks to address the issues of cross border terrorism.



He said Prime Minister Modi is working hard to resume dialogue with Pakistan, but the "problem is that we can only talk to the constitutional authority in Pakistan which is the Prime Minister, who do not seem to have a final word. The army seems to have veto along with the ISI and Mullahs."



"China being a friend of Pakistan can help peace in South Asia by encouraging the constitutional authorities to assert their authority. If China convenes a tripartite meeting on India-China-Pakistan on issue of terrorism because terrorism from Pakistan is no longer a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan any more. It is also trilateral issue as terrorists from Pakistan also go to (Muslim-majority) Xinjiang," he said.



Swamy claimed that China also recognises that terror emanates from Pakistan's soil even though it do not admit openly because of its friendship.



"You can say I am confident that our government would welcome such a trilateral meeting on terrorism because terrorists from Pakistan are going to both India and China. My expectation our government will welcome," he said.



"I intend to urge the Prime Minister to consider this as an initiative when he comes here for G20 meeting," Swamy said.



Modi is expected to attend the G20 meet scheduled to be held in the Chinese city of Hangzhou in September.



Asked if China is open to such a proposal, he said, "I think China will find it very hard to refuse such a proposal from India based on my conversations here."



"In my opinion China is already an observer country in SAARC. So they have a legitimate role to play in helping SAARC solving it problems. Now the problem of terrorism not only affects India, they are not going to be umpires but also affected parties. India and China are affected parties from terror based in Pakistan," he said.



"We should be able to get Pakistan to comply to many things if we have trilateral meeting. They will find it very difficult to say no China," he said.



Swamy, accompanied by Indian Charge daffaires Bala Bhaskar, yesterday visited the China Tibetology Research Centre here which has no links with India despite collaboration with 22 other countries.



This is first time an Indian official delegation has been invited to the centre which focusses on research on Tibet, Swamy said and proposed collaboration between the centre and Indian Council of Cultural Research.



Today he met Chinese Vice Finance Minister Shi Yaobin and discussed India's concerns over rapidly increasing trade imbalance between the two countries which touched about USD 48 billion last year.



Swamy proposed cross border economic cooperation and people-to-people contacts in Tibet besides a chair on Hindu religion in Tibetan university and chair on Mahayana Buddhism in an Indian university.



He also welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinpings proposal to allow more Indian pilgrims to Kailash-Manasarovar through the new Sikkim route which was opened last year.



The proposal to allow more than the previously agreed 250 people was conveyed by Xi during his meeting Mukherjee.



China has organised Kailash yatra for about 35 years without interruption despite problems in the bilateral ties, he said.


India today said it wanted to make Morocco the hub for its economic activities in the African region as the two countries sought to inject fresh momentum in bilateral ties with Vice President Hamid Ansari holding wide-ranging talks with the Moroccan Prime Minister.





Two MoUs on cultural cooperation and institutional training were signed after Ansari met Moroccan Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane and delegation-level talks were held between the two sides.



"We reviewed all aspects of our expanding cooperation. Morocco is crucial to us for food security as it is the main supplier of phosphate which is crucial for agriculture," Ansari said as the two leaders jointly spoke to the media.



Five Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs) had been finalised between India and Morocco for improving bilateral relations but only two could be signed.



The MoUs on Cultural Exchange and Institutional Training for Foreign Service officers were signed, Secretary Economic Relations Amar Sinha said at a media briefing.



Sinha said the MoUs relating to other three areas of cooperation -- Water Resources, Television Broadcasting and Education -- have been finalised but "could not be signed due to technical issues".



Sinha said the Vice President conveyed to the leadership that the Indian government would like to look at Morocco and expand its economic activities since the two countries have a trade of USD 350 million.



"We would like to use Morocco as a hub for our economic activities in the African region," Sinha quoted the Vice President as saying during the talks.



The Moroccan Prime Minister said India is an important partner for them, India's Ambassador to Morocco Dinesh Patnaik said.



"The two agreed to make the relations more dimensional for increased cooperation," Patnaik said.



Both the sides stressed on the need for injecting fresh momentum in bilateral relations. Morocco said that they need to look into the issues of political stability, economic development and human resources development, Sinha said.



Ansari said India appreciates Morocco's support for India's candidature for the UN Security Council.



The two sides identified new areas of mutual cooperation which included information technology, the Vice President said, adding that the MoUs signed will be beneficial for both countries.



He said that India was very happy to receive the King of Morocco Mohammed VI, who came to India last year for the Indo-Africa Summit.



The Vice President said on behalf of the Indian government he invited Prime Minister Benkirane to visit India.



Benkirane said Morocco sees India as a friend. "We will work together for a common future for the Mediterranean region."



He said the two countries will also work in engaging jointly in efforts towards counter-terrorism.



Benkirane indicated he may visit India this year.



Briefing the media, Sinha said, "We are not looking at short-term cooperation as far as Institutional training of Foreign Service officers is concerned."



"Moroccan diplomats would come to India for one year while Indian diplomats would also visit Morocco," he said.



Sinha said the Vice President during his interaction with the Prime Minister held discussions on bilateral issues and decided to increase cultural exchanges.



He said on the issue of terrorism both shared their perception on the need to exchange information.



Sinha said Information Technology is another area which the Vice President highlighted and the Prime Minister Benkirane evinced keen interest in the issue.



He said India will be setting up a Centre of Excellence on IT that will be set up by C-DAT, which will take special care of linking IT to the industry.



Sinha said that India will also train Moroccans in various other fields like English speaking and e-governance, including creating data base of 33 million population of Morocco like the Aadhaar scheme in India.



"We told them about the benefits of Aadhaar in DBT and other programmes," he said.



Speaker of the House of Representatives Rachid Talbi Alami and the Speaker of the House of Councillors Abdelhakim also separately called on the Vice President"Our MPs sought to know about obstructions etc to which they said that they do not face such things as Houses are for formation of laws," Sinha said.



Both the Speakers stressed the need for formation of Joint Parliamentary Forum to which the Vice President said that back home he would discuss the issue with the Speaker.



The Vice President has invited both the Speakers to visit India.



Asked about the extradition treaty between the two countries, Patnaik said it was not there but Morocco has always been helpful.



"Even without an extradition treaty Morocco had extradited a wanted criminal of Karnataka some time back," the Ambassador said.



He said that most countries today need intelligence from Morocco as this was the country which also helped in cracking the Paris bomb blast case.



Ansari's trip here is the first high-level visit to the African country after Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee went there in 1999.



Besides his wife Salma Ansari, the Vice President is accompanied by Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilizers Hansraj Gangaram Ahir, four members of Parliament and senior officials.



On June 2, Ansari will head to Tunisia for a two-day visit at the invitation of Prime Minister Habib Essid.




The idea of going to Singapore had been at the back of my mind for a long time. The long cherished dream of visiting Malaysia and Singapore became a reality when 15 of our family members decided and embarked upon a 7-day Singapore and Malaysia trip.





We were picked up by our tour guide. The airport is 65 kms from Kuala Lumpur. Before proceeding to the famous Genting Hill Hotel, the bus stopped at Putrajaya for photographs at the Malaya Kings Palace and Prime Ministers office/residence.



The Genting Hill Hotel is a private resort promoted by Chinese businessman Late Lim Goh Tong at an elevation of 6000 feet above sea level.



On the final leg to Genting Hills, we took a cable car, which has the longest cable car route covering a distance of 3.38 kms. It was a breathtaking, exhilarating experience with a thick rainforest below and dense fog playing hide and seek with us inside the cable car.



Genting Hill Hotel has the largest number of rooms (6118) in the world, a Guinness world record!



After breakfast, we left for Kuala Lumpur by bus. Our first stop was Batu Caves where a very tall statue of Lord Murugan is situated at the foot of the caves and one has to climb 300 steep steps to reach the cave where the Murugan temple is located.



Next on our itinerary was the KL Tower, 420 metres high, giving a panoramic view of the city. This is the worlds 7th tallest tower, with the topmost floor being a revolving restaurant. While travelling in the city, we could also see the chaotic traffic during the peak hours. The day ended at Grand Season Hotel for our stay at night.



In the morning, we visited the famous landmark of Kuala Lumpur, the Petronas Towers. This entire 88 floor tower is constructed with stainless steel and glass. There is a sky bridge at the 41st level connecting the 2 towers while at the 84th floor, there is an observatory deck for viewing the entire citys landscape.



The next day, we were dropped off at the Imperial Grand Hotel in the Little India area in Singapore. In Little India, one can feel at home with similar shops and plenty of eateries like Saravana Bhavan, Komala Vilas, Sangeetha and Anjapaar.



Post lunch, we were taken to the Merlion Plaza where the famous mascot of Singapore stands tall. The Merlion is a tall statue of a fish cum lion with water gushing out of the lions mouth on the bank of the river. Later, we went for a river safari followed by a night safari to enjoy the animals in their natural habitat.



Another highlight of our trip was the Sentosa Resort Island with several attractions like the Butterfly Park, cable ride, Madam Tussauds wax museum, sea beach side, Segway ride, ropeway slide, 3D shows and laser show titled Wings of Fire.



A visit to Universal Studios is a star attraction for children and adults alike. There are several breathtaking rides there and Steven Spielbergs conceived special effect section gives the visitor an idea about how special effects are created in disaster movies.



We also took a ride on the Singapore Flyer, Asias largest giant observation wheel (merry-go-round), 165 metres high. It rotates very slowly (45 minutes to take one round) so that people can enjoy a birds view of the Singapore skyline as well as the illumination of tall buildings at night.



The last stop was the Skypark observatory deck at the famous Marina Bay Sands Hotel. At the 57th floor is a deck in the shape of a big ship resting on 3 towers of the hotel. It has the worlds largest rooftop swimming pool with palm trees around. It takes 57 seconds to reach the deck on the 57th floor! Like all trips, ours too came to an end and we returned home with sweet memories of Singapore and Malaysia!



How to get there



We flew Malaysian Airlines from Bengaluru to Malaysia which cost Rs 25,000 for a round trip for one. From Malaysia, one can reach Singapore by road in

two hours.



Places to stay



At Genting, we stayed at the Genting Hill Hotel.

In Kuala Lumpur, it was the Grand Season Hotel.

In Singapore, we were at the Imperial Grand Hotel in Little India.

The entire tour package per person was Rs 45,000 excluding air fare.



(The author can be contacted at srayyangar@gmail.com)
In a fresh twist in the Dadri lynching case, a report prepared by a forensic lab in Mathura has concluded that the meat found in the victim's house was beef, eight months after the attack set of a fierce debate over intolerance.





The finding was in contrast to the preliminary report of an enquiry by the Uttar Pradesh Veterinary department which said the meat over which Mohammad Akhlaq, 52, was lynched on September 28 last in Dadri was mutton of 'goat progeny'.



What was recovered from the house of the lynching victim in Dadri was that of beef, a senior prosecution officer in the case said today, quoting the report by the Forensic laboratory of the Uttar Pradesh University of Veterinary Services(Animal Husbandry).



It was stated that on the basis of chemical analysis the forensic investigation of the sample showed that it belonged to "cow or its progeny".



The report was sent to the Noida police and submitted to a fast-track court in a sealed cover, an official said.



The Veterinary officer in his report that was cited by the police had earlier said that the mutton sample which was investigated was not beef, but meat of "goat progeny". The sample was later sent to the forensic laboratory in Mathura for 'final diagnosis', according to its report.



Mohammad Akhlaq, 52, was beaten to death on September 28 in Bisahra village in Dadri district by a mob infuriated by rumours that he and his family had stored and consumed beef.



According to police, the meat was sent for testing only to establish the motive for Akhlaq's killing.



Akhlaq's family, which has always denied eating beef on the day of the attack, has rejected the Mathura lab report.



"Dadri police said mutton, now you are saying it is beef. This is all politics," said Akhlaq's brother Chand Mohammad.



"This report(of Mathura lab) has come after six months. At that time, a report(of Veterinary department) had also come, but it didn't say the same thing. We don't know what they have done and what they have done with it?," he added.



Beef eating is not a crime in Uttar Pradesh, only cow slaughter is.



The attack had sparked a nationwide debate over intolerance and beef politics and also unleashed a chain of protests across the country, with prominent writers, film- makers and scientists returning their awards.



Nearly three months after the lynching incident, police filed a chargesheet on December 23 against 15 people, including a minor, but there was no mention of beef in it. A local BJP leader's son is among those named in the chargesheet.



Ikhlaqs daughter Shaishta has been made the prime witness in the case.



"Forensic report is yet to be received on whether the meat sample taken from the fridge of the deceaseds house was that of goat or cow. In the chargesheet it is stated that the accused persons had attacked the house of Ikhlaq after the announcement from the temple about cow slaughtering. The accused had found pieces of meat stored in fridge and they had claimed it to be that of beef, Deputy Superintendent of Police Anurag Singh had said on the day the chargesheet was filed.



A chargesheet was also filed against BJP leader Sangeet Som for allegedly violating the prohibitory orders imposed in Dadris Bishada village where the incident took place.
Congress today latched on to Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar's attack on courts to target Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his team accusing them of "deliberate confrontation" with the judiciary.





Noting that the Congress is concerned over the "confrontationist path", party's senior spokesman Anand Sharma wanted "motormouth" ministers to be "reined in", insisting that conflict with judiciary was "not healthy" for the system laid down by the Constitution.



At the AICC briefing, Sharma accused the Prime Minister of being "patronising" to the chief justice and judges. "Undermining the judiciary is not a happy thing in a democracy," he said, adding Modi should have responded when Chief Justice T S Thakur broke down during a recent function over the issue of shortage of judges.



"Telling them which petition to entertain is not the job of PM. In a constitutional democracy, there is a clear demarcation of responsibility of all three organs," he said.



Besides, Sharma attacked Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for targeting the judiciary through his "tyranny of the unelected" remarks and wondered whether judges have to run for elections.



He claimed that future appointments in courts are being delayed despite a huge shortage of judges and high pendency of cases because government is "undermining" judicial system.



He also claimed that the government is "angry" because the proposal to have a National Judicial Appointments Commission for judicial appointments was rejected by the apex court.



Taking a jibe at Parrikar, Sharma said the minister "who does not understand Constitution, is busy giving advice to courts".



Yesterday, Parrikar had made some critical comments at the judiciary claiming some of its directions are "senseless".



"I was reading report about Mercedes Benz company. They have stopped the investment in India because they say the decisions of the court are beyond the limit of understanding," Parrikar had said.



"(They say) we don't understand the logic of banning diesel vehicle. We understand that you can ban diesel vehicle which is polluting but what is the point in banning a diesel vehicle which may not pollute or less polluting than the petrol vehicle," he had said.




As lower rung police personnel plan to go on a mass leave on June 4 in protest against alleged harassment and lesser pay, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah today warned against any act of "indiscipline" by the force.





Siddaramaiah chaired a meeting of Home Department and police officials and asked the force not to get instigated, saying there should not be any room for indiscipline.



Speaking to reporters after the meeting, he said, "A non-recognised organisation has called for protest by police on June 4 by going on one day mass leave. Police department is a disciplined organisation. It is a department that has the responsibility of protecting public life and property, so there should not be any room for indiscipline."



"If there is any act of indiscipline, government will take it seriously and will take strict action against them," he said.



An organisation called Akhila Karnataka Police Maha Sangha is spearheading the stir led by V Shashidhar, who is its founder-President and a suspended police personnel.



Asking police personnel to discuss their demand with the government, Siddaramaiah said, "The government will be open minded on this. If the demands are just we are ready to fulfil them. All issues can be solved through discussion."



Requesting police not to participate in the protest, he said, "If you participate, it will be indiscipline. We have complete faith in our police force. There has never been indiscipline. Even now they will not indulge in any indiscipline by going on mass leave."



Siddaramaiah also expressed confidence that keeping public safety and protection of law and order in mind, the force would stay away from any such protest.



"There is no scope for mass leave, every one should understand that," he said, adding, the government will take action against those instigating the police.



He also requested opposition BJP and other political parties not to take up the issue for political advantage.



In a letter to Home Minister G Parameshwara on May 13, Shashidhar had highlighted the issues faced by police, particularly constables, and their intention to go on mass leave. The letter pointed out irregular working hours coupled with no proper leave and pay anomaly, among others.



Complaining about interference by politicians and influential persons, it also demanded separate pay commission for police.



To a question about protest by state government employees on June 2, the Chief Minister said, "We will talk to the employees union."



The state employees are demanding pay parity with central government employees.




Industry body Assocham on Tuesday cautioned the Modi government that the draft guidelines that seek to put a cap on royalties on genetically-modified seeds could dampen investor interest in the flagship Make in India programme.





Assocham said the government notification of May 18 on the Licensing and Formats for Genetically-Modified Technology Agreement Guidelines had created an environment that discouraged research and innovation. After running into stiff opposition from within a section of the government, Agriculture Minister Radhamohan Singh had withdrawn the notification and re-issued the same as a draft for consultation with various stakeholders. Singh admitted that the guidelines were notified without any inter-ministerial consultations and were withdrawn on May 23.



The minister appeared to suggest that the Agriculture Ministry had went ahead with the notification after getting a positive response from farmers on the Cotton Seed Price (Control) Order that lowered the licence fee companies would charge from seed companies by 70%.
Reliance Exploration and Production DMCC (REPDMCC) has decided to sell the entire 76% interest held by it in the Mauritius-incorporated Gulf Africa Petroleum Corporation (GAPCO) to French energy major Total for an undisclosed sum.





REPDMCC is an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries. GAPCO is a holding company with operating subsidiaries in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda which are primarily engaged in petroleum product import, and trading, storage, distribution, marketing, supply and transportation of oil products in East Africa.



Since the acquisition of 76% equity interest in GAPCO by REPDMCC in 2007, GAPCO has significantly grown, and is one of the leading petroleum marketing company in East Africa, which now operates 108 retail outlets and owns 260 TKL of storage capacity, RIL said. REPDMCCs agreement to sell its interest in GAPCO is part of a joint transaction, wherein both REPDMCC and the minority shareholder have agreed to sell their entire respective holdings in GAPCO for cash.
Southeast Asias economic promise is emerging as a global growth driver after years of being overshadowed by the China story. At the heart of the Asean Economic Community, the regions newly introduced single market, are three countries: Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia, home to nearly 450 of the regions 600 million people and with a combined gross domestic product of more than $1.3 trillion in 2014.



These three countries have young populations, growing middle classes and projected growth of 5% to 7% this year. As they face their own developmental challenges, however, they must also contend with maritime friction with China, resulting in tricky political and economic choices. All three are also on the South China Sea, the majority of which is claimed by China, which has overlapping claims with Vietnam and the Philippines, as well as the fellow Asean members Malaysia and Brunei. Indonesia is a non-claimant.



In 2014, Vietnam was the first to feel the economic sting of maritime disputes with China. Anti-Chinese riots that broke out after China parked an oil rig in waters claimed by both countries did some damage to the Vietnamese reputation and investment environment, said Le Hong Hiep, a visiting fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.



The foreign-invested sector represents more than 70% of Vietnams exports and the strongest part of the countrys economy, he said. Vietnam will be careful to not let similar incidents happen again, Hiep said.



China is Vietnams biggest trading partner, providing 29% of its imports and buying more than 10% of its exports, Hiep said. If for some reason trade with China were to stop, the damage would be huge, he said. That is why Vietnams trying to diversify its import sources and become less dependent on China.



Chinas importance to Vietnams economy is a major factor behind Hanois decision to join the United States-led Trans-Pacific Partnership, which has yet to come into force. On his visit to Vietnam this week, President Obama conveyed American interest in deepening the economic relationship between the former adversaries.



Ironically, although Vietnams participation in the trade partnership is an attempt to diversify away from reliance on China, it is having the effect of increasing Chinese investment in Vietnam, said Brian Eyler, deputy director of the Stimson Centres Southeast Asia Programme. Chinese firms who seek to take part in the regional supply chain built by the TPP can only do so if they invest in TPP countries like Vietnam, Eyler said.



While Vietnam is welcoming the Chinese investment, it is also concerned about Chinas decision to convert reefs that both countries claim in the Spratly Islands into military outposts.



Its safe to say that if China werent in the business of reclaiming submerged reefs, trade and investment relations between China and Southeast Asian states on the whole would be much rosier, Eyler said.



TPP membership reflects Vietnams lack of leverage in its relationship with China, which is pushing it to use the rivalry between China and the United States and, to a lesser extent, China and Japan to lift its status, Hiep said. Vietnam is receiving great attention from these powers and may use that as leverage to enhance its bargaining power vis-a-vis China, he said.



Across the South China Sea, the Philippines is awaiting the outcome of the case it has brought to a United Nations arbitration tribunal in The Hague regarding Chinas claims in the Spratlys. China has said it will refuse to participate in or accept the arbitration.



Under former President Benigno S Aquino III, the Philippines has been the Southeast Asian claimant to the Spratlys most willing to challenge China, through arbitration and increased military cooperation with the United States. But there are signs that it could be changing tack under President-elect Rodrigo Duterte, who takes office on June 30.



Among the candidates in this years election, Duterte most consistently advocated for an approach similar to the pre-Aquino days, favouring bilateral negotiations and joint development, said Malcolm Cook, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. Duterte has repeatedly expressed interest in attracting Chinese rail investment to the Philippines.



One major variable is whether China will build up and install an airstrip on Scarborough Shoal, less than 150 miles from Subic Bay. A source close to the Chinese Navy told The South China Morning Post that construction would begin this year, according to an April report.



The suggested construction by China on Scarborough Shoal would be a red line for any Filipino president, Cook said. Moreover, unlike Vietnam, the Filipino economy would not suffer much from a downturn in relations with China. Relatively low economic engagement with China means economic pressure would be less effective than elsewhere in Asean, he said.



Infrastructure investment



Meanwhile, the Philippines requires major infrastructure investment, said Benjamin E Diokno, a professorial lecturer at the University of the Philippines School of Economics and a former secretary of budget and management.



Traffic congestion in metro Manila is horrible, its roads and bridges are crumbling, Diokno said. Ports which are critical for an archipelagic country like the Philippines need to be improved to facilitate the movement of people and goods.



The China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank could provide much of the investment, but its distrust in the Philippines makes that unlikely. Other development partners like Japan, South Korea and multilateral banks like ADB and World Bank can fill those gaps, likely with more efficiency than China can, Eyler said.



Last March, in a rare maritime confrontation with Indonesia, a Chinese Coast Guard ship rammed a detained Chinese fishing boat to free it from Indonesian detention. The incident took place close to Indonesias Natuna Islands, near the southern end of the South China Sea. China said the boat was in Chinas traditional fishing grounds.



'Traditional fishing ground is an alien concept to international law of the sea as codified in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, said Arif Havas Oegroseno, Indonesias deputy coordinating minister of maritime affairs and resources.



Indonesia views that it is important for China to maintain its peaceful rise in accordance with international law. In order to deal with illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing activities, assets have been relocated and strengthened in the Natunas, he said.



Sustained development will also require significant infrastructure investment. As Indonesia courts Chinese investment, it is also refining its approach to potential future incidents, said Evan Laksmana, an analyst at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Indonesia. Since the March incident, Jakarta now seems to consider the issue with China in the Natunas to be primarily about unauthorised fishing, rather than sovereign rights or exclusive economic zones.




An economic wrong can never be a political right. States which went for Assembly elections recently  Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Kerala  played the liquor ban political card to appease the voters. To prove their moral high ground stand, Kerala under the last UDF regime, and Bihar and Tamil Nadu immediately after coming to power, implemented the liquor ban either in full, like in Bihar, or partial as in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.



The political leaders have won the election battle but are losing out on the economic front. The revenue loss in the form of excise duties on account of these populist moves is devastating. It is ironic that political parties which ensure free flow of liquor on the eve of elections to buy votes, introduce prohibition soon after coming to power. None supports the ill-effects of liquor consumption. The crux of the issue is whether prohibition is the brahmastra to overcome the evil effects of alcohol or remedy worse than the malady.



The states which have implemented prohibition as political compulsion will face serious social and economic repercussions. In Tamil Nadu, 30% of the states revenue  Rs 30,000 crore per annum  comes from liquor sales, that too with the sole distribution control of the state arm, the Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation(Tasmac).



Kerala under the UDF, which implemented phased prohibition from April 2014, has taken a loss hit of Rs 2,000 crore. The state has huge liquor sale earnings over Rs 6,000 crore. The excise revenue is 20% with tourism chipping in 10% of the GDP.



The gods own country is terribly impacted by the partial liquor ban which the new LDF government may reverse, since the state cannot afford to kill the golden goose. Similar is the position of Bihar with a humongous loss of Rs 6,000 crore by way of revenue on account of the total prohibition imposed by Nitish Kumar government.



The euphoria over declaring states dry has serious collateral damages. From the economic stand point, the huge revenue loss deprives funds to be spent on welfare programmes such as midday meals to school children, free uniform, free education, old age pensions, food subsidies, medical aids etc.



The quixotic decisions will adversely affect tourism. Blanket prohibition on liquor will also dampen investment sentiments. Foreign Institutional Investors who are eager to invest in successful Indian breweries will now develop cold feet. This will impact employment, investm-ent and profits of the breweries and that of the ancillary industries such as bottling, labelling, transportation, fuel etc.



This will ruin the livelihood of workers and their families who depend on these sectors. Moreover, there will be investment flight from existing foreign partners to better pastures fearing demonstration effect of liquor ban by other Indian states which go for elections. This will fizzle out FDI.



Politics has overtaken economics. Ban on liquor has taken the toll on the bottom line of the breweries. They are defaulting on their bank loan repayments. This will seriously impact the banks which are writhing with pangs of Non Performing Assets. The harmful effects can be epidemic too as a large number of breweries which are situated in states where there is no prohibition will nose dive as their supplies to the states under prohibition will get shut.



Liquor mafia



Prohibition makes criminals rich. Ban may prevent manufacture and sale of liquor officially but not its consumption. The World Health Organisation has cited that more than half of alcohol consumed in India is unrecorded like the black money. Jello Biafra has rightly said that for every prohibition you create, you also create an underground.



Prohibition leads to liquor mafia taking over the reigns of manufacture and supply of illicit liquor. The bootleggers operate with the nexus of unscrupulous politicians and police. Spurious liquor is provided to the thirsty lot leading to calamities, crimes and irreversible damage to health.



Reminds us of loss of innocent lives on account of hooch tragedies in liquor-banned Gujarat in 1976 (100 lives), 1986 (108) and 2009 (130), in Kerala in 2010 (23), in Bihar in 2012 (26).



If this is the sordid story of lesser mortals, the privileged ones will get their quota of liquor from the neighbouring states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka (for Tamil Nadu), Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and even Nepal (for Bihar), and Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Goa (for Gujarat). It is happy hours for the neighbouring states which mint money by ensuring prompt supplies to the dry states by following the help thy neighbour philosophy in letter and spirit.



The entire exercise to kick the can of ban without any alternative revenue stream to make up for the excise loss, is suicidal and putting the cart before the horse. Almost all previous experiments with liquor ban have failed. Andhra Pradesh, Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland and Haryana have the dubious distinction of repealing prohibition after suffering huge revenue loss coupled with rampant bootlegging and social catastrophes.



The solution lies in having an effective liquor policy, the key being uncompromising political will to implement the laws. The policy should prescribe high licence fee for liquor permits, hike in the prices of liquor to make drinking prohibitive, raising the permissible age to drink to 23 years, declaring more dry days, locating liquor outlets away from schools, places of worship and hospitals.



There should be stringent punishment for violation of laws. Portion of excise revenue should be earmarked for the NGOs, institutions like Alcoholic Anonymous (AA), which are dedicated to reforming the addicts, counselling and for programmes to educate people on the harmful effects of drinking.



Nothing works by force. Moderation is the key. The aim should be to inculcate good habits, develop moral fibre, abstinence and to behave responsibly. Prohibition policy sans alternate revenue generating streams, rampant supply of spurious liquor, hooch tragedies, depletion of state finances is a sure recipe for disaster and putting the economic clock back by 20 years.



(The writer is a Bengaluru-based economist)




The Army inquiry into the Central Ammunition Depot fire in Pulgaon will ascertain the cause of the fire and the extent of the damage caused.





The destruction was restricted to only one shed in the depot.



The cause of the fire has not yet been ascertained. Actions to assess the damage are in progress. An inquiry has been ordered by the Army, DGMO Lt Gen Ranbir Singh said in Delhi. The probe team would include the Army's Ammunition Technical Officers and fire service specialists.



Army sources said preliminary indications suggest destruction of mines and not artillery shells.



However, what triggered the fire in the first place in the dead of the night remains unclear. Spread over 7,000 acres, the Maharashtra CAD is Army's biggest storage for artillery and tank ordnance besides anti-tank mines.



The ammunition manufactured in ordnance factories is dispatched to Pulgaon, from where it is sent to the field ammunition depots.



Shortage of staffThe audit watchdog found shortage of firefighting staff and equipment in eight selected depots it audited.



The Director General Ordnance Service (DGOS) in the Indian Army initiated action in November 2011 but could not finalise it till March 2013.



The armed forces are now reviewing the design of the ammunition depot so that the minimum distance of one km between the storage sheds and living quarters can be reduced.



Worst fire tragedyThe Pulgaon accident is the Army's worst fire tragedy in which 16 people are confirmed dead while 17 more are battling for their lives in a hospital in Wardha.



While three persons died in an Army ammunition dump fire in 2007 in Khundru village, 75 km from Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir, another fire in Bikaner ordnance depot in 2002 left two dead.



A report by the Comptroller and Auditor General last year, red-flagged the high risk of fire accidents in Army armament depots due to lack adequate fire protection measures. The scale of firefighting equipment and authorisation of adequate fire fighting staff was last revised by the government in March 2004.






The calm of the night at Pulgaon was shattered as a series of explosions shook the ground and shattered window panes.





It took some time for the people of Pulgaon and neighbouring villages to find out what exactly has happened.



Some of them came out of their houses to find flames lighting up the skies over the Central Ordnance Depot (CAD), the largest ammunition depot of the country.



The explosions could be heard in a 30-km radius of the CAD, reports reaching Mumbai said.



Immediately after the series of explosion, Wardha District Collector Shailesh Nawal swung into action and evacuated people from three villages located in the vicinity of the CAD.



News of fire at CAD, Pulgaon is very unfortunate and disturbing. Spoke to Wardha collector and took stock of the situation, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis tweeted.



Window panes of several houses were shattered, the doors weakened at the hinges and some huts in villages developed cracks, a Maharashtra the police official said.



Eyewitnesses said that they initially thought that it was an earthquake when the first explosions were heard, but later realised that they were bomb explosions.



The night sky was red and yellow and appeared like a fireball, said some of the locals.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday claimed that the murder of Congolese student Masonda Ketada Oliver in South Delhi two weeks ago was not a racial crime.





All criminal acts should not be construed as racial attacks. As the CCTV footage of the incident in question showed, this was an act committed by goons who also thrashed the Indian bystanders who had attempted to intervene to save Oliver, she said after a meeting with African envoys and students in the national capital.



India is the land of Gandhi and Buddha. We have fought consistently against racial discrimination. Mahatma Gandhi himself championed the cause of fighting against this evil. We can never have a racist mindset, she noted.



Assuring prompt action on the part of the government, Sushma said these crimes were not premeditated acts against a particular community, rather spontaneous attacks perpetrated by anti-social and criminal elements.



Killing of Oliver on May 20 in a night-time brawl by three goons snowballed into a diplomatic crisis as several incidents of scuffles were reported in Delhi and Kinshasa, the capital of Congo. Out of the three criminals, Delhi Police arrested two while search is on for the third person.



Junior foreign minister V K Singh and MEA officials had several meetings with African diplomats and community leaders in Delhi to douse the fire.



The African delegation, which met Sushma, included Alem Tsehage Woldemariam, the Ambassador of Eritrea, who is also the Dean of the African Diplomatic Corps besides the Acting High Commissioner of Nigeria, who is the Chair of the African Unions Student Committee and Abdoulaye Brahim, head of the Association of African Students in India. They raised concerns over safety and security of the community.



On her part, Sushma assured the team that the government was working on a major strategy under which an institutional mechanism will be put in place to address their concerns.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday came to the defence of her son-in-law Robert Vadra over allegations of links with a controversial arms dealer and buying a house in London.





Sonia said the attack on Vadra was part of the BJPs conspiracy to fulfil its objective of Congress-mukt Bharat (Congress free India).



Sonia, who was on a two-day visit to her Lok Sabha constituency of Raebareli, also sought to link Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the attack on Vadra and dared him to investigate the allegations impartially to ascertain the truth.



She also attacked Modi for holding shows at a time, when the country was facing drought and the farmers were in distress.



Modi not kingMaine pehle aisa nahin dekha...Modi pradhan mantri hain, shenshah nahin (I have never seen anything like this...Modi is prime minister not a king), the Congress president said in an informal chat with reporters after taking part in a programme in her Parliamentary constituency of Raebareli.



This is all part of a conspiracy to push for Congress-mukt Bharat....they come up with one or the other allegations every day...let there be an impartial investigation and the truth will come out, she said.



Cong-free IndiaCongress-mukt Bharat ka matlab kya hai (what do they mean by Congress free India), Sonia sought to know. There is poverty in the country...we are facing drought and the farmers are in distress but the government is busy holding shows, the Congress president said in an apparent reference to the celebrations in New Delhi recently following completion of the NDA governments two years in office.



Earlier in the day, Sonia took part in several programmes in Raebareli and met a cross-section of the people.
The BJP on Tuesday sprung a surprise by fielding its second candidate for the polls to the Legislative Council.





Former MLC Lehar Singh, the partys second candidate, filed his nomination papers along with the partys first candidate, former minister V Somanna in presence of state BJP leaders on the last day for submitting nominations.



The move to field a second candidate by the BJP is seen as a bargaining strategy to keep the JD(S) on tenterhooks at least for the next few days. The JD(S) has sought the support of the BJP for its second candidate and had hoped that the saffron party will heed to its request. The JD(S) did not want the BJP to field its second candidate.



According to sources in the BJP, the party leaders are not taking at the face value the promise of the JD(S) that it will support the BJP during the Bengaluru mayoral elections scheduled to be held in September. A series of talks between BJP and JD(S) leaders is on the cards in the next few days. The sources said Singhs candidature will be withdrawn only after the JD(S) gives a commitment that it will honour its promise. Sources said the BJP may even persuade the JD(S) to withdraw its second candidate. Singh has the support of BJP state president B S Yeddyurappa.



The last date for withdrawal of nominations is June 3. A candidate needs a minimum of 29 votes to get elected. The ruling Congress with 123 MLAs can win four seats, while the BJP and the JD(S) with 44 and 40 MLAs respectively, can win one each. The BJP and the JD(S) will be left with 15 and 11 excess votes respectively. The JD(S) on Monday fielded former MLC K V Narayanaswamy as its first candidate and S M Venkatpathi, who runs a chain of hospitals and educational institutions, as the partys second candidate.



The JD(S) had sought the excess votes of the BJP to its second candidate. In return, the JD(S) has indicated it will support the BJP during the mayoral elections in the BBMP Council. The Congress has fielded four candidates - Allum Veerabhadrappa, Veena Achaiah, R B Thimmapur and Arshad Rizwan.



BJP wooing Independents



Sources in the BJP said the party has been trying to woo the Independents and MLAs of smaller parties to ensure the victory of the second candidate without the help of JD(S). The party will be left with 15 surplus votes after ensuring the victory of the first candidate. The Assembly has nine Independents, three of BSR Congress, two of KJP and one each of Sarvodaya Karnataka Paksha and Karnataka Mallala Paksha, the sources added.



Rajya Sabha polls: Nirmala files papers



Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday filed her papers for the June 11 Rajya Sabha polls as the BJP candidate.



The BJP is one short of the 45 votes required for Sitharamans victory and has sought the support of MLAs Guru Patil (KJP) and T H Suresh Babu and S Thippeswamy (both BSR-Congress). Tuesday was the last date for filing nominations. The last date for withdrawal of nominations is June 3. Scrutiny of nominations will be taken up on Wednesday. Sitharaman's nomination from Karnataka was finalised at the last minute by the BJPs central leadership following a campaign in a section of society that only those who have roots in the state should be nominated from the state.



I am indebted to Karnataka and I will learn Kannada. I will speak in Kannada soon, she told reporters. Her parents live in Bengaluru and she is a frequent here.






In a bid to woo Dalits ahead of the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, BJP chief Amit Shah had lunch at a Dalits house at a village on Tuesday.





Shah, who is on a two-day visit to the state, went straight to the house of Girija Prasad Bind at Jogiapur village in Varanasi, Prime Minister Narendra Modis Lok Sabha constituency, and had lunch there with the local leaders of the party.The BJP chief, however, was seen drinking bottled mineral water, which was carried by one of the party workers.



Shahs visit to the Dalits home triggered immediate reactions from the rival parties, which termed it a drama aimed at garnering votes of the Dalit community.



BSP supremo Mayawati said the BJP had an anti-Dalit mindset' and it only wanted to secure votes of the community. She also referred to the destruction of the statue of the BSP founder Kanshiram in Gurgaon under BJP-ruled Haryana and urged the state government to bring the culprits to book immediately.



Instead of dramatics, the BJP should exert pressure on its government to take action against those responsible for damaging the statue, Mayawati said in a statement on Tuesday.



UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, who had food with the labourers on May Day, said he had not asked about the caste of the man who was beside him while he was having food. It will have no effect on the polls....the people will vote on the basis of development, not for having food with members of a caste or community, Akhilesh said.
The NGT on Tuesday said it had no plan of extending the ban on diesel vehicles in Delhi and Kerala to other cities till it examined the data on pollution levels.





We are not banning any vehicles. We have asked state governments to submit a report on the pollution levels in various cities. Let that data come and then we will hear different parties and decide accordingly, a bench headed by National Green Tribunal (NGT) Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar said.



The panel gave Karnataka, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and West Bengal three weeks time for filing information on the two most polluted cities, total population of those cities and vehicle density over there.



The tribunals reassurance came as Additional Solicitor General Pinky Anand, appearing for Ministry of Heavy Industries, asked the bench not to extend to other cities the ban on registration of vehicles beyond 2000 CC.



She contended that about 8% FDI under "Make in India" has come from the automobile industry and the sector generates employment opportunities and any restriction would have an adverse effect on the momentum of its growth.



Senior advocate A M Singhvi, appearing for Society of Indian Automobile Manufactures, also opposed the idea of extending diesel ban to other metros and said diesel was not the only source of pollution.



Sources of pollution are other than diesel vehicles as well. Other sources like dust and burning also contribute to the air pollution, Singhvi said.



To this the bench said: In any case we have already said that there are primarily three sources of pollution, burning of waste and other materials, dust emission from other sources and vehicular pollution.



That is why we want every state to react. We want every state to give response on each aspect. Let that data come to us and then we will hear the matter in detail, the bench said. The tribunal had earlier taken note of air pollution in Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Patna, Lucknow, Allahabad, Kanpur, Varanasi, Nagpur, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Amritsar and Pune and directed states to file a comprehensive affidavit stating the steps taken by them for prevention and control of air pollution.






The Supreme Court on Tuesday slammed the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) for tinkering with the time schedule fixed by it in granting annual approvals to technical colleges.





We can exhibit exemplary ruthlessness, a vacation bench of Justices P C Ghose and Amitava Roy said, warning contempt action against the top brass of the regulatory body of technical education.



While extending the time till June 10 for granting approvals to 612 engineering and polytechnic colleges across Uttar Pradesh, the bench told the AICTE counsel: Don't tinker with our verdict. We are not sitting here for nothing.



The court expressed its anguish as counsel for Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Technical University, a nodal varsity of technical colleges in UP, cited non-adherence of the time schedule, fixed by the apex court in its 2012 judgment, by AICTE. He said the delay in approval resulted in inability of the university to follow the schedule.



We are final as far as law is concerned. We will issue contempt to you. Let it be clear to all concerned. We know how to enforce our order, the bench said.The court pointed out that the students of 612 engineering colleges cannot be relocated for now.



The court gave a week to AICTE to state the reasons for not following the verdict and explain the delay in communicating its approval to 612 engineering colleges in Uttar Pradesh and to the APJ Abdul Kalam Technical University in the state.




JD(S) state president H D Kumaraswamy has said that Congress is his first enemy, as it is making concerted efforts to dent the regional partys prospects.





Speaking to reporters in Bengaluru on Tuesday, Kumaraswamy said that the Congress was trying to harm the prospects of the BJP in the Rajya Sabha and Legislative Council polls.



As both the JD(S) and BJP have fielded a second candidate in the Council elections, he said that he would hold talks with the saffron party leaders and decide on extending support. Both parties are short of numbers to get their second candidates elected.



He clarified that the upcoming elections were not a contest with Congress leader and Energy minister D K Shivakumar. This is not a fight against D K Shivakumar. He is strategising to ensure that his party candidate wins and I am doing the same, he added.
In a major breakthrough, the police on Tuesday apprehended three of the four men who abducted and gang-raped a 25-year-old girl in a moving vehicle.





All the men confessed to the crime that took place at Kolkatas Salt Lake on Sunday night, said the police.



The detective department of Bidhannagar Police Commissionerate traced the three men to Haroa in North 24 Parganas, using footage from traffic CCTV cameras and tracing the cell phone tower location of one of the perpetrators.



The three men were identified as Arnab Bera, Sourav De and Sukhendu Nag, drivers of pool cars on contract for IT companies that operate out of Salt Lake Sector V, the citys IT hub. While Arnab and Sourav are from Beliaghata in east Kolkata, Sukhendu hails from Haroa, but stayed in a rented accommodation at Chowbhaga, close by. The police believe that he was driving the car on Sunday night.



Recounting her night of horror before the police, the victim said she had taken a taxi to Sector V, where she was scheduled to meet a friend at a multiplex around 10 pm. Not familiar with the area, she got down at an earlier intersection. Seeing Arnab standing close by, she asked him the way to the multiplex. He called up a friend to ask for directions.



Soon, the other men arrived in a white Sumo and offered lift. When she refused, they dragged her in and drove off towards Salt Lake, as the men took turns to rape her in the moving car. At around 4 am on Monday, they dumped the unconscious girl near Baisakhi traffic island at Salt Lake, where morning walkers saw her and informed the police.



Senior police officials said that the girl managed to describe Arnab, following which a sketch was made and shown around. When a civic police volunteer recognised him as one of the drivers ferrying employees of a top IT firm, the police got hands on his cell phone and traced his location to Haroa. The men were hiding at Sukhendus ancestral home to avoid the manhunt.



The woman, a 25-year-old dancer at a bar on VIP Road, was discharged from a state-run hospital on Tuesday, where she underwent a series of tests since the police got her admitted after recovering her on Monday. Authorities are still looking for the fourth perpetrator, whose name is being kept under wraps. The seized vehicle has been sent for forensic examination, senior officials said.




Additional armed forces have been deployed in Punjab ahead of the Operation Bluestar anniversary which is unlikely to be incident-free given the amplified surge in radical sentiment this time around.





The anniversary, in fact, is observed as a week-long event beginning June 1 to protest the military operation 32 years ago to flush out militants from the Golden temple.



Some radical Sikh organisations owing allegiance to slain Khalistan ideologue Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale plan to disrupt the speech of the head priest of Akal Takht Giani Gurbachan Singh on Operation anniversary date on June 6. Radicals have asked Sikh organisations to assemble at the Golden temple on that day.



The event is likely to be beyond just staple pro-Khalistan sloganeering and sale of Bhindranwale T-shirts and memorabilia. Thats also because the radical sentiment appears unimpressed with the ruling Akali Dal over a series of incidents of desecration of the holy book Guru Granth Sahib in 2015. The issue of clemency by the Akal Takht to Gurmeet Ram Rahim, the chief of sect Dera Sacha Sauda, who was accused of blasphemy, too had not gone down well with many Sikh outfits. In fact, a parallel event of sorts on Bluestar anniversary by the Sarbat Khalsa appointed new Akal Takht head priests could spell more trouble. Bluestar anniversaries havent been entirely free from violent incidents with radicals and the SGPC task force clashing on the temple premises. The police are also unwilling to take any chance given that its intelligence inputs also point towards regrouping of a militant outfit in Canada that could target prominent persons and peace in Punjab.




The Congress on Tuesday ran into fresh trouble in Uttarakhand as two BJP leaders filed their nomination papers as independent candidates for the Rajya Sabha elections, queering the pitch for its nominee Pradeep Tamta.





It was only on Tuesday morning that Tamta had heaved a sigh of relief as Congress ally Progressive Democratic Front (PDF) had agreed to withdraw its candidate Tourism Minister Dinesh Dhanai from the Rajya Sabha race following some hectic negotiations with Congress managers in Delhi.



Soon after Tamta, escorted by Chief Minister Harish Rawat, had submitted his nomination papers to the principal secretary of the Uttarakhand Assembly, Leader of the Opposition Ajay Bhat walked in with BJP leaders Geeta Thakur and Anil Goel to hand over their nomination papers as Independent candidates.



Though the Congress is confident of support for Tamta, considered to be a close confidant of the chief minister, BJP is banking on the support of certain disgruntled elements in the Congress as well as the PDF, whose support is crucial for the government.



Tamtas candidature had ruffled feathers within the Congress ranks with former state unit chief Yashpal Arya questioning the choice. The PDF, which has been supporting the Congress government since 2012, had announced the candidature of Dinesh Dhanai, an Independent legislator.



Rawat rushed to Delhi on Monday and mollified Arya by having him speak to Congress president Sonia Gandhi. He later worked up the phone lines and got Dhanai to withdraw his candidature. But the fresh challenge came from the BJP.




Admiral Sunil Lanba on Tuesday took over as the new chief of the Indian Navy for the next three years.





Lanba has the task of adequately arming the warships and submarines of the blue water force.



While 46 ships and submarines are under construction, many of them would not get their main weapons and helicopters in time as shadow of the Agusta VVIP helicopter controversy looms large on several naval acquisition projects, the most immediate of which is the Scorpene class submarines.



Likely to be commissioned by September, the first Scorpene class submarine  to be named INS Kalvari  would not have its Black Shark torpedoes as they are manufactured by a Finmeccanica group firm named Whitehead Alenia Sistemi Subacquei.



Following the Agusta VVIP chopper scam, the Defence Ministry cancelled the WASS contract and asked the Navy to look for alternatives. This would be one of the main tasks of Admiral Lanba as all the six scorpene submarines are likely to be inducted during his tenure.



Several other naval acquisition projects are also in jeopardy as the Defence Ministry made it clear that it would not proceed with any new contract with Finmeccanica group companies till the Indian investigations are over.



These include 127 mm Otomelara main gun for seven warships built under Project-15B (Visakhapatnam class), new choppers to replace the old Sea Kings and electronics from Selex. Soon after taking over from his predecessor Admiral R K Dhowan, Lanba said he would continue with the Navys modernisation agenda.



Over the years, the Navy has turned into a modern and combat-ready force capable of operating in all three dimensions., he said.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Tuesday warned of disciplinary action against lower rung police staff going on mass casual leave on June 4 as a mark of protest against the governments failure to fulfill their demands.





The police department is known for discipline and is committed to ensure law and order, peace and harmony and safety of the public and properties. Violation of the departments order of not going on leave will be viewed as gross indiscipline and stern action will be taken against those violating the order, Siddaramaiah said after holding a meeting with senior police officers.



The president of an unregistered association has called for the bandh. Some outsiders, some trade unions and BJP are backing the lower rung. The government is committed to the welfare of the constabulary. The lower rung staff can discuss their grievances with the higher-ups. I appeal to the constabulary not to be instigated by anyone, he said.



The department has identified some forces instigating the lower rung and action will be taken against such forces, he said and criticised the BJPs attempt to take political advantage of the situation.



Government employees have decided to stage a protest on June 2 and the government will hold discussions with the office-bearers of the employees organisations, he said.



Home Minister G Parameshwara, chief secretary Aravind Jadhav and DG&IPG Omprakash were present.



Omprakash said that the department would consider provisions under Police Forces (Restriction of Rights) Act-1966, IPC, Karnataka Police Manual, Karnataka Essential Services Maintenance Act 2013 and Karnataka Police Act and take action, including suspension, dismissal and levying of fine, against those violating the order.



The Health and Family Welfare director issued a circular directing the health officers not to issue medical certificates to any lower rung staff, unless there are genuine grounds.



The All India and Trade Union Congress leaders and AAP have expressed support to the lower rung staff and demanded that the government fulfill the demands.



They also supported the government employees stir on June 2.



The office-bearers of the Karnataka Rajya Police Sangha have met Om Prakash and submitted a memorandum, listing out the lower rung staffs grievances and measures needed to address them.




Four men hijacked a truck laden with 13 tonnes of cigarettes worth Rs 4.5 crore from Nayandahalli, off Mysuru Road, recently.





The incident occurred on May 26 when Radhakrishna, the truck driver was heading to Kerala after loading the cigarette bundles from the ITC factory at Sadahalli gate on Kempegowda International Airport road, said the police.



The robbers trailed Radhakrishna of Kerala and intercepted the truck at Nayandahalli at around 4 am. After dragging him out, one of the robbers got into the truck and drove it away.



The three others blindfolded Radhakrishna, took him in a car and abandoned him near Srirangapatna.



They made away with Radhakrishnas mobile phone and switched it off later. They also disconnected the GPS facility in the Karnataka-registered truck, said the police.
Those looking for carbide-free, naturally ripened mangoes and jackfruit varieties, sold directly by growers at a reasonable price, can head to the month-long mango and jackfruit exhibition and sales mela, at Lalbagh from Tuesday.





Hosted by the Department of Horticulture and the Karnataka State Mango Development and Marketing Corporation Limited (KSMDMCL), the mela, which starts at 8 am to 7 pm, will go on till June 29.



While 80 mango varieties are exhibited, 20 are up for sale in 85 stalls. Besides, 15 sales counters are meant for jackfruit, M Kamalakshi Rajanna, chairperson of KSMDMCL, said. A total of 105 registered farmers were selected for the mela.



In 2015, we were able to sell about 850 tonnes of mangoes, which generated Rs 5.38 crore revenue. This year, we expect the revenue to touch Rs 10 crore. The corporation has provided space and facilities free for the growers to sell their produce, she noted.



Chandra Reddy, a mango grower from Kolar, said, We get an additional income of Rs 20 to Rs 30 for every kg of mango here. The same goes to the middlemen in the market, he said. Earlier in the day, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah inaugurated the event in the presence of Co-operation Minister H S Mahadeva Prasad and Horticulture Minister Shamanur Shivashankarappa. The chief minister told reporters at the event that the government would encourage more such melas to help the farmers expand their market, besides creating an online platform.



Buy mangos online

Now, mangoes can be bought online on the Boards website www.ksmdmcl.org. For this, the consumers have to order a minimum of 5 kg and the delivery time is three days. At present, the facility is available only in Bengaluru.



Kamalakshi said that the corporation had identified 10 representatives from among the growers to deliver the mangoes to the customers who purchase it online. Talks were on with e-commerce companies too, she said.
Medtronic has partnered with its subsidiary company Qualcomm Life to develop affordable continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) for people with type 2 diabetes.

Medtronic accounts for around half of the CGM market worldwide  a technology that is normally used by people with type 1 diabetes, but is becoming more available to those with type 2 diabetes.

This new collaboration is expected to lead to a low-cost disposable glucose monitor. There are roughly 400 million with type 2 diabetes globally, and these devices would be targeted at the vast majority who dont have access to self-monitoring technology for blood glucose levels.

People with type 2 diabetes can find it hard to finance self-monitoring of blood glucose levels. In the UK, insulin-treated patients receive testing supplies for free, but this isnt the case for all type 2 diabetes patients. Not keeping good control of blood sugar levels can increase the risk of long-term diabetes-related complications.

Laura Stoltenberg, vice president of non-intensive diabetes therapies at Medtronic, said: We believe that glucose should be a vital sign of diabetes health. Our vision is to transform diabetes care so people with diabetes can enjoy greater freedom and better health.

Stoltenberg added that the goal of the collaboration is to develop innovative and affordable CGM systems that will fundamentally change type 2 diabetes management.

Medtronic is a market leader in the CGM field, while San Diego-based Qualcomm Life will contribute communications technology expertise to the project.

What we are doing with Medtronic is helping them develop the electronics and the communications technology that will go in the actual sensor itself, said Rick Valencia, head of Qualcomm Life.

Medtronic is also aiming to use its CGMs to help doctors and patients better manage type 2 diabetes. Our solutions go beyond delivering data and provide automated observations and clinical decision support to help create a personalised care plan, said Stoltenberg.

These devices, once created, will require US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval before coming to market, and it could therefore be a few years before this happens.

The other major CGM market leader, DexCom, announced last year that it was teaming up with Google to develop new products that are smaller and less expensive than existing technologies.
This Thursdays meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is unlikely to result in any major change to the oil market, according to analysts at HSBC and Morgan Stanley.

The standoff between Saudi Arabia and Iran continues, making any agreement on production highly unlikely, said HSBC.

We find it interesting to see that both Iraq and Iran have claimed record production levels in recent days, which could be seen as posturing ahead of the June OPEC meeting.

Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley said the meeting was unlikely to end in anything other than a statement of support for the current condition of oil markets.

The bank said that while headlines could create some volatility in markets, its likely to be another status quo meeting with similar results as the one in December. Still, with low expectations and limited positioning ahead of the meeting, any surprise could have an outsized impact, MS said.

OPEC abandoned its quota at the last meeting, and given recent policy decisions and personnel changes at several members, expectations for any OPEC quota discussions are low.

Therefore, commentary about the state of the oil market and individual country policy will likely be more important. Of particular interest will be Saudi Arabias comments on oil markets, policy and OPECs role, as well as Irans production outlook and oil policy. We will also listen for any comments about members efforts to grow production or invest.

MS said it expects to hear some freeze talk, particularly from fiscally-distressed nations, but reckons few members are willing to sacrifice revenue at this stage.
Telit Communication chairman Enrico Testa has shown his confidence that the company's hardware and software products are gaining traction with industry.

Testa spent 226,500 to add 100,000 shares at a price of 226.5p to take his total ownership of the internet of things (IoT) company to 1%, or 1,155,500 ordinary shares.

Last week, Telit was signed up by SAP to license and resell Telit's deviceWISE platform that the pair said would create a new way for companies to onboard to the Internet of Things.

This followed another agreement in May for the Rome-headquartered company, which won a contract with John Deere to implement DeviceWISE. This will enable John Deere to collect and analyse real time assembly information to help improve efficiency throughout its supply chain and near 100 factories.

Also this month, Telit gained CAT-1 LTE module certification in the US market with a major mobile network operator.

Top Director Buys

Telit Communications (TCM)

Director name: Testa,Enrico (Chicco)

Amount purchased: 100,000 @ 226.50p

Value: 226,500.01



Hostelworld Group (HSW)

Director name: Mooney,Feargal

Amount purchased: 84,000 @ 180.25p

Value: 151,410.00



Ithaca Energy Inc. (di) (IAE)

Director name: Lee,Jack C.

Amount purchased: 82,600 @ $C1.06

Value: $C47,618.42



Sinclair Pharma (SPH)

Director name: Tschudin,Jean-Charles

Amount purchased: 97,000 @ 36.25p

Value: 35,162.50



Blackrock World Mining Trust (BRWM)

Director name: Cockerill,Ian

Amount purchased: 8,653 @ 229.80p

Value: 19,884.59



Ithaca Energy Inc. (di) (IAE)

Director name: Lee,Jack C.

Amount purchased: 16,900 @ $C1.07

Value: $C9,834.67



City Merchants High Yield Trust (CMHY)

Director name: Taylor,Philip

Amount purchased: 2,539 @ 179.51p

Value: 4,557.76



John Laing Group (JLG)

Director name: Beeton,Jeremy

Amount purchased: 2,000 @ 221.10p

Value: 4,422.00



Mortgage Advice Bureau (holdings) (MAB1)

Director name: Imlach,Nathan James McLean

Amount purchased: 392 @ 348.00p

Value: 1,364.16



Sinclair Pharma (SPH)

Director name: Tschudin,Jean-Charles

Amount purchased: 3,023 @ 35.50p

Value: 1,073.16



Record (REC)

Director name: Cullen,Steve

Amount purchased: 906 @ 24.85p

Value: 225.14



3i Group (III)

Director name: Wilson,Julia

Amount purchased: 28 @ 542.50p

Value: 151.90





Top Director Sells

Severn Trent (SVT)

Director name: Garfield ,Olivia (Liv)

Amount sold: 20,995 @ 2,271.60p

Value: 476,922.41



Severn Trent (SVT)

Director name: FitzGerald,Emma

Amount sold: 6,926 @ 2,271.60p

Value: 157,331.01



Severn Trent (SVT)

Director name: FitzGerald,Emma

Amount sold: 6,908 @ 2,271.60p

Value: 156,922.13



Driver Group (DRV)

Director name: Laslett,Robert (Bob) Charles

Amount sold: 100,000 @ 70.00p

Value: 70,000.00



Vedanta Resources (VED)

Director name: Joshi,Akhilesh

Amount sold: 1,816 @ 375.00p

Value: 6,810.00




Private equity group 3i said it had agreed to invest 181m in German car parts maker Schlemmer as part of a buyout.

In a statement, 3i said the management team will also hold a significant equity stake in the business, which is being purchased from German private equity firm Hannover Finanz and the Mackprang Holding.

The parties have agreed to keep the purchase price confidential.

Founded in 1954 and headquartered in Poing, close to Munich, Schlemmer develops and produces cable protection for automotive and industrial applications.

The group employs 2,500 people globally, and generated gross sales of 220.2m in 2015, including 50% of the sales generated by a joint venture in China.
David Abery will step down from his role as finance director at Petra Diamonds to pursue other opportunities.

Following his departure, he will continue to be available to the company on an advisory basis for at least six months, as part of the succession process.

In addition, the company announced the appointment of Jacques Breytenbach as chief financial officer.

Breytenbach has held the role of finance manager of operations since 2006, with responsibility for financial management across the group's operations. He joined Petra from Anglo Platinum, where he held various roles, culminating in his position as finance manager of Capital Projects.

Petra said Koos Visser  who has held the role of group operating manager since 2005  will be appointed chief operating officer.

Prior to joining Petra, he worked for Impala Platinum in a number of roles, culminating in his position as Utilities and Technical Services manager.

Chairman Adonis Pouroulis said Visser and Breytenbachs new roles will be integral to the daily management of the company and its operations, as well as to the delivery of our medium- to long-term strategy.

He added: Their extensive knowledge of the company, our operations and management of our capital investment programmes, as well as of the diamond mining industry and our local operating environments in South Africa and Tanzania, will continue to serve the company well."

RBC Capital Markets said: We believe a clear succession plan involving experienced executives as new CFO and COO (RBC has had significant and helpful contact with both men) will be welcomed by the market given Petra is nearing the end of its large expansion programme.

"However the resignation of a CFO, particularly one who has been integral to the investor communications strategy, also creates some short-term uncertainty until investors become comfortable with the new executives.

At 1126 BST, Petra shares were down 0.6% to 115.06p.
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7 places to find pumpkin-flavored treats in Columbus

Just days before Halloween is National Pumpkin Day, which takes place Wednesday. Want to celebrate? Here are some suggestions to help.
One of Ireland's best-known peace activists has told an audience in Donegal that most people in Ireland are unaware of the countrys role in the international arms industry and that there must be a movement to bring it to an end.

Margaretta D'Arcy, a playwright, writer and peace activist, was in Letterkenny to launch her book, Ireland's Guantanamo Granny, an account of her life including her decades of protest which started with protests against nuclear arms at Greenham Common in England.

The 82-year-old was christened Guantanamo granny due to her wearing of an orange jump suit during her protests at the use of Shannon by U.S. military aircraft.

She served nine-and-a-half weeks of a three-month sentence in 2014 for an unauthorised incursion into Shannon Airport.

She had previously served sentences in the North for her protests for rights for women prisoners and in England over the Greenham Common protest.

She told the audience that her time in Limerick prison was awful.

It is like a dungeon.

Speaking to an audience at the Donegal launch of her book at An Grianan Theatre in Letterkenny, she made the point that the issue of the use of Shannon by U.S. military aircraft is not a big issue in Ireland because it is not discussed enough by the public.

We now know about homelessness, not that anything will be done about it, because it is talked about all the time. Shannon is not talked about. It is not talked about - the complicity of the Irish government with the most horrific wars that have taken place since World War Two. Six million people have been displaced and we as an Irish people have to take responsibility for that because of the planes that come through.

She said the use of the airport is contrary to the Irish constitution. Domestic laws are being broken, international laws are being broken and the spirit of the constitution is being broken. So why are we not conscious of what is happening to our country? What is happening to us?

While she was eventually prosecuted for her protests at Shannon, she said the failure to prosecute successfully a number of people for criminal damage of U.S. planes at Shannon shows there is a collusion among the Irish and American authorities so as not to draw attention to the issue.

The Americans do not want a focus on what is happening at Shannon. The courts, the government and the Americans collude so that the real atrocities that are happening at Shannon do not come out to us, the general people.

She said the distraction of people by other issues means they don't have time to focus on issues such as Shannon. If you are homeless you don't have time, you don't pay the mortgage. We are overburdened. It is as if there is a war against the people of the world. There are so many little things that we are not looking at the bigger picture.

Addressing the issue of Irelands arms trade Ms. DArcy said Ireland exports 2.3m of arms a year to countries including Saudi Arabia, the USA, Russia, China, Pakistan Afghanistan. Key components of US Apache helicopters which are used by the Israeli Defence Force are made in Cork and research by the University of Limerick and Trinity College Dublin have been linked to military research, she said.

Our country is impregnated with destructive forces. We want to stop the arms industry in this country. We have to stop Irelands role in the death industry. We have to stop this vicious circle some way or another.

We could make Ireland into an absolutely free zone without arms and without support of the military and what a difference it would make to the world. Seventy seven per cent of people in Ireland don't want war, they want to be neutral.

Commenting on the visit of Prince Charles to the county the day after her book launch, she said:

If you are talking to him could you remind him that his mother put me into jail in Armagh. His mother is head of all the armed forces as well as head of the Church of England. If you would like to get compensation for the treatment that his mother gave me.
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.
More than 20 witnesses took the stand last week when the long-anticipated public corruption trial of indicted Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard finally got its day in court. Testimony in the case resumes today.

Fellow legislators, politicians, businessmen, lobbyists and state executives each testified about their knowledge of Hubbards actions, providing testimony in the first four days of trial mostly in response to the first nine of the 23 charges Hubbard faces.

Prosecutors accuse Hubbard of using his position as ALGOP chairman to direct business to the Auburn Network, a consulting agency he owns, and Craftmaster Printers, in which Hubbard holds partial interest, for counts 1-4 of the indictment.

He is accused of attempting to put language into the 2014 General Fund budget that would have given an edge to the American Pharmacy Cooperative Inc. -- a client of Hubbards  by making it the only agency with the ability to bid on a pharmacy benefit manager contract related to Medicaid, and voting for that budget for counts 5-6.

The state accuses Hubbard of using his position to obtain a monthly $12,000 consulting contract with the Southeast Alabama Gas District and of lobbying two members of the executive branch -- Gov. Robert Bentley and Alabama Department of Commerce Secretary Greg Canfield -- for initiatives related to the organization for counts 7-9.

Witnesses: Hubbard dealings

Several witnesses from the Wiregrass area testified Friday that Hubbard used his position as speaker for matters related to economic development consulting with the Southeast Alabama Gas District.

Dothan Mayor Mike Schmitz, who sits on the gas district's board along with representatives from 13 other municipalities that own the organization, testified about Hubbards involvement with the gas district.

Schmitz said Hubbard was hired as a consultant for the gas district to head economic development in the Wiregrass area, which was suffering at the time from aviation maintenance company Pemcos 2012 bankruptcy. Pemco was the largest lease holder at the Dothan Regional Airport at the time, and employed from 300 to 1,200 people at its peak.

Schmitz testified that Hubbard, helped work on negotiations to get Commercial Jet, a Miami-based aviation maintenance, repair and overhaul company, to relocate to Dothan and fill the needs left by Pemcos demise.

The gas district received a letter from the Alabama Ethics Commission approving the contract, he said, but it explicitly stated Hubbard was not to use the mantle of his office while working as an independent consultant.

But Hubbard used his position as speaker of the house to arrange meetings with Gov. Bentley, Schmitz said, which in turn helped secure state funding and other assistance for the initiative.

"He (Hubbard) has a lot of influence, and we did get meetings," Schmitz said. "My opinion is he did what he said he was going to do -- get a meeting with the governor."

As a result of Hubbards efforts, Commercial Jet eventually relocated to Dothan.

Theyre here and theyre booming, Schmitz said.

Lead defense attorney Bill Baxley in his cross examination of Schmitz called getting Commercial Jet to Dothan a blue-ribbon ordeal.

It seems to me  everyone involved in this should be patted on the back and thanked, said Baxley.

Enterprise Mayor Kenneth Boswell recalled working with Hubbard on several economic development initiatives involving the Southeast Alabama Gas District, and attending multiple related outings with him.

Boswell testified that Hubbard's state office and networking ability were key reasons why members of the gas district board unanimously voted to hire Hubbard.

Asked if Hubbard's position in the projects -- as either speaker of the house or as a private consultant -- was clearly defined, Boswell answered "no."

On cross examination, though, Boswell said Hubbard did not use his position to get the contract.

Baxley had Boswell read aloud a letter from the ethics commission essentially giving approval to Hubbard's consulting contract with the gas district, as long as nothing came before the Legislature that would "uniquely affect" the organization.

"We do not see any problems with the arrangement ... as we discussed at our meeting yesterday, as it is currently being done in several circumstances around the state by various members of the Legislature," the document read, later adding that the fact that it is a consulting contract rather than an employment contract "makes it cleaner."

Baxley asked Boswell if he was aware of Hubbard ever using his position as speaker to get the job. Boswell responded, "no."

Dothan Area Chamber of Commerce President Matt Parker testified that he didn't know the specifics of Hubbard's contract with the gas district, but that he felt Hubbard's assistance with Wiregrass economic development stemmed from his position as speaker.

Rep. Paul Lee, R-Dothan, testified about his involvement in certain meetings and efforts in which Hubbard participated to secure the Commercial Jet deal.

Repeatedly asked what capacity he believed Hubbard was acting in, Lee answered, "as speaker of the house."

Hubbard 'encouraged' Bentley

Rep. Steve Clouse, R-Ozark, was also asked about Hubbards work with the Southeast Alabama Gas District on Thursday.

He said Hubbard had never spoken to him about his consulting contract with the gas district, and that he only found out about Hubbards contract at a meeting among local officials in Ozark in which the mayor informed him that Hubbard was working with the gas district via the Auburn Network for economic development.

Asked what he thought when he learned of the contract, Clouse said, I didnt know what to think, really.

Clouse recalled attending a meeting with Hubbard, Bentley, Canfield and Lee regarding Commercial Jet.

The subject of the meeting, he said, was that a plan to get Commercial Jet to relocate to Dothan seemed to be lagging. Locals were encouraging Bentley and Canfield to do all they could to provide whatever incentives they could to bring Commercial Jet on board to enhance local economic development.

Clouse said Hubbard was encouraging Bentley and Canfield to do all they could.

Hamrick: Hubbard hired

American Pharmacy Cooperative Inc. President and CEO Tim Hamrick testified Friday that Hubbard was hired as a consultant for the organization due to his contacts as speaker of the house.

Hamrick said the pharmacy cooperative gave Hubbard a $5,000-per-month contract to help the organization grow its presence in other states.

The contract strictly prohibited Hubbard from lobbying for the organization within the state, though in an email shown Friday, Hamrick thanked Hubbard for championing the temporary language in the budget bill.

Baxley argued the exact same email was also sent to a handful of other legislators.

Clouse: Hubbards vote

Clouse, who served as acting chairman of the House General Fund Ways and Means Committee during the 2013 legislative session, was also questioned Thursday about his knowledge of language Hubbard is accused of attempting to insert into the 2014 General Fund budget that would have benefitted the American Pharmacy Cooperative Inc., and then voting on the budget.

Clouse testified that he didnt know at the time the language was temporarily inserted that pharmacy cooperative was a client of Hubbards. He said that Hubbards vote on the budget was probably a conflict of interest.

Asked how the language ended up in the budget bill, Clouse said Rep. Greg Wren had advocated on its behalf. Wren resigned from office and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor ethics charge involving misuse of his public office in 2014.

Williamson: Wrens language

Former Medicaid director Don Williamson Thursday answered questions pertaining to how the APCI budget language would have affected Medicaid, as well as when and how he learned about Hubbard's outside consulting contract with the APCI.

Williamson recalled a phone call he received from Medicaid Commissioner Stephanie Azar on April 18, 2013. He said Azar had seen the proposed APCI language and was alarmed.

Williamson said he went and met with Medicaid staffers to discuss the issue. That's when Medicaid Pharmacy Director Kelli Littlejohn Newman told him and others she was certain only one entity in the entire state could meet the PBM language criteria as written: APCI.

Williamson and Azar arranged a meeting with Hubbard the next day. At the meeting, Hubbard claimed that he didn't know that the language would essentially create a monopoly, Williamson testified.

"He said, 'I am angry. Farrell (Patrick) should have told us that.' I took that to mean Farrell should have informed him it would limit Medicaid's choices to one provider," he said.

"He was very clear this was Rep. Wrens language," said Williamson.

Hubbard committed to getting the language out and to making sure Wren wasn't on the conference committee that would be tasked with stripping it from the budget, Williamson said.

On that same occasion, Williamson claimed Hubbard told him of his contract with APCI. Hubbard allegedly reiterated that the contract was for out-of-state business only.

Williamson said he came away with four "key takeaway points" from the meeting.

"I just remember in reconstruction that I had four takeaway points: that was it was Wren's legislation, that the speaker said Farrell (Patrick) should have told us about it, the APCI contract was for out-of-state work and he was supposed to be getting language out of the legislation and he would not put Wren on the committee," he said.

It appeared that Williamson's testimony might not have been exactly what the prosecution was expecting.

Special Prosecutor Matt Hart asked Williamson if he'd ever heard that Hubbard had a consulting contract with APCI before Hubbard told him. Williamson said he had "heard rumors," but was surprised to find that it was true.

Hart asked Williamson if this meeting with Hubbard was the first instance in which he'd been told that it was Wren's language versus the speaker's. Williamson said yes.

He told Hart that Hubbard instructed himself and other Medicaid officials to meet with Wren to work out alternative language regarding the PBM.

On April 25, Williamson said he and Azar met with Wren, Clouse, Patrick and others.

"They tried to convince us of the wisdom of their language, which we couldnt live with," he said, adding that "Mr. Wren became almost extraordinarily angry ... yelling that the language was his and he had written it."

Seemingly taken aback by Williamson's testimony, Hart asked him if he felt awkward about testifying against the current speaker of the house as a lobbyist for the Alabama Hospital Association, where Williamson currently serves as president and CEO.

Baxley raised several objections to Hart's questions and assertions.

In cross examination, Baxley focused on the fact that Hubbard did not place Wren on the conference committee.

Azar: no change of mind

Azar offered a slightly different account of Hubbard's plans following the meeting.

She didn't recall Hubbard changing his opinion about the legislation.

"I don't recall anything about Hubbard changing his mind," she said.

Azar implied that mediating by Sen. Greg Reed, R-Jasper, aided the situation.

Former chief of staff

Testimony Hubbards former chief of staff Josh Blades cut like a knife for the defense Wednesday afternoon.

Blades told the court he and others advised Hubbard not to vote on language that would have essentially made the American Pharmacy Cooperative Inc. -- a client of Hubbard's through his consulting firm the Auburn Network -- the only agency with the ability to bid on a pharmacy benefit manager being considered for Medicaid at the time.

"We told him it was a problem and we didnt think he should move forward with the language in the budget because it looked bad," said Blades. "I told Mr. Hubbard he should not vote on the budget."

Blades, who served as Hubbards chief of staff from 2011 to 2014, said the General Fund budget was in trouble at the time, and the pharmacy benefit manager was an attempt by legislators to save the state money.

Medicaid is the largest portion of the General Fund budget. One of the ideas Dr. Williamson had  was to have a personal PBM instituted at the department of Medicaid, he said, adding that the benefit manager would cut costs for pharmaceutical providers and Medicaid was in favor of it.

In an attempt to protect small pharmacies, Blades said, the APCI went to the speaker claiming that it could basically do the exact same thing as a commercial pharmacy benefit manager, but it could also protect small businesses in the state.

It sounded like a great idea to us, Blades said. Lobbyist Farrell Patrick then asked for meeting with Hubbard and others to discuss the proposal, he explained.

After a positive meeting among Blades, Hubbard, Patrick, John Ross, Clouse and Wren, Everyone wanted to do it.

Language reflecting what the men had discussed was developed and inserted it into the budget.

But shortly thereafter, Blades was approached by Ross, who had learned through Patrick that Hubbard held a consulting contract with APCI.

Blades said he and Ross asked Hubbard if it was true, and he confirmed that it was. But Hubbard said the contract was for out-of-state matters only and that the ethics commission had given him approval for the contract.

Generally speaking, we tried to not even have an appearance of impropriety.  This, in my opinion, was an appearance of impropriety, Blades said.

With the budget already on the floor, Blades said he and others advised Hubbard to either abstain from the vote or not to vote at all.

He said it would raise too many red flags if the speaker did not vote on his own budget, Blades said, and so he voted in favor of it, allegedly with the intent to fix it later by removing the language.

I was upset that I had played a role in what transpired that day, and that I had played a role unknowingly, a sometimes-emotional Blades said on the stand, adding that he was afraid that there might be legal implications after all this transpired."

The language was later removed from the legislation.

Hubbard's attorneys asserted that his consulting contract with ACPI was strictly for out-of-state business, and in no way pertained to his role as speaker.

"Theres a lot more in that bill than those few lines," said Baxley, adding that the budget allocated billions of dollars.

"Without a vote, the state would shut down," he said.

Baxley said Hubbard knew the language was going to be removed in committee when he voted on it.

The speaker had changed his mind and wanted the language out that the APCI wanted in. So it was determined by all of them that it would be fixed in the Senate, and so the Senate did take it out, Baxley said.

Consultant: not directed

Just after 9 a.m. Friday, the co-owner of a Florida political advertising business hired to produce ALGOP direct mail advertising testified that Hubbard never instructed him to use his Auburn printing company.

Brett Buerck, who co-owned Majority Strategies during the time the business was subcontracting printing work for projects related to the Alabama Republican Party's 2010 election efforts with Auburn-based Craftmaster Printers, said he was under the impression that the business in which Hubbard held partial interest was Majority Strategies only option.

But asked if Hubbard specifically directed him to use Craftmaster, Buerck told defense attorney Lance Bell, no.

Buercks business partner Randy Kammerdiener testified Thursday that the company felt it had to use Craftmaster to fulfill the printing orders or that it would not be able to do business with the Alabama Republican Party, though Kammerdiener revealed in cross examination from the defense that Hubbard never specifically told him he had to use Craftmaster.

Buerck said Kammerdiener told him their business had to use Craftmaster.

I believed they were our only option, said Buerck.

Craftmaster or nothing

Kammerdiener testified that his political advertising company felt it had to use Craftmaster for the production of ALGOP fliers or it would not be able to do business in the state of Alabama  a directive he said came from the embattled speaker.

Under questioning by Hart, Kammerdiener, co-owner of Majority Strategies, told the court he felt his business was required to used Craftmaster for its printing needs. Majority Strategies was hired by the Alabama Republican Party, which in turn subcontracted printing work with Auburn-based Craftmaster -- in which Hubbard holds partial interest -- during the 2010 and 2014 election cycles.

Kammerdiener said that his business partner Buerck, who handled finances, believed that Craftmasters pricing was too high for the products it turned out.

In an email exchange between Kammerdiener and Buerck, Kemmerdiener said that Majority Strategies client, the ALGOP, was "essentially the printer," and urged Buerck to treat Hubbard and Craftmaster personnel as clients when discussing cost issues because of Hubbards ability to bring the company more future business.

In an email, Buerck wrote, I think if Mike knows theres more opportunities to make money, his greedy (sic) will be our ally.

Kammerdiener said he certainly believed that the party wanted us to use Craftmaster, but upon cross examination from defense attorney Lance Bell, he said he could not recall a specific instance in which Hubbard told him he had to use Craftmaster.

The defense also argued that the ALGOP used Craftmaster prior to Hubbards tenure as chairman.

Hines: not typical

Chris Hines, former vice president of Hubbards Auburn Network, took the stand Wednesday morning and testified that the company received tens of thousands of dollars from consulting contracts with various entities, including the Southeast Alabama Gas District, Edgenuity Inc. and CV Holdings LLC.

Questioned by Deputy Attorney General Mike Duffy, Hines said he was formerly tasked with managing the day-to-day operations of the business, including finances. Hubbard, as president, CEO and owner of the Auburn Network, received a $132,000 salary from the company, Hines said, and also received dividends from time to time.

Hines said he did not know specifically what services Hubbard was providing under the contracts, and said the transactions were not typical.

He confirmed that at least one check written to the company included a memo for lobbying.

Only Hubbard worked on the contracts mentioned, he said, and Hubbard merely provided consulting services to his knowledge.

On cross examination, Baxley asked if it was fair to say that Hubbard put much more money into the company than he made. Hines said yes.

Whatley: no profits

The president of Craftmaster Printers Barry Whatley testified Wednesday that Craftmaster is a financially struggling business and that Hubbard never profited off any transactions involving the state Republican party.

Whatley said the company was basically bankrupt when he became involved with it.

When we bought the company, there was $8.8 million worth of debt, he said. Its almost like raising the Titanic. Its been very difficult from day one.

Whatley said three people, including himself, own 55 percent of the business in holding company stock, while 10 others own 45 percent of the company in preferred stock. Original owners were Hubbard, Philip Cole, Doug Taylor, Pat Dye and himself, he said, adding that he and Hubbard are the only original owners left in the business.

Whatley said he didnt know Hubbard before going into business with him. He said Hubbard was recommended to him as a business partner by an employee of AuburnBank.

But even with Hubbards help, the company continued to struggle.

Craftmaster filed for bankruptcy in 2005, but later withdrew its filing. The company would later run into issues when it got behind in federal taxes.

At that point, Whatley said, Hubbard came up with a plan to help the business.

The plan was to go out and find some investors that would invest that amount of money so we could pay off our bank notes, he said.

So Hubbard, Whatley and others sifted through their contacts searching to find investors at $150,000 each.

If the business went under, Whatley said, the owners would be responsible for the debt.

Hart questioned Whatley about Majority Strategies. Asked why the business used Craftmaster, Whatley said he really didnt know, but that Majority Strategies had been using Craftmaster since 2004.

In a string of emails between Whatley and Majority Strategies Brett Buerck dated in 2013, Whatley wrote that Hubbard had sent over $500,000 in work to the company, and accused Buerck of starting rumors that Hubbard was profiting from the transactions.

Whatley said Hubbard never received so much as a dollar, and that all transactions were proper, despite two commissions recorded some 14 years ago that he believes were incorrectly labeled.

Under cross examination by defense attorney David McKnight, Whatley testified that Hubbard received no salary from Craftmaster and that he was not involved in the business daily activities.

Firm handled payments

A lobbyist said Tuesday that his company handled what state prosecutors are calling illegal transactions between the Alabama Republican Party and Hubbard.

Tim Howe, a lobbyist and partner with the Montgomery-based political consultant firm Swatek, Azbell, Howe and Ross, told attorneys that the Alabama Republican Party paid money to his intermediary media buying firm The Howe Group, which in turn wrote checks to Network Creative Media -- an affiliate of Hubbards consulting firm, the Auburn Network -- while Hubbard was the partys chairman.

Howes firm, in exchange for handling the payments, received a 5 percent cut. Howe said he was unsure why the payments were handled as they were, though prosecutors previously said it was done to hide the fact that the party was paying Hubbards company.

I know I got 5 percent. I don't know how that got handled on either end, he said.

Howe was the prosecutions second witness. His business partner and former ALGOP executive John Ross took the stand about an hour before Howe on Tuesday afternoon.

Ross was questioned by Deputy Attorney General John Gibbs and lead defense attorney Bill Baxley about his knowledge of ALGOP payments to Craftmaster Printers while Hubbard served as chairman.

Ross said he and others knew of Hubbards affiliation with the business, but decided to use it anyway for its low rates and reputable quality. He said the companies did a good job and that the party had used Craftmaster in the past before Hubbard served as chairman.

Special Prosecutor Matt Hart, in opening arguments Tuesday morning, accused Hubbard of funneling $961,431 to Craftmaster and the Auburn Network.

Asked if Ross knew of any instances in which Hubbard pocketed money from the transactions, he said no.

Trial resumes Tuesday

Trial will resume Tuesday at 9 a.m. Among those expected to take the stand are Jimmy Rane, Will Brooke, Billy Canary, Farrell Patrick, Dax Swatek and Minda Riley Campbell.

Hubbard was indicted in October 2014 on 23 felony ethics charges of using his political office for personal gain.

If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of two to 20 years imprisonment and fines of up to $30,000 for each count. He would be removed from office if convicted of any of the charges.

Hubbard has long maintained his innocence, and continued to serve as speaker of the house during the 2016 legislative session.
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.
The new head of Nissan's Nismo performance division says the brand should set aside the Altima sedan and race in V8 Supercars with the GT-R performance icon.

Takao Katagiri took charge of Nismo in April ahead of a planned expansion with new models and markets that will include a strong Australian presence.

Speaking exclusively with Drive at the Nurburgring 24 Hour race, where Nissan entered three GT-R machines, Katagiri says Nissan Australia should consider campaigning the GT-R coupe in races such as the Bathurst 1000.

"If the Australian regulation has changed and the GT-R is possible to be in V8 Supercars or Supercar racing in Australia we have an advantage," he says.

"We have a strength... We have a strong technical background racing the GT-R."

V8 Supercars recently re-drafted its rule book to allow two-door body styles as well as turbocharged engines  both of which feature in the GT-R.

Katagiri says Nissan's policy is to use the GT-R as the face of its racing efforts.

"The core of Nissan is Nismo," he says.

"The core essence of Nissan is excitement and innovation, and the core of Nismo is motor racing, represented by GT-R. That's our structure.

"If we can do something in motorsport to enhance the image, the excitement, definitely we need to use motorsports and the core element of motorsports for Nissan or Nismo is the GT-R."

However, while a GT-R-based V8 Supercar is preferable from Katagiri's perspective, it does not gel with local requirements.

V8 Supercars use a control chassis and roll cage for all models. Existing body styles based on the Holden Commodore, Nissan Altima, Ford Falcon, Volvo S60 and Mercedes E-Class must be adapted to fit that frame. The GT-R's proportions don't line up well with those of an Altima or Commodore as it has a low, turret-like glasshouse and broader footprint than family-focused sedans.

While the racing Nissan GT-R GT3 Nismo drivetrain could be tuned to meet V8 Supercars' specifications, ambiguity in the draft rulebook hasn't encouraged its local operation to forge ahead with a turbocharged powerplant in place of the current V8 motor based loosely on the engine in Nissan's Patrol SUV.

There is also the question of results. Nissan has won just one race in four seasons of V8 Supercars competition marked by technical struggles when it became the first manufacturer to break Ford and Holden's duopoly in the sport.

Another hang-up surrounds its competitors. Volvo and Ford have pulled out of V8 Supercars racing, leaving the sport with an uncertain future in terms of manufacturer involvement.

Holden is likely to run a European-sourced Opel Insignia badged as a Commodore as its next-generation racing machine, and being beaten on track by a Toyota Camry rival would do little to preserve the GT-R brand.

Nissan has not publicly committed to racing in V8 Supercars beyond 2016.

Mike Carcamo, Nissan's new global motorsport director, says the manufacturer has not decided whether to stay on after the current season.

"All of our motorsport programs are currently under review," he says.

"It's a normal process within the year to do the budgeting and planning for next year  we'll release a full announcement on all programs later in the year.

"I think [V8 Supercars] has been a very important program in Australia, as well as the GT3 program.

"I think that we will continue to review its effectiveness for both racing and marketing as well  what's important to the brand there."

Carcamo could not say whether the GT-R should take part in future V8 Supercars competition.

"The rules haven't been released yet, and that's one of the things important to us, to review what the direction is. If the direction aligns globally with the GT-R that would be great," he says.

"It's a good platform. It's a flexible and strong platform that's easily recognised by the customers, whatever form it takes. I think that's what's important as well."

Click here for all the latest Nissan news and reviews.
Toyota has given its 2016 Camry a mild upgrade, singling out its Atara SX for the majority of added gear.

All models are now fitted with ISOFIX child safety points.

Atara models are now fitted with front and rear corner parking sensors, with the S variant also gaining a 4.2-inch digital information display in the dash.

The range topping Atara SL now comes with a wireless phone charger and an optional 18-inch alloy wheel package with sportier suspension is now available.

Most additions are saved for the Atara SX, which adds in-built satellite navigation, a larger seven-inch touchscreen with digital radio and a new JBL audio system, 18-inch alloy wheels, red inserts on the front grille and rear diffuser, power rear sunshade and the reversing camera now features predictive driver guidelines.

Engine variants remain the same for all petrol and hybrid variants.

Prices remain the same, except for the Atara SX, which has seen an increase of $1500 up to $33,490 plus on-road costs.

The refreshed range goes on sale from June 6.

2016 Toyota Camry prices*

Toyota Camry Altise: $26,490 (petrol), $30,490 (hybrid)

Toyota Camry Atara S: $29,490 (petrol), $32,490 (hybrid)

Toyota Camry Atara SX: $33,490 (petrol-only)

Toyota Camry Atara SL: $37,44 (petrol), $40,440 (hybrid)

*Plus on-road costs
The 27th Infantry Battalion of the Irish Army are set to march 240KM from Roscommon to Louth in search of the Brown Bull of Cooley this Bank Holiday weekend.

The 2016 Tain March Festival will begin in Rathcroghan, Co Roscommon, Saturday (tomorrow) May 28th and finishing up in Omeath, Co Louth, on Bank Holiday Monday June 6th.

Joining Queen Meabhs Army are the 27th Infantry Battalion of the Irish Army who will be walking across the country to replicate the footsteps of the Legendary tale of An Tain Bo Cuailnge/The Brown Bull of Cooley.

The Tain March Festival is a family-friendly celebration, tracing the route of Queen Meabh and her army in their attempt to seize The Brown Bull of Cooley as told in Irelands greatest epic  An Tain Bo Cuailnge. Packed full of music, storytelling, performances and much more, this festival is the ideal way to soak in Irish culture and heritage with something for everyone to enjoy along the route this year.

It is great to see the Tain March grow from strength to strength, says Paul Gosling, Archaeologist and Senior Lecturer at GMIT Galway. Ive been involved for the past 6 years as a storyteller of Irelands legends along the way while it was only a Louth event and now last year it took a leap of faith to incorporate the full route of Queen Meabhs army from Rathcroghan, Roscommon and finishing in Omeath in Louth. What a spectacular family event to teach adults and children along the way about the legends of Ireland, he added.

This years celebrations kick off on Saturday May 28th with a gathering at Rathcroghan Visitor Centre and a meal will be enjoyed in Tulsk afterwards along with a few short readings from the Tain.

The following morning sees the marchers head out to Rathcroghan, with the official launch taking place on top of the mound where Marshail na Tana, composed by Gerry OConnor, renowned fiddle player, will be played publicly for the first time.

Queen Meabh will thereafter order the 27th Infantry Battalion of the Irish Army, headquartered at Aiken Barracks in Dundalk, to lead her own ancient army as they set off on their quest.

They will be led through Tulsk by the Raheen Pipe Band and will be greeted by local school-children before arriving at Leahys Pub for another gathering.

After stops at Ballinalee, Longford and Ballymanus, the march then descends into Kells on June 1st with the day finishing up in the Commons of Lloyd, where Meabh was said to have camped during her quest.

Further stops in Rathkenny, Ardee, Moore Hall and Knockbridge will follow before Meabh and her army arrives in Dundalk on June 4th, where the epic battle between Ferdia and Cu Chulainn commences at the Market Square.

The next day, the marchers will be joined by students from Dulargy National School and a barbecue will take place at the Lumpers Bar in Ballymakellett with the festival concluding on the shores of the beautiful Carlingford Lough in Omeath on June 6th.

If you or your family would like to take part along the way you can log onto www.tainmarch.ie
Sinn Fein Louth TD Gerry Adams has called on the Irish Government and the Assembly Executive to work together to seek funding to construct Narrow Water Bridge.

Deputy Adams hosted the Narrow Water Bridge Community Network group in the Dail on Wednesday 25th May where they presented the case for the construction of the bridge to assembled TDs and Oireachtas staff.

Gerry Adams said:

This campaign has been ongoing for decades and I want to commend those who have been promoting the project tirelessly despite numerous setbacks.

This is a vital piece of infrastructure for the whole of the Mourne, Gullion and Cooley area which has been so intricately linked for centuries.

The need for the bridge is well recognised.

It is included in the Irish Governments 2016-2021 Capital Investment Plan. An Oireachtas Jobs, Enterprise & Innovation committee recently reported that it is essential to the economic development of the region and the Fresh Start Agreement in the North mandated the Northern Executive and Southern Government to review and develop the project.

The recent appointment of Sinn Fein MLA Chris Hazzard as Infrastructure Minister in the Assembly Executive is good news for this scheme and I welcome his public support for this project but he cannot deliver this project alone.

The Narrow Water Bridge Community Networks presentation includes newspaper reports from 1976 calling for this project. It is high time for a step change in government priority and support for Narrow Water Bridge must change from concept to reality.

It is not acceptable to delay it any longer and as an outcome of Wednesdays briefing I am currently drafting a letter to the Minister of Transport, Shane Ross and the Infrastructure Minister Chris Hazzard which I am asking all TDs and MLAs in the constituencies of Louth, Newry Armagh and South Down to co sign.

This will send a powerful message of the level of support for Narrow Water Bridge which must not be ignored.
A 40 year old man has appeared before Dundalk District Court accused of stealing 200 thousand euro.

A 40 year old man has appeared before Dundalk District Court accused of stealing 200 thousand euro.

The offences allegedly relate to two injured parties - who both live in the north Louth area.

Paul Sharkey with an address at Ballinurd, Kilkerley, Dundalk is charged with five counts of theft on separate dates unknown between the first of April 2011 and the 30th of November 2012.

The amounts involved range from 23,000 to 50,000 and relate to two alleged injured parties with addresses in the Jenkinstown and Rampark areas.

Four of the five thefts are alleged to have occurred at the complainants homes and the fifth at a business premises in the Ballymascanlon area.

Two officers from Pearse Street Garda Station in Dublin gave evidence last Wednesday of charging the accused who they said made no reply when the charges were put to him after caution that morning

The court heard the DPP has directed that the charges be dealt with by indictment, which means the case will be heard in the Circuit Court.

After he was told there was no garda objection to bail, and the Defence was consenting to time being extended for a book of evidence to be served, Judge William Hamill remanded Paul Sharkey on his own bail of one thousand euro until the 12th of February.
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The troubled Cape York Aboriginal Australian Academy in Aurukun has a new acting principal. Beenleigh State High School principal, Matt OHanlon, and two teachers have flown to the Western Cape community, where they will deliver a combination of education programs over the remaining weeks of the term.



OHanlons arrival follows a period of extreme unrest in the town. Safety concerns repeatedly forced the evacuation of the current serving principal, Scott Fatnowna and 25 teachers. Fatnowna was himself the victim of two armed attacks.



OHanlon has over 16 years experience in Queensland education and previously ran schools in Mackay, Blackwater and Mirani. He told media that he received a warm reception on what was his first visit to Aurukun.



Teaching is a complex role at the best of times, even more complex in complex settings, he said.



Ive just come up here to do the best I can over the next couple of weeks and to try to support the teachers, so that when they come back it wont be too hard, kids will be in the pattern of going to school.



Education Minister Kate Jones said OHanlon had personally asked to be considered for the role. He was hand-picked by Education Queensland because of his intensive work with Indigenous students at Beenleigh, south of Brisbane.



He rang the head of state schooling and said that he would like to go to Aurukun," Jones said. "He's a passionate educator and I'm confident that he will do a very good job.



At the request of the Queensland Teachers Union, OHanlon and other relief staff have been provided with secure accommodation.



We wont be taking any unnecessary risks, OHanlon said.



Fatnowna and his teachers have taken paid leave while a review into education delivery in the remote community is under way.



QTU president Kevin Bates said the Department of Education and Training had a well-established review process.


In their proposed rules on school accountability, federal officials are attempting to walk a fine and aggressively scrutinized line.

They say theyve tried to offer the meaningful flexibility to states and districts under the Every Student Succeeds Act that many say the law requires, while answering the call to make sure that all students are accounted for and given appropriate, equitable support.

What remains to be seen, however, is whether a variety of otherssuch as Republican members of Congress and civil rights advocateswill be satisfied with the U.S. Department of Educations foray into crafting accountability regulations for the successor to the No Child Left Behind Act.

The draft rules, issued May 26, would not impose specific, statistical requirements for how much various indicators would count toward accountability.

Districts would have the freedom to decide on their own school turnaround plans. States could set their own academic goals, and measures of interim progress. And states would get significant flexibility in defining what it means for certain groups of students to be consistently underperforming.

However, states do have to disaggregate all indicators by all student subgroups for accountability. And for picking out which schools need interventions, not all indicators are created equal.

One potential point of conflict could be the requirement in the rule that states publish a single, summative rating for schools in accountability systems.

Although that rule could have strong backing in Congress and elsewhere, others might be concerned it could also damage a budding trend in states and districts to use accountability systems that dont necessarily produce one comprehensive rating, and therefore a statewide rank, for each school.

Another possible flashpoint could be test participation.

The departments desire in the draft ESSA rules to closely control how states deal with relatively high testing opt-out rates could reignite concerns and even anger about the place of standardized exams in schools.

Creativity and Equity

When it was signed by President Barack Obama last December, ESSA shifted more control over things like school turnarounds and academic goals to state and local officials.

Unpacking the Proposal The draft accountability regulations for states and districts under the Every Student Succeeds Act cover everything from what states measure in the areas of school performance and quality to how they make that data public and use it to boost school improvement. School Ratings

States must assign comprehensive, summative ratings for each of their schools. However, the results from each indicator that contributes to these overall ratings must also be reported.

If a school scores at the lowest-possible level on any academic indicator, it must get a different summative rating than a school thats getting top marks on all the indicators.

There must be at least three different performance categories for overall ratings. The rules dont dictate what those categories must be or what they must be called.

Within those overall ratings, each indicator must have at least three performance categories. The rules dont say what these categories must be, or be called. Indicators Weights

Each academic factor, like test scores and graduation rates, would have to have substantial weight in accountability.

Altogether, the academic factors would have to have a much greater weight than the measures of school quality or student success in state accountability systems.

The regulations would not dictate or encourage states to set any particular weight, or a range of weights, for individual accountability measures.

Schools could not avoid being targeted for interventions solely based on students strong performance on school quality or student success measures. (More on that below.) Interventions

Districts and states can design their own evidence-based interventions for struggling schools.

Schools needing comprehensive support are the lowest-performing 5 percent of Title I schools, high schools with graduation rates below two-thirds, and Title I schools with chronically underperforming subgroups that did not improve after previous interventions.

Schools needing targeted support are those with a consistently underperforming subgroup of students whose results are similar to those students in the bottom 5 percent of Title I schools, and Title I schools with a consistently underperforming subgroup, as defined by the state, annually.

A school identified for comprehensive support couldnt get that label removed based solely on the basis of progress on the indicator of school quality or student success. It would also have to show progress for all students on at least one academic indicator. The same goes for schools identified as needing targeted support, except theyd have to show progress on at least one academic measure for the underperforming subgroup of students.

The regulations suggest several definitions states could use for consistently underperforming subgroups of students.

One sample definition is a subgroup of students that is not on track to meet the states long-term goals or is not meeting the states measurements of interim progress.

Another sample definition is a subgroup of students that is performing at the lowest performance level in the system of annual meaningful differentiation on at least one indicator, or is particularly low performing on measures within an indicator.

These consistently underperforming students must be classified as such over two or more years. Assessments and Opt-Outs

The proposed regulations do not dictate how states must deal with schools that assess less than 95 percent of all their students and 95 percent of all subgroups.

States must choose from several options provided by the department, or else propose their own rigorous strategy for dealing with them. The departments menu of options include assigning a lower summative rating to a school with a high opt-out rate; giving it the lowest performance level on the states academic achievement indicator; or flagging the school for targeted support and improvement.

Alternatively, the state could submit its own plan to try to address testing opt-outs.

Individual schools with high opt-out rates would have to develop plans to address them for all students or subgroups of students. Student Subgroups

For accountability purposes, individual subgroups cannot be replaced by super subgroups that combine several different demographics of students. This was a popular approach in states accountability systems under waivers from No Child Left Behind.

The rules do not prescribe a minimum number of a subgroup of students at a school for that group of students to be included for accountability purposes.

However, states wishing to use a minimum accountability threshold for subgroups of students of larger than 30 must submit an explanation to the Education Department explaining why. School Report Cards

Report cards must be put together in consultation with parents.

They must be published every year by Dec. 31.

The report cards have to include district and school-level per-pupil spending information, under a process developed by the state thats uniform. Source: U.S. Department of Education

But in the subsequent months, there was been significant uncertainty over how ESSA accountability regulations being crafted by the department would work, and to what extent they would reinforce or depart from what many saw as ESSAs intent of taking more policy decisions out of Washington.

Now, some could see these draft accountability rules as less aggressive in some respects than separate ESSA spending rules the department is widely expected to propose. The latter would govern the part of the law requiring federal aid to poor students to supplement state and local aid.

The draft accountability regulations were slated to be published in the Federal Register on May 31. Once they are, there will be a 60-day period during which the public can comment on the proposed rules. That period is scheduled to close Aug. 1.

When he discussed the rules last week, U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. stressed that the new law presented the chance for states to be creative, even as he stressed the importance that they look out for all students and work toward educational equity.

And his department has been careful, he said, to ensure the draft rules are consistent with the law.

States now have an opportunity to use really thoughtful, evidence-based interventions, he said in a meeting with reporters at J.C. Nalle Elementary School in Washington, adding his hope that, Were also going to see robust, state-level conversations.

Drawing on Public Input

States would have until March 2017 or July 2017 to submit their accountability progress, depending on their progress beforehand, the proposed regulations state.

The draft rules draw on input from more than 100 meetings around the country with advocates, educators, and community members, and further feedback on the draft rules will also be key, said Cecilia Munoz, the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, in a meeting with reporters at J.C. Nalle Elementary.

She acknowledged the new discretion and opportunities states and districts will have under the law.

Were trying to balance that flexibility with strong civil rights guardrails, Munoz said.

The summative ratings required in the rules are one such attempt to provide clear and actionable data for parents, educators and others.

But the categories of performance levels for schools, and what they would be called, would be left up to states.

And just because the draft ESSA rules dont prescribe or suggest specific weights for indicators, that doesnt mean theyre all created equal.

Taken together, academic indicators would have to account for a much greater part of a schools overall rating than the school quality and student success indicators, which can consist of factors like school climate and student engagement.

Turning Things Around

And academic indicators also carry more weight for school interventions. Thats because however well schools are doing with school quality and student success indicators, those alone wont prevent interventions designed to help struggling students.

Specifically, the rules state a school could not be removed from the list of those needing comprehensive or targeted support simply through strong performance on its school quality or student success measures. Such a school would have to be making sufficient progress on at least one other academic indicator in order to have either of those two labels removed.

But other, related requirements are not so strict. In fact, the draft rules suggestions for how to define students who consistently underperform are troubling because only one of them puts a priority on students progress toward interim and long-term academic goals, said Daria Hall, the vice president for government affairs and communications at the Education Trust, a civil rights advocacy group.

At its heart, this law and these accountability systems are about ensuring support for any group of students that is not making progress, Hall said.

But Hall stressed that she was pleased with other aspects of the law, such as how student access to advanced coursework and success in those courses would have to be measured, not just how many advanced classes schools offered.

School turnaround models would have to be developed with parents, educators, and others. And they would have to include information about available resources, such as per-pupil spending and any disproportionate access to inexperienced teachers or those teaching out of field.

For the first time under federal law, ESSA requires states to include English-language proficiency as part of their state accountability plans. The rules would require states to take into account diverse English-learner populations and students initial level of English proficiency, before setting goals and determining what kind of progress these students were making.

And after more than a year of controversy over relatively high testing opt-out numbers in several states, the states would be required to increase test participation, although theyd get several choices for how to approach the matter.

Still, that approach drew a sharp denunciation from the American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. She said in a statement that, It simply inflames the problem by suggesting punitive consequences for those who are so frustrated by the misuse and high-stakes nature of standardized testing that they want to opt their kids out. (Under ESSA, states are still allowed to pass their own laws allowing parents to opt their children out of state exams.)

Transparency, data, and resource equity are also stressed in the draft rules.

States would have to craft school report cards in consultation with parents. And they would have to include a full set of accountability information, including test scores and graduation rates, and a clearly labeled overview section that is prominently displayed, the proposed rules say.

And in keeping with the departments emphasis on resources and other matters of equity, theyd also have to include information on issues ranging from per-pupil expenditures and access to preschool to school discipline information.

Reactions Vary

Advocates with different perspectives also weighed in.

Several were positive and optimistic. Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., the ranking Democrat on the House education committee, said the proposed rules fulfill the federal obligation to protect and promote equity, ensuring that ESSA implementation will uphold the civil rights legacy of the law.

And the Council of Chief State School Officers indicated it was generally pleased with the departments proposals, saying in a statement, The department has balanced the need for clarity and the clear intent of the law for flexibility for states.

When considering the draft rules, its important to keep in mind the letter of the law as well as the spirit behind ESSA, said Noelle Ellerson, the associate executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association.

The regulations are not as bad as they could have been. But just because theyre not as bad doesnt make them good, Ellerson said, adding that what Congress deliberately left out of ESSAs language should be just as important as what it deliberately put into the law.

But there were also early signs of opposition, along with hints of where the proposed regulations may run into trouble.

I am disappointed that the draft regulation seems to include provisions that the Congress consideredand expressly rejected, Alexander, the Senate education committee chairman, said in a statement. He did not give an example of such overreach, but said hes going to give the proposed rules further review.

Speaking with King at the Washington elementary school last week, Kristen Amundson, the executive director of the National Association of State Boards of Education, expressed her concern about the rules requirements for summative ratings in particular.

And Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., the chairman of the House education committee, said he will fully review the proposal, and that if it doesnt match the letter and intent of the law, he will use every available tool to make sure the law is implemented as Congress intended.
A school police officer violently throws a black high school student from her desk before arresting her for refusing to put away her cellphone. A young student is put in handcuffs for defiant behavior. A school imposes drastically different punishments on a black student and a white student for the same behavior.

In years past, such stories may have been dismissed as isolated incidents. But, under the Obama administration, civil rights and student groups have quickly turned to federal data to make the case that these events are part of a larger pattern of unfair and excessive discipline in schools, particularly for students of color.

And theyve found a partner in the U.S. Department of Educations office for civil rights, which is charged with identifying and rooting out unfair and discriminatory treatment in public schools.

By all accounts, that office has been particularly aggressive during this presidency by putting schools on notice about their responsibilities on everything from suspensions to bullying, by increasing the data it collects on inequitable treatment in schools, and by committing itself to transparency by posting its resolutions and investigations online.

We know from our data that our kids today are not experiencing the equality that is their federal promise and that is their birthright, Catherine Lhamon, the assistant secretary for civil rights at the Education Department, said in an April speech.

Complete Series: Beyond Bias This yearlong series will examine efforts to recognize and overcome discrimination in schools. View the complete series.

Because of outreach efforts by the agency and the awareness generated by its distinctively public, active approachone that has attracted criticism as well as praisethe office for civil rights processed a record 10,392 civil rights complaints in 2015 about potential violations at public K-12 schools and colleges and universities that receive federal funding, it said in a report to Congress in May.

Those complaints led to about 3,000 investigations and more than 1,000 of them led to significant resolutions, in which districts and schools committed to changing policies or practices, the report said. Statistics dating back to 1990 show upticks in civil rights investigations during Democratic administrations, but the trend line dramatically spiked under Obamas presidency. During that time period, white students also became a minority in public schools as other populations grew.

Now, midway through President Obamas last year in office, its clear that the work of the office for civil rights may be one of the most notable parts of his Education Departments legacy.

Improved Data

Supporters say that, after years of local-level work, cooperation between the agency, the White House, and advocacy groups brought unprecedented focus to issues like the school-to-prison pipeline, a term to describe overly punitive and discriminatory discipline practices that lead to poor outcomes for African-American, Hispanic, and Native American children.

At an April discussion at the American Education Research Association conference in Washington, advocates recalled singular moments during the Obama administration: the nations first black president acknowledging problems theyd been working to surface for years, former Attorney General Eric Holder committing to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline, and former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan challenging states to shift funds from prisons toward education systems.

When we see that kind of alignment on the national level, it provides kind of wind in the sails of local groups, said Thena Robinson-Mock, the director of the Advancement Projects Ending the Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track Campaign.

Among the signs of growing support for the advocates work was when American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, who previously supported zero-tolerance discipline, retracted her support in a winter 2015 issue of the unions American Educator magazine.

Civil Rights Guidance The U.S. Department of Educations office for civil rights has been particularly active during the administration of President Barack Obama, regularly issuing guidance to inform schools and districts how it interprets and enforces federal civil rights laws. Here is a sampling of significant guidance. School Discipline

In a January 2014 letter, federal officials warned schools that school discipline policies could be considered discriminatory if they affect one racial or ethnic group at a disparate rate, even if they werent written with a discriminatory intent. That interpretation faced criticism from conservative lawmakers who said it would lead some schools to set quotas to keep their disciplinary statistics in line. Transgender Students

In a May 2016 letter, officials said schools are obligated under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 to honor transgender students gender identities by giving them access to corresponding locker rooms, restrooms, and classes. Republican governors around the country encouraged schools to defy the guidance, and the assertion is the subject of a handful of federal lawsuits. Bullying

In several letters, federal officials have said schools can violate federal civil rights laws by responding inadequately to the bullying or harassment of students, including students with disabilities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students; and students from racial and ethnic minority groups. Sexual Violence

In an April 2011 letter, officials said K-12 schools, colleges, and universities are obligated to thoroughly investigate and respond to student reports of sexual assault. Source: Education Week

These policies were promoted by people, including me, who had hoped they would standardize discipline procedures and free students from the disruptions of misbehaving peers; it was analogous to the broken windows theory of policing, Weingarten wrote. We were wrong.

That alignment includes more and better data. Under the Obama administration, the office for civil rights stepped up the biannual reporting it requires from schools on issues including discipline, funding, staffing, and access to advanced coursework for all student demographic groups. Rather than taking a representative sample of schools, the agency now collects data from nearly every U.S. public school every two years.

It also added new questions about issues like pre-K expulsions, chronic absenteeism, and bullying, and it expanded access to the data, making them available to the public on a searchable website.

Among the most recent data from the 2011-12 school year: Students of color are more likely than their white peers to be suspended, expelled, or arrested at school; to attend schools with inexperienced or underqualified teachers; and to attend schools with fewer advanced courses.

The office is expected to release updated data this summer.

Data about school equity are important in the way achievement scores or graduation rates are important, said Daniel Losen, the director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of California, Los Angeles, has applauded the departments work to expand access to and the accuracy of civil rights data, and pushed for annual data collection.

The data are critically important to assessing what is working well and also in uncovering less-than-genuine reports of success, Losen said.

Disparate Impact Evolves

The office for civil rights has also released reams of guidance, informing schools of how it planned to enforce civil rights laws, and sometimes drawing criticism from lawmakers and policy watchers who said it was overstepping its authority.

In 2014, Duncan and Holder released a letter calling on schools to cut back on suspensions and other forms of exclusionary discipline, making the Obama administration the first to release guidance on discrimination in school discipline. The document said school discipline policies could be considered unfair if they have a disproportionate impact on students from certain racial or ethnic groups, even if those policies werent written with a deliberately discriminatory intent, a concept known as disparate impact.

According to federal data, South Carolina schools suspended 12.7 percent of students during the 2009-10 school year, while North Dakota schools, in comparison, suspended 2.2 percent of students, Duncan said in a speech announcing the discipline guidance at a Baltimore high school.

I am absolutely confident that students in South Carolina are not six times more likely than their peers in North Dakota to pose serious discipline problems worthy of an out-of-school suspension, Duncan said. That huge disparity is not caused by differences in children; its caused by differences in training, professional development, and discipline policies. It is adult behavior that needs to change.

And changing policies and practices can also drive down racial disparities in discipline rates, the 2014 guidance said.

To expose effective strategies, the office for civil rights posts its complaint resolutions online, showing how schools and districts plan to remedy civil rights violations. Common strategies include retraining staff, setting limits for school-based police officers, and rewriting policies.

It matters to draw attention to this problem and talk about what we want to see changed, Lhamon said in April.

Investigations have revealed unchecked discrepancies in how students are disciplined. For example, federal officials point to schools in Christina, Del., where investigators discovered that, while a black kindergartner received a five-day suspension for pulling a fire alarm, a 9th grade white student received a one-day suspension for a similar offense.

But problems can also be more subtle, researchers have said. For example, broad rules against things like defiance can be applied in a subjective manner that can be exacerbated by a teachers implicit biases.

Civil Rights Complaints While the number of school-related civil rights complaints filed with the federal government has tended to spike during Democratic presidential administrations, the growth during President Obamas tenure in office is unprecedented. Source: U.S. Department of Education

Some critics, including conservative lawmakers and representatives of local school boards, have criticized the office for civil rights more aggressive approach. While they say all schools should aim to promote equity for students, they question whether the agency has overstepped its authority and whether it has adequately consulted with the school leaders who must carry out its interpretations of civil rights laws.

I think this has been a very aggressive OCR, and I dont say that in an admiring way, said Michael J. Petrilli, the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. For all of the hullabaloo around the common core and concerns from conservatives about federal overreach, this is the office that has been meddling in schools affairs.

Especially on this issue of school discipline, he continued, they have gotten into the daily routines of schools in a way that is not about promoting students civil rights, but is about promoting some very prescriptive rules about school discipline. I dont think thats an appropriate federal role.

Francisco Negron, the general counsel for the National School Boards Association, said new data-collecting requirements have been cumbersome for schools.

And some of the office for civil rights guidance hasnt been informed enough by the real life, on-the-ground experience of school leaders, he said. Those are the folks who are ultimately going to be applying guidance and regulations to make sure that students are really achieving in school.

Like Petrilli, Negron is concerned that guidance on disparate impact may lead schools to hold back on discipline needed to create orderly learning environments out of concern for how it will affect their suspension statistics.

But advocates say the offices work has made a positive contribution to the lives of students by exposing previously overlooked inequalities and by helping contribute to the momentum for policy changes on the state and local level. As the nation transitions to a new federal education law and prepares to elect a new president, they hope to see a continued focus on equity.

The Every Student Succeeds Act, the replacement for No Child Left Behind, includes a requirement for states and schools to collect more data on equity and how they are tackling issues like high discipline rates.

But a new president could appoint leaders to the Education Department with significantly different views on federal civil rights laws, set different enforcement priorities, and sign off on budget cuts to the office for civil rights, which is already processing more complaints with fewer staff than it has had in the past.

Advocates and researchers at the AERA conference agreed that such changes could slow down the work theyve done in cooperation with the federal agency, but they insisted the attention raised by their efforts would continue to help propel a focus on equity.

I think a new administration will be hard-pressed to move away from this work and to justify that movement, said Lisa Thomas, the American Federation of Teachers associate director for educational issues.

Losen agreed.

People want to do the right thing by kids, he said. I think thats what this all boils down to.
To build the largest and most complete Amateur Radio community site on the Internet - a "portal" that hams think of as the first place to go for information, to exchange ideas, and be part of whats happening with ham radio on the Internet. eHam.net provides recognition and enjoyment to the people who use, contribute, and build the site. This project involves a management team of volunteers who each take a topic of interest and manage it with passion. The site will stand above all other ham radio sites by employing the latest technology and professional design/programming standards, developed by a team of community programmers who contribute their skills to the effort. The site will be something of which everyone involved can be proud to say they were a part. We welcome your comments. The eHam.net Team, Revision 07/2020.
The importance of support being provided by the European Investment Bank to replace 27 obsolete bridges in rural districts of Papua New Guinea was highlighted in advance the summit of leaders from Africa, Caribbean and Pacific nations being held in Port Moresby.

The European Investment Bank, the worlds largest international public bank owned directly by the 28 European Union member states, is providing USD 58.4 million for the bridge replacement programme in cooperation with Government of Papua New Guinea and the Asian Development Bank. Implementation of the project will also be supported by a USD 2.5 million technical assistance grant provided by the EIB.

The new long-term loan from the European Investment Bank was formally signed in Port Moresby by Minister Patrick Pruaitch and Patrick Walsh, Deputy-Director General of the European Investment Bank responsible for lending outside Europe. This is the first project supported by the European Investment Bank in Papua New Guinea since 1995.

Todays signing marks a significant milestone for Papua New Guinea and one of its most important multilateral development partners that has been supportive to Papua New Guinea for nearly forty years, the European Investment Bank (EIB), in making progress towards achieving this goal. said Hon. Patrick Pruaitch, CMG, MP, Papua New Guinea Minister for Treasury.

This investment in 27 bridges is the EIBs first operation in PNG since 1995. The road and bridges transport infrastructure sectors are important sectors as PNG has very difficult geographic conditions for the provision of transport because of its rugged terrain and extreme climate that makes the supply of infrastructure and its sustainable operation very costly. On behalf of the people and the Government of Papua New Guinea, I sincerely thank the European Investment Bank again for its continued support in complementing the ongoing development efforts of our country. added Prime Minister ONeill.

The European Investment Bank has supported long-term investment in Papua New Guinea for nearly 40 years. We are pleased to return to the country and support this crucially important initiative that will strengthen economic activity in remote Madang and East Sepik provinces. Upgrading obsolete bridges is crucial to ensure that road connections can adapt to increased risk of flooding and changing weather patterns. We look forward to continuing to strengthen our engagement in Papua New Guinea and building on close cooperation with the government and other partners in the country. Long-term investment that improves lives is a key focus of our engagement in Africa, Caribbean and Pacific states and this project is an excellent initiative to highlight to ACP leaders in Port Moresby. said Patrick Walsh, European Investment Bank Deputy Director-General.

The European Investment Bank delegation, led by Patrick Walsh, will visit Madang province in the coming days to meet Madang Governor Hon. Jim Kas and see at first-hand how upgrading road access will benefit an expected 400,000 Papua New Guineans.

The EIB delegation attending the ACP summit will meet ministers from Papua New Guinea and across the region.

The EIB will also host a workshop to outline opportunities for financing and technical assistance for climate related investment.

The European Investment Bank is the worlds largest lender for climate related investment. Climate projects supported in the Pacific include a typhoon resilient windfarm in Vanuatu, investment to cut energy use in hospitals in French Polynesia and improving water distribution and treatment in Fiji.
February 24, 2022, the day of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, will go down as a tragic date not only for the Ukrainian people, but also for the whole civilised world.
TT documentary to show realities of policing event

Film crews are tailing police officers on the Isle of Man as part of a documentary about policing the TT.

Raw Cut TV - the company behind 'Police Interceptors' - is making a two-part programme which will be broadcast on ITV4.

Cameras will be following officers from the Roads Policing Unit and the Neighbourhood Policing Teams constantly throughout the fortnight.

Sergeant Steven Lapsley says the programme is designed to look at policing as a whole:

Media

Steven Lapsley
On April 30, 2012, I wrote:

Here is my solution to any aquatic invasive specie problem. Have the government start a covert marketing campaign designed to convince the public that the invasive specie is in fact a delicacy. They can even rename the specie to make it sound appetizing (think Toothfish to Chilean Sea Bass). But here's the catch... once the public is convinced of the delectable nature of the new exotic seafood, fail to regulate the fishery. As demand increases, prices will rise and the tragedy of the commons will eradicate the invaders.

Although they didn't rename it, Whole Foods seems to have heeded my suggestion for the invasive Gulf of Mexico/Caribbean Lionfish:

Lionfish with their distinctive venomous spines are an invasive species that has thrived in U.S. coastal waters because they have no natural predators -- until now.

Whole Foods stores in Florida are selling the "white, buttery meat" of the fish, which the grocery chain says is suitable for ceviche or a "simple pan saute."

The U.S. government, eager to stop the lionfish from preying on native fish and shellfish, gives the meal five stars.

"If we can't beat them, why not eat them?" says the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration in a PSA video. "Why wait? Get them on your plate."

The lionfish are native to the Pacific and Indian oceans, but can also be found in the Atlantic and Caribbean, where it is considered an invasive species, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The government blames the aquarium trade for introducing the fish to the U.S. in the 1980s, and encourages Americans to catch and eat them.
Its dismal state is reason for despondency, as India needs a strong opposition.

Is the Indian National Congress, which has ruled the country for all but roughly 14 years since August 1947, in a state of terminal decline? The staunchest supporter of the Congress will surely acknowledge that the party is today weaker than it has ever beenarguably ever since it was established in December 1885. This question, raised many times in the past, acquires relevance in the wake of the partys electoral defeat in Assam and Kerala. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would like us to believe that we are moving inexorably towards a Congress-mukt Bharat. But there could be a difference between perception and reality.

The Congress, which used to boast that it was not just the worlds largest political party (bigger than the Chinese Communist Party) but had a presence in each and every one of the more than six lakh villages in the country, has fallen and risen on a number of occasions. But each time it bounced back, it has found it difficult to return to its earlier peak. Each new trough has touched a nadir, the last being the 2014 Lok Sabha elections when the partys share of the total vote crashed below the 20% mark for the first time and the number of MPs (Members of Parliament) owing allegiance to it in the Lok Sabha plummeted to just 44. So can the Congress descend to even lower depths after the 17th general elections scheduled to take place in AprilMay 2019? Much depends on the performance of the Narendra Modi government over the coming three years. Still, the party led by Sonia Gandhi currently seems to be at a complete loss as to what strategies it should adopt to rejuvenate itself. It is helplessly hoping the BJP government will self-destruct. And the not-so-young vice president of the partyRahul Gandhi turns 46 on 19 Juneremains as diffident as he has always been to lead the Congress in the way a dynamic leader of the biggest opposition party should.
Younited Italia, Nicola Manzari e il nuovo Coo, Luca Faccini e Head of Growth e Domenico Petraroli e General Counsel
Payment penalties tied to readmissions currently do not reflect socioeconomic variables and may create unintended consequences on already financially strained institutions

CHICAGO: Readmission rates after complex cancer operations tend to be higher in hospitals that are considered to be vulnerable because they serve as safety nets in their communities or have a high number of Medicaid patients. Reasons for higher readmission rates are highly complex and involve socioeconomic and hospital institutional characteristics. Payment programs that penalize hospitals for high readmission rates without understanding these issues could stress already financially threatened institutions, according to authors of a new study published online in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons in advance of print publication.



Clinical quality improvement efforts as well as federal payment policies have sought to reduce hospital readmissions to improve the quality of patient care and decrease Medicare program spending. A review of Medicare claims by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) in 2005 found that 5 to 79 percent of readmissions could potentially have been prevented and saved $12 billion in Medicare spending.1



Findings such as these led to creation of the Medicare Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) in the Affordable Care Act, which penalizes hospitals that have higher than expected readmission rates. HRRP currently covers four common medical conditions--pneumonia, heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), along with two joint replacement operations (knee and hip). The program will expand in 2017 and begin including coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) procedures.2



While the American College of Surgeons has publicly recognized that high readmission rates may reflect lower quality care and lead to unnecessary spending, ACS has emphasized that readmissions may be related to many factors, including the complexity of the medical condition as well as patients' socioeconomic status and compliance. ACS has urged HRRP to take such factors into consideration so hospitals are not penalized because of factors that are beyond their control.3



In the present study, researchers found that patient factors were primary drivers of higher readmission rates to vulnerable hospitals after cancer operations. These results further support the need for incorporating socioeconomic variables into the determination of HRRP payments especially for hospitals that already serve a disproportionate number of disadvantaged patients.



"Patient conditions and hospital infrastructure make vulnerable hospitals prone to higher readmissions from the outset. Policymakers need to be aware of the drivers that lead to higher readmissions at these hospitals so payment penalties do not push financially strained hospitals into further hardship," said Young Hong, MD, lead study investigator, MedStar-Georgetown Surgical Outcomes Research Center and Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, D.C.



The researchers evaluated the care of 110,857 adult patients who had one of seven major or complex cancer procedures between January 1, 2004, and September 30, 2011, in one of 355 hospitals in the state of California. The researchers compared readmission rates for 311 non-vulnerable hospitals, 13 safety net hospitals, 31 high Medicaid institutions, and five hospitals that were both safety net and high Medicaid institutions. Patients underwent cancer resection procedures to remove the esophagus, stomach, pancreas, liver, prostate, lung, or kidney.



The 30-day readmission rates were 14 percent for safety net hospitals, 13 percent for high Medicaid hospitals, and 14 percent for safety net and high Medicaid institutions. Ninety-day readmission rates were 20 percent for safety net hospitals, 22 percent for high Medicaid hospitals, and 21 percent for high Medicaid and safety net hospitals. In contrast, the readmission rates for non-vulnerable hospitals were 11 percent at 30 days and 17 percent at 90 days.



Patients having cancer operations at vulnerable hospitals were more likely to live in low income areas (28 percent vs. 17 percent), have Medicaid (27 percent vs. 5 percent), and be admitted via the emergency department for their index procedure (15 percent vs 9 percent) than those who had their operations at non-vulnerable hospitals.



Patient cohorts differed in various types of vulnerable hospitals. The proportion of Hispanic patients was much higher (41 percent) at high Medicaid hospitals than at safety net (24 percent) or high Medicaid and safety net institutions (25 percent). High Medicaid and safety net institutions had a higher percentage of Medicaid patients (41 percent) than either of the other categories of vulnerable hospitals (27 percent for safety net hospitals and 24 percent for high Medicaid hospitals).



The vast majority of safety net and high Medicaid plus safety net institutions were teaching centers (85 percent and 100 percent, respectively), while 47 percent of high Medicaid hospitals had teaching programs.



"This study showed that the reasons behind higher readmissions may depend on the type of vulnerable hospital, given their varying patient populations and hospital characteristics," said Chaoyi Zheng, MS, statistician for the study group.



Findings from this study reinforce ACS's position that measures for determining financial penalties associated with hospital readmissions should focus on patient subgroups and socioeconomic factors.



"Different hospitals have different patient mixes, and if that is not factored in, HRRP reductions in payment may further marginalize financially vulnerable hospitals," said corresponding study author Waddah B. Al-Refaie, MD, FACS, chief of surgical oncology, MedStar Georgetown University Hospital.



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In addition to Drs. Al-Refaie and Hong and Ms. Zheng, other study authors include Elizabeth Hechenbleikner, MD; Lynt B. Johnson, MD, FACS; and Nawar Shara, PhD.

This study was originally presented at the Western Surgical Association 123rd Scientific Session, November 2015.



"FACS" designates that a surgeon is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons.



Citation: Vulnerable Hospitals and Cancer Surgery Readmissions: Insights into the Unintended Consequences of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Journal of the American College of Surgeons. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jamcollsurg.2016.04.042

1 Medicare Hospital Readmission Reduction Program. Health Affairs, Nov 12, 2013 http://www.healthaffairs.org/healthpolicybriefs/brief.php?brief_id=102.

2 Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program Overview. QualityNet (HCQIS). Available at: http://www.qualitynet.org/dcs/ContentServer?c=Page&pagename=QnetPublic%2FPage%2FQnetTier2&cid=1228772412458 . Accessed May 27, 2016.

3Hoyt DB. American College of Surgeons letter to Andrew Slavitt, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. June 15, 2015. Available at: https://www.facs.org/~/media/files/advocacy/regulatory/fy2016%20ipps%20comments.ashx. Accessed May 23, 2016.



About the American College of Surgeons

The American College of Surgeons is a scientific and educational organization of surgeons that was founded in 1913 to raise the standards of surgical practice and improve the quality of care for surgical patients. The College is dedicated to the ethical and competent practice of surgery. Its achievements have significantly influenced the course of scientific surgery in America and have established it as an important advocate for all surgical patients. The College has more than 80,000 members and is the largest organization of surgeons in the world. For more information, visit http://www.facs.org(.)
In a study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, researchers examined the care that obese older adults receive when they are admitted to nursing homes.

This study was designed to find out whether obese older adults were as likely as non-obese elders to be admitted to nursing homes that provided an appropriate level of care. Those who are obese (people who have a body mass index score of 30 or higher) may require nursing homes with specialized equipment, beds, and lifting devices, for example. Nursing homes also may need to have bedrooms and other spaces designed to accommodate heavier residents. What's more, since older obese adults may require extra help in performing daily activities, nursing home staffers may need to devote extra time to their care.

The researchers examined 164,256 records of obese people aged 65 or older who were admitted to nursing homes over a two-year period. They also examined the nursing homes' total number of deficiency citations and quality-of-care deficiencies to determine the quality of care that the homes provided.

The researchers reported that about 22 percent of older adults admitted to nursing homes were obese. Nearly 4 percent were considered morbidly obese. Nursing homes that admitted a higher number of obese residents were more likely to have a higher number of deficiencies.

The researchers discovered that nursing homes that admitted more morbidly obese residents were also more likely to have more severe deficiencies in care. The researchers said that their study raises concerns about creating equal opportunities for obese elders to gain access to nursing homes that provide the highest quality of care.

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This summary is from "Are Obese Residents More Likely to be Admitted to Nursing Homes with More Deficiencies in Care?" It appears online ahead of print in the May 2016 issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. The study authors are Ning Zhang, PhD; Yue Li, PhD; Rosa Rodriguez-Monguio, PhD; Andrew Barenberg, MS; Helena Temkin-Greener, PhD; and Jerry Gurwitz, MD.

About the Health in Aging Foundation

This research summary was developed as a public education tool by the Health in Aging Foundation. The Foundation is a national non-profit established in 1999 by the American Geriatrics Society to bring the knowledge and expertise of geriatrics healthcare professionals to the public. We are committed to ensuring that people are empowered to advocate for high-quality care by providing them with trustworthy information and reliable resources. Last year, we reached nearly 1 million people with our resources through HealthinAging.org. We also help nurture current and future geriatrics leaders by supporting opportunities to attend educational events and increase exposure to principles of excellence on caring for older adults. For more information or to support the Foundation's work, visit http://www.HealthinAgingFoundation.org.
In a study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, researchers examined the kind of medical interventions doctors used toward the end of their lives.

The researchers wanted to test the theory, based on prior surveys, that doctors would choose less high-intensity hospital-based care at the end of their lives than would people without medical training. To test its theory, the research team examined Medicare records from 9,947 deceased physicians and 191,426 deceased non-doctors.

What the team discovered did not coincide with their expectations or with previous research:

The number of days spent in the hospital during the last six months, as well as during the last one month of life, was about the same for doctors and non-doctors.

The proportion of doctors and non-doctors who had at least one stay in an intensive care unit (ICU) was about the same toward the end of life.

Doctors spent slightly more days in an ICU than non-doctors during the last six months and the last one month of life.

More than 46 percent of doctors, versus 43.2 percent of non-doctors, had enrolled in hospice care for some amount of time during the last six months of life.

The average age of the physicians in the study was 83. The researchers hypothesized that many of these doctors trained and practiced medicine before hospice and palliative care (which eases discomfort toward the end of life) were in use. They also suggested that fear and avoidance of dying are strong motivators of human behavior, to which doctors are not immune.

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This summary is from "How U.S. Doctors Die: A Cohort Study of Health Care Utilization at the End of Life." It appears in the May 2016 issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. The study authors are Daniel D. Matlock, MD, MPH; Traci E. Yamashita; Min Sung-Joon, PhD; Alexander K. Smith, MD, MPH; Amy S. Kelley, MD, MSHS; and Stacy Fischer, MD.

About the Health in Aging Foundation

This research summary was developed as a public education tool by the Health in Aging Foundation. The Foundation is a national non-profit established in 1999 by the American Geriatrics Society to bring the knowledge and expertise of geriatrics healthcare professionals to the public. We are committed to ensuring that people are empowered to advocate for high-quality care by providing them with trustworthy information and reliable resources. Last year, we reached nearly 1 million people with our resources through HealthinAging.org. We also help nurture current and future geriatrics leaders by supporting opportunities to attend educational events and increase exposure to principles of excellence on caring for older adults. For more information or to support the Foundation's work, visit http://www.HealthinAgingFoundation.org.
Ants comprise one lineage of the triumvirate of eusocial insects and experienced their early diversification within the Cretaceous. The success of ants is generally attributed to their remarkable social behavior. Recent studies suggest that the early branching lineages of extant ants formed small colonies of either subterranean or epigeic, solitary specialist predators.

The vast majority of Cretaceous ants belong to stem-group Formicidae and comprise workers and reproductives of largely generalized morphologies, and it is difficult to draw clear conclusions about their ecology, although recent discoveries from the Cretaceous suggest relatively advanced social levels.

Remarkable exceptions to this pattern of generalized morphologies are ants with bizarre mouthparts in which both female castes have modified heads and bladelike mandibles that uniquely move in a horizontal rather than vertical plane. Haidomyrmecines have puzzled evolutionary biologists as to their specific ecology, with the mandibles apparently acting as traps triggered by sensory hairs in a way distinct from that of modern trap-jaw ants.

Not all ants cooperate in social hunting, however, and some of the most effective predatory ants are solitary hunters with powerful trap jaws. Models of early ant evolution predict that the first ants were solitary specialist predators, but discoveries of Cretaceous fossils suggest group recruitment and socially advanced behavior among stem-group ants.

Dr. WANG Bo of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and his colleagues describe a new bizarre ant, Ceratomyrmex ellenbergeri, from 99 million-year-old Burmese amber that displays a prominent cephalic horn and oversized, scythelike mandibles that extend high above the head. These structures presumably functioned as a highly specialized trap for large-bodied prey. The horn results from an extreme modification of the clypeus hitherto unseen among living and extinct ants, which demonstrates the presence of an exaggerated trap-jaw morphogenesis early among stem-group ants.

Together with other Cretaceous haidomyrmecine ants, the new fossil suggests that at least some of the earliest Formicidae were solitary specialist predators. In addition, it demonstrates that soon after the advent of ant societies in the Early Cretaceous, at least one lineage, the Haidomyrmecini, became adept at prey capture, independently arriving at morphological specializations that would be lost for millions of years after their disappearance near the close of the Mesozoic. The exaggerated condition in the new fossil reveals a proficiency for carriage of large-bodied prey to the exclusion of smaller, presumably easier-to-subdue prey, and highlights a more complex and diversified suite of ecological traits for the earliest ants.

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The study, entitled "Extreme morphogenesis and ecological specialization among Cretaceous basal ants," has been published online in Current Biology, doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2016.03.075.
IUNE, using 47 indicators, analyzes information for 74 public and private Spanish universities for the years between 2005 and 2014, a period of great consequence for SUE scientific activity, according to the report's authors. "The effect of the crisis on universities is being particularly grave, since, in addition to the large drop in economic resources due to budget cuts, we have to add the hold on renewal of university staff and the freeze on faculty promotion and all university personnel," noted the IUNE Observatory coordinator, UC3M Full Professor, Elias Sanz Casado.

According to the report's conclusions, during this period there has been a significant loss of resources in the Spanish scientific university system. Specifically, funding by researchers has decreased 6.7% in recent years. (From 112,240 in 2008 to 104,890 in 2014) and the evolution of university spending witnessed a nearly 8% drop in 2014 with respect to 2010.

Nevertheless, there was also a strong reaction on the part of the Spanish universities, which are responding in exemplary fashion according to many of the indicators analyzed. Specifically, they has improved their figures for output, visibility, international collaboration, competitiveness, and participation in European Union scientific projects, for example.

In the past decade, the universities' scientific output in the Web of Science (one of the chief data bases for worldwide scientific output) nearly doubled, from 26,124 publications in 2005 to 51,301 in 2014 (96.7% more). As a consequence, a marked increase in the scientific output of the universities' faculty can be observed, going from an average of .045 papers per professor in 2005 to 0.81 in 2014. Furthermore, the visibility of these researchers has also grown, since the publications in the first quartile (where the top scientific journals are located) represented 53.23% of all papers published by university professors in 2014

More than half of domestic scientific output in three regional communities

By regional community, the highest scientific output is held by Catalonia (with 100,313 publications in the ten- year period; 22.72% of total SUE publications) while Madrid holds second place (78,032 publications; 17.67% of the total). Andalucia comes in third (60,806 publications; 13.77%), ahead of the Valencian Regional Community (49,994 publications; 11.32% of the SUE contribution). In addition, Galicia and the Basque Country, despite their smaller size, have undergone significant growth in the last decade.

With respect to scientific cooperation with other institutions, the significant increase in international collaboration is noteworthy, with the United States being the most attractive for Spanish universities, followed by United Kingdom, Germany, France and Italy. Collaboration among authors also improved and experienced important growth throughout the decade.

Innovation and funding

With respect to innovation activity, between 2004 and 2014 4,153 patents were granted to universities, representing a growth rate of 136.4%. The creation of university supported spin-offs experienced different behavior, being very irregular during the ten-year period; this area witnessed its best year in 2013, with 127 companies of this type, while the smallest number of companies were created in 2014 (89)..

As for competitive funding, Spanish universities experienced a twofold trend: on one hand, participation in national plans and government research continued to decrease (due to the slowdown in these projects as well as their decreased funding), on the other hand, participation in the European Framework Program and Horizon 2020 scientific programs since 2009 did increase.

As in previous editions, the IUNE Observatory is able to obtain disaggregated information for each of the public and private universities. To obtain the data that it analyzes, it uses official information sources, such as the Instituto Nacional de Estadistica (National Institute of Statistics; INE in Spanish), the Ministerio de Educacion, Cultura y Deporte (Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport; MECD in Spanish), the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness; MINECO in Spanish), the Oficina Espanola de Patentes y Marcas (Spanish Office of Brands and Patents; OEPM in Spanish), and the Centro para el Desarrollo Industrial (Center for Industrial Development; CDTI in Spanish).

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Further informaion: http://www.iune.es
ITHACA, N.Y. - 3-D printing has become a powerful tool for engineers and designers, allowing them to do "rapid prototyping" by creating a physical copy of a proposed design.

But what if you decide to make changes? You may have to go back, change the design and print the whole thing again, perhaps more than once. So Cornell researchers have come up with an interactive prototyping system that prints what you are designing as you design it; the designer can pause anywhere in the process to test, measure and, if necessary, make changes that will be added to the physical model still in the printer.

"We are going from human-computer interaction to human-machine interaction," said graduate student Huaishu Peng, who described the On-the-Fly-Print system in a paper presented at the 2016 ACM Conference for Human Computer Interaction. Co-authors are Francois Guimbretiere, associate professor of information science; Steve Marschner, professor of computer science; and doctoral student Rundong Wu.

Their system uses an improved version of an innovative "WirePrint" printer developed in a collaboration between Guimbretiere's lab and the Hasso Platner Institute in Potsdam, Germany.

In conventional 3-D printing, a nozzle scans across a stage depositing drops of plastic, rising slightly after each pass to build an object in a series of layers. With the WirePrint technique the nozzle extrudes a rope of quick-hardening plastic to create a wire frame that represents the surface of the solid object described in a computer-aided design (CAD) file. WirePrint aimed to speed prototyping by creating a model of the shape of an object instead of printing the entire solid. The On-the-Fly-Print system builds on that idea by allowing the designer to make refinements while printing is in progress.

The new version of the printer has "five degrees of freedom." The nozzle can only work vertically, but the printer's stage can be rotated to present any face of the model facing up; so an airplane fuselage, for example, can be turned on its side to add a wing. There is also a cutter to remove parts of the model, say to give the airplane a cockpit.

The nozzle has been extended so it can reach through the wire mesh to make changes inside. A removable base aligned by magnets allows the operator to take the model out of the printer to measure or test to see if it fits where it's supposed to go, then replace it in the precise original location to resume printing.

The software - a plug-in to a popular CAD program - designs the wire frame and sends instructions to the printer, allowing for interruptions. The designer can concentrate on the digital model and let the software control the printer. Printing can continue while the designer works on the CAD file, but will resume when that work is done, incorporating the changes into the print.

As a demonstration the researchers created a model for a toy airplane to fit into a Lego airport set. This required adding wings, cutting out a cockpit for a Lego pilot and frequently removing the model to see if the wingspan is right to fit on the runway. The entire project was completed in just 10 minutes.

By creating a "low-fidelity sketch" of what the finished product will look like and allowing the designer to redraw it as it develops, the researchers said, "We believe that this approach has the potential to improve the overall quality of the design process."

A video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X68cfl3igKE

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The work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation and by Autodesk Corp.
Montreal, May 31, 20016 -- As the summer heats up, so do cities. That's true not just for hot places like Los Angeles and Phoenix, but also for cooler capitals like Ottawa and Reykjavik.

Regardless of latitude, urban temperatures are typically several degrees higher than those of nearby suburban and rural areas. The resulting "heat islands" mean increased discomfort, higher air-conditioning bills and denser smog.

A major culprit? Hot roofs baked by the sun. The solution? Cooling down those roofs by using reflective surfaces -- and doing so even if those cities are covered in snow for several months of the year.

A new study published by researchers from Concordia University in Montreal in Energy and Buildings confirms that, contrary to the belief that cool roofs won't work in colder climates, they actually provide net energy -- and monetary -- savings.

"Using a cool roof on a commercial building in cold climates is typically not suggested based on the presumption that the heating penalties may be higher than the cooling savings," says Hashem Akbari, professor in the Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering and the study's senior author.

"Our research shows that any improvement to a roof that limits the summertime solar heat gain actually results in energy-cost savings for the building owner, as well as a reduction in the building's overall environmental impact."

For the study, Akbari and his co-author, Mirata Hosseini, a Concordia PhD candidate, used modelling software to simulate energy consumption for several prototype office and retail buildings in four cold-climate cities in North America: Anchorage, Milwaukee, Montreal and Toronto.

They found that cool roofs for the simulated buildings resulted in annual energy expenditure savings in all municipalities.

A cool roof on a new, medium-sized office building would save four dollars per 100 square metres in Montreal, $10 per 100 square metres in Toronto and $14 per 100 square metres in Milwaukee and Anchorage. The research also showed that cool roofs can reduce the peak electric demand of the retail buildings by up to five watts per square metre.

"Our study proves that cool roofs for commercial buildings are a net saver of energy in all climates that use air conditioning during the summer," says Akbari.

"In cooler climates, installing cool roofs may even prevent buying an air conditioner altogether. Even in non-air-conditioned buildings, cool roofs improve comfort during hot summer days. And in extreme cases, these roofs may even save lives by reducing the risk of heat stroke."

Many municipalities already prescribe cool roofs in the construction of new buildings and for re-roofing existing buildings. This study proves that those rules should also apply in colder climates. It is Akbari's hope that cool roofs become the global standard.

"On a large scale, cool roofs can moderate the air temperature surrounding a building, decrease greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the urban heat island effect," he says.

"Put simply, cool roofs cool the globe."

Akbari is organizing and chairing the Fourth International Conference on Countermeasures to Urban Heat Islands, being held May 30 to June 1 in Singapore. At this conference, over 300 scientists, practitioners, and policy makers gather to discuss implementation of heat island mitigation technologies. On top of the list of implementation is developing policies that lead to installing cool roofs on all buildings that are air conditioned.

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Partners in research: This study was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Related links:

Cited study

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378778815300256

Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering

https://www.concordia.ca/encs/bcee.html

Hashem Akbari

https://www.concordia.ca/encs/bcee/faculty.html?fpid=hashem-akbari

Sustainability hub

http://www.concordia.ca/about/sustainability.html
Psoriasis: Targets and Therapy has published the review "Psoriasis and smoking: links and risks".

As corresponding author Professor Luigi Naldi says "The review in Psoriasis: Targets and Therapy throws new light on the relation between smoking habits and psoriasis. Smoking influences the onset and the severity of psoriasis, and negatively influences the response to systemic treatment. Several pathomechanisms are involved including oxidative stress, interaction with signalling pathways and vascular influences. Dermatologists could play a major role in reducing the health burden of smoking by influencing their patients changing behavior."

As Dr Uwe Wollina, Editor-in-Chief, explains "This paper demonstrates important links between smoking and worsening of psoriasis or reduced therapeutic response of the disease. It points to the fact that patients who are a smoker and are affected by psoriasis can positively influence the course of their disease by quitting smoking."

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Psoriasis: Targets and Therapy is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal focusing on psoriasis, nail psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis and related conditions, identification of therapeutic targets and the optimal use of integrated treatment interventions to achieve improved outcomes and quality of life.

Dove Medical Press Ltd is a privately held company specializing in the publication of Open Access peer-reviewed journals across the broad spectrum of science, technology and especially medicine.
In the United States, the use of natural gas for electricity generation continues to grow. The driving forces behind this development? A boom in domestic natural gas production, historically low prices, and increased scrutiny over fossil fuels' carbon emissions. Though coal still accounts for about a third of US electricity generation, utility companies are pivoting to cleaner natural gas to replace decommissioned coal plants.

Low-maintenance, high-efficiency gas turbines are playing an important role in this transition, boosting the economic attractiveness of natural gas-derived electricity. General Electric (GE), a world leader in industrial power generation technology and the world's largest supplier of gas turbines, considers gas-fired power generation a key growth sector of its business and a practical step toward reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. When burned for electricity, natural gas emits half the carbon dioxide that coal does. It also requires fewer environmental controls.

"Advanced gas turbine technology gives customers one of the lowest installed costs per kilowatt," said Joe Citeno, combustion engineering manager for GE Power. "We see it as a staple for increased power generation around the world."

GE's H-class heavy-duty gas turbines are currently the world's largest and most efficient gas turbines, capable of converting fuel and air into electricity at more than 62 percent power-plant efficiency when matched with a steam turbine generator, a setup known as combined cycle. By comparison, today's simple cycle power plants (gas turbine generator only) operate with efficiencies ranging between 33 and 44 percent depending on the size and model.

GE is constantly searching for ways to improve the performance and overall value of its products. A single percent increase in gas turbine efficiency equates to millions of dollars in saved fuel costs for GE's customers and tons of carbon dioxide spared from the atmosphere. For a 1 gigawatt power plant, a 1 percent improvement in efficiency saves 17,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year, equivalent to removing more than 3,500 vehicles from the road. Applying such an efficiency gain across the US combined-cycle fleet (approximately 200 gigawatts) would save about 3.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year.

In 2015, the search for efficiency gains led GE to tackle one of the most complex problems in science and engineering--instabilities in gas turbine combustors. The journey led the company to the Titan supercomputer at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), a US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility located at DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Balancing act

Simultaneously increasing the efficiency and reducing the emissions of natural gas-powered turbines is a delicate balancing act. It requires an intricate understanding of these massive energy-converting machines -- their materials, aerodynamics, and heat transfer, as well as how effectively they combust, or burn, fuel. Of all these factors, combustion physics is perhaps the most complex.

In an H-class gas turbine, combustion takes place within 6-foot-long chambers at high temperature and pressure. Much like a car engine has multiple cylinders, GE's H-class turbines possess a ring of 12 or 16 combustors, each capable of burning nearly three tons of fuel and air per minute at firing temperatures exceeding 1,500 degrees Celsius. The extreme conditions make it one of the most difficult processes to test at GE's gas turbine facility in Greenville, South Carolina.

At higher temperatures, gas turbines produce more electricity. They also produce more emissions, such as nitrogen oxides (NOx), a group of reactive gases that are regulated at the state and federal levels. To reduce emissions, GE's Dry Low NOx combustion technology mixes fuel with air before burning it in the combustor.

"When the fuel and air are nearly perfectly mixed, you have the lowest emissions," said Jin Yan, manager of the computational combustion lab at GE's Global Research Center. "Imagine 20 tractor-trailers full of combustible fuel-air mixture. One combustor burns that amount every minute. In the process, it produces less than a tea cup (several ounces) of NOx emissions."

Such precise burning can lead to other problems, specifically an unstable flame. Inside a combustor, instabilities in the flame can cause deafening acoustic pulsations--essentially noise-induced pressure waves. These pulsations can affect turbine performance. At their worst, they can wear out the machinery in a matter of minutes. For this reason, whenever a new pulsation is detected, understanding its cause and predicting whether it might affect future products becomes a high priority for the design team.

Testing limits

In 2014, one such pulsation caught researchers' attention during a full-scale test of a gas turbine. The test revealed a combustion instability that hadn't been observed during combustor development testing. The company determined the instability levels were acceptable for sustained operation and would not affect gas turbine performance. But GE researchers wanted to understand its cause, an investigation that could help them predict how the pulsations could manifest in future designs.

The company suspected the pulsations stemmed from an interaction between adjacent combustors, but they had no physical test capable of confirming this hypothesis. Because of facility airflow limits, GE is able to test only one combustor at a time. Even if the company could test multiple combustors, access-visibility and camera technology currently limit the researchers' ability to understand and visualize the causes of high-frequency flame instabilities. So GE placed a bet on high-fidelity modeling and simulation to reveal what the physical tests could not.

The company asked its team of computational scientists, led by Yan, to see if it could reproduce the instability virtually using high-performance computers. GE also asked Yan's team to use the resulting model to determine whether the pulsations might manifest in a new GE engine incorporating DOE-funded technology and due to be tested in late 2015, less than a year away. GE then challenged Yan's team, in collaboration with the software company Cascade Technologies, to deliver these first-of-a-kind results before the 2015 test to demonstrate a truly predictive capability.

"We didn't know if we could do it," Yan said. "First, we needed to replicate the instability that appeared in the 2014 test. This required modeling multiple combustors, something we had never done. Then we needed to predict through simulation whether that instability would appear in the new turbine design and at what level."

Such enhanced modeling and simulation capabilities held the potential to dramatically accelerate future product development cycles and could provide GE with new insights into turbine engine performance earlier in the design process instead of after testing physical prototypes.

But GE faced another hurdle. To meet the challenge time frame, Yan and his team needed computing power that far exceeded GE's internal capabilities.

A computing breakthrough

In the spring of 2015, GE turned to the OLCF for help. Through the OLCF's Accelerating Competitiveness through Computational Excellence (ACCEL) industrial partnerships program, Yan's team received a Director's Discretionary allocation on Titan, a Cray XK7 system capable of 27 petaflops, or 27 quadrillion calculations per second.

Yan's team began working closely with Cascade Technologies, based in Palo Alto, California, to scale up Cascade's CHARLES code. CHARLES is a high-fidelity flow solver for large eddy simulation, a mathematical model grounded in fluid flow equations known as Navier-Stokes equations. Using this framework, CHARLES is capable of capturing the high-speed mixing and complex geometries of air and fuel during combustion. The code's efficient algorithms make it ideally suited to leverage leadership-class supercomputers to produce petabytes of simulation data.

Cascade's CHARLES solver can trace its technical roots back to Stanford University's Center for Turbulence Research and research efforts funded through DOE's Advanced Simulation and Computing program. Many of Cascade's engineering team are alumni of these programs. Although the CHARLES solver was developed to tackle problems like high-fidelity jet engine simulation and supersonic jet noise prediction, it had never been applied to predict combustion dynamics in a configuration as complex as a GE gas turbine combustion system.

Using 11.2 million hours on Titan, members of Yan's team and Cascade's engineering team executed simulation runs that harnessed 8,000 and 16,000 cores at a time, achieving a speedup in code performance 30 times greater than the original code. Cascade's Sanjeeb Bose, an alumnus of DOE's Computational Science Graduate Fellowship Program, provided significant contributions to the application development effort, upgrading CHARLES' reacting flow solver to work five times faster on Titan's CPUs.

Leveraging CHARLES' massively parallel grid generation capabilities -- a new software feature developed by Cascade -- Yan's team produced a fine-mesh grid composed of nearly 1 billion cells. Each cell captured microsecond-scale snapshots of the air-fuel mix during turbulent combustion, including particle diffusion, chemical reactions, heat transfer, and energy exchange.

Working with OLCF visualization specialist Mike Matheson, Yan's team developed a workflow to analyze its simulation data and view the flame structure in high definition. By early summer, the team had made enough progress to view the results: the first ever multicombustor dynamic instability simulation of a GE gas turbine. "It was a breakthrough for us," Yan said. "We successfully developed a model that was able to repeat what we observed in the 2014 test."

The new capability gave GE researchers a clearer picture of the instability and its causes that couldn't be obtained otherwise. Beyond reproducing the instability, the advanced model allowed the team to slow down, zoom in, and observe combustion physics at the sub-millisecond level, something no empirical method can match.

"These simulations are actually more than an experiment," Citeno said. "They provide new insights which, combined with human creativity, allow for opportunities to improve designs within the practical product cycle."

With the advanced model and new simulation methods in hand, Yan's team neared the finish line of its goal. Applying its new methods to the 2015 gas turbine, the team predicted a low instability level in the latest design that was acceptable for operation and would not affect performance. These results were affirmed during the full-scale gas turbine test, validating the predictive accuracy of the new simulation methods developed on Titan. "It was very exciting," Yan said. "GE's leadership put a lot of trust in us."

With the computational team's initial doubts now a distant memory, GE entered a world of new possibilities for evaluating gas turbine engines.

The path forward

Validation of its high-fidelity model and the predictive accuracy of its new simulation methods are giving GE the ability to better integrate simulation directly into its product design cycle. "It's opened up our design space," Yan said. "We can look at all kinds of ideas we never thought about before. The number of designs we can evaluate has grown substantially."

Coupled with advancements in other aspects of gas turbine design, Citeno projects the end result will be a full percentage-point gain in efficiency. This is important to GE's and DOE's goal to produce a combined-cycle power plant that operates at 65 percent efficiency, a leap that translates to billions of dollars a year in fuel savings for customers. A 1 percent efficiency gain across the US combined-cycle fleet is estimated to save more than $11 billion in fuel over the next 20 years.

"The world desperately needs higher-efficiency gas turbines because the end result is millions of tons of carbon dioxide that's not going into the atmosphere," said Citeno, noting that in the last 2 years, more than 50 percent of gas turbines manufactured at GE's Greenville plant were exported to other countries. "The more efficient the technology becomes, the faster it gets adopted globally, which further helps to improve the world's carbon footprint."

Internally, GE's experience with the OLCF's world-class computing resources and expertise helps the company understand and evaluate the value of larger-scale high-performance computing, supporting the case for future investment in GE's in-house capabilities. "Access to OLCF systems allows us to see what's possible and de-risk our internal computing investment decisions," Citeno said. "We can show concrete examples to our leadership of how advanced modeling and simulation is driving new product development instead of hypothetical charts."

Building on its success using Titan, GE is continuing to develop its combustion simulation capabilities under a 2016 allocation awarded through the DOE Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) Leadership Computing Challenge, or ALCC, program. As part of the project, GE's vendor partner Cascade is continuing to enhance its CHARLES code so that it can take advantage of Titan's GPU accelerators.

"A year ago these were gleam-in-the-eye calculations," Citeno said. "We wouldn't do them because we couldn't do them in a reasonable time frame to affect product design. Titan collapsed that, compressing our learning cycle by a factor of 10-plus and giving us answers in a month that would have taken a year with our own resources."

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Oak Ridge National Laboratory is supported by the US Department of Energy's Office of Science. The single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, the Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.
Inhibition of platelets in Alzheimers disease patients may become an important in therapy in future. Research findings of an international research team led by Professor Margitta Elvers, Institute of Hemostasis, Hemotherapy and Transfusion Medicine, University Clinic Dusseldorf, Germany, could be of great importance for the treatment of Alzheimers disease patients.

They were published in the current issue of the renowned journal Science Signaling. The scientists provide evidence for the first time that treatment of Alzheimer transgenic model mice with an anti-platelet drug leads to significantly reduced amyloid plaques in cerebral vessels. They together with scientists from the Research Center Julich, Germany, identified a key mechanism for a direct involvement of platelets in the progression of the disease.

Alzheimer's disease is an age-related neurodegenerative disorder that is the most common form of senile dementia with about 35 million people worldwide who are affected by this progressive cognitive decline. By 2030, the number of Alzheimer's disease patients is predicted to increase to > 66 million people; by 2050 the number is predicted to increase already to 115 million people. Alzheimer's disease is characterized by the formation of protein agglutination, so called amyloid aggregates, and deposits of amyloid in the brain. These amyloid deposits damage structure and function of nerve tissue in the brain and lead to the loss of neuronal cells and cognitive capability.

Formation of amyloid deposits in Alzheimer's disease patients occurs not only in brain parenchyma but also in blood vessels in the brain that contributes to the severity of Alzheimer's disease pathology. The scientists from Dusseldorf already demonstrated that attachment of platelets to amyloid deposits of the vessel wall leads to ongoing platelet activation in mice. Platelets stick together and form a hemostatic plug which induced the occlusion of vessels in the brain leading to insufficient perfusion of the surrounding tissue. The current published results are predicted on the vascular form of the disease.

An involvement of platelets in Alzheimer's disease is assumed for many years. The scientists from Dusseldorf and Julich were now able to identify the key mechanisms of a direct involvement of platelets. This mechanism is characterized by the binding of the protein amyloid-? to a specific integrin, a receptor on the platelet surface that is important for the aggregation of platelets. This binding induces the release of adenosine diphosphate (ADP) and clusterin and supports the formation of amyloid plaques. Platelets from patients with Glanzmann's thrombasthenia, a hereditary defect of platelet activation, showed no amyloid plaques in cell culture experiments.

Anti-platelet agents such as Clopidogrel are applied for the therapy and prevention of blood clots that provoke myocardial infarction and stroke. Treatment of Alzheimer transgenic mice with Clopidogrel led to reduced platelet activation, significantly reduced amyloid plaque formation and thus improved the perfusion of the brain when these mice were treated with the anti-platelet drug for three months. "Platelets directly influence the formation of amyloid deposits in cerebral vessels, and A?, in turn, activates platelets, creating a feed-forward loop that supports fibril formation in cerebral vessels of Alzheimer's disease patients" says Margitta Elvers.

If platelets have an impact on the formation of amyloid plaques in brain tissue will be investigated by the scientists of Dusseldorf University at present.

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Original publication:

Science Signaling, Donner et al., 2016, Platelets contribute to amyloid- aggregation in cerebral vessels through integrin IIb33-induced outside-in signaling and clusterin release
The PhD student Margherita Bettinelli, of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC) and the University of La Laguna (ULL), together with an international team of astrophysicists has recently discovered an unusual astronomical object: an Einstein ring. These phenomena, predicted by Einstein's theory of General Relativity, are quite rare but scientifically interesting. The interest is sufficiently strong that this object has been given its own name: the "The Canarias Einstein ring". The research was carried out by the Stellar Populations group at the IAC, led by Antonio Aparicio and Sebastian Hidalgo. The results were published in the international journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

An Einstein ring is a distorted image of a very distant galaxy, which is termed "the source". The distortion is produced by the bending of the light rays from the source due to a massive galaxy, termed "the lens", lying between it and the observer. The strong gravitational field produced by the lens galaxy distorts the structure of space-time in its neighbourhood, and this does not only attract objects which have a mass, but also bends the paths of light. When the two galaxies are exactly aligned, the image of the more distant galaxy is converted into an almost perfect circle which surrounds the lens galaxy. The irregularities in the circle are due to asymmetries in the source galaxy.

Confirmation using the GTC

The chance discovery was made by Margherita Bettinelli when she was examining data taken through the "Dark Energy Camera" (DECam) of the 4m Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Observatory, in Chile. While working on her doctoral thesis, she was analyzing the stellar population of the Sculptor dwarf galaxy and noticed the peculiar morphology of the Einstein ring. This quickly raised the attention of the members of the group and they started to observe and analyze its physical properties with the OSIRIS spectrograph on the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS (GTC).

This "Canarias Einstein ring" is one of the most symmetrical discovered until now and is almost circular, showing that the two galaxies are almost perfectly aligned, with a separation on the sky of only 0.2 arcseconds. The source galaxy is 10,000 million light years away from us. Due to the expansion of the Universe, this distance was smaller when its light started on its journey to us, and has taken 8,500 million years to reach us. We observe it as it was then: a blue galaxy which is beginning to evolve, populated by young stars which are forming at a high rate. The lens galaxy is nearer to us, 6,000 million light years away, and is more evolved. Its stars have almost stopped forming, and its population is old.

"Studying these phenomena -says Antonio Aparicio, one of the IAC astrophysicts who is leading the resarch-, gives us especially relevant information about the composition of the source galaxy, and also about the structure of the gravitational field and of the dark matter in the lens galaxy".

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The 2016 Gutenberg Teaching Award has been given to Carl Wieman, a Nobel Prize laureate in Physics. The Gutenberg Teaching Council (GTC) of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) is thus recognizing the achievements of an outstanding researcher who, in addition to making breakthroughs in the field of quantum optics, has contributed impressively to the dissemination of knowledge and the quality of academic teaching. "It is a particular pleasure and a great honor for us to present Professor Carl Wieman with this year's Gutenberg Teaching Award," declared JGU President, Professor Georg Krausch. "Carl Wieman is an outstanding, world-class scientist who is not only actively involved in research but also promotes the development of excellent educational approaches to the sharing of knowledge and the training of students in unparalleled fashion." In 2007, he established the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative (CWSEI) at the University of British Columbia aimed at improving undergraduate science education.

Born in 1951, Carl Wieman studied Physics at the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1975, he transferred to Stanford University, where he worked for the subsequent Nobel Prize winner Theodor Hansch, under whose guidance he completed his doctoral degree in 1977. He occupied posts as an assistant professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and as Professor of Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. In 1995, working in collaboration with Eric Cornell, he was able to create the first pure Bose-Einstein condensate, the fourth aggregate state of matter. As a result, he together with his colleagues Eric Cornell and Wolfgang Ketterle were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2001. In subsequent years, Wieman increasingly dedicated himself to improving the quality of teaching and in 2004 was awarded the title of U.S. Professor of the Year together with three other lecturers. In 2006, he moved to the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where he founded the CWSEI. Since 2013, he has been teaching in a combined post at the Department of Physics at Stanford University and its Graduate School of Education.

Wieman places a specific emphasis on the promulgation of knowledge in the natural sciences, technology, and mathematics. The CWSEI was established as an institute of the University of British Columbia and now consists of seven active departments working in the fields of Life Sciences through Computer Science and Physics to Chemistry and Mathematics. "This institution is unique worldwide. It offers highly competent teaching at the cutting-edge of science and provides for the exceptional education of Bachelor degree students and prospective teachers," emphasized Professor Harald Paulsen, Director of the Gutenberg Teaching Council at Mainz University.

After two years at the White House Office of Science and Technology working as an advisor to the President of the United States of America in matters of science education, Wieman's subsequent efforts at Stanford University have been concentrated on further improving the educational approach to training undergraduate students in the natural sciences. Wieman's concept is based on combining an analysis and survey of the current status of the corresponding teaching content with empirical studies. When teaching, Wieman utilizes novel tools and modern media and technologies. "In the person of Carl Wieman, the Gutenberg Teaching Council is paying homage to an internationally eminent figure in the worlds of research and education. The approach he has developed should help generate major new stimuli that will lead to the improvement of methods of teaching in the natural science disciplines at Mainz University," added Paulsen.

The Gutenberg Teaching Award will be presented to Wieman in the spring of 2017 at an official ceremony when the prize winner comes to JGU to assume the post of a guest professorship. The teaching staff for Physics and all other faculties and institutes at Mainz University will then have the opportunity to discuss his educational concepts with Professor Carl Wieman in person.

The Gutenberg Teaching Council was established at Mainz University in early 2011. Its primary strategic objective is to design and advance teaching and learning structures at JGU. Moreover, the Gutenberg Teaching Council initiates measures for the promotion of academic teaching competence and skills with specific reference to aspects of research orientation, interdisciplinarity, internationalism, and career orientation. The Gutenberg Teaching Award comes with a prize of EUR 10,000 and was awarded for the first time in 2014.

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New Rochelle, NY, May 31, 2016-A new study of sexual assault on college campuses found that nearly 2 of every 5 bisexual female college students experienced sexual assault after four years in college. About 1 in 4 gay and bisexual men are victims of sexual assault during college, which is similar to the frequency reported by heterosexual women, according to the study published in the journal Violence and Gender, from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Violence and Gender website until June 30, 2016.

In the article "Sexual Assault Victimization Among Straight, Gay/Lesbian, and Bisexual College Students," Jessie Ford and Jose Soto-Marquez, New York University, identified Greek life (participation in fraternities or sororities) as a factor strongly linked to a higher prevalence of sexual assault for most of the student groups studied.

"We cannot tolerate the sexual assault of any group of men or women on our college campuses," says Violence and Gender Editor-in-Chief Mary Ellen O'Toole, PhD, Forensic Behavioral Consultant and Senior FBI Profiler/Criminal Investigative Analyst (ret.) Director of the Forensic Sciences Program, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA. "Sexual assault is a very underreported crime for a wide range of reasons, and it is underreported when it occurs on college and university campuses as well."

"To really understand the breadth and depth of this problem, it is critical to understand the victimology of sexual assault, and that it includes all students, not just heterosexual females," Dr. O'Toole continues. "As difficult as it can be for any college student to come forward following a sexual assault because they are afraid, intimidated, or ashamed, it can be even more so for bisexual females and gay and bisexual males who are at risk for this crime at similar rates as heterosexual females, according to this important study. We have to do so much more for all students to encourage them to come forward and report what happened - no matter what their gender or sexual orientation. No one is immune from this hideous crime."

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About the Journal

Violence and Gender is the only peer-reviewed journal focusing on the understanding, prediction, and prevention of acts of violence. Through research papers, roundtable discussions, case studies, and other original content, the Journal critically examines biological, genetic, behavioral, psychological, racial, ethnic, and cultural factors as they relate to the gender of perpetrators of violence. Led by Editor-in-Chief Mary Ellen O'Toole, PhD, Director of the Forensic Sciences Program, George Mason University (Fairfax, VA), Forensic Behavioral Consultant, and Senior FBI Profiler/Criminal Investigative Analyst (ret.), Violence and Gender explores the difficult issues that are vital to threat assessment and prevention of the epidemic of violence. Violence and Gender is published quarterly online with open access options and in print, and is the official journal of The Avielle Foundation. Complete tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on the Violence and Gender website.

About the Publisher

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers is a privately held, fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in many promising areas of science and biomedical research, including Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking and Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology. Its biotechnology trade magazine, GEN (Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News), was the first in its field and is today the industry's most widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm's 80 journals, books, and newsmagazines is available on Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers website.
The prices and affordability of recently developed and highly effective direct-acting antivirals for treating hepatitis C (HCV) vary greatly among countries worldwide, according to a study published this week in PLOS Medicine. Suzanne Hill and colleagues from the World Health Organization undertook an economic analysis of prices for a 12-week course of treatment with sofosbuvir and ledipasvir/sofosbuvir in 30 countries - mostly European as well as Egypt and Mongolia, adjusting for average 2015 exchange rates and purchasing power parity (PPP). While the nominal price based on exchange rates was highest in the US (US$72,765 for a 12-week course of ledipasvir/sofosbuvir), PPP-adjusted prices in Central and Eastern European countries were highest, costing up to 1.63 times as much in Poland (PPP$118,754 for a 12 week course of ledipasvir/sofosbuvir). The researchers went on to calculate the cost of treating the entire HCV infected population in each of the countries studied. Using previous estimates of HCV burden by country, they calculated that it would range from 10.5% of the total pharmaceutical expenditure (TPE) to treat all HCV patients in the Netherlands with the new HCV medications, to 190.5% of the TPE to treat all patients in Poland.

The authors note that their analysis is limited by the accuracy of the estimates of the numbers of people infected and price information that was accessible, and that some actual prices may be lower than the publicly accessible numbers because of confidential discounts. They also note, however, that they only considered the cost of sofosbuvir and ledipasvir/sofosbuvir and did not consider extra costs of treatment such as screening and follow-up. The authors say their analysis illustrates the wide range of affordability worldwide and suggests a need for an updated pricing system: "In order for countries to increase investment and minimise the burden of hepatitis C, governments and industry stakeholders will need to jointly develop and implement fairer pricing frameworks that deliver lower and more affordable prices".

In an accompanying Perspective, Elliot Marseille and James G. Kahn discuss the pricing of these new HCV medications in relation to the high initial cost when HIV anti-retroviral therapy was introduced in the 1990s. Marseille and Kahn compare and contrast the situations, and suggest ways forward such as treating a proportion of cases initially, to spread the upfront cost of HCV treatment over several years while fighting for lower drug prices.

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Research Article

Funding:

The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Competing Interests:

SH is a member of the PLOS Medicine Editorial Board. KTT has been an employee of Deloitte Australia within the past 5 years. Deloitte Australia has provided consulting services to pharmaceutical companies. However, KTT has not been involved in any project directly related to the content of this manuscript that can lead to conflict of interest.

Citation:

Iyengar S, Tay-Teo K, Vogler S, Beyer P, Wiktor S, de Joncheere K, et al. (2016) Prices, Costs, and Affordability of New Medicines for Hepatitis C in 30 Countries: An Economic Analysis. PLoS Med 13(5): e1002032. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1002032

Author Affiliations:

World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland

WHO Collaborating Centre for Pharmaceutical Pricing and Reimbursement Policies, Health Economics Department, Gesundheit Osterreich, Vienna, Austria

IN YOUR COVERAGE PLEASE USE THIS URL TO PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE FREELY AVAILABLE PAPER:

http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002032

Perspective Article

Funding:

There was no funding for this work.

Competing Interests:

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Citation:

Marseille E, Kahn JG (2016) A Revolution in Treatment for Hepatitis C Infection: Mitigating the Budgetary Impact. PLoS Med 13(5): e1002031. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1002031

Author Affiliations:

Health Strategies International, Oakland, California, United States of America

Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America

IN YOUR COVERAGE PLEASE USE THIS URL TO PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE FREELY AVAILABLE PAPER:

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1002031
What if scholars, librarians, archivists, publishers and funders could restart scholarly communication all over? This was the slogan of the first FORCE11 Scholarly Commons Working Group (SCWG) workshop, which took place in February. Advocating for an open, sustainable, fair and creditable future that is technology- and business-enabled, not -led, FORCE11's SCWG committee published a Workshop Report in the open access journal Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO), becoming the anniversary 50th publication in the innovative research publishing platform.

The community of FORCE11, comprising scholars, librarians, archivists, publishers and research funders from around the globe, was born at the FORC Workshop held in Dagstuhl, Germany in August 2011. Ever since, the community have been working and striving together towards a change in modern scholarly communication through the effective use of information technology. Their aim has always been to facilitate the change to improved knowledge creation and sharing.

In 2016, the Scholarly Commons Working group within FORCE11 conducts two workshops in order to find the answers to the question how scholarly communication would have looked now, had it not been for the 350 years of traditional practices. They also focus on the implications of modern technology and modes of communications that could help bring the right change about.

"Too often, scholars are unaware of the origins of current practices and accept the status quo because 'that's how it's done'," the authors point out. "But what if we could start over? What if we had computers, Internet, search engines and social media, but no legacy of journals, articles, books, review systems etc.?"

The first workshop, held between 25th and 27th February in Madrid, Spain, was titled "What if we could start over?". The second one is planned for later this year under the slogan "Putting the pieces together."

During the three-day workshop, the fifty participants, representing experts, early career researchers and new voices from across disciplines and countries, engaged in various activities. In order to "diverge and then converge", the participants were encouraged through a number of enjoyable tasks to freely think outside the box, assuming that the current system of scholarly communication, based on a paper-based reward system, never existed.

"Given today's technology and the amount of money currently in the system, how would you design a system of scholarly communications ("The Scholarly Commons"), the goal of which is to maximize the accessibility and impact of scholarly works," they were asked. "By putting us in an alternate reality with a clear charge, we sidestepped issues that often engulf such discussions: why do we publish and who do we publish for."

At the end of the workshop, the group's principles were ordered under five subheadings, namely:

Open and sustainable

Fair

Credit for all endeavors

Technology- and business-enabled, not -led

Governance and funding

The attendees' ideas, visions and suggested principles were also captured in a live and interactive visualization, consisting of the participants' virtual post-it notes, also available through Trello.

In the spirit of the workshop itself, the report is now formally published in the form of a new scholarly communication artifact. Workshop Report is only one of the various innovative research publication types, provided by the open access journal Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO), whose aim is to acknowledge and disseminate all quality and valuable research outputs from across all stages of the research cycle.

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Original source:

Kramer B, Bosman J, Ignac M, Kral C, Kalleinen T, Koskinen P, Bruno I, Buckland A, Callaghan S, Champieux R, Chapman C, Hagstrom S, Martone M, Murphy F, O'Donnell D (2016) Defining the Scholarly Commons - Reimagining Research Communication. Report of Force11 SCWG Workshop, Madrid, Spain, February 25-27, 2016. Research Ideas and Outcomes 2: e9340. doi: 10.3897/rio.2.e9340

Additional information:

The activities of the Scholarly Commons Working Group are coordinated by its steering committee: Jeroen Bosman (Utrecht University), Ian Bruno (Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre), Amy Buckland (University of Chicago), Sarah Callaghan (STFC), Robin Champieux (OHSU), Chris Chapman (Pentandra), Stephanie Hagstrom (UCSD), Bianca Kramer (Utrecht University), Maryann Martone (UCSD and Hypothesis) and Daniel O'Donnell (Universtiy of Lethbridge).

About FORCE11:

FORCE11 is a movement of people interested in furthering the goals stated in the FORCE11 manifesto. An important part of their work is information gathering and dissemination. Everyone is welcome to provide relevant information via links which could be then include on the FORCE11's websites. Everyone with similar and/or related efforts is also asked to include links to FORCE11. They are a neutral information market, and do not endorse or seek to block any relevant work.

About RIO:

The Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) Journal publishes all outputs of the research cycle, including: project proposals, data, methods, workflows, software, project reports and research articles together on a single collaborative platform offering one of the most transparent, open and public peer-review processes. Its scope encompasses all areas of academic research, including science, technology, the humanities and the social sciences.

Additional contact:

Jeroen Bosman

Email: j.bosman@uu.nl
Due to the exponential growth of biodiversity information in recent years, the questions of how to mobilize such vast amounts of data has become more tangible than ever. Best practices for data sharing, data publishing, and involvement of scientific and citizen communities in data generation are the main topic of a recent report by the EU FP7 project Building the European Biodiversity Observation Network (EU BON), published in the innovative Research Ideas & Outcomes (RIO) journal.

The report "Data sharing tools for Biodiversity Observation Networks" provides conceptual and practical advice for implementation of the available data sharing and data publishing tools. A detailed description of tools, their pros and cons, is followed by recommendations on their deployment and enhancement to guide biodiversity data managers in their choices.

"We believe publishing this report in RIO makes a lot of sense given the journal's innovative concept of publishing unconventional research outcomes such as project reports. This feature provides projects like EU BON with the chance to showcase their results effectively and timely. The report provides a useful practical guide for biodiversity data managers and RIO gives the project an opportunity to share findings with anyone who will make use of such information", explains Prof. Lyubomir Penev, Managing Director of Pensoft and partner in EU BON.

The new report is the second EU BON contribution featured in a dedicated project outcomes collection in RIO. Together with the data policy recommendations it provides a comprehensive set of resources for the use of biodiversity data managers and users.

"We did our biodiversity data sharing tools comparison from the perspective of the needs of the biodiversity observation community with an eye on the development of a unified user interface to this data - the European Biodiversity Portal (EBP)", add the authors.

The scientists have identified two main challenges standing in front of the biodiversity data community. On the one hand, there is a variety of tools but none can as stand alone, satisfy all the requirements of the wide variety of data providers. On the other hand, gaps in data coverage and quality demand more effort in data mobilization.

"For the time being a combination of tools combined in a new work-flow, makes the most sense for EU BON to mobilize biodiversity data," comment the report authors on their findings. "There is more research to be done and tools to be developed, but for the future there is one firm conclusion and it is that the choice of tools should be defined by the needs of those observing biodiversity - the end user community in the broadest sense - from volunteer scientists to decision makers."

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About EU BON:

EU BON stands for "Building the European Biodiversity Observation Network" and is a European research project, financed by the 7th EU framework programme for research and development (FP7). EU BON seeks ways to better integrate biodiversity information and implement into policy and decision-making of biodiversity monitoring and management in the EU.

About RIO:

The mission of RIO is to catalyze change in research communication by publishing ideas, proposals and outcomes in order to increase transparency, trust and efficiency of the whole research ecosystem. Its scope encompasses all areas of academic research, including science, technology, the humanities and the social sciences. The journal harnesses the full value of investment in the academic system by registering, reviewing, publishing and permanently archiving a wider variety of research outputs than those traditionally made public: project proposals, data, methods, workflows, software, project reports and research articles together on a single collaborative platform offering one of the most transparent, open and public peer-review processes.

Original Source:

Smirnova L, Mergen P, Groom Q, De Wever A, Penev L, Stoev P, Pe'er I, Runnel V, Camacho A, Vincent T, Agosti D, Arvanitidis C, Bonet F, Saarenmaa H (2016) Data sharing tools adopted by the European Biodiversity Observation Network Project. Research Ideas and Outcomes 2: e9390. doi: 10.3897/rio.2.e9390
HOUSTON - (May 31, 2016) - The percentage of Texans without health insurance has dropped by 30 percent since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) went into effect, cutting the state's uninsured rate below 1999 levels. That's one of the conclusions of a new report released today by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy and the Episcopal Health Foundation (EHF).

The report found the uninsured rate among Texas adults dropped from 26 percent in September 2013 to 18 percent in March 2016. Researchers also discovered a steady decline in the uninsured rate for every age, ethnic and income-level group across the state.

"These latest numbers confirm the continuing downward trend in the number of uninsured Texans that began as the ACA was implemented," said Elena Marks, EHF's president and CEO and a nonresident health policy fellow at the Baker Institute. "For more than a decade prior to the ACA, the uninsured rate remained above 20 percent and was rising. It's now clear that it's moving in the opposite direction, and the ACA deserves the credit."

The report found that Texans between the ages of 50 and 64 experienced the largest decrease in their percentage of uninsured. The group's uninsured rate plummeted from 21 percent to 10 percent since the ACA went into effect -- a drop of more than 51 percent.

"For the older group, the ACA made health insurance much more affordable, because the law limits insurers from charging older adults no more than triple the cost for the same health insurance plans as younger adults," said Vivian Ho, the chair in health economics at the Baker Institute and director of the institute's Center for Health and Biosciences, a professor of economics at Rice and a professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. "However, limiting premium variation by age made Marketplace policies less attractive to younger adults, which is why their uninsured rate fell less."

Researchers also found the percentage of uninsured Texans who earned annual incomes between $16,000 and $47,000 dropped by more than 42 percent. The group's uninsured rate declined from 23 percent in 2013 to 13 percent in 2016.

"Texans with low to moderate incomes were able to use federal subsidies to help pay for health insurance premiums for ACA Marketplace plans," Ho said. "Those subsidies made coverage affordable for many who could not have purchased plans without that help."

In fact, Ho and Marks note that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports that 84 percent of the 1.3 million Texans now enrolled in ACA Marketplace health insurance plans received subsidies to help pay for premiums.

Researchers said that while it's evident the ACA has helped drop the uninsured rate in Texas, it's also clear that a significant number of Texans with the lowest incomes remain uninsured. The report found that 46 percent of Texans earning less than $16,000 a year don't have health insurance.

"The ACA as implemented in Texas offers little hope for Texans with the lowest incomes," Marks said. "They make too much to qualify for traditional Medicaid and not enough to get a subsidy to help pay for their premium. They're stuck in the 'coverage gap,' and unless Texas expands Medicaid or comes up with another system of coverage for this group, they will remained uninsured."

According to the report, the "coverage gap" affects mostly people of color in working families and was recently estimated by the Kaiser Family Foundation to include 766,000 Texans.

The report is the 21st in a series on the implementation of the Affordable Care Act in Texas co-authored by Marks and Ho.

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The Health Reform Monitoring Survey (HRMS) is a quarterly survey of adults ages 18-64 that began in 2013. This report is a summary of data extracted from the HRMS surveys in Texas administered between September 2013 and March 2016.

The HRMS is designed to provide timely information on implementation issues under the ACA and to document changes in health-insurance coverage and related health outcomes. The Baker Institute and EHF are partnering to fund and report on key factors about Texans obtained from an expanded, representative sample of Texas residents (HRMS-Texas).

The HRMS was developed by the Urban Institute, conducted by GfK and jointly funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Urban Institute. The analyses and conclusions based on HRMS-Texas are those of the authors and do not represent the view of the Urban Institute, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation or the Ford Foundation.

To schedule an interview with Marks, contact Brian Sasser, director of communications at the Episcopal Health Foundation, at bsasser@episcopalhealth.org or 832-795-9404.

To schedule an interview with Ho, contact Jeff Falk, associate director of national media relations at Rice, at jfalk@rice.edu or 713-348-6775.

Related materials:

Full survey report: http://bakerinstitute.org/media/files/files/14a37857/Issue_Brief_21_FINAL_a.pdf

Episcopal Health Foundation: http://www.episcopalhealth.org

Marks bio: http://www.episcopalhealth.org/en/about/staff

Ho bio: http://bakerinstitute.org/experts/vivian-ho

The Episcopal Health Foundation was established in 2013 and is based in Houston. With more than $1.2 billion in estimated assets, the Foundation is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation that operates as a supporting organization of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas. EHF works to improve the health and well-being of the 10 million people in the 57 counties of the Diocese by investing in communities through grant-making, outreach to Diocesan churches and critical research to advance community health.

Founded in 1893, Rice University's Baker Institute ranks among the top 10 university-affiliated think tanks in the world. As a premier nonpartisan think tank, the institute conducts research on domestic and foreign policy issues with the goal of bridging the gap between the theory and practice of public policy. The institute's strong track record of achievement reflects the work of its endowed fellows, Rice University faculty scholars and staff, coupled with its outreach to the Rice student body through fellow-taught classes -- including a public policy course -- and student leadership and internship programs. Learn more about the institute at http://www.bakerinstitute.org or on the institute's blog, http://blogs.chron.com/bakerblog.
The vibrations and pulses that male fiddler crabs produce when they are trying to lure females into their burrows to mate are surprisingly informative. These signals serve as a type of "Morse code" that the females decipher to learn more about the size and stamina of their suitors. This is according to a study by Japanese researchers Fumio Takeshita of Nagasaki University and Minoru Murai of the University of the Ryukyu, published in Springer's journal The Science of Nature.

During mating season, the males of some fiddler crab species construct a raised mound or semidome near their burrows. They stay close to their burrows and wave their one distinctively large claw to attract females to their burrow's entrance. The ones able to wave their claws higher and for a longer period of time have the most success. Once a female comes closer, the male repeatedly emits vibrations to lure her even further inside his hide-out, with the intention to eventually mate.

Takeshita and Murai went to the tidal flat of Nagaura Island in Kumamoto in Japan to investigate how these vibrations might be helping female fiddler crabs (Uca lactea) to decide on a preferred mate. The researchers used a female dummy to elicit courtship vibrations from several males. These were recorded and analysed further.

The researchers learned that these acoustic signals consist of repetitive pulses. The lower the dominant frequency, the more likely it was that the male's body or carapace would be quite large. The length of the pulses decreased slightly when more vibrations were repeatedly produced. The interval between such pulses also increased when more pulses were produced.

"These factors imply that the vibrations convey information on male characteristics, such as body size and stamina," says Takeshita.

The production of vibrations and the initial waving of one large claw in the air therefore seem to go hand in hand. Both are ways by which males can signal their endurance and stamina to potential mates.

Observing fiddler crabs mating with real females, the researchers also looked at what happened once the females were successfully lured to a burrow entrance. Females were more likely to enter the burrow of males that could repeatedly produce a higher rate of pulses in succession. "This indicates that the females use the male vibrational signals to decide whether to enter the burrow or not," adds Murai.

The researchers found that once a female finds herself inside a burrow, the continuous production of vibrations plays no further role in her decision to mate. Aspects such as the protective structure of the burrow, in which she will possibly release larvae, might therefore also come into play.

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Reference: Takeshita, F. & Murai, M. (2016). The vibrational signals that male fiddler crabs (Uca lactea) use to attract females into their burrows, The Science of Nature. DOI 10.1007/s00114-016-1371-2
A report investigating the current state of digestive health in children has revealed alarming trends in disease incidence and inequalities in the provision of digestive health-care services for children across Europe

(Brussels, 31 May, 2016) A report investigating the current state of digestive health in children has revealed alarming trends in disease incidence and inequalities in the provision of digestive healthcare services for children across Europe.

'Paediatric Digestive Health Across Europe', commissioned by United European Gastroenterology (UEG), is published today and highlights how the current health burden and economic pressure of paediatric digestive health issues, in particular the increasing levels of childhood obesity, have become a pandemic issue throughout the continent.

The report canvasses the opinion of a number of paediatric GI specialists, including experts from UEG and current and past presidents of the European Society for Paediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition (ESPGHAN), who highlight three particular areas of digestive health that show worrying trends and require urgent action. These include:

In 46 European countries, one in every three children aged 6-9 years is now overweight or obese

Childhood onset of inflammatory bowel disease now accounts for 20-30% of all IBD cases

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease has become the most common cause of chronic liver disease among children and adolescents in Western countries, with cases documented in children as young as 3 years old

Commenting on the current state of paediatric digestive health care in Europe, Professor Michael Manns, President of UEG, explains; "Across Europe we have leading paediatric experts and many centres of excellence. However, these are not widespread and currently cannot meet the needs of children throughout the continent. This has an impact on not just individuals and their families but on society and wider health service provision".

A call for change across Europe

One of the main findings in the report is that many areas of digestive health follow a 'one size fits all' approach with many children following adult care pathways. Professor Berthold Koletzko, President of ESPGHAN, comments; "It is important for stakeholders and policy makers to appreciate that children have complex physical, psychological and social needs and these must be met by trained paediatric specialists to improve the accessibility of optimal care for children today and in future generations".

The report calls for urgent attention and resource investment in paediatric digestive health treatments and services to improve the prognosis for children who suffer from varying digestive health conditions. A 6 point action plan, targeting key policy makers, stakeholders and health service providers, is outlined within the report to help encourage and deliver change and improve paediatric care across Europe. The 6 key actions are:

1. Further development of national strategies and public health campaigns for education, prevention and early intervention 2. Improve and harmonise training standards through the development of a pan-European digestive health syllabus 3. Enhance paediatric subspecialty training to understand the complex physical, psychological and social needs of children 4. Develop transition services as patients move from teenage to adult care 5. Encourage further research into childhood digestive diseases and early life programming to enable improved prevention strategies

6. Further development of specialised centres for the optimal management of children with digestive diseases

The report will be issued to European policy makers today at the European Parliament, who will meet with leading health experts to discuss the latest research and areas for development examined in the review. The report is unveiled as part of UEG's Digestive Health Month to raise awareness of digestive health issues across the continent.

"In spite of 20% of the European population being children and the incidence of gastrointestinal diseases increasing, it is extremely worrying that only 1 out of 58 topics currently receiving EU research funding is focused on paediatric health" explains Professor Koletzko. "Priorities need to change quickly to appreciate the specific issues of paediatric digestive provision and ensure greater investment into prevention, cost-effective diagnostic measures and harmonised training".

Professor Manns adds; "UEG hope this report will encourage policy makers, stakeholders and health service providers to adopt the recommendations and prioritise the development of specific paediatric focused strategies for improving the digestive health of children today and for future generations".

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Notes to Editors

About UEG

UEG, or United European Gastroenterology, is a professional non-profit organisation combining all the leading European societies concerned with digestive diseases. Together, its member societies represent over 22,000 specialists, working across medicine, surgery, paediatrics, gastrointestinal oncology and endoscopy. This makes UEG the most comprehensive organisation of its kind in the world, and a unique platform for collaboration and the exchange of knowledge. Find out more by visiting http://www.ueg.eu

To advance standards of gastroenterological care and knowledge across Europe and the world, UEG offers numerous activities and initiatives, including:

UEG Week, the biggest congress of its kind in Europe, and one of the two largest in the world.

NOW OPEN FOR PRESS REGISTRATION

UEG Education, the universal source of knowledge in gastroenterology, providing online and classroom courses, a huge online library and delivering the latest GI news, fostering debate and discussion

Training Support, funding for innovative training and educational programmes, as well as international scientific and professional co-operations

UEG Journal, published bi-monthly, covering translational and clinical studies from all areas of gastroenterology

EU Affairs, promoting research, prevention, early diagnosis and treatment of digestive diseases, and helping develop an effective health policy for Europe

About the Report

Commissioned by UEG, Paediatric Digestive Health Across Europe, is a report that highlights the current levels of quality in paediatric digestive health throughout Europe, the current state of service provision and the potential impact on longer-term health outcomes and economies. The opinions of leading gastroenterologists and patient organisations have been utilised to help identify priority areas for improvement both now and in the future.

Other key trends raised in the report include:

It is predicted that the global number of children under five who are overweight will rise from the current 41 million to 70 million by 2025

The high cost of treating obesity and related disorders now represents up to 10% of total healthcare costs and threatens the sustainability of public healthcare systems across Europe

Delays in diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease are taking up to 5 years for 18% of under 18's

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease prevalence continues to rise among paediatric patients, affecting up to 10% of Europe's paediatric population

UEG Digestive Health Month

The first UEG Digestive Health month, organised by United European Gastroenterology (UEG), has taken place throughout May. Held to raise awareness of digestive health conditions in Europe and highlight opportunities to help advance the treatment and prevention of related diseases, activity has featured on social media via the hashtag #DigestiveHealthMonth

Contact Information

For further information about the report and UEG's activities, or to speak to a paediatric digestive health expert please contact Luke Paskins at UEG on +44 (0)1444 811099 or email media@ueg.eu

References

1. http://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/disease-prevention/nutrition/policy

2. United European Gastroenterology Journal: (1) Farthing M, Roberts S, Samuel D, Williams D, et al, Survey of digestive health across Europe: Final report. Part 1: The burden of gastrointestinal diseases and the organisation and delivery of gastroenterology services across Europe, 2014 2: 539-543

3. Day CP. Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease: a massive problem. Clin Med. 2011; 11:176-178

4. 1000 Days: http://thousanddays.org/the-issue/obesity/

5. Early Nutrition Project: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/lsm/research/divisions/wh/newsevents/newsarchive/earlynutritionfactsheet.pdf

6. B. Wilson, S. Lonnfors, S. Vermeire. The true impact of IBD: a European Crohn's and Ulcerative Colitis patient life. IMPACT Survey 2010-2011 http://efcca.org/media/files/press-Join-Fight/3PRESS_KIT_IBD_IMPACT_REPORT_BCN.pdf

7. http://www.childliverdisease.org/News/Research-funded-by-Birmingham-charity-identifies-genetic-variant-in-childhood-liver-disease-
The United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) has signed a licensing agreement with USA-based global pharmaceutical company BioLegend, Inc. to use 4 different UAEU patents in biotechnology; The license was granted in order to develop diagnostic tools

The United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) has signed a licensing agreement with USA-based global pharmaceutical company BioLegend, Inc. to use four different UAEU patents in biotechnology. The license was granted in order to develop diagnostic tools for the early detection of Parkinson's Disease and possibly other neurological diseases.

The technology was developed at UAEU and is patent protected in the USA, the European Union and other countries and regions worldwide. Dr. Ali Rashid Al Noaimi, Vice Chancellor of UAEU, signed the agreement on behalf of the university, while Dr. Gene Lay, the CEO and founder of BioLegend signed on behalf of the US company.

His Excellency Dr. Ali Rashid Al Nuaimi, Vice Chancellor of UAEU, stressed that this patent agreement was the second of its kind at UAEU. This is yet more evidence of the university's pursuit of excellence in order to follow the directives of the national leadership headed by His Highness Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the President of UAE; and in accordance with the vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai. Such directives are further supported by His Highness General Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. This is also in tune with UAE Vision 2021. The Vice Chancellor added that UAEU reflects the leadership's focus on healthcare. Finally, he also added that, "the knowledge-based economy is part of the global economy and our national university should protect and market its technological discoveries and collaborate with industrial leaders globally and within the country."

Dr. Al Nuaimi also welcomed the announcement by saying that UAEU was honoured to cooperate with a global pharmaceutical company that specialized in brain diseases and neurological research as just such research is being carried out at the university. He also highlighted the importance of protecting research results by filing patent applications to protect the new discoveries: "UAEU has more than 80 different new inventions and around 190 patent applications in its portfolio, of which 36 have already been granted."

Dr. Gene Lay added that BioLegend were, "happy to have a partnership with United Arab Emirates University and is committed to the commercial development and exploitation of these patents." He further added that BioLegend was striving to provide quality research reagents and expert technical support to the worldwide scientific. Their mission is to accelerate research and discovery by providing the highest quality products at outstanding value, along with superior customer service and technical support.

Professor Ghaleb Al Hadrami, the Deputy Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Studies, said that the university supports scientific excellence and innovation and said that, "there were four international competitors negotiating for the license, however our office chose BioLegend due to their leading position in developing and manufacturing world-class, cutting-edge immunological reagents for biomedical research." He also noted the efforts of Mohamed Al Hemairy, Head of Patents and Technology Transfer at the university, and said that, "this deal took over a year of discussion before reaching a mutual consensus. Licensing biochemistry patents in the neurological sciences is challenging due to the complexity of the technology, as well as the time it requires to negotiate the details of the agreement especially when it involves human experimentation."

The driving force behind this technology is Professor Omar El-Agnaf and his team of experienced postdoctoral and postgraduate researchers in the College of Medicine and Health Sciences at UAEU. They developed assays for the detection of proteins involved in Parkinson's Disease. Between seven to ten million people worldwide live with Parkinson's Disease and the lack of early detection is recognised as an impediment to effective clinical intervention as well as retarding the development of new therapeutics.

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Jennifer Barton is identifying biomarkers and creating optical imaging tools to screen for a form of cancer often called a 'silent killer' of women

University of Arizona researcher Jennifer Barton is leading a two-year, $1 million project funded by the National Cancer Institute to identify imaging biomarkers of ovarian cancer, the most deadly gynecological cancer in the United States. This work may enable the first effective screening system for ovarian cancer.

"Located deep in the body, with few early symptoms and no effective screening techniques, ovarian cancer has remained stubbornly difficult to understand, much less effectively combat," said Barton, professor of biomedical engineering, electrical and computer engineering, optical sciences, and agricultural and biosystems engineering, and interim director of the UA BIO5 Institute.

In fact, 70 percent of women diagnosed have advanced ovarian cancer that has spread beyond the fallopian tubes and ovaries to other organs, she said.

Tracking an Elusive Enemy

Barton is collaborating with researchers in the UA departments of physiology, medical imaging, and obstetrics and gynecology to identify imaging biomarkers, or subtle changes in the tissue that can be detected by sensitive optical methods, for ovarian cancer in mice. The mice spontaneously develop ovarian tumors and mimic hormonal conditions of postmenopausal women, who are most often diagnosed with the disease.

Using three high-resolution optical imaging techniques -- optical coherence tomography, fluorescence imaging and multiphoton microscopy -- the researchers are obtaining in vivo images of the animals' ovaries and fallopian tubes and analyzing physical and biochemical changes over time to create a roadmap of the changes that happen during ovarian cancer.

"This gives us a very controlled way of looking at ovarian cancer," Barton said. "We can observe developments over just a few months that would occur over several years in women with the disease." The researchers will also develop contrast agents to study overexpression of cell surface receptors that could be targeted to increase sensitivity to imaging.

Opening the Door for Noninvasive Testing

Presently the only way to confirm ovarian cancer is with a surgical biopsy.

"Our goal is to identify biomarkers at the earliest possible stage of ovarian cancer to build a viable optical imaging technology that will enable early detection and save lives," said Barton, previously inaugural head of the College of Engineering biomedical engineering program, chair of the UA biomedical engineering graduate interdisciplinary program and UA associate vice president for research.

"We believe that early in ovarian cancer development, there are clusters of cells in the fallopian tube that have abnormal microstructure and fluorescence," Barton said. "We believe we can detect these cells before they spread to the ovary and cause advanced cancer."

Evan Unger, MD, a UA professor of radiology and bioengineering who with Barton co-leads the Cancer Imaging Program at the Arizona Cancer Center, said the predictive biomarkers will help more accurately stratify women in risk groups for ovarian cancer and "open the door for more intensive screening using a noninvasive or minimally invasive technique like the microendoscope Dr. Barton has developed."

Barton's tiny, highly flexible endoscope, or falloposcope, is a wand-like imaging device that combines several optical imaging techniques to detect ovarian cancer in the fallopian tubes, where many researchers believe the cancer originates. Her team has already tested rigid prototypes in pilot clinical studies, but the new flexible version will not require any incisions, making it more suitable for screening.

Screening Critical for Early Diagnosis, Treatment

Caught early, ovarian cancer can often be treated effectively with surgery and chemotherapy. But with no good tools for catching it early, fewer than half of women diagnosed survive five years.

Women who receive manual exams, pelvic ultrasound or blood tests for the CA-125 protein, which may indicate elevated risk, are no less likely to die from ovarian cancer than women who don't. Further, most women diagnosed have none of the associated risk factors, such as a family history of the disease or mutations of the BRCA genes.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, each year approximately 20,000 U.S. women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer and 14,000 die from the disease.

Meredith Mitstifer is one of the lucky ones.

At 30, while visiting a fertility specialist, she had an ultrasound test that revealed a large mass in her left ovary. A few weeks later, preparing for surgery, she learned she was pregnant. She had the diseased ovary removed and biopsied, confirming early stage ovarian cancer. She went on to give birth to Ryan, now a healthy teenager.

Mitstifer, a clinical psychologist for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, is approaching her 14th year with no evidence of disease. She serves on the board of the National Ovarian Cancer Coalition and has participated in Survivors Teaching Students: Saving Women's Lives, an Ovarian Cancer National Alliance program in which ovarian cancer survivors share their stories with UA medical students.

"I've lost many friends to this awful disease, and have many other friends who are dying from it," she said. "Many of them desperately want to see advances in diagnosis and treatment and, ultimately, a cure, so their own children won't have to go through what they have. An effective screening process would be a great start."

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The Tucson chapter of the National Ovarian Cancer Coalition will host its first Walk to Break the Silence on the UA campus on Nov. 6. Contact tucsonaz@ovarian.org for more information.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The mouth is one of the "dirtiest" parts of the body, home to millions of germs. But puffing cigarettes can increase the likelihood that certain bacteria like Porphyromonas gingivalis will not only set up camp but will build a fortified city in the mouth and fight against the immune system.

University of Louisville School of Dentistry researcher David A. Scott, Ph.D., explores how cigarettes lead to colonization of bacteria in the body. Scott and his research team have identified how tobacco smoke, composed of thousands of chemical components, is an environmental stressor and promotes bacteria colonization and immune invasion.

Scott says since this initial finding several years ago, a recent literature review published in Tobacco Induced Diseases revealed that cigarette smoke and its components also promote biofilm formation by several other pathogens including Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus mutans, Klebsiella pneumonia and Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

Biofilms are composed of numerous microbial communities often made up of complex, interacting and co-existing multispecies structures. Bacteria can form biofilms on most surfaces including teeth, heart valves and the respiratory tract.

"Once a pathogen establishes itself within a biofilm, it can be difficult to eradicate as biofilms provide a physical barrier against the host immune response, can be impermeable to antibiotics and act as a reservoir for persistent infection," Scott said. "Furthermore, biofilms allow for the transfer of genetic material among the bacterial community and this can lead to antibiotic resistance and the propagation of other virulence factors that promote infection."

One of the most prevalent biofilms is dental plaque, which can lead to gingivitis - a gum disease found in almost half the world's population - and to more severe oral diseases, such as chronic periodontitis. Bacterial biofilms also can form on heart valves resulting in heart-related infections, and they also can cause a host of other problems.

"We are continuing research to understand the interactions of the elaborate communities within biofilms and how they relate to disease. Many studies have investigated biofilms using single species, but more relevant multispecies models are emerging. Novel treatments for biofilm-induced diseases also are being investigated, but we have a long way to go," Scott said.

Scott elaborates on this research in a short question and answer style blog published today on the BioMedCentral website.

Attention to Scott's work comes as the World Health Organization observes World No Tobacco Day on May 31 to encourage a global 24-hour abstinence from all forms of tobacco consumption. The effort points to the annual 6 million worldwide deaths linked to the negative health effects of tobacco use.

In the United States, Kentucky ranks second for cigarette use among adults, according the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Only West Virginia has more smokers. Kentucky also brings up the rear among youth in grades 9-12 who use tobacco; according to 2011 CDC data, about 24-percent of high school students smoke cigarettes.

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BALTIMORE - May 31, 2016. The University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Cancer Center has been awarded the National Cancer Institute's highest designation as a Comprehensive Cancer Center. The prestigious distinction recognizes the cancer center's high caliber of scientific leadership and robust programs in basic, clinical and population science research, placing it in the top tier of cancer centers nationwide. The new name of the center is the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center (UMGCCC).

The cancer center was granted NCI-designated Cancer Center status in 2008 and applied last fall to become a Comprehensive Cancer Center. NCI awarded the center the new designation after a rigorous review, which included a three-day site visit by 22 NCI reviewers in late February. The reviewers cited the cancer center's "impressive progress" over the past five years and rated the center "outstanding." The new designation goes into effect at the start of the cancer center's next grant cycle August 1.

"We are extremely proud to have met the NCI's exacting standards to be recognized as a Comprehensive Cancer Center and to be ranked in the very top echelon of cancer centers in the country," says Kevin J. Cullen, MD, the Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Distinguished Professor of Oncology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the cancer center's director. "This designation is a tremendous achievement for our entire team and will significantly enhance our ability to translate discoveries in the laboratory into better treatments for cancer patients in Maryland and beyond."

The Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center is one of only 46 NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers in the United States. There are a total of 69 NCI-designated Cancer Centers in 35 states and Washington, D.C.

"The Greenebaum family could not be more pleased that the Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Cancer Center has achieved this important milestone," says Michael Greenebaum, President, Greenebaum Enterprises, Inc. "To see the cancer center reach the highest echelon under the direction of Dr. Cullen is truly a dream come true for my Mom and Dad."

As a result of the new designation, the cancer center's grant will increase 50 percent, to $1.5 million, and the center will be eligible for other funding from the NCI and other public and private sources.

"We have made significant strides in expanding our basic and clinical research to include a strong population science program to help reduce disparities in both cancer treatment and prevention that threaten the health of minority populations," Dr. Cullen says. "About 33 percent of the patients who take part in our clinical trials are African-American, reflecting our cancer center's unique position and mission to involve the minority community in state-of-the-art clinical and translational research."

Dr. Cullen adds that the cancer center has also developed a comprehensive education and training program to educate the next generation of clinicians and scientists.

NCI Comprehensive Cancer Centers have comprehensive, well-integrated programs in population health, education and cancer prevention as well as outstanding basic, clinical and translational research programs.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who was treated for Stage III non-Hodgkin lymphoma at the cancer center in 2015, has advocated for the center's efforts to achieve Comprehensive Cancer Center status. "Our state takes enormous pride in the Greenebaum Cancer Center's accomplishments and commitment to helping reduce cancer risks, increase access to care and improve the health of all Marylanders," Mr. Hogan says. "The cutting-edge research being conducted at the cancer center has changed the ways cancer is treated, not only here in Maryland but around the world.

"Personally, I could not be more grateful to have been the recipient of the outstanding medical care that the center is known for," Mr. Hogan says. "And it is because of this expert and compassionate care, combined with a lot of support and prayers, that I am proud to say that I am now in complete remission and cancer-free."

"This is a significant achievement for the Greenebaum Cancer Center, and one that perfectly reflects the research-intensive ethos and culture of the School of Medicine," says E. Albert Reece, MD., PhD, MBA, vice president for medical affairs at the University of Maryland and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor and dean of the University of Maryland School of Medicine. "With our commitment to discovery-based medicine, this designation further supports the culture and research productivity of our faculty in developing major breakthroughs in cancer that will benefit patients in our community and around the world."

"This designation reflects the commitment to scientific discovery, precision medicine and cancer prevention that makes the Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center a world-class institution, known for its innovative research but also its compassionate patient care," says Jay A. Perman, MD, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB). "Faculty members at the School of Nursing and other professional schools at UMB work very closely with the cancer center on a number of major research initiatives, including exploring methods to eradicate debilitating cancer-related pain."

The UMGCCC is part of both the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the University of Maryland Medical Center. All of the physicians and the majority of the basic scientists are employees and faculty members of the School of Medicine. The cancer center also is at the heart of the University of Maryland Cancer Network, which includes cancer centers at several community hospitals in the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) - the University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center, the University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Medical Center, and the University of Maryland Baltimore Washington Medical Center.

"This designation marks a significant milestone for the Greenebaum Cancer Center, further advancing the extraordinary levels of clinical services and research available to the people of Maryland and the region," says Robert A. Chrencik, president and chief executive officer of the University of Maryland Medical System. "Through the University of Maryland Cancer Network, our affiliated cancer centers treat Marylanders with the innovative and outstanding care they would expect from an academic cancer center - but closer to their homes."

NCI-designated Cancer Centers are the backbone of the NCI's programs to study and control cancer. About three-quarters of NCI's grants for investigator-initiated research are awarded to NCI-designated Cancer Centers, and many new therapies are available to patients as part of clinical trials. Studies have shown that patients treated at NCI-designated Cancer Centers have increased survival rates.

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About the University of Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center

The University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center is a National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center in Baltimore. The center is a joint entity of the University of Maryland Medical Center and University of Maryland School of Medicine. It offers a multidisciplinary approach to treating all types of cancer and has an active cancer research program. It is ranked in the top 50 cancer programs in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. http://www.umgcc.org.

About the University of Maryland School of Medicine

The University of Maryland School of Medicine was chartered in 1807 and is the first public medical school in the United States. It continues today as an innovative leader in accelerating innovation and discovery in medicine. The School of Medicine is the founding school of the University of Maryland and is an integral part of the 11-campus University System of Maryland. Located on the University of Maryland's Baltimore campus, the School of Medicine works closely with the University of Maryland Medical Center and Medical System to provide a research-intensive, academic and clinically based education. With 43 academic departments, centers and institutes and a faculty of more than 3,000 physicians and research scientists plus more than $400 million in extramural funding, the School is regarded as one of the leading biomedical research institutions in the U.S. with top-tier faculty and programs in cancer, brain science, surgery and transplantation, trauma and emergency medicine, vaccine development and human genomics, among other centers of excellence. The School is not only concerned with the health of the citizens of Maryland and the nation, but also has a global presence, with research and treatment facilities in more than 35 countries around the world. medschool.umaryland.edu/

About the University of Maryland Medical Center

The University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) is comprised of two hospitals in Baltimore: an 800-bed teaching hospital -- the flagship institution of the 12-hospital University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) -- and a 200-bed community teaching hospital, UMMC Midtown Campus. UMMC is a national and regional referral center for trauma, cancer care, neurocare, cardiac care, diabetes and endocrinology, women's and children's health and has one of the largest solid organ transplant programs in the country. All physicians on staff at the flagship hospital are faculty physicians of the University of Maryland School of Medicine. At UMMC Midtown Campus, faculty physicians work alongside community physicians to provide patients with the highest quality care. UMMC Midtown Campus was founded in 1881 and is located one mile away from the University Campus hospital. For more information, visit http://www.umm.edu

UMGCCC AT A GLANCE

Cares for more than 3,300 new cancer patients a year; handles nearly 50,000 outpatient visits and 1,800 inpatient admissions

5 research programs and 7 shared services

248 faculty members from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, other professional schools at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) and four universities within the University System of Maryland

Minority participation in clinical trials. Nearly 33 percent of patients who take part in clinical trials are African-American. Nationally, the rate of African-American participation in clinical trials is less than 2 percent.

$61.7 million in research funding - $22.7 million from the National Cancer Institute (NCI)

Heart of the University of Maryland Cancer Network: Includes University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center, University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Medical Center and University of Maryland Baltimore Washington Medical Center

Active community role:

Partners with the NCI and UMB on UMB CURE Scholars Program to encourage middle-school students to become physicians, cancer researchers and other health care workers. Mentors tutor students three times a week in science and math. First CURE Scholars Program in the country for middle-school students.

Baltimore City Cancer Program offers free breast, cervical, oral and colon cancer screenings to uninsured or underinsured Baltimore residents. More than 32,000 screenings have been performed since 2001.

RECENT SCIENTIFIC ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Discovery of galeterone, a novel compound to treat aggressive prostate cancer resistant to hormone therapy. Licensed to Tokai Pharmaceuticals, galeterone has been fast-tracked by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and is in Phase III clinical trials. Complementary research has identified gene mutations that may predict patients' response.

Invention of a one-of-a-kind stereotactic radiotherapy system called the GammaPod designed to treat early-stage breast cancer. Pending FDA approval.

OTHER KEY AREAS OF RESEARCH
MIAMI - A scientist at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science is leading an upcoming international research campaign to study a significant contributor to regional climate warming - smoke. The first-of-its-kind research experiment begins on June 1, 2016 from Ascension Island in the southeastern Atlantic Ocean. The experiment, called LASIC (Layered Atlantic Smoke Interactions with Clouds), is part of a broader international scientific collaboration led by the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility deployment. The broad collaboration is detailed in a new article in the July Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

Southern Africa is the world's largest emitter of smoke particles in the atmosphere, known as biomass-burning aerosols, from the burning of grasslands and other biomass. The project will help researchers better understand the effects of widespread biomass burning on Earth's climate.

The study will investigate how smoke particles flowing far offshore from the African continent affect the remote and cloudy southeast Atlantic climate. Smoke, which absorbs sunlight, is a warming agent in the climate system when located above a bright surface, such as clouds. The smoke overlying the southeast Atlantic provides one of the largest aerosol-based warming of climate on the planet, since the region is also home to one of the largest low-cloud decks on the planet.

"Ascension Island is an ideal location since it is very remote and allows us to sample the smoke after it is well-aged, about which less is known," said Paquita Zuidema, professor of atmospheric sciences at the UM Rosenstiel School and principal investigator of the research experiment. The long deployment time will allow us to characterize the marine low clouds both with and without the presence of smoke. This is ultimately valuable for understanding the Earth's energy balance."

By evaluating how the low clouds respond to the presence of sunlight-absorbing aerosols, scientists can better understand low cloud behavior, which is currently an uncertainty in model predictions of future climate, since no fundamental theory on low cloud processes is yet in place.

Low clouds dominate the atmosphere over the southeast Atlantic Ocean all year. Bright white cloud appears darker when viewed from above when smoke is present. The southeast Atlantic overall is brighter, not darker when smoke is present, suggesting that the clouds become thicker and more extensive when smoke is present.

Zuidema received a $365,050 seed grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to plan the study. And a $440,225 grant from NASA which further supports related aircraft investigations as part of the NASA Earth Venture Suborbital-2 ORACLES project.

NASA will complement the DOE surface-based measurements with airborne experiments during a month of each year in 2016-2018. This will allow researchers to take airborne samples of smoke particles as it ages, information that will improve satellite retrievals of this mixed smoke-cloud regime. The United Kingdom will also participate with its research aircraft, and French, Namibian, and South African scientists will collect and interpret aircraft and ground-based measurements closer to the Namibian coast.

The UM Rosenstiel School-led research team will study how smoke is transported through the atmosphere and across the Atlantic, how the aerosols change when transported, and the response of the low-lying clouds to the smoke. The information from the experiments will ultimately be used to improve global aerosol models and climate change forecasts.

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About the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School

The University of Miami is one of the largest private research institutions in the southeastern United States. The University's mission is to provide quality education, attract and retain outstanding students, support the faculty and their research, and build an endowment for University initiatives. Founded in the 1940's, the Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science has grown into one of the world's premier marine and atmospheric research institutions. Offering dynamic interdisciplinary academics, the Rosenstiel School is dedicated to helping communities to better understand the planet, participating in the establishment of environmental policies, and aiding in the improvement of society and quality of life. For more information, visit: http://www.rsmas.miami.edu and http://www.climate.miami.edu
The University of Southampton is leading an international project to understand how the environment can help to control the risk of disease in fish and crustacean aquaculture in India and Bangladesh.

Infectious disease outbreaks represent a key limitation to the sustainable expansion of the aquaculture industry to meet the global challenges of food security and poverty alleviation.

The consortium, which is jointly led by the University of Southampton (UK) and the Central Institute of Brackishwater Aquaculture (India), involves nine research institutes and universities in India, the UK and Bangladesh.

The aim of the project is to calculate the role of physical pond conditions in controlling two socio-economically devastating pathogens of decapod crustaceans and freshwater fish in Asian aquaculture.

Global losses to White Spot Syndrome Virus (WSSV), the causative agent of white spot disease (WSD) in shrimp and other crustaceans, have been estimated to cost between US$ 8-15 billion.

Dr Chris Hauton, Associate Professor in Ocean and Earth Science at the University of Southampton and Principal Investigator of the project, said: "Currently, there is no effective means of controlling this globally significant pathogen that has been proven at farm scale. Our current best option is to understand how the environment controls disease progression in shrimp ponds, as a means to reduce the risk of infectious outbreak. This knowledge, incorporated into guidelines for best management practice, will allow for the development of novel intervention strategies to be implemented in the future."

At least 94 species of fish are affected by ulcerative syndromes (EUS) caused by the pathogenic fungal-like oomycete Aphanomyces invadans. In the period 1988-89 Bangladesh alone suffered a revenue loss of US$ 4.8 million due to EUS.

Professor Pieter van West, Director of the International Centre for Aquaculture Research and Development at the University of Aberdeen, added: "This is a very important award that will give us much needed information about EUS. As far as we know, this disease has not reached European aquaculture, but is one disease we should be very vigilant about as it is uncontrollable at the moment."

Researchers will work with farmers in India and Bangladesh to identify existing best practice to formulate new guidelines to disseminate throughout farming communities across Asia. The team will also develop new understanding of the host pathogen interaction for both diseases, with the intention of developing future novel intervention methods with which to tackle infection.

Funding for this research has been provided through the Global Research Partnership Aquaculture, representing the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) India, the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences and the Economic and Social Research Councils (BBSRC and ESRC), the Newton-Bhabha Fund and UK Aid.

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New fundamental research by UT Dallas physicists may accelerate the drive toward more advanced electronics and more powerful computers.

The scientists are investigating materials called topological insulators, whose surface electrical properties are essentially the opposite of the properties inside.

"These materials are made of the same thing throughout, from the interior to the exterior," said Dr. Fan Zhang, assistant professor of physics at UT Dallas. "But, the interior does not conduct electrons -- it's an insulator -- while the electrons on the surface are free to move around. The surface is therefore a conductor, like a metal, but it is in fact more robust than a metal."

There are two types of topological insulators: strong and weak. The difference between them is subtle and involves complex physics, but is critically important.

"If you had a cube of material that is a strong topological insulator, all six faces can conduct electrons," Zhang said. "For the weak one, only the four sides are conducting, while the top and bottom surfaces remain insulating."

Strong topological insulators were made experimentally shortly after they were theoretically proposed. Zhang said they are common in nature, and several dozen variations have been identified and experimentally confirmed.

On the other hand, weak topological insulators have been more elusive. Scientists have proposed various ways to construct a weak topological insulator, but because of its distinctive properties, researchers have not been able to say definitively that they have experimentally produced one.

Zhang, a theoretical physicist, has devised a new way to make a weak topological insulator, one that involves a relatively simple mix of two chemical elements: a crystal composed of bismuth combined with either iodine or bromine. He and his colleagues published the research recently in the journal Physical Review Letters and presented their work at the March meeting of the American Physical Society.

In the 1970s, German scientists grew bismuth iodides and bismuth bromides, but they didn't understand their potential as weak topological insulators, Zhang said.

"This class of materials we are proposing is a unique platform for exploring exotic physics with fairly simple chemistry," he said. "With further research and experimentation, our findings could lead to significant advances in technology, especially in electronics and quantum computing."

Electrically conductive materials are the fundamental building blocks of the traditional transistors that power electronic devices including cellphones and computers. Researchers are developing new theories and experiments with innovative physics and materials to create new transistor-like technologies that run devices and make computers more powerful.

With such exotic electrical properties, topological insulators offer a potential option, Zhang said.

"Our lives have been modified over time by our understanding of the conduction of electrons and the exploitation of this physics for use in electronic devices," he said. "We now need to revolutionize transistors. One possible substitution is a so-called topological field effect transistor, which could be made of a thin film of a weak topological insulator."

Computers also are heading for a fundamental redesign, and those efforts might be aided by Zhang's research.

"The fundamental computing scale is now very limited," he said. "For many applications, like weather forecasting and information encoding and decoding, today's computers are way too slow. However, quantum computers have been proposed that would use the principles of quantum physics to compute exponentially faster than today's computers.

"Weak topological insulators could make quantum computing feasible."

As a theorist, Zhang used old-fashioned pencil and paper to construct the basis of his theory about the bismuth compounds. His postdoctoral researcher Dr. Cheng-Cheng Liu, the study's lead author and now an assistant professor at Beijing Institute of Technology, then crunched specific numbers using high-speed supercomputers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center based at UT Austin.

Zhang's UT Dallas colleague, Dr. Bing Lv, assistant professor of physics, has made samples of bismuth iodide.

"The next step will be to characterize the material to explore the unique properties that a weak topological insulator can offer to fundamental physics and to our everyday lives," Zhang said.

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In addition to Zhang and Liu, other authors of the study are Dr. Jin-Jian Zhou at California Institute of Technology and Yugui Yao at Beijing Institute of Technology.

The work at UT Dallas was primarily supported by University startup funds and the National Science Foundation through the Aspen Center for Physics and Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics.
When neurons die, their remains need to be eliminated quickly so that the surrounding brain tissue can continue functioning. A type of highly specialised cell known as microglia is responsible for this process which is called phagocytosis (derived from the Greek "phagein", to eat, and "kitos", cell). These tiny cells have numerous branches that are constantly on the move inside the brain and are specially equipped to detect and destroy any foreign element, including dead neurons. Or that is what has been believed until now.

In this study, which has just been published by the journal PLoS Biology, the process of neuronal death and microglial phagocytosis in the diseased brain has been studied for the first time. To do this, brain samples taken from epilepsy patients at the University Hospital of Cruces and from epileptic mice were used.

Neurons are known to die during the convulsions associated with epilepsy. But contrary to expectations, in this condition the microglia are "blind" and incapable of either finding them or destroying them. Their behaviour is abnormal. And the dead neurons that cannot be eliminated build up and damage the neighbouring neurons further, which leads to an inflammatory response by the brain which harms and damages it even further.

This discovery opens up a new channel for exploring therapies that could palliate the effects of brain diseases. In fact, the research group that authored this work is right now exploring the development of drugs to encourage this cleaning up process, phagocytosis, that could help in the treatment of epilepsy patients.

The study was led by Dr Amanda Sierra, head of the Glial Cell Biology laboratory of the Achucarro Basque Center for Neuroscience, and the experimental work was conducted mainly by the researchers Oihane Abiega, Sol Beccari and Irune Diaz-Aparicio. Other Achucarro and UPV/EHU researchers such as Juan Manuel Encinas, Jorge Valero, Victor Sanchez-Zafra and Inaki Paris also participated in it.

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This piece of international research was coordinated from the Basque Country and had the participation of research groups from CIC bioGUNE (Derio), the University of Bordeaux (France), the University of Southampton (UK), Universite Laval (Canada), and the Baylor College of Medicine (USA).

Bibliographical reference:

O Abiega et al. "Neuronal hyperactivity disturbs ATP microgradients, impairs microglial motility, and reduces phagocytic receptor expression triggering apoptosis/microglial phagocytosis uncoupling" PLoS Biol 14(5): e1002466. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1002466
Most of epilepsy cases are treatable, yet in many parts of the world, including sub-Saharan Africa where the burden is amongst the world's highest, access to adequate treatment remains low. This results is significant stigma, avoidable harm and large societal costs. A doctoral dissertation from Umea University suggests using community health workers to provide patient education and monitor medication adherence in a cost-effective way to reduce the epilepsy treatment gap.

"Our study adds to the health community's understanding of the epidemiology of epilepsy in rural South Africa and seriousness of the treatment gap in this context," says Ryan Wagner, researcher at the Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Unit of Epidemiology and Global Health and author of the dissertation.

"Researchers and policymakers must urgently work together to identify interventions, such as the one we propose, that seek to reduce the epilepsy treatment gap and, ultimately, the burden of epilepsy."

Epilepsy is a common neurological disorder that affects 50 million individuals globally and indirectly impacts the lives of at least 500 million family members, friends and teachers of people with epilepsy. A majority of epilepsy cases are treatable with anti-epileptic drugs.

In his research, Ryan Wagner, who has a background in both neuroscience and field-based epidemiology, has followed a number of individuals in rural Agincourt, South Africa. Participants in the study were patients - both with and without epilepsy - within the Agincourt Health and Demographic Surveillance System. Using blood samples, Ryan Wagner and his research colleagues identified people who had epilepsy and determined how many of them were not adequately receiving or taking treatment, often referred to as the treatment gap.

The study results showed that 63 percent of people with epilepsy did not receive adequate treatment and were in fact in urgent need of an intervention. Employing local community health workers to counsel patients and monitor their adherence to medication for epilepsy, the researchers found, would be a cost-effective intervention to reduce the treatment gap, ultimately reducing the disease burden. Concretely, this would mean fewer seizures, improved productivity and likely less money spent on emergency care.

According to Ryan Wagner, recent attention given to epilepsy by the World Health Organization lends important political support and momentum for increased focus on a condition that for too long has been neglected in much of sub-Saharan Africa.

"Using sound epidemiology and population-based research sites, such as Agincourt, disease parameters can be measured and interventions modelled to determine their cost-effectiveness. Continued epilepsy research is essential in order to reduce the treatment gap for some of the world's most vulnerable populations," says Ryan Wagner, who is keen to continue this work in rural South Africa.

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Ryan Wagner has spent the last eight years living and working in rural northeastern South Africa. In addition to his doctoral studies at the Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Ryan is currently the acting Research Manager at the MRC/Wits Agincourt Research Unit within the School of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. The abovementioned research was supported by the European Union's Marie-Curie International Research Staff Exchange Scheme, the Umea Centre for Global Health Research at Umea University, through contributions from FAS and the Swedish Research School in Global Health. Additional support for the fieldwork was provided through the Priority Cost-effective Lessons for Systems Strengthening (PRICELESS) directorate, a sub-award through the University of Washington from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.
Written by ACM





*Strasbourg/Angelo Marcopolo/- European Christian Leaders and Experts from various confessions, joined by a Group of Muslim representatives, started with a message from Pope Francis, on "UpHolding Human Dignity" and "Transforming Hearts" and "Bars", a 3 Day Conference in Strasbourg, under the auspices of the CoE, on how to tackle the currently "Hot" issue of "Radicalisation in Prisons", which obviously involves both Human Rights and Security matters vis a vis Violent Terrorism, as well as Debates on the role of Religion in Society Today.





By "Directing their Thoughts and Prayer to the Father, each time they Cross the Threshold of their Cell", this could "Signify for them their Passage through the Holy Door, because the Mercy of God is Able to Transform Hearts, and .. to Transform Bars into an Experience of Freedom", reads this Message from the Pope, as send to Strasbourg by Vatican's Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who referred also to a Letter related to this "Jubilee Year of Mercy" (2016), regarding which, Pope Francis "Thanks Prison Chaplains for Assisting Prisoners to Celebrate (it) ..; Fruitfully", while a Special Event for them is prepared in Rome on November.



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The Head of the European Bishops' Conference, (which extends throughout all the European Continent), Mgr Duarte da Cuhna, observed from the outset that some Conclusions on these Issues "may have Political Consequences" as well. It's a Fact that Radicalisation led lately to various Violent Acts of some Extremists, which provoked legitimate Concerns to all Citizens, and, therefore, concern also the Christian Church.



This a "Complex Question", he warned. Recently, a kind of "Religious Radicalisation" emerged, provoking also a "Radical Laicism" from another side. It's better to avoid both, mainly by Reflecting on anOther concept of Society, he advised.



At the Heart of the matter is "also" the "Human Person", "not only as an Individual, but with All its Human Relations". "For us", "Religion is Not about Violence, but about God's Regard to a Human Person", which Valorizes him and his Freedom. Therefore, instead of some's attempts to Exclude Religion from the Public Space, on the Contrary, it should be adequately Developed, he stressed.



In particular, f.ex. Prisons' Chaplains can Help "Create Human Relations and Bridges between Persons", Mgr da Cuhna pointed out, concluding by expressing his "Hope" that the Conclusions of this joint PanEuropean Conference together with the CoE would observe that an adequate Religious Experience is Indispensable also in order to help Avoid Violence and Radicalisation Today.



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More particularly, speaking on behalf of the Experienced International Commission of Catholic "Prison Pastoral Care", its President, Father Brian Gowans, from Scotland, observed that in a Recent meeting of COE Member Countries' Ministers of Justice in Bucarest (Romania), most of them Acknowledged the "Need to have More Prisons' Chaplains" in real practice. Indeed, instead of Seeing Chaplains as Part of the Problem, on the Contrary, they should become "Part of the Solution", he stressed.

One among the things that Chaplains can do, is to Focus "on Truth", and on the Various Aspects of Truth, which Help to Reach God, and, by the right "Consciousness", help bring some "Light" in the life of Prisoners, so that they can "Trust" us, he pointed out.



In the Past, f.ex. during the 1970ies, due to the previous Problems about Terrorism etc. either in relation with IRA or some other subsidiary groups (in Northern Ireland), Catholics often were seen with "Suspicion" then inside Great Britain, almost as Muslims might feel Today in Europe, he speculated. But, Today, "it's Only 1" among CoE's 47 Member Countries' Minsiters of Justice who claimed that the Church might be "Part of the Problem". Most felt that, Opposite to that, we should all together Look for a Solution, and become Parts of that Solution : Both Bishops, Chaplains, Jurists, Counter-Terrorism Officials, etc, he concluded.



Even in my comparatively Small Country, Scotland, there are, Today, many People in Prisons who need some kind of Care, which could also help avoid Radicalisation, President Gowans said afterwards to "Eurofora".



Christian Chaplains can Help create useful Personal Contacts and Trust with Inmates, even of Muslim Religion, both by adequately Cooperating with Imams, and by Speaking to Prisoners and contributing to provide them with various Practical kinds of Help to address several everyday matters that they need to settle, the Experienced ICCPPC Head told us.



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ECHR's EuroJudge Vincent de Gaetano, who has already had a Long and Multifacet Carreer, building useful relevant Experience not only as Judge, but even as former Attorney General, dealing also with various Criminal cases, pursued with a very Long and Interesting Analysis, as Keynote Speaker, mainly Focused on Prisoners' Human Rights :



Despite the Prison sentence that they are serving, Inmates, according to ECHR's Case-Law, "at least, they should Not be Deprived from their Human Dignity, also because, if they are deprived even from that, then they Risk to be Attracted by Extremists" who push "Radicalisation", the EuroJudge Warned in substance.

As for the part often attributed Today to "Religion" vis a vis some new kinds of Radicalisation, in fact, most of the times, "Religion is just a Symptom of Underlying Problems", he advanced. "One of these Problems could be related to the way that some People are sometimes Ill-Treated, but they don't have the means to tackle that in an adequate way, and there is where CoE's Principles could help.



In Fact, CoE's PanEuropean Convention on Human Rights, doesn't deal with Radicalisation, not even with Prisoners, as such. F.ex., the Term "Imprisonment" is used only 1 time, about the Prohibition of Prison sentences for Debt, (Article 1 of Protocol 4 to that Convention). And the term "Detention" is met Twice in the Prohibition of Slavery and Forced Work, (Article 4), as well as Many Times in the Article 5 about Personal Liberty, he observed.



Indeed, in the Past, we didn't have a real Experience of Radicalisation in Europe, Gaetano reminded, except around "Early 1980ies", Gaetano (who comes from Malta) reminded, at least as far as he was personaly concerned. F.ex., I had to deal with a case of an Airplane from Egypt, Hijacked to Cyprus, which ended up to Malta, whose Authorities refused to give assault, and left it to the hands of the Egyptian Authorities, resultin in a Mess, from which remained only 1 Hijacker, who was cought and prosecuted, pleaded Guilty and was sentenced to Prison. When I Visited him in that Jail, I was surprized to find out that he was "Fascinated by 1 Person : An Old Lady aged 60 or 70 years, a Nun, with whom he spend Hours Talking !" However, he also Warned her : - "I Respect you, but if you were American, I would Kill you !"...

During our First Experience with Radicalisation, from Late 1960ies to 1970ies, f.ex. in Italy, those Problems of "Political Radicalisation, had Nothing to do with Religion", he reminded.



At the Same Time, approximatively "up to the Middle of 1980ies", ECHR's Case Law avout the Conditions of Detention, didn't yet have not even 1 known case where it would have found an "Inhuman or Degrading Treatment" of Prisoners;. It's only after "Late 1980ies", (i.e. after the Fall of Berlin Wall, when the ReUnification of Europe arrived to the LimeLights), when the CoE set up the "Commitee to Prevent Torture" (CPT), and issues PanEuropean Guidelines against inhuman and/or Degrading Treatments, that ECHR really Started to deal with such kind of issues more actively.



Thus, even without explicite references to the "Human Dignity", ("unlike the -subsequent- EU's Charter of Rights, which speaks about Human Dignity from its very 1st Article"), ECHR started to Build a relevant Case Law mainly around Article 3 of the PanEurropean Convention on Human Rights, which Prohibits Torture and/or Inhuman/Degrading Treatments, extending that not only to Member States' Obligation to "Refrain" from Ill-Treatment, but also to their Positive Obligation to Take Steps to Protect f.ex. the Safety, and the Health, etc. of Prisoners. In parallel, CPT developed relevant Standards, f.ex. against OverCrowding (i.e. at least 4 Square Meters for each Prisoner), Lack of outdoor Exercice, Solitary Confinement, etc), Gaetano pointed out. Moreover, in addition to those "Substantial" Violations of Article 3, ECHR recognized also certain "Procedural" Violations, particularly when it couldn't have yet enough Evidence of ill-treatment, while a Member State had "Not Investigated Adequatly" a serious affair. ECHR also condemned States' attempts to search Evidence of Terrorism by Torturing Witnesses, on the basis of Article 6 about the Human Right to "Fair Trial", he noted.



Already as early as at the beginning of the 2Oth Century, a British Politician as Winston Churchil, speaking of Prisoners, had adopted an Attitude Similar to that of the ECHR Today, stressing that this would be Better for Great Britain and for all Europe, EuroJudge Gaetano found, citting also Russian Writer "Dostoyevski"'s moto that "the Level of Civilisation in a Country could be measured by the Way it Treats its Prisoners".



Replying, afterwards, to various Questions, f.ex., on the "Definition of Radicalisation" according to ECHR's principles, he observed that the PanEuropean Court wasn't called to define Radicalisation as such, but this might be "Measured in terms of Dangerosity", f.ex. in order to give or deny Bail, etc. However, this had to be Assessed Not by a Judge, but by Other Competent Experts". Nevertheless, Gaetano didn't really Reply another relevant Question by another Participant, concerning the relation of Radicalisation with "Ideology", when, f.ex., some among Jihadist Prisoners may believe that Aggressing "Non Believers" would be "Halal" (i.e. Allowed), reminding, mutatis-mutandis, a similar kind of Dangerous Terrorist Ideology as that of NAZIsm in the Past, as criticaly denounced an Expert from Austria, claiming that he refered to realy existing cases.



However, speaking later to" Eurofora", EuroJudge Gaetano didn't think that ECHR might extend its above mentioned Case Law about Member States' "Positive" Obligations also regarding the current Need to Protect both Prisoners themselves and other Citizens as well as the Society at large from Risks for some Extremist Terrorist Networks to attempt to "Exploit" a Fragile and Frustrating situation in Jails, including eventual ill-treatments of detainees, in order to "Manipulate" them, and push them to Serve their Deadly purposes afterwards : Already, ECHR faces a lot of Criticism, (by some Governments, etc) for its Case Law on States' existing "Positive Obligations", so that I don't think that it might Now try to Advance Further in this regard, as he carefuly told us, (but, apparently, without excluding a priori similar developments at another stage in the Future).



(../..)

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("DraftNews", as already send to "Eurofora"s Subscribers/Donors, earlier. A more accurate, full Final Version might be Published asap).

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The expansion into the Chennai market is expected to add business of over 100 crores for Motivator and is an integral part of the growth plans for the agency

Motivator, a GroupM agency has extended its services in the Southern market by launching its operations in Chennai.

The expansion into the Chennai market is expected to add business of over 100 crores for Motivator and is an integral part of the growth plans for the agency. Chennai is the fifth city in Motivators network in India in addition to Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Thrissur.

Christopher Paul will lead the new Chennai team and will report to Zahid Shaikh, who was recently appointed as the Head of Operations - Motivator South.

With the aim of solving business and marketing challenges, the agency further plans to set up a Data, Science and Tech lab in the city that will focus on building frameworks for data applications.

The Chennai operations will service Motivators existing client base in the city, including brands like Yamaha and FundsIndia. In addition to these, the agency will look at bringing on board other local accounts and potential businesses with the objective of strengthening the client base in the new market.

Speaking on the announcement, Rabe Iyer, MD, Motivator said, As part of our expansion plans, we are looking at diversifying our client portfolio in the Southern market. The launch of our Chennai operations is a significant step in that regard. Besides, we look at Chennai as our Data & Tech lab destination given our existing partnerships and engagement with highly evolved start ups there. While Bangalore will be the central hub for Insights and Product development, Chennai will host the labs for Data Science and emerging technology."

Read more news about (ad news, latest advertising news India, internet advertising, ad agencies updates, media advertising India)
The Data Sciences Center will embed analytics in all decisions and will focus on big-data and advanced-analytics to define consumer-centric growth strategy

Snapdeal, Indias largest online marketplace has announced the establishment of its Data Sciences Center in San Carlos, California. The center is home to veteran data scientists from leading global brands like Groupon, Google, Yahoo and Amazon and is headed by Nitin Sharma, Senior Vice President, Data Sciences. This is in line with the companys vision to onboard top global talent to help build high-value solutions and develop a high impact growth strategy.

The center will focus on big-data and advanced analytics to add granular clarity to Snapdeals consumer-centric initiatives. It will help shape the business strategy of the company and optimize the operational efficiencies using data driven algorithms, data analytics and predictive modeling.

Commenting on this development, Rohit Bansal, Co-Founder, Snapdeal said, We have set up a Data Science engine in California, which is home to domain talent, to further augment our efforts in creating a superior customer experience and strengthen our supply chain. Snapdeal is extensively working on data mining through an existing analytics team. Under Nitins leadership the data science team will focus on elevating Snapdeals growth-focused strategy and to provide insightful guidance. The richer understanding of the customers by capturing and integrating the information on their buying behavior will drive habit commerce and is in sync with our vision of 20 million daily transacting users by the year 2020.

We have a highly accomplished team which can distill key patterns, consumer preferences and hidden correlations by quickly analyzing huge quantities of data. We will bring fresh insights to the existing work and will enhance customer experience through better planning and forecasting, added Sharma.

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As Narendra Modi completes two years in office, he seems to be taking steps forward to make Digital India more than just a dream and working towards stamping Indias presence on the global digital map

When you change the way you see the world, you change the world you see, said global tech giant Microsofts India-born chief executive officer (CEO) Satya Nadella who was in India for a day on Monday at Microsofts Tech For Good, Ideas for India event.

Modi has always rooted for a digitally empowered economy, and it is this vision that saw the launch of Digital India, one of the central governments marquee initiatives. The launch of the Digital India week also saw the announcement of new projects as part of the campaign. Digital Locker system, MyGov.in and Swachh Bharat Mission mobile app were some of the projects revealed to the public.

If you innovate in India for India, you are going to be able to innovate for the world, India can, then, become the entrepreneurial engine for the next six billion people on the planet just like the US is the entrepreneurial engine for the top one billion people. Thats the opportunity we have, and that is India's economic future, said Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha, who was also present at the event where Nadella was delivering his keynote adddress, said technology is a platform of growth for India.

Private sector supports Digital India

While the government has been all out to promote this initiative, the private sector has also done its part. Top industrialists including Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani and Vedanta chairman Anil Agarwal pledged investments amounting to Rs 4.5 lakh crore for the PMs Digital India programme. While Ambani announced investments of Rs 2,50,000 crore, a part of which will go into a retail network of 1.5 lakh stores, and rest help set up a start-up fund, Vedantas investments will include set up of a LCD panel fab unit, which he expects will employ 50,000 people and reduce Indias electronic imports by 20 per cent.

By the end of 2015, the government had launched 22 new schemes under the digital India programme. The vision of the programme is centred on three key areas: digital infrastructure as a utility to every citizen - digital identity, mobile phone and bank account, safe and secure cyber space; governance and services on demand - services available in real time on online and mobile platform, making financial transactions electronic and cashless, and digital empowerment of citizens - all documents, certificates available on cloud.

Digital India envisages connecting 2.5 lakh villages by broadband and phones, reduce import of telecom imports to zero, wi-fi in 2.5 lakh schools, all universities, public wi-fi hotspots for citizens and creating 1.7 crore direct and 8.5 crore indirect jobs. Other impact points include training 1.7 crore citizens for IT, telecom and electronics jobs, and delivering e-governance and e-services.

Digital India gains momentum

In a recent interview to a mainstream business newspaper, Ravi Shankar Prasad, union minister for communication and information technology informed that the digital delivery is right on track. Around 19 lakh citizens are interacting on MyGov.in, 15 lakh pensioners are on Jeevan Pramaan (a biometric-enabled digital service), 37 lakh are using e-Hospital@NIC for their bookings and around 74-lakh are on National Scholarship Portal.

But e-TAAL (Electronic Transaction Aggregation And Analysis Layer), which records any movement for digital delivery of services anywhere in the country, witnessed the maximum rise with 58 crore compared to 25 crore last year. Under the digital literacy programme, 55 lakh people have been trained and around Rs 6 crore have been sanctioned in this Budget.

The union minister further added that they are looking to create some digital platforms for the country. First is BharatNet. This scheme, as National Optical Fibre Network, started in 2011 and had optical fibre of 358 km and OFC pipes of 2,292 km. As of May 2, 2016, the OFC pipe laid is 1,39,582 km, optical fibre laid is 1,11,726 km. OFC is laid in around 61,000 gram panchayats (GPs) and optical fibre in 50,500 GPs.

Furthermore, the guidelines for Mobile Virtual Mobile Network are in the process of being finalised, which is expected to revolutionise India in terms of services in the hinterland, small villages and semi-urban areas.

With all of these achievements and government initiatives, India was showcased on the world stage as a rising power in the digital space. The efforts did not go unnoticed as the Prime Minister attracted a long list of people from the digital world. Mark Zuckerberg organized a Facebook town hall with the prime minister and said The last time that a Prime Minister of India visited California was in 1982. And a lot has changed since then. Today India is a global leader, Indian businesses and culture are transforming peoples lives around the world, and for India to keep making progress, India needs to be a leader online. Responding to a question on Digital India, Modi said, In the 21st century, i-ways are as important as highways. There are around 60,000 villages in India and around 2.5 lakh panchayats, I will make an attempt to connect these villages through an optical fibre network. In the days to come, cities will be built in the presence of the optical fibre network

At the launch of the Digital India week Modi, said Through Digital India we plan to boost the manufacturing of electronic goods in the country. This initiative will help the youth aware of innovations to come up and accept the challenges faced

Foreign companies come calling

The voice of Modi may have reached not only the Indian youth but also among people globally. Top CEOs from India and overseas committed to the initiative by pledging an investment of $67 billion to make smartphones and internet devices at an affordable price. Companies like Oracle and Microsoft also chose to be a part of the Digital India campaign.

According to media reports, Microsoft CEO Nadellas meeting with Modi involved engagement of Microsoft for linking Skype and Aadhaar and enhanced cooperation for cloud services in the government sector. Nadella also spoke to the PM looking at ways to enhance partnership for the Digital India initiative.

Earlier this month, Apple CEO Tim Cook visited India and announced to set up a start-up accelerator facility in Bangalore, which would help iOS developers create innovative apps for the company's customers globally.

In February, Oracle CEO Safra Catz met with Prime Minister of India Shri Narendra Modi and announced three major investments that support the countrys global digital leadership. Catz unveiled a massive, state-of-the-art campus centered in Bengaluru, nine incubation centers throughout India, and an initiative to train more than half a million students each year to develop computer science skills. Oracle has been in India for over 25 years and during that time weve grown our investments tremendously, said Catz.

As Narendra Modi completes two years in office, he seems to be taking steps forward to make Digital India more than just a dream and working towards stamping Indias presence on the global digital map.

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Pound Sterling Slumps Overall as Polls see Leave Campaign Close the Gap in EU Referendum, but GBP/CAD Exchange Rates Tick Higher

Demand for the Canadian dollar exchange rates (CAD) diminished as members of OPEC met in Vienna for its bi-annual meeting, with the chances of any production curbing measures low.

With sentiment towards the Pound taking on a more optimistic note once again this allowed the Pound Sterling to Canadian Dollar (GBP/CAD) exchange rate to strength.

The lack of Canadian data over the rest of the week may prove advantageous for the GBP to CAD exchange rate.

Looking ahead, the next UK economic data to watch out for will come tomorrow morning in the form of the construction PMI for May, which is expected to remain at 52 points.

Friday will bring UK services and composite PMIs, while no impactful Canadian data is due until the coming week.

Heightened Brexit uncertainty saw the British pound exchange rates (GBP) slump across the board on Wednesday morning, as the latest ICM telephone poll placed the Leave camp ahead.

While confidence in the Canadian Dollar (CAD) remained generally soft the relative weakness of the US Dollar (USD) offered some additional support to the currency.

The Pound has been a generally unstable option for investors today, on account of the latest EU Referendum polls putting the more instability-linked Out vote as a strong contender at 46% compared to the 51% assigned to In.

Other UK news has been similarly harmful, with the Lloyds business barometer result for May showing a drop off from 38 points to 32, which has shown the lowest level of confidence since 2013.

This drop off in confidence is largely due to concerns about the instability caused by the EU Referendum, as well as recent poor results for UK data on the whole.

Here are the latest CAD exchange rates for your reference:

On Tuesday the Pound to British Pound exchange rate (GBP/GBP) converts at 1

The GBP to GBP exchange rate converts at 1 today.

FX markets see the pound vs us dollar exchange rate converting at 1.148.

The live inter-bank GBP-AUD spot rate is quoted as 1.795 today.

NB: the forex rates mentioned above, revised as of 25th Oct 2022, are inter-bank prices that will require a margin from your bank. Foreign exchange brokers can save up to 5% on international payments in comparison to the banks.

GBP to CAD Exchange Rate Forecast - Future UK Data This Week to Focus on PMI Printings

The Pound is likely to be moved over the remainder of the week by announcements concerning PMIs, particularly due to the fact that they could gauge how great an impact the Referendum is having on UK economic performance.

Tomorrow will bring the manufacturing variant for May, while Thursday and Friday will see the construction, composite and services results released.

Fridays services data is forecast to be of high-impact, given that previous trends have shown this industry to be holding up the national economy.

Canadian Dollar (CAD) Exchange Rates Flop after GDP Results Prove a Mixed Bag

The Loonie has fallen across the board against its peers today, owing to domestic data and commodity prices.

In the former case, GDP in March has fallen to -0.2% on the month, dropped from 1.4% to 1.1% on the year and fallen short of expectations by shifting from 0.8% to 2.4% on the annualised quarter.

In the latter, the cost of gold per 100 ounces has fallen, while despite the rise in value of crude oil per barrel on the WTI index, the Alberta wildfires that have disrupted oil production remain untamed.

Heavy Limitations on Remaining Canadian Economic Data This Week

Tomorrow is expected to bring Canadas finalised RBC manufacturing PMI for May, although other data over the rest of the week is not expected to be anywhere near as impactful.

Thursday will bring a speech from the Bank of Canadas (BOC) Lawrence Schembri, while Fridays most notable contribution will be the April balance of trade result.

Also due to come on Friday will be the Canadian export and import prices for April, as well as the first quarter labour productivity result.

Canadian GDP Results Signpost Incoming Slowdown, says Economist

Although Canadian GDP did record some sizable rises today, the long-term outlook by economists is gloomy. In particular, CIBC Capital Markets Managing Director and Chief Economist Avery Shenfeld has stated:

A fine quarter ended with a thud, as Canadian GDP got all its momentum from its first month, a signpost of a slowdown ahead.
Hi



I am at early stage's of my pregnancy and will receive my matb1 certificate after our submission of document's so will not be attaching any document's in our spouse application to confirm this. However I was wondering is it worth mentioning my pregnancy in my introduction letter briefly to add authencity of our relationship as well as the need for my husband to be with me in the UK?



Please advise?



Many thanks,
Your biggest concern is not shipping your Deer Mount here...it is the fact that any and all animal or plant material, either dead or alive "MUST" get past customs officials. Live plants, leaves, roots, seeds, animal skins, eggs...anything of a Biological nature!



I would suggest checking with Philippine Customs and see what they say...or if in the US, try to contact a company that regularly ships to the Philippines to see if they have any knowledge about the in's and out's of the Philippine Customs regulations.



I know I tried to get a few plants shipped here and had such a hassle with it that I finally gave up!
Colt Seavers said: Wouldn't that mean i'd be working illegally as my current critical skills visa is issued for me to "search for employment" (which needs to be approved)? Click to expand...

Well technically you are still searching for employment... 3 months contract goes by so quick. By the time DHA responds back to you, your 3 months contract will be over.and remember critical skills is meant to give you flexibility in your job search. if i were you i would not bother about informing DHA now, i wud only do that once i have a longer term contract. but again, this is my decision and i am not an immigration officer.VFS fees are wayyy too high and the procedures too cumbersome for me to go there every 3 months.If you want to get a better idea of what to do, email [email protected] She responds to all her emails.
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The FBI is warning U.S. energy companies that the oil industrys downturn is increasing their vulnerability to theft of technological secrets.

Companies that long have faced the prospect of economic espionage now must be prepared for the possibility that workers who have been laid off could be targeted by foreign entities and competitors wanting to steal intellectual property.

FBI investigations indicate economic espionage and trade secret theft against U.S. oil and natural gas companies and institutes are on the rise, according to an unclassified briefing report prepared for the energy industry.

Agents shared the report recently with about 150 energy sector executives, managers and others who gathered behind closed doors at the FBI building in Houston.

These energy companies are on the front lines, said Perrye K. Turner, special agent in charge of the FBIs Houston Division.

Were trying to raise awareness, educate them about the vulnerabilities and send them away with the best practices on how to protect themselves from insider threats and economic espionage, he said.

Economic espionage  which involves a proprietary product, process or idea being stolen for the benefit of a foreign government, including state-owned companies  is a federal crime that carries a sentence of up to 15 years in prison and millions of dollars in fines. China has been a major offender, according to officials.

The FBI meeting was not open to the public. Attendees declined requests to be interviewed and asked that their presence remain private.

Economic espionage is an especially sticky subject in the business world, and even those seeking information on how to prevent it are known to make investors nervous.

Trade secrets related to the search for crude oil beneath the land and sea and refining oil into gasoline are of particular interest as foreign entities target U.S. companies, universities, think tanks and researchers, according to the FBI.

Computer hacking, theft, unauthorized photography, dumpster diving and the secret elicitation of information from unsuspecting employees are just some of the ways trade secrets, proprietary information and research can land in the wrong hands, according to the FBI.

David H. Laufman, chief of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section at the Department of Justice, said U.S. corporations arent just facing foreign companies but also governments.

The threat you all face includes hackers with the full backing of their governments and criminal syndicates; you should not have to face those threats by yourself, Laufman said as he cautioned the executives to safeguard their companies.

Identify what you deem to be your crown jewels and implement tiered security efforts to protect them, he said.

Former workers could knowingly or unknowingly divulge material protected by law and worth many millions of dollars, said Special Agent Michael S. Morgan, a member of the FBI Houston Divisions national security branch.

There are increased incidents of employees taking proprietary information when they believe they will be, or are, searching for a new job, Morgan said.

With the loss of so many jobs in the oil and gas sector, it is important to remain vigilant in their efforts to protect their intellectual property from both domestic and foreign business competitors, he continued. Failure to do so will likely result in the businesses losing their competitive advantage.

Few companies have felt the impact of economic espionage as quickly and brutally as American Superconductor Corp., a company that designs wind turbines and technology used to operate them. AMSC lost nearly $1 billion in one day on the stock market in 2011 after reporting its woes.

If they want to steal windmill technology, they pretty much want to steal everything, the companys CEO Daniel McGahn, said as he shared his story with the gathering at the FBI building.

A personally troubled employee sold some of AMSCs secrets to a Chinese firm, which had presented itself as a potential partner for the U.S. company but instead sought to run it out of business.

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.

McGahn said it is important for companies to know their employees and realize that some of them, depending on their positions, could reveal compromising information about themselves and open the door to trouble for the company.

If they are going to put it out on Facebook, Twitter, whatever, you may want to have your people know what they are putting out publicly, he said noting that this employee was going through a divorce and had a love for foreign girlfriends, money and international travel.

You dont want to cross lines of personal privacy, I am not advocating that in anyway, he said. But you need to know what your people are up to as much as possible.

He noted that his company has recovered from the incident, but said that several employees he had to lay off as a result of the loss are now working in China.

The DOJs Laufman pointed to about a half-dozen economic espionage cases that have recently made their way into federal courtrooms around the country.

One defendant, who pleaded guilty earlier this year, was arrested in Iowa after being spotted in a corn field looking for special inbred corn seeds that a company had developed.

In 2014 in Pennsylvania, five Chinese military officers, who remain fugitives, were indicted for allegedly hacking into the computer systems of Westinghouse and others.

Also in 2014, an engineer in California was sentenced to 15 years for stealing secrets, basically the formula for the color of his companys white paint. It marked the first jury conviction for the charge, as most defendants plead guilty in bids for leniency, Laufman said.

Anyone with concerns about insider threats or economic espionage may contact the FBI Strategic Partnerships Coordinator in Houston via email at Economic.Espionage@ic.fbi.gov.

dane.schiller@chron.com

twitter.com/daneschiller
The Every Student Succeeds Act, which will replace the No Child Left Behind Act next year, has been widely praised for giving states more control over public education.

But several San Antonio school district officials told Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, and a U.S. Department of Education adviser Tuesday that might not be a good thing in Texas, where the school finance system is widely considered to be inadequate and the desire for greater autonomy has led governors to decline federal funding.

I think a lot of us in education feel like the accountability piece is not a two-way street, said Shelley Potter, president of the San Antonio Alliance of Teachers and Support Personnel. Its all focused on, supposedly, accountability for those of us who work within the system, but it seems like theres not any accountability for the rest of the system, which includes the funding from the state and the decisions that are made at the state.

Castro and Ruthanne Buck, a senior adviser to U.S. Education Secretary John King, met with about 30 educators and community leaders at the education service center for Region 20 to take questions and comments on ESSA.

President Barack Obama signed the bipartisan rewrite of federal education policy in December, promising an increased focus on college and career readiness, high-quality preschool and local innovation. The legislation aims to reduce unnecessary testing, in a departure from what many considered to be the test and punish system created by No Child Left Behind.

Theres real flexibility in our language around whats possible in the accountability system as long as the civil rights intention of the law is respected, Buck said.

Linda Mora, deputy superintendent for curriculum and instruction at Northside ISD, said there are concerns that the state might not depart too far from the previous system.

No Child Left Behind was based on the Texas accountability system, Mora said. The state might just tweak a few things.

Proposed rules are still being released incrementally for school district chiefs across the country. The biggest package of rules to date was released Tuesday in the Federal Register, Buck said. They are open to public comment through Aug. 1 and the Department of Education will respond to every public comment, she said. The administration hopes to finalize the rules before the next president is inaugurated.

Pauline Dow, NEISDs chief instructional officer, said she would like a requirement that teacher preparation programs include training on English-language learners and asked for school districts to be given more time before they are held accountable for the performance of transfer students.

Buck took note of suggestions made in the meeting.

All of them that I have heard, there is some attachment to dollars, Buck said. We really need you all to beat the drum on funding.

Castro said he would like to see the federal government bypass states in some cases to give money directly to local school districts.

When the governor makes a unilateral decision not to take money, it hurts several pockets of the state, Castro said.

amalik@express-news.net

Twitter: @AliaAtSAEN
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If youre sitting in a Bexar County parking lot in the cab of your semi-truck with the engine running, dont be surprised if a county official pays you a cordial visit.

County commissioners passed an order May 3 banning any vehicles of more than 14,000 pounds from idling more than five minutes, with several exceptions. The San Antonio City Council is expected to pass a similar ordinance in June. The city managers office also is preparing an administrative directive telling most city employees not to idle, sustainability director Doug Melnick said.

Local officials are hoping that the measures can reduce tailpipe emissions that help form ground-level ozone, a key component of smog. By October 2017, the San Antonio metro area will almost certainly be in violation of the Environmental Protection Agencys ozone standard, which will likely trigger increased federal oversight.

The higher the ozone level, the more potential consequences, so the Alamo Area Council of Governments is leading an effort to keep ozone levels as low as possible.

Across Texas, 44 communities have already adopted anti-idling ordinances, including Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth and Austin. Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston have long had ozone levels above federal standards. Austins level is barely below the threshold.

No one believes that anti-idling policies alone will rein in San Antonios ozone levels back below the federal standard.

Its part of a puzzle, Melnick said. Theres no one measure we can point to that can solve the problem.

Still, many see unneeded idling trucks as a clear, easy target to cut air pollution. According to the EPA, a heavy-duty diesel engine idling for an hour emits an average of 33 grams of nitrogen oxides, which form ozone when exposed to sunlight. Thats the weight of a pudgy adult mouse.

About 44 percent of the ozone-forming emissions from San Antonio roads come from heavy-duty vehicles, Melnick said at a May 10 City Council subcommittee meeting.

At the meeting, District 8 Councilman Ron Nirenberg compared anti-idling ordinances to laws that ban littering. Nirenberg also is chairman of an AACOG committee focused on air quality.

Were looking at this as sort of our opening salvo to our air quality strategies, Nirenberg said, adding that these policies are expected to cut nitrogen oxide emissions by 500 tons per year.

Drivers who spew pollutants needlessly from their tailpipes can be as tough to catch as those who hurl plastic bottles out their windows, Nirenberg said.

We dont often observe people littering, but its unlawful, Nirenberg said. Without enforcement, the laws only as good as an honor code.

At a joint meeting last month between the AACOG committee and its Austin-area counterpart, Bexar County environmental engineer Andrew Winter discussed the difficulty of enforcing the order.

No one wants to tie up sheriffs deputies or the courts with idling scofflaws, so the county is taking an approach of educate first, civil penalties later, if necessary, Winter said.

On May 17, Winter assembled a team of six code enforcers, environmental law enforcement and animal control officers to visit several machine shops and gas stations along Interstate 10 to educate drivers about the new county order. Their goal was simply to tell drivers about the ordinance and pass out fliers.

Instead of writing these people a $200 ticket, were educating people, Winter said. Were all in this together. Were breathing the same air.

Education is the plan now, but Winters team has more leverage at its disposal if necessary: first a formal notice of violation, then a Class C misdemeanor citation that carries a $200 fine.

In the field, they met drivers with trucks of many different model years and emissions levels. Many qualified as exempt from the order. The exemptions include any 2008 or later EPA-certified, clean-idling diesel or natural gas engines.

At a Texaco station along Interstate 10, Winter and animal control officer Javier Flores approached truck drivers Robert Delgado and Jesus Delgado. The latter shared a cab with his son Jesus Delgado Jr. They had stopped for fuel while hauling loads of pipe from El Paso in trucks too old to meet the clean-idling standard.

Its good, Robert Delgado said of the order. We need to clean the air.

Next to the Delgados, Greg Sutler of Florence, Arizona, parked his 2009 International Harvester, a certified clean-idling truck. He seemed familiar with trucking regulations across the country, explaining the intricacies of Californias regulations on refrigerated trailers, known in the industry as reefers.

So many new laws, Sutler said.

In the same parking lot, a white Ford F-250s engine chugged in front of an empty drivers seat. That vehicle would be too small to violate the order.

There are still more exemptions. The order does not apply to military, National Guard, emergency, law enforcement or airport ground-support vehicles. Armored trucks can idle while the driver sits inside to guard its contents and while loading or unloading.

Vehicles idling to operate machinery or for maintenance are also exempt, as are those stuck in traffic, idling to defrost a windshield, or supplying heating and cooling during road maintenance. For buses or other public transportation, idling for passenger comfort and health is allowed for up to 30 minutes.

A driver can also idle his or her truck when snoozing in the vehicles sleeper berth for a government-mandated rest period if not within 2 miles of a facility offering electrical connections.

Winters teams last stop that day was a Flying J, where a parking lot in the rear held dozens of trucks. Environmental law enforcement officer Stan Jordan counted 24 idlers, many driving for big corporations such as Tyson, True Value and Knight Transportation. Most had stickers proclaiming them as clean-idling, in need of a special fuel additive stored in a tank near the diesel pumps.

That was a new lesson for Flores, the animal control officer. Some drivers told him their companies install automatic shutoffs that kill the engine after four or five minutes.

Thats one of the things I learned today, he said. Its the older trucks we have to continue to worry about.

Out of the dozens of drivers they spoke to that day, only two were idling when they were not supposed to, Winter said. One driver made his feelings about the order known, but nothing more, he said.

I think he begrudgingly accepted that thats the way it is, Winter said. And thats all we can hope for.

In a few months, similar tasks could fall to the citys sustainability staff, downtown operations, parking enforcement, code inspectors and metro health inspectors, Melnick said.

Winter said he would repeat his educational efforts at truck stops and garages on Interstates 35 and 37. His team will return in six months, count the idlers again and see if the strategy is working.

bgibbons@express-news.net, Twitter: @bgibbs
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The case of two children found tied up like dogs outside a Northeast Bexar County home last month drew a spike in community interest in child abuse that put new volunteers on the ground for Child Advocates San Antonio.

On Friday, CASA, a nonprofit organization that helps abused children after theyve been legally removed from their parents, graduated 50 new advocates  a large class for the group, many of whose members rallied in response to media reports of the abuse, officials said.

Its huge because of this case, Yolanda Valenzuela, vice president of programs for CASA, said last week. We have another one in June, and its filling up.

The interest and response couldnt come at a better time, she said.

In May, over 100 cases came through, cases of children being removed, each of which could involve two to three children, Valenzuela said.

I havent seen numbers this high since 2012, when there were 228 children removed (in May), or (maybe) in the last eight years, she said. Its been a real big month, and its not over.

On April 29, sheriffs deputies rescued a sister and her brother, ages 3 and 4, who allegedly had been abused for at least two weeks and for days had been tied up with dog chains and left outside.

Cheryl Reed, their mother, later was arrested, as were Porucha Phillips and Deandre Dorch, the parents of six other children found unhurt in the barely furnished, filthy house. The state has custody of all eight children.

Reed, Phillips and Dorch are being held on a variety of charges, and a grand jury could issue indictments next month, officials said. But the trauma experienced by the children could take a long time to repair, experts said.

When (abuse) has been this extreme, its a long process to rehabilitate the kids and undo damage, said Hope Bell, a professor in the department of counseling at the University of Texas at San Antonio and an expert in child trauma and mental health. It will take patience, caregiver education and a large team of professionals to address the deficits, both physical and mental, particularly with mental health.

In a hearing May 11, an attorney representing the children told Associate Judge Richard Garcia in Bexar County Childrens Court that the two children left outside were not speaking, still wore diapers and ate as if they had not seen food.

Bell said young children in their position can lack social skills and are more likely to be diagnosed with learning disabilities and suffer from attachment issues.

They have no model for a healthy relationship, she said. All they know is, People dont take care of me; they hurt me, so helping them learn to trust people, that there are adults who want to help them and love them, is a big hurdle in mental health development. All of that has to be addressed long term.

Valenzuela concurred.

You cant see emotional abuse with your eyes, she said. All of these children are being ordered to have therapy and counseling, and they are all in great places that will definitely make those connections happen.

Bell said organizations such as CASA and ChildSafe offer the type of support that is crucial to the healing process.

Though the road will be long, Bell said, caregivers need to instill hopefulness.

If mom (or the caregiver) is positive, they have a better chance, she said.

Valenzuela said that although the community has stepped up, volunteers still are needed to help with caseloads that continue to grow.

Information on volunteering at CASA is available at 210-225-7070. After completing training, volunteers commit to visit children once a month for 12 months. Applicants for training need to be 21, have a valid Texas drivers license and access to an insured vehicle. They also must pass background checks.

ezavala@express-news.net

Twitter: @elizabeth2863
City officials are contemplating whether to give local school districts the authority to issue civil citations to drivers who pass stopped school buses while children are entering or exiting.

If the council passes an ordinance allowing civil citations, school districts could partner with companies that affix surveillance cameras near the articulating stop signs on the buses used when children are getting on and off the bus.

The council considered such action in June 2014 but ultimately let the issue die. Dallas and Austin are the only major Texas cities that have granted such authority to school districts.

Time is of the essence, wrote council members Alan Warrick and Ray Lopez in a council-consideration request. The risk of injury or death to our most precious resource  our children  is far too great to sit idle while other municipalities have successfully proven the ability to increase compliance and thus security and safety around school buses.

Yet in San Antonio, apparently theres not been a single injury or fatality associated with drivers passing school buses while loading or unloading children, which is a violation of state law.

In the past three years, San Antonio police officers have ticketed 418 drivers for the criminal violation. According to the state transportation code, fines for illegally passing school buses run from $500 to $1,250.

Those tickets are criminal citations, much like speeding tickets. Deputy City Manager Erik Walsh told the councils Governance Committee recently that the legality of the civil citations is still murky.

The uncertainty that came up three or four years ago still exists from staffs standpoint, and thats whether or not under state law civil citations are allowed for this type of infraction, he said. There have been bills that have been proposed on both ends of the argument, and none of them have passed. And so I suspect in the next legislative session, we will see that again.

In Dallas and Austin, drivers face $300 civil citations. Walsh said the companies that partner with districts would collect 100 percent of fines until they recoup costs for equipment, and then they would share revenue with the school districts.

In Dallas, drivers can appeal through the city. In Austin, the city isnt involved at all.

Walsh said city staffs recommendation is to follow a path similar to Austins. The city would pass an enabling ordinance and then the school districts would decide whether to proceed and negotiate their own deals with the companies.

But the city would require that the school districts provide an appeals process for contested tickets and that any revenue they receive would fund enhancements to student safety. Among other things, that could be additional crossing guards or crosswalk improvements.

Councilmen Mike Gallagher and Joe Krier, both members of the Governance Committee, said they fully support the idea and want to proceed quickly so school districts could implement the technology by the next school year.

Councilman Ron Nirenberg said he has concerns about handing over ticketing authority to private enterprises.

School zone safety should be the top priority for public dollars, and there is an inherent conflict in that priority when you mix in a profit motive for a nonpublic entity, he said. Our goal should be to reduce the revenue coming in from such violations so that were actually improving safety, whereas the goal for the company would be to keep churning in these violators.

If the council passes the ordinance, it would be effective within city boundaries only. School buses cross municipal lines into more than a dozen suburban cities that would also have to enact similar legislation in order for a school district to be blanketed.

The council is expected to consider the issue and could make a final decision before the end of June.

jbaugh@express-news.net

Twitter: @jbaugh
The Texas prison system is exposing elderly, ill and disabled inmates to dangerous heat conditions with limited access to safe drinking water, a public health expert testified Friday.

Michael McGeehin, a national expert on heat exposure, told U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison that the situation is urgent at the Pack Unit in Navasota, where inmates are trying to force the state to provide an alternative to well water that contains elevated levels of arsenic.

If youre asking me if I can say to a captive population, You should continue to drink this water until it gets fixed, I cant, testified McGeehin, a former division director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

McGeehin capped two days of testimony from authorities in corrections, health and environmental regulation this week as the inmates seek an emergency injunction to force state action.

The judge said he could rule on the question of an alternate water supply as early as this week.

Its clear we are all uncomfortable with the circumstances under which these men find themselves, Ellison told the attorneys Friday.

Six inmates sued in federal court in 2014 over what they say are inhumane conditions that violate their rights under the U.S. Constitution and the Americans with Disabilities Act. They are seeking to turn the case into a class-action lawsuit, which could have broad implications for inmates and prison staff across the state and in other jurisdictions where prisons lack air-conditioning systems.

The inmates lawsuit was triggered by an unprecedented heat wave in the summer of 2011, when 10 inmates died of heat exposure in non-air-conditioned Texas prisons. Two more inmates died from extreme heat in 2012. The families of eight of those inmates filed separate wrongful death suits in 2012 and 2013.

Not an emergency

The latest lawsuit is the first to challenge state standards for Texas inmates in non-air-conditioned prisons. It was filed by minimum-security inmates at the Pack Unit whose ages, health conditions or psychiatric medications put them at higher risk for heat-related illness or death.

The plaintiffs include a morbidly obese 61-year-old who takes medication for schizophrenia, an obese 72-year-old with hypertension and depression that requires medication and 70-year-old with diabetes, hypertension and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

The federal suit claims the heat conditions are not only dangerous but also punitive and calls for the judge to compel the prison to reduce the temperature to a safe level or move vulnerable inmates to safe dorms during heat waves.

Lawyers filed the emergency motion seeking an injunction to remedy the compromised drinking water.

Arsenic has been found in the well water at the Pack Unit at levels that violate the Environmental Protection Agencys cap for safe amounts, and the Pack Unit operates one of 60 Texas water systems that are out of compliance with the federal standard, according to testimony from Michael Honeycutt, director of toxicology at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Prior to 2001, the EPAs cap for safe amounts of arsenic in an aquifer was 50 parts per billion (PPB), Honeycutt said.

A federal law lowered the cap to 10 PPB, he said, and enforcement of that level began in 2006. The Pack Unit put in a new filtration system in 2007, but the water still tests at 25 or 30 PPB, he said.

Honeycutt, however, told the judge that the EPAs own recommendations indicate that even those elevated levels do not constitute an emergency and would not require anyone to avoid drinking the water.

When the inmates lawyer, Jeff Edwards, asked Honeycutt if he would drink the Pack Unit water, he said he would.

Water remedies sought

Cody Ginsel, the deputy director of management operations for Texas prisons, testified that he drank two glasses of Pack Unit water the other day. Ginsel said bringing in water and making ice for over 1,400 inmates presented a storage problem.

Bottles of water at the commissary sell for about 30 cents but not every inmate has the resources to purchase bottled water. The prison recommends inmate drink up to 2 gallons per day when the heat index rises above a certain level.

State criminal justice and environmental officials told the court the water quality must be remedied, and the government has taken steps to make changes. However, state experts said they do not consider it an emergency. A new filtration system should be installed in the unit perhaps as early as January.

High doses of arsenic over a long period of time can cause lung, bladder, kidney and skin cancer, said Heidi Bojes, director of environmental injury epidemiology and toxicology at the Department of State Health Services.

Bojes testified Thursday, however, that she did not believe the levels inmates were ingesting at the Pack Unit are perilous.

Gabrielle.Banks@chron.com
A Brownsville judges order that the federal government turn over the names and addresses of tens of thousands of immigrants who received benefits under a controversial immigration policy under legal challenge is creating a high level of reported fear, concern and confusion, federal officials said in a court filing Tuesday.

Lawyers representing the government are asking U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen to stay his own sanctions earlier this month requiring federal immigration officials to turn over the names and addresses of young immigrants who received three-year reprieves from deportation and work permits under an expansion of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which Hanen and an appellate court ruled violated a federal statute about administrative procedures.

Texas is leading 26 states that challenged the program in court.

Hanen last year ruled against President Obamas 2014 policy that would have granted three-year work permits to about 5 million undocumented young immigrants and parents of U.S. citizens and legal residents. It was an expansion of his 2012 directive that gave two-year work permits to 1 nearly million young immigrants who were in the country illegally.

During court hearings in early 2015, government lawyers told Hanen they had not yet begun issuing permits under the expanded Deferred Action programs. However, after Hanen ruled in February 2015 that the administration had violated the Administrative Procedures Act by not holding public hearings about the new program, lawyers for the federal government acknowledged that 100,000 three-year permits had been issued to recipients of the 2012 DACA program, which was not part of the court challenge, who applied for renewals.

Immigration officials have since said they collected the three-year work permits and replaced them with two-year permits.

Now, however, having studied the Governments filings in this case, its admissions make one conclusion indisputably clear: the Justice Department lawyers knew the true facts and misrepresented those facts to the citizens of the 26 Plaintiff States, their lawyers and this Court on multiple occasions, Hanen wrote in his May 19 ruling sanctioning the Justice Department.

He ordered the Obama administration to turn over identifying information about any expanded DACA recipients who live in the 26 states challenging the law, and also ordered Justice Department lawyers who appear in court in those states to take legal ethics courses.

In its response, the government said lawyers never intentionally misled Hanen and argued it would violate the privacy of DACA recipients  immigration officials estimate that about 50,000 would be affected  to release their identifying information. The attorneys also questioned whether he could set rules for Justice Department lawyers appearing before judges outside of his jurisdiction in the Southern District of Texas, which includes Houston, Laredo and the Rio Grande Valley.

With respect to public trust, even though the information is to be provided under seal, the production of sensitive personal information in such large quantities would be very likely to undermine individuals trust in DHSs ability to maintain the confidentiality of personal information provided to it, a trust that is essential to its mission, the government lawyers wrote.

An appeals court in November upheld Hanens ruling against the Deferred Action expansion. In April, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments about the challenge but has not issued a decision.
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On a morning when stormy weather forced Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery to cancel its somber observance of Memorial Day, nothing was going to prevent Armis Sunday and his mother from celebrating.

Called to a stage at Freeman Coliseums Expo Hall A, the tall, bespectacled Sunday, a McAllen high school graduate on his way to the Air Force Academy, shook hands with U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and retired Army Col. Bruce Crandall, who earned the Medal of Honor as a Vietnam War helicopter pilot.

It was hard to tell who was more impressed: the 115 high school graduates from across Texas at the 10th annual Military Academy Sendoff  bound for West Point, the Naval Academy, Air Force Academy, Coast Guard Academy and Merchant Marine Academy  or Crandall, the keynote speaker who had flown more than 900 combat missions.

Its just a privilege to be part of something so great, Sunday, 18, said afterward.

Crandall earned the Medal of Honor for flying 22 missions in a single day of battle, saving dozens of lives. But he said appearing before the young men and women Monday was his biggest honor yet.

Ive got nothing but envy for you all, Crandall said.

Cornyn said that those accepted to the service academies  some 261 Texans in all  are among the best students in the nation.

You cant just be good academically, you have to be very well-rounded, he said. Youve got to be smart, youve got to make good grades but you also have to be a leader, which is perhaps the most important requirement.

The kids came from all parts of the state, with the most, 31, hailing from the Houston area, including Crandalls grandson Bruce Crandall II of Bellaire. Twenty-two are from greater San Antonio, and 20 are from the Dallas-Fort Worth region.

The send-off might have been the only Memorial Day event that went as planned. The national cemetery called off its ceremony because of heavy rains that left the grounds soggy and unsafe.

This is the first year weve ended up getting rained out, said Bob Winkler, the cemeterys grounds maintenance foreman. Its been miserable.  We just didnt want to take that chance.

A festive atmosphere prevailed at the Expo Hall. Richard Carson marveled at the possibilities awaiting his son Riley, 18, of Houston. Hes going to the Air Force Academy and hopes to become an astronaut.

His generation has a real chance to be involved in opening up Mars, and thats very exciting, Carson said.

I grew up in a block where a lot of military families lived and always wanted to serve, as all my childhood friends did. Both my grandfathers took part in World War II, said Jake Gerak, 18, a West Point-bound senior who moved to San Antonio from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. I also want to give back all that my country has done for me.

Spencer Stallone, 18, from Orange Grove, west of Rockport, will attend the Naval Academy and wants to be a pilot. Soon enough, hell be keeping an eye out for his kid brother.

My younger brother, Jackson, is going to attend the same place a year later, Stallone predicted.

Sunday has a similar story. An older brother, Otto, will graduate from the Air Force Academy this summer and serve as a maintenance officer. How they got there is a tale of a family that was, perhaps, a bit different from others.

Their mother, Patti Sunday, said the kids were educated in a McAllen Montessori school. They also attended a Catholic school before finishing at McAllen Memorial High School. There was little television at home and no video games, but Armis Sunday said that wasnt a big deal.

We always had friends who had the PlayStations and everything like that, and when we were over there, we were like, OK, this is cool, this is pretty cool. But at home, I dont know, we just read a lot.

Ancient Greek history, it turns out, was a big subject for both brothers.

Whether we knew it or not, we were learning a lot. We just found passion in all these things that you wouldnt see in a lot of middle-schoolers, elementary-schoolers. Its not like the thing they focused on in their lives, Armis Sunday explained.

So even though thats stuff we did for fun, we didnt realize how much of a field of knowledge we were developing, he added. We had a lot of knowledge we didnt know what to do with, but it set us up for success because all we needed after that was the hard work because we had a really good foundation just for learning in general.

Patti Sunday, who sat with him, began to tear up.

That makes me want to cry, she said. No ones ever asked him, so to hear him express it, that makes me feel really good.
Working in the Civil War-era log cabin that he spent two years painstakingly restoring, artist Gilbert E. Barrera feels a sensation of timelessness.

If you just stay in here for five or 10 minutes and close the doors, the quietnesss of it really takes you back in time, he said. You really get the feeling that youre safe.

Aside from enjoying the captivating aura of daylight penetrating single window, in what artists consider true light, Barrera has won praise from the San Antonio Conservation Society for preserving one of about 120 known historic farm and ranch properties in Bexar and surrounding counties  sites that tie the human values of courage and determination to the fields and homesteads that helped a frontier settlement evolve into a major city. His conservation work at the Heidemann-Barrera Ranch, at 26090 Toutant Beauregard Road in northwestern Bexar County, garnered a 2016 Building Award at the societys annual preservation gala in March.

Joanna Parrish, a former conservation society president, led the groups efforts in 2005 to begin saving old rural properties as a tribute to pioneers who endured hardships while working to feed the local population.

If wed not had these farms and ranches, I dont think San Antonio would have survived, Parrish said. You think about how they lived, what they had and what they didnt have. Its important to know where we came from.

Barrera, a sculptor and oil painter whose works include the Lady Justice statue at the Bexar County Courthouse, learned to appreciate how German immigrant Wilhelm William Heideman and his family hauled 1,200-pound logs over hill and dale  presumably with a horse and chain. With a mechanical loader and his on-site helper, Gabino Flores, Barrera turned the crumbling cabin, smokehouse and barn from ruins overrun by dirt daubers, turkey vultures and rattlesnakes to monuments to the past.

Replicating the cabins 1860s construction, Barrera shoveled mortar made from the ranchs yellow caliche that had held the walls together, then deteriorated. He put it into containers and re-mixed it to rebuild the walls.

I tried to replicate the exact construction, imagining if they were one or two people and Im one or two people, how did they do it, and how can I redo it? he said.

The ranch, added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2011, is named for William Heidemann, who arrived in Texas at Galveston and renounced any allegiance to the King of Prussia to become a U.S. citizen, according to the conservation society. He and his wife Eliza and five sons raised cattle and grew corn and sweet potatoes. Two more generations of Heidemanns lived there, including a grandson, Emil Heidemann, who would climb trees on the property and hunt squirrels, rabbit and deer.

Emil, later a World War II veteran and civil servant at Camp Stanley, a military depot by Camp Bullis, built a shop out of ammunition crates where he did woodworking on the ranch. Barrera, wanting to add workspace to the 1930s shop, used scrap materials from the ranch  timbers, caliche, wood window frames and screens  to build an enclosed structure around the shop that resembles the 1860s cabin next to it. He treats the shop itself with reverence, leaving it filled with Heidemanns old work hats, license plates, an antique radio and a calendar from 1966  the year Heidemann died from a cerebral hemorrhage.

This was his getaway, Barrera said. I havent moved anything on the workbench.

Heidemanns widow, Jewell Heidemann, took care of the ranch frugally, collecting rainwater in barrels from the roof of the garage after her water pump stopped working. Rather than selling the land to a housing developer, she accepted an offer from Gilberts father, Roy Barrera Sr., a prominent lawyer who had owned an adjacent family ranch since the 1970s. Under a life estate agreement, the ranch transferred to the Barreras when she died in 1999.

City Archaeologist Kay Hindes has called the restored five-acre ranch property, encircled by a 1860s-style zigzag fence of cedar posts and native wildflowers, one of the most intact 19th-century vernacular farm and ranch complexes near San Antonio. Gilbert Barrera really did a wonderful job researching and restoring the site, she said. The ranch buildings, which will serve as an arts complex, are the latest historic structures of their kind to be adaptively reused as offices, restaurants and other modern facilities with rustic ambiance.

This is one of the few properties that have undergone stabilization and rehabilitation by the property owner, who initiated the work, Hindes said. Part of our challenge is to work with developers to help them recognize potential for adaptive reuse of these historic structures. These type of features really make iconic places.

Hindes believes there may still be several historic rural properties not identified. But about 95 percent of them have been recognized, and about one-fourth are protected through local landmark designation or recognition as state or national historic places.

Barrera, who hosts an annual arts show at the ranch, views the historic site as the showpiece.

This is as much art to me as sculpture in Italy is art, he said.

shuddleston@express-news.net

Twitter: @shuddlestonSA
Harry Cabluck /Associated Press

A judicial panel in Spain has thrown out a money-laundering case against Humberto Moreira, a former governor of Coahuila, Mexico and ex-president of Mexico's national ruling party.

Prosecutors made allegations in court documents that some of Moreira's underlings laundered in Spain and in San Antonio some of the millions of dollars in money that was stolen from Coahuila's public coffers.
When San Antonio hosts the state Democratic Convention in two weeks, it will hit home just how much recent upheaval the local legislative delegation has experienced.

In the past year and a half, five Democratic state legislators from San Antonio have resigned, resulting in five special elections and five special-election runoffs.

A sixth, Trey Martinez Fischer, gave up his House seat to make a failed run for the Senate. That means 98 years of San Antonio-based Democratic experience in the Texas Legislature have evaporated in the blink of an eye. Next January, at least six locals will be in House or Senate offices that they did not hold at the beginning of last years legislative session.

Local Democrats probably would spend more time bemoaning all the institutional knowledge being lost, if they werent confronted with the more urgent issue of winning elections in November. And thats where things get really weird.

One solid Democratic seat, Districts 118, is currently in the hands of a Republican, former firefighter John Lujan. An equally reliable Democratic seat, District 120, could soon belong to an independent, Laura Thompson, who plans to run in November.

In addition, District 117  a swing district that has veered from one party to another for three straight election cycles  features a Democratic nominee, Philip Cortez, who is serving an Air Force commitment in Southwest Asia and probably wont be back to the Southwest Side of San Antonio until the end of the summer.

The good news for Democrats is that all three of those seats are highly winnable, regardless of the incumbency factor.

District 118, which is rooted in the citys South Side, offers a telling example of how context is everything in a political matchup.

Lujan is an affable man with deep roots in the South Side community, and hell be facing a Democratic challenger, Harlandale board trustee Tomas Uresti, who he beat early this year in a special-election runoff. But only 3,589 voters bothered to show up for that runoff. By comparison, in the 2012 general election (the last time a District 118 race shared the ballot with a presidential election), more than 40,000 voters turned out. A comparably high turnout in November will make Uresti tough to beat in a rematch with Lujan.

The news looks even better for Barbara Gervin-Hawkins, who won a Democratic runoff last week over former East Side Councilman Mario Salas. Gervin-Hawkins supporters celebrated the runoff result like it was a general-election win, and for good reason.

Gervin-Hawkins, the superintendent of the George Gervin Academy (named after the Spurs legend who happens to be her brother), faces no Republican opposition in November, and there are serious question marks about whether Thompson will make the ballot.

To qualify as an independent, Thompson needs to get at least 500 petition signatures by June 23, with the added challenge of making sure that those signers did not vote in any Democratic or Republican primaries or runoffs this year.

If she makes it, Thompson, a child-literacy advocate, might carry the power of incumbency with her. She won a plurality of the vote in a May 7 special-election to fill the seat for the rest of the year, and she meets insurance agent Lou Miller in a runoff on August 2.

Gervin-Hawkins supporter (and Democratic Party activist) Norris Tyrone Darden believes Thompson wont make it on the ballot.

I find it very difficult for anyone  not just Laura  running as an independent to find 500 registered voters that are willing to sign a petition but are not willing to vote (in a primary), Darden said. Im not saying its impossible, but its a very large task.

Darden suggests that Thompson could reap long-term political benefits by staying out in November and helping to ease Gervin-Hawkins transition into the office. Thompson insists, however, that she plans to compete in November and says she has about half the signatures she needs.

As for Cortez, his prospects could hinge less on his own military-induced absence than on presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trumps presence  on the ballot.

Nearly two-thirds of the voters in Cortezs district are Latino, and Trumps calls for a border wall and deportation of all undocumented immigrants could produce a Democratic surge in District 117.

Thats why local Dems will be feeling optimistic when the state convention comes to town.
LOUDONVILLE, Ohio  Three triplet calves born to an Ashland County beef producer are gaining weight and doing surprisingly well.

John Edmondson, of rural Loudonville, said one of his beef cows delivered three calves in April, while he and his wife were on vacation in North Carolina.

Johns daugther, Marcia Bitner, noticed the cow had begun to give birth  but never expected two  and then a third  to be born.

I didnt believe it, he said. This was just a freak thing.

Providing care

Edmondson said it was cold the day the calves were born, and since he wasnt home, some local farmers helped get the calves indoors and ensure they were cared for.

But even before help arrived, the mother cow had them all cleaned up and has done a good job nursing them since.

Jeff Byers, a local veterinarian and beef producer, said its rare for any cow to have triplets, but hes seen it happen among dairy and beef.

Its even more rare for the mother and all three calves to survive. Sources vary about the probability of triplets, but many reports say it happens about 1 in every 105,000 births.

However, the probability that all survive and be the same sex is much less, about one in 700,000.

Byers said he does ultrasounds on pregnant dairy cows, and can detect when a cow is carrying three calves. In those cases, he usually recommends terminating the pregnancy because of the risk to the cow and all of the calves.

More resilient

Beef cattle tend to be more resilient than dairy cows when it comes to birthing multiple calves.

Byers said the goal is to produce one healthy calf per calving, but exceptions do sometimes happen.

The Edmondson calves only weighed about 30-35 pounds each at birth, and are now up to 70-75 pounds. He works for Columbia Gas, and raises beef as a hobby.

Having triplets is not something he planned for or wished for his cow  but so far it seems that all are doing well  and his small herd is growing fast.
Antibiotic resistant bacteria could spread into the food chain through agricultural soil, researchers at the University of Southampton said.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the major issues facing society.

By 2050, if not tackled, it will kill more people than cancer, and cost, globally, more than the size of the current global economy (Review on Antimicrobial Resistance, 2014).

The aim of the research is to understand how AMR is introduced into natural soil bacteria, for example from manures applied by farmers or exposure to domesticated or wild animal and bird faecal droppings, and how this transfer takes place in different soil types.

The research will be able to help inform Government AMR policy and management strategies.

Professor Bill Keevil and Dr Marc Dumont from the Universitys Network on Antimicrobial Resistance and Infection Prevention (NAMRIP) are leading the study.

Antibiotic resistant bacteria

Professor Keevil said: "The project addresses if antibiotic resistant bacteria introduced by agricultural practice (animal husbandry, human wastewater disposal, improperly composted manures) or domesticated and wild animal faecal droppings contribute antibiotic resistance genes to the soil microbiome communities or gain resistance genes from the soil antibiotic resistance gene pool (the resistome), becoming more difficult to treat if they are spread in the food chain causing disease."

Professor Tim Leighton, Chair of NAMRIP, said: "It is great to see NAMRIP members pushing the boundaries in this area.

"In NAMRIP we have from the start emphasised the importance of the big picture, and the role of soil is clearly a feature we need to know much more about.

"Bill, Marc and the team have an excellent research plan and I am certain this will be a hugely valuable study."

The work, which has received 198,000 funding from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), will take clay, loam and sandy soils obtained from different parts of the country for analysis of their natural antibiotic resistant species before adding important antibiotic resistant or sensitive bacteria to monitor antibiotic resistance transfer.

Researchers at the University of Newcastle said tackling antibiotic resistance on only one front is a waste of time because resistant genes are freely crossing environmental, agricultural and clinical boundaries.

Analysis of historic soil archives dating back to 1923 has revealed a clear parallel between the appearance of antibiotic resistance in medicine and similar antibiotic resistant genes detected over time in agricultural soils treated with animal manure.

Collected in Denmark - where antibiotics were banned in agriculture from the 1990s for non-therapeutic use - the soil archives provide an 'antibiotic resistance timeline' that reflects resistant genes found in the environment and the evolution of the same types of antibiotic resistance in medicines.
Dairy Crest is announcing, in agreement with Dairy Crest Direct (DCD), that the Davidstow milk price will reduce by 1 ppl from 1 July 2016.

This applies to all farmers supplying Davidstow. This means the Davidstow core milk price will be 20.72ppl from that date.

At the same time, Dairy Crest is introducing a milk price floor, meaning there will be no further reductions in the milk price until at least the end of September 2016.

Ruth Askew, Head of Procurement at Dairy Crest, said: "Dairy Crest is introducing this milk price floor now to give our farmers some much-needed stability until at least the end of September.

"We are doing this because we recognise the challenging environment dairy farmers are facing. I also want to make it very clear that this is a price floor - not a ceiling.

"Dairy Crest always aims to pay a fair, stable, market-related milk price. I know this reduction will be disappointing for our farmers.

"However, the on-going deflationary pressures in dairy markets remain significant. We must therefore act responsibly to ensure that our cheese business remains competitive.

"I am pleased that Dairy Crest continues to offer a contract which is amongst the most competitive in the country.

"I have every confidence in the future of British dairying. We have some of the best farmers supplying Davidstow as well as the best conditions for producing milk.

DCD Chairman Steve Bone commented: "It is our hope that this three month floor will go some way to help to slow what seems to be an on-going culture of monthly milk price reductions across the majority of milk buyers and promote some stability."
Germany has announced a 100m euro aid package for its country's stricken dairy farmers.

German Minister of Food and Agriculture Christian Schmidt met on Monday with representatives from the dairy industry and retailers in Berlin at a "milk summit" aimed at resolving the problems caused by a radical fall in milk prices.

Schmidt announced after the meeting that German dairy farmers would receive at least 100 million euros ($111.37 million) in immediate loans, guarantees and tax relief to help them weather any financial shortpasses.

He said he would be holding discussions about the exact sum.

Ahead of the summit, Schmidt said he also wanted to cut milk production to stabilize the market.

"We need less milk at a better price," he told the daily Passauer Neue Presse.

At the same time, however, he said that farmers and retailers should make out such agreements among themselves, as it was "not the job of the state" to intervene in pricing policies.

Recently, German dairy farmers have sometimes received less than 20 cents per liter, with 35 cents being seen as the minimum price needed to cover their costs.

The fall in milk prices in recent months has been caused by large amounts of milk flooding the markets, not just in Germany, but across Europe.

The "milk summit" was also set to discuss pushing milk prices up from the current average supermarket value of 46 cents in the hope that the increased profits will be passed on to farmers.
Great Taste will judge Northern Irish entries on home soil this year at Belfast Metropolitan Colleges Titanic Quarter Campus from Tuesday 7 June  Friday 10 June 2016.

Invited to Belfast by Invest Northern Ireland, to take part in Northern Irelands Year of Food and Drink 2016, the worlds most coveted blind-tasted food awards will form part of a 12-month celebration of quality, innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship in the countrys food and drink industry.

This comes after an impressive year for Northern Ireland in 2015, when 150 of its products scooped those coveted Great Taste stars, with 124 achieving a 1-star, 23 getting a 2-star and three exceptional products being deemed worthy of a 3-star accolade.

This select group of 3-star winning products included Baronscourt Estates Wild Sika Venison French Rack, Dale Farm Ltds Fivemiletown Ballyoak smoked brie and a Brown Soda Loaf by McErlain's Bakery Ltd, all of which now proudly carry the unmistakable gold and black Great Taste logo.

With 33% of all spend by visitors to the country going on food and drink, Northern Irelands Year of Food and Drink is a celebration of this growing success story, bringing together the government, private sector, education, farmers and retail to develop the industry and inspire the next generation.

2016 has already seen an uplift in Great Taste entries from Northern Ireland, with 138 companies entering 712 products this year, compared with 109 companies entering 554 products in 2015.

With a whole host of experts lined up to blind taste the Northern Irish entries, including esteemed food critic, Charles Campion, BBC Radio 2s Nigel Barden, Michelin star chef Michael Deane, multi-award winning chef Danny Millar, and many more chefs, buyers, restaurateurs and writers, the Great Taste roadshow is set to put the spotlight firmly on Northern Irelands diverse and innovative food and drink producers.

'Fantastic momentum' in Northern Ireland

John Farrand, Managing Director of the Guild of Fine Food, organisers of Great Taste, explains: "Our judges were treated to a fantastic variety of products when we last visited Belfast in 2014, so were very excited to be bringing the Great Taste roadshow back to Northern Irelands capital this year.

"Our roadshows have proved to be hugely successful in raising the profile of Great Taste, the winning producers and the location itself as a top food destination, and we are delighted to be playing our part in such a big year for food in Northern Ireland.

"Shining a light on the very best the country has to offer is at the heart Northern Irelands Year of Food and Drink, and of course this is what Great Taste is all about.

"We look forward to uncovering some more hidden gems in Belfast and bringing them to a worldwide audience which we know is eager to source from the list of Great Taste stars."

John Hood, Director of Food & Tourism at Invest Northern Ireland, adds: "As the benchmark for fine food in the UK and Ireland, Great Taste has played an important role in uncovering new stars in recent years and bringing these products to a wider audience.

"Theres a fantastic momentum behind the development of food and drink in Northern Ireland right now, which can be seen in the big increase in Great Taste entries this year, so were very excited about welcoming the judges to Belfast and seeing which products come out on top.

"During Northern Irelands Year of Food and Drink, this week of judging is an undoubted highlight, as we showcase the very best of our food and drink to the world, with anticipation then building towards the announcement of our winners in August."
The number of store and breeding stock sold through livestock markets continued to rise in 2015  up nearly a quarter of a million on the previous 12 months.

The latest sales figures, put together by the Livestock Auctioneers Association (LAA), paint a positive picture for marts in England and Wales.

There were 3,947,000 store and breeding stock sold at auction last year, a rise of 241,000 compared to 2014 and the highest number for 10 years.

In total, overall throughput numbers remained relatively steady at 11,496,000  a drop of just 37,000 on 2014 (less than 1%).

Support for livestock markets remains strong

Chris Dodds, Executive Secretary of the LAA, said the national figures painted a positive picture  especially at a time when the agricultural sector faced a number of challenges  that showed support for livestock markets remained strong among the farming community.

"In total nearly 11.5m head of livestock were sold through LAA members during 2015," he said.

"This figure has been achieved at a time when national flock and herd numbers are declining and despite the many challenges that auction marts face.

"Numbers sold have held up very well, highlighting the crucial importance of livestock markets to British farmers and a strong and vibrant red meat sector.

"The livestock that were sold through auction marts last year will have experienced modern handling facilities that were staffed by well-trained drovers, they will have been sold by auctioneers who have the best interests of their farmers at heart and they will have been purchased by people who could stand around the ring and buy exactly what they wanted."

According to the sales figures the number of store and breeding sheep rose by 225,000 in 2015 to 2,912,000, while levels of store cattle increased by 6,000 to 692,000 over the same period.

Levels of prime slaughter sheep remained relatively steady, with 5,399,000 sold in 2015, compared to 5,469,000 the year before, while levels of prime slaughter cattle dropped by 48,000 in 2015 to 198,000.

Numbers of stores and breeding stock had increased, auctioneers said, because in many cases they represented a better financial option for small to medium sized producers.

Maximise margins

Rather than spend time fattening their livestock many farmers chose to instead market them as stores, selling to larger, professional finishers who had access to the economies of scale necessary to maximise margins.

Peter Kingwill, from Hobbs Parker auctioneers in Ashford, Kent, said: "There are some very good people doing it but for the average farmer its just too difficult.

"Instead, they much prefer to sell their stock as stores to maximise margins. Thats a big changing face of livestock markets."

Russell Steer, auctioneer at Exeter Livestock Centre, which was taken over by Kivells four years ago, said: "For many farmers its no longer financially viable to rear prime slaughter stock. Instead, they use the market to sell to professional fatteners."

Mr Dodds acknowledged that farmers choosing to sell their livestock direct to large supermarket chains and abattoirs may have also had an impact on throughput numbers, but warned: "I would encourage anyone thinking about entering into such an agreement to think again.

"With some major multiple retailers struggling to maintain sales, direct contracts might not be the best way for farmers to secure a long-term sustainable business.

"Auction marts offer a good service, give farmers choice and stability and encourage the marketplace to be open, transparent and competitive."
A new platform designed to tackle undeclared work in the European Union was launched today after GEOPA, the Agricultural Employers Group of COPA, presented the results of a two year project on this topic.

The project, which was supported by the EU Commission, aimed to tackle the problem of undeclared work in the EU agricultural sector in a more effective way to improve the situation of farm workers and to cut red tape for employers.

A key problem with the current system is that undeclared and illegal work can promote social fraud and unfair competition.

Speaking at the event, LodewijkAsscher, the Dutch Minister of Social Affairs and Employment, said that the agricultural sector makes him proud, but that there are always villains.

He said hes counting on the social partners to combat undeclared work and social dumping.

Arnd Spahn, Secretary of the Trade Unions EFFAT, highlighted that there are good examples of cooperation in the agriculture sector and it has to be maintained, implementing, for example, a social labelling.

Albert Jan Maat, President of the Dutch Farm Organisation LTO, stressed that the polder model," the Dutch consensus decision-making process, can be implemented on EU labour aspects.

Wrapping up, Geopa-Copa President Chris Bottermansaid: "We dont need more legislation but better legislation: reducing administrative burden to comply with and sharing best practices.

"We need a simpler system which benefits both farm workers and employers."

The EU Platform on Undeclared Work was launched today by GEOPA  COPA as one of the 14 observers members.

"We are ready to present to the European Platform our results. A lot has to be done to combat social fraud and unfair competition at the European and national level but more efforts are needed," said Chris Bottermansaid.
The government would be mad not to continue supporting farmers should Britain vote to leave the EU on June 23, former Mayor of London Boris Johnson has said.

Appearing on the BBC programme Countryfile on Sunday, Mr Johnson said it was an 'economic no-brainer' as the industry was vital to the UK.

"We will have gone through a democratic process of consent from the British people and they will understand that is necessary for the economy, politicians will take responsibility for it, rather than just saying theres nothing I can do, its all Brussels.'"

Bluff and bluster

However, earlier this month EU agricultural commissioner Phil Hogan said there was no guarantee British farmers would be able to get money elsewhere.

Prime Minister David Cameron, who was also interviewed on the programme, echoed Hogan's warning by saying: "I believe in the living, working countryside. We want to support our farmers. If you ask me 'can you tell me exactly what that would consist of' then no, I can't.

"I'm saying vote to stay in, keep the Common Agricultural Policy payments we get now, keep Europe's markets open."

Former NFU President Peter Kendall said it was "typical bluff and bluster from Boris, who failed to answer and key questions that are vital to the British farming industry.

"He was unable to guarantee that farmers would receive the same support as their key competitors in the European Union.

"And he could not explain how farmers could sell tariff-free into the EU if we left the single market.

"Its clear that British farming is stronger, safer and better off in Europe."

EU migrants

Mr Johnson also said decisions to allow immigrants to work on farms would be taken in the UK, following an exit.

"I think it would be up to the government of the day.

"If the rural industry were saying 'come on, we are desperate, we can't get the crops out of the fields' then of course that is an argument people would listen to."

He also made the commitment when visiting Yorkshire earlier, when he said workers would be allowed to come but there would be controls.

"You could get EU workers and get people from other European countries.

"They could continue to come, but there would be control.

"If the agricultural sector said we need seasonal labour then that would be something immigration authorities would take int oaccount. Of course you would do that.

"We had lots of seasonal workers on our farm in Somerset. We had workers from European countries, years and years ago when I was a kid.

"There is no reason why that shouldn't continue but what we are saying is that you would be able to set controls."

He said EU migrants were preferable to employers from outside Europe because they do not require visas.

Help unleash the talent and ambition

Environment Secretary Elizabeth Truss said: "Unlocking access to our share of 360 billion of European funding will help unleash the talent and ambition across our world-leading food and farming industry, from supporting punchy start-ups to developing the very latest technology in production methods.

"Last year our dairy exports hit 1.4 billion so we know theres a growing appetite for quality British dairy products.

"The funding will help innovative businesses produce more high-demand products such as yoghurts and cheeses in the UK, creating more jobs, increasing productivity and making the sector more resilient."

Artisan cheese manufacturer Cows & Co, which has its creamery in Cumbria and dairy herd in Dumfriesshire, is one such farm business seeking to access EU funding to support its expansion.

Cows & Co is bringing together a group of farmers in the borders area who have additional capacity to produce high-quality milk to make cheese.

Together, they are looking to create unpasteurised cheese to sell into the many specialist shops across the UK that have sprung up to cater for the increasing demand in top-quality British cheeses.

While Cows & Co has the necessary producing, processing and marketing expertise within its group, moving into unpasteurised products requires investing in separate processing facilities  which is where EU support can provide the head start the project needs.
Russia has said it expects a series of concessions before it lifts a ban on EU farm exports imposed during the African Swine Fever outbreak in January 2014.

EU producers have lost more than 3.5 billion since the Russian market was lost to exports of 800,000 tonnes of pigmeat, including 350,000 tonnes of fat and by-products.

Russian agricultural minister Alexander Tkachev was recently part of a delegation in Paris to participate in the General Assembly of the World Organisation for Animal Health, despite being on an EU travel blacklist.

'Critical situation'

Copa & Cogeca have said it is 'vital' the EU Commission steps up efforts to re-open the Russian market for EU exports.

"We welcome the fact that many ministers understand the critical situation hitting EU farmers, especially in the EU livestock sector and fruit and vegetable sectors, which has been fueled by the ban imposed by Russia on EU farm exports," said Copa vice-president Henri Brichard.

"Pork prices are less than they were 11 years ago and milk prices over 40% below last years levels. This is unacceptable priority for the EU must be to re-open this market."

Yellow card

"Member States also need to ensure that aid from the package agreed last September is paid out as little has reached farmers until now.

"Some farmers have also still not received the full amount of direct payments under the CAP and have to fill the next form for 2016."

He went on to welcome introduction of the yellow card system under CAP simplification for

first offenders which will make life easier for farmers.

In cases where the over-declaration is minor (below 10% of the area determined), the administrative penalty would be cut in half.

Farmers who receive a yellow card will be registered and will be subject to an on-the-spot control the following year.

Wrapping up, Mr Brichard urged the EU to make sure that animal welfare requirements and objectives under the new Animal Welfare Platform are consistant with the EUs trade policy and with the free trade talks with the Latin American trade bloc Mercosur and the USA (TTIP).
The universal postal service is financially sustainable, Ofcom reports, while current rules and safeguards for people and businesses who use post are generally working well.

Under the universal service, Royal Mail must deliver to every address in the UK, six days a week, at a uniform price.

The service is highly valued by postal consumers, and its terms are protected by Parliamentary law.

Countryside Alliance Chief Executive Tim Bonner commented: "Communications in the countryside are essential, whether you are going online to conduct business or sending a birthday card to a loved one, access to the internet and postal services should be simple and integrated parts of living and working in rural communities.

"It was encouraging on Wednesday when we learned that Ofcom, following a review of Royal Mail regulation, found that the universal postal service is financially sustainable.

"We raised our concerns with Ofcom last year that competition was making the service unviable in rural areas so we welcome the bodys acceptance that the service can and should be a viable part of the rural economy.

"The Universal Service Obligation should, as its name suggests, be universal, backed up with a competitive and vibrant postal service.

Broadband an important utility

"We have also repeatedly made the case to the Government and the media that broadband is the fourth utility alongside gas, water and electricity, and that case is being heard at the highest levels.

"Earlier this week colleagues and I met with Ministers Ed Vaizey, Rory Stewart and Oliver Letwin to discuss one of the countrysides biggest bug bears  the rollout of broadband to the countryside.

"The Government included a Digital Economy Bill in last weeks Queens Speech, which will underpin the proposal to deliver the broadband universal service obligation.

"Working alongside the CLA and NFU we will ensure that the digital interests of the countryside are best represented in Whitehall and will continue to push hard and be vocal for connectivity across the countryside.

"It may dismay many, but digital communications are the future and provide alternative ways for people to exchange information, consume news, do business, shop and communicate.

"While the online world is a fact of life we must also continue to make the case for our postal service, upon which many still rely and which has always been held to be reliable and secure."
AHDB agrees to transfer surplus levy funds to new horticultural body
"This review will help show if there is a real desire for change in the co-operative model or if we need to do some tweaking to our structure," she said.
7 things to know about Wawa as it plans a Fayetteville location

Wawa, the convenience store chain eyeing Fayetteville, has a cult-like following. What's so special about it, and what is it known for?
The Office of the Chief Counsel of the IRS released an Advice Memorandum on May 6 that said a disgorgement payment to the SEC in a corporate FCPA enforcement action wasnt tax deductible.

Section 162(f) of the Tax Code says deductions arent allowed for any fine or similar penalty paid to a government for the violation of any law.

In this case, the taxpayer  a U.S. company  entered into a consent agreement with the SEC that required disgorgement, representing profits gained as a result of the conduct alleged in the complaint.

While penalties usually arent deductible, compensatory payments are. In the Advice Memorandum, the IRS said the taxpayer couldnt establish that the disgorgement was intended to compensate the SEC or the United States for actual losses.

The IRS said,

Here, there simply is nothing indicating that the purpose of the disgorgement payment was to compensate the United States Government or some non-governmental party for its specific losses caused by Taxpayers violations of the FCPA. Consequently, we think the disgorgement payment is not deductible pursuant to section 162(f) because the payment was primarily punitive. Similarly, a deduction for a loss under section 165 is prohibited. See generally Rev. Rul. 77-126, 1977-1 C.B. 47; Stephens v. Commissioner, 905 F.2d 667 (2d Cir. 1990).

The deductibility of disgorgement in FCPA cases has always been a close call. In 2010, the FCPA Blog asked a tax lawyer in the District of Columbia, George Clarke, about it.

Clarke predicted the IRS may try to analogize disgorgement to a criminal forfeiture of assets as a basis to argue that disgorgement is non-deductible.

Thats just what the the Office of the Chief Counsel did in the Advice Memorandum:

Additionally, we think some cases that impose disgorgement as a discretionary equitable remedy can have similarities to some cases that impose forfeiture as required by statute. Cf. United States v. Contorinis, 692 F.3d 136, 146 (2d Cir. 2012); United States v. Dobruna, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 160476 (E.D.N.Y. 2015). We note that forfeiture is not deductible even when it is used by the government to compensate victims. See Bailey, 756 F.2d at 47. Forfeiture and restitution to a victim serve different purposes, and a criminal defendant can be required to pay restitution and also forfeit an equal amount. United States v. Newman, 659 F.3d 1235, 1239-1242 (9th Cir. 2011).

In 2010, however, Clarke said the purpose of criminal forfeiture is, in the main, different and more akin to a fine or similar penalty than is disgorgement worked by a settlement agreement in these situations.

But as the IRS Advice Memorandum noted, there simply is nothing indicating that the purpose of the disgorgement payment was to compensate the United States Government or some non-governmental party for its specific losses caused by Taxpayers violations of the FCPA.

This question will come up again. Disgorgement is now part of most SEC enforcement actions under the FCPA, and its a big deal. There have been six FCPA cases with disgorgement of more than $100 million, according to our list of the ten biggest disgorgements in FCPA cases.

Meanwhile, courts arent bound by the IRS Advice Memorandum and its not legal precedent.

So the lesson today as in 2010 is that taxpayers can argue that FCPA-related disgorgements are deductible. The success of the argument will depend chiefly on what the SEC intends and how the agreement describing the disgorgement is written to reflect that intent.

The Office of the Chief Counsel of the Internal Revenue Service Advice Memorandum Number 201619008 (January 29, 2016) released May 6, 2016 is here (pdf).

_____

Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog. Hell be the keynote speaker at the FCPA Blog NYC Conference 2016.
Hello everyone,

Caroline Oldham

So I hope you are all enjoying the bank holiday and the weather! Looks like summer is finally coming and it is this time of year I love to get the BBQ out and invite friends round and just sit outside in the evening with a fire going.

One of my favourite things to cook on the BBQ is chicken so I have this excellent BBQ chicken recipe for you which is gluten free and dairy free and is really delicious. http://blog.biteappy.com/blog/bbq-chicken-gluten-free/

If you are BBQ'ing it is perfect to have with some gluten free beer, one of my favourite brands is Green's as they make flavours for all different taste buds and weather too. Here is what I think of their many flavours which should help you choose which one suits you the most.

Not only is the beer suitable for coeliac but it also uses no animal products so suitable for vegetarians and is free from the following allergens: gluten, crustaceans, eggs, fish, peanuts, soya beans, milk, lactose, nuts, celery, mustard, sesame seeds, sulphur dioxide and sulphites. Here are the flavours, which one would you choose? Pop over to my Facebook and Twitter page and let me know @biteappy

Dark: This is the beer you need for the winter as it is so warming. It tastes strong but has a really creamy and nice texture to it which aromas of chocolate, cherries and burnt sugar.

India Pale Ale: To be served at cellar temperature, this ale is lovely and light, perfect on a summers day, it has a really nice herbal flavour to it, this ale also has no GMO yeast in it. This was my preferred choice, being a girl, I prefer a lighter tasting beer.

Gorgeous Blond: Not as light as India but a nice wholesome beer. Conditioned spicy and aromatic this is more of a full tasting beer which is golden honey colour and has a mixture of a bitter/sweet aftertaste. Also to be served at cellar temperature.

Gilded Golden Ale: Made to have a subtle dry caramel flavour but is also very creamy, this is a lovely smooth beer and should be served at cellar temperature.

Pilsner: Lovely as the taste is a blend of hoppy citrus with hints of vanilla which makes this a delightful tasting beer, a classic 'Belgium' beer that should be served chilled.

Restaurant Hangout of the Week

This week's hangout is The Corner restaurant and Champagne bar in Selfridges in London, a perfect place to celebrate and have engagement drinks. It is a very busy small restaurant but the menu was perfect for what we wanted. I went with a friend of mine who is also called Caroline and she is training to be a nutritionist at the moment so I followed her lead and ordered the 'Superfood' salad which is naturally gluten free and also vegetarian.

This salad was made of quinoa one of my favourite grains mixed with beetroots, broccoli, pomegranate and feta. We also decided to have some root vegetable crisps the healthier option to having fries. Quinoa is naturally gluten-free and contains iron, B Vitamins, calcium and is also one of the only few plant foods which is considered a complete protein which is excellent if you are a vegetarian or vegan.

Beetroot not only tastes good but it helps lower blood pressure, fights inflammation and is rich in nutrients and fibre so this was a really delicious salad especially to give you extra energy which is needed when you are shopping all day.

Have a great Bank Holiday, until next time xoxo
Britain's Prince Charles has met with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis and Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos.

Prince Charles

The heir to the throne arrived in Bucharest on Monday (30.05.16) afternoon and was due to meet with the officials, and will also travel to Viscri to publicly open The Prince of Wales' Training Centre on Wednesday (01.06.16).

During his meeting with the president and Prime Minister, Charles, 67, discussed topics including traditional architecture, durable rural development and the nation's cultural heritage.

Charles' Prince of Wales' Foundation Romania was launched almost a year ago and the educational charity helps bring skills and knowledge to rural communities to support architectural heritage preservation, farming and sustainable development in Romania, as well as helping local people boost their chances of employment.

The new training centre in Viscri will assist around 150 people this year, predominantly from Transylvania and Moldavia and will offer them a choice of 12 course.

The executive director of The Prince of Wales' Foundation Romania, Aura Woodward, hailed the facility as "a dream comes true for His Royal Highness who has visited Romania for nearly twenty years and wishes to leave a legacy to our country".

The training centre is currently home to the first traditional fabrics' course for apprentices from Bucovina, Maramures, Bucharest and Transylvania.

Charles has been a regular visitor to Romania since his first trip in 1998.

He owns two properties in Transylvania.
'Britain's Got Talent' winner Richard Jones wants Prince Harry to assist with one of his magic tracks.

Richard Jones

The 25-year-old magician will perform at the Royal Variety Performance later this year after dazzling judges and viewers alike with his impressive conjuring tricks, and now hopes he can enlist the 31-year-old prince to help with his act when he takes to the stage for the prestigious show.

He said: "If he was up for it and I was allowed that would be great.

"Some of the headlines a while ago were saying I would love to read the queen's mind. I am not sure I would be able to use the queen - I wouldn't be able to get past security.

"I would love to know if she knows who I am. I am sure she watches the show."

Richard - who is a musician in the Household Cavalry - is promising something "quite British" when he takes to the stage for the Royal Variety performance on December 6.

But before then, the former Parachute Regiment soldier is due to return to the Army on Wednesday (01.06.16) but admits his new-found fame has left him with a dilemma.

He told the Daily Express newspaper: "I would love to headline Las Vegas but I would love to do a tour in the West End.

"Now my name is starting to get out here in the UK I would love to get out and meet the people who voted for me.

"The Army have been in touch and said don't panic, we do offer flexible careers.

Referring to Fijian-born rugby player Lance Corporal Semesa Rokoduguni, he added: "I know there is a Fijian rugby player who plays professionally and is in the Army as well and they are really flexible in giving him the time to do that. I am hoping they will offer me something similar."
After announcing that he will be returning as an X-Factor judge, Louis Walsh took a break to send a letter on behalf of PETA and the Animal Rights Action Network (ARAN) to Michael Creed. Walsh contacted the new Minister of Agriculture Food and the Marine to ask for a ban on wild animal circuses.

Vegan on Female First

In the letter, Walsh says that unlike the willing human acts he has worked with throughout his career, animals used in circuses don't want to perform - they do so because if they don't, they will be punished.

He writes, "They don't stand on their heads, ride bicycles or perform other demeaning, often painful tricks willingly. They do so because if they don't, they will be whipped, beaten with a steel-tipped bullhook or shocked with an electric prod".

Many European countries have already introduced bans on using wild animals in circuses and Walsh believes that by not doing the same it's like "putting out a welcome mat for animal abusers".

PETA and ARAN remind us that wild animals in circuses are often stolen from their mothers as babies. They cannot engage in normal behaviours and are moved from location to location in tiny, dirty conditions. Once they reach their destination, the creatures are chained or caged for up to 23 hours a day. The animals often suffer from chronic health problems, abusive treatment, psychological disorders and premature death.

Austria, The Netherlands and Croatia are among the countries that have introduced bans on wild-animal circuses. On a smaller scale, local authorities - including Galway, South Dublin, Kildare City, Waterford, Arklow and Monaghan - have banned these acts from public land.

Walsh joins Michael Sheen, Martin Freeman and Robert Carlyle in teaming up with PETA to banish wild-animal circus acts.

The full text of Walsh's letter is below.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk.

Dear Minister,

I am writing on behalf of my friends at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and Animal Rights Action Network (ARAN) to urge you to implement an immediate ban on the use of wild animals in circuses in Ireland.

My career has given me a deep appreciation for the determination and talents of human performers. They do what they do because they love to entertain, and the joy it gives them is apparent the minute they come on stage.

That is not true for animals who are used in circuses. They don't stand on their heads, ride bicycles or perform other demeaning, often painful tricks willingly. They do so because if they don't, they will be whipped, beaten with a steeltipped bullhook or shocked with an electric prod. That's what they learned from the first day of their training, and intimidation continues to be their motivation.

It's vital that Ireland remain in step with other European countries by banning circuses that use wild animals immediately - otherwise, it's like putting out a welcome mat for animal abusers. Because our understanding of elephants, lions and other animals has improved, we now realise that their complex needs cannot be met in a circus environment.

Austria, Croatia and the Netherlands are among the many enlightened countries that have banned circuses that use wild animals. Please ensure that Ireland takes its place beside them.

Thanks for your consideration.

Yours sincerely,

Louis Walsh

by Lucy Moore for www.femalefirst.co.uk

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Pope Francis honoured Hollywood actors Richard Gere, George Clooney and Salma Hayek with the Olive Medal of Peace in an event to promote the Scholas Occurrentes foundation.



The A-listers have agreed to work as ambassadors for the foundation's arts projects, said The Hollywood Reporter.



Scholas Occurrentes, or "schools that meet," is a foundation that links 400,000 schools and educational networks from various cultures and religions in 82 countries.



"It was a wonderful experience and it's a wonderful program that Scholas Occurrentes runs, causing so many different religions to speak of inclusion, because we know that hatred and fundamentalist attitudes are learned and indoctrinated," Clooney, who attended the event with his wife Amal, said.



Hayek was joined by husband Francois-Henri Pinault and daughter Valentina.



"Important values can be transmitted by celebrities," said Lorena Bianchetti, an organizer of the event.

Next Story : Pictures of Laxmi with her daughter will leave you speechless
What if you head to a brothel and instead of being met by a young woman, you are seen by an entirely different host: a robot?



Experts say that sex machines are just around the corner that could turn a crime-ridden industry into a respectable "guilt-free" business in Amsterdam's red light districts, reports the Mirror. According to a bizarre study, red-light districts will be transformed by 2050 with the introduction of the robotic sex workers.



Futurologist Ian Yeoman and sexologist Michelle Mars at the University of Wellington imagined what an Amsterdam brothel will be like in the year 2050. They based it on Yub-Yum, which closed in 2008 but was once considered one of Amsterdam's most exclusive brothels.



As per the paper, Yub-Yum will be modern and gleaming with about 100 scantily clad blondes and brunettes parading around in exotic G-strings and lingerie. Entry will cost 10,000 dollars for an all inclusive service. It noted that the club, which will offer a full range of sexual services from massages, lap dancing and intercourse in plush surroundings, will be a unique bordello licensed by the city council, staffed not by humans but by androids.



Yeoman and Mars go on to describe how the futuristic brothel will come about because of a spoke in human trafficking in the sex industry in the 2040s. They also predict a growing problem with STIs, particularly HIV, which they say will mutate and become resistant to vaccines.



The pair claim Yub-Yum will feature robots of all ethnicities, body shapes, ages, languages and sexual features. But the most popular, they say, is tall, blonde, Russian android 'Irina,' who is a particular favourite of Middle Eastern businessmen. As per the paper, all androids will be made of bacteria resistant fiber and flushed for human fluids, guaranteeing no Sexual Transmitted Diseases transmission between consumers.



However, according to Yeoman and Mars, while the club will help the sex industry alleviate all health and human trafficking problems, human sex workers will be put out of business, unable to compete on price and quality of service. The work appears in Futures, an academic journal.

Next Story : Not Your Average Gift: Our Handpicked Thoughtful Diwali Gifts
Femina

If you visit Pranaadhika Sinha Devburmans social media profile, youd come across a photo of hers when she was just four years old. The caption reads, This is me on the day I was abused. I was 4 years old. Try blaming it on my clothes. The Kolkata-based feisty activist has also posted a video where she talks about her experiencesshe tells viewers that she was abused by a senior male relative, who was responsible for looking after her, when she was just four and how she was assaulted by the caretaker of her building when she was just eight years old. She goes on to say that what was more traumatic than the actual abuse itself was her aunts response at that time. She laughed and asked her what she actually did to invite that kind of behaviour from the caretaker.



As a young girl, Pranaadhika was angry, confused and fully aware of the fact that the caretaker was wrong in touching her, but why didn't her aunt understand this? My aunt has been terrible. I didn't say much in the video because my cousin, my aunts daughter, had been watching it. My aunt is relatively popular in Kolkata. Overall, she will come across as an erudite person. I am aware of the fact that she kind of spies on me on the internet, says Pranaadhika. I was shocked that despite being an educated person, she could be so insensitive to what had happened to me. I didn't confront her later in life - it takes a lot of self-control on my part not to say to her some things that I would like to point out to her. I forgive herI don't want to exact any kind of vengeance.



The experiences of abuse seem to have left on her life an indelible mark. She has been coping with depression and a tendency to self-harm. She has been running a nationwide campaign, One Million Against Abuse for several years now. It's not that I am talking about something new. I have been dealing with the issue over several years. It's like pulling out the elephant in the room. Generally what we are saying is that we have two options hereone is prevention and the other is cure, she says. Insofar as prevention is concerned, as part of our campaign, we have developed a curriculum involving personal safety, age appropriate sex education and other aspects, which we hope to translate into 20 different languages by the end of this year. We also have a self-defense component to combat street harassment. We are observing that more and more children are being victims of this for the past five years or so. We want to petition education authorities to include this as part of the ISC or CBSE curricula.



What also seemed to have triggered the recent video and the statement accompanying the photo was some of her friends reaction to the abuse she faced near the Howrah station a few days ago. She was returning from Kharagpur and lost her way at the crowded station. She managed to reach a bus stop. It was 11 pm and the area was deserted. Out of nowhere, a man came and tried to drag her to an empty bus. She fought the man fiercely as she is well versed in self-defense techniques. People from nearby kiosks came to her rescue. When she shared the traumatic experience with friends, she heard from some of her peers, Given the way Pranadhikaa dresses, she should not be talking about molestation.



Says Pranadhikaa, who belongs to the Tripura royal family, My friends are educated people, coming from an elite background. I am an activist, but I felt more vulnerable because these are the same people I have spoken to for my campaign. They pretended to care!



Pranaadhika is bent on fighting the bias and prejudices associated with sexual abuse across the country. Ultimately in India, we all belong to a patriarchal society. We are normally told right from our childhood that whatever elders in our families say or do are always right, she says. We feel that the onus or accountability should always be on adults or caregivers responsible for protecting children. As part of our campaign, we do have interactions with parents and teachers. We would be having independent parent groups too - my mother is going to be a part of this kind of workshop.



Pranaadhika has supportive parents. As part of her own healing process, she talks to her mother about her experiences. But she makes sure that her mother doesn't suffer from any burden of guilt. I haven't shown the video to my mother. I shot it when my mother went to her dentist, she says. My parents are erudite people - my father is an IAS officer. The problem was that they were separated for a few years when I was just a child and I was made to feel responsible for their drifting apart.



Through her campaign, Pranaadhika wants more stories to come out in the open. Two of her close friends, including a male friend, have already posted their videos on social media where they talk about how they were sexually abused as children. After posting the videos, Pranaadhika has heard 53 survivor stories so far. I want more stories to create more impact. With one million voices as a starting point, we can create a pressure group. But that will not be the end, says Pranaadhika.

Femina
In a major policy decision, China has decided to lift restrictions to investments by foreign firms in a range of service industry sectors, including e-commerce, logistics, accounting and auditing, the China Securities News quoted Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng as saying.The report said but gave no time-frame for the changes to come into effect.

In a major policy decision, China has decided to lift restrictions to investments by foreign firms in a range of service industry sectors, including e-commerce, logistics, accounting and auditing, the China Securities News quoted Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng as saying. The report said but gave no time-frame for the changes to come into effect.#

According to the Minister, China's trade in services would exceed $1 trillion by 2020. The Commerce Ministry had previously said the value of China's services trade was expected to exceed $750 billion this year.The Chinese government has been attempting to guide the economy away from a reliance on investment and exports to one largely orientated towards services and underpinned by domestic demand.Gao's comments came ahead of bilateral meetings between China and the US in early June. American officials are expected to press their Chinese counterparts to take steps to improve the business and investment climate and open Chinese growth sectors to US investment.The American government is negotiating a bilateral investment treaty with China, and US negotiators have said they are still awaiting a new "negative list" of sectors that Beijing wants to keep off limits. (SH)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Fashion major Future Lifestyle Fashions (FLF) reported rise of 5.38 per cent in net sales in fiscal 2016 to Rs 3,229 crore as compared to Rs 3,064 crore last fiscal, according to a company filing with the BSE.

Net profit reported for the period was Rs 29 crore as compared to Rs 19 crore in fiscal 2015, a rise of 52.63 per cent. Gross profit for the year was Rs 1,255 crore, a rise of 3.29 per cent as compared to Rs 1,215 crore previously.

EBITDA, however, saw a decline of 1.51 per cent to Rs 325 crore in fiscal 2016 as compared to Rs 330 crore in fiscal 2015 at FLF.

Fashion major Future Lifestyle Fashions (FLF) reported rise of 5.38 per cent in net sales in fiscal 2016 to Rs 3,229 crore as compared to Rs 3,064 crore last fiscal, according to a company filing with the BSE. Net profit reported for the period was Rs 29 crore as compared to Rs 19 crore in fiscal 2015, a rise of 52.63 per cent. #

Additionally, the board approved a dividend of 20 per cent for the fiscal.

The company expanded geographical presence in 12 new cities during the fiscal, making its current presence to 82 cities. (MCJ)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk - India
A new garment factory coming up in Calabar, a city in Cross River state of south southern Nigeria, will employ 3,000 people, Cross River governor's office has said.

The new garment factory, which is part of the business cluster comprising four different ventures, is set for commissioning by Nigerian president Mohammadu Buhari soon, Christian Ita, special assistant on media and chief press secretary to governor Ben Ayade told journalists, Vanguard reported.

Widows will be given preference in employment in the factory that will produce uniforms for customs and police, as well as t-shirts for National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) among others, Ita said after reviewing the progress of the business cluster.

A new garment factory coming up in Calabar, a city in Cross River state of south southern Nigeria, will employ 3,000 people, Cross River governor's office has said. The new garment factory, which is part of the business cluster comprising four different ventures, is set for commissioning by Nigerian president Mohammadu Buhari soon, #

Many young people from the state are already benefiting from the upcoming factory because of the ripple effect, said Ita.

Earlier this year, the British government had expressed its willingness to train the needed manpower for the take-off of the Calabar Garment Factory. (RKS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
E-commerce major Snapdeal has established a data sciences centre in San Carlos, California to get top global talent and build high-value solutions, the company said in a statement.The centre will focus on big-data and advanced analytics to add clarity to Snapdeal's consumer-centric initiatives, help shape business strategy and optimise the operational efficiencies using data.

E-commerce major Snapdeal has established a data sciences centre in San Carlos, California to get top global talent and build high-value solutions, the company said in a statement. The centre will focus on big-data and advanced analytics to add clarity to Snapdeal's consumer-centric initiatives, help shape business strategy and optimise the operational#

"We have set up a data science engine in California, which is home to domain talent, to further augment our efforts in creating a superior customer experience and strengthen our supply chain. Snapdeal is extensively working on data mining through an existing analytics team," Rohit Bansal, co-founder, Snapdeal said.Experienced data scientists from leading global brands like Groupon, Google, Yahoo and Amazon are part of the data sciences centre. The centre is headed by Nitin Sharma, Senior Vice President, the statement said."The richer understanding of the customers by capturing and integrating the information on their buying behaviour will drive habit commerce and is in sync with our vision of 20 million daily transacting users by the year 2020," Bansal added. (SH)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
DyStar Group, solution provider offering a complete range of colorants, has introduced Cadira Polyester as the second concept of their new resource efficiency programme.

The Cadira Polyester combines Dianix dyes and Sera auxiliaries with the eliotTM process optimisation tool Optidye PES. The resource efficiency effects are achieved through Optidye PES which improves first time performance, reduces energy, water, chemical consumption and the effluent load.

The Cadira Polyester also alternatives in reduction clearing to reduce the effluent load, energy and water consumption. Cadira Polyester also reduces the processing time which improves the utilisation of the machinery. The benefits of a full optimisation through Cadira Polyester can be up to 58 per cent of productivity increase.

DyStar Group, solution provider offering a complete range of colorants, has introduced Cadira Polyester as the second concept of their new resource efficiency programme. The Cadira Polyester combines Dianix dyes and Sera auxiliaries with the eliotTM process optimisation tool Optidye PES. The resource efficiency effects are achieved through Optidye PES which#

As the first concept of the Cadira Module, Cadira Reactive was previously launched to considerably reduce water, waste and energy consumption. Cadira has helped brands, retailers and their production partners to save valuable resources, to reduce the carbon footprint of their textile goods and to increase productivity by improving the utilisation of machinery. (NA)

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India
Textile manufacturing companies in Ghana may soon be wiped out altogether. And political interference that has scuttled a taskforce commissioned by the government to check the influx of cheap pirated textiles into the country , would largely be responsible for such an eventuality, The Weekend Finder has reported.According to the newspaper, the scuttling of the task force has meant that designs of the local textile manufacturers continue to be pirated and imported into the country, with the fake ones crowding the originals out of the market.The paper said that Ghana's local textile manufacturers are planning another lay off as the industry continues to collapse in the country.

The manufacturers say that they are not against the import or manufacturing of quality wax prints in the country but are only concerned about the imitation of their trademarks and logos.



A market survey conducted by Weekend Finder indicated that the pirated textiles have virtually taken over the textile market in the central business district of the capital.



The pirated designs are conspicuously displayed in textile shops and sells at almost half the price of the original.



A pirated Printex fabric, for example, sells for 25 cedi ($6.43) while the original sells at 45 cedi ($12 approx).



Agnes, a textiles dealer at the Makola Market, lamented the influx of pirated textiles was collapsing their businesses as many Ghanaians patronise the cheap ones due to the harsh economic situation in the country.



She noted that the situation has compelled a lot of genuine textile dealers to also join the sale of counterfeit ones to shore up their sales.



It will surprise you to know that when a new design comes to the market, it takes only a month for them to bring in the fake one, she lamented.



She said strict checks at the ports of entry would be an effective way of stopping the influx of pirated goods into the market.



Ghana's textile industry has been reeling for sometime under high taxes and cheap pirated textiles from China. Over a period of time, the flood of pirated textiles has undermined various textile industries, forcing them to lay off workers, the report said. (SH)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
A new anti-dumping and countervailing duty petition may lead to an increase in import tariffs on a key input for manufacturers of textiles, leather and flame retardant materials in the US.

A new anti-dumping and countervailing duty petition may lead to an increase in import tariffs on a key input for manufacturers of textiles, leather and flame retardant materials in the US. The petition alleges dumping margins between 273.33 per cent and 474.94 per cent on import of ammonium sulphate (classified under HTSUS sub-heading 3102.21.0000) from #

Report. The petition alleges dumping margins between 273.33 per cent and 474.94 per cent on import of ammonium sulphate (classified under HTSUS sub-heading 3102.21.0000) from China, says a recent Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg (STR) Trade

A new anti-dumping and countervailing duty petition may lead to an increase in import tariffs on a key input for manufacturers of textiles, leather and flame retardant materials in the US. The petition alleges dumping margins between 273.33 per cent and 474.94 per cent on import of ammonium sulphate (classified under HTSUS sub-heading 3102.21.0000) from #

The petition covers ammonium sulphate in all physical forms, with or without additives such as anti-caking agents. The scope includes ammonium sulphate that is combined with other products, such as by blending (e.g. mixing granules of ammonium sulphate with granules of one or more other products), compounding (e.g. compacting ammonium sulphate with one or more other products under high pressure) or granulating (e.g. incorporating multiple products into granules through a slurry process), regardless of whether the combining occurs in third countries, the STR report said.

A new anti-dumping and countervailing duty petition may lead to an increase in import tariffs on a key input for manufacturers of textiles, leather and flame retardant materials in the US. The petition alleges dumping margins between 273.33 per cent and 474.94 per cent on import of ammonium sulphate (classified under HTSUS sub-heading 3102.21.0000) from #

In case of combined products, only the ammonium sulphate component is covered in the scope. Ammonium sulphate when commingled with the same product from sources other than China is also included in this scope.

A new anti-dumping and countervailing duty petition may lead to an increase in import tariffs on a key input for manufacturers of textiles, leather and flame retardant materials in the US. The petition alleges dumping margins between 273.33 per cent and 474.94 per cent on import of ammonium sulphate (classified under HTSUS sub-heading 3102.21.0000) from #

The next step is for the US department of commerce and the US international trade commission (USITC) to determine whether to launch anti-dumping and/or countervailing duty and injury investigations, respectively on ammonium sulphate. (RKS)

A new anti-dumping and countervailing duty petition may lead to an increase in import tariffs on a key input for manufacturers of textiles, leather and flame retardant materials in the US. The petition alleges dumping margins between 273.33 per cent and 474.94 per cent on import of ammonium sulphate (classified under HTSUS sub-heading 3102.21.0000) from #

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
HON PM BAINIMARAMA REMARKS AT SIGNING OF EUROPEAN UNION CYCLONE ASSISTANCE TO FIJI





The European Commissioner for InternationalCooperation and Development,The European Ambassador for the Pacific,Excellencies,Ladies and Gentlemen,Bula vinaka and a very good morning to you all.This is an important day for Fiji and for our relationship with the European Union  the signing of an agreement that provides Fiji with 10-million Euros or 23.4-million Fijian dollars to support our recovery effort in the wake of Tropical Cyclone Winston.This allocation is on top of the 28-million Euros - 65.5 million Fijian dollars - already pledged by the EU to Fiji under the National Indicative Program of assistance for sugar and agriculture and improving access to justice. And also on top of the one-million euros or 2.3 million Fijian donated in the immediate aftermath of Winston.Commissioner, the manner in which the European Union has responded to our needs and assisted us during a very difficult period is deeply appreciated. And I ask you to convey the gratitude of every Fijian to the Commission, your member governments and the people of Europe. The way in which this assistance is being provided is especially appreciated  direct support for our national budget to enable us to set our own priorities and distribute the funding where it is most needed. We are very gratified by the confidence the European Union isshowing in our budgetary process and the management of our public finances. You are recognising that the best way to deliver assistance is through a partnership with the Government. And your example is one that we hope our other development partners will emulate.Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, this funding is destined to improve the lives of many thousands of Fijians, and especially those in our agricultural sector,including sugar, who have been especially hard hit by Cyclone Winston.Of the total damage bill to the nation of more than 3 billion Fijian dollars, around 540 million dollars of that is in the agricultural sector, according to our recent Post Disaster Needs Assessment.On the latest figures, our all up losses in the sugar cane industry add up to 163 million Fijian dollars. The loss of workers livelihoods is 53 million dollars. The damage and losses at the Fiji Sugar Corporations mills is more than 72 million dollars. Production infrastructure losses are almost 17 million dollars. And a further 19.7 million Fijian dollars has been lost in industry services. So there is no doubting the extent of the challenge faced by the 200,000 Fijians who depend on sugar for theirlivelihoods or those in other agricultural sectors.Ever since the cyclone struck on February 20th, the EU has been a reassuring presence by our side, supporting us in the preparation of our Post Disaster Needs Assessment, providing a range of assistance through the Accompanying Measures for Sugar protocol; distributing vegetables, fruit, crops and tree seedlings; realigning projects to help with water, sanitation and hygiene and rural electrification infrastructure; and by supporting the roll-out of a new construction and carpentry training course that will engage selected mill workers and community members.Through these measures, the people of Europe have extended a firm helping hand to get Fijians back on their feet. And now we have an extra 23.4 million dollars Fijian to take that assistance to another level.In closing, Commissioner, I want to make special mention of the positive role that has been played by your Ambassador for the Pacific, Andrew Jacobs, and his team in Suva. Vinaka vakalevu to you all for your understanding and support, especially over the past three months.The quality of our recent engagement underlines the overall quality of our relationship, which has rarely, if ever, been closer in the four decades since we established formal ties with Europe. And we look forward to continuing to strengthen those ties in the months and years ahead.Vinaka vakalevu. Thank you.
The lifestyle of an actor is pretty tough! One day you have to be in your hometown and the other day you have to be in a completely different city or country. Constant travelling takes a toll on your health and the change of weather can affect your body and make you ill.

It looks like Katrina Kaif, is suffering from constant travelling from Mumbai to Morocco and London, and that has taken a serious toll on her health.

It is reported that Katrina Kaif, visited the doctor during the wee hours of the night at Khar hospital in Mumbai for a check-up and spent 45 minutes inside the hospital.

Hot Hotter Hottest! Richa Chadda's Maxim Pictures Can Make You Sweat

Katrina's manager accompanied the actress, and a few female staff members from the hospital guarded the entrance so that no one would come to know what was going on.

Katrina, had been braving the severe heat in Morocco during the shoot of her upcoming film, Jagga Jasoos, starring alongside Ranbir Kapoor. Then she had to come down to Mumbai, which is too hot in the summers too, and then flew to London which is currently cold. The hot & cold change of winds has badly affected Katrina Kaif's health, and the actress is now undergoing treatment.

Red Hot Pictures! Shruti Haasan Braces The Cover Page Of GQ Magazine

However, nothing much is confirmed as to what treatment the actress is undergoing, and her 45 minutes visit to the doctor was kept under the wraps. The actress has not spoken out about her doctor's visit.

Well whatever it is, we hope Katrina Kaif a speedy recovery and want to see her back on track as soon as possible! Get well soon Katrina!

Bollywood Celebs React To Tanmay Bhat's Controversy!
Renowned script writer John Paul is all set to make a comeback to films. It is nearly after 9 years that the writer is penning a script for a film.

According to reports, John Paul would pen the script for the upcoming Mohanlal film, which would be directed by Major Ravi.

The Major Ravi-Mohanlal film is touted to be a family drama, unlike the previous films from the same team. They were previously seen together for the film Karmayodha, which released in the year 2012.

Certain reports suggest that, the film is based on the famous short story named Qutab Minar, written by Ambika Nair. Mohanlal is said to be playing the role of a Delhi based Malayali named Balu, in this film.

It is indeed a great sign to see John Paul back in Malayalam films. Previous script of John Paul came 9 years back, for the film Nammal Thammil, which released in the year 2007. John Paul was later seen in an important role in Aashique Abu's Gangster.

With this film Major Ravi is also trying for a shift in genre. This film which would be a complete family drama, would definitely be a breakthrough in his career as a director.

Meanwhile, talks are on for Major Ravi's big budget film which would be based on the 1971 India-pakistan war, which again would have Mohanlal in the lead role. The director is planning to make war based film after the completion of this family drama featuring Mohanlal.
Sai Pallavi, the Premam fame actress is likely to make her Telugu movie debut, this year. If the rumours are to be true, Sai Pallavi is the lead actress of Shekhar Kammula's next movie.

According to some sources, the director has approached the actress for his upcoming venture, which will have Varun Tej in the lead role. As per the reports, Sai Pallavi is interested in the project.

The actress, who made her Malayalam debut with the Alphonse Puthren's Premam, is one of the sought after actresses in the Southern industry today. She has been flooded with offers from all prestigious banners.

But Sai Pallavi, who is a doctor by profession, has made it clear that films are only her second priority. She wants to start practising as a doctor and is planning to go for a specialisation course as well.

Pallavi played the female lead in the Dulquer Salmaan starrer Kali, and received rave reviews for her performance in the movie. She was the initial choice for the female lead in Mani Ratnam's next project.

But later, Bollywood actress Aditi Rao Hydari replaced her in the project, as Mani Ratnam felt that Sai Pallavi is too young to pull off the role. We hope that the charming actress will sign a Malayalam project very soon.
As banks continue to retreat from privately negotiated deals in the wake of the global financial crisis, some buy-side investors are now looking to move in.

The risks of investing in such illiquid markets can be high but the opportunity is too big to ignore, delegates at the AsianInvestor's 11th Asian Investment Summit heard last week.

One of the favourite sayings inside Pimco is do what banks can't do  that is disintermediate the banks, Scott Steele, head of the institutional business for California-headquartered Pimco in Asia excluding Japan, told the audience.

Before 2008, banks in both the US and Europe could deliver a return on equity of around 15%, he said. But that has now has fallen under 10% (or 8.6% in the first quarter, in the case of US banks), he said.

That differential of profit is worth about $85 billion and 200 billion [in the US and Europe, respectively]. Somebody out there is going to earn that money, said Steele, who was speaking on a panel on the attractiveness of alternative investments versus public markets.

New rules designed to make banks safer following the global financial crisis have restricted their ability to take advantage of market inefficiencies in more illiquid markets. Meanwhile, real money accounts are keen to invest in unlisted, illiquid instruments for a variety of reasons such as diversification or return enhancement.

Peter Ryan-Kane, who heads portfolio advisory at Willis Tower Watson, a global insurance broker and financial consultancy, cautioned against most buy-side investors leaping into new markets without carefully assessing the risks.

"If anyone thinks that asset managers are going to be the new banks then we should all be a bit worried," said Ryan-Kane, who traded Asian debt in the mid-1990s and recalled when liquidity dried up sharply.

Different mindset

He noted that the basic mindset of banks when putting money to work is different to other investors. Banks look to earn a premium on lending over and above their cost of capital while asset managers are trying to earn a yield beyond that on, say, government bonds. Regulators also do not require them to hold a capital cushion against such investments.

I have yet to see an asset manager in the market talking about yield minus loss, Ryan-Kane said.

From left to right: Kondo, Ryan-Kane, Steele, CAIA Singapore's Peter Douglas

The added complication is that banks retreat as middlemen in many markets due to tougher regulation, namely Dodd-Frank and Basel III rules that make holding inventory and financing positions more expensive, has meant that Asian markets have become more illiquid, potentially resulting in extreme price movements.

What was liquid has become illiquid, Ryan-Kane said.

The illiquidity premium, the compensation investors enjoy for putting their money in such stop-start markets, is the lowest it has been for about 15 years, according to research by Willis Tower Watson. On average, the firm regards the general level of available illiquidity risk premia on the assets it measures to be moving towards the lowest end of its fair value range.

Buy-side interest in these markets pre-dates the global financial crisis but if that interest is now growing it is happening at a time when the maths needed to make it work has become highly demanding.

Hideo Kondo, the asset management director of Tokyo-based DIC Pension Fund, a corporate pension fund that manages $1 billion of assets and targets a return of 3.5%, said he had been investing in unlisted instruments since 2004.

We suppose a 60% probability to win in private markets so we need a double-digit return to protect our investment in private markets, Kondo said at the conference.
TOKYO (dpa-AFX) - Panasonic (PCRFY.PK, PCRFF.PK) will withdraw from manufacturing LCD panels for televisions, succumbing to stiff price competition, Nikkei reported. The company plans to end production of the parts at its Himeji plant in Hyogo Prefecture by the end of September. The company reportedly said that hundreds of workers will be reassigned to car battery production facilities, elsewhere. The Himeji facility will remain open, producing parts for medical devices, car monitors and other Non-TV components. 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.
Fresh Milk based Formula was highly praised

BUDAPEST, Hungary, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- On May 30, Monde Selection, an international quality selection institute with 55 years of history, held an annual award ceremony in Budapest, Hungary. Feihe, a leading Chinese dairy products company, won two gold awards for their infant formula milk powder AstroBaby and Super Feifan. This is the second time Feihe won this world renowned prize with AstroBaby also honored with the same gold award last year.

Lu Guang, Vice President of Feihe, said, "I am pleased that Feihe won the Monde Selection gold award again. It not only re-affirms the fact that our formula products are widely recognized in developed countries such as in Europe and America, but also illustrates that the quality of Chinese infant formula is comparable with the standard of developed countries. We also hope that other local Chinese dairy brands will compete globally in the future."

Jiang Shilong, the R&D Director of Feihe added, "Feihe has researched and developed infant formula milk powder products such as AstroBaby and Super Feifan, which takes fresh milk as a raw material and integrates it with the unique requirements of Chinese babies."

Speaking at the event, President of Monde Selection Patrick De Halleux said, "The jury is impressed by Feihe's products. From the testing results, we could see that the nutrient ingredients and standards of various microorganisms met the EU requirements. Feihe has a main outstanding advantage in terms of raw materials and the use of fresh milk reflects their determination to create high-quality milk powder."

It has been reported that the processing of infant formula with fresh milk has always been the basic requirement of developed countries in Europe. This is the concept of 'freshness' which Feihe has been persisting.

However in some developing countries, most producers are still using powder to produce infant formula milk powder. Industry experts say that there are differences between using milk powder and fresh milk. The use of fresh milk not only ensures the freshness of the milk powder, its unique wet technique also ensures uniform distribution of nutrients, maximizing the retention of nutrients in milk.

Recently, many Chinese dairy enterprises have made efforts to revitalize the reputation of the Chinese dairy industry, by adhering to tight quality control from the beginning of the production process.

Li Shengli, the chief scientist of the Chinese National Dairy Industry and Technology System, supports the high standard adopted by Feihe. "Feihe's bacterial colony count is less than 10,000 CFU per ml, which is lower than the European safety standard where the average total bacterial colony count is less than 100,000 CFU per ml."

Song Liang, an expert on China's dairy industry said, "China is not a big country in dairy production, but a strong one in dairy consumption. From Feihe, we can see that the Chinese dairy industry is building its own global brands to achieve the 'Healthy Chinese Dream'."

Contact:

Wang Sujuan

+86-136-5137-9139

sujuan.wang@bluefocus.com
DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES--(Marketwired - May 31, 2016) - After investor confidence was shaken to its core in the wake of corporate fraud at Enron, WorldCom, and other companies, it received a much-needed boost by the 2002 passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). With the Act's fourteenth anniversary on the horizon, Reda Bedjaoui, CEO of Redbed Investments LLE and recognized thought leader on multi-sector international investing, reflected on the significance of SOX in the U.S. and around the globe. "The legislation provided a much-needed course correction in the corporate governance arena," he noted. "SOX served to hold the CEOs of publicly-held companies accountable to their shareholders and ensured that public accounting firms would operate with a high standard of impartiality."

Reda Bedjaoui connected the dots between SOX and similar regulatory legislation in other parts of the world, "That same year, corporate governance codes were enacted in Canada, Germany, and South Africa, with France, Italy, Australia, Japan, and The Netherlands following suit within the next few years." The investing expert asserted that by shoring up corporate governance requirements, these measures created a paradigm shift within publicly traded companies that continues to this day. "Senior management and board members had a wake-up call," Bedjaoui notes. "They gained a new appreciation that their fiduciary duty was to their shareholders, who are the de facto owners of the companies." Still, according to Reda Bedjaoui, the Great Recession of 2008 revealed that some corporate governance principles were on shaky ground, underpinnings that 2010's Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act sought to stabilize. "Executive compensation often bore no relationship to a company's health or profitability, so Dodd-Frank gave shareholders an important -- though non-binding -- 'say on pay' and required that compensation committees be independent," he pointed out. "In the same vein, if those in the executive suite misrepresent the company's financial well-being, the law says they can be forced to return their compensation."

The expert investor notes that, today, companies with exemplary governance go beyond reactively complying with SOX, Dodd-Frank, and other regulatory mandates. "Successful corporate governance initiatives proactively tackle the concerns of both shareholders and stakeholders," maintains Bedjaoui, noting that stakeholders can include everyone from employees to vendors to community members. "Internal accounting controls and accurate financial statements are critical to investors, but factors like environmentally sustainable practices, a mission-driven corporate culture, and an executive team that leads by example satisfy a range of stakeholders." When companies excel in all of these arenas, they deliver value to shareholders. According to Bedjaoui's conclusions, "The importance of corporate governance -- which includes sound risk management and regulatory compliance -- is what makes near- and long-term profitability possible."

For more than a decade, Reda Bedjaoui has anticipated trends in commodities trading. His expertise in corporate governance, risk management, and regulatory compliance has enabled him to manage commodity risk exposure and provide governance guidance to a number of international companies. Mr. Bedjaoui's insights grow out of his command of international law, as well as his global business and real estate successes. Raised in Paris, France, Mr. Bedjaoui studied at Universite de Montreal, where he was accorded a Bachelor in Law degree. He furthered his education at Hague Academy of International Law in the Netherlands, and then was admitted to the Bar of Quebec, Canada (Montreal Section) in 1995. He honed his practice of commercial law, corporate law, and international arbitration in positions at recognized law firms in both Montreal and Paris.

Reda Bedjaoui - Expert Investor and CEO of Redbed Investments: http://www.redabedjaouinews.com

Reda Bedjaoui -- Offers Expert Advice for Novice Hedge Fund Investors: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/reda-bedjaoui----offers-expert-advice-for-novice-hedge-fund-investors-2016-05-17

Reda Bedjaoui -- Attended NAAIM 2016 Uncommon Knowledge Conference: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/reda-bedjaoui-attended-naaim-2016-021402029.html

Contact Information

ICMediaDirect.com

TEL: 1.800.595.0821

www.ICMediaDirect.com

pr@icmediadirect.com
MENLO PARK, CA--(Marketwired - May 31, 2016) -Strata+Hadoop World, London -- Galactic Exchange, Inc. today announced the availability of its Docker container powered clustering technology (ClusterGX') as an on-premise managed service solution (ClusterGX' Full-Service) for customers deploying Hadoop/Spark Big Data applications.

Unlike any other on-premise Big Data solution, ClusterGX' uniquely operates using master nodes for Hadoop, Spark and Impala running inside a cloud service managed and maintained by Galactic Exchange. Businesses can now deploy ClusterGX' on-premise without the complexity of allocating, configuring and maintaining separate dedicated hardware to support the critical master node functions.

Despite the success of cloud offerings such as AWS, Big Data managed services offered entirely in the cloud are not the preferred option for many organizations. Either because of legal restrictions, sheer volumes of data generated, security concerns or other reasons -- many businesses choose to keep their data on premise where the opportunity for a true managed service, until now, has essentially not been an option.

The ClusterGX' Full-Service offering is an obvious next step in Galactic Exchange's hybrid on-premise/cloud deployment architecture. Whilst all user data stays securely on the customer premise where it is processed via applications running on ClusterGX, any Hadoop/Spark master nodes -- which do not touch the actual user data and therefore do not compromise security - are run off-site as a cloud service operated by Galactic Exchange. As a result, Galactic Exchange is ideally positioned to provide pro-active monitoring of the master nodes as well as the associated on-premise cluster performance and the actual status of Hadoop/Spark jobs that are running on each cluster.

"A customer could manage their own ClusterGX' deployment through our cloud portal," said Rob Mustarde, co-founder and CEO of Galactic Exchange. "but in many cases they may not have deep knowledge of Hadoop/Spark, they may need assistance with application deployment and probably cannot monitor their jobs running from start to finish. With ClusterGX' Full-Service, we can consult and then assist all the way through cluster set-up, HDFS data ingestion, application deployment and then provide a 24/7 cluster monitoring service to review cluster performance and ensure that Hadoop/Spark jobs are running to completion."

"Galactic Exchange is offering a great alternative to businesses looking to stand-up a big data analytics solution but that have challenges recruiting deep platform expertise and concerns about data security. With the unique ClusterGX' Full-Service, businesses can now take immediate advantage of a managed service offering but at the same time keep their data on-premise," said Mike Matchett, Senior Analyst at technology consultants Taneja Group. "It's another solid example of how cloud-hosted management as-a-service can solve real data center problems. Leveraging a cloud provider to maintain all the Hadoop/Spark master nodes makes hosting a Big Data analytics cluster on-premise so much easier -- but then big data users can also gain from the expert value-added services wrapped around those cloud-based master node operations."

City of San Jose Smartens Up to Big Data with ClusterGX' Full-Service

As the Capitol of Silicon Valley, the City of San Jose is recognized as a leader and pioneer in the adoption of new technology. Their Smart City initiative covers areas as diverse as IoT, Transportation, Cleantech and Cyber-Security. One area that has been lacking is taking advantage of the large volumes of data that the City generates.

"We are in the business of putting Big Data to work for our community; we are not in the business of managing complex Big Data solutions. With City technical staff wearing many hats these days, Big Data just needs to work. We aren't Big Data experts," said Vijay Sammeta, Chief Information Officer for the City of San Jose. "The City generates a lot of data across a broad spectrum of areas. There is constant demand, internally and externally, to provide access, insight, and ultimately action based on that data. ClusterGX' Full-Service brings the power of open source with enterprise manageability in a single solution that is easily deployed on-premise."

In partnership with Galactic Exchange, the City has deployed ClusterGX' in its datacenter and has begun the process of gathering numerous data sources in which to model "what-if" scenarios for City planning. "Having ClusterGX' as well as our data on-premise means we are learning the world of Big Data much more quickly than if we just out-sourced it to a 3 rd party in the cloud," said Sammeta. "Using ClusterGX' Full-Service and having Galactic Exchange as our partner has made the implementation painless. After many years of consolidation and deep budget cuts, we thought introducing Big Data to the City was going to be a costly, challenging and prolonged process, but that simply hasn't been our experience."

Galactic Exchange will be demonstrating ClusterGX' at Strata+Hadoop World at the ExCeL in London (May 31 st - June 3 rd ). Please come and see us at booth P4 in the Innovators Pavilion.

About Galactic Exchange:

Galactic Exchange, Inc. develops software to enable the industry's easiest and fastest possible deployment and management of powerful container-enabled compute clusters for Big Data. The ClusterGX' platform can be deployed in minutes with zero required big data or clustering experience. ClusterGX' Full-Service provides an on-premise managed service using the ClusterGX' platform combined with 24/7 pro-active monitoring. ClusterGX' Community Edition will be made available under an open source license in the future. Beta software can be downloaded from the Galactic Exchange web site by registering at www.galacticexchange.io.

For more information, please contact:



Rob Mustarde:

rob@galacticexchange.io

Tel: (+1) 650 353 6940
MUNICH, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Paygoo launches Reloadable MasterCard

Exclusive partnership with Reitan Convenience to offer outstanding distribution network

Wirecard Card Solutions Ltd, a Wirecard Group company, is the card issuer of Norwegian-based prepaid programme manager Paygoo. Paygoo have recently launched their first prepaid reloadable MasterCard following the previous launch of their MasterCard Gift Card programme earlier this year. The cards can be purchased and loaded throughout Reitan Convenience, one of Europe's largest convenience store chains including the retail brands 7-Eleven, Shell and Narvesan, offering instant issue at extensive point-of-sale outlets as well as online.

Paygoo's rapidly expanding portfolio already includes the MasterCard gift card programme sold through Reitan Convenience stores in Norway and Sweden and offering consumers a gift card product which can be used at over 35 million merchants worldwide instore or online through the MasterCard acceptance network, making it the perfect gift card for any occasion. The Paygoo gift cards are also available to the corporate market as a reward or incentive mechanism for their employees or third parties.

The new Paygoo Reload MasterCard targets foreign workers and the unbanked and has initially launched successfully in Norway. An imminent launch in Sweden will soon follow to secure wide reach and adoption across the Nordics.

"We are delighted to establish a partnership with Wirecard which we are sure will support our growth ambitions in the Nordic prepaid market. For Paygoo it was important to choose an issuer with outstanding experience and knowledge, combined with a mind-set characterized by innovation and creativity," said CEO of Paygoo, Per Erik Nygaard.

Wirecard Card Solutions is a specialist for prepaid card issuance. The UK-based Company is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and operates under its Electronic Money license with permissions to issue cards throughout the SEPA region. Wirecard Card Solutions accompanies its clients throughout all stages of their business development and offers a vast array of products, services and experience needed to take a new a prepaid card programme to market.

Brian Lawlor, Director of Sales and Business Development at Wirecard Card Solutions said, "We're delighted to be working with the highly experienced team at Paygoo. With Paygoo's exclusive distribution channels, this product has fantastic reach within the Nordic region. This programme further cements Wirecard's position as one of the leading prepaid issuers in Europe."

About Wirecard:

Wirecard AG is a global technology group that supports companies in accepting electronic payments from all sales channels. As a leading independent supplier, the Wirecard Group offers outsourcing and white label solutions for electronic payments. A global platform bundles international payment acceptances and methods with supplementary fraud prevention solutions. With regard to issuing own payment instruments in the form of cards or mobile payment solutions, the Wirecard Group provides companies with an end-to-end infrastructure, including the requisite licences for card and account products. Wirecard AG is listed on the Frankfurt Securities Exchange (TecDAX, ISIN DE0007472060, WDI). For further information about Wirecard, please visit http://www.wirecard.com or follow us on Twitter @wirecard.

About Wirecard Card Solutions:

Wirecard Card Solutions Ltd (WDCS), a subsidiary of Wirecard AG, is a multi-award winning issuer of prepaid cards and products in Europe. WDCS is an FCA regulated Electronic Money institution specialising in BIN Sponsorship and is a principal member of both MasterCard International and Visa Europe. WDCS issues plastic and digital prepaid products for many of the biggest and most innovative programmes in the European marketplace. http://www.wirecard-cardsolutions.co.uk.

About Paygoo:

Paygoo has grown rapidly to be the preferred supplier of gift cards and payment cards across the Nordics. They believe in creating great user experiences with a vision to offer the best in user experience and innovation. Formerly the Spendon (Sparebank) gift card product, Paygoo was first launched recently. The reloadable and gift card products are available through the Reitan and Blackhawk networks.

Wirecard media contact:

Wirecard AG

Jana Tilz

Tel.: +49-(0)89-4424-1363

E-Mail: jana.tilz@wirecard.com

Wirecard Card Solutions Limited

Annelleise Miles

Tel.: +44-191-277-5472

E-Mail: marketing.uk@wirecard.com

Paygoo media contact:

Per Erik Nygaard

Tel.: +47-480-73-171

E-Mail: per.erik.nygaard@paygoo.no


LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- NewVoiceMedia, a leading global provider of cloud technology which helps businesses sell more, serve better and grow faster, today announced that SponsoredLinX has transformed its customer experience with ContactWorld for Service.

SponsoredLinX helps over 2,500 clients achieve online success by increasing website traffic, improving lead conversion rates and aiding customer retention. With offices in five cities across Australia, a new operation in New Zealand and plans to open another office in the US, the search marketing agency is fast becoming a global player.

Seeking to stand out in a highly competitive market, SponsoredLinX sought to transform its contact centre to provide customers with a unique experience. With a legacy on-premise PBX system and no Salesforce integration, agents and managers had to spend time on unproductive activities, customers could not be easily directed to the most appropriate agent and call handling was inefficient. Furthermore, maintaining its on-premise hardware left the company open to unnecessary system and disaster recovery risks. With call volumes growing by 30 percent per annum, these shortcomings were holding back the business.

NewVoiceMedia's cloud technology ContactWorld for Service offered the answer for the 49 client managers and four team leaders at SponsoredLinX. With its seamless Salesforce integration, enhanced reporting capabilities, and ability to provide customers with a far superior experience, NewVoiceMedia was able to provide a comprehensive solution to the business's challenges.

With ContactWorld, SponsoredLinX has been able to offer customers a completely unique and personalised experience. As well as benefiting from immediate access to a customer's entire history of interactions from one screen, incoming calls are intelligently routed based on Salesforce data, meaning they can be handled by specialised client managers who can deal with ongoing work quickly and competently, improving handling time and customer satisfaction. The platform's real-time reporting, analytics and call recording functionality offer complete visibility of contact volumes, advisor performance and customer experience, enabling the business to improve processes such as workforce scheduling and the performance of individual advisors to ensure the company continues to offer the best possible experience to customers.

With ContactWorld's 'click-to-dial' feature, SponsoredLinX is also able to make outbound calls to clients directly from within Salesforce -- delivering significant efficiency improvements while reducing dialling errors. Customer records are then automatically updated, meaning there is a complete history of interactions.

ContactWorld also meets the company's requirements for a solution that can be customised in response to changing business needs. NewVoiceMedia will form a large part of SponsoredLinX's plans to expand across the Pacific to New Zealand and the US, as the technology ensures complete flexibility and scalability, enabling new functionality and consultants to be added in minutes. Agents can also log into the same system wherever they are as all they need is a phone and internet connection, meaning they can work from multiple locations as required.

William Zhang, IT Manager at SponsoredLinX, comments, "Our previous contact centre system was slow, inefficient and didn't integrate with Salesforce, meaning we couldn't provide the unique and personalised customer experience that we know is so critical to a company's success. With features such as intelligent call-routing, screen-pops, click-to-dial and detailed reporting, NewVoiceMedia's ContactWorld solution has enabled us to completely transform the experience for both customers and agents, and is really helping us to stand out in the market".

Jonathan Gale, CEO, NewVoiceMedia, comments, "We're delighted to see how significantly SponsoredLinX has been able to improve its customer experience with ContactWorld and Salesforce. As our technology is completely flexible and scalable, it will also continue to support the business throughout its rapid growth in Asia Pacific and the US; while reducing its capital investments".

For further information, download the case study at www.newvoicemedia.com

Salesforce and others are among the trademarks of salesforce.com, inc.

About NewVoiceMedia

NewVoiceMedia powers customer connections that transform businesses globally. The leading vendor's award-winning cloud customer contact platform revolutionises the way organisations connect with their customers worldwide, enabling them to deliver a personalised and unique customer service experience and drive a more effective sales and marketing team. With a true cloud environment and proven 99.999% platform availability, NewVoiceMedia ensures complete flexibility, scalability and reliability.

Spanning 128 countries and six continents, NewVoiceMedia's 600+ customers include PhotoBox, MobileIron, TNT, Lumesse, JustGiving, Canadian Cancer Society and Wowcher. For more information visit www.newvoicemedia.com or follow NewVoiceMedia on Twitter @NewVoiceMedia.

NewVoiceMedia PR contact

Nicola Brookes

NewVoiceMedia

Tel: +44 (0)7500 006 458

Email: Email Contact




LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM--(Marketwired - May 31, 2016) - Back in October of 2014, Apple Pay was launched in the U.S. with great fanfare, and for almost a year it was the only game in town for consumers who wanted to pay with their smartphones. Since then it's been joined by Android Pay and Samsung Pay, with more branded mobile payment solutions, such as Walmart Pay and Chase Pay, waiting in the wings. But is anyone using them?

The answer, according to the latest Mobile Pay Tracker survey from Auriemma Consulting Group (ACG), is a qualified yes: about 7% of all U.S. smartphone owners* claim to have at least tried mobile payments. "It's important to remember that less than half the smartphones that U.S. consumers carry are capable of mobile payments," says Marianne Berry, managing director of ACG's Payment Insights practice. "Among those with an eligible phone, 27% of consumers we surveyed say that they have used Apple, Android, or Samsung Pay."

However, that doesn't mean they can leave their wallets at home yet. Mobile pay users in the still put the lion's share of their purchases on old-fashioned plastic, since stores that accept mobile payments are still hard to find in the U.S.: 39% say they would use mobile payments more if more stores/apps accepted it. 61% say their mobile pay usage is supplanting cash transactions, suggesting that the phones are being used for smaller purchases, confirmed by average ticket size -- one-third of those who have used mobile pay in the past week made a purchase of $25 or less. These transactions are made both in-app and in-store, except for Samsung Pay, which has yet to offer in-app payments. On average, users report that 17% of their discretionary spending was done with mobile pay.

Even when they find a store that accepts mobile pay, only one-third of U.S. mobile pay users (31%) pay that way every time they know it is accepted, most frequently citing that they simply forgot. "Reaching for the phone instead of the wallet isn't an automatic reflex, even for mobile pay enthusiasts," said Berry. "And even if they do remember, many will give up and use their plastic cards if they encounter friction at the point of sale, particularly if there are other shoppers in line behind them."

Mobile payments have been around for only a year in the U.S., a fraction of the many decades that plastic cards have dominated. As the upgrade cycle puts the newest smartphones into the hands of more consumers, increasing numbers of them will have the opportunity to try out this new way of paying. "Overall satisfaction with mobile payments is quite high at 80%, despite complaints about low merchant penetration and inconsistent customer experience at point of sale," Berry stated. "But mobile payment has yet to reach the tipping point that will take it from novelty to norm."

Survey Methodology

The study was conducted online among 2004 consumers in the U.S. with Apple Pay eligible (n=1,000), Android Pay eligible (n=838), and/or Samsung Pay eligible (n=327) smartphones between March 3 - April 7, 2016. Respondents were screened to own an iPhone 6/6+/6s/6s+ or Apple Watch (in combination with an iPhone 5/5C/5S) -- a Samsung Galaxy S6, S6 Edge/Edge+, S6 Active or Galaxy Note 5 -- and/or other Android phone with KitKat (4.4) OS or newer. All respondents also have a general purpose credit card in their own name. In addition to the quantitative web survey, twenty in-depth interviews (IDIs) were conducted March 21, 2016 - March 25, 2016 via telephone with Android Pay and Samsung Pay users recruited from the quantitative web survey. For this round of IDIs, the focus is or was on the Android and Samsung Pay users, and their usage and experience thus far.

* ACG conducted a standalone market sizing study in March 2016 among 1,100 U.S. adults. Data was weighted by gender, age, race/ethnicity, household income, and education to be nationally representative of the entire US adult population (aged 18+).

About Auriemma Consulting Group

ACG is a boutique management consulting firm with specialised focus on the Payments and Lending space. We deliver actionable solutions and insights that add value to our clients' business activities across a broad set of industry topics and disciplines. Founded in 1984, ACG has grown from a one-man shop to a nearly 50-person firm with offices in London and New York. Visit ACG's website at www.acg.net. For more information, please contact Marianne Berry at +44 (0) 207 629 0075 or marianne.berry@acg.net.

Marianne Berry

+44 (0) 207 629 0075

marianne.berry@acg.net
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- Scientific Metals Corp. ("STM" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: STM)(FRANKFURT: 26X)(OTC PINK: NRNDF) is pleased to announce it has entered into an arm's length agreement to acquire a 100 percent interest in the Paradox Basin Lithium Brine property (the "Paradox Property") located in Utah in the western United States.

The Paradox Property consists of 334 mineral claims covering approximately 6,000 acres that contain eight historic oil and gas drill holes. The Paradox Property exists over an area with historic fluid analysis ranging from 81 to 1,700 ppm lithium in saturated minerals brines, which was previously disclosed by Voltaic Minerals Corp.'s press release of February 18, 2016. Well No.1 Long Canyon returned 500 ppm lithium. This well is located within 400 feet of the Paradox Property and is fully enclosed by the boundary ("Concentrated Subsurface Brines in the Moab Region, Utah", Utah Geological and Mineralogical Survey, June 1965). The brine was discovered in the 1960s when over pressurized oil exploration wells encountered blowouts upon drilling.

The Paradox Basin area is a semi-desert region with an average of over 300 days of sunshine per year, existing infrastructure, and year-round access to road and rail.

The Paradox Property is located approximately 4 kilometres northwest of Intrepid Potash's Cane Creek Operation and is contiguous to the north of Voltaic Minerals Corp.'s "Green Energy" lithium property. As disclosed in Intrepid Potash's 2015 Annual Report, the Cane Creek Operation produced 93,000 tonnes of potash in 2015 through solution mining and solar evaporation ponds. The Property is approximately 530 miles east of Tesla's Gigafactory in Nevada.

STM's President Brian Kirwin states: "We believe the Paradox Property could prove to be a substantial lithium asset with minimal work expenditures and substantial cost savings due to the extensive existing historic drill holes. Multiple historic high grade lithium results in the area are extremely encouraging. We will continue our review of recent and historic well logs, along with chemical analysis with the intention of reprocessing the seismic data focusing on mineral brine. Evaluation of reservoir potential will be done in preparation for the re-entry of shut-in wells located throughout the Paradox Property."

STM Director Wayne Tisdale states: "Our corporate strategy is focused on acquiring underexplored lithium basins with extensive historic drilling already completed and existing fluid analysis as evidence of the presence of high grade lithium in the mineral brine. We are currently evaluating multiple additional opportunities in the lithium space for potential acquisition."

Approximately eight wells have been drilled on the Paradox Property with approximately 25 historic wells in the immediate area. Of these 25 historic wells, five near the Paradox Property have analytical data for lithium and are concurrent with a zone determined by the USGS to contain greater than 40% total dissolved solids in oil field brines. Lithium occurs at the basin in oversaturated mineral brine (40 per cent minerals, 60 per cent water) and was discovered during oil exploration when drill wells intercepted the main brine zone (clastic break 31) of the Paradox formation. The main brine zone is approximately 6,000 feet deep, and consists of 28 feet of shale, anhydrite and dolomite; the bed is not part of any oil reservoir. The fractured clastic zones form an excellent reservoir for brines derived from underlying evaporate units. The fracturing is caused by salt flowage, and it is possible that, when brine is removed from the zones, salt will flow into voids assisting to maintain the high reservoir pressure and high recovery of brine ("Concentrated Subsurface Brines in the Moab Region, Utah", Utah Geological and Mineralogical Survey, June 1965).

The Company has not undertaken any independent investigation of the drill results, fluid analysis or other information contained in this press release nor has it independently analyzed the results of the previous exploration work in order to verify the accuracy of the information or whether the information was prepared in accordance with the requirements of National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101"). The Company believes that the historical drill results, fluid analysis and other information contained in this press release are relevant to continuing exploration on the Paradox Property. The Company intends to conduct a review of recent and historic well logs, along with chemical analysis in the area and reprocessing of seismic data focusing on mineral brine. Evaluation of reservoir potential will be done in preparation for the re-entry of shut-in wells.

In consideration for the acquisition of a 100-per-cent interest in the Paradox Property, STM will make a cash payment of $65,000.00 USD and issue 4,500,000 common shares to the vendor on the closing date and will make an additional payment of $65,000 USD within 30 days of the closing date. The completion of the acquisition of the Paradox Property is subject to a number of conditions precedent including, without limitation, the parties having received all necessary regulatory, court and third party consents, orders (both interim and final), approvals, waivers and authorizations as may be required in respect of the acquisition (including the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange). In addition, each party shall have completed their due diligence of the other party to their satisfaction including, without limitation, STM being satisfied that it will acquire good and valid title to the Paradox Property, free and clear of any and all liabilities and encumbrances.

Mr. Garry Clark, P. Geo., of Clark Exploration Consulting, is the "qualified person" as defined in NI 43-101, who has reviewed and approved the technical content in this press release.

About The Company

STM is a Canadian-based exploration company focused on the acquisition and development of production grade lithium deposits in North America. STM has executed a definitive agreement to acquire the Deep Valley lithium property, located in west-central Alberta, consisting of a 6,648 ha (16,427 acres) permit that encompasses an area of reported enrichment of lithium brines. This property is located in the active Fox Creek - Sturgeon Lake area of Alberta, where formation waters within Leduc aquifers are known to be highly enriched in lithium, potassium, boron, bromine and other commodities. Within the central part of the property, historic samples of formation waters (brines) have returned 140 mg/L (ppm) from the Leduc Formation, which are amongst the highest values recorded for Alberta.

Reader Advisory

This press release should not be considered a comprehensive summary of the terms of the acquisition described above. Additional information may be required by the TSX Venture Exchange and may be disseminated at a future date following a satisfactory review by the TSX Venture Exchange.

Completion of the acquisition is subject to a number of conditions, including but not limited to, TSX Venture Exchange acceptance. The acquisition cannot close until the required approvals are obtained. There can be no assurance that the acquisition will be completed as proposed or at all.

The Company has not undertaken any independent investigation of the drill results, fluid analysis or other information contained in this press release nor has it independently analyzed the results of the previous exploration work in order to verify the accuracy of the information or whether the information was prepared in accordance with the requirements of NI 43-101. The Company believes that the historical drill results, fluid analysis and other information contained in this press release are relevant to continuing exploration on the Paradox Property. The Company intends to conduct a review of recent and historic well logs, along with chemical analysis in the area and reprocessing of seismic data focusing on mineral brine. Evaluation of reservoir potential will be done in preparation for the re-entry of shut-in wells.

This news release contains certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities law. Forward-looking information is frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. . In particular, forward-looking information in this press release includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to timing and completion of the acquisition and the completion of the conditions precedent to the acquisition (including receipt of TSX Venture Exchange approval). Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking information are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. We cannot guarantee future results, performance or achievements. Consequently, there is no representation that the actual results achieved will be the same, in whole or in part, as those set out in the forward-looking information.

Forward-looking information is based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date the statements are made, and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking information. Some of the risks and other factors that could cause the results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking information include, but are not limited to: general economic conditions in Canada and globally; industry conditions, including governmental regulation and environmental regulation; failure to obtain industry partner and other third party consents and approvals, if and when required; the availability of capital on acceptable terms; the need to obtain required approvals from regulatory authorities; stock market volatility; liabilities inherent in water disposal facility operations; competition for, among other things, skilled personnel and supplies; incorrect assessments of the value of acquisitions; geological, technical, processing and transportation problems; changes in tax laws and incentive programs; failure to realize the anticipated benefits of acquisitions and dispositions; and the other factors. Readers are cautioned that this list of risk factors should not be construed as exhaustive.

The forward-looking information contained in this news release is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. We undertake no duty to update any of the forward-looking information to conform such information to actual results or to changes in our expectations except as otherwise required by applicable securities legislation. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information.

The TSX Venture Exchange has in no way passed upon the merits of the proposed acquisition and has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts:

Scientific Metals Corp.

Brian Kirwin, President

(775) 772-0165

bongold@intercomm.com

info@scientificmetalscorp.com

www.scientificmetalscorp.com




TOPSIL SEMICONDUCTOR MATERIALS A/S Interim report, Q1 2016 1 January-31 March 2016Topsil's Board of Directors has signed an agreement to sell Topsil's silicon business to GlobalWafers at a price of DKK 320 million. The agreement is subject to approval by the shareholders at the extraordinary general meeting to be held on 17 June 2016.Over the past few years, Topsil has been seriously challenged by negative market developments, too expensive and too comprehensive long-term raw materials contracts and the failure of some of our sub-suppliers to meet our quality standards. Thanks to our efforts during the past few years to strengthen Topsil's position within highly specialised float zone wafers for the power market, several major bidders have found our silicon business attractive despite our poor financial performance.By becoming part of one of the leading players in the business, Topsil is taking a necessary step towards improving our competitive strength. The move will significantly reinforce our negotiating position in respect of major customers and suppliers, and GlobalWafers possesses the wafering technology that has previously caused us problems due to the failure of a sub-supplier to live up to our quality standards.Kalle Hvidt Nielsen, CEOQ1 HIGHLIGHTS-- On 20 May 2016, the Board of Directors signed a conditional agreement to sell Topsil's silicon business to GlobalWafers for DKK 320 million on a debt-free basis.-- The selling price cannot yet be finally determined, being subject to specific factors, including the outcome of a patent dispute, a calculation of the value of Topsil's inventories and the revenue of Topsil's silicon business for the six months ending 30 June 2016. In a worst case assumption, this is believed to involve a possible reduction of the selling price in the order of 10%.-- Considering the transaction to be in the interests of shareholders, employees and other stakeholders, Topsil's Board of Directors recommends that the Company's shareholders approve the sale of the silicon business.-- If the sale is approved by the extraordinary general meeting to be held on 17 June 2016, Management will take steps to significantly trim the continuing business, which will comprise a Danish listed holding company, whose only activity will be the Polish property business, which is currently being prepared for sale.-- On completion of the transaction and repayment of its bank debt, payment of transaction costs and management changes, the listed company is expected to have at its disposal excess liquidity in the net amount of approximately DKK 110 million, equal to DKK 0.21 per share. The Board of Directors recommends that most of these cash funds be distributed to the company's shareholders in the third quarter of 2016.-- As a result of the conditional agreement to sell Topsil's silicon business, our reporting is to be divided into continuing and discontinued operations.-- Topsil reported a loss of DKK 92.5 million for the first quarter of 2016, of which DKK 88.0 million can be attributed to depreciation, amortisation and impairment of the assets of the silicon business in accordance with the anticipated selling price of the silicon activities.OUTLOOK FOR 2016Our expectations are based on the assumption that the sale of Topsil's silicon business is approved by the extraordinary general meeting to be held on 17 June 2016.If the divestment is completed effective 1 January 2016, revenue is therefore expected to amount to DKK 36 million, assuming that under the new ownership the Polish silicon business stays on as a tenant throughout 2016 and purchases utilities (hydrogen, power, water, etc.) from the property company in the same amounts as previously.The divestment of the silicon business is expected to be finalised in the third quarter of 2016, following which steps will be taken to significantly trim the Danish listed holding company.For the year as a whole, EBITDA is expected to amount to a loss of DKK 10-15 million, impacted by restructuring costs in the region of DKK 11 million.If the sale of the silicon business falls through, sales efforts are expected to impact adversely on EBITDA.Moreover, in order to implement its strategy and create additional value for its shareholders, Topsil will, the Board of Directors believes, require a significant capital contribution if the sale is not completed.The full text of the announcement is attached in PDF.The announcement has been prepared in a Danish-language and an English-language version. In the event of any discrepancies, the Danish version shall prevail.Please direct any questions regarding this announcement to CEO Kalle Hvidt Nielsen or CFO Jesper Bodeholt through Susanne Hesselkjr, Executive Secretary, tel.: +45 2926 6752.Unsubscribe announcements: send an e-mail to investor@topsil.comAttachment:https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=573978


31 May 2016 HARBOURVEST GLOBAL PRIVATE EQUITY REPORTS 6% NAV PER SHARE INCREASE DURING FINANCIAL YEAR ENDED 31 JANUARY 2016 * Net asset value per share was $16.75, a 6% increase from 31 January 2015 * Record $362 million of realisations received during financial year * 38% uplift on carrying value at realisation for largest exits * Gearing remains at zero; $204 million of cash on Balance Sheet



HarbourVest Global Private Equity Limited ('HVPE' or the 'Company'), a closed- end investment company listed on the London Stock Exchange and Euronext Amsterdam, today announces its audited results for the financial year ended 31 January 2016.



The Company invests in private companies and portfolios of private companies through funds managed by Harbourvest, an independent private markets investment specialist with $39 billion in assets under management globally and a 30-year track record of innovation and success.



HVPE is designed to offer shareholders long-term capital appreciation by investing in a private equity portfolio diversified by geography, by stage of investment, by vintage year, and by industry.



Sir Michael Bunbury, Chairman of HVPE, said:



'I am pleased to report a strong set of results, with the portfolio having delivered NAV growth of 6% as measured in HVPE's functional currency, the U.S. dollar. Converted to Pounds sterling, this is equivalent to a 12% return.



'The year to 31 January 2016 was a milestone year for HVPE as it completed its transition to the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange and joined the FTSE 250 Index. As a result, the liquidity of the Company's shares has increased significantly, which has helped broaden its appeal to a new range of investors.'



HVPE provides a complete private equity solution for institutional and retail investors by giving access to a diversified portfolio managed through four phases of the private equity cycle to create value: Commitments, Investment, Growth, and Realisation (Mature). Commitments



During the financial year ended 31 January 2016, HVPE committed $526 million to newly-formed HarbourVest funds, including U.S. venture and buyout-focused funds, global and European multi-strategy funds, a North American venture-focused fund, and a mezzanine co-investment fund.



At 31 January, the Investment Pipeline of future commitments was $1.0 billion, reflecting HVPE's forward commitment strategy.



Investment During the financial year, the Company invested $211 million in HarbourVest funds, which in turn made investments across the private equity spectrum, including new primary fund investments, secondary investments, and direct co- investments. HVPE's Investment Portfolio is highly diversified by stage, phase, geography, and strategy.



Growth



At 31 January 2016, HVPE's Net Asset Value ('NAV') was $1,337 million, or $16.75 (11.76) per share, a 6% increase (12% in sterling) from 31 January 2015 ($15.86/10.53). Growth across the Investment Portfolio was driven by ongoing liquidity events and increasing valuations. By strategy, the buyout portfolio outperformed venture; by geography, Europe and Asia Pacific outperformed the U.S. and other regions.



HVPE's functional currency is the U.S. dollar, and NAV movements are reported in U.S. dollars with a conversion to sterling at the month-end exchange rate. The GBP/USD rate as of 31 January 2016 was 1.4244, while the rate as of 31 January 2015 was 1.506.



Realisation (Mature)



HVPE received a record $362 million of realisations from HarbourVest funds during the financial year, the highest level since inception, and expects to fund its ongoing commitments using the cash received. Liquidity events within the underlying portfolio remained steady, with buyout-backed IPOs and M&A events outpacing venture-backed offerings. The largest realisations within the Investment Portfolio were achieved at an uplift to carrying value of 38%.



Balance Sheet and Credit Facility



HVPE's balance sheet strength and flexibility is supported by its $500 million credit facility, and gearing remains at zero. At 31 January 2016, HVPE's cash ($204 million) and remaining available credit facility total $704 million.



HVPE's Annual Report and Audited Consolidated Financial Statements provide further detail on: * The results for the financial year ended 31 January 2016 * Commitments - HVPE's commitments to newly-formed HarbourVest funds and the Investment Pipeline * Investment - Cash invested in HarbourVest funds and HVPE's HarbourVest funds' new commitments to portfolios of private companies * Growth - Investment Portfolio review and growth * Realisation (Mature) - Realisations received and liquidity events * Managing a Listed Private Equity Company - Balance Sheet Management and Commitment Ratios * Global Private Markets Overview and Outlook and Recent Events HVPE's Annual Report and Audited Consolidated Financial Statements can be found on HVPE's website, in the Annual Report - Year Ending 31 January 2016.



Enquiries:



HarbourVest



Richard Hickman Tel: +44 (0) rhickman@harbourvest.com 20 7399 9847



Laura Thaxter Tel: +1 (617) lthaxter@harbourvest.com 348 3695



FleishmanHillard Fishburn



Henry Adams Tel: +44 (0) henry.adams@fhflondon.co.uk Ludo Baynham-Herd 20 8618 2975 ludo.baynham-herd@fhflondon.co.uk Tel: +44 (0) 20 8618 2804



Notes to Editors:



About HarbourVest Global Private Equity Limited: HarbourVest Global Private Equity Limited ('HVPE') is a Guernsey-incorporated closed-end investment company which has a dual listing on both the London Stock Exchange and Euronext Amsterdam. HVPE is registered as an investment institution with the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets. HVPE is designed to offer shareholders long-term capital appreciation by investing in a private equity portfolio diversified by geography, by stage of investment, by vintage year, and by industry. It invests in and alongside HarbourVest-managed funds which focus on primary fund commitments, secondary investments, and direct co- investments in operating companies. HVPE is advised by HarbourVest Advisers L.P., an affiliate of HarbourVest Partners, LLC.



About HarbourVest Partners, LLC: HarbourVest is an independent, global private markets investment specialist with more than 30 years of experience and $39 billion in assets under management. The Firm's powerful global platform offers clients investment opportunities through primary fund investments, secondary investments, and direct co-investments in commingled funds or separately managed accounts. HarbourVest has more than 340 employees, including more than 90 investment professionals across Asia, Europe, and the Americas. This global team has committed more than $30 billion to newly- formed funds, completed over $13 billion in secondary purchases, and invested $5 billion directly in operating companies. Partnering with HarbourVest, clients have access to customized solutions, longstanding relationships, actionable insights, and proven results..



This announcement is for information purposes only and does not constitute or form part of any offer to issue or sell, or the solicitation of an offer to acquire, purchase or subscribe for, any securities in any jurisdiction and should not be relied upon in connection with any decision to subscribe for or acquire any Shares. In particular, this announcement does not constitute or form part of any offer to issue or sell, or the solicitation of an offer to acquire, purchase or subscribe for, any securities in the United States or to US Persons (as defined in Regulation S under the US Securities Act of 1933, as amended ('US Persons')). Neither this announcement nor any copy of it may be taken, released, published or distributed, directly or indirectly to US Persons or in or into the United States (including its territories and possessions), Canada, Australia or Japan, or any jurisdiction where such action would be unlawful. Accordingly, recipients represent that they are able to receive this announcement without contravention of any applicable legal or regulatory restrictions in the jurisdiction in which they reside or conduct business. No recipient may distribute, or make available, this announcement (directly or indirectly) to any other person. Recipients of this announcement should inform themselves about and observe any applicable legal requirements in their jurisdictions.



The Shares have not been and will not be registered under the US Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the 'Securities Act') or with any securities regulatory authority of any state or other jurisdiction of the United States and, accordingly, may not be offered, sold, resold, transferred, delivered or distributed, directly or indirectly, within the United States or to US Persons. In addition, the Company is not registered under the US Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended (the 'Investment Company Act') and shareholders of the Company will not have the protections of that act. There will be no public offer of the Shares in the United States or to US Persons.



This announcement has been prepared by the Company and its investment manager, HarbourVest Advisers L.P. (the 'Investment Manager'). No liability whatsoever (whether in negligence or otherwise) arising directly or indirectly from the use of this announcement is accepted and no representation, warranty or undertaking, express or implied, is or will be made by the Company, the Investment Manager or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, advisers, representatives or other agents ('Agents') for any information or any of the opinions contained herein or for any errors, omissions or misstatements. None of the Investment Manager nor any of their respective Agents makes or has been authorised to make any representation or warranties (express or implied) in relation to the Company or as to the truth, accuracy or completeness of this announcement, or any other written or oral statement provided. In particular, no representation or warranty is given as to the achievement or reasonableness of, and no reliance should be placed on any projections, targets, estimates or forecasts contained in this announcement and nothing in this announcement is or should be relied on as a promise or representation as to the future.



Other than as required by applicable laws, the Company gives no undertaking to update this announcement or any additional information, or to correct any inaccuracies in it which may become apparent and the distribution of this announcement. The information contained in this announcement is given at the date of its publication and is subject to updating, revision and amendment. The contents of this announcement have not been approved by any competent regulatory or supervisory authority.



This announcement includes statements that are, or may be deemed to be, 'forward looking statements'. These forward looking statements can be identified by the use of forward looking terminology, including the terms 'believes', 'projects', 'estimates', 'anticipates', 'expects', 'intends', 'plans', 'goal', 'target', 'aim', 'may', 'will', 'would', 'could', 'should' or 'continue' or, in each case, their negative or other variations or comparable terminology. These forward looking statements include all matters that are not historical facts and include statements regarding the intentions, beliefs or current expectations of the Company. By their nature, forward looking statements involve risks and uncertainties because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that may or may not occur in the future and may be beyond the Company's ability to control or predict. Forward looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. More detailed information on the potential factors which could affect the financial results of the Company is contained in the Company's public filings and reports.



HarbourVest Global Private Equity Limited is registered with the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets as a collective investment scheme which may offer participations in The Netherlands pursuant to article 2:66 of the Financial Markets Supervision Act (Wet op het financieel toezicht). All investments are subject to risk. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. Prospective investors are advised to seek expert legal, financial, tax and other professional advice before making any investment decision. The value of investments may fluctuate. Results achieved in the past are no guarantee of future results.



This announcement is issued by the Company, which is registered with the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets and whose registered address is Ground Floor Dorey Court Admiral Park St Peter Port Guernsey GY1 2HT.



 2016 HarbourVest Global Private Equity Limited. All rights reserved.



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: HarbourVest Global Private Equity Limited via GlobeNewswire [HUG#2016682]



BR30MJ8R50



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LONDON and CORK, Ireland, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Global Shares today announced the appointment of Mike Baker as Head of Business Development, EMEA.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160122/325085LOGO )



Mike, who will join the company in July 2016, brings over 25 years of experience in the implementation, management and administration of equity compensation plans to the role. Prior to joining Global Shares, he most recently served as Director EMEA, Sales at Solium Capital UK Ltd.

As a dedicated leader in the equity compensation industry Mike's depth of experience will play a key role in accelerating Global Shares' business development for the EMEA region. Global Shares' EMEA clients will benefit from Mike's financial services knowledge gained from advising companies on implementation and ongoing management of employee share plans, as well as providing guidance in compensation strategy and best practice.

"We are delighted to welcome Mike Baker to the Global Shares team," said Tim Houstoun, CEO at Global Shares. "His record of past experience providing global share plan solutions to a variety of large multi-national companies, coupled with an extensive knowledge of all forms of equity incentive plans makes him an invaluable addition to Global Shares".

Mike Baker said, "I am delighted to be joining Global Shares at such an exciting time in the equity and compensation industry. Their client centric approach, global reach and the delivery of superb technology is proving to be tremendously successful at a time when issuers strive to deliver equity incentives to all their employees, no matter where in the world they are located; and attempting to achieve this against a background of ever increasing cost constraints. Global Shares is excellently placed to meet these needs."

Mike joins Global Shares at an exciting time in our expansion as our portfolio of clients on our EquityAdmin cloud-based platform continues to grow around the world. Mike will be based in the London office and will Head Business Development for the EMEA region.

Notes - About Global Shares:

Global Shares is an international Software-as-a-Service company headquartered in Ireland, specializing in employee equity software solutions, with over 1 million users in 100 countries worldwide. Global Shares helps public and private companies to manage every aspect of their Employee Share Plans, providing stock plan administrators with a fully-automated, customizable and compliant solution, as well as expert support services. With over 80 staff and offices in London, Lisbon, New York, California and Brazil, our highly skilled team of software developers & qualified equity professionals have developed this market-leading software in-house and are now releasing it to an ever increasing portfolio of clients. Since its launch in 2015 the new Global Shares equity administration platform has been extraordinarilywellreceived internationally, catapulting the company into the industry spotlight. With the company's new regulated status Global Shares is forecast to grow substantiallyin 2016 and beyond.
DUBLIN, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "China Dental Industry Report, 2016-2020" report to their offering.

The dental industry refers to medical industrial chain on the basis of oral medical consumption, consisting mainly of dental apparatus (equipments and consumables), dental medical services, etc. With the synergy of deepening implementation of new medical reform, growing per capita disposable income and raising public awareness over health, China's dental industry has witnessed robust development in recent years. The scale of dental apparatus and relevant medical services industry was roughly RMB40 billion in 2015 and is expected to hit at least RMB150 billion in 2020.

Dental apparatus: There are a great variety of dental apparatus and consumables and numerous manufacturers in China, presenting a relatively low market concentration. The revenue of enterprises each with annual revenue of RMB20 million or more from their main business operations exceeded RMB5 billion in 2015. However, the mid- to high-end market is dominated by foreign brands which entered the Chinese market via agents or branches in the early days, and some of them out of optimism about the Chinese market have built production bases in China. For example, Foshan has gathered 17 world-renowned dental equipment manufacturers including Sirona Dental.

However, China's domestic dental apparatus companies have made huge breakthroughs in some fields like dental CBCT and invisible appliance.

Hefei Meiya Optoelectronic Technology has become a major supplier of dental CBCT in China. Since the introduction of the products in 2012, the sales volume has doubled every year with a growing tendency of import substitution, and is estimated to reach 350 units in 2015. In 2015, Angel Align, an indigenous Chinese appliance brand, surpassed Align Technology's Invisalign to become the first brand in the Chinese invisible appliance market with a share of 38% (compared with a 35% share for Invisalign in China over the same period).

Dental medical services: The total revenue of stomatological hospitals in China rose from RMB2.37 billion in 2006 to RMB11.39 billion in 2014 at a CAGR of 21.5%. The stomatological hospitals enjoy higher gross margins (among the top three by gross margin) compared with other specialized hospitals, standing at 10.8% in 2010, 11.8% in 2011, 11.9% in 2012, 12.4% in 2013, and 13.1% in 2014.

China Dental Industry Report, 2016-2020 highlights the followings:

- Chinese dental apparatus and materials market (size, imports & exports, competitive landscape, development forecast, etc.);

- Chinese dental medical service market (status quo, competitive landscape, development trends, etc.);

- Market segments (orthodontics, tooth implantation, and teeth whitening) in China (development status, trends, etc.);

- 11 dental apparatus suppliers and 9 private dental medical service companies in China (current development, dental business, development prospects, etc.)

Companies Mentioned

- ARRAIL Dental

- BYBO Dental

- C.K.J Professional Dental

- Dazhong Dental

- Fujian Meisheng Medical Science & Technology Co., Ltd.

- Hefei Meiya Optoelectronic Technology Inc.

- Heraeus Kulzer

- Huamei Dental

- Jiamei Dental

- KaVo Sybron

- Keen Dental

- Modern Dental Group Limited

- Ningbo Runyes Medical Instrument Co., Ltd.

- Northwest Medical Instrument (Group) Co., Ltd.

- Shandong Huge Dental Material Co., Ltd.

- Shandong Sinocera Functional Material Co., Ltd.

- Shanghai Fimet Medical Instrument Co., Ltd.

- Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical (Group) Co., Ltd.

- Shenzhen Jiahong Dental Co., Ltd.

- TC Medical

- Weigao Group

- YaFei Dental

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/p8brrq/china_dental

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


WOLFSBURG (dpa-AFX) - Shares of Volkswagen AG (VKW.L, VLKAF.PK, VOW.BE) declined around 3 percent in the morning trading, after the German automotive giant reported Tuesday lower profit and revenues in its first quarter, mainly reflecting weak passenger car volumes and negative currency impacts. Further, the company reiterated its outlook for fiscal 2016, expecting a decline in revenues.



CEO Matthias Muller said, 'Nevertheless, we remain confident that our operating business will again record solid growth this year. The Group's robust financial strength and earnings power are key to our ability to take the necessary decisions calmly and diligently....'



For the first quarter, profit after tax declined 19.3 percent to 2.37 billion euros from 2.93 billion euros last year.



Operating profit, however, increased 3.4 percent from last year to 3.44 billion euros, resulting in an operating margin of 6.8 percent, higher than 6.3 percent a year ago. The latest results included overall positive special items of 0.3 billion euros, due mainly to currency-related adjustments to the provisions recognized in connection with the diesel issue.



Excluding the positive special items, operating profit would have decreased slightly to 3.1 billion euros, and margin would be down to 6.1 percent from 6.3 percent last year.



Quarterly group sales revenue was down 3.4 percent to 50.96 billion euros from 52.74 billion euros a year ago. This slight decline was primarily attributable to the fall in vehicle unit sales and negative exchange rate effects.



The results did not include the operating activities of the Chinese joint ventures, for which the proportionate operating profit amounted to 1.2 billion euros in the first three months.



In the quarter, deliveries to customers edged up 0.8 percent to 2.51 million units, while vehicle sales dropped 1.2 percent to 2.58 million units. Production was 2.56 million units, down 6.1 percent from last year.



Volkswagen Passenger Cars brand recorded a year-on-year decline in volumes and sales revenue, and its adjusted operating profit plunged to 73 million euros from 514 million euros last year.



Audi's operating profit before special items was almost on a level with the previous year, and sales revenue almost stable. SKODA's operating profit rose by just over 30 percent due to positive mix effects and lower material costs. Sales revenue rose significantly.



Meanwhile, Bentley posted a loss due to the decline in vehicle unit sales.



Muller noted that the company in the quarter once again managed to limit the economic effects of the diesel issue and achieve respectable results under difficult conditions.



For fiscal 2016, the company continues to expect sales revenue to be down by up to 5 percent on the prior-year figure, depending on economic conditions - particularly in South America and Russia. The company still expects an operating return on sales of between 5.0 and 6.0 percent in 2016.



In the Passenger cars business, Volkswagen expects a marked decrease in sales revenue.



Volkswagen shares were trading at 133.65 euros, down 3.12 percent.



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CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- Sunshine Oilsands Ltd. wishes to announce that it has filed its Management Information Circular for its Annual General Meeting of Shareholders to be held on June 30, 2016 with the applicable Canadian securities administrators. The Management Information Circular contains, among others, proposed changes to the composition of the Board of Directors of Sunshine Oilsands Ltd. Please see the below announcement for further information.

By Order of the Board of Sunshine Oilsands Ltd.

Sun Kwok Ping, Executive Chairman

Sunshine Oilsands Ltd. (the "Corporation" or "Sunshine") (HKEX: 2012) today announced that it has filed its Management Information Circular (the "Circular") for its Annual General Meeting of Shareholders to be held on June 30, 2016 (the "AGM") with the applicable Canadian securities administrators. The Circular contains, among others, proposed changes to the composition of the Board of Directors of the Corporation (the "Board") that will be voted on by shareholders at the AGM. The Circular is expected to be dispatched to the shareholders of Sunshine on or about 31 May 2016.

Proposed Re-election of Directors

The Corporation is pleased to announce that each of Kwok Ping Sun, Michael John Hibberd, Hong Luo, Qi Jiang, Chen Jianzhong, Raymond Shengti Fong and Gerald Franklin Stevenson has confirmed that he will offer himself for re-election at the AGM.

Proposed New Directors

The Corporation is also pleased to announce that Mr. Qiping Men, Mr. Yi (David) He, Ms. Joanne Yan, and Ms. Xijuan Jiang (the "Proposed Directors") have each been proposed for election as directors of the Corporation at the AGM. If elected, it is anticipated that Mr. Qiping Men will become an executive director of the Corporation, Ms. Xijuan Jiang will become a non-executive director and each of Mr. Yi (David) He and Ms. Joanne Yan will become independent non-executive directors of the Corporation.

Qiping Men. Mr. Men, aged 51, was appointed as Chief Financial Officer of the Corporation on December 18, 2015. Mr. Men had been serving in the capacity of the Interim Chief Financial Officer of the Corporation from July 2014 to December 2015. Prior to joining Sunshine, Mr. Men was Vice President of Goldenkey Oil Inc., a private oil and gas company based in Calgary, Alberta. Prior thereto, Mr. Men was the Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of each of Anterra Energy Inc. and Sahara Energy Ltd., both of which are publicly traded. Mr. Men has a Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering, is a Professional Engineer and APEGA member. He has an MBA from Dalian University of Technology, has a Canadian CPA designation and is a member of Chartered Professional Accountants of Alberta with a public accountant designation.

Yi (David) He. Mr. He, aged 43, has worked in the financial industry for more than 22 years and held various senior management roles in several global banks in China. In 2012, Mr. He was appointed as Chief Executive Officer of Nomura China Bank and led all China related banking businesses. From 2008 to 2012, he was in charge of China related banking business for Barclays Bank as the General Manager of the Shanghai Branch. Prior thereto, Mr. He led the global markets business for Australia and New Zealand Banking Corporations Limited ("ANZ") and was the Deputy General Manager of ANZ China. Mr. He began his career with Credit Agricole China in 1994 and joined First Sino Bank as the Head of Treasury in 1997.

Mr. He has been an independent non-executive director of Kai Yuan Holding Limited Company (SEHK code: 01215) since 2011 and is member of the audit committee, the remuneration committee, and the nomination committee of Kai Yuan Holding Limited Company.

Mr. He founded Yaoxin Asset Management Company in early 2015, which mainly focuses on financial related consulting. In addition, Mr. He holds a Master's Degree in Economics from Fudan University of China and also is a Certified Professional Accountant in China.

Joanne Yan. Ms. Yan, aged 58, has over twenty years of experience advising, directing and managing publicly listed companies in North America. She has been a leading director, a corporate governance committee chair and audit committee member of numerous companies listed on the TSX Venture Exchange and the TSX. She also has been active in the cross border investment and M&A space and is familiar with the business culture and operations of North American and Chinese businesses. Since September 1994, Ms. Yan has been President of Joyco Consulting Services Inc., a wholly-owned private company based in Vancouver, BC, providing business consulting services particularly with respect to mergers and acquisitions and related public and private financings. Ms. Yan is currently a director of Hanwei Energy Services Corp., a TSX listed company that manufactures and sells high-pressure fibreglass reinforced plastic pipes for international oil & gas and infrastructure industries in addition to producing oil & gas in Canada. From June 2006 to November 2013, Ms. Yan was the President and a director of Brazil Resources Inc. (formerly, Brazilian Gold Corp.), a resource exploration company with international scope, which is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange (trading symbol BRI). Ms. Yan was a director of New Era Minerals Inc. from June 2014 to April 2016, Grande West Corp. from November 2013 to May 2014, and of Archer Petroleum Corp. from April 2013 to October 2014.

Ms. Yan was a director of Hanfeng Evergreen Inc. ("Hanfeng") until she resigned in August 2013. She was subsequently reappointed to the board of directors of Hanfeng on February 24, 2014. On February 19, 2014, the Ontario Securities Commission (the "OSC") issued a temporary cease-trade order in respect of the shares of Hanfeng as a result of Hanfeng's failure to meet its reporting obligations under applicable securities law. Subsequently on March 3, 2014, the OSC issued a permanent cease-trade order in respect of the shares of Hanfeng. The securities commissions of British Columbia, Quebec, Manitoba and Alberta issued cease-trade orders in respect of the shares of Hanfeng in February, March, April and June 2014, respectively. On January 15, 2014, the TSX suspended trading in Hanfeng's shares pending clarification of Hanfeng's affairs and subsequently, on June 9, 2014, the TSX delisted Hanfeng's shares as a result of the failure of Hanfeng to meet the continued listing requirements of the TSX. On August 20, 2014, Ernst & Young Inc. was appointed by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice as receiver and manager over all of the assets of Hanfeng. On this date, Ms. Yan also resigned as a director of Hanfeng.

Xijuan Jiang. Ms. Jiang, aged 50, is a senior engineer with 25 years of experience in industrial applications. Ms. Jiang is the recipient of numerous design awards, primarily in respect of heating and ventilation systems. Ms. Jiang has been the Vice President and Chief Engineer of Nuoxin Energy Technology (Shanghai) Co. Ltd. since November 2012. Prior thereto, she was the Chief Engineer (Water and Sewer) at the Architecture Branch of Shougang Design Institute. Ms. Jiang obtained a Bachelor degree from the Xi'an University of Architecture and Technology in 1984.

If each of the Proposed Directors is elected, it is anticipated that there will be no service contract between the Corporation and each of them, other than Mr. Qiping Men's employment contract in relation to his role as Chief Financial Officer of the Corporation. If elected, each Proposed Director will be entitled to receive director's emolument in accordance with the emolument policy of the Corporation (such emolument policy is subject to revision by the Compensation Committee of the Corporation). In accordance with the Corporation's articles of incorporation and by-laws, each Proposed Director, if elected, shall hold office as a director subject to re-election at the next annual general meeting of the Corporation.

Save as disclosed in this announcement, each of the Proposed Directors has not held any directorships in other listed public companies in the last three years and does not hold any other positions in the Corporation nor in any other subsidiaries of the Corporation. None of the Proposed Directors has any relationship with any directors, supervisors, senior management, substantial or controlling shareholder of the Corporation other than Ms. Jiang, who currently is employed with Nuoxin Energy Technology (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., a company that is part of the Nobao Renewable Energy Holdings Limited group of companies that are controlled by the Chairman of the Corporation. Other than as disclosed in the Circular, none of the Proposed Directors has any interests in the securities of the Corporation within the meaning of Part XV of the Securities and Futures Ordinance (Chapter 571 of the Laws of Hong Kong).

Save as disclosed above, each of the Proposed Directors has confirmed that there is no other information that is required to be disclosed in accordance with Rule 13.51(2)(h) to (v) of the Rules Governing the Listing of Securities on The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited and there is no other matter relating to his appointment that needs to be brought to the attention of the shareholders of the Corporation.

Additional Changes to the Board of Directors

The Corporation also wishes to confirm that each of Mr. Robert Herdman, Mr. Jin Hu, Mr. Zhefei Song and Mr. Hok Ming Tseung will not be standing for re-election at the AGM and each of their terms as a director of the Corporation will expire at the conclusion of the AGM. Each of Messrs. Herdman, Song and Hu has confirmed that he has no disagreement with the Board. Mr. Tseung has no disagreement with the Board other than the proposed changes to the Board and was the only director of the Corporation that voted against the resolution to approve the proposed slate of directors of the Corporation for the AGM. Save as disclosed above, there are no matters that need to be brought to the attention of the shareholders of the Corporation.

The Corporation wishes to sincerely thank Messrs. Herdman, Hu, Song and Tseung for their dedicated service and contributions to the Corporation over the years and wishes them success in their future endeavours.

Hong Luo, CEO

Dr. Qi Jiang, President & COO

ABOUT SUNSHINE OILSANDS LTD.

The Corporation is a Calgary based public corporation, listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange since March 1, 2012. The Corporation was also listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange from November 16, 2012 to September 30, 2015, when it chose to voluntarily delist. The Corporation is focused on the development of its significant holdings of oil sands and heavy oil leases in the Athabasca oil sands region. The Corporation owns interests in oil sands and petroleum and natural gas leases in the Athabasca region of Alberta. The Corporation is currently focused on executing milestone undertakings in the West Ells project area. West Ells Phase I is operational and has an initial production target rate of 5,000 barrels per day.

FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION

This announcement contains forward-looking information relating to, among other things, (a) the future financial performance and objectives of Sunshine; (b) the plans and expectations of the Corporation; and (c) the anticipated election of proposed nominees as directors of the Corporation. Such forward-looking information is subject to various risks, uncertainties and other factors. All statements other than statements and information of historical fact are forward-looking statements. The use of words such as "estimate", "forecast", "expect", "project", "plan", "target", "vision", "goal", "outlook", "may", "will", "should", "believe", "intend", "anticipate", "potential", and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on Sunshine's experience, current beliefs, assumptions, information and perception of historical trends available to Sunshine, and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to, those associated with resource definition and expected reserves and contingent and prospective resources estimates, unanticipated costs and expenses, regulatory approval, fluctuating oil and gas prices, expected future production, the ability to access sufficient capital to finance future development and credit risks, changes in Alberta's regulatory framework, including changes to regulatory approval process and land-use designations, royalty, tax, environmental, greenhouse gas, carbon and other laws or regulations and the impact thereof and the costs associated with compliance.

Although Sunshine believes that the expectations represented by such forward-looking statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Readers are cautioned that the assumptions and factors discussed in this announcement are not exhaustive and readers are not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements as the Corporation's actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied. Sunshine disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, subsequent to the date of this announcement, except as required under applicable securities legislation. The forward-looking statements speak only as at the date of this announcement and are expressly qualified by these cautionary statements. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing lists are not exhaustive and are made as at the date hereof. For a full discussion of the Corporation's material risk factors, see the Corporation's annual information form for the year ended December 31, 2015 (the "AIF") and risk factors described in other documents we file from time to time with securities regulatory authorities, all of which are available on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange at www.hkexnews.hk, on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com or the Corporation's website at www.sunshineoilsands.com.

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.

As at the date of this announcement, the Board consists of Mr. Kwok Ping Sun, Mr. Hong Luo and Dr. Qi Jiang as executive directors; Mr. Michael John Hibberd, Mr. Hok Ming Tseung, Mr. Chen Jianzhong and Mr. Jin Hu as non-executive directors; and Mr. Raymond Shengti Fong, Mr. Robert John Herdman, Mr. Gerald Franklin Stevenson and Mr. Zhefei Song as independent non-executive directors.

(i)For identification purposes only

Contacts:

Sunshine Oilsands Ltd.

Dr. Qi Jiang

President & Chief Operating Officer

(1) (587) 390-0606

investorrelations@sunshineoilsands.com

www.sunshineoilsands.com




EAGLE POINT, OR -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- Grow Condos, Inc., a fully reporting publicly traded company under the trading symbol (OTC PINK: GRWC). Grow Condos, Inc. is a real estate purchaser, developer & manager of specific use industrial properties providing "condo" style turn-key grow facilities to support the cannabis industry. The Company is pleased to announce that it is launching a new division which will target the development of cannabis friendly RV Campgrounds/Resorts specifically tailored for owner/operators and cater to the recreational marijuana marketplace.

"Recreational vehicle owners and campers want to be able to enjoy a stress free experience and we feel that in the recreational marijuana states a cannabis friendly resort will draw great interest," said CEO Wayne Zallen.

The company plans to build out a branded RV campground/resort named "Smoke on the Water Resorts," providing a turn-key solution for the campground owner/operator. Grow Condos will participate in a revenue share and or royalty/rental basis while maintaining the ownership of the real estate thus taking advantage of any appreciation.

About Grow Condos, Inc.

Grow Condos is a fully reporting publicly traded company listed under the symbol GRWC: Pink Sheets. It is a real estate purchaser, developer & manager of specific use industrial properties providing "condo" style turn-key grow facilities to support the cannabis industry. We own, lease, sell and manage multi-tenant properties.

Like during the Gold Rush days in California, Grow Condos is focused on a pick-and-shovel approach to participating in the exploding marijuana industry. We finance the purchase and/or development of properties by offering investors private placement sponsorships, debt instruments, or limited partnerships. We believe there is a significant investor demand for such opportunities. Currently we own and manage a 15,000 square foot warehouse in Eagle Point, Oregon, own and developing a property in Eugene Oregon and are currently looking into other acquisitions in Oregon, Colorado, Washington, California and Nevada with like-minded investors who want to share in the growth of this dynamic new industry.

Additionally the company is currently an additional line of products and services to offer our partners, customers and tenants.

Safe Harbor: This release contains statements that constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These statements appear in a number of places in this release and include all statements that are not statements of historical fact regarding the intent, belief or current expectations of Grow Condos, Inc., its directors or its officers with respect to, among other things: (i) financing plans; (ii) trends affecting its financial condition or results of operations; (iii) growth strategy and operating strategy. The words "may," "would," "will," "expect," "estimate," "can," "believe," "potential" and similar expressions and variations thereof are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond Grow Condos, Inc. ability to control, and that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors. More information about the potential factors that could affect the business and financial results is and will be included in Grow Condos, Inc. filings with the OTC Markets, Securities and Exchange Commission and/or the company's website.

CONTACT:

Grow Condos, Inc.

Corporate: www.growcondos.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GrowCondosInc

Twitter: https://twitter.com/GrowCondosInc

Investor Relations: ir@growcondos.com




SALT LAKE CITY, UT--(Marketwired - May 31, 2016) - Davinci Virtual, the leading provider of virtual office solutions, announced today that its global network of virtual office services now includes 1,200 virtual office address and meeting room locations. Davinci's clients can purchase business addresses and rent office space in over 500 cities across the United States and in 42 countries worldwide.

"We are very proud of the vast location network we have established over the past decade. Now any size company -- solopreneur or enterprise -- can work with Davinci for all of their virtual office and meeting space needs -- anywhere," said Martin Senn, CEO of Davinci Virtual. "Reaching the milestone of 1,200 locations in our preferred partner network is an awesome testament to Davinci's great industry relationships and track record. We want to thank all of our outstanding partners for their on-going trust and support," Senn added.

Davinci has provided virtual office solutions to over 40,000 companies and entrepreneurs throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, Central America, Africa, Asia and Australia. The company now offers over 1,200 virtual office locations in most metropolitan areas throughout the world while providing access to more than 4,500 meeting venues. Clients can obtain prime business addresses, live receptionist and live web chat services, meeting spaces and business support -- instantly -- with the click of a button.

For more information please visit www.davincivirtual.com or www.davincimeetingrooms.com or call 888-VOFFICE (888-863-3423).

About Davinci Virtual

Davinci Virtual Office Solutions was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. For the past decade, the company has provided live receptionist services and virtual office solutions to over 40,000 companies and entrepreneurs throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, Central America, Africa, Asia and Australia. Clients can obtain live receptionist services, live web chat services, prime business addresses, meeting & work spaces and business support -- instantly -- with the click of a button.

Davinci offers virtual office locations and services in coworking spaces worldwide. With professional business addresses in over 1,200 prime locations, mail forwarding, lobby and directory listings, access to conference rooms and day offices, catering, administrative services, virtual assistants, business support centers, resident agent services, license hanging and more, Davinci Virtual helps businesses maintain a global presence on a local budget.

DavinciMeetingRooms.com is a comprehensive online reservation platform for business, providing access to over 4,500 conference rooms, day offices, meeting spaces and business support services around the globe. Users can book professionally equipped meeting spaces, as well as critical add-on services such as LCD projectors, video conferencing, wireless Internet access, catering services and secretarial support.

Media Contact:

Mary Castleton

Davinci Virtual

801-990-9200
PUNE, India, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The global biomaterials market is driven by the rising baby boomer population coupled with surging prevalence of deaths from chronic diseases. According to research report, "Global Biomaterials Market (By Type, By Application, By Region, By Country): Opportunities and Forecasts (2016-2021) - (By Value; By Material Type - Polymer, Ceramic, Metal; By Application Orthopaedic, Cardiovascular, Plastic Surgery, Wound Care); By Region-North America, Europe, APAC, ROW; By Country - US, UK, Germany, Italy, Japan, China, India; Key Players - Strategy, Financial Performance)", Global Biomaterials Market is projected to exhibit a CAGR of around 15.73% during 2016 2021.

Complete report on biomaterials market spread across 235 pages providing competitive analysis of 8 companies, tables and figures is now available at http://www.reportsnreports.com/reports/569412-global-biomaterials-market-by-type-by-application-by-region-opportunities-and-forecasts-2016-2021-by-material-type-polymer-ceramic-metal-by-application-orthopaedic-cardiovascular-plastic-surgery-wound-care-by-region-north-america-europe-apac-row-by-country-us-uk-germany-italy-japan-china-india-key-players-strategy-financial-performance-.html.

Biomaterials Market has been growing at a moderate rate over the last five years on account of increasing prevalence of deaths from various chronic diseases, emerging technological innovations, rising number of baby boomer population, surging implantable devices market. During 2016-21, Biomaterials Market is anticipated to grow at an increased rate on the heels of high prevalence of chronic diseases coupled with emerging usage of biomaterials in various other applications. Moreover, increasing government aids and grants along with a series of technological innovations has been backing the market.

Material Wise, polymer biomaterials lead the market with over 64% contribution in the year 2015 while orthopedic biomaterials contribute the maximum share in the same period. And Region Wise North America contributed a whopping share of 42.77% in 2015 and is anticipated to maintain the leadership in the future. High baby boomer population coupled with increasing grants and aids by the government is backing the biomaterials market in the region.

The leading companies operating in Global Biomaterials Market are Royal DSM, Wright Medical Technology, Inc., Corbion N.V., Carpenter Technology Corporation, Zimmer Biomet Holdings, Inc., Evonik Industries, Bayer Healthcare AG, Koninklijke DSM N.V., Basf SE. Order a Copy of Report at http://www.reportsnreports.com/purchase.aspx?name=569412.

Another report titled Global Orthobiologics Market 2016-2020 forecasts orthobiologics market to grow at a CAGR of 7.03% during the period 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from the sales of: Stem cells, Bone morphogenetic proteins, Synthetic bone grafts, Viscosupplements, Demineralized bone matrix and Allografts.

The following companies are the key players in the Global Orthobiologics Market like DePuy Synthes, Medtronic, Sanofi, Stryker and Zimmer Biomet. Other prominent vendors are also listed. Commenting on the report, an analyst said: "A major trend that is expected to boost the market growth during the forecast period is the increase in funds to enhance orthobiologics. Vendors in the market are extensively investing in research to develop a wide range of innovative products, strengthening their portfolio and successful commercialization of products. Such developments will lead to the growth of the orthobiologics market over the next five years."

According to the report, forming strategic partnerships for marketing is one of the primary drivers of the market. Vendors form strategic partnerships to expand their businesses, extend their product offerings, and increase their market shares. These partnerships also help companies align their technologies with each other's innovative medical device portfolio. Complete report available at http://www.reportsnreports.com/reports/496155-global-orthobiologics-market-2016-2020.html.

Explore other new reports on biotechnology market at http://www.reportsnreports.com/market-research/biotechnology/.

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DUBLIN, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Marketshas announced the addition of the"Global and China Activated Carbon Industry Report, 2016-2020"report to their offering.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160330/349511LOGO )





In 2015, global activated carbon capacity approximated 2.1 million tons (mainly distributed in China, the United States, Japan, and Europe), compared with total demand of only about 1.547 million tons, indicating a huge excess capacity across the entire industry and further capacity integration or elimination in the future.



As the world's largest producer of activated carbon, China's capacity and output of activated carbon reached roughly 900,000 tons and about 628,000 tons (up 6.6% year on year) respectively in 2015, with autilization of 69.8%. Driven by environmental protection and automobile industries, China's activated carbon industry will continue to grow steadily in the future at an output CAGR of around 7.4% during 2016-2020.



Besides satisfying domestic demand, about 1/3 of China-made activated carbon is exported. The country exported 251,000 tons of activated carbon, including 58,000 tons of wood-based activated carbon, mainly to Japan, Peru, and Indonesia, and 193,000 tons of other activated carbons, primarily to Japan, South Korea, and Belgium.



Water treatment and food & beverage are two application fields of activated carbon in China, together making up 60.2% of total demand in 2015, with the former mainly adopting granular activated carbon and the latter powdered activated carbon.



Major global activated carbon manufacturers include U.S. Calgon, Cabot, and Meadwestvaco, Japanese Kuraray and Osaka Gas, French CECA, and Chinese Fujian Yuanli Active Carbon, Datong Coal Mining Jinding Activated Carbon, and Shanxi Xinhua Chemical. Calgon is the world's largest activated carbon producer with a 21.2% global market share, Fujian Yuanli Active Carbon is the largest wood-based activated carbon maker in China, seizing about 21.7% of the Chinese wood-based activated carbon market, and Datong Coal Mining Jinding Activated Carbon is the country's largest coal-based activated carbon manufacturer, occupying 16.7% or so of the segment in China.



Key Topics Covered:



1 Overview of Activated Carbon Industry



2 Global Activated Carbon Industry



3 Activated Carbon Industry in China



4 Main Upstream Sectors of Activated Carbon



5 Main Applications of Activated Carbon



6. Leading Activated Carbon Companies Worldwide



7. Leading Wood-based Activated Carbon Enterprises in China



8. Major Coal-based Activated Carbon Enterprises in China



9 Summary and Forecast



Companies Mentioned



- CECA

- Cabot

- Calgon

- ChifengZhonglinZhongtian Chemical Industry

- Datong Coal Jinding Activated Carbon

- Datong Locomotive Coal

- Datong Municipal Yunguang Activated Carbon

- Fujian Xinsen Carbon

- Fujian Yuanli Active Carbon

- Fujian Zhixing Activated Carbon

- Golden Lake Carbon

- GuizhouQianmin Activated Carbon

- Hangzhou Hengxing Activated Carbon

- HuairenHuanyu Purification Materials

- Inner Mongolia Taixi Coal

- Jiangsu Zhuxi Activated Carbon

- Kuraray

- Meadwestvaco

- Ningxia Guanghua-Cherishmet Activated Carbon

- Ningxia Huahui Activated Carbon

- Osaka Gas Chemicals Group

- QuzhouYunhe Carbon

- Shanghai Xingchang Activated Carbon

- Shanxi Huaqing Activated Carbon

- Shanxi Xinhua Chemical



For more information visit:http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/6khkvs/global_and_china

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com

For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

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DUBLIN, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Marketshas announced the addition of the"Global and China Machine Tool Report, 2016-2020"report to their offering.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160330/349511LOGO )



Global and China Machine Tool Industry Report, 2016-2020 highlights the followings:



- Production and sale, import & export of machine tool and competitive pattern of enterprises worldwide;

- Policies on and operation, import & export and competition of Chinese machine tool industry;

- Production and sale, import & export and key manufacturers of metal cutting machine tool, metal forming machine tool and CNC machine tool in China;

- Operation and business in China of eight world renown companies;

- Operation, revenue structure, development strategies and so forth of 18 Chinese players.

Affected by factors such as economic downturn at home and abroad, weak market demand and the amounting pressure of industrial transformation and upgrading, the machine tool industry of China was on a downward path in 2015 when the operating revenue fell 9.2% from a year earlier and total profit plunged 43.5% year on year; specifically, the metal cutting machine tool has come down for four consecutive years, and the metal forming machine tool dropped sharply for the first time. It is expected that in 2016 China's machine tool industry would continue to decline but the drop range is anticipated to be narrowed.



Although it remains sluggish, the machine tool industry of China showed some new characteristics in 2015 as the industrial restructuring paces up. First, the structure of demand accelerates to be upgraded, with common machine tools seeing a significant decline but high-end products like machining center rising; then, the export market showed negative growth as a whole, but special processing machine tool and others still kept growth; next, the support capability of functional components and so on was improved, and breakthroughs were made in the CNC system.



Facing harsh reality of the industry, Chinese enterprises are seeking strategic breakthroughs by means like innovation of products, extension of industrial chain as well as cooperation between enterprises.



Key Topics Covered:



1 Overview of Machine Tool Industry



2 Status Quo of Global Machine Tool Industry



3 Development Environment of Machine Tool Industry in China



4 Development of Machine Tool Industry in China



5 Status Quo of Major Machine Tool Market in China



6 Major Global Machine Tool Manufacturers



7 Major Chinese Machine Tool Manufacturers



8 Summary and Forecast



Companies Mentioned



- Amada

- Beijing Beiyi Machine Tool Co., Ltd (BYJC)

- Chongqing Machine Tool Co., Ltd.(CHMTI)

- DMG MORI AKTIENGESELLSCHAFT

- DMG MORI CO., LTD

- Dalian Machine Tool Group Corporation (DMTG)

- JIER Machine-Tool Group Co., Ltd.

- Jiangsu Yawei Machine Tool Co., Ltd.

- Jtekt

- Komatsu

- Okuma

- Qier Machine Tool Group Co., Ltd.

- Qinchuan Machine Tool & Tool (Group) Corp.(QCMT&T).

- Qinghai Huading Industrial Co., Ltd.

- Qiqihar Heavy CNC Equipment Co., Ltd.

- Shanghai Machine Tool Works Ltd.

- Shenji Group Kunming Machine Tool Co., Ltd.

- Shenyang Machine Tool Co., Ltd. (SMTCL)

- Spark Machine Tool Co., Ltd.

- Tontec Technology Investment Group Co., Ltd.

- Trumpf

- WeihaiHuadong Automation Co., Ltd. (HDCNC)

- Wuhan Huazhong Numerical Control Co., Ltd. (HNC)

- Yamazaki Mazak

- Yunnan CY Group Co., Ltd.

- Zhejiang Rifa Precision Machinery Co., ltd.



For more information visithttp://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/f4p8b8/global_and_china

Media Contact:

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com

For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470

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Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716




Cynthia Wong Director, Member Relations & Marketing, CASBAA Cynthia@casbaa.com +852 3929 1711

SINGAPORE, May 31, 2016 - (ACN Newswire) - The emergence of new technologies in the satellite industry, including the arrival of HTS GSO and NGSO systems, is prompting the industry to embrace a substantial shift - from offering one-size-fits-all capacity to creating value propositions better tailored to customers' fast-growing, diverse demand and the price pressures in dynamic economic circumstances.This was a key focus at CASBAA Satellite Industry Forum 2016, attended by close to 200 industry leaders yesterday at Pan Pacific Singapore. Nine high-level panels discussed a wide range of topics - from the latest strategies in the challenging market landscape, the rise in NGSO systems, to developments in the launch market and perspectives on airline communications, broadband and enterprise solutions.Demand for superior value propositionIn the Asia Pacific Satellite Leadership Roundtable, key industry leaders agreed that despite cyclical downturns in industries like oil and gas, there is still immense market potential in Asia. "These are cyclical forces that don't fundamentally lead to long-term decline in demand," said Mr. Jean-Francois Fenech, CEO of Eutelsat Asia. "Usage in data is continuing to pick up."Panellists highlighted long-term fundamentals for sustained growth in video and broadband data connectivity, which lead to continued investments in growth across the region. These are manifested in initiatives to enhance satellite efficiency and launch new ones to expand capacity.Amidst intense competition in the industry, the second panel "Is the NGSO Revolution Coming?" discusses the arrival of the NGSO systems as a new alternative for delivering the optimal experience in the most cost-effective manner. Mr. Mark Rigolle, CEO of LeoSat Enterprises, said: "Satellites are now better than terrestrial solutions. Our focus is to be the fastest, most secure network, do it better than fibre and do it better than what satellites have so far been able to do."However, beyond debates on seemingly competing technologies - between NGSO and GSO, Ku and Ka bands, terrestrial and satellite - the discussion called for the industry to take a more customer-focused approach. "You want to offer end-to-end services; you don't want to merely sell bandwidth and MHz. Ultimately, what your customers care about are the end benefits," said Mr. Stephane Chenard, Senior Associate Consultant, Euroconsult.Featuring updates from leaders in the launch market, the third panel underlined the need to focus on the economic calculus of satellite launches and not just the technology. Mr. Jacques Breton, Senior Vice President, Sales & Business Development, Arianespace, said half of the company's backlog comprises NGSO, but also added: "We are agnostic on any orbit; for us, it's about providing the appropriate vehicles and solutions at the appropriate cost."The discussion on cost is especially pertinent with the advent of new innovations that claim to offer greater efficiency and lower costs, unlocking industry-disrupting possibilities that make space more accessible."We have been successful in changing the cost paradigm," said Mr. Jonathan Hofeller, Vice President of Commercial Sales, SpaceX. "We will continue to see smaller satellites and newer constellations come online that couldn't afford to previously. For small satellites, we have tapped on third party ride-share missions."In addition, the panel cited reusability and automation as measures that are being adopted for enhancing efficiency.Aeronautical applications in ongoing evolutionThe fourth panel featured an exciting discussion on whether satellite applications in aeronautics and in-flight connectivity are merely a flash in the pan, especially given the challenges in monetising this service proposition. Panellists agreed that there is no singular model, as airlines integrate connectivity in different ways - from 'freemium' offering to pay-as-you-go amongst low-cost carriers.The panel also highlighted the fact that besides passenger and consumer connectivity, the aeronautics sector generates demand for satellite applications in aircraft operations. Even as antenna and satellite technology evolves, airlines are demanding options that are readily available to support their capabilities.Towards World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC) '19In a rallying call, Mr. Gonzalo de Dios, Associate General Counsel, Intelsat emphasised that in the aftermath of WRC '15, the industry needs to advocate for a vision of the critical role that satellite will play in an ever-connected world through close coordination between service providers, end users, and customers at domestic and regional levels. "This is about connectivity on a global level and the imperative to serve underrepresented areas."Continued optimism amidst price pressuresWhile demand for satellite capacity is rapidly increasing, pricing remains low. Panellists in the "The Customer is Always Right - Sometimes" discussion tackled growing customer expectations by advocating for more aggressive business models to attract and retain customers. They also identified video as an emerging opportunity for huge growth potential.Mr. Vaibhav Magow, Regional Director, Asia-Pacific, Hughes Network Systems, LLC, said: "The industry is opening up many market segments that were not available to us in the past. With new technological developments, we are now starting to gain back a space in the traditional telecommunications world and fight back through innovation. That's a really strong reason to be optimistic."Meanwhile, panellists on the "CEO Panel - The Sharp End" responded to falling transponder prices by stressing the need for businesses to increase flexibility and quality of their services to remain competitive in the market. Mr Steve Collar, CEO of O3b Networks, said falling prices offer opportunities for the industry to innovate and deliver solutions that are more relevant to customers, and urged the satellite business to transform from a scarce, niche industry into a more accessible one.Indonesia as a growth marketAt the session "Focus on Indonesia", panellists said weak economic fundamentals and the gap between rising operational costs and consumers' ability to pay are key challenges for the satellite industry in Indonesia. Nevertheless, the fragmented archipelago heavily relies on satellite services, and demand for bandwidth in Indonesia has quadrupled in the last five years, said Mr. Henry Mulya, Sales Director, Asia Pacific, SES.The way forward for the satellite industryTo close, CEOs of leading satellite businesses discussed the way forward for the satellite industry and the challenges it currently faces. Acknowledging the harsh stock market perceptions of the industry, the key business leaders emphasized that the business realities point towards long-term growth that can be accomplished through continuous innovation.Summing up the day's discussions, Mr. Paul Brown-Kenyon, Chairman, CASBAA Satellite Industry Committee and CEO of MEASAT said: "We are at an important transformational place, and the world is changing dramatically. The amount of money we pay for data today is the same as five years ago, but the data we consume is ten times more. I think our business would change, and the role we play in the communications sector would change."About CASBAACASBAA is the Asia Pacific region's largest non-profit media association, serving the multi-channel audio-visual content creation and distribution industry. Established in 1991, CASBAA has grown with the industry to include digital multichannel television, content, platforms, advertising, and video delivery. Encompassing some 500 million connections within a footprint across the region, CASBAA works to be the authoritative voice for multichannel TV; promoting even-handed and market-friendly regulation, IP protection and revenue growth for subscription and advertising, while promoting global best practices. For more information, visit www.casbaa.comSource: CASBAAContact:Copyright 2016 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved.
HANOVER and HAMBURG, Germany, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The international investor 3i Group plc, together with the management, is to take over 100 percent of the shares in the automotive component supplier based in Poing, near Munich. For the HANNOVER Finanz Group, which currently holds around 70 percent of the shares, this is one of the largest transactions in its nearly 40 year-old history. The final closing of the deal is subject to approval by the cartel authorities, and as usual, the parties have agreed not to disclose the purchase price.

The HANNOVER Finanz Group made its investment in Mackprang Holding GmbH & Co. KG, the parent organization of the Schlemmer Group and several logistics companies, in 2012. HANNOVER Finanz and Mackprang implemented a reorientation of the Group, first selling the logistics companies, and concentrating together with the management on growth at Schlemmer, a specialist for cable protection systems and connectors. The signing of the purchase agreement is also an expression of the company's successful further development. During the equity capital partnership, the Schlemmer Group continued to grow strongly on international markets, and now comprises 31 companies with 23 production facilities worldwide. In 2015, the business achieved sales of 263 million euros (including all sales of the joint venture in China) - compared with 179 million euros when the investment was made in 2012.

Andreas Schober, Chairman of the Board of the HANNOVER Finanz Group comments as follows: "Together with all those involved, we reached our target more rapidly than we had planned. Now, Schlemmer will press ahead in its next stage of growth with an international investor. Schlemmer is one of the most successful transactions in the almost 40 year-old history of the HANNOVER Finanz Group. With our commitment, we made a decisive contribution to the development of the Schlemmer Group, a medium sized enterprise with global operations."

Dr. Uwe Hautz, a member of the Advisory Board of Schlemmer GmbH and former Managing Director of Mackprang Holding, reviews the partnership: "The restructuring of the Mackprang Group was a step towards a clear, future-oriented strategic alignment. Our partner HANNOVER Finanz enabled us to strengthen our equity capital base and implement further growth."

Josef Minster, CEO of Schlemmer, said: "We are delighted to be partnering with 3i for the next stage in our global growth story. During the past four years, Schlemmer developed very well under the ownership of HANNOVER Finanz and the Mackprang Family. I'm convinced that in future, Schlemmer will greatly benefit from 3i's deep experience and strong track record in the automotive industry, as well as from its international network."

The representatives of the HANNOVER Finanz Group involved in effecting the transaction were Claus von Loeper, Jurgen von Wendorff, Jorg Caesar and Dr. Christina Silberberger.

About the Schlemmer Group

The Schlemmer Group is a global technology expert, which has focused on the development and production of highly specialized synthetics solutions. Building on 60 years of experience in cable protection, the group of companies headquartered in Poing, Upper Bavaria, has become one of the leading and most comprehensive value added partners, supporting its clients as an intelligent consulting and service partner. In addition to the core Automotive business area, the Schlemmer Group also pursues activities in a wide range of other sectors with its Industry and Appliances business areas. Over 60 sites throughout the world, 23 production plants at strategically important locations and a mobile factory enable the company to simultaneously implement global strategies and enjoy a local presence in development production and sales. The company's over 2,500 employees generated total consolidated sales of 263 million euros in 2015 (including all sales of the joint venture in China).

Further information: http://www.schlemmer.com and http://www.schlemmer-ecotech.com

Schlemmer Group at Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/schlemmer.group

About Mackprang

The Mackprang family business was founded under the name of C. Mackprang jr. GmbH & Co. KG as a trading company for agricultural raw materials in 1878. The Hamburg-based company started in the 1960s to pursue a strategy of increasing diversification. In 1963, Mackprang acquired an interest in Schlemmer GmbH, taking over 100 percent of the shares in 1979. In the 1980s and 1990s, Mackprang expanded its activities with the establishment of the logistics companies Suderelbe Logistik GmbH, CM Eurologistik GmbH and UNISPED Logistik GmbH. Both groups of companies belonged to Mackprang Holding GmbH & Co. KG, which the HANNOVER Finanz Group joined as the majority shareholder in 2012. The original trading company C. Mackprang jr. GmbH & Co. KG, in contrast, continued its trading operations in agricultural commodities as an independent enterprise with the previous shareholders, and was finally sold by them in 2014.

About the HANNOVER Finanz Group

The HANNOVER Finanz Group, founded in 1979 and backed by institutional investors, has over 37 years of experience as a private equity investor. The basis of its investments in medium sized enterprises, intended for the long term, is the currently seven active evergreen funds with unlimited duration. The investors are mainly insurance companies or professional pension funds. HANNOVER Finanz's commitments extend from old economy industries to commerce and the new technologies. Since its foundation, the equity capital partner for medium sized enterprises has grown continuously, and with it the number of successfully completed investments has also grown. The reasons for involvement are mainly to finance growth and corporate succession in sound businesses with annual sales of at least 20 million euros. The HANNOVER Finanz Group is one of the few private equity houses in Germany to take on minority as well as majority shareholdings

Text:

Jantje Salander, Head of Corporate Communications,

HANNOVER Finanz Group, Gunther-Wagner-Allee 13, D-30177 Hannover

Tel.: +49-(0511)-2-80-07-89, Mobile: +49-(0160)-6-33-72-04, Fax: +49-(0511)-2-80-07-37

Email: salander@hannoverfinanz.de , Internet: http://www.hannoverfinanz.de


SEATTLE (dpa-AFX) - Coffee retailer Starbucks Corp. (SBUX) Tuesday said it is set to capture multi-billion dollar cold coffee market, after it unveiled a new line-up of cold beverages, forming a new 'cold bar' of coffee and espresso products. The company's existing core 'cold bar' menu in stores in U.S. and Canada will now include Cold Brew, Cold Brew with Vanilla Sweet Cream, Nitro Cold Brew, Traditional Iced Coffee, Starbucks DoubleShot on Ice and Caramel Iced Macchiato. In addition to bringing handcrafted vanilla flavor to Cold Brew coffee, Starbucks said it will also debut a handcrafted Starbucks Doubleshot on Ice espresso beverage and introduce Nitro Cold Brew in select cities. Starbucks launches Nitro Cold Brew on tap in major cities across the U.S., making it the largest retailer of this new handcrafted cold coffee experience. In addition, the Company expects the category of cold coffee to double in the next three years. 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) -- 05/31/16 -- Pangolin Diamonds Corp. (TSX VENTURE: PAN) (the "Company" or "Pangolin") is pleased to provide an update for the Company's wholly-owned Motloutse Diamond Project ("Motloutse"), located 150 km east of the Orapa Diamond Mine in Botswana. Several aeromagnetic anomalies have been selected for follow-up with soil sampling, ground magnetic and gravity surveys to identify kimberlite drill targets. This program is nearing completion.

The AGA-01 kimberlite target was confirmed on the ground to be associated with a gravity anomaly which coincides with positive kimberlitic indicator minerals. Sub-angular kimberlite indicator garnets with sculptured surfaces, denoting proximity to source, were optically identified from five soil samples collected directly over the gravity anomaly associated with the AGA-01 aeromagnetic anomaly. Both the gravity and soil sampling surveys at AGA-01 are being expanded to cover a larger area.

Additional kimberlite targets are being further developed using detailed gravity surveys expected to be completed by mid-June. Once the gravity results have been interpreted, the drill program will commence and include the additional targets identified. It is anticipated that the percussion drill program will be completed before the end of July 2016.

The Motloutse Diamond Project covers the area where the first diamonds in Botswana were recovered in 1959. It also includes the location where De Beers discovered its first diamonds in Botswana in 1962. The kimberlite source(s) of these diamonds have never been located.

The indicators were recovered at AGA-01 from unscreened 100-litre samples collected on a 50 m x 50 m square grid within a 10 square metre area of a GPS-controlled sample site. The material was dry screened in the field to recover the +0.425-2.0 millimetre size fraction, then transported to Francistown, Botswana and processed through Pangolin's 1-tph DMS plant. The concentrates were subsequently delivered to an independent mineral specialist in Gaborone, Botswana who examined the concentrate and recovered the indicators.

The indicators will be delivered to MCC Geoscience Inc. (Vancouver, B.C.) for additional interpretation of surface features and thereafter delivered to C.F. Mineral Research (Kelowna, B.C.) for microprobe analysis.

Quality Control and Quality Assurances

Quality assurance procedures, security, transport, storage, and processing protocols conform to chain of custody requirements.

Stock Option Grants

Pangolin also announces that the Board of directors has approved the granting of 2,850,000 options under its Stock Option Plan; each share under option having a 5 year term and an exercise price of $0.12. The Options in question were granted to certain directors, officers, and employees.

The technical disclosure in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Dr. Leon Daniels, BSc., BSc. Honours Geology, PhD and a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101.

About Pangolin Diamonds Corp. and Our Social Connections

For more information on Pangolin Diamonds Corp., please visit our website at http://pangolindiamonds.com

Follow us on Twitter @pangolindiamond and Facebook at Pangolin Diamonds Corp

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:

Pangolin Diamonds Corp.

Scott Young

Investor Relations

+1.705.888.2756

syoung@pangolindiamonds.com



Pangolin Diamonds Corp.

Graham C. Warren

Chief Financial Officer

+1.416.594.0473

+1.416.594.1630 (FAX)

gwarren@pangolindiamonds.com




TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- Kombat Copper Inc. (TSX VENTURE: KBT) ("Kombat Copper" or the "Company") and its management team are pleased to provide its shareholders with the following update on EBM Mining Namibia's progress at the Kombat Mine site.

Plant Refurbishment and Mining Update

Kombat Copper previously reported that refurbishment activities have been progressing well. This status continues and EBM has reported that they have successfully reached an agreement to acquire a surplus mill from a major African mining company located in close proximity to Kombat's operations. With this acquisition, all the necessary major components needed for refurbishing and restarting the Kombat mill have been secured. EBM is now completing a full technical assessment of the facility.

As Kombat has advised in previous releases, mining will initially commence at Gross Otavi and is on track to start during June. Ore will be stockpiled until the mill is operational.

Aggregate Byproduct Opportunities

Kombat Copper has determined that selling and distributing aggregate and sand byproducts from mining processes continue to be an important opportunity for the Company. With that in mind, the scope of EBM's mining contractor agreement has been expanded to assist the Company with selling its waste rock as construction aggregate. Two opportunities are currently being evaluated, to sell aggregate for a housing development and as railroad ballast. Management expects to have further details on these potential byproduct sale agreements mid-way through the third quarter.

Offtake Agreement Update

Discussions are in progress with several groups for copper and lead concentrate offtake agreements. Management is aiming to conclude agreements during the third quarter.

Paul Bozoki, President and CEO of Kombat Copper, commented: "I am very pleased to report that the refurbishment of the mill and preparations at the mine site are moving along as planned. The management team is preparing for a very exciting third quarter as we move closer to getting the Kombat Mine back into production."

About Kombat Copper

Kombat Copper is a publicly traded Canadian exploration and development company with its core operations focused on copper resources in Namibia, one of the world's most prospective copper regions, where it has substantial assets with significant upside in place. The Company holds an 80% interest in five mining licenses in the Otavi Mountainlands, an area of Namibia particularly known for its high-grade copper deposits. Within these licenses are three past-producing mines including the Company's flagship property, the Kombat Mine.

Kombat Copper has contracted EBM Mining Namibia to begin mining lead/copper mineralization at Kombat East, Kombat Central and Gross Otavi within the year. Concentrates will be produced at the Company's production facilities, which are being refurbished by EBM. EBM is also evaluating opportunities to market aggregate stone and sand byproducts locally.

Cautionary Notes

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 may contain forward-looking statements. These statements include statements regarding the drill program, possible mineralization and deposits, the anticipated timeline regarding future exploration work, availability of results and production, the Company's expectations regarding mineral resources, EBM's ability to commence operations and operate the applicable portions of the Kombat mine, EBM's ability to make the requisite investments, the Company's expectations regarding the production and sales of mineralization from the Kombat Mine, the Company's ability to negotiate and enter into offtake agreements and potential development work and the Company's plans for the Kombat Mine including any financial impact and community impact. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially because of factors discussed in the management discussion and analysis section of our interim and most recent annual financial statements or other reports and filings with the TSX Venture Exchange and applicable Canadian securities regulations. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable laws.

Contacts:

Kombat Copper Inc.

Rob Hopkins

Manager, Investor Relations

+1 (416) 861-5899

info@kombatcopper.com

www.kombatcopper.com



Kombat Copper Inc.

Paul Bozoki

President and CEO

+1 (416) 309-2951

pbozoki@kombatcopper.com




LONDON, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Prepaid Financial Services (PFS) are delighted to announce that their CEO, Noel Moran, has made the shortlist in the International category of the EY Entrepreneur Of the Year' Ireland.

Now in its 30th year globally, the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year' programme celebrates exceptional entrepreneurs who can see the future, and through their businesses, are helping to redefine it. The competition is run in 145 cities across 60 countries with just one winner being selected from each country.

The EY Entrepreneur Of The Year' programme has been running in Ireland for over 18 years, which has been identified as one of the strongest programmes worldwide. Noel has been nominated in the International category for PFS and Navan based eCOMM Merchant Solutions.

PFS has grown significantly year on year; from humble beginnings operating from a kitchen table in Navan, Ireland, the company now employs 128 dedicated and committed members of staff across three different locations. The company is acknowledged as the fastest growing MasterCard prepaid issuer in Europe, with a customer base of 2.5 million cardholders, and a further 1.3 million new prepaid cards due to be issued in 2016 alone.

eCOMM Merchant Solutions deals with the provision of online payments facilities for merchants throughout Europe. Noel feels passionately about demonstrating that Ireland based FinTechs are on an equal footing with other countries and are not inhibited by being based outside of 'financial hubs' like London.

Noel Moran, CEO, Prepaid Financial Services said: "PFS is acknowledged as the fastest growing MasterCard prepaid issuer in Europe with a customer base of 2.5 million cardholders, and we are incredibly proud of the company's achievements, which we have worked hard to build together.

PFS has been providing its payments technology and range of e-money and banking solutions to governments, local authorities, mobile network operators, banks and corporates globally, for a number of years now. In fact, by the end of this calendar year, we will have more customers and cardholders than any Irish Bank - all without funding or external investment."

The Irish entrepreneur winners will be announced at a prestigious Awards Gala held in Dublin in October 2016. Following this, the country winners of the EY Entrepreneur Of the Year' programme from across the globe will then go on to compete for the coveted title of EY World Entrepreneur Of the Year' at the global awards ceremony, which is due to be held in Monte Carlo in June 2017.

Notes to editors

About Prepaid Financial Services:

Prepaid Financial Services (PFS) is an award winning payments technology specialist offering a comprehensive range of e-money and banking solutions including e-wallets, physical and virtual prepaid cards and current accounts in the UK and the Eurozone. Authorised and regulated by the FCA in the UK, PFS has passported its e-money license across the SEPA region to enable card issuance throughout the region.

Founded in 2008, PFS is now one of the fastest growing issuers in Europe, with programmes live and active in 23 countries with the ability to transact in 20 different currencies. Its products and cutting-edge technology platforms are utilised by governments, local authorities, mobile network operators, banks and corporates globally.

PFS has been listed within the top 25 fastest growing technology companies in the UK by the Sunday Times Tech Track 100 for 3 consecutive years and most recently ranked number 108 in Deloitte's EMEA Technology Fast 500.

For more information about PFS's payment solutions please contact: sales@prepaidfinancialservices.com
DALLAS, TX and MUMBAI, INDIA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- Calpian, Inc. (OTC PINK: CLPI), a world leader in mobile money solutions through its subsidiary MoneyOnMobile in India, today announced that MoneyOnMobile and Enfold signed an agreement to provide digital lockers for the 170 million individuals that constitute MoneyOnMobile's unique user base. MoneyOnMobile is a leading provider of financial-services-via-mobile-phone in India. It currently processes over US$ 1 billion through its systems on an annual basis and has delivered services to over 170 million Indians directly and through its 310,000 channel partners and retail outlets across the country.

Enfold is a leading provider of white-label digital lockers worldwide, with a particular focus on the telecom, banking and insurance sectors. It is backed by a range of investors, led by the Shapoorji Pallonji Group of Mumbai, India. The digital locker service will be hosted on Microsoft's Azure data centers located in India. Both parties believe that this agreement is unprecedented -- it covers more than 12% of India's population, and is by far the largest deployment of digital lockers in the world. It provides a very large number of people with the ability to securely store their important personal documents -- Aadhaar card, PAN card, various certificates, photos, videos -- any digital file they want -- including transaction receipts each time they use the MoneyOnMobile service. Documents can be added to the lockers via email, fax, upload and via photos taken by smartphone cameras.

"This agreement represents a massive expansion of the services we provide to the people of India. Our digital locker is a major convenience for our customers, as it provides them with a secure and very functional single common place to store and manage receipts for not just all the various financial services we provide, but also any other digital file they want to store," said Ranjeet Oak, Co-Founder & President of MoneyOnMobile. "We also intend to apply for empanelment as a National Digital Locker provider as soon as possible to bring millions of our customers into Prime Minister's Digital India mandate," he added.

"Enfold is very pleased to provide the technology that underlies this agreement," said K. Digvijay Singh of Enfold India Pvt. Ltd. "We want to thank Microsoft for providing us with the resources to build and test our digital lockers at scales of hundreds of millions, so that we are in a position to provide MoneyOnMobile with the speed, scale and size they need for this type of mega-offering." He also stated that, "The current plan is to provide a core of highly functional features in all lockers, with additional features to increase the range of offerings as demand grows."

"Enfold's agreement with MoneyOnMobile illustrates the value that Microsoft Cloud is bringing to the Indian market," said Mark Ozur, Partner Architect and General Manager with Microsoft's Azure team. "By adopting Azure as their technology platform Enfold has gained the ability to scale to hundreds of millions of users as their business grows. The sky is the limit as we jointly explore additional capabilities to integrate into the Digital Locker offering."

About Calpian

Calpian, Inc. offers mobile payment services through Indian subsidiary MoneyOnMobile. MoneyOnMobile is a mobile payment service provider that enables Indian consumers to use their mobile phones to pay for goods and services, or transfer funds from one cell phone to another using simple SMS text functionality. Read about Calpian and MoneyOnMobile in The New York Times at New York Times - MoneyOnMobile.

Safe Harbor Statement

This presentation contains forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. With the exception of historical information, the matters discussed in this presentation are forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. The actual future results of Calpian, Inc. could differ significantly from those statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include risks and uncertainties such as the inability to finance the company's operations, inability to hire and retain qualified personnel, and changes in the general economic climate, as well as the risk factors disclosed in Calpian, Inc.'s Form 10-K filed on December 1, 2015. Calpian, Inc. may, in some cases, use terms such as "anticipates," "continue," "estimates," "predicts," "believes," "potential," "proposed," "expects," "plans," "intends," "may," "could," "should," "might," "will," or other words that convey uncertainty of future events or outcomes to identify these forward-looking statements. These statements are only predictions. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, such statements should not be regarded as a representation by Calpian, Inc. or any other person, that such forward-looking statements will be achieved. Calpian, Inc. undertakes no duty to update any of the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. In light of the foregoing, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. This presentation does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of offers to buy any securities of any entity.

Investor Relations Contact:

Harold Montgomery

CEO

Calpian, Inc.

214-837-2765

hmontgomery@calpian.com




FORT WORTH, TX -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- Cherubim Interests, Inc. (OTC PINK: CHITD) ("the Company"), an expansion-stage alternative construction and real estate development company, announces that it has acquired 100% of the membership interests of Victura Roofing LLC., and Cherubim Builders Group LLC (Oklahoma) from Victura Construction Group Inc. (OTC PINK: VICT).

"When catastrophic weather events occur, people in the affected regions need help immediately," states Patrick Johnson, CEO of Cherubim Interests, Inc. "Help repairing their homes and living spaces, before further damage is done and to limit the loss of property due to inclement weather. Today, we are excited to announce that the company has expand our capabilities to meet the demands of Americans in some of the hardest hit areas of the country."

"Oklahoma and Texas are no strangers to weather related disasters -- but they're also some of the most determined people when it comes to rebuilding their homes and their communities. CHIT is there to help them rebuild."

Victura Roofing was a wholly owned subsidiary of Victura Construction Group Inc., and is led by industry professionals with a 20 year track record of success. Victura Roofing provides quality work for internal Victura subsidiaries Gregg Construction and WaterMasters Restoration as well as a platform for market business opportunities in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex.

Cherubim Builders Group Oklahoma (CBG Oklahoma) is a general contractor that focuses on opportunities in insurance restoration, as well as multi-family and new home construction in the Oklahoma City Region.

"This roofing acquisition is very important as it provides us with immediate cash flow production, coupled with built-in expansion capability into one of the most active markets for damaged home repairs in the nation," states Patrick Johnson, CEO of CHIT.

"With the acquisition of Cherubim Builders Group Oklahoma we have an established, and registered- to do business entity in the OKC metro region as we progress into this years' storm season, which bears all the signs of being an active one."

The company initially executed an MOU to acquire Golden Eagle Roofing LLC, but was not able to meet its closing deadlines due to time constraints regarding approval of its recent corporate action. "It was a blessing in disguise for the company as we were forced to be patient and look at additional opportunities," states Patrick Johnson, CEO of CHIT. "We are excited to make this revenue producing acquisition with a class of convertible preferred stock, which allows us to invest any required cash into the expansion of the business model and not towards the acquisition cost. We will reach ROI faster this way, while adding more profit to the bottom line sooner than initially expected," says Johnson.

About Victura Roofing

Victura Roofing is led by industry professionals with a 20 year track record of success and a well established platform for market business opportunities in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex.

The company can be found at: www.victuraroofing.com

About Victura Construction Group

Victura Construction Group, Inc. (OTC PINK: VICT), is a holding company focused on strategic acquisitions within the construction industry that service both residential and commercial sectors in new development and construction projects, restoration and re-build following any covered loss or catastrophic event and materials supply opportunities within the industry.

Victura operates with excellent business practices and management expertise, sound ethics, financial resources as applicable, and utilizes strategic industry relationships to help add to the success of any acquired company(s).

The company can be found at www.victuraconstruction.com

About Cherubim Interests Inc.

Cherubim Interests specializes in alternative construction projects, as well as covering the entire spectrum of real estate development: due diligence, acquisition, planning, construction, renovation, and management; providing complete beginning-to-end development programs for mixed use, single, and multifamily projects and properties.

For more information, visit www.cherubiminterests.com

Safe Harbor Statement

This release includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E and/or 27E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 that are based upon assumptions that in the future may prove not to have been accurate and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties, including statements as to the future performance of the company and the risks and uncertainties detailed from time to time in reports filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. 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. Although the company believes that the expectations reflected in its forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations or any of its forward-looking statements will prove to be correct. Factors that could cause results to differ include, but are not limited to, the company's ability to raise necessary financing, retention of key personnel, timely delivery of inventory from the company's suppliers, timely product development, product acceptance, and the impact of competitive services and products, in addition to general economic risks and uncertainties.

For more information please contact:

Cherubim Interests, Inc.

Patrick J. Johnson

Chief Executive Officer

(844) 842-8872

pjohnson@cherubiminterests.com




WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Gannett Co., Inc. (GCI), which has offered to acquire Tribune Publishing Co. (TPUB), on Tuesday urged Tribune stockholders to 'WITHHOLD' votes in connection with the Tribune 2016 Annual Meeting of Stockholders to be held June 2. Gannett encouraged Tribune stockholders to send a clear message to the Tribune Board to engage constructively with Gannett regarding its $15.00 per share all-cash premium offer to acquire Tribune. Gannett said it will review whether to proceed with its acquisition offer taking into account the results of the 'WITHHOLD' vote and the latest Tribune actions, including its response to Gannett's offer. Gannett's revised offer represents a premium of 99% to the $7.52 closing price of Tribune's common stock on April 22, the last trading day before Gannett publicly announced its initial offer for Tribune. The $15.00 per share offer also represents a 76% premium to the $8.50 share price at which Tribune recently issued common stock to an entity controlled Michael Ferro. 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.
SAN DIEGO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- Fresh Healthy Vending International, Inc. (OTCQB: VEND) -- Reis and Irvy's, the revolutionary first-to-market robotic frozen yogurt vending kiosks announced today that they will partner with Chloe's Soft Serve Fruit Co. to provide prospective franchise operators a healthier option to provide to both locations and their customers. The robotic Reis and Irvy's FroYo Kiosks (which currently deliver nine different flavors of frozen yogurt and up to six toppings in 60 seconds or less) will now be available to franchisees with the option of being stocked with a lighter option for customers.

"As we have launched the Reis and Irvy's brand and concept, our primary focus has been to continue our focus on understanding the demands of the market," says Art Budman, Chief Executive Officer for Reis and Irvy's. "While developing a revolutionary new way to experience customized frozen yogurt, we congruently recognized and collectively heard the demand from our health-conscious customers. Chloe's Soft Serve Fruit is the perfect complement to our brand and will allow us to deliver the Reis and Irvy's experience to even more locations on behalf of our franchisees."

Founded in 2010, Chloe's Soft Serve has dedicated themselves to celebrating the wonder and simplicity of fruit. Made from the simplest of ingredients (fruit, water and a touch of organic cane sugar) the soft serve fruit snacks deliver big flavor and a return to the origin of the fruits themselves. Operators will be able to choose from a variety of low-calorie, low-fat delicious flavors that not only offer healthier nutritional benefits, but, more importantly, conform to the Smart Snacks in School guidelines, a benefit that allows Reis and Irvy's expanded opportunity within schools, campuses and educational facilities across the country.

Available in both frozen pop form and soft serve, the latter was a perfect match for the groundbreaking Reis and Irvy's kiosks. "Reis and Irvy's brings a customized frozen yogurt experience to customers everywhere. We are excited to be a part of that revolution and make frozen snacks more accessible," says Chloe Epstein, Co-Founder of Chloe's Soft Serve Fruit Co. "Our snacks, which are free of dairy, gluten, fat, free of all eight major allergens and are both vegan and kosher, provide customers with an alternative delicious option delivered by these ground-breaking machines. It's a win for both of our organizations and our loyal customers."

Reis and Irvy's robotic frozen yogurt kiosks launched this past April and to impressive demand from the prospective franchise community. The frozen yogurt franchise concept is managed by Fresh Healthy Vending, International (soon to be Generation Next Franchise Brands); based in San Diego, it is North America's leading healthy vending franchisor. Fresh Healthy Vending pioneered the concept of vending machines stocked with tried-and-tested fresh, healthy snack options and capitalizes on a growing market of health-conscious consumers. The Company has more than 250 active franchisees throughout the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and the Bahamas, and continually looks to partner with like-minded entrepreneurs who share its vision. The Company has booked more than 3000 machines for placement in schools, universities, hospitals, community centers, military bases, airports, fitness facilities, YMCAs, libraries and many other locations. Using its current infrastructure, the franchisor will replicate its franchise model and apply it to Reis and Irvy's, offering a comprehensive, turnkey model consisting of kiosk supply, location procurement, national service infrastructure and best in class franchisee support.

Reis & Irvy's kiosks are available for pre-order as of today. Potential franchisees can find more information by contacting Reis and Irvy's directly at 855-385-5333 or by going to www.froyofranchising.com. To see the kiosk in action, check out their video at https://vimeo.com/160788415

About Chloe's Soft Serve Fruit Co.

Chloe's Soft Serve Fruit Co celebrates the wonder of fruit: its rich flavor, luxurious mouth feel, and natural origin. Available in the traditional soft serve format or as a frozen pop, Chloe's Soft Serve Fruit answers the consumer desire for great taste and clean, simple ingredients. With 12 varieties of soft serve fruit mix and seven varieties of pops from which to choose, Chloe's Soft Serve Fruit offers big, delicious flavor using only fruit, water and a touch of organic cane sugar. Chloe's Soft Serve Fruit is free of dairy, gluten, fat, and the eight major allergens, and is vegan and kosher pareve.

Founded by a trio of health-conscious entrepreneurs in 2010, the company has grown from its brick-and-mortar shop in NYC to national distribution for food service with its soft serve fruit mix and single serve pops. In 2015, Chloe's introduced multi-packs of Chloe's Pops in supermarkets and club stores throughout the country. Chloe's Soft Serve Fruit Pops are now available in over 3000 markets nationwide. For more information, visit: www.chloesfruit.com.

About Fresh Healthy Vending

Fresh Healthy Vending, based in San Diego, California, is North America's leading healthy vending franchisor. Fresh Healthy Vending pioneered the concept of vending machines stocked with tried-and-tested fresh, healthy snack options to serve the growing market of health-conscious consumers. The Company has over 250 active franchisees throughout the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and the Bahamas, and continually looks to partner with like-minded entrepreneurs who share its vision.

The Company has booked over 3000 machines for placement in schools, universities, hospitals, community centers, military bases, airports, fitness facilities, YMCAs, libraries and many other locations. Fresh Healthy Vending's stock is traded on the OTC Markets, Symbol: VEND.

Cautionary note on forward-looking statements

Except for historical information contained in this release, statements in this release may constitute forward-looking statements regarding assumptions, projections, expectations, targets, intentions or beliefs about future events that are based on management's belief, as well as assumptions made by, and information currently available to, management. While the Company believes that expectations are based upon reasonable assumptions, there can be no assurances that goals, results and strategy will be realized. Numerous factors, including risks and uncertainties, terms and availability of financing, may affect actual results and may cause results to differ materially from those expressed in forward-looking statements made by the Company or on its behalf. In addition to statements, which explicitly describe risks and uncertainties, readers are urged to consider statements labeled with such terms as "believes," "belief," "expects," "intends," "feels," "anticipates," "proposes," "proposed," or "plans" to be uncertain and forward-looking. More detailed information on these and additional factors that could affect Fresh Healthy Vending's actual results are described in Fresh Healthy Vending's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Form 10-Q's for the quarterly periods ended December 31, 2015 and September 30, 2015, and its annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2015. All forward-looking statements in this news release speak only as of the date of this news release and are based on Fresh Healthy Vending's current beliefs and expectations. Fresh Healthy Vending undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

This information is not intended as an offer to sell, or the solicitation of an offer to buy, a franchise. It is for information purposes only. No Reis and Irvy's franchises will be sold to any resident of any state until the offering has been exempted from the requirements of, or duly registered in and declared effective by, such state and the required FDD (if any) has been delivered to the prospective franchisee before the sale in compliance with applicable law. Currently, the following states in the United States regulate the offer and sale of franchises: California, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. If you reside in one of these states, or even if you reside elsewhere, you may have certain rights under applicable franchise laws or regulations.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Christina Erwin

cerwin@konnect-pr.com



Danny Beardsworth

dbeardsworth@konnect-pr.com



www.konnect-pr.com




LEWIS CENTER, OH--(Marketwired - May 31, 2016) - Midwest Energy Emissions Corp. (OTCQB: MEEC) ("ME 2 C" or the "Company"), an emerging leader in mercury emissions control technology for the global coal-power industry, has been invited to present at the Sixth Annual LD Micro Invitational in Los Angeles, California, on Wednesday, June 8, 2016, at 9:00 a.m. Pacific time.

Richard MacPherson, CEO of ME 2 C, will be giving the presentation and holding one-on-one meetings with investors throughout the day.

The presentation will also be webcast and available for 90 days following the live presentation. The webcast can be viewed at http://wsw.com/webcast/ldmicro10/meec and on the investor relations section of the ME 2 C website.

The conference will be held at the Luxe Sunset Bel Air Hotel and will feature 195 companies in the small/micro-cap space.

View ME 2 C's profile here: http://www.ldmicro.com/profile/meec

About Midwest Energy Emissions Corp. (ME 2 C)

Midwest Energy Emissions Corp. (OTCQB: MEEC) delivers patented and proprietary solutions to the global coal-power industry to remove mercury from power plant emissions, providing performance guarantees, and leading-edge emissions services. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) MATS rule requires that all coal- and oil-fired power plants in the U.S., larger than 25 mega-watts, must remove roughly 90% of mercury from their emissions starting April 15, 2015. In June 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court remanded MATS back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for further review, but left the rule in place. The D.C. Circuit has since remanded the rule to the EPA for further consideration, but without vacatur, allowing MATS to remain in effect until the EPA issues a final finding. On April 14, 2016, the EPA issued a final supplemental finding upholding the rule and concluding that a cost analysis supports the MATS rule. ME 2 C expects legal challenges to the rule will continue. ME 2 C has developed patented technology and proprietary products that have been shown to achieve mercury removal levels compliant with MATS at a significantly lower cost and with less operational impact than currently used methods, while preserving the marketability of fly-ash for beneficial use. For more information, please visit www.midwestemissions.com.

About LD Micro

LD Micro was founded in 2006 with the sole purpose of being an independent resource in the microcap space. What started out as a newsletter highlighting unique companies has transformed into an event platform hosting several influential conferences annually (Invitational, Summit, and Main Event).

In 2015, LDM launched the first pure microcap index (the LDMi) to exclusively provide intraday information on the entire sector. LD will continue to provide valuable tools for the benefit of everyone in the small and microcap universe. Visit www.ldmicro.com for more information.

Company Contact:

Richard MacPherson

Chief Executive Officer

Midwest Energy Emissions Corp.

Main: 614-505-6115

rmacpherson@midwestemissions.com



Investor Relations Contact:

Greg Falesnik

Senior Vice President

MZ Group - MZ North America

Main: 949-385-6449

greg.falesnik@mzgroup.us

www.mzgroup.us
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) -- 05/31/16 -- LITE ACCESS TECHNOLOGIES INC. (the "Company") (CSE: LTE)(OTC PINK: LTCCF) today reported its financial results for the second quarter ended March 31, 2016 and provided a business update. The financial statements and related management's discussion and analysis ("MD&A") can be viewed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Financial Highlights for the Second Quarter 2016:

-- Strong quarterly performance with revenues and earnings reaching record levels; -- Total sales of $6,895,478 for the quarter ended March 31, 2016 compared to $408,312 in 2015, an increase of 1,589%; -- 2016 Q2 revenues $6,895,478 compared to 2016 Q1 revenues of $813,546 up 748%; -- Q2 Gross Margins of 32.8%; -- Record income from operations of $1,385,813 for the quarter ended March 31, 2016 compared to a loss from operations of $27,761 in 2015; -- Record income before income tax of $1,374,172 in the quarter compared to a loss of $30,764 in 2015; -- Record net income after taxes of $953,096 for the quarter ended March 31, 2016 compared to a net loss of $30,764 for 2015 and net loss of $306,273 in Q1; -- Adjusted EBITDA(i) totalled $1.82 million (26.4% of total revenue)

Recent Corporate Highlights:

-- Increased number of installers that are currently undergoing Lite Access certification and training. The addition of these partnerships further enables new opportunities in areas expressing interest and have projects that cannot be completed using conventional methods and current infrastructure budgets or timelines. Having our teams of qualified and trained construction partners enables immediate response to fibre connectivity needs using proven air blown technologies as well as the approved and successful micro-trench / micro-drill processes developed by Lite Access Technologies. Being able to satisfy connectivity requirements in the most cost effective, timely and environmentally friendly means possible further solidifies our position as a global leader. New partners and territories include; South Africa, Sweden, Peru, Northwest Territories, Alberta, and various states within the USA are a few examples. -- Lite Access has been working closely with a number of major international telcos that have announced plans to micro-trench within a number of key cities, states and councils. Having had the Lite Access technology as well as micro-trench / micro-drill installation process successfully approved on a national level by a large number of Service Providers throughout the globe fully supports our advancement in this area of fibre optic connectivity solutions. -- Strengthened Advisory Board - with a number of key additions to our Advisory Board, the number of opportunities and contacts within organizations and direct to key decision makers has helped ensure vibrant sales and positive project forecasts. -- Working closely with the First Nations and Native Americans has further advanced our entrance in markets that are considered underserved and truly not a focus for the large telcos. This mutually beneficial relationship broadens the Company's opportunities while also empowering indigenous groups within the USA and Canada from an economic and educational standpoint. -- Continued sales and support for our long time clients within the USA and Canada including projects such as: -- Distributed Antenna System (DAS) connectivity within the state of New York and California -- micro-trench builds within BC, Alberta and various states within the USA -- Completion of a 16 mile fiber optic network build for the Colville Tribes located in Washington State

Corporate Update

On 27 May 2016, Lite Access Technologies Inc. completed the requirements to register as a non-dominant carrier with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). Based on the information provided, Lite Access meets the requirements to be placed on the list of non-dominant carriers.

Lite Access remains committed and well positioned to respond to client specific or non-standard applications by maintaining active involvement in numerous technology forums and trade shows. Being able to immediately respond to changing and evolving technology and client needs and by being able to design and have manufactured new products, processes, equipment and tools, positions Lite Access ahead of the competition.

Lite Access continues its search for new construction partners in support of the numerous cities and organizations that have engaged Lite Access with design and engineering work for micro-trench installations of their own networks.

The Company is developing a broader Project Management team to work with new cities and organizations in support of city owned infrastructure once the design and engineering is complete and to help train individuals or groups on not only the technology and installation but on the positive impact of economic development and growth expected.

"We are very pleased with our exceptional second quarter results," said Mike Plotnikoff, CEO of Lite Access. "We are starting to reap the rewards of all the time and effort our team has spent over the years in developing new markets and relationships with customers both old and new. We continue to work hard to further increase our reach by developing new markets and new products and services to meet the growing demand for an economical way to satisfy the explosion in fiber optic connectivity requirements. A number of companies such as Google Fiber, Verizon, CenturyLink and Virgin Media have recently stated that they are investigating and/or adopting micro-trenching as a means of deploying their fiber optic networks validating what Lite Access has been pioneering and perfecting for years. We expect the balance of the year to show continued growth in micro-trench adoption which will result in further growth for Lite Access."

About Lite Access

Lite Access is a world leader in Microduct and fibre optic technologies. Using its specially designed and innovative micro-trench and micro-drill methods of deployment, Lite Access' proprietary Microduct technology extends a network provider's ability to deliver true broadband connectivity directly to end-users, such as homes, government and educational institutions, and emergency response facilities. Providing a full portfolio of fibre connectivity solutions for many types of Telecom infrastructure, Lite Access has successfully deployed thousands of kilometres of Microduct networks throughout North and South America, the United Kingdom, the Caribbean, Australia and Asia.

Lite Access' products have been deployed in many high profile communication networks including the Whistler 2010 Winter Olympic facilities, builds within the state of New York including Central Park, the Las Vegas strip and surrounding areas of Nevada, fibre to the home at Stanford University and numerous other locations around the globe that have adopted Lite Access as the "solution of choice" for future proof fibre optic connectivity.

(i)Non-IFRS Measures

Adjusted EBITDA is a measure not recognized under IFRS. However, management of Lite Access believes that most shareholders, creditors, other stakeholders and investment analysts prefer to have these measures included as reported measures of operating performance, a proxy for cash flow, and to facilitate valuation analysis. Adjusted EBITDA is defined as earnings before interest income, taxes, depreciation and amortization, stock based compensation, restructuring costs, impairment charges and other non-recurring gains or losses. Management believes Adjusted EBITDA is a useful measure that facilitates period-to-period operating comparisons.

Adjusted EBITDA does not have any standardized meanings prescribed by IFRS and therefore may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other issuers. Readers are cautioned that Adjusted EBITDA is not an alternative to measures determined in accordance with IFRS and should not, on its own, be construed as indicators of performance, cash flow or profitability. References to the Lite Access' Adjusted EBITDA should be read in conjunction with the financial statements and management's discussion and analysis of Lite Access posted on SEDAR (www.sedar.com).

Forward Looking Information

Information set forth in this news release contains forward-looking statements. These statements reflect management's current estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations; they are not guarantees of future performance. The Company cautions that all forward looking statements are inherently uncertain and that actual performance may be affected by a number of material factors, many of which are beyond the Company's control. Such factors include, among other things: risks and uncertainties described in the Company's Listing Statement dated May 26, 2015 available on www.cnsx.ca. Accordingly, actual and future events, conditions and results may differ materially form the estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations expressed or implied in the forward looking information. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information.

The CSE has neither approved nor disapproved the information contained herein and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts:

Lite Access Technologies Inc.

1-604-247-4704

www.liteaccess.com



For investor relations please contact:

Contact Financial Corp.

Rob Gamley

1-604-689-7422

rob@contactfinancial.com




MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- TomaGold Corporation (TSX VENTURE: LOT) ("TomaGold" or the "Corporation") is pleased to announce that it has signed an agreement to acquire the Obalski property from David Malouf and 2736-1179 Quebec Inc.. The property consists of 22 claims and one mining concession covering a total of 344.8 hectares and lies 3 km south of Chibougamau, Quebec.

The Obalski property hosts seven separate mineralized zones, one 85-metre shaft and two ramps. A total of 230 holes have been drilled on the property for a total of over 60,000 metres of drilling, most of which was surface drilling. In 1964, United Obalski Mining Co. Ltd. mined a total of 90,093 tons grading 3.0 g/t Au, 6.2 g/t Ag and 1.53% Cu from the property.

"The acquisition of the Obalski property is fully in line with our strategy of developing promising gold properties in the Chibougamau mining camp," said David Grondin, President and CEO of TomaGold. "Interestingly, we see the same scenario here as at Monster Lake when we acquired it. There has been a fair amount of drilling on the Obalski property, but most of it was shallow drilling. Based on a preliminary review of the data collected, we believe that the property has excellent potential for a discovery at depth. We also believe that with today's exploration technologies, we will be able to better target future exploration work."

The Obalski property transaction is subject to regulatory approval, and the common shares to be issued following signature of the agreements will be subject to a hold period of four months plus one day.

Mineralization

There are seven separate mineralized zones on the Obalski property. Four of them, Zones A, C, D and G, have been defined by drilling, trenching and geophysical surveys. Zones A, D and G have also had underground development done on them. The mineralization consists of gold and/or copper with small amounts of silver and smaller amounts of zinc. The dominant sulphides are pyrite and chalcopyrite with local sphalerite and pyrrhotite. The mineralization generally occurs in shear zones dipping steeply southwest and striking ENE and ESE, intersecting or bordering on a system of mafic to intermediate dykes running through the granophyres and diorites. The best gold grades are found in quartz-carbonate massive sulphide veins.

History

1928: Initial exploration work was carried out by Obalski Mining Syndicate Ltd. Work consisted primarily of prospecting, sampling, trenching and stripping. Zones A, B, C and D were identified.

1946: Obalski Ltd. sunk a three-compartment shaft at a depth of 85 metres and drove 240 metres of drifting in Zone D on the -40-metre and -80-metre levels, as well as 115 metres of crosscutting in the direction of Zones A and C.

1964: United Obalski Mining Co. Ltd . mined Zone Q on the -80-metre level, producing a total of 90,093 tons grading 3.0 g/t Au, 6.2 g/t Ag and 1.53% Cu.

1971: Campbell Chibougamau drove a 300-metre ramp followed by 150 m of drifting on Zone G. The zone was found to be strongly erratic, and work was halted.

1983: Surface mining took place on Zone D. A total of 9,000 tons at 8.5 g/t Au were mined.

1987: The last major drilling program was carried out by Syngold on Zones A and G, totalling almost 15,000 metres.

The most recent drilling was done by a prospector in 2012, and consisted of six short holes drilled on Zone C. The results were as follows:

---------------------------------------------------------------------- Hole From To Length Au Ag Cu Zn ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DM-12-01 37.0 m 37.8 m 0.8 m 9.72 g/t 19.50 g/t 0.82% 0.44% ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DM-12-02 33.6 m 34.2 m 0.6 m 1.81 g/t 5.40 g/t 0.16% 0.03% ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DM-12-03 45.5 m 47.4 m 1.9 m trace values ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DM-12-04 35.0 m 37.8 m 2.8 m 27.81 g/t 23.74 g/t 1.15% 0.24% ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DM-12-05 45.0 m 46.7 m 1.7 m 12.30 g/t 16.95 g/t 0.83% 0.03% ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DM-12-06 42.1 m 43.0 m 0.9 m 2.66 g/t 15.00 g/t 2.00% 0.54% ----------------------------------------------------------------------

Based on observation of the sections available, the ratio of true thickness to core length is about 70%.

"The next step is to compile all the data we have on hand and build a 3D model of the project, which might entail re-assaying of some of the samples. Once we have done that, we will decide on a strategy to ensure optimal exploration of the property," Mr. Grondin concluded.

To acquire a 100% interest in the Obalski property, TomaGold must issue 4 million of its shares to David Malouf and 2736-1179 Quebec Inc. and make cash payments totalling $500,000 over four years, including $100,000 upon signature of the agreement. The property is also subject to a 3.5% net smelter return, of which 1.25% can be bought back for $1 million.

Private Placement

TomaGold also announced the first closing of a non-brokered private placement in the amount of $334,340 of a maximum amount of $1,000,000.

The private placement consists in the issuance of 3,714,884 common shares priced at $0.09 per share and 1,857,442 warrants. Each warrant entitles its holder to purchase one common share of the Corporation at $0.12 within a twelve-month period.

TomaGold will use the proceeds from the private placement for exploration work, acquisitions, and for working capital purposes. The securities issued under the private placement are subject to a resale restriction period of four months and one day.

These transactions are subject to regulatory approval.

The technical content of this press release has been reviewed and approved by Andre Jean, Eng., a qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101.

About TomaGold Corporation

TomaGold Corporation is a Canadian-based mining exploration company whose primary mission is the acquisition, exploration and development of gold projects in Canada and abroad.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its regulation services provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release. The statements in this news release that are not historical facts are "forward-looking statements". Readers are cautioned that any such statements are not guarantees of future performance, and that actual developments or results may vary materially from those described in such "forward-looking" statements.

Contacts:

David Grondin

President and Chief Executive Officer

(514) 583-3490

www.tomagoldcorp.com




WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Crude oil futures held near $50 a barrel Tuesday morning as OPEC prepared for a pivotal meeting in Vienna. It will be the first meeting presided by the new Saudi oil minister. A weaker U.S. dollar helped crude oil inch a bit higher after the Memorial Day holiday. Supply interruptions in Nigeria and Libya also supported oil prices. WTI light sweet crude oil was up 0.3 percent at $49.50 a barrel. Prices are up sharply in May, touching a 7-month peak early last week. In addition to Thursday's OPEC meeting, traders are also looking ahead to a crucial U.S. jobs report on Friday. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - The Commerce Department is scheduled to release its personal income and spending report for April at 8:30 am ET Tuesday. Economists expect personal income growth of 0.4 percent month-over-month and personal spending growth of 0.7 percent. Ahead of the data, the greenback showed mixed trading against its major counterparts. While the greenback held steady against the yen and the pound, it fell against the franc and the euro. The greenback was worth 1.1153 against the euro, 111.08 against the yen, 0.9902 against the franc and 1.4638 against the pound as of 8:25 am ET. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
SANTA CLARA, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- PLUMgrid, a leader of secure and scalable SDN and NFV solutions for OpenStack clouds, announced today that its Open Networking Suite (ONS) 5.0 for OpenStack has achieved certification with Red Hat OpenStack Platform 8. Designed to deliver advanced SDN services that meet the production requirements of OpenStack clouds, ONS 5.0 provides a rich set of features and tools to simplify deployments and increase operational efficiency.

PLUMgrid ONS 5.0 is among the industry's first software-only virtual networking solutions to be certified with Red Hat OpenStack Platform 8. Red Hat's certification requires passing an extensive test suite to ascertain compatibility with OpenStack APIs and other functions implemented in Red Hat OpenStack Platform 8.

The certification of PLUMgrid ONS 5.0 on Red Hat OpenStack Platform 8 augments the previous certifications PLUMgrid achieved with Red Hat OpenStack Platform versions 4, 5, 6 and 7. The certification means that Red Hat customers can more confidently run PLUMgrid ONS via an OpenStack Networking (Neutron) plug-in on Red Hat OpenStack Platforms.

PLUMgrid ONS 5.0 recently introduced SDN support for Docker containers, expanded gateway integration with Cisco Nexus 9000, IPv6, PLUMgrid SmartLogs, toolbox wizards and many new enhancements as well as support for OpenStack releases Kilo and Liberty. The PLUMgrid certification with Red Hat enables customers to more rapidly make use of new enhancements in Red Hat OpenStack Platform 8.

Red Hat OpenStack Platform 8 is the latest version of the company's highly scalable platform based on the OpenStack community "Liberty" release. A comprehensive solution that integrates the foundation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Red Hat's OpenStack technology to form a production-ready cloud platform, the newest version delivers optimized storage and management capabilities through the native inclusion of Red Hat Ceph Storage and Red Hat CloudForms, respectively. Red Hat's core OpenStack offering now natively includes: automated upgrades and updates; infrastructure and workload management; software-defined storage; and a telco-focused preview.

PLUMgrid ONS provides secure cloud infrastructure with Virtual Domains and uses PLUMgrid Life Cycle Manager to streamline installation of ONS on OpenStack distributions. The combined support provides Red Hat and PLUMgrid customers with an enterprise-ready OpenStack cloud solution that enables simpler and faster deployment with multi-tenant security features and high availability. ONS 5.0 can further simplify OpenStack operations with updated drag-and-drop configuration, rich automation, analytics, troubleshooting tools, and breakthrough SDN visualization and monitoring platform, CloudApex.

"OpenStack deployments are rapidly accelerating at enterprises and service providers alike," said Wendy Cartee, vice president of Product Management at PLUMgrid. "End customers and channel partners require certified solutions that seamlessly integrate to confidently roll out and maintain OpenStack clouds. PLUMgrid ONS 5.0 with RHEL OSP 8 certification gives customers and partners the confidence they need and simplifies deployments to enable improved time to service and ROI."

PLUMgrid is part of the Red Hat Connect for Technology Partner Program, which connects business and technical resources to third-party technology companies who are aligning with Red Hat's OpenStack product offerings. Solutions that have achieved Red Hat OpenStack Certification, or which are certified for other products in Red Hat's open hybrid cloud portfolio, are available in the Red Hat Marketplace.

"We are pleased that PLUMgrid's newest release is certified with Red Hat OpenStack Platform 8, enabling our mutual customers greater trust in our certified and supported solutions," said Mike Werner, senior director, Global Technology Ecosystems, Red Hat. "As Red Hat's OpenStack offerings advance, we are happy to work with innovative companies such as PLUMgrid to offer a broad set of complementary solutions to our customers."

PLUMgrid at Red Hat Summit, San Francisco

PLUMgrid is a sponsor of the upcoming Red Hat Summit, June 27-30, 2016. Visit PLUMgrid's booth 922 where it will showcase products and technologies through whiteboard sessions, demos, and hands-on training that enable key use cases for businesses to build secure and scalable SDN infrastructure for OpenStack clouds.

About PLUMgrid Open Networking Suite (ONS) for OpenStack

PLUMgrid ONS for OpenStack is a comprehensive software suite that enables secure and scalable SDN and NFV infrastructure for OpenStack clouds. Deployed by service providers and enterprises in more than 70 OpenStack clouds, PLUMgrid ONS enables micro-segmentation through Virtual Domains, production-grade resiliency, and distributed scale-out performance for hybrid data centers. Built on PLUMgrid Platform and IO Visor technology, ONS supports the industry's broadest set of OpenStack distributions and installers including Mirantis OpenStack, Rackspace Private Cloud powered by OpenStack, RDO, Red Hat OpenStack Platform, and Ubuntu OpenStack by Canonical.

PLUMgrid ONS is available worldwide with free test drives through the PLUMgrid Ignition program.

About PLUMgrid

PLUMgrid is the leader of secure and scalable virtual network infrastructure solutions for OpenStack clouds. PLUMgrid delivers industry leading software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) solutions that enable modern data centers to connect tenants, applications and workloads efficiently across hypervisors, virtualized, container and bare metal architectures. PLUMgrid is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif. and is funded by venture capital and strategic investors. Visit www.plumgrid.com, read the PLUMgrid blog and follow the company on Twitter @PLUMgrid.

Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ceph and CloudForms are trademarks or registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Linux is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States and other countries. The OpenStack Word Mark is either a registered trademark/service mark or trademark/service mark of the OpenStack Foundation, in the United States and other countries, and is used with the OpenStack Foundation's permission. Red Hat is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by the OpenStack Foundation, or the OpenStack community.

Media Contact:

Bob Eastwood

10Fold Communications

plumgrid@10fold.com

415-800-5385




SAN DIEGO, CA--(Marketwired - May 31, 2016) - Medical Marijuana, Inc. (OTC PINK: MJNA) is pleased to announce that its flagship product Real Scientific Hemp Oil' (RSHO') has been authorized by Paraguay's government for import into the country as a prescription medication for refractory epilepsy.

Paraguay's first-ever import permit for RSHO' marks the fourth country in Latin America, after Brazil, Puerto Rico, and Mexico, to approve MJNA's cannabidiol (CBD) hemp oil for indications including epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, chronic pain, and cancer.

The first shipment of RSHO' into Paraguay was authorized for 15-year-old Mathias Alejandro Gonzalez, who was diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder and suffers from Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome (LGS), a rare type of epilepsy that doesn't respond well to seizure medications.

"We are extremely proud of the wonderful news that RSHO' has been approved for import by the government of Paraguay," states Dr. Stuart Titus, Chief Executive Officer of Medical Marijuana, Inc. "In the U.S., we enjoy the ability to easily access RSHO' and many other CBD hemp oil products online. However, in other countries, we must respect their regulations and handling of cannabis-based products including hemp."

"MJNA is a 'Company of Firsts'," Titus continues. "It took many years to establish and streamline a standardized commercial system while developing the world's first CBD hemp oil pipeline. We are extremely grateful to our investors who also saw and continue to see the vision of CBD hemp oil access in the U.S. and around the world."

In February of 2015, HempMeds received authorization to export Real Scientific Hemp Oil-X' (RSHO-X') to individuals in Mexico with government-issued import permits. Raul and Mayela Elizalde from the Por Grace Foundation, based in Mexico, helped explain their daughter Grace's need for the cannabidiol (CBD) hemp oil product for a case similar to that of Mathias Gonzalez's family in Paraguay -- and were instrumental in the process of securing the permit. Since 2014, the government of Brazil continues to issue import permits for RSHO', as well as subsidize payments for the product under the federal government's healthcare system -- and also waive import taxes.

About Medical Marijuana Inc.

Our mission is to be the premier cannabis and hemp industry innovators, leveraging our team of professionals to source, evaluate and purchase value-added companies and products, while allowing them to keep their integrity and entrepreneurial spirit. We strive to create awareness within our industry, develop environmentally-friendly, economically sustainable businesses, while increasing shareholder value. For details on Medical Marijuana, Inc.'s portfolio and investment companies, visit www.medicalmarijuanainc.com.

The Company is committed to consistently providing the highest-quality CBD hemp oil products on the market. To see Medical Marijuana, Inc.'s video statement, click here. Shareholders are also encouraged to visit the Medical Marijuana, Inc. Shop for discounted products.

FORWARD-LOOKING DISCLAIMER

This press release may contain certain forward-looking statements and information, as defined within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and is subject to the Safe Harbor created by those sections. This material contains statements about expected future events and/or financial results that are forward-looking in nature and subject to risks and uncertainties. Such forward-looking statements by definition involve risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Medical Marijuana, Inc. to be materially different from the statements made herein.

FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION (FDA) DISCLOSURE

These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA and are not intended to diagnose, treat or cure any disease.

LEGAL DISCLOSURE

Medical Marijuana Inc. does not sell or distribute any products that are in violation of the United States Controlled Substances Act (US.CSA). These companies do grow, sell, and distribute hemp-based products and are involved with the federally legal distribution of medical marijuana-based products within certain international markets. Cannabidiol is a natural constituent of hemp oil.

The following files are available for download:

Mathias Alejandro Gonzalez

For further information, please contact:



Public Relations contact:



Andrew Hard

Chief Executive Officer

CMW Media

P. 888-829-0070

andrew.hard@cmwmedia.com

www.cmwmedia.com



Corporate Contact:



Medical Marijuana, Inc.

Toll Free: 888-OTC-MJNA (888-682-6562)

www.medicalmarijuanainc.com

www.facebook.com/mjnainc



Investor Relations:



Nicholas R. Massalas

Director of Business Development

Medical Marijuana Inc.

OTC Symbol: MJNA

Toll Free: (877) 964.6463

Office/Direct: (858) 264-6505

Email: Nick@MedicalMarijuanainc.com
Studies Support Validity of SKY92 as a Superior Predictor of Risk Stratification in Newly Diagnosed and Relapsed Patients

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands and LAGUNA HILLS, California, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --SkylineDx today announced the presentation of four posters that reconfirm the prognostic value of MMprofiler' with SKY92, the only gene-based signature proven superior to the biomarkers currently used for risk-stratifying newly-diagnosed and relapsed multiple myeloma patients.1 Of the four posters, three will be presented Friday, June 10, 2016, at the European Hematology Association (EHA) 21st Annual Congress in Copenhagen, Denmark. The fourth will be presented as an E-poster. Additionally, SkylineDx will host a "Meet the Experts" event in booth C4.328 on June 10, from 2:30 - 3:30 p.m. (CEST).

Each of the four new abstracts utilized MMprofiler and its novel gene signature, SKY92, to determine the prognostic validity in both the clinical and analytical setting in identifying high risk or standard risk stratification in patients with multiple myeloma. Results show that the SKY92 signature, a key component of MMprofiler, is a powerful and robust prognostic marker, not only for overall survival, but also for progression free survival in younger, elderly, newly diagnosed, and relapsed patients with multiple myeloma across various treatments. Moreover, it can be used reliably as a predictor for survival to optimize follow-up and treatment strategies in an early stage.

"We are pleased to showcase MMprofiler and its reliability in determining risk stratification to optimize treatment in patients with multiple myeloma through these four posters," said Dharminder S. Chahal, Chief Executive Officer of SkylineDx. "We are confident that these additional studies will help inform patients and physicians with clinically actionable information that will guide and speed up the therapeutic decision-making process, no matter what stage of the disease the patient is experiencing."

MMprofiler with SKY92 is a gene-based risk identification signature that determines the level of risk for patients with multiple myeloma by classifying them into a "high" or "standard" risk group. MMprofiler assesses risk by measuring the activity of 92 genes (the SKY92 gene signature) that are directly or indirectly related to the disease. Patients with a "high" risk classification have a poor prognosis as compared to patients with a standard risk profile, regardless of treatment. The performance of the SKY92 gene signature to risk stratify these patients exceeds that of standard clinical parameters that include FISH, and earlier gene expression signatures utilized in myeloma.

"With the information that MMprofiler provides, physicians are now able to make better informed decisions," said Antonio Palumbo, M.D., Chief of Myeloma Unit, Department of Oncology, University of Torino, Italy. "The power to classify a patient's risk level using MMprofiler enables the physician to potentially tailor a more precise and beneficial treatment for their multiple myeloma patient, thus potentially avoiding ineffective, costly, or potentially harmful treatments."

The following three posters will be presented on Friday, June 10, from 5:15-6:45 p.m. (CEST) in Hall H of the Bella Center, Copenhagen, Denmark:

Abstract P283: Martin van Vliet Ph.D., SkylineDx, Rotterdam, Netherlands Risk Stratification by SKY92+ISS Outperforms iFISH Markers t(4;14) and Del(17P) in Multiple Myeloma

Abstract P282: Martin van Vliet Ph.D., SkylineDx, Rotterdam, Netherlands Precision as Part of the Analytical Validation of the SKY92 High Risk Signature and the MMprofiler Assay

Abstract P276: Martin van Vliet Ph.D., SkylineDx, Rotterdam, Netherlands The SKY92 Prognostic Marker is Validated in Eight Multiple Myeloma Clinical Datasets



Additionally, the E-poster will be on display on E-poster screens from 9:30 a.m. (CEST) Friday, June 10 to 7:00 p.m. (CEST) Saturday, June 11, 2016:

Abstract E1262: Martin van Vliet Ph.D., SkylineDx, Rotterdam, Netherlands Robustness of the Prognostic Value of the SKY92 Marker Versus FISH Markers Across Nine Multiple Myeloma Cohorts



About Multiple Myeloma

Multiple myeloma (MM) is a cancer that arises from plasma cells, a type of white blood cell made in the bone marrow. In patients with MM, the plasma cells become abnormal, multiply uncontrollably, and release only one type of antibody - known as M-protein - which has no useful function. It is often through the measurement of M- protein that MM is diagnosed and monitored. Most medical problems related to MM are caused by the build-up of abnormal plasma cells in the bone marrow and the presence of the M-protein in the blood or urine. The most common symptoms of MM include bone pain, recurring infection, kidney damage, and fatigue. According to the World Cancer Research Fund International, an estimated 114,000 people around the world are diagnosed with MM annually, and the disease represents 0.8% of all cancers globally.

For more information about MM, visit www.hematon.nl/myeloom (information available in Dutch only), www.themmrf.org, www.myeloma.org.uk, or www.myeloma.org

About MMprofiler'

MMprofiler with SKY92 is the only CE-IVD marked, gene-based risk identification signature that has been proven superior to the biomarkers currently used for risk- stratifying newly diagnosed and relapsed multiple myeloma patients1. A recently published peer reviewed study showed that MMprofiler is more accurate at identifying high-risk patients, and is the strongest predictor of overall survival - where median survival was 24 months for the highest-risk group2. MMprofiler is available in Europe to be run quickly and confidently in laboratories or as a service from the SkylineDx laboratory in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. In the U.S., MMprofiler is available only as an investigational use and/or research use tool, as the performance characteristics of this product have not been established. For more information, please visit www.mmprofiler.com .

About SkylineDx

SkylineDx is a commercial-stage biotech company based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Originally a spin-off of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the company specializes in the development and marketing of innovative gene signature- based diagnostic tests to assist healthcare professionals in making personalized treatment decisions for individual patients. These tests are designed to accurately determine the type or status of the disease or to predict a patient's response to a specific treatment. Based on the test results, healthcare professionals can tailor the treatment to the individual patient. MMprofiler is the company's lead product. To learn more, please visit www.skylinedx.com.

1. Van Beers EH, et al. SKY92 GEP, iFISH, and ISS comparisons for risk stratification in multiple myeloma. Poster p661 presented at 2015 European Hematology Association Congress.

2. Kuiper R, et al. Prediction of high- and low-risk multiple myeloma based on gene expression and the International Staging System. Blood. 22 October 2015, Volume 126, Number 17, Pages 1996-2004
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- Highlights:

-- An 85m step-out hole from PBM-008, the initial discovery hole, intersected 2.3m of 9.3% zinc equivalent; -- A total of four holes have intersected mineralization along an approximate 175m strike length; and -- Plans to complete a deep hole testing the down-plunge extension of the Pine Bay East Zone.

Callinex Mines Inc. (the "Company" or "Callinex") (TSX VENTURE: CNX)(OTCQX: CLLXF) is pleased to announce that drill hole PBM-014, a 85m step-out hole completed to the northeast of the initial Pine Bay East discovery hole, has intersected 2.3m of 9.3% Zn Eq., containing 6.65% zinc and 0.83 g/t gold and 28.0 g/t silver. In total, four holes drilled during the 2016 Winter Drilling Campaign have outlined mineralization along an approximate 175m strike length. The main mineralization at the Pine Bay East Zone appears to be located slightly southwest and down-plunge from the Baker Patton deposit, where Callinex recently announced a near-surface drill intersection of 10.6m grading 1.4% Cu that expanded the Baker Patton deposit. The Company plans to complete at least one deep hole to test down-plunge from the Pine Bay East Zone.

Max Porterfield, President and CEO, stated, "We are encouraged by the high-grade mineralization encountered over a considerable strike length at the Pine Bay East Zone. We will complete additional drilling at depth where we can further evaluate the size potential of this new zone."

Of the four drill holes completed at the Pine Bay East Zone, holes PBM-008 and PBM-014 intersected high-grade mineralization towards the northeast while two additional holes, PBM-012 and PBM-016, completed to the southwest intersected lower grade zinc mineralization within massive sulphides. There has been almost no drilling conducted at depth, where both Placer Dome Inc. and Inmet Mining Corporation planned to explore before Callinex discovered this new zone.

Callinex has now reported results from 11 of 12 drill holes completed during the 2016 Winter Drilling Campaign. The final unreleased hole, SDB-004, was completed to expand the new zone in the Sourdough area of the Pine Bay Project that was discovered during the 2015 Summer Drilling Campaign.

Drill Results from the Pine Bay East Zone

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From To Interval Zn Zn Au Ag Cu Hole (1)-(3) (m) (m) (m) Eq.(6) (%) (g/t) (g/t) (%) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- PBM012 445.90 446.70 0.80 2.99 2.40 0.23 1.44 0.03 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- and 453.60 454.60 1.00 2.47 1.83 0.15 4.35 0.07 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- and 457.40 458.10 0.70 2.74 0.82 0.58 26.60 0.01 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- PBM014 330.70 333.00 2.30 9.29 6.65 0.83 27.97 0.07 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- including 331.20 331.75 0.55 23.33 17.90 1.62 62.80 0.16 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- and 339.80 346.00 6.20 2.80 2.51 0.04 4.54 0.03 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- and 350.30 352.00 1.70 1.50 1.33 0.03 2.01 0.02 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- and 493.45 494.00 0.55 5.39 0.05 0.04 3.09 1.75 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- PBM016 499.95 504.50 4.55 1.42 0.98 0.12 3.89 0.03 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Notes:

1. Dip and azimuth for hole PBM-012 is -75 degrees and 275 degrees Az. The 524m deep diamond drill hole is located at the following Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates using the North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83) within UTM Zone 14N: 332531m East and 6071600m North. The collar of the hole is 325m above sea level. 2. Dip and azimuth for hole PBM-014 is -78 degrees and 332 degrees Az. The 773m deep diamond drill hole is located at the following Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates using the North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83) within UTM Zone 14N: 332530m East and 6071600m North. The collar of the hole is 325m above sea level. 3. Dip and azimuth for hole PBM-016 is -67 degrees and 300 degrees Az. The 548m deep diamond drill hole is located at the following Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates using the North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83) within UTM Zone 14N: 332586m East and 6071503m North. The collar of the hole is 322m above sea level. 4. PBM-015 was abandoned and as a result did not have any significant results. 5. PBM-013 was drilled to test a VTEM target and did not have any significant results. 6. Zinc equivalent grades are based on the following metal prices: zinc US$0.95/lb, copper US$2.55/lb, gold US$1225 per oz, silver US$16.65 per oz, lead US$0.90/lb. Metal recoveries of 100% are applied in the zinc equivalent calculation. The zinc equivalent calculation is as follows; Zn Eq = Zn grade + ((Cu grade%/100(i)2205 x Cu price) + (Au grade/32.15 x Au price) + (Ag grade/32.15 x Ag price))/Zn price/20). 7. True width is not currently known.

QA/QC

Individual samples were labeled, placed in plastic sample bags, and sealed. Groups of samples were then placed in security sealed bags and shipped directly to SGS Canada Inc in Vancouver, B.C. for analysis. Samples were crushed to 75% passing 2mm and pulverized to 85% passing 75 microns in order produce a 250g split. All copper, zinc and silver assays were determined by Aqua Regia digestion with a combination of ICP-MS and ICP-AES finish, with overlimits (greater than 100 ppm Ag, greater than 10,000 ppm Zn, and greater than 10,000 ppm Cu) completed by fire assay with gravimetric finish (Ag) or Aqua Regia digestion with ICP-AES finish (copper and zinc). All samples were analyzed for gold by Fire Assay of a 30 gram charge by AAS, or if over 10.0 g/t were re-assayed and completed with a gravimetric finish. QA/QC included the insertion and continual monitoring of numerous standards and blanks into the sample stream at a frequency of 1 per 10 samples, and the collection of duplicate samples at random intervals within each batch at a frequency of 1 per 10 samples.

SGS Canada Inc carried out some or all of following methods to obtain the assay results for Callinex: G_LOG02 Pre-preparation processing, G_WGH79 Weighing and reporting, G_PRP89 Weigh, dry, crush, split, pulverize, G_SCRQC QC for crush and pulverize stages, G_CRU22 Crush greater than 3kg, G_DRY11 Dry samples, GE_FAA313 @Au, FAS, AAS, 30g-5ml (Final mode), GE-IC14A Aqua Regia digestion/ICP-AES finish, GE_IMS14B Aqua Regia digestion/ICP-MS package, GE_IMS14 Aqua Regia digestion, GO_FAG303 30g, Fire assay, gravimetric finish (Au)(Final Mode), GO_FAG313 30g, Fire assay, gravimetric finish (Ag)(Final Mode) and G0_ICP13B Ore Grade, Aqua Regia digest/ICP-AES. Ag greater than 10ppm was analyzed by ICP.

The technical content of this news release has been reviewed and approved by James Pickell, P.Geo, a Consultant to the Company, and a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101.

Figure 1: Pine Bay Overview Map: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/Callinex1.jpg

Figure 2: Longitudinal Section of the Pine Bay East Zone: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/Callinex2.jpg

About The Pine Bay Project

The Pine Bay Project is located 16km east of HudBay's 777 Mine and processing facilities near Flin Flon, MB. The project area spans 6,000 sq. ha. and covers a significant portion of the Baker Patton Felsic Complex, one of the largest and most highly altered packages of felsic volcanic rocks within the Flin Flon Greenstone Belt. Historic exploration activities have outlined four mineral deposits, three of which are located within a mineral lease that has advanced permitting status and includes the right to conduct mining activities. The Pine Bay deposit, the largest of the four historic deposits, has a 212m vertical shaft with significant underground workings from previous exploration activities.

The project has two distinct areas with VMS mineralization, the northern Pine Bay area and the southern Sourdough area. These areas are each related to historic deposits and occur along an approximate 10km NE-SW VMS trend near the top of the Baker Patton Felsic Complex. The Sourdough area is immediately adjacent to HudBay's past-producing Centennial Mine. Callinex has recently intersected new VMS zones in both the Pine Bay and Sourdough areas.

During the 1990s, majors including Placer Dome Inc. and Inmet Mining Corporation conducted limited exploration programs in the Pine Bay area to define a large VMS deposit at depth. A review of historic work has confirmed that several proposed drill holes and targets outlined by Placer Dome there were never completed. The property position was recently consolidated for the first time combining several large claim blocks previously operated by companies including Placer Dome, Inmet, Newmont, HudBay and Cameco.

Previous to Callinex' modern geophysical and geological exploration programs, very limited work was conducted between 1996 and 2014. Callinex has digitally compiled more than 1,000 mostly shallow drill holes and has completed large airborne and ground geophysical surveys to identify and evaluate the most prospective drill targets.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pine Bay Historic Resources(1)(2) (3) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Deposit Tons Cu Eq%(2) Cu % Zn % Au g/t Ag g/t ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pine Bay 1,113,200 2.76 2.76 N/A N/A N/A ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sourdough 291,150 2.98 1.46 1.71 1.03 29.8 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cabin 125,000 2.18 0.84 4.02 N/A N/A ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Baker Patton 95,000 3.66 0.80 5.28 0.83 56.0 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total 1,624,350 2.81 2.26 0.92 0.24 8.9 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Notes:(1) Values have been converted from the imperial to metric system(2) Historical resource estimates include (a) a Cerro-Mining-Guggenheim Joint Venture report titled "Feasibility Study for 550 ton per day mine & mill", prepared by Wright Engineers Limited in 1971, reported a "geological ore reserve" 1,113,200 tons at 2.76% Cu at the Pine Bay deposit, (b) a Keys report in 1963 reported a historical resource estimate of 291,150 tons at 1.46% Cu at the Sourdough deposit, (c) a Pine Bay Mines report in 1976 reported a historical resource estimate of 125,000 tons at 0.84% Cu at the Cabin deposit and (d) a Macmillan report in 1968 reported a historical resource estimate of 95,000 tons at 0.80% Cu at the Baker Patton deposit. The historical "geological ore reserve" and resource estimates cited above is mentioned for historical purposes only and uses terminology not compliant with current reporting standards. The reliability of these historical estimates is unknown but considered relevant by the Company as it represents a significant target for future exploration work by the Company. The assumptions, parameters and methods used to calculate this historical resource estimate are not known to the Company. The qualified person has not made any attempt to re-classify the estimates accordingly to current NI 43-101 standards of disclosure or the CIM definitions. In order for these resources to be current, the Company will be required to conduct additional drilling on the Pine Bay Property. The Company is not treating this estimate as current mineral resources or mineral reserves as defined in NI 43-101. Although the Historical resource estimate was also designated as "ore" it cannot be compared to mineral reserves as it is not supported by at least a current pre-feasibility study.(3) Copper equivalent grades are based on metal prices of: copper US$3.00/lb, zinc $1.00/lb, gold US$1200 per oz, silver US$20 per oz. Metal recoveries of 100% are applied in the copper equivalent calculation. The copper equivalent calculation is as follows; Cu Eq = Cu grade + ((Zn grade%/100(i)2000 x Zn price) + (Au grade/32.15 x Au price) + (Ag grade/32.15 x Ag price)/Cu price/20).

About Callinex Mines Inc.

Callinex Mines Inc. is focused on discovering and developing copper and zinc rich mines within prolific Canadian VMS mining jurisdictions. The Company is actively exploring its Pine Bay Project, located in the Flin Flon mining district of Manitoba, which hosts significant historic VMS deposits that are within close proximity to a processing facility. The larger project portfolio hosts three significant zinc rich mineral resources including the Point Leamington, Nash Creek and Superjack Projects located in Eastern Canada.

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.

Some statements in this news release contain forward-looking information. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to future expenditures. These statements address future events and conditions and, as such, involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the statements. Such factors include, among others, the ability to complete contemplated work programs and the timing and amount of expenditures. Callinex does not assume the obligation to update any forward-looking statement.

Contacts:

Callinex Mines Inc.

Max Porterfield

President and Chief Executive Officer

(604) 605-0885

info@callinex.ca




TORONTO, CANADA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- BacTech Environmental Corporation ("BacTech" or the "Company"), (CSE: BAC)(OTC PINK: BCCEF) (WKN: A1H4TY) announced that it intends to raise up to CAD$500,000 on a non-brokered, best efforts basis through the sale of units. Each unit, priced at 4 cents per unit, consists of one common share and one non-transferable common share purchase warrant. Each warrant entitles the holder to purchase one common share at a price of CAD$0.10 for a period of 2 years from the first anniversary of the date of issue. The common shares and warrants are subject to a four-month hold period.

In a press release dated May 24, 2016, BacTech announced that it had signed the final contract related to the creation of an Association Contract with COMIBOL, the state mining company of Bolivia. The contract outlines the obligations and contributions of both parties with respect to the project. COMIBOL owns the tailings at Telamayu, Bolivia, and is making them available to the Association. In addition, there is power, rail and a former mill housing on site. Representatives of Bumigeme Inc., a Montreal-based engineering firm, will be onsite the week of June 6th to assess the existing infrastructure and to develop a go forward plan with respect to development. It is anticipated that a drill program will be instituted shortly. The material from the drill program will be incorporated into a NI 43-101 report, as well as provide fresh material for gravity and flotation testwork. Phase 1 should be completed within 6 months.

BacTech has engaged the services of FronTier Merchant Capital Group ("FronTier") for investor relations services. FronTier is an experienced and reputable investor relations group with a home office in Toronto, Canada. Under the terms of the engagement, FronTier has been retained for a 12 month period at $6,500 per month plus direct expenses. FronTier will assist the Company by increasing market awareness for the Company utilizing a number of financial market communications initiatives. The core of their efforts will be facilitating in-person introductions for the Company with institutional and retail brokers and investors in a number of cities across Canada, the U.S., Europe and Australasia.

Company Profile

BacTech Environmental Corporation holds the perpetual, exclusive, royalty-free rights to use the patented BACOX bioleaching technology for the reclamation of tailings and mining waste materials. The Company's principle focus is a high-grade silver/copper tailings project called Telamayu, located in Atocha, Bolivia, in association with COMIBOL, the state mining group. The Company signed an MOU with Duran Ventures Inc. to explore the viability of building a BACOX plant in Peru to treat high-grade gold/arsenic ores. Investigation has begun to identify similar opportunities in Ecuador. The Company continues to field enquiries globally with respect to additional opportunities for remediation, including licensing transactions for the technology.

Follow us on:

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/BacTechGreen

Twitter http://twitter.com/BacTechGreen

LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/company/1613873

Vimeo http://vimeo.com/bactechgreen

YouTube http://www.youtube.com/user/bactechgreen

Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains "forward-looking information", which may include, but is not limited to, statements with respect to future tailings sites, sampling or other investigations of tailing sites, the Company's ability to make use of infrastructure around tailings sites or operating performance of the Company and its projects. Often, but not always, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", or believes" or variations (including negative variations) of such words and phrases, or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. 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 expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. 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.

Shares outstanding 42,393,994

The Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE) has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or the accuracy of the contents of this release.

Contacts:

BacTech Environmental Corporation

Ross Orr

President & CEO

416-813-0303 ext 222

borr@bactechgreen.com



Bill Mitoulas

Investor Relations

416-837-7147

billm@venturenorthcapital.com




TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- Pelangio Exploration Inc. (TSX VENTURE: PX)(OTC PINK: PGXPF) ("Pelangio" or the "Company") announces the voting results from its Annual General Meeting of Shareholders held on May 26, 2016 (the "Meeting").

Pelangio's shareholders voted in favour of all items of business at the 2016 Annual General Meeting held on May 26, 2016. A total of 98,280,521 (42.83%) of Pelangio's common shares were represented at the meeting.

The six nominees listed in the Management proxy circular were elected as directors of Pelangio. Detailed results of the vote for the election of directors are set out below.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- NOMINEE Votes For % For Votes Withheld % Withheld ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ingrid Hibbard 90,072,772 99.91 84,351 0.09 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Philip Olson 90,061,772 99.89 95,351 0.11 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thor Eaton 90,059,772 99.89 97,351 0.11 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- David Mosher 90,054,772 99.89 102,351 0.11 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Carl Nurmi 90,082,772 99.92 74,851 0.08 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ian Shaw 90.055,772 99.89 101,351 0.11 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

First Quarter Results

Also today, Pelangio announces financial and operational results for the three months ended March 31, 2016. Financial reports and Management's Discussion and Analysis are available on both the Company's website (www.pelangio.com) and SEDAR (www.sedar.com).

Q1 2016 Operational Highlights

-- Manfo - in preparation for drilling, a detailed interpretation continued on a laterite covered major structure identified in 2015 lying to the east of the currently explored structure -- Obuasi - technical review of exploration along a gold and arsenic in soil anomaly (the "NGA trend") underway in preparation for further drilling -- Akroma - paper studies, including the use of satellite imagery, indicate that substantial galamsey (local artisanal mining) and unregulated mechanized alluvial operations surrounding the project were carried out during 2014-2015. These alluvial operations appear to be sourced by large gold-in-soil anomalies on the Pelangio Dormaa Concession -- Poirier - prepared a three dimensional geologic model using all available public data and a three dimensional magnetic inversion which indicates that the favourable structure hosting the Rusk and Gap zones dips into the Poirier property

Canadian Mining EXPO 2016 - The Big Event

Pelangio will be presenting and exhibiting at "The Big Event" held Wednesday June 1 and Thursday June 2, 2016 in Timmins, Ontario. Pelangio's President and CEO, Ingrid Hibbard, will be giving a presentation about the Company at the Investors Forum on June 2 at 2:10 pm.

About Pelangio

Pelangio successfully acquires and explores camp-sized land packages in world-class gold belts, while using innovative corporate restructuring to maximize shareholder value. The Company primarily operates in Ghana, West Africa, an English-speaking, common law jurisdiction that is consistently ranked amongst the most favourable mining jurisdictions in Africa. The Company is exploring three 100%-owned camp-sized properties: the 100 km2 Manfo Property, the site of seven recent near-surface gold discoveries, the 264 km2 Obuasi Property, located four kilometres on strike and adjacent to AngloGold Ashanti's prolific, high-grade Obuasi Mine, which has produced over 30 million ounces of gold since 1897, and the early-stage 159 km2 Akroma Property.

For additional information, please visit our website at www.pelangio.com, follow us on Twitter @PelangioEx.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements herein may contain forward-looking statements and forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements or information appear in a number of places and can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate" or "believes" or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements and information include statements regarding the private placement, the proposed use of proceeds and the Company's exploration plans and drill program. With respect to forward-looking statements and information contained herein, we have made numerous assumptions, including assumptions about the state of the equity markets. Such forward-looking statements and information are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the Company's actual results, performance or achievements, or industry results, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statement or information. Such risks include changes in equity markets, share price volatility, volatility of global and local economic climate, gold price volatility, political developments in Ghana, increases in costs, exchange rate fluctuations, speculative nature of gold exploration and other risks involved in the gold exploration industry. See the Company's annual and quarterly financial statements and management's discussion and analysis for additional information on risks and uncertainties relating to the forward-looking statement and information. There can be no assurance that a forward-looking statement or information referenced herein will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements or information. Also, many of the factors are beyond the control of the Company. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements or information. We undertake no obligation to reissue or update any forward-looking statements or information except as required by law. All forward-looking statements and information herein are qualified by this cautionary statement.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts:

Pelangio Exploration Inc.

Ingrid Hibbard

President & CEO



Pelangio Exploration Inc.

Warren Bates

Vice President Exploration

905-336-3828

Toll-free: 1-877-746-1632

info@pelangio.com




DUBLIN, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Global Higher Education Financial and HRM Market 2016-2020" report to their offering.

Global Higher Education Financial and HRM Software Market 2016-2020, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.



The global higher education financial and HRM software market consists of software solutions that are employed by institutions to improve the decision-making and productivity of employees and management of financial resources. The data collected from the software is further analyzed using analytics applications.



The analysis is to ensure that an institution's resources are optimally used. HRM primarily focuses on planning, managing, and reporting of HR processes, along with recruitment and retention of good performers. Financial management software primarily focuses on providing real-time access to financial data such as procurement, accounts payable, and others. They provide stakeholders with specific financial information, which can help improve data-backed decision-making and strategies, and prioritize tasks.



One trend which is already having an impact on the market is the rise in the international mobility of students. The increase in the number of international enrollment and student exchange programs have widened the scope of growth of the global higher education market. An integration of intercultural and international dimension into the main objective and functioning or delivery of education have been happening. For instance, the Bologna process in Europe, a collective effort of universities, faculties, and public authorities, focuses on the introduction of various bachelor's, master's and doctorate programs. The purpose is to strengthen the quality assurance of the entire system and enhance recognition of the achieved qualifications across geographical borders.





According to the report, a key growth driver of market growth is the rising ICT investment in higher educational institutions. Educational technology enriches the learning experience for students. Digital classrooms have incorporated advanced technological learning aids such as interactive whiteboards and 3-D printing to increase student interactivity and knowledge retention. As a result, educational institutions have increased their budget to include more collaboration, assessment, and ERP systems in their delivery methods.



Further, the report states that one challenge that could hinder market growth is the shortage of trained staff.



Key vendors



- Ellucian

- Oracle

- SAP

- Workday



Other prominent vendors



- IBM

- Infor

- Halogen Software

- Unit4

- Lexmark International

Key Topics Covered:



PART 01: Executive summary



PART 02: Scope of the report



PART 03: Market research methodology



PART 04: Introduction



PART 05: Market landscape

- Global higher education: Market overview

- School ERP: Market overview

- Global higher education financial and HRM software market

- Five forces analysis



PART 06: Market segmentation by product

- Global higher education financial and HRM software market by product

- Global higher education financial management software market

- Global higher education HRM software market



PART 07: Geographical segmentation



PART 08: Market drivers

- Rising ICT investment in higher educational institutions

- Increased competition among higher educational institutions

- Changing funding models for higher education

- Budget shortfalls in certain regions

- Resistance to tuition fee increases



PART 09: Impact of drivers



PART 10: Market challenges

- Challenges with implementation issues

- Shortage of trained staff

- Security and ethical issues

- Lack of transparent communication between stakeholders



PART 11: Impact of drivers and challenges



PART 12: Market trends

- Increase in implementation of big data analytics

- Intensified use of cloud computing

- Rise in international mobility of students

- Investment in buying rather than building software

- Growing demand from emerging regions



PART 13: Vendor landscape



PART 14: Other prominent vendors



PART 15: Appendix



For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/g7b42t/global_higher

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
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - May 31, 2016) - Blue River Resources Ltd. (TSXV: BXR ) (OTC Pink: BRVRF) (FSE: 0BL) ("Blue River") is pleased to announce that the surface gold anomaly on the Banlung Project, Cambodia has been expanded to 4.37 km2, with a higher gold pan concentrate zone measuring 40 hectares, within the zone.

Today's announcement follows a previous release of exploration results on the Banlung Project dated October 13, 2015 where ANGKOR Gold Corp. disclosed the discovery of a 2 km2 surface gold anomaly from sampling 12,500 termite mounds over an 6.8 km x 8.4 km area. Visible gold was panned from 83% of the termite mound samples in the 2 km2 anomaly area.

A second infill program of systematic soil sampling of 2,420 termite mounds was conducted in late 2015 and has expanded the size of the surface gold anomaly by more than 100%. The surface gold anomaly now covers an area of 4.37 km2, twice the size of the known anomaly identified in the first survey. The results of the infill survey shows the highest gold pan concentrate results covers an area of 40 hectares. Rounded to angular visible gold grains were found from panning in 64% of the total samples collected in the second survey, leading to the possibility that the source of this gold is within 50 to 500 meters from the surface anomaly. Gold values from auger drilling and surface sampling to date on the Banlung Project range from 1.14 g/ tonne to 3.5 g / tonne.

2016 EXPLORATION PLAN, BANLUNG PROJECT

The 2016 Banlung Exploration Plan calls for auger drilling the 40 hectare high gold pan concentrate surface anomaly with 1200 auger sites and the remainder of the 4 km2 surface gold anomaly with 1400 auger sites. Samples will be split and panned by Angkor Gold personnel and fire assayed at the ALS lab in Laos. All sample analysis includes a minimum 10% blank, standard and duplicate QA/QC sample checks.

Follow-up exploration will include trenching and pit excavation and 2,000 to 4,000 m of air-core drilling. The exploration plan is designed to delineate a near surface gold resource that can be mined using gravity separation.

Technical information contained in this news release was reviewed by Jonathan Soper, P. Eng., a qualified person as defined under National Instrument 43-101. Mr Soper has reviewed and approved the scientific and technical disclosure in this news release.

Blue River initially has the right to participate in up to a 50% interest of the Banlung license from Angkor Gold Corp., after the completion of a total investment of US$3.5 million in exploration expenditures over a 4-year period. Blue River may then exercise their option on an additional 20% interest of the Banlung tenement through the commission and completion of a bankable feasibility study on the property or portion thereof.

ABOUT BLUE RIVER RESOURCES LTD

Blue River Resources Ltd. is a mineral exploration and development company, focused on gold exploration on the Banlung Tenement, Cambodia. The Company also has a 100% interest in two mineral properties in the Quesnel Trough Copper Belt: the Castle Copper Project near the Copper Mountain Mine, Princeton, BC and the Mazama Copper Deposit, Okanogan County, WA.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

BLUE RIVER RESOURCES LTD.

/s/ Griffin Jones

Griffin Jones

President, Director



For further information contact:

Griffin Jones, Tel: (604) 682-7339

www.Blueriv.com
WASHINGTON, DC -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- DirectTrust today announced the launch of Partnership for Patients Program (P4PP), an initiative that will make it easier for patients and health care consumers to securely share personal health information with medical professionals at hospitals, offices, clinics and other locations via secure email. DirectTrust is a non-profit health care industry alliance created by and for participants in the Direct exchange network used for secure, interoperable exchange of personal health information (PHI) between provider organizations, and between provider and patients, for the purpose of improved care coordination.

P4PP aims to remove the barriers of cost and complexity that can make it difficult for patients and consumers to engage in two-way digital communication with their care providers, even in the "age of the Internet." P4PP features DirectTrust members whose products and services offer consumers and patients secure email on the same network used by tens of thousands of their providers and hospitals.

"The need for patients and consumers to take charge of their health information, communicate with their providers about their health and be free to move their health information anywhere they choose has never been greater," said DirectTrust President and CEO David C. Kibbe, MD, MBA. "This, of course, means individuals must have access to their personal health information stored in their providers' EHRs and other health IT systems, and have that access electronically and digitally. It also means that individuals who desire it have the ability to download copies of their health information, or any parts of their medical record, and to collect, manage and transport the information to other providers. The Partnership for Patients Program gives patients and consumers all of these options."

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires that health care providers provide access to personal health information in the format and file type -- including electronic -- requested by the patient. Individuals who join P4PP will have access to DirectTrust's nationwide network of 58,000 health care organizations and more than 1.2 million email addresses. Participants can then take advantage of Direct exchange, which enables electronic health information exchange as easy to use as regular email, with one big difference: Direct protects information through encryption and identity assurance, so the privacy of the information is kept secure and reaches only those individuals who are authorized to receive and use it.

Four DirectTrust members currently participate in P4PP and provide the necessary identity proofing and certificate issuance with EHNAC-DirectTrust accredited healthcare information service providers (HISPs) to onboard consumers and patients with Direct email accounts. They are IdenTrust, iShare Medical, MaxMD and DataMotion. Additional DirectTrust members have committed to participate in P4PP in the coming weeks and months.

Patients interested in joining P4PP can visit the DirectTrust P4PP website to access step-by-step directions for setting up an account. Once there, individuals can visit each of the participating member sites to learn about their product offerings and decide which offerings work best for them and their families.

About DirectTrust

DirectTrust is a four-year-old, non-profit, competitively neutral, self-regulatory entity created by and for participants in the Direct community, including Health Internet Service Providers (HISPs), Certificate Authorities (CAs), and Registration Authorities (RAs), doctors, patients and vendors, and supports both provider-to-provider as well as patient-to-provider Direct exchange. DirectTrust received a Cooperative Agreement Award from ONC as part of the Exemplar HIE Governance Program that was in place from March 2013 to March 2015. DirectTrust serves as a forum and governance body for persons and entities engaged in Direct exchange of electronic health information as part of the Nationwide Health Information Network (NwHIN). DirectTrust's Security and Trust Framework is the basis for the voluntary accreditation of service providers implementing Direct Messaging of health information. The goal of DirectTrust is to develop, promote and, as necessary, help enforce the rules and best practices necessary to maintain security and trust within the Direct community, consistent with the HITECH Act and the governance rules for the NwHIN established by ONC. DirectTrust is committed to fostering widespread public confidence in the exchange of Direct Messaging of health information. To learn more, visit www.directtrust.org.

Contact

Ed Emerman

Eagle Public Relations

609.275.5162

eemerman@eaglepr.com




PUNE, India, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

According to a new market research report "Wound Care Market by Product (Advanced (Foam, Alginate, NPWT, Active), Surgical, Traditional), Wound Type (Chronic (DFU, Pressure Ulcer), Acute (Burn)), End User (Hospital (Inpatient, Outpatient), Long-Term Care, Home Healthcare) - Global Forecast to 2021", published by MarketsandMarkets, The global market is expected to reach USD 20.4 Billion by 2021 from USD 17.0 Billion in 2016, growing at a CAGR of 3.6% from 2016 to 2021.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302 )

Browse 380 market data Tables and 48 Figures spread through 301 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Wound Care Market"

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/wound-care-market-371.html

Early buyers will receive 10% customization on reports.

The report analyzes and studies the major market drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges in North America, Europe, Asia, and the Rest of the World (RoW)

On the basis of type of wound, the wound care market is segmented into chronic wound and acute wound. On the basis of end users, the wound care market is segmented into hospitals and specialty wound care clinics, long-term care facilities, and home healthcare. Based on the type of products, the wound care market is segmented into traditional wound care, surgical wound care, and advanced wound management products. Among various segments, the advanced wound management product segment commanded the largest share in 2015, and is forecasted to be the fastest-growing segment in the wound care market. Factors such as rising awareness regarding new technologies for wound care, government support in the form of funding, and rising diabetic and aging population are driving the growth of the wound care market.

Based on geography, the global wound care market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia, and the Rest of the World (RoW). North America is expected to account for the largest share of the market by the end of 2016. This large share can be attributed to various factors, including the increase in acute and chronic conditions such as diabetic foot ulcers, venous ulcers, and pressure ulcers and government support for wound care research in the form of funds.

Talk to our Experts: http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/speaktoanalyst.asp?id=371

The prominent players in the Wound Care Market are 3M Company (U.S.), Baxter International, Inc. (U.S.), Coloplast A/S (Denmark.), Convatec Healthcare B.S.A.R.L (U.S.), Covidien PLC (Ireland), Derma Sciences, Inc. (U.S.), Ethicon, Inc. (U.S.), Hollister, Inc. (U.S.), Kinetic Concept, Inc. (U.S.), Molnlycke Health Care (Sweden), and Smith & Nephew (U.K.).

Browse Related Reports:

Home Healthcare Market by Product (BP & Heart Rate Monitor, Ovulation Kit, HIV Test, ECG, EKG, Nebulizer, Hearing Aids, Pedometer, Cane, Walker, Wheelchairs), Software, Services (Rehabilitation, Skilled, Hospice), & Telehealth - Global Forecasts to 2020

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/home-healthcare-equipment-market-696.html

Top 10 Medical Device Technologies Market by Type (IVD, Cardiology, Diagnostic Imaging, Orthopedics, Ophthalmology, Endoscopy, Diabetes Care, Wound Management, Kidney/Dialysis, and Anesthesia & Respiratory Care Devices) - Global Forecast to 2020

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/top-10-medical-device-technologies-96.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.

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Elektrenai, Lithuania, 2016-05-31 15:30 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --LIETUVOS ENERGIJOS GAMYBA PRODUCED MORE DURING THE FIRST QUARTER AND ENSURED STABLE SUPPLY OF ELECTRICITYIn 2016 1Q, the national energy producer Lietuvos Energijos Gamyba effectively availed of the potentials of the managed power generation facilities to conduct competitive production and provided services necessary for the energy system in a reliable manner. Unaudited financial performance results of the Company reveal that its operation was more effective. Still a considerable negative effect of the regulatory provisions disputed by the Company can be felt.In 2016 1Q, all three power plants managed by the Company produced 25% more power than during the same period last year (305 GWh and 247 GWh, accordingly). Higher amount of water determined the 22.6% increase in production of power by Kaunas Algirdas Brazauskas' Hydroelectric Power Plant (Kaunas HPP) - up to 118 GWh. Kruonis Pumped Storage Hydroelectric Plant (Kruonis PSHP) maintained similar level of production (produced 153 GWh), meanwhile, the unit of combined cycle which functioned in a competitive manner produced 34 GWh. During the first quarter of last year, no power was produced in Elektrenai at all."We prepared for 2016 responsibly because we knew that once subsidised electricity generation quotas are removed and new links occur, we will have to operate in a changed market. Consequently, we produced more power during the first quarter of the year, power plants managed to operate reliably even when the weather abruptly became cold or where the link with Sweden NordBalt was disconnected and we had to ensure stable power supply and contribute to energy price stabilisation on the market. All this shows that we successfully adapt to changes," Egle Ciuzaite, chairwoman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Lietuvos Energijos Gamyba, said.Despite the successful operation of the Company, by decision of the National Commission for Energy Control and Prices (NCC), part of the result of the Company's commercial activity had to reduce the earnings the Company receives from funds of public services obligations. This was the main reason the Company's sales income reduced (drop of 10.1% from EUR 37.23 million in 2016 1Q to EUR 33.46 million in 2016 1Q) as well as earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) which amounted to EUR 9.56 million in 2016 1Q and was by 48.1 % lower than EBITDA of 2015 1Q (EUR 18.41 million).The impact of the NCC decisions excepted, the Company's EBITDA would be by EUR 5.8 million higher. Most of this amount, namely, EUR 4.8 million, is part of the earnings from commercial activity of Kruonis PSHP and Kaunas HPP, which, by decision of NCC, is currently directed towards covering the Company's fixed costs while providing public services.It should be recalled that the influence of the NCC decisions was not reflected in the statements of 2016 1Q a year ago. These decisions regarding the results of the inspection of the Company's performance during the 2010-2012 period and the recognition of the Company as having considerable impact in the power generation market reduce the amount the Company receives from funds of public service obligations and the income from services of ensuring capacity reserves, i.e. part of income from regulated activities are not recognised. The Company does not include this income in the financial statements referring to the auditor's recommendations, however, it continues to actively defend its position regarding their recognition and seeking to annul the above mentioned decisions of the NCC in the court.Unaudited net earnings of the Company in 2016 1Q amounts to EUR 13.96 million, meanwhile, the net profit in 2015 1Q was EUR 14.82 million. The net result was largely determined by the sale of part of the wholesale power business. It should be recalled that Energijos Tiekimas UAB, which bought this part of the business will have to pay the Company EUR 13.1 million in cash in instalments by 31 March 2017. Moreover, EUR 8 million in addition (EUR 2 million per year) may have to be paid subject to the results of the sold activity in the period until 2019. The final price of the transaction, if all terms and conditions specified in the agreement are fulfilled, may amount to EUR 21.1 million. However, the sale of the wholesale electricity business share has negative impact on the Company's EBITDA because having sold this share of business on 1 January 2016 it no longer receives any income from this activity.According to Ms. Ciuzaite, tangible benefit in improving the results of the Company in 2016 1Q was the result of the effort of all employees who aimed at becoming a more flexible and effective energy production company. "We will continue focusing on ensuring the reliability of facilities. Operating costs are reducing due to faster repairs and changes in work organisation, besides, the costs of business support services also fall down," the head of the Company said.Valentas Neviera, Lietuvos Energijos Gamyba, AB, Head of Corporate Communication Division, tel. +370 670 25997, e-mail: valentas.neviera@le.ltAttachment:https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=574054
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - MGT Capital Investments Inc. (MGT) provided a commentary from the company's proposed Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, John McAfee. On Sunday afternoon May 29th, McAfee, conceded the Libertarian Party nomination for President of the United States to former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson. McAfee said at the Libertarian National Convention in Orlando, Florida, 'So many problems in the world can be easily fixed with common sense and a good grasp of the technology that people use daily, as long as we monitor the vulnerabilities caused by these same technologies. I see my upcoming new role as CEO of an exciting new cybersecurity company as paramount to that mission.' McAfee said that CEO of MGT, he will lead a team to aggressively develop technology platforms, software, hardware and components designed to protect people and their freedoms. He added that under the technical leadership of the company's proposed Chief Technology Officer, Eric 'Eijah' Anderson, the company will be focused on bringing these technologies to market. 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.




Daon's IdentityX Platform Used to Enable Multi-modal Biometric Authentication

RESTON, Virginia, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --Daon and Gulf Bank Kuwait announced today their partnership in providing biometric authentication within Gulf Bank Kuwait's new mobile banking application. Daon's IdentityX Platform enables Gulf Bank Kuwait's customers to seamlessly authenticate using their face and fingerprint to quickly and easily assert their identity online across multiple channels.

Logo- http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151030/282469LOGO

Cesar Gonzalez-Bueno, Gulf Bank's Chief Executive Officer said, "Digital banking is important to our customers and we wanted to make it convenient and simple for them to conduct their banking transactions with our new mobile banking app. By working with Daon, we were able to leverage cutting-edge technology with global best practices to provide our customers with an enhanced mobile banking experience. Our customers can now login with biometrics using their fingerprint touch id and 'Blinking to Bank' facial recognition, from anywhere in the world, and perform a wide array of banking transactions efficiently and securely."

Daon's IdentityX Platform provides fingerprint, face and voice recognition, along with other authentication factors, which will provide convenient, fast, secure authentication for Gulf Bank Kuwait's customers. IdentityX was designed with an eye toward the future, allowing Daon customers to easily add new biometrics as they become commercially available. This innovative solution will be the first deployment in the Middle East and illustrates Gulf Bank Kuwait's commitment to their customers.

Tom Grissen, Daon's Chief Executive Officer said, "We are seeing tremendous opportunity for banks to leverage the power of biometrics to improve their customer experience. Convenient and secure authentication has become critical in today's digital economy and we are very happy supporting Gulf Bank Kuwait on their journey to a mobile first, customer first strategy. Their customers can now login on to the Gulf Bank mobile app in a few seconds, putting speed and ease of use first. Our experience with banking customers like Gulf Bank Kuwait allows us to help our valued customers understand the actual benefits from using biometrics and how to achieve successful large scale implementations quickly and efficiently."

About Gulf Bank Kuwait

Gulf Bank, established in 1960, is one of the largest and leading retail banks in Kuwait. It has a network of 56 branches, with total assets of KD 5,438 million for year ended 31 December 2015. Gulf Bank is currently ranked "A" by the three leading international credit rating agencies and offers a wide range of banking and financial products and services. Gulf Bank has been recognized with numerous awards, spread over different sectors of its work, including consumer banking, wholesale banking, products, performance, marketing, human resources, and corporate social responsibility. These include awards from respected international publications such as The Asian Banker, International Finance Magazine (IFM);International Banker; Banker Middle East; and Arabian Business Magazine.

Gulf Bank is strongly committed to giving back to Kuwait through its corporate social responsibility program. The Bank supports numerous events focusing on youth, education, health and fitness, helping the underprivileged, women's empowerment, as well as promoting Kuwait's heritage and culture. For more information about Gulf Bank log onto: www.e-gulfbank.com or see our social media channels on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.

About Daon

Daon is a leading provider of biometric authentication and identity assurance solutions focused on meeting the needs of enterprise and public sector customers worldwide. Daon has pioneered methods for securely and conveniently combining biometric and identity capabilities in multiple channels. Daon empowers its customers and their users to choose the factor or combination of factors that best meet their situational needs and preferences.

Daon's offerings include rich mobile biometric authentication and biometric identity management solutions with deployments that include payments verification, digital banking, border management, immigration, employee credentialing, national ID, passports, driver's licenses, voter registration, beneficiary verification, and cloud authentication.

For more information, please visit www.daon.com or get to know us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Media and Analyst Contacts

Laila Al-Qatami, Assistant General Manager, Corporate Communications

+965 9497 2156

laila@gulfbank.com.kw

Travis Wachter, Director of Marketing Communications

+1 (703) 984-4016

travis.wachter@daon.com





To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/gulf-bank-kuwait-first-in-region-to-use-biometrics-for-digital-banking-300276436.html
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- On May 31st, International Flight Attendant Day, CUPE Airline Division President Michel Cournoyer encourages passengers across Canada to express their gratitude to these in-flight safety professionals.

"The flight attendant's role is critical for ensuring passenger comfort and safety," explained Cournoyer. "Flight attendants offer outstanding service, but their in-flight contribution hardly ends there. As safety professionals, they are always ready to act if danger arises, whether a medical emergency, fire, violent passenger, evacuation, depressurization or other event. On this International Flight Attendant Day, please take a few moments to thank them."

For CUPE, no compromise is acceptable when it comes to passenger safety. "CUPE flight attendants will continue to pressure the federal government to restore the safety-proven ratio of one flight attendant for every 40 passengers," said Cournoyer. "All emergency exits should be staffed by a flight attendant to facilitate the evacuation of passengers in an emergency situation. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case on all Canadian flights under the guideline approved by the Conservatives under Stephen Harper, who changed the ratio to one flight attendant per 50 passenger seats. The new Liberal government has the power to reverse that decision and to once again put passenger safety ahead of corporate profits."

International Flight Attendant Day has been celebrated on May 31st in several countries for many years. In Canada, it is celebrated since 2015.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees is Canada's largest union, with 636,000 members across the country. CUPE represents 10,000 flight attendants at Air Canada, Air Transat, Calm Air, Canadian North, CanJet, Cathay Pacific, First Air and Sunwing.

Contacts:

Philippe Gagnon

CUPE Media Relations

613-894-0146

pgagnon@scfp.ca






CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The Canadian dollar slipped against its key counterparts in European deals on Tuesday, as the Canadian economy expanded less than forecast in the first quarter.



Data from Statistics Canada showed that the GDP grew 2.4 percent on a seasonally adjusted annualized basis, slower than the expected 2.8 percent increase. Nonetheless, it was higher than the previous quarter's 0.8 percent gain.



On month, the economy shrank by 0.2 percent, sharper than February's 0.1 percent decline. Economists had been expecting the GDP to match the February's estimate.



Crude oil futures held near $50 a barrel as OPEC nations meet in Vienna this week, although no production cuts are expected.



The currency was mostly higher in Asian deals, amid rising oil prices.



The loonie declined to a 6-day low of 1.4598 against the euro, compared to 1.4529 hit late New York Monday. On the downside, the loonie may challenge support around the 1.48 area.



Data from Eurostat showed that the Eurozone jobless rate remained stable at the lowest level in more than four years in April.



The unemployment rate came in at 10.2 percent in April, the same rate as seen in March, and in line with expectations.



Reversing from an early 4-day high of 1.3017 against the greenback, the loonie slipped to 1.3083. The next possible support for the loonie may be located near the 1.32 mark.



Data from the Commerce Department showed that U.S. personal spending increased more than expected in the month of April.



The Commerce Department said personal spending jumped by 1.0 percent in April after coming in unchanged in March. Economists had expected spending to climb by 0.7 percent.



The loonie slipped to a weekly low of 0.9479 against the aussie, following an advance to 0.9366 at 5:00 pm ET. Continuation of the loonie's downtrend may see it finding support around the 0.96 region.



The loonie, having advanced to near a 5-week high of 85.51 against the yen in Asian trading, reversed direction and was trading lower at 85.02. The loonie is seen finding support around the 83.00 region.



Data from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism showed that Japan's housing starts expanded at the fastest pace in 10 months in April.



Housing starts grew by more-than-expected 9 percent year-on-year in April, the biggest growth since June 2015, when it climbed 16.3 percent. Economists had expected 4.1 percent growth after posting 8.4 percent increase in March.



Looking ahead, U.S. Chicago PMI and consumer confidence index for May are slated for release shortly.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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This comprehensive report forecasts the global SDR market to grow at a CAGR of 11.82% during the period 2016-2020. Commenting on the report, an analyst from the research team said: A key trend that is expected to drive market growth is the availability of next generation reconfigurable radio equipment. Incorporating SDR technology in CR has enabled them to move to the next level of effective communication. The improvised CR can select frequency bands and type modulation types and power levels required according to the conditions and geographic regulations. This development mainly aims at the effective use of radio spectrum for communication. These type of radios need not define as a single piece equipment but can be merged into components that can spread across the entire network. According to the report, a key growth driver is the growing demand for effective communication systems. Since the 1990s, the SDR technology has undergone many developments and has been applied widely used across every sector. Major military equipment providers have been inspired by the Joint Tactical Radio System Joint Program Office (JTRS JPO) to adopt Software Communication Architecture as the operating system for radios. Questions Answered:

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.
LINCOLNSHIRE, IL -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- Bentley's Pet Stuff, a family-owned, multi-unit healthy pet foods retailer founded by Lisa and Giovanni Senafe, along with entrepreneur Marcus Lemonis, host of CNBC's reality series, The Profit, are pleased to announce the opening of a new store in Crystal Lake, Illinois, located at 5300 Northwest Highway. To celebrate, Bentley's Pet Stuff is hosting a grand opening event to be held on Saturday, June 11 from 10am to 3pm and on Sunday, June 12 from 11am to 2pm. The grand opening event will offer customers exclusive weekend deals and giveaways. The local community, business owners and pet parents are encouraged to attend and to bring their leashed four-legged friends to join in the fun!

The first 50 shoppers to visit during the grand opening celebration will receive a special gift bag (valued up to $25) and all shoppers will receive free samples and enjoy live music and product demostrations.* The store's adoption partners, Helping Paws and Animal Outreach Society will be onsite Saturday, June 11 from 10am to 2pm with cats and dogs available for adoption in honor of June being the official National Pet Adoption Month.

Bentley's Pet Stuff sells natural food, pet care essentials, toys, grooming products and treats for their four-legged friends. The company focuses on the three critical elements in caring for pets: to nourish, energize and reward. Specialty pet food brands such as Fromm, Orijen, Zignature, Honest Kitchen and Stella & Chewy's can be obtained from all Bentley's Pet Stuff locations. In addition, seasonal products and holiday gift items are available for purchase throughout the year.

The retailer has been a fixture in the Chicago market since 2008, and currently operates 19 stores in the Chicagoland area, with several locations under renovations in the Milwaukee, Minneapolis, St. Louis and Denver markets after recent acquisitions. "We're constantly researching new areas and opening up new stores to provide pets and their owners with a one-stop location for a variety of competitively priced, quality natural products," said Lemonis. "We are excited to host the grand opening in the community of Crystal Lake and look forward to more openings and acquisitions throughout the year."

For more information about Bentley's Pet Stuff stores, products and history, please visit www.PetStuff.com. For information on future store opening plans, please contact Giovanni Senafe at 708-214-4197 or giovanni@bentleyspetstuff.com.

*All grand opening giveaways available while supplies last.

About Bentley's Pet Stuff

Bentley's Corner Barkery opened its doors in 2008 with a mission to feed animal lovers' pets genuine real meat products made in the USA. Their dedication to customers' animals is why they hand pick and research every item stocked on their shelves, allowing customers to be at ease when making a purchase at any of their retail stores throughout the Chicagoland area. Started from a single retail store eight years ago, Bentley's Corner Barkery grew to encompass seven locations offering natural pet food, a variety of treats, toys and more! In November 2015, Bentley's Corner Barkery acquired Pet Stuff and the newly formed company, Bentley's Pet Stuff, now features 19 locations across Chicagoland. http://www.petstuff.com/ & www.facebook.com/bentleyscb/

About Marcus Lemonis

Marcus Lemonis is an entrepreneur, investor, television personality, and chairman and CEO of Marcus Lemonis LLC as well as Camping World and Good Sam Enterprises. Camping World is the nation's largest RV and outdoor retailer, and Good Sam is the world's largest RV owner's organization. Visit www.campingworld.com for more information.

Lemonis is known as the "business turnaround king" and host of CNBC's prime time reality series, The Profit, in which he lends his expertise to struggling small businesses around the country and judges businesses based on a "Three P" principle: People, Process, and Product. The Profit returns on Tuesday, August 23rd at 10pm ET/PT on CNBC.

More about Marcus Lemonis can be found at http://www.marcuslemonis.com, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/marcus.lemonis and Twitter @MarcusLemonis.

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For media, contact:

Karen L. Porter

Director of Media Services

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NIESTETAL (dpa-AFX) - The shareholders of SMA Solar Technology AG (SMTGF.PK) granted full discharge to the Managing Board and Supervisory Board for the 2015 fiscal year with a clear majority of over 99% at today's Annual General Meeting 2016 in Kassel. The remaining agenda items also received the majority approval of the Annual General Meeting. The Annual General Meeting approved the payout of a dividend of EUR 0.14 per qualifying bearer share for the 2015 fiscal year. In his speech, SMA CEO Pierre-Pascal Urbon criticized the intended amendment to the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) by the German Federal Government and the plans the German Federal Ministry of Finance has for taxing self-consumption of solar power. He called on the German Federal Ministry of Finance to remove the bureaucratic constraints on the bidding process for PV systems on building walls and roofs and to develop a plan to ensure that the photovoltaic expansion target set by politicians is achieved this year. The SMA Managing Board is adhering to its sales and earnings forecast for the 2016 fiscal year. This forecast anticipates sales of EUR950 million to EUR 1.050 billion and a significant increase in EBIT to between EUR80 million and EUR120 million. 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.
ROCKLIN, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- ClearCaptions, the leading provider of telephone conversation captioning services, has established a new relay service center in Columbus, Ohio, in partnership with Teleperformance USA (TPUSA). The new center is the operations hub for local employees who facilitate the conversion of spoken voice into text captions for ClearCaptions customers.

"We are proud to partner with a company such as ClearCaptions and admire the work they do to benefit the hearing-impaired community," said Terry Casey, Teleperformance Managing Director, USA. "Teleperformance is excited to work alongside ClearCaptions to help facilitate a clear, seamless conversation for its customers."

Bob Rae, CEO and president of ClearCaptions, agrees, "We're always seeking opportunities to increase our regional presence, especially with partners like Teleperformance USA that share our quest to better serve people through technology coupled with exemplary customer care. With over 48 million Americans who have some form of hearing loss, opening a new center like this one lets us provide even more support to our customers while bringing new jobs to new locations. We think it makes a strong win for everyone."

How ClearCaptions works

ClearCaptions enables the near real-time transcription of a spoken phone conversation into text captions. Through use of the service, a caller's words are converted into text for easy reading and reference. The service is available for a variety of technology platforms including personal computers, mobile devices and a specialized caption phone called the Ensemble.

The Ensemble phone is the standout device that really shows off the features and benefits of ClearCaptions' service, beginning with a Call Log that enables users to go back to previous conversations to review what was said -- a helpful feature to ensure details, such as addresses, phone numbers or doctor's instructions, are not missed. Additionally, Ensemble's loud and clear speakerphone allows for hands-free conversations where individuals can use both ears to hear the caller while also reading the captions. And, an audio boost function enables Ensemble users to increasing incoming call audio up to 50 decibels.

"For the millions of people who have hearing loss, captioning enables them to enjoy everyday phone conversations that many of us take for granted," said Gordon Ellis, vice president of sales for ClearCaptions. "Making and receiving phone calls should be a comfortable experience for everyone. There's no need to be guessing at what is being said or asking to have a caller repeat themselves; that's what has made many people uneasy about using the phone. With the ClearCaptions service, the Ensemble phone or the applications for the web, personal computer and mobile devices, our goal is to make phone calls easy and enjoyable again."

The ClearCaptions applications for computer and mobile devices are available for free download at clearcaptions.com/Content/onthego.

The Ensemble phone can be purchased at clearcaptions.com/buynow. High-speed internet and landline services are required for the Ensemble phone.

About ClearCaptions - Get the whole conversation

ClearCaptions helps millions of people with hearing loss across the U.S. stay connected with the outside world. ClearCaptions is a Federal Communications Commission (FCC)-certified telephone captioning provider that was founded in 1997. ClearCaptions provides an innovative suite of captioning services through a variety of platforms, including personal computers, mobile devices and home phones. For more information on ClearCaptions, visit clearcaptions.com.

About Teleperformance USA

Teleperformance (RCF - ISIN: FR0000051807 - Reuters: ROCH.PA - Bloomberg: RCF FP), the worldwide leader in outsourced omnichannel customer experience management, serves companies around the world with customer care, technical support, customer acquisition and debt collection programs. In 2015, it reported consolidated revenue of EUR 3.4 billion ($3.7 billion, based on EUR 1 = $1.11).

The Group operates 147,000 computerized workstations, with close to 190,000 employees across 311 contact centers in 65 countries and serving more than 160 markets. It manages programs in 75 languages and dialects on behalf of major international companies operating in a wide variety of industries.

Teleperformance shares are traded on the Euronext Paris market, Compartment A, and are eligible for the deferred settlement service. They are included in the following indices: STOXX 600, SBF 120, Next 150, CAC Mid 60 and CAC Support Services. They also have been included in the Euronext Vigeo Eurozone 120 index since December 2015, with regard of the Group's performance in corporate responsibility.

CONTACT:

Minh Le

(615) 327-7999




MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- Dundee Sustainable Technologies Inc. ("DST" or the "Corporation") (CSE: DST) is pleased to announce that it has entered into an agreement with Empresa Nacional de Mineria, Chile ("ENAMI") for the purchase of 125 tonnes of gold concentrate (the "Concentrate") to be processed using DST's gold extraction technology (the "Demonstration Phase"). This is part of a phased approach established between DST and ENAMI with the objective of implementing a commercial processing facility, utilizing DST's patented technology, in Chile.

The Concentrate contains an estimated 115 g/tonne of gold, 9.0% copper and mercury content in excess of 600 g/tonne. This complex material is difficult to process using conventional processing methods without the associated environmental liabilities and metallurgical challenges. The Corporation was able, during its piloting campaign (Refer to September 23, 2015 and March 1, 2016 press releases), to removed 99.7% of the sulphide and 99.6% of the mercury content. The calcine material was then submitted to acid and water leaching where 99% of the copper was recovered as copper sulphate. DST's chlorination process that followed achieved a gold recovery of 98.8% and a final gold deposition over silica recovery of 99.8%.

This is yet another step forward for the Corporation in its strategy for the commercialization of its technologies worldwide.

About ENAMI, a Chilean state-owned company

ENAMI's mission is to promote the small and medium size private mining sector in Chile, by supplying technical, financial, metallurgical, production and trading services to small and medium size miners. ENAMI's assets include one smelter, five processing plants and a network of technical support and facilities. ENAMI purchases ore and concentrate from producers in various purchasing agencies located throughout Chile.

About Dundee Sustainable Technologies, a company controlled by Dundee Corporation

The Corporation is engaged in the development of environment-friendly technologies for the treatment of materials in the mining industry. Through the development of patented, proprietary processes, DST extracts precious and base metals from ores, concentrates and tailings, while stabilizing contaminants such as arsenic, which could not otherwise be extracted or stabilized with conventional processes because of metallurgical issues or environmental considerations.

At present, DST most advanced proprietary processes are associated to the extraction of precious metals using a chlorination process which provides a cyanide-free alternative for the exploitation of gold deposits. The primary benefits of this innovative technology are shorter processing times, a closed-loop operation eliminating the need for costly tailings pond, and a reduced environmental footprint related to the inert and stable characteristics of the cyanide free tailings.

The chlorination process developed by DST is a recognized "green technology" for which it was awarded a $5 million grant from the Government of Canada to assist in the construction and operation of a demonstration plant. The plant will serve as a demonstration platform for the chlorination process on an industrial scale and under continuous operating conditions.

In addition to this chlorination process, DST operates a pilot plant designed to demonstrate its arsenic stabilization process which is designed for the sequestration of arsenic in a stable glass form. This process is becoming an attractive solution to segregate the arsenic and is therefore opening opportunities for materials considered to contain too much of this toxic material to be exploited or stabilized using conventional approaches.

DST has filed, published and was granted patents for these processes in several countries.

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS: This press release contains forward-looking statements that address future events and conditions, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements as a result of numerous factors, some of which may be beyond the Corporation's control. These factors include: general market and industry conditions, risks related to continuous operations and to commercialization of new technologies and other risks disclosed in the Corporation's filings with Canadian Securities Regulators.

Forward-looking statements are based on the expectations and opinions of the Corporation's management on the date the statements are made. The assumptions used in the preparation of such statements, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be imprecise and, as such, undue reliance should not be placed on forward - looking statements. The Corporation 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 applicable law.

Neither the CSE nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts:

Dundee Sustainable Technologies Inc.

John W. Mercer

President and CEO

(514) 866-6001 # 239

(514) 866-6193 (FAX)

info@dundeetechnologies.com




CINCINNATI, OH--(Marketwired - May 31, 2016) - Swapalease.com, the nation's largest car lease marketplace, recently completed an online survey presented to more than 2,500 drivers across the U.S. to gauge their appetite for leases deals on used cars and trucks. The company also commissioned a similar survey presented to 250 automotive executives at dealerships across the country on their desire and plans to offer more lease deals on used cars and trucks.

The opportunity for lease deals on used cars and trucks may be ripe. 78.7% of drivers said they would consider a deal on a used lease, and 74% of dealers indicated used lease offers may help, or definitely would help move the influx of leases coming back onto their lots.

Expectations For Payments

75% of drivers polled said they would want a monthly payment on a used car or truck lease priced between 20% - 35% lower than the original payment on the same car as a new vehicle. More specifically, most people said they would expect a BMW 3 Series originally priced at $400 per month, to then be priced at $250 or $275 monthly as a three-year-old lease. Conversely, 44% of dealers polled said they would offer a three-year-old lease at 25% - 35% off the original monthly payment as new.

Maintenance & Warranty Disconnects

Only 21.1% of dealers said they feel warranty issues are important to shoppers considering a used car or truck lease. However, 95.3% of drivers said they would expect a warranty to be offered on a used car or truck lease.

Popular Types of Used Car & Trucks For Leases

Drivers said their top three choices for domestic cars and trucks as a used lease would be Cadillac Escalade, Cadillac CTS and Jeep Cherokee. Conversely, most dealers said they would want to offer used lease deals on a Buick Regal, Cadillac CTS and Chevrolet Cruze.

More Overall Flexibility in Leasing

The majority of drivers feel more flexibility is needed overall in lease options. 54% of consumers said they would be interested in extending their lease between 6-12 months at lease end of the original term. Another 72% said they would be interested in transferring into a lease that was older than three years. Lastly, 37% of drivers said they would like to work with a dealer who could help them get out of their lease without penalty if it meant they could purchase or lease a new or different vehicle. Conversely, nearly half (47%) of dealers said they would like to make car shopping more like shopping for an iPhone, where consumers get a new smartphone every two years.

About Swapalease.com:

Headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, Swapalease.com is the world's largest automotive lease marketplace and the pioneer in facilitating lease transfers online. More specifically Swapalease.com matches individuals who want to get out of their lease with people who are looking for short-term lease agreements. Prospective buyers can search the listings for the exact vehicle they want, and then register for a nominal fee, allowing them to use Swapalease.com's safe online system to contact the prospective seller and close the deal. For more information about Swapalease.com or how to exit your lease early, call 866-SWAPNOW or visit www.swapalease.com.

Press Contact:

John Sternal

Merit Mile

jsternal@meritmile.com

O - 561-362-8888

C - 954-592-1201


DUBLIN (dpa-AFX) - Shares of Allergan plc (AGN) rose in early trades Tuesday after billionaire investor Carl Icahn said he recently acquired a 'large position' in the Botox maker and was very supportive of CEO Brent Saunders.



Icahn did not disclose details of the stake he acquired in Allergan, but expressed confidence in Saunders' ability to enhance value for all Allergan shareholders.



Icahn was instrumental in bringing Saunders on board as the new CEO of Forest Laboratories a few years ago. Forest Labs was acquired by Actavis, which was subsequently acquired by Allergan for $70.5 billion in cash and stock in 2015, resulting in massive gains for Forest shareholders.



'While we at that time disposed of our position in Forest, we still have always maintained great respect for Brent. We have every confidence in Brent's ability to enhance value for all Allergan shareholders,' Icahn said in a statement on his website.



In April, drug maker Pfizer Inc. (PFE) that its $160 billion merger deal with Allergan was terminated by mutual agreement of the two companies. The company's decision comes after new rules were announced by the U.S. Treasury to curb corporate tax inversions.



Allergan, which is run from New Jersey but has a legal domicile in Dublin, last year agreed to merge with Pfizer in a deal that would have given New York-based Pfizer a foreign address and a lower tax rate.



However, Icahn was against the Pfizer-Allergan deal and had urged the U.S. Congress to stop tax inversions. He noted that the planned exodus of U.S. companies out of the country was extremely dangerous as it would cause the loss of thousands of jobs, as well as hundreds of billions of dollars of future tax revenue and investment in the U.S.



AGN is trading at $238.85, up $2.91 or 1.23 percent on a volume of 1.87 million shares.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- News came from Brazil Hengtong on May 19th that its first patch of optical cables supplied to Oi Brazil came off the production line and would be used for the optical network construction in Rio de Janeiro, the host city of 2016 Olympic Games.

Oi is the leader of the four major operators in Brazil. Hengtong Brazil signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Oi in April 2016, becoming the communication cable supplier of the latter, which shows Oi's trust in as well as recognition of Hengtong Optic-electric. It implies that Hengtong Brazil has made a figure in South America and breakthroughs in the international market initially.

According to the research report of CRU, Brazil is estimated to hold a 9 percent average growth rate in demand of optical cable in the next 5 years. A few days ago, Brazil Communications released a national broadband development plan, "Intelligent Brazil," seeking to cover 95 percent of the population in Brazil by 2019. Besides, the plan tells that Brazil will construct 6 submarine cables, linking it to Europe, Africa and America in order to improve the network data transmission capacity and secure communications. Hengtong will do its best to booster the broadband development in Brazil.

About Hengtong

Hengtong Optic-Electric Co., LTD. (SH. 600487) was founded in 1993 and has committed itself to providing integrated solutions of telecommunication and energy network, including optical communication, copper communication, power transmission, marine engineering and new materials. According to Global Optic & Cable Markets Investigation released by CRU, HENGTONG Optic-Electric ranked the second with a share of 8% of the global market.

HENGTONG has founded nine industrial base stations in South America, South Africa, Southeast Asia, Europe and other regions, and has established marketing and technology services branches in more than 30 areas; thus HENGTONG products have covered more than 100 countries and regions.

Hengtong Optic-Electric Co., LTD.

Zhang Xian

(86)13611780080

zhangxian@c114.net.cn




SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- Employee happiness company, AnyPerk, today launched AnyPerk Rewards, an employee recognition platform that empowers employees to praise achievements, celebrate milestones and show gratitude. With AnyPerk Rewards, companies can easily increase employee recognition and boost employee happiness, resulting in improved productivity and retention.

AnyPerk Rewards is answering the call of 89 percent of employees who claim that recognition for their efforts makes them happier at work.(1) Until now, individually rewarding employees for a job well done has been an arduous task, rife with painstaking data management, stale catalogues and HR-centric, clunky user experiences aimed at global enterprises with limited opportunity for oversight and reporting. As a result, only 14 percent of companies with less than 2,500 employees have software-based rewards and recognition platforms.(2) AnyPerk Rewards is the first offering of-its-kind built for scaling, mid-size businesses looking to foster cultures of appreciation and recognition without increased burden on the HR and managerial teams.

With this addition, AnyPerk extends its Perks program of exclusive employee discounts to become the only company to provide both perks and rewards in one unified platform, offering company-to-employee, manager-to-employee and peer-to-peer recognition with customized notes that make employees feel valued.

"AnyPerk's mission is to help companies build places where employees love to work, so a rewards and recognition program was an obvious evolution to our Perks platform," said Taro Fukuyama, CEO and co-founder of AnyPerk. "It gives companies a way to easily and effectively invest in their employees' happiness, recognize their achievements, and help make their lives better inside and outside of the office. Ultimately, managers are pleased with the platform, because recognition for effort is also the highest contributor to increased employee engagement and productivity. The program actually impacts a company's bottom-line."

According to a survey commissioned by AnyPerk, only half (48 percent) of respondents agree that their boss cares about their happiness at work with the remaining responses either neutral or disagreeing, and only 15 percent claiming to be 'very happy' at work.(3) AnyPerk Rewards seeks to alter those responses by helping companies build places where employees want to work.

"The AnyPerk rewards and recognition platform is a competitive differentiator for any organization," said Michael Rochelle, Chief Strategy Officer and Principal HCM Analyst of Brandon Hall Group. "It offers a personalized experience with a simple and engaging interface, supported by a dedicated customer success team to ensure a delightful culture is cultivated where meaningful contributions are rewarded and recognized perpetually between managers and employees and among peers."

Key features of AnyPerk Rewards include:

Multiple Recognition Occasions and Designs: Celebrate everything from a job well done to employees living your core values, or create an occasion that matters most to you using designs that delight.

Diverse Rewards Options: From movie tickets to charitable giving to shopping, AnyPerk lets employees choose from a range of rewards options, ensuring there's something for everyone.

Pile on the Praise: Recognition is most impactful when it's broadcast, so share your recognition with a team or company-wide, that way others can offer kudos too.

Centralized Analytics Dashboard: Manage program progress and success including, overall budget spend, available rewards credits, and monitor the most recognized and most generous employees, all in one user-friendly interface.

Mobile App for On-the-Go Appreciation: Recognize employees while you're on-the-go, or redeem rewards whenever it's most relevant.

Customers running the beta version of the program have seen rapid increases in employee engagement as a result of AnyPerk Rewards. "The first time we conducted an engagement survey, we found there were opportunities to improve our employee appreciation, engagement, and benefits initiatives," said Derek Kanehira, Vice President of Human Resources at Hawaii National Bank. "Since implementing AnyPerk, our employee engagement has been 3x more effective. AnyPerk is playing a big part in increasing engagement and improving our benefits package."

Today also marks a new partnership with leading all-in-one HR platform company Namely, to automate the onboarding and maintenance of AnyPerk Rewards for customers to further ease the burden on HR administrators.

For more information about AnyPerk Rewards, please visit www.AnyPerk.com or email sales@AnyPerk.com.

About AnyPerk

AnyPerk is an employee happiness company that helps business leaders build places where employees love to work. With a Perks product that lets companies deliver VIP treatment and exclusive discounts to employees, and a Rewards product that fosters employee recognition, AnyPerk enables thousands of companies to attract, retain and motivate employees. Founded in 2012, AnyPerk is headquartered in San Francisco. Learn more at www.AnyPerk.com.

(1) Amsterdam Printing "Employee Recognition Programs Work When Done Right" Survey. [http://www.amsterdamprinting.com/blog/employee-recognition-programs-research] November 2012. Accessed online. 13 May 2016.

(2) AnyPerk "Rewards & Recognition Market Landscape" Survey. AnyPerk research conducted by Beehive Research. September 2015.

(3) AnyPerk "AnyPerk Employee Happiness Index" Survey. AnyPerk research conducted by Ask Your Target Market. May 2016.

Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3014249

Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3014252



Julie Noble

Inner Circle Labs for AnyPerk

Email Contact

415-684-9564




SASKATOON, SASKATCHEWAN -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- Today Bullfrog Power, Canada's leading green energy provider, and SES Solar Co-operative Ltd. are announcing a new partnership alongside the launch of the second largest solar project in Saskatoon on The Two Twenty building, located at 220 20th Street West. The project is a 27.5 kilowatt rooftop solar installation that should be generating clean, pollution-free electricity within a few days.

"As the first solar investment co-operative in Saskatchewan, we believe that SES Solar Co-op is playing an important role to increase the amount of renewable energy developed in Saskatoon," said Ron Seftel, CEO, Bullfrog Power. "Thanks to the support of bullfrogpowered individuals and businesses across the country, Bullfrog Power is proud to be able to partner with SES Solar Co-op to help finance the clean energy projects of the future."

Through the agreement between the two organizations, Bullfrog Power provided financing to help SES Solar Co-op build the rooftop solar installation on The Two Twenty building. SES Solar Co-op is an investment co-operative, which means that its members have purchased shares in the co-operative. By working co-operatively with local building owners to offset their power needs with renewable energy and to supply renewable electricity to the grid, SES Solar Co-op is able to generate revenue for its members.

"We are very grateful for the support that Bullfrog Power has provided to SES Solar Co-op to help make this project a reality," said Jason Praski, who led the planning process for the Co-op's solar installation at The Two Twenty building. "The co-working space at The Two Twenty is the perfect location for Saskatoon's newest solar project-together we're demonstrating how the future of the city can be about connecting people within our community to foster innovative and sustainable solutions."

Bullfrog Power has supported over 60 community-based renewable energy projects across Canada. In Saskatchewan, projects Bullfrog Power has supported include two community solar projects with First Nations Power Authority (FNPA) in Fond-du-Lac and Hatchet Lake as well as the rooftop solar installation on the Broadway Theatre in Saskatoon. For a listing of the community renewable projects Bullfrog Power has supported, see bullfrogpower.com/projects.

About Bullfrog Power

Bullfrog Power, Canada's leading green energy provider, offers renewable energy solutions that enable individuals and businesses to reduce their environmental impact, support the development of green energy projects in Canada and help create a cleaner, healthier world. As a Certified B Corporation, Bullfrog Power meets higher standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability. Thousands of individuals and businesses in Canada are doing their part to address climate change and air pollution by choosing green energy with Bullfrog Power. Sign up easily, quickly and affordably at bullfrogpower.com.

Join the bullfrogpowered community online on Facebook (facebook.com/BullfrogPower), Instagram (@bullfrogpower) and Twitter (@bullfrogpower).

About SES Solar Co-op

The SES Solar Co-operative Ltd. is the first co-op of its kind in Saskatchewan. Southern Saskatchewan has an outstanding solar resource, with more hours of sunlight than anywhere else in Canada. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan sees an average of 2,267 hours of bright sunshine every year. Based out of Saskatoon, the SES Solar Co-operative Ltd. has carefully developed a legal structure, a set of bylaws, and a business model that can then be followed - and modified as needed - by future renewable power co-operatives. Its goal is to ultimately see dozens of renewable power co-operatives across the province.

Contacts:

Contact Bullfrog Power

Jon McKay

Corporate Communications Manager

416.360.3464 ext 239

jon.mckay@bullfrogpower.com



Contact SES Solar Co-op

Jason Praski, Chair

SES Solar Co-op Installations Committee

306.665.1915

solarcoop@environmentalsociety.ca




DUBLIN, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- DMS Offshore Investment Services Ltd. (DMS), the world's largest fund governance firm, has added Efficient Capital's CTA Index Fund to its UCITS ICAV platform.

The fund aims to provide investors with medium to long term capital appreciation through investment of approximately 50% of its Net Asset Value in a total return swap which is referenced to the Efficient Capital CTA Index, and the remainder in cash and cash equivalents. The Index is comprised of investment funds and managed accounts traded for the benefit of such investment funds that utilize a range of CTA strategies.

UCITS has created a regulatory passport for investment managers to access European investors. DMS has developed a proprietary UCITS V compliant ICAV platform to provide investment managers with solutions for their UCITS requirements to support the regulatory and fund governance challenges that UCITS presents for U.S. and international investment managers doing business in Europe.

As a sub-fund on the DMS UCITS ICAV platform, Efficient Capital's CTA Index Fund has the benefit of a fully supported platform with top-tier service providers, along with DMS support in fund structuring, establishment, regulatory, compliance, distribution, directorship, and reporting requirements.

"Over the past year, the DMS UCITS ICAV platform and stand-alone fund services have been growing significantly, and the addition of a highly regarded firm such as Efficient Capital Management LLC represents another milestone in our growth. It has been our pleasure to work with and support Efficient as the investment manager in this venture", stated Derek Delaney, Managing Director of DMS Europe.

"We are very excited about having been selected to be the investment manager for this CTA Index Fund. This innovative investment solution from DMS allows us to bring our passion for managed futures and our expertise with the CTA investment universe to institutional investors and qualified individuals. We look forward to a continued partnership with the DMS team," stated Michael Marcey, Managing Director, Business Development of Efficient Capital Management, LLC.

ABOUT DMS

DMS Offshore Investment Services Ltd. (DMS) is the worldwide leader in fund governance with more than 225 professionals representing leading investment funds with assets under management exceeding $330 billion. DMS provides trusted and comprehensive Fund Governance, FATCA, AIFMD + UCITS, Banking + Custody, Trust, Corporate and Outsourcing solutions that support investments across a range of structures, and diverse investment strategies.

info@dmsoffshore.com

ABOUT EFFICIENT CAPITAL MANAGEMENT

Efficient Capital Management, LLC, was founded in 1999 by leading futures industry professionals from some of the world's most successful trading firms with the common goal of establishing an innovative multi-manager CTA portfolio investment firm. Efficient currently has over $2 billion in nominal firm wide assets under management and advisement, and offers both managed fund and managed account solutions for qualified investors and clients.

info@efficient.com

Media contact:

KateBohner Managing Director/Chief Marketing & Communications Officer DMS Offshore Investment Services (p)+1.212.403.2783|(c)+1.917.863.5310 E: kbohner@dmsoffshore.com

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dms-offshore-investment-services-adds-efficient-capital-cta-index-fund-to-its-ucits-icav-platform-300276583.html
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - On Wednesday, President Barack Obama will return to Concord Community High School in Elkhart, Indiana - the site of his first trip as President. More than seven years after that visit, the President will highlight the economic progress that Elkhart and America have made, the economic challenges that remain, and the decisions that Americans face in communities like Elkhart. While in Elkhart, the President will take part in a town hall hosted by PBS at the Lerner Theatre, where he will have the opportunity to hear directly from Elkhart residents, the White House said. 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.
Distributed by MT Multimedia (for Master Ad) Yuttachai ("Tle") Phraikhanahok Tel: +66-2612-2081 #125 Mob: +66-9-1736-2866 Email: yuttachai.p@mtmultimedia.com

BANGKOK, May 31, 2016 - (ACN Newswire) - After VGI Global Media Public Company Limited, or VGI's decision to increase its equity stake in Master Ad Public Company Limited, or MACO (SET:MACO) to 37.42%, MACO has changed its management structure, appointing Suparanan Tanviruch to the CEO position to achieve synergy and facilitate the implementation of the strategic move to create a nationwide media integrated platform.The board of MACO resolved on 31 May 2016 to appoint Mrs Suparanan Tanviruch, chief financial officer of VGI to the chief executive officer (CEO) position, following VGI's decision to increase its shareholding percentage in MACO from 24.96% to 37.42% and offer to buy all remaining shares from public between 3 June and 8 July 2016.The management change is aimed at pursuing synergies by combining the strengths of MACO and VGI to enhance their overall competitiveness, facilitate the implementation of MACO's plan to expand its advertising media business nationwide especially in the upcountry and enable them and Rabbit to jointly offer multimedia solutions for online platforms as powerful tools for raising brand awareness among consumers in the future.Possessing more than 20 years of experience in the communication and media industry and known for her great expertise in advertising media planning and management as well as her strategic thinking, broad vision and commitment to achieving corporate goals, Mrs Suparanan Tanviruch will strengthen MACO's partnership with VGI in their joint efforts to create nationwide media integrated platform and increase their ability to respond to customers' needs and their shares in the media market.Currently, MACO is a provider of integrated OHM advertising media solutions, offering 1,349 display units, 398 of which are billboards along highways throughout Thailand and mid-sized units at major intersections and on buildings in the provincial areas, 265 of which are lightboxes at Jiffy shops/PTT petrol stations, 555 of which are street furniture items on the pillars supporting the BTS skytrain tracks and elevated road bridges in Bangkok and 131 of which are transit media (124 at toll booths of Expressway Authority of Thailand and seven at New Mo Chit Bus Terminal).About Master Ad PCLMaster Ad Public Company Limited (SET:MACO) is a leading out-of-home media advertising company in Thailand with media coverage of more than 1,200 ad display units nationwide. With over 24 years of experience, we specialize in providing clients with creative out-of-home media solutions ranging from billboard, street furniture, transit, ambient advertising to made-to-order job. We place emphasis on the creation of our products and services under the concept of Smart, Creative and Innovative. Through state-of-the-art technology in order to improve communication efficiency and attractiveness, our team develops imaginative and intelligent ways for our clients to reach and connect with their audiences and impress them. For more information, please visit www.masterad.com.Source: Master Ad PCLContact:Copyright 2016 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved.
GRAND CAYMAN, CAYMAN ISLANDS -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- Tethys Petroleum Limited ("Tethys" or the "Company") (TSX: TPL)(LSE: TPL) announces the results of its Annual General and Special Meeting of Shareholders ("AGM") held on May 31, 2016.

Results of Annual General and Special Meeting

All resolutions put to shareholders at the AGM were passed on a poll at the meeting.

Prior to the AGM, Resolution 9.4 was withdrawn from the formal business of the meeting as the conditions required for the proposed director, Vladimir Griguletsky, to be appointed the Board prior to the meeting had not been met.

Details of the voting on a poll on those resolutions voted on at the AGM including votes represented by proxies are as follows:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Resolution For Against Withheld ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Reduction in Par Value of 169,107,844 1,684,011 N/A Ordinary Shares and Preferred (99.01%) (0.99%) Shares, Change in Authorised Share Capital and Amendment to the Company's Articles of Association ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Approval to Issue Ordinary 106,450,130 1,576,161 N/A Shares to Annuity and Life (98.54%) (1.46%) Reassurance Ltd upon exercise of ALR Warrants and/or Conversion of ALR Debentures ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Approval to Issue 106,220,033 1,527,361 N/A 181,240,793 Ordinary Shares to (98.58%) (1.42%) Olisol Petroleum Limited ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. Approval to Issue up to 106,220,033 1,527,361 N/A 24,434,008 Ordinary Shares to (98.58%) (1.42%) Olisol Upon Conversion of US$1 Million Plus Accrued but Unpaid Interest Under the Amended Facility Agreement ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. Approval to Issue up to 106,220,033 1,527,361 N/A 43,962,996 Ordinary Shares to (98.58%) (1.42%) Olisol Upon Conversion of the Working Capital Indebtedness ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6. Approval to Issue up to 106,168,233 1,579,161 N/A 50,000,000 Ordinary Shares to (98.53%) (1.47%) Olisol for Future Offering ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7. Approval to Issue Shares to 106,171,233 1,576,161 N/A Olisol to Satisfy its Pre- (98.54%) (1.46%) Emptive Rights ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8. Receipt of Financial Non-voting Non-voting Non-voting Statements and Auditors Report resolution resolution resolution ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9.1 The election of Alexander 165,107,862 5,683,993 N/A Abramov (96.67%) (3.33%) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9.2 The election of William P. 164,763,645 6,028,210 N/A Wells (96.47%) (3.53%) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9.3 The election of Adeola 168,925,384 1,866,471 N/A Ogunsemi (98.91 %) (1.09%) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10. Appointment of Auditors 171,005,959 N/A 2,023,200 (98.83%) (1.17 %) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cayman Islands Court Approval Requirement

The closing of the Olisol transaction is conditional on a few items, including the reduction in the par value of the Company's ordinary shares. Following approval by special resolution of the Shareholders, pursuant to Section 14(1) of the Companies Law (2013 Revision), the reduction in the par value of the shares of the Company, and thereby the authorised share capital, requires confirmation by the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands. The Company will petition the court for approval of the special resolution and if approved, the order of the court and the minutes will be delivered to the Registrar of Companies for registration, the resolution for reducing the par value and authorised share capital will take effect on registration. It is noted that the confirmation of the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands may be subject to certain consents being obtained and the satisfaction of certain publication requirements.

Chairman's Quote

Alexander Abramov said: "I am pleased to be able to report that all resolutions put to shareholders at today's AGM were passed with votes in favour of all resolutions above 96% of the votes cast. I look forward to working with the new board and management of the Company and to completing the transactions with Olisol which the shareholders have now endorsed."

About Tethys Petroleum

Tethys Petroleum's aim is to become the leading independent E&P Company in Central Asia, by exercising capital discipline, by generating cash flow from existing discoveries and by maturing large exploration prospects within our highly attractive frontier acreage.

Contacts:

Tethys Petroleum

info@tethyspetroleum.com

www.tethyspetroleum.com




FORT LAUDERDALE, FL and DAVIE, FL--(Marketwired - May 31, 2016) -Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it - George Santayana.

That's the sentiment behind the latest financial gift to Nova Southeastern University (NSU). The gift, from Craig and Barbara Weiner, will benefit NSU's Alvin Sherman Library (ASL) to create a new Holocaust Reflection and Resource Room. The gift was presented by the Weiners to NSU at the ASL Circle of Friends Annual Gala on May 14.

"We must strive to provide opportunities for our current generation and those of tomorrow to reflect on the horrific events of the Holocaust and the lessons to be learned from it," said Craig Weiner, president of the Holocaust Learning and Education Fund, Inc. (www.holocausteducationfund.com).

The gift will fund, furnish, equip and build the new room, on the Alvin Sherman Library's second floor. In addition, an endowed fund will be established to provide resource materials and for maintenance of the room as well as to support related special events.

Set to open in the coming academic year, the room will offer NSU students and the general public a place to learn about, and to contemplate, the horrendous acts that result from intolerance and hate.

"It's important that we do not forget the lessons from the past," said NSU President Dr. George Hanbury. "With so few survivors of the Holocaust remaining, resources like this one are vital to help tomorrow's generation avoid the atrocities of past generations. We're pleased to receive this gift and proud that this new educational resource will be available to NSU students, members of the faculty and staff and to the community at large."

For Craig and Barbara Weiner, their dream of creating a space in South Florida dedicated to these goals led them to the NSU Alvin Sherman Library. Their relationship with NSU began in the 1980s when Barbara earned her B.S. in Elementary Education at NSU, and their children attended NSU University School. Their son later graduated from NSU's College of Osteopathic Medicine. The Weiners have been generous donors to NSU ever since, and Craig is also a member of NSU's Ambassadors Board.

Barbara and Craig co-founded the nonprofit Holocaust Learning and Education Fund, Inc. (HLEF) in 2013 to encourage the expansion of Holocaust education in the United States. Beginning in 2014, HLEF partnered with NSU to host the annual Holocaust Reflection Contest, a statewide initiative enhancing Holocaust education for middle and high school students.

Participating students study the testimonials of Holocaust survivors and reflect on what they've learned; they then submit original writing, art, and film projects expressing how those lessons apply to their own lives. HLEF awarded the contest's 2014 and 2015 winning students, their teachers, and one parent per student an all-expense paid trip to Washington, D.C. to visit the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and meet with national and international dignitaries.

"Barbara and I could not be happier, nor more honored, than to be a partner with this outstanding university," said Mr. Weiner. "NSU has shown unhesitating and unrivaled leadership in extending itself for the betterment of our community. NSU is a true leader in education; the growth at this university in so many ways is simply incredible. The Alvin Sherman Library will continue to be a major focal point of the university and will be here for the very long term. With that in mind, we could not have found a better partner to create this amazing project with -- the Holocaust Reflection and Resource Room will be a wonderful resource for our students and the community to enjoy and learn from for many, many years."

This financial gift from Craig and Barbara Weiner advances Realizing Potential, NSU's first comprehensive fundraising campaign. The philanthropic campaign goal is $250 million with $125 million of that total to be directed toward students, $75 million for faculty and research and $50 million designated for 21st century education initiatives.

For more information on the Realizing Potential campaign, please visit: https://realizingpotential.nova.edu/

Be sure to sign up for NSU's RSS feed so you don't miss any of our news releases, guest editorials and other announcements. Please sign up HERE.

About Nova Southeastern University (NSU): Located in beautiful Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Nova Southeastern University (NSU) is a dynamic research institution dedicated to providing high-quality educational programs at the undergraduate, graduate, and first-professional degree levels. A private, not-for-profit institution with more than 26,000 students, NSU has campuses in Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, Jacksonville, Miami, Miramar, Orlando, Palm Beach, and Tampa, Florida, as well as San Juan, Puerto Rico, while maintaining a presence online globally. For more than 50 years, NSU has been awarding degrees in a wide range of fields, while fostering groundbreaking research and an impactful commitment to community. Classified as a research university with "high research activity" by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, NSU is 1 of only 50 universities nationwide to also be awarded Carnegie's Community Engagement Classification, and is also the largest private, not-for-profit institution in the United States that meets the U.S. Department of Education's criteria as a Hispanic-serving Institution. Please visit www.nova.edu for more information about NSU and realizingpotential.nova.edu for more information on the largest fundraising campaign in NSU history.

Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2016/5/31/11G100632/Images/NSU_Alvin_Sherman_Library-3aa8fc5f333b9a058dd755f0ea8dcc58.jpg

Julie Spechler

Office of Public Affairs

954-262-5348 (office)

954-591-3361 (cell)

julies@nova.edu

www.nova.edu
SAN JOSE, CA --(Marketwired - May 31, 2016) - Tech CU (Technology Credit Union) today announced three promotions within its executive ranks. As of May 13, 2016, Jeannine Jacobsen was promoted to EVP and COO with IT, Corporate Services and Project Management, Support Services, Human Resources and ERM reporting in to her. Richard Hanz, formerly the SVP of Treasury and Strategic Planning, became CFO, responsible for the company's Finance organization. Finally, Dean Davis was promoted to SVP, heading up all of IT. Both Hanz and Davis will also join Tech CU's Managing Committee.

"We're lucky to have so much talent within our own ranks," said Todd Harris, CEO of Tech CU. "Jeannine, Richard and Dean have all proven themselves time and time again -- contributing greatly to the company during their tenure. We are proud and excited to have such a skilled executive team."

"I have worked with Richard closely for the past five years and he has been critical to the company's strategic vision. Jeannine's promotion feels like a natural extension of her great success heading up HR and ERM, and Dean Davis has what it takes to bring our IT department into the future -- balancing both business objectives with the necessary technology.

With more than 25 years of experience, Jacobsen has spent the majority of her career focusing on Human Resources and corporate development. Prior to joining Tech CU, she served as Senior HR Manager at Cisco Systems partnering with Global Communications, Marketing, HR Operations, Corporate Social Responsibility and CMSG. Earlier in her career, she held positions at Lucas Film, LTD., Silicon Valley Bank, Bank of California, Great Western Bank and Lockheed Federal Credit Union. She is a Certified Compensation Professional and Credit Union Enterprise Risk Management Expert (CUERM). She received her degree in Business Administration from San Jose State University and has completed both the Berkeley Leadership and Wharton leadership programs.

Hanz has more than 25 years of experience in the financial services industry. Prior to joining Tech CU, he served as Assistant Vice President of Treasury and Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) for Alliance Credit Union, and Director of Treasury and FP&A for KeyPoint Credit Union. He has an economics degree from San Jose State University and an MBA from the University of Phoenix.

Davis has been in the IT field for more than 20 years. An employee of Tech CU for more than 10 years, he originally joined the company as Assistant Vice President of IT -- growing steadily into his current role. Prior to Tech CU, he was a senior network engineer in the semiconductor industry. Before that, he worked at Brigham Young University in Hawaii in the Information Systems/Technology division as Department Chair for five years. He received his master's degree in Management Information Systems from Hawaii Pacific University. Dean has been CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) certified for the past four years.

ABOUT TECHNOLOGY CREDIT UNION

Tech CU (www.techcu.com) is a $2 billion credit union serving more than 75,000 members throughout the San Francisco Bay Area -- including employees of such companies as Tesla, eBay, Applied Materials, Nvidia and Facebook. A federally insured, not-for-profit organization, we put the financial interests of our members ahead of shareholder profit by helping members achieve their financial goals on their terms and by sharing the benefits of our growth. Founded in 1960 by a group of forward-thinking employees at Fairchild Semiconductor, today we continue to be an industry leader, providing innovative financial products for all stages of our members' lives, including personal banking, wealth management, private banking, commercial lending and business banking. Tech CU consistently achieves a customer satisfaction rating above 95 percent and maintains a 5-star rating from Bauer Financial, the nation's largest independent rating service for financial institutions. And, with mobile and online banking, 65,000+ surcharge-free ATMs worldwide (more than Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo combined) and convenient branch access to our financial experts, Tech CU makes 24/7 banking easy and empowering.

Contact Information:

Linden Kohtz

Public Relations

(512) 964-3784

lkohtz@techcu.com


Regulatory News:

Adocia (Paris:ADOC) and Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) announced today positive topline results from a Phase 1 clinical trial evaluating BioChaperone Lispro, an ultra-rapid formulation of insulin lispro licensed to Lilly. This formulation uses Adocia's proprietary technology, BioChaperone, which is designed to enable the acceleration of insulin absorption.

The study, under the Adocia-Lilly partnership, aimed to compare the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic profiles of BioChaperone Lispro to that of Humalog (insulin lispro rDNA origin) in 15 healthy Japanese subjects placed under euglycemic clamp.

"We are very satisfied with the results of this study in Japanese subjects, which support the faster absorption and more rapid insulin action of BioChaperone Lispro compared to Humalog as well as the linearity of the dose response all of which we had observed in Caucasian people with type 1 diabetes" says Simon Bruce, Adocia's Chief Medical Officer. "These results support the inclusion of Japanese subjects with diabetes in the phase 3 program, in line with our global registration plan for the product."

In this double-blind, randomized, three-period crossover study, 15 healthy Japanese subjects placed under euglycemic clamp received three single dose administrations separated by 1 to 14 days. Each participant was randomly allocated to receive either three single doses of BioChaperone Lispro U100 (0.1, 0.2 and 0.4 U/kg) or one single dose of Humalog U100 (0.2 U/kg) and two single doses of BioChaperone Lispro U100 (0.1 and 0.2 or 0.2 and 0.4 U/kg) on three separate dosing visits. While the study was not powered for statistical analysis, results show an acceleration of BioChaperone Lispro pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic profiles relative to Humalog, as well as the linearity of exposure as a function of the dose administered in the pharmacokinetic profile.

Both BioChaperone Lispro and Humalog were similarly well tolerated. No new or unexpected safety findings were observed.

The registry on clinicaltrials.gov for this trial (NCT02660502) has been updated.

This press release contains forward-looking statements about the research collaboration between Adocia and Lilly related to BioChaperone Lispro and reflects Adocia's and Lilly's current beliefs. However, there are substantial risks and uncertainties in the process of drug research, development, and commercialization. There is no guarantee that the research collaboration will yield successful results or that either company will achieve the anticipated benefits, or that BioChaperone Lispro will achieve additional positive study results, or will achieve regulatory approval. For further discussion of these risks and uncertainties and more generally of the risks related to the businesses of Lilly and Adocia, see Lilly's filings in the United States with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Adocia's filings in France with the French Financial Markets Authority (Autorite des marches financiers AMF). Neither Lilly nor Adocia undertake any duty to update such forward-looking statements.

About Eli Lilly and Company

Lilly is a global healthcare leader that unites caring with discovery to make life better for people around the world. We were founded more than a century ago by a man committed to creating high-quality medicines that meet real needs, and today we remain true to that mission in all our work. Across the globe, Lilly employees work to discover and bring life-changing medicines to those who need them, improve the understanding and management of disease, and give back to communities through philanthropy and volunteerism. To learn more about Lilly, please visit us at www.lilly.com and http://newsroom.lilly.com/social-channels.

About Adocia

Adocia is a clinical-stage biotechnology company that specializes in the development of innovative formulations of already-approved therapeutic proteins. It has a particularly strong expertise in the field of insulins. Adocia's proprietary BioChaperone technological platform is designed to enhance the effectiveness and safety of therapeutic proteins and their ease of use for patients. To learn more about Adocia, please visit us at www.adocia.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160531005563/en/

Contacts:

Contact Lilly

Greg Kueterman, Mobile : +1.317.432.5195

Director of Communications, Lilly Diabetes

kueterman_gregory_andrew@lilly.com

www.lilly.com

or

Contact Adocia

Gerard Soula, Phone: +33 4 72 610 610

President & CEO

contactinvestisseurs@adocia.com

or

Adocia Media Relations Europe

MC Services AG

Raimund Gabriel, Phone: +49 89 210 228 0

raimund.gabriel@mc-services.eu

adocia@mc-services.eu

or

Adocia Media Relations USA

The Ruth Group

Johanna Zimmerman, Phone: +1.646.536.7006

jzimmerman@theruthgroup.com
At a media conference during SNEC 2016 in Shanghai, Mr. Michael Shoemaker, the Global Strategic Marketing Manager of Dow's elastomers sector, said the company is planning on promoting its elastomers business, which focuses on encapsulant film for PV modules, in the Chinese market, to coincide with the rapid development of China's PV industry. Distinct from EVA film material that is currently the most commonly used by PV module manufacturers, Dow wants to encourage Chinese companies to use its ENGAGE POE film. The company's own study found that compared with EVA film, POEs, such as ENGAGE, offer better electrical performance, a lower water vapor transmission rate and longer weathering performance. Additionally, POEs can significantly reduce the Potential Induced Degradation (PID) and snail tail, and ...

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.


VIENNA (dpa-AFX) - The European markets ended Tuesday's session in negative territory. Following the sharp gains of the previous trading week, markets in Europe have been struggling since the start of the current week. Holidays in the U.S. and the U.K. kept trading activity on the light side Monday, while the impending U.S. jobs report for May at the end of this week is keeping some investors on the sidelines. Investors will also be watching for any developments from the European Central Bank meeting on Thursday.



There were a slew of economic reports from Europe today, the results of which were mixed. Eurozone consumer prices dropped in May from a year ago, marking the second consecutive month of declining prices, while unemployment in the euro area held steady at 10.2 percent in April, the same rate as seen in March.



The Euro Stoxx 50 index of eurozone bluechip stocks decreased 0.86 percent, while the Stoxx Europe 50 index, which includes some major U.K. companies, lost 1.07 percent.



The DAX of Germany dropped 0.68 percent and the CAC 40 of France fell 0.53 percent. The FTSE 100 of the U.K. declined 0.64 percent and the SMI of Switzerland finished lower by 0.74 percent.



In Frankfurt, embattled auto giant Volkswagen tumbled 2.61 percent after its sales and profits fell in the first three months of the year.



Deutsche Bank decreased 1.71 percent and Commerzbank surrendered 1.36 percent.



In Paris, Air France - KLM fell 1.74 percent. The airline said it is in exclusive discussions to sell a 49.99 percent stake in its airline catering unit, Servair, to China's HNA Group for an enterprise value of 475 million euros.



Peugeot lost 1.01 percent on a report the Peugeot family plans to hold informal talks with the French government to discuss the future of its stake in Peugeot PSA Citroen.



In London, easyJet dipped 1.22 percent after the budget airline imposed a new rule that stops passengers trying to pass through security barriers with less than 30 minutes before takeoff.



Inmarsat dropped 3.87 percent as the company is set to lose its place in the FTSE 100 in June.



Alliance Trust rose 2.46 percent after confirming it had received an informal merger proposal from the investment trust of British financier Jacob Rothschild.



Nestle decreased 1.01 percent in Zurich. The world's largest food company has agreed to pay DBV Technologies SA as much as 100 million euros ($111 million) to develop and market an experimental milk allergy test for infants.



Aryzta sank 4.70 percent after the bakery business reported that its third-quarter revenues declined 2.4 percent from last year to 949.8 million euros.



Insurer Delta Lloyd dropped 1.59 percent in Amsterdam after announcing it would sell up to 11.3 million depositary receipts, representing 27.4 percent of the total capital of Van Lanschot bank in a secondary offering.



Statoil declined 1.77 percent in Oslo after RBC Capital Markets downgraded its rating on the stock to 'Underperform' from 'Sector perform.'



Eurozone consumer prices declined for the second straight month in May, despite several measures taken by the European Central Bank policymakers to lift prices to positive territory. Consumer prices dropped 0.1 percent from a year ago, as economists had expected, after easing 0.2 percent in April, the flash estimate published by Eurostat showed Tuesday.



Eurozone's jobless rate remained stable in April at the lowest level in more than four years, while the German figure slipped to a new low since the reunification, in May.



Data from the Eurostat showed that the unemployment rate came in at 10.2 percent in April, in line with expectations and the same rate as seen in March. This was the lowest rate recorded in the euro area since August 2011.



Germany's retail sales dropped unexpectedly in April, figures from Destatis revealed Tuesday. Retail turnover decreased 0.9 percent in April from March, confounding expectations for a 0.9 percent rise. This was the second consecutive drop in sales.



Germany's unemployment declined more than expected in May, the Federal Labor Agency reportedly said Tuesday. The number of people out of work decreased by 11,000 to 2.695 million in May. Economists had forecast a fall of 5,000.



Germany's unemployment rate held steady in April, after falling slightly in the previous month, preliminary figures from Destatis showed Tuesday. The adjusted jobless rate came in at 4.2 percent in April, the same rate as in the previous month. In the corresponding month last year, the unemployment rate was 4.7 percent.



French consumer prices continued to decline in May, the provisional estimate published by the statistical office Insee showed Tuesday. Consumer prices decreased 0.1 percent year-on-year in May, in line with expectations, but slower than the 0.2 percent drop seen in April. Prices have been falling since February.



Personal spending in the U.S. increased by more than expected in the month of April, according to a report released by the Commerce Department on Tuesday.



The Commerce Department said personal spending jumped by 1.0 percent in April after coming in unchanged in March. Economists had expected spending to climb by 0.7 percent.



The report also said personal income rose by 0.4 percent in April, matching the increase seen in the previous month as well as economist estimates. Chicago-area business activity unexpectedly contracted in the month of May, MNI Indicators revealed in a report released on Tuesday.



MNI Indicators said its Chicago business barometer dropped to 49.3 in May from 50.4 in April, with a reading below 50 indicating a contraction. The decrease came as a surprise to economists, who had expected the index to inch up to 50.7.



After reporting a drop in consumer confidence in the previous month, the Conference Board released a report on Tuesday showing that confidence unexpectedly declined further in May. The Conference Board said its consumer confidence index dropped to 92.6 in May from 94.7 in April. The index had been expected to climb to 97.0.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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The global robotic software platforms marketis expected grow at a CAGR of over 4% during the forecast period, according to Technavio's latest report.

In this report, Technavio covers the market outlook and growth prospects of the globalrobotic software platformsmarketfor 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from the subscription and license fees of robotic software platforms provided by third party manufacturers and OEMs of industrial robots.

Technavio's research study segments the global robotic software platforms market into the following regions:

APAC

EMEA

Americas

APAC: largest robotic software platforms market

Technavio estimates that this will reach USD 8.15 billion by 2020, should the market sustain a CAGR of 4.57% during the forecast period. A rise in use of industrial robots in the automotive, electrical, food and beverage, and metal industries was observed in the past decade in China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and Indonesia. Heavy investments directed at expanding or building new manufacturing units in the automotive industries and the popularity of electronic products in emerging APAC countries sparked an expansion in the use of industrial robots in the said industries.

According to Bharath Kanniappan, a lead analyst at Technavio for research on robotics, "Many manufacturers are adopting robots in their plants to increase productivity and meet the demands put forth by industries such as automotive and healthcare.

South Korea announced in 2014 that it would invest USD 2.7 billion to increase the sales of the existing robotic businesses and expand the scope of robotics in disaster recovery, search and rescue, and eldercare.

Ask for a sample of this report: http://goo.gl/FmSSD4

Robotic software platforms market in EMEA

The European Commission funded over 100 collaborative projects on advanced research into robots. The projects were aimed at manufacturing robots that can understand, sense, perceive, reason, and act in step with its external environment. Funding support from United Robotics of Europe and other associations is also boosting demand for software platforms that can test the robots in the virtual world before making it a reality.

By 2022, the UK plans to invest USD 2.8 billion in the European Commission's robotics research and innovation program, which will distribute funding to robotics sectors, ranging from industrial to domestic and from agriculture to space sectors.

"Europe is the hub of the automotive industry due to the presence of some giant automotive manufacturers, such as Daimler, BMW, and Volkswagen. These companies use reprogrammable and reconfigurable industrial robots in their plants. The dynamic demand from the automotive sector requires frequent configuration and programming of industrial robots; we note that such demand propels the market for software platforms," says Bharath.

Robotic software platforms market in the Americas

Countries such as the US, Mexico, Brazil, and Canada are the major users of robots in their manufacturing, service, and healthcare sectors. Researchers and academics are the major end-users of robotics software platforms in this region.

The use of robotics in the healthcare industry in the US is approaching USD 4 trillion annually. Robots are used in hospital surgical suites, in-patient rooms, in-home patient care, and other emergency services and vehicles to enhance efficiency. The use of automation also reduces the testing turnaround time, technician's exposure to bio-hazardous materials, and repetitive-stress injuries. Robots, especially laboratory robots, have helped to cut costs significantly in the healthcare industry, since the modular system has made robotics cost-effective for smaller laboratories.

Technavio forecasts that the widespread use of robots in the healthcare industry for applications such as surgical assistance and orthopedic surgical assistance should propel demand for robotics software platforms.

Some of the top vendors in the global robotic software platforms market highlighted in the report are:

iRobot

ABB

Fanuc

Kuka

Browse Related Reports:

Global Robotics Market 2015-2019

Global Material Handling Robotics Market 2015-2019

Global Cartesian Robots Market 2015-2019

Purchase these three reports for the price of one by becoming a Technavio subscriber. Subscribing to Technavio's reports allows you to download any three reports per month for the price of one. Contact enquiry@technavio.com with your requirements and a link to our subscription platform.

About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. The company develops over 2000 pieces of research every year, covering more than 500 technologies across 80 countries. Technavio has about 300 analysts globally who specialize in customized consulting and business research assignments across the latest leading edge technologies.

Technavio analysts employ primary as well as secondary research techniques to ascertain the size and vendor landscape in a range of markets. Analysts obtain information using a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, besides using in-house market modeling tools and proprietary databases. They corroborate this data with the data obtained from various market participants and stakeholders across the value chain, including vendors, service providers, distributors, re-sellers, and end-users.

If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at media@technavio.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160531005458/en/

Contacts:

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media Marketing Executive

US: +1 630 333 9501

UK: +44 208 123 1770

www.technavio.com
Regulatory News:

ASIT biotech (Paris:ASIT) (BSE:ASIT) (ASIT BE0974289218), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the research, development and future commercialization of breakthrough immunotherapy products for the treatment of allergies, informs its shareholders that the Annual General Meeting will be held on 30 June 2016 as from 3 pm at the Company's registered office at 5 avenue Ariane, 1200 Woluwe-Saint-Lambert, Belgium.

The notice for the meeting, including the agenda of the day as well as the motions to vote and all the required documents, has been published in the Belgian Official Gazette and L'Echo on 31 May 2016.

The documents and preliminary information concerning this meeting have been made available to the shareholders and can be consulted on the website of the Company, www.asitbiotech.com, in compliance with the applicable law and regulations.

The documents are also available upon request by email (investors@asitbiotech.com) or by phone (+322 264 03 90). Finally, the documents are available at the Company's headquarters: 5 avenue Ariane, 1200 Woluwe-Saint-Lambert, Belgium.

About ASIT biotech

ASIT biotech is a Belgian clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development and future commercialisation of a range of breakthrough immunotherapy products for the treatment of allergies. Thanks to its innovative ASIT+TM technology platform, ASIT biotech is currently the only developer of AIT product candidates consisting of a unique mixture of highly purified natural allergen fragments in an optimal size selection. This innovation results in a short treatment, expected to improve patient compliance and real-life effectiveness. ASIT biotech's product pipeline entails two novel ASIT+ product candidates targeting respiratory allergy with the highest prevalence (i.e. grass pollen: gp-ASIT+TM and house dust mite: hdm-ASIT+TM), that could significantly expand the current immunotherapy market. The Company believes that its innovative ASIT+ platform is flexible and would be applicable across a range of allergies.

ASIT biotech has a headcount of 22 staff members, at its headquarters in Brussels and a laboratory in Liege, Belgium.

Further information can be found at: www.asitbiotech.com.

Forward Looking Statements

All statements in this announcement that do not relate to historical facts and events are "forward-looking statements". In some cases, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology, including the words "believes," "estimates," "anticipates," "expects," "intends," "may," "will," "plans," "continue," "ongoing," "potential," "predict," "project," "target," "seek" or "should" or, in each case, their negative or other variations or comparable terminology or by discussions of strategies, plans, objectives, targets, goals, future events or intentions. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding the Company's intentions, beliefs or current expectations. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that may or may not occur in the future. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. Given these risks and uncertainties, you should not rely on forward-looking statements as a prediction of actual results. Any forward-looking statements are made only as of the date of this announcement and, without prejudice to the Company's obligations under applicable law in relation to disclosure and ongoing information, the Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update the forward-looking statements set forth in this announcement.

Important Legal Notice

This announcement does not constitute, or form part of, an offer or invitation to sell or issue, or any solicitation of an offer to purchase or subscribe for shares of ASIT biotech SA (the "Company" and the "Shares"). Any purchase of, subscription for or application for, Shares to be issued in connection with the intended offering should only be made on the basis of information contained in the prospectus and any supplements thereto, as the case may be. This announcement does not constitute a prospectus and the information contained herein is for information purposes only and does not purport to be full or complete. Investors should not subscribe for any Shares except on the basis of the information contained in the prospectus that the Company expects to publish after its approval by the Belgian Financial Services and Markets Authority, and which can then be obtained at the Company's registered office and on www.asitbiotech.com.

This announcement is not for distribution, directly or indirectly, in or into the United States or to any U.S. person within the meaning of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act"). The Shares have not been and will not be registered under the Securities Act and may not be offered or sold in the United States, except pursuant to an exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act. The Company has not registered, and does not intend to register, any portion of the intended offering of Shares in the United States, and does not intend to conduct a public offering of Shares in the United States.

This announcement and the information contained herein are not for publication, distribution or release in or into the United States, Australia, Canada, Japan or any jurisdiction where to do so would constitute a violation of the relevant laws of such jurisdiction.

This announcement is only addressed to and directed at (i) the public in Belgium and France, and (ii) persons in member states of the European Economic Area ("EEA") other than Belgium and France who are "qualified investors" within the meaning of the Prospectus Directive (Directive 2003/71/EC and amendments thereto, including Directive 2010/73/EU, to the extent implemented in the relevant EEA Member State, and together with any applicable implementing measures in such relevant Member State, the "Prospectus Directive") ("Qualified Investors"). In addition, in the United Kingdom, this announcement is only addressed to and directed at (i) persons having professional experience in matters relating to investments who fall within the definition of "investment professionals" in Article 19(5) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005, as amended, (the "Order") or ii)"qualified investors" falling within Article 49(2)(a) to (d) of the Order, and (iii) any other person to whom it may otherwise lawfully be communicated (all such persons together being referred to as "relevant persons"). The intended offering, as the case may be, will only be available to, and any invitation, offer or agreement to subscribe for, purchase, or otherwise acquire the Shares will be engaged in only with relevant persons. Persons within the United Kingdom who receive this communication (other than persons falling within (i), (ii) and (iii) above) should not act or rely on or act upon this communication or any of its content.

The date of completion of listing on Euronext Brussels and Euronext Paris may be influenced by things such as market conditions. There is no guarantee that such listing will occur and investors should not base their financial decisions on the Company's intentions in relation to such listing at this stage. Acquiring investments to which this announcement relates may expose an investor to a significant risk of losing the entire amount invested. Persons considering such investments should consult an authorized person specializing in advising on such investments. This announcement does not constitute a recommendation concerning the intended offering. The value of the shares can decrease as well as increase. Potential investors should consult a professional advisor as to the suitability of the intended offering for the person concerned.

No announcement or information regarding the intended offering, as the case may be, or the Shares referred to above may be disseminated to the public in jurisdictions outside of Belgium and France where a prior registration or approval is required for such purpose. No steps have been taken, or will be taken, for the intended offering of the Shares of the Company in any jurisdiction outside of Belgium and France where such steps would be required. The issue, the subscription for or purchase of the Shares are subject to special legal or statutory restrictions in certain jurisdictions. The Company is not liable if the aforementioned restrictions are not complied with by any person.

The Company is responsible for the information contained in this press release.

THIS ANNOUNCEMENT IS NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, IN OR INTO THE UNITED STATES, AUSTRALIA, CANADA, JAPAN OR ANY JURISDICTION WHERE TO DO SO WOULD BE UNLAWFUL. OTHER RESTRICTIONS ARE APPLICABLE. PLEASE SEE THE IMPORTANT LEGAL NOTICE AT THE END OF THIS ANNOUNCEMENT.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160531006193/en/

Contacts:

Company

ASIT biotech

Thierry Legon, Tel. +32 2 264 03 90

CEO

investors@asitbiotech.com

or

Media and Investor Contact

NewCap

Dusan Oresansky Pierre Laurent, Tel.: +33 1 44 71 94 92

asitbiotech@newcap.eu
LONDON, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Poised to tap further investor interest, launching second capital raise as cannabis market comes of age

Forma Holdings ("Forma"), an international diversified cannabis company with offices in London and Los Angeles, which operates in legalised, medicinal cannabis markets, announces the completion of its first asset acquisitions and the launch of its second capital raise, targeting at least 10 million for expansion.

This follows the success of a fund raising earlier this year, the proceeds of which were used to acquire Forma's initial US assets in the Southwestern United States.

This latest fund-raise will harness the rapidly growing interest in the US & Europe in the medical cannabis sector. Proceeds will be used to invest in growing the business and expanding in both the US and internationally.

Regulatory momentum and market drivers

Medicinal cannabis is already legal in Canada and 24 US states (most recently, Pennsylvania in April 2016) with more US states expected to vote on medical legalisation in 2016. Five US states have created fully legal 'adult' or 'recreational' markets, and at least three states are expected to vote on recreational use in 2016.

In April 2016, Germany joined other European countries including Italy, in introducing medical cannabis legislation; Australia, Uruguay and Brazil have all announced medicinal cannabis legalisation programmes in the past year.

Global demand for cannabis is forecast to grow at over 30% per year to reach over $29 billion by 2020 and $40-$50 billion in ten years (ArcView Market Research). Catalysed by a wave of changing legislation in states across the world, patients are increasingly using medical cannabis for the treatment of a variety of conditions. The pharmaceutical market also provides a large opportunity, as the medical benefits of cannabis continue to be identified, allowing for the creation of drugs based on the cannabis plant that treat diseases. The vaporizer and edibles market provide growth opportunities as users move to 'healthier' ingestion methods and away from smoking.

Growing the business

Founded by three Harvard MBAs and a pioneer of California's cannabis industry, Forma is based in London and Los Angeles and operates across two divisions:

Retail and Cultivation Division: medical cannabis assets have already been acquired across the supply chain, in the Southwestern United States , the first of which will be opening in the second half of 2016. Forma will implement a full roll-out programme of cultivation facilities and medical dispensaries, targeting key medical markets initially in the US, then across Europe . Retail and Cultivation operations generate attractive margins, with store payback periods often around six months.



medical cannabis assets have already been acquired across the supply chain, in the , the first of which will be opening in the second half of 2016. Forma will implement a full roll-out programme of cultivation facilities and medical dispensaries, targeting key medical markets initially in the US, then across . Retail and Cultivation operations generate attractive margins, with store payback periods often around six months. Life Sciences Division: Forma's Life Sciences division is partnering with top-tier academic institutions to develop understanding and insight into the therapeutic advantages of medicinal cannabis. Forma will ultimately develop a range of cannabis-based drug medications for the OTC and prescription markets.

Gavin Sathianathan, CEO of Forma Holdings, said:

"We are excited as we look to the next phase of our growth. The medical cannabis market is rapidly evolving both in the US and the rest of the world. Teams that blend traditional business skills with knowledge of cannabis operations are best placed to succeed.

"There is now significant interest in the US & Europe in investing in the sector. Forma has established a strong foothold in a short space of time and we have delivered on many of our strategic objectives, including acquiring assets in the US. We have a unique market opportunity available to us and great potential for growth."

http://www.formaholdings.com
Last Friday, the Governor of the U.S. state of Maryland vetoed a bill which would have modestly increased the state's renewable portfolio standard (RPS) policy. SB0921/HB1106 would have required that utilities procure 25% of their electricity from renewable energy sources by 2020, an increase from the current 20% by 2022. Maryland's existing RPS is around mid-level in terms of ambition compared to other policies nationally, and the increase would put it at the level of California's previous 2020 mandate. California has since passed a more aggressive RPS of 50% by 2030. ...

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) -- 05/31/16 -- Redhill Resources Corp., (TSX VENTURE: RHR), ("Redhill" or the "Company") wishes to announce that it has entered into a property option and assignment agreement (the "Agreement") with a vendor (the "Vendor") to acquire a 100% right, title and interest in and to the Lincoln Lithium Property in Nevada (the "Property"). The Property covers an area of 3200 acres of placer claims in the Big Smoky Valley, Nevada, directly adjacent to claims controlled by Ultra Lithium Inc. and Avarone Metals Inc.

The Big Smoky Valley is located 25 km immediately north of the Clayton Valley, home to Albemarle's Silver Peak Lithium Mine, the only producing lithium brine facility in the United States. The Lincoln Lithium Property is located approx. 225 km SE of the Telsa Motors Gigafactory site, scheduled to open July 29, 2016.

To earn its interest in the Property, the Agreement calls for the Company to pay a non-refundable deposit of $25,000 to the owner (the "Underlying Owner") of the Property, from whom the Vendor had optioned the Property, upon signing of the Agreement and to pay an additional $225,000 to the Underlying Owner upon Exchange approval of the Agreement. The Company is required to expend $250,000 in exploration expenditures on the Property in the next year and to pay an additional $750,000 at the end of the year to the Vendor to earn its interest. The Vendor will be issued 1,500,000 post-consolidated shares upon Closing of the Agreement. Upon acquisition of the Property, if the Option is fully exercised, a GORR of 1% on industry standard terms will be payable by the Company to the Underlying Owner on any commercial production from the Property. A finder's fee of $25,000 is payable in connection with the Agreement.

CONCURRENT FINANCING, SHARE CONSOLIDATION AND NAME CHANGE

The Company currently has sufficient working capital to cover most of its operating expenses for the next year but will require additional capital to fund its commitments under the Agreement.

As a result, the Company is engaging in a private placement financing (the "Financing") the proceeds of which will fund its financial obligations resulting from the Agreement. The Financing will see the Company issuing a total of 8,000,000 post-consolidation units (the "Units") at a price of $0.15 per Unit. Each Unit is to be comprised of one common share and a share purchase warrant (the "Warrants") exercisable for a period of two year at an exercise price of $0.30. If the Company's share price closes at or above $1.00 for a period of twenty (20) consecutive trading days, the holders of the Warrants will either have to exercise them on 14 days' notice or the Warrants will be cancelled.

The Financing is conditional upon the closing of the Agreement as is the Consolidation described below.

The Company intends to, concurrently with the closing of the Financing and the Agreement, consolidate (the "Consolidation") its outstanding common shares on a 1 for 2 share basis.

The Company currently has 20,682,397 shares outstanding and, after the Consolidation, will have 10,341,198 shares outstanding in addition to any shares to be issued as a result of the closing of the Financing and of the Acquisition.

Upon receiving Exchange approval, the Company plans to change its name to Millennial Minerals Ltd.

FUTURE ACQUISITIONS AND ACTIVITIES

The Company currently holds mineral claims in Northern British Columbia and oil and gas licences in Alberta which were the subject of a recent farmout agreement. It intends, over the next few months and conditional upon market conditions for commodities and financing, to investigate the possibility of acquiring additional mineral properties, both in Canada and abroad, that are prospective for lithium. The Property that is the subject of the Agreement is not expected to be the Company's primary focus for the next year.

The Closing of the Agreement, the closing of the Financing, the implementation of the Consolidation and any future acquisitions are all, or may be, subject to the approval of the Exchange.

Further details on the Consolidation, the Property, the Agreement and the Financing will be made available to the public when available to the Company.

APPOINTMENT OF PRESIDENT

It is anticipated that, concurrently with the closing of the Financing and the Agreement, Mr. Kyle Stevenson will be appointed as President of the Company to replace Mr. Jamie Carlson, who is expected to resign as President but remain as a director of the Company.

Mr. Carlson will continue to oversee the Company's Alberta oil properties as they are drilled this summer and fall and assess the Company's prospects in this area.

REDHILL RESOURCES CORP.

Graham Harris, Chairman & Director

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 may contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions and therefore involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements."

Contacts:

Redhill Resources Corp.

Investor Relations

(604) 662-8184

info@redhill-resources.com

www.redhill-resources.com




TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- Allied Properties Real Estate Investment Trust ("Allied") (TSX: AP.UN) today announced that it has closed the acquisition of the following properties in Montreal (the "Properties"):

Total Office Retail Industrial Parking Buildable Address GLA GLA GLA GLA Spaces Area ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Le Nordelec Rental 786,954 734,157 19,914 32,883 520 0 Le Nordelec Development 74,396 0 39,396 35,000 0 251,000 740 St-Maurice Street 67,869 67,869 0 0 40 0 480 St-Laurent Blvd. 53,530 46,365 7,165 0 75 0 3510 St-Laurent Blvd. 98,824 84,740 14,084 0 72 0 8 Place du Commerce 57,236 40,702 16,534 0 193 0 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1,138,809 973,833 97,093 67,883 900 251,000 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Le Nordelec Development in the table above includes two additional neighbouring properties acquired from the vendor for a purchase price of $2 million, bringing the total purchase price for the properties to $220 million. The additional properties include (i) a vacant industrial structure (approximately 35,000 square feet of GLA) that will be demolished, with the 48,378 square feet of underlying land being used for additional surface parking capacity and (ii) a very small brick-and-beam structure (approximately 2,345 square feet of GLA) that will be restored for retail use.

Allied funded the acquisitions with (i) $33.6 million of existing first-mortgage financing, (ii) the net proceeds of the $150 million of 3.934% Series B Unsecured Debentures and (iii) a portion of the final $100 million drawn down on an unsecured debt facility provided by a Canadian chartered bank. Despite a more rapid pace of acquisitions than anticipated at the outset of the year, Allied's commitment to its balance sheet remains unwavering.

Allied also announced that it has entered into a conditional agreement to acquire 47 Front Street East in Toronto for $6.2 million. On closing, which is scheduled for July 31, 2016, the property will give Allied ownership of the properties from 35 to 49 Front East, representing 230 feet of uninterrupted frontage on the south side of the street, just east of St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts. Allied will redevelop 47 Front East for office use above grade and retail use at grade and will carry it as a Property Under Development during the redevelopment process.

About Allied

Allied is a leading owner, manager and developer of urban office environments that enrich experience and enhance profitability for business tenants operating in Canada's major cities. Its objectives are to provide stable and growing cash distributions to unitholders and to maximize unitholder value through effective management and accretive portfolio growth. For further information, please refer to Allied's website at www.alliedreit.com.

Cautionary Statements

This press release may contain forward-looking statements with respect to Allied, its operations, strategy, financial performance and condition. These statements generally can be identified by use of forward looking words such as "may", "will", "expect", "estimate", "anticipate", "intends", "believe" or "continue" or the negative thereof or similar variations. The actual results and performance of Allied discussed herein could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. Such statements are qualified in their entirety by the inherent risks and uncertainties surrounding future expectations, including that the transactions contemplated herein are completed. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations include, among other things, general economic and market factors, competition, changes in government regulations and the factors described under "Risk Factors" in Allied's Annual Information Form, which is available at www.sedar.com. These cautionary statements qualify all forward-looking statements attributable to Allied and persons acting on Allied's behalf. Unless otherwise stated, all forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this press release and the parties have no obligation to update such statements.

Contacts:

Michael Emory

President & CEO

(416) 977-0643

memory@alliedreit.com



Cecilia C. Williams

Vice President & CFO

(416) 977-9002

cwilliams@alliedreit.com




VALLEY COTTAGE, New York, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Aloe vera extracts are gaining traction as an essential ingredient in food, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, with global volume to surpass 60,720.4 tonnes in 2016 end, representing revenues worth US$ 1.6 Bn.

Demand for aloe vera extracts for manufacturing aloe vera gels, cosmetics products, juices, and yogurts will continue its upward momentum in 2016 as well. The all-pervasive health and wellness trend will also boost positive sentiment on aloe vera, with wide-ranging applications in low-calorie fruit juice and packaged drinking water opening up new avenues of growth.

Cosmetics, the largest end-use sector for aloe vera extracts, will account for over 45% of global demand in 2016, with annual volumes totalling 27,458.5 tonnes - an increase of 6% over 2015.

Request a Sample Report: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-903

Among all the product type segments, aloe vera whole leaf extracts will continue to grow at a relative higher rate, representing 41% volume share of the market in 2016. Global consumption of aloe vera whole leaf extracts will surpass 25,280.2 tonnes by 2016 - an increase of 6.2% in 2016 over 2015.

Germany was the largest consumer of aloe vera extracts in 2015, with total consumption at 3,139.2 tonnes. It will further its lead as the largest market in 2016, witnessing a y-o-y volume increase of 5.3%. Demand will continue to grow at a healthy rate in Asia Pacific, where a rapidly growing middle class with increasing disposable income is making a steady shift to natural and organic products.

Free Analysis by End Use Industry: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/aloe-vera-extracts-market

Lily of the Desert Organic Aloeceuticals, Aloe Farms Inc., Terry Laboratories Inc., Foodchem International Corporation, Natural Aloe Costa Rica S.A., Pharmachem Laboratories Inc., Aloecorp Inc., and Aloe Laboratories Inc. are the market leaders identified across the value chain in the global aloe vera extracts landscape. The global aloe vera extracts market is highly fragmented, with the top eight players accounting for around 6-7% revenue share of the global market in 2015. Leading companies are looking to expand their production capacity and launch new product offerings in a bid to increase market share, expand customer base and achieve a competitive edge.

Long-term outlook: FMI maintains a positive long-term outlook on the global aloe vera extracts market, estimating global revenues to surpass US$ 3.3 Bn by 2026. Volume-wise, the global aloe vera extracts market is anticipated to expand at 7.4% CAGR through 2026.

Request for TOC: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-903

Note to Editors and Journalists: Analysts who have compiled this report are available for interviews and quotes at press@futuremarketinsights.com

FMI Latest Insights:

Maltodextrin Market: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/maltodextrin-market

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/maltodextrin-market Nutraceuticals Market: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/mena-nutraceuticals-market

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/mena-nutraceuticals-market Beverage Packaging Market:http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/global-beverage-packaging-market

About Us:

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SANTA CLARA, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- DataStax, the leading provider of database software for cloud applications, today announced it has won the 2016 Microsoft Alliance Global Commercial ISV Partner Award. The company was honored among a global field of top Microsoft partners for demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementation of customer solutions based on Microsoft technology.

Click to Tweet: DataStax wins 2016 @Microsoft Alliance Global Commercial ISV Partner award bit.ly/1Z7g3sT @Azure cloud hybridcloud

"DataStax is deeply honored to receive the 2016 Microsoft Global Commercial ISV Partner award and we look forward to continuing our collaboration with the entire Microsoft team -- including sales, marketing, engineering -- to enable enterprises to quickly power the exploding number of cloud applications that require real-time value at epic scale," said Billy Bosworth, CEO, DataStax. "This honor validates the depth of the strategic partnership between the two organizations and we are excited about better serving our joint customers, including IHS and Microsoft Office 365, that have deployed DataStax Enterprise on Azure for their distributed, cloud-based applications."

Awards were presented in several categories, with winners chosen from a set of more than 2,500 entrants from 119 countries worldwide. DataStax was recognized for providing outstanding solutions and services as the Microsoft Alliance Global Commercial ISV Partner.

DataStax demonstrated exceptional customer focus, technical thought leadership and the ability to execute with Microsoft teams globally for joint sales and marketing success. DataStax and Microsoft are committed to delivering tightly integrated, database solutions architected for cloud applications via the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. The combined solution provides our joint customers the unique capability to build cloud applications whose infrastructure spans private and public cloud environments, a stark contrast to the non-hybrid offerings available from Amazon Web Services. Together, we are serving global customers with a differentiated solution that scales seamlessly to customer demands. To learn more about the partnership and solution, visit www.datastax.com/partners/microsoft-azure

"We are honored to recognize DataStax as this year's winner of the 2016 Microsoft Alliance Global Commercial ISV Partner award," said Gavriella Schuster, general manager, Worldwide Partner Group, Microsoft Corp. "DataStax is a prime example of the excellent talent we see in our Microsoft partner community to deliver innovative and transformative solutions to our mutual customers."

About DataStax

DataStax, the leading provider of database software for cloud applications, accelerates the ability of enterprises, government agencies, and systems integrators to power the exploding number of cloud applications that require data distribution across datacenters and clouds, by using our secure, operationally simple platform built on Apache Cassandra.

With more than 500 customers in over 50 countries, DataStax is the database technology of choice for the world's most innovative companies, such as Netflix, Safeway, ING, Adobe, Intuit, Target and eBay. Based in Santa Clara, Calif., DataStax is backed by industry-leading investors including Comcast Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Meritech Capital, Premji Invest and Scale Venture Partners. For more information, visit DataStax.com or follow us @DataStax.

Product or service names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

For additional information:

Wendy Hynes

DataStax

415.505.1544

wendy.hynes@datastax.com




Largest Israeli Forum for Health/Tech Innovators Taps Global PR Firm to Support its Entrepreneurial Mission

JERUSALEM, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --mHealth Israel, Israel's largest digital and technology health community, announced that it has selected Finn Partners as its communications agency of record (AOR), drawing upon its strategic relationship during the past two years.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140723/130030

As AOR, Finn Partners is responsible for all mHealth Israel public communication, including media relations, creative, social media and reputation positioning. Additionally, Finn Partners will offer counsel for the annual mHealth Israel global conference, the largest digital health conference in Israel, which attracts 600-plus attendees from around the world.

"After benefiting from media results and seeing firsthand Finn Partners' ability to navigate the ever-changing needs in digital health, we look to the Israel office of this global PR network as our counsel," said Levi Shapiro, Founder, mHealth Israel and noted venture capital leader. "As agency of record, Finn Partners brings an ability to communicate both locally and globally, the value of Israel's contributions to digital-health technologies and improved patient care."

mHealth Israel is the largest community for digital-health entrepreneurship in Israel, with more than 2,500 members. The group facilitates global meetups, roadshows, social-media postings and online databases for the digital health community. mHealth Israel is the host of the annual mHealth Israel Conference, a key worldwide gathering of health/tech innovators that draws an audience ranging from the world's large health innovators to start-up disrupters who may change the face of patient care.

"The Israel health system is known for its high medication compliance and engineering skills that lead to smart technologies - from life-saving apps to patient-monitoring advances to eye-care and cardiovascular innovations," said Goel Jasper, senior partner and managing director, Finn Partners Israel. "Under Levi's leadership, we seek to project the power of mHealth to promote this country's digital-health community globally."

About Finn Partners, Inc.

Finn Partners was launched in late 2011 to realize Peter Finn's vision to create a leading communications agency dedicated to shaping a bold new future in which innovation and partnership are strong brand drivers. Finn Partners specializes in the full spectrum of public and corporate affairs services, including digital and social media. Practice areas include arts, consumer, CSR, education, health, technology and travel & lifestyle.

Since its inception four years ago, Finn Partners has received six agency awards that are indicators of client and cultural leadership: "Best Midsize Agency" in 2015, "Best Agency to Work For" in 2013 and "Best New Agency" in 2012 from the Holmes Report and "Midsize PR Firm of the Year" in 2015 and "Top Places to Work in PR" in 2013 from PR News. Headquartered in New York City, the company has approximately 500 employees, with offices in Chicago, Detroit, Fort Lauderdale, Jerusalem, London, Los Angeles, Munich, Nashville, Paris, San Francisco and Washington D.C., and offers international capabilities through its own global network and PROI Worldwide. Find us at www.finnpartners.comand follow us on Twitter @finnpartners.

About mHealth Israel:

With over 2,500 members, mHealth Israel is the largest community for digital health entrepreneurship in Israel. Activities include Meetups, Global Roadshows, social media, online database and the annual mHealth Israel Conference. The conference, the largest of its kind in Israel, brings together the world's leading health tech experts from over a dozen countries, including top executives from Fortune 1000 global health and technology companies, as well as industry analysts and investors. For more information: http://www.mhealthisrael.com

Media Contacts:

Ben.Moore@finnpartners.com

Finn Partners Israel

+1 929-222-8012

Renee.Martin@finnpartners.com

Finn Partners New York

+1 212-715-1600
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- Attn: Assignment Editor

From across Ontario representatives from dozens of communities facing devastating cuts to their community hospitals carted thousands of ballots to the Ontario Legislature. The votes - 93,840 of them as of last night - were cast in a province-wide voluntary "referendum" on Saturday May 28 and in lead-in advance polls held in the last two weeks. Since last night the coalition has received hundreds more votes, putting the total over 94,000. Hundreds of votes continue to be sent in to the coalition every few hours. To put the size of the vote in perspective, a very large petition presented to the Legislature might have 20,000 signatures at most.

More than 40 communities took part in the referendum and more than 1,000 volunteers took to the streets on the weekend to staff voting stations outside grocery stores, corner stores, busy retailers, in Legions and churches and other high-traffic areas. In total, there were more than 1,000 voting stations, including advanced polls. Health Coalition volunteers collected oaths from those voting, asking people to swear that they are 16-years or older, the age of consent for health-care decisions, and that they would only vote once. People were asked to leave their postal code to help ensure the integrity of the vote wherever possible.

In more than 40 communities, volunteers set up voting stations and collected votes as part of the grassroots referendum, including: Thunder Bay, Sault Ste. Marie, St. Joseph Island, Timmins, Kapuskasing, North Bay, South River, Ottawa, Smiths Falls, Brockville, Kingston, Quinte West, Northumberland, Durham, Kawartha Lakes, Peterborough, Toronto, Hamilton, Niagara, Guelph, Orillia, Midland, Penetanguishene, Oxford County, London, St. Marys, Stratford, Seaforth, Chatham, Wallaceburg, Sarnia, Essex County, Windsor, and others.

Ontarians were asked to vote yes or no as to whether Ontario's government should stop the cuts to community hospitals and restore services to meet the population need for care. More than 99.6% voted in favour of stopping the cuts. Everywhere, people expressed their gratitude to volunteers for holding the referendum and for doing something to stop the cuts in their communities.

The results as of last night (note: every few hours we are receiving hundreds more votes): "Yes" or "No": Ontario's government must stop the cuts to our community hospitals and restore services, funding and staff to meet our communities' needs for care. Yes - 93,501 No - 308 Spoiled - 31 Total - 93,840 -------------------

The coalition is calling for Ontario's government to restore public hospital funding to the average of the other provinces. By every reasonable measure, Ontario's hospital funding is at or near the very bottom of all the provinces in Canada. The coalition is also calling for public hospital funding to go to care and vital support services.

"The huge turnout is representative of deeply-held values that cross all political line and all regions in our province," reported Natalie Mehra, executive director. "The message we received was overwhelming. People are angry about their communities' hospital cuts. In no uncertain terms, they want the services restored and they want to ensure that funding is adequate and it goes to care and support services, not executive tiers and consultants. They were happy to be able to vote on it."

She concluded: "We were certain before, but having gone through this massive undertaking and having spoken with more than a hundred thousand Ontarians, we can say with more certainty than ever that our current provincial government fails to listen to the will of Ontarians at their peril. Ontarians urgently want to find a way to have their voices heard, to stop the cuts and bring back the services that they are losing in their local public hospitals."

The coalition is asking the public for donations to help cover the costs of the volunteer-led referendum.

Background

Ontario's hospital cuts are the deepest in the country, and despite claims by government, the services that are being dismantled in local public hospitals are not replaced in community care. In fact, many communities are losing vital services and across the province whole categories of services are being privatized. Without any sound capacity planning, hospital redevelopment decisions seem to be driven by political opportunism and divorced from service needs. Tens of millions are wasted in renovations and redevelopments, only to find services closing down within a few years. Planning, such as it is, bears no relation to community need anymore.

The cuts are devastating. Entire community hospitals are on the line. Services like birthing; emergency departments; medical and surgical beds; mental health units; chronic care beds; surgeries and diagnostic tests; and thousands of nurses, health professionals, caregivers, and vital patient support workers and all the work they do --- all of these are threatened with cuts in different communities. In many communities hospitals are running at dangerous levels of overcrowding.

By every reasonable measure, Ontario has now dropped to the bottom of the country in hospital services. We have the fewest hospital beds left - by far - of any province. Only Chile and Mexico in the entire developed world have fewer hospital beds than does Ontario. We have the least amount of nursing care per patient (both RN and RPN combined). Patients are moved out of hospital earlier in Ontario than any other province - and we have the highest readmission rates as people end up back in emergency departments. Charts showing government data on these measures and others can be found here: http://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/index.php/health-system-facts-trends/funding/

Every service that is being cut is privatized, moved out of town or lost entirely. Patients are now required to drive longer and longer distances for care, or are being charged hundreds or even thousands of dollars in private clinics for cataract surgeries, colonoscopies and other care than used to be provided - under OHIP - in our local public hospitals. People are waiting on stretchers, in the worst cases for days, for admission to hospitals that are filled to overcapacity.

Contacts:

Kim Johnston

Campaign Director

647-381-7025 (c)



en francais

Sue Hotte

905-932-1646 (c)

Note: local contacts for communities across the province

are available.




LONDON, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

European eel scientists, conservationists and industry delegates gathered today in London to discuss solutions for sustainable management of the European eel stocks. One of the biggest challenges is to ban illegal trafficking of the precious species to Asia. The Sustainable Eel Group (SEG) has made an extensive study into the last 6 months of trade in glass eels and has identified a vast gap between the legitimate sales within Europe and the declared catch.

Since 2009, national Eel Management Plans were developed in all Western-European countries, and since 2010, any export of eel from the EU has been banned completely. Nevertheless, illegal trade and trafficking exported over 100 million live eels - the greater part of the total catch of young recruits in Europe.

Ricardo Serrao Santos, MEP for the Azores and Commissioner for the Sargasso Sea Commission with Andrew Kerr, Chairman of the Sustainable Eel Group, called upon the legally responsible authorities (all national authorities and the European Commission) to stop the illegal export, by signing an official declaration.

Mr. Santos: "Illegal trafficking is jeopardising Europe's eel protection plans. That is why we plea, in line with the EU Action Plan Against Wildlife Trafficking, to fully implement the measures as agreed in the European Eel Regulation and/or the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species."

Mr. Kerr: "To enforce the ban on export of the European eel effectively, the government should implement a system that makes tracking and tracing of all live eels possible. Well-regulated trade can contribute positively to the conservation of species. Such a system is already designed within the Sustainable Eel Standard. We strongly advise its application."

During the conference it became clear that the European eel sector has been working steadily towards full transparency of the chain of custody in the past 5 years. All activities of the sector are based on the philosophy that full transparency enables sustainable use of the stock. Eel scientist Doctor Willem Dekker presented an analysis of the effectiveness of international steering models for governing of the eel across Europe. Working together - on both short and long term solutions - between stakeholders is the only way to achieve adequate protection of the stock.
LOS ANGELES, CA--(Marketwired - May 31, 2016) - Seong Hwan Kim and Rebecca Edelson have joined the Century City office of Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP as partners in the firm's Intellectual Property practice groups. Kim and Edelson join from Steptoe & Johnson, where Kim was head of the firm's Korea Commercial Litigation practice, co-head of the Korea practice group, and a member of the firm's executive committee; and Edelson led the firm's Trade Secrets practice. Special counsel James Wald and Jason Zelin also join Sheppard Mullin from Steptoe & Johnson.

Kim handles all types of commercial litigation, but specializes in intellectual property matters, including patent and trade secret litigation. His client base is focused on Asia, Latin American and U.S. clients.

Edelson's practice emphasizes intellectual property, with a particular focus on trade secrets and unfair competition. She has broad experience in all phases of state and federal litigation, including trials, writs, and appeals. As a recognized leader in trade secret litigation, Edelson is co-editor and author of the treatise Trade Secret Litigation and Protection in California, published by the State Bar of California. She is a past chair of the Executive Committee of the Intellectual Property Section of the State Bar of California and recently served on the Board of Directors for the Century City Chamber of Commerce and is also on the advisory board to the Shriver Project, which provides legal assistance to thousands of unrepresented low-income litigants.

"We are thrilled to welcome Seong and Bec to the firm. In addition to the continued growth of our IP practice, they expand and deepen our litigation and trade secrets capabilities. Their capabilities fit nicely with our already strong presence in Korea, and their cross-border experience further augments our Latin America practice," said Guy N. Halgren, chairman of Sheppard Mullin.

"I am excited to join Sheppard Mullin. I have been impressed by the firm's consistent growth year-over-year. I was especially attracted to the firm's successful Korea office, burgeoning Mexico practice, robust IP practice group, and substantial California footprint, which are all key to growing my practice further. I also greatly look forward to continuing to practice with Bec," Kim commented.

"Seong is a highly respected trial lawyer. Some of the largest companies around the world turn to Seong to protect their intellectual property interests. His knowledge and experience are synergistic with our capabilities in Korea and Mexico. Bec is especially expert in trade secrets work. We've had tremendous growth in our IP practice, and the addition of Seong and Bec further strengthens our formidable IP capabilities," commented Daniel N. Yannuzzi, co-chair of Sheppard Mullin's Intellectual Property practice group.

Kim received a J.D. from University of California, Los Angeles in 1993 and a B.S. from University of California, Berkeley, Walter A. Haas School of Business in 1990. He has received recognition from Chambers USA, Legal 500 U.S., IAM Patent 1000, among others.

Edelson received a J.D. from University of California, Los Angeles in 1990 and a B.A. from University of Pennsylvania in 1983.

The arrival of Kim and Edelson is another milestone in the growth of the firm's internationally recognized Intellectual Property practice group. In the past 12 months, IP partner Weiguo (Will) Chen joined the Palo Alto office of Sheppard Mullin from Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner; IP partner Lisa Martens joined the Del Mar office from Fish and Richardson; IP partners Jim Gatto, Ben Esplin & Brad Blaise joined the Del Mar and Washington DC offices from Pillsbury Winthrop; IP Partner Manish Mehta joined the Chicago office; and IP partner William Lambert joined the firm's Palo Alto office from Kilpatrick Townsend.

Sheppard Mullin has 240 attorneys based in its Los Angeles and Century City offices. The firm's Intellectual Property practice group includes 125 attorneys firmwide.

About Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP

Sheppard Mullin is a full service Global 100 firm with 770 attorneys in 15 offices located in the United States, Europe and Asia. Since 1927, companies have turned to Sheppard Mullin to handle corporate and technology matters, high stakes litigation and complex financial transactions. In the U.S., the firm's clients include more than half of the Fortune 100. For more information, please visit www.sheppardmullin.com.

CONTACT:

GUY HALGREN

(619) 338-6605



SEONG KIM

(310) 228-3746



RALPH RICHARDSON

(213) 617-5542
Technavio has announced the top seven leading vendors in their recentglobal anesthesia face masks market 2016-2020report. This research report also lists nine other prominent vendors that are expected to impact the market during the forecast period.

Competitive vendor landscape

The global anesthesia face masks market is intensely competitive, with both global and local vendors developing anesthesia face masks that have improved characteristics of seal and design. The vendors offer these anesthesia face masks to hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers, and clinics. These vendors implement various strategies to remain competitive in the market, expand their operations in emerging economies, and improve their brand recognition to gain market shares.

"Global vendors use advanced technologies and invest extensively in R&D to expand their product portfolio and decrease competition from new players, whereas local vendors compete with global players by offering cost-effective products," says Barath Palada, a lead orthopedics and medical devicesanalyst from Technavio.

Request for sample report: http://goo.gl/XOpUOt

Top seven anesthesia face masks market vendors

Ambu

Ambu was founded in 1937 and is headquartered in Ballerup, Denmark. The company designs and manufactures a wide range of equipment and solutions for hospitals, biotechnology companies, R&D laboratories, examination rooms, and universities in Denmark and worldwide. It operates through the anesthesia, patient monitoring and diagnostics, and emergency care segments. Ambu distributes anesthesia face masks under the brand Aura through the anesthesia segment.

BD

Becton, Dickinson and Company or BD was established in 1906 and is headquartered in Franklin Lakes, US. It is a medical technology company that manufactures and sells a broad range of medical supplies, laboratory equipment, devices, and diagnostic products. The company mainly serves life science researchers, healthcare institutions, clinical laboratories, and the pharmaceutical industry. The company's products are marketed through independent distribution channels and directly to end-users by the company and independent sales representatives. It has operations in 190 countries.

Dragerwerk

Dragerwerk was established in 1889 and is headquartered in Lubeck, Germany. It is an international leader in the areas of medical and safety technology. The medical division's product portfolio includes anesthesia workstations, emergency and mobile ventilation units, ventilation equipment for intensive care, warming therapy equipment for infants, IT solutions and gas management systems, and patient monitoring equipment. The company distributes its anesthesia delivery system products through its medical division. The company has operations in over 190 countries around the globe, with sales and service offices in over 40 countries.

GE Healthcare

GE Healthcare was incorporated in 1971 and is headquartered in Little Chalfont, Buckinghamshire, UK. The company is a subsidiary of General Electric, a US-based multinational conglomerate. GE Healthcare manufactures and markets diagnostic imaging systems, patient monitoring equipment, and cardiology devices and offers healthcare IT solutions. It also provides transformational medical technologies and services. Through the healthcare systems segment, GE Healthcare offers Series A, C, and F face masks for anesthesia management that help clinicians offer improved medical care for wellness screening, advanced diagnostics, and general treatment.

Intersurgical

Intersurgical was established in 1980 and is headquartered at Wokingham, UK. The privately held medical device company offers respiratory support solutions including oxygen therapy products, airway management products, anesthesia breathing systems, critical care systems, and carbon dioxide absorbents. Its products meet the requirement of BS, ISO and EN standards. Intersurgical markets its products under brand names EcoLite and QadraLite through its subsidiaries in the US, Europe, and APAC and a global network of distributors.

Medline

Medline was established in 1910 and is headquartered in Mundelein, Illinois, US. The company offers products for wound and skin care, nursing and patient care, pharmaceuticals and nutrition, and respiratory care. It also provides healthcare supplies such as aprons, surgical gowns, and uniforms. The company offers a range of anesthesia face masks produced in all shapes and sizes to fit adult and pediatric patients. Flexible and transparent crowns, grooved adjustable cushions, and round edges make these products preferable among clinicians and patients alike. The company has a business presence in over 90 countries. It has over 40 distribution centers in North America and 50 across the world. It also operates 17 manufacturing facilities worldwide.

Smiths Medical

Smiths Medical was established in 1940 and is headquartered in Saint Paul, Minnesota, US. The company is a subsidiary of Smiths Group, a UK-based multinational diversified engineering organization. Smiths Medical offers medical devices, consumables, and equipment for use in emergency departments, hospital, home, and specialist environments. These products are used in the areas of surgeries, critical and intensive care, high-end home infusion therapies, and post-operative care during recovery. Smiths Medical distributes products such as Portex face masks for anesthesia management.

Browse Related Reports:

Global Anesthesia Disposables Market 2016-2020

Global Anesthesia Delivery Systems Market 2016-2020

Global Anesthesia Resuscitators Market 2016-2020

Purchase these three reports for the price of one by becoming a Technavio subscriber. Subscribing to Technavio's reports allows you to download any three reports per month for the price of one. Contact enquiry@technavio.com with your requirements and a link to our subscription platform.

About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. The company develops over 2000 pieces of research every year, covering more than 500 technologies across 80 countries. Technavio has about 300 analysts globally who specialize in customized consulting and business research assignments across the latest leading edge technologies.

Technavio analysts employ primary as well as secondary research techniques to ascertain the size and vendor landscape in a range of markets. Analysts obtain information using a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, besides using in-house market modeling tools and proprietary databases. They corroborate this data with the data obtained from various market participants and stakeholders across the value chain, including vendors, service providers, distributors, re-sellers, and end-users.

If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at media@technavio.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160531005530/en/

Contacts:

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media Marketing Executive

US: +1 630 333 9501

UK: +44 208 123 1770

www.technavio.com
The DECT Forum is delighted to announce the winners of the DECT Awards 2016 in the Design, Innovation, Enterprise and ULE categories. The 2016 Awards have been selected by a prestigious jury and will be presented at the 20th DECT World Conference in Barcelona.

DECT Award Design

1. Sennheiser: TeamConnect Wireless (Winner)

2. SGW: DECT Video Door Bell (Runner up)

DECT Award Innovation

1. Sinotech: ONEsurround (Winner)

2. CCT: Opera(Runner up)

DECT Award Enterprise

1. VTech: ErisStation (Winner)

2. Sennheiser: TeamConnect (Runner up)

DECT Award ULE (Ultra Low Energy)

1. Livassured: Nightwatch (Winner)

2. ball b: bb1401 (Runner up)

3. Panasonic: KX-HNS 104 (Highly commended)

"On behalf of the DECT Forum and the entire industry I would like to congratulate all winners of the 2016 DECT Awards. We are delighted with the impressive number of almost 40 applications for this competition. It shows strong commitment of the industry and proves its powerful creativity and strong innovation in all four categories", says Andreas Zipp, Chairman of the DECT Forum. "I would like to most sincerely thank the Award's jury for their decisions, jury members were in particular challenged by the large number of praiseworthy products."

About DECT Forum:

DECT Security, DECT 6.0, J-DECT, CAT-iq are worldwide-adopted technologies with high relevance for cordless voice, wireless residential and enterprise communication. Full members of the DECT Forum are: Arcadyan, Ascom, Askey, AVM, Binatone, Cetecom, Deutsche Telekom, Dialog Semiconductor, DSP Group, Gigaset, GN Netcom, Huawei, Mitel, NEC, Nemko, Panasonic, Pioneer, Plantronics, RTX, Sagemcom, Sercomm, SGW Global, Spectralink, Swissvoice, Technicolor, Vtech, ZTE, and ZyXel.

You can find us here: www.dect.org @DECT_Forum

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160531006266/en/

Contacts:

DECT Forum

Roland Schmidt

T. +49 89 5166 2456

M. +49 176 2535 0007

roland.schmidt@dect.org
SEATTLE, WA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- Avalara, Inc., a leading provider of tax compliance automation for business, today announced Foxy.io, a leading enterprise ecommerce platform, has joined Avalara's community of certified solution partners. Avalara's solution partners are software publishers that integrate Avalara's software as a service (SaaS) offering for sales tax management directly into their own applications.

As a result of this partnership, FoxyCart users can now benefit from Avalara, which automatically calculates sales tax for every invoice line item, in the real-time "magic moment" of ecommerce. In addition, FoxyCart users can add Avalara's tax return preparation, filing, and remittance services. Avalara helps reduce the tedious work and complexity of calculating taxes and preparing tax returns for millions of products and services across the U.S., Canada, Europe, and dozens of other international jurisdictions, giving customers more time to focus on driving their own business success.

"Foxy is a provider of powerful ecommerce functionality that allows our enterprise users to focus on their core business instead of reinventing the ecommerce wheel," said Brett Florio, CEO, Foxy.io. "Taxes are complicated, and remain a growing drag on internal resources. Our partnership with Avalara will enable our users to easily manage and remain up-to-date on increasingly complex tax regulations, as an integrated part of our ecommerce platform."

Pascal Van Dooren, Chief Revenue Officer at Avalara said, "We recognize the value Foxy.io brings to its users, and are pleased to augment their offerings with our comprehensive solutions. Avalara simplifies and automates the tax compliance process for FoxyCart users to increase efficiency and enable continued business success. We're pleased to welcome Foxy.io into our community."

For more than a decade, Avalara has pioneered innovations in tax compliance for businesses of all sizes. Today, Avalara integrates with hundreds of ERP systems, accounting packages, ecommerce shopping carts, Point of Sale systems, and mobile payment platforms.

About Avalara

Avalara helps businesses of all sizes achieve compliance with sales and use, excise, communications, VAT, and other transactional tax requirements by delivering comprehensive, automated, cloud-based solutions that are fast, accurate, and easy to use. Avalara's Compliance Cloud platform helps customers manage complicated and burdensome tax compliance obligations imposed by state, local, and other taxing authorities in the United States and internationally.

Avalara offers hundreds of pre-built connectors into leading accounting, ERP, ecommerce and other business applications. The company processes millions of tax transactions for customers and free users every day, files hundreds of thousands of transactional tax returns per year, and manages millions of exemption certificates and other compliance related documents.

A privately held company, Avalara' s venture capital investors include Sageview Capital, Battery Ventures, Warburg Pincus, Technology Crossover Ventures, Arthur Ventures, and other institutional and individual investors. Avalara's headquarters are in Seattle, WA and it has offices across the U.S. and London, England; Brussels, Belgium; and Pune, India. More information at: www.avalara.com.

About Foxy.io

Foxy.io provides custom ecommerce to online merchants, enterprise, and platforms worldwide. Developers and merchants alike take advantage of Foxy's powerful ecommerce feature set while providing their customers the safest, fastest checkout possible.

Embedded Video Available

Embedded Video Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3015146



Sheri Renner

Director of Corporate Communications

sheri.renner@avalara.com




According to the latest market study released by Technavio, the global ceramic fiber market is expected to grow at a CAGR of almost 11% during the forecast period.

This research report titled 'Global Ceramic Fiber Market 2016-2020' provides an in-depth analysis of the market in terms of revenue and emerging market trends. This market research report also includes an up to date analysis and forecasts for various market segments and all geographical regions.

Request sample report: http://goo.gl/4XYOk0

The report categorizes the global ceramic fiber market into the following five major end-user segments.

Petrochemical industry

Ceramics industry

Iron and steel industry

Power generation industry

Other industries

The four most important end-user segments are discussed below:

Global ceramic fiber market in petrochemical industry

The global ceramic fiber market in the petrochemical industry is expected to reach approximately USD 2.3 billion by 2020, growing at a CAGR of around 11%. The petrochemical industry needs temperature insulation materials which aid in conserving energy and reducing operational costs. Further, the evolution of coal gasification and shale gas production are also elevating the overall consumption of ceramic fibers in the petrochemical industry. Therefore, there is high demand for ceramic fibers from the petrochemical industry.

In addition, the increasing demand for polymers and elastomers in China and India is expected to bode well for the market. The growth in demand from the automotive industry, advances in food processing industry, and the rise in disposable income in the developing economies is driving the market for elastomers in these regions. According to Chandrakumar Badala Jaganathan, a lead analyst at Technavio for textile, fiber, and composites research, "The increase in the production capacities of the existing elastomer manufacturing and the establishment of new ones will increase the consumption of ceramic fibers for insulation."

Global ceramic fiber market in ceramics industry

The global ceramic fiber market in the ceramics industry is expected to exceed USD 945 million by 2020, growing at a CAGR of over 11%. Ceramic fiber products are used in refractories for high-temperature equipment that is used in ceramic production. This equipment includes blast furnaces, hot stoves, steam boilers, cement kilns, glass tanks, and open-hearth furnaces.

The rapid growth in the construction segment in many regions, especially in the emerging economies, is driving the consumption of ceramics. The material is extensively used in flooring, roofing, in the manufacture of household ceramic articles and in soundproofing applications. Further, ceramics are also used for housing electronics as they are bad conductors of electricity and heat.

"However, the high cost of energy associated with the manufacturing of ceramics has necessitated measures to conserve heat, compelling the use of ceramic fibers for insulating furnaces and baking ovens used in ceramic manufacturing," says Chandrakumar.

Global ceramic fiber market in iron and steel industry

The global ceramic fiber market in the iron and steel industry is expected to exceed USD 648 million by 2020, growing at a CAGR of over 11%. Ceramic fibers and related products (textiles, board, paper, and other special products) are used to insulate and conserve heat energy in the iron and steel industry. These fibers also prevent workers from exposure to the high temperature of furnaces and heat-forming units in the manufacturing plants.

The steel and iron industry is one among the most energy-intensive industries and also poses serious environmental threats. Governments of many countries are therefore encouraging energy conservation in this industry, thus indirectly promoting the use of ceramic fiber. The expected expansion of iron and steel industries in the US and Europe will provide better prospects for the growth of the market during the forecast period.

Global ceramic fiber market in power generation industry

The global ceramic fiber market in the power generation industry is expected to exceed USD 388 million by 2020, growing at a CAGR of over 10%. The ceramic fiber market in the power generation segment is expected to grow steadily during the forecast period. These materials are used to design precise and advanced components. The use of ceramic fibers in the power generation industry has reduced pollution, increased fire safety, conserved energy, and offered safer working conditions.

Global urbanization, increasing population, industrial development, and infrastructure development have raised electricity requirements. The increased demand for electricity and the establishment of new power generation plants along with the expansion and upgradation of existing power plants is likely to increase the consumption of ceramic fibers in this segment.

The top vendors highlighted by Technavio's research analysts in this report are:

IBIDEN

Isolite Insulating Products

Morgan Advanced Materials

Unifrax

Browse Related Reports:

Global High-Temperature Insulation (HTI) Materials Market 2015-2019

Global Polymer-based Thermal Interface Materials (TIM) Market 2015-2019

Global Glass Ceramics Market 2016-2020

Purchase these three reports for the price of one by becoming a Technavio subscriber. Subscribing to Technavio's reports allows you to download any three reports per month for the price of one. Contact enquiry@technavio.com with your requirements and a link to our subscription platform.

About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. The company develops over 2000 pieces of research every year, covering more than 500 technologies across 80 countries. Technavio has about 300 analysts globally who specialize in customized consulting and business research assignments across the latest leading edge technologies.

Technavio analysts employ primary as well as secondary research techniques to ascertain the size and vendor landscape in a range of markets. Analysts obtain information using a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, besides using in-house market modeling tools and proprietary databases. They corroborate this data with the data obtained from various market participants and stakeholders across the value chain, including vendors, service providers, distributors, re-sellers, and end-users.

If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at media@technavio.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160531005537/en/

Contacts:

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media Marketing Executive

US: +1 630 333 9501

UK: +44 208 123 1770

www.technavio.com
Adoption of all resolutions submitted to the vote of Shareholders.

Regulatory News:

The Combined Shareholders' Meeting of Ipsen S.A. (Euronext: IPN; ADR: IPSEY), chaired by Marc de Garidel, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, was held today, in the presence of the members of the Board of Directors and the Group Executive Management.

The Shareholders' Meeting approved all the resolutions submitted by the Board of Directors and in particular the distribution of 0.85 dividend per share to be paid on 6 June 2016 (ex-dividend date 2 June 2016) and the renewal of the terms of office as Directors of Mrs. Carol Xueref and the company Mayroy SA.

During the Meeting, Marc de Garidel and Aymeric Le Chatelier, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, presented, in particular, the major events and financial results for 2015 as well as the 2016 outlook and 2016 first quarter sales.

About Ipsen

Ipsen is a global specialty-driven pharmaceutical group with total sales exceeding 1.4 billion in 2015. Ipsen sells more than 20 drugs in more than 115 countries, with a direct commercial presence in more than 30 countries. Ipsen's ambition is to become a leader in specialty healthcare solutions for targeted debilitating diseases. Its fields of expertise cover oncology, neurosciences and endocrinology. Ipsen's commitment to oncology is exemplified through its growing portfolio of key therapies improving the care of patients suffering from prostate cancer, bladder cancer and neuro-endocrine tumors. Ipsen also has a significant presence in primary care. Moreover, the Group has an active policy of partnerships. Ipsen's R&D is focused on its innovative and differentiated technological platforms, peptides and toxins, located in the heart of the leading biotechnological and life sciences hubs (Les Ulis/Paris-Saclay, France; Slough/Oxford, UK; Cambridge, US). In 2015, R&D expenditure totaled close to 193 million. The Group has more than 4,600 employees worldwide. Ipsen's shares are traded on segment A of Euronext Paris (stock code: IPN, ISIN code: FR0010259150) and eligible to the "Service de Reglement Differe" ("SRD"). The Group is part of the SBF 120 index. Ipsen has implemented a Sponsored Level I American Depositary Receipt (ADR) program, which trade on the over-the-counter market in the United States under the symbol IPSEY. For more information on Ipsen, visit www.ipsen.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160531006314/en/

Contacts:

For further information:

Ipsen S.A.

Media

Didier Veron

Senior Vice-President, Public Affairs and Communication

Tel.: +33 (0)1 58 33 51 16

Fax: +33 (0)1 58 33 50 58

E-mail: didier.veron@ipsen.com

or

Financial Community

Come de la Tour du Pin

Investor Relations Manager

Tel.: +33 (0)1 58 33 53 31

Fax: +33 (0)1 58 33 50 63

E-mail:come.de.la.tour.du.pin@ipsen.com

or

Brigitte Le Guennec

Corporate External Communication Manager

Tel.: +33 (0)1 58 33 51 17

Fax: +33 (0)1 58 33 50 58

E-mail: brigitte.le.guennec@ipsen.com
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - May 31, 2016) - CardioComm Solutions, Inc. (TSXV: EKG) ("CardioComm Solutions" or the "Company"), a global medical provider of consumer heart monitoring and medical electrocardiogram ("ECG") software solutions, today announced that it has entered into a sales and ECG services agreement with California-based Vascular Innovations Ltd. ("Vascular Innovations"), to provide post-market surveillance of patients with coronary artery disease treated with a new drug eluting stent ("DES"). The program will first be launched in India through Vascular Concepts Ltd. ("VCL"), an India-based affiliate of Vascular Innovations.

The arrhythmia surveillance deal provides a significant revenue opportunity to CardioComm Solutions which will be supported from the over 250,000 pre-paid ECG reading fees that will follow the purchase of a minimum of 8,250 HeartCheck devices. Additional revenue is expected from continued patient use of the HeartCheck SMART Monitoring service following completion of a pre-paid one month surveillance period.

Under the six-year renewable agreement, Vascular Innovations will develop sales and marketing channels to hospitals in India for their coronary and structural heart medical devices with post-market surveillance of patients conducted through the use of HeartCheck based technologies. The Company confirms that the Vascular Innovations deal was finalized with the placement of an initial order of 250 HeartCheck ECG devices. The first phase for launch of the DES in India will require a maximum of 33 months during which period an additional 2,000 HeartCheck devices with pre-paid ECG triages will be utilized. Over the next three years a minimum of 6,000 additional HeartCheck ECG devices will be purchased with pre-paid ECG triages. Based on the results of their DES treatment program in India, Vascular Innovations plans to expand the launch of their surgical treatments and patient surveillance program into other territories globally from which CardioComm Solutions will derive further benefits.

Under the sponsored arrhythmia/rhythm surveillance program, patients implanted with a Vascular Innovations medical device will be provided a free HeartCheck ECG PEN and a pre-paid one month post-surgery arrhythmia/rhythm surveillance service at hospital discharge. Each HeartCheck device serial number will be associated with a specific patient and a set number of pre-paid ECG triages that patients will utilize over their first month of recovery. ECG recordings will be taken once each day or if/when a patient feels symptomatic. Patients will utilize the Company's free GEMS Home software to upload recorded ECGs to the Company's SMART Monitoring ECG service. A triage report will be generated from each uploaded ECG and should an actionable arrhythmia such as atrial fibrillation ("AF") be found, the patient's health care provider will be alerted to provide any needed follow up support. After the initial one month period of free arrhythmia surveillance is completed patients will be allowed to keep their HeartCheck ECG PENs. The configuration of the 8,250 HeartCheck devices will be automatically converted to a per ECG based, pay-for-use-service model and patients may then continue to access the SMART Monitoring ECG service on a per-ECG fee model identical to what is currently offered to the direct to consumer markets globally.

A representative from Vascular Innovations confirmed that an initial market evaluation of the HeartCheck technologies has been completed and that eighteen medical centers within India are ready to implement the HeartCheck post-surgery arrhythmia surveillance program. Vascular Concepts further confirms that use of their DES implantable devices and an expected atrial occluder for AF treatment will be expanded globally and that use of the HeartCheck ECG technologies will increase proportionately.

This is the second Company announcement regarding a partnership agreement to provide services within India, a country which holds significant growth potential for the SMART Monitoring service. This initiative will assist the Company to expand into new markets and provides the first opportunity for CardioComm Solutions' technologies to be integrated into a patient care management strategy.

To learn more about CardioComm Solutions' products please see the Company's websites www.theheartcheck.com and www.cardiocommsolutions.com or contact the Company at sales@cardiocommsolutions.com.

About Vascular Innovations Inc.

Vascular Innovations, Inc. is a premier intellectual property development group providing opportunities for acquisition, merger, or alliances with the latest medical device technologies. Vascular Innovations has assembled a portfolio of technologies from many years of medical device experience. Programs are in many stages, from business plans to pending/issued patent, to stock products ready for market introduction. Innovative technologies are available from the areas of vascular and cardiovascular.

About CardioComm Solutions

CardioComm Solutions' patented and proprietary technology is used in products for recording, viewing, analyzing and storing electrocardiograms (ECGs) for diagnosis and management of cardiac patients. Products are sold worldwide through a combination of an external distribution network and a North American-based sales team. The Company has earned the ISO 13485 certification, is HPB approved, HIPAA compliant and has received FDA market clearance for its software devices. CardioComm Solutions is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

Etienne Grima, Chief Executive Officer

1-877-977-9425 x 227

investorrelations@cardiocommsolutions.com

www.cardiocommsolutions.com

Forward-looking statements

This release may contain certain forward-looking statements and forward looking information with respect to the financial condition, results of operations and business of CardioComm Solutions and certain of the plans and objectives of CardioComm Solutions with respect to these items. Such statements and information reflect management's current beliefs and are based on information currently available to management. By their nature, forward-looking statements and forward-looking information involve risk and uncertainty because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that will occur in the future and there are many factors that could cause actual results and developments to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements and forward-looking information.

In evaluating these statements, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and forward-looking information. The Company does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking statements and forward-looking information contained in this release other than as required by applicable laws, including without limitation, Section 5.8(2) of National Instrument 51-102 (Continuous Disclosure Obligations).

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- Ateba Resources Inc. (CSE: ATR) ("Ateba" or the "Company") announces the resignation of William P. Dickie, Robert Holmes, John Kennedy and Peter Evans as directors and officers of the Company. Following the resignations, Ashley Makuch has been appointed sole director, President, Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Secretary.

In addition, the Company announces that it has received notice of termination of the option agreement between New Walsh-Katrine Resources Inc. and Ateta with respect to the Katrine and Ossian Township properties located in the Larder Lake Mining District, Northern Ontario.

On May 6, 2016, the Director of the Ontario Securities Commission issued an order that all trading in the securities of the Company cease, until further order by the Director, for failure to file the audited financial statements, management discussion and analysis and related certificates for the year ended December 31, 2015.

The Canadian National Stock Exchange has not reviewed this press release and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.

This news release may contain forward-looking statements including but not limited to comments regarding the timing and content of upcoming work programs, geological interpretations, receipt of property titles, potential mineral recovery processes, etc. Forward-looking statements ad dress future events and conditions and therefore, involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements.

Contacts:

Ashley Makuch

(416) 366 - 2856




English-speaking Markets Less Complex Overall

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA) has issued its 2016 report on the Most Complex Contingent Markets Globally. Sixty different staffing markets were assessed across six continents in SIA's most detailed analysis of market complexity to date. The findings cover both emerging and established staffing markets, and complexity is identified according to 11 different criteria.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160531/373601

This year's report found Venezuela to be the most complex market, followed by Egypt and with Italy ranking third in complexity. Heavy regulation on temporary work, low VMS/MSP maturity, labor market inefficiencies and political instability were among contributing factors to Venezuela's high level of complexity. India was the most complex of the Asian markets, with Indonesia following.

The United Kingdom ranked as the least complex contingent market, followed by Australia and the United States as joint second in the rankings. English-speaking markets are less complex overall and scored favorably across most criteria, deeming them easier places in general for employers to develop a contingent workforce.

"This report provides a framework by which to understand the relative ease of deploying or extending a contingent workforce program," said Barry Asin, President of SIA. "Complexity should not be interpreted as lack of feasibility. It simply suggests additional considerations may need to be taken into account when choosing to extend activities in a particular geography or region. Conversely, those markets that are the least complex still require extensive market knowledge, along with strategic and cultural alignment as part of a successful approach to contingent work."

Argentina, Bulgaria, Estonia and Kuwait and Malaysia were all less complex compared to findings for 2015. Markets that have become more complex in the past year include Egypt, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden and Turkey. Algeria, Israel, Slovakia, Slovenia and Venezuela were additional countries included in the assessment for the first time this year.

The full report is available for CWS Council Members here, along with the excel-based Market Complexity Assessment Tool (MACAT). The MACAT allows users to conduct their own evaluations by weighting the indicators which are most relevant to their business activities and specific risk profile/appetite.

About Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA)

SIA is the Global Advisor on Staffing and Workforce Solutions

Founded in 1989, SIA is the global advisor on staffing and workforce solutions. Our proprietary research covers all categories of employed and non-employed work including temporary staffing, independent contracting and other types of contingent labor. As a division of the international business media company, Crain Communications Inc., SIA is headquartered in Mountain View, California, with offices in London, England. Read more about SIA here.

Media Contact

Jennifer Arcuni, Communications Director, Staffing Industry Analysts

jarcuni@staffingindustry.com | +1 650-390-6171 | www.staffingindustry.com

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/venezuela-egypt-rank-as-most-complex-contingent-markets-sia-finds-300277078.html
31 May 2016

Queros Capital Partners PLC

("Queros" or "the Company")

Unaudited Annual Results for the year ended 31 December 2015

Queros Capital Partners Plc is pleased to announce its unaudited annual results for year ended 31 December 2015. Alexander David Securities Limited confirms that other than as disclosed in the unaudited annual results, we are not aware of any reason for material differences between the unaudited and audited annual results.

Chairman's statement

Incorporation and change of name

The company was incorporated on 4 November 2014 as Queros Capital Partners Plc. The company commenced trade on 1 December 2014.

Principal activity

Company Principal Investment policy is focused on two key investment areas which is bridge financing and social housing in UK and Europe. It intends to provide bridge financing to UK companies which is a growing market with high returns along with identifying property portfolios in UK and Europe as per the terms of the bond document.



Company has invested at present in interim bridge loan contracts for the initial money raised in order to service the coupon and further subscriptions will be invested in other larger property portfolios.



Company also provides consultancy and advisory services related property portfolios to clients in Europe and UK. It has identified high yield property investments which will be acquired subject to satisfactory due diligence when further subscriptions will be raised via bond issue.



Directors

The directors who served during the period are as stated below:



Marcel Samuel Boom

Christopher Nigel Hutton

Yashpreet Singh



This report was approved by the Board on 26 May 2016 and signed on its behalf by





Marcel Samuel Boom

Chief Executive Officer

31 May 2016







Profit and loss account

for the period ended 31 December 2015

Period ended 31/12/2015 Notes  Turnover 2 114,212 Cost of sales (19,597) _______ Gross profit 94,615 Administrative expenses (88,911) _______ Profit on ordinary activities before taxation 5,704 Tax on profit on ordinary activities 1,141 _______ Profit for the period 4,563 _______







Balance sheet

as at 31 December 2015

31/12/2015 Notes   Fixed assets Investments 3 582,000 Current assets Debtors 4 136,837 Cash at bank and in hand 7,920 _______ 144,757 Creditors: amounts falling due within one year 5 (90,094) _______ Net current assets 54,663 _______ Total assets less current liabilities 636,663 Creditors: amounts falling due after more than one year 6 (582,000) _______ Net assets 54,663 _______ Capital and reserves Called up share capital 7 50,100 Profit and loss account 4,563 _______ Shareholders' funds 54,663 _______



The directors of Queros Capital Partners Plc accept responsibility for this announcement.

COMPANY CONTACT DETAILS:
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- Teranga Gold Corporation ("Teranga" or the "Company") (TSX: TGZ)(ASX: TGZ) announced today that it will host its Annual General Meeting on Tuesday, June 7, 2016 at 9:30 a.m. ET at the TMX Broadcast Centre in The Exchange Tower located at 130 King Street West, Toronto, Ontario.

Those wishing to listen to the live event can access the conference call and webcast as follows:

Date & Time: Tuesday, June 7, 2016 at 9:30 a.m. ET Telephone: Toronto 647-788-4919 Toll-free +1-877-291-4570 International +1-647-788-4919 Please allow 10 minutes to be connected to the conference call. Webcast: The webcast can be accessed directly at www.gowebcasting.com/7593 and on Teranga's website at http://www.terangagold.com/. Replay: The conference call replay will be available for two weeks after the call by dialing 416-621-4642 or toll-free at 1-800-585-8367 and entering the conference ID 21888260. Note: The slide presentation will be available for download at http://www.terangagold.com/ for simultaneous viewing during the call.

About Teranga Gold

Teranga is a Canadian-based gold company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: TGZ) and Australian Securities Exchange (ASX: TGZ). Teranga is principally engaged in the production and sale of gold, as well as related activities such as exploration and mine development in Senegal, West Africa.

Teranga's mission is to create value for all of its stakeholders through responsible mining. Its vision is to explore, discover and develop gold mines in Senegal and greater West Africa, in accordance with the highest international standards, and to be a catalyst for sustainable economic, environmental and community development. All of its actions from exploration, through development, operations and closure will be based on the best available techniques. For more information, please refer to www.terangagold.com.

Contacts:

Teranga Gold Corporation

Trish Moran

Head of Investor Relations

+1-416-607-4507

tmoran@terangagold.com




BOISE, ID -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- The Boise office of Cushman & Wakefield/Commerce has been exclusively engaged by the City of Boise in search of a development partner for approximately 275 acres of prime industrial land off Eisenman Road near the airport.

Developers with the financial and resource capacity will have the potential opportunity to build an intermodal rail facility as well as plans and speculative buildings for industrial and manufacturing tenants. By doing so, developers will be able to capture tenant demand and engage in built-to-suit projects.

Cushman & Wakefield/Commerce has mobilized a multi-state commercial real estate team and will leverage their international platform to drive the project.

"The development opportunity will include a mix of single and multi-tenant industrial buildings comprised of manufacturing firms who have either expanded in the area or are planning to join national companies attracted to Boise due to its pro-business environment," said Harrison Sawyer, industrial specialist with the Boise office of Cushman & Wakefield/Commerce. "When the best use of the 275 acres is established, new jobs will be created along with a surge in economic growth."

Enhancement of Idaho state tax incentives adopted July 2014 was designed to help with the expansion of existing manufactures and attract out-of-state developers. Since the adoption, 26 new projects with investments of $537 million have emerged, creating 4,228 new jobs.

"The area is perfectly situated for economic development and growth due to its proximity to the interstate, airport, downtown Boise, and 9,000 feet of rail system," said Jake Miller, industrial specialist with the Boise office of Cushman & Wakefield/Commerce. "This location provides a great opportunity to create a state-of-the-art facility for Treasure Valley manufacturers to ship goods and materials in and out of the region, whether by plane, train or truck."

Social Media Links:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/comre_

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/COMRE1

Blog: http://blog.comre.com/

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/commerce-real-estate-solutions?trk=tabs_biz_home

About Cushman & Wakefield/Commerce

Cushman & Wakefield/Commerce operates the Cushman & Wakefield business in Idaho, Nevada, Utah and Washington. The firm partners with its sister company Cushman & Wakefield/NorthMarq to provide innovative commercial real estate solutions to occupier and investor clients, offering transaction services, capital markets services, occupier and investor services, and real estate advisory. Together the firms manage 52 million sq. ft. of retail, industrial, and office assets, have transaction revenues of more than $2 billion, and employ more than 750 professionals. Learn more at www.comre.com.

About Cushman & Wakefield

Cushman & Wakefield is a leading global real estate services firm that helps clients transform the way people work, shop, and live. The firm's 43,000 employees in more than 60 countries provide deep local and global insights that create significant value for occupiers and investors around the world. Cushman & Wakefield is among the largest commercial real estate services firms with revenue of $5 billion across core services of agency leasing, asset services, capital markets, facility services (C&W Services), global occupier services, investment & asset management (DTZ Investors), project & development services, tenant representation, and valuation & advisory. To learn more, visit www.cushmanwakefield.com or follow @CushWake on Twitter.

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Media Contact:



Tim Rush

Springboard5

+1 801 208 1100

Email Contact




SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwired - May 31, 2016) - ISCS, developer of cloud-based, core administration software solutions for property and casualty (P&C) insurance organizations, is pleased to announce that American Integrity Insurance Group (American Integrity) has successfully deployed a newly-developed home insurance sales portal through ISCS's SurePower Innovation modern enterprise suite. The sales portal enables Florida home insurance shoppers to obtain a quick and accurate online premium quote prior to purchasing a policy with an agent.

American Integrity provides a broad spectrum of property insurance coverages specifically developed for, and available to, Florida consumers. The company sought a home insurance online quoting tool that balanced the need for a fast, accurate quote with a user-friendly platform. It was important the tool use back-end technology that would pre-populate data about the customer's home to help ensure a fairly effortless experience and provide users with an accurate quote. A final requirement was a seamless hand-off of the quote from online sales portal to the agent ultimately responsible for binding the policy. ISCS worked closely with American Integrity to provide exactly what they were looking for, compatible with ISCS's SurePower Innovation.

"We recognized a critical gap in our market -- Florida carriers tend to dictate the channels consumers must use in order to buy a home insurance policy," said Victor Mandes, American Integrity Insurance Vice President of Information Technology. "With the launch of our new technology, consumers can quickly and easily obtain an accurate quote, any time of day or night, and then select one of our local agents in order to bind their policy. Our goal is to provide Floridians with solutions and a user experience on par with what they would expect from a national carrier."

As American Integrity is a current ISCS customer and SurePower Innovation user, the implementation process took advantage of that relationship with no business interruption at all. A smooth development process resulted in a platform that deployed in early May and has already been used by Florida home insurance customers to purchase policies. ISCS's future planned developments include another template that will enable companies additional options to more closely match their marketing sites; providing additional configuration options around some of the features like the progress indicator, icons inside the app; as well as continuous usability testing to ensure that the app continues to meet user expectations across ISCS's entire customer base.

"Working with American Integrity on this new project was and continues to be a true partnership," said Andy Scurto, president of ISCS. "We're thrilled with the results and are excited to expand the portal with additional product lines."

About ISCS

ISCS is the developer of SurePower Innovation, a highly scalable, configurable, cloud-based modern enterprise suite that mitigates risk and increases business agility for property and casualty (P&C) insurance organizations writing personal, commercial and specialty lines. SurePower Innovation extends beyond core administration (policy, billing and claims) to include reinsurance, business intelligence (BI), insurance accounting, payables, document management, producer/commission management, agent/consumer portals and more. With a 100% proven implementation track record on enterprise core system replacement projects, ISCS consistently delivers SurePower Innovation as a complete, managed SaaS solution via ISCS's SurePackage' deployment option, allowing insurers to focus on the business of insurance. For more information, visit the company website at www.iscs.com.

About American Integrity Insurance Group (American Integrity)

American Integrity Insurance, the third largest writer of new residential property business in the state, has over 200,000 customers, represented by over 700 independent agents. The company is located in Tampa, FL and offers innovative property insurance solutions such as coverage for vacant homes, condos, manufactured homes and dwelling fire policies in addition to homeowners' insurance. For more information, please visit the company's web site www.aiicfl.com, or call 866-968-8390.

Media Contact:

Jennifer Overhulse

St. Nick Media Services

(859) 803-6597

jen@stnickmedia.com
DAYTONA BEACH, FL -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- Nano-Concepts, the nation's foremost leader in slip-and-fall solutions, has announced the launch of its interactive recruitment website, nanoconceptsopportunities.net, which provides entrepreneurs with a detailed overview of the benefits of investing in a Nano-Concepts business.

The content-driven recruitment website features a wealth of information for entrepreneurs who are interested in learning about ownership opportunities with the proven Nano-Concepts business. Prospective Nano-Concepts owners can learn more about the business from documentary videos featuring members of the Nano-Concepts executive team, and they can stay abreast of the latest news about Nano-Concepts' growth and development.

"Our business model centers on the idea that small businesses in every community need to guard against slip-and-fall injuries and litigation," said Charlie Werz, President and founder of Nano-Concepts. "You don't need to be a good salesman to be successful in this business, but you do need the drive to reach out to your community and introduce the benefits. Once you've made an introduction, you conduct a demonstration for a business owner. They can experience the difference in their floors right away. They will see that the floor is less slippery wet than when it's dry. It is very straightforward, and the demand is constant."

Nano-Concepts is a best-bet investment opportunity

With more than 400 Nano-Concepts owner-operators working in North America and abroad, the brand's three proven concepts has helped protect hundreds of small business owners against slip-and-fall injuries and potentially expensive lawsuits, as well restore commercial ceilings to their original condition and create germ-free environments using environmentally responsible solutions.

According to the National Safety Council, more than 9 million disabling slip-and-fall injuries occur every year. With a proven concept and a peerless commitment to innovative technology, Nano-Concepts owner-operators have helped fast-food outlets, nursing homes, restaurants, office buildings, banks, hospitals, malls, spas, pool decks, garages, country clubs and public buildings become safe environments for customers, clients and co-workers, and spaces that are fully compliant with existing and forthcoming regulation for nonslip safety standards through the use of our Nano-Grip technology.

While Nano-Concepts is known for its proven and state-of-the-art slip-and-fall solutions for homes and businesses, Nano-Concepts owner-operators have access to two other lucrative revenue streams. For a small investment, an owner-operator can purchase Nano-Clean, a proven concept that utilizes environmentally responsible detergent-based solutions to thoroughly clean and restore the ceilings of commercial businesses. Nano-Clean is especially demanded in restaurants, where the buildup of grease, fumes and smoke can discolor the ceilings and lead to a buildup of bacteria that is a source of odors and unhealthy for employees.

Nano-Shield, the new technology that is capable of rendering any surface essentially germ-free for a period of 90 days, is another potentially lucrative revenue stream that Nano-Concepts owner-operators can capitalize on. For known bastions of germs, such as hospitals, nursing homes, gyms and restaurants, this technology provides a much-needed, nontoxic solution.

"Our services are far beyond the scope of what others offer small business owners," Werz said. "We've made significant investments into technology that goes beyond applying a coating; rather it changes the floor on a microscopic level without changing its look and feel. After a Nano-Concepts owner-operator is done treating a floor with our proprietary Nano-Grip solution, the floor is actually safer when it is wet than when it is dry. Nano-Concepts' services are not only affordable for the small business owner, but when treated, the floors will also be compliant with standards for floor safety set by Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)." In addition, Nano-Concepts can show eligible small business owners how to use IRS Form 8826 to claim the disabled access tax credit to recoup the investment in their floor safety treatment."

Costs and fees of owning a Nano-Concepts business

Nano-Concepts is a low-investment business opportunity that any potential business owner can start for less than $10,000. With three proven business models that are easy to grow, Nano-Concepts provides innovative solutions to problems that the business community faces every day:

1. Nano-Grip: Protection against dangerous and costly slip-and-fall accidents in the workplace and home

2. Nano-Clean: Environmentally responsible ceiling cleaning and restoration

3. Nano-Shield: Environmentally safe, long-term surface protection against germs, mold and odor

A Nano-Concepts business is quick to scale, so owner-operators can purchase all three business models at once or focus just on one. All three business models use technology proprietary to Nano-Concepts, and unlike the brand's competitors, its products are exclusive to Nano-Concepts owner-operators. Unique among competitors, Nano-Concepts offer multiple businesses that work together to give our business owners the advantage of having multiple streams of income in competition-free service industries.

Embedded Video Available

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Contact



Steve Sewell

Vice President of Business Development

(855) 687-0976

stevesewell@nanoconcepts.net




Washington D.C.--(Newsfile Corp. - May 31, 2016) - The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that a California-based mortgage company and six senior executives agreed to pay $12.7 million to settle charges that they orchestrated a scheme to defraud investors in the sale of residential mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by the Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae).

First Mortgage Corporation (FMC) is a mortgage lender that issued Ginnie Mae RMBS backed by loans it originated. The SEC alleges that from March 2011 to March 2015, FMC and its senior-most executives pulled current, performing loans out of Ginnie Mae RMBS by falsely claiming they were delinquent in order to sell them at a profit into newly-issued RMBS. FMC caused its Ginnie Mae RMBS prospectuses to be false and misleading by improperly and deceptively using a Ginnie Mae rule that gave issuers the option to repurchase loans that were delinquent by three or more months.

According to the SEC's complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, FMC purposely delayed depositing checks from borrowers who had been behind on their loans, falsely claiming to both investors and Ginnie Mae that such loans remained delinquent when in reality they were current. This was done with the knowledge and approval of the company's senior-most management. After repurchasing at prices applicable to delinquent loans, FMC was able to resell the loans into new Ginnie Mae RMBS pools at higher prices applicable to current loans for an immediate, nearly risk-free profit. Investors, meanwhile, were wrongly deprived of the interest payments on the repurchased loans.

"FMC and its senior executives abused their privileged access to Ginnie Mae's securitization program by allowing greed to corrupt their business practices," said Andrew Ceresney, Director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement. "It is critical that we hold senior management fully accountable for this kind of misconduct, which we were able to accomplish here quickly due to the cooperation of company insiders."

The executives charged with fraud in the SEC's complaint agreed to the following settlements:

Chairman and CEO Clement Ziroli Sr. agreed to a $100,000 penalty.

Company president Clement Ziroli Jr. agreed to pay 411,421.98 plus $27,203.92 in interest and a $200,000 penalty.

Chief financial officer Pac W. Dong agreed to pay a $100,000 penalty.

Senior vice president Ronald T. Vargas, who headed FMC's capital markets department, agreed to pay a $60,000 penalty.

Senior vice president Scott Lehrer agreed to pay a $50,000 penalty.

Managing director of the servicing department Edward Joseph Sanders agreed to pay disgorgement of $51,576.51 plus $6,811.19 in interest. Sanders cooperated in the SEC's investigation.

In settling the charges without admitting or denying the allegations, each of the six executives agreed to be barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for five years.

The SEC's complaint alleges that FMC, Ziroli Sr., Ziroli Jr., Dong, Vargas, Lehrer, and Sanders violated Sections 17(a) of the Securities Act, Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act, and Rule 10b-5(a) and (c). The complaint also alleges that FMC violated Rule 10b-5(b). The settlements are subject to court approval.

The SEC's investigation was conducted by Allison Herren Lee and John B. Smith from the Complex Financial Instruments Unit in the Denver Regional Office. They were assisted by Dugan Bliss and Judy Bizu, and the case was supervised by Laura M. Metcalfe and Michael J. Osnato. The SEC appreciates the assistance of Ginnie Mae.


MCKINNEY, TX -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- J&B Prime Marketing Solutions announces the grand opening of a branch of the company in Durant, Oklahoma coming June 6, 2016. In the last few months, J&B Prime Marketing Solutions tripled their footprint in Texas, landing them on the radar of their multi-million dollar clients. This growth ultimately opened the door for the expansion, taking place in mere weeks.

In March, J&B Prime Marketing Solutions had a hold on the marketing and promotions for their clients in McKinney, Plano, Sherman and Denison. Because of their consistent productivity and outstanding client relations, the company expanded into Allen, Lucas and Princeton. Director of Operations, Jordan Roberts suggests the company owes their success to the lifeline of their organization -- their associates. "Without our associates representing our brand and our client's brand with the utmost respect and dedication, we would not be where we are today."

At the forefront of their success emerged Mr. Roberts' associate, Anthony Winters. Anthony was offered an opportunity to continue productivity in Durant, Oklahoma beginning in June. Within the next three months, Anthony is projected to quadruple the previous productivity seen in the area by focusing primarily on the training program instilled in him by J&B Prime Marketing Solutions. "The best part about what we do is changing the lives of our associates," says Anthony. "I am eager to bring the career growth opportunities to Durant while continuing to expand the client's brand in the area."

As Anthony gears up for the expansion, J&B Prime Marketing Solutions braces for the hiring process. "The expansion occurring within J&B Prime Marketing Solutions leaves many open positions within the firm. In order to continue our resilience and reach our goal of five national locations by the end of the year, we are seeking the company's future leaders," says Mr. Roberts. Because of the management training positions offered within the company, J&B Prime Marketing Solutions is seeking entry-level individuals with a desire to learn and grow within the company. "We pride ourselves on promoting solely from within, so each of our managers and executives know our clients and their products from the inside, out," he explains.

For more information about the career opportunities offered at J&B Prime Marketing Solutions, visit www.JBPrimeMarketingSolutions.com.

J&B Prime Marketing Solutions

6800 Weiskopf Avenue Suite 150

McKinney, Texas 75070

Email Contact

214-307-2896




HOLLYWOOD, FL -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- The Luxurious Travel Corp. (OTC PINK: LXRT) ("Luxurious Travel" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has entered into a definitive Share Exchange Agreement to acquire all of the issued and outstanding capital stock of US Lighting Group, Inc. ("US Lighting Group"), an independent designer and manufacturer of patent-pending, transformer less, LED lighting technologies.

Upon completion of this transaction, US Lighting Group will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company, the shareholders of US Lighting Group will become the principal shareholders of the Company and the Company will take the necessary corporate and regulatory action to change its name to "US Lighting Group, Inc." and secure a new trading symbol to better reflect its new corporate name and business focus. In addition, at closing existing LXRT management will resign and US Lighting Group management will assume management roles at the public company.

The transaction is expected to close within the next fourteen days, subject to receipt of certain approvals from market regulators, and satisfaction of customary closing conditions.

Paul Spivak, President of US Lighting Group, commented, "We are extremely excited to begin this next chapter in the history of US Lighting Group as a publicly traded company. We look forward to taking full advantage of this strong new corporate position to accelerate our current growth strategy to go after larger and more lucrative markets with our cutting edge patent-pending LED lighting technologies."

Founded in 2011, US Lighting Group is an independent designer and manufacturer of high quality patent-pending, transformerless, "green" LED lighting tubes for sale and distribution into the commercial and industrial 4' tube lighting sectors in the United States and abroad. Every US Lighting Group LED bulb is made in the USA at the Company's own manufacturing facility located near Cleveland, Ohio.

US Lighting Group's flagship line of LED bulbs is the BH4 Series. BH4 LED bulbs are 4 feet long and intended to replace the harsh, inefficient fluorescent bulbs found in many offices, warehouses, department stores, and corporate buildings. BH4 Series LED bulbs utilize an innovative and patent-pending, transformerless design which decreases manufacturing costs and dramatically increases energy efficiency and brightness. These factors combine to give BH4 Series LED bulbs an incredibly long lifespan - independently tested to have an average lifespan of 190,000 hours (21 years) -- more than 3x the closest competition. This reduces maintenance costs significantly and is a major pre-buying consideration of end-users.

Market demand for 4' LED tubes is expected to grow dramatically over next several years due to federal/state government and energy provider incentives and rebates for end-users, increasing utilities cost savings for end-users, and the Department of Energy's approval of the green eco-friendly 4' LED tube as the logical replacement for the more than 1.8 billion outdated and energy inefficient fluorescent light tubes currently installed in the United States.

US Lighting Group BH4 Series LED bulbs are distributed throughout the United States to various commercial and industrial end-users and resellers, and also available at several online retailers, including The Home Depot.

For additional information regarding US Lighting Group, Inc., visit www.uslightinggroup.com.

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

Statements included in this press release, other than statements of historical fact, are "forward-looking statements" made in reliance upon the safe harbor provisions of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Forward-looking statements are typically, but not always, identified by the words: believe, expect, anticipate, intend, estimate, and similar expressions or which by their nature refer to future events. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to have been correct. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these statements.

Disclaimer: This press 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 state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.

Investor/Media Contact:



US Lighting Group, Inc. - Investor Relations

Email: investor@uslightinggroup.com

Web: www.uslightinggroup.com




TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- CHC Student Housing Corp. ("CHC" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: CHC), Canada's only publicly traded company providing high-quality purpose-built multi-residential student housing properties, today reported financial results for the three months ended March 31, 2016. The financial statements and related Management's Discussion and Analysis ("MD&A") are available under CHC's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

"We continued to make progress in the first quarter as a direct result of the strategic initiatives undertaken at the end of 2015 and early on in 2016," said Mark Hansen, President and CEO, CHC. "For example, during the quarter, we began to see the positive impact of internalizing property management as we started managing our marketing initiatives earlier this year at our London and Windsor properties resulting in occupancy of 97% for the May leasing cycle, up 14.5% when compared to the same period in 2015."

"We remain steadfastly committed to our business model to become the student housing market leader in Canada and firmly believe in the exciting growth opportunities existing in this space. We continue to explore alternatives to enhance our existing platform and positioning. Going forward, I remain confident in our ability to deliver on our long-term strategy and vision to become the preeminent student housing owner in Canada."

Highlights during the three months ending March 31, 2016:

-- Property revenues of $1,289,711. -- Net Operating Income (NOI) of $624,406. -- Net income of $440,366. In 2015, the Company successfully negotiated $765,044 reduction in fees from certain key vendors related to the cancelled equity offering, which was fully recognized in this quarter. At the beginning of 2016, the Company began the process of internalizing property management in London and Windsor starting with internalizing marketing and expects to positively contribute $100,000 per annum in savings to the Company's financial statements.

Summary of Selected Financial and Operational Information

The selected financial information below is based on and derived from the financial statements for the first quarter 2016.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Statement of financial position data 31-Mar-16 31-Dec-15 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cash $ 819,602 $ 842,808 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Investment properties $ 64,963,664 $ 64,895,000 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total assets $ 66,439,571 $ 66,353,022 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total current financial liabilities $ 20,368,835 $ 20,641,033 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total non-current financial liabilities $ 38,133,682 $ 38,155,301 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total liabilities $ 58,502,517 $ 58,796,334 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Statement of net income (loss) Three Months Ended March 31 -------------------------- 2016 2015 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Property revenues $ 1,289,711 $ 1,363,719 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Property operating expenses $ (665,305) $ (709,732) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Net Operating Income (NOI) $ 624,406 $ 653,987 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- General & administrative expense $ (291,823) $ (301,918) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Transaction costs $ 765,044 $ (120,080) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Interest income $ 30 $ 427 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Stock-based compensation $ 18,000 $ (432,726) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Forfeiture of deposit - - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Interest expense $ (675,291) $ (769,946) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fair value adjustment on investment properties - - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Net income (loss) $ 440,366 $ (970,256) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Net income (loss) per share - basic and diluted $ 0.19 $ (0.42) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Funds From Operations (FFO)(1) $ (324,678) $ (850,176) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FFO per share $ (0.14) $ (0.36) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Adjusted Funds From Operations (AFFO)(1) $ (380,789) $ (394,353) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- AFFO per share $ (0.16) $ (0.17) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributions of cash dividends Nil Nil ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Weight average shares outstanding(2) 2,335,181 2,335,181 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) FFO & AFFO are non-IFRS performance measures. Please refer to definition on pages 7 & 8 as well as the reconciliation from net loss on page below. (2) After giving retroactive effect to the 85 to 1 common share consolidation that occurred on February 19, 2015.

FFO & AFFO Reconciliation

The following table reconciles FFO and AFFO to GAAP net income (loss) and comprehensive income (loss):

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reconciliation from net income (loss) to FFO & Three Months Ended AFFO March 31 -------------------------- 2016 2015 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Net income (loss) $ 440,366 $ (970,256) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Add: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Transaction costs $ (765,044) $ 120,080 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fair value adjustment on investment properties - - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Funds From Operations (FFO) $ (324,678) $ (850,176) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Add (subtract): ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Stock-based compensation(1) $ (18,000) $ 432,726 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rental guarantee - $ 66,275 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Amortization of financing transaction costs $ 29,227 $ 94,504 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Straight line rent $ 1,326 $ (1,545) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Capital expenditures $ (68,664) $ (136,137) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Adjusted Funds From Operations $ (380,789) $ (394,353) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) Compensation expense for option grants is based on the fair value of the options at the grant date and is recognized over the period from the grant date to the date the award is vested. A liability is recognized for outstanding options based upon the fair value as the Company is a mutual fund corporation and there are retraction rights to the share conditions attached to the common shares. During the period in which options are outstanding, the liability is adjusted for changes in the fair value with such adjustments being recognized as expense in the period in which they occur. The three months ended March 31, 2015 adjustment for stock-based compensation relates to the accelerated amortization of cancelled options awarded in December 2014 and January 2015. Industry practice normally would not adjust for stock-based compensation in the calculation of AFFO. However, as the options were cancelled and the balance expensed in the fiscal first quarter in its entirety, the Company has determined that under the circumstances adjusting AFFO is reasonable. The Company will follow industry practices under normal course for stock-based compensation that is not cancelled.

FFO for the three months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015 amounted to ($324,678) or ($0.14) per share and ($850,176) or ($0.36) per share respectively. AFFO for the three months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015 was a loss of ($380,789) or ($0.16) and ($394,353) or ($0.17) per share respectively. The AFFO improvement is primarily driven by a reduction in capital spending due to the Company closely monitoring cash flow.

The following table reconciles IFRS cash used in operating activities to AFFO:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reconciliation from cash used in operating Three Months Ended activity to AFFO March 31 -------------------------- 2016 2015 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cash used in operating activities $ 59,309 $ (24,505) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Add (subtract): ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Transaction costs - $ 120,080 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Changes in non-cash working capital $ 285,014 $ (112,980) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rental guarantee 66,275 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Depreciation $ (3,535) $ (899) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Interest expense on mortgages payable $ (646,064) $ (675,442) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cash interest paid $ 563,179 $ 369,255 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Write off of deposit on property - - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Capital expenditures $ (68,664) $ (136,137) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Adjusted Funds From Operations $ (380,789) $ (394,353) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Going Concern

The Company's consolidated financial statements are prepared on a going concern basis.

The Company's ability to continue as a going concern is subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. The Company has incurred net losses and used significant cash resources in its operating activities since incorporation. It has relied upon financing to fund its operations and acquisitions, primarily through debt and private equity placements.

If the Company is otherwise unable to satisfy its current liabilities through suitable agreements for debt refinancing, equity financing or other measures, planned operations could be scaled back and a portion of the Company's asset could be sold. Additionally, the going concern assumption may no longer be appropriate for the consolidated financial statements and adjustments may be necessary to the carrying values of the assets and liabilities, the reported net loss and the classifications used in the statements of financial position.

About CHC Student Housing Corp.

CHC Student Housing (TSX VENTURE: CHC) is Canada's only publicly traded company offering high-quality purpose-built multi-residential student housing properties strategically located on campus or in close proximity to universities and colleges providing students a safe and secure living environment, affordable prices and high-quality amenities. CHC is focused on acquiring, developing and managing student housing in primary and well understood secondary markets in Canada. For more information, visit CHC at www.chcstudenthousing.com.

Non-IFRS measures

The Company's consolidated financial statements are prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards ("IFRS"). The following measures: net operating income (or "NOI"), funds from operations (or "FFO"), FFO per share, adjusted funds from operations (or "AFFO") and AFFO per share, are not measures recognized under IFRS and do not have standardized meanings prescribed by IFRS, and should not be compared to or construed as alternatives to profit/loss, cash flow from operating activities or other measures of financial performance determined in accordance with IFRS. However, these non-IFRS measures are recognized supplemental measures of performance for real estate issuers widely used by the real estate industry, particularly by those publicly traded entities that own and operate income-producing properties, and the Company believes they provide useful supplemental information to both management and readers in measuring the financial performance of the Company. Further details on non-IFRS measures are set out in the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis for the period ended December 31, 2015 and available on the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Cautions Regarding Future Plans and Forward-Looking Information

This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of Canadian securities laws. Forward-looking information is provided for the purposes of assisting the reader in understanding the Company's financial performance, financial position and cash flows 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 and readers are cautioned that such statements may not be appropriate for other purposes. Such information includes, without limitation, information regarding the business strategies of CHC. Although CHC believes that such information is reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Forward looking information is typically identified by words such as: believe, expect, anticipate, intend, estimate, postulate and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. CHC cautions investors that any forward-looking information provided by CHC is not a guarantee of future results or performance, and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward looking information as a result of various factors, including, but not limited to: CHC's ability to complete proposed or contemplated transactions; the state of the real estate sector generally; recent market volatility; CHC's ability to secure the necessary financing or to be fully able to implement its business strategies; and other risks and factors that CHC is unaware of at this time. A variety of factors, many of which are beyond the CHC's control, affect the operations, performance and results of the Company and its business, 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 risks discussed in CHC's materials filed with Canadian securities regulatory authorities from time to time, copies of which may be accessed through CHC's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The reader is cautioned to consider these and other factors, uncertainties and potential events carefully and not to put undue reliance on forward-looking information, as there can be no assurance that actual results will be consistent with such forward-looking information

The forward-looking information included in this press release relate only to events or information as of the date hereof. Except as specifically required by applicable Canadian law, CHC undertakes no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, after the date on which the statements are made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

This news release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities nor shall there by any sale of securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange ("TSXV") nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSXV) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts:

CHC Student Housing Corp.

Mark Hansen

President and CEO

647.288.9355

www.chcstudenthousing.com




TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- Denison Mines Corp. ("Denison" or the "Company") (TSX: DML)(NYSE MKT: DNN) is pleased to report that its 22.5% owned McClean Lake mill has obtained authorization from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission ("CNSC") to increase its annual production capacity of uranium ("U3O8") from 13 million to 24 million pounds per year.

Located in the infrastructure rich eastern portion of the Athabasca Basin region, in Northern of Saskatchewan, the McClean Lake mill is one of the most technologically advanced uranium mills in operation and is the only facility in the world designed to process high grade uranium ore without dilution. Since 2013, the McClean Lake mill has been in the process of an upgrade and expansion program to improve, modernize and increase the capacity of various circuits while ensuring high standards of employee safety and environmental protection.

The McClean Lake mill is owned by the McClean Lake Joint Venture ("MLJV"), a joint venture between AREVA Resources Canada Inc. ("AREVA") (70%), Denison (22.5%) and OURD (Canada) Co. Ltd. (7.5%), and is operated by AREVA. The McClean Lake mill is currently processing ore from the Cigar Lake mine under a toll milling agreement.

This regulatory approval from the CNSC will lead to a progressive ramp-up of the mill in line with the Cigar Lake mine's ramp-up to 18 million pounds U3O8 annually. The tandem of the Cigar Lake mine and McClean Lake mill will therefore become the second-largest uranium production centre in the world.

Denison's President and CEO, David Cates, commented, "The restart of the McClean Lake mill has been a tremendous success for the MLJV and we are very pleased with the AREVA's commitment to delivering operational results while maintaining a focus on the safety of the MLJV's workers and the environment. With authorization from the CNSC to increase the annual production at the mill, the MLJV is now in a position to deliver on its tolling commitment with the Cigar Lake joint venture and will have excess licensed processing capacity - which speaks to the strategic importance of the mill to the entire region."

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, 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. (GXU: CSE) to sell its African interests, with an expected closing date in late May or early June, 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.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Certain information contained in this press release constitutes "forward-looking information", within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and similar Canadian legislation concerning the business, operations and financial performance and condition of Denison. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "believes", or the negatives and/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 "has the potential to". In particular, this press release contains forward-looking information pertaining to the activities, plans and objectives of joint venture partners and other contractual parties, including the proposed expansion of production at the McClean Lake mill, and Denison's interest therein.

Forward looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management as of the date such statements are made, and they are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of Denison to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Denison believes that the expectations reflected in this forward-looking information are reasonable but there can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and may differ materially from those anticipated in this forward looking information. For a discussion in respect of risks and other factors that could influence forward-looking events, please refer to the "Risk Factors" in Denison's Annual Information Form dated March 24, 2016 available under its profile at www.sedar.com and in its Form 40-F available at www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml. These factors are not, and should not be construed as being, exhaustive.

Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The forward-looking information contained in this press release is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. Denison does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking information after the date of this press release to conform such information to actual results or to changes in its expectations except as otherwise required by applicable legislation.

Contacts:

Denison Mines Corp.

David Cates

President and Chief Executive Officer

(416) 979-1991 ext. 362



Denison Mines Corp.

Sophia Shane

Investor Relations

(604) 689-7842

www.denisonmines.com



Follow Denison on Twitter:

@DenisonMinesCo




TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- Changfeng Energy Inc., (TSX VENTURE: CFY) ("Changfeng" or the "Company"), a natural gas utility in China, is pleased to announce that, Sanya Changfeng New Energy Investment Co., Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Changfeng, has entered into a Statement of Intent for Cooperation (the "Statement") with EDF (China) Holding Ltd., a subsidiary of Electricite de France (the "EDF Group") to jointly pursue energy utilization and low carbon energy projects in Haitang Bay area ("Haitang Bay") of Sanya City, China.

Based on the Statement, Changfeng and EDF Group will further discuss the feasibility to establish a Joint Venture Company (the "Joint Venture") and jointly invest and operate in energy utilization projects in Sanya City. Changfeng and EDF Group respectively will own 50% each of the Joint Venture. This Statement creates no new legal obligations for Changfeng or the EDF Group.

Electricite de France (the "EDF Group")

The EDF Group is the world's biggest electricity generator. It covers every sector of expertise, from generation to trading and transmission grids. For almost 20 years, the EDF group has been aggressively developing business in China, and established a China division in Beijing. The EDF Group's activities in Asia (China, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos) are part of its deliberate growth strategy. Under this strategy, the EDF Group is involved in long-term projects, which reflect the spirit of co-operation and partnership, and a commitment to the Group's corporate and environmental values.

Haitang Bay

Haitang Bay is one of the five major bays in Sanya City, Hainan Province. It is a flagship project being promoted by the Hainan provincial government to build Hainan Island into an international tourism destination by 2020. The size of the Haitang Bay development area is estimated at 98.7 square km and includes approximately 24 km of beachfront. It is planned to build this area into a new township and house with more than twenty (20) five-star hotels by 2020. Haitang Bay will be a fully developed world-class vacation township with a population of 250,000. The city has estimated that gas usage in this area will exceed 60 MM M3 per annum by 2020. Changfeng has received the approval to build an LNG storage plant in the Haitang Bay. Currently, there are twelve newly built hotels, including the Hilton, and Sheraton-chains, in operation and using the natural gas supplied by Changfeng.

Changfeng Energy Inc.

Changfeng Energy Inc. is a natural gas service provider with operations located throughout the People's Republic of China. The Company services industrial, commercial and residential customers, providing them with natural gas for heating purposes and fuel for transportation. The Company has developed a significant natural gas pipeline network as well as urban gas delivery networks, stations, substations and gas pressure regulating stations in Sanya City & Haitang Bay. Through its network of pipelines, the Company provides safe and reliable delivery of natural gas to both homes and businesses. The Company is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario and its shares trade on the Toronto Venture Exchange under the trading symbol "CFY". For more information, please visit the Company website at www.changfengenergy.com

Forward-Looking Statements

Information set forth in this news release may involve forward-looking statements under applicable securities laws. The forward-looking statements contained herein are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. The forward-looking statements included in this document are made as of the date of this document and the Company 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 expressly required by applicable securities legislation. Although Management believes that the expectations represented in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities described herein and accordingly undue reliance should not be put on such.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSXV) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts:

Mr. Yan Zhao CPA. CA

Chief Financial Officer

416.362.5032

yan.zhao@changfengenergy.com



Ms. Ann S.Y. Lin

VP, Corporate Development and Corporate Secretary

416.362.5032

ann@changfengenergy.com




NEW YORK, NY -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- Institutional Investor, a world leading financial information company founded in 1967, is pleased to announce the results of the 2016 rankings of Japan's top CEOs, CFOs, Investor Relations Officers and Investor Relations Departments. Institutional Investor's CEO, David Antin, is the founder of the Executive Team rankings, which are supported by deep data and have become a key benchmark globally. This year, 443 Japanese companies received nominations across 25 business sectors. Corporate governance proved a key factor in determining the winners.

"Japan's recently enacted stewardship and corporate governance codes are spurring investors from around the world to learn more about Japanese companies and to request meetings with their chief executives," observes Thomas W. Johnson, Institutional Investor's director of research. "Voting in this year's All-Japan Executive Team survey, our annual ranking of the nation's top business leaders as seen through the eyes of investment professionals, surged by roughly 40 percent year over year."

Three companies sweep their sectors -- capturing first place in every category in which they are eligible to compete -- on the 2016 All-Japan Executive Team, Institutional Investor's exclusive annual ranking of the nation's corporate leaders as seen through the eyes of investment professionals:

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, a multinational engineering and electronics outfit

Mizuho Financial Group, the nation's second largest financial services firm, in terms of holdings

Nidec Corp., a manufacturer of electric motors for appliances, computers and other devices

Other companies that finish in the top three in every category (and the sector in which they rank) are:

Asahi Group Holdings (Beverages, Food & Tobacco)

Astellas Pharma (Health Care & Pharmaceuticals)

Daiwa House Industry Co. Construction)

Dentsu (Broadcasting)

Komatsu (Machinery)

Mitsubishi Corp. (Trading Companies)

Mitsubishi Electric Corp. (Electronics/Industrial)

Mitsui Chemicals (Chemicals)

Murata Manufacturing Co. (Electronics/Components)

Nissan Motor Co. (Autos)

Rakuten (Internet)

Sony Corp. (Electronics/Consumer)

Tokio Marine Holdings (Insurance & Other Nonbank Financials)

Yamato Holdings Co. (Transportation)

To see the top 3 winners per category, visit http://www.institutionalinvestor.com/Research/6279/Overview.html.

The 2016 All-Japan Executive Team reflects the opinions of 570 investment professionals at 226 financial services firms. Respondents from the buy side work at institutions that collectively manage an estimated $586 billion in Japanese equities.

The overall rankings in each of the four categories -- Best CEO, Best CFO, Best IR Professional and Best IR Company -- are based on combined buy- and sell-side votes. Detailed data behind the rankings is available by subscription.

"Money managers that voted in this year's survey work at firms that oversee more than half a trillion dollars in Japanese equities," Johnson reports. "This year they identified a higher number of companies and executives that they deemed worthy of recognition, which suggests that they are meeting with a wider array of corporate leaders and paying close attention to the level of transparency and disclosure that they receive."

"The All-Japan Executive Team is unique in the sense that the people who vote, whether they're on the buy side or sell side, are experts on the stocks they cover -- it's their job to know these companies inside and out," explains II Editor Michael Peltz. "They exert tremendous influence on current and potential shareholders by virtue of their expertise."

II asks portfolio managers and sell-side analysts to name the best CEOs, CFOs and investor relations professionals at the Japanese companies they cover, and to evaluate these businesses on several corporate governance attributes, including making board members and senior executives accessible, responding quickly and thoroughly to requests, providing timely and accurate disclosure of essential financial information, and so on. Responses to these questions are aggregated to produce an overall rank for each company.

About Institutional Investor

Now entering its fifth decade, Institutional Investor has consistently distinguished itself among the world's foremost financial publications with groundbreaking journalism and incisive writing that provides essential intelligence for a global audience. In addition, Institutional Investor offers a host of proprietary research and rankings that serve as respected industry benchmarks. For more information visit www.institutionalinvestor.com.

Contact:

Craig Leon

cleon@institutionalinvestor.com



Atsuko Ogino

+81 090-8518-0889




VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- Viscount Mining Corp. (TSX VENTURE: VML)(OTCQB: VLMGF) ("Viscount" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has closed today the first tranche of the Brokered Private Placement previously announced in its news release of April 25, 2016, (the "Private Placement") raising gross proceeds of $1,225,000 from the issuance and sale of 2,450,000 Units at a price of $0.50 per share. Each Unit consists of one (1) common share ("Common Share") of the Company and one (1) share purchase warrant ("Warrant").

Each Warrant will entitle the holder to acquire one (1) Common Share at an exercise price of $0.70 for a period of 24 months from the closing date of the Private Placement. In the event that the Company's common shares trade at a closing price on the Exchange of greater than $0.85 per share for a period of 20 consecutive trading days at any time after the closing date, the Company may accelerate the expiry date of the Warrants by giving notice to the holders thereof and in such case the Warrants will expire on the 30th day after the date hereafter referred to as the ("Eligible Acceleration Date") on which such notice is given by the Company.

These Common Shares and Warrants issued under the Private Placement will be subject to a four month and one day resale restriction expiring October 1st, 2016 for the first tranche.

Gravitas Securities Inc. ("GRAVITAS") acted as agent for and on behalf of Viscount and is entitled to an Agency Fee of 7% of the cash received from the sale of the Units to certain subscribers, and Compensation Warrants equal to 7% of the aggregate number of Units issued to certain subscribers, exercisable into Common Shares at an exercise price of $0.70 until May 31, 2018.

The Private Placement remains subject to the final approval of the TSX Venture Exchange.

The Company intends to use the net proceeds of the Private Placement for the advancement of the Company's 100%-owned Silver Cliff property in Colorado. Viscount plans to substantiate the mineral inventories through surface sampling and core drilling followed by an evaluation of deposit(s) potential through geophysical surveys, offset drilling and detailed geological mapping. Once this is completed a report will be generated to substantiate the value of the Silver Cliff Property.

Jim MacKenzie, CEO, commented, "We are pleased with the strong investor support for this financing, which strengthens Viscount's balance sheet and allows for advancement of the Company's 100%-owned Silver Cliff property in Colorado."

About Gravitas Securities Inc.

Gravitas Securities Inc. ("GRAVITAS") is a full service investment dealer platform registered with IIROC and headquartered in Toronto. Gravitas provides comprehensive investment banking services, retail advisory and private client portfolio management.

About Viscount Mining (TSX VENTURE: VML)(OTCQB: VLMGF)

Viscount Mining Corp. is an exploration company with a portfolio of gold and silver properties in the Western United States, including Cherry Creek in Nevada and Silver Cliff in Colorado. Cherry Creek is comprised of more than 10,000 acres, all 100% owned, and includes more than 20 past producing mines. Viscount has entered into an exploration earn-in agreement with Sumitomo Corporation covering the Cherry Creek property. Sumitomo can earn in up to a 75% interest in the property by producing a bankable feasibility study and by spending in addition a minimum of US$10,000,000 in exploration and development expenses by the eighth anniversary of the earn-in agreement. Silver Cliff in Colorado is comprised of 96 lode claims, covering much of the historical past-producing mineral districts of Silver Cliff and Rosita Hills.

For additional information regarding the above noted property and other corporate information, please visit the Company's website at www.viscountmining.com.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Jim MacKenzie, President, CEO and Director

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking" statements. Forward looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects", "plans", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "projects", "potential" and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could" or "should" occur. Although Viscount Mining Corp. believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results may differ materially from those in forward looking statements. Forward looking statements are based on the beliefs, estimates and opinions of Viscount Mining Corp. management on the date the statements are made. Except as required by law, Viscount Mining Corp. undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements in the event that management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change.

Contacts:

Viscount Investor Relations

604-960-0535

info@viscountmining.com

www.viscountmining.com




IRVINE, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/31/16 -- Burnham Los Angeles (Burnham LA), an extension of Irvine-based Burnham Benefits Insurance Services -- one of the largest privately owned employee benefits brokerages in California -- is pleased to report record growth for the second consecutive year, continuing on a streak of 100 percent from 2015. Launched in 2010 to meet high demand from clients in Los Angeles County, who account for 35 percent of Burnham Benefits' entire portfolio, Burnham LA has quickly established itself as an industry leader and among the few employee benefits brokerages to specialize solely in employee benefits consulting and, in particular, Affordable Care Act (ACA) compliance.

"We are extremely proud of Burnham's growth in the Los Angeles market," says Burnham Benefits founder and CEO Kristen Allison. "Under the impeccable leadership of vice presidents Cathy Gee and Denise Feldman, Burnham LA possesses the uncommon ability to successfully meet the complex needs of companies experiencing high-growth and high-volume expansion, as well as those in the private equity marketplace planning for mergers or acquisitions. Helping them navigate the maze of the ever-changing benefits world, Burnham LA consistently delivers solutions that help organizations achieve key business results."

With an esteemed reputation and track record for winning clients based on its ACA expertise, Burnham LA is trusted by reputable institutions and organizations. Supported by an in-house ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974) attorney, highly experienced benefits professionals, as well as best-in-class employer-reporting software vendors, Burnham LA provides a full spectrum of strategic and tactical benefits solutions, wielding the in-depth industry knowledge and Fortune 500 resources of a large firm while retaining the flexibility, creativity and consultative service of a privately held boutique.

The changes that have occurred in the healthcare market over the past several years have undoubtedly forced the role of an employee benefits broker to evolve into one of an advisor. It is no longer enough to market a benefits program and help with open enrollment; employers need help navigating plan options, as well as funding alternatives such as limited funding, self-funding and captives. They want help implementing benefits administration and human resource information systems (HRIS) that improve their efficiencies and seek guidance with new regulatory requirements placed upon them not only by ACA but also by state and local ordinances. Equally as important, they seek a trusted advisor who can educate their employees about health and wellness options so that they become knowledgeable consumers when it comes to healthcare and health insurance. And finally, they are looking for innovative and engaging ways to motivate employees to embrace healthier lifestyles, recognizing that a healthier workforce keeps medical costs under control in the long term.

"Specialization has allowed Burnham LA to emerge on the cutting edge of major trends in benefits programs, including multi-year strategic planning, healthcare reform guidance, cost-containment strategies, underwriting and actuarial services, legislative and corporate compliance support and self-funded plans," Allison adds. "There is no other local economy in the world quite like Los Angeles and the surrounding areas. Burnham LA not only understands the difficulties firms face maintaining a community-focused approach to business but also helps them save money and achieve their goals for the present and well beyond."

For more information, visit www.burnhambenefits.com.

About Burnham Benefits Insurance Services: Burnham Benefits Insurance Services, Inc. is a privately held, full-service employee benefits consulting and brokerage firm headquartered in Irvine, Calif. The firm is among the largest in the state to specialize solely in strategic employee benefits consulting and brokerage services. With a comprehensive offering of client-first health and wellness programs, Burnham effectively manages over $1.5 billion in premiums for more than 400 clients. A certified Benefits Corporation (B Corp), the firm maintains a more than 95 percent client retention rate and has averaged 25 percent growth annually over the past 10 years. Because Burnham Benefits does not have outside shareholders, it can easily adapt and create customized solutions that fit clients' best interests -- investing in cutting-edge technology and the tools and resources needed to provide the specialized level of service that today's rapidly challenging climate demands. Its team of more than 80 highly skilled industry professionals includes in-house underwriters, compliance officers, healthcare reform consultants, communications specialists and wellness experts. Through a strategic partnership with Burnham Gibson Wealth Advisors, Inc., Burnham also provides retirement planning and wealth management services. Burnham Benefits' footprint currently spans offices in Orange County, San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Sacramento and San Diego, Calif., as well as a satellite office in the Washington D.C. metro area. Burnham Benefits holds national recognition as Business Insurance's #1 Best Places to Work in Insurance 2013, 2014 and 2015, has been ranked a Best Place to Work by the Orange County Business Journal for five years running. Burnham Benefits founder and CEO Kristen Allison earned the Distinguished Founders Award from the Annual Association for Corporate Growth (ACG) in 2016. For more information, visit www.burnhambenefits.com.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Leslie Licano

Beyond Fifteen Communications, Inc.

949.733.8679

leslie@beyondfifteen.com




Ixaltis, a Toulouse, France-based startup specialized in genito-urinary disorders, raised 8m in first funding.

Backers included Irdinov, Ix o Private Equity, Principia, Sofimac, and Pierre Olivier Goineau, current President of France Biotech.

The company will use the funds to continue research into urinary incontinence.

Created by urology and pharmaceutical experts Dr Philippe Lluel, Christian Chavy, Dr Roberto Gradnik and Professors Pascal Rischmann and Xavier Game, Ixaltis is a biopharmaceutical research and clinical development company specializing in genito-urinary diseases.

The company acquired three molecules including:

 Litoxetine IXA-001* under exclusive licence from Sanofi and, with evidence of efficacy in pre clinical trials, started proof of concept/ Phase 2 in Urinary Incontinence,

 IXA-002, an MAO A-B inhibitor, and

 IXA-003, an MAO B inhibitor.

Ixaltis was also granted an OSEO loan of 2.8m for the MAGENTA collaborative industrial research project dedicated to uro-genital diseases.

*IXA-001 (Litoxetine) Litoxetine is an oral highly specific mixed serotonin agonist-antagonist. It was extensively evaluated by Sanofi previously in a CNS indication. The company has studied litoxetine in three different animal models of UI.

FinSMEs

31/05/2016
Chrysalix Venture Capital, a Vancouver, BC, Canada-based industrial innovation and alternative energy venture capital firm, and RoboValley, a center for robotics commercialization Located at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, launched a new fund.

With a target size of 100m, the RoboValley Fund will identify, invest in and commercialize robotics technologies.

Led by Mike Sherman, Managing Partner, the fund will connect novel robotics technology and market demand by combining RoboValley Innovation Hub and TU Delft Robotics Institute with Chrysalix established network of corporate and financial limited partners to identify industry problems and market needs that robotic solutions could solve.

FinSMEs

31/05/2016
Thermondo, a Berlin, Germany-based provider of innovative heating solutions, raised over 23m in Series C funding.

Backers included Global Founders Capital, E.on, Holtzbrinck Ventures, IBB and Picus Capital.

The company intends to use the funds to continue to innovate and launch new products.

Founded in late 2012 by Philipp Pausder, Florian Tetzlaff and Kristofer Fichtner, Thermondo provides efficient heating products such as condensing boilers, solar and fuel cell heaters.

The company also offers homeowners a complete package of services including consultation, preparation of proposals, applying for government subsidies, dismantling and disposal of old equipment, delivery, installation, maintenance and emergency.

It currently employs more than 200 people.

FinSMEs

31/05/2016
ABA English, a Barcelona, Spain-based online English language academy with over 10 million users worldwide, raised $12m in growth capital.

The round was led by Kennet Partners, an international growth equity firm, with participation from existing investor Nauta Capital and Inaki Ecenarro, the former founder and CEO of Trovit, the virtual search engine for classified ads, sold to NEXT Co in 2014 for $90m. In conjunction with the funding, Hillel Zidel, Managing Director at London based Kennet Partners, will join the Board at ABA along with Ecenarro.

The company intends to use the funds to further develop its methodology, to continue its international expansion, especially in target markets such as China and Turkey, and to develop its language learning method to encompass business-oriented areas.

Led by Javier Figarola, CEO and co-founder, ABA English is an online English language academy that offers a methodology based on contextual learning, translating the principles of intuitive and natural mother-tongue learning to the digital world, and using films specially developed for learning English that improve the user experience on any platform.

The platform is currently available in over 170 countries, including key territories such as Brazil, France, Italy, Mexico, Russia and Spain.

The company has 60 employees.

FinSMEs

31/05/2016
Arun Jaitley has recently stated that the SC diesel ban is in a transient phase and the Indian car market is large enough not to adversely affect the auto companies. Jaitley is currently in Japan for six days in an effort to bring Japanese investors into the country. He is scheduled to meet Osamu Suzuki, chairman of Suzuki Motor, the biggest Japanese investor in automobile sector in India.

In his statement, Jaitley said, I think the Indian auto sector is extremely comfortably placed. This is all transient phase which happens and I...
He labelled his Snapchat spoof video, featuring a face swap face-off between Sachin Tendulkar and Lata Mangeshkar, the Civil War. Instead, comedian and All India Bakchod member Tanmay Bhat found himself in the midst of a civil war, with two clear groups forming for and against him.

While one group said that even if the joke was not to everyones liking, it hardly merited the levels of outrage it elicited (including several political parties seeking police action against Tanmay); the others were of the opinion that such vilifying of national icons like Tendulkar and Mangeshkar could not be taken lightly  and that Bhat was a repeat offender.

(Read Firstposts take on both sides of the subject here.)

Whichever side you agreed with, one thing cannot be denied  Tanmay Bhat is now facing a whole lot of trouble.

But with at least four political parties  the Shiv Sena, BJP, NCP and MNS  seeking action against Tanmay, and roping in everyone from the Maharashtra CM to the Mumbai Polices Cyber Crime Cell in their mission, it could be difficult to keep track of just whos asking for what.

Heres our ready reckoner on all the legal action (or threats thereof) that Tanmay Bhat now has to contend with:

MNS (Maharashtra Navnirman Sena): Police complaint and a cyber crime probe request

Members of Raj Thackerays party (the Cine Workers Wing, to be precise) filed a complaint at the Shivaji Park Police Station in Mumbai. The MNSs spokesperson Shalini Thackeray also wrote to the Cyber Crime Cell, stating that Tanmay Bhats video amounted to an insult to national icons.

BJP: Letter to police commissioner

The BJP wasnt about to just approach any police station and file a complaint. The partys Mumbai division chairman Aashish Shelar ensured that the BJPs displeasure with Tanmays joke was made evident to the powers-that-be. Shelar set up a meeting with Mumbais commissioner of police, Dattatray Padsalgikar, and passed on the complaint against the comedian directly to his office.

Shiv Sena: A letter to the CM

The partys spokesperson Neelam Gorhe has reportedly asked Maharastras chief minister Devendra Fadnavis to look into the Tanmay Bhat video, and has sought action against both the comedian and the group he belongs to, All India Bakchod.

The NCP: Burn!

Comedians may rely on insults to administer an effective insult  aka burn!  but the Nationalist Congress Party preferred to take a rather direct approach: Party members actually set fire to effigies of Tanmay Bhatt. The partys Mumbai division chairperson, Surekha Pednekar was quoted as saying: We have strict objections to the video and whatever Bhat has portrayed is critically wrong. We shall write to the police commissioner to register a complaint against such people who don't understand the meaning of comedy.

Meanwhile, the Mumbai Police has taken down over 200 posts online that contained the video in question. Hindustan Times reported that the police were in touch with Google, Facebook and YouTube to block the video.

Assistant commissioner of police Yashwant Pathak told ANI that the police were also trying to identify and block the IP address of the device from which the video was uploaded.
Oil prices inched up toward $50 a barrel on Monday, although uncertainty ahead of an OPEC producer-group meeting later in the week was expected to cap gains.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries meets in Vienna on Thursday, although most analysts did not expect any changes in the group's production.

While OPEC has been unable to agree on an output freeze to support prices, Iraq was the latest Middle East producer to raise its export quota ahead of the meeting, supplying 5 million barrels of extra crude to its partners in June.

"So far there's pretty much a consensus that nothing will happen and that the same strategies will continue, which are basically produce as much as you want and go for market share," said energy economist James L. Williams of WTRG Economics in Arkansas.

Price moves will be choppy in the run-up to the meeting, Williams added.

Brent crude futures LCOc1 were up 47 cents at $49.79 a barrel at 1714 GMT, reversing losses from earlier in the day, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate, or WTI, crude futures CLc1 rose 27 cents to $49.60.

Trade was subdued because of public holidays in Britain and the United States, where Monday's Memorial Day is seen as the traditional start of U.S. summer driving season.

Vienna-based consultancy JBC Energy said global oil demand rose by 1.5 million barrels per day in January-April. That was stronger than many forecasts and stemmed from strong consumption in the United States, China and India.

U.S. crude output also dropped to its lowest since September 2014 after drillers cut rigs for the ninth week in 10 despite the recent rally in oil prices.

However, an expected rise in Canadian oil sands production could weigh on WTI. Suncor Energy (SU.TO) is planning to ramp up output at its fields in Alberta this week after it was forced to shut them down earlier in May because of massive wildfires.

Outages because of wildfires in Canada and unrest in Libya and Nigeria helped to push oil prices to a seven-month high in recent weeks.

(Additional reporting by Ron Bousso in London and Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - India has the most slaves in the world with over 18 million people trapped in debt bondage, forced into marriage, sold to brothels or born into servitude, according to a global slavery index, which noted an improved government response to the issue.

Forty percent of the world's estimated 45.8 million slaves are in India, although the scourge exists in all 167 nations surveyed by the Australian-based group Walk Free Foundation.

Fiona David, head of global research at Walk Free, said while estimates of slavery had risen by 15 percent in India from the previous figure due to better data collection, government efforts to curb such exploitation had also improved.

"The incidences of slavery in 2016 is larger than we thought. This doesn't necessarily mean the numbers have gone up since the last Global Slavery Index, but more because of a greater improvement in our measurements," David said.

"But what is new is that the Indian government is taking really exciting steps to bring all the different pieces of legislation together into one anti-trafficking act. It's a huge step forward."

The index found that India with a population of 1.3 billion had the largest number of slaves in absolute terms at 18.35 million, followed by China, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.

India however ranked fourth in the index in terms of prevalence of slavery as a percentage of the population - at 1.4 percent - after North Korea, Uzbekistan, Cambodia.

FORCED MARRIAGE, CHILD SOLDIERS

The third edition of the index was based on interviews U.S. pollster Gallup conducted with about 42,000 people globally - 14,000 of them in India.

All forms of slavery were prevalent in India, it said, including inter-generational bonded labour, forced child labour, commercial sexual exploitation, forced begging, forced recruitment into non-state armed groups and forced marriage.

Respondents admitted to being made to work to repay a loan taken by themselves or another family member.

Girls and women described being forced or duped into prostitution by traffickers and brothel owners, many of them locked in a room and repeatedly raped.

Domestic workers spoke of a lack of freedom, long working hours, little or no wages and physical and sexual abuse. Street beggars said they were made to beg by organised criminal gangs.

The report said a preference for sons in India had led to the widespread, yet illegal practice of aborting female foetuses - resulting in fewer females in some parts of the country and fuelling the trafficking of girls and women for brides.

"It is reported that in some instances, girls are forced into marriage and then used as unpaid labourers  local day labourers cost $140 for a season but a bride can cost only $100 as a once off payment," the Global Slavery Index report said.

In Indian states such as Kashmir, Jharkhand, Assam, Odisha and Chhattisgarh, children were being forcibly recruited by opposition groups as informers or trained to fight, it noted.

GOVERNMENT RESPONSE IMPROVES

The index, which also rates government response to tackling slavery based on support for victims, a strong criminal justice system and effective coordination and accountability, said India's response had improved.

It upgraded India's rating, praising efforts a national policy on domestic workers, the introduction of a new anti-trafficking law and an online platform to find missing children.

India unveiled a draft of its first-ever comprehensive anti-human trafficking law on Monday which focuses on greater protection for victims and provides for special courts.

The proposed law also provides for more shelters for victims as well as a fund to help them rebuild their lives, and calls for a special investigative agency to boost convictions.

David said this was a critical step towards curbing modern day slavery in India, but stressed that implementation was key.

"After all, a law is just words on paper until it is implemented," she said.

(Reporting by Nita Bhalla. Editing by Katie Nguyen. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Days after IAS officer Ajay Singh Gangwar was transferred for praising Jawaharlal Nehru on Facebook, he has been asked by the Madhya Pradesh government to explain another post calling for a peoples revolution against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

One of his posts dated 23 January, 2015 referred to an opinion piece, critical of Modis 'Make in India' campaign that was published on the editorial page of Jansatta, according to The Indian Express. The notice sought his reply within a week.

Gangwar, however, claimed that the post is not on his timeline and he may have liked an article shared on Facebook. They are doing this because their action of transferring me for my comments on Nehru boomeranged on them. They are doing this to divert attention, said Gangwar.

He accused the government of gherabandi while stating that a Facebook share or like is similar to handing over a book to someone in the library.

He further called it an ideological battle saying, Whatever policy they make about freedom of speech and expression has to conform to the Constitution. Otherwise, it will be challenged in a court of law, The Indian Express quoted him as saying.

Last week, Gangwar was transferred by the Madhya Pradesh government as deputy secretary in the Secretariat in Bhopal. He praised Nehru for preventing India from becoming a 'Hindu Taliban Rashtra' in 1947 in his Facebook post. He further asked if Nehru was at fault for honouring Sarabhai and Homi Jehangir instead of Asaram and Ramdev.

His transfer came to notice on 27 May, the death anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru. Congress was quick to denounce the government for its action against Gangwar.

Under BJP, you aren't allowed to praise our Freedom Fighters. Is it because RSS played no role in Freedom Struggle? pic.twitter.com/LqyJTyXAaf  INC India (@INCIndia) May 27, 2016

Firstpost wrote about BJPs hypocritical stand of transferring Gangwar while its own leaders keep showering praises on Nehru.
Around 20 people, including an officer of the rank of Lt Colonel, were killed and several injured in a major fire in India's biggest ammunition depot located in Pulgaon, 110 km from Nagpur in Maharashtra. Catering to Army's ammunition needs in the western sector, Pulgaon is home to the biggest stockpile of weapons including Brahmos missiles.

The fire, at the depot in Wardha district is now said to be limited to a small area and several surrounding villages have been evacuated with a Court of Inquiry ordered by the Army Chief, General Dalbir Singh Suhag. Quoting an Army officer, PTI reported that "secondary fire and explosions cannot be ruled out now". Television footage showed massive flames lighting up the night sky at Pulgaon where the central ammunition depot is located.

The blaze triggered multiple explosions, rocking houses in the area and forcing the evacuation of more than 1,000 people.

Two among the 20 dead were identified as Lt Col RS Pawar and Major K Manoj. The dead and injured soldiers belonged to the Defence Security Corp (DSC) that guards strategic defence installations.

Defence minister Manohar Parrikar is slated to visit Pulgaon this afternoon. Incidentally, Parikkar was in Pune to meet villagers around another ammunition depot in Pimpri and Chinchwad. The villagers have been demanding that the sanitised area around the dump be reduced to allow them to build houses. In recent years, there have been several fires at ammunition depots with the last one in West Bengal's Panagarh which is also an IAF base, which was rocked by explosions in 2010.

In 2007, thousands of villagers living in Kashmir's Anantnag district were evacuated after a huge fire broke out at a depot, injuring at least 25 people.

But, it was a fire in 2000 at an ammunition depot in Bharatpur in Rajasthan that put our attention back on the handling of ammunition and the safety of civilians around such locations. However, in recent years the defence ministry has been under immense pressure from local politicians to relax norms on no-go-areas around these ammunition depots.

According to the Works of Defence Act 1903, the ministry of defence can issue notification for sensitive defence establishments, putting restrictions on construction activities carried out by civilians in a certain radius for safety reasons in case of accidents.

An article in The Indian Express on 17 May quoted Lok Sabha MP from Shirur, Shivajirao Adhalrao Patil, who raised the issue of Red Zone limits around Dighi Magazine Depot in the assembly claiming that the defence minister was positive about reducing the Outer Safety Distance (OSD) from 1,145 metres to 500 metres, but there was resistance from ministry officials.

Local people have demanded a reduction in the 2,000-yard limit of the Red Zone around Dehu Road ammunition depot and Dighi magazine depot as several people are living around these areas. Parikkar travelled to Pune on Tuesday to discuss the issue with local people when the Pulgaon ammunition dump caught fire.

While the Court of Inquiry will conduct a thorough investigation into the cause of this fire serious questions are being raised about the security of civilians in surrounding areas. Coinciding with demands from residents of Pimpri and Chinchwad, an IAF ammunition depot in Gurgaon was also in news for similar demands.

Encroachments, with the complicity of local administration, have created a major security hazard around the Gurgaon IAF depot. Attempts to demolish tenements hugging the outer walls of the IAF depot faced strong protests as local politicians demanded demanding that norms be relaxed at the cost of safety of civilian population living around.

The IAF could not get the surrounding areas vacated and the matter went to the courts.

In March this year, the Punjab and Haryana High Court directed the deputy commissioners (DCs) of Gurgaon and Faridabad to issue notices against those who have made constructions within 300 metre around the IAF ammunition depot Gurgaon and 100-metre around the air forces station in Faridabad.

The state government is in talks with private builders to provide alternate housing to people living near the IAF ammunition depot. The decision comes after Punjab and Haryana high court directed the Khattar government to remove all structures that lie within 300 metres of the depot.

The Hindu reported from the IAF ammunition in Gurgaon in February 2016: "surrounded by unauthorised buildings, security of 54 Air Stores Park, Air Force Station Ammunition Depot on Old Delhi-Gurgaon Road, could be a major concern for the authorities. Though no construction is allowed in a 900 meter radius around the IAF ammunition depot, houses - most of them with a second floor - rise above the concertina mesh on the depot's boundary wall. Though crucial for the IAF because of its strategic location near Delhi, the political patronage and a mix of civic indifference and collusion has allowed houses to be built deep inside the restricted zone of the depot."
Nagpur: Twenty security personnel, including two Army officers, were killed in a major fire that broke out at the central ammunition depot in Maharashtra's Pulgoan that houses the biggest stockpile of weapons in the country.

Two officers, including a Lieutenant Colonel, and 15 Defence Security Corp (DSC) jawans were among those killed in the blaze, an Army officer said.

Also, at least 19 security personnel were injured in the fire that has spread to number of sheds that houses ammunitions, bombs and other explosive items.

Sources said residents of nearby villages have been evacuated and Army helicopters pressed into service to help in the evacuation of the injured security personnel.

"The main fire at one of the sheds has been extinguished. The situation is being stabilised. Secondary fire and explosions cannot be ruled out now," the Army officer said refusing to go into the reasons of the fire.

Army has ordered an inquiry into the incident.

The central ammunition depot at Pulgaon is India's biggest ammunition depot as stocks from various factories comes to Pulgaon first and is then distributed to various forward areas. Pulgaon is 110 kms from Nagpur.
Gauhati University expelled a student and suspended two others for indulging in anti-varsity activities following an objectionable Facebook post and an RTI seeking the universitys financial status.

An India Today report states that an order dated 28 May expelled Milton Handique for life while Rejaul Karim and Writtick Saikia were rusticated for one year each. It was signed by the universitys secretary, Hemanta Nath and was handed over on 30 May.

The notification issued said, after completion of the enquiry and hearing conducted by the Residence, Health and Discipline Board (R.H&D), GU, in its meeting held on 22-04-2016 and as approved by the vice-chancellor, Gauhati University, dated 27-05-2016, disciplinary actions have been taken."

It further added that the enquiry has found the students "guilty of indulging in activities detrimental to the university amounting to indiscipline."

Handique and Karim are students of the University Law College while Saikia is a mass communication student.

Handique collapsed as soon as he was handed the notice by the police, claimed his colleagues. A Hindustan Times report quoted a university students leader as saying, He (Handique) is in the ICU of a private hospital where he was taken after the university hospital declined to admit him.

In their defence, an official of the Gauhati University said, Handique had become a habitual rule-breaker. He also publicly posted derogatory remarks against the university authorities on social media, according to a Times of India report.

The other two students have been filing RTI queries in many departments. When they did not get answers from some, they threatened to lock those departments, he added.

NSUI and a section of the students termed the suspensions too harsh and demanded a withdrawal. A Chhatra Mukti Sangram Samiti member has threatened protests against the universitys dictatorial move if the order is not revoked.
The final report on the meat found from the house of Akhlaq in Bisahra Village of Greater Noida, has confirmed that the flesh was that of a cow. The report was presented in the court on Tuesday. The same has been compiled by the Central Forensic and Scientific Lab in Mathura. Interestingly, the lab is governed by the Uttar Pradesh government.

Dadri-Final

Interestingly, the preliminary report of the lab test of the pieced of meat recovered from the house of Akhlaq had ruled out that it was cow meat. The report suggested that the flesh is that of a goat. 50-year-old Akhlaq was killed by an angry mob over allegations and rumour that his family was feasting on meat of a cow calf.

Dadri-1

The timing of the report is in question. The report confirming that if was cow meat comes at a time when Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh are round the corner. This report could well be used as a tool to funnel religious sentiments by various political parties and divide the state on religious grounds quite easily.

The earlier and report had been issued by the Deputy Chief Medical Veterinary Officer of the Government Veterinary Hospital, of Dadri, Disrtict Gautam Budh Nagar. It says that "due to the request of Tej Pal Singh, Sub-Inspector, Police Station Jarcha, case no. 241/15 dated 29/09/2015, I have examined the meat seized by the police from the village".

The report said that meat weighing about 4-5 kilograms in the form of small pieces, which was non-hygienic, red in colour and foul smelling with deposits of white fat was received for further tests. The meat pieces were from the the hind legs of the animal and skin of the animal was intact.

The officer had then concluded the initial report by saying that "to the best of my knowledge, it seems that this meat belongs to goat progeny but for final confirmation and diagnosis, sample have been taken and sent to forensic laboratory, Mathura. Rest of the meat was handed over to the police authority for final disposal".

The incident had taken place in Bisahra Village of Greater Noida on the night of September 28, last, when there was an announcement was made from the loud speaker of a local temple that the family members of Akhlaq were consuming beef at home.

Immediately, a mob of about 200 persons gathered outside the house of Akhlaq's house and hell broke loose. While Akhlaq was beaten to death, his younger son Danish, sustained severe head injuries. He was treated at a local hospital in Noida from where he was later shifted to the Army Hospital in Delhi. The elder son of Akhlaq and Danish's elder brother is a Corporal with the Indian Air Force and was posted in Chennai when the incident took place.

The local police had registered an FIR and ten persons including the son of a local BJP leader was arrested. Seven more persons were arrested later taking the total arrest count to seventeen. The police have filed a charge sheet in this case.
The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Tuesday rejected Art of Livings (AOL) plea to pay compensation by bank guarantee for violation of environment norms during a cultural event organised in March this year, reports ANI.

The organisation must now pay nearly five crores as a fine, the country's top environment court said on Tuesday.

Art of Living "used the order of the court to hold the event and then went back on its commitment," the NGT said on Tuesday. The court also added that the organisers tried multiple legal cases "in order not to pay the fine" as a result of which the "conduct of the foundation has been called into question," reports NDTV.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's Art of Living had moved the National Green Tribunal in early April seeking its nod to accept the fine, slapped for allegedly damaging Yamuna's biodiversity, as bank guarantee instead of "payment of balance amount".

The green panel on 9 March had refused to prohibit the 'World Culture Festival' held between 11 and 13 March but slapped a fine of Rs five crore on his Art of Living foundation for damaging biodiversity and aquatic life of Yamuna.

Later on 11 March, AOL moved a plea seeking four weeks time for depositing the amount after which the tribunal allowed the foundation to deposit Rs 25 lakh on that day and granted three weeks time period to pay the balance amount.

"The applicant submits that the present application is being filed for modification of the order dated 9 and 11 March to allow for submission for security by way of a bank guarantee in lieu of payment of balance amount as directed.

"The applicant is in the process of preparing proposal laying down process/methodology for collection of scientific data/evidence regarding assessment of actual environmental damage, if any, and hopes to persuade that the damage is neither permanent nor irreversible but, in fact, remediable and respectfully seeks an opportunity to demonstrate that the allegations levelled against it are completely without foundation and the reports submitted by expert committees which form the basis of previous orders were predominantly based on visual examination of the site rather than a detailed scientific assessment which, in any event, was not possible due to paucity of time," the plea said.

AOL has also sought to submit a proposal for laying down methodology for collection of scientific data regarding assessment of actual environmental damage and requested the tribunal to grant 45 days for the same.

Recently, Manoj Mishra of Yamuna Jiye Abhiyaan filed a review plea challenging the NGT order which had dismissed his petition on the ground of "delay and lapses on the part of the applicant in approaching the tribunal".

With inputs from PTI
The surrender of Tariq Pandit, a top Hizbul Mujahideen militant and a close aide of its commander Burhan Wani, before the army on Saturday, could have serious impact on the new militancy wave emerging from south Kashmir.

Such surrenders by prominent militants or even their arrest in the past have been detrimental to the militant networks and their operations in the Valley. In north Kashmir, where it was once at peak, the intensity of militancy also decreased in past few years due to arrest of a few active militants. Both the arrests and the surrender have been a major help to the security forces in damaging the rise of the new militancy.

Pandit, 25, was one of the militants who prominently featured in a picture that went viral on social networking sites last year, when the poster boy of Kashmirs new militancy, Wani, decided to shun the cloak of anonymity and change the strategy for attracting youth towards the militancy. Over the past one year, majority of the militants brandishing automatic weapons in that picture have been killed by the security forces.

But Pandit is the only one, who has preferred to surrender before the forces, although the reasons attributed arent known, his sudden surrender would leave the Wanis group vulnerable. This major breakthrough comes at a time when the security forces have intensified their operation across south Kashmir against the militants, having been able to neutralize majority of the known faces in the area.

Pandit, for the security agencies, is a big fish, when it comes to using his knowledge and hideouts of the Wanis group because he, according to the police, knew the areas and the places where the Hizb group would hold meetings or roam in the jungles.

This has worked for the forces in the past in north Kashmirs troubled town of Sopore in April 2013, when police managed to nab a top Lashkar militant Qari Naved alias Fahadullah. It is still not clear if it was surrender or police apprehended him. But his arrest led to almost winding up of militancy from Sopore town. At that time, the police said Fahadullah was sending local youths to Pakistan for advanced arms and communication training. Even the people whom he had met in the streets were arrested.

This could also work well in case of Pandit, sources say, from the last two days police and army have carried out many search operations following the leads provided by him, including in the village of Tral, of which Wani, the Hizb Commander is a resident of.

Experts says Pandits surrender would effect the new militancy in two ways.

First, the confidence level of the people wanting to join the militant groups would diminish looking at one of the close aide of the divisional Commander surrendering before the police. And the suspicion on the streets rising on what led to Pandit's decision many would try to distance themselves from the very idea of militancy.

Secondly, almost majority of the places used by these local Kashmiri militants have been compromised after the surrender of Pandit, the hideouts, the houses which the militants might have used and the people who might have helped the group in recent years.

There is no doubt that the earth under the feet of Wani is shrinking day after day. Most of his comrades have been killed in recent months and the people who have been sheltering him in different villages would be also afraid after Pandit's arrest, a senior police officer said.

It has to be seen how much information would the security forces be able to retrieve from Pandit in the coming weeks. If his surrender means anything, it definitely suggests that the security forces are closing in on the popular commander of new militancy Burhan Wani, who has otherwise been successful to sustain and operate so far.
Patna: Senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi on Tuesday described as "speculative", media reports that he was interested in going to Rajya Sabha from Bihar to become a minister in NDA government at the centre and said that he respected party's decision for him to continue working for the state.

"It was a media speculation," he told reporters when asked about his name cropping up for Rajya Sabha nomination in the biennial poll.

"I respect party's decision asking me to continue working for Bihar," Sushil Modi, who is state BJP Parliamentary Board leader, said after his weekly public interaction programme.

Sushil Modi, who has been the face of the party in the state for long, said he never expressed any personal desire for any post or position.

Media reports had suggested name of Sushil Modi for Rajya Sabha to become a minister in the Narendra Modi government.

The party choice finally fell on former state BJP president Gopal Narayan Singh, who filed his nomination today.

BJP on the basis of its strength of 53 in Legislative Assembly in Bihar could easily win one seat out of five that fell vacant. JD(U) and RJD have fielded two candidates each for the rest four seats.

Sushil Modi also rubbished media reports about "rumbling" within BJP over selection of Singh and claimed he is a "consensus" candidate of the party and NDA as a whole.

"The fact that I and other BJP leaders along with those from allies LJP, HAM and RLSP were present at the nomination of Gopal Narayan Singh and two other party nominees for Legislative Council dismisses any rumbling," he said.

Asked about selection of Singh against whom there were a few cases, Sushil Modi defended him saying "there are no less than a dozen cases due to political rivalry against me too."

Sushil Modi also made a blistering attack on the Nitish Kumar government over pass percentage in matriculation dropping to half this year.

"What does this show. The same CM allowed cheating last year due to election in mind but curbed it this time after the poll," he alleged.

The pass percentage in Matriculation has dropped to around 45 percent this time as compared to nearly 75 percent last time when photographs of parents and aides climbing wall of a school building in Vaishali district to supply chits had gone viral.

He also attributed poor results this year to vacancy of nearly one lakh posts of teachers in schools particularly in the science subject.
New York: Donald Trump went on the offensive against the US media Tuesday, slamming coverage of $6 million he claimed to raise for veterans, branding the political press "dishonest" and one journalist "a sleaze."

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee, who has a thin skin when it comes to perceived slights in the media, slammed the press for questioning his claim to have raised $6 million on one night in Iowa in January.

The former reality TV star annihilated 16 rivals in the race to sew up the Republican nomination for the White House, and is trailing Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton by just a few percentage points in recent polls.

Last January, he skipped a Republican debate hosted by Fox News in a row over the television channel's perceived bias and instead hosted a fundraising event for veterans' charities.

Trump said Tuesday that he had raised $5.6 million, of which every penny had been donated to veteran charities, and that he expected additional donations to tip the figure over the $6 million mark.

But the real estate tycoon said the media coverage seemed intent on finding fault in actions he said were entirely altruistic.

"The press should be ashamed," he said. "I have never received such bad publicity for doing such a good job," Trump hectored.

"I think the political press is among the most dishonest people that I have ever met," he added, before pointing to Tom Llamas, who covers the Republican race for ABC News.

"You're a sleaze because you know the facts and you know the facts well."

Llamas took to twitter in response. "Trump just called me a 'sleaze.' Should be an interesting week," he wrote.

The candidate called Bill Kristol, editor of neoconservative magazine "The Weekly Standard" and a fierce critic of the Republican nominee "a loser."

"I've won some and I've lost some, but one thing I've always tried not to be is a roaring jackass," wrote Kristol on Twitter in response.

Trump batted aside questions on whether he needed a thicker skin to run for the presidency.

"I think it's bothersome," he insisted. "I have given a lot of money... and I think when the press portrays it differently, the press is being very dishonest, so I don't like that."

Al Baldasaro, a retired Marine and Republican representative in New Hampshire's state house of representatives, leapt to Trump's defense dressed in a suit and Trump campaign trucker hat.

"I think the liberal media, and I have been dealing with you a long time, need to get your head out of your butt, focus on the real issues," he said.

(Text by AFP, original video content by FP)
Tokyo: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday expressed confidence that the much delayed Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill will be passed in the monsoon session, saying "almost every political party" is supporting it.

Speaking at 'The Future of Asia' Conference organised by Nikkei Inc, he said the GST Bill -- which creates a single national sales tax to replace several state and central levies-- has already been approved by the Lok Sabha or Lower House of Parliament and is slated to come up in the Upper House where the government doesn't have a majority.

"But I am optimistic because an overwhelming number of political parties, almost every political party, has supported it," he said.

Without naming opposition Congress, he said one party had some reservations on certain provisions. "We are trying to be in dialogue with them and make sure that we are able to bring them on board."

The main opposition party wants the rate of the goods and services tax capped at 18 percent, the proposed 1 percent additional levy on inter-state trade be removed and an independent dispute resolution mechanism for states set up.

The Congress had first proposed the GST in 2006. The present BJP government had originally planned to pass the GST Bill in Parliament in April, converting 29 states into a single market. But the deadline was missed as the bill remained stuck in the Rajya Sabha.

"And I am reasonably optimistic over the next session of Parliament, the GST reform will also ....(go through). And if that were to happen then our ability of implement it after passing supporting legislation in near future will also be very high," he said.

Jaitley further said he believed that reforms in India are a continuous process.

"There will be no finishing line as far as reforms are concerned. Both through legislation and executive action we still have a large number of steps lined up and that direction is consistently going to be maintained," he added.

Once the GST, touted as the biggest reform of the indirect taxation since Independence, is passed, India will become one single market.

After Parliament approves the constitutional amendment to allow GST, the measure needs to be ratified by more than half of states. Then Parliament must pass another bill to implement the GST.

The overall rate, which would vary for different goods,would be set by a newly formed GST Council.
On Tuesday, Congress party president Sonia Gandhi criticised the Narendra Modi government on its two years in power and came out in defence of her son-in-law Robert Vadra over an inquiry into whether he was bought a benami house in London from the arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari.

This was a strange outburst from a party leader who doesn't speak to the media very often, but on this occasion spoke at length in defence of Vadra, who isn't even a party member.

Sonia criticised the Modi government for celebrating its success of two years. She disapproved of Modi's conduct, alleging that he behaves like an emperor as opposed to an elected official leader. She said, "I've never seen anything like this, Modi ji is a PM not a shehenshah"

She added, "Our nation is facing drought, poverty, farmer is in pain; at these times a "show" is not appropriate."

#WATCH Congress President Sonia Gandhi reacts on allegations on Robert Vadra of links with arms dealerhttps://t.co/CYS9754KBH  ANI (@ANI_news) May 31, 2016

The Congress chief dared the government to conduct investigations into the matter if they had sufficient proof. She alleged, "Yeh bhi ek conspiracy hai, 'Congress-mukt Bharat' ka matlab kya hai? Roz bahaana banate hain, galat ilzaam lagate hain (This too is a conspiracy by the BJP for a Congress-free India. They make different excuses everyday and allege wrong things.)

She added, "Agar aisi baat hai, toh bina bhed-bhaav jaanch karo; doodh ka doodh paani ka paani (Without any bias, lets have an investigation in the matter. The truth shall be revealed).

According to an exclusive report by NDTV, Vadra, is being probed after a connection was found between him and arms dealer Bhandari. The connection came to light during an the Income Tax raids on Bhandari, where a series of email interactions between Bhandari and Vadra also revealed the existence of a London property (bought for almost Rs 19 crore).

Vadra, who arguably shot to fame due to his business deals, was also mentioned in the documents released by India Against Corruption (IAC) that showed how he acquired land assets in and around the National Capital Region (NCR), worth hundreds of crores of rupees, funded by interest-free loans given to him by DLF and other companies for no apparent reason, as mentioned in an earlier report.

Lately, the Modi government has alleged the Congress of corruption in various deals and scams. The party has been under constant scrutiny over various deals like the AgustaWestland chopper deal.

Earlier in the year the party chief and her son Rahul Gandhi had been named in the National Herald controversy wherein the Congress was allegedly involved in illegal activities. At the time too, Sonia had lashed out saying, 'Why dont you challenge us in the court?'.

The case went to the courts and Rahul and Sonia are now out on bail. At the time too, the party president had claimed that this was a controversy by the BJP against the Congress.
India today stands at crossroads.

While half of the countrys ministers embark on journeys to far off nations in pursuance of relationship building, the nation bears witness to the other half who openly indulge in racism with their insensitive remarks.

As India reels under the recent spate of attacks on African nationals, one would expect nation's leaders to stand in solidarity and condemn such attacks. However, what is happening is a little different from the imagined ideal scenario.

Sample these ministers:

Even as Sushma Swaraj geared up for damage control after the murder of the Congolese national in Delhi, and similar attacks on African nationals in the capital, Union Minister VK Singh, dismissed the attacks and called them 'minor scuffles' and blamed the media for blowing things out of proportion.

Union Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar at a Make in India initiative held in June 2015, in Delhi, told the media and others present how "Chinese" were invading the Indian market.

Chief Minister of Goa Laxmikant Parserekar had this to say when he was asked about racist attacks on Africans in the country.

Dayanand Mandrekar, minister of arts and culture in Goa had this wonderful insight about Nigerians.

Union Minister Giriraj Singh, who made headlines when he told all those who were opposed to Narendra Modi as the PM candidate in 2014, to go to Pakistan, said this very sophisticated thing about Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

It's Parsekar again! The minister rather than focusing on the issue at hand, chose to address the marital prospects of the nurses.

While the Centre countinued its efforts of placating African nationals, Goa tourism minister Dilip Parulekar said something that made MEA Sushma Swaraj's life a little more miserable.

Following the arrest of a Nigerian national from Calangute beach in Goa, BJP legislator Subhash Phaldesai compared Africans to "Wild Animals".
New Delhi: The BJP on Tuesday said that Congress President Sonia Gandhi's defence of her son-in-law Robert Vadra over allegations that he owns 'benami' property in London vindicates the party's old charge that whatever Vadra does has the backing of the Gandhi family.

"Vadra has the blessings of 10 Janpath...That is why he has earned so much money. He can't be dubbed as a private citizen. Whatever he has done has the backing of Sonia Gandhi and Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi," BJP National Secretary Shrikant Sharma told IANS.

"You can't separate Vadra from the Gandhi family. Sonia Gandhi coming out in support of Vadra has established our charges," he added.

Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Kirit Somaiya on Monday sought a detailed inquiry by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) into the alleged involvement of Vadra in the 2009 purchase of a 'benami' or proxy-owned mansion in London.

Reacting to the allegations, Sonia Gandhi said in Rae Bareli on Tuesday: "This is also a political conspiracy. What do you mean by Congress-mukt Bharat? Everyday they give excuses and level wrong allegations."

"If this is true, then they should conduct an unbiased probe. Everything will become clear," said an angry Sonia Gandhi, who was on a two-day visit to Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh, her Lok Sabha constieuency.

Continuing his attack on Sonia Gandhi, the BJP's national media convenor said that the Congress president has been trying to threaten the BJP whenever there is a corruption charge against them.

"Congress has looted the nation and now they are coming out. Whenever there are corruption charges against the Congress and its family, they try to threaten us. We are not scared," he said.

Over Sonia Gandhi's jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi that "he is the PM, and not a Shehenshah (emperor)", Sharma said, "Modi ji is a jan sewak. Those who were Shehenshah are nowhere today. They are in panic and in frustration."
Beijing: The Sino-Indian deadlock over a UN ban on JeM chief Masood Azhar and others may end if India

resubmits its application focussing on evidence against him than attempting to "censure" Pakistan, BJP MP Subramanian Swamy on Tuesday said after talks with Chinese officials.

"My impression is that India can expect cooperation from China on the issue of declaring Masood Azhar, leader of Jaish-e-Muhammad, as terrorist who should face trial in India, if India in the UN concentrated more on him than seeking to censure Pakistan as a sponsor of terror," Swamy told PTI.

Swamy, who is here on a pilgrimage to Kailash-Manasarovar in Tibet, said he is visiting China in an individual capacity as an "old friend" but with the knowledge of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other senior ministers of his cabinet.

The BJP leader said "as a tactical move it would (be) prudent (to) resubmit the complaint in UN which was blocked after China put a technical hold."

"Based on what I learnt here, I will be very surprised if China continues to obstruct once it is limited to hard evidence," said Swamy after meeting Wang Guo Qing, Director of the foreign affairs committee of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Committee, and Wu Hailong, President of the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs (CPIFA).

He said the application submitted by India in UN was more Pakistan-centric than Azhar. "I think for the limited purpose it was submitted which was to get UN sanctions, the report should be resubmitted," he said.

"I assume the Chinese would find it difficult to say no, once the report is limited to hard evidence. In fact it would (be a) good idea if there is pre-UN trilateral consultation between India, China and Pakistan," he said.

China, which previously blocked India's attempts to get a UN ban on Mumbai terror attack mastermind and LeT commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, also put a hold on listing of Azhar as global terrorist for his role in the Pathankot attack.

The issue has cast a shadow on bilateral ties as India has expressed disappointment over China's actions while the two countries are seeking a way out to end the impasse.

The issue also figured in the just concluded visit of President Pranab Mukherjee.

Swamy suggested India, China and Pakistan trilateral talks to address the issues of cross border terrorism.

He said Prime Minister Modi is working hard to resume dialogue with Pakistan, but the "problem is that we can only talk to the constitutional authority in Pakistan which is the Prime Minister, who do not seem to have a final word. The army seems to have veto along with the ISI and Mullahs."

"China being a friend of Pakistan can help peace in South Asia by encouraging the constitutional authorities to assert their authority. If China convenes a tripartite meeting on India-China-Pakistan on issue of terrorism because terrorism from Pakistan is no longer a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan any more. It is also trilateral issue as terrorists from Pakistan also go to (Muslim-majority) Xinjiang," he said.
Gaza City: Hamas authorities in the Gaza Strip executed three men for murder on Tuesday, the attorney general said, signalling more could follow despite appeals from the United Nations for a halt.

The three men were put to death behind closed doors at dawn. "To achieve public deterrence and curb crime, the competent authorities carried out at dawn today, 31 May, 2016 execution rulings against three of those convicted of shocking murders," a statement from the attorney general said.

In theory all execution orders in the Palestinian territories must be approved by President Mahmud Abbas, who is based in the occupied West Bank. But Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, no longer recognises his legitimacy, and the Attorney General in Gaza Ismail Jaber recently announced that the authorities there would carry out the executions without Abbas's backing.

Xavier Abu Eid, an adviser to Abbas, condemned the executions on Twitter.

The UN envoy for the Middle East had previously called on Hamas to abandon the planned executions. "I urge Hamas not to carry out these executions," Nickolay Mladenov told the UN Security Council last week.

Human Rights Watch also condemned the use of the death penalty, with its Israel and Palestine director Sari Bashi calling it "particularly egregious to execute defendants sentenced in Gaza, whose court system is rife with coercion, torture and compromised procedures."

The attorney general's statement announcing the executions said they had all been given a fair trial.
Tokyo: Japanese rescuers scoured thick forest on Monday in search of a seven-year-old boy whose parents left him in mountain woods inhabited by bears as a punishment, in a case that has infuriated the public.

The parents originally told police the boy got lost on Saturday while they were hiking to gather wild vegetables -- but later admitted they had left him in the forest to punish him.

The boy, Yamato Tanooka, went missing in mountains on Japan's main northern island of Hokkaido, which is inhabited by wild bears.

Yamato, his older sister, mother and father came to a park near the forest on Saturday, but the parents became angry when the boy threw stones at cars and people, Japanese police said.

On the way back home, they made Yamato get out of the car and left him alone in the forest, driving the car about 500 metres (some 550 yards) away, TV Asahi and other reports said.

"They said they went back to the site immediately, but the boy was no longer there," a local police spokesman earlier told AFP.

About 180 rescuers and police officers widened the search area on Monday, mobilising sniffer dogs and horses to go deeper into the woodlands, according to broadcaster NTV.

Footage showed scores of officers clawing through overgrown forest and tall bushes as a helicopter hovered overhead.

Police searched in the dark Sunday night with torches in hand and calling out for the boy, who was wearing a black jacket, navy blue pants and red sneakers when he disappeared, according Kyodo news agency.

"I feel very sorry for my child," the father told an NTV reporter. "I am so sorry for causing trouble for many people."

Police said they will look into filing neglect charges against the boy's parents, according to Kyodo.

Japanese reacted with outrage on social media, condemning the actions of the parents.

"This is not punishment but abuse!" one Twitter post read. Another added: "The parents are so stupid that I am speechless."

Many also worried about the fate of the child in the forest, alone and reportedly with no food or water as heavy rain fell overnight.

Mitsuru Wakayama, a spokesman for the nearby town of Nanae, said local residents only occasionally pass through the mountainous area as a short cut.

"Not many people or cars pass by, and it gets totally dark as there are no lights," Wakayama said.

"It's not surprising to encounter bears anywhere in the area."
MINNEAPOLIS Three Somali-American men from Minnesota made persistent efforts to join Islamic State militants in Syria and conspired to help the group, a prosecutor said in closing arguments on Tuesday in their federal jury trial.

Mohamed Farah, Abdirahman Daud and Guled Omar are charged with conspiring to provide material support to Islamic State and commit murder outside the United States, charges that could result in a life sentence for each if they are convicted.

They participated wholeheartedly in the conspiracy from early 2014 through April 2015, Assistant U.S. Attorney John Docherty told jurors in U.S. District Court in Minnesota.

They were going to put themselves under the control of Islamic State, and they knew that they would be ordered to kill, Docherty said.

Farah's attorney said his client planned to go to Syria and was willing to die fighting with anti-government forces, but had no plan to join Islamic State.

"Right or wrong, that is not a crime," attorney Murad Mohammad told jurors.

Prosecutors brought similar charges against 10 men they said were part of a group of extended family and friends who sometimes took classes on Islam together and planned to go overseas to fight for Islamic State.

Six men pleaded guilty to providing material support to Islamic State, some testifying at trial. A seventh man is believed to be in Syria.

The trial has exposed tensions in Minnesota's Somali community, where some believe the men were entrapped.

Docherty said the defendants made "persistent efforts" to join Islamic State and the evidence supported the testimony of charged friends turned witnesses.

"There simply is no entrapment in this case," Docherty said, adding that the defendants were "itching" to go.

Mohammad said Farah's plan to leave was "dead in the water" if not for his friend turned FBI informant offering fake passports.

Prosecutors presented two dozen witnesses, plus audiotaped conversations to support the charges and played Islamic State videos witnesses said the men watched.

Farah and Daud did not present any witnesses at trial. Omar testified his taped conversations were boasts or taken out of context.

Defence attorneys have said the government lacked sufficient evidence to prove the men intended to travel to Syria and fight for Islamic State.

Farah and Daud also are charged with perjury, and Farah with making a false statement to FBI agents. Omar is also charged with attempting to use $5,000 in federal student aid to fund travel to Syria.

(Reporting by David Bailey; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Tom Brown)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
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As Brad Veeder limped through the dark forest bleeding and scared, his one thought was about the graphic bear attack scene he had watched months earlier in the movie The Revenant.

What kept going through my mind is that its following me and its going to pounce, he recalled. It certainly could have finished me off. I was not looking forward to being eaten alive.

In the movie set in the early 1800s, actor Leonardo Dicaprios character is mauled nearly to death by a grizzly bear in a scene that some reviewers called disturbingly lifelike. In contrast, Veeder was the victim of a black bear attack that was not nearly as vicious but was real  real blood, real pain and visceral fear.

Yet the May 10 attack in Great Smoky Mountains National Park seems a world away on this day. The 49-year-old Veeder sits on an ottoman in the living room of his parents' home. Hes at ease talking about the incident, grinning so often that he feels compelled to note that even before the attack he was a person who smiled easily and often. Now he has even more reason to be happy.

I have so much relief and gratitude to be alive.

Although the former Billings West grads puncture wounds from the bears bite to his calf are now mostly healed, covered only by Band-Aids, he thinks the next time he sleeps outdoors in a tent he will be a bit nervous.

I was shocked, said Jolane Jones, Veeders older sister, about hearing the news from her mother. I think its totally a miracle that he ended up as unscathed as he was after a bear attack.

Bear facts

Although there are an estimated 1,500 bears spread across Great Smoky Mountains National Parks more than 522,000 acres, black bear attacks are fairly rare, according to Jamie Sanders, park spokeswoman.

The park advises hikers, which number in the thousands since the Appalachian Trail passes through the Smoky Mountains, to hike in groups, carry bear spray, hang their food out of a bears reach and even provide shelters to sleep in and cables to hang food on.

Having grown up in Montana and backpacked across the West in regions occupied by grizzly and black bears, Veeder was familiar with the drill: dont leave food in your tent, hang your food away from camp, etc. He wasnt even using a cook stove, deciding instead to avoid the hassle and just eat cold foods.

I was very careful, he said, even keeping his food in an odor-proof sack.

His attention to detail may come from his former career as a computer network engineer. Yet Jones described her brother as awfully adventuresome, evidenced by a stint as a teacher in Southeast Asia and extended bicycle trips in Korea, Japan and Taiwan after leaving the computer business.

Hes not afraid of taking risks, and hes pretty smart, she said.

The trip he had started on April 30 was meant to be a hike along the entire distance of the 2,000-mile Appalachian Trail, a walk from Georgia to Maine. Unfortunately, he only made it about 180 miles.

Night of the bear

Veeder arrived at the Spence Field Backcountry Shelter at about 11 a.m., exhausted after a lengthy days hike of about 17 miles. But the shelter and even the overflow camping areas were full of hikers. Park trail workers suggested a field about 200 feet farther up the mountain as a good place to pitch his tent.

Another shelter located about 3 miles before Spence Field had been closed because of bear activity, perhaps leading to congestion at Spence Field.

So Veeder pitched his lightweight tent in the field, pumped some water, ate and then hung his food, washed his feet and socks and hung them out to dry, before crawling under his sleeping quilt.

He guesses it was around 10:30 that night when he was awoken by a crushing pain in his left leg, which was resting against the tent fabric as he laid on his right side.

It felt like it was in a hydraulic press, Veeder said. It was a frightening deal.

Immediately upon waking and sitting up, Veeder realized what was happening and yelled at the bear, whose ear must have been fairly close to Veeder's mouth at the time.

No bear! Go away!

The bear retreated, leaving Veeder wondering if he was simply having a nightmare.

But then the bear attempted to walk into the tent. Veeder punched the bear as hard as he could, possibly hitting it in the shoulder, which he said felt like a rug with meat behind it. At the same time he continued yelling.

No bear! Back off!

The cloudy night was so dark that Veeder couldnt see the bear, and the bear probably couldnt see Veeder in his thin-walled tent.

Which is fine, he said. I didnt want to see it.

Second assault

Then the bear began attacking the small tents vestibule, an enclosed area near the head of the tent where gear can be stored overnight to keep it dry. Veeder yelled as loud as he could again, thinking that maybe someone at the nearby shelter would hear him.

The bear would back off, then attack again. Veeder said it happened about four times before everything went quiet. Thats when the bear apparently found Veeders socks hanging nearby and gave them a thorough and loud sniffing.

Then the bruin hit the vestibule harder than any of the previous attacks but again backed off.

I sat there holding my leg, Veeder said. Hed been sleeping in long underwear bottoms that were now soaked with blood from the calf down. I waited about 10 minutes and finally realized I have to go. I put on my shoes, coat and grabbed my quilt.

Long walk

Thats when Veeder began limping back toward what he thought was the shelter, hoping that he could get help. But it was so dark that he almost walked into a tree. Not only was he worried about the bear attacking again, but he also feared he might get lost in the thick, dark forest and wander around bleeding and confused.

Luckily, he stepped onto the smooth surface of the trail. As he got closer to where he thought the shelter was located he began yelling that hed been attacked by a bear, been bitten and was bleeding. He cried out for help asking where the shelter was.

Its right over there, a mans voice yelled in irritation, as if it was too obvious to miss.

A female camper heard his pleas and joined him in the shelter. Her tent was only 40 feet away but in the morning had also been shredded by a bear. Another hiker wrapped up his leg. One camper was able to get a cellphone signal and call 911. The trail workers also had a radio on which they called park rangers who appeared in the afternoon on horseback.

While waiting for the rangers to arrive, fellow campers retrieved all of Veeders gear from his campsite.

The bear had chewed everything, even my aluminum tent poles, my smartphone, book, plastic water filter, Veeder said.

Bear search

Three days later park rangers trapped a 400-pound male black bear in the area and euthanized it based on a comparison of its bite and the marks on Veeders phone. Unfortunately, a later DNA test comparing saliva on Veeders shredded gear to the bears revealed it was the wrong animal. Another black bear trapped in the area on May 20 also failed the DNA test but was released alive with a GPS collar. The first bears neck was so big a GPS collar wouldnt fit.

While human injury is rare, we have recently had multiple incidents of bears ripping into tents in the backcountry, the Park Service said in a press release following Veeders attack. The months of May and June are particularly difficult for bears due to the lack of abundant natural foods. Summer foods, primarily berries, will begin to ripen over the next several weeks and we historically see less aggressive bear behavior after that point.

Yet only last June, a 16-year-old Ohio boy was dragged by his head from his familys Great Smoky Mountains campsite by a black bear. His father had to jump on the bears back and punch it repeatedly in the face before the bear released its grip on his son.

In 2000, the park recorded its first lethal bear attack when a sow and yearling female attacked and killed a 50-year-old Tennessee woman. She was the first person killed by a black bear in a federal park or reserve in the Southeast, according to news accounts.

Going back

Despite the incident, Veeder said he plans to return to the Appalachian Trail, this time hiking from the north to the south. He wont be doing any camping off by himself, though.

Ive slept really well since the attack, he said, with no nightmares or post-traumatic stress. But out on the trail I think it will take me a few nights to settle down.

Although the two puncture wounds in his left calf missed his shin bone and never severed an artery, hes hoping the injuries are big enough to leave marks.

I hope I have a scar, he said and smiled. I want to have something to back my story up.

Its become a cautionary tale for Veeder, because even though he thought he had done everything right, he was still attacked.

Even if youre really careful and use best practices, you can still get a rogue bear. And if it does happen, you just fight.

At 5-foot-9 and 180 pounds, Veeder is no bantamweight bear fighter, but bears are incredibly strong with a bite force thats been estimated at 700 pounds. Still, one of the common instructions given to people who run into a black bear is to appear big and fight back.

The attack may have frightened Veeders family more than it has him.

I will never spend a night in a tent again, said his older sister. Its too scary.
Qualcomm has announced a new QCA4012 chip that brings dual band Wi-Fi, enhanced security and low power for connected devices. The QCA4012 brings dual-band Wi-Fi connectivity as compared to the single-band solution for QCA4010 single-band solution.

The QCA4012 also offers increased computing performance, memory and advanced features while minimizing size, cost and power consumption. It integrates low-power Wi-Fi and a fully featured micro-control unit (MCU) in a single-chip solution that combines design flexibility and rich development capabilities with a comprehensive set of hardware interfaces.

Key features of QCA4012 chip:

Dual Band capable of supporting both 2.4GHz and 5GHz for more robust Wi-Fi connections, with antenna diversity for extended range coverage

Full MCU capability with 1.5MB on-chip RAM for future upgradability of features and bug fixes, which is critical for applications with long life cycles

Enhanced security with secure boot, over-the-air (OTA) secure software update, anti-rollback, one-time-programmable (OTP) memory and on-chip crypto engine for application-level security

Rich interfaces including UART, HS-UART, I2C, I2S, up to 42 GPIOs, PWMs, ADCs, SPI/SDIO to directly interconnect to sensors, actuators, display, lighting and audio components

Low power Wi-Fi to support energy efficient applications

Pin-compatible part to support I-temp

The company also announced the expansion of the QCA401x software ecosystem to include support for HomeKit, Google Weave and AllJoyn, as well as new cloud providers.
Just yesterday, the Commerce Ministry rejected Apples proposal of selling refurbished iPhones in India. Now, the government has turned down Foxconns plans to import refurbished phones in India.

Prakash Jawdekar, the Environment Minister has rejected Taiwanese contract manufacuteres request of importing refurbished phones in the country, owing to e-waste rules. Foxconn makes smartphones for companies like Apple, Xiaomi, Microsoft and so on. It is reportedly looking to build 10 to 12 facilities in the country by 2020.

Javadekar told Economic Times,

Yes it (proposal) was made, but I have told them that we cannot go against our e-waste management rules.

The environment ministrys technical review committee observed that phones that are to be imported to India have short functional life and are prone to become obsolete in short period of time thereby generating e-waste. It had even denying Apple permission to import 1,00,000 iPhones and 2,50,000 iPads last July. Officials told ET that about 17 lakh tonnes of e-waste is generated every year, with an annual increase of 5%.

source
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks is looking for volunteers for its fourth annual Dome Mountain Clean-Up Day on June 11.

Volunteers will remove remnants of old fencing that are dangerous to wildlife. Participants should meet at the north parking area at Dailey Lake at 9 a.m.

Volunteers should contact FWP area biologist Karen Loveless ahead of time at kloveless@mt.gov or 406-333-4211 so there is enough food for everyone. Volunteers should bring their own gloves and fencing pliers if they have them, and should be prepared to hike on steep and rocky terrain. Volunteers will work on pulling fence until around noon, and then will be served burgers, hot dogs and refreshments at Dailey Lake.

The Dome Mountain Wildlife Management Area is more than 4,500 acres of public land owned by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. It was purchased in the late 1980s with the help of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation in order to preserve elk winter range and provide hunting and recreational opportunity for the public.

The event is co-sponsored by the Park County Rod and Gun Club and the Upper Yellowstone Chapter of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.
Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG 2.47%) aims to serve "food with integrity," according to its evocative mission statement. But contrary to some assumptions, the company's ingredients aren't quite as local as you might think.

In this clip from the Industry Focus: Consumer Goods podcast, Vincent Shen and Asit Sharma talk about Chipotle's mission statement and what it reveals about the company's business model. They also discuss where Chipotle's pork, avocados, tortillas, and lettuce come from, and why they aren't as locally sourced as they used to be -- in fact, it's possible some components of the burrito you ordered today were shipped across an ocean.

A transcript follows the video.

This podcast was recorded on May 24, 2016.

Vincent Shen: The company's mission statement actually reads, "Food with integrity is our commitment to finding the very best ingredients raised with respect for the animals, the environment and the farmers."

If we're looking at the life cycle here of the Chipotle burrito, going from the farm to our table, it's exactly some of those animals and farmers that I think we're going to be discussing today, looking at these ingredients. Let's dive right into it. What do you think Asit?

Asit Sharma: Yeah, sure. Let's talk about that mission statement for just a second. Chipotle often shortens that mission statement on its websites, [if] you come across any promotional materials, because it's a mouthful. They shorten it to, "Food with integrity," and that is an awesome mission statement when you condense it down. It's concise, it's evocative, it makes you believe, or want to believe in the product. But there's this other thing going on, too, and that's actually a business model. It's got this marketing pull and it's got a certain cost structure underneath it. When you communicate to the customer, "This is food with integrity," you're differentiating yourself from the quick-service restaurants, the McDonald's and Wendy's of the world, so you're setting a very high bar to begin with.

What we've seen with Chipotle is that that business model's worked so well for them for so many years because there weren't many incremental costs associated with that model. They went about their business sourced with great suppliers, had a great product, but didn't have to come to terms with any kind of food scares that we've seen recently. This is the first instance that we're seeing Chipotle is having to pay whatever it takes to make that one word in the mission statement, integrity, come true for its customers.

Diving from there into the supply chain, what's really interesting when you walk into your local Chipotle, you see -- Vince, I know we talked about this recently -- you see the ingredients, and you want to think they're very low or very close to you. I'm sure this is your take, correct?

Shen: Yes, absolutely.

Sharma: Yeah, mine too. I'm also a fan of Chipotle, a fan of the stock, a fan of the food. But the reality is that your burrito, or your burrito bowl, has a variety of far-flung ingredients coming with it. Your pork may be coming from England, because Chipotle had a few food scares, and before that had issues with hormones. They've really reached out and branched overseas to some suppliers. They have two, one is called Karro, the other is Tulip. These suppliers sent carnitas, that is pork, over the ocean to Chipotle because Chipotle ran into some issues with hormones in the pork here domestically.

That doesn't mean that they don't have domestic suppliers, it's just they're branching out. Your pork and your burrito bowl might come from overseas. The avocados come from California, for the most part. One of Chipotle's big tortilla suppliers is called Don Pancho, and they're based in Oregon. You might think, "Hey, I happen to know that there is this farm close by that supplies lettuce to Chipotle," and again this is very interesting. Before that lettuce gets to you, because of the Norovirus scares, E.coli scares, that lettuce is now being shipped to a central kitchen, which may be hundreds of miles away, where it's prepped and then sent back to be distributed to the restaurants.

This burrito bowl ought to come with its own passport; it's a really cosmopolitan batch of ingredients that's traveling hundreds, and in some case thousands of miles to get to the line where you pick up that order.
Heading into 2016, Whiting Petroleum (WLL) had hoped that oil would average at least $50 a barrel, the magic level at which the company would generate enough cash flow so that it could drill roughly the number of wells needed to keep production basically flat. Unfortunately, oil prices declined well past that mark early in the year, leaving the company with no choice but to cut its investment below that sustainable level in order to match capital expenditures with its weaker projected cash flow. However, with oil recently regaining the $50 level, it puts Whiting Petroluem in a much more comfortable position.

$50 oil = higher cash flow

When oil dove into the low $30s earlier this year, Whiting Petroleum had no choice but to slash its capex budget by 80% to just $500 million, which would roughly match its expected cash flow at those lower oil prices. That capital was just enough so that the company could complete wells drilled in 2015 -- it had initially planned to wind down its fracking operations by the end of the first half of the year. It was a decision that was based not only on the fact that it didn't have the cash to continue activities, but the returns it would earn on additional activities just weren't high enough to justify further investment.

However, with the return of $50 oil, it will have a significant impact on Whiting's cash flow from its legacy production. In fact, the company's initial estimate was that it would generate $1 billion in cash flow this year at $50 oil. That effectively doubles the company's cash flow, all else being equal. This provides additional capital to potentially to accelerate its drilling activities later this year.

$50 oil = higher returns

In addition to substantially higher cash flow, the increase in the price of oil will significantly boost the returns Whiting can earn on new wells going forward, assuming oil stays in the $50s. That's because when oil was in the $30s, the company's drilling economics were marginal at best. However, with oil improving, so is the rate of return it can earn on new wells. In fact, as the slide below shows, Whiting Petroleum can earn an average internal rate of return of 55% on new wells drilled at $50 a barrel.

That's a very strong return, which would only improve if oil continues to rally.

Oil in the $30s wasn't just an issue for Whiting Petroleum. Rival Continental Resources (CLR 0.04%) also couldn't make any money drilling wells in the Bakken at $30 oil. That's why it turned its attention to the STACK play of Oklahoma, where returns were north of 20% at $30 oil. However, $50 oil puts the Bakken back on the map for Continental Resources, which can earn returns between 20% to 40%, depending on well size and costs. While that's not as high as the more than 60% returns of the STACK at $50 oil, nor as high as Whiting can earn in the Bakken, it's still a pretty compelling return and a vast improvement from earlier this year.

Investor takeaway

Oil rising back to $50 a barrel isn't just breaking through some physiological trading barrier. Oil above that price has a tangible impact on companies like Whiting Petroleum and could potentially double the company's cash flow while significantly improving its drilling returns. That's why oil's return to this key level is such a big deal for the company and the industry as a whole.
This blog covers software patent news and issues with a particular focus on wireless, mobile devices (smartphones, tablet computers, connected cars) as well as select antitrust matters surrounding those devices.
MISSOULA  The attorney for a Kalispell woman who killed her husband when she pushed him off a cliff in Glacier National Park eight days after their wedding has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal of her conviction.

Jordan Linn Grahams federal defense attorney Michael Donahoe filed a petition for writ of certiorari on May 5. The Supreme Court has not made a decision on whether to accept the case for review.

On July 7, 2013, Graham and her husband, Cody Johnson, scuffled and she pushed him backwards off a cliff near the Loop trail along the Going-to-the-Sun Road. She then returned to Kalispell. It wasnt until July 11, days after she told law enforcement Johnson had driven away from their house with some friends, that she led a search party to his body. A week later, she confessed to an FBI officer that she had murdered him.

Shortly before the end of her December 2013 trial in U.S. District Court in Missoula, Graham pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in a deal with prosecutors, who dismissed a first degree murder charge, as well as another for making false statements to law enforcement. Graham was subsequently sentenced to 365 months in prison. She is being held in federal prison in Aliceville, Ala.

During an appeal of her conviction, Donahoe said prosecutors claimed during her sentencing that the murder was premeditated, which he said shouldnt have been allowed after the first-degree murder charge was dismissed.

In November 2015, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld Graham's sentence, finding that neither federal prosecutors nor U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy erred in the process.

"The government did not breach the plea agreement by arguing premeditation at sentencing," the judges wrote, "because the agreement contained no provision, express or implied, limiting such arguments.

In February, a three-judge panel from the 9th Circuit denied a petition to rehear Grahams appeal, leaving the Supreme Court as the only remaining option. After the 9th Circuit's February decision, Assistant U.S. Attorney Melissa Hornbein said it is unlikely the Supreme Court would take up the case because in the prosecution's view, it doesnt provide a new area of law for the high court to rule on.
Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Microsoft are putting in writing their commitment to combat the spread of hate speech in Europe.

The tech giants signed a new EU code of conduct, promising to wipe illegal hate speech from their sites in less than 24 hours, the European Commission announced Tuesday. As part of the agreement, the companies have promised to review hate speech notifications and, if necessary, remove or disable the illegal content within a day. That includes any content that "promotes incitement to violence and hateful conduct."

For Facebook and its peers, tackling this issue requires striking a balance between giving users the freedom to express themselves, while providing a respectful environment for everyone, the social network's Head of Global Policy Management, Monika Bickert, said in a statement.

"There's no place for hate speech on Facebook," Bickert wrote. "We urge people to use our reporting tools if they find content that they believe violates our standards so we can investigate."

Hate speech has been a major problem on Twitter, in particular, where trolls hide behind anonymous accounts to hurl insults and threats, particularly at women. Last year, former CEO Dick Costolo admitted that "we suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we've sucked at it for years." The company has since set up a new Trust & Safety Council and streamlined the process of reporting harassment to help address the issue.

In a statement Tuesday, Twitter's Head of Public Policy for Europe, Karen White, said the service "will continue to tackle this issue head on."

"We remain committed to letting the Tweets flow," White said. "However, there is a clear distinction between freedom of expression and conduct that incites violence and hate."

Meanwhile, Google's Public Policy and Government Relations Director, Lie Junius, echoed those sentiments, adding that the Web giant already has systems in place to review hate speech notifications and remove illegal content in less than 24 hours.

"We're committed to giving people access to information through our services, but we have always prohibited illegal hate speech on our platforms," Junius said. "We are pleased to work with the Commission to develop co- and self-regulatory approaches to fighting hate speech online."

For its part, Microsoft recently released a new set of guidelines and policies for how the company treats terrorism-related content on any of its properties. The company now explicitly prohibits terrorist content on its consumer services and has a new online reporting tool for flagging this kind of content.

This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.
Americans don't always do such a great job of saving money, but when we think about those with minimal or nonexistent savings, we often imagine low-income families struggling to make ends meet. It's therefore somewhat shocking to learn that nearly 25% of households earning $100,000 to $150,000 a year claim they couldn't come up with $2,000 in a month'stime.

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In a study published by The Brookings Institution, participants were asked whether they'd be able to come up with $2,000 within 30 days for an unexpected expense. Across all income levels, over 25% of respondents admitted that they could not come up with that much money, while another 19% claimed they could do so only if they sold off possessions or took out payday loans Those who earn more often spend more A big part of the problem is that higher earners tend to fall into the trap of taking their healthy incomes as an invitation to spend more. Higher earners are more likely to get approved for substantial mortgages and other loans than those who earn less, so many make the mistake of spending first and saving second (or not at all). The Brookings study authors admit that while the percentage of cash-strapped six-figure families is perhaps higher than it should be, the numbers are less surprising when we consider the high costs of living in desirable neighborhoods, housing prices, and child care expenses. While roughly 20% of American households bring home six figures, many higher earners live in the most expensive geographic areas of the country. According to Bankrate, a $100,000-a-year salary in Memphis, Tennessee, buys you the same standard of living as a $245,000-a-year salary in New York City. And even though salaries do tend to be more generous in and near cities with higher costs of living, the folks who make those salaries often have no choice but to spend their earnings in full just to keep up. In other words, our ability to save hinges heavily not just on how much we make, but where we live.

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Dividends are great, but dividends that have room to grow can make you rich over time. And, while it may not happen right away -- and in one case, we don't want it to -- here are three examples of stocks whose dividends could double. In fact, I'm so confident about these three dividend-paying stocks that I own all three in my personal portfolio.

As of this writing, Bank of America's dividend stands at just $0.20 per year, which translates to an annual yield of 1.34%. So, it's fair to say Bank of America isn't exactly an "income stock" in the traditional sense of the word.

I've written before Bank of America is extremely attractive at its current valuation, and that it's share price doesn't reflect the bank's dramatic improvements since the financial crisis.

Although its dividend is low, the bank is rather generous about distributing capital to investors. In fact, the bank returned $4.5 billion to shareholders in 2015 and hopes to increase this amount going forward. The thing is -- the majority of this return of capital was in the form of buybacks, not dividends. This trend has continued into 2016: During the first quarter, the bank spent twice as much on buybacks as dividends.

Bank of America has chosen to emphasize buybacks for one simple reason: It's stock is extremely cheap right now. In fact, the bank trades for just 64% of its book value, and even trades for less than its tangible book value of $16.17 per share. In other words, Bank of America can spend $0.64 to buy a dollar's worth of its own assets. No wonder dividends aren't the priority.

In a nutshell, although I'm confident the bank could get approval to double its dividend if it wanted to, doing so wouldn't be in the best interest of shareholders at this time. I believe Bank of America will someday become a solid income stock again, and as a B of A shareholder myself, I hope the bank continues to take advantage of its depressed valuation. And for the time being, you can, too.

The newest Buffett stock has lots of room for dividend increases

Apple was recently added to Berkshire Hathaway's portfolio by one of Warren Buffett's trusted stock pickers, and it's not too tough to guess why.

The company has several characteristics Berkshire loves. For one thing, Apple is the clear leader in its industry; when it comes to phones, there are iPhones and everything else. And, in the tablet computing market, there are iPads and everything else.

Also, Berkshire loves a cheap stock. Apple has been cheap for some time, but it's especially attractive right now after losing 24% of its value over the past year. As of this writing, Apple trades for just 11.2 times TTM earnings, and it's sitting on a massive stockpile of about $216 billion in cash and securities. When backing this out and only including Apple's business, the company's P/E ratio drops to an unheard-of 6.8-to-1. Granted, the majority of Apple's cash is parked overseas and can't be repatriated without a massive tax bill, but it's still worth considering.

As far as the dividend goes, Apple's current annual payout of $2.28 represents just 25% of its earnings over the past year, so there's plenty of room to grow. While I don't expect it to double from its current level right away, it could happen within the next few years.

This REIT's best days could still be ahead of it

Just to reiterate, I never said these stocks will double their dividends immediately. In dividend investing, long-term trends are much more important than short-term dividend growth. With that in mind, one stock that's definitely worth mentioning is Digital Realty Trust , a real estate investment trust (REIT) focused on data center properties.

Over the past decade, Digital Realtytriple its dividend thanks to the exponential growth in data storage needs. Even more impressively, shareholders have been rewarded with an average total return of more than 19% per year.

I realize that a stock's past performance doesn't guarantee future success, but in this case, there's no reason to believe Digital Realty's best days are behind it. In fact, a report from Cisco forecasts that global IP traffic will continue to grow at a rate of 23% per year until at least 2019, and mobile and cloud data traffic will grow even faster. So, there should be no shortage of opportunities to grow in the years ahead, and it shouldn't be too difficult to keep occupancy high.

A word of caution

Just because I say these stocks' dividends could double doesn't mean they will, and there are several things (both good and bad) that could prevent this from happening. As I mentioned, Bank of America could decide to focus the majority of its efforts on buybacks and leave its dividend alone for years to come -- which I believe would be the right move. Or, Apple could decide to use a large portion of its cash to make acquisitions, and could rule out large dividend raises for the near future. These would probably both be good things for shareholders unless, of course, you rely on your stocks for income.

On the negative side, Digital Realty could struggle to fill its properties and retain tenants if data needs don't grow as expected. And, since it depends on regulatory approval to return capital to shareholders, Bank of America could be forced to trim its dividends and buybacks in the event of another recession.

The point is, while I think it's likely these dividends will increase substantially, it's important to know there are many different possibilities that could prevent it from happening, so invest accordingly.

The article 3 Attractive Income Stocks Whose Dividends Could Double
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn said on Tuesday he had acquired a "large position" in Botox-maker Allergan Plc and that he was very supportive of CEO Brent Saunders.

Shares of Allergan rose 2.6 percent to $242 in early trading.

Icahn, who did not disclose details of the stake, said he was confident in Saunders' ability to enhance value for all Allergan shareholders. (http://bit.ly/1UatnIM)

Icahn, who launched a $150 million political action committee advocating tax reform to eliminate inversions, was firmly against the now terminated Pfizer-Allergan deal, saying it would result in the loss of the country's 10th largest company to Ireland. (Reporting by Amrutha Penumudi in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)
All eyes on Wall Street have become increasingly fixed on the Federal Reserve given the snapback in the U.S. economy since the worst start to a new year ever back in January.

The U.S. central bank in December raised rates from a near-zero bound for the first time in nearly a decade, and said it anticipated four more hikes by the end of 2016. However, global-economic growth worries and a sharp slide in equity markets put the Fed on ice. Now, with a June meeting of the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee looming on the calendar, many speculate that a summer rate hike is in the cards.

In fact, fed funds futures, a tool used to predict the likelihood in changes to U.S. monetary policy, show a 23% chance of a rate rise next month, while odds jump to 58% for at least one rate hike by July.

Former Federal Reserve Vice Chairwoman Alice Rivlin said essentially, it would be foolish to think the Fed would hold off on tightening monetary policy for much longer.

If anybody is surprised by the Fed talking about a rate hike, theyve been absolutely absent for a very long time, she said in an interview on FOX Business Networks Cavuto: Coast to Coast.

Weve known this was coming, the only reason it wouldnt would be some really bad news on the economy, which Chairman [Janet] Yellen does not expect.

Indeed, before the long Memorial Day weekend on Friday, Yellen said while the economy has been slow to recover from the financial crisis, a great deal of progress has been made, and a rate hike may be appropriate in the coming months.

Yellen pointed to a decline in the unemployment rate, which peaked at 10% during the height of the crisis, but which has since fallen back to 5%. Rivlin agreed the labor-market strength is the U.S. economys biggest upside.

We have seen an increase in labor force participation; not a big one, we arent back to where we were before, but people are coming back into the labor market to look for jobs and thats the reason why we have more employment, she said.

On Friday, the Labor Department will release its latest figures on the health of the job market in May after a slight setback in April, which saw job creation come in just below the 200,000 level that it had seen for several months. Economists polled by Thomson Reuters expect the economy to have added 162,000 jobs this month, while the unemployment rate is forecast to tick down to 4.9% from 5%.

One caveat analysts at Barclays point out, though, is a strike among Verizon (NYSE:VZ) employees, which impacted about 40,000 workers.

Whether this will pass fully into headline payrolls depends on the extent to which Verizon is using temporary hires to offset the effects of the strike, which may provide some offset to the effect of the strike on the headline payroll figures, they explained in a May 20 note.

While there are bright spots for the U.S., Rivlin said there are also areas that have been slow to recover, particularly productivity growth, or the output per hour of work per worker. The Conference Board expects GDP per hour to fall by 0.2% this year in America.

Rivlin explained that no one really knows exactly why that measure of growth is slowing.

Presumably it's slow demand and thats slowing down investment. But it neednt slow down public investment. There are all kinds of things we need to spend money for in the public sector  modernizing our infrastructure, she said.
Great Plains Energy, the parent of regulated power utility Kansas City Power & Light, will buy rival Westar Energy for $8.6 billion, the biggest deal in the U.S. power distribution market so far this year.

Falling demand for electricity in both open and regulated markets due to increased energy efficiency and a weak economy has led to several deals as U.S. utilities look to cut costs and diversify their portfolios.

This year, Dominion Resources said it would buy Questar for about $4.4 billion and Exelon closed its $6.8 billion merger with Pepco Holdings.

Westar shares rose about 9 percent to $57.65 in premarket trading on Tuesday, way below the total offer price of $60 per share.

The deal, which has an enterprise value of about $12.2 billion including $3.6 billion of Westar's debt, will increase Great Plains' customer base to more than 1.5 million in Kansas and Missouri and its generation capacity to nearly 13,000 megawatts.

Great Plains had a generation capacity of about 6,400 megawatts and about 850,800 customers in the two states, as of March 31.

The industry is facing increased customer expectations, stricter environmental standards and emerging cyber security threats, Great Plains Chairman and Chief Executive Terry Bassham said. "These factors, coupled with slower demand growth for electricity, are driving our costs and customer rates higher."

The deal includes a reverse breakup fee of $380 million and it is expected to close in the spring of 2017. Bassham will be the chief executive and chairman of the combined company.

Great Plains, whose last big acquisition was in 2008 when it bought Midwestern electric utility Aquila, said it had secured about $8 billion of committed financing from Goldman Sachs for the Westar acquisition.

Goldman Sachs & Co is Great Plains' financial adviser for the Westar deal and Bracewell LLP is its legal adviser.

Guggenheim Securities LLC is Westar's financial adviser and Baker Botts LLP is its legal counsel.

(Reporting by Amrutha Gayathri in Bengaluru; Editing by Kirti Pandey)
Apple CEO Tim Cook explained that the decline was the result of "strong macroeconomic headwinds." Growth in the United States is lackluster, China has been working to avert a steep economic downturn, and Europe is still deeply ensconced in its own nascent recovery.

Although Apple still sold 51 million iPhones during the quarter, that was down by 16% from the 61 million it sold in the second quarter of 2015. The decline was even more dramatic on a sequential basis, falling by 32% compared to the first quarter of 2016 -- though that's not surprising given that Apple's fiscal first quarter ended on Dec. 26, 2015 and thus included the holiday shopping period.

Warning signs have cropped up over the past year to suggest that the Cupertino, California-based company is either approaching or has already passed this inflection point. Most recently, in the second quarter of 2016, quarterly iPhone sales fell on a year-over-year basis for the first time since the product was introduced in 2007.

The iPhone has been a blessing for Apple over the past decade, fueling the company's transformation into the biggest and most profitable company in the United States. But even though iPhone sales will continue to fill Apple's coffers for years to come, there's reason to believe that its over-reliance on this single product will soon be a curse.

But the issue for Apple is not just that it sold fewer iPhones in the second quarter of the year, it's also relinquishing market share. Apple's share of the worldwide smartphone sales fell to 14.8% in the first quarter of 2016. That marks a low point for the company. Its market share in the same period last year was 17.9%. And if you go back to 2012 it was as high as 22.5%.



Data source: Gartner.

This is an ominous sign in a market that's already seen multiple companies rise and fall over the span of a single decade. At different points, for instance, Nokia and Blackberry sat atop the industry -- and look where they're at today.

To top things off, the drop in iPhone sales and market share are particularly problematic given Apple's lack of revenue diversification. Its principal competitor, Samsung, which currently tops the industry with a 23.2% share of the worldwide smartphone market, sells everything from kitchen appliances to televisions to cameras to smartphones. Apple, by contrast, looked to the iPhone for two-thirds of its sales last year.

Apple has other products, to be sure, but neither its second or third largest product segment is in a position to pick up the slack. Sales of iPads, its third biggest segment, are also declining, down by 19% in the latest quarter compared to the year-ago period. And while sales of Macs have proven to be more resilient than PCs, its second largest segment is also experiencing declines, down by 12% in the second quarter.

In short, the future for Apple rests now on innovation. The time is coming to an end when it can simply reap what co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs sowed. Whether Apple can successfully navigate this challenge remains to be seen, but in order to do so it must move beyond its over reliance on the iPhone.

The article Here's Why Investors Should Be Skeptical of Apple Stock
What: Shares of miner Cliffs Natural Resources Inc popped as much as 41% in early trading on Tuesday, after the company announced a new supply agreement. By noon EDT on Wall Street, shares had settled in at a 35% gain on the day.

So what: Cliffs Natural announced that it signed a long-term commercial agreement with ArcelorMittal USA LLC, part ofArcelorMittal SA, to supply all of the company's iron-ore pellet needs. The deal could be for up to 10 million long tons and comes with a minimum purchase requirement of 7 million long tons. This is a higher minimum purchase than two previous contracts that are being replaced in this deal.

Now what: While this is an incremental positive for Cliffs Natural Resources, it isn't an entirely new supply deal and won't likely lead to a big increase in profits. And the company is barely breaking even over the past year with the current deal in place.

What really needs to happen is this increase in volume combining with higher prices for iron ore to increase profits. Management thinks that iron ore prices will climb later in the year, but markets have been volatile and Cliffs Natural has a history of losses lately, so I would be cautious getting too bullish today.

The article Why Cliffs Natural Resources Inc's Shares Jumped 41% Today originally appeared on Fool.com.

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Poland's justice minister on Tuesday revived an effort to have filmmaker Roman Polanski extradited to the U.S., where he is wanted in a nearly 40-year-old case involving sex with a minor.

Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro's office said he asked Poland's Supreme Court to annul a ruling in October by a court in Krakow which found that Polish law forbids Polanski's extradition. In November, prosecutors said they found no grounds to challenge the decision.

Ziobro took office late last year, after the ruling, as part of a new conservative government. The minister, who is also the country's chief prosecutor, argues that celebrity status is shielding Oscar-winning director Polanski in Poland, where he grew up and which he often visits.

The Krakow court's decision was at odds with a Polish-U.S. extradition agreement, Ziobro's office argued in a statement. It said that, "according to the extradition agreement, the defendant should be handed over to the United States."

The director pleaded guilty in 1977 to one count of unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl during a photo shoot in Los Angeles. In a deal with the judge, he served 42 days in prison, but then fled the U.S. fearing the judge would have him imprisoned again for much longer.

The U.S. has been seeking to bring Polanski back and put him before a court.

Last year, the Krakow judge ruling on the case found that Polanski served his punishment in confinement in the U.S., and later for 10 months  partly under house arrest  in Switzerland in 2009-2010 when the U.S. unsuccessfully sought his extradition there.

He argued that U.S. judges and prosecutors in the case violated legal procedures, broke the plea bargain in 1977, denied Polanski the right to proper defense and appeared biased.

Jan Olszewski, Polanski's lawyer in Krakow, where the filmmaker has an apartment, told The Associated Press he had contacted the director about Ziobro's decision, which "we had been expecting."

"The court's verdict stands and Mr. Polanski is a free man," he said. "But I cannot exclude that this situation will affect his decisions as to visiting Poland."

Paris-born Polanski, 83, has Polish and French citizenship. He lives in Paris but often visits Poland, where he is popular and is preparing to make a film.

Polanski's artistic output is deeply admired in Poland, where he spent his World War II childhood and later went into filmmaking. His mother died at the Auschwitz death camp.

The filmmaker's movements are restricted by an Interpol warrant in effect in 188 countries, but he has avoided extradition by traveling only between France, Poland and Switzerland, which in 2011 rejected a U.S. request to extradite Polanski. Ziobro's move could now make Poland a risky destination for him.

Polanski won an Academy Award for best director for his 2002 film "The Pianist," which he filmed in Warsaw, and was nominated for his 1970s movies "Chinatown" and "Tess."
Billings-area high school students will be able to take dual-credit classes without paying tuition costs next school year as part of a one-year pilot program.

Gov. Steve Bullock announced the move Tuesday morning at the Billings Career Center.

Dual credit saves Montana families millions of dollars in college tuition and better prepares students to succeed in college, he said in a statement.

Dual-credit courses are college-level classes offered at high schools for which students can earn credit at any Montana University System school. Students currently pay about $50 per credit for tuition to take a dual-credit class, most of which are three credits, plus potential extra costs for things like books and lab fees.

The program, High School Connections, waives the tuition fee for any course for which a high school partners with Montana State University Billings or City College. Costs are covered through performance-based funding, according to a press release, which MSUB belatedly received in February after reviewing retention and degree completion figures.

Waiving the fee allows better student access to the classes, School District 2 Superintendent Terry Bouck said.

Its kind of is a game changer in that it levels the playing field for all students that might want to take courses, he said. They kind of get to dip their toe in the water and see, 'Is going to college what I want, or do I need to think more about a trade or going into the job market?'

SD2 high schools and Billings Central Catholic High work with MSUB for dual-credit classes. Hardin and Columbus high schools hope to get classes going next year.

The challenging part of this is finding an instructor that has the necessary qualifications and credentials to teach the college class, said Harold Olson, MSUBs dual-credit coordinator. While many teachers have masters degrees, theyre often in education fields, not subject matter fields. MSUB also aims to develop graduate-level courses tailored to teachers seeking certification to teach dual-credit courses.

SD2 announced that it will add several new dual-credit options next year, in addition to existing classes. College writing, college algebra, web design and programming, two college-level automotive classes and a college-level emergency medical technician class will be added at the Career Center. West High will add introduction to business and American history. The classes will be taught by SD2 teachers in partnership with Montana State University Billings faculty.

SD2 has been working with MSUB for several months to add new courses and develop options for teacher certification, Bouck said.

A related but separate program, University Connections, allows Montana high school students to take courses at any Montana University System school for a fee of about $50 per credit.
Gigi Zuniga, 5, was diagnosed with leukemia three years ago, but last week, she received an honor to aid in her battle with the deadly cancer. She was named an honorary police officer for the DeSoto Police Department in Texas.

Zuniga underwent a bone marrow transplant two months ago. She once got to blare the siren in a police car, and since then, she has been passionate about all things police, her family said, Fox 4 reported.

DeSoto police officer Tyler Sherman, a family friend, surprised the girl at her Irving, Texas, home with a customized police officer uniform and a badge with her name on it.

As the Chief of Police in Desoto, I'm going to appoint you an honorary Desoto Police officer, Chief Joe Costa told Zuniga. You accept that challenge?

I do, she replied.

Zuniga is now part of her new family in blue forever, Sherman told Fox 4.

And anything she ever needs, we'll be right here for her, he said.

I had a great day, Zuniga told Fox4. Im going to fight cancer. Beat cancer.
A baby girl delivered Tuesday in New Jersey is the first in the continental U.S. to be born with the Zika virus-related brain condition, giving rise to new fears about the spread of the disease.

Doctors, including Fox News Health Senior Managing Editor Dr. Manny Alvarez, confirmed the birth of a child with Zika virus linked to microcephaly the first reported case of the birth defect, which is marked by a partially formed brain, in the continental United States.

The 31-year-old mother, whose name was not disclosed, apparently contracted the Zika virus while in Honduras and was admitted to the emergency room at Hackensack University Medical Center on Friday while vacationing in the U.S. Doctors at Hackensack performed an emergency caesarean section to deliver the baby girl, who was born also with intestinal and visual issues.

The mother arrived in the U.S. about 30 days ago. It was not clear if she had been diagnosed with Zika in her homeland, but doctors at the New Jersey hospital made the determination Friday. It was not immediately known how much the baby weighed, but babies born with the disease typically suffer from low birth weights.

The child's mother, who developed a rash for two days in Honduras but had no other symptoms until arriving in the U.S., was under the care of a surgical team led by Dr. Abdulla Al-Khan and Alvarez, the hospital's chairman of the department of obstetrics and gynecology and reproductive science. A neonatologist and pediatric infectious disease specialist, as well as nursing personnel, were on hand for the birth.

Doctors in Honduras suspected intracranial complications with the child in utero, but it was not until she was admitted to the high-risk unit at Hackensack University Medical Center that doctors confirmed the microcephaly diagnosis. The patients aunt told FoxNews.com the mother is not doing well emotionally after the birth of her child.

While this is the first birth of a child with Zika-linked complications at Hackensack, it is not the first such case in the U.S. In February, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed that a woman in Hawaii delivered a baby who suffered from severe microcephaly as a result of Zika infection.

Microcephaly is a birth defect wherein a babys head is smaller than expected compared with other babies of the same sex and age. According to the CDC, babies with the condition typically have smaller brains that might not have developed properly. Microcephaly can also cause seizures, developmental delays, intellectual disability, hearing loss, vision problems, feeding issues, and problems with movement and balance. In April, researchers at the CDC concluded that after a careful review of evidence, the Zika virus is a cause of microcephaly and other severe fetal brain defects.

The CDC has advised pregnant women to avoid traveling to areas where Zika is spreading, and to talk to a health care provider to prevent sexual transmission of the virus. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), women planning to become pregnant should wait at least eight weeks before trying to conceive if they or their partner live in or are returning from Zika virus hotspots.

While there is no vaccine to prevent Zika virus, health officials recommend wearing long-sleeved shirts and pants, as well as practicing mosquito control to prevent infection where Zika is being transmitted. According to the CDC, 591 cases of Zika have been diagnosed in the U.S., and all have been travel related. Infected patients typically do not present symptoms, but those who do may complain of fever, rash, joint pain or red eyes.
Honolulu students who get lice next year can stay in schools that are included in a new education department policy.

Schools currently send students home for treatment, KHON-TV reported (http://bit.ly/1Z67gaF).

It's unclear why the new procedure will only apply to Farrington-Kalani-Kaiser Complex schools.

Hawaii Department of Education officials say the policy is based on U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.

A letter sent to parents says absences due to lice contribute to chronic absenteeism, though the department does not track that data.

The school will notify parents if their child has lice. The student can stay in class if the parent is not able or doesn't want to pick the child up. "The student will go back to class and remain in school until the end of the school day," the letter said.

Dr. Kalani Brady, a physician who teaches at the University of Hawaii, said parents shouldn't worry about the change. "What we've discovered in observation is the transmission of (lice) is not really high, and that's why the DOE has made that recommendation," Brady said.

Parent Keesha Boyer said the department's letter to parents was upsetting. "It's disgusting to me," Boyer said

Boyer said lice disrupt learning.

"Is the kid really going to sit there and be comfortable learning, knowing that he has (lice) in his head and scratching and going crazy?" she said. "His focus is not going to be on the learning."

Boyer said it doesn't make sense to treat her sons for lice just for the boys to catch it again at Kalihi Kai Elementary School.

"He's going to come home, and I'm going to have to treat it, spend hours treating my household, me, my kids, my furniture, my carpet. It gets everywhere," she said. "And then go to school the next day and catch it again? Am I really gonna be doing this constantly?"
It was an unforgettable prom night for one Massachusetts teen, and not because of the dancing and fun she accidentally swallowed a boutonniere pin.

Kathleen Garvey, a senior at Wellesley High School, was having trouble pinning the flower on the jacket of her boyfriend, Colin Emerson, so she held the pin in her mouth. Emerson made her laugh with a joke and inhale the pin.

I was scared the pin was there and I said, Oh my god, did you swallow it? and she said, I dont know, Emerson told The Swellesley Report.

Garvey didnt feel any pain and thought the pin may have gotten lost, but went to the hospital as a precaution the next morning. An X-ray revealed the pin was sitting in her bronchial tubes but hadnt done any real damage.

Doctors removed the pin in a 45-minute surgery. Garvey has a sore throat and shortness of breath, but she feels well otherwise, according to The Swellesley Report.
Ever wondered the true secret of greatand frequentsex? Turns out a lot of it has to do with personality.

A new study in the Journal of Research in Personality found that couples in which the wife was more "agreeable" (meaning nice, sympathetic, and affectionate) and open to new things tended to have sex more often. None of the husband's personality traits were linked with how often the couple had sex, although some did predict satisfaction.

If either the husband or the wife was "neurotic" (moody and anxious), they enjoyed sex less. Men were more satisfied if they were less open on the so-called Big Five personality scale. While the wife or husband's own personality affected how happy they themselves were with their sex life, their partner's personality did not seem to influence their experience in the bedroom.

RELATED: 11 Sex Tips That Are Better Than Female Viagra

The study was more robust than many in that it did not rely on participants' memories, but asked them to keep real-time diaries of their sex life for two weeks. (The study was actually several studies for which the authors pooled data.)

The frequency of sex was determined based on responses from 278 couples; while the satisfaction findings were based on the reported experiences of 218 couples. All couples were not long married (some as brief as four months), all heterosexual, and all young (in their 20s and 30s).

Like other research, these findings suggest that women are the "gatekeepers" of sex.

"Given that women, on average, desire sex less than men, it makes sense that women likely have greater input or control over couples' sexual frequency," said study co-author Andrea L. Meltzer, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at Florida State University. "Any time there is a difference between partners in the amount that they desire something, the one that desires something less likely has more power."

Meltzer also said the researchers don't know why the associations emerged. Nor are there any clear implications to the findings (say, to help with couples therapy).

There are several other things the study doesn't tell us. For instance, would any of the findings hold up in older couples who have been married for 20, 30, or 50 years? "The honeymoon phase is a unique transient phase of life that usually supports increased sexual activity," pointed out Sonjia Kenya, PhD, research assistant professor of medicine at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. "It doesn't really represent long-term couples."

RELATED: How to Ask for What You Really Want in Bed

Plus, there's much more that affects a couple's sex life, said Dr. Jennifer Wu, an ob-gyn at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

"There are so many factors that go into the frequency: demands of work, partners' jobs, how often they travel for work, whether or not they work a night shift," she says. "We often talk to patients about intimacy, how close they feel to their partners, how much trust there is between them. That also adds to the quality of sex."

There are also factors more likely to apply to old, married folk. "As we get older, our sex drive goes down," Wu said. "There [can be] erectile dysfunction in men and any kind of chronic illness can affect libido, sex drive, and ability to have an erection." (Of course, the odds of having a chronic illness, like diabetes, rise as you age.)

And does frequent sex make for a happy marriage anyway?

"There's no one recipe," Wu assured.

This article originally appeared on Health.com.
The husband of a woman who died climbing Mount Everest earlier this month says he blames himself for her death, the Guardian reports. In an interview with Network Seven in Australia, Robert Gropel says wife Maria Strydom seemed exhausted from climbing when they were just 15 minutes from the peak.

"I asked: 'Do you mind if I go on,' and she said: 'Yes, you go on, Ill wait for you here,'" says Gropel. "From that position the summit didnt look that far." Not realizing that she was suffering from altitude sickness, which can be lethal, Gropel kept climbing to the top of the world.

"I just ran up and down and it didnt mean anything to me," he adds. "When I made it to the summit of Everest it wasnt special to me, because I didnt have her there." When he got back and they began descending, 34-year-old Strydom had trouble walking and talking and even hallucinated, possibly due to a stroke brought on by cerebral edema.

Gropel says he gave her altitude-sickness medication and the Independent reports sherpas gave her additional oxygen, but she got worse overnight and died in his arms on May 20.

"I'm her husband, its my job to protect my wife and get her home and its just natural for me to blame myself," says the Australian.

"I still cant look at any pictures of her because it breaks my heart." Both vegans, Gropel and Strydom hoped to show the world "that vegans can do anything and more," Strydom said in March.

Initially left behind, Strydom's body has been picked up by helicopter and flown to Kathmandu. (Meanwhile, her mother isn't satisfied by the official story.)

This article originally appeared on Newser: Vegan Climber Whose Wife Died on Everest: It's My Fault

More From Newser
Master Sgt. Kelly L. Hornbeck (pictured above) passed away on January 18, 2004  two days after an improvised explosive device detonated during a combat patrol in northern Iraq and decimated the frontal lobes of his brain.

I will be wearing Kellys memorial bracelet this Memorial Day, as I do every day, and praying for his daughters and other family members he left behind.

As the fifteenth anniversary of September 11 draws near, hundreds of Special Forces operators still find themselves in Afghanistan, Syria, or one of the 90 other countries in which Green Berets are deployed at any given time.

These members of the Special Forces Regiment, Americas only Unconventional Warfare force, will be carrying out lengthy training missions and living in austere conditions, often with no or limited electrical power and running water. Hot showers are a rare luxury. Life during deployment can be perpetual boredom interspersed by moments of sheer terror and carnage.

If you enjoy being able to speak your mind publicly and practice (or abstain from practicing) the religion of your choice, please think of this Memorial Day as more than a beachside, grill-side day off from work. Attend a local ceremony; thank a veteran; reach out to the family of a deployed or wounded service member.

Many Americans may be tired of armed conflict, but less than one percent of them will ever find themselves in remote proximity to a combat zone.

This war is not going away. Extremism is not going away. We have already been fighting radical Islamic terrorism for decades. Our children and grandchildren will be fighting radical Islamic terrorism for decades to come. Maintaining a persistent presence and persistent engagement with our allies abroad is the only way to protect our way of life and contain those who threaten it.

This is where the Green Berets make a difference. A twelve-man force is often responsible for training 1,000 or more foreign allied combatants. While Special Operations forces use their multilingualism, intimate understanding of other cultures, exceptional intelligence, and adaptability to prepare allied forces for battle, Green Berets serve as much more than a force-multiplier. Often having to accompany the foreign fighter trainees on missions, Green Berets are deployed and exposed to live combat at higher rates than any other branch of the military. As a result, the Green Beret communitys rate of injury and death toll continue to mount year by year, because Green Berets are trained to refuse surrender until they complete the mission. Until they annihilate the enemys threat.

Yet so few Americans understand the immense sacrifice undertaken by one of the most elite, rigorously trained, and patriotic group of men in the world.

This Memorial Day, the Green Berets deployed overseas will not have time to sit and remember the sacrifices of wars past. Sacrifices that allowed America to withstand German and Japanese domination during World War II; sacrifices that kept Communist forces at bay in the 1960s; sacrifices that are still necessary to stymie the spread of radicalism and caliphate desired by the Islamic State.

Memorial Day does not exist for active Green Berets, because Americas past struggle for freedom is their present.

If you enjoy being able to speak your mind publicly and practice (or abstain from practicing) the religion of your choice, please think of this Memorial Day as more than a beachside, grill-side day off from work. Attend a local ceremony; thank a veteran; reach out to the family of a deployed or wounded service member.

Above all, educate your children, friends and neighbors about the significance of the day and its honorees. Remember the Green Berets who died defending our freedom, but also keep in mind those who return to the United States, rejoin their families, and transition to become leaders in whatever career field they choose to pursue.

It is time to engage with those who continue to engage, defend, and sacrifice. Memory is not sufficient this Memorial Day. Take action.
This weekend a hulking 450-pound gorilla almost killed a child that fell into its enclosure at the Cincinnati zoo. Haunting video shows the gorilla tossing and dragging the 4-year-old child like a rag doll. The animal was necessarily killed to save the child.



The reaction was more disturbing than the incident.

Instead of praising the heroic act of the security team that saved the boy in what was described as a life-threatening situation, the childs parents were lambasted, the zoo officials demonized, and western lowland gorilla mourned. Zoo visitors even left flowers for Harambe the gorilla and thousands on social media called it 'murder', with a 'Justice for Harambe' Facebook group quickly garnering over 90,000 likes.

Instead of criticizing the zoo for constructing a barrier that wasn't child proof, the mother was accused of neglectful parenting and could face criminal charges. An online petition blaming the mother and calling for her prosecution has already accumulated over 250,000 supporters. The mother was watching several children at the time. She was heard telling the child not to go into the enclosure. The child didn't listen. This could have happened to any parent. It was an accident. One eyewitness described it all as happening in an instant.



It is disheartening that an endangered gorilla species was killed. But a child almost died. In that context concern for the gorilla needs to take a backseat.

This could have happened to any parent. It was an accident. One eyewitness described it all as happening in an instant

There was nothing needless about the shooting. It was absolutely necessary. According to an incident report, the gorilla was 'violently dragging and throwing the child.' A tranquilizer may not have acted fast enough to save the boy, and may have even enraged the gorilla further.

These types of incidences have ended in tragedy. In 2012, a 2-year-old boy was horrifically mauled to death dead by a pack of wild African dogs at a Pittsburgh zoo. Gorillas are not docile creatures. They are the largest of all primates, and are many times stronger than humans. There is even research and evidence that this particular species of gorilla sometimes kills other gorilla infants.

In a ridiculous attempt at attributing human qualities to animals The Gorilla Organization suggested that the zoo should have negotiated with the Gorilla offering it food, treats, pineapple or some kind of fruit. Animal lover and expert Jack Hanna even defended the zoos actions, describing how hes seen gorillas take a green coconut, which you cant bust open with a sledgehammer and squish it with ease. Youre dealing with either human life or animal life here, Hanna explained.

Showing compassion and empathy toward animals is certainly noble especially when it comes to a majestic and endangered gorilla.

But the mentality that ascribes Disney-like human qualities to animals by prioritizing a gorilla over the saving of a child has consequences. Gorillas are wild animals. Children are humans. Humans can wreak terrible devastation but they are also responsible for the greatest advancements in medicine and technology well beyond what the animal kingdom can accomplish.

It is this delusional anthropomorphizing of animals that leads people to help dog charities over dying children, and according to reports give twice as many donations to animals than the homeless. It is the reason people seemed more outraged over Cecil the lions death, than the savage rape and murder committed by the likes of Boka Haram.

As a parent of two toddlers my heart goes out to the family that not only had to witness a traumatic near-death encounter of a child where the mother was heard telling the sobbing boy Mommy loves you! but also had to endure the vicious attacks following the incident.
Today, thirty million Venezuelans are forced to cope with a grave scarcity of food, medicine, electricity, and political freedom. As the humanitarian crisis worsens, many fear that seething social tension may explode into a bloody confrontation. President Nicolas Maduro seeks to hold on to power by defying the National Assembly and distributing weapons to militants who will use violence to defend the regime. Instead of bolstering urgent regional efforts to confront the crisis, the Obama administration inexplicably backed the regimes bid to buy timeso the meltdown in Venezuela is the next U.S. presidents problem.

Since Maduro was elected by the narrowest of margins to succeed Hugo Chavez three years ago, Venezuelas sputtering and debt-ridden economy has been in steep decline. Plunging oil prices and production compounded the governments woes. The regimes international credibility has been devastated by authoritative reports in U.S. and European dailies implicating then National Assembly president Diosdado Cabello and other regime leaders in drug trafficking and money laundering. Last November, the arrest of Maduros stepson on cocaine smuggling charges in the United States scandalized Venezuelans. That December, Maduros destructive economic policies, political repression, and insecurity touched off a political avalanche, garnering the opposition two-thirds of the seats in national legislative elections.

Maduros response was to pack the supreme court with cronies who nullified every act of the assemblyincluding an amnesty of political prisoners. Electoral authorities are doing Maduros bidding by stalling a revocatory referendum that, if held this year, would allow voters to oust the president and elect a replacement.

Were it not for the dramatic humanitarian crisis, Maduro might be able to escape responsibility for this power grab. However, the imminent economic collapse and fear of widespread political violence has led the regions chief diplomat, Luis Almagro, Secretary General of the Organization of American States, to call an urgent meeting to press regional governments to respond to the crisis.

President Obama has confronted Maduros abuses only when pressured by the U.S. Congress, because he believes that U.S. actions will raise nationalist ire. However, one would think he would support Almagros multilateral efforts to rally the region to address Venezuelas unrest before it grows more dangerous. Instead, over the weekend, Secretary of State John Kerry risked prolonging the crisis by endorsing an ill-fated political dialogue mediated by Spains leftist ex-president Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. The opposition already has rejected such a dialogue, and the National Assembly has declared that Maduros unconstitutional actions and efforts to evade a referendum on his presidency justify a formal invocation of the OAS Inter-American Democratic Charter.

U.S. diplomats must have known that Kerrys endorsement of a dialogue hosted by Maduros friends would blindside the opposition and undermine Almagros plea for action. Now that the opposition has ruled out such mediation, it remains to be seen whether U.S. diplomats will continue to duck the Venezuela issue or urge countries to confront Maduros anti-democratic measures and launch a diplomatic rescue mission.

Even those in the chavista base and in the military who oppose Maduros irresponsible leadership and Cuban interference might welcome a clear signal that Venezuelas neighbors will not stand by as Maduro and his narcogenerals take the country into an abyss.

An OAS resolution might also call on the executive branch to respect the constitutional rights of the National Assembly to grant an amnesty to political prisoners and to authorize a revocatory referendum; permit independent election monitors; cease the distribution of weapons to irregular forces; and allow the private sector to mitigate the shortage of food, medicine, and electricity. The OAS also could pledge to organize international humanitarian relief efforts.

Meanwhile, a U.S. indictment of Cabello and other officials for drug-trafficking as well as executive sanctions on those who are violating constitutional norms and human rights would dispel justified doubts about where Washington stands on democracy and the rule of law in Venezuela. Its never the wrong time to do the right thing.


Days before the 1983 gubernatorial election in Louisiana, Democrat Edwin Edwards infamously declared that the only way I can lose this election is if Im caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy.

Edwards was elected governor that year  demonstrating the low bar Democrats must hurdle to hold public office in the Bayou State.

Click here to join Todds American Dispatch: a must-read for conservatives.

Edwards may have been a scoundrel (not to mention a convicted felon) but at least he didnt slander our Founding Fathers or the Declaration of Independence.

Rep. Barbara Norton managed to do both during a bizarre May 25th rant on the floor of the Chambre des Representants de Louisiane as they say in Cajun Country.

All men are not created equal, the Gentle Lady from Shreveport ranted. Were teaching them a lie.

Rep. Norton was fired up hotter than a bottle of Tabasco from Avery Island.

Lawmakers had been asked to consider a bill authored by Republican Rep. Valarie Hodges that would have required children in grades four, five and six to recite portions of the Declaration of Independence.

I want students to understand that the Declaration of Independence is the cornerstone of our republic  and what gives us liberty, Rep. Hodges told me. I want them to not just memorize it  but to understand what that document did  it changed the course of history.

Click here to get Todds most recent book  a guide to restoring traditional American values.

A noble cause indeed  to teach young Americans that they live in a most exceptional nation.

Its important that we fight for these values, she told me. The future of our republic depends on the next generation  whether or not they are prepared for citizenship.

And as my Fox News colleague Jesse Watters demonstrates on a weekly basis in his Watters World segment  our public school system is doing a subpar job of teaching kids what it means to be an American.

The Left is pushing against this very hard  trying to rewrite history, she said. Instead of believing that America is an exceptional nation  there are some radicals who want to rewrite history and teach our children the opposite of what is truth.

And that brings me back to Rep. Norton  railing on about the Declaration of Independence.

Were teaching them a lie, she declared.

When I think back in 1776 July 4th  African Americans were slaves and for you to bring a bill to request that our children will recite the Declaration  I think its a little bit unfair to us to ask those children to recite something that is not true, she said.

House Speaker Pro Tem Walt Leger III (another Democrat) took issue with the All men are created equal portion  and said it needed to be taught with historical context.

Men and women were not seen as equals at that time nor were blacks considered to be men that were equal to others, he said during a committee hearing.

Rep. Hodges was dumbfounded by the hostility.

I feel sadness that that level of hatred was displayed against the Founding Fathers and the documents that give us the ability as women and black people and Caucasians to run for office, she said. The lack of understanding to me is saddening and frightening.

Hodges ended up pulling her bill  under pressure from lawmakers and a mountain of amendments.

Democrats dont believe we should teach young Americans that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. And they sure dont want them to pursue happiness.

That, boys and girls, is what we call a self-evident truth.
In the wake of Memorial Day, a crowd gathered on the Yellowstone County Courthouse lawn to continue honoring American veterans. On Tuesday the focus was on those who served in Vietnam.

Veterans, and in some cases their relatives, received a lapel pin commemorating the 50th anniversary of the conflict. U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke addressed the crowd before distributing the pins and shaking hands with the veterans.

Zinke told the crowd he remembered watching parades in the 1960s and lines of marching veterans from World War I, World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam. He remembered noticing the younger vets standing out among the others.

The Vietnam vets didnt march so well. They were different even back then, Zinke said.

He said their experience was different and their war unsettled. The soldiers, airmen, Marines and sailors returned home to an adverse political climate. On Tuesday he welcomed them home and thanked them for their service.

At 16, Bruce Glenn forged the date on his birth certificate so he could join the Army in 1963. During his 12-year career, he served a combined 26 months in two tours in Vietnam.

Glenn said he also had two brothers who served in Vietnam as Marines. Both have since passed.

I was able to get pins for them, Glenn said. My mother turns 88 tomorrow so Ill be able to give those pins to her for her birthday.

Glenn said while in Vietnam he was a door gunner aboard a UH-1 helicopter with the Pink Panther painted on its nose. His experiences left him with post-traumatic stress disorder.

It was 30 years before I heard the words Welcome home, and I cried like a baby, Glenn said.

That first welcome came during a stop of the traveling Vietnam memorial wall in Billings. It was in sharp contrast to his return to the United States in the 1960s. His plane landed in Oakland, Calif., during the middle of the night to avoid protests near the airstrip.

Retired Senior Chief Petty Officer John L. Christian served more than 30 years in the United States Navy. He remembers a different experience upon returning to his hometown of Poplar from his first tour of Vietnam.

I was in Montana in a matter of 24 hours, Christian said. I was always treated outstanding in Montana. We didnt have those crazies and those hippies.

Christian served as a corpsman, a Navy medic, in three tours in Vietnam. Because the United States Marine Corps does not have its own medical personnel, he spent two of those deployments with Marine Corps Force Recon and infantry units. The last was aboard a ship.

Christian said it was good to have Vietnam Veterans honored on Tuesday. His attendance came just hours before he acted as honor guard in a Laurel funeral for a fellow veteran.

Im not here for myself. Im here for my friends and neighbors and shipmates who couldnt be here, he said.
For decades, the State of Israel has been battling bullets and bombs. Now, a new weapon is being used against our most cherished ally  a weapon that poses grave danger.

The rise of anti-Israel sentiments is apparent in this country and worldwide. A product of that hatred is the BDS Movement. BDS  Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions  a long-term global effort created by enemies of Israel to delegitimize the State of Israel.

Make no mistake about it: The unambiguous goal of the international BDS Movement is the elimination of the State of Israel.

The BDS Movement is a serious new threat designed to cripple Israel economically and politically.

Make no mistake about it: The unambiguous goal of the international BDS Movement is the elimination of the State of Israel.

The fact is that activities and events fostering an environment of intimidation and marginalization of Jewish citizens have seen a marked upswing on college and university campuses around the country, but the issue is not limited to the academic arena.

Businesses that sell Israeli products have been harassed by pro-BDS picketers, labor unions have passed resolutions supporting divestment from Israeli institutions and corporations, and even government agencies have cancelled plans to visit Jerusalem based on absurd claims that Israels border security measuresa primary means of defending the country from imminent terrorist threatsare discriminatory.

That is exactly why I am honored to stand-up for Israel at the United Nations. Were proud to serve as a co-sponsor with Israel of an international anti-BDS conference entitled Building Bridges, Not Boycotts. The conference host is Danny Danon, the Israeli Ambassador to the U.N., who clearly expressed whats at stake with this global gathering.

BDS is the modern incarnation of anti-Semitism, said Ambassador Danon. Holding this anti-BDS summit in the UN General Assembly will bring together an international coalition against the boycott movement, and will send a clear message to all of our adversaries  Israel will not relent and will continue to reveal the lies propagated by the BDS movement.

At the U.N. General Assembly on Monday, I outlined our multi-pronged legal and media advocacy strategy to combat the anti-Israel BDS movement:

1. The first part of our strategy is to expose true nature of BDS for what it is: a long term project created by anti-Israel activists that are designed to delegitimize the State of Israel, and the Jewish people, by any means possible.

2. The second part of our strategy is to identify & quash BDS manifestations, including subtle ones that violate existing law & policy.

3. The third part of our strategy is to enshrine in the law additional protections for Jewish citizens and Israeli interests.

4. The fourth part of our strategy is to change the international conversation about Israel stemming from false BDS narrative.

The good news: our strategy is working.

We have won victories against BDS at University of Chicago Loyola, University of Texas, University of California, University of Michigan, UCLA, and City University of New York (CUNY), in addition to the American Studies Association.

In the face of intimidation and fear, we operate critically as attorneys to stand up for the rule of law and religious freedom in the face of anti-Semitism and bigotry.

The law is on our side because the BDS movement violates many non-discrimination laws and policies.

As I told the UN, there are several pro-active measures that can be taken in academia to stop BDS before it begins:

? In order to defend individuals against unjustifiable discrimination, the ACLJ urges college administrators to reject false narratives of the supporters of the BDS movement.

? To avoid the continued harassment, denigration, and marginalization of Israeli supporters, the ACLJ stresses the importance of colleges and universities denouncing anti-Semitism in all its forms and taking action against anti-Jewish discrimination on campus.

For the students, faculty, employees, or other members of any organization who are threatened and harassed, the ACLJ is fighting to protect their freedoms.

And those who would continue to single out one nation and one people for discrimination and harassment are now officially on notice  anti-BDS forces continue to grow and will continue to combat the growing anti-Semitic, anti-Israel attacks.

And thats an important message the U.N. General Assembly needs to hear.
Hillary Clintons campaign chairman scrambled over the holiday weekend to reassure jumpy supporters, in the wake of an inspector general report that took the Democratic presidential front-runner to task over her personal email use while secretary of state.

In a memo sent Saturday, and obtained by Fox News, campaign chairman John Podesta acknowledged Clinton has called her use of a personal email server while secretary of state a mistake.

But he put a positive spin on the IG report, saying it gets us one step closer to resolving this.

Since last year, Secretary Clinton has said her use of a personal email server was a mistake. And while there have been ongoing reviews of this matter, the completion of the Inspector Generals examination gets us one step closer to resolving this, Podesta said.

He also repeated campaign claims that Clinton opted to use a personal server for convenience and was only doing what she thought her predecessors did -- though the IG report challenged this assessment.

What she thought would be a convenient way to communicate with family, friends and colleagues  by using one email account for both her work related and personal emails  has turned out to be anything but convenient. If she could go back, shed do it differently, Podesta's memo read. "... She believed she was following the practices of other Secretaries and senior officials."

The IG report released last week found Clinton did not seek permission to use her personal account for official business as secretary of state -- and would not have been approved to do so had she asked.

The day the IG report was issued, Clinton said in an interview that her use of personal email was consistent with her predecessors.

But the report stated that Condoleezza Rice did not use personal email for government business. It said Colin Powell used personal email to connect with people outside the department -- but he did not have a private server.

Howard Krongard, a George W. Bush administration appointee who served as the State Department inspector general from April 2005 to January 2008, also told Fox News that Rice did not use a personal server.

I certainly never either sent an email to one or received an email from one, said Krongard.

He added, I would have been stunned had I been asked to send an email to her at a personal server, private address. I would have declined to do so on security grounds and if she had sent one to me, I probably would have started an investigation.

The IG report also found that repeated warnings about cybersecurity were ignored and that staffers who expressed their concerns were told never to speak of the Secretarys personal email system again.

Podesta, though, downplayed the criticisms in the May 25 report, saying the report confirms her email use was known by many department officials, and that there was no evidence of a breach of the server by hackers.

However, Podesta does not include the IGs finding that the server was attacked by hackers, though there was no evidence of a successful breach.

Had Secretary Clinton known of any concerns about her email setup at the time, she would have taken steps to address them, Podesta said in the memo.

Fox News Jennifer Griffin and Catherine Herridge contributed to this report.
The Justice Department moved Tuesday to fight a federal judges order that its lawyers undergo mandatory ethics training, digging in after the DOJ was accused of misleading the courts over President Obama's immigration executive actions.

In filings Tuesday, the department said the order would "far exceed the bounds of appropriate remedies" and would cost the department millions.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, of Texas, had issued the order earlier this month, after alleging DOJ attorneys misled him about the implementation of Obamas executive orders on illegal immigrants.

Attorneys had told Hanen that a key component  an expansion of a 2012 program to protect illegal immigrants from deportation if they were brought to the U.S. as children  hadnt been implemented. But officials later revealed they had given more than 108,000 people three-year reprieves from deportation under the expanded rules, as well as work permits.

Hanen blocked Obama's actions and the case is now before the Supreme Court.

Hanens scathing order filed on May 19 accused the DOJ of a calculated plan of unethical conduct. He ordered that all DOJ lawyers attend a yearly ethics course. He also ordered the department to turn over the names of those who received the reprieves.

"Such conduct is certainly not worthy of any department whose name includes the word 'Justice,'" Hanen said.

The Department of Justice responded in the court filing Tuesday, saying that it "emphatically" disagrees with the judges ruling, claiming that none of its lawyers intended to deceive. The filing requests Hanens order be put on hold so federal lawyers can review.

In Tuesdays filing, the DOJ estimated that the ethics training mandated would cost upwards of $7.8 million.

"The sanctions ordered by the Court far exceed the bounds of appropriate remedies for what this Court concluded were intentional misrepresentations, a conclusion that was reached without proper procedural protections and that lacks sufficient evidentiary support," lawyers for the department said.

Compounding matters, the sanctions imposed by this Court exceed the scope of its authority and unjustifiably impose irreparable injury on the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and thousands of innocent third parties, the filing said.

The department also argued the order to turn over the list of those who were given reprieves would undermine trust in the Department of Homeland Securitys ability to maintain the confidentiality of personal information, which it said was vital to its mission.

The Department emphatically disagrees with the sanctions orders and will seek review of this matter in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals," a Department of Justice spokesman said in a statement.

Fox News' Matt Dean and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Hillary Clinton is packing her campaign schedule with new stops across California ahead of next weeks delegate-rich primary, in an apparent bid to forestall a Bernie Sanders win as her rival climbs in the polls and barnstorms the state in pursuit of a dramatic upset.

The campaign hastily scrapped a planned New Jersey stop later in the week, and instead announced the Democratic presidential front-runner will camp out in California from Thursday through Monday, right up until the June 7 primary.

In a boost ahead of her West Coast swing, Clinton also snagged the endorsement Tuesday of California Gov. Jerry Brown, who in an open letter said Clinton represents the only path forward to win the presidency and stop the dangerous candidacy of Donald Trump.

He wrote, Hillary Clinton has convincingly made the case that she knows how to get things done and has the tenacity and skill to advance the Democratic agenda.

The developments come amid signs that the campaign-finale contest could be close. A recent poll, by the Public Policy Institute of California, showed Clintons lead in the state narrowing from double digits to just 2 points. Sanders, meanwhile, has been crisscrossing California for days and on Monday boldly predicted a victory in the Golden State, where 475 pledged delegates are at stake.

Shes getting very nervous lately, Sanders claimed of Clinton.

Clinton does not have to be nervous about whether shell effectively secure the nomination by June 7  shes just 71 delegates shy of the 2,383 needed to clinch, and is assured of crossing that threshold by next Tuesday night. Six states, including California and New Jersey, are voting on Tuesday, the last major primary election day.

But she wants to avoid a high-profile loss in the Democratic stronghold, at a time when she's trying to unify the party. A Sanders upset victory could energize the Vermont senators vows to take his fight all the way to the convention.

Speaking Monday in Oakland, Calif., Sanders insisted the race will not be over next Tuesday. He again vowed to keep working to persuade so-called superdelegates  party insiders and officials free to support any candidate  to cross over to his side in the weeks ahead. (While Clinton is sure to exceed the 2,383-delegate threshold on Tuesday, Sanders' campaign for weeks has questioned whether her superdelegate support should count toward that tally.)

On Tuesday, Sanders was continuing his extended swing through California with stops in Emeryville, Santa Cruz and Monterey.

Clinton has not revealed exact details on where shell be campaigning when she travels from New Jersey to California later in the week.

Her attention to New Jersey in recent days may reflect the campaigns back-up plan in case California is tight. Clinton aides recently told Fox News they're hoping for an overwhelming win in New Jersey on June 7, which could possibly seal the nomination for Clinton before the polls even close in California.

"If things go our way in New Jersey," one senior Clinton official said, "we could wrap up the nomination and the rest of the country will already be asleep before the results are even final in California."

Sanders aides told Fox News they plan to spend most of their time in California in the lead-up to Tuesday and feel they are closing strong in the nation's most populous state.

"We feel it's an important state," Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs told Fox News. "And we plan to campaign hard there and turn these huge crowds and momentum into a big win."

Fox News Jake Gibson and Dan Gallo contributed to this report.
Even as Donald Trump and Republican Party bosses diligently work Capitol Hill in hopes of bringing the party together after a fractious presidential primary, convention planners could still be looking at a block of empty seats for the July convention.

A growing roster of senior GOP figures  from governors to senators to, most notably, nearly every living GOP presidential nominee  is vowing to skip the convention in Cleveland, despite the candidate starting to win over the rank-and-file.

In an unconventional election season where Trump has capitalized on an anti-establishment fervor, the case can be made that Trump does not need the blessing of party elders, or their attendance.

Trump is a master entertainer and more than likely going to put together a convention program that attempts to highlight his strengths and sideline some of the major absences, Republican strategist Ron Bonjean told FoxNews.com.

Still, since wrapping up the nomination, Trump and his surrogates have been regularly meeting with Hill Republicans, showing at least an effort to pursue party unity  a message that high-profile absences in Cleveland could undercut.

Trump hit the unity theme again Sunday night, as he responded to the latest prediction that an independent candidate would soon enter the race. On Twitter, Trump warned, if the GOP can't control their own, then they are not a party.

Yet Trumps contemporaries will be nowhere near Cleveland.

Of all the living Republican presidential nominees and former presidents, only Bob Dole is expected to attend  and even then, only briefly, for the purpose of catching a luncheon hosted by his law firm, a source told Fox News earlier this month.

Former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush have said they will not attend, as have 2008 nominee John McCain and 2012 nominee Mitt Romney. Former 2016 White House candidate Jeb Bush also is expected to skip.

Of them, Romney is working most actively against Trump, having delivered a major address attacking his candidacy and frequently sparring with the now-presumptive nominee on Twitter. He also reportedly has been the focus of efforts to recruit an independent candidate, though so far to no avail.

Others claim to be skipping in order to focus on their own election battles  some of those potentially made more challenging by Trumps primary success.

McCain seemingly counts himself among that group. The Arizona senator is facing a tough re-election fight in a state with a heavy Hispanic population, and has said Trump complicates his race.

New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte also has said she will not be attending the convention, citing a tough re-election battle.

"Unlikely," Ayotte told CNN. "I've got a lot of work to do in New Hampshire, I have my own re-election and I'm going to be focusing on my voters in New Hampshire."

Other senators who do not plan to be in Cleveland include: Wisconsins Ron Johnson, Alaskas Lisa Murkowski, Kansas Jerry Moran, Missouris Roy Blunt, and Illinois Mark Kirk, according to McClatchyDC. Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C. told CNN "Im more valuable outside of Cleveland than inside of Cleveland," but his spokeswoman later said his schedule is still being finalized.

FoxNews.com reached out as well to Republican governors for an attendance tally.

Most of those RSVPs remain outstanding, but representatives for Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval and Wyoming Gov. Matthew Mead told FoxNews.com they would not be in Cleveland. Meads spokesman cited a busy summer as the reason for the governor not making it.

No-shows could be more common for lawmakers in the House, where a faction remains skeptical of Trumps candidacy. Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., a co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus, told The Hill about 10 other conservatives are planning not to attend.

Many lawmakers and their staff remain tight-lipped about whether theyre attending, and their rationale.

Asked for comment on whether Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., would show up, a representative for the senator sent FoxNews.com a Boston Globe article in which Flake is quoted as saying, Ive got other things to do. Meanwhile, a rep for South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley linked to a YouTube video in which the governor said she was undecided on whether to go.

This may be because Republicans are still evaluating how to deal with Trumps victory.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, for one, is rumored to be close to endorsing the billionaire, though he hasnt yet. Now that Trump has reached the necessary 1,237 delegates to clinch the nomination, according to the latest AP tally, more top GOP lawmakers could feel pressured to step in line.

Marco Rubio, once an outspoken Trump rival who sold #NeverTrump merchandise on his website, said Sunday he will get behind the presumptive nominee.

I want to be helpful, the Florida senator said on CNN's "State of the Union."

The big unknown is whether Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who suspended his campaign in early May, will similarly get on board.

While the absence of major figures at the convention could damage the partys ability to present a united front against likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, some argue that Trump will be able to manage the dissension in the ranks.

The absences wont hurt Trumps ability to unite the party, Bonjean said, but he must keep his focus now on Hillary Clinton and avoid getting into fights with other Republicans that may not agree with his pending nomination.

It is not unheard of for Republicans, especially those in tight re-election races, to skip the national convention when political waters look choppy.

In 2008, several top Republicans chose to skip. Some were due to urgent state issues -- like then-California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger grappling with a budget stalemate or Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal dealing with Hurricane Gustav. Gustav even forced then-President Bush not to attend, making him the first sitting president since Lyndon Johnson not to attend his partys convention. Instead, he delivered his address by satellite hookup from the White House.

Sens. Pat Roberts, of Kansas; Susan Collins, of Maine; Gordon Smith, of Oregon; and Elizabeth Dole, of North Carolina, also stayed home from the GOP convention in order to campaign. At that time, Bushs approval ratings were hovering around 30 percent.

This was a departure, however, from the 2000 convention where various interest groups in the party all came together behind their candidate with a single-minded determination to take back the White House. It didn't hurt that Bush was leading in the polls and had seen his last primary challengers fade away months before.

At that convention, there were no reports of prominent Republicans choosing not to attend.
Buzz Cut:

 Hillary makes a big bet on California

 Trump bashes press in defense of vets charity flap

 Podesta explains email regrets

 Sausage so good, youll riot

HILLARY MAKES A BIG BET ON CALIFORNIA

A week from today, Hillary Clinton will clinch the Democratic presidential nomination.

She will probably have it done even before the polls close that night in California, the largest prize of the night and of the entire calendar. And even if she did lose in the Golden State, Clinton would still be the nominee thanks to a proportional split of Californias 548 delegates.

So why is Clinton ripping up her schedule and heading west? Why would she even want to increase the attention on the contest there instead of honing in on New Jersey, where she is favored to win and which could easily deliver her the 72 delegates she needs to go over the top?

The answers have nothing to do with math. There are nearly 900 delegates from the states voting next week, and she just needs about 8 percent of them.

Whats at stake for Clinton is momentum at a moment she needs it badly.

To the shock and consternation of Democrats, the general election is starting out as very much a horse race. Clinton & Co. did not realize the degree to which Donald Trump would poll as a normal Republican, nor the degree to which Clintons own negatives would weigh her down.

We know they said over and over again that Clinton was taking nothing for granted, yadda, yadda, yadda But cmon, hes a reality TV host who is at war with his own party. No sweat, right?

Clinton is surely sweating now.

While Trumps claim to make a play for California in the general election doesnt look credible today, his chances would at least appear better if she lost her own primary there while Trump cruises to an uncontested victory. It would at least give Trump lots to talk about.

But leaving aside any crazy talk of California in the fall, theres the basic issue of early race momentum. And right now, Trump has it all.

Deadlocked head-to-head polls show Trump benefitting from a win bonus as the members of the Republican rank and file do what they can to get in line behind a candidate most of them initially opposed. Democrats, meanwhile, are still laboring under the illusion of choice, believing that there is still some way that it might be something other than the Clinton restoration now 16 years in the making.

A big win in the biggest state would help to smash this illusion and force Democrats into the binary box where Republican now dwell: Its either him or her.

Another upside to a California win is that it would deprive hanger-on Bernie Sanders of a strong argument to keep his campaign going after the voting is through. Sanders could technically remain in the race after a California loss, as he has promised, but would be going through the motions.

For a campaign that has been mostly marked by crippling caution, Clintons California play has the marks of a decision made by a candidate whos ready and worried enough to start taking some chances.

WITH YOUR SECOND CUP OF COFFEE

On this day 100 years ago, British and German fleets met in the North Sea off Denmarks Jutland Peninsula in what would be historys largest naval battle, in terms of the total tonnage of ships involved. The battle engaged 100,000 men aboard 250 ships. The British fleet, under Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, lost more ships and suffered double the casualties 6,784  as the Germans. But as Britains current First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Philip Jones, recounts in The Telegraph, the strategic victory went to Britannia: In the longer term, Jutland also forced Germany to abandon attempts to challenge the Navy and instead switch to a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare against merchant shipping. This would be its undoing, for Germanys targeting of transatlantic supply routes brought the United States into the war, leading ultimately to the collapse of the German Empire.

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 +1 point

Generic congressional vote: Democrats +2.2

TRUMP BASHES PRESS IN DEFENSE OF VETS CHARITY FLAP

The Hill: Donald Trump on Tuesday said he finally gave close to six million dollars to veterans groups, four months after making the pledge in late January. The presumptive GOP presidential nominee also said the press should be ashamed of themselves for asking questions about the money he donated. I have never received such bad publicity for doing such a good job, Trump said, before releasing a list of the veterans groups who received the money. As of this moment, it's $5.6 million, Trump added in a press conference at Trump Tower in Manhattan on Tuesday. All of the money has been spent.

PODESTA EXPLAINS EMAIL REGRETS

Fox News: Hillary Clintons campaign chairman scrambled over the holiday weekend to reassure jumpy supporters, in the wake of an inspector general report that took the Democratic presidential front-runner to task over her personal email use while secretary of state. In a memo sent Saturday, and obtained by Fox News, campaign chairman John Podesta acknowledged Clinton has called her use of a personal email server while secretary of state a mistake. What she thought would be a convenient way to communicate with family, friends and colleagues  by using one email account for both her work related and personal emails  has turned out to be anything but convenient. If she could go back, shed do it differently, Podestas memo read.

RACE NOTES

The psychology of political misinformation - Politico

Kristol tweet trolls Trump - Fox News

Hillary, Trump tied, but not liked, in NH swing state poll - Boston Herald

The complicated Clinton candidacy- NY Mag

Can Hillary recast herself as an agent of change? - WaPo

How to pick a running mate - FiveThirtyEight

Thats one way to increase your name ID - Politico

WITHIN EARSHOT

We do have some differences, but he brags about being transactional and being a dealmaker and all the rest  thats part of what makes things work in Congress.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Fox & Friends talking about his endorsement of Donald Trump.



SAUSAGE SO GOOD, YOULL RIOT

Radio Free Europe: A vegan cafe in the historic center of Tbilisi [the capital of the nation of Georgia] was forced to cancel an English-language video screening over the weekend when a group described by witnesses as far-right extremists threw meat into patrons vegan dinners and started a brawl. The staff at Tbilisis Kiwi Cafe called police on the evening of May 29 after more than a dozen men carrying meat attacked restaurant customers and staff. The clash spilled onto the street outside and neighbors joined in the brawl -- some reportedly fighting against the restaurants staff and customers, as well as the meat eaters. Minor injuries were reported. The attackers fled before police arrived and no arrests were made. Police briefly detained some cafe staff members for interrogation.

Chris Stirewalt is digital politics editor for Fox News. Want FOX News First in your inbox every day? Sign up here.
Lawyers for senior Hillary Clinton aide Cheryl Mills, during a nearly five-hour deposition last week in Washington, repeatedly objected to questions about IT specialist Bryan Paglianos role in setting up the former secretary of states private server.

According to a transcript of the deposition with watchdog group Judicial Watch released on Tuesday, Mills attorney Beth Wilkinson  as well as Obama administration lawyers  objected to the line of questioning about Pagliano, who has emerged as a central figure in the FBI's ongoing criminal probe of Clinton's email practices.

I'm going to instruct her not to answer. It's a legal question, Wilkinson responded, when asked by Judicial Watch whether Pagliano was an agent of the Clintons when the server was set up.

This was a pattern repeated throughout the deposition by the seven lawyers for Mills -- including four attorneys representing the State and Justice departments, as well as her personal representatives.

Asked direct questions about when Mills spoke with Pagliano, Mills' lawyer also objected.

In other exchanges relating to the server's set-up, Mills said she did not know how to answer either.

"I don't know how to answer your question because I don't know the time period, Mills said, when asked when she spoke with Pagliano. She did clarify that she met him in 2008 during Clinton's first presidential campaign. Mills served as Clintons chief of staff at the State Department and her counsel.

Pagliano, a former State Department employee, cut an immunity deal last fall with the Justice Department amid the FBI probe. He was recently described to Fox News by an intelligence source as a "devastating witness."

Mills had recently gone to court to make sure that recordings of this past Fridays deposition were not released. The request was granted by the court, though Judicial Watch was still able to release the transcript.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told Fox News on Tuesday that they have more information than we did before the deposition despite difficult questioning.

He added, Mills attorneys directed her not to discuss conversations with Pagliano.

Mills also testified under oath that the server existed before Clinton became secretary of state in 2009.

President Clinton had established a server for the purposes of his own staff office, and  her email was subsequently put on that, Mills said, adding that she learned about the servers origin after the fact.
The White House has been unable to detect a single cyber security threat more than six months after issuing a national emergency to deal with what the administration identified as growing and immediate danger, according to a new government report.

Six months after President Barack Obama invoked emergency powers to block the assets of any person caught engaging in malicious cyber-enabled activities, the administration has not identified a single qualifying target, according to the Treasury Department, which disclosed in a report that no entities or individuals have been designated.

The April 2015 directive issued by the White House identified an increasing prevalence and severity of malicious cyber-enabled activities among individuals living outside the United States.

These activities were said to constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States, prompting Obama to declare a national emergency to deal with this threat.

A half a year later, the White House still has not invoked this power to combat growing cyber threats, despite a rise in such activity among rogue nations such as Iran, North Korea, and China.

The Department of the Treasury took no punitive licensing actions, and it assessed no monetary penalties, according to the departments first periodic review of the presidents emergency order.

Click for more from The Washington Free Beacon.
A burlesque dancer is accusing JetBlue of "slut shaming" after she was asked to change her clothes before boarding a flight from Boston to Seattle.

Maggie McMuffin (a stage name used by the passenger) says she was returning home on May 18 after several performances on the east coast when a JetBlue crew member told her that the outfit she was wearing wasnt fit to fly.

"A few minutes before boarding was set to start, the gate lead approached me and said there was a problem and that what I was wearing was not appropriate," McMuffin told KING news. The dancer says she had been waiting in the boarding area for about 45 minutes before anyone approached her.

McMuffin was wearing a tiger sweater with striped black and white Daisy Dukes and thigh-highsand she had already worn the same outfit on the first leg of her flight that day from New York to Boston, also on JetBlue.

She said the gate agent apologized then told her that what she "was wearing was not appropriate and the flight crew had discussed it and the pilot had decided that I needed to put something else on or I would not be allowed to board the flight.

She explained that she didnt have anything else with hereven suggesting she wrap her sweater around her legs or wear a blanket-- at which point she says the JetBlue crewmember suggested she go buy something. Instead of missing her flight, McMuffin ran through the airport terminal and purchased a $22 paid of pajama bottoms to cover up.

@fuckityfuckity Yes. I was told to rebook or find something else so I bought and put on these. pic.twitter.com/RgdIkjApTD  Maggie McMuffin (@MaggieMcMuff) May 30, 2016

McMuffin says she feels disrespected and says that since the final decision is left up to the pilot, the policy is unfairly subjective. She told KOMO news that the incident is indicative of unfair treatment of women in a patriarchal society.

"I'd say body shaming and slut shaming more than outright sexism, but it is really hard to remove those two things from misogyny."

Since the incident, JetBlue has apologized to the burlesque dancer, reimbursed her for the cost of the pajama bottoms and offered her a $162 credit for a future flight.

A spokesperson for JetBlue released the following statement to KING 5:

"The gate and onboard crew discussed the customer's clothing and determined that the burlesque shorts may offend other families on the flight. While the customer was not denied boarding, the crew members politely asked if she could change. The customer agreed and continued on the flight without interruption. We support our crew members' discretion to make these difficult decisions."

But McMuffin says that in additional to a personal apology from the pilot, she wants JetBlue officials to analyze their own dress code and come up with a clearly stated policy for all airline passengers.

"It was a nice gesture," said McMuffin of the $162 offer. "But I don't really want to fly JetBlue again and they told me they couldn't give me a cash refund."
A suspicious package left by a prison guard's mailbox exploded and seriously burned him when he opened it, authorities said Sunday as they worked to determine who sent it and why.

The 52-year-old officer was severely injured, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said, in an explosion that stunned the small central New York town of Floyd. Cuomo called the blast "horrific," and local, state and federal agencies were investigating and trying to determine whether the blast was related to the victim's work.

"He's in critical condition, but we keep fingers crossed and you pray for the best," the Democratic governor said.

Cuomo said the officer is getting "the best care he can get" at the burn unit of Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse.

"There are a lot of unanswered questions," Oneida County Sheriff Robert Maciol told reporters at a news conference. "And we're confident that with all of us working together, we can figure out who did this."

The corrections officer picked it up the package around 8 a.m. near his mailbox, Maciol said, saying he couldn't give specifics about the explosive. Cuomo said the item blew up as the victim opened it.

Authorities aren't releasing the man's name. He's hospitalized in stable condition with burns on his hands and arms, according to Maciol.

The state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision referred inquiries to the governor's office.

The explosion shook neighbors in the quiet town of about 3,800, a bedroom community for the old industrial cities of Rome and Utica. It's also near a prison, in Marcy.

"I heard the loud boom, and I was scared," resident Patricia Westcott said by phone. "It did sound like a bomb."

She opened her door and heard screaming from a few doors away, then sirens.

Authorities used automated phone calls to warn some residents to stay indoors as they searched the neighborhood with dogs and other means to make sure it was safe. Maciol said they concluded no other residents were in danger, but part of the road remained closed to most traffic hours later so investigators could keep gathering evidence.
Like an echo, the sharp crack of gunfire and the slow, steady notes of taps bounced from cemetery to cemetery across Yellowstone County on Monday as hundreds of people honored fallen military members for Memorial Day.

About a half-dozen ceremonies took place across the county throughout the day, each ending with the traditional three seven-shot volleys of rifle fire and the solitary sounding of taps that concludes military funerals.

"Today, we honor the fallen, and remember that the fallen are not old men and women," said Montana Congressman Ryan Zinke, a retired Navy SEAL commander, at a late-morning ceremony at Mountview Cemetery in Billings. "The fallen are our youth. The fallen are a national treasure."

At each service, veterans, their loved ones and the public joined local and state officials in honoring those who served and died as members of Americas armed forces.

At the Yellowstone National Cemetery's ceremonies outside of Laurel, Maj. Gen. Matthew Quinn, adjutant general of the Montana Army National Guard, read Linda Ellis' poem "The Dash," which says what matters in a person's life is what happens where the dash sits between the birth and death dates on their tombstone.

He said that the public and loved ones left behind should honor those fallen military members' time and service while dedicating themselves to giving back.

"Then I believe that if our men and women are asked if it was worth it, their answer will be a resounding, 'Yes,'" Quinn told the crowd of several hundred gathered there.

According to the U.S. Veterans Administration, Montana has a veteran population of more than 99,000 people, and at nearly one in 10, the state has one of the highest per capita veteran populations in the nation.

Many of those present at Monday's services were veterans themselves, sporting hats, patches or shirts noting their branch or the conflict in which they served.

At the Laurel cemetery  which is a national veteran's cemetery  one such group received special recognition.

After officials noted that many veterans of the Vietnam War returned home to little thanks and a hostile public, they invited any who wished to do so to come to the stage and receive a pin commemorating their service.

A few took the chance right away and over the next few minutes about 20 Vietnam veterans took the stage, to applause from the gathered crowd to receive a handshake, a salute and a pin from Quinn and Zinke.

Zinke also invited the public and any Vietnam veterans who weren't part of the ceremony to attend another such pinning ceremony on Tuesday at 8 a.m. on the lawn of the Yellowstone County Courthouse.

Earlier in the day at Mountview, where hundreds of graves were decorated with small American flags to mark the day and indicate where a veteran was buried, Billings Mayor Tom Hanel urged people to honor military members more often than just Memorial Day.

"We love our military," he said. "We respect our military. We should acknowledge them each and every day."

In addressing the crowds, Quinn implored them to make a point to honor "the nation's bravest" for their sacrifices.

"The noble profession of military service demands much from those who answer the call," he said.

During his closing prayer, American Legion Post 117 chaplain Skip Venard noted that while service is worth the sacrifice, but isn't always easy.

"Some of us pay with a price that reaches into our lives very deeply," he said. "Some us pay with our lives."

Quinn noted that, as inspired by "The Dash," the military members who did pay with their lives are remembered and honored not only through their deaths, but through their actions and their service before.

"For these brave men and women, it was worth it," he said. "The men and women memorialized here today are worth it."
Iranian-American pastor Saeed Abedini has warned that if Christians don't reach Muslims with the "love of Jesus Christ," then Muslims will reach them with jihad.

"If we don't reach Muslims with the love of Jesus Christ, they will reach us with the love of Allah, which is jihad," Abedini wrote on his Facebook page on Sunday.

Abedini, who converted from Islam and spent three years and a half in prison in Iran for his Christian faith, has slammed the teachings of Islam in several statements, arguing that it's a "lie" to believe that Islam is a peaceful religion.

"If Muslims say: we are peaceful, 'it's a lie.' The Qur'an teaches that Muslims must fight and kill (Jihad) unbelievers. 'Wherever you overtake them' until 'religion is Allah's,' i.e. Islamic law rules all societies (2.Sura Al _Baqarah(Cow) 2:190-193). Regarding to the Qur'an's verse, Christians and Jews are included to make them Muslim or kill them in entire the world," Abedini wrote back in March, following the Easter Sunday terror attacks on Christians in Pakistan.

The mass suicide blast in Lahore killed at least 72 people, and Islamic terrorists said it was specifically aimed at Christians.

Muslims leaders around the world, such as Muslim Judicial Council of South Africa President Maulana Ihsaan Hendricks, condemned, at that time, what they called a "heinous and cowardly" attack on Christians.
An Army veteran who served in Afghanistan has been identified as the gunman in a deadly shooting at a Houston auto detailing shop over the weekend.

The shooter's identity has not been made public, but multiple local news outlets reported his name as Dionisio Garza III, 25, of San Bernardino County, Calif.

KTRK reported that investigators identified Garza as the shooter after his personal papers, including his birth certificate and military discharge record, were found in a backpack near the scene Monday. According to the station, Garza's record shows that he was discharged in 2014 after attaining the rank of sergeant.

Garza also received several awards, including the Afghanistan Campaign Medal with two campaign stars and the Army Achievement Medal.

It was not immediately clear how or why investigators failed to collect the backpack from the scene after almost 24 hours.

Garza's father told KPRC that he suspected his son suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and his behavior had grown increasingly erratic in recent months.

"You know he was rambling off about the economy collapsing, you know," the man said. "And that something was going to happen by Monday, that kind of stuff. Of course you look back now and there were signs. There were signs."

Garza's stepmother told ABC News that she also believed her stepson was suffering from PTSD.

"He did two tours in Afghanistan. I think he was proud to be in the military, but I know he went through a lot," she said. "I don't think he ever came back the same."

The Sunday morning shooting caused panic in a normally quiet neighborhood in West Houston. One person, identified as 56-year-old Eugene Linscomb, was killed and six others were wounded, including two law enforcement officers.

One of the other injured victims, 30-year-old Byron Wilson, has officially been ruled out as a suspect after authorities determined he shot at Garza with a gun he was licensed to carry.

The gunman was killed by a SWAT officer about an hour after the shooting began.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Casey Anthony's former attorney, Jose Baez, lashed out at accusations that he had sex with his client before her murder trial, telling Fox News on Tuesday the investigator who made the claim was "a complete and total moron."

Dominic Casey, who worked for the Orlando-area mom's legal team in 2008 after the disappearance of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, claimed in court documents that Baez had sex with Casey Anthony in exchange for payment. The investigator also said Baez told him the mom killed her daughter and dumped the body.

In his first TV interview since the accusations surfaced, Baez told Fox & Friends that Dominic Casey's new claims flew in the face of his sworn deposition in the case. "He'd better pray to the god of punk wannabe private eyes that some U.S. attorney in Tampa does not see these transcripts and decides to charge him with perjury."

Baez confirmed that he planned to seek legal action against the investigator, but would not elaborate. He also said Dominic Casey previously claimed the drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman helped pay the defense team.

"One, 'El Chapo' did not finance Casey Anthonys defense. Two, I did not have an inappropriate relationship with Casey. Three, drug traffickers did not kidnap Caylee and take her to Colombia. Four, she never told me that she murdered her child and where the body was. And five, the post office is not involved in Caylee Anthony's disappearance," Baez said.

In the new court papers, Dominic Casey claimed, "I arrived at Baezs office unexpectedly one day and once again, witnessed a naked Casey. This time she ran from his private office, through the conference room to the hallway. That night I told her that she cannot allow him to continue engaging in this behavior. Casey told me she had to do what Jose said because she had no money for her defense."

The attorney said it obviously was a mistake on his part to hire Dominic Casey in the first place. "I took a chance on him, and unfortunatey I'm paying for it today."

He said the investigator worked for free for three years, first for the legal team and then separately for the Anthony family.

Caylee Anthony's remains surfaced in December 2008. A jury found Casey Anthony guilty of lying in July 2011 but acquitted her of murder.
The FBI announced Tuesday that a gun stolen from an agent in San Francisco over the weekend was recovered during the execution of a federal search warrant.

The agent had reported that somebody broke into his car in the city's Alamo Square Sunday afternoon before snatching his .40-caliber Glock handgun, ID badge and credentials.

The FBI did not provide any more details on how investigators found the gun.

The theft followed a series of break-ins and burglaries involving stolen guns used in homicides in the San Francisco Bay Area. Last summer, investigators said an illegal immigrant used a gun stolen from the vehicle of a Bureau of Land Management agent to kill 32-year-old Kate Steinle.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Investigators examining the 1989 murder of a Kansas woman say they have identified a female suspect in the case and believe the crime may be related to the killing of another woman in 1994, as well as a 1987 abduction.

Sarah DeLeon, a 19-year-old community college student from Kansas City, was killed on Dec. 29, 1989, shortly after leaving her boyfriend's house. Her body was dumped along railroad tracks near the western edge of the city. She had been stabbed multiple times and also suffered a head injury. There was neither evidence of a struggle around her car, which was found nearby, nor was there any sign of sexual assault.

On Sunday, Kansas City Police Detective Scott Howard said investigators have identified a woman from the Kansas City area as a suspect. Howard did not release the name of the woman, who is not in custody, but said that she "and an accomplice have been involved in other incidents involving the harassment and intimidation of romantic rivals."

Detectives said the DeLeon case was reopened in July 2014 and helped along by advances in DNA testing. Howard says he hopes to present to the Wyandotte County district attorneys office for charges in coming weeks.

Police believe that DeLeon's death might be connected to the Jan. 31, 1994, murder of 26-year-old Diana Ault, of Independence, Mo. Ault was shot in front of her two young children. A gun thought to be the murder weapon was found in Ault's car at a nearby church. Ault and her husband had reported receiving several threatening phone calls, mostly from a woman, in the weeks before her death. A suspect was identified, but no arrests were made in the case.

"Through different periods of time weve jointly investigated our homicide and their homicide," Howard said of the possible connection between the two cases.

Police are also looking for anyone with information about a so-called "abduction by deception" on Feb. 13, 1987. In that incident, a woman was tricked into leaving her home in a limousine and taken to a motel.

"We believe that we can show a pattern of behavior that links this to the DeLeon homicide and other crimes," Howard said.

Anyone with information on the 1987 abduction is asked to contact Kansas City, Kan., homicide unit or the police department's top line at (816) 474-8477.

"Were coming to a conclusion, Howard said. We can see an end."

Click for more from The Kansas City Star.

Click for more from Fox4KC.com.
Alexander Hamilton has never been so popular, with a smash Broadway musical about his life as the youngest of the nation's Founding Fathers.

But the man on the $10 bill did not have a fan in the man on the nickel.

A newly surfaced letter from Thomas Jefferson offers a scathing critique of the financial genius and father of the U.S. monetary system, calling him an anglophile whose powerful mind was chained by native partialities to every thing English.

Jeffersons four-page letter -- which is now selling for $375,000 --

slams Hamilton's vision for America and suggests that the parts of the nation that agree with Hamilton should secede.



The letter -- penned on June 20, 1816 -- was sent to a Jefferson contemporary who was a confidante of three U.S. presidents and was penned a decade after Hamilton was killed in a duel with his life-long rival, Aaron Burr. Hamilton had backed Jefferson over Burr for president in 1800.

Hamilton and Jefferson long sparred over the role of the federal government -- and the musical hit, "Hamilton," brings the feud to life in a rap battle between the two men on stage. Hamilton favored more federal power, whereas Jefferson favored states' rights.

In the letter, Jefferson writes that Hamilton's mind "was really powerful, but chained by native partialities to every thing English; who sincerely believed it for the good of this country to make them their model in every thing; without considering that what might be wise and good for a nation essentially commercial, and entangled in complicated intercourse with numerous and powerful neighbors, might not be so for one essentially agricultural, and insulated by nature from the abusive governments of the old world"

"You have fairly stated the alternatives between which we are to choose: 1. licentious commerce and gambling speculations for a few, with eternal war for the many; or, 2. restricted commerce, peace, and steady occupations for all," Jefferson writes to his confidante.

"If any State in the Union will declare that it prefers separation with the first alternative, to a continuance in union without it, I have no hesitation in saying, Let us separate," he wrote.

The young Hamilton had differences with every other Founding Father -- political strife the modern-day musical explores with a hip-hop narrative and colorful cast of characters.

Born out of wedlock in the Caribbean and deserted by his father, Hamilton made his way to New York City at 17. The hard-working, fiercely ambitious Hamilton became General Washington's aide de camp during the Revolutionary War at just 22. By 34, he was the country's first Secretary of the Treasury.

A 700-page biography of Hamilton -- written by Ron Chernow in 2004 and the inspiration for the musical -- portrays the young revolutionary as one of the most influential immigrants in the country's history.

There are few more iconic people in American history than Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, and their relationship and visions represented distinct paths that America could take, said Nathan Raab of The Raab Collection, the dealer that unveiled the letter Tuesday and offered it for sale.

In many ways, this letter is the great American debate, and it is remarkable that it survived in the hands of the family for so many years," Raab said.
The leader of the armed group that took over a federal wildlife reserve in Oregon last January is complaining about what he says is a big injustice: the lack of Internet access inside his jail cell.

Ammon Bundy and his brother Ryan Bundy have requested Internet access in jail to help them prepare for a Sept. 7 federal trial, the Oregonian reported.

The two brothers are among 26 defendants indicted on federal conspiracy and weapons charges related to the 41-day armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon. The occupation began Jan. 2, with Bundy and others demanding the federal government turn public lands over to local control.

The Bundy brothers are arguing that they cannot sufficiently prepare for their Sept. 7 trial, alleging a violation of their civil rights, according to the newspaper.

In response, the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office said the brothers and their co-defendants could have iPads in their jail cells, as long as their lawyers preload the devices with the discovery documents and videos needed to prepare for trial, the newspaper reported.

But Ammon Bundy's lawyer wrote in a court document last week that such an arrangement wouldn't work because the case discovery program is web-based.

"They attempted to work through these issues with jail staff, but now are forced to evaluate other viable options to protect their rights as citizens who stand accused with the weight of the government against them,'' Ammon Bundy's lawyer, Mike Arnold, wrote in a report on jail conditions filed in court Tuesday, according to the paper.

Bundy and his co-defendants also have complained about not having the opportunity to see one another to discuss trial strategies and pray together.

"My right to live is being violated,'' defendant Ryan Bundy wrote. "All of my First Amendment rights are being violated...I am not allowed to see my brother and move about....This violates my freedom of assembly...My Second Amendment rights are being violated. I never waived that right.''

Click here for more from OregonLive.com
A Texas man was arrested Sunday after authorities found his girlfriend stabbed to death in a Plano apartment, Fox4News.com reported.

Kenneth Alan Amyx, 45, allegedly posted a photo of himself covered in blood and a picture of his girlfriends body on her Facebook page with the caption, Please pray for us.

The station reported that police received a call about a disturbance at the apartment and found Amyx with stab wounds and Jennifer Streit-Spears dead.

Amyx has been charged with murder and indecency with a child in Dallas County, and sex abuse of a child under 14 in Rockwall County, The Dallas Morning News reported.

For all three charges his bond total is $600,000. Police have not yet released a motive for Streit-Spears murder.

Click for more from Fox4News.com.
Jack Holder survived the attack on Pearl Harbor and aerial combat over Midway and the English Channel unscathed. But the 94-year-old World War II veteran recently fell victim to a sweepstakes scam that cost him $43,000 in what he called the "worst tragedy of my life."

Holder received a phone call last March informing him he was the winner in the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes -- and would be rewarded with $4.7 million and a new Mercedes-Benz, the Arizona Republic newspaper reported.

In order to claim his prize, Holder had to provide some personal information and open a bank account where the money could be deposited, according to the paper.

But days later, thieves made off with $43,000 from Holder and his fiancee, 78-year-old Ruth Calabro.

"I can't believe that anything like this ever happened to me," Holder, of Sun Lakes, Ariz., told Fox affiliate KSAZ. "I faced almost five years in combat during the war and made it out alive."

"This is the worst tragedy I've ever experienced," he said.

The Arizona Republic reports that the scam involved at least four different callers, three addresses in Brooklyn, Mount Vernon, N.Y. and Hoboken, N.J. and two phone numbers in Gilbert and Nichols, N.Y.

The Chandler Police Department and the FBI are reportedly investigating the scam, which authorities say it not uncommon.

A GoFundMe page has since been set up to help Holder and his fiancee reclaim the money they have lost.

Click here for more from Fox 10
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Pope Francis reaches the halfway mark of his South American pilgrimage Thursday, celebrating his first Mass in Bolivia and meeting with workers' cooperatives and other grass-roots groups representing the poor whose causes have long been championed by history's first Latin American pope.

When Francis headlined the first such summit of grass-roots groups at the Vatican last October, he issued a remarkable, off-the-cuff monologue on the injustice of unemployment, the scandal of poverty and the obligation to care for the Earth.

"Terra, Techo, Trabajo," was his mantra then. "Land, Roof, Work."

"I talk about this some people think the pope is a communist," he told the gathering of miners, indigenous leaders and "cartoneros" who sift through garbage looking for recyclable goods. "They don't realize that love for the poor is at the center of the Gospel."

Francis arrived in Bolivia from Ecuador on Wednesday, embraced by President Evo Morales on the tarmac of La Paz where Francis praised Bolivia for taking "important steps" to include the poor and marginalized in the political and economic life of South America's poorest country.

Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, came to power championing Bolivia's 36 indigenous groups and enshrined their rights in the constitution. Under his leadership Bolivia's economy has boomed thanks to high prices for its natural gas and minerals.

But Morales has roiled the local Catholic Church by taking a series of anti-clerical initiatives, including a new constitution that made the overwhelmingly Catholic Bolivia a secular country. As soon as Morales took office in 2006, the Bible and cross were removed from the presidential palace and Andean religious rituals have now replaced Catholic rites at official state ceremonies.

In his speech, Francis noted the Catholic faith took "deep root" in Bolivia centuries ago "and has continued to shed its light upon society, contributing to the development of the nation and shaping its culture."

"The voice of the bishops, which must be prophetic, speaks to society in the name of the church, our mother, from her preferential, evangelical option for the poor," he said.

Morales, for his part, recalled how the Catholic Church in the past was on the side of the oppressors of Bolivia's people, three-quarters of whom are of indigenous origin. But Morales, an Aymara Indian known for his socialist stands, said things have changed with this pope and the Bolivian people are greeting Francis as someone who is "helping in the liberation of our people."

"He who betrays a poor person, betrays Pope Francis," Morales said.

Morales then offered Francis an unusual gift: a crucifix carved into a wooden hammer and sickle, the Communist symbol of the joining together of workers and peasants.

While Morales is known for his anti-capitalist bent, the ideologically charged gift actually had a very personal back story to it: A Jesuit priest killed by the Bolivian military regime in 1980, the Rev. Luis Espinal, had an identical crucifix.

Espinal, a follower of the left-wing liberation theology, was kidnapped and tortured by Bolivia's right-wing regime before his body was dumped on a highway in La Paz.

Moments after arriving Wednesday, Francis stopped his motorcade to pray by the assassination site, in a poignant reminder of his own experiences with Argentina's military dictatorship. The then Rev. Jorge Mario Bergoglio led the Jesuit order in Argentina in the 1970s when two fellow priests were kidnapped by the regime, which had joined like-minded governments in Bolivia and Paraguay to mount Operation Condor to wipe out and "disappear" leftist opponents.

"Remember one of our brothers, a victim of interests that didn't want him to fight for Bolivia's freedom," Francis said from the popemobile to a crowd gathered at the site Wednesday. "Father Espinal preached the Gospel, the Gospel that bothered them, and because of this they got rid of him."

Morales gave Francis another politically-charged gift: a copy of "The Book of the Sea," about the loss of Bolivia's access to the sea during the War of the Pacific with Chile in 1879-83. Bolivia has recently taken its bid to renegotiate access to the Pacific to the International Court of Justice, arguing that its poverty is due in part to being land-locked. Chile has argued the court has no jurisdiction since Bolivia's borders were defined by a 1904 treaty.

Francis referred to the border dispute in a speech to civil authorities in La Paz, calling for countries of the region to improve their diplomatic relations "in order to avoid conflicts between sister peoples and advance frank and open dialogue about their problems."

"I'm thinking about the sea, here," he said. "Dialogue is indispensable."

"Instead of raising walls, we need to be building bridges," he said.

___

Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield
WASHINGTON  Unless you are a pacifist, you accept that evil acts  the destruction of other human lives  can be justified, even necessary, in pursuit of good and urgent ends.

But unless you are amoral, you also acknowledge the human capacity for self-delusion and selfishness. People are quite capable of justifying the utterly unjustifiable by draping their immoral actions behind sweeping ethical claims.

And if you are a responsible political leader, you must recognize both sides of this moral equation and still not allow yourself to be paralyzed.

As a student of Reinhold Niebuhr, the great theologian who was at once a liberal and a realist, President Obama has spent many years pondering this tension. He has sought out occasions on which he could preach about the ironies and uncertainties of human action  and also our obligation to act in the face of them.

Upholding U.S. standards

This habit can annoy those who prefer to see a world in which good guys with few flaws confront the bad guys. Obama is constantly being criticized for "apologizing" for the United States when he is in fact attempting to hold us to the very standards that make the U.S. the "exceptional" nation his critics extol. Judging ourselves by our own standards is the best way to prove that our commitment to them is real.

It is thus not at all surprising that Obama chose to be the first president of the United States to visit Hiroshima, where the United States dropped the first nuclear bomb  where, as Obama put it, "a flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself."

His speech was powerful precisely because of its moral realism. He made no apology for Harry Truman's decision to use the bomb and instead put it into the context of all the destruction wrought by World War II: "Sixty million people would die. ... Shot, beaten, marched, bombed, jailed, starved, gassed to death." Inherent in these sentences, with their reference to forced marches and the death camps, was the explanation of why the allies fought the war in the first place.

Obama got at both why wars are inevitable ("We may not be able to eliminate man's capacity to do evil, so nations and the alliances that we form must possess the means to defend ourselves") and why we should nonetheless strive mightily to avoid them ("The irreducible worth of every person, the insistence that every life is precious, the radical and necessary notion that we are part of a single human family  that is the story that we all must tell").

And in good Niebuhrian fashion, he urged that even those who believe they are fighting for justice be wary of "how easily we learn to justify violence in the name of some higher cause."

Remaining aware that even the righteous can do both good and evil is central to Niebuhr's project. Back in 2007, Obama greatly impressed my friend and fellow columnist David Brooks with this off-the-cuff statement of what he had learned from Niebuhr. It was remarkably true to the theologian's core insights:

Recognizing 'serious evil'

"I take away the compelling idea that there's serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn't use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away ... the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard, and not swinging from naive idealism to bitter realism."

Obama's critics typically see him as setting too high a bar for American intervention or argue that he is far more a realist than an idealist. The simple truth is that moral realism is hard because it means being hard on ourselves and accepting tragedy. Actions undertaken in the name of legitimate goals and actions avoided for prudential reasons can both have appalling outcomes.

Niebuhr himself was deeply ambivalent about the bomb, initially signing a Federal Council of Churches statement declaring that the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been "morally indefensible," but later concluding that he and his colleagues were perhaps too harsh on "statesmen ... driven by historic forces more powerful than any human decision."

It's not hard to identify with Niebuhr's moral reticence. A humble ambivalence may be the proper response to a horrifically destructive act undertaken in the name of avoiding even more destruction.
"Several hundred" innocent families were trapped in the center of the bloody battle for the Islamic State's Iraqi hub of Fallujah, used as human shields for the terror group, the United Nations refugee agency warned on Tuesday as a leading aid group called it a "human catastrophe."

The fighting left at least seven members of one family dead or wounded on Saturday, UNHCR spokesperson William Spindler told reporters. An estimated 50,000 people remained trapped.

"They are locking some families down inside the hospital building," Salem al Halbusi, who lived in Fallujah, told USA Today. "They are making people freak out over the (arrival of) Iraqi forces by telling them, 'The army and militia are coming to kill you all.'"

Iraqi forces battling their way into the city repelled a four-hour ISIS attack in the city's south on Tuesday, a day after first moving into the southern edges of the militant-held city with the help of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes. The attack started at dawn in Fallujah's Nuaimiya area where Iraqi troops captured almost 85 percent of the ground the previous day, two officers with the special forces told The Associated Press.

Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis described Fallujah as "the last bastion of ISIS control in Anbar Province," adding that the terrorists "intend to put up a fight." Officials told Fox there were between 500-1,000 ISIS fighters in Fallujah.

ISIS fighters "distributed some sweets for kids for the first time, trying to get people on their side, as they know their end is so close," al Halbusi added.

"A human catastrophe is unfolding in Fallujah," Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council Jan Egeland said, adding that only one family managed to escape from the town on Monday. Since the offensive began a week ago, 554 other families have escaped from areas surrounding Fallujah, which lies 40 miles west of Baghdad. "Warring parties must guarantee civilians safe exit now, before it's too late and more lives are lost," Egeland added.

The NRC group, which is working with refugees and internally displaced people in Iraq, said lack of food, medicine, safe drinking water and electricity in the city was "pushing families to the brink of desperation."

The Pentagon was also concerned that more than 10,000 Iranian-backed Shia militias had amassed outside northern Fallujah, officials told Fox News. A year ago, ISIS took control of nearby Ramadi and it took U.S.-backed Iraqi forces six months to rid the city of hundreds of ISIS fighters. One Iraqi general was quoted as saying 80% of the Iraqi militarys success there was due to U.S. airstrikes.

ISIS militants used tunnels, deployed snipers and sent six explosives-laden cars to hit troops but they were destroyed before reaching their targets, the special forces officers said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing campaign.

Iraqi forces suffered casualties, but the officers didn't give details.

Nuaimiya is a sprawling mainly agricultural area in Fallujah's south and Monday's push into it was the first attempt by Iraqi forces to enter the city after focusing on dislodging the militants from surrounding areas to tighten the siege.

Fallujah has been under Islamic State control for over two years and is the last major city in western Iraq still under control of the Sunni extremist group. The militants still control patches of territory in the country's north and east as well as the country's second largest city, Mosul.

The U.S. led coalition and Iranian-backed Shiite paramilitary forces are helping the Iraqi army in the battle to retake Fallujah. But the fight is expected to be long and protracted, given that ISIS militants have had more than two years to dig in.

Tunnels  similar to those found in other territory long held by ISIS  have already been discovered in the northeastern outskirts of Fallujah.

The Iraqi counterterrorism forces are leading the assault on Fallujah, slowly moving up from the southern edge. Their advance is expected to be slow also because tens of thousands of civilians remain trapped in Fallujah and hidden bombs are believed to be strewn throughout the city, according to special forces' commanders at the scene.

The extremist group is expected to increase attacks in major Iraqi cities in an attempt to distract the security forces' attention away from the front lines. On Monday, ISIS claimed responsibility for a wave of bombings in and around the capital, Baghdad, that killed at least 24 people and wounded dozens.

Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
ISIS fighters and depraved sympathizers have turned social media platforms into a digital auction block, where sex slaves are offered for sale to an audience of wisecracking creeps, according to an international institute that monitors the global threat of terrorism.

Facebook profiles discovered by the Middle East Media Research Institutes Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor Project feature a German ISIS fighter offering two Yazidi sex slaves to the highest bidder.

To all the bros thinking about buying a slave, this one is $8,000, reads a May 20 post accompanied by the picture of a woman on the Facebook page of the Islamic State militant who calls himself Abu Assad Almani.

A few hours later, a second image was posted by the fighter of another woman.

Another sabiyah [slave], also about $8,000, the posting reads. Yay, or nay?

Its not clear if Almani was selling the women himself or just commenting on their sale by other militants, but the stomach-turning posts highlight ISIS' longstanding penchant for enslaving and selling girls and women who they perceive as non-believers.

The posts were removed from the social media site a few hours later, but not before users commented on the photos, asked questions and made derogatory remarks about the women. Screenshots were saved by MEMRI JTTM and provided to FoxNews.com.

MEMRI researchers have monitored jihadist posts for the last decade, and seen the brutality increase dramatically in recent years, said Executive Director Steve Steven Salinsky. He noted that ISIS' extensive use of Islamic punishments such as beheading and crucifixion, and throwing homosexuals off roofs to their deaths has all been heavily documented on Twitter and Facebook.

"Sales of slave girls on social media is just one more example of this," Stalinsky said. "When ISIS beheaded Western journalists, people took notice  but since then, apathy has prevailed. The West has become desensitized to this evil."

The latests posts captured by MEMRI include disparaging remarks about the women and girls being offered for sale. A British self-described ISIS supporter named Abdulrahman Mosh Arm wrote, "That much for that? That thing should be buy 1 get that troll for free lol."

Another commenter who identified himself as Romeo Langhorne commented: "What makes her worth that price? Does she have an exceptional skill?" Almani replied, "Nope. Supply and demand makes her that price."

One female supporter even suggests that he keep the two women, believed to be of the religious minority group Yazidi, for himself.

"She is Yazidi, A woman named Almera Farzanah asked. Alami repled that he believes so to which she says; "$8000 is too expensive, even Mahar [dowry] for a good Muslimah [Muslim woman] is not that expensive. I thought there were many muhajirah [foreigners]?? Why u not marry one of them? Rather than having to buy expensive sabi."

Others complained in comments on the Facebook postings, chastising Almani for posting pictures of unveiled women. Others made derogatory comments regarding the Yazidi people and culture.
A heartbreaking photograph of a drowned migrant baby in the arms of a charity worker has been released following a week in which 700 migrants were killed trying to cross the Mediterranean.

The baby, who appears to be no more than a year old, was pulled from the sea off the coast of Italy on Friday after a wooden boat capsized.

Forty-five bodies arrived in the southern Italian port of Reggio Calabria on Sunday aboard an Italian navy ship, which picked up 135 survivors from the same incident.

German rescue organisation Sea-Watch, operating a rescue boat in the sea between Libya and Italy, released the picture taken by a media production company on board, in a bid to convince European authorities to ensure the safe passage of migrants.

In an email, the rescuer, who gave his name as Martin, said he had spotted the baby in the water "like a doll, arms outstretched".

He said: "I took hold of the forearm of the baby and pulled the light body protectively into my arms at once, as if it were still alive ... It held out its arms with tiny fingers into the air, the sun shone into its bright, friendly but motionless eyes."

The rescuer, a father of three and by profession a music therapist, added: "I began to sing to comfort myself and to give some kind of expression to this incomprehensible, heart-rending moment. Just six hours ago this child was alive."

Like the photograph of the three-year-old Syrian boy Aylan laying lifeless on a Turkish beach last year, the image puts a human face on the more than 8,000 people who have died in the Mediterranean since the start of 2014.

Little is known about the child, who according to Sea-Watch was immediately handed over to the Italian navy.

Rescuers could not confirm whether the partially clothed tot was a boy or a girl and it is not known whether the child's mother or father are among the survivors.

Sea-Watch collected around 25 other bodies, including another child, according to claims from the crew seen by Reuters. The Sea-Watch team said it unanimously decided to publish the photo.

They said: "In the wake of the disastrous events it becomes obvious to the organisations on the ground that the calls by EU politicians to avoid further death at sea sum up to nothing more than lip service.

"If we do not want to see such pictures we have to stop producing them."

The organisation called for Europe to allow migrants safe and legal passage as a way of shutting down people smuggling and further tragedies.

At least 700 migrants are believed to have died at sea during the past week - the busiest week of migrant crossings from Libya towards Italy this year, the UN Refugee agency said on Sunday.

The boat carrying the baby left the shores of Libya near Sabratha late on Thursday, and then began to take on water, according to accounts by survivors collected by Save the Children on Sunday. Hundreds were on board when it capsized, the surivors said.

The baby's tragic death comes after it emerged that a woman migrant was decapitated in a horrific accident as a boat carrying 500 people started to sink in the Med on Thursday.

The vessel, which had no engine, was being towed by another smuggling boat - also with hundreds on board - when it started to take on water.

Survivors of the disaster claim refugees started to panic and jumped into the sea.

Others told how the Sudanese captain of the first boat then cut the tow rope which snapped back and decapitated a woman - though it is not clear which of the two boats she was on.

Hundreds drowned between Wednesday and Friday when their boats all overturned off southern Italy, according to the UN refugee agency.

Giovanna Di Benedetto, Save the Children's spokeswoman in Sicily, told AFP it was impossible to verify the numbers involved but survivors of Thursday's wreck spoke of around 1,100 people setting out from Libya on Wednesday in two fishing boats and a dinghy.

She said: "The first boat, carrying some 500 people, was reportedly towing the second, which was carrying another 500. But the second boat began to sink. Some people tried to swim to the first boat, others held onto the rope linking the vessels."

The Sudanese captain was arrested on his arrival in Pozzallo along with three other suspected people traffickers, Italian media reports said.
The Pentagon announced Tuesday that for the first time since the U.S. sent special operations forces into Syria last year, an Islamic State attack wounded an American service member there.

The attack unfolded north of Raqqa, ISIS de-facto capital in Syria, Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said. He added that a separate explosion near Irbil in northern Iraq also wounded one U.S. service member. Both were special operations fighters.

In both cases, Davis said the service members were hit by indirect fire. There also were reports that one of the attacks was an ISIS car bomb.

Davis would not reveal the extent of the injuries. He said the troops were not returned to duty, and that both were hurt during advise and assist missions away from the front line.

President Obama first authorized sending 50 special operations forces to Syria in October. In April, he ordered 250 more. He also ordered more than 200 additional U.S. troops to Iraq last month.

The Pentagon has acknowledged more than 5,000 U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq.

"At the three-star [coalition] headquarters level, we may not have perfect fidelity on what happens every minute of every day out there in the wilds of Syria, Col. Steve Warren said Friday.
Pope Francis said on Sunday that he has no plans to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI, and retire from his position as leader of the Catholic Church.

The pontiff responded to a question from a young person during an event at Vatican City on Sunday and assured Catholics and supporters that the thought of retirement has not even occurred to him.

"I never thought of quitting being pope, or of leaving because of the many responsibilities," The Associated Press quoted Pope Francis as saying.

The pontiff, who's a native of Argentina, became the first pope to come from Latin America when he began his papacy in March 2013 after Pope Benedict XVI became the first pope in nearly 600 years to step down from the most prominent religious leadership position in the world.

The last pope to retire before death prior to Benedict XVI was Pope Gregory XII in 1415.

The now 79-year-old Pope Francis joked in August 2014 that his papacy would only last two or three more years until he goes "off to the Father's house," but had not previously ruled out retiring like Pope Benedict XVI.

AP reports that there is some uncertainty about how many popes have stepped down from the papacy while still alive. While scholars are sure that there are at least four popes who have retired, there could be as many as eight popes that have done so.

Pope Francis' retirement remark was made during a Vatican event for the Scholas Occurentes global educational initiative.
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Mohamed Abdelaziz, the head and co-founder of the Polisario Front independence movement in the Western Sahara, died Tuesday after a long illness, the group said. He was in his late 60s.

The Polisario Front ordered a 40-day mourning period, after which it said a new secretary-general will be chosen.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika also declared a week of mourning for the Polisario leader, whose group is based in Tindouf, in southern Algeria.

The death of Abdelaziz, leader of the Polisario Front for four decades, comes at a time of growing tensions over the fate of the Western Sahara. The Polisario Front has fought for four decades for independence for the vast, mineral-rich territory on Africa's Atlantic coast, which was annexed by Morocco after Spain withdrew in 1975.

Morocco now considers the territory its "southern provinces" and has pumped funds into the area's development over the years. Morocco is also becoming increasingly assertive on the topic with the United Nations, which has worked for years to help settle the issue of Western Sahara's status.

Abdelaziz was born in 1948 in Smara, which is now in Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara, and led the Polisario Front, which he helped found, since 1976, according to Algeria's state-run APS news agency.

The issue of Western Sahara has prompted new friction between two North African neighbors, Morocco and Algeria. Algeria supports the Polisario Front, and like numerous other African countries recognizes the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic it defends.

The Moroccan government has proposed wide-ranging autonomy for the region, but the Polisario Front insists on self-determination through a referendum for the local population  as called for in U.N. resolutions.

Morocco expelled most U.N. civilian staff last month after the U.N. chief used the word "occupation" to refer to the situation following a visit to a camp for Western Sahara refugees in southern Algeria.

In April, a top member of the Polisario Front, Bachir Mustafa Sayed, warned that war is possible over the disputed territory if the U.N. Security Council fails to set a timetable for a vote on self-determination.

Abdelaziz warned in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that Morocco will have "a green light to a military aggression" unless the Security Council imposes "real and direct pressure" on Morocco to restore the U.N. mission's work. He warned that the Sahrawi people in Western Sahara will defend their rights in the face of aggression" by all legitimate means, including armed struggle."

The Polisario had mounted a desert war against Morocco after the territory was annexed.

Issandr El Amrani, North Africa Project Director with the International Crisis Group, said the impact of Abdelaziz' death on the U.N. contingent was unclear in the immediate future "but it adds uncertainty at a time when the mission is under pressure."

El Amrani noted the saber-rattling tone among some Polisario activists in the absence of a diplomatic breakthrough.

"The next Polisario leader will have to contend with that sentiment," El Amrani said.

The Polisario Front has appointed the head of the movement's National Council, Khatri Abdouh, as interim Polisario leader.
Fantastic Sams to Partner Again With Operation Reinvent in Serving Our Women Veterans

Operation Reinvent, a Nonprofit Organization Specializing in Transitioning Women Veterans to a Civilian Lifestyle, Is Working With Fantastic Sams for Their Upcoming Workshops in Kentucky and North Carolina

BOSTON, MA - (Marketwired - May 27, 2016) - Operation Reinvent, a nonprofit organization specializing in transitioning women Veterans to a civilian lifestyle, is working with Fantastic Sams for their upcoming workshops in Kentucky and North Carolina.

Operation Reinvent, an organization dedicated to transitioning women Veterans to civilian life through education and empowerment, is hosting workshops at the Kentucky and North Carolina military bases; Fort Bragg and Fort Campbell, respectively. Through these events the women gain confidence personally, socially and professionally as they embark on their next chapter out of the uniform. The workshops are scheduled for June 8 and 9 and the Fantastic Sams Stylists are eager to take part.

"At Fantastic Sams our goal is to make the world a more beautiful place and we are proud to extend this service to the women who have boldly served our country. Through our partnership with Operation Reinvent we are so fortunate to have the chance to welcome our female veterans back into their civilian lives and relish the opportunity to bring a lovely smile to the faces that bravely represent our country. Fantastic Sams proudly gives back to those who have already given so much!" said Ruth Swanson, V.P. of Marketing for Dessange Group North America; parent company for Fantastic Sams.

Fantastic Sams is honored to be partnered with Operation Reinvent along with other national brands enthusiastic about the workshops. Fantastic Sams stylists will cut and style the hair, as well as consult on color, while their makeup artists will do their magic and provide makeup education, as well. CVS will supply all makeup for the event, and Macy's will be arranging the wardrobe and clothing options for the participating women veterans.

The brands, of course, are not the only parties involved in the event. Dick Kauffman, region owner in North Carolina, has been instrumental in coordinating the workshop at Fort Bragg. As team leader, Bonnie Harmon, Director of Education/Operations, is well-versed and experienced in running the seminars with Operation Reinvent and has been a huge support to the Fort Bragg team, as well. At Fort Campbell, Fantastic Sams national educators are working in collaboration with Region Owner Glen Adams and his Region V. P. Helen Lahah to create a life-changing experience for these veterans.

Fantastic Sams' lively brand spirit offers attainable beauty that is trending now with easy access to all salons at a fantastic price.

About Fantastic Sams

Fantastic Sams was the first nationally franchised hair salon, and has grown to more than 1,100 locations over 40 years. Unlike discount haircut franchises, Fantastic Sams offers the full range of salon services, including haircuts and trend-right styles, color and waxing, which helps generate higher tickets and margins. Fantastic Sams invented the no appointment needed hair salon and continues to be an industry leader.

For more information on the Fantastic Sams franchise opportunity, visitwww.fantasticsamsfranchise.com.

SOURCE Fantastic Sams

Contact:

Lori Merrall

Director of Franchise Sales and Development

480-272-3404

lori.merrall@dessange-inc.com

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Reis and Irvy's Partners With Chloe's Soft Serve to Offer World's First Healthy Soft Serve Frozen Yogurt Robotic Kiosks

Franchise Concept Will Offer Both Traditional and Healthy-Option FroYo Products, Expanding Opportunity and Locations for Franchise Network

SAN DIEGO, CA - (Marketwired - May 31, 2016) - Fresh Healthy Vending International, Inc. (OTCQB: VEND) -- Reis and Irvy's, the revolutionary first-to-market robotic frozen yogurt vending kiosks announced today that they will partner with Chloe's Soft Serve Fruit Co. to provide prospective franchise operators a healthier option to provide to both locations and their customers. The robotic Reis and Irvy's FroYo Kiosks (which currently deliver nine different flavors of frozen yogurt and up to six toppings in 60 seconds or less) will now be available to franchisees with the option of being stocked with a lighter option for customers.

"As we have launched the Reis and Irvy's brand and concept, our primary focus has been to continue our focus on understanding the demands of the market," says Art Budman, Chief Executive Officer for Reis and Irvy's. "While developing a revolutionary new way to experience customized frozen yogurt, we congruently recognized and collectively heard the demand from our health-conscious customers. Chloe's Soft Serve Fruit is the perfect complement to our brand and will allow us to deliver the Reis and Irvy's experience to even more locations on behalf of our franchisees."

Founded in 2010, Chloe's Soft Serve has dedicated themselves to celebrating the wonder and simplicity of fruit. Made from the simplest of ingredients (fruit, water and a touch of organic cane sugar) the soft serve fruit snacks deliver big flavor and a return to the origin of the fruits themselves. Operators will be able to choose from a variety of low-calorie, low-fat delicious flavors that not only offer healthier nutritional benefits, but, more importantly, conform to the Smart Snacks in School guidelines, a benefit that allows Reis and Irvy's expanded opportunity within schools, campuses and educational facilities across the country.

Available in both frozen pop form and soft serve, the latter was a perfect match for the groundbreaking Reis and Irvy's kiosks. "Reis and Irvy's brings a customized frozen yogurt experience to customers everywhere. We are excited to be a part of that revolution and make frozen snacks more accessible," says Chloe Epstein, Co-Founder of Chloe's Soft Serve Fruit Co. "Our snacks, which are free of dairy, gluten, fat, free of all eight major allergens and are both vegan and kosher, provide customers with an alternative delicious option delivered by these ground-breaking machines. It's a win for both of our organizations and our loyal customers."

Reis and Irvy's robotic frozen yogurt kiosks launched this past April and to impressive demand from the prospective franchise community. The frozen yogurt franchise concept is managed by Fresh Healthy Vending, International (soon to be Generation Next Franchise Brands); based in San Diego, it is North America's leading healthy vending franchisor. Fresh Healthy Vending pioneered the concept of vending machines stocked with tried-and-tested fresh, healthy snack options and capitalizes on a growing market of health-conscious consumers. The Company has more than 250 active franchisees throughout the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and the Bahamas, and continually looks to partner with like-minded entrepreneurs who share its vision. The Company has booked more than 3000 machines for placement in schools, universities, hospitals, community centers, military bases, airports, fitness facilities, YMCAs, libraries and many other locations. Using its current infrastructure, the franchisor will replicate its franchise model and apply it to Reis and Irvy's, offering a comprehensive, turnkey model consisting of kiosk supply, location procurement, national service infrastructure and best in class franchisee support.

Reis & Irvy's kiosks are available for pre-order as of today. Potential franchisees can find more information by contacting Reis and Irvy's directly at 855-385-5333 or by going to www.froyofranchising.com. To see the kiosk in action, check out their video at https://vimeo.com/160788415

About Chloe's Soft Serve Fruit Co.

Chloe's Soft Serve Fruit Co celebrates the wonder of fruit: its rich flavor, luxurious mouth feel, and natural origin. Available in the traditional soft serve format or as a frozen pop, Chloe's Soft Serve Fruit answers the consumer desire for great taste and clean, simple ingredients. With 12 varieties of soft serve fruit mix and seven varieties of pops from which to choose, Chloe's Soft Serve Fruit offers big, delicious flavor using only fruit, water and a touch of organic cane sugar. Chloe's Soft Serve Fruit is free of dairy, gluten, fat, and the eight major allergens, and is vegan and kosher pareve.

Founded by a trio of health-conscious entrepreneurs in 2010, the company has grown from its brick-and-mortar shop in NYC to national distribution for food service with its soft serve fruit mix and single serve pops. In 2015, Chloe's introduced multi-packs of Chloe's Pops in supermarkets and club stores throughout the country. Chloe's Soft Serve Fruit Pops are now available in over 3000 markets nationwide. For more information, visit: www.chloesfruit.com.

About Fresh Healthy Vending

Fresh Healthy Vending, based in San Diego, California, is North America's leading healthy vending franchisor. Fresh Healthy Vending pioneered the concept of vending machines stocked with tried-and-tested fresh, healthy snack options to serve the growing market of health-conscious consumers. The Company has over 250 active franchisees throughout the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and the Bahamas, and continually looks to partner with like-minded entrepreneurs who share its vision.

The Company has booked over 3000 machines for placement in schools, universities, hospitals, community centers, military bases, airports, fitness facilities, YMCAs, libraries and many other locations. Fresh Healthy Vending's stock is traded on the OTC Markets, Symbol: VEND.

Cautionary note on forward-looking statements

Except for historical information contained in this release, statements in this release may constitute forward-looking statements regarding assumptions, projections, expectations, targets, intentions or beliefs about future events that are based on management's belief, as well as assumptions made by, and information currently available to, management. While the Company believes that expectations are based upon reasonable assumptions, there can be no assurances that goals, results and strategy will be realized. Numerous factors, including risks and uncertainties, terms and availability of financing, may affect actual results and may cause results to differ materially from those expressed in forward-looking statements made by the Company or on its behalf. In addition to statements, which explicitly describe risks and uncertainties, readers are urged to consider statements labeled with such terms as "believes," "belief," "expects," "intends," "feels," "anticipates," "proposes," "proposed," or "plans" to be uncertain and forward-looking. More detailed information on these and additional factors that could affect Fresh Healthy Vending's actual results are described in Fresh Healthy Vending's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Form 10-Q's for the quarterly periods ended December 31, 2015 and September 30, 2015, and its annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2015. All forward-looking statements in this news release speak only as of the date of this news release and are based on Fresh Healthy Vending's current beliefs and expectations. Fresh Healthy Vending undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

This information is not intended as an offer to sell, or the solicitation of an offer to buy, a franchise. It is for information purposes only. No Reis and Irvy's franchises will be sold to any resident of any state until the offering has been exempted from the requirements of, or duly registered in and declared effective by, such state and the required FDD (if any) has been delivered to the prospective franchisee before the sale in compliance with applicable law. Currently, the following states in the United States regulate the offer and sale of franchises: California, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. If you reside in one of these states, or even if you reside elsewhere, you may have certain rights under applicable franchise laws or regulations.

SOURCE Fresh Healthy Vending

Media Contacts:

Christina Erwin

cerwin@konnect-pr.com

Danny Beardsworth

dbeardsworth@konnect-pr.com

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BOZEMAN  Someday you or someone you love may need safe, legal access to medical marijuana. You, or they, may have cancer, epilepsy, IBS, colitis, or Crohns disease, Parkinsons, breast cancer, a recent heart attack, or may be a veteran or emergency worker with PTSD.

In 2004, 64 percent of Montana voters passed a law creating a medical marijuana program. But access for patients seeking relief will soon disappear because of political nonsense in the 2011 Legislature. With these draconian, nonsensical laws, you and your loved ones arent going to get what you need for pain, symptom relief, or a cure.

In my town, there is a courageous 33-year old mom of two who is fighting a battle with cancer. You might have seen her, bald, on TV or in a newspaper photo, asking you to sign the petition to get Initiative 182 on the ballot and vote for the measure come November. Medical marijuana makes her daily struggle with chemotherapy possible, and allows her some quality of life. I-182 will ensure patients like her have access to the medicine they need, while putting new sideboards and accountability in place.

Veterans' access

The issue of veterans access to medical marijuana has garnered strong bipartisan support at the federal level with both Montana Sens. Steve Daines (Republican) and Jon Tester (Democrat) endorsing legislation that is pending before Congress to allow access to medical marijuana for veterans in the 24 states that have adopted medical marijuana laws. Medical marijuana is being used to treat veterans for PTSD and is a safer option than opioids for managing pain.

It is important that we provide Montana veterans with safe, legal access to the medicine they need and I-182 will do just that. This new marijuana initiative will honor our vets with a safe, responsible approach. Montana has one of the largest populations of vets per capita, second only to Alaska. We need to align with Tester and Daines and change these laws to allow our veterans the choices they deserve.

Recently that 33-year Bozeman mom said, "I know from my personal experience with others fighting cancer we need safe access to medical marijuana. My health story is not unusual, but with the potential absence of medicinal marijuana, I and other cancer patients in Montana face a choice they shouldnt have to, pain or vomiting. Im not a bad person. Im a sick person; it pains me to think I might be persecuted for being a sick person.

Her story could be the story of tens of thousands Montanans unless we act to correct the current situation. I support and will advocate for I-182 because it addresses concerns over the previous law and ensures accountability to all Montanans by:

Requiring providers obtain licenses and receive unannounced yearly inspections.

Allowing for product testing to ensure safety, consistency and accurate dosages.

Providing access to veterans and other patients diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Removing the three-patient limit for providers.

Creating licensing fees to pay for the administration of the new law.

The citizens of Bozeman have trusted me with their city; three times Ive been mayor. The citizens of Gallatin County have trusted me with their money; I was the elected county treasurer as a Republican. Gov. Brian Schweitzer trusted me with the university system when he appointed me to the Montana Board of Regents. You can trust me when I tell you medical cannabis works, and is desperately needed. You can trust me when I tell you we can establish controls on how and where its sold, and how many sellers there are. We can prohibit public use. We can prohibit off-premises advertising.

Signatures needed

I know, because we did all that in Bozeman when I was mayor. I-182 can also limit how it is prescribed, who prescribes it, and for what it can be prescribed.

Time is short. We need your signature. There is urgency to our campaign. To allow Montanans the opportunity to establish a responsible, accountable law, we need to qualify for the ballot by collecting at least 24,175 valid signatures from across the state. Right now hundreds of volunteers and staff are working hard to meet the June 17 deadline.

Please sign I-182. Restore the mandate that 64 percent of Montanans established a decade ago. Lets give people a fighting chance at a better life.

For more information on I-182 go to www.yeson182.com.
A man charged in tribal court pleaded not guilty last week in the stabbing death of a Lame Deer man.

Tyson Lonebear, 27, entered his plea on May 25 in Northern Cheyenne Tribal Court. He faces a deliberate homicide charge related to the death of 21-year-old Chay Little, who died of stabbing wounds on May 18.

Tribal officials issued a warrant for Lonebear, and Big Horn County Sheriff's Office officials arrested him in Hardin late on May 18.

The court will schedule a pretrial hearing within about a month or so," said tribal prosecutor Kelvin Wilson. "And then at that time, the court will give direction to everybody  where were going for the trial.

A trial will happen if Lonebear maintains his plea and demands it. Wilson said that Northern Cheyenne's judicial system has a speedy trial doctrine that provides a six-month window for a trial, and the court holds criminal jury trials every three months.

By the court's schedule, a jury trial could be set for August if Lonebear requests it, Wilson said.

In the meantime, Lonebear is being held in the tribe's adult detention facility on a $5,000 bond. That's the maximum bond the tribe can set under federal law, Wilson said. However, the Northern Cheynne tribal code allows judges to deny a suspect's release on bail or bond.

There is also a maximum sentence statute for tribal courts, which is one year for a serious, Class A felony.

The U.S. Attorney's Office district in Montana can pick up tribal cases, but Wilson said it's too early to tell whether the office will do that.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office has not responded to an inquiry about a possible referral. Wilson said that he stays in contact with those officials.

We have conference calls every month. We talk it over," he said.

If the U.S. Attorney's Office issued an indictment during the tribal court process, Wilson could choose to abandon his case and defer to the federal process. Other times, the tribal court process could finish and the federal indictment comes after.

Little was stabbed at 6 a.m. on May 18 at a home next door to his grandparents' house. Friends and family remembered him as a cheerful person and an active member of the mixed martial arts gym, Rez Brawl.

Following Little's death, federal investigators took up the case.

"FBI and (BIA) special agents both worked on it," Wilson said. "And that's what the basis is so far. Of course, there will be more stuff coming in."
The teacher crisis is real, and were not going to work our way out of it simply by making it easier to hire teachers.
MISSOULA  All Mineral County Sheriff's Office deputies, 911 dispatchers and detention center workers went on strike on Monday morning and are picketing the county courthouse in Superior in an effort to get a new collective bargaining agreement.

The 16 members of the Teamsters Local 2 union unanimously voted on a strike authorization and officially went on strike at 8 a.m. Monday. They notified the Mineral County Commissioners that they intended to strike last Friday but didn't hear back, according to union business representative Shawn Fontaine. Only three people, Sheriff Tom Bauer, Undersheriff Mike Boone and civil clerk Roni Phillips are staffing the detention center, the 911 dispatch center and the public safety and coroner duties of the sheriff's office as of Monday morning. Bauer said he has a reserve deputy on duty as well.

"I've got a reserve deputy out and we've got some more people coming in to help us out," Bauer said. "We'll get a hold of some other jails so we don't have that hanging over our heads. Long-term we'll have to do something. I'm hopeful they'll get something worked out. I hope it's a matter of days, but they aren't talking right now. I had to go out and ask (the union members) something about a duty, and they are upbeat today."

The good news on Monday was that there had not been a catastrophic emergency so far.

"I'm the 911 dispatcher today," Phillips said. "We haven't had any calls yet, but the day is young."

Fontaine said that the union has been trying to get a long-term contract for several years.

"We have been without a contract since July 1 of last year," he explained. "For the past two years, to even get the commissioners to the table to negotiate, we had to file charges with the Montana Board of Personnel. They had a legal duty to bargain in good faith. We sent multiple requests, and they never responded to it."

Fontaine said the union has been stuck in a series of one-year agreements.

"We've been in perpetual negotiations with them for five years," Fontaine said.

He added that the commissioners never offered to negotiate any of the terms they presented in their last offer.

"They made one offer and never came off their position on anything," he said. "It was just kind of a 'take it or leave it.' The members voted when it was first presented and rejected it. The strike authorization vote was passed unanimously. The commissioners' first offer they gave us was their last, best and final offer. So when our counter proposal was shot down, we informed them we would go on strike."

The union members are handing out leaflets and picketing the courthouse, trying to raise awareness about their position. The leaflet states that although additional money has been categorized under "public safety," the Sheriff's Department has seen a decline in funding for the last 10 years. The union members contend that this has robbed the department of essential resources and thereby created a public safety hazard.

The union members also contend that the county has a serious problem with a high turnover rate within the Sheriff's Office. They say this means their department is viewed as a "training ground" by most employees who are looking to quickly move on to other places with higher wages and more longevity incentives.

Both county commissioners Duane Simons and Laurie Johnston declined to comment on Monday. A cellphone number for commission chairman Roman Zylawy was not listed online.
Ink Business Bundle WordPress Themes 2016 Neeraj Agarwal Product Launched

Ink Business Bundle, a brand new collection of 10 WordPress themes created with local businesses in mind, has been launched by Neeraj Agarwal, and provides licensees with ready to use tools to create small or large business websites for their clients.

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New product, Ink Business Bundle - 10 Local Business WordPress Themes, has been launched by Neeraj Agarwal, and provides licensees with ready to use tools to create small or large business websites.

A link to the product and further information can be found here: http://letsgolook.at/InkBusinessBundle.

Neeraj Agarwal is celebrating the launch of Ink Business Bundle, which provides licensees with 10 powerful local business WordPress themes that are suitable for any type of business website, on March 30, ideal for web developers and design agencies. To secure a license for the Flyers Bundle template pack, users can purchase online.

The Ink Business Bundle website pack contains 10 brand new Word Press themes, for creating attractive, professional looking websites for any type of business for design agency and web development customers, or to upgrade an existing or personal site. The local business bundle allows for the very fast creation of websites, suitable for any industry type.

The Ink Business Bundle provides 10 ready to use templates, ideal for use for local businesses, for creating websites within any business category in as little as 15 minutes. Business websites can be built for customers whilst easily keeping within a budget.

Examples of some of the quick and easy local business website themes from the Ink Business Bundle include: online food stores, fitness centers, auto directories, summer camps, schools, laundromats, nutritional information, locksmiths, tour operators and other local based businesses requiring online presence.

There are two different packages on offer: the Front End Ink Business Bundle providing buyers with full access to the 10 local WordPress themes, with several bonus Word Press plugins; and, the OTO1 Different Business Word Press Theme Power Bundle with 10 Word Press plugins.

InkThemes.com has to date more than 25,000 customers and over 176,000 websites created, providing a multitude of themes ideal for design agencies and web developers. The Ink Business Bundle offers 10 new release Word Press themes for business themed websites.

More information about the Ink Business Bundle pack, the local business bundle offer by Neeraj Agarwal is provided on the following site: http://muncheye.com/neeraj-agarwal-inkbusiness-bundle.

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Contact Info:

Name: James Peterson

Organization: Muncheye.com



Release ID: 117292

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Mercedes-Benz Of Westwood Announces Refrigerated Van Restock

The restock has been perfectly timed for the upcoming summer buying season, reports www.sprinterguyboston.com.

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Mercedes-Benz of Westwood, a premier car and van dealership serving the residents and business owners of Boston and the surrounding areas, has recently announced that they have restocked their inventory of reefer vans for sale. This restock has been specifically timed for the upcoming busy buying season. The staff at Mercedes-Benz of Westwood has made refrigerated vans their specialty and invites business owners in the food, floral, and fishing industries, and all industries to give them a call for more information on their inventory.

"Having a refrigerated van to transport inventory and make deliveries is crucial for those in the food, floral, and catering industries. We've restocked our inventory of sprinter vans just in time for summer to meet the needs of business owners who need to keep food and floral arrangements at a set temperature," said James Tully, a representative of Mercedes-Benz of Westwood. "We want people to know that we're offering the lowest prices as well as the best service in the business. We have relationships with some of the highest-rated refrigerated truck fitters in the country who stand ready to create a customized solution for our customers."

Mercedes-Benz of Westwood customers can get a refrigerated van for sale with units from one of two major reefer manufacturers: Thermo King and Carrier. Those who are purchasing a van will meet with both a Sprinter Consultant and an up-fitter to discuss their unique needs. The purpose of this meeting is to educate the customer on the features of their refrigerated van and ensure that the finished product will hold the consistent temperature that they need during transport. Mercedes-Benz of Westwood Finance Consultants are available to discuss financing options with interested business owners.

Tully goes on to say, "Our restock includes the first commercially-produced Metris Refrigerated Van with a Carrier unit on top. We are so excited to begin talking with business owners during this upcoming buying season. Our team is here to assist them as they make a smart investment in a high-quality refrigerated van that will give them exactly what they need to take their business to the next level."

About Mercedes-Benz of Westwood:

Mercedes-Benz of Westwood is a full-service car dealership offering customers competitive pricing, a no-hassle sales and financing process, and complete dedication to excellent service. Their team specializes in the sale of refrigerated vans.

For more information about us, please visit http://www.sprinterguyboston.com

Contact Info:

Name: James Tully

Organization: Mercedes Benz of Westwood

Phone: (781) 688-1073

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/mercedes-benz-of-westwood-announces-refrigerated-van-restock/117326

Release ID: 117326

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York, North Yorkshire Professional Cleaning Services Expansion Announced

Professional cleaning services company Noble Clean, based in Leeds, UK, has announced its expansion to a new depot in York, North Yorkshire, the first as part of an 18 month rollout for its national service coverage expansion for 2016 - 17.

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Leeds, UK professional cleaning services company, Noble Clean is opening a new depot in York to service the area of North Yorkshire, as part of its national service expansion plans for 2016 - 17.

More information about Noble Clean's locations and services can be found at the company website: http://www.nobleclean.co.uk/locations/york/.

The new Noble Clean satellite depot is earmarked for opening on June 1, 2016, in York, North Yorkshire, the first in a national roll out over the next 18 months to provide professional cleaning services across the UK, offering oven cleaning, gutter cleaning, carpet cleaning and end of tenancy cleaning services.

Noble Clean already services the following areas from their head office in Leeds: Wakefield, Harrogate, Doncaster, Goole, Huddersfield, Halifax and Bradford. The new depot in York, North Yorkshire will enable Noble Clean to service the following areas: Acaster Malbis, Acomb, Askham Bryan, Askham Richard, Bishopthorpe, Bootham, Clifton, Copmanthorpe, Crockey Hill, Deighton, Dringhouses, Dunnington, Earswick, Elvington, Fishergate, Fulford, Groves, Haxby, Heslington, Hessay, Heworth, Holgate, Holtby, Huntington, Kexby, Knapton, Layerthorpe, Middlethorpe, Murton, Naburn, Nether Poppleton, New Earswick, Osbaldwick, Rawcliffe, Rufforth, Selby, Skelton, Skipwith, South Bank, Stockton on the Forest, Strensall, Tang Hall, Towthorpe, Upper Poppleton, Wheldrake, Wigginton, Woodthorpe and York City Centre.

Noble Clean only uses high quality, eco-friendly products together with industry leading equipment by security checked technicians. All Noble Clean technicians wear ID badges. The company is flexible with appointment times to suit customers' availability and it is covered by ?5 million public liability including items under work.

Noble Clean technicians professionally clean and revitalise carpets; expertly clean ovens (one of the most tedious household chores), a popular service beginning from ?50 with most bookings made via customer referrals; and professionally clean properties for homeowners, tenants and landlords from top to bottom as required, for end of tenancy periods.

The company provides a pre-work, recorded gutter survey to determine the need for gutter cleaning, which if needed is performed by a ladderless method using carbon fibre poles and a debris removal vacuum system. Noble Clean's leather cleaning service cleans, repairs damage and can restore colour to aniline leather furniture.

One of the UK's leading commercial and domestic cleaning companies, Noble Clean is a family owned and operated business providing fully guaranteed, professional services at competitive pricing. Noble Clean can be followed on social media: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, YouTube and LinkedIn.

For more information about us, please visit http://www.nobleclean.co.uk/locations/york/

Contact Info:

Name: Kelly Hoyland

Organization: Noble Clean

Address: York Hub Popeshead Court Offices Peter Lane York YO1 8SU

Phone: 01904 500303

Release ID: 116699

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Alcon Media Launches Ad Retargeting App For Online Ads And Behavioral Marketing

Most people need to see a product several times before they buy. Traffic Tempest gets ads in front of people more often and makes sure anyone who clicked an ad would see it again and again all over the web. This is called ad retargeting.

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After visiting some websites a user suddenly start seeing adverts for that site all over the web. That's known as retargeting. Retargeting specifically hunts down people who have seen been on a particular website or clicked on an advertisement before and keeps showing them that ad over and over. With Traffic Tempest, marketers get to use the power of ad retargeting in their advertising.

Most people need to see a product or service several times before they buy or sign up. That's just how psychology works. But with things like Facebook ads, marketers only get one spin of the wheel. If someone sees an ad, clicks, but doesn't buy immediately (which is most people) then they are gone. Traffic Tempest gets marketer's ads in front of people more often and makes sure anyone who clicked on the ad would see it again and again all over the web. This is called ad retargeting or behavioral retargeting.

All a marketer needs to do is sign up to the usual retargeting services like Perfect Audience and AdRoll, which can be done for free, or just use Facebook. Then copy and paste the details into Traffic Tempest. The marketer's ads will follow the targeted buyer all over the web. Traffic Tempest brings back the hottest leads to any video promotion, any CPA offer, any Amazon page or whatever is being marketed whether an advertiser owns the site or not.

o Traffic Tempest is web-based software so it can be used anywhere, anytime

o Traffic Tempest is 100% Facebook compliant

o Traffic Tempest automatically puts the retargeting pixel exactly where it needs to be

o Traffic Tempest integrates with Facebook, Adroll and Perfect Audience and works for any online promotion - video, Facebook, CPA, Teespring, JVZoo or anything else

Visit traffictempest.com today to learn more and see Traffic Tempest in action and why it's the only Internet marketing tool a marketer or advertiser will ever need.

About TrafficTempest.com

Traffic Tempest was developed by Alcon Media. Alcon Media has been building online presences for businesses and individuals worldwide for over 17 years by providing quality and value through web and app development, video and social media marketing, and much more. alconmedia.com

For more information about us, please visit http://traffictempest.com

Contact Info:

Name: Derek Stewardson

Organization: Alcon Media



Release ID: 116188

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Kent State Massacre Southeast Michigan MENSA Events & Annual Gathering Announced

Author Jenny Deason Copeland has announced a speaking engagement ahead of the launch of her book, Tiananmen West: Why Nixon Ordered the Kent State Massacre. The talk deals with research behind the conspiracy theories that surround the shooting of unarmed students on May 4, 1970.

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New author talk has been announced by Jenny Deason Copeland, the author of the upcoming book, Tiananmen West: Why Nixon Ordered the Kent State Massacre, at MENSA Annual Gathering in San Diego. The talk will focus on her book, which documents the research done while investigating conspiracy theories surrounding the Kent State massacre in an effort to find motives and proof.

More information can be found at: http://crazyredheadpublishing.com.

The MENSA Annual Gathering starts in San Diego on June 29, 2016. The Tiananmen West talk is scheduled for July 1, 2016 at 10:30 AM PDT. This will be held at 500 Hotel Circle N, San Diego, CA.

This event will focus on the amount of research that has gone into the book across nearly three decades of work. This includes Freedom of Information Act requests in 1992 and 1994 that received unwelcome attention and threatened the lives of the author's children.

The Kent State Massacre occurred on May 4, 1970, at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, and involved the shooting of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard. It's reported that 67 shots were fired over a period of 13 seconds, resulting in four deaths and nine people being injured. Following on from the shooting, a large national response ensued, with four million students striking and hundreds of universities closing across America.

Some of the students who were shot had been protesting the Cambodian Campaign, announced by President Nixon on April 30. Others were not at the protest, and had been observing from a distance. A number of conspiracy theories surround the episode, with some believing the shooting was ordered and some suggesting the guardsmen themselves could have been shot at and were simply retaliating. Jenny Deason Copeland details Her theory that Nixon was in direct control of the event and the research she used to shed light on that theory in her book, which forms the backbone of the two author events.

For more information about us, please visit http://www.crazyredheadpublishing.com

Contact Info:

Name: Jenny Deason Copeland

Organization: Crazy Red Head Publishing

Address: 3900 Walnut Lake Rd, West Bloomfield, MI 48323

Phone: 248-227-5508

Release ID: 116653

For more information visit r



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Sometimes these days when he speaks to audiences, Paul R. Wylie of Bozeman will listen with knit brows as he is introduced as a historian.

It might be hard to prove in a court of law, since people in the legal system know Wylie better from that earlier career of his  as a legal expert on intellectual property whose services were in demand all over the country by Fortune 500 companies. He specialized in evaluating monetary damages for patent infringement, testifying as an expert in cases such as the $10 billion Polaroid vs. Kodak fight, for example.

But historian?

I dont think I have the credentials for it. At the same time Ive got two dissertation-length books out there approved by peer reviewers and so on. I guess I am, I guess Im not, says Wylie, now 79 and a retired Bozeman attorney. I kind of think of myself as a lawyer writing history.

Writing history about Montana, more specifically  the parts he missed while growing up.

Lessons from a classmate

A 1955 graduate of White Sulphur Springs, Wylie knew a pretty fine writer while he was growing up, only nobody knew it then. It was Ivan Doig, who lived across the street for a time. They used to walk to school together, though Doig was a little bit younger.

He was a quiet student but  it appears now  always taking in every detail about rural Montana, from the peeling paint to the cracking sidewalks and the turns of speech in the way folks talk. Wylie admires Doig's novels and memoirs about Montana and finds them exactly true to life, from the dialogue to the landscape and people.

"Ivan was always quiet but with those amazing powers of observation that the whole world would know about when he published 'This House of Sky,'" Wylie wrote in a letter in 2015 supporting Montana State University's successful effort to get Ivan Doig's papers into its collection for purposes of teaching and research. "Later in life, as I was retiring from the practice of intellectual property law and looking for something meaningful to do, I took a look at my own upbringing in White Sulphur Springs, now made more positive by Ivans writings. I was always so impressed that Ivan had become a famous writer, and I decided I might be able to get something published in history if I researched well."

Wylie added he doesn't think he'd have even attempted a book "if it hadn't been for Ivan's guiding light" to show that it could be done.

Montana history

Wylies first effort as a writer, published in 2007, was The Irish General: Thomas Francis Meagher. Its the same topic that the highly regarded writer Timothy Egan has written about in his The Immortal Irishman: The Irish Revolutionary Who Became an American Hero, published early this year. But some readers say Wylie may have written the better book.

I was a little surprised, having grown up in Montana, that I didnt know more about Thomas Francis Meagher, says Wylie. I started looking at Irish history and finding out that Meagher was a hero in Ireland and a famous person in Ireland. I didnt know any of that. I just knew he was on the statue in front of the state Capitol and I knew the county I was brought up in, Meagher County, was named after him.

Earlier this year, Wylie followed it up with a book about another chapter of Montana history that he simply wanted to know more about: the massacre of perhaps 200 Piegan men, women, children. Blood on the Marias: The Baker Massacre puts it in context by telling about the decades of strained relations between the Piegans of the Blackfeet confederacy and the whites leading to the Jan. 23, 1870, tragedy in which troops of the 2nd U.S. Cavalry under the command of Maj. Eugene Baker attacked the wrong Piegan village on the Marias River.

They were looking for the village of a man named Mountain Chief. Instead they destroyed the village of another man named Heavy Runner, where many of the people were already sick from smallpox.

Both Wylies books are published by the University of Oklahoma Press, which has always been generous about publishing books on Montana history and Plains Indian history, Wylie noted.

Lawyers approach

With the Baker massacre, Wylie marveled that he didnt learn much about that event while growing up, and that seemed to be the case with other Montanans, too.

Certainly wed heard of the Custer battle, the Little Bighorn battle, he said. I remember going there as a fairly young person  I dont know if I was even in my teens  and seeing that, yes, there was a battlefield there and there were graves down there. With the Baker massacre, theres no identifiable battlefield. If you go there, youre not sure youre there, because its not marked in any way. If you dont have a marker for the place, then its a story, and not one you can associate with any particular terrain or any of that. Thats one of the problems.

Another problem, Wylie said, is that the Piegan tribe has been reluctant to speak of it, though that may be changing in recent years. There's now an annual commemoration of the massacre and Wylie was invited to attend the one earlier this year. He said he was honored to be asked.

Whites, too, Wylie said, need to know about what happened on the Marias River and how it happened. That's part of what his book does.

Wylie said his background as a lawyer serves him well when it comes laying down that history, plank by plank.

Its basically a fact-based approach. Just from years and years of being involved in major litigation: You cant be wrong on the facts. If youre in court and youre trying to tell the judge that something is a fact and its not, and the other side knows its not and tells the judge its not, then typically you get thrown around the courtroom by the judge like a rag doll. It builds into one, I think, a discipline of getting the facts right.

How he writes

Each of Wylie's books took him six years to do, counting the research and the writing.

He started The Irish General while he was still working as an attorney.

When I would be in some city like St. Paul or Minneapolis or New York, if I had time in the evening, Id go to the libraries there and dig up material, he said. I take boxes of files with me when Im traveling so Ill always have my source materials if I need them.

He does all his writing on a laptop. He used a Dell laptop for The Irish General. He used a MacBook Pro to write Blood on the Marias. Hell write at any time of day, but morning and evening are most productive.

And while his work as a lawyer was important  legal arguments about intellectual property and who owns a good idea help keep the economy greased and operating as it should  he thinks what he does now might be even more important.

I worked on some very big and important cases involving high values as far as money damages," Wylie said. "Generally it was one large corporation against another large corporation, most of them Fortune 500 companies. But once the case is over, it just fades into obscurity. I like the idea of having a couple of books out there and Im working on other things that may see the light of day, Im just not sure. I enjoy doing the work. I love the process. And I like having the books out there because they may be there for a while.
CASPER, Wyo.  A jury will determine next month if the Sublette County sheriff should be removed from his position for alleged misconduct in office.

The Wyoming Attorney General filed a petition in March in Sublette County District Court requesting the removal of Stephen Haskell from office because of misconduct. The civil case will go to trial June 6.

The Attorney General's action came after the Sublette County commissioners submitted a verified complaint to the governor requesting Haskell's removal from office. The complaint references criminal allegations against Haskell, which say he made unauthorized purchases with county money before he was sworn in. The commissioners also state they are concerned about a hostile work environment at the sheriff's office.

The county commissioners ask that Haskell be temporarily removed as sheriff while the criminal charges are pending.

Gov. Matt Mead reviewed the verified complaint and determined "it appears that Haskell is guilty of misconduct or malfeasance in office," the petition for Haskell's removal states.

Haskell, through his attorney H. Michael Bennett, filed a response to the petition on May 10. His response states he denies any wrongdoing, criminal or otherwise.

Haskell faces charges of obtaining property by false pretenses, buying or receiving stolen property, false claim or voucher, public officer performing duty before qualifying and official committing an unauthorized act. He pleaded not guilty to all the charges March 16. A trial date on the criminal charges has not yet been set.

According to charging documents, the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation was assigned to look into Haskell's actions in September after the Sublette County Commissioners wrote the agency asking for an investigation into "criminal wrongdoing" by the sheriff.

The criminal charges allege Haskell ordered more than $11,000 worth of equipment before taking office and then altered invoices to show he made the purchases after being sworn in.

On a recorded phone call obtained by police, Haskell allegedly asks a vendor to change invoice dates after the county commission told him items that he ordered before taking office would not be paid for by the county.

According to the complaint, Haskell ordered sheriff's office employees to shred documents relating to the purchases.
Alliance Trust has confirmed it has been approached by RIT Capital, owned largely by Jacob Rothschild, to takeover its 2.7bn of assets.

In a statement released today (31 May), the Scottish investment firm confirmed it had an informal proposal made recently to merge the two companies.

However, the statement added no detailed terms have been provided.

RIT now has 28 days to either make a formal offer or announce it has no intention to bid.

The takeover of Alliance Trust, which has been through a long-running battle with activist investors, could put an end to speculation over its future.

Activists were concerned about Alliance Trusts underperformance against its benchmark and called for a restructure of the management board.

Alliance Trust finally buckled under pressure in October last year and changed its board members, causing chief executive Katherine Garrett-Cox to leave the firm.

The merger could take the total assets to 5bn.

Mark Dampier, head of investment research at Hargreaves Lansdown, said the merger would create the largest investment trust in the UK and increase liquidity of both trusts dramatically.

However, both trusts are widely different in their objectives and philosophy. The politics of Alliance Trusts Scottish base, savings scheme and platform will make this a potentially complex merger.

katherine.denham@ft.com
The Investment Association (IA) is to shake up the way it presents fund data as the trade body seeks to fully monitor how UK investor behaviour affects fund management flows.

The trade bodys monthly sales figures, which currently present fund flows and other data based on fund domicile, will now reflect UK investor behaviour across all domiciles.

Sales statistics for UK-domiciled funds will have overseas investors moves deducted, while funds domiciled overseas will only show data relating to UK investors.

The changes, which come into force this week, are a response to the changing shape of UK and European fund flows, not least the Ucits directives allowing UK investors to buy funds domiciled in other European countries.

By [only] focusing on UK-domiciled funds, we are not fully monitoring trends in UK investors habits within our membership, the IA said.

The bodys monthly statistics, which are keenly monitored as a bellwether of investor interest, will be presented in a single document.

The IAs data set has been backdated to January 2012 in the new format, to allow long-term trends to be monitored.

Data from before this time will be presented in the old format.
It is common knowledge that good employee wellbeing is key to minimising sickness absence and promoting a happy, healthy  and above all, productive  workplace.

But how can organisations achieve this when there are so many wellbeing issues and opportunities facing employers?

From mental health concerns, with over half of employees experiencing a mental health problem while in employment, to physical health and personal issues, there are plenty of potential topics that employers need to be aware of.

Employers cant influence events beyond the workplace, but they can certainly take steps to provide their employees with a supportive environment and tangible solutions to address their wellbeing concerns.

Paul Avis, marketing director of Canada Life Group Insurance, explains how positive employer communications, effective absence management and use of services like Employee Assistance Programmes and vocational rehabilitation can prevent and resolve wellbeing problems.

Employee wellbeing is now high on many businesses agendas rather than merely an afterthought when addressing sickness absence. There is an obvious link between having a happy, healthy workforce and improved productivity and the government has acknowledged it believes improvements in employees wellbeing may be conducive to economic growth.

But how can organisations effectively enhance employee wellbeing, prevent potential issues and provide effective solutions when faced with wellbeing challenges?

It is incumbent upon employers to understand the key issues affecting employee wellbeing. The Health and Safety Act of 1974 makes this is a legal obligation.

Mental health is one area that has attracted growing attention in recent years, not least because stress and mental ill-health are among the top four causes of long-term absence. Stress is the leading cause of absence for non-manual workers. Over half of UK employees have suffered from mental health problems while in employment, with stress and depression the most commonly experienced issues .

The causes of mental health problems are rarely clear-cut, but sometimes its the workplace itself that leads to these kinds of illnesses. One in five (19 per cent) of employees we surveyed said their workplace has had a negative impact on their mental health.

Having a high pressure or stressful role, an unsustainable workload, excessive working hours and unpleasant interactions with colleagues can all lead to issues with mental health.

Stress is one of the areas of mental health most commonly talked about in the context of employee wellbeing, but depression is also quickly becoming a growing issue.

An analysis of calls made to EmployeeCare (Canada Life Groups Employee Assistance Programme) showed calls seeking help for depression increased 40 per cent in Q1 2015 compared to the same quarter in 2014.

Calls about stress increased 9 per cent over the previous 12 months. Depression might not attract the same attention as stress, but employers need to be aware this is a significant problem and must be taken seriously.

The workplace also has a bearing on our physical health. The type of environments we work in can easily encourage or dissuade healthy lifestyles. How many times have you found yourself indulging in office snacks, or hurriedly eating lunch at your desk?
Defined contribution schemes must overcome a crazy commitment to daily liquidity if they are to meet members retirement needs, according to BlackRocks head of retirement for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Tony Stenning said workplace schemes heavy with younger members can afford to put as much as 30 per cent of their total assets in illiquid investments like private equity, real estate and infrastructure.

We need to rediscover long-term investing, he said. When youre investing for 30, 40 or 50 years, to have a daily liquid product is crazy.

He pointed to the Danish system, where some funds have a third of pensionsers savings in alternative assets, which are less easy to trade quickly.

They think thats about the right level to maintain the liquidity requirements, but also to enable them to secure the illiquidity premium on offer in these other investments, he said. If we can get the regulatory regimes aligned with the member requirements [in the UK], it will allow us to secure those benefits.

Without a deeper embrace of long-term assets with reliable returns, Mr Stenning said the looming longevity crisis could leave new generations worse off than their parents.

We estimate that around 2035 there will be a tipping point in our society where a generation retires worse off than the previous one. That wont have occurred for 100 years, since the creation of the welfare state and has properly profound impacts to the UK and to the long-term growth aspects of our economy, he said.

BlackRock research found millenials  the generation born between the early 80s and late 90s  were the most likely to underestimate their longevity, on average expecting to live to 79, whereas the true figure is around 90.

Mr Stenning said failing to factor in those extra 11 years would have a profound impact on retirement planning, leading them to underestimate how much they would need in their pension pot at retirement by around 100,000.

But Colin Low, managing director of Kingsfleet Wealth, pointed out liquidity needs varied from client to client.

There will be some clients for whom liquidity will be absolutely paramount, and even more so with pension freedoms. For others, such as younger investors or those with alternative sources of income, he said liquidity was irrelevant.

Direct commercial property was the illiquid asset most favoured by his clients, particularly those with small businesses, he said.

james.fernyhough@ft.com
Pension professionals are divided between those wanting radical product innovation and others who repeat the long-held mantra that the industry needs stability.

The pension minister, a former director of the Fidelity Retirement Institute and a senior consultant at a workplace pension firm with a mission statement to transform the quality of our industry, are all demanding more product diversity.

But the Association of British Insurers and Aviva defended the current range of options for pension savers.

Baroness Ros Altmann told FTAdviser the innovation she had hoped for in 2014 after the pension freedoms were announced has still not happened.

We have not seen many new products yet. I understand the industry is coping with a lot of extra volume as a result of auto-enrolment, and the pensions dashboard is going to require co-operation, management time and so on; but that doesnt stop companies maybe offering new products.

David Dunn, former director of fund manager Fidelitys Retirement Institute, agreed the industrys response has only led to incremental innovation in products, not the needed transformational change.

Weve been less good with the latter and a part of that is because weve been handicapped from the generous tax breaks that pensions have, he said at a recent panel debate held by Aviva.

Going forward we do need to try and think more creatively.

John Reeve, senior consultant at Premier Pensions Management, said decumulation and financial education are two areas in dire need of fresh thinking. There are too many similar products, we need some form of disruptive innovation to re-energise the industry and the publics view of the industry, he said.

After pension freedoms, reductions in the lifetime and annual allowances and the incoming Lifetime Isa, not all are keen for more change in the pension sector.

David Snailham, director at compliance firm Compass Risk Solutions, said theres a danger the industry ends up innovating for the sake of it.

The ABIs retirement policy manager Rob Yuille argued current options in the market are a good mix, with more likely in the pipeline.

Innovation in the pension market did not start in April 2015, the retirement income market had already evolved to give people higher incomes, to try and achieve the right balance of flexibility and security.

It is an ongoing process and the dilemma for customers and for policy makers is to try and strike the right balance of flexibility and security.

John Lawson, head of financial research at Aviva, defended the product providers and noted commercial success determines new launches.

The market had already been quite good at innovating, some of them did not sell and some of them looked quite attractive on paper, but when it comes down to explaining that to a customer it becomes a lot more difficult.

ruth.gillbe@ft.com
Farmers in England could be waiting for as much as 120m in 2015 Basic Payment Scheme support, according to calculations by the NFU.

The Rural Payments Agency announced on 1 May that all farmers had received either a full BPS payment or a bridging loan worth 50% of the value of their 2015 claim.

But six months after the opening of the payment window, the union has warned that it is ridiculous that thousands of farmers are still waiting for cash.

See also: Read Farmers Weeklys latest stories on the Basic Payment Scheme

About 7,000 are understood to be waiting for the top-up payment to their bridging loan, while several thousand more believe they have been underpaid as a result of an RPA error and have lodged queries with the agency.

A number of the affected farmers are on cross border holdings, where payments are still outstanding because it has proved impossible to share data between the RPA and Rural Payments Wales.

Guy Smith, NFU vice-president, said the total BPS fund was about 1.43bn and the union estimated that the RPA had paid out in the region of 1.31bn.

So there is a 120m deficit there and of that we think 60m is the second tranche of bridging payments and that leaves 60m, which we assume is underpayments.

Under EU regulations, the payment window for BPS runs from 1 December to 30 June with interest paid on any money received by farmers after that date.

However, it has emerged that the EU Commission is currently considering extending this deadline until 15 October to give member states more time to pay.

Mr Smith said if this was the case, the NFU was adamant that farmers should be paid interest on any money paid after the end of June.

Action plan

The Country Land and Business Association said the government needed to put an urgent action plan in place to address the ongoing issues.

The organisation has called for the RPA to contact individually any farmer yet to receive a payment to explain why not and to offer face-to-face meeting with claimants to speed up the resolution of outstanding issues.

It has also suggested contacting all claimants who have been subject to mapping changes to give them a chance to respond before any changes are finalised.

The reintroduction of dedicated case workers would also help support claimants, it added.

Daniel Kawczynski, MP for Shrewsbury and Atcham, said he had been approached by a number of farmers in his constituency to express their sheer frustration with the RPA.

The vast majority of those I have spoken to have not received full payment but merely a partial one. This causes cashflow problems for the industry and needs rectifying quickly.

An RPA spokesman said that over 81,800 (94%) of 2015 BPS claims had now been completed, but was unable to provide figures on the value of payments.

We will investigate all claim queries through a planned payment reconciliation process that will take place from June, when the BPS 2015 payment window closes, he added.

Farmers who believe their payment is not correct, should write to the agency so it can investigate, make any necessary adjustments and top up payments.
Americans' satisfaction with the quality of the nation's K-12 education has fallen to 42%, the second-lowest on record, with Republicans entirely responsible for the recent decline.




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.





If you enjoyed this episode of the President's Daily Brief, remember to subscribe and listen daily at podfollow.com/pdb.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Unity kicks off its developer event in Amsterdam this week by announcing some big changes, including a revamped pricing scheme that will see it debut a new mid-tier subscription option, Unity Plus, as it increases the cost of Unity Pro and renders all versions of Unity capable of deploying games on iOS and Android at no additional cost.

What this means, for developers, is complicated. First and foremost, Unity devs who currently pay for an Android and/or iOS license will no longer have to do so, potentially saving up to $150/month if you pay for both of the $75/month licenses.

"[Unity] has evolved into something over its 10+ year life that right now isn't massively accessible," Unity Technologies CMO Clive Downie told Gamasutra in a recent phone conversation. "[With Unity] it's actually three different things you have to buy if you want to be in as many places as possible, and take your ideas to the largest groups of consumers on the planet. It's just not very accessible in that way."

However, the cost of Unity Pro is going up from $75/month to $125/month. Alongside that price hike Unity will roll out a new $35/month annual (or $49/month if you pay month-to-month) subscription option, Unity Plus, that Downie says is meant to make a subset of Unity Pro's features accessible to developers at a lower price.

"There's a group of developers who are not in the beginning phase of their lifecycle, and are not in the kind of pro, kind of career developer phase of their lifecycle," said Downey. "But there is a middle, and they've honed their skills, and they want to take their first commercial product to market, and they want some optimization tools to do that that aren't in Personal, and are probably too cost-inhibitive in Pro. So we've added this new tier of Plus to be able to make that segment successful."

In concrete terms, Unity Plus is like Unity Personal in that it's only available to developers and studios who generate less than $100,000 a year in funding/revenue. Like Unity Pro, this new subscription plan will include some select Unity features not available in the free Unity Personal plan, including real-time data feeds via Unity Analytics, game performance reporting intended to help devs optimize their games prior to launch, and access to "specifically designed asset store project packs" via the Unity Asset Store.

While both Plus and Pro will be offered as annual subscription plans, now Unity developers can also pay a large lump sum upfront to buy a version of the engine outright via Unity's new "Pay to Own" program.

Unity believes devs want a "Pay to Own" option for their engine

"We're going Pay to Own because we realize there's probably a portion of our large userbase who want that security, said Downie. "They want that peace of mind of being able to keep something they've been paying for at the end of that subscription period."

If a developer opts to "Pay to Own" they can expect to pay for a multi-year Unity subscription deal up front (Downie says it's typically priced as your monthly cost x the number of months in your deal, so you'd probably pay $125 x 36 for a three-year Unity Pro deal) and get engine updates and support for the duration of that subscription. At the end of that time period they'll lose access to Unity services, engine updates and support, but they'll retain full access to whatever version of Unity they've reached.

"You get to keep the version of Unity that you're on at that moment, and you get to use that core engine in perpetuity until it may no longer be relevant because it hasn't had a tech upgrade," Downie added. "It's just another option for a percentage of our very large global userbase, who kind of may not be ready to move to subscription and they might favor a more traditional model."

The company also wants a piece of the recruiting game, so it's launching a job marketplace

The company is also getting into the networking business in a big way, as Unity now plans to launch a job marketplace called Unity Connect that's designed to help Unity devs find collaborators, contractors and new hires.

"If you're a small developer, you might be a great coder...but you might not be a great artist," Downie said. "Imagine what the unlock could be, if you could advertise for a great artist's time, share your project, so artists within the Unity community worldwide could look at your project. And you could hire them for a period of time to work on your project with you."

That's the pitch for Unity Connect, which Downie says will be entering a phase of beta testing in select markets ahead of a full commercial release sometime down the line. And yes, there's absolutely a commercial angle here for Unity -- in addition to giving Unity developers more reasons to interact with its community and remote collaboration tools, Unity intends to collect some sort of revenue from Unity Connect.

Downie tells Gamasutra the company is currently evaluating various business models for Connect, but he's confident there will at least be some sort of fee levied at Unity Connect users.

"This all comes back to the fact that it's just hard to be successful as a game developer right now, and we want developers to be as successful as possible, " he added. "[Unity Connect] is about connecting everyone in the Unity community globally with projects they might like to work on and available jobs that are going to provide a living for them."
Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia was among the right people enshrined on the memorial wall on Saturday, Oct. 21.
While going through and typing up the Oregon West Conference all-softball team this afternoon based on a press release from the league, I immediately noticed a couple of Philomath players names had been misspelled.

Kira Williams (spelled as Kyra) and Carrie Lillis (spelled Lilis) were two that jumped out at me. But the name I thought might actually be wrong was Reiley Reichhuber, but nope, her name was spelled correctly. The only problem was they listed her as playing for Newport. Oh well, I guess the league is just trying to keep us newspaper editors on our toes.
Les Whittles last year organizing the annual Memorial Day service at the Benton County Veterans Memorial in Corvallis had his personality written all over it.

As he emceed the event on Monday, he frequently offered his own little asides:

I wish I could do that, he said after the Oregon State University Air Force ROTCs drill team performed a routine where its members twirled and tossed gun-shaped props around in unison.

How many of you danced to that? he asked the crowd as the events musicians performed The Andrews Sisters Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy during a medley of 1940s hits.

After hearing that the playing of the Armed Forces Medley would need to be delayed for a moment because the keyboard player had to rush his young son to the bathroom, he said, I think weve all had those emergencies. Ive had a few of those myself.

You guys are going to miss my teasing, he told the audience another time.

And he may be right about that: when, during her own address, County Commissioner Annabelle Jaramillo thanked Whittle for organizing the event for nearly two decades and founding the group that built the war memorial, the audience of nearly 600 gave him a standing ovation.

This year's event was the 85-year-old Whittles last as organizer, but he will stay on in an advisory capacity next year when his daughter, Becki Goslow, will take over running the event.

Its time to step back, he told the audience.

The event also featured other local veterans: World War II Navy veteran Dick Nale handed a rifle to Navy ROTC cadets during a ceremonial passing of the guard and Steve Besse, a Navy veteran who last year was named a chevalier in the French Legion of Honor for his service during the D-Day landing, gave the keynote address.

Besse recounted for the audience his experiences as the executive officer of a landing craft that had a crew of 24 and could sleep 200. He said after training in the United States, his ship sailed for England, which was a rough three-week journey because the flat-bottomed ship had to go over every wave instead of going through them.

After being stationed in England his ship was part of a group of four that landed at Omaha Beach on D-Day. Their first trip in the tides forced them to make a wet landing, in which they had to unload men into waste-deep water. The other three ships were damaged by enemy fire. Besse said the large balloons the crafts floated to discourage strafing runs by German planes gave the enemy artillery an easy way to target the ships; his own craft, he said, just missed being bit. At one point he took a piece of shrapnel to his helmet, which fortunately did not penetrate it.

There were not very many of our soldiers in that first wave that made it up the beach, he said.

He recounted additional trips the ship made that day, ferrying in men from troop transports and eventually towing to the beach a barge with tons of open ammunition on the deck while hoping it wouldnt get hit by enemy fire and explode. He said when they landed the barge they cut their lines to it with axes rather than take the additional time require to untie it.

My experiences in World War II were exciting and at times they were terrifying, he said.

Besse also talked about the history of Memorial Day.

This is a special day that deserves more recognition than it gets, he said.

He also referenced statistics that 1.2 million Americans have been killed through history while serving in the armed forces.

For many Americans, Memorial Day is a three-day weekend for a family outing or a picnic, but we need to recognize Memorial Day, he said. We need to recognize those who gave their lives so we can enjoy ours.
The Oregon State University Board of Trustees will hold a series of meetings on the Corvallis campus this week.

All meetings will be held in the Horizon Room of the Memorial Union, 2501 S.W. Jefferson Way, and are open to the public.

The boards three standing committees will convene on Thursday, with the Executive & Audit Committee meeting from 8 to 9:30 a.m., the Academic Strategies Committee meeting from 9:45 a.m. to 3 p.m. and the Finance & Administration Committee meeting from 3 to 4:45 p.m.

The full board will meet from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on Friday. Among the agenda items will be OSUs efforts to advance equity, inclusion and social justice, the universitys operating budget for fiscal 2017 and the amended capital plan.

Opportunities for public comment will be provided. People who wish to comment can sign up at the meeting or register in advance by sending an email to marcia.stuart @oregonstate.edu.
Whitewater? Vince Foster? Juanita Broaddrick? Donald Trump appears to have tumbled into a time warp. He wants to revive the Arkansas scandals of the 1990s, when many Republicans thought impeaching then-President Bill Clinton was a sure path to victory. (It wasn't.) Trump has turned an old political bromide on its head. For the moment, his campaign isn't about the future; it's about the past.

In interviews, speeches and a campaign video, Trump has cited the often-lurid controversies of the Bill Clinton administration as a reason voters shouldn't put Hillary Clinton in the White House.

Clinton "was the biggest abuser of women, as a politician, in the history of our country," Trump said in one interview.

"Hillary was an enabler," he added.

"Whether it's Whitewater or whether it's Vince or whether it's Benghazi, it's always a mess with Hillary."

(For younger readers, Whitewater was a land deal in Arkansas in which Bill and Hillary Clinton were investors; one of their partners was convicted of fraud in 1997, but the Clintons were not found at fault. Vince Foster was a law partner of Hillary Clinton who killed himself in 1993; conspiracy theorists, including Trump, suggest  without evidence  that he might have been murdered. Juanita Broaddrick is an Arkansas woman who says Bill Clinton raped her in 1978; Clinton's lawyer has denied the allegation, which Broaddrick did not report to police at the time. And yes, Congress impeached then-President Clinton; in 1999, the Senate held a month-long trial and acquitted him.)

Trump's resurrection of tales from the Clinton crypt may seem bizarre. After all, Bill Clinton has been one of the more admired politicians in America since his presidency ended in an economic boom 15 years ago. He's far more popular than either Trump or his wife.

Other Republican politicians have been scratching their heads.

"It's something I might not have done," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who led the impeachment effort in 1998, told The Washington Post. "But he operates on such a different model that I'd be very cautious about rendering judgment."

Trump claims he's raking up ancient muck because he thinks he has been forced to. "It's only retribution for what (Hillary Clinton) said," he told CNN. "She is playing the woman's card to the hilt."

But as often with Trump, there's an element of strategy at work here, too.

Throwing allegations at Clinton, even indiscriminately, helps reinforce the label he's trying to pin on the presumptive Democratic nominee: "Crooked Hillary."

If Trump can get the media and voters to focus on Clinton's problems, real or imaginary, that helps counter her negative messages about him. Reviving old controversies also gets in the way of Democrats' portrayal of the 1990s as a golden age.

"If this becomes a race about which one would be the worse president, that's to Trump's advantage," GOP strategist David Winston told me. "It puts him on an equal footing with Clinton."

Clinton advisers, for their part, think Trump is "trolling"  trying to provoke Bill or Hillary Clinton into losing their tempers and responding in kind.

"Any response would make it into a huge story," one Clinton adviser told me.

Fully cognizant of that fact, Hillary Clinton and her husband have stolidly refused to directly counter Trump's nastiest charges.

When the Clintons do attack Trump, they focus mostly on what they call his "dangerous and divisive" statements and his proposals. They say he's "an unqualified loose cannon" but leave his marital history  which includes past charges of adultery and spousal rape  off the table. And in this election, that qualifies as the high road.

Indeed, Clinton is trying to make this contest about something other than bluster.

She has already been talking at length  sometimes great length  about the policies she proposes to make the country better. The problem is, those speeches haven't earned her much live coverage on cable television; Trump's unscripted news conferences beat her on that count every time.

But I'll boldly offer a scrap of good news: The scandals of the 1990s won't remain a novelty forever. They're already old  and pretty soon, they're going to seem old again. One of these days, possibly on a debate stage, even Trump will have to talk at length about policies and programs  about the economy, and health care and foreign policy. But only, it appears, once he has exhausted every other topic.
Veterans, community members and prominent guests gathered Monday to celebrate Memorial Day in the Russell Reid Auditorium at the North Dakota Heritage Center.

Over 200 in attendance listened to the keynote speech by Shaundra Ziemann-Bolinske, former nutrition care specialist of the U.S. Army Reserve, who now is a Burleigh County family and consumer sciences agent with the NDSU Extension Service.

Ziemann-Bolinske focused on the importance of helping veterans who are struggling daily with depression and suicidal thoughts.

"Asking for help is hard to do," she said. "It sometimes means you have to relive the experience. What happens when you're forced to hide something? You stuff your feelings. You don't want to talk about it, you just want to forget about it."

Ziemann-Bolinske explained that many veterans believe expressing feelings is just not something that people do. She stressed the importance of opening up to veterans as someone they can talk to.

She also spoke of her personal struggles after the war and praised a treatment called eye movement and desensitization reprocessing for helping her overcome her struggles.

"This can work for anybody," she said. "You're not gonna forget what you saw, but you can reset the emotional tie to those memories. This treatment can be effective for those in all walks of life."

Prominent speakers included Gov. Jack Dalrymple, Sens. John Hoeven and Heidi Heitkamp, Rep. Kevin Cramer, Brig. Gen. Dormann, Bismarck Mayor Mike Seminary and Mandan Mayor Arlyn Van Beek.

Dalrymple started off acknowledging that this would be the last time he would be able to participate in the ceremony, as his term is coming to an end. He went on to express his pleasure of being able to honor the veterans.

"These are all ordinary people that we're talking about who performed extraordinary acts of valor that shaped the course of history, preserved the freedoms that we cherish for generations to come," Dalrymple said. "All who enjoy the blessings of liberty are forever in their debt."

Hoeven reflected on some of his time spent with World War II veterans. He also touched on veterans' health care and long-term care issues.

He recognized the hard work the Fargo Veterans Affairs Health Care Center is doing, then addressed the importance of creating more options closer to home.

Numbers were the main topic for Heitkamp's remarks. She noted that, according to Veterans Affairs, there are 22 million vets in the U.S. These numbers are slowly dwindling, she said. She went on to express the importance of veterans from a political aspect.

"Speak with loud voices for America's veterans," Heitkamp said. "They've earned it. They have earned our honor, they have earned our respect and they have earned our advocacy. Because without our advocacy, I fear that we will not make the right decisions. Let's make sure that we provide the support and the advocacy to make sure that we never forget how much we owe American veterans."

Emcee Jim Nelson addressed the state of the nation today and questioned what those who have fought and are still fighting today have worked toward.

"Today, the whole world should stop and honor America's fallen heroes," he said. "Not as a gesture endorsing any nation in its current political or economical policy, but in honor of the brave men and women who gave and are giving their lives for others."

Nelson went on to say Memorial Day is not about picnics and ballgames. He urged listeners to ask themselves what they are doing with the legacy fallen service people left behind.

"Did our Revolutionary War heroes die so we could remove faith and God from our country?" he said. "Was the Civil War fought so we could be a hyphenated and divided nation? Did we die in the trenches of Argonne so we have to press one for English and argue about which restroom to go to?"

"Their true memorial is the nation and the culture we create out of their sacrifice," Nelson said. "Ask yourself today: Are we really doing them the recognition they deserve?"
Emergency dispatchers in Bismarck are now able to walk and talk at the same time, as the result of a treadmill desk recently installed at the Central Dakota Communications Center.

Eighteen communications specialists at CenCom, which is in charge of routing 911 calls for the Bismarck and Mandan Police Departments and the Burleigh County Sheriff's Department, have used the treadmill workstation since it was installed in October.

With good walking shoes, Brendan Hanken, who's been at CenCom for three years, uses the treadmill at a safe speed  no more than 2 mph. He watches the six computer monitors in front of him and occasionally might stop to take a call.

CenCom has 28 employees who work a combination of eight-, 10- and 12-hour shifts to provide public safety communications services 24/7/365. They are typically confined to a traditional desk and chair.

The treadmill helps combat adverse health effects and improve employee wellness, said Katie Johnke, nutrition services coordinator at Bismarck-Burleigh Health.

Within Bismarck, CenCom is the only department with a treadmill, Johnke said, which Bismarck-Burleigh Public Health received through a grant from the North Dakota Comprehensive Cancer Control and Chronic Disease Programs.

The grant was to pilot a treadmill workstation for use by communications specialists while carrying out their duties.

Each communication specialist who uses the treadmill wears a FitBit activity tracker to monitor daily step counts and treadmill usage.

Beginning in October, CenCom and Bismark-Burleigh started tracking employees' steps using a tracking sheet. Data has already been submitted to the state Health Department; however, the communications specialists continue to wear their FitBits and monitor their steps.

Mike Dannenfelzer, director of CenCom, said the treadmill workstation was so successful that he hopes to get another one for employees to use, though he notes space in the building is limited.
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.
Roundtable on youth violence : Police promise stronger presence

Bonn Following the death of Niklas P., city leaders held a first roundtable discussion on youth violence. Results were announced following the meeting.

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Leaders from the City, school and church, law enforcement and integration officials met Monday morning for a first roundtable discussion on tackling youth violence. Following the meeting at the old City Hall, Police Chief Ursula Brohl-Sowa and Mayor Ashok Sridharan presented the results to the media. In Bad Godesberg, there is to be an increased presence of both police officers and Ordnungsdienste, the law enforcement arm charged with enforcing rules and regulations. In addition, the City will investigate possibilities for more video cameras in public places.

Following the violent beating death of Niklas P. three weeks ago, officials had promised to meet and take swift action against the problem of youth violence. Police Chief Brohl-Sowa said a first step will be dispatching two police officers whose primary responsibility is working the streets, maintaining contact with youth. This is already happening in Tannenbusch. As well, police apprentices in their third year will be sent out on foot and bicycle to patrol the district. We will do everything to give Bad Godesberg residents more security, said Brohl-Sowa.

At the area where the beating occurred, steps will be taken to make it more visible such as adding lights. Also in other areas where the subjective feeling of danger lurks, more lighting will be added and overgrowth of bushes, trees and scrub be cut back heavily. We are doing something now, promised the Mayor, so that what we have experienced in Bad Godesberg never happen again, not there or in Bonn. Brohl-Sowa commented that the criminal statistics dont point towards growing danger in Bad Godesberg. Youth crime appears in waves.

Another agreement resulting from the roundtable is the establishment of a working group to deal with prevention of youth violence. This group is to meet before the summer break, as is the roundtable group for a second discussion. Representatives of the mosques were not at the first roundtable. According to the Mayor, they were invited but had to cancel. Coletta Manemann, the citys integration minister said the Muslim community was also very prepared to work on concepts towards violence prevention, They also have children whom they are worried about, and like the rest of us they want to live in peace.
Deadly attack on Niklas P. : Walid S. arrested twice in one night

Bad Godesberg The young man suspected of carrying out a fatal attack on Niklas P. had previous run-ins with police.

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20-year-old Walid S., who killed Niklas P. with a punch and a kick to the head, was not unknown to police. For one year already, there had been six ongoing investigations against him, five of them for assault. This information was obtained by General Anzeiger from sources familiar with the investigation. Walid S. now sits in jail while prosecutors investigate him on charges of homicide.

Living in Mehlem, the young man with an Italian passport and Moroccan roots first came under police radar at the end of May, 2015. He was not considered highly criminal but someone who easily snaps. Noteworthy is that shortly before the attack on Niklas P. on May 7, the 20-year-old is said to have been arrested twice in one night. He was allegedly involved in a fight on April 30 at 12:30 a.m. on a bus from Line 66, traveling from Honnef to Siegburg. Police got in at the Rheinaue bus stop, ended the fight and took those involved to the police station. He was apparently one of those persons.

On that evening, police let him go. At 3 a.m., he was apparently involved in a second incident, this time on Poststrae in Bonn inner city. It is not clear why he was not kept behind bars after this second incident involving police. Without saying as much, it is thought that the two responsible police stations in Bad Godesberg and on Bornheimer Strae didnt exchange information about Walid S.
The man who walked off from the Missouri River Correctional Center on May 2 was arrested Monday with a stolen car in Newport, Tenn.

Leroy Hollman was allegedly working under the hood of a spray-painted car with no tags, when sheriff's deputies found him, according to the Cocke County arrest report. He has family in the area and the authorities got a tip that he was there, Sgt. Michael Whitmer said.

Hollman allegedly told deputies his name was Tyson Rebellosa and handed them a Washington ID. The photo ID looked nothing like him  much shorter and with long hair. Authorities confirmed his identity by comparing his picture to an image that ran with a news story. Whitmer said he finally confessed and said, "I know why you're here." He was arrested without incident.

Rebellosa said his wallet was stolen from his work truck in early May.

Deputies tracked the car's VIN number and found that it was registered in South Dakota and stolen in Bismarck.

While in custody, Hollman allegedly claimed the vehicle and everything in it, which included a small bag of suspected meth, a pry bar, a vehicle unlocking kit and a BB gun, according to the arrest report.

Whitmer said he had two South Dakota tags, including the original ones, a Texas tag and a Tennessee tag.

Hollman will face charges of using false identification, theft of property and drug possession in Tennessee before he can be extradited to North Dakota, according to the sheriff's department.

Hollman was serving time for nearly identical charges  drug possession, theft and giving false information to law enforcement  in North Dakota. He was expected to get out of prison in June 2017, according to the North Dakota Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

MRCC is an unfenced, minimum-security facility for inmates at the end of their sentences, which is located in Bismarck.

The DOCR and North Dakota Highway Patrol could not be reached for comment.
Law enforcement and hospitals are reporting an increase in opiate use in Bismarck and the surrounding area.

As part of a meeting with law enforcement, treatment providers, educators and community members, Bismarck Police Chief Dan Donlin said Tuesday the department is seeing an uptick in heroin and fentanyl use in the Bismarck area.

"Not as much as it seems like its happening around us, but we are seeing it," Donlin said.

On Sunday night, Bismarck police officers were called to a report of a possible fentanyl overdose. The woman was given the opiate antidote Narcan and survived.

Opiate abuse is climbing nationwide, including in North Dakota. In 2014, in North Dakota, 43 people died from an opioid overdose, an increase from 20 deaths in 2013.

In 2014, nearly 19,000 people died in the United States due to a prescription opioid overdose, or an average of 51 people died each day. Opioids resemble morphine in their pain-relieving qualities. Almost 200,000 Americans have lost their lives to prescription opioid abuse since 1999.

Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., who organized the meeting, declared opiate abuse as a "national epidemic" and discussed a bill she recently introduced, called the Budgeting for Opioid Addiction Treatment Act, or LifeBOAT, that would establish a 1-cent fee for every milligram of active opioid ingredient in a prescription pain pill.

The bill, co-sponsored by Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, would provide more than $1 billion nationwide each year. Funding would establish new addiction treatment facilities and programs, bolster the mental health workforce and expand access to substance abuse treatment.

Caught unaware

Mitzie Nay, of Minot, attended the discussion Tuesday to talk about the death of her son, Aidan Vanderhoef, 19, who overdosed on meth and heroin last year.

I didnt know he was addicted a lot of the time," said Nay, adding her son had problems with theft. I just thought he was a troubled teenager who has no motivation. It was all addiction, every bit of it was addiction."

Nay spoke Tuesday about a need for more education and awareness surrounding addiction, as well as resources and treatment options.

Chad Meyers, of Bismarck, also attended Tuesday's discussion to share his experience with addiction. Meyers has been in long-term recovery since 2011, when he stopped using opiates.

Nine years ago, he was run over by a motorcycle and broke his hip. His doctor prescribed him a lot of opiates, he said, and, nine months after he was prescribed the medication, he overdosed.

He was treated using Narcan, but eventually started taking opiates again. He also had his left lung and rib cage on his left side removed and was prescribed even more opiates.

Because of my condition, my primary care physician continued giving me my opiates, and that was my life. I could not live, I couldnt function. I could not do nothin without my pain medications. I couldnt get out a bed. I couldnt walk across this room five years ago," Meyers said.

He went to Heartview in 2011 and hasnt used opiates since, with help from a medically assisted opiate treatment program.

For opiate addiction, I can say that a person like ... myself or any other opiate addict, they need long-term recovery," he said. You cant go into a hospital and expect an opiate addict to leave and stay sober because they need long-term care.

Drug monitoring

Dr. Chris Meeker, chief medical officer at Sanford Health in Bismarck, spoke Tuesday about a drug monitoring program the hospital recently developed.

"Were going to start tracking whos prescribing narcotics, who theyre going to, how many theyre going to and if theyre appropriately being used," said Meeker, adding that emergency room visits for substance abuse diagnoses are increasing, from less than 500 visits in 2011 to about 900 visits in 2015.

"Interestingly, between 2013 and 2015, alcohol has actually remained flat. It's amphetamines, cannabis, opioids and synthetics have really driven that number up," he said. "It's still on the rise."

Though prescriptions for opioid painkillers have been on the decline in recent years, deaths have gone up, which Meeker said is troublesome.

It really concerns me that, as opiates become much harder to get through normal medical means, that death rate is going to go up because people are going to start getting heroin, which is going to be laced with fentanyl," he said.
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Well that's embarassing. It looks like the page you're looking for has been moved or is no longer available.
Two UH-72A Lakota helicopters heralded the beginning of a Vietnam-themed Memorial Day ceremony on Monday.

Held annually at the North Dakota Veterans Cemetery in Mandan, this year's service not only was the first to be themed, but also served as the first public appearance of the twin helicopters since their dedication in September 2012.

"The theme comes from the fact that we need to respect, in particular, these Vietnam veterans -- people who have thrown their bodies in front of those who would deny our freedoms," said Bill Prokopyk, coordinator of the event.

Memorial Day has major significance to Prokopyk's family. Both of his brothers served in the Vietnam War, and one has since passed away.

"I firmly believe that how we treated veterans from Vietnam is directly related to the result of our respect today. We look at these guys coming home from Iraq, Afghanistan, and it's us saying, 'Look at what we did to Vietnam, we're not going to do this to any other soldiers,'" Prokopyk said. "This ceremony is when we honor dead vets ... and the ones that are still living. It is too late for some, but we want to go out of our way and thank those that are still with us."

Col. David Johnson, the chaplain who led the closing prayer at the ceremony, also has a personal connection to the event.

"My dad was a World War II veteran, and all my family has connections with the military," Johnson said. "On this day, I think of him, but also the countless others I know who have served. We need to remember why we have the freedoms we do."

In a society where everything is often rushed and hurried, Johnson believes it is valuable to pause and remember these brave few.

"I've talked to many veterans, both as a pastor and in the community, and they always tell me stories of how they had to hide their service," Johnson said. "That's hard to hear. What I love is getting the opportunity to say thank you. Because I know that when I came back from deployment, I got welcomed, but they didn't ... it's good to connect with them, see them straighten up when you approach and, most of all, tell them your appreciation."

Gary Seyer, who served as a sergeant in the U.S. Army in Vietnam, enjoys the chance to attend with his family and veteran community these ceremonies.

"We're celebrating memories," Seyer said. "I like to think of it as gathering together as an organization that would honor those lost. For the years gone by and those to come, that's why I'm here."

The keynote speaker was Maj. Gen. Alan Dohrmann, adjutant general of North Dakota. He expounded on the significance of Vietnam and the treatment of veterans as they came home.

"Like many Americans, I feel some of the collective guilt," said Dohrmann.

Though he was too young to serve at the time, Dohrmann said he was close to his mother's cousin, who did serve in Vietnam. However, his cousin never brought up the topic.

"He put his uniform away and put his medals in a box," Dohrmann said.

No one in the family discussed his military service, either. So Dohrmann would go out for ice cream with his cousin -- who was more like a "cool uncle" to him -- and never ask about it.

Years later, the night before he went off to basic training, Dohrmann attended a party thrown by his boss. That night, his boss showed him the medals he, too, had hidden away in a box.

"I'd like to think I remembered to thank my boss (for showing me), but I probably didn't," he said. "Nor did I thank my cool uncle."

Dohrmann says that, while the problem of the initial resentment cannot be remedied, the community can join together as part of the solution.

"It's important to back up our words, our (gratitude), with action ... to live by it," he said. "We will never forget."

Supporting the event on Monday were many volunteers and retired military members, along with representatives from several veterans organizations and auxiliaries. About 2,500 community members attended, and 584 motorcycles were parked on the grounds -- one of the largest crowds Prokopyk has seen.

"Memorial Day is not just to kick off summer," he said. "It's the right thing to do, this ceremony, so that everyone here can ... honor those resting in these hallowed grounds, in cemeteries here and around the world."

In Seyer's opinion, all members of the military should receive respect, regardless of whether one supports the intent of their missions.

"We need to recognize everyone who served," Seyer said. "I think we're doing a lot better now than when I came back (from Vietnam) ... the attitude toward veterans is so much more friendly. People tell you thanks for serving almost every day. I appreciate that."
Panasonic eyes Rs 2,500 crore revenue from mobile phones this year News oi -GizBot Bureau

Panasonic India expects its revenues from mobile phones to more than double to Rs 2,500 crore by the end of this fiscal as the company expands its product portfolio and distribution chain in the country.

The Japanese company, whose revenues from mobile phones stood at Rs 1,200 crore last year, plans to launch about 25 smartphones this year.

Computex 2016: Asus ZenFone 3 Deluxe, ZenFone 3, ZenFone 3 Ultra Unveiled with Promising Features

"India is an important market and we are seeing strong growth here. This fiscal, we expect to garner Rs 2,500 crore in revenues. We will do this by launching devices across price points, expanding distribution in tier II and III cities and through strong marketing campaigns," Panasonic India Business Head (Mobility Division) Pankaj Rana told PTI.

He added that this year, the company plans to spend about Rs 200 crore on marketing campaigns.

"We will bring about 25 smartphones and 15-20 of these will be before Diwali. This will be across various price points -- Rs 3,500 to Rs 20,000. Next month, we will launch our most affordable smartphone for Rs 3,500," he said.

Panasonic will focus on Rs 10,000-15,000 devices to fuel its growth in the country and will bring out 7-8 products in the said price range. The company, which has assembly facility in Noida, meets about 95 per cent of its sales requirements in India from the plant, Rana said.

He added that Panasonic is gradually scaling up the capacity to about 8 lakh units a month. The company is increasing the assembly lines as well as the packaging lines to support its growth. Rana said Panasonic expects to sell around 3 million units this fiscal, up from 1.2 million last year.

Samsung Galaxy S7: 10 Best Accessories to Buy

"While online comprises about 10 per cent of our sales, we are focussing on growing our retail presence as well. We have 250 exclusive showrooms that showcase our phones, we want to take this number to 350," he added.

Source PTI

Best Mobiles in India

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Morton County is dividing the responsibilities of its county engineer by adding a highway supervisor  a division that will require a high degree of collaboration between the two as they share staff.

In addition, the county road commission will expand with the addition of two citizens and the sheriff, who will join the engineer and two county commissioners.

The Morton County Commission approved adding the new position in April despite directing budget cuts and hiring freezes in other departments. The new position is being advertised at an annual salary range of $65,353 to $100,000, according to Wendy Bent, human resources director for the county, who said there is no deadline to apply and the position will be advertised until filled.

Mike Aubol, Morton County's engineer who helped draft the reorganization, earns $102,793 per year.

"In the next two years, we have $11 million in projects. It puts a strain on the workload," Aubol said.

Commissioner Bruce Strinden said the county had already budgeted for the new slot.

"We did reduce 2016 spending, but we felt the position was important enough," Strinden said. "It separates the engineer and the road director duties. This better coordinates the engineering and the supervising of the road projects. It's because of the increase in workload. The road projects are critical."

County Commission Chairman Cody Schulz agreed that the work load requires a division in duties.

"We do a great amount of engineering in-house in the county. Given the amount of road work, we want to make sure the county engineer could focus more on engineering and planning and zoning and less on personnel management," he said.
Iran rejects Bahrain espionage, interference allegations

Iran Press TV

Mon May 30, 2016 2:45PM

Iran has categorically rejected as "unfounded" espionage and meddling allegations by the Bahraini regime against the Islamic Republic.

An appeals court in Bahrain on Sunday upheld the life sentences as well as the citizenship revocation of five Shia activists over allegations that they had been "spying for Iran" and planning attacks in the country.

A statement by the prosecution said that the court rejected the appeal by the five defendants and stripped them of their citizenship.

In November last year, a Bahraini court handed down life imprisonment sentence to the men after convicting them of "spying for Iran" and seeking to carry out hostile acts against Bahrain.

"Since the outset of popular protests in Bahrain, the country's government has been seeking to divert the public opinion from this country's internal crisis through leveling fabricated and delusive accusations against some countries," a source at Iran's Foreign Ministry said on Monday.

The source added that such claims by the Bahraini regime are aimed at projection and evasion of accountability on the charges of human rights violations.

The adoption of security and prejudiced approaches by the Bahraini government not only will fail to settle the country's problems but will exacerbate the ongoing woes, the source said.

The Bahraini monarchy, which is facing a massive popular uprising, has heavily relied on courts to level accusations of spying for Iran against protesters as part of a crackdown on political dissent. Hundreds of people, including notable opposition leaders, are behind bars for their involvement in popular protests against the ruling Al Khalifah regime.

The Manama regime has accused the Islamic Republic of interfering in its affairs. Iran has strongly rejected the allegation.

The uprising in Bahrain began in February 2011. Since then, anti-regime protesters have held numerous demonstrations on an almost daily basis in the country, calling for the Al Khalifah family to relinquish power.

In March that year, troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were deployed to Bahrain to assist the regime with its crackdown on the peaceful protests. Scores of people have been killed in the crackdown.

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Snowden's Leaks an Act of 'Public Service,' Says Holder

by Catherine Maddux May 30, 2016

Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder says Edward Snowden performed a "public service" when the ex-National Security Agency contractor leaked classified intelligence documents.

Holder, however, was quick to put into context what appeared to be praise of a person the U.S. considers a criminal.

"I thought the president put it best when he said, 'Just because we have the ability to do something, doesn't mean we should,'" Holder said during an appearance on the "Axe Files," a podcast hosted by David Axelrod, produced by CNN and the University of Chicago Institute of Politics.

The Obama administration was constantly weighing the value of surveillance against the issue of privacy, Holder explained.

Still, the former top American law enforcement official added "We can certainly argue about the way in which Snowden did what he did, but I think that he actually performed a public service by raising the debate that we engaged in and by the changes that we made."

By leaking a flood of classified information to select news outlets in 2013, Snowden revealed the extent to which the Obama administration was collecting personal data  far and above what took place under The Patriot Act following the 9/11 attacks.

The revelations not only shocked the American public, but also international allies (think Angela Merkel, whose personal cellphone was revealed to have been bugged).

The crisis prompted President Barack Obama to convene a panel that criticized the National Security Agency's domestic data collection  that is the bulk of metadata on Americans, which can show the most intimate details of an individual's life.

For some, Snowden is a traitor who gave away all kinds of secrets to our enemies, thus putting the public in danger.

For others, he is a brave American activist, who put his life on the line to reveal the violations of the U.S. constitution.

During the podcast, Holder reflected on the nuance of the Snowden case by saying that, "... doing what he did  and the way he did it  was inappropriate and illegal."

In the eyes of the U.S. government, Snowden jeopardized America's security interests by leaking classified information while working as a contractor for the National Security Agency in 2013.

"He harmed American interests," Holder said.

Holder is currently trending in the top 10 on Twitter. Snowden lives in exile in Russia, but occasionally makes video appearances.

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Counter-ISIL Strikes Continue in Syria, Iraq

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, May 30, 2016  U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Syria and 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

Bomber, attack, and fighter aircraft conducted nine strikes in Syria:

-- Near Raqqah, two strikes struck an ISIL vehicle bomb factory and an ISIL weapons storage center.

-- Near Manbij, four strikes destroyed 11 ISIL fighting positions, an ISIL ammunitions facility and an ISIL heavy machine gun.

-- Near Mar'a, three strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed two ISIL tactical vehicles and an ISIL vehicle.

Strikes in Iraq

Attack and fighter aircraft conducted 21strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of the Iraqi government:

-- Near Baghdadi, two strikes destroyed an ISIL vehicle bomb and an ISIL weapons cache.

-- Near Fallujah, a strike struck a large ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ISIL fighting positions, two ISIL vehicles, two ISIL mortar systems, an ISIL vehicle bomb, an ISIL weapons cache, an ISIL tunnel entrance, and an ISIL heavy machine gun.

-- Near Habbaniyah, two strikes struck a large ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL fighting position, 12 ISIL rocket rails, and an ISIL bunker.

-- Near Hit, a strike struck a large ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ISIL fighting positions, two ISIL heavy machine guns, and an ISIL boat.

-- Near Kisik, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and an ISIL headquarters and destroyed an ISIL fighting position.

-- Near Mosul, 12 strikes struck eight separate ISIL tactical units; damaged an ISIL assembly area; suppressed three ISIL tactical units and an ISIL headquarters; and destroyed 15 ISIL assembly areas, an ISIL supply cache, five ISIL weapons caches, four ISIL vehicles, and two ISIL command and control nodes.

-- Near Qayyarah, a strike destroyed five ISIL rocket rails with rockets.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is a strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target. 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, United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.

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NATO Secretary General discusses Warsaw Summit with Polish President

NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

30 May. 2016

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Polish President Andrzej Duda met today (30 May 2016) in Warsaw to discuss preparations for the Warsaw Summit. Speaking at a joint press point with the Polish President, Mr. Stoltenberg said that the Warsaw Summit, which will take place in five weeks from now, "comes at a crucial time, when we face the most serious security challenges in a generation".

The NATO Secretary General praised Poland for playing a big role in shaping the response to current security challenges. He commended Poland for hosting Multinational Corps Northeast and one of NATO's new small headquarters. Mr. Stoltenberg also thanked Poland for breaking ground on a new site for NATO's missile defence system, to protect against missile attacks from outside the Euro-Atlantic area. Poland is a major contributor to NATO's exercises, Baltic air-policing, as well as Alliance-led missions in Afghanistan and Kosovo.

"Poland is also leading by example on defence spending", Mr. Stoltenberg said. "You devote 2% of your GDP to defence. And you are making significant investments in new capabilities. I welcome that very much. All of this shows Poland's leadership and commitment to NATO."

The NATO Secretary General said that the Warsaw Summit in July will be a "landmark Summit". The Alliance will take decisions to strengthen its deterrence and defence and step up efforts to project stability beyond its borders. "We have agreed to enhance our forward presence in the eastern part of our Alliance. This will be a multinational presence. It will be a rotational presence. We have clear proposals on the table from our military planners. We are discussing the exact numbers and locations on this enhanced forward presence of NATO troops; and we will make decisions by the Warsaw Summit. So let me be clear: there will be more NATO troops in Poland after the Warsaw Summit, to send a clear signal that an attack on Poland will be considered an attack on the whole Alliance," Mr. Stoltenberg said.

"We will also expand our efforts to project stability beyond our borders; by supporting partners like Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova in the east and Iraq, Jordan and Tunisia in the south. We are helping them build stronger defence institutions and train capable forces to secure their own countries", NATO Secretary General added.

Mr. Stoltenberg also said that the Summit will cement Alliance's cooperation with key partners, especially the European Union and stressed the need for closer cooperation with the EU in response to hybrid, cyber and maritime security challenges.

On Tuesday (31 May 2016) the NATO Secretary General will deliver a speech at the Warsaw University "The Warsaw Summit: Strengthening NATO in Turbulent Times". He will also meet with the Polish Minister of National Defence, Antoni Macierewicz, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Witold Waszczykowski, and with other senior officials.

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NATO Deputy Secretary General: Euro-Atlantic integration is the key to stability in the Balkans

NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

30 May. 2016

Addressing the Spring Session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Tirana, Albania (30 May 2016), NATO Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow said that "Euro-Atlantic integration is the key to stability here in the Balkans". The Deputy Secretary General also congratulated Albania on the 7th anniversary of its membership of NATO and said that "NATO's door is opening once again with the impending membership of Montenegro". Earlier this month NATO foreign ministers signed the Accession Protocol for Montenegro. "Once the parliaments of all 28 Allies have ratified the Protocol, Albania will have a fellow NATO member on its northern border. This will enhance Albania's security while fortifying the stability of the western Balkans and the Adriatic region more broadly", Ambassador Vershbow said.

In his speech Ambassador Vershbow also discussed key issues on NATO's agenda for the Warsaw Summit in July. "The summit will take place at a critical time for our alliance - a time when our security and our values are facing significant challenges from the south and the east", he noted.

The Deputy Secretary General said that NATO leaders will take important decisions at the Warsaw Summit on strengthening Alliance's defence and deterrence, and projecting stability beyond its borders. "I expect leaders at Warsaw to agree on an enhanced forward presence in the East of the Alliance, including multinational, battalion-sized units provided by European and North American Allies. This will make it clear to anyone who would do us harm, from the east or south, that an attack against any Ally will be swiftly met by forces from across the Alliance", he said.

With regard to projecting stability beyond NATO's borders, the Deputy Secretary General said: "At the Warsaw Summit, we will intensify our efforts to project stability by boosting the defence capabilities and increasing the resilience of our partners".

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Former Chad dictator Habre sentenced to life in jail

Iran Press TV

Mon May 30, 2016 1:37PM

Former Chadian dictator Hissene Habre has been sentenced to life by a special court in Senegal.

The Extraordinary African Chambers (CAE), a special tribunal set up by the African Union under a deal with Senegal, convicted Habre on Monday of involvement in war crimes, crimes against humanity and a litany of other charges, including rape.

"Hissene Habre, this court finds you guilty of crimes against humanity, rape, forced slavery, and kidnapping," as well as war crimes, Gberdao Gustave Kam, president of the special court said, adding, "The court condemns you to life in prison."

Habre had been accused of kidnap, rape and torture of 40,000 people during his rule as president of Chad from 1982 to 1990. Rights campaigners have been seeking his prosecution, although he has always denied the crimes were committed upon his direct order.

Members of Habre's defense team unsuccessfully sought to convince the court that he had not been aware of the abuses committed by his notorious secret police, the Documentation and Security Directorate (DDS).

"What we have seen today is not justice. It is a crime against Africa," said Mahamat Togoi, part of a Habre supporters group.

However, lawyers representing the victims hailed the court ruling as a warning to other despots in Africa.

"This verdict sends a powerful message that the days when tyrants could brutalize their people, pillage their treasury and escape abroad to a life of luxury are coming to an end," Reed Brody, a lawyer for Human Rights Watch who has spent the last 15 years working with victims to bring Habre to justice, said in a statement.

Victims said the verdict was a solace to many families left without answers 25 years after Habre left office.

"A verdict proportionate with the crimes committed by Habre will allow many families to properly mourn and offer some comfort from the suffering we former prisoners endured," he said.

Habre fled to Senegal after his 1990 ouster by Chad's current President Idriss Deby. The skilled desert warrior, who was known for his combat fatigues during the leadership, has lived freely in an upmarket suburb of the Senegalese capital, Dakar, with his wife and children for more than 20 years.

The prosecution in Senegal was the first time a country in Africa has prosecuted a former leader of another nation for rights abuses.

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12 Afghan police officers killed in Taliban attacks

Iran Press TV

Mon May 30, 2016 12:18PM

Afghan police have announced that a dozen of their officers have been killed in a series of attacks by Taliban militants south of the country.

Hismatullah Daulatzai, the head of police for the greater Helmand zone, said Monday that the attacks the previous night targeted police checkpoints in Gereshk district, killing 12 officers and injuring seven more.

Daulatzai said the Taliban may have abducted seven other policemen as they are still missing.

Local sources said clashes erupted after dozens of Taliban militants attacked police outposts in the area. They put the death toll at 11 and said there were no reports of casualties among the militants.

The attacks in the southern, opium poppy-producing region of Helmand come days after Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour was reportedly killed in a US drone strike in western Pakistan. Mansour was believed to be the key figure in Taliban's large network of opium trade in Helmand. The militant group has vowed to avenge Mansour's death.

Similar attacks have been carried out over the past few days in different parts of Helmand, including in Gereshk, Nahr-e-Saraj and along the Helmand highway.

Estimates show that around 200,000 people have been killed in less than three decades of Taliban militancy in Afghanistan. The government in Kabul has undertaken a series of initiatives for peace with the group, although fighting continues unabated across the country.

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South Ossetia Postpones Referendum On Accession To Russian Federation

May 30, 2016

by Liz Fuller

Leonid Tibilov, de facto president of Georgia's breakaway Republic of South Ossetia, has been forced to abandon his plans to hold a referendum in August on amending the region's constitution to empower its leader to request South Ossetia's incorporation into the Russian Federation. On May 26, Tibilov and South Ossetia parliament speaker Anatoly Bibilov issued a joint statement announcing that the referendum will take place only after the presidential election due in early 2017.

The two men, who are widely regarded as the only candidates with any chance of winning that ballot, have long held diverging views on the optimum relationship between Russia and South Ossetia, and the time frame for achieving it. Moscow formally recognized South Ossetia as an independent sovereign state in August 2008, shortly after Russia and Georgia's five-day war over it and another breakaway Georgian republic, Abkhazia.

In January 2014, Bibilov publicly advocated holding concurrently with the parliamentary elections due in June of that year a referendum on the unification within the Russian Federation of South Ossetia and Russia's Republic of North Ossetia-Alania. And in early 2015, he criticized the planned bilateral Treaty on Union Relations and Integration between Russia and South Ossetia as falling far short of the desired level of integration. That treaty obliged Moscow, among other things, to work for broader international recognition of South Ossetia, which only a handful of countries besides Russia have recognized as an independent state.

Both before and after his election as de facto president in April 2012, Tibilov stressed the need to preserve South Ossetia's nominally independent status. At the same time, he described South Ossetia's incorporation into the Russian Federation as a separate federation subject (rather than merged with North Ossetia) as the long-term dream of the region's population, although he never suggested a time frame for it.

In October, however, just months after the ratification of the bilateral Treaty on Union Relations and Integration, Tibilov announced plans for a referendum on the region's incorporation into the Russian Federation. Moscow pointedly declined to endorse that initiative. Then in April, he floated the concept of forming a "union state" with Russia and simultaneously called for the holding of a referendum by August on amending South Ossetia's constitution to empower its leader to formally request its incorporation into the Russian Federation as a separate federation subject.

Bibilov immediately objected to that proposal, arguing that if a referendum took place, the sole question put to voters should be whether or not South Ossetia should become part of Russia.

Tibilov and Bibilov met on May 19 to discuss the planned referendum, after which Tibilov announced they would issue a joint proposal "within days." Then on May 23, Tibilov scheduled a meeting on May 26 of the presidential Political Council, which comprises representatives of both the executive and legislative branches.

That session lasted over four hours and at one point degenerated into a shouting match between Tibilov and Bibilov, who demanded permission to walk out on the grounds that "there have been too many insults directed at lawmakers." Tibilov refused to allow him to leave. Council members finally voted overwhelmingly (with just three votes against and one abstention) to "recommend" postponing the referendum until after next year's presidential ballot, and Tibilov acceded to that proposal. It is not clear whether the council discussed the wording of the referendum question as well.

The rationale for the postponement cited in the joint statement released later by Tibilov and Bibilov was "the need to preserve political stability" in the run-up to the 2017 presidential vote. But Bibilov himself told the Russian daily Kommersant that the current political situation could in no way be described as tense.

It is not known what other arguments Tibilov's opponents adduced, although Bibilov was quoted as protesting that there was not enough time to organize a referendum by August. Bibilov also predicted that if the referendum were held now, the vote in favor of joining Russia would be lower than the 99 percent registered in 1992. RFE/RL's Echo Of The Caucasus quoted the chair of breakaway South Ossetia's election commission, Bella Pliyeva, as raising the possibility that the vote in favor could be as low as 51 percent, or even that a majority might prefer independence. That would constitute a slap in the face for Russia, which subsidizes South Ossetia's budget to the tune of 90 percent.

The postponement of the referendum, and the continued lack of clarity over the wording of the question it will pose, constitute a setback for Tibilov insofar as a referendum on whether and on what terms South Ossetia should become part of the Russian Federation will now inevitably be the central issue in the election campaign. Bibilov's aggressive campaign for such a referendum certainly contributed to the victory in the 2014 parliamentary elections of his One Ossetia party, which controls 20 of the 34 parliament mandates.

A large question mark remains over Moscow's agenda. Russian President Vladimir Putin was quoted in April, just after Tibilov floated the idea of holding a referendum by August, as noting, first, that the precise formulation of the referendum question was still unclear, and second, that the Russian leadership would be guided by the will of the people of South Ossetia.

That latter remark implies that Putin anticipates that the referendum question will be the "Bibilov variant," meaning that voters will be asked whether or not they want South Ossetia to become part of Russia, rather than whether or not the de facto South Ossetian president should be empowered to petition Moscow for the region's incorporation into the Russian Federation. From Putin's point of view, a nationwide vote in favor of accession to the Russian Federation would give a marginally more substantial veneer of legitimacy to that annexation than a request by one man whose election the international community regards as devoid of legitimacy.

On the other hand, as Aleksei Makarkin, deputy director of the Moscow-based Center for Political Technologies, pointed out to the news portal Caucasian Knot, Tibilov's strategy of empowering the South Ossetian president to raise the question of accession to Russia at his discretion has the advantage for Moscow that it does not require an immediate response, and therefore would not necessarily precipitate a further deterioration in relations with the West. Tibilov himself told the Political Council that Russia was not currently even considering the possibility of incorporating South Ossetia precisely because it would create new problems in international relations.

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/georgia-russia-south- ossetia-accession-referendum-delay/27766068.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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Saber Knight Exercises Start in Estonian City of Tapa - Defense Forces

Sputnik News

21:24 30.05.2016(updated 21:36 30.05.2016)

The international military Saber Knight exercises have started in the Estonian city of Tapa, the country's Defense Forces said in a statement on Monday.

TALLINN (Sputnik)  A total of 600 military personnel from the United Kingdom, the United States, Latvia, Lithuania and Denmark are said to be involved in the exercises.

"The aim of the Saber Knight exercises is to practice the skills of planning and conducting military operations in the Baltic states. During the drills, the participants will have to repel an attack of a simulated state called Botnia," the statement said.

Saber Knight exercises focus mainly on staff procedures. The tactical parts will be conducted at the central training range in Tapa, at the Amari airbase, and at the training grounds in Lithuania and Latvia.

Saber Knight is a preparatory phase for Saber Strike, a US-Europe set of cooperative military training drills conducted annually since 2010. Participating nations this year include Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

 Sputnik

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NATO Attempts to Use Confrontational Approach in Black Sea - Moscow

Sputnik News

19:38 30.05.2016(updated 19:43 30.05.2016)

NATO attempts to use confrontational approaches in the Black Sea and Moscow will prepare measures to neutralize any potential threats, Russia's envoy to the alliance said Monday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  NATO has been increasing its military presence in Eastern Europe and the Black Sea since the outbreak of the conflict in southeastern Ukraine in April 2014.

Russia has repeatedly expressed concerns over NATO's military buildup along its western borders, warning that the alliance's expansion undermines regional and global security.

"NATO is today attempting to move its confrontational schemes to the Black Sea. Recently, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the Black Sea cannot be transformed into a 'Russian lake.' But NATO is well aware that the Black Sea will never become a 'NATO lake' and we will take all necessary steps to neutralize possible threats and attempts to pressure Russia militarily from the south," Alexander Grushko told Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper.

Earlier, NATO Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow that NATO should consider a "more persistent" military presence in the Black Sea region, focusing on maritime capabilities.

He added that the alliance had already implemented a number of assurance measures in the region, such as intensification of NATO maritime patrols in the Black Sea, surveillance flights of AWACS (airborne warning and control systems) in the region and presence of the US Marine Corps Black Sea Rotational Force in Romania.

 Sputnik

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China Launches Tours to 'Mysterious' Islands in South China Sea

Sputnik News

13:43 30.05.2016(updated 16:27 30.05.2016)

The large Dream of the South China Sea cruise ship will start to travel from the city of Sanya in China's Hainan Island to the Paracel Islands (Xinsha). It will be the second and the largest cruise liner to sail to the Islands, website China Daily reported.

There has been one ship, the Star of Beibu Gulf, from Hainan Strait Shipping, running from Sanya to the islands.

"We are also considering a cruise around the South China Sea at the appropriate time," China Daily reported Cai Chaohui, the owner of the new liner, the Dream of the South China Sea, as saying.

The liner started operating in March and has the capacity of carrying 300 guests on four to five trips every month. "It will allow more Chinese nationals to view the scenery in the South China Sea," Cai said.

He expressed confidence about the prospects of this tourism, saying that, "many people are interested in having a look at the mysterious islands," website China Daily reported.

The journey will take 13 hours to arrive at the Paracel Islands and the company also plans to start more cruises connecting Sanya with Southeast Asian nations throughout the South China Sea.

Meanwhile, the construction of the Sanya Phoenix Island International Cruise Terminal is in its second phase. The project has an investment of 18 billion yuan ($2.75 billion) and will enable the port to receive 2 million tourists annually, making it one of the busiest cruise ports in Asia.

 Sputnik

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Taliban Kills Around 57 Afghan Forces

by Ayaz Gul May 30, 2016

Taliban militants in Afghanistan have intensified battlefield attacks, killing around 57 Afghan security forces and wounding 37 others in the restive southern Helmand province.

Afghan officials say fierce fighting has raged since Saturday, when the Taliban launched a string of coordinated assaults on three districts, including Nad Ali, Gereshk and Marjah. Most of the casualties occurred in Nad Ali and Gereskh, said Major General Asmatullah Dawlatzai.

The insurgents also overran four security outposts on the main road linking Marjah to the provincial capital of Lashkardah in the overnight fighting.

Insurgent gains

Senior Afghan commanders say fighting is currently raging on the outskirts of Lashkargah. But they have vowed to push back the Taliban, saying national security forces have inflicted heavy casualties on the insurgents. However, no figures were released.

Helmand is the largest province of Afghanistan and is poppy-producing region.

The Taliban has stepped up attacks since it appointed Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada as its new chief. His predecessor, Mullah Mansoor, was killed in a U.S. drone attack in neighboring Pakistan on May 21.

Critics expect fighting and bloodshed to escalate in Afghanistan this summer under Hibatullah, widely known as a conservative Islamist cleric, because he would want to consolidate power through battlefield gains to try to dismiss the impression the killing of his predecessor has weakened the Taliban.

In a significant development on Monday, a key council of pro-Taliban clerics pledged allegiance to Hibatullah.

Hibatullah gets endorsement

In a statement sent to VOA, the council's chief Maulvi Ahmad Rabbani said the decision was taken in the wake of Hibatullah's unanimous election for the top position. The council had refused to endorse Mansoor who faced opposition to his leadership even from within the Taliban.

Meanwhile, the Afghan Interior Ministry said Monday that an army-led operation to open the main highway linking southern Uruzgan and Kandahar provinces has killed at least 22 Taliban insurgents.

The Kandahar police spokesman, Zai Durban, however, told the local Pajhwok news agency that the insurgent deaths occurred in an overnight U.S. drone strike.

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Former Chad Dictator Habre Sentenced to Life in Prison

by Anne Look May 30, 2016

A court in Senegal has found former Chadian president Hissene Habre guilty of crimes against humanity, war crimes and torture and sentenced him to life in prison. Rights groups are hailing the landmark verdict as a strong warning to leaders who brutalize their citizens.

Guilty. That was the verdict announced by head judge Gberdao Gustave Kam of Burkina Faso.

The court found Habre to have been directly involved in ordering detentions, executions, systematic torture and other abuses against people identified as opponents of his regime.

Judge Kam said Habre presided over eight years of "uninterrupted" repression. Rights groups say Habre was responsible for over 40,000 killings.

'Impunity and terror'

During sentencing, Judge Kam said Habre "created and maintained a system where impunity and terror were law. He was at the head of a regime of generalized suspicion, so paranoid that he himself turned against his own agents."

Victims of Habre's regime and relatives of victims in the courtroom Monday wept and cheered after Habre was sentenced to life in prison.

"It is by the grace of God that we won," said one woman. Her husband, a civil servant under Habre, was detained and tortured. He died before the trial.

She said, "I cannot find the words. I am very moved. A lion, a man who took himself for God on the Earth, has been brought down."

Habre said nothing. He joined his hands in a fist and waved at supporters as he was escorted from the court.

Habre had refused to stand or acknowledge the judge throughout the trial, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses, his head and face wrapped in a white scarf.

He had to be forcibly brought into the court last June when the trial began. He and his lawyers refused to participate, and the trial was briefly suspended while court-appointed attorneys prepared his defense.

Habre fled to Senegal in 1990 after he was ousted in a coup.

Long, sordid history

The case against him has been over 20 years in the making. The Extraordinary African Chambers is an African Union tribunal created in 2013 within Senegal's justice system and funded by the international community.

More than 4,500 victims were registered as civil parties in the case. Chadian lawyer Jacqueline Moudeina, lead counsel for the victims, said, "today marks the end of the victims' relentless search for justice."

She said "it is a great joy for the victims and for Africa because we are sending a strong message to tyrants all over the world."

Among those who testified were 69 survivors of detention and abuses, including a woman whom Habre was found guilty of raping four times.

Habre's lawyers have 15 days to appeal the verdict.

Alpha Jallow contributed reporting from Dakar.

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Coalition Strikes Target ISIL Terrorists in Syria, Iraq

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, May 31, 2016  U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Iraq and Syria yesterday, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Officials reported details of the latest strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

Attack, fighter, ground attack and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 11 strikes in Syria:

-- Near Raqqah, a strike destroyed an ISIL oil pumpjack.

-- Near Manbij, nine strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and an ISIL improvised explosive device factory and destroyed 26 ISIL fighting positions, an ISIL mortar position, two ISIL vehicles, an ISIL supply cache and three ISIL tunnels.

-- Near Washiyah, a strike struck an ISIL weapons production factory.

Strikes in Iraq

Bomber, fighter, ground attack and remotely piloted aircraft and rocket artillery conducted 13 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq's government:

-- Near Baghdadi, a strike struck an ISIL bed-down location and an ISIL weapons cache.

-- Near Albu Hayat, a strike struck an ISIL weapons cache.

-- Near Fallujah, three strikes struck three separate ISIL tactical units; destroyed five ISIL fighting positions, five ISIL vehicles, an ISIL heavy machine gun, three ISIL heavy machine gun positions, two ISIL recoilless rifles and an ISIL mortar system; and denied ISIL access to terrain.

-- Near Hit, a strike struck a large ISIL tactical unit; destroyed two ISIL fighting positions, an ISIL anti-air artillery piece, an ISIL vehicle and two ISIL weapons caches; and suppressed an ISIL machine gun position.

-- Near Mosul, three strikes struck three separate ISIL tactical units; destroyed two ISIL fighting positions, eight ISIL assembly areas, five ISIL vehicles, an ISIL command-and-control node, an ISIL vehicle bomb facility, three ISIL vehicle bombs and an ISIL heavy machine gun; suppressed an ISIL mortar position and an ISIL light machine gun position; and denied ISIL access to terrain.

-- Near Sultan Abdallah, a strike struck a large ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL vehicle, two ISIL assembly areas, an ISIL mortar system, three ISIL supply caches and an ISIL IED factory.

-- Near Tal Afar, three strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target.

Part of Operation Inherent Resolve

The strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to eliminate the ISIL terrorist group and the threat they pose to Iraq, Syria, and the wider international community. The destruction of ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq further limits the terrorist group's ability to project terror and conduct operations, officials said.

Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Iraq include the United States, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Syria include the United States, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, France, Jordan, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.

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Australia SM-2 Block IIIB STANDARD Missiles

Media/Public Contact: pm-cpa@state.gov

Transmittal No: 16-17

WASHINGTON, May 31, 2016 -- The State Department has made a determination approving a possible Foreign Military Sale to Australia for SM-2 Block IIIB STANDARD missiles, equipment, and support. The estimated cost is $301 million. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency delivered the required certification notifying Congress of this possible sale on May 27, 2016.

The Government of Australia requested a possible sale of:

Major Defense Equipment (MDE):

Up to eighty (80) STANDARD Missile, SM-2 Block IIIB Vertical Launching Tactical All-Up Rounds, RIM-66M-09

Up to fifteen (15) MK 97 SM-2 Block IIIB Guidance Sections (GSs)

This request also includes the following Non-MDE: MK 13 MOD 0 Vertical Launching System Canisters, operator manuals and technical documentation, U.S. Government and contractor engineering, technical and logistics support services.

The total estimated value of MDE is $216 million. The total overall estimated value is $301 million.

Australia is one of the major political and economic powers in Southeast Asia, a key democratic partner of the United States in ensuring regional peace and stability, a close coalition ally in major/lesser regional contingency operations, and a close cooperative and international exchange agreement partner. It is vital to U.S. national interests that Australia develops and maintains a strong and ready self-defense capability. This sale is consistent with U.S. regional objectives.

The SM-2 Block IIIB missiles proposed in this purchase will be used for anti-air warfare test firings during Combat Systems Ship Qualification Trials for the Royal Australian Navy's three new Air Warfare Destroyers (AWD) currently under construction. The SM-2 Block IIIB missiles, combined with the Aegis combat systems in the AWDs, will provide significantly enhanced area defense capabilities over critical South East Asian air-and-sea-lines of communication. Australia has already integrated the SM-2 Block IIIA into its Perry-class FFGs and recently upgraded its Intermediate-Level Maintenance Depot at Defense Establishment Orchard Hills with new guided missile test equipment capable of maintaining the SM-2 All-Up Round. Australia will have no difficulty absorbing these new missiles.

The proposed sale of this equipment and support will not alter the basic military balance in the region.

The principal contractors will be Raytheon Missile Systems Company, Tucson, Arizona; Raytheon Company, Camden, Arkansas; and BAE of Minneapolis and Aberdeen, South Dakota. There are no known offset agreements proposed in connection with this potential sale.

Implementation of this sale will not require the assignment of any U.S. or contractor representatives to Australia.

There will be no adverse impact on U.S. defense readiness as a result of this proposed sale.

This notice of a potential sale is required by law and does not mean the sale has been concluded.

All questions regarding this proposed Foreign Military Sale should be directed to the State Department's Bureau of Political Military Affairs, Office of Congressional and Public Affairs, pm-cpa@state.gov.

-30-



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Commentary: Asia-Pacific Rebalance, an unjust strategy that finds little support

People's Daily Online

By Su Xiaohui (People's Daily Online) 10:07, May 31, 2016

During his recent visit to Vietnam and Japan, U.S. President Barack Obama has been advocating the Asia-Pacific Rebalance strategy, drawing wide attention from the international community. Some western media even applaud this kind of strategy, claiming that the U.S. is capable of building stronger alliance ties with countries that are China's concerns.

The Asia-Pacific Rebalance strategy is a top priority in the foreign policy of the Obama administration. From the content, the strategy includes three aspects, which were thoroughly highlighted in Obama's trip this time.

First of all, is the increased military presence of the U.S. in the Asia-Pacific region and its strengthened engagement in regional security affairs. During Obama's visit to Vietnam, both sides issued a joint statement, pledging to step up cooperation in security, defense, and other areas.

The U.S. government has fully lifted its embargo on sales of lethal arms to Vietnam, and promised to help improve Vietnam's maritime ability. The "Return of U.S. Forces to Cam Ranh Bay" is among the key topics of discussion between the U.S. and Vietnam.

Secondly, is the seeking of influence and control over economic order in the Asia-Pacific region. The Tran-Pacific Partnership (TPP), with Vietnam and Japan on board, has become a crucial stepping point for the U.S. Obama administration which has raved about the benefits that the TPP will bring to economic growth and the boosting of employment in Vietnam and has vowed to offer technical support as well as capability-building assistance to the Southeast Asian country, in a bid to persuade the Vietnamese side to approve and fully carry out this so-called "high-standard" agreement as soon as possible.

Thirdly, is the promotion in the regards of communication and coordination abilities between the U.S. and Asia-Pacific countries. The U.S. is committed to consolidate alliance ties with Japan and other traditional allies. Per the request of Japan, Obama visited Hiroshima, making him the first active U.S. president to do so. Such a move is clearly intended to bring closer together the U.S.-Japan alliance.

In the meantime, the U.S. is also developing partnerships with regional countries in order to build a relationship network. The U.S. and Vietnam have made it clear that the two countries will strengthen political and diplomatic bonds and intends to launch "2+2" meetings between both Foreign Ministers and Defense Ministers, so as to further enrich the "comprehensive partnership".

Obama's trip to Japan and Vietnam this time is obviously centered on the Asia-Pacific strategy with multiple agendas. Through clearly intending to restrain China, the U.S. may not get what it wishes for.

In terms of military deployment, more frequent military presence of U.S. troops, especially its reckless behavior in the South China Sea, has triggered tension and concerns among regional countries.

As for economic cooperation, several media have pointed out that the implementation of the TPP could let more Vietnam-made commodities, such as shoes, flood into the U.S. market, which will bring about concerns from domestic interest groups and cause dissatisfaction within the government.

On the other hand, TPP membership will not convince Vietnam to relinquish other options. In fact, Vietnam has joined the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) as well as the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

Obama's visit to Hiroshima has also drawn controversy from U.S. allies, for example, South Korea. Due to its diverse foreign policies, Vietnam will not easily choose sides between major countries, let alone be tied to the U.S. "chariot".

The Asia-Pacific Rebalance strategy has been through a "rough ride". The reason for this is that the strategy is ultimately based on the exclusiveness of America's own interests, instead of inclusiveness. It goes against the trend of in-depth development of economic globalization and the epoch tide of peace and development. Unjust and with little support, how can such a strategy be realized?

(The author is the Deputy Director of the Department for International and Strategic Studies at the China Institute of International Studies.)

This article was edited and translated from ""Source: People's Daily

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Taliban militants kill 16 civilians in Afghanistan's Kunduz

Iran Press TV

Tue May 31, 2016 8:59AM

At least 16 passengers of a number of buses have been killed by militants affiliated with the Taliban in northern Afghanistan, local officials say.

The militants seized several buses in Aliabad District in the volatile province of Kunduz on Tuesday, pulled out their passengers and "shot dead 16 passengers and they are still holding more than 30 others," said Seyyed Mahmood Danish, spokesman for the governor of the province.

The buses were transporting about 200 passengers when they were stopped by the militants.

Police commander Shir Aziz Kamawal, however, said the militants killed 17 passengers. "They (Taliban) have released some passengers but are holding many others. None of the passengers were wearing military uniform, but some may have been former police."

According to local residents of the militancy-prone district, the Taliban set up an informal court in a local mosque, interrogated the passengers and scrutinized their ID documents for any possible links to the government in Kabul.

The Taliban have so far not commented on the deadly incident, which is the latest assault since it appointed Haibatullah Akhundzada as its new leader last week.

The killing occurred a day after Hismatullah Daulatzai, police chief for the greater Helmand zone, announced that nearly 60 Afghan police had been killed by Taliban militants over the past two days.

The killing occurred near Lashkar Gah, the capital of the southern province of Helmand.

He said as many as 24 police lost their lives on Monday and another 33 were killed on Sunday. Daulatzai added that the Taliban may have abducted seven other policemen as they are still missing.

Local sources said clashes erupted after dozens of Taliban militants attacked police outposts in the area.

The attacks in the southern, opium poppy-producing region of Helmand come days after Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour was reportedly killed in a US drone strike in western Pakistan.

Mansour was believed to be the key figure in Taliban's large network of opium trade in Helmand. The militant group has vowed to avenge Mansour's death.

According to a Tuesday report by Amnesty International, at least 1.2 million Afghans have been internally displaced due to violence in the past three years.

Estimates show that about 200,000 people have been killed in less than three decades of Taliban militancy in Afghanistan.

The government in Kabul has undertaken a series of initiatives for peace with the group, although fighting continues unabated across the country.

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Forced Cotton-Picking Earns Uzbekistan Shameful Spot In 'Slavery Index'

May 31, 2016

by RFE/RL

A new report on global slavery ranks Uzbekistan and Pakistan among the five worst offenders in terms of the number of people forced into modern slavery.

With its forced labor in the cotton fields, Uzbekistan also was estimated to be the world's second-worst country when ranked by the prevalence of slavery in proportion to the population.

The findings are contained in the 2016 Global Slavery Index, which was released on May 31 by an Australia-based nongovernmental organization called the Walk Free Foundation.

Around the world, the report says, there are now almost 46 million people who are enslaved.

Andrew Forrest, the chairman and co-founder of the Walk Free Foundation, told RFE/RL on May 31 that the 2016 estimate is more than 10 million higher than the findings from his organization's 2014 research.

Forrest said he thinks slavery is increasing in the world and that "it will probably get worse before it gets better and then is finally eliminated."

The definition of "modern slavery" includes people who are trapped in forced labor, human trafficking, debt bondage, sex trafficking, forced marriage, and other "slavelike exploitation."

The study's leading author, University of Hull professor Kevin Bales, says slavery can be defined as "a relationship in which one person is controlled by another through violence, the threat of violence, or psychological coercion, has lost free will and free movement, is exploited economically, and is paid nothing beyond subsistence."

He says "modern-day slavery takes various forms and achieves certain ends" but its outcome is "always exploitative in nature: appropriation of labor for productive activities resulting in economic gain."

The report says Uzbekistan ranks near the top of the shame list for modern slavery because the government in Tashkent uses one of the world's largest state-sponsored systems of forced labor to harvest cotton.

Uzbekistan's government denies that forced labor is an official policy. It claims its citizens volunteer out of civic responsibility and take part in a form of traditional voluntary labor called "khashar."

But Forrest notes that employees of local administrations, teachers, factory workers, state firms, and doctors are forced to leave their jobs every autumn for weeks at a time to pick cotton with little or no additional compensation.

Those who refuse to take part are threatened with punishment and dismissal from their state-sector jobs, he said.

"That, unfortunately, defines itself as modern slavery," Forrest said.

"The central leadership of the government [in Uzbekistan] is able to distribute those profits [from the cotton industry] as they see fit," he said. "The people who made the profits, which is the people who plant the cotton and harvest the cotton, have no say in the distribution of that income. They are just there to do the government's bidding, to make that revenue. And they see none of it."

The Global Slavery Index says that authoritarian President Islam Karimov's government, under pressure from international monitoring organizations, has "begun to take steps to improve the situation."

But it says reports from the 2015 cotton harvest in the Central Asian country estimate that more than 1 million people were forced to work.

Only North Korea has a higher proportion of its population forced into modern slavery than Uzbekistan, the report says.

It says North Korea tops the list because of its extensive system of prison labor camps, and because many North Korean women are subjected to forced marriage and commercial sexual exploitation in China.

In absolute terms, the report said countries with the most people forced into slavery are India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Uzbekistan.

Forrest explained that Pakistan is high on the list because of the widespread practice of forced marriage and child marriage.

"Across Pakistan, wherever you have child marriages or you have marriages by force, it defines itself as modern slavery because those young girls have no say whatsoever in what is happening to them," he said.

"They are absolutely under the control of someone else," Forrest said. "They have no choice and they can never leave under their own free will. That, of course, meets the definition of slavery."

The report listed North Korea and Iran as the two countries that were taking the least action to reduce modern slavery.

Governments that were praised for their efforts to combat modern slavery and forced labor include Croatia, Georgia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Moldova, Albania, and Serbia.

The 2016 Global Slavery Index includes a measure on state-sanctioned forced labor as a way of rating how governments respond to slavery.

It says state-sanctioned forced labor is "where the government forces the population, or segments of it, to work under the threat of penalty, and for which the person or population has not offered himself voluntarily."

It said the countries that have systematically forced their population into labor include Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Belarus, China, Eritrea, North Korea, Russia, and Vietnam.

With reporting by Reuters

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/ global-slavery-index-uzbekistan-pakistan- worst-offenders/27770928.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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Saudi Arabia Agrees on Ceasefire on Border With Yemen

Sputnik News

19:07 31.05.2016

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Jubeir said Tuesday that Riyadh had reached an arrangement on a ceasefire at the Saudi-Yemeni border in order to provide access for humanitarian aid coming to the war torn country.

CAIRO (Sputnik)  According to Jubeir, Saudi Arabia supports holding of the intra-Yemeni talks.

"We tried to work with all sides of the Yemeni conflict, including Houthi rebels, on the way of reaching the agreement," Jubeir said at a press conference on the sidelines of a consultative meeting of leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council in Jeddah.

Yemen has been engulfed in a military conflict between the government headed by Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and Houthi rebels, the country's main opposition force. The Houthis are backed by army units loyal to former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Since March 2015, the Saudi-led coalition of mostly Persian Gulf countries have been carrying out airstrikes against the Houthis at Hadi's request.

The latest round of the UN-mediated peace talks between the Yemeni government and the Houthis started in Kuwait on April 21.

 Sputnik

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Polish Defense Minister Says NATO to Deploy 4 Battalions in Baltic States

Sputnik News

16:30 31.05.2016

NATO will deploy four battalions in Poland and Baltic states.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The decision to deploy four NATO battalions in Poland and Baltic states has been already made, only technical details are left to discuss, Polish Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz said Tuesday.

"Our conversation confirmed that four combat battalions on a rotating basis, which would represent an important element of NATO's expanded permanent presence in Eastern Europe, would be deployed in Poland, as well as in Baltic states," Macierewicz said during a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, as quoted by the local TVN24 broadcaster.

According to Macierewicz, one of the technical details currently in discussion is a specific location of the battalions deployment. He also noted, that one out of four battalions would be deployed in Poland.

"It is extremely important for us and it will strengthen our feeling of security and effective security of Poland and Eastern flank," the defense minister said when commenting on the possible placement of arms stock in Poland.

NATO has been reinforcing its military presence in Europe, particularly in Eastern European states, since the outbreak of the Ukrainian crisis, citing Russia's alleged interference in that conflict as justification for the move. Moscow has repeatedly denied the accusations, calling NATO's military buildup near Russia's borders provocative.

The Warsaw summit is scheduled for on July 8-9, with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg describing it as coming at a crucial time for the Alliance.

 Sputnik

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Operation Rolling Thunder

Operation Rolling Thunder was a frequently interrupted bombing campaign that began on 24 February 1965 and lasted until the end of October 1968, the longest aerial-bombardment campaign in the history of American air power. During this period US Air Force and Navy aircraft engaged in a bombing campaign designed to force Ho Chi Minh to abandon his ambition to take over South Vietnam. The operation began primarily as a diplomatic signal to impress Hanoi with America's determination, essentially a warning that the violence would escalate until Ho Chi Minh "blinked," and secondly it was intended to bolster the sagging morale of the South Vietnamese. The Johnson administration also imposed strict limits on the targets that could be attacked, for China and the Soviet Union were seen as defenders of communism who might intervene if the North Vietnamese faced defeat. Consequently, the administration tried to punish the North without provoking the two nations believed to be its protectors.

By the beginning of 1965, the situation in South Vietnam was rapidly reaching crisis proportions. The three basic choices available to the United States were not particularly palatable. The United States could continue with a role essentially limited to aid and advisory action and risk humiliation if the situation continued to deteriorate and South Vietnamese resistance collapsed. Alternatively, the United States could recognize that the situation was irretrievable and cease to support the South Vietnamese. Such a cut-and-run strategy, many believed, might cast other American collective defense commitments in doubt and undermine important alliance arrangements. Finally, the United States could become more deeply involved and bring its military might to bear against the enemy to salvage the situation.

Air power seemed to offer a middle ground between continuation of the aid of advisory effort on the one hand and full-scale military involvement on the other hand. Using air power against North Vietnam would bring the war home to the North Vietnamese, would strike closer to the heart of the problem, and yet would avoid the bane of all Western military experts  involvement in a land war on the Asian continent. Air power seemed to offer the possibility of war at arms length and on the cheap, although most policymakers realized that the use of air power would be cheap only by comparison with a manpower intensive land war.

A campaign of graduated pressure intended to signal resolve to the North Vietnamese, Rolling Thunder failed to persuade the North Vietnamese and it failed to destroy their ability to prosecute their war in South Vietnam. In the view of the Air Force leadership, the campaign had no clear-cut objective nor did its authors have any real estimate of the cost of lives and aircraft. General LeMay and others argued that military targets, rather than the enemy's resolve, should be attacked and that the blows should be rapid and sharp, with the impact felt immediately on the battlefield as well as by the political leadership in Hanoi.

The failure of the American military to develop an air power doctrine consistent with the constraints that cannot be avoided in wars fought for limited objectives precipitated the crippling clash between doctrine and perceptions. As a result, air power was unwillingly tasked to perform a mission for which it was ill-equipped and doctrinally unprepared.

When Rolling Thunder failed to weaken the enemy's will after the first several weeks, the purpose of the campaign began to change. By the end of 1965, the Johnson administration still used air power as an attempt to change North Vietnamese policy, but bombing tended to be directed against the flow of men and supplies from the North, thus damaging the enemy militarily while warning him of the danger of greater destruction if he maintained the present aggressive course.

To persuade the North Vietnamese to negotiate, President Johnson restricted the bombing of North Vietnam to the southern part of the country on 31 March 1968, in effect, bringing Operation Rolling Thunder to an end. Preliminary discussions began in Paris in May but bogged down over trivial issues. In November, Johnson made another concession, ending the bombing throughout the north, and serious negotiations began in January 1969.

Some have argued that had air power been turned loose in 1965 as it was in 1972 during the Linebacker campaigns, the conflict could have been brought quickly to an end. This line of reasoning may is a red herring, as there were significant differences in the situation. By 1972, the conflict had the familiar trappings of a conventional war involving large numbers of North Vietamese regular army units brandishing the implements of mechanized warfare, all demanding considerable logistical support from North Vietnam, and all presenting attractive targets for air power. In 1965, by contrast, direct North Vietnamese involvement in the South was much more limited and the indigenous Viet Cong comprised the bulk of the hostile forces (and would continue to do so until the Tet Offensive in 1968).

The United States had structured, trained, and equipped its air power to prosecute major, unlimited wars against industrialized enemies and to do so by relying on nuclear weapons. The doctrine began to shift in the early 1960s, but not to a significant degree and not to the degree at which the fundamental assumptions were seriously challenged. As a result, the military had few air power alternatives to offer in Vietnam except those based on their existing doctrine, and those alternatives were politically unacceptable.

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1979-82 Civil War and Multilateral Mediation

From 1979 to 1982, Chad experienced unprecedented change and spiraling violence. Southerners finally lost control of what remained of the Chadian government, while civil conflicts became significantly more internationalized. In early 1979, the fragile Malloum-Habre alliance collapsed after months of aggressive actions by Habre, including demands that more northerners be appointed to high government offices and that Arabic be used in place of French in broadcasting. Appealing for support among the large communities of Muslims and Arabs in N'Djamena, Habre unleashed his FAN on February 12. With the French garrison remaining uninvolved, FAN sent Malloum into retirement (under French protection) and drove the remnants of FAT toward the south. On February 22, Goukouni and FAP entered the capital.

By this time, most of the city's Sara population had fled to the south, where attacks against Muslims and nonsoutherners erupted, particularly in Sarh, Moundou, and throughout Moyen-Chari Prefecture. By mid-March more than 10,000 were said to have died as a result of violence throughout the south.

In early 1979, Chad became an open arena of unrestrained factional politics. Opportunistic power seekers sought to gather followers (often using sectarian appeals) and to win support from Chad's African neighbors. Between March 10 and August 21, four separate conferences took place in the Nigerian cities of Kano and Lagos, during which Chad's neighbors attempted to establish a political framework acceptable to the warring factions. Chad's neighbors, however, also used the meetings to pursue interests of their own, resulting in numerous externally generated complications and a growing number of factions brought into the process.

For example, at one point, Qadhafi became so angry with Habre that the Libyan sent arms to Colonel Wadel Abdelkader Kamougue's anti-Habre faction in the south, even though Kamougue was also anti-Libyan. At the second conference in Kano, both Habre and Goukouni were placed under what amounted to house arrest so Nigeria could promote the chances of a Kanembu leader, Mahmat Shawa Lol. In fact, Nigerian support made Lol the Chadian titular head of state for a few weeks, even though his Third Liberation Army was only a phantom force, and his domestic political support was insignificant. Within Chad the warring parties used the conferences and their associated truces to recover from one round of fighting and prepare for the next.

After Muammar al Qadhaafi seized power in Libya in 1969, he exploited Chad's instability by stationing troops in northern Chad and by channeling support to Chadian insurgents. Although Tombalbaye expelled Libyan diplomats in 1971, blaming them for inciting a coup attempt and inspiring unrest, in general he sought a balance between concessions and resistance to Qadhaafi's regional designs, hoping to persuade Qadhaafi to reduce his support for Chadian insurgents. Tombalbaye voiced a willingness to cede the Aozou Strip and did not object to Libyan troops' being stationed there after 1973. Chad erupted in renewed protests against Tombalbaye's unpopular and weakened regime. Despite the help of French combat forces, the Tombalbaye government was never able to quell the insurgency. Tombalbaye's rule became more irrational and brutal, leading the military to carry out a coup in 1975, assassinating Tombalbaye and installing General Felix Malloum, another southerner, as head of state.

General Felix Malloum, a former government critic imprisoned by Tombalbaye, proclaimed himself head of the Supreme Military Council (Conseil Superieur Militaire--CSM), which seized power in 1975. As a southerner with strong kinship ties to the north, Malloum believed that he could reconcile Chad's divided regions and establish representative institutions. He set a high priority on freeing Chad from French economic and political control, but in this effort he was unsuccessful. He sent French combat forces home, but he retained several hundred French advisers and renegotiated a series of military accords to ensure emergency aid.

Malloum was unable to convert dissatisfaction with Tombalbaye's regime into acceptance of his own. His opponents exploited popular displeasure with the remaining French presence by recruiting new dissidents. In response to this threat, Malloum seized control of all branches of government and, in the increasingly repressive manner that characterized his presidency, banned almost all political activity. His opposition coalesced around FROLINAT, which established alternative administrations in outlying areas to compete with N'Djamena. In 1978, in the face of mounting violence, Malloum reluctantly called for the return of French forces.

In the meantime, Goukouni had been joined by the young and dynamic Habre, who had been named commander in chief of the Command Council of the Armed Forces of the North (Conseil de Commandement des Forces Armees du Nord--CCFAN). Habre, however, was ousted in 1976, when he objected to Goukouni's willingness to cooperate with Libya to further the struggle against the central government. The two leaders also differed over Habre's kidnapping of French citizens and holding them for ransom as a means of raising funds.

Most of FROLINAT's First Liberation Army was reunified under Goukouni's overall command as FAP during 1977. (Habre reclaimed the name FAN for his followers.) Equipped with freshly supplied Libyan weapons, FAP carried on a broad offensive against government troops until a cease-fire was laboriously negotiated in March 1978. The truce was soon broken by Goukouni, whose troops soundly defeated the government army and threatened N'Djamena. French forces were again airlifted into the country and were decisive in routing FAP in a series of sharp engagements during the spring of 1978. During the course of the fighting, much of the new equipment FAP had received from Libya was abandoned.

In 1978, Malloum's government was broadened to include more northerners. Internal dissent within the government led the northern prime minister, Hissein Habre, to send his fighters against the national army in the capital in 1979, reigniting the civil war. In spite of the French rescue effort, the Malloum government was weakened both politically and militarily by the defeats administered to FAT, the national army. To shore up his position, Malloum offered Habre the post of prime minister in a government of national unity under the former's presidency. The new government, however, failed to function because it was paralyzed by factional differences. Clashes between FAT and Habre's FAN were frequent in the capital.

In early 1979, the fragile Malloum-Habre alliance collapsed after months of aggressive actions by Habre, including demands that more northerners be appointed to high government offices and that Arabic be used in place of French in broadcasting. Appealing for support among the large communities of Muslims and Arabs in N'Djamena, Habre unleashed his FAN on February 12. General fighting broke out between the two forces in February 1979.

With the French garrison remaining uninvolved, FAN sent Malloum into retirement (under French protection) and drove the remnants of FAT toward the south. On February 22, Goukouni and FAP entered the capital. The poorly led, less aggressive FAT troops were soon driven out of N'Djamena by FAN. By this time, most of the city's Sara population had fled to the south, where attacks against Muslims and nonsoutherners erupted, particularly in Sarh, Moundou, and throughout Moyen-Chari Prefecture. When the fighting ended, the looting and summary executions that followed precipitated a mass exodus of southern civilians. Mutual reprisals followed. Massacres of Muslims in southern towns were countered by executions of southern officials in eastern areas controlled by FAN. By mid-March more than 10,000 were said to have died as a result of violence throughout the south.

In early 1979, Chad became an open arena of unrestrained factional politics. Opportunistic power seekers sought to gather followers (often using sectarian appeals) and to win support from Chad's African neighbors. Between March 10 and August 21, four separate conferences took place in the Nigerian cities of Kano and Lagos, during which Chad's neighbors attempted to establish a political framework acceptable to the warring factions. Chad's neighbors, however, also used the meetings to pursue interests of their own, resulting in numerous externally generated complications and a growing number of factions brought into the process.

For example, at one point, Qadhaafi became so angry with Habre that the Libyan sent arms to Colonel Wadel Abdelkader Kamougue's anti-Habre faction in the south, even though Kamougue was also anti-Libyan. At the second conference in Kano, both Habre and Goukouni were placed under what amounted to house arrest so Nigeria could promote the chances of a Kanembu leader, Mahmat Shawa Lol. In fact, Nigerian support made Lol the Chadian titular head of state for a few weeks, even though his Third Liberation Army was only a phantom force, and his domestic political support was insignificant. Within Chad the warring parties used the conferences and their associated truces to recover from one round of fighting and prepare for the next.

The final conference culminated in the Lagos Accord of August 21, 1979, which representatives of eleven Chadian factions signed and the foreign ministers of nine other African states witnessed. The Lagos Accord established the procedures for setting up the Transitional Government of National Unity (Gouvernement d'Union Nationale de Transition-GUNT), which was sworn into office in November. By mutual agreement, Goukouni was named president, Kamougue was appointed vice-president, and Habre was named minister of national defense, veterans, and war victims. The distribution of cabinet positions was balanced between south (eleven portfolios), north, center, and east (thirteen), and among proteges of neighboring states. A peacekeeping mission of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), to be drawn from troops from Congo, Guinea, and Benin, was to replace the French. This force never materialized in any effective sense, but the OAU was committed to GUNT under the presidency of Goukouni.

GUNT, however, failed. Its major participants deeply mistrusted each other, and they never achieved a sense of coherence. As a result, the various factional militias remained armed. By January 1980, a unit of Habre's army was attacking the forces of one of the constituent groups of GUNT in Ouaddai Prefecture. Shortly thereafter, N'Djamena plunged into another cycle of violence, and by the end of March 1980 Habre was openly defying the government, having taken control of a section of the capital. The 600 Congolese troops of the OAU peacekeeping force remained out of the fray, as did the French, while units of five separate Chadian armies prowled the streets of N'Djamena. The battles continued throughout the summer, punctuated by more OAU mediation effots and five formal cease-fires.

French troops present in the N'Djamena area did not intervene; French neutrality in effect favored Habre, although the French attitude toward him was divided. Goukouni's FAP, meanwhile, had descended from the north to fight alongside FAN. By March 1979, the struggle had resulted in a de facto partition of Chad: the Muslim armies of FROLINAT controlled the capital, together with the northern and central prefectures, and Malloum controlled the five southernmost prefectures.

By January 1980, a unit of Habre's army was attacking the forces of one of the constituent groups of GUNT in Ouaddai Prefecture. Shortly thereafter, N'Djamena plunged into another cycle of violence, and by the end of March 1980 Habre was openly defying the government, having taken control of a section of the capital. The 600 Congolese troops of the OAU peacekeeping force remained out of the fray, as did the French, while units of five separate Chadian armies prowled the streets of N'Djamena. The battles continued throughout the summer, punctuated by more OAU mediation efforts and five formal cease-fires.

It became evident that the profound rivalry between Goukouni and Habre was at the core of the conflict. By mid-1980 the south cut off from communication and trade with N'Djamena and defended by a regrouped, southern army - had become a state within a state. Colonel Kamougue, the strongman of the south, remained a prudent distance away from the capital and waited to negotiate with whichever northerner emerged as the winner. In 1980 the beleaguered Goukouni turned to Libya, much as he had done four years earlier. With the French forces having departed in mid-May 1980, Goukouni signed a military cooperation treaty with Libya in June (without prior approval of the all but defunct GUNT). In October he requested direct military assistance from Qadhafi, and by December Libyan forces had firm control of the capital and most other urban centers outside the south. Habre fled to Sudan, vowing to resume the struggle.

Nigeria and the Organization of African Unity (OAU) attempted to bring the Chadian factions together. In August 1979, the Lagos accord established a transitional government pending national elections planned within 18 months. Goukouni Oueddei, a northerner, was named President; Colonel Kamougue, a southerner, Vice President; and Habre, Minister of Defense. Early in 1980, however, the accord broke down and fighting broke out again between Goukouni's and Habre's partisans.

Although Libyan intervention enabled Goukouni to win militarily, the association with Qadhafi created diplomatic problems for GUNT. In January 1981, when Goukouni and Qadhafi issued a joint communique stating that Chad and Libya had agreed to "work for the realization of complete unity between the two countries," an international uproar ensued. Although both leaders later denied any intention to merge their states politically, the diplomatic damage had been done.

With assistance from Libya (which asserted a claim to the northern Chadian territory called the Aouzou Strip), Goukouni regained control of the capital and other urban centers and Habre retreated into Sudan. Goukounis policy of political union of Chad and Libya, however, was unpopular and generated support for Habre, whose forces took N'Djamena in June 1981. He proclaimed himself President. French troops and an OAU peacekeeping force of 3,500 Nigerian, Senegalese, and Zairian troops remained neutral during the conflict.

As a consequence of the Libya-Chad rift, Goukouni asked the Libyan forces in late October 1981 to leave, and by mid-November they had complied. Their departure, however, allowed Habre's FAN-reconstituted in eastern Chad with Egyptian, Sudanese, and, reportedly, significant United States assistance-to win key positions along the highway from Ab&ch to N'Djamena. Habre was restrained only by the arrival and deployment in December 1981 of some 4,800 IAF troops from Nigeria, Senegal, and Zaire.

Throughout 1981 most of the members of the OAU, along with France and the United States, encouraged Libyan troops to withdraw from Chad. One week after the "unity communique," the OAU's committee on Chad met in Togo to assess the situation. In a surprisingly blunt resolution, the twelve states on the committee denounced the union goal as a violation of the 1979 Lagos Accord, called for Libya to withdraw its troops, and promised to provide a peacekeeping unit, the Inter-African Force (IAF). Goukouni was skeptical of OAU promises, but in September he received a French pledge of support for his government and the IAF.

But as Goukouni's relations with the OAU and France improved, his ties with Libya deteriorated. One reason for this deterioration was that the economic assistance that Libya had promised never materialized. Another, and perhaps more significant, factor was that Qadhafi was strongly suspected of helping Goukouni's rival within GUNT, Acyl Ahmat, leader of the Democratic Revolutionary Council (Conseil Dmocratique R~volutionnaire-CDR). Both Habre and Goukouni feared Acyl because he and many of the members of the CDR were Arabs of the Awlad Sulayman tribe. About 150 years earlier, this group had migrated from Libya to Chad and thus represented the historical and cultural basis of Libyan claims in Chad.

In February 1982, a special OAU meeting in Nairobi resulted in a plan that called for a cease-fire, negotiations among all parties, elections, and the departure of the IAF; all terms were to be carried out within six months. Habre accepted the plan, but Goukouni rejected it, asserting that Habre had lost any claim to legitimacy when he broke with GUNT.

When Habre renewed his military advance toward N'Djamena, the IAF remained essentially neutral, just as the French had done when FROLINAT marched on Malloum three years earlier. FAN secured control of the capital on June 7. Goukouni and other members of GUNT fled to Cameroon and eventually reappeared in Libya. For the remainder of the year, Habre consolidated his power in much of war-weary Chad and worked to secure international recognition for his government.

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10 Convicted for Somali Passenger Plane Bomb

by Mohamed Olad Hassan May 30, 2016

A military tribunal in Somalia has convicted 10 people in connection with a bomb attack on a Daallo Airlines passenger plane in February.

Abdiwali Mahmud Maow and Arais Hashi Abdi, both members of militant group al-Shabab, received sentences of life in prison.

Abdi, who was tried in absentia, was found guilty of masterminding the attack. Security officials said they discovered documents in his house, including a chart showing the attack plan.

Hassan Ali Nur Shute, Somalia's military court chief, said evidence of the suspects' involvement was clear. "All evidences brought at the court, including the videos of airport surveillance cameras, have shown that these people had a hand in planning the blast," he said.

Surveillance video

Maow was one of two airport workers seen in a surveillance video released by Mogadishu airport security officials days after the attack.

In the video, he takes the laptop and hands it to another employee, who then hands it over to Abdullahi Abdisalam Borleh, the man who was killed when the laptop explosion blew a hole in the plane's fuselage.

The blast went off 20 minutes into the plane's flight from Mogadishu to Djibouti, killed the bomber and left a hole in the plane's fuselage. None of the plane's 74 other passengers and crew members were killed.

Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack.

Monday's verdicts were the first in connection with the blast. The court sentenced eight other people, including a woman, to between six months and four years in prison. Five other defendants were acquitted.

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China bears 10.2 percent of UN peacekeeping assessed contributions

People's Daily Online

(People's Daily Online) 13:44, May 30, 2016

From 2016 to 2018, China will bear 10.2 percent of the UN Peacekeeping assessed contributions, only second to the U.S., said UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Herve Ladsous while being interviewed by a Chinese media outlet on May 29, 2016.

Under the invitation of the Chinese government, Ladsous will visit China soon. On this trip, he hopes to discuss with China about the construction of an 8,000 member standby peacekeeping troop which China promised last year at the UN Peacekeeping Summit.

Ladsous said that among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, China tops in number of peacekeepers sent to other countries, meanwhile, China is the second-largest donor country for peacekeeping operations. Chinese peacekeepers are well-trained, well-equipped and are fully prepared for peacekeeping tasks. According to UN statistics, currently, about 3,000 Chinese peacekeepers operate in South Sudan, Lebanon, Mali and other countries and regions.

As China has a comprehensive peacekeeping personnel training center, the UN is interested in cooperating with China in this regard, said Ladsous.

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China Prepares to Deter the US in the Pacific - Reports

Sputnik News

05:31 30.05.2016(updated 10:11 30.05.2016)

Amid mounting tensions between the US and China over disputed areas in the South China Sea, Beijing is set to send nuclear submarines to patrol the Pacific Ocean this year for the first time in history.

The news first emerged after a report by The Guardian that Beijing is planning its first nuclear deterrence patrol. The newspaper quoted unnamed Chinese military officials, who said such patrols are the only tool to secure China from US' weapons systems.

While Chinese authorities haven't confirmed or declined the news, a piece in the state-run People's Daily added evidence to the allegations.

The report suggests that nuclear deterrence patrolling is essential to showcase China's nuclear capabilities to the Americans. In the past, as reported, Washington politicians demonstrated ignorance toward Beijing's nuclear potential. For instance, in the 2012 US presidential campaign, candidate Herman Cain stated that he was unaware China was a nuclear power.

Meanwhile, Beijing sticks to an "effective nuclear deterrence" strategy that relies on a smaller number of warheads compared to that of other nuclear powers.

"As Sino-US tensions build, it is necessary for China to strengthen its capability for nuclear retaliation. It will help with balance in the Asia-Pacific region and enhance the US willingness to seek peace with China."

According to the People's Daily, China has been successful in developing nuclear technologies with launches of missiles from both under water and from land. The reports adds that the "survival capability of China's nuclear force" has been improved.

"History shows that balanced power better contributes to peace. China should increase its number of nuclear weapons, and enhance their survival power and capability to hit the targets. It is the most important foundation of China's national security," reported the Daily.

Earlier, the Pentagon projected that "China will probably conduct its first nuclear deterrence patrol sometime in 2016." However, the exact start date is yet to be announced.

 Sputnik

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Enlarged Plenary Meeting of C.C., UAWK Held

Korean Central News Agency of DPRK via Korea News Service (KNS)

Pyongyang, May 30 (KCNA) -- The 74th enlarged plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Union of Agricultural Workers of Korea (UAWK) was held here on Monday.

Present there were members and alternate members of the C.C., the UAWK and its officials in Pyongyang and local areas.

The meeting discussed the issue of implementing the tasks set forth by supreme leader Kim Jong Un in his report at the 7th Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea.

The speakers said that Kim Jong Un in his report clearly indicated the high goal and strategies for building at an early date the best power and people's paradise on this land where the people's ideal for independence and dream are fully realized by thoroughly carrying out the last instructions of President Kim Il Sung and leader Kim Jong Il.

They called upon the officials and members of the union to raise the hot wind of study to firmly arm themselves with the main spirit of the Seventh Congress of the WPK and conduct the political and ideological work through the accurately targeted method to arouse all the members of the union to implementing the decision of the party congress.

They underscored the need to hold fast to the theses on the socialist rural question set forth by the President and the party's policy of agricultural revolution as the great programme of solving the food issue and the agriculture issue and carry them out to the last, and attain without fail the goal of grain production set forth at the five-year strategy for the state economic development.

Organizations of the union and agricultural workers should turn out as one in the 200-day campaign of loyalty to raise the hot wind of the movement for creating the Mallima speed, glorify the new history of golden field ushered in by Kim Jong Il down through generations, conduct the dynamic campaign of overtaking, learning from other's example and exchanging the experience and thus bring about great achievements in the agricultural front this year. -0-

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Japan army on alert over possible North Korea missile attack

Iran Press TV

Mon May 30, 2016 9:13PM

Japan's military has been placed on alert over the possible threat of the North Korean ballistic missile fire.

According to Japan's state broadcaster NHK, the country's naval destroyers and Patriot anti-ballistic missile batteries received orders on Monday to be prepared for targeting and destroying inbound projectiles.

Patriot missile batteries stationed on the grounds of the country's defense ministry were also set to firing position.

The orders have been confirmed by a Japanese official who talked to Reuters on condition of anonymity, although the country's defense ministry has declined to comment on the issue.

As part of its missile deterrent, Tokyo has stationed advanced Aegis vessels in the Sea of Japan which are capable of simultaneously tracking multiple inbound targets, and is also armed with SM-3 missiles systems which can annihilate warheads in space before they enter the atmosphere.

As a final line of defense, Patriot PAC-3 missile systems have also been deployed around the capital and other strategic locations.

South is ready too

South Korea's Yonhap News Agency also reported that Seoul has detected evidence of launch preparations by the North, adding that Pyongyang would probably use intermediate-range Musudan missiles which it test launched three times in April.

"We've detected a sign and are tracking that. We are fully prepared," said a South Korean official.

In relation to a probable launch, US Navy Commander Gary Ross, a Pentagon spokesman, said he could not discuss intelligence assessments.

"We are closely monitoring the situation on the Korean Peninsula in coordination with our regional allies. We urge North Korea to refrain from provocative actions that aggravate tensions and instead focus on fulfilling its international obligations and commitments," he added.

Tensions have been flaring in the region since January, when North Korea said it had successfully detonated a hydrogen bomb, its fourth nuclear test, and vowed to build up its nuclear program as deterrence against potential aggression from the US and its regional allies.

A month later, Pyongyang launched a long-range rocket which it said placed an earth observation satellite into orbit. However, Washington and Seoul denounced it as a cover for an intercontinental ballistic missile test.

Pyongyang was recently placed under the toughest UN sanctions in two decades. The country, however, has pledged not to relinquish its nuclear power unless the US ends its hostile policy and dissolves the US-led military command in South Korea.

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Reports: North Korea Is Preparing for Missile Launch

by VOA News May 30, 2016

Japanese and South Korean officials say the have detected signs that North Korea is possibly planning for a ballistic missile launch.

Japanese broadcaster NHK said the government has put its military on alert for a possible launch. Japan has also ordered its naval destroyers to shoot down any projectiles that threaten its territory.

A South Korean defense official said Seoul is maintaining 'combat readiness.'

Officials did not specify the missile type but reports say it is likely to be a intermediate-range Musudan missile, similar to one the North unsuccessfully tried to test launch three times in April.

The missile reportedly has a range of 3,000-4,000 kilometers which, if fired successfully, could reach targets in Japan, China and Guam.

The Musudan is based on an old Soviet submarine launch ballistic missile design that the North converted to be fired from a mobile land-based launcher.

The United Nations Security Council has banned North Korea from developing nuclear and ballistic missile technology. China, the North's key ally, has urged the government of President Kim Jong Un to return to international talks and dismantle its nuclear program for economic assistance and security guarantees.

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North Korea Missile Launch Tuesday Likely Failed

by VOA News May 30, 2016

North Korea's missile launch Tuesday appears to have failed, according to South Korean officials.

The attempted missile launch... is believed to have failed, a spokesman for the South's defense ministry said. We are analyzing and closely monitoring the situation and maintaining a watertight defense posture.

The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff released a statement saying the missile was launched around 5:20 a.m. Monday in the East, near the port city of Wonsan.

Earlier in the day, Japanese broadcaster NHK said the government has put its military on alert for a possible launch. Japan had also ordered its naval destroyers to shoot down any projectiles that threaten its territory. A South Korean defense official said Seoul had been maintaining combat readiness.

Officials did not specify the missile type but reports say it is likely to be a intermediate-range Musudan missile, similar to one the North unsuccessfully tried to test launch three times in April.

The missile reportedly has a range of 3,000-4,000 kilometers which, if fired successfully, could reach targets in Japan, China and Guam.

The Musudan is based on an old Soviet submarine launch ballistic missile design that the North converted to be fired from a mobile land-based launcher.

The United Nations Security Council has banned North Korea from developing nuclear and ballistic missile technology. China, the North's key ally, has urged the government of President Kim Jong Un to return to international talks and dismantle its nuclear program for economic assistance and security guarantees.

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New North Korea missile launch ended in failure: South

Iran Press TV

Tue May 31, 2016 4:39AM

South Korea says the North has attempted to launch another powerful missile from its east coast, but the launch apparently failed.

Seoul's Defense Ministry said the launch took place at around 5:20 a.m. local time (2020 GMT Monday) near the eastern port city of Wonsan, but it was likely to have exploded at about the time it lifted off from a mobile launcher.

"We believe that it was a failure," said Jeon Ha-gyu, spokesman for the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff, adding, "As to why and how it failed, we are in the process of analyzing that and can't give more details at the moment."

The ministry did not speculate on the type of missile, but South Korea's Yonhap News Agency cited military sources as saying it was a powerful, medium-range Musudan ballistic missile.

The South officials said it was the fourth time Pyongyang tried to test-fire the intermediate-range missile. They claimed the North had attempted three more test launches of the missile in April, all of which failed.

The missile has the range to reach any part of Japan and the US territory of Guam, in the northwestern Pacific Ocean.

On Monday, Japan put its military on high alert for a possible ballistic missile launch by Pyongyang.

"We have no reports of any damage in Japan," said Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani. "We are gathering and analyzing data. The Defense Ministry is prepared to respond to any situation."

"North Korea shows no sign of abandoning the development of nuclear missiles and so we will continue to work closely with the US and South Korea in response and maintain a close watch on North Korea," Nakatani added.

North Korea has vowed to develop a nuclear arsenal in an effort to protect itself from the US military, which occasionally deploys nuclear-powered warships and aircraft capable of carrying atomic weapons in the region.

The country conducted its fourth nuclear test in January and carried out the launch of a long-range rocket in February, which it said was aimed at placing an earth observation satellite into orbit.

Washington and Seoul described the practice as a cover for an intercontinental ballistic missile test.

Pyongyang, which is under harsh UN sanctions over its nuclear tests and missiles launches, says it will not give up on its nuclear deterrence unless Washington ends its hostile policy toward Pyongyang and dissolves the US-led UN command in South Korea.

Washington holds joint military maneuvers with Seoul, which Pyongyang views as preparations for war and a direct threat against its security.

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DICKINSON  Roberta Jean Bobbi Miller, 71, Dickinson, died May 23, 2016, at her home. Bobbis Celebration of Life service will be held at 11 a.m. MDT Friday, June 3, at Ladbury Funeral Service, Dickinson, with the Rev. Dick Rinearson officiating. Inurnment will take place at the North Dakota Veterans Cemetery, Mandan.

Visitation will be from 9:30 to 11 a.m. MDT Friday at Ladbury Funeral Service.

Bobbi Gilliland was born on July 10, 1944, in Williston, to Dr. Robert and Dorothy (Hagen) Gilliland. She graduated from Dickinson High School in 1962, and from the University of North Dakota in 1967 with a degree in education. She married Ernie Miller in Dickinson on March 18, 1967. They were blessed with one daughter, Michelle.

Bobbi made many lifelong friends while working as a P.E./health teacher at Hagen Junior High for over 30 years. She loved western North Dakota and was very active in the local community. She was a member of the Friends of the Library Board, the Dickinson Public Schools Foundation Board, and St. Joseph Hospital Auxiliary. She was in PEO, a member of Gamma Phi Beta Sorority, the Dickinson Elks Lodge and St. Anthony Club. After her retirement, she served for several years as a volunteer at St. Josephs Hospital and the Dickinson Public Library.

In addition to spending time with friends and family, Bobbi loved to knit and play bridge. She was active in knitting, bridge and book clubs. The past several years, she spent numerous hours knitting beautiful prayer shawls and baby caps, which she donated locally.

Bobbi is survived by her daughter, Michelle Lingle, Bismarck; one grandson, Drew Lingle, Moorhead, Minn.; her mother-in-law, Margaret Miller, Dickinson; two brothers, Jay (Carol) Gilliland, Missoula, Mont., and Tom (Deb) Gilliland, Rapid City, S.D.; a sister-in-law, Martha Decker, Dickinson; a brother-in-law, Tom (Pat) Miller, St. Paul, Minn.; as well as many cousins, nieces and nephews.

She was preceded in death by her husband, Ernie, on May 30, 2011; her parents, Dr. Robert and Dorothy Gilliland; and father-in-law, George P. Miller.

In lieu of flowers, please send donations to Friends of the Library, 139 W. Third St., Dickinson. (www.ladburyfuneralservice.com)
Senior North Korean Diplomat Arrives for Surprise Visit in Beijing

Sputnik News

09:45 31.05.2016(updated 11:40 31.05.2016)

A North Korean delegation, headed by a senior diplomat, has arrived in Beijing for the first high-ranking visit since Pyongyang's January 6 hydrogen bomb test, media reported Tuesday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Ri Su-yong, a Workers' Party of Korea Politburo member, arrived for a surprise visit to China earlier on Tuesday and is expected to meet with Chinese officials, South Korea's The Korea Herald reported, citing diplomatic sources in Beijing.

The move marks the first official contact between the two countries on a senior level since relations soured after North Korea pushed ahead with its nuclear program earlier this year.

Tensions over North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs escalated after Pyongyang said on January 6 that it had successfully carried out a hydrogen bomb test and put a satellite into orbit on February 7, violating UN Security Council resolutions and triggering condemnation from the international community in both cases.

 Sputnik

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USSTRATCOM Detects Attempted North Korean Missile Launch

U.S. Strategic Command Public Affairs

5/31/2016

OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE, Neb. -- U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) systems detected what we assess was a failed North Korean intermediate-range ballistic missile launch at 3:30 p.m. CDT, May 30, 2016, from Wonsan.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) determined the missile launch from North Korea did not pose a threat to North America.

The men and women of USSTRATCOM, NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, and U.S. Pacific Command remain vigilant in the face of North Korean provocations and are fully committed to working closely with our Republic of Korea and Japanese allies to maintain security.

USSTRATCOM's mission is to conduct global operations in synchronization with other combatant commands and appropriate U.S. government agencies to detect, deter and prevent strategic attacks against the U.S., its allies, and partners, and to be prepared to deliver warfighting capability to defend the nation.

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Salehi: Talks for Iran's heavy water supply to Russia not finalized yet

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, May 30, IRNA -- Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Ali-Akbar Salehi said on Monday that agreement on supply of 40 tons heavy water to Russia has not been finalized yet.

Salehi was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a ceremony for signing a cooperation agreement between the AEOI and the Ministry of Petroleum on different scientific and research areas, particularly those related to production of ultra centrifuges.

Russia demanded 40 tons heavy water from Iran, Salehi said.

However, he noted that Iran and Russia are still in talks and the negotiations are not finalized yet.

He said, in the meantime, that Iran and Russia are currently involved in cooperation to produce stable isotopes in Fordo site, central Iran.

Asked about selling Iranian heavy water to the US, Salehi said that the US is required to pay the bill in advance prior to shipment of the heavy water.

'We must make sure about the payment. Otherwise, we will not deliver heavy water to the US.'

Salehi said that after the seizure of two billion dollars of Iranian assets by the US government, he asked his colleagues at the AEOI to refrain from sending the cargo to the US.

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Rosatom eyeing Iran heavy water deal

Iran Press TV

Mon May 30, 2016 4:12PM

Russia announced on Monday that the country's nuclear agency Rosatom is considering the possibility of buying heavy water from Iran.

The announcement was made by Ambassador Vladimir Voronkov, Russia's permanent representative to international organizations in Vienna.

"To date the Americans have bought a significant amount of it [heavy water]. Moreover, Rosatom is thinking and is likely to follow this path," Voronkov has been quoted as saying by Russian media.

A new report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) indicating Iran's compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is a sign of the efficiency of the document agreed last year, Voronkov said.

He noted that the paper proves that Iran is successfully advancing on its implementation of the nuclear deal.

Iran and the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany  a group referred to as the P5+1  signed the JCPOA agreement whereby Tehran agreed to restrict some aspects of its nuclear energy program in return for the removal of economic sanctions against the country.

The JCPOA gives Iran the right to sell, dilute or dispose of the heavy water it has produced under certain conditions.

It also allows Iran to sell its enriched uranium material  called UF6 - and to buy natural uranium or "yellow cake" in return.

The announcement that Rosatom is interested in buying heavy water from Iran follows reports that the Congress has banned the US from further purchases.

In early March, Iran announced that it had sold 32 tons of heavy water to the US in what was seen as a landmark progress in the commercialization of the country's nuclear energy program. Officials in Tehran later said the sale had been carried out through a third party.

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Iran will continue Iraq, Syria advisory missions: Senior official

Mon May 30, 2016 10:42AM

A senior official says Iran will continue its advisory military assistance to the Iraqi and Syrian governments in their fight against terrorism.

The remarks by Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian on Monday came a day after Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir called for an end to Iran's support for Iraq and Syria in their fight against terrorist groups.

"Iran will proudly and firmly carry on with its advisory assistance to the serious fight against terrorism in the region," Amir-Abdollahian said.

Iran, he said, deems the assistance "a critical issue that contributes to the security and stability of all the countries in the region and the world."

Iraqi military forces and popular militia units are currently battling Takfiri terrorists on several fronts. On Monday, Iraqi commanders said their forces have entered Fallujah in a major victory against militants.

Amir-Abdollahian referred to the Fallujah operation and said, "Had it not been for Iran's assistance and the effective measures of the army and popular forces in Iraq and Syria in the fight against terrorism, there would have been no safe spot in the sensitive West Asia region."

"Unfortunately, the state and non-state sponsors of the terrorists and the parties that use terrorism as a tool have both threatened the security of the region and the world, and had to suffer losses," he said.

Amir-Abdollahian said Tehran calls for political solutions to conflicts, a serious fight against terrorism, and all-out regional cooperation.

Writing on his Instagram page, Mohsen Rezaei, another senior Iranian official, also reacted to the comments by the Saudi foreign minister, saying Jubeir lacks the necessary grounding in politics and diplomacy expected of a statesman.

Jubeir "says the Iraqi government does not have the right to seek Iran's help in defending the country; at the same time, he believes occupying Yemen is [Saudi Arabia's] legal right," Rezaei wrote.

Saudi Arabia has been engaged in a bloody war against Yemen since March 2015. More than 9,400 people have been killed and at least 16,000 others injured since the onset of the Saudi war.

Rezaei, who is the secretary of Iran's Expediency Council, also referred to the deployment of Saudi forces to Bahrain to help Manama suppress a popular uprising. "They have entered Bahrain with tanks," he said.

"They wouldn't even take up the task of protecting foreign nationals in the Hajj rituals, and are stonewalling in the visa issuance process," he said.

Jubeir's behavior, he said, is like that of "desert-dwelling people" who have only recently migrated to the city.

"Mr. Jubeir," he said jokingly, "you've got to come to Iran so we give you training in politics and diplomacy."

Iran and Saudi Arabia have severed diplomatic ties. The cutting of the ties came after attacks on vacant Saudi diplomatic perimeters in Iran during otherwise peaceful demonstrations against Saudi Arabia's execution of prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr in January.

Iran condemned the attacks and arrested some 100 people in connection with the violations of the diplomatic perimeters.

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Nuclear Deal in Action: Russia Mulls Buying Heavy Water From Iran

Sputnik News

11:50 30.05.2016(updated 12:15 30.05.2016)

Russia's Rosatom nuclear agency may purchase Iranian heavy water, Moscow's envoy said.

VIENNA (Sputnik)  Russian nuclear agency Rosatom is considering the possibility of buying Iranian heavy water, Russian Envoy to International Organizations Vladimir Voronkov said.

"To date the Americans have bought a significant amount of it [heavy water]. Moreover, Rosatom is thinking and is likely to follow this path," Voronkov told RIA Novosti in an interview.

According to the nuclear deal agreed last year, Iran must store no more than 130 tons of heavy water during the first year after signing the agreement.

A new report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) indicating Iran's compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is a sign of the efficiency of the document agreed last year, Voronkov said.

He said that the upcoming meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors on June 6-10 would discuss the report issued last week. Voronkov noted that the paper proves that Iran is successfully advancing on its implementation of the nuclear deal.

"In other words, we expect a usual conclusion with the same assessments as were presented in the first report that the JCPOA is being implemented normally. That is very good. This is an indication that the document agreed last summer is absolutely efficient," Voronkov told RIA Novosti in an interview.

In July, Iran and six world powers, including the United States and Russia, signed the JCPOA agreement whereby Tehran agreed to dismantle aspects of its nuclear program to ensure it is used for peaceful purposes in exchange for sanctions relief.



 Sputnik

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Tony Blair indicates he won't accept Iraq war inquiry verdict

Iran Press TV

Sun May 29, 2016 11:32PM

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has indicated that he will not accept the verdict of the upcoming Iraq war inquiry report if it accuses him of committing London to invading the Arab country before he told parliament.

Sir John Chilcot, a former British civil servant, is due to publish his long-awaited inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the March 2003 invasion of Iraq and its aftermath into the war on July 6. The Chilcot inquiry report is expected to be highly critical of Blair and other political and military officials.

According to a 2015 White House memo, Blair had agreed to support the war a year before the invasion even started, while publicly he was working to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

The document also disclosed that Blair agreed to act as a spin doctor for former US President George W. Bush and convince a skeptical public that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, which actually did not exist.

On Sunday, Blair told BBC he did not think anyone could say he did not make his position clear ahead of the 2003 Iraq war.

When asked if he would accept the Chilcot inquiry report, Blair said, "It is hard to say that when I haven't seen it."

"But I think when you go back and you look at what was said, I don't think anyone can seriously dispute that I was making it very clear what my position was," he continued.

The former Labour prime minister also said that he would appear on different news channels and defend himself after release of the Iraq war report.

"The thing that will be important when it does happen is that we have then a full debate," Blair said. "And I look forward to participating in that. Make no mistake about that. It is really important we do debate these issues."

The US with strong UK backing invaded Iraq in March 2003 under the pretext that the regime of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons, however, were ever found in Iraq.

More than one million Iraqis were killed as a result of the invasion, and subsequent occupation of the country, according to the California-based investigative organization Project Censored.

The invasion plunged Iraq into chaos, resulting in years of deadly violence and the rise of terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, which was a precursor of Daesh.

Blair has already admitted that he "profoundly" underestimated the complexity of the politics in the Middle East and the possible turmoil that would ensue following the invasion.

According to Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, the Iraq war was illegal and that anyone who had committed a crime should be tried, including Blair, who served as Labour prime minister between 1997 and 2007.

"If [Tony Blair has] committed a war crime, yes. Everyone who's committed a war crime should be [charged]," Corbyn, who voted and campaigned against the war, said earlier this week.

"I think it was an illegal war, I'm confident about that, indeed [former UN secretary general] Kofi Annan confirmed it was an illegal war, and therefore he has to explain that."

"Is he going to be tried for it? I don't know. Could he be tried for it? Possibly," he added.

The Sunday Times recently reported, quoting an unnamed source with knowledge of the Chilcot inquiry report, that Blair "won't be let off the hook" over reports that he promised to Bush he would support the Iraq war in 2002, a year before the invasion.

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Iraq's Kurdish fighters liberate nine villages from Daesh terrorists

Iran Press TV

Mon May 30, 2016 5:40PM

Iraq's Kurdish fighters have managed to liberate several villages from the clutches of the Daesh Takfiri militants in east of Mosul.

The Kurdistan Region Security Council (KRSC) said in a statement that Kurdish Peshmerga forces wrapped up an operation east of Daesh terrorists' main hub of Mosul on Monday after recapturing nine villages.

The statement listed nine villages that had been held by Daesh terrorists since the summer of 2014 and were previously mainly inhabited by northern Iraq's Kakai and Shabak minorities.

The KRSC said the high-scale military operation which was launched by around 5,500 Peshmerga fighters before dawn on Sunday "had achieved its key objectives."

The statement also noted that Kurdish forces recaptured an area of 120 square kilometers during the two-day anti-Daesh offensive. The area lies near the main road between Mosul and Erbil, the autonomous Kurdish region's capital.

The KRSC further said 140 Daesh terrorists were killed and 14 car bombs were destroyed during the course of the operation. At least four Kurdish forces were killed and nearly three dozen sustained injuries during the fierce fighting.

The developments come as Iraqi commanders said on Monday that their forces entered the city of Fallujah in a major victory against Daesh militants. The troops entered the city from three directions in a new phase of an operation to recapture it.

Gruesome violence has plagued the northern and western parts of Iraq ever since Daesh launched an offensive in the Arab state two years ago.

The Iraqi military and volunteer fighters are engaged in joint military operations to win back militant-held regions.

In recent months, Daesh terrorists have been losing ground in both Syria and Iraq, where they have been involved in a campaign of terror.

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Iraqi Army Starts Operation To Storm IS-Held City Of Fallujah

May 30, 2016

The Iraqi military says its forces have begun an operation to storm Fallujah, which is controlled by Islamic State (IS) militants.

The forces recaptured some areas in a southern suburb and took up positions on the eastern and northern fringes, leading to fierce battles.

Correspondents said explosions and gunfire could be heard on May 30 in Fallujah's southern Naimiya district.

Some 1,200 IS fighters and 50,000 civilians are believed to be inside Fallujah, a mainly Sunni city about 70 kilometers west of the capital, Baghdad.

As government forces advanced, a wave of bombings claimed by the IS group in and around Baghdad killed more than 20 people.

News of the assault comes a day after the Iraqi military said special forces had completed a troop buildup around Fallujah.

Iraqi forces, supported by Iranian-backed Shi'ite militia and backed by aerial strikes from the U.S.-led coalition, began the operation to recapture Fallujah on May 22.

An Iraqi military officer said on May 29 that troops had recaptured 80 percent of the territory around the city since the operation began.

WATCH: Iraqi forces have begun a direct assault to retake the western city of Fallujah from Islamic State militants. Reports said heavy fighting could be heard on May 30 in the southern part of the city. (Reuters)

In January 2014, Fallujah became the first Iraqi city to fall under the control of the militants, six months before they declared a caliphate over territory seized in Iraq and Syria.

Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/iraq-fallujah- operation-islamic-state/27765053.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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Iraq's Lawmakers Prepare to Negotiate as Bombs Hit Baghdad

by Sharon Behn May 30, 2016

Iraq's lawmakers are said to be preparing to begin a fragile process of negotiation aimed at cracking the country's month-long political paralysis.

But ahead of their expected gathering on Tuesday, Islamic State militants attacked Baghdad with a double bombing and a third explosion just north of the capital, killing at least 20 people.

Monday's bombings were a reminder of the dangers of a drawn-out political stalemate. Previous bombings led to a wave of street protests and angry calls for the government leadership to step down

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Sunday addressed parliament, calling on lawmakers to set aside their differences until the ongoing fight for Fallujah was over.

Lawmakers have been deeply divided since Abadi tried to implement government reforms, including replacing a number of ministers with technocrats.

Member of Parliament Shatha al-Obosi told VOA that Monday's parliamentary session would be a chance for lawmakers to move toward a political settlement.

"I think they will be smart and address this step by step," Obosi said. "This is the only way to solve the problem, and get opposition lawmakers to return."

Lost trust of people

Iraq's lawmakers have largely lost the trust of the people, who see the parliament and government ministers as corrupt, ineffective and largely removed from the harsh daily realities of Iraq.

"I hope they get rid of parliament, we don't need it. Things would be better without them," said Ma'ath, the manager of an ice cream shop in Zayouna, a middle-class neighborhood in east Baghdad.

"It was put there by the Americans, and we don't need those people here," he said, referring to the post-Saddam Hussein system of electing political parties who then appoint their lawmakers and parcel out the country's ministerial posts among them.

The so-called quota system is at the heart of the current political impasse.

Opposition lawmakers have demanded that the arrangement be abolished, while others have refused to let go of a structure that guarantees them considerable power.

In nearby Karrada district, on the second floor of a dusty building with a broken-down escalator, the owner of a popular tattoo shop said change was the only answer.

"We should change the government," said the owner, who spoke through a translator on condition that his name not be used.

"We don't have electricity, we don't have water, we don't have security. We need this from the government, and they never do anything about this," he said.

"We should have a revolution by the people, like Egypt," he said, then added, "we need a real solution, but only God knows what that is."

'Need to solve the problem'

Political analyst Mustafa Habib agreed that the political system was flawed, but said talk of revolution was dangerous.

"The problem is that those who want revolution, such as the protesters, they don't have any solutions or programs [policies]," Habib told VOA.

"We need to solve the problem, step by step, and I think the change in Iraq will need to be a deal between Iran and the United States," Habib said.

Iran has significant influence in Iraq, wielded through several leading Shi'ite politicians and their well-armed militias, while the U.S. wields both military power and economic might, Habib explained.

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Say you recently bought a new car for the family. It seats five comfortably, meets current safety and gas mileage standards (called CAFE Standards by the Environmental Protection Agency) and you financed it for five years; not an uncommon thing to do in this day and age.

You plan on keeping the car for five or six years and make your monthly payment, on time, each month. Its clean inside and out and you make sure the oil is changed according to the manufacturers specifications. Lastly, you park where it is unlikely to get a door ding in any parking lot.

Yet two years into owning and paying for your new car the EPA decides your vehicle needs to emit less pollution. You are then required to make modifications to attain 46 percent better gas mileage before you are able to renew your vehicle registration. It does not matter that you are still paying for your car or at the time of purchase the car met and even exceeded the current mileage standards. It now has to meet standards far and above previous standards and what is technologically possible, all at your expense. You cry foul, unfair and not possible but are told no matter  your car has to meet the standards or else you will not be permitted to drive it on public roadways again. I would bet my next years income if this happened to any hard-working American citizen, or group of citizens, there would be an outcry. Attorney general, governors and U.S. senators alike would be notified and action would be demanded.

This scenario exists today. The EPA has acted in a capricious and arbitrary manner by passing Rule 111(d), the Clean Power Plan, as a way to make it seem innocuous to the general public. Essentially, Rule 111(d) requires coal-fired power plants in North Dakota to reduce carbon emissions by 46 percent. No matter technology does not currently exist to make our coal-powered generation that efficient. No matter facilities were built to the existing standards. No matter the power-generating companies have continuously upgraded their facilities as new technologies have come on line. And, no matter our power-generating facilities are being depreciated over time. The EPA has spoken, they bypassed Congress, and we must comply or risk limiting or losing our ability to generate power.

Because the EPAs power has been seemingly elevated over that of the U.S. Congress, it is unlikely the rule will be reconsidered or even modified into a more reasonable tenet. This is why it is so very important for North Dakota to lead the way to protect 14,000 jobs, $100 million in annual tax revenue and $3.3 billion in economic impact by continuing to develop near-zero-emission coal technology. Our policymakers must work with the industry to meet that goal.

If not, consider what this means to power consumption: Costs will significantly increase to replace power generated by coal and we may even experience degradations of electric reliability. All the while, we, as consumers of power, continue to pay for power-generating facilities which may be forced to either produce less power or somehow find a way to meet an almost unattainable reduction in emissions.

Now I ask, where is the outrage?
Daesh commanders killed in Iraqi airstrike near Syria border

Iran Press TV

Tue May 31, 2016 6:57AM

Several top commanders of the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group have been killed along with a number of other militants an Iraqi aerial attack in the western province of Anbar, media reports say.

In a statement released late on Monday, the Iraqi Joint Special Operations Command said Iraqi bombers hit their gathering in the town of Qaim.

Among those killed was a high-ranking intelligence director who was a close ally to the so-called leader of the terrorist group, Ibrahim al-Samarrai, aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, it said.

The unnamed intelligence director was reportedly responsible for orchestrating a string of terrorist attacks including a recent bomb attack in the strategic city of Hit.

He was an officer in Iraq's defunct General Directorate of Intelligence under slain dictator Saddam Hussein. He had worked with terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi before pledging allegiance to Baghdadi.

Commander of the militants Tabuk Battalion operating inside both Syria and Iraq also died in the air raid.

Daesh press director in Baghdad and southern Iraqi regions, a fugitive from Camp Bucca prison in southern Iraq, sustained injuries in the attack, and succumbed to his grave wounds later on.

Peshmerga forces kill Daesh terrorists near Mosul

Separately, Kurdish Peshmerga forces have launched an operation against the Daesh terrorists in Kazir region, which lies northeast of the militant-held city of Mosul.

Arif Tayfour, a spokesman for Peshmerga forces, said on Monday that his fellow fighters have killed 140 Daesh members over the past two days and purged more than 130 square kilometers of the area of the terrorists.

Tayfour added that four Peshmerga fighters lost their lives during the cleanup operation.

Daesh abducts 100 Iraqi youths for not growing beard

Moreover, Daesh extremists have abducted 100 young residents of Fallujah, located roughly 69 kilometers (43 miles) west of Baghdad, on trumped-up charges of not growing beard and refusal to join the ranks of the militant outfit in battles against government forces and allied Popular Mobilization Units fighters.

Majid al-Jarisi, a tribal elder from Fallujah, told Arabic-language al-Sumaria satellite television network that the terrorists took away the youths to an unknown location and there is no information about their whereabouts.

In a new report on Tueday, the UN refugee agency said Daesh terrorists have been using civilians in Fallujah as human shields to slow the advance of Iraqi forces.

some 3,700 people have fled Fallujah over the past week since Iraqi forces began their counter-terrorism operations in the Daesh-held city, according to the UN organization.

William Spindler, spokesman for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said the body has received reports of causalities among people in the city center in Fallujah due to heavy shelling."

"We also have several reports of people being used as human shields by ISIL (Islamic State)," the UNHCR official told a news briefing.

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Iraqi Army Advances Against Daesh Despite Suicide Bombers' Attacks

Sputnik News

12:34 31.05.2016(updated 12:35 31.05.2016)

The Iraqi Army is continuing to advance in the fight against Daesh terrorists in the city of Fallujah despite attacks by suicide bombers and mine-laden vehicles, Iraqi Armed Forces spokesman Yahya Rasul told Sputnik on Tuesday.

BAGHDAD (Sputnik)  Last week, Iraqi military and Shiite militia with the support of the international coalition have launched the military operation to liberate the city 40 miles west of Baghdad. On Sunday, according to reports, these forces took control of almost all entrances to Fallujah.

"In the next few hours you will see the positive results of the operation of our counter-terrorism units and SWAT teams, as well as our federal police," Rasul said.

Since 2014, Iraqi city of Fallujah has been controlled by Daesh terrorist group. Before the war, the city was one of the country's biggest with population of 350,000 people.

On Monday, Fallujah city sources told Sputnik that the Iraqi military continues to move through the city of Fallujah and was able to block Daesh militants who were attempting to flee the city on boats along the Euphrates River.

Shiite militia, fighting Daesh in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, has discovered network of the tunnels used by extremists in the suburbs of the city, the al-Hashd al-Shaabi group told RIA Novosti on Monday.

 Sputnik

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Pondering Power Projection: What Type of Aircraft Carrier Does Russia Need?

Sputnik News

19:00 27.05.2016(updated 19:08 27.05.2016)

Commenting on the changing global geopolitical balance, respected Russian defense analyst Konstantin Sivkov discusses the kinds of new aircraft carriers Russia must develop in order to be able to defend its interests worldwide.

Last week, the Russian Ministry of Defense said that it might sign a contract on the construction of a new aircraft carrier; designed by the Krylov State Research Center, the construction of the ship would begin in the mid-2020s.

Currently, the Admiral Kuznetsov heavy aircraft-carrying missile cruiser, commissioned in 1990, is the only attack aircraft-carrying Russian Navy ship.

In his analysis, published in the independent online newspaper Svobodnaya Pressa, Sivkov recalled that in the history of contemporary Russian naval doctrine, "the question of whether the Navy needs the aircraft carrier has existed throughout the entire existence of this class of ships, but no conclusive, unequivocal opinion has ever been given."

What is Russia's naval doctrine? "Without going into detail, all tasks of the Russian Navy can be reduced to two goals: to support Russian diplomacy, and to defend our national interests by military means, both in peacetime to prevent aggression, and in wartime."

In the contemporary world, Sivkov wrote, "the geography of Russia's interests, especially its economic interests, is very broad and stretches across most of the world's oceans. This includes the development of economic relations within the BRICS framework, fishing (including in remote areas away from our coasts), mining and energy extraction from the floor of the seas and the oceans, cargo transportation, and much more."

"In wartime," the doctor of military sciences added, "one of the most important tasks of the Russian Navy will be to defeat the carrier and missile-launching battle groups of the potential enemy. The areas where combat would take place in such situations would likely be sea and ocean areas 400-600 km from the Russian coast. From this distance the enemy would move to strike at targets on the mainland, at our ships at sea and their bases."

"Therefore, the tasks which the battlegroups of the Russian Navy must resolve, in both peacetime and in wartime, go far beyond the reach of our shore-based fighter jets and bombers. An analysis of the Navy's tasks and the conditions for their implementation indicates that it will not be able to effectively solve the problems assigned to it in distant sea and ocean areas if its groupings do not include at least one carrier."

Sivkov indicated that "among the main tasks requiring the use of Russian aircraft carriers is, first of all, participation in peacekeeping operations, the protection of Russian citizens in war zones and their evacuation, as well as the provision of assistance in areas of man-made and natural disasters."

In this context, he added, "the naval groups allocated for these tasks must be able to repel both limited surprise attacks of small groups and individual boats or small warships and submarines, and also combat aircraft and missiles. It may also be necessary to defend various [civilian] ships, to protect Russian and foreign civilian aircraft and various land-based objects, and to ensure the security of Russian citizens from hostile military units (including irregular units) during their evacuation."

"Without the participation of naval aviation, these tasks, especially those associated with countering enemy aircraft and ground formations deep inside enemy territory, cannot be addressed," the analyst noted. Specifically, such tasks will "require patrols by pairs or squads of fighter aircraft, along with one or two AWACS aircraft."

Hence, Sivkov calculated, "depending on the the remoteness of the patrol area, it may be necessary to have a permanent rotation of between 12-15 to 24-30 fighter aircraft, along with between four to eight AWACs aircraft."

"In particularly adverse conditions the possibility of attacks by major aviation groups against formations of [Russian or Russian-allied] surface ships, important ground-based objects or large population centers cannot be excluded. Such groups could reach up to 30 individual aircraft. Rebuffing such a force would require 12 to 18 fighter aircraft, plus an additional AWACS aircraft."

At the same time, Sivkov indicated that in a battle under the oceans, "control of an area's underwater environment, the timely detection of enemy submarines and their destruction using short-range missiles and torpedoes would require the deployment of a minimum of between two and four [ASW] helicopters. Ensuring this would require at least 12 helicopters in the carrier's air group in total."

As far as dealing with the threat of ground-based terrorist and irregular units is concerned, "sudden shock attacks can be parried only by the timely response of aviation groups flying combat air patrol missions. Attacks by small groups of missile boats can be countered in similar fashion." Effective defense would require the patrol of at least one aviation battle group, consisting of two to four planes [at any one time]. And for this it will be necessary to have from 12-15 to 24-30 aircraft in the air group in total."

"In the absence of such cover capabilities, solving these tasks would require more diplomatic efforts, and would be accompanied by substantial material and political losses, and possibly even great loss of life," Sivkov warned. In the worst case scenario, "it might be impossible altogether," he added.

"Therefore, assuring the implementation of Russian foreign policy in peacetime requires a fairly powerful aircraft carrier. And the carrier is even more important when it comes to conducting military operations at sea; after all, it is common knowledge that superiority at sea is impossible without air superiority."

"At present," the analyst recalled, "naval confrontation between groups is carried out almost exclusively using air power. Attacks by anti-ship missiles and strike aircraft are repelled using fighter aircraft and ship-based anti-aircraft weapons. If small naval groups and individual surface ships are attacked by between two to four aircraft or cruise missiles, large groups may be struck by 30-40 or more anti-ship missiles launched from missile destroyers and submarines, or 40-50 carrier-based tactical aircraft."

"Repelling such attacks using only a ship's air defenses is virtually impossible, no matter how powerful those defenses may be, especially if the air attack is conducted simultaneously, is supported by electronic warfare aircraft, and the strike is preceded by an anti-ship rocket attack on air defenses."

In this situation, Sivkov wrote, "fighter aircraft not only destroy enemy aircraft, but also disorganize attacks: the timeframe of the attack is stretched, and the means of attack arrive in relatively small groups which ships' air defenses can successfully destroy." Moreover, "the enemy's target distribution is disrupted, and attempts to cover up the means of air assault through electronic jamming and anti-radar missiles are frustrated."

"It is the disorganization of groups of attacking aircraft which is the main contribution of fighter aircraft in the defense of naval forces from attack by enemy tactical and carrier-based aircraft," Sivkov emphasized.

Therefore, "in order to repulse major groups of tactical or carrier-based aviation, it's necessary to allocate between 22 and 32 fighters, the majority of them operating airfield alert missions from the carrier deck, and assisted by accompanying AWACS aircraft. Outside areas 100-150 miles from the coasts this [type of ship defense] is only possible by carriers."

Switching to offensive operations, the military analyst noted that "the use of naval aviation for attacks on large groups of enemy surface ships has a number of advantages over cruise missiles." These, he noted, include higher reliability of target detection and destruction, with fighters supported by AWACS, reconnaissance, and electronic warfare aircraft having a higher chance of defeating enemy air defenses.

"Therefore, aircraft carriers for the Russian Navy are not simply a folly of our sailors, but an urgent necessity," Sivkov noted. "At the same time, the analysis above indicates that the air group aboard Russian aircraft carriers must be fairly large."

"In order to be able to handle the full spectrum of tasks which may be assigned to it, it is necessary for the carrier to have at least 40-60 aircraft, capable of targeting naval and ground-based targets, and to defend against enemy aircraft and cruise missiles. In addition, the air group must contain four-eight AWACS aircraft, two-four electronic warfare aircraft, two-four reconnaissance aircraft, and a minimum of 12 anti-ship and two search and rescue helicopters. In total this is between 70-90 aircraft."

"Therefore, the carrier itself must be large, with a total displacement of 75-85 tons, and possibly nuclear powered. Its air defenses must be capable of repelling both small groups (up to four units) of attacking air units in conditions of electronic interference. To this end, air defenses must include at least eight short-range air defense systems, as well as two to four units of small-caliber anti-aircraft artillery. Additionally, the ship must have means of anti-torpedo and anti-electronic warfare protection, capable of suppressing the homing capabilities of anti-ship missiles."

In the final analysis, the military analyst calculated that "each of Russia's two ocean-going fleets must have at least two carriers. Taking account of planned repairs and other measures to maintain the ships' combat readiness, this will allow Russia to have at least one combat-ready aircraft carrier in each oceanic theater of operations at any one time."

 Sputnik

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Turkey proposes special operation with US in Syria

Iran Press TV

Mon May 30, 2016 7:46AM

Turkey has proposed to join the United States in a special operation in Syria only if Kurdish fighters are excluded from the offensive.

"If we join forces, they (the Americans) have their own special forces and we have our special forces," Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters.

"The subject we are discussing with the Americans is the closure of the Manbij pocket as soon as possible," he said, referring to a backdoor border route used by Daesh terrorists to transport militants into and out of Syria.

However, Cavusoglu stressed the exclusion of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), also known as the YPG, from the operation as a condition for such action.

"We say okay, a second front should be opened but not with the PYD," he said.

Turkey stands accused of supporting the militants that are fighting against the government in Syria by, among other things, allowing them safe passage into the Arab country via Turkish territory.

Turkey says the YPG is linked to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militant group, which has been engaged in a three-decade fight for autonomy in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated southeast.

Ankara and Washington both consider the PKK a terrorist organization. The United States, however, does not consider the YPG a terrorist group.

The Turkish foreign minister said special forces from Turkey, the US, France, Britain and Germany could also support militants fighting to topple the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Cavusoglu also said a recent deal between Ankara and Washington to deploy US light multiple rocket launchers along the Syrian border to allegedly fight Daesh had been postponed until August.

"The United States is unfortunately not keeping its promise," he said. "We are completely ready. Not us, but the US is responsible for the delay."

On Friday, Turkey slammed the United States for its "two-faced" behavior, saying it is "unacceptable" that US soldiers are backing Kurdish fighters in Syria.

A group of US troops are said to be operating alongside mostly Kurdish fighters belonging to the YPG.

Images recently appeared showing US forces wearing Kurdish insignia on their clothes. Turkey slammed the move, and Washington said the soldiers did not have a permission to do so.

Earlier this month, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the US and Turkey agreed to form a coalition to launch a large-scale military operation in northern Syria.

The Rai al-Youm newspaper, edited by prominent Palestinian journalist Abdul Bari Atwan, on May 16 reported that the campaign would be backed by American and Turkish airstrikes as well as Turkish artillery attacks.

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Chief negotiator of Syria's Saudi-based opposition quits talks

Iran Press TV

Mon May 30, 2016 6:26AM

Chief negotiator of the Saudi-based Syrian opposition has resigned over what he called the failure of UN-brokered negotiations to end the conflict in the Arab country.

Mohammed Alloush, a senior figure with the Jaish al-Islam militant group in the so-called High Negotiations Committee (HNC), on Sunday called peace talks a "waste of time."

The negotiations, he said, could not bring about a political settlement to the conflict, citing the failure to secure the release of thousands of detainees or to push President Bashar al-Assad out of office.

Jaish al-Islam is one of the Saudi-sponsored Takfiri groups operating to topple Assad.

The HNC said it has not yet elected its new chief representative in the Geneva talks after Alloush tendered his resignation.

Head of the main Syrian opposition delegation Asaad al-Zoubi also told the Saudi al Hadath TV channel that he wanted to be relieved of his post, but did not confirm if he had taken a similar step.

Last peace talks were suspended on April 27 after the opposition abandoned them and declared a "new war" on the Syrian government.

UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said this week there were no plans for new talks in the next three weeks.

Ceasefire strengthens Nusra

Al-Qaeda's branch in Syria has recruited thousands of militants, including teenagers, and taken territory from government forces in an offensive in the north, Associated Press reported on Sunday.

It is "illustrating how the ceasefire put in place by Russia and the United States to weaken the militants has in many ways backfired," the news agency said.

Since March, Nusra Front has recruited 3,000 new militants, including teenagers, in comparison to an average of 200 to 300 a month before, AP quoted the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights as saying.

Other sources said hundreds living in camps for displaced people in the northern parts near Turkey have joined the al-Qaeda branch.

Nusra and other Takfiri terrorists hold most of the northwestern province of Idlib and parts of neighboring Aleppo province.

Saudi Arabia and its allies as well as Turkey are considered as the main supporters of Takfiri groups fighting to topple the Syrian government.

According to de Mistura, some 400,000 people have lost their lives in more than five years of foreign-backed militancy in Syria.

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'Turkish Military Enters Syrian Village' Amid Concerns of Invasion

Sputnik News

21:40 30.05.2016(updated 01:55 31.05.2016)

Member of the Democratic Majlis of Syria and of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PDS), Ahmet Arac, spoke to Sputnik about how the Turkish Army is preparing to invade Syria.

Amid violent clashes between militants of Daesh and troops of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in the town of Azaz in northern Aleppo district, reports are surfacing suggesting that the Turkish Army units have been seen located in the district of Azaz.

Earlier, the Democratic People's Movement stated that the Turkish military occupied the village of Hamam in Afrin region and called on the world community to condemn such acts.

One of the leaders of the Majlis of Democratic Syria, which is part of the Democratic Forces of Syria and the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party, Ahmet Arac, told Sputnik that the Turkish Armed Forces are preparing an offensive in the Azaz area.

"Yesterday the Turkish Army carried out rocket attacks on the positions of Democratic Forces of Syria."

"Two days ago, the Turkish military entered the village of Hamam in Afrin area. We are ready to repel any attack. Meanwhile, FSA units are suffering serious defeat in clashes with Daesh. They have already lost control of 12 villages. If Daesh comes to Azaz, 'Democratic Syrian Forces' will repel the jihadists, and not allow them to enter the city," Arac stressed.

 Sputnik

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Thousands of Syrians Trapped as Islamic State Pushes to Border

by Jamie Dettmer May 30, 2016

Concern mounted Monday for the fate of tens of thousands of displaced Syrian civilians caught in the middle of a desperate fight in the countryside north of Aleppo.

Days of clashes between moderate and Islamist rebel factions and the Islamic State group, which has mounted a fierce offensive on two key border towns, imperils rebel resupplies from Turkey.

The battles have drawn in Turkish and U.S.-coalition warplanes and Kurdish militiamen from the People's Protection Units (YPG) in a multisided fight in an area measuring only 25 by 55 kilometers.

Kurdish spokesmen say they have opened closed roads to allow about 6,000 fleeing civilians into their border canton of Afrin.

Turkish officials aslo said their warplanes and artillery have struck multiple IS targets in the past three days, including four Katyusha rocket firing positions and two ammunition depots after the jihadists on May 27-28 lobbed rockets over the border hitting a district in southern Gaziantep province and the town of Kilis.

U.S.-led anti-IS coalition warplanes carried out at least three airstrikes this weekend on IS positions, U.S. officials said, more in support of the Turks than of embattled Free Syrian Army and Islamist rebels, who have complained they're not receiving the close air support from the coalition that YPG fighters get in neighboring Raqqa province.

"If we had the support the YPG gets, we would not be in such a desperate position," said Zakaria Malahefji of the 3,000-strong Fastaqim Kama Umirt, a brigade aligned to the rebel alliance Jaish al-Mujahideen (Army of Holy Warriors).

The upsurge in fighting risks complicating U.S. efforts to try to persuade FSA militias to stop mingling with fighters from al-Qaida's affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, and allied Islamist factions.

Earlier this month under pressure from Moscow, the International Syria Support Group, the 20-power group that includes the U.S. and Russia, warned armed groups that they could be excluded from the cessation of hostilities agreement, which is only partially functioning, if they work with al Nusra or other factions deemed terrorists.

Confusion on the ground

Last week in Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters that in and around Aleppo, "there is a certain amount of overlap, commingling, whatever the heck you want to call it, among these groups; and it's incumbent on them and absolutely vital that they separate themselves so that we can clearly delineate where Nusra is and where the credible opposition is."

With IS on the offensive in the northern Aleppo countryside that challenge will become greater.

Rebel commanders say they have no choice but to work with al-Nusra on occasion when they are being hard-pressed by IS or the Assad regime, which they argue is doing all it can to push factions opposed to President Bashar al-Assad into the arms of al-Nusra in order to paint them as terrorist in nature.

Activists say that since March al-Nusra has been gaining on average 200 to 300 new recruits a month.

Over the weekend the al-Qaida affiliate said it was mobilizing to support rebel factions battling to retain control of the strategically-vital border towns of Azaz and Marea, the onetime HQ of the FSA in Aleppo province.

Kurdish propagandists claim Nusra fighters are already engaged in the battle but this is denied by FSA commanders.

The battles for the towns of Azaz and Marea have flared and ebbed since February, but the IS push this time has been more determined  possibly to compensate for the recent loss of territory in Raqqa province.

Marea and Azaz fell to opposition forces in 2012 and are vital stops along a rebel supply route from Turkey to districts the rebels hold in Aleppo, which the government has been trying to encircle for months.

The pro-opposition monitoring group, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists on the ground for its information, said the fighting in the area is the heaviest in months and that the offensive amounts to the most significant advance near the Turkish border for IS in two years.

Humanitarian situation

The medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), or Doctors Without Borders, evacuated most of its staff and patients from al-Salamah hospital near Azaz on Friday.

"We are terribly concerned about the fate of our hospital and our patients, and about the estimated 100,000 people trapped between the Turkish border and active front lines," Pablo Marco, MSF operations manager for the Middle East, said in a statement.

Marco added: "There is nowhere for people to flee to as the fighting gets closer."

Most of displaced Syrians in or near the current fighting fled into the area from a blistering Russian-backed Assad regime offensive in February.

Turkish officials refused to allow displaced civilians to cross into Turkey. European appeals for the border to be re-opened fell on deaf ears.

"Officially we are still pressing the Turks to allow them in," says a European diplomat, who asked not to be identified. "Unofficially we aren't anymore," he lamented.

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Raqqa Offensive Brings Syrian Talks in Geneva to 'Deadlock'

Sputnik News

11:09 31.05.2016(updated 11:20 31.05.2016)

After Syrian Kurds backed by the US and Russia launched an assault on Raqqa, the capital of the Daesh "caliphate" the Geneva peace talks have become at risk of disruption. However, Moscow and Washington are interested in the continuation of the negotiations.

On Monday, chief negotiator of the Syrian opposition High Negotiations Committee, Mohammed Alloush said in an interview with Al Arabiya that the Syrian negotiations in Geneva had reached a stalemate.

He condemned the international community and the Syrian government for the failure of the talks.

According to Alloush, the Syrian opposition he represents will not join a national unity government if it includes Syrian leader Bashar Assad or his supporters.

Alloush is also a member of Jaysh al-Islam, one of the most powerful factions within the Syrian opposition. Moscow and Damascus have repeatedly opposed the participation of Jaysh al-Islam members in the negotiations.

The group has been accused of attacking the Syrian Army and government facilities as well as of using terrorist tactics. The group has been part of the so-called pro-Western Syrian opposition, backed by the US, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

At first glance, Alloush's departure could be viewed as a positive development for Russia. However, at the moment Moscow is not interested in his resignation, former Russian diplomat Veniamin Popov said.

According to him, Alloush is an infamous person, and this is why his resignation is a positive step. At the same time, it disrupts the course of the peace talks.

"Both Moscow and Washington are interested in the continuation of the negotiations," Popov told Gazeta.ru.

The crisis in the Syrian peace talks began five days after the large-scale offensive on Raqqa, the de-facto capital of Daesh, was launched.

The operation has involved over 20,000 militants of the Syria Democratic Forces (SDF). Over 50 percent of the forces are Kurds, backed by the US. They are coordinating their actions with the US military.

Russia also offered Washington to coordinate efforts in this campaign, but the Pentagon rejected the offer. However, Russia has the right to carry out unilateral airstrikes on Raqqa.

Earlier, spokesperson of the Kurdish Democratic Union forces Ibrahim Ibrahim said that the forces are coordinating actions with both Moscow and Washington.

The composition of the forces storming Raqqa has angered Turkey. Formally, Ankara is party to the Western anti-Daesh coalition, but it is pursuing own interests in Syria. Turkey sees the Kurdish militia forces as one of the most serious threats to its security.

The actual goal of the Syrian Kurds is to establish an autonomous state in northern Syria. This would also provoke a surge of separatism in southern Turkey that is mainly populated by Kurds.

Last year, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan launched a crackdown on separatists in southern Turkey. Ankara considers local Kurdish forces terrorists. Moreover, Turkish forces have been shelling Kurds across the Syrian border.

Jaysh al-Islam is a part of the Islamic Front, a coalition of a number of Syrian opposition armed groups. It was established in November 2013 in coordination with Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

The threat of a collapse of the pro-Western delegation in Geneva looks like a signal to the US supporting the Kurdish offensive on Raqqa.

"Indeed, combat actions in Syria have had significant impact on the peace talks. However, there are still a lot of possibilities in Geneva for all parties involved to agree their positions. They just need patience," Popov said.

A source close to the negotiations told Gazeta.ru that in fact Moscow is not interested in the withdrawal of Jaysh al-Islam from the talks.

Jaysh al-Islam is one of the largest and most powerful factions. If it withdraws from the peaceful process the talks on the future of Syria would make no sense, the source said.

Further actions of the Syrian opposition are unclear. Jaysh al-Islam has not commented on Alloush's resignation. Nevertheless, on May 30, Assad al Zoubi, head of High Negotiations Committee delegation, said he also may resign.

He said that he would resign if Jaysh al-Islam members left Geneva. On Monday it was also reported that the High Negotiations Committee was continuing talks on Alloush's resignation and its consequences.

"Personal ambitions of opposition leaders are an important part of the process. Now they are bargaining, but this is unlikely to break the deadlock," the source added.

The Geneva peaceful process is now in a real crisis, Julien Barnes-Dacey, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said.

"The talks are on the verge of disruption. All parties understand that they've reached a deadlock," he told Gazeta.ru.

According to Barnes-Dacey, the withdrawal of Jaysh al-Islam would result in the entire Islamic Front leaving Geneva. This, in turn, would paralyze the diplomatic process and provoke a new surge of violence in Syria.

"Currently, there are two scenarios of further developments," Elena Suponina, adviser at the Russian institute for Strategic Assessments, said.

"The first: the pro-Western delegation leaves Geneva and a new stage of the Syrian crisis begins. The second: the US pressures the delegation to continue the talks. In this scenario, the negotiations would not be productive until a way is found to break the course of the talks," she explained.

Currently, the talks in Geneva are not in an active phase. Negotiators are preparing for the next round which is expected to start after Ramadan. According to experts, by this time the diplomatic process as well as combat actions in Syria would intensify.

 Sputnik

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Tangled Syrian Conflict Getting Messier, More Sectarian

by Jamie Dettmer May 31, 2016

U.S.-backed Kurdish-led forces have expanded their operations west of Syria's Euphrates River, crossing a Turkish 'red line' and angering mainstream Sunni Arab rebels.

The move is making a tangled fight in northern Syria messier and more chaotic by the hour and could drive some Sunni Arabs into the arms of the Islamic State terror group, political activists are warning.

The main anti-Assad rebel political opposition, the Syrian National Coalition, is now demanding guarantees from the international community that Sunni Arabs will be allowed to return to villages seized from the jihadist IS group by the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is dominated by Kurdish People's Protection Units, or YPG.

Rights groups accused the YPG last year of forcibly evicting Arabs and Turkmen and demolishing whole villages seized from IS  allegations the Syrian Kurds strongly deny.

The SDF

The SDF, which includes some small Sunni Arab armed groups and Syriac and Turkmen community defense forces, is shunned by most anti-Assad rebel groups, who fear  as the Turks do - that the Kurds are intent on establishing their own state along the border with Turkey.

That ambition has seen the Kurds collaborate at various times in the six-year-long Syria conflict with diverse groups - including, rebels claim, with the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and the Russians. A European diplomat told VOA he suspects YPG forces have been receiving arms supplies from the Russians.

On Monday, SDF forces mounted ground operations in three villages to the east of the town of Manbij, 30 kilometers west of the Euphrates and to the northeast of the city of Aleppo. Within hours, SDF units were fighting IS in parts of the city, say local activists. Before the Syria conflict erupted, the town of 100,000 had an ethnically diverse population of Arabs, Kurds and Circassians.

The SDF also seized from IS two villages on the western bank of the Euphrates  al-Sandaliyah and al-Haloulah  with the help of more than a dozen U.S. airstrikes.

Kurdish People's Protection Units

The YPG has not commented on the operations, imposing a gag order on its various social media outlets.

The YPG, however, lashed out at anti-Assad rebel groups in an escalating war of words with the Arab rebel groups, warning of severe retaliation for attacks on a Kurdish district in the city of Aleppo. "Groups linked to the Syrian National Coalition have not stopped attacks on Aleppo's Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood," the YPG said in a statement.

The YPG said it had accepted in the last few days hundreds of Sunni Arab civilians fleeing an IS offensive on towns north of Aleppo city, "yet Kurdish neighborhoods have repeatedly come under fire" including missile attacks on the Kurdish Afrin canton on the border with Turkey. "In their attacks, civilians have lost their lives and our fighters have been martyred," the Kurdish militia said.

On its official Twitter feed, the YPG threatened it would respond to this "hostile attitude."

In February, the Kurdish militia and rebel groups fought over several towns and villages in the northern Aleppo countryside as a blistering Russian-backed Assad regime offensive was under way, raising the almost unprecedented spectacle of U.S.-supported groups battling each other.

As sectarian tensions flare in northern Syria, the Syrian National Coalition, which is officially recognized by the West as the main opposition to Assad, has been trading angry words with the YPG, accusing Syrian Kurds of exploiting the fight against IS "to achieve their own goals  away from the common goals of the Syrian people."

The Syrian Coalition urged the U.S.-led international coalition "to publicly give guarantees that clearly ensure the right of all refugees and internally displaced persons in Syria to return to their towns and villages."

The SNC stressed "no military or security presence, other than the local population and the free police force, should be imposed on the areas which will be liberated from IS."

Implications of SDF expansion

The expansion of SDF ground operations west of the Euphrates could endanger the campaign to liberate Raqqa from IS. Anti-jihadist activists in the collective Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently are now dubbing the U.S.-supported SDF offensive north of Raqqa, the de facto IS capital in Syria, a so-called liberation. They label the YPG a "fanatical nationalist militia."

Last week, former U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, now an analyst with the Washington-based Middle East Institute, told a U.S. Senate panel that some Sunni Arabs fear the YPG more than IS.

"In some cases, Syrian refugees flee it and don't go toward the Kurdish areas - they run away from them and into Islamic State territory," Ford told a Senate hearing.

Last Thursday, Ankara urged European countries not to allow the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD, which controls the YPG, to open political offices in their capitals, saying it would encourage Kurdish separatism in both Syria and Turkey.

In recent weeks, Turkish officials have proposed a joint military operation against jihadists inside Syria with the Americans and other allied troops. But they have made it clear the offer only involves joint efforts to support non-Kurdish rebel forces in the so-called Manbij pocket aimed at driving out IS fighters from the Aleppo countryside, from where the jihadists have launched rocket attacks on Turkish towns.

U.S. officials say the Turks have not offered any operational details for their proposal.

A European diplomat based in Istanbul told VOA Western officials see the repeated and highly public offer of a joint military operation in northern Syria as grandstanding by Ankara, designed more for domestic Turkish political consumption and not one amounting to a realistic offer.

"The Turks will continue to retaliate for IS shelling along the border but they won't launch any major ground offensive south of the border," he said.

Despite Turkish and mainstream rebel objections to U-S. support for the SDF, there are no signs that Washington is re-thinking its anti-IS strategy in Syria. U.S. officials say while they are sensitive to Ankara's concerns about Syrian Kurdish political ambitions, they have little choice but to back the YPG as the Kurdish militia has proven to be an effective partner in the fight against IS.

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Army, PKK clashes leave three soldiers dead in southeast Turkey

Iran Press TV

Mon May 30, 2016 4:9PM

A series of fresh clashes between Turkish army and militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) have claimed the lives of at least three soldiers in the country's restive southeast over the past 24 hours.

Turkish military said in a statement on Monday that two soldiers were killed in the Kurdish-dominated province of Sirnak, while another lost his life in neighboring Siirt Province near the Iraqi border.

Turkish officials say a member of its special operations police was among those killed.

The statement added that two PKK militants were killed in the ongoing high-scale military operation across the volatile region.

This comes days after six Turkish soldiers were killed in a bomb attack ripping through a military convoy in the Kurdish-dominated Van Province On May 24. Also on May 18, a bomb attack on military vehicles in the town of Semdinli in Hakkari Province killed four soldiers and wounded nine others.

Turkish sources blamed members of the PKK militant group for the attacks.

The Turkish military has launched large-scale military operations against the PKK militants in its southern border region since last summer. The government has imposed curfew in the areas that have been targeted in the army's anti-PKK campaign.

The Turkish military has also been pounding the PKK positions in northern Iraq.

Ankara's operations against PKK began in the wake of a deadly July 2015 bombing in the southern town of Suruc. More than 30 people died in the attack, with the Turkish government blaming the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group for the attack.

Following the bombing, the PKK militants, who accuse the government in Ankara of supporting Daesh, engaged in a series of reprisal attacks against Turkish police and security forces, prompting the Turkish military operations.

A shaky ceasefire between Ankara and the PKK that had stood since 2013 was declared null and void by the militants following the Turkish strikes against the group. The PKK has been fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region in southeastern Turkey since 1984. The conflict has left thousands of people dead.

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Turkey: Russia ties to be mended shortly

Iran Press TV

Mon May 30, 2016 11:58AM

A senior Turkish official says his country and Russia do not have any insurmountable issues, and that sour relations between the two sides would be mended in a "short while."

"Neither Russia nor Turkey can afford to sacrifice their relationship with each other," Numan Kurtulmus, a deputy prime minister and the government's official spokesman, said on Monday.

"I wish such tensions had never emerged, but I believe that Turkish-Russian ties can be fixed in a short while," he added.

Kurtulmus said Turkey and Russia have no problems that cannot be overcome.

Ties between the two countries strained last November after Turkey shot down a Russian aircraft over Syrian skies, saying the fighter jet had repeatedly violated the Turkish airspace.

Kurtulmus's conciliatory remarks came even as Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan accused Russia of providing anti-aircraft weaponry and rockets to militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Erdogan accused Moscow of transferring weaponry to the PKK via Iraq and Syria, the pro-government Star newspaper said.

"At this moment, terrorists are using anti-aircraft guns and missiles supplied by Russia. The separatist terrorist organization is equipped with these weapons. They have been transferred to them via Syria and Iraq," the newspaper reported Erdogan as saying.

The latest comments appear to be the first time he has accused Moscow of supplying arms to the PKK.

Turkey-Israel relations

Kurtulmus also touched on Ankara's relations with Israel, saying officials from the two sides were holding more meetings to discuss a normalization.

Israel and Turkey were traditionally close allies but they came to loggerheads after Israel attacked a Turkish ship in an aid flotilla to the Gaza Strip in May 2010 and killed 10 Turkish citizens.

Kurtulmus said two out of Ankara's three conditions for reviving ties have been met.

Last month, Ankara said Turkey and Israel had made progress towards the conclusion of an agreement aimed at ending a six-year freeze in their relations.

Ankara is suspected of actively training and arming Daesh militants operating inside Syria and buying smuggled oil from them.

Israel has set up hospitals near the border with Syria to treat militants injured in the fighting with Syrian troops.

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Turkey Makes No Particular Steps to Restore Relations With Russia

Sputnik News

17:02 30.05.2016(updated 17:05 30.05.2016)

Turkey makes a lot of proposals to restore relations with Russia though does not take concrete steps to drive the issue from the deadlock, Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov said Monday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  According to Ushakov, Ankara has not done "the main thing," which would allow Russia to start the process of normalization of the bilateral relations.

"There was a lot of different ideas, including from the Turkish side, about the necessity to restore the relations. And our leader [President Vladimir Putin] mentioned it during the latest contacts with journalists. Although, the Turkish side has not made any steps yet, which would allow to start normalization of the relations. And that is why this issues is hanging in the air," Ushakov told reporters.

Earlier in the day, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu proposed to form a joint working group with Russia in a bid to restore the the Ankara-Moscow relations, which deteriorated after the downing of a Russian military plane by a Turkish fighter jet in Syria on November 24, 2015.

Moscow imposed a number of restrictive measures on Turkey in response to what Russian President Vladimir Putin classified as a "stab in the back."

Russia's retaliatory measures against Ankara include, in particular, restrictions on the activities of Turkish organizations in Russia, an embargo on Russian employers hiring Turkish citizens and a ban on certain food imports since January 1, 2016.

 Sputnik

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Turkish government brands Gulen movement 'terrorist'

Iran Press TV

Tue May 31, 2016 3:32PM

The Turkish government has officially designated as a "terrorist" group a movement led by Fethullah Gulen, a US-based opponent of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Addressing supporters in the Western coastal city of Izmir late on Monday, Erdogan referred to a recent cabinet meeting in which the Gulen movement was designated a "terrorist" group.

The movement was added to a list of outlawed organizations on par with separatist Kurdish groups, whose positions have been being targeted in a large-scale military campaign by the Turkish army for several months.

Elsewhere in his comments, the Turkish president threatened to bring to account Gulen movement members, saying, "We will not let those who divide the nation off the hook in this country."

Some Gulen followers have fled, but others are imprisoned and are being tried, he said, vowing, "This process will continue."

Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999, is regarded as an outspoken opponent of Erdogan and his policies.

Ankara has called for Gulen's extradition, but Washington has shown little interest in doing so.

As a possible consequence of the recent Turkish cabinet decision, Erdogan is expected to further press Washington to hand over Gulen.

Erdogan has accused Gulen of plotting to overthrow him by building a network of supporters in the media, the judiciary and the education system, an allegation the cleric denies.

Erdogan and Gulen were allies until police and prosecutors, seen as sympathetic to the latter, opened a corruption investigation into Erdogan's inner circle in 2013.

The investigation led to the resignation of the ministers of economy, the interior, and urbanization. Gulen is also believed to have been behind a series of leaks that led to the probe.

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Erdogan Notes Positive Dynamic in Restoration of Turkey-Israel Relations

Sputnik News

20:50 31.05.2016(updated 20:51 31.05.2016)

The process of restoration of Turkish-Israeli relations is going in a positive way, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday.

ANKARA (Sputnik)  In 2010, relations between the two countries deteriorated after the Freedom Flotilla incident, when a convoy of six ships, including one under Turkey's flag, tried to approach the Gaza Strip allegedly to deliver humanitarian aid.

The flotilla was blocked and stormed by Israeli forces, resulting in a fight with Muslim activists aboard the ships, in which eight Turkish citizens were killed.

"The thing that we wanted [for the normalization of relations] was apologies. It is done. The compensation is almost completely paid. The third condition was the lifting of the blockade [of Gaza]. There are serious problems with electricity and water supply in Palestine. We have made several proposals to solve them. Things are developing in a positive way, it seems. If we are able to solve these problems, Turkey will build schools, hospitals [in Gaza]," Erdogan said at press conference.

In April, the Turkish and Israeli negotiating teams met in London. Following the meeting, the Turkish Foreign Ministry announced that a reconciliation deal was expected to be finalized during the next round of consultations, which, according to Ankara, will be held very soon.

 Sputnik

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New clashes kill three army soldiers in east Ukraine: Military

Iran Press TV

Mon May 30, 2016 3:39PM

The Ukrainian military has announced the death of three of its soldiers in a fresh wave of clashes between government troops and pro-Russia forces in the country's troubled east.

"Over the past 24 hours, as a result of the hostilities, three Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and eight more wounded," Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine's military, said on Monday.

Lysenko said the fatalities occurred as a result of "escalated" violence around the eastern Donetsk region and the strategic portal city of Mariupol, which is currently held under Ukrainian government's control.

The spokesman further noted that the fighting has intensified compared to a month ago and accused pro-Russia forces of "actively using heavy weapons" including a Grad multi-rocket launcher.

The new development comes a day after five Ukrainian soldiers were killed and four others sustained injuries in clashes near the volatile Donetsk region, bringing the death toll to at least eight over the past two days.

Earlier this month, France and Germany held a round of talks with Kiev and Moscow in the German capital of Berlin as part of mediation efforts to try to hammer out a lasting peace deal in Ukraine conflict but no consensus was reached over the issue.

Conflict erupted in eastern Ukraine after people in the country's Black Sea Crimean Peninsula voted for unification with Russia in March 2014. The West describes the development as Moscow's annexation of the territory. The US and its allies in Europe also accuse Moscow of having a major hand in the crisis in eastern Ukraine, a charge that Moscow denies.

Ukraine's eastern provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk have witnessed deadly clashes between pro-Moscow forces and the Ukrainian army since Kiev launched military operations later in April 2014 to crush pro-Moscow protests there.

The crisis has left over 9,300 people dead and over 21,000 others injured, according to the United Nations.

In September 2014, the government in Kiev and the pro-Russians signed a ceasefire agreement in the Belarusian capital city of Minsk in a bid to halt the clashes in Ukraine's eastern regions.

They agreed on 12 points, including pulling back heavy weapons, releasing prisoners, setting up a buffer zone on the Russia-Ukraine border, and allowing access to international observers.

The warring sides also inked another truce deal, dubbed Minsk II, in February 2015 under the supervision of Russia, Germany and France.

Since then, however, both parties have on numerous occasions accused each other of breaking the ceasefire.

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Alan Burkitt-Gray speaks to Michael Wheeler, executive vice president at NTT Ltd, about a name change for the company, NTT's contribution in the midst of the pandemic and all things network security.
The victims said a man they didnt know started a verbal and physical altercation with them at the 3100 block of E. Rosser Ave. before retrieving a handgun from inside his home. He came back outside, fired one shot in the air and two more shots at the victims. No one was injured.
ATC Alloys Limited (ASX:ATA) (ATC) and Almonty Industries Inc. (TSX-V:AII) (Almonty) jointly announce that ATC and Almonty have entered into a Binding Heads of Agreement (HOA) pursuant to which Almonty has agreed to make a recommended off-market takeover offer under the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) for all of the issued, and to be issued, shares of ATC (the Offer).This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here:http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160530005312/en/Under the Offer, ATC shareholders will receive one (1) new Almonty share in the form of CHESS Depository Interests (CDIs) to be listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) for every 10.38 ATC Alloys shares held.Based on an Almonty share price of CA$0.37and an exchange rate of CAD:AUD of 1.00:1.0659, the offer ratio implies a ATC share price of AU$0.0411 per share, representing a 37.0% premium to ATCs last closing price of AU$0.0300.The acquisition will provide Almonty with ATCs interest in the ATC Ferrotungsten Project in Vietnam and thereby a downstream ferrotungsten production capability. The Offer provides ATC shareholders with ownership in a larger, diversified mining company with a portfolio of production, development and growth assets.

Directors Recommendation

The Directors of ATC unanimously recommend that all ATC shareholders ACCEPT the Offer in the absence of a superior proposal. All of the ATC Directors have entered into a pre-bid acceptance agreement in relation to all ATC shares owned or controlled by them.

ATC Shareholder Support

ATC has entered into pre-bid acceptance agreements with a number of ATC shareholders, including all members of the ATC Board of Directors that hold shares in ATC, and other major shareholders in respect of a total of 19.9% of ATCs issued shares. Under the pre-bid acceptance agreements these shareholders have agreed to accept the Offer within three business days of receiving the Offer, subject to receipt of a superior proposal.

Almonty does not currently hold any shares in ATC.

ATC Alloys Chairman Pat Burke said:

The Offer provides ATC Alloys shareholders with ownership in Almontys diversified production and development portfolio with strong financial resources and a Board and Management team with a proven track record of delivering shareholder returns.

Almontys Chairman, President and CEO Lewis Black said:

We are pleased to announce the Offer which will add a downstream ferrotungsten production capability to our existing world class portfolio of tungsten development and production assets. We anticipate that the ASX listing associated with the Transaction will promote enhanced trading liquidity and greater investor interest in Almonty.

Offer conditions and Indicative timetable

The Offer is subject to the following conditions as set out in the HOA, including:

90% minimum acceptance condition;

Completing an interim capital raising (the Interim Fundraising) by way of a brokered private placement of common shares of Almonty at CA$0.30 per Almonty share for minimum gross proceeds of CA$1.5 million. Almonty will pay a commission equal to 4% of the gross proceeds raised on the financing;

Obtain an executed underwriting agreement (Underwriting Agreement) to fully underwrite a A$5.25 million capital raising in conjunction with a secondary listing of Almonty on the ASX via tradeable CDIs (the Capital Raising). The Almonty shares (tradeable as CDIs on the ASX) to be issued in the Capital Raising will be issued at an issue price equal to a 10% discount to the 5-day VWAP of Almonty Shares up to the date of execution of the Underwriting Agreement;

At least 75% of the holders (by value) of the ATC AU$0.05 Convertible Notes convert into ATC Alloys shares prior to completion of the Offer;

At least 75% of the holders (by value) of the ATC AU$0.25 Convertible Notes exchange their ATC AU$0.25 Convertible Notes for convertible notes in Almonty;

Consent of ATCs secured lender (Siderian Resource Capital Limited)

Approval by the ASX and TSX-V for the quotation of Almonty shares via CDIs on the ASX following completion of the Offer;

All regulatory approvals that are required, including but not limited to that of the ASX, TSX-V and ASIC and including in respect of the Interim Fundraising and Capital Raising;

All other approvals necessary to allow the Offer to occur, including but not limited to any shareholder approvals, lender approvals, regulatory and other third party approvals;

From the date of this announcement to the end of the Offer Period, no prescribed occurrence (as is standard for a transaction of this nature) occurs in respect of ATC.

The HOA contains customary deal protection and exclusivity arrangements, including no-shop and no-talk provisions, matching and notification rights in the event of a competing proposal and break fees payable by ATC to Almonty if ATC accepts a proposal superior to the Offer.

Further details of the Offer will be contained in Almontys Bidders Statement which will be dispatched to ATC Shareholders shortly.

Advisors

ATC Alloys is being advised by Somers and Partners Pty Ltd (Somers and Partners) as financial adviser and Steinepreis Paganin as legal adviser. Somers and Partners will act as Lead Manager to the Capital Raising.





About Almonty



The principal business of Toronto, Canada-based Almonty Industries Inc. is the mining, processing and shipping of tungsten concentrate from its Los Santos Mine in western Spain, its Wolfram Camp Mine in north Queensland, Australia and its Panasqueira mine in Portugal as well as the development of the Sangdong tungsten mine in Gangwon Province, Korea and the Valtreixal tin/tungsten project in north western Spain. The Los Santos Mine was acquired by Almonty in September 2011 and is located approximately 50 kilometres from Salamanca in western Spain and produces tungsten concentrate. The Wolfram Camp Mine was acquired by Almonty in September 2014 and is located approximately 130 kilometres west of Cairns in northern Queensland, Australia and produces tungsten and molybdenum concentrate. The Panasqueira mine, which has been in production since 1896, is located approximately 260 kilometres northeast of Lisbon, Portugal, was acquired in January 2016 and produces tungsten concentrate. The Sangdong mine, which was historically one of the largest tungsten mines in the world and one of the few long-life, high-grade tungsten deposits outside of China, was acquired in September 2015 through the acquisition of a 100% interest in Woulfe Mining Corp. Almonty also has an option to acquire a 100% ownership interest in the Valtreixal tin-tungsten project in northwestern Spain. Further information about Almontys activities may be found at www.almonty.com and under Almontys profile at www.sedar.com.





About ATC Alloys



ATC is listed on the ASX under the symbol ATA. ATC has a 60% joint venture interest in the Vinh Bao Ferrotungsten plant in Vietnam, one of the largest and most advanced ferrotungsten plants outside of China.





Legal Notice



The release, publication or distribution of this announcement in certain jurisdictions may be restricted by law and therefore persons in such jurisdictions into which this announcement is released, published or distributed should inform themselves about and observe such restrictions.



Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.





Disclaimer for Forward-Looking Information



When used in this press release, the words estimate, project, belief, anticipate, intend, expect, plan, predict, may or should and the negative of these words or such variations thereon or comparable terminology are intended to identify forward-looking statements and information. This press release contains forward-looking statements and information including, without limitation, the completion of the ATC Take-over by Almonty, the closing of the interim CA$1.5 million financing, the entering into of the Underwriting Agreement and the closing of the proposed A$5.25 million underwritten capital raising, adding downstream ferrotungsten processing capabilities, and, the secondary listing of Almonty shares on the ASX. These statements and information are based on managements beliefs, estimates and opinions on the date that statements are made and reflect Almontys current expectations.

Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of Almonty to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including but not limited to: any specific risks relating to fluctuations in the price of ammonium para tungstate (APT) from which the sale price of Almontys tungsten concentrate is derived, actual results of mining and exploration activities, environmental, economic and political risks of the jurisdictions in which Almontys operations are located and changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined, forecasts and assessments relating to Almontys business, risks relating to production forecasts and estimates from the ATC ferrotungsten plant, credit and liquidity risks, ATC shareholders acceptance of the take-over bid, completion of the CA$1.5 million interim financing on reasonable terms, hedging risk, competition in the mining industry, risks related to the market price of Almontys shares, the ability of Almonty and ATC to retain key management employees or procure the services of skilled and experienced personnel, risks related to claims and legal proceedings against Almonty and any of its operating mines, risks relating to unknown defects and impairments, risks related to the adequacy of internal control over financial reporting, risks related to governmental regulations, including environmental regulations, risks related to international operations of Almonty, risks relating to exploration, development and operations at Almontys tungsten mines, the ability of Almonty and ATC to obtain and maintain necessary permits, the ability of Almonty and ATC to comply with applicable laws, regulations and permitting requirements, lack of suitable infrastructure and employees to support Almontys mining operations, uncertainty in the accuracy of mineral reserves and mineral resources estimates, production estimates from Almontys mining operations and ATCs ferrotungsten plant, inability to replace and expand mineral reserves, uncertainties related to title and indigenous rights with respect to mineral properties owned directly or indirectly by Almonty, the ability of Almonty to obtain adequate financing, the ability of Almonty to complete permitting, construction, development and expansion, challenges related to global financial conditions, risks related to future sales or issuance of equity securities, differences in the interpretation or application of tax laws and regulations or accounting policies and rules and acceptance of the ASX of the listing of Almonty shares on the exchange.



Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions management believes to be reasonable, including but not limited to, no material adverse change in the market price of APT, the continuing ability to fund or obtain funding for outstanding commitments, expectations regarding the resolution of legal and tax matters, no negative change to local Australian laws, the ability to secure local contractors, employees and assistance as and when required and on reasonable terms, the ability to sell the ferrotungsten produced from the ATCs operations and such other assumptions and factors as set out herein. Although Almonty has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause results, level of activity, performance or achievements not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate and even if events or results described in the forward-looking statements are realized or substantially realized, there can be no assurance that they will have the expected consequences to, or effects on, Almonty. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and are cautioned that actual outcomes may vary.



Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements. Almonty cautions that the foregoing list of material factors is not exhaustive. When relying on Almontys forward-looking statements and information to make decisions, investors and others should carefully consider the foregoing factors and other uncertainties and potential events



Almonty has also assumed that material factors will not cause any forward-looking statements and information to differ materially from actual results or events. However, the list of these factors is not exhaustive and is subject to change and there can be no assurance that such assumptions will reflect the actual outcome of such items or factors.



THE FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS PRESS RELEASE REPRESENTS THE EXPECTATIONS OF ALMONTY AS OF THE DATE OF THIS PRESS RELEASE AND, ACCORDINGLY, IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE AFTER SUCH DATE. READERS SHOULD NOT PLACE UNDUE IMPORTANCE ON FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION AND SHOULD NOT RELY UPON THIS INFORMATION AS OF ANY OTHER DATE. WHILE ALMONTY MAY ELECT TO, IT DOES NOT UNDERTAKE TO UPDATE THIS INFORMATION AT ANY PARTICULAR TIME EXCEPT AS REQUIRED IN ACCORDANCE WITH APPLICABLE LAWS.



1 If the number of ATC shares held by an ATC Shareholder means that their aggregate entitlement to Almonty shares is not a whole number, then any fractional entitlement will be rounded up to the nearest whole number.



2 Almonty closing share price prior to announcement May 30, 2016







Contact



Almonty

Lewis Black, Chairman, President and CEO

+1 647 438-9766

lewis.black@almonty.com or



ATC Alloys

Patrick Burke, Chairman

+61893205220

patrick.burke@atcalloys.com


VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - May 31, 2016) - Scientific Metals Corp. ("STM" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE:STM)(FRANKFURT:26X)(OTC PINK:NRNDF) is pleased to announce it has entered into an arm's length agreement to acquire a 100 percent interest in the Paradox Basin Lithium Brine property (the "Paradox Property") located in Utah in the western United States.

The Paradox Property consists of 334 mineral claims covering approximately 6,000 acres that contain eight historic oil and gas drill holes. The Paradox Property exists over an area with historic fluid analysis ranging from 81 to 1,700 ppm lithium in saturated minerals brines, which was previously disclosed by Voltaic Minerals Corp.'s press release of February 18, 2016. Well No.1 Long Canyon returned 500 ppm lithium. This well is located within 400 feet of the Paradox Property and is fully enclosed by the boundary ("Concentrated Subsurface Brines in the Moab Region, Utah", Utah Geological and Mineralogical Survey, June 1965). The brine was discovered in the 1960s when over pressurized oil exploration wells encountered blowouts upon drilling.

The Paradox Basin area is a semi-desert region with an average of over 300 days of sunshine per year, existing infrastructure, and year-round access to road and rail.

The Paradox Property is located approximately 4 kilometres northwest of Intrepid Potash's Cane Creek Operation and is contiguous to the north of Voltaic Minerals Corp.'s "Green Energy" lithium property. As disclosed in Intrepid Potash's 2015 Annual Report, the Cane Creek Operation produced 93,000 tonnes of potash in 2015 through solution mining and solar evaporation ponds. The Property is approximately 530 miles east of Tesla's Gigafactory in Nevada.

STM's President Brian Kirwin states: "We believe the Paradox Property could prove to be a substantial lithium asset with minimal work expenditures and substantial cost savings due to the extensive existing historic drill holes. Multiple historic high grade lithium results in the area are extremely encouraging. We will continue our review of recent and historic well logs, along with chemical analysis with the intention of reprocessing the seismic data focusing on mineral brine. Evaluation of reservoir potential will be done in preparation for the re-entry of shut-in wells located throughout the Paradox Property."

STM Director Wayne Tisdale states: "Our corporate strategy is focused on acquiring underexplored lithium basins with extensive historic drilling already completed and existing fluid analysis as evidence of the presence of high grade lithium in the mineral brine. We are currently evaluating multiple additional opportunities in the lithium space for potential acquisition."

Approximately eight wells have been drilled on the Paradox Property with approximately 25 historic wells in the immediate area. Of these 25 historic wells, five near the Paradox Property have analytical data for lithium and are concurrent with a zone determined by the USGS to contain greater than 40% total dissolved solids in oil field brines. Lithium occurs at the basin in oversaturated mineral brine (40 per cent minerals, 60 per cent water) and was discovered during oil exploration when drill wells intercepted the main brine zone (clastic break 31) of the Paradox formation. The main brine zone is approximately 6,000 feet deep, and consists of 28 feet of shale, anhydrite and dolomite; the bed is not part of any oil reservoir. The fractured clastic zones form an excellent reservoir for brines derived from underlying evaporate units. The fracturing is caused by salt flowage, and it is possible that, when brine is removed from the zones, salt will flow into voids assisting to maintain the high reservoir pressure and high recovery of brine ("Concentrated Subsurface Brines in the Moab Region, Utah", Utah Geological and Mineralogical Survey, June 1965).

The Company has not undertaken any independent investigation of the drill results, fluid analysis or other information contained in this press release nor has it independently analyzed the results of the previous exploration work in order to verify the accuracy of the information or whether the information was prepared in accordance with the requirements of National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101"). The Company believes that the historical drill results, fluid analysis and other information contained in this press release are relevant to continuing exploration on the Paradox Property. The Company intends to conduct a review of recent and historic well logs, along with chemical analysis in the area and reprocessing of seismic data focusing on mineral brine. Evaluation of reservoir potential will be done in preparation for the re-entry of shut-in wells.

In consideration for the acquisition of a 100-per-cent interest in the Paradox Property, STM will make a cash payment of $65,000.00 USD and issue 4,500,000 common shares to the vendor on the closing date and will make an additional payment of $65,000 USD within 30 days of the closing date. The completion of the acquisition of the Paradox Property is subject to a number of conditions precedent including, without limitation, the parties having received all necessary regulatory, court and third party consents, orders (both interim and final), approvals, waivers and authorizations as may be required in respect of the acquisition (including the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange). In addition, each party shall have completed their due diligence of the other party to their satisfaction including, without limitation, STM being satisfied that it will acquire good and valid title to the Paradox Property, free and clear of any and all liabilities and encumbrances.

Mr. Garry Clark, P. Geo., of Clark Exploration Consulting, is the "qualified person" as defined in NI 43-101, who has reviewed and approved the technical content in this press release.

About The Company

STM is a Canadian-based exploration company focused on the acquisition and development of production grade lithium deposits in North America. STM has executed a definitive agreement to acquire the Deep Valley lithium property, located in west-central Alberta, consisting of a 6,648 ha (16,427 acres) permit that encompasses an area of reported enrichment of lithium brines. This property is located in the active Fox Creek - Sturgeon Lake area of Alberta, where formation waters within Leduc aquifers are known to be highly enriched in lithium, potassium, boron, bromine and other commodities. Within the central part of the property, historic samples of formation waters (brines) have returned 140 mg/L (ppm) from the Leduc Formation, which are amongst the highest values recorded for Alberta.

Reader Advisory

This press release should not be considered a comprehensive summary of the terms of the acquisition described above. Additional information may be required by the TSX Venture Exchange and may be disseminated at a future date following a satisfactory review by the TSX Venture Exchange.

Completion of the acquisition is subject to a number of conditions, including but not limited to, TSX Venture Exchange acceptance. The acquisition cannot close until the required approvals are obtained. There can be no assurance that the acquisition will be completed as proposed or at all.

The Company has not undertaken any independent investigation of the drill results, fluid analysis or other information contained in this press release nor has it independently analyzed the results of the previous exploration work in order to verify the accuracy of the information or whether the information was prepared in accordance with the requirements of NI 43-101. The Company believes that the historical drill results, fluid analysis and other information contained in this press release are relevant to continuing exploration on the Paradox Property. The Company intends to conduct a review of recent and historic well logs, along with chemical analysis in the area and reprocessing of seismic data focusing on mineral brine. Evaluation of reservoir potential will be done in preparation for the re-entry of shut-in wells.

This news release contains certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities law. Forward-looking information is frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. . In particular, forward-looking information in this press release includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to timing and completion of the acquisition and the completion of the conditions precedent to the acquisition (including receipt of TSX Venture Exchange approval). Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking information are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. We cannot guarantee future results, performance or achievements. Consequently, there is no representation that the actual results achieved will be the same, in whole or in part, as those set out in the forward-looking information.

Forward-looking information is based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date the statements are made, and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking information. Some of the risks and other factors that could cause the results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking information include, but are not limited to: general economic conditions in Canada and globally; industry conditions, including governmental regulation and environmental regulation; failure to obtain industry partner and other third party consents and approvals, if and when required; the availability of capital on acceptable terms; the need to obtain required approvals from regulatory authorities; stock market volatility; liabilities inherent in water disposal facility operations; competition for, among other things, skilled personnel and supplies; incorrect assessments of the value of acquisitions; geological, technical, processing and transportation problems; changes in tax laws and incentive programs; failure to realize the anticipated benefits of acquisitions and dispositions; and the other factors. Readers are cautioned that this list of risk factors should not be construed as exhaustive.

The forward-looking information contained in this news release is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. We undertake no duty to update any of the forward-looking information to conform such information to actual results or to changes in our expectations except as otherwise required by applicable securities legislation. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information.

The TSX Venture Exchange has in no way passed upon the merits of the proposed acquisition and has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Vancouver, B.C. / TheNewswire / MAY 31, 2016 - Avarone Metals Inc. (CSE: AVM) (Frankfurt: W2U1; WKN: A14SVX) (the "Company" or "Avarone") is pleased to announce it has received exploration permits from the Bureau of Land Management, Nevada, to complete up to 20 drill holes on its 100% owned Moab Lithium Project in the South Big Smoky Valley, Nevada.

Drilling is to be conducted utilizing Vibracore electric drills, which will utilize large diameter NQ2 and AQ rods for superior sample recovery and is expected to reach depths of up to 50 meters. The purpose of the drilling will be to test subsurface layers for lithium and other commercial elements. The Company is in the process of mobilizing its field crew and work is expected to commence shortly.

The Moab Lithium Project fits well into the playa-type brine deposit model as it shares geological similarities with Clayton Valley, the only lithium producing brine operation area in North America. A playa is an internally drained brine deposit, the surface of which is primarily composed of silts and clays in which lithium can accumulate from the surrounding source rocks during successive evaporation and concentration events.

"We are excited to receive our initial drill permit for our Moab lithium brine project, located in Nevada near the Tesla Gigafactory. The salt-bearing zones, in addition to the volcanogenic clays encountered at Moab, confirm previous observations made by historical USGS surveys on both the Moab property as well as Ultra Lithium's contiguous property, which is currently being drilled within the same enclosed basin," said CEO Marc Levy.

About Lithium in Nevada

Lithium is a scarce and technologically important element produced primarily from brines and pegmatites. Although it is a non-renewable resource, it is used in conjunction with renewable energy technologies and hybrid automobiles, primarily in the form of Li-ion batteries, currently the most widely applied battery technology in many electronic devices. The consumption of lithium carbonate is on the rise and so far global production has kept pace with demand.

The Big Smoky Valley, located in the Range Province in southern Nevada, is an internally drained, fault bounded and closed basin approximately 3 kilometers wide and 14 kilometers long. Geological modeling suggests that lithium-rich brines have been transported and deposited in the both the Clayton and Big Smoky Valleys since the Pleistocene era. The primary exploration model is to identify and map basins with ground gravity surveys and evaluate the chemistry of salts and sediments therein with RC or rotary-mud drilling. In the later stages of exploration, downhole geophysics and seismic reflection surveys are also utilized to define lithium-bearing aquifers.

The technical content of this news release has been prepared under the supervision of Peter Born, P. Geo., a Qualified Person as defined in National Instrument 43-101, Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects.

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

AVARONE METALS INC.

Marc Levy

CEO

For more information contact the Company at:

Telephone: (604) 669-9788

Facsimile: (604) 669-9768

Neither the CSE nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

No stock exchange, securities commission or other regulatory authority has approved or disapproved the information contained herein. We seek Safe Harbor.

Copyright (c) 2016 TheNewswire - All rights reserved.
9.05 g/t 3E over 5.5 meters in Super T

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - May 31, 2016) - Platinum Group Metals Ltd. (TSX:PTM)(NYSE MKT:PLG) ("Platinum Group Metals" or the "Company") reports new platinum, palladium and gold ("3E") assay results for recent drill intercepts completed on the Waterberg Project subsequent to the updated independent resource estimate announced on April 19, 2016. Assay results for two new drill intercepts on the Super T layer have been received as follows:

Hole WB208 - 9.05 g/t 3E (2.16 g/t Pt, 5.32 g/t Pd, 1.57 g/t Au) over 5.5 meters from 1006.5 meters to 1012 meters vertical depth.

Hole WB209 - 4.40 g/t 3E (1.12 g/t Pt, 2.97 g/t Pd, 0.31 g/t Au) over 5.72 meters from 1061 meters to 1066.72 meters vertical depth.

Previously announced holes up dip from WB208 and WB209 include WB195 (13.91 g/t 3E over 11.87 meters from 895.63 meters to 907.5 meters vertical) and WB200 (5.92 g/t 3E over 7.56 meters from 938.44 meters to 946 meters vertical.

On the Super F central layer new infill drilling assay results have been received as follows:

Hole WB206 - 3.56 g/t 3E (1.15 g/t Pt, 2.35 g/t Pd, 0.06 g/t Au) over 6.0 meters from 403.5 meters to 409.5 meters vertical.

Hole WB207 - 3.75 g/t 3E (1.10 g/t Pt, 2.42 g/t Pd, 0.23 g/t Au) over 6.5 meters from 328.5 meters to 335.0 meters vertical.

On the Super F boundary layer new infill drilling assay results have been received as follows:

Hole WB202 - 4.00 g/t 3E (1.24 g/t Pt, 2.65 g/t Pd, 0.11 g/t Au) over 7.91 meters from 245.09 meters to 253 meters vertical.

Hole WB204 - 4.01 g/t 3E (1.07g/t Pt, 2.74g/t Pd, 0.20 g/t Au) over 8.84 meters from 275.66 meters to 284.5 meters vertical.

True thickness of the intercepts described above is estimated at 70% of vertical thickness on both the T and F layers.

R. Michael Jones, P.Eng., CEO of Platinum Group Metals Ltd. said, "These new intercepts continue to demonstrate the extraordinary nature in grade and thickness of the T and F layers at Waterberg compared to most platinum mines in South Africa. The Super F and the T layers are also extremely shallow (140 meters) as compared to another recent underground discovery on the North Limb. There remains excellent potential to increase the size of the Waterberg deposit and to further define the new Super T area. We continue to work closely with our partner the Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation ("JOGMEC") to expand and delineate the Waterberg Project. A Pre-Feasibility Study for the project is in progress and on track for completion later this year."

The Company holds a 58.62% effective interest in the Waterberg Project, located on the North Limb of the Bushveld Igneous Complex, South Africa. Engineering work related to an ongoing Pre-Feasibility Study continues for fully mechanized mining plans as recommended in an NI 43-101 Technical report filed on April 29, 2016. Drilling and engineering work is being funded 100% at this time by the Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation ("JOGMEC") under a US$ 20 million firm commitment to the Joint Venture. The Joint Venture technical committee will be meeting in June to discuss ongoing work in addition to the approved Pre-Feasibility Study.

The Waterberg deposit is still open to the north and down dip. Surface exploration work up to 15 kilometers north of the known deposit area is now re-commencing northward on Joint Venture licenses to define the extent of this newly discovered lobe of the famous Bushveld Complex.

Waterberg Resources (April 2016)

Mineral resources in the T and F layers at Waterberg (100% project basis) have increased to an estimated 23.894 million ounces 4E in the indicated category plus 11.710 million ounces 4E in the inferred category:

Indicated 209.559 million tonnes grading 3.55 g/t 4E (1.07 g/t Pt, 2.19 g/t Pd, 0.26 g/t Au, 0.03 g/t Rh, 2.5 g/t cut-off)

Inferred 105.918 million tonnes grading 3.44 g/t 4E (1.04 g/t Pt, 2.09 g/t Pd, 0.28 g/t Au, 0.03 g/t Rh, 2.5 g/t cut-off)

Note Inferred resources have a high degree of uncertainty and resources may never be converted to reserves.

To view the maps accompanying this press release please click on the following link: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/1057074m.pdf.

Qualified Person Data Verification and Quality Control and Assurance

Scientific and Technical Information in this Press Release related to mineral resources has been approved in a filed technical report by Charles J Muller, (BScHons) Pr Sci Nat (Reg. No 400201/04), an independent consulting geologist and resource estimator of CJM Consulting, an independent qualified person as defined in National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("N1 43-101"). See technical report at www.sedar.com entitled "Mineral Resource Update on the Waterberg Project Located in the Bushveld Igneous Complex, South Africa" dated April 29, 2016.

This press release has been reviewed and approved by R. Michael Jones, P.Eng., a non-independent Qualified Person and the CEO of the Company. He has verified the technical information for disclosure in this press release by reviewing the work of experienced Company geologists, visiting the site and the ongoing project database.

Assays have been assured for quality through a chain of custody protocol, check assay process and the blind insertion of blanks and standards in the assay sample stream in accordance with the Company procedures. Assays are completed by fire assay and ICP finish in an ISO 17025 accredited lab.

On behalf of the Board of Platinum Group Metals Ltd.,

R. Michael Jones, CEO and Co-founder

Disclosure

The Toronto Stock Exchange and the NYSE MKT LLC have not reviewed and do not accept responsibility for the accuracy or adequacy of this news release, which has been prepared by management.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of Canadian securities laws and forward-looking statements within the meaning of U.S. securities laws ("forward-looking statements"). Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as: believe, expect, anticipate, intend, estimate, plans, postulate and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. All statements that are not statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this press release include, without limitation, statements regarding the use of proceeds. Although the Company believes the forward-looking statements in this press release are reasonable, it can give no assurance that the expectations and assumptions in such statements will prove to be correct. 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 market conditions; the nature, quality and quantity of any mineral deposits that may be located; metal prices; other prices and costs; currency exchange rates; the Company's ability to obtain any necessary permits, consents or authorizations required for its activities; the Company's ability to access further funding and produce minerals from its properties successfully or profitably, to continue its projected growth, or to be fully able to implement its business strategies and other risk factors described in the Company's prospectus, registration statement, Form 40-F annual report, annual information form and other filings with the SEC and Canadian securities regulators, which may be viewed at www.sec.gov and www.sedar.com, respectively.

Cautionary Note to U.S. and other Investors

Estimates of mineralization and other technical information included or referenced in this press release have been prepared in accordance with NI 43-101. The definitions of proven and probable reserves used in NI 43-101 differ from the definitions in SEC Industry Guide 7. Under SEC Industry Guide 7 standards, a "final" or "bankable" feasibility study is required to report reserves, the three-year historical average price is used in any reserve or cash flow analysis to designate reserves and the primary environmental analysis or report must be filed with the appropriate governmental authority. As a result, reserves reported by the Company in accordance with NI 43-101 may not qualify as "reserves" under SEC standards. In addition, the terms "mineral resource", "measured mineral resource", "indicated mineral resource" and "inferred mineral resource" are defined in and required to be disclosed by NI 43-101; however, these terms are not defined terms under SEC Industry Guide 7 and normally are not permitted to be used in reports and registration statements filed with the SEC. Mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. Investors are cautioned not to assume that any part or all of the mineral deposits in these categories will ever be converted into reserves. "inferred mineral resources" have a great amount of uncertainty as to their existence, and great uncertainty as to their economic and legal feasibility. It cannot be assumed that all or any part of an inferred mineral resource will ever be upgraded to a higher category. Under Canadian securities laws, estimates of inferred mineral resources may not form the basis of feasibility or pre-feasibility studies, except in rare cases. Additionally, disclosure of "contained ounces" in a resource is permitted disclosure under Canadian securities laws; however, the SEC normally only permits issuers to report mineralization that does not constitute "reserves" by SEC standards as in place tonnage and grade without reference to unit measurements. Accordingly, information contained or referenced in this press release containing descriptions of the Company's mineral deposits may not be comparable to similar information made public by U.S. companies subject to the reporting and disclosure requirements of United States federal securities laws and the rules and regulations thereunder.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - May 31, 2016) -

NOT TO BE DISSEMINATED IN THE UNITED STATES

Silver Bull Resources Inc., (TSX:SVB) (OTCQB:SVBL) ("Silver Bull" or the "Company") is pleased to announce its intention to complete the second and final tranche of the non-brokered private placement (the "Private Placement") of units (the "Units") of the Company announced on May 12, 2016. The Units will be issued at a price of CDN$0.13 per Unit. Each Unit will consist of one common share in the capital of the Company and one Common Share purchase warrant (a "Warrant"). Each Warrant shall entitle the holder thereof to acquire one common share at a price of CDN$0.16 until the date that is 12 months following closing of the Private Placement. If the closing price of the common shares of the Company on the OTCQB Venture Marketplace is US$0.18 or higher for five consecutive trading days then the Warrant will expire thirty trading days from such fifth consecutive day.

Under the first tranche of the Private Placement, which closed May 19, 2016, Silver Bull issued 4,349,500 Units for aggregate gross proceeds of CDN$565,435.

The Company expects to issue 3,342,810 Units in the second tranche of the Private Placement, for gross proceeds of CDN$434,565 on or about Friday, June 3, 2016.

The net proceeds of the Private Placement will be used by Silver Bull for general working capital purposes. The Company has agreed to pay a finder's fee of CDN$13,000 in connection with a subscription in the second tranche.

All securities issued pursuant to the Private Placement are subject to a hold period under applicable Canadian securities laws, which will expire four months plus one day from the date of closing of the Private Placement, and U.S. Securities Laws, which will expire six months from the date of the closing of the Private Placement.

The securities issued under the Private Placement have not been, and will not be, registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any state securities laws, and accordingly, may not be offered or sold within the United States except in compliance with the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities requirements or pursuant to exemptions therefrom. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of Silver Bull's securities in the United States.

About Silver Bull: Silver Bull is a mineral exploration company whose shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and trade on the OTCQB in the United States, and is based out of Vancouver, Canada. The "Sierra Mojada" project is located 150 kilometers north of the city of Torreon in Coahuila, Mexico, and is highly prospective for silver and zinc.

On behalf of the Board of Directors

Tim Barry, CPAusIMM, Chief Executive Officer, President and Director

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this news release are "forward-looking" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking statements can generally be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "may", "will", "expect", "intend", "estimate", "anticipate", "believe", "continue", "plans" or similar terminology. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements relating to the completion of and expected use of the proceeds from the Private Placement. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon the current belief, opinions and expectations of management that, while considered reasonable by the Company, are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties and other contingencies. Many factors could cause the Company's actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. These factors include, among others, the market prices, metal prices, availability of capital and financing, general economic, market or business conditions, as well as other risk factors set out under the heading "Risk Factors" in the Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended October 31, 2015, which is available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Investors are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements due to the inherent uncertainty therein.
VANCOUVER, May 31, 2016 - Nevada Clean Magnesium, Inc. (TSXV: NVM; Frankfurt-M1V; OTC Pink Sheets: MLYFF) (The "Company") today announced that the TSX Venture Exchange has granted a 30 day extension for the non-brokered private placement of unsecured convertible notes.

The accumulated total from the two tranches has collectively raised $250,000; no finder's fees were paid in connection with the financing.

About the Financing

The Principal Amount of the Convertible Note will bear interest at 20% per annum, and any accrued but unpaid interest, will mature on the date that is one (1) year following the Closing Date (the "Maturity Date"). Each Convertible Note will be convertible into common shares (each, a "Share") of the Company at a price of $0.05 per Share and any accrued but unpaid interest thereon will be convertible into Shares at the price per Share which is the greater of (i) $0.05 and (ii) the Market Price (as defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange (the "Exchange")) on the date of a conversion notice.

In connection with the private placement, the Company may, subject to regulatory acceptance, pay a finder's fee to certain arm's-length parties on the proceeds raised.

The securities issued will be subject to a 4 month hold period from the date of issue of, as the case may be, the Convertible Notes, or the Shares. The completion of the private placement and payment of any commission and fees remains subject to the receipt of all necessary approvals, including the approval of the Exchange. In additon,.

Proceeds of the non-brokered private placement will be used for working capital.

About Nevada Clean Magnesium, Inc.

Nevada Clean Magnesium is focused on becoming a major U.S. producer and distributor of primary, high grade, low cost magnesium metal extracted from its 100% owned Tami-Mosi property located in North Central Nevada. Based on the Company's NI 43-101 Preliminary Economic Assessment Report published in September 2011 and amended in July 2014, the Tami-Mosi Project has an inferred resource of 412 million tonnes with an average grade of 12.3% Mg for a contained metal content of 111 billion pounds of magnesium using a 12% cut-off grade contained within a high purity dolomite block. For more information, please visit www.nevadacmi.com.

This news release was reviewed by James Sever, P. Eng. a qualified person recognized under NI 43-101.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward-Looking Statement

Statements in this news release that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements in this news release include that we will conduct and close a private placement and that we can become a a major U.S. producer and distributor of primary, high grade, low cost magnesium metal. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors, including the Company's dolomite reserves may not be mined because of technical, regulatory, financing or other obstacles, the market price for magnesium may make our resources uneconomic, we may not be able hire and retain skilled employees, and other risks associated with being a mineral exploration and development company. We may not be able to close with interested investors on our intended private placement because of perceived risks or market conditions. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking information except as required by law. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release.

To Reach Nevada Clean Magnesium Please Contact:

Edward Lee, CEO at (604) 210-9862

For additional information please visit our website at http://www.nevadacmi.com or view our profile at http://www.sedar.com.

You may also follow us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Copyright (c) 2016 TheNewswire - All rights reserved.


THUNDER BAY, ON, May 31, 2016 /CNW/ - Wolfden Resources Corp. (WLF:TSX-V) ("Wolfden" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has completed a previously announced non-brokered private placement (the "Offering") of 3,250,000 flow-through units (the "Flow-Through Units") at a price of $0.11 per Flow-Through Unit for gross proceeds of $357,500. Each Flow-Through Unit consists of one common share of the Company that is a "flow-through share" within the meaning in the Income Tax Act (Canada) (a "Flow-Through Unit Share") and one-half of one non-transferrable common share purchase warrant (each whole warrant a "Warrant"). Each such Warrant will entitle the holder to purchase one common share of the Company at a price of $0.20 per common share until May 31, 2018.

In connection with the Offering, the Company has paid an aggregate of $10,000 in finder's fees to certain arm's length parties.

The Flow-Through Unit Shares and the Warrants (including the underlying common shares) issued under the Offering will be subject to a four-month hold period which will expire on October 1, 2016. The Offering is subject to final acceptance by the TSX Venture Exchange.

The proceeds from the Offering will be used to fund exploration at the Company's Canadian mineral exploration projects. Additional information is available in the Wolfden press releases dated May 10, 2016 and May 12, 2016.

ABOUT WOLFDEN RESOURCES:

Wolfden is a mineral exploration company that recently acquired the Rice Island and Nickel Island properties in Manitoba. Manitoba is ranked #6 in Canada and #19 in the world as the most favourable jurisdiction to conduct mining and exploration (Fraser Institute (2015-2016)). The Company also holds a dominant, 24,000 hectare, land position in the heart of the Bathurst Mining Camp in New Brunswick and a 100% interest in the Clarence Stream gold-antimony property in southern New Brunswick that hosts a significant 43-101 mineral resource.

This press release contains forward-looking information (within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation) that involves various risks and uncertainties regarding future events. Such forward-looking information includes the anticipated final approval of the Offering, statements based on current expectations involving a number of risks and uncertainties and such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance of the Company, and include, without limitation, statements relating to plans and results of exploration and the magnitude and quality of the property. There are numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and the Company's plans and objectives to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking information in this news release, including without limitation, the following risks and uncertainties; (i) risks inherent in the mining industry; (ii) regulatory and environmental risks; (iii) results of exploration activities and development of mineral properties; (iv) risks relating to the estimation of mineral resources; (v) stock market volatility and capital market fluctuations; and (vi) general market and industry conditions. Actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. This forward-looking information is based on estimates and opinions of management on the date hereof and is expressly qualified by this notice. Risks and uncertainties about the Company's business are more fully discussed in the Company's disclosure materials filed with the securities regulatory authorities in Canada at www.sedar.com. The Company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking information or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from such information unless required by applicable law.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE Wolfden Resources Corp.
Sweet lemon rumdul (Cambodian beef rib curry) is the go-to dish. Photo: Dominic Lorrimer

Address Upper level, 14 Kensington Street Chippendale, New South Wales 2008 View map Book online Opening hours Lunch Thu-Sun noon-3pm; dinner daily 6pm-10pm Features BYO, Licensed, Romance-first date, Accepts bookings, Gluten-free options, Vegetarian friendly, Outdoor seating Prices Moderate (mains $20-$40) Chef Tiw Rakarin Payments eftpos, AMEX, Visa, Mastercard Phone 02 8823 8818

These days, everything is a journey. Life is a journey, apparently. Even a meal is a journey, especially as you travel from one street-food stall to another in Chippendale's lantern-lined Spice Alley.

The journey continues as you climb the stairs to the newly arrived Mekong, where the menu is described as "a travelling feast along the river", somewhat tediously divided into Little Jetties (snacks), Enter (entrees), Enter Mainland (main courses), Curried Fields (curries), and River Sides (side dishes).

Mekong is forgiven its poetically inclined, pun-filled menu, however, because it delivers a lightness, elegance and nuance we don't often see in our Asian restaurants. Indeed, it brings us dishes we don't often see, taking its influences from the Mekong River's own journey through Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam; stopping short of Tibet.

Mossy green walls, bamboo stalks and fishing-basket-style lamps evoke the region. Photo: Dominic Lorrimer

Chef Tiw Rakarin, who also curated the street food of Spice Alley for developer Dr Stanley Quek, has installed Mekong above the more casual Lower Mekong. Rakarin has his own followers from his time at Rambutan, Alphabet and Mama's Buoi, and looks set to find more in Chip 'n Dale. The long, darkly furnished room is pleasingly lined with mottled, mossy green walls, thrusting thickets of bamboo and a copper-lined bar, topped with wire mesh pendant lamps recalling fishing baskets.

And so we trace the Lao border, wake up to Thai sunrises, pause by gilded Cambodian pagodas  lordy, let's just eat. The inspiration for some dishes is recognisable, such as "smashed prawn cakes" ($15 for three), a richer, sweeter version of Thai tod mun pla fishcakes; and a "little stack" ($6 for two), a sweet/salty hit of juicy pineapple stacked with smoked salmon and caramelised radish that is Mekong's take on ma hor. Others come from left field, such as a complimentary opener of baby heirloom carrot, coated in chilli jam, lime zest and fluffy, funky-smelling moo yong (pork floss).

Then there's a simple, crisp omelette filled with sour pork roll and morning glory ($14); and squid ink dumplings ($12), the crab and prawn filling held within delicate, glossy, jet-black skins, served with a pour-over fragrant chicken pho broth that's a trip in its own right.

Crab and pork squid ink dumplings. Photo: Dominic Lorrimer

While the cute titles could drive you batty  the rice is a "jasmine paddy field", and a red curry of confit duck is "a duck at sunrise"  the cooking is true. Chunky with sweet potato and heady with lemongrass, "sweet rumdul" Cambodian beef rib curry is sweetly satisfying, while a main course of "young ginger" ($24) is a prosaic stir-fry lifted by truly excellent Holmbrae chicken thigh meat.

Sauces and relishes are consistently delicious here; a world apart from the bog-standard sweet chilli sauce brigade. And if you want to finish your journey in a fresh, cool amusement park of flavour, go for the Bangkok ice-cream bowl ($10), a happy mix of coconut ice-cream, pomegranate, roasted peanuts and chewy palm seed lozenges served in a coconut shell.

BYO for its first few weeks (the excellent Red Bottle in the adjacent Central Park makes that no problem), Mekong will be doing cocktails as well as mocktails any day now, alongside a spice-friendly wine list.

Sweetcorn harvest (rice flour cups). Photo: Dominic Lorrimer

There is charm on the floor, and a kitchen that cares enough to raise what is often street food to a higher level without losing the reason you liked it in the first place.

As they say  and I couldn't, to save my life: "Take a barge down the Mekong River, loaded with the richest cargo: its cuisine."

THE LOWDOWN

Best bit: The smell of jasmine rice.

Worst bit: Bit of a journey to the downstairs loo.

Go-to dish: Cambodian beef rib curry, $28.

Terry Durack is chief restaurant critic for The Sydney Morning Herald and senior reviewer for the Good Food Guide. This rating is based on the Good Food Guide scoring system.

www.kensingtonstreet.com.au/vendors/mekong
Andrew McConnell says Moon Under Water will make way for good times around the lazy susan. Photo: Rodger Cummins

Zeitgiest-surfing Melbourne restaurateur Andrew McConnell has seen the future and the future is ... Chinese.

In August he'll be smashing down walls at his Fitzroy bistro the Builders Arms and the rear contemporary dining room Moon Under Water, and creating Ricky & Pinky, a fun but not kitsch Chinese restaurant inside the 1853 hotel.

What won't change is the front bar. "That's sacred," says McConnell.

The "sacred" Builders Arms front bar is staying in the revamp. Photo: Supplied

But beyond the front bar's tiled walls will be one space, with an open kitchen at the rear giving energy back to the room, round tables with lazy susans and seating for 130, and fish tanks stocked with clams for McConnell's favourite: clams with XO sauce. "People will be able to roll their sleeves up and have a bit of a party."

Hong Kong chef Archan Chan will head the Ricky & Pinky kitchen, working with McConnell on a combination of Canto classics such as drunken chicken and dry-aged roasted duck, and more creative modern dishes.

Chan has spent plenty of time with the McConnell stable, at Cutler & Co, Golden Fields and Supernormal. For the past year, she's been at Sydney's Moon Park, but with its closure expected in September, McConnell was only too happy to lure her south again.

"I had a shortlist of one person for the job," he says. "She's a rare talent."

The impetus for the change was the need to renovate the Gertrude Street hotel, which McConnell took over in 2012.

Realising that the dining landscape had changed and more restaurants and pubs had swung their focus to good steaks and bistro dishes, the time seemed right to try something entirely new, says McConnell, who lived in Hong Kong and Shanghai for five years. Ricky & Pinky is named after the legendary but now-closed Hong Kong tattoo parlour.

Work will begin in July and Moon Under Water and the bistro will close for two weeks in August for the structural work.

Ricky & Pinky, at 211 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, is due to open on August 22.
Sydney's Year of the Chicken continues as Chicken & Sons opens at The White Horse. Photo: Chris Hopkins

Culinary historians not yet born will ponder exactly why 2016 was Sydney's Year of the Chicken, but for now there's no point in pork producers crying fowl. If former fine dining chefs are prepared to burn their paws at the deep fryer and rotisserie the humble chook, who are we to argue?

The Michelin star trained chefs from Chicken & Sons (in Leichhardt and Chatswood) have struck a deal to open at The White Horse in Surry Hills on June 9. White Horse operator Steven Hiles has taken the opportunity to give the pub another design overhaul.

"We're bringing in a smoker. Their chicken burger has been voted the best in Sydney," Hiles says of his new food operators.
Tony Sabia has fulfilled a long-held dream with the opening of Ape restaurant in Potts Point. Photo: Steven Siewert

Ignore the carb barbs, the pasta bar is heading full steam into Sydney in 2016.

A Tavola owner-chef Eugenio Maiale has plans for a new pasta bar at the Tramsheds development at Harold Park in the inner west, while Antonio Sabia from Puntino Trattoria has jumped on the pasta wagon with the opening of Ape in Potts Point. "It's a retail shop with 12 seats to eat-in," Sabia says.

Ape, which stands for Artisan Pasta Espresso, is also the name of the three-wheel light commercial vehicle found across Italy, one of which Sabia is currently customising to home-deliver pasta.

Pasta is made fresh from the tiny shopfront; rigatoni with ripped buffalo mozzarella and ravioli filled with Japanese pumpkin are on the opening menu.

"I've been wanting to do this since I was 18. We're also contemplating gluten free pasta down the track," the chef says.

Ape: 142 Victoria Street, Potts Point Mon-Wed 5.30-9.30pm; Thu-Sat 11.30am-9.30pm.
Same food, different name: Darlinghurst's Lazy Suzie is now called Lucky Suzie. Photo: Dominic Lorrimer

The reviews have been good for new Stanley Street arrival Lazy Suzie, but not everyone approves of its name. "Lazy Susan's Comedy Den in Brisbane has sent us a legal letter saying we've infringed on its trademark. There's no point fighting it, so we're changing the name to Lucky Suzie," co-owner Derek Puah says.

Ex Vue de monde head chef Cory Campbell has joined Reserve Wine Bar in his home town of Newcastle. Reserve's new executive chef moved back to Newcastle last year with the long-term dream of opening Newcastle's first three-hat restaurant.

Glebe Point Diner founding chef Alex Kearns continues to expand his Sydney food interests, which already include a home-delivered meal start-up. Kearns has added a new eatery to his portfolio, nabbing Bonython Cafe in Paddington.

Rockpool Bar & Grill senior sous chef Ben Sitton is headed down the hill to Ivy as the new head chef at Italian restaurant Uccello.
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By Staff Report

United Blood Services will hold a blood drive 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday at Walmart Neighborhood Market, 1852 Sherwood Way.

Donors will receive a Texas Hero T-shirt, a Double Dave's Pizzaworks coupon and be entered into a drawing to win two three-day passes worth $100 or two VIP tent passes worth $280 to the Showdown in Showdown in San Angelo drag boat races.

Grilled burgers will be available for donors.

To make an appointment, call 325-276-6948 or visit bloodhero.com and use sponsor code "neighbor."
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The State Department's inspector general released a report last week concluding that Hillary Clinton is a breathtakingly brazen and consistent liar.

No, that's not a direct quote. Bureaucrats don't talk that way under the best of circumstances  and this IG, Steve Linick, is an Obama appointee whose report is about the apparent Democratic nominee for president.

So it's all the more shocking, then, that the report confirms nearly everything Clinton's critics have been saying. By setting up a secret email server in her home in Chappaqua, New York, without proper authorization from any legal or security official, Clinton displayed a cavalier disregard for national security and an outrageous desire to hide her doings from Freedom of Information Act requests, government archivists, Congress, the press and, ultimately, the American people.

What's infuriating about all of this is that it is not, in fact, news. Yes, the fresh details are justifiably headline-grabbing. But the underlying conclusion is about as shocking as a Department of Interior report confirming that bears are currently using our national parklands as toilets.

Over a year ago, Clinton held a news conference at the United Nations intended to put the whole controversy to rest. Nearly every significant statement she made was a lie. And we've known it for a year.

For instance, she said, "I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no classified material." We know that's untrue. Of the emails she handed over (remember, she unilaterally deleted some 32,000 on her own), 2,079 of them contained classified material, some given a classification even more sensitive than "top secret," some fairly mundane. Her campaign clings to the fact that they were not "marked" classified.

Nonsense. Classified material is "born" classified, and it was Clinton's job to understand that. Moreover, how could the classified material she sent be marked "classified" if the whole point of her shadow server was to avoid oversight by the people who do the classifying? It's like selling bootleg gin and then claiming that no one from the government marked it "bootleg."

Another major lie: that she did this out of "convenience" because she didn't want to carry two devices. The whole thing sort of just happened on autopilot while she was concentrating on much more important things, Clinton insisted.

More lies. Not only did she carry several devices, but the IG report makes it clear that this stealth rig took a lot of planning and effort. She told staffers, "I don't want any risk of the personal being accessible."

When two employees in the IT department raised concerns that Clinton's stealth server would not properly preserve records, a supervisor replied that the matter had been reviewed and approved by lawyers and that the staffers were "never to speak of the secretary's personal email system again."

That's a strange instruction for something lawyers approved, isn't it? The IG couldn't find any evidence of this legal review of Clinton's system. These mystery lawyers are surely unreachable because they are aiding O.J. Simpson in the search for the real killers.

If such a review existed, you'd think the Clinton campaign would provide it to investigators (and the press). Then again, if Clinton did nothing wrong, she also would have talked to the inspector general, like every other relevant secretary of state did. And she would have happily told her team to cooperate with the IG to clear the air. They all refused. I wonder why.

Just kidding. Of course I don't wonder why. From the earliest days of this scandal  and it is a scandal  Clinton has lied. Unlike Donald Trump's lies, which he usually vomits up spontaneously like a vesuvian geyser, Clinton's were carefully prepared, typed up and repeated for all the world to hear over and over again.

I would think this is an important distinction. Neither of the candidates is worthy of the office in my eyes, but voters might discount many of Trump's deceits as symptoms of his glandular personality. Much like Vice President Joe Biden, who always gets a pass for launching errant fake-fact missiles from the offline silo that is his mouth, Trump is often seen as entertainingly spontaneous.

Meanwhile, Clinton  who lives many time zones away from the word "entertaining"  is marketing herself as the mature and upstanding grown-up. She does nothing spontaneously. And that means all of her lies are premeditated.

Jonah Goldberg is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior editor of National Review. Contact him at goldbergcolumn@gmail.com.
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The following editorial appeared in the May 15 (Brazoria County) Facts:

Republicans in Washington insist nothing be done to give a fair hearing to President Barack Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court because the voters are the ones who deserve a say in the matter.

Republicans in Austin have a different take on the role of voters. When locals go to the polls and make a decision on an issue those in the Texas Capitol don't like, the elected leaders will simply overrule them.

Voters in Austin decided May 7 to mandate drivers for ride-hailing companies such as Uber and Lyft undergo background checks that include fingerprinting. The companies spent millions trying to defeat the measure, then pulled out of the city when it passed.

In the aftermath of the vote, several Republicans with some sway have criticized the vote and instead are pushing for statewide regulation of the services, which undoubtedly would be far more industry-friendly than that adopted in Austin.

"This is what happens with liberalism  the government wins and the people lose," Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush posted on Facebook, using an unusual word choice for what many would call "democracy." Senate Transportation Chairman Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, promises to take up the issue in the next legislative session that starts in January.

While Austin certainly is a blue dot in a blood-red state, it would seem the insistence on fingerprinting of drivers is more about the safety of customers than carrying out any sort of liberal agenda. The measure was rooted in widespread reports in the city and elsewhere of ride-hailing drivers with questionable personal histories and those perpetrating real crimes.

A study of Austin Police Department records by KXAN-TV found seven complaints claiming sexual assault by drivers between April and August 2015. During that same time period, three taxi drivers also were accused. Those numbers are not outrageous, but if residents of Austin believe including fingerprints on background checks makes them even lower, they should have that right.

It's what democracy is supposed to be about, after all.

As we have pointed out before, a state government that rails against Washington mandates and being allowed to decide things for itself doesn't seem to think that same requirement should apply to anyone else. State lawmakers overrode an anti-fracking law, bans on plastic grocery bags and other local initiatives put into place by people at the ballot box. If states should have autonomy from the federal government, to some logical measure, cities should have autonomy from the dictums of the state.

Austin voters were well within their rights as Texans and Americans to decide the best approach to keep them safe. Uber and Lyft were within their rights as corporations to decide to take their business elsewhere if they didn't like Austin's rules. And the state would be right to listen to the will of the people instead of deciding they know better.
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For years, there have been warnings about the forthcoming retirements of a large segment of the public sectors most experienced workers. Now, it appears those retirements may be accelerating across many state and local governments.A new Center for State and Local Government Excellence survey indicates that governments are experiencing an uptick in retirements. More than half -- 54 percent -- of surveyed governments reported an increase in retirements last year from 2014, while just 10 percent reported a decrease.The looming talent crisis that weve been talking about for years is right on our doorstep, said Elizabeth Kellar, the centers president.Older workers in all sectors pushed back their retirement in the years following the Great Recession. In the centers 2012 survey , about 46 percent of human resources representatives reported workers were postponing their retirements. That figure has declined each year since, with only 21 percent reporting retirement postponements in the latest survey.Baby boomers at or near retirement age make up a large share of senior-level managers in many agencies. Compared to the private sector, public-sector workers tend to be older and possess higher levels of education.In Virginia, nearly 12 percent of state workers were eligible for retirement, and another quarter of the workforce was eligible to retire within five years as of last year, according to the state Department of Human Resource Management . Similarly, in Washington state 31 percent of executive branch employees are age 55 or older.While its rare for a large swath of public employees to retire all at once, the expiration of union contracts or cuts to retirement benefits have led to spikes in retirements in a few states. In New Jersey, for example, union officials contend that threats of benefit cuts by Gov. Chris Christie led more workers to retire last year. Whats been called the Silver Tsunami will instead play out over a number of years given that the youngest baby boomers just turned 52 years old.Senior-level fire department staff are one segment thats been hit particularly hard with retirements, said Kellar. That's partially because public safety personnel are generally eligible to retire earlier than other public employees.The survey also found that 40 percent of governments experienced year-over-year increases in employees quitting (excluding retirements), while just 11 percent reported declines. Thats up from last year, when 28 percent of responding governments said more employees were quitting. Kellar said poor salary increases or pay freezes that have persisted for years may be one explanation. Another contributing factor could be large numbers of younger workers seeking new employment as they tend to switch jobs more than veteran employees.At the same time, governments report that theyre also hiring more workers. Sixty percent of survey respondents hired more employees last year than in 2014, compared to just 8 percent hiring fewer workers. More recently, employment estimates published by the federal Labor Department suggest overall local government employment picked up modestly over the first few months of this year. Meanwhile, state government job estimates have remained mostly flat for more than a year now.The extent to which individual local governments are able to hire more workers or replace those who retire varies greatly as property taxes and other major sources of revenue have yet to fully recover from the recession in some jurisdictions.Not surprisingly, recruiting and retaining qualified workers were identified as the most important workforce issues to governments in the survey. Not too far behind were succession planning and staff development.That's something the Los Angeles County, Calif., government -- which saw retirements climb 20 percent in 2015 -- is already working on. To prepare the workforce, management-level employees participate in experienced-based and classroom learning programs. Each of the countys 34 departments are expected to maintain and carry out their own succession plans.Most participants in the survey , which was conducted this spring, represented local governments and were members of either the International Public Management Association for Human Resources or National Association of State Personnel Executives.
State lawmakers dealt a surprise loss to Gov. Bruce Rauner on Monday when a handful of Republicans joined with Democrats to override his veto of a bill to provide Chicago with financial relief in paying for police and fire pensions.Meeting on the eve of Tuesday's scheduled adjournment, the move came almost exactly one year after the bill originally passed and only a few days after Rauner vetoed it, prompting a weekend of heated words between the Republican governor and Democratic mayor who once were vacation friends.The override avoids another immediate City Hall property-tax hike following last year's record increase. The Monday vote also injected a major element of drama into the ongoing battle between Rauner and Democrats who control the General Assembly, one that has left Illinois without a formal state government spending plan for nearly a year.But there was no sign that the Republicans who backed the override were bolting from Rauner's larger agenda. And as lawmakers faced a midnight Tuesday deadline for the end of the session, no resolution to the impasse appeared imminent. Instead, rhetoric continued to fly from Rauner's Republican allies aimed at veteran Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan.An override of the Chicago pension veto had been expected in the Senate, where Democrats hold a 40-19 majority over Republicans. The measure got 39 votes, three more than the minimum. Republican Sam McCann of Downstate Plainview, who beat back a March primary election challenge funded by Rauner allies, joined Democrats in the override.An override in the House had been questionable, if not doubtful. Democrats have 71 members, the minimum required to overturn a veto, and the bill got just 65 votes when it was approved.But three Republicans joined with the House Democratic majority -- Reps. David Harris of Arlington Heights, David McSweeney of Barrington Hills and Michael McAuliffe of Chicago. McAuliffe's Northwest Side district is home to many police officers and firefighters.It was the first time that the Democrat-controlled General Assembly has succeeded in overturning a major Rauner veto without first reaching a deal with the governor.The bill was long sought by Emanuel and provides short-term relief to the city by reducing in the short term how much taxpayers contribute to the retirement funds by hundreds of millions of dollars a year through the creation of a new payment schedule. But it also comes at a price, adding billions of dollars in long-term costs while the city's pension debt continues to grow."I particularly want to thank the Democrats and Republicans in the General Assembly for putting politics aside and doing the right thing for Chicago taxpayers, and for our first responders," Emanuel said in a statement. "We in the city agreed to step up and finally do our part to responsibly fund these pensions, and I want to thank Springfield for doing their part as well."Rauner, who has been critical of Emanuel's governance of the city, in particular for failing to take on the Chicago Teachers Union, issued a statement deriding the override vote."Clearly, those who supported this measure haven't recognized what happens when governments fail to promptly fund pension obligations," he said. "Instead of kicking the can down the road, local and state governments should instead focus on reforms that will grow our economy, create jobs and enable us live up to the promises we've made to police and firefighters."In vetoing the bill Friday afternoon, Rauner called the measure "irresponsible" and warned "the cost to Chicago taxpayers" in the long run is "truly staggering."That led Emanuel to spend much of the holiday weekend protesting the move and ripping Rauner, saying the governor had "told every Chicago taxpayer to take a hike" and questioning the governor's trustworthiness. Without the changes in the pension funding schedule, Emanuel said, Chicago taxpayers faced a property tax hike of as much as $300 million.Democratic Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie of Chicago, Madigan's top deputy, called Rauner's veto "an outrage." Democrats argued that delaying the pension payment schedule wasn't ideal, but was necessary to try to prop up the city's finances.Some Republicans made that argument, too."I very respectfully disagreed with (Rauner)," said Harris, who voted "present" on the bill last year. "I understand his logic in terms of saying that it's kicking the can down the road, and it does stretch out the payments, absolutely. But at the same time, I believe the mayor has taken some really significant actions to try to address the problem."Harris said he notified House Republican leadership of his plans to override Rauner but emphasized his action was "totally separate and distinct" from the governor's agenda, focused on pro-business changes and altering collective bargaining and workers' compensation rules.McSweeney said he voted for the override to prevent a tax hike in Chicago. "I looked at it and I'm not voting for a property tax increase. I never have, never will," he said.But opponents sought to play the regionalism card in arguing Chicago was seeking a special deal."The truth is, Chicago is basically, they're coming here again with their hand out," said Rep. Jeanne Ives, R-Wheaton. "They're expecting the General Assembly to make a difficult decision for them, but they have the ability to clean up their own mess ... they just don't want to."Following the vote, Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton walked one floor down from the legislative chambers to Rauner's second-floor Statehouse office for a previously scheduled meeting on the end of session. Asked afterward about Rauner's response to the override, Madigan said the governor "had nothing to say" about it."And," the speaker added, "I was raised not to cause embarrassment for people, so I didn't raise it."As for chances on a comprehensive budget agreement by Tuesday night, Madigan said he already has planned on scheduling House sessions "every Wednesday through June starting next week."It was Madigan and his House Democrats who sent the Senate a budget bill that provides hundreds of millions of dollars to schools but is at least $7 billion short of what the state expects to bring in. If it gets to his desk, Rauner has vowed to veto the bill in its entirety.Many rank-and-file Senate Democrats dislike Madigan's plan, but Cullerton indicated it likely was the one his chamber will vote on Tuesday."The budget bill, I should point out, was passed out of the House first but was negotiated by the speaker and myself together. And, especially, the education part of the budget, which increased the education funding by $760 million, that was totally signed off on by myself and we're working that issue in our caucus," Cullerton said.Rauner has sought to build pressure on Madigan to agree to some of his wish list by organizing bipartisan groups of rank-and-file lawmakers to negotiate key agenda items. Madigan said his members will continue to take part in those groups, though he said they are unwilling to "sacrifice the interests of the middle class."On Monday, Madigan held briefings to update House Democrats on the status of those working groups. But in a symbol of the deep partisan divide, the Rauner-controlled Illinois Republican Party issued a news release that likened the briefings as brainwashing "re-education meetings."Republicans also sought to score points when GOP Sen. Matt Murphy of Palatine tried to enter the Democratic meetings and later asked Madigan's members to "not fall victim to the speaker's ongoing personal vendetta against the governor.""This seems to me like his attempt to derail (his members) and run out the clock," Murphy said of Madigan.
Each year, thousands of people are charged in animal cruelty cases for abusing their pets or other animals. But many of those charges don't result in trial or conviction.That could soon change in Connecticut.Legislation signed by Gov. Dan Malloy makes Connecticut the first state in the nation to appoint "animal advocates" to assist courts in deciding animal cruelty cases. The new measure allows judges to choose pro bono lawyers or law students to represent victims -- in this case, pet cats and dogs -- by gathering witness testimony as well as other records from police, animal control and veterinarians.The law is a victory for animal rights proponents who see Connecticut's current approach as a pro-forma rehab process that fails to adequately prosecute offenders and prevent future abuse."Animal cruelty is still somewhat under-prioritized by the court system because its 'an animal,'" says state Rep. Diana Urban, who wrote the bill known as Desmonds Law , named for a dog that was found strangled to death by his owner in 2012. But Urban framed the legislation as a remedy for more than just animals, citing research that shows people who abuse animals often commit acts of violence against people, too. Earlier this year, the FBI began collecting acts of cruelty against animals in its national crime database, which federal officials hope will allow them to examine whether animal abuse is a precursor to other types of crime.In Connecticut, the high-profile case of Desmond galvanized activists who believed the owner didn't receive appropriate punishment: He completed a rehab course and his record was then sealed by the court.There was no question in anyones mind that he would get jail time, said Urban. But when he didn't, "a lot of people said, This has got to stop."The Desmond case was typical for the state: In Connecticut, 82 percent of people charged with animal cruelty either see their cases thrown out or are sent to rehabilitation. Animal rights groups say that rehab often amounts to periodic check-ins with a supervisor or possibly community service, and that the program isn't tailored to address cases of animal violence.The new law could potentially lead to faster rulings and more convictions because it lets judges designate a single person to gather information about a case and present it all at once.But some critics worry that bringing more animal cruelty cases to trial will bog down Connecticut's court system -- the very thing rehabilitation and other pre-trial diversion programs are designed to prevent. Sen. Joe Markley, one of the few state lawmakers to oppose the legislation, said that while of course he supports the goal of reducing animal cruelty, creating a new category of legal advocate in the state could place a strain on the judicial system. Desmond's Law, he said, is "unprecedented" and could have unforeseen consequences on the courts.One other state -- Rhode Island -- does allow judges to appoint animal advocates in cruelty cases, but they aren't legal experts. They're veterinarians, either from the states agriculture division or the nonprofit Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA). At a judge's request, these veterinarians may inspect animals for evidence of animal fighting, neglect or mistreatment.Connecticut lawmakers decided to take a different tack because it appears that judges in Rhode Island don't use that option.Im embarrassed to say, Ive never been called to be an advocate, said Scott Marshall, the Rhode Island state veterinarian who oversees animal health. And, to my knowledge, neither has anyone from SPCA.Marshall suspects judges either dont know about the animal advocate law or choose not to use veterinary expertise because it would slow down court proceedings.In Connecticut, Desmond's Law passed both state legislative chambers easily, 119-24 in the House and 34-2 in the Senate. Gov. Malloy's office announced on May 31 that he had signed the measure.
Ruling in the case of an Eastern Iowa teenager who killed his grandparents, the Iowa Supreme Court has concluded that sentencing a juvenile offender to life without the possibility of parole violates the state constitution.The ruling comes in the case of Isaiah Sweet, then 17, of Manchester who pleaded guilty to killing his grandparents, Richard Sweet, 55, and Janet Sweet, 63, in 2012.Sweet said in court he intended to murder them "before, during and after" he shot them in the head with a high-powered rifle in their Manchester home. He acknowledged the state could prove that he did so "willfully, deliberately and premeditatively."A district court judge called two sentences of life without parole appropriate for Sweet because he was a coldblooded murderer who had little chance of rehabilitation.However, in concurring with the 4-3 majority, Chief Justice Mark Cady said sentencing a teenager to life without parole violates the Constitution's cruel and unusual punishment clause.Judges cannot predict whether a teen murderer might be rehabilitated in the future, Cady said. There is an "inherent deficiency" in the information available that makes it "cruel to sentence a youthful offender to life without the possibility of parole at a time when the juvenile has not even had the time to finish maturing.""In particular, a juvenile offender who is resentenced based on evidence of rehabilitation acquired after full brain development has occurred may present a far better case for parole than an offender who has not completed brain development," he wrote.In a dissenting opinion, Justice Edward Mansfield said the majority lacked justification to break new ground by categorically forbidding life without parole sentences for teen felons."More is needed before we strike down a legislatively authorized sentence -- especially one the General Assembly reauthorized by large majorities in both (chambers) just last year," Mansfield wrote.
(TNS) -- A decade-long, problem-plagued technology project at the Texas attorney generals office will be $200 million over budget and two years delayed by the time it wraps up, state officials said Friday.T2  a massive technology system upgrade intended to handle child support payments and investigations at the attorney generals office  will ultimately cost $420 million. But officials say they finally have control over the runaway project. T2 is expected to go live Dec. 3, 2018. If the project is not completed by then, Accenture, the technology company spearheading the remaining work, will be fined $340,000 for every week it is late.Were confident weve explored the problems and identified the solutions, said Steve Pier, director of intergovernmental relations and strategic initiatives for the attorney general.The new price tag includes $145 million for Accenture. The rest has been going to state employees and other contractors and for the use and maintenance of existing state technology.The federal Office of Child Support Enforcement is paying two-thirds of the cost.That agency has raised objections to the state in recent months, demanding reforms and freezing its T2 payments in December. Earlier this month, however, the federal office signed off on the states plans to save the project and resumed its funding , saying the attorney general had a clear go forward strategy focused on ensuring good management of the project.The T2 project has been a thorn in the states side for years.In 2007, Gov. Greg Abbott  then attorney general  decided to upgrade the old system, which was built in 1994 and struggled to handle the growing number of child support enforcement cases. Officials wanted a more nimble system that would make it easier to deal with investigations, track customer information and process child support payments. They hoped to get rid of paper case files, develop the ability to access the system remotely and revamp ways to handle other tasks.The agency currently handles 1.5 million child support cases, and more 5,000 families sign up every month, said Mara Friesen, deputy attorney general for child support.By the time T2 hit the development stage, the endeavor was crippled by bloated bureaucracy, substandard work and unrealistic deadlines. Numerous reports by University of Texas researchers hired to review the project raised red flags about the troubles, which continued anyway.And the costs kept skyrocketing. The initial estimate was $220 million. By January 2015, it had jumped to $275 million. In December, the agency told clearly frustrated legislators that it would cost $310 million.I am kind of speechless, Rep. Helen Giddings, D-DeSoto, said at a hearing that month.While Accenture has publicly taken the biggest hit for the technology debacle, officials say they, too, shoulder the blame for what happened. Accenture had to take on a lot more work because the state had trouble finding qualified employees, which drove costs even higher. The state agency also didnt plan well enough for a project this big and complicated, Pier said.You need to do it with open eyes, and you need to try and anticipate all of the needs up front rather than as you go, Pier said.T2 fell under state scrutiny in March 2015 after Paxton took office. Friesen later reported to the Legislative Budget Board that without immediate action, the project would have resulted in runaway development costs, overly complex systems, increased maintenance costs and significant delays  even as much as well past 2020.Agency officials say they are now satisfied that, when all is said and done, they will have a state-of-the-art computer system that allows them to process child support payments quickly and efficiently.Its going to allow us to continue being a national leader, Pier said.
Earlier this month, California lifted its sweeping restrictions on how its towns and cities use their water, signaling that even though much of the state continues to face extraordinary drought, a moderately wet winter has blunted officials' sense of urgency over water shortages.Seemingly overlooked, however, is the state's enormous reliance on the Colorado River for its urban water supplies  and the fact that the Colorado is approaching its worst point of crisis in a generation.Colorado River water provides a significant portion of the drinking water to some 19 million of the state's 39 million residents, making up, as the state's largest water utility puts it, "the backbone" of supplies for Los Angeles and 25 other cities and municipalities. In San Diego County, Colorado River water comprises 64 percent of the total supplies."The importance of the Colorado River is very little understood by Californians," Felicia Marcus, chair of the California State Water Resources Control Board, told ProPublica in an interview in February. "Folks just really don't know where their water comes from."On May 18  the same day that California's Water Resources Control Board lifted its restrictions  Lake Mead, the reservoir that stores Southern California's share of the Colorado River, reached its lowest point since 1937.Mead will continue to reach a new record low each day until the middle of June, when managed flows from reservoirs upstream will allow the bleeding to be temporarily staunched. Then levels will dive deeper still, next year.California gets its water from the Colorado River through 242 miles of canals and pipelines that begin at Lake Havasu on the Arizona border, and are drilled through mountains into Riverside County, where the Colorado River Aqueduct empties into Lake Matthews, one of the largest reservoirs to supply metropolitan Southern California. Another system, the All American Canal, runs 80 miles along the Mexican border and draws more water from the Colorado for California farmland.The falling water levels in Lake Mead won't immediately dry up those canals. The state is promised all of its water even as the Colorado dries up and Arizona, Nevada and other states face critical shortages, thanks to California's seniority in interstate sharing agreements that stretch back some 94 years.But whether such a divisive posture can be maintained as supplies continue to dwindle is an open question. In a nod to an answer, California just this spring has been considering voluntary cuts in its water, along with those other southern states, in anticipation of Lake Mead's supplies getting even worse.That is almost certain to happen. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which manages Lake Mead and distributes Colorado River waters, predicts the reservoir  now 37 percent full  will reach a new record low in 2017, part of a steady decline that began more than a decade ago as southwestern water users continued to draw far more out of the Colorado each year than the river provides. By 2019, the Bureau says, there is a 64 percent chance the water in Lake Mead will drop so low as to trigger a federal emergency provision that mandates further cuts to the states.California is the single largest draw on this resource  using nearly one third of the entire Colorado River's flow.California's water planners need to recognize that the Colorado may soon leave California with a significant shortfall, and, "That may happen sooner, rather than later," said James Famiglietti, a senior water scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California.Meanwhile, the rest of California's water supplies are far from secure. Though the state's largest reservoirs filled quickly after heavy precipitation blanketed northern parts of the state this past winter, peoplerecipitation in the Los Angeles area was just 59 percent of normal, and more than 43 percent of California remains in what the U.S. Drought Monitor describes as a state of "extreme drought." Furthermore, California pumped deeply into its groundwater reserves as a sort of water piggybank over the last half decade, depleting supplies that will take many wet years in a row  if not centuries  to replenish.So why ease up on water limits now? Cities, Marcus told ProPublica, "thought we were being too paternalistic." So the state decided to back off.While the state made permanent a set of common-sense limits on car washing and lawn watering, it set its towns and cities loose to determine their own water conservation guidelines.The relaxed posture is not meant to green light runaway use; it's more of a trial run for local independence."It's really a question of what's the appropriate role of the state emergency regs?" said Marcus, who also points out that the restrictions only applied to municipal water; the state's farmers, who use the vast majority of the state's water, fall under a different set of limitations. "I called it a show me the water approach. You prove to us you can go through three more lousy years, and show us where the water is coming from and set your own standard."But therein lays the risk. California has always faced a shortage of water. Yet up until Gov. Jerry Brown imposed the statewide drought restrictions early last year, few California cities had effectively curtailed water use by their own free will.
Earlier this year, the Connecticut General Assembly was considering a bill that would prohibit the use of facial recognition technology for commercial applications unless companies got prior consent from consumers to gather that information  a move that would have severely curtailed the deployment of the technology. Fortunately, state lawmakers listened to reason and revised the bill so that it now simply requires retailers to display signs indicating that their establishments use facial recognition. This type of reasonable approach to regulating new technology should serve as a model for state legislators considering regulation for other emerging technologies.Facial recognition is a form of automated image recognition that uses computer algorithms to uniquely identify an individual in a database based on a photo. Concerned with the growing accuracy of the technology, some privacy advocates have argued that facial recognition is a threat to privacy and public anonymity and have recommended the government impose restrictions on both public - and private-sector uses of it.However, broad restrictions on using facial recognition could chill innovation and prevent uses that benefit consumers and society alike. Most people are willing to accept limitations on anonymity and privacy in exchange for security and convenience. For example, few people mind that a grocery store uses cameras to prevent shoplifting, since this helps prevent theft and thereby lowers prices. Similarly, facial recognition technology can help drive down prices by making repeat shoplifters easier to spot.Well meaning laws can often have unintended effects. For example, some organizations are beginning to use facial recognition to combat human trafficking . Undoubtedly, it would be nearly impossible to obtain consent from the subjects of the millions of photographs that would need to be analyzed to find the victims.Moreover, the concern about new technology is often inflated. For example, retailers already know who their customers are if the person is using a credit card or loyalty card to complete the transaction. Theres little real impact to consumer privacy if these same retailers also use facial recognition technology.Technology is just a tool, and it can be used for both good or ill. The goal of legislation should be to protect people from harms that result from the abuse of the technology, not to stop its use overall. By that metric, the original bill was an overreaction and would have effectively prevented Connecticut businesses from using facial recognition technology in public by requiring them to obtain prior consent from every customer entering their stores. The new bill scraps that approach and instead requires retailers and other businesses to display a sign so that shoppers are aware that facial recognition is being used on the premises.To be clear, the new bill is still not ideal. While transparency in business practices is generally good, by requiring retailers to post warning signs, theres an implicit assumption that using facial recognition technology is something potentially harmful that requires consumer notification. Instead, states should abide by technology-neutral policies. If they want to require retailers to post a sign, they should do so for all surveillance video recordings, not just those using facial recognition. Even if legislators simply want to ban retailers from tracking the movement of customers in their stores, then it should prohibit that practice across all technologies, including other forms of biometrics. But it should not play favorites.A better approach would have been for lawmakers to look at what specific harms they were actually trying to address, such as harassment or defamation, and make laws prohibiting those uses. Still, Connecticut lawmakers deserve credit for not letting those peddling fear run the show and focusing on the issue most salient to them.As my colleague ITIF Research Assistant Alan McQuinn and I have written before, the privacy panic cycle  a term used to describe the increasingly alarmist rhetoric around new technologies  often dominates the politics of emerging technologies and causes lawmakers to overreact to perceived fears. Overcoming this cycle of fear requires policymakers to act thoughtfully, without passion or prejudice. Other states would be wise to follow Connecticuts path.
(TNS) -- While most research suggests that police-worn body cameras could improve cops' relations with the public, a study released this month suggests the opposite.In any case, experts say getting the best results depends on how the cameras are utilized.As simplistic as it seems to put a ... camera on your hat or shoulder, the technology is out of pace with reality, and laws are out of pace with current conditions, said John Rago, a Duquesne University law professor who studies police practices.He noted that much of the research done shows the cameras have a calming effect on police and the public they interact with, such as a study published in spring 2015 that found officers in Mesa, Ariz., performed nearly 10 percent more controversial stop-and-frisks when they were not wearing cameras. Those wearing them initiated 13 percent more interactions with citizens  generally viewed as positive  and they were 25 percent more likely to perceive the cameras as helpful.A new study from Cambridge University  the largest of its kind so far  suggests cameras can have some negative effects.The study looked at eight police units in England and Ireland and two in California and found that when police-worn body cameras were in play, citizen assaults on cops went up. Police assaults on citizens stayed the same  unless individual cops could control when cameras were turned on, in which case police assaults on citizens rose dramatically.Beth Pittinger, executive director of the Pittsburgh Citizen Police Review Board, said the data raise questions. Pittsburgh police are using cameras as part of a pilot program.Who knows if that increase in assaults on officers ... if it's something that's real, maybe under-reported before, or just what's going on with that reporting, she said. It always leads to more questions.Rago agreed, saying the key to positive results is proper planning and procedures.There's a great deal of mischief-making that could be done if we just put cameras on people and said, Go out and film everything,'  he said. There needs to be published protocol, adequate training and clear Right to Know standards.He said police officials and lawmakers must deal with privacy laws, which are at the center of the body camera debate at a statewide level. Pennsylvania wiretapping laws create a gray area on whether the cameras would be completely legal if they are worn inside a civilian's home.State Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery County, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been working since last year on a bill that would change the state wiretapping law to address body camera concerns.Greenleaf said that he had not read the Cambridge study, but all data he has seen have indicated positive effects.Numerous studies have said the camera has ... a calming effect, and everybody is on better behavior, he said.State law has limited the expansion of camera use.The Pittsburgh Bureau of Police last fall received a $250,000 grant from the Department of Justice to buy 50 more cameras, as well as storage and equipment, adding to the 35 that motorcycle and bicycle officers use, according to Public Safety spokeswoman Emily Schaffer.Schaffer said the department is in the pilot phase, and the department has been testing the body cameras on officers in the zones. She noted that the law keeps officers from filming inside people's homes, so their interactions that are recorded are limited.Pittsburgh police Chief Cameron McLay said that while he could not comment on the Cambridge study without going through the intricacies of the data, he noted that camera technology is evolving at a rapid pace  faster than the supporting research.He said the bureau will conduct its own control study to determine the behavioral impact on officers and the public.Rago said that path is the way to go. He said departments are grappling with procedural variables, and while there should be a baseline best practice, the bottom line is that each individual department will have to tweak body camera policies to fit their unique department.It's an issue everywhere, he said, but the results will be worth it: The reality is it is amazing that virtually every state in the country is struggling with trying to come up with the right type of legislation so that full deployment of body cameras can be realized, Rago said.
SDPD looking into officer selfie during Trump rally(TNS) -- A San Diego police officer posted a selfie to social media during Friday's Donald Trump rally with a questionable caption, prompting the department to look into the matter.According to reporter Wendy Fry at NBC 7 San Diego, the officer posted a photograph of herself in riot gear to Instagram with the caption, "Waiting waiting waiting!! Just riot all ready people!!! #waitingsucks."Friday's rally in front of the San Diego Convention Center was mostly peaceful, until supporters and protesters began to mix after Trump had delivered his speech. Several fights broke out, which prompted police to declare an unlawful assembly and drive crowds from the area about 5 p.m.The officer's post appeared online about 2 p.m., according to NBC 7 San Diego's story.San Diego police Lt. Scott Wahl said the department was made aware of the photograph on Saturday morning. He was not able to confirm details about what the caption said or when it was posted."We are looking into this matter," said Wahl.He added that the department was proud of the "professionalism, restraint and patience displayed by all the officers and deputies during Mr. Trump's visit to San Diego."The officer's Instagram account has since been removed.2016 The San Diego Union-TribuneVisit The San Diego Union-Tribune at www.sandiegouniontribune.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
THE REALITY OF TODAY

States as city coordinators

States as smart city enablers

Smart states

What does it mean to be smart?

There is another actor waiting in the wings, watching as the smart city struts around on the stage, bathed in a national spotlight.Such is the existence of the smart state: following the smart city movement, helping where it can and all the while working to build itself an identity.Smart states today seem to have a dual role. They are the setting for smart cities, and might well become an important driver behind the creation of the smart city in America. And though the idea of the smart state might not have as much buzz around it, state governments are starting to take up the idea of pursuing more data-driven approaches to their work, separate from local government operations.Much of government IT work, especially at the state level, doesnt revolve around headline-grabbing, cutting-edge projects. No, public IT professionals will alternately describe their day-to-day operations as keeping the lights on and putting out fires.The larger, broader policy discussions sometimes get put on the back burner, said Amy Glasscock, a senior policy analyst at the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO).Glasscocks work as of late has been devoted to understanding the role of concepts like smart government and the Internet of Things (IoT) at the state level.So far, it seems those concepts arent too prevalent on states radar. NASCIOs most recent survey of IT professionals from 47 states and territories found that 76 percent of respondents were not having formal discussions about IoT applications, data collection and security. Of those who did say they were having state-level conversations, about 25 percent said their IT plan referenced IoT.Nobody participating said theyd formally adopted IoT policies.Glasscock sees a couple possible reasons for that. One is simply the nature of IoT as an emerging field  one in which the return on investment might not be totally clear.When it comes to big initiatives, everyone wants to know: How much is it going to cost? Glasscock said.Another reason might have to do with the ways IoT is used. Cities are finding myriad useful applications of ubiquitous connectivity, things that fall very much within the scope of municipal work. In the San Francisco Bay Area, city CIOs are beginning to install sensors in parking spots that can feed information into a platform telling citizens when and where parking is available. In Chicago, the researchers behind the Array of Things project are hoping to use sensors for tasks like identifying flooding in real time.The services that cities provide might lend themselves well to IoT applications, said Glasscock.But that doesnt mean states wont touch IoT. Indeed, many think that states can act as a nexus point for local government to make smart projects better.Take roads, for example.We have state roads [and] we have city roads, but they all cross and connect with each other, said David Fletcher, chief technology officer for the Utah Department of Technology Services.Whenever Utah digs up a road, Fletcher wants to seize the opportunity to lay down fiber. That will support connectivity in the long run  a central component of the Internet of Things  and provide a possible resource for cities in the future.Another example is water. Utah might get a lot of its water from snowpack that falls in the mountains, but then it flows down to cities, towns and farms where humans and animals use it. There are many different government entities involved in managing water, and Fletcher sees the state as a natural point to coordinate those efforts.We have sensors throughout the state that track snow levels, and they report on those snow levels in real time, he said. And then we also have sensors that track stream flows so we know how much water is coming down, how much is going to be available. The state and federal government manage reservoirs that become water resources for cities and localities, and so we all work cooperatively to track the availability of the water  how much is used by agriculture versus urban use so that we know theres enough for various uses.Cities help with those efforts by giving the state local water data, and the state handles the dissemination of that information to other government entities that can use it. And as more and more sensors are added to the network, the insights the state can glean from it will only improve.Helping to coordinate regional efforts between cities has another advantage, according to Illinois CIO Hardik Bhatt. We can bring a few municipalities in the state together and provide their services from a single operation center so they can reduce overhead, he said.It goes back to Fletchers point about roads being connected across government jurisdictions: Transportation is one area where it makes sense for cities to work together.Call that doubly true in Chicagoland, a conglomeration of municipalities that can extend all the way into Wisconsin and Indiana depending on your preferred definition. One of Bhatts ideas leading state IT efforts is to consolidate city traffic signal centers together to help create optimal traffic flow.If we can start pooling the services together, bringing them closer together to where they can be managed easily and centrally, you can  keep an eye toward efficiency, he said.An adjacent role states play is in enabling cities to undertake smart projects. Californias Department of Technology has made that a central mission by treating itself as a business. To Chris Cruz, chief of operations for the department, cities and counties are clients who buy services, and the department spends much of its time and resources on customer service to make sure its products are working for those customers.We go out and compete for that business just like some of the other private data centers would, Cruz said.One of the departments big pushes is called CalCloud. Through the service, local government entities in California can buy cloud hosting on state-controlled servers, which allows them to cut costs while relying on the state for security.Launched in 2014, that part of CalCloud appears to be catching on. Cruz said the number of customers with hosting agreements doubled from 14 to 28 between 2014 and 2015.Were driving more adoption every day, he said, and theres more service requests coming in each week.Another 40 are using CalClouds vendor hosting services. Through that program, the department takes on the responsibility of approaching a vendor, negotiating prices and buying services or licenses from that company. Because so many local government entities participate in the program, the department can negotiate volume pricing  which it has already done with Salesforce.The department also has worked to help cities build themselves smarter. Thats through a cooperation with the Governors Office of Planning and Research. According to Scott Gregory, the departments geographic information officer, the initiative is meant to provide guidance to cities developing general plans.Local government can access authoritative data content from the state, for example: Where are the known floodplains in the state? Where are the known earthquake faults? Gregory said.Cities can then submit their general plans back to the state for help and guidance, which can encourage smart growth in areas ranging from energy consumption to water management.In addition, the department has an open data platform to make useful information available to local government entities within California, which Gregory said will support smart city projects.[That helps] these smart city initiatives move toward modernizing design, modernizing their approach to initiatives that then touch the IT  sectors, Gregory said. So for example, things like sensor networks, sensors that help us understand traffic throughout the region, things like energy usage and smart grid, being able to understand what our energy consumption is throughout buildings and then conversely what happens with greenhouse gases after that.Aside from helping cities get smart, states are beginning to craft strategies to become smart themselves.In fact, thats a big goal for Bhatt  one of the few state CIOs working on an official smart state strategy, supported by Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner.The idea is over the next three years we want to be not only the smartest state in the U.S., but our competition is Singapore, Dubai and others, said Bhatt. And I think we can do that.Part of that is consolidating operations. Much like bringing cities together to achieve efficiency, Bhatt said breaking down silos between departments can help state government run smoother.After taking the role of CIO, he identified 62 data silos in Illinois state government. If you think about creating a department out of 62 existing silos, its kind of like mergers and acquisitions, Bhatt said. So youre working on streamlining.There are also services that states tend to handle more than cities  transportation, health and human services and water management. While states work with local government on all those services, they are also the places where public-sector IT thought leaders see opportunity for smart states to carve out an identity.For instance, state operations often require fleets of vehicles. Bhatt said those vehicles can be managed efficiently, much in the same way that airports coordinate the comings and goings of planes through central command centers.We have a huge fleet of satellite vehicles between the cop cars and everything else, he said. So were looking at how  we apply those principles on our side.Smart transportation today can mean establishing multi-jurisdiction control centers, which Utah has already done. But tomorrows smart state transportation efforts might have to take into account things like connected vehicles and self-driving cars. The U.S. Department of Transportation is moving full steam ahead on those efforts, having put up millions of dollars in funding for government entities to test vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure connections. The agency has also started the rulemaking process to require new cars to support those capabilities.So in the future, states might be using various technologies to coordinate traffic flow, optimize snow removal and build infrastructure smarter.Theres also a need for states to get smart about how they fund their transportation efforts. Because government on all levels in the U.S. is pushing for alternative fuel vehicles, it will eventually need to find a substitute for the gasoline tax that funds road work today.States such as Oregon and California are testing systems that tax people based on how much they drive instead of how much gas they buy. Though these projects are only in the pilot phases, one approach to measuring miles is plugging in connected devices to car ports. Since car ports have been standardized since the late 1990s, most passenger vehicles can accommodate the devices. And those devices can do more than just report miles traveled  they can provide information about the health of the car.Smart state-type water management projects are beginning to materialize too. Aside from Utahs coordination of data from various water managers, California has used technology in recent years to help its statewide water conservation efforts amid a historically bad drought. The Department of Technology launched an application for citizens to report the overuse of water toward the end of 2015. Since then, its received more than 10,000 reports through the app.The idea is this: You have neighbors, businesses or parks who are overwatering. We have a modal application now that allows citizens to take a picture of that, provide a description and then send it to the state, said Gregory.The state then finds the water entity responsible for that user and lets them know about the potential problem in their system. The key here  is that these decisions are data-driven, Gregory said. Its not broad-swath here, its more surgical.Thats a common refrain in any kind of smart government project, and part of why Bhatt said that analytics is probably the single most important piece of technology on his radar today.In the future, he hopes to apply that motif of surgical intervention to health and human services in Illinois. Bhatt believes that data can help the state identify people who use a lot of government services, which can then help agencies intervene earlier to help those people before their problems worsen.Its very tough to know  who are those 20 percent of Illinois citizens who are using 80 percent of our health and human services  and how can we serve them more efficiently? Bhatt said.With both the federal government and cities pushing for smart projects, it might be inevitable that states eventually get smart too.I think its coming, but I think its something that cities [are ahead of states on], being smaller and having the kind of services that lend themselves to this, NASCIOs Glasscock said.What direction the smart state movement goes in is a different matter, and might depend on how states set their priorities.CIOs like Bhatt see some commonalities between smart government projects that should serve as guideposts. At the end of the day, its how  you use technology to improve government efficiency and keep an eye toward economic goals, he said.For Fletcher, that means automation.You remove a lot of the human intervention so that ultimately a lot of this is machine-to-machine, so that the data drives control systems whether thats in fire detection and response, or humidity in buildings or smart power systems, he said. And then it impacts individuals, getting the information to individuals and their systems.And ultimately, the focus areas of smart states are unclear. They might lean more toward helping cities or they might sway toward state operations.So is one approach more important or prevalent than the other?I dont know that the state CIOs would have an overwhelming answer on that, one way or the other, Glasscock said.
Max Verstappen's impressive F1 career is still on track despite a less-than-impressive showing in Monaco, his new boss Christian Horner insists.

Just a fortnight after stunning the F1 world and drawing comparisons with Senna or Schumacher by winning in Barcelona, the 18-year-old Dutchman crashed not only in qualifying but also during the race in Monaco last weekend.

But Red Bull team boss Horner said Verstappen was having a good race through the field until he made a mistake and hit the wall.

"He wasn't the only one to be caught out, but it's been a very contrasting weekend for him compared to two weeks ago," Horner admitted.

"It's all part of the learning curve that he's on and I think that the trajectory that you can see is still extremely impressive. I only think that he's going to learn and we won't see him make the same mistakes next year," he added.

Horner said Verstappen had apologised to the team and will use the experience of Monaco - where he also crashed in his Toro Rosso a year ago - to keep learning.

"He's a bright, intelligent character and I think he'll take on board what has happened this weekend and he'll definitely move forward and learn from it," said Horner.

(GMM)
Ferrari has gone from targeting title glory to digging itself out of a "crisis", according to the Italian press.

Having aimed to chase and unseat dominant Mercedes this year, the Maranello outfit was in fact beaten to the win in Barcelona by Red Bull, and then to the Monaco podium by Force India's Sergio Perez.

"Force India did a better job than us," Sebastian Vettel, taking the blame for missing the podium on Sunday, said.

But Italy's La Gazzetta dello Sport insists: "Vettel took a responsibility that is not his. He fights with a car that has no leadership ability and a Maranello that is on the wrong track."

Corriere della Sera, however, suggested German Vettel might be right to take some of the blame.

"Vettel appears a sad relative of the driver who took hold of the Scuderia last year," the newspaper exclaimed.

And La Stampa added: "In Monaco, Hamilton laughs again after a seven-month losing streak, while Maranello must deal with its crisis still."

Tuttosport noted after Monaco: "For Ferrari, this time it was the pilots who flopped."

Indeed, the Italian media was particularly scathing of Kimi Raikkonen, after a notably poor Monaco for the 2007 world champion.

La Gazzetta dello Sport gave the Finn just five out of ten for his weekend, which ended with a lazy slide into the barrier.

"A disaster," it said. "With his experience, he should not be in the rails after just ten laps. It is not acceptable."

(GMM)
 Islamist Ideology Goes Missing in Post Report | Main | For Memorial Day, CAIR Official Avoids Honoring U.S. Fallen 

May 31, 2016

Baltimore Sun Carries False AP Report on Iran's Holocaust Cartoon Contest



Listed below is an unpublished letter that was sent to The Baltimore Sun:

Dear Editor:

The Associated Press (AP) dispatch Israels Netanyahu: Iran contest mocks Holocaust,? appearing in the Sun on May 16, wrongly claimed that an international cartoon contest with a Holocaust denial theme, held in Iran, was not supported and sponsored by the regime in Tehran.

AP, perhaps echoing claims made by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in an interview with The New Yorker, asserted that the contest was organized by nongovernmental bodies.? This is false.

As a May 9 Washington Post editorial noted, an Iranian official confirmed that his countrys Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance supports the exhibition. As for those nongovernmental bodies,? the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum asserted that one of the organizations behind the festival, Owj Media and Cultural Institute, is funded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, a key element of the regime.

Another, the Sarcheshmeh Cultural Complex, is supported by the Islamic Development Organizationan entity whose budget is approved by the Iranian parliament.

That is, the cartoon festival, aimed at minimizing, mocking, denying and/or inverting the Holocaust, is supported absolutely by the Iranian regime. Zarifwho, with current Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, is frequently mislabeled as a moderate?serves that dictatorship loyally.

A previous Holocaust cartoon contest was held in 2006 under Irans then-President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-2013) and a second took place in 2015. In a Dec. 16, 2005 article The Sun called Ahmadinejads Holocaust denial an effort to signal that Iran, not al-Qaida, is the leading force behind militant Islam.?

More than a decade later, little has changeda fact the AP failed to properly report for Sun readers.

Sincerely

Sean Durns

Durns is Media Assistant for CAMERAthe 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America



Posted by SD at May 31, 2016 02:46 PM

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 Baltimore Sun Carries False AP Report on Iran's Holocaust Cartoon Contest | Main | Harvard Professor is Worried About Jewish Threat 

May 31, 2016

For Memorial Day, CAIR Official Avoids Honoring U.S. Fallen



A high-ranking official of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) spent her 2016 Memorial Day weekend attacking the character of U.S. service men and women.

CAIR claims to be a leading civil rights group, but as CAMERAs 2009 Special Report CAIR: Civil Rights or Extremism? has noted, the council is an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2009 Holy Land Foundation retrialthe largest terrorism financing case in the countrys history. At least five former CAIR staff members and co-founders have been imprisoned, indicted, arrested and/or deported on weapons or terrorism-related charges.

Ryan Mauro, an analyst with the Clarion Project, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit organization that monitors Islamic extremism, reported that the executive director of CAIRs San Francisco Bay Area Chapter, Zahra Billoo, took time out of her Memorial Day weekend to stand by her opposition to honoring fallen U.S. soldiers on the holiday? When asked this year if she stood by her previous bashing of American service members Billoo affirmed that she did. The CAIR official was questioned on Twitter social media if any U.S. soldiers, including Muslim Americans, were worth honoring. Billoo replied, "If they killed innocent people? Uncritically participated in an unjust war(s)? No."

Mauro noted that in 2014 Billoo criticized U.S. soldiers on Memorial Day weekend. The CAIR official said she struggles with Memorial Day each year? and wondered whether she should honor American service members who died. Then Billoo justified her stance by using Twitter to quote another CAIR official, Dawud Walid, executive-director of CAIRs Michigan chapter. Perhaps referring to U.S. and coalition partners actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, Walid questioned whether American soldiers who died in unjust? wars and occupations? should be honored. Islamic terrorist groups, such as al-Qaeda and ISIS, frequently use the term occupation? to describe the presence of non-Muslims in lands that are currently or were at one point ruled by Muslims.

Although Billoo later deleted that tweet, her views emerged again on Memorial Day 2015. On that occasion, Billoo claimed that U.S. soldiers frequently murder? innocent civilians. Afterwards, Mauro noted, she equated Israel with ISIS [the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a U.S.-designated terrorist group].?

Billoos remarks were criticized by Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, the leader of the American-Islamic Forum on Democracy, a Muslim group opposed to Islamic extremism. Jasser, a former U.S. Navy doctor, said Billoos statements shows that they [CAIR officials] have nothing but disdain for our armed forces.?

CAIR officials frequent extremist statements and ties to Islamic terrorist groups have not stopped many U.S. news media outlets from treating the council as a credible source.



Billoo herself was recently quoted in a Dec. 24, 2015 Los Angeles Times article (Threat to harm Muslims is alleged?). Yet, her history of Israel-bashing and equating U.S. troops with murderers was omitted by The Times. Billoo also was treated as a credible source in a New York Times report (College Student is Removed from Flight After Speaking Arabic on Plane,? April 18, 2016) and by the Associated Press (Stowaway on jetliner has left Hawaii,? May 4, 2014). CAIR has sought to intimidate those who point out the councils history. Writer Shireen Qudosi reported in the Counter Jihad Report, an online-publication that highlights Islamic extremism, that CAIR has worked to discredit Mauro by questioning his ability as an expert, tarnishing him as an anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist?although Mauro has worked with Muslim reformers. In April 2016, CAIR tried, unsuccessfully, to prevent Mauro from delivering a lecture on Islamic terrorism to law enforcement personnel in New York. As CAMERA has noted, (see, for example CAMERA Letter in Washington Times Educates on CAIR,? Nov. 1, 2007), in 2004 CAIR sued the Web site www.anticair.com for libel. The site had claimed, among other things, that the council had been founded by Islamic terrorists, started by Hamas members and functioned as a terrorist-supporting front group that sought to overthrow the U.S. government. CAIR and www.anticair.com reached a confidential, mutually agreed settlement that appeared to leave intact the latters charges that the council was founded and funded by Hamas members. Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Resistance movement, has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government. CAIR may have settled to avoid further disclosure of its finances, ideology and relationships, the lawyer for anti-cair-net.org surmised. News media would do well to note that CAIR not only attacks its critics, but some of its officials cant bring themselves to honor members of the U.S. military who have died serving their country.



Posted by SD at May 31, 2016 03:35 PM

Although I hear from some Sanders supporters he is pro-Veteran, I believe it is only in a limited sense, money. Winter Warriors for instance pushes veterans who acted properly under the ROEs to confess to committing "war crimes".

The Secretary of State derided Vietnam Veterans his own peers, accusing them of committing thousands of atrocities, yet he never did anything when he was there to stop them? Instead he made it his ticket into the politics of the DNC's left wing. His criticisms of war crime were little self-serving.

Phony Veterans are one thing, but phony war criminals are something else. I spent a month peeling away the layers one confessed "Veteran" who claimed he had thrown VC out of a helicopter was an absolute fraud. But why would someone pretend to be a phony war veteran slash war criminal?

It isn't simply that CAIR acted like CAIR. I would have expected nothing less from President Obama's accomplices in forwarding the agendas of a "socialist Islam" he may construe as simply left wing politics. It is the poisoned well of contempt too many Americans have embraced as a means to justify their alienation for caring about what does go on in the "world", ignoring the genocide of Christians and antiSemtism on a new world order. . The malfeasance is orchestrated by old school socialists and new age Jihadis.

Posted by: jeb stuart at June 6, 2016 10:02 AM

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 Palestinian Health Ministry Passes Off Fauxtography to WHO | Main | Baltimore Sun Carries False AP Report on Iran's Holocaust Cartoon Contest 

May 31, 2016

Islamist Ideology Goes Missing in Post Report



The Washington Posts Hezbollah blames Sunni extremists in recent killing of top commander? (May 15, 2016) by reporter Hugh Naylor failed to define an Islamic extremist term central to the news it reported.

Naylor, in a dispatch on fighting between Sunni Muslim terrorist groups, such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and the Lebanese-based, Shiite Muslim terrorist organization Hezbollah, wrote:

Hezbollah uses takfiri, an Arabic word, to describe its extremist Sunni Muslim enemies, including al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.?

But The Post, unjournalistically, doesnt explain the term takfiri? for its readers.

Bernard Haykel, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at Princeton University, has noted that takfirism is the practiceoften by adherents of the radical Salafist brand of Sunni Islamof declaring a fellow Muslim to be an infidel, or non-believer. By declaring another Muslim to be a takfir, the Quranic prohibition of a Muslim killing a fellow religious adherent can be sidestepped. Islamic terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIS have employed the doctrine of takfirism, derived from the teachings of Ibn Taymiyyah, a 13th and 14th century Islamic scholar to justify their killings of countless other Muslims, combatants and non-combatants alike.

Yet, extremist Shiite Muslim groups, such as Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terror movement, also use the term takfiri to describe Sunni Muslims. Fighting between Sunni and Shiite Muslims dates back to a seventh-century split over who should succeed Mohammed, the founder of Islam. This smoldering intra-Islamic conflict has exploded, once again, across the Middle East in recent years, as is evidenced by fighting in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York-based think tank:

Iranian officials, Iraqi politicians, and Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, routinely describe their Sunni opponents as takfiris (referring to the doctrine embraced by al-Qaeda of declaring fellow Muslims apostate) and Wahhabis (referring to the puritanical Saudi sect).?

In labeling their Sunni opponents takfiri, Hezbollah implies its adherents practice true Islam while their rivals amount to heretics.

By failing to define takfirism for readers, The Post, if unintentionally, downplayed a religious element that remains central to understanding fighting between Sunni and Shiite Muslim groups in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East.







Posted by SD at May 31, 2016 02:16 PM

i agree that it's important to define "takfirism", but i think you could have elaborated a little more. or provided a link or two, such as .

Posted by: shloime at May 31, 2016 08:30 PM

This points to a singular reason why Islam is stagnant and cannot help itself or the people of Islamic states make "progress". Is it possible, Islam could function as a religion, instead of becoming the anti-religion of others, if the literacy level of its advocates ever rose above 15% in Muslim Revolutionary States like Afghanistan. The teaching of the Koran by rote recitation permits the Miktahs and Mullahs to indoctrinate their "believers" with a limited interpretation and knowledge of the Koran.

If you are Jewish you can not tell me that learning to read Hebrew and gaining access to the Torah does not have greater effect than choosing to never read the book at all, which is optional in English at least. Such access and ease of facility is a great asset.

The same is true of Christianity, the Bible excited me, it was a "Sacred" book, The desire to learn to read came from wanting to be able to read the Book on my own. That lead to my reading more secular publications ad broadening my knowledge in general and creates the possibility for more democratic freedoms through tolerance of criticism and ridicule of my beliefs.

It seems to me the Islamic religious leaders have their followers right where they want them, and because we are too liberal to "interfere" on religious grounds we have lost many great opportunities to befriend Islam. For example, when a Baptist minister threatened to burn a Bible, Obama's response was to call him and tell him, under no duress? not to, he even had the Theater commander call because it made the Afghanistan tribes violent. Instead of our media fanning those flames of violence by reporting this inane expression, they should have sat on the story but once it broke we should have offered those Muslims so offended copies of the Koran by bulk. They burn Bibles in those countries all the time without comment, the Gideon's just print thousands more. So unless the Koran that the Pastor threatened to burn was a thousand year old relic that was the pride of an Islamic community, instead of the generic one you buy off the shelf, this should have been better handled, but religion seems to get in the way with that religion. If we had sent Korans and teachers so people could learn to read the Koran under the eye of their Mullahs would they even accept the gesture? Or, Is it about control and minimizing the knowledge of Muslims so it may be used as a weapon?

Posted by: jeb stuart at June 6, 2016 09:48 AM

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The nature of the findings shows  a clear and exciting path forward  to create the next-generation cathode materials with substantially higher energy density then current cathode materials, the researchers wrote in a paper on their work published in the journal Nature Chemistry .

Researchers at the Department of Energys (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) report a major advance in understanding how oxygen oxidation creates extra capacity in lithium-rich cathodes, opening the door to batteries with far higher energy density.

The traditional design paradigm for Li-ion battery cathodes has been to create compounds in which the amount of extractable Li+ is well balanced with an oxidizable transition metal (TM) species (such as Mn, Fe, Co or Ni) to provide the charge-compensating electrons, all contained in an oxide or sulfide host. Transition metals have been considered the sole sources of electrochemical activity in an intercalation cathode, and as a consequence the theoretical specific capacity is limited by the number of electrons that the transition-metal ions can exchange per unit mass.

Recent observations have brought this simple picture into question and argued that oxygen ions in oxide cathodes may also participate in the redox reaction. This oxygen redox is often ascribed to covalency, following theoretical and experimental work in the last two decades that has demonstrated large electron density changes on oxygen when the transition metal is oxidized. However, covalency cannot lead to a higher capacity than would be expected from the transition metal alone, as the number of transition-metal orbitals remains unchanged when they hybridize with the oxygen ligands. The more important argument for the future of the Li-ion battery field is whether oxygen oxidation can create extra capacity beyond what is predicted from the transition-metal content alone, as has been argued for several Li-excess materials, such as Li 1.2 Ni 0.2 Mn 0.6 O 2 , Li 2 Ru 0.5 Sn 0.5 O 2 and Li 1.3 Mn 0.4 Nb 0.3 O 2 . Seo et al.

For the study, the research team used ab initio calculations to demonstrate which specific chemical and structural features lead to electrochemically active oxygen states in cathode materials. They uncovered a specific atomistic origin of oxygen redox and explained why this oxygen capacity is so often observed in Li-excess materials and why it is observed with some metals and not with others.

The research was led by Gerbrand Ceder of Berkeley Labs Materials Sciences Division. The lead authors were Dong-Hwa Seo and Jinhyuk Lee, and other co-authors were Alexander Urban, Rahul Malik, and ShinYoung Kang. Ceder also has an appointment at UC Berkeleys Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and all the co-authors are also affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where some of the work was done.

In a conventional lithium-ion battery, the cathode material is a lithium transition metal oxide, with the content of the lithium and the transition metal, such as nickel or cobalt, balanced, as described above. In a lithium-rich (also called lithium-excess) cathode, there is a higher proportion of lithium than the transition metal.

Because transition metals are heavy and also expensive, reducing its content is a big benefit. The battery can be significantly cheaper and lighter, which are especially important factors for vehicle applications, where the battery is often one of the heaviest components of the vehicle.

This is a very exciting direction being pursued by battery scientists. It has been experimentally demonstrated many times that a lithium-excess cathode material can deliver higher energy density, about 50% higher than the current cathode materials in commercial lithium batteries. Jinhyuk Lee

A major stumbling block has been that scientists had lacked a clear understanding of the chemistry in a lithium-rich cathodespecifically the role of oxygen. Normally when a battery is charged and discharged, the transition metal in the cathode oxidizes and releases electrons; those electrons then travel between the cathode and anode and create electricity.

What we and others have been claiming recently is that you can take an electron off the oxygen and put it back, which is fairly radical. Thats the big idea for this cathode design. This paper specifically shows that its true and more importantly, shows under which conditions that it becomes true. Gerbrand Ceder

Currently there are only three transition metalscobalt, nickel, and manganeseused in most commercial cathodes. That limited choice constrains battery design; further, their availability is limited. Demand for cobalt has been booming, and more than 45% of the worlds cobalt production now goes to lithium-ion batteries, Ceder noted.

Its not scalable. If were ever to all drive electric vehicles, theres no way a cobalt-only technology can make it. Gerbrand Ceder

The research started two years ago after Ceders group discovered that a disordered cathode structure, previously dismissed by battery designers, could indeed be workable. This prompted the group to look into how and when oxygen is active in lithium-excess cathodes, which are similar in structure to disordered cathodes.

Ceders group developed a novel methodology of utilizing quantum mechanical simulations to study electron charge transfer in cathode materials with high accuracy. They used supercomputer facilities at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), a DOE Office of Science User Facility hosted at Berkeley Lab, and the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), led by the University of Illinois.

 we have identified the chemical and structural features that lead to oxygen oxidation and therefore to extra capacity in lithium intercalation compounds. Oxygen redox activity in Li-excess layered and disordered materials originates from very specific LiOLi configurations that create orphaned oxygen states that are lifted out of the bonding oxygen manifold and become positioned in the TM-dominated complex of e g * and t 2g states, making oxygen oxidation and TM oxidation compete with each other.

This effect is distinct from the prevailing argument that the holes are introduced in O 2p states that are hybridized with TM d states, which occurs due to the covalent nature of the TMO bonding.

In stark contrast with this current belief, we demonstrated that oxygen oxidation in Li-excess materials mainly occurs by extracting labile electrons from unhybridized O 2p states sitting in LiOLi configurations and is therefore unrelated to any hybridized TMO states. This distinction is important, because the number of electrons, and thus the capacity, from the hybridized TM d states (for example, the e g * state) stays the same, regardless of the oxygen contribution to these states. Only the energy (voltage) of these TM states is modified by their hybridization. Hence, unlike oxygen redox states created by LiOLi configurations, oxygen redox participation through (re)hybridization with TM states is not a useful mechanism to extend capacity beyond the conventional, TM-determined theoretical capacity limit.

Creating unhybridized (orphaned) oxygen states in Li-intercalation cathodes is a promising mechanism to achieve higher-energy-density cathode materials as it lifts the fundamental restriction on transition metal content that has existed for decades in the Li-ion battery field. Seo et al.

The research was supported by DOEs Office of Vehicle Technologies, the Robert Bosch Corporation, and Umicore Specialty Oxides and Chemicals.

Resources
Currently, around 12,000 freight brokers in the US act as intermediaries for free-loading capacities between shippers and carriers via telephone, e-mail, and fax. The system is highly fragmented and thus often very inefficient; it is difficult to compare prices and costs for mediation are high. The FR8 system aims to support all parties involved in the process of this ecosystem, to leverage the existing potential, and to make it significantly more efficient.

MAN Truck & Bus AG, part of Volkswagen Truck & Bus, is investing up to $8.5 million in the US start-up FR8 Revolution Inc. (Fr-eight). Silicon-Valley-based FR8 has developed a comprehensive operating system for a connected transportation industry that will be launched in the second quarter of 2016. The IT platform will provide shippers, carriers, and truck drivers with a uniform and transparent platform for planning cargoes based on real-time data.

MAN Truck & Bus intends to participate actively in shaping the digital transformation of the industry, gain experience, and transfer business models to Europe. The system will be launched together with various partners in the US: groups of traders, fleet operators, freight brokers, and shippers.

The logistics industry is not working as economically as it could. All parties involved still have limited access to real-time data. Where are the trucks currently located? Do they have free loading capacities? What are the current prices? What is the current driving period of the truck driver? To this date, almost 35% of the freight volume is not used at all or not used efficiently which is neither economical nor environmentally friendly. In collaborating with FR8, we can open up new possibilities for changing the system in Europe. Joachim Drees, Chief Executive Officer of MAN SE and MAN Truck & Bus AG

In Europe, too, haulers, dispatchers, and truck drivers lack sufficient information on logistics processes using a variety of different IT systems.

The system developed by FR8 has been designed as an open platform across brands. This provides the opportunity to integrate apps for all target groups. Shippers, for example, can view current freight rates, locate the truck's position, and manage invoices.

Carriers, for example, can view freight plans of all trucks on one screen only; in addition, they can enter free loading capacities on the electronic freight exchange or manage the drivers time behind the wheel and rest periods.

The drivers are connected online with the carriers, can view their route planning and change them if necessary; they also receive information on when the next visit to a workshop is due.

Digitization is fundamentally changing the world of transportation. Connected services help our customers to be more productive and competitive while opening up completely new business areas. We will be changing more and more from a truck manufacturer into a provider of intelligent transportation solutions. Our partnership with FR8 will bring us one step closer to this goal. We would like to transfer our experience and ideas to Europe as well as to our brands. Andreas Renschler, Member of the Board of Management of Volkswagen AG and CEO of Volkswagen Truck & Bus GmbH

Volkswagen Truck & Bus has sold more than 200,000 networked trucks from MAN and Scania. As of 2017, every new truck from the production line will be online. For this reason, Volkswagen Truck & Bus has announced that it will make a three-digit million investment into digital technologies. Today, more than 300 employees at MAN and Scania already work on digital innovation.
The Department of Energys Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Cincinnati Incorporated have signed a nonexclusive licensing agreement on ORNL patents related to large-scale additive manufacturing.

ORNL is a research leader in the production of large-scale 3-D printed materials, refining industrial processes to decrease costs and increase efficiency. Under the agreement, Cincinnati Incorporated may make, use or sell the labs patented developments of enhanced additive manufacturing with a reciprocating platen that enables the manufacture of parts much larger and with higher quality than current standards.

The speed of next-generation additive manufacturing offers new opportunities for the automotive, aerospace and prototyping industries, said Lonnie Love, leader of ORNLs Manufacturing Systems Research group.

Our goal is to demonstrate the potential of large-scale additive manufacturing as an innovative and viable manufacturing technology. We want to improve digital manufacturing solutions for the automotive industry. Lonnie Love

The additive manufacturing agreement is the latest in a series of ORNL advances that include the production of a 3-D printed vehicles at DOEs Manufacturing Demonstration Facility, at ORNL, including a reproduction Shelby Cobra that debuted in early 2015.

A portfolio of ORNL patents associated with large-scale additive manufacturing is available for licensing on a nonexclusive basis.

Founded in the late 1890s as the Cincinnati Shaper Company, Cincinnati Incorporated is one of a handful of US-based, build-to-order machine tool manufacturers. The company has shipped more than 50,000 machines in more than 100 years of operation.

This technology development was supported by DOEs Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy  Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO). AMO supports applied research, development and demonstration of new materials and processes for energy efficiency in manufacturing as well as platform technologies for the manufacturing of clean energy products.
One of the key factors behind the low fuel consumption is the massive 40% improvement in aerodynamic efficiency that has benefited both the tractor and trailer. Aerodynamically optimized chassis side-skirts cover the rear wheels on the tractor and all the trailer wheels; aerodynamic spoilers extend the trailer and cut air resistance.

With support from the Swedish Energy Agency, Volvo Trucks has developed a new concept vehicle, the Volvo Concept Truck. The result of a five-year long research project aimed at creating more energy-efficient vehicles, the new concept truck cuts fuel consumption by more than 30%. The aim of the project is to improve the efficiency for long-haul truck transportation by 50%.

Weve modified the entire rig and optimized it for improved aerodynamics as much as possible. For instance, we use cameras instead of rear-view mirrors. This cuts air resistance, so less energy is needed to propel the truck.  Ake Othzen, Chief Project Manager at Volvo Trucks

In addition to the aerodynamic improvements, the concept vehicle is fitted with newly developed tires with lower rolling resistance. The trailer weighs two tonnes less than the reference trailer, which translates into either lower fuel consumption or the possibility of higher payload. The project also includes an improved driveline. The rig was test driven on Swedish roads in autumn 2015.

Since the concept vehicle is part of a research project it will not be available on the market. However, some of its aerodynamic features have already been implemented on Volvo Trucks' series-produced vehicles, and more of its solutions may be fitted in the future.

The research project is a bilateral joint venture between Sweden and the US involving support from the Swedish Energy Agency and the US Department of Energy. The US SuperTruck project aims to increase transport efficiency for long-haul operations on the North American market.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. Lionfish is on the menu at Whole Foods Market.



The grocery store chain announced it is selling lionfish at 26 stores in Florida.

Officials at Whole Foods said once caught and placed on ice, the fish is safe to consume after its venomous spines have been removed.

They said the flesh is not poisonous.

Gigi Joseph, a regular shopper at the chain, said she would consider eating lionfish.

"I guess don't knock it until you try it," Joseph said.

Some customer said they're not so adventurous.

"I don't think it's a fish that looks too edible," Val Lundy said.

"Just the thought that it is venomous at some point, I can't get that past my head," Kate Connor said.

Lionfish is a not a native species to Florida, and it has no known natural predators.

The fish are voracious eaters of just about any other fish it can swallow around Florida reefs.

Marine officials encourage the removal of the fish from Florida waterways.

Store officials said the white flaky meat has a sweet flavor and tastes like snapper. They said it can be grilled whole, blackened, sauteed or baked.

There will be a live cooking demonstration of lionfish at the Whole Foods Market in West Palm Beach on Saturday.

Customers will get to sample the fish and learn more about it.

This article originally appeared on WPBF.com
They will stop at nothing. Photo: Newyorkicecream/Facebook

This is almost certainly the most extreme chapter in New Yorks long, ruthless soft-serve turf wars. According to a report in the Times, a radical splinter group of former Mister Softee vendors known only as the New York Ice Cream Company has claimed the crucial midtown territory exclusively for themselves. While vendors with permits can legally sell anywhere in the city, this new soft-serve cabal has strong-armed Mister Softee out of the neighborhood over the last year through threats, bullying, and physical intimidation.

In fact, one anonymous NYICC vendor tells it exactly like it is, claiming that the stretch of Manhattan from 34th to 60th Street, river to river belongs to his company now, adding, You will never see a Mister Softee truck in Midtown  If you do, there will be problems, and you wont see him there very long. Peter Bouziotis, who runs a Mister Softee depot in the Bronx, says this is more than an empty threat, and explains that whenever his drivers dare go into midtown a gang of their rivals boxes them in and bangs on the trucks windows, letting them know who can sell cherry magic shells where.

While Mister Softees leadership wants its drivers to retake midtown, vice-president Jim Conway says they have not sought out legal solutions because they respect the code of the streets. Yes, New Yorks ice-cream vendors like to act like its all fun and cones, but their innocent veneer obscures a more sordid history. Behind the soft serve, one Softee truck operator claims, theres always a bat. Incidents of ice-cream-related violence go back to at least the 60s.

There is also the fact that, more recently, Mister Softee was the one doing the bullying: Back in 2012, Softee vendors were accused of slashing tires, pointing guns, and cutting the brakes on trucks run by another splinter group, allegedly going as far as sending death threats to the founder of new-school ice creamery Van Leeuwen.

The particular beef with New York Ice Cream Company dates back to 2013, when Mister Softee sued the impostor trucks operated by NYICC founder Dimitros Tsiroks, who originally had a dozen Softee franchisees but became disenchanted with his ice-cream overlords. He made minor changes to the logo and called his business Master Softee, but was accused of trademark infringement, hence the change in name. A judge sided with Mister Softee, and Tsirkos owes the company $767,000, though hes apparently only coughed up a meager $2,246. If this summer really is as oppressively hot as some experts predict, the stakes  and tensions  are only likely to rise further, and this could be the year that the citys soft-serve skirmishes turn into full-blown, all-out chocolate-dipped warfare.

[NYT]
Arguably the best. Photo: Levain Bakery/Facebook

While Levain Bakerys rich, buttery cookies are humongous  each weighs a whopping half-pound  its 400-square-foot Upper West Side home is uncomfortably tiny. After 21 years, it will move two blocks away, to a larger 3,000-square-foot space at 351 Amsterdam Avenue, but it will still keep the 74th Street original. This will surely mean more cookies for all  as well as, most likely, expanded operations. (New cookie flavors? Additional kinds of other pastries? Wholesale potential?) Take note that when Grub recently ordered a box for local delivery, the cookies arrived still warm.

[NYP]
Classic French desserts are popping up in menus around town. Photo: Bobby Doherty/New York Magazine

In the relentless pendulum swing of global tastes, France and its iconic cuisine have been going through a slump. Youd never know it, though, from the proliferation of classic French desserts around town. This is a moment for meringue, for lush pastry cream, and for looming souffles  and not just at places like La Grenouille. The trend is most apparent at Antoine Westermanns Le Coq Rico, which has reacquainted New Yorkers with the pleasures of these festive showstoppers, but its also on display at Bowery neo-bistros and English-clubby hotels. Here, a retro-pastry primer.

Le Coq Ricos ile flottante. Photo: Bobby Doherty/New York Magazine

Le Coq Ricos Ile Flottante

A domed island of ethereal soft meringue, floating in a sea of creme anglaise dappled with crunchy pink praline. $10. 30 E. 20th St., nr. Park Ave. S.; 212-267-7426

Le Coq Ricos profiteroles. Photo: Bobby Doherty/New York Magazine

Le Coq Ricos Profiteroles

Bourbon-vanilla ice cream inside pate a choux, or cream-puff dough, dribbled with rich Valrhona chocolate. As close as France gets to a hot-fudge sundae. $11.

Vaucluses vacherin. Photo: Bobby Doherty/New York Magazine

Vaucluses Vacherin

Strawberry shortcake has nothing on pastry chef Alina Martells vacherin, a textbook-crisp meringue shell housing fromage blanc ice cream and strawberry consomme. $13. 100 E. 63rd St., nr. Park Ave.; 646-869-2300.

The Clocktowers pistachio souffle. Photo: Bobby Doherty/New York Magazine

The Clocktowers Pistachio Souffle

Sebastien Rouxel patterned his menu after the rooms old-fashioned vibe. His classic souffle, a miracle of beaten egg whites aerating a yolk-based sauce, is all about technique and comes with a scoop of chocolate ice cream. $18. 5 Madison Ave., at 24th St.; 212-413-4300.

Dirty Frenchs tarte Tatin. Photo: Bobby Doherty/New York Magazine

Dirty Frenchs Tarte Tatin

When you think tarte Tatin, you think apples. But Rich Torrisis pineapple tarte Tatin  larded with sliced banana for creaminess  changes all that in one bite. $15. 180 Ludlow St., nr. Houston St.; 212-254-3000.

Rebelles mille-feuille. Photo: Bobby Doherty/New York Magazine

Rebelles Mille-feuille

Pastry chef Samantha Chen makes her own flaky thousand-leaves puff pastry, tops it with huckleberry compote, and layers it with yogurt mousse and nutty taro mousseline  a nod to her Taiwanese roots. $24 (to share). 218 Bowery, nr. Prince St.; 917-639-3880.

M. Wells Steakhouse Photo: Bobby Doherty/New York Magazine

M. Wells Steakhouses Baked Alaska

M. Wells picks up where Delmonicos left off, plopping ice cream onto cake, spackling it with meringue, baking it for a while, then dousing it with anise liqueur and torching it tableside. $20. 43-15 Crescent St., Long Island City; 718-786-9060.

La Sirenas baba al Campari. Photo: Bobby Doherty/New York Magazine

La Sirenas Baba al Campari

Baba au rhum reinterpreted for a Mario Batali restaurant by former Le Bernardin pastry chef Michael Laiskonis. The cake is soaked in everyones favorite deep-pink aperitif and topped with basil ice cream. $14. 88 Ninth Ave., at 16th St.; 212-977-6096.

*This article appears in the May 30, 2016 issue of New York Magazine.
Even better: You can order a slice of one of the winning cakes in a bar. Photo: Miachel Breton

Yes, any cake can technically be a birthday cake if you put a candle in it, but we wanted the version specifically billed as a birthday cake on the bakerys menu, because celebrations are no time to be wishy-washy about your intentions. Now that weve come back down from our sugar highs, were happy to inform you that these are officially the cakes that will take you back to your childhood and put the biggest smile on your face.

The Absolute Best 1. Butter & Scotch

818 Franklin Ave., nr. Union St., Crown Heights; 347-350-8899 Bakers Allison Kave and Keavy Blueher make the platonic ideal of a childhood birthday cake: a 9-inch, three-layer vanilla white cake with pink frosting and rainbow sprinkles. And, look, theres no other way to say it: The cake is moist, miraculously so, and it stays that way even hours after youve cut the first slice, owing to an expert reduction in the amount of flour thats used in the batter. The cake also happens to nail a perfect level of sweetness, giving you the sugar fix youre looking for without making you immediately reach for a glass of milk. In fact, because the cake is sold by the slice at Butter & Scotchs combination bakery and bar, you can reach for a glass of something considerably stronger to wash everything down.

2. Momofuku Milk Bar

251 E. 13th St., nr. Second Ave.; 347-588-9504

If youve been to a birthday party in New York in the last few years, you have almost certainly seen, and possibly eaten, one of Christina Tosis now-iconic naked unfrosted birthday cakes. Its essentially a status cake, but it also happens to taste like the pastry-chef version of childhood: Tosis team soaks the cake in milk and vanilla extract and bakes sprinkles, Funfetti style, right into the batter. The rainbow-cake crumble on top is an A-plus garnish, too. In fact, the cake only loses points because the vanilla frosting between layers is so aggressively sweet that its hard for all but the most hardcore sugar fiends to eat more than a few bites in one sitting.

3. Duane Park Patisserie

179 Duane St., nr. Greenwich St.; 212-274-8447

Through her Tribeca bakery, Madeline Lanciani makes cakes for some seriously highbrow clients, like the Met Costume Gala. What makes Lancianis cakes really stand out is their ornate appearance. Almost always custom orders  consisting of three layers of actual cake and two layers of a filling encased with icing  the finished cakes can be made in the likeness of a tiara, a piano, or your own photograph. Anything you want, in other words. You can choose whatever flavor combination you want, too, but by default Lanciani suggests a combination of yellow cake with chocolate icing. You should take her advice: The combination is classic for a reason and, and in contrast to many of Duane Parks competitors, the sugar level is ratcheted down a bit to give these high-class cakes an adult-appropriate sweetness.
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After Germany and the UK, Samsung has now pulled out of the camera market in Australia. "Due to changing market conditions, Samsung will reduce its focus on sales and marketing for its range of digital imaging products in this country," the tech giant said.

Most Australian retailers have already stopped stocking Samsung cameras, and are - quite understandably - focusing on clearing the existing inventory. An important point worth mentioning here is that Samsung's exit from Australian camera market will not impact the launch of its Gear 360 camera there.

This comes just a few weeks after Samsung Australias digital imaging manager Craig Gillespie left the company.

Via
After undergoing the thorough leak treatment, the Sony Xperia E5 was just made official today, without too much fuss. The handset can now be found on the company's website, along with a confirmation of its previously rumored specs.

Just as expected, the Sony Xperia E5 is equipped with a 5-inch 720p display and powered by Mediatek's MTK6735 with four 1.3GHz Cortex-A53 cores. There's 1.5GB of RAM, plus 16GB of expandable storage to finish the picture of an entry-level device.

On the physical side of things, the Xperia E5 measures 144 x 69 x 8.2 mm and weighs in at 147g, which includes the 2,700 mAh battery pack. It should offer quite enough capacity for the Mediatek chip in question, with Sony promising "up to 2 days battery life".

The phone's camera setup consists of a 13MP main shooter with a single LED flash and a 5MP one on the front, also equipped with its own flash for better low-light selfies. Other features on the smartphone include NFC, Cat.4 LTE connectivity, as well as optional Dual-SIM support.

It is offered in traditional white or black colors and boots Google's Android Marshmallow. You will need to shell out 199 to get one when it launches.

Source
The ZUK Z2 arrives tactfully late after the Z2 Pro. It has a metal frame and a honking big battery, Android 6.0 Marshmallow and a Snapdragon 820 chipset, all served up at CNY 1,800 ($275/245).

The ZUK Z2 has a slightly smaller screen than the Pro version - 5" 1080p - which is covered with 2.5D Curved glass. The phone is slightly thicker, 8.5mm vs. 7.5mm, but comes with a bigger battery, 3,500mAh vs. 3,100mAh. Quick Charge 3.0 is supported over the USB Type-C port (80% in 1 hour), but you can also grab a wireless charging pad for CNY 300.



ZUK Z2

The Z2 is powered by a Snapdragon 820 chipset, a jump of several generations over the S801 in the original ZUK. You get a generous 4GB of RAM and 64GB storage (no microSD card slot this time either).

The phone runs Android 6.0 with ZUI 2.0 on top. It has a U-Touch 2.0 fingerprint reader that works in just 0.1s and can even recognize a wet finger. This is a dual-SIM phone with LTE connectivity (Cat. 6), with support for China Unicom and China Telecom.



ZUK Z2

For the camera, ZUK called on Samsung and its ISOCELL sensor for the back unit. It's a 13MP sensor, 1/2.6" in size and with 1.34m pixels. It supports phase detection AF (0.1s for focus lock) and electronic image stabilization. The front 8MP camera also has 1.34m pixels.

The Z2 can capture 4K videos as well as impressive 960fps slow-motion videos.

The ZUK Z2 will launch on June 7, but pre-orders start today. It costs CNY 1,800 and you can grab one from ZUK.com, Suning Tesco and the Lynx flagship store.

Source (in Chinese) | Via
Nashville, Tennessee-based vocalist Elena Chavez has just released her new EP Shelter. Chavez relocated to Nashville from her hometown of Roswell, New Mexico, when she was 19 to work with veteran music industry executive and producer Otto Price on a new Christian rock band. After a series of life events, including the death of a dear friend, the band dissolved and Chavez took a job working with breast cancer survivors.

She released her debut project titled "More Than Getting By." When she was 21, she moved to Malaysia to develop worship teams in local international churches. While in Asia, she released her sophomore EP, titled "Push and Pull." It was during a trip from Malaysia to Singapore that she met Luy.

Q: Elena, thank you so much for your time. Prior to the release of your own solo projects, you were involved in a Christian rock band. What's the name of the band? Did you release any albums together?

Well hello and thank you for your questions! Long ago I was in a Christian rock band called Empire Run (Formerly known as The Wager). We had a short career together that involved one EP and a handful of shows. I was 18 when I auditioned for the lead vocalist position in the band, Otto and the team selected me to sing. I dropped out of my freshman year at University of New Mexico to move to Nashville and pursue the door the Lord had opened before me.



Q: What happened to the band? And what prompted you to pursue a solo career?



When I moved to Nashville I was pretty blessed to have met the Robert and Mary Green. They were an awesome couple that opened up their spare room to me so I could make my move before I found an apartment. We were in the developing stages of Empire Run when my world was shaken. Robert collapsed one morning and I remember Mary yelling for me to call 911. I ended up doing CPR on my friend for about 20 minutes. He was later pronounced dead due to a brain aneurysm. As a 19 year old I don't think I had the tools to process that experience in a healthy way and I just powered through. There were differences in interest within the band and at the time I wasn't capable of being the one to spearhead what needed to be done and the band dissolved. I have seen God's plan unfold over the years in the lives of Empire Run's old members and we know that Empire Run was a stop along the way but not the final destination for us.



Q: Congratulations on the release of your new EP "Shelter." How would you describe your sound on this EP?



Thank you! Oh my, this EP. Positive would be the first word I would say. Because of the difficult nature of some of the trials God has walked me through in my life, my solo writing and previous EPs all contain a hint of pain or anguish, the listener can usually hear me wrestle with God through my words and melodies. For an example, "Not Afraid" from my first EP "More Than Getting By" was the prayer I prayed hours after Robert passed away. The making of Shelter was the first time I had ever teamed up with another writer, classical pianist and song writer Jayne Luy. That woman is a happy, bubbly, JOYFUL Lady. The words she wrote swing together like a hymn, point to God and feel hopeful.



Q: This album finds you teaming with pianist and writer Jayne Luy. And both of you met in Asia. Tell us the story of how the two of you started working together.



I was living in Malaysia as a missionary while I volunteered as head over the worship and media departments at a local international church. One week I packed a backpack and took the bus over the bridge to Singapore. I was there to sing for a funeral and assist our sister church for a few services. I remember being in the music office of that church building when Jayne walked in to speak to the music director about her the need for a vocalist. At the end of their conversation, Jayne asked if he knew anyone who could help, and that music director turned towards me with a smile on his face and said "Well. I can think of one person..." The rest is history.



Q: Did you approach the making of this EP any different from your other releases?



Oh Yes. This was my first time recording songs that weren't ones I had written myself. It wasn't intended to be an EP when we began working together but slowly the purpose for it became clear to Jayne and we worked together to see it come through fruition.



Q: From the EP, you have released a new single "Shepherd (Morning Song)." What's the song about? And what does it mean to you personally?



Me personally, I have a memory that pops into my head every time I sing the chorus. During the week I had spent in Indonesia, my traveling buddies and fellow volunteers in the church had convinced me to trek Mount Merapi. Merapi is well known for being a pretty temperamental volcano. We were ill prepared when my friend, our travel guide and myself started up the base of Merapi at 12AM.

Our goal was to see the sunrise from the summit. It was pitch black and I didn't have a headlamp so I carried a flash light in one hand and pulled myself up the wooded terrain with my other. I am not usually easily frightened, but fear started to set in when the ground beneath me got so steep I could only travel forward on all fours while holding the flashlight between my teeth. Then I realized we were moving up along a drop off. We moved in silence, but the prayers began. "Alrighty. Okay. Jesus. What did I get myself into here..." I struck up a conversation with our travel guide through gasps and puffs for air. His English was better than most of the people I had encountered that day so our conversation was able to last until he revealed that... "You won't see others up here. No one climbs Merapi in these seasons. Too active. Very Active."

To make a long story short, we were not able to summit because of volcanic activity and instead stayed in a cave on the safe side of the mountain until the morning came. A lot of my time over that trek was spent in prayer for God's peace and protection as I willed my body to keep moving and my mind to not be anxious. I remember when morning broke on that night. The first pieces of light slithered across the sky and the valley beneath us. Proverbs and psalms and promises of peace whirled in my head as I watched in awe as God directed His morning song before me. Going down the mountain, with the light on all the path before me, I was not in fear because I could see things for what they really were. He is the Light of The World. When I sing Shepard (Morning Song), I feel him proclaiming over his Church that he is near and that we no longer walk blindly for he calls us friend and directs our paths. We are not to forget this, He reminds us over and over in his word to not be anxious but to abide in his peace, joyfully, in ALL situations.



Q: What's next for you? Are you currently touring in support of your new music? If so, where can our readers find out about your tour dates and venues?



I am currently gearing up to spend a good portion of this summer in South East Asia, in areas I haven't been before to continue work similar to what I did while living in Malaysia. At the moment I have no tour dates in the States, but keep an eye on www.elenachavez.co for any events that are to come!

For more information about Chavez, visit elenachavez.co or like on Facebookand Twitter. The EP is available for purchase at iTunes.

Tags : elena chavez elena chavez news elena chavez interview elena chavez shelter elena chavez new ep jayne luy elena chavez shepherd (morning song)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Copyrighting" and "Copyrights" redirect here. For the use of words to promote or advertise, see Copywriting . For the Wikipedia policy about copyright issues, see Wikipedia:Copyrights

Copyright is a legal right created by the law of a country that grants the creator of an original work exclusive rights for its use and distribution. This is usually only for a limited time. The exclusive rights are not absolute but limited by limitations and exceptions to copyright law, including fair use. A major limitation on copyright is that copyright protects only the original expression of ideas, and not the underlying ideas themselves. [1]

Copyright is a form of intellectual property , applicable to certain forms of creative work. Under US copyright law, legal protection attaches only to fixed representations in a tangible medium. The Berne Convention allows member countries to decide whether creative works must be "fixed" to enjoy copyright. Article 2, Section 2 of the Berne Convention states: "It shall be a matter for legislation in the countries of the Union to prescribe that works in general or any specified categories of works shall not be protected unless they have been fixed in some material form." Some countries do not require that a work be produced in a particular form to obtain copyright protection. For instance, Spain, France, and Australia do not require fixation for copyright protection. The United States and Canada, on the other hand, require that most works must be "fixed in a tangible medium of expression" to obtain copyright protection. [2] U.S. law requires that the fixation be stable and permanent enough to be "perceived, reproduced or communicated for a period of more than transitory duration." Similarly, Canadian courts consider fixation to require that the work be "expressed to some extent at least in some material form, capable of identification and having a more or less permanent endurance." [2] It is often shared among multiple authors, each of whom holds a set of rights to use or license the work, and who are commonly referred to as rightsholders . [3] These rights frequently include reproduction, control over derivative works , distribution, public performance , and " moral rights " such as attribution. [4]

Copyrights are considered territorial rights, which means that they do not extend beyond the territory of a specific jurisdiction. While many aspects of national copyright laws have been standardized through international copyright agreements , copyright laws vary by country. [5]

Typically, the duration of a copyright spans the author's life plus 50 to 100 years (that is, copyright typically expires 50 to 100 years after the author dies, depending on the jurisdiction). Some countries require certain copyright formalities to establishing copyright, but most recognize copyright in any completed work, without formal registration. Generally, copyright is enforced as a civil matter, though some jurisdictions do apply criminal sanctions.

Most jurisdictions recognize copyright limitations, allowing "fair" exceptions to the creator's exclusivity of copyright and giving users certain rights. The development of digital media and computer network technologies have prompted reinterpretation of these exceptions, introduced new difficulties in enforcing copyright, and inspired additional challenges to copyright law's philosophic basis. Simultaneously, businesses with great economic dependence upon copyright, such as those in the music business, have advocated the extension and expansion of copyright and sought additional legal and technological enforcement.
artment store Myer has reasserted its co-operation with the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO), as legal action is launched against a cleaning contractor alleged to have underpaid employees who cleaned Myer stores in Queensland, Victoria and Tasmania.The FWO is alleging in the Federal Court that commercial cleaning firm Pioneer Personnel breached the Fair Work Act by underpaying nine employees. The Ombudsman also said that despite holding meetings with Myer over the issue of underpaid workers, the retail chain opted against entering into a compliance partnership to address underpayment in its supply chain.When contacted by HC Online, Myer re-iterated its statement of full co-operation with the FWOs investigations.Myer takes our responsibilities as an Australian employer very seriously and we hold the same concern for the rights and wellbeing of anyone who works in our business, said the statement.In June last year we terminated Pioneer Cleaning Services for being unable to provide us with assurances of its compliance.Myer will continue to assist the Fair Work Ombudsman with any enquiries and investigations.The Ombudsman alleges that the among the underpaid employees are a number of migrant workers from non-English speaking backgrounds, and that the legal action has been launched because of concern that the company's alleged non-compliance issues potentially affect a large number of workers, including many vulnerable workers".In a statement of claim (obtained by Fairfax Media), the Ombudsman noted that since November 2015, Pioneer Personnel made a number of payments since November 2015, to rectify some of the underpayments" but that the underpayments have not been fully rectified.
North Carolina citizens can now pay probation-related costs, fines and fees online using their credit / debit card with the launch of Online Collections and Payments (OCAP). Online payments are available 24/7 at onlineservices.NCcourts.org for supervised and unsupervised probationers with their case file number, the county that issued the charge, and a major credit card, including American Express, Discover, MasterCard, and Visa cards.

OCAP is easy to use, more convenient for the public, and more efficient for the state, said Judge Marion Warren, director of the N.C. Administrative Office of the Courts. It is a great online tool that is part of the larger ongoing initiative to modernize the North Carolina court system.

The online payments system provides immediate benefits to citizens, as well as to court officials and staff. While it provides a more convenient payment option for citizens, the system also means less paperwork, less traffic in the courthouse, and shorter lines at the cashier window. Prior to OCAP, citizens had to pay costs, fines, and fees at the courthouse or by mail. In fiscal year 2014  15, North Carolina courts processed probation payments totaling more than $14.2 million.

If you come down to New Hanover Courthouse on any given day and you look at the traffic of the public trying to pay fines and fees, anytime, theres a line, said New Hanover County Clerk of Superior Court Jan Kennedy. [With OCAP] you wont have to fight with driving down here or coming through the security system, or taking time off from work.

The system was piloted in Chatham, New Hanover, and Wake counties prior to statewide implementation on May 31. Probation payments are the first statewide non-traffic citation-related costs available for online payment. Credit / debit card payments are eligible for most district criminal (CR) or superior criminal (CRS) cases that have gone to court and been placed on supervised or unsupervised probation with monies owed. The OCAP system can only be used for probation cases that have been tried in court.

A convenience fee is charged at the time of each credit / debit card payment and is remitted to a third-party company. Except for the convenience fee, most monies received do not stay with the courts but instead go to other state and local government agencies. Continuing on the technology success of NCAOCs payNCticket program since 2010, the online payments system is another convenient epay technology making it easier for citizens to do business with the courts. NCAOC is working to expand payment options to all criminal cases for release later this year.

More information

OCAP fact sheet

onlineservices.NCcourts.org

###

About N.C. Judicial Branch The Judicial Branch is an equal and distinctively separate branch and core function of government. More than 6,000 Judicial Branch employees statewide administer justice in courthouses in North Carolinas 100 counties. The Judicial Branch budget for FY 2015  2016 is $484.9M, 92% of which is used to pay salaries and the remaining 8% is used for operations. The Judicial Branch receives only 2.23% of the overall State budget. More than 54% of the Judicial Branchs appropriation is equivalent to revenues collected by the courts through imposed fines and fees that are deposited in the State General Fund.

About N.C. Administrative Office of the Courts The N.C. Administrative Office of the Courts (NCAOC) is the administrative agency for the N.C. Judicial Branch, providing administrative services to help the North Carolina court system operate more efficiently and effectively, taking into account each courthouses diverse needs, caseloads, and available resources.

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By Jesse Wood

Unlike he has in past years, Gov. Pat McCrory will not attend the annual Oasis Shriners spring ceremonial and grand parade through Blowing Rock on Saturday, June 4.

The Oasis Shriners apparently were under the impression that McCrory would be attending the parade and delivering a special message from Memorial Park.

But on Tuesday afternoon, Don Reid, a spokesperson for the Oasis Shriners, said that the Shriners became aware on Friday that McCrory wouldnt attend the event on Saturday. Instead, Reid said that Assistant Secretary for the Department of Military and Veteran Affairs James Prosser will attend.

While Graham Wilson, the governors press secretary, confirmed that Prosser will be attending the event as a representative of McCrory, Wilson was adamant that McCrory was never scheduled to attend the event in the first place.

He was never scheduled to be there. It was never on his schedule, Wilson said.

During the parade, the Watauga County chapter of the NAACP has planned a McCrory HB2 Protest on Main Street in Blowing Rock, where the parade meanders.

However, its unclear if the protest will still take place since McCrory isnt attending the event. Watauga NAACP Branch President Todd Carter couldnt be reached on Tuesday.

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By Jessica Isaacs | [email protected]

Photos by Ken Ketchie.

Youve heard of the farm-to-table movement, but how about farm-to-bar? Theres a brand new tavern at one of your favorite High Country spots, and theyre bringing the best in fresh local ingredients to your next cocktail!

A quick drive from Boone will bring you to the Linville community, where youll find a delightful little place known as the Old Hampton Store, which was first built in 1920.

Today, current owners Abigail and Steve Sheets have invested countless hours and a lot of money into improving the historic general store and surrounding buildings, which now house a classic North Carolina barbecue restaurant, a trading post, an art gallery, an antique store and, new this summer, a tavern.

The store is a very nice environment where someone can do a little bit of everything, said Morgan Hockaday, head bartender and bar manager. The tavern is a wonderful addition. Were using all local craft beers from breweries in North Carolina, especially in Banner Elk, Boone and Plumtree. Were really, really strong in supporting the local community.

Hockaday will also be introducing what she calls a farm-to-bar style cocktail menu, which will incorporate fresh, organic ingredients from nearby farms.

Ready to try one? Head to the store this weekend for the taverns grand opening on Saturday and Hockaday will have one ready for you. Shell be introducing some signature drinks, like a jalapeno watermelon cocktail, and local bluegrass group WD40 will be serving up some tunes.

Whether youre new to the Old Hampton Store or not, theres no better way to kick off your summer than a Saturday at its brand new tavern.

While youre there, sit for a spell in the restaurant or out on the lawn to enjoy its famous smoky barbecue recipe; satisfy your sweet tooth at the candy barrels; swing by the adjoining gallery to shop top-quality crafts and artwork.

This place will give you a taste of the local North Carolina mountains, Hockaday said. Its not just a cocktail, a beer, or a glass of wine. Its a taste of what life in the High Country has to offer.

Whet your whistle at the Old Hampton Store this weekend. Youll be glad you did!

The store is located at 77 Ruffin St. in Linville. For more information, stop by, give them a call at 828-733-5213 or follow the store on Facebook.

The Old Hampton Store hours on Saturday, June 4:

The General Store: 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.

The Barbecue Restaurant: 11 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.

The Tavern: 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.

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Altogether 243 international cruise ships will visit Helsinki this summer, bringing with them an estimated 460,000 cruise visitors, which would be a new record for us, Jenny Taipale, a marketing manager at Visit Helsinki, reveals in a press release .

Up to 460,000 international cruise passengers are expected to arrive in Helsinki in 2016, reports Visit Helsinki.

The passengers are expected to spend a total of 28 million euros during their visit.

The cruise ship season began earlier this month as three large cruise ships  Celebrity Silhouette, Costa Luminosa and Regal Princess  dropped their anchors in Helsinki, unloading roughly 9,000 passengers from several corners of the world to the streets of the capital of Finland.

Germans made up the largest group of cruise passengers visiting Helsinki in 2015, with as many as 117,000 visitors, while other common countries of origin for the visitors included the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy and Canada.

Helsinki has also launched a campaign to establish itself as an attractive exchange port for cruise passengers alongside Copenhagen and Stockholm, and to increase the number of overnight stays by the passengers, reveals Taipale. The city is currently used as an exchange port by Pullmantur, a cruise line based in Madrid, Spain.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Photo: Irene Stachon  Lehtikuva
A teenager lashed out at gardai after he had too much to drink while celebrating St Patrick's Day.

Jordan Joyce (19) was with a large group of youths drinking in a Swords park, but the others walked away when they saw gardai.

A court heard Joyce was so drunk that he collapsed on the ground and gardai had to help him to his feet.

Judge Dermot Dempsey ordered Joyce to complete 240 hours of community service in lieu of two months in prison.

The defendant, with addresses at Jugback Green and St Cronan's Close, Swords, admitted before Swords District Court to public drunkenness and threatening and abusive behaviour at River Valley Park, Swords, last, March 17.

Gda Thomas Murphy said he was on bicycle patrol at around 6.30pm when he came across a large group of youths who were carrying beer and Irish flags to celebrate St Patrick's Day.

Violent

Gda Murphy said the youths moved off when they saw gardai, apart from Joyce, who collapsed on the ground.

He said Joyce was highly intoxicated and became violent towards him and his colleague, aggressively striking out at them with his fists.

Gda Murphy said Joyce also pulled the epaulettes from his colleague's shirt.

The officer said Joyce was taken to Swords Garda Station where his violent behaviour continued.

He said Joyce, who has no previous convictions, later came into the garda station and apologised.

Defence solicitor Fiona D'Arcy said the defendant is a young man who suffers from anxiety and depression.

She said he was drinking heavily around the time of the incident.

Ms D'Arcy said he now realises he needs help and he is due to start counselling this week.

She said the teenager would also benefit from working with the probation services.

Judge Dempsey told Joyce he was "getting an opportunity" to complete community service and he should use it wisely.
Audrey Mahon has forgiven her husband David for unlawfully killing her son Dean three years ago but says she has not "forgotten" what happened.

Mrs Mahon said she could not disagree with the jury's verdict because her husband had produced a knife unlawfully.

David Mahon (45) was found guilty of the manslaughter of his stepson earlier this month.

He will be sentenced by Ms Justice Margaret Heneghan on Monday week. Mahon had denied murdering Mr Fitzpatrick on May 26, 2013, a day after the deceased interfered with his bicycle to annoy him.

He had claimed that father-of-one Mr Fitzpatrick walked into the knife he was holding and his death was an accident.

His legal team argued that Mahon's account of what happened was not contradicted by the scientific evidence.

Agitated

However, it was the prosecution case that Mahon was drunk, angry and agitated and he stabbed his stepson, before fleeing the scene and leaving him to die on the street.

Dean Fitzpatrick was the older brother of 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 Mahon at Burnell Square, Northern Cross in Malahide.

Earlier this month, a jury of six men and six women took eight hours and 16 minutes to reach a verdict that Mahon was not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter.

During the sentence hearing yesterday, victim impact statements from Dean's dad, Christopher Fitzpatrick, his mother, Audrey Mahon, his girlfriend, Sarah O'Rourke, and his four-year-old son, Leon, were read to the court.

In her victim impact statement, Audrey Mahon, David's wife and Dean's mother, said her life had become a living nightmare since his death.

She said that, like all mothers, she had a "special bond" with her son, and although he had his problems, she recalled his "cheeky grin" and "heart of gold".

She said she had lost both her children and did not think she was strong enough to cope with losing her husband.

Mrs Mahon said David had also lost everything, and he had done everything in his power to find Amy. Mrs Mahon said her husband had supported her through her illness, through two resuscitations, often literally picking her up off the floor.

She said that "nothing can compare with the tragedy of Dean's loss".

She could not disagree with the jury's decision, she said, because David Mahon had produced a knife unlawfully.

Mrs Mahon further said she has "forgiven Dave but has not forgotten" what happened, adding that Mahon will "always be my husband, carer and my best friend".

Dean's dad, Christopher Fitzpatrick, said his son took his first breath into the world in March 1990, and he was "so small and precious" and he was so "full of joy" to have a son.

He said he will never get to see Dean enjoy his own son Leon growing up.

In his victim impact statement, Mr Fitzpatrick said his daughter went missing in Spain in 2008 and his "world came crashing down again" in May 2013 when he had to identify his son's body in Beaumont Hospital.

He said that doctors told him they had done all they could but the stab wound was so deep they could not save him.

He said Dean's death has taken its toll on him, and he had been hospitalised due to stress.

Despair

Mr Fitzpatrick also said Audrey Mahon had tried to exclude him from Dean's funeral and he had been forced to go to the High Court so his son could be buried in his own plot.

He said he hoped Amy would eventually be found alive but he could have no such hope for his son. He also said there were no words to describe his "pain, anger and despair".

Mr Fitzpatrick said that all he now has of Dean is "visits to his resting place".

Ms Justice Margaret Heneghan said she will impose sentence on Monday, June 13.
Gda David Connolly said it is alleged the man felt the boy's privates through his tracksuit bottoms. Stock photo: PA

A pensioner allegedly asked a 16-year-old "Do you like it?" after he felt the boy's privates through his tracksuit bottoms.

The 70-year-old is alleged to have left the area when the 16-year-old told him he did not like it.

The accused appeared before Tallaght District Court charged with sexually assaulting a teenage boy at Churchtown Shopping Centre last January 24.

The court heard that the DPP has directed summary trial in the district court.

Bike

Outlining the allegation for jurisdiction purposes, Gda David Connolly said the boy stopped outside a coffee shop so he could use the wifi.

Gda Connolly said the accused was sitting outside and went over and started to talk to the teenager, who was on his bike.

The officer said it is alleged the man felt the boy's privates through his tracksuit bottoms and asked: "Do you like it?"

Gda Connolly said the teenager replied "no" and the accused moved off.

The boy immediately told two other individuals what had happened.

Judge Bridget Reilly accepted jurisdiction and the matter was adjourned until July for a plea.
County GOP central committee chairman to leave after Election Day

Jerry DeWolf, Washington County GOP Central Committee chairman, says he's leaving the group after the election to spend more time with family.
Harry Boyte continues his conversation with Deborah Meier. To read their full exchange, please visit here .

Dear Deb and Colleagues,

You ask, At what point does one go from flawed democracy to one not at all? I have two points, both about larger strategy.

If we understand democracy to include not only governance structures but also empowering cultures, the question is, How does such culture develop? As I learned in the freedom movement as a young man (the civil rights movement) its a mistake to make overly sharp contrasts between democratic and undemocratic communities, just as its mistaken to contrast good and bad people. Its more or less, not either-or.

All communities have elements that make for democratic action and elements that oppose democratic action, as the community organizer Saul Alinsky put it. In community organizing, the first job of an organizer when entering a community is not to identify what she or he thinks is wrong with it, but rather to get to know that community and its values, histories, power dynamics, conflicts, and leaders. Democratic capacities are developed from the inside out.

Beginning where a community is, not where one would like it to be, and developing democratic capacities, civic agency, is the strategy of organizing. It contrasts with both mobilizing and also a human rights stance. Mobilizing, rallying people against injustices, often overlooks developing democratic capacities. Human rights, articulating ideals of equality and dignity and seeking protection usually through the courts, often is advanced as an alternative to popular agency. Both mobilizing and human rights play important roles in democracy. But the question needs insistently to be asked: How do they build civic agency?

In this vein, Martin Luther King assigned me to organize in poor white communities, though he knew full well that they included KKK members, a story told on the Civil Rights Movement Veterans website. We had some success, beginning in a white mill village in East Durham, N.C., as Ive mentioned. I dont want to exaggerate. We also had many challenges and made mistakes, but we also saw changes and new interracial relationships.

My other point: its important to think about building democracy schools in historical context.

I didnt know this at the time of Kings assignment but later discovered that he and others were thinking about the movements next stage, which they believed needed to involve alliances between blacks and white working people.

Bayard Rustin, a political mentor of Dr. King, had argued for such alliance-building since the 1940s. By the mid-1960s he was making this argument with urgency. The battle against legal segregation was largely won. He saw the movements next stage as much more difficult, tackling many-sided, complex problems, wicked problems, such as chronic unemployment, failing schools, lousy housing, drugs, and antagonistic relations with police. All are still with us. The strategy Rustin proposed is still relevant.

In his 1965 essay From Protest to Politics Bayard Rustin proposed three elements. The first was electoral coalitions to win over middle America. Robert Kennedys presidential bid in 1968 was in this vein, successfully appealing to white blue collar voters who had earlier backed the segregationist George Wallace. Cross-racial community organizing of the kind I was doing was the second. Here and there across the country, it was proving highly successful, but it never went to full scale. Institutional transformation, including transformation of schools, was the third. You helped show the way in this, Deb, which is why I see your work as so exemplary, but most neglected this approach entirely.

Rustin contrasted this, what could be called a sober democratization strategy, with the purist tone he saw among many young activists and white professionals, whom he called moralists. Moralists looked at white working people with condescension and prejudice, seeing them as the enemy. This continues to be a problem. Today in education, a focus on consciousness-raising about injustices continues to substitute for the citizen politics which Rustin advanced.

Rustin, King, and others anticipated what would occur if alliance-building did not happen on a large scale: elites would drive a wedge between blacks and white working people. Divide-and-conquer was central to Richard Nixons Southern Strategy in 1968 and 1972. It reached new levels with Donald Trump. This is our context and our challenge.

Trumpism is much bigger than Donald Trump. Bill Doherty, a family therapist and pioneer in the movement called citizen professionalism, observes that Trumpism includes scapegoating groups; degrading rivals; and promoting the cult of the strong man. The cult of the strong man appeals to resentments, scorns reasoned discussion, champions narrow nationalism over respect for other societies, incites violence, and calls for people to trust in the great leader. Whether it is resurgent fascism or something new is beside the point. Trumpism is profoundly dangerous. It threatens existing elements of democracy, like protection of human rights. It threatens future democratic possibilities. It is emerging not only in the US but also around the world.

Bayard Rustin, like many around Martin Luther King, was shaped by the 1930s, in a time with parallels to our time, when the world faced rising dangers of totalitarianism. In response people created an international movement against fascism which not only defended democracy but also deepened democracy, showing connections between many issues. Rustin brought this perspective to the sixties.

The international movement was a seedbed for unions, cooperatives, culture change, anti-racist struggles, and organizing in and around education. It birthed successful anti-colonial movements. Overall it built civic agency on an immense scale, even with all its contradictions (like the manipulations of the self-proclaimed communist vanguard).

Today, again, we need to develop something parallel.

Building democracy in schools is inextricably connected to building democracy everywhere.

Harry
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Obama administration to weigh in on whether it should grant review in a special education case about the level of education benefit required under federal law. Meanwhile, the administration has filed a brief urging the justices to take up another special education case, one involving Wonder, the goldendoodle service dog.

The case in which the justices issued an order on Tuesday, Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District RE-1 (No. 15-827), raises an important question about which federal appeals courts are divided: What level of educational benefit must a child receive under his or her individualized education program to satisfy the demands of the main federal special education law.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver, ruled in the case of a Colorado child with autism that because the childs public school IEP provided him with some educational benefit, the Douglas County district had provided a free, appropriate public education under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. (The 10th Circuit court thus rejected a private school reimbursement for the parents of the boy identified as Endrew F., who had pulled him from public school after the dispute over his 5th grade IEP.)

In its August 2015 decision , the 10th Circuit court panel acknowledged that several other courts of appeals have adopted a higher standard that requires an IEP to result in a meaningful educational benefit.

The courts of appeals are in disarray over the level of educational benefit that school districts must confer on children with disabilities to provide them with a free appropriate public education under the IDEA, says the appeal filed on behalf of Endrew F. and his parents by his Denver lawyers and the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at Stanford Law School. This court should use this casewhich cleanly presents the legal issue on a well-developed set of factsto resolve the conflict over this important question.

The Supreme Court on May 31 did what it does in many IDEA cases that seemingly present a question worth taking upit asked the U.S. solicitor generals office to provide its views.

The solicitor generals office is under no particular deadline to file a brief, and it would seem unlikely that a response would come before the court adjourns for the summer.

Service-Dog Case

Meanwhile, the Obama administration recently filed a brief in another special education case in which the justices asked for its advice.

In that case, involving a young Michigan girl with cerebral palsy who was seeking to use her service dog, Wonder, at school, the solicitor generals office said the court should hear the familys appeal, and that it should ultimately rule for the family.

As I explained in January , when the court sought the solicitor generals views in Fry v. Napoleon Community Schools (No. 15-497), the legal question in the case is bit more technical than the dispute over whether Wonder may accompany and help the girl, Ehlena Fry, at school.

The legal question is whether a 1986 federal statute, the Handicapped Childrens Protection Act, requires families to exhaust procedures under the IDEA when they are suing under a couple of other federal lawsthe Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 or the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Those latter statutes provide for damages, which the IDEA does not.

In a brief filed on May 20 , the solicitor generals office said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, in Cincinnati, was incorrect when it ruled last year the Fry family must exhaust procedures under the IDEA when they brought claims under the ADA and Rehabilitation Act.

Because the federal appeals courts are split on their interpretations of that issue, the solicitor general recommends that the court grant review in the case.

What does all this have to do with Wonder, the service dog? Officials at Frys school refused to allow the girl to bring Wonder to school (though they briefly relented for a period of a few months). So Frys parents removed the girl from the Napoleon public schools and sued under the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act. Because Fry enrolled in a different public school district that welcomed Wonder, the case appears to be primarily about damages sought under those two federal disability statutes.

The Supreme Court is likely to decide before the end of its term whether to accept the case for argument, which would be for its next term.
For the second time this year, Kansas Supreme Court struck down the state legislatures funding formula on the grounds that it does not distribute equitably more than $4 billion in state aid among its school districts.

This time, the stakes are much higher. The legislature, which ended its session earlier this month, will have until June 30 to figure out a new funding formula or the state supreme court will deem the entire formula null and essentially shut the states public school system down.

A ruling on whether the states funding formula is adequate is expected to come down later this summer. If the state loses that case, the legislature will be forced to find close to $400 million more for Kansas school districts.

After the supreme court ruled in the Gannon v. Kansas case in February that the states funding formula was inequitable between wealthy and poor school districts, the legislature, late in its session, quickly (Democrats said illegally ) pushed through a bill known as the Classroom Learning Assuring Student Success Act. The law would have poured $2 million more into the states funding formula and done it in a way so that the states wealthy (and politically powerful) school districts wouldnt financially suffer.

Randy Watson, the states superintendent said last month that because the legislature doesnt have that much money to work with and that raising taxes wouldnt generate revenue by this July, there was a strong possibility that the court would accept the ruling.

But Alan Rupe, one of the lead lawyers for the plaintiff Dodge City, Hutchinson, Kansas City and Wichita school districts, told the court in a hearing earlier in May that the legislature essentially just rearranged its funding formula and left local (and mostly poor) taxpayers footing the bill. He used a set of Legos in court to demonstrate his rearrangement argument.

In its 47-page ruling issued May 27, the court essentially agreed with Rupe, describing the states current funding formula as still inequitable and disproportionately burdensome on local taxpayers.

The justices said political necessities were irrelevant to their review and that if schools were to close, legislators, not the court, would be to blame.

Simply put, the legislatures unconstitutional enactment is void; it has not performed its duty, said the ruling, signed by all seven justices.

Rupe predicts satisfying the court will cost the state $17.5 million, or $29.5 million if the legislature doesnt want to force the states wealthier districts from losing money, according to the Associated Press. In the coming weeks, the legislature will have to reconvene, devise a new funding formula, get the governor to sign it and send it to the courts.

In reacting to the ruling, the states governor and lawmakers didnt parse their words.

The court has yet again demonstrated it is the most political body in the state of Kansas, said Republican Gov. Sam Brownback in an e-mailed statement to the AP. He referred to the ruling as political brinksmanship.

Republican House Speaker Ray Merrick said, according to the AP, the court was holding children hostage.

But for administrators of the states poorest school districts, who have frozen teacher wages, cut extracurricular programs and, as a last resort, dramatically increased local property taxes, the courts ruling was a relief, and they amped up the pressure for the legislature to increase funding.

All sides in this dispute, including school boards and administrators across the state, want to avoid any disruption to public education in Kansas, the Kansas Association of School Boards said in a statement. Shutting down the school system on July 1 would have disastrous effects on our fine public schools and state. In its ruling, the Kansas Supreme Court said the Legislature has solved half the problem, declaring that capital outlay is constitutional. We strongly urge our elected leaders to continue working on providing a constitutional system for all of our students and resolve this issue as soon as possible.

The case, brought against the state by four poor districts in 2010, has roiled the Republican-dominated legislature for years, and has become one of the starkest examples in the country of how much power state supreme courts have in shaping school finance.

The court first ruled in 2014 that the states funding formula was in equitable. After the governor and legislature made another round of cuts to its school districts, the court ruled again earlier this year that the funding formula was still inequitable, predicting that it left school districts more than $54 million short in annual funding. In that ruling, the court first said it would shut down the states school districts if the legislature didnt come up with a satisfactory formula by June 30.

The legislature has had to make dramatic cuts in recent years after lawmakers in 2012 made a series of income tax reductions to spur the economy, an outcome that has not yet come to fruition.

In response to the school funding ruling and several other rulings, the states legislators have in recent months campaigned to have the states appointed justices be removed from office this fall. (Voters can remove appointed judges in whats known as retention votes.)

In this weeks Education Week issue, I wrote about how state supreme court rulings around education funding formulas often hinge on the specificitiesand ambiguitiesof state constitutions.

Dont miss another State EdWatch post. Sign up here to get news alerts in your email inbox. And make sure to follow @StateEdWatch on Twitter for the latest news from state K-12 policy and politics.
A group of Miami teachers is looking to raise $100,000 to take on the school district over millions of dollars in alleged lost wages.

The educatorswho are using the popular crowdsourcing platform Go Fund Me to raise money for the lawsuit contend that the Miami-Dade school district is openly ignoring a 2011 Florida law that requires districts to give pay increases to teachers deemed highly effective or effective based on student test scores and classroom observations. They also contend that the district has illegally changed the way tenured teachers are compensated.

Miami-Dade, the nations fourth largest school district, was a pioneer in a national movement to base teachers compensation on performance. In 2011, with much fanfare, thousands of Miami teachers received pay bumps , and longtime superintendent Alberto Carvalho presented 120 educators with large novelty checks for amounts ranging from $4,000 to $25,000. Those payouts were funded by the districts share of the Obama Administrations $4.3 billion Race to the Top program, which offered states and school districts additional funds if they adopted some of the presidents favorite education policies, including providing pay to teachers based on performance.

The idea behind merit pay is that educators need to be treated more like private sector employees, paid based on the quality of their work, not strictly on their years of experience and credentials. Florida lawmakers agreed and, during the same year that Miami began experimenting with merit pay, they passed a bill that mandated all districts in the state implement similar programs by 2014, becoming the first state to adopt a salary schedule based entirely on teacher performance. Miamis federal funds for their merit-pay program ran out the same year that the state mandate kicked in.

Senate Bill 736 was the first piece of legislation signed by Governor Rick Scott. (Back In 2011, Stephen Sawchuk noted that similar efforts had been scuttled in previous years, but with Republicans in control of the legislature and governors office, the bill became law after a party-line vote .)

The law not only mandated that teachers deemed effective or highly effective receive pay increases; it also eliminated tenure for new teachers. Veteran teachers could opt to continue to be paid under July 1, 2014 salary schedules based on years of experience and advanced degrees earned, though the law tried to get veteran teachers to abandon their tenure status and opt into the new pay structure by stipulating that pay increases for teachers under the merit-pay system must be larger than any pay increase on old pay scales.

In Miami that meant, highly effective teachers would receive $6,000 pay raises, while effective teachers would receive a smaller percentage of that figure. In 2014, 39 percent of Miamis 20,000 teachers were deemed highly effective, creating, officials say, an untenable financial position for the district, reported the Miami Herald.

By way of contrast, in neighboring Broward County, just 5 percent of the districts 14,000 teachers received the highly effective rating . While state law mandates that principal observations and student test scores be a part of evaluation systems, districts and unions negotiate the details of the process.

Last September, the United Teachers of Dade, the union representing Miami teachers, and the district agreed to a new pay scale that shrunk the raises promised to both tenured and non-tenured teachers.

The teachers behind the Go Fund Me campaign say the new contract is illegal, charging that it violates SB 736s provision that entitles tenured teachers to the grandfathered salary schedule . The district counters that teacher raises are never guaranteed, but are instead negotiated regularly between districts and unions. Superintendent Carvalho has called the pay increases promised under the 2014 salary schedule magical steps that teachers knew werent certain in hard times.

Opponents of the 2011 legislation predicted then that just like other performance-pay programs, Floridas would eventually cause fiscal headaches. One Democratic lawmaker called it the mother of all unfunded mandates, reported the Orlando Sentinel .

Funding problems havent been the only headwinds for the states merit-pay system. As Sawchuk reported, the research on the effectiveness of teacher performance pay is mixed at best . Additionally Floridas performance pay system has clashed with other education policies. For example, while lawmakers originally envisioned that eventually tests would be developed for every subject so that teachers in non-tested subjects like art and music could be more fairly compensated for their performance, that policy goal has evaporated under calls to reduce student testing. The system also greatly complicated Gov. Scotts 2013 pledge that every Florida teacher would get a pay raise .
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The violent racist attacks on Africans on the streets of the Capital by lumpen elements are a cause of deep concern and introspection by all who uphold human values. The minister for external affairs has strongly condemned these attacks, asked the law enforcement agencies to apprehend the attackers and stop any further violence. The African envoys are not placated by the Indian response. There is genuine fear that such incidents will continue if adequate measures are not taken. Their anxiety is deep and is linked not just to the attack but also to the kind of responses.

One minister representing the government stated that the attack was only a minor scuffle. This not only contradicts the external affairs minister (EAM) but tries to underplay and thus normalises these attacks. As if minor scuffles are business as usual on the streets of this country and so not to be taken seriously. Another minister responded saying that Even Africa is not safe, as if to say why should India be safe for the other if Africa was not? While condemning the attacks he also said that the attacks were giving India a bad name. As if the only problem at hand is one of image. Further, in 2013, Nigerians were attacked in Goa and one state minister called African nationals a cancer. Earlier, a Delhi minister had led a vigilante justice mob against African residents of his locality.

Read | Delhi cabbie beaten up by African nationals for refusing extra passengers

The response to such violence and statements on African nationals should not be one of damage control whereby the hurt and anger of the African envoys is assuaged and we move on from there. What is required is a series of measures, after the condemnation from the highest authority and ensuring safety of all Africans living in India.

Read | After attack on Africans, Delhi police say dont party at night

Of the several measures that can be taken, one step is to activate the public diplomacy section in the ministry of external affairs. They can initiate a programme of sensitisation for the politicians, the police and the public on the issue of racism. Perhaps a good idea would be to show how the national movement, freedom and the very formation of India were based on a platform that opposed colonialism and racism. Further, the ideas on non- violence and how these were developed by Mahatma Gandhi and his experience of racism in South Africa can be creatively revived and popularised. Indias solidarity with African anti-colonial, anti-racist struggles should be made part of public culture and discourse. It is worth noting if these ideas are repeated by politicians from public platforms, the message is well received by the masses.

Read | Centre in overdrive to contain crisis over attacks on Africans

Further the Information and Broadcasting Ministry that is known to be guiding the media, should promote debates, discussions and historical analysis of racism, how it is linked to oppressions, how to fight it, and how we develop critical thinking about it. Since there is so much focus on culture, perhaps it would be good for the culture ministry to show how diverse and plural the many cultures within India are and how they compare with African and Asian cultures. And if we really want to condemn and stop racism, it would be a good idea to make sure that the realities and implications of race are presented. How race has local forms that are called by different names and how it is a system based on exclusions and hierarchies.

Another resource against racism can be the NRI community. Many NRIs are into long-distance nationalism and want a good image of India. It would be worthwhile if they were to relate their good and bad experiences on racism as part of this nationalism. Several of the countries they live in had terrible racist policies and practices. Many, like the UK, Canada and the USA have also made huge political efforts to diminish this, even as racism continues to exist. Multiculturalism and tolerance are promoted as public culture, even though not all are successful. But anti-racism and opposing all kinds of phobias is a process that should be initiated from the highest levels.

Read | No conflict between the two communities

India has been party to the United Nations and all kinds of international resolutions and conventions on racism, it is time they popularised these and took action on the wonderful rhetoric presented in these forums. It would be useful if the Parliament and state assemblies had an all-party resolution against racism and its local forms.

The reason that resistance against racism needs to be promoted is because it is a major challenge within India. It is present in the association of being fair (somewhat white) as an aspect of beauty. It is deeply associated with caste discrimination. Racism intersects with different kinds of exclusions and discriminations.

Read | Lets get rid of this coloured view

One way however, that will ensure that racism continues to exist is to deny that we have racism problems. If we continue to exacerbate the contradictions where we see ourselves as being only victims of external (Western) racism, but we refuse to look critically at our own biases against others then we will not be able to fight racism and only reinforce it in different ways.

It is time we acknowledge that racism, like many related oppressions, is part of our everyday structures and institutions. It is present in our political process, in the social system, in our educational institutions, in our inter-personal relations. One has to just to step into the shoes for just one day, of those who feel this everyday exclusion to know.

There is also the resistance to racism and that is also one stream of thinking in India. The need however is to make this minor stream into a major one. This will happen when the complexity of truth is recognised, not denied.

Anuradha Chenoy is a professor at the School of International Studies, JNU

The views expressed are personal
Actor Priyanka Chopra returned home for 10 days after wrapping up the shooting of her Hollywood film Baywatch and television series Quantico and may decide on her next Hindi film in this duration.

The shooting of Baywatch is done; all have packed-up. The film is completed and will release in May next year. The shooting of Quantico season 1 is completed. I have come home for 10 days and will go for Quantico season 2 in July, Priyanka said at the Mumbai airport after returning from the US where she was shooting for Quantico and Baywatch.

Priyanka Chopra returns to Mumbai after completing her part of the Baywatch shoot in USA. (PTI)

She was accompanied by her Quantico co-star Yasmine Al Masri.

Priyanka has been in the US for the past 10 months shooting for her international projects. While she plays FBI agent Alex Parrish in Quantico, she plays negative character Victoria Leeds in Baywatch.

Read: What The Rock wrote about Priyanka Chopra

Two other big accomplishments that happened in Priyankas life in the meanwhile, were featuring on the Time magazines 100 Most Influential People and attending annual White House Correspondents Dinner hosted by US President Barack Obama.

Asked about her upcoming Hindi films, she replied: Now that I have returned, Ill decide what films Ill do. I havent decided yet. Her last Hindi film Jai Gangaajal did decent business at the box-office and there are reports of Priyanka being part of both of her Bajirao Mastani director Sanjay Leela Bhansalis rumoured films - Gustakhiyaan and a period drama on Rani Padmavati.

See pics: Priyanka Chopra stuns in a black Oscar number

Rumours claim that Priyanka has been offered a film by Aditya Chopra, Boney Kapoors Sikhni and Abhinay Deos superwoman film. However, the projects are yet to be confirmed.

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iv/vd
The remake of 2014 Hollywood movie Chef, starring Saif Ali Khan, is all set to go on floors after monsoons.

Since the 45-year-old actor is busy dubbing for Rangoon and will soon be occupied with its promotion, the producers of the remake have decided to begin with the shoot once the actor is done with his current project.

Read: Kareena Kapoor reveals her one condition for marrying Saif Ali Khan

Raja Menon, who will be directing the Chef remake, said the reason they want to begin the film after the release of Rangoon is Saif will also be promoting the film, so his availability might be a concern, reports Deccan Chronicle.

The director also added that because theres a lot of travel involved in the film, so it will be ideal to start the film only post rains.

Watch: The trailer of original Chef

Rangoon that also stars Kangana Ranaut and Shahid Kapoor will hit the big screen on February 27 next year.

Follow @htshowbiz for more.
Actors are often seen running on trains and doing daredevil stunts to protect their heroines onscreen. Singer-actor Diljit Dosanjh recently did so in real life when the sets of his upcoming Punjabi film caught fire and co-star Sonam Bajwa was stuck in it.

Actor Sonam Bajwa is all praise for his co-star Diljit Dosanjh, who rescued her and the team from what could have been a fatal accident.

It could have been a horrible accident, but thankfully Diljit used his presence of mind and helped everyone. I am glad he was there. We were not expecting something like this to happen at all. I think it is great to have a co-star who is not just a great actor but a great human being as well. Thankfully, there were no injuries otherwise it would have upset everyone a lot, says Bajwa.

Read: This turban got me this film: Diljit Dosanjh on Udta Punjab

A source from the sets explains the incident, The crew was in Australia, shooting a song sequence when Sonam was rehearsing for a dance sequence. The light fixtures were giving some trouble and one of the lighting equipment caught fire due to overheating, causing a fire right next to Sonam. Diljit rushed to the spot and got Sonam and the other dancers out of there. However, no damage was caused as the crew took immediate action.

Follow @htshowbiz for more.

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India clocked a double-digit growth in April, thereby becoming the fastest-growing aviation market in the world in a month that saw global passenger traffic grow at its slowest pace since January 2015.

The global airlines body International Air Transport Association's (IATAs) data released on Monday showed international passenger traffic rose by just 4.6% in April, the slowest year-over-year pace since January, 2015, following the Brussels suicide bomb attacks in March.

The disruptive impact of the Brussels Airport attack weighed on the April figures. The IATA estimates that absent the impact of the attacks, demand growth would have been around 5%, it said.

Indias domestic traffic soared by 21.8%, marking the 20th month of double-digit traffic growth and the 13th consecutive month it has led the domestic markets, said IATA, which represents some 260 airlines comprising 83% of the global air traffic.

India was the fastest-growing aviation market in the world in March 2016 clocking a growth of 27.4%. The countrys growth was over six times than that of the US, which with 4.1% was the second-fastest growing market.

Growth is being propelled by the comparatively strong economic backdrop as well as by substantial increases in service frequencies, the IATA said.

The disruptive impacts of the Brussels terror attacks will likely be short-lived. There are some long-term clouds over the pace of the demand growth. The stimulus from lower oil prices appears to be tapering off. And the global economic situation is subdued. Demand is still growing, but we may be shifting down a gear, said Tony Tyler, director general and CEO of IATA.

All markets reported demand increase with the exception of Brazil, which showed a 12.1% decline, reflecting the countrys ongoing economic recession and political turmoil, it added.

According to IATA, China recorded 9.5% domestic traffic growth, a strong rebound from the 3.3% increase recorded in March.

Fears about slowing economic growth in the country have eased somewhat and increased growth in frequencies is helping stimulate demand, it said.

International passenger demand, however, rose 4.8% in April this year compared to April 2015, the slowest pace in two years.

Airlines in all regions recorded growth, led by the West Asian region, it said.

(With PTI inputs)
Top 3 Legal Questions for Handling a Traffic Stop

Traffic stops are quite common and every driver needs to know how to handle them well. Even if you did not do anything wrong, you can end up with a criminal charge if your encounter with police goes awry. And your encounter will go awry if you give police officers a hard time.

Yes, it's true that you have rights and that the police work for you. But these authority figures do have reason to be wary when pulling people over, as they do face dangers. Make it easy for them to be cool by playing it cool. Also, know what an officer can and cannot do. Here are some questions that you may have when you're pulled over and the answers you need to handle a traffic stop appropriately.

Traffic Stop Legal Questions

1. How Long Is Too Long for a Traffic Stop?

If you've been pulled over, every minute that passes may feel like an hour. But try to be patient anyway. The Supreme Court has never specified what amount of time precisely is appropriate for a traffic stop and when one has gone on so long that it becomes unreasonable. An officer must investigate or issue a ticket within a "reasonable" amount of time. What that means precisely will depend on the situation.

2. Civil Rights During a Traffic Stop: 5 Reminders

You do not have to consent to a search of your vehicle although an officer can still search if the police have reasonable suspicion of criminality. Be explicit but polite about the fact that you oppose the search, so that you can preserve your right to challenge it in court, and feel free to film the encounter. It's never in your interest to upset the police but if you know your rights, you can be both insistent and polite.

3. When Can Police Conduct a Strip Search?

The basis for a search of any kind is a reasonable suspicion in the area police seek to search. If the thing police seek to search is your body, then there must be a reasonable suspicion that there is something hidden in or on your body. What is reasonable is widely debated in case law and ultimately will depend on the details of your case. Again, you do not have to consent but a search may still happen.

Talk to a Lawyer

If you are issued a ticket or criminally charged on the basis of a traffic stop, talk to a lawyer. Many criminal defense attorneys consult for free or a minimal fee and will be happy to assess your case.

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MELBOURNE: Pankaj and Radhika Oswal have launched a $1.5-billion (over Rs10,000 crore) lawsuit, one of the biggest in Australias legal history, against ANZ bank for allegedly undervaluing shares of their fertiliser company, Burrup Fertilisers, to recoup millions in debts.

The Oswal couple has alleged that Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) and the receiver PPB undervalued their share of the company by $1.5 billion.

They argue that their stake in Burrup was sold to cover a $800-million loan from ANZ instead of for the $2.5 billion they say it was worth.

Tony Bannon from Oswals defence team told the Supreme Court of Victoria that the couple was entitled to a judgement against the bank and receivers in excess of $1.5 billion.

Oswal is also suing ANZ for alleged bullying.

Bannon said the receivers and ANZ made it clear that their purpose was simply to clear Oswals debt, and effectively disclosed the reserve price to potential bidders.

Not only was it a breach of selling any asset rule 101, as it turns out, its a breach of a duty of a receiver, Bannon said, adding the receivers effectively did ANZs bidding.

The legal battle has already seen millions of dollars spent with over 25 barristers in court on Monday.

Openings in the trial are expected to last three weeks, with the trial itself expected to continue for six months.

Meanwhile, the couple is also accused of misappropriating $150 million from the fertiliser company for personal use.

The Oswals left Australia in December 2010, when receivers were appointed to Burrup, and only recently returned to be in Melbourne for the court case.

As owners of Burrup Fertilisers, Oswals became part of the Western Australias (WAs) champagne set, building an enormous home on the banks of the Swan River in Peppermint Grove (WAs most affluent suburb), nicknamed by locals as the Taj on Swan. The half-built home, estimated to cost $70 million, will be demolished soon.
NEW DELHI: Days after a spate of attack on Africans in India, President Pranab Mukherjee warned that it would be most unfortunate if the tradition of Indo-African friendship is diluted.

Addressing the gathering of Indian envoys posted across the world, the President said, It would be most unfortunate if the people of India were to dilute our long tradition of friendship with the people of Africa and the welcome we have always extended to them in our country. African students in India should have no reason to fear for their safety and security.

Mukherjees assertion assumes significance as he is also scheduled to visit three African nations  Namibia, Ghana and Ivory Coast early next month.

A dozen Africans were allegedly attacked and racially abused by the residents of Maidangarhi and Rajpur Khurd villages on Friday. Police registered four separate FIRs and said the attacks were not planned. Five persons were also arrested in connection to the case.

The attacks on the African youths, mostly from Nigeria, come less than a week after a 23-year-old Congo national was stoned to death by three men in Kishangarh village near Vasant Kunj. The victims have planned a protest march at Jantar Mantar on Tuesday.

Mukherjee emphasized on creating awareness about the history of the Indo-African ties among the youth. We shall have to create appropriate awareness in the minds of our youngsters who may not know the history, age old relations with Africa. India has had trading relations with African countries for centuries and every one of the 54 countries of Africa has a thriving Indian community doing business, industry etc. (With PTI inputs)
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday staged a protest outside Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwals residence demanding improvement in power and water supply in the national capital.

BJP supporters, led by South Delhi MP Ramesh Bidhuri, gathered outside the chief ministers residence and shouted slogans. The Delhi Police had to use water cannons to disperse the demonstrators.

Bidhuri said: People of Delhi especially from unrecognised colonies and resettlement colonies voted for Kejriwal government with great hopes, but the chief minister has totally failed them.

Despite a directive of the central government, Kejriwal government has not moved a single file for approval of unrecognised colonies, he said.

The people of unrecognised colonies have all along faced hardships, but the water and power cuts seen under Kejriwal regime have been unprecedented, he said.

Highlighting the plight of South Delhi, Bidhuri said: South Delhi, specially Mehrauli, is almost parched. Water reaches once in three days in most of the unrecognised colonies.

He said over 155 unapproved colonies are facing worst power cuts of up to six hours a day in this hot weather.

Bidhuri also warned of a massive agitation against the Kejriwal-led Delhi government if it fails to address the issues of water and power crisis.
Tucked away in an urban village in south Delhi is a quiet shrine of 14th century Sufi saint Nasiruddin Mahmud Chirag Dehlavi. A close disciple and spiritual successor of another famous Sufi saint Nizamuddin Auliya, he was also known as Roshan Chirag. Despite rapid commercialisation and densely populated surroundings, the entire complex has managed to retain a sense of calm and is believed to attract people from different faiths. The place is rarely crowded unlike other shrines in the city.

Nasiruddin was born in Ayodhya, a Hindu pilgrimage town in Uttar Pradesh. Raised by his widowed mother, he preferred solitude. He slowly withdrew from society to meditate in the forest and soon started for Delhi at the age of 40.

Historians say that once during his time as a disciple, he was supervising the construction of a baoli (Nizamuddin Baoli) and Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq, the founder of the Turkic Tughlaq dynasty in India, who reigned over the sultanate of Delhi from 1320 to 1325, was raising a fort in Tughlaqabad around the same time. Ghiyasuddin decreed that labourers were to work on his fort onnly; however, they worked on the baoli at night. This infuriated Ghiyasuddin, who stopped the oil supply to the area so that lamps could not be lit at night, effectively ending the construction. An upset Nasiruddin informed Hazrat Nizamuddin, who then instructed him to pour water in an earthen lamp (chirag) and use it to light the others, thus leading to his sobriquet. Soon after this incident, the disciple was bestowed with the title Chirag Dehlavi.

Saint Nasiruddin Mahmud died in 1356 and his urs is observed on the 17th of Ramzan, the ninth month of Islamic calendar, which is falling next month this year. (S Burmaula / HT Photos)

In the evenings, a group of elderly men chat over hookah before proceeding to clean the mausoleum premises. Though all the rituals and maintenance are taken care of by the Chirag Dilli Dargah Committee, they like to offer their services as obeisance.

We are fortunate to have a mausoleum of Sufi saint in our village, who was revered by people of all faiths. Its our moral responsibility to ensure the premises are clean for prayers. Our ancestors were also impressed with the teachings and sermons of the saint, said 67-year-old Naseeb Singh.

Despite being close to Hazrat Nizamuddin, the saint never encouraged the use of music (sama), instruments and qawwalis. And his master never forced him to follow the ritual or tradition either. Nasiruddin died in 1356 and his urs is observed on the 17th of Ramzan, the ninth month of Islamic calendar, which is falling next month this year, said Farid Ahmed Nizami, who is writing a book on the life of Hazrat Nizamuddin.

Nasiruddin was buried in the chamber he lived in, which is now surrounded by the graves of his own disciples. A few of them are covered with coloured pieces of cloth. The foliage of a grand khirni tree (Manilkara hexandra) provides shade to a section of the courtyard. In summer, earthen pots filled with water are kept around its trunk. During the hours of prayer, devotees turn to the direction of Mecca.

Since Nasiruddin had always preferred the seclusion of the jungle and was buried where he lived, his mausoleum (khankah) is situated in the midst of wilderness. Over time, the area that houses Chirag Dehlavis mausoleum came to be known as Chirag Dilli (the slightly botched and more vernacularly flavoured way of pronouncing Dehlavi) that is now home to the aspiring middle class.

It is said that Hazrat Nizamuddin would always ask Nasiruddin to live amongst people and encourage him to leave solitude behind. He also extolled the virtues of being surrounded by human beings and yet being one with God. Perhaps, it is fitting then, that Chirag Dehlavis khankah is now a rare spot of calm amidst an area populated by thousands.

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NEW DELHI: The Centre on Monday moved the National Green Tribunal (NGT) seeking directions on not extending to other cities the Supreme Court-mandated ban on registration of vehicles with diesel engines of capacity larger than 2,000cc in the NCR.

The plea moved by the heavy industries ministry came on the eve of a crucial hearing by the tribunal on air pollution and the diesel vehicle ban on Tuesday.

The ministry asked the tribunal not to apply restrictions in any city on the sale and registration of new vehicles that comply with statutory emission norms irrespective of the fuel used.

The department of heavy industry is of the view that the extension of the above ban imposed by the Supreme Court to 11 cities by the NGT would have adverse effect on the momentum of growth of auto industry, the ministry said in its plea.

The tribunal slammed state governments on Monday for making a joke of its orders and took the Central Pollution Control Board to task for submitting half-baked data.

The green court directed 11 states to provide information on their most polluted areas and vehicle density in major cities by Tuesday, failing which bailable warrants would be issued against their chief secretaries.

Every day you (states) say we want to seek instructions. We want a clear stand on ambient air quality, human population and vehicle density. If the states fail to produce the data by tomorrow, we will issue bailable warrants against the chief secretaries of all states. You have made a joke of our orders. Be prepared to face consequences now, NGT chairperson Swatanter Kumar said.

In the past five years, Rs 60,00070,000 crore has been invested in increasing capacity for diesel car manufacturing. Almost every carmaker bet on Indias growing appetite for diesel vehicles.

From under 20% in 2012, the share of diesel cars sold went above 40% in 2015. Though the shrinking price differential between diesel and petrol has resulted in reverse dieselisation, any move to extend the ban could hurt automakers.

It will lead to a lot of uncertainty, unemployment and will affect the investment decisions of companies, said Abdul Majeet, partner at consultancy firm PwC.

T he Supreme Cour t in December banned the registration of diesel SUVs and private cars with engine capacity of 2,000 cc in the National Capital Region until March 31 this year. Subsequently, it extended the ban to April 30. On April 30, the apex court maintained the status quo till the matter was taken up by it after the summer vacation.
NEW DELHI: A 50-year-old man, who was found guilty of possessing 20 kg pseudo ephedrine drug, has been sentenced to over three years in jail, a period already spent by him behind bars, by a Delhi court which said he deserved one opportunity to mend his ways.

Special Judge Shail Jain took a lenient view towards Delhi resident Kishan Pal, who was arrested from Chandni Chowk in 2013 with a bag of pseudo ephedrine, considering his age and circumstances.

Considering the age and family circumstances of the convict that he is the sole bread earner of the family, coupled with the fact that the convict is not involved in any other similar matter, I am of the opinion that one opportunity to mend his ways must be given to the convict.

Hence, I am of the opinion that the ends of justice would be served if Kishan Pal is sentenced to rigorous imprisonment of 3 years and 2 months (period already undergone by him), the judge said, while also imposing a fine of Rs 5,000 on him.

The court, which held Pal guilty under provisions of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, said the accused could not prove he was falsely implicated by the police.
NEW DELHI: To rein in fee hike by private schools running on government land, the ruling AAP dispensation has approved a proposal to hire chartered accountants to facilitate audit of the schools accounts in case of complaints.

The decision was taken at a meeting of the Delhi Cabinet on Saturday chaired by chief minister Arvind Kejriwal.

The government has taken this step after distressed parents recently approached it, complaining of a fee hike ranging from 20 to 55 per cent.

As per the Delhi Cabinets decision, the government will only hire the CAG-empanelled chartered accounts to get accounts of schools running on its land audited.

The audit of the accounts will be done if government receives any complaint from the parents against a particular school, said a senior government official.

The Directorate of Education (DoE) had recently warned private schools in the national Capital citing rules that schools running on government land cannot do so without prior sanction from the authorities.
NEW DELHI: In the wake of string of attacks on African citizens in the Capital, the Delhi Police on Monday launched a police helpline number exclusively for complaints from foreign nationals in the city.

The department also appointed a joint commissioner-rank official as the nodal officer for attending to issues concerning African community.

The 10-digit helpline number  8750871111  was launched by police chief, Alok Kumar Verma, following a meeting he had with a delegation of African people living in the city at the police headquarters on Monday.

During the meeting, Verma announced that joint commissioner of police (South-Eastern Range) RP Upadhyay has been appointed the nodal officer entrusted with attending to and addressing issues concerning African citizens living in Delhi, a senior official said.

The meeting was attended by SBK Singh and P Kamaraj, special CPs, law and order, (North and South), Joint CPs Deependra Pathak and RP Upadhyay, Ishwar Singh and Mandeep Singh Randhawa, DCPs (south and southeast).

The police chief assured the delegation of prompt redressal of their grievances.

Verma also apprised them of various steps being taken by the police to ensure their security.
NEW DELHI: Delhi University will start its Open Days from June 1 in which a team of experts will address queries of students over admission process for undergraduate courses.

The online registration for undergraduate courses in Delhi University will also begin from June 1 and will continue till June 19.

This year there will be no offline forms and all students will have to fill the online centralised registration form.

The Open Days can be attended by both students and parents where they can pose their queries related to admission process to the team of experts.

The Open Days session will start from June 1, 2016 from 10am till 1pm at Conference Centre, opposite Department of Botany, University of Delhi, the university said in a statement.

It said that colleges will also conduct Open Days in their respective premises and will announce the dates soon.

The admissions in the respective colleges will start from June 27.

Read more: DU aspirants brace themselves for tackling CBCS

The online registration for all categories including Sports, Extra Curricular Activities (ECA), Kashmiri Migrants, and CW (Defence) will be completely online.

From this year, applicants will be required to submit their self-attested documents online along with the central registration form. Documents include Class 10 certificates, Class 12 provisional certificate, character certificate and transfer certificate.

The applicants will also have to upload their recent photograph and scanned copy of their signature in the online form.

Till last year these documents used to be submitted to the particular college at the time of admission.
NEW DELHI: African students should not fear for their safety, President Pranab Mukherjee said on Monday as the government took multi-pronged measures to contain a diplomatic disaster over a spate of vicious attacks on Africans living in India.

The Presidents remarks at a gathering of Indian envoys complemented steps by external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and foreign secretary S Jaishankar to calm the anxiety and anger of Africans over racism and Afrophobia in the country.

It would be most unfortunate if the people of India were to dilute our long tradition of friendship with the people of Africa and the welcome we have always extended to them in our country. African students in India should have no reason to fear for their safety and security, Mukherjee said.

The crisis was triggered by the murder of Masonda Ketada Oliver, a 29-year-old from Congo, in an altercation over hiring an auto-rickshaw in south Delhis Vasant Kunj on May 20. This was followed by four separate attacks on Africans in south Delhis Rajpur Khurd last week.

Foreign minister Swaraj moved swiftly to reassure African envoys of the safety of their nationals. Foreign secretary Jaishankar tried to calm frayed nerves, telling a group of students that their security is an article of faith for the government.

The students raised visa issues, problems in getting accommodation and the need to make police aware of African sensitivities when they deal with them. Jaishankar assured them all help.

Foreign ministry officials received family members of Oliver at the airport and assured a swift trial to punish his assailants. The government will bear the expenses for transporting Olivers body  currently kept at a morgue in AIIMS  home.

The governments crisis management is on overdrive as the 54-nation African bloc is the pivot of Indias plans to expand its international footprint, especially the countrys push for a permanent members seat at the United Nations Security Council.

A snowballing diplomatic row could endanger efforts to take ties with Africa to a new high, which includes new partnerships and high-level visits.

We shall have to create appropriate awareness in the minds of our youngsters who may not know the history, age-old relations with Africa. India has had trading relations with African countries for centuries and each of the 54 countries of Africa has a thriving Indian community doing business, President Mukherjee said.

He is scheduled to visit Namibia, Ghana and Ivory Coast early next month. Vice-president Hamid Ansari and Prime Minister Narendra Modi too are likely to visit the continent this year.

Incidents of assaults on African nationals in recent years have put ties under strain. Earlier in January, a mob in Bengaluru allegedly dragged a Tanzanian girl out of a car and stripped her. She was travelling with friends, who were assaulted too.
CT Death Penalty Ban Upheld, State Death Row Is Dead

Connecticut's death row inmates got the ultimate reprieve this week as the state Supreme Court ruled again that abolition of the death penalty applies even to those who were already sentenced to execution before the ban. The state abolished the death penalty in 2012 but there was still some question regarding the execution of inmates already on death row when the ban passed.

The 11 inmates who were to be executed will be re-sentenced to life in prison and will join the general prison population, reports the Hartford Courant. The now-total repeal of the death penalty in Connecticut was met with dismay by some victims' families and with relief by death row inmates.

Death, a Brief History

The death penalty is morally complicated for societies because it punishes the heinous crime of taking a life with, well, the heinous crime of taking a life. Capital punishment, as the death penalty is called, is permitted in 31 US states and barred in 19 as of this year.

The practice has had a contentious history in this country. Death penalty challenges in the US Supreme Court in the 1960s and early 1970s ultimately resulted in the invalidation of 40 state death penalty statutes and a temporary reprieve from executions. But the Court did not ban the death penalty altogether, just the procedures for finding that it applied in most states. So after a series of criminal procedure and sentencing reforms were implemented, a moratorium on executions was lifted, and in 1977 executions as punishment began again.

Connecticut's Ban

When Connecticut repealed the death penalty in 2012 it was with the caveat that the ban would not apply to people who were already sentenced to death. But then death row inmates challenged that, angling to save their lives.

Last August, the Connecticut Supreme Court justices issued their ruling in a contentious decision. The majority, four judges, wrote that executing an inmate "would violate the state constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment" and that the death penalty "no longer comports with contemporary standards of decency."

Prosecutors continued to challenge that ruling until this week. Yesterday the Chief State's Attorney Kevin T. Kane confirmed that death row inmates would be resentenced to life in prison and that there would be no more challenges.

Family members of some victims were very unhappy with the decision. William Petit, Jr. whose family was killed by two men now on death row told reporters, ""You end up not having much faith in the criminal justice system because it's really not a justice system. It's a legal system moved by the winds of different opinions and who has been appointed. I think it's a sad day for jurisprudence in the state of Connecticut."

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NEW DELHI: India has the largest population of modern slaves in the world with more than 18 million people trapped as bonded labourers, forced beggars, sex workers and child soldiers, a global survey report said on Monday.

The Global Slavery Index by human rights organisation Walk Free Foundation said the number was 1.4% of Indias population, the fourth highest among 167 countries with the largest proportion of slaves.

Existing research suggests all forms of modern slavery continue to exist in India, including inter-generational bonded labour, forced child labour, commercial sexual exploitation, forced begging, forced recruitment into non-state ar med groups and forced marriage, said Grace Forrest, co-founder of the Australia-based foundation.

The survey said an estimated 45.8 million people are living in modern slavery globally and 58% of them are concentrated in India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.

The Gallup survey was conducted across 15 states and covered nearly 80% of Indias population, the foundation said.

The report coincided with the Centre unveiling a draft bill that envisages punishment for gangs involved in human trafficking and scrutiny of placement agencies, many of which are accused of forcing children into bonded labour and prostitution.

The Cabinet recently cleared proposals to address new forms of bondage such as organised begging rings, forced prostitution and child labour. India abolished bonded labour in 1976 but gangs continue to trap people from poor rural areas with the promise of better jobs. Most of them are sold into domestic work, prostitution, or to brick kilns, textile units and farms.

The foundation requested the Centre to frame a policy for private employers so that they keep a check on bonded labour in their supply chain, an issue repeatedly raised by Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi, who runs a campaign called Bachpan Bachao Andolan against child labour.

His organisation said on Monday the true test of the draft bill will lie in ensuring time-bound prosecution and rehabilitation, and fixed accountability and stringent monitoring parameters for law enforcement agencies.

The survey produced case studies to highlight individual cases, underpinning social and economic reasons behind this.

This is an old disease in the village that if you are not able to pay off your debts you will have to work as a bonded labour in the field of a powerful person. My husband was employed far from the village so that he cannot run away, the report quoted a woman as saying.

Another woman working as a domestic help said she was never paid wages and in the name of debt, I was made a victim of sexual violence. It said a skewed sex ratio in some parts of India has fuelled trafficking of women for forced marriage.

The report also highlighted the recruitment of child soldiers by militant groups active in several states, including Jammu and Kashmir, and Jharkhand, and the Northeast.

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NEW DELHI: Japanese ambassador Kenji Hiramatsu on Monday met Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and discussed mutual cooperation on infrastructure projects like the Dedicated Elevated Bus Corridors, an official said.

Both discussed common grounds between Delhi and Japan and how the two can mutually benefit each other, said the official.

The main project discussed during the meeting was the Delhi governments project of Dedicated Elevated Bus Corridors in the city to ease out traffic congestion. Besides this transportation, water, sewage system, earthquake resistant buildings projects were discussed during the 30-minute meeting, a government official said.

The meeting was also attended by PWD Minister Satyendar Jain and Delhi Dialogue Commission (DDC) vice chairman Ashish Khetan.

Kejriwal told the ambassador that a delegation of the Delhi government will visit him for further discussions and to look into more areas of cooperation, an officials said.

Delhi Dialogue Commission vice chairman Ashish Khetan said that the delegation would make a presentation on the infrastructure projects to be taken up by the Delhi government and outline its vision when the panel visits Japan, the official said.
NEW DELHI: The arrest of five people, residents of villages adjoining Mehrauli, in connection with the alleged attacks on Africans, mostly Nigerian nationals, reported from the capital on Friday, seemed to have irked the locals.

Maintaining that it was the Africans who started the argument that eventually led to a scuffle, the locals stated that the arrests were erroneous.

On the other hand, the Africans living in the area are now extra cautious. Speaking to HT, a Nigerian student said, We have been asked to be extra vigilant now. We do not wish to pick up a fight, we have come here to study but sometimes we do not understand what the locals say and they mistake it to be rudeness... We just hope that the situation normalises.

A local, however, maintained that these students misbehave on several occasions that they ignore. We have always lived in harmony with them (Africans) in the area then why would we enter into a fight without any reason? They return from parties late at night, roam around in the area, play loud music, but we have never picked up an argument with them.

Meanwhile, the police have sent three teams to arrest the two men, evading arrest.
PANAJI: Amid a string of attacks on Africans in Delhi, Goa tourism minister Dilip Parulekar on Monday demanded a strict law to deport Nigerians. The problems of Nigerians are not only in Goa, they are across the entire country. They (Nigerians) arrive here to study and create problem so that the case is filed against them, Parulekar said.

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DELHI: The African student and community leaders based in Delhi on Monday tried to defuse tension by saying that there is no conflict between the two communities and they would make an extra effort to normalise the situation.

Commenting on the attack on the 51-year-old Ola cab driver who was allegedly thrashed by a group of six Africans, who used metallic punches to scar his face, for refusing to accommodate more than four passengers, president of All India Nigerian student and community association, Arinze Nelson said that there are some unruly miscreants trying to take advantage of the situation and create trouble.

It is a one-off incident and I would not call it some kind of backlash or reaction to what happened to Africans in Mehrauli. We Africans are very peaceful people, however, there are a few elements trying to take advantage of the existing tension and flare up things, Nelson said.

The incident of the cab driver being attacked has just coincided with the episode of Africans being attacked and are not connected, he said.

There is absolutely no conflict between the two communities and we shall find ways to defuse the tension instead of escalating it. We have also conducted a meeting with our people residing in Mehrauli to discuss how to bring about a balance.

Some students, however, raised concerns over the security for their community. Celestine,a Delhi University student living in Saket told HT, Such attack on people coming from Africa is not normal at all. It has become a serious security concern.

OLIVIERS FATHER ARRIVES

Edmon Ketanda, father of Olivier, who was allegedly beaten to death by three men in South Delhis Vasant Kunj area on May 20 after an argument with them over hiring an auto, reached Delhi on Monday to take back Oliviers body to Democratic Republic of Congo.

Ketanda had to take a loan for his trip to India to take back Oliviers body, which has been lying in AIIMS mortuary for the past 10 days.

On Monday, he along with is cousin met the officials from the external affairs ministry and from the Embassy of Congo. India has promised to help the family take back Oliviers body.
The power distribution companies in the national capital will now be penalised and made to compensate consumers for unscheduled power cuts.

The Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) on Monday, through a notification of the Delhi Electricity Supply Code and Performance Standard regulations, said that consumers can get up to Rs 100 as compensation for every hour of outage.

The DERC was given policy directions to penalise the companies for unscheduled power cuts and it is being implemented now after consultations on the draft notification issued last year, a power department official said.

According to the notification, the quantum of compensation ranges from Rs 25 to Rs 100 per hour.

The default period will be considered from the time someone registers a complaint till the supply is restored. For a blown fuse or damaged service line, for instance, the power companies will have three hours to fix the fault. If they do not meet the deadline, the complainant will be compensated Rs 100 per for every subsequent hour.

For a distribution failure impacting up to 50 consumers, the deadline for temporary supply restoration will be one hour and 12 hours for normal supply. The compensation for such an outage has been fixed at Rs 50 per hour per consumer for the first two hours and Rs 100 per hour per consumer thereafter.

Read: Soon, get a message about power outages in Delhi

The compensation will be awarded through adjustment against current or future bills within 90 days.

Delhi government last week had said it will not hesitate to consider cancelling the licenses of discoms if they failed to improve the power situation in the city which has been hit by a series of outages in the past fortnight.

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had said this in a meeting attended by the representatives of the private distribution companies BSES, Tata Power (TPDDL) and also the chairman of DERC. In the meeting, Kejriwal gave the discoms a weeks time to take corrective measures or face strict action.

A senior government official said the discoms could not offer a single explanation behind the outages despite there being no shortage of power in the national capital. They had blamed local faults for frequent power cuts.

The government has categorically asked them to set their house in order as people of Delhi will not suffer for the efficiency on their part, the official said.

The discoms have not built adequate infrastructure. They say we have put up cables but whenever there is overload, those cables snap as they are of inferior quality. We have directed the companies to arrange mobile transformers, power minister Satyendar Jain had earlier said.

Delhis power demand hit an all-time peak of 6,188 MW on May 20, which power officials say may rise further in June and July when usage of air conditioners increases due to higher humidity.

Read: Sizzling Delhi quenches power thirst, demand reaches all-time high of 6,188 MW

The discoms have been asked to deploy additional breakdown and maintenance teams to minimise the complaints. They have also been asked to immediately strengthen their call centers by doubling the existing capacity by suitably enhancing the telephone lines and deploying more personnel so that each and every call is registered for its proper resolution.

Earlier, too, the regulator had taken the matter of penalties up with the discoms, who had demanded better infrastructure before such a compensation is brought in.

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KATHMANDU: Faced with unfavourable weather, Nepalese rescuers on Monday abandoned plans to retrieve the bodies of two Indian climbers who died while scaling Mount Everest and will now attempt to bring them down only next year.

Rescue work was halted as the mountaineering season is over and it will not be possible to go to the mountain due to unfavourbale weather conditions, said Wangchhu Sherpa, managing director of Trekking Camp Nepal, that managed the expedition.

The two climbers, Paresh Nath and Goutam Ghosh, were near the summit of the 8,848metre mountain on May 21 when they lost contact with their team.

In all, three Indian climbers died while scaling the worlds highest peak this season.

The body of Subhas Paul was brought to Kathmandu last week. However, the bodies of Nath and Ghosh, who also died last week, could not be brought back as the monsoon season had started and the rescue efforts had to abandoned, Sherpa said. Paul died while descending from the summit after the climb.

This season, around 450 climbers successfully scaled the Everest.
NEW DELHI: Thousands of Delhi University teachers along with their families marched the street of national capital on Monday in protest against the UGC 3rd amendment regulation.

The 3rd amendment regulation defines the service conditions for teachers. The new regulation will lead to thousands of ad-hoc teachers losing their jobs and also making promotion difficult. The regulation has altered the teaching hours of the assistant and associate professor and excluded tutorials and practical from direct teaching hours.

The morning rain failed to deter teachers as they marched from Mandi House under the banner of Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA). They were to march till Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) but they were stopped at the Parliament Street.

We demand the complete roll back of UGC Gazette Notification (3rd Amendment), which will push thousands of working teachers out of their jobs. The API scheme imposed by MHRD is virtually denial of promotion, said Rajesh Jha of Academics for Action and Development (AAD) and teacher at Rajdhani College.

As a mark of protest teachers have boycotted the evaluation process till Wednesday. Since May 24 the teachers have not been evaluating the examination papers.

On Monday, the staff associations of Hindu College, SRCC, PGDAV, Ram Lal Anand College, Zakir Hussain College and others had turned up in large numbers.

The ad-hoc teachers who faces the greatest threat from the regulation also turned up in large numbers. There are close to 5,000 ad-hoc teachers in different DU colleges.

The march was a powerful clarion call for a widespread movement against the MHRDs narrow parameters on workload calculation and impossible API targets for promotions. Teachers and students are resolute in their determination to not submit to the MHRDs bullying and will leave no stone unturned to fight against attack on public-funded higher education, said Nandita Narain, DUTA president.

Teachers under the umbrells of the Indian National Teachers Congress (INTEC) will hold a protest at Jantar Mantar.

A university official said the protest can delay exam results, which are usually announced by the end of June every year. The UGC has to take a call on the issue soon otherwise our calendar will be affected, said a senior official.

Around 3,000 teachers were scheduled to evaluate papers at 13 centres.
NEW DELHI: Three new instances of dengue reported last week have taken the total number of cases to 13 , shows latest data provided by the municipal corporations.

Eleven cases were reported in Delhi during the corresponding period in 2016, when Delhi saw its worst dengue outbreak that left more than 15,000 people infected and 60 dead.

The similar numbers, however, are not predictive of whether Delhi will witness an outbreak of the vector-borne disease this year, experts said.

My guess is as good as anyone elses about whether there will be an outbreak. There are theories that dengue is cyclic, meaning that fewer cases are seen after there has been an outbreak. But there are four serotypes of dengue, and herd (community) immunity developed during an outbreak from one serotype will not protect the population from the other three serotypes, said a municipal health officer.

Dr BR Mirdha, additional professor of microbiology at AIIMS, agrees. Last year, serotype two and four causes infection. Since the population is now immune to them, the effect would be mild if the same serotypes circulate this year, but if other serotypes infect, people will be vulnerable, he said.

Experts said at this moment efforts must be focused on prevention of breeding of aedes egypti, the mosquito that transmits dengue, chikungunya and zika.

The mosquito that transmits dengue only breeds in clear water and takes eight days to mature. So, clear your homes of stagnant water at least once a week to prevent breeding, said the health official.
NEW DELHI: The rain and strong winds on Sunday night claimed a two-year-old girl her life in central Delhis Motia Khan after a wall from the adjacent house fell on the family. The sudden turn of the weather also led to flight delays and diversions.

Eighteen people were also injured in storm-related incidents reported from across the national Capital.

Officials from Delhi Fire Services said that on Sunday, around 10pm, the girl was buried in the debris. The victim has been identified as Mansha. Her sister, four-year-old Kahkashan, was also severely injured.

The family was sleeping when the debris of the old wall of the neighbours house fell on the roof of their room. The parents of the child and her sister are admitted to the LNJP hospital, said deputy chief fire officer, Atul Garg.

Several cars were also crushed after the wall of a post office in Fatehpuri near Chandni Chowk fell on the vehicles. No one was injured.

The bad weather also affected flight schedules. Over 40 flights were diverted on Sunday and Monday.

Among the diverted flights was Prime Minister Narendra Modis flight, which was flying from Karnataka to Delhi. The flight was diverted to Jaipur on Sunday night after the weather turned bad.

Several travellers took to social media to vent their anger, after having to wait at airports for hours. At the Nagpur airport. Due to bad weather plane was diverted to Nagpur. Feeling disappointed, tweeted Rajendra Kumar Sharma, on Monday morning.

So far, 78 flights have been diverted in May this year. This is the highest since 2008, when the total diversions because of adverse weather conditions was 80.

OUTAGES IN GURGAON

For Gurgaon residents, Sundays thunderstorm led to power outages, water-logging and traffic jams across the city. The high-velocity wind and trees that fell across roads during the thunderstorm forced residents to stay indoors on Sunday evening only to be irked by outages that lasted up to 20 hours in some localities.

The rain, however, brought much needed respite from the scorching heat.

Power supply was restored in some parts of the city within four hours but several areas did not have supply till Monday afternoon.

Discom officials warned that the situation may worsen if similar weather conditions prevail on Monday night.

PLEASANT WEATHER IN DELHI

Delhiites witnessed a pleasant day on Monday with the maximum temperature settling at 32.4 degrees Celsius, eight degrees below average. The minimum was recorded as 23 degrees Celsius, four degrees below normal.

The city started receiving light rain late on Sunday evening accompanied with squalls and a dust storm, leading to a dip in temperature. Monday afternoon also saw strong winds. Several spells of rain were seen throughout the day.

The rain gauge at Safdarjung recorded 8.7 mm of rain till Monday evening.

According to IMD director, BP Yadav, the rain was a result of excess moisture coming in from a western disturbance over Gujarat and easterly winds from Bay of Bengal.

The interaction of both these moisture laden winds over Haryana, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh are the cause of the continuous cloud cover and rain. This usually doesnt happen, Yadav said.

The situation will last another day as the Met department forecast light rain on Tuesday afternoon as well.
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Watching the polling results of four states recently at his three-bedroom apartment in Vasant Kunj, Bhanu Bishnoi said, I remember how I used to watch election results on my Dynora TV in this room when we came here in mid 80s. The election results were a three-day affair then. When we came to the colony, we knew everybody by name - bus drivers, postmen, police officers and civic staff. But now everything is so fast and artificial.

Bishnoi was among the first settlers of Vasant Kunj. He moved to this flat in 1986 with his family after his father, a government officer, got transferred to Delhi from Patna. We purchased the flat for Rs 2,11,000. The same flats here now cost at least Rs 3 crore, he added.

Vasant Kunj, once a farmland, was acquired by the government in 1960s. DDA carved out the colony which included two-bedroom , three bedroom and duplex flats. There are five sectors in the locality  A,B,C,D and E. The area has around 18,000 houses and 250 farmhouses with a population of around 80,000.

THE EARLY DAYS

Vasant Kunj, one of the most coveted addresses in Delhi, didnt even have basic amenities in the beginning. Drinking water was sold in a goat-skin bag known as the mashk. Gradually, some tubewells were dug and an underground reservoir was built in Sector A to solve the water problem. Since the colony was on the southern end of the city and the first Metro train in Delhi was still 10 years away, connectivity was a major problem. Bus services started in the late 1980s after the residents made repeated requests to the authorities. The Delhi Transport Corporation sanctioned 616 number bus services that plied from Vasant Kunj Sector A to New Delhi Railway Station.

A picture taken in 1992 shows a part of Vasant Kunj which was undergoing rapid transformation at that time. (HT FILE)

I still remember the drivers name was Bharta. I used to take this bus to go to PGDAV College. If he saw me, he would stop the bus. He did the same for schoolchildren and others, he said.

Vasant Kunj then had no schools or hospitals. Most of the people went to schools in Alaknanda or Greater Kailash. V Rajamani , who taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University and was also one of the first settlers in the area, said, Cattle from Masoodpur and Kishangarh village would come to the colony in search of water as there were small water bodies in the area then.

With the construction of flats and other real estate projects, the flow of rainwater was interrupted and the ponds went dry. Narender Khatri, who lived in the adjoining Kishangarh village but later purchased a flat in Vasant Kunj, said, During the 1970s, when we lived in Kishangarh, animals had water from the ponds in the area. We heard sounds of jackals at night and blue bulls roamed around in the morning.

The locality lacked civic amenities and the pressure of population was steadily growing. In the late 1980s, residents formed the first Resident Welfare Association to raise their demands before public representatives.

PRESENT-DAY VASANT KUNJ

The modern-day Vasant Kunj is known for its green and gated colonies, its strategic location as it is close to the airport and the countrys first Islamic tomb Sultan Garhi. However, the supply of drinking water, traffic congestion and parking problems remain a challenge. Rajender Bharadwaj, a resident of Sector B, said, When the DDA allotted the flats, parking space was provided for two-wheelers as people buying flats worth Rs 2 to 3 lakh would not be able to afford anything more than two-wheelers. Today, there are BMWs, Audis and Mercedes cars in every block. Some houses have more than three cars in a four member family.

Water shortage and traffic jams remain two other major problems. The stretch between Aruna Asaf Ali Marg and Nelson Mandela Marg sees heavy jams during peak hours, he added. Neela Hauz on Aruna Asaf Ali Marg near Vasant Kunj had the potential to solve the water woes of the locality by recharging the groundwater level. But unplanned growth here led to its downfall.

Over the years the stormwater drains and the sewage systems of several unauthorised colonies made their way into the lake, but the worst happened when the Public Works Department (PWD) constructed a bridge across the lake around seven years ago to cut short the distance between Old JNU Campus and Vasant Kunj. When the flyover was built, the debris was dumped into the lake after which its deterioration started. DDA did not follow the correct procedure for its construction, said Khatri.

Vinod Rawat, Air Vice Marshal (rtd), who lives in Sector B that was built in early 90s, said, people fight over parking space. The colony has reached a saturation point and there is no place to park cars for outsiders. There are illegal taxi stands everywhere where hundreds of vehicles remain parked, he added. Another problem that residents are facing is the mushrooming of jhuggi clusters. There are more than 200 jhuggis in front of our sector. If the government cant remove them, at least they should be rehabilitated.

WHEN ASSETS BECAME LIABILITIES

Vasant Kunjs biggest USP is its proximity to the airports with Indira Gandhi International Airport (Terminal 3) being just 5.9km away while the domestic airport (Terminal 1) at a distance of 7.8km. However, when the other areas of Delhi get a sound sleep at night, people in Vasant Kunj remain awake due to the noise pollution by aircrafts.

Sood, whose NGO Chetna has launched a campaign against noise pollution, said, Residents are suffering from hearing loss, insomnia and stress due to deafening sounds caused by aircrafts flying above their houses, he said. The sound is around 90dB against the 45dB permissible noise level at night as stipulated by the pollution board. Even the morning decibel levels stand at 55dB.

Old timers say that there was a time when Vasant Kunjs temperature would be at least three degree less than citys temperature as it is at the foothills of the Aravalli mountain range. Green areas like Sanjay Van, Rangpuri Pahari, Ghitorni reserved forest, Jawaharlal Nehru Univeristy ensured the air here remained clean. Too many vehicles, excessive use of air conditioners have upped the temperature and air pollution levels, said RTI activist and resident Anil Sood.

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The Mumbai university (MU) submitted to the police names of 31 more first-year engineering students, who allegedly got their answer sheets smuggled out of the examination centre, so they could rewrite them.

The scam was unearthed last week, after the arrest of eight MU employees. A total of 127 answer booklets were found to be missing from the exam house at Kalina. The MU had earlier given the details of 96 students, whose answer sheets were missing.

We have, over the weekend, shared the details of all candidates. We believe the police have started questioning some of the students, said Deepak Wasave, controller of examinations, MU.

Read: Engg scam: Cops say 18 students benefitted last year

In a statement to the media last week, MU vice-chancellor Sanjay Deshmukh said most of the students are from the 20 engineering colleges in Navi Mumbai. While two MU employees involved in the case are absconding, 69 other employees have been transferred.

The police are investigating whether more employees were involved. The police have so far only sought information on students. No information on employees has been sought as yet, said Wasave.

The incident came to light on May 21, when acting on a tip-off, the Bhandup police arrested university employees with answer sheets of engineering students. A search by MU officials revealed many answer booklets were missing and an FIR was registered. The MUs management council also suggested a criminal investigation department (CID) probe into the matter, while a separate fact-finding committee was set up by the MU to conduct an internal inquiry.

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A Muslim boy has given the RSS in Assam a reason to rejoice again, a week after a BJP-led government came to power in the state for the first time.

Sarfaraz Hussain topped the state boards Class 10 exam with 590 marks out of a maximum 600. The results were declared on Tuesday.

Others before him have had similar scores. But 16-year-old Sarfaraz is the first Muslim to pass from a school run by an affiliate of Vidya Bharati, the RSSs education wing.

He is not the only Muslim student of Sankardev Sishu Niketan, one of the many schools run by the Vidya Bharati-affiliated Sishu Shiksha Samiti, Assam.

Read | Boys outperform girls in Class 10 exam in Assam, check results here

The school at Betkuchi on the outskirts of Guwahati has 24 Muslim students, most of whom  like Sarfaraz  have won prizes for reciting the Bhagwad Gita.

They have never complained about what we teach because our emphasis is on academic excellence apart from giving the students a grip on Indian culture and values, Akshaya Kalita, the schools headmaster, told HT.

We did not make them feel different, and as a rule, they have lunch with all the other students and teachers after a bhojan mantra (prayer before meal), he said.

Ajmal Hussain, Sarfarazs father, said he let his son study in the school because it provided free education. It would have otherwise been difficult to sustain his studies with my meagre income as a waiter in a small restaurant, he said.

He credited his sons success to his hard work, the support from his schoolteachers, and also to the Hindu goddess of learning, Saraswati. Sarfaraz was the secretary of the schools Saraswati Puja celebrations.

The school shaped my life, and I hope to achieve greater academic glory as my teachers expect, Sarfaraz said, wishing he could repay his alma mater some day.

For now, the Sarbananda Sonowal government is taking care of the payback. Education minister Himanta Biswa Sarma promised a road to the school that existed only on paper since it was established in 1998.

We will also give the school Rs 10 lakh for upgrade and give Rs 5 lakh to Sarfaraz in a fixed deposit for his higher studies, Sarma said.

State secondary board officials said of the 381,585 students that appeared for this years Class 10 exam, 239,614 passed to clock a 62.79% success rate. Sarfaraz was one of 44 candidates of Vidya Bharati-affiliated schools in the Top 20.
Some new courses are also likely to be offered at Delhi University in the coming session. Prof Nachiketa Singh, member, DU admissions committee, says, Nineteen DU colleges have been granted new courses to be introduced subject to the approval of the University Grants Commission. But the UGC approval has been pending. Nine colleges have informed DU that they would like to start these courses on condition that it is subject to UGC approval. Some of these courses might go in the self-financing mode.

The proposed courses include BSc forensic science at SGTB Khalsa College, Mathematics (hons) at Gargi College and Delhi College of Arts and Commerce, mathematics, history, computer science and psychology (hons) at Aryabhatta College, and sociology (hons) at Indraprastha College for Women. Daulat Ram, Bharti College and Ramanujan College might also start some courses. St Stephens College might not start political science (hons) due to some confusion though it was passed by the Academic and Executive Councils. If the UGC sends its approval for these courses in time, then an additional number of around 2,000 seats might get added to the existing 54,000 seats. If only nine colleges start admitting students to these new courses, then only 500 seats will increase, adds Prof Singh.

Minority institutions such as St Stephens and Jesus and Mary College have been conducting an independent admission process for several years. This time, they have been requested to be part of the centralised registration process, so that the university does not face problems of duplication of data. They can, however, follow their own admission process and policy, which the university will not interfere with, such as additional criteria of entrance test or viva etc, he says.

The very high cut-offs make headlines every year. But is the university planning steps or change in policy to lower cut-offs? No. Colleges are free to decide their cut-offs based on the formula they have been adopting in previous years, he clarifies. There are going to be five cut offs. If any college is left with any vacant seat, after that then it has to inform the university and upload the information on its website. The college then will devise rules and procedure to fill up those vacant seats by inviting applications from already registered students on a first-cum-first-serve basis.

Read more: 1,500 seats to be filled through entrance tests in Delhi University

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External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj on Monday came to the aid of a Jaipur-based Pakistani teenage girl seeking to appear for medical entrance exam in India.

Mashal Maheshwari, 19, had sought Indian governments help to allow her to appear in the All-India Pre-Medical Test (AIPMT). Swaraj assured her admission in a medical college in Karnataka.

After her case was reported widely by the media, Swaraj tweeted on Monday, Mashal, dont be disappointed my child, I will personally take up your case for admission in a medical college.

Mashal and her mother Dr Nirmala Maheshwari spoke to Swaraj. After speaking to Swaraj, Mashals delighted mother said, We were not expecting such a quick response. I am happy that finally our plea has been heard. We would like to thank prime minister Narendra Modi, Sushma Swaraj and the media for their support.

Nirmala said Swaraj assured Mashals admission in Karnataka but she would prefer Rajasthan or Gujarat, as it would be closer to home.

An overjoyed Mashal said, We were not aware about the ministers tweet. We got to know through the media and then we spoke to her. She asked about my education, family details and for my documents.

Mashal, who scored 91% in the CBSE Class 12 examinations wanted to appear for the AIPMT exam but was ineligible to apply as she did not fall in either of the categories under which aspirants can apply  Indian citizen and NRI.

After her CBSE results, the family pursued Mashals case to appear in the AIPMT with the Rajasthan and the central government.

Her family wrote to chief minister Vasundhara Raje and to the union ministries of home and health but to no avail. Mashal had also placed a request on the Prime Ministers portal.

Mashals parents, who are doctors, quit their jobs in Hyderabad in Pakistans Sindh province and moved to India in June 2014 due to security concerns. The family is residing in Jaipur on a long-term visa.

Hindu Singh Sodha of the Seemant Lok Sangathan, an NGO that works with Pakistani Hindu migrants, appreciated Swarajs gesture but said the central government should put in place a legal framework.

Mashals is not an isolated case. There are many Pakistani Hindus who face a similar problem as they dont have documents. The government should have a legal framework so it will help others too, Sodha asserted.

Read: The Pak girl who sought PM Modis help to appear for medical entrance test


Actor Lindsay Lohan has made her first public appearance since she reportedly became engaged to Russian boyfriend Egor Tarabasov.

The 29-year-old actor attended a private screening of Disney sequel Alice Through the Looking Glass at Londons Bulgari Hotel with the shipping heir, reported Contactmusic.

Read: Meet Lindsay Lohans new love, an heir to a Russian business empire

#wearefstvl @e2505t  A photo posted by Lindsay Lohan (@lindsaylohan) on May 29, 2016 at 4:18pm PDT

The Mean Girls star wore a black and white Temperley London dress with black platform sneakers, while Egor rocked the casual look with a white T-shirt and denim jacket.

Read: Lindsay Lohan says 1Ds Harry Styles came knocking at her door for fun

Rushing around from work to lunch to work and fittings but still smiling!! #love #raybans saving the day  A photo posted by Lindsay Lohan (@lindsaylohan) on May 26, 2016 at 8:42am PDT

Lohan also posed for photos with her boyfriend, alongside fashion designer Alice Temperley, who designed her outfit.

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Game of Thrones star and the sexiest woman alive, Emilia Clarke has revealed she would like to be the first female James Bond. I have a lot of unrealised dreams, Clarke said.

Read: Tom Hiddleston becoming James Bond so likely, betting has been suspended

I would love to play Jane Bond. My ultimate leading man would be Leonardo Dicaprio. No doubt about it, she added.

Channeling my inner @beyonce for this premier, #QUEENS4LIFE. @hairbyadir @monikablundermakeup @petraflannery putting the crown on riiiight.... #gottabringtheAGameforagameofthronesnight A photo posted by @emilia_clarke on Apr 10, 2016 at 11:19pm PDT

Read: Daniel Craig turns down 68m James Bond deal, wont play 007 again

But 29-year-old Clarke is not the only female star to have thrown her hat in the ring. Earlier this month X Files star Gillan Anderson was the subject of a twitter campaign, with fans asking for her to replace Daniel Craig. Bollywoods export to Hollywood, Priyanka Chopra also expressed interest in the role.

A lot of people, however, are placing their money on Tom Hiddleston while Fantastic Four star Jamie Bell is also reportedly in discussion with James Bond producer about replacing Daniel Craig as 007 agent in the franchise.

Bell has had a meeting with Barbara Broccoli, who coincidentally produces the actors new movie Film Stars Dont Die, about taking over the coveted role, reported Deadline.

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Polands Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro announced on Tuesday he will appeal to the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court decision that Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski should not face extradition to the United States to face sentencing over a case of statutory rape.

It is the latest twist in a case that dates back to 1977.

-- 1977 --

March 10: Polanski, aged 43, invites 13-year-old Samantha Gailey (now Samantha Geimer) to take part in a fashion photo session at the Hollywood home of actor Jack Nicholson. The girl tells her mother that Polanski plied her with alcohol and drugs and raped her.

April 15: Polanski goes on trial on charges including rape and sodomy. He initially pleads not guilty, but under a plea bargain agreement, admits the charge of having unlawful sex with a minor. He is ordered to undergo three months of psychiatric tests.

This 1967 photo shows film producer Gene Gutowski, left, and director Roman Polanski. (AP)

-- 1978 --

February: After a month and a half in the state prison at Chino, California, Polanski flees the United States to avoid the risk of a hefty sentence. He settles in France, where he was born and has citizenship. France refuses an extradition request.

-- 1994 --

Polanski reaches a civil agreement to pay damages to the woman he assaulted. California refuses to lift the criminal charges.

-- 2003 --

March: Polanski is awarded an Oscar for his film The Pianist. Geimer issues a statement saying she has forgiven Polanski, but confirming that he raped her. Fearing arrest, the director stays away from the Oscars ceremony.

In this May 2002 photo, producer Gene Gutowski, right, chats with film director Roman Polanski in Cannes, France. (AP)

-- 2009 --

September 26: Polanski is arrested upon arrival in Zurich, Switzerland, for a film festival, pending an extradition request from the US.

October 23: US authorities submit a formal extradition request.

November 25: A Swiss court authorises Polanskis release on bail and on the condition that he remains under effective house arrest at his chalet in the Swiss resort of Gstaad.

-- 2010 --

April 22: A California court rejects a request by Geimer to drop the charges against Polanski. Geimer says she has suffered health problems after being hounded by media.

May 15: A 42-year-old British actress, Charlotte Lewis, alleges that Polanski sexually abused her when she was 16. Lewiss attorney said the actress was speaking out to counter suggestions that the US case against Polanski was based on an isolated event.

July 12: Switzerland rejects the US extradition request and Polanski is freed.

Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski looks on as he attends a news conference in Krakow, Poland.

-- 2014 --

October: The US asks Poland to arrest Polanski as he travels to Warsaw for the opening of a Jewish museum. Polish prosecutors question the filmmaker but do not detain him.

-- 2015 --

January 7: The US asks Poland to extradite Polanski.

May 8: The Krakow court examining the demand asks the US for more information.

October 30: The court decides against extraditing Polanski, ruling the US request inadmissible.

November 27: The prosecutors office in Krakow says the decision to refuse to hand Roman Polanski over to US authorities was justified.

In this Feb. 25, 2015 file photo filmmaker Roman Polanski, centre, with his lawyers, arrives at the regional court in his childhood city of Krakow, Poland. (AP)

-- 2016 --

May 31: Polands Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro says he will appeal to the Supreme Court to overturn the previous decision that Polanski should not face extradition.

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A woman working with a dance bar has alleged she was gangraped inside a moving SUV in the IT hub of Salt Lake, raising the spectre of the infamous Park Street gang rape of February 2012.

The 28-year-old woman was sent to Bidhannagar sub-divisional hospital for medical examination.

According to the police complaint lodged by the girl, she was thrown out of the car after being sexually assaulted by a group of youths who forced her inside the vehicle when she was about to enter a restaurant. The woman also told the cops that her mobile phone and purse were taken away by the culprits. The woman lodged a complaint with the Electronics Complex police station on Monday.

The victim, who had come to the city some time back, wanted to go to a local restaurant, but reportedly got confused with the route and landed in the Sector V area.

No one has been arrested so far.

The incident has similarities with the chilling Park Street rape incident where five youths raped a 37-year-old Anglo Indian mother of two inside a moving vehicle. A local court has held five persons guilty of that crime.

On Monday, the police were tightlipped and even refused to identify the country or state the victim was from. All that the officers said was that the woman worked at a restaurant and used to stay as a paying guest at Baguihati area for the past three years.

According to the complaint, the woman booked a cab and reached Salt Lake on Sunday night. As she was about to get off the car, some youths in an SUV dragged her inside their car. They raped her in the car and then threw her out later.

A taxi driver noticed her lying at a desolate spot near Baishakhi early on Monday and took her to her house Baguihati.
A 36-year-old IT professional in Kerala allegedly shot dead his father, cut his body into pieces and dumped them at various locations.

Police said Sherin John, employed with a company in IT hub Technopark, was arrested after he confessed that he had killed his father 68-year-old Joy V John last week.

John lived in US for the last three decades and visited his ancestral home near Chengannur when he was murdered, police said, adding a property dispute led to the crime.

Based on Sherins statement, police carried out a search in various places and recovered a portion of a limb, head and some other body parts, believed to be that of Joy.

The recovered body parts will be sent for DNA testing and other scientific analysis. As per our preliminary investigation, property dispute between the father and son had led to the murder, said Alappuzha District police chief B Asok Kumar.

John went missing last Wednesday when he went out with Sherin to repair an air-conditioner.

As her husband and son did not return, Johns wife Mariamma lodged a missing complaint with the police.

During interrogation, Sherin confessed to committing the crime, police said, adding he had been booked for offences including murder and destruction of evidences.
In a symbolic protest, activists of River Connect organised a sand bath on the bank of river Yamuna on Monday. They were protesting against the shrinking waters of the river.

The protesters gathered at Itimad-ud-daula viewing point on Yamuna bank, erected small peaks of river sand and smeared it on their bodies. The symbolic protest generated a lot of interest among the passers-by, who stopped to watch the proceedings.

Explaining the concept behind the sand bath protest, Braj Khandelwal, convener of the campaign said, If there will be no water left in river Yamuna, masses will have no other option but to bathe with sand instead of water as there would be nothing else in the river basin.

We have been raising the issue of scarcity of water in river Yamuna for a long time now. The falling quality and quantity of river water becomes an issue during every election. However, once elections are over, the issue gets buried, complained Khandelwal.

He added, Denizens are forced to drink poor quality water and the problem escalates during summer. Officials come and get transferred and thus are unable to grasp the scale of the problems that lie in store due to the depletion of Yamuna water.

Khandelwal further warned that if the water crisis continued, it would affect the tourism industry adversely, which in turn would hit the economy of the city. Now a new menace has surfaced insects are turning walls of Taj green by leaving stains on it. It is also affecting the protected site of Itimad-ud-daula. These insects are breeding on pollution and piles of garbage that is disposed off in Yamuna, he stated.
A few reports in the African press in recent days highlight the anger against the attack on their nationals in India.

The latest attacks represent a setback for India, which is trying to make inroads into Africa. In July, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to visit Mozambique and South Africa, as a follow-up to the India-Africa Forum Summit of October 2015, said the Kenyan newspaper Daily Nation in a recent report. The article on May 26 was based on strong statements, made by some African envoys in anger, which said that they would have to stop sending students to India for studies. However, the external affairs ministry seemed to have doused the fire, at least for now.

A report in the Congolese daily Le Congolais, published in English and French, on the same day has angry residents talking about the killing of one of their countrymen in India.

We found that our compatriots are stoned and killed like game in India. The past week, a young Congolese man was killed by Indians. Thats why we wanted to react killing or beating one of themso that this situation now ceases. Justice must be done and well do it our way, said a Congolese national. Two Indians were attacked in Congo on May 26 in what was seen as an instance of retaliation.

The DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) believes that the government is unable to find quick solutions to this situation, a local resident is quoted as explaining why there were attacks on Indians.

There was no overwhelming coverage in most African papers about the incident. For instance, in Nigeria it was mostly positive news in most papers, such as bilateral trade hitting $72 billion.
A group of African students in the national capital on Monday called off a demonstration to protest the spate of assaults against the community after the government assured them of better security.

The students said they had a meeting with officials of the Ministry of External Affairs where they were assured of security and safety. The government officials also requested them not to go ahead with their planned protest at Jantar Mantar.

There was a high-level meeting with the Permanent Secretary of Ministry of External Affairs yesterday. He listened to our grievances and has made commitments to ensure our safety in India. Leaders of 15 African countries were also present during the meeting, the Association of African Students in India said in a statement.

It further said, There was also a meeting with Delhi Police Commissioner and other senior officials where contact details of high level officials were shared with us and they promised us of better policing with respect to Africans.

There was also a meeting with the African Ambassador body in which they advised us to take the path of diplomacy and hold the Indian government to their words....and also fast track justice for past cases. The parents of Congolese youth M K Olivier have also requested us to not take part in the protest, it said.

Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar had on Sunday met a group of African students who raised their concerns over host of issues including better security in the wake of the killing of Congolese and cases of assaults against the community.

There has been a series of attacks on African nationals in the last few days including killing of the Congolese youth and assault on a 23-year-old Nigerian student in Hyderabad.

Five persons have so far been arrested in connection with the attacks.
Italian defence company Leonardo Finmeccanica has threatened to reassess its business in India, a few days after New Delhi said it would blacklist the company over the alleged payment of bribes to win a large helicopter contract.

Former executives of the state-controlled conglomerate were found guilty last month after being tried in Italy on corruption charges relating to a 560 million euro ($624 million) contract in 2010 to supply a dozen helicopters to the Indian government.

Finmeccanica has distanced itself from the allegations, saying the case is against individuals rather than the company but Indias defence minister Manohar Parrikar said the company would be banned from future government tenders.

Responding to the ministers comments, Finmeccanica issued a statement saying that its business in India was very marginal.

The company hopes that an agreed and transparent solution is found as soon as possible to shed light on current initiatives and future business opportunities, it said.

Should this not be the case, the company will not refrain from assessing the situation given the limited size of ongoing business in the country.

Since his appointment in May 2014, Finmeccanica CEO Mauro Moretti has worked to improve the companys reputation and streamline the organisation to increase transparency.

In its statement on Monday the defence group stuck to its previous full-year guidance of 20 billion euros in orders and core profit of 1.22 billion euros to 1.27 billion euros, saying that new Indian orders have not been included in its budget forecasts over the past few years.
If Rashtriya Lok Dal chief Ajit Singhs moves to align or merge his party with Mulayam Singhs Samajwadi Party have stirred the hornets nest within Uttar Pradeshs ruling family, the reasons are understandable.

While Mulayams cousin Ram Gopal Yadav said an alliance with a leader who had lost political credibility would not be a wise thing, the party chiefs brother, Shivpal Yadav, hinted that talks with Singh were part of efforts to bring followers of Ram Manohar Lohia, Mahatma Gandhi and Chaudhary Charan Singh on the same platform to fight the BJP.

Having done business across ideological platforms in past years, Singh has come to be regarded as a slippery customer of sorts. Until recently, he had been confabulating with JD(U) president and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar for a possible merger of their parties. Subsequently, he opened up channels of communication with the BJP. The RLD leaders recent political hop-skip and jump has bordered on the incredible.

In recent days, Singh met Mulayam twice, while the latters brother Shivpal called on the RLD leader at his residence on Sunday. The developments gave rise to theories that a Bihar-type of a grand secular alliance was in the making in the adjoining state.

The political complexities to the UP situation, however, are far too many. The Jat community  whom Singh represents has been at loggerheads with the Muslims (core vote bank of the SP) for the past several years, particularly after the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots.

The arrangement with the RLD, if it comes about, will revive the dying party (the RLD) at the expense of alienating the Muslim voters from the SP in next years election, a senior SP leader predicted, adding that it was most unlikely that the Congress would agree to align with such a combination.

The RLD leaders moves are understandable. With the Narendra Modi juggernaut having decimated his partys support base among the Jats in the 2014 general elections, Singh has been in political oblivion. A membership of the Rajya Sabha with the SPs support  can politically rehabilitate him and also help him retrieve the official Tughlaq Road bungalow he had to vacate, after ceasing to remain a member of the Lok Sabha.

But Mulayams gains from such an arrangement seem limited, at best. An alliance with Singh can marginally neutralise the gains Mayawatis Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is reported to have made in Western UP in recent months, but this will come at the cost of demoralising SP workers who have toiled hard, a senior SP leader said.

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Senior BJP leader and Maharashtra revenue minister Eknath Khadses woes are mounting with more accusations of wrongdoing surfacing on Monday and chief minister Devendra Fadnavis looking for ways to minimise damage to the government and party.

Read: Conflict of interest alleged in Khadse land deal

The two had an hour-long meeting after industries minister Subhash Desai of the Shiv Sena said land in Pune bought by Khadses kin belonged to the Maharashtra Industries Development Cor poration (MIDC) and that he had no idea how the plot could be purchased when it belonged to the government.

Read: Hacker claims to have access to Dawoods call logs, seeks protection

There was more trouble for Khadse in the evening when social activist Anjali Damania alleged that he had links with controversial contractors involved in the Tapi irrigation project.

The row over the land deal could cost Khadse the revenue portfolio  one of the most important departments  in the coming days, said sources in the BJP, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Khadses wife Mandakini and son-in-law Girish Chaudhary allegedly purchased the 1.68-hectare plot at Bhosari in Pune for Rs3.75 crore on April 27, 2016. The plot already had 13 industrial units set up decades ago on 99-year leases from the MIDC. In a formal complaint to the Pune police on Monday, one Hemant Gawande alleged the land was purchased by the minister to claim compensation of up to Rs100 crore under the new Land Ceiling Act.

Desais claim that the land belongs to the MIDC puts Khadse in a spot even more.

An irked Khadse countered the claim: In a letter to the industries department by the t hen MIDC CEO Bhushan Gagarani in 2012, it has been mentioned that the land does not belong to them as the sale was not completed in 1969. The letter has also mentioned that the owner of the land Abbas Ukani has been fighting for compensation for the last 45 years. Desai had not studied the case before issuing the statement, Khadse said. An MIDC official said the land deal was sound on legal grounds, but the issues of conflict of interest and quid pro quo remained.

The official pointed out that the land was purchased though the compensation case was in the High Court, and that compensation to the owner would range between Rs40 crore and Rs70 crore depending on which Act was applied.

Khadse, however, told HT: The land was purchased by paying the stamp duty and registration fee for the ready reckoner price of the land which was Rs 23 crore. The owner of the land has given it to me in writing that Rs3.72 crore was the settlement price between us and him as he was not able to pursue the matter in the high court because he was aged and lived in far-off Kolkata.

When Khadse met Fadnavis he reportedly explained the entire issue to him and requested the CM to ensure that a formal FIR was not registered on Gawandes complaint.

Khadse, however, told the media that the meeting was to discuss the elections to the legislative council and the Rajya Sabha. He also insisted that the reports of him losing the revenue portfolio were baseless.

In a related development, a Congress delegation led by city unit president Sanjay Nirupam met Governor C Vidyasagar Rao and demanded that Khadse should be sacked.

In the evening, Damania, a former Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader instrumental in exposing both the irrigation and the Maharashtra Sadan scams, alleged that Khadse had links with large-scale irregularities in the Tapi irrigation project. She also alleged that Khadses family members were directors of a sugar factory purchased by two irrigation contractors. Khadse, however, described the allegation as baseless. I was not even the irrigation minister when these contracts were awarded and hence there is no question of me favouring anyone, he said. Damania has threated to start a dhar na agitation outside Fadnavis residence if action is not taken against Khadse.

Meanwhile, Desais statement could escalate the war between the BJP and the Sena.

The party high command has backed Desai to settle scores with Khadse who played a key role in snapping the 25-year-old ties between the two parties ahead of the Assembly election in 2014, a Sena leader said on the condition of anonymity.


Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs chairman Pradip Bhattacharya on Tuesday demanded a National Investigation Agency probe to find out whether there was any sabotage angle in the massive fire at Indias largest ammunition depot in Maharashtras Pulgaon town that left 16 people dead.

I am asking for a NIA probe. We need to see whether there was any sabotage angle. So many have died. We have to find out whether terrorists were involved, Bhattacharya, a Rajya Sabha member, told IANS.

The senior Congress leader said he had earlier cautioned the government to tighten security at strategic locations.

After touring the scene of the Pathankot attack, I had warned the government they needed to be cautious about tightening security at strategic locations. Terrorists and subversive groups are active in the country.

They are often coming into the country or going out. So we need to get to the bottom of the matter and an NIA probe is the best option, he said.

At least 16 persons, including a lt. colonel and a major, were killed and 17 injured in a massive fire at Indias largest ammunition depot in Maharashtras Pulgaon town early Tuesday, raising questions about alleged safety violations that endanger human lives and arsenal stocks at dozens of such facilities in the country.

The cause of the blaze that started around 1 a.m. was not immediately known. The sprawling 7,000-acre depot, some 115 km from Nagpur, houses the countrys biggest stockpile of weapons, including Brahmos missiles, AK47 rifles, other arms and ammunition, bombs and explosive items.

Seven security personnel and four terrorists were killed in the 80-hour gunfight at the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot of Punjab in January.
It takes some temerity to pose as grandchildren of a figure of history. But thats what happened at the inauguration of an exhibition to mark 125 years of Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan - the Sarhadi Gandhi also known as Badshah Khan - at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NNML) earlier this month.

The exhibition was inaugurated on May 20 by culture minister Mahesh Sharma. Sitting by his side on the dais was a lady who styled herself as a granddaughter of the freedom movement icon. Her sister and her son were also present, duly introduced to the largely unsuspecting audience as granddaughter and great grandson of Badshah Khan.

But a couple in the gathering suspected the trios lineage  and for good reasons! Married to an Indian Foreign Service officer of the 1964 batch, Brinda Dube is the granddaughter of Ghaffar Khans brother, Dr Khansaheb. She did not know the people introduced as descendants of Badshah Khan.

Dr Khansaheb was the first chief minister of North-West Frontier Province now known as Khyber Pukhtonkhwa. He married twice, having three sons from his first wife who was a Pakhtun and two children -- a son and a daughter -- from the second wife, an English woman.

Dubeys mother Mariam Khansaheb married her father, Air Marshal Jaswant Singh, in 1942 and became an Indian citizen after the Partition. We were absolutely shocked by the appearance of this person, styling herself as the granddaughter of the great Badshah Khan, even giving a speech saying that she and her family were carrying on the legacy, recalled Dubey.

She told HT that she took up the matter with an additional secretary of the culture minister soon after the function. I told him that she isnt what she says she is.I followed up the conversation with an email to the official. There has been no word in response to my mail

Dubey also informed Ghaffar Khans grandson, Asfandyar Wali, the supreme leader of Pakistans Awami National Party. The ANP leader told HT on phone that the threesome in question had nothing to do with his family. I appeal to the government and the people of India not to be misled by them. Theyre obviously misusing the name of my grandfather.

The only granddaughter of Badshah Khan in India is Zarine Khan Walsh who lives in Mumbai. She is the second daughter of the Frontier Gandhis eldest son, Abdul Ghani Khan, and had married a Canadian who died some years ago.

On being confronted by facts as stated by Asfandyar, a culture ministry official claimed the women honoured at the function were daughters of Ghaffar Khans adopted son: We invited them on the advice of Humanities and Social Sciences department of IIT-Kharagpur where too a commemorative event was held for the Frontier Gandhi.

Be that as it may, an official release on the function had said the minister honoured Ghaffar Khans descendants by presenting them shawls. Its another matter the real descendants of the Sarhadi Gandhi have no clue from where they were, or who they are.
Amid developments in the much-debated diesel car ban in several states, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Tuesday gave three weeks time to all states to furnish a report on pollution levels in their worst-affected cities.

The next hearing in the matter is on July 11, where all states will have to present data on vehicular population, pollution from dust and the two most polluted cities in their respective states, to the NGT.

During the hearing on Tuesday, Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Pinky Anand told the NGT that about 8% FDI under Make in India has come from the auto industry and that the sector also generates employment opportunities.

We dont want the industry to suffer, which is why the government has brought fuel guidelines. The whole idea is that people must prosper. The NGT passed an order but the same was stayed by the High Court. There arent enough evidences to show that diesel vehicles are causing more pollution, Anand told the media here after the hearing.

Anand, who is representing the Centre in the matter, asserted that there must be a broad plan for a long, short and medium term to curb pollution.

The auto manufacturers Association also conveyed to the NGT that vehicular pollution was not the sole cause of pollution and that cars above 2000 cc were not the major source.

Earlier, the NGT bench after hearing a petition filed by Lawyers Environmental Awareness Forum (LEAF), ordered that diesel vehicles over 10 years old may not be allowed to ply in six cities, including Thiruvananthapuram, Kothamangalam, Thrissur and Kozhikode.

The bench also directed the traffic police to take action and charge a fine of Rs. 5,000 as environment compensation from defaulters.

The petition had demanded that toxic gases emitted by old diesel vehicles such as lorries and buses should be immediately curtailed and a strict rule be imposed for it.
Union agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh on Tuesday said the country was poised to witness strong farm growth this year, aided by a good monsoon predicted by India Meteorological Department (IMD).

If the IMD forecast comes true, I am confident that foodgrain output will definitely increase and the overall agricultural growth will also be higher, Singh said at a press conference here.

The minister also said the Modi government would continue with the trend of higher minimum support prices for pulses for the upcoming agriculture season.

The first priority of the central government was to take up effective initiatives to fight the challenges prevailing in the agricultural sector. I would like to tell you despite a more severe drought this year, compared to last year, we have been able to maintain the levels of food production, Singh said.

He said the Modi government had taken a number of initiatives to minimise the cost of agricultural production.

Fourteen crore farmers in the country are being given soil health cards. Apart from this, Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana has been launched to promote organic farming. Neem-coated urea, improved varieties of seeds and planting material, and schemes like Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana have been introduced, he said.

The minister also said he was not against genetically-modified (GM) crops and said he would abide by any decision taken by the countrys biotech regular, Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee, under the environment ministry.

He said the central government was committed to bringing down input costs for farmers and that was the reason for capping costs of GM cotton seeds at Rs 800 a packet.

Upbeat over the prospects of a good monsoon, the agriculture ministry has set a target of achieving a record 270.10 million tonnes of foodgrain production in the 2016-17 crop year, he said.
"There are worse things than murder. You can kill someone an inch at a time."

John Payne fans must be loving the recent flurry of Blu-ray releases celebrating this affable actor's detour into the darkness of film noir. Over the past few months, such well regarded but largely forgotten Payne crime dramas as 'The Crooked Way' and 'Kansas City Confidential' have received high-def remasters, and now two more Payne pictures are primed to hit the home video market: 'Hidden Fear' and '99 River Street.' I haven't yet seen the former, but the latter, a taut, engrossing tale of theft, murder, and dirty double-crosses, stands as one of Payne's finest forays into the underworld.

More film noir on Blu-ray is always a good thing, but this specific spate of releases shines a spotlight on Payne's versatility, reminding us he was far more than the lawyer who defended Santa Claus in 'Miracle on 34th Street' or the polished leading man who supported the likes of Betty Grable and Alice Faye in a series of Technicolor Fox musicals. As he aged, Payne adopted a rugged hardness, evolving into a macho hero who fought his way out of shady situations, all while maintaining an appealing romantic sensitivity. And if any role encompasses those characteristics, it's Ernie Driscoll in '99 River Street,' arguably the best of Payne's handful of noir films.

An ex-prizefighter who once had a shot at the heavyweight title, Ernie has fallen on hard times and ekes out a living as a New York City cab driver. He hopes to save enough money to buy his own filling station, but his modest salary and dull dream aren't enough to satisfy the lofty desires of his restless, materialistic wife Paulne (Peggie Castle), who - unbeknownst to the hot-tempered Ernie - is dallying with slick gangster Victor Rawlins (Brad Dexter). Victor has just stolen a crop of diamonds and hopes to sell them for $50,000 so he and Pauline can run away to Paris, but the plan falls apart when the buyer (Jay Adler) finds out Victor killed the diamond merchant and Pauline witnessed the crime.

Meanwhile, Ernie tries to help his friend Linda James (Evelyn Keyes) land a role in a Broadway show, but a scuffle with the play's producers prompt them to report him to the police. That normally wouldn't be a big deal, but when Ernie and Linda discover Pauline's dead body in his cab's back seat an hour or so later, Ernie knows he's in big trouble and the victim of a vicious frame-up.

The rest of the film chronicles Ernie's attempts to elude the police, clear his name, and exact revenge on those who wronged him, all with Linda's able assistance. As the night wears on, the plot thickens, and plenty of violent confrontations ensue. (Amazingly, several critics termed '99 River Street' "gory" at the time of its release.) Though the story rarely rises above the mundane, it hangs together well, moves briskly, and features one notable twist. Screenwriter Robert Smith has an ear for noir dialogue and spices up the proceedings with both spirited and suggestive exchanges, while director Phil Karlson adeptly maintains tension most of the time. Saddled with a paltry budget, Karlson toils valiantly to overcome its constraints by sprinkling in a few creative shots and indulging his love of close-ups, both of which lend this B-grade thriller an elegance and intimacy its sister films lack.

Payne makes a believable everyman and nicely conveys the gut-twisting anguish that afflicts him when he discovers he's been duped...not once, but twice, and by two different women. Keyes, who's best known for playing Scarlett O'Hara's younger sister (the title of her best-selling autobiography) in 'Gone With the Wind' and second fiddle to Marilyn Monroe in 'The Seven Year Itch,' really sinks her teeth into her role and files a surprisingly astute and dimensional portrayal. Early in the film, Keyes appears to be overacting - quite badly - but there's a definite method to this madness that quickly becomes evident and ultimately fuels respect for her underrated talent. Though she appeared in many notable movies, Keyes never quite cracked Hollywood's A list, but she provides this film with a couple of potent shots in the arm and some of its most memorable moments.

The supporting cast and even a few bit players also assert themselves well, adding essential atmosphere, humor, and a cynical edge to this hard-boiled yarn. Peggie Castle only has a few scenes, but she steals all of them as the wanton, shrewish Pauline, who seems just as turned on by the idea of money as she is by the opposite sex. Beautiful, calculating, and defiant, Castle feels right at home within the grimy confines of noir, and the icy blonde plays off both Payne and Dexter with equal aplomb. (We only wish we could see more of her.) Frank Faylen also shines as Ernie's ever-helpful but under-appreciated best friend, and Dexter, Jay Adler (brother of noted acting teacher Stella Adler), and Jack Lambert all put their individual stamp on generic tough-guy parts.

'99 River Street' may not be the slickest, darkest, or most intricate film noir, but it's a very solid genre entry that's directed and acted with confidence and panache. A meat and potatoes meal rarely outclasses haute cuisine, but it often satisfies our cravings, so if you're a classic movie fan hungry for an absorbing crime drama, this straightforward, no-nonsense thriller hits the spot...and occasionally the bull's-eye.

The Blu-ray: Vital Disc Stats

'99 River Street' arrives on Blu-ray packaged in a standard case. Video codec is 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 and audio is DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono. Once the disc is inserted into the player, the static menu with music immediately pops up; no previews or promos precede it.
Goans are annoyed with the behaviour, attitude and the way of life of Nigerians living in the coastal state, chief minister Laxmikant Parsekar has said.

Parsekar also said he was getting complaints against Nigerians on many occasions.

The remarks came at a time thousands of students from Africa were outraged over the murder of a 29-year-old Congolese man in south Delhi and a string of other attacks that triggered a debate on racial bias.

The Goans in general are complaining about these foreigners. We get people from all other countries, but in general the people of Goa are very much annoyed with their (Nigerians) behaviour, with their attitude, with their way of life, Parsekar said, even as police on Monday arrested a Nigerian for allegedly raping a 31-year-old woman in Assagao village, 20km from Panaji.

I cannot generalise. But generally people in Goa are not happy with these people, Parsekar said, adding that he regularly hears complaints about Nigerians.

Read: How can we tolerate? Pranab asks after attacks on African nationals

Goas tourism minister, Dilip Parulekar, had demanded a new law to facilitate quick deportation of Nigerians, who Parulekar claimed got embroiled in criminal cases on purpose, in order to extend their stay in India.

Nigerians create problem not just in Goa, but in the entire country. Nigerian students come to Goa and India to study, they get an FIR filed (against them), make it a judicial matter and they try to stay in India or Goa and indulge in drugs and other unwanted things, Parulekar said on Monday.

In October 2013, over 50 Nigerians had blocked the National Highway 17 in Goa, to protest against police inaction following a murder of a Nigerian national, allegedly by a local drug cartel.

The blockade had also seen police and locals being beaten up by the protesting Nigerians, before some of the foreigners were also beaten up in retaliation by a local mob.

Read: Foreign secy meets African students; Congolese mans brother scared

Centres outreach

On Monday, foreign secretary S Jaishankar met a group of African students in New Delhi and assured them of their security after reports of attacks on African nationals.

External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj was personally monitoring the outreach to the Africans, assuring swift action against culprits and a sensitisation programme amid a diplomatic crisis after African envoys raised concerns.

President Pranab Mukherjee too called for the safety of African nationals living in the country.

Masonda Ketada Olivier, a Congolese national, was killed in Delhi on May 20 following an argument over hiring an auto-rickshaw around 10 days ago. A Nigerian student in Hyderabad was allegedly beaten up over a parking dispute on May 25 and four separate cases of alleged assault on African nationals in the national capital were reported three days later. However, police say some of these incidents are non-racial in nature.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved on Tuesday a proposal of the Union health ministry to increase the age of retirement of all government doctors to 65 years.

The order, which is effective from May 31, 2016, will affect both central and state government hospitals.

The President is pleased to enhance the age of superannuation of the specialists of non-teaching and public health sub-cadres of Central Health Service and general duty medical officers of CHS to 65 years with immediate effect, read the order.

The PM had announced the move at a rally in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, on May 26.

According to a health ministry source, the move will enable the government to retain experienced doctors for a longer period, and to provide better services in its public health facilities, particularly to the poorest, who are entirely dependent on state-run facilities.

Health minister JP Nadda said: This step will empower the government to strengthen the healthcare sector in the country. It will help in providing additional doctors in the health pool of the country.

This will strengthen the efforts of the ministry in conceptualising and rolling out various people-oriented schemes, which l need the services of doctors in implementing them, he added.

While most doctors hailed the decision, a section of specialists believed it was a regressive move.

Like engineers, even doctors will now start moving out of the country in large numbers. By increasing the age of retirement of doctors, one senior doctor will eat jobs of at least three young doctors, said a resident doctor at one of Delhis government-run hospitals. He wished to remain unnamed.

If seniors do not retire, how will juniors get a chance to move ahead. This move will affect the careers of young doctors adversely, the doctor said.
In the wake of the recent attacks on the African nationals, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj is set to meet African students to assure them of their safety and security in India.

The Indian government had on Monday assured family members of African national Masunda Oliver, who was brutally killed in the national capital, that a speedy trial would take place in the case and all the three accused would be prosecuted as per law of the land.

Read:Attacks on Africans: Govt shifts into overdrive to contain crisis

Birender Yadav, Joint Secretary (West Africa), who met the family members of Oliver at the airport, offered his heartfelt condolences and informed that the Indian government would bear all the expenses to dispatch his mortal remains back to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Expressing deep concern over attacks on African nationals, President Pranab Mukherjee on Monday said it is not tolerable as Indias relationship with African countries is close, and always we considered.

Read:Foreign secy meets African students; Congolese mans brother scared

Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju earlier in the day had dubbed the recent attacks as unfortunate.

Rijiju said the government will try its best to avoid such episodes in the future.

After what has happened with the African students in Delhi, we are holding regular meetings to come up with ways to sensitize the local populace, Rijiju said.

Arrests have already been made and the foreign ministry is also looking into the matter along with us. I also had a meeting with the Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh to discuss the same, he added.

A week after the killing of a Congolese man in the national capital that stirred a diplomatic row and instigated violence against Indians in Congo, four attacks on African nationals by the residents in Chattarpur were reported on Friday.

Five people were arrested by the Delhi Police in connection with the four attack incidents on the African nationals on Sunday. The African nationals had sustained minor injuries in the attack that took place in South Delhis Mehrauli area on Friday.

The accused have been arrested are identified as- Babu (32), Kunal (20), Om Prakash (24), Rahul alias Rocky (24) and Ajay (25). The police are carrying out search operations to nab the other accused persons.

On Sunday, Swaraj spoke to Rajnath Singh and Delhi Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung about the attacks and said she was assured that the culprits would soon be arrested.

They assured me that the culprits will be arrested soon and sensitisation campaign will be launched in areas where African nationals reside, she tweeted.
With the All India Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti (AIJASS) threatening to go ahead with another round of agitation from June 5 in the wake of the Punjab and Haryana high court stay on reservation granted to Jats and five other communities, district authorities are making elaborate arrangements to deal with the situation.

Deputy commissioners are issuing statements in newspapers warning the people not to participate in the agitation as the government will take stern action, which may include sedition charges, arrest and sealing of their properties. The government is in action mode this time and people (who are planning to join agitation) should not take it lightly as they will have to face stern action, said a deputy commissioner in the region, on the condition of anonymity.

He said as per the directions issued by the government, the police were collecting details of the people who had indulged in violence during the quota agitation in February. If they joined the agitation again, their properties would be attached and sold to recover losses, he added.

Moreover from June 2, special training camps will also be organised for duty magistrates to deal with any eventuality, an official said. The main motive of the training was to teach them how to tackle the situation in case of violence. They would also be briefed about the situations in which they would give orders for firing.

Read: Jats adamant on stir, central forces take guard in 7 dists

FOCUS OF AGITATION TO BE ON VILLAGES

Meanwhile, the AIJASS has already declared that they will go ahead with the agitation from June 5.

Jat leaders said that this time they would not block the road and rail traffic in the cities and the focus of the agitation would be on villages.

On the other hand, sources in the government said this time protesters would not be allowed to hold protests at several places and only one location would be identified for their protest, which will be under the monitoring of the police and paramilitary forces. Talking to Hindustan Times, AIJASS national president Yashpal Malik said, By imposing sedition charges, they cannot stop me from coming to Haryana. I will visit various districts in the state and the protest will go on peacefully.

He added, We will not block road and rail traffic this time and village-level protests will be organised. District-level committees will be formed to monitor the agitation. It is ironical that the government has imposed sedition charges on Jats, who had always stood in the forefront for the security of the nation.

KAITHAL ADMN WARNS OF STRICT ACTION

The Kaithal district administration has warned Jat leaders in the district of strict action if they would provoke people for agitation. The police have collected the details of 99 people from the district, who were involved in the quota agitation in February.

Talking to HT, Kaithal SP Sumit Kumar said, The paramilitary forces have arrived in the district and they will be deployed as per the situation.

He said, Directions have already been issued to those who were leading the agitation in February. This time we will not allow any blockade of road and rail traffic.

The sources in the police said that they would arrest Yashpal Malik and others if they got directions, as he had already been booked.

However, there are no threats of agitation in the northern districts. Yamunanagar deputy commissioner SS Phulia said, As of now, there is no need for paramilitary forces in the district, but we will review the situation on June 3, and the next step will be taken after that.

Read: Jat stir: Haryana submits Prakash Singh panel report to HC

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The Kerala High Court on Monday rejected the plea for a CBI probe into the rape and murder of a Dalit woman in Perumbavoor near here last month, noting that a new Special Investigation Team had been set up in the case.

Passing orders on two Public Interest Litigations (PILs), a division bench comprising acting Chief Justice Thottathil B Radhakrishnan and Justice Anu Sivaraman noted that a new SIT had been constituted to probe the case and ruled that there was no need for CBI investigation at this stage.

Opposing the PILs which sought CBI probe, the state government informed the court that the investigation by the SIT into the case was going on in a satisfactory manner.

Read:Kerala police closing in on Dalit womans murderer

When the petitioner sought a copy of the postmortem report, the court said the party had no right to make such claims. Ernakulam Range IG Mahipal Yadav, a key member of the probe team, was present in the court.

A report on the progress of the investigation was submitted to the court in a sealed cover. Meanwhile, Yadav filed a petition in the court against the direction of Police Complaints Authority to appear before it for offering an explanation regarding lapses in the investigation into the murder of the 30-year-old woman.

The high court is likely to hear the petition on Wednesday.

The woman, a law student who hailed from a poor family, was allegedly raped and brutally assaulted using sharp- edged weapons before being murdered at her house in nearby Perumbavoor on April 28.

The new LDF government, which assumed office in Kerala after the recent assembly elections, in one of its first decisions, appointed senior woman IPS officer ADGP B Sandhya as the head of a new team to probe the case.

The murder was in focus during the assembly polls campaign with political parties attacking the then UDF regime for tardy progress in the investigation and failure to nab the culprits.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi launched a scathing attack on the NDA government on Tuesday over its two-year bash and likened Prime Minister Narendra Modi to a shahenshah (emperor).

Terming the event at India Gate last week unethical, Sonia said, I have never seen anything of this sort in my entire life.

The Prime Minister is a Prime Minister, not a shehenshah... When there is still poverty in the country, there is drought, farmers are troubled, then setting up a show (governments two-year anniversary event) like this is not appropriate, Sonia said in her parliamentary constituency Rae Bareli, where she arrived on Tuesday on a two-day visit.

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, which completed two years at the centre recently, on Saturday organised a star-studded show at India Gate that saw 21 ministers showcasing its achievements. An array of Bollywood stars and eminent personalities from business and industry also joined them in espousing social causes promoted by the government.

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi too had recently hit out at Modi, saying the government was busy in celebrating its two years in power while the farmers of the country were committing suicide.

Sonia said Modis ministers have given him this stature [of an emperor] and are busy celebrating.

The Congress president appeared to be quoting the Prime Minister from his salvo on chief minister Mamata Banerjee while campaigning ahead of the assembly elections in West Bengal.

As an opposition leader, she used to fight on the streets. But that Mamata didi changed so much that she does not care for anybody. She has become a shahenshah, Modi had said. Such a change is not desirable in democracy.
Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah will address a farmers rally in Allahabad and visit Varanasi on Tuesday, stepping up the partys efforts to woo voters ahead of the crucial 2017 election.

Shahs rally comes four days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose Saharanpur in western Uttar Pradesh to mark two years in office, virtually launching the BJPs campaign in this political bellwether state.

Shah was expected to talk about the state election and also highlight schemes launched by the Modi government for farmers and the common man at the Sardar Patel Kisan Maha Rally, party sources said.

Accused of being pro-industry and anti-farmer by rivals, the BJP has been underlining various welfare programmes introduced by the Centre, including a farm insurance scheme and the Jan Dhan Yojana that aims to provide banking access to all.

Read | Ahead of UP polls, BJP president steers clear of Ram Mandir

Several senior party leaders have been in Allahabad, where the BJPs executive will meet on June 12 and 13, reviewing the preparations for the rally.

Shah will reach Allahabad after having lunch with a Dalit family at Jogiyapur village in Modi Lok Sabha constituency of Varanasi, a move seen as a part of the partys larger plan to connect with Dalits, who Mayawatis Bahujan Samaj Party counts as its core vote-bank.

The BJP is also looking to address the sense of alienation in the community, which constitutes about 17% of the countrys population and dispel the impression of being a party that provides little space to Dalits.

Shah may also visit Nagepur, one of the two villages adopted by Modi in Varanasi. Earlier this month, the BJP chief took a holy dip with Dalit sadhus in the Kshipra river at the Kumbh in Ujjain.

Read | Bajrang Dal is not BJP, listen only to your government: Amit Shah
The three-day Assam assembly session from June 1 will be the first for the BJP-led alliance government headed by Sarbananda Sonowal.

The session will see governor PB Acharyas customary speech, oath-taking by the newly-elected MLAs, election of a new Speaker and Deputy Speaker besides selection of members for new legislature committees.

The session will also mark a couple of firsts. BJP legislators will be occupying the assemblys treasury bench for the first time since contesting the state polls in 1985. The assembly will also have an officially-recognised leader of Opposition for the first time in 10 years.

An opposition party needs to have a minimum 21 MLAs in the 126-member assembly for its leader to get the formal status. In the last assembly election in 2011, perfume baron Badruddin Ajmals All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) came close with 18 seats.

Congress, the main opposition party this time, has 26 MLAs. Former chief minister Hiteswar Saikias son Debrabata Saikia, the chosen Congress Legislature Party leader, is set to be the Opposition leader.

The BJP and its ruling allies  Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and the Bodoland Peoples Front  have 86 seats.

A session staple is the debate on the governors customary address, which is likely to touch upon the development objectives of the new government and the issue of Bangladeshi immigrants.

Chief minister Sonowal and his cabinet colleagues have said the influx issue is on top of their agenda. The Congress and AIUDF, which has 13 MLAs, have cautioned against hasty action so that genuine Indian citizens are not victimised.

The Bangladeshi issue has plagued Assam since the 1979-1985 anti-foreigners Assam Agitation that led to the birth of AGP in 1985 and saw the BJP sprout roots that year. The BJP accuses Congress, the Left Front and AIUDF of patronising infiltrators for vote-bank politics.

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A report prepared by a forensic laboratory has confirmed that the meat found in Dadri lynching victim Mohammad Ikhlaqs house was from a cow or its progeny, documents accessed by Hindustan Times showed on Tuesday.

Police maintained that the report was of no use in the investigation into the murder and assault.

Read: Opinion: Beef it is, but what about the guardians of culture, Dadri killers?

The matter is sub-judice, so we cant comment, said Anurag Singh, the police deputy superintendent of Dadri, 50km from Delhi.

The 55-year-old Ikhlaq was murdered by a mob on September 28 last year and son Danish was gravely wounded while trying to save his father. The incident triggered national outrage over religious intolerance and a chain of protests across the country, with prominent writers, filmmakers and scientists returning their awards.

It has been alleged that the mob, which gathered following a public announcement from a nearby temple, attacked Ikhlaq even as family members kept screaming that the meat was not beef but mutton.

Read: Dadri lynching has raised troubling questions on Indias secularity

The familys claim was corroborated by a preliminary report of a government veterinarian that said the flesh looks like mutton.

A day after the brutal killing, the state veterinary department sent 4kg of red meat seized from Ikhlaqs home to a Mathura laboratory for forensic tests.

Read: Bisada lynching: Victims family shifted to Delhi Air Force station

In the meantime, 19 people were named in a police FIR based on the statement of Ikhlaqs daughter, Shaista. Police arrested 18 of them but one was let off after it was confirmed that he was not in the village when the incident occurred.

The laboratory report was submitted in a sealed envelope to a fast-track court this April.

We got the copy of the forensic report today in which it is mentioned that the sample was cow meat. Now we will discuss the future course of action, said Ram Sharan Nagar, the counsel for the accused.

On May 17, the court allowed the counsel to access Shaistas statement, copy of the forensic report and medical reports of Ikhlaq and 21-year-old Danish, who suffered a broken skull in the attack.

Read: Bisada tense as demand grows for release of 18 held for Dadri lynching

Eating beef is not illegal in Uttar Pradesh, where Dadri is located, though the slaughter of cows is banned.

Police also maintained that they are investigating Ikhlaqs murder, not cow-slaughter. The meat was sent for forensic test following the demands of the agitating villagers, an officer said.

The Ikhlaq familys lawyer, Yusuf Saifi, said as much. The matter is sub-judice. Moreover, the forensic report has nothing to do with the case of murder and assault.

The family was not happy with the report. My brother is no more. I would like to request everyone not to politicise this issue anymore, said Jaan Mohammad.

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Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar urged the nation to come out in large numbers and join the African students for the March for Justice at the Jantar Mantar in the national capital on Tuesday.

Condemning the governments approach in the matter, Kanhaiya said that the government wanted to perpetually function in a denial mode, adding that the attack on the African students showed the racial discrimination that was taking root in this country.

Read:Attack on Africans in Delhi: Cops arrest 4, detain 4 amid growing pressure

All that the spokesperson for the state has to say is that it is a minor issue. It is shameful that the government takes this issue so lightly when diplomats from 42 African nations boycotted the weeklong celebration of Africa Day, hosted by the Indian government as a sign of protest against renewed racism and Afro-phobia, he added.

Kanhaiya further stated that the government wanted to turn the citizens of the nation into an unthinking and blindly following mob with intolerant attitude.

The BJP-RSS government continues to attack the cultural ethos of this nation that promotes unity in diversity and welcoming people from diverse background and through these attacks, they pose a very serious threat to the very constitution of this country, he added.

Read:Dont party and drink in public, Delhi cops tell African nationals

Read:Nigerians create problems in Goa, all of India: Goa minister Parulekar

Further escalating the attack, Kanhaiya asked the government to stop turning the people of the country into a crowd and stop propagating ideas, which promote discrimination on the basis of colour, caste, religion and regions.

In wake of the recent attacks on the African nationals, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj is set to meet African students on Tuesday to assure them of their safety and security in India.

The Indian Government had assured the family members of African national Masunda Oliver, who was brutally killed in the national capital, that speedy trial would take place in the case and all the three accused would be prosecuted as per law of the land.

Birender Yadav, Joint Secretary (West Africa), who met the family members of Oliver at the airport, offered his heartfelt condolences and informed that the Indian government would bear all the expenses to dispatch his mortal remains back to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

A week after the killing of a Congolese man in the national capital that stirred a diplomatic row and instigated violence against Indians in Congo, four attacks on African nationals by the residents in Chattarpur were reported on Friday.

Five people were arrested by the Delhi Police in connection with the four attack incidents on the African nationals on Sunday. The African nationals had sustained minor injuries in the attack that took place in South Delhis Mehrauli area on Friday.

The accused have been arrested have been identified as- Babu (32), Kunal (20), Om Prakash (24), Rahul alias Rocky (24) and Ajay (25). The police are carrying out search operations to nab the other accused persons.

On Sunday, Swaraj spoke to Rajnath Singh and Delhi Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung about the attacks and said she was assured that the culprits would soon be arrested.
The Amyotha Hluttawthe Upper House of Parliamentis discussing a bill to amend the Ward or Village Tract Administration Law of 2012, which replaced two earlier laws enacted over a century ago. The law requires residents to inform government officials when visitors spend the night in their homes and to report personal data about those visitors. Authorities enforce the guest registration requirement through late-night raids, commonly known as midnight inspections, and have used the law to target low-income communities, individuals working with civil society organizations, and political activists.

Members of Parliament with the National League for Democracy (NLD) party introduced the bill to amend the law to bring it in line with human rights standards. Military-appointed MPs, who hold 25 percent of the seats in parliament, oppose changes to the law, arguing that the law is necessary to ensure national security.

Guest registration and unwarranted searches have no place in a rights-respecting democracy, said Matthew Smith, Executive Director of Fortify Rights. These provisions infringe on basic human rights, making Myanmar less secure. Parliament should repeal these provisions once and for all.

The law effectively requires all Myanmar residents to seek permission from the authorities to host overnight guests and puts information about who is sleeping whereand for how longin the hands of government officials. The authorities have access to individual household data dating back decades, infringing on the right to privacy, Fortify Rights said.
The LDF government in Kerala would not take any decision that would hurt anybody on the issue of entry of women of menstruating age in the famous hill shrine of Lord Ayyappa at Sabarimala, state Devaswom minister Kadakampally Surendran said on Tuesday.

Addressing a press meet in Thiruvananthapuram, Surendran said, The government will not take any decision that would hurt anybody ...it will take any decision only after consulting all groups.

The issue had not yet been discussed either in the ruling front or by the ministry, he said.

He further said he was only a politician and not competent enough to say how the entry of women would affect the rituals of the temple.

The case is under the consideration of the Supreme Court and it will take a decision in this regard. I am not the right person to say how the entry of women will affect the rituals of Ayyappa Temple. There are competent people to comment on the matter and they will speak, the Minister said.

Women in the age group of 10-50 are banned entry in the temple, which attracts lakhs of devotees.

Asked about the decision to dissolve the Devaswom recruitment board and entrust the job to the state-run public service commission, he said there was no need for an institution like Devaswom recruitment board for the purpose.

Our decision was only to leave the recruitment of clerical staff and engineers, who are very less in number, to PSC. And not the recruitment of priests. There is no need for a separate devaswom recruitment board for the purpose, he said.

Surendran slammed the previous UDF government for constituting the board.

The PSC would make appointments after meeting all necessary formalities and procedures, he added.
External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday said that the government is committed to providing security to African students in India after a meeting with a delegation of students from the continent. She was accompanied by minister of state for external affairs VK Singh and foreign secretary S Jaishankar.

Swaraj also said that the incident of the killing of a Congolese national, Masunda Oliver, was not a case of racial discrimination.

Accompanied by ministry officials, Singh will visit each metropolitan city and hold meetings with students in order to reassure African students. The ministry will also undertake a sensitisation campaign all over the country to prevent any attacks on them.

We tried to explain to them that although the incident is huge, it isnt an incident of racial discrimination, Swaraj said after meeting the delegation. The CCTV footage clearly shows that Indian citizens who were present at the spot tried their best to save Oliver. The minister termed his death both painful and unfortunate.

We held a meeting with African students and told them the incident of the death of the Congolese national is not only unfortunate but painful for us, Swaraj said. She said that as a mother, she could understand the pain of Olivers parents who lost their son on foreign soil.

Olivers killing, a slew of other attacks on Africans in New Delhi, and a case in Hyderabad in which a Nigerian man was beaten up, has caused widespread anger among the community. A group of African students held a protest at Jantar Mantar on Monday.

Meanwhile, after the government assured them of better security, African students called off a demonstration in the capital to protest the spate of assaults against the community. The students said they had a meeting with officials of the ministry of external affairs, where they were assured of security. They were also requested not to go ahead with their planned protest at Jantar Mantar.

There was a high-level meeting with the permanent secretary of the ministry of external affairs yesterday. He listened to our grievances and made commitments to ensure our safety. Leaders of 15 African countries were also present at the meeting, the Association of African Students in India said in a statement.

Read: Congolese mans murder: Govt faces tough questions from African diplomats

Read: Congolese mans murder: Govt assures victims kin of speedy trial

Read: Congolese man killed in Delhi: For African students, racial taunts never end
An officer of the special branch of police was abducted and killed by suspected Maoists in Jharkhands Nawatoli village on Monday night.

The officer, Badrinath Tiwari, was posted in insurgency-hit Chainpur a few months ago and, as part of his duty, had successfully developed a network of local informers and also planted moles inside Maoist camps.

Working undercover as a tribal in Nawatoli under the pseudonym Binod Tirkey, he gathered intelligence on the hideouts of insurgents and their movements. On the basis of his inputs, the Gumla police and the CRPF busted several Maoist camps and inflicted serious damage to their operation.

Officers in Chainpur told HT that around 9 pm, a squad of rebels, including top local leaders Ranthu, Birbal and Lajim, swooped down on Nawatoli, kidnapped Tiwari and took him into a nearby jungle, where he was shot dead.

Its an unfortunate incident. [Have] heard various reasons for the killing since last night, hence I am travelling to Gumla to personally probe [the incident], said additional director general of police (special branch) Anurag Gupta.

The pamphlet left near the body of the slain intelligence officer purportedly by Maoists threats special police officers of dire consequences. (HT Photo)

The suspected Maoists left a pamphlet threatening special police officers near the body. They mistook him to be a special police officer (SPO) and hence left a pamphlet near the body warning other SPOs of dire consequences, said deputy inspector general of police RK Dhan.

Security forces over the last few months have been carrying out combing operations in the region. But Tiwaris murder has reaffirmed the Maoists strong presence in addition to being a severe blow to the polices intelligence-gathering network.

State director general of police DK Pandey recently said the Maoists were confined to 32 panchayats in the state, chief minister Raghubar Das in December 2014 expressed confidence that the menace would be eliminated within six months.

However, the recent incident has brought back memories of the October 2009 beheading of special branch inspector Francis Induwar in Bundu, near state capital Ranchi.


Three key officers handling files in the home ministry related to the alleged fake encounter killing of Ishrat Jahan have deposed before a one-man inquiry committee probing the missing documents of the case.

The panel of B K Prasad, Additional Secretary in the Home Ministry, recorded the statements of retired IAS officer Deverakonda Diptivilasa and serving senior IAS officers Dhamendra Sharma and Rakesh Singh in the last few days.

All the three were handling the key Internal Security-I division in the home ministry as joint secretary in different periods.

While Diptivilasa is currently serving as non-official director of public sector Corporation Bank, Sharma is at present with Delhi government. Singh is serving in Karnataka government.

Sources said Diptivilasa, Sharma and Singh explained their respective position and reportedly pleaded their ignorance about the missing documents related to the Ishrat Jahan case.

The inquiry panel has so far not been able to trace the missing files related to alleged fake encounter killing of Ishrat Jahan.

The one-member panel was constituted after home minister Rajnath Singh had disclosed in Parliament on March 10 that the files were missing.

Following an uproar in Parliament, the ministry had asked Prasad to inquire into the circumstances in which the files related to the case of Ishrat Jahan, who was killed in an alleged fake encounter in Gujarat in 2004, went missing.

The papers, which disappeared from the Home Ministry, include the copy of an affidavit vetted by the then Attorney General and submitted in the Gujarat high court in 2009 and the draft of the second affidavit vetted by the AG on which changes were made.

Two letters written by the then Home Secretary G K Pillai to the then Attorney General late G E Vahanvati and the copy of the draft affidavit have also so far remained untraceable.

Chidambarams remarks came amid speculation that the Chidambarams remarks came amid speculation that the one-member inquiry panel set up by the Union home ministry, probing the missing files related to the case, could submit its report soon.

The panel headed by B K Prasad, a Tamil Nadu cadre IAS officer, was constituted on March 14 this year to inquire into the circumstances in which the crucial files related to the case of Ishrat Jahan, who was killed in an alleged fake encounter in Gujarat in 2004, went missing.

The papers which went missing from the Home Ministry include the copy of an affidavit vetted by the Attorney General and submitted in the Gujarat high court in 2009 and the draft of the second affidavit on which changes were made, they said.

The first affidavit was filed on the basis of inputs from Maharashtra and Gujarat police besides the Intelligence Bureau where it was said the 19-year-old girl from Mumbai outskirts was a Lashkar-e-Taiba activist but it was ignored in the second affidavit, they said.

The second affidavit, claimed to have been drafted by the then Home Minister P Chidambaram, said there was no conclusive evidence to prove that Ishrat was a terrorist, the sources said.

Pillai had claimed that as home minister, Chidambaram had recalled the file a month after the original affidavit, which described Ishrat and her slain aides as LeT operatives, was filed in the court.

Subsequently, Chidambaram had said Pillai is equally responsible for the change in the affidavit.

Ishrat, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were killed in an encounter with Gujarat Police on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004.

The Gujarat Police had then said those killed in the encounters were LeT terrorists and had landed in Gujarat to kill the then chief minister Narendra Modi.
The BJP government in Madhya Pradesh issued a show cause notice to IAS officer Ajay Singh Gangwar, ex-collector of Barwani district, on Monday in the wake of his Facebook post praising former Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru and alleged attack on the saffron brigade.

The move comes days after Gangwar was transferred as deputy secretary at the secretariat in Bhopal.

Read:IAS officer transferred in BJP-led Madhya Pradesh after praising Nehru

Gangwar reportedly liked a post against Modi on January 23, 2015 and wrote a comment, which read: Modi ke khilaph jankranti honi chaia (sic) (A revolution should be initiated against Modi).

He also wrote on his Facebook page: Pls let me know the mistakes Nehru should not have committedIt was his mistake if he didnt allow you to become a Hindu Talibani Rashtra in 1947It was his mistake that he brought IIT, ISRO, BARC, IISB, IIM, BHEL STEEL PLANT, Dams, Thermal Power (sic).

Sources said Gangwars actions violated the All India Service (conduct) Rules, 1968.

Gangwar received support from a section of government officials against his removal, but a senior government official justified the action taken against him.

A strict message has to be sent to the bureaucracy that freedom of expression doesnt mean writing anything, that too in utter disregard to All India Service (conduct) Rules. If such an action is not taken then any official will like to write anything on the social media and there will be a chaotic atmosphere in the bureaucracy, he told HT.

Read:MP govt digs up IAS officers anti-Modi Facebook post to justify transfer

Immediately after his transfer, Gangwar said the post was his personal opinion meant for a discussion exclusively among Facebook friends and is a kind of satire.

He went on leave after his transfer and was unavailable for further comments.
National Commission for Women (NCW), which had been investigating the case of Dalit womans death in police custody, on Tuesday, indicted the Farrukhabad police.

A Dalit woman, 20, had alleged that the son of a politician abducted and raped her in 2014. She was jailed three times and suffered fatal injuries when police arrested her a fourth time on April 29. The 20-year-old died on May 9.

She was arrested last for possessing 500 grams of charas when she was on way back her home after meeting Nilabja Chowdhary, DIG Kanpur range.

She had feared she could be implicated in a fake case and even could be killed. Chowdhary on her complaint had instituted an inquiry under ASP Cantt Khyati Garg.

NCW member Rekha Sharma said the commission took the case suo moto on the Hindustan Times reports on the case.

Sharma spent nearly a week investigating the case, summoned the DIG Kanpur and SSP Farrukhabad Arun Srivastava at Circuit House on Tuesday.

The NCW team directed the team to shift the investigation from Farrukhabad to Kanpur police and arrest the BSP candidate Mahendra Katiyar and his son immediately. Both havent been arrested despite victims father lodging an FIR of murder against them and four policemen with Kamalgunj police.

DIG Kanpur has assured that he will issue the order if the family gives in writing that it wants investigation be conducted by another district, she told reporters at circuit house.

In last one week, the commissions team met people related to the case and recorded their statements. The Farrukhabad police clearly were hiding facts about the incident and had been planting stories about girls character, she said.

I took all the statements in one week; the police havent recorded a single one even after a month has passed, she said.

The investigating officer hasnt called the driver of the jeep from which the Farrukhabad police claims had jumped off, she said.

The NCW team would submit its report to the commission, which would send it to the state government. In addition, the commission is likely to summon SHO Kamalgunj Saligram Verma who was suspended in the case with five other policemen, to Delhi.
Congress leader Pradeep Tamta is set to be elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha from Uttarakhand after alliance partner the Progressive Democratic Front decided to withdraw from the fray, averting fresh trouble for the Rawat government.

The naming of former parliamentarian Tamta, known to be close to chief minister Harish Rawat, had not gone down well with alliance partner PDF and senior cabinet minister Yashpal Arya.

PDF lawmaker Dinesh Dhane softened stand hours before the Tuesday deadline for filing the nominations for the June 11 elections was to end. Till Monday night, Dhane appeared firm on contesting the election for the Upper House of Parliament but changed his mind after Rawats lieutenants met him next morning.

There were reports that the Congress leadership may change the candidate to avoid fresh trouble in the state, where its government recently survived a rebellion by nine MLAs.

But, the leadership chose to go with Tamta. The 57-year-old will file the election papers in the presence of Rawat and Arya, who backed down on Monday after meeting Congress president Sonia Gandhi in New Delhi. He conveyed his feelings to the Congress president and she was sympathetic to him, Arya said.

The BJP, the single largest party in the assembly with 27 MLAs, is not contesting the election.

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Describing Indias ties with African countries as good, vice-president Hamid Ansari said on Tuesday that India wants to engage with the region in various areas -- including IT, tele-medicine and agriculture.

Interacting with reporters on board his special aircraft en route to the Moroccan capital Rabat, Ansari said, With Morocco we have substantive relationship due to one product -- phosphate -- which is very important for us. Indian investment is also there in Morocco in this sector.

He said Morocco has been helpful towards India at the international level.

When asked about the sudden push towards Africa, Ansari said that focus on Africa was always there. He said there was focus on Africa since the time of late president APJ Abdul Kalam.

Every government has laid focus on Africa, he said, adding that the focus was not due to their relationship with China.

We are not competing with China. We both have different capacities. Our relations (with Africa) are old. We will discover our space in more areas, including IT and tele-medicine, he said, adding that there is also scope for cooperation in agriculture.

He said Moroccans find Chinese good, but China was not engaging locals. If we get a foothold in Morocco, we can expand our business (in the region), he said.

Ansari said India has a presence in Africas automobile sector. It is a promising sector.

Sooner or later Bollywood would become interested as (Morocco) is a good place for shooting of movies, he said.

Ansari, however, said that visits to Morocco have been too few.

There is no specific reason for this, he added.

Ansari said Morocco is a monarchy of life-long standing but they have learnt to democratise.

Ansari, who will be in Morocco till June 1, will jointly launch the India-Morocco Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Rabat with Moroccan Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane.

In the second leg of his tour, Ansari will visit Tunisia from June 2-3.

Speaking about the Islamic influence in Tunisia, Ansari said: The leader of Islamic Party was in New Delhi recently. He is a moderate. He also said that during changing phase you ought to talk to all.

Ansari said India has good relations with Morocco and Tunisia but trade has dipped lately with the two countries.

One Indian company is working there but below its installed capacity due to labour trouble, if they can work at 70% capacity the company can start earning profit, he added.

Asked about the terror threat from the Islamic State (IS), Ansari said the African political view was clear -- they do not want any conflict. IS rises when law and order machinery collapses, he said.

Asked about cooperation with both the countries on countering-terrorism, Ansari said, Intelligence cooperation sharing cant be talked in public. There are two broader areas -- one exchange of information and secondly issue of cyber security. We are talking on both these areas with both.
Special offer for officers and employees of Hyderabad secretariat who opted for Amaravati new capital. We are providing decent accommodation with free air and also delicious and homely food.. (sic)  read a pamphlet of a private hostel in circulation among employees of Andhra Pradesh secretariat a couple of days ago.

Several such hostels and private residential apartments in Guntur district, where the new secretariat complex of the Andhra Pradesh government is coming up, are offering to provide accommodation to employees coming from Hyderabad.

With the Chandrababu Naidu government deciding to shift the state secretariat from Hyderabad to the new capital city of Amaravati by June 27, employees staying comfortably in Hyderabad are struggling to shift their families.

Amaravati was envisioned after Telangana was created out of the erstwhile united Andhra Pradesh two years ago. The two states are supposed to share Hyderabad as a capital for 10 years, after which the IT-hub goes to Telangana. But ties between the two states have been less than cordial and Naidu has now chosen to fast-forward the move out of Hyderabad by ordering 2,500 secretariat employees to relocate by the month-end. Another 17,000 will have to relocate to Amaravati over the next few months.

Officially though, the reason cited for the hurried shifting is to generate economic activity in Andhra Pradesh. The longer the Andhra employees stay in Hyderabad, Telangana earns more in the form of commercial taxes and excise. Naidu wants all the income to accrue to Andhra instead.

To fulfil his wish, those ordered to shift immediately are scrambling to find homes in the new capital. Athidhi Home, a new residential apartment in Tullur block, offers separate accommodation for women and men with security and 24-hours water facility.

It provides shared accommodation for two to six people at a price ranging from Rs 6,000 to Rs 10,000 for non-airconditioned and air-conditioned rooms respectively.

It also gives non-AC and AC dormitories for bachelors charging Rs 150 to Rs 250 per bed daily.

Many such hostels and residential apartments are ready for occupation for the employees coming from Hyderabad, D Gopi, a local resident, told HT. Private buildings are offering to house even government offices.

The chief minister has asked the officials to identify buildings in and around the new capital region to house government offices, as it would take at least a couple of months more to complete the construction of the transitional secretariat complex at Velagapudi village  a part of Amaravati.

According to municipal administration minister P Narayana who is overseeing the construction of the new capital, the secretariat complex will house all departments of the main administration, including the CMs office, and some of offices of other heads of departments.

The remaining government offices would be accommodated in rented buildings in Vijayawada and Guntur, he said.

The biggest problem, however, is the shifting of employees to Amaravati, as majority of them have made Hyderabad as their hometown.

According to U Murali Krishna, president of AP Secretariat Employees Association, most employees cannot shift their families permanently to Amaravati, till all infrastructure is created. Till such time, most of us will have to stay in hostels and shared accommodations, while returning to Hyderabad during weekends, Murali Krishna told HT.

In a bid to pacify the employees, the Naidu government has agreed to some of their major demands including enhancing their house rent allowance from 13 to 30%. Yet, transferring the capital remains a daunting task.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday asked Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar to visit the central ammunition depot in Maharashtras Pulgaon to take stock of the situation after a major fire killed at least 17 security personnel, including two Army officers, there.

Read: Maharashtra: 2 officers,15 soldiers killed in massive army depot fire

Modi also expressed pain over the loss of lives caused by the fire and prayed for quick recovery of the injured.

I pray that those who are injured recover quickly. Have asked RM @manoharparrikar to visit the spot & take stock of the situation.

Pained by loss of lives caused by a fire at central ammunition depot in Pulgaon, Maharashtra. My thoughts are with the bereaved families, the Prime Minister said on Twitter.

The central ammunition depot at Pulgaon isthe countrys biggest ammunition storehouse.

Meanwhile, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis termed as very unfortunate the fire at the central ammunition depot.

.He said he has spoken to Wardha collector and instructed him to provide all help.

Following the mishap, Fadnavis said in a tweet: News of fire at Central Ammunition Depot, Pulgaon is very unfortunate and disturbing. Spoke to Wardha collector & took stock of the situation.

Instructed Wardha collector to provide all required help in this situation. Also asked collectors of the neighbouring districts to be alert, the CM said.
Mon language on Mya Zedi Inscription (Photo: Bagan.Travel Myanmar)

Since the Mon language was also inscribed on the stone, the MoWs recognition of the Mya Zedi inscription will improve global awareness and education of the Mon language.

The standard of Mon language will be enhanced around the world because the Mya Zedi inscription, which was also inscribed by Mon scholars, is recognized as world heritage, said Nai Maung Toe, the chairman of Mon History Research Association, in an interview with MNA.

Nai Maung Toe continued that the Mon History Research Association is very glad and welcomes the recognition of the Mya Zedi inscription by the MoW.

Nai Maung Toe also added that although the stone inscription is quadri-lingual, namely Pyu, Mon, Burmese and Pali, they were primarily inscribed in two languages. The Pyu section was inscribed in Pyu language, while the Mon, Burmese and Pali were inscribed in Mon language.

There are some people who want to destroy Mon heritage. Nevertheless, we will safeguard Mon heritage effectively. The Mon History Research Association will also keep working on this matter, said Sayadaw Thawa Lawontha.

The Mon History Research Association remarked that there are many heritage sites in Pagan but most of them have been destroyed. Therefore, they could not be listed as world heritage. The organization would be grateful if the pagodas founded by Mon king Manu Ha, including Manu Ha Pagoda and Nan Pagoda in Myin Kapar village, in the area of Pagan, were also recognized as world heritage.

According to historians, it was estimated that the Mya Zedi inscription, which is also known as the Yarzakumar Inscription, was engraved in 1113 AD. The relic itself is 5 11 tall and stands as a four-sided pillar. Each inscribed face of each side is 3 6 tall and 12 wide. The inscription has four languages; 41 lines of Pali language, 39 lines of Burmese, 33 lines of Mon and 26 lines of Pyu.

The Mya Zedi stone inscription has been listed by the MoW international register and will be recognized as world heritage.

Last week, a ceremony of setting up logo for MoWs recognition of Mya Zedi inscription took place at the Mya Zedi Pagoda. Attendees at the ceremony included the Religion and Culture Minister Thura U Aung Ko and representatives from Mandalay Division government.
The toll from the inferno at the central ammunition depot in Pulgaon has reached 18 after the recovery of two more bodies from the debris. They have been identified as: Amol Yesankar and Amit Dandekar.

An army officer identified two among the dead as Lt Col RS Pawar and Major K Manoj, the chief security officer at the depot at Pulgaon, around 110km from Nagpur.

The dead and injured soldiers were from the Defence Security Corp (DSC) that guards strategic defence installations.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Twitter that he was pained by the loss of lives. Defence minister Manohar Parrikar later visited the site and met the injured in hospital.

The Pulgaon depot -- Asias second largest -- stocks ammunition including bombs, grenades, shells, assorted rifles and other explosives from various factories before they are distributed across states.

Read | PM rushes defence minister Parrikar to Maharashtras depot fire site

Location of the Central Ammunition Depot in Maharashtras Pulgaon. This is Indias largest stockpile of weapons. (PTI)

Villagers near the depot said they were woken up by a booming sound followed by rattling of window panes. When they rushed out in panic, they saw massive flames lighting up the night sky at Pulgaon.

The blaze also triggered multiple explosions forcing the evacuation of more than 3,000 people. The people, however, allowed to return in the afternoon after the fire was completely doused.

According to unofficial sources, the dead also included two fire brigade personnel who battled through the night to control the blaze that started at around 1.30am. At least 20 fire tenders were pressed into service.

All the injured persons were rushed to a private run medical college at Sawangi where the condition of three was said to be critical. Hospital dean Sandip Shrivastava said: Most of the patients complained of hearing loss while others had splinter injuries and burns.

Read | Probe ordered into fire at Maharashtra ammunition depot: Army

The fire has been completely doused and situation brought under control. Howevertwo officers and 14 personnel lost their lives and two officers and 15 personnel were injured, director general, military operations, Lt Gen Ranbir Singh said in Delhi.

The cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained. The army has ordered a probe into the incident.

Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said the accident had caused a great loss of lives and property.

Its a very unfortunate incident. Many of our men were killed in the blaze, he told reporters.

Villagers walk past houses struck by debris after fire at the ammunition depot in Pulgaon. (AFP)

The Pulgaon depot -- Asias second largest -- stocks ammunition including bombs, grenades, shells, assorted rifles and other explosives from various factories before they are distributed across states. Surrounded by hillocks on either side, the depot has had its brush with blazes in past  in 1989 and 1995, though no loss of life was reported on both occasions.

Read | Villagers near Pulgaon ammunition centre return home

In 2007, a fire wrecked an ammunition dump in Jammu and Kashmir, exploding artillery shells and mortar rounds, which rained down on surrounding villages. At least 17 people were killed and two dozen injured.

A fire also ripped through one of the armys largest ammunition depots in 2010 in Kolkata, destroying 150 tonnes of explosives and ammunition. No one was killed in the accident.

(With agency inputs)

Also read | No sabotage, inquiry needed to find cause: Parrikar on Pulgaon fire
The Pulgaon fire has raised concerns among residents of several sectors close to the Indian Air Force ammunition depot in Gurgaon. People fear that a similar incident could jeopardise the lives of people, especially those living close to and inside the 900-meter restricted area.

The high-density HUDA area that includes sectors 14, 17, 18, 22, 23, and parts of Old Gurgaon are close the ammunition depot.

A number of government offices, private companies, including Maruti Suzuki India and its vendors, operate close to the depot. There are nearly 1.5 lakh people who live in the restricted area as the last two decades witnessed a wave of illegal construction, patronised by politicians and bureaucrats.

A survey conducted by MCG Gurgaon found there are 14,154 structures in the 2,325-acre area around the depot. The built-up area is 692 acres and recently, the state government had reduced the restricted area to 300 meters. However, this is pending in the Punjab and Haryana high court.

At least 16 defence personnel including two army officers were killed and 19 others were injured on Tuesday when an overnight fire raged through Indias biggest weapons stockpile at Pulgaon depot in Maharashtras Wardha district.

Strategically, the Gurgaon depot is important for the Indian armed forces due to its centralised location as it ensures armaments can be moved to two sectors in case of war occurring on multiple fronts.

During the Kargil war, ammunition and other stocks from abroad were imported and replenished with ease at the Gurgaon depot due to availability of the air bridging facility at the Delhi airport.

However, Gurgaon residents are now more worried about their own survival rather than the strategic worth of the depot. They say an incident like Pulgaon could lead to potential disaster. We had bought land here 10 years back and no one told us it is illegal. The dealers also promised the depot will be shifted but nothing happened, said Chattarpal Yadav, who lives close to the IAF wall. Sanjay Kumar, a Sector-23 resident, said wholesale construction in the 900-meter area should have been banned.

Retired defence officials in the city, however, allayed the fears of the Gurgaon residents. The incident at Pulgaon (sic) is a freak incident and nothing of this sort can happen in Gurgaon. There are adequate safeguards and advanced technology used to handle ammunition, said Major General (Retd) Ashok Sheoran, while adding the rule book should be followed in letter and spirit.

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The Uttarakhand high court stayed on Tuesday a possible arrest of chief minister Harish Rawat over a sting that showed him negotiating a deal to lure dissident Congress lawmakers to back him during a floor test.

Justice Sudhansu Dhulia refused to intervene and asked Rawat to cooperate with the CBI, which is conducting a preliminary inquiry.

The consent for a CBI probe was given by governor KK Paul when the hill state was under Presidents rule.

The state was under Presidents rule for nearly two months since March 27 after nine Congress MLAs revolted against the Rawat government and sided with the opposition BJP. Rawat was reinstated after he won a Supreme Court-monitored trust vote on May 10.

The controversial video  released on March 26  shows the deposed chief minster trying to lure dissident Congress lawmakers with money and plum posts to support him in a floor test in the assembly on March 28, which never happened.

The video, authenticated by the Chandigarh-based central forensic science laboratory later, was partly instrumental in bringing the state under central rule as allegations of horse-trading swirled.

Rawat had admitted his presence in the video but dared critics to prove if he was making any offer in cash or kind. Hang me on the clock tower (in Dehradun) if I had done wrong.

He challenged the probe in the high court on May 20 and had skipped summonses by the agency. His cabinet had even passed a resolution to cancel the CBI probe, though central investigating agency rejected the decision.

The chief minister went to the CBI headquarters in New Delhi on May 24, where he was quizzed for five hours. He has to appear before agency on June 7 again.

On Tuesday, the high court issued notice to Congress rebel Harak Singh Rawat, who did a second sting in May.
A 23-year-old taxi driver, working for cab aggregator Uber, was allegedly stabbed to death near the Senior Superintendent Of Police(SSP) office on Sunday night in a suspected case of road rage, police said.

The deceased, Gaurav Chauhan,was driving a Hyundai Accent cab, owned by a retired army personnels daughter, when the incident occurred. The police, however, said personal enmity can be a motive behind the incident .

Chauhan (22), a native of a village in Bulandshahr, was killed on Sunday night when he, along with his two cousins, was returning to Noida from Delhi after attending a marriage celebration.

Near HotelCrowne Plaza in Delhis Mayur Vihar, another cab driver was trying to overtake, but Gaurav did not give way. At around mid night, when they reached Noida near SSP office, Gauravs vehicle was hit by the cab behind, which led to an argument between him and the other driver.

While Gaurav was arguing with the driver, three men on motorbike hit him with a sharp-edged object and also broke the window panes of his cab.

Gaurav was critically injured and was taken to Bhardwaj hospital and referred to Kailash hospital, where the doctors declared him brought dead.

Gauravs brother Satvir has lodged an FIR against unknown cab driver and three men on bike.

The Sector 20 police has launched a manhunt to trace the accused with the help of CCTV footage.

.
Days after University of Hyderabad (UoH) officials pulled down tents erected on campus in memory of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula, protesters decided to make a new tent by stitching the clothes donated by the universitys students and faculty.

The blanket used by Vemula while agitating against his and four others suspension, will be used as the centre piece of the tent.

This is to symbolise the solidarity between the students and teachers in the fight to achieve justice for Rohith. We have asked all the students and professors to bring their old clothes to Velivada (Dalit colony) for making the tent, Y Bhaskar, leader of the UoH Joint Action Committee for Social Justice, told HT.

Read:Rohith Vemula row: Hyderabad varsity students want VC Appa Rao to go

The activists participating in the Justice for Rohith Vemula movement are planning to erect the new tent at the same makeshift Dalit colony where tents had been set up earlier in Vemulas memory.

The student members of the Joint Action Committee (JAC) reached out to others through social media in a bid to collect as many clothes as possible for their initiative.

Instead of buying a new tent, we have come up with this novel idea to establish our commitment to the Justice for Rohith cause. Let us see how it works. We are hoping for huge response once the vacations are over and students return to the campus. The size of the tent depends on the number of clothes we collect, Bhaskar said.

Expressing solidarity with the struggle, Marika, a postgraduate student of the university, said: Although many of us are busy this summer, we are with the movement. We will reunite in July to make our forces stronger.

The university authorities had removed the tents erected at the shopping complex in the early hours of May 28, triggering protests from the students.

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Switzerland named Lalit Modi and his wife Minal on Tuesday among those about whom India has sought information and assistance related to income tax investigations.

In two separate gazette notifications issued on assistance matters, the Swiss Federal Tax Administration (FTA) also gave Lalit Modi and his wife 10 days for exercise of the right to be heard.

Without divulging further details, the FTA notifications asked them to inform about an authorised person in Switzerland within 10 days to receive notifications.

One notification has been issued for Lalit Kumar Modi, Indian national, while the other one is for Minal Modi alias Minalini Modi.

Email and SMS queries to former Indian Premier League commissioner about the notifications elicited no response.

In the past, several other Indian nationals have been named in such notifications after the Swiss FTA was approached by Indian authorities for information about those people with regard to the pending tax-related probes against them.

After a due process prescribed under the Swiss law, the information has been shared by Switzerland with India in several cases, pursuant to which the Indian authorities -- including the tax department and Enforcement Directorate -- have proceeded with their prosecution and other actions.

These included several Indians named in the leaked HSBC List of people with accounts in the Geneva branch of the global banking giant.

The latest notifications come days before Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Switzerland on an official visit, during which discussions are expected on further strengthening of ties between the two countries in the fight against black money suspected to be stashed by Indians in Swiss banks.

The former IPL commissioner, who is said to have left India for London in 2010, is facing a money-laundering probe and the ED has asked the external affairs ministry to seek his extradition from the UK. He has been denying any wrongdoing.

The ED wants Lalit Modi to join investigations in a case relating to the Indian Premier League after an FIR was registered against him and others under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

For long, Switzerland used to be known for strict secrecy clauses about details of foreigners having accounts in its banks. Under growing global pressure, Switzerland has, however, begun sharing information in cases where other countries have been able to present some evidence of suspected illegalities.

Under the Swiss law, a prescribed procedure is followed for any administration assistance or information exchange by the FTA with India or any other country with which the Alpine nation has tax treaties about their respective nationals.
Police arrested three men early on Tuesday for the alleged gangrape of a woman in a moving car in an IT hub on the outskirts of Kolkata, officials said.

Arnab Bera, Saurabh De and Subhendu Nag - all believed to be between 25 and 30 years - were arrested from Haroa in North 24-Parganas.

The culprits were held after tracking the CCTV footage, said an official.

The woman alleged that she was thrown out of the car after the assault on Sunday night, officials said.

The incident took place in Sector 5 of Salt Lake, which is in North 24-Parganas district.

The incident brought back the memories of the 2013 Park Street gangrape where five men raped a 37-year-old woman inside a moving vehicle.

Read: Kolkata: Dance bar employee alleges she was gangraped in moving car

Though West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee had initially doubted the claims of the Park Street victim, a court later found all the five accused guilty.

India brought in more stringent laws after the fatal gangrape of a student in Delhi in December 2012, but they have failed to stem the tide of violence against women across the country.

In her complaint, the woman, who lives in the Baguihati area, said she boarded an Uber cab around 11:30pm on Sunday night to reach a restaurant at Salt Lake.

She alleged that as soon as she got off the car - a few paces away from the eatery - an SUV stopped near her and some men dragged her inside.

The woman complained to police that her mobile phone and purse were also stolen after the assault.

Officials were not sure why the woman got off the cab before reaching her destination.
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav said on Tuesday that Amit Shah having a meal with a Dalit family in Varanasi was planned keeping the 2017 state elections in mind and his Samajwadi Party did not indulge in politics of caste.

The chief minister said his party aims to reach out to people only on the basis of their work.

In Uttar Pradesh, such things were done in the past too. Elections are near and these are done to give a message. Some will take a dip (in river) also.

I also had lunch with labourers recently but did not discriminate on the basis of caste. If you all have pictures, go and find out the caste of the labourer who sat next to me, Akhilesh told reporters.

I thank media for showing photos of poor people drinking mineral water and having mutton and chicken when I had lunch with them, he said referring to his recent lunch with labourers at the construction site of the new secretariat building here.

We dont see things on the basis of caste and creed. One should reach out to people on the basis of work and achievements, Yadav said.

Shah had a meal with Girjaprasad Bind and Ikbal Binds family, who belong to the Dalit community, in Jogiyapur village of Sevapuri assembly segment, that falls under Prime Minister Narendra Modis Lok Sabha constituency of Varanasi.

On banning liquor in the state, Akhilesh said, I will urge people not to drink. Its a big issue for Uttar Pradesh and will have to be thoroughly considered before any decision is taken. I want that none should drink.
A Vishwa Hindu Parishd (VHP) leader is among several persons booked by police for allegedly instigating religious sentiments by imparting arms training to women cadres of a right-wing affiliate, police said on Tuesday.

A case has been registered at Sigra police station against a VHP leader who used only his first name Diwakar and some other people, police said.

The case was lodged following a complaint by Sigra police inspector Anupam Srivastava.

At least 70 members of the Durga Vahini, the VHPs womens wing, were trained to shoot with air rifles and fight with cane sticks during the controversial camp at Varanasi, the Lok Sabha constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Varanasi camp came close to a similar training programme organised by another VHP affiliate, the Bajrang Dal, at Ayodhya. The earlier camp too had run into a controversy after a video surfaced, showing activists fighting volunteers dressed as terrorists in robes and skull caps.

A Bajrang Dal leader was arrested over the camp which the ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) said was organised to polarise the state ahead of the assembly polls next year.

The VHP is affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), considered the ideological fountainhead of the ruling BJP at the Centre.

The VHP had defended the weapons training programme at Ayodhya as a routine exercise and said such training was within the ambit of the law.

Read | After row in UP, Bajrang Dal to hold self-defence camps in Rajasthan

Read | In pics: Army-style training at a Bajrang Dal camp in Noida
Devotees may soon receive water from the river Ganga by post, a minister said on Monday, as India moves to tap booming e-commerce platforms.

Many Hindus believe the water from river Ganga has the power to wash away their sins and religious ceremonies are considered incomplete without a generous sprinkling of the holy water.

Communication and information technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said he had been inundated with requests for Ganga water to be made available through post.

I have directed (the postal department) to utilise e-commerce platforms and make arrangement for providing pure Gangajal (Ganges water) from Haridwar, Rishikesh to people, Prasad was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India news agency.

They have assured that they will take pro-active step to address cultural needs.

If a postman can deliver, mobile phones, sarees, jewellery, apparels, then why not Ganga water?

Around 80% of Indias 1.2 billion population is Hindu but the country is also home to large numbers of Muslims, Christians and Buddhists.

India Post, the state-run postal network, has in the past two years, tied up with some 400 e-commerce companies, including Amazon and Indian giant Flipkart to deliver a diverse range of goods.

The tie-ups have reaped rich results, with parcel deliveries increasing 15-fold to 75,000 daily deliveries since 2014.

Prasad also said that by the end of the year all postmen in urban centres would be given smart phones while those in rural post offices would be equipped with hand-held devices by March next year.
For a decade, Canada's previous petro-tory government prosecuted scientists who publicly reported their results without first passing them through the party's commissars, almost as though reality had a well-known left-wing bias and couldn't be trusted.

Stephen Harper's Tories have been out of office for less than a year and now we're starting to learn what Canada's researchers had been unable to tell the country about the state of the land and the world. Most recently, Policy Horizons Canada  a Canadian government think-tank that focuses on medium-term predictions  has warned the government that global adoption of renewables is coming on faster than predicted, and shows signs of accelerating, which means that Canada's economy is in danger  thanks to a decade of orienting the country around exporting some of the dirtiest oil on the planet, at the expense of high-tech manufacturing industries.





Independent analysts and business-people who've reviewed the report  published after a public records request by CBC  say that, aside from minor quibbles, they agree with its findings.

The report specifically calls out Canada's plan to build a wildly unpopular pipeline to transport tar-sand oil to foreign markets.

The 2015 Canadian election was won by Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party, who tacked to the left of the New Democratic Party, whose own leadership had tacked right, a move that cost it the seats it won in an unprecedented surge during the previous election.

A recent party convention ousted the NDP's leader and adopted Naomi Klein's Leap Manifesto, which calls for decarbonizing the Canadian economy.

That, in turn, caused a rift in the NDP: the Alberta party leadership (who took office in the oil patch's stronghold in 2015) decrying the national party as out-of-touch and unrealistic.





The report suggests that the national NDP was more in touch with future reality than the Alberta party knew. Meanwhile the report predicts that rare earths and conflict minerals are likely to occupy the niche currently enjoyed by oil, and shift economic power to some of the world's poorest countries.



The document was obtained by CBC News under an access to information request and shared with two experts  one in Alberta, one in British Columbia  who study the energy industry. Both experts described its forecasts for global energy markets as more or less in line with what a growing number of analysts believe. "It's absolutely not pie in the sky," said Michal Moore from the University of Calgary's School of Public Policy. "These folks are being realistic  they may not be popular, but they're being realistic." Marty Reed, CEO of Evok Innovations  a Vancouver-based cleantech fund created through a $100-million partnership with Cenovus and Suncor  had a similar take after reading the draft report. "You could nit-pick a couple of items," he said. "But at a high level, I would say the vast, vast majority of what they wrote is not even controversial, it's very well accepted."



Canada's energy superpower status threatened as world shifts off fossil fuel, federal think-tank warns

[Robson Fletcher/CBC]





(Image: Canadian national exhibition and windmill, J Rawls, CC-BY)





(via Naked Capitalism)
The Anti-Corruption Bureau on Monday arrested two government officials for allegedly taking bribes to award tenders under the National Health Mission (NHM).

The duo  Indian Administrative Service official Niraj K Pawan and Rajasthan Administrative Service bureaucrat Anil Kumar Agarwal  was questioned for 12 days before the anti-graft watchdog took them into custody.

The bureau registered a case against several NHM officials, including former additional mission director Pawan and a middleman, under the Prevention of Corruption Act and the Indian Penal Code on May 17. It arrested three of them  chief accountant Deepa Gupta, storekeeper Joji Varghese and middleman Ajit Kumar Soni  the following day.

The case was registered on the basis of a complaint filed on October 28 last year by a private firm, which alleged that Soni had demanded a bribe for awarding a tender on Pawans behalf.

ACB officers, who have been questioning Pawan since May 18, finally arrested him around 4.30 pm on Monday. They recovered $4,100, around 85 liquor bottles and Rs 2.5 lakh in cash from a raid at his residence. Agarwal, NHM additional director, was also arrested the same day.

The 32-page FIR against the government officials includes transcripts of conversations between Soni, Pawan, Gupta, Varghese and others.

The private firm alleged in its complaint that that ever since Pawan was appointed to the mission, Soni became a single-window authority for getting the tenders passed and the demand for bribes increased. The middleman would allegedly blacklist candidates if they did not come through him. The complainant claimed that the duo sought 5% of the tender amount before allocating the work order, and 12% before releasing the payment.

While Pawan and Agarwal will be produced before a court on Tuesday, the other three accused are in the bureaus custody.

The state government has removed Pawan from the agriculture department, where he was posted as the commissioner and special secretary.
A major fire broke out at the Adharwadi dumping ground in Kalyan on Tuesday evening. It took seven hours to control the fire on the 4-acre dumping ground near Durgadi bridge but the fire is yet to be doused completely.

Read: BMC to use sewage water for Deonar dump project

More than 14 fire engines and 12 water tankers were pressed into service. Fire tenders were also called from the municipal corporations from Bhiwandi, Ambernath and Ulhasnagar.

The fire broke out around 3.30pm. The fire could not be doused immediately because of the strong wind, said Sudhakar Kulkarni, fire officer of Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC).

Read: Deonar fire: Municipal inaction has set Mumbai dumpyards ablaze

This is the first time that a major fire has broken out at Adharwadi dumping ground. Thick smoke covered the area, affecting visibility. The cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained.

We have not seen such a huge fire at the dump yard, said a civic employee.

Five months ago, a major fire broke out at Deonar dumping ground, taking days to be doused.

Kalyan residents have been demanding the KDMC to shift the dump yard away from the city.

Suddenly, we saw the entire area filled with smoke. This is the first time we have seen such a major fire in the dumping ground. We are facing difficulty in breathing, said Santosh Mane, 33, who lives near the dumping ground.

The areas have been affected are Maharashtra Nagar, Subhash Nagar, Adharwadi, Sathe Nagar and Wadekar. The residential area is around 50 metres from the dumping ground. The The Adharwadi dumping ground is surrounded by residential areas, a hospital and a college which is hardly 200 metres away.

More than 2,000 residents have been shifted to safer places as smoke and smog filled the area.

Namdev Choudhary, officer from Adharwadi fire station, said: We are using well water to douse the fire. We have used than lakhs of litres of water to douse the fire but it is still burning.

Dilip Gaund, chief fire officer from Kalyan division, said it might take the entire night for the fire to be completely doused. The fire might have been caused due to excessive heat for the past few days.

The police are making arrangements at a school to shift the residents.

Additional commissioner of police (zone 3) Vijay Kumar Phulkar said: We have been going round the areas to shift residents till the fire is doused. We have make arrangements for those evacuated at Sharda Vidhya Mandir at Lal Chowki. Smoke has engulfed 2 kilometres around the dump yard.

ABOUT THE DUMP YARD

The 4-acre Adharwadi dumping ground in Kalyan (West) handles 700 metric tonnes of solid waste a day.

Without any scientific procedure to dispose waste, pollution has worsened in the nearby areas.

The KDMC has been using the Adharwadi dumping ground since 1984.

The KDMC has plans to scientifically shut down the dumping ground and shift it away from the city.
MUMBAI: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday decided to field Dr Vikas Mahatme and Vinay Sahastrabuddhe as its candidates for Rajya Sabha elections from Maharashtra to be held on June 11.

The move was surprising as Shyam Jaju and Suresh Prabhu were in the fray so far. Railway minister Prabhu was given the candidature, but from Andhra Pradesh, and Mahatme was accommodated in his place. The party has already announced Union minister Piyush Goyal as its candidate for the polls.

The BJP also declared three more candidates  former MNS leader Pravin Darekar, who joined BJP last year, Sadabhau Khot of ally Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana and Vinayak Mete of another ally Shiv Sangram for the biennial elections of 10 legislative council seats to be held on June 10. Here again, Darekars name came as a surprise as the names of party spokesperson Madhav Bhandari and corporator Manoj Kotak were in the fray along with Surjitsingh Thakur and former legislators Bal Mane and Pramod Jathar. By far, it has announced four candidates, including Surjitsingh Thakur. The party is yet to announce one more candidate for the council polls.

With strong candidates for the five seats, the party has decided to accommodate smaller allies for three seats  thus Khot and Mete were given the candidature. However, RPI(A) chief Ramdas Athawale is still adamant for a berth in the Union government and thus the BJP is yet to declare its last candidate for the council elections.

Mahatme, an eye surgeon, is the Dhangar face of the BJP in the Rajya Sabha polls, who is also close to both union minister Nitin Gadkari and chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, said a senior BJP functionary. The BJP led government is under tremendous pressure from the Dhangar (shepherd) community for reservation in the state and hence Mahatmes candidature is expected pacify the community for the time being, the BJP sources said.

Darekar, once a close confidant of MNS chief Raj Thackeray, was also chosen for his proximity to the chief minister.

He is supposed to help the party in the preparations for the coming Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections to be held next year, informed another senior BJP leader.

The last day for filing nominations for the both Rajya Sabha and legislative council elections is May 31. As all the four political parties  BJP, Shiv Sena, Congress and NCP have declared as many candidates in the fray, the elections are also likely to be unopposed.

Congress has declared P Chidambaram for Rajya Sabha and Narayan Rane for legislative council polls, NCP has declared Prafull Patel (Rajya Sabha), Ramraje Naik Nimbalkar and Dhananjay Munde (legislative council), while Shiv Sena has declared Sanjay Raut (Rajya Sabha), Subhash Desai and Diwakar Raote for legislative council elections.

The requisite votes for winning each RS seat is 48 while for legislative council seats it is 28 votes.
A two-and-a-half-year-old with a rare disease became the youngest liver recipient in the city after his mother donated a part of her liver to save his life.

At the age of five months, Shriraj Jedhe had an abnormally large abdomen, said his 29-year-old mother, Gayatri.

An ultrasound test revealed that Shrirajs liver had fluid accumulated in it. He was referred to Bai Jerbai Wadia Hospital for Children, Parel. Within three weeks, doctors diagnosed him with Budd-Chiari syndrome, which is caused by blood clots that completely or partially block blood flow from the liver.

He was put on blood thinners to dissolve the clot and was on a regular follow-up for nearly two years, said Dr Saista Amin, consultant paediatrician, Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital (KDAH), Andheri.

During treatment, early this year, Shriraj developed liver cirrhosis and the only option left was a liver transplant, said Dr Amin, adding that Shriraj was then referred to KDAH, where the surgery took place.

According to Dr Vinay Kumaran, head of transplant surgery at KDAH, who performed the life-saving transplant, nearly 80% of Shrirajs liver stopped functioning. Both his parents were willing to donate their liver. However, the mother turned out to be a more compatible donor, he said.

It is estimated that around 300 children in the city suffer from this condition, but unfortunately not everyone can afford the transplant, said Dr Kumaran.

A study conducted by Dr Aabha Nagral, a city-based liver specialist, which was recently published in the European Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, has shown radiological interventions for children with Budd-Chiari syndrome can significantly delay the need for a transplant.

A transplant may not be affordable. Radiological interventions have shown a good long-term outcome in improving the livers functioning, she said.
DEHRADUN: The Congress leadership decided on Monday to stick to its plans to nominate Uttarakhand chief minister Harish Rawats loyalist for a vacant Rajya Sabha seat despite widespread resentment over the decision.

The central leadership apparently took the decision after Rawat rushed to Delhi for advice as the nomination of former parliamentarian Pradeep Tamta last week did not go down well with alliance partner Peoples Democratic Front (PDF) and senior cabinet minister Yashpal Arya.

National par ties don t change stand  party will go ahead with the Tamta, a senior Congress leader said on Monday evening after reports that the party may drop the Rawat loyalist to quell dissent.

Tamtas nomination for the Upper House of Parliament, for which election is due on June 11, was a surprising move even for Congress leaders in the state.

PDF leaders were upset because they stood by Rawat in a Supreme Court-monitored trust vote on May 10 that ended nearly two months of Presidents rule in the state.

As the crisis escalated, he even offered to give up his candidature. In a letter to Ambika Soni, the Congress general secretary in-charge of Uttarakhand, he mentioned that the party should nominate someone else to end the crisis.

But some semblance of reconciliation was noticed on Monday as Congress chief whip Indira Hridayesh said the lawmakers will ensure victory for the candidate chosen by party president Sonia Gandhi.

I am not interested in knowing (what Tamta has written). Our job is to ensure victory for the official candidate, she said.

The government also appointed two officials of Aryas choice in his home district, US Nagar.

The crisis deepened after independent legislators who are part of the PDF threw their hats in the ring. Tourism minister Dinesh Dhane, an independent lawmaker who is part of the six-member front, announced his candidature for the Rajya Sabha seat.

He was apparently mollified too. He was reportedly annoyed with an IAS officer heading the government-run GMVN. The official was removed.

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BHOPAL: The two people arrested from Mumbai on charges of allegedly posting offensive and obscene pictures of Hindu deity Kali and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Facebook may have to face charges under the National Security Act (NSA) after the Bhopal district administrations recommendation.

The superintendent of police, Arvind Saxena, has given a green signal to impose NSA on the two accused as their crime was offensive enough to incite communal violence. The legal proceedings are under way for the imposition of NSA on them, said Mukhtar Qureshi, town inspector, Gautam Nagar investigating the case.

Thirty one-year-old Abdul Qayyum Qureshi and 32-yearold Ali Hassan Sheikh were arrested by the police from Wadala in Mumbai, after a Gautam Nagar-resident lodged a complaint against the two at Bhopals Jahangirabad Police Station on May 10 for allegedly posting offensive pictures of Hindu deities and Prime Minister Modi.

The duo was arrested from Mumbai on May 19 by a special investigation team. They were presented before the court on May 20 and are since in jail.

However, not everyone is satisfied with the way the police and judicial officials have handled the incident. Civil society member Sachin Jain said the incident and the resulting crackdown on Abdul and Ali were symbolic of the intolerance prevailing in the country.
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday put on hold the Armed Forces Tribunal order demoting a Lt General to Brigadiers rank and imposing Rs 50 lakh on the government for promoting the officer in violation of the rules.

A vacation bench of Justice PC Ghose and Justice Amitava Roy gave the order on Centre and Chief of Army Staffs appeal, contending the Lucknow bench of AFT had delivered a perverse order. Every part of the judgement should be set aside, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi told the bench. He said the verdict will have a demoralising effect on the army and tribunals should not be allowed to pass such orders.

The tribunal had also ordered Lt General NK Mehta to pay Rs 5 lakh after holding that he had colluded with his seniors to obtain the promotion from Brigadier to Major General in 2012. The AFTs order came on a petition filed by Mehtas batch mate Major General RS Rathore who was found unfit for the Lt Generals post last year when Mehta was promoted.

Rohatgi said since Rathore failed to get elevated, he went to the tribunal in 2015 to revive an old case, which Mehta filed when the authorities did not promote him to Major General from Brigadier. Mehta won the case in 2012. The law officer alleged Rathore sought a re-hearing of the matter on the ground he was not party to the proceedings.

Rohatgi argued Rathore had no locus standi in the case. Even if he was aggrieved, the AG said, Rathore should have moved the AFT in 2012 and not waited for three years to challenge Mehtas elevation as Major General. Both serve as Major Generals for three years and Rathore never complained of any malpractice, Rohatgi told the bench.

Rathores counsel Aishwarya Bhatti opposed the stay. She said Mehtas record as a Brigadier was counted when he was promoted last year to the post of Lt General. She said her client had challenged Mehtas elevation as the top-ranked officer in the army, but a final decision was pending in the same.

Both Rathore and Mehta belong to the Army Ordnance Corps of the 1979 batch.
JAIPUR: Minister of external affairs Sushma Swaraj on Monday came to the aid of a Jaipur-based Pakistani girl seeking to write the medical entrance exam in India.

Mashal Maheshwari, 19, had sought the Centres help to allow her to appear in the All-India Pre-Medical Test (AIPMT). Swaraj assured her admission in a medical college in Karnataka. After her case was reported by the media, Swaraj tweeted on Monday, Mashal, dont be (sic) disappointed my child, I will personally take up your case for admission in a medical college.

Mashal said, We were not aware about the ministers tweet. We got to know through the media and then we spoke to her. She asked about my education, family details and for my documents.

Mashal, who scored 91% in the CBSE Class 12 exams, wanted to appear for AIPMT but was ineligible as she did not fall in either of the categories under which aspirants can apply  Indian citizen and NRI. After her CBSE results, the family pursued Mashals case with the Rajasthan and the central government.

Her family wrote to CM Vasundhara Raje and to the Union ministries but to no avail. Hindu Singh Sodha of the Seemant Lok Sangathan, an NGO that works with Pakistani Hindu migrants, said: Mashals is not an isolated case. There are many Pakistani Hindus who face a similar problem as they dont have documents. The government should have a legal framework so it will help others too.

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A veterinary doctor who was allegedly attacked with acid by a woman has confessed to having been in a relationship with her, police said on Monday.

Gorakh Nath Yadav , station house officer, Indira Puram, said that Amit Verma, a veterinary doctor, was practising in Shastri Nagar, Meerut and was living as a tenant in a house in Ghaziabad.

A few months back, he shifted his clinic to Vaishali, Ghaziabad. The woman allegedly attacked Dr Verma with four litres of acid on May 16 while he was taking a bath. She was allegedly pursuing Verma for the last 19 days, despite Verma rejecting her advances.

The doctor had sustained 40% burn injuries and is still undergoing treatment at a private hospital.

An FIR has been lodged on Amits complaint under section 326 (voluntarily causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapons or means) IPC.

Police teams have conducted several raids at the womans residence in Meerut and she will be nabbed soon, the officer added.
It was just an unfortunate incident, nothing communal about it, the culture minister Mahesh Sharma said airily at that time. Well, that must have been a great comfort to the grieving family of Mohammed Ikhlaq who was lynched by a mob in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, in December 2015. His crime which led up to the fateful events in which he lost his life after his head was bashed in with a sewing machine was that he had stored, in his own fridge, some meat which our self-appointed cultural commissars discerned to be beef. The reports then said it was mutton, but now comes what we presume is the final word, it was beef all along.

Read: Dadri lynching: Meat found in Ikhlaqs fridge was beef, says lab

Instead of focusing on apprehending the criminals who not only killed Aklaq but also grievously injured his son Danish, the whole debate shifted to whether the meat in question was actually beef. Could the poor man have actually been done in even though he was storing meat other than beef, asked breathless television channels. For heavens sake, the man has every right to store whatever meat he wants in his own fridge in his own house for his own consumption without some self-righteous upholder of bovine rights barging in and attacking him. But, the incident blew up in the face of the right-wing loonies who have taken it upon themselves to stamp out beef from India. There was widespread anger and revulsion across India and the incident made none too flattering headlines across the world.

Read: Dadri lynching has raised troubling questions on Indias secularity

Then we were told that the poor man lost his life for no reason at all, the meat in question was mutton. Now, the meat in question is apparently beef. The clever bit of interchangeability could well work in justifying the heinous crime. But the real question is why it was necessary in the first place to devote so much attention to the meat. Has anyone any right to dictate what you can store in your fridge? If it was the meat of an endangered species, maybe the wildlife authorities could confiscate it. The issue at hand is that under the guise of some misplaced religious zeal and cow protection, vigilante groups are taking the law into their own hands. The fact that these people can enter homes to examine the contents of ones fridge is only a step away from them entering our personal lives and dictating our preferences not just in food but in our very lifestyles.

Read: Bisada tense as demand grows for release of 18 held for Dadri lynching

The irrepressible Mahesh Sharma who really had no business speaking on this in the first place apart from the fact that he considers himself a guardian of our culture would have better served the nation by saying that this sort of evil has nothing to do with our culture, it is just barbarism disguised as a noble crusade to protect the cow. But we can now expect a ding dong battle and a bit of gloating I told you so over the revelation that the meat was actually beef ergo Ikhlaq was a bit of a villain. What next? An attack on milk consumption, after all it is a byproduct of the holy cow.

Read: Bisada lynching: Victims family shifted to Delhi Air Force station

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Though he "harmed American interests," says Eric Holder, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden's leaks "were also a public service."

Holder was speaking with David Axelrod, a CNN political commentator and former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, on the podcast "The Axe Files."

"We can certainly argue about the way in which Snowden did what he did, but I think that he actually performed a public service by raising the debate that we engaged in and by the changes that we made," Holder said. "Now I would say that doing what he did  and the way he did it  was inappropriate and illegal."

Holder said Snowden, who has been living in exile in Russia, should return to the U.S. and face consequences for his actions. But he also said a judge, when determining an appropriate sentence for Snowden, "could take into account the usefulness of having had that national debate."
Seven major robberies happened in the month of May, have revealed how secure this district is and how efficient the police is, as they have managed to solve only one case; a case of Rs 22 lakh robbery, which later turned out to be a mere story concocted by the complainant Rajinder Bansal, a rice broker.

On the first day of the month, some unidentified robbers barged into a house when a 80-year-old woman was alone in the house. She was stabbed multiple times which resulted in her death and later the robbers fled away with Rs 50,000 cash and 200 grams of gold. The police is still clueless about the robbers.

On the same day, police came across another robbery case, where in a rice broker claimed that he was robbed of Rs 22 lakhs inside his office by two armed men on the pretext that his son was in their custody and they would kill him, when he was sitting in his office at Kaleke road in Baghapurana in the afternoon. Later it turned out the trader had cooked up the story. This remains the only solved robbery case till now.

Then 16 days later, on May 17, some unidentified persons robbed an employee working at a petrol pump of Rs 2.93 lakhs outside the Punjab and Sindh Bank in Nihal Singh Wala sub-division of the district. The police are yet to find any constructive lead in the case.

Then on very next day, a miscreant threw chilli powder in womans eyes and fled away with her Tata Indica Vista car. The woman was sitting in the car, waiting for her husband outside a sweet shop in Moga in the afternoon.

Then came the biggest and most shocking one; a heist of Rs 60 lakh bank robbery, again in broad daylight. Six armed men attacked a private taxi in which staff of Oriental Bank of Commerce (OBC) was ferrying the money from the bank to nearby town Bagha Purana. The armed robbers killed the security guard and fled away with the money.

Connected to the above mentioned crime, another robbery took place, this time with police were the victim. When a team of cops from crime investigation agency (CIA) went to raid a house at Butter Kalan village the next day, the robbers overpowered them and fled away in cops car after opening fire. The police tried to conceal the incident by not mentioning the car snatching incident in the first information report (FIR).

On May 26, two unidentified bike-borne youths ran away after snatching a bag carrying Rs 1.10 lakh when a man was coming on his scooter from Baghapurana side to Moga.

The common connection in all these cases has been the timing. All the robberies took place in broad daylight, especially in the afternoon. This shows that the robbers had no fear which could stem from the fact that that they either had confidence on their abilities or on the inefficiency of the police.

Commenting on a deteriorating law and order situation in Moga, Amarjit Singh, superintendent of police (SP) investigation said that to control the crime, the police have deputed 24 hours police barricades at all entry points and other vulnerable points of the district.

Singh said that so far the police have failed to make any new development in Rs 60 lakhs robbery but they are screening the old criminals to get any clues in all the crimes happened in the district.

The police are raiding their houses and will interrogate them, he added.

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Punjab in-charge of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Sanjay Singh on Tuesday said the party would announce its first list of candidates for the assembly elections by June-end. The party had earlier said the first list would be out by March and later said the list will be released by April-end.

When asked about the status of partys suspended MPs Dr Dharamvira Gandhi and Harinder Singh Khalsa, the AAP leader said the two were still primary members of the party and were bound by the party discipline. When pointed out that the recently launched Swaraj Party had claimed the support of the two, Sanjay said the two MPs couldnt indulge in anti-party work ethically or legally as long as they were members of the AAP.

SENIOR JOURNALIST MAJOR SINGH JOINS PARTY

Senior journalist Major Singh (centre) being welcomed into the party by AAP leaders. (HT Photo)

Addressing a press conference along with partys state convener Sucha Singh Chhotepur and national organisation building head Durgesh Pathak, Sanjay announced that senior journalist Major Singh had joined the AAP. Major Singh has worked with many vernacular newspapers and was working with Daily Ajit before joining the party.

Sanjay said journalists were the important part of any society and play a vital role in awakening the masses about the issues concerning society. He said in the past as well, many senior journalists had joined the party.

Major Singh said as a journalist, he had worked for the betterment of society through his writings and it was time to serve society in a different capacity.

61-year-old Major Singh is not new to politics. Belonging to a farming family of Daryapur village in Mansa, Major Singh was the district head of the Punjab Students Union in the early 70s. Later, he joined the CPI (Marxist-Leninist), an ultra-left group of the Communist Party. During his association with the party, he was jailed several times.

He also headed the partys magazines. The Communist Party focused a lot on reading and writing and its members invariably developed an intellectual character, he said.

Later, he started working as a full-time journalist with Punjabi Tribune in 1989 and later joined Ajit in Jalandhar the next year. He covered Punjab terrorism and also the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the Kargil war.

Some years ago, he left Ajit and shifted to UK where he attempted to start a paper. However, he returned to Punjab and joined the SAD-supported Fastway channel as its news head in Ludhiana. He rejoined Ajit and was the president of the Jalandhar Press Club.
With an instinct to become a great leader, the young Canadian politician, Gugni Gill Panaich, born and brought up in Africa headed towards her roots back in Punjab as she feels, I always feel connected to Punjab and even got married in the city.

Acting as a strong activist for womens issues in the South Asian community, her philanthropist attitude has never kept her away from her passion. Gugni, who conducted women achievers awards in Canada, is back to her hometown to conduct its Indian chapter for the city women.

I am planning to honour the women achievers in the city, for which award ceremony will be held in November. My utmost desire and reason of coming to the city was to gather momentum and support in financial and other ways for this noble initiative.

Deeply affected by the farmers committing suicide, she said, My inner conscious guided me to do something beneficial for farmers families here in Punjab, said Gugni. The show is not a profitable move, as the aim is to collect funds to support the families of such farmers.

Due to her inclination towards social causes and social justice, she chose her life partner who is a police officer and who is serving in the Canadian Forces. After her marriage, she decided to take a break from her profession and to concentrate on her family life. However, her passion to do something extraordinary has always been enticing her to search for the best avenues in life.

Being an active charity donor, she was selected as the North American brand ambassador for the Imran Khan Cancer Foundation. Recently, she has been honoured with the prestigious Mrs India United Nations (delegate) and Mrs United Nations International (1st runner up 2012/2013) awards. She was recently nominated as a Canadian Ambassador for ROKO Cancer Foundation, and she has outshined her abilities through her charity involvements, (for various hospitals around the world and cancer foundations), to which she added in high spirits, Cancer is a rising problem these days, and I would like to extend my utmost support to the city by guiding and counseling the young ones against this deadly disease.
Tempers ran high during the municipal corporation House meeting on Monday as nominated councillor and Panjab University senate member Aruna Goel threatened to slap former UT mayor Subhash Chawla, who retaliated by warning to break her hands.

Days drama started when Congress councillors tore the copies of minutes when Sood did not allow them to speak over the amendments in the minutes of the last months House meet.

Even Chawla tried to snatch the copy of the agenda from the mayor. When nominated councillor and former professor, department of Sanskrit, PU, Aruna Goel tried to intervene, Chawla snubbed her by asking who are you?.

Later, nominated councillor MP Kohli demanded an apology from the Congress councillor over the remark, but Chawla said, We are elected councillors. I have an experience of 40 years in politics and we are not like nominated councillors. On this, Aruna went to Chawla and threatened him to slap if he repeats this. Chawla retaliated and said, How dare you threaten me to slap? I will break your hands.

Councillors intervened and pulled each other back.

The congress councillors then demanded Soods resignation over BJP councillor Satish Kainth, who is involved in a property grab case. Sood had said if Kainth is held guilty, he will give his resignation. The court has even cancelled his bail application. The police are conducting raids to arrest him, but he has not been arrested to date as he is getting the patronage of BJP leaders, they added.

Not paying heed to their protest, Sood asked the secretary to read out the agenda, but Chawla lost cool and tried to snatch the agenda copy from the mayors table. Threatening Chawla, the mayor said he will get a police case registered against him. On this, the Congress councillors banged the table of the mayor.

HIGH OFFICE, LOW ACTS

This is not the first time that the incidents of manhandling, name-calling or slapping have been witnessed in the well of the House.

August 2015

Pardeep Chhabra (HT Photo)

Former mayors Pardeep Chhabra, (in picture) Subhash Chawla and BJP councillor Davesh Moudgil manhandled with each other over showing banners in the House in protest against imposition of house tax.

May 24, 2015

Saurabh Joshi (HT Photo)

BJP councillor Saurabh Joshi (in picture) brought a beer can in the MC house meeting. The councillor wanted to bring home his point against serving of liquor at community centres during functions.

June 25, 2014

Satish Kainth (HT Photo)

Former Congress councillors (now in BJP) Satish Kainth (in picture) and Darshan Garg and their supporters locked MC chief engineer Mukesh Anand and other officials in his room for nearly 30 minutes and raised slogans against him for not carrying out development work in their respective areas. Leaving no chance, the BJP councillors made senior deputy mayor Heera Negi sit on the mayors chair to begin the House proceedings.

August 8, 2013

Jannat Jahan (HT Photo)

BSP councillor Jannat Jahan (in picture) used derogatory words while underlining her disgust with the civic bodys functioning inviting criticism from all quarters. November 29, 2013 Jannat Jahan also abused former deputy mayor Satish Kainth and former MP Pawan Kumar Bansal for nearly 30 minutes in the house meeting. Other representatives were not far behind as they too used derogatory language, including bakwaas (nonsense), aukat (social standing), chor (thief) and dharam ke thekedar (guardian of faith) used and abused with ease by the councillors at their rivals.

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A division bench of the Punjab and Haryana high court on Monday allowed Panjab University to admit students in its six MDS (master of dental surgery) courses at Dr Harvansh Singh Judge Institute of Dental Sciences and Hospital.

The order came from the high court division bench of justice SS Saron and justice HS Sidhu on the petition of the PU, its dental college and students. The admissions will take place on Tuesday, on the last date specified by the Supreme Court.

The Central government on March 31 had denied renewal of the permission to allow admissions for the second batch of the MDS courses in five specialties, along with its plan to start a new course.

The high court not only allowed admissions in five courses already being run by the university, but also gave nod to admit students in its new course.

A total of 17 students will be admitted, 14 in already-run courses and three in oral pathology and microbiology course being started this year. The five other courses include specialties conservative dentistry and endodontics, oral and maxillofacial surgery, orthodontics and dentofacial orthopedics, periodontics or periodontology, prosthodontics and crown and bridge.

The single judge bench last week had dismissed the PUs petition on the grounds that it was the Central governments prerogative to accept or reject the proposal on starting of courses.

Senior advocate Anmol Rattan Sidhu, who appeared on behalf of the PU, said the university had been allowed to start admissions on the basis of duplicate documents, as the court was told the students might have submitted their original documents in other colleges. The permission has been given for all six courses, he added.

Meanwhile, the detailed order is awaited.

The PU had argued that it had a principal since December 2014, and on the basis of documents submitted for the permission to start new courses in academic session in 2015-16, the PU was allowed to run these courses. But this year on hyper technical grounds, the DCI recommended disaffiliation of courses, stating that there was no regular principal at the college, which became the basis for the ministry of health to disaffiliate these courses.

On the other hand, the secondyear students of the college had sought extension of time for the admission in MDS courses, stating that exceptional circumstances warranted for such an order. Also they had argued that the PU, being a prestigious government institution  on a ground of not having a regular principal  disaffiliation should not have been effected by the Centre.
Supporters of Sikh preacher Ranjit Singh Dhadrianwale protested on Monday to ask for the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to look into the May 17 murderous attack on him that killed one of his aides.

They handed over memorandums addressed to the President to the deputy commissioners at various places in Punjab. In Rupnagar, they gathered at Maharaja Ranjit Singh Bagh and marched up to the district administrative complex. In Sangrur, 250 of them marched through the city to this office during heavy rain. Dhadrianwale follower Gurnaib Singh said there was no getting justice from the state government.

In Ludhiana, the protesters were out on the Ferozepur road, marching from the Verka Milk point to the mini secretariat, where a heavy police force was deployed.

Protest leader Jagmitha Singh Dhakki Sahib said Dhadrianwale supporters were being threatened on the social media even after the attack, and instead of arresting the accused, police are favouring them.

He claimed that everyone knew who was behind the attack, but the government doesnt have the guts to arrest the culprits.
A day after former minister Sarwan Singh Phillaurs son and Youth Akali Dal (YAD) leader Damanvir Singh accused state transport minister Ajit Singh Kohar of interfering in Kartarpur constituency of his father, the rift in the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) unit here widened when Phillaur endorsed the views.

When on Sunday YAD Doaba zone senior vice-president Damanvir Singh said he was going to start a signature campaign against Kohar in Jalandhar district, no one took him seriously, until former minister Phillaur came out next day and told HT: Kohar as SAD district president (rural) in Jalandhar was making arbitrary appointments in my assembly constituency without taking me into confidence. We will complain to party president Sukhbir Singh Badal.

Damanvir Singh has a controversial past. When his name cropped up in the Bhola drug racket investigation, his father had to quit the cabinet in May 2014.

A few days ago, Damanvir  whom Enforcement Directorate (ED) has interrogated in the money-laundering case related to the synthetic drug racket and not given him clean chit yet  demanded resignation of chief parliamentary secretary (CPS) and Phillaur Akali legislator Avinash Chander, saying his repeated summoning by the ED in the same case was embarrassing the party.

Phillaurs endorsing his sons views has surprised many senior leaders of the party who were suggesting disciplinary action against Damanvir Singh. I wont comment on Damans statement; you may ask him why he said so; but he has a point, said Phillaur.

Meanwhile, many party workers from Kartarpur led by senior Akali leaders Gurdial Singh Chitti, Ranjit Kahlon, and Rajinder Singh Nagra demanded disciplinary action against Phillaurs son. At a press conference, where they had gathered more than 50 members of panchayats, block samiti, and zila parishad, they accused Damanvir Singh of patronising land mafia in Kartarpur.

For many months now, Phillaurs son has been running all his fathers business. He has ignored the grass-roots workers to promote those with land-mafia links, said SADs Lambra circle president Chitti.

Kahlon, an SGPC (Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee) member from Kartarpur, said before condemning Kohar, Phillaurs son should measure his own political stature.

Its funny to see a small member of the YAD accuse old guard. We doubt if he can do this without his fathers backing; so the party should ask both to explain, said Kahlon.

Doaba YAD president Sarabjot Sabi confirmed that a few senior leaders of the party had filed complaints against Damanvir Singh. I am in touch with the party high command to receive advice on action, said Sabi. NO DECISION YET ON NRI ADMISSIONS The latest instruction did not mention anything about NRI (non-resident Indian) quota admissions.

Medical education secretary Hussan Lal said that fresh directions would be issued in day or so as legal opinion on the recent ordinance of the central government was awaited.

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The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) has decided to step in to broker peace between Damdami Taksal head Harnam Singh Dhumma and Sikh preacher Ranjit Singh Dhadrianwale following appeals by various Panthic groups, including the ruling Shiromani Akai Dal (SAD).

We have decided to mediate to resolve the differences between the two, SGPC chief Avtar Singh Makkar said after presiding over a meeting of the executive of the religious body.

Briefing the media, Makkar said he had authorised the executive to form a committee for resolving the differences between the Taksal head and Dhadrianwale. The peace committee will be formed in day or two and will establish contact with the two sides, he added.

When asked how long it will take to broker peace between the two, Makkar said: We will find a solution soon.

Meanwhile, the SGPC executive issued an appeal to Dhumma and Dhadrianwale to maintain peace and harmony.

Also read I HT Analysis: New fault lines widen Panthic rift

Sikh preacher Ranjit Singh Dhadrianwale at the bhog of his associate Bhupinder Singh at Khasi Kalan village in Ludhiana. (HT File Photo)

Damdami Taksal chief Harnam Singh Dhumma interacting with media persona at Damdami Taksal. (HT File Photo)

Dhadrianwale had earlier rejected such offer made by Akal Takht on the grounds that its jathedar, Giani Gurbachan Singh had no moral right to remain on the post due to his role in the Dera Sacha Sauda case.

The preacher had demanded a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) inquiry into the May 17 attack on him near Ludhiana in which his close associate was killed. He had accused Dhumma of engineering the attack.

When contacted, Dhumma refused to comment on the SGPC peace initiative. No one has established contact with me as yet.

Dhadrianwale could not be contacted despite repeated attempts.

APPEALS FOR PEACE DURING BLUESTAR ANNIVERSARY

Makkar issued an appeal to all Panthic groups to maintain peace and communal harmony on June 6, the Operation Bluetsar anniversary. The main function will be held at Akal Takht where only the jathedar will issue the customary sandesh (message) to the Sikh community, Makkar said.

Makkar said he had asked the SGPC officials to ensure that no untoward incident takes place on June 6. He said the state government is also keeping a tab on the situation.

Also read I Central forces take guard in Amritsar ahead of Operation Bluestar anniv
Though the state government recently lauded itself for installing the worlds largest single rooftop solar power plant facility in Beas, the concept of the renewable energy source has failed to attract power consumers in Jalandhar city.

According to the information gathered by the Punjab Energy Development Agency (PEDA), since last year, when the concept was operationalised in the region, only three industrial units of the city have installed solar power plant at their establishments.

Supinder Singh, district manager, PEDA, said that the prime reason why industrialists are not forthcoming for installing solar cell set-up as the government has not made any provision for giving any subsidy to industrialists. However, the government gives 30% subsidy in the installation cost to residential establishments. Supinder said though the local industrialists here have not welcomed the concept of renewable energy source, the system has turned out to be a success in Ludhiana owing to the large number of industrial units there.

The industrialists there (Ludhiana) look to the long-term profit since after a few years the solar power cell gives you the pay back assurance of one-time investment, The current rate of installing solar power cell is Rs 80 per watt.

Meanwhile, the PEDA received as many as 217 applications for the household set-up in one year; but the set-up has been installed in only 18 houses.

Though we receive applications, but only a few of the applicants turn up for installing the system, officials said.

A PEDA official said after receiving the application, the PEDA office verifies the compatibility of the application with the prescribed norms of the government.

Officials said that any consumer, whether residential or commercial, can only apply for the 80% amount of power that is utilised. That means if a consumers daily power consumption is 10 kilowatt, he can only apply for 8-kilowatt capacity solar power plant, otherwise his application will get rejected.

After PEDA, Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) officials conduct checking of the solar power meters after which the PEDA makes it sure that the consumer is following all the guidelines given under the Net Metering System.

After getting the certification, the consumers purchase the solar power cell.
The Punjab government has announced summer vacation in all government, private, government-aided and affiliated schools from June 1 to June 30. Schools would be reopened on July 1, a spokesperson said in a press communique released here on Tuesday.

Also read I Its hot! Will get hotter, says Met as Punjab sizzles at over 40 degrees

During the vacation, non- teaching staff of the schools would remain on duty. Instructions have also been issued for all school heads to remain in contact over phone in view of the ongoing process of promotions, posting of new recruited teachers and transfers in the teaching cadre.
Kameron Hurley is first and foremost a talented novelist (see, for example, her critically acclaimed God's War books), but her first Hugo was awarded for an essay, " We Have Always Fought ," which is just one of many significant, eloquent, and insightful nonfiction pieces collected in The Geek Feminist Revolution , just published in paperback.

Like her fiction, Hurley's essays draw on her own history, growing up in a sheltered, working class white suburb; a disastrous relationship with an emotionally abusive boyfriend; a failed bid to move out at 18 and then a more successful migration to Alaska at 19; a near-death experience when her lack of medical insurance left her late-onset Type 1 diabetes untreated; her medical debt; her queer identity; her graduate research on woman revolutionaries in South Africa; her grandmother's experiences in Nazi-occupied France; and her day job as a successful marketing writer and her struggles with depression and her political awakening through science fiction.

An occupational hazard of this sort of collection  collecting the author's columns and essays for diverse publications  is a certain amount of repetition. The essays are written to stand on their own, and so they recapitulate bits of the same background. It's unavoidable (and universal  my own essay collections suffer from this, too), but it's not too intrusive, and is really the only complaint I have about this collection.

Because otherwise, it's excellent. Though the collection is divided into thematic sections (Level Up; Geek; Let's Get Personal; and Revolution), the overarching themes are of understanding the role of culture in exploring and addressing social injustice. Sometimes, Hurley explains the notion of "privilege" with crisp, critical language that acknowledges the shortcomings of using "privilege" as a shorthand without minimizing its importance. Other times, she's writing hot takes on some of pop culture's ugliest moments  Gamergate, Sad Puppies, etc  and manages the nearly impossible: a hot take that stands up in hindsight, capturing truths that endure past the scandal's brief flash.

Whether offering advice to up and coming writers; or reflecting on how to remain professional in the face of abusive harassment campaigns; or explaining how her own thinking was changed by science fiction; or talking about the foundational injustice of economic inequality in a nation without universal healthcare, Hurley is cogent and measured, wielding her anger like a scalpel rather than a cudgel, deploying a rage that is as tactically sound as it is genuine.





The Geek Feminist Revolution [Kameron Hurley/Tor]
Raam Reddys National Award-winning film Thithi has been winning hearts by the dozen. A while back director Anurag Kashyap praised the film. Now, Bollywood actor Aamir Khan too has lauded Thithi.

The actor has praised the film and says it is a little difficult to slot it into a genre. Hey guys, just saw one of the most amazing films I have seen in a long time! Thithi, Aamir tweeted on Monday. The 51-year-old shared that the film has English subtitles and is releasing in theatres on July 3.

Aamir also lauded the performances by the actors in the film. Absolutely unbelievable performance! And all non-actors in the film. And how funny is it, he wrote, and added: Its a little difficult to slot it into a genre, but its really funny. Dont miss it. Love. a.

Read: Dont miss a gem like Thithi, says Anurag Kashyap on Kannada film

Read: A National Award is a dream come true, says Thithi director

Produced by Pratap Reddy and Sunmin Park, Thithi was screened in over 12 prestigious international and national film festivals and won 13 awards. The film started its journey at the prestigious Work-in-Progress Lab (WIP) at the NFDC Film Bazaar, 2014 where it was declared the Best WIP Fiction Feature.

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. Set in a small village in Karnataka, the three storylines intertwine before converging at Century Gowdas thithi -- the final

funeral ceremony, 11 days after a death.

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Native Central American people were terrified of a witch centuries ago, who they believed lived deep in the earth. They would sacrifice their children and young women to what today is known as Nicaraguas Masaya volcano, one of the most popular tourist destinations.

Today, the crater southwest of the capital Managua is an international tourist magnet, where photo-snapping visitors scramble among sulfurous fumes to get views of its bubbling lava  a rare sight.

The only volcanoes in the world to boast lakes of incandescent magma are Masaya, Hawaiis Kilauea and Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of Congo, explained a Nicaraguan geographer and environmentalist, Jaime Incer.

Read: Worlds best beaches 2016: Plan your next holiday in paradise

Its something extraordinary, unique in the world, said Noheli Pravia, a French visitor filming and photographing the scene which has happened every 20 to 25 years since 1902.

The red-hot liquid performs an agitated ballet for the spectators, with a cloud of white smoke filling the active crater, whose name is Santiago.

Masaya volcano is located in the most populated part of Nicaraguas Pacific coastal stretch and is inside a nature reserve of some 50 square kilometers (20 square miles) where vast fields of petrified lava contrast with the white flowers of frangipanis.

The 400-meter (1,300-foot) high volcano formed 5,000 years ago, and its activity has intensified in the past six months.

This is the first time Ive seen something like this  its really impressive, said Mijaela Cuba, an Austrian nurse, speaking above the waves of lava.

The only volcanoes in the world to boast lakes of incandescent magma are Masaya, Hawaiis Kilauea and Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of Congo, explained a Nicaraguan geographer and environmentalist, Jaime Incer. (Shutterstock)

Toxic gases

She was one of 4,000 tourists whom the Nicaraguan government has given permission to edge up close to the craters edge in the past two weeks. Each visit is limited to just a few minutes because of the risk from the toxic gases.

The only signs of life in the walls of the crater that go down hundreds of meters are green parrots and bats.

Masaya has erupted twice in recorded history: in 1670 and 1772, scaring the Spanish conquistadors.

It is a maw of fire that never ceases to burn, the first governor of the region, Pedrarias Davila, wrote to the king of Spain in 1525.

Read: City of love, victim of hate: Paris tourism hit hard by attacks, protests

One monk, Francisco de Bobadilla, even considered it to be the gate to hell and erected a big cross on the edge of the crater.

The pre-Columbian people who inhabited the area believed that a subterranean witch they called Chalchihuehe, lived inside, and they sacrificed young innocent lives to try to appease her.

According to Incer, the risk now is that, if the lava keeps rising higher inside the volcano each time it appears, a new eruption could occur within the next 150 years on the scale of the one in 1772 -- when it reached as far 30 kilometers away, where today stands Nicaraguas international airport.

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Whether you are visiting a city or you live there, bike sharing programs are a great way to get around and explore the area quickly. If youre new to cycling theyre also a good way to get started without investing in a bike of your own, with most programs providing a cheap form of transport, not to mention a workout!

With the US and Canada kicking off their bike month on Monday, we look at some of the latest bike-sharing schemes launching around the world to help you cycle your way around.

Read: Lazy bones, move out and cycle: Air pollution wont affect you as much

Los Angeles

The US city is one of the most recent to announce a bike-sharing scheme, with 1000 public bikes coming to the city on July 7.

The bikes will be available at 65 locations in the downtown area of the city including Chinatown, Union Station and city hall. Those who hold a metro card and the general public, including those who are just visiting the city, will be able to use the bikes starting August 1.

As one of the most traffic-clogged cities in the world its good news for commuters and those looking to leave their car at home and get around the city in a cheap, easy, and health way.

Vancouver

The Canadian west coast city, already known for being home to an active population, is set to launch its public bike share system in the coming months with 1500 bikes and 150 bike stations set to be in operation by the end of the summer. Named Mobi, the program is currently offering discounted memberships through June.

Read: Gurgaon: Over 200 pedal on dirt track to promote cycling for fitness

Helsinki

Finlands capital Helsinki will be one of the next major cities to get a bike sharing program, with the city putting its bike sharing system in place from May 1 with the aim to launch 50 bike stations and 500 bikes by summer 2016, increasing these numbers to 1,500 bikes and 150 stations by 2018.

Users will be able to borrow a bike throughout central Helsinki bypurchasing a pass for a day, week, or whole season, making it a great option for both visitors and inhabitants.

Belfast

Belfast launched its bike sharing scheme just last year, with the city now boasting 33 docking stations located across the city center.

Cyclists can register as casual users or annual subscribers and the first 30 minutes of each trip is free. And as Belfast Bikes are provided by the bike sharing company nextbike, members can also rent bikes from all nextbike schemes across the world.

Read: Hawaii to New York, beautiful pictures of 10 most beautiful US beaches

Prague

The Czech capital is set to add to its existing bike sharing scheme next year, enabling users to rent thousands of bikes from more than 120 points around the city.

Bike sharing in the city is currently available thanks to Rekola, which plans to install 3000 bikes around the city throughout 2016. However bike sharing company Homeport is currently testing an electric bike sharing system in Pragues district of Karlin, where they have placed 16 charging stations. If they win the right to operate the scheme, Prague could see 500 electric bikes placed around the city in addition to a fleet of traditional bikes, making it easier for cyclists to get up and down Pragues hilly terrain.

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Americans leery of the two leading candidates for the White House, Republican Donald Trump and Democratic Hillary Clinton, have a choice now apparently. But are there any takers?

The Libertarian Party nominated former governors Gary Johnson and William Weld its presidential and vice-presidential candidates in a close contest on Sunday.

This is a national ticket," Weld said after he was declared victorious. We can offer something meaningful and realistic to the country. And an alternative, he might as well have added.

Johnson, a former New Mexico governor, has polled in double digits in simulated three-way match-ups with Trump and Clinton  finishing with 11% in a Monmouth University poll.

Nicholas Sarwark, chair of the Libertarian National Committee, has said polls show there is a likelihood the Libertarian Party will have a sizable influence in the 2016 election.

Both Trump and Clinton suffer record high un-favourability ratings at around 57%, which has left the race, and situation, ripe for wild-card independents or third-party challengers.

Can the Libertarian Party, which calls itself Americas third largest , offer itself as that alternative? And if it does, will it find takers; finally, 45 years since its founding in 1971?

Libertarian Party candidate Vermin Supreme (L), wears his signature boot, with supporters at the National Convention held at the Rosen Center in Orlando, Florida on Sunday. (REUTERS)

I really doubt it, said Chris Bedford, a senior editor at conservative-leaning The Daily Caller. They are an alternative to the major two, but one that is historically inefficient, tribal, and against all of the types of structures necessary to move a party off the ground.

The Libertarian Party has fielded candidates in every presidential election since its founding, who never left much of a mark  they managed to win more than 1% of votes just once.

This is Johnsons second shot at the White House. He ran first in 2012, against President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, and finished a distant third by miles with just 0.99% of votes polled.

The party advocates small government, low taxes, less market regulation (party website calls it hassle) and an isolationist foreign policy that seeks to end foreign interventions.

Before this presidential election cycle, it had found little traction with voters and the media. But news reports and party officials say 2016 has been vastly different.

A Libertarian delegate, far right, poses for a photo with comic charters attending a Megacon Convention next door to the National Libertarian Party Convention on Friday in Orlando, Florida. Many of the Libertarian delegates and Megacon attendees were sharing the same hotel near the Orange County Convention Centre. (AP)

The partys average new membership has surged from 100 for most of 2015 to 148 in January, to 323 in February, 546 in March, 706 in April, and 1,292 in the first three weeks of May.

Party officials have attributed the surge to Senator Rand Paul, a Republican with strong Libertarian views, dropping out of the White House race and Trumps gravity-defying rise.

Many Republicans and conservatives remain worried about Trump, who is now the nominee, having secured the requisite number of delegates, and continue to look for alternatives.

On the Democratic side, Clintons un-favourability ratings continue to be a major reason for Bernie Sanders, her only rival, to stay in the race despite an evaporating path to nomination.
Afghanistan has an extraordinarily close relationship with India but supports the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), Kabuls new envoy to Beijing has said.

In an interview with Chinese state media, Janan Mosazai also said Afghanistan would like to be part of the CPEC and connect it to central Asian countries.

We enjoy the importance and vitality of the Afghanistan-China relationship, which is irreplaceable. At the same time, we have an extraordinarily close relationship with India, a country with which we also share millennia of ties and government-to-government cooperation, he told Global Times newspaper, a tabloid from the Peoples Daily stable.

The $46-billion CPEC is a crucial aspect of President Xi Jinpings Belt and Road Initiative connecting Chinas Xinjiang to Pakistans Gwadar port. India opposes the Beijing-sponsored strategic passageway as it passes through Pakistan occupied Kashmir.

So far, Beijings public response has been to say it is an economic project not aimed at a third country. Recently, Premier Li Keqiang said the CPEC is not only a flagship project between the two sides, but also conducive to development and prosperity of the whole region.

Mosazai seemed to be echoing this position. We support the CPEC. We would like to link up with it and facilitate the linking of Central Asian countries with the corridor. Perhaps it is time for us to enhance cooperation in areas that can benefit our people, Mosazai said, indicating that cooperation in the region would help fight terrorism and extremism.

Mosazai , who had previously served as Afghanistans top envoy in Islamabad, was asked whether the Chabahar port  for which India, Iran and Afghanistan had recently signed an agreement was a challenge to the Gwadar port and Chinas Belt and Road initiative.

He said Kabuls relationships, both with New Delhi and Beijing, are strategic and it will be never be competitive. We have never and will never look at the two strategic relationships that Afghanistan has with the two important neighbours in the context of any competition.

On ties with China, he said: Today, our two countries and governments enjoy extremely close ties and cooperation in all dimensions of our relationship. There is political cooperation between Afghanistan and China and we provide support to each other at the political level bilaterally, regionally and internationally.

Militarily too, Kabul and Beijing are closely tied, he said, recalling Chinas help to fight against the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM).

We have deepened our security cooperation, especially with regard to counterterrorism and the common fight we have against terrorist groups including the ETIM, against which Afghanistan has done more than any other country. We will continue that fight because we view the ETIM as the common foe of Afghanistan and China and the entire region, he said.
Vice-President Hamid Ansari condemned the string of assaults on Africans in India as despicable, saying they are our guests and should be looked after in the wake of violation of law and order.

Interacting with media on board his special aircraft before arriving here in the Moroccan capital, Ansari said, Attack on anyone  whether own person or guest, it is despicable.

Nobody or no government can say anything different  condemning all types of violence, he said.

He said, They (Africans) are our guests. We have to look after them in the wake of violation of law and order.

Describing Indias ties with African countries as good, Ansari said, We greatly value our relationship with African countries and we always stood by them.

Even before 1947 we talked of decolonisation of Africa, he said, adding that the stand of the previous UPA government and the present NDA government has been no different.

Ansari is on a five-day visit to two North African countries  Morocco and Tunisia - as part of efforts to build on diplomatic gains from the India-Africa summit held in New Delhi in October last year.

The Vice-President said India attaches great importance to Africa, and in that context he was undertaking the trip to Morocco and Tunisia.

There was a spate of attacks on Africans in the last few days, including the killing of a Congolese youth in the national capital and assault on a 23-year-old Nigerian student in Hyderabad.
A group of animal rights activists briefly interrupted a Bernie Sanders rally in Northern California when they jumped barricades and tried to rush the podium.

Sanders security stopped the protesters before they could reach the Democratic presidential hopeful, who was addressing supporters at Frank Ogawa Plaza at Oaklands City Hall Monday.

Video of the incident shows two bodyguards immediately surrounded Sanders while nearby security personnel quickly handcuffed the protesters and escorted them out of the rally, even carrying one of them by the legs and arms.

Sanders continued his speech within minutes of the disruption.

Earlier Monday, Sanders joined actor Danny Glover and San Francisco Supervisor Jane Kim for a conversation at the historic Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland.

In March, a man stormed the stage as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump spoke in Vandalia, Ohio before he was met by several agents.

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China will pressure the United States on maritime issues at talks in Beijing next week because of Chinese concern about an increased US military presence in the disputed South China Sea, a major state-run newspaper said on Tuesday.

China has been angered by what it views as provocative US military patrols close to islands China controls in the South China Sea. The United States says the patrols are to protect freedom of navigation.

Beijing will pressure Washington over maritime issues during the upcoming Strategic and Economic Dialogue, as the United States increasing military presence in the South China Sea is among Chinas major concerns, the official China Daily said, citing unidentified officials.

Read: Beijing lands military plane on disputed reef in South China Sea

China claims most of the South China Sea, through which $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have overlapping claims.

This month, Beijing demanded an end to US surveillance near China after two Chinese fighter jets carried out what the Pentagon said was an unsafe intercept of a US military reconnaissance aircraft over the South China Sea.

The South China Sea is also likely to feature at a June 3-5 security forum in Singapore known as the Shangri-La Dialogue.

Chinas Defence Ministry said on Tuesday that Admiral Sun Jianguo, a deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission, would lead Chinas delegation at the Singapore talks.

At the Beijing talks with the United States, which US Secretary of State John Kerry will attend, other issues will also be on the table.

China will bring up the issue of self-ruled Taiwan - claimed by Beijing but which elected a pro-independence party to power in January - as well as the situation on the Korean peninsula, the China Daily added.

The two countries have differing pursuits on major issues at the strategic level. However, the two still have many common interests, the paper said.

Whether it is on the South China Sea issue or on the Korean Peninsula issue, the two countries have a shared security goal to maintain regional stability, it added.

The newspaper did not elaborate.

China is reclusive North Koreas only major ally but has been angered by Pyongyangs nuclear and missile tests and signed up to tough UN sanctions against it in March.
Xian'er is a robotic Buddhist monk that lives at the 1,700 year-old Longquan Temple in Beijing, China. Video below. The temple is host to an animation and maker studio meant to blend technology, science, and spirituality. From CNN:

(Animation studio head and Buddhist master) Xianfan, a graduate of the Chinese Central Art Academy, first conceived Xian'er (Xian stands for virtuous. Er means dumb in Beijing dialect but is a term of endearment) in 2013 as a cartoon character





(Xian'er) can answer up to 100 questions and a CNN team put him through his paces on a recent visit to the temple.



At first, he didn't seem very co-operative. His head kept spinning around and, like a child, he kept saying: "Leave me alone; stop bothering me."



But when he was in the mood, his Buddhist wisdom shined through:



"Where are you from?" we asked.



"How would I answer a question that you human beings have no answer to?" he quipped.



"Xian'er, who are your parents?" we countered.



"Do the designers count?" was his pithy reply.
ISLAMABAD: A Chinese national was among two people injured in a roadside bombing in Karachi on Monday.

Taliban splinter group Jamatul Ahrar claimed responsibility for the attack on the vehicle of a Chinese engineer in Steel Town area , adding to the confusion as to who carried out the bombing. Local police had said earlier that nationalists opposed to the Chinese presence in the area were behind the attack.

In a mail sent to the media, Jamatul Ahrar spokesperson Ihsanullah Ihsan said the group carried out the attack as part of its Alraad Operation in which the economic and military assets of Pakistan would be targeted.

The 25- year- old Chinese man, identified as Finche, and his driver were wounded in the attack. Sindh police chief Allah Dino Khawaja said both were out of danger. Apparently, the attack was aimed at the Chinese national, Khawaja said.

The low-intensity bomb shattered the windows of the van the men were travelling in. Police had said earlier that a pamphlet signed by the Sindhudesh Revolutionary Army, an ethnic Sindhi separatist group, was found at the site.

In November last year, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif assured that the government will provide full security to Chinese workers in Pakistan. China is a close friend to Pakistan besides being a strategic partner and the government will provide full security to the Chinese workers in Pakistan, Sharif had said while chairing a review meeting in Islamabad to monitor progress on projects related to the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

China had earlier called for better security for its workers engaged in the CPEC.
A Bangladeshi court on Tuesday sentenced to death six Islamist militants from banned groups Jamatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh (JMB) and Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) for killing seven people during a bank robbery near the capital last year.

Three other militants from the groups were jailed for various terms, prosecution and defence lawyers said.

Two of the defendants were acquitted as their involvement could not be proven.

Dhakas District and Session Court Judge SM Kuddus Zaman made the decision while 10 of the defendants were in dock. Another man was tried in absentia.

Defence lawyer Faruk Ahmed said they were not happy with the verdict and would appeal in the High Court.

Public Prosecutor Khandker Abdul Mannan said the defendants were calm when the judge pronounced the verdict involving the killing of seven people during a robbery of a commercial bank in April 2015 in Ashulia industrial belt.

The lawyers said Tuesdays verdict involved murder and bank robbery while a second case of possessing weapons and explosives remains pending. The suspects had thrown bombs during and after the robbery as their plan was to collect money to fund their activities.

According to police investigation, the suspects involved in the incident were originally members of the JMB but later joined Ansarullah Bangla Team, a newly formed militant group blamed for recent attacks and killings of secular people in the Muslim-majority nation.

The JMB, which wants Shariah law to replace the countrys secular governing system, was behind the simultaneous explosions of around 500 home-made bombs across the country in 2007. Six of the top leaders of the JMB were later hanged.
A photo of a dead migrant baby pulled from the Mediterranean was published by a charity, hoping to force European leaders to grant migrants safe passage, after hundreds were presumed to have died at sea last week.

The baby in the photograph was not identified but the German non-governmental organisation Sea-Watch said the infant was found in the water last week after a wooden boat carrying 350 migrants capsized off the Libyan coast.

The photo shows the baby, its eyes closed with blue-tinged lips, in the arms of a rescuer. Many of the migrants had already drowned when the rescue boat arrived, the humanitarian group said, without giving a specific number.

Sea-Watch said urgent action was required from European Union leaders to prevent more migrant deaths, as Europe faces its worst migrant crisis since World War II.

If we do not want to see such pictures, we have to stop producing them, Sea-Watch said in a statement released with the photo on Monday.

In the wake of these disastrous events it becomes obvious that the calls by EU politicians to avoid further death at sea, sum up to nothing more than lip service.

Read | Drowned baby picture captures week of tragedy in Mediterranean

The image was released after a deadly week in the Mediterranean, with 700 feared dead and several small children reportedly drowned in a series of boat accidents as thousands continue to attempt the deadly sea crossing to Europe in rickety vessels from the Middle East and Africa.

Many of those who have died at sea trying to reach European shores were children. The image of a drowned three-year-old Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi washed ashore on a Turkish beach last year stunned the world.

These accidents will not stop... a policy forcing people on the boats will always lead to such pictures. We think that solely the establishment of new systems ensuring legal and safe entries to EU can finally lead to an ending of this humanitarian tragedy, added the statement.

Sea-Watch justified the publication of the photograph saying that such images have to be acknowledged by the European society as the tragedies are the consequence of EU foreign policy.

Over one million migrants, many refugees escaping conflict in Syria and other states, arrived in Europe in 2015, with almost 200,000 arriving so far this year by land and sea routes.

The influx has caused concern in some conservative EU societies, boosting right-wing parties and prompting the bloc to negotiate a controversial deal with key transit country Turkey to stem the flow of migrants.
A senior adviser to the European Court of Justice says a European Union business may legitimately prohibit an employee from wearing a Muslim headscarf on the job, provided the ban is based on a general company rule prohibiting visible political or religious symbols in the workplace, and not on prejudice against a particular religion.

Advocate General Juliane Kokott issued the opinion today after a Belgian court asked for clarification on what is prohibited by EU anti-discrimination laws.

In the Belgian case, Samira Achbita was fired as a receptionist by a security company after she insisted she should be allowed to work wearing an Islamic headscarf.

Achbita has lost her discrimination lawsuit in two Belgian courts and is now before the countrys Court of Cassation, which sought the EU courts opinion.

Read: US military school denies Muslims request to wear headscarf
A court on Tuesday convicted a former Miss Turkey of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan through social media postings and sentenced her to a 14-month suspended sentence, amid deepening concerns that the country is swaying toward an increasingly authoritarian form of rule.

The court in Istanbul found 27-year-old model Merve Buyuksarac guilty of insulting a public official but immediately suspended the sentence on condition that she does not reoffend within the next five years.

Her lawyer, Emre Telci, said he would file a formal objection to the verdict and appeal her case at the Strasbourg, France-based European Court of Justice.

Buyuksarac, who was crowned Miss Turkey in 2006, was briefly detained last year for sharing a satirical poem on her Instagram account in 2014. Prosecutors deemed it to be insulting to Erdogan, who was still prime minister at the time. She has denied insulting Erdogan.

Since becoming president in 2014, Erdogan has filed close to 2,000 defamation cases under a previously seldom-used law that bars insulting the president. Free speech advocates say the law is being used aggressively to silence and intimidate critics.

The trials have targeted journalists, academics and even schoolchildren. Coupled with a crackdown on opposition media and journalists, the trials have sounded alarms over the erosion of rights and freedoms in a country that was once seen as a model of Muslim democracy.

Erdogan caused an uproar last month, when on the basis of an archaic law that criminalizes insulting foreign heads of state, he went after a German comedian who mocked him in a profanity-packed poem.

These insult trials are being initiated in series, they are being filed automatically, Telci told The Associated Press by telephone after the verdict. Merve was prosecuted for sharing a posting that did not belong to her. My client has been convicted for words that do not belong to her.

Thousands of others also posted the poem, which is a satirical adaptation of the Turkish national anthem. It did not mention Erdogan by name, but alluded to a corruption scandal that allegedly involved his family.

Before the verdict was announced, Erdogans lawyer argued in court that Buyuksaracs Instagram post had gone beyond the limits of criticism and amounted to an attack on the Turkish leaders personal rights, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.
Omar Diaby, believed to be a leading French recruiter of jihadists in Syria, has declared himself alive after falsely announcing his death to receive medical treatment, France 2 television reported.

Speaking on Skype, Diaby, who also goes by the name Omar Omsen, told a France 2 journalist: The emir Omar Omsen is not dead. His death was announced for a very precise reason.

The 40-year-old said his parents had announced his death on Twitter last year so he could leave Syria to have major surgery in a neighbouring country while avoiding detection by security services.

France 2, which made contact with Diaby via intermediaries, is due to air a programme Thursday showing footage of the Frenchmans camp in western Syrias Latakia province.

France has an international arrest warrant out on Diaby, whom the programme showed running a cell of around 30 young French jihadists, most of them from the southern Nice region like himself.

Operating out of a pine forest, his cell has pledged allegiance to the al Qaeda-affiliated al Nusra Front.

A Syrian cameraman filmed Diabys camp for three days, with the jihadist carefully controlling what could be filmed and which fighters could speak.

While Diaby is not suspected of any direct link with the terror attacks in France last year, he expressed approval for the deadly shootings at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in January 2015.

Those who insulted the prophet were executed, he said, referring to Charlie Hebdos publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

I wish Id been chosen to do that, he added.
German police have arrested three Pakistani suspects as 18 women have reported becoming victims of sexual assaults at a music festival, authorities said Tuesday.

The mostly young women said they were encircled and groped by groups of men on Saturday night in ways that recalled a spate of mob attacks at chaotic New Years festivities in Cologne.

Police said they were investigating whether the perpetrators also robbed the women in the latest attacks at a four-day open air music festival in the western city of Darmstadt.

Initially three women had filed charges, leading to the arrests of the three men, Pakistani asylum seekers aged 28 to 31, and another 15 women have come forward since.

Police said they were searching for another two or three men and said in a statement that the women have reported that they appeared to be men from the South Asia region.

The Cologne attacks -- committed in a crowd of mostly Arabic and North African men -- appalled Germany and sharpened public concern about the arrival of over one million mostly asylum seekers last year, most from the Middle East.

In the inflamed debate, far-right groups railed against sex jihadists and rapefugees.
Saudi Arabia intercepted a ballistic missile fired from Yemen on Monday night, the military coalition supporting the Yemeni government against rebels said.

It was the second missile launch from Yemen since UN-brokered peace talks began in Kuwait on April 21 between the Houthi Shia rebels and the government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.

The Saudi-led Arab coalition in March last year began air strikes and other military aid in support of Yemeni forces resisting the Houthis who had seized much of the country and are backed by Saudi Arabias regional rival Iran.

Fighting has continued despite a ceasefire that paved the way for the talks in Kuwait.

The Houthi rebels are allied with elite troops loyal to Yemens former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The missile launches are designed to sabotage efforts of the international community to make the peace negotiations a success, the Saudi-led coalition said in a statement.

Saudi Arabia has deployed Patriot missile batteries to counter tactical ballistic missiles which have been fired occasionally during the war.

The coalition warns that it could retaliate if such strikes continue.
Roadside bombs killed at least six people in two separate attacks on security forces in Turkeys largely Kurdish southeast on Monday, security sources said, adding to the violence in the region in the last 24 hours.

One bomb hit a passing police vehicle in the town of Silopi in Sirnak province near the border with Iraq, the sources said, hours after Turkish warplanes struck camps belonging to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Iraq.

Four civilians were killed and 19 other people were injured, including five security force members, in that attack, the sources said. Turkeys Dogan News Agency said the bomb had been placed inside a manhole and was detonated as a police vehicle passed.

Earlier, near the eastern city of Van, PKK fighters detonated a roadside bomb by remote control targeting a passing armoured vehicle. Two police officers were killed and a third was wounded, the sources said.

Clashes between Turkish security forces and the PKK have reached their most intense in two decades since the breakdown of a two-year ceasefire last July.

Thousands of militants and hundreds of civilians and soldiers have been killed since the PKK resumed its armed fight. The government has refused to return to the negotiating table and has vowed to liquidate the PKK, considered a terrorist organisation by Turkey, Europe and the United States.

Late on Sunday, PKK snipers attacked a Turkish base located inside Iraq, killing a lieutenant, the sources said. In the past, Turkey has garrisoned a battalion in Iraqs Kani Masi region to prevent PKK fighters from crossing into Turkey.

A man suspected of smuggling goods across the border between Iraq and Turkey was killed and five others injured, when unidentified forces opened fire on smugglers across the border in the Uludere district, they said.

Uludere was the site of an airstrike in December 2011 that killed 34 young men and boys after the military mistook them for PKK militants. Smuggling of cigarettes, fuel and household items is widespread in the poverty-stricken border region.

The PKK also attacked a base in the Turkish town of Siirt, killing one soldier, the military General Staff said. A police officer was also killed in Sirnak province, under a round-the-clock curfew since March 14, security sources said.

In the village of Kulp in Diyarbakir province, a civilian and five members of the village guard, a state-backed militia that fights the PKK, were wounded in a car-bomb attack, they also said.

The General Staff said on its website it had destroyed PKK shelters and weapon stores in the Metina area of northern Iraq on Sunday during the air strikes. It gave no casualty count.

The PKK has been based in the remote, mountainous region of northern Iraq, which borders southern Turkey, since the 1990s.

The PKK launched its insurgency against the Turkish state in 1984 and more than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
A super-rich village in Switzerland, one of the wealthiest in Europe, has chosen to pay a fine of 200,000 pounds instead of accepting 10 refugees under the countrys newly imposed quota system.

Residents of the picturesque Oberwil-Lieli village, which has 300 millionaires in a population of 22,000, voted no in a referendum over whether to accept the refugees.

The vote has resulted in a division in the town and people slamming the residents for being racist.

But Andreas Glarner, mayor of the village, denied that they were being racist by refusing the refugees.

We were not to be told if the 10 were from Syria or if they are economic migrants from other countries. Yes, the refugees from Syria have to be helped and they are better served by being helped in the camps nearer their home, said Glarner.

Money could be sent to help them, but if we are housing them here it sends out the wrong message. Others will come and risk their lives crossing the ocean and paying people smugglers to bring them, he was quoted as saying by metro.co.uk.

Glarner added that language barrier would also be an issue.

They are not likely to be able to speak the language and if some of the refugees have children they will have to go to the local school where they will need special focus, he said.

The Swiss government had recently announced a quota system to take in about 50,000 asylum seekers. The plan was to distribute the refugees across the countrys 26 counties, according to the quota system.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), around one million refugees arrived in Europe till 21 December 2015, three to four times more than in 2014.
An official media organ of the North Korean regime has endorsed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, describing Democrat rival Hillary Clinton as "dull."

An editorial in DPRK Today, an official media outlet, welcomed the Republican presidential candidate's proposal to hold direct talks with Kim Jong-un, saying he could help bring about Pyongyang's "Yankee go home" policy.

"There are many positive aspects to Trump's 'inflammatory policies'," wrote Han Yong-mook, who described himself as a Chinese North Korean scholar.

"Trump said he will not get involved in the war between the South and the North, isn't this fortunate from North Korea' perspective?"

Analysts said that although the editorial was not officially from Pyongyang, it was sure to reflect thinking inside the regime.
The mortal remains of Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, who was killed in a US drone strike, were handed over to his kin in Afghanistan after a DNA test confirmed his identity, it was announced here on Tuesday.

Pakistans interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said the body of Akhtar Mansoor was handed over to his heirs in Afghanistan after fulfilling all legal requirements.

Earlier on Sunday, a spokesman of the Interior Ministry had said that it had been confirmed through DNA test that the second person killed in the US drone attack in Balochistan was Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Mansoor.

It is confirmed that Mullah Mansoor was killed in the US drone strike in Noshki area of Balochistan, the interior ministrys spokesperson said.

DNA of Mansoor matched with one of his relative who came to receive his body from Afghanistan.

The interior minister said: The government has arrested the suspects who facilitated Mullah Mansoor in acquiring a Pakistani NIC. These include an assistant commissioner, a Risaldar-Major and several FIA and Nadra officials.

Nisar further said that a Federal Investigation Authority official assisted Mullah Mansoors wife in acquiring the NIC.

Advisor to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz also confirmed the death of Afghan Taliban chief in Balochistan.

The drone strike was also the first in the restive province of Balochistan, considered a red-line by the Pakistani government. Authorisation for the strike came directly from US President Barack Obama.
Taliban insurgents killed nine people and kidnapped 20 others when they held up three buses in northern Afghanistan on Tuesday, while the remaining 140 passengers had to be rescued by Afghan forces, the local deputy police chief said.

The attackers stopped the buses on a road and ordered the passengers out, shot dead nine of them and kidnapped the rest, said Massoum Hashemi, deputy police chief of Kunduz.

The Taliban have brutally killed nine civilians and taken about 20 with them, Hashemi said. Afghan forces then rescued the remaining 140 passengers, he said.

The Taliban, who are waging a bloody insurgency to topple the foreign-backed government of President Ashraf Ghani, said they killed six and took 20 members of the Afghan security forces with them.

After we searched the buses, we detained 26 police and army personnel in civilian clothes with evidence, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement.

Six were killed after trying to escape and the rest are in our custody, Mujahid added.

The police in Kunduz did not confirm if security forces were among the kidnapped or killed, but Sher Aziz Kamawal, a senior police official, said those killed may have been government employees who were carrying identity cards.

A campaign of kidnappings against Afghanistans Hazara ethnic minority has become a source of tension, fueling concern about sectarian violence. The Hazara are Shia Muslims who are considered heretics by the hardline Sunni Taliban movement.

Since persecuting Hazaras and other minorities during their rule in the 1990s, the Taliban have largely avoided specifically targeting Shias.

But a rise in Afghanistan in the number of militants claiming allegiance to Islamic State, a hard-line Sunni movement that emphasises purging Shias and is a rival to the Taliban, has coincided with a number of attacks on Hazaras. The brief capture by the Taliban of Kunduz last year was a major blow to Ghanis government.

Read | Afghan Talibans new chief Haibatullah Akhundzada rejects peace talks

Read | Despite new leadership, Taliban will continue agenda of violence: Obama
The universe has finally come up with a phenomenon that renowned scientist Stephen Hawking cannot explain: Donald Trump.

Asked to explain the Republican presidential candidate's ascension to frontrunner status, the British theoretical physicist was stumped.

"I can't," he said on ITV's "Good Morning Britain." "He is a demagogue, who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator."

During his appearance on the program, Hawking also commented on political issues closer to home. He urged U.K. voters to support a referendum that would keep the nation in the European Union. The vote will be held June 23.

"Gone are the days when we could stand on our own, against the world," he said. "We need to be part of a larger group of nations, both for our security and our trade. The possibility of our leaving the EU has already led to a sharp fall in the pound, because the markets judge that it will damage our economy."

Education, he said, is a chief factor.

"There are two obvious reasons why we should stay in," Hawking said. "The first is that it promotes the mobility of people. Students can come here from EU countries to study, and our students can go to other EU universities. More importantly, at the level of research, the exchange of people enables skills to transfer more quickly, and brings new people with different ideas. Without this exchange we would become more culturally isolated and insular, and ultimately more remote from where progress is being made."

Backers of "Brexit" - the initiative behind a UK exit from the EU - naturally disagree.

"The EU has been bad for science - increasing costs and bureaucracy," said Vote Leave Chief Executive Matthew Elliott. "The clinical trials directive, for example, acted to double the cost of cancer research - as leading scientists and medical practitioners have acknowledged. In the internet age, it is patently ridiculous to suggest that the referendum will have an impact on the exchange of information between scientists. And with our world class universities, the caliber of scientists wanting to study here is unlikely to do anything except grow.

"We give more money to the EU than we get back - meaning we could spend more on science if we vote to leave."

Hawking, meanwhile, also weighed on a much lighter topic: the perception that his profile has grown since Eddie Redmayne's Oscar-winning portrayal of him in 2014's "The Theory of Everything."

"I had many fans before Eddie Redmayne played me," the scientist said.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
This week a new kind of hotel experience debuted in Amsterdam. The opening of the very first Zoku concept represents a real turning point, one where trend becomes design, and design becomes the hype. For years hotel strategies have skirted the evolution mobile, tech, and a stoked Millennial Generation. Now Zoku makes a first-of-a-kind concept hotel, one where business dissolves into pleasure. We talk a lot about the space where high tech trends intersected with guest experience and progress, but this hotel seems designed to create, rather than to prognosticate.

Zoku is Japanese for "family", and according to the creators of the new hotel synergy, it's a hybrid just in the nic-of-time. The evolution of business, the high octane, no-time-to-waste world has spurred a new work meets play lifestyle in every sector of business. Naturally, time crunching our lives has changed everything. And the need for business travelers to have a home-office away from home arose. Before Zoku, hotels only "bandaged" this hole hospitality. So, based on what we saw at Zoku's grand opening, a totally new category promises a cure instead of a bandaid. Zoku provides the services of an office, in an atmosphere where social buzz permeates.

(L to R) Zoku co-founder Hans Meyer, airbnb co-founder Nathan Blecharczykand and Zoku co-founder Marc Jongerius in Zoku's Living Room - During @startupfesteu 24 May, 2016. Photo by facebook.com/livezoku

The Zoku loft layout is Spartan, elegant, no-nonsense  Photo by Zoku and concrete

Aimed at true hotel industry disruption, Zoku visionaries, co-founders Marc Jongerius and Hans Meyer collaborated with the concrete concept geniuses, to create something truly stunning, and really logical too. Zoku seems intent on creating more than a building with nice beds and smiling faces. Meyer gives us clues as to the depth of design thought that went into creating this new class:

" Zoku reflects Amsterdam's modern values of diversity, entrepreneurship and creativity . Our objective is for Zoku to connect thinkers from various industries, and facilitate the emergence of a new hub where talented international travelers mingle with locals. "

Eat, sleep, work, hang out, pummel the punching bag  Photo by Zoku and concrete

The allusion is transparent here; Zoku melds geography, design, the architecture of business, and lifestyle into a sort of "summit magnet", a place not just to serve guests, but to cultivate socializing, and potentially the synthesis of ideas too. Inside the hotel contemporary design has been sculpted for beauty and utility, services like health and beauty are boosted by local wellness partners, and extended stay amenities are accentuated with connectedness features. Social spaces, Zoku's Sidekicks and Community Manager's efforts, and a new concept called "Better Together" really do show Zoku's differentiation. Better Together is a new kind of meeting space that helps promote openness and collaborative business-style.

The further convergence of technology onto the collaborative design of Zoku, reveals the visionaries teaming up with StayNTouch, to more perfectly connect guests to hotel staff. The Bethesda, Maryland innovators of cloud-based hotel PMS, leads the way in solving one of the industry's biggest problems. Guests of Zoku can tailor their experience via a touch of their mobile, and the hotel can streamline operations and efficiency as well. Jos Schaap, StayNTouch founder and CEO elaborated on how Zoku leapfrogs forward with this integration:

"This innovative property is a model for what a forward-looking hotel can be, offering full choice of service (without a front desk) for guests, the opportunity for full check in and out via mobile phone with 100% integration of mobile door lock technology, social engagement and digital promotions, and complete back of the house implementation of tablet-based communication for management and housekeeping - all provided via one simple cloud solution. The ultimate result is higher guest engagement and superior guest service - and we are pleased to help them drive it."

Other similarly progressive elements have gone into the planning of this first-in-a-class hospitality property. One innovation I was curious about at first, is the way Zoku Lofts are designed. The refocus on a living-centric space, versus a sleep-centric model disturbed me initially. Then the simple genius sunk in. Zoku exists the way we live and breathe. I recall my experiences in Paris boutiques, and the big-as-a-house beds that occupy the whole space. Puffy as they are, Paris hoteliers are "shooing" their guests out into the streets. Zoku rooms are not bedrooms, they are economical apartments without the upkeep and cost, situated inside a social sphere. At least this is one way of expressing what my first impressions are.

Zoku shared spaces promote create a seamless social-business climate  Photo by Zoku and concrete

The long and short of this new Zoku concept is, a new category of stay for business nomads has been created. And from what we've seen, Zoku's team has elevated the bar. They've created the benchmark for this "nomad" class of hotel. The founders tell us this first Zoku is the prototype. Logically located on Amsterdam's Weesperstaat, the home-office away is right next door to an international co-working spadce called WeWork. Smack in the middle of the so-called "Knowledge Mile" commercial buzz center of the city, Zoku clearly turned over every stone forging this new class of hospitality.

Zoku's PR people tell us the brand is set to roll out in London, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Berlin, Vienna and Paris next.

Phil Butler

Senior Partner

Pamil Visions PR
Hospitality Net today

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Iceland is poised to curb an Airbnb explosion as it tries to balance record tourist numbers with the protection of its spectacular unspoilt landscape and traditional lifestyle. Proposed legislation, which could become law this week, seeks to restrict the number of days residents can offer Airbnb rentals in their properties to 90 days a year before they must pay business tax. The move comes as the islands 335,000-strong population is set to welcome 1.6 million visitors this year  a 29% increase on last year  drawn by the glaciers, fjords, lava fields, hot springs, hiking trails and midnight sun.

Read the full article at theguardian.com
Vilnius, the capital city of Lithuania, this week hosted representatives of 34 countries for the 60th Meeting of the UNWTO Commission for Europe. Discussions focused on major tourism trends and the priorities and agenda of the Organization for the region. The meeting was followed by a seminar on new business models.

"In 2015, there were 29 million more international tourists in Europe than the previous year, raising the total in the region to 609 million. At a time when economic recovery is still quite slow, tourism has been a major contributor to the European economy, generating 404 billion euros in exports," said UNWTO Secretary-General Taleb Rifai opening the meeting.

"Although the sector continues to progress, many challenges face us. These include a rapidly changing consumer market, the impact of technology, the emergence of new business models, manmade and natural crises, and the quest to make our sector more sustainable and more responsible," he added.

"Tourism in Lithuania has large growth potential and after this event we have even more stimulus to keep promoting our country and look for new possibilities to support tourism," said Evaldas Gustas, Minister of Economy of Lithuania and Vice-Chair of the UNWTO Commission for Europe.

Safe, secure and seamless travel, the role of tourism in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development in 2017 were discussed at the Commission meeting.

The following seminar explored the impacts of new business models, and in particular of the so-called 'sharing economy', on the tourism sector, and how 'traditional' businesses are responding. Speakers included BeMyGuest, the Lithuanian Hotels and Restaurants Association, Room Mate Hotels, TripAdvisor, ReviewPro, HOTREC, NBTC Holland Marketing, the European Commission, the Tourism Chamber of the Republic of Lithuania and Airbnb. Participants agreed that the opportunities afforded by new business models should be embraced but that measures should be taken to ensure both a level playing field and the protection of consumers.

On the occasion of his visit to Lithuania, UNWTO Secretary-General Taleb Rifai met Lithuanian private sector representatives and the Chamber of Commerce. "Sustainable measures and other tourism policies should be applicable to all business models, so that all stakeholders across the value chain hold the same level of responsibility with regard to the sector," said Mr Rifai. "Only by working in cooperation and by building bridges will the tourism community be able to capitalize on the strong potential of the sector," he added.

In 2015, Europe remains the world's most visited region with 609 million international tourist arrivals (51% of the world's total). International tourism generated 404 billion euros in exports, 3% more than in 2014.

Additional information :

About The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO)

The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) is the United Nations specialized agency fostering tourism as a vehicle for equal, inclusive and sustainable development. Working with its Member States, international organizations and the private sector, UNWTO promotes safe and seamless travel for all. UNWTO also works to make tourism the foundation of trust and international cooperation and a central pillar of recovery. As part of the wider UN system, UNWTO is at the forefront of global efforts to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including through its ability to create decent jobs, promote equality and preserve natural and cultural heritage.

Follow UNWTO on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin.

Rut Gomez Sobrino

Principal Media Officer

(+34) 91 567 81 60

UNWTO
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Reps from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Barbados, Bhutan, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Kiribati, Madagascar, Maldives, Nepal, Philippines, Rwanda, Saint Lucia, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Vietnam just gathered in Peru to announce the formation of the "Vulnerable 20" group, a coalition of 20 nations threatened by climate change.

The group's major inaugural activity will be formalizing accounting principles for expressing the economic losses from climate change, and then to establish a "risks fund" that will allow countries to insure each others' losses from climate events.

Finance Ministers decided to develop and apply innovative fiscal measures. They voiced support for an international financial transaction tax to aid the mobilization of additional resources for the fight against climate change. They also called for improved access to international climate change finance for adaptation and mitigation action, the fulfillment of the $100 billion commitment to the Green Climate Fund, and acceleration towards a 50:50 balance in resources mobilized given prevailing shortfalls for initiatives to adapt to climate change. "This is not a typical group of major economies. Instead we represent countries put at high risk by the economic failures to address climate change," said Jose Francisco Pacheco, Vice Minister of Finance of Costa Rica, calling the event today in Lima "historic". "We have decided to work together to ensure we are not made victims, but do everything we can to contribute to a resolution to this crisis." Dr. Atiur Rahman, Governor of the Bangladesh Bank, added: "We want to the world to know that we will not overlook the perils that our economies have been placed at due to the shortcomings, particularly of action by major economies. The world also needs to know that working together our vulnerable countries are doing everything in our power to bring the climate crisis under control, and we won't relent until we've succeeded in our ambition."



Vulnerable Twenty Group Founded

[V20]





(via Beyond the Beyond)





(Image: Geralt/Pixabay)
Michael Jordan wouldve never settled for a measly bronze medal but that hasnt deterred Jordan Brand from going forward with this upcoming Bronze Air Jordan 5.

The classic Air Jordan 5 silhouette is actually outfitted in obsidian blue but bronze accents on the tongue and midsole give the sneaker its 3rd place moniker.

Considering Jordan Brand has already released the gold-tongued Air Jordan 5, one would assume a Silver joint will soon be unveiled to complete this Olympics-themed collection but thus far nothing has been confirmed.

If youre particularly fond of this Bronze rendition of the Air Jordan 5, you can score a pair tomorrow, September 24th- the kicks will carry a $190 price tag.

Select Foot Locker locations will be implementing the following raffle ticket system for the release, so be sure to check out their Launch Locator to see how your local store will be handling the drop.

Tickets will be given out for the shoe you have selected on Monday, September 19th and Tuesday, September 20th. Limit one ticket per customer. You must have a valid photo ID to receive a ticket. If your ticket number is drawn you will be notified by phone on Wednesday, September 21st or Thursday, September 22nd. If your ticket number is drawn you must be at the store on Saturday, September 24th between store opening time and 6:00 p.m. local time to purchase the shoe. You must have the ticket and show a valid photo ID that matches the name on the list in order to purchase the shoe. Any shoe not purchased by the 6:00 p.m. deadline will be forfeited.

[Via]

Bronze Jordan 5
Troy Ave was released from the hospital this afternoon after appearing in a Manhattan court for last weeks incident at Irving Plaza, where 3 people were wounded & 1 was pronounced dead after gunfire opened up in the VIP room. According to NY Daily News, Troy Ave, whos real name is Roland Collins, pleaded not guilty to his attempted murder charges on Monday and was remanded without bail.

According to Troys lawyer, Scott Lemon, hes the true victim in all of this, and NOT the assailant. Lemon says theres much more to the story than the video that surfaced tells.

What really happened here is Mr. Collins here is the real victim, Leemon said. The person who was killed at this event, he died a hero. He (McPhatter) was his bodyguard. He wasnt shot by Mr. Collins. He was a lifelong friend.

This 11 seconds of video that the NYPD released, it doesnt say what happened before, it doesnt say what happened after. The scientific evidence will show he didnt shoot himself. This was another rush to judgement.

In this case hes the victim and should be treated like the victim.

Troy Ave will be held without bail until his trial. Well continue to provide you with updates as information becomes available.

[Via]
Check out the full line-up and stage times for this year's festival

The full line-up and stage times have been announced for this year's Glastonbury festival.

Tame Impala, Damon Albarn, Catfish And The Bottlemen, Mystery Jets, Editors, Tom Odell and Band Of Skulls have been added to the already jam packed weekend at Worthy Farm.

Headlining the Pyramid stage is Muse on Friday, Adele on Saturday, and Coldplay on Sunday. With Damon Albarn And The Orchestra Of Syrian Musicians playing the Main Stage on the Friday.

Meanwhile Disclosure, New Order and LCD Soundsystem have all been confirmed to headline the Other Stage. While Underworld, James Blake and Earth, Wind And Fire will be playing top on the West Holts Stage.

At John Peel Stage, Sigur Ros, M83 and Jake Bugg have been announced as the headliners. While Richard Hawley, Philip Glass' Heroes Symphony and Grimes are on the Park Stage.

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The full stage times are as follows:

Pyramid Stage:

Friday 24 June

Muse  22:15  23:45 (pictured)

Foals  20:00  21:15

ZZ Top  18:15  19:15

Jess Glynne  16:30  17:30

Two Door Cinema Club  15:00  16:00

Skepta  13:45  14:30

Rokia Traore  12:15  13:00

The Orchestra of Syrian Musicians with Damon Albarn and guests  11:00  11:45

Saturday 25 June

Adele  22:15  23:45

Tame Impala  20:00  21:15

The Last Shadow Puppets  18:15  19:15

Madness  16:30  17:30

Wolf Alice  15:00  16:00

Baaba Maal  13:40  14:30

Squeeze  12:25  13:15

Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Choir  11:30  12:00

Sunday 26 June

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Coldplay  21:30  23:15

Beck  19:15  20:30

Ellie Goulding  17:45  18:45

Jeff Lynnes ELO  16:00  17:15

Laura Mvula  14:30  15:15

Gregory Porter  13:00  14:00

Caravan Palace  12:00 12:40

Burnham and Highbridge Band  11:00  11:30

Other Stage

Friday 24 June

Disclosure  22:30  23:45

Bastille  20:40  21:40

Bring Me the Horizon  19:10  20:10

Editors  17:40  18:40

The Lumineers  16:10  17:10

Frightened Rabbit  14:50  15:40

Christine and the Queens  13:40  14:30

Blossoms  12:30  13:20

James  11:00  12:00

Saturday 25 June

New Order  22:30  23:45

Chvrches  20:45  21:45 (pictured)

The 1975  19:15  20:15

Tom Odell  17:45  18:45

Band of Skulls  16:15  17:15

Hurts  14:45  15:45

St Paul and the Broken Bones  13:15  14:15

Shura  12:00  12:45

Haelos  11:00  11:40

Sunday 26 June

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LCD Soundsystem  21:45  23:15

PJ Harvey  19:50  21:00

Catfish and the Bottlemen  18:20  19:20

Years & Years  16:50  17:50

Jamie Lawson  15:30  16:20

Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott  14:20  15:10

Bears Den  13:20  14:00

Newton Faulkner  12:20  13:00

Anteros  11:30  12:00

West Holts Stage

Friday 24 June

Underworld  22:15  23:45

Roisin Murphy  20:30  21:30

White Denim  19:00  20:00

Protoje  17:30  18:30

Vince Staples  16:00  17:00

Dakhabrakha  14:30  15:30

Bixiga 70  13:00  14:00

Paradise Bangkok Molam International Band  11:30  12:30

Saturday 25 June

James Blake  22:15  23:45 (pictured)

Santigold  20:30  21:30

The Very Best  19:00  20:00

Shibusashirazu Orchestra  17:30  18:30

Mbongwana Star  16:00  17:00

Little Simz  14:30  15:30

Oddisee and Good Company  13:00  14:00

Anna Meredith  11:30  12:30

Sunday 26 June

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Earth, Wind and Fire  21:45  23:15

Gary Clark Jr  20:00  21:00

Quantic All Stars  18:30  19:30

Anoushka Shankar  17:00  18:00

Michael Kiwanuka  15:30  16:30

Kamasi Washington  14:00  15:00

Eska  12:30  13:30

Human Pyramids  11:00  12:00

Park Stage

Friday 24 June

Richard Hawley  23:00  00:15

Savages  21:30  22:30

Ronnie Spector  20:00  21:00

Daughter  18:30  19:30

Ezra Furman  17:00  18:00

Unknown Mortal Orchestra  15:30  16:30

Nao  14:15  15:00

Night Beats  13:00  13:45

Declan McKenna  12:00  12:45

Gwenno  11:00  11:30

Saturday 25 June

Philip Glasss Heroes Symphony  23:45  00:30

Mercury Rev  21:30  22:30

Floating Points (Live)  20:00  21:00

Ernest Ranglin and Friends  18:30  19:30

Kurt Vile  17:00  18:00

Jagwar Ma  15:30  16:30

Lady Leshurr  14:10  15:00

Izzy Bizu  13:00  13:45

Cats Eyes  12:00  12:40

Car Seat Headrest  11:00  11:30

Sunday 26 June

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Grimes  21:00  22:00 (pictured)

Guy Garvey  19:30  20:30

Saint Etienne  18:00  19:00

Kwabs  16:30  17:30

Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats  15:10  16:00

Hinds  14:00  14:45

C Duncan  13:00  13:40

Holly Macve  12:00  12:40

Khruangbin  11:00  11:30

The John Peel Stage

Friday 24 June

Sigur Ros  22:30  23:45

AlunaGeorge  21:00  22:00

Explosions in the Sky  19:30  20:30

Jack Garratt  18:10  19:00

Half Moon Run  16:50  17:40

Aurora  15:30  16:20

Rat Boy  14:10  15:00

Elle King  13:00  13:40

X Ambassadors  12:00  12:40

Dan Stuart with Twin Tones  11:00  11:40

Saturday 25 June

M83  22:30  23:45 (pictured)

Fatboy Slim  20:30  22:00

Example  19:20  20:10

John Grant  17:50  18:50

M  16:40  17:30

Lapsley  15:10  16:10

Alessia Cara  13:50  14:40

Dua Lipa  12:45  13:25

Nothing But Thieves  11:50  12:20

Palace  11:00  11:30

Sunday 26 June

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Jake Bugg  22:00  23:15

Mac Demarco  20:30  21:30

Of Monsters and Men  19:00  20:00

Band of Horses  17:30  18:30

Bat for Lashes  16:00  17:00

Mystery Jets  14:30  15:30

Matt Corby  13:00  14:00

Tired Lion  11:50  12:30

She Drew the Gun  11:00  11:30

Friday 24 June

Billy Bragg  21:00  22:00 (pictured)

Rhoda Dakar  19:30  20:30

Man and the Echo  18:00  19:00

Comedy with Jeremy Hardy  17:00  17:30

Big Bills Radical Roundup  15:00  16:30

Panel: Immigration  A World Without Borders?  13:30  14:30

Panel: Feminism  A Mans Place  12:00  13:00

Saturday 25 June

Tom Robinson and Band  21:00  22:00

The King Blues  19:30  20:30

Ferocious Dog  18:00  19:00

Comedy with Francesca Martinez  17:00  17:30

Big Bills Radical Roundup  15:00:00 16:30

Panel: What now for Europe and Britain?  13:30  14:30

Panel: Junior Doctors, Unite and Strike!  12:00  13:00

Sunday 26 June

The Selecter  21:00  22:00

The Membranes  19:30  20:30

Stick in the Wheel  18:00  19:00

Comedy with Elvis McGongall  17:00  17:30

Big Bills Radical Roundup  15:00  16:00

Speak for yourself in the Green Kids Area  14:00  14:30

Jez We Can  Jeremy Corbyn in conversation  13:00  14:00

Panel  Post Capitalism for an Equal society with Paul Mason  12:00  13:00
As a firm friend of Primal Scream and the man who twiddled the knobs on their most recent album, More Light, you expect David Holmes to have a few shocking anecdotes to share. Nothing prepares you, however, for one particular revelation.

Ill tell you something about Primal Scream, the Belfast producer begins in conspiratorial tones. People think they are crazy drug addicts? Bobby Gillespie and Andrew Innes never smoked a cigarette in their lives.

With that, the world spins off its axis.
With just three days to go here's a look at some of the country's most exiting acts who are set to descend on Kilmainahm for Forbidden Fruit.

On Saturday you can see five of the country's biggest buzz acts play Forbidden Fruit, find out a bit about them and what to expect below.

KORMAC: Producer and DJ Kormac can boast an ever-expanding circle of cheerleaders, including Annie Mac and DJ Yoda. His 2014 album Doorsteps was a delightfully oddball affair with contributions by Irvine Welsh, Speech Debelle (winner of the Mercury Prize a million years ago) and Texas songwriter Micah P Hinson. In his alternate guise of big band leader, Kormac dabbles in funk and strings. In stripped down form, however, he manipulates twinkling beats into innovative new shapes.



WHITE COLLAR BOY: The electro two-piece of Gavin White and Mark Cummins met up in the most appropriate location possible, Catalan electro festival Primavera Sound. Since forming in 2011, theyve supported artists such as Factory Floor and Com Truise and released a well regarded debut EP, Suu/Tide, in 2013. Not to be confused with the Belle and Sebastian song from 2006 (but you knew that already, obviously).



MMOTHS: After early buzz  and an endorsement from electronica father figure Flying Lotus  Newbridges Jack Colleran has taken his time putting together a debut album under his Mmoths moniker. But the delay didnt worry him. Acclaim or media love never factored into his decision to make music full time.

I dont do this project for anyone but myself, he told Hot Press earlier this year. I dont worry whether it is going to sell a lot of records. Its a really selfish thing, I m using it as a means of expression. It helps me get through things. I guess you could say it is semi-therapeutic.

At the time it was weird, he said of the early hype. I wasnt doing what everyone else was doing. It was quite lonely  in the sense that I was doing this on my own and didnt have anyone to talk to about it.

Was it overwhelming? I guess it may have seemed overwhelming from the outside. When you are experiencing it, you see the highs and the lulls too. So in that sense it doesnt feel as overwhelming as people might think. There are plenty of quiet days.

Luneworks, which will receive its live debut at Forbidden Fruit, isnt a break up record per se  but it is informed by romantic pain. Feeling he needed to temporarily get away from Ireland, a recently heartbroken Colleran left the old country for a sojourn in Los Angeles, staying at the apartment of his manager Jimmy Flemming. Here, he devoted countless nights to assembling the album, a working method which imbued the record with a fever-dream sensibility.

I didnt leave the house that much, he said. When I have a lot of work to do my sleeping patterns go crazy. Ill sleep during the day and stay up all night working. Id see Jimmy in the morning and at night. When he was going to bed Id be getting stuck in.



CLU: This duo blend quirky grooves and an innovative live visual show. The results are thrilling, esoteric and, in the best sense, impossible to pin down. Theyve been compared to SBTRKT, while single Moonrunner, featuring vocals from Liverpool-based Dubliner Gemma Donlovely, is a woozy dubstep symphony which has racked up some 50,000 hits

on YouTube.



VOXXThis Dublin three-piece bring a love of 70s glam and a thoroughly 21st century passion for splicing genres. Hot Press namechecked them as one of the most influential new Irish groups of 2015. Their early track Stuck On My Mind quickly became a live favourite, while an exclusive HP Storeroom session further raised their profile. All of that and they are surely just getting started. Check out their single Glamour Puss here.
Researchers are starting to think that Alzheimer's disease could be caused by microbial infections that cause plaque to form in the brain. This opens the possibility for a vaccination against Alzheimer's.

Support for the immune defence idea comes from work by Jacobus Jansen of Maastricht University in the Netherlands. Using MRI brain scans, his team has found that people in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease have more permeable blood-brain barriers, suggesting that they may have developed the disease because their brains were more vulnerable to attack. "The microbe hypothesis seems plausible," says Jansen.

If infectious agents are kicking off the formation of plaques, then vaccines could head them off. "You could vaccinate against those pathogens, and potentially prevent this problem arising later in life," says Moir.

If many microbes are involved, immunising against them all will be hard, says Jansen. "But if the frequency of certain pathogens is quite high, there might be a possibility."
The multi-disciplinary arts festival takes place this summer

This year's week-long festival will animate the town with it's colourful programme featuring live music, theatre, street performance, dance, comedy, visual art, film screenings, food, pop-up shops, markets and much more.

Added to the festival is Lords of Strut, Iarla O Lionaird and Steve Cooney, Neil Delamere, The Passion of Joan Of Arc, Tanabata, A Game Called Lucy Finally Wins, Panti, Beowulf the Blockbuster, Eddie Lenin, Niall De Burca, West Cork Ukulele Orchestra and Apres Match.

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The multi-disciplinary arts festival takes runs from July 4-10.
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NEW YORK - Nearly 40,000 striking Verizon employees will return to work Wednesday after reaching a tentative contract agreement that includes 1,300 new call center jobs and nearly 11 percent in raises over four years but also makes health care plan changes to save the company money, the company and unions said Monday.

The pact, subject to approval by union members, stands to end one of the largest strikes in the U.S. in recent years. Workers and Verizon Communications had reached an agreement in principle Friday but hadn't released details or a date for the workers' return. The strike began in mid-April.

The Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers unions, which both represent the strikers, called the deal a victory for American workers.

"We are turning the tide from cutbacks against working people to building a stronger labor movement and strengthening the power of working Americans," said Dennis Trainor, vice president of the union's District 1 in the Northeast.

New York-based Verizon Communications said it was a good deal for workers, customers and the telecom giant alike.

"This will allow our business to be more flexible and competitive," chief administrative officer Marc Reed said.

Union members will vote on the deal after returning to work.

Besides the raises and new call center jobs, the tentative agreement includes $1,250 in signing bonuses and health care reimbursements for new workers, a 25 percent increase in the number of unionized crews maintaining Verizon's utility poles in New York state, and three 1 percent increases in pensions, which Verizon had proposed to freeze, the CWA said.

The deal also entails changes that Verizon says will save significant money, such as adopting Medicare Advantage plans - private health insurance contracted with the government-sponsored Medicare program - rather than costlier insurance. The agreement also increases flexibility to route customer service calls from one call center to another, the company said.

The unions said they were striking because Verizon wanted to freeze pensions, make layoffs easier and rely more on contract workers.

Verizon said it had high health care costs for its unionized workers, a group that has shrunk as Verizon sold off large chunks of its wireline unit and focused on its mobile business, which was not unionized. It also wanted the union workers, around one-fifth of its U.S. workforce, to agree to move around to different regions when needed, which the union opposed.

The strike made its way into the presidential campaign. Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton visited strikers outside a Verizon store in midtown Manhattan, and rival Bernie Sanders cheered workers on a picket line in Brooklyn.
A suspect is in custody after the body of a teenage girl was found Monday at an abandoned apartment complex in South Houston.

The body was discovered about 11 p.m. in the 1600 block of Avenue N, said Capt. Eddie Martin of the South Houston Police Department.
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Paris Nichols saw the bare-chested man with a crew cut stride calmly up to his wife Sunday morning as she chatted with a longtime customer at their family-owned car wash off Memorial Drive. He reached around her, shooting Eugene Linscomb in the head while the 56-year-old sat in his Mercedes.

"That man's the devil," the gunman declared.

Felicia Nichols sank to the ground, reciting the Lord's Prayer.

"Y'all calm down. I'm not going to kill y'all, y'all are Christians," Paris Nichols said, recalling the words of the shooter, who was identified Monday by a Houston Police Department source as 25-year-old Dionisio Garza III from San Bernardino County, California.

See the Facebook profile of the man identified as the shooter.

Garza was a sergeant who received several awards for his service in Afghanistan, according to a military discharge record found at the scene. He harbored anti-government sentiments, the HPD source said.

Railing against homosexuals, Jews, and Walmart, Garza then walked back toward his car to grab an AR-15 assault rifle, yelling that the world was coming to an end. Nichols, 42, who has owned Memorial Hand Car Wash for the past 13 years, seized the opportunity to escape. Grabbing his wife's hand, they sprinted across the street to a Chase Bank and jumped a residential wall.

Police say the gunman began shooting indiscriminately for nearly an hour, instilling terror in this cozy middle-class neighborhood where churchgoers were just returning home and joggers were out on their morning run. The scene turned chaotic and confusing almost immediately, with initial reports indicating two gunmen might be on the loose, while neighbors tried to protect themselves.

Three bystanders, two men and a woman, were wounded, as were two Harris County Precinct 5 constable's deputies. Another armed man, initially thought to be the second shooter, also was injured. Garza successfully fired five bullets at a police helicopter circling the scene. Part of a Conoco gas station burst into flames, likely the result of a stray bullet hitting a gas pump. A SWAT officer finally ended the ordeal, killing the gunman at 11:10 a.m.

On Monday, police declined to release more details about the attack or suspect, citing the ongoing investigation. The Harris County medical examiner's office is expected to officially identify the shooter Tuesday. Garza's relatives could not be reached for comment.

A TV station reported finding Garza's military bag at the scene with several documents, including his birth certificate, as well as ammunition that police detonated Sunday. Police didn't recover the backpack until Monday. "This was the most terrifying event I have ever encountered in my life," said Deputy Constable Danny Luna, who pulled up to the scene near 13210 Memorial Drive shortly after Houston police to assist.

The first officer had responded to reports of an active shooting and was immediately shot at, police said. A photo later released by the Houston Police Department shows his SUV's windshield and hood riddled with 21 bullet holes. He quickly called for backup and a SWAT team.

By the time Luna arrived, dispatchers asked him to block off Brittmoore Rood near Memorial Drive. Hearing dozens of gunshots, he grabbed his rifle, crouching behind his constable vehicle.

"We were taking bullets," he said.

He'd intentionally rolled down both his driver and front passenger windows so he could aim at the shooter, who was less than half a mile away, if he had the chance.

"I thought if I could get a good shot at the suspect, I would be able to shoot through the window," he said.

At some point, Luna moved. For mere seconds, he was visible through the open window.

"I heard a gunshot, it sounded so close," he said. "I heard another thump, boom. That was the bullet. It hit me right in the chest."

Luna fell to the ground, yelling at his partner.

"I didn't know if I was going to make it or not," said the 43-year-old father of two.

He checked his bullet-proof vest. The bullet had flown through the vest's first plate. Miraculously, it had lodged in the second.

"I'm pretty shaken up, realizing that one more inch and that bullet would have hit me," he said.

Luna returned to the standoff, moving with his partner and three other officers behind a Houston police car for shelter.

Another deputy constable, Jaime Ayala, was also shot in the thumb after the gunman shot at his car and the bullet tore through the vehicle. He said dozens of 911 calls and an array of varying information coming over police channels made it difficult to know what was going on.

"We were hearing multiple calibers of rounds," Ayala said. "There were reports of multiple shooters, and we had no idea, just too many calls coming in all at once."

Down the street on Wycliffe Drive, Prudence Allwein was gardening outside when she heard several loud booms. She ran to her husband in the backyard and after a few confusing seconds trying to discern the sound's origins could it be? Here? they hurdled upstairs to wake their two teenage daughters.

"I said, 'Get down, there's a shooter somewhere on our street,'" said Allwein, a 44-year-old photographer. "We were hysterical. We moved the kids back behind the fire place. They were crying."

So powerful was the shooter's artillery that a bullet shattered the back window of her daughter's car, parked in the driveway, though they were about half a mile down the street from the gunman.

Allwein's neighbor, a chiropractor and retired U.S. Navy commander, grabbed his gun. Brian Cesak, 55, said he could see the shooter standing at the corner of Memorial Drive and recognized the sound of a powerful assault rifle firing "well over a 100 shots."

"I was going to stop him if he came down the street," he said.

Crouching behind houses and shrubs, he ran up to cars coming down the street and shouted at them to turn back.

Ken Gibbs was going to the gym when he saw Cesak.

"There's a guy down there shooting with a high-powered rifle," Cesak yelled.

Gibbs, a 60-year-old oil and gas businessman, helped his neighbor alert oncoming cars.

"We didn't want anybody to go down there, they'd be like sitting ducks," he said. "We were like a human road block pissing off a hundred cars."

Eventually, a stillness descended. Police officers began walking down the street. Residents slowly uncurled from their fear.

By Monday, they flocked to the car wash, where many have known both the Nichols and the owner of the neighboring tire center for years. They placed bouquets of roses and sunflowers and a balloon decorated with the American flag near the spot where Linscomb died. They hugged the couple, who recounted their horror over and over.

Linscomb's family could not be reached for comment. But Paris Nichols said he had been a regular for years and was "more than a customer, almost like a friend."

Staff writers James Pinkerton and Cindy George contributed to this report.
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Fashion absorbs culture, and designers take in influences from across the globe and reinterpret them for their collections.

So as summer starts, life unwinds and the weather warms, the luxury-fashion scene reveals a mix of cultural accents - Spanish, Asian, African, Indian - all with bohemian appeal.

Houston designer Elaine Turner suggests the global trend is part escapism and part fantasy. Shoppers consumed by wanderlust, or even those who have traveled the world, want to look and feel the part of the adventuress.

"The cultural influences we see can take you away and carry you to someplace unique, someplace tropical," she says.

Tropical and global touches have been part of Turner's aesthetic since she launched the brand in 2000.

Her spring and summer collection takes cues from tile mosaics in Barcelona parks and, in particular, those created by the late Spanish-Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi.

"There's such a jumping-off point from eclectic artists like Gaudi. The consumer doesn't know the story behind the print or the look, but it's inviting. You can interpret it many ways."

Natural textiles and fiber from raffia to cork are essential to Turner's collection.

"I'm a believer that you have to capture the customer emotionally. Fashion is emotion, wanting something that's unique and a statement. I like the tropical, natural feel, and I find it's what our customers want. It's unique and functional."

Just as the Spanish influence peppers summer collections, so does chinoiserie. The European interpretation of Asian style trended when the Metropolitan Museum of Art toasted the Costume Institute's exhibit "China: Through the Looking Glass" and sent the fashion world buzzing with red-carpet chinoiserie style.

Valentino brought out crimson dragons, and Roberto Cavalli's floral gowns were inspired by the films of director Wong Kar-wai.

Sarah Rutson, vice president of global buying for Net-a-Porter, says today's savvy shoppers are looking for discoveries from faraway places.

"I'm not only specifically buying for the region but also seeing the importance for the company to bring new discoveries to our American and European clients as well. It is something that our customers expect of us."

Rutson lived in Hong Kong for nearly 25 years and saw the influence that Asian designers have on U.S. fashion. She cites Japanese designer Chitose Abe of Sacai as a trendsetter. Net-a-Porter has put the spotlight on design talents such as Facetasm and Adeam.

"We constantly scour the world for new talent," Rutson says. "It's not necessarily about the country these designers come from, but its about the talent and unique perspective that they bring to our buy that we don't get from anyone else."

As fashion continues to circle the globe, the continent of Africa is giving designers inspiration and license for cultural appropriation. Valentino's spring collection is filled with African motifs. The fashion house's ad campaign is set against the backdrop of Kenya's Amboseli National Park. The ads were controversial, the clothes arresting.

Locally, designer Karissa Lindsay sees a growing demand for her collection of dresses and separates incorporating bright African Ankara prints in classic designs.

"I always want my designs to make a woman feel bold and beautiful," Lindsay says. "I think African textiles have everything to make a woman feel super bold."

She sells her brand, A Leap of Style, at Melodrama Boutique on Almeda near the Museum District.

Lindsay also embraces Indian prints for spring and summer.

"There is something in all of us that wants to connect with something that's not mass-produced. These prints are very artesian," she said.

Houston's ethnic diversity, Lindsay says, helps fuel the market for fashion with global inspirations.

"It's a city where you can tap into different cultures, bring it out in your art and do it in a different way. It appeals to the senses and encourages you to look at fashions from all over the world."
HARTFIELD, England - One day, a "blustery" kind of day  the kind of day that couldn't decide if it was sunny or gray, or if it might rain or might not, Kitty pulled on her Wellington boots, which meant that, just like Christopher Robin, she was ready for anything.

Kitty was visiting Hartfield, in East Sussex, to spend the day with her great-uncle Vincent, an uncle so "great" that he could make coins disappear and then magically reappear behind her ear. Magic uncles are, in the eyes of 5-year-old Kitty, the best kind of uncle ever.

Kitty, Vincent and I (Kitty's mummy) were off on an "expotition," which is Pooh-bear speak for expedition. It was to be an afternoon walk around Ashdown Forest, following a special map drawn a long time ago (90 years, more or less), by a little boy named Christopher Robin Milne. ("Mr. Shepard helped" with the map, Christopher Robin allowed, and you will hear more about him in a minute.)

Christopher Robin lived near Hartfield in a house called Cotchford Farm. Just like my uncle, the boy's father, A.A. Milne, had moved his family from London to Sussex in search of fresh air and adventures.

More Information If you go Where to stay The Dorset Arms Cottages Buckhurst Park, Withyham, Hartfield TN7 4BD 011-44-1892-770-278 dorset-arms.co.uk Self-catering accommodations that can be booked as a house or on an individual-room basis. Standard rooms, $153-$175. The entire six-bedroom cottage, $875/night. The Anchor Inn Church St., Hartfield TN7 4AG 011-44-1892-770-424 anchorhartfield.com Hartfield pub offers two rooms, a double or a twin, plus a full English breakfast. Single occupancy $87, double occupancy $123. Hever Castle Hever, Edenbridge, Kent TN8 7NG 011-44-1732-861-800 hevercastle.co.uk/stay/ Upgrade your experience and stay in the childhood home of a wife of King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn. Prices range from $152 for a single midweek to $400 for a Friday or Saturday night. Early booking is advised. Where to eat The Dorset Arms Withyham, Sussex TN7 4BD 011-44-1892-770-278 dorset-arms.co.uk Foodie establishment that uses local produce in its traditional pub cuisine. Typical pub prices. Fish and chips cost $17, most main dishes around $22. The Anchor Inn Church St., Hartfield TN7 4AG 011-44-1892-770-424 anchorhartfield.com The Anchor, in the heart of Hartfield village, offers classic pub fare for about $20 for a main course. The Gallipot Inn Gallipot Hill, Hartfield TN7 4AJ 011-44-1892-770-008 the-gallipot-inn.co.uk On the outskirts of Hartfield, this pub with a garden overlooking the Sussex countryside also offers pub fare at reasonable prices, about $22 for a main dish. What to do The Ashdown Forest Center Wych Cross, Forest Row, East Sussex RH18 5JP 011-44-1342-823-583 ashdownforest.org Ashdown Forest offers two Pooh-themed walks, maps of which can be downloaded from the website. You can visit the Forest Center to discover more about the region's landscape, flora and fauna. Chartwell Mapleton Rd., Westerham, Kent TN16 1PS 011-44-1732-868-381 nationaltrust.org.uk/chartwell Family home of Sir Winston Churchill. Adult entry to garden, $11; garden plus house $21. Children entry to garden, about $6; garden plus house $11. Pooh Corner High St., Hartfield, East Sussex TN7 4AE 011-44-1892-770-456 pooh-country.co.uk A toy shop and cafe devoted to Winnie-the-Pooh. Information sussextopattractions.co.uk - S.S. england-pooh See More Collapse

A.A. Milne's first collection of stories about Christopher Robin and his teddy bear was published in the book called "Winnie-the-Pooh" on Oct. 14, 1926, followed by "The House at Pooh Corner" in 1928.

Milne, inspired by his son's imaginative play with his menagerie of stuffed toys, created a world beyond the nursery where Pooh Bear and his friends had a series of adventures.

Artist E.H. Shepard was recruited to illustrate the stories, sparking a lifelong friendship between the two men.

Ashdown Forest is an area of mostly open heathland about 30 miles south of London. Originally a hunting forest dating to Norman times, it was a favored haunt of King Henry VIII, who courted his second wife, Anne Boleyn, at her home at nearby Hever Castle. Today it is managed by a group called the Conservators of Ashdown Forest, an independent body appointed by local authorities.

We began at Pooh car park and ambled down through the woods, which, because of the weather being indecisive and still not yet fully spring, was both "floody" and muddy.

Pale yellow primroses peeped out from among the moss and fallen trees. Masses of bluebell clumps, yet to bloom, hinted at the promise of warmer days to come.

It was school holidays in England, and half a dozen families were on a similar quest to locate "woozles" and "heffalumps." Wellington-clad kids clambered over tree stumps, iPads momentarily cast aside.

"I bet Pooh bear didn't come out on a day like this," grumped a passing walker, who had clearly forgotten the story "in which Piglet is entirely surrounded by water" and has to be rescued by Pooh and Christopher Robin. Water soaks the world of the "100 Aker Wood," as it's labeled on Christopher Robin's map, reflecting England's damp climate. The map describes "Eeyore's gloomy place" as "rather boggy and sad." But every good adventurer knows that "floody places" can be conquered with "big boots" and a Sou'wester hat, in which Shepard often depicted our boy-hero.

And so  Pooh's house proved as elusive as a "woozle," but there was one good contender for Piglet's: a tree with a little fissure at the base, just the right size for "a very small animal." And scattered in the woods were numerous homes for Eeyore fashioned from sticks by visitors old and young.

We drove on to our next location, parking at the very top of Ashdown Forest "Galleons Leap," also known as "Gills Lap." We walked to a clump of tall pine trees that Christopher Robin called "The Enchanted Place," because "nobody had ever been able to count whether it was sixty-three or sixty-four, not even when he tied a piece of string round each tree after he had counted it," explains Milne in "The House at Pooh Corner."

The landscape had changed dramatically, the slight gain in height affecting the topography. Deciduous woods are replaced by moor and clumps of tall Scots pine, which were so beautifully represented by E.H. Shepard in his illustrations.

We followed the path a little further, pausing to admire the view over the valley at the memorial plaque honoring Milne and Shepard, whose partnership created some of the best-loved characters in children's literature.

"The enchanted place" is where Christopher Robin led Pooh and his friends on their expotition to find the North Pole. More hardy explorers can follow a longer trail across Wrens Warren Valley (a.k.a. "Eeyore's sad and gloomy place") toward the Five Hundred Acre Wood (a.k.a. the Hundred Acre Wood). But now our enchanting adventure had come to an end, so Kitty took her uncle's hand and went home for tea.
When the Texas Supreme Court handed down its highly-anticipated verdict in the seventh challenge to the states school financing system since the 1980s, it dealt a blow to the more than 600 school districts acting as plaintiffs in the largest such lawsuit to date.

Nearly two-thirds of the states school districts, with a wide range of economic characteristics, argued that the states current funding formulas dont provide enough resources to meet state education standards and fulfill the constitutional requirement to teach students though an efficient system of public free schools.

The plaintiffs also charged that school districts  even property wealthy districts  now have to rely so heavily on local property taxes that it effectively creates a state property tax, which is constitutionally prohibited.

The court disagreed on both matters in a 9-0 decision, declaring the system constitutional for only the second time.

A court in retreat

In his opinion, Justice Don Willett said although the system was imperfect, it was not imperfectible. But he said such change would have to come from the legislature, which cut education funding by nearly $5.5 billion in 2011, prompting lawsuits from many of the states districts.

I think we have a court in full retreat, said David Thompson, an attorney who represented moderate-wealth districts including Houston ISD, Fort Bend ISD and Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, among others, in the lawsuit. [The courts] dont want to be part of this.

Though some of the funding was later restored, many in education also question the legislatures commitment to providing a well-funded system.

The legislature didnt need permission from the court to fix these problems, said Scott Hochberg, an education finance expert who previously served as a Democratic state representative. I dont see any added pressure.

Indeed, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott praised the court for preserving the status quo.

Todays ruling is a victory for Texas taxpayers and the Texas Constitution, Abbott said in a statement. The Supreme Courts decision ends years of wasteful litigation by correctly recognizing that courts do not have the authority to micromanage the States school finance system. I am grateful for the excellent work of the States lawyers at the Attorney Generals Office, without whom this landmark ruling could not have been achieved.

Since the 2011 cuts, the legislature restored some of the lost funding, increased the basic amount allotted to each student in the funding formulas and added $118 million for new pre-kindergarten programs. But many districts argue the fundamental problems remained.

Low-hanging fruit

The court addressed two major topics raised in the suit: one focusing on equity issues and one involving the notion that the state has essentially created a state property tax.

Under the current school funding system, many districts find themselves having to tax at or near the state-set cap of $1.40 per $100 of home valuation. Some districts have even successfully received local voter approval to exceed that rate. Even property-wealthy districts have had to raise taxes, they say, because the state uses a program called recapture to redistribute some of that tax revenue to less wealthy districts or the state general fund. Thompson thought the evidence that this amounts to a state tax was clear.

I thought the claim was obvious, frankly, he said. The dependence of the system on property taxes, and the way the state is even using school property taxes for non-education things  its really just a source of revenue for the state budget.

In the past, Hochberg said when it was argued that some districts had to impose much higher tax rates than others, thats always been a trigger for the court saying the system is out of constitutional compliance; its not fair to taxpayers and its not educationally fair. But in this ruling, said Hochberg, we have backed away from the requirement for fairness in the way property taxes are assessed.

In many cases, districts feel forced to increase their tax rates. But even when they dont, residents often experience rising tax bills  particularly in the Houston area. Thats because tax bills rise as property values increase, even when the rate itself remains unchanged.

But that increased revenue doesnt always return back to the districts. The state gets the benefit of the property, and the people in the communities dont know it, Thompson said. That money, he said, is really being used by the state to pay for other things, including non-educational things.

When recapture began in the early 1990s, explained Hochberg, it was to deal with a handful of property-wealthy districts like, Highland Park in Dallas, becoming their own districts. It was never intended to be something that hit mainstream districts, he said.

But since then, the list of districts considered property-wealthy  meaning property taxes there bring in more money than what the state provides for each weighted student  grew, adding districts like Houston Independent School District to the list.

Under the recapture system, HISD doesnt do so well, according to the district.

Our school district is facing a huge financial crisis, said Ashlea Graves, the governmental relations director for Houston Independent School District, the largest in the state. Graves said the district is looking at sending the state $165 million in local revenue. She says the district is facing a $100 million deficit as it approaches the next school year, and she blames those recapture payments for the shortfall.

A troubling ruling

Part of the reason recapture hits districts like HISD so hard is the districts high percentage of economically disadvantaged students and English Language Learners, roughly 80 percent and 30 percent of its student population, respectively.

Though funding formulas include weighted amounts for those students, it isnt enough to provide the types of programs educators say are needed to bridge the lingering gaps in standardized test performance.

Graves said changing those weights would require a tough legislative fight. Anything they do next session  it will be very minimal, Graves speculated, offering little optimism that the status quo would change.

Under the states current accountability ratings system, one of the four indices campuses are graded on is their success in closing those gaps between student groups, which is why Thompson found part of Willetts opinion so troubling.

It goes on and on and on about how money doesnt really seem to make a difference, particularly money spent on poor kids, Thompson said.

Indeed, Willett acknowledged the testimony provided by numerous school officials and educators about the programs that could help make a difference in closing gaps. But, he concluded, they did not prove that those gaps could be eliminated or significantly reduced by allocating a greater share of funding to these groups.

He continues his opinion, saying that in order to provide more funding for programs to educate economically disadvantaged students, it would require taking funds away from programs for other students. He suggested any extra resources put towards those programs might result in decreased performance of students who arent disadvantaged.

That belief, Thompson said, is out of line with the states changing demographics. More than 60 percent of public school students are economically disadvantaged, and the number is growing, he said. You get no sense of recognition about how critical an issue that is to the future of the state, Thompson said. Though he noted that other justices concurring opinions differentiated themselves from that of Willett, the 9-0 decision leaves little room for future challenges.

We do not today foreclose completely a ruling of constitutional inadequacy as to subgroups, Willett wrote in his opinion, but conclude that the showing necessary for such a ruling would have to be truly exceptional.

Perfecting the system

That leaves it to the legislators to address funding issues. Eddie Lucio Jr., a Democrat and vice chair of the state senates education committee, said he views the ruling as a clear call for the legislature to fix what remains of a broken system.

I hope when the Legislature meets again, whether next January or in a special session before then, we will consider making needed improvements to the school finance system, including replacing all of the funds lost after the 2011 budget shortfall; increasing the basic allotment; re-examining the weights for English language learners and economically disadvantaged students for the first time in 30 years; and funding the construction of necessary new school buildings, Lucio said in a statement provided by Chris LeSeur, the senators education policy analyst.

Graves, of HISD, is hoping for those changes too. She saw a glimmer of hope last session in a bill put forward by Jimmie Don Aycock, the Republican chair of the state houses education committee. But he subsequently withdrew the bill, saying he knew it had no chance of making it out of the senate.

Youve got a political dynamic that is vastly far to the right, said Graves, and then they dont want to spend any money.

Other techniques

The HISD board is currently considering whether to put the issue of recapture on a local ballot.

If it went before voters and failed, Graves said, the state education commissioner could take portions of downtown Houston  an area with expensive property and few kids  and allot it to another district with higher tax rates.

The technique would be an intriguing maneuver. It would allow HISD to take some tax revenue off its books, which could trigger more state funding flowing from Austin. At the same time, the state would still get Downtowns tax dollars.

But as Graves looks at the numbers, and the potential upset to the businesses and loss of tax revenue, she said it doesnt look like it would help the district in the end  leaving the district in a familiar position.

When you talk about property tax relief, said Graves, how do you do that when the majority of districts rely on property taxes?

Leah Binkovitz (@leahbink), formerly of the Houston Chronicle, is now a staff writer for Rice University's Kinder Institute. This story first appeared in the institute's Urban Edge blog.

Bookmark Gray Matters. It is not "imperfectible."


SAN ANTONIO - City officials are contemplating joining Dallas and Austin in allowing school districts to issue civil citations to drivers who illegally pass stopped school buses while children are entering or exiting.

If it passes this month, school districts could partner with companies that affix surveillance cameras near the articulating stop signs on buses that deploy when children are getting on and off school buses.

"Time is of the essence," wrote council members Alan Warrick and Ray Lopez in a consideration request. "The risk of injury or death to our most precious resource - our children - is far too great to sit idle while other municipalities have successfully proven the ability to increase compliance and thus security and safety around school buses."

The council previously considered the idea in June 2014 but never passed it. There's not been a single injury or fatality associated with drivers illegally passing school buses, which is a violation of state law.

In the past three years, San Antonio police officers have ticketed 418 drivers for the criminal violation. According to the state transportation code, fines for illegally passing school buses run from $500 to $1,250. Those tickets are criminal citations, much like speeding tickets. The legality of civil citations, however, is a bit murky, Deputy City Manager Erik Walsh told the council's Governance Committee.

In Dallas and Austin, drivers face $300 civil citations. Walsh said the companies that partner with the school districts would collect 100 percent of fines until they recoup costs for equipment, and then they would share revenue with the school districts.

In Dallas, drivers can appeal through the city. In Austin, the city isn't involved at all.

Walsh said city staff's recommendation is to follow a path similar to Austin's. The city would pass an enabling ordinance and then the school districts would decide whether to proceed and negotiate their own deals with the companies.

But the city would require that the school districts provide an appeals process for contested tickets and that any revenue fund enhancements to student safety such asadditional crossing guards or crosswalk improvements.

Councilmen Mike Gallagher and Joe Krier said they fully support the idea and want to proceed quickly so school districts could implement the technology by the next school year.

Councilman Ron Nirenberg said he has concerns about handing over ticketing authority to private enterprises.

"School zone safety should be the top priority for public dollars, and there is an inherent conflict in that priority when you mix in a profit motive for a nonpublic entity," he said. "Our goal should be to reduce the revenue coming in from such violations so that we're actually improving safety, whereas the goal for the company would be to keep churning in these violators."
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With an estimated 1,000 residents already evacuated, Fort Bend County braced on Memorial Day for floodwater to continue rising along the Brazos River, likely flooding neighborhoods along its path for several more days.

The river reached a record level of more than 50 feet Monday in Richmond - about 30 miles southwest of Houston - and was projected to crest at 53.5 feet on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, north of the city a voluntary evacuation of a Spring neighborhood in northern Harris County was lifted,and streets in flooded areas such as Humble and Kingwood were expected to become passable by vehicle on Tuesday.

Down south, just outside Richmond city limits, it was a bleak holiday. Floodwater lapped around Anice Divin's knee-high rain boots as she waded into overflow from the Brazos that was slowly closing in on her home.

Divin's street has taken on water in past storms, she said, but this was the first flood in 49 years to bring the river up to her home's brick exterior. Firefighters told Divin, 71, that the water likely would reach her windowsills.

"I ain't going nowhere," Divin said. "I'm not going to leave my junk."

The statewide death toll from flooding over the long holiday weekend rose to seven, after a 16-year-old died in Brenham on Monday after being struck by a falling tree limb during storm recovery efforts.

The teen, whom Brenham police declined to identify, was part of a church youth group cleaning up yard debris from last week's rainstorm when a large pine branch, snagged on wires, fell on him. His was one of five flood-related deaths in Washington County, some 80 miles northwest of Houston. The National Weather Service recorded almost 17 inches of rain last Thursday in Brenham, snapping a previous one-day record of 10.38 inches in 1994.

By the weekend, water flowing down the Brazos from that hard-hit region caused flooding in Fort Bend County, which received less than four inches of rain last Thursday and Friday.

An eye downriver

Beth Wolf of the Fort Bend County Office of Emergency Management projected that water would continue rising through Tuesday, when the Brazos River is set to peak more than three feet above its 1994 record.

"There's some question about how long it will take to run off," Wolf said; she was unsure how many homes countywide were flooded as of the holiday. "Everything's very wet, and it may take a while to go back down."

Officials ordered residents in portions of Richmond in Fort Bend to evacuate Monday afternoon as floodwater seeped across more city streets. Evacuations in Simonton, Rosenberg and Missouri City already were in place.

Many of the homes threatened in the Richmond area are located either in the floodway, the zone most at risk for flooding, or further out in the "100-year" floodplain - deemed to have a 1 percent chance of flooding in any given year.

Resident Jim Klentzman said his home was eight inches out of the floodway when he bought it in 1989, but it has since been redesignated, making flood insurance cost-prohibitive.

Klentzman, who lives across Strange Drive from Divin, was hoping the water would remain in his yard. Neighbor Donna Walleck, 55, was preparing for the long haul, too.

"Hey, are you making Whataburger runs?" she shouted to Klentzman as he floated down the street in his skiff. Several homes already appeared waterlogged.

Some 20 miles north of Richmond, in the town of Simonton, most of the 800 residents on property near the bulging Brazos had been evacuated by mid-afternoon, many with the help of airboats, high-water vehicles and dump trucks.

The higher ground near City Hall was dry, but longtime inhabitants were nervous.

"The only thing that's saving us is it's not raining," said Stephen Johnson, 42, who has lived in this region of Fort Bend County all of his life. "Back in 1994, it rained for three or four days and the water was almost to the grocery store" a block away.

Johnson repeated a refrain expressed by many in this flood-ravaged area. "I hope the water will go ahead and start receding, but it's not looking good, because they are talking about it raining more during the week," he said.

Stephen Sear, coordinator of emergency operations for Simonton, feared the worst for those living downstream.

"I'm worried that Richmond, Rosenberg, Sugar Land, Rosharon and other communities downriver don't know what's coming," Sear said. "They say they are prepared and they have prepared for it as much as they can, but not for what is still on the way."

'Fearing the worst'

Glenn Lamont, deputy emergency management coordinator for coastal Brazoria County, expected the county to close additional roads Monday night andearly Tuesday morning, at which point he projected homes in the Rosharon area would take on water.

Lamont estimated 300 to 500 Brazoria County houses would flood from the rising Brazos, which flows into the Gulf of Mexico, compared with 200 during last year's Memorial Day flood. The Brazos is set to crest in Rosharon on Thursday. As a precaution, about 2,600 inmates from two prisons in Rosharon were evacuated on Sunday to nearby facilities because ofthe rising river level.

Harris County officials tallied 48 flooded homes in the northern reaches of the county Monday, said Francisco Sanchez, spokesman for the Harris County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. They planned to continue counting on Tuesday. Tomball, Humble and Kingwood were among the northern neighborhoods that flooded during last week's storms. The city of Houston was spared, with virtually no Memorial Day rainfall.

Major flooding along the San Jacinto River Basin northeast of the city was projected to continue through midweek, though the majority of Spring Creek was back within its banks, according to the Harris County Flood Control District.

Accordingly, authorities on Monday lifted the voluntary evacuation order issued Saturday for Spring's Northwood Pines subdivision, where the creek did not end up breaching its levee.

"We were fearing the worst," resident Sharadha Jani, 28, said. "It could have been very bad."

James Pinkerton, Kyrie O'Connor and Dylan Baddour contributed to this report.
SAN ANTONIO - Mail theft is on the rise in San Antonio, with crooks using crowbars or other tools to pry open cluster mailboxes at apartments and neighborhoods - sometimes pulling them out of the ground altogether.

"We have seen an increase around the city of San Antonio, usually around the holidays and near tax season and combined with May because people mail gift cards for graduation," said Michael Martinez-Partida, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, adding that there aren't exact figures to illustrate the recent uptick.

On the Northeast Side alone, in and near the Royal Ridge neighborhood, someone broke into seven cluster mailboxes - the aluminum mailboxes that serve newer subdivisions - in a single stormy night in mid-May, according to authorities and area residents. "That's hell when you can't even have mail without someone trying to steal it," said Jim Patton, who keeps watch as part of the civilian Royal Ridge Security Patrol.

Sometimes, there are arrests. Court records show prosecutors filed 52 cases since 2000 against people charged with stolen mail crimes, with three indicted since January of this year. That doesn't take into account cases where drug charges, or other counts, are filed instead of mail-theft charges because they carry higher penalties.

A single suspect can account for vast amounts of pilfered mail. In 2014, for instance, Linda Mae Ortiz, 40, who has a history of drug charges, was arrested outside the Merry Oaks Apartments on the Southwest Side with more than 2,500 pieces of stolen mail in a stolen car, court records show. She was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

Police often find mail thieves when they get reports of meth labs or other suspicious activity at area motels and officers checking the rooms find mail scattered with drug paraphernalia.

"The two usually go hand in hand," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Sam Ponder, noting crooks often go after mail for checks, credit cards and other things they can use for money to help feed their drug habits.

In January, Boerne police arrested James Joseph Taylor Jr., 42, after he and two accomplices were reportedly seen breaking into cars at a Toyota dealership. The ensuing investigation led authorities to suspect that Taylor has been stealing mail for years.

Stolen keys

Postal inspectors were already looking into an incident in which a man resembling Taylor was seen on video Aug. 22, 2015, taking mail from the Savannah Oak Apartments. The man used a key to access the mailboxes, court records said. When Taylor was arrested in January in Boerne, investigators found a briefcase in his truck that contained stolen mail and two Postal Service keys that had been reported missing in 1994.

Taylor's father, now retired, used to work there from 1990 to 200, court records said. One key opened apartment mailboxes and neighborhood cluster mailboxes. The second key opened padlocks used on blue stand-alone mailboxes.

"The keys accessed any mailbox in San Antonio," Ponder said.

Back in custody

Taylor charges included two federal counts of illegal possession of a Postal Service key, each charge punishable by up to 10 years in prison, and three counts of possession of stolen mail, each count carrying a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

After being let out on bail Feb. 12, Taylor tested positive for methamphetamines and his bond was revoked in March, records show. He is now back in federal custody awaiting trial in July. He has pleaded not guilty.
DOMINIQUE FAGET/Staff

JOHANNESBURG - A court in Senegal sentenced former Chadian President Hissene Habre to life in prison after finding him guilty of crimes against humanity and torture committed during his eight-year rule.

The Extraordinary African Chambers, an court operating under an African Union mandate, made the announcement Monday in Senegal's capital, Dakar. Habre, 73, had spent more than two decades in exile in the West African nation before his arrest in 2013. He was found not guilty of war crimes.
Donald Trump, finally, on Monday made public a list of the $5.6 million in charitable donations to veterans group he gave or raised during an Iowa speech in January. He also took the opportunity -- at a press conference at Trump Tower (of course) -- to lambaste the press for pushing him to be accountable on these donations.

"The political press is among the most dishonest I have ever met," said Trump. He added that he wasn't interested in getting attention for his donations but the press forced his hand -- a process that revealed the media's fundamental corruptness.

Wrong.

The simple facts are these:

1. Trump said, on the night of the event, that he had raised $6 million for veterans groups. This from a CNN report of the speech:

He did it Thursday night, dazzling a crowd of hundreds of enthusiastic supporters by announcing that he had raised more than $6 million for veterans in one day -- $1 million of it from his own checkbook. "We love our vets," he said.

2. Trump made the $1 million personal donation to veterans groups a week ago and only after The Washington Post's David Fahrenthold did a deep dive into where the promised money went. That was four months after the speech/fundraiser where Trump trumpeted that he had donated the money.

What you saw Tuesday morning at Trump Tower was the press at its best, not at its worst as Trump said over and over again.

Here's why: Donald Trump is the Republican presidential nominee. He is one of two people -- sorry Gary Johnson! -- who might be the next president of the United States. Given that, Trump has to be held accountable for the things he has done and the things he has said -- both in this campaign and in the past.

If he said he raised/donated $6 million to charity for veterans group -- the support of which he has put at the center of his campaign -- then the media's job, LITERALLY OUR JOB, is to find out who he gave to and how much. Simply taking Trump at his word -- "I'm accountable," he insisted Monday -- isn't good enough.

Ask yourself this: Would you be okay with Hillary Clinton being allowed to skate with her "trust me I did the right thing" explanation (I am paraphrasing) on her email server? Would you be okay with the media simply taking her word for it that all of the emails she deleted and didn't turn over to the State Department were totally personal in nature? Or that the sole reason she set up the server was for "convenience" sake?

No, you wouldn't.

Donald Trump -- or you -- don't have to like the media. That's fine. But, I would caution you that casting aspersions on the media for asking questions of one of the two people who will be the leader of the free world is a dangerous game.

Accountability isn't a partisan issue. Never has been. Never will be.
Nonprofit organizations that advocate for mothers and children are urging U.S. legislators to address infant mortality in poor countries through the Reach Every Mother and Child Act. That bill merits wide public support but should prompt a renewed focus on our own situation in the United States.

Each year an estimated 5.9 million children still die of mainly preventable and treatable causes before they reach their 5th birthday, according to UNICEF. Add to that 289,000 women die from pregnancy-related causes each year. The majority of these deaths occur in underdeveloped countries.

Expecting legislators, no matter their political stripe, to support a measure to improve infant mortality wherever it surfaces is reasonable and morally right. And the Reach Act is the measure. Introduced in the U.S. Senate last year, it is a comprehensive bill focused on helping pregnant mothers and their children in poor countries. It has won bipartisan support. Texas representatives, both Democratic and Republican, have signed on as cosponsors.

As pointed out on these pages by David Schubert, a Houstonian and member of the nonprofit RESULTS, the act directs the U.S. Agency for International Development to focus its resources on a preventable, low-cost program that save lives. It's needed desperately. For example, children in sub-Saharan Africa are more than 14 times more likely to die before the age of 5 than children in developed regions. The bill has been referred to committee and is awaiting action. It is a bill that deserves to become a law.

While Congress is considering the measure, we urge them to do more to address the frightful and embarrassing infant mortality rate in the United States. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 582.1 infant deaths per 100,000 live births in the United States in 2014. Although the rate reflects a 2.3 percent decline over 2013, it is still more than double that of other industrialized nations such as Finland, Iceland and Norway and exceeds rates in other developed countries.

Also, huge disparities exist among the states: 4.4 deaths per 1,000 live births in Massachusetts versus 8.7 deaths per 1,000 in Alabama, according to the CDC. Texas is average with 5.8 deaths per 1,000 live births. And, according to the 2015-2016 State of Health for Houston and Harris County, the county has six infant deaths per 1,000 live births, with African-Americans recording the highest rate of infant mortality among all races with 12 deaths per 1,000 live births.

We are the wealthiest nation in the world. We record health care spending that is higher than any other nation. There is no excuse for such a dismal infant mortality rate. We need to do better.
Donald Trump wants to win New York. Hillary Clinton wants to win Texas.

Even in a political year as topsy-turvy as 2016, both of these things seem increasingly unlikely, considering the built-in advantages Republicans have here and Democrats have in New York. This wont be the year that the Empire State or our own state become general election battlegrounds, but it has not stopped both campaigns from at least publicly dreaming about it.

In a New York magazine story, published last weekend, Hillary Clinton was asked about her willingness this year to spend time in states that are not exactly hospitable to Democrats running for president. For example, the last time a Democrat won Kentucky was in 1996, when Bill Clinton won the state by a razor-thin margin of 45.8 percent to Republican Bob Doles 44.9 percent.

Texas! Clinton told the reporter when asked which traditionally red states might be in play with Trump as the GOP standard bearer. If black and Latino voters come out and vote, we could win Texas.

The New York reporter, Rebecca Traister, pushed back on Clintons assertion, but the former secretary of state was undaunted, Traister wrote.

Thats not to say its impossible  lets talk again in 2020 or 2024  but enough Latino and black voters are not going to show up in November to upend the last 20 or so years in Texas. It will take much more than a Clinton v. Trump general election to do that, as much as a once-in-a-generation contest it will be.

Clintons diagnosis is as predictable as her campaign of late. How many generations of Texas Democrats have said the same thing? That is not a strategy as much as it is a bumper sticker slogan. Time will tell how much time Clinton spends in Texas to do more than raise money and then leave. She was here this month to raise an estimated $1.2 million at fundraisers, but there were no reported public campaign stops.

Clinton has had one win in Texas so far, though. The states top Republicans have used her candidacy to rally their base to donate money to right-wing groups and to unite behind Trump as the GOP nominee, if only to deny Clinton a victory in Texas. Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick drew doomsday scenarios during their speeches to delegates at this months Republican Party of Texas convention, warning the party faithful that theyll be shut out of the White House for the foreseeable future if Democrats take Texas in a presidential election.

That is true, but it is also predictable election year talk. The same is true about Clintons assertion.

Six months out, here is the best course for Texas Democrats this year: whatever leverage theyll have with Trump at the top of the Republican ticket  and there is plenty  they should use it to improve their standing in Austin. Quorum Reports Scott Braddock pointed out some Texas House races in particular where the Republican incumbent could be in danger if Democrats play Republicans against themselves.

GOP-led redistricting that has made it an uphill climb for Democrats to win majorities in the Legislature may have met its match in the Year of Trump  but only if Democrats can put up a fight where it matters. That is not statewide yet.
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The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued the final version of the much-anticipated new Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) regulations regarding the salary threshold for exempt employees. The following provides employers with insight into how to understand, and ultimately apply, the new regulations, which will affect employers of all sizes in all industries across the country. History of the New Overtime Regulations The FLSA provides an exemption from the overtime pay requirement for workers employed as executive, administrative, and professional employees (exempt white-collar employees). The FLSA also exempts from overtime pay for highly compensated employees (HCEs). To be exempt, an employee must meet three criteria: (a) the employee must be paid on a predetermined salary basis (i.e., the employees predetermined salary cannot be reduced because of variations in the quality or quantity of work performed); (b) the employees salary must meet a minimum salary threshold (currently $455 per week; i.e., $23,660 per year); and (c) the employee must meet the duties test of the applicable exemption (i.e., the employee must perform certain white-collar job duties). On March 13, 2014, President Barack Obama signed a memorandum directing the DOL to update the FLSAs overtime regulations governing exempt white-collar employees. On July 6, 2015, the DOL announced the much-anticipated proposed regulations, which, among other...
tinational electronics company, Foxconn has replaced 60,000 employees with robots in a factory near Shanghai in Kunshan, China.The Foxconn factory has reduced its employee strength from 110,000 to 50,000, thanks to the introduction of robots. It has tasted success in reduction of labour costs, Xu Yulian, head of the Kunshan governments publicity department, told South China Morning Post.More companies are likely to follow suit, he added.Foxconn is Apples biggest supplier with devices such as the iPhone and iPad manufactured there. While headquartered in Taiwan, the firm presently operates 12 factories around China.When contacted by the BBC, Foxconn denied that the automation of these manufacturing tasks would result in long-term job losses.We are applying robotics engineering and other innovative manufacturing technologies to replace repetitive tasks previously done by employees, and through training, also enable our employees to focus on higher value-added elements in the manufacturing process, such as research and development, process control and quality control, a spokesperson said."We will continue to harness automation and manpower in our manufacturing operations, and we expect to maintain our significant workforce in China.Elsewhere around the country, moves have also been made towards an automated workforce.Since September 2014, 505 factories in Guangdong province have invested 4.2 billion yuan (S$880 million) in robots with the aim to replace thousands of employees.
i employers are being warned not to ignore employee review sites after a recent survey revealed the vast majority of New Zealand job seekers let online comments influence their decision.The study of 630 New Zealand-based job hunters found that more than 80 per cent could be swayed by reviews left by former and current employees."In mere minutes a candidate can learn a lot about what it's really like to work for an organisation, which allows them to make a far more informed decision about whether they want to apply for a job there," said Hays New Zealand managing director Jason Walker He added that the study also proves times have changed for employers  rather than the organisation controlling the message about what its like to work for them, current and former employees now do.You want to make sure they leave with a smile on their face and a willingness to talk positively about their employment experience at your organisation," he stressed.The rise on online employee review sites puts employers in a difficult position, with many facing the wrath of disgruntled former workers. Sadly, leading employment lawyer Peter Cullen said past employees should have no legal concerns about posting anonymous reviews  as long as they dont defame a staff member or say something that causes damages to the company.He did, however, reveal that employers have more power when it came to current employees leaving online comments."If you surreptitiously slate your boss you're breaching your obligations," Cullen told Stuff, adding that employees have an obligation of fidelity and good faith and are required to behave in a way that promotes trust and confidence.According to Cullen, even leaving a positive review could be a risky move for existing employees unless it had been discussed with the employer first.
Harambe the gorilla was not trying to protect a child who slipped into the animal's enclosure, a zoo expert said, offering several reasons for the animal's "aggressive" behaviour.

A four-year-old boy was injured after he crawled through a barrier and fell into the gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo on Saturday. The boy was dragged around the enclosure by Harambe, a 400-pound silverback, until zookeepers shot Harambe with a rifle in order to remove the child.

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Video footage also shows the 17-year-old Harambe standing over the boy, and at one point, the two touch hands.

Greg Tarry, associate director of Canada's Accredited Zoos and Aquariums (CAZA), said he was positive Harambe was being aggressive towards the child, not protective, as several commenters online have claimed.

"He was jerking that child around like a rag doll."

"When you watch a gorilla handle young gorillas, they actually can be very gentle," Tarry said in an interview with The Huffington Post Canada. "Even when it was standing over the child in the water, that's generally kind of a dominance thing."

"He was jerking that child around like a rag doll," he also said.

When asked in a news conference Monday whether he thought Harambe was protecting the child, Cincinnati Zoo director Thayne Maynard said no, the gorilla was clearly agitated.

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Cincinnati Zoo director Thayne Maynard said Harambe the gorilla was aggressive, not protective, toward the child who slipped into the animal's enclosure. (Photo: Reuters)

Tarry, who has worked hands-on with animals, including gorillas, in the past, suggested that a number of factors contributed to Harambe's behaviour.

"It was a totally abnormal event in the life of this gorilla," he said. Harambe would have never dealt with a situation like this before, and Tarry said the fact that the person in danger was a child made it even more confusing.

In the video, the child is screaming and he tries to get away from Harambe. This behaviour is not something that the gorilla would have encountered previously, according to Tarry.

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"If the child had been knocked unconscious, and hadnt made a sound after he fell in the enclosure, things would have turned out differently," he explained.

"It was a totally abnormal event in the life of this gorilla."

"If that had been an adult, and the adult had sense enough to roll himself into a ball and shut up, its likely that the gorilla might have swiped at him once or twice, and maybe even bitten him once, but would probably have left him alone."

Tarry also stated that the onlookers' reactions would have agitated Harambe. They can be heard screaming in the video, and Tarry said he would imagine that people may have been throwing things to try and distract the gorilla.

Captivity not a factor: Tarry

Living in captivity, however, is most likely not a contributing factor, Tarry said. He explained that gorillas act virtually the same in the wild. When they encounter another troupe of gorillas, or a group of people, the males tend to charge around similar to the way Harambe was when he was dragging the child around.

Many are criticizing the zoos decision to kill the gorilla, saying that they could have tranquilized it rather than shooting it with a rifle. The Cincinnati Zoo explained on Facebook that tranquilizers don't take effect fast enough and that the child was in imminent danger.

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Tarry agreed, saying that the behaviour Harambe was exhibiting at the time would have continued and possibly gotten worse. He also explained that if the tranquilizer accidentally hit the child, it would have killed him.

He said that the Cincinnati Zoo made the best decision and that they had no other option but to shoot Harambe. He said the child would have been killed otherwise.

Flowers were laid around a statue of a gorilla as a memorial for Harambe.

In a press release, the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said that holding primates captive is "never acceptable" and that in cases like this it can be deadly.

This is not the first time that someone has been injured after falling into an animal enclosure. In 2014, a young man was attacked and killed by a tiger after climbing into an enclosure at the Delhi Zoo.

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One witness told The Indian Express that the tiger only attacked after onlookers pelted it with stones. The zookeepers did not tranquilize the animal, stating that tranquilizing an agitated tiger is complicated, and was not practical in this situation.
OTTAWA  The Liberal government continued to argue Monday that it doesnt need to hold a referendum  or even get any other political party on side  in order to obtain broad public support for a new electoral system.

How do we get a broad buy-in if we do not actually consult broadly? Conservative democratic institutions critic Scott Reid asked, appearing genuinely perplexed. How do we do this without having a referendum?

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Over the weekend, Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef told The Toronto Star that the government will not proceed with any changes to the electoral map without the publics broad buy-in.

Canadians can rest assured that unless we have their broad buy-in, were not moving forward with any changes, she told the newspaper.

Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef responds to a question in the House of Commons, May 11, 2016. (Photo: Sean Kilpatrick/CP)

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What that means, she told the Star, is that there needs to be a conversation in the House of Commons including all parties.

Conversations but not approval  it seems.

Monsef skipped question period Monday  although she showed up for votes later in the day. Her office said she was attending to personal matters. So it was left to her parliamentary secretary, Mark Holland, to swat away the oppositions unceasing questions.

NDP democratic reform critic Nathan Cullen said Monsef was damaging the credibility of the Liberals process through her platitudes and vague answers to straightforward questions.

He wanted to know if the Liberals were actually willing to go it alone and unilaterally change our voting system, or will they require the support of at least one recognized party in the House?"

Holland offered unspecificity.

Each and every MP will be allowed to give input, he said. Each and every one of us has a responsibility to engage our constituents and Canadians, on a pan-Canadian basis, to make sure their voices are heard.

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We have a good idea for the broad support. Have a referendum.  Conservative deputy Leader Denis Lebel

The Conservatives suggest both privately and publicly that the government is rigging the process  through a parliamentary committee stacked with a majority of Grit MPs  to ensure Liberal majorities in perpetuity. They argue a referendum is the only way change should happen.

Truth be told, many Tories also believe the current first-past-the-post system is likely the most advantageous for their party.

We have a good idea for the broad support, Conservative deputy Leader Denis Lebel said in the Commons. Have a referendum.

Quebec Tory Alain Rayes said three-quarters of Canadians  73 per cent according to a recent Ipsos online survey of 1,005 Canadians  want a referendum.

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Would the democratic institutions minister, and her government, finally listen to them? he asked.

The Conservatives had not consulted the public at all when they introduced  and passed  their controversial Fair Elections Act, Holland said, turning the tables on them.

The Liberals want to do things differently, he said.

Would the democratic institutions minister, and her government, finally listen to [Canadians]?  Tory MP Alain Rayes

A digital portal will be set up soon to let Canadians have their voices heard, he said, promising a dynamic conversation.

We are absolutely committed to ensuring that the support of Canadians is behind the proposals we bring forward, he said.

More than 60 per cent of Canadians had voted on Oct. 19 for political parties that support changing the electoral system, he noted, referring to the Greens and the NDP as well as the Liberals.

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The Tories should start proposing options for change rather than continuing to demand a referendum, he suggested.

Join us in the process, he urged Alberta Conservative Blake Richards. Right now, I do not even know what the member would want a [referendum] question on.

The Liberals, he said, do not know where this process is going to conclude.

The Tories continued to insist that nothing but a referendum could meet the threshold of broad consensus needed for such a major change.

Conservative MP Andrew Scheer makes a hashtag sign as he rises during Question Period, May 30, 2016. (Photo: Adrian Wyld/CP)

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Mocking the ministers past reference to Twitter impressions as an indication of public support, Saskatchewan Conservative MP Andrew Scheer decried the Liberals approach as #logical.

Their motion gives Liberals on the committee total control of the process to fundamentally change the way Canadians vote, he said, #thatseemsfair.

We know the Liberals do not respect Parliament, and now we can see that they do not respect Canadians either. #arrogance #outoftouch #disrespect, he said.

Holland suggested that there are ways besides Twitter  such as town halls  to encourage conversations.

A motion setting up the committee that will study viable alternative voting systems such as proportional representation and preferential ballots also invites all MPs to conduct a town hall with their constituents and to report back before October.

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Ottawa-area MP Karen McCrimmon, the parliamentary secretary to the veterans affairs minister, told The Huffington Post Canada that she already held a town hall on April 26 and shared her report with Monsefs office.

We know the Liberals do not respect Parliament, and now we can see that they do not respect Canadians either."  Tory MP Andrew Scheer

One hundred and twenty five people showed up, she said, 30 per cent more than usually attend one of her events.

It was a fabulous discussion. We had one person  even before we started the town hall, the first question  he stood up and said: I dont think anythings wrong with our electoral system, so I dont know why we are bothering.

He sat down and I said, OK. Who here thinks we need to modernize our electoral system? Well, every other hand in the house went up, she recounted, laughing. So, I said: Im sorry, it looks like the room has a different opinion.

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McCrimmon asked residents what principles they wanted any new system to represent. She provided a list as a starting point and asked them to prioritize.

At the top of their ranking, she said, her constituents wanted any reform to decrease the cost of election spending. The last election, she noted, had double the cost of electoral spending limits in each riding as well as on the national campaigns.

It came up over and over again  we were spending too much on elections, she said.

New system should emulate other modern countries: MP

The second priority , she said they wanted to see, is a system that encourages and rewards co-operation and collaboration.

When I talk to people I say,So you like first-past-the-post? Well, all you need to do is look south of the border. That is ultimately where it will end up. Its kind of like a horror story happening down there right now, she said, pointing to the polarization of U.S. politics.

I really think that some system of voting  we spend more time going left and right, than we do going forward.

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She said Canada should be emulating countries such as Germany, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, which are doing really well economically, really well on the jobs front, really well on the social justice front.

They have these modernized electoral systems, McCrimmon said. I think there is potential there.

These were the results of McCrimmons consultation, as described in her local paper, Nepean Barrhaven EMC.

Decrease election spending: 71 check marks

A system that encourages and rewards co-operation and collaboration: 65

Direct representation  one MP to one riding [as opposed to large ridings with several MPs]: 57

An element of proportional representation by political party common vote: 51

Easy to understand and quick results: 51

Provide independent candidates an opportunity to earn a seat: 50

Include an element of direct democracy: recall/plebiscite/citizen-generated motions: 49

Reduce the power of political parties: 47

A system that has a higher chance of creating coalition governments: 41

A system that has a higher chance of creating majority governments: 22

Regional representation  multiple MPs to a region: 17

Increase the power of political parties: 8

An element of proportional representation by sex: 8

Increase election spending: 0

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Maryam Monsef, Democratic Institutions Minister See Gallery
OTTAWA  Canada's ambassador to Washington was appointed as a cushy reward so he could lobby for his former clients, claimed outspoken Conservative MP Cheryl Gallant Monday in remarks the Liberal government said amounted to character assassination.

Gallant, the longtime MP for RenfrewNipissing Pembroke, told the Commons the appointment of David MacNaughton was simply outrageous. He is the former chairman of the Toronto government relations firm StrategyCorp and a former principal secretary to Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty.

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"This is one at the same level as appointing a family member, like a nephew, to such a position. It is who one knows in the PMO for the government," she said.

Conservative MP Cheryl Gallant rises in the House of Commons in April in Ottawa. (Photo: Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

"His appointment at taxpayer expense is his reward for having sat in the same office as the prime minister's principal secretary, the individual who controls everything the prime minister says and does," Gallant said, referring to Gerald Butts, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's best friend and trusted advisor.

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Butts worked for MacNaughton in McGuinty's office  later replacing him as the principal secretary to the Ontario premier. MacNaughton was also the one-time boss of Trudeau's chief of staff, Katie Telford, who worked at StrategyCorp prior to becoming the Liberals' campaign co-chair for the 2015 election.

Gallant went on to suggest that MacNaughton was the "prime minister's bully" and was given the job to line his own pockets. She referenced how he was named in a $1.5 million lawsuit by a disgruntled ex-Liberal candidate.

"Is this the way the Liberal Party is getting the taxpayer to pay MacNaughton's legal bill?" Gallant asked. "Give him a cushy job in Washington where he can lobby for his lobbying clients and add to his clientele list."

'Character assassination'

Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux, the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader, suggested it was a good thing Gallant was standing inside the chamber  where parliamentary privilege protects her from slander lawsuits  rather than outside of it.

"Wow, what a job on character assassination."

MacNaughton's appointment was subject to the appropriate controls of the ethics commissioner, he said, and the ambassador had ensured all of his previous business arrangements were, and continue to be, in compliance.

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Toronto International Film Festival board member Leslie Noble and David MacNaughton attend a cocktail party in 2007. (Photo: Getty Images)

Lamoureux noted that MacNaughton, who is well regarded in government and business circles, had a wide breadth of experience both in working with Liberals as well as Conservatives, and with governments abroad, including at federal and state levels in the United States.

"Ambassador MacNaughton brings with him an expertise that will provide the Canadian public, businesses and governments at every level a deep understanding of the various systems and leaders that will help Canada champion its interests in a renewed spirit of co-operation and promotion of every aspect of that relationship," Lamoureux said.

"His resume speaks for itself. He has worked with various industries, sectors of our economy, key stakeholders, public and private alike, and countless governments from coast to coast to coast. He will do a fantastic job representing our business and stakeholder interests abroad."

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"Anyone whose name is linked directly or indirectly to former premier McGuinty should be disqualified for life from holding any government position."  Tory MP Cheryl Gallant

The Trudeau government is focused on improving the Canada-U.S. relationship and MacNaughton will play a key role in strengthening that partnership, Lamoureux suggested.

Ex-U.S. ambassador Derek Burney, a former chief of staff to Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney, told the Ottawa Citizen earlier this year that MacNaughton had the most vital ingredient for any diplomat in Washington: access, through close connections to Trudeau's inner circle.

"His asset in Washington and in Ottawa will be the fact that he is known to have the prime minister's confidence and to have the ability to get to the prime minister without going through a lot of filters. It will strengthen his capacity to get the job done," Burney is quoted saying.

But Gallant would have none of it.

Unlike prime minister Stephen Harper, who had appointed an NDP premier to Washington  Manitoba's Gary Doer  Trudeau had made a "sordid," "unethical" political appointment, she said.

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Former prime Minister Stephen Harper meets with then-ambassador to the United States Gary Doer on Parliament Hil in Ottawa, on Friday August 28, 2009. (Photo: Adrian Wyld/CP)

"Cronyism is at its finest in the Liberal tradition," she said.

Gallant was particularly incensed that MacNaughton, someone with ties to the McGuinty Liberals, would be given a reward.

"MacNaughton is cursed by the taxpayers of Ontario for his time spent as principal secretary to Dalton McGuinty," she said, blaming him for Ontario's high electricity rates and large debt.

"Anyone whose name is linked directly or indirectly to former premier McGuinty should be disqualified for life from holding any government position."

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She then went on to read comments from readers on a Postmedia story about the appointment, such as: "Way to go junior you've shown us that you really are ready to pork-barrel as well as anyone."

Lamoureux said it was "amazing" that Gallant felt she could come into the chamber and besmirch the character of an individual who had done so much serving his province and the country.

"The manner in which the member has brought forward issues, which are so beyond what is good parliamentary decorum, is completely uncalled for," he said. "There is no foundation in truth or merit to her arguments. I highly recommend that the member do a little more homework and look at what this individual has done for our country."

Cameron Ahmad, Trudeau's press secretary, told The Huffington Post Canada via email that the prime minister was "proud to appoint Mr. MacNaughton as Ambassador to the United States last fall, and is confident that he will continue to strengthen the Canada-US relationship moving forward."

ALSO ON HUFFPOST:
A Muslim student in Ottawa says she is "deeply appreciative" of a bus driver who stood up to a passenger spewing hateful remarks.

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In a post on Muslim Link, an online newspaper based in the capital, Hailey DeJong describes the incident on a recent trip on an OC Transpo bus. The 20-year-old, who began wearing a niqab in October 2015, was on her way to shop at the Rideau Centre mall.

DeJong said she heard a man on the bus talking about her to other passengers. "She could be a bank robber or something and we don't even know!" she noted him saying.

'I was angry'

Despite other passengers telling him to get off the bus, the man wouldn't stop. He referred to DeJong as a "freak" and a "terrorist."

"I was angry, but you can't respond to hate with more hate, so I tried to keep it cool and just to explain to him," she told CBC News.

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Then she heard a "booming voice" from the front of the bus.

Enter Alain Charette.

"You are either part of the problem or on the side of the solution."

"Hey! If you've got a problem with her, then you've got a problem with me!" the bus driver told the man, according to DeJong.

The man then tried to remedy the situation, saying he loved Muslims, Christians and Jews. He left the bus after Charette told him he had called the cops.

"It's very easy to be a bystander in situations like this, particularly as a bus driver, but the bus driver I want to thank responded quickly and professionally to the situation at hand," DeJong wrote. "He deserves to be recognized for his courage."

'Sitting idle is not an option'

Charette wrote on Facebook that he was "overwhelmed" by the attention the story has brought him. His employer said that "kudos" were sent to his supervisor.

Operator has been identified & kudos sent to his supervisor! @Muslim_Linkhttps://t.co/UYg7fbGeok  OC Transpo (@OC_Transpo) May 30, 2016

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"Bigotry hurt everyone by lowering the humanity level of society. Sitting idle is not an option," Charette wrote. "You are either part of the problem or on the side of the solution."

Charette and DeJong took a selfie after the incident, as she "wanted to raise awareness that these things happen."

She told CBC News what Charette did was "super courageous and I can't thank him enough," and hopes to meet him again soon.

Also On HuffPost:
Few of us think about what we're wearing when we board a flight, which is why one woman's experience is so surprising.

A Seattle burlesque performer said she was asked to change out of her shorts before boarding a plane home from Boston because they were deemed inappropriate.

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Maggie McMuffin told WTHR that before she was about to board the May 18 JetBlue flight, an employee approached her, saying the black-and-white striped shorts were too short and she needed to change.

"It's obviously subjective," she said of the airline's opinion of her outfit, noting that she wore the shorts on a JetBlue flight from New York to Boston the same day without issue.

She told the staff she didn't have anything else to change into, so they suggested she buy something at the airport.

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The other option was to be booked on another flight, she told Kiro 7.

She ended up spending $22 USD on some sleep trunks and took her scheduled flight.

In a statement to Kiro 7, JetBlue said that the flight and on-board crew discussed McMuffin's getup and decided that her "burlesque" shorts might offend families on the plane.

"While the customer was not denied boarding, the crew members politely asked if she could change. The customer agreed and continued on the flight without interruption," they said.

"We support our crew members discretion to make these difficult decisions, and we decided to reimburse the customer for the cost of the new shorts and offered a credit for future flight as a good will gesture.

"Sexism is alive and well in this world. How does what Maggie was wearing effect her ability to fly? It doesn't."

When the outlet asked if McMuffin would have been allowed on board if she refused to change, a spokesman said they couldn't address a hypothetical situation.

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In a Facebook post defending the performer, friend Molly McIsaac expressed her anger at JetBlue's actions.

"Sexism is alive and well in this world. How does what Maggie was wearing effect (sic) her ability to fly? It doesn't."

What do you think? Were her shorts inappropriate? Let us know in the comments below.

Also on HuffPost
A Conservative leadership candidate says he can no longer reconcile his support for free-market principles with Canada's system of supply management for the dairy and poultry industry.

And so veteran Quebec Tory Maxime Bernier has formally come out against what he calls a "government cartel," and is urging fellow Conservatives not to run away from the debate.

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Conservative leadership candidate Maxime Bernier speaks during a news conference in Ottawa on Tuesday. (Photo: Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

Supply management was introduced for the dairy industry in the 1960s and for poultry and egg producers in the early 1970s as a means of shielding Canadian farmers from unstable market fluctuations with minimum, made-in-Canada prices. It also sets quotas for domestic producers and imposes tariff controls on foreign competition.

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While many farmers have said the system protects their way of life, critics argue it makes milk, cheese, yogurt, eggs, and chicken more expensive for average Canadians and stifles innovation and competitiveness.

According to a copy of Bernier's prepared remarks, the MP noted that he defended his party's support of supply management since first being elected to the House of Commons in 2006.

"I was not in a position to question the party's democratic decision or cabinet solidarity," he said. "And so I went along with it, even though I had grave misgivings about it for all these years."

System contradicts Tory principles: Bernier

Now that he is running for his party's leadership, Bernier  who fancies himself something of a libertarian  says conservative values need to be defended with conviction.

"I think we Conservatives are not credible when we talk about principles and then defend policies that squarely contradict these principles," Bernier said.

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While conceding that supply management does have advantages  namely in the way it provides a level of stability for producers  he said the system is "fundamentally unfair" to consumers, farmers, and businesses.

In the interest of protecting 10 per cent of Canadian farmers, Bernier said, all families  including low-income Canadians  must pay hundreds more each year for food staples.

"Supply management is also unfair to the other 90 per cent of farmers who cannot develop their export markets as much as they otherwise could," he said, adding that Canada always negotiates free trade agreements with the focus on protecting the system rather than trying to open new markets.

Riding has largest number of farms under supply management

Bernier also conceded Canada could not just do away with the system and leave farmers in the lurch. Instead he argued for a phase-out of import barriers, domestic quotas, and the price control system over several years, as was done in Australia. Farmers, he said, must be "properly compensated" and a temporary levy on products would be raised on products to ease the transition.

Bernier said it is time for Tories to stop treating the very discussion as taboo, despite the powerful lobbies in the supply management sector.

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"My own riding is among those with the largest number of farms under supply management in Canada," he said. "But political leadership is about tackling difficult issues, not avoiding them."

Bernier's remarks evidently made an impression on former Tory finance minister Joe Oliver, who took to Twitter to call the position "courageous."

Not ready to support a Cons leadership candidate but I salute Maxime Bernier for courageous & principled opposition to supply mgt. #gotmilk  Joe Oliver (@joeoliver1) May 31, 2016

Oliver is now a distinguished senior fellow at the Montreal Economic Institute think tank. Bernier was the group's vice-president before making the jump to politics.

Three years ago, Liberal leadership candidate Martha Hall Findlay also called for the end to Canada's supply management system.

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"The average family pays hundreds of dollars more than they should. It's regressive," Hall Findlay told The Huffington Post Canada. "The people who pay the most proportionally are the people less capable of affording it  single parent families with small children."

With files from The Canadian Press

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It's a dance routine like no other, but more importantly, it's one that challenges the way people see Muslim women.

We're Muslim, Don't Panic (WMDP), a dance group led by hip-hop dancer and choreographer Amirah Sackett, is hoping to change common stereotypes of Muslim women. In a recent interview with Bust, the Chicago-based teacher says her dance routines (including one that was filmed for Brother Ali's music video "Mourning in America"), are about flipping the script.

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I wanted to educate others and reflect the beauty that I know and love in Muslim women," she told the magazine. "Yes, there are oppressed women in the Muslim world. Women are oppressed the world over. These are our mutual struggles.

And now, a video that was originally posted in 2015 is making its rounds on social media sites. The video shows WMDP showing off their amazing talent, with a full dance routine to Brother Ali's "Tight Rope."

In an introductory video posted three years ago, Sackett says she and her two dancers Iman and Khadijah started the group to educate people about hijabs in general.

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"Together we have performed all over the Twin Cities educating people about the Muslim style of dress for women known as hijab to increase understanding and tolerance within our city and school systems," she writes on her Vimeo page.

Sackett, along with two other dancers, wear long black niqabs and white sneakers. And as she told the magazine, dancing was used to not only to break these age-old stereotypes of oppression, but also to empower Muslim women and girls who are discriminated against because of their religion.

Watch the full video above.

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Zephyr18 via Getty Images Pura Ulun Danu Bratan, Hindu temple on Bratan lake, Bali, Indonesia

Bali is different than any other island in Indonesia. Its people practice a different religion, elaborate ceremonies are abundant, the arts and crafts are out of this world, and it's far more than a tropical vacation destination.

When you tell your friends you're travelling to Bali, images of coconut palms and picture-perfect beaches may come to mind. While Bali does offer all of those things, you won't want to spend your entire vacation sipping frozen drinks on the beach. The following four experiences are ones that can only be had in Bali, and they'll leave every visitor with a better understanding of what makes this Indonesian island such a special place.

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Meet the Balinese People and Learn the Four Balinese Names

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When you arrive in Bali, you'll probably be a little confused by how many Wayans and Ketuts you meet. Most Balinese people are named one of four names, Wayan, Made, Nyoman or Ketut. Balinese parents don't buy books about baby names at Barnes and Noble. Each child is named by the order of his or her birth, and it doesn't matter if they are a boy or a girl. The first born is named Wayan, the second is named Made, the third is Nyoman and the fourth is Ketut. If a family has more than four children, the names start over again with Wayan.

You'll likely meet a Balinese person whose name isn't one of the four listed above. Some are given names that denote their caste, while others simply choose to use a nickname to set themselves apart. The naming system can be tricky to understand at first, but there's no better way to learn than to ask one of the many friendly Balinese people you meet along your journey.

Discover the Balinese-Hindu Religion

The majority of Indonesians are Muslim, but most Balinese people follow the Balinese-Hinduism religion. The moment you land at the airport in Denpasar, you'll discover that the lives of the Balinese people revolve around their religion. You'll find daily offerings to the gods everywhere from temples to street corners and car windshields. The Balinese people celebrate 60 religious holidays each year, and you'll find them worshipping, praying, and making offerings at all times of day.

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Attend a Balinese Ceremony

Dive deeper into the infectious Balinese-Hinduism religion, and you'll find yourself enjoying a once-in-a-lifetime experience at a cultural ceremony. Balinese people hold ceremonies for every milestone in a person's life, and with such tight knit communities, don't be surprised if your new Balinese friends are attending multiple ceremonies each week.

Whether the ceremony is celebrating birth, death, marriage, a teenager's entrance into adulthood, or a number of other life experiences, you're guaranteed to enjoy the jovial spirit, delicious food, traditional Balinese dress, heartfelt prayer, and so much more. The Balinese people are welcoming to those who wish to admire their ceremonies, and expressing a sincere interest in attending one is typically all you need to do to receive an invitation.

Stock Up on Authentic Souvenirs

With so many shop attendants attempting to lure you into their stores, it can be difficult to steer clear of the touristy shops along the streets of Kuta, Ubud, and other popular tourist destinations in Bali. However, it pays to experience the hustle and bustle of a Balinese street market, like the Sukawati Art Market in Sukawati, the Kumbasari Art Market in Denpasar, and the Badung Market in Denpasar. They're some of the best places on the island to stock up on traditional Balinese jewelry, paintings, handicrafts, and batiks, but you'll have to be prepared to bargain.

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Wavebreakmedia Ltd via Getty Images Cape Town, South Africa

June 1 is the Global Day of Parents. Beyond traditional life lessons (think tying your shoes and learning to ride a bike), parents are also responsible for imparting good money management skills to their children. Traditionally it was men who were largely responsible for long term investing and financial planning for their families. But that's so 1960s.

It's 2016! Women control $1.1 trillion in financial wealth in Canada. They're outnumbering men in colleges and universities. Their employment rate jumped from 42 to 58 per cent between 1976 and 2012.

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Good financial habits are something everyone can develop, and for many people, that starts with learning from their parents.

About a year ago, TD Bank joined forces with the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management to establish a think tank - Women @ Work. It studied the opportunities and challenges related to the advancement of professional women in Canada, and developed 10 practical lessons for women.

Basically, start with a good understanding of your financial affairs, put together a long-term financial plan, and ensure you have an emergency fund. These are things every woman needs in the event of illness, divorce, unemployment or any other unexpected life events.

And these fundamentals of personal finance don't change from generation to generation - it's balancing money-in with money-out.

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As part of the Women @ Work undertaking, women across Canada were invited to partake in an essay competition about their own experiences managing careers and families, with Calgary's Dr. Karen Dawson, winning out over 333 other entries.

Dawson, a mother of two, wrote that she had discovered how important it was to ensure that she could always support herself and her kids. "And the way life turned out, I needed to".

Dawson lost her husband when she was 34. She had planned to go back to grad school, but with two young children to think of those plans shifted to preparing for her future, and her children's futures.

"My obsession with managing my career and money was inherited from my mom." A value that Karen will work to embody and pass down to her children.

There are simple steps that parents can take to introduce financial literacy to their kids. Here's my top three:

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Document spending for a month - at the end of that month, your kids will have a much better idea of how much money is spent, and whether you need to cut back or look at options to earn additional income (part-time job, allowance, etc.).

- at the end of that month, your kids will have a much better idea of how much money is spent, and whether you need to cut back or look at options to earn additional income (part-time job, allowance, etc.). Develop a monthly budget - assign dollars to all ongoing essential expenses like groceries and entertainment to develop an awareness of costs.

- assign dollars to all ongoing essential expenses like groceries and entertainment to develop an awareness of costs. Repetition is key - together, revisit and revise your budget as your financial situation evolves and as your income, lifestyle, and financial goals change. Consider setting a reminder on your smartphone to track and examine your budget each month.

"I knew that I needed to be fulfilled in my professional life with plenty of money to support us, in order to love them as best I could," said Dawson. And it's so true.

June 1 may be one specific day dedicated to parents, but their fiscal responsibilities and love of their families lasts all year.
Bob Elam via Getty Images parliament

The headlines were emphatic: "Quick wins amounted to little for NDP"; "Quick wins report lands with a dull thud."

But behind the headlines something unsettling: a window into a culture of seeming impunity, where players are told anything goes, do whatever it takes to win.

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A single criminal charge for breach of trust by a public officer against former B.C. government communications director Brian Bonney is disturbing and should not be seen in the context of a goal or miss on a political scorecard.

It's the latest manifestation of a political mindset that should worry British Columbians.

In November 2012, The Province reported that in 2011 the B.C. Liberal party's CantAffordDix website "was crafted by government employees at the B.C. legislature under the watchful eye of the premier's office."

Lesson lost, though.

At the same time that The Province was reporting that news, "quick wins" -- or the multicultural outreach strategy -- was in full swing.

Emails that were released in June 2013 -- as a result of then-deputy minister to the premier John Dyble's investigation into the strategy -- offer a glimpse into that anything goes culture, even when redacted.

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In one, executive assistant Mike Lee emailed then-multiculturalism minister John Yap and wrote: "It is absolutely critical that we do not leave any evidence in us helping them through this application" Yap replied: "I appreciate each of your efforts with the 3 RFQs (request for qualifications). Great job. Let's now hope for the best."

In another set of emails, Bonney informed fellow political staff Lee, Fiera Lo, Barinder Bhullar and the premier's director of outreach Pamela Martin that "Sepideh (Sarrafpour) worked hard to ensure that the 2012 World Partnership Walk did not invite the NDP this year. No NDP were in attendance."

Not true, but revealing of their mindset nonetheless.

Bonney's email was written in what can only be described as a mutual "high-five" over a 24 Hours front page photo of Premier Christy Clark and Yap at the walk.

Three months later, it was the Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Vancouver's annual telethon that was the subject of their arm-twisting.

Bonney wrote: "The Event Director indicated he can adjust to what we want to do to maximize MJY (Minister John Yap) exposure."

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They were walking a fine-line with both the walk's organizer and the cultural centre, as the two groups are registered charities.

According to Revenue Canada's rules a registered charity may not take part in a partisan political activity, which it defines as "any activity that provides direct or indirect support or opposition to any political party at any time, whether during an election period or not, or to a candidate for public office."

Fallout from the "quick wins" strategy for political staff was swift.

Then-deputy chief of staff to the premier Kim Haakstad, Bonney, Lee, Lo and Sarah Welch were found to have breached the public sector's standards of conduct. Haakstad and Lee resigned.

Others, including Martin, Bhullar and Dave Ritchie were found to have engaged in misconduct with "mitigating factors."

Lesson lost again, though.

Throughout this entire period, political staff were triple-deleting their way to career advancement.

As a result of B.C. privacy commissioner Elizabeth Denham's investigation into the scandal, former assistant to Transportation Minister Todd Stone, George Steven Gretes, was charged with two counts of "wilfully making false statements to mislead, or attempt to mislead, under the province's Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act."

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In her report, Access Denied, Denham found that a second deputy chief of staff to the premier, Michele Cadario, had also put political interests ahead of the public's interest.

Cadario "bulk-deleted" emails on a daily basis in contravention of B.C.'s freedom of information law.

Others implicated in the affair, included then-director of issues management for the premier Evan Southern, Nick Facey chief of staff to Citizens Services Minister Amrik Virk and B.C. Liberal caucus research director Jen Wizinsky.

Since April 2014 -- as a direct result of the "quick wins" strategy -- standards of conduct for political staff are now in place.

They read in part: "Political staff will exhibit the highest standards of conduct. Their conduct must instil confidence and trust and not bring the Province of British Columbia into disrepute."

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Clearly, it's still a work in progress.
Yiannis Kourtoglou / Reuters A UN mine disposal expert from Cambodia walks while holding a mine detector during a media tour in the UN-controlled buffer zone near the village of Mammari, Cyprus August 26, 2015. REUTERS/Yiannis Kourtoglou

By Fergus Watt

May 29 is celebrated each year as the International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers.

Over the years, 3,400 peacekeepers have lost their lives serving under the UN flag, 128 of them last year alone. Since 1948, 71 peace operations have been established.

The UN's deployment of peacekeepers has never been greater, with approximately 122,000 military, police and civilian personnel serving in 16 missions around the world. In fact, the UN deploys more troops abroad than any other entity, including the United States government.

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Nevertheless, the supply of uniformed personnel from Troop Contributing Countries has not kept pace with demand. Five UN Missions (Central African Republic, Darfur, Mali, Sudan and South Sudan) are staffed at levels significantly below the troop levels mandated by the UN Security Council.

With the system over-stretched, U.S. President Obama convened a Leaders Summit at the UN last September. More than 50 heads of State and government, including many western governments, made pledges of additional personnel and equipment, and also committed to modernize UN peace operations.

Also at the UN, three expert review processes have addressed different aspects of the UN's efforts to maintain peace and security:

Although organized independently, each with a mandate to review different aspects of the UN's peace and security machinery, these three stock-taking exercises have also given rise to a new vision of a better coordinated, system-wide response to threats to international peace. "Sustainable peace" is the term for this emerging framework that is intended to reflect a more integrated approach, linking the UN's activities ranging from conflict prevention, mediation and conflict resolution, to peacekeeping operations, post-conflict peacebuilding and long-term development.

It's an approach that makes sense, conceptually. However, efforts to achieve policy coherence across the UN system have typically been realized more in words than in deeds. Bridging bureaucratic silos isn't easy. One looks hopefully to the leadership that a new Secretary-General may provide, once (s)he takes office in January 2017.

Last September's Obama-led UN Peacekeeping Summit took place while Canada was in the midst of an election campaign. Canadian officials were understandably absent.

But when it comes to UN peace operations, the fact is that Canada has been missing in action for a very long time.

Re-engagement in peace operations should be viewed as part of a broader new "sustainable common security" framework for our international engagements.

For over four decades Canada was the world's leading peacekeeping nation. However, since the early 1990s Canada's personnel commitments to UN Peace Operations have steadily declined -- at a time when the UN's demand for peacekeepers was steadily increasing. The chart below, prepared by Dr. Walter Dorn at Canadian Forces College, illustrates Canada's declining personnel contributions, from a high of over 3,000 in the early 90s to less than a hundred military and police personnel today.

A diminishing commitment to peace operations, and a lamentable disdain for the United Nations system as a whole, was a consistent feature of successive Conservative governments under Stephen Harper.

The new Trudeau government has brought a change in tone, a more active Canadian engagement in multilateral organizations, and a promise to strengthen Canada's commitment to UN peace operations. Understandably, this new Canadian approach was lauded by the UN Secretary-General during a three-day visit to Canada in February.

Re-engagement in peace operations should be viewed as part of a broader new "sustainable common security" framework for our international engagements.

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'Sustainable Security' shifts the emphasis toward the long-term impact and consequences of our policies, as well as the underlying causes of insecurity and conflict. And 'Common Security' (which helped to arrest the momentum of the last Cold War) acknowledges our interdependence and mutual vulnerability. A common security approach relies to a greater extent on the machinery and diplomacy of international cooperation; there is less reliance on the competitive pursuit of national security at the expense of others.

For a country like Canada, peacekeeping made sense for over four decades, and it makes even more sense today. Canada has no immediate threats to its territory and, as an outward-looking trading nation, has a built-in commitment to a stable, rules-based international order.

But those of us who have waited a long time for Canada to make a significant return to UN peace operations will have to wait a while longer. Six months into a new government, Canada's rank among uniformed troop-contributing states has reached an all-time low -- 73rd place.

We're not there yet.

Fergus Watt is Executive Director of the World Federalist Movement - Canada (WFMC, www.worldfederalistscanada.org) a longstanding non-governmental organization advocating more effective and accountable global governance. WFMC publishes an annual fact sheet on Canada and UN Peacekeeping.

The views expressed in this blog are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the positions of CCIC or its members.

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Traveling to Cambodia will change your life. Many travelers have already added a visit to Angkor Wat to their bucket lists, but they don't know that a trip to the Kingdom of Cambodia may change the way they travel and see the world entirely. In just a 1-hour-long flight from Bangkok, you could be experiencing the land once known as the Khmer Empire.

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The following four ways that traveling to Cambodia could change your life are just a few of the many reasons to consider the Southeast Asian country for your next travel adventure.

Money Doesn't Buy Happiness

The phrase "Money can't buy happiness," is thrown around all of the time, but the Cambodian people are a personification of that phrase. The moment you arrive in their country and hop aboard a tuk tuk to your hotel or guesthouse, you'll be greeted by smiling faces. Ninety-three per cent of Cambodians are Theravada Buddhists, a branch of Buddhism that's doctrinal core is based on the oldest Buddhist texts developed over thousands of years through interactions with diverse cultures. The open-mindedness of the Cambodians you meet will make you feel less like an imposing tourist and more like a long-time friend.

Poverty holds an overwhelming presence in Cambodia, but you'll find it hard to believe when you experience the hospitality and generosity of the Cambodian people. Don't be afraid to get to know your tuk tuk driver, your restaurant server, your bartender, local shop owners and those who simply call this magical country home.

It's Okay to Be a Tourist

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Traveling throughout Southeast Asia can make you feel like an experienced adventurer. Many like to call themselves "travelers," not "tourists." However, it's okay to gawk at the majesty of ancient Angkor Wat, one of the largest religious monuments ever created. It's okay to record a video of yourself bobbing down the street in the back of a tuk tuk, and it's okay to feel shocked when you hear about Cambodia's recent and painful history of mass starvation and execution under the Khmer Rouge. The best way to experience Cambodia is to put your ego aside and immerge yourself in the dramatic history and culture of one of the world's most underrated travel destinations.

Plans Don't Have to Be Followed

If you have a set travel itinerary for your visit to Cambodia, burn it now. Cambodia is a country that encourages you to go with the flow. Some travelers prefer to spend an entire week taking in the majesty of Angkor Wat, while others will wander for a couple days and hop a bus to Cambodia's idyllic beaches or the hustle and bustle of Phnom Penh. It's impossible to stay on schedule in Cambodia, so use the advice of the friendly locals and your fellow travelers to guide you toward a spontaneous and unforgettable experience.

Travel Isn't All About You

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Every trip you take doesn't have to be perfect. Sure, you spent a lot of money to get to Cambodia, took time off work and may not have another travel experience of this caliber for a while. But in Cambodia, you have the opportunity for your trip to have a huge impression on someone else. Decades of corruption and war have taken their toll on the country, and visitors can give back in countless, not-so-time-consuming ways. A number of volunteer companies, like GlobalTeer and Projects Abroad, offer volunteer programs for visitors.

If your visit to Cambodia is too short for volunteer work, simple gestures, like buying a Coca Cola for your tuk tuk driver or packing some old clothing to give away, can make a big difference in someone's life.

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Sydney Roberts via Getty Images Businesswoman having lunch in cafe

The typical full-time work week averages around 47 hours, about 30 per cent of our week. With all this time spent in our workplace, the environment and routine should be a healthy one. Unfortunately many people see too great a distinction between the active life they lead away from work, and sedentary office living, with tempting breakroom treats and rushed-through take-out lunches.

If you are going to spend a lot of time at work, you need to make sure you are living well, even amongst the stress and strain of deadlines and performance reviews. The good news: it's not as hard as you think. Try incorporating some of these simple principles and ideas into your average workday.

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Make Hydration Stupidly Simple

Your body needs hydration to operate optimally; but coffee isn't going to cut it (coffee is actually dehydrating!). The healthy choice is a continual intake of good old H2O. To make it really easy on yourself, and so you don't forget or get too busy, keep a 1L water bottle at your desk at all times. Fill it up, as necessary, with fresh filtered water. A continual supply of water is particularly important for those who work on their feet and in active roles.

Take Five, Every Hour

By now we've all heard that sitting too much has dangerous effects on our health; it can raise your risk of heart disease, and has been linked to health conditions like high blood pressure and obesity. The trouble is; many of our jobs require working on a computer, at a desk, or sitting down for meetings.

Ideally, you would invest in a standing desk, or alternate through the day between sitting and standing to work, but even if this is not possible you can try to counteract the effects of remaining seated all day by walking around at least five minutes of every hour. You can still be productive! Take your phone and check email while you (safely) pace the lobby. Or ask a co-worker to go on a walking meeting with you to check-in about a project.

Take 40, Every Day

Our work culture today is very much focused on productivity in terms of hours put in, and not on what should be measured, "output." We are actually more proficient with our output when we take time away from the work. How many times have you come up with a brilliant solution, while not even "thinking" about the problem at all? Give yourself time to step away from your desk; you can not only re-charge, but give your body time to "think" in new ways. Take 20 minutes to eat your lunch away from your desk, and an additional 20 minutes to go for a walk. With just 40 minutes away, you come back refreshed and ready to tackle the rest of the day. You might also head to the gym during your lunch hour; it's a great way to fit a workout in, and to recharge your brain.

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Live Actively At Work

I often detect this misbelief in the patients who visit me regarding their weight; it's a mistake to define your active life by the number of trips to the gym or blocks you ran in your neighborhood. Active living means taking every available opportunity to move your body; it means parking as far away from your office building as you have time for. It means taking the stairs and not the elevator to your office. It means walking to talk with a colleague, rather than emailing or calling. Try to live actively at work.

Stick To Healthy Eating

Communal work environments breed communal eating habits, often defined by that notorious breakroom treat. People love to bring donuts, leftover Halloween candy and freshly baked cookies and cake to work! That doesn't mean you need to indulge. Stay away from the breakroom, and that other devilish temptation the vending machine, by bringing your own healthy snacks from home. Try nuts and seeds, fruits and veggie sticks with hummus. Always have a healthy snack on hand; it helps curb cravings and keeps you going until your next meal. Avoid eating out in general by leaving your wallet at home, and bringing all of your food instead.

You spend so much time at work; every second should be a healthy one! I hope these tips have inspired you to make your workplace one of active, abundant living.

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Chris Wattie / Reuters People take part in a march and candlelight vigil in the Attawapiskat First Nation in northern Ontario, Canada, April 15, 2016. REUTERS/Chris Wattie

A lot of people have asked me for my opinion on how we can help support First Nations youth. There are many challenges facing our youth and there is no easy solution. Whether it's an ongoing suicide crisis across North America, a high rate of violence, abuse and poverty or the overrepresentation in the correctional system, these kids are dealing with some serious obstacles. And these continuing challenges demonstrate that though some approaches may have been beneficial, we are nowhere near yet to fully supporting the next generation to break the cycle and prepare for the future.

Many reports over the years have documented the negative impact of various government policies of both the United States and Canada. In Canada, the release of the Truth and Reconciliation (TRC) report has recorded in the voices of indigenous people the generation over generation impacts of colonialism and cultural genocide, including a lack of business, education stability options in First Nation communities.

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The response of the current Canadian federal government to the TRC has been encouraging, though I, like others, will look closely for actual ongoing solutions and attention other than around election times. I think it's important that there is shared responsibility for keeping kids from falling through the cracks in such small communities. No child should grow up feeling hopeless and left behind.

Entrepreneurship, from my experience, could mean the difference between life and death for these kids. Although I grew up fairly privileged compared to others, I could have easily ended up in prison as many of my childhood friends have. I could have easily committed suicide, been murdered or passed away from addiction as others I knew did, but entrepreneurship saved me.

The resilience that indigenous people possess is a powerful asset for achieving in the business world.

It wasn't easy at all. With no real experience or support I was forced to learn things the hard way. I fell victim to predatory lenders who blocked and worked against me to sell off my first company and I have watched people get rich off my ideas while I got nothing. I have struggled to pay bills and I have failed and made more mistakes than I can count, but having been through the battles, headaches and sleepless nights I have learned more and came out stronger. I became more successful and involved in more businesses than I originally ever could have imagined because I learned from every mistake and kept wanting to do more and build bigger.

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I have gone through hell to succeed and it was anything but a smooth road, but, it kept me too busy and motivated to get into trouble for enough years to mature as a person and gave me something to look forward to. Entrepreneurship has opened many doors for me that would have never opened had I not gone through it all and I am now able to share these experiences to help others succeed.

To establish independence and self worth in indigenous communities, it is important to listen to the community and provide support to what they identify, rather than rushing in with what we, with all good intentions, consider are the answers. The resilience that indigenous people possess is a powerful asset for achieving in the business world. There are so many bright, artistic, entrepreneurial-minded individuals in First Nation communities who only need a little help to put their vision into reality. What is missing is the help and encouragement.

There are companies and investors eagerly awaiting the opportunity to do business in First Nation communities (although there are challenges to this) as we have a lot to offer. We have a workforce, resources, land, and in some cases tax advantages, creditor protections and opportunities not easily accessible to others.

There are reservations in North America where people are thriving and serious revenues are being generated and that is because the reservations are home to entrepreneurs who create opportunities for others and inspire others to succeed. These communities are a far cry from the headlines of places like Attawapiskat and other communities with third-world living conditions where we can't seem to even get clean water, and drug dealers and deplorable sex traffickers often appear to be the ones with the most logistic and business experience. Bringing and supporting business experience to Band Councils and First Nation youth is one opportunity to shift the skill base to those who should be in charge.

Supporting entrepreneurship could prove extremely profitable for First Nation communities and create new revenue streams, which is really in the best interest of the community as it uplifts everyone. It is not easy and there is no simple answer but investing in programs, resources, mentorship and tools for future entrepreneurs provides hope and opportunities for self-sufficiency rather than dependence on welfare-based approaches. So leaders of all sorts in First Nations, government and other services have an opportunity to declare if supports for entrepreneurship are a viable option.

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There has been increasing interest in the use of a sugar-sweetened beverage tax to curb the burden of obesity in Canada -- call it a 'pop tax' if you like. A recent Senate report on obesity in Canada recommends assessing the possibility of a sugar-sweetened beverage tax and points to the high rates of taxation on tobacco products as a successful example worth imitating.

But have taxes on tobacco products been as successful as is often claimed?

While the prevalence of smoking has gone down considerably since the introduction of various smoking policies across Canada -- taxation being just one of the major ones -- upon closer inspection, the decrease in smoking has not been uniform across the population as a whole.

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Over the last 30 years, more individuals of high socioeconomic status have quit smoking or not started smoking in Canada. However, during the same time period, the prevalence of smoking has decreased very little among populations of low socioeconomic status.

This gap is particularly evident for heavy smoking -- 29 per cent of women with less than a high school education were heavy smokers in 1974. This number dropped to only 24 per cent in 2005 -- an improvement, but a very modest one.

In comparison, 18 per cent of women with a university degree were heavy smokers in 1974 and this number dropped to fewer than three per cent in 2005. This is despite the fact that individuals with lower income are disproportionately burdened by the tobacco tax.

The same pattern has been observed in the United States where, between 1996 and 2012, counties in the top income brackets experienced faster declines in smoking rates compared to counties with lower income levels. This pattern is not unique to North America either. European countries have observed the same socioeconomic disparities in changes in smoking prevalence over time.

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So why didn't tobacco taxes work for people of lower socioeconomic status? Well, people don't smoke because it's cheap, just like people don't drink pop because it's cheap.

Smoking makes people feel good in the short-term, as do sugar-sweetened beverages. Who doesn't enjoy an iced-cold cola? Ultimately, tobacco tax contributed to a societal change in the way smoking was viewed, which in turn pushed more people, especially people with resources and support, to quit or not smoke at all.

The effect of smoking policies, like taxation, have likely widened the health equity gap.

Smoking-related diseases -- lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes and cardiovascular disease -- disproportionately affect those with lower socioeconomic status. Using Canadian census mortality data, researchers have recently reported that death due to these specific diseases is substantially higher for individuals of lower income and education.

So back to the idea of a 'pop tax.' Will taxing sugar-sweetened beverages reduce obesity across Canada?

I predict a similar societal change in the way we view sugar-sweetened beverages if a tax is implemented. People with resources, support and education will be better situated to identify, afford, prepare and ultimately care about the food they eat.

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People of lower socioeconomic status, however, including the over four million food insecure Canadians, will more likely continue to focus on adequate access to food instead, as well as a home to prepare their food in.

Like the tobacco tax, the ultimate goal of pop tax would be to improve health outcomes. Already we know that the burden of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease are greater among populations of low socioeconomic status.

In other words, a sugar-sweetened beverage tax alone would likely do very little to improve population health outcomes if it fails to change behaviour among low socioeconomic populations. Unfortunately, there is currently no research that indicates otherwise and unless there is, we should refrain from implementing the tax.

So what should be done instead? Policies geared to improve eating habits and, ultimately, public health, should focus on food security. Emerging evidence suggests that food insecurity results in greater health care costs in comparison to overweight/obesity.

We need to look for solutions to benefit low income and marginalized Canadians. These solutions will need to be developed in partnership with marginalized populations and will need to include roles for both government and industry. Slapping a pop tax on sugar-sweetened beverages looks like a quick fix, but is more band aid than solution.
POOL New / Reuters Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (L) and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe attend their joint news conference at Abe's official residence in Tokyo, Japan, May 24, 2016, ahead of the Ise-Shima G7 summit meetings. REUTERS/Toru Yamanaka/Pool

On paper at least, it would appear as if deepening Canada's relationship with Japan would be as simple as ordering takeout from a sushi restaurant.

Canada exports energy, metals and agriculture and forest products, just the materials Japan's industrial economy consumes in large quantities. Canadians have a high regard for Japan manufactured goods, such as cars and electronics. The two Pacific Rim nations also have areas of mutual strength, such as scientific research and digital media, that could benefit from greater cooperation.

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The commonalities go far beyond goods and services. A mature but sizable economy -- still the world's third largest -- Japan's business norms, democratic institutions and common values put Canadian at ease. Canada has a long history of Japanese immigration and a love of Japanese culture. As the popularity of Canadian artists like Celine Dion, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young in Japan can attest, the feeling is mutual.

An increasingly volatile world economy, as well as the specter of a more protectionist United States, means that neither Canada nor Japan can afford to take the other for granted.

Yet even an opportunity as obvious as increasing economic ties between Canada and Japan won't materialize without foresight and hard work by both countries.

Trade between Japan and Canada has stagnated for over a decade. Exports from Canada to Japan grew only four per cent from 2006 to 2015, while Canada's imports from Japan have declined. There is good news -- foreign investment from both sides show an upwards trend -- but business will need help to capitalize on this opportunity.

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The Japan Canada Chambers Council, a group of business leaders connected to the national chambers of commerce in each nation, strongly support the Trans-Pacific Partnership as a means of promoting closer Canada-Japan ties. But the TPP is not enough. An increasingly volatile world economy, as well as the specter of a more protectionist United States, means that neither Canada nor Japan can afford to take the other for granted.

Last week the Prime Minister met with Japan's Shinzo Abe during the G7 Leader's Summit. This should only be the first of many such meetings with the goal of reigniting bilateral trade negotiations with Japan through the Economic Partnership Agreement. Successfully concluding bilateral trade negotiations between Canada and Japan would help to preserve and build upon the benefits of the TPP.

While all aspects of Canada and Japan's economic relationship are important, there is a unique urgency around the need to build liquefied natural gas export infrastructure to take advantage of a large but fleeting opportunity. Canada is the world's 3rd largest producer of natural gas, while Japan is the second largest net importer of fossil fuels in the world. There is an opportunity to expand our energy trade, but it will not take place unless the requisite export infrastructure is constructed.

There's already a mechanism to build on. Canada and Japan launched an energy dialogue in 2013 aiming to increase cooperation in natural gas, oil extraction and renewable technologies.

Unless urgent action is taken, the tremendous potential of the Canada and Japan relationship will not be realized. Better relationships with Japan should be made a priority for Canadian trade policy.

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THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-CNW Group/Air Canada-MANDATO

It's been a few weeks since thousands fled from the Canadian city of Fort McMurray to escape the raging wildfires. The news has died down but the big blaze rages on. It is not unusual for the U.S. to lend a hand in this type of exceptional natural disaster, as Canadians have been deployed state-side in similar occurrences. Outside of the bilateral relationship with its U.S. ally, foreign aid is not something Canadians are accustomed to.

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Source: AirCanada's Twitter account

That's why eyebrows were raised when a contingent of 300 African firefighters landed in Edmonton to lend a hand. Three hundred -- that's 100 more firefighters than the U.S. is sending Canada's way to battle the historic blaze.

Currently, 2,267 firefighters are either already battling blazes across Alberta or are en route to do so. Over 300 of those firefighters are from out of province. Almost 500 hail from outside of Canada (298 firefighters from South Africa and 199 from the United States). They are being supported with the help of 95 helicopters, 263 pieces of heavy equipment and 24 air tankers. [source ]

According to The Globe and Mail's Africa corresponded Geoffrey York, the PR line goes as follows: "South Africa is repaying a debt to the Canadian people for their support for the anti-apartheid struggle." It's an interesting rationale considering Canada's frosty relationship with Mandela's party, the ANC, over the past decade.

The more plausible explanation is that the Fort McMurray aid initiative is a "strategy for changing the lives of unemployed South African youth. The jobless young men and women were recruited for a government-funded organization called Working on Fire." WOF has trained 5,000 firefighters to serve in 200 bases across South Africa.

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This Canadian experience is quite the resume-builder for participants in the program. One can imagine a successful eight-week stint in Fort Mac, while pious and noble, is also a career springboard. Everybody wins!

The norm: sending aid to Africa

The Canadian International Development Platform estimates that Canada sent $2 billion in international assistance to Africa (2014), or about $64 per Canadian.

Many top aid workers and international development leaders cut their teeth in Africa, Haiti or South America. They spend a few weeks to a year acculturating foreign cultures and learning the art of Third World creativity and resourcefulness all the while finding themselves contributing to an aid project. Beyond the white saviour complex feel-good benevolence, they often earn a good living and build career cred with hardship postings.

Luckily, when the aid flows from Africa to Canada, it seems all parties benefit equally.

The norm: white, male firefighters

Both the U.S. and Canada have a checkered history when it comes to its firefighters. The coveted career was often restricted to white men, despite the availability of qualified candidates of other ethnicities. Since 1983, the percentage of black firefighters in the U.S. has hovered around seven to 10 per cent. As for Hispanics, the National Fire Protection Association reports a jump from four per cent in 1983 to almost 10 per cent in 2012.

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From New York City to Chicago and Los Angeles, fire departments experience difficulties in recruiting and retaining qualified personnel who happen to be Africa-American.

Canada doesn't keep racial statistics consistently (birthplace, gender, language spoken at home are the preferred barometers of social progress), but we know that the City of Montreal counts nine black firefighters out of roughly 2,400, and 20 visible minorities. That's less than one per cent.

Toronto's fire chief estimated the percentage of visible minorities in its union membership is two per cent, despite a pool of diversity in the 'most multicultural city in the world'. Incoming recruits move the needle at a snail's pace.

Vancouver boats a large, vibrant Asian-Canadian community -- a population which hovers around the 50 per cent mark. City officials told me in an email that they "do not currently track the ethnic diversity of its staff." Their derisory diversion plan hinges on tracking the diversity of future applicants. In 2007, a spokesperson for nearby Richmond, B.C. said the fire department less than 10 per cent of its force could be "categorized as visible minorities."

Halifax' fire department chief apologized for instances of racism throughout the department in 2013.

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People of colour are chronically underrepresented in North American firefighting. The arrival of a planeload of African firefighters might have increased the diversity of firefighters on Canadian soil by as much as 250 per cent.

Firewomen: the next feminist frontier

Fewer than four percent of U.S. firefighters are women, despite almost half of female firefighter candidates passing physical ability tests, a study says. In 2007, more than half of paid fire departments had never hired a female firefighter.

Montreal boasts 32 women firefighters (one per cent). Toronto had 67 female firefighters in 2013 (two per cent). Vancouver has 21 women "working in Fire Rescue Services" (three per cent) but it is unclear how many are firefighters. It's the same story in Ottawa, Edmonton, etc. Of 22,000 professional firefighters in Canada, only about three per cent are women.

In contrast, South Africa's Working On Fire 300-person delegation to Fort McMurray boasts over 60 women. Working On Fire tells me that 21 per cent of the South African deployment are of the weaker stronger sex. That's seven times the North American average!

South Africa Leads the Way

In a time of need, South Africa graciously sent help Canada's way. The aid isn't just in manpower, it is in a recalibration of social progress barometers for women and minorities. Westerners often look at Africa as upside down and backwards. Perhaps it is the West that is lagging behind. Working on Fire proves that the West still has a lot to learn from Africa.

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my Facebook page to follow me." data-caption="The view from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade after sunset is amazing, I couldn't resist making a long exposure panorama of Lower Manhattan, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge. You can also see the Statue of Liberty in the left side, and the colorful top of the Empire State Building.Like my Facebook page to follow me." data-credit="Nicolas Hoizey/500px">

Some 60 million tourists visited New York City last year. So when it comes to ladies' getaways know, hospitality-wise, you're in good hands. Recently, Girls' Flight Out landed in the Big Apple to soak up its exciting literary scene. Home to publishing giants, top-notch agents, best-selling authors as well as aspiring scribes, ladies gather your gal pals-- this is Book Club gone wild. And yes, the city is infused with thousands of restaurants, bistros and bars, so there will be plenty of wine available.

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Here are 6 must-dos to include in your litinerary:

1. Check in to the Algonquin Hotel

Rebecca checks in with Matilda, the hotel cat who can often be found at the front desk.

Affectionately known as "The Gonk", this national historical landmark is steps away from Times Square and boasts an endless list of famous wordsmiths who have stayed there including Gertrude Stein, J.D. Salinger and Tennessee Williams. This is where Dorothy Parker and her band of critics, editors and Pulitzer-winners hung out at the now-famous Round Table throughout the 1920s. It's also where The New Yorker got off the ground. Rooms and suites are appointed with a comfy work desk just begging you to jot down a line or two. The lobby is jaw dropping so even if you're not a guest, stop in for a bite at the restaurant or a drink at the legendary Blue Bar.

2. Check out the New York Public Library

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Located on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building is known as the main branch of a massive library system that includes 92 locations. Since it opened its doors back in 1911, this has been the go-to destination of scholars, researchers, writers and millions of patrons. Check out nypl.org for a list of tours, exhibits, and special events, many of which are free. Tickets to LIVE from NYPL, a series of debates and discussions with notable writers, artists, and leaders can be purchased online. Past guests include the likes of Toni Morrison and Margaret Atwood.

3. Visit the Morgan Library and Museum

Library at the Morgan

What began as a private library by financier Pierpont Morgan, is now a complex of buildings located at 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street. There, you can soak up temporary exhibits, take a guided tour, attend lectures, concerts and workshops. Holdings include an astonishing collection of letters, original manuscripts and printed books and feature three Gutenberg Bibles, and works by Byron, Dickens, Poe, and Twain.

4. Take a guided literary tour

Walking tours are alive-and-well in NYC with sites such as www.literarypubcrawl offering tours with stops at popular wateringholes along the way. The Greenwich Village crawl takes place every Saturday with participants gathering at White Horse Tavern, a bohemian hotspot back in the 50's and 60s that saw writers such as Dylan Thomas and Jack Kerouac saddle up to the bar. For Sex and the City enthusiasts, www.onlocationtours offers a guided tour lets you hop off the bus to hang out at the fictional foursome's favourite locals.

5. Read up at The Strand

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Books by the foot room at The Strand

Billed as the sole survivor of what was once dubbed "Book Row, a 6 city block area of Manhattan flush with 48 bookstores, this iconic indie book store has been titillating bibliophiles since 1927. With its 18-mile collection of new, used, collectible and rare books, you'll need to leave plenty of time to browse the aisles, and get recommendations from the highly-knowledgeable staff. Be sure to settle in for a read on the rare books floor, which is home to readings, signings and literary events as posted on www.strandbooks.com.

6. Head to Brooklyn

Lobby at The Box House

Whether you take the train or walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, a literary haven awaits you. Boasting book festivals, readings, workshops, and scores of cafes flush with scribes, this borough is a must-see on any NYC lit vacation. The tree-lined streets of Brooklyn Heights alone were once home to literary greats from Norman Mailer to Arthur Miller to Truman Capote. With so much to see and do, you may wish to stay a night or two so check out Booking.com's list of cool accommodations which includes B&Bs, apartments and guesthouses. Girls' Flight Out chose The Box House, a fab boutique hotel with a suite that offered us a full living area, kitchenette and a fun and funky vibe.

7. Go to the theatre, darling

Be it Broadway, Off Broadway or Off Off Broadway, your NYC Get Lit trip demands catching at least one page-to-stage adaptation. This summer, you can watch your favourite fictional characters come to life by taking in the musical, The Color Purple based on the book by Alice Walker; the play, The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night-time based on Mark Haddon's best seller; or Sense and Sensibility based on Jane Austen's classic. Check out nycgo.com before you go to check out what's on.
mediaphotos via Getty Images Men like to drink beer

The enthusiasm for craft beer has exploded on a global scale, and now virtually anywhere you go, a quality craft beer awaits. However, there are some select vacation spots that offer a beer tourism experience like no other, and this should be on every beer lover's list to travel to at least once:

Brussels, Belgium

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Known around the world for their stellar creativity and quality, Belgian beers should not be missed. Brussels is a fantastic central point for exploring the Belgian beer scene, and even has a beer tour featuring a 300 year old tavern.

Munich, Germany

The German's are responsible for the Beer Purity Law of 1516 so it goes without saying that they brew some of the crispest, cleanest beer available in the world. Munich also happens to be the epicentre of Oktoberfest, where the beer flows like water.

Portland, Oregon

No other city in the world has embraced craft beer more than Portland. The city that celebrates being weird has the most breweries than any other city in the world. Not only does that make it extremely easy to hop from brewery to brewery, but one company even provides a pedal powered tour.

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Osaka, Japan

Craft beer has really taken off in Japan, and while there are a number of strong examples in Tokyo to point to, Osaka has taken the lead in showcasing some of the best craft beer Japan has to offer. No two breweries or taprooms are alike, it's a pleasure hopping around finding these unique watering holes.

Prague, Czech Republic

One of the most beautiful cities in the world also hides a vast history of craft beer. The first recorded monastery brewing beer in the city goes all the way back to 993 AD. While taking in all the history, Prague also happens to be one of the few places in the world where you can bathe in beer.

Dublin, Ireland

Ireland is practically synonymous with beer, and for most, Guinness comes to mind instantly. But the Emerald Isle has more to offer than just Guinness, with the majority of beer consumption actually more focused on Lagers.

Denver, Colorado

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Portland isn't the only US city with a thriving craft beer scene. Denver continues to build an impressive line-up of award winning craft breweries in the city which consistently top the best of North America. I'd suggest going around the annual beer festival to capture them all in one location.

Toronto, Canada

Speaking of festivals, Toronto hosts the largest beer festival in the entire country. Pairing beer and bands, the three day festival showcases the best breweries from around the province. During the rest of the year, the city houses some of Canada's best breweries and brewpubs.

Shanghai, China
Travel industry insiders worried about the impact of global events, such as terrorism and health scares like the Zika virus, have no great cause for concern, according to new research released by Travelzoo Canada. The research shows resilience from Canadian tourists, with international travel bookings expected to increase for summer 2016.

Travelzoo's latest findings show that 83 per cent of Canadians are planning at least one summer vacation abroad this year, compared to 76 per cent last year.

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The rise in vacations is not limited to the summer months either, with travel across the whole of 2016 expected to increase on last year's total bookings. "Canadians clearly have the travel bug," says Lara Barlow, Travelzoo Canada Country Manager. "These results are reassuring to those in the travel industry who were concerned that recent world events, as well as the low Canadian dollar, could really dampen the appetite to travel this year. We're seeing that the reverse is true and Canadians are planning to book even more vacations -- both at home and overseas before the year is out."

Canadians Love the Beach

Photo courtesy www.tourismnewbrunswick.ca

Canadians are beach-lovers, as a third of survey respondents said their preferred vacation features sun and sand. The second-favourite choice, at 16 per cent, was taking in incredible landscapes and geography. When asked specifically about the types of domestic vacations they prefer, respondents favoured coastal vacations (29 per cent), and big city visits (second place with 15 per cent).

USA Bound

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Flickr photo by Bobby Hidy

The United States continues to rise in popularity as the top overseas destination for Canadians. Over two-thirds of respondents plan to visit the country in the coming twelve months. "Canadians are encouraged by the slight increase in the loonie and the U.S., because of its proximity, is traditionally the go-to international travel destination for many Canadians," says Barlow.

Staycations on the Rise

Photo courtesy of www.novascotia.com

Domestic vacations are also increasing. According to the study, 80 per cent of respondents took at least one domestic vacation in 2015 and 87 per cent plan to take one in 2016. The survey identified the two main reasons for choosing a staycation as visiting family members (55 per cent), and because the location is close and within easy reach (32 per cent).

Andrea Chrysanthou is an editor of the Travelzoo Canada blog and is based in Toronto, Ontario. Travelzoo has 250 deal experts around the world who rigorously research, evaluate and test thousands of deals to find those with true value.

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The five things you need to know on Tuesday May 31, 2016

1) VATS LIFE

The Vote Leave campaign have their tails up after the bank holiday weekend, and Boris and Michael Gove are up north targeting the voters they think can swing the EU referendum - working class and lower middle class Labour or floating voters. Todays pitch is that under Brexit, fuel bills will be cheaper because the UK can slash its VAT rates.

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Its part of a bread-and-butter issues shift, taking on the Remain camps lead on cost of living (and cost of leaving) strategy. The speaking-up-for-the-little-guy plan is seen as Vote Leaves strongest card. As with the message on immigration (that big business wants cheap labour to take your job at any cost), it borrows from UKIPs economic populism while seeking to distance the most negative bits of Farageism.

Having Beefy Botham on the 10 oclock news last night alongside Boris was a PR coup for Leave. Today, the Remain camp have brained-up with Stephen Hawking on GMB telling us why staying in the EU is a smart idea. Hawking also says even his brain cant fathom why Trump is so popular in the US, which shows may why hes not cut out for politics. Boriss journey north is a key test, as is this whole referendum, of the Boris Effect: can he prove as popular with the White Van Man vote north of Watford Gap as he has been down south?

The Remain camp have a fantasy politics dossier hitting back at the VAT claims, saying they are as honest and truthful as the 350m and NHS claims of the Brexiteers. Most hard-hitting of all, they say Leave's fantasy figures amount to 111bn of spending commitments. Sounds like a 'tax bombshell' that would dwarf a VAT fuel cut sparkler.

The PM is continuing his drive to appear with Labour figures, after sharing a platform with Sadiq Khan, and more trade unionists are due to join later this week. There are some strange bedfellows indeed and Nicola Sturgeon will appear on the In camp trio on the ITV debate next week, the Sun reports. Some Brexiters think thats a gift to them, but progressive leftwing voters in England may feel a surge for Sturge just as they did in the 2015 election debates.

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2) MEANING BUSINESS

I cant quite imagine Bojo or Gove saying Yes, Lord Sugar, no Lord Sugar, like quivering Apprentice contestants. But the TV tycoon has delivered for the In camp this morning with an exclusive Sun article and a YouTube video (see below).

Sugar, who came under fire from Labour last week for agreeing to become the Governments business czar, is the kind of big name the Remainers need, speaking in language the punters can understand. In the Sun he says Britain would end up "the mugs of the world if we quit the EU. In his video, he says Brexit is one of the daftest and duff ideas hes ever heard. He also has millions of Twitter followers as well as his telly recognition reach. Again, it's all about reaching the key voter groups politicos call the 'C1s/C2s', ie the skilled working classes.

Sajid Javid appears alongside seven former and current Dragons Den biz chiefs today as the In camp warns 1.2m small businesses will suffer from Brexit. Not many of the dragons are the real stars and maybe Leave will grab others in due course.

Whats notable is the fury from ex BCC chairman John Longworth, who says Javid changed his mind for reasons we can only guess at. In case we didn't get the message, he adds that this latter-day pro-Brussels campaigner is wrong about the stats (Longworth says just 6% of small firms export to the EU but 100% are caught in its red tape). I hope that Sajid Javids priority is not his political career - rather than helping British businesses.

For some people whatever the result of the referendum, its just good business. The FT reports that hedge funds are paying for exit polls to make a mint on the early signs of which way the vote has gone on June 23. All reminiscent of how George Soros bet against the ERM-linked pound in 1992 - and won.

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3) IN-FIGHTING, OUT-FIGHTING

Some of the leadership plotters against David Cameron finally broke cover this weekend. After Nadine Dorries and Andrew Bridgen made clear their letters for a vote of no confidence were already in, Sir Bill Cash told the the Telegraph that he was certainly considering following suit - unless the PM stopped attacking pro-Brexit Tories.

That was a key caveat, and yesterday No10 dialled down the attacks on fellow Tories. Yet neither side can quite help itself and every other day there is a fresh round of tit-for-tat jibes. Boris and Gove claimed on Sunday that Cameron was corroding public trust, while Priti Patel suggested the PM was too wealthy to understand ordinary voters. Ken Clarke yesterday described Boris as a nicer Donald Trump (which actually is a label Bojo may welcome, given Trumps upside is his mass appeal among working class voters). Andy Coulson yesterday gave Steve Hilton a kicking for his Kumbaya, sockless blue-sky approach to Brexit.

Cameron said last week he wanted a self-denying ordinance but the slings and arrows of outrageous claim and counterclaim may be too much. Today, Sajid Javid against gets it in the neck for his treachery and closeness to the madness of King George (as one Brexiteer puts it). Dorries set the bar high, saying Cameron needed a 60-40 In-Out vote to avoid a leadership challenge, but other plotters tell me 55-45 would probably be enough.

The Guardian reports on worries that Jeremy Corbyn just hasnt been doing enough to motivate Labour voters to back the In camp. A campaign memo from Britain Stronger In Europe leaked to the paper shows that only about half of Labour voters have realised their party is in favour of staying in the EU, with the rest thinking it is split or believing it is a party of Brexit. Focus groups were uniformly uncertain about what Corbyn thought - or believed he was for remain but his heart isnt in it.

BECAUSE YOUVE READ THIS FAR

Alan Sugar says hes been a gambler in his time but hes not ready to gamble on Brexit. Watch the 6am video

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4) REGISTRATION TIME

HuffPost UK has joined with Bite the Ballot and others today in a big voter registration drive in this crucial week in the EU referendum. Jeremy Corbyn has written a guest blog for us, urging younger people to register. It is your generation that will be most affected by the decision Britain takes in three weeks time. Young people will live with the consequences for the longest.

The #TurnUp campaign aims to register 500,000 people (many of them younger voters) in time for the June 7 deadline. Tonight Hope Not Hate will stage an event in Hackney, with 12 women dressed as suffragettes wearing purple sashes. (Hackney suffered the worst drop off of voters in the country when Individual Voter Registration was brought in, with an estimated 40,000 still missing).

Tomorrow, Bite The Ballot opens a Democracy Cafe for young people at a Starbucks in London and the DeCafe rolls out among 50 Starbucks stores nationwide.

HuffPost UK Young Voices begins a two-week focus on the EU referendum, examining what is at stake for Britain's young people. We'll be hearing both sides of the argument from politicians, policy experts and most importantly young people themselves on what Britain's youth needs to know before we got to polls on 23 June - and why it's imperative they are registered to vote by 7 June.

5) HAROURING DISCONTENT

Yesterday two British men were charged with people smuggling after a sinking boat carrying 18 Albanians, including two children, was rescued in the Channel. And the rescue has sparked plenty of front pages.

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The Times reveals that the Home Office dismissed concerns by the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration about the smuggling of people in small boats as "not significant" only months ago. Warnings about Norfolk and Suffolks remote creeks and estuaries being attractive to smugglers were ignored, it suggests.

The Mail splashes on claims that there have been four reports warning ministers that Britain's small ports are an easy target for people smugglers. The Telegraph reports that immigration union leaders warned that Britain faced its biggest onslaught of people smugglers. Lucy Moreton, general secretary of the Immigration Services Union, tells the i that it was an inevitable progression from the other migration flows across the Med of late.

In the Guardian, Britain Stronger in Europe has attacked the false and bogus MigrationWatch claims that up to half a million refugees and their relatives could move to Britain after 2020. In the Telegraph, there's a new ORB poll putting Leave on 46%, up four points, with Remain on 51 %, down four. Sir Lynton Crosby suggests that Leave's "increasing focus on lack of control over immigration and associated message discipline has helped their case".

As for perils of the sea, its the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Jutland today and David Cameron will be joined by Nicola Sturgeon, Carwyn Jones and Arlene Foster and others for the memorial service in Orkney. The Duke of Edinburgh wanted to attend but has been told by doctors that he ought not to. Jeremy Corbyn, as revealed by HuffPost last week, wont be there. The Times reports the extraordinary story of one 19-year-old sailor who survived by covering himself in oil to keep warm in the cold waters.

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I recently wrote about the difficult subject of immigration, an issue that is so often used to silence debate on the EU. Instead of immigration, let's talk maths. According to the NHS Confederation, there are currently 7,875 GP practices in the UK, serving 64 million people. This equates to approximately one practice per 8,000 people. If, as predicted by the Office of National Statistics, the UK population rises to 74 million in 25 years and there isn't a material rise in the number of GP practices, each one will then serve approximately 9,500 people, an 18% increase. In order to keep our ratio of people to practices the same, the UK would need to fund an additional 1,400 GP practices.

If the government wants to engage those who are worried about immigration, it needs to outline a public investment program to demonstrate that mass immigration will not impact the quality or availability of public services. The government needs to point to the 1,400 new GP practices, the hundreds of schools, and dozens of hospitals that it will build to maintain existing standards of public service. By failing to implement such investment, the government is tacitly expecting people to accept a drop in their standard of living. If immigration is such a boon to the economy, there should be no question of the country being able to afford a massive program of investment and it should be demanded by both the leave and remain camps as the minimum price of our continued membership of the EU.

Someone very close to me recently had an experience that illustrates why the people of Britain are not being offered increased investment in public services in return for staying in the EU. This person, let's call them Bob, was rushed to a major hospital on a Wednesday morning with a serious medical emergency. Bob was put on a trolley, as were a dozen other seriously ill patients who all languished in a corridor because there were no treatment rooms available. Bob's attending doctor made an educated guess at a diagnosis of pulmonary embolism, which has a mortality rate of 25%, but wanted to consult a cardiologist before administering treatment. The doctor also told Bob that he'd need a CT scan to confirm diagnosis but that the next available slot on the scanner was Saturday morning - 3 days later.

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Bob and the doctor waited for 6 hours to see a cardiologist, but were told that no one was available. In the end, not wishing to continue running the risk of dying, Bob instructed the doctor to treat him for pulmonary embolism, which was done in the corridor because there were still no treatment rooms available. The doctor informed Bob that he'd have to be admitted but that there were no beds either, so Bob would have to spend the night on a trolley in a brightly lit corridor lined up with a dozen similarly ill, distressed people until a bed became available.

Bob had a brainwave and asked about going private, and within 25 minutes was in a private room two floors above the crowded corridor. For the sum of 500 per night, Bob had literally risen above the crowd, was seen almost immediately by a consultant cardiologist, and was booked in for a CT scan on the hospital's brand new private scanner first thing the following morning - two days sooner than he could be scanned by the hospital's overworked NHS machine.

Bob was in hospital for four nights and spent 3,000 on his care. Once he'd made the decision to go private, treatment was quick and stress free, but of course Bob was in the privileged position of being able to afford private care. Most people in this country would be unable to find the thousands of pounds needed to rise above the crowd and, like the people Bob left behind, would be doomed to spend a night on a trolley waiting for a bed, a consultant, and a scan, running the risk of dying in a hospital corridor in the fifth richest country in the world.

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Many leading figures advocating continued membership of the EU will never go near an NHS hospital or comprehensive school. They will never experience the consequences of a massive, unmanaged increase in population, because, like Bob, they have the money needed to rise above the crowd. When they argue that unmanaged immigration is good for the country, they are not making any sacrifices in their quality of life - quite the opposite; EU membership is good for them because the influx of people keeps labour costs low, enabling their money to go further. If we remain in the EU, our leaders need to be held to account and we must have a mature debate about how we invest in our public services to ensure they keep up with Britain's growing population.

Without such an investment program, continued EU membership will be yet another instance of the poor being asked to shoulder an unfair burden because they will see a fall in the quality and availability of the public services they rely on, while those with money can buy their way out of the problem. Those trapped in poverty have no choice and are often the worst affected; they usually live in the poorest, most crowded areas, can only afford to use the NHS, and have to rely on the state to educate their children.
Photograph: Xaquin

Spain, known as the land of sol, siestas and sangria, is less well known for the diversity of its linguistic heritage. Though most people could probably identify Basque and Catalan as languages spoken in Spain, the Iberian Peninsula is home to a number of minority languages and dialects you've probably never heard of.

1. Galician

Even though it has 2.4 million native speakers and is Spain's third most spoken language, it's surprising how many people have not heard of Galician. That's maybe because Galicia's most famous residents - including current Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy, the 20th century writer Ramon Valle Inclan, and Spain's late dictator Francisco Franco - are known for being Spanish, not Galician, speakers. Galician and its neighbour across the border, Portuguese, were originally one and the same language, Galician-Portuguese, a highly prestigious medieval language famous for its lyric poetry. Although Galician then became a low prestige language for many centuries, today it is co-official with Spanish in Galicia and has its own publicly-funded television channel.

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2. Aragonese

Aragon, the land of Henry VIII's first wife and the 18th century painter Francisco de Goya, is also home to the luenga aragonesa, or Aragonese language, which descends from the now extinct medieval language Navarro-Aragonese from North-East Spain. Aragonese has a core of native speakers in Aragon's remote Pyrenean villages, but is understood by many more people in the surrounding areas, and is mutually intelligible with neighbouring languages such as Castilian Spanish and Astur-Leonese. Aragonese is protected by local laws, and has its own language academy, but, like many of Spain's minority languages, is still considered endangered by UNESCO.

3. Judeo-Spanish

Judeo-Spanish, also known as Ladino, is a language from Spain that hasn't been spoken in Spain since 1492, when the Jewish population was expelled from the country by the Spanish monarchs. Though since 2015 their descendants have been able to apply for dual Spanish citizenship, Judeo-Spanish is now mostly spoken in Israel, Turkey and Greece. Because the last time it was used in Spain was over 500 years ago, Judeo-Spanish is a linguistic time capsule, and sounds more similar to Medieval Spanish than modern Spanish. It's also the only Spanish language to be written in Hebrew script.

Bilingual Spanish-Leonese roadsign

4. Leonese

One half of the Astur-Leonese language branch, Leonese descends from the everyday Latin spoken in the geographic area that would become the medieval Kingdom of Leon. The kingdom's capital, also called Leon, or Llion in Leonese, was founded by the Roman Seventh Legion. Leon/Llion, which means 'lion' in today's language, actually comes from the Latin name of the capital's founders, legio septima gemina, meaning 'the twin seventh legion'. Despite a flourishing medieval literature, history has not been kind to the llingua llionesa, which is now a UNESCO endangered language that, unlike its other half Asturian, has no official status in Spain.

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5. Aranese
If you've been following my Instragram, I'm at charlene_flash by the way, I recently visited Milan. Now, I originally planned to visit Barcelona, but due to my proposed dates that I wanted to travel, and this clashing with Barcelona Grand Prix, the next option was Milan. I visited Rome a few years ago and didn't want to visit again, scared of the astronomical prices and having visited many of the tourist sites, I wanted to visited another Italian, Milan, the fashion capital of the world is not only great for Versace, Miu Miu or Prada but there are some great "must see sights" that is worth a visit. Before, I share in detail where I would recommend to visit, Milan is accessible to English speakers. The majority of the shop owners, restaurateurs and general passer byers speak English and all the transport signs and instructions are in English and Italian so you'll be able to get around. Also, I found the Italians to be very friendly and helpful so there should be no evil glances heading your away. Compared to England, the cost of eating out is cheaper, although glasses of wine tends to be cheaper from soft drinks. Great if you love wine. Here are my top 5 things to do in Milan.

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1) Visit Leonardo Da Vinchi's "The Last Supper" mural painting is one of the world's famous painting depicting the symbolic scene in the New Testament where Jesus has his last supper with his disciples. The painting is famous for characterising each of the disciples reaction after Jesus stated that he will be betrayed. What's so great about this painting is the intricacy and sheer size of the painting, it covers one wall in Santa Maria dell Grazie church. Whilst you are admiring Leonardo da Vinchi's work, take a look at Giovanni Donato da Montofano crucifixion painting also held in the same room. You only get 15 minutes to view and tickets are notoriously difficult, if not impossible to purchase last minute. Many guides and websites state that tickets must be purchased 3 months in advance as only 15 people are allowed to view the painting at any one time to preserve the painting. I booked a half day walking tour with Viator to guarantee an informative day and also to guarantee entry to the The Last Supper. As our guide informed us, it's easier to get a date in Milan than to purchase tickets for The Last Supper. It really is a breathtaking painting, one which should not be skipped.

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2) Milan Cathedral, also known as Duomo di Milano is an imposing gothic cathedral, the second largest in Italy, the third largest in the world. As soon as your eyes lay eyes on this imposing cathedral which took 6 centuries to make, you will marvel at the building works, it is simply breathtaking. My friend and I visited on two occasions, the first to enter into the cathedral which was included in our walking tour. Entry to services I believe are free, but if you want entry and you are not attending service this will cost 2 Euros. Admire the beautiful intricate cathedral, see the story of the New Testament in picture form and just adimtre its sheer grandeur. The 2 Euro ticket entrance also included entrance to the museum, unfortunately, I did not have time to enter. Tickets to enter the terraces of the Duomo, which is worth the long queues (about 1hr 15 minutes) and going past armed army soldiers, cost 11 euros to enter the terraces using the lift. Here admire the view of Milan city skyline from one of the tallest building, alongside the sharp and dramatic buildings. Make sure you take some beautiful pictures on the roof top, utterly breathtaking.

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3) Hop On/Hop Off bus. Whenever I visit a new city, I have to book a hop on and hop off tour. What is a better way to see a new city then on the top decker on a bus with a slight breeze, sunny weather and camera at the ready. So far, I've booked this excursion at Rome, Miami, Berlin and Varaderro. The hop and off bus tickets cost 25 Euros for 48 hours. There are three bus routes, I chose the red route as it had all, what I consider the key sites, but if I had more time I would have checked out the other routes. It's probably worth taking a quick visit to the Milan Tourist Centre for advice on which route to take.

4) Galleria Vittorio Emanuelle - Unless you've got some serious deep pockets, this is likely to be a window browsing visit only. One of the worlds oldest shopping malls in the world. All the designer giants have shops here: Prada, Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Miu Miu all have shops there. It's also a great location, right next to the Duomo and near the Opera House.

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5) Venture out of Milan for the day and take a train up north and venture up to Lake Como. Around one hour train journey away and costing around 13 Euros return, view the spectacular views of the Italian lakes. Take a ferry ride to one of the many towns, people watch whilst you enjoying a glass of wine overlooking the lakes and mountains. Or if your purses can cope, visit one of the many designer shops.
Anders Breivik killed eight people by detonating a van bomb in Oslo, then shot and killed 69 participants of a political summer camp on the island of Utya. It was the most devastating act of terrorism in Norway's history. Breivik is now Norway's highest profile terrorist, a constant reminder of the dark side of the Scandinavian dream. Breivik successfully challenged the Norwegian state on human rights grounds regarding his imprisonment. His accommodation comprises of three separate cells, exercise facilities, a computer, TV and a PlayStation: far more luxurious than the average student accommodation. The substance of Breivik's claim, however, rested upon his isolation. Prolonged solitary confinement is without question inhumane: human beings are social animals and prolonged isolation leads to psychological breakdown.

The Norwegian authorities claim that this move, exceptional within the country, was designed to prevent Breivik from interacting with fellow prisoners in a move designed to prevent him from spreading his vile right-wing extremist ideology to other prisoners. Norway is a society which prides itself on its tolerance and progressive values. The isolation of Breivik represents a crisis of faith in these values. Breivik has become a symbol for all Norway's doubts about the increasing diversity of our society, a patient zero of xenophobia: a role in which he rejoices.

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The extent to which radicalised prisoners present a threat to others needs to be determined, and it's open for debate how far containment is a legitimate method to achieve this. What is clear is that we need to be concerned about the grooming of prisoners into radical movements, whether ultrareligious, or ultranationalist. Recently, a former inmate described Belmarsh maximum security prison as a 'jihadi training camp', showing that these fears are not misplaced. The UK has a growing number of young Muslims locked up in its prisons, of whom a tiny minority are radicalised. Just as prisons have long been described as Universities of Crime, this minority can turn them into Universities of Jihad in which young men evolve from being a petty criminal to a dangerous terrorist. British jihadis have seemingly been granted the freedom which Breivik sought for his own ideology - the ability to build terrorist networks and alliances within prisons. Like Breivik, some extremists actively seek to recruit and organise in these settings - from deliberately seeking to be sentenced to trying to gain entry through the system.

After two years of extensive interviews with Islamic extremists for my documentary Jihad, I consider the process of recruitment into extremism as being similar to grooming. Recruiters are experts building relationships that exploit lost souls. Prisoners living in hostile conditions with troubled histories, often with psychological and cognitive vulnerabilities, are easy targets for them. Radicalisation thrives upon despair. As a recent report has shown, despair flourishes in Britain's prisons. Rising levels of assaults and suicides indicate a dangerous decline in prisoner safety. Young men in search of a sense of identity may well prefer the glamour of being 'holy warrior' over the dreary realities of life as a prisoner or ex-con; young men dealing with guilt and shame may well prefer the idea that all their faults are due to 'the West' than their own failings; and young men whose lives have been chaotic may well appreciate the fantasy of order suggested by compliance to 'sharia.'

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The Norwegian prison system, by contrast, has a strong focus upon rehabilitation rather than punishment, and has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world. This approach is not just the best for reducing crime. A 15-country study suggests this rehabilitative ethos can also reduce the risks of radicalisation within prisons. Prisons can increase the resilience of young people vulnerable to extremist messaging through building positive programmes in order to reintegrate prisoners into society and to combat the despair of life in prison, and of lives gone astray. Prison radicalisation is not just a question of overcrowding or understaffing: it is a fundamental question about the purpose of prisons, whether they are intended to punish, to contain or to rehabilitate.
Rui Vieira/PA Wire

Today, HuffPost UK Young Voices launches Young Voters: #EURef giving young people a voice ahead of the referendum on Britain's membership of the EU on 23 June.

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Young voters will potentially cast the deciding votes in this referendum - and they'll live with the result for decades.

"It is your generation that will be most affected by the decision Britain takes in three weeks' time. Young people will live with the consequences for the longest," Jeremy Corbyn blogs exclusively on The Huffington Post UK today.

Yet many believe the campaign thus far has done little to speak to young peoples' interests, concerns, or experiences.

Younger voters see both Leave and Remain camps as a turn off - or "a group of old men shouting at each other".

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And one look at the BBC's youth debate panel - all white, with an average age of 59 - shows a lack of diversity continues to plague the referendum.

Put simply, young people also don't trust the messengers of the EU campaigns.

As Harriet Kingaby of campaign group We Are Europe puts it, older politicians have a tendency to treat younger people "as though they are in a petri dish".

And the result? Only half of young people aged 18-30 are absolutely certain to vote in the Referendum, according to a specially commissioned YouGov poll for Bite The Ballot and Hope Not Hate.

Yet with cringeworthy campaign tactics like these, why would they?

So it's time for young people to take control of the debate and consider the issues that matter most to them.

So HuffPost UK Young Voices is running a fortnight-long focus on the EU Referendum.

We're examining what is at stake for Britain's young people on 23 June and why it's imperative you register to vote and have your say.

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And if you want to have your say and blog on our platform around this topic, email ukblogteam@huffingtonpost.com.

There are around six million people aged 18 to 24 eligible to vote, according to the ONS, but 1.5million are not registered.

For Millennials older than 24 some eight million are eligible, but two million are not registered.

Many university students, registered at their term-time addresses, are expected to return home by 23 June leaving some without the right to vote at their local polling place.

What's more, with big events like Glastonbury and the start of the Summer, many thousands won't be able to vote in person come polling day.

Campaigns therefore have needed to encourage young people both to register to vote and to remember to ask for a postal ballot.

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You can do both here and find out more about voting at aboutmyvote.co.uk.

READ MORE: How do I register to vote?
Young people are being told that their lives will be more insecure and less prosperous than their parents or grandparents. I won't accept that.

There is no reason why - as the fifth richest country in the world - Britain's young people should not have the chances given to previous generations.

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In fact we live in a world where there is the potential for more opportunity than ever. Our relationship with the European Union can be part of what provides that opportunity.

Labour believes that remaining in Europe can help meet the challenges of the 21st Century. The urgent need to tackle climate change cannot be undertaken alone. Air pollution, rising sea levels and rising temperatures steadfastly refuse to recognise national boundaries - we can only address environmental issues by working together.

This government is taking away opportunities and holding back young people.

Under David Cameron college students from lower income families have had educational maintenance allowance taken away; university students have had tuition fees trebled and maintenance grants taken away. They not face the prospect of fees rising above 9,000 a year in many institutions.

Housing has become increasingly unaffordable whether to rent to buy, and young people under 35 are now unable to claim housing benefit in full. The welcome increase in the minimum wage doesn't apply to anyone under-25 and youth unemployment rose by 6,000 in the last three months.

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Too many young people I meet feel insecure about their housing and working life - where low pay, insecure hours and temporary contracts have become the norm.

There has never been a more important time to get political. In the words of the US politician Ralph Nader, "if you don't turn on to politics, politics will turn on you."

The cutbacks made by the government are disproportionately harming young people's prospects, yet it is clear they are a political choice not an economic necessity. At the same time, the government has cut taxes for the richest and for big corporations.

By working with allies across Europe we can also tackle the scandal of big corporations and the super-rich avoiding their taxes, exposed by the Panama papers. By co-ordinating our efforts we can stop one country being played off against another and clamp down on this global problem.

Labour MEPs have been working hard to make this happen - and to ensure that the 'TTIP' negotiations over a EU-US trade treaty do not give corporations powers over nation states or a free hand in diluting environmental standards, rights at work or consumer protections.

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We want Britain to remain in Europe - but also to reform the EU: strengthening workers' rights, ending the grip of destructive austerity, supporting public enterprise and democratising its institutions.

The more people participate in our democracy, the better decisions we will make as a country. That's why I have been so encouraged that young people are turning to Labour in increasing numbers.

Our party membership has doubled in the last year, and our youth membership (for those under 27) has more than trebled. Labour now has more young people as members than Ukip or the Liberal Democrats have members in total.

I want young people to have their voice heard in the EU referendum on 23 June and in politics more generally. That's why it's so important that you register to vote, encourage your friends to register to vote by 7 June - and then use that vote.

It is your generation that will be most affected by the decision Britain takes in three weeks' time. Young people will live with the consequences for the longest. If you believe we can together make this country better, then start by registering to vote.

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'Next, they wheeled out a mixed group of the ultra-religious and politicians to trick Jesus with his own words. They said to him, slyly, 'Rabbi, you always speak honestly and you're not bothered about other people's opinions. You're not swayed by status but share God's guidelines. Is it kosher to pay tax to the emperor, or not? Should we pay up?'

It wasn't hard to tell that this wasn't a genuine enquiry so he said, 'One of your tricks is it? Bring me a coin, let's have a look.' They brought a coin. He asked them, 'Whose face is this, whose name is on this coin?' 'The Emperor.' Jesus said, 'So it's his money, do what he tells you, and don't forget to do what God says too.' They realised, again, that he had won.'

Mark 12:13 - 17 (extract from unpublished 'Jumbled up in Jerusalem')

One of the stranger stories of our time is of multinational corporations earning megabucks in the pursuit of 'Mammon' and escaping the reach of the 'Emperor'. Incredibly, companies like Amazon sell goods worth billions of pounds to UK customers and pay virtually no tax, because their tax affairs are handled from a tax haven. Pretty clever, don't you think? It is possible to have your cake and eat it. Facebook settles with the 'taxman' for a few thousand pounds, while young people straight from university pay more than that in income tax. A world gone mad. Perhaps if Jesus was here today representatives of HM Revenue and Customs would be asking him for advice on tax compliance. And would he be commending the shrewdness of the 'children of this world' in his parable about the crooked manager or 'the ingenuity of tax avoiders?'

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Jesus often talked about money - the widow's 'mite', the lost coin, wealthy men with their loaded camels trying to squeeze through the eye of a needle - but only as parables, signifiers of something else. He does the same in the famous passage quoted above, to help his questioners answer their own question. They were squeamish about graven images on coins in ways that we are not, though these were accompanied by claims of godhood. Nevertheless, our own coins feature the Queen's head and make both dogmatic statements (fidei defensor) and appeals to divine agency (dei gratia), dressing up the authority of the 'Emperor' in religious language of another era ... Jesus might have something to say about this too, giving to Caesar what is God's ...

Jesus' answer, it is debatable whether it is an answer - 'give to Caesar what is Caesar's' - has often been taken as establishing the principle of the division of 'church' and state, though of course there was no church in his lifetime, as if he was setting out a demarcation in society between the sacred and the secular. In our Judaeo-Christian tradition and Western European political development we have striven to maintain a division between the secular and the religious - thus we can indeed have one law for the state and another for the church, perhaps this is a problem! Or secular politicians talk about the UK as a Christian country for political purposes, or right wing extremists use it as a badge of, and bludgeon for, racial and religious intolerance. How can any of these be sanctioned by Jesus? Yet even in the churches we get hung up over whether we live in a 'Christian country', without considering that Jesus never gave a mandate for dressing up Caesar in religious clothing. We wouldn't want to go to Jesus with our test questions, giving him a choice between two politico-religious options ...

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Jesus never gave any political advice or rulings, nor do we need any reminders of his moral teachings on human interaction or self-awareness, he did however enjoin expediency. The parable of the crooked manager has already been mentioned, think too of the (religiously?) suspicious servant who didn't even entrust his master's money to the secular banking system. Jesus was not a political revolutionary or radical, as some of his followers would have hoped, he was not a rabble rouser (as was claimed at his trials). He never vented his spleen on the secular authorities, he reserved it for religious practices. We should really take his tax ruling (if that's what it is) in this passage and look at it alongside his treatment of the moneychangers in the Temple. No doubt they were performing a useful function, ensuring that God didn't receive pagan money but Jesus saw the corruption and abuse, and no doubt religious squeamishness, and trashed the whole system, he put nothing in its place. Consider also the 'widow's mite', she was making her offering to the Temple in the coin of the realm.
Jorg Greuel via Getty Images

Young voices are being sidelined in this referendum campaign - often quite literally. The first television event held last Thursday was a debate for 18-29 year olds. Its panel featured Alan Johnson (66), Alex Salmond (61), Diane James (56), and Liam Fox (54).

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Beyond this piece of crude symbolism, polling data courtesy of Hope not Hate and Bite the Ballot/YouGov shows voters under the age of 30 generally feel detached.

When asked on their views on the referendum, 45% of 18-30 year olds saw it as 'two groups of old men shouting at each other' which, by-and-large, is true. The most prominent figures ranked by share of television appearances are Boris Johnson (9.2%), David Cameron (7.9%), Ian Duncan Smith (3.3%), and George Osborne (2.1%), followed by Nigel Farage (2.1%) and Michael Gove (2.1%).

Meanwhile, 46% of young people said they did not know who to believe in this debate, compared with 29% who did. Of groups young people were most likely to trust, a teacher/academic came first (net +59), followed by a young person like yourself (net +19). Unsurprisingly, politicians - who have made it their business to be at the forefront of both campaigns - are the least trusted group (net -66).

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One such politician is George Osborne, whose recent Treasury report outlined a few of the short-term economic risks of Brexit, among which a warning that house prices would face an 18% hit over two years.

The chancellor cannot be accused of holding young people in contempt as to do would be to acknowledge that they exist. By dangling such an incentive for this generally pro-EU cohort to switch, betrays a brazen indifference to the priorities of this constituency.

George Osborne has probably calculated there is more to gain in spooking wealthy home-owning swing voters by the prospect of a loss in the value of their asset(s), and he would be correct, as recent polls have suggested older voters may be switching to Remain.

It is an absolute truth that a large swathe of people between 18-29 do not vote. The message this sort of tactic sends is that they do not count.

Nevertheless, there are those who are, at least, trying to engage young voters. But these types of outreach efforts are rarely successful.

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From charming gimmicks like Vote Leave's condoms 'encouraging students to pull out', to the #Votin monstrosity concocted by premillennial thirtysomethings in the Remain camp, these methods all have one thing in common; they underestimate the intelligence of their target market.

Albeit rare to see, bringing in younger voters arguably now has an established blueprint. Concrete instances where politicians have connected, Bernie Sanders in the United States or Jeremy Corbyn closer to home, usually involve presenting big ideas, addressing anxieties directly, and making bold arguments.

Yet these successes are instinctively dismissed as 'populist' or 'idealistic' without further discussion, usually by the same sort of person who subsequently opts for bright colours, flashing lights and bad grammar in their own doomed-to-fail attempt to rally youth support.

It is clear that neither campaign has convincingly inspired young people to turn out to vote in this referendum, which is ironic, seeing as young people will have to endure the consequences of this decision the longest out of anyone.

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This blog first appeared on Keumars' personal blog, and can be read here
There has often been a self-assurance verging on smugness by some British commentators regarding how safe the UK is from terrorist attacks compared with our fellow nations on the continent due to our nation not being in the Schengen zone. It is true that there is a much greater chance to smuggle weapons and explosives into the Schengen zone compared to the UK. You only need to cross one border in Eastern Europe to be able travel anywhere from Seville to Stockholm to Slovenia in theory without being checked any further but entry to the UK by Car or foot is only achieved through a few highly secure port entry points such as Dover, Portsmouth and Plymouth.

But whilst it's true that the UK is safer from the threat of smuggled weapons and explosives than Europe, it is not as safe as it was. There has been an increase in the cases of British citizens paying for guns and explosives to be sent to them from abroad to the UK via the dark web. Two cases of note are the would-be spree killer Liam Lyburd who bought a Glock Pistol and of Michael Shingler, who bought a quantity of triacetone triperoxide (TATP) the explosives used in the 7/7, Paris and Brussels attacks to attempt suicide with.

In both cases it is safe to say neither would have had access to the weapons without the dark web. One of the defining characteristics of British Al Qaeda/ISIS plots in the period after 9/11 is how of the hundreds of would-be terrorists who were convicted, how few of them had any realistic chance of harming anyone with anything other than melee weapons which as the Woolwich attack of May 2013 has shown can be dangerous but nowhere near as dangerous as firearms and explosives. A great deal of these plots were disrupted by the authorities due to the would-be terrorist's communications being intercepted due to shoddy tradecraft. The advent of almost entirely encrypted communications make it much more unlikely that some of those plots in the 2000s would be discovered today.

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This is not to say, that the dark web or encrypted communications are bad per se. They are a big thorn in the side of coercive regimes worldwide, and there is a persuasive libertarian argument for their use if used for benevolent purposes. In any case you can no more ban these technologies as you could the surface internet or the printing press. It's important to note though, it could conceivably lead to a sizeable increase in the proliferation of weaponry and terrorist expertise to those with motives but previously no means.

It would be a democratization of terror so to speak. This isn't to say there wouldn't be ways of fighting back as law enforcement agencies in this and other countries have been launching sting operations to trace and arrest the buyers and sellers in this market and in an economy where one can't report fraud to trading standards, being scammed is a real possibility. Nevertheless, there is a viable market in ordering items more commonly seen on the battlefield via the dark web to be ordered hidden in the post and ISIS have been making use of the dark web for propaganda and communication purposes since late last year.

We can no longer reassure ourselves that we are 'fortress Britain' impervious to the chaos we saw engulf France and Belgium in the last eighteen months. It's no good to reassure ourselves smugly that what is over the channel, can't cross over. Yes, you can't smuggle an AK-47 from The Schengen outer border to London with no checks in theory like was the case in Brussels and Paris, but if you were street-smart (or 'web-smart' to be more exact) enough to discern successfully which were genuine vendors of these goods, you could order the parts for an AK-47 to be smuggled to London from Eastern Europe disguised in seemingly innocuous packages. If Lyburd hadn't been arrogant enough to post about his plans on social media beforehand, he quite possibly could have carried out his plans of mass-murder and mayhem with weaponry bought online without detection.

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In April this year, the seventh Indonesian president, Joko Widodo (known colloquially as 'Jokowi') travelled to the UK. During his visit, he inked at least five agreements in different fields; namely, sports, fisheries, maritime affairs, education, as well as the deal between national flag carrier Garuda Indonesia and Airbus and Rolls Royce. Of all these deals, the agreement on education seems ripe for further discussion.

The new trend of Indonesian students studying in the UK has increased significantly in recent years. This is even recognised by the UK Ambassador to Indonesia, Moazzam Malik. It is estimated that approximately 3,000 Indonesian students are studying currently at several UK institutions. This figure is expected to increase around 20 to 30% annually. The interests of Indonesian students to pursue education in the UK are driven primarily by the world-renowned quality of UK education.

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Although this growing number should be appreciated, it is important to note that the UK is not yet a top-choice destination for Indonesian students. The UK is ranked seventh among the main destination countries of Indonesian students, behind Australia, the US, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, and Germany. Therefore, it is not surprising that the number of Indonesian students in the UK remains relatively low; for example, compared with Australia, which has around 19,000 Indonesian students.

The government in London has made some efforts to attract more Indonesian students to study in the UK. One example is the routine education exhibition held by the British Council in various cities in Indonesia. This year, the Council held the largest exhibition on UK education in three different cities; Jakarta, Surabaya, and Medan. Moreover, the UK Embassy in Jakarta has also taken a step. Last March, for instance, it launched a programme named 'UK Education Month' in cooperation with the British Council. Various programmes were held during the event, which took place between 3rd of March and 1st of April. The event included the promotion of 64 universities from the UK, Education UK Alumni Awards, and the collaboration between Indonesian and UK researchers through Newton Fund. Although this effort undoubtedly provides a platform from which both countries can strengthen their educational partnership, such event are usually held only in major cities of Indonesia; thereby, reaching only a small proportion of the population. Given the vastness of the Archipelago, it is necessary to hold such events in smaller cities in the country.

Despite these efforts, especially when compared to top destination countries for Indonesians to study, the UK's determination to enhance people-to-people contacts with Indonesia remains minimal. One possible explanation for this is the absence of youth and student exchange programmes between the two countries, as was implemented by Australia, Japan, and Malaysia. Australia, for instance, has an initiative named the Australia Indonesia Youth Exchange Program (AIYEP), where 18 youths from various Indonesian provinces are sent to Australia for two months to learn about, and exchange, culture. Moreover, this is not a one-way initiative; the Australian government also sends 18 of its youths to Indonesia.

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In addition to the limited promotions and awareness, the relatively small number of Indonesian students in the UK can be attributed to the absence of annual exchange programmes between Jakarta and London. Besides offering an opportunity for the two different groups of people to develop a sense of brotherhood and understanding, exchange programmes could be an impetus for the participants wishing to continue their studies in the countries they had visited. Moreover, the exchange alumni could become the mouthpiece for the country to which they had exchanged. Furthermore, these individuals can spread important information to other prospective students regarding the country's education and living conditions. This, of course, will boost the interests of others to study abroad, because it has become human nature for people to trust those who have the same background than foreigners.

Exchange programmes become more crucial for the UK, given the interaction patterns among the people of Indonesia and the UK remain one-way; whereby only Indonesians study in the UK and not the other way around. It is unsurprising that, in 2014, fewer than 50 students from the UK were studying in Indonesia. With the exchange activities, British and Indonesian societies will have close emotional ties, which will increase the interests of British to study in Indonesia and otherwise.

As the UK-Indonesia relationship has grown significantly in recent years, both governments should realise the importance of strengthening people-to-people exchanges to overcome linguistics-cultural barriers. These ties will boost the number of their populations who are acquainted with each other's societal norms and customs, methods of performing business, and national and institutional interests. While stimulating cooperation is not a simple process, through the use of student exchanges and stronger educational partnership, the UK-Indonesia ties could expand to spheres beyond that of education.

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The MoU signed by Jokowi last April, especially in the field of education, is the correct step. Cooperation in education should be a priority for the two countries in order to complement their growing relationship.
"I don't give to charity as much as I should do...I feel guilty, but I'm never sure where my money goes."

I must have heard that sentence, or variations of it, dozens of times at the end of last year. I was polling donors to test the waters for a new philanthropy platform that shows exactly what impact donations makes, and that's the kind of response I got, again and again.

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Who can blame them?

As a social entrepreneur specialised in running online campaigns for charities, I was also starting to feel really depressed about the constant attacks on charities in the press. It felt like hardly a week went by that I didn't see a new damning headline:

Poppy seller commits suicide after charity pest calls!

MPs say 'catalogue of failures' led to Kids Company collapse!

Crackdown on chuggers as charities told to stop bullying donors!

So I wasn't at all surprised to see that, in November, public trust in charities hit its lowest point in almost a decade. That's a big problem because less trust means less donors, and the sector is already starting to see the number of donors plummet.

And it's not a new problem either. Donations have been pretty stagnant for the past ten years. Even though people give a huge amount to charity - about 19bn a year - a big fall in generosity could be catastrophic, especially as the government has cut back a lot on funding for the third sector due to austerity.

So that's why, with my co-founder Areti, I started looking for ways in which we could restore trust in charities once and for all, and solve the problem at its root.

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Blockchains are about enforcing trust

Luckily, "trust" has become a whole new area of research in startup land, thanks to the rise and rise of blockchains. It's definitely one of the "next big things" in tech, and I have to admit that I've fallen down the rabbit hole. I'm obsessed with its potential!

At its core, blockchain technology is a way to enforce trust and transparency amongst people transacting with each other. I was intrigued by the increasing use of Bitcoin for donations, for example, and by the creation of very serious all-blockchain NGOs dedicated to empowering the unbanked in some of the poorest regions of the world.

What really made it click for me is the potential of one of the most powerful blockchain innovations - "smart contracts" - to restore trust in the charity sector. What if you could track exactly what impact your donation makes? And what if you got your money back if no impact is made? That's exactly what smart contracts allow us to do, and they're at the heart of the new donation platform we're building, called Alice.si.

To make it simple, I like to think of smart contracts as hyper-secure, transparent piggy banks that store donations, and only pay them out to charities that can demonstrate concrete results.

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Donating on Alice.si

Tying donations to results

To make this vision a reality, Areti and I set about finding partners who shared our commitment to transparency and accountability, and we've been really lucky to collaborate with some incredibly inspiring and forward-looking charities. With Thames Reach and Commonweal Housing, for example, we're exploring ways in which we could help scale their innovative Peer Landlord programme, which helps people at risk of becoming homeless by providing them with affordable accommodation, training, and a peer support group within which they can learn home management skills and then teach them to others. Donations can be tied to the the programme's success in keeping its beneficiaries from sleeping rough, because it's regularly assessed by an independent body.

Henry, one of Thames Reach's Peer Landlords, outside his front door.

Raising funds on a payment-by-results basis can be risky, of course, so we're also working to ensure that we protect the charities that have the courage and discipline to carry out performance-based programmes through our platform. With the social finance experts at Numbers for Good, for example, we're looking at how Alice can help charities reduce their operational risk by raising impact investment, particularly through the use of social impact bonds, which the UK has been pioneering since 2010.

Making it happen

We've been lucky in other ways too. About a month ago, I was sitting in a room full of social entrepreneurs in Oxford, where we were all presenting our projects, ranging from a Digital Farm using the Internet of Things to support smallholder farmers in Africa, to VR goggles for the visually impaired. That was in the beautiful offices of the Nominet Trust, and the thing we all had in common was that we'd received funding from their Social Tech Seed fund. I'm incredibly grateful to them as we couldn't have got this far without them, and they've been supporting us in many other ways since.

Alice.si is still in beta, but do please check out our website and get in touch or sign up to our newsletter. The first pilots are planned for December this year, we're looking for more partners, and we'd love you to be a part of the donation revolution!

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One winter's day in 1961, Professor Edward Lorenz - one of the first meteorologists to use computer-based prediction - decided to run a weather simulation in his MIT lab. He'd run this one before, so he was pretty sure he knew what to expect. But on this occasion, to save time, he inputted the data using three decimals places, rather than six as he had used originally. So, for example, 23.348 rather than 23.347813: a difference of just 0.000187.

When he ran the programme, the model's prediction varied radically from the original. This confused Lorenz. Why hadn't a small change had a small impact?

Over the next decade, came to recognise that his finding wasn't an aberration. Lorenz had uncovered what we now call "the butterfly effect": the theory that in complex systems, small differences can have radical effects.

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And it's as relevant for communications as it is for climatology.

The Butterfly Effect in action

Take Brexit, described by David Cameron as the biggest political decision of a generation, with far-reaching consequences.

Brexit comes down to a single question: stay or go? To investigate what happens when a seemingly inconsequential change is made to this question, Zenith recruited 500 nationally representative people and asked them about their voting intention. However, we made a subtle tweak to the wording. Half were asked if they wanted the UK to remain in the EU; the rest if the UK should become independent from the EU.

Considering the gravity of the matter, you might expect the wording to be insignificant. However, we found the opposite. When voters were asked about remaining, the majority wanted to stay. But when the question was phrased as a matter of independence, more people wanted to leave.

Stop and consider how strange this is. On a vote of international importance, the result could be swung by a peripheral factor - the mere phrasing of the question.

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What is depressing for democrats is interesting for marketers

If a referendum can be swayed by wording, then seemingly peripheral tweaks can be a far more powerful influence on the unthinking purchase of everyday goods, like deodorants, shampoo or beer. If our views are lightly held, then a nudge can create a dramatic shift in behaviour.

The sales impact generated by subtle changes in purchasing conditions has been demonstrated by Adrian North, psychology professor at Heriot Watt University. He persuaded a supermarket to alternate the music in the wine aisle: one week it would be traditional German oompah music, the next French accordion music.

When accordion music was played French wine accounted for 77% of wine sales whereas when oompah music played German wine accounted for 73% of sales. A detail so small that most consumers failed to notice, had a huge impact on sales volumes.

Start from a principle of zero budget

There is a misconception, rife in marketing, that big problems can only be solved with big budgets. However, our research shows that minor changes in the context of decision making can have a disproportionate influence. Before assuming that a multi-million pound marketing campaign is the answer, brands should imagine they have no ad budget. What simple change could they make to the purchasing context?

The power of words

Fittingly, the popularity of the butterfly effect itself shows the importance of apparently trivial changes in communications.

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Lorenz originally published his findings in 1963 in a paper called 'Deterministic Nonperiodic flow'. It was a flop: cited just three times in the next decade.

In 1972 he presented his work at a conference under the title "Predictability: Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?" The emotive title attracted attention and was a hit among scientists and public alike. His ideas became the basis of chaos theory and one of the few scientific principles of recent years that has taken a hold on the popular imagination.
Parent Infant Partnership (PIP) is to launch Infant Mental Health week from 6th-10th June working closely with the 1001 Critical First Days campaign. On 27th June at the Houses of Parliament there will be an exhibition - Tomorrow's Child - that deals with the theme of maternal mental illness and the impact on the unborn foetus, which I am participating in.

Suicide is the primary indirect cause of death for mothers in the UK; if we do not protect the mental health of mothers the impact on their children is profound.

Safeguarding the mental health of our children needs to start in the womb. But our most vulnerable mothers, both in the UK and across the world, who are suffering with mental health issues, are often not getting the support they need. Being able to access care, such as a mother and baby specialist unit, remains a postcode lottery for mothers in the UK. In other countries there is a lack of knowledge about maternal mental health issues. Recently I gave two talks at the Malaysian Mental Health Association and was told that they advised women with mental health problems not to have children. This saddened me to hear. With the right support mothers with mental health issues can be good mothers and it is essential that we support them, because if we don't we are not only failing them but also their children.

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Montage of mother and child in the womb to be featured in the Tomorrow's Child exhibition on 27th June at Westminster

The mental health of a child is precarious; a baby is totally dependent on adults for food, care, shelter, warmth, cuddles and love. If a baby is not held apparently it will die. Certainly the first 1001 days of a child's life are critical, this is when they form their core relationships and if these are not solid the foundations to grow into a stable, confident young adult are jeopardised.

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How do we protect the mental health of children? By protecting and supporting mothers - this is crucial. But how do we do this? We can't just solely rely on overstretched mental health services. Support can manifest itself in the form of enlisting the help of family, partner, friends, a neighbour and a good GP. A new mother, especially one with mental health problems, will struggle with the demands of breastfeeding and the rigors of motherhood that are unrelenting. The chronic sleep deprivation can also make her vulnerable.

Support needs to be sustained and on-going to ensure the child is thriving and healthy, not just physically but mentally. If a mother is depressed or psychotic bonding with her children is going to be challenging, but these phases will pass although at times it might seem like the darkness is never ending.

There is much that a mother can do from the outset of her pregnancy, but she might be disinclined if she is enduring pre-natal depression; these mothers need to be monitored because a mother's depressed state will impact on her growing baby. A mother who doesn't make eye contact, smile or play with her baby - all this impacts on the mother/baby relationship and on the baby's development. Some mothers who experience thoughts/visions to harm their babies are too afraid to seek help because they fear they might be separated from their babies, or that their babies will be removed from their care permanently. I would like to believe that most mothers want the very best for their children; having mental health problems can impede that process, but with the right help they can overcome these challenges.

Even as children grow, if they are born to mothers with mental health problems they need extra care. A mother might explain her condition, when she is unwell or triggered, but these are complex issues for anyone to understand let alone a child. As long as children are getting love and stability from one person they will be ok. In my book Schizophrenics Can Be Good Mothers Too I argue that mothers with mental health problems should not be left alone with their children for prolonged periods of time. For children should not be exposed to mental illness they need to be shielded from it and yet mentally unwell mothers are left alone with children. This is just not right and yet it is the reality of the situation.

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On 7th June at the House of Lords I am participating in a debate hosted by Baroness Helena Kennedy of the Shaws Q C. Perinatal psychiatrists, MPs, mental health advocates and sufferers/survivors of maternal mental illness will be coming from all over the country to listen and participate in a debate addressing the following question:

What can we do to protect the maternal mental health of mothers and their children, especially those vulnerable to maternal mental illness in the UK and globally?

A lot can be done that simply involves caring, being compassionate, patient, neighbourly, or helping by listening to a mother that you know who is struggling on her own. There's only so much that doctors and mother and baby units can do, realistically.

Personally, I sense the current epidemic in mental health is a direct result of the erosion of community in many parts of the country and the world. Our ancestors lived in tribes, a mother was not left in isolation to raise a child, she had countless people to turn to for support, these structures of support have diminished over time and so we have to create virtual and alternative ones to protect vulnerable mentally unwell mothers and their children.

Acting now could help to stop generational cycles of mental illness. The consequences for our children will be profound, if we fail to act not just in the UK, but globally. We all must do our bit to help mentally unwell mothers, to support them and their children, too.

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"I feel like I'm living like a ghost because I cannot speak the language". Those are the words of Mahmoud*, a Syrian refugee who arrived in the UK in September 2015, after a long and perilous journey.

Having survived the horrors of conflict in Syria, Mahmoud was granted refugee status here in February. He is desperate to rebuild his life, and contribute to the country that has granted him sanctuary. For Mahmoud, learning to speak English is the key to unlocking his future here. However, his hopes of doing so are frustrated by a desperate lack of English language classes.

Mahmoud's situation is depressingly familiar. While politicians across all parties continue to talk of the need for migrant communities to learn English in order to properly integrate with British society, the reality is very different. All too often refugees struggle to move on with their lives because government cuts mean that they cannot access English language classes.

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At Refugee Action we believe that political rhetoric needs to be met with action, which is why we have launchedLet Refugees Learn, a new campaign calling on the government to invest the funds needed to ensure that refugees are given quick access to quality English classes and ensure a proper English language strategy for England is put in place, like those in Scotland and Wales.

In theory, refugees in England are eligible for fully funded English classes. However, as our report clearly demonstrates, government cuts mean refugees in England are facing barriers to accessing quality English lessons; including shortages of provision, long waiting lists and being assigned to the wrong class because of a lack of available places. The problem is particularly acute for women. Meanwhile bus fares to get to college are unaffordable; meaning that in some instances refugees are forced to pull out of classes.

For refugees, learning English is vital because it enables them to achieve tasks that the rest of us might take for granted; from paying bills and explaining health problems to their doctor to chatting to their neighbours and communicating with their children's teachers. Moreover, our research shows that refugees want to learn with all of those interviewed saying that they want to learn English because they want to live independently and self-sufficiently.

It's in all our interests for refugees to be able to integrate and to contribute to Britain. The cost of providing English classes for two years is effectively reimbursed through taxation in just eight months if a refugee gets a job at the national average wage as a result of learning English. The public support this. A recent poll - conducted by BritainThinks for Refugee Action - demonstrated that nearly three quarters of the British public think refugees learning English is beneficial to Britain; enabling them to better integrate, work, make a living and pay taxes.

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Being able to speak English is the first step towards integration for refugees. Those that we work with often explain that not being able to access English language classes leaves them feeling isolated, depressed and frustrated. Many try to learn through other routes, whether by watching English programmes on television or on YouTube and of course there are many volunteer-led community groups doing excellent work in supporting refugees to learn the language. Only last week I met a former train driver in Bradford, who wants to put his retirement to good use by teaching English to refugees. Such efforts are hugely commendable and a brilliant supplement to accredited ESOL provision but it cannot be a replacement for them.

The government must act now to ensure that those refugees that arrive here, having fled unimaginable horrors, are given the English classes they need to start rebuilding their lives and integrate within our communities.
The world is at a tipping point--closer than ever before to ending the misery of animals used in toxicity tests for cosmetics and their ingredients. After years of pressure from animal protection groups, caring consumers and ethical retailers across the globe, cosmetics cruelty has been fully or partially banned by law in 33 countries, home to 1.7 billion consumers, with at least 10 more countries lining up to do the same.

Yet despite this progress, Humane Society International estimates that as many as 500,000 animals are still being used each year around the world in cruel and outdated tests for cosmetic ingredients and products. By far the largest proportion of these animals--more than 375,000 in 2015--are used to meet pre-market test requirements in China alone.

Mandatory animal testing

China's Food and Drug Administration requires all imported cosmetics, new cosmetic ingredients, and "special-use" cosmetics such as hair dyes, deodorants and sunscreens, to undergo animal testing before being sold. Companies are required to submit finished product samples to the government for testing in a CFDA-recognized laboratory. Once approved for sale, provincial authorities also conduct post-market inspections of cosmetic products, which can include a further layer of animal testing.

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Currently, CFDA accepts only a few of the available, internationally recognized cell- and tissue-based methods as alternatives to animal testing for cosmetics. In other words, even if a test requirement, e.g., eye irritation, can be satisfied using a validated non-animal approach, results from an animal test will still be required for sale in China. Expanding the number of existing and new non-animal test methods recognized and accepted by Chinese authorities remains a top priority as a gateway to change.

Changing regulations

In June 2014, the CFDA introduced regulatory reform that removed the mandatory requirement for pre-market animal testing for non-special-use or "ordinary" cosmetics manufactured in mainland China. This rule change could allow for some reduction in animal testing, provided Chinese domestic companies choose to conduct or contract for non-animal product safety assessments.

Foreign brands have also had limited options to circumvent China's pre-market animal testing requirements, although these doors appear to be closing. One route involved piggy-backing on the 2014 rule change by shipping semi-finished "ordinary" products for bottling or re-packaging in mainland China. Because such re-packaging was considered final "manufacturing" under the law, these products were not technically considered imports and mandatory animal testing was not required. However, it was reported in the past week that CFDA may be planning to ban such repackaging of cosmetics, effectively closing this loophole. Similarly, China moved in April to require licensing of all foreign cosmetics purchased online and imported through special government authorized "free-trade zones," closing another door to the avoidance of pre-market animal testing (although for now it is still possible for Chinese consumers to purchase cosmetics from foreign company websites and have these delivered directly to their home without animal testing).

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Whether or not pre-market animal testing can be avoided in some cases, any cosmetic sold on shop shelves in China may also be subject to post-market testing, which can include animal testing. Such testing is undertaken at the discretion of provincial authorities, whether at random or in response to consumer complaints, and is normally carried out without a company's knowledge.

Sold in China and cruelty-free?

Following the CFDA rule change in 2014, certain animal groups have begun to provide "cruelty-free" endorsements for Chinese companies (see media releases from Cruelty Free International and PETA). Other cruelty-free certification programs, such as the North American Leaping Bunny program overseen by the Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics, maintain that "any company that markets or sells their products in China may be removed from the Leaping Bunny Program unless a company can provide proof that they are exempt from animal testing now and anytime in the future." Similarly, Australia's Choose Cruelty Free"is very concerned about cosmetic companies selling, or contemplating selling, their products in China ... If your company decides to enter a market where animal testing of your products is still required you will be removed from the Choose Cruelty Free List."

These conflicting positions from cruelty-free certification programs provide little help to consumers or ethically-minded companies, and beg the question: Is it possible for a company to provide a 100 percent assurance of no new animal testing for the Chinese market?

For an objective, independent opinion, Humane Society International turned to a very reputable Chinese consulting group, REACH24H. The resulting Investigation Report on Regulation Status of Domestic Non-Special Use Cosmetics-Related Animal Testing concluded that "a company cannot provide a 100% assurance of no new animal testing for the Chinese market. New animal testing can still be required or undertaken for new ingredient notification, and/or post-market surveillance by provincial [Food and Drug Administrations] or related authorities, who will conduct sampling inspection including animal testing randomly, no matter [whether] the submitted data is animal test reports or safety assessment reports."

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Bottom line
Secretary of State John Kerry recently discussed a new approach to U.S. foreign policy making during a lecture at Rice University in Houston - a focus on religion: "The more we understand religion and the better able we are as a result to be able to engage religious actors, the more effective our diplomacy will be in advancing the interests and values of our people."

He explained in great detail how religion would be taken more seriously as a component of foreign policy making with the creation of a permanent Office of Religion and Global Affairs within the State Department; religious actors and officials at different levels would engage regularly, going beyond leadership and "to the rank and file"; and, he recognized that religion is an integral part of people's lives all around the world, something that is "pervasive...complex....and internally diverse, reflecting multiple schools of thought, regional variations, and complicated histories". Ignoring religion undercuts American foreign policy. Critically, Secretary Kerry stated: "But we don't - and this is important - we don't establish contacts just for the sake of having interesting conversations. We do so to make progress towards our foreign policy and our national security goals, and I believe this effort is one of those multiple efforts necessary in today's world to help make America safer in a responsible and thoughtful and perhaps even, hopefully, visionary way."

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As a student of religion and politics who focuses primarily on the Middle East, I am genuinely excited about this new approach. Religion, indeed, is an important factor in politics and needs to be taken seriously. This new approach has the promise of helping to make better-informed foreign policy decisions. Yet, its eventual distinctiveness and success depends on the extent that U.S foreign policy makers are willing to engage with non-orthodox religious actors and move beyond the nebulous substantive focus of this new policy. In particular, the implementation of the new approach to foreign policy making faces three major challenges, especially as it relates to the Middle East: the nature of religious authority, dominance of Islamists, and resemblance to CVE programs. Ultimately, I am compelled to ponder whether there is anything "new" in this new approach to foreign policy making that promises to take religion more seriously.

1) Fragmented Religious Authority: This new approach requires engagement with leaders and representatives of faith communities who typically are well-informed and wield religious authority. These individuals provide the most direct and immediate access to a religious tradition, channel insight into religious doctrines, and potentially help identify problems in policy issues as it relates to U.S. foreign policy. Yet, the Middle East in particular, and the Muslim world more broadly, experienced a major fragmentation in the nature of religious authority within the last century. The class of religious scholars (ulama) who historically wielded religious authority is weakened, abused, or ultimately turned into stooges of government. Islamic intellectuals, Islamists, and fundamentalists are the new kids on the block. They have successfully morphed into major religious actors and holders of religious authority throughout the 20th century, being only marginal outsiders a century ago.

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There is no well-defined religious institutional structure and authority throughout the Middle East, perhaps with the exception of Iran. Religious authority is highly fragmented and fiercely contested between the state, preachers, scholars, Islamists, and fundamentalist groups. Under such circumstances, this new foreign policy approach that draws from religion is fraught with key dilemmas, calling into question the viability and value of this new policy.

For example, picking partner(s) to work with in a fiercely contested issue area such as religion introduces a host of potential problems. Who do U.S. state department officials interact with among various claimants of religious authority, state or civil society representatives? If civil society partners are picked, then the State Department officials must be wary about their choices, which might amount to picking winners.

By contrast, if official state religious institutions become the partner (which in most cases have limited legitimacy or credibility), such partnership renders the notion of "progress towards our foreign policy and our national security goals" futile. Religion might simply be overlaying a thinly guided effort to affect the policy making of another country. As such, it would signal, at best, unnecessary encroachment in the affairs of another country and spur anti-American and anti-Western sentiment; at worst, it would undermine strategic foreign policy goals of the U.S. throughout the Middle East in countries such as Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Egypt by fueling religious oppositional groups' antagonism. Critically, the majority of activities that relate to religion in international affairs originate and persist beyond formal state and multilateral institutional confines. Put differently, limiting engagement to formal institutional structures or "favorable" religious groups and individuals is unlikely to yield effective policy.

2) The Dominance of Islamists: Perhaps the most daunting challenge to the new policy is Islamists. While it is easy to classify Islamists merely as political actors, which they certainly are, they often exist as hybrid organizations. They act as political parties or have organically-tied political branches; they also operate as religious groups that preach, educate, lead prayers, and provide health care and other kinds of social services. They have their own men of religion and imams. Crucially, this Islamic activism forms the bedrock of Islamist claims to legitimacy and religious authority; they provide an alternative and, by their own claims, a more authentic Islam to the ones typically offered by state institutions of religion in association with the traditional ulama. Many buy into Islamist claims.

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Yet, Islamists have historically been ignored in U.S. foreign policy making; indeed this aversion is so great that, as Amaney Jamal explains, the authoritarian outlook of the Middle East partially owes its existence to this aversion. Secular authoritarian leaders and citizens in the region channel their efforts to block Islamists from assuming power lest the U.S. turns hostile against their country; the economic and strategic costs of such an unfavorable turn outweigh the potential democratic gains. There is a peculiar dilemma. While the U.S. is dismissive of Islamists, such actors are highly popular, well-entrenched in the society, and generally command religious authority. The policy of engaging religion and religious actors but leaving major ones such as Islamists or other oppositional religious groups out undercuts this new policy's efficacy right off the bat. Moreover, it is highly possible that the new policy might turn into liability, as alternative religious actors who are shunned will likely use this as an opportunity to actively derail U.S. foreign policy discourse and credibility. In order to make this new religion in foreign policy effective, therefore, the U.S. needs to develop a sustainable policy on engaging Islamist groups.

3) Existing Policies and Religion in Foreign Policy: Recently, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd analyzed counter violent extremism (CVE) programs in the U.S. These programs are gaining ground domestically especially among college students and have been around for many years as an instrument of foreign policy. They typically aim to tackle "bad" religion and nurture "religious moderation", most recently in the Muslim world: "Government-led programs and projects intended to support moderate religion and to suppress violent religion are flourishing. These efforts encompass advocacy for religious freedom, interfaith dialogue, and legal protections for religious rights. Increasingly, they also include CVE."

Many problems have historically plagued CVE and similar programs. Most critically, religion is viewed as the primary cause of political behavior, i.e. political violence and extremism. Consequently, neutralization or transformation of the religion becomes the policy option to provide the most favorable outcome in regards to providing security.

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The concern is that it might eerily resemble past or existing programs that utilize religion and religious discourse to attain American foreign policy objectives such as CVE programs. While the new religion approach of the State Department remains only partially unveiled, the poor track records of similar policies in the past focusing on religion to achieve "our foreign policy and our national security goals" cautions us against taking the same path. Unless a distinct focus and approach to religion can be created, the proposed policy promises to waste resources for no clear endgame. To quote Shakman Hurd again, "The US has never disestablished religion in our foreign policy. Instead, American authorities coopt and cooperate with religious institutions and leaders overseas, perceiving these efforts as essential to securing US interests."
A Multi-Trillion-Dollar Bridge to Nowhere in the Greater Middle East

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

We have it on highest authority: the recent killing of Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour by a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan marks an important milestone. So the president of the United States has declared, with that claim duly echoed and implicitly endorsed by media commentary -- the New York Times reporting, for example, that Mansours death leaves the Taliban leadership shocked and shaken.

But a question remains: A milestone toward what exactly?

Toward victory? Peace? Reconciliation? At the very least, toward the prospect of the violence abating? Merely posing the question is to imply that U.S. military efforts in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Islamic world serve some larger purpose.

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Yet for years now that has not been the case. The assassination of Mansour instead joins a long list of previous milestones, turning points, and landmarks briefly heralded as significant achievements only to prove much less than advertised.

One imagines that Obama himself understands this perfectly well. Just shy of five years ago, he was urging Americans to take comfort in knowing that the tide of war is receding. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the president insisted, the light of a secure peace can be seen in the distance.

These long wars, he promised, were finally coming to a responsible end. We were, that is, finding a way out of Washingtons dead-end conflicts in the Greater Middle East.

Who can doubt Obamas sincerity, or question his oft-expressed wish to turn away from war and focus instead on unattended needs here at home? But wishing is the easy part. Reality has remained defiant. Even today, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that George W. Bush bequeathed to Obama show no sign of ending.

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Like Bush, Obama will bequeath to his successor wars he failed to finish. Less remarked upon, he will also pass along to President Clinton or President Trump new wars that are his own handiwork. In Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and several other violence-wracked African nations, the Obama legacy is one of ever-deepening U.S. military involvement. The almost certain prospect of a further accumulation of briefly celebrated and quickly forgotten milestones beckons.

During the Obama era, the tide of war has not receded. Instead, Washington finds itself drawn ever deeper into conflicts that, once begun, become interminable -- wars for which the vaunted U.S. military has yet to devise a plausible solution.

The Oldest (Also Latest) Solution: Bombs Away

Once upon a time, during the brief, if heady, interval between the end of the Cold War and 9/11 when the United States ostensibly reigned supreme as the worlds sole superpower, Pentagon field manuals credited U.S. forces with the ability to achieve quick, decisive victory -- on and off the battlefield -- anywhere in the world and under virtually any conditions. Bold indeed (if not utterly delusional) would be the staff officer willing to pen such words today.

To be sure, the United States military routinely demonstrates astonishing technical prowess -- putting a pair of Hellfire missiles through the roof of the taxi in which Mansour was riding, for example. Yet if winning -- that is, ending wars on conditions favorable to our side -- offers the measure of merit by which to judge a nations military forces, then when put to the test ours have been found wanting.

Not for lack of trying, of course. In their quest for a formula that might actually accomplish the mission, those charged with directing U.S. military efforts in the Greater Middle East have demonstrated notable flexibility. They have employed overwhelming force and shock-and awe. They have tried regime change (bumping off Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, for example) and decapitation (assassinating Mansour and a host of other militant leaders, including Osama Bin Laden). They have invaded and occupied countries, even giving military-style nation-building a whirl. They have experimented with counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, peacekeeping and humanitarian intervention, retaliatory strikes and preventive war. They have operated overtly, covertly, and through proxies. They have equipped, trained, and advised -- and when the beneficiaries of these exertions have folded in the face of the enemy, they have equipped, trained, and advised some more. They have converted American reservists into quasi-regulars, subject to repeated combat tours. In imitation of the corporate world, they have outsourced as well, handing over to profit-oriented private security firms functions traditionally performed by soldiers. In short, they have labored doggedly to translate American military power into desired political outcomes.

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In this one respect at least, an endless parade of three- and four-star generals exercising command in various theaters over the past several decades have earned high marks. In terms of effort, they deserve an A.

As measured by outcomes, however, they fall well short of a passing grade. However commendable their willingness to cast about for some method that might actually work, they have ended up waging a war of attrition. Strip away the light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel reassurances regularly heard at Pentagon press briefings or in testimony presented on Capitol Hill and Americas War for the Greater Middle East proceeds on this unspoken assumption: if we kill enough people for a long enough period of time, the other side will eventually give in.

On that score, the prevailing Washington gripe directed at Commander-in-Chief Obama is that he has not been willing to kill enough. Take, for example, a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed penned by that literary odd couple, retired General David Petraeus and Brookings Institution analyst Michael OHanlon, that appeared under the pugnacious headline Take the Gloves Off Against the Taliban. To turn around the longest war in American history, Petraeus and OHanlon argue, the United States just needs to drop more bombs.

The rules of engagement currently governing air operations in Afghanistan are, in their view, needlessly restrictive. Air power represents an asymmetric Western advantage, relatively safe to apply, and very effective. (The piece omits any mention of incidents such as the October 2015 destruction of a Doctors Without Borders hospital in the Afghan provincial capital of Kunduz by a U.S. Air Force gunship.) More ordnance will surely produce some version of victory. The path ahead is clear. Simply waging the Afghanistan air-power campaign with the vigor we are employing in Iraq and Syria, the authors write with easy assurance, should do the trick.

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When armchair generals cite the ongoing U.S. campaign in Iraq and Syria as a model of effectiveness, you know that things must be getting desperate.

Granted, Petraeus and OHanlon are on solid ground in noting that as the number of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan has decreased, so, too, has the number of air strikes targeting the Taliban. Back when more allied boots were on the ground, more allied planes were, of course, overhead. And yet the 100,000 close-air-support sorties flown between 2011 and 2015 -- thats more than one sortie per Taliban fighter -- did not, alas, yield some version of victory. In short, weve already tried the Petraeus-OHanlon take-the-gloves-off approach to defeating the Taliban. It didnt work. With the Afghanistan Wars 15th anniversary now just around the corner, to suggest that we can bomb our way to victory there is towering nonsense.

In Washington, Big Thinking and Small

Petraeus and OHanlon characterize Afghanistan as the eastern bulwark in our broader Middle East fight. Eastern sinkhole might be a more apt description. Note, by the way, that they have nothing useful to say about the broader fight to which they allude. Yet that broader fight -- undertaken out of the conviction, still firmly in place today, that American military assertiveness can somehow repair the Greater Middle East -- is far more deserving of attention than how to employ very expensive airplanes against insurgents armed with inexpensive Kalashnikovs.

To be fair, in silently passing over the broader fight, Petraeus and OHanlon are hardly alone. On this subject no one has much to say -- not other stalwarts of the onward-to-victory school, nor officials presently charged with formulating U.S. national security policy, nor members of the Washington commentariat eager to pontificate about almost anything. Worst of all, the subject is one on which each of the prospective candidates for the presidency is mum.

From Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford on down to the lowliest blogger, opinions about how best to wage a particular campaign in that broader fight are readily available. Need a plan for rolling back the Islamic State? Glad you asked. Concerned about that new ISIS franchise in Libya? Got you covered. Boko Haram? Heres what you need to know. Losing sleep over Al-Shabab? Take heart -- big thinkers are on the case.

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As to the broader fight itself, however, no one has a clue. Indeed, it seems fair to say that merely defining our aims in that broader fight, much less specifying the means to achieve them, heads the list of issues that people in Washington studiously avoid. Instead, they prattle endlessly about the Taliban and ISIS and Boko Haram and al-Shabab.

Heres the one thing you need to know about the broader fight: there is no strategy. None. Zilch. Were on a multi-trillion-dollar bridge to nowhere, with members of the national security establishment more or less content to see where it leads.

May I suggest that we find ourselves today in what might be called a Khe Sanh moment? Older readers will recall that back in late 1967 and early 1968 in the midst of the Vietnam War, one particular question gripped the national security establishment and those paid to attend to its doings: Can Khe Sanh hold?

Now almost totally forgotten, Khe Sanh was then a battlefield as well known to Americans as Fallujah was to become in our own day. Located in the northern part of South Vietnam, it was the site of a besieged and outnumbered Marine garrison, surrounded by two full enemy divisions. In the eyes of some observers, the outcome of the Vietnam War appeared to hinge on the ability of the Marines there to hold out -- to avoid the fate that had befallen the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu slightly more than a decade earlier. For France, the fall of Dien Bien Phu had indeed spelled final defeat in Indochina.

Was history about to repeat itself at Khe Sanh? As it turned out, no... and yes.

The Marines did hold -- a milestone! -- and the United States lost the war anyway.

In retrospect, it seems pretty clear that those responsible for formulating U.S. policy back then fundamentally misconstrued the problem at hand. Rather than worrying about the fate of Khe Sanh, they ought to have been asking questions like these: Is the Vietnam War winnable? Does it even make sense? If not, why are we there? And above all, does no alternative exist to simply pressing on with a policy that shows no signs of success?

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Today the United States finds itself in a comparable situation. What to do about the Taliban or ISIS is not a trivial question. Much the same can be said regarding the various other militant organizations with which U.S. forces are engaged in a variety of countries -- many now failing states -- across the Greater Middle East.

But the question of how to take out organization X or put country Y back together pales in comparison with the other questions that should by now have come to the fore but havent. Among the most salient are these: Does waging war across a large swath of the Islamic world make sense? When will this broader fight end? What will it cost? Short of reducing large parts of the Middle East to rubble, is that fight winnable in any meaningful sense? Above all, does the worlds most powerful nation have no other choice but to persist in pursuing a manifestly futile endeavor?

Try this thought experiment. Imagine the opposing candidates in a presidential campaign each refusing to accept war as the new normal. Imagine them actually taking stock of the broader fight thats been ongoing for decades now. Imagine them offering alternatives to armed conflicts that just drag on and on. Now that would be a milestone.

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If you had two minutes with John S. Watson, the CEO of oil industry giant Chevron, what would you ask? Climate scientist and NCSE Board member Ben Santer recently got that opportunity, when he attended the company's annual shareholder meeting in San Ramon, California.

You would be correct in assuming that Santer doesn't own any shares in Chevron. So how did he get into the shareholders meeting? It turns out that the Union of Concerned Scientists arranged for a corporate shareholder to transfer its legal proxy to Santer, giving him the right to attend the meeting and submit a two-minute statement.

The proxy paperwork arrived only two hours before the meeting was to begin--just the first of many hurdles Santer faced. Security was extremely tight. No cell phones, computers, or other electronic devices were allowed. Santer couldn't even bring in a cup of coffee. Just a pencil and paper. And it turns out there was no guarantee that he'd even get to make his statement and ask his questions: everyone who hoped to speak was assigned a number, and only a few numbers were chosen--lottery-style--from a large hopper. Fortunately, Santer's number was called.

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Here's what he said:

My name is Dr. Ben Santer. I am a MacArthur Fellow and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. I use "climate fingerprint" methods to study the causes of climate change.

In 1995, I was Lead Author of a chapter in a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We concluded that: "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate".

Since 1995, the "discernible human influence" has become far clearer. Human "fingerprints" are identifiable in warming of the oceans and land surface, in changing rainfall patterns, in declining Arctic sea ice extent, and in sea level rise. Over our lifetimes, we are witnessing large and rapid changes in climate. If these changes are unchecked, future generations will grow up in a world with a very different climate from that of today. They will inherit climate debt they did nothing to incur. I don't want to see that happen. I'm sure you don't either.

Chevron is one of the largest corporate emitters of CO. Your actions have global consequences. You should be leaders in efforts to chart a sustainable path towards a clean energy future. You have made impressive investments in STEM education. I respectfully request that you show similar corporate leadership in acknowledging the reality and seriousness of human-caused climate change, and in making the educational investments needed to prepare the next generation for the climate challenges they will face.

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My specific questions are these:

1. When will Chevron commit to align its business model with the target set by world leaders in Paris--the target of limiting warming to "well below 2 Celsius?"

2. More than 150 companies have signed up to set science-based targets for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. When will Chevron join this group?

I'm sure you're curious to know how Mr. Watson responded. Sadly, Santer reports that "It was more of a 'Q session' than a 'Q&A session'." All questions having to do with how Chevron planned to adjust its business model in the face of rapid climate change to which the company's products are materially contributing were, essentially, punted--in other words, the answer Santer got was no answer at all. The company will change its business model when it is forced to by regulation or changed economic incentives (like a carbon tax). Until then, the climate change "can" will be kicked down the short-term profitability "road."

Shareholder votes on climate change-related resolutions suggest that most of them agree with the kicking-the-can-down-the-road plan. Santer reported that a shareholder's suggestion that "Chevron should just keep doing what it does!" got the biggest round of applause of the whole meeting. A full 81% of shareholders rejected a resolution proposed for this meeting to include a climate expert on the company's board of directors. Even a proposal simply asking the company to report on how limiting global warming to 2 would affect Chevron's business was voted for by only 38% of shareholders.

There is some good news, however. Santer was not alone in asking how Chevron plans to adjust its business plan in response to the reality of climate change. While his questions focused on the implications of the accumulating weight of scientific evidence. other shareholders, including representatives of various religious faiths, implored Chevron to consider the moral implications of continuing to rely on a product that is literally endangering future generations. Still others pointed out the potentially dire financial consequences of failing to invest in alternatives to fossil fuels, given the high likelihood that they will indeed face significant regulatory and tax disincentives as the U.S. strives to fulfill the promises it made in the Paris agreements.

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Were I in attendance, I would have raised one more issue: As Santer mentioned in his remarks, Chevron invests heavily in STEM education. I think that's great, although I find its ads pretty cloying. (Dear Marketing Team: Building a robot that throws paper cups is not, technically speaking, science. I would argue it's even sort of a stretch to call it engineering.) But if they have such a strong interest in STEM, shouldn't Chevron be distancing itself from groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, which has a dismal record of casting doubt on climate science? Wouldn't it be a good idea to use some of that STEM investment to ensure that science (the S in STEM) teachers are adequately prepared and strongly encouraged to teach climate science? Surely a company that depends heavily on scientific and engineering talent does not want a generation miseducated about one of the greatest challenges we face as a society--or are they really only interested in funding S*TEM (* only science that does not negatively impact our bottom line)?

Maybe I should show up at next year's shareholders meeting and see what Mr. Watson has to say about that.

Kick the can photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/levanahpix/3828240291

Can-can photo credit: By Toulouse-Lautrec, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=109479
This interview is part of a series on Trailblazing Women role models (Entrepreneurs and Leaders) from around the world and first appeared on Global Invest Her. You have to see what you can be.

"Earlier in my career, my biggest challenge was understanding that all forms of success are not identical and I didn't need to look or behave like successful men. I could be my own person."

Leslie Jump has over twenty-five years experience building, advising and investing in new companies, products and brands, in the US and across the globe. She is the Founder and CEO of Startup Angels, a platform to inspire and enable new angel investors around the world. Prior to that, she was a Partner in Sawari Ventures, LLC, a Cairo-based early stage venture capital firm investing in entrepreneurs across the Middle East/North Africa. She continues as an advisor to Flat6Labs, Sawari Ventures' dedicated startup accelerator for seed stage investments. Leslie also serves on the Board of UP Global, a network of entrepreneurs and startup community leaders, and Ubongo, a social enterprise that creates interactive edutainment for children in Africa. She is an alumna of St. Johns College (Annapolis, MD/Santa Fe, NM), and serves on its Board of Visitors and Governors.

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Learn more about Startup Angels here Visit her website https://startupangels.com and follow her on Twitter @StartupAngelsCo and @lajump



Who is your role model as an entrepreneur?

Two people stand out: Austin Ligon and Marc Nager. Austin is most famous for being the Founding CEO of CarMax, a Fortune 500 company he spun out of Circuit City. Today, CarMax is a $9 billion company, that's very tech-driven despite not being a technology company. What I admire about Austin is that he is someone who has been able to create enormous commercial success while at the same time inculcating a culture that sees people as human beings.



I also admire Marc Nager, the Founding CEO of UP Global (formerly Startup Weekend, now owned by Techstars), the nonprofit that supports startups and their communities. I served on their Board. One of the most exciting things about the organization is that a couple of guys in an apartment started it about 8 years ago and now there are over 300,000 people in 110 countries who have participated in a Startup Weekend, with over 7,000 volunteers leading it. They created a movement helping people understand that anything is possible no matter where you are. While attending their events I've met some of the top volunteers who gathered from around the globe - everywhere from Damascus to Dublin to Detroit.



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What is your greatest achievement to date?

I was fortunate to be part of the leadership team when the commercial Internet was launched. It was 1994 and within 10 weeks we were shipping software (the equivalent of Microsoft Outlook). We launched the first e-commerce site and helped ignite the spark of more broad based interest in the Internet, raising collective consciousness to where it is today. We did the first OEM deal for the Netscape browser (with Marc Andreessen) and helped put them on the map. That's one thing I'm very proud of.



Another thing I'm proud of is being part of a group accelerating technology entrepreneurship and startup investing in the Middle East. When I began working actively on this in 2007, there were only 5 VC funds with $120M under management in the region (excluding Israel). We launched our firm, Sawari Ventures, in 2011, as well as Flat6Labs an accelerator which now has 6 locations, just as the Arab Spring started. Now there are 50 funds with $1B funds in the region. This entrepreneurial ecosystem is part of the fight against extremism and terrorism and it's very exciting to be a part of that.



What has been your biggest challenge as a woman entrepreneur?

Earlier in my career, my biggest challenge was understanding that all forms of success are not identical and I didn't need to look or behave like successful men. When I was in my 20's I worked for an incredible woman who would come to work looking like someone from the cast of Dynasty. This was the age of the power suits and she always looked amazing. She taught me it was ok to be a full-on woman and be successful in this very male-dominated industry.



Now as an entrepreneur again, in my early 50's, my greatest challenge is getting out of my own way. You know too much and have seen so many things. My co-founder graduated from college in 2010 and everyone who works for me is under 30. Working with people from different generations helps me a lot to not get caught up in my own analysis.



What in your opinion is the key to your company's success?

I'm a 'people collector'. I love understanding people and putting them in context. Before I met my husband, who was a Senior US Diplomat in the Middle East, I knew nothing about that part of the world, so I decided to learn as much as possible about it. I was nurtured to learn this way at home, but I also went to St John's College where the entire curriculum is prescribed (obligatory) and every subject is taught through the Socratic method. The combination of being naturally curious, enjoying engaging with people, and feeling like there is no subject matter I can't take on if I want to are all traits that have led to a lot of success.



If you could do one thing differently, what would it be?

Recognizing when I've had enough. There is a line between tolerance and insanity. We've all been in places in our career where you work like crazy -- to a point of going overboard -- and think you are being ambitious. There were definitely moments in my career where I have been guilty of that and it's resulted in less-than-ideal decisions at times. Now I try to hit the reset button on myself, take vacations, workout regularly and do things I need to do for myself, husband and my family. It's important to recognize your own limits.



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What would you say to others to encourage them to become entrepreneurs?

Encourage and celebrate your natural curiosity. A lot of people have great ideas or think about things and think 'that can't work' or 'I live in a society where that's not acceptable'. What defines a successful entrepreneur versus other people in the world is that they are unwilling to let any of those things stand in their way. I think that the two countries in the world who are off the charts for entrepreneurship are the United States and Israel. What both countries have in common is that they are filled with immigrants. It's linked to risk tolerance - being willing to throw away everything that is familiar.

How would you describe your leadership style?

I've been told that I am like the toughest university professor you will ever have, which is probably true! I'm pretty demanding and ambitious for my team and myself. One of the things that blows people over when they first start working with me is my own personal output. That can be a flaw and you have to be really careful about that. Another strength is that I'm very empathetic. I'm in the trenches with them. Empathy helps me to look holistically at an individual and understand how to best work with and support them.

What advice would you give to your younger self?

Don't take it all so seriously! For most of us, what we do every day isn't a matter of life and death. I remember having an early conversation with the UP Global guys. They were worked up about something and I said, "Time out. Were shots fired? No, was tear gas fired? No. Did somebody die? No. It's been a good day! Don't worry about it so much".





What would you like to achieve in the next 5 years?

I would like to lead a group of people interested in transforming the way early-stage investment happens across the globe. I am convinced that the system for early-stage investing in technology is fundamentally flawed. If you look at it as an asset class, it doesn't work and it drives all kinds of negative behaviors. Unfortunately, those behaviors get the majority of airplay and some angel investors feel they need to imitate that. But the reality is that venture capital only goes to 1% of companies, and it only works 1% of the time.



The bottom line is there are a huge number of entrepreneurs around the world -- 95 new companies being formed every minute. But the number of investors and the amount of capital is highly consolidated in a few places. If you look at venture capital, almost half of the world's venture capital is in Silicon Valley. This flaw in the system in the way it works. People need to understand that there are smart people, capital and innovators in every city. If you get them to throw off the constructs that exist in the newspapers and tech journals, and think about what you need to do to grow a company, they'll create new models and ways of doing it that are relevant in their local markets.

3 key words to describe yourself?

Smart

High energy

Empathetic

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Watch Anne Ravanona's TEDx talk on Investing in Women Entrepreneurs.
Personally speaking, I am concerned about our political discourse which demonized "the other." Despite the fact that I grew up with seeming advantages, I had real struggles which make me very sensitive to the characterizations I hear spouted by certain politicians every day. I am troubled by the idea that people with disabilities could ever be afraid, and it's why I am compelled to share.

Here is my story.



When I was 14-years-old, my mother called me into her bedroom to tell me that I had something called Epilepsy. My mom struggled to discuss it with me through her tears; she said the doctor told her whatever I do, not to tell anyone -- not a teacher or any friends. I was worried something had happened to her and initially did not understand the magnitude of what she was trying to explain to me in her grief. I felt so bad for her that I bought her a bunch of daisies at the local florist. Her pain was personal, couldn't be discussed and was our secret.



I soon discovered that sadly, my mother's warnings were well-founded and came on the heels of centuries of stigmas against epileptics. According to The History and Stigma of Epilepsy "In the United States, for instance, people with epilepsy were forbidden to marry in 17 states, until 1956. The last state to repeal this law did so only in 1980. In 1956, 18 states provided for the sterilization, on eugenic grounds, of people with epilepsy. In the United Kingdom, a law prohibiting people with epilepsy from marrying was repealed in 1970."

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My mother told me that people would not understand what I had and would make judgments about me. She told me I would have to stop doing some things like riding my bike, and I might not be able to drive -- that they would have to see how the medicine worked.



Throughout high school, I took a variety of meds to manage my secret diagnosis. At the time, I was 6'6'' and weighed 160 lbs. The meds, in the beginning, made me so tired I at times could hardly hold my head, up. Additionally, I suffered from disfiguring severe cystic acne that was believed to be connected to my meds. The remainder of high school I never had my picture taken, I did not attend graduation. Looking back a combination of shame and wanting to be invisible. I looked different, and I felt different. In my lankiness, I moved like a toddler giraffe and did everything I could not be noticed.



Since that time, a lifetime ago, I have been off seizure meds for over 25 years and even longer seizure free.



While I still have the scars on my face from acne, something that has faded with age, the wounds of the epilepsy stigma have not faded. I have never been able to get my head around knowing that people would hate me not for what I did but simply because of who I was, something over which I had no control. The fact that my diagnosis caused my mother so much pain that it was something that only discussed in the confines of her bedroom. I was someone who seemingly had to be whispered about in privacy.



Since that time, I have been quick to suppress that especially fearful time in my life, when I felt as if I had to be invisible to survive.



Now several years later, we are hearing unthinkable rhetoric from a presidential candidate, mocking the "other" -- those with disabilities, a different religion, a foreign heritage. Building walls within our country with words.

I recall the jokes in high school about epileptics hoping my nervous laugh would not give me away; I was afraid that soon the dots would be connected to me.

I am personally moved to advocate for not turning the clock back on centuries of bigotry against those of us that might be different. We must not build the physical brick walls to keep people out, nor something much higher, the invisible walls of hate. When the political climate changes, hate is in many ways harder to tear down than something physical. Not unlike an overflowing bathtub, hate seeps into every crack and crevice. And like a leak, unattended, even a small flow can down the tallest and the strongest.



My professional interest is in preventing cancer. Everything that we accomplish comes from people who have compassion and act without judgment.



Our run here on the planet is brief; it needs to be one of actions for others not against others. If we are ever to see advances in treating society's ill -- from poverty to cancer -- our leadership must be focused on bringing people together, not stepping on others to fill our egos and bank accounts, or worse, throwing it all under the bus just to win elections.



So whatever the politics -- left, right or everything in between -- let's never make it about hate of the "other." If we are ever to find common ground on so many crucial social issues, we must do it from a place of caring.
Azadeh Shahshahani is a human rights lawyer who has worked for over a decade in the US South. She was the first woman of color to lead the National Lawyers Guild and as a social justice lawyer has been deeply involved in the movements for immigrants' rights including shutting down the Stewart Detention Center and repealing the discriminatory educational bans affecting undocumented students in Georgia, dignity for Muslim-Americans, a just US foreign policy, and Free Palestine.

Growing Up

Azadeh Shahshahani was born in Tehran, Iran, four days after the 1979 Iranian revolution. The Iranian people overthrew the unelected, US-supported, Shah of Iran who had ruled the country since a 1953 CIA coup which eliminated the democratically elected President of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh.

Her parents named her Azadeh, which means free-spirited in Persian, signifying the hopes they had for the revolution. Her father as well as several aunts, uncles and cousins were all in the medical profession.

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She grew up with war. The Iran Iraq war started when she was one and it did not end until she was nine years old. Readers should recall the US supported Saddam Hussein in that war giving Iraq billions of economic aid, plus weapons and intelligence to fight Iran.

"I remember that my family had created this space underneath the stairs with a blanket hanging where the four of us (my parents, sister, and I) would go, sit, and hold hands when there were sirens to warn us that Saddam's missiles were coming.

When she was 15, her family immigrated to the US for greater educational opportunities for her and her sister, settling in Memphis.

"Though I had a privileged immigration experience because I was able to come with my parents and with documents, I still felt deeply traumatized and uprooted." Because of the role the US played in overthrowing the democratically elected government in Iran and supporting Iraq in the war against Iran, "I developed a keen interest in US foreign policy and the destructive role the US government has played recently and historically in many countries. My background and upbringing made me into a semi-revolutionary, but it was college and law school that finally sealed my fate!"

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Human rights led her to law school, even though she originally planned to be a doctor and had been selected for a spot in the University of Michigan Medical School. As an undergraduate she majored in Middle Eastern Studies and history. "I became involved with various social justice and human rights organizations and realized that my true passion was fighting for human rights. I thankfully had the support of a mentor at the time, Professor Kathryn Babayan of the Near Eastern Studies Department, who encouraged me to follow my heart. Much to my parents' chagrin and disbelief, I postponed medical school for a year and applied to Michigan law school."

Graduating in 2004 from the University of Michigan Law School, Shahshahani also has a Masters in Modern Middle Eastern and North African Studies. There she met her future husband, who earned his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Michigan. They have now been married almost 15 years. Together they moved to Raleigh North Carolina where her husband was hired as a professor.

"I had no connections to North Carolina whatsoever. Honestly, for a while, it was very rough. I was in a state of loss and desperation. There was a large Muslim and Middle Eastern community living in the state. I was expecting to find an organization or program to provide legal support to the community. But there was not any. So I thought maybe I could help start something. I approached the ACLU of North Carolina with the idea of a program to provide the community with the legal support tools they needed. We got funding for the project which enabled me to do a series of "Know Your Rights" presentations at various mosques and community centers around the state. I also helped put together a network of attorneys to help represent community members when they were approached by the FBI or faced discrimination.

Three years later, Shahshahani was asked to serve with the ACLU of Georgia. "These were times of terror for immigrant communities in Georgia. ICE launched a number of police collaboration programs and detention centers such as the Stewart Detention Center. The Georgia legislature also notoriously put forth and passed several anti-immigrant bills including an Arizona copycat bill. I served as director of the Georgia National Security and Immigrant Rights for 7 years. I took on litigation, human rights documentation, coalition and movement building, advocacy at the legislature, training of attorneys, and public education." With the ACLU she helped publish a 2012 report on private prisons for immigrants in Georgia, and a 2014 report on hyper-enforcement against immigrants in Georgia.

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One of her human rights victories was on behalf of Mrs. Valentine who was prevented access to a courthouse in Douglasville, Georgia in 2008 because she was wearing a headscarf. Not only was Shahshahani able to help secure an individual settlement for Mrs. Valentine from Douglasville, but she was also able to implement a statewide policy change allowing religious headgear in courts.

During her time in Georgia, Shahshahani restarted the Georgia chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. Founded in 1937, the NLG is the nation's oldest organization of progressive lawyers and legal workers fighting for social change. Soon she was elected the Southern Representative to their national board and was active in the United People of Color Caucus (TUPOCC) of the NLG. "TUPOCC has played a large role in making the NLG become an anti-oppressive organization."

In 2011, Shahshahani was elected President of the National Lawyers Guild "The NLG has served as my political home. NLG members have been some of my strongest mentors, role models, and friends. There is no other organization like the NLG serving as a base for legal activists. It provides a space to do political legal work and be connected to other movement lawyers, legal workers, law students, and jailhouse lawyers."

With the NLG, Shahshahani participated in international human rights delegations to Haiti, Honduras, Palestine, post-revolutionary Tunisia and Egypt, and Venezuela. She also served as a member of jury for human rights tribunals on Mexico and the Philippines.

In January 2016, Shahshahani started a new job as Legal and Advocacy Director with Project South, a

Southern-based leadership development organization dedicated to movement building. She provides legal support to social justice movements with a focus on immigrants' rights and defending Muslim and Middle Eastern communities against state repression.

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She has been recognized with the 2012 Advocacy Award from the American Immigration Lawyers Association among others. Her writings have appeared in Al Jazeera America, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Huffington Post, The Guardian, MSNBC, and Truthout.

"As an immigrant and a Muslim, I am intimately familiar with the human rights issues I am working on. I know justice comes about through grassroots mobilization and movement building. My work as a social justice lawyer and activist is to help support the movement. Winning even small victories for the movement gives me great satisfaction.

"I am inspired by freedom fighters throughout history, particularly Palestinians fighting for their human dignity in the most oppressive of circumstances. On my office wall I have pictures of Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically-elected prime minister of Iran who was toppled in a 1953 CIA-engineered coup because he dared to nationalize Iranian oil and Forough Farrokzad, a pioneering Iranian woman poet who died tragically young but who has left her mark on Iranian literature and the feminist movement.
A panoramic view of the coast of Gozo, Malta, last week

Which of the following statements is most accurate for you?

A) I receive 15 days of paid vacation each year, and I take them--guilt-free.

B) I receive 15 days of paid vacation each year, but I feel guilty if I take them.

C) I haven't had a vacation in years. I'm loyal to my company or business and am proud of this fact.

D) I work for myself and don't take vacations. If I don't work, I don't make money.

Even if you chose A, you surely know people in the other three categories. We in the U.S. wear as a badge of honor the fact that we rarely, if ever, take time off from work. We need to earn a living, and many of us like what we do, so our reluctance to take vacations is justified, right?

No, it isn't.

Leaving work behind for a period of time is not only acceptable; it is our ethical obligation.

Here's why.

AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

Imagine taking up to six weeks of paid vacation each year and not feeling the slightest bit of guilt in doing so. It's not a fantasy; for many, it is a happy way of life. Consider this:

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The United States is the only advanced economy in the world that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation. European countries establish legal rights to at least 20 days of paid vacation per year, with legal requirements of 25 and even 30 or more days in some countries. Australia and New Zealand both require employers to grant at least 20 vacation days per year; Canada and Japan mandate at least 10 paid days off. The gap between paid time off in the United States and the rest of the world is even larger if we include legally mandated paid holidays, where the United States offers none, but most of the rest of the world's rich countries offer at least six paid holidays per year. [Source: "No-Vacation Nation Revisited," Rebecca Ray, Milla Sanes, and John Schmitt, Center for Economic and Policy Research, May 2013]

Perhaps many U.S. companies view vacation days as a perk, a benefit, something above and beyond the call of duty. But for ethical reasons, it is a serious mistake for employers to view vacations this way, and it is just as wrong for employees to feel that they are being disloyal to their employer or their colleagues when they take time off.

WHAT DOES ETHICS HAVE TO DO WITH VACATIONS?

Five fundamental principles of ethical intelligence are:

1. Do No Harm

2. Make Things Better

3. Respect Others

4. Be Fair

5. Care

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As I've discussed in previous blog posts, our ethical responsibilities apply not just to how we treat others but to how we treat ourselves, too. Although ethics is fundamentally a guard against self-obsession, it is right and good to treat ourselves with respect, fairness, and compassion and to avoid causing ourselves harm.

Now consider two states of affairs: how you feel after working for a long time without a break, and how you feel during and after some restorative time at the beach. Can you really be at your best when you're running on empty? Aren't you more likely to do a good job when your batteries are recharged? Taking a vacation from time to time enables you to do your job to the best of your ability, and this is one reason why vacations are an ethical issue.

Another reason why it is ethical to take time off periodically is because we simply owe it to ourselves to rest. The ethical arguments for taking vacations are in fact similar to those for staying home when you're sick. Doing the right thing for yourself and your clients means that when you've got a cold or the flu, you ought to stay home and get better. Being an ethical person also means cashing in those vacation days each year, out of respect for both yourself and those to whom you provide a service.

OBSTACLES TO TAKING VACATIONS AND HOW TO RESOLVE THEM

Let's look at some of the most common reasons for not taking time off, and how you can respond effectively to these challenges:

"I work for myself/My employer doesn't provide paid vacations/I've been laid off, and I need to work."

The reluctance to give up some future revenue is understandable, particularly in our current economy. But how often is this an excuse, rather than an accurate reflection of one's financial or work situation? Taking a vacation doesn't have to mean gambling big in Vegas or flying first-class to Sydney, as fun as these trips may be. With "staycations" becoming more popular, time away from work can mean nothing more than sleeping late, binge-watching The Office or Breaking Bad on Netflix, and eating lots of comfort food at home.

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We budget for meals, clothing, and transportation. Shouldn't we also budget for a vacation? Yes, there ought to be a law mandating paid vacations, but until that comes to pass, we'll have to find creative ways on our own to take time off.

"I love my work, and I'm miserable when I'm away from it."

Maybe it's time to get a hobby. I'm reminded of Godfrey Reggio's astounding 1982 film, Koyaanisqatsi. The title is a Hopi term for "life out of balance." It's wonderful to be jazzed about your job--I feel the same way--but a rich, meaningful life involves things beyond work.

"Most of the people I work with aren't taking vacations, so I don't want to burden them with the extra work they'd have if I left for a while."

It's praiseworthy to want to avoiding causing undue stress on your colleagues, but you--and they--are entitled (ethically, if not legally) to some time off. Ultimately, the fair distribution of labor is a management issue, and employees shouldn't have to worry that a justifiable absence will result in an undue burden on the team.

I'm the only one at work who can do my job. The company, and my clients, can't afford for me to be away.

It's nice to feel wanted or needed, but few of us are truly indispensable, as much as we may hate to admit it. I submit that in most cases, the idea that you, and only you, can do your job is a delusion of grandeur rather than a reflection of reality.

"I feel guilty when I take vacations."

If you're not yet convinced that it's ethical to take time off, perhaps it's time to talk with a trusted adviser about why you feel you aren't worthy of a trip to the mountains or the shore, or even just some time to yourself. You have every reason to feel good about treating yourself right, and vacations, however you choose to spend them, are self-indulgent in the best possible way.

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Checking e-mail, taking work-related phone calls, and reading material related to one's job are not the elements of a true vacation. A working vacation makes about as much sense as showing up for a corporate job in shorts and a tank top with a margarita in your hand. To the list of things for which there is a time--a time to be born, a time to die, a time to weep, a time to laugh--one might add, "a time to work, and a time to take a long break."

* * *

This article appeared originally on Bloomberg.com. Read all of my Bloomberg columns here. The five principles of ethical intelligence are based on Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics.

Take my free ethics quiz, sign up for weekly updates on how to be a stronger, more successful leader, and even book me to speak to your group! Just visit my website.
Financial Aid:

Students with intellectual disabilities are eligible to apply for federal financial aid to help cover the cost of attending college under these circumstances:

The student must meet the definition of intellectual disability as outlined in the act

Students must be attending an approved Comprehensive Transition Program - a list of these programs is maintained on the Federal Financial Aid website

Students who meet these two criteria DO NOT have to have a standard high school diploma, or be pursuing a degree or certificate.

Students with intellectual disabilities DO still have to meet the financial need criteria for eligibility

They are eligible for federal grants and work study funds, but NOT student loans.

Transition and Postsecondary Programs for Students with Intellectual Disabilities (TPSID):

The 27 TPSID grantees, located in 23 states, create or expand college programs that focus on academics, social activities, employment experiences, and independent living. TPSIDs provide individualized supports for students and opportunities to be involved in college experiences with their peers without disabilities. Evaluating what works and does not work is a key component of each project.

National Coordinating Center:

Think College serves as the National Coordinating Center for these projects. The Center conducts evaluation of the TPSID projects and collects information related to best practices in academic, social, employment and independent living program components.


Oil touched $50 last week, close to double its slump price earlier this year, before falling slightly below that benchmark. Short-term impacts - the wildfire in Canada and outages in Nigeria - helped reduce stocks and drive up the price; then Iraq production increases stalled the rally. The market seemed to have averted the risk of an extended period of $20-30 prices, unsustainable for oil dependent nations, even the richest like the Saudis, whose "pump and dump" strategy lies behind the current low-price environment.



At $40-60/barrel, however, the Saudis can stay the course. They can afford that price in terms of their budget deficit, if not easily. Some US shale plays come back into production, but the capital heavy projects in the Arctic, ultra-deep ocean or Canadian tar sands are still off the table as prudent investments. Medium term, as non-OPEC, non-shale production falls, with no new big ticket projects coming on-line to replace depleted wells, reserves fall. Increasing demand will then require increasing dependence on OPEC and soaring prices. Even if US shale roars back in response, it can't make up for an investment slump everywhere else. The Saudis can then set the price they want.



Western governments know this. They treat the Kingdom with kid gloves. In Kossovo, even while it was effectively an American protectorate, the Saudis were allowed to implant jihadi mullahs to create an ideological base for their Wahhabi Islam. In the process they "transformed this once-tolerant Muslim society at the hem of Europe into a font of Islamic extremists and a pipeline for jihadists." Kossovo now sends more recruits to ISIS than any nation in Europe: 314 identified to date from a tiny country.



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Kossovo is not alone. Wiki-Leaks found that the Saudi consulate in New Delhi had 140 imams on its payroll - and Indian Muslims lament the erosion of the tolerant Islam that was indigenous to their country.

In Washington, efforts to disclose the role of the Saudis in the 9-11 attacks, laid out in 28 still secret pages of the 9-11 Commission Report, are still stalled by counter-lobbying from the Saudi Government - although some of its representatives have previously asserted they have nothing to hide and would welcome the release of the documents.



So cheaper oil, even oil below $50, has not freed the United States from the security threats of oil's monopoly over global transportation, while it has threatened to continue (or even exacerbate) the escalating disruption of global climate stemming from continued reliance on oil and other fossil fuels.



The Saudi Strategy to extend oil's hegemony seems to be gathering steam.



But technology and politics are hinting there is a pathway to a world Beyond Oil. Recent months have been full of breakthroughs among advocates of clean transportation technologies like EV's. The biggest splash was Elon Musk's staggering 400,000 early orders for the launch of his Model 3. But significant new opportunities for EV's were also signaled by the declaration by Indian Energy Minister Piyush Goyal that he wanted a national goal of complete electrification of the Indian motor vehicle fleet by 2030! The German Government, its market lagging the rest of Europe in EU sales, committed $1.4 billion to catch up. The Austrian Ministry of Agriculture and Environment is working on a plan that would ban the sale of new gas and diesel cars by 2020. Lawmakers in the lower house of the Dutch Parliament approved a motion in March that would ban the sale of new gas and diesel cars five years later.



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These kinds of policy support for a more rapid transition to cleaner, non-petroleum based transportation choices matter - a lot. Indeed, even if clean transportation vehicles have higher sticker prices than diesel or gasoline engines, their positive impact on future oil prices makes them a very good deal for oil importers like the EU, the US, India and China. A recent study by Cambridge Econometrics, Oil Market Futures, concluded that investing in clean transportation could help head off the next oil price spike. It also found that without such leadership, oil prices could easily reach $130 by 2050, even though most of the U.S. shale reserves would become profitable again once prices reach $80. Importantly, it estimated public policies to encourage reduced reliance on oil could save $33 trillion in transportation spending over the decade from 2020-2030.

What is lacking, particularly in the US, is a robust public conversation about breaking oil's monopoly and replacing it with cleaner transportation energy. While states on the West Coast and in the Northeast push for lower oil dependence, and the Obama Administration works on fuel economy standards, the oil and auto industries are gearing up a massive political assault on these efforts. Oil companies are pouring tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions into California legislative efforts. The President has done little to make the fight to get off oil a clear priority for his final year in office. Donald Trump, of course, thinks the answer is simply to drill even more wells, precisely the strategy that has left us vulnerable to the Russians and Saudis today.



But one intriguing idea has been offered up - that the next President should set up a National Commission to investigate the manipulation of the global oil market by exporters like Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Iran. The idea was offered by Securing America's Future Energy, a coalition of business and national security leaders. SAFE's goal is not so much to discover new conspiracies - OPEC conducts its market manipulation in the broad light of day, and economists have agreed for decades that in a competitive oil market, prices would be far lower.

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But what has been lacking is a mechanism to focus public attention on the problem, and the solution - ensuring that Americans have genuine transportation choices rather than being forced to fuel up with gasoline, diesel or jet fuel all derived from crude oil. SAFE's proposed OPEC Commission could serve that function, forcing Washington to address the problem. The first Congressional support for the idea came from some interesting sources: Arizona Republican Congressman Trent Franks, Minnesota Democrat Colin Peterson, and Donald Trump's own energy advisor, North Dakota Congressman Kevin Cramer. (Trump himself did not embrace the idea, nor have either of the Democratic Presidential candidates.)
Dear Carrie,

I have $85,000 to invest for my grandchildren's education. Where would you suggest I invest it?

--A Reader

Dear Reader,

I applaud your idea wholeheartedly--with just one caveat. Before you move ahead, make absolutely sure you won't need that money for your own retirement. It's great to be generous, but only make this gift to your grandkids if you're confident you'll have the financial resources you'll need for yourself. To me, retirement is one time when it's okay to be a little selfish.

That said, investing in a child's education is a wonderful gift. To do it thoughtfully, there are essentially four options to consider: a 529 plan, a custodial account, a trust account, or simply using your own account with the plan to make gifts to your grandchildren later. Here are the basics of each.

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A 529 plan is the most popular tax-deferred vehicle

In a 529 account, earnings grow federally tax deferred and withdrawals aren't taxed as long as the money is used for "qualified" higher education expenses--things like tuition and fees, room and board, books and school supplies. (Make sure to keep the receipts!)

The federal tax advantages of a 529 are a big plus, but there are also additional benefits:

An individual can contribute70,000 (140,000 for a married couple) in a single year without triggering gift taxes (provided no additional gifts are made over the next five years).

You control the assets. The child is the beneficiary but can't access the money directly.

You can transfer unused assets to other family members. Say one grandchild was college bound, but the other wasn't. The 529 assets could be shifted to the one headed for college without penalty.

Some states offer tax deductions and even tax credits for 529 contributions.

What's not to like? Well, 529 plans may offer fewer investment choices than some custodial accounts or trusts, and trading and exchanges are often limited. Plus, the funds can only be used for higher education; if you withdraw them for some other reason, you'll pay federal and state taxes on any investment income, plus a 10 percent penalty.

For the record, a Coverdell Education Savings Account (ESA) also has tax benefits and can be used for elementary and secondary education as well as college. The drawback is that annual contributions are limited to $2,000, and then only if you qualify based on your adjusted gross income.

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A custodial account allows more investment flexibility

If you're sure your grandkids will go to college, a 529 plan makes sense. But if your goal is simply to give them some financial assistance later in life, you might consider a custodial account. It's generally more flexible than a 529 in terms of what you can invest in, and how your grandkids can use the money.

That second point can be a double-edged sword. While you control the investments now, the assets become the beneficiary's at 18, 21, or 25 (depending on your state and your wishes). Theoretically, your grandchild could reach the legal age and cash out the account to buy a Ferrari, and there'd be nothing you could do about it. That's something to think about.

Earnings don't grow tax-deferred and there are no qualifying tax free withdrawals, as in a 529 plan, but a custodial account may offer a tax benefit: Under the 2016 tax code, the first $1,050 of investment earnings are tax-free and the next $1,050 is taxed at the child's (usually lower) rate; after that the marginal tax rate goes up to the parents' rate.

You also need to be aware of the gift tax exclusion. While there are no limits on the amount you can contribute to a custodial account, currently an individual can only contribute a maximum of $14,000 per year ($28,000 per couple) without triggering the gift tax.

A trust account gives you more control

If you want more control over the money, look at a trust account, either a Crummey Trust (the odd name comes from the first person who successfully set one up) or a 2503(c) Minor's Trust. These are more complex and more expensive than your other options. If they sound appealing, consult a trust expert. With a trust account, you're also limited to the annual gift tax exclusion.

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A final option: Keep it in your own account

One final option is simply to earmark that money for your grandchildren and keep it in an account in your own name. Of course, you'd need to stipulate your intentions in your will (or set up a trust), and think about estate taxes. But the pluses are that you'll have complete control over how the money is invested and how and when it's disbursed. And if you should happen to need the money yourself, it'll be available.

You have a lot of options, although given the amount of money you plan to invest, the 529 plan may make the most sense. Pick one with low expenses and a wide range of investment choices, and then choose investments that match the time horizon you need and offer plenty of diversification. Target funds, which rebalance automatically as the date of matriculation grows nearer, offer a simple solution, so check them out.

Whatever you choose, I'm sure your generosity will be remembered for years to come.

Note: Target date funds asset allocations are subject to change over time in accordance with each fund's prospectus.

The values of target date funds will fluctuate up to and after the target dates. There is no guarantee the funds will provide adequate income at or through retirement.

Target date funds are built for investors who expect to start gradual withdrawals of fund assets on the target date, to begin covering expenses in retirement. The principal value of the funds is not guaranteed at any time. Also, please note that the target date represents an approximate date when investors may plan to begin withdrawing from the fund.

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For more updates, follow Carrie on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Looking for answers to your retirement questions? Check out Carrie's new book, "The Charles Schwab Guide to Finances After Fifty: Answers to Your Most Important Money Questions."

This article originally appeared on Schwab.com. You can e-mail Carrie at askcarrie@schwab.com, or click here for additional Ask Carrie columns. This column is no substitute for an individualized recommendation, tax, legal or personalized investment advice. Asset allocation and diversification cannot ensure a profit or eliminate the risk of investment losses. Where specific advice is necessary or appropriate, consult with a qualified tax advisor, CPA, financial planner or investment manager. Diversification cannot ensure a profit or eliminate the risk of investment losses.

The information on this website is for educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for specific individualized tax, legal or investment planning advice. Where specific advice is necessary or appropriate, consult with a qualified tax advisor, CPA, financial planner or investment manager.
Nagasaki survivor Takeo Aizawa, a retired school teacher now living in Tokyo, did not watch President Obama's speech at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial live, as many other Japanese did. At 77, Aizawa keeps the schedule of a much younger man. He was handling other events in his life, his new grandbaby for one, and planned reunion of old classmates.

But he remembers better than most, the events that brought Obama to Japan a few days ago, because Takeo Aizawa lived through them.

Aizawa was a six-year-old student attending class when the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, 30 kilometers from where he sat. "I was not affected seriously," he told me, "that's why I survived and now I can talk to you." But he and his friends ran back to their homes as sirens wailed and people screamed. The Aizawa family sat out the attack in a homemade bomb shelter. He remembers how many people were killed or seriously injured on August 6, 1945. "It was a terrible scene every day," he told me.

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I have known Takeo since 2010, when I interviewed him for a story about Goodwill Guides, a corps of multilingual Japanese who volunteer to assist as guides to people visiting their country. A former English teacher with a curiosity about many things, Takeo is well-suited to this post-retirement activity. And over the years, he has also helped me on other stories and as a researcher for my soon-to-be-published book.

Last summer Takeo and his brother Michihiko visited me in Connecticut, meeting my neighbors, attending a service at my church and through the generosity of my friend David Paqua, taking their first-ever flight in a small airplane.

I did not learn for a few years that Takeo and Michihiko were Nagasaki survivors. But when Takeo told me it was in a most surprising context. It was to explain how - in a very attenuated way - the two of us were able to become friends.

After the bombs, American soldiers provided food that kept his family alive. This act of kindness inspired the boy to learn to English. And as a man, that skill gave Takeo the opportunity to see the world from a broader perspective.

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Over the years, Takeo has spent time guiding people from 28 different countries. Each encounter has changed him in some way. "I now know that people of the whole world are the same, they have common feelings and share the same compassion, kindness and weaknesses."

During his speech on May 27, President Obama alluded to the same conflict, what the president called "humanity's core contradiction."

"Many speeches have been made so far," said Takeo, who is more attuned to the subject than most, but Obama's address and its honest appraisal of human nature "is one of the greatest," Takeo said.

"This gives me the impression that we should have some means of getting to know each other more directly," Takeo suggested. "Then we have more peace and resolve prejudice against different people."
The recent General Conference of the United Methodist Church in Portland, Oregon highlights the struggles of a denomination that is hemorrhaging. While public attention focuses upon United Methodism's stance on LGBT equality, I left Portland with the sense that this issue is the tip of the iceberg of a church that is plagued by an unwieldy structure and a lack of trust among its leaders. The drawn-out arguing over rules of debate, incessant parliamentary maneuvering, and the deferral of legislative action on many critical issues was paradigmatic not only of the church's theological confusion. It also demonstrates an inability of different sections of the church to find ways to creatively engage one another in what United Methodists historically term "Christian conferencing." By a narrow vote, the conference empowered the denomination's Council of Bishops to create a commission to explore a way forward for the church on questions of human sexuality. This includes the possibility that the bishops may call a special General Conference sometime within the next few years to focus exclusively on these issues. The idea of a special General Conference session has risen some hope that solutions to the church's longstanding impasse over human sexuality might be at hand. However, I recognize that my church is deeply wounded leaving me pessimistic about its future--even as I try to hold out hope of reform.



Historically, church unity has always been an elusive ideal for the United Methodist Church. Since its founding in 1784, the antecedent denominations within United Methodism have been torn apart by schisms over theology, ecclesiology, and social-political issues. Painfully, Methodists have often compromised principles of justice for the sake of preserving institutional unity. Even with the empowerment of the Council of Bishops to call a special General Conference to address issues related to human sexuality, I am skeptical of the church's ability, or will, to alter the current political realities within the denomination.

Part of the United Methodist Church's struggle today is not just over theology; it's over structure. The growing presence of international United Methodists, in particular from Africa, highlight the ways that the United Methodist Church has become a global entity. Although United Methodism may be a global church in its appearance, its structure is unequivocally American--a fact that clearly works to the benefit of many conservatives who want to preserve the church's current prohibitions against the LGBT community.

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The 2016 General Conference coincided with the 200th anniversary of the death of Methodist patriarch, Francis Asbury. Despite all of the changes in the church since Bishop Asbury's leadership shaped the early American Methodist movement, characteristics of Asbury's era are still evident in United Methodism today. In Portland, this was apparent in the ways delegates responded to the church's bishops. Many delegates pleaded with the bishops to lead the church in discerning a way forward on LGBT issues, while other delegates castigated the bishops for overstepping their authority. Throughout its history, Methodist debates on social issues were often intertwined around questions of church polity, related to episcopal authority, the meaning of ordination, and the role of laity. (For example, the 1844 schism over slavery that split episcopal Methodism into northern and southern churches revolved around competing understandings of the role of bishops in the church.) These debates were also shaped within the historical context of the United States, whereby Methodism, like other American religious groups, was impacted by the nation's larger political struggles on a range of social issues.

Religious leaders frequently make the assertion that one's faith should make a person rise above the cultural norms of a given era. However, the history of American Methodism reveals the ways that this tradition was shaped by--even as it has critiqued--larger developments within American culture. Today, American social-political institutions, including the Supreme Court, affirm that LGBT persons have fundamental legal and human rights, including marriage equality. Despite its proud heritage of standing up for human rights both nationally and internationally, the United Methodist Church is still reluctant to acknowledge the dignity and worth of LGBT persons. Frankly, the conservative rationale that opposing the "sinful" lifestyles of LGBT persons makes the church countercultural just rings hollow. These arguments don't make the United Methodist Church more biblical, more Christian, or more Methodist. They just drive away LGBT Christians whose leadership and talents could be used to make our church stronger in its witness.

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The fact that the United Methodist Church has fiercely resisted changing its policies on LGBT rights is not only an indication of conservative dominance in the U.S. but reflects the symbiotic relationship between American conservatives and African churches. These groups have created a seemingly insurmountable voting block within the denomination. (In Portland, 260 of the 864 total delegates came from African churches.) However, the African church is not the root of the problem when it comes to changing the church's stance on human sexuality. The problem rests with American conservatives who largely dictate the voting patterns of African church leaders. This reality not only stymies debate on LGBT issues, but it prevents the United Methodist Church from envisioning organizational structures that take into account the widespread theological and cultural differences within global Methodism.

What then is the way forward for the United Methodist Church when it comes to LGBT equality? For me, the one ray of hope that I saw in Portland came when disparate groups of delegates voted together on certain resolutions dealing with issues of poverty. For example, when the conference passed a resolution calling for universal health care in the United States, it not only rejected the arguments of conservative delegates who ranted against the sins of Obamacare; it garnered the vocal support of African delegates who recognized the fractured logic of those who profess a care for the poor, without providing the practical means by which the physical needs of the individual can be addressed. This development gave me some hope that diverse constituencies in the church recognize that historically Methodism is at its best as a faith movement when it focuses upon the needs of the poor.

Does this development represent a potential window by which the United Methodist Church might experience a kairos moment when it comes to changing the church's prohibitions on human sexuality? As much as I'd like to hope that this is the case, I am not optimistic that change will occur anytime soon. Without minimizing the deep theological differences that exist in the church, we must face the fact that the reality of "Christian conferencing" as practiced by the United Methodist Church keeps a vital segment of the church from having a voice in shaping its polity: mainly, those within the LGBT community.

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Joanna Palani is a boss. This gorgeous 23-year-old left college to go kill members of ISIS like a badass. But don't get too hyped -- according to her, it wasn't even that hard. "ISIS fighters are very easy to kill," she explained during a recent interview with Broadly.

Well, ok then.

Palani was born into an Iranian-Kurdish family in a refugee camp in Iraq. Eventually the family fled to Copenhagen, Denmark, where she endured a relatively normal childhood. Until she was 9 years old, the age she learned to shoot her first rifle. Obviously she was destined to be a badass and change the world.

When news broke about what was going on in Syria, Palani was in college studying philosophy and politics. But instead of finishing out and getting her degree, she decided to drop out and join the fight against ISIS.

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"On the 14th of November 2014 I went to Iraq, and then I went to Rojova in Syria," she explained. "I was with the YPG for six months and then I was with the Peshmerga for six months, so I was fighting for a year."

One of her greatest victories came in 2015, when she helped liberate a village captured by ISIS. Located outside Mosul, Palani found a large group of children being sexually abused by ISIS militants and helped lead them to freedom.

Unfortunately her military career was cut short by the Danish government when authorities confiscated her passport "under laws intended to stem the movement of ISIS fan boys to the conflict."

"After arriving in Denmark the police sent me an email after only three days. It said my passport was no longer valid, and would be revoked if I was to attempt to leave the country," she explained. "If I was to go back I could go to jail for six years."

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Until she is able to return to her military roots, Palani is back in school and livening up her Instagram page, the latter of which we are eternally grateful for.
"Our class has been kind of divided," said Sossou, an 18-year-old. "Having these pictures helps us to embrace our diversity."

Latin School has been mired in negative news after allegations of racism surfaced, with students of color complaining that administrators were slow to respond to the use of racial epithets at the school.

The drawings -- taped above the school's purple lockers, near doorways, and along the hallway -- aim to change a negative narrative around Sossou's beloved school, he said.

The portraits -- gleaned from Facebook posts and shots from Sossou's smartphone -- show seniors in their element, and came as a bolt out of the blue to most of them. One student is cuddling a cat, another flashed a peace sign, nearly everyone had a smile.

"I was trying to show everyone in a positive light," Sossou said...

Sossou -- bound for Bunker Hill Community College this fall and later, he hopes, the University of Massachusetts Amherst to study computer science -- said that when he began the project, he just wanted to get better with charcoal.

"But after that, the whole thing became altruistic," he said.

Soon, he had drawn 50 portraits and then 100, then 200. He worked when he could, taking extended breaks only twice since early February before finishing up last week.

"There were times that I wanted to stop," he said. "I thought they probably are not going to appreciate this because we are so divided."
Times are hard for democracy. Trump wants a wall. Senators refuse to question judicial nominees. And anti-Hillary liberals seriously contend that she is "as bad as" the opposing party's presumptive nominee, vowing not to vote if she wins the nomination.

But when were they ever other than hard? Democracy has always been vulnerable to extreme opinions and dogmatic certainties. Sometimes the price of free speech is listening to things you don't want to hear.

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Theater holds a possible remedy, though, to some of our worst tendencies. It's pretty simple. We need more tragedy.

Tragedies reveal the horrible consequences of seeing things in black and white and so encourage us to discern shades of gray.

Of course, tragedy might seem remote and irrelevant. To many it is dimly remembered as something to do with hubris, catharsis and tragic flaws. We hear the word tragedy in the news mainly when it's misapplied to some disaster -- natural or otherwise. But it needn't be either irrelevant or misappropriated. Tragedy is not just the stuff of English tests. It has a long and illustrious history as a salve for self-government. It's no coincidence that democracy and tragedy arose around the same time in ancient Athens.

While scholars disagree about exactly how tragedy arose, we are certain that it evolved alongside Athenian democracy. Athenians understood that what they saw onstage taught them truths and ways of thinking vital for their roles as citizens. Like the law courts, tragedy was a civic institution. Funded by the state, it was perhaps the greatest citizenship class ever.

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Laurence Olivier as Oedipus on Nov. 3, 1945 (Merlyn Severn/Picture Post/Getty Images)

The most important tragic lessons warn against extremism. Tragedy centers on heroes who, paradoxically, are passionate to do precisely what the gods decree. They are men and women who invite their fate with extreme self-regard combined with all-or-nothing thinking.

Consider Oedipus the tyrant, eponymous hero of Sophocles' most famous tragedy. Witnessing a plague ravage his home city of Thebes, Oedipus boasts that he, "whom all men call the great," is the only person who can save the day. Sound familiar? "I am the only one who can fix this," tweeted Donald Trump in February. He was stumping on the loss of American jobs to Mexico, but it's an attitude he uses throughout his political performance.

Athenians understood that what they saw onstage taught them truths vital for their roles as citizens.

And tragedy offers its comeuppance. The plague in Thebes is caused by the unsolved murder of the previous king of Thebes, Oedipus' father -- who was slain by his only son. That is the very definition of tragic irony. Admittedly less tragic but no less ironic is the fact that, tweets to the contrary, Trump has been accused of outsourcing jobs to foreign employers. No one is the "only one" to fix anything, tragedy tells us. In fact, thinking that way is a trait of those who cause problems.

A related insight comes from Oedipus' own headstrong daughter, Antigone. In her eponymous tragedy, having apparently learned nothing from her father's example, Antigone is certain that she alone knows what piety is and what the gods want -- the burial of her rebel brother. But self-righteousness runs in the family, on both sides.

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Antigone's maternal uncle Creon, current ruler of Thebes, is just as adamant that he knows best. The gods do not honor traitors, he asserts, punctuating his assertion by burying his niece alive. Antigone, always swift to stress her independence, even in the choice of death, ends her own life by hanging before she can serve out Creon's sentence. As Hegel almost said once, tragic heroes have one-line bucket lists. Once that item is crossed off, you can cross off the hero as well.

Actors Katharina Susewind and Klaus Maria Brandauer perform as Antigone and Oedipus in Salzburg on July 24, 2010. (REUTERS/Herwig Prammer)

Such single-minded, black-and-white thinking dominates politics today. Pundits, politicians and private individuals alike love to make noise about the doom that will overtake us if we even consider the opinions of their opponents. Overlooking his misuse of the term, there is nonetheless something tragic in the French Prime Minister Manuel Valls' recent prediction that a U.K. "Brexit" would spell "tragedy" for Britain.

Like tragic heroes, such people are convinced that they alone know what's what and what's right. They are especially self-righteous when it comes to self-knowledge. Oedipus was positive he knew himself inside out: He was a simple man, a straightforward man, a self-made man. ("Men of the people" are a dime a dozen in American politics. Remember George W. Bush's gestures of folksiness from atop a trust fund?)

It's no coincidence that democracy and tragedy arose around the same time in ancient Athens.

But despite the Delphic injunction to "know thyself," we never quite succeed. Even the brightest light, when shone against the self, casts a shadow. Oedipus may be able to solve the Sphinx's riddle but he must also recognize that he himself is a riddle that defies reason -- his children's brother, his mother's husband, his father's slayer, his city's savior and its destroyer. The consequences of this forced recognition are horrific: He loses his sight, his homeland and his wife and mother at one fell swoop.

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Such consequences are not restricted to tragic heroes. Politicians are by custom, if not by nature, in the business of projecting false images of themselves. And then when we find out the "truth" -- that they are not really what they seem -- we are horrified, ashamed and feel betrayed. Richard Nixon swore he was not a crook. The White House tapes proved otherwise. John Edwards seemed a model of sympathy. The handling of his extramarital affair tells another story.

A bust statue of Sophocles, the ancient Greek playwright. (Gettystock)

As classics scholar Jean-Pierre Vernant realized, tragedy teaches us that those who blindly adhere to a single-minded perspective will, like Oedipus, inevitably be forced to confront the opposite point of view, the perspective they had hitherto refused to even consider. In comedy we laugh. In tragedy we cry. But the cause of both is the same: We recognize a yawning chasm between what should be and what is. Tragedy teaches by negative example. The great stage and literary tragedies reveal the horrible consequences of seeing things in black and white and so encourage us to discern shades of gray. They promote what the Greeks called sophrosyne, one of those "untranslatable" words usually translated as "moderation."

Smack dab in the middle of a speech in the middle of Antigone a character called Haemon advocates this middle-of-the-road approach to life. "Don't think that you alone know the truth and everyone else is wrong. Such individuals, when they are opened up, are found to be hollow inside." Unfortunately, it is often such "hollow men" who seem to make the biggest noise and to have the greatest courage of their convictions. But sometimes these people are heard above the rest simply because they are empty inside. Their souls are echo chambers, amplifying pin drops to thunder claps.

Tragedy was a civic institution. Funded by the state, it was perhaps the greatest citizenship class ever.

Tragedy diagnoses this hollowness -- and listens for the softer voice of sophrosyne that might better guide our governments and our lives. Tragedy challenged Athenian citizens to question their own black-and-white thinking, to open their minds to the perspectives of others. This is not to say that ancient Athens was perfect. Far from it. It was rife with xenophobes, demagogues and warmongers. It was propped up by slave labor. Its women residents did not have the right to vote and they were almost certainly dissuaded from attending the very tragedies that extolled democracy. It was a culture with a lot of work to do.

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But so is ours. Which is why we can't afford to discard the millennia-old art form that can help us address very contemporary problems. Athens needed tragedy. We do, too.

Earlier on WorldPost:
I was having dinner with my remarkably intelligent friend Nicole last night at a wonderfully loud Oaxacan restaurant in Koreatown. As we feasted on guacamole with lots of fresh serrano chiles in it, a four- mole sampler plate and freshly hand-made giant flour tortillas, we were feeling good. We'd been to LACMA and seen Robert Mapplethorpe's photos, some exquisite German expressionists and dozens of tiny Netsuke. I was out in jeans, boots and a flowy top with an intelligent female friend. We saw art, and were now having great food; perfect day, pretty much. Things are also great at home; I'm dressing in the house (kids are out of the house now), and my wife told me I looked great before I left; I did.

Nicole, who has sponsored me as a speaker on being trans at several local colleges, really does know me well. When I speak, she's the one who reminds me that they really don't want to hear what "cisgender" means; they just want to hear my whole painfully honest, slutty story. I know how to tell a story; always have.



Nicole bravely tackled the elephant. "So, forgive me for being forward and for asking this so bluntly, but what is keeping you from telling your kids?" I honesty love it when others ask me this; it's just a question I have trouble asking myself. Another close, transitioned trans friend always finds a delicate way to ask me this too; I recognize it as a sign of love.

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I'm getting older. I never realized it, but our bodies supply us with a sense of natural optimism, even if our behavior and persona belie that. One can be a "rebel" and "dark" and still feel a certain Pollyannaish conviction that all of one's dearest dreams will somehow come true. Here in the U.S., our restless, ADHD genetics constantly reinforce that message, and we're always told to think young, young, young with a perky exclamation point at the end. I'm turning sixty-five this year; five years from the date my Grandfather's life ended.

I'm not someone who will look heavenward toward the angry desert God of Job and shout "Why!?!" but I'm not above trying to figure out what the fuck it all meant, or even more importantly, what makes me happy. I am faced with what I can do with the time I have left.

I pretty much hit the Lottery in terms of children, so any weepy "I wish I had transitioned at seventeen" thinking is just an indulgent waste of time and emotional energy. I am incredibly proud of who my children are as human beings; even prouder that they, unlike me, are doing what they truly love for a living, rather than something they are merely competent doing. I'm also sure that they have more than a sketchy idea of who I am; they're both pretty damn bright. In fact, they're both wonderful people, so what's my damn problem?

Why haven't I told them? Why hasn't Darya, everyone else's cheerleading Transition Fairy herself, not told her own kids? Such a great question; such a simple problem so easily solved, it would seem. I think the simplest answer is that those two kids are pretty much the only two people other than my spouse that I really give a shit about. I've built my entire identity very much modeled on my mother, which was to be "other person minded;" another way of saying "co-dependent," although it often makes one wildly popular as in "Oh he/she is soooo nice."

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Like my mother, I'm a resentful alcoholic/co-dependent beneath all that; I'm in recovery, she never got to be. Get me into any social situation (like my local labor union) and I'm the smiling ambassador of good will, but really, the punk in me wants to see all the internal political shit just fucking burn, and scream "fuck your egos, fuck your poses, fuck your bullshit schemes and especially fuck your bullshit fake-ass phony fronts!!" I can roil, spin and sputter in the drama of it all, but I'd rather be home (if I'm honest) reading one of the great books I never got to read in college, watching a black-and-white film, or writing about my dirty life and times.

However, it's easier to go along to get along, so I'm as fake as they are; something I never quite forgive myself for. I'm scared. I'm scared of losing the only people I truly love. Sound, fury and the ol' soft shoe keep me occupied and distracted, as do the dropping of bon mots on social media, a.k.a. the Whore of Babylon

As Nicole pointed out to me last night, over chocolate con leche, I have this gigantic heart; my best and worst quality. She and I share some similarities in our family histories which can often lead us to doubt ourselves, obsess about perfection, try and control others and roll ourselves out like doormats at the oddest times.

She asked that, perhaps, the one person who needed to be included within the sphere of my gigantic heart space, to be allowed to flourish and be herself, was me? She scored a point on that one. I keep my "male" identity intact out of abundance of caution and to theoretically minimize disruption in the life of my wife, children, and myself. That said, I'm no less dysphoric than any of my other trans sisters or brothers, just better at repressing it.

I think my meditations might be these:

"Would your children want you to be happy and fulfilled in yourself?"

"Will your life be happier without needing to lie about yourself?"

I keep thinking of the Ten Bulls, the famous Zen parable of seeking enlightenment. An elephant would seemingly be harder to hide than a bull. A wise friend, a former Zen teacher and one of the first to see my giant heart, told me that her meditation as she transitioned was simply "Trust this."

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There is simply nothing as magical as an evening train ride through Europe. This was a first for Joy, she had never taken a train in Europe and as our train departed the Venice train station we were filled with excitement as we sped through the night to Rome. The first twenty minutes of the trip took place in a tunnel under the water that surrounded Venice. I can't help but marvel at the pure ingenuity of mankind that anyone could ever have conjured up the idea to dig a tunnel under the water yet alone to actually accomplished the feat.

As we looked out the train window we could see the blackness and we realized we were under the very tunnel that mankind created to take passengers from one part of the world to another. As Joy and I looked out the window at the blackness we both decided that this was the perfect time to head to the club car for a glass of wine and Joy's traditional water (with ice, please). We were ending our trip to Europe in Rome, a city that dates back centuries and still honors the remnants of a time when this empire was the center of the world.

As we traveled through the night I couldn't help but think how short this journey is that we call life. We are here for one brief instant and then we return to the cosmos from where we came, not unlike this empire that once stood so strong. Although the facade of the buildings remain and the monuments that were erected to celebrate this great civilization still stood the people who once occupied this city and built these shrines had now all passed into the divine. Rome was the perfect embodiment of the transience of life. We are here briefly however if we live a life of passion and creativity we can leave a mark on the world that can last through generations.

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This got me to thinking, if we are here for only a brief moment and we all will, like the people of Rome before us, one day leave this plane then wouldn't it be most prudent for us to love one another, to be kind to one another, to hold on to one another and support each other as we traverse this journey together as opposed to fighting one another and tearing apart our shared humanity all because we have forgotten one fundamental truth: we are all one and we are all in this together. This was where my heart was resting in this moment. Our trip was coming to an end, just like this empire that once stood so strong.

Joy and I arrived at the train station filled with excitement and as we exited the train we were met with the most beautiful and melodious sounds of a concert piano solo right there in the station.

The cacophonous sounds emanating from the piano made me feel like I had landed right smack dab in the middle of Carnegie Hall with a front row seat to a world-class performance. Apparently, a fellow passenger decided to sit down and play an impromptu performance and within moments began drawing a small crowd to hear him play.

In my excitement I quickly grabbed my camera and I began firing off several shot of him while he played. I couldn't resist the desire to capture this man as he poured his passion through his hands to the keys leaving all that watched spellbound. To say that I took a lot of pictures would be an understatement and as he played I kept firing off shot after shot from my camera. This is, until, our traveling pianist finished his performance and grabbed his bag and quickly, without any need for approbation, rose from the piano stool and exited the train station.

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This abrupt departure only added to the mystery and intrigue of this man so I followed after him snapping a few more shots before he exited the train station and my life forever. Soon after the man disappeared I spied four Rome train station police officers through the lens of my camera ascending the stairs from below headed directly towards me. For one moment I thought about capturing their image until I realized these police officers were coming implicitly for me.

I quickly placed my camera against my chest allowing my camera strap to support the camera as the police officers approached and it became increasingly obvious to me they were not coming to give me their personal welcome to Rome. You see, what I had failed to think about is that the last thing they probably want to see through the security cameras at a train station in one of the largest cities in the world is someone taking picture after picture of the train station. Given the tensions in the world it probably would have been more prudent to just watch the piano performance instead of photographically documenting it. I, in my excitement, allowed prudence to be trumped by enthusiasm.

"Let me see your pictures," the lead officer said to me as he approached.

I quickly scrolled through my pictures for him and immediately he could see that I was not a threat in the least although his countenance didn't soften in the least.

"Delete them," he instructed with not a hint of humor or warmth in his voice and then he disappeared officiously into the caverns of the train station as his subordinates followed him.

I looked over at Joy as she stood off to the side with complete shock and horror on her face as she watched the entire episode unfold. As I walked over to her and began to tell her the story of what just occurred she quickly cut me off.

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"Let's just get out of the train station. You can tell me about it in the cab," she said,

I agreed with her suggestion and we exited the train station out into the spring Rome air. Joy suggested that we grab a cab to the Rome Life Hotel for our final stay in Europe. We hailed a cab and hopped inside and I immediately began scrolling through the pictures in the train station (I disobeyed instructions to delete them).

As I looked through the pictures the cab driver raced and jutted through the streets of Rome summarily terrifying Joy during the entire ride. For my part, my heart was still racing from almost being arrested at the Rome train station only moments after my arrival and my attention was diverted to my camera roll so I took no notice of the poor display of driving that was occurring. In fact, it wasn't until long after the cab ride was over that the cab ride was even brought to my attention.

"Oh heavens, did you see how bad that cab driver was?" Joy asked. "He was easily in the top three worst cab drivers I have ever experienced."

I hadn't noticed but I was also abundantly aware of the reputation of Rome cab drivers that I wasn't surprised in the least. Taxi drivers in Rome have a notorious reputation for making passengers feel as if they are about to come face to face with their personal God and it secretly pleased me to know that this one lived up to that well deserved reputation.

"Welcome to Roma," I smiled as I said to Joy.

All of this was still a mystery to me as we were deposited on the doorstep of the Rome Life Hotel, which is a very nice hotel only a short walk from the Roman Coliseum. Joy and I checked in and even though the hour was late we dropped our bags in our room and then scurried across the street to grab a quick bite to eat.

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Rome at night comes alive. This is a city that has two distinct personalities. There is daytime Rome, which is comprised of tourists from all over the world taking in all of Rome's edifices in the hopes of capturing the perfect picture and there is nighttime Rome, that comes alive long after the tourists have gone to bed. Each side of Rome is beautiful in her own way.

As Joy and I sat taking in Rome's night air we talked about this amazing journey. Tomorrow we would explore Rome but for tonight we simply wanted to enjoy each other. Over a glass of table wine that would rival a $200 bottle in the states, we talked about how blessed we are, we talked about this amazing European adventure, we talked about love, we talked about kindness and compassion but mostly we talked about gratitude. Gratitude is that ingredient that is at the heart of all manifestation for without it life becomes less vibrant.

Morning Rome awaited us tomorrow but in the darkness of evening Rome we simply drank her in. We knew our time here was short, both here in Rome and our short stay on this plane called Earth, so Joy and I decided we would enjoy it at its fullest.
Perhaps no topic better illustrates the enormous gap between knowledge and ignorance, and its profound importance to the ambient understanding of all humanity vital to advancement at the most basic level, than evolution. The story of evolution by natural selection is, effectively, written, in vivid detail, in the language of molecular genetics. If you can read this language, the tale it tells is clear, decisive, and irrefutable; the facts presented about as prone to denial as sunrise.

Nor need you be literate in molecular genetics per se, any more than you need learn Russian to read Crime and Punishment. There are highly proficient translators in both cases. A bounty of books on evolutionary biology have been written by the unassailably erudite for the decidedly less so among us. Complex science has been translated into the lingua franca.

What, then, is the basis for denial in all its shades of gray, from intelligent design, to young earth creationism? In a word, ignorance. But not ignorance of the traditional "I really wish I knew, but alas, I don't" variety. Rather, this is generally ignorance of the "my eyes are covered and my ears are plugged, so you must be wrong" variety.

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The only way to dispute the evidence for evolution is never to look at it in the first place. The fossil record is itself almost astonishingly replete, given what is required to preserve the faint impressions of fleeting life in dust and mud over millions of years. But the fossil record is all but irrelevant, mere icing on the cake. The cake is baked of our DNA, which provides an encyclopedic account of life's recipe.

So, permit me to reiterate: the only way to dispute so incontrovertible a case is to ignore it. Now, of course, you cannot ignore the content of an entire domain and achieve any recognition by peers, credentials, expertise, or even rudimentary understanding. Ignoring leads only to ignorance. Actual experts can and do, of course, disagree in their interpretations. But those interpretations require knowledge and understanding. Knowing is prerequisite to interpreting. Disagreements born of expertise are interesting, and resolving such tensions is in the service of progress.

Not so the dissent of non-experts. Asserting the deficiencies of a field one has never mastered is tantamount to the claim that any language you don't speak is just gibberish.

The problem is indeed acute for evolutionary biology, but by no means unique to it. In every field, from evolutionary biology, to biomedicine, to political science, the cries of non-experts populate cyberspace: listen to us, too! We've only ever read what we already decided to believe -- if we've read anything at all -- but listen to us just the same.

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The long-standing tendency to repudiate understanding not on the basis of alternative understanding, but on utter lack of understanding and, for that matter, never attempting to learn, is massively amplified by the Internet, the ultimate leveler. Nobel laureates, and consummate nincompoops, have recourse to the same megaphone. This is where expertise goes to die.

But how does it die? There is famous concern about ending with a whimper rather than a bang. Sadly, we are well into the realm of a demise more tiresome still.

Non-experts routinely assert their opinions to refute the views of experts they simply don't like (this may refer to the views, the experts, or both). If challenged for want of expertise, they label it an attempt at character assassination. They allege that their legitimate, alternative view is being suppressed. In other words, they whine -- 140 characters at a time.

But credentials are not character; that's a load of crap. Credentials, whether formal or informal, are the price of entry into any legitimate debate. Expert debate actually requires expertise on both sides. Two literary scholars might differ in their interpretations of Crime and Punishment, or War and Peace, and an interested audience might benefit from the exchange. But the audience is forgiven for restricting its interest to debaters who have actually read the works in question. Participation in the vein of, "I never read it, but I know it stinks," would be reliably less illuminating.

Confront the pretenders for what they are, and you find yourself in the morass where credentials are conflated with character. They may also charge at you under an anti-elitist banner, implying that expertise is really just prissy privilege in disguise. But that campaign reeks of hypocrisy. Find me the anti-elitist willing to let any untrained, highly opinionated stooge perform neurosurgery on their child, and I will give up my day job for hula dancing.

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So, yes, our culture seems tolerant to the substitution of fatuous hearsay for genuine knowledge, earned the hard way (is there any other?). Yes, our culture is implicated in the death of expertise.

It dies neither with a bang, nor a whimper. It dies silently, drowned in the endless echoes of incessant cyberspatial whining by those conspiring, ignorantly, to kill it.

-fin

Director, Yale University Prevention Research Center; Griffin Hospital

President, American College of Lifestyle Medicine

Senior Medical Advisor, Verywell.com
Memorial Day

Donald Trump is headed toward the Republican Party's presidential nomination. He's among the most pugnacious of candidates, routinely trashing Republicans, Democrats, immigrants, Mexicans, women, Muslims, and foreign policy professionals.

Many of these political battles could reduce his chance of getting elected president. But his fight with the last group might help. Given the disastrous course of U.S. foreign policy in recent years, there's little public support for more military adventurism in the Middle East. Today's foreign policy establishment represents no one but itself.

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Trump clearly is out-of-step with the neoconservatives and militaristic nationalists who dominated the Republican Party of late. He denounced the Iraq war, doubted NATO, praised Russia's Vladimir Putin, opposed "war and aggression," and criticized South Korea. He evidences no systematic foreign policy vision, but nevertheless offers a welcome contrast to most of his defeated rivals.

One of Trump's most important pledges addressed personnel, not policy: "My goal is to establish a foreign policy that will endure for several generations. That's why I also look and have to look for talented experts with approaches and practical ideas, rather than surrounding myself with those who have perfect resumes but very little to brag about except responsibility for a long history of failed policies and continued losses at war. We have to look for new people."

Trump may have been reacting against the open letter from 117 self-described members of "the Republican national security community," including leading neoconservatives and right-leaning analysts of other stripes. Whatever their disagreements, in the main they support promiscuous military intervention abroad. They denounced Trump as "fundamentally dishonest," acting like "a racketeer," being "hateful," and having a vision that "is wildly inconsistent and unmoored in principle."

Their critique contained some truth, but was fueled by Trump's lack of enthusiasm for new wars. In fact, a number of his GOP critics support Hillary Clinton--called "the lesser evil, by a large margin" by Eliot Cohen of SAIS. Clinton's approach is largely indistinguishable from that of George W. Bush: as First Lady she pushed for war in the Balkans two decades ago, and has routinely advocated bombing and invading other nations ever since. Only her presidential ambitions caused her to admit error in supporting the Iraq war. She has yet to acknowledge the debacle in Libya.

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Ironically, Clinton claims support of foreign leaders as an argument for her candidacy: "I'm having foreign leaders ask if they can endorse me to stop Donald Trump." But their backing reflects the fact that her interventionist policies serve the interests of other states far more than of America. Indeed, subsidizing prosperous, populous allies and attempting to remake failed states provides little benefit to most Americans, who do the dying and paying. Clinton's foreign support actually reinforces Trump's point: the need for an international policy that advances the interests of the American people.

Trump's promise to ignore the usual foreign policy suspects also may reflect media coverage of some members of the very same policy elite publicly stating their willingness to serve Trump--though only reluctantly, of course. An unnamed GOP official told the Washington Post: "Leaving any particular president completely alone and bereft from the best advice people could give him just doesn't sound responsible." Of course, it's all about advancing the national interest, and not gaining attractive, influential, prestigious, and career-enhancing jobs. No wonder Trump apparently sees no need for advice from such folks.

Author Evan Thomas took to the New York Times to defend the "global corps of diplomats, worldly financiers and academics." He warned, "Get rid of them, as Mr. Trump seems intent on doing, and chaos will follow." Thomas seemed to miss Trump's point. Trump endorsed diplomacy, which would require the assistance of a variety of seasoned professionals. In fact, his policies would rely far more negotiation those of neoconservatives, who see war as a first resort.

Not needed, however, are such "advisers" with the reverse Midas Touch, whose counsel has proved to be uniformly disastrous. Indeed, every recent intervention has created new problems, generating calls from the usual suspects for more military action. For instance, stage a military cakewalk in Iraq. Now intervene to resave Iraq, pacify Syria, confront Iran, save religious minorities, and destroy ISIS. Ad infinitum.

Trump may be feeling especially dismissive of those who never learn from their mistakes--like supporting the wars in Iraq and Libya, for instance. In August 2011, after the ouster of Moammar Khadafy, Anne-Marie Slaughter took to the Financial Times to celebrate the success: her article was entitled "Why Libya skeptics were proved badly wrong." Once that country imploded and the Islamic State made an appearance, she dropped any discussion of who had been "proved badly wrong" by that conflict.

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Samantha Power later criticized the public for losing its faith in her strategy of constant war: "I think there is too much of, 'Oh, look, this is what intervention has wrought' ... one has to be careful about overdrawing lessons." Of course, she routinely "overdrew" lessons from foreign crises when demanding U.S. intervention.

Anyway, what she really sought was to avoid responsibility for supporting multiple foreign policy blunders. Consider what the Iraq invasion has wrought: thousands of American dead, bloody sectarian war, promiscuous suicide attacks, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, trillions of dollars squandered, rise of the Islamic State, destruction of the historic Christian community, dramatic increase in Iranian influence. No wonder Trump disclaims any interest in listening to such people with such ideas.
The cold wind of intolerance, authoritarianism, and nationalism is blowing across America and Europe. The unexpected rise of Trump as the presumptive Republican nominee in the United States and the recent political stirrings in Europe are oddly built of the same cloth. Intolerance of non-citizens, the belief that present governments have subordinated their countries best interests for outsiders, and the need for new leaders, whose view of their countries best interests seems to call for an upending of the joint efforts to build a collective defense system like NATO and an economic union like the EU. They are united in their belief that each individual country should do what's best for their sovereignty, rather than build co-operative relations between countries.

The recent Austrian presidential election is a telling example. Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party of Austria may have lost the election by a small differential (which is still being challenged and there are claims of voter fraud), but his message was disturbing in the ways to that of Donald Trump. Norbet's message is in effect "Make Austria Great Again." He calls for closed borders in particular to Muslims, complains of the trade deals made with the EU just as Trump complains of the trade deals America has made and wants to stop all Muslims from entering US for an undefined time. Throughout Europe such factors as the plight of the refugees seeking shelter from war and the lack of economic opportunities are giving rise to right wing parties that are in effect a new form of authoritarian nationalism. Trump wants to build a wall to stop Mexicans from emigrating.

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Today, European countries are literally seeking to build armed detention camps to contain the refugees. They are even considering paying Turkey to take back the refugees, that pass through to Greece. But now even the deal between the EU and Turkey is falling apart, due to Turkey has turning into an authoritarian state under President Erdogan. The EU is demanding that Turkey allows free speech, stops arresting journalists and taking over newspapers that are not pro Erdogan. Turkey is no longer a free society. The country has endorsed this new spreading version of authoritarian Nationalism. A German far right wing neo-Nazi party (NPD) and the nationalist alternate for Germany party (AFD) have been steadily increasing in popularity. Their platforms are more than anti-immigrant. They were opposed to the welfare reforms, upset about the rescue of Greece, and share with Trump the lack of trust of their own government officials.

The vote in Britain, pending on June 23rd, on whether it should exit the EU also has elements of this nationalistic trend seen in America with Trump, and also in main land Europe with the rise of the above mentioned nationalism . The principal in Britain, Germany, Turkey and the Austrian elections is straightforward. A large group of British citizens feels that as EU members they are being subject to rules and regulations that unfairly cost British people too much, providing very little benefit in return. Sounds familiar? It is the same type of nationalism Trump has to the economic trade deals America has made with a variety of countries. It is the same nationalistic thinking the Turkish - Eu deal will fail and it is the same Nationalistic theme causing the surprising success of the Austrian extreme right wing party.

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I have spent much of my life fighting for the protection of kids, teenagers, and the underdog. All too often I encounter young people whose lives were ruined by the scourge of sexual abuse which harms their self-esteem and ability to thrive and function as adults. It's our responsibility to take every measure possible to hold abusers accountable and send a strong message to institutions that fail to stop abuse.

Legislation in the State Assembly, known as the Markey bill, would eliminate New York's civil statute of limitations (currently absurdly capped at age 23) for crimes involving child sexual abuse going forward and create a one-year window for victims to file claims regardless of the elapsed time. The bill, sponsored by Assemblywoman Margaret Markey of Queens, has been proposed seven times previously, and now seemingly has enough supporters to pass the lower house. It could pick up even more support for passage with some strong advocacy from the state's chief executive.

State Senators recently proposed a similar bill that would additionally remove a current requirement that those seeking to sue a public institution, such as a school, file a claim within 90 days. This would make public and private institutions equally accountable.

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I discussed the topic and the Markey bill with the Governor over two years ago. He was very versed in the bill and was clearly in agreement to numerous parts of the bill conceptually.

But until recently Gov. Andrew Cuomo was playing his cards close to the vest on this, making vague public statements about protecting victims without commenting on the Markey bill.

After sustained pressure from abuse survivors and their substantial community of supporters, the governor finally agreed to support some reforms mentioned in the two bills.

This is an incredibly important issue and we are serious about addressing the situation," a Cuomo spokesman told The New York Daily News. "We have been discussing options with the Legislature ..."

The governor is showing that he gets that it often takes abuse victims years, with the help of supporters and therapists to come to terms with the grievousness of their trauma. In many cases, they sadly tend to place their own welfare second to that of the abuser.

It remains to be seen if he will back a one-year window for those already stuck behind the statute of limitations for seeking redress for long-ago abuse.

Perhaps it's the governor's style to avoid too much comment on a bill that has not yet reached his desk, and still must be hammered out between legislators in both houses. But this is no ordinary bill. Lives are literally at stake. I have seen too many people fatally destroy their lives because of abuse, and so have all the activists who have pushed for this bill.

New York has been an activist state in many areas, such as marriage equality and gun control, and must not take a back seat on this issue. Some powerful interests oppose the bill because they fear a torrent of lawsuits that could pose an existential threat. But I am more worried about the existential threat to victims, and so should political leaders.

The Markey bill would put institutions on notice that looking the other way and failing to take strong, necessary action when there are signs of abuse by an employee or representative is dangerous. It would also send a strong compassionate message to victims that we as a society want them to come forward for healing and justice and that we will have their backs when they do so.

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Hopefully the message will also trickle down to would-be abusers that they can't take advantage of children and perpetrate their depraved acts and expect to get away with it, and that they should get help for their compulsions. A pedophile who gets away with his or her first crime is likely to continue with over 100 more victims, making it crucial that they be stopped at the earliest juncture.

Should we be concerned that institutions could face an insurmountable cascade of lawsuits, some of them involving former, perhaps temporary employees, incurring legal expenses that impede their ability to function? Yes, but the burden of proof on the accuser remains high. Experienced investigators and prosecutors know how to detect false claims, which are very rare in the first place given the stigma attached to sexual abuse.

I hope we can be confident that our system of laws and courts can weed out false claims and uphold the rights of victims to come forward and seek justice, no matter how long it has taken them to muster the support and courage.

There are only a few session days left before the June 16 end of the legislative session. Too much is at stake to wait until the next session.

If Governor Cuomo and other members of the Legislature have concerns about this matter let him air them in the marketplace of ideas and seek changes in the final version of the bill.

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This is the third in a series of five blogs that we will post on grit and what it means for poor kids.



In the first blog, we introduced the concept of grit and discussed how important it is for poor kids. In the second, we examined how quality education in early childhood and beyond can contribute to grit-building. In this blog, we focus on the three most essential grit-builders.

In 2013 we wrote a blog about making the educational connections and introduced the concept of a triangle with the student at the center, with the family at the top, and, the school and the community at either tip as an integrated framework for improving the quality of education for kids.

As we have studied and looked at this since then, that construct also seems appropriate as a framework for building grit using communities, schools and families as the pivot points.

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Robert Putnam, names those same three points in his book, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis when he describes the plight of poor kids who "...through no fault of their own, are less prepared by their families, their schools, and their communities to develop their God-given talents as fully as rich kids."

What can be done to fill that preparation gap - or what might be labeled the grit gap- of poor kids? Let's look at each of these pivot points in turn beginning with communities.

Communities as Grit-Builders

As we discussed in the second blog of this series, the comprehensive pre-K interventions in Union City and New York City provide models worth studying and potentially replicating. Professor David Kirp advises that there are other "successful pre-K programs" in places such as Boston, North Carolina and Tulsa, OK that also warrant investigation and consideration.

Probably the most comprehensive community-based approach is the work that has been done by Geoffrey Canada and his organization the Harlem Children's Zone to provide wrap around services and a "conveyor belt" that would carry kids from infancy through higher levels of educational success and into the middle class. Paul Tough examines this approach in detail in his book, Whatever It Takes.

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The U.S. Department of Education's (DOE) Promise Neighborhood Program is modeled after the Harlem Children's Zone program. DOE has given planning grants of $500,000 to 21 programs across the country and will provide $30 million annually to these programs by focusing on "their needs outside school such as health and nutrition.



Neighborhood Schools as Grit-Builders

The focus on neighborhoods is an appropriate one for changing both communities and schools. Two studies by Harvard economists Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren and by Chetty and Hendren with Lawrence Katz, disclosed that children who moved into "good" neighborhoods fared much better than those who were stuck in "the ghetto." Those studies also showed that the beneficial effects were greatest for those youth who moved at a young age.

It is financially and socially infeasible to implement a whole scale migration of kids to good neighborhoods. The alternative is to take actions that can change poor neighborhoods and the schools in them.

Professor Putnam proposed a number of corrective measures in this regard in the final chapter of his book. They include: Increasing family income by $3,000 during a child's first five years through government cash transfers. Public subsidized mixed income housing. Neighborhood regeneration. Dedicating more money to school districts with high poverty. Putting and paying higher quality teachers to work in those districts.

Professor Putnam also recommends having charter schools run by community organizations. As KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) has proven, charter schools can make a difference in the quality of education, the development of grit and educational achievement and advancement.

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Research shows, however, that KIPP is an outlier and that charter school performance overall is "average" and in general charter schools perform about the same as public schools. More importantly, the scaling costs of implementing a KIPP like approach could be $4,800 to $5,000 per student more than its peers.

So, the answer appears to be to buttress the neighborhood school - whether that school is charter or public. Another answer could be collaboration among public and private schools in poorer neighborhoods.

In December 2012, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provided $25 million in grants to seven cities to back public charter cooperation to fund joint approaches to benefit students. In January 2014, the Foundation awarded $500,000 in competitive grants to five new cities.

Families as Grit-Builders

Finally, we come to the pivot point of families. Inarguably, the pivot point that matters the most and should come first in terms of developing poor kids' grit. The problem is that this is most difficult area to address.

The reasons that families are the pivot points that matter most are because that is where a child develops cognitively, emotionally and socially. And, it is well documented that there is a substantial and significant difference between the experiences and progress of poor kids and their middle-class and wealthier peers in their home environment. To highlight just a few:

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In the early 1960's, Dr. Bettye Caldwell, director of the Children's Center at Syracuse University was involved with a pilot project that suggested that children born into poor families developed normally until about 1 year old but then did not keep pace with their peers in terms of intellectual development.

Dr. Betty Hart and Todd Risley reported in their landmark 1995 book, Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children, in words heard, the average child in a welfare family heard 616 words per hour at home, as opposed to 1,251 for the average child in a working class family, and 2,153 for the average child in a professional family. Hart and Risley, also found that there was a difference in other areas such as "tone of voice and positive and negative feedback to the child."

In his book, How Children Succeed, Paul Tough explains that one of the reasons that poor kids have difficulty in developing grit can be attributed to a troubled home environment. He writes, "The part of the brain most affected by early stress is the prefrontal cortex, which is critical in self-regulatory activities both emotional and cognitive. As a result, children who grow up in stressful environments generally find it harder to concentrate, harder to sit still, harder to rebound from disappointments and harder to follow directions."

Esther Cepeda, opinion columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group has written extensively on how parental behavior (e.g. yelling and using abusive language with kids; not having regular bed time hours for them; and not developing planning skills) impacts the success and failure of children from low income families and high poverty neighborhoods.

Cepeda has stated that it is a bigger challenge to ingrain "...the qualities of planning and perseverance in low income parents" than it is do so with low income children. She has also suggested "serious consideration" be given to a universal parenting school in order to address all that is holding back poor kids as students today.

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Given the findings that we have highlighted, we are in total agreement with Ms. Cepeda's observations and the direction of her recommendation. This nation needs a major initiative directed at assisting low-income parents to enable them to become grit-builders.

The W.W. Kellogg Foundation and other groups and individuals who have committed funds to support projects to strengthen the low income families' capacity and competence to contribute to the positive cognitive, social and emotional development of their children are to be commended. Given the expanding scope and intensifying nature of the need, however, something much bigger is demanded.

There is a critical need for a major governmental intervention. Having said that, let us advance again a "radical idea" that we first made three years ago.

We propose a national Welfare to Homework program funded by the federal government. In this program, low income parents would be trained in something like what Professor Duckworth calls "Wise Parenting" skills. They would then be paid not to leave home to go to work but to stay home and become part of the educational team. These parents might even be paid a bonus for their children's attendance at and performance in school.

That was a radical idea in 2013. In this election year, where the political discussions in both parties have been dominated by populist concerns and the issues of the middle class, it is probably even more radical.

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Nonetheless, the need for an innovative and comprehensive governmental intervention is more critical than ever - and much more necessary, in our opinion, than most of the issues that have been discussed in the presidential political debates to date.
I'm Fred Raillard, CEO, Co-founder and Creative Chief Officer of FRED & FARID, a social, content, tech solutions for brands company based in Paris, Shanghai, Beijing and New York. In partnership with FRED & FARID, BFM Business launches #FredinChina, a social media podcast in "Chine Hebdo", the weekly radio broadcast of Mathieu Jolivet. #FredinChina is essential to know and understand the world's largest economy.

I fell in love with China, and live in Shanghai with my wife and sons since September 2012. With my teams at the FRED & FARID Shanghai agency we monitor, analyze and decrypt this ultra-connected China with nearly 800 million netizens by sharing what we see, hear and read on Weibo, WeChat, Huaban, Youku. I prepare this column with Jing Qian from FRED & FARID Shanghai.

Click here to listen to all the podcasts.

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Two police scandals revealed on social networks shake China

The HotTopic of the week is about the police. Two huge scandals in China concerning the police. This first one occurred this week, a policeman was found dead on the side of the road, and the people in charge of the investigation just said that he probably committed suicide. But his wife disagreed: this policeman was working hard on a drug investigation. She believes her husband was killed by the organisation. She also thinks that the other policeman in charge of the investigation had a role in her husband's death and this drug traffic.

It raised a lot of questions on social media and it reminded people of another story that happened 3 weeks ago. A father was found in a massage place by the police. They took him and brought him to the police station. Under strange circumstances he died on his way to the station. Again,, the wife was suspicious of his death and let out her own investigation on social networks. Very weird elements came up: the CCTV cameras on the way to the police station were broken that day, she found people witnessing the fact that her husband had been beaten by the policemen before they took him in the car.

Consequently, a huge debate about police integrity rose on social media in China. People are now very angry about the police, and it came to the point that Xi Jinping himself (President of China) had to react and declare that he is going to "reinvent" the police and demand better transparency ethics in the police organisation. We can be sure that these scandals will have huge consequences on the Chinese police force.

This new social app makes money off intellectual property

The HotBrand of the week is Fenda, with an app on WeChat. It's a Q&A app, which are very successful now in China. You can ask any kind of question and people answer. But this app is more interesting. For instance, I'm an expert in advertising so I can register on this platform as one. And then I can decide how much a user of the app pays me for a specific answer. Users can ask me questions about advertising, and if I choose to answer, he will have to pay me that amount I've defined. Answers are audio, 60 seconds maximum. I can give only one answer. But people can see the questions, if a third person sees this question and wants to know and listen to the answer, he has to pay me 1 RMB. This one RMB will then be shared between me and the first user having ask the question first.

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It's a very new genre of Q&A. In the first day they registered 100,000 paying users. The biggest KOLs have already generated 50,000 RMB. I find this app very interesting because it is the beginning of something in China: people are willing to pay for immaterial things, specifically knowledge. Maybe we can expect more respect for intellectual property on the Chinese web.

Coldplay's 'Up&Up' sparks a trend among Chinese millennials

The HotPost of the week is about Coldplay and their latest music video 'Up&Up'. It's a kind of surrealistic trip around pictures, it's very beautiful and benefitted from a great direction. It's also very sensitive.

Chinese people really love this video because they were stunned by the imagination and creativity of the director. Then, a second big hit emerged on social media with people analyzing each scene of the video. They realized Coldplay is a super positive band, with concerns about ecology, peace, love etc. They were surprised to see such a successful band talk about the bright side.

So Coldplay is highly admired in China. It's truly amazing that a Western band managed to have this kind of impact in China. So congratulations to Coldplay.
By: Emily Gover

For most of my academic career, I played by the books. I earned my bachelor's degree in four years, went straight to graduate school and earned my master's in Information & Library Science by the ripe old age of 23.

Despite a graduate degree and two internships under my belt, it took me nine months to find my first full-time gig, which involved a paltry salary and moving thousands of miles away from home. It wasn't long until I started looking again, and I felt totally lost. After all, the whole plan for my career fell to bits in just a few months.

When I was in graduate school, I followed the same "play by the books" mentality as I had done my whole life. My goal was to graduate quickly, land a job in an academic library and spend my career helping students, while getting lost amongst the stacks, wearing elbow-patched cardigans and other dreamy stereotypes that came along with working in academia.

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My (incorrect) thinking was that I had earned an expensive piece of paper that said I was skilled to work where I wanted to.

Besides, no other industry would see value in the wide range of skills and experiences I built up during my academic career, right?

Wrong. I never thought about how the "hard" skills that I learned in school and during internships, like research, outreach, writing, basic coding and organizational skills, could be applied to other roles outside of libraries. Like many young professionals who played by the books, I never realized how important (and appealing!) a hybrid of hard and soft skills is to employers, especially as the job force shifts and evolves in the early 21st century. Increasingly, careers are built through jobs that involve a delicate balancing act of roles and responsibilities. In order for people entering the workforce to find meaningful jobs and professional growth, one must disregard the "play by the books" mentality and blend hard and soft skills into a unique, and invaluable, package.

Through the help of a friend, I landed a job at an education technology company back in New York, where I was able to apply the skills I learned in grad school to the vendor side of the library and education industry. Letting others know you're looking around can only help your job search. For example, they may have access to resources you don't. My friend heard about the New York job by way of her grad school's listserv; there's no way I would have found it on my own. Others may hear about jobs that fit your skill sets, but may be outside your "job hunt mentality" (and therefore off your radar). Never in a million years would I have thought about looking at education startups as place that would see value in my skills.

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Therein lies two lessons when finding a career that aligns with your passion:

Don't pigeonhole yourself to one industry; and

Reach out for help when you need it.

Over the years, my role slowly evolved from curriculum developer, to content marketer, to community manager, which is a thriving and growing industry in and of itself. Community management wasn't even "A Thing" when I finished my undergrad (or at least it wasn't as popular as it is today), but is a great fit for those with a diverse set of skills and, most importantly, passion for what they do.

All different fields and industries hire for multifaceted positions, which can make for an ideal way to find work that aligns with your passions. What's more, for these roles people come from all walks of life. I have colleagues in the field who have backgrounds in QA, music, life sciences, art history, hospital administration, political science, marketing and anthropology.

How did we all find ourselves working in the same field? We discovered opportunities that mesh "hard skills," built through formal education and work experience with "soft" skills which can't be taught (think empathy, communication, creativity, etc.). Economists have argued the importance of this balance, particularly for tech companies, and more employers are seeing its value.

In the case of community managers, roles take on a number of forms as the field continues to evolve--from customer support, to marketing, to user-to-user engagement. It requires unique and versatile skills that are not always taught in a curriculum, but can be learned during your college years. That said, the "hard" skills that you learn during internships or coursework can make you a strong candidate if the community job is within a similar industry.

One of the biggest factors within any "hyphenated" role is empathy. Having prior experience working in education/libraries makes me a great community manager for an education technology company; it's my passion! Increasingly people will be hired to solve problems, empower users, build loyalty and trust, and do so in myriad ways that are all deeply rewarding on a personal and professional level.

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For GenDIY, cookie cutter jobs are not going to cut it. Businesses need to find unique ways to stand out and build loyalty and trust amongst their customers, while attracting innovative, forward-thinking young professionals. Employees need to be challenged, while contributing their expertise and be in a position with opportunities to grow. Community management and similar positions are one route young professionals can take to leverage their wide array of skills.

Whichever route you choose to take, keep your mind open, and reach out to people you know--you'll be surprised how far you can stretch your skills to find an awesome career path.

About "GenDIY"

eduInnovation and Getting Smart have partnered with The J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Family Foundation to produce a thought leadership campaign called Generation Do-It-Yourself (GenDIY)- how young people are hacking a pathway to a career they love - on The Huffington Post and GettingSmart.com. This campaign about reimagining secondary and postsecondary education and career skills will explore the new generation building a global economy and experiences that are impact driven and entrepreneurial. For more on GenDIY, see:

Emily Gover is a community and marketing manager in ed tech, librarian and online writer for publications such as Inside USC Rossier, the blog community through Rossier's online teaching degree. Follow her on Twitter: @edtechjam.

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For most of my life I have avoided speaking publicly about the issues I care about, preferring instead to work quietly behind the scenes. Yet as I witness each day the profound impact of climate change on the places and people I love, I have decided it is time for me to raise my voice.



Air pollution, years of drought, rising sea-levels, mounting health impacts, and wildfires all fueled by climate change are taking their toll. No state has done more to address this incredible challenge than California. California now leads the nation in solar jobs, and the clean energy sector is growing rapidly--giving our economy a needed boost. Our leadership set a standard that President Obama has since followed to make historic progress at every level to reduce carbon pollution. Rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline, finalizing a rule to reduce carbon pollution from power plants, and securing the international climate agreement in Paris have put us on the path to minimizing the impacts of catastrophic climate change.



While I celebrate this progress, I know that it is all on the line in this election. California needs the next President to be a proven leader with the experience and expertise to start getting the job done on Day One--who not only understands the problems we face, but knows how to build on the environmental progress we've made, and pushes forward an aggressive plan to tackle climate change in a way that doesn't leave anyone out.



There is no doubt that the leader we so desperately need is my dear friend, Hillary Clinton. She possesses a level of compassion and empathy that is rare in politics. I first met Hillary when our children were young. I know how deeply she cares about their future, and even more, about the future of the children that are most vulnerable to the impacts of global climate change. She carries their burdens with her, deepening her fierce commitment to addressing this challenge.



Just as important, Hillary has spent a lifetime honing the skills needed to get things done amidst partisan rancor. As a Senator and Secretary of State, Hillary was a tireless advocate for environmental protection. I've witnessed her skillful and effective efforts to protect clean air and clean water. I watched her vote repeatedly to incentivize wind and solar power. And I've seen her nimbly collaborate across party lines to help create job training programs for renewable energy workers. She twice introduced legislation that would prioritize investment in cleaner energy, and signed on to legislation to reduce the worst air pollutants from power plants. She launched the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, which brought together 37 countries and 44 non-state partners.



As a candidate, Hillary has a bold, ambitious plan for building on President Obama's climate action plan and taking us further. Her plans include aggressive investments in solar and wind power, further reductions in climate pollution from not only carbon dioxide but methane, and a transition away from dirty fossil fuels, including opposition to offshore drilling, coal leasing and fossil fuel extraction on public lands. Her leadership earned her an important early endorsement from the League of Conservation Voters Action Fund.



Californians also understand that the clean water crisis in Flint, Michigan is not an isolated incident. Organizations have been advocating for clean water in the Californian Central Valley for a decade. Yet many low-income Latino communities in our San Joaquin Valley continue to wait for safe drinking water to return to their taps. It's a tragic fact that communities of color in this country are unfairly shouldering the burden of air and water pollution. That's why it's so significant that Hillary Clinton is the only presidential candidate to not just call attention to this problem, but go a step further and develop a detailed plan to address environmental injustice. Hillary's environmental justice plan says everything about why her vision for a cleaner, safer and more just world is exactly what we need in our next President.



I have watched Hillary Clinton as a public figure, as a fellow mother, and now as a grandmother. It is because of all of her roles, and the strength she has brought to them, that I see the leader California needs. Our families need a President with the proven leadership skills and the comprehensive plan to move us forward on addressing the serious economic, health, and environmental impacts of climate change. We need Hillary Clinton.
U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at the UFCW Union Local 324 in Buena Park, California, U.S. May 25, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

Bernie Sanders must go on the offensive politically regarding the FBI's investigation of Clinton's emails and address the serious national security implications of this controversy. The current spin regarding the latest State Department report, from the Clinton campaign and supporters, focuses solely upon record-keeping. The mounds of paper Hillary Clinton would have needed to print (in order to abide by existing guidelines), or the archaic technology at the State Department have been integral to creating the narrative this story is simply about "emails."

However, a recent CNN piece titled State Department report slams Clinton email use explains how the report destroys Clinton's convenience narrative. The State Department report sates the Inspector General's office "found no evidence that the Secretary requested or obtained guidance or approval to conduct official business via a personal email account on her private server."

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Therefore, since nobody at the State Department authorized Clinton's server, and she broke State rules and guidelines, her convenience excuse is now obsolete.

Every legal defense of Clinton rests upon the notion that convenience, and not intent, was the reason to own a private server for both work and personal emails.

Today, we know that Clinton's email practices weren't condoned, by either the president or State; intent is now front and center in this story. If Hillary Clinton intentionally used a private server to hide communication from the government and public, legal consequences are certain. However, gross negligence is enough to prosecute under the Espionage Act, and Clinton somehow managed to transfer Top Secret information onto an unguarded private server.

Bernie Sanders should address the Top Secret intelligence, at this juncture and before indictments. Transferring state secrets onto a private server is a felony, and something Colin Powell and others never did, when using private email.

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Clinton's email controversy isn't about "emails." Rather, it's the reality Clinton could have easily jeopardized national security.

First, the 22 Top Secret emails on Hillary Clinton's server contained Special Access Program information. This threat to national security is highlighted by NBC News in a piece titled Hillary Clinton Emails Held Info Beyond Top Secret: IG:

Emails from Hillary Clinton's home server contained information classified at levels higher than previously known, including a level meant to protect some of the most sensitive U.S. intelligence, according to a document obtained by NBC News. In a letter to lawmakers, the intelligence community's internal watchdog says some of Clinton's emails contained information classified Top Secret/Special Access Program, a secrecy designation that includes some of the most closely held U.S. intelligence matters... The declarations cover "several dozen emails containing classified information determined by the IC element to be at the CONFIDENTIAL, SECRET and TOP SECRET/SAP information." ...While she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, Clinton conducted government business over private email. The arrangement was particularly unusual because the email system relied not on Yahoo or Google but her own server, which she kept in her home in Westchester County, N.Y.

If Bernie Sanders had managed to transfer SAP intelligence onto a private server in Vermont, rest assured the Clinton campaign would have accused him of treason.

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If the State Department just confirmed that Clinton broke rules, and it's not "convenient" to circumvent guidelines without approval, then intent must be an aspect of this controversy.

SAP intelligence often times pertains to government programs so secretive, the United States denies their existence. These programs and projects could deal with anything from battling ISIS, to combating the threats posed by enemy nations and adversaries.

Intentionally transfer SAP intelligence anywhere other than secure government networks and guess what happens? For my many fans in the Clinton campaign, I explain here (118,000 views and 2,5000 up votes since May 21) why indictments of the former Secretary of State are imminent.

Bernie Sanders, before the California Primary, should address the fact that Top Secret and SAP intelligence was found on a private server; utilized because Clinton intentionally chose to hide personal emails. Since even Chuck Todd isn't buying the convenience excuse, there's an obvious element of premeditation regarding owning the server. Furthermore, knowing that she'd be receiving Top Secret intelligence only adds to the belief that Clinton risked national security (by utilizing an unencrypted server), for the sake of hiding emails from Republicans, or the public.

This element of intent is further highlighted by the number of emails deleted, and the fact that Top Secret intelligence was combined with personal correspondence on a private server. According to ABC News, around half of Clinton's emails as Secretary of State were deleted and deemed personal:

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The big headline from Hillary Clinton's news conference Tuesday was that, although she claims to have turned over all work-related emails, she deleted the rest of her emails and it appears there is no way to read them ever again. But one important point regarding how her team determined which of Clinton's 62,320 e-mails were work-related and which were "personal and private" may have been glossed over... "This review did not involve opening and reading each email," Time reported. "Instead, Clinton's lawyers created a list of names and keywords related to her work and searched for those. Slightly more than half the total cache -- 31,830 emails -- did not contain any of the search terms, according to Clinton's staff, so they were deemed to be 'private, personal records.'" ...According to that document, here is a summary of how Clinton's attorneys, who were tasked with the job, said they sorted through: First, a search was done of all emails Clinton received from a .gov or state.gov account during the period she was secretary of state -- from 2009 to 2013. Then, with the remaining emails, a search was done for names of 100 State Department and other U.S. government officials who Clinton may have had correspondence with during her tenure. Next, the emails were organized and reviewed by sender and recipient to "account for non-obvious or non-recognizable email addresses or misspellings or other idiosyncrasies." The results of the searching were that Clinton's attorneys found 30,490 work-related emails and 31,830 emails that were deemed "private and personal."

If Team Clinton's keyword searches were indeed the manner used to define work and personal emails, then there's little assurance that SAP or other forms of classification weren't deleted.

In addition, Bernie could simply focus upon the bizarre fact that in 50 months of work as Secretary of State, 31,830 out of around 60,000 emails were deleted.

So, let's do the math. Around 636 of Clinton's emails per month were personal, which amounts to around 21 emails per day. If Clinton, addicted to her Blackberry (denied by the NSA), spent 10 minutes per email, America is looking at a Secretary of State who spent over 3 hours per day on private emails. I explain Clinton's legendary work ethic in the following YouTube segment.

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Simply focusing on the amount of time spent not working, would be enough to highlight that Clinton jeopardized national security.

Finally, I hope my friends at The Daily Beast and Banter and Daily Clinton Inevitability Press have seen my latest MSNBC appearance, since I highlight a number of reasons why Clinton will receive indictments. Also, progressive writers everywhere (who prefer Clinton over Sanders) should watch my latest YouTube segment explaining why Bernie should focus politically on Clinton's emails.

It's essential to provide a counterbalance to so many reporters in the media beholden to Hillary Clinton, which is why my CNN New Day appearance is so important.

Ultimately, Bernie Sanders will win the Democratic nomination, because it's never been about delegate count. Only one Democrat is facing an FBI criminal investigation, and the other candidate is named Bernie Sanders. While it might annoy the Clinton faithful, and the Democratic establishment, Bernie Sanders must go on the offensive politically, regarding the Top Secret intelligence on Clinton's server.

This issue isn't only valid, but something that Clinton would focus upon, if the roles were reversed. Furthermore, I explain here why Bernie Sanders must be ready for Clinton indictments, and the spin from Clinton's campaign after these indictments become reality. Senator Sanders has been extremely gracious thus far, but Clinton's email protocol is a potential threat to national security. SAP intelligence on a private server should disqualify a candidate from the White House, and it's perfectly reasonable for Bernie Sanders to address this fact.

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By Amanda Gardner

Researchers have long believed that the devastating protein plaques that collect in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease have no useful function, and their presence does nothing but obliterate once vital memories and minds.

A study published this week in the journal Science Translational Medicine suggests that the plaques -- made of a protein called amyloid beta -- may actually have a role after all, possibly in fighting off infection, and that Alzheimer's may be an unwelcome result of this legitimate purpose.

This could change the thinking about a disease that has not seen a new drug approval since 2003 and stubbornly eluded scientists' efforts not only to treat it, but even to understand it.

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Any practical applications of the new research, however, are still a long way off.

"It's intriguing, it's exciting, and it opens new opportunities for intervening in the disease, but at the same time it's very preliminary and speculative," says Ronald Petersen, MD, PhD, director of the Mayo Clinic Alzheimer's Disease Research Center in Rochester, Minnesota. "I wouldn't go too far in saying that this is the answer or breakthrough."

But it is different.

"The [theory] that has guided therapeutic strategies for more than 30 years is that amyloid beta is a freak, that what it does is abnormal and has no function," says study corresponding author Robert Moir, PhD, of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at the MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease in Boston.

Five years ago, Moir and colleagues demonstrated that amyloid beta could kill pathogens, among them Candida yeast, in test tubes.

The criticism of that study was expected: Test tubes aren't humans.

So the researchers took the idea a step further, not quite to humans but at least to living organisms, including mice, round worms, and fruit flies.

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In this study, creatures that had been genetically engineered to produce high levels of amyloid beta were able to fight off infections from Salmonella and other microorganisms quickly and successfully. Those with low levels couldn't fight them off nearly as well.

"The really surprising thing was it doesn't just kill microbes like an antibiotic," explains Moir, who is also assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School.

Instead, the plaques use the exact same structure that is the hallmark of Alzheimer's -- steel-strength fibrils aggregating into plaques -- to entomb the offenders.

The plaques did this quickly and they didn't let go, becoming permanent residents, as jailers of microbes serving several life sentences.

"The good side is the bugs don't get out, but it's very hard for us to clear the amyloid," says Moir.

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The study authors hypothesize that more bugs manage to cross the blood-brain barrier as we age, triggering the whole system into overdrive.

In other words, very low-level chronic infection and the inflammation and immune response that go with it may be culprits in Alzheimer's.

If this turns out to be true (and proving it is a long way off), then drugs targeting this portion of the immune system may pay off, as might a strategy of lessening the plaques rather than eliminating them entirely.

"It opens up doors," says Moir. "It doesn't invalidate all the stuff that's been done but it puts it in a new perspective."

"It's not going to be a simple answer," adds Dr. Petersen. "It's going to take a combination of approaches but this might be a component."



Could Infections Cause Alzheimer's? originally appeared on Health.com.
I was pleased when I heard last year that the President of the Boy Scouts of America, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, called for an end to the ban on gay leaders. But my brief satisfaction turned to disappointment when I learned his reason: Otherwise courts might force the BSA to radically modify its positions. Gates also wanted the BSA to give church sponsors of scout troops the option to reject gay leaders.

Gates further said he worried that a court order might overturn the BSA policy of banning atheist scouts and troop leaders. He wanted the BSA to maintain its right to promote religious bigotry, while he was willing to, sort of, give in on the anti-gay policy.

The change happened just as Gates proposed. Atheists and agnostics still need not apply. Gates cited membership decline as another reason to change the policy regarding gay boys and adults. Perhaps he did not realize that religiously unaffiliated young people are rapidly increasing across all demographic lines--another reason to welcome atheists and agnostics.

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On May 26, Gates ended his BSA term and was replaced by AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, who has not said if he will propose any policy changes.

Not all churches had supported BSA policies. The national Unitarian Universalist Association took a principled stand and disaffiliated from the BSA in 1998 because of its discrimination against gays and atheists. Unfortunately, the UUA recently decided to affiliate again because the BSA ended its ban on gay leaders, even though it continues to ban atheists. This decision is particularly perplexing because the tolerant Unitarian Church counts many atheists and agnostics among its members throughout the country.

My wife and I are atheists and token members of our local Unitarian Church in Charleston, South Carolina. We have long supported and appreciated this church because of its commitment to social justice in our conservative community, and its welcoming inclusion of atheists and humanists. When we learned the dismaying news that the national UUA has re-affiliated with the Boy Scouts, we told our local minister that we wouldn't be making our annual financial contribution while the situation continues. We don't blame our local church, but we hope that its minister will vocally support the many atheists and humanists in his congregation and oppose the UUA decision.

Probably the group most upset with the UUA/BSA affiliation is the nontheistic UU Humanists, which is also a member of the Secular Coalition for America. I'm on the board of directors of the American Humanist Association, which held its annual conference in Chicago from May 26-29. The UU Humanists attending the conference arranged for a Sunday breakfast and lively discussion there with UUA President Peter Morales and some AHA members. I admire Rev. Morales for agreeing to talk with a group he knew would disagree strongly with the recent Boy Scouts decision.

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Morales told participants that the UUA cherishes and respects the humanists, agnostics, and atheists among its members, and that he feels the best way to change BSA policy is from the inside rather than from the outside.

After his brief talk, I asked the first question: "Would you have supported UUA affiliation with the BSA if they had excluded Jews, Muslims, African-Americans, or any other minority but atheists and humanists?" Rev. Morales hemmed and hawed and never did say yes or no. When someone asked why the UUA had disaffiliated from BSA over the gay issue instead of working for change from the inside, Morales indicated that these are judgment calls on which reasonable people can disagree.

Morales said that boys and adults who want to join the Boy Scouts through a local Unitarian Church could be given membership without a god requirement, but it was pointed out that only a small portion of atheists are associated with the Unitarian Church.

Many of us are especially concerned with the BSA principle of equating God with morality. Though Morales expressed sympathy with the concerns of humanists and atheists, most in the audience were disappointed that the UUA has not yet strongly repudiated the requirement that scouts or leaders must sign a document that says, "The Boy Scouts of America maintains that no member can grow into the best kind of citizen without recognizing an obligation to God."

What most disheartened me was Rev. Morales's attempt to placate humanists and atheists by telling us we can simply make up different definitions of "God" in order to pass the religious test requirement. What he failed to understand is that we want to show we can be good without any gods, and help end the unwarranted prejudice against atheists.

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This reminded me of my run for governor of South Carolina in 1990 to challenge the state constitution requirement that prohibited atheists from holding public office. Some state lawyers argued in court that no constitutional change was needed because I surely could find some kind of god to believe in. The head of the Election Commission said I wouldn't have been questioned about my religious beliefs had I kept quiet about them. In other words, I should have lied and deliberately violated our state constitution requirement. We have enough ethical problems with political leaders without formally sanctioning such hypocrisy. Fortunately, I won a state Supreme Court victory in 1997 that nullified the anti-atheist clause in the constitution.
I interviewed Vlora Citaku, the Kosovo Ambassador to the US about the NYTimes story published 21 May that portrayed Kosovo as "fertile ground for ISIS." The article asserted that Gulf monies from Saudi, Kuwaiti, Emirati and Qataris have transformed Kosovo from a previously tolerant, secular nation to an intolerant, Wahabi dominated country.

"The NYtimes story is accurate but it only tells half the truth and two years late." Ambassador Citaku said in a one-on-one interview with yours truly.

"I, personally, was one of the first officials who spoke publically about the radicalization problem in Kosovo as early as 2009. In 2014 my government recognized the radicalization problem and took drastic legislative and operational measures to address it. Consequently, less than 10 people joined ISIS in 2015 and zero in 2016." Yet, ISIS is still a problem in Kosovo as it is for much of the rest of the world, the Ambassador added.

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Kosovo has instituted a number of legislative and operational procedures to combat violent extremism. The Parliament passed in 2014 a Law On The Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing. And in 2015 the Law on Prohibition of Joining the Armed Conflicts Outside State Territory was adopted. The latter makes it a crime to "organize, recruit, lead or train persons or group of persons with the aim of joining or participating in a foreign army or police in any form of armed conflicts outside Kosovo." Such offense is punishable by 5 to 15 years in prison. Furthermore, in 2015, Kosovo approved a Strategy on Prevention of Violent Extremism and Radicalization Leading to Terrorism. The strategy stipulates that "Kosovo will undertake all necessary actions to provide necessary resources for successful implantation of the Strategy and Action Plan."

Ambassador Citaku, formerly Kosovo Consul General in New York City, does not shy away from acknowledging that Gulf money advocating Wahabi brand of Islam permeated Kosovo in the recent past, but rejects the notion that Gulf governments per se were responsible for such activity. The Ambassador's rejection is in line with what some officials in Washington also believe. The Administration has been adamant that the Saudi government does not fund radicalization activities and that it is private Saudi individuals who do so. In the words of a senior U.S. government official who did not want to be identified "there is no evidence that Saudi government funds such activities. It is private charities and individuals." He emphasized that media and political circles should be careful to make this distinction. He continued that "I looked at the [classified] 30 pages of 9/11 commission report and there is nothing in the last page that shows the Saudi government funded 9/11 attackers." The distinction that Washington makes is unconvincing, considering that Saudi Arabia is, by far, not an oasis of democracy.

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Informed observers believe that Kosovo is part of the collateral damage from the political controversy regarding Saudi government's alleged links to Islamic terrorism and 9/11. Certainly, one could argue that the NYTimes article is more about Saudi Arabia than Kosovo. The former is perceived in many quarters to be a primary financier of Islamic terrorism and responsible for spreading Wahabisim (a radical and intolerant form of Islam) across the globe. The article used Kosovo as another example that highlights Saudi's role in paving the fertile way to terrorism by propagating a singular and intolerant form of Islam.

"We are Muslims," Ambassador Citaku stated, "but we remain secular and although we have good relations with Arab Gulf countries, our vision is focused on joining the EU, NATO and staying closely aligned with the US. We have recently opened a Consular office in Des Moines, IA in January 2016 to support civilian and defense engagements with the US."

Major General Tim Orr, Adjutant General of the Iowa National Guard, which has a National Guard State Partnership Program (SPP) in security cooperation with Kosovo since 2011, agrees. "Kosovo understands that its future lies in being part of European and international institutions," he noted before adding that, "Kosovo is the most pro American country I have been in and they continue to support the US as a friend and ally. We are honored to have them as our security partner." Iowa National Guard's SPP with Kosovo, conducted through U.S. European Command, is focused on enhancing military professionalism and interoperability between their respective forces. It also has the capacity to support disaster response and crisis management exchanges and to encourage educational, medical, economic and people to people contacts. Orr believes that "SPP has become an important vehicle to advance key U.S. interests in Kosovo."

Ambassador Citaku concluded that "Kosovo has cracked down on private donations coming from the Gulf. 19 NGOs with suspicious funding have been shutdown. Pristina only accepts identified funding from Gulf governments such as the UAE's 20 million Euros pledge to build a pediatrician hospital in Kosovo. And, while Kosovo is grateful for the Emirati charitable gesture, we are primarily looking West not East. Our President just joined an LGBT parade with the British and American Ambassadors in Pristina earlier this month, for God sake. That should tell you something!"

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Excerpted from Age of Discovery: Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New Renaissance by Ian Goldin and Chris Kutarna. Copyright  by the authors and reprinted by permission of St. Martin's Press.

If Michelangelo were reborn today, amidst all the turmoil that marks the present moment, would he flounder, or flourish again?

Every year, millions of people file into the Sistine Chapel to stare up in wonder at Michelangelo Buonarroti's Creation of Adam. Millions more pay homage to Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. Through five centuries, we have carefully preserved such Renaissance masterpieces, and cherished them, as objects of beauty and inspiration.

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But they also challenge us.

The artists who crafted these feats of genius 500 years ago did not inhabit some magical age of universal beauty, but rather a tumultuous moment--marked by historic milestones and discoveries, yes, but also wrenching upheaval. Their world was tangling together in a way it had never done before, thanks to Gutenberg's recent invention of the printing press (1450s), Columbus' discovery of the New World (1492) and Vasco da Gama's discovery of a sea route to Asia's riches (1497). And humanity's fortunes were changing, in some ways radically. The Black Death had tapered off, Europe's population was recovering and public health, wealth and education were all rising.

Genius flourished under these conditions, as evidenced by artistic achievements (especially from the 1490s to the 1520s), by Copernicus' revolutionary theories of a sun-centered cosmos (1510s) and by similar advances in a wide range of fields, from biology to engineering to navigation to medicine. Basic, common-sense 'truths' that had stood unquestioned for centuries, even millennia, were eroding away. The earth did not stand still. The sun did not revolve around it. The 'known' world wasn't even half of the whole. The human heart wasn't the soul; it was a pump. In mere decades, printing boosted the production of books from hundreds to millions per year, and these weird facts and new ideas travelled farther, faster than had ever been possible.

But risk flourished, too. Terrifying new diseases spread like wildfire on both sides of the now-connected Atlantic. The Ottoman Turks--backed by a 'new' weapon, gunpowder--conquered the eastern Mediterranean for Islam in a stunning series of land and naval victories that cast a threatening gloom over all of Europe. Martin Luther (1483-1546) leveraged the new power of print to broadcast blistering condemnations of the Catholic Church, igniting religious violence continent-wide. The church, which had endured every challenge to its authority for over a thousand years to become the most important and pervasive authority in European life, split permanently under the strain.

Such was the age in which, on 8 September 1504, in Florence, Italy, Michelangelo unveiled his statue of David in the city's main square. Standing over 5 meters tall, weighing in at over 6 tons of fine Carrara marble, David was an instant monument to the city's wealth and to the sculptor's skill.

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David and Goliath was a familiar Old Testament story, about a brave young warrior who, in true underdog fashion, improbably defeated a giant foe in single combat. But with hammer and chisel, Michelangelo fixed into stone a moment that no one had seen before. It must have caused some confusion for those present at the unveiling. David's face and neck were tensed. His brow was furrowed and his eyes focused determinedly upon some distant point. He stood, not triumphant atop the corpse of his enemy (the standard portrayal), but ready, with the implacable resolve of one who knows his next step but not its outcome. And then they saw the artist's meaning clearly: Michelangelo carved David in that fateful moment between decision and action, between realizing what he must do and summoning the courage to do it.

They knew that moment. They were in it.

The past is prologue

We are in it, too.

The present age is a contest: between the good and bad consequences of global entanglement and human development; between forces of inclusion and exclusion; between flourishing genius and flourishing risks. Whether we each flourish or flounder, and whether the twenty-first century goes down in the history books as one of humanity's best or worst, depends on what we all do to promote the possibilities and dampen the dangers that this contest brings.

The stakes could not be higher. We each have the perilous fortune to have been born into a historic moment--a decisive moment--when events and choices in our own lifetime will dictate the circumstances of many, many lifetimes to come.

Yes, it is the conceit of each generation to think so, but this time it's true. The long-term facts speak more loudly than our egos ever could. Humanity's shift into cities, begun some 10,000 years ago by our Neolithic ancestors, crossed the half-way mark in our own lifetimes. We are the first generations of the urban epoch. Carbon pollution has pushed atmospheric green-house gases today to concentrations not seen since those Neolithic days; fourteen of the fifteen hottest years in our climate record have all come in the twenty-first century. For the first time ever, the number of poor people in the world has plummeted (by over one billion people since 1990) and the overall population has swelled (by some two billion) at the same time. Scientists alive today outnumber all scientists who ever lived up to 1980, and--in part thanks to them--average life expectancy has risen more in the past fifty years than in the previous 1,000.

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In the short term, too, history is being made. The Internet, effectively non-existent twenty years ago, linked one billion people by 2005, two billion people by 2010 and three billion people by 2015. Now, over half of humanity is online. China has erupted from autarky to become the world's biggest exporter and economy. India is close behind. The Berlin Wall is gone, and the clash of economic ideologies that defined the second half of the twentieth century is gone with it. All this feels like old news when set against the headlines since the turn of the new millennium: 9/11; devastating tsunamis and hurricanes; a global financial crisis that struck dumb the world's highest-paid brains; a nuclear meltdown in hyper-safe Japan; suicide bombings in the heart of Paris, City of Love; riots over inequality--and happier events like the explosion of mobile and social media, cracking the human genome, the advent of 3D printing, the breaking of long-standing taboos such as gay marriage, the detection of gravitational waves and the discovery of earth-like planets orbiting nearby stars.

It seems that every day we wake up to a new shock. And shock itself is the most compelling evidence that this age is very different, because it's data that comes from within. Shock is our own personal proof of historic change--a psychic collision of reality and expectations--and it has been the relentless theme of all our lives. It agitates and animates us. It will continue to do so. Right now we don't talk much about geoengineering, organic energy, super-intelligent machines, bioengineered plagues, nano-factories or artificial human chromosomes, but someday soon--surprise!--it may seem that we talk about little else.

We lack--and need--perspective

We don't know where we're headed, and so we let ourselves get pushed around--bullied even--by immediate crises and the anxieties they evoke. We retreat rather than reach out. In an age when we must act, we hesitate instead. Globally, that's the present mood. US citizens, once the world's chief promoters of free trade, are now increasingly against it. Industry around the world is accumulating or distributing record levels of cash, rather than investing it. By late 2015, it was estimated that global corporations held over $15 trillion in cash and cash equivalents--four times as much as a decade earlier. The S&P 500 companies as a group gave almost all their 2014 profits back to shareholders (via dividends and share buybacks), rather than bet on new projects and ideas. Both the political far right (which seeks to reverse society's opening up to gays, immigrants and global responsibilities) and the far left (which seeks to reverse society's opening up to trade and private enterprise) enjoy surging popularity across much of the developed world. In the 1990s, the word 'globalization' was ubiquitous. For many, it implied a global coming together, and it captured grand hopes of a better world for everyone. Today, the term has fallen out of favor (except among politicians, who invoke it as a convenient scape- goat for the problems they can't solve).

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What we lack, and so urgently need, is perspective. With it, we can see the contest that defines our lifetime and better assert our own will upon the wider forces shaping the world. When the shocks hit, we can step back from their immediacy and place them in a broader context, in which we have more leverage over their meaning (and our response). Civic and political leaders need perspective to craft a compelling vision that connects the big drivers of change with our daily lives. Businesspeople need perspective to cut through the chaos of 24/7 news and information to make capable decisions. Youth need perspective to find answers to their big, burning questions and a pathway for their own passions. Perspective is what enables each of us to transform the sum of our days into an epic journey. And it's what improves our chances of together making the twenty-first century humanity's best.

'Perspective is the guide and the gateway, and without it nothing can be done well.' When he wrote these words, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was counselling artists, but he could easily have been counselling his whole generation. A contemporary of Michelangelo (1475-1564), Leonardo lived in the same moment of fateful contest that his peer had captured in marble. To gain perspective on the present age, we need only step back, look to the past, and realize: We've been here before. The forces that converged in Europe 500 years ago to spark genius and upend social order are present again in our lifetime. Only now they are stronger, and global.

That is the main message of this book. It should fill us with a mix of hope and determination. Hope, because the Renaissance left a legacy that we still celebrate, 500 years on, as one of humanity's brightest. If we want to achieve our own golden age, we can. The conditions are ripe. We can seize this moment and realize a new flourishing that in magnitude, geographic scope and positive consequences for human welfare will far surpass the first Renaissance--or, indeed, any other flourishing in history. Determination, because this new golden age will not simply arrive; we have to achieve it.

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And the work will not be easy. In 1517, Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), one of the chief philosophers of his age and a founding father of modern political science, wrote:

Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who have been, and ever will be, animated by the same passions. The result is that the same problems always exist in every era.

We've been warned. The first Renaissance was a time of tremendous upheaval that strained society to, and often past, the breaking point. Now, we risk fumbling badly again, as individuals, as society and as a species--and we've had some big stumbles already. It's made many of us cynical and fearful for the future. If we want to attain the greatness for which humanity is once again eligible, we must keep faith in its possibility. We must do all we can to realize it. We must broaden and share more widely the benefits of progress. And we must help one another to cope with the shocks that none of us will see coming.
NATO flag flutters as U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor fighter flies over the military air base in Siauliai, Lithuania, April 27, 2016. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins

NATO's former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander, General Sir Richard Shirreff's new book, "2017: War With Russia," is a work of fiction. But its subject -- a clash between NATO and Russia as early as next year -- is not completely fanciful.

When Russia attacked Ukraine in 2014, it also attacked the Helsinki-based security order of Europe. In place of this system, President Vladimir Putin is calling for a revived Yalta system, based on spheres of influence and respect. He also has invoked the borders of historic Russia and proclaimed a right to "defend" Russian "compatriots" abroad.

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And if treaties and agreements are not sacrosanct to the Kremlin, why should NATO borders be sacrosanct? It is only reasonable that NATO's Baltic allies ask this question and that others, beginning with Turkey, do so as well.

If treaties and agreements are not sacrosanct to the Kremlin, why should NATO borders be sacrosanct?

Their concerns are heightened by military developments as significant as today's political ones. Since the war with Georgia in 2008, Russia has made a steady, cumulative investment in the capacity to wage local and regional war throughout the interior and on the periphery of the former U.S.S.R. This means full-spectrum, non-linear war, from non-attributable attacks by "polite little men" to first use of nuclear weapons. It also means information war, from disinformation to cyber attacks, and a coordinated effort to mobilize the state.

What is the purpose of the investment? The short answer is to wage proactive defense against geopolitical and civilizational encirclement by the West. That states on Russia's periphery might welcome Western encroachment is grist to the mill of those in Russia who assess threats and respond to them. Inside the Kremlin's febrile world, an unbroken chain of malign intent connects NATO and European Union enlargement, humanitarian interventions, colored revolutions and regime changes, culminating with Russia itself. To ask in these circumstances whether Russia's policy is offensive or defensive is to play with words.

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Until NATO takes steps to rectify the military balance, Russia will use fear as a weapon to undermine the political balance.

Today the Baltic states are threatened politically. The aim of Russian policy is to persuade them that, inside or outside the EU and NATO, they lie in a grey zone and should behave accordingly. To this end, military-force groups with a capacity to seize Riga and Tallinn in 60 hours are an asset, even if it would be folly to employ them in practice. Until NATO takes steps to rectify the military balance, Russia will use fear as a weapon to undermine the political balance.

But what is the risk that the Baltics will be attacked militarily? Since NATO cannot know, it must not allow a dangerous imbalance of forces to arise. Unfortunately, it already has arisen. From 1991 to 2008, the West believed there would be no military threats in Europe, and national armed forces were restructured accordingly. The impact of the Georgian war on these orthodoxies was minimal. But Crimea's annexation has launched an intellectual revolution. Those at its cutting edge are realists who know that vulnerabilities cannot be repaired by summit declarations and band-aids.

Crimea's annexation has launched an intellectual revolution.

They also know that Russia's weaknesses are as telling as its strengths. Today, Russia has an enhanced version of the army that Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu's predecessor, Anatoly Serdyukov, aspired to build. The irony is that he was the first Russian defense minister to remove NATO as the baseline of Russian defense sufficiency.

The core of today's military capability lies in 30-40 maneuver units, nuclear and dual-use strike systems and multi-layered air defense. That is a formidable capability for limited conflict, but it is not the capability Russia's General Staff would design for full-scale war against NATO. Russia's ambitious longer-term plans confirm as much. But these plans are running into the usual Russian buffers -- human, industrial and institutional -- and not all of them can be planned out of existence, least of all in a damaged and deteriorating economy.

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Therefore, the challenge for NATO is no different than it used to be in West Berlin: to persuade Russia that any war means full-scale war. To this end, it is not necessary to deny Russia a victory in the Baltic states. It is necessary to deny it a quick victory. This is a doable task, but that does not mean it will be done. There also is no certainty that Putin's Chekist testing and probing of weakness will not provoke a tougher response than he can safely manage.
International pop star Ellie Goulding has found herself in the middle of a controversy after a dust-up with Twitter user @PokePro101. Goulding recently tweeted the following about presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump:

Donald Trump continues to say that climate change is a "hoax", and that he would scrap the Paris agreement. Just putting that out there.  Ellie Goulding (@elliegoulding) May 27, 2016

Goulding's statement is absolutely true; as recently as this week, Trump formally announced his intent to withdraw the US from the UN's international climate accord, as well as an intent to resurrect the Keystone XL pipeline between the US and Canada -- provided that the US reap a large share of the oil revenues:

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He said President Obama, who in November formally rejected a permit for Keystone to cross into the U.S., "doesn't know what the hell he is doing." "I want the Keystone pipeline, but the people of the United States should be given a significant piece of the profits," Trump said. "That's how we're going to make our country rich again, and it's how we're going to make America great again."

But despite all of the controversies surrounding Trump and his presidential campaign, @PokePro101 had the following to say to Goulding's denouncement of Trump:

Don't stick your nose into politics and make me not want to go to your concert in June  Tom Leising (@PokePro101) May 27, 2016

Goulding's response was equally biting:

Don't come please  Ellie Goulding (@elliegoulding) May 27, 2016

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An Outspoken Celebrity

But this is not the first time Goulding has spoken out against Donald Trump and his candidacy, leaving choice words about him at least since last fall. Additionally, she has spoken out in support of a number of causes, including battling climate change, animal rights, and even eliminating homelessness in her British homeland. On Christmas Eve 2015, she volunteered at the Marylebone Project in central London to support efforts to end homelessness and especially to eliminate the stigma associated with the homeless population:

"It's not just about working yourself back up to be in a job it's also about social life, getting confidence again. Because on the street people, especially women can get shouted at, urinated on at times, get stepped over and ignored. To me it's just something I cannot ignore and everyone I meet who's interested in what I do for the homeless I really talk about it and really try and educate people. "It's that stigma of what a homeless person is -- they abuse drugs or abuse alcohol. It's just not true, some people come from very normal backgrounds, very normal situations and something goes wrong. It can happen to all of us."

However, despite her history of tackling societal issues, Goulding was taken to task by British tabloid UnrealityTV, which was critical of her response to the "fan" who told her to stay out of politics:

Most artists are doing everything they can to try to convince their fans to buy a ticket to their concerts, but Ellie Goulding is actually doing the opposite. In a pretty surprising move, Ellie took to Twitter to actually tell a fan not to come to one of her upcoming shows after the social media user put Goulding on blast over a controversial tweet about US presidential hopeful Donald Trump.

But perhaps @PokePro101 is another example of just how the 2016 presidential election has exposed the deep divisions within America. Goulding may not be a United States citizen, but given the possible ramifications of what a Trump presidency could do to the stability of our country's international relations, she has just as much right as anyone else to be concerned. So for PokePro101 to effectively tell her to butt out -- and for a tabloid in her home country to call her out for exercising her own freedom of speech -- reflects poorly on our society's overall ability to debate issues and politics without resorting to personal attacks. We see further examples every day, with seemingly every Trump rally drawing more and more protesters like those in San Diego this evening. If trends continue, I can personally foresee someone actually being killed in the political furor before the November election -- and Ellie Goulding, despite not being from America, may be able to see the warning signs better than a large number of Americans.

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Less than eight years ago, the U.S. was the world's largest obstacle in the fight against climate change. Today, we are the world leader. And this astonishing turn of events is in large part due to Latino voters.

Both in 2008 and 2012, Barack Obamas overwhelming Latino support was crucial in his two election victories and the eventual implementation of its policies to counter the climate crisis.

For us Latinos, the consensus that climate change is real and that the federal government must intervene to fight it is practically unanimous, and even today, it's far higher than that of the population in general. This Latino support for environmental protections is demonstrated time and again at the polls.

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This year, the Latino vote will prove crucial once again, and the presidential candidates know fully well that to prevail they must garner a substantial percentage of these votes.

On the Democratic side, both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders consider fighting climate change as a top priority, and both have presented clear and decisive plans to expedite the transition to a clean energy economy.

Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, on the other hand, calls climate change "bullsh*t" and a "hoax" concocted by the Chinese to destroy the American economy. In a major speech, he outlined his terrifying dirty energy agenda, including the authorization of the Keystone XL pipeline, which President Obama correctly rejected last year. He has also called for the elimination of the EPA, repealing the Clean Power Plan and rejecting the Paris Climate Agreement. With him in the White House, it would be game over for the climate.

If we add the fact that Trump calls immigrants "rapists" dedicated to drug trafficking and other criminal activities, it's no wonder among us his popularity is abysmal. So how then can he get the necessary Latino support? He and his party have an alternative: suppressing our votes.

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Thirty-three states already have voter ID laws that restrict our constitutional right to vote, and practically all of them are controlled by Republican legislatures. These laws are specifically designed to suppress the vote of Latinos, African-Americans, the young and the elderly. In Texas, for instance, for the members of these typically low-income communities, getting the required documentation to vote is so hard, many are forced to hire lawyers to chase the paperwork. Many more give up and stop trying.

These laws are a solution in desperate search for a problem that doesn't exist. According to studies, a voter is more likely to be struck by lighting than to commit election fraud, among many other reasons because the risks of being caught far exceed the potential gains of such fraud.

Voter suppression, however, is a very effective tactic. According to a General Accountability Office study, voter ID laws can reduce voter participation by up to 3 percent, especially among members of communities of color. In heavily Latino South Florida, tens of thousands had to wait up to nine hours to cast their ballots in 2012, after the Republican governor drastically restricted the availability of voting places and times.

Yet there is a lot you can do to be ready to vote. The Ya Es Hora Ve y Vota! (it's time, get out and vote) Campaign, organized by NALEO, NCLR, Univision and ImpreMedia, among others, provides a free bilingual information service (888-839-8682) about all aspects of the voting process. These include registering to vote, voter ID requirements and finding your polling place on Election Day. In any instance, to avoid difficulties, vote early, by mail or the weekend before Election Day whenever possible.

For us Latinos, these obstacles constitute a no-confidence vote that puts our constitutional right in peril. But you are still in time to get ready to use your power and vote for your family's future on November 8.

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Dear Chris,

First let me say, I have been a faithful viewer of your show and MSNBC for many years. I have always enjoyed your direct approach to issues, as well as your ability to challenge a guest when the B.S. meter gets triggered. However, this past Friday, May 27th, I was quite disturbed by what I saw on your program between 4:07 and 4:17 p.m. pacific time. It was 10 minutes that I believe exposed a need for some real examination.

At 4:07 as Jacob Rascon (one of the few Latinos to have a presence on MSNBC) was covering from the midst of the protests, you commented, "So here we hear USA from the Ameri-- well, um, the people taking the conservative view, let's put it that way..." I almost fell out of my chair, knowing what you almost said was, "So here we hear USA from the "the Americans..." Three quarters of one word not only rattled me, you could see it rattled you too. Please go back to that episode and you'll notice there were a lot of non-Latinos also protesting. Unfortunately your focus was only about Latinos and later admitting your "Ameri..." comment, was a "slip." I hope to point out what could be an opportunity for growth from this "slip."

Chris, Google recently decided to address what they call "unconscious bias" across their entire organization. The video is online. What facilitated their inward view of themselves, was when they looked around and found a very insular corporate culture. They came to the realization that even the most well-meaning people, don't "consciously" see their own shortcomings. I would ask you and your colleagues to consider a similar inward reflection. Perhaps start with your booking logs over the years and see how many Latino guests you have had on your show. My guess will be that the number of "American Latinos," would be substantially below that of which you may "consciously" believe it to be. It's an easy fix, call me I can get you the "hook up" to lots and lots of smart Latinos that can intelligently discuss everything from immigration to particle accelerators and everything in-between. I got your back.

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Then at 4:09, Joy Reid, who eventually made a plethora of salient points during her appearance, first tried to answer a question of yours when she said, "I can tell you that at the moment, net migration from Mexico..." You immediately cut her off with, "No, no, whose doing anything, I know, I know, I know the arguments..." Had you let her finish her point, she was about to say, "Net immigration from Mexico, is ZERO." A point you claimed you know, but knowledge that your audience and Ann Coulter, we will find out later on, could have benefited from.

What could have been your "unconscious bias" at work, was also evident at 4:12 when Ann Coulter stated, "You have Mandarin Chinese with signs for Trump, Make America Great Again, written in Mandarin." You complacently or unconsciously responded and I quote, "Yeah." It took your guest, Joy Reid, going toe to toe at 4:17, to try and correct Ann's constant use of the term "Mandarin." Your response was "Yeah."

Then at 4:13, Ann Coulter took to your earlier "the Ameri-" comment, like a cultural dog whistle, when she bellowed, "Because you got it right before, when you 'slipped' and said something about the protestors versus the Trump supporters when you called the Trump supporters 'The Americans.' They are the Americans! Chris, it's amazing what kind of ignorance three quarters of one unintended word can create. Imagine what the multitude of speeches Trump and his surrogates are making, that are not unintended, but blatantly calling for people to allow their fear to overtake their common sense. To your credit, you rebounded with, "First of all that was a 'slip. I was looking at the American flag against the Mexican flags and it was a 'slip.'" Boy was it.

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Lets continue down the "slippery" slope. At 4:15, you said to Joy Reid, "American flags, Confederate flag now showing, a Mexican flags, I never thought the Mexican flags was a particularly good public relations move here by the protestors..." I couldn't agree with you more. Latinos do themselves a disservice, by carrying Mexican flags at a rally like this. That said, how on earth could you dress down Latinos about a bad PR move and not mention the Confederate flags as a bad PR move? Mexico is our neighbor to the south that has many positive qualities about it. The Confederate flag came from some other "neighbors from the south", that used that flag in a civil war to try and preserve "hate and slavery." Slight difference in the intentions don't ya think?

Throughout the segment, Joy Reid, made very smart data driven observations. As a Latino, I am thankful for her perspective, but would ask that perhaps you actually have a Latino on your show to discuss Hispanic issues in the future. When you discuss African, Gay, Jewish, veterans issues, you often have members of those communities on as guests, but for some strange reason, when Latino issues are discussed, we are too often invisible. Easy peezy fix Chris.

Lastly at 4:18 you seemed to have lost complete control of your show, when Joy tried multiple times to correct an unapologetic Ann Coulter who commented, "But it isn't. As I told you, they have Mandarins in the audience..." Joy, brilliantly countered with, "It's not 1913, they are called Asian Americans, not Mandarins!" Had you let Joy finish her sentence earlier at 4:09 about "net immigration being zero," Ann would not have made her next diatribe which was, "We are having an 'Invasion,' of people across the southern border." Invasion? Really? The only invasion that's happening, is of people that will never get into MENSA. It was right there that I realized Ann Coulter isn't even intelligent enough to be ignorant. Yet you have her on your show as a paid guest, to espouse her distorted views. Wow, what am I not getting here?

My favorite moment came when Ann in her best Jan Brady impression tossed her blonde locks and forth and tried to set Joy in her place saying, "No, you're not going to police my language, they are Mandarins!" Talk about a Marsha, Marsha, Marsha moment. Classic. I only wish that Joy had challenged Ann to use the "N word," the "C word," the "K word," or the "F word," on the air. Words that the Black, Female, Jewish and Gay communities have fought so hard to eliminate from our vernacular. Amazing how Ann Coulter felt so empowered to say no one can police her language on cable television. Gee I wonder where she could have gotten that from?

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The announcement last week of the composition of the Democratic Party's Platform Committee has fueled speculation of a looming intra-party battle over Israel and the Palestinians.



Without question, there's tension on these issues in present-day politics as outdated notions of what it means to be pro-Israel give way to more nuanced ideas better suited to the present moment.



The platform committee shouldn't approach its work believing there is a painful choice awaiting between two competing visions, but rather seeing a valuable opportunity to articulate a new consensus on America's approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For some time now, political leaders have labored under the erroneous assumption that American Jews -- an important and reliable Democratic constituency -- are far more hawkish when it comes to Israel than they actually are.



Politicians have feared, for instance, articulating the notion that the Palestinians have a right to a state or that both Israeli and Palestinian leaderships bear some responsibility for the ongoing failure to resolve their conflict. Indeed, the current Democratic platform mentions neither settlement expansion nor the rights and aspirations of the Palestinian people.



Yet American Jews -- Democrats and Republicans alike -- overwhelmingly favor a two-state solution, oppose unlimited settlement expansion and want stronger American leadership to end the conflict.



This erroneous understanding of American Jewish opinion has caused a growing gap between American Jews and those representing them over what it means to be pro-Israel. But, in Congress, in Jewish communities and at the ballot box, that gap is now closing.



The drafting committee has an opportunity to close the same gap in their platform. In doing so, they can ensure that the official views of the party conform to the views of its constituents.



As Israel and the Palestinians came up in debates and speeches, both Democratic candidates reiterated their commitment to ensuring Israel's right to live free from terror and the Palestinians' right to dignity and self-determination.



The challenge before the drafting committee now is to build on the common ground that began to emerge and to put forward a platform that represents pro-Israel, pro-peace views that Democratic voters actually hold.

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The platform should clearly affirm the right of both the Jewish and the Palestinian peoples to self-determination in states of their own.



Support for the two-state solution breaks no new ground and has been a consensus position not simply within the Democratic Party but across party lines for years.



So too, every American administration since President Johnson's time has expressed American opposition to settlement construction and expansion over the Green Line in the territory Israel has occupied since the 1967 War -- fifty years ago.
In the United States of America everyone has equal rights regardless of race, color, creed or national origin. I am saddened by the current state of affairs that we are experiencing in contemporary society. Just last night upon seeing Donald Trump's face on the national news the person sitting next to me in the room asked me to comment on what he deemed "the problem with all these Islamists in our country." My blood began to boil, I began to find it hard to breathe, and all I could do to remain civil was to get up and walk out of the room and say "I don't like Donald Trump or anything that he stands for."

The truth is I'm no good at public debate. My hands are sweating just typing this. I'm too emotional to have a conversation in person that wouldn't end up with me screaming at the top of my lungs in frustration. But to have someone sitting right next to me try and tell me that this country has a problem because too many Muslims are in it is just so disappointing. The problem America has, and the rest of the world for that matter, is that too many humans kill other humans.

The problem that's bothering me most right now is Islamophobia. Martin Luther King, Jr. said "Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way" And lately I'm finding that my soul just can't stay quiet anymore.I have a problem with what Trump is encouraging and the behavior of his more fervent supporters. How is it any different than what was happening during the Civil Rights Movement?

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When the general public start yelling out violent threats to those they disagree with saying things like "light the mother@!$%#er on fire!" and "seig hail!" and encouraging beat downs by saying they were deserved. That's a huge problem and it isn't going to just go away. As citizens of the United States of America have we already forgotten the heavy price of overcoming segregation? Have we forgotten about the churches being bombed and the innocent people being mistreated, beaten and even killed by our own countrymen?

I wasn't even alive but I haven't forgotten.In America we have already had innocent Muslims die as a direct result of irrational fear that is being perpetuated by the right leaning media. Just last year in Missouri a 15-year-old boy was killed as he exited a mosque. An SUV with the words 'Quran is a virus disease woreste than Ebola (sic)' scrawled on the rear window in white paint rammed into him severing his legs. Abdisama Sheikh-Hussein died in the hospital. This is just one glaring and tragic example of many. Let's get one thing straight right now Islamic extremists are not the only ones doing the senseless killing in America.

Innocent people die every day and that will continue. That man's ignorance goes much further than just bad spelling it resulted in him killing an innocent child and ruining not only his own life but the lives of the victim's family and friends. Hate crimes against Muslims are happening all across the nation, the children of bigots are becoming bigots themselves and there are people in power who are encouraging this behavior. When will it ever end? Why do we allow this type of behavior to go unchecked?

Free speech is being abused and used to incite hate right in our own backyard. The good people of the world can no longer stand by and silently tolerate this behavior. It is our responsibility to uphold the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr, by speaking out and standing up against injustice and encouraging others to do the same. If you are afraid of Muslims, if you are one of those people spreading the hate, if you've ever said you felt like killing a raghead or that all Muslims are terrorists or whatever other hateful sentiment you might be harboring, I beg you, please reconsider your stance.

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An open letter to all delegates committed to Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Dear Delegate,

You are to be congratulated on making the grade and becoming a delegate for Hillary Clinton. You got the signatures, you raised the cash, you have passed all the requirements to get to Philly.

I know you are excited for your candidate. I am sure you have had many one-on-one personal contacts with her as you have watched her rise through the years.

If you were with her in 2008, you may feel that she checked all the boxes and has the resume to make it to the White House.

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You feel like this is owed to her and you with fight with everything you have to win this for her - and by extension win it for you.

When the campaign started months ago there were limited opportunities to debate one of the most critical issues of the campaign. Bernie Sanders famously and clearly stated he didn't give a damn about Hillary's emails. That was back on October 13, 2015.

He was right to say it then because the issue was only 6 months old with the State Department and FBI still trying to sort the whole thing out.

It is now summer of 2016. The email server issue broke in March of 2015. It took 14 months for the Inspector General to issue a report clearly stating she broke the rules.

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You have cover now to do the right thing for the Party and the country.

You will have immense pressure brought to bear upon you by people who will insist that you must remain loyal to the Clinton Campaign.

You have to fight that pressure. You do not have to cast a vote for her at the convention in Philadelphia.

You can abstain.

With the Inspector General's Report, the GOP will have the ammunition to destroy the Clinton Campaign. It is better than even odds the FBI will issue similar, if not more strident findings, that will allow the ozone smell of a disk crashing to permeate the Democratic Party. (The FBI does not give computer nerds deals for testimony or Romanian hackers free plane rides for the fun of it.)

The argument that Hillary can beat Trump is vanishing.

You can abstain from Hillary.

She blew her turn when she set up the email servers for whatever of the myriad of reasons or excuses you want to pin on her. Fact is, she did it. Karl Rove and the vast RW conspiracy did not do this. She did it to herself. She broke the rules and people are getting in trouble in her wake.

Calls for Special Prosecutors will intensify if she were to be made the nominee in the face of these reports. There was nothing but smoke in the Whitewater scandal and the GOP ground the government to a halt. (The irony of Ken Starr recently being in the news is not lost on anyone.)

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The GOP is not stupid. They got the goods. They are already telling the world they got the goods and are going to use them on her. It is being timed to perfection. It will get ugly.

You can stop this at the convention.

Abstain from Hillary.

Your loyalty to Hillary cannot be questioned, but you allow the torch to be passed to a new generation by saying nothing.

If you were elected as delegate BEFORE the Inspector General's Report you can say you withheld judgment until further information has become available. With a clear mind you can abstain.

There are no scandals -- real or made up -- that can reasonably be pinned on Bernie Sanders when compared to either Trump or Hillary.

We can beat Trump with Bernie.

I am sorry, but Hillary as a nominee will produce a President Trump. You need to #AbstainFromHillary.

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This may be one of the few times Democrats can believe Abstinence can yield a desired result.

A Democratic President.

Democratically Yours,
International volunteering has been an important and satisfying part of my life since 1991. Serving first as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala, to date I have had the privilege to serve on 23 international missions in 12 countries. All of this began after I turned 50. It changed my life.



How to Begin

A good place to start when you are thinking about international volunteering is with an examination of your skills and interests. Which of your skills most interest you? What work have you have enjoyed doing? Former volunteers say that their most successful missions have been those on which they have been able to combine their skills and passions.

A way to test your skills is to volunteer in your local community. Try different organizations. Get a feel for the type of work in which you feel you can make the greatest contribution.

When you have an idea of what type of volunteer work you would like to do it is time to think about time commitment. Volunteer assignments can run from one-week to two-years or more. If this is your first international volunteer trip a short-term program can be a good introduction. A one or two week program gives you a chance to see if international volunteering is for you. If it works, you can start thinking about longer term assignments.

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Contacting International Volunteer Placement Organizations

After deciding on what type of work will interest you and how long you will devote to your first international volunteer mission you can start investigating volunteer placement organizations.

First search the organization that have programs that match your interests. Also see if their programs are in countries or areas where you would like to volunteer. When you have narrowed your organization list down it is time to start contacting them.

Carefully examine the history of the organization. It is important to work with a placement agency that has a positive track record. They should be working closely with an in-country, community oriented non-governmental organization (NGO). Their programs must be providing a needed -and wanted - service to the communities and individuals with whom they work. There are stories of well-intentioned volunteers building schools in areas that had no teachers or constructing medical facilities where there were no doctors and nurses.

To find out if the organization is effective talk to former over 50 volunteers. Ask organizations for the contact details of former volunteers in your age range. Reach out to the former volunteers and ask them about their experiences. Did the program meet their expectations? Did they believe their work made a positive and needed contribution to the community? What were the accommodations like? Did the organization provide good security? Was there access to medical care? Did the organization provide insurance? Were the staff helpful and knowledgeable? Was the ability to communicate home satisfactory? Was the food okay? Were sanitation facilities adequate? Were the physical requirements within their comfort zones? Was the age mix of fellow volunteers comfortable? Ask if they have contact information for other volunteers whom you can contact?

Short-Term Volunteering - one week to six months

Most short-term volunteering organizations require that the volunteer pay for transportation and costs associated with the volunteer assignment. The exceptions are organizations that have particular professional needs.

Prospective volunteers often ask why they have to pay to volunteer. There are many good reasons. Well run volunteer placement organizations do a lot of advance work to assure the volunteer has a meaningful experience. They cooperate with in-country host organizations to develop programs that fulfill the needs of the community served and contribute to their overall welfare. They travel to program sites to set-up accommodations, food, medical care, security and transportation for the volunteers. They may include insurance. Providing these services requires time and finances. When contacting organizations ask them what they do with the funds that they receive from volunteers.

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Long-Term Volunteering - six months or more

A long-term volunteer has additional considerations.Thought needs to be given to how to arrange one's financial and investment obligations at home.

Do you lease or rent out your house? If so, who will manage it? What will be the term of the lease or rental agreement? What if you return early? Do you have alternate lodging arrangements in mind? In my case I have had either family, a neighbor or a friend take care of my mail, residence and cars. I have found online banking very handy for taking care of financial obligations. I travel so much I can't consider having pets but for those of you who do arrangements must be made.

Health Considerations

Volunteers of all ages have to pay attention to health needs. Visit your physician. Get a checkup and evaluation. Discuss your volunteer assignment, travel plans and destination. Take into consideration your health needs and the quality of the health care at your program site when you choose your organization. Ask the volunteer placement organization about any known health risks at the site and take precautionary measures. If insurance is not provided check your personal insurance and see if it covers international volunteer assignments. Most don't. Having insurance is an imperative. I have both purchased private insurance and worked with organizations that have provided it. Some volunteers purchase emergency evacuation insurance that covers initial treatment at the site and air transportation to the volunteer's home for further medical treatment.

Family Considerations

It is important to talk with your family about your volunteering plans. Tell them how you researched the assignment. Explain to them the security and health precautions that you made personally. Describe those provided by the organization with which you will serve. Discuss communications arrangements at the assignment site. This type of information will put you family member's minds at ease.

When I joined the Peace Corps I worried about what my adult children would think about my heading off to another country to volunteer. My worries were for naught. My son and daughter fully supported me and were as excited as I. Now my grandchildren are nearing adulthood and sharing in the excitement. One of my granddaughters just returned from a tour of China with her school choir and is planning her international future.

Roundup

I hear every week from global friends I have made on my volunteer trips. They are like family. We have shared our lives and cultures in the past and continue to do so. I still communicate with a friend I met while serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala 24 years ago. On a return trip to my Peace Corps site in 2014, I stayed with her and her family. I met her husband and son and we had a delightful time together. I just heard from a friend I met while managing camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Afghanistan in 2002. The friend, still in Afghanistan, described the tensions and fear associated with living in a war ravaged country. These kinds of exchanges and friendships bring mutual understanding that would not be a part of my life had I not volunteered and worked internationally.

If you have an interest in international volunteering I encourage you to pursue it. It can positively change your life and the lives of those to whom you reach out.


(Cartoon courtesy of Jesse Springer)

EUGENE, Ore. - It might make sense for Hillary Clinton to play the long game and campaign in high-profile locales - but it's a drag the Democratic frontrunner couldn't at least hold a rally in beautiful Oregon before the recent primary here.

Granted, we're a bit out of the way. When I'm overseas and people ask where I'm from, it's hard not to explain with something like, "It's the state right above California."

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Of course, former President Bill Clinton visited Oregon earlier this month. He also came through a few months back to campaign for his busy wife, making a stop in Portland with Gov. Kate Brown to smile, shake hands and sign books at the famous Powell's City of Books.

You can peruse a downtown bookshop in the dreamlike Pacific Northwest, or cruise along a riverside highway to see wispy clouds settle on brooding green forests. In the winter, feel free to ski down one of our powdered slopes, whether you're at Mount Bachelor to Mount Hood. It's all great Instagram fodder. Yet behind the photo-ready veneer, Oregon is a complex state with complex issues. Clinton should be speaking to regular people about them.

The University of Oregon, for example, was recently voted one of the best 50 schools in the United States for LGBTQ students. According to College Choice, it came in at a solid 42nd place - a win for progressives. But we can't forget the 2013 suicide of 15-year-old Jadin Bell, the young gay man from rural La Grande who hanged himself after telling others he was bullied, as The Oregonian reported.

Then there's the steep minimum wage hike, which has doubtless left local business owners worried about shuttering their front doors. I'll not go into the public records laws here, which I railed against in another column. Or the fact that we've had too many school shootings, from Roseburg to Thurston, that hang raw in the state memory.

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It's a shame Clinton couldn't find time to check in on her Oregonian supporters. Sanders came over and over again, drawing massive crowds in the cities of Portland, Springfield and Salem. Donald Trump even showed up to raise some havoc.

Perhaps summing up Clinton's choice best was a scathing editorial cartoon that appeared in the daily newspaper not too long ago: local artist Jesse Springer lines the three presidential candidates up and has them state Oregon's (painfully) oft-mispronounced name.

Bernie Sanders: "Are-uh-gun"

Donald Trump: "Oh-ree-gone"

Hillary Clinton: "Ignoregon"

Oregonians tend to feel overlooked come primaries season, because this state's not one of the big players like, say, New Hampshire, Springer told me.

A friend of mine was not a big fan of Clinton's absence. "I'm upset that Hillary didn't come," said Negina Pirzad. The 22-year-old journalist said she "would have loved it" if Clinton dropped by - and would go to a rally if the presidential hopeful decided to later.

She said: "I would be there, supporting her as a fellow feminist." And sure, Pirzad would support Sanders if he won the Democratic nomination - but the former secretary of state is her first choice.

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There's no denying that Sanders's and Trump's politics have been divisive this election cycle. But at least the two made the effort and travelled through this tucked away state. And as Springer pointed out in a note, when the general election rolls around, "Oregon and New Hampshire have about the same clout."

So come on, candidate Clinton. Remember that Eugene rally in 2008? Try to ignore the perpetual Oregon rain, but don't forget your people.
On May 31st, I addressed the Ambassadors Against BDS International Summit at the United Nations, which was hosted by the Israeli Mission to the UN:

The following are my remarks as delivered:

It is ironic to be speaking today here at the United Nations. The UN is the place that helped to legitimize Israel as a member of the international community when it was founded in 1948, creating a formal nation state that represented another step in the 5000 year history of the Jewish people with the land of Israel. And yet we know that the UN has helped to delegitimize Israel in recent years as its organs like UN Human Rights Council, UNESCO and even the WHO have been captured by anti-Israel elements who subvert the work of these entities in service to their rabid, irrational anti-Israel agenda. So there is a meaningful irony to be here today.

I start with the proposition that we need a multi-layered strategy to deal with ongoing campaign of delegitimization, including the tactic of BDS. BDS - the very visible effort to boycott divest and sanction the state of Israel - must be taken on with every measure of seriousness because it poses a threat to Israel's fundamental legitimacy. That is, to Israel's very right to exist as a manifestation of the Jewish people yearning to live freely.

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We need to expose and combat the extremists and anti-Semites who are behind this noxious idea. BDS is an idea which flies in the face of the basic principles which animate the UN. BDS is an idea which flies in the face of our commitments made to each other as members of the community of nations. BDS is an idea which pushes out the very solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - that is, a mutual peace between two nations - that the world has sought in that region since 1948 when the Palestinian leadership rejected a mutual arrangement that could have ended the conflict before it began.



And we also need to educate and seriously engage those who would join this movement even if they don't share the goal of BDS to seek Israel's isolation and disappearance.

Let me be clear: at its core BDS is an anti-Semitic movement. It is part and parcel of the larger effort to delegitimize the Jewish state. That is to erode its basic foundational legitimacy and weaken its morale in the face of great external threat.



I see these movements, as is natural for ADL, through the lens of the long history of anti-Semitism in the world. At the core of the most virulent manifestations of anti-Semitism for 2,000 years was a noxious fantasy about the Jewish people: that Jews are all powerful and evil. A fantasy, of course, because it bore no relationship to the reality of Jewish powerlessness the world over.

Jews for millennia were without a home of their own. We were defenseless, largely oppressed and discriminated against. We did not live as equals in the countries where we had homes. I think of my own children, whose paternal lineage they trace through Eastern Europe or their maternal lineage that was rooted in Iran. If my children look back, they will see that their direct ancestors and other Jewish compatriots were marginalized, ostracized and tolerated in the Christian and Muslim societies they called home until push came to shove and then they were forcibly converted, physically removed or irrationally murdered.

This fact pattern of continuous victimization is tragically irrefutable. Of course, it has not stopped the anti-Semites from concocting conspiracies of Jewish global domination. It has not diluted the racism at the core of the delegitimization and dehumanization of the Jewish people.

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However, since the Holocaust, the culmination of that lethal combination of Jew hatred and Jewish powerlessness, the Jewish people have acquired a degree of power that gives us strength even in the face of hatred. This power is represented by the state of Israel, by our engagement in democratic processes the world over, and in the form of the support for Israel through the American Jewish community and our allies in the US and in our countries.

Thank g-d for this welcome change in the history of the Jewish people.

But this also meant that there is now room for legitimate criticism of Israel and Jewish political behavior.

Let me be clear. No state is beyond reproach and no leadership of any political entity is free from the responsibilities to the governed or for the consequences of their policies.

That being said, BDS and the delegitimization of Israel have nothing, I repeat, nothing to do with legitimate criticism of Israel's policies. Its aims are out of all proportion to the discourse of legitimate criticism. Despite the claims of the BDS crowd about the taboos that inhibit criticism of Israel, is there any state that is more widely criticized than Israel? Despite the protestations of pundits who express their indignation that they supposedly cannot critique Israel, is there any nation that attracts more self-righteous indignation than Israel?

So let's see BDS for what it is -a continuation, a modern version if you will, of an irrational hatred of the Jewish people. Boycotting Israeli businesses is no different that boycotting my grandfather's barber shop in pre-war Germany. Denying the rights of Jewish academics to express their views here in the US is no different than denying the ability of Jewish academics to teach freely at the highest levels in Iran. In truth, despite the veneer of rationality attached to BDS and delegitimization, these tactics are not new - they are a continuation of what seems like an eternal campaign against the Jewish people.

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Simply blaming Israel for the absence of peace between Israel and the Palestinians, not to mention the Arabs, is deeply unhinged and entirely divorced from the real world of almost seven decades of an ongoing effort to destroy the Jewish state.

It completely ignores the context out of which Israel's policies emerge and creates a narrative of Israel as the archetypical villain in which every event, every false charge, every alleged crime, however fantastical, the allegation confirms the axiomatic assumption of Israel's fundamental sin - it's very existence.

Denying only Israel the right to exist and to express Jewish sovereignty and self-determination in its historic home, when all other people either are granted that right de jure or at least their rights are acknowledged de facto - is classic anti-Semitism.

Now it is important to distinguish here that since the outset of the peace process in the early 90s under the auspices of Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, Israel has engaged in negotiations whose ultimate outcome would be the emergence of a Palestinian state which would be the embodiment of the Palestinians coequal right to self-determination. Supporting that goal is not at all the same thing as denying the Jewish right to self-determination.

But denying the Jewish people's connection to the land of Israel lies at the heart of the BDS movement. This anti-Semitic fantasy justifies Palestinian rejectionism, despite the fact of our stubborn connection to the land and to our faith that kept the Jewish people alive for 2000 years of dispersal.

And in a region where democracy is non-existent outside of Israel, a region engulfed in the most brutal forms of sectarian strife and civil war, a region where Israel stands out as exemplary in comparison to every one of its neighbors in its treatment of ethnic, religious, and gender minorities, to see Israel alone castigated for human rights violations or the conduct of its military and attack out of all proportion to any reasonable comparative standard. These are grotesque distortions of reality that can only be attributed to anti-Semitism or, if you prefer, an irrational, obsessive hatred of the Jewish people.

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So let's be open and honest. The founders and organizers of BDS, like Omar Barghouti and the Students for Justice in Palestine, are not dedicated to a vision which so many of us share--including many who have cast in their lot with BDS--they do not share the vision of two states living in peace, a Jewish state and a Palestinian state confirmed and confirmed again by the international community as the only reasonable means to reconcile the competing claims for self-determination of both the Jewish people and the Palestinian people.

No, such a campaign is geared instead toward the sinister purpose of making Israel a pariah state to set it up for destruction and disappearance from the world scene. They share then this goal with many shall we say, less polite company whose anti-Semitism is bare for all to see.

As always regarding extremists and anti-Semites, we must delegitimize the delegitimizers. We must condemn them unequivocally and demand that government, university; religious and corporate leaders denounce them as well.

In other words, we need a full-scale plan to expose the haters and distinguish them from others who do indeed seek a peaceful resolution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict . This is necessary and it won't be easy.

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What makes the struggle much more complex, particularly on our campuses, is the significant strengthening of the hard core extremists by large numbers of other people - let's call them joiners. These are people who may not be motivated by anti-Semitism or a desire to see Israel disappear altogether. Indeed I believe these compose the vast majority of those who lend credence to this campaign. This presents a major challenge for us because these are individuals, as misguided as they may be, who have been influenced by anti-Israel propaganda, or who may be susceptible to this perspective because they are frustrated by the continuing conflict and perceived mistreatment of Palestinians.

They have bought into the narrative and are looking to act, so they mistakenly believe that BDS presents them an opportunity in the absence of other credible alternatives. But even if this "long tail" of followers are not motivated by anti-Semitism, their support for the anti-Israel BDS movement makes its inherent anti-Semitism much more acceptable.

If anti-Semitism has been inhibited in the post-Holocaust world by the shame of Auschwitz, this assault on Israel's good name erodes that sense of shame. It indeed provides a platform for the worst images, conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic ideas today, paving the way for physical violence against Jewish communities around the world. And this is not imagined. Jewish communities indeed are under physical threat in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and even here at home where anti-Semitism remains an issue. At the ADL, we track anti-Semitic attitudes and incidents and we see a marked increase after anti-Israel votes on college campuses. It's not a correlation, it's a causation.

But one cannot approach what we call the long tail of the BDS movement, the large group of supporters who have some degree of sympathy for BDS in the same way as we deal with the extremists who are dedicated to eroding Israel's basic legitimacy.

Calling them anti-Semites will only close off any possibility of engaging and understanding them. Only by engaging them, only by creating viable alternatives for those who fundamentally seek a two state solution that respects Israel's right to self-determination even as we address Palestinian aspirations, can we peel away the long tail from destructive movement they are buttressing.

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This is a role that ADL uniquely can fill. For more than 100 years, we have used a variety of means including legal and legislative strategies, educational programming and community engagement, public relations and private outreach to protect the Jewish people. We have attempted to embody the ancient counsel of Hillel and the modern words of Niemoller by fighting for others because this builds allies to support us in the fight for ourselves. It's not a quid pro quo, but work that must be done authentically, gradually and strategically because only by building relationships and crafting coalitions can we stand together. And we are stronger when we stand together.

Remember, the declaration made in these chambers to recognize the Jewish state of Israel did not happen as a result of angry Op-eds in the Jewish press or because of a volume of volleys in social media. No, it happened because the Zionist movement made its case in capitals and coffee shops around the world to Jews and non-Jews. It happened because our forbearers labored in public and engaged with allies in private. It happened because there was a literal coalition of nations who endorsed Jewish sovereignty.

So I am proud that we stand on the shoulders of those giants and remain committed to building alliances and strengthening our case on college campuses, in corporate boardrooms, in cultural spaces or wherever the racists of the delegitimization movement lurk. And we need to reach out to those people who have been mesmerized by their oversimplified rhetoric and who have been lured despite their hidden agenda.

We must make it clear to them what BDS is about. We must make it clear that whatever their motives, they are contributing greatly to an atmosphere which justifies attacks on Jews.

We must insist that if their goal is to make the situation in the region better, they should focus on working on the ground to build prosperity and civil society with Palestinians rather than trying to tear down the enduring and resilient Jewish state birthed by the Zionist movement. Those who have dedicated themselves to the cause of Palestinian independence should be part of building incentives for Palestinians to make the compromises necessary to achieve this worthy goal. Imagine if, rather than boycott divestment and sanctions against Israel, the BDS forces focused on businesses, investments and startups to support a Palestinian economy.

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Why is this not their focus? Because it is not their goal. The goal is simple - harness long-standing religious and social prejudices against the Jewish people to delegitimize the Jewish state. That's it. Frankly, it's a fairly simple formula. That's what makes it so repulsive.

But isolating defaming and delegitimizing Israel is no substitute for the hard work of compromise and negotiation. Screaming and yelling may feel momentarily cathartic, but it does not yield real results. Indeed, it de-normalizes and denies reality.

For me, as a long-time entrepreneur, I see this for what it is - a failed way forward. I didn't get my products and services into new markets or attract new partners because I simply complained about competitors or yelled and screamed. No, I recruited great people and we built superior offerings that gave our vendors, our customers and our consumers equal or more value. That is why my ventures were successful. And investors came forward because they saw results. We must apply those lessons here to this current challenge.

Looking ahead, there is no silver bullet that will stop delegitimization. We should rid ourselves of such magical realism. It will require a variety of means. Different groups will attempt different tactics. Some will work, some may fail. But if we avoid criticizing one another and instead, soberly and smart attempt experiments, iterate based on results, and then scale what works, we likely will achieve better outcomes.

So unlike some leaders, I will not slam or slander those within our own community with whom I might disagree but who get the basics right - particularly support for a strong and secure, democratic and Jewish state of Israel and support for a two state solution that guarantees Israel and its people peace and security. Is that a litmus test? Sure, it is. And I have no shame in setting it out in these explicit terms, but shame on those Jewish leaders who lack sechel and prefer to attack each other than focus on the real problem.

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So, whether or not we at ADL will adopt every approach, I applaud groups who attempt to use the law and legislation to fight delegitimization like those that you will hear from on the panel this afternoon. I celebrate individuals that opt for education and programming to beat back BDS. I honor those who use naming and shaming to expose the enemies of peace. And I approve of efforts to prepare our students more effectively for the challenges on campus as well as those who insist that university presidents and administrators use their influence, not to bar the speech of BDS activists, but to articulate in the clearest terms how evil and counterproductive BDS really is to the cause of peace.



Let me share a story. Back in 2001, when a divestment initiative came to Harvard University, then president Larry Summers spoke out. He said that any comparison of democratic Israel to apartheid South Africa was morally abhorrent, factually inaccurate and divestment at Harvard would never happen under his watch. That was leadership. The divestment campaign at Harvard soon died. We need more moral courage of this order among our leaders in every segment of society.



And, as I said earlier, we also must make clear to our current and prospective coalition partners on issues of social justice that mutual respect is the sine qua non of a relationship. Racism in all forms is intolerable. Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. Both are unacceptable. We will not sit with those who espouse hatred against the Jewish people. Period.

Finally, with all this, we need to maintain our internal balance. Perspective is in order.



As I said earlier, boycotting the Jewish people is not exactly a novel idea. We've seen this movie before, even if the current delegitimization efforts offer special challenges. But remember, we defeated the Arab boycott of Israel. We repealed the infamous UN resolution equating Zionism and racism. And let's keep in mind our assets, particularly the justice of our cause, the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in our historic home, the power we have when we are united, and the wide array of options that the state of Israel and its allies possess to fundamentally alter the playing field.

We must win this struggle. And we will win this struggle because we are in the right and because history has taught us that we cannot afford to lose.
In her inaugural speech, Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan's first female President, urged China to "drop the baggage of history," emphasized the need to reduce economic dependence on the mainland and vowed to safeguard "democracy, freedom and this country." Beijing answered by attacking her not for her positions, but for being a single female politician. Classy move. The Chinese authorities would be well inspired to remember that when it comes to establishing whether Chinese sovereignty over Hong Kong is working out for its residents and whether it might work one day for Taiwan, the jury is, at best, still out.

Last week, Zhang Dejiang became the highest-ranking member of the Chinese government to visit Hong Kong since the pro-democracy Umbrella Revolution took place nearly two years ago. Extraordinary "counter-terrorist" measures were put in place to ensure he never met with the semi-autonomous city's population, let alone with protesters of all ages, except for a mysterious group of two hundred (mostly) men in suits whose picture was posted on Twitter by the Hong Kong Government. But he did have a message for young people and pro-democracy activists upon departing: "If [we] forego 'one country, two systems,' or forego the Basic Law, Hong Kong will definitely rot."

We beg to differ. The world we live in is, increasingly, organized around cities and regions -- not nation-states. And the truth of the matter is that, when it comes to the competition over global supply chains, energy markets, industrial production, and the flow of finance, technology, knowledge and talent, Hong Kong has become less, not more relevant as a global capital since it returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. Most major German companies made a point of having a strong presence in Berlin until the fall of the Iron Curtain when they all moved back to Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt and Stuttgart (the only major German company whose headquarters are still located in the capital, Schering, has all but lost its shine). Similarly, many global companies which made a point of having a strong presence in what was still viewed as the sole true financial capital of South East Asia have in the past twenty years relocated their Asian headquarters either to Shanghai and other major demographic centers of mainland China, to less expensive Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur or to faster-growing, more future-looking and strategically-located Singapore. They have done so because, whether they admit it or not, they have strong doubts about the "one country, two systems" principle. Ensuring that the world truly believes that the unique nature of Hong Kong will be preserved by this principle is very much the Chinese leadership's responsibility. And so far, Beijing is failing.

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To be sure, the obsolescence of the nation-state and the city-centric paradigm shift it is provoking are regularly portrayed as a fantasy not just by the Chinese government but by national political leaders worldwide. Our world is still run mostly by baby-boomers for baby-boomers who have a vested interest in the international system and the polity that underpins it, the nation-state. The fact that this polity is hindering youth empowerment is overlooked by a generation reluctant to admit the drift towards irrelevance of the system it grew up in. A tendency to portray post-national youth movements as quixotic and immature, possibly under the influence of "external influences" (other nations) has taken hold in the age of singularity and that of the ever-increasing acceleration of change -- technological, social, political, etc.

We have no allegiance to national governments. Like Star Wars characters, we don't care much about where people come from and what color their skin is. Instead, we are focused on where they are going. We represent an increasingly large number of people worldwide who sense that leaders of constituencies defined solely along national boundaries and world-views are ill-equipped to adequately tackle the issues closest to our hearts: the asphyxiation of our planet, the rise of the police state, the constant rise of inequalities, a general confusion between economic growth and prosperity, the ever-increasing thirst for profit, the cult of the individual, the lack of importance attributed to spiritual development, cooperation and to the fact humans need one another to thrive.

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Ottawa is in a celebratory mood.

Canada's 150th anniversary of confederation is just a few months away -- they're calling it Canada's "big year" -- plus a round of smaller commemorations, including the 50th anniversary of the famous Ottawa swans and the 10th anniversary of the Rideu Canal as a World Heritage Site, are happening now.

What better time to check out Canada's capital?

The Rideau Canal, a series of lakes and rivers linked by canals and connected by about 47 locks, is a National Historic Site of Canada, a Canadian Heritage River and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Whew, that's a lot of awards! It stretches from Kingston, at the foot of Lake Ontario, to Ottawa.

The Rideau Canal is the oldest continuously operated canal in North America. The locks are operated by hand as they were when first opened in 1832. It's quite a sight to see. We accessed the canal from steps off the Sappers Bridge near the East Block of Parliament.

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Interesting fact: The canal was excavated when the British became interested in building a water passage for ships between Montreal and Kingston during the War of 1812. After the war, scouts were sent to assess proper locations and, upon arriving at Wrightsville, determined that the Rideau River would be the shortest and best route. This would require building a canal and lock system, however, because the Rideau Falls were the only point of contact between the two rivers.

To market!

Ottawa's ByWard Market area covers many blocks of specialty shops, restaurants and farmer's stands. It's a popular spot for locals to get some fresh vegetables, crusty bread and cheeses on their way home. The restaurants stay open late to accommodate the tourists and late-night crowd.

We discovered a French Boulangerie hidden a few blocks from the main shops with a delectable array of cakes. There's also a Polish butcher's shop and delicatessen with excellent homemade pierogis.

Some say the ByWard Market is where Ottawa began. It's first settlement was founded in 1800 by Philemon Wright, an American who received it as a land grant. He brought lumbering to the area and built a lumber village known at the time as Wrightsville. The market sits where the original downtown markets served residents, predominantly service personnel and blue collar workers from the lumber yards.

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The Lowertown area, as it was known then, witnessed many conflicts, both racial and political. But by the 1850s tensions lessened as shops and businesses appeared and mills started being built. By the time train service reached Ottawa, the Market needed its own rail yard.

Parliament is in session

When visiting the capitol you'll note that Parliament Hill is set up in blocks. The Centre Block is home to the Senate, House of Commons and Library of Parliament. Tour tickets are available year round, and in order to see inside you'll need to take the tour. Same-day tickets are available at 90 Wellington Street on a first-come, first-served basis.

Anyone who is part of a guided tour has access to the Peace Tower and Memorial Chamber as part of their visit. The 53 bells of the Peace Tower Carillon add an unusual soundtrack to your visit, but if you can climb to the top of the Peace Tower to get a 360 degree view of the capital. The Memorial Chamber commemorates Canadians who have lost their lives in military service.

The East Block has guided tours between July and early September. It was the nerve centre of Canada's government during its first hundred years. Guided tours take you inside restored heritage rooms to explore parliamentary life in the late 19th century.

Exploring the final frontier

At the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, you can browse exhibits commemorating Canada's many achievements in aviation and space flight.

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The exhibition begins with a look into how people imagined space travel. It includes the famous French Canadian tale about lumberjacks that fly in a canoe as well as our family's favorite video Le Voyage Dans la Lun (A Trip to the Moon) by Georges Melies circa 1902 and recently revitalized.

Aircraft are arranged according to time period and use. You'll be especially impressed with its Jet Age and Bush Flying exhibits.
Since the beginning of the campaign season, Trump's rhetoric -- most overtly against women, "Mexicans" (by which I think he means any immigrant from Mexico, Central America, or South America), and Muslims -- has stirred up those groups of people who have been upset ever since Barack Hussain Obama took the presidency. Yes, there are White people upset that we have a Black president. Even if it is couched in other terms, many Whites harbor a racist resentment -- a feeling of impending doom for White privilege, as more Asian, Hispanic, African, African-American, Black, Brown, and Multi-racial people are born, grow up, begin to demand equal treatment, and take up positions of power. These scared folks love Trump and his dangerous policies, and Trump has made bigotry a legitimate form of discourse in the public sphere.

He has argued for a variety of morally bankrupt policies. One of the more heinous and less ambiguous positions Trump takes is on the issue of torture: "As far as I'm concerned waterboarding is absolutely fine, we should go much further." He made clear that he believes torture is a legitimate practice. Now, it is our job as United Methodists, and as Christians generally, to stand up and stand in our witness to Jesus Christ as Lord.

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Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,

whose hope is in the Lord their God,

who made heaven and earth,

the sea, and all that is in them;

who keeps faith for ever;

who executes justice for the oppressed;

who gives food to the hungry.

Our help and our hope, my brothers and sisters, is in the Lord. The Creator of the heavens and the earth whose concern focuses on justice for the oppressed and food for the hungry.

Our systems of security, especially the ones that utilize and glorify torture, suggest that we are a scared, fearful people wandering without a God, looking for someone to fill the void -- to make us strong -- to make us safe. But, my brothers and sisters, is this who we are?

No. We are not a fearful people. We are fearfully and wonderfully made in order to follow our Lord. Do you remember who it is that we follow, my fellow United Methodists?

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The Lord sets the prisoners free;

the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.

The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;

the Lord loves the righteous.

The Lord watches over the strangers;

he upholds the orphan and the widow,

but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

Those of us who are privileged to follow Jesus must be the ones standing in the face of Trump and all his hate. We are to fight bigotry at every turn -- not just within the church but out in the world.



The United Methodist Church should be known for such things.

So here is the thing. There are United Methodists standing up to the blasphemy that Donald Trump spews every day. A colleague of mine from seminary, T.C. Morrow, is one example. In her position at the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, she is "mobilizing people of faith to end torture in U.S. policy, practice and culture." This includes calling President Obama to account for his promise to the American people to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, as well as a practical devotion to inter-faith work that directly combats Trump's anti-Islamic comments. She is working to stop hate, as it is on the rise.

So there a few more things about T.C. that you should know:

1) T.C. Morrow is married to a woman.

2) She is answering a call to be an Ordained Deacon in the United Methodist Church.

3) The Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference Board of Ordained Ministry (BoOM) has recommended that her ordination process proceed.

4) On June 1st, there is one final vote at the clergy executive session of the Baltimore-Washington's Annual Conference Session that will determine if she does proceed. Historically the clergy executive session has not turned down candidates recommended by the BoOM.

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As many are aware, the "United" Methodist Church made national news this past month concerning protests that broke out around the issue of homosexuality in the church. This issue has divided the church and kept many current United Methodist pastors in the closet. The division on this issue brought the UMC to the edge of schism. While the church rends itself apart arguing legalities, I recommend that we evaluate T.C. Morrow, and the many others like her, on their fruits.

Does her life witness to Christ? Well...

She labors to end torture in a time when many of us feel paralyzed and unable to stop the hate that Trump and his followers spew.

She holds the powerful -- whomever they are -- to account when many of us sit back and allow the system to continue as it is.

She is doing what the United Methodist Church needs to be known for in these times of a legitimized rhetoric of hate.



So yes. Her life is a witness to Christ. T.C. Morrow is a moral model for all United Methodists during this hate-filled election season and beyond.

Therefore, I bid the powerful clergy executive session of the Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference to vote yes for T.C. Morrow and for the witness to Christ she represents. Make the United Methodist Church great again by voting for love and not cowering in fear. Vote down Trump's world and choose to support God's choice in T.C. Morrow.

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This act will show the world with whom the United Methodist Church stands.



Let's stand with the likes of T.C. Morrow.

Let's stand and show the world that not only do we support T.C., but that we want our church to be more like her -- she represents us as a witness of Christ's kingdom. Her life testifies to the fearful -- those who want to close the border to Muslims, who want to build a wall to keep out Mexicans, and who want to go beyond waterboarding for the sake of our "security" -- that there is a better way, a way that submits all fear to the Lord, so that we may love the world as the Lord does.

As we face this time of deliberation -- whether or not to affirm T.C.'s call and whether or not as United Methodists we will stand against Trump and all the bigotry he has promoted -- please heed T.C.'s words of prayer my brothers and sisters and let's make the United Methodist Church great again:

God of Justice and Compassion

who creates each and every person with dignity and worth

Help us to be mindful of our interconnectedness and sacredness in your eyes.

Be with us when we forget and fall short. We come today asking for your forgiveness. Forgive us of our sins. Forgive us for our complicity in brutal acts of torture done in our name and in the name of our security. Forgive us of all that keeps us apart from you, O God. Forgive us of all that builds walls instead of opening dialogue with our sisters and brothers in our own backyards and around the world. Receive our prayer, O God, and open our hearts

as we pray for all who have suffered torture and abuse

as we pray for all who participated in torture and abuse

as we pray for all your people around the earth. Receive our prayer, O God.
Walt Whitman (1819-92), American poet (B&W)

Walt Whitman was born on this day in 1819. His lifespan overlapped with a period in neuroscience history that laid the foundation for today's exciting time of brain exploration. For example, in 1854 when Whitman was 35 years old, Emil Huschke produced the first lithograph of the human brain. Just one year later, Pierre Gratiolet proposed a strategy for how to demarcate the lobes of the human brain that is similar to how they are defined today. Though he would likely roll over in his grave at the word listicle, here are three ways Whitman is historically linked to the brain:

1. Bumpology. Whitman's writings are littered with references to the brain and especially phrenological terms. Phrenology (or 'Bumpology') was that fad of a science in the 1800s in which some dude would run his fingers through your hair and over your scalp, and then, all of a sudden, chart out your character and personality traits based on the protrusions, or bumps, of your skull. Whitman had his own bumps charted by Lorenzo Fowler. The map of Whitman's chart of bumps was printed in the Brooklyn Daily Times in 1855 - around the same time that the pioneering works from Huschke and Gratiolet were being published. A year later, the second edition of Whitman's monumental work, Leaves of Grass, was actually published by Fowler and Wells - yes, the Fowlers not only read heads, but also published books, which generates a direct link between Whitman's poetry and the history of neuroscience.

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Whitman's notes of 'The Physique of the brain from a literary life'. Source: http://whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/marginalia/introduction.html; Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University, MS 4to 148; Frey p. 66, item 24.

2. Broken brains. In a previous post, I mentioned how Burt Green Wilder collected and studied brains. Wilder's Cornell Brain Association was independent of the American Anthropometric Society (AAS), but the AAS had a similar goal of examining brains after death. In a 1907 paper, Edward Spitzka (whose father was a founding member of the AAS) describes the fate of Whitman's brain:

'The brain of Walt Whitman, together with the jar in which it had been placed, was said to have been dropped on the floor by a careless assistant. Unfortunately, not even the pieces were saved' [pg. 176].

Like all good conspiracies, Whitman's involvement with the AAS and the perpetrator responsible for the destruction of his brain are still debated. For example, just two years ago, an academic paper was published pointing fingers at Henry Cattell (who removed Whitman's brain from his skull), not a lab assistant, for allowing Whitman's brain to slip through his fingers. Regardless of who is at fault, the weight of Whitman's brain was recorded and is included in an empirical paper that is directly linked to an interesting mystery in neuroscience.



Screengrab of the 'abnormal brain' from 1931's Frankenstein, which the story of Whitman's brain is rumored to have influenced. Source: http://ourcynicalomelet.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/AbbySomeone1931.jpg

3. Frankenstein. The first edition of Frankenstein was published anonymously in 1818, the year before Whitman was born. As told by Burrell and later recounted by Haven, the brain is an afterthought in Frankenstein. However, there is a clip in the 1931 Hollywood re-make of Mary Shelley's novel that oddly resembles the tale of Whitman's broken brain. Specifically, Fritz grabs one of the brains labeled 'normal' after a lecture and then drops it after being startled. Since it is destroyed, he is forced to grab the brain labeled 'abnormal.' Collections of brains in jars were not fashionable until the late 1800s, far after the time that Shelley wrote the novel. Because (a) Fritz is Dr. Frankenstein's assistant and (b) the 'normal' brain crashes to the ground in a similar fashion as the descriptions of Whitman's brain, both Burrell and Haven suspect that the stories about the destruction of Whitman's broken brain inspired this scene in Frankenstein.

During his life and long after his death, Whitman remains closely entwined within the stories of neuroscience. And while brain mapping today has no relation to the phrenology of yesteryear, considering Whitman's deep and abiding interest in the brain, I don't think it would be surprising to find him volunteering to have his brain scanned. I imagine he would be keen to gain further insight into the neuroanatomical substrate contributing to the songs of himself. So, from one Jerseyan to another, Happy Birthday, Walt!

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Kevin S. Weiner is a neuroscientist, as well as member of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM) and writes for the Communications/Media Team. The OHBM Media Team brings cutting edge information and research on the human brain to your laptops, desktops and mobile devices in a way that is neurobiologically pleasing. For more information about brain mapping, follow www.humanbrainmapping.org/blog or @OHBMSci_News
American forces in Afghanistan where the Taliban is mostly concentrated. (The U.S. Army/Flickr)

The death of Mullah Akhtar Mansour could trigger a succession battle in the Taliban https://t.co/wmkeDLUrBj pic.twitter.com/vtOJWbbean  VICE News (@vicenews) May 22, 2016

The drone strike happened in a province called Baluchistan. Local officials say they found a burned-up car and two bodies--one is suspected to be Mansour, though it has not been confirmed. (The Taliban hasn't yet acknowledged his death.) The other man killed was likely a taxi driver.

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Afghanistan's spy agency confirms the death of Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour https://t.co/Pe08qEZidr  BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) May 22, 2016

Here's what Obama said about Mansour:

"Mansour rejected efforts by the Afghan government to seriously engage in peace talks and end the violence that has taken the lives of countless innocent Afghan men, women, and children."

This is a Big Deal.

What does the Taliban do?

A woman wearing a burka, clothing required by the Taliban. (flequi/Flickr)

The Taliban movement is an opposition force in Afghanistan, against the government. They've been around for a long time--since the mid-90s.

The Taliban came in to both Afghanistan and Pakistan to enforce Islamic Law: harsh rules that prevented girls from going to school, forcing women to wear burkas (robes that covered all of their bodies) and men to grow beards.

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The Taliban even targeted teenaged activist Malala Yousafzai, shooting her in the face for attending school and advocating for girls education. (Malala survived the attack and went on to international fame and influence and to win the Nobel Peace Prize, so going after her pretty much backfired.)

After 9/11, world leaders accused the Taliban of harboring another terrorist group, al-Qaeda, led by the 9/11 mastermind, Osama bin Laden. Not long after, the U.S. drove the Taliban out of Afghanistan, but not forever.

The Taliban regrouped and have now climbed back into power in some parts of the Middle East. In fact, more than 11,000 Afghan civilians died in 2015--one of the most violent years in the country's history--because of fighting between Afghan troops and the Taliban, as well as other, similar groups.

1) Note that the Obama admin still believes it can negotiate a peace settlement with the Taliban. Madness.  Bill Roggio (@billroggio) May 23, 2016

In the past few years, countries including the US have pushed for peace talks between the Taliban and Afghanistan's government. Those talks stalled last month after a deadly suicide attack in Kabul killed 64 people.

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Who was this Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour?

Mansour was the head of the Taliban and had been for about a year. He was probably in his 50s and he headed civil aviation for the Taliban from 1996 through 2001.

President #Obama says Mansour rejected efforts by the Afghan govt 2 engage in peace talks and end the violence".  VOA DEEWA (@voadeewa) May 23, 2016

Some originally thought Mansour would facilitate peace talks as he took power, but he turned out to reject any sort of negotiation. He refused any participation in ongoing peace talks, so it's not surprising President Obama called him an "obstacle" to peace.

What does this mean?

It means the Taliban has taken a hit. It's a major setback.

The Taliban is reeling from leaders death in U.S. drone strike https://t.co/esUNgbcpUf pic.twitter.com/GkBuiFXovb  The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) May 23, 2016

Without their leader, there's likely to be chaos in the organization--and it might boost the power of Afghanistan's president, Ashraf Ghani.

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Death of Mullah Mansour would be biggest blow to Taliban of the war & huge boost for @ashrafghani govt. Taliban had been making gains all yr  christinalamb (@christinalamb) May 22, 2016

For America?

President Obama said Mansour routinely ordered Taliban forces to target Americans in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He said the drone strike sent a message to the Taliban, and he hopes they'll choose to negotiate peace.

Pakistan says US drone strike that killed Taliban leader violated its sovereignty https://t.co/rXSVsomfV6  The Guardian (@guardian) May 22, 2016

But the strike probably also sent a message to Pakistan, where it took place. Pakistani officials denounced the strike in a statement--prime minister Nawaz Sharif said,

"This is a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty."

(Sovereignty is when you have power over yourself.) American officials admitted they didn't tell Pakistan about their plans to strike within their borders until after it was over.

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Pakistan can't be given F16's but the Americans can drone our towns. Next you know they could employ conventional air strikes at their will  Reham Khan (@RehamKhan1) May 22, 2016

Obviously, this drone strike wasn't a huge boon to American-Pakistan relations, but it's unclear how much it could fracture the relationship.

It does add to Obama's anti-terrorism legacy.

My statement on confirmation that Mullah Mansoor, the head of the #Taliban, has been killed  pic.twitter.com/H99ObsTVHY  Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) May 23, 2016

For the world?

While US leaders might hope for peace in Afghanistan between the Taliban and the government, Mansour's death probably won't be a driving force for peace.

With Mansour gone, Taliban infighting would go intense. Race for leadership would start in which Haqqanis might be contenders. Peace far cry  Marvi Sirmed (@marvisirmed) May 21, 2016

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An official told Vice News that with the Taliban's resurgence,

"It's hard to see much incentive for them to start compromising now, with the fighting just heating up again."
Let's face it: our water infrastructure is crumbling. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that there are 240,000 water main breaks in the United States each year, averaging to about 700 each day. Leaky water pipes and other water waste accounts for the loss of an estimated 7 billion gallons of clean drinking water each day.

Meanwhile, there are as many as 10 million lead service lines that connect water mains to homes and public buildings such as schools and hospitals across the country. The information about where these pipes are, and their potential for leaching lead is largely unknown. Across the U.S. there are over 90,000 schools and over 500,000 childcare facilities that aren't required to test their water for lead; potentially leaving America's most vulnerable citizens--our children--exposed to lead poisoning.

The communities exposed to the potential consequences of lead poisoning are increasingly coming into focus. Cities like Washington, D.C. and Newark, New Jersey, are taking action to address elevated lead levels in their school water supplies. The health effects of lead poisoning are dire and long-lasting, affecting many generations of a community. Decreased cognitive function in children, premature birth, cardiovascular disease, and decreased kidney function are just some of the consequences of drinking lead-contaminated water.

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We would be remiss not to mention that repairing America's water infrastructure would create and sustain quality jobs across the country. Every $1 invested in upgrading water infrastructure in America result in increases by more than $3 to national economic benefits(accounting for multiplier effects of activity through all sectors of the economy).

In the wake of the events in Flint, the U.S. Senate Environmental, and Public Works Committee took action to help repair water infrastructure in communities across the nation--recently approving legislation to reauthorize the Water Resources Development Act or WRDA. This bill includes innovative provisions to ensure clean drinking water and to provide effective action to address lead contamination in Flint and around the country. The bill builds out a comprehensive plan that recommits the federal government to a critical role in water infrastructure investment, lead remediation and the strong drinking water protections provided by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee this week approved their version reauthorizing WRDA, a bill that now heads to the House floor. But this bill falls short in addressing water infrastructure issues. It is critical that the final WRDA legislation addresses drinking water infrastructure in addition to investing in ports and protecting waterways, and keeps in place measures to ensure advanced U.S.- made materials are used in federally funded water projects and those efforts pay American workers fair wages.

Fixing our water infrastructure will ensure all Americans have access to clean, safe drinking water, will protect public health, and will create good jobs rebuilding the systems meeting our nation's water needs. Congress needs, now more than ever, to work together to pass a strong WRDA bill with critical infrastructure investments.

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There are three royal cities that make up the Kathmandu Valley and since we had already seen two of them (Kathmandu and Patan), we decided to check out the third, which is called Bhaktapur. Bhaktapur is known as the City of Devotees, the City of Culture, the Living Heritage, and Nepal's Cultural Gem. Don't you wish you were as important as Bhaktapur to have that many nicknames? Bhaktapur is an ancient city and is renowned for its elegant art, fabulous culture, colorful festivals, traditional dances and indigenous Newari community. It is just twelve kilometers east of Kathmandu but gives the feeling of prehistoric times given the ambiance of traditional homes, lifestyles and environment. Unfortunately, the city has been severely damaged by the recent 7.9 magnitude earthquake. Many buildings and historical temples, including some in the Bhaktapur Durbar Square, collapsed. Regardless, it was still a charming, welcoming, jolly town.

Just like in Patan, we went on a two hour self-guided walking tour thanks to Lonely Planet. And every step we took, every corner we turned, every person we passed, made us fall more in love with it. The locals were beyond friendly and the overall demeanor made us feel like we were living hundreds of years ago. Things were simple, easy and extremely old school. It was the epitome of time travel.

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We saw a few girls getting water from an actual well...

A woman balling yarn with a wheel...

Kids playing handball in a courtyard...

Two older gentleman enjoying an afternoon smoke...

A pretty young girl all dressed up for the Maha Shivaratri Festival...

Kids filling up their water balloons in the pond...

The streets were narrow yet lively...

The children were playful...

The Pagoda's that were still in tack were mesmerizing...

And there was a somewhat scary yet entertaining spiritual dance being performed...

As mentioned earlier, today is the Maha Shivaratri Festival, in honor of Lord Shiva. And a long standing tradition on this day is for kids to block the roads and lanes throughout the city with strings and ropes, only to let you by once you've paid your dues. Over the course of the day, between me, Vinny, Jennifer and Laxman, we all forked out about one hundred rupees in total, which is not a lot at all. I think it's more about the fun of game than the actual prize itself. It almost is their version of Trick-O-Treating but this was done in broad day light and consisted of money, not candy.

Next up was the Kopan Monastery, a monastery in the Gelug tradition of Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism under the guidance of Lama Zopa Rinpoche. It is the home of 360 monks, lamas, teachers and workers. The monks come from all areas of Nepal and Tibet with ages ranging from seven to sixty years old. They have devoted their lives to the study and practice of the teachings of Buddha Shakyamuni, with special emphasis on the teachings of Lama Tsong Khapa, the founder of the Gelug Lineage. It sits on top of a hill, high above the city, with refreshingly clean air, stunning 360 degree views and intricately detailed traditional Buddhist architecture.

That night, we went back to Dhokaima Cafe for dinner, sat outside, shoved our faces with food and then for the cherry on top, we each ordered our own cake with ice cream. And not one of the pounds I gained made me feel guilty in the slightest. Cosy Nepal was hosting a small get together in the courtyard of our Newari house as their way to celebrate the Lord Shiva day. About 30 people gathered for drinks, food and good times. We took part in the festivities for a little but were heading to Chitwan at 6:30 a.m. tomorrow morning so didn't stay too long. Are you wondering why we needed to leave so early? Well, I'm going to tell you even if you aren't interested. Apparently there is one road from Kathmandu to Chitwan and it is currently under construction (like everything else) so if we don't get to a certain point by 11 a.m., we will be stuck there until 4 p.m. And that doesn't sound fun.

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I hope you enjoyed our three full days in the Patan/Kathmandu/Bhaktapur area as much as we did. Despite the pollution, lack of electricity and severe damage from the earthquake, this small town captured our hearts in a very memorable, genuine, endearing way. The people here are by far my favorite. They had me at Namaste.
Some time ago I was researching the divorce and inheritance laws of a particular state when I ran across an article entitled "Getting Ready for Marriage," which dealt with premarital contracts and asset-protection planning. It was written by a law school professor, who laid out each element of that state's property and inheritance laws and described in great detail how far the terms of a prenuptial agreement could go toward preventing the sharing of assets and income with a new spouse. The entire thrust of the article was to explain how the wealthier, more-moneyed future spouse could minimize or eliminate the post-marriage rights of the less-moneyed spouse and also ensure that the prenup would be still enforceable under that state's laws.

I was shocked at the tone of the article. Why would anyone want to destroy the financial security of a future spouse -- someone that person loved enough to marry -- especially in a first marriage of young people? But I shouldn't have been surprised. I run across this attitude often when dealing with other attorneys who are representing the more-moneyed spouse in a prenup negotiation.

The article reminded me of a conversation with a big-firm attorney whose client was the more-moneyed future spouse. It was a first marriage for two young people. That attorney had presented a prenup draft that was truly severe. It significantly reduced what the less-moneyed spouse could receive in the event of a divorce, regardless of the length of the marriage. It had the potential of leaving the less-moneyed spouse in a very fragile economic condition...even if the marriage were to end because of the natural death in old age of the more-moneyed spouse. The attorney then quoted with admiration and approval a recent state supreme court decision that reduced sufficient grounds for the overturning of a prenup by a less-moneyed spouse at the time of a divorce to a "standard of unconscionability."

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Unconscionability is quite a high legal standard. To judge an agreement as unconscionable and thus worthy of being set aside, the terms for the less-moneyed spouse at the time of divorce must be more than just patently unfair, or even very unfair or extremely unfair. Courts have defined an unconscionable agreement as "one which no person in his or her senses and not under delusion would make on the one hand, and no honest and fair person would accept on the other, the inequality being so strong and manifest as to shock the conscience and confound the judgment of any person of common sense."

The problem with this standard is that many sensible future spouses do enter into such unconscionable contracts, despite their unfairness. They agree to them because they have already invested so much time and emotion in a given relationship and do not want to break off the engagement or start all over again.

Unconscionability is very hard to prove in a court of law, and the court gives the suing party the burden of proving it. The less-moneyed spouse may not have the funds to litigate, and the court case may be well be a losing battle under this extreme standard anyway, especially if that spouse originally had the benefit of being represented by an attorney in the prenup negotiations, as happens in most cases.

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Here are some of the terms I've seen offered in prenup drafts (even in first marriages of young people) by attorneys for more-moneyed spouses:

Alimony? It should be banned in total, no matter the circumstances at the time of a divorce, and no matter the income or assets of the more-moneyed spouse or the valuable non-monetary contributions of the other spouse.

Property division? In many agreements, all premarital property -- and often post-marital property -- is forever owned by the more-moneyed spouse. Gains and income generated by that property are also separate and belong to the more-moneyed spouse. The assets are only shared if the owning party chooses to do so.

Earnings during marriage? I've seen many first-draft prenups declare that earnings from employment during a marriage shall forever belong to the earner, who will share the earnings only if and when he or she wants to. I even find this term in first drafts of prenups between relatively young people marrying for the first time, who have been dating and engaged for a significant period and who plan to have children; it doesn't matter if the other spouse will be a stay-at-home mom or dad and homemaker during the marriage.

When I represent less-moneyed spouses, I usually find myself fighting an uphill battle to try to make the terms of a prenup more generous to them and evidencing of greater caring on the part of the more-moneyed partner. If I am representing the more-moneyed partner, I will encourage that future spouse to exhibit caring and protection and fair treatment, even if the marriage should end in divorce.

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My take on prenups is that they should meet the goals of both parties and also be as generous as possible within that framework. Too often an "off-the-shelf" prenup, generally submitted by the attorney of the more-moneyed spouse, dramatically departs from those aims.

Money isn't everything in a marriage, even legally speaking. Providing the comforts of home is valued in divorce law equally with earning money. The less-moneyed spouse needs to be educated that he or she deserves security, even if starting with fewer assets or earning less. For the sake of the marriage at hand, the more-moneyed spouse will do well to ensure the future security of the partner that he or she loves, even if that union could eventually end in divorce.

This is the operative question: What's more important -- the money or the marriage?

The knee-jerk asset-protection route will lose its appeal if all eyes are on the prize: the marriage itself. In my experience, the best process is one in which both clients and their attorneys aspire to create a prenup that supports the health of the impending marriage and helps it to thrive.

Sharing is healthy and good for a marriage. That's the way I encourage people to think about prenups, whether I am mediating one between partners or representing clients individually. Recent academic studies have confirmed that generosity is at the root of a good marriage, and couples (especially young people) who sign ungenerous prenups have unwittingly put a serious roadblock in the way of success.

If you or a loved one plan to be married and are considering a prenup, think about what terms you would want in it to demonstrate caring toward your partner...no matter whether the marriage might someday end in divorce. That's the standard you should aim to meet.

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Where are the skilled workers? That seems to be the question in many parts of the country, and certainly in Wisconsin.

During our college's regular talks with local employers about their current and future needs, the subject invariably turns to a projected skilled worker shortage. The issue is also a major theme of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC), Be Bold III (a proactive policy think tank), the seven Wisconsin regional economic development organizations, local chambers of commerce, and others.

Many of the skilled workers in the current workforce are baby boomers nearing retirement. And, the demographic projections indicate there are fewer people in the generation behind this retiring group to fill these vacancies.

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But, as a technical college, what can we do to help the situation? We could ask for more state and federal funding to expand programs - but in the current climate that is not something we should count on. We could throw our hands up in the air and wish our employers good luck. Or, we could roll up our sleeves and develop partnerships to prepare for what is coming, and address the issue from many different angles.

Let's look at the facts.

The United States Federal Reserve Board in their report, The Beige Book, (also known as the Summary of Commentary on Current Economic Conditions) indicates that employers report difficulty finding sufficient applicants for the following occupations:

Information technology

Engineering

Legal

Health-care services

Management

Skilled manufacturing

Building trades

Transportation and warehousing.

The effect of the skilled worker shortage are even more dramatic, because we are coming off a severe recession, when many people (including skilled workers) lost their jobs.

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The demographic picture provides an added complication for states like Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan and Ohio, that have experienced overall population growth less than 2% from 2010 to 2015 (Wisconsin projects the population will increase by .05% during the next five years). Given the projection of low population growth and an aging population, there will fewer people between the primary working years of 18 and 65. Simply put, the numbers will "not add up" in terms of people to replace the skilled and semi-skilled workers that are needed. These states need to consider stepping up efforts to recruit talent from outside the region.

Of course, finger pointing is also part of the mix. Some employers and political leaders report that schools are not producing enough qualified replacements, and that parents and teachers need to do more to channel young people into the occupations where the shortages are greatest.

Western Technical College recognizes it cannot solve the skilled worker shortage alone. It has developed a plan to do its part.

Develop High School Academies for manufacturing and building systems occupations, allowing high school juniors and seniors to take classes at Western's new Integrated Technology Center and earn college credit. Furthermore, the college is seeking industry partners to provide field experiences, guest speakers, and internships to enhance the learning environment. These partners will also be asked to provide scholarships to High School Academy students to encourage the transition to further training in the career pathways.

Expand the number of Career Pathways Certificates with a special emphasis on reaching working adults. Many adults in our region are under employed, yet they are unable to quit their jobs in order to enroll in college full-time. Pathways certificates provide real opportunities for adults to take part-time coursework that will lead to better-paying job opportunities. Furthermore, these certificates will provide college credit, allowing these individuals to later complete a diploma or degree, further improving their employment opportunities.

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Expand activities designed to improve student retention and program graduation rates. In a time when there are significant shortages of skilled workers, it is important to maximize the number of graduates in each program. Through enrollment management, as well as coordinated retention efforts through a national program called "Achieving the Dream," the college has developed plans to significantly improve retention and graduation rates.

Increase overall college enrollment. Through the focus on key results in its Vision 2020 Strategic Plan, Western is committed to increasing the annual number of persons served from approximately 7,000 per year to 10,000 per year. In order to accomplish this goal, there is a need to significantly increase online, evening, and weekend offerings, as well as continuing education for incumbent workers.

Expand outreach beyond the region. Many of the programs and facilities at Western (such as the new Integrated Technology Center) are considered best in class for the upper Midwest. The college believes it can attract students from surrounding states, provide housing during their program enrollment, and then work with area employers to seek opportunities to persuade these individuals to stay in the area after program completion.

Finally, Western will seek to work as partners with area employers to assist them in developing strategies to better recruit and retain employees.

But here's the thing, the demographic challenges are real. And the first step involves policy leaders recognizing that fact. Where are the skilled workers? They are on the horizon if we take the right steps.
By: Rory Winston

"Meet me in St. Louis, Louis" sang the inimitable Judy Garland in the Hollywood classic of that name. The again, the city has long been a meeting ground for diverse groups of people. Though Eero Saarinen's remarkable Gateway Arch design may have been meant to symbolize westward expansion (i.e. the dynamic duo Lewis and Clark used this as their point of departure), the protruding stainless steel monument has become more of a timeless portal leading one both forward and back in time; it is, in a sense, a large empty doorway that is forever open to all even if it is not always welcoming. Whether it was the African Americans in the early part of the 20th Century who had fled here from the deep south in search a better life or the Irish, German and Italian immigrants of the 19th and 20th Century who sought the fabled 'land of opportunity' or those as late as the 1990's who sought refuge from civil war as they founded Little Bosnia, St. Louis is a place that many can call home. It was and remains a city in flux, a dynamic multi-cultural haven where history and identity is part of the daily subtext.

With an array of American Italian restaurants, the city is a study guide on how to make Italo-American foods even heavier than you thought possible. Here, the notion of 'fusion cooking' means taking the sumptuous excesses of two worlds and finding a wonderfully unhealthy non-compromise. Think: cheese-filled ravioli and deep fried American fast food, and voila: roasted ravioli. Your veins may close but your mouth isn't likely to do so in time. Then there's Cherokee Street and while the name may call to mind the Native Americans (actually those that never inhabited this area since this region was home mostly for the Osage nation and the Illiniwek tribes - made up of at least 12 subset tribes none of which were remotely Cherokee), this part of the city is Latino (often Mexican) restaurants, bakeries and groceries joined at the hip to a thriving gallery and shop district.

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As for my Judy Garland fans whose Rainbow flags adorn the Art Deco hotspots, cocktail lounges and flamboyant night clubs, welcome to the Grove. This LGBT after-hours world of camp ostentation and mid-western restraint is studded (sic) by lovely venues like The Monocle, Just John, the Atomic Cowboy and - for those inclined to just hang - the more laid back angle of Erney's 32.

Of course, if you want to feel the 'Clang, clang, clang' of Garland's famous Trolley Song, there's always the Loop - location of the the old streetcar turnaround, a neighborhood that today hosts a myriad of unique boutiques and restaurants. Though Josephine Baker had reason enough to leave the city forever after witnessing the notorious race riots, it's unlikely she'd feel alienated entering the retro realm of the Pin-Up Bowl or the Pageant concert nightclub. Once home to both her and Tennessee Williams, this district boasts the Moonrise Hotel - a dazzling and funky property, one that Tom Wingfield from the Glass Menagerie would likely have dreamt of frequenting after a night of carousing and debauchery.

Then there's Soulard, an area of the city that houses both the oldest Farmers Market of the city (1779) as well as the most well-known gay bar in the entire city, La Bastille. As this district boasts the best in local Blues, it's easy to understand from whence Chuck Berry got his inspiration. From there it's on to South Grand - where alongside some of the best Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese and Latin restaurants, you'll find LGBT-owned businesses like the the respective coffee houses, MoKaBe's and Grand as well as haunts such as the Brickyard Tavern and Cheap TRX. This is LGBT shopping heaven. The Victorian walking park nearby has been designated a historic landmark. Of course, for true Victorian architecture it's worth going to the historic neighborhood found at Lafayette Square. Here stately French Second Empire homes play host to some of the city's most distinguished wine bars.

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Walking through the historic Forest Park at Central West End, it's easy to imagine what it might have felt like walking here for those like Miles Davis who lived on the East side of the river. With the Neo-Byzantine monolith of a church, Cathedral Basilica, and the historic Forest Park, the area still carries a solemn air of authority. Of course the LGBT vibe that dates back to 60's does manage to sabotage the funereal sensibility with its sidewalk cafes, trendy boutiques, exceptional galleries and plush pubs. By night, you can always chill at Sub Zero or heat it up at the Latin-inspired Club Viva.

But whether you come to see the St. Louis Cardinals or just to get a refreshing glass of Bud, it's probably a good time to get to St. Louis - at least the city still boasts a multicultural ambience, something which may not be the case after Anheuser-Busch Brewery goes all Donald Trump on us for the upcoming election and changes the monicker for the King of Beers (sadly not to the Queen of Beers) to 'America,' while following up the nationalist monicker with the even more odious and xenophobic inscription "this land is your land."

At present the vibe is still one that boasts diversity. It is the juxtapositions of cultures. It takes in, absorbs, develops and thrives. This is the city I believe we were all meant to love and visit. Not the one Josephine Baker had been forced to flee.

So "Meet me in Saint Louis, Louis..." and if not Louis, then Lois, Bob, Ramona, Javier, Malik, Ahmed, Devorah and Brian. This is, after all, still everyone's city. And the talents who have hailed from there seem to have liked it just that way.
In labs and classrooms, we are building an understanding of the volatility of our planet's changing climate and anticipating its adverse effects on human health. That knowledge is key to creating evidence-based solutions to climate changebut it is beyond time to forge a link between that learning and decision-makers around the world. Next week in New York, we have an opportunity to do just that at the 2016 Health and Climate Colloquium.

In North America, changing weather patterns in both hemispheres are causing alarming disruptions. A relatively dry El Nino winter and a warm spring that melted snow earlier-than-normal created forest fires that forced the evacuation of 80,000 Alberta residents and destroyed more than 702,000 acresabout 1,096 square miles. The Zika virus is entering the United States from the Caribbean, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimates that at least 20 percent of Puerto Rico's 3.5 million residents will become infected with the mosquito-borne virus this year. According to Reuters, Zika "is beginning to show up in warm climates in U.S. southern states such as Florida." The climate shocks associated with natural variability, such as El Nino, are being compounded by longer-term climatic trendsparticularly in temperaturewhich facilitate further spread of the disease.

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The White House recently issued a report by the interagency U.S. Global Change Research Program titled The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States: A Scientific Assessment. Developed over three years by leading experts in climate change science and public health, it is the most comprehensive volume of research on the topic to date, and provides overwhelming evidence that as the climate continues to change, the risks to human health will continue to grow, exacerbating existing threats and creating new challenges for population health.

The report states:



Current and future climate impacts expose more people in more places to public health threats. Already in the United States, we have observed climate-related increases in our exposure to elevated temperatures; more frequent, severe, or longer-lasting extreme events; degraded air quality; diseases transmitted through food, water, and disease vectors (such as ticks and mosquitoes); and stresses to our mental health and well-being. Almost all of these threats are expected to worsen with continued climate change. Some of these health threats will occur over longer time periods, or at unprecedented times of the year; some people will be exposed to threats not previously experienced in their locations.

The challenge is, of course, a global one, and the United States and its fellow nations have a vested interest in tackling it together. Around the world, awareness must be created to build on existing science and partner on solutions. That's one major reason the Health and Climate Colloquium is being convened from June 8-10 in Palisades, New York, by Columbia University's International Research Institute for Climate and Society and Mailman School of Public Health.

Serving as a launchpad for a global network of climate and health scientists and policymakers, the Colloquium will bring together experts who understand the complex relationship between climate and health and know how to use climate science and data to educate their peers, influence policy, and protect the health of populations. The meeting will focus on infectious diseases, nutrition, and the public health outcomes of disasters caused by extreme weather, and will bring together policymakers, practitioners, and researchers from multinational agencies, government, civil society, and the private sector. Representatives from more than 25 nations will share cutting-edge health and climate research and outline the tools needed to strengthen health policy and practice in resource-limited settings. We will discuss ways of collaborating, needed evidence, and the role of schools of public health in conducting research that can feed into public policy. And, we'll focus on the underlying data that's needed to develop climate and health analyses, appropriate methodologies for specific problems, and how best to integrate climate science into health decision making.

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Climate science expertise is growingbut so is the need to translate and apply that science into public health practice. We need mechanisms by which scientific understanding is shared with practitioners on the ground to create solid evidence for sound policy relevant to different leaders, different conditions, and different contexts. Reliable data can help countries better deliver health programs in the context of changes in the climate over seasonal, year-to-year, or longer timescales. Such information may help better allocate resources, adapt to climate change, and achieve development goals.

It is vitally important that we recognize and understand that climate change is already threatening our health, anticipate its breadth, build evidence-based solutions grounded in sound science, and implement plans to protect hard-won health gains while minimizing catastrophe risks. To achieve this ambitious agenda, we need to invest in expertise in climate and public health, but critically, we also need global collaborations among the many diverse actors who can drive it forwardleaders across government, civil society, and the private sector.
Make no mistake. We are in the middle of the Civil Rights movement of our generation, and although we don't see lynchings as a routine practice, the hatred and dare I say, the malice and violence of racial discrimination still lives and breathes. It just hides behind different uniforms and different masks then it used to.

The word "malice" is a hot topic where I live. In Washington State, the Statute the governs when and how a Law Officer or a Peace Officer can be charged with a deadly force crime says that the officer has to have acted with malice to be held criminally liable. You have to be able to prove definitively that an officer had "ill will" or "evil intent", and/or wanted to cause suffering, to charge an officer with a crime when using deadly force.

It cannot be proven. You cannot prove a state of mind. Washington state, the liberal gem in the corner of the Pacific Northwest, is the only state in our country where a law enforcement officer cannot be charged when killing someone while wearing a badge. They literally are literally shielded by the law.

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There was once a time for some of us, those of us who are white and privileged, when the thought that an officer would commit a crime in the line of duty was unthinkable. However, that thought alone is a demonstration of privilege, in a way that mothers who aren't terrified when their sons walk out the door every day can never understand.

"Privilege" is another charged word in our society. White people are very uncomfortable with the word privilege. However, in a nation that was built on land stolen from indigenous people, built on the backs of slaves, privilege is a very real thing. It's a thing I recognize when I look in the mirror, and I especially recognise when I look at my sons.

I am raising white, well educated, boys who are growing up in a society that favors them above all else. The social stratification of being white, upper-middle class, and male, provides a shield of safety and a promise of prosperity that others in our country simply don't expect or enjoy. For my boys, this is their promised land. They breath rare air just because of the way they look.

And for the record, that is why I do it.

I get asked that question a lot.

Do you remember the Faces of Death video series? It was a series of videos that showed the moments of someone's dying. That is what the evening news feels like at this point. I've seen more videos of people of color dying at the hands of police than I can even count. I've lost track of all their names. There have been so many in the last few months I get them confused. And for the record, I'm paying attention more than most, there have just been that many. I'm am deeply and profoundly disturbed by all of them. Unfortunately, my now eight-year-old son knows the names, locations, and details of the shooting better than I do at times. This is the world he's growing up in.

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When the officers involved in the Eric Garner death were not charged, the video of Eric Garner, crying for help, repeating "I can't breathe", over and over again before he died was all over the news. It deeply impacted my child. Yes, he saw it. Everyone did.

So, we did something. We went to a rally in Seattle. Honestly, it was a protest. We marched in downtown Seattle stopping traffic during rush hour. We stand out in those protests. We don't look like the average protesters on the street. When a newspaper reporter asked us why we were there, we explained we wanted to show our boys that we are a family who doesn't sit idly by and talk about injustices done to others. Protesting and attending rallies was all we knew to do at that point.

Interesting side note, by the time we got home our seven-year-old was practically trending on Twitter, and the next day his picture was all over the Seattle papers. Cute white kid at a protest was more relevant than posting a picture of Eric Garner for a story about a protest in his honor.

A few days after the Eric Garner protest, it happened. Two unarmed, black young men were shot by a police officer in my hometown. Olympia, Washington is the center of the free-thinking, liberal universe, or so we thought. What we thought happened anywhere but where we lived, happened at one a.m. on May 21st, 2015, in our proverbial backyard, and our community has not been the same. It never will be.

We have learned we are not a community bound by common liberal values the way we once believed. We are a community deeply divided where racism reared its head in ways none of us thought was possible. White supremacists, neo-Nazis, and militias came out to protests. Neighbours of mine used the word "thugs" the way their parents used the "N" word.

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And as a family, we did what we've always done. We went to rallies and protests. I marched until my feet blistered. I also sat in meetings and forums until my chronic migraines returned.

Now for the record, we are a family with a long-standing tradition of activist work, or trouble making, depending on how you see it. I started in homeless advocacy work twenty years ago, and that experience led to many other interesting experiences. However, working with the homeless taught me two things.

#1 People who are vulnerable in our society are at risk in ways most of us can't understand. It was my work in the homeless community that showed me how dangerous interactions with law enforcement are on a routine basis.

#2 Because of who I am my life is always going to be easier than the lives of others, simply because of who they are, or more specifically what they look like. I learned from helping others who aren't, that I am privileged.

In Olympia, every time things would settle, another shooting of an unarmed person of color would happen, making the protests more heated and the conversations more complicated.

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There have been a lot of discussions about why as a state and a nation this issue is in our face more than it's been before. A lot of people think it's because of cellphone cams and social media. This New York Times article suggests that although police violence is up, increased awareness is changing the narrative. In my opinion is it up in Washington State, however, even as I write that, I know my opinion is shaded by my privilege. It's been happening all along. It's just that some of us have had the luxury not to notice.

A few weeks ago we went to a protest in the rain. We walked until my feet literally bled. I got chilled to my core. I came home, crawled into the tub and cried while I soaked trying to warm up. I knew that for me, protesting against something wasn't working anymore. I had find the energy to do what I knew I needed to be doing, or stop doing anything at all.

I am now the author of an initiative we believe will put use of force by a law enforcement officer, on the ballot in front of Washington State voters. We intend to strike the "without malice" clause from the law. We are calling it the John T. Williams Bill.

When I say we, I mean that quite literally. Although I wrote it, a vast and powerful coalition of people in our state have come together to do the hard work of getting that initiative off the ground. That coalition of people is comprised of the families of victims of police violence and activists who have been behind the scenes from the beginning of this movement.

Washington State cannot even address the kinds of police reforms other states are doing until this law is changed, so it has to be done. For the record, I am not anti-police. I am not in favor of dismantling the police departments. I don't believe all cops are bad. I simply don't believe anyone, especially those who wear a badge, should be above the law.

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I am attending meeting after meeting where I'm asked the same question. "Why are you doing this? Why does someone who looks like you care about this issue?". Those inquiries are not always comfortable. I often stumble trying to answer them. I am not always entirely welcome or even trusted in those rooms. It's been said, publicly, in front of the press, that I might never actually fully pass the "test for being an ally".

For the record, I care because these laws that protect police officers from prosecution would protect those officers no matter who they shoot. The law shields the blue, no matter if the victim is black, native, latino, or white. Laws that unfairly affect people of color are still laws, therefore they impact us all. Frankly, without exception, no matter how privileged you are, injustice affects everyone.

I am doing it for my boys. I am doing it because as a parent, I want my uber-privileged white boys to know it's not ok to sit on that privilege.

Sitting silently on the sidelines with your privilege when there is something to do, is a form of racism in and of itself.

We are at yet another crossroads in our great nation. The presidential race is illustrating what we all, already know is true. Racism is alive and well. Equality is still a privilege only afforded to some of us. However, freedom belongs to all of us, and what we do with that freedom counts.

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As I walk the road of a white woman in a movement that only exists because white people still oppress, I can't say I have any right answers for anyone else. However, for myself what I know is that doing something is better than doing nothing. At times, it's an awkward place to be. I don't always get it right. Sometimes my very presence is offensive.
Warning: the political news you are consuming may be synthetic, manufactured in a corporation and served up breathlessly by the media. Like many synthetic substances, it could be bad for your health.

I refer, of course, to the epidemic of polling. Polls have become a political narcotic. There is an appetite for them that knows no bounds. If you do not like or trust one poll, take another.

This, in turn, reflects a time when the science of polling faces challenges. Polling had become fearsomely accurate, but recently it has encountered two bugaboos: changing demographics and changing telephone usage. These things have cleft polling in two: polls that are conducted through telephone interviews and those that are conducted electronically.

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The evidence is that the old way remains more accurate, but it is bedeviled with fewer land lines and more people who do not want to be interviewed, or may not be comfortable speaking English.

It is, I am told, cheaper to poll electronically, but the bugs are not all out of the system and wide discrepancies in results are showing up. Hence, a poll that shows Hillary Clinton beating Donald Trump in the general election is followed by another equally reputable poll that shows Trump defeating Hillary.

The pollsters I have known are a canny lot, and I have no doubt they will get on top of these problems. The most egg that has landed on the face of the polling industry was in getting the last British election so wrong. That fiasco is informing the doubt surrounding polls on whether or not Britain should leave the European Union. They are struggling with a close call and public distrust of polling.

In the United States, polling has gotten the presidential primaries more or less right. But the putative contest between Clinton and Trump has wide swings in polling results; so wide that the pollsters themselves are having difficulty asking the right questions and managing the results.

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Not since 1945, when it started seriously, has polling seemed so challenged as in this presidential contest.

But unreliable or not, the debate is fashioned by the polls. Talk radio, talk television and the newspapers are nourished by the latest polls, which pass as news.

For me the argument is not whether the polls are accurate, but rather the damage they do to the system. They are -- and I am assuming the pollsters will regain their former omnipotence -- an impediment to the political process.

A poll is a snapshot that morphs into a narrative. A second in time becomes a reality, and candidacies are extinguished before they can catch fire.

Commentators extrapolate a grain of truth into a mountain of fact.

Polling has reached a point where not only is it part of the democratic process, but it also distorts that process, picking winners and losers before the electorate has assimilated the facts.

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The news media has fallen onto the habit of taking this synthetic news -- a suspect commodity for which the great news organizations pay -- as the real thing. A poll gets the same weight as the ballot, thus affecting the ballot.

I believe that polls do reveal a truth, but a truth of one brief moment in time. The trouble is that revelation becomes the revealed truth, and the future gets tethered to that moment. Normal evolution in political thinking is hampered by this synthetic truth.

In hiring pollsters, news organizations are unwittingly setting up what is the equivalent of a posed photograph -- a photograph that will be reprinted hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of times until it has become a kind of truth and its dubious genesis is forgotten.
I plead "no contest" to being a Baby Boomer which definitely influences what follows.

Given the three remaining candidates for president, I believe Bernie Sanders is the best choice. I have not come to this opinion hastily or impulsively, although any of you reading this are free and I'm guessing will gleefully ram my words down my throat.

The reason for my conclusion is that Sanders is best positioned to facilitate the transfer of power and influence from the Baby Boomer generation to Generations X and the Millennials. The main function of the next American President - and if the world is fortunate - presidents around the world (are you listening Justin Trudeau) will be to serve as "place holders" until the Gen X's and Millennial can get their experience, skills, judgment and wisdom up to speed to run the world. I already think there values of care and concern for humanity and the planet far exceed those of baby boomers.

When that happens, I am optimistic that they will do a better job of making the world better than we baby boomers left it for them.

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Baby boomers were definitely not the greatest generation (those who fought and died in WWII) and they have been the longest generation to keep their snouts nose down in the trough of world resources. Coincident with their focus on health and vitality more than generations before them is they now have the stamina to fight tooth and claw and to follow Dylan Thomas' words and "not go gently into that good night, but instead to rage and fight against the dying of the light."

Many Baby Boomers have not planned well financially and have multiple families strewn across the geographical landscape that they barely keep in touch with much less have deep relationships with (kind of the revenge of the "Cats in the Craddle" a la Harry Chapin). What that latter means is that boomers may not be able to rely on their children to take care of them as they age and become more dependent and infirm. It may also explain why I have heard not infrequently the expressed intention by boomers to take their lives before their "boomerangst" of not having the money to grow old plus burdening their children overtakes them.

This was no more on display than when I recently attended a large evening event celebrating an organization that helps prepare millennial college graduates and twenty something adults eyeing a career in politics and public service and at which a significant percentage of elected "lifetime" politicians in Los Angeles were in attendance.

I had never been in such a "political" gathering and the collective tentativeness and insecurity that shown through the sea of disingenuous smiles among the lifers was palpable and made me sick to my stomach.

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The good news was that these lifers' anxious energy was in stark contrast with the true enthusiasm and alive idealism of the the younger generation that was eyeing a life in public service.

To me these older politicians represented Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Clinton is a "lifer" politician and Trump is a "dyed in the wool" power hungry person who needs look no further than Sumner Redstone to see the future arc of his life.

You may say, but isn't Sanders a baby boomer of even older than a boomer? Age wise that may be true, but to many he represents the grandpa they always wanted instead of a boomer parent that they've had a lifetime of conflict with.

And even though he is also a lifer when it comes to public service, he for some reason doesn't seem as insecure and in need of holding onto power and fighting tooth and nail to make sure he doesn't lose it.

Although nobody likes to lose, he strikes me as a better loser than Clinton or Trump. I haven't seen him demonstrating the same petulance the other two candidates show when they lose. Winning and losing seem much more personal to the Clinton or Trump than to Sanders.

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Trump might say, "Show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser." Clinton may not say the same thing, but she certainly doesn't seem like a happy camper whenever she loses.

Maybe I am a Pollyanna, but show me a good loser and I'll show you a good winner. Before you laugh me off the page, think Steph Curry.

Years ago one of my late and early mentors, death and dying pioneer, Dr. Edwin Shneidman was fond of sharing the wise and prescient words of his mentor, Harvard psychology pioneer, Henry A. Murray, regarding the definition of a good death. To me his words were way more appropriate than Dylan Thomas' advice to "rage against the dying of the light."

And Murray's definition of a good death? "Dying so as to be as little a pain in the ass to your family as possible."

Maybe that's something the baby boomers need to do as they graciously hand over the baton to the next generations instead of holding onto like a dog with a bone.
Governor Bruce Rauner (R) of Illinois has achieved a milestone- a little over one year into his first term and Illinois has the lowest credit rating of any state and is now tied with Alaska for the highest unemployment among states in the country at 6.6%. Rauner is as ideologically rigid as other conservative true believers like Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas or Governor Rick Scott of Florida. It seems he almost set out to achieve such chaos because he has refused to sign a budget since entering office and the state's bills now total more than $159 billion in IOU's - more than twice the inflow of revenue in a single year. Social service agencies are shutting down, universities are laying off staff and programs are being cut.

Before Rauner's election, the "state's jobless rate was in the middle of the pack and unemployment was going down," according to an article in The Chicago Reporter quoting Frank Manzo IV of the Illinois Economic Policy Institute. Since Rauner entered office, joblessness in Illinois has climbed steadily while the national unemployment rate has fallen. Of course, such results are a testament to the failures of trickle down economics, which so many conservatives still seem to have blind faith in.

Rauner seems to reflexively believe that by creating a "business friendly" environment which translates to busting unions, reducing wages, cutting public services, making massive cuts to the state's university system, and bankrupting Chicago public schools, he can grow jobs when just the opposite has happened.

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Before he was elected then candidate Rauner explained to a partisan crowd his game plan. As told in an article on NPR: "He said he could drive a wedge in Democratic ranks by throttling human service providers, forcing Democrats to forsake their labor allies to protect the frail elderly, the homeless, abused children, and others among society's most disadvantaged. Shutting down state government might be needed, Rauner told the partisans, and he was ready to do so."

Governor Rauner is impervious to the pain he is causing since it is primarily the poor feeling it and the poor are not the constituency of Republicans. Rauner is a member of the privileged top .01% who made his riches as a speculator and investor. He has foregone his salary as governor only to benefit by far more, as much as $750,000, from tax cuts since he took office.

Of course, House Democrats did deliver a proposed budget with a $7 billion deficit to the governor and Illinois law requires a balanced budget. However, a 2011 tax increase was allowed to expire decreasing the state income tax by 25% in 2015. In fact, Rauner campaigned on letting the higher tax rate expire. According to the Daily Kos: "Illinois Democrats, including House Speaker Michael Madigan want to raise the State income tax back up and enact a special tax on millionaires similar to the one enacted in California in 2012 to avoid billions in vital budget cuts and to begin to cope with the state's $111 billion in unfunded pension obligations." On the other hand, Rauner proposes to balance the budget entirely with cuts.

"Furthermore, the tax savings was distributed highly unequally. The bottom 60% of the Illinois income scale received just $479 million or only 13% of the total tax savings while the top 11% of tax payers received over 54% of the tax savings or over $2 billion dollars. Another one billion in annual corporate tax cuts go to the biggest, multinational corporations doing business in the State of Illinois, not small businesses which don't pay the corporate income tax." Thus, Illinois has a revenue problem as opposed to a spending problem.

"Today, nearly 90% of state spending is running on autopilot fueled by statutorily mandated spending, consent decrees and court orders," according to capital fax.com.

Many of the Rauner's objectives have nothing to do with the state's budget anyway. His agenda includes items such as "local right-to-work laws, reduced unemployment insurance and workers' compensation payments, and term limits for legislators," according to Crain's Chicago Business. While the poor suffer and the middle class shrinks, Rauner is preoccupied with term limits. Well, Nero fiddled while Rome burned!

Of course, Republicans would not be Republicans if they were flexible. Rauner and other conservative governors can not grow the economy by impoverishing workers and disinvesting in the state's educational system and infrastructure. It is spending by consumers which creates jobs in the economy and not some mythical billionaire job creators who are standing by the sidelines waiting to start hiring when taxes are lowered. Businesses look to invest in locations with a competitive educational system, which can provide them with skilled workers, and a good infrastructure to transport goods and services. Austerity and disinvestment does not create such conditions.

However, Republican governors like Rauner of Illinois, Brownback of Kansas, and Scott Walker of Wisconsin wear ideological blinders. Their thirst to bust unions and lower salaries of workers for their billionaire benefactors and corporate friends is just too strong for them to see reason. They leave devastation in their wake, but to them if only they had a little longer their vision of creating a conservative business utopia is always just around the corner. Of course, the corner is never turned.
The drama surrounding the cleanup of dangerous, leaking coal ash ponds continues to unfold in North Carolina. Last week the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) announced its assessment of the state's many polluted sites and earlier this week the state legislature proposed changes to the existing law governing coal ash cleanup. But before we dig into the details, let's be clear about what's at stake. Clean water is one of those things that many of us, thankfully, can take for granted. We trust what comes out of our taps; and we should, as no one should have to fear that this essential ingredient in our daily lives poses a danger.

Sadly, that's simply not the case for many folks facing the threat of toxic coal ash contamination in their drinking water. Coal ash is a waste byproduct of burning coal, and it's produced in huge amounts (it's the second biggest waste stream in the US, after municipal garbage). Coal ash often is stored in ponds near the power plant where it was made and, because most coal-fired power plants require millions of gallons of water for daily operation, that means that these ponds sit dangerously close to rivers and lakes that we count on for drinking water and recreation.

Coal ash contains a dangerous mix of heavy metals and chemicals that pose a direct threat to the health and well-being of the local environment and folks living in nearby communities. In fact, almost 70 percent of all coal ash ponds are located near low income communities or communities of color.

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Few states have taken proactive measures to clean up this toxic sludge, and EPA protections still aren't strong enough to get the job done on their own. A recent story from the Winston-Salem Journal highlights the uncertainty and helplessness folks living near these coal ash dumps feel. As Amy Brown, who lives close to one of Duke's leaking ash ponds and whose drinking well water was found to contain cancer-causing hexavalent chromium at unsafe levels, has asked:

"Why is it so hard to get these people to want to protect us?" asked Brown, referring to state government [of North Carolina]. "When did it become acceptable in this state to ignore the cries of a mother for her children?"

A devastating coal ash spill in 2014 put North Carolina at the epicenter of the coal ash drama. The spill released at least 39,000 tons of coal ash and millions of gallons of toxic wastewater into the Dan River from a coal ash pond at one of Duke Energy's retired coal-fired power plants. Ranked as the third-worst coal ash spill in American history, it stands as a tragic reminder of what coal-fired power generation can really cost a community and its environment.

In response to the Dan River spill, North Carolina passed legislation in August of 2014 requiring the cleanup of all coal ash pits statewide. However, many critical decisions pertaining to the actual nature and timeline of the cleanup process were left for a later date.

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This March, the DEQ held hearings across the state to seek public input on how to classify the risks posed by Duke Energy's coal ash ponds. A classification of "high risk" would require Duke to remove its coal ash from ponds and store it in lined, dry landfills, away from water resources and to complete such clean up by 2019. Ponds classified as "intermediate risk" also would have to be excavated with ash moved to landfills by 2024. Coal ash at ponds deemed "low risk," however, could remain in place and covered with a permanent cap. Duke would not have to cap its "low risk" ponds until 2029.

We believe no coal ash pond should remain a threat to local communities, and we fought hard to ensure DEQ's classifications did not treat any community as a low priority. Hundreds of folks came out across the state to testify at community hearings. They spoke about why the state should require the full cleanup of the coal ash ponds near their homes, why the dangers posed by leaving millions of tons of toxic ash in place far outweigh any possible benefits and why clean water is so critically important to the health and well being of all families -- not just those fortunate enough to live outside the shadow of coal ash pollution.

Thanks to the tireless efforts of community members, organizers, local groups and the Sierra Club, last week DEQ released its classifications for Duke's coal ash ponds in North Carolina, concluding that all ponds posed at least an intermediate risk and, therefore, must be excavated and fully cleaned up by 2024. While we had pushed for "high risk" classifications and a cleanup deadline of 2019, this is an important step forward.

Unfortunately, there were a couple of steps back as well. First, DEQ announced that it would seek the authority to revisit its decisions on coal-ash pond classification in 18 months in order to allow Duke to submit additional information that could justify lower risk levels, and thus less comprehensive cleanups could still be a possibility. And, just this week, the North Carolina House passed a bill that would reopen the classification process and lead to further delays in long-overdue cleanups. On a more positive note, the bill includes provisions directing Duke Energy to make permanent drinking water supplies available to at least some of the people living near the leaking ponds.

Clearly, we still have our work cut out for us to eliminate this pollution once and for all. We're still working hard, supporting our friends and allies and will continue to push DEQ and Duke to abide by the law, ensuring a timely cleanup of every coal ash pond in the state.

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Memorial Day weekend was replete with parades, American flags, and tributes to our war dead, but little reflection on war, particularly the tragic fact that the United States has fallen into the death trap that President Eisenhower warned us about: the military-industrial complex.

Instead of defending our nation as the Constitution stipulates, since the 9/11 attacks the U.S. military, CIA, and military contractors have been waging aggressive wars or interfering by proxy in other nations' internal affairs.

Looking at our national budget, you can see the overwhelming power of the military. The $600 billion price tag, way over $1 billion a day, eats up 54 percent of all federal discretionary funds. That's almost as much money as the military budgets of the rest of the world combined. It's no wonder we don't have money to address the crisis of global warming, build a decent public transportation system, institute a medicare-for-all health system, or provide the free college education that all our youth deserve.

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There have been a few great wins for diplomacy under President Obama, particularly the historic Iran nuclear deal and opening to Cuba. For the most part, however, President Obama has carried over many of the Bush policies. Fifteen years after 9/11, the U.S. military is still in Afghanistan (the longest U.S. war in history) and the Taliban remain strong. U.S. soldiers are still in Iraq, where our invasion opened up the floodgates of sectarian violence that gave birth to the Islamic State. President Obama, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, has bombed seven countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Syria. He never made good on his promise to close the prison in Guantanamo. But he did do something unique: Instead of capturing prisoners and locking them up in Gitmo, he decided instead to kill "suspected terrorists" through drone warfare.

The barbarism of targeting "suspects" by remote control from the comfort of an air-conditioned base in the United States, including in countries where we are not at war, should enrage all Americans who cherish the rule of law. As Army Chaplain and Unitarian Minister Christopher John Anton said last month when he resigned from the military:

The executive branch continues to claim the right to kill anyone, anywhere on Earth, at any time, for secret reasons, based on secret evidence, in a secret process, undertaken by unidentified officials. I refuse to support this policy of unaccountable killing.

A practical reason for focusing on nonviolent approaches is that violence rarely works. A Rand study examining the 40-year history of groups once designated as terrorists found that out of 268 groups, 43 percent came to their demise through their participation in the political process, 40 percent through effective policing, and only 7 percent through military force.

Add to this scientific evidence the wisdom of the Great Chinese philosopher Lao-Tseu, who said, "It is only when you see a mosquito landing on your testicles that you realize that there is always a way to solve problems without using violence."

The problem is not just our frequent military interventions, but also the massive amounts of weapons sold by our merchants of war. The United States has become addicted to the lucrative business of war, with U.S. companies now accounting for 31 percent of global arms exports. While the manufacturing base of our nation has been gutted by globalization, the weapons industry is alive and thriving.

The country that is the number one purchaser of U.S. weapons is Saudi Arabia. U.S. arms dealers have sold the Saudis a record $97 billion in weapons in the past 10 years, most of those deals made under President Obama. These transactions represent the largest weapons deals in the history of humankind, and they have been made to one of the most repressive regimes in the world. How tragic that U.S. businesses are arming a country where nonviolent protesters are beheaded in public squares; where bloggers are sentenced to ten years in prison and 1000 lashes; where it is prohibited to set up a church or synagogue; where women are not even allowed to drive; and where the government exports the intolerant form of Sunni Islam, Wahhabism, that forms the ideological basis of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.

For the past year, the Saudis have been using U.S. weapons, including internationally banned cluster bombs, to decimate neighboring Yemen, creating a severe humanitarian crisis. (One bit of good news is that just this month, the campaign to stop the sale of cluster munitions to Saudi Arabia was successful, with the administration placing a hold on these sales.)

When Pope Francis spoke to Congress in September 2015, he said this:

Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society? Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood. In the face of this shameful and culpable silence, it is our duty to confront the problem and to stop the arms trade.

Congress applauded enthusiastically but then turned around to "dial for dollars," collecting millions of dollars in campaign contributions from the weapons makers and Pentagon contractors, and in turn awarding them billions in contracts, often no-bid contracts.

Just prior to the Memorial Day commemorations, President Obama made a trip to Vietnam. How did he seal our friendship with that nation, after slaughtering two million of their people? By agreeing to sell them weapons.

From there, Obama went on to Japan, thankfully visiting Hiroshima and giving a very moving speech. Left unsaid, however, was that the Obama administration has agreed to spend $1 trillion in the next 30 years to modernize U.S. nuclear weapons instead of eliminating them.

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The anti-war movement was strong and vibrant under George Bush, inspiring hundreds of thousands of people to take to the streets in protest. When Obama became president, the movement fell apart, mainly because many people thought Obama would end U.S. military adventurism.

There can be no illusion, however, about the next resident in the White House. Imagine the conflicts Donald Trump will stir up if he has the chance to insult all the world's heads of state. And let's remember that the Democratic presidential option, Hillary Clinton, supported the invasion of Iraq, the surge in Afghanistan, the overthrow of Qaddafi in Libya, the drone wars, and the military coups in Egypt and Honduras. She even talked about obliterating Iran.

In the aftermath of the Memorial Day military parades and with a new administration looming on the horizon, a critical task for the coming year is to build a renewed, more vibrant, interracial, and multi-generational peace movement that will pressure the next administration to:

1. Stop obligating our young men and women to fight unwinnable wars of choice that only make more enemies, and fatten the bank accounts of the military contractors and weapons manufacturers.

2. Cut the military budget so that we have funds for the critical needs here at home, from universal healthcare to free college education to green jobs.

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3. Take much better care of our veterans, including the homeless vets, jobless vets, and vets suffering from mental wounds that lead them to commit suicide at a heartbreaking rate of 22 a day.

As Vietnam vet Dan Shea said when he reflected on the names etched and not etched on the Vietnam Memorial, including the missing names of the Vietnamese and all the victims of Agent Orange, including his own son: "Why Vietnam? Why Afghanistan? Why Iraq? Why any war? ... May the mighty roar of the victims of this violence silence the drums that beat for war."
The plight of the homeless of any age is heart-wrenching, but when the homeless are unaccompanied teens in the midst of Mormon's home base in Salt Lake City, Utah and its surrounding Wasatch Front cities, it is especially difficult to hear about. Mormons are a Christian denomination and as such, are a church of love, but in recent years, there have been questions about whether this love extends to LGBT Mormons.

On its website www.mormonsandgays,org, the Mormon church says, "As people with hopes, fears and aspirations like everyone else, these neighbors deserve our love. But we can't truly love the neighbors next door if we don't love the neighbors under our own roof. Family members with same-sex attraction need our love and understanding. God loves all his children alike, much more than any of us can comprehend, and expects us to follow." The website quotes Quentin L. Cook that "no one should be more loving and more compassionate" to those who have a different lifestyle choice. Nonetheless, the recent policy change in November of 2015 that labels same-sex married Mormons as apostates has caused a great deal of pain and suffering in the LGBT Mormon community, and especially among young Mormon teens.

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In Ogden, Utah, just 30 miles north of Salt Lake City, a homeless youth shelter Youth Futures, opened on February 20, 2015. Youth Futures for the first time offers services targeted for homeless teens (straight or LGBT+), who have different needs than the adult homeless population. Executive Director Kristen Mitchell and President Scott Catuccio are life partners who have spent more than six years working to open this shelter. It could only be opened after overcoming a legislative barrier in 2014 as a new law passed so that youth shelters could avoid being charged with "harboring a minor." But because Youth Futures is run entirely on private donations at a tune of $26,000 a month, they are desperately in need of donations.

If you are interested in donating, you can go here to sign up for a regular, monthly donation or a one-time donation. In-kind donations like warm clothing, toiletry items, and bottled water are always appreciated, but things you might not think about include bus passes and tokens, earbuds, and gift cards for clothing, hair salon or even for fun activities like a movie or Lagoon passes (a local amusement park). Larger items like a minivan to help transport youth would also be appreciated, as would new couches and a volunteer to help repair storm doors and cement. Volunteers who can help with yard work, tutors, or food preparers are also greatly needed. Please contact Youth Future directly if you have a large donation. Other donations can be dropped off at 2760 Adams Ave in Ogden, Utah.

Youth Futures serves youth 12-17 who are unaccompanied. They have 14 temporary beds and have had nearly 1,500 overnight stays. They also serve as a daytime drop-off with intensive case management. They offer necessary supplies to those who come in, and have served over 6,000 meals. They offer a place for youth to wash clothes, take a shower, and get a sleeping bag. They also have a charging station for teens with phones. In addition, they offer mental health counseling and other medical services, including dental care.

Though Youth Futures is for any homeless teens, about fifty percent of those who are homeless in Utah are "not straight," says Kristen Mitchell. The number one reason teens are homeless is "family discord," including religious discord. Youth Futures works with the guidelines of "The Family Acceptance Project" to help parents learn to better deal with their child's sexuality within different religious perspectives. Their license requires Youth Futures to call parents within 8 hours of a youth being placed with them. Youth Futures reports an 85% rate of resolving family conflict and returning teens to safe homes. Less than 1% of teens return to the facility after they have been helped. Some teens need help finishing high school or finding a way to college through Weber State University, which is where Kristen Mitchell received her degree in social work. Weber State has been very supportive of Ogden Youth Futures.

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In addition to word-of-mouth from homeless youth to homeless youth, Ogden Youth Future seeks to make itself known through fliers and contacts from adults who are aware of the needs of homeless youth. They also take supplies to the homeless youth where they are at, including canned goods and blankets to trailheads and other camping sites.

52% of the LGBT+ teens who are homeless say they have experienced suicidal ideation, and counseling is one of the services Youth Futures provides them. There is a 24/7 therapist on call to help with youth who are immediately suicidal, and depression counseling for the many youth who experience this. Hope Community Health Center is a partner for Youth Futures in this and in other medical concerns for the homeless youth.

Homeless youth are particularly vulnerable because many are out on their own for the first time, have never been hungry, and are not aware of the dangers of being on the street, including human trafficking. Some are so desperate that they are willing to trade almost anything for a chance to have a warm place to stay, a bed, and food. Ogden Youth Futures aims to first deal with a crisis situation, then offer aid, then help youth think about the future and preventing bad outcomes then. Mitchell says, "I'm passionate about helping these youth, I'd love to be able to take away their pain and their struggles. I know that is unlikely, but we can be a stopping point on their journey, a stepping stone on their path...maybe give them a resource that turns out to change their life. We save lives every single day...that's what this is all about."
The differences between Maine and Utah are substantial. Think LL Bean boots vs. cowboy boots. King pines vs. sagebrush. Moose vs. bighorn sheep. Oysters vs. Rocky Mountain oysters. This divide also holds true for treatment of public lands.

In America's West, vast national forests and national parks are owned by and open to the public. By comparison, in many parts of the Northeast, the closest many folks get to wilderness is the median strip of Interstate 95. As a result, Northeast residents like myself fiercely protect our ability to use and enjoy the forests, lakes, and coastlines to which access still exists.

On June 1, West will meet East when Utah Congressman Rob Bishop chairs a congressional hearing in Millinocket, Maine targeting a proposal from a private landowner who wants to donate 87,500 acres of land--and a $40 million endowment--to the National Park Service to create and maintain the Maine North Woods National Monument.

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There are differing views in Maine about whether to establish a new monument on the site, though polling indicates that roughly two-thirds of Mainers support the concept. But the Utah congressman's ideological opposition to conserving lands and wildlife is well outside Maine's mainstream.

Rep. Bishop heads up a 20-member congressional Anti-Parks Caucus. The caucus's goals include transferring and selling national forests and public lands in the West, ending the Land and Water Conservation Fund--a program that has helped create ball fields, trails, and open space throughout Maine and the country--and stopping the creation of new parks, wilderness areas, and national monuments.

Rep. Bishop has already come out in opposition to the North Woods proposal and is likely to trot out the same old tired arguments when he comes north. Anti-Parks Caucus members often rail against federal takeovers of public lands, though in the instance of the North Woods proposal, the landowner is asking to make a gift to the American people. They bloviate about the cost to taxpayers of maintaining these recreation areas, though in this case the cost will be covered by private donations. They bemoan the injustice of forcing outdoorsmen off their recreational lands, though hunting, snowmobiling, and other uses will be allowed in much of the proposed monument area.

Perhaps loudest of all, Anti-Parks Caucus members decry the economic losses from what they perceive as the elimination of working land--in the West that debate has centered on grazing rights and other uses. In the Kathadin region of Maine, some opponents claim a monument would harm the pulp and paper industry, yet nearly all the area's paper mills are already shuttered because of broader market forces. For better or worse, what happens to this particular parcel of land won't help or harm the region's timber industry.

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But if Rep. Bishop stops to listen when he comes to Maine instead of dusting off his Cliven Bundy-inspired talking points, he will find a state with a proud tradition of forging compromises to conserve its land and natural resources and support economic development.

Southeast of the proposed monument site, along the Penobscot River, groups that sat on opposite sides of the table for decades have come together to remove dams, bring fish back, and restore an iconic watershed that has also boosted tourism.

Maine's lobster industry has put sustainability at the forefront for generations, self-policing common-sense regulations like those that make it illegal to harvest egg-bearing females and set a maximum as well as a minimum size limit to leave the largest, most fecund breeders in the water. It's no coincidence that lobster is currently the highest value single-species fishery in the country.

Now in Maine's North Woods, residents are following a path that is uniquely their own. Through town halls, meetings, coffees, and engagement from the state's elected leaders, this proposal is being shaped, reshaped, and molded into a true Maine solution. The editorial boards of the state's two largest newspapers have endorsed the monument, as have more than 200 individual businesses, the Katahdin Chamber of Commerce, and a wide range of local organizations. So perhaps instead of pontificating about the evil deeds of Big Government, Rep. Bishop will choose instead to listen and observe during his visit to Maine.

If he does, Rep. Bishop will witness an impassioned discussion about Maine's prized forests, just the latest entry in a storied history of compromises. But if he doesn't, Mainers will happily pack up his lobster to go.

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Peter Rosenstein has written a much-circulated Huffington Post article entitled "Sanders Candidacy Devolving into an Arrogant Insufferable Self-serving Disaster."

The article couldn't be more wrong. This is a rebuttal.

The article is is consistent with a not-so-subtle campaign by Clinton surrogates to discredit Sen. Sanders in order to limit his influence in moving the Democratic Party away from Clintonian corporate-friendly triangulation and back to its FDR-style New Deal roots as a party representing the interests of the working and middle classes; to discourage voters from going to the polls for Bernie in California and the other remaining primaries; and to excuse the manifest weakness of Secretary Clinton as a Presidential candidate by blaming it on Bernie.

Let's be clear. There's only the most remote chance of Bernie winning the 2016 Democratic Presidential nomination. And when the primaries are over, there will need to be a united front between Bernie and Hillary and their respective supporters to defeat the racist, xenophobic, misogynist Donald Trump.

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But by every possible metric other than actually winning the nomination, Sanders' candidacy has been an astounding success that will change America and the world for the better in ways we can only begin to imagine.

Let us count the ways:

Hillary will likely eke out a win in the battle for the Democratic nomination, but Bernie has won the battle for the soul of the Democratic Party and the wider progressive movement.

Bernie (and fellow progressives like Elizabeth Warren) represent the future of the Democratic Party while Hillary and Clintonism represent the past. Bernie has won overwhelming majorities among people under 45-years old (as well as independents). These are the people who will dominate the Democratic Party and the progressive movement in years to come.

Bernie has raised voters' enthusiasm level. Despite limited media coverage, he regularly gets tens of thousands of enthusiastic supporters to his rallies, while Hillary struggles to get a few hundred or a few thousand. Democrats will need the enthusiasm of Bernie's supporters to defeat Trump.

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Bernie's campaign has become the largest progressive movement in recent history. As I've previously written, it will hopefully transform itself into a permanent mass progressive socialist/social democratic/progressive organization that will both run progressive candidates at every level of government from dog-catcher, to City-Councils, the State Legislatures to Congress, and organize popular campaigns, sometimes including large-scale demonstrations and even non-violent civil disobedience, for progressive change.

Bernie has placed the issue of America's corrupt campaign finance system front and center on the political agenda. And he's done it not only with words but with deeds, raising over $200 million from over 8 million individual contributions averaging $27, while Hillary has relied on larger contributions and several Super PACs. Until millionaires, billionaires and corporations are no longer allowed to buy our elections, it's unlikely that we will solve any of the nation's serious problems. Bernie is leading the way.

Bernie has made "democratic socialism" a word that can now be spoken in polite company. 42% of Iowa Democratic caucus-goers identified themselves as socialists. A year ago, I doubt if the number would have been 4%. Increasingly, younger people reject unfettered, unregulated neoliberal forms of capitalism and are looking for an alternative. Bernie has started to provide one.

Bernie has set the political agenda for the Democratic Party and the progressive movement while Hillary has followed meekly behind. He has made the issue of economic inequality one of the pressing issues of our times. Raising the minimum wage to $15; guaranteeing healthcare to all Americans; making it possible for every student who wants it to get a free college education at a public institution; increasing social security benefits by lifting the cap on social security taxes for wealthy taxpayers; creating well-paying jobs by investing in our crumbling infrastructure; taxing Wall Street transactions; breaking up the biggest banks who tanked the economy and threw millions out of work; opposing corporate-friendly trades deals that send American jobs overseas: These are the winning issues for Democrats. Hillary and the Democratic Party would be wise to appropriate much of Bernie's programs if they want to defeat Trump and win over voters who've been left out of the neoliberal global economy.

Bernie has emphasized that climate change is the existential issue of our times. He opposes fracking. And he wants to put a tax on carbon. Adequately addressing climate change could literally determine the future of the human race on this planet.

Peter Rosenstein's Huffington Post article scornfully concludes, "Bernie you LOST...While you have achieved your fifteen minutes of fame and made a real difference in the discussion if you want to actually make a difference on the issues you care about you will gracefully leave the stage [sic]."

If the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign adopt Rosenstein's arrogant and demeaning attitude towards Bernie and his supporters, they will make it likely that fewer of Bernie's supporters will turn out to pull the lever for Hillary and defeat Trump.

There are still 9 Democratic primaries and caucuses remaining with 930 delegates at stake, including the Big Kahuna, California, with 546 delegates. While it's improbable that Bernie will win the remaining contests by a large enough margin to gain a majority of the pledged delegates, there is no reason for Bernie to "leave the stage" and deprive voters in those 9 states of the opportunity to voice their views.

Moreover, Bernie will likely come into the Democratic Convention with 45%-47% of the pledged delegates. Yes, Bernie should support Hillary to defeat Trump and urge his supporters to do the same. He's already said that he'll do everything in his power to prevent Trump from becoming President.

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But an anti-Trump united front between Hillary supporters and Bernie supporters is a two-way street. To be effective, it will require the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party to incorporate many of Bernie's principles and ideas.

That includes making the Democratic Party more democratic by eliminating unelected Superdelegates and opening as many Democratic primaries as possible to independents in the future. 44% of the electorate identifies as independent and Democrats need their participation and support to win.

It also includes incorporating many of Bernie's themes and policy proposals, not only into a Democratic Platform that no one reads, but into Hillary's actual campaign. Thematically, that means making an end to the corrupt campaign finance system and an economy rigged in favor of the billionaires and corporations against the working and middle classes the core of the Democratic Party. Programmatically, it means going beyond many of Hillary's timid proposals to incorporate such things as a $15 minimum wage, free college tuition, increased social security benefits, and a tax on carbon.

Bernie has had way more than "15 minutes of fame". He has inspired millions to work to change the world for the better. He has fundamentally changed the political dialogue and set the future agenda for the Democratic Party, the progressive movement, and America as a whole.

Hillary and the Democratic Party would be wise to welcome much of Bernie's values and agenda into their campaign. To paraphrase Rosenstein, "Any other scenario places you in the position to take the blame if Trump wins."
One year after the earthquake, Nepal has become the poorest country in Asia, surpassing Afghanistan. Last week, I visited the Kathmandu valley for a few days as part of a fact-finding trip organised by the Freedom Fund, an organization funding NGOs fighting slavery in the frontlines.

Trafficking here is an endemic sickness in this beautiful country, where people have to migrate to find work and send money home. Often they fall prey to traffickers and slavers ready to take advantage of the most vulnerable. It is estimated that one Nepalese in 100 is subject to some form of slavery today.

I was able to see the worst and the best during this trip. The worst: the police stations where Nepalese dream to work because these are the places where you can become rich -all from corruption. The worst: children who have been sold and re-sold endlessly for the sexual gratification of people with no shred of morale.

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The best: three women in their forties, who have survived the most abject outrages and ordeal for years before turning into real heroes after they were rescued. These women, Sumita Danuwar, Chari Maya Tamang and the third one, who wants to stay anonymous, were 9, 12 and 14 years old when they were taken from their villages in Nepal to the sinister red light district of Mumbai where they were turned into sex slaves for many years. In 1996, they were freed when the police raided a few brothels releasing 500 girls, of which almost 200 hundred Nepalese - the young Nepalese girls are very valued in India for their fairer skin and their beautiful smiles. This raid was publicised all over India and Nepal.

This was far from the end of their ordeal for these three women. The Nepalese government refused to repatriate them in fear that they would spread HIV/Aids in the country. Thanks to a few NGOs they finally left their squalid shelters in India where they were still stigmatised as prostitutes to return to Nepal. Twelve of the girls decided to stick together refusing to be separated across different shelters. But as soon as back in Nepal, they were all put in hospital, in a special unit to undergo HIV tests. Most of the women were found positive. They were treated as pestiferous, even by the doctors who didn't know how to deal with the virus.

It took the women months before they realised that being trafficked and sold in prostitution was not their fault and that they were indeed victims.

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That was when they decided to create an NGO to help other survivors like them. But to be able to do so, they had to prove their Nepalese citizenship. The task wasn't an easy one: they had to go back to their villages and find their families, families which they left many years ago as young children. They had to convince their fathers to recognise them, not an easy task when they were ashamed: "we had sometimes to bribe our own fathers," they said. All in all, it took them four years until finally, in 2000, they were able to set up Shakti Samuha, thanks to a grant of 500k rupees from Mama Cash, a well known international NGO.

Today, Shakti Samuha, is present across many vulnerable locations in Nepal and operates shelters in Kathmandu offering fantastic programs of rehabilitation, training, legal aid and psychological support to hundred of survivors that the organization rescues every year.

As part of the rehabilitation programme, a girl that has been rescued spends three months in intense psychological support. Anxiety and depression are constantly assessed by a number of counsellors. An individual recovery plan is designed by a case manager for each and every survivor. After three months, if the child wants to go back home, the organization assesses if the return home is feasible: would this be too dangerous as the survivor could be enslaved again.

If the girls prefers to stay at the shelter, they are taught different crafts to develop new skills and facilitate a full psychological recovery. The fast recovery takes up to minimum six months; a slow recovery can take up to three years during which victims receive different kind of training. When they are strong enough, they are then moved to 'half way homes' where they can come and go freely for 6 to 12 months. If they find a job, they take a flat of their own.

What these three women have built is truly remarkable. Today, these former child slaves receive support from many international funders to rescue but also rehabilitate victims. They also work on prevention of the risks in villages where so many parents still believe that to send their daughter to Kathmandu is the only way to secure a good life for her.

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The real ray of hope for me, came from a meeting with judge Tek Narayan Kunwar, whose most remarkable achievement is to implement the law and make sure that justice is given swiftly and equitably. The judge, who is in his forties, has enforced a simple obligation across his district: to champion the rights of the victims and ensure that a case is judged in 90 days (not in ten years), and to make sure that the witness is indeed protected. This "fast track justice system" where the survivor is protected against all kinds of intimidations from their slavers, where he/she is given the right to speak behind a curtain is truly revolutionary.

As judge Kunwar said, speaking of him and his staff, "we provide smile service". The system is though on criminals: it imposes severe penalties. For example, if the trafficker cannot pay compensation, the judge will ask the government to pay damages to the victims. In 2013, the Judicial Council of Nepal named Tek Narayan Kunwar the Best Performing Judge: he had proven in his district that without spending more money, justice could be rendered efficiently. Today people no longer dare to try to corrupt him, he says in a big smile. No small achievement.

At the other end of the spectrum, we also visited a brick kiln in Bakhtapur, where the proud owner showed us that they were no children working in his factory -a rarity in Nepal, as in India.
Full disclosure: I'm not a Bernie Sanders fan. Perhaps it's because my memories don't stop at the year 2000 when some believe Ralph Nader's third party candidacy cost Al Gore the presidency. Those people have to look further back in time--Bernie Sanders is making us relive 1968. His determined bid to radicalize the Democratic Party, and the zealotry of his supporters, could well propel Donald Trump into the Oval Office, much the same way Richard Nixon squeaked by Hubert H. Humphrey because disaffected Democrats and Independents reluctantly rallied behind The Happy Warrior too late to carry the election.

That indeed would be a radical achievement for Sanders, not one to be proud of, however.

One of the first politicians to openly fight to end segregation, Humphrey was a true progressive from a state, Minnesota, that was truly progressive back then. His loyalty as vice president to Lyndon Baines Johnson kept him from breaking off support for the war in Vietnam until late in the election campaign.

The anti-war activists never forgave him. By the time some fell in line behind him, Nixon could not be stopped. Instead of burying the Republican Party under 12-16 consecutive years of Democratic presidencies, the disaffected Democrats and Independents provided Nixon and the GOP a life line which ultimately gave us Watergate.

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Enough already! Sanders must stop attacking Hillary and focus all his vitriol at Trump.

Bernie Sanders is Jewish, as am I. He grew up in Brooklyn, as I did. He went to Brooklyn College. Me, too. But there is no joy, no pride in seeing Sanders succeed any more than he has because it would harm, perhaps fatally, Clinton's election as the first woman president. He is damaging the Democratic Party he just recently joined. He is building a wall his supporters will not cross in November to vote for Clinton if she is the party nominee.

I often wonder how Afro-Americans feel about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. How could they feel any pride when he consistently turns his back on his heritage. Earlier this week he was the lone dissenter on a case that overturned the conviction and death sentence of an alleged killer because Georgia prosecutors had systematically excluded blacks from his trial jury. This was no bleeding heart liberal decision. Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. wrote the opinion and fellow conservatives Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy concurred.

Thomas repeatedly fails to see the recurring discrimination Afro-Americans suffered and continue to endure. Bernie Sanders is the Jewish American version of Clarence Thomas.

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Perhaps Sanders, and for that matter any politician who wants to speak authoritatively about the Arab-Israeli conflict, should live in and not just visit Israel. Yes, Sanders spent time on a kibbutz some 50 years ago. Today Israel is much different, as are its neighbors.

Let him live next to the Gaza Strip for a month. Live with the constant threat of missile and mortar bombardments and the uncertainty that attack tunnels are being dug under your very back yards. Then, spend a month in Gaza and see how Hamas has transformed the land into a military zone among residential communities, how Hamas has diverted home building material into tunnel construction, how Hamas indoctrinates children to hate Israelis and Jews.



Perhaps then Sanders et al would understand why Israel is justified in retaliating not just in kind but in force when Hamas or its surrogates strikes. Hamas wants to wipe Israel off the map. Wants to kill Jews. Israel just wants to live in peace.

Let's be clear. I abhor actions that Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has taken. It is appropriate and acceptable to criticize Israeli policy. But it is neither appropriate nor acceptable to question Israel's response when its enemy is sworn to its destruction. Survival trumps a proportional response to terror. Only a fool engages in combat hoping for a stalemate.

I am not a one-issue candidate, but Bernie Sanders' position on Israel has made me more sympathetic to many of my co-religionists who vote Israel right or wrong. In a close election, Jewish voters in New York, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois, New Jersey and other states who are repulsed by the influence Sanders is trying to wield could pull the Trump lever and send our country into an abyss we could be in for generations.
Dear Donald,

You have already made history. Now you want to make it to the White House.

Here's a suggestion: Lead on the issue of money in politics. The public gets it.

When asked late last year by the Pew Research Center "what is the biggest problem with elected officials in Washington," the number one response was they are "influenced by special interest money."

It's time to start showing people, with specific ideas, how the influence of special interests would be different under President Trump.

I've heard from a few friends of yours that you like short memos and bullet points, so I'll be brief.

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Four ideas: 1) Create ways of funding politics that empower the little guys. 2) Reduce the influence of lobbyists. 3) Make it all transparent. 4) Put a cop back on the beat.

The point of these ideas is not to "get money out of politics," but to have politics funded by more people--middle class people--instead of by very few people. When we all fund politics, then we all have more power over politicians. And we all stay more engaged in the process of governing. That's what we call American democracy.

Here we go:

First: New ways of funding politics. You have said, "I have friends who are in Congress and they run every two years...All they do is fundraise. They don't really govern...Their whole life is raising money." You even said, "We can think about different forms of campaign finance laws."

The good news is that different models for funding elections already exist. The Government by the People Act sponsored by Representatives John Sarbanes (D-MD) and Walter Jones (R-NC), is based on the high-functioning system in your hometown of NYC. It would help get politicians off the old fundraising treadmills--20-30 hours a week of dialing for dollars and attending lunches and dinners hosted by lobbyist "bundlers"--and incentivize them to reach out to everyday Americans who can give $25 or $50, but not $2,700.

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You could combine this with the bill proposed by Representatives David Jolly (R-FL) and Rick Nolan (D-MN), which would ban politicians from directly asking donors for money, either on the phone or in person. If they can't do the asking, it would help trigger them to make the transition to online small-donor fundraising.

Second: Reduce the power of lobbyists. You: "These are lobbyists, these are people that don't necessarily love our country. We have to stop it. We have to stop it."

Well, how about stopping lobbyists from using money to get what they want. Legislative decisions should be made based on merit, not money. In South Carolina lobbyists can't donate to politicians' campaigns. Straightforward. In Connecticut, lobbyists can't donate more than $100 to a campaign or a PAC. And they can't make any contributions during legislative sessions.

Third: Transparency. Complete and immediate. You've said: "I want transparency. I don't mind money coming in. Let it be transparent." Unfortunately, "dark money" is going through the roof. Since 2004, it's increased by 5000%. Most of it is being run through nonprofits. If such groups are involved in electing or defeating candidates for office, they should be required to disclose their donors, just like candidates' campaigns and PACs. That seems fair enough. And all groups that spend money to influence elections should have to disclose their donors immediately, not months after the elections have passed.

Fourth: Put a cop back on the beat. You: "Super PACs are a disaster...it's only going to get worse." They are a disaster in part because they're flouting the laws. So how about passing the bipartisan Restoring Integrity to America's Elections Act, aimed at overhauling the dysfunctional Federal Election Commission. This legislation would end the gridlock that has paralyzed the agency. It would also ensure our tax dollars--its budget is about $60 million a year--do not go to waste.

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That's it. Four pretty simple ideas to address a big, big problem that's been getting much worse in recent years. All viable. All constitutional. All ready for the kind of attention that only you can bring to them.

As a businessman and former political donor, you understand better than most how average Americans are getting a raw deal because of this rigged system. Some voters have already flocked to you because of that. But you need to keep it up.
[Note: Continually thinking about how disastrous the last seven years have been, I did some imagining and research on what the world would be like if Al Gore had become president in 2001. Such a process is really about how important it is to elect the right president. I asked friends and acquaintances for their ideas, I read books by and about Gore, and I watched again his September 2000 interview with Oprah Winfrey, where I learned about his favorite book and movie and his art teacher. Here are some of my findings.]

The Presidency of Al Gore, 2001-2009

On January 20, 2001, Al Gore, the candidate who won the most votes, becomes the 43rd president of the United States.

President Gore follows up on the many urgent warnings from the intelligence agencies that Osama Bin Laden is determined to strike in the United States. The 9/11 planners are caught, and their plots are aborted.

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In Afghanistan, the Taliban warns that it will destroy the two giant 1,500-year-old statues of the Buddha in the Bamiyan Valley. Much of the world sees these serene figures as symbols of wisdom beyond time, but they offend conservative Muslims. Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke talks with the Pakistani foreign minister, who reminds him that Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world and suggests that if aid to the poor there is increased, the Buddhas will be spared. Gore calls the American Buddhist actor Richard Gere, who immediately raises $50 million for the Afghani poor, and the Gore administration promises $5 billion in direct aid over the next five years. The Taliban agrees to preserve the statues.

Gore's favorite film, Local Hero, the Scots eco-comedy, becomes a best-selling DVD. The film is about how ancient values of subsistence, closeness to nature, and community defeat the rapacious forces of the oil industry. People like quoting the old Scot who puts the kibosh on the oilmen: "The business left, but the beach is still here."

Republicans are squawking that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is a threat to the safety of the country, that he has weapons of mass destruction. Gore asks the United Nations to send its weapons inspectors back into Iraq, and after six months of searching, they find none. Saddam is in what Eliot Weinberger calls "the 'autumn of the patriarch' mode: holed up in his palaces writing his trashy novels, and oblivious to the details of government." Gore brokers a deal in which Saddam's novels are translated into English and published and he agrees to slowly loosen up some of the restrictions on the Kurds and Shias and bring them into the government.

In 1998, as vice president, Gore proposed a NASA satellite, Triana, to provide, from a distance of 930,000 miles, a continuous view of the sunlit side of the earth. Triana would measure global warming by measuring how much sunlight is reflected and emitted from the earth and would monitor weather systems. Triana is built and launched in February 2003. In late 2004, it sends back images of the beginnings of a great tsunami that might have killed hundreds of thousands if it had gone undetected in its early stages. But Triana's continual data feed allows people to be warned to flee to higher ground, and only a few dozen perish.

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The president's favorite book, Stendahl's The Red and the Black, becomes a bestseller. People like quoting the book's young hero, Julien Sorel: "So there, this is what these rich people are like. First they humiliate you, then they think they can make it up to you by monkey business!"

Recognizing that nothing good can come from the continuing Israeli-Palestinian standoff, Gore sends Holbrooke and Vice President Joe Lieberman to broker a peace. In May the two sides sign a peace accord, in which Israel agrees to go back to the 1967 boundaries, the Palestinians recognize Israel's right to exist, and both sides renounce violence. The Republic of Palestine is founded in 2002.

President Gore has a nightmare: He becomes president on January 20, 2001, but the next day he is incapacitated, and Lieberman becomes president. In the spirit of the close election, Lieberman appoints George W. Bush as vice president on January 22. The next day Lieberman is incapacitated, and Bush becomes president and appoints Dick Cheney his vice president. The Bush-Cheney presidency starts January 23, not January 20. Immediately Bush begins abrogating treaties of long standing that kept the world at peace. Terrorists destroy the World Trade Center on September 14, 2001. Bush enacts draconian laws that make America a police state. People constantly refer to "9/14" as the day that changed everything. President Gore wakes up in his bed in the White House in a cold sweat, the dream disappearing from his conscious mind but the numbers 9 and 14 puzzling and haunting him at odd moments for the rest of his days.

As vice president, Gore signed the Kyoto Accord on Climate Change in 1998, but there were not enough votes to ratify it in the Congress, and there still are not. President Gore, however, is able to implement most elements of the treaty by executive order. He begins a process of education about global warming and publishes a book on the subject. He sponsors twenty-four hours of concerts with rock and pop stars, Live Earth, on every continent, and broadcast on television, radio, and the Web to raise awareness about climate change and global warming. A third of the planet's population watches and hears the concerts and has a pretty good time in the process. Soon every nation has ratified Kyoto, and the climate crisis begins to ebb. The temperatures of the oceans stop rising, and thus the severity of hurricanes stops increasing.

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Early in 2001, acting on urgent warnings from the Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA, the president directs that the New Orleans levees be reinforced and where necessary rebuilt, and the nearby wetlands protected and expanded. When hurricane Katrina strikes in August 2005, the wetlands absorb much of the flooding, the reinforced levees hold, and New Orleans suffers only minor damage.

People start reading Gore's favorite philosophers, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, and Reinhold Niebuhr. They quote passages like this from Merleau: "We struggle with dream figures and our blows fall on living faces." And this from Niebuhr: "The sin of man arises from his effort to establish his own security; and the sin of the false prophet lies in the effort to include this false security within the ultimate security of faith. The false security to which all men are tempted is the security of power. The primary insecurity of human life arises from its weakness and finiteness."

The United States and the nations of the former Soviet Union agree to destroy the nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons built up during the Cold War. The president halts and junks the Star Wars strategic defense initiative boondoggle. Every nation signs a treaty to begin eliminating their weapons of mass destruction. The military-industrial complex must now make a transition. Converting the country, and the world, to alternative energy sources other than fossil fuel and nuclear becomes a new growth industry.

The special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom continues, as does the close relationship between the progressive governments of Tony Blair and Al Gore, begun under Bill Clinton. As planned, Blair carries through the New Labour vision of the New Jerusalem, with higher quality of life and better public services, similar to those in France. In 2008, he is re-elected for an unprecedented fourth term.

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President Clinton had twice shaken hands with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and now President Gore sends Holbrooke to Caracas to draft a treaty of cooperation with Chavez. Gore arrives in the Venezuelan capital, where he and Chavez sign the treaty. Later, they talk about their mutual love of Victor Hugo's great novel of the dispossessed, Les Miserables. Chavez tells Gore that he was named for its author. They quote from memory lines from the great book. Gore remembers this, about Jean Valjean: "Then he asked himself if it was not a serious thing that he, a workman, could not have found work and that he, an industrious man, should have been without bread." Chavez responds with what Jean Valjean's savior, the Bishop of Digne, says: "Jean Valjean, my brother, you belong no longer to evil, but to good. It is your soul I am buying for you." Gore replies with this about the inspector who hunts Valjean: "Javert was always in character, without a wrinkle in his duty or his uniform, methodical with villains, rigid with his coat buttons." Chavez says this about Fantine: "What is this story of Fantine about? It is about society buying a slave. From whom? From misery. From hunger, from cold, fron loneliness, from desertion, from privation. Melancholy barter. A soul for a piece of bread."

Gore and Howard Dean, his Health and Human Services Secretary, begin having regular discussions with Canada's Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, about that country's single-payer health care system. Gore plans to introduce universal health care in the United States step by step. His health care bill, narrowly passed in 2001, covers all those age eighteen and under by 2004, and everyone else by 2007.

The president invites to the White House the person who had the most influence on him, his high school art teacher. The Smithsonian exhibits some of Gore's paintings.

By a few votes in each house, Congress passes Gore's tax cuts for middle- and lower-income people. But also by a few votes in each house, the Congress passes tax cuts for the rich and super-rich, which Gore vetoes. The rich and super-rich continue paying their same rate. Soon, the gap between rich and poor, which has been increasing since the Reagan administration began in 1981, begins decreasing.

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The undamming of rivers, begun seriously under Clinton/Gore, continues, and the ancient vibrant river life of salmon, shad, freshwater dolphin, and manatee returns.

U.S. Army Specialist Casey Sheehan becomes a Chaplain's Assistant. In 2005, his tour of duty up, he returns to California to visit his mother, Cindy.

A bird alights on a Bamiyan Buddha.
By U.S. Library of Medicine

Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, an outspoken advocate for women's rights, was the first woman ever awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Two years later, the medal was revoked. Congress changed the Medal of Honor criteria to include only "actual combat with the enemy," and honors bestowed upon some 911 others who served the military in other capacities -- such as medical care for the wounded -- were voided.

Undaunted by this, as she was in the face of other slights in her life, Walker wore the medal every day till the day she died.

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Not until 112 years later was the award to her restored -- posthumously -- by President Jimmy Carter.

Mary Walker was born in Oswego, in upstate New York, in 1832. She was the fifth daughter of Alvah and Vesta Whitcomb Walker, and all children were encouraged to pursue their education.

She and her sisters originally went into teaching after completing their studies, but Mary Walker enrolled in Syracuse Medical College at the end of her teenage years. She graduated with a doctor of medicine degree in 1855.

Dr. Walker went into private practice and married Albert Miller, also a physician, and the couple moved to Rome, New York. At the beginning of the Civil War, she volunteered for the Union Army as a civilian. The U.S. Army had no female surgeons, and at first she was only allowed to practice as anurse.

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During this period, she served at the First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas), July 21, 1861, and at the Patent Office Hospital in Washington,D.C. She worked as an unpaid field surgeon near the Union front lines, including at the Battle of Fredericksburg and in Chattanooga after the Battle of Chickamauga.

As a suffragette, she was happy to see women serving as soldiers and alerted the press to the case of Frances Hook in Ward 2 of the Chattanooga hospital, a woman who served in the Union forces disguised as a man.

In September 1862, Walker wrote to the War Department requesting employment as a spy, but her proposal was declined. In September 1863, she was employed as a "Contract Acting Assistant Surgeon (civilian)" by the Army of the Cumberland, becoming the first female surgeon employed by the U.S. Army. Walker was later appointed assistant surgeon of the 52nd Ohio Infantry. During her service, she frequently crossed battle lines and treated civilians.



Outside a Union hospital, 1862



On April 10, 1864, she was captured by Confederate troops and arrested as a spy, just after she finished helping a Confederate doctor perform an amputation. She was sent to Castle Thunder in Richmond, Virginia, and remained there until August 12, 1864. She was released as part of a prisoner exchange.

While she was imprisoned, she refused to wear the clothes provided because, she was told, they were more "becoming of her sex". Walker was exchanged for a Confederate surgeon from Tennessee on August 12, 1864.

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She went on to serve during the Battle of Atlanta and later as supervisor of a female prison in Louisville, Kentucky, and as the head of an orphanage in Tennessee.

In 1865 Dr. Walker was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for her bravery during the Civil War. Her name was removed from the honor list of awardees in 1917, along with others, when the terms used to designate eligibility for the award were reappraised. She refused to surrender the medal.

Drexel University photo

In the mid-nineteenth century, as women were campaigning for a more public and professional role in society, clothing became a central issue in the struggle for women's rights. Feminists argued that tight corsets and long heavy skirts were bad for women's health and even designed to limit the possible activities that women could undertake.

By 1861, her typical ensemble of choice included trousers with suspenders under a knee-length dress with a tight waist and a full skirt. She was arrested for impersonating a man several times, although she argued that Congress had awarded her special permission to dress in this way.

Despite the controversy surrounding her career and her politics, Dr. Mary Walker was proud of her accomplishments as a physician and an advocate for women's rights. As she concluded in 1897,

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"I am the original new woman... Why, before Lucy Stone, Mrs. Bloomer, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were -- before they were, I am. In the early '40's, when they began their work in dress reform, I was already wearing pants ... I have made it possible for the bicycle girl to wear the abbreviated skirt, and I have prepared the way for the girl in knickerbockers."



(To read about the two-time Congressional Medal of Honor winner who became a vocal war critic, click here).
A recent editorial in The Detroit News couldn't make it clearer. Michigan's education system needs reforming, and the business community must play a leading role in creating the change Michigan needs. That's the message that will be made, time and time again, as Michigan's policy leaders head to Mackinac Island to set the course for our state's future.

Thanks to some forward thinking legislators, the future is already here. House Bill 4552 was created after Michigan business leaders told legislators they had good paying jobs, especially in skilled trades and manufacturing, but couldn't find enough workers. One of the keys to keeping this sector of Michigan's economy strong, they said, is to make sure school counselors know about the current career and college options available to Michigan students, especially the career opportunities that don't require four years of college. In sharing this information with students and families, counselors will help students better understand the full menu of choices that await them after high school, and help them find one that meets their individual talents, interests and needs.

The idea behind the bill is simple. If students have a better understanding of the exciting possibilities that await them after high school, they'll be motivated to do better work in high school. That's why the bill is supported by businesses, skilled trade workers, retired military personnel, and law enforcement officers. Just like school counselors, they know that students with a goal are more motivated to succeed, and are more likely to succeed as a result.

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The goal of House Bill 4552 is to help students, but they aren't the only winners in this bill. Michigan employers who are now forced to look out of state and overseas to meet their talent needs will now be able to offer internships, on the job training, and even training scholarships to Michigan students. That's what happened when a group of Michigan school counselors visited a plant last year, where they learned of an owner's desire to help pay for the training of students who would be interested in coming to work for him. Students wouldn't know about that chance if it weren't for the counselors, and the counselors wouldn't know about that chance if it weren't for the tour. That's effective professional development.

The bill also helps school counselors, who desperately need relief from the largest single challenge of their work--being overwhelmed. Too many students, too many duties unrelated to counseling, and too much teacher-based professional development makes it easy for school counselors to feel they aren't given the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of their students. House Bill 4552 modifies counselors' current professional development requirements by focusing part of their activities on staying current with career and counseling trends, the kind of information counselors say they need, and the kind surveys say parents and students want. The bill doesn't require more time from counselors; it gives them the freedom to make better use of the time they already spend on learning how to best serve their students.
Gdansk has been currently experiencing a great time for its economy and labor market. The number of employed persons in the Pomorskie region grew by more than 40% between 2006 and 2016. It is an unprecedented growth in the EU and a proof of our rapid economic development. The city of Gdansk and the whole region becomes one of the most interesting places in Europe for investment.

For years labor market has been a sore spot of European economy. High rates of unemployment, precarious conditions and stagnation have been unfortunately its distinctive features in many countries. Also Poland suffered high rates of unemployment in the beginning of the transformation towards a free market economy in the 90s.

Now Poland, the Pomorskie region and Gdansk are experiencing the time of dynamic growth. Eurostat has already reported that the total number of employees in our region grew from 679,000 in 2006 to 971,500 in 2015, which is more than 40% growth in just 10 years (Employment by sex, age and NUTS 2 regions)! The whole EU, 28 countries, on average, noticed almost no growth (213m in 2006 vs. 215,6m in 2015), the same like the Euro-zone (169,9m vs. 171,3m).

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There are not many European regions getting close to the numbers of the Pomorskie. Scottish region of Highlands and Islands and Luxembourg noticed growth of 30% each. Poland's Mazowieckie region with the capital city of Warsaw grew by about 28%.

The numbers confirm what we see daily in Gdansk: new construction sites, new investments announced and a lot of people relocating to Gdansk for better career opportunities. As a first-choice city for business (among others, ICT, financial services, shipbuilding, logistics), Gdansk boasts its great location at the Baltic sea coast, skilled labor and talented graduates. Students and employees are attracted not only by a great labor market, but also by conditions of living here.

Shipbuilding industry is one of the strongest assets of Gdansk economy. Photo: gdansk.pl

As the mayor of the biggest city in the region, I have always struggled for improving our economy and labor market. Building trust and cooperation with city's stakeholders has always been my goal. Creating friendly environment for investment, policies and strategies supporting labor market based on knowledge, effective use of the EU funds and open approach were tools we used for developing local economy.

Infoshare - a great event for technology sector takes place in Gdansk on May. Photo: J. Pinkas

It was a long way from the troubled economy of the 90s. to the current days of flourishing labor market in Gdansk and the Pomorskie. We had to take many hard decisions, but Eurostat data proves we chose a right direction.

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The crisis in Mali has landed upon front pages again this week, and what has become a recurring headline is cause for concern: 'Terror groups target United Nations peacekeepers.' Five UN troops were killed in an ambush in central Mali on Sunday. The attack came only days after a UN convoy hit an improvised explosive device and later came under fire from armed assailants. The latter attack also killed five peacekeepers and injured three others from the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA). The surge in jihadist violence in the West African nation has made Mali the UN's most deadly operation globally, with more than a dozen attacks targeting peacekeepers this year alone. Sixty-four peacekeeping troops have died in action since the mission arrived in 2013. Despite the constant threat, there are more than 11,900 UN Peacekeepers currently deployed to help stabilize the country and assist in the peace process between the Malian government and rebel groups following a 2012 coup. Unfortunately, militant extremist groups continue to act as spoilers to the peace process, launching attacks against the UN and against civilian targets -- like hotels and businesses. What's more, peacekeepers in Mali are not alone in these dire challenges. More and more UN peacekeeping missions are taking place in dangerous and remote environments around the globe. In fact, two-thirds of all peacekeepers are currently deployed to areas experiencing active conflict, and they are increasingly viewed as targets for attack. The string of attacks against peacekeepers will almost certainly continue as the terror threat in the region grows. In response, the UN must not withdraw; rather, we must maintain strong support for the UN presence and notably peacekeepers, who are putting their lives on the line to support a future of peace amid a growing terrorist hotbed. Peacekeepers will be best positioned to protect civilians--including young children who are threatened by these insurgents-- if their mission is fully resourced.
I have run a small business for a long time now and it's been downright fascinating to watch the technological sea change that has taken place. As I write in The New Small, no longer are the most powerful tools only the purview of large enterprises. Even in this most democratic age, however, it's not always easy for small businesses to be found. Against this backdrop, I recently sat down with Mark Cenicola, Chairman, President, and CEO of BannerView.com. The following are excerpts from our conversation.

PS: What's the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) to small businesses?

MC: For many small businesses with limited advertising budgets, SEO is a way for them to get traffic to their websites which can result in qualified sales leads. Unlike paid advertising, SEO has a lasting benefit that doesn't disappear once you stop paying.

PS: What can businesses do to improve their search rankings?

MC: Improving a website's search ranking involves many factors including both onsite and offsite optimization. Since a business has direct control over their onsite optimization, they should start there first. We've created a free website keyword optimization tool. It allows a business owner to enter specific keywords. It then provides tips that can then be implemented that should help improve the possibility of ranking higher for that set of keywords.

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PS: What's the difference between onsite and offsite optimization?

MC: Onsite optimization is everything a website owner has control directly on their website. It includes the content of the page and the code behind the scenes that can tell the search engines how to index the website. Offsite optimization is everything that happens outside of the website. Google revolutionized search by taking into account what was happening on other websites along with what's happening on the website to determine the search ranking. A link from another website to your website based around a certain set of keywords is an example of offsite optimization.

PS: What can businesses do to improve their offsite optimization?

MC: Activities like guest blogging or doing interviews such as this can help improve offsite optimization. When you do guest posts or offer to do an interview, it's typical to ask for a link back to your website either within the article or via a byline. It can also help to build relationships with complementary organizations where it makes sense to trade links. However, only non paid links are considered valuable in the eyes of Google.

PS: How does Google know the difference between paid and unpaid links?

MC: It can tell if a link comes from an advertisement server. The company's algorithm knows that certain websites accept payment for direct links to a third party website. While they don't necessary always know whether a link is paid, they are pretty good at discounting low quality links, those that don't appear to be natural.

PS: How is the explosion of mobile devices affecting SEO today?
Children running ahead of parents on sidewalk, Manhattan, New York City

I'm joining a team that consists of 75+ avid travelers and travel writers all around the world banding together to write a book about the trip that changed our life. The book will be crowd funded with 100% of the proceeds donated to charity. Although meeting the Dalai Lama and going on volunteer trips are on my wish list for the future, each family we have taken so far brings us together and helps me reflect and understand myself better. We strive to make the most of our limited vacation days to be travelers rather than tourists -- visiting and learning about different countries, the people and their culture. I believe in exposing children to the world outside the suburbs is key to having an enriched childhood. I'm going to be writing about our visit to the Picasso Museum in Barcelona which was instrumental in our family trying to learn that there is more to Picasso than jumbled up limbs and eyes in wrong places.

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My travel story might not be as captivating and inspiring as some of the other stories you are going to read in this wonderful book but when I learnt about Save the Children and Unbound -- both are great organizations that sponsor kids and their community, I was excited to be a part of it in some small way. Thai, a friend I met online is a founder of travel blog Up Up and a Bear, has been traveling the world extensively for the past five years and has a passion for interviewing adventurers about their journeys. He recruited top writers, editors, and ambassadors to contribute to the book, which contains anecdotes ranging from stories about volunteering during a political coup in Africa to navigating the Sahara desert.

"Travel, for me and so many others, is such a powerfully transformative way to impact positive life change," says Thai. "The Project Alpha team hopes The Trip that Changed My Life inspires readers to take their own journeys of self-discovery by exploring the world's wonders and meeting the people who inhabit them."

We can do no great things, only small things with great love. ~Mother Teresa

Charity Details

All proceeds from the book will benefit Unbound and Save the Children. Unbound is the only child sponsorship program to receive a score of A+ from CharityWatch. 92.5% of Unbound's donations go straight into programs to help those in need and they are the only children charity to earn an A+ ratings from Charity Watch. Unbound's philosophy is to support the children through community-based solutions. This approach looks at the whole picture to ensure that the family unit and the community are built up at the same time. I really resonate with this strategy. It really does take a village to raise a child. I encourage you to read into Unbound's approach and mission. More details are available at the Unbound Sponsor a Child Page.

Save the Children works with children in 120 countries, aiding in initiatives on nutrition, health, education and more. In 2013, Save The Children helped to rescue 21 million children from being exploited, abused, and neglected. This charity was directly involved in propelling Honduras to become the 37th country to ban corporal punishment, which includes abusive actions towards children. Save the Children creates "Child-Friendly spaces" in the midst of crises and emergencies, even in the United States, which helps to reunite kids with their families in the cases of separation. The organizations promotes their programs that raise awareness to combat child trafficking, amongst other forms of child maltreatment. In addition to aid for children and families in extreme cases, Save the Children features community-led activities to educate kids on how to protect themselves and better their lives.

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Sponsorship

If you are a travel startup, tourism agency, or an established travel company, looking to engage with travelers around the world to solidify and/or expand your brand -- you can sponsor this noble effort. You may also be a philanthropist looking to support a great cause. You can find details

about the different way you can sponsor.

Support

Here is how you can support this great initiative, three versions of the book --

The trip that changed my life

will be available: e-book with colorful images and links, a paperback and a colorful coffee table book. You can go

to buy the book through indiegogo! I urge you to sign up and show your support and as a bonus you get to read some awesome travel stories!
What is the toughest question you have ever had to answer as Press Secretary? originally appeared on Quora - the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights.

Answer by Josh Earnest, White House Press Secretary, on Quora.

April 23, 2015. It was among the toughest days that I have answered questions from the White House press corps. President Obama announced that an American counterterrorism operation had led to the accidental death of an American hostage, Dr. Warren Weinstein. He was an American who was taken hostage in Pakistan while doing humanitarian aid work. The US government had been working around-the-clock for years to locate him and bring him home.

President Obama announced Dr. Weinstein's death that morning, offered his condolences on behalf of the country to Dr. Weinstein's loved ones and ordered that a significant amount of information about the operation be declassified so that the US government could be as transparent as possible what happened. The President said that day that when the United States makes a mistake, we acknowledge it and hold ourselves accountable. Dr. Weinstein was an American who selflessly dedicated his life to helping those less fortunate around the world. His death was a tragedy.

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The war in Syria has forced more than five million people to flee from their homes. The vast majority of them are not in Europe. They are living in neighboring countries as the conflict in Syria stretches into its sixth year with no signs of abating. The Syrian population in Jordan exceeds 1 million now, representing 11 percent of the population, with more than 650,000 of them registered as refugees. The numbers continue to grow but an even more alarming crisis is brewing along Jordan's northern-eastern border causing yet another enormous and complicated refugee situation. I have been following the Syrian refugee flow into Jordan since its inception in March 2011, prior to any crisis or camps. The few Syrians who fled the unrest back then were staying with Jordanian families in the northern border town of Ramtha. Syrians, like Jordanians, thought it was a temporary conflict and they would return home fairly quickly. Of course, that has not been the case. The Syrian civil war, in its sixth year now, has fueled a massive exodus that continues to grow. It has triggered the world's largest humanitarian crisis of our time. More than a year ago, Syrians began fleeing to an area located over a sand ridge or berm. A demilitarized zone on the Syrian/Jordanian border, the berm prevents refugees crossing into Jordan and limits help from aid workers. As a result, it's believed some Syrians have died in the berm area. Jordan's government argues it has security and economic concerns about the refugees, some of whom come from areas controlled by Isis. The fact that Syrians are willing to live in a desolate stretch of desert for many months now reveals the dangers of the Syrian conflict and the level of desperation among the refugees. A satellite image published in November 2014 revealed nearly 155 informal white shelters, with nearly 2700 people stranded on the other side of Jordan's border. Today that number has increased to more than 50,000 people, effectively creating a massive unmonitored refugee camp. Once known more for scorpions and snakes, the newly populated area is now vulnerable to traders, smugglers and drug dealers.

In order for the stranded refugees at the border to receive food rations by the World Food Programme and other aid items, the UN refugee agency registers the refugees. Aid workers have been dispatched to the border yet it is taking the UN team nearly four hours each way, per day, to reach a waiting area where the refugees are being registered. In the few hours the UN staff is there, they are registering a few thousand refugees a day. As it stands, it's a painstaking slow process because of the time spent driving on unpaved desert dirt roads, resulting in vehicle accidents and sometimes causing injuries to aid staff. The international community, including Germany, must help to facilitate this registration process and in turn the aid distribution by dispatching helicopters for aid workers to register many more of the stranded refugees each day. The international community can also help the Jordanian government build a road for safer and easier access. Of the more than 50,000 refugees on the border, Jordan is allowing between 200-300 refugees daily into the country only after thorough security screening and immense pressure from the international community. The refugees who enter are being sent to Azraq refugee camp, also far from being an ideal place for living. It was deliberately built far from any settlement, a half-hour's drive from the city of Azraq, mostly an arid desert area about 60 miles east of the capital, Amman. The newly arrived refugees in the Azraq camp are enclosed and closely monitored but have easier access to services, personal safety and aid. There is electricity provided by generators only in very limited areas. Recent polls in Jordan reveal worsening public attitudes toward refugees, yet many Jordanians know that Syrians are likely here to stay. In fact, only 2 percent of Syrian refugees in Jordan left for Europe and nearly one-third of Syrians residing here plan to stay for good, according to a study on the economic and social integration of refugees. The trip to Europe is treacherous and costly but as desperation grows and the summer months loom ahead, it is yet unknown whether more refugees, despite the tightening of borders, will attempt to make the journey. The Syrian refugee tragedy is a global humanitarian and security crisis and unless Europe steps up to help Jordan take immediate steps to try to improve the health care and security at the berm, it will mean more injuries and deaths. It means riots and security deterioration at the defacto camp that will in turn endanger women and children but also cause more border security concerns for Jordan. Other concerns include human trafficking and exploitation Despite the alarming numbers at the berm, aid agencies and the government are wary of speaking publicly about the refugee situation on the border. This should not be the case. Some ordinary Jordanians and others who I spoke to and who visited the border area argue the fact that aid and limited services are being distributed encourages desperate Syrians to flock to the stranded area and remain there. Moreover, the mere thought of entering Jordan encourages others to leave their belongings and lives behind and flock to the border. This is what aid agencies and politicians call a pull factor, which creates a paradoxical situation, a catch-22, for both international organizations and governments. Therefore, the recent announcement of an agreement to air-drop food and other supplies to towns besieged by the Assad regime is welcome news. The international community continues to be weary of hosting Syrian refugees, but they are also not contributing enough money to help host communities where the Syrians are living now. This is causing harm to both refugees and those living in host countries. So far, the UN Syria appeal for this year is only 22 percent funded. In the immediate future, Germany and the international community must dispatch helicopters to aid refugee registration, increase medical aid and help the Jordanian government maintain both border security and increase security at the berm. Jordan should speak more publicly about what is taking place at the berm and the challenges it is facing on the border. In the long run, however, the absence of a political solution to address the root cause of the humanitarian crisis will mean more complex emergencies like the one growing on Jordan's border. It will also mean more threats to Europe and more parents seeking a haven and a future for their children.
Ancient Greek philosophers believed that music had a therapeutic purpose -- including to treat depression, mania and even hangovers. In the Native American culture, music has played a similar role: In fact, the U.S. Indian Bureau contains 1,500 songs used for healing purposes. During the fallout of World Wars I and II, musicians traveled to hospitals to play for the thousands of veterans who were suffering both physical and emotional trauma. Their positive responses led medical facilities to begin hiring musicians, and before long, it became clear that these individuals would need some additional training to fully leverage the healing power of music.

Today, that power is finally starting to be better leveraged thanks to the evolution of Neurologic Music Therapy (NMT): the therapeutic application of musical components to address cognitive, sensory and motor dysfunctions. In recent years, NMT has progressed rapidly primarily due to advancements in brain-imaging technologies, which have revealed the brain's plasticity (its ability to change) and also the different networks in the brain that music can activate. Meanwhile, a growing body of research has emerged showing that NMT can help patients affected by a range of conditions including stroke, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's dementia, traumatic brain injury and Multiple Sclerosis.

According to a report by Michael H. Thaut at Colorado State University, a study of patients with MS showed that word lists were significantly better learned and recalled when presented and rehearsed via song as opposed to standard spoken presentation and rehearsal. Another study showed improvement in executive function and overall emotional adjustment as well as lessening of depression and anxiety among brain-injured persons treated with NMT. In a pilot study published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, the effects of all three NMT techniques combined were shown to significantly improve gait and the sense of body position and movement in patients with Parkinson's disease.



MedRhythms -- a neuro-rehab company based out of Boston and Portland, Maine -- focuses on this intersection between music, neuroscience, and technology, offering therapy to both individuals in their homes and medical facilities. And now that the company is offering its services throughout New England, CEO/co-founder Brian Harris estimates MedRhythms is treating between 400-500 patients a year.

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Gradual growth

Launched at the end of 2014, MedRhythms' team has doubled since last July -- and Harris indicated that over the next few months, it will likely be growing exponentially quicker. In January, MedRhythms forged a key contract with the Spaulding Rehabilitation Network, where they are providing their inpatient and outpatient NMT program -- the most comprehensive of its kind in the country.



(Co-founders Brian Harris and Owen McCarthy)

Harris, who has consulted on the implementation of multiple hospital NMT programs in the U.S., says the field has certainly been steadily maturing, but emphasized that healthcare is a very "slow-moving beat." Still, he noted that a surge in research on music and the brain is raising awareness around the benefits of NMT.

In the fall, Harris will be speaking at an annual conference organized by the American Congress of Rehab Medicine that focuses on progress in rehab research, co-chairing a special interest group on the arts and neuroscience. This year, for the first time, the ACRM conference will have four symposiums on music and neuroscience: a notable win for NMT as a whole.

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"To be acknowledged by the ACRM is a huge step," said Harris. "We are at the beginning of a very fast-moving, exciting trajectory in healthcare -- something that's going to become a very important part of peoples' recovery in the next five to ten years."

Improving access through tech

According to Harris, roughly 30 percent of people who suffer a stroke still aren't better by the time their insurance benefits run out. That's where technology comes in: MedRhythms is building a digital platform that will enable the company to deliver NMT at a lower cost and without the need of an actual therapist.

"Our mission since day one has been figuring out how to get NMT to the people who need it," said Harris. "A lot of people need help, and unfortunately, we're likely going to see a shortage of therapists in the coming years."

The software platform will include sensors and machine learning capabilities that can record data from movement, as well as proprietary algorithms that use music and can respond in real-time like a therapist would. Harris revealed that the prototype for the first platform has already been completed, and the goal is to begin rolling out individual products for the platform by next year. Still, he emphasized that introducing this technology does not mean MedRhythms is getting rid of the traditional in-person therapy component. Rather, it will enable the company to help more people -- particularly those in rural areas who might not have access to a medical facility that offers NMT. MedRhythms is currently working on raising an initial round of investment, which will be used in part to bring this technology to market.

"We're using all of the clinical knowledge that we've learned from our therapists to build out the software so that it's actually informed by the practice," said Harris.

In February, MedRhythms hired Dr. Ronald E. Hirschberg to serve as the company's clinical lead. Dr. Hirschberg is an instructor in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School, consultant physiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and staff physiatrist at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, and he is helping the company to coordinate research trials as well as collaborating on the digital platform.

Newfound hope

Harris has a slew of patient success stories to cite since the company's founding. One stroke patient was left with severe walking impairments and underwent Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation (RAS), a particular NMT intervention that uses rhythm to access the movement centers in the brain. Recent research has been strong in favor of RAS to improve gait and upper extremity function. And in just one RAS session, this particular MedRhythms patient doubled his walking speed and tripled his distance while also eliminating the cane he had been relying on.

In a recent Facebook post, one patient's husband recapped his wife's first NMT session at Spaulding Rehab, walking with a cane and walker as well as unaided at varying rhythms to a metronome and then the beat of music.

"This is the first time in nine years that we have some optimism that we may be able to stop the slide toward a wheelchair," he wrote.

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While all NMT therapists must be proficient with a piano, guitar and their voice, Harris emphasized that musical knowledge or skill is not required for a patient to reap the rewards of the therapy. And perhaps one of the most remarkable aspects of NMT is how rapidly one can see results: a MedRhythms patient who is unable to speak can gain the ability to say a new word in as little as one session.

"The fact is, 97 percent of humans -- regardless of age, culture, religion, ability, disability, talent -- their brains respond the same to music," said Harris.
As we wind down the last primaries, there are all kinds of suggestions and demands as to what Democratic Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders should do to unite the Party. There are calls for Sanders to withdraw, some saying he should not be on the ticket, and there are calls for Clinton to do more to energize the base. I hear the noise - there are some things I agree with and some that I do not. What we ought to do however is look at the larger goal and gauge our strategy on that as opposed to drawing lines of division amongst ourselves. At the end of the day, 10 years from now it will not matter who got more face time on cable news or who got more headlines in newspapers if we regress rather than progress. There is far too much at stake from Supreme Court nominees to protection of the Affordable Care Act, Affirmative Action, voting rights, women's rights, LGBT rights, criminal justice reform and more. This Presidential election is at a pivotal moment when we cannot allow divide and conquer to push us back further and lose many of our gains. If we don't wake up now, we will look back at this time period and realize that this is when we were effectively silenced.



It's easy to forget exactly where we were as a nation when President Obama was first elected into office in 2008. And it is just as easy to overlook the substantive changes he ushered in despite facing the toughest opposition in Congress and elsewhere that one could imagine. In addition to reviving our economy from the brink of catastrophe, President Obama was successful in bringing about historic health care reform, saving the auto industry, bringing many of our troops home, changing our image on the world stage, getting a historic nuclear deal signed with Iran, reviving relations with Cuba, enacting Wall Street reform, directing his Justice Department to investigate corrupt police departments, deliver a criminal justice bill (that is on the brink of passing) and much much more. What our first African American President also did was serve as a symbol that everything - even the highest office in the land - is attainable regardless of the obstacles placed before you.



It is that sense of hope and aspiration that we must hold on to as we begin to wind down his Presidency. We cannot become complacent or disillusioned into thinking that we can stop participating in the process. And we must never become so comfortable as to believe that our work is done - far from it. Our collective goal must be to continue the legacy of President Obama, to elect someone that will choose the next couple of Supreme Court Justices who best represent our interests. Whether it's preserving voting rights, keeping the Affordable Care Act in place so that millions of Americans continue to receive health insurance, protecting Affirmative Action (the case of Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin) and more, the Supreme Court will make critical decisions that will directly impact all of us. Whoever the next President is will make key choices regarding who to nominate to the Court, so we must not take this election lightly.



It is perfectly normal to have disagreements within one's house. But when those small divisions tear from the greater objective, then we have lost focus from what truly faces us long-term. It doesn't matter how many people Sanders draws to a rally if they do not lead to these longer goals and victories. And it doesn't matter how many votes Clinton wins if the Party doesn't bring in everyone and stay focused on the main target. We sometimes confuse the preliminary for the main bout; the main event must be that we continue moving this nation in the direction that President Obama and others did when they steered the ship towards even more advancement.



When I was a young kid watching and listening to those leading the great civil rights movement, I remember many would sing a song with the lyrics: "hold on, hold on; keep your eye on the prize."



We must keep holding on today.



The prize is not noise, but rather using noise to change the melody of the mood of American social policy.
By Emily Shugerman



This post originally appeared on Revelist.

Abercrombie -- the brand that haunted your middle school days and made you think that wearing two polos stacked on top of each other would suddenly make you popular -- is dying. And I am here to sing its eulogy from the treetops.

Abercrombie's stock dropped 11% on Thursday -- even more than originally predicted. That's not exactly new for Abercrombie, which lost $63.2 million in its first quarter last year, and has yet to show steady improvement. A Google News search for the company turns up dozens of articles about the company's decline.

Execs tried to shake things up starting in 2014, ousting their controversial CEO, Mike Jefferies. The company vowed to cut the sexy images from their bags, and removed the once-coveted moose logo from most of their clothing.

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But these changes to Abercrombie's "brand" don't obscure what's at its rotten core: A company set on propagating an outdated, unattainable image of perfection. I know, because I helped them.

I started working for Abercrombie my first year of college. My second week of school, two women approached me at the campus coffee shop and asked if I wanted to model for their company.

"We work for Abercrombie and Fitch," they whispered, leaning in conspiratorially. It was my official invite to the "exclusive" club Abercrombie has built.

I went to the interview, admittedly a little flattered at the request. Once there, I learned that "model" is Abercrombie code for sales associate -- a title used so the company can legally hire and fire their front-of-house staff based on appearance. I arrived 20 minutes late to the group interview, told them I had no retail experience, and was still hired on the spot. Not as lucky were the three other (much more qualified) women at my interview, who had submitted applications instead of being "scouted." I never saw them again.

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A friend who worked at the company headquarters in Columbus, Ohio, confirmed that hiring at Abercrombie is based largely on looks.

"I was asked to go look at a group of people interviewing and see if they were attractive enough," she told me. Later, when she applied to work at one of the retail stores, she was required to submit only a picture.

A "model's" job is to stand in predetermined areas of the store -- purportedly to assist customers, but largely to act as a human mannequin. As a model I was provided a uniform, which changed seasonally, but was always short on fabric.

Every aspect of my appearance was inspected -- I was once sent to the back to scrub eyeliner off of my face because it violated the "natural" look they strove for.

Appearance approved, I was stationed at front of the store for hours on end, with nothing to do but spout pithy, store-fed "taglines." I once complained to a co-worker about how I was always assigned the entrance position, where I stood shivering in my barely-there outfit. She told me I should take it as a compliment.

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"You remember that picture they took of you your first day?" she asked me. I did. I had been told it was for record keeping. "They send that picture to the district manager. You have to be approved to stand at the entrance."

I don't say this to brag about my appearance. I wasn't hired because I am any great beauty, but because I fit within the Abercrombie boundaries of what is acceptable: white, blond, tall, skinny. The company needs people like me working at its stores to attract people like me to shop at them -- and to keep everyone else out.

Reflecting on it now, it is a frighteningly Donald Trump-esque business model. Both Trump and Abercrombie harken back to a mythical, by-gone era of American greatness, where the wealthy, healthy and white were celebrated, and everyone else was largely invisible. In Trump's case, this is accomplished by building walls. In Abercrombie's, it's done by constructing strict "look" policies that only a select few can meet.

Samantha Elauf learned that the hard way, when Abercrombie denied her a job because she wears a hijab. So did thousands of Latino, Black and Asian employees who Abercrombie paid out in 2005 for denying them front-of-house positions. And so did I, when I learned that my membership to this privileged, front-of-house class was based on my willingness to act simply as decoration.

I wish I could say that Abercrombie's declining sales were evidence of America's rejection of this mentality. I wish it signified a greater acceptance of diversity, and an acknowledgement of women's virtues other than beauty. But as Donald Trump has taught us so well, it's not acceptance or acknowledgement that talks -- it's money.

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(Islamic Cultural Center at 96th St & Third Avenue NYC)

I live next door to the Islamic Cultural Center, the first Mosque ever built in New York City, which is located at 96th Street and Third Avenue. Every morning I buy a coffee from Omar, a Muslim who runs the corner food truck, and some of the people who live in my building worship at the Mosque and send their children to school there as well. I'd walked past the Mosque every day for ten years, yet I knew almost nothing about the religion or culture, other than what I saw or heard (mostly negative) from various media outlets.

I am Jewish, and I faced anti-Semitism growing up and remember my father repeatedly telling me that people fear what they don't know. Learning about the Mosque was easy. I went to the website and clicked the contact tab and called the number it provided. I explained to a receptionist named Mohammed that I was a neighbor and wanted to introduce myself, and an appointment was quickly scheduled with Imam Saad Jalloh. I found the Imam to be reserved and formal, yet he greeted me with a warm embrace before we went to his office, and he and his entire staff made me feel completely at home.

I asked the Imam to tell me about Islam, and he began by explaining that Muslims contribute Zakat -- an obligatory charitable donation that is very similar to tithing in Christianity -- which is used to help those in need throughout the community. "We have a program called Midnight Run that reaches out to the homeless and distributes food and clothing to them once a month between 10pm and 5am," said Imam Jalloh. "We've also helped people buy bus tickets, get MetroCards, find jobs and places to live." The Mosque distributes nearly 25 thousand dollars in charity every three months, all from Zakat.

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"We built the Mosque for men and women to come and pray and to serve the community at large, whether they are Muslims or not." -- Imam Saad Jalloh

Between 700-1000 people visit the Mosque on a daily basis. The number rises to 2,000 people on Fridays for congregational prayer and the worshipers are comprised of more than 45 different nationalities.

Our conversation shifted to misperceptions of Muslims. "The reason that many people don't understand Islam is that they've only heard it discussed in a negative way," said Imam Jalloh. "ISIS does not represent Islam and Muslims. What they say is nothing more than a trick to show the wrong face of Islam. I've always told people if they want to learn about something they should go to the source."

I went to the source and found everyone I met at the Mosque to be warm, friendly and accepting of other cultures and religions. The women working in the office were treated with kindness and respect, and like my friend Omar, they are all a part of my community just like anyone else.

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What truly makes America great is that it has always been a melting pot of different cultures and religions all living together in harmony. We are a nation of tolerance and freedom, not of oppression and tyranny. It's incumbent upon us to educate ourselves about what we don't know, rather than listen to people who propagate hate and fear.
On June 23, the question of whether Britain will leave the European Union (colloquially known as "Brexit") will be put to a referendum vote. President Obama has already weighed in, declaring that Britain ought to remain part of the EU because the United States desires the partnership of a strong Britain--and that strength is made possible through membership in the EU. These words suggest that the outcome of this vote will no doubt ripple around the globe.

As an American businessman in Europe for more than 30 years, I deeply understand that Brexit could greatly change the way in which business is done in Europe and beyond; it's clear to me that the pro-Brexit point of view not only ignores why the EU was formed in the first place, but also sets Europe up for a future of weakness. At the center of the Brexit question are concerns about sovereignty and the centralization of power in Brussels. But it's not the right question Europe and the world should be asking--and it disregards the very values on which the EU is based.

Now, don't get me wrong: Of course, the relationships that make up the EU are not perfect. But member countries need to be willing to work to make this union a better one, while accepting that they won't always agree--and that that's okay. Even with its flaws, the EU is still a useful tool for uniting member countries in pursuit of common goals--namely, physical and economic security.

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Keeping Europe safe and secure was the impetus for the ideation and formation of the European Union. The modern EU grew out of the immediate postwar period, when the countries of Europe sought to guarantee a level of stability in the aftermath of much tumult. Seventy years have passed since then, and so it's easy for many to forget the history of this union and instead focus on its imperfections. Those in favor of Britain's exit from the EU say that Brussels has too much control over the affairs of individual EU countries, that power over European affairs has become too centralized and not representative of the various viewpoints across the continent.

These concerns miss the forest for the trees: The EU provides security not only for member states, but also for the rest of the world. Former British Prime Minister Sir John Major has said that Brexit would leave the EU "gravely weakened" on the world stage. I would have to agree. Should Britain exit the EU, it would no longer have the same access to intelligence and military capabilities brought to bear by the 27 other member states. The pro-Brexit camp is worried about British sovereignty, but if its position wins on June 23, they will face a new reality in which Europe--including Britain--has less power and has less influence on global events.

Membership in the EU is also very important to Britain's economic security. The UK is critical to the EU's success--but it's also true that the EU is equally important to the UK's success. According to IMF data recently published by The Economist, more than half of all British goods exported between 2005 and 2014 were sent to the EU. However, if the Brexit referendum is approved, this trade relationship might be reevaluated and renegotiated. Analysis from Bloomberg Intelligence finds that the UK's membership in the EU may have been responsible for boosting British trade by 10 percent over what it otherwise would have been. Renegotiated trade terms might include tariff increases, which could eradicate the economic benefits Britain has enjoyed from the union.

The fact that President Obama has spoken out on the Brexit vote shows that it could have immense ramifications for the future of Europe's role in the world. In 2000, I cofounded the European Executive Council, as a way for CEOs and other top executives to discuss the challenges and opportunities posed by conducting business in Europe. Taken together, our companies represent many countries, resources, employees and clients throughout Europe, all of which have a stake in this upcoming vote. And given the uncertain and complicated state of world affairs, Brexit is coming at a time when European strength is especially important. History has shown that Europe works better when it's united, when the countries work in tandem. The EU is flawed, but it can be improved: The countries of Europe should be asking how to make the union better, rather than turning to withdrawal. A UK exit from that union likely creates a future in which Europe's role in the world will be significantly--and problematically--diminished. I say fix it, not Brexit.


Jack Moreh, Learning and Education - Brain Functions Development Concept

David Livingstone Smith is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of London, Kings College, where he worked on Freud's philosophy of mind and psychology. His current research is focused on dehumanization, race, propaganda, and related topics. David is the author of seven books and numerous academic papers. His most recent book Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave and Exterminate Others (St. Martin's Press, 2011) was awarded the 2012 Anisfield-Wolf award for nonfiction. He is also editor of How Biology Shapes Philosophy, which will be published by Cambridge University Press later this year, and he is working on a book entitled Making Monsters: The Uncanny Power of Dehumanization, which will be published by Harvard University Press.

David speaks widely in both academic and nonacademic settings, and his work has been featured extensively in national and international media. In 2012 he spoke at the G20 summit on dehumanization and mass violence. David strongly believes that the practice of philosophy has an important role to play helping us meet the challenges confronting humanity in the 21st century and beyond, and that philosophers should work towards making the world a better place.

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Robert: David, your great book, Less Than Human, has stayed with me since I first read it a few years ago. What, if any, connections should I make between race, racism and dehumanization?



David Livingstone Smith

David: Racism and dehumanization are very intimately connected. To explain the connection, I need to say a little bit about what race and dehumanization are.

Let's start with race. Races are supposed to be real, objective divisions of the human family--analogous, perhaps, to breeds of dog. To be a member of a certain race is to be a certain kind of human being. Racial identity is supposed to be innate and unalterable (you don't have any choice about what race you belong to) and transmitted from one generation to the next.

There are many systems of racial classification and these vary from one historical era to the next as well as from culture to culture. Contemporary Americans regard Irish and Jewish people as white, but this wasn't always the case. In the past, both Irish and Jewish people were thought of as belonging to non-white races. When English settlers first landed on the shores of North America, they considered Native Americans as white, and only later came to regard them as members of an alien race (the "merciless Indian Savages" of the Declaration of Independence). And, in Sudan, the dark-skinned residents of the northern part of the country regard those living in the south, but not themselves, as "black." But Americans would see them both as members of the same race.

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Most people think that it's obvious that races are real biological categories. However, most of the scholars who study race think that races are invented categories. When one group of people sets out to oppress another, they "racialize" them--that is, they think of them as fundamentally different from and, importantly, inferior to themselves. Prior to the trans-Atlantic slave trade, sub-Saharan Africans did not consider themselves members of a single, homogeneous "black" race. Instead, they identified themselves as members of any one of a number of distinct groups--as Akan, Wolof, Mbundu, etc. The idea of "blackness" was a European invention, designed to legitimize the oppression of Africans.

The idea that races are invented will probably sound crazy to a lot of people. They'll think of it as a silly idea that only an academic who's out of touch with the real world could come up with. Surely, there are visible features such as skin color, hair texture, facial morphology, and body build that set the races apart from one another!

It would be foolish to pretend that there aren't obvious biological differences between human beings and that these differences are tied to certain geographical regions. If you're a light-skinned person with blue eyes you very probably had lots of ancestors from northern Europe, and if you're a dark-skinned person with tightly curled dark hair you very probably had lots of ancestors from sub-Saharan Africa. Nobody worth listening to denies these facts about human diversity, but there's a big difference between race and diversity.

Phenotypic diversity is a fact, but race is a theory. It's what we call a folk-theory. It's a way of trying to explain human diversity by positing that there are a small number of "pure" types (races) of human beings--black, white, etc. According to the folk-theory, everyone is either a member of one of these pure types or a mixture of them. This theory of race is false, for all sorts of reasons. One reason is the fact that the biological traits that are conventionally associated with race--like skin color--vary continuously across geographical regions. Imagine taking a slow train from equatorial Africa to Scandinavia. As you travel north, the skin color of the people that you see lightens gradually. So any line that you choose to draw between so-called white people and so-called black people is bound to be arbitrary. The very same consideration applies to all the other "racialized" traits as well.

Now, there's one more key point about race that I need to discuss before moving on to talk about dehumanization. According to the folk-theory, a person's appearance is an indicator of their race, but it isn't what makes them a member of that race. Perhaps an analogy will make this a little clearer. Sneezing, a stuffy nose, and a sore throat are all symptoms of having a cold, but they aren't what make it the case that one has a cold (being infected with a cold virus). If a person's race were purely a matter of how they look, it would be possible to change one's race by changing one's appearance. But (as evidenced by the public outcry surrounding Rachel Dolezal last year) this doesn't fit with the way that we ordinarily think about race. Also, consider the notion of "passing." A person is said to "pass" as a member of a race if they misleadingly present themselves as belonging to that race on the basis of their appearance (for obvious reasons, it is most often members of oppressed groups that pass themselves off as members of the dominant group, although there are some interesting exceptions). If race were really determined by appearance, then the notion of passing would make no sense at all.

The fact that the way that a person is racially categorized can come apart from their appearance forces us to look more deeply into what's really going on when we racially classify people. We seem to assume that every member of a race shares some deep characteristic or "essence" that is unique to that race--something "in the blood" or in the genes that's innate, unchangeable, and inherited biologically from one's parents.



The notion that there are racial essences doesn't have a shred of scientific support. In fact, it's totally incompatible with what science tells us about human variability. It's pure fiction, but it's a fiction that's stubbornly rooted in our ordinary ways of thinking.

Now we're positioned to move on to the topic of dehumanization. I need to start by clarifying what I mean by "dehumanization." The word "dehumanization" is used in all sorts of ways in both the scholarly and popular literatures. Some people see any kind of demeaning, disrespectful, or degrading treatment of others as dehumanizing. Others think of objectification--for example, the sexual objectification of women in pornography--as dehumanizing. And there are many, many more notions of dehumanization in circulation. When I use the term "dehumanization," I have something very specific in mind: when we dehumanize others, we think of them as subhuman creatures.

A lot of my work on dehumanization has been focused on explaining why this happens and explicating the psychological processes that underpin it. Briefly, I think that we dehumanize others to disable inhibitions against harming them. All social animals have built-in inhibitions against harming members of their communities. If these inhibitions weren't in place, their social groups would disintegrate. Human beings are far more social than any other mammal. We live in very large, highly cooperative groups in which lethal violence is relatively uncommon. However, we're also highly intelligent primates, and our great big brains enable us to recognize that it's sometimes advantageous for us to do violence to our fellow human beings. Dehumanization is a way of overcoming our inhibitions against performing acts of violence for our own advantage. Conceiving of other people as rats, snakes, lice, dangerous predators, or beasts of burden, makes it much easier to treat them inhumanely.

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Racism is often a precursor to dehumanization. In circumstances where one group of people wants to exterminate, harm, or enslave another group of people, the first step is to form the belief that the target group is racially alien. But this isn't yet dehumanization, because members of the target group are seen as inferior human beings, but human beings nonetheless. However, racism very easily transforms into dehumanization. When this happens, members of the oppressed group are no longer seen as inferior human beings, but rather as counterfeit human beings--beings that look like humans, but which aren't really human at all. I have written extensively about the transition from racialization to dehumanization: Native Americans, Africans, Jews and other racialized groups have all, at one time or another, been regarded as subhuman entities.

Robert: So, couldn't our great big brains be responsible for either innate or evolved processes that prompt us to quickly distinguish and categorize one face from another perhaps to determine friend from foe? Was the concept of race born as some kind of survival mechanism?

David: Because we're hypersocial primates, with a strong bias towards vision, we have a knack for recognizing and categorizing human faces. In fact, there is some very cool research from neuroscience showing that the human brain processes faces very differently than it processes other kinds of visual inputs. And yes, the ability to distinguish between friend and foe is one aspect of our social intelligence--but it's not the only aspect, and perhaps not the most significant one. However, distinguishing friend from foe is a far cry from sorting people into races. During our evolution, human beings lived in small, relatively isolated groups and rarely if ever encountered people who were "racially" different. It follows from this that prehistoric people's friends and foes were overwhelmingly likely to be members of the same "racial" group.

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More importantly, remember my point that racial categorization isn't simply the perception of biological diversity. It's a way of explaining diversity by categorizing people into types, and the evidence is simply overwhelming that the way that we carve up the human family into races is best explained by political forces rather than any innate tendency to distinguish friend from foe.

Having said all of this, I want to make it clear that I don't want to deny that the evolved structure of the human mind is irrelevant to racial thinking. Human beings are animals, and that means that evolution plays some role in explaining everything about us. The question is, what role does it play in any given case? I think that the evidence points to the conclusion that the relation between our cognitive evolution and our tendency to racialize others is an indirect one.

Robert: What is the difference between race and ethnicity?

David: Well, the difference is supposed to be that race pertains to biology while ethnicity pertains to culture. One way of cashing this out is to say that you can change your ethnicity but you can't change your race. But, in practice, the situation is a lot messier than these definitions suggest. The category "Hispanic" is supposed to refer to an ethnicity, but people classified as "Hispanic" belong to a diverse range of cultures. "African American" is thought of as a racial category, but it's actually a cultural one (Ethiopians have very little in common with African Americans, but they're considered members of the same race). Furthermore, ethnic categories readily become racialized, and vice versa. Although "Hispanic" is ostensibly an ethnic category, in practice it's increasingly being treated as a racial one. Jews used to be thought of as a non-white race, but nowadays Jewishness is at least ostensibly thought of as an ethnicity. Because the boundary between race and ethnicity is so permeable, many scholars have abandoned "race" and "ethnicity" in favor of the hybrid term "ethnorace."

Robert: Are there any positive applications for the concept of race in our society? What are the negative consequences of race consciousness?

David: Karl Marx once wrote, "The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living." That perfectly sums up my view of race. I think that race is a destructive and oppressive delusion--a nightmare. The idea of race has facilitated war, genocide, chattel slavery, and oppression for thousands of years. Think of the trans-Atlantic and trans-Saharan slave trades, the holocaust, the Namibian and Rwandan genocides, the extermination of Native Americans, Belgian colonialism in the Congo (which took the lives of as many as ten million women, men, and children), the genocide unfolding in Sudan as you read these words, and the atrocities perpetrated against African Americans in the South for a century after slavery was ostensibly abolished in the United States. Think of the racism still rampant in the world today--and the poverty, mass incarceration, and exclusion that comes in its wake. All of these, and many more, are legacies of racial thinking. The idea of race would have to have a great deal going for it to counterbalance the evil that has been, and continues to be, committed in its name. Some people argue that we need to retain the idea of race to justify affirmative action and reparations (both of which I strongly support). But acknowledging that African Americans and other racialized groups have been treated unjustly doesn't require us to retain the idea that there are races any more than, say, acknowledging the fact that many thousands of women were once executed for being witches requires us to retain the idea of witchcraft. Another argument for the positive value of race is that it provides a focus for solidarity among oppressed and marginalized people. This is true, but notice that the need for such solidarity is itself a result of racialized oppression. The idea of race created the problem for which it is offered as a solution!

Robert: How could the perception of race be successfully replaced?

David: I think that the project of getting over race needs to be pursued on at least three fronts. One is psychological. It's clear that there's something about how the human mind works that makes us vulnerable to the race delusion. This suggests that our strategies should take account of a sound understanding of the psychological forces that drive racial thinking. One view of the psychology of race, which I think has a whole lot going for it, is that our minds have a built-in tendency to essentialize, and that this explains why the idea of race comes so easily to us and why its so difficult to uproot. If this is right, then we should identify the circumstances that promote or discourage essentialistic thinking, and craft interventions accordingly. For example, there's psychological research suggesting that certain forms of speech (technically called "generics") encourage us to essentialize others. Perhaps avoiding those linguistic forms might help us get over race.

The second front is social and political. The idea of race is sedimented in our cultural practices and institutions, and is affirmed and reaffirmed every day in the media, on application forms that ask us to check off our race, and so on. We're all marinated in racial ideology, and an effective campaign against racialization needs to address the issue at the collective, structural level as well as the individual, psychological one.

Finally, I think that we need to address the problem educationally. Most people are ignorant of the hideous history of race and racism, and don't understand that folk-biological concepts of race are scientifically incorrect. A little education can provide a big bang for the buck. Once a year, I teach a course entitled "Race, racism, and beyond" to upper-level undergraduates. Many of these (predominantly white) students come to the course with very naive conceptions about race and racism, and learning the facts is a revelation to them. Some of them parrot that race is a "social construction" without any real understanding of what this means. By the end of the course, these students very often report that they feel cheated by the educational system for not addressing such an import subject, and many of them passionately express the view that this course should be a mandatory component of every college student's education. Almost without exception, they say that their views about race have been radically transformed. I find this immensely heartening.

It may be that the psychological and social forces are so formidable that we'll never be able to cure ourselves of the race delusion. But we don't know, because we've never tried.
Anti-Islamic State coalition military operations are underway, with the ultimate goal of destroying the Islamic State in Syria/Iraq. This involves liberating the cities of Mosul, Raqqa, and Fallujah, as well as all ISIS-entrenched positions on the Euphrates River, beginning west of Baghdad and heading north all the way to Raqqa and beyond, to Syria's border with Turkey. Since the Islamic State is fanatically committed to a single jihadist principle -- either victory or death ("martyrdom"), and a scorched-earth policy in retreat, any strategy to defeat and dismantle their so-called caliphate in Syria and Iraq requires thinking outside usual frameworks.

American leaders sometimes say, in effect, 'we don't understand ISIS at all, it's a totally new phenomenon.' To the extent that this is true, it is at best a half-truth. ISIS is a combination of elements and it can only be this combination of elements that's hard to figure out. In its individual parts, ISIS is quite clear. It's a projection of the worst, extreme and brutal interpretations of Islam: a Salafist/jihadist/terrorist ideology that produced a fearsome Islamist conventional army that has killed more of its own--Sunni Muslims--than Shi'a Muslims, Yazidis, Christians or anyone else. Its barbaric fighting methods, the decapitations, enslavement and torture, are part of a strategy, they are not barbarism for its own sake. Organizationally, there are two parts: the Islamic State so-called caliphate in Syria/Iraq, plus an always-changing transnational network of terrorists and local military forces in other countries such as Libya and the Sinai.

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Whereas the caliphate, the Islamic State properly speaking, was once the driving force and the source of expansion, today the balance has shifted between it and the transnational terrorist networks. The Islamic State in Syria/Iraq is going down while its terrorist attacks and bombings are increasing because an organization emphasizes what it does best. In this sense, the upsurge in terrorism, including the bombings in Baghdad itself, represent core weakness rather than expanded strength. The anti-ISIS coalition's strategic priority is total dismantling of the caliphate, because re-establishing a global Muslim caliphate was the rationale for creating ISIS in the first place. From the beginning, the jihadist organization's goal has been to restore Islam's power and religious prestige in world affairs by creating a new global theocratic institution. That credibility and prestige is what has attracted tens of thousands of fighters from more than 100 countries. The initial fanaticism has faded, but thousands planted in Syria and Iraq remain committed. The caliphate could, in fact, be destroyed militarily in a few weeks if major coalition powers were not so committed to limiting civilian casualties and the devastation of cities and infrastructure. As things are, it's unlikely to last another year or two, the hardest struggles being liberating the major cities that require siege and surgical attack. The transnational network of terrorist operations, however, will survive the demise of the caliphate, and ISIS terrorist networks, bereft of the caliphate, will intermingle with other jihadists such as Al Qaeda. Diligent international counter-terrorism will be necessary so long as the networks replenish themselves in various countries and regions, until the impulse to violent jihad finally burns itself out, however long it takes.

The Art of War against ISIS

Ancient Chinese warrior-philosopher Sun Tzu's slim treatise, "The Art of War," has been read in military colleges for over two millennia. Immensely influential, its laconic considerations on how to prevail in war provide modern strategists with unexpected points of view.

The key to victory, writes Sun Tzu, is that "[y]ou should take away the energy of their armies, and take away the heart of their generals ... When you do battle, it is necessary to kill people, so it is best to win without fighting.

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"The best policy is to use strategy, influence, and the trend of events to cause the adversary to submit willingly...Therefore those who win every battle are not really skillful -- those who render others' armies helpless without fighting are the best of all..." The translator, Thomas Cleary, says "the paradox of 'The Art of War' is its opposition to war. And as 'The Art of War' wars against war, it does so by its own principles; it infiltrates the enemy's lines, uncovers the enemy's secrets, and changes the hearts of the enemy's troops."

Sun Tzu is of course speaking philosophically, and not as an actual policymaker. It's not a matter of giving battle plans and a scorecard to decide what victory "really" consists of. Sun Tzu's main point is that war is first of all a matter of strategy, meaning intelligent conception, preparation, and execution -- plus luck. The important thing is to be able to think anew in every situation, not to automatically use a previously successful strategy, i.e., to fight the last war. Reconfiguring a country's military with new strategy and weaponry adapted to new situations is the essence.

Is winning without fighting ever possible? There are many examples. Arraying for battle and intimidating an enemy into surrendering was a classic case: Alexander the Great and innumerable conquerors after him massed before a city and demanded surrender, promising annihilation to the recalcitrant. Forcing appeasement -- Hitler's success at Munich with Britain and France -- is a modern example. If the best victory is to win without fighting through massing force, exploitation of psychological factors, and maneuver, second-best is surely to limit the damage as much as possible. On the weaker side, surrender or appeasement is thus sometimes a rational policy, rather than cowardice, when opposition is hopeless. In the modern world of human rights aspirations, making war with some emphasis on moral calculation adds that if war does become necessary, as a last resort, a so-called just war is best, with its concern for morally adequate goals and methods of fighting, as opposed to an objectively amoral "realist" war for national interest.

What is the situation in the war on ISIS? Coalition government and military officials are rightly prudent in what they say. When things are going badly it's useful to talk about 'tactical retreat.' When things are going well it's useful to play down how well things are going. The war against the Islamic State turned in favor of coalition forces late last year. Right now it's probably going better than the public is being told. An outsider such as this writer can be provocative: In spite of several spectacular terrorist bombings in Baghdad and elsewhere, the Islamic State's situation in the Middle East looks grim. Possibly fewer than 20,000 or even 15,000 fighters with a decimated leadership structure are hunkered down in defensive occupation positions over a large territory, essentially waiting to be attacked and killed.

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Only specialists now remember the frighteningly plausible map issued two years ago revealing ISIS's ambition to conquer most of the Middle East, Eurasia, and North Africa, or its plan to incite internecine Sunni-Shi'a war throughout the Muslim world, ultimately overthrowing the House of Saud to take over Mecca and Medina. The likelihood of such events unfolding has abated to zero, and even the mediatized individual and mass beheadings no longer keep international opinion awake at night.

What advice would Sun Tzu give concerning a plan for anti-Islamic State coalition military operations? A few more aphorisms from "The Art of War": Instill confusion and conflict in the enemy, "throw them into disarray ... Wait for them to become decadent and lazy ... Cause division among them," and disorganize their internal unity by working to intensify conflicts among their leaders, their fighters, and between them.

Disorient leadership and chain of command and communication (already being done successfully). Sun Tzu also advises disrupting their "system of rewards and punishments." Act surreptitiously to encourage killing among them. If punishments are immoderate, "there will be slaughter that does not result in awe." Crucially, encourage conflict between those who, abandoning the ideology of martyrdom, at this point want to live, and those who will insist on being killed.

Use both old tactics and new: Drop leaflets and use social media to demoralize fighters and give heart to the local population. Hack and troll their social media operations (much more important than de-radicalization propaganda). Emphasize incessantly that Islamic State's cause is lost and that ISIS has become a historic disgrace of Islam rather than its resurrection. Detail how many top leaders have been killed and give names. (Local fighters may be uninformed.) Emphasize the decline in number of new recruits. Emphasize, despite and because of the successful terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels, the dismemberment of ISIS's networks in Europe. Show that the strategic retreat to Libya is not succeeding. Emphasize deadly drone strikes by the United States, with dozens killed at a time.

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The strategic goal is to eliminate the choice the leaders set at the beginning: only victory or a martyr's death. Denying Islamic State this "success" -- i.e. they win even if they lose -- is the formula for getting them to move, to do something. Sitting under siege with no hope of new success will drag on fighters' enthusiasm. In the end, ISIS forces might commit collective suicide, but suicide is generally forbidden in Islamic texts and Islamist suicide/homicide bombings in the cause of jihad will be a bitter memory in Islam's history.

Limit ISIS's Options

Is it possible to talk in some productive way with Islamic State's leaders? Originally, they wanted to lure the United States into a new ground war in the Middle East. This failed. U.S. President Barack Obama refused to fight on terrain chosen by the enemy. Perhaps ISIS leaders, or some of them, can be convinced to meet with the coalition. Could something of value be offered them to stand down instead of insisting on being killed?

The coalition could give minor legitimacy to ISIS if there were a public call (not an "appeal") for talks. This would not involve negotiations, let alone diplomatic recognition as some kind of a state, but talks. The Islamic State caliphate structure has to go. Discussions would be private but their existence must be public, showing that ISIS is willing to discuss its future.

Two broad subjects could be discussed: the war and the Islamic State as a structure. As to the war, it's a hard fact for the Islamic State that its fate in Syria and Iraq is sealed. The question then is, if the so-called caliphate is in the process of being destroyed, does ISIS leadership want to do anything other than submit to fate? It could well be -- and probably is -- that martyrdom will be preferred by the great majority.

Discussions on the Islamic State as an Islamic religious institution should obviously prioritize religious representatives, leaving perhaps a minimal role for governments. Privately and to some extent publicly, many Islamist Muslim leaders opposed declaring a caliphate and naming a caliph. Al-Qaeda, in the person of its leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, opposed this and also condemned ISIS's extreme brutality, in particular targeting brother Sunni Muslims. Al-Qaeda's strategy, in contrast with ISIS, is a long game, a patient strategy of infiltration and internal takeover, the main example of which is the Nusra Front in Syria. The offer of talks among Muslims should be put as an invitation to ISIS leaders to demonstrate their superiority as a religious and ideological leader in the Islamic world. Even if they refuse, as is likely, there could be a shaming effect.

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Could the Islamic State's leaders be offered terms to abandon its occupation of cities? This is not absolutely unthinkable. For example, could they be allowed to surrender? What kind of surrender? If they agree to leave the cities, could they be guaranteed free passage, if necessary taking human shields, a horrible permission that nonetheless would leave behind an urban civilian population and city intact? Some jihadist fighters would go back into battle but some would be glad at the opportunity to get out of jihad.

And who on the Islamic State's side would make decisions? That is, who are the top leaders now besides the self-styled caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi? If, through good intelligence and luck, al-Baghdadi were meantime eliminated, would that change the structure of attitudes among the leadership? In Mosul, Raqqa, and Fallujah, among the local populations, many ISIS leaders are known. Could they be lured into talks, even separate talks in each city? These are possibilities that ought to be tested.

For after all, as bad as it is, civilian life in Mosul, Raqqa, and Fallujah today is far from the worst hell on earth. They are relatively peaceful, it seems, even if made so by terror. But the level of ruthless violence is less than it once was. Given the human and property destruction in other cities where Islamic State was ousted -- Ramadi, Kobani, and others -- everything should be tried to stanch the Islamic State's scorched-earth tendencies and to limit the damage and loss of life.
An honest essay has numerous characteristics: original thinking, a good structure, balanced arguments, and plenty more.

But one aspect often overlooked is that an honest essay should be interesting. It should spark the readers curiosity, keep them absorbed, make them want to stay reading and learn more. An uneventful article risks losing the readers attention; whether or not the points you create are excellent, a flat style, or poor handling of a dry subject material can undermine the positive aspects of the essay. The matter is that a lot of students think that essays should be like this: they believe that a flat, dry style is suited to the needs of educational writing and dont even consider that the teacher reading their essay wants to search out the essay interesting. You might want to have online essay editor service to boost your confidence in writing with an error-free output. Academic writing doesnt need to be  and shouldnt be  bland. The excellent news is that there is much stuff you can do to create your essay more attractive, while youll be able only to do such a lot while remaining within the formal confines of educational writing. Lets study what theyre.

Have an interest in what youre writing about

Dont go overboard, but youll be able to let your passion for your subject show.

If theres one thing bound to inject interest into your writing, its being fascinated by what youre writing about. Passion for a subject matter comes across naturally in your essay, typically making it more lively and fascinating and infusing an infectious enthusiasm into your words  within the same way that its easy to talk knowledgeably to someone about something you discover fascinating.

Include fascinating details

Another factor that may make an essay boring maybe a dry material. Some topic areas are naturally dry, and it falls to you to form the article more interesting through your written style and by trying to seek out fascinating snippets of knowledge to incorporate, which will liven it up a small amount and make the data easier to relate to. A way of doing this with a dry subject is to create what youre talking about that seems relevant to the critical world, as this is often easier for the reader to relate to.

Emulate the fashion of writers you discover interesting

When you read lots, you subconsciously start emulating the fashion of the writers you have read. Reading benefits you a lot, as this exposes you to a spread of designs, and youll start to require the characteristics of these you discover interesting to read.

Borrow some creative writing techniques

Theres a limit to the quantity of actual story-telling youll do when youre writing an essay; in the end, essays should be objective, factual and balanced, which doesnt, initially glance, feel considerably like story-telling. However, youll apply a number of the principles of story-telling to create your writing more interesting.

consider your own opinion

Take the time to figure out what its that you think instead of regurgitating the opinions of others.

Cut the waffle

Rambling on and on is dull and almost bound to lose the interest of your reader. Youre in danger of waffling if youre not completely clear about what you wish to mention or havent thought carefully about how youre visiting structure your argument. Doing all your research correctly and writing an essay plan before you begin will help prevent this problem.

Editing is a vital part of the essay-writing process, so edit the waffle once youve done a primary draft. Read through your essay objectively and eliminate the bits that arent relevant to the argument or labor the purpose.

employing a thesaurus isnt always a decent thing

Avoid using unfamiliar words in an essay; theres too great a likelihood that youre misusing them.

You may think that employing a thesaurus to seek out more complicated words will make your writing more exciting or sound more academic, but using overly high-brow language can have the incorrect effect.

Avoid repetitive phrasing

Please avoid using the identical phrase structure again and again: its a recipe for dullness! Instead, use a variety of syntax that demonstrates your writing capabilities and makes your writing more interesting. Mix simple, compound, and complicated sentences to avoid your paper becoming predictable.

Use some figurative language

Using analogies with nature can often make concepts more accessible for readers to know.

As weve already seen, its easy to finish up rambling when youre explaining complex concepts  mainly after you dont know it yourself. One way of forcing yourself to think about a couple of pictures, present it more simply and engagingly is to form figurative language. This implies explaining something by comparing it with something else, as in an analogy.

Employ rhetorical questions

Anticipate the questions your reader might ask.

One of the ways ancient orators held the eye of their audiences and increased the dramatic effect of their speeches was by using the statement. A decent place to use a statement is at the top of a paragraph, to steer into the following one, or at the start of a replacement section to introduce a brand new area for exploration.

Proofread

Finally, you may write the top interesting essay an instructor has ever read. Still, youll undermine your good work if its plagued by errors, which distract the reader from the particular content and can probably annoy them.
Many people who are sensitive to gluten claim they can eat all the bread and pasta they want when traveling abroad. How could this be true?
DURHAM, NC - MAY 10: Unisex signs hang outside bathrooms at Toast Paninoteca on May 10, 2016 in Durham, North Carolina. Debate over transgender bathroom access spreads nationwide as the U.S. Department of Justice countersues North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory from enforcing the provisions of House Bill 2 (HB2) that dictate what bathrooms transgender individuals can use. (Photo by Sara D. Davis/Getty Images)

Gender oblivion refers to the covert ways that gender stereotypes influence everyday practices of individuals and organizations. Earlier this year we discussed how gender oblivion would continue to pose significant challenges for women in the military as they integrate into combat positions, despite the formal policy changes that have occurred. Gender oblivion, however, is not limited to military. The recent discussion of bathroom policies in public schools focused on transgender individuals are reminiscent of the bathroom discussions we heard when discussing female integration into combat positions with soldiers in Special Operations.

In our initial research, soldiers frequently discussed bathrooms while talking about the integration of women into Special Forces. At first, we were a bit surprised by the conversational turn to bathrooms, but it turns out that bathroom politics encapsulate gender oblivion in the workplace and the larger heart of inequality in many organizations. Marking the entrances to bathrooms is an easy way for organizations to police and enforce informal boundaries. In addition to its functional purpose, the gender signage on a bathroom door also represents an unspoken organizational boundary that demarcates between who has access to an organization and who does not. Membership to a particular bathroom directly communicates to a group and lets them know if they are insiders who belong, or if they are outsiders who don't really belong; or worse yet, if they are simply invisible to an organization.

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As the rhetoric surrounding toilet politics continues to swirl, we often find ourselves returning to Sally's story, which perfectly captures gender oblivion and why bathrooms are a common space of organizational privilege.

Sally was one of the few women in an elite training program for the Army. The "School," as they referred to it, was built for men and had traditionally only housed men. When Sally entered the program a simple modification was made to the barracks; a sheet was hung to separate her living quarters from the men in her class. This inexpensive and simple accommodation allowed Sally to remain in the barracks with her team rather than segregating her from them. However, the leadership at the School insisted that Sally had to have a gender-segregated bathroom. Sally's "female" designated bathroom was a ten-minute walk from the barracks. Each morning her class was provided 30 minutes for hygiene. The men used bathrooms attached to their barracks while Sally had to walk 10 minutes to get to her "female" bathroom. Being tardy is not an option in the military, so Sally had to rush to complete her morning routine in 10 minutes so she had time for her round-trip bathroom commute. Sally is tough, and does not complain, but she did note the unfairness of her ten-minute hygiene time to the men's 30 minutes. Rather than being singled out for her gender, Sally said she would have preferred to "just share" the bathroom with her class like she shared the barracks. Although Sally didn't recognize it, she was fighting to be a full member of the organization.

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Sally's desire to "just share" bathroom facilities was not unique. In our survey of women in Special Operations 78% of our sample were willing to use unisex bathroom facilities all of the time or most of the time with their male colleagues. This was in stark contrast to the men we surveyed in Special Forces, only 49% of whom were willing to share unisex bathroom facilities all or most of the time with their female colleagues. Throughout our focus groups, men typically discussed their opposition to shared bathroom facilities as a desire for privacy, and were ultimately unwilling to share a facility that they perceived was built exclusively for their needs. Since the men were never required to share facilities, they were largely unaware that their desire for privacy posed an institutional disadvantage for their female colleagues.

In the military, women are pushing for equality in an institution that does not have a blueprint that includes them. It was literally not built for women in terms of how the space was designed, and it was figuratively not built for them in terms of the norms that have evolved over time. Much of the infrastructure, norms and practices of the organization were never intended to include women. Gender oblivion blinds the military (and many other organizations) to the long-established norm of designing spaces and practices with men in mind without recognizing how this norm builds inequality into the institution for others. Although not malicious in intent, many of the practices where invisible gendering continues, contribute to inequalities in the workplace, even in institutions built to protect the equality that our nation promises.

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The second line of arguments focuses on the privacy of cisgender students in spaces that have traditionally been seen as exclusively theirs. This reasoning parallels the privacy argument we heard from many men in our military research, where they symbolically constructed the bathroom as a less hygienic "man cave." A space uniquely designed for men, where their privacy is paramount and the boundaries of the space is guarded from outsiders.

Schools have historically been built to recognize gender as a male/female binary based on biology, but society now recognizes that gender is more fluid than a simple male/female binary that does not always correlate with biological sex. Like the change in military policy banning women from combat positions, the Obama administration's guidelines push educational institutions to be more inclusive and strive for gender equity, noting that many educational buildings were not designed with these concepts of equity in mind.

Gender oblivion as a concept encourages us to think critically and deeply about institutions, probing us to think about how they were designed and how current practices are framed by conscious and unconscious stereotypes related to gender. Privacy as a framework often focuses on the desires of individuals to maintain their own privacy, but rarely explores who might be excluded from institutions in order to maintain the privacy of individuals who have always had access.
Welcome to spring in the school world! With the warmer weather, adolescents shed their winter feathers and, as in the current case in Woodstock,VT, adults navigate the perilous waters of spaghetti straps, bare midriffs and skirt length. As has been sharply pointed out by critics in the Woodstock brouhaha, the peril is nearly always expressed in female terms. Teachers at Woodstock Union Middle School convened a girls-only meeting to discuss this complex issue, creating a bit of a tempest, drawing accusations of sexism and poor judgment. The administration apologized and went back to the drawing board, intending to craft a revised policy.

I've sailed these spring waters for 18 years and can testify that there are no easy answers, but a good start is to recognize that "less is more." (I don't mean that phrase to be the dress code!)

Here is my school's dress code:

"Calhoun does not have a detailed dress code. We expect that all students will dress in a way that is appropriate for a school setting and that their choices respect Calhoun's intent to sustain a community that is inclusive of a diverse range of identities. Students who make inappropriate or insensitive choices will be expected to reconsider. Calhoun's expectations for appropriate dress encompass the understanding that gender expression is not binary, that racial and cultural influences may inform students' choices, and that individual self-expression is a natural and important part of human development."

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With a dress code, the devil is in the details. So we avoid them. The policy has multiple intentions. First, we explicitly reject the notion that appropriate attire is gender specific. A teenager in Pennsylvania was recently turned away from her prom because she wore a black "men's" suit. School officials threatened to call the police if she refused to leave. The school's principal ignored a reporter's request for comment. What could be said other than, "I'm sorry" ?

Our policy also acknowledges the risk that expectations may be based on subconscious racial, cultural or religious bias. The last phrase in our policy is perhaps the most important. We recognize that adolescent expression and identity are developmentally crucial. Repressing this expression with an arcane and detailed dress code is not wise or productive. It is a mistake to pathologize healthy teen-age experimentation. I am particularly baffled by dress codes that specify such things as hair color. Other than serving as a statement of individuality and creativity, what possible threat to a school environment is manifested in the color of a student's hair?

Adolescents will test virtually any rule adults can conjure up. If a dress code specifies a length in inches, the teenager will try to get away with measuring in metric. If spaghetti straps are outlawed, they'll try fettuccini straps. All of the testing around the petty details distracts from the conversations that are important. Our policy does not surrender the right of the school to determine what is appropriate, but it does promise that the determination will be a matter of discussion leading to reconsideration, not mindless enforcement of a rule. If we believe a student's choice of attire is inappropriate or insensitive, we are obligated to a dialogue, which is where learning can occur. This is where the blurry line between confident comfort with one's body and the risks of self-objectification can be examined.

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Any discussion of dress and sexuality is affected by cultural norms and values, which change over time. The attention some schools place on these issues reveals more about the adults than the students. I've heard adults talk as though a bare midriff is nearly pornographic, or that sagging pants are indecent exposure. Really? An adult who is deeply concerned with a girl's bare midriff may need some self-reflection. If an adult finds a bra strap overly stimulating, a good therapist might be indicated. Sagging pants are a cultural phenomenon, not a highly sexualized choice. My experience is that many of the "choices" that raise the hackles of adults don't get a second glance from the kids themselves.

Perhaps some of the clothing choices young women and men are making today are because they have healthier and more open relationships with their own bodies and with each other. Might we have as much to learn from them as they do from us?
So you've done the classes, you've read the books... you've talked to and listened to all the people around you offering their advice. You think you are prepared. But are you really? Are you really prepared for the birth of your child three weeks ahead of schedule when suddenly one morning at 2 AM your wife shouts from across the house, "Honey, I think my water broke." A fairly sound sleeper usually, those six words woke me up with a start and made me jump out of bed right away. "Are you sure?" was my extremely intelligent answer at the time. "Are you sure you are not just peeing?", I followed up, sounding even more intelligent. Well, after having gone through all the lessons and training and everything, those are two questions I shouldn't have been asking. After all, we had been told by all our instructors, "You will know when your water breaks... it is time! Call the hospital and let them know you're on your way in". And yet, here I was wanting confirmation.

Not to panic. I got things in order; I asked my wife to call the hospital while I changed and got things ready to go. "Stay calm, stay calm", I kept telling myself. I had to make sure there was no panic around the house and we made it to the hospital smoothly, with no incident. It was 2 AM and getting to the hospital was another worry - "are there enough cabs around? Will they have issues taking a pregnant woman on board? Will they turn us away? How would we get to the hospital if that was the case...?" So many thoughts run through your head in that one instance... "Is the baby ok? Is my wife going to be ok? Is the baby going to be popping out in the cab?"... the questions range from the very sane to the absolutely bizarre!

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This may sound like a bit of an advert, but I have never been more thankful for technology and for that greatest of inventions, Uber. Login to phone, open app, punch in address and cab to be there in one minute... Voila! How easy can it get... More importantly, do it while attending to wife in labour... really easy! What's even better is the fact that the Uber drivers are actually polite and considerate given the circumstances. The horror stories we had heard about cab drivers in London declining to drive pregnant women did not manifest themselves in this instance. If anything, the Uber drivers were more than happy to do it... and we were happy that they were happy. Thankfully the 'tremendous' British customer service that is prevalent all across the UK hasn't made its way into Uber... maybe all firms should ask customers to award stars to their employees... Yay Uber!

Off to the hospital then, and that was the first of our trips (thankfully there was only one other a few hours later). The midwife gets my wife into a room, sets her up and begins examining her. "Yes, your water has broken." I just roll my eyes... we already knew that! "Congratulations! Your baby will be coming soon"... Ok, captain obvious. We knew that too. When is it going to be here? Tell us the important stuff... "Everything is normal. The baby is fine and you are looking in good health", she confirms. OK, now we are getting to the important stuff. And then she delivers the ultimate blow... "But since your contractions haven't started and you're feeling no pain, I would say you can go home and get some rest... It could be a long day tomorrow." Noooooo!!!! Don't send us home again, I am thinking. It means we have to take another cab, and then another back... In one night alone we were going to make Uber a lot of money.

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"Get some rest. Try and get some sleep. It is going to be a long day tomorrow", said the midwife as we were leaving the hospital. Sleep! How can you expect us to sleep now! This is the single biggest day in our lives; a milestone; we will be giving birth soon... how can we sleep... are we to suppress all of our thrills, excitement and emotions and pretend like nothing is happening? Are we to go home, just close our eyes and go to bed as though nothing happened and nothing is going to happen? Fat chance of that happening! And so we got home in anticipation of what was to come... we tried to sleep... no luck... pottered around the house to take our mind off things; did some useless errands... cooked breakfast... and just waited... and waited...

"When will those darn contractions arrive?", my wife wondered... and she didn't have to wonder long. Because by 11 am that morning they had come in full force and it was time to head off to the hospital for round 2...
Just in time, some very powerful forces are lining up on the side of the individual investor vs. those in the financial services industry who have been overcharging and urging investors into flawed products. The timing is critical because the baby boom generation is rolling trillions of dollars out of company 401(k) plans and into IRAs -- and wondering what to do with their money.



It started with the Labor Department's fiduciary rule, and now the Fiduciary Institute has launched the Campaign for Investors. I attended he kickoff in Philadelphia last week. The event featured speeches by John Bogle, the legendary founder of Vanguard and creator of the index fund concept, and Phyllis Borzi of the Department of Labor, who can take credit for the new DOL fiduciary rule.

That fiduciary rule will soon require all financial advisers to act in the best interests of their clients in managing most retirement accounts, with assurances that fees will be fully disclosed and the customers' interests will come first.

Registered investment advisers have always adhered to this fiduciary standard. But now the stockbrokers who call themselves advisers and the insurance agents who sell annuities linked to promises of stock market performance will all be required to adhere to the new rule.

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The industry says those requirements will raise costs and possibly deny advice to "small investors." But Sheryl Garrett, founder of the nationwide Garrett Planning Network of financial advisers, which does not charge commissions or base fees on the amount of assets, says: "We've been acting as fiduciaries for 16 years, serving clients of all types. The cleanest and easiest way to minimize conflicts of interest is simply to charge for your time."

The campaign features a website, www.campaignforinvestors.org, a great starting point for individual investors seeking a trusted adviser. Key information is grouped in three sections:

--Evaluate your adviser. Whether you're searching for a new adviser or wondering about the one you have, this section lists six critical questions you should be asking -- and the answers you should receive. For example, does your adviser give you a written annual accounting of all fees and expenses paid by your account? Most people don't even know they can -- and should -- ask for this information. The section also features links to the disciplinary background checks for both brokers and advisers.

--Calculate your fees. Here's a new tool that can save you a small fortune over the life of your investment portfolio -- and years' worth of retirement income. This costs section of the site links you to a service provided by FeeX.com. It gives you an analysis of the fees charged annually in your IRA, 401(k), 403(b), brokerage and other investment accounts -- and some insights on how to save that money.

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(Even if you're stuck in a company plan, this analysis should make the corporate executives think about making a change to a lower cost retirement plan -- or face fiduciary consequences!)

--Know your rights. Sadly, most investors don't know they have rights -- the right to demand information from the adviser, and rights that now will stand up in court when advisers are required to demonstrate that they have acted in the client's best interests. You don't have to be an expert in stock picking or market timing, but you do have the responsibility of picking an adviser whom you trust based on this information and research.

Perhaps I should say the time has "almost come" to empower investors. The full weight of the new DOL fiduciary standard won't come into play until the end of 2017. In the meantime, plenty of unscrupulous agents will be out there selling equity-linked annuities, packages of risky, high-yielding commercial mortgages or high-commission mutual funds -- trying to get the last commission dollar before the fiduciary rule takes full effect.
America's Endless War in the Greater Middle East

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

Here's last week's good news on America's war fronts: finally, there's light at the end of the tunnel!

From one end of the Greater Middle East to the other, things are looking up for Washington. A U.S. Air Force drone struck for the first time in Baluchistan province and took out the leader of the Taliban with two Hellfire missiles (whereupon the Pakistani government denounced Washington for violating the country's sovereignty). The action was taken, President Obama later announced, as part of "our longstanding effort to bring peace and prosperity to Afghanistan." (Admittedly, you may not have heard much about such peace and prosperity recently with fierce fighting raging on Afghan battlefields, the Taliban gaining ground, the government in its usual pit of corruption, and the country maintaining its proud position as the uncontested global leader in the production and sale of opium.)

Soon after, the president paid a historic visit to Vietnam and finally put to bed memories of a disastrous American war there in the only way conceivable -- by ensuring that American arms and munitions would once again be allowed to flow freely into that country. And while he was at it, he sternly rebuked China (without mentioning it by name) for its actions in the waters off Vietnam. "Nations are sovereign," he said, "and no matter how large or small a nation may be, its territory should be respected."

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On the other side of the Greater Middle East, U.S. Green Berets were photographed in northern Syria engaged with Kurdish rebels in fighting aimed at someday retaking Raqqa, the "capital" of the Islamic State. Several of those soldiers were wearing the insignia of the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Forces, or YPG (which the Turkish government considers a terrorist outfit), even as the Pentagon continued to insist that theirs was a non-combat role. In other words -- in the good news category -- those boots, whatever the photos might seem to indicate, were not actually on the ground. Meanwhile, some genuinely upbeat news arrived in the midst of a little distinctly out-of-date bad news. Members of the U.S. team now conducting the air war against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq told New York Times reporter Eric Schmitt that, despite thousands of air strikes, their predecessors had essentially botched the job, thanks to "poor intelligence collection and clumsy process for identifying targets." Fortunately, they were now in charge and the results were stunning. The Islamic State was finally being hit in its pocketbook, where it truly hurts, damaging its "ability to pay its fighters, govern, and attract new recruits."

"Every bomb now has a greater impact," reported U.S. air war commander Lieutenant General Charles Brown Jr. Yes, after 15 years of American air war across the Greater Middle East, it seems that, from Pakistan to Syria, the Obama administration has finally found the winning formula. If, as Schmitt's piece indicated, you want confirmation of that, who better to turn to than the very people who have gotten the formula right? Having no access to similar in-the-know figures capable of throwing light on the subject of Washington's ongoing conflicts, TomDispatch instead turned to outsider Andrew Bacevich, author most recently of a groundbreaking book, America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History, to assess the recent spate of upbeat news from America's war zones. We sent him directly into that infamous Vietnam-era tunnel of darkness to see what might be glimpsed so many decades later when it comes to the American way of war, and his report, "Milestones (Or What Passes for Them in Washington)," is out today.
Austin Petersen makes the "boy president" John F. Kennedy seem like an elder statesman. Petersen wasn't even eligible to run when he announced his candidacy for the Libertarian Party's Presidential Nomination (he's since turned 35 and is fully eligible). As the first "millennial" candidate, Petersen believes he can not only attract young voters, but others across the political spectrum.

"I believe I can bring in not just libertarian voters, but I think I can bring in conservative voters and I think I can bring in social democratic voters because I embody those principles of economic freedom and personal liberty," Petersen said.

Petersen does believe opponents Gary Johnson and John McAfee have a slight advantage in executive experience, having both run large businesses and in Johnson's case, the New Mexico State Government for two four-year terms.

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"It does put me at a disadvantage," said Petersen, "but obviously my campaign slogan is I want to take over the government to leave people alone. So, the idea is not that I want to run things. I just want to let people run their own lives. So, do you really need to have been a former software billionaire or a former governor in order to be President of the United States? I would submit 'no.' If so, the founding fathers should have put that in the Constitution."

Petersen believes he can distinguish himself as a voice or reason in the general election, even in a year where an angry electorate has seemed to prefer populist bomb-throwing over calm, intellectual messages.

"Honestly, when you put three ducks in a row and one of these kids is doing their own thing, sometimes the voice of reason wins out. And that's simply because when there's so much cacophony and noise, and background noise, sometimes a small, quiet voice can be heard," said Petersen.

Like many of his opponents, Petersen faces almost as tough a challenge in winning the Libertarian Nomination as he would in the general election. Libertarians are known to be strict on ideological purity and Petersen has challenged the central libertarian principle of non-aggression as a guiding principle for government power.

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"I'm willing to take even the most sacred cows and slaughter them for all to see, because I really kind of actually enjoy that," quipped Petersen. He argues that children, for example, have positive rights and the non-aggression principle doesn't adequately ensure them.

Outside the theoretical world, however, Petersen's positions line up pretty closely to those of his opponents, any of which he said he would support if he were not to win the nomination.

You can watch the full video interview below. More information on Petersen's campaign can be found at austinpetersen2016.com.

The final debate before the delegates vote for the nomination is tonight (Saturday May 28) at 8:00 PM EDT and will be carried live on CSPAN, Reason.com and several other media.

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FILE - In this Sept 23, 2011 file photo, Libertarian Party presidential candidate, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson speaks in Orlando, Fla. President Barack Obama's presidential campaign is paying close attention to two candidates mounting third party campaigns for the presidency, believing they could draw votes from rival Mitt Romney and help the president to victory in a few tightly contested states. (AP Photo/Joe Burbank, Pool, File)

Former two-term Governor of New Mexico Gary Johnson is again seeking the Libertarian Party's nomination for President of the United States. And while Johnson has polled as high as 11% in multiple polls against Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, he faces tougher competition for the LP nomination than he did four years ago with nationally-known entrepreneur John McAfee, Austin Petersen, Darryl Perry, Kevin McCormick and others in the race.

"It looks OK, but like I say, anything can change. You've got a final debate tonight and I might bite my tongue in half," said Governor Johnson of his chances.

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Should Johnson win the nomination, he faces an even tougher challenge in doing what Rand Paul couldn't do in the Republican primaries: win over an angry electorate with a reasonable libertarian message.

"When I'm constantly asked about Rand Paul, and why Rand Paul did not succeed, when he's a libertarian, the response is, well, he's not a libertarian. He's a Republican. So, I think these issues will resonate by the time the general election rolls around, and people will really be concerned about issues and not hair," said Johnson.

"And if it is hair, I haven't had a drink in twenty-nine years, but if it's hair, I might have a drink, I don't know, champagne to celebrate," quipped Johnson, apparently referring to The Donald's infamous coiffure.

Despite the perception that libertarianism is subset of conservatism, Johnson believes he can appeal to voters across the political spectrum because of the areas of agreement libertarians have with liberals and independents on issues such as ending military interventions, gay rights and legalization of marijuana.

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Johnson called Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton "a major architect of the conflict going on around the world," referring to her work as Secretary of State, adding "I think that resonates with Democrats."

The entire interview with Johnson can be viewed below. More information about Johnson's campaign can be found at garyjohnson2016.com.

The final debate before the delegates vote for the nomination is tonight (Saturday May 28) at 8:00 PM EDT and will be carried live on CSPAN and several other media outlets.

Tom Mullen is the author of Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness?
Cross-posted fromUN Women

Although the job can be very stressful and intense, I love what I am doing. I started working as a humanitarian worker at the refugee transit centre in Tabanovce* [former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia] in October 2015. Trains arrived every two to three hours and we had around 10,000 people arriving and leaving per day. I had to give directions to these people, assist in their medical needs or social care. The biggest challenge initially was to quickly prioritize and coordinate [responses to] refugees needs. We were only two people per shift. Later it increased to seven or eight people.

There is nothing harder than watching someone suffer when your abilities to help them are limited in every aspect. Even the work you do feels so little and you feel that much, much more can be done. Ive found ways to deal with the stress, such as breathing exercises, music, painting and writing.

Being a psychologist, my primary role is to provide psychosocial care for women refugees. Women mainly approach me to request assistance with stress from travelling and there were some cases of violence survivors. Ive found that non-verbal communication is universal and comprehensible in all languages. Sometimes I can understand them even though I dont speak their language. Ive learned that as long as there is empathy and truth, people could open themselves up to each other.

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We now provide other services such as English, Arabic and Farsi language classes for the children. I like helping other people. I would love to continue what Im doing in the future.

Sonja Dimitrijoska, 39, from the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, is a humanitarian aid worker with the NGO La Strada, a partner organization of UN Women and Oxfam in their joint work to provide support to women and girl refugees in transit centres in the Western Balkans. This work is related to the Sustainable Development Goals, including SDG 10 on reducing inequalities, which seeks to facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people; and SDG 16, which aims to promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development.

Read more stories in the From where I stand... editorial series.
71 years ago today Mother and I were clustered around our radio in Philadelphia seeking the latest news of the war that was raging in the Pacific. Dad of course was the object of our anxiety. He was on duty as the commanding officer of an evacuation hospital within the Fifth Division of the US Marines and was currently in the midst of the frightful fight on Iwo Jima. He had contacted us immediately about his whereabouts, long hand (no email), so we knew that every report from the front was a status report. He wrote me from the dugout where he reported having to step over the bodies of our men and theirs on the way to breakfast. There was no front line. Everywhere was the front. Flamethrowers, suicide bombers, tunnels every were the spotty bits of news that Mother and I scavenged.

In three weeks of the ferocity we lost 8,000 Marines, the Japanese lost 25,000 of their men, 33,000 men fallen in three weeks on that tiny island, that's 1,400 per day. This of course is but a fraction of the 405,000 total casualties in World War II, but this in turn was three times the total killed in World War I. Still only a small fraction of the Civil War dead of 750,000. War truly is hell.

Dad had been in the Naval Reserve for years, so he showed up for duty shortly after Pearl Harbor and was generally installed as commanding officer of the Philadelphia Naval Hospital. I recall meeting Helen Keller who had come to visit while he was there.

As the conflict in the Pacific picked up he received orders to report for duty with the Marines in N.C. He learned to shoot during this era, but I doubt that he ever fired during combat. Eventually he was transferred to Hawaii where his outfit boarded ship for the invasion of Iwo. Iwo Jima was a critical target in that it provided much more proximity for our B 29 bombers who were targeting Tokyo. Precious in my possession is a letter that he wrote on ship board two days after the beachhead was established. He recalled seeing the stars and stripes flying proudly on the top of Mount Surabachi the dominating landmark. On my piano today is a glorious photo of Dad and the famous Iwo flag.

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After the battle his group returned to Hawaii to train for the upcoming invasion of Japan that was expected momentarily, however Truman's brave decision to drop the two bombs settled the issue and saved millions of casualties on all sides.

Subsequently Dad landed in Japan and surveyed the radiation damage in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He returned to Mom and me in two more months. What a reunion!

My armed service record pales in comparison. I was a Capt. In the Army Medical Corps with the 25th division at Schofield barracks awaiting momentary summons to Korea which thankfully never came.

So, on this Memorial Day we pause to honor the lives and sacrifice of the young people who gave their all to protect our freedoms.

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by Lynnette A. Dent

The bullet pierced my chest. I fell and struggled for life in an Iraqi desert. Blinding sand flew everywhere as soldiers kicked the dirt. I tried to get up but could only crawl over the blood that soiled the ground. Many fell to death around me. Then, something happened. The scene changed. I realized I was not on a battlefield but actually in a red leather chair staring at the stage with my dad next to me as usual.

You can't stop my imagination, which has grown up with my passionate love for theater. For as long as I can remember, my dad has taken me to plays on Broadway a couple of times a month. After a few quick slices of pizza, we search the billboards around Times Square for the right show. This time it is Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, but the mission is different. I am not here to merely enjoy the show. I am a junior conducting an honors project on the portrayals of politics in Broadway plays and Bengal Tiger is one of the three plays I am reviewing.

I try to watch the play from a distantly academic point of view but my imagination will not allow it. I can't detach myself from the characters. My senses easily go beyond reality and travel with the adventures of the two marines, the Iraqi translator and the smart tiger.

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Not coincidentally, I've always loved books and I feel like I'm in a different place when I read and interact with characters: like a maid who loves someone above her station or a vampire. The library has always been my nesting place. Yet it sometimes feels too solitary so I always join theater productions where I can share my imagination with others in roles big and small. In the first grade, I was a little angel at a Harlem School of the Arts holiday production. I also played Ivana Trump in Miracle on 51st Street at St. Bart's Church in Fourth Grade. I was in the chorus of Pinocchio in Fifth Grade at the American Overseas School of Rome when my family spent six months in Italy. Two years later, I was Cynthia in a film I produced at a summer camp in Zell am See, Austria. Even as a senior, I portrayed a nurse in my school's production of Dracula. These are just a few of my roles.

I do not expect to be a professional actress or theater critic after college. Yet I see the ways theater and my imagination will serve me at times I least expect. For example, I spent three weeks in the LEAD Business program at the University of Michigan. My favorite moment was meeting an executive from British Petroleum who led one of our sessions. She was a theater major in college and she inspired me so much. She divided us into groups: My group was an American company collaborating with a Chinese company. We researched the ways to orient our conversations to appeal to the Chinese business people. I had to play a convincing role -- something I knew how to do -- to make a deal.

A few months earlier, I was an intern at the New York Historical Society. With my fellow interns, we studied the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. We were divided into groups and, with my leadership, my group wrote a theatrical debate and recorded it. Looking back on that day, it was clear to me why we chose to re-enact this event through performance; theater was such an enthralling way to comprehend the perspectives behind this historic event. I served as a Northern representative and I easily imagined myself in nineteenth century New York struggling with an issue that sent our country into war.



I have always seen history, my favorite subject, through the lenses of theater and imagination. Yet this year, I learn to use my imagination in math, the subject that gives me the most trouble. In my Advanced Topics in Mathematics class, we explore math through complex case studies such as elections, business scheduling and sorting. Now when I tackle a math problem, I imagine myself as the congresswoman elected in a newly created district because of population changes. Or I am a CEO of a small company arranging employee work hours in a way that saves on the bottom line. All of a sudden, math becomes a different kind of challenge that I welcome. Whether in math, history, or business, the intersection of my imagination with theater often means my whole world is indeed a stage in which the coming acts are an exciting mystery.

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Since an overdue focus on the Syrian refugee crisis in global headlines, nations across Europe have experienced a steep rise in the popularity of far-right political parties. With many of the foundational ideals of such parties pointing inwards to directly and solely support especially native born citizens, it is clear that such politicians are rising in favor built off the rallying hate of innocent refugees.

According to the New York Times, the most recent election in Hungary garnered at least 65% of votes for the Fidesz-KDNP and Jobbik, two of the nation's most radically right parties. Hungary has also garnered the second-most asylum applications per its population during 2015. Following only Serbia & Kosovo's astounding 5,000 per 100,000 people, Hungary reported a still extremely high 2,400. It must be noted that Hungary's numerical population is magnitudes larger than that of Serbia & Kosovo, so it truly is experiencing a frontload of demand in aiding the refugee crisis.

Yet Hungary's reaction in political lashback is not alone. While nearly all European countries are witnessing this garnering wave of conservatism to some degree, noticeable stark surges are plaguing more than just a couple countries. Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Poland and Switzerland all retain their own share of close to or over a third of total votes supporting the radical right. To reiterate, this "right" does display diversity in its exact affiliation of strong conservative parties. Though while they range all the way from from "populist and nationalist to far-right neofascist," many still maintain a common platform hinged at rebolstering national foundations from the inside out: which mean, essentially, keeping "the outside" out.

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While a flight across the pond may seem to substantially separate Lady Liberty's Home of the Brave and Land of the Fast food, such swinging attitudes are certainly embedded right here in our soil, too.

The obvious example of Donald Trump, who has essentially acquired enough to officially be named the 2016 GOP Candidate, only highlights the danger and power in hateful rhetoric against refugees, which has further fueled a chicken-and-egg relationship with Muslim, Middle-Eastern, and South Asian hate across the country.

It doesn't require multiple colorful interactive data graphs on the New York Times website to acknowledge this similar nature into which America is falling - one that is predicated on assumptions and lies and one that feeds on hate and fear. Only more elections are set to unfold in Europe in the coming months; the very same can be said for the POTUS election here in the States - and the hateful rhetoric seems to be going just about nowhere.

The refugee crisis is one of absolute humanitarian atrocities. As the war heads into its fifth year of tragic headlines and as ISIS kindles even more chaos in the region, it must remain the duties of nations -- those in fact founded apparently upon openness and happiness and hope for immigrants, particularly refugees -- to offer home and haven out of basic human decency. The rise in conservative parties, whether across Europe or in the States, displays a regression into times marred by xenophobia and alarm for anything "different." Yet differences and learning and growing from them are exactly what has come to define such nations over the decades, even centuries.

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Bloomberg via Getty Images An attendee takes a photograph of the new Apple Inc. iPhone SE smartphone after an event in Cupertino, California, U.S., on Monday, March 21, 2016. Apple Inc. unveiled a new, smaller iPhone that will start at $399, seeking to jump-start sales of its flagship product by enticing more users to upgrade, especially in high-growth markets such as China and India. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Theres both good and bad news for Apples plans for the red hot Indian smartphone market: it still wont be able to sell refurbished iPhones, but could get a waiver on the local sourcing norms that will allow it to open branded retail stores.

On Monday, Indias Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, said the government is not in favour of any company selling used phones in the country, however certified they may be.

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However, it plans to push for a waiver request for Apple that would allow the company to open branded stores in India. The waiver can be granted to companies deemed to have cutting-edge technology. India allows 100 percent foreign investment for single brand retail, but mandates that one-third of the components be procured in India, in part to boost local employment and industry.

Indias Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) had recently permitted Apple to open retail stores in the country.

Indias fast-growing smartphone market has a huge growth potential with several foreign players vying for a piece, say analysts. However, it is flooded with many low-cost options; at least 19 Chinese smartphone makers currently sell in India, as we reported earlier. Apples share in the market is estimated to be around 3 per cent.

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook was also in India recently, and met with several senior government officials including Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He also announced its plans to open an iOS app development centre in Bengaluru during his visit.

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STR via Getty Images Incoming Chief Minister of the southern Indian state of Kerala Pinarayi Vijayan (C) stands alongside Governor of Kerala P. Sathasivam(R)as he takes part in a swearing-in ceremony in Thiruvananthapuram on May 25, 2016. / AFP / STR (Photo credit should read STR/AFP/Getty Images)

The Communists in Kerala swear by their working class ideology and dialectics, but in practice they deftly spin it to survive and gain from a neoliberal world order. On paper, they are Communists, but in reality, they can only aspire to be, at best, social democrats.

Marxists would certainly detest being called social democrats because ideology is what they wax eloquent about and what gives them cover. Everything they do, whether its an alleged political murder or taking advertisements from homegrown crony-capitalists, are ideologically sanitised by their formal and informal network of supporters and proxies. Everything, according to them, is part of their long-term plan of a revolutionary project.

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Being a mutualist with the neoliberal marketplace is therefore their unavoidable strategy for the triumph of the working class. But, Marxism is certainly not social democracy.

Marxists would certainly detest being called social democrats because ideology is what they wax eloquent about and what gives them cover.

One of the early trends that the media picked up since the CPM came to power in Kerala is the spate of announcements welcoming big businesses to invest in Kerala, encouraging public-private partnerships, and even kickstarting infrastructure projects that have long been shelved for environmental and feasibility reasons. Left goes right said a Times of India headline while the Indian Express said Pinarayi Vijayans new Kerala: Silicon Valley-type hubs. A Malayalam newspaper headline quoted the industries minister saying all monopolies are welcome to the state.

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(CPI (M) leaders, including new Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan (L), take part in the Polit Bureau Meeting at CPI (M) office at Gole Market, on May 29, 2016 in New Delhi, India. Photo by Sushil Kumar/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)

Vijayan has made it clear that the Government would acquire land for highways and rail-lines, offer all support to industries, and create Silicon Valley hubs. He also said there would be new high-speed trains - all with private investment. In terms of power generation, he said a highly controversial hydro-electric project that had been shelved because of potential ecological damage would be implemented. He dismissed trade unionism as a myth. His junior in the cabinet and Industries Minister, EP Jayarajan made the most telling statement: the government would not put any curbs on multinational monopolies if they are beneficial to the state.

So Marxists have no problem with multinationals, IT giants, and monopolies if they benefit the state. So, are they turncoats like their counterparts in the rest of the world? Have they gone Right as the popular media have begun to call them?

Probably not, because in the same breath of strengthening private investment, they also talk about the public sector and welfare. Therefore, its better to look at them as social democrats because social democracy allows for growth and welfare to match each other. The CPM certainly will not like the terminology and will like to spin its ideology to suit its behaviour.

So Marxists have no problem with multinationals, IT giants, and monopolies if they benefit the state. So, are they turncoats like their counterparts in the rest of the world?

Although social democracy preceded Marxism and brilliantly survived more than a century of socio-political and economic changes better than the latter, ideological dogma prevents Marxists from acknowledging its merit and sustainability. What Pinarayi and his party are attempting in Kerala is what social democracy does - striving for a balance between capitalism and socialism, a system where the state is large and welfare of the people is as important as economic growth. The only justification the CPM can use to encourage multinationals and private capital is peoples welfare. Welfare through capitalist growth is not Marxism or Communism.

(Street scene of a cycle rickshaw in a street near Kalighat, Kolkata, West Bengal, India. Symbol on the wall : the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (abbreviated CPI (M) or CPM) is a left-wing Marxist political party in India. Photo by Marji Lang/LightRocket via Getty Images)

It's not surprising that all the "happy" countries in the world are social democracies where wealth generation and the welfare state go hand in hand. The World Happiness Report published by the United Nations strongly associates happiness with equality, which means that people feel most equal with one another in these countries.

The happiest country in the world is not United States, China or Cuba, but Denmark. Even capitalist Canada and New Zealand are up there in happiness index because of their welfare states. One of the greatest welfare state examples of our times, the National Health Service (NHS) in England, draws its resources from capitalist growth. The Scandinavian social democracies - which are the best in the world for women, differently abled, sick and for people who are both hardworking and easy-going - havent achieved their human development goals through a Marxist socio-economic model.

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Communism hasnt delivered what it promised. Keralas transformational success story is not an exclusively a Communist story as the party and its proxies try to misrepresent. Its the early reformist movements that put the state on the right track and C Achutha Menon and K Karunakaran, who headed Right governments are as important as EMS, the first Communist Chief Minister.

What Pinarayi and his party are attempting in Kerala is what social democracy does - striving for a balance between capitalism and socialism, a system where the state is large and welfare of the people is as important as economic growth.

If at all it delivered in a tiny Cuba, it was not without the cost of human rights (lobotomies in mental hospitals, incarceration of HIV-positive people, abuse of dissidents etc). Even when endowed with a rich national resource such as oil, Venezuela is fast becoming a failed state.

In East Asia, Communist rulers have ravaged their countries and post-communist distress capitalism is driving people apart under party leadership. A century of world history teaches us that its a fallacy that you need a Communist state for equality. In fact, it's a ruinous fantasy. The danger, as we have seen everywhere, is that what comes after communism is distress capitalism, which is essentially a free for all. Most often, even that doesnt help. Look at Venezuela.

Therefore, its really encouraging to see Pinarayi pursuing a transitional or rather forward-looking policy for growth and welfare. It makes sense to change the lens we use to look at the CPM in Kerala.

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Betwa Sharma

NEW DELHI -- Eight months after a Muslim man was lynched by a mob alleging that he had slaughtered a calf, and six months after the preliminary report said that the sample of meat recovered from his house was mutton, a report prepared by a forensic laboratory in Mathura has found that the meat in question belonged to "cow or its progeny."

On Tuesday, several media outlets reported that a laboratory based in Mathura had concluded the meat belonged to "cow or its progeny."

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Mohammad Akhlaq, an ironsmith, was dragged out his house and beaten to death in Bisada village of Dadri tehsil in western Uttar Pradesh on September 28. His son, Danish, was brutally beaten.

While eating beef is not prohibited in Uttar Pradesh, cow slaughter is banned. But whether it was, chicken, mutton or beef does not justify murdering a man.

The family has insisted that they had not slaughtered a calf, and the meat was mutton.

"Initially we did say mutton but subsequently we were told by the lab that it was beef," Uttar Pradesh police chief Javed Ahmed told NDTV.

The horrific episode triggered a nationwide debate on "rising intolerance" in the country, with activists and writers expressing grave concern about the treatment of minorities under the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government which came to power in May 2014.

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The Dadri Lynching was also hugely embarrassing for India on the international stage, with the incident being widely reported in the foreign press.
Keith Brofsky via Getty Images Technician drawing blood with syringe from blood bag, Close-up of hands

The National AIDS Control Organization (NACO), released data, according to which 2,234 persons across India have been infected with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) while getting blood transfusions in the last 17 months alone.

Uttar Pradesh with 361 cases, tops the list of unsafe blood transfusion practices in hospitals. Gujarat, Maharashtra and New Delhi are the other leading states with 292, 276 and 264 cases respectively.

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Earlier this month, a three-year-old boy in Assam was infected with the HIV virus after he received a blood transfusion at the state-run Guwahati Medical College and Hospital (GMCH).

The data was released in response to a Right to Information (RTI) query by social activist, Chetan Kothari.

According to National AIDS Control Organisation's (NACO) 2015 annual report, the total number of people living with HIV/AIDS in India was estimated at around 20.9 lakh in 2011. Nearly 86 percent of these patients are in the 15-49 age-group.

A woman died in March this year after she was infected by the HIV virus during a blood transfusion in Kasganj. She had undergone a Cesarean section last December.

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The government has been slackening on raising AIDS awareness due to budget cuts. Cases like these keep happening over and over again and no action is taken against erring hospitals and blood banks. This is an extremely serious issue, and the government needs to address it urgently, The Hindu quoted Kothari as saying.

A 2014 NACO report shows total blood collection for the year as being around 30 lakh units, with about 84 percent of the donated blood units having come from voluntary blood donation. According to Dr Naresh Goyal, Deputy Director General, NACO, the infected blood can be traced back to the voluntary donations.

These are unfortunate cases and we are working towards the goal of zero transmission. Having said that, these numbers must be looked in the context of the scale of our HIV programme. For example, 20 years ago, nearly 8-10 percent of total HIV infections were coming from transfusions. Currently, that figure is below 1 percent. We have conquered this route of infection. It is now legally mandatory for every blood bank to screen the units before giving it to a patient," Goyal said.

In some cases, the donor may be in a window period  before his HIV viral load can be detected  when he donates the blood. In such cases, when screened, the blood sample shows a false negative, he added.

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Days after IAS officer Ajay Singh Gangwar was transferred, following a Facebook post in which he praised Jawaharlal Nehru, the Madhya Pradesh government has sought an explanation from him over his comments on the social network site criticising Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Gangwar has been given a week to reply.

The notice was sent to him after Gangwar shared an opinion piece published in the Jansatta newspaper on his Facebook page. The piece was critical of Modis 'Make in India' initiative.

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Gangwar claimed that while he may have 'liked' the article on Facebook, the post in question is not on his Facebook timeline.

According to reports, he had commented on the article, Modi ke khilaf jankranti honi chahiye (There should be a peoples movement against Modi).

They are doing this because their action of transferring me for my comments on Nehru boomeranged on them. They are doing this to divert attention," the 54-year-old officer told The Indian Express.

On 26 May, Gangwar was transferred from Barwani, where he was the District Collector, to the secretariat in Bhopal "on a temporary basis till further notice," reportedly for posting comments that praised India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

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The post which allegedly led to his transfer reads: Pls let me know the mistakes Nehru should not have committedIt was his mistake if he didnt allow you to become a Hindu Talibani Rashtra in 194... It was his mistake that he brought IIT, ISRO, BARAC, IISB, IIM, BHEL STEEL PLANT, DAMS, THERMAL POWER (sic).

However, government officials have denied transferring the IAS officer on the basis of his comments on Nehru. S K Mishra, principal secretary to Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who also holds the General Administration Department portfolio, said, The government acted when the anti-Modi post was brought to its notice. It has nothing to do with his comments about Nehru."

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Bryan Bedder via Getty Images NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 07: Google's modular phone (Project Ara) at Engadget Expand New York 2014 at Javits Center on November 7, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Engadget Expand)

After the initial dazzle and growth in the smartphone industry, the wheel of innovation seems to have hit a speed breaker. Over the last couple of years, the phone released have been more like incremental advancements over the previous versions rather than technological leaps to be marvelled at. The phones aren't bad. In fact, they are some of the best that the makers have ever produced. But, by now people are quite used to seeing Apples, Samsungs, and Googles producing devices that appeared almost miraculous when they first made an appearance a decade ago.

Flagship phones already have top-notch hardware and advanced software. So what could the next smartphone frontier be? Enter modular phones. Of late, the industry seems to be picking up the concept of modularity, in different shapes and designs, with gusto. Google's Project Ara has been aiming at full modularity, while phones such as LG G5 and Moto Z now sport modular add-ons.

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In 2013, Dutch designer Dave Hakkens presented the idea of Phonebloks at a conference in Melbourne. His aim was to reduce the e-waste and give the consumer the freedom to upgrade the smartphone without burning a hole in the pocket.

Later in the year, Google's then subsidiary Motorola announced that they will be working on a modular smartphone under the name Project Ara. They said that they will also be collaborating with Phonebloks for the project. In 2014, at Google IO, the company demonstrated an almost working modular phone but unfortunately, the demo stuck on the boot screen. Later, in 2015, Google released a second developer kit and planned to launch the consumer version of the phone in Puerto Rico, though that plan too became stalled indefinitely because of technical reasons.

However, at the Google IO this year a working model of Project Ara was shown which got the tech industry's qualified approval. With the help of Dan Kaufman, ex-head innovator at DARPA, Google is planning to take Project Ara to consumers by 2017. Though, the creator of the Phonebloks is unhappy with the effort, his point being that since the CPU, battery and the antenna are in the skeleton of the phone, it is not truly modular.

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Google is not the only company working on the modular phone concept. Puzzlephone which started as an Indiegogo campaign, is attempting what can be called partial modularity. They have two pieces in their phone which can be removed and replaced with other modules.

Current phone makers are also joining the modular trend. While they are not making the phones fully modular yet, they are trying to attach add-ons in different forms and factors which can enhance some capabilities of the phone. One fine example is LG G5, which launched this year in February at MWC (Mobile Word Congress). It comes with a detachable battery module at the bottom. The company has introduced replacement modules, such as camera module and an audio DAC module. Making modular phones entails constancy in design over successive models so that the modules are usable across successive models.

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Fairphone is one of the first consumer modular phones to hit the market. Lenovo-owned Motorola is also coming up with a modular phone with its Moto Z smartphones. However, they are taking a different approach as compared to LG to give their phones a modular makeover. Motorola is fashioning modular back plates, that resemble the phone case, for add-on features.

We may not see fully functional modular phones very soon, but partially modular phones could well turn a mid-range phone into a premium phone after the add-ons. Until then, we can keep playing with our lego blocks!

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Hindustan Times via Getty Images NEW DELHI, INDIA - MARCH 13: Spiritual Guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar addressing a press conference during the World Culture Festival organised by the Art of Living Foundation headed by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, on March 13, 2016 in New Delhi, India. The mega event witness artists, musicians and dancers from across the globe participating with utmost zest and enthusiasm. The 3-day mega event was embroiled in controversy till the very last moment before the National Green Tribunal gave it a green signal. But not before the organisers submitted Rs. 25 lakh, part of the Rs. 5 crore fine imposed by the green tribunal. (Photo by Virendra Singh Gosain/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)

The National Green Tribunal on Tuesday rapped the Art of Living Foundation for a plea seeking to pay the 4.75 crore compensation, slapped on it for allegedly damaging the Yamuna flood plains, as a bank guarantee. Spiritual guru and AOL founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar took to Twitter soon after the judgement, vowing to "fight till the end for justice".

The green panel also slapped a fine of Rs 5,000 on AOL for filing an application which "lacks bonafide" and directed the institution to pay the remainder amount in one week. A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar pulled up the foundation for not depositing the amount despite assurance granted to the tribunal.

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The green panel on March 9 had allowed the three-day 'World Culture Festival', held by AOL between March 11 and 13, on the condition that it paid a Rs 5 crore fine for damaging the biodiversity of the fertile Yamuna flood plain.

On March 11, AOL had moved a plea seeking four weeks time for depositing the amount after which the tribunal allowed the foundation to deposit Rs 25 lakh on that day and granted three weeks time to pay the balance amount.

Since the Art of Living has not created any air, water or soil pollution, we will fight till the end for justice. #Yamuna  Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (@SriSri) May 31, 2016

The AOL, in its application, had stated that it is in the process of preparing a proposal laying down parameters/methodology for collection of scientific data/evidence regarding assessment of actual environmental damage, if any, and hoped to persuade NGT that, "damage, if any, is neither permanent nor irreversible but in fact remediable".

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On May10, the foundation had issued a clarification over a NGT notice to Sri Sri for his alleged remarks against the green panel. The spiritual guru had said that the allegations against him were 'completely false' and based merely on 'newspaper reports'.

(Workers dismantle stadia temporarily erected for massive three-day cultural festival organized by the Art of Living Foundation on the banks of the river Yamuna in New Delhi, India, Monday, March 14, 2016. The three day event attracted a lot of flak from environmentalists with concerns that the sprawling construction of roads, ramps and pontoon bridges would irreparably damage the river's floodplains. AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

He also said that the fine imposed by the green panel was politically motivated. The NGT had asked why contempt of court proceedings should not be initiated against him.

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(Volunteers of the Art of Living Foundation remove plastic and other waste from the River Yamuna in New Delhi, India, Wednesday, March 24, 2010. Hundreds of volunteers have been picking up garbage along the Yamuna River as part of an eight day long clean up campaign to offset what they say is government inaction that has left the waterway a putrid sewer. AP Photo/Gurinder Osan)

The AOL founder had earlier said he "will go to jail but not pay a penny."

"Not a single tree was felled. Trees were only pruned and we levelled the floodplain," he said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended the World Culture Festival, a three-day event attended by three million people from over 150 countries. Held over a weekend packed with cultural performances, yoga and meditation sessions, the WCF saw around 37,000 artists perform on a mammoth 7-acre stage.

(Hundreds school children present an Indian classical dance during the inauguration of a massive cultural festival on the banks of the river Yamuna, in New Delhi, India, Friday, March 11, 2016. AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

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Kagenmi via Getty Images Data equality concept of a wooden court gavel next to a sign that says net neutrality,

The Telecommunication Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released a pre-consultation paper, setting the ground for the debate on net neutrality in India. The paper, which was released today, poses questions on the subject, including what the definition of net neutrality in India should be.

The purpose of the paper is to identify the relevant issues that will help TRAI formulate its views on the way forward for policy or regulatory interventions.

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The paper frames the discussion by stating that, "TSPs [Telcom Service Providers] must treat all Internet traffic on an equal basis, without regard to the type, origin, or destination of the content or the means of its transmission." It also addresses issues such as traffic management and unrestricted access by telecom service providers. It states that TSPs must not throttle any service's traffic nor must they block any application or service without permission by the authorities.

There are six key questions on which TRAI has solicited the views of stake holders:

1) What should be regarded as the core principles of net neutrality in the Indian context? What are the key issues to be taken into account so that the principles of net neutrality are ensured?

This question is about the definition of net neutrality in India.

2) What are the reasonable traffic management practices that need to be followed by TSPs while providing Internet access services and in what manner could these be misused? Are there any other current or potential practices in India that might give rise to concerns about net neutrality?

The idea here is to address potential programs which might favour one service over another. In the US, for instance, there is a huge protest going on against T-mobile's Binge On service.

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3) What should be India's policy and/or regulatory approach in dealing with issues relating to net neutrality? Please comment with

justifications.

4) What precautions must be taken with respect to the activities of TSPs and content providers to ensure that national security

interests are preserved? Please comment with justification.

There is a need to regulate certain websites in India that feature objectionable content such as child pornography. TRAI is asking for views on such sites. In addition, views have been solicited on how traffic management and transparency should be handled while keeping the freedom of Internet intact. These questions also address the issue of balancing universal access to the Internet without compromising on the security and integrity of India.

5) What precautions must be taken with respect to the activities of TSPs and content providers to maintain customer privacy?

Please comment with justification.

While regulating the traffic of the Internet, telecoms should keep all the data of customers, whether personal data or the data on the Internet in a secure environment. What steps should be taken to ensure this.

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6) What further issues should be considered for a comprehensive policy framework for defining the relationship between TSPs and OTT (Over The Top) content providers?

Comments on other issues regarding OTT providers, such as regulation on calling over the Internet or encrypted messaging services.

Since last year, TRAI has released several consultation papers and orders on the Internet in India. In March 2015, they released the paper on regulatory framework on OTT services such as WhatsApp, Viber, and Facebook messenger. In December 2015, they released a paper on differential pricing by the service providers, which led to TRAI ruling against differential prices . As a result, services such as Airtel Zero and Facebook's Free Basics were not allowed to be launched.

The paper also cites the different norms used in different parts of the world, such as net neutrality laws of Australia, the European Union, Brazil, Japan and the US. The last date to send comments to TRAI is 21 June 2016. You can send your views on advqos@trai.gov.in. Currently in India, different groups are engaged in a tussle over net neutrality. Groups such as Savetheinternet and Free Software Movement Of India are supporting the cause by educating people through blog posts and videos.

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The Kingston Trio comes to Hutchinson

All three current members, have links to and experience with the original group.
The Tallinn e-Governance Conference held on 30 and 31 May within the scope of the ICT Week focuses on the impact of e-governance on the economy and society. 340 representatives of the public and private sectors from more than 50 countries will attend the two-day conference. The most exotic countries represented are the Faeroe Islands, Mauritius, Seychelles, Haiti, Kyrgyzstan, Australia and Namibia.

The participants in the event organised by the e-Governance Academy will discuss the key factors of creating an efficient e-state and the challenges in assessing the impact of e-governance.

Executive Director of the e-Governance Academy Arvo Ott said that people have often asked him what the benefits of e-governance are and how much does it cost, and these two questions were therefore chosen as the topics of the conference. The heads of state who visit Estonia often think that only wealthier societies can afford to use ICT in governance and provision of public services, said Mr Ott. Actually, small budgets do not prevent the achievement of good results. This is confirmed by Estonias own experience as well as the development report of the World Bank. The benefits of e-governance have so far been assessed with indirect methods, but we can also speak about practical examples at the conference.

President of the Republic of Estonia Toomas Hendrik Ilves will open the conference with an address. During the debate on the first day, former EU Commission vice-president Siim Kallas and Member of French Parliament Frederic Lefebvre will discuss whether and when Europe could become an e-continent, and how this would help increase economic growth in the region.

The conference will showcase e-governance experience from all over the world and offers the attendees the opportunity to hear the introduction of the development report of the World Bank, and the ministers of France, Kyrgyzstan, Mauritius and Faeroe Islands will speak about the experience of their countries in the creation of public e-services and the lessons learnt from Estonia. The attendees will also hear how Estonia measures the benefits gained from the functioning of e-governance for the economy and society, and how the Tax and Customs Board plans to support business and economic growth with its e-services.

On the second day of the conference, cyber security expert Raul Rikk will speak about the cyber security index of countries developed in the e-Governance Academy, which measures the level of cyber security in different countries and is a tool for increasing cyber security. There will also be four workshops, where the participants can share their experience in the cyber security of states, the lessons of small states, island countries and EU Eastern Partnership countries, and change management.

The speakers at the Tallinn e-Governance Conference are: French Minister of State for Digital Affairs Axelle Lemaire, Deputy Head of Government Administration of Kyrgyz Republic Zhyldyzbek Isakulov, Minister of Finance of Faeroe Islands Kristina Hafoss, IT Minister of Mauritius Etienne Sinatambou, Estonian Minister of Foreign Affairs Marina Kaljurand, Research Fellow of CITIS Kristjan Vassil, Director General of the Tax and Customs Board Marek Helm, former EU Commission vVice-President Siim Kallas, Member of French Parliament Frederic Lefebvre, Lead ICT Specialist at the World Bank Juan Navas-Sabater, expert of e-Governance Academy Raul Rikk, Head of Public Policy for Facebook Jakub Turowski and others.

Further information, the programme and live broadcast of the discussions are available online at http://tallinnconference.ee/. You can also have your say on Twitter #egov2016.

The Tallinn e-Governance Conference is being organised by the e-Governance Academy in association with the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the European Commission, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, Microsoft, USAID, the Estonian Centre of Eastern Partnership and Tallinn University of Technology.

The Tallinn e-Governance Conference is part of the events of the ICT Week.
North Adams held a parade and observances at the Veterans Memorial on Eagle Street. See more photos from the event here.

Memorial Day Marked in North Berkshire, Pittsfield



Lanesborough held its services on Sunday; find the story here and more photos here.

Korean War veteran Robert Richards makes it a point to attend Memorial Day services.



He was at the Veterans Memorial in North Adams on Monday morning to remember his fellow soldiers who did not make it home.



"A lot of guys I took basic training with got killed in Korea. I was lucky. I signed up for the heavy weapons and ... they put me in Japan for three months so I missed that," Richards said. "On the way back, I ran across one of the guys I took basic with and he said most of the guys I took basic with got killed over there. That's why I am here. To remember for them."



World War II veteran Eugene "Red" Arrighini said he rarely misses a Memorial Day ceremony. He said people always need to remember the sacrifices made for this country.



"I don't think anyone should ever forget what everyone went through," Arrigoni said "A 14-year-old kid stopped me a while back  and he wanted to know what war I was in. I said World War II. He asked 'when was that?' It escapes people. Like everything else, when things are going good people forget everything and when someone gets hurt they start to remember."

The observances in the city followed the trek down Main and Eagle streets, to music of the Drury High School marching band. Keynote speaker Rachel Branch, a city native and former secretary to the chief of information at Wheelus Air Base, Tripoli, Libya, asked those in attendance to remember those lost in war.

"We mourn Peter W. Foote who died in Vietnam in 1968, and Michael DeMarsico II who died in Afghanistan in 2012," Branch said. "All those remembered and honored with hallowed gold stars on our honor roll behind me, who proudly heeded the call of duty, honor and commitment to the United States."

Branch said through remembrance we can reflect on our freedoms and focus on peace.



"Through the tears of remembrance today, may we walk in the light of the freedoms they have so nobly preserved for us," she said. "We can never break faith. Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with you and me."



Mayor Richard Alcombright said he recently took a ride up to Drury, from which he could better see the many flags marking veterans at Southview Cemetery below.

"I thought how lucky I am and how lucky are we that we are so protected. We know that so many around the word live in fear live in war and live without freedom," he said. "War is a horrible and ugly thing but the hundreds of thousands who have died serving over hundreds of years are the most honorable people this country has ever known."



Past Comdr. Dennis St. Pierre of American Legion Post 125 awarded Joseph Cariddi a certificate to commemorate his 71 years as a member of the American Legion. St. Pierre said during this time he has only missed two ceremonies.

Drury High School student Abby Kate Caproni gave the Gettysburg Address and was awarded the George Angeli Award.



Williamstown held ceremonies at Field Park. See more photos here.

In Williamstown, Richard A. Ruether American Legion Post 152 not only remembered fallen comrades but also recognized those who follow in their footsteps.



The families of departed veterans David E. Fenton, Gary Edgar Field, Shirley E. Gardner, Jeremy L. Dupell, Richard L. DeMayo and Stanley W. Bubriski were honored for their loved ones' service in war and peace on battlefields ranging from World War II to Vietnam.

The local American Legion also honored a tradition that dates back to World War I, awarding a Blue Star Banner. This year it went to the family of Mitchell Malloy, who is serving in the Navy on the USS Ronald Reagan in the Western Pacific.

Mitchell's dad Roger and his granddaughter  Mitchell's niece  Sophia accepted the banner on behalf of the family.



Roger Mitchell said Mitchell has been deployed for a year.



"I just heard from him this week," Roger said. "They're taking off for a fast cruise this week, and then they're going to South Korea in two weeks for the rest of the summer, the Phillipines, right around there."



Roger said Mitchell, soon to be promoted from seaman apprentice to seaman, thought about going to work in the family business after graduation from McCann Technical School, but was inspired to serve his country.



"Believe it or not  we went to watch the movie 'American Sniper,' and he was sitting there one day and said, 'You know what, Dad,' I said, 'You're not sniper material,' " Roger Malloy recalled. "He said, 'I know that, but I think it's something I'd like to do.'



"We went down and talked to a recruiter.  And he's happy to be serving."



The Blue Star service banner is traditionally displayed in the window of the homes of families with members serving in the armed forces.



"As Americans provide their support to our troops during the current armed conflicts, the Blue Star Service Banner tradition reminds us all that war touches every neighborhood in our land," Adam Filson told the crowd gathered at Field Park.



That crowd listened to Filson read verses from Theodore O'Hara's poem, "Bivouac of the Dead," witnessed a flag-folding





ceremony executed by members of Post 152, watched the post's Ladies Auxiliary lay wreaths at the war memorial and heard patriotic songs performed by Kathleen Toohey Carbone and Mount Greylock Regional School student Jaden King.



Post Comdr. Ron James set the tone for the day, a sacred and solemn celebration of fallen heroes.



"This is a sacred day, and this is our most visible presence to those who have gone before us," James said. "We honor the memory of those who gave their lives in sacrifice for our country and those who have dropped their burdens by the wayside of life and have gone to their eternal rest. May the ceremonies of today deepen the reverence for our departed friends and comrades.



"Let us renew our pledge of loyalty to our country and its flag. Let us resolve by word and deed to emphasize the duty and privilege of patriotism."





Pittsfield photos can be found here.

The sound of a bugle was the "soundtrack" of Pittsfield Mayor Linda Tyer's childhood. Her father was in the Air Force and she grew in Air Force bases around the country. Every morning and every night, the bugle sounds halted everything as the entire base honored the flag being raised or retired.



"During revelry and retreat, military personnel stand at attention, facing the American flag and salute until the last note is played. Civilians, even young girls playing softball or little boys getting off the school bus must stop, stand at attention and place their hands over their hearts. These bugle calls became the soundtrack of my life and when I hear them played today, I am overwhelmed by the sacrifice, honor and courage of so many of our veterans and their families," Tyer said.



"Yet, of all the military bugle calls none is more easily recognized or more likely to invoke emotion than the call to taps. Taps is played at funerals, wreath laying and memorials. The melody is eloquent and haunting."



After giving the keynote speech, honoring both the history of the day and reminding the hundred or so residents the importance of taps, Tyer headed to Lenox, where her father was delivering an address there.



"I was the lucky kid whose dad came home every night and kept me safe from many of life's challenges. That is not the story of so many American boys and girls, wives and husbands, moms and dads, brothers and sisters. For them, grief and pride are in their hearts today," she said.



For those families who weren't so lucky, Tyer honored all of those who made the sacrifice for the country in the numerous wars over the years.



"We lack the words to describe how your heart breaks on Memorial Day and every day that you remember your loved ones. We can never fully know it but we do know what your sacrifice means to us, to our country, and to a dangerous world that still depends so much on the greatest fighting force for world security," Tyer said.



Pittsfield's ceremony was held inside the gymnasium at Morningside Elementary School after the parade was canceled because of the threat of rain.



"I would like to thank all of the great participants, those who got ready today until we canceled this morning. But they still did everything they need to do to get ready. That includes Pittsfield High School and Taconic High School bands, our local politicians, veterans organizations, Sheriff Thomas Bowler, the Pittsfield Police Department," Veterans Service Agent James Clark said of the cancellation.



"We invited this year elementary school children and at last count we had 100, 150 who were going to march in the parade today. I think it is really important for our young citizens to be shown what respect is and what Memorial Day is all about and that was our goal in having them participate," Clark said.



Inside the gym, John Harding served as the master of ceremonies; colors were posted; the national anthem was sung by Anthony Pastore; the Rev. James Lumsden gave the invocation; Mike Anacora read Gen. John A. Logan's Memorial Day order; Martha Green sang "American the Beautiful"; taps were played, and Rabbi David Weiner provided the benefiction.



See photos from the Adams event here.

In Adams, the parade traveled its usual route around the downtown, marching up Park Street to Maple Street Cemetery. A caravan of local veterans and dignitories was joined the Adams Police Department, the Adams Alerts and their parade wagon, the Hoosac Valley High School marching band, Boy Scouts and Girls Scouts, and followed by a cavalcade of children with patriotically decked out bicycles.



The ceremonies at the cemetery included renditions by the band, the Berkshire Highlanders and the Rev. Matthew Guidi of St. Mary of the Assumption in Cheshire gave the benediction. The master of ceremonies was Paul Hutchinson, who recognized local veterans Joseph Roulier and Clement St. Hilaire and VFW Auxiliary representatives Laurie Zepka and Theresa Marby.



Tom Brown and his grandchildren, Hannah and Adrian Koczela, sang patriotic and Civil War era songs. Hoosac eighth-grader Shaleigh Levesque read the World War I poem "In Flanders Fields" and junior Kaylea Nocher gave the Gettysburg Address.



Selectman Joseph Nowak gave the main address, reminding the crowd that many of the nation's military members were lost to disease and difficult conditions. There were more than 620,000 casualties in the Civil War, the nation's deadliest conflict. But of those, five men died of disease for every three in combat.



"I think its important for us to realize no matter how strong and brave our troops stand, they cannot always withstand the onslaught of sickness and disease," Nowak said. "They are as much an enemy to our fighting forces as those we waged war against."



Each war brought different conditions and new diseases, from the freezing weather and primitive conditions endured during the Revolution, to the heat and dysentary of the Civil War, to the trenches and the gas of World War I.



"As we look across the cemeteries, we see the flags placed on the graves of those honorable men and women who fought in wars so that we could be a free and sovereign nation," Nowak said. "Soldiers are four-season patriots who during wartime, regardless of weather conditions, unforeseen circumstances and unique situations, must stand together as one."





Cheshire photos can be found here.

After marching through town following an convoy of children on bikes, Cheshire residents marched up to the town cemetery to conduct its Memorial Day ceremony.



Selectmen Chairman Paul Astorino thanked all those who attended the ceremony and asked them to reflect on the sacrifice many soldiers have made.



"Honoring their sacrifice not only reminds us of the cost of war but perhaps more importantly the price we must pay for peace and that freedom is not an entitlement," he said. "It comes with a burden and a price. Today we reflect on the lives soldiers gave that gives us the freedom we cherish."



Cheshire fifth-graders also read written essays at the service.



Lillian Meehan said we should always remember what soldiers have sacrificed for the country.



"Memorial Day is a very important day because it is a day to remember all fallen soldiers," she said. "Also, we should remember how soldiers risked their lives for us, and we should all appreciate what soldiers have done for us."



Mia Francesconi said all servicemen and -women have accomplished their goal of securing freedom in America.



"The soldiers who fought in the wars were brave and courageous. Those soldiers wanted us to be free and they believed that our lives were more important than their own," she said. "They wanted us to remember them as the ones who made our country a free country. They have achieved their goal."



Ian Cappiello thanked all the miliary members for keeping America safe.



"Soldiers fight for the flag, and they fight for the 50 stars and the people within them," he said. "Every person that has fought is extremely courageous, and I want to thank everyone who has fought in the military. You are the reason this country is standing."



Zachary Gaylord read the Gettysburg Address.



More photos from Clarksburg can be found here.

Earlier in the morning, Clarksburg Town Administrator Carl McKinney called on the crowd gathered at Town Hall on River Road to pay homage to those who paid the ultimate sacrifice, "a debt that can never be paid in full."



"Let us not forget those who carry on the struggle throughout the world ... let their actions be an inspiration to this troubled world."



The gathering included members of Peter A. Cook Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 9144, the Clarksburg School band that played several selections; and the Clarksburg Volunteer Fire Department. Clarksburg eighth-graders Julia Jammalo, Holly Boudreau and Madison Goodell gave the Gettysburg Address and Laurie Boudreau and Lynette Farnsworth sang.



The bell was rung as the name of each of Clarksburg's fallen was called.



Former Rep. Daniel Bosley, speaking in Clarksburg earlier in the morning, said the word "hero" gets thrown around too easily.



"The young men and women who have given this ultimate sacrifice  the people we honor each year on this day  are the true heroes of our society," he said.



More than 200 Massachusetts men and women have lost their lives war or while on active duty since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Bosley said.



He remembered his uncles who fought in World War II, his father in Korea, and his many appearances at Memorial Day ceremonies over the years, including reading the Gettysburg Address as an eighth-grader in his hometown of Florida.



"It's never easy, sometimes the country is united in our efforts and sometimes it's been divided over our actions," he said, noting how "close" war can be today with almost instant news and social media. "What has been the constant in all of that is the service and sacrifice of young men and women who have given their lives for their county and by extension, to each one of us."

Staff writers Andrew McKeever, Jack Guerino, Stephen Dravis and Tammy Daniels contributed to this report.
Brian Gill from Mount Greylock Regional School District talks about how the Olmsted Award money from Williams College has reinstated a ninth-grade team model. Williams College President Adam Falk addresses the Olmsted Award breakfast. Wililamstown Elementary School technology teacher Tom Welch talks about a technology conference that teachers got to attend with Olmsted money. PreviousNext

Williams Celebrates Olmsted Awards for Local Schools

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.  In a year filled with ongoing discussions about "budgets and buildings," local educators still have managed to direct their time, attention and talents to where it matters most.

"It's about our kids," Williams College President Adam Falk told a crowd of local teachers and administrators who joined Williams staff at a breakfast to celebrate the local 2016 Bicentennial Olmsted Awards for Faculty Development last week. "You really have focused on educating our students."

The local Olmsted Awards are funded by an endowment from the estates of Williams alum George Olmsted Jr., class of 1924, and his wife, Frances. The awards were established in 1993, on the occasion of Williams' bicentennial celebration. They are an extension of the national Olmsted Prizes, which are administered each year to secondary school teachers from around the country.

This year, Olmsted Awards went to Adams-Cheshire Regional School District, Berkshire Arts and Technology Public Charter School, Brayton Elementary School in North Adams, Lanesborough Elementary School, McCann Technical School, Mount Greylock Regional School, and Williamstown Elementary School. Each school will receive $5,000 for professional and curricular development projects.

Not only did representatives from each of the districts come to the May 25 breakfast to accept the awards this year, they also came to give short presentations on how their schools used last year's Olmsted Award money, so that Williams could see firsthand how the grants were being put to use.

This coming year, Adams-Cheshire will use its Olmsted Award to hire two consultants and purchase the book "Teaching with Poverty in Mind" by Eric Jensen for the C.T. Plunkett School. Faculty at the school will work with the consultants to develop a plan to foster a safe, healthy, positive, and inclusive whole-school learning environment that enables students to develop positive relationships with adults and peers, regulate their emotions and behavior, achieve academic and non-academic success in school, and maintain physical and psychological health and well-being.

Last year the district used the grant to improve instruction for English Language Learners (ELL).

This year, BArT's Olmsted grant will support three projects. The first will provide Spanish lessons for 18 faculty and staff members, to enable better communication and help build strong family-teacher partnerships among the school's increasingly diverse community. The second project will fund workshops for teachers in a technology education program called Web-Enriched Classroom (WEC). The third project is a new support group for teachers who are also administrators at the school.

Last year BArT used the money to digitize student portfolios, adapt the school's science curriculum to the new Next Generation Science Standards and create new teacher support groups run by a trained facilitator. These groups will provide a space where teachers can acknowledge the emotions and frustrations they encounter in their work, and create plans of action to address these feelings.

This year, Brayton will use its Olmsted grant to support continued training for teachers in the "Leader in Me" program, which incorporates leadership skills into the curriculum. The grant will allow Brayton to bring national Leader in Me educators and trainers to work with staff to increase student skills and self-confidence, improve academics, and decrease discipline referrals.

Last year, North Adams Public Schools started "The Leader in Me" program at Brayton and enhanced curriculum development training for the district's secondary teachers, in particular those who teach Advanced Placement courses in science, math, English, and social studies, in an effort to boost participation in AP classes, particularly among at-risk students.

For Lanesborough and Williamstown elementaries this year, the awards will help support their collaborative focus on STEM and provide a three-day professional development experience focusing on teaching math. The program will include ways to reinforce a deeper understanding of math, improve number fluency, use a student's developmental age to increase learning, teach understanding and accuracy in mental and written math, and engage students in active discourse in the Common Core classroom. A portion of the grant also will support stipends for curriculum development over the summer and outside of school hours next year to help the schools transition to the new Massachusetts science standards.

Last year, both schools sent teachers from each school, along with the principals, technology coordinators, and other administrators, to the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) national conference in Philadelphia to attend workshops focusing on school improvement, technology infrastructure, professional learning, digital-age teaching and learning, and virtual schooling/e-learning.

This year, McCann plans to use its Olmsted grant to help add expertise for a computer science and software engineering (CSE) course to its Project Lead the Way program. The CSE course will include computer application development, data visualization, cybersecurity, and simulation. The grant will support comprehensive training for two faculty members for two weeks this summer at Worcester Polytechnic Institute to develop and implement the new program.

Last year, McCann expanded its robotics program and developed a robotics summer camp.

This year, Mount Greylock will use its Olmsted award to continue its ninth-grade team model, which provides support for the academic, social, and emotional growth for ninth-graders. The school is planning two class trips, including a hike of Mount Greylock and participation in Ramblewild's tree-to-tree aerial course and low-ropes course. The grant also will provide a stipend for a ninth-grade team faculty leader to organize events, collaborate with the peer team and colleagues, and coordinate outside speakers.

Last year, Mount Greylock used the Olmsted funds to reinstate the ninth-grade team model and to pay for diversity awareness, cyberbullying training, and leadership development.

After the district presentations, Gage McWeeny, associate professor of English at Williams, said it was incredibly rewarding for him not only as an educator but as the father of four children in the Williamstown/Mount Greylock school district to see the level of creativity and commitment.

"Seeing these presentations ... you get to see all the tremendously hard work," he said. "It is incredibly interesting to see the ecosystem of education in the region."

McWeeny said that comes in handy when he has local students in his Williams classrooms and he can "steal" some of the brilliance these local teachers send these students off to Williams with.

"I regularly crib stuff from my students' teachers," he said.
Superintendent Douglas Dias and School Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Greene were given signing authority for change orders on the school building project. A schematic outlining changes that will be made to the current Mount Greylock building during its addition/renovation project. Areas in white will be unchanged in September. PreviousNext

Mount Greylock School Committee Hears Some Good News



Retired Mount Greylock teacher Joan Devoe shares her story with the School Committee. WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.  Not all the talk at last Tuesday's Mount Greylock Regional School Committee focused on allegations of state law violations or rehashing of budget battles from the local elementary school.

Principal Mary MacDonald gave the committee a list of the colleges at which members of the class of 2016 have been accepted. Several members of the class have been accepted at multiple competitive colleges and universities, she said.

"There was a comment from an admissions counselor at Middlebury (Vt.), where we had three students accepted," MacDonald said. "The admissions person said that this year the applications from Mount Greylock looked like they were from [New Hampshire prep school] Phillips Exeter with the kinds of scores and the kinds of extracurricular and co-curricular opportunities."

MacDonald touched on the college plans of soon-to-be graduates as part of a monthly presentation apprising the committee of recent accomplishments by Mount Greylock students.

The School Committee also dealt with topics ranging from the addition/renovation project to the dangers of opioids in a meeting that stretched well into the third hour.

The evening began where the committee's previous meeting started, with concerns from Mount Greylock retirees that the district could unilaterally increase the retirees' contribution to their health benefits.

Joan Devoe shared with the committee her personal battle with cancer and explained how its continuing threat makes good health insurance coverage a critical part of her life.

"A year after I retired, I was diagnosed with a rare cancer," said Devoe, a retired speech therapist. "The news was devastating, but at least I had the comfort that after a total of 33 years teaching I had excellent health plan coverage that I was thankful for."

Devoe said she just celebrated her fourth year in remission.

"My oncologist said I will be lucky to make it to five, but I'm out to prove him wrong," Devoe said.

She told the School Committee that during her time at Mount Greylock, the teachers union was asked to make concessions during difficult financial times, and it did so. Those former employees deserve the same loyalty from the district that they showed the district, she said.

"We did not enter teaching to get rich, but we did make a commitment to stay at Mount Greylock," Devoe said.

"Now, as retirees, we are powerless to negotiate."

Devoe asked why the retirees group that appeared at committee's April meeting did not hear from the committee in the weeks that followed. Chris Dodig of the School Committee's Negotiations Subcommittee explained that he did not have contact information for a leader of the retirees group and asked them to give him a name so he could sit down one-on-one and talk about the options the district might explore.

Mount Greylock school nurse Nichole Russell addressed the committee to explain the district's procedure for administering Narcan, a drug that reverses the effects from an overdose of heroin or other opiods.

"Deaths from opioid abuse are on the rise," Russell said. "We need to be prepared. According to the Department of Public Health, at least 75 percent of school districts have Narcan.

"Faculty and staff are trained at the beginning of the year to recognize the signs of an overdose, but only a nurse can administer it."

Russell and MacDonald told the committee that if the school finds evidence that a student is involved with opioids, it communicates with parents and the child's physician to work on finding treatment options. The school also would look to local resources like the Brien Center in North Adams.

The School Committee also took action to expedite the school building project, slated to break ground this summer. In order to maintain the project's ambitious timeline, the School Building Committee asked that School Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Greene and Superintendent Douglas Dias, both members of the building committee, be given signing authority for change orders that may arise between meetings of the committees.

Greene told her colleagues that there will be a team looking at proposed change orders on a regular basis, and that team, which includes the chair and co-chair of the building committee, will be relying on the advice of the owner's project manager who has provided guidance since the beginning of the district's feasibility study.



Mount Greylock nurse Nichole Russell talks to the School Committee about opioids. The School Committee considered attaching a dollar limit to the change order authority but decided against it.

"When you get to this stage, you don't want to slow it down," district counsel Fred Dupere told the committee. "On occasion, there will be very large authorizations."

Dupere suggested language for the motion to approve the change order authority, including a provision that any changes made will be discussed at the next available meetings of the School Building Committee and School Committee.

MacDonald talked to the School Committee about the changes that will be made to the existing building over the summer as the building project gets under way.

The most obvious change will be the elimination of the current main entrance. The new entrance will be at the south end of the building's east side, near the current guidance office. The guidance and school administration offices will be flipping in order to allow the main office to monitor visitors during the day.

Meanwhile, the auditorium and band room  along with the Tri-District administration offices  will be shut down as that section of the building is gutted.

MacDonald showed the committee a layout of how the school will look when students return in September. Notably, the gym, cafeteria, library and most of the classrooms will remain as is  marked on the schematic in white, indicating no change.

Nevertheless, she said, the school will add additional orientation tours this summer, allowing returning students to come and learn about the changes. The school routinely holds tours during the summer for new students.
Some of the pictures made by Plunkett School pupils that will be sent to Gov. Charlie Baker. PreviousNext

Plunkett Students Ask Governor To Finish The Train Track

ADAMS, Mass.  The children at C.T. Plunkett School are adding their voices to calls to complete the Berkshire Scenic Railway line: "we are all aboard here at the Adams Station, please build the tracks to downtown."

Earlier this month, Plunkett students took on a schoolwide effort to write more than 50 letters or draw pictures to Gov. Charlie Baker asking him to finish the last mile of the rail line to Hoosac Street.

"We though it could be fun, and the kids love that train. More than half of the Berkshire Scenic ridership were kids," Director of Community Development Donna Cesan said. "I hope its taken that this is important to the community whether you are 3, 30, or you are 90,"

The state Department of Transportation announced earlier this month that there were no funds to finish the last 6/10ths of a mile of the rail line that extends from North Adams to Adams.

This leaves Adams with its renovated "train station" on Hoosac Street, but with no train.

Cesan said Selectman Joseph Nowak, who sometimes substitute teaches, spearheaded the project and delivered stacks of letters and drawings to the Community Development Office last week.

The material varied from family portraits boarding the train to drawings of trains equipped with rockets.

Some letters stated that "the train will be cool" or "please make the train go behind my house" or "we have a station but no train."

Some students asked if Baker would ride the train with them and one student boldly asked the governor to "put the train tracks on the missing spots."

Cesan said the town has already invested a lot into a project that was promised to the town. That spur of the Ashuwillticook Rail Trail, now under construction, was delayed nearly three years while the state redesigned it to accommodate the rail line and purchased the section from North Adams to the industrial park.

The town, meanwhile, purchased and refurbished a former carwash on Hoosac Street to act as a welcoming pavilion for tourists expected to disembark from the scenic rail. Adams town meeting approved $230,000 toward the $600,000 project in hopes the nonprofit railway will prove an economic boon.

"The town made investments and decisions based on that promise," Cesan said. "There are 351 municipalities in Massachusetts and I am sure they all have very important projects, but this, in the scheme of things, is really a relatively small amount of money."

Cesan said to finish the track and install platforms in both Adams and North Adams it would probably cost between $1.5 million and $2 million.

She said the selectmen continue to reach out to state representatives and MassDOT to relay the importance of bringing the train to the newly renovated Adams Station

Cesan noted that the letter collections must have been a huge project and she hopes the governor sees them.

"To me it makes the point but in a fun light-hearted way. It is good for the kids, who are our future citizens," Cesan said. "I hope the governor takes it in the spirit that it was intended, and I would love to have him come out and visit and ride the train with some of the kids."

CT Plunkett First Grade Letters by iBerkshires.com

More CT Plunkett Letters and Pictures by iBerkshires.com
A pile of loose bricks that fell or were removed from the southwest corner of Notre Dame. Water damage can be seen on the southeast corner as well. PreviousNext

North Adams Mulling Repairs to Notre Dame Church



The extent of the damage to the lower section of the buttress.

NORTH ADAMS, Mass.  City officials say the damage on the back of the former Notre Dame du Sacre Coeur Church is far worse than it looks.



The exterior bricks on southwest buttress have fallen down and there is separation in the bricks on the southeast corner as well.



The damage was caused by copper thieves who pulled out the gutter system and pipes.



"It was directly the result of the water falling directly on the bricks," said Building Inspector William Meranti last week.



But the church is in no danger of collapsing, unlike St. Francis of Assisi a block away that had its steeple removed in an emergency procedure that ended a week ago. In that case, water got into the cap on the bell tower, undermining the structure.



"We are confident in the structural integrity of the building," Mayor Richard Alcombright said last week.



Meranti concurred, saying the interior of Notre Dame, a decade or so younger than the 1869 St. Francis, has a different internal configuration and is more stable.



"We're not fearful of any collapse," he said. In fact, city crews pulled out a lot of the loose brick. "We helped knock it down because we didn't want it to fall on anyone's head."
Greylock Federal Credit Union held its eighth Community Shred Day on May 21, shredding over 5 tons of paper and raising $1,420 in donations for the Berkshire United Way.

Biz Briefs: Greylock's Annual Shred Day Benefits Berkshire United Way

Shred it up: Greylock Federal Credit Union shredded over 5 tons of paper at its eighth annual Community Shred Day on May 21. The effort also raised $1,420 in donations for the Berkshire United Way. The credit union suggested a $1 donation per box from people looking to dispose of personal documents.



ProShred supplied two mobile shredding trucks featuring cameras inside the bin. People were able to watch their documents being shredded on the spot.



Millions of Americans have their identities stolen each year. Identity theft occurs when someone uses personally identifying information, like name, social security number, or credit card number, without permission, to commit fraud or other crimes. Shredding personal documents is one of the best ways to combat ID Fraud.





Giving back: Berkshire Bank will close all locations at noon on Tuesday, June 7, for its companywide "Xtraordinary Day: The Power of Giving Back."



"Xtraordinary Day" is a day of employee volunteering that has occurred in previous years, but this year it will be on a larger scale, as it will be the first year that the bank as a whole will participate in community service events from 1 to 4 p.m. The day is set to focus on more than 50 community projects, with more than 1,100 employees, to make the greatest impact with this years effort.

The previous years week of service marked the highest number of employee participants and the most projects undertaken during a single week in the companys history. This year will focus less on the quantity of projects and more on higher employee participation while making a more significant contribution to each organization.

Touching scenes: Residents of the Berkshires and visitors to the vacation destination came out in droves to Touch A Truck hosted by Lee Premium Outlets on May 21.

All proceeds benefitted Berkshire County Kids Place, which provides support to children and families who are victims of abuse. More than 25 vehicles and heavy equipment were on hand for truck enthusiasts of all ages to check out, including fire trucks, boom trucks, dump trucks and more.





Horseback merger: Equus Therapeutic and Whispering Pines Farm will merge their therapeutic horseback riding programs.



This merger comes after it was announced earlier this year that Equus would no longer be offering therapeutic services at Wedgewood Stable in Lanesborough. The new Equus will continue the mission of both programs, which is providing an equine assisted therapeutic riding program that is dedicated to providing a safe and encouraging environment for special needs individuals.



The change of location, now at Whispering Pines Farm on Miner Road in Lanesborough, will offer an amazing growth opportunity for the program. The merger has also brought to the forefront a desire to increase the services offered by Equus and Whispering Pines Farm. The therapeutic program, which has been around since 1982, allows for riders to experience improvements in a variety of areas including, but not limited to, better muscle tone, balance, posture, emotional well-being and motor development. In addition, therapeutic events and group lessons enable students to improve their social skills and feel more comfortable in public settings. On the horizon, Wojtkowski looks to add services for wounded warriors and veterans.
Over 260 guests gather at Hancock Shaker Village on May 20 for the Movers + Shakers Party, the culmination of Berkshire United Ways 2016 Day of Caring, which included the installation of 50 Berkshire Book Houses in 24 communities throughout the county.

Berkshires Beat: Berkshire United Way Hosts Day of Caring

Day of caring: Berkshire United Way held its 2016 Day of Caring on May 20. Day of Caring is the name United Way has used to represent volunteer engagement and community building.



In the past, Berkshire United Way Day of Caring initiatives have included the installation of Born Learning Trails at Muddy Brook Elementary School in Great Barrington, and Durant and Springside Parks in Pittsfield. To enhance literacy, volunteers have painted classrooms and held book drives in support of education. Volunteers also have cleaned the Housatonic River in Great Barrington, and held countywide forums with youth called You First to help them build aspirations.



At the heart of the 2016 event was the installation of 50 Berkshire Book Houses in 24 communities throughout the county. With the help of Jack Geary Builders, dozens of SABIC and JRL Construction volunteers, using materials donated by LP Adams, built 50 book houses, each of which can house 100 childrens books.



With volunteer support from Unistress and Dodge Construction, the book houses were installed in high-traffic public places. 47 local businesses and faith based or civic organizations, along with several individuals, have signed on as caretakers for the houses, which involves hosting book drives to keep them stocked with age-appropriate materials and conducting regular check-ins to ensure the continued upkeep of the structures.



To celebrate the hard work of this initiative and over 120 volunteers involved, plus hundreds more who have participated in book drives throughout the county to stock these houses, Berkshire United Way hosted a Movers + Shakers dance party celebration at Hancock Shaker Village on May 20 featuring a dance party led by DJ BFG, hearty hors doeuvres, dance performances, tastings, local milkshakes, and cash bar.



The celebration also provided attendees with an opportunity to view some of Berkshire United Ways community impact work, which was on display in the Community Room.



Net proceeds from the 2016 Day of Caring benefit Berkshire United Ways early literacy efforts across the county. For more information on Berkshire Book Houses, including a list of locations, please visit berkshireunitedway.org.




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Imperial Valley News Center

Poverty Marks a Gene, Predicting Depression

Durham, North Carolina - A long line of research links poverty and depression. Now, a study by Duke University scientists shows how biology might underlie the depression experienced by high-risk adolescents whose families are socio-economically disadvantaged.

The study, published May 24 in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, combined genetics, brain imaging and behavioral data gathered as adolescents were followed for more than three years as part of a larger study.

The results are part of a growing body of work that may lead to biological predictors that could guide individualized depression-prevention strategies.

Adolescents growing up in households with lower socioeconomic status were shown to accumulate greater quantities of a chemical tag on a depression-linked gene over the course of two years. These epigenetic tags work by altering the activity of genes. The more chemical tags an individual had near a gene called SLC6A4, the more responsive was their amygdala -- a brain area that coordinates the bodys reactions to threat -- to photographs of fearful faces as they underwent functional MRI brain scans. Participants with a more active amygdala were more likely to later report symptoms of depression.

This is some of the first research to demonstrating that low socioeconomic status can lead to changes in the way genes are expressed, and it maps this out through brain development to the future experience of depression symptoms, said the studys first author Johnna Swartz, a Duke postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Ahmad Hariri, a Duke professor of psychology and neuroscience.

Adolescence is rarely an easy time for anyone. But growing up in a family with low socioeconomic status or SES -- a metric that incorporates parents income and education levels -- can add chronic stressors such as family discord and chaos, and environmental risks such as poor nutrition and smoking.

These small daily hassles of scraping by are evident in changes that build up and affect childrens development, Swartz said.

The study included 132 non-Hispanic Caucasian adolescents in the Teen Alcohol Outcomes Study (TAOS) who were between 11 and 15 years old at the outset of the study and came from households that ranged from low to high SES. About half of the participants had a family history of depression.

The biggest risk factor we have currently for depression is a family history of the disorder, said study co-author Douglas Williamson, principal investigator of TAOS and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke. Our new work reveals one of the mechanisms by which such familial risk may be manifested or expressed in a particular group of vulnerable individuals during adolescence.

The groups previous work, published last year in the journal Neuron, had shown that fMRI scan activity of the amygdala could signal who is more likely to experience depression and anxiety in response to stress several years later. That study included healthy college-aged participants of Hariris ongoing Duke Neurogenetics Study (DNS), which aims to link genes, brain activity, and other biological markers to a risk for mental illness.

This study asked whether higher activity in the same brain area could predict depression in the younger, at-risk TAOS participants. Indeed, about one year later, these individuals (now between 14 and 19 years of age) were more likely to report symptoms of depression, especially if they had a family history of the disorder.

Swartz said the new study examined a range of socioeconomic status and did not focus specifically on families affected by extreme poverty or neglect. She said the findings suggest that even modestly lower socioeconomic status is associated with biological differences that elevate adolescents risk for depression.

Most of the teams work so far has focused on epigenetic chemical tags near the SLC6A4 gene because it helps control the brains levels of serotonin, a neurochemical involved in clinical depression and other mood disorders. The more marks present just upstream of this gene, the less likely it is to be active.

In 2014, Williamson and Hariri first showed that the presence of marks near the SLC6A4 gene can predict the way a persons amygdala responds to threat. That study included both Williamsons TAOS and Hariris DNS participants, but had looked at the chemical tags at a single point in time.

Looking at the changes in these markers over an extended time is a more powerful way to understand an individuals risk for depression, said Hariri, who is also a member of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences.

The team is now searching the genome for new markers that would predict depression. Ultimately, a panel of markers used in combination will lead to more accurate predictions, Swartz said.

They also hope to expand the age ranges of the study to include younger individuals and to continue following the TAOS participants into young adulthood.

As they enter into young adulthood they are going to be experiencing more problems with depression or anxiety -- or maybe substance abuse, Hariri said. The extent to which our measures of their genomes and brains earlier in their lives continue to predict their relative health is something thats very important to know and very exciting for us to study.

This work was supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (R01AA016274), the Dielmann Family (MH087493), the National Institute on Drug Abuse grant (R01DA033369 and R01DA031579), the National Institute on Aging grant (R01AG049789), and the National Institutes of Health Center for the Study of Adolescent Risk and Resilience (P30DA023026).
Imperial Valley News Center

The disabled face significant obstacles to voting in Americas political system

Stanford, California - People with disabilities are the ticking time bomb of the electorate. So says Stanford law researcher Rabia Belt, who has new research on the disenfranchisement of disabled Americans. The intersection of disability and citizenship - in history and in the here-and-now - is, in Belts view, part of a great unseen in law and democracy.

The number of disabled individuals in this country is sobering  about 50 million and counting. And in the lead-up to the 2016 election, the nation is ill prepared to accommodate them, said Belt, who joined Stanford Law School last year as a research fellow to finish her dissertation before she takes up her position as an assistant professor teaching disability law and criminal law at the school in June.

Some 3 million votes will be lost because citizens with disabilities are less likely to vote, according to Belt. The situation isnt expected to improve either: Up to 35 percent of all voters in the next 25 years will need some form of accommodation.

For example, substandard accommodations at the polls  from inadequate parking to large crowds and waiting times  are common and often deal-breakers for disabled voters. On top of this, many states bar people from voting based on often arbitrary standards about their mental health. These issues, Belt found, have roots in the past.

When it comes to disability, we dont really know the history. It doesnt occur to us to ask, Who is the Thurgood Marshall of the disability movement? There is no public consciousness relating to one of the largest minority groups in the country, she said.

Barriers to voting

Belt is helping to build that awareness both as an advocate for the disabled  she sits on the board of the Disability Rights Bar Association  and as a legal historian who has plumbed the depths of disability and suffrage.

Her writings include a forthcoming article in the June issue of Stanford Law Review, where she examines the barriers to voting that disabled citizens often face  and the paucity of effective remedies and action. Her efforts to shine a light on the problems of the disabled include a 2012 article in the Rutgers University Law Review that takes the acclaimed HBO crime drama The Wire to task for giving short shrift to the problems of poor people and people of color with disabilities.

Belt has also done groundbreaking research into the long history of disenfranchisement of the disabled, putting into historical context the challenges for many in this election year.

Expanding upon work in her dissertation, she is preparing a book manuscript that chronicles a century of skirmishing over the voting rights of idiots and lunatics  terms then used to describe persons suffering from mental disabilities  as well as physically disabled and elderly voters.

The story told by Belt in her book begins in 1819, when Maine became the first state to deny suffrage to the disabled, and concludes in 1920, when women won the right to vote for the first time. Along the way, she describes how black and womens suffrage activists challenged their disenfranchisement based on their alleged inferior mental status.

Among the protagonists is Leroy Pitzer, the pawn in a court battle in 1905 over a voter referendum to ban the sale of liquor in a saloon-peppered village in Ohio. The case turns on efforts by tavern owners to prove that Pitzer  a local who had voted with the drys  was mentally disentitled to vote under the Ohio constitution.

Pitzer is forced to endure a circus-like trial, in Belts telling, with newspapers mocking his testimony as amusement and medical doctors on both sides offering conflicting opinions about his state of mind. A judge juggles 29 definitions of insanity or idiocy and, without stating which he adopted, declares Pitzer incompetent.

Unconventional approach

Notably, this and other stories were found by Belt in an unconventional way, dug out of the files of rural county courthouses or old newspapers. Emblematic of a growing crop of historians, she is showing new and valuable perspectives not found in law books and other conventional legal research sources.

That was one of the greatest ideas that came out of her dissertation: To look at the law you have to go outside LexisNexis and the online repositories, said Matthew Lassiter, a University of Michigan history professor who was on Belts dissertation committee. The words that come to mind when I think about her are iconoclastic, provocative and brilliant.

Remnants of the disturbing truths she unearthed are still around  and still quite daunting. More than 30 states disenfranchise people based on often arbitrary standards about their mental health.

Voting laws today

Belt found that inadequate accommodations at the polls  a lack of parking, large crowds and long waiting times  often keep the disabled from exercising their votes.

Long lines at the polling place are not just an inconvenience; they make voting an impossibility for some people with impairments such as physical frailty or old age, Belt wrote in her upcoming Stanford Law Review article, Contemporary Voting Rights Controversies Through the Lens of Disability.

The legal systems response to the injustice has been decidedly mixed. Disabled voters gained new protections under the Help America Vote Act of 2002, although the Justice Department has not brought a single case under the law alleging violations pertaining to the disabled, Belt said.

Rather than increasing access to voting, lawmakers seem to be doing just the opposite, she said.

Strict voter ID laws popular in a growing number of states and aimed at cutting down on fraud at the polls are falling hardest on disabled voters, who are less likely to have the requisite documentation. Paradoxically, disabled citizens still wanting to cast ballots have to vote absentee, a process that studies have shown is especially subject to fraud and manipulation, Belt said.

History is also repeating itself in one other important way  a shared philosophy about who should be entitled to vote, she suggested.

We could think of voting as so important that we make sure everyone is able to vote. But we also could say, Voting is so important that we want to purify the electorate and make it hard for people to vote, Belt says. I think there is a long history of the second phenomenon being true. We still see that today.
Couples study ties anger to heart problems, stonewalling to back pain

Berkeley, California - If you rage with frustration during a marital spat, watch your blood pressure. If you keep a stiff upper lip, watch your back.

New research from UC Berkeley and Northwestern University, based on how couples behave during conflicts, suggests outbursts of anger predict cardiovascular problems later in life.

Conversely, shutting down emotionally or stonewalling during conflict raises the risk of musculoskeletal ailments such as a bad back or stiff muscles.

Our findings reveal a new level of precision in how emotions are linked to health, and how our behaviors over time can predict the development of negative health outcomes, said UC Berkeley psychologist Robert Levenson, senior author of the study.

Link stronger for husbands

The study, published today in the journal Emotion, is based on 20 years of data. It controlled for such factors as age, education, exercise, smoking, alcohol use and caffeine consumption.

Overall, the link between emotions and health outcomes was most pronounced for husbands, but some of the key correlations were also found in wives. It did not take the researchers long to guess which spouses would develop ailments down the road based on how they reacted to disagreements.

We looked at marital-conflict conversations that lasted just 15 minutes and could predict the development of health problems over 20 years for husbands based on the emotional behaviors that they showed during these 15 minutes, said study lead author Claudia Haase, an assistant professor of human development and social policy at Northwestern University.

The findings could spur hotheaded people to consider such interventions as anger management, while people who withdraw during conflict might benefit from resisting the impulse to bottle up their emotions, the researchers said.

Conflict happens in every marriage, but people deal with it in different ways. Some of us explode with anger; some of us shut down, Haase said. Our study shows that these different emotional behaviors can predict the development of different health problems in the long run.

Studying longtime couples

The study is one of several led by Levenson, who looks at the inner workings of long-term marriages. Participants are part of a cohort of 156 middle-aged and older heterosexual couples in the San Francisco Bay Area whose relationships Levenson and fellow researchers have tracked since 1989.

The surviving spouses who participated in the study are now in their 60s, 70s, 80s and even 90s.

Each five years, the couples were videotaped in a laboratory setting as they discussed events in their lives and areas of disagreement and enjoyment. Their interactions were rated by expert behavioral coders for a wide range of emotions and behaviors based on facial expressions, body language and tone of voice. In addition, the spouses completed a battery of questionnaires that included a detailed assessment of specific health problems.

In this latest study, the researchers focused on the health consequences of anger and an emotion-suppressing behavior they refer to as stonewalling. The study also looked at sadness and fear as predictors of these health outcomes, but did not find any significant associations.

Our findings suggest particular emotions expressed in a relationship predict vulnerability to particular health problems, and those emotions are anger and stonewalling, Levenson said.

Raised voices, knitted brows

To track displays of anger, the researchers monitored the videotaped conversations for such behaviors as lips pressed together, knitted brows, voices raised or lowered beyond their normal tone and tight jaws.

To identify stonewalling behavior, they looked for what researchers refer to as away behavior, which includes facial stiffness, rigid neck muscles, and little or no eye contact. That data was then linked to health symptoms, measured every five years over a 20-year span.

The spouses who were observed during their conversations to fly off the handle more easily were at greater risk of developing chest pain, high blood pressure and other cardiovascular problems over time.

Alternately, those who stonewalled by barely speaking and avoiding eye contact were more likely to develop backaches, stiff necks or joints and general muscle tension.

For years, weve known that negative emotions are associated with negative health outcomes, but this study dug deeper to find that specific emotions are linked to specific health problems, Levenson said. This is one of the many ways that our emotions provide a window for glimpsing important qualities of our future lives.

In addition to Levenson and Haase, co-authors and researchers on the study are Sarah Holley at San Francisco State University, Lian Bloch at Stanford University and Alice Verstaen at UC Berkeley. The study was funded by grants from the National Institute on Aging and the German Research Foundation.
Conservation plays vital role in preserving collections

West Lafayette, Indiana - Rare books conservator Sue Donovan holds a rare herbal book by 16th-century German physician and botanist Leonhart Fuchs, part of the Edward Lee Greene collection. In 2012, it was discovered that the book had spine linings of parchment manuscript waste used to bind the book, including an extremely rare medical text by Constantinus Africanus (Constantine the African), an 11th- century physician and Benedictine monk from North Africa who spent the last part of his life in Italy.

Conservators discussed with the curators what to save and how to save it. The parchment pieces have been removed and photographed for documentation, and the book will then be reassembled. Its been a wonderful project - the fragments have value, so we photographed them, put them back and documented the process, says Donovan. There are three different texts represented in the parchment found in the book.

Says rare books curator David Gura, Its essential to have a top-notch conservation staff to preserve our collections for posterity, keeping them usable and accessible. Were very fortunate to have the conservators here.

Donovan completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Chicago and holds a masters in conservation from the Universite de Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne. She joined the University as a Samuel H. Cress Fellow in 2015 and was recently extended as a rare book conservator through July 2017.
Experts develop first method for including migration uncertainty in population projections

Seattle, Washington - Statisticians at the University of Washington have developed the first model for projecting population that factors in the vagaries of migration, a slippery issue that has bedeviled demographers for decades.

Their work, published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also provides population projections for all countries worldwide - and challenges the existing predictions for some, particularly the United States and Germany.

It turns out that for quite a few countries, migration is the single biggest source of uncertainty for population projections, said principal investigator Adrian Raftery, a UW professor of statistics and sociology.

For the first time, the researchers used a probabilistic model that draws on migration rates in each country and worldwide over the past 65 years, along with patterns of fertility and mortality, to project population around the world. The findings were most striking for Germany, whose bureau of statistics has called population decline inevitable as the countrys populace ages.

But the UW model predicts that when migration is factored in, Germanys population decline could be offset by the arrival of more than 1 million immigrants every five years for most of the next century. The data in the study was collected before the influx of more than 965,000 migrants and refugees into the country in 2015, so the near-term difference could be even more dramatic.

Projected net migration rate (net annual migrants per thousand people), net migration count (five-year count, in millions of people), and population (in millions) for the United States, Germany, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Saudi Arabia.Adrian Raftery / University of Washington

Our model could change the perception of the future of Germany from a country that goes into decline for the rest of the century to one that may not, if its policy of accepting migrants continues, said Raftery, also a faculty affiliate for the UW Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences and the UW Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology.

The researchers also predict that France and the United Kingdom are likely to have bigger populations than Germany by 2060, given both countries higher fertility rates.

They also predict that the U.S. population has a 10 percent chance of exceeding 610 million over the next 85 years  nearly double the current population  when migration is factored in, versus a projected high of 510 million if it isnt. While that likelihood is small, it has large ramifications, said lead author Jonathan Azose, a doctoral student in the UW Department of Statistics.

If you think about planning for social welfare programs, sometimes the biggest issues arise when these unexpected events occur, he said. Countries need to be prepared for the possibility.

But migration is a difficult force to predict, driven by factors ranging from war to economic crises, employment opportunity, family dynamics and even migration policy, which can themselves be difficult  if not impossible  to foresee. To come up with their projections, the researchers looked at past migration patterns in each country to determine a range of probability for future outcomes, reasoning that recent history creates an environment that is likely to create similar migration patterns going forward.

A lot of the influences that have produced migration levels in the recent past are baked in and likely to continue to play a role in the future, Raftery said. Its almost impossible to tease out all factors, but using current levels of migration, this is the best we can do.

The researchers then incorporated global migration patterns to build a statistical model and make population projections for each country. Some regional patterns emerged. Smaller European countries that have experienced broad swings in migration over the past half-century are more likely to be impacted by migration uncertainty than countries like India and China, where migration rates are smaller relative to their large populations.

In some African countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, migration uncertainty is expected to be less of a factor in population change than fluctuations in mortality and fertility rates. And projections were adjusted for Gulf countries that in past decades have had large influxes of oil industry workers, since in-migration is expected to decline as the sector cools off in that region.

The researchers model contrasts with the traditional deterministic approach that projects current mortality, fertility and migration rates into the future to estimate population size. But migration rates vary considerably in many countries and fluctuate over time, Raftery said, making for unreliable estimates.

Leaving migration out of the equation can lead to long-term challenges for nations in planning for social programs, the researchers said. Many European countries are cutting education funding in anticipation of declines in school-aged populations, Azose said, which could lead to school closures and fewer trained teachers.

If the school-age population turns out to be larger than the space allocated for them, there can be huge costs associated with opening or reopening schools and finding teachers to staff them, he said. International migration, and especially refugee migration, typically includes large numbers of school-aged children.

The new research stems from a collaboration between Raftery and his colleagues and the United Nations Population Division that started 10 years ago. The team was enlisted by the U.N. to incorporate uncertainty about fertility and mortality to develop more accurate population prediction models. But migration remained a critical, and unaccounted for, determinant. Raftery hopes the new model may eventually be incorporated into U.N. projections.

Including migration uncertainty in population projections could make a substantial difference in how we understand population changes, he said. As far as we know, nobody has done this before.

Hana Sevcikova, a senior research scientist at the UW Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences, co-authored the paper. The work was supported by NIH grants R01 HD54511 and R01 HD70936.
Automatic bug finder

Cambridge, Massachusetts - Symbolic execution is a powerful software-analysis tool that can be used to automatically locate and even repair programming bugs. Essentially, it traces out every path that a programs execution might take.

But it tends not to work well with applications written using todays programming frameworks. An application might consist of only 1,000 lines of new code, but it will generally import functions  such as those that handle virtual buttons  from a programming framework, which includes huge libraries of frequently reused code. The additional burden of evaluating the imported code makes symbolic execution prohibitively time consuming.

Computer scientists address this problem by creating simple models of the imported libraries, which describe their interactions with new programs but dont require line-by-line evaluation of their code. Building the models, however, is labor-intensive and error prone, and the models require regular updates, as programming frameworks are constantly evolving.

Researchers at MITs Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, working with colleagues at the University of Maryland, have taken an important step toward enabling symbolic execution of applications written using programming frameworks, with a system that automatically constructs models of framework libraries.

The researchers compared a model generated by their system with a widely used model of Javas standard library of graphical-user-interface components, which had been laboriously constructed over a period of years. They found that their new model plugged several holes in the hand-coded one.

They described their results in a paper they presented last week at the International Conference on Software Engineering. Their work was funded by the National Science Foundations Expeditions Program.

Forty years ago, if you wanted to write a program, you went in, you wrote the code, and basically all the code you wrote was the code that executed, says Armando Solar-Lezama, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, whose group led the new work. But today, if you want to write a program, you go and bring in these huge frameworks and these huge pieces of functionality that you then glue together, and you write a little code to get them to interact with each other. If you dont understand what that big framework is doing, youre not even going to know where your program is going to start executing.

Consequently, a program analyzer cant just dispense with the framework code and concentrate on the newly written code. But symbolic execution works by stepping through every instruction that a program executes for a wide range of input values. That process becomes untenable if the analyzer has to evaluate every instruction involved in adding a virtual button to a window  the positioning of the button on the screen, the movement of the button when the user scrolls down the window, the buttons change of appearance when its pressed, and so on.

For purposes of analysis, all that matters is what happens when the button is pressed, so thats the only aspect of the buttons functionality that a framework model needs to capture. More precisely, the model describes only what happens when code imported from a standard programming framework returns control of a program to newly written code.

The only thing we care about is what crosses the boundary between the application and the framework, says Xiaokang Qiu, a postdoc in Solar-Lezamas lab and a co-author on the new paper. The framework itself is like a black box that we want to abstract away.

To generate their model, the researchers ran a suite of tutorials designed to teach novices how to program in Java. Their system automatically tracked the interactions between the tutorial code and the framework code that the tutorials imported.

The nice thing about tutorials is that theyre designed to help people understand how the framework works, so theyre also a good way to teach the synthesizer how the framework works, Solar-Lezama says. The problem is that if I just show you a trace of what my program did, theres an infinite set of programs that could behave like that trace.

To winnow down that set of possibilities, the researchers system tries to fit the program traces to a set of standard software design patterns. First proposed in the late 1970s and popularized in a 1995 book called Design Patterns, design patterns are based on the idea that most problems in software engineering fit into just a few categories, and their solutions have just a few general shapes.

Computer scientists have identified roughly 20 design patterns that describe communication between different components of a computer program. Solar-Lezama, Qiu, and their Maryland colleagues  Jinseong Jeon, Jonathan Fetter-Degges, and Jeffrey Foster  built four such patterns into their new system, which they call Pasket, for pattern sketcher. For any given group of program traces, Pasket tries to fit it to each of the design patterns, selecting only the one that works best.

Because a given design pattern needs to describe solutions to a huge range of problems that vary in their particulars, in the computer science literature, theyre described in very general terms. Fortunately, Solar-Lezama has spent much of his career developing a system, called Sketch, that takes general descriptions of program functionality and fills in the low-level computational details. Sketch is the basis of most of his groups original research, and its what reconciles design patterns and program traces in Pasket.

The availability of models for frameworks such as Swing [Javas library of graphical-user-interface components] and Android is critical for enabling symbolic execution of applications built using these frameworks, says Rajiv Gupta, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of California at Riverside. "At present, framework models are developed and maintained manually. This work offers a compelling demonstration of how far synthesis technology has advanced. The scalability of Pasket is impressive  in a few minutes, it synthesized nearly 2,700 lines of code. Moreover, the generated models compare favorably with manually created ones."
President Obama to Travel to Elkhart, Indiana

Washington, DC - On Wednesday, June 1, the President will return to Concord Community High School in Elkhart, Indiana  the site of his first trip as President. More than seven years after that visit, the President will highlight the economic progress that Elkhart and America have made, the economic challenges that remain, and the decisions that Americans face in communities like Elkhart. While in Elkhart, the President will take part in a town hall hosted by PBS at the Lerner Theatre, where he will have the opportunity to hear directly from Elkhart residents.

The arrival and departure of Air Force One are open to pre-credentialed media but closed to the public. The Presidents remarks at Concord Community High School are open to pre-credentialed media and will be streamed live at www.whitehouse.gov/live.
UK Train Passenger Praised for Refusing to Give Up Her First Class Seat to Old Woman
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Warning: this article contains spoilers for those not up to date with Game of Thrones series six.

Events in HBOs Game of Thrones TV series have got people talking about what it means to return from the dead. But while resurrection appears to be a very real possibility for some of the religions of mythical Westeros  not least Jon Snows resurrector, the red priestess, Melisandre  what can the Bible add to the discussion?

In fact, coming back from the dead was a fairly rare event around the time of Jesus. Very few ancient Greeks and Romans ever managed to make it out of Hades, but those who did were heroes, such as Hercules and Protesilaus.

A particularly famous example is Orpheus, who travels to the murky underworld to rescue his beloved Eurydice. As Orpheus is leading Eurydice out of the darkness, he turns to look back at her, breaking the agreement hed made  and Eurydice is taken back into the depths of Hades, never to return. This story was popular in antiquity, represented in a variety of art, and continues to be so today.

What is clear in antiquity is that it is heroes, such as Orpheus, not ordinary mortals, who come back from the dead.

Resurrection in the Bible

Perhaps like some heroes, Jesuss own resurrection points to his extraordinary identity as the Son of God. Resurrection wasnt a key characteristic of expected messiahs in early Judaism, but became a common trope to describe saviours after the rise of Christianity. But Jesus isnt the only one resurrected in the Bible. The story of Lazarus is only found in the Gospel of John, but has likewise enjoyed millennia of reinterpretations in art.

In Bethany, Jesus finds out that Mary and Marthas brother Lazarus has died and is already entombed  hes been dead for four days. He tells Martha that whosoever lives and believes in me will never die (John 11:26) and then orders Lazarus to come out of the tomb, alive but still wrapped in his burial cloths (John 11:4344).

Jesuss claim that whosoever lives and believes in me will never die has not always been interpreted as referring to Lazaruss eternal life in heaven; some followers of Jesus seem to have believed that Lazarus was never to die a bodily death again after his resurrection. The final chapter of John, for example, believed by most scholars to be a later addition, reports that a rumour spread among the disciples that this disciple would not die (John 21:2123). The question this raised was, if someone has been brought back from the dead, can they then die again? Is it really the case, as is believed on Game of Thrones' Iron Islands, that what is dead may never die?

Death is not the end

If you arent up to date with season 6, youre going to want to stop reading here.

Coming back to life is not uncommon in the world created by George R R Martin. Aside from Jon Snows dramatic comeback, the current season boasts the White Walkers, whose corpse army threatens the Seven Kingdoms; the Frankenstein-esque resurrection of The Mountain, Gregor Clegane, by disgraced Maester Qyburn; Daenerys Targarians second escape from the flames; and the drowning of Euron Greyjoy as a kind of baptism to the Drowned God of the Iron Islands. What is dead may never die, indeed.

Jon Snows return to life is facilitated by Melissandre. The red priests and priestesses, who serve the god R'hllor, Lord of Light, seem to be able to call back the dead at will. The most successful resurrectionist is probably Thoros, who has brought back Beric Dondarrion six times and counting, each time praying to the Lord of Light. In Martins Game of Thrones book A Storm of Swords  which differs from the TV series  Catelyn Stark is also brought back to life as Lady Stoneheart by Beric Dondarrion. Like Lazarus, Jon Snow has been dead for quite some time when he comes back to life.

Of the remaining contenders for the Iron Throne, Jon Snow, Daenerys Targarian and Euron Greyjoy have all come back from the dead. Both Melisandre and the latest red priestess to join the series, Kinvara, know of a prophecy about a promised prince. Melisandre used to believe this referred to Stannis Baratheon but now sees Jon Snow as the one foretold - Stanniss (permanent) death removed him from the running, but Jon Snows resurrection seems to confirm his eligibility. As we learned most recently, Kinvara believes the prophecy speaks about Daenerys the Unburnt, who has returned from what seems like certain death in the flames not once, but twice.

What is dead may never die

The idea of a resurrected saviour whose reign will save the known world from the armies of darkness clearly relies on Christian images of Jesus as divine ruler and defeater of death. But this closer look at resurrection perhaps raises more questions  are characters who have come back to life able to die  or, for example, will Jon Snow now have special capabilities against the undead White Walkers?

Indeed, is resurrection a precondition for ruling the Seven Kingdoms  and, if so, are early hopefuls such as Gendry now out of the running for good? What is clear is that messiah figures in contemporary popular culture are constructed in the image of their biblical ancestors. And that trope certainly doesnt look like dying any time soon.

 Game of Thrones: Who's planning what?

Meredith J C Warren, Lecturer in Biblical and Religious Studies, University of Sheffield

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
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There is a strange contradiction in writing about a private experience and making it public. Ive just written a book about a subject that for five years I not only avoided but found bitterly painful to talk about. To discuss my son Miless situation with anybody other than family or closest friends felt like a betrayal of his privacy; it was too intensely private to share. And now Ive written a book about it.

Miles had a snowboarding accident in Austria in 2006. Aged just 29, he suffered a traumatic brain injury and I spent six weeks in Innsbruck, where he was in hospital.

Despite the horror of those weeks, the dread-filled walks to the hospital twice a day and the inert, profoundly damaged Miles I encountered every time, I had guessed they might be halcyon days. While different members of the family came and went and I remained in the quiet town with its clean cobbled streets and Tyrolean propriety, we were a family together in a bubble of privacy, isolated by our shared grief and protected by our anonymity. We had no need to present ourselves or explain our situation.

But back in London we were a family that had been visited by disaster, marked out, different. We had to explain what had happened to Miles. It felt like a grave breach of his privacy  he had been so diminished by his brain injury that to describe him was to incur peoples pity and pity for him I could not bear. He was a young man who had never once, in all his life, had to endure pity.

(Atlantic Books)

What made you start to write about it? people ask me, or, more often, Was it cathartic? The reason I started is that it felt necessary; I felt compelled to write. There was no catharsis, if that means to release, and thereby get relief from, repressed emotions. I simply needed to try to understand what had happened to Miles and to us as a family.

One day I came home from visiting him, went straight up to my desk and wrote about the moment of first confronting Miles at the hospital in Innsbruck. The scene, part of which is reproduced here, had remained vividly imprinted on my mind: the strange, empty terror I felt, that I knew all the family felt too, followed by the shock of seeing him unconscious and on a ventilator. In retrospect it was a moment of rupture in our lives, a point of no return.

I found that writing about it helped make sense of it. It wasnt painful; I found to my surprise that I enjoyed the process. And so the book grew. As I retrieved the memories, I realised something more significant was happening. By writing about the extraordinary world Miles now inhabited, I could bear witness to his suffering and to the suffering of the thousands of people in his situation. And, so important to us as a family, I could reclaim his identity and pay tribute to the man he was before his accident.

He had been a young man defined by his energy and vitality, his humour and down-to-earthness. He was adventurous, a risk-taker, but also reflective and kind. Gifted, powerful, handsome, his future was full of promise. I wanted to retrieve that, to portray his brilliance and his flaws.

After Miles awoke from his initial coma  not the Hollywood awakening we had all come to expect  he had remained in what is known as a minimally conscious state. Unable to speak or control any aspect of his life, he was nevertheless at times aware enough to feel and indicate pain, humiliation, anger, misery, frustration, loneliness, boredom  the same sensations and emotions as before, but imprisoned in a twilight world of the profoundest solitude.

Releasing the book has been a strange process for me and for my other three children, Will, Claudia and Marina. Their support throughout the years following Miless accident was extraordinary and I could not have survived it in the way I did without them. Their support during the writing process was remarkable too. In many ways it was a collaborative venture. They read and edited every word; it was essential that they concurred with everything I wrote.

Now that its out there we are freshly vulnerable. Of course this applies to all writers, the intensely private writing process followed by exposure and scrutiny. In our case, we faced the exposure of both the book itself and of Miles.

The wonderful irony now is that, through sharing our painfully private story with strangers, Miles has been restored to us. The reaction of complete strangers has been overwhelming, as has those of friends. I am moved beyond words by the kindness of people who have felt it necessary to express their feelings about my book and it is through their affirmation that Miles has finally had his dignity given back to him.

Only two people at a time can visit the ward, accompanied by a nurse. I go first with Will, down the corridor that we will come to know so well, stopping at the end to take out the plastic aprons and gloves from their dispensers on the walls. Even more disoriented in this new uniform, we then turn the corner to face the ward. It feels as though we have entered an underwater world: tinted green glass divides cubicles and nurses stations, and everywhere is silent save for the rhythmic tidal swish of respirators and the soft sonic keening of machines, like whale calls in the deep. Nurses and doctors glide through the rooms, serious, intent on the silent bodies each beached on their high beds.

He lies on his back on a high bed in the centre of the room, perfectly still. The stillness is terrible. His strong face, the one we are so familiar with, that we know to be so expressive, humorous, animated, is closed from us in a way it would not be if he were asleep. After a week in the mountain sun his face and neck alone are tanned, a clear demarcation line where the top of his tee shirt would have been. He always tanned easily and it suited his dark looks; now that demarcation line breaks my heart.

A sheet has been placed like a loincloth over his middle, but otherwise he is naked, his muscular young mans chest and arms and beautiful virile legs defying his injury. A multitude of wires and tubes connect his brain and body to the bank of machines and electronic charts behind him which are recording every tremor of his existence, tubes coming out of his nose, his mouth, the top of his head, his chest, his wrist; but his face, bruised down the right side only, is calm, his eyes closed, the violent new scar running serenely from his hairline up and over his partially shaven head and down to the base of his right ear.

He looks so strong, so healthy, in such fine physical condition. How can it be that only his brain is damaged, and quite so damaged? It is later we are told that he comes to be known by the doctors and nurses on the ward as The Athlete; the nurses flirt coyly with the word. But it is not just his body that is powerful; something is radiating directly from him, the air is thick with his presence.

Click here to buy Beyond the High Blue Air: A memoir by Lu Spinney from Wordery
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While there are numerous upcoming reboots and sequels that could anger devoted fans, none have quite the same potential to be disappointing as the Han Solo spin-off.

Centring on the adventures of a young version of Harrison Fords loveable rogue, the film - written by Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Empire Strikes Back scribe Lawrence Kasdan - is set to hit cinemas in May 2018. Filming will, of course, take place months beforehand, with Kasdan revealing work will begin January 2017.

After being asked by fans at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival if they should be excited, he said (via RadioTimes): Oh, I think so! You know, Chris Miller and Phil Lord are going to direct it. Theyre great, funny and imaginative and weve had a great time together.

My son [Jon] and I wrote the script and Chris and Phil are working on it and theyre about to move to London to start shooting in January. And it should be fun.

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Asked to clarify when the film will be released, he said: Theyre actually scheduled for May. The [other Star Wars films] are falling on Christmas  Rogue One and Episode 9. Han will come before Episode 9.

Episode 8 was previously supposed to be released in May 2017, but was delayed until December that year, something many thought may happen to the Han Solo film. At the moment, the May release seems fairly certain.

Meanwhile, Disney is reportedly disappointed with what they have seen of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story so far, ordering numerous reshoots of the film.
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Expensive reshoots have reportedly been ordered for upcoming Star Wars spin-off movie Rogue One.

Disney executives were not happy with the first cut from director Gareth Edwards, according to a Hollywood source quoted by insider website Page Six.

The much-hyped film, starring Felicity Jones, Ben Mendelsohn, Mads Mikkelsen and Forest Whitaker and currently titled Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, is due for release on 16 December.

However, the source said: The execs at Disney are not happy with the movie and Rogue One will have to go back into four weeks of expensive reshoots in July. Gareths work on the first Godzilla [2014] shows he can handle a big studio blockbuster but Rogue One has fallen short of what JJ Abrams did with Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Disney wont take a back seat and is demanding changes, as the movie isnt testing well.

Page Six has approached Edwards, known for taking risks in his work, for comment but he is yet to respond. Disney has insisted that the filmmaking team and the studio always anticipted additional shooting and second unit work to make the film the absolute best it can be.

 Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - Trailer



Little is known about the plot, but the film will take fans back in time to somewhere between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. It is rumoured that the storyline will follow a resistance mission to steal the Emperors Death Star plans before they can be used for evil.

Darth Vader is expected to appear in the darker movie as the Emperors chief enforcer, while Alden Ehrenreich is believed to be making his first cameo appearance as a young Han Solo.
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In this award-winning play, Charlene James writes with great power and sensitivity about the trauma of female genital mutilation. She does so through the jarring perspectives of two fifteen year old Somalia-born girls who happen to attend the same British school. The piece  first heard on Radio 4 last year and now fleshed out for the stage in Gbolahan Obisesan's starkly eloquent production  brings home forcibly how this practice is happening in our midst, in this case in an inner city flat where, on Saturday mornings, seven year old girls are taken by their mothers and cut in an atmosphere choking with the stench of blood and bleach. It's clear that James finds the ritual horrific but she contrives to write about the subject without either demonising the perpetrators or indulging in a slack no-one's-to-blame type of cultural relativism.

The play takes the form of alternating monologues which occasionally collide into conversation  the fluctuations between apartness and convergence intensified by Joanna Scotcher's design which has the two protagonists ranging in diagrammatic spatial relationships on a steep, fissured set of brutalist concrete steps. The lippy, street-smart Muna (played by the extremely winning Adelayo Adedayo) has lived in Britain since early childhood and has loads of friends. Tsion Habte beautifully captures the gentle stoic sorrow of the lonely Iqra, an orphan of Somalia's civil war, who has only been here for four months, has never heard of Rihanna, and is billeted in a bleak tower block with an auntie who does community work.

Yet the girls have in common the memory of unimaginably painful violation and the experience of living with a wound that leaves you feeling estranged from your own body. Muna blurts out her fear that her beloved little sister will suffer the same fate on her upcoming seventh birthday. The result is a clash of attitudes which James presents with keen compassion and insight. From the point of view of Muna, FGM is a downright affront that traps you in a culture of shame and fear, with medical repercussions that you can't mention to doctors or school friends.

A part of Iqra endorses the traditional notion that it's a rite of passage into womanhood that makes a girl clean for her husband: We have done it for so long. It is who we are. It has to happen. She's still haunted, though, by her own childhood experience of it and her attempts to soothe the children subjected to auntie's razor arise from the fact that  no one made it okay for me. She knows, too, that FGM represents a fundamental infringement of the trust between mothers and daughters that no amount of treats promised for bravery could ever repair. The character caught horribly between, on the one hand, life-long indoctrination and an orphaned immigrant's wary desire to be helpful to a new guardian and, on the other, the dread knowledge that she is nauseating the one friend she has managed to make here.

A hugely enlightening evening.

To June 11, 020 7922 2922  then touring to Birmingham Rep, Royal Court and three other venues.
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The Late Late Show with James Corden really knows how to make a viral segment.

First it came up with the immensely popular Carpool Karaoke, and now its getting its celebrity guests to take part in a rap battle - Cordens equivalent of Jimmy Fallons lip-sync battle.

David Schwimmer proved a particular popular entrant this week, laying into the host, whose sitcom history is obviously not quite so award-decorated as the Friends cast members.

A Brit in Americas your one claim to fame / We all know as an actor your roles were all the same, he opened with. The heavy best friend, the humorous sidekick / With a belly so big you cant find your own Dickens, the author we all read as kids / Hes British like you, but people know who he is.

Watch the rap battle in full below:

He then got a double-length verse to finish, before flipping Corden off.

Im tall and lean, youre short and stout. They know me in Japan, they know you at In-N-Out. You embarrassed your country, this was easy for me. Bitch, lay down the mic and go make me some tea.

Yes, it was rehearsed, yes, you could see Schwimmer reading the bars off the autocue, but it was still a lot of fun.
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After a jaunt to Rio de Janeiro for Louis Vuittons 2017 Cruise show, the international fashion press were brought to Blighty, under appropriately Dior-grey skies, for that august labels latest outing. Cruise, or resort, is the name affixed to the current season underway, a relative newcomer to the catwalk calendar that sits between autumn/winter and spring/summer. It came across those monikers for the simple reason that it drops into stores around November, when the suitably well-dressed and deep-pocketed are thinking not of winter coats but of winter coasts for December vacations. The travel theme has stuck with many designers interpretations - never mind the fact these interim collections now account for 60 per cent or more of labels incomes, making these clothes a bedrock of designer fashion brands today.

The commercial reality of the importance of Cruise explains why houses - such as Dior - are lavishing money on the presentation of these lines. Vuitton flew press to Rio, Dior to London, renting suites at the Ritz (for favoured clients) and chartering the Orient Express (unofficially renamed the Dior Express) to ferry 600 of said clients and a smattering of press to Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. It was picturesque - the same way Vuitton organised helicopter rides over Rio and trips to the statue of Christ the Redeemer atop Corcovado mountain. Its odd when youre from the locale, of course, to see it used as the backdrop to a high-octane, higher-cost fashion spectacle.

Thats especially odd for Dior, too, given the current status of the house. Following the departure of creative director Raf Simons last October, Dior has been relying on a design team headed by two former assistants to the latter, Serge Ruffieux and Lucie Meier. Yet this show was staged with the pomp, circumstance and budget characteristic of Dior. Perhaps that was the message: that the might of Dior outstrips the impact of any singular designer? And that the history of the house not only deserves, but perhaps necessitates shows on such a grand scale. Back in 1949, Dior counted for 75 per cent of Frances fashion exports, and 5 per cent of all exports, full stop. Today, its annual revenues total around 3.8 billion.

Before the Dior show, guests milled around an exhibition of dresses - Diors 1954 H line (he had an affinity for alphabetised fashion - he also pioneered the Y and A lines). He presented that show to Princess Margaret at Blenheim the same year; in 1958, following Diors untimely death, his successor Yves Saint Laurent showed another collection here. Thats the grounding for Diors cruise excursion - beside the fact they were opening a shop, the largest outside of Paris, where you can buy pale rose-pink tumblers for 130 and pale rose-pink mink coats, for a pre-teen girl, for 12,500.

A hunting-scene Jacquard from the Dior 2017 Cruise collection (Getty)

The clothes presented by Dior, lead by Ruffieux and Meiers team, were fine. Inspired by interwar English eccentrics, they had swags of drapery across the hips and scribbled embroidery, both of which were reminiscent of the work of Elsa Schiaparelli. Her broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped silhouette was the antithesis of Diors fecund, hourglass-waist New Look - in fact the popularity of that look in part sent Schiap out of business the same year Dior staged his triumphal show at Blenheim. The inspiration generally for these clothes was travel - the wanderlust of that eccentric Englishwoman, layering clothes influenced by the various locales they cruise through (geddit?).

Pulled apart, the pieces were good - ruched thirties-ish tea dresses dribbled with sequins, jackets knotted closed with slim foulard scarves drawn through eyelets, others with those puckered Schiaparelli hips layered over slender trousers. There were a few Asiatic prints and other fusing chintzy florals with figures from a traditional English hunting scene, like those painted by Stubbs. That ran riot across a few jacquard knits, and served to carpet the entire 183-foot floor of Blenheims famously long library. There were lots of the all-important bags and shoes too, tricked out with sparkles and gold heels and a revival of Diors logo canvas, in case you forgot which house you were at, though it was all, unmistakably, in the vein of Simons, with a hint of current trends of current designers (JW Anderson has recently puffed sleeves like these, for instance; Phoebe Philo cuts her Celine trousers similarly short with the same kick in the hem).

This show offered plenty to buy, but not a new vision to buy into - which is what the fashion press are longing for, even if clients purchasing the clothes dont seem quite so fussed. It also underlines the unenviable, possibly unassailable position of Meier and Ruffieux, to steer Diors ship safely, but in circles, until a new creative director is appointed. Meaning this cruise looked like it took hard work, but didnt take us to waters fresh.

A logo canvas handbag by Christian Dior, Cruise 2017 (Getty)

Regarding the all-important and ever-imminent new Dior designer, the leading names plumped for the roles are Sarah Burton of Alexander McQueen and Maria Grazia Chiuri, one half of the winning team currently heading the Valentino label - if either are appointed, they will be the first woman to ever head Dior, as the house reaches the all-important anniversary of its first spring/summer 1947 collection, the aforementioned New Look. Rumour has it that an appointment will be announced in days. Then again, similar rumours - around those names, and others - have been voiced since Simons departure (and, in some quarters, even before), with deadlines for said announcements coming and going.

So Dior is on cruise control. Waiting for someone to captain, and make it look new once more.
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When it comes to ordering a takeaway, our eyes are often larger than our stomachs, so it's likely there will be leftovers no matter how hungry we felt.

No one likes the feeling of throwing out perfectly decent chicken Madras when it could be the perfect meal next day.

However, if not cooked correctly, these delicious meals could cause a serious case of food poisoning.

The Food Standards Agency estimates the overall number of food poisoning related cases to be around 1 million per year.

"This is because in such cases not everyone visits the doctor or A&E, or if they do, samples arent always taken and tested," they explain.

In research published by the FSA, it was found that poultry was the food linked to the most cases of food poisoning, with an estimated 244,000 cases every year.

Campylobacter was the most common pathogen, with about 280,000 cases every year.

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The quality of the food probably wont be improved by re-heating, but it is important to make sure the food is cooked thoroughly.

One food to look out for is rice, a spokesman from the FSA told The Independent:

"Takeaway rice should ideally be consumed immediately. This is because leftover rice, especially egg fried rice or cooked savoury rice is often associated with the bacteria Bacillus Cereus, which can cause food poisoning."

Recommended Read more Restaurant owner jailed for six years for killing customer with curry

The FSA spokesman suggested an alternative: To allow the rice to cool after consumption and store in the fridge, and only reheating once in order to avoid any risk of food poisoning.

"If takeaway food is frozen, the food should be fully reheated within 24 hours of it being fully defrosted. We suggest always defrosting the food in the fridge," they added.

"Before eating, make sure the leftover food is reheated thoroughly by reaching a core temperature of 70C for 2 minutes or equivalent."
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Apple is set to hold its biggest software event of the year, WWDC, in the middle of June. Itll use the San Francisco event to show off all of the software thats on its way to your Watch, phone and other computers  as well as potentially new Apple devices.

The event comes at a big time for Apple. The company is fresh off the back of its first quarter of decline since the iPhone came out, and is feeling the heat from other companies like Google.

It will intend to use WWDC as a way of showcasing the software and potentially other products that it hopes will prove its doubters wrong and get the company to grow again.

The announcement  on the morning of 13 June, in San Francisco  will include updates to the software powering iPhones, iPads, Macs, and Apple TV. It will also include updates to Apples services, a growing area, such as a complete re-design of Apple Music.

In pictures: iPhone 6s goes on sale Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: iPhone 6s goes on sale In pictures: iPhone 6s goes on sale Despite the rain, some 40 on-line reservation buyers visit the Apple Store in Omotesando neighborhood as the iPhones new models - iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus go on sale in Tokyo, Japan Rex In pictures: iPhone 6s goes on sale Sam Shaikh holds up two bags containing the new iPhone as he is surrounded by store staff after the release and sale start of the new Apple IPhone 6S at the Apple store in Covent Garden, London In pictures: iPhone 6s goes on sale Apple fans pose for selfie at the store in Australia, during the launch of the new iPhone 6s In pictures: iPhone 6s goes on sale People cheer at the launch of the new iPhone 6s, at the store in Australia In pictures: iPhone 6s goes on sale 19-years-old David Kiss from Debrecen, Hungary, shows off his new iPhone 6s at the Apple store in Munich, Germany. Kiss camped in front of the shop for almost a week to be the first to get the new smartphone In pictures: iPhone 6s goes on sale A customer tries out a rose gold iPhone 6s Plus smartphone at the Apple Store near the West Lake in Hangzhou city, Zhejiang province, China In pictures: iPhone 6s goes on sale A member of staff processes a transaction as customer purchase phones during the launch of the Apple iPhone 6s at The Apple Store Opera, in Paris, France In pictures: iPhone 6s goes on sale The Apple store in Beijing launches the new iPhone 6s In pictures: iPhone 6s goes on sale Veronika Babochkina, 27, from Moscow, Russia, looks at the new iPhone 6s at The Apple Store in Opera, after queuing for few days, in Paris In pictures: iPhone 6s goes on sale Jonathan Pierrard, 26, from Rossignol, Belgium is the first customer to leave with the new iPhone 6s at The Apple Store in Opera, after queuing for few days, in Parisr to open new shortcuts - a feature Apple calls 3D Touch. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)

And its expected to bring new hardware, too. That might include new MacBook Pros  and potentially wholly new products like a Siri speaker.

Whether or not that product actually appears, its likely to be a marker of the uniting theme of many of the announcements. Almost all of the rumours so far point to a heavy showing for Siri  which will receive major updates on all platforms, as it looks to take on competitors like Amazons Alexa and Google Now.

iOS 10

With the growth of the iPhone, this is the most exciting moment of the event for many people. It offers a chance to see how your iPhone is going to change come the autumn  and sometimes offers a hint of what the new handsets might look like, too.

And many of the features are expected to be built around Siri. That will include, for instance, opening up the voice assistant so it can be used to trigger things in other apps  youll be able to ask the digital butler to send a message through WhatsApp rather than the Messages app, for instance.

Elsewhere, iOS will benefit from changes with other technologies, including the opening up of Apple Pay to allow payments between people and a redesign of Apple Music.

Siri for your house

The one rumoured new kind of product is a version of Siri for the home, taking on Amazons Echo and Googles newly-announced (but not yet released) Home speaker.

Apple is almost certainly working on such a product, but its unclear whether it will actually arrive in time for WWDC. Apple may choose to trail it but announce it later in the year  or wait for another event, like the reveal of the iPhone later this year.

Recommended Read more Apple is opening up Siri to developers and putting it in a speaker

When it does arrive, it might have features including facial recognition that can tell whos in a room, according to a report from CNET. It would also be able to control smart devices around the home and play media, according to the same report.

Previous reports have suggested that the hardware could be released by the end of the year  but that 2017 was more likely. Still, if Apples expected focus on Siri for WWDC comes true, then it will probably lay the groundwork for the speakers eventual arrival.

macOS

First off, OS X is set to get a redesign  named macOS, in keeping with the operating systems for the rest of Apples line-up.

And it will bring with it a range of new features, after the relatively farrow and housekeeping-focused released last year.

That will include the addition of the apparent theme of the year  Siri. The voice assistant has never been available on the Mac, but that looks like it's about to change.

 What is Apple's strategy?

Macs might also get new ways of talking to iPhones and Apple Watches. That could include the addition of Apple Pay, which would allow people to make purchases using their phones fingerprint scanner, and unlock their computer in the same way.

And they too will benefit from other changes across the Apple line, including changes to services like Music.

Apple Watch

The Apple Watch was first unveiled in September 2014, and came out in April last year. Since its the first generation, its impossible to say how often Apple is going to refresh its wearable  but its been a while since the last one.

Rumours have suggested that Apple might bring a camera to the Watch, as well as potentially adding its own internet connection so that it can work without a phone. Its also almost certain that Apple will bump up the insides, making the Watch faster and more efficient.

Either way, its almost certain that the Watch will be getting new software, with watchOS 3.0. Thats likely to bring more autonomy to the Watch, allowing it to do more without the phone.

Apple Music

The streaming music service was only revealed at WWDC last year, but Apple is rumoured to be revamping and re-designing the whole thing as it looks to shift more towards services.

That is likely to strip back the quite complicated version of the app at the moment and make it far simpler, with fewer colours and different screens.

Those updates are likely to come with the new versions of iOS and macOS in the Autumn.

New MacBooks

Apple hasnt updated some of its laptops  the MacBooks Air and Pro  in any major way for some time. Both are due an update, and the latter has been widely rumoured.

If the new MacBook Pro does arrive, then it has been suggested that it might feature new features like a special screen at the top of the keyboard that can adapt to whatever the computers doing, and a fingerprint sensor that can be used to more quickly unlock it.
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A tropical parasitic disease causing serious disfiguration is sweeping across the Middle East. Cutaneous leishmaniasis has been common in Syria for centuries but recent social unrest and breakdown in the healthcare system have seen it develop into a major epidemic.

The disease is identifiable through vast sores on the skin, which can be both painful and permanently disfiguring.

Research has revealed hundreds of thousands of people are now suffering from the condition in refugee camps or trapped in conflict zones. It is thought close proximity caused by cramped conditions is facilitating the diseases spread, compounded by lack of healthcare structures due to civil unrest and societal breakdown amid the on-going conflict and mass displacement.

What is it?

Also known as 'aleppo evil', cutaneous leishmaniasis is a tropical disease caused by a parasite in the blood stream. It is transmitted from person to person through sand fly bites, which are common in the Middle East.

Other forms exist with varying severity. Visceral leishmaniasis is the most severe form and results in fever, as well as enlargement of the liver and spleen. It can be fatal if left untreated. Mucocutaneous leishmaniasis eats away at the membranes of the nose, mouth and throat.

Children suffering from Cutaneous Leishmaniasis, a disfiguring and disabling skin disease (Getty Images ) (Getty Images)

Where is it?

Scientists have warned it is multiplying rapidly in Syria with hundreds of thousands of cases suspected. In Lebanon, there were six reported cases between 2000 and 2012, by comparison 1,033 cases were reported in 2013 alone.

Cases have also been reported in Turkey, Jordan, Eastern Libya and Yemen.

What does it do?

It causes large open sores on the skin. The sores are painful and often lead to permanent disfiguration. The sores are also vulnerable to secondary infection, spreading further disease.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Why is it spreading now?

Previously the disease has been largely contained to Syria. However, amid societal breakdown due to conflict there, it has increased. Lack of healthcare resources means the condition has not been treated and as people have become trapped in conflict zones they have increased in close contact with other people, further spreading the disease. Poverty and malnutrition, as well as lack of access to clean water, may be further exasperating the situation.

It appears to have spread outside of Syria partly due to refugees fleeing the area. Refugee camps often involve living in close quarters with strangers, without medical treatment facilities beyond those which can provide emergency or basic care.

Recommended Read more There is an alternative to air strikes on Isis in Iraq and Syria

How much do we know about it?

An incomplete picture of the disease is available due to the chaotic situation in Syria and in refugee camps. Peter Hotez, dean of the US National School of Tropical Medicine, told Nature Middle East: It's nearly impossible to have on the ground tropical disease experts and epidemiologists in Syria, Iraq, eastern Libya so we are only getting glimpses of the situation from refugees fleeing the conflict zones and going to camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey.

A man suffering from Cutaneous Leishmaniasis (Getty Images ) (Getty Images)

Can it be stopped?

Conditions are very difficult for both doctors and public health professionals to access affected people and treat them in the hope of containment. Scientists say early intervention is key and have called on international health organisations and governments to conduct a combined effort to improve diagnosis and treatment urgently.
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Co-op Bank has closed the bank accounts of charitable organisations, leaving them unable to carry out essential work with developing countries.

In April, the Sheffield branch of the Nicaraguan Solidarity Campaign (NSC) received a letter notifying account holders that the account would be closed at the end of June.

Branches of the NSC in Tavistock, Bristol, Norwich and Leicester have also received 21-page forms asking them to give extra details on their activities.

The NSC works to improve trade links with and social justice in the Central American nation.

Since February 2015, Nicaragua has been off the list of nations monitored by an intergovernmental body that combats money laundering and terrorist financing called the Financial Action Task Force. That means its laws and regulations are considered to be up to international standards.

Co-op Banks scrutiny of these accounts follows the closure of an account belong to the Wales Nicaraguan Solidarity Campaign in December. Accounts of Palestinian and Cuban groups were also targeted at the end of 2015.

Helen Yuill, co-ordinator at the Nicaraguan Solidarity Campaign, said the closures caused extreme inconvenience for small groups.

All of them are run by volunteers. Quite a lot of them have donors paying by standing order and every one of those has to be set up again. When small organisations change accounts its quite common for them to lose donors, so it could mean quite a significant financial loss, she said.

The Nicaraguan Solidarity Campaign organisations chose to bank with Co-op because they believed that it was different from other banks (Getty)

A spokesman for the Co-op said that the decision was not a reflection of the work carried out by the organisations, but a part of its due diligence processes.

For customers who operate in, or send money to, any very high risk or high risk location throughout the world, advanced due diligence checks are required by all banks to ensure that funds do not inadvertently fund illegal or other proscribed activities, the spokesman said.

When it is not possible for the bank to complete checks to its satisfaction, accounts are closed, he said.

Unfortunately, after quite extensive research, the charities involved did not meet our requirements or, in our view, allow us to fulfil our obligations, he added.

The Nicaraguan Solidarity Campaign organisations chose to bank with Co-op because they believed that it was different from other banks, Yuill said.

What they promoted and implemented corresponded more closely with the values and ethics of the groups concerned in particular equality, international solidarity and the protection of human rights and the environment, Yuill said.

It is working with Save Our Banks, a union of customers that assembled to check Co-op Bank stuck to its ethical policy after it was sold to private shareholders in 2013.

Shaun Fensom, part of the Save Our Bank team, said it was told in December that account closures would be paused while Co-op Bank reviewed its communications. Since then, it has started sending out 21 page review documents as an interim step before deciding if accounts will be closed.

The question is still open whether they are taking proper account of the importance of supporting humanitarian work in assessing the balance of risk, Fensom said.

In January, Co-op Bank closed the account of the UK-based NGO Friends of Al-Aqsa along with more than 20 other pro-Palestine NGOs, including the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

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One such charity funded women in Gaza through university.

Banks have become increasingly wary of offering services to organisations sending money overseas because of stiff penalties introduced to stop illegal transactions on their books.

The Government has delegated a role to banks to monitor the potential financing of terrorism, which means they must report suspicious financing or money laundering or face penalties. As such banks scrutinise clients sending money to parts of the world connected with terrorism. This can have an impact on charities whose work is in conflict areas.

Tom Keatinge, director of the centre for financial crime and security studies at the Royal United Services Institute, told The Independent: Unfortunately for a lot of charities, at some point banks say, we are not making money out of banking NGOs so we are going to close these accounts.
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Consensus amongst economists quickly unravels. In April 1999, Britains top academic economists voted strongly in favour of switching from the pound to the euro. Mercifully, the government had better sense.

In August 2008, Olivier Blanchard, then a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reported that economists shared a common vision of macroeconomics because, he said, facts do not go away. But in 2014, reflecting on the failures of macroeconomics, Blanchard conceded that economists were fooled because they were not looking at the right facts.

In the past few weeks, virtually all official agencies have insisted that leaving the European Union  a British exit or Brexit  will impose enormous costs on the British. Indeed, these agencies have competed with each other in escalating the cost estimates.

Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), pithily summarised the consensus: the consequences of Brexit, she said, would be pretty bad to very, very bad.

 IMF Chief Lagarde on Brexit

Recommended Read more Why Boris Johnson is right about Europe

The UK Treasury, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the IMF say it is a fact that Britain will be permanently poorer because it will trade less with the EU. In a terrifying warning, the Bank of England added that financial markets will panic and create senseless havoc.

Adding comic relief, George Osborne predicts that house prices will fall by 18 percent. Not to be outdone, G7 leaders say that the world economic system, as we now know it, will fall apart if Britain exits the EU.

Economics is neutral on whether to leave or remain <p> </p>

Michael Mussa, my first boss at the IMF, used to say that a number must pass the smell test if it is to be used for making decisions. Conducting a smell test requires going back to core principles. When we do that, we reach a humbler conclusion: economics is neutral on whether to leave or remain. The battle for Brexit must be fought on other grounds.

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All economists  not just the current protagonists  agree that a country gains by increasing its overall international trade. Greater trade makes it possible to produce more of and export what the country does best (its comparative advantage) and import what it does less well. Everyone gains.

But there is no gain in exporting to Germany, Spain and Poland rather than to the United States, Korea and China. In fact, if preferential access diverts trade away from the United States to Germany, then departure from the countrys comparative advantage hurts rather than helps, as Columbia Universitys trade theorist Jagdish Bhagwati has long argued.

What has the EU ever done for us? Show all 7 1 /7 What has the EU ever done for us? What has the EU ever done for us? 1. It gives you freedom to live, work and retire anywhere in Europe As a member of the EU, UK citizens benefit from freedom of movement across the continent. Considered one of the so-called four pillars of the European Union, this freedom allows all EU citizens to live, work and travel in other member states. What has the EU ever done for us? 2. It sustains millions of jobs A report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, released in October 2015, suggested 3.1 million British jobs were linked to the UKs exports to the EU. What has the EU ever done for us? 3. Your holiday is much easier - and safer Freedom to travel is one of the most exercised benefits of EU membership, with Britons having made 31 million visits to the EU in 2014 alone. But a lot of the benefits of being an EU citizen are either taken for granted or go unnoticed. What has the EU ever done for us? 4. It means you're less likely to get ripped off Consumer protection is a key benefit of the EUs single market, and ensures members of the British public receive equal consumer rights when shopping anywhere in Europe. What has the EU ever done for us? 5. It offers greater protection from terrorists, paedophiles, people traffickers and cyber-crime Another example of a lesser-known advantage of EU membership is the benefit of cross-country coordination and cooperation in the fight against crime. What has the EU ever done for us? 6. Our businesses depend on it According to 71% of all members of the Confederation of British Influence (CBI), and 67 per cent of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the EU has had an overall positive impact on their business. What has the EU ever done for us? 7. We have greater influence Robin Niblett, Director of think-tank Chatham House, stated in a report published last year: For a mid-sized country like the UK, which will never again be economically dominant either globally or regionally, and whose diplomatic and military resources are declining in relative terms, being a major player in a strong regional institution can offer a critical lever for international influence.

So the claim that Brexit will impose a huge cost rests on the twin beliefs that British trade with Germany will go down sharply and trade with the United States will not increase. Is that reasonable?

First, British trade with Germany will not decline significantly. As economists have long known, trade is embedded in business and social networks into which partners invest enormous social capital. Studies repeatedly show that businesses make accommodations in profit margins to retain the benefits of trust and reliability.

For this reason, all productive trading relationships will remain intact. For this reason too, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeubles threat that renegotiation of Britains trade arrangements with the EU would be most difficult and poisonous is bluster. Germans run a trade surplus with Britain. Mr Schaeuble can humiliate the IMF, but he dare not hurt the interests of his exporters (or his importers).

And even if British trade with the EU falls, trade with other regions will undoubtedly increase. Because Europe has been growing at a slower pace than the rest of the world, trade has been shifting away from Europe for years.

 EU Referendum: Latest Poll

With Europe rapidly aging and struggling to revive productivity growth, the shift to non-European markets is bound to continue. Most firms already sell to multiple markets and Brexit will prompt them to strengthen their non-European networks.

What about costs of transition? Britain exports 13 percent of its GDP to the EU. Say about a quarter of those export products  about 3 percent of GDP  have to eventually be sold either in Britain or outside Europe.

If the adjustment each year costs somewhere between one-tenth and one-fifth of 3 percent of GDP, it is possible that GDP will be lower by about half-a-percent in the peak transition year. Thus the costs will be modest and short-lived.

So how do the Treasury, OECD and the IMF conclude that Brexit could reduce GDP by between 6 and 10 percent forever? The vast bulk of those large estimates come from the further assumption that reduced trade will shrink British productivity growth. This is disingenuous. There is simply no evidence that less trade lowers productivity growth  and there is not even a logical connection between productivity growth and a shift in trade from Germany to the United States.

The costs of transition will be modest and short-lived <p> </p>

More trade has been associated with higher productivity growth when countries have emerged from economic isolation. But for the sophisticated British economy, this possibility should be completely dismissed.

The Bank of Englands claims are the most outrageous of all. The Bank says that fear of Brexit is holding investment back and, thus, causing growth to slow down in anticipation. How can it know that? British GDP is slowing for so many reasons.

The economy has moved faithfully with the magnitude of fiscal austerity: gratuitous austerity delayed recovery from the Great Recession, brief fiscal easing in 2014 helped achieve a short-lived rebound, and now the IMF projects more austerity in the pipeline and slower growth. Meanwhile, the world economy is slowing: the United States had a weak first quarter, China is struggling and world trade is barely crawling forward. The Bank of England is cynically exploiting its authority by claiming to detect Brexit-induced anxiety in the cloud of short-term data.

But more outrageous is the Banks warning of mayhem if Britain votes to leave. Nobel Laureates George Akerlof and Robert Shiller have explained that people act in accordance with the narratives they live. The Bank is, in effect, building a narrative of panic, which could become self-fulfilling. The central banks proper role is to reassure and stand-by to stem panic.

Since 2010, official agencies have repeatedly promised global recovery. The forecasts fail because they all disregard inconvenient evidence. Now, the official consensus on the economic costs of Brexit has crossed the line into groupthink. A numerical illusion is masquerading as a fact. And when those in authority distort facts, they also subvert the cause of democracy.

Ashoka Mody is Visiting Professor of International Economic Policy at Princeton University and former deputy director of the International Monetary Fund's European and Research Departments
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Alan Devereux, who appeared as Sid Perks on the BBC drama The Archers for nearly 50 years, has died, the BBC reports.

Mr Devereux made his first appeared as a teenager on the BBC Radio 4 soap opera in 1963 and continued to play the role until his character's death in 2010.

Sean O'Connor, the editor of The Archers', paid tribute to Mr Devereux in a blogpost for the radio drama's website.

He said: "Alans voice as Sid had a genuine sense of authenticity to it - instantly recognisable and full of rich character.

"He arrived in the village just as the sixties took off and when Archers writer Edward J. Mason observed that the programme should reflect the real world that does include vulgarity, that does include sex, that does include strong language and that does include violencea world in which values are constantly changing, in which the youth culture is dominating and in which cosiness plays no part.

"Sid  and his wife Polly- were very much part of this agenda for the programme to keep up with the rapid social changes of the times."

He said Mr Devereux was a "wonderful member of The Archers' family in Birmingham and will be deeply missed".

Former editor, Vanessa Whitburn said: "Alan was a consummate and brilliant radio actor. Always a delight to work with, his versatility as publican Sid Perks meant that he created superb partnerships with the actresses who played all three of his wives.

"A modest man, I don't think he knew just how talented he was."

Buffy Davis, who played Sid's third wife Jolene, said: Alan was a one off, there was no one like him.

"He possessed a wicked sense of humour and was uniquely talented, I loved him. Standing next to him on the mic was a lesson in radio performance.

Culture news in pictures Show all 33 1 /33 Culture news in pictures Culture news in pictures 30 September 2016 An employee hangs works of art with "Grand Teatro" by Marino Marini (R) and bronze sculpture "Sfera N.3" by Arnaldo Pomodoro seen ahead of a Contemporary Art auction on 7 October, at Sotheby's in London REUTERS Culture news in pictures 29 September 2016 Street art by Portuguese artist Odeith is seen in Dresden, during an exhibition "Magic City - art of the streets" AFP/Getty Images Culture news in pictures 28 September 2016 Dancers attend a photocall for the new "THE ONE Grand Show" at Friedrichstadt-Palast in Berlin, Germany REUTERS Culture news in pictures 28 September 2016 With an array of thrift store china, humorous souvenirs and handmade tile adorning its walls and floors, the Mosaic Tile House in Venice stands as a monument to two decades of artistic collaboration between Cheri Pann and husband Gonzalo Duran REUTERS Culture news in pictures 27 September 2016 A gallery assistant poses amongst work by Anthea Hamilton from her nominated show "Lichen! Libido!(London!) Chastity!" at a preview of the Turner Prize in London REUTERS Culture news in pictures 27 September 2016 A technician wearing virtual reality glasses checks his installation in three British public telephone booths, set up outside the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, Netherlands. The installation allows visitors a 3-D look into the museum which has twenty-two paintings belonging to the British Royal Collection, on loan for an exhibit from 29 September 2016 till 8 January 2017 AP Culture news in pictures 26 September 2016 An Indian artist dressed as Hindu god Shiva performs on a chariot as he participates in a religious procession 'Ravan ki Barat' held to mark the forthcoming Dussehra festival in Allahabad AFP/Getty Images Culture news in pictures 26 September 2016 Jean-Michel Basquiat's 'Air Power', 1984, is displayed at the Bowie/Collector media preview at Sotheby's in New York AFP/Getty Culture news in pictures 25 September 2016 A woman looks at an untitled painting by Albert Oehlen during the opening of an exhibition of works by German artists Georg Baselitz and Albert Oehlen in Reutlingen, Germany. The exhibition runs at the Kunstverein (art society) Reutlingen until 15 January 2017 EPA Culture news in pictures 24 September 2016 Fan BingBing (C) attends the closing ceremony of the 64th San Sebastian Film Festival at Kursaal in San Sebastian, Spain Getty Images Culture news in pictures 23 September 2016 A view of the artwork 'You Are Metamorphosing' (1964) as part of the exhibition 'Retrospektive' of Japanese artist Tetsumi Kudo at Fridericianum in Kassel, Germany. The exhibition runs from 25 September 2016 to 1 January 2017 EPA Culture news in pictures 22 September 2016 Jo Applin from the Courtauld Institute of Art looks at Green Tilework in Live Flesh by Adriana Vareja, which features in a new exhibition, Flesh, at York Art Gallery. The new exhibition features works by Degas, Chardin, Francis Bacon and Sarah Lucas, showing how flesh has been portrayed by artists over the last 600 years PA Culture news in pictures 21 September 2016 Performers Sean Atkins and Sally Miller standing in for the characters played by Asa Butterfield and Ella Purnell during a photocall for Tim Burton's "Miss Peregrines Home For Peculiar Children" at Potters Field Park in London Getty Images Culture news in pictures 20 September 2016 A detail from the blanket 'Alpine Cattle Drive' from 1926 by artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner is displayed at the 'Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum for Contemporary Arts' in Berlin. The exhibition named 'Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - Hieroglyphen' showing the complete collection of Berlin's Nationalgallerie works of the German artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and will run from 23 September 2016 until 26 February 2017 AP Culture news in pictures 20 September 2016 A man looks at portrait photos by US photographer Bruce Gilden in the exhibition 'Masters of Photography' at the photokina in Cologne, Germany. The trade fair on photography, photokina, schowcases some 1,000 exhibitors from 40 countries and runs from 20 to 25 September. The event also features various photo exhibitions EPA Culture news in pictures 20 September 2016 A woman looks at 'Blue Poles', 1952 by Jackson Pollock during a photocall at the Royal Academy of Arts, London PA Culture news in pictures 19 September 2016 Art installation The Refusal of Time, a collaboration with Philip Miller, Catherine Meyburgh and Peter Galison, which features as part of the William Kentridge exhibition Thick Time, showing from 21 September to 15 January at the Whitechapel Gallery in London PA Culture news in pictures 18 September 2016 Artists creating one off designs at the Mm6 Maison Margiela presentation during London Fashion Week Spring/Summer collections 2017 in London Getty Images Culture news in pictures 18 September 2016 Bethenny Frankel attends the special screening of Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" to celebrate the 25th Anniversary Edition release on Blu-Ray and DVD in New York City Getty Images for Walt Disney Stu Culture news in pictures 17 September 2016 Visitors attend the 2016 Oktoberfest beer festival at Theresienwiese in Munich, Germany Getty Images Culture news in pictures 16 September 2016 Visitors looks at British artist Damien Hirst work of art 'The Incomplete Truth', during the 13th Yalta Annual Meeting entitled 'The World, Europe and Ukraine: storms of changes', organised by the Yalta European Strategy (YES) in partnership with the Victor Pinchuk Foundation at the Mystetsky Arsenal Art Center in Kiev AP Culture news in pictures 16 September 2016 Tracey Emin's "My Bed" is exhibited at the Tate Liverpool as part of the exhibition Tracey Emin And William Blake In Focus, which highlights surprising links between the two artists Getty Images Culture news in pictures 15 September 2016 Musician Dave Grohl (L) joins musician Tom Morello of Prophets of Rage onstage at the Forum in Inglewood, California Getty Images Culture news in pictures 14 September 2016 Model feebee poses as part of art installation "Narcissism : Dazzle room" made by artist Shigeki Matsuyama at rooms33 fashion and design exhibition in Tokyo. Matsuyama's installation features a strong contrast of black and white, which he learned from dazzle camouflage used mainly in World War I AP Culture news in pictures 13 September 2016 Visitors look at artworks by Chinese painter Cui Ruzhuo during the exhibition 'Glossiness of Uncarved Jade' held at the exhibition hall 'Manezh' in St. Petersburg, Russia. More than 200 paintings by the Chinese artist are presented until 25 September EPA Culture news in pictures 12 September 2016 A visitor looks at Raphael's painting 'Extase de Sainte Cecile', 1515, from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence during the opening of a Raphael exhibition at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, Russia. The first Russian exhibition of the works of the Italian Renaissance artist Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino includes eight paintings and three drawings which come from Italy. Th exhibit opens to the public from 13 September to 11 December EPA Culture news in pictures 11 September 2016 Steve Cropper and Eddie Floyd perform during Otis Redding 75th Birthday Celebration - Rehearsals at the Macon City Auditorium in Macon, Georgia Getty Images for Otis Redding 75 Culture news in pictures 10 September 2016 Sakari Oramo conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Chorus and the BBC Singers at the Last Night of the Proms 2016 at the Royal Albert Hall in London PA Culture news in pictures 9 September 2016 A visitor walks past a piece entitled "Fruitcake" by Joana Vasconcelo, during the Beyond Limits selling exhibition at Chatsworth House near Bakewell REUTERS Culture news in pictures 8 September 2016 A sculpture of a crescent standing on the 2,140 meters high mountain 'Freiheit' (German for 'freedom'), in the Alpstein region of the Appenzell alps, eastern Switzerland. The sculpture is lighted during the nights by means of solar panels. The 38-year-old Swiss artist and atheist Christian Meier set the crescent on the peak to start a debate on the meaning of religious symbols - as summit crosses - on mountains. 'Because so many peaks have crosses on them, it struck me as a great idea to put up an equally absurd contrast'. 'Naturally I wanted to provoke in a fun way. But it goes beyond that. The actions of an artist should be food for thought, both visually and in content' EPA Culture news in pictures Culture news in pictures Culture news in pictures

"He was completely dedicated to The Archers - and once that green light was on - he was Sid Perks.

Mr Devereux's character was best known for running the local pub, The Bull, for decades and his character was announced to have mysteriously died off scene while jogging in New Zealand.

A spokeswoman for The Archers at the time said Mr Devereux had "decided to retire" from the show but did not elaborate.

Fans speculated that Mr Devereux had fallen out with the producers of the show as long-standing characters were rarely killed "off mic" and it was normally a scene that they were either too ill to perform or producers wanted to slight them by not giving them a good exit.
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Amber Heard has said she will release a full statement to the Los Angeles Police Department about the alleged domestic abuse her estranged husband Johnny Depp has subjected her to.

Heard, 30, said she did not previously release a statement to the LAPD in order to protect her privacy and Depps acting career.

The actress alleged she had experienced years of physical and psychological abuse from the 52-year-old.

Heard said her behaviour was not motivated by financial reasoning and she was a "financially independent woman".

On Saturday, the Los Angeles police told The Independent that they responded to a domestic violence call at the couple's home.

On 21 May, 2016, police responded to a domestic incident radio call in the 800 block of South Broadway, a spokesperson for the LAPD said. The person reporting did not insist on a report, nor was there any evidence provided by the victim that warranted a report. Officers investigation determined that a crime did NOT occur. The officers cleared the scene and left a business card.

Johnny Depp on screen Show all 16 1 /16 Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen Preening: Johnny Depp in 'Mortdecai' Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp in 'Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End' AP Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen With Helena Bonham-Carter in 2007's 'Sweeney Todd' AP Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen Depp in Richard Burton's 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' AP Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp with Winona Ryder in Edward Scissorhands back in 1990 Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen Depp with short hair in 2009 film 'Public Enemies' AP Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen In 2012's 'Dark Shadows' AP Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen The actor in 'Finding Neverland', 2004 AP Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp stars in 2014 sci-fi thriller 'Transcendence' Alcon Entertainment, LLC. Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp in 2006 film 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest' AP Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp as Tonto in 2013 movie 'The Lone Ranger' Disney Enterprises, Inc Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp and Amber Heard star in 2011 movie 'The Rum Diary' AP Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz in 2011 film 'Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides' AP Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp stars with Angelina Jolie in 2010 movie 'The Tourist' Rex Feature Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp as The Mad Hatter in a scene from 2010 film 'Alice in Wonderland' AP Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp stars in Michael Mann's 2009 movie 'Public Enemies'

Heard has now explained she chose to stay silent because she was keen to keep the matter private and, like many other victims of domestic violence, she first thought of the harm that might come to the abuser.

Last Friday, Heard was issued a temporary domestic violence restraining order against Depp after she alleged he had been violent towards her on multiple occasions during their 15-month marriage. Heard appeared in court, with a visible bruise on her face, alleging that Depp threw an iPhone at her face last Saturday and a month before grabbed [her] by the hair and violently shove [her] to the floor.

Depps lawyer, Laura Wasser, has claimed Heard applied for a restraining order as a result of the negative media coverage shes been subject to and in order to secure a premature financial resolution. The unfavourable media attention Wasser is referring to is the coverage of Heard choosing to file for a divorce several days after Depps mother Betty Sue died.

 Johnny Depp accused of assault

The statement from Heards lead attorney Samantha F. Spector and her co-counsel Joseph P. Koenig is in full below:

As the result of Ambers decision to decline giving an initial statement to the LAPD, her silence has been used against her by Johnnys team. Amber did not provide a statement to the LAPD in an attempt to protect her privacy and Johnnys career.

"Johnnys team has forced Amber to give a statement to the LAPD to set the record straight as to the true facts, as she cannot continue to leave herself open to the vicious false and malicious allegations that have infected the media.

"Amber has suffered through years of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of Johnny.

"In domestic violence cases, it is not unusual for the perpetrator's playbook to include miscasting the victim as the villain.

"In reality, Amber acted no differently than many victims of domestic violence, who think first of the harm that might come to the abuser, rather than the abuse they have already suffered.

"Amber can no longer endure the relentless attacks and outright lies launched against her character in the Court of Public Opinion since the tragic events of 21 May. With her statement Amber hopes to give the LAPD the opportunity to conduct an accurate and complete investigation into the events of that evening and before. If that occurs, and the truth is revealed, there is no doubt that Ambers claims will be substantiated beyond any doubt, and hopefully Johnny will get the help that he so desperately needs.

"From the beginning it has been Amber's desire to keep this matter as private as possible, even though LAPD officers responded to a 911 call made by a third-party. The LAPD officers viewed not only the disarray that Johnny had caused in the apartment but also the physical injuries to Ambers face. We filed the Petition for Dissolution of Marriage at the very end of the day on Monday May 23rd and we did not serve Johnny with the Petition at the premiere of Alice Through the Looking Glass that evening. We sent a letter to Johnny's counsel team the next morning making it clear we wanted to keep this matter out of the media. We then held off requesting a domestic violence restraining order as we knew that Johnny was out of the country.

"We took the high road. Unfortunately, Johnny's team immediately went to the press and began viciously attacking Ambers character. Amber is simply a victim of domestic violence, and none of her actions are motivated by money. Amber is a brave and financially independent woman who is showing the courage of her convictions by doing the right thing against Johnny's relentless army of lawyers and surrogates.

"The Family Law Court is not going to be influenced by misinformation placed in the social media based on anonymous sources. Amber is the victim. Amber is a hero.

A representative for Depp did not immediately respond to request for comment.
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Johnny Depp went ahead with his performance in Stockholm despite a social media campaign calling for the show to be boycotted over the domestic abuse allegations made by his wife Amber Heard.

Depp and The Hollywood Vampires took to the stage on Monday night to perform to a full crowd.

The venue Grona Lund faced criticism for letting Depp perform amid the abuse allegations. A social media campaign called for people to boycott the event and fans posted messages on the the venues Facebook event and Instagram pledging not to attend the concert.

Using the hashtag #ImWithAmber, one Facebook user said, I was planning on going to the concert but I will boycott it.

Are you taking a stand against this, Grona Lund? said another. I hope that as many as possible do the right thing and boycott this.

Johnny Depp on screen Show all 16 1 /16 Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen Preening: Johnny Depp in 'Mortdecai' Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp in 'Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End' AP Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen With Helena Bonham-Carter in 2007's 'Sweeney Todd' AP Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen Depp in Richard Burton's 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' AP Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp with Winona Ryder in Edward Scissorhands back in 1990 Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen Depp with short hair in 2009 film 'Public Enemies' AP Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen In 2012's 'Dark Shadows' AP Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen The actor in 'Finding Neverland', 2004 AP Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp stars in 2014 sci-fi thriller 'Transcendence' Alcon Entertainment, LLC. Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp in 2006 film 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest' AP Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp as Tonto in 2013 movie 'The Lone Ranger' Disney Enterprises, Inc Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp and Amber Heard star in 2011 movie 'The Rum Diary' AP Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz in 2011 film 'Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides' AP Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp stars with Angelina Jolie in 2010 movie 'The Tourist' Rex Feature Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp as The Mad Hatter in a scene from 2010 film 'Alice in Wonderland' AP Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp on screen Johnny Depp stars in Michael Mann's 2009 movie 'Public Enemies'

While an Instagram user asked, Johnny Depp is a woman abuser so how about setting up their concert?

The venue defended their decision to go ahead with the concert, saying that Depp had the right to be judged as innocent until proven guilty.

 Johnny Depp accused of assault

We are opposed to any sort of violence, of course, Annika Troselius, a spokesperson for the venue which is an amusement park, told People Magazine. But it's also equally important that we cannot judge someone beforehand. Everyone, including Johnny Depp, should be allowed to have the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty.

The Hollywood Vampires, which also features Alice Cooper and Joe Perry, are on the European leg of their tour.

A representative for Depp did not immediately respond to request for comment.
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Labour MP Jess Phillips has said she was subjected to more than 600 rape threats in one night.

The MP for Yardley in Birmingham said she received around 5,000 Twitter notifications of people discussing whether or not they would sexually assault her.

Ms Philips, who helped launch the Reclaim the Internet campaign against misogynist bullying online, said the ringleaders of those who have abused her should face civil or criminal action.

The politician has become a target for trolls since exposing tweets from individuals threatening to rape her last year. Earlier this year, Phillips also revealed she was sexually assaulted as a 19-year-old.

People news in pictures Show all 18 1 /18 People news in pictures People news in pictures 7 October 2015 Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part in an ice hockey match between former NHL stars and officials at the Shayba Arena in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Vladimir Putin spent his 63rd birthday on the ice, playing hockey with NHL stars against Russian officials and tycoons EPA People news in pictures 6 October 2015 German designer Karl Lagerfeld (R) and model Cara Delevingne (C) appear at the end of his Spring/Summer 2016 women's ready-to-wear collection for fashion house Chanel at the Grand Palais which is transformed into a Chanel airport during the Fashion Week in Paris, France Reuters People news in pictures 5 October 2015 Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne addresses the Conservative party conference in Manchester. The Chancellor argued that reducing the payments to people in low paid jobs would give them economic security by reducing the Governments spending deficit Getty Images People news in pictures 4 October 2015 Cowboys captain Johnathan Thurston takes a moment in the centre of the field with his daughter Frankie Thurston, holding dark-skinned doll, after winning the 2015 NRL Grand Final match between the Brisbane Broncos and the North Queensland Cowboys at ANZ Stadium in Sydney. The image quickly became the talking point of Australias National Rugby League Final and provoked a strong reaction on social media, with many praising Thurston for giving his child a toy that promotes inclusiveness and diversity Getty Images People news in pictures 3 October 2015 Pope Francis gives a thumbs-up as he greets people at the end of an audience to the participants of a meeting organized by the "Food Bank" at the Paul VI audience hall in Vatican Getty Images People news in pictures 2 October 2015 Britain's Finance Minister George Osborne (L) throws an American football as he meets with former American football players Dan Marino (2nd R) and Curtis Martin (not pictured) at 11 Downing Street in London, ahead of the New York Jets playing against the Miami Dolphins at London's Wembley Stadium on 4 October Getty Images People news in pictures 1 October 2015 An honor guard opens the door as Russian President Vladimir Putin enters a hall to attend a meeting with members of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia People news in pictures 30 September 2015 Former Mrs America Lisa Christie, who alleges misconduct by Bill Cosby, holds up photos of her younger self during a news conference at the law office of attorney Gloria Allred in Los Angeles People news in pictures 29 September 2015 Matt Damon has defended himself against claims that he instructed gay actors to remain in the closet. He had said I think youre a better actor the less people know about you and sexuality is a huge part of that. Whether youre straight or gay, people shouldnt know anything about your sexuality but an appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres show said, I was just trying to say actors are more effective when theyre a mystery. Right? Getty People news in pictures 29 September 2015 Actor Marion Cotillard has said that there is no place for feminism in Hollywood. Speaking to Porter magazine, she saidFilm-making is not about gender/ You cannot ask a president in a festival like Cannes to have, like, five movies directed by women and five by men. For me it doesnt create equality, it creates separation. I mean, I dont qualify myself as a feminist." Getty People news in pictures 29 September 2015 Actor Paul Walkers daughter, Meadow, is suing Porsche over her fathers death in a lawsuit that claims he was trapped in the burning car because of design flaws and the seat belt. The Fast and Furious star was killed when the Porsche Carrera GT he was a passenger in hit a pole in California in 2013. The driver, his friend Roger Rodas, also died when the vehicle burst into flames. AP People news in pictures 28 September 2015 Robert Mugabe waits to address the United Nations General Assembly. The leader of Zimbabwe reportedly exclaimed 'We are not gay!' as he criticised Western nation's "double standards and attempts to prescribe new rights that are contrary to our values, norms, traditions and beliefs. In 2013 he described homosexuals as worse than pigs, goats and birds. Reuters People news in pictures 28 September 2015 South African comedian Trevor Noah hosts the first 'Daily Show' since taking over from Jon Stewart as host. Stewart had presented the US satirical news show since 1999 and was described by Noah during the show as a 'Political father' 2015 Getty Images People news in pictures 25 September 2015 Sir Elton John may have received a phone call from the real Vladimir Putin. Mr Putin's spokesman announced he had made contact weeks after the singer was duped by pranksters pretending to be the Russian President. Getty People news in pictures 25 September 2015 Actor Leonardo DiCaprio was mistakenly declared as the artist who produced the Mona Lisa by Fox News anchor Shepard Smith. It was in fact Leonardo da Vinci. People news in pictures 24 September 2015 A new biography claims Donald Trump expected to be dead by 40 and never marry. The Guardian says the a new book also claims that in 1980, Mr Trump manufactured a fake vice-president of his real estate conglomerate, whom he called John Baron. People news in pictures 24 September 2015 The Dalai Lama has said that Britain's policy towards China is just about 'Money, money, money.' And asked 'Where is morality?' People news in pictures 24 September 2015 Puff Daddy secured the number-one spot on the Forbes Hip Hop Cash Kings list, with the publication calculating he made an estimated $60million (39m) between June 2014 and June 2015.

The dog piling attack I have suffered highlights the importance of doing something to change how people act online," Ms Phillips told The Independent. "I have been subject to thousands of tweets with varying viciousness and aggression."

"The content is horrible and reflects very poor intelligence and discourse I'd expect from a child," she continued. "But the volume is specifically designed to silence me and people who speak to me. Something must be done to stop this targeted harassment.

Speaking about the events of last night on the BBCs Victoria Derbyshire Show, Philips explained her local police force were already aware she had been subject to online abuse.

I dont need to contact the police anymore because my local police officers watch what happens on Twitter and they get in touch with me, she said. The vast majority of people who are doing this are in America so there is very little West Midlands police can do about it.

Shocked by the behaviour of her online abusers, Phillips added, Their level of discourse is that they're saying that they dont want to rape me as if raping is something they would do to someone they liked.

Phillips said she would be contacting Twitter about some of the ringleaders of this dog piling.

Representatives for the Labour Party and Twitter did not immediately respond to request for comment.
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Every year, 47,000 women worldwide die from an unsafe abortion. To put this into context, every nine minutes a woman dies from a termination which is not safe.

While abortion might be one of the safest medical procedures in the world in countries where it is legal, it is harrowingly risky in nations where it is illegal. Of the estimated 20 million women who undergo illegal abortions each year, millions go on to suffer long-lasting and sometimes permanent health consequences from their termination. Infertility and chronic pain are just two of the possible symptoms.

For this very reason, Dr Rebecca Gomperts has devoted the entirety of her work and life to helping women safely terminate pregnancies in countries where it is illegal. From flying drones filled with abortions pills to sailing the seven seas to distribute safe medical abortions in international waters, the 49-year-old Dutch physician will stop at nothing to help women in need.

Since founding Women on Waves, a non-profit organisation of doctors and activists, back in 1999, Gomperts' tactics have perpetually evolved. As well as defying the law of the land by ship, she also runs Women on Web, a website and mail service which delivers abortion pills to women worldwide. Having encountered everything from constantly changing legal frameworks to poker-faced border authorities and stormy seas, Gomperts always has her wits about her.

Dr Rebecca Gomperts (Women on Waves)

But what was it that prompted that first eponymous lightbulb moment? When did Gomperts first decide she wanted to sail to the far east with a boat stocked with packets of mifepristone and misoprostol (the two key drugs you need to carry out an abortion). The Independent spoke with Gomperts to find out.

Who is Rebecca Gomperts?

Born in Suriname, a country on the northeastern Atlantic coast of South America and a former Dutch colony, Gomperts moved to the Netherlands at the age of three. Growing up in a small village in the south of the Netherlands, her international consciousness was inbred into her from an early age. At this time, she was not yet aware of the struggle many women faced to access medical abortions, but after studying medicine and going to art school, this rapidly changed.

Abortion was legalised in Holland in 1984 but I was too young to be involved in the struggle to get it legalised, she recalls. But working in a small hospital as a trainee doctor in Guiana changed this. There were women coming in severely bleeding. Somehow at the time I didnt make the connection with the illegality of abortion.

Later Gomperts helped on the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior II in South Africa where she was exposed to countless stories of womens suffering and their obstacles to accessing reproductive services. This, in turn, sowed the seeds for Women on Waves.

Women on the front line of America's abortion war Show all 3 1 /3 Women on the front line of America's abortion war Women on the front line of America's abortion war IA28-34-Abortion-2.jpg AP Women on the front line of America's abortion war IA34-Janis.jpg Women on the front line of America's abortion war IA28-34-abortion-3.jpg AP

What is Women on Waves?

To put it simply, Women on Waves is centered around the idea of a floating abortion clinic: the ship travels to collect women in need and transports them to international waters. There, they provide them with the pill which they can safely take after reaching dry land at home. She explains that it has to remain separate from Women on Web because of the legal risks it takes.

It wasnt until that 2001 that Women on Waves made their maiden voyage to Ireland. Carrying two Dutch doctors and one Dutch nurse on board, this particular mission was thwarted because of a certification error.

Since then Women on Waves has travelled as far afield as Morocco, Spain, Poland, and Portugal when abortion was still illegal. The group did plan to go to Equador but Gomperts says the ship was stranded in the storm and it was never able to make it.

Moroccan police follow the Women on Waves ship (Women on Waves)

What impact has Women on Waves actually had?

While it is hard to quantify such things, Gomperts has seen concrete legislative change from her direct action. She says this is most notable in relation to their campaign in Portugal. Back in 2004, the government refused to allow the organisation entry and physically obstructed their ship with two Portuguese Navy warships. In turn, it was stranded twelve miles from Figueria de Foz, a small holiday town, in the midst of Portuguese waters.

But the campaign caused outrage in Portugal, Gomperts explains. After the election, the abortion law was changed and it was legalised. While I think it would have happened eventually, I definitely think Women on the Waves had a catalysing effect.

How does she harness the power of the World Wide Web?

Founded in 2005, Women on Web is an online service which allows women to request medical abortions by post after they have undergone a consultation with a doctor online. We get around ten thousand emails a month, Gomperts says. We have women on the helpline answering emails in different languages. Their emails have ranged from 123 countries, to be exact.

Brazil is a key country which utilises this service. Since the advent of the Zika virus, Gomperts says the demand for abortion pills has dramatically increased. Nevertheless, sadly this good work has now been pushed to an abrupt halt. Unfortunately since the new year, theyve started stopping the customs service and stopping all the packages, Gomperts unhappily explains. We have had to stop providing help to Brazil . Now we tell them where they can travel where abortion is legal. I.e. Cuba, Belize, Uruguay, and more.

Interestingly, she says Women on Web also gets a fair few requests from women in Britain. These women cite a range of reasons for their requests. As well as complaining about long NHS waiting list, many are or in abusive, coercive relationships and have no means of accessing abortion clinics. Or well have a girl of 16 contact us who is from a religious family who cannot leave the house without being chaperoned and then are illegal undocumented women too, she adds.

Who are the people behind the statistics?

For Gomperts, it is the individual stories which ultimately drives her. Everyday we get so many emails from women who are desperate for help and are desperate to have found somebody that can help them whether they have money or not, she says. Those with money can always travel to another country or find a good doctor but for many women, that is not possible.

A number of particularly heart-rendering emails are featured in Vessel, a recent documentary which charts both her and the charitys trajectory. From a US soldier serving in Afghanistan who was raped and unable to access abortions, to a woman in Ireland whose husband controls her income and cannot afford black-market prices, to a woman in Qatar who will be lashed to death if the authorities find out she is pregnant, Gomperts has had women from all over the world reach out to her.

What are drones used for?

In recent years, Gomperts has also become famed for her drone work. Most notable is the campaign in Poland - where abortion is severely restricted - in the summer of last year. The drones are flying abortion pills from one country to the other, she explains. Like the ship, its using the different laws and jurisdictions to do that legally and by doing that its trying to invent a new mode of delivery. This is not yet sustainable in the long run but these are test campaigns to see how it works out. So far so good - the campaign in Poland was a success. The drone-delivered drugs were flown from the border of Germany safely into Poland where they were collected.

Nevertheless, it has left some of the Polish activists in hot water. "The Polish authorities contacted all the Polish participants in the campaign and made them go to the police station for questioning. We dont know if theyll start a court case or theyll drop it. Its an example of intimidation of activists.

What about the legal logistics?

One thing Gomperts is forever careful about is ensuring she meanders her way through the loopholes of the legal system.

We never break the law, she says matter-of-factly. People are allowed to import medicine for their use - that is how it works. It is sent with a prescription from one of our doctors. But of course, the law is not static. We push the interpretation of laws and put them in a human rights framework.

To put this into context, the World Health Organisation lists abortion pills on its list of essential medicines all individuals have the right to access. Saying that, the Dutch physician has spent over a decade fighting in international legal battles to defend her work and continues to do so, remaining unwavering in her commitment to womens reproductive rights worldwide.
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Tim Farron has questioned David Cameron's claim he enjoys listening to The Smiths, suggesting the Conservative leader can't identify with the band's songs because of his privileged upbringing.

The Prime Minister has presented himself as a fan of the Mancunian band on a number of occasions and once picked "This Charming Man" as one of his tracks while on BBC Radio 4s Desert Island Discs.

But Mr Farron has taken issue with Mr Camerons stated preference, claiming The Smiths could not resonate with him because their songs speak of issues and a life he has never experienced.

Leader Tim Farron arriving at his conference last September (Getty)

The leader of the Liberal Democrats grew up in a working-class family in Preston, Lancashire, and said he could appreciate The Smiths music because it reflected he had actually led.

Mr Cameron, in contrast, was raised in a middle-class family in Berkshire and attended Eton College.

Morrissey's most controversial quotes Show all 29 1 /29 Morrissey's most controversial quotes Morrissey's most controversial quotes On racism If you call someone racist in modern Britain you are telling them that you have run out of words. You are shutting the debate down and running off. The word is meaningless now. Everyone ultimately prefers their own race  does this make everyone racist? NBCU/Getty Morrissey's most controversial quotes On Lady Gaga In an interview with Billboard, Morrissey calls Lady Gaga nothing new and says her style is fraudulent, and the exact opposite of erotic. He also refers to Madonna as McDonna and says Michael Buble is famous and meaningless. Getty Images Morrissey's most controversial quotes On dance music: "It's the refuge for the mentally deficient. It's made by dull people for dull people." Getty Images Morrissey's most controversial quotes On London mayor Sadiq Khan "London is debased. The Mayor of London tells us about 'Neighborhood policin'  what is 'policin? He tells us London is an 'amazin' city. What is 'amazin'? This is the Mayor of London! And he cannot talk properly!" Getty Morrissey's most controversial quotes On Madonna Madonna reinforces everything absurd and offensive. Desperate womanhood. Madonna is closer to organised prostitution than anything else. Photo by Michael Campanella/Getty Images Morrissey's most controversial quotes On Beyonce: "The rhino is now more or less extinct, and it's not because of global warming or shrinking habitats. It's because of Beyonce's handbags" Buda Mendes/Getty Images Morrissey's most controversial quotes On animal cruelty in China You cant help but feel that the Chinese people are a subspecies. Getty Images Morrissey's most controversial quotes On royal family: "The arrogance of the British royals is staggering, absolutely staggering" Getty Morrissey's most controversial quotes On creativity: On being creative: I'd rather produce art than become art. Getty Images Morrissey's most controversial quotes On Prince Charles: "I wish that Prince Charles had been shot. I think it would have made the world a more interesting place." Morrissey's most controversial quotes On sexuality: "Unfortunately, I am not homosexual... In technical fact, I am humasexual. I am attracted to humans. But, of course, not many." Getty Morrissey's most controversial quotes On Bob Geldof: "Bob Geldof is a nauseating character. Band Aid was the most self-righteous platform ever in the history of popular music." Getty Morrissey's most controversial quotes On growing old: Age shouldnt affect you. Youre either marvellous or youre boring, regardless of your age. Getty Images Morrissey's most controversial quotes On being alcoholic: Life would be so colourful if only I had a drink problem. GETTY IMAGES Morrissey's most controversial quotes On being sexy: I think I must be, absolutely, a total sex object. In every sense of the word. EPA Morrissey's most controversial quotes On music industry: I lost myself to music at a very early age, and I remained there. Morrissey's most controversial quotes On Taylor Swift: The maximum trimmings [at the Brits] divert your attention from the fact that Taylor Swift has nothing to do with Coventry or Wrexham. To pull off rank fraud in tellyland is not a difficult undertaking, especially if you have the entire population of Peru dancing around you as you mime your song." Provided by Shore Fire Media Morrissey's most controversial quotes On grooming: "I do maintain that if your hair is wrong, your entire life is wrong. Rex Features Morrissey's most controversial quotes On Elton John: He is pushing his face in all the time and telling us about his private life. Nobody's interested. He should just go away." AFP/Getty Images Morrissey's most controversial quotes On charisma: I'm not very good at being dull." Getty Images Morrissey's most controversial quotes On musicians: Artists aren't really people. I'm actually 40 per cent papier mache. Getty Images Morrissey's most controversial quotes On love: On romance: I do think it's possible to go through life and never fall in love, or find someone who loves you. Getty Morrissey's most controversial quotes On failed assassination attempt on Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher: "The sorrow of the IRA Brighton bombing is that Thatcher escaped unscathed." Getty Images Morrissey's most controversial quotes On the music addiction: Music is like a drug, but there are no rehabilitation centres. Associated Press Morrissey's most controversial quotes On vanity: On vanity: Well, I am an extremely beautiful person. Rex Features Morrissey's most controversial quotes On death: "I have an unswayable obsession with death. If there was a magical pill that one could take that would retire you from the world, I would take it." Reuters Morrissey's most controversial quotes On Kate Middleton Morrissey links the suicide of a London nurse to the Duchess Kate Middleton. Theres no blame placed at Kate Middleton, who was in the hospital for, as far as I can see, absolutely no reason . . . She feels no shame about the death of this woman. The arrogance of the British royals is staggering, absolutely staggering. PA Morrissey's most controversial quotes On his legacy: When they bury me in a church and chuck earth on my grave, Id like the words Well, at least he tried engraved on my tombstone. Morrissey's most controversial quotes Rex

Mr. Farron told Ruth and Martins Album Club: Forgive me, but Ive always had a problem with David Cameron saying that he likes the Smiths, in particular that he likes The Queen is Dead. Theres a line in "Panic" that goes the music he constantly plays, it says nothing to me about my life

I dont want to be an inverse snob, but The Smiths do not sing to David Cameron about anything in his life at all. What Morrissey sings cannot possibly resonate with him. Im a Northern working class bloke, an angsty 1980s teenager, The Smiths say plenty to me about my life.

Mr Farron isnt the only person who has taken issue with Mr Cameron declaring himself a Smiths fan. In 2010, founding member Johnny Marr forbid the Prime Minister from liking the band, writing on Twitter: "Stop saying that you like The Smiths, no you dont.

His demand was echoed by Morrissey, who wrote an essay on his blog criticising Mr Camerons position on hunting and claiming he cancelled an appearance on the Andrew Marr Show because Mr Cameron was due to appear alongside him.

I would like to, if I may, offer support to Johnny Marr who has spoken out to the media this week against David Cameron, he wrote. David Cameron hunts and shoots and kills stags  apparently for pleasure. It was not for such people that either "Meat Is Murder" or "The Queen Is Dead" were recorded; in fact, they were made as a reaction against such violence.
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A mother and her partner have been found guilty of murdering her two-year-old son and attempting to blame it on another child.

Rachel and Nyomi Fee were found guilty of assaulting and killing their son Liam at his home near Glenrothes in March 2014.

They were also convicted of attempting to defeat the ends of justice by attempting to frame another young boy who was one of two other children present in the house when Liam died.

The little boy was found dead at his home near Glenrothes on 22 March 2014 with heart injuries similar to those found on road crash victims after a severe blunt force trauma to his chest and abdomen.

Pathologists found more than 30 external injuries on the toddler's body and fractures to his upper arm and thigh.

The Fees tried to shift the blame for the death on to a boy of primary school age, who they claimed had been acting in a sexualised way towards Liam.

The child initially appeared to admit responsibility, claiming he had strangled Liam by putting his hands over his mouth, but in a series of five video interviews carried out separately over several weeks with both children, the truth began to emerge.

Far from being strangled, Liam had died from a single blow to the abdomen which had ruptured his heart, pathologists said.

The jury heard there was an escalation of violence towards the toddler leading up to his death, which included the couple failing to get help for him when they knew he had a broken leg and fractured arm.

Rachel and Nyomi Fee (l-r) have both been found guilty of murdering two-year-old Liam (PA)

Prosecutor Alex Prentice QC told the court the women were guilty of unyielding, heartless cruelty and had shown callous indifference to the boys suffering.

Instead of taking him to hospital, they searched questions such as how do you die of a broken hip, how long can you live with a broken bone? and can wives be in prison together? on Google.

Rachel and Nyomi Fee were convicted following a seven-week trial heard at the High Court in Livingston.

They were also found guilty of abusing two other children, including the child they attempted to frame, who cannot be named for legal reasons.

The court heard the two children, both of primary school age, were subjected to physical and psychological abuse over several years.

The boy wrongly blamed for Liams death told interviewers Nyomi Fee would show she was angry by calling him dirty boy and that he had been tied to a locked home-made cage during the night, with his hands and feet would be bound with cable ties to the makeshift construction using a fireguard and bars.

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The child also described how he would sometimes be naked in the cage and had his hands bound behind his back, while at other times he would be tied to a cot with a dressing-gown cord and coat belts.

The trial heard how the boy tried to flee on three separate occasions from the Fees' house, and had even made a rope out of bandages to aid his escape.

I tried to run away because of bad treatment, the boy said.

During interviews, the second boy said he was banned from going to the toilet in the night but given cold showers for 15 or 20 minutes if he wet the bed.

He told police Fee tied him naked to a chair and left him alone in a room all night in the dark, with snakes and rats in boxes.

The boy, who said he is scared of the dark, said the snakes included a boa constrictor which he was told eats naughty little boys.

He said he felt unsafe with both women and was scared of being punished when he stayed with them.

Liam's father, Joseph Johnson, appears in court to hear the verdict (PA)

Detective Inspector Rory Hamilton, the senior investigating officer, praised the courage of the two children whose evidence was key to securing the conviction of the pair.

He said the deterioration in Liam's care began when his mother Rachel, 31, left his father to move to Scotland to be with Nyomi, 28, in August 2011.

Nyomi would certainly appear to be quite a domineering part of the relationship, certainly from what the investigation uncovered, Det Insp Hamilton added.

Jurors were moved to tears after a video showing Liam's body was shown to the court. After 12 minutes, one juror raised their hand to ask for a break in proceedings to give people time to compose themselves.

The silent recording, taken hours after the toddler died, was taken by detectives. Going through every room in the house, numerous family photos were spotted on the walls as well as toys dotted around the rooms.

Liam died after a single blow to the abdomen ruptured his heart (PA/Police Scotland)

The final images of the video showed Liam lying dead on his bedroom floor, dressed in cartoon character pyjamas with a duvet covering him up to his neck, appearing as if he were sleeping.

Fife Child Protection Committee has said it would carry out a significant case review, after it was found that social services had been alerted to Fees' abuse but failed to take any action.

Liam's nursery had alerted social services after they noticed Liam had become withdrawn  in contrast to the happy little boy he had been when he first arrived.

Staff also found he had a lot of injuries and was losing weight and his childminder also raised concerns.

Despite this, a senior Fife social worker admitted in council his case had been dropped as he fell off their radar when a member of staff went on sick leave and no-one took over the case.

Vice-chairman of the Fife Child Protection Committee, Douglas Dunlop, described the death as a tragedy and said the body would reflect on the case to see whether there is any scope for improvement.

The couple, originally of Ryton, Tyne and Wear, will be sentenced on July 6 at the High Court in Edinburgh.

Additional reporting by PA
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Prime Minister David Cameron will join descendants of those who fought at the Battle of Jutland for a centenary service to remember the 8,645 seamen who died in the largest naval battle of the First World War.

One hundred years ago British and German ships engaged in a 36-hour conflict off the coast of Denmark which would leave both sides with devastating losses and change the course of the war.

A service is being held at the UK's most northerly cathedral in Kirkwall, Orkney, where Mr Cameron and German President Joachim Gauck are expected to attend.

 The Battle of Jutland - All you need to know

Duke of Edinburgh pulls out

The Princess Royal will represent the Royal family at the memorial at St Magnus Cathedral where thousands of ceramic poppies have been installed in tribute to the war dead and a specially-commissioned piece of music by the late composer and Orkney resident Sir Peter Maxwell Davies will be performed.

Recommended Read more Prince Philip to miss Battle of Jutland commemoration

The Duke of Edinburgh who was due to attend will now not join events in Orkney following doctor's advice.

Descendants of those who fought at Jutland have been invited to join the commemorations, which will continue with a service at Lyness Cemetery on the island of Hoy - the final resting place for more than 450 service personnel who died in the war, including sailors killed at Jutland.

The cemetery stands close to Scapa Flow, from where the British Grand Fleet set out for the Jutland Bank to repel German forces attempting to break a British blockade.

HMS 'Lion' is shelled and HMS 'Queen Mary' is blown up by German shells during the Battle of Jutland on 31 May 1916 (Getty Images)

Both nations claimed victory

Almost 250 ships took part, creating a scale of battle that has not been seen since.

Both nations claimed victory - Germany because of the 6,094 British losses compared to the 2,551 men it sacrificed - but Britain had seriously weakened the enemy's naval capability.

At the time, the battle dented domestic pride in the Royal Navy. Yet with shipping lanes and sea supply lines to the front kept open, Jutland would arguably prove a strategic victory for Britain.

On Tuesday there will also be a remembrance service at sea, where British and German naval representatives will scatter poppies and forget-me-nots - the German flower of remembrance - into the North Sea at Jutland Bank.

The Government said the commemorations will remember all those who lost their lives while also paying tribute to the role of the Royal Navy and the Orkney Islands in the 1914-18 conflict.

Orkney Islands Council vice-convener Jim Foubister said: "We are proud to be hosting the UK's national commemoration of the Battle of Jutland.

"It is fitting that the Jutland commemorations will draw to a close among the graves of some of those who made the ultimate sacrifice for their countries a century ago."

Commemorative events marking the Jutland centenary have previously been held at Rosyth and South Queensferry on the Firth of Forth, from where the Battlecruiser force set sail ahead of the battle on May 31 1916.

Sailors point to a shell-hole in the side of HMS CHESTER after the Battle of Jutland on 31 May 1916 (PA)

One vessel remains

The last surviving vessel from the Battle of Jutland will provide the backdrop for a commemoration honouring the 10,000 Irish sailors who served in World War One.

HMS Caroline, a light cruiser built on Merseyside in 1914, will open to the public in Belfast tomorrow after a 15 million-plus lottery-backed restoration project.

Today, descendants of sailors who saw action in the First World War will gather alongside it at the city's Alexandra dock for a special memorial event on the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Jutland.

Weighing 3,750 tons and measuring 446ft (136m), HMS Caroline was part of the screening force which sailed out ahead of the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet during the battle off Denmark to establish the position of the German battleships.

Six years after the war ended, HMS Caroline was moved from Portsmouth to Belfast to become a training vessel for local Royal Navy Reserves. Most of the rest of the fleet was decommissioned and broken up.

HMS Caroline performed its function as a drill ship up until 2011, apart from during the Second World War when it was used as an operations headquarters for the efforts to protect the Atlantic convoys from German U-boats.

The vessel, which is docked in the same shipyards where the Titanic was built, was in danger of rusting away or even being scrapped before moves to save it started to build up steam three years ago.

The German Fleet are deflected from bombarding the British coast by Admiral Beatty's battle cruiser squadron, who form a protective screen during the Battle of Jutland in June 1916 (Getty Images)

The Battle of Jutland in numbers

36: The length in hours the naval engagement lasted over May 31 and June 1 off the coast of Denmark's Jutland peninsula.

6,094: The number of deaths on the British side.

2,551: The deaths on the German side.

More than 1,000 others were injured.

249: The number of ships involved, with 150 British and 99 German vessels. The ships carried more than 100,000 sailors, making Jutland the largest naval battle in history.

25: The total number of warships sunk during the battle, 14 from the British Grand Fleet - including HMS Invincible and HMS indefatigable - and 11 from the German High Seas Fleet.

4: The number of Victoria Crosses awarded after the battle, to Major Francis Harvey, Commander Barry Bingham, Commander William Loftus Jones, and 15-year-old Boy First Class Jack Cornwell - who died from his injuries in the days afterJutland.

The figures were obtained from the Royal Navy Museum.
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The parents of Madeleine McCann, Kate and Gerry McCann, have begun a new legal bid against the former detective who claims they covered up their daughters death.

The seven-year battle between the parents and Goncalo Amaral recently saw Mr Amaral ordered to pay the couple 380,000 in libel damages following the allegations the detective made in his book, The Truth of the Lie. But the decision was overturned by three judges at Portugals Supreme Court.

Ms Duarte said the appeal was sent to the court on 23 May. If Ms and Mr McCann lose the latest battle, they could face a large pay-out to Mr Amaral, which would drain the public donations in the Find Maddie Fund which currently stands at 750,000. The loss would also hinder their on-going search for their daughter who they believe may still be alive.

Recommended Read more Thousands raised for officer who claimed McCanns faked abduction

Mr Amaral, 57, headed in investigation to find Madeleine in 2007, and the following year accused the McCanns of faking her kidnap. He was sacked after criticising the British police's efforts during the investigation.

More than 50,000 was raised in support for the Portuguese detective, donated via a Go Fund my page, after he was ordered to pay damages to the McCanns.

 Search for Madeleine continues

Madeleine disappeared from the apartment where the family were staying in the Algarve on 3 May, 2007, while her parents were dining nearby.

Kate, 48 and Gerry, 47 were cleared of any wrongdoing in 2008, when the case was closed. Mr Amaral released his book three days after Portuguese authorities closed the inquiry.

British police are still investigating her disappearance.
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Families of vulnerable people abused in the Winterbourne View scandal have written to the Prime Minister to demand action, criticising progress as painfully slow. It has been five years since an undercover investigation revealed abuse at the care home for disabled and vulnerable adults near Bristol.

In a letter, seen by The Independent, four relatives of abuse victims have described their anger at government response in the intervening period and say care systems for vulnerable adults are outdated and inappropriate. Their calls are backed by charities Mencap and The Challenging Behaviour Foundation, as well as former minister for care and support Norman Lamb.

Abuse at Winterbourne View care home came to light following an investigation by BBC's Panorama in 2011. Footage obtained in the investigation showed staff treating patients in what a judge later called a cruel, callous and degrading manner. The care home housed vulnerable adults including those with learning disabilities or challenging behaviour. Staff were found pulling patients hair, poking their eyes, swearing at them and making violent threats. Once the abuse surfaced, 11 members of staff were prosecuted for their involvement.

Winterbourne View has since been closed, but thousands of patients with learning disabilities are still living in units like it for extended periods. It is estimated that some 3,000 are in similar institutions in the UK.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. 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Norman Lamb said: It is deeply frustrating that five years on from Winterbourne View we are yet to see the change needed for this group of vulnerable people. It is a shocking indictment of our health and social care system that there has been such a failure to action change. People need to be moved out of these places and into more appropriate care in community settings, where they will be able to live in the way they and their families chose.

It is a shocking indictment of our health and social care system that there has been such a failure to action change <p>Norman Lamb MP and former Minister for Care and Support</p>

Ann Earley, whose son Simon was a victim of abuse at Winterbourne View, said: I am devastated that five years on from Winterbourne View people with a learning disability are still stuck in inpatient units like Simon was, and families are still forced to battle a system of care that is outdated. After everything that Simon went through, after all the things that have been said by those in power, it is unforgivable that things have not changed for so many people.

A spokesperson for NHS England told The Independent: We have seen significant increases in the numbers of people both being discharged from hospital and having their care and treatment reviewed in the last year. We know, however, that progress up to now hasnt been quick enough and we sympathise with the frustrations expressed.

The real difference will be made over the coming months and years as local areas implement their response to the far-reaching plans set out by NHS England and its national partners, ensuring that the housing, care and advocacy services become available in each community to provide the high-quality alternatives to hospital people and their families want and need.
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The Prime Minister and others who constantly tell me to be afraid, talking frankly, in a soldierly way about it... they can b***er off. I will not lead my life dominated by fear. Major General Tim Cross was speaking as a member of Veterans for Britain, a group of former senior officers who have launched a campaign for Brexit, an issue which has caused deep divisions in the military and security establishment as it has done elsewhere in British society.

What are the arguments?

Some in the military  men and women who have faced real danger, unlike the politicians  feel angered by David Camerons attempts to induce fear in those who want Brexit and this has hardened their support for leaving. But they also staunchly maintain that the UKs defences will become severely weakened the longer one stays in.

On the other side there are also senior figures claiming that it is leaving the EU which would be seriously detrimental for Britains security. They include ex-heads of MI6 and MI5, Sir John Sawers and Jonathan Evans. Former senior military officers including Field Marshal Lord Brammall, Air Chief Marshal Lord Stirrup, Admiral Lord Boyce and General Sir Michael Rose. Their names appeared in a public letter in support of continuing membership.

That letter, however, was organised by Downing Street and, according to Major General Julian Thompson, a former commandant general of the Royal Marines and a Brexiter, some of the signatories now regret doing so. General Rose has received an apology from No 10 for including him in the list and he is now campaigning vigorously for an out vote.

There has also been intervention from overseas, among them five former Nato secretary-generals and 13 former US secretaries of state and defence secretaries, all of whom have warned that the UK leaving the EU would help the Wests enemies.

What does that mean?

The main issues in the debate fall under the broad categories of intelligence: terrorism, Vladimir Putin, the future of Nato, an EU army and Britains special relationship with the US. These are interlinked.

In what way?

Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon (EPA)

Names of bogeymen have been thrown around with abandon to prove how unsafe Britain would become staying in or going out of EU. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is rooting for Brexit, declared Mr Cameron. One wonders whether the leader of Isis, facing offensives in Raqaa, Fallujah and Mosul really is poring over UK opinion polls. In any event, the Leave campaign is adamant that al-Baghdadi is definitely one for Remain.

But countering terrorism is a serious matter and Sir John Sawers and Jonathan Evans maintain intelligence sharing will be lost with Brexit. Sir John has previously stated: The reason we would be less safe is that we would be unable to take part in decisions that frame the sharing of data, which is a crucial part of counter-terrorism work that we do these days.

Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, has been keen to stress: The fact is across Europe we do have these mechanisms now, sharing intelligence about terrorists movements, swapping data about them that enable all intelligence services across Europe to pool their efforts to try to keep a tab on them.

But just how efficient is this intelligence sharing in the EU?

Judging by the recriminations following the attacks in France and Belgium, it is a deeply flawed system in which two countries next to each other failed to share vital information. Jean-Marie Delarue, the recently retired chief of the French government agency which oversaw intelligence surveillance, said after the Paris attacks: We think there should be co-operation, we rely on other countries to give it to us, and I dont think the Belgians gave us precise information.

Intelligence sharing between the US will not be affected by Brexit, Barack Obama has assured, although he added that it would be preferable for the UK to be inside the EU to push through reforms in the intelligence sector. It should be noted that the US and Britain share intelligence with Canada, Australia and New Zealand  the Five Eyes network  without any plans to extend this to the EU.

Mr Putin has also been cited by the Remain side claiming that either leaving or staying in would embolden the Russian President into further aggression of the type he had shown in Ukraine. The Prime Minister named him as a Brexit supporter in the same sentence he mentioned al-Baghdadi and Lieutenant General Sir Richard Shirreff who has written a book saying the West is going to be at war with Russia within a year also holds that Putin really would like the UK to leave.

Major General Thompson maintains however that the opposite is the case. The mayhem the Euro created in southern Europe gave Putin big openings to make mischief there. The European Unions persistent efforts, led by France, to up the profile of its own defence aspirations by criticising and downplaying Nato leads to wasteful duplication of missions. It was EU diplomatic recklessness that kicked off the Ukraine crisis; and the EUs wish to spread its influence, a latter-day form of imperialism, has weakened east European support and strengthened the hand of fascists and communists in those countries. This all helps Putin.

What has the EU ever done for us? Show all 7 1 /7 What has the EU ever done for us? What has the EU ever done for us? 1. It gives you freedom to live, work and retire anywhere in Europe As a member of the EU, UK citizens benefit from freedom of movement across the continent. Considered one of the so-called four pillars of the European Union, this freedom allows all EU citizens to live, work and travel in other member states. What has the EU ever done for us? 2. It sustains millions of jobs A report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, released in October 2015, suggested 3.1 million British jobs were linked to the UKs exports to the EU. What has the EU ever done for us? 3. Your holiday is much easier - and safer Freedom to travel is one of the most exercised benefits of EU membership, with Britons having made 31 million visits to the EU in 2014 alone. But a lot of the benefits of being an EU citizen are either taken for granted or go unnoticed. What has the EU ever done for us? 4. It means you're less likely to get ripped off Consumer protection is a key benefit of the EUs single market, and ensures members of the British public receive equal consumer rights when shopping anywhere in Europe. What has the EU ever done for us? 5. It offers greater protection from terrorists, paedophiles, people traffickers and cyber-crime Another example of a lesser-known advantage of EU membership is the benefit of cross-country coordination and cooperation in the fight against crime. What has the EU ever done for us? 6. Our businesses depend on it According to 71% of all members of the Confederation of British Influence (CBI), and 67 per cent of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the EU has had an overall positive impact on their business. What has the EU ever done for us? 7. We have greater influence Robin Niblett, Director of think-tank Chatham House, stated in a report published last year: For a mid-sized country like the UK, which will never again be economically dominant either globally or regionally, and whose diplomatic and military resources are declining in relative terms, being a major player in a strong regional institution can offer a critical lever for international influence.

What about an EU army?

The supposed creation of a EU army is a bugbear much highlighted by the Brexit campaign. This, they say, will severely weaken Nato and antagonize Washington. The Ministry of Defence has stated Britain will never join such a force, but this has been contradicted by one of its own ministers, Penny Mordaunt, a Brexit supporter, who insisted: If we stay in the EU the Lisbon treaty gives us the worst of all worlds: powerless to prevent the EU army it paves the way for. As usual with the EU, the plan for this army would see Britain paying highest price and but getting a raw deal.

Lieutenant General Jonathon Riley is also convinced that the ultimate ambition of the EU is undoubtedly EU armed forces. Who would control the EU armed forces? The EU Commission? Can we seriously believe that our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines should be sent into danger by a body over which we have no control ?

Brexiters such as Lt Gen Riley holds that, as an organisation, only Nato can mount viable military campaigns. But, in reality, it has become increasingly difficult for the Alliance to do this by itself over a prolonged period. One of Lt Gen Rileys last posts was deputy commander of the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) in Afghanistan. Isaf started off as a Nato force in 2009, but grew to more than 50 contributing nations, including South Korea and Malaysia as the conflict continued over the years.

The problem becomes much more acute when the US is not that interested in a mission. David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy, rather than Barack Obama, were the cheerleaders for bombing to remove Muammar Gaddafi. American warplanes took part in the very early stages of air strikes before relinquishing command to Nato and taking on what was described as a supporting role.

But Nato was running short of precision bombs and being forced to ask the US for help less than a month into a campaign against a country with antiquated air defences. Furthermore, Britain did nothing to stabilise the country after the fall of Colonel Gadaffi as splintered into warring factions, a fact President Obama pointedly noted in a recent interview.

Being in close partnership with the US on a mission does not guarantee that Britain will have much influence, as the Iraq war demonstrated. Maj Gen Cross was appointed deputy to the retired US General Jay Garner to run the civil administration in Baghdad after the invasion. But both were displaced within months by Paul Bremer, sent as emissary by the neo-cons in Washington. The result was disastrous and played a key part in the country sliding into savage strife.

One of the worst mistakes Bremer made was to disband the Iraqi army as part of a wholesale de-Baathification process. Maj Gen Cross was among other senior figures warning against this act of folly. Lt Gen Riley, on the other hand, took Bremers line and defended the decision to break up the Iraqi armed forces when giving evidence in 2009 to the inquiry into the Iraq war.

So, the opposing sides on Brexit do not, among themselves, necessarily sing from the same hymn sheet on many important issues. What unites each side in this battle, however, is the belief that the result of the coming referendum will have an impact of massive significance for the defence of the realm.
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The father of a young Tory activist who took his own life after alleged bullying has told an inquest his son had been caught up in a "victimisation campaign" by a Conservative Party member.

Elliott Johnson, 21, was found dead on railway tracks in Sandy, Bedfordshire, on September 15 last year, just weeks after making allegations about his treatment within the Tory party.

Giving his verdict, senior Bedfordshire and Luton coroner Tom Osborne said he was satisfied Mr Johnson intended to take his own life.

The inquest in Ampthill, Bedfordshire, focused on the fact Mr Johnson believed he was being bullied and on his being made redundant by pressure group Conservative Way Forward (CWF) shortly after making the allegation.

In a detailed complaint, he had accused former Conservative Party activist Mark Clarke of bullying, following an altercation in a pub in central London during a friend's birthday party on August 12.

During the exchange, Mr Clarke was alleged to have threatened to "squash" him "like an ant".

Paul Abbott, former chief executive of the CWF, told the packed inquest Mr Clarke harboured a "vendetta" against CWF, and there had been other complaints by the group's volunteers against him.

And Mr Johnson's father Ray Johnson said he believed Mr Clarke had "ruined" his son's career.

He said: "We were unaware of, at the time, a victimisation campaign by Mr Clarke towards Elliott and other members of the Conservative Way Forward, which was getting steadily worse."

He added he believed Mark Clarke had told his son's employers of a caution Mr Johnson purportedly received for tweeting election results - even though no record of a caution existed.

Mr Johnson (Snr) said: "I believe that Mark Clarke spoke to (former CWF chairman) Donal Blaney and Paul Abbott, as he says in my son's letter, to squash him like a young ant - that's the reason Mark Clarke went to Abbott and Blaney."

Mr Johnson's allegations eventually sparked an investigation and the resignation of former party chairman Grant Shapps.

Mr Clarke, who has since been expelled from the party, strongly denies the allegations.

Mr Clarke is known as the so-called Tatler Tory after he was tipped for a future cabinet position by the society magazine.

At times during Mr Abbott's cross-examination, the coroner interjected to remind the family's legal team of the scope of the inquest.

"I'm not going to allow this to degenerate into a trial of Mark Clarke," he said.

The inquest heard Mr Johnson had claimed in a detailed account of the exchange that Mr Clarke had confronted him about the use of an image on an article on the CWF website.

Mr Clarke, who led the Road Trip 2015 campaign for young activists in which Elliott was involved, had allegedly threatened to sue him for copyright infringement and had "gone ballistic" in the pub, shouting and grabbing the younger man.

Elliott claimed Mr Clarke had threatened to "destroy" his career in politics and journalism because of a caution the activist had supposedly received for tweeting results of European elections illegally.

Mr Clarke allegedly told Elliott he had sued other people and always won, adding: "I squash them like ants when they are small and young - this is what I'm going to do to you."

PA
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A coroner will today start taking evidence into the death of a young Tory activist who is believed to have taken his life after being bullied while campaigning for the party.

Elliott Johnson, 21, was found dead on railway tracks in Bedfordshire last September, weeks after making allegations about his treatment.

The inquest in Bedfordshire will focus on why Mr Johnson believed he was being bullied and on his being made redundant by Conservative Way Forward after making the allegation.

Bedfordshire and Luton coroner Tom Osborne has refused a call by the Johnson family in March for the inquest to hear more detailed evidence about events in the months leading up to his death. It was argued this should include the culture within the Conservative Party at the time.

In his ruling, the coroner said the original scope of the inquest was appropriate and he would not call members of the Conservative Party as witnesses.

After his death, a note was found in which Mr Johnson cited the alleged bullying by former activist Mark Clarke, a "betrayal" by mutual friend Andre Walker and his loss of employment as reasons. Both Mr Clarke and Mr Walker deny the allegations.

Mr Walker, a lobby journalist and former political adviser who claims he was in a relationship with Mr Johnson, says he intends to attend this week's inquest.

In a statement ahead of the hearing, he told the Press Association: "The loss of Elliott has left a hole in everyone's lives. I'm just looking forward to getting some clarity on all the circumstances surrounding his death not just the ones that have been focused on heavily so far."

The coroner had stated in his ruling in March: "The inquest is limited to answering the question as to how the deceased came by his death, will look at the circumstances of his employment and consider in detail the content of the notes left by the deceased to determine whether the correct conclusion should be that he died as a result of suicide.

"I emphasise again that an inquest is not a trial. The purpose is not to determine whether the allegations of bullying set out in the letters left by Mr Johnson were true and I will not allow the inquest to be used as a tool for putting anyone on trial."

Elliott's parents Ray and Alison, of Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, say they want to know if the death is linked to a series of events that occurred in the last few weeks of his life.

The family stated that at the time of his death, Mr Johnson believed his career was over after his full-time position with Conservative Way Forward was made redundant.

Elliott had alleged bullying a month before his death. His allegations eventually sparked an investigation and the resignation of former party chairman Grant Shapps.

The allegations centre on the activities of Mr Clarke who has since been expelled from the party. Mr Clarke has strongly denied the allegations against him.

Elliott had made a formal complaint about Mr Clarke to Conservative HQ.
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Nearly half of Labour voters are unaware of the partys stance on the upcoming EU referendum, according to two separate sets of research released just three weeks before polling day.

A leaked memo from the Britain Stronger In Europe campaign, based on recent focus groups, found that supporters of Jeremy Corbyns Labour were uniformly uncertain about the partys position on the EU.

The research, leaked to the Guardian, was corroborated by a YouGov poll for the Times that claimed only 55 per cent of Labour voters knew that the majority of the partys MPs back remaining in the EU. Around 45 per cent of those asked thought the party was backing Brexit or its members were split down the middle.

A source in the Remain camp told the newspaper it was crucial that Mr Corbyn stepped up his efforts. They added: Labour voters are pivotal in this referendum. Thats why we need a lot of Labour voices because they are better message carriers.

Speaking about the Labour leaders efforts in the EU debate Alistair Darling, the former Chancellor, last week said: I hope that he does more. It could be crucial on voting day as a as poll has already revealed that more people trust Mr Corbyns position on the EU to the Prime Minister  28 per cent to just 18 per cent.

The worrying news for the Remain camp comes as John McDonnell, the shadow Chancellor, begins a week-long tour of the country with events scheduled in Wolverhampton, Leeds, Leicester and Cardiff.

 Corbyn on EU referendum

Speaking ahead of the first event Mr McDonnell said: The EU referendum is about our future relationship with Europe not who is the next leader of the Tory party, which is why I think there is a positive case to be made and its vital young people hear this case over the personal ambitions of different Tory MPs.

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The Labour leadership will not go anywhere near the Tories project fear campaign on both sides of the debate, but instead we will continue to set out the positive case to 'Remain and Reform' the EU to create 'Another Europe' and reject Tory Brexit.

What has the EU ever done for us? Show all 7 1 /7 What has the EU ever done for us? What has the EU ever done for us? 1. It gives you freedom to live, work and retire anywhere in Europe As a member of the EU, UK citizens benefit from freedom of movement across the continent. Considered one of the so-called four pillars of the European Union, this freedom allows all EU citizens to live, work and travel in other member states. What has the EU ever done for us? 2. It sustains millions of jobs A report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, released in October 2015, suggested 3.1 million British jobs were linked to the UKs exports to the EU. What has the EU ever done for us? 3. Your holiday is much easier - and safer Freedom to travel is one of the most exercised benefits of EU membership, with Britons having made 31 million visits to the EU in 2014 alone. But a lot of the benefits of being an EU citizen are either taken for granted or go unnoticed. What has the EU ever done for us? 4. It means you're less likely to get ripped off Consumer protection is a key benefit of the EUs single market, and ensures members of the British public receive equal consumer rights when shopping anywhere in Europe. What has the EU ever done for us? 5. It offers greater protection from terrorists, paedophiles, people traffickers and cyber-crime Another example of a lesser-known advantage of EU membership is the benefit of cross-country coordination and cooperation in the fight against crime. What has the EU ever done for us? 6. Our businesses depend on it According to 71% of all members of the Confederation of British Influence (CBI), and 67 per cent of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the EU has had an overall positive impact on their business. What has the EU ever done for us? 7. We have greater influence Robin Niblett, Director of think-tank Chatham House, stated in a report published last year: For a mid-sized country like the UK, which will never again be economically dominant either globally or regionally, and whose diplomatic and military resources are declining in relative terms, being a major player in a strong regional institution can offer a critical lever for international influence.

Next month there is a serious choice before the British people, the prospect of a Tory Brexit or a Labour Remain and Reform to create Another Europe that offers greater opportunity for working people in our country and across the EU.

He added: For the first time in over a generation there are movements and political forces mobilised and mobilising across Europe to respond to the challenges we face.

Another Europe is not just possible but urgently and vitally needed, which is why we must reject the offer of a Tory Brexit.
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What time is the result?

Well, theres no specific time. The Electoral Commission, which is in charge of overseeing the referendum, estimates the final result will be announced at breakfast time on Friday 24 June.

The count will get underway when the polls close at 10pm on 23 June at 382 local centres across the UK

These local results will be declared as the counts are completed before being collated at 12 regional centres, which will also declare to the totals for each side. The chief counting officer will then collate all the results and once they are approved  and declared  the referendum result will be announced.

You can view a full estimated breakdown of the result times on the Electoral Commission's website. Note that the latest estimated time on the register in some areas is at 7am.

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Where will it be announced?

 Corbyn on EU referendum

The chief counting officer will announce the result at Manchester Town Hall.

This was decided in December 2015 to ensure value for money for the taxpayer as the Electoral Commission chose to combine the event with one of the regional count collation centres rather than hosting a separate event.

Sir Howard Bernstein, counting officer for Manchester, said in December: Manchester is honoured to have been chosen as the venue for this important democratic event in which there will be worldwide interest. We look forward to hosting the Electoral Commission and working with them to help deliver a successful event.

They will also announce the national turnout.

Will there be a speech after the announcement in Manchester?

The Electoral Commission is in discussion with the campaign groups as to whether they want to make any speeches on the night. It is expected, however, that David Cameron will address the nation from Downing Street on June 24  in the event of both a Leave and Remain vote.

What has the EU ever done for us? Show all 7 1 /7 What has the EU ever done for us? What has the EU ever done for us? 1. It gives you freedom to live, work and retire anywhere in Europe As a member of the EU, UK citizens benefit from freedom of movement across the continent. Considered one of the so-called four pillars of the European Union, this freedom allows all EU citizens to live, work and travel in other member states. What has the EU ever done for us? 2. It sustains millions of jobs A report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, released in October 2015, suggested 3.1 million British jobs were linked to the UKs exports to the EU. What has the EU ever done for us? 3. Your holiday is much easier - and safer Freedom to travel is one of the most exercised benefits of EU membership, with Britons having made 31 million visits to the EU in 2014 alone. But a lot of the benefits of being an EU citizen are either taken for granted or go unnoticed. What has the EU ever done for us? 4. It means you're less likely to get ripped off Consumer protection is a key benefit of the EUs single market, and ensures members of the British public receive equal consumer rights when shopping anywhere in Europe. What has the EU ever done for us? 5. It offers greater protection from terrorists, paedophiles, people traffickers and cyber-crime Another example of a lesser-known advantage of EU membership is the benefit of cross-country coordination and cooperation in the fight against crime. What has the EU ever done for us? 6. Our businesses depend on it According to 71% of all members of the Confederation of British Influence (CBI), and 67 per cent of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the EU has had an overall positive impact on their business. What has the EU ever done for us? 7. We have greater influence Robin Niblett, Director of think-tank Chatham House, stated in a report published last year: For a mid-sized country like the UK, which will never again be economically dominant either globally or regionally, and whose diplomatic and military resources are declining in relative terms, being a major player in a strong regional institution can offer a critical lever for international influence.

Is there an official exit poll?

No.

But

Britains hedge fund industry is commissioning private exit polls to get an early warning of the result  and trying to make a profit from it.

Electoral Commission rules allow exit polls on the day of a referendum so long as they are not published until polls close at 10pm. But that does not stop the funds themselves trying to profit from early indications of the result  by using the information to place bets on whether sterling will rise or fall depending on the result.

That in turn may move the market  giving the public an early indication of which way voting is going.

Polling companies have said demand is high for their private services on referendum day.
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Britains Hedge fund industry is commissioning private exit polls to get early warning - and trying make profits - from the result of next months EU referendum.

The hedge funds are exploiting Electoral Commission rules that permit exit polls on the day of the referendum so long as they are not published until polls close at 10pm.

But that does not stop the funds themselves trying to profit from early indications of the result  by using the information to place bets on whether sterling will rise or fall depending on the result.

That in turn may move the market  giving the public an early indication of which way voting is going.

However polling experts have warned that early voting patterns need to be treated with caution  as certain types of voters are likely cast their ballot at different times of day. The data would also not include postal ballots.

Polling companies say demand is high for their private services on referendum day.

Hedge funds have asked for exit polls and for hourly polls on the day. Banks are certainly commissioning polls for their own consumption that are never released, one pollster told the Financial Times.

Another pollster said his firm was getting lots of calls from asset managers asking when their next research was coming out: We are also being asked if we will do polls on the day. People in the City are wanting a head start.

The cost of a rudimentary exit poll where researchers record votes electronically and send them to headquarters is about 500,000, according to a source in the investment management industry. That is far lower than the potential profits available from finding out whether Leave or Remain is likely to win.

The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit Show all 7 1 /7 The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 22 May 2015 In his regular column in The Express Nigel Farage utilised the concerns over Putin and the EU to deliver a tongue in cheek conclusion. With friends like these, who needs enemies? PA The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 13 November 2015 UKIP MEP for Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire Mike Hookem, was one of several political figures who took no time to harness the toxic atmosphere just moments after Paris attacks to push an agenda. Cameron says were safer in the EU. Well Im in the centre of the EU and it doesnt feel very safe. Getty Images The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 19 April 2016 In an article written for The Guardian, Michael Gove attempts to bolster his argument with a highly charged metaphor in which he likens UK remaining in the EU to a hostage situation. Were voting to be hostages locked in the back of the car and driven headlong towards deeper EU integration. Rex The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 26 April 2016 In a move that is hard to decipher, let alone understand, Mike Hookem stuck it to Obama re-tweeting a UKIP advertisement that utilises a quote from the film: Love Actually to dishonour the US stance on the EU. A friend who bullies us is no longer a friend The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 10 May 2016 During a speech in London former work and pensions secretary Ian Duncan Smith said that EU migration would cause an increasing divide between people who benefit from immigration and people who couldnt not find work because of uncontrolled migration. The European Union is a force for social injustice which backs the haves rather than the have-nots. EPA The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 15 May 2016 Cartoon character Boris Johnson made the news again over controversial comments that the EU had the same goal as Hitler in trying to create a political super state. Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically. The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods. PA The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 16 May 2016 During a tour of the womens clothing manufacturer David Nieper, Boris had ample time to cook up a new metaphor, arguably eclipsing Goves in which he compares the EU to badly designed undergarments. So I just say to all those who prophecy doom and gloom for the British Business, I say their pants are on fire. Lets say knickers to the pessimists, knickers to all those who talk Britain down. Getty Images

The Financial Times said that a significant move in sterling is guaranteed on the result of the vote, with a modest rise expected if Remain wins and a sharp drop anticipated if there is a vote for Brexit.

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Betting odds have suggested the chances of a Remain victory are as high as 80 per cent.

Adam Cole of RBC Capital Markets said financial markets have all but discounted a Leave vote.

The UKs implied EU exit risk premium has collapsed to the point where the implied probability of exit is close to the level before last Mays election, when few thought there would even be a referendum, he said, raising the prospect of wild swings in sterling if Leave appears to be doing well on June 23.

Any exit polls are likely to be less reliable than the one after the 2015 general election because that relied on an analysis of the change in voting shares for different political parties in polling stations that had also been surveyed in 2010.

Polling companies have no prior data on past vote patterns to calibrate any results they get from private exit polls.
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Labour will appoint a shadow minister for neurodiversity in a bid to improve its policies around autism and other behavioral differences.

The announcement follows an open letter to Jeremy Corbyn by Monique Craine, a blogger who campaigns for autism rights, who suggested the idea.

John McDonnell, Labour shadow chancellor, backed the plan in public earlier month and said he would consult on the issue.

Speaking at a book launch over the weekend he said the shadow minister proposal was brilliant idea for increasing representation.

We want to represent the whole of society fairly. At the moment we are focusing on LGBT, were focusing on women, were focusing on race, etc, he said, according to the Guardian newspaper.

But what about neurological diversity as well? And I think thats come on to the agenda.

The shadow chancellor added that Labour would draw up an autism manifesto created by people who were on the spectrum themselves, with policies relevant to their lives.

The new position follows the appointment of an explicit shadow minister for mental health in the shadow cabinet for the first time.

Mr Corbyn, who has long campaigned on mental health issues, created that point as one of his first acts after being elected leader.

Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Show all 10 1 /10 Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report 30 per cent of people deal with anxiety by talking to a friend or relative, or by going for a walk. Getty Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report Almost one in five people feel anxious all or a lot of the time. PA Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report 22 per cent of women feel anxious a lot or all of the time, compared to 15 per cent of men. Roman Levin/Flickr Creative Commons Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report 45 per cent of people who feel anxious in everyday life cite financial issues as their biggest cause of worry. Getty Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report And 26 per cent of people who feel anxious say fearing for the welfare of their children and loved ones leaves them burdened with worry. And 26 per cent of people say fearing for the welfare of their children and loved ones leaves them burdened with anxiety. Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report 27 per cent of people who suffer from anxiety say work issues, such as long hours, are the source of the problem. Getty Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report But 16 per cent use alcohol to cope, while 10 per cent turn to cigarettes in the face of anxiety. Unemployed people are more likely to resort to these harmful strategies: 27 per cent use alcohol and 23 per cent use cigarettes. AFP/Getty Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report Only seven per cent of people who say they suffer from anxiety seek help from their GP. Getty Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report People are thought to be more anxious than they were five years ago. Alessandra/Flickr Creative Commons Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report The stresses of modern life are thought to have created "The Age of Anxiety". Getty

Mark Lever, Chief Executive of the National Autistic Society, said other parties should consider adopting similar ideas.

"The proposals put forward by the Shadow Chancellor look promising. We need more details but, if followed through, they should give welcome attention to the particular and diverse needs of autistic people and their families," he said.

"We'd encourage other parties to consider developing similar ideas, especially creating a position with specific responsibility for autism.

"More than 1 in 100 people are on the autism spectrum and many of them face huge barriers each day, just to do things that others take for granted - whether that's being supported in school, finding a job or even feeling able to go to the cinema or shops without feeling judged.

"We're pleased that the Shadow Chancellor emphasised the importance of making sure that autistic people and their families have a central role in developing these plans.

"We look forward to finding out more details soon and working with Labour to improve the lives of the 700,000 autistic people in the UK, and their families."
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Anti-corruption campaigners have backed an Italian mafia expert who claimed the UK was a global centre for corruption.

In an attack on how London helps criminals launder their money, Roberto Saviano, who has been under police protection since exposing the activities of Naples crime syndicate the Camorra, told an audience at the Hay Festival: If I asked you what is the most corrupt place on Earth you might tell me its Afghanistan, maybe Greece, Nigeria, the South of Italy, and I will tell you its the UK.

Its not the bureaucracy, its not the police, its not the politics but what is corrupt is the financial capital.

He has now been backed by the campaign group Transparency International, whose head of UK advocacy and research Rachel Davies told The Independent: Its absolutely true that the UK is one of the leading financial centres for the laundering of corrupt money from overseas, whether through the property market, luxury goods or other sectors.

The UK has been a prime location for stashing away illicitly gained wealth, as anti-money laundering systems are weak and sectors such as UK property represent a safe investment, as well as a place to hide corrupt money.

After the Panama Papers leak revealed details of thousands of offshore funds, including one run by David Camerons father, Transparency International said tens of billions of pounds of corrupt money are being laundered through the UK each year. The campaign group said this was done with the help of an eco-system of professional enablers who faced inadequate punishment if they are found to be involved in wrongdoing.

Ms Davies said that Londons property market is also benefiting criminals. Transparency International researchers found that last year 36,342 London properties covering a total of 2.25 square miles of the capital were owned by offshore companies whose source of wealth was unknown or hard to verify.

Almost one in ten (9.3 per cent) properties in the borough of Westminster were owned by offshore companies, and Transparency International found that since 2004 at least 180 million worth of UK property had been brought under criminal investigation as the suspected proceeds of corruption.

Referring to the Prime Minister telling the Queen ahead of an anti-corruption summit earlier this month that Afghanistan and Nigeria were fantastically corrupt, Ms Davies added: It is vital that the UK has its own house in order too. It is vital that the Government takes action to end the UKs role as a safe haven for corrupt money.

The London Anti-Corruption Summit had, Ms Davies said, produced some positive commitments, including the promise of a public register of the ownership of foreign companies buying UK property, a move that would make money laundering more difficult.

 11 most corrupt countries in world

But she said the summit had failed to act against the anonymity provided by offshore companies.

The rhetoric has been promising, Ms Davies said, But now the words need to translate into strong action. There were a few areas to which the Summit didnt extend  such as a commitment to extend transparency to the UKs Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies through the adoption of central, public registers of the true owners of companies.

Her concerns were echoed by Mr Saviano, who told the audience at Hay, Jersey and the Cayman [Islands] are the access gates to criminal capital in Europe and the UK is the country that allows it.

While problems like the mafia might seem distant to a UK audience, he added, I want to tell you, this is about you, this is about your Government.

Mr Saviano first raised the issue of the UKs role in facilitating crime and corruption  and apparent British indifference to it  last July, in an interview with The Independent.

Anti-mafia campaigner Roberto Saviano sues gangsters who ordered his death Show all 2 1 /2 Anti-mafia campaigner Roberto Saviano sues gangsters who ordered his death Anti-mafia campaigner Roberto Saviano sues gangsters who ordered his death 483727.bin REUTERS Anti-mafia campaigner Roberto Saviano sues gangsters who ordered his death web-gomorrah.jpg

He said then that the UK played a key role in the international drugs trade.

Mexico is its heart, he said, And London is its head.

His comments came a month after a strategic assessment by the UKs National Crime Agency stated: We assess that hundreds of billions of US dollars of criminal money almost certainly continue to be laundered through UK banks, including their subsidiaries, each year.

The scale of the laundering, despite the UKs leading role in developing international standards to tackle it, is a strategic threat to the UKs economy and reputation.

The banking sector continues to be the biggest producer of suspicious activity reports.

But most Britons, Mr Saviano claimed, did not seem bothered by this - even though in 2012 HSBC, the UKs biggest bank, paid a record $1.9bn (1.2bn) to settle claims by the US authorities that it had allowed Mexican drugs traffickers to deposit thousands of dollars a day in HSBC accounts.

The biggest UK bank! said Mr Saviano. Yet it has scarcely been written about. The British treat it as not their problem, because there arent corpses on the streets.

They think its all happening over there somewhere, so they neednt worry about it.

Spokespeople for HSBC have said the bank is committed to combatting financial crime and has made fundamental changes since 2012.

In February this year HSBC also said it plans to vigorously defend attempts to sue it by families of US citizens killed by Mexican drugs cartels who are alleging the bank allowed the criminals to launder money.

A National Crime Agency spokesman told The Independent: The NCA estimates that hundreds of millions of pounds are laundered in or through the UK every year. This is in the context of the UK as a global financial centre with trillions of pounds worth of transactions made each year.

We are working to improve the response to this threat, including sharing intelligence with major financial institutions to identify and interdict illicit financial flows; and identify those professionals (lawyers, accountants, company formation agents) who enable laundering to take place. We are also working with other Government departments to ensure the commitments of the PMs recent summit on corruption and the Governments Anti-Money Laundering Action Plan are delivered.

A Government spokesperson said: It is utterly ridiculous to suggest the UK is the worlds most corrupt country. Since 2010, the UK Government has introduced some of the worlds strictest legislation on bribery, led the way on tackling tax evasion - bringing in more than 2 billion from offshore tax evaders, and co-chaired a UN panel that put tackling corruption at the heart of the new UN Development Goals.

Corruption is a cancer at the heart of so many of the worlds problems and no country is immune. That is why the Prime Minister announced a number of initiatives at the international Anti-Corruption Summit on 12 May, including a new public register of beneficial ownership to stop corrupt individuals hiding illicit funds through Londons property market or being awarded public contracts.
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Egypts president has promised those responsible for stripping an elderly Christian woman and parading her naked through the streets will be brought to justice.

The 70-year-old woman was stripped during an outbreak of violence by a mob of around 300 Muslim men in a village in southern Egypt on 20 May.

The mob also burned down seven homes belonging to Christian families, according to a statement issued by the local Orthodox Coptic church, after rumours circulated in the village that a Christian man was having a relationship with a Muslim woman.

Recommended Read more Christian woman stripped naked and paraded through streets by mob

"They burned the house and went in and dragged me out, threw me in front of the house and ripped my clothes. I was just as my mother gave birth to me, screaming and crying," the elderly woman told Reuters a week after the attack.

The woman was reported to be the mother of the man involved in the rumoured affair. She has since met with church leaders, the Diocese of Minya and Abu Qirqas said.

President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi denounced the violence and said such attacks divide Egyptians.

Human rights attacks around the world Show all 10 1 /10 Human rights attacks around the world Human rights attacks around the world China Escalating crackdown against human rights activists including mass arrests of lawyers and a series of sweeping laws in the name of national security. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Egypt The arrest of thousands, including peaceful critics, in a ruthless crackdown in the name of national security, the prolonged detention of hundreds without charge or trial and the sentencing of hundreds of others to death. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Gambia Torture, enforced disappearances and the criminalisation of LGBTI people; and utter refusal to co-operate with the UN and regional human rights mechanisms on issues including freedom of expression, enforced disappearance and the death penalty. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Hungary Sealing off its borders to thousands of refugees in dire need; and obstructing collective regional attempts to help them. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Israel Maintaining its military blockade of Gaza and therefore collective punishment of the 1.8 million inhabitants there, as well as failing, like Palestine, to comply with a UN call to conduct credible investigations into war crimes committed during the 2014 Gaza conflict. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Kenya Extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances and discrimination against refugees in its counter-terrorism operations; and attempts to undermine the International Criminal Court and its ability to pursue justice. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Pakistan The severe human rights failings of its response to the horrific Peshawar school massacre including its relentless use of the death penalty; and its policy on international NGOs giving authorities the power to monitor them and close them down if they are considered to be against the interests of the country. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Russia Repressive use of vague national security and anti-extremism legislation and its concerted attempts to silence civil society in the country; its shameful refusal to acknowledge civilian killings in Syria and its callous moves to block Security Council action on Syria. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Saudi Arabia Brutally cracking down on those who dared to advocate reform or criticise the authorities; and committing war crimes in the bombing campaign it has led in Yemen (pictured) while obstructing the establishment of a UN-led inquiry into violations by all sides in the conflict. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Syria Killing thousands of civilians in direct and indiscriminate attacks with barrel bombs and other weaponry and through acts of torture in detention; and enforcing lengthy sieges of civilian areas, blocking international aid from reaching starving civilians. Getty Images

Speaking on local TV on Monday he said: We are all one and the law must take its course."

The incident took place in the village of Al-Karm where, according to local media, similar violence has flared up in recent years.

The violence is representative of the tensions between the two religions in the province south of Cairo, where extra-marital affairs between Muslims and Christians are strictly taboo.

Egypt's Coptic Christians account for about 10 per cent of the country's 90 million people.

Since taking power in 2014, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has changed some laws to ease restrictions on Christians building churching and entering politics, but many grievances remain.
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Brazil's new interim government has been hit with a new set-back - causing more headaches for acting President Michel Temer - with a second minister announcing their resignation.

Fabiano Silveira, who was in charge of the anti-corruption ministry, is the second member of the interim administration to leave in only 16 days because of leaked recorded conversations about the investigation into corruption at the state oil company Petrobras and the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff.

The new turmoil started when TV Globo broadcast a recording of Mr Silveira giving legal advice to the Senate president, who is under investigation for links to corruption at Petrobras. The recording also shows Mr Silveira criticising the investigation itself, which has implicated some of Brazil's most prominent politicians and businessmen.

In its report late Sunday, TV Globo claimed Mr Silveira had repeatedly contacted investigators in the Petrobras case to seek information on the accusations against Senate chief Renan Calheiros, but he did not succeed in getting any details. The conversation was recorded at Calheiros' residence some time before the Senate voted to suspend Ms Rousseff pending an impeachment trial and put the government in Mr Temer's hands.

Brazilian media had said Mr Temer met with Cabinet ministers on Monday afternoon and decided to keep Mr Silveira on the job for now, with Mr Silveira saying he was not involved in any wrongdoing. But later Mr Silveira sent a letter of resignation, saying it was best that he leave the job despite the fact that nothing is hitting my behavior.

Mr Temer did not announce any pick to succeed Mr Silveira.

According to the union for workers at the Transparency Ministry, about 200 officials of the anti-corruption body offered their resignations to protest Mr Temer's initial decision to keep Mr Silveira on the job. Earlier Monday, employees at the ministry blocked Mr Silveira from entering the building in the capital of Brasilia. They also staged a protest in which they cleaned the front doors of the building and his office.

The newspaper O Globo printed an extra editorial to demand Mr Silveira's resignation, echoing calls by allies of Ms Rousseff, who argues that her foes ousted her because she allowed the Petrobras investigation to go forward.

Another leaked recording forced Temer's planning minister to take a leave of absence last week. In that recording, Romero Juca appeared to suggest there should be a pact to impeach Ms Rousseff and appeared to link it to obstructing the Petrobras investigations. He denied any wrongdoing or intention to stop the investigations.

O Globo's editorial said that Temer needs to apply the same rule that he applied to Juca: There can be no conspiracy against Operation Car Wash, a reference to the Petrobras probe. It is the only way that his public commitment to support the operation and to fight against corruption will be taken seriously.

Associated Press
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"Parent shaming, or witch hunt on social media?" wondered the Cincinnati Enquirer. "Social media turns ugly after zoo episode."

That about summed it up Monday.

Three days after her 4-year-old son plummeted 20 feet into the Cincinnati Zoo gorilla exhibit, after animal rights activists blamed her alleged poor parenting for the death of a beloved, endangered ape named Harambe, then called on child protective services to investigate her, the boy's mother became the Internet's most reviled mom.

Authorities have not yet released the name of the child who tumbled into the Gorilla World exhibit Saturday afternoon, nor have they identified his parents. But the Internet doesn't care about these sorts of formalities.

A mob of online parenting critics mobilized over the holiday weekend, lambasting a nameless figure they were convinced had neglected her child inside the zoo Saturday and was to blame for the events that transpired. Then on Sunday, a woman claiming to be the preschooler's mother took to Facebook in a desperate attempt to defend herself.

"God protected my child until the authorities were able to get to him. My son is safe and was able to walk away with a concussion and a few scrapes... no broken bones or internal injuries," the woman wrote on Facebook, according to People magazine. "As a society we are quick to judge how a parent could take their eyes off of their child and if anyone knows me I keep a tight watch on my kids."

She added: "Accidents happen..."

While some news outlets named the woman, others, including having been unable to verify that she was the mother in question, are not.

People wasted little time responding to the woman's Facebook post with hateful comments, forcing her to eventually remove it altogether, People magazine reported. They then found the Facebook page for a preschool where a woman by the same name works, records show. They blasted that next, according to news reports, forcing the school to delete its page, too.

Other women who share her name on social media received threatening messages intended for her, attacks that called her "scum," "a really bad mother" and a "fing killer."

"that animal is more important than your s kid," one man messaged.

Another woman wrote: "u should've been shot."

At times, the barrage of insults were racially charged, reported the Cincinnati Enquirer.

By Monday, the threats grew so intense that Cincinnati police felt compelled to act.

"Even though they're not direct death threats, we're going to reach out to the mother and let her know what's going on, if she doesn't know already," police spokesman Lt. Steve Saunders told the Enquirer. "We're going to keep her in the loop. We're going to err on the side of safety for her and her family."

The mother found some sympathetic advocates, including the zoo director and several witnesses who said the woman was keeping a watchful eye on her children at the exhibit and, when she realized her son had fallen in with the 17-year-old, 400-pound silverback gorilla, tried to jump in after him.

A witness named Deidre Lykins described what she saw and heard in a long post on Facebook, which has been shared nearly 43,000 times:

I was taking a pic of the female gorilla, when my eldest son yells, "what is he doing? " I looked down, and to my surprise, there was a small child that had apparently, literally "flopped" over the railing, where there was then about 3 feet of ground that the child quickly crawled through! ! I assumed the woman next to me was the mother, getting ready to grab him until she says, "Whose kid is this? " None of us actually thought he'd go over the nearly 15 foot drop, but he was crawling so fast through the bushes before myself or husband could grab him, he went over! The crowed got a little frantic and the mother was calling for her son. Actually, just prior to him going over, but she couldn't see him crawling through the bushes! She said "He was right here! I took a pic and his hand was in my back pocket and then gone!" As she could find him nowhere, she lookes to my husband (already over the railing talking to the child) and asks, "Sir, is he wearing green shorts? " My husband reluctantly had to tell her yes, when she then nearly had a break down! They are both wanting to go over into the 15 foot drop, when I forbade my husband to do so, and attempted to calm the mother by calling 911 and assure her help was on the way.

"The mother was not negligent and the zoo did an awesome job handling the situation!" Lykins wrote.

The incident began Saturday afternoon, when the boy crawled through a barrier, past some bushes and over the edge of a moat in the gorilla enclosure. In the moments before he fell, a witness heard the boy tell his mother he wanted to jump in with the gorillas, reported NBC affiliate WLWT-TV.

Video footage shot by horrified visitors shows Harambe straddling the boy in the far left corner of the enclosure. At first, he appears to be standing guard, like he is protecting the boy, but he becomes agitated by visitors' chaotic response to the fall and suddenly snatches the boy's leg, violently dragging him through the foot of water that covers the floor of the enclosure. The dragging pauses momentarily, and the boy seems to try and scoot away from the gorilla, but as quickly as he did before, Harambe latches onto the child's foot again and drags him to the opposite end of the enclosure.

Minutes later, visitors heard the crack of a gunshot.

On Sunday, the zoo wrote a lengthy statement on Facebook explaining why they chose to shoot the 17-year-old gorilla rather than tranquilize him. They said the child's life was in danger, and when the zookeepers called for the gorillas to exit the enclosure, Harambe did not obey like the two other females inside. Tranquilizing the ape, they wrote, would have put the child at greater risk because it takes minutes for the drug to take effect and the dart could have agitated him further.

At a news conference Monday, Zoo Director Thane Maynard further defended the zoo's decision to fatally shoot the gorilla, whose nickname was "handsome Harambe."

After protests from animal rights activists, Cincinnati Zoo director Thayne Maynard defended the decision to shoot a gorilla after a boy fell into his enclosure and was "being dragged around by the ankle and being hurt." "Looking back, we would make the same decision," Maynard said. (Reuters)

"We're talking about an animal that I've seen crush a coconut with one hand," Maynard said, noting that the stress of the situation had made the gorilla's behavior even more erratic. "The child was being dragged around, his head was banging on concrete. This was not a gentle thing."

The director also addressed suggestions that the zoo was to blame for the fall since the barriers didn't successfully keep the child out. Maynard told reporters the facility is inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and that the enclosure barriers exceed recommendations, Fox News 8 in Cleveland reported.

"You can lock your car, you can lock your house, but if someone really wants to, they can get in," Maynard said at the news conference. "Do you know any 4-year-olds? They can climb over anything."

But despite Maynard's words and law enforcement's decision not to press any charges against the woman, critics continued to assault her parenting.

During interviews in which they defended the zoo's lethal response to the situation, two well-known wildlife experts and TV personalities, Jack Hanna and Jeff Corwin, attacked her parenting.

"Zoos aren't your babysitter," Corwin told Fox 25 News. "Take a break from the cellphone and the selfie stick and the texting. Connect with your children. Be responsible for your children. I don't think this happened in seconds or minutes. I think this took time, for this kid, for this little boy to find himself in this situation. And ultimately, it's the gorilla that has paid that price."

Corwin emphasized that the loss of Harambe is especially devastating because his species is on the "precipice of extinction."

"No amount of money or biology or science can ever bring back what was lost with the death of this gorilla," he said.

In an interview on CBS This Morning, Hanna, director emeritus of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, said he agreed "1,000 percent" with the zoo's decision to shoot the gorilla. But he, too, spoke on the importance of parental supervision at zoos, comparing the locations to parks and malls.

"Just watch your kids. ... I'm sure that the mother here did the best she could. I guess maybe she was doing something else, I don't know, I wasn't there," he said.

By Tuesday morning, a Facebook group called Justice for Harambe had amassed 109,544 likes and described its purpose as a page to raise awareness about "Harambe's murder" and to "see charges brought against those responsible." A separate Change.org petition asking child protective services to investigate the mother had been signed more than 293,000 times and a second petition, calling for the passage of a "Harambe's law" that would hold any negligent party criminally and financially responsible if an endangered animal dies due to human error, had been signed nearly 100,000 times.

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A vigil has been held at Cincinnati Zoo in memory of a 400-lb gorilla fatally shot after a four-year-old boy fell into its enclosure.

Cincinnati Zoo's special response team shot Harambe, the 17-year-old African western lowland gorilla, when it dragged the boy out of a moat after he fell climbing through a public barrier at the Gorilla World exhibit on Saturday afternoon.

The child was taken to hospital after the incident, but suffered no serious injuries according to a Facebook post written by his mother.

Harambe (pictured) was a 17-year-old silverback western lowland gorilla (Reuters)

The zoos director, Thane Maynard, has defended its decision to kill the gorilla, saying a tranquilier wouldn't have immediately felled the creature, who was strong enough to crush a coconut, leaving the child in danger.

Mr Maynard said Harambe was agitated, disorientated and acting erratically at the time of the incident.

"This is very emotional and people have expressed different feelings," Mr Maynard said by email. "Not everyone shares the same opinion and that's OK. But we all share the love for animals."

Dozens of people, including animal rights activists, attended Mondays tribute to Harambe, who turned 17 the day that he was shot.

Anthony Seta, an animal rights activist in Cincinnati, called the death "a senseless tragedy" but said the vigils aim was not to place blame on any of the involved parties.

 Cincinnati zoo gorilla shot dead as boy falls into enclosure

"People can shout at the parents and people can shout at the zoo," Seta said. "The fact is that a gorilla that just celebrated his birthday has been killed."

The boys mother, Michelle Gregg, has faced mounting controversy over the incident and has reportedly recieved a police warning she could face charges.

Ms Gregg has defended herself against critics on Facebook saying: As a society we are quick to judge how a parent could take their eyes off of their child and if anyone knows me I keep a tight watch on my kids.

Accidents happen but I am thankful that the right people were in the right place today.

Around 85,000 people have signed an online petition seeking Justice for Harambe, calling for the boys parents to be held accountable for their actions for not supervising their child. Another page calls for a protest at the zoo on 5 June.



Additional reporting by Associated Press
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While her family and friends posted frantic online pleas for help and the New York Police Department scoured the city, 19-year-old Nayla Kidd was moving into her new apartment in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood.

The then-Columbia University student had last been seen May 5, in a hall on campus. Then, for the next two weeks, she was gone: disappeared from the apartment she shared with three classmates, absent from her exams, noticeably silent as Mother's Day came and went. (She and her mother are close; last year, Kidd made a video.)

"Her grades are very important to her -- to have her not show up to her finals is very troubling," Alesha Wood, a family friend, told The Washington Post earlier this month. "That is not like Nayla -- she loves to go to school."

Indeed, Kidd was a star science student in high school and a class representative on Columbia's Engineering Student Council. But even those close to her did not know that at the time of her disappearance, it had been a while since Kidd loved school.

She said as much in an op-ed Sunday in the New York Post, in the first public statement Kidd has made since she was found safe May 16.

Photo published for Why I had to escape my Ivy League life and disappear

Why I had to escape my Ivy League life and disappear

Nayla Kidd was an engineering student at Columbia University when reports that she had gone missing went viral. She was found perfectly healthy nearly two weeks later, only telling police she wanted

In a piece titled "Why I had to escape my Ivy League life and disappear," Kidd recounted how the school's pressure-cooker environment led her to become increasingly ambivalent about her schoolwork. As the search for her intensified, she was trying to erase all traces of the life she knew: "I started to totally disconnect. I deleted my Facebook profile first, shut down my phone and got a prepaid number, took all of my money out of my Chase bank account and opened a new one."

These measures were prompted by a sense of alienation from Columbia and its expectations, Kidd wrote. Since arriving in college two years ago, she ceased to be the academic all-star that she had been all of her life.

Kidd grew up in Louisville and was raised by a single mom, LaCreis Kidd, who her daughter says conducted cancer research at the University of Louisville. Her mother holds graduate degrees from John Hopkins University and MIT.

Throughout elementary, middle and high school, Kidd's talent for science showed. She was accepted into the highly competitive Thacher School, a private boarding high school in California where she promptly earned the nickname "The Science Girl."

The teachers loved her and lavished her with praise, Kidd wrote, using her homework as an example for other students. When she was a sophomore, her chemistry teachers announced before 240 classmates that Kidd had garnered the highest score in a national chemistry competition.

These accolades only fueled Kidd's drive to succeed, and it culminated in her acceptance to an Ivy League university.

"The ultimate climax was when I got into Columbia," Kidd wrote. "Because it's such a prestigious school, it made me feel like I had proven to myself, and everyone around me, that I made it."

When she got on campus, she decided, naturally, that she would study science. But things didn't go smoothly.

The day she moved in was her birthday. "I felt really alienated and alone and didn't find the Columbia students very welcoming," Kidd wrote. "During my freshman year, I quickly went from star student to slacker."

In contrast to the tight-knit community at Thacher, Kidd said, "at Columbia I was lucky if a teacher talked to me." The lack of close connections with her teachers discouraged her from engaging with her schoolwork.

"Even though I was wired to be a good student," Kidd said, "I didn't feel inspired. I got through the year, getting B's and C's, but I didn't care. I was just happy the summer arrived."

Upon her return to classes in September, Kidd signed up for computer-science classes and "hated every minute of it."

One morning in April, she woke up and realized she needed to make a change and "started plotting [her] escape."

Weeks before her exams, Kidd stopped going to class altogether. She saved money from her on-campus job, which paid $14 an hour, and sold many of her possessions on Facebook. She found an affordable room in Williamsburg and quietly moved out without her roommates being any the wiser.

She gave her new phone number to a few friends before she left, but she did not tell them where she was going, and she did not answer when they called. She wanted to make sense of her situation without external influences, Kidd said.

She described a spiral of isolation:

"I was constantly worrying, and the more they tried to contact me, the more I didn't feel ready to tell them. The longer I ignored them, the worse it got.

"When Mother's Day arrived, I felt guilty for not calling my mom, but I still couldn't bring myself to do it. I couldn't face her yet.

"I never turned on the TV and stayed immersed in my own world. I had only seen the missing-person fliers online."

If Kidd had been on Facebook, she would have seen the flurry of posts from friends, relatives and classmates under the hashtag #FindingNayla. Many noted that she was not the type to neglect her academics.

Kidd's disappearance ended after "three big cops" showed up at her new apartment. When she was reunited with her mom at the police station, LaCreis Kidd was reassuring.

"You don't have to explain anything," she told her only child. "An investigator told me you might be stripping. Even if you're a stripper, you're gonna be the best stripper out there."

Kidd wrote that she has no plans to return to school. Instead, she wants to make music and work on her writing and modeling careers.

"I always told myself I needed to find gratification through academia, but now I want to find it on my own through the arts," she wrote. "I finally broke down because I was living a life I thought I should be living instead of living the life I want."

The New York Post simultaneously published a statement from Kidd's mother.

The pair usually spoke at least a couple of times a month, LaCreis Kidd said, so when her daughter went missing, she feared the worst.

"When I was finally re-united with Nayla, it was a bit awkward," Kidd wrote. "How could she just cut me off like that? ... I'm not angry, but I'm still recovering from such a traumatic experience."

When Kidd was found, a police official told the New York Daily News, "Basically, she just wanted to get away from it all."

Multiple news outlets reported that Kidd was attending Columbia on a full scholarship. All scholarships for undergraduates at Columbia are rewarded based on financial need. In a recent story, The Washington Post's Nick Anderson chronicled the burdens facing lower-income students in the Ivy League. Despite having their tuition paid for, many are nonetheless stymied by high costs of living and feel socially alienated from their wealthy peers.

Anderson interviewed students who said they often went hungry to save on food. "The reality of a full ride isn't always what they had dreamed it would be," he wrote.

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At some point, Donald Trump needs to designate the person who will serve as his second-in-command should he win the presidency this November. Predicting the person who will be tapped to serve as a candidate's vice president is always a tricky affair, thanks to the general opacity of the decision-making process. For Trump, there's an added layer of obscurity; the simple unpredictability of the guy coats the whole thing with another layer of thick black paint.

So who's it going to be? He's mentioned looking for someone with experience on Capitol Hill, and he and his staff have had a sort of muddled presentation on the merits of choosing a demographically friendly subordinate. Which seems quite possibly to be the role his pick will play: The manager of the restaurant, dealing with the quixotic owner. Perhaps that's ungenerous, but his new current No. 2, Paul Manafort, told the Huffington Post that the VP would "do the part of the job [Trump] doesn't want to do."

With that in mind, allow us to propose the person who I believe would be Trump's best VP choice both politically and personally: His daughter, Ivanka Trump.

Let's dismiss the obstacles at the outset. Ivanka is currently 34 years old, below the 35-year-old threshold demanded by the Constitution. The good news is that her birthday is Oct. 30 -- just about a week before Election Day.

A bigger stumbling block is that both Ivanka and Donald share the same home state. Fans of the 2000 election may remember concerns over George W. Bush and Dick Cheney both hailing from Texas, in apparent contradiction of the 12th Amendment's prohibition against both candidates being from the same state. It ended up not being important, thanks to a court's decision that December that Cheney was a resident of Wyoming.

But the amendment's criteria are also often misunderstood. What the amendment says is that members of the Electoral College "shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves." So it's not that the candidates can't both be from the same state; it's that the electors from that state can't vote for both, as Politifact noted last year. That adds a hurdle to a Trump-Trump candidacy, but not an insurmountable one. It means that Trump needs to win the presidency by at least 32 electoral votes (one more than the number from New York state) in order to serve with his daughter. (If this rabbit hole isn't deep enough, here's what might happen next.) But, as Ken Fowler pointed out on Twitter, that's only if Trump won New York -- which seems unlikely.

 10 of the scariest things Donald Trump has ever said

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Why even risk it? Because Ivanka brings so much to the table.

She is a woman. I am a skeptic about the idea that women who plan to vote for Hillary Clinton might be tempted by Trump simply because he picks a woman as his running mate. John McCain gave that a shot eight years ago, and it was not a success. But Trump's problems with women far exceed McCain's, and having a constant reminder that he has strong, smart women in his life probably isn't the worst idea.

She knows how to work with Donald Trump. Of all of the considerations that seem critical in a Trump vice president, the ability to deal with the quixotic candidate seems pretty near the top of the list. Chris Christie's given it a go and stuck with it even after being curtly dismissed at one event, and told not to eat cookies at another. But Ivanka's been putting up with his shtick for 35 years (in October) and been successful at it.

She is a good campaign surrogate. We could probably modify this by saying that Ivanka isn't a bad surrogate; after all, her recent assurance that her father was "not a groper" probably wasn't super helpful. Compared to other Trump surrogates, though -- Ben Carson, for example -- she's hitting at a remarkably good batting average. This is almost certainly a function of having been around her father long enough to have a very good innate sense of his boundaries, and of how to present his will to the world.

She seems like a capable negotiator. Granted, I'm flying a little blind here, but Ivanka has, by all obvious measures, been able to carve her own path to success in the business world. Being born a Trump was more of a kickstarter for her than even for her father, but her personal empire stands on its own feet.

When Trump says he wants someone that knows Capitol Hill, he probably means two things. One is that he wants someone who won't get out-maneuvered on the picayune rules and systems that it takes to get anything done in Congress. Ivanka can't do that. What she almost certainly can do is the other thing: She can wrangle and cajole members of Congress, build relationships and serve as an ambassador for her father.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to solve our biggest global challenges and bring people everywhere a better quality of life.

Would someone who knows members of the House and Senate have an advantage in this regard? Perhaps, but perhaps not. No one seems particularly able to move much on Capitol Hill these days, and I would propose that a celebrity who is new to the scene might have better luck cracking open doors -- at least for a little while. I mean, Alex Rodriguez showed up on Capitol Hill and people actually met with him. If a celebrity that toxic can make a dent in things, imagine what someone with actual charm and talent could do. (Editor's note: Philip is a Mets fan.)

It's good branding. One of the things that has been running through my head as we consider who might be Trump's running mate is the idea that Trump might someday soon have to share his campaign signs with another person's name. When insiders were bubbling over the idea of Sen. Bob Corker, I found it very hard to envision "Trump-Corker" t-shirts sweeping the country.

Well, how about: "Trump-Trump"? Or, more simply: "Trump."

The only words that Donald Trump likes to see next to his last name are the names of products he wants to sell: towers, steaks, water. He'd probably settle for following "Trump" with another "Trump."

Choosing Ivanka would allow Trump to create a sort of hereditary system for the presidency. Our founding fathers went to great lengths to create the most-democratic and least-monarchical system of government they could think of. Every four years, a new election and possibly a new president. None of this hereditary transfer of power nonsense. Well, bad news, Mssrs. Madison and Jefferson. Somebody may have just found a loophole.

The beauty of this entire thing is that, for once, it's not totally outside the realm of possibility. I approached this exercise as more of a thought experiment than a real effort at advocacy, but as I was exploring it, realized that ... it's not actually all that crazy. Especially given that the person making the decision somehow manages to intersperse completely rational decisions with utterly incomprehensible ones within the span of a few minutes. Donald Trump -- who has even mentioned choosing his daughter as his running mate in the past -- is as likely to pick Ivanka as he is Mitt Romney, Bob Corker, Shaquille O'Neal or the skeleton of Betsy Ross.

The case has been made. Now we wait.

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A jury in Illinois has convicted a former Chicago policeman with attempting to arrange the murder of a prosecutor who put him behind bars three years ago for the murder of one of his wives.

The guilty verdict against 62-year Drew Peterson came on Tuesday afternoon from jurors who had deliberated for barely an hour. They convicted him on charges of solicitation of murder for hire and solicitation for murder, which carry a possible prison sentence of up to 60 years.

Peterson, who sat expressionless as the verdict was read in court, is already serving time for the murder of his third wife, Kathleen Savio. It was the principle prosecutor in his murder trial, States Attorney James Glasgow, whom had been targeted for death by Peterson from inside prison.

The case against the former officer was underpinned by tape recordings between him and the inmate with whom he was hoping to orchestrate the killing. Unbeknownst to him, however, that inmate, Antonio Smith, was working with the authorities.

Jurors had heard Smith confirming that arrangements had been made for someone on the outside to carry out the hit. I told him what you said, that it's the green light on, that basically go ahead and kill him, Smith said on the tapes. That's what you wanted, right? ... It ain't no turning back.

OK, all right. I'm in, Peterson was heard to respond. From the first time we talked about it, there was no turning back. ... If I get some booze in here, we'll celebrate that night.

A defence lawyer for Peterson had attempted to persuade the jury that what they had heard was nothing more than loose prison talk and proved nothing. This case is wrought with inconsistency and incomplete evidence, Lucas Liefer told the jury.

Among those in the public seats was the sister of Petersons fourth wife, Stacey Peterson, who went missing in 2007. Her disappearance garnered headlines around the world, which in turn prompted Mr Glasgow to re-open the case of the third wife, Ms Savio, whose earlier death had been ruled an accident. The re-opened probe in turn led to Petersons 2013 murder conviction.

Still today, there is no word on what happened to Ms Peterson, although in the prison tapes Peterson was heard suggesting he thought she was still alive. As he passed a sister of Ms Peterson inside the court on Tuesday, he was seen muttering something to her.

Earlier on Tuesday, prosecutor Steve Nate told the jury in his closing argument that the tape recordings surely showed that Peterson was guilty of trying to have Mr Glasgow rubbed out. He said it, he meant it, and he's guilty, he averred to the packed courtroom.

Long before the solicitation to murder case, the notoriety of Peterson - he made a now infamous appearance on CNNs Larry King Show in 2008 to argue his innocence just one year before his eventual arrest - prompted a Lifetime made-for-television film about his life, Drew Peterson: Untouchable, with Rob Lowe in the title role.

At the first trial, a witness said Peterson had offered him $25,000 to find someone to kill Ms Savio. She died barely three months after the couple had been divorced. Signs of a struggle were found when Mr Glasgow ordered a second autopsy on her body.
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Unsullied by the trappings of the modern world and cut off from the rest of humanity, the uncontacted peoples of the Amazon are seen as offering a fascinating insight into a prehistoric world.

This romantic view of the most remote native communities in the world is what two leading US anthropologists have spent the last two years trying to deconstruct.

Professors Kim Hill and Robert Walker say it is an illusion to protect these people by leaving them alone, and that a controlled programme of forced contact is the only way to save them from the threats of illegal loggers, mining prospectors and diseases to which they have no immunity.

Now, the charity whose campaigns helped bring the plight of these people to international attention says the idea of forced contact has been rejected  by the indigenous tribes themselves.

Survival International has released a video created by the Guajajara tribe, whose lands in northeast Brazil include groups of uncontacted people, which warns that the plan produced by some anthropologists in another country would lead to another genocide of indigenous people.

Speaking to The Independent, Survival Internationals campaign director Fiona Watson said the Guajajara were taking matters into their own hands in the absence of the state, protecting uncontacted groups as the reach of deforestation stretches further and further up the Amazon.

Olimpio and Franciel Guajajara of the Guajajara Guardians, who say they are taking responsibility for protecting the uncontacted peoples in their land. They have been given equipment and training to film updates on the situation, which are then being published by Survival International's Tribal Voice programme (Survival International)

The charity has produced an open letter to Hill and Walker warning that forced contact would open up the indigenous people to new diseases, violence at the hands of better-armed outsiders and the theft of their natural resources.

And the Guajajara, who were themselves decimated by disease when they first came into contact with outsiders 100 years ago, were the best-placed people in the world to know what is best in turn for the tribes in their territory, Ms Watson said.

Video shows moment Amazonian tribe makes contact with outside world

Increasingly, indigenous peoples are speaking out in defence of uncontacted tribes, which has never been the case before, Ms Watson said.

Hill and Walkers proposal  to instigate contact, educate and inoculate the tribes before they have a chance to clash with illegal intruders  is the equivalent of playing God, she said.

In some of the contacts in the past, up to 90 per cent [of indigenous people] have died within the first year, Ms Watson said. Even when it is around 50 per cent, that is a huge amount of people to lose.

There was a good example of this recently when two women from the Awa tribe made contact because there were loggers nearby. Even with the best medical care and people there to help treat them, they nearly died from tuberculosis.

You cannot guarantee a similar thing wont happen [with forced contact], it is highly irresponsible.

Ms Watson said experts with the Brazilian government, which in 1987 instigated the policy of total non-contact and enshrined the rights of the indigenous tribes to their land in the constitution, still believed it was the best way forward. In recent years the number of distinct isolated groups has risen from 100 to 107.

In pictures: The uncontacted tribes of the Amazon Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: The uncontacted tribes of the Amazon In pictures: The uncontacted tribes of the Amazon A group from the Mashco Piro people in Peru, photographed from a distance by the Madre de Dios river Survival International In pictures: The uncontacted tribes of the Amazon Uncontacted Brazilian people, photographed from the air Survival International In pictures: The uncontacted tribes of the Amazon Uncontacted Brazilian people, photographed from the air Survival International In pictures: The uncontacted tribes of the Amazon Uncontacted Brazilian people, photographed from the air Survival International In pictures: The uncontacted tribes of the Amazon Uncontacted Brazilian people, photographed from the air Survival International In pictures: The uncontacted tribes of the Amazon Uncontacted Brazilian people, photographed from the air Survival International In pictures: The uncontacted tribes of the Amazon Uncontacted Brazilian people, photographed from the air Survival International

The crux of Hill and Walkers argument, set out in an impassioned editorial in Science last year, was that contact of some form or another was unavoidable, making it sensible to try and instigate it in as controlled a manner as possible.

There is no such thing as a group that remains in isolation because they think its cool to not have contact with anyone else on the planet, Professor Hill said, arguing that most tribal peoples were interesting in making contact with the outside world but too afraid to do so.

Campaigners are not labouring under the illusion that the tribes are living in some sort of pre-mechanised paradise, Ms Watson said.

But it goes down to the question of rights. Theres lots of evidence to show that the uncontacted tribes are rejecting contact, and with tribes like the Awa who were first contacted in the seventies, plenty have said to me that they think it would have been better if they stayed in the forest.

They are not some prehistoric throwback. They are contemporary people who have decided they want to live their way, and that is their choice.
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Authorities in New York have arrested a former director of Barclays Plc on charges that he improperly gave tip-offs to a friend about mergers before they were publicly announced.

Prosecutors said that Steven McClatchey, 58, who worked at the British banks Manhattan offices from 2008 until the end of last year, had fed information to a plumber, Gary Pusey, to help him make profits by trading the stocks of companies involved in deals that were in the works.

In return for the highly confidential intelligence that should have remained within the bank, he allegedly received thousands of dollars in cash payments from Mr Pusey, with notes stuffed in a gym bag brought to a marina where they both had pleasure boats or handed to him in his garage. On other occasions, Mr Pusey did on the bankers home for free.

Mr McClatchey, who was arrested on Long Island on Tuesday where he lives, was expected to appear in court later in the day. There was no comment from his lawyers as of late in the afternoon.

The charges against the banker of conspiracy, wire fraud and securities fraud, were confirmed by Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara, the top prosecutor in Manhattan, who has been on a years-long crusade to sniff out and eliminate insider trading scams on Wall Street.

While no name is attached to the bank involved in the complaint, Barclays confirmed that it had indeed been Mr McClatcheys employer for seven years and that it was cooperating with the authorities on the case, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, since learning about this incident involving a former employee.

Steven McClatchey worked for the bank for seven years (Reuters)

Barclays will take appropriate action when employees do not hold themselves to the conduct and control standards which are embedded in our culture, a spokesman for Barclays said in a statement.

The prosecutors office said that Mr Pusey, the plumber, had entered a guilty plea last Friday and had agreed to cooperate with the investigation.

The plumber and the banker were described as being good friends who often met at the marina at weekends. The information improperly handed over concerned future mergers involving 11 companies, including PetSmart, the CVS chemists chain and Duke Energy, all household names.

According to the complaint, Mr Pusey was able to rack up profits of about $76,000 on the back of the secrets handed to him by his friend. That it seems a somewhat paltry sum in the annals of Wall Street malfeasance was clearly not enough to deter Mr Bhararas office from pursuing the case.

Mr McClatcheys duties at the Barclays, close to Times Square in Manhattan, was to keep track of all the mergers and acquisitions that were pending and being handled by the bank. He even was responsible for distributing an in-house publication called M&A Global Weekly Business Update, which occasionally included deals that were expected to close in the coming week.

The first tip to Mr Pusey came in about 2013 or 2013 when he was told to keep an eye on a particular company because something good was going to happen, according to the complaint.

The bank said that Mr McClatchey was a back-office employee and never had direct contact with any of its M&A clients.
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Conservative talk show host Glenn Beck has been suspended from SiriusXM for the remainder of the week after a guest was accused of inciting an assassination attempt of Donald Trump if he is elected president.

In conversation with Beck, conservative commentator and fiction author Brad Thor said that it would be unlikely that Congress would remove Mr Trump from office; he suggested that there is no legal means available to do so.

With the feckless, spineless Congress we have, who will stand in the way of Donald Trump overstepping his constitutional authority as President? Mr Thor asked.

If he oversteps that, how do we get him out of office? And I dont think there is a legal means available, he continued. I think it will be a terrible, terrible position the American people will be in to get Trump out of office because you wont be able to do it through Congress.

Beck, 52, a former Fox News pundit, agreed with Mr Thor, pivoting to focus on the state of the US economy.

In a Tuesday announcement, SiriusXM said they will not air Becks program on their Patriot Channel and will determine the shows future with the company.

SiriusXM encourages a diversity of discourse and opinion on our talk programs, the statement said. However, comments recently made by a guest on the independently produced Glenn Beck Program, in our judgement, may be reasonably construed by some to have been advocating harm against an individual currently running for office, which we cannot and will not condone.

Last week, Beck responded to accusations by media organisations, like Drudge Report, a conservative news aggregator.

So evil. That is NOT what he meant, nor is it what we thought. How evil do you have to be to think this?, Beck said in a statement on Facebook.

Becks co-host Brad Gray also clarified Mr Thors comments in a Facebook statement.

As you know if you were listening this morning, Brad was discussing the possibility that if Trump ever got completely out-of-control as President, there would be no way the Republican Congress would ever impeach him, he wrote. So, even if it were necessary, patriots have no way to get him out of office.

Nobody...NOBODY stated or implied any harm coming to Trump, that's not something we joke about.

Neither Beck nor producers of his radio show responded to requests for comment.

Glenn Beck is one of the more outspoken conservative critics of Donald Trump. As such, he campaigned for Texas Sen Ted Cruz - whom he endorsed in January.

We need a new George Washington. Today's Washington will not be found in the garish light of gold but rather in the bold service of a man who stands tirelessly for what he deeply believes, Beck said of Mr Cruz at a rally in Iowa, a week before the caucuses. That is why I'm endorsing Sen. Ted Cruz as the next President of the United States of America.

Before the endorsement, Beck said the US under a Trump presidency would be a snowball to hell.
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North Korea is supporting Donald Trump as the next president of the US, citing him as wise and a far-sighted presidential candidate."

The editorial in DPRK Today said Mr Trump could unify the Korean Peninsula and favoured his proposal to hold direct talks with their leader Kim Jong-un.

In my personal opinion, there are many positive aspects to the Trumps inflammatory policies, wrote Han Yong Mook, who said he was a Chinese North Korean scholar.

Trump said he will not get involved in the war between the South and the North, isnt this fortunate from North Koreans perspective?

The businessman turned presumptive presidential nominee proposed in March that South Korea should obtain nuclear bombs and deter North Korea without US aid.

He argued that South Korea and Japan having their own weapons would reduce pressure on the US to jump to action when North Korea acted aggressively.

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

Therell be a point at which were just not going to be able to do it anymore. Now, does that mean nuclear? It could mean nuclear, said Mr Trump.

The speech was welcomed in North Korea.

Yes do it, now  Who knew that the slogan Yankee Go Home would come true like this? wrote Mr Han. The day when the Yankee Go Home slogan becomes real would be the day of Korean Unification.

Yankee go home is a phrase used to express anger at Americans in a foreign land.

The editorial blasted Hillary Clinton as dull and criticised her for adapting the Iranian model to resolve nuclear issues on the Korean Peninsula.

John Feffer, a director at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC, told NK News that Pyongyang is hoping that either Trump will be elected (and follows through on his pledges) or that his pronouncements will change the political game in the United States and influence how the Democratic party and mainstream Republicans view Korean issues.

Pyongyang has recently made several calls to re-start talks with Seoul and with Washington DC.

It also published a government statement on 17 May with the aim of improving relations with its neighbour.

A recent YouGov study found that Russia was the only major economy in the world that preferred the property tycoon over Ms Clinton.
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California Governor Jerry Brown has endorsed Hillary Clinton ahead of the states imminent Democratic presidential primary, saying a vote for the former Secretary of State is the only way to halt Donald Trumps dangerous candidacy.

The California primary on 7 June is the last and biggest contest of primary season, and it has become an unexpectedly close race between Ms Clinton and her progressive challenger, Bernie Sanders. In March, Ms Clinton appeared comfortably ahead, but a poll released last week found the Vermont Senator just two percentage points adrift, well within the margin of error.

The Clinton campaign, which has amassed an unassailable lead in delegates, super-delegates and the popular vote, expects to reach the numbers needed for the nomination earlier the same day, when New Jersey also goes to the polls. But a Sanders win in California could give him the momentum and moral weight to take the fight to the Democratic convention in July.

Ms Clinton has reportedly curtailed her latest campaign tour of New Jersey to return early to the stump in the Golden State and try to prevent an upset. California is symbolic not only for its size, but for its deep blue tinge: it has voted for the Democrat at the past six presidential elections, ever since Ms Clintons husband, Bill Clinton, won the White House in 1992.

In an open letter to California Democrats and independent voters, who can also vote in the primary, Mr Brown said Democrats have shown  by millions of votes  that they want her as their nominee, adding that Ms Clinton, with her long experience, especially as Secretary of State, has a firm grasp of the issues and will be prepared to lead our country on day one.

He also said, however, that he had been deeply impressed by Mr Sanderss success, and that the Senators campaign had driven home the message that the top one percent has unfairly captured way too much of Americas wealth, leaving the majority of people far behind.

Mr Brown, a Democrat, compared the Sanders campaign to his own presidential run in 1992, when the clashes between himself and Mr Clinton grew increasingly bitter. At one point Mr Brown accused the Clintons of allegedly diverting public fund to Ms Clintons law firm. But in his endorsement on Tuesday, he said this was no time for Democrats to keep fighting each other.

A Sanders rally in Oakland in Monday evening was interrupted by a handful of animal rights protesters, who attempted to rush the stage during Mr Sanderss speech. The demonstrators from the group Direct Action Everywhere, who said they wanted to encourage the candidate to take a tough stance on factory farming, were ejected by Secret Service agents.
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At least 17 army staff have reportedly been killed and 19 others injured in a fire in a massive ammunition depot in western India.

A police source said the blaze at the Pulgaon depot started before dawn on Tuesday.

Defence Ministry spokesman Nitin Wakanker would only confirm that a fire had broken out at the ammunitions depot. He said details would be released after they emerged from the site.

New Delhi Television and other media said 17 army personnel died in the fire and 19 other people were injured.

About 1,000 villagers had been evacuated from around the area, NDTV said.

Ramesh Barde, a fire officer with the Nagpur fire department, told AFP: "The fire broke out at 1:30am and nearby fire engines reached the venue by 2:30am. The fire was brought under control by 6:15am. The situation is under control and a report is being prepared."

The ammunition depot, one of India's largest, is in Maharastra state's Wardha district.
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A North Korean missile launch likely failed on Tuesday, according to South Korea's military, the latest in a string of high-profile failures that tempers somewhat recent worries that Pyongyang was pushing quickly toward its goal of a nuclear-tipped missile that can reach America's mainland.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency said in an unsourced report that the missile was a powerful mid-range Musudan, which, if true, would make it the fourth failure by the North to conduct a successful test launch of the new missile, which could potentially reach far-away U.S. military bases in Asia and the Pacific. Seoul defense officials could not immediately confirm the report.

The South's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in statement that the North attempted to launch an unidentified missile early in the morning from the Wonsan area, but likely failed. The military is analyzing what happened and had no other details.

Despite recent failures, there has been growing outside worry over North Korea's nuclear and missile activity this year, which includes a nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket test in February that outsiders see as a test of banned long-range missile technology.

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 most recent launch follows Seoul's rejection of recent Pyongyang overtures to talk, part of what some analysts see as an attempt by the North to start a dialogue meant to win the impoverished country aid.

In April, North Korea attempted unsuccessfully to launch three suspected powerful intermediate-range Musudan missiles.

Musudan missiles have a potential range of about 3,500 kilometers (2,180 miles), which would put U.S. military bases in Guam within their striking distance. South Korea believes the North does not yet possess a missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland, but the North is working on that technology.

Before April's suspected launches, North Korea had never flight-tested a Musudan missile, though one was displayed during a military parade in 2010 in Pyongyang.

AP
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Aylan Kurdi's father has said his son and family "died for nothing" after a string of boat disasters in the Mediterranean that have put 2016 on course to be the deadliest ever year for refugees.

Abdullah Kurdi, who survived the sinking that killed his wife and two children as they attempted to cross to a Greek island in September, said the global outpouring of grief following the publication of harrowing photos of three-year-old Aylan's body had changed little.

Refugee children continue to drown every day, the war in Syria has not stopped, he told Italy's La Repubblica newspaper.

I see countries who build walls and others that do not want to accept us. My Aylan died for nothing, little has changed.

At least 880 migrants died last week alone and deaths are up more than a third compared to the same period last year, according to figures compiled by the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR).

 Refugee shipwreck survivors arrive in Italy

Shipwrecks and capsizings have claimed 2,510 lives so far this year, compared to 1,855 in January to May 2015, which ended as the deadliest year on record for those crossing the Mediterranean to reach Europe.

While the number of disasters in the Aegean Sea has fallen since the imposition of the controversial EU-Turkey deal, which is seeing refugees arriving in Greece detained with the threat of deportation, numerous sinkings have been recorded between Libya and Italy.

This year is proving to be particularly deadly, UNHCR spokesman William Spindler said.

"At the moment (smugglers) are packing people on boats that are barely sea-worthy and many cases are not meant to make the crossing.

"What happens is as soon as they depart from shore they call for rescuers and then rescue services come and rescue them.

"It's a race against time to get there before the boats sink, in some cases it gets there too late."

Refugee crisis - in pictures Show all 27 1 /27 Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugee crisis - in pictures A child looks through the fence at the Moria detention camp for migrants and refugees at the island of Lesbos on May 24, 2016. AFP/Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Ahmad Zarour, 32, from Syria, reacts after his rescue by MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station) while attempting to reach the Greek island of Agathonisi, Dodecanese, southeastern Agean Sea Refugee crisis - in pictures Syrian migrants holding life vests gather onto a pebble beach in the Yesil liman district of Canakkale, northwestern Turkey, after being stopped by Turkish police in their attempt to reach the Greek island of Lesbos on 29 January 2016. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees flash the 'V for victory' sign during a demonstration as they block the Greek-Macedonian border Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants have been braving sub zero temperatures as they cross the border from Macedonia into Serbia. Refugee crisis - in pictures A sinking boat is seen behind a Turkish gendarme off the coast of Canakkale's Bademli district on January 30, 2016. At least 33 migrants drowned on January 30 when their boat sank in the Aegean Sea while trying to cross from Turkey to Greece. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A general view of a shelter for migrants inside a hangar of the former Tempelhof airport in Berlin, Germany Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees protest behind a fence against restrictions limiting passage at the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Since last week, Macedonia has restricted passage to northern Europe to only Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who are considered war refugees. All other nationalities are deemed economic migrants and told to turn back. Macedonia has finished building a fence on its frontier with Greece becoming the latest country in Europe to build a border barrier aimed at checking the flow of refugees Refugee crisis - in pictures A father and his child wait after being caught by Turkish gendarme on 27 January 2016 at Canakkale's Kucukkuyu district Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants make hand signals as they arrive into the southern Spanish port of Malaga on 27 January, 2016 after an inflatable boat carrying 55 Africans, seven of them women and six chidren, was rescued by the Spanish coast guard off the Spanish coast. Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee holds two children as dozens arrive on an overcrowded boat on the Greek island of Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures A child, covered by emergency blankets, reacts as she arrives, with other refugees and migrants, on the Greek island of Lesbos, At least five migrants including three children, died after four boats sank between Turkey and Greece, as rescue workers searched the sea for dozens more, the Greek coastguard said Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants wait under outside the Moria registration camp on the Lesbos. Over 400,000 people have landed on Greek islands from neighbouring Turkey since the beginning of the year Refugee crisis - in pictures The bodies of Christian refugees are buried separately from Muslim refugees at the Agios Panteleimonas cemetery in Mytilene, Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures Macedonian police officers control a crowd of refugees as they prepare to enter a camp after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee tries to force the entry to a camp as Macedonian police officers control a crowd after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees are seen aboard a Turkish fishing boat as they arrive on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing a part of the Aegean Sea from the Turkish coast to Lesbos Reuters Refugee crisis - in pictures An elderly woman sings a lullaby to baby on a beach after arriving with other refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A man collapses as refugees make land from an overloaded rubber dinghy after crossing the Aegean see from Turkey, at the island of Lesbos EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures A girl reacts as refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees make a show of hands as they queue after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures People help a wheelchair user board a train with others, heading towards Serbia, at the transit camp for refugees near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija AP Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees board a train, after crossing the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Macedonia is a key transit country in the Balkans migration route into the EU, with thousands of asylum seekers - many of them from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia - entering the country every day Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures An aerial picture shows the "New Jungle" refugee camp where some 3,500 people live while they attempt to enter Britain, near the port of Calais, northern France Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A Syrian girl reacts as she helped by a volunteer upon her arrival from Turkey on the Greek island of Lesbos, after having crossed the Aegean Sea EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Beds ready for use for migrants and refugees are prepared at a processing center on January 27, 2016 in Passau, Germany. The flow of migrants arriving in Passau has dropped to between 500 and 1,000 per day, down significantly from last November, when in the same region up to 6,000 migrants were arriving daily.

Mr Spindler reiterated UNHCR's appeal to the European Union to allow for more legal pathways for refugees to reach Europe, and said it was shameful that fewer than 2,000 people had been resettled under a plan announced last year to home 160,000.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said that just 13 deaths were estimated in the first three weeks of May 2016 but disasters last week, including at least two major sinkings, had killed almost 1,000 people.

Survivors of a sinking on Thursday said an engineless wooden boat with more than 550 passengers on board was being towed by another smuggling boat, carrying an estimated 800 people, when the captain cut the tow line.

Refugees who were rescued and taken to Italy told the IOM the second vessel to start sinkinged and eventually capsized, leaving just 87 survivors.

Stefanos, a young Eritrean man who had been on board, said he was among women and children packed in the hold.

We were taking on water, but we had a pump that helped us to push the water out, he said. When the pump ran out of fuel, we asked for more fuel to the captain of the first boat, who said no.

At this point there was nothing left to do: the water was everywhere and we slowly started to sink. There were between about 35 women and 40 children next to me: they all died.

One of the refugee boats that capsized off Libya in the last week of May (Italian Navy)

Survivors reported that they did not want to leave Libya in the conditions but were forced aboard by armed smugglers.

At least 250 migrants died in another deadly incident, when a boat carrying 350 asylum seekers went down. Only 45 bodies have been recovered and up to 280 people remain missing, presumed dead.

Recommended Read more More than a third of refugees arriving in Europe are children

Among the victims was a drowned baby, believed to be no more than a year old, who was pulled from the water by a German humanitarian organisation.

More than 13,000 migrants were rescued in the stretch of water known as the Channel of Sicily last week, bringing the total brought ashore this month 47,600 men, women and children.

There have also been rescues in Greece, including a boat with 64 people on board that issued a distress call of the coast of Crete on Friday.

A 40-year-old Iraqi man who was rescued said he was trying to join his wife and three children in Glasgow and said he would rather die than wait up to six months for his asylum application to be decided in Greece.

On the ship the smugglers took our mobiles and locked us inside for the most of the journey, he recalled.

Migrants on an overturned boat between Sicily and Libya on 26 May (EPA)

They were on the upper deck, where they were driving and smoking cannabis.

They didnt let us see them. They just shouted at us: 'Shut up! Shut up!' They didnt give us food or water for 36 hours. There was no toilet on our deck.

Everyone was crying, vomiting and some lost consciousness couple of times. We were scared and thought we were dying.

Around 204,000 asylum seekers have arrived by sea in Europe so far this year  156,000 in Greece and 47,000 in Italy, where numbers are rising following the closure of the smuggling route over the Aegean Sea.

Federico Soda, director of the IOMs Coordination Office for the Mediterranean, said the high number of arrivals was partly due to improving weather and also to the use of larger wooden vessels that carry up to 700 migrants.

During the last few days we have had major accidents involving unsafe wooden boats, he said. This also explains the increase in the number of migrants dead or missing: one accident can result in hundreds of fatalities.

This is a humanitarian emergency in the desert and at sea where thousands of people are dying.

Mr Soda praised the work of rescue ships patrolling the region, including European Union, Italian and charity missions and said funding for the life-saving work must continue.

A doctor carries a child as refugees disembark from the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) vessel at Pozzallo's harbour in Sicily, Italy (Reuters)

But these operations are not in and of themselves a solution, he added. We must come together to change irregular, dangerous and costly migration to migration that is legal, safe and orderly.

Refugees have also been killed attempting to cross the English Channel either through the tunnel or by boarding ferries, rowing or even swimming.

An RNLI boat rescued 18 Albanian asylum seekers, including two children, and two British smugglers after their inflatable boat began to sink off the coast of Kent on Saturday night.

David Cameron has announced that Britain is to send a warship to the Mediterranean to combat people smuggling as EU operations continue.

The majority of asylum seekers currently arriving in Italy are from sub-Saharan Africa, with the largest group from Nigeria, at 15 per cent, followed by Gambia, Somalia, the Ivory Coast, Eritrea, Guinea and Senegal.

In Greece, 49 per cent of those to have arrived so far this year were from Syria, while a quarter were from Afghanistan, 15 per cent from Iraq and others from Pakistan and Iran
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The Danish royal family has been forced to issue a rare public statement about the finances of the Queens grandchildren, amid a growing row over which of them will receive a state-funded salary.

Politicians have led calls for some sort of limit on the number of Queen Margrethe IIs eight grandchildren who will be supported by the state financially, describing it as simple mathematics that some would have to be cut off.

The rare controversy for the Danish royals, who are currently enjoying record public popularity, appears to be of their own making. While traditionally only the direct heirs to the throne were supported by the state, in 1995 the rules were changed so money would also go to the family of the Queens second son, Prince Joachim.

Recommended Read more Denmark to stop salaries for members of its royal family

Speaking to the state broadcaster DR, Royal House spokeswoman Lene Balleby said only Crown Prince Frederiks son, Prince Christian, will receive a salary when he comes of age.

It is not the expectation, nor has it ever been, that anyone other than Prince Christian should have the salary when the time comes, she said, according to a translation by the Danish edition of The Local.

It means that Joachims eldest son Prince Nikolai, whose approaching 18th birthday sparked the recent controversy, will indeed be cut off. So too will be his and the 10-year-old Prince Christians younger siblings.

Since 1849, the heirs to the Danish throne have received an appanage or annual salary, enough to meet the needs of themselves, their spouses and any widows.

But after the change to support Joachim upon his marriage to now-ex-wife Alexandra Christina 20 years ago, critics were concerned there would be no end to the number of royals receiving state money.

A spokesman for the ruling Venstre party, Jakob Elleman-Jensen, told Politiken: Simple mathematics dictate that there needs to be some sort of limit.

Otherwise within a few generations there will be several hundred princes and princesses who need an annual salary.

By issuing a clarification , the royals seem to have accepted what a cross-party group of MPs were threatening to try and impose.

The tax spokesman for the Liberal Alliance party, Ole Birk Olesen, had said things should go back to the old system. Government finances should only have the task of supporting one of [Crown Prince Frederiks] children, who will inherit the throne after him, he said.

The 10 most prosperous countries in the world Show all 10 1 /10 The 10 most prosperous countries in the world The 10 most prosperous countries in the world 10. Ireland The 10 most prosperous countries in the world 9. Finland The 10 most prosperous countries in the world 8. Netherlands The 10 most prosperous countries in the world 7. Australia The 10 most prosperous countries in the world 6. Canada The 10 most prosperous countries in the world 5. Sweden The 10 most prosperous countries in the world 4. New Zealand The 10 most prosperous countries in the world 3. Denmark The 10 most prosperous countries in the world 2. Switzerland The 10 most prosperous countries in the world 1. Norway 2008 Getty Images

Lars Hovbakke Srsensen, a Danish royal family expert, told Berlingske it was unusual for the royals to enter any political debate, even if it was about their own funding.

He said it was very smart of the Royal House to come out and say this now after opinion polls suggested a large majority of the public believed only Christian should receive funding.

They could have risked jeopardising the current record high support for the Royal House in Denmark if they began demanding that this, that and the other prince and princess should have support, he said.
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Companies may ban Muslim employees from wearing headscarves as long as they also forbid other religious and political symbols in the workplace, an adviser to the European Court of Justice has said.

The case concerns a compensation claim from a woman working as a receptionist for the Belgian company G4S Secure Solutions, who was dismissed from her job for wearing a headscarf for religious reasons.

The company already placed a general ban on wearing visible religious or political symbols.

The European Court of Justice was asked whether forbidding the headscarf violated an EU law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of religion.

"While an employee cannot 'leave' his sex, skin colour, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age or disability 'at the door' upon entering his employer's premises, he may be expected to moderate the exercise of his religion in the workplace," Juliane Kokott, the EU court's advocate general, wrote in her opinion published on Tuesday.

The advocate general's findings are only an initial view and not binding, but the EU court typically follows the adviser's recommendation.

Paris designers react to burka ban Show all 3 1 /3 Paris designers react to burka ban Paris designers react to burka ban 334905.bin AFP PHOTO/Pierre Verdy Paris designers react to burka ban 334906.bin AFP PHOTO/Pierre Verdy Paris designers react to burka ban 334907.bin AFP PHOTO/Pierre Verdy

A ruling from the European Court of Justice is expected later this year. Belgians court of cassation, who referred the case to the EUs top court, will rule on the matter thereafter.

The woman had reportedly worked for three years at G4S Belgium when she insisted on being allowed to wear the headscarf. She took legal action backed by a Belgian racial equality organisation but the case was dismissed by two lower courts, AFP reports.

Wearing headscarves and full-face veils is an increasingly contentious issue in some European countries, particularly in France which attaches importance to the separation of state and religious institutions.

France brought in a ban on full-face veils in 2010 and there are already some headscarf bans in schools and public institutions in Belgium. Last year, however, Germany's top court quashed a ban on teachers wearing headscarves in schools.

Additional reporting by Reuters
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Eighteen women have said they were sexually assaulted at a music festival in Germany.

Three men from Pakistan aged between 28 and 31 have been arrested and police are still searching for three men who may also have been involved.

The attacks are similar to those reported in Cologne and other cities on New Year's Eve, when as many as 1,000 women were groped and robbed.

Police said three women reported being groped at the Schlossgrabenfest music festival in Darmstadt on Saturday, saying they had been encircled then sexually harassed by a group of men.

By Tuesday, 15 more women had made complaints of being sexually assaulted in a similar manner at the festival.

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

The three men who have been arrested are asylum seekers from Pakistan. All have been charged with sexual assault charges.

Police have said the number of complaints could rise and are hunting for between two and three more men.

 Cologne victims speak

The attacks are similar to those which occured on New Year's Eve in Cologne and other German cities.

Many of the perpetrators were allegedly of North African or Arab descent and the assaults sparked a backlash against refugees throughout Europe.

Protests by anti-refugee groups swept the country following the New Year's Eve attacks and support for refugees in Europe fell.
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A Slovakian model who shot her British millionaire ex-boyfriend has been sentenced to 15 years in prison after she was found guilty of his murder by a Spanish court.

Mayka Kukucova was sentenced to 15 years for murder and another six months for breaking into her ex-boyfriend's house in Marbella, where the murder took place.

The 26-year-old claimed she had "never meant to hurt" former gold dealer Andrew Bush, saying he had died during a violent struggle.

Prosecutors said Kukucova shot the 48-year-old twice in the head and once in the shoulder.

British millionaire businessman Andrew Bush and Mayka Marica Kukucova

The court also ordered her to pay 200,000 (152,500) to the victim's daughter and sister, as well as court costs.

Last Friday, Kukucova told the Ciudad de la Justica court in Malaga that Bush had threatened her with a gun.

"The gun just went off. I only wanted to break free from his grasp," she said.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. 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The jury heard how the businessman had returned unexpectedly early from the UK to his home with his new girlfriend, Maria Korotaeva, to find Kukucova in his Costa del Sol home. Mr Bush and Kukucova had broken up about a month before the killing after a relationship of more than two years.

Kukucova said she was simply collecting her belongings but prosecutors argued she had "an unmistakable desire to end Andrew Bush's life". When he saw Kukucova was there, Mr Bush told Korotaeva to go outside.

In a seven-page report filed when charges were brought against her in December, prosecutor Jose Antonio Nieblas said: "The accused...at a certain point in a row they were having, made a sudden and unexpected use of the .38 special-model Amadeo Rossi revolver that she was carrying.

"She shot Andrew Bush three times, the first shot hitting in the arm and the other two in the head.

"Andrew Bush had no chance to react or to defend himself."

Slovakian model Mayka Marica Kukucova is escorted by the police from the Regional Court in Trencin, Slovakia (EPA)

The prosecutors said she placed the revolver in Mr Bush's had before telling Ms Korataeva to get out of Mr Bush's Hummer and using the car to flee the scene.

She fled to Slovakia, but turned herself in to police four days after the killing. She was extradited to Spain a month later.

Additional reporting by Associated Press
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The first official refugee camp in Paris is to open within weeks to house hundreds of destitute asylum seekers in the French capital.

Anne Hidalgo, the citys mayor, said the site would conform to United Nations regulations and offer respite to migrants.

We have identified several sites in the north of Paris in which we can create a centreconforming to UN conditions, she told a press conference.

I hope that it will provide both a day care centre to assess peoples situation and also a site that allows the accommodation of those arriving destitute.

 Moment huge ship full of refugees capsizes

The precise location of the camp has not yet been announced but Ms Hidalgo said it is expected to open within six weeks.

She said she was inspired by work at Grande-Synthe in Dunkirk on Frances northern coast, where the countrys first internationally recognised refugee camp opened earlier this year.

Wooden cabins have been built there to house up to 2,500 people, many of whom are attempting to reach the UK, along with thousands of other asylum seekers to the west in the Calais Jungle.

Ms Hidalgo said the structure would be built quickly but with all necessary comfort for families, including some of whom are already sleeping rough in Paris subways and parks such as Les Jardins dEole.

Her announcement came as thousands of asylum seekers continued to arrive in Europe over the Central Mediterranean following efforts to close the smuggling route over the Aegean Sea with the controversial EU-Turkey deal.

A string of boat disasters in the Mediterranean has put 2016 on course to be the deadliest ever year for refugees, with at least 880 migrants believed to have died last week alone.

Calais and Dunkirk camps Show all 16 1 /16 Calais and Dunkirk camps Calais and Dunkirk camps (Photo: Alan Schaller) Calais and Dunkirk camps A portrait of an Afghan man wearing a traditional Perhan Turban in the Calais Jungle (Photo: Emily Garthwaite) Calais and Dunkirk camps Two Gendarmes guard the main entrance to the Dunkirk camp (Photo: Emily Garthwaite) Calais and Dunkirk camps One Kurdish Iraqi mans reminder to himself (Photo: Alan Schaller) Calais and Dunkirk camps Two young boys in the Dunkirk camp (Photo: Alan Schaller) Calais and Dunkirk camps An Iranian hunger striker stands outside the only remaining shelter in the South Side of the Calais camp (Photo: Emily Garthwaite) Calais and Dunkirk camps A church in the South Calais camp, on of the the only structures not demolished in the South Side of the camp (Photo: Emily Garthwaite) Calais and Dunkirk camps A man gets a hair cut in the Calais camp (Photo: Alan Schaller) Calais and Dunkirk camps Night falls on the Calais Jungle. Fires burn in the distance (Photo: Alan Schaller) Calais and Dunkirk camps The containers provided as alternative accommodation for the people in the camps (Photo: Alan Schaller) Calais and Dunkirk camps A young boy in the Dunkirk camp (Photo: Alan Schaller) Calais and Dunkirk camps A man listens to music inside one of the shipping containers (Photo: Emily Garthwaite) Calais and Dunkirk camps The awful living conditions in the Dunkirk camp (Photo: Alan Schaller) Calais and Dunkirk camps An Afghan man in the Calais camp (Photo: Emily Garthwaite) Calais and Dunkirk camps One of the Iranian hunger strikers (Photo: Alan Schaller) Calais and Dunkirk camps A family in their wooden shelter in the new Dunkirk camp (Photo: Alan Schaller)

Deaths are up more than a third compared to the same period last year, according to figures compiled by the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR).

Around 204,000 asylum seekers have arrived by sea in Europe so far this year  156,000 in Greece and 47,000 in Italy.

The closure of borders throughout the Western Balkans route formerly used to reach western Europe has left thousands of refugees trapped across the continent and refugees have also been killed attempting to cross the English Channel, either through the tunnel or by boarding ferries, rowing or even swimming.

An RNLI rescued 18 Albanian asylum seekers, including two children, and two British smugglers after their inflatable boat began to sink off the coast of Kent on Saturday night.

David Cameron has announced that Britain is to send a warship to the Mediterranean to combat people smuggling as EU operations continue.
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Iraqi government forces started arriving into the city of Fallujah early on Monday, but Isis showed that it can still hit back and by recapturing a small city further north on the Euphrates. Isis suicide bombers killed at least 24 people in a series of attacks in and around Baghdad.

Iraqi counter-terrorism troops, the most experienced soldiers in the Iraqi security forces, began moving into Fallujah from the south in the face of sniper and mortar fire.

They took one neighbourhood called Nuyamah and are at the entrance to another called Shuhada that is five miles from the centre of Fallujah, said a source in contact with people in the city.

The Iraqi government and the US are eager for regular military forces to be seen to be winning a victory at Fallujah, and not the Shia paramilitary movements that are allegedly under Iranian influence. But, for all the publicity given to clashes, there has so far been no heavy street fighting and casualties are still low.

In response to the assault on Fallujah, Isis lunched a surprise attack on the small city of Hit on Monday and were reported to have recaptured it.

 Iraqi army advances in Fallujah while ISIL launches suicide attacks

As frequently happens in the war in Iraq, the number of combatants was small, with 25 Isis fighters crossing the Euphrates, which runs through the centre of Hit, from districts they already held, to oust government forces on the other side with the assistance of sympathisers who had stayed behind when Isis lost the city earlier this year. Only one person was reported dead and three injured.

Isis suicide bombings directed against soft targets are proving more effective against police and civilians than they are against regular soldiers. In one attack a suicide bomber rammed a car filled with explosives into a checkpoint in the Shia Shaab district of Baghdad killing eight civilians and three soldiers. A second suicide car bomber blew himself up in a market in the town of Tarmiyah, 31 miles north of Baghdad, killing seven civilians and three policemen. The third attack was in Sadr City when a bomber on a motorcycle detonated explosives killing three people.
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A human catastrophe is looming in Fallujah as up to 50,000 civilians remain trapped in the Isis-held Iraqi city during a continuing government assault.

Families who have managed to escape said fighters from the so-called Islamic State had sealed exit points and shot anyone attempting to flee since the start of Operation Breaking Terrorism last week.

As well as using the trapped civilians as human shields against approaching Iraqi forces, Shia militias and coalition air strikes, there were reports of militants forcing families to move with Isis forces from one location to another.

Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who was the UK Special Envoy for Iraq from 2003 to 2004, told Radio 4s Today programme that renegades from Saddam Husseins Ba'ath Party and Sunni tribes were also present in Fallujah and would resist the governments offensive.

 Iraqi army advances in Fallujah while ISIL launches suicide attacks

Its bound to be a very destructive campaign, he said. Theres no way of re-taking Fallujah by the Iraqi security forces without serious harm to the civilian population.

Iraqi counter-terror forces started moving into the city in the early hours of Monday morning, mortar fire and with air support from the US-led coalition.

There have been no confirmed casualty figures, with both sides claiming to have killed dozens of enemy fighters but no official mention of civilian deaths.

Isis media channels have been sharing footage of destruction in residential areas, claiming to show children among those injured by US air strikes, while Iraqi television has shown images of families being evacuated by troops.

Displaced Iraqi children at a camp for displaced civlians in Amriyat al-Fallujah on 29 May (AFP/Getty Images)

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), which is working in displacement camps at Amiryiat Al Fallujah, has warned that there are few safe routes for evacuations as the city is attacked from three directions.

A human catastrophe is unfolding in Fallujah. Families are caught in the crossfire with no safe way out, said general secretary Jan Egeland.

Warring parties must guarantee civilians safe exit now, before its too late and more lives are lost.

Suad, who fled from a village on the outskirts of the city with her husband and her six children, told the NRC Isis militants had used them in battles.

When the attack on Fallujah started, Isis forced us to leave our homes and kept moving us from one damaged, deserted house to another, she said.

All the time we were exposed to the exchange of fire. On our last day the fighting became too fierce - they were shooting above our heads.

Families have trekked for hours under the cover of darkness, moving through fields and hiding in disused irrigation pipes, but women and children are among many believed to have been killed or flogged for attempting to escape.

A member of the Iraqi security forces fires artillery during clashes with Isis militants near Fallujah, Iraq, 29 May, 2016 (Reuters)

Conditions for those left inside Fallujah were described as dire, with a severe lack of food, clean drinking water and medicine, while relief supplies in Amiryiat Al Fallujah are also limited despite efforts by the United Nations, Muslim Aid and other organisations.

Caroline Gluck, from the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said several hundred families made their way out of Fallujah on Monday, while almost 3,200 people had already reached government displacement camps.

But it was a fraction of up to 50,000 civilians feared to remain trapped, with routes out of the city barred for civilians since December.

She said that stories of extreme desperation were emerging, with rocketing food prices of more than $40 for a kilo of flour forcing people to search rubbish and eat rotten food.

Since December, food has been in short supply, people are relying on expired rice and dried dates, and several starvation-related deaths have been reported, UNHCR spokesperson Melissa Fleming said.

The number of families whove escaped is still very small, given the tens of thousands of people still trapped in Fallujah.

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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Save the Children said the price of a single can of infant milk had hit 35 at times during the siege and that potatoes and sugar cost between ten to fifteen times more than normal, forcing families to eat soup made from grass or a handful of seeds.

Some residents have reportedly killed themselves, while parents are said to have drowned their children in the river or abandoned them because they could not feed them.

The UNHCR has also received reports of a dramatic increase in of executions of men and boys for refusing to fight for Isis and many people dying in air strikes or buried alive under the rubble of their homes.

Fallujah, lying around 40 miles west of Baghdad, was the first Iraqi city to be taken by Isis in its January 2014 offensive and is the groups largest stronghold in Iraq after Mosul.

The Sunni majority city has long been a centre of resistance against the Shia government and was bombed by Coalition forces during the Gulf War and invaded by American troops in 2003, becoming a focus for the ensuing resistance and insurgency.

A man walks in the rubble of damaged house in Fallujah, 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Baghdad (AP)

Battles continued on Tuesday morning as Iraqi forces repelled a four-hour attack by Isis in the southern Nuaimiya district.

Hundreds of militants have prepared for the assault with a warren of underground tunnels and are using snipers, vehicle bombs, IEDs and booby traps, while the group launches a string of suicide bombings aiming to sow discord and lower morality in Baghdad.

The Ministry of Defence says the RAF is assisting the Fallujah offensive with air strikes, hitting weapons stockpiles, tunnels and a mortar team last week.

The most recent air strikes documented by the US-led coalition included strikes on Isis tactical units, fighting positions, vehicles and bridges on Sunday.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is urging the Iraqi and government and its partners to make the protection of civilians paramount in operations to retake Fallujah.

A statement said: We call on all parties to the conflict to adhere strictly to international humanitarian law, including the principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution in the conduct of hostilities, and to ensure that civilians are permitted to leave areas where fighting may be taking place in dignity and safety, and that they can access humanitarian assistance.
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Isis is under attack in and around the last three big cities it holds in Iraq and Syria  Fallujah, Mosul and Raqqa. It is likely to lose these battles because its lightly armed if fanatical infantry, fighting from fixed positions, cannot withstand air strikes called in by specialised ground forces. They must choose between retreating and reverting to guerrilla war or suffering devastating losses.

It is two years since Isis launched itself on the world by capturing Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, though it had already taken Fallujah 40 miles west of Baghdad at the start of 2014. In its first campaigns, its ability to achieve surprise by using mobile columns of vehicles packed with experienced fighters was astonishingly effective.

It had developed these military techniques in the years of warfare that followed the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, first fighting the Americans and later the Iraqi army. Its menu of tactics combined ideological fanaticism with a high degree of expertise and rigorous training, and was distinguished by the mass use of suicide bombers, snipers, IEDs, booby traps and mortar teams.

Atrocities highly publicised through the internet terrified and demoralised opponents even before Isis fighters appeared and go a long way to explaining why an Iraqi army, far superior to Isis in numbers and equipment, broke up and fled when Isis attacked it in Mosul in 2014.

But these tactics no longer work as well as they once did. All the armies battling Isis are trained to eliminate suicide bombers before they get close enough to kill. Isis can still recruit young men  and occasionally women  willing to die, but these days they seldom inflict mass casualties among enemy soldiers as they used to do.

 Heavy clashes in Fallujah

Last weekend, six suicide bombers attacked the front line between Mosul and the Kurdish capital, but although they all died blowing themselves up or were killed before doing so, they only succeeded in wounding a single Kurdish Peshmerga. Like the Japanese Kamikaze pilots who attacked US and British ships in 1944-45, suicide bombers are achieving diminishing returns against better prepared defences.

Peshmerga advancing towards Mosul in the past few days are accompanied by excavators to dig trenches immediately in front of their forces as soon as possible so bombers cannot reach them with vehicles full of explosives. Unfortunately, suicide bomber are still able to slaughter civilians in great numbers by attacking undefended targets such as markets, pilgrimages, checkpoints and hospitals.

Kurdish Peshmerga forces move into Mufti village, east of Mosul, after it was recaptured from Isis earlier this week (EPA)

Isis is not the all-conquering military force it once was, but the war in Iraq and Syria is as much about politics as military success. At issue for all involved in the conflict in its present phase is not only the breaking Isis control of territory, but determining who will rule there in place of Isis.

So, if the Shia paramilitaries of the Hashd al-Shaabi, whom the US says are under Iranian influence, play the leading role in capturing Fallujah, this will help secure their long-term power and prestige in Iraq. It will be seen as a success for Iran rather than the US and its allies. Equally important in shaping the future political geography of the Middle East will be the relative roles of the Kurdish Peshmerga, Iraqi army and the US in driving Isis from Mosul or, in Syria, of the Syrian Kurds, their Arab allies, the US and the Syrian Army in taking Raqqa from Isis.

In pictures: The rise of Isis Show all 74 1 /74 In pictures: The rise of Isis In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Fighters of the Islamic State wave the group's flag from a damaged display of a government fighter jet following the battle for the Tabqa air base, in Raqqa, Syria AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Fighters from Islamic State group sit on their tank during a parade in Raqqa, Syria AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Fighters from the Islamic State group pray at the Tabqa air base after capturing it from the Syrian government in Raqqa, Syria AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Fighters from extremist Islamic State group parade in Raqqa, Syria AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis kidnapping A video uploaded to social networks shows men in underwear being marched barefoot along a desert road before being allegedly executed by Isis Getty Images In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis kidnapping Haruna Yukawa after his capture by Isis In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis kidnapping Khalinda Sharaf Ajour, a Yazidi, says two of her daughters were captured by Isis militants Washington Post In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Spokesperson for Isis Vice News via Youtube In pictures: The rise of Isis A pro-Isis leaflet A pro-Isis leaflet handed out on Oxford Street In London Ghaffar Hussain In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Isis Jihadists burn their passports In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis controls Syrian Aid A man collecting aid administered by Isis in Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis controls Syrian Aid A woman collecting aid administered by Isis in Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis controls Syrian Aid Local civilians queue for aid administered by Isis. Since it declared a caliphate the group has increasingly been delivering services such as healthcare, and distributing aid and free fuel In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces detain men suspected of being militants of the Isis group in Diyala province In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Mourners carry the coffin of a Shi'ite volunteer from the brigades of peace, who joined the Iraqi army and was killed during clashes with militants of the Isis group in Samarra, during his funeral in Najaf In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An Iraqi Shiite Turkmen family fleeing the violence in the Iraqi city of Tal Afar, west of Mosul, arrives at a refugee camp on the outskirts of Arbil, in Iraq's Kurdistan region In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi A photograph made from a video by the jihadist affiliated group Furqan Media via their twitter account allegedly showing Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi delivering a sermon during Friday prayers at a mosque in Mosul. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared an Islamist caliphate in the territory under the group's control in Iraq and Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Islamic extremists destroying mosques in Iraq Shiite's Al-Qubba Husseiniya mosque explodes in Mosul In pictures: The rise of Isis Islamic extremists destroying mosques in Iraq Smoke and debris go up in the air as Shiite's Al-Qubba Husseiniya mosque explodes in Mosul. Images posted online show that Islamic extremists have destroyed at least 10 ancient shrines and Shiite mosques in territory - the city of Mosul and the town of Tal Afar - they have seized in northern Iraq in recent weeks In pictures: The rise of Isis Islamic extremists destroying mosques in Iraq A bulldozer destroys Sunni's Ahmed al-Rifai shrine and tomb in Mahlabiya district outside of Tal Afar In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces celebrate after clashes with followers of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi, in front of his home in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces arrest a follower of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi after clashes with his followers in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces arrest a follower of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi at his home after clashes with his followers in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces arrest a follower of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi after clashes with his followers in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis A vehicle burns in front of a home of a follower of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi after clashes with his followers in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An Iraqi woman holds her exhausted son as over 1000 Iraqis who have fled fighting in and around the city of Mosul and Tal Afar wait at a Kurdish checkpoint in the hopes of entering a temporary displacement camp in Khazair In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees Displaced Iraqi women hold pots as they queue to receive food during the first day of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, at an encampment for displaced Iraqis who fled from Mosul and other towns, in the Khazer area outside Irbil, north Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria A militant Islamist fighter waving a flag, cheers as he takes part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa. The fighters held the parade to celebrate their declaration of an Islamic "caliphate" after the group captured territory in neighbouring Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters wave flags as they take part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province Reuters In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters travel in a vehicle as they take part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Fighters from the Isis group during a parade with a missile in Raqqa, Syria. Militants from an al-Qaida splinter group held a military parade in their stronghold in northeastern Syria, displaying U.S.-made Humvees, heavy machine guns, and missiles captured from the Iraqi army for the first time since taking over large parts of the Iraq-Syria border In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters during a parade in Raqqa, Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Fighters from the Isis group during a parade in Raqqa, Syria. Militants from the splinter group held a military parade in their stronghold in northeastern Syria, displaying U.S.-made Humvees, heavy machine guns, and missiles captured from the Iraqi army for the first time since taking over large parts of the Iraq-Syria border In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters hold a military parade in their stronghold in northeastern Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters during a parade in Raqqa, Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria A member loyal to the Isis waves an Isis flag in Raqqa In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi anti-government gunmen from Sunni tribes in the western Anbar province march during a protest in Ramadi, west of Baghdad. The United Nations warned that Iraq is at a "crossroads" and appealed for restraint, as a bloody four-day wave of violence killed 195 people. The violence is the deadliest so far linked to demonstrations that broke out in Sunni areas of the Shiite-majority country more than four months ago, raising fears of a return to all-out sectarian conflict In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces hold up a flag of the Isis group they captured during an operation to regain control of Dallah Abbas north of Baqouba, the capital of Iraq's Diyala province, 35 miles (60 kilometers) northeast of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Iraq Isis fighters parade in the northern city of Mosul In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Volunteers, who have joined the Iraqi army to fight against the predominantly Sunni militants from the radical Isis group, demonstrate their skills during a graduation ceremony after completing their field training in Najaf In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Kurdish Peshmerga troops fire a cannon during clashes with militants of the Isis group in Jalawla, Diyala province In pictures: The rise of Isis Lieutenant General Qassem Atta speaks during a press conference Iraqi Prime Minister's security spokesman, Lieutenant General Qassem Atta speaks during a press conference about the latest military development in Iraq, in the capital Baghdad. Iraqi forces pressed a campaign to retake militant-held Tikrit, clashing with jihadist-led Sunni militants nearby and pounding positions inside the city with air strikes in their biggest counter-offensive so far In pictures: The rise of Isis A police station building destroyed by Isis fighters An exterior view of a police station building destroyed by gunmen in Mosul city, northern Iraq. Iraq's new parliament is expected to convene to start the process of setting up a new government, despite deepening political rifts and an ongoing Islamist-led insurgency. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani issued a decree inviting the new House of Representatives to meet and form a new government In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Iraq Smoke billows from an area controlled by the Isis between the Iraqi towns of Naojul and Tuz Khurmatu, both located north of the capital Baghdad, as Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces take part in an operation to repel the Sunni militants In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An elderly Iraqi woman is helped into a temporary displacement camp for Iraqis caught-up in the fighting in and around the city of Mosul in Khazair In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An Iraqi Christian woman fleeing the violence in the village of Qaraqush, about 30 kms east of the northern province of Nineveh, cries upon her arrival at a community center in the Kurdish city of Arbil in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An Iraqi woman, who fled with her family from the northern city of Mosul, prays with a copy of the Quran AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Iraq The body of an Isis militant killed during clashes with Iraqi security forces on the outskirts of the city of Samarra Reuters In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi civilians inspect the damage at a market after an air strike by the Iraqi army in central Mosul EPA In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Members of the Al-Abbas brigades, who volunteered to protect the Shiite Muslim holy sites in Karbala against Sunni militants fighting the Baghdad government, parade in the streets of the city AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Shia tribesmen gather in Baghdad to take up arms against Sunni insurgents marching on the capital. Thousands have volunteered to bolster defences AFP/Getty In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis A van carrying volunteers joining Iraqi security forces against Jihadist militants. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced the Iraqi government would arm and equip civilians who volunteered to fight AFP/Getty In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Fighters of the Isis group parade in a commandeered Iraqi security forces armored vehicle down a main road at the northern city of Mosul In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq An Islamist fighter, identified as Abu Muthanna al-Yemeni from Britain (R), speaks in this still image taken undated video shot at an unknown location and uploaded to a social media website. Five Islamist fighters identified as Australian and British nationals have called on Muslims to join the wars in Syria and Iraq, in the new video released by the Isis In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Al-Qaida inspired militants stand with captured Iraqi Army Humvee at a checkpoint belonging to Iraqi Army outside Beiji refinery some 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Baghdad. The fighting at Beiji comes as Iraq has asked the U.S. for airstrikes targeting the militants from the Isis group. While U.S. President Barack Obama has not fully ruled out the possibility of launching airstrikes, such action is not imminent in part because intelligence agencies have been unable to identify clear targets on the ground, officials said In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants attacked Iraq's main oil refinein Baiji as they pressed an offensive that has seen them capture swathes of territory, a manager and a refinery employee said In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants from the Isis group parading with their weapons in the northern city of Baiji in the in Salaheddin province In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq A smoke rises after an attack by Isis militants on the country's largest oil refinery in Beiji, some 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of the capital, Baghdad. Iraqi security forces battled insurgents targeting the country's main oil refinery and said they regained partial control of a city near the Syrian border, trying to blunt an offensive by Sunni militants who diplomats fear may have also seized some 100 foreign workers In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants of the Isis group stand next to captured vehicles left behind by Iraqi security forces at an unknown location in the Salaheddin province. For militant groups, the fight over public perception can be even more important than actual combat, turning military losses into propaganda victories and battlefield successes into powerful tools to build support for the cause In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq An injured fighter (C) from the Isis group after a battle with Iraqi soldiers at an undisclosed location near the border between Syria and Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Fighters from the Isis aiming at advancing Iraqi troops at an undisclosed location near the border between Syria and Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Fighters from the Isis group taking position at an undisclosed location near the border between Syria and Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Fighters from the Isis group inspecting vehicles of the Iraqi army after they were seized at an undisclosed location near the border between Syria and Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq One Iraqi captive, a corporal, is reluctant to say the slogan, and has to be shouted at repeatedly before he obeys Sky News In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Iraqi captives held by the extremists Sky News In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Iraqi captives held by the extremists Sky News In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants of the Isis group force captured Iraqi security forces members to the transport In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants of the Isis group transporting dozens of captured Iraqi security forces members to an unknown location in the Salaheddin province ahead of executing them In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq A major offensive spearheaded by Isis but also involving supporters of executed dictator Saddam Hussein has overrun all of one province and chunks of three others In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants of the Isis group executing dozens of captured Iraqi security forces members at an unknown location in the Salaheddin province In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Isis militants taking position at a Iraqi border post on the Syrian-Iraqi border between the Iraqi Nineveh province and the Syrian town of Al-Hasakah In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Isis rebels show their flag after seizing an army post AFP/Getty Images In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Isis militants waving an Islamist flag after the seizure of an Iraqi army checkpoint in Salahuddin Getty Images In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Demonstrators chant slogans as they carry al-Qaida flags in front of the provincial government headquarters in Mosul, 225 miles (360 kilometers) northwest of Baghdad. In the week since it captured Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, a Muslim extremist group has tried to win over residents and has stopped short of widely enforcing its strict brand of Islamic law, residents say. Churches remain unharmed and street cleaners are back at work

It all depends on who liberates Fallujah, how it is liberated and when it is liberated, says Fuad Hussein, chief of staff to the Kurdish President Massoud Barzani, in an interview with The Independent. He believes that the balance of power has shifted decisively against Isis compared with a year ago, but warns that nobody should imagine that the fall of Isis will bring peace and stability to the region.

He notes that Isis is suffering defeats but has also shown great powers of revival and reorganisation, citing as an example a recent attack by 400 Isis fighters and 20 armoured vehicles in which they penetrated the Peshmerga front line at an abandoned Christian village called Teleskof, 14 miles north of Mosul. What is different today compared with a year ago is that they were not able to exploit their local success before they came under air attack and lost between 200 and 250 fighters.

Fuad Hussein, the Kurdish President's chief of staff (Getty)

Mr Hussein says that if the caliphate falls, Isis will transform from a terrorist state into a terrorist movement. It will be weakened by not having secure bases for training but it will not evaporate or be replaced by moderate Arab Sunni politicians who claim great influence on their own community and are well-financed by foreign powers.

In Syria, a more likely successor to Isis would be the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra, which has been growing in popularity among Sunni Arabs. Though ideologically similar to Isis in its Salafi-jihadi fundamentalist beliefs, Nusra is presenting itself as a less maniacal alternative to Isis and one that can probably count on a measure of support from Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

Sunni Arabs as a whole have every reason to feel under threat. The great majority of the five million Syrian refugees come from Sunni Arab opposition areas. In Iraq they were reduced to holding a few enclaves in Baghdad in the 2006-7 sectarian bloodbath  islands of fear in the words of a US diplomat the time, a description that now fits almost every Sunni population centre in the country.

The governor of Kirkuk, Najmaldin Karim, told The Independent that there were 500,000 Internally Displaced Iraqis (IDPs), mostly Sunni Arabs who have sought refuge in his province. He ticks off why they cannot go home: they are banned from Diyala province north-east of Baghdad for sectarian reasons by the authorities there, from mixed communities in Salahudin province though they can go to districts that are wholly Sunni while Anbar is still too dangerous.

It may be that the enemies of Isis are dividing the lions skin before checking that it is truly dead or close to dying. The territorial losses of Isis may look impressive on a small scale map of Iraq and Syria, but what is impressive when driving outside the borders of the caliphate is how big it remains.

It has the advantage that its enemies are wholly disunited and detest each other almost as much as they hate Isis, if not more so. Turkey has failed to close Isiss last access to the outside world west of the Euphrates and has prevented the Syrian Kurds doing so. Isis may be weakened, but its opponents are also fragile. The latest limited offensive by the Kurds to take back villages on the Nineveh Plain east of Mosul showed that these days they have the upper hand, but in reality the attack was delayed several days because some of the troops taking part had not been paid their salaries. The economy of the Kurdistan Regional Government area is in ruins.

An Isis fighter takes aim during battle with Iraqi forces near Fallujah (AP)

Isis is good at selecting vulnerable targets, in this case rebel groups backed by the US and Turkey in the north of Aleppo province who control the towns through which the rebel side of Aleppo used to be supplied. Isis fighters have been driving them backwards in recent days, gaining control over a larger section of the border and reinforcing their hold on the fertile and heavily populated countryside of north Aleppo province.

The Syrian army does not look as strong as it did when it was getting greater support from Russian air strikes and drove Isis out of Palmyra. Isis has been fighting back, capturing an important gas field and targeting civilians in cities famous for their loyalty to President Bashar al-Assad on Syrias Mediterranean coast.

 Iraqs fight against ISIL hampered by divisions

In both Iraq and Syria, Isis is responding to military pressure by the mass slaughter of civilians, killing some 148 and injuring in the Syrian coastal cities of Tartus and Jableh and another 198 in a week of bombings in Baghdad. The purpose of these massacres is to show that Isis has not lost its strength and can still strike anywhere, while at the same time hoping to force Syrian and Iraqi regular forces to leave the front line to defend their civilian populations. It is an effective strategy that has generally worked in the past.

One of the many problems about ending the war is that many of the players have an interest in seeing it continue. Why, for instance, are there offensives against Isis by the Kurdish authorities and the Baghdad government this week? There are many reasons, but one important motive is that President Barzani and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi are presenting themselves as fighting Isis whole their local political opponents are demanding reform of corrupt and dysfunctional governments. The main reason people here in Kurdistan are quiet and not protesting about the collapse of the economy and in their standard of living is that they are afraid of Daesh [Isis], said a Kurdish businessman this week. President Assad benefits from having an enemy so monstrous as to rule it out as an alternative to himself and therefore secure him in power. Isis is a very convenient enemy for many of those fighting it, which may be one reason why it is so difficult to defeat.

Patrick Cockburn is the author of Chaos and Caliphate: Jihadis and the West in the Struggle for the Middle East', published by OR Books, 18. Readers can obtain a 15 per cent discount by using the code: INDEPENDENT
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Three members of the Kuwaiti royal family have been handed five year prison sentences for insulting judges over WhatsApp.

Among the three royals is Athbi al-Fahad Al Sabah, the former head of Kuwaits National Security Office and the nephew of the countrys current ruler.

The royals were sentenced on Monday alongside four other co-defendants who had been accused of insulting Kuwaits Emir Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmed Al Jaber Al Sabah. Phone logs of WhatsApp messages obtained by the court show the defendants planning to publish anonymous Twitter posts sharing fabricated videos of judges receiving bribes, a 122-page ruling seen by the Associated Press stated.

Three of the other four defendants were sentenced to five years in prison, while one person was sentenced to 10 years. All defendants are able to appeal.

In 2013 a female teacher was sentenced to 11 years in jail for insulting the Emir on Twitter.

Sources close to the case said at the time that Huda al-Amji, 37, had been given two consecutive five year sentences for insulting the Emir and one year for insulting a religious sect.
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Around mid-point along the volcanic arc of Caribbean islands that stretches from Florida to Venezuela, lies the largely forgotten nation of Sint Eustatius. Today it is overshadowed by neighbouring St Kitts, Antigua and the Virgin Islands, but this tiny island of just over 8.1 square miles once played a disproportionately large role in the fate of both Europe and the newborn United States of America.

While many people are unfamiliar with Sint Eustatius, a special municipality of the Netherlands more commonly known as Statia, those who have heard of it tell me, theres nothing to do there. Its small  youll get bored within a day. I take this as a challenge.

Its riches are first suggested to me while Im pulling on my hiking shoes to climb the Quill, Statias dormant volcano that dominates the islands skyline. Theres treasure in the crater, you know, says my host Win Piechutzski. What kind? I ask. Valuables the Dutch landowners hid in caves when they knew the English were coming. He replies with just a hint of a glare.

Statia certainly carries great promise of treasure through its history of wealth and conflict. With little rain or land to support plantations, it became a trading post for goods, raw materials and slaves between the Americas, Africa and Europe in the late 17th century and was at one time the worlds busiest seaport. The island became phenomenally wealthy and European nations, principally the Dutch, British and French, vied regularly for control of it. It has changed hands 22 times throughout its history.

My initial ascent of the Quill is through rather uninspiring scrub and dry woodland. Statias population boom to over 12,000 people at the height of its wealth in the 18th and early 19th centuries (it is now just over 3,000) forced landowners to clear far up the slopes, destroying the biodiversity. But when I reach the rim and look down into the crater, its a dramatically different landscape; the interior is swathed in dense forest.

After scrambling down the steep path to the bottom of the crater a broad path appears, leading me past giant ficus trees that spread their tentacle-like roots across the forest floor. Their leaves create a high canopy that, with the stillness of the air, creates a church-like feel. I follow the path around the inside of the crater, lit by an ethereal green light as the tropical midday sun filters through the leaves. To either side of the path is impenetrable undergrowth  its no wonder the treasure remains hidden.

That afternoon I explore Statias only town and capital, Oranjestad, in the company of the islands director of monuments, Walter Hellebrand. Our first stop is Fort Oranje, where he tells me Statias best-known story. In 1774 the British had become increasingly annoyed with Statias role in supplying the restive states in North America with munitions. They encouraged the Dutch West Indies Company to ban the trade, which they duly did. Statia, however, ignored them.

Fort Oranje was the first to recognise a United States vessel (Shutterstock)

This is the period when the economy of Statia really went crazy, says Hellebrand. We supplied the American revolution with everything it needed, from cloth to guns. The final straw for Britain came on 16 November 1776, when a naval vessel flying the flag of the newly declared United States of America arrived in Statias port and fired an official salute to greet the Dutch flag.

The Commander of the fort asked Statias governor, Johannes de Graaff, what he should do. says Hellebrand. The governor ordered that he should salute in return. This was the first formal acknowledgement of American independence by a sovereign nation.

Plaques adorn Fort Oranje, now a peaceful viewpoint sheltered by a large mango tree. They tell of visits by The Daughters of the American Revolution and even President Roosevelt, who the airport is named after, to thank Sint Eustatius for its role in the birth of their nation.

After a little pressing however, Hellebrand admits that governor De Graaff had no idea what flag he was looking at and had ordered the salute to hide his ignorance.

The largely stone-paved streets of Oranjestad are lined with small gingerbread-fringed houses dating from as early as the 17th century and interspersed with reminders of the islands former wealth; a ruined synagogue, large churches surrounded by imposing tombs of long-dead European noblemen.

I ask Hellebrand about the treasure in the Quill. A thorough historian, he is unable to let a good story get in the way of the truth. There is absolutely no evidence that anybody buried treasure in the Quill, Hellebrand says ruefully, But it does have a hidden past that for me is more interesting than buried treasure.

The Quill was supposed to provide slaves with an escape route (Amy Dean)

From at least the late 1700s he continues, there are reports of slaves running away and hiding in the crater of the Quill. Once there, they would chop down one of the big trees and carve out a canoe. When the canoe was ready, the runaway slaves would wait until night and then drag it up the inside of the crater, down the other side and escape to British-owned St Kitts, where slavery had already been abolished.

Stories of treasure on Statia are not entirely apocryphal however. Divers are drawn to the island by its large number of shipwrecks. The most sought-after prize is one of the islands renowned blue beads, which were principally used to barter for slaves in the 17th century. Legend has it that once you find a bead beneath the waves, you belong to Statia and are destined to visit the island time and again.

I found no bead, or indeed any other kind of treasure during my visit, but Statia itself proved rare and remarkable. Unlike many caribbean towns, all of Oranjestads historic buildings are lived or worked in by ordinary Statians, and its rare to bump into another tourist on the island.

Since the recent tourist surge in Cuba after the islands thawing of relations with the US, Sint Eustatius is now one of only a handful of Caribbean islands that remains untouched by mass tourism. Despite its size, it has enough history, nature and underwater adventure to satisfy any independent traveller looking to find the real Caribbean. Far from being bored within a day, I extended my stay and left with the firm resolve to return, blue bead or none.

Travel essentials

Getting there

Sint Eustatius can be accessed from St Martin on Win Air (fly-winair.sx). KLM (0871 231 0000; klm.com) flies to St Martin from a range of UK airports via Amsterdam.

Staying there

Accommodation is sparse on Statia. The writer stayed at Kings Well Resort, which is within easy walking distance of Oranjestads centre. Doubles start at US$120 (82) per night including breakfast (kingswellstatia.com).

More information

statiatourism.com
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A new airline launching a direct route not served by any other airline out of London is pretty newsworthy stuff. But multiply that by a factor of two, sprinkle in a crowdfunded launch proposition and a generous dose of philanthropy  the airline has committed to donating 51 per cent of its profits to funding social projects  and you have "POP", a new low-cost airline that plans to rev up its engines for flights out of Stansted before the end of the year.

On Sunday, the airline hosted a launch party at The Indian High Commission in Nehru House, in London's Mayfair, attended by a spectrum of dignitaries, including Lord Loomba CBE.

POP's launch destinations are Amritsar (Punjab) and Ahmedabad (Gujarat), two of India's key "secondary cities", and part of the airline's plans to "provide air services between the extensive Indian communities in the UK and South Asia" says the airline, catering for a mix of VFR (visiting friends and family), leisure tourism and business passengers. Hitherto, travel to these destinations from the UK meant lengthy road journeys or connecting with regional flights upon arrival at India's bigger hub airports.

The airline will serve the city of Amritsar

So why "POP"? Low-cost airlines seem to have a soft spot for snappy, one-syllable names, such as "Scoot", "HOP!", "WOW", "UP"  well, you get the picture. But POP is an acronym for "People Over Profit", the airline's mantra. "We are committed to putting People Over Profit  POP! Its all in the name" says the airline.

Just over half of the airline's profits will be allocated to charities in the UK and India, and passengers will be able to select beneficiaries during the flight-booking process. Initially these will channel through the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), though the airline says it may establish a dedicated charitable foundation in due course.

As for the actual inflight product and experience, POP's routes will be served by a 378-seat Airbus A330-300 operating on a weekly schedule. Stansted, owned by Manchester Airport Group (MAG), from whence the flights will depart, should prove a popular setting off point for POP's flights as the airport recently implemented an 80 million makeover of its international departures lounge.

The POP ticket price, the airline says, will include 46kg of checked luggage, a choice of basic snacks and hot drinks and water, seat selection, as well as magazines and newspapers (both in Indian and English languages).

On board, POP's aircraft will be equipped with wi-fi, and although an all-economy seating layout is planned, passengers will be able to purchase a range of optional extras, including extra legroom, an extended range of snacks and meals, a bar service (including alcoholic drinks), duty-free items, as well as headphones. Pre-flight options include airport lounge access and priority boarding.

Crowdfunding is the path POP has chosen to raise start-up funds  in association with Trillion Fund Ltd  commencing in early June and running for 60 days, intended to raise 5m through the pre-sale of "Gold Passes", priced at 500 each, "to supporters who are attracted by a different kind of rewards package". The first 10,000 Gold Pass holders will "win one free off-peak return seat to any POP destination" and will be entitled to a range of other VIP benefits for a five year duration, including extra baggage allowance, fast-track departure, free on-board meals, free Wi-Fi, as well as a first look (via text/email) at next seasons fares, a minimum of 24 hours before public release .

At Sunday's launch party, POP's Chairman and Principal of POP, Navdip Singh Judge  aka Nino  and the airline's fellow directors presented the strategy, sales, marketing, CSR, and operational aspects of the airline's plans.

Revealing POP's holistic approach to combining a much-needed direct service to Amritsar and Ahmedabad with an ethical approach to business, Chairman Navdip Singh Judge said "My vision is to create an airline that, unlike any other before it, serves not just the passengers travelling between the UK and the developing world but, just as importantly, delivers tangible benefits to the communities they are visiting. POP will provide an Enhanced-Value in the air and in the community.

Paul Sillers is a freelance aero-industry writer focusing on design, technology, user-experience and brand strategy
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Suddenly, silently, and at times violently, ecstasy is back. The 2016 European Drug Report, released yesterday, headlined on a very significant surge in usage of psychoactive 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine, better known as MDMA, itself better known as ecstasy. The European monitoring centre for drugs, based in Lisbon, estimated that 2.1 million people aged between 15 and 34 used ecstasy in the past year, 300,000 higher than the estimate for 2015.

The findings will alarm for two further reasons: first, because ecstasy usage had previously been falling since its mid-2000s peak; and second, because the purity of the ecstasy now being taken in dance clubs, bars and living rooms across the continent has a much higher level of purity than in earlier years.

Nine out of 12 countries report higher estimates of ecstasy consumption in the past year, with Britain achieving, as it were, the second highest level of use. An estimated 3.5 per cent of young adults say theyve taken it in the past year alone (second only to the Netherlands, where 5.5 per cent of adults have taken it). This, of course, is based only on those who have confessed. Many more, doubtless including some who readers of The Independent know well, will have tried it but refuse to admit it.

If ever evidence were needed that the alleged and misnamed "war on drugs" was a catastrophic failure, this would be it. Except we dont need further evidence, because we have a century of it to go on and yet still design policy as if none of that evidence were available to us. Since the passing of the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act in the US in 1914, hundreds of billions of dollars  trillions, by some estimates  have been spent fighting an enemy that cannot be defeated. In so doing, we have created infinitely more harm, horror, suffering and penury than if the war had not been fought in the first place.

It is wrong in principle to stop sentient adults doing what they want to with their bodies, unless they are harming others. This harm principle, which pre-dates John Stuart Mill, its most celebrated proponent, acts like a philosophical tripwire. But those 2.1 million people who took ecstasy were not, for the most part, harming others. They were, most often, dancing to heavy beats in a state of literal, if induced, ecstasy.

Many of them will have been free of the harmful consequences of their actions, if they are lucky not to belong to the impoverished, crime-ridden sections of society who bear the brunt of this idiot prohibition. The main consequence of the "war on drugs" is the conflation (often to astronomical levels) of the salaries of the gangsters, barons and mafia leaders who control supply of illegal drugs in our societies.

Their murderous manners are sponsored by every government stupid and cowardly enough to give them control of the supply chain. It is so blatantly obvious that the practical effects of mass criminalisation  not just in these narco-wars but in the mass incarceration of, in particular, young men  is so counter-productive to human flourishing that the only people who can support such a policy must be thought to have lost their minds.

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

More often, they have simply lost their balls instead  if they ever had any. The "war on drugs" never worked. Contrary to what some defenders of the status quo argue, it is not a war that was never fought, but one in which vast sums have been invested, and countless lives lost.

The latest figures on ecstasy usage across Europe show that the sooner we legalise drugs and regulate their consumption and quality, taking control away from organised criminals and into the hands of society, the sooner we will be able to stop pretending the stupidest policy in history is anything but a catastrophe.
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In politics, much like elsewhere but only more so, relationships are in a constant state of flux.

In 1984, 15 months after the Dujail Massacre for which the tyrant was later nominally hanged, Donald Rumsfeld appeared on the front page of the Baghdad Gazette shaking Saddams hand and praising him as a regional force for modernity. Sadly, as you recall, that friendship did not endure.

For more than a decade, meanwhile, Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson nurtured a psychotic reciprocal hatred  until the moment Brown needed Mandy to survive, and recalled him from Brussels to run the government on his behalf.

With that absurd moment branded forever on the memory, no political allegiance should have the power to shock. But however high ones tolerance level for the marriage of convenience, however blunted the tastebuds to the acidic flavour of rank opportunism, the defences were pierced on Monday when Londons Mayor and the Prime Minister launched themselves as a cross-party Remain double act.

Where years of transition are usually required for enmity to morph into a friendship, it was as recently as April that David Cameron smeared Sadiq Khan by association, at PMQs, as a sympathiser with Islamic extremists. It is very important we do not back these people and do not appear on platforms with these people, he said. I have to say I am concerned about Labours candidate for Mayor of London who has appeared again and again and again.

How quickly that genuine concern faded into equally sincere admiration. In the Prime Ministers infinitely supple mind, Aprils terrorism fellow traveller is reborn in May as a proud Muslim, a proud Briton with whom he is proud to share a platform in the cause of keeping us in the EU. Its a miracle, its a miracle!

Which of these two most deserves the metaphorical hiding for this joint appearance is less clear cut than one might assume. On first watching the footage, it is Cameron who clearly merits the slap. Within 50 days of sketching Khan as the Trojan Horse of Islamic extremism, he heaped honeyed words on his head with no hint of apology or even explanation for that previous depiction.

When the new Mayor tried a spot of self-parody, asking the crowd if it was aware of his fathers career, the PM chortled as if listening to Algonquin Round Tables Greatest Hits on a hidden earpiece while being force-fed newly illegal nitrous oxide and having the soles of his feet tickled. Had Khan recited the timetable from his old mans No 44 bus route, he would likely have yielded bodily function control. 11.26 Petergate. 11.30 Swandon Road. 11.33 Wandsworth Town Station  Oh, do stop, Cameron would have whimpered in an echo of Brian Johnstons Test Match Special giggling fit. Sadiquers, for heavens sake 

 Sadiq Khan on sharing platform with David Cameron

As for Camerons claim that being a stockbrokers son is less romantic than being that of a bus driver, well let that magisterially condescending idea pass to ask what Sadiq Khan was doing there. While it was one thing to share a platform with Cameron, to share it without any direct reference to the disgusting Tory mayoral campaign the PM so merrily endorsed was another. Im a stickler for good manners, but this was politeness gone mad.

What Khan thought he was doing, we might guess, was studiously playing the high-minded statesman, nobly suppressing any personal feelings in the interests of a higher cause. The true intent, we may also guess, was to bolster his embryonic credentials to succeed Jeremy Corbyn (with whom he is far less keen to share a platform, though that might well change if and when Corbo smears him as a suicide bomber manque).

What Khan was really doing by so overtly relishing this ego-massaging love-in was tacitly suggesting that race-baiting is nothing to fret about so long as its spouted during a campaign; that this kind of stuff  spouting vicious falsehoods they dont believe for short term tactical gain  is just what politicians do. If such stuff happens subliminally to endorse the deranged myth that most Muslims support terrorism, if it inflames false suspicion and plays straight into the hands of active racists, so be it. Its all a big game. Even if they kicked lumps out of each other on the park, once the final whistle blows, the rivals shake hands and head off for a pint, and sod the collateral damage.

Sadiq Khan's 5 most significant policies Show all 5 1 /5 Sadiq Khan's 5 most significant policies Sadiq Khan's 5 most significant policies Tackle the housing crisis Khans key policy is an ambitious target to make 50 per cent of all new homes being genuinely affordable, and improving conditions for people renting Getty Images Sadiq Khan's 5 most significant policies Freeze transport fares Khan says he will 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. He claims Londoners wont pay a penny more for their travel in 2020 than they do today Getty Images Sadiq Khan's 5 most significant policies Make London safer Resore neighbourhood policing, tackle gangs and knife crime, and a new plan to tackle the spread of extremism, and a review of the resourcing of our fire service Getty Images Sadiq Khan's 5 most significant policies Restore London's air quality Pedestrianise Oxford Street and prioritise measures to improve Londons air quality Getty Images Sadiq Khan's 5 most significant policies Make cycling and walking safer More segregated cycle routes with a promise to spend money improving dangerous junctions Getty Images

There is plenty to like about Khan beyond the pure joy of having seen a Muslim win a prestigious election in defiance of such an odious Tory campaign. But on behalf of all victims of vicious anti-Muslim sentiment  whether himself or a young Asian teen being chased down a Bradford alley by morons screaming Paki  he had a responsibility to avoid such a smugly amnesiac show of pleasure at the grandeur of the company he now keeps.

On the basis that Cameron long since exhausted his capacity to surprise with the range and glibness of his hypocrisy, it is not the PM but Khan whose presence on Monday was the more disappointing. If his intention was to present himself as a freshly minted, post-New Labour political leader, the naked cynicism of this foolish alliance achieved precisely the opposite result.
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As it appears that the Scots are more likely than the English to vote to remain in the European Union, surely it is possible that, in a close result, a majority to remain could be dependent on the Scottish vote.

If this were to happen, we could anticipate a new drive for a referendum on Scottish independence, not from the Scots themselves but from the frustrated English Brexiteers, who, if successful, would then call for another referendum on membership of the EU. You never know!

Grant Serpell

Maidenhead

Berks

In response to Crystal Dickinson, who intends to toss a coin to decide how to vote on 23 June because the information from both sides makes it impossible to make a rational decision. I absolutely agre with you, but I have found a solution: spend a while reading about two countries who are outside the EU, namely Switzerland and Norway, and if that doesn't make you vote Leave, I'll eat my hat.

Roger Wilson

Hayling Island

Hampshire

The hubbub of the EU referendum debate murmurs on and we're hearing the same arguments recycled over and over, and frankly it's starting to turn people off.

So perhaps it's time to explore some alternative angles to pipe up some interest. I've given some thought to International Development and Aid and I wondered why it hasn't come under more scrutiny. After all, many believe that our own International Aid budget, pegged at 0.7 per cent of GDP, is bloated and wasteful.

Other European nations similarly spend huge sums of money on their aid budgets on projects in Africa, and in other poor countries, but let's focus on Africa for a moment.

In reality, isn't part of the reason that we spend all this money on aid because the EU massively restricts trade with Africa? We have to prop them up with aid because we kick them down on trade.

As we've seen time and time again all over the globe, from the industrial revolution to the more recent development of Singapore and South Korea, the best way  arguably the only way  to lift people out of abject poverty is to build a strong economy.

Yet the EU trading tariffs apply to African nations, as many aren't in a strong economic position to negotiate a trade deal as we would be, and this makes it incredibly hard for African businesses to export to us. As if they didn't have a hard enough time already, the EU stifles African growth by applying tariffs to their exports, which can in some cases be punitive.

If there were no EU we, and other nations of Europe, would be free to strike trade deals with African countries to encourage free trade.

Rather than continue spending billions on wasted an inefficient projects, we should open up trade with Africa and help the continent to prosper.

It comes down to an age-old saying that I'm sure everyone will be familiar with: give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he can feed himself for a lifetime. Vote Brexit for Africa.

Tom Davies

Fareham

Hants

Staying in the EU would make my life so much easier, but I am very much in favour of Brexit.

I was too young to vote in the UK referendum in 1975 to withdraw from the European Community. In those days our political masters disingenuously sold us on the idea that it was purely a Common Market aimed at building a trading block that would safeguard our industry in an increasingly global market place. I was in favour. It seemed to make sense in so many ways.

I worked for years in a European institution and experienced first-hand the self-serving arrogance and undemocratic bullying that are fundamental to the European Commissions mentality and modus operandi. It was a salutary experience. Of course, there are some earnest and able people working in the EU bureaucracies, but they are cowed by a dictatorial management framework that owes much to both Kafka and Machiavelli. Challenges to existing procedures or highlighting policy failures are severely discouraged. Any whiff of dissent or complaint results in the threat that the offender will be ousted from their comfortable salaries and extensive perks.

There is an argument often trotted out that the UK can influence positively the direction of the EU. Qualified majority voting and the political, historical and cultural complexion of the 28 member states show this to be a hollow boast. Even in the days of national veto, whenever a major European Commission initiative was blocked, a coterie of member states was able to sign a separate agreement and to shoehorn it into the acquis (the Schengen Treaty, for instance). Will such manoeuvring cease because the UK votes Remain? What happened when the people of Ireland voted against the Lisbon Treaty and earlier the Treaty of Amsterdam? What happened when the French and Dutch voted against the EU constitution? The British people were never given the option to vote on these milestones towards EU integration, but whenever there has been a negative response to EU ambition, it is an established tactic to continue asking the question until the desired response has been received.

The referendum debate should not be based on what might happen after a Brexit, but should concentrate on the experience and political trends that are already well established. There are many countries in the world that are thriving outside of the EU. Their citizens seem to be able to travel in Europe inconvenience. Their industries seem to progress and businesses profit despite operating beyond the hallowed single European market. Does the Remain campaign actually mean to imply that such countries are more capable, better managed and better led than is possible in the United Kingdom?

This is no rant from a Little Englander. Apart from living and working extensively in several EU countries, I am resident in continental Europe and married to someone from another member state. I still work in association with the EU (I have no choice because of the EUs monopoly position in my business area) and were I to be identified as deviating in any way from the EU hive mind, I would instantly lose my livelihood. For this reason, I feel I have no alternative, but to conceal my identity.

Brexit will significantly complicate my life, but I am convinced that leaving the EU is by far and away in the best interests of the British people and of democracy.

Ivor Veuw (a pseudonym)

Address supplied

The unbearable cruelty of humans

We'll never know what would have happened if Cincinnati Zoo hadn't shot Harambe the gorilla, but we do know that if he hadn't been locked up to serve as a high-earning living exhibit, this incident would never have occurred. Zoos put the con in "conservation" by hoodwinking the public into believing that something meaningful is being done for these animals, when the salvation of endangered species lies in habitat conservation, not a life spent behind bars. The message everyone should take away from this story is simple: don't give zoos your money, and eventually, they'll have to stop imprisoning  and killing  animals.

Jennifer White

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

London

I was so upset by the report about poachers using cyanide to kill elephants, I shed tears of fury and hopelessness. How can humans hope to live on this earth for very much longer if this is how nature and wildlife are treated?

Lynne Clark

Tunbridge Wells

And where did you school?

There is no need to ask if someone went to Eton: if they don't tell you, their wives do.

Angela Polsen-Emy

Birmingham
Campaigners say too many young people are leaving prison no better equipped for life outside than when they went in

Almost one-third of prisoners who are locked up 23 hours a day are aged 18-24, campaigners have revealed.

The Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice said there is no reason the state cannot halve the number of young people being sent to jail and put into severe confinement, many out of fear for their own safety.

Its research showed 18-24-year-olds make up about 12% of the country's population but a quarter of those sent to prison each year.

Statistics for January from the Irish Prison Service showed that 17 young adults were on extended lock-up with only one hour a day out of their cells. They make up almost one-third of the total on this restrictive regime.

Another 75 were on 21 hours lock-up and 12 on 22 hours lock-up.

Fr Peter McVerry, homeless and addiction campaigner who visits Mountjoy and Wheatfield prisons each week, said: "Most young people in prison have left school early, have no qualifications or skills, often poor literacy skills, no history of employment. Indeed they have been failed by all the systems in society.

"It should be a priority to ensure that their time in prison is used constructively, by equipping them for life outside prison through educational and skills training. Unfortunately, for many young people, they leave prison no more equipped for life than the day they entered prison."

Eoin Carroll, advocacy officer in the Jesuit Centre and lead researcher, said Ireland should follow the example of other countries and ask Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Katherine Zappone to take responsibility for 18-24-year-old prisoners.

The Jesuits' report also called for young adults to be imprisoned separately from older inmates.

It warned that a disproportionate number of 18-24-year-olds are put in "basic" accommodation in jails for behavioural issues, leaving them with less access to family visits and telephone calls.

Statistics from the Irish Prison Service showed 9% of young adults in jails are imprisoned under this regime, compared to 2.6% of over 25s, leaving them with only one half-hour visit a week.

Joanne O'Riordan, a campaigner and activist on disability rights, said: "As a baby my parents brought me to Fort Mitchel Prison, since closed, on Spike Island in Cork. The prisoners there - mainly in their early 20's - decided to organise a fundraiser for my family," she said.

"When my parents heard, they wanted to personally thank them. I spent a day playing with them in the prison. Such a gesture, prisoners raising money for someone, really challenges our perception about people in prison as being just bad."
In the first in a series of special Brexit podcasts brought to you by Independent.ie, INM Group Business Editor, Dearbhail McDonald, looks at the political ramifications of what a #VoteLeave result would look like.

Joined by Eoghan Murphy, Fine Gaels Junior Finance Minister, economist Susan Hayes Culleton, John Downing, INM political columnist, and Liam Halligan, economist and Telegraph columnist who is voting Leave in the upcoming referendum, Dearbhail got both sides of the argument asking what the consequences would be for Ireland and across the rest of Europe.
The farm that was home to Peter Kingston's 1,000 head Cradenhill Herd is up for sale, reports Louise Hogan.

The 170ac dairy farm at Nohoval, Kinsale, Co Cork is for sale under the instructions of receivers David Swinburne and Kieran Wallace from KPMG.

The farm made headlines earlier this year after the Cork County Sheriff moved to sell the Cradenhill herd to recoup some of the 2.5m owed by the Kingstons to their main creditor, ACC.

The farm and herd were repossessed by ACC last December following a High Court order in respect of the unpaid loan.

Peter Kingston and his father George built up a pedigree herd of Holsteins on the farm outside of Kinsale. In 2006, he began a plan to expand to a 1,000-strong herd. The holding is in a highly sought after farming area in Co Cork.

The auctioneers, Cohalan Downing who are handling the sale, declined to comment on it. However, recent figures show that good quality land in the area has fetched at least 10,000/ac, with one small parcel of land reaching 23,000/ac a number of years ago.

The farm is in permanent pasture laid out in large-sized fields. It is equipped with central roadways and a modern shed extending to 100,000sqft, in addition to concrete aprons, milking parlour and accommodation.

A second sale of the pedigree herd was held after the Kingston family's bid to buy 500 cows at the first auction failed.

Mr Kingston said his father had cashed in his pension to pay for the animals but the funds did not clear in time. The family has described the sale of the herd as "heart-breaking".

The farm had fallen into disrepair by the time it was seized in December, with a number of animal welfare issues highlighted in a report and 1m later invested in the property by the Cork County Sheriff.

Peter Kingston dismissed the report as "ludicrous" and stated the farm was going well in the months before it was repossessed by the Sheriff.
Energy experts said this would more than wipe out price cuts due today from Electric Ireland.

THE energy regulator is proposing a massive rise in the levy imposed on household electricity bills to cover the cost of producing electricity from renewables, peat and to ensure security of supply.

The regulator has proposed that the so-called Public Service Obligation (PSO) levy go up by 32pc for households from October.

This would mean every household would end up paying 90 a year on the levy.

Energy experts said this would more than wipe out price cuts due today from Electric Ireland.

Bills for the 1.2 million Electric Ireland electricity customers are due to fall by 6pc from June 1, knocking 57 off the average bill.

The proposal comes days after a report found that electricity prices here are the third highest in the European Union.

The levy is currently 68 a year when value added tax (VAT) is included, according to Simon Moynihan of price comparison site Bonkers.ie.

The Commission for Energy Regulation said the reason for the proposed rise was the fact that wholesale energy prices are lower.

The regulator said: Lower wholesale price means that the payment to companies engaged in the PSO increases.

Wholesale gas prices in May were down 37pc compared with a year ago.

The other reason for the proposed hike in the levy is the fact that there is more electricity is being generated from renewables like wind and biomass.

The levy was put in place to subsidise the production of electricity from peat, renewables and to pay power plants to produce energy to ensure we have a steady supply to the network, what the regulator calls a security of supply.

Mr Moynihan said: The main reason seems to be the entry of peat burning power stations like Edenderry into REFIT (the Renewable Energy Feed-In Tariff) which is adding 150m to the PSO levy and more than offsetting plants like West Offaly and Lough Ree coming off the security of supply payments.

The regulator has called for submissions from the public on the proposed rise in the levy.
The Irish Uplands Forums community study has found slow internet and poor network coverage is hampering life for residents and business owners in mountainous areas. File photo

Businesses and communities in the uplands are being undermined by a "broadband apartheid", according to a new report.

The Irish Uplands Forum's (IUF) community study has found slow internet and poor network coverage is hampering life for residents and business owners in mountainous areas.

It also demonstrates that Government schemes to address issues are not working.

The lack of internet access and efficient mobile networks is threatening how groups in upland areas stay in touch and preserve natural landscapes.

Locals have described broadband in these areas as patchy.

It has also been highlighted as a key feature of the urban- rural divide that decimated Fine Gael in this year's election.

As part of the study, 25 upland community-based groups nationwide were profiled, with each expanding on issues and threats to livelihoods and living in upland regions.

"The 'broadband apartheid', as it was described in one group session, between rural and urban Ireland remains a significant structural obstacle restricting progress," says the report.

"Today, mobile phone and internet reception in virtually all upland areas is unpredictable," it adds.

More than a quarter (27pc) of the groups said they were formed to tackle a lack of local development, while half of the groups cited economic reasons and job creation as major challenges locally.

One group of farmers in Co Carlow told the IUF Government schemes for upland areas are not working.

"Internal communications are often hampered by some farmers not having email or access to email and in some cases mobile phones," said the Blackstairs Farming Group.
Engineers Ireland has called on the Government to fast-track the roll-out of broadband across the State and to begin work on a second runway at Dublin Airport.

In its State of Ireland 2016 report on the countrys infrastructure, the professional body said that a mid-term review of the long-term capital plan also needed to be brought forward to address serious deficits in key pieces of infrastructure in a timely manner.

The plan also says that ministerial cars and the bus fleet should be switched to clean energy vehicles, and that there needs to be public buy-in to address climate change.

It also grades key pieces of public infrastructure, with the water network receiving a 'D' grade  the lowest.

Communications gets a 'B', with energy infrastructure, transport, flood management and water quality all given 'C' grades.

The report was launched by Communications, Climate Change and Natural Resources Minister Denis Naughten, who said it provided a valuable expert insight into infrastructure planning and delivery.

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The Government is committed to investing in strategic national infrastructure, he added. We will continue to make significant long-term investments in areas like communications, transport, education, health and enterprise.

In every part of the country, these investments will boost competitiveness, create jobs and improve equality of opportunity. Additionally, the over-dependence on fossil fuels challenges all of us to work together to find a balanced and sustainable energy mix. This effort must be marked by community consultation and open dialogue.

Incoming president of Engineers Ireland, Dermot Byrne, said that all publicly-operated buses and vehicles operated by State agencies should be converted to electric, natural gas or hybrid fuel sources to reduce emissions. This includes ministerial cars.

He added that the roll-out of a network of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) filling stations would help cut commercial fuel bills and reduce emissions, and that the Government had to take a leadership role on climate change.
Newly-appointed Minister for Transport Shane Ross will make the first keynote address at the International Air Transport Association (IATA) annual general meeting in Dublin this week.

The aviation gathering attracts airline and aerospace chief executives from all over the world.

Among those attending the event are Dubliner Alan Joyce, the chief executive of Qantas; Delta Air Lines' chief executive officer Ed Bastain; and Tim Clark, the chief executive of Gulf carrier Emirates.

Familiar faces including the former chief executive of Aer Lingus, Christoph Mueller, will also attend.

Mr Mueller is the out-going chief executive officer of Malaysia Airlines. IATA director general Tony Tyler will be succeeded at this year's event by Alexandre de Juniac, the former chief executive of Air France-KLM. IAG chief executive Willie Walsh will become the chairman of the IATA board of governors from this week.
THE French economy grew faster than originally estimated in the first quarter, lifted by improving corporate investment.

Growth accelerated to 0.6pc, instead of the 0.5pc estimated on April 29, Frances statistics office Insee said yesterday.

That compares with a 0.4pc increase in gross domestic product in the previous quarter. The economy expanded 1.4pc from a year earlier.

The improved first quarter represents good news for President Francois Hollande as he battles unions to try to loosen French labour law and improve job creation. The Socialist president is repeatedly pointing out that growth is accelerating and unemployment is declining as he digs in his heels against a protest movement that is blocking refineries and ports.

Two unions  CGT and FO  embarked on strikes last Thursday and Friday. The CGT union is objecting in particular to proposals that would let companies opt out of national obligations on labour protection if they adopt in-house deals on pay and conditions with the consent of a majority of employees.

Yesterdays French GDP report showed that business investment jumped 2.4pc in the quarter instead of the 1.6pc originally estimated. This was helped by 40bn in tax cuts over the course of four years and a short-term tax break that allowed companies accelerated amortisation in the current fiscal year.

Consumer spending increased 1pc, compared with the 1.2pc initially reported. There are signs that the recovery is starting to feed through into the labour market for the first time since Mr Hollande took office four years ago. Jobless claims have fallen for two consecutive months, to their lowest in more than a year. (Bloomberg)
Martin Senn, former chief executive officer of Zurich Insurance Group, died by suicide, the company said in a statement yesterday.

"We are profoundly shocked by the news of the sudden death," the company said.

The family informed Zurich Insurance that Mr Senn had taken his life on Friday, according to the statement.

Mr Senn (59) was found in his holiday house in Klosters, Switzerland, 'Blick' newspaper reported. The cantonal police of Grisons said they couldn't confirm the death and said police were deployed on Friday in connection with Mr Senn.

"This is a huge loss; Martin Senn was an amazing person," said Martin Naville, ceo of the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce, where Senn had served as president.

Zurich Insurance Group's chief executive officer Martin Senn resigned last December, acknowledging "setbacks" in recent months as losses forced the company to abandon a high-profile takeover bid for RSA Insurance Group.

Chairman Tom de Swaan was named interim ceo at the time of the reshuffle.

Mario Greco, the former ceo of Italy's Assicurazioni Generali, assumed Mr Senn's role in March.

Mr Senn joined Zurich as chief investment officer in 2006 and became chief executive officer in 2010.

In 2011, he oversaw the purchase of a 51pc stake in Banco Santander's insurance division. He had been under pressure to increase profit as the stock declined even as the company increased its dividend.

Last month, the company posted a 79pc drop in third- quarter profit after booking $275m in losses from the Tianjin disaster and setting aside $367m in reserves to cover mainly North American auto and construction liabilities.

That led to a $183m operating loss in general insurance and prompted the company in September to abandon its offer for the British insurer.

Zurich simultaneously announced an overhaul of non-life insurance that includes job cuts and plans to exit some businesses. (Bloomberg)
A teacher has written a personal letter to each of her students telling them what was "special and unique about them" after she was shocked by the suicide attempt of one young girl.

Colorado teacher Brittni Darras posted a message to Facebook explaining why she did so and that message has now gone viral.

She revealed that she has broken down crying at a parent/teacher conference when one mother told her about why her daughter had been out of school for some time.

"Her daughter - a friendly, intelligent, beautiful, driven, young woman - not only planned to commit suicide, but was in the act of doing so when the police ... broke in, and stopped her," Brittni revealed.

The teacher wrote to her student and the girl's mother told her that "her daughter cried, turned to her mom and said, 'How could somebody say such nice things about me? I didnt think anybody would miss me if I was gone'.

She added, "It made me realise that I was way too close to losing another student to suicide."

In an effort to reach out to her other students she wrote more than 100 personal letters to them "telling each one what is special and unique about them".

"Suicide is growing to be more and more common, and I cant help but to think that its a direct result of the pressure we put on these kids - to be successful, to fit in, to be the best in their class/sport/etc," she wrote.

"We need to remember that each human being is unique, and that is what makes them special."

Almost 170,000 people have shared Brittni's post and many have praised her actions.

If you are affected by any of the issues in this article, contact the Samaritans on 116 123 (Ireland and UK), email jo@samaritans.org or find your local branch at www.samaritans.org
Mark Hamill could not stop raving about his time filming Star Wars Episode 8 in Ireland and now the cast and crew have officially thanked the people of West Cork.

The cast and crew took out an ad in a local newspaper to thank the locals and crew who facilitated filming in locations including Crookhaven and Goleen.

Stars including Hamill (who plays Luke Skywalker), Daisy Ridley (Rey) and Adam Driver (Kylo Ren) as well as director Rian Johnson flew in to Belfast airport two weeks ago to film in Donegal.

Two days later they took a private Boeing 767-300 to Cork and spent two more days shooting at various locations before moving to Kerry to shoot at Skellig Michael's bee huts.

Expand Close Daisy Ridley (Rey) and Adam Driver (Kylo Ren) pictured as Star Wars Cast Members arrive at Belfast International Airport on Friday Morning Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker / Facebook

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The ad reads, "Lucasfilm and the Cast and Crew of the 8th installment of the Star Wars saga would like to thank the people of Crookhaven, Goleen and the Brow Head Peninsula for the warm welcome we have received throughout our location shoot here in West Cork.

"We have been captivated by the landscape of the Wild Atlantic Way, it has provided a spectacular backdrop for our story.

Expand Close Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) pictured as Star Wars cast members arrive at Belfast International Airport on Friday Morning. They are due to film Star Wars Episode VIII at Malin Head in Co Donegal. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker / Facebook

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Whatsapp Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) pictured as Star Wars cast members arrive at Belfast International Airport on Friday Morning. They are due to film Star Wars Episode VIII at Malin Head in Co Donegal. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker

"The tireless commitment of our Irish Crew, the enthusiasm and support of the people of West Cork have made our Irish adventure one we will always treasure.

"Go mbeidh an forsa leat!! - May the force be with you!!"
Garth Books was due to play five concerts at Croke Park in 2014

It seems Bruce Springsteen's phenomenally successful Croke Park gigs may have prompted Garth Brooks to consider returning to the Dublin venue.

In June 2014 he cancelled a run of three concerts at Croker after he was refused permission by Dublin City Council to perform a planned five night run.

However, the success of Springsteen's two gigs coupled with Taoiseach Enda Kenny's public support (and air guitar display), has reportedly sparked Brooks' interest in returning.

A source revealed to the Irish Sun that Brooks' US management has already been in touch with concert promoters with a view to organising new dates.

Expand Close Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in Croke Park, in Dublin. Photo: Arthur Carron / Facebook

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However, Aiken Promotions have stated that there are no plans at the moment.

Croke Park is limited to just three concerts a year, so a five-night run is out of the question.

Beyonce took the third slot for this year but had there been a third slot for Bruce Springsteen, it would easily have sold out, the head of Aiken Promotions said.

When asked if the American rocker could have played a third night, Peter Aiken said: Yes, but dont go there. We couldve done a third Ed Sheeran but what can you do about it.

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Last year Rolling Stone probed Brooks on whether or not he would ever play Ireland again and he said, "I can't answer that."

However, speaking to Patrick Kielty in April last year, the country star said he would like to return to Ireland to make it up to his fans.

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Speaking to The Irish Daily Star, Kielty said, "[Garth] said, 'Well it was one of those things, we couldn't make it work' and he was gutted and he wants to try and fit it back in the tour and all these things."
People gather along the canal at Mespil Road in Dublin at lunchtime. Photo: Steve Humphreys

Denise Derham and her sister Orla, from Ballybrack pictured with Cara Gormley (1), Harley Wallace (4) and Ethan Gormley (3) at Sandycove. Photo: Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin

The country has been enjoying the sunshine, but the best weather is ahead of us, as temperatures are set to soar to a sizzling 25C.

According to forecasters the glorious weather - which has seen highs of 23C in some parts of the country - will keep until the June Bank Holiday.

The outlook for this week is dry and mostly sunny, with highest temperatures of 20-24C tomorrow and shooting up to 25C in parts of the country later in the week.

The good news does not end as Met Eireann predicts the sunshine could get even warmer next week.

"We are expecting a lot of dry settled weather as we head into June," said the forecaster's Evelyn Cusack.

"There is a slight chance of some rain along the east coast as we go into Wednesday but we will see a lot of sunshine through the week and temperatures of around 20C to 22C.

"At this stage it looks as if the dry settled weather will continue right through."

The whole country will bask in balmy sunshine this week, although there is a risk of scattered spells over the next 24 hours in the east and north of the country.

These showers will have shifted to the southwest by tomorrow.

It's good news for those looking forward to making the most of the Bank Holiday as temperatures will remain above average heading into the weekend, with some parts of the country enjoying highs of 24 to 25 degrees.

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Many have taken to the water to keep cool over the last two weeks.

However, this has led to a "significant rise in maritime recreational incidents" according to the Irish Coast Guard.

Chief of Operations, Coast Guard Eugene Clonan, said: "there has been a noticeable increase in the number of calls over the weekend.

"Sunday was particularly busy with 23 calls in response to maritime recreational incidents."

Yesterday evening, a group of girls, understood to be all aged 12, had to be rescued by the Dublin coastguard after they got into difficulty in the water at Blackrock beach in County Louth.

The mother of one of the girl's raised the alarm after the small group disappeared from sight.

It is thought the girls had wandered to a section of the shore away from the main beach and had become trapped by the incoming tide.

"As the weather improves we notice an increase in call-outs for our lifeboats," said Gareth Morrison RNLI Lifesaving Delivery Manager.

After such a "disastrous April", it should come as no surprise to hear that ice-cream sales are booming in recent weeks.

"Sales have been soaring since the weekend," said a spokesperson for the famous Teddy's Ice Cream in Dun Laoghaire.

"April was a disaster, so it's great to finally have some good weather," said a spokesperson.

The Europeans might love their gelatos but the Irish love their soft-serve ice-cream." Staff at Murphy's Ice Cream store on Wicklow Street said they had been rushed off their feet since the weekend. "The good weather has them coming in droves. Sales have been up all week."
There is a widely-held view that the civilian staff are of 'lesser importance' and feel 'undervalued', according to the document sent to Garda Commissioner Noirin OSullivan.. Photo: Gerry Mooney

Civilians who could free up over 1,000 gardai from desk jobs are being treated like "second class citizens" within the force, a new report has warned.

There is a widely-held view that the civilian staff are of "lesser importance" and feel "undervalued", according to the document sent to Garda Commissioner Noirin O'Sullivan.

But hundreds of gardai are being tied up in desk duties - while union chiefs warn that civilians are denied the chance to take greater responsibility within the force.

There are about 1,000 technical or administrative roles that could be filled by civilians, which would provide an opportunity to release gardai for frontline roles fighting crime.

The Civil, Public and Services Union (CPSU) demands that a new workplace strategy for the force must identify new functions appropriate to them "as distinct from those that require sworn duties".

It says its civilian members should be performing a much wider range of functions in garda stations.

The union said it "fundamentally disagrees" with comments from garda associations "which sought to suggest that there were certain functions our members could not perform because of their importance".

In its submission to the commissioner, it warns that industrial action could be on the cards if she fails to tackle a lack of communication with her office on industrial relations issues.

The CPSU document emerged as the commissioner faces pressure from gardai to boost resources to help them tackle organised crime. It also comes after she received a stinging indictment from the Policing Authority last week for a litany of management problems in the wake of the O'Higgins report.

The union warns: "There is a widely held view that civilian staff are of lesser importance within the organisation and as a result many feel undervalued.

"Unfortunately the term 'second class citizen' is often used by our members to best describe how they feel about how they are treated within the organisation.

"This is a very important time for the organisation and we approach it with very significant concerns for our members in terms of how they fit within the organisation, how they are deployed and generally how they believe they are treated as employees."

The report, compiled by CPSU deputy general secretary, Derek Mullen, also says:

Civilians are just 14pc of the overall workforce, compared with 31pc in London, 25pc in Scotland, and 54pc in Surrey;

Civilian staff are working extra hours under the Haddington Road Agreement, but rank and file gardai are not. It says this is becoming "very difficult";

Civilian HR is attempting to roll out a performance management programme "which is clearly not supported by the commissioner's office";

There is no career path for civilians. Three months after an Executive Officer competition closed for applications, the process has not begun.
A 12-month-old child who, eight years ago choked on plastic allegedly contained in a Cow&Gate baby food jar, was today awarded 10,000 damages in the Circuit Civil Court.

The court heard that the baby food manufacturer, Nutricia Ireland Limited, which trades as Cow&Gate, had delivered a full defence denying liability for the claim of Aaron Giblin, now aged nine.

Barrister Keith OGrady told the court that Aaron, who was one-year-old in February 2008 when he was being fed by his mother, Karen Giblin, when she noticed he was choking.

Ms Giblin, of Doon, Kilfree, Gurteen, Co Sligo, said in a sworn statement that she checked and found a piece of soft plastic in the contents of what he was eating.

Mr OGrady, who appeared with John McNulty of Kevin P. Kilrane and Co solicitors, told Judge John Hannan that after the incident Aaron refused food and was gagging on food given to him. He had attended his GP who noticed he had a sore looking throat.

The court heard that Aaron, who had a painful throat for a few days, refused to eat any solid food for several months.

Through his mother Karen, Aaron sued Nutricia Ireland Ltd, of Sir John Rogersons Quay, Dublin, for negligence.

Mr OGrady told Judge Hannan that the company, after an investigation and extensive testing, denied the piece of plastic, resembling tape, could have come from their plant.

It claimed the plastic could not possibly have passed through its production process and remained in the state it was when Aaron chocked on it.

Mr OGrady said the company had made a 10,000 damages settlement offer, without admission of liability.

Counsel said that although the offer may be low, he was recommending acceptance of it to the court, as if the case went to full trial, Aaron may lose his claim. Judge Hannan approved the offer.
AN East European woman who falsely claimed 45,000 in social welfare and pension payments over a four year period has received a suspended prison sentence.

Liliana Etropolska (71), a retired economist, received an 18 month prison sentence which was suspended on condition that she leaves Ireland within the next seven days.

Ms Etropolska pleaded guilty before Cork Circuit Criminal Court to 21 counts of falsely claiming and receiving social welfare and pension payments.

The total amount claimed by the woman was 45,000.

Judge Sean ODonnabhain was told the offences related to dates between 2011 and 2015.

The court heard the social welfare payments were claimed on the basis of an address at Kiltegan Crescent, Rochestown Road, Cork.

However, when a social welfare inspector called to the address for a routine query, he discovered that the woman was not a full-time resident at the property.

An immediate investigation was launched.

Gardai were notified and the defendant was detained when she arrived at Cork Airport last March.

Judge ODonnabhain was told that Ms Etropolska has since repaid the full 45,000 involved.

The court was also told that Ms Etropolska is elderly and has suffered from a number of health problems over recent times.

She is deeply remorseful for what happened.

However, Judge ODonnabhain said he has very little sympathy for her given her offences.

The judge described the offences as deliberate and ongoing for a considerable period of time.

He stressed that, but for the fact she had repaid the entire amount involved to the Department of Social Protection, the court would have been considering a prison term.

Judge ODonnabhain said that, in the circumstances, he would impose an 18 month prison term but would suspend it on condition Ms Etropolska leaves Ireland within the next seven days.

He also directed that she not return to Ireland until 2021.
Audrey Mahon has forgiven her husband David for unlawfully killing her son Dean three years ago but she has not "forgotten" what happened.

Mrs Mahon said she could not disagree with the jury's verdict because her husband had produced a knife unlawfully.

She said she had lost both her children and did not think she was strong enough to cope with losing her husband.

She added that Mahon will "always be my husband, carer and my best friend".

David Mahon (45) was found guilty of the manslaughter of his stepson earlier this month. He will be sentenced by Ms Justice Margaret Heneghan on Monday week. Mahon had denied murdering Mr Fitzpatrick on May 26, 2013.

He had claimed that father-of-one Mr Fitzpatrick walked into the knife he was holding and the death was an accident.

His legal team argued that Mahon's account of what happened was not contradicted by the scientific evidence.

However, it was the prosecution case that Mahon was drunk, angry and agitated, and he stabbed his stepson before fleeing the scene and leaving him to die on the street.

Dean Fitzpatrick was the older brother of 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 Mahon at Burnell Square, Northern Cross in Malahide.

Earlier this month, a jury of six men and six women took eight hours and 16 minutes to reach a verdict that Mahon was not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter.

During the sentence hearing yesterday, victim impact statements from Dean's dad Christopher Fitzpatrick, his mother, Audrey Mahon, his girlfriend Sarah O'Rourke and his four-year-old son Leon were read to the court.

Dean's mother Audrey Mahon said her life had become a living nightmare since his death. She said like all mothers, she had a "special bond" with her son, and although he had his problems, she recalled his "heart of gold".

Mrs Mahon said her husband David had also lost everything, and had done everything in his power to find Amy.

She said that "nothing can compare with the tragedy of Dean's loss".

Mrs Mahon said she has "forgiven Dave" but has "not forgotten" what happened.

Meanwhile, Sarah O'Rourke, Dean Fitzpatrick's partner, said the couple's young son Leon often picks up Dean's picture and asks: "Where's my daddy?"

Ms O'Rourke said she tells her son Dean is "a star in the sky" and "angels took him to heaven".

Leon was just 18 months old when his father was killed. Ms O'Rourke said it "broke her heart" to hear their son calling "dada, dada" following Dean's death.

Dean Fitzpatrick's father, Christopher said his "world came crashing down" after hearing his son had been "brutally killed".

Mr Fitzpatrick said his son took his first breath in March 1990 and he was so "full of joy" to have a son. He said he will never get to see Dean enjoy his own son Leon growing up.

In his victim impact statement, Mr Fitzpatrick referred to the disappearance of his daughter Amy. "I thought Amy's disappearance was the worst thing that would happen in my life," he said. "In 2013, my world came crashing down once again".

"There are no words to describe the pain, anger and despair," he added

Ms Justice Margaret Heneghan said she will impose sentence on Monday, June 13.
Gardai investigating the death of Gareth Hutch last week

A man will appear in court tomorrow morning charged in connection with the murder of Gareth Hutch.

The suspect (29) handed himself into gardai last Tuesday, just hours after the 35-year-old's murder.

He is scheduled to appear in Dublin District Court tomorrow morning charged with weapons offences.

Earlier today a 44-year-old woman was charged with failing to disclose information to gardai investigating the gangland murder.

Mary McDonnell, of Avondale House, North Cumberland Street, was charged under Section 9 of the Offences Against the State Act.

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A garda spokesman said: "Gardai in Mountjoy investigating the murder of Gareth Hutch on May 24, 2016, have charged a male (29 years).

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"He was charged this evening and will appear before CCJ Parkgate St at 10.30am on June 1, 2016."

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Gareth Hutch (35), a nephew of Gerry The Monk Hutch, died after he was shot outside the flat complex on North Cumberland Street in Dublin's north inner city on May 24.

Mr Hutch had been getting into his car in the car park of the Avondale House flats on North Cumberland Street at around 10am when two men approached him. Mr Hutch was shot several times and fatally injured.

The two fled the scene

One man is still being questioned in connecton with the killing.
An Italian man who viciously beat his ex-girlfriend and tore out her hair in front of their child has been given a suspended sentence after a judge said he would have a difficult time in prison due to his lack of English.

Davide Sanfillipo (30) attacked the woman on the day of their child's christening because he saw a message on her phone from another man. He later told gardai she had played with his patience, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard.

Judge Martin Nolan called it a cowardly attack but noted Sanfillipo would have a difficult time in prison due to his lack of English. He said he had decided with some hesitation not to send him to jail before imposing a two year suspended sentence and ordering him to pay over 3,000 to the woman.

Sanfillipo (30) with an address in Drumcondra, Dublin but originally from Palermo, pleaded guilty to assault causing harm to the woman at Highfield Road, Rathgar on October 1, 2015. He has a number of minor previous convictions from Italy.

Garda Leslie McCormack said the couple had met while she was on holidays in Italy. He moved back to Ireland where they had a child in 2014.

They broke up a short time later and remained separated despite Sanfillipo's efforts to rekindle the relationship. On the day of the assault they had gone shopping together ahead of the christening.

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He was in her house when he saw a message from a man on her phone. He took her phone and told her she would be getting no more messages from the man. They then got into the car with the victim in the driving seat and Sanfillipo in the back seat with the child.

After they drove a short distance he began punching her repeatedly to the back of the head. He was also dragging her head back and forth and tearing out clumps of her hair.

He said he would kill her and she believed him. The woman later said she was scared for her life but more concerned about the safety of their infant child.

She managed to get out of the car and flag down a passing motorist who took her and the child to Rathmines Garda Station. When gardai saw her she had a swollen and bloody face and was holding clumps of her own hair in her hands.

Sanfillipo was arrested shortly afterwards. Elva Duffy BL, prosecuting, said he admitted in interview he had made a mistake but said that she had played with his patience.

Defence counsel Luigi Rea BL said Sanfillipo puts (the attack) down to immaturity on his part. Counsel said his client accepted his behaviour was unforgivable and that it was a cowardly and violent assault.

Mr Rea said Sanfillipo had served in the Italian military and now worked as a car valet in Ireland.
Lorcan O Snodaigh spoke to confirm he did not want the case to be dealt with before a jury in the Circuit Court, which has tougher sentencing powers.

A son of Sinn Fein TD Aengus O Snodaigh has been spared a criminal conviction and a possible sentence for stealing a box of Desparado beer.

Lorcan O Snodaigh (18) pleaded guilty yesterday to the theft of the beer worth 10 at SuperValu on Talbot Street, Dublin, on April 12, 2015. However, he was let off after paying 50 to the court poor box.

His case was heard at Dublin Children's Court because he was aged 17 and still a minor at the time of the incident. However, he had turned 18 by the time the summons was issued.

Defence counsel Damian McKeone told Judge John O'Connor that the youth, who is from the Naas Road, Bluebell, Dublin, was pleading guilty to the charge.

The teen was accompanied to the proceedings by his father, who is Sinn Fein TD for Dublin South-Central and party spokesperson on social protection.

Lorcan O Snodaigh spoke to confirm he did not want the case to be dealt with before a jury in the Circuit Court, which has tougher sentencing powers. Garda David Leahy told the court he had responded to a call that a security guard had detained a male in the shop. He viewed CCTV footage which showed the youth "took a box of Desparado beer and passed all points without payment".

The court heard the teenager had eight prior convictions, which included entering with intent to commit an offence, criminal damage, and six for theft which led to him being bound to the peace.

Mr McKeone said his client was drunk at the time. He was remorseful and had 50 for charity.

The judge said he was sure the young man has "turned it around" and he accepted the offer. He marked the facts proven but struck out the case.
A WOMAN has been accused of failing to disclose information to gardai investigating the gangland murder of Gareth Hutch.

Mary McDonnell (44) was remanded in custody after she appeared in court today charged in connection with the killing of Mr Hutch, who was shot dead outside an apartment complex last week.

She is the first person to be charged following the murder of the father-of-one; two other people remain in garda custody. Mr Hutch is believed to have been the seventh victim of a feud between the rival Kinahan and Hutch gangs.

Dublin District Court heard Ms McDonnell made no reply when she was charged.

Ms McDonnell, with an address at Avondale House, North Cumberland Street is charged with failing without reasonable excuse to disclose information to the gardai.

The charge states that she failed to do so  as soon as was practicable and it was information she knew or believed might be of material assistance in securing the apprehension, prosecution or conviction of any other person for a serious offence.

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The charge is under Section 9 of the Offences Against the State Act and the offence is alleged to have happened at another address at Avondale House on May 24 last.

This morning, Sgt Enda OSullivan of Mountjoy Station told Judge Anthony Halpin he arrested the accused at 6.21pm yesterday for the purpose of charge and brought her to the Bridewell Garda Station.

She was charged at 6.52pm and made no reply after caution. She was handed a copy of the charge sheet, Sgt OSullivan said.

He asked Judge Halpin to remand Ms McDonnell in custody for a week and said the directions of the DPP were not yet available.

Defence solicitor Philiip Hannon said he there was no bail application at this time but he was reserving his position on this.

Judge Halpin directed all necessary medical attention to be provided to the defendant while she in in custody, at Mr Hannons request.

Mr Hannon also applied for legal aid, handing a statement of the accuseds financial means into court.

It would be an appropriate case, he said.

The judge granted legal aid after gardai had no objection.

He remanded Ms McDonnell in custody, to appear in court again on June 7.

Dressed in a black and white striped top and black trousers, the accused did not speak during the brief hearing.

Gareth Hutch (35), a nephew of Gerry The Monk Hutch, died after he was shot outside the flat complex on North Cumberland Street in Dublin's north inner city on May 24.

Two other people, a man and a woman who were also arrested in connection with the murder, are still being detained at the Bridewell and Mountjoy Garda Stations.

Mr Hutch had been getting into his car in the car park of the Avondale House flats on North Cumberland Street at around 10am when two men approached him. Mr Hutch was shot several times and fatally injured.

The two fled the scene.
A Dublin woman in her 40s is due to appear before the courts today, charged with withholding information about the feud murder of Gareth Hutch.

The nephew of Gerry 'The Monk' Hutch was shot dead as he left the Avondale flats complex in Dublin's north inner city at 10am last Tuesday.

The woman, who is due to appear before Dublin District Court this morning, was arrested by investigating detectives on Thursday evening.

Gardai believe she has key information about the murder and may have provided logistical support to the two criminals who murdered Gareth Hutch.

The woman is known to the two chief suspects in the case, according to sources.

Danger

Two other suspects, a younger female and a 29-year-old man, remain in garda custody, where they are being questioned about the fatal shooting, the seventh in the deadly Hutch/Kinahan feud.

The 29-year-old north inner city man, who handed himself in to investigating detectives in Mountjoy Garda Station last Tuesday on the orders of his mother, was briefly hospitalised on Saturday afternoon.

It has emerged that a number of death threats have been issued to the man by associates of Gareth Hutch and sources say his life will be in "grave danger" if he is released.

The 30-year-old 'New INLA' criminal suspected of firing the shots that killed Gareth Hutch remains on the run.
The father-in-law of innocent gangland murder victim Martin ORourke has hit out at Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald for acting too late to halt the bloody Kinahan and Hutch feud which has already claimed seven lives.

A grief stricken Larry Power, father to Martins fiancee Angeline, said the violence that has gripped Dublin's inner city in recent months has been allowed to go on too long.

The Minister for Justice like she saying about putting armed Gardai on the street, its too late now isnt it?, he told Claire Byrne during an emotional exchange on RTE One.

You know theres no regard whatsoever for human life anymore.

People told me down there in Sheriff St that if it had have been 20 minutes earlier some of the kids could have been shot coming out of the creche.

He added: To be honest about it, if a person gave me any amount of money to go out and kill a person, I wouldnt kill a person for money. I would like... who gives me the right to take another persons life? Im not God.

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Innocent Martin ORourke (24) was gunned down in a botched hit by a Kinahan gunman who mistook him for Hutch associate Keith Murtagh in Dublin last month.

The father-of-threes partner Angeline was three months pregnant at the time, and tragically lost her baby, which her father claimed was due to grief.

Asked if any good could come from the murder of his son-in-law, Mr Power said it was too late, adding that if Martins death could have stopped the feud it would have happened by now.

My message would be now to the people that are carrying out those killings is to please try and think about the distraught and the torment and the upset and the suffering that youre putting into peoples lives, for the rest of their lives.

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[Martin] didnt deserve it you know, three kids dont deserve to grow up without a father for something that they didnt do.

He was in the wrong place at the wrong time you know and as for that guy that done Martin, I do know he has to live with that.

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And its not one death, its two deaths he has to live with.

"He has to live with the death of my unborn grandchild and the death of my son-in-law Martin.
Five units of the fire brigade have contained a large fire at an industrial estate this evening.

Responding to an emergency call shortly after 6:30pm, firefighters from stations in Finglas, Kilbarrack and North Strand in North Dublin raced to a timber yard in Ballyboghil after reports that a fire had broken out in one of the shortage sheds.

A Dublin Fire Brigade spokesman explained that four regular units and an environmental unit brought the blaze under control after almost 45 minutes.

We had to relay water to the site, as, given the weather, water is at a premium in the north of the county, they added.

The DFB said an investigation would now be carried out to discover the initial source of the fire.
Five units of the Dublin Fire Brigade are battling to contain a large fire at an industrial estate in North Dublin.

Responding to an emergency call shortly after 6:30 pm, firefighters from stations in Finglas, Kilbarrick and North Strand are attending the scene at a timber yard in Ballyboghil.

Units from F/glas, K/barrick, N/strand & enviro unit from HQ are in attendance at a large industrial fire in Ballyboghil  Dublin Fire Brigade (@DubFireBrigade) May 31, 2016

A DFB spokesman explained that five regular units and an environmental unit are currently trying to control the blaze.

Were relaying water to the site, as, given the weather, water is at a premium in the north of the county, they added.
A nurse has been struck off after lying about how a resident at a care home for people with dementia was hurt when she fell in her room.

Mary Ellen Donnelly, who had been a nurse for 36 years at the time of the incident, admitted lying to management at Ashgrove Care Home in Newry and telling a junior colleague to do the same after the accident in April 2014.

A Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) hearing last week found her guilty of misconduct and issued a striking off order, stating that her fitness to practise had been impaired.

Explaining its decision, the NMC panel said Ms Donnelly's actions put the resident "at real risk of unwarranted harm".

The fitness to practise hearing was told that Ms Donnelly, who first registered as a nurse in 1978, was working a night shift at the Co Down care home on April 13 2014 when she went for a sleep break at about 2am.

While she was taking her break, a health care assistant was alerted by a loud cry.

When she went to investigate, the health care assistant found the woman lying face down on the floor, so she alerted Ms Donnelly and asked for assistance because she was not allowed to touch the lady.

Ms Donnelly and her colleague helped the woman off the floor and put her into her armchair for safety.

They both noticed a bruise beginning to appear on her arm, but neither of them had witnessed the accident so they had no idea how it had happened.

The NMC panel said Ms Donnelly told the health care assistant "not to tell the truth about what had happened and told her to write a false statement regarding the incident, stating that the patient had fallen out of bed and bumped into a locker during the fall, which caused the bruising".

Ms Donnelly then recorded false information about the incident and the injury into the woman's medical notes.

The NMC continued: "Further, the registrant did not hand over the true circumstances of the incident to the morning staff at the start of their shift. The patient's next of kin were not informed of the fall."

Ms Donnelly's lies were uncovered the following night when the colleague who originally alerted her to the accident told senior staff what had happened.

She claimed Ms Donnelly "pressured her into making a false statement".

Management at the care home launched an investigation into the allegations and Ms Donnelly was subsequently sacked after she admitted lying about what had happened.

She appealed the decision to dismiss her, but this was upheld by the home and she was referred to the NMC on May 8 2015 by the manager of the centre.

The fitness to practise panel was told Ms Donnelly, who did not appear at the hearing, had applied for voluntary removal from the NMC register on March 10 this year.

In her application, she said that she was no longer working as a nurse and had no intention to return to the profession due to ill health.

She also provided a letter from her doctor which said she has experienced problems with her health following the incident.

However, the application was refused, and Ms Donnelly admitted the five charges that she was facing.

Following the fitness to practice hearing in Belfast, the NMC panel said "Ms Donnelly's actions were significant departures from the standards expected of a registered nurse" and were "fundamentally incompatible with her remaining on the register".

It continued: "The registrant's position at the home meant that she was dealing with vulnerable patients who required the maximum degree of professional conduct.

"Her behaviour in failing to disclose and record the patient's fall put the patient at unwarranted risk of harm.

"Her failure to recognise the serious nature of the incident at the time, and her failure to demonstrate any insight, remorse or remediation since that time, suggests a risk of repetition of such behaviour.

"During the home's investigation, the registrant submitted a false statement providing a fabricated account of the incident.

"She then also asked a junior colleague to provide a false account.

"Whilst the registrant did eventually admit to fabricating the circumstances of the fall, this was only after her junior colleague had whistle-blown.

"It is believed that the registrant would not have come forward with the truth had this not been done."
SOCIAL Protection Minister Leo Varadkar has described previous remarks by US Presidential hopeful Donald Trump as "sexist" and "misognyistic".

Mr Varadkar was speaking after Taoiseach Enda Kenny labelled some of the US businessman's speeches as "racist" and dangerous".

Speaking ahead of a book launch in Dublin City, Mr Varadkar hit out at Mr Trump.

"I think any reasonable person would agree some of the comments he's made are racist, particularly in relation to latinos and also many of the things he has said are sexist," Mr Varadkar told reporters.

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"And don't show a positive attitude towards women. But ultimately it is up to American citizens to determine who their President is. But I know how most Irish people would vote.

"It's up to American citizens to decide who they elect as president...we will of course work with whoever Americans decide to elect as President. But I don't think there can be any doubt that many of the speeches he has made were racist and showed a very misogynistic attitude to women."

Mr Kenny had earlier described comments by US Presidential candidate Donald Trump as racist and dangerous.

The Taoiseach went much further in the Dail today in statements about the Republican frontrunner than the more conciliatory tone he struck in the US last month.

Asked for his views on Mr Trump while in Washington, Mr Kenny said it was not for him to comment on who the next President should be.

He described the battle between Mr Trump and Hillary Clinton as a matter for the American electorate" but admitted the debate has been "very provocative and divisive".

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However, in the Dail this afternoon Richard Boyd Barrett of the Anti-Austerity Alliance asked Mr Kenny if he would be happy with the continued use of Shannon Airport by the US Military if they are under the command of Mr Trump.

He referenced the billionaires comments in relation to immigration.

In response, Mr Kenny said: If Trumps comments are racist and dangerous, which they are, there is an alternative to vote for.

Mr Boyd Barrett had asked the Taoiseach: Mr Trump has talked about wiping people out across the Middle East and massively escalating US military action in that region.

Whatever about the previous differences between the Taoiseach and I on this issue, is he seriously going to tell the House that if Donald Trump was President of the United States, the Taoiseach would carry on with the policy of facilitating the US military at Shannon Airport?

If the Taoiseach did that, it would beggar belief because everybody recognises what a dangerous man Donald Trump is.
John McGuinness has defended his decision not to tell the O'Higgins Commission about his secret meeting with former Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan, arguing that it wasn't within the inquiry's remit.

The Fianna Fail TD also said he would have been accused of "tampering" with the inquiry if he had provided details of the meeting where Mr Callinan allegedly tried to discredit garda whistleblower Sergeant Maurice McCabe.

Mr McGuinness, the former chairman of the Dail's Public Accounts Committee (PAC), last week told the Dail about the intervention by Mr Callinan.

The revelation came more than two years after Mr Callinan appeared at the PAC and said that he viewed the actions of two whistleblowers as "disgusting".

Mr McGuinness claimed last week that Mr Callinan warned him in a car park that Sgt McCabe "was not to be trusted and there were serious issues about him".

Judge Kevin O'Higgins was later tasked with investigating Sgt McCabe's allegations of garda malpractice but Mr McGuinness did not inform the judge's commission about the meeting with Mr Callinan.

Last night, a spokeswoman for Mr McGuinness responded to questions on the matter saying; "This did not come within the terms of reference of the O'Higgins Commission, which reached its own conclusions. The Deputy was dealing with allegations and he believed Maurice McCabe. Over some time, he concluded that the allegations were without worth, because no action was taken. Recent attempts to again discredit Maurice McCabe convinced the Deputy that he had an obligation to stand up and defend him," she added.

Mr McGuinness did not address questions from the Irish Independent about whether he had sought legal advice on disclosing the meeting with Mr Callinan to the PAC and later the O'Higgins Commission.

Later, appearing on RTE's Claire Byrne Live, Mr McGuinness insisted the meeting with Mr Callinan was "appropriate". He said it wasn't PAC business and that the O'Higgins Commission had "no remit" to deal with allegations raised about Sgt. McCabe.

"If I had gone there I could have been accused of tampering with the course of justice in that inquiry," he added.

After the publication of the O'Higgins Report, it emerged that lawyers for the current Commissioner, Noirin O'Sullivan, had been instructed to question Sgt McCabe's credibility during the investigation. The O'Higgins Report found that Sgt McCabe had raised "legitimate concerns" and that he "performed a genuine public service". Last night, a Garda spokesman said Ms O'Sullivan "was not aware of any private meeting" between Mr McGuinness and Mr Callinan.

He added that Ms O'Sullivan had "consistently stated that dissent is not disloyalty and as a service we are determined to learn from our experiences."

Sinn Fein deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald - a former PAC member - told RTE Radio that she didn't know about the meeting between Mr McGuinness and Mr Callinan at the time.

She called on the former commissioner to respond to Mr McGuinness's remarks in the Dail and suggested that he should appear before an Oireachtas Committee to answer questions on the issue.

She added it was her "strong view" that the meeting "should have been brought to the attention of O'Higgins".

A Fianna Fail spokesman said the party had no comment on the matter.

Mr Callinan was unavailable for comment.
TANAISTE and Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald has told Cabinet of her plans to update the law in relation to covert electronic surveillance.

Ministers today approved a package of measures aimed at tackling the gangland crisis, including additional funding for garda overtime and new powers for the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB).

Officials from the Revenue Commissioners and the Department of Social Protection will also be drafted in to target the assets of criminals.

The officials will work closely with a new garda task force, according to Ms Fitzgerald.

As revealed by the Sunday Independent this week, the Government will also lower the thresholds in relation to the sums of money that can be seized by CAB.

Ms Fitzgerald also signalled plans to bring forward proposals in the near future to enhance and update the legislative framework for the lawful interception of communications and for covert electronic surveillance in order to combat the threats from serious and organised crime and terrorism.

The Fine Gael politician also told Cabinet of her plans to meet her counterparts from Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands next week to discuss international gangland elements.

The suite of measures, which were discussed at todays Cabinet meeting, have been proposed in response to the escalating gangland feud.

Speaking directly after the meeting, the Tanaiste said: We have seen unprecedented gangland violence in the last few weeks. However long it takes, whatever resources are necessary, we will face down the activities of these ruthless gangs.

I want to acknowledge the great work of An Garda Siochana in dealing with this situation. My proposals are aimed squarely at helping them in this work.

I intend to introduce legislative measures to strengthen the powers of the Criminal Assets Bureau to make it easier to seize assets and money from criminals.
Dog owners have been warned to exercise caution following the death of two pets after eating a toxic substance.

The PSNI said there has been "three worrying incidents" in total, including the two dogs' death just yesterday in Craigavon, Co Armagh.

While it is believed the animals died after eating something toxic in the Clonmeen area, police at this stage are not able to say if the deaths were caused by intentional poisoning.

"Dog owners, please keep a close eye on your dogs, especially what they are eating or sniffing at," the PSNI warned on its Craigavon Facebook page.

"This could be deliberate acts, however at this stage we cannot confirm that.

"We urge all dog owners to be particularly alert and to report anything suspicious or out of the ordinary, especially if your dog is taking an interest in it.

"This may well be something accidentally discarded, in which case we need everyone's help to find out what, and where."

Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) Assembly member Carla Lockhart described news of the dogs' deaths as "very serious and very worrying".

The Upper Bann MLA said she would be taking up the matter with the local dog warden and environmental health officers.

"This is very alarming," she said.

Ms Lockhart said she would advise dog owners not to take their pets out at the moment.

However, the PSNI urged owners to keep walking them - but to be extra vigilant.

"Folks, nowhere should be 'avoided', we're just asking that everyone is alert," the PSNI said.

"Don't be not walking your dogs on account of this - that would lead to some very sad pooches!"
Emily reclaimed the top spot on the list as the most popular female name with 626 tots registered last year.

Jacks still the lad as the moniker was the most popular name bestowed on Irish newborns in 2015, according to new figures released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

More than 750 Jacks were welcomed by happy parents in 2015 while Emily reclaimed the top spot on the list as the most popular female name with 626 tots registered last year.

James, Daniel, Conor and Sean remain amongst the five most popular baby boy names in 2015, where they have placed since 2007 while Emma, Ava, Sophie and Amelia were the most frequently chosen names for baby girls last year.

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The figures revealed that the name George entered the top 100 list of most popular names for the first time last year, rising 13 places over the course of 12 months, perhaps inspired by the growing Prince across the water.

Annabelle, Mila and Rosie were also first time entrants in the list of the top 100 female names registered in Ireland in 2015.

The figures compiled by the CSO also displayed that Irish parents may be becoming more influenced by celebrity culture when it comes to naming their little one as babies named Mila, Zayn, Kim, Dakota and Romeo were registered in Ireland in 2015.

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Some of the more unusual baby names registered last year included Paris, Nelly, Pixie, Barra, Gus and Otis.

Regionally, Adam proved to be the most popular name for baby boys in Galway City in 2015, while Charlie topped the list in Co. Kilkenny. More babies were named Ella in Co. Roscommon than any other moniker, while Molly proved the favourite in Co. Cavan.

Murphy retained its spot as Irelands most common surname and accounted for 1.1pc of births last year, followed closely by Kelly (1pc).

More than 21,264 unique surnames were also registered suggesting the continuing popularity of double-barrelled names such as OBrien-Murphy, which was registered in 2015.

Expand Close Regionally, Adam proved to be the most popular name for baby boys in Galway City in 2015, while Charlie topped the list in Co. Kilkenny. / Facebook

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Whatsapp Regionally, Adam proved to be the most popular name for baby boys in Galway City in 2015, while Charlie topped the list in Co. Kilkenny.

Top 20 boys' names in 2015

Jack

James

Daniel

Conor

Sean

Adam

Noah

Michael

Charlie

Luke

Thomas

Oisin

Alex

Cian

Harry

Patrick

Dylan

Ryan

Fionn

Liam

Top 20 girls' names in 2015

Emily

Emma

Ava

Sophie

Amelia

Ella

Lucy

Grace Chloe

Mia

Lily

Hannah

Aoife

Anna

Olivia

Sarah

Kate

Saoirse

Lauren

Caoimhe
Some 40pc of the Irish population have low health literacy levels and this is linked with poor health outcomes, a conference hosted by the Institute of Public Health in Ireland was told.

Inez Bailey, of the National Adult Literacy Agency, said: "Health literacy is the ability to read, understand and act on health information and it is closely connected with health outcomes."

An OECD study of Ireland showed that those experiencing low literacy levels had reported significantly higher levels of poor health than those with higher literacy scores.

"Patients who are better informed about their health have more effective consultations with their health care provider, are better informed about the medicines they are prescribed, are more likely to comply with their medication and, as a result, have improved health outcomes," added Bailey.
An examination of how the Government can fund fertility treatments for the first time is due at the end of the year.

Health Minister Simon Harris said that before the pledge to fund treatments is followed through, it is important that consideration be given to how best to provide public funding for fertility treatment.

An evidence review of international public funding models is underway.

"It is important to note that while in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment is not provided by the Irish public health service, there is some support available, in that patients who access IVF treatment privately may claim tax relief on the costs involved under the tax relief for medical expenses scheme," he said.
The Irish Pharmacy Union (IPU) has warned Irish women of the dangers posed by self-administering illegal emergency contraception purchased online, which could threaten their health.

Recent reports in the UK suggest that there has been a rise in the number of women purchasing the morning after pill online from illegal foreign sellers for as little as 6.50 but Bernard Duggan, a member of the executive committee of the IPU warned that there is a big risk involved in taking the drugs.

He warned that women are placing themselves at risk without the advice of a professional or a consultation regarding their age, underlying health issues, medications and enquiries about when they had unprotected sex.

There are two ways in which women have access to emergency contraception in Ireland; to have it prescribed by their GP or to have it administered by an Irish pharmacy, he said.

Either way, you undergo a personal consultation, you answer a series of questions about your health as is appropriate before a drug is administered. A GP or pharmacist will also offer advice, and warn of the potential side-effects of the drug.

Ordering such medication illegally online without consultation contrasts greatly to the Irish service that is in place, he said.

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Duggan warned that Irish women are putting themselves at risk by placing trust in unregulated drugs and the quality and safety of such emergency contraceptive cannot be assured.

Buying prescription medication online from an unregulated source opens up a myriad of risk. When you are administered Norlevo or EllaOne in an Irish pharmacy you can be assured that it is HPRA (Health Products Regulatory Authority) approved.

People purchasing emergency contraception from abroad cannot be guaranteed of a drug's quality, safety or ethicacy which often cannot be established. In an Irish pharmacy you can be assured of that appropriate quality and safety, he said.

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The opportunity to purchase more than one illegal contraceptive online for a cheap price is also posing a risk to women, and Duggan said that the morning-after pill should not be relied upon as a way to prevent pregnancy except in an emergency.

Emergency contraception is what the name suggests. It is to be used in the case of an emergency after unprotected sex. Apart from the obvious risks involved in ordering emergency contraception online, using these drugs as contraception is not recommended and other methods of contraception, such as the pill, the coil or the depo shot need to be considered.
The lifetime risk of kidney failure is now between 0.5pc and 1.5pc on average for people in Europe.

The ERA-EDTA Congress in Vienna was told that women have a lower lifetime risk of kidney failure compared to men. The reasons for this are not entirely clear. Women may have a healthier lifestyle than men.

The study also shows that older people have a lower lifetime risk of kidney failure compared to young people. This is so for both men and women.

The most important reason for this is the fact that older people have already survived for a long time without kidney failure - beyond the time during which a younger person is still at risk of kidney failure.

This result may mean that older people may be accepted as living kidney donors in the future.

There are around 4,172 people in Ireland with failed kidneys, 2,278 or 55pc are transplanted and 1,894 or 45pc are on dialysis.

Around 600 are waiting for transplants.

If diabetes is poorly controlled, too much glucose can build up in the blood. The glucose can damage the tiny filters in the kidneys, which affects the ability of kidneys to filter out waste products and fluids. It is estimated that 20pc-40pc of people with type 1 diabetes will develop kidney disease before they reach 50 years of age. Around 30pc of people with type 2 diabetes also show signs of developing kidney damage.
Many drivers have seen premiums double in the last year

Thousands of angry motorists are preparing to protest over soaring motor premiums.

The drivers are demanding a fairer deal on cover, after some young drivers have been quoted 1,400 to renew policies.

Many drivers have seen premiums double in the last year.

Now a group called Ireland Underground, which is being co-ordinated by a Kerry-based travel agent, is organising the monster protest.

Up to 6,000 drivers from all over the country are expected to converge on Kildare Street in Dublin on Saturday, July 2, to protest over soaring motor insurance premiums.

The protest is being co-ordinated by Kian Griffin using the Ireland-Underground.com website and a Facebook page.

He said all drivers, but younger ones in particular, were enraged at being asked to pay double and treble last year's rates for motor insurance.

Mr Griffin, who lives in Killorglin, Co Kerry, said thousands of people contacted him about insurance costs.

"I've been told that some people are driving without insurance, simply because they can't afford it. And others are trying to carpool with friends.

"The hardest hit would be the under-30s. Having said that, I've been talking to 50 and 60-year-olds whose premiums have gone up 300pc or 400pc."

Central Statistics Office figures show the average rise in premiums in the last year has been 34pc, but many are being quoted higher rises.
Fine Gael will face a choice between the popular one, the safe one or the anointed one.

TDs, senators and members won't have to make their decision any time soon but they know the day is approaching fast.

Enda Kenny has indicated he will step down before the next election but most in the party hope he does so sooner rather than later.

For many, that wish is not held out of malice - it's more about preservation of the party and giving themselves a chance at still being in power after the next election.

Everybody, even the Taoiseach, it would seem, accepts that he cannot lead them into another election.

However, at the same time there is considerable fear among the contenders to replace Kenny that any attempt to oust him could bring the Government down in a flash and bounce them into an election that they are not ready for, either emotionally or financially.

Leo Varadkar (the public's choice), Simon Coveney (the reliable statesman) and Frances Fitzgerald (the compromise successor) all want Mr Kenny to go quietly and with dignity at a time of his choosing. But history suggests that might not happen - and the longer it takes, the more potential there is for collateral damage.

There has been some unease among ministers about the gaffes. Suggesting Britain play America in the Ryder Cup, telling the Dail there was nothing he could do about gangland crime and then there was the mortifying air guitar performance at Bruce Springsteen. And that was just in the past week.

While another politician could have turned the Springsteen euphoria into a vote-winning 'dad moment', Mr Kenny has lost that sort of a relationship with the ordinary man.

So while the Taoiseach has spent recent weeks shoring up his support within the party, it's the public support he should really be worried about.

By distributing ministries far and wide and lining up allies for the Seanad, Mr Kenny has sought to ensure that he can stay in his position for quite a while.

But in reality it's the party's support levels he needs to focus on. If there is slippage in the polls and Fianna Fail starts to pull in front, then his status will come under renewed focus.

Even at that, none of the three frontrunners will push because Varadkar and Coveney know that such a move could backfire and scupper their chances before the race begins, while Fitzgerald is fiercely loyal.

However, you can expect at least one of the two men to find a stalking horse that they can unleash from the backbenches when the time is right.

Party figures believe that the leadership question is likely to drop off the agenda until after the summer but then whispers are likely to start.

And by ruling himself out of the race in yesterday's Irish Independent, Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe may well have made himself a kingmaker.

The Dublin Central TD never linked himself to the job but his affable nature and rising star status at Cabinet made it inevitable.

Stepping back may actually make him even more powerful when the race kicks off.
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Ian O'Doherty Opinion For once, the UN is right  were standing on the edge of a deadly nuclear precipice

For those of us of a certain age, the last few months have felt as if we have somehow time-warped back to the 1980s. Stranger Things, which is set in that decade, has been the biggest show on TV. Kate Bush  thanks, incidentally, to Stranger Things  is now regularly played on the radio and she has reached number one in 2022 with the re-release of her 1985 hit, Running Up That Hill.
These are difficult times for Hillary Clinton. Democrats are edgy, "bedwetting" to quote Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook, as 'The New York Times' reports widespread uneasiness among key Clinton supporters as to how the presidential campaign is being waged.

With Trump creeping level in the polls and Clinton (inset) once again entangled in the email mess, these are darker times for a campaign that just a few months ago looked invincible. What is worrying is when senior political figures such as Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, who has no peer as a grassroots Democratic politician, starts to send smoke signals that the campaign is not connecting.

But remember we are at Memorial Day, the start of summer in America, not Labour Day, which signals the end. There is more than enough time for Clinton to get her mojo back, especially when the primaries finish on June 14 and Bernie Sanders is finally officially out.

Meanwhile, the debate continues on how to beat Trump. The best way to beat The Donald may be to look back in history to 1964 and follow the ad campaign of Lyndon Baines Johnson, who utterly destroyed Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee who most resembles Trump.

Back in 1964, JFK had just been assassinated, Lyndon Johnson had taken over the White House and a young girl in Park Ridge, Illinois, was a "Goldwater Girl" dutifully supporting her father's preferred candidate for president in the 1964 election. Her name was Hillary Rodham.

Goldwater held extreme views for the time, was known to run his mouth off and was backed by many wild-eyed bigots, including the Ku Klux Klan, who saw him as anti-black. His best-known line was, "Extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice."

By the time the campaign finished, Johnson had crushed Goldwater and sent him to the second-largest defeat in American history and the biggest since 1820 when Monroe ran unopposed. It's the stuff of dreams for the Hillary Clinton campaign, to banish Trump and the Trumpeters and hurl him into political oblivion.

But the Clinton ad campaign at the moment is uninspiring, relying on boilerplate, looking like lawyers and accountants composed it. The mixed messages and poor follow-through are off key as Trump continues to control the message.

Despite the huge target opportunity, the ads have continued to miss. Every day, Trump overshadows her with tweets, public appearances and outrageous comments, such as his weekend blast at the Hispanic judge who is overseeing the Trump University lawsuit, where dozens of students are suing for allegedly being hoodwinked into paying huge amounts of money for useless courses.

Sid Myers, former art director at Doyle Dane Bernbach, the Johnson campaign's advertising firm, and Lloyd Wright, the Democratic National Committee's media coordinator during the 1964 race, sat down with 'Politico' magazine and showed how it was done back then and how it could be done to Trump.

If I was the Clinton campaign ad tsar, I would listen very carefully to the advice across the ages.

First, they should emulate the Johnson team, who made the most famous ad in the history of American political advertising, one which blew Goldwater's campaign apart.

As with Goldwater back then, one deeply worrying factor for most Americans is how Trump would handle the nuclear codes he would be entrusted with. The notion of the quick-draw Trump able to launch nuclear attacks petrifies Americans, even those who vote for him.

The Democrats in Johnson's era quickly defined their opponent. Goldwater's slogan seemed quite effective: "In your heart, you know he's right". The Democrats' response, however, was devastating and witty: "In your guts, you know he's nuts."

The attack ad became a reality after Goldwater suggested nuclear arms be used in the Vietnam War, by then the dominant story in the country.

The ad was named 'Daisy'; it showed a young girl counting as she plucked the petals off a daisy in what looked like a country field but was actually a rare patch of grass in Upper Manhattan.

Suddenly the count is taken over by a sinister voice counting down to a nuclear bomb launch. Daisy looks up and we see a mushroom cloud reflected in her eyes. The ad ran just once but its effectiveness rivals the Apple "1984" ad, also played just once. It immediately became a sensation and was widely discussed.

It was incredibly effective in painting Goldwater as too rabid to ever be given the power of nuclear access. The comparison with Trump is very apt, as he has too has talked about obliterating enemies and bombing countries back to the Stone Age.

Another hugely effective Johnson ad was a video of the KKK in action, with their comments backing Goldwater flashed up on the screen. The endorsement Trump got from self-styled Klan "Grand Knight" David Duke could be used similarly, say the Johnson folk.

The third Johnson ad, which again eerily chimes with this campaign, 52 years later, shows fellow Republicans' actual statements about Goldwater, many of them vicious and pointed. All of Trump's 16 opponents in his primary campaign to win the Republican presidential nomination have made similar comments.

So it could be a case of back to the future for Hillary Clinton to finally close in and destroy her opponent in the general election. LBJ's slogan was "all the way with LBJ". Maybe the best advice to Hillary right now would be "Bring out the artillery, Hillary." It's time.
Actors Amber Heard and Johnny Depp attend The Art of Elysium 2016 HEAVEN Gala presented by Vivienne Westwood & Andreas Kronthaler at 3LABS on January 9, 2016 in Culver City, California. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images for Art of Elysium)

Johnny Depp arrives at Southport Magistrates Court on April 18, 2016 in Gold Coast, Australia. Heard is facing two counts of breaching Australia's quarantine laws by allegedly bringing in her pet dogs Pistol and Boo on a private jet in May 2015. (Photo by Matt Roberts/Getty Images)

Actress Amber Heard claims bruising on her face was caused when husband Johnny Depp threw a mobile phone at her (AP)

Johnny Depp and Amber Heard and inset, Amber claims she received the bruise on her face when Johnny threw an iPhone at her

A lawyer for Johnny Depp's estranged wife Amber Heard has slammed "offensive" allegations suggesting the actress made up her domestic abuse claims as a means of blackmail.

The 30-year-old beauty filed for divorce from her husband of 15 months on 23 May, but their separation proceedings took a troubling turn on Friday, when she submitted documents to the court alleging Depp had physically abused her.

At the weekend, Depp's close friend, comedian Doug Stanhope, published a guest column on TheWrap.com, suggesting the actress has ulterior motives with her abuse claims, writing that Heard was "threatening to lie about him publicly in any and every possible duplicitous way if he didn't agree to her terms".

He continued, "Blackmail is what I would imagine other people might put it (sic), including the manner in which he is now being vilified."

Expand Close Actress Amber Heard claims bruising on her face was caused when husband Johnny Depp threw a mobile phone at her (AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Actress Amber Heard claims bruising on her face was caused when husband Johnny Depp threw a mobile phone at her (AP)

Heard's attorney, Peter Sample, fired back at Stanhope's accusation on Monday, slamming his essay in a statement to TheWrap, which reads: "It is highly offensive and disturbing that you would choose to publish it in the first place."

"The allegations against Ms. Heard are absolutely and unequivocally false," Sample continued. "The letter has no basis in reality and is nothing but the typical celebrity muckraking for profit."

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He demanded a retraction of the article on the basis it is defamatory and "outrageous". Editors at TheWrap stated they will respond to his letter through their legal counsel.

Expand Close Amber Heard shows her injuries. Photo: Reuters / Facebook

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Whatsapp Amber Heard shows her injuries. Photo: Reuters

Stanhope isn't the only one coming to the defence of Depp - in addition to his superstar friends, such as Paul Bettany and Mickey Rourke, the Pirates of the Caribbean star's daughter Lily-Rose Depp and her mother, his ex-partner Vanessa Paradis, have also defended the star, with Vanessa writing an open letter in which she called the abuse claims "outrageous".

Meanwhile, Depp was in Sweden on Monday, playing a gig at Stockholm's Grona Lund amusement park with his rock band Hollywood Vampires.

Video of the Day

Critics who have called for a boycott of Depp's work amid the abuse allegations had urged event bosses to axe the show, but shortly before show time, a spokesperson insisted they would allow Depp and his bandmates, including Alice Cooper and Joe Perry, to play on as planned.

A representative for Grona Lund released a statement to People magazine, which read: "We are opposed to any sort of violence, of course. But it's also equally important that we cannot judge someone beforehand. Everyone, including Johnny Depp, should be allowed to have the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty."

Expand Close (L-R) Actress Amber Heard and actor Johnny Depp arrive at the 27th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival at Palm Springs Convention Center / Facebook

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Whatsapp (L-R) Actress Amber Heard and actor Johnny Depp arrive at the 27th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival at Palm Springs Convention Center

Depp and the band went on as scheduled and performed for the sold-out crowd without incident.
Hermione Norris has admitted she was unsure whether the Cold Feet reunion was a good idea

Hermione Norris has hit out at what she says is the overt sexualisation of women on television, calling it "hateful".

The British actress told the Radio Times that despite progress, it suggests society has actually taken a step backwards.

"The overt sexualisation of women on TV is an issue for me. I find that really hateful," she said.

"I am a feminist and although we've moved forward in some areas, I think we've regressed in a lot of others."

Asked for examples, Norris said: "I think regularly seeing women being sexually demeaned on television is not a good thing.

"If you do show that on screen, then at least give a nod to it being really inappropriate and cruel; that it is not humane."

Norris, 49, has a son and a daughter but said she does not think the issue is something you can protect children from.

She added: "I think you can help educate them to deal with it, so I just keep talking to both my children."

Norris also opened up to the magazine about the Cold Feet reunion, admitting she was not sure it was a good idea.

The actress starred in the ITV series from 1998 to 2003, and it proved to be her breakout role.

Video of the Day

A reunion series will air this year, but asked if she liked the idea of going back to the show, Norris said: "I didn't, to be honest.

"It was really good, of its time, and I didn't want to undo anything positive that we had created back then.

"But I was persuaded it would be interesting to see how they have been dealing with things."

:: This week's Radio Times is on sale from Tuesday May 31.
The first televised banquet to be held in the House of Commons Members' dining room will feature in the new series of The Great British Menu.

The BBC Two show will see chefs from around the country prepare a four course menu inspired by the transformation in British food throughout the Queen's reign for a chance to cook at the Palace of Westminster.

In the regional heats, the chefs' dishes will be judged by veterans of the competition, including Tom Aikens, Simon Rogan, Richard Corrigan, Michael O'Hare and Angela Hartnett.

The judges will narrow it down to two chefs, who will present their four course menu to restaurant critic Matthew Fort, cookery writer Prue Leith, and restaurateur Oliver Peyton.

Each week the panel will be joined by a guest judge from the food industry to choose a regional champion from Scotland, the South West, North West, Wales, Central England, London/South East, North East and Northern Ireland.

The eight regional winners will then compete in the national finals for a chance to cook at the Great Britons Banquet at the Houses of Parliament for people who have been recognised on the Queen's birthday and New Year's honours list.

Peyton said: "The chance to cook at the Palace of Westminster is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, it would be considered a crowning glory of any career. The competition this year is intense, the chefs sense how well they need to cook. As a result the quality of the dishes produced is outstanding, world class."

Leith added: "The chefs are competing to cook for people who have gone above and beyond to help others or to help their country and I think these Great Britons really inspired them. British cuisine has changed so much in my lifetime and also in the lifetime of the competition and in this year's competition the chefs never cease to astonish us by creating the most beautiful food."
Mohammed Alloush, the chief negotiator for the main Syrian opposition delegation at the Geneva peace talks, has resigned (AP)

At least 23 people have been killed in late night air strikes that struck the Syrian city of Idlib.

Dozens more have been injured while others are trapped under the rubble of their homes after the strikes hit near two hospitals and a mosque, according to activists.

At least seven children are among those killed, said the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, who said that Russian aircraft carried out the strikes. Moscow, however, insists it was not involved in the strikes on Idlib, a city held by several militant groups, including al Qaida's branch in Syria known as the Nusra Front.

"The Russian aviation hasn't performed any combat tasks, moreover hasn't conducted any air strikes in the province of Idlib," Russian Defence Ministry spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov, said.

Since the Russian military campaign began last September in an effort to shore up Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces in their battle against Islamic militants, Moscow has staunchly denied that its warplanes have hit any civilian areas in Syria.

Like its more powerful rival, the Islamic State group, the Nusra Front has also been excluded form a ceasefire brokered by Russia and the United States that went into effect in late February and collapsed weeks later.

The Nusra Front has evacuated all its civilian centres, such as religious courts, in the city of Idlib and nearby villages and towns, said an activist based in Idlib province who goes by the name of Ahmad Ariha.

"The Russians claim they are targeting the Nusra Front," said Ariha, adding that the air raids late on Monday killed and wounded some 250 people. He said some of the casualties were taken to clinics near the Turkish border in the Bab al-Hawa area.

The Local Co-ordination Committees (LCC), another activist group that like the Observatory monitors the Syrian civil war, said the air strikes hit two hospitals and one struck near a mosque. It said 50 people were killed and over 200 were wounded.

According to the Observatory - which has a network of activists on the ground in Syria - about 10 air raids targeted areas near the National Hospital, the Al-Jalaa public gardens and other neighbourhoods in Idlib.

"The air raids either aim to pave the way for a ground offensive on Idlib or to make the resistance kneel," said Turkey-based activist Hassan Dughaim who is originally from Idlib and is in contact with residents in the province that borders Turkey. "Some people are fleeing the city but the bombing is chasing them. People are even getting bombarded in refugee camps."

Mr Dughaim, the Observatory and the LCC all reported air strikes on towns and villages near Idlib, in the province that carries the same name.

Mr Ariha, the Syria-based activist, said fresh air raids on Tuesday destroyed two vaccination centres in the village of Kfar Takharim.

Amateur videos showed relief workers using torches as they dug through the rubble in the night. When a boy is seen being carried out alive from what appears to have been a building, screams of "God is great' could be heard in Arabic. Another video shows a man being carried into an ambulance.
Five-time Tour de France winner Eddy Merckx will be charged in a Belgian corruption case linked to irregular purchases of equipment by police and municipalities, a Brussels prosecutor has said.

Merckx is accused of corruption and the use of false documents in the sale of 46 bikes by his then-company Cycles Eddy Merckx to police in southern Brussels in 2006-07, the prosecutor said.

The contract, worth an estimated 15,000 euro (11,500), was allegedly obtained after a policeman furnished Merckx with inside information.

Merckx, considered by many the greatest cyclist of all time, allegedly rewarded the officer by selling him a carbon-fibre bike at a low price and giving a bike to the man's wife.

If found guilty of the charges against him, the prosecutor said, Merckx could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison.

He said such a heavy sentence was unlikely for a person many Belgians consider their country's greatest hero.

Twelve others, including two former high-ranking police officers, are also charged in the case.

"What Merckx is accused of is really small potatoes compared to some of the others," the prosecutor said. Some of the irregular procurements involved Toyota vehicles and security cameras, according to published accounts.

Merckx, 70, was quoted by the Belgian daily newspaper Derniere Heure as saying: "I have nothing to say. We'll see what happens."

After the criminal charges are confirmed by the Brussels prosecutor's office, a panel of judges will decide whether the case should proceed to trial.

The panel is expected to consider the case in early September, the prosecutor said.
One of Europe's wealthiest villages has decided to pay a 260,000 fine instead of accepting around 10 refugees under its country's newly imposed quota.

Residents in the picturesque Swiss village of Oberwil-Lieli said they voted 'no' in a referendum on whether to accept the refugees because "they wouldn't fit in".

It comes after the Swiss government announced a quota system to meet its promise of allowing 50,000 asylum seekers into the country.

By rejecting the plans, the village - which counts 300 millionaires among its population of 22,000 - has sent shockwaves across the country, with some accusing the residents of racism.

The villagers must now fork out 290,000 Swiss francs (260,000) as a forfeit for refusing to welcome the asylum seekers. One of them, who asked not to be named, said: "We do not want them here, it is as simple as that. We have worked hard all our lives and have a lovely village that we do not want spoiled."

They added: "We are not suited to take in refugees, they would not fit in here."

But another resident, a mother-of-two who asked not to be identified, said it was regrettable the row had led to claims the village was selfish and racist. "It is only right that we do something to help others who are less fortunate," she said. "It makes the village look like we all do not care what happens to others and only look after ourselves."

Andreas Glarner, the town's right-wing mayor, denies the vote was motivated by racism and said the town rejected the quota because it was not told whether the refugees were Syrians or "economic migrants".

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
Iraqi military forces prepare for an offensive into Fallujah to retake the city from Islamic State militants (AP)

An aid group has warned of an unfolding "human catastrophe" in Fallujah as Iraqi forces press to dislodge Islamic State militants from the city, where conditions are worsening for tens of thousands of trapped civilians.

IS fighters launched a fierce counterattack on the southern edge of the city, slowing the progress of the elite Iraqi counter-terrorism troops, and the militants reportedly corralled civilians into a single neighbourhood for use as human shields.

Iraqi forces repelled the four-hour counterattack a day after entering the southern part of Fallujah with the help of US-led air strikes. The dawn attack unfolded in the Nuaimiya area, most of which was captured by Iraqi troops on Monday, two special forces officers said.

IS militants used tunnels and snipers and targeted Iraqi forces with six explosives-laden cars that were destroyed before they reached their targets, the officers said. Iraqi forces suffered casualties but no details were given.

The clashes subsided by Tuesday afternoon but the officers said progress was slowed by roadside bombs the militants left behind. The troops also paused to destroy tunnels in the area. Since Monday 106 militants have been killed, the officers said.

The push into Nuaimiya, a sprawling agricultural area, was the first attempt by Iraqi forces to enter Fallujah, which fell to IS in 2014. In recent days, Iraqi forces had focused on expelling the militants from outlying areas to tighten a siege on the city, which is 40 miles (65 kilometres) west of Baghdad.

The Sunni majority city was the first in Iraq to fall to IS and is the last major urban area controlled by the extremist group in western Iraq. The Sunni-led militants still control the country's second largest city, Mosul, in the north.

The US-led coalition and Iranian-backed Shiite militia forces are helping the Iraqi army in the offensive. But the fight is expected to be protracted because the militants have had more than two years to dig in, hidden bombs are believed to be strewn throughout the city, and the presence of trapped civilians will limit the use of supporting air strikes.

With an estimated 50,000 civilians still inside Fallujah, humanitarian groups renewed calls on both sides to open up safe corridors for non-combatants to flee - an action that seems unlikely because it would require negotiations between IS and the Iraqi forces to agree on a cessation of hostilities. In addition, Iraqi authorities want to prevent IS fighters from escaping the city by melting into the fleeing civilian population.

"A human catastrophe is unfolding in Fallujah," said Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council.

Only one family managed to escape the town on Monday, he said. Since the offensive began more than a week ago, 554 other families have fled areas surrounding Fallujah.

"Warring parties must guarantee civilians safe exit now, before it's too late and more lives are lost," Mr Egeland added. A lack of food, medicine, safe drinking water and electricity is "pushing families to the brink of desperation", the NRC said.

At a briefing in Geneva, the spokesman for the UN refugee agency, William Spindler, cited figures by Iraqi authorities that said 624 families - about 3,700 individuals - have fled in the past week.

The UNHCR "understands another 500 men and boys over 12 years old are held for security screening", which can take five to seven days, Mr Spindler said.

"We understand some 27 men were released" on Monday, he said.

The 56-nation Organisation of Islamic Co-operation - the world's largest body of Muslim-majority countries - expressed "deep concern" about the safety of civilians in Fallujah. In a statement, the group's head also reiterated its opposition to sectarian violence and expressed support for the Iraqi government.

Some Sunni politicians in Iraq have accused the security forces of using indiscriminate force and say the Shiite militias have committed abuses against civilians in mainly Sunni towns and cities. The security forces and the militias deny the accusations.

The government-sanctioned umbrella group of mostly Shiite militias is not taking part in the current push into Fallujah, officials said, adding that the task is being handled solely by the elite counter-terrorism force.
Egypt's president has promised justice for a Christian grandmother who was stripped naked and paraded through the streets by a Muslim mob.

The 70-year-old woman was attacked in her village south of Cairo after rumours spread that her son had had an affair with a Muslim woman.

"They burned the house and went in and dragged me out, threw me in front of the house and ripped my clothes," said the woman, who requested anonymity.

"I was just as my mother gave birth to me and was screaming and crying."

The crowd burned down her house and six others during the attack on May 20 in the village of Karma in Minya province.

President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi condemned the attack and said that such violence divided Egyptians.

Fled

The woman's son, who was alleged to have had the affair, fled the village with his wife and children the day before the attacks.

Extra-marital affairs are a major cultural taboo in both Christian and Muslim parts of Egypt.

The country's law states that it is illegal for a Muslim woman to marry a Christian man but it is not illegal for a Christian woman to marry a Muslim man.

The woman and her elderly husband had already appealed to police for help after receiving death threats but decided to stay in the village.

Bishop Makarios, the local Coptic leader, said police took two hours to respond to the violence, by which time the grandmother had already been assaulted by the mob.

"No one did anything and the police took no pre-emptive or security measures in anticipation of the attacks," he said in a television interview at the time of the attack.

The woman is part of Egypt's Coptic Christian minority, which makes up around 10pc of the country's 90 million people.

Copts have long complained of discrimination by Egypt's Muslim majority.

President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi said such attacks divide Egyptians. "We are all one and the law must take its course," he said in comments broadcast live on local TV.

El-Sisi has, since taking office in 2014, amended election laws to allow more Christians into the national legislature and eased restrictions on building churches.

He was speaking at an inauguration ceremony for a housing project in Cairo for low-income Egyptians, a substitute model for the shanty towns around the city.
At least 880 people have died due to shipwrecks and capsized boats in the Med over the last week, according to the UN

The mayor of Paris has announced plans to create a centre to take in migrants with nowhere to go.

Anne Hidalgo said she wants the French capital to welcome those escaping war and poverty in dignity.

The centre will be located in northern Paris where hundreds of arriving migrants without a place to go often camp near subway stations.

The Socialist mayor said several times she hopes the state will be a "partner" in the project, which she said must conform to international norms for refugees.

She said Parisians have a humane duty to help the have-not travellers, adding that she is confident "the Paris population will be at our side".

Her announcement comes after the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said at least 1,000 people died or are missing and presumed dead following a string of deadly incidents in the Mediterranean Sea over the last week.

The updated IOM tally on was drawn from the accounts of survivors who were saved at sea or landed in Italy in recent days.

Figures from aid groups and Italian police had on Sunday counted at least 700 deaths from three shipwrecks over three consecutive days, but IOM pointed to other smaller incidents as well as more precise figures following interviews with survivors.

The IOM says 62 people were confirmed dead and another 971 were missing and presumed dead in nine incidents on the central Mediterranean route between Libya and Italy since May 25.

The UN refugee agency spokesman William Spindler said this year is proving to be "particularly deadly" on the Mediterranean, with some 2,510 lives lost compared to 1,855 over the same period a year ago.

Mr Spindler reiterated UNHCR's appeal to the European Union to allow for more legal pathways for refugees to reach Europe, and said it was "shameful" that the bloc had resettled fewer than 2,000 people under a plan announced last year to resettle 160,000.

He said authorities were still trying to understand the rise in deaths, even as they know the region is moving into its high season for human trafficking.

UNHCR cited unconfirmed accounts that smugglers might be trying to "maximize income" before the Ramadan holy month, which begins in the first week of June. Mr Spindler also said he had never heard of smugglers using such risky tactics as having one overloaded boat tow another one overflowing with hundreds of people.

IOM spokesman Joel Millman also pointed to a new tactic used by smugglers in recent weeks.

"Traffickers and smugglers working out of Libya are using much bigger boats now, carrying as many as 750 people, where for the last 12 months, we've been seeing a lot of smaller rubber inflatable dinghies," Mr Millman said at a Geneva news conference alongside Mr Spindler.

UNHCR said most boats leaving Libya are departing from Sabratha, west of Tripoli.

A deal between the European Union and Turkey to return migrants to Turkey has significantly dampened the migrant sea route into Europe from Turkey to Greece, which hundreds of thousands of people used last year.

UNHCR has been watching for signs that migrants may be shifting to the much longer and more dangerous Libya-Italy option.

"As of now, UNHCR has not seen evidence of a significant diversion of Syrians, Afghans or Iraqis from the Turkey-Greece route to the central Mediterranean one," Mr Spindler said.
PHOTOS BY KATIE MCLEAN/INDEPENDENT MAIL Linda Landreth (left) kisses the gravestone of her uncle Robert Garvin along with Garvin's widow, Betty Garvin, at the third annual Memorial Day program at M.J. "Dolly" Cooper Veterans Cemetery in Anderson.

SHARE Linda Landreth (right) clutches the gravestone of her uncle Robert Garvin along with Garvin's widow, Betty Garvin, at the third annual Memorial Day Program at the M.J. "Dolly" Cooper Veterans Cemetery in Anderson. Betty Garvin kisses the gravestone of her late husband. "That's my sweetheart," she said while looking at the gravestone. "I just wish people could realize how much I love him."

By Charmaine Smith-Miles of the Independent Mail

Lucy Laubshire and her son, David, stood in front of a granite wall Monday at M.J. "Dolly" Cooper Veterans Cemetery and remembered.

They looked at a name engraved on that wall  Robert Laubshire  and thought of how he volunteered to serve his country even when so many of the men in his family had died or suffered serious injury carrying out that same duty. He was a corporal in the U.S. Army and served in the Korean War. The stone that bears his name in the Anderson cemetery also has the inscription "Robert H. Laubshire, Corporal, U.S. Army in Korea, Born 1934, Died 2015. Beloved husband, father and grandfather. Our hero. Rest in Peace."

About once a month, Lucy Laubshire visits the grave. But on Monday, she and her son were at the cemetery for the Memorial Day service. They joined an estimated 300 people who attended the event that honored the 360 men and women who served the nation and have been buried at the cemetery off the Belton-Honea Path Highway in the last year.

Lucy Laubshire said her husband served three years in the Army. To enlist, he was required to get permission from his mother because he was the last remaining man in his family who had not been injured or killed in combat.

"He still volunteered," Lucy Laubshire said. "He wanted to serve his country."

David Laubshire said, "Dad was so brave. He was the bravest man I know."

Lucy Laubshire has 60 years of marriage to recall when she looks at that name carved in stone.

"We come out here to say hello and to share stories about him," she said. "It is so peaceful out here. And today, they were going to say his name, so we wanted to be here for that."

The Cooper cemetery serves all of the Upstate, because the next-closest veterans cemetery is in Columbia. So there were people at the ceremony from Anderson, Greenville and Spartanburg.

Jeff Fultz, the cemetery's superintendent, said 2,400 people are buried at the cemetery.

"All of our veterans mean everything to us here," Fultz told the crowd.

His own father was among those named in the roll call.

Phyllis Brown, who works at the cemetery, read aloud the 360 names as people  many wearing their red, white and blue  listened. Some names brought tears to those in attendance. When taps was played, Berry Cox, who served in the U.S. Navy, stood with his walking cane and saluted.

"This means a lot to me," Cox said.

His brother and three of his close friends served in World War II, and not all of them made it back, he said. He attended the ceremony Monday with his daughter and son-in-law, Beryl and Alan Barclay. They wanted to pay their respects to a dear friend, Donnie Hawkins, and cousin, Tommy Hilley, who both served in Vietnam. Hilley was in the Navy and Hawkins was in the Army.

"This is tradition, and it is our heritage," Barclay said.

Follow Charmaine Smith-Miles on Twitter@Charmaine_AIM
PHOTOS BY KATIE MCLEAN/INDEPENDENT MAIL U.S. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Sam Wigley speaks at the Richard M. Campbell Veterans Nursing Home Memorial Day service in Anderson.

SHARE Kim Price of Iva, center, puts her hand over her heart during the playing of the national anthem at the Richard M. Campbell Veterans Nursing Home Memorial Day observance in Anderson. Army veteran Ken Klinsky of the American Legion Post 184 Honor Guard bows his head in prayer at the Richard M. Campbell Veterans Nursing Home.

By Charmaine Smith-Miles of the Independent Mail

U.S. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Sam Wigley knows firsthand what it is like to serve his nation, and to lose someone to the battlefield.

He referred to the courage it takes for someone to become a soldier as he spoke to the veterans who gathered Monday in Anderson for a Memorial Day observance at Richard M. Campbell Veterans Nursing Home. Nearly 100 of the veterans who live at the Campbell home and their family members gathered under the shade of a pavilion for a barbecue and ceremony.

Wigley grew up in Six Mile, graduated from D.W. Daniel High School, and along with his brother enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 2008. Two years later, he and his brother were stationed in Afghanistan, Wigley told the crowd.

"Having served on the battlefield, it puts me in awe at how well you (veterans) accomplished your mission," Wigley said. "My time in Afghanistan makes up both the best times of my life and the worst times of my life. I am sure that many of you here can say the same thing. I am in awe of the support that your generation has given my generation."

No matter how tough some of those days were for Wigley, he made it home. Like many of the veterans in the audience, Wigley said he knew people who did not.

Like one of his dear friends, Scott Harper.

"He sacrificed himself for his brothers in arms," Wigley said, adding that Harper was killed by enemy fire while trying to carry a wounded soldier off the battlefield in the Middle East.

"Every year, a crowd gathers at his graveside, and we tell stories," Wigley said. "We remember Scott for the man that he was."

The ceremony Monday honored the 110 veterans who died in the last year while residents of the Campbell home. The event was also a way of thanking the veterans who still live at the facility on Belton-Honea Path Highway. Veterans served other veterans when it was time for the meal to begin. People came decked out in their best patriotic outfits. Some veterans' family members snapped pictures. Others took the time to laugh and share stories.

Faye Buckley drove an hour from Liberty so she could spend the afternoon with her brother, Ralph Swanson. Swanson is 68 and served in Vietnam.

Swanson sat across the table at the ceremony from his buddy and fellow Campbell home resident John Brogren. Brogren also served in Vietnam. He volunteered to serve when he was 22 because his father tried to enlist and couldn't as the result of a problem with his leg. With music playing in the background, the two men ate and enjoyed being outside.

"It is nice to be out here today, to be honored," Brogren said.

Follow Charmaine Smith-Miles on Twitter @Charmaine_AIM
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Union Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister, Radha Mohan Singh has said that future of agriculture in India is great and people are very much hopeful about it. The Minister stated this after having a direct dialogue with the people, across the nation through face book today.

Singh further said that he took questions related to agriculture and Ministry and answered on face book between 11am and 12 pm. Singh added that 450 queries came on face book and 100 were responded instantly. He said that responses of remaining questions are being communicated. The Minister said that over 30, 000 people saw it on the face book and we received 600 comments till 3 pm in the evening.

Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare said that people from all over country asked questions and the prominent feature of this dialogue was that all of the queries were related to the agricultural sector. In asking questions people seemed to be serious, and they asked innocently and with honesty. He said that after taking questions, it can be stated that people are very keen about agriculture and future of agriculture in India is great.

Singh said that these questions reflect the status of various agriculture schemes being implemented in the country and advantages of the schemes are reaching to the farmers or not.

Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare said that the implementation of the agriculture schemes takes place through states. Therefore, based on the questions asked we get to know extent of agricultural progress in states. Singh said that he would have direct question - answers session on face book regularly.
JSW Steel Ltd is among seven bidders shortlisted for Tata Steel Ltds UK assets, according to reports.

Report says that the company will enter into the next stage of the sales process after Tata Steel gives access to details of Tata Steel Europe.

Tata Steel Europe reportedly said that seven expressions of interest for British operations had been taken forward to the next stage of the sale process.

The company stated that it was clarifying outstanding points with a number of other parties who had expressed interest in Tata Steel UK.
Reliance Exploration & Production DMCC (REPDMCC), an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) and Total, have executed agreements on May 30th, 2016 for the sale of the entire 76% interest held by REPDMCC in the Mauritius-incorporated Gulf Africa Petroleum Corporation (GAPCO). The proposed transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and other closing conditions that are customary for similar transactions.GAPCO is a holding company with operating subsidiaries in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda which are primarily engaged in petroleum product import, and trading, storage, distribution, marketing, supply and transportation of oil products in East Africa. Since the acquisition of 76% equity interest in GAPCO by REPDMCC in 2007, GAPCO has significantly grown and is one of leading petroleum marketing company in East Africa, which now operates 108 retail outlets and owns 260 TKL of storage capacity.REPDMCCs agreement to sell its interest in GAPCO is part of a joint transaction, wherein both REPDMCC and the Minority Shareholder have agreed to sell their entire respective holdings in GAPCO for cash. The net proceeds for the sale will be finalized on completion of the transaction which is expected to be within the coming months.
Net Profit of PSUs in the first two years of PM Modi (Rs. Cr) PSU FY13 FY14 FY15 FY16 Coal India 17356 15112 13727 16344 ONGC 23990 26653 17673 16004 HPCL 501 1080 1499 3863 BHEL 6693 3502 1450 -913 BPCL 1936 4053 5082 7432 REC 3833 4741 5344 5628 Indian Oil 3627 6967 4872 10399 GAIL 4374 4786 3160 2299 Oil India 3592 2942 2608 2330 NTPC 12591 11404 9986 10243 SAIL 2181 2632 2118 -4137 Power Finance 4438 5462 6004 6113 NHPC 2617 1219 2491 2440 NMDC 6334 6371 6347 3028 Power Grid 4313 4548 5046 6027 Shipping Corp -114 -2745 201 377 Nalco 593 642 1322 731 Hindustan Copper 356 286 68 44 RCF 273 241 345 191 Neyveli Lignite 1458 1502 1580 1204 NBCC 207 257 277 309 MRPL -757 606 -1853 710

Several Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) are still awaiting Achhe Din, while few have come across a positive transformation on profitability front during the first two year of Narendra Modi-led NDA government. Of total 22 PSUs, 9 saw their profitability going up during the Modi regime as compared to last two years of the UPA rule. On the other hand, net profit of 8 PSUs worsened what it was during the UPA regime.PM Modis clarion call of development Sab ka saath, Sab ka vikas seems yet far from yielding tangible gains - at least for some PSUs. The list includes state-owned firms like ONGC, BHEL, Gain India, Oil India, and NTPC among others. On the positive side, the profitability of a few PSUs is up, like HPCL, BPCL, Indian Oil Corporation, Power Grid, and Shipping Corporation of India among others.On May 16, 2016, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) celebrated their clean sweep achieved in 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The two years of Narendra Modi as the new Prime Minister of India saw the visionary leader embark on a global voyage spree to market India as the ultimate destination for investment.The data analysis shows that many of leading Oil & Gas PSUs have seen consistent drop in profits. For instance, Oil and Natural Gas Ltd (ONGC) had reported yearly net profit of Rs.23,990 crore and Rs.26,653 crore in FY13 and FY14 respectively. However, things turned gloomy following NDAs triumph with net profit tumbling to Rs.17,673 crore in FY15 and Rs.16,004 crore in FY16.Analysts are of the view that the consecutive dip in ONGCs net profit is attributed to the multi-billion overseas investment made by ONGC Videsh Nigam (a subsidiary of ONGC) to acquire oil fields, an integral part of the TAPI project.For NTPC Ltd, increasing coal production and lower coal price during NDA regime has failed to lift profits. Be it UPA or NDA, NTPCs net profit is on a falling spree since last three fiscals. For FY13 and FY14, NTPCs net profit had stood at Rs.12,591 crore and Rs.11,404 crore, which further tumbled to Rs.9,986 crore during the first year of NDA government. The net profit of the power producer stood at Rs.10,243 crore FY16.In what can be seen as redeeming facts, PSU like Coal India have performed fairly well during the second years of NDA regime. The net profit of the largest coal miner of the country was Rs.17,356 crore in FY13 that had plummeted to Rs.15,112 crore in the following year. The first year of NDA had seen another dip in the net profit to Rs.13,227 crore; however, the same bounced back to Rs.16,344 crore in FY16.The falling crude oil price and declining burden of oil subsidy given to the oil marketing companies (OMCs) has significantly helped the Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltds (BPCL) yearly net profit surge to Rs. 5,082 crore in FY15, which further shot up to Rs.7,432 crore in FY16. BPCL had reported net profit of Rs. 1,936 crore and Rs. 4,053 crore in FY13 and FY14 respectively.The table below show how the leading PSUs have gone through a topsy turvy ride during the last two financial years of USP and the first two fiscals of NDA government:The first two years of the NDA government are rather inadequate to judge the fruitfulness of its pro-growth measures. Having said that, declining domestic demand, global economic slowdown and production glitches have marred the performance of PSUs in sectors like Oil & Gas, Power, Mining & Minerals, etc. With global sentiments hinting at a significant recovery, it is expected that central PSUs will be back on growth path in the near future.
While Pune may be famous for its missal, pohe and IT parks, it has a rich legacy in education which very rightly bestows the title of The Oxford Of The East on the city. Since the establishment of the University of Pune in 1949, this quiet town has grown into a vibrant student destination with colleges offering courses in defence, law, food, medicine, management and others.

From the Symbiosis kids to the FTII artists, from the Fergusson idealists to the Wadias - current or ex-students always say, Nothing compares to the vibe in Pune. Whether you have 100 or 10,000 rupees in your pocket, the city accepts and serves all.

So whether you're studying in Pune or are just leaving with a lot of memories - here are a couple of things you'll relate to!

1. Amchi Mati, Amchi Manse

Puneri Patya

Its no news that Pune has a strong Maharashtran influence, so its best to know the language. And if you are not Punjabi, dont mess with the manus. Learn Marathi, it helps you everywhere!

2. The diverse crowd and the bros

Todaytoptrends

People from all over the world come to study in the city  more so foreigners. So when you meet someone who speaks your mother tongue - true friendship is found. #friendsforlife

3. The Symbiosis bach ke rehna rulebook

spmc

Symbiosis is legendary for its great drug driven haze with students, and every single person, right from your mother to the rickshaw-wala, will give you a warning. You can try to run, but you cant hide. Its all true boss.

4. The half return rickshaw fare fight

DNA india

For Symbi-ites in the Viman Nagar campus, Phoenix market city is the closest place that has AC all day to beat the heat, with Starbucks and Forever 21. Even though its all of a distance of 1.8 kms, the rickshaw manus will take 50 bucks  because madam, khaali aana padta hai na?

5. The raids in Viman Nagar

Viman Nagar /Flickr

Anisha Tiwary, a recent graduate says, If you live in Viman Nagar, your house would have had to be raided by the police at least once. It's like a crash course on how to deal with Pune policemen. The ideal ice breaker is talking about a sport. At least one of the cops would've represented the state in any one sport, so it's easy to get your way out!

6. The fact - three is no crowd

bccl

Even if your raste ka momo wala is just walking distance away, going tripley with your friends MAKES the experience. And the cops wont give a damn.

7. The best friend that is y our two-wheeler

bccl

Since Punes public transport is pretty much non-existent, having a two-wheeler is critical. And if a friend has a car, yay for parties - but the poor dude is SO the designated driver!

8. A drawer full of stoles

bccl

While in Pune, do as the Puneites do. This means wearing a stole/scarf wrapping the face just like the Taliban to escape the sun - because helmet ho na ho, skin toh main bacha ke rahoongi!

9. Going out literally every night to High Spirits

Zomato

For the student in Pune, life pretty much starts and ends at High Spirits in Koregaon Park. It is a home away from home with the homies! High is life. Sunday is reserved exclusively for cookout scenes.

10. The hike to Vetal Tekdi

dgpspune

A hill which is famous for everything from midnight drunken birthday parties to secret make-out sessions, it is an integral part of college life. Think of it as orientation into the student life - if you can make it to the top, you are IN.

11. BOGO on tickets

Sitaphal

With the vast number of gigs that happen almost every single night, if you are student - Pune loves its students - so one for one ticket is a almost a norm.

12. The language of Pune's food

bccl

S.P.D.P? Cold Coffee? Misal Pav? You aint no noob, you know the right places to eat the best food at the cheapest prices (and the best service) in a matter of days. Because hostel food pretty much tastes like rat droppings.

13. Dada or maushi

bccl

New to the city and need help carrying your bag? Slipping back into the hostel and the warden is flaming red? Maushi, rahi dya na and instant calm. #truestory
Even when SRK is yet to pick between Imtiaz Alis film and Aanand L Rais film, there is a highly exciting news that is doing the rounds. While Aanand has confirmed that SRKs will be playing a midget who is only 3 feet 1 inch tall, there is another interesting detail about the film.

Talking to a media house, SRK said,

"I would have a problem if I have to do it on my knees. I am trying to avoid that part because that looks unreal also and in today's time and age, you don't want to do that. You would like to have more feel to an actor and shoot it like a regular film and still be able to do it. So we are trying to figure out and we are doing R&D already. Aanand has a lot of collection of what we have to do. If need be, we will figure out how to do it abroad and then bring it here."

It wont be wrong to say that SRK and Red Chillies has pioneered the use of VFX in India and reports claim that SRK has now dedicated a separate team for Aanand's film to make it on the lines of Hollywood flick Hobbit.

SRK added,

"Technology wise, our VFX team is working on it. And Aanand is working with them. It will need a few tightening. We will do it once and fail, maybe. But we will get it right because it has been done previously. I think in Hobbit, it's been tried. But we have never done that technology in India.
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Acid attack is one of the most heinous crimes against women.

kaanchichopra.wordpress

It has been estimated that around a thousand women are victim to acid attacks per year in India. Acid attacks in India have a gendered aspect to them. An analyses of reports revealed that at least 72% of reported attacks included one female victim. 34% of the analysed print media in India cited rejection of marriage or refusal of sexual advances by women as the cause of the attack and even dowry disagreements have shown to spur acid attacks. Land, property, and/or business disputes accounted for 20% of acid assaults.

kaanchichopra.wordpress

Most survivors experience a dramatic change in their lifestyle and face social isolation that damages their self-esteem and economic position. The trauma stems from excruciating pain and unbearable shock compounded by social rejection even by their own family members. This is a series of illustrations with the sole purpose of changing the mindset of how the general public looks at acid attack survivors and even how the victims look at themselves.

kaanchichopra.wordpress

In my opinion, scars and bruises on the bodies of the survivors should not be a sight of pity. These marks should be considered beautiful. Victims should not feel insecure about their appearance but should sense a feeling of pride because they were strong enough to survive the inhumane incident.

Ive doodled the various parts which are disfigured because these floral patterns beautify their face and soul. Their marks, scars and bruises are nothing but doodles on their bodies  an everlasting impression of their courage and strength.

kaanchichopra.wordpress

There are instances when the entire face is affected.

Hydrochloric acid, nitric acid and sulphuric acid cause severe burning of the face, and even bones melt. If the acid enters the eyes of the victim, she loses her eyesight. In some cases the women lost their ability to hear due to the attack. When the acid enters the wind pipe or food pipe, it leads to fatal diseases. Many deaths have been reported after acid attacks.

This is a plea to all the victims to not lose their self-confidence.

This is a reminder for all the on-lookers to salute their undying spirit.

Originally published here.
Barely a week after E-commerce major Flipkart found itself in the midst of a controversy after it deferred the joining dates to campus recruits from IIM Ahmedabad now now L&T Infotech that is facing the wrath of students.

PTI

The real estate giant has withdrawn offer letters it had provided to around 1,500 students nearly one-and-a-half years ago.

The company had given them 'letter of intent', which wasn't legally binding to some 6,500 students across the country in early 2015 with a promise that they will be hired in batches.

Glassdoor

But after waiting for one-and-a-half years around 1,500 of them received a letter saying that the letter of intent is being withdrawn citing the 'poor performance' of the students in a second online test conducted in March this year.

"I was shocked to receive the email. I had cleared all the assessments and interviews when the company came to college," said a student.

I studied day and night before the examination in the 15 days time I got. The HR official went on reiterating that it was not an elimination round. But after a few days, they mailed me saying I have not cleared the examination, hence the offer of intent stands cancelled, said another student.

According to reports, the company had overestimated its growth prospects at the time of hiring, but since it couldn't materialise they decided to cancel the offer letters.

With their future-prospects unexpectedly hitting dead the dejected students protested outside the L&T Infotech's office in Chennai.

Commonfloor

L&T's move comes close to Flipkart deferring the joining dates of recruits from IIM Ahmedabad citing organisational restructuring. The company had instead offered a Rs. 1.5 lakhs compensation to the recruits, which was both rejected by the students and the IIM.
Amid the concerns over the attacks on African nationals in India, two Goan ministers have kicked up another controversy. Goa Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar said he has been receiving a lot of complaints against Nigerians and people of Goa are annoyed with their behaviour.

PTI

The Goans in general are complaining about these foreigners. We get people from all other countries, but in general the people of Goa are very much annoyed with their (Nigerians) behaviour, with their attitude, with their way of life, Parsekar said

Goa tourism minister Dilip Parulekar has gone one step further and demanded a strict law to deport Nigerians, claiming that they come in conflict with Indian law. He also claimed that Nigerian nationals are involved in drug trade and they are a problem, not just in Goa, but across the country.

cleanindiajournal

"The problem of Nigerians is not only prevalent in Goa, but also the entire country. They (Nigerians) arrive here to study and create problem so that cases are filed against them," Parulekar said.

Nigerian students come to study here, file FIR & build a court case & try and stay in India: Goa Min Dilip Parulekarhttps://t.co/cAYmrSL1E1  ANI (@ANI_news) May 31, 2016

The statements come at a time when India is trying to assure the African community that the country is safe for them. Top central ministers including VK Singh had met African students and envoys in an effort to reassure them following the murder of a Congolese student in Delhi earlier this month.
Almost six months after the Pathankot terror attack, intelligence agencies have sent an alert to Canada's Justin Trudeau government, saying that pro-Khalistan terrorists are running a camp near Mission city in British Columbia to carry out strikes in Punjab.

Reuters

According to a report prepared by Punjab intelligence sleuths, Canadian Sikh Hardeep Nijjar has taken over as the operational head of Khalistan Terror Force (KTF) and formed a module comprising Sikh youths to carry out the attacks.

The Punjab government has already submitted the report to the ministry of external affairs and ministry of home affairs to seek Nijjar's extradition.

morningcable

The report makes a reference to the January 2 Pathankot airbase attack, saying Nijjar "was to arrange weapons from Pakistan but due to high alert on the border in the wake of Pathankot incident, it could not materialise".

Nijjar, a baptized Sikh staying in Surrey since 1995 on a Canadian passport (QK139247), is a proclaimed terrorist in Punjab and wanted in connection with the 2007 Shingaar cinema blast in Ludhiana in which six people were killed.

shawglobalnews

These disclosures were made in the report after an alleged KTF member, Mandeep Singh, was arrested from Chak Kalan village in Ludhiana two weeks ago following his phone calls to Pakistan-based terror outfit Dal Khalsa International's (DKI) chief Gajinder Singh and Nijjar.

The report said "Nijjar has been imparting arms training to his group in Canada after the arrest of former KTF chief Jagtar Tara in Thailand by Interpol last year. He took Mandeep Singh and three more Sikh youths recently for AK-47 training in a range near Mission where they were made to fire for four hours daily"

The report has even disclosed that Thai authorities had detained Nijjar when he was flying back "from Lahore to Vancouver via Bangkok last year".

Both Mandeep and Nijjar have made frequent visits to Pakistan for arms training with the ISI, says the report. It has also attached their recent photographs brandishing AK-47s outside Nankana Sahib gurdwara in Pakistan.

calgaryherald

Claims the report "Mandeep came to India in January 2016 from Canada with a specific plan to target police officers, Shiv Sena leaders and dera chiefs. While in India, he was in constant touch with Nijjar and Gajinder Singh in Pakistan. He was doing a recce of targets in Patiala and Ludhiana while Nijjar was to arrange weapons from Pakistan"

Recently, there were attacks on leaders of Shiv Sena and Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) in Ludhiana and Jalandhar.

The report has said Mandeep was in touch with DKI boss Gajinder Singh, who had masterminded the hijack of a Srinagar-Delhi Indian Airlines flight in 1981.
Within hours of the breaking of news about the gang-rape of a 16-year-old by more than 30 men in a Rio de Janeiro favela last week, a Facebook page was created by a group of women to organise a protest against the crime. The main message on the page asked the Rio residents to protest as it was not "acceptable that we do not make noise".

BCCL

With anger rising against the crime and slow police action against 33 men involved in the attack, the page urged people to take inspiration from India's Nirbhaya case.

BCCL

"Who does not remember the 23-year-old girl's case of 2012 who was raped and murdered by six men in a bus in India? She died! And the next day, thousands of Indian women were on the streets, demanding the end of this culture of fear,"

said the page which has been "liked" by thousands and has a thread of several hundred messages, with many referring to the protests that had swept India following the crime in the national capital.

Also Read: A Teenager In Rio Was Gang-Raped By 33 Men For 36 Hours. Here's Why Brazil Is Keeping It A Secret

Organised mainly through this page, a massive protest took place in Rio on last Friday, with hundreds of women gathering on the steps of the city Legislative Assembly. Carrying placards which protested against violence against women and demanded action against the criminals involved in the case, some had painted their faces with the female symbol. Said Camila Araujo, a Rio-based activist, referring to the Nirbhaya case.

"We know about the case in India. We also want to protest in similar way so that our voices are heard and this rape culture is finished. The police are very slow. We want to tell them that this is not acceptable anymore, just like the people of Delhi did after the case".

BCCL

The Rio case came to light after two suspects posted her photos and videos  naked, unconscious and suffering abuse  on the social networks last Wednesday.

Though it's almost a week since the teenager was assaulted by a group of men whose number, according to the police, could be as high as 36, the probe has been moving at a slow pace. Just four persons, including the girl's boyfriend, have been detained so far. Though the police have now pressed helicopters and special teams to hunt down the culprits, the anger against the police is growing in the city that will host the Olympics in August.

BCCL

In the meantime, the outrage caused by the assault and Rio protests have set in motion a series of demonstrations that will rock the country this week. The biggest demonstration will take place here on Avenida Paulista on Tuesday (June 1), where thousands are expected to rally against the crime. Again organised through social networks, the Sao Paulo protest has "invited" more than 160,000 people through its Facebook page.

At the protest site, there is already a wall dedicated to slogans with photos of some of the most well-known anti-rape protests in the world. Called a "Mural in support of rape victims", a photo of Delhi women with candles in their hands at the India Gate after the Nirbhaya case sits among the cluster of posters under the slogan "#NoMoreRape". Hundreds of people have left hand-written messages on the mural.

Also Read: Another Nirbhaya! In A Horrific Attack Kerala Woman Raped And Murdered, Private Parts Mutilated

The Sao Paulo protest is expected to gather at least 25,000 people. That will make it one of the biggest protests against sexual crimes in the history of this country. Similar rallies are being organised in other cities as the outrage caused by the attack on the teenager spreads across the country. says the Facebook page of the group which has organised these protests.

"This event aims to show that we do not accept impunity for rape and any form of harassment".

BCCL

In the meantime, the 16-year-old who was the victim of a gang rape has deleted her Facebook profile after she was accused by some of not being assaulted at all. Earlier, the teenager had joined the campaign "I fight to end rape culture" by writing a post on her Facebook page. The girl wrote on her page.

"No, I do not want media attention. It was not me who posted the photos (of assault) on social media. So stop blaming me!"

What is fuelling anger here is the slow progress in the case and the police's attitude towards the victim. In an interview broadcast on Sunday evening on prime time television, the teenager criticised the chief investigator in the case for asking her if she was often involved in group sex. She said.

"It was horrible to testify because they blamed me for something I did not. They were wondering why I was there. The officer was trying to make me feel guilty. Then I stopped answering questions".

On Sunday, though the chief investigator was taken off the case and replaced by another officer the police have been frustratingly slow in moving against the criminals.

"I do not believe in justice," the girl said on TV on Sunday night. "I believe in the justice of God, which is slow, but does not fail."
Sea-Watch, a humanitarian organisation that operates a boat between Libya and Italy, recently published a photo of a drowned baby cradled in the arms of a German rescuer to garner sympathy for refugees who are losing their lives at sea.

The baby, believed to be below the age of one, drowned after a wooden boat capsized near the southern port of Reggio Calabria on Friday. In the photo, the baby - whose gender is still unknown - looks as if it's sleeping with arms outstretched.

Reuters

The German rescuer, who pulled the baby out of the water, named it Martin. He said he spotted the baby "like a doll, arms outstretched".

"I took hold of the forearm of the baby and pulled the light body protectively into my arms at once, as if it were still alive It held out its arms with tiny fingers into the air, the sun shone into its bright, friendly but motionless eyes," he added.

The rescuer sang to himself after finding the baby to prevent himself from giving into the "incomprehensible, heart-rending moment".

Reuters

Sea-Watch circulated the image in hopes to incite some iota of sympathy in European authorities, at whose doorstep, hundreds of migrants are losing their lives. Nearly 700 people are feared to have died in the Mediterranean during the past week alone.

45 migrants died at sea when the boat capsized. 135 survivors were pulled to safety by German rescuers.

Similar to Aylan Kurdi's image last year, this photo once again evokes empathy for all those who're fleeing their war-torn homes to seek refuge elsewhere. And in the same breath, it also screams urgency - the urgency to prod the authorities awake to the plight of the displaced.
When you're President Obama and the First Lady's pet dogs, you know you have a life that can give humans a run for their money.

The absolutely paw-dorable pooches, Bo and Sunny Obama, live such amazing lives, it's making our own fade in comparison.

Cute as hell, you have to agree that these are two celebrity dogs that have, on occasions, stolen limelight right from the President and First Lady themselves. And rightly so. Have you seen them?

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The Portuguese water dogs are so busy being famous that even they have schedules like the Obamas. Michelle says, "Everybody wants to see them and take pictures. I get a memo at the beginning of the month with a request for their schedules, and I have to approve their appearances."

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The presidential dogs have been in attendance in almost all famous White House balls such as the Easter Egg Roll and Christmas events. They have also been at the First Lady's side when she welcomed tourists on the anniversary event of the president's inauguration, reports Associated Press.

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And the dogs live a lavish life, full of fun and love. Michelle says, "They can sit on my lap, they sit on my chair, they cuddle with me. I like to lay on the floor with them and blow in their face. I like to make them run and chase each other."

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Being famous doesn't mean the pooches are at their disciplined best at all times. Sunny - the naughtier one of the lot - is always cooking up mischief when no one's paying attention.

"You know what she does sometimes? She leaves the kitchen and she'll sneak and she'll go poop on the other end of the White House," adds First Lady.

Sigh, the sweet life of Bo and Sunny. :)
Governor of Kwara State, Abdulfatah Ahmed, has commended the President Muhammadu Buhari administration for allocating funds in the 2016 budget for deplorable federal roads in the state.

He described the move as the best thing to ever happen to the state in the last 16 years from the federal government.

Governor Ahmed, who gave the commendation yesterday during a media chat to mark the first year of his second term in office and the 2016 Democracy Day, listed the federal roads captured in the 2016 budget as Share-Patigi-Kogi boundary road, Kaiama-Kishi road and Ajase-Erinle road.

According to him, funding of the projects by the federal government will bring relief to the states resources as funds earlier earmarked for the roads, will now be channeled to other development projects of the state government.

This is the best thing that has happened to Kwara in the last 16 years that I know. For the first time, we are getting federal projects in the state coming into the federal budget; projects that we could have spent our money on. When was the last time we were noticed and got projects at the federal level? Mr. Ahmed queried.
More than 50 Afghan police officers have been killed over the past two days in heavy fighting around the capital of the southern province of Helmand, officials say. Helmand, with its strategic location, has been the scene of major attacks by the Taliban over the past year. As many as 24 officers were killed on Monday, and another 33 on Sunday, regional police commander Esmatullah Dawlatzai told Reuters news agency. Nearly 40 others were injured, he added.

Taliban fighters have managed to enter the outskirts of Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital, and residents could hear the sound of heavy gunfire and artillery throughout the night. The situation is not good, we can hear the sound of guns just outside the city, and Taliban now operate within two kilometres of the city, Mohammed Kareem Atal, Helmand member of parliament, told Al Jazeera.

He said four government posts have fallen to the Taliban, as the fighters are trying to cut off the main road to the capital Kabul and the neighbouring province of Kandahar. The army is using helicopter gunships to support the ground forces. They have so far managed to retake one fallen post, and we are waiting for reinforcement to arrive from Kabul, Kareem Atal added.
Governor of Imo State and Chairman of Progressive Governors Forum, Owelle Rochas Okorocha, has said that the governing All Progressives Congress will not use the economic downturn in the country as an excuse to dodge credible performance.

Rather, he said the President Muhammadu Buhari administration is demolishing what he called the old and shaky structures laid by the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in the past and rebuilding it for a new nation that all Nigerians will be proud of.

The governor spoke at a special church service yesterday to mark Sundays Democracy Day celebration at the Victory Chapel, Government House in Owerri, the state capital.

He said: What is happening now in the country is a total reconstruction of Nigeria and laying of a strong foundation that will metamorphose into a new Nigeria we shall all be proud of.

The restructuring requires patience and perseverance on the part of all. The APC government, led by President Muhammadu Buhari, will put Nigeria back on its strong foot. The APC government will not use the downturn in the economy as an excuse but will bring water out of stone to put the nation right.

Governor Okorocha added: What we are passing through now as a nation is a road other great nations, such as the United States of America (U.S.A) and Britain, passed through before they got to where they are today. If Nigeria fails from now henceforth, then the APC will be held responsible. But this government must be given time to clear the rot of yesteryears.

On his achievements in Imo State that last five years, he said: The joy of a father is to see the collection of successful sons he has set the state on the right path of greatness with his Rescue Mission team. I love Imo State.

I am doing my best to live a legacy and mark that the generation yet unborn will be proud of.
The Nigerian Army has imposed a dusk to dawn curfew on Pandogari in Rafi local government area of Niger state, following the outbreak of religious violence in the area.

The violence resulted in the killing on Sunday of a 24-year-old trader identified as Mr. Methodus Chimaije Emmanuel, who was accused by the mob of allegedly posting blasphemous comments about Prophet Mohammed on social media.

The riotous mob, which was still spoiling for more blood, embarked on a looting spree of shops just as they took over the Lagos-Kaduna road, a major artery connecting the northern and southern parts of the country before they were dispersed by the security agencies.

A statement on Monday signed by Major NC Agwu, Assistant Director, Army Public Relations, said one church, one house and a shop were burnt while 25 other shops were looted in the ensuing melee.

Major Agwu, however, regretted to announce that three other persons including personnel of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC, also lost their lives.

Continuing he said, Some arrests have been made in connection with the violence and the suspects handed over to the police. The military and other security agencies are currently embarking on confidence building patrols in all nooks and crannies of the town.

Giving further details on the violence, the assistant spokesperson for the Army said, At about 6pm on Sunday, 29 May 2016, one Mr. Methodus Chimaije Emmanuel, a 24 year old trader based in Pandogari, Rafi LGA of Niger State was attacked and killed by a mob in the town on allegation of posting a blasphemous statement about Prophet Muhammad on the social media.

Troops of 31 Artillery Brigade of 1 Division, Nigerian Army on operation MESA quickly intervened and restored law and order while a dusk to dawn curfew was imposed in the town.

Early Monday morning however, the rioters embarked on further violence, looting shops and blocking the Lagos  Kaduna Road, a major artery connecting the northern and southern parts of the country.

Again, troops in conjunction with the personnel of Nigeria Police and Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) took control of the situation to forestall escalation of violence and any threat to the peace in the town.

As part of the measures to de-escalate tensions and ensure a lasting peace in the town, the military is working with the Local Government Council authorities and community leaders, including the Kagara Emirate Council to pacify all aggrieved parties and build on the peace so far established.

However, while the military will continue with its current non-violent approach to maintaining peace in Pandogari town, it will not take kindly to any unscrupulous element who would attempt to visit violence on innocent and law abiding Nigerians.

The general public is therefore warned to abide by the conditions of the curfew so far emplaced. All law abiding citizens are enjoined to go about their legitimate businesses without any fear of intimidation.

They are to be rest assured that the security forces will remain fully present to guarantee their safety and security across the length and breadth of the town, within their rules of engagement.
Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar on Tuesday urged Nigerians to give President Muhammadu Buhari a pass mark for his efforts in the first year of his administration. He made the call in Abuja at the launch of a book titled We Are All Biafrans written by Chido Onumah.

According to Atiku, Buhari promised to face five areas and he has accomplished two.

He promised to look into issues like power, insurgency, unemployment, corruption and diversification and if you are to take two out of five, you can give him a pass mark.

He has dealt with corruption and with Boko Haram. For power, give him time, he said.

According to the former vice president, power supply issue is complex. He explained that unless the Niger Delta issue was resolved Nigeria may not get electricity soon.

SEE ALSO: Atiku Criticizes Nigerias Federal Structure

I think the Niger Delta should be handled with a stick and carrot approach. In 2007, before I ran for president, I met with various stakeholders on the Niger Delta issue and they came up with a policy.

Part of the recommendations was that the ministry be moved to the Niger Delta and not Abuja. We have had administrations that did not do their homework on the Niger Delta.

If I had won, I would have sold 10 per cent shares in the NNPC; that will give me 20 billion dollars which would build infrastructure for the Niger delta but we will always end up with accidental leadership.

Bring peace and development to the Niger Delta then they will stop blowing up pipelines. Then, we will get gas and then power can be stable but until then, we will not get it, Atiku said.

Atiku also recommended devolution of powers to states and local governments.
No fewer than 50 members of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) were on Monday arrested for holding road show in Owerri, the Imo State capital to commemorate their anniversary.

Mr Okechukwu Nwogu, a stalwart of MASSOB, who spoke to journalists in Owerri regretted the arrest of members of the group whom he said were on a peaceful march to commemorate the 49th anniversary of Biafra and 17th anniversary of MASSOB.

MASSOB, a pro-Biafra agitation group was formed in the year 1999 by Chief Ralph Uwazuruike, as a non-violent group to continue failed secession attempt championed by the late Dim Chukwuemeka Ojukwu in 1967.

MASSOB members had kicked off their road show at Waterside Primary School Owerri from where they moved to Rotibi Street into Oguamana Street before linking Douglas road where heavily armed security men threw teargas at them at the Ama JK end.

Speaking, Okechukwu Nwogu lamented saying, What Nigerian Government is doing to us is very unfair. MASSOB is a non-violent group moving without arms in remembrance of our history. If Nigerias security is well armed and ready for war, they should go to Sambisa forest and fight the Boko Haram insurgents who are out to fight and not Biafra. He added that the group had achieved great results despite the challenges and suppression faced by the members from security forces in different parts of the country.
One of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and investors alike is the difficulty in operating a business in the country. President Muhammadu Buhari has, therefore, approved the formation of a Presidential Commission on ease of doing business in Nigeria to address this.

Nigeria currently ranks 169 on the World Bank Ease of Doing Business ranking.

The commission will have a secretariat to be headed by a private sector professional, Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, said while presiding over the first Quarterly Consultation between the presidency and the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN).

One of the key issues the presidential commission which I am heading would be looking at is the case of multiple taxation. This is also an issue that the Ministry of Trade and Investment is also actively engaged with, Osinbajo said.

He explained that the chair would lead the secretariat of the Presidential Commission that would now pay even greater attention and focus to the issues of doing business in Nigeria.
Civil Servants in Ondo State have announced that they will embark on an indefinite strike starting tomorrow, Wednesday.

The workers will stay away from their offices in protest at the state governments inability to pay over five months salary.

The strike notice is contained in a communique issued in Akure, the state capital by chairmen and secretaries of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Joint Negotiating Council (JNC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) in Ondo State.

According to the communique, the decision followed an emergency meeting of the labour unions, which reviewed the failure of the state government to pay the workers since January 2016.

It has become unbearable that workers have not received salaries for the past five months at a stretch.

That non-payment of salaries to workers have affected the wellbeing of workers/pensioners economically, socially, psychologically and health wise.

That workers of Ondo State can no longer bear this situation, in view of the untold hardship suffered by these workers, it added.

The NLC, TUC and JNC, therefore, directed all civil servants in the state to remain at home beginning from June 1, pending when the government pays the salary arrears.

The communique was signed by the state NLC Chairman, Bose Daramola, NLC Secretary, Adewale Sanusi, JNC Chairman, Sunday Adeleye, his Secretary Akinlolu Oluwole, as well as TUC Chairman and Secretary Ekundayo Soladoye and Fatuase Clement, respectively.


Following the incessant cases of domestic violence in Lagos state, Governor Akinwumin Ambode has vowed to punish anyone guilty of the crime in the state.

In a series of tweets on Tuesday, May 31st, Ambose revealed that the long hammer of the law will not fail to land on anyone who is found guilty of carrying out abuses in their homes no matter who they are.

The Governor tweeted;

No matter how highly placed you are in the society, if you commit any domestic violence crime, Well go after you. pic.twitter.com/hcKYJX4AKB  Akinwunmi Ambode (@AkinwunmiAmbode) May 31, 2016

The Governor noted that in the last one year, the Lagos State Government has handled a total of 4, 035 cases ranging from rape, adding that victims of sexual assault received medical attention from Mirabel Centre and State Hospitals, so far, 50 cases were charged to court.

All the victims of sexual assault received medical attention from Mirabel Centre and State Hospitals, so far, 50 cases were charged to court  Akinwunmi Ambode (@AkinwunmiAmbode) May 31, 2016

Ambode also stated that victims of domestic violence and rape can seek counselling with trained professionals via DSVRT hotline~08137960048
Kogi State Governor, Yahaya Bello has accused his predecessor, Captain Idris Wada, of embezzling the N2 billion Youth Enterprise Fund obtained from the Central Bank of Nigeria.

Bello, who made the accusation on Sunday in a statewide broadcast to commemorate Democracy Day, said the immediate past administration used fictitious beneficiaries to siphon the money.

He said: This money is a loan meant to stimulate commerce among the youth.

We will recover it back from whoever has stolen it.

The governor said he was not out to witch-hunt anyone but would not condone corruption by closing his eyes to obvious cases of outright embezzlement of state funds.

Bello urged the youths not to despair and disclosed that his government was assisting the Dangote Group to negotiate the acquisition of 20,000 hectares of land for commercial rice cultivation and processing, while it has also signed memorandum of understanding with tested large scale farming enterprises.

He said government has also engaged consultants to review all projects awarded by the previous administration and advise it on the way forward.

He said: We did discover that most of the contractors who rushed back to site when we assumed office had abandoned those projects before. This has led us to wonder what other abandoned projects exist for which the state has made payments and received little or no value.

We advise other contractors who know they have not given value to money to quietly return to site and complete their obligations. We will not condone corruption where discovered.

Bello said he was employing creative financial and social engineering to re-distribute the meagre allocations coming from the Federation Account in the interest of the citizens through cost cutting, prioritization and elimination of wastages.

We have set up an Economic Team and a Fiscal Responsibility Committee to assist the administration in the areas of probity and accountability, he explained.

Reacting to the allegation of embezzlement, Wadas media aide, Jacob Edi, in a statement said the money in question was given to all states of the federation through the Central Bank of Nigeria with clear guidelines on disbursement.

He said the government had set up a Special Purpose Vehicle Committee as directed by the CBN to disburse the money.

Edi said the then State Executive Council also deliberated on the guidelines before approving the disbursement of the money.

While stressing that every transaction was done in accordance with the CBN guideline, Edi asked those in doubt to reach out to the beneficiaries who are still in the state and verify.

Source: Daliypost
The Ondo State chapter of All Progressives Congress (APC) has accused the state governor, Olusegun Mimiko, of alleged diversion of the bailout funds the state received from the federal government as loans to members of NURTW, Artisans, market women in exchange for their voter cards. 

President Muhammadu Buhari had last July approved the release of N713.7billion intervention funds for states to pay workers salaries.

The bailout was part of a three-pronged relief package by the Buhari administration to help states, which were buckling under the weight of dwindling federal allocation, to settle outstanding workers salaries, allowances and pensions owed the people. 

While some states are yet to apply for the bailout funds, others that had received their own share, have either used it to settle workers salaries or diverted it other purposes the funds were not originally meant for.

One of such states in the latter category is Ondo, according to the state publicity secretary of APC, Omoba Abayomi Adesanya, who said the party has uncovered a new strategy by Governor Olusegun Mimiko to hoodwink the people of Ondo State and to illegally acquire their voters cards under the guise of soft loans to certain groups of people and associations in the state.

According to Adesanya, these groups the National Union of Road, Transport Workers (NURTW), artisans, market women associations, the Okada Riders Association, Tipper union and others.



He claimed that Using his surrogates planted within these associations, the governor has started witch-hunting and intimidating members who refused to submit details and photocopy of their voters cards.

He has threatened to deregister and expel them as members of such association/group and that he will not allow them to function within the state.



Mimikos plan is to give soft loans of between N60,000 to N100,000 to every member in exchange for their voters card ahead of the 2016 gubernatorial election in the state. He also promised any member with children of voting age an extra N100, 000, depending on the number of children. 

This is obviously robbing Peter to pay Paul. He is robbing the workers in the state of their salaries to give loans to the artisans, NURTW, market women in exchange of their voters cards, the Ondo APC alleged.



The party, however, pleaded with the aforementioned groups and the good people of the state not to fall for what it termed Governor Mimikos evil plot, stressing Voters card or its information should not be released to anybody or government agents as pre condition or license loan. Doing so will amount to selling their future and that of their children.



We challenge Ondo State Police command, Directorate of State Security, Ondo State command, the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) in the State to quickly investigate this matter and unravel the government agents behind this dastardly act and bring them to book, the statement concluded.
Senator representing Osun Central Senatorial District, Prof. Sola Adeyeye has reacted to the accusation of Senator representing Bayelsa East Senatorial District, Ben Murray-Bruce, that operatives of the Department of State Services (DSS) prevented him from greeting President Muhammadu Buhari at a state dinner hosted by President Buhari to mark the 2016 Democracy Day.

Professor Adeyeye argued that Murray-Bruce along with some All Progressives Congress, APC lawmakers were turned back because they breached protocol.

Murray-Bruce had tweeted: I was at the Presidential Villa today, went to the presidents table. DSS wouldnt allow me greet him, but let another senator greet him. I have nothing against the President. However, nobody is too important to be criticized and my mouth will never be silenced!

However Adeyeye said: I was at the dinner. I sat in the front row along with other Principal Officers of the National Assembly. I had a vantage view of what transpired. I am disappointed by this comment from a respected colleague. I have on two occasions provided robust defense of Sen Ben Bruce. Not this time!

It was Dino Melaye who first went to greet those seated at the Presidents table, including President Buhari. He was well greeted. No one in the senate has criticized President Buhari more than Sen Melaye. But as others rose to do what Dino had done, the scene got clumsy and indecorous because people were approaching the Presidents table from different directions.

I sat between Sen Olujimi and Sen Bwacha. The three of us felt embarrassed by what was clearly a breach of dinner protocol. At that level, if dinner was served or being served, good etiquette demanded that the Presidents table should not be approached. One should wait until people had finished eating.

No senator in the USA would breach such elementary protocol. We (on my table) predicted in whispers that colleagues would soon be barred from approaching the Presidents table and it happened. The first person to be turned back was Sen Barnabas Gemade who was visibly embarrassed. He belongs to the APC; he is not a known critic of the President.

When I noticed that most people had finished their food, I approached the table and offered my pleasantries. Others followed suit. No one was turned back, Adeyeye explained.
The new militant group, Niger Delta Avengers, which has claimed responsibility for recent bombings of oil and gas installations in the Niger Delta, has denied the Nigerian Armys claim that its members were arrested.

The 4th Brigade, Nigerian Army, had on Sunday paraded 10 suspected militants specialised in disruption of oil and gas facilities and their weapons, saying they confessed to be members of the Avengers during interrogations.

Refuting the claim via its Twitter handle on Tuesday, the militant group said none of its strike team was arrested by the Army.

Our attention has (been) drawn to the arrest of 10 Niger Delta Avengers boys by Nigeria Military. None of our strike team has been arrested, the group said. Its all a lie.

It also denied that any of its members had been killed, discrediting a claim by the military Joint-Task Force codenamed Operation Pulo Shield, operating in the region.

Nigeria Military also lied that NDA kill(ed) soldiers. We havent engaged in combat with them but if they want us to kill them let them come after us, it said.
The Chairperson of the House of Representatives Committee on Diaspora Affairs, Rita Orji, has brought to the public the case of a Nigerian woman said to be in her 30s named Julie Osamese, whose kidney was allegedly harvested by some doctors in Italy.

According to The Sun, Julie, a mother of one, who is a legal immigrant in Italy, had gone to the Ospedale Maria Vittoria Cibrario Hospital in Turin, Italy sometime in November 2008 to complain about her poor health.

At the time, she had a bit of fever and was given some drugs and asked to come back for revaluation one week later . Julie returned to the hospital one week later and the doctors allegedly gave her drugs which made her dizzy. It was gathered that as she complained to the doctors who attended to her, she was tied to the bed despite her protest. By the time she woke up, part of her buttocks had allegedly been chopped off, and her kidney tampered with.

That was how she lost control of her bladder, leading to uncontrollable urination.

Speaking on the matter, the House of Representatives member, Rita Orji said: After taking the drugs for one week, she came back to report how she was feeling. On that day, she was asked if she came to the hospital alone, and she said, yes innocently without knowing the reason why that question was put across to her. That marked, the beginning of her paralysis. She was asked to lie down that they were going to give her some medication. Within two, three minutes, she was approached with a mixture in a cup and she drank it, believing that it was for the fever she complained of. But she became dizzy and she was telling them how she felt. But they said there was no problem. Suddenly, the team of doctors came around and tied her legs and her hands on the bed and she started shouting, why are you tying me? She said one of the doctors responded that she could shout at the top of her voice, but that nobody would know what was being done. That was how they faced her down and gave her injection on her base bone. After the injection, she passed out.

When she finally regained consciousness, she saw that the lower part of the buttocks on both sides had been chopped off, to the extent that the bones in her buttocks had cracked and she saw the pieces of the bones. Also her bladder was disengaged from the source with urine pouring out uncontrollably. In fact, she woke up on a catheter and a big plaster by the region of her kidney. They started moving Madam Julie from one hospital to the other. It is the norm that when you are being transferred to any hospital, the ambulance in which a patient is transferred goes with a medical report. But in Julies case, nothing like that was done. They dumped her into one ambulance to drop her in one home or the other without attaching her medical history. They kept her, thinking she would die. At a stage, she was only living on prayers. They finally dropped her at the seventh medical Centre. During our investigations, I asked what the reasons for moving her from one place to the other were. There is no answer to that. What they were telling us is that she is mentally Ill. She is diabetic. But I want to tell you that all these stories are unfounded. No one has the confirmation of these health conditions they told us she suffers from based on medical ground. On our arrival at that place, we conducted a test and found that Julie is not diabetic. The scan that was carried out on her, and we have the result, shows that her kidney was tampered with. This is what the woman has been shouting about for the past eight years, and nobody seems to believe her. Today it is Julie, tomorrow I dont know who it will be. On their final stop, they dumped her in a mental home, a woman of thirty something years, dumped in a mental home that harbours old men and women that are demented.

Also speaking on the matter, a medical doctor and another member of the committee who represents Itu/Ibiono Ibom federal constituency, Henry Okon -Archibong, says due to the poor treatment meted to Julie, she can never walk again

From what happened, they might have tried to give her anaesthesia before they harvested the kidney. In doing that, they damaged the lumber and sacred nerves. So, there is no way Julie can walk again. Julie has been paralysed and the issue of walking has nothing to do with what we are calling for. She has to be compensated, the medical doctors that participated in what led to her current situation have to be dealt with as the law permits. Indeed, the committee is demanding that the Italian government investigate Julie Osameses case with a view to fishing out the medical personnel whose highly unprofessional conduct led to the loss of one of her kidneys and her permanent confinement to a wheelchair. The lawmakers are also asking for the highest form of compensation and a complete rehabilitation of the mother of one, who they said have been the subject of several protests by the Nigerian community in Italy. The action that will satisfy us as lawmakers starts from the whole world condemning the injustice meted out to an innocent person. We are saying that there should be a holistic compensation and a new medical team should conduct an analysis of Madam Julies situation and proffer the best way to get her life back on track. She has lost hope on the medical doctors around her. So, I will advise that they have to look for another medical team that are not from Turin to carry out this job.

The lawmakers are demanding the minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama to institute a panel of inquiry into the matter with a view of determining the role of the staff of the Nigerian High Commission in Italy, whom they accused of negligence.

You cant believe that when the relations of this lady were at the hospital, a woman named Deborah told them what she had been put through. She gave them documents to back her claims and told these relatives of hers to run to the Nigerian High Commission in Rome, to inform them of what happened. Those documents were given to one Madam Martina and Mr. Folorunsho who are staff of the commission. But no one asked after her (Osamese) since 2009. They never went to visit her. They didnt even keep the documents handed over to them. When we demanded for them, they denied ever receiving the documents. For us, the recklessness of the Nigeria High Commission in Italy as at then, caused the terrible situation we see. Assuming they intervened on time, the situation of this woman will not be this bad, Rita Orji added

Source: LIB
Worried by the turn of events in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) following the removal of Senator Ali Modu Sheriff, the Board of Trustees (BoT) of the opposition party has raised a three-man team to meet with the sacked Acting National Chairman.

Sheriff is presently in court challenging his removal by PDP governors and other stakeholders during the recently held national convention of the party in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.

The leadership crises between the sacked national chairman and the Ahmed Makarfi caretaker committee appointed during the convention, led to a takeover of the PDP national secretariat in Abuja by the police.

It was learnt that as a follow up to the meeting last week to try and reconcile Sheriff and Makarfi, the BOT agreed with the stakeholders to raise the three-man panel to avert the degenerating situation in the party.

Members of the panel are Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu, former Education Minister Tunde Adeniran and House Minority Leader Leo Ogor.

According to a source in the party, the panel is expected to:

 prevail on Sheriff to be a true party man by placing the PDP above anything;

 implore Sheriff to withdraw all cases in court  in deference to the internal party mechanism for addressing such issues; and

 find amicable ways of resolving all pending issues.

The source said: The three-man team will meet Sheriff in Abuja on Tuesday (Today) because if we go on like this, the PDP might not survive this crisis.

We believe the panel can agree on workable solutions with Sheriff whose suits in court may draw PDP backward and tear it apart.

We are hopeful that we will come out of this crisis stronger, if Sheriff cooperates with the panel.
Immediate past Governor of Kano State, Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso has described the planned relocation of Mile 12 Market in Lagos as unfair and unacceptable.

He therefore, cautioned Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State against relocating the market from its present location or persecuting Hausa traders, who dominate the market, stressing such move would be inimical and counter-productive to the long existing cordial relationship between the Yoruba and Hausa in the state and beyond.

The Lagos State Government in March announced that after a meeting with all stakeholders involved in the operation of the Mile 12 Market, it was agreed among others that the market should be relocated to another suitable location as trading activities had outgrown the present location.

The decision was arrived at as part of measures aimed at bringing sanity into the market, especially after the deadly clash between the Hausas and their Yoruba host community on March 3, 2016.

However, Kwankwaso, who spoke yesterday when he stormed Lagos to oversee the repatriation of 40 members of Hausa Community just released from Kirikiri Maximum Prisons, urged Governor Ambode to have a rethink on the relocation of the popular market.

The released prisoners, mostly teenagers, were arrested in the wake of the March 3 clash.

The Kano senator, who had earlier met with the Serikin Hausawa, Alhaji Musa Muhammed at his Agege Palace, before he proceeded to address a large Hausa community in Lagos at Capitol Road, Agege, urged the Hausa community to be good ambassadors in the state.

Mr. Kwankwaso also urged the Lagos Government to accord due respect and friendship to the Hausas in the interest of one Nigeria.
The Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase, has directed that members of the Indigenous people of Biafra, IPOB, arrested in connection with the killing of policemen during a clash on Monday, be tried for murder.

At least five protesters were shot dead by soldiers near the Niger Bridge as the group held protests to mark the 49th anniversary of the declaration of the defunct Biafra Republic.

Pro-Biafra activists attacked and killed two policemen and injured two others during the fracas.

The army said it arrested nine protesters and handed them over to the police.

More protesters were arrested in Ebonyi when they gathered to observe what the group as the Biafra Day.

The police chief, Mr. Arase, said in a statement, Tuesday, that the IPOB members be disarmed, wherever they are found bearing arms.

He lamented the killing of the groups members but said the police and other security organisations will not allow any group disturb the peace of the nation.

Following the manifestation of the disposition of the armed IPOB activists to undertake premeditated attacks on Police officers engaged in operations aimed at restoring public order in States in the South-East and South-South geopolitical zone of the country, the Inspector-General of Police, IGP Solomon Arase, has directed the Assistant Inspectors General of Police and the Commissioners of Police in the affected area to disarm members of the group operating firearms immediately, said the statement signed by the force spokesperson, Olabisi Kolawole.

IGP Arase, while condemning the killing by members of IPOB, also directed the arrest of any member of the group found in possession of firearm and bring him/her to deserved justice, while all IPOB activists arrested in connection with the killing of the policemen should be charged to court for murder, the statement said.

Mr. Arase assured Nigerians of his commitment to their safety and security, adding that efforts would be focused on eliminating all forms of internal threats by unlawful groups.

Source: PremiumTimes
Professor Wole Soyinka has denied comments attributed to him in an interview assessing President Muhammadu Buharis first year in office.

The Nobel laureate, in a statement on Tuesday, described a report quoting him as declaring his support to Mr. Buhari as a disgusting forgery.

Once again, I notify the security arms of Nigeria about this increasingly obsessed exercise in identity forgery, the renowned playwright said in a terse statement.

According to the reports, Mr. Soyinka said he had faith in the president to stop the unprecedented bleeding of the country from never-seen looting in history.

It further quoted him as saying a situation where criminals were rewarded under the past administration openly and obscenely, could not be allowed to continue.

We needed a Buhari to put his legendary stamp of integrity to drive governance and in one year there is a new lease of life in the way government business is now conducted.

On economy we have believed lies of GDP and statistics built on falsehood for too long. Corruption was driving the economy as the working capital while petrol-dollars gave us a false sense of insularity, the report continued.

The report said the Nobel Laureate lamented that everything crashed on us without the money from oil like it used to be, blaming years of mismanagement for the current economic crisis in the country.

With Buhari having used the last 12 months for housekeeping, the trajectory of the economy will continue to go north with more hard work and faithful implementation of government programmes, Mr. Soyinka concluded in the report.

In the statement issued on Tuesday, Soyinka denied making such remarks in any interview.

I alert the public to beware of the danger this portends in the murky atmosphere of Nigerias ongoing politics, he said.

The sycophants of power and influence will clearly do anything to gain attention and preferment, but they only earn the contempt of decent citizens, including those on whom they foist their unsolicited services.
On this day in 2015, 69 persons burnt to death, when a trailer loaded with PMS descending from Army barracks side of Onitsha Enugu express way lost control and rammed into the Asaba Motor Park at Upper Iweka Onitsha and exploded.

Eleven vehicles mostly commuter buses and two motorcycles inside the Asaba Park Onitsha including the 40 foot tanker laden with petrol burnt beyond repairs inside the park.

The Nigerian Red Cross Society officials were the first to arrive at the scene of the incident, and according to its Chairman Prof Peter Emeka Kathy we have sixty nine burnt to dead persons as at now, there are other 30 casualties, a casualty is a living person, a dead person is no longer a casualty, so 69 persons are dead, and they have bee evaluated to various mortuaries in Onitsha, from Toronto to St Charles Boromneo Mortuaries and others in town.
The Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) may not be able to provide adequate security for people of the Southwest against rampaging Fulani herdsmen, national coordinator of the group, Otunba Gani Adams, has said.

He, therefore, called on people of the Southwest states to be on guard and ready to defend themselves against any attack by the herdsmen, which he noted, continued unabated.

Mr. Adams, who spoke at a lecture organised by the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Ondo State Council, to commemorate the 2016 Democracy Day, disclosed that negative comments from Yoruba people over the activities of the OPC has demoralized the group and weakened its resolve to protect the race.

The OPC leader, who was guest lecturer at the event, spoke on the theme: Herdsmen/ Fulani clashes: What implication for inter-Ethnic Relations/ Nigerian Economy?

According to Adams, members of the OPC lost the zeal to protect the people because its members were branded touts, thugs and terrorists by the same Yoruba race.

He noted that they were only recognised during elections, but once the politicians got into office, they (OPC) were discarded.

He also lamented that some traditional rulers did not encourage OPCs existence in their communities.

Religion has taken away traditional means of protection from the people in Yoruba land, Adams said, adding When one is too fanatic about religious, it brings shame. Religion is good, but when it becomes fanatic, it brings ridicule.

The OPC leader continued: If we are being moderate in our religions in Yorubaland  be it Christian, Muslim or traditional  who dares bring attack into our communities?

But Yoruba people are being hypocritical about traditional protections.

Mr. Adams, therefore, urged the people to use whatever traditional object they have to protect themselves and their communities, stressing that the first law in heaven is self-defence.

Reacting to President Muhammadu Buharis comment that the 2014 National Conference report would be kept in the archives, the OPC leader described it as insulting.

He stressed that only the implementation of confab report would bring lasting solutions to the crisis facing the country.

He said: Before you think that I am exaggerating, consider this: between 2010 and 2013, according to a report, Fulani herdsmen killed about 80 people. However, by 2014, they had slaughtered 1,229 people.

When you consider the Global Terrorism Index, you discover that Fulani herdsmen are Number Four on the list of the deadliest terror groups in the world.

Boko Haram, of course, takes the first position. As noted by a recent report, over 2,000 people were killed in conflicts between the herdsmen and different host communities in 2015 alone.

In comparison, the regular Boko Haram kills 2,500 people annually. In a situation where a group of supposed herdsmen carry sophisticated weapons and wipe out entire communities, the unity of the Nigerian nation is indeed threatened.

Those of us who attended the 2014 National Conference know that Nigeria cannot make any progress without implementing the report of that conference.

If we do this (implement the report), we will have a decisive framework for dealing with issues such as the one addressed in this brief lecture.

Until the report is implemented, we will just be going round in circles and life in Nigeria will continue to be nasty, short and brutish. The time to change our path is now.
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The annual letter from the CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation admits further missteps in its education reform efforts  and illustrates the hard lessons that can result when funder goals and ambitions collide with the political and organizational complexities of the K-12 landscape.

For years now, Gates has stood at the head of a coalition of funders supporting the development and implementation of the Common Core State Standards. Other funders supporting the Common Core have included the Hewlett and Mott foundations, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Helmsley Charitable Trust. But no funder has given more, or done more, to make the Common Core happen.

Gates Foundation work in this area started in 2008 and has given more than an estimated $200 million to push the standards forward. Eventually, more than 40 states and the District of Columbia adopted the Common Core, which required students to meet more rigorous standards in reading and math. Common Core also ushered in a set of more rigorous standardized assessments: the Smarter Balanced assessment in some states, the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) in others. The U.S. Department of Education under President Obama encouraged states to adopt the standards, even providing financial incentives to do so.

And then the political backlash began. Conservatives saw the administration's action as federal overreach into education, traditionally regarded as a state and local matter. We've reported on the range of funders on the right who mobilized serious money to fight the Common Core, most notably the hedge funder Sean Fieler.

Related:

Other critics attacked the overemphasis on testing and charged that the standards relied on unproven instructional methods. Diane Ravitch has written: The idea that the richest man in America can purchase and  working closely with the U.S. Department of Education  impose new and untested academic standards on the nations public schools is a national scandal.

What's striking is how much pushback to the Common Core emerged, despite what appeared to be a calculated effort by the Gates Foundation to co-opt possible critics through a blizzard of grants to nearly every ed group one might imagine. For example, if you ever found yourself scratching your head about why the foundation was giving big money to the American Federation of Teachers  some $10 million between 2010 and 2013  the Common Core push offers one explanation. (The NEA got almost as much money.)

If there was a deliberate co-option strategy, though, it failed.

As opposition grew and baseline data from the new assessments showed underwhelming results, a growing number of states evinced a kind of "buyer's remorse" and backed away from the assessments or dropped Common Core altogether. Indiana and Oklahoma dropped the standards, while North Carolina ordered the drafting of new standards. Politics has arguably played a bigger role than data. Tea Party types turned opposition to the Common Core into a litmus test for GOP candidates at both the national and state level.

In a speech last year, Bill Gates acknowledged that the Common Core effort had gone off the rails, saying the "attacks have drowned out the facts." He went on:

I believe much of the difficulty with the Common Core standards came because the advocatesand I include our foundation in this categorydidnt do enough to explain them early and clearly. Once states adopted the standards, parents needed to hear from principals and teachers and superintendents about the reason for the changes, how they would help their kids, and how things would be bumpy for a number of years as teachers adjusted to the new standards.

This month, in her annual letter, Gates Foundation CEO Sue Desmond-Hellmann says something similar. She acknowledges that the funder underestimated the level of resources and support that would be required for school systems to implement the standards. She also said that it failed to engage educators, parents, and communities about the benefits of the standards and to build support for them. "This has been a challenging lesson for us to absorb, but we take it to heart," she wrote.

A mea culpa like this from Gates is not new. The funder has admitted past missteps in K-12 reform efforts. In 2009, for example, Gates admitted that its initial investment in "small schools" had failed, noting that many smaller schools had not impacted student achievement in a meaningful way. (That mea culpa, some believe, was premature, as we've reported.)

Related: "Evidence-based" Philanthropy Gone Wrong: The Myth of How Small Schools Failed

In a 2015 interview with New York Times columnist Nicolas Kristof, Bill and Melinda Gates themselves admitted that their overall education reform investments had underdelivered. They said their early efforts were too technology focused and that they would redirect their efforts toward such areas as effective teaching and early learning. Yet, as we've reported, the work around teaching has already involved some major missteps, most notably in Tampa.

After we reported last year that Gates seemed to be gearing up for a big move into early education, one of our readers sniped: "Oy vey. Stick to immunization."

Related: That Didn't Quite Go As Planned: Looking Back at a Huge Gates Ed Grant in Tampa

But remember, we're talking about a "learning organization," here, and Desmond-Hellmond makes it clear that the the foundation's "learning journey in U.S. education is far from over... we are in it for the lon

g haul." And that includes not giving up on Common Core.

Desmond-Hellmann points to Kentucky as a Common Core success story. Following its adoption of the standards, the Bluegrass State engaged communities, parents, teachers, and school system leaders to tie the new standards to systems of teacher support and feedback, and performance measurement. In the years that followed, the proportion of students meeting college readiness standards on the ACT jumped from 27 percent to 33 percent after years of flat results. To some critics, though, Kentucky is hardly a clear-cut success story.

Regardless, Desmond-Hellmann's vision for Gates is that it's a place that course corrects in the face of empirical evidence. And it will be interesting to see how it applies lessons from its experience with the Common Core. There is little doubt that family, school, and community engagement is an essential element in the success of any education reform agenda, and Gates certainly has the resources to support such an effort. The depth of resistance to the Common Core and the number of states that have turned away, however, pose the question of whether engagement alone will be enough to bring about the success for which Gates and other funders are hoping.

More broadly, we wonder how all this will play into a shift that seems to be underway at the foundation in terms of its overall approach and operating style on K-12 as a new director of that work, Bob Hughes, starts his post tomorrow.

Related:
Is womens empowerment moving closer to center stage at the Rockefeller Foundation? Will there someday be a Rockefeller Sisters Fund to complement the Rockefeller Brothers Fund? Its hard to tell, but news that the foundation is starting a new initiative to address gender equality in the workplace is definitely big. With the ambitious goal of 100 female CEOs in the Fortune 500 corporations by 2025, this new initiative is more evidence that the agenda for womens empowerment is a higher priority for the foundation.

On May 12th at the Forbes Womens Summit, Rockefeller Foundation President Judith Rodin announced the foundation's 100x25 Initiative, which aims to impact gender equality by raising the number of female CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies worldwide.

Currently, only 21 women hold CEO jobs at the top 500 companies in the world. At the same time, nine in 10 Americans are unaware of this stark inequality at the highest ranks of the corporate world.

As part of this initiative, the Rockefeller Foundation plans to make this research widely known, and to use it to foster big changes to workplace norms around male and female leadership.

Related:

Along with the announcement, the foundation is releasing extensive new research about how far we are from womens equality in the workplace, including the fact that 60 percent of publicly listed companies having no women on their boards.

The initiative also spotlights companies successfully advancing gender equality agendas, and hopes to create a pipeline of women who will push to obtain higher-level jobs in corporations.

The Rockefeller Foundation has been investing in women's empowerment since the first wave of feminism in the 1970s, when it, along with other large foundations like Carnegie and Ford, began funding womens studies programs in universities, and other efforts to research and address womens equality.

But it's difficult to know the extent of the foundations investments aimed at women. Like the Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation spreads grants aimed at women throughout several of its funding areas, and to greater and lesser degrees in each area.

One thing is for sure: The Rockefeller Foundation is a notable funder of research and initiatives aimed at closing the gender gap. The foundation has also supported many of the major convenings for womens equality, including the recent Women Deliver conference of the United Nations, which it supported with a $100,000 grant through its Advance Health Initiative.

Related:

The foundation also gave $350,000 toward the costs of curating and executing the seventh annual Women in the World Summit to be held in New York City, April 2016 and of hosting a luncheon around the launch of the Foundations 100 by 2025 campaign. This money came from the Presidents Discretionary Fund. Other supporters of the Women in the World Summit included Toyota, Merck, Flex, The MasterCard Foundation, Microsoft, PepsiCo, Ford Foundation and Thomson Reuters.

As a contrasting example showing the range of grantmaking Rockefeller makes to women, the foundation gave $350,000 in 2015 through its Innovative Finance Initiative to Impact Investment Shujog Limited in Singapore, to go toward the costs of the development and launch of the Womens Livelihood Bond, a replicable social mission bond designed to raise capital to promote economic inclusion and resilience for poor and vulnerable women in South and Southeast Asia.

Another notable grant: In 2012, Rockefeller gave $1.2 million, again from the Presidents Discretionary Fund (Thank you, Judith!) to support the launching of a "Women for Results pillar of its Momentum for Change initiative to showcase the role of women in addressing climate change adaptation and mitigation.

So it appears the Rockefeller Foundation is coming at the issue of gender equality in a number of ways. Its unclear how much money over time the foundation will be investing in the 100x25 Initiative, so we will be watching closely to see how this new initiative plays out for the legendary philanthropic foundation.

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@PtboSpeedway  Peterborough, ON (May 30, 2016)- They might not be the most powerful machines in the pit area, but anyone familiar with the division will tell you that the Battlefield Equipment Rental 4Fun class regularly offers some of the most action-packed racing at Canadas Toughest 1/3-Mile Paved Oval.

26 year-old Brandon Feeney would be considered a veteran of the tracks entry level division. The Orono, Ontario resident has been a regular in the field, steering his #38 ride since 2014. While he has the desire to explore other racing classes and recently acquired an Ontario Modifieds Racing Series chassis that he hopes to debut later this year, hell continue to race for fun.

Its an affordable racing division and I get to have a good time with a great group of people. Who could ask for anything more, said Feeney, who earns a paycheque as a mechanic at Lees Autoworks. I love the adrenaline rush that comes with being at the track every Saturday night. Even when Im not racing, Im thinking about some changes I can make on the car to make it better.

Even at this level of competition, Brandon Feeney says there have been some memorable moments during his career. From finishing 9th in last seasons final point standings and 8th during 2014, his accomplishments also include winning the OMRS Award in 2014 and capturing the 4Fun feature checkered flag during an OSCAAR event at Kawartha Speedway. While he has yet to claim main event win at Peterborough, the popular driver is hoping to find his way into the winners circle.

I got a qualifying heat win last year, so if I can find a little racing luck, Im sure itll happen before too long, said Feeney, who as his sights set on making a start at Sunset Speedway and would love to race the high banks at Bristol Motor Speedway. Every driver in the pit area is working toward the same goals and even though we all want to win, were also quick to help each other achieve our objectives.

For the 2016 season, Brandon Feeneys program is supported by Deaners Wieners, K1 Graphics, Boundy Roofing, Tough as Nails Strongman Tour, Gee Peez Property Management, Lees Autoworks, Pete Larkin Salvage, P.S. Auto Parts, Lauries Delights, Pre Fab Drywall, Pineridge Auto Supply and Clarke Motorsports Communications.

Feeney says that thanks to the kindness of Dean OReilly from Deaners Wieners, his team will host a silent auction on a Deadwood Sounds custom guitar  valued at well over $1000  with proceeds to Make-a-Wish. The winning bid will be announced on the final day of the 24th Annual Autumn Colours Classic.

Fans can keep up to date with the team by liking the Brandon Feeney Racing page at www.facebook.com, or visiting www.bfeemotorsports.weebly.com.

Prepared by: Jim Clarke, Clarke Motorsports Communications/First Draft Media

clarkemotorsports@hotmail.com, www.facebook.com/clarkemotorsports

613.968.6410
@PtboSpeedway  Peterborough, ON (May 30, 2016)- According to the calendar, summer doesnt officially arrive for about another month, but that didnt stop fans from enjoying a hot night of action  Saturday, May 28 at Canadas Toughest 1/3-Mile Paved Oval. The Ontario Modifieds Racing Series, OSCAAR Midgets and Pro Midgets joined the home track Battlefield Equipment Rental 4Fun, Jiffy Lube Mini Stock and Paul Davis Systems Thunder Car divisions at Peterborough Speedway.

The nights feature race action got underway with Jiffy Lube Mini Stock runners Ryan Carr and Steve McNevin on the front row. An early yellow flag for a 3 car incident slowed the pace, but it was pretty much smooth sailing from there. Last years track champion Tyler Junkin managed to hold off a challenge from opening night victor James Townsend to take his first win of the young season. Brandon Hannah, Carr and Donovan Price completed the top 5.

Jessica Pasinetti and Rob Richards paced the Paul Davis Systems Thunder Car field to the Great Canadian RV green flag. In just her second career Peterborough Speedway start, Pasinetti led early but was freight trained by at least 5 others when she slipped out of the preferred lower line. Veteran Howie Crowe followed new leader Richards for several circuits, before taking the top spot and his first win of the year. Nick Oram, Like Gignac and Pasinetti chased Crowe and Richards across the line to round out the top 5 in the caution-free feature.

It was Jake Kelly and Carson Hennessy showing the way as the Battlefield Equipment Rental 4Fun teams came to the stripe. At the drop of the green flag, Jeremy Kelly slipped past the front row starters and took control. His #80 machine was the class of the field, leading by nearly half a straightaway before a yellow flag bunched the pack. The restart was short lived, as another caution slowed the pace. With Sean Kennedy, Ray Schroer, Matthew Vanderbelt and defending track champion Ryan Oosterholt on his tail, Kelly managed to record his first career win and celebrated with family, friends and his grandmother in victory lane.

Brian Woodland and Jody Bound brought the OSCAAR Midget field to the line for their 25 lap feature race, but Bound had the field covered. When a mid race yellow flag slowed his pace, the Uxbridge, Ontario racer had already lapped most of the field. When the green reappeared, he took off again and scored a dominating win over Richard Woodland, Brian Woodland, James Stanley and Larry Lawson. Ted Greenwood took the victory in the inaugural OSCAAR Pro Midget A main.

Earlier in the night, qualifying heats went to James Townsend, Kevin Strutt, Tyler Junkin and Brad Lavalle in the Jiffy Lube Mini Stocks. Howie Crowe, Steve Mayhew, Nick Oram and Bailey Jacobs took the opening rounds of Paul Davis Systems Thunder Car action, while Jake Kelly, Griffin Powell, Ryan Oosterholt and Keith Parkes shared the Battlefield Equipment Rental 4Fun checkered flags. Ted Greenwood and Wally Northcott each won an OSCAAR Pro Midget qualifier. John Baker Jr., Brad Stevenson, Stu Robinson Jr. and Rob Warnes split the Ontario Modifieds Racing Series heats, with Richard Woodland, Jody Bound with a pair and Brian Woodland grabbing OSCAAR Midget qualifiers.

Bullring Bullet Points: The 50/50 prize of $444.00 went to Darrin Fice of OshawaMichael Shumilak made the long haul from Timmins, Ontario for his first ever Peterborough Speedway start. Mechanical issues sidelined the effort before he could run a Thunder Car heat.

Action returns to Canadas Toughest 3rd of a Mile Paved Oval for the years first Fan Appreciation/Toonie Spectator Grandstand Admission Night  presented by Pepsi  Saturday, June 4th. The Battlefield Equipment Rental 4Fun, Jiffy Lube Mini Stock, Renegade Truck and Earl Ireland Auto Sales Late Model divisions will be joined by the INEX Ontario Legends Series. Pit gates open at 2:00, with the spectator areas unlocked at 4:00 and racing underway at 5:00.

Full schedule details, along with up to the minute news and results are always available at www.peterboroughspeedway.com, by liking the track on Facebook or following it on Twitter. You can also download the free Peterborough Speedway app on your Smartphone.

Prepared by: Jim Clarke, Clarke Motorsports Communications/First Draft Media

clarkemotorsports@hotmail.com, www.facebook.com/clarkemotorsports

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In 1882 a 28-year-old financier headed west to open a remote branch for Bank of Ottawa. The local communities on the prairies needed the banks services, he was told. So in June of that year, he left Ottawa for Chicago and continued by train to St. Paul, Minnesota, through to Winnipeg. His final destination was a small trading hub in Ontario called Keewatin. Upon arriving he took off the three-piece suit he had worn throughout the long journey, and with a letter opener he made a slit in the lining of his vest. He removed nearly C$50,000 that the bank had entrusted to him. The cash was to be used to establish a local branch and finance the building of the Five Roses flour mill, along with upgrades to the rails connecting to the mill.

For the next few years, he slept above the bank and worked to help Keewatin get the funds it needed to develop and prosper. It was not easy living; the winters could be brutally cold. His first wife fell ill in the harsh environment and later died. But, duty-bound, the young man stayed and delivered. His success led Bank of Ottawa, which would one day become part of the central bank of Canada, to recruit him in running its much larger branch in Winnipeg. Eventually, he left the bank to help develop the local insurance industry. Of all the positions he took over the years, however, he was most proud of his work as a local banker on the prairie. When he died, the Ottawa Journal praised him, first and foremost, as a banker: John Benning Monk, Manitoba pioneer banker, died at his home early Monday afternoon. He was 92.

J.B. Monk was my great-grandfather. I first heard his story when I was 18 and living in California. My father, whose job at Hewlett-Packard Co. had taken him from Canada to Silicon Valley, was trying to explain to his teenage son how easy he had it compared with his past relatives, whod had to walk through waist-deep snow just to get milk and eggs. In trying to toughen me up, my father exposed me to J.B. Monks deep and enduring focus on using the tools of finance for the greater good. My father even pulled from an old trunk the vest J.B. had worn on his long journey  with the long slit down the side  and recounted the dangers and sacrifices he had incurred to put the banks money to work in the Keewatin community. Im sure I nodded my head with as much sincerity as an 18-year-old could muster  and then went to the beach.

But the story of J.B. stuck with me. And I came to realize over time that although my great-grandfather may have been a pioneer, he was not unique. Bankers and financiers of many stripes played integral roles in the development of countries around the world. Finance once was a highly personal industry founded on mutual understanding, woven into the very fabric of society. No doubt there were exceptions, such as the robber barons, but trust seemed to be at the heart of finance during J.B.s time. Local bankers put themselves at the center of communities and sometimes even in harms way. J.B. sacrificed considerably for Keewatin, and others in the community no doubt recognized that. At a fundamental level they all shared the same mission: security and prosperity.

Over the past century, however, trust has steadily eroded in the business of finance. In fact, the innovations that were supposed to render finance cheaper, easier, better and more efficient have become some of the most costly in our society. In 1950 the financial services industry enjoyed a 10 percent share of U.S. corporate profits. Today that share is 40 percent. Of the 400 richest Americans ranked by Forbes magazine, 26 got their fortunes from real estate, 28 from media, 28 from energy and 29 from fashion and retail. The big winner would be technology, with 48, if not for banking, finance and investment. The last group takes the prize with a whopping 106 of the richest Americans. Not bad for an industry that doesnt actually make anything.

Financiers and bankers have lost the publics trust, in large part because they have sought to use the increasing complexity, sophistication and opacity of corporate and project finance to enrich themselves at the expense of the capitalist system they were originally meant to serve. The business of finance seems to have devolved into a world of rent-seeking and zero-sum games. No doubt some people are doing right by their clients, but the system as a whole is so tilted in the wrong direction that doing right by clients is now akin to not doing wrong by clients. Because finance was, and is, crucial for capitalism to function effectively, its derailment could derail capitalism. With this in mind, its important that finance and investment be set on a more sustainable path. This path should be rooted in service to the key players in the capitalist system  savers and developers  and in a commitment to create value within the real economy.

Id love to be able to say that my interest in rerooting finance in the real economy grew out of an appreciation for my great-grandfathers legacy. It didnt. The truth is, a few hazy years spent in the bowels of the finance world at the height of exorbitance and rent-seeking pushed me in this direction. After graduating from Princeton University with a BA in economics in 2000, I shuffled off to Wall Street to work as an analyst at an investment bank. Assigned to a technology group at the height of the Internet bubble, I saw what the excesses of Wall Street looked like up close. After that melted down in epic fashion, I ended up in a venture capital firm focused on financial services. Yet again this role provided me a rather unique set of insights into the ways financial services companies actually make money. There was a mix of offshore banking and insurance, with a tiny dash of new financial technologies. Much to my parents chagrin, I walked away from the high-paying venture capital world and instead chose to do a decade of graduate studies and enjoy the relative poverty that sadly went with it. I went to the Sorbonne in Paris for a masters in economics and then to the University of Oxford for a doctorate, paying for a verre or a pint with consulting gigs with pension funds. (There will be more on all that later.)

Through these experiences, as a professional and as an academic, I came to believe, perhaps naively, that putting finance and investment on the right path would demand that we wake the industrys sleeping giants. In the same way that Bank of Ottawa sent one of its own employees off to the frontiers of finance, todays institutional investors need to develop similar pioneering capabilities. As I saw it, and continue to see it, ushering in a new dawn of capitalism demands that the global community of long-term asset owners  endowments, family offices, insurance companies, pensions and sovereign funds  take the $100 trillion or so that the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates it oversees and step up, professionalize and act like educated financial consumers. The idea here is for the ultimate principals in the long principal-agent chain of intermediaries  a chain that facilitates the flow of resources between savers and developers in our capitalist system  to take their role more seriously than they have previously. Today the community of asset owners, which should be a potent disciplinary force over intermediaries, doesnt know how to play its part. I accept that this wont be easy, but it has to change if we want to put capitalism on a more sustainable trajectory. And by sustainable, I specifically mean a capitalist system that is more attuned to the long-term fundamental challenges facing society.

Taking a step back, I see a few obvious reasons asset owners lost touch with the real economy. Starting with the development of Modern Portfolio Theory in the 1950s, a plethora of financial concepts allowed for the mass production of finance. We as a society were told that this mass production, which was based on the deconstruction and repackaging of financial risks into products, was a very good thing. It allowed for risk diversification and widespread access to financial opportunities that had been available only to the most-sophisticated investors. These products were engineered to provide investors with something that seemed to satisfy their risk and return objectives in an easy manner. But although these products were sold as simple, they were anything but. Converting numerous investment risks into standardized return expectations is highly complex. And the top-down models, heuristics and black boxes used for this left local knowledge and trust  the cornerstones upon which investment decisions were made  by the wayside. The ultimate financiers of our entire capitalist system  the asset owners  were attracted by the ease of buying something that purported to offer a predictable return. It was simpler to assess standardized products than to actually study the underlying real assets, which could be quite messy. But few asset owners had the sophistication required to make smart decisions about how to consume the rapidly expanding array of financial products and services. Most didnt understand the underlying fees, costs, risks and incentives they were accepting, either explicitly or implicitly, in the grand bargain to move toward mass-produced finance.

I went to Oxford to work with Professor Gordon Clark on a thesis that was meant to look at the regulation of offshore financial markets. I cant recall exactly what I was hoping to learn, but I no doubt had visions of doing fieldwork on tropical islands. But a consulting project for a large U.S. public pension fund right before I started at Oxford set me off in a completely different direction. The goal of the project was to help the pension fund assess permissible equity markets in the worlds emerging economies. I was tasked with traveling to Morocco and Taiwan to run the audits of the countries macro and fiscal transparency. I remember, on my first day in Taiwan, coming into a giant boardroom in the Ministry of Finance with my translator and being invited to sit on one side of a long table. On the other side sat 13 representatives of the ministry. For these officials, receiving a thumbs-up from this 28-year-old kid, who barely understood the difference between public and private accounting, could mean hundreds of millions of dollars of additional capital from this fund and billions more from its peers, while a thumbs-down could mean getting nothing. There and then I realized that pensions matter. More significantly, I also realized that pensions should really be using far more experienced consultants to audit countries macro and fiscal transparency, especially as it pertained to Morocco and Taiwan. Anyway, much to my Oxford advisers great relief, my Ph.D. topic quickly shifted to the design, governance and management of public pensions and other long-term investors. And Ive never looked back.

As academics studying these funds, and indeed as consultants actively working to help them improve their governance and management, Gordon Clark and I have been given an unvarnished view of their operations. What weve learned over the past decade has been profoundly depressing: The big asset owners are often complicit in, and perhaps even responsible for, the short-termism and rent-seeking in the finance industry. Why? Because traditional institutional investors have been outsourcing almost all of the assessment and selection of their investments and rarely possess the expertise and competencies to execute even the most basic financial transactions without the help of some external, and often compromised, adviser. In this respect, the sponsors of these investment organizations have been comfortable with the idea that their funds success has been a function of the effective oversight and management of a long chain of principal-agent relationships. The ugly secret of our capitalist system is that the ultimate providers of financial capital today are managing their assets with business, risk and information technology systems that are obsolete or lacking in critical functionality, redundancy and security. Thats scary for anybody interested in preserving the efficiency of capitalism.

To be fair to the sponsors of these funds, the outsourced model was originally supposed to provide cost-effective, flexible and efficient access to markets. Indeed, the academic literature on the subject would tell you that intermediaries are important agents to help minimize transaction costs. No, stop laughing; its true. Granted, in finance the increasing use of intermediaries has simply led to an explosion of even more intermediaries. Asset owners have lost trust in their existing intermediaries, and the new ones are meant to hold the old ones accountable. The idea of adding intermediaries to control intermediaries may sound absurd, but it fits with Nobel laureate George Akerlofs research on information asymmetries. He showed that new institutions inevitably emerge to try to help minimize information asymmetries, especially around the issue of quality control. But Akerlof also showed that as the number of intermediaries grows, people tend to revert to heuristics such as brand name to try to ensure quality in the intermediaries they pick. For example, the brand-name coffee shop may not offer you the best cup of coffee in town  in fact, it almost certainly doesnt  but at least you know what youre getting. What this meant for finance was that the asset owners would look to established brands to ensure they were buying quality, all the while asking a growing number of these brand-name intermediaries to help them try to hold the entire system together. It was the fox guarding the henhouse. As new research by Kathryn Judge of Columbia Law School shows, financial intermediaries were quite adept at promoting self-serving arrangements that drove high fees and even ensuring that high-fee options were retained despite lower-fee options.

I admit Im a slow learner, but even for me the problems in the finance industry were starting to crystallize during my doctorate and postdoc work at Oxford. And I was not alone in thinking that one of the biggest problems that needed fixing was the role  or lack thereof  of the asset owners in disciplining the investment chain. For example, both my Ph.D. adviser and Roger Urwin of Towers Watson & Co. have argued that asset owners should adopt governance budgets to help them professionalize. Keith Ambachtsheer of the University of Toronto has been a champion of trustee education and mentorship. Harvard Business School professor Josh Lerner has led efforts, including at the World Economic Forum, to foster long-termism among asset owners. John Rogers, recently retired president and CEO of the CFA Institute, has asserted that institutional investors should take their role in shaping the markets and, indeed, the economy more seriously. Adam Dixon of the University of Bristol has written extensively on the rise of sovereign wealth funds and how these new players can serve to catalyze change in the finance industry more broadly. In an article for Harvard Business Review, McKinsey & Co. global managing partner Dominic Barton and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board CEO Mark Wiseman recently underlined the importance of asset owners to any plan to fix capitalism: The single most realistic and effective way to move forward is to change the investment strategies and approaches of the players who form the cornerstone of our capitalist system: the big asset owners... If they adopt investment strategies aimed at maximizing long-term results, then other key players  asset managers, corporate boards and company executives  will likely follow suit. I couldnt agree more.

This community of thought leaders  and there are many more who deserve to be cited  has begun to realize the importance, for finance and indeed capitalism, of empowering the asset owners of the world to professionalize. And Im here to tell you: This is starting to happen. I believe were about to witness a new dawn of institutional investment, which if it unfolds as planned could deliver a more efficient and effective form of capitalism. And from our respective academic perches at Oxford and Stanford, Professor Clark and I are actively helping to drive some important developments among institutional investors. The very fact that some of the largest pensions, sovereign funds and family offices in the world are supporting a financial research center that sits within Stanfords engineering school is evidence of the shifting priorities among these asset owners.

The Global Projects Center I run at Stanford, together with engineering professor Raymond Levitt, has for its mandate the rerooting of finance in the real economy. We work directly with some of the largest asset owners on the planet, and we help them think about how to provide the engineers walking our hallways with the long-term financing they require to build real things in the real world. We also work with the engineers to help them think creatively about how to govern their own projects and where to look to find aligned financial partners. In our estimation, if the financing doesnt come together in the right way, the projects being undertaken may not be successful. For example, if an engineer wants to develop a new type of green building that has a sophisticated energy conservation component, this engineer will likely want long-term investors involved right from the beginning. After all, its the terminal investors that will reap much of the value from the energy cost reductions associated with the investment in efficiency. Trying to cobble together short-term financing with high leverage to fund these long-term projects would be inefficient, risky and very expensive in terms of the layering of fees and costs. Intuitively, its wrong. Through our work at the center, were trying to fix this for the people thinking big thoughts about infrastructure, real estate, computer science, water, energy and so on.

Indeed, one of the many projects we are working on is focused on resolving the infrastructure funding gap through innovative governance vehicles for projects and investors. If the governance of green-field infrastructure can be designed to accommodate the long-term interests of institutional investors, and if the institutional investors can develop the capacity to invest wisely and stay involved in managing large-scale civil and social infrastructure projects, a flood of new capital could be unleashed. This new capital could be deployed to rebuild the infrastructure of mature economies or generate sorely needed infrastructure for both developing and developed economies, and to resolve the constrained financial circumstances that many local, provincial, state and national governments are subject to.

Most people think were crazy to put a finance center in an engineering school. But were not. We simply believe that bringing engineers together with large asset owners offers powerful insights on ways in which we can strengthen finance and put capitalism on a sturdier footing. This is in large part because these are two of the most important agents in capitalism  the investors and the developers  so its incredibly valuable to provide them a space where they can begin thinking about how to make long-term plans and how to follow through on them. If I want to understand the real economy, I just open the door to my office. I may not comprehend 99 percent of what comes through that door, but the 1 percent I do understand makes it all worth my while.

So, with all that weve been doing with large asset owners and engineers at Stanford, what have we learned about the business of institutional investment? What is the correct model that will drive high returns and allow for a closer link with the real economy? In my experience, its not the widely copied endowment model, which because of its overarching focus on gaining access to external alpha generators puts the asset managers in a position to discipline the asset owners (see The Alternative Reality of the Endowment Model). Instead, the model of institutional investment that Id like to see widely copied is the one that recognizes the inherent competitive advantage that comes with being a long-term investor. Consider this: Theres no portfolio of assets that a short-term investor can hold that a long-term investor cannot hold. Yet long-term investors can and do hold portfolios that short-term investors cant. That means that being a long-term investor is, thanks to the power of diversification, better than being a short-term investor. If you read the annual reports of the New Zealand Superannuation Fund or the CPP Investment Board  two of the best institutional investors in the world today  youll see this advantage articulated. These investors look for opportunities where markets are inefficient. They believe that if an asset fits in a neat box, its overbid and overvalued. They instead want to move into markets with minimal competition (see also How to Be a Better Long-Term Investor).

As an example, I recently worked with three sovereign funds on a $1.2 billion collaborative vehicle designed to scoop up promising clean-energy companies that the venture capital industry had failed to carry through to commercialization. Rather than viewing the companies as abiding in the valley of death, these funds saw clean energy as a valley of opportunity. Thus far, theyve deployed about $700 million on a no-fee and fully aligned basis. Although we dont yet have visibility on the returns (its still very early), this vehicle was a useful step in transitioning the way investors do things. We continue to collaborate on this and other opportunities where the competitive advantages of sovereign funds allow them to invest in underserved markets.

Based on experiences like this, Ive come to realize the importance of long-termism. If the engineers at Stanford have shared any complaints over the past few years, its that most capital is too short-term to maximize the real value of what they are doing. Message received. With this in mind, weve come up with four key research and engagement themes to extend the time horizon of institutional investment: the professionalization of asset owners, the reintermediation of finance, the adoption of technology by asset owners and the development of new conceptual models.

Professionalization of Asset Owners

The first thrust of our research is to help empower institutional investors to take greater responsibility for the end-to-end management of their assets. They cannot simply be pass-throughs from the plan sponsor to professional money managers. They have to professionalize themselves. This seems self-evident, but many funds have resisted.

At the most fundamental level, the sponsors and boards of directors have not invested in professionalization because they have not yet seen the true cost of the outsourced investment model. Its plain to see why: As demonstrated by the recent leaking of private equity limited partnership agreements from the Pennsylvania treasurys e-contracts library, a key characteristic of a successful finance company is the ability to obfuscate fees and costs. Institutional investors and their boards simply do not know how much they are paying for money management. And this means they are not assessing their organizations effectiveness with full information.

Worse still, some asset owners prefer to put their heads in the sand rather than get real transparency on fees and costs. I can think of one executive of a large asset owner who told a senior investment officer to stand down on the fee and cost issue for fear of alerting the board and the sponsor. Another told me that he didnt want to know what he was paying in fees  that it would be too depressing to see how much he was giving away. I can also think of organizations that present incomplete fee pictures in their annual reports. Some focus only on base fees and bury performance fees in net return numbers, whereas others make no attempt to quantify the implicit fees associated with holding, moving or trading assets (despite the fact that the implicit numbers, such as spreads and transaction costs, are often as high as the explicit fees). In addition, many large asset owners suffer from an overconfidence bias, nurtured by insufficient information and lack of appreciation for how costs migrate within mandates and across the entire portfolio. Most institutional investors fail to link payments made to internal staff with payments made to external service providers. This seems bizarre to me, as both payments are costs of running the same business.

For institutional investors to move toward professionalization, they have to start by getting fee and cost transparency. They have to really know the price theyre paying for external service provision. My assumption here is that boards, at least those with sane people on them, would prefer to pay internal staff millions than pay external staff billions for the same service. But if you look at the industry today, that doesnt happen. And the high fees paid to the finance industry have allowed it to consolidate power and then wield that power to extract a disproportionate share of value from the global economic system. Think of it this way: Paying overly generous fees today is a recipe for paying even higher fees tomorrow.

I recognize that many of the people working in these funds are very happy with the status quo. They prefer to avoid career risk by shifting investment risk to others. They also realize that their domain expertise may not be needed in the next generation of institutional investing, where direct-investment skills may be required. It is thus understandable that they may not want change. After all, if you need new staff, its only natural that existing staff would try to thwart the change.

But the reputational risk associated with the current path is growing. Institutional investors do not want to explain to their sponsors, let alone to the general public, that their lack of attention allowed the private industry to accumulate wealth beyond anything remotely reasonable and that their oversight has been complicit and even instrumental in allowing most, if not all, of the scale economies in finance to accrue to the private managers. If thats not enough to get somebody moving, then how about the carrot of risk-free returns? Its far easier to save money through smart implementation  call this implementation alpha  than it is to generate alpha returns in the market.

Reintermediation of Finance

The second thrust of our research focuses on reintermediation, which we define as the fostering of a new generation of aligned intermediaries. Rerooting a public pension fund in the real economy will inevitably create strains on already resource-starved organizations. As such, a new generation of intermediaries to support the professionalization movement is required. In my view, this begins with institutional investors deepening their collaboration with one another but extends into a whole host of new managers, service providers and consultants. If youre going to move away from the existing set of intermediaries and all the economies of scale they enjoy, then you have to replace them with something else.

One of the new intermediaries of finance that were focused on is the collaborative organization. Ive been lucky to help launch and grow a variety of these peer-to-peer groups. For example, I worked to launch the Innovation Alliance, which helped a handful of sovereign funds share deals in growth-stage, capital-intensive venture-backed companies, largely in energy innovation. In addition, I helped to grow the Institutional Investors Roundtable, a Quebec-based not-for-profit group focused on seeding new collaborative platforms that was founded by some of the largest direct investors in the world. Ive aided in building Institutional Investors Sovereign Investor Institute, a membership group that meets six times a year in six different global locations and brings more than 100 asset owners together for knowledge exchange. Last but not least, theres the affiliate program of the Global Projects Center, which gathers 12 or so asset owners together a few times a year to think deep thoughts about the future of investing. None of these collaborative platforms has been anywhere near as easy to put together as I thought on the way in, but all have delivered significant value to the asset owners participating, helping to connect like-minded investors.

Moving beyond the asset owners and their collaboration, there will still have to be outside intermediaries to serve the long-term interests of these funds. One of the big research projects were working on right now at Stanford is focused on best practices and policies for seeding new managers. As David Swensen, CIO of Yale University, has said: Attractive investment management organizations encourage decisions directed toward creating investment returns, not toward generating fee income for the manager. Such principal-oriented advisers tend to be small, entrepreneurial and independent. And to find such managers, you may have to seed them.

You can think of seeding as the venture capital of asset management. The objective is to maximize the alignment of interests between the asset owners and the asset managers and to minimize fees, which means the institutional investor can get the same or higher net returns on a lower base of gross returns. Importantly, there is plenty of research that demonstrates the outperformance of new and emerging managers. I can think of more than 15 large asset owners that are seeding in the domains of hedge funds, private equity, real estate, infrastructure and venture capital.

Technological Adoption

The third thrust of our research agenda is centered on the adoption of innovative technologies among asset owners. To date, a widespread lack of technological sophistication has served to disempower institutional investors. With the computing revolution the private financial services industry has accumulated and consolidated its economic power. However, a new generation of technology entrepreneurs are focusing their sights on helping institutional investors better do their jobs.

For the sake of transparency, I should add that I believe in this trend so much that, much to my wifes chagrin, I have invested considerably in, and advise a handful of, these invest tech start-ups. In all cases I view my role as pushing rather aggressively for the asset owners. What I want is for technology entrepreneurs to understand the importance of institutional investors and build products to help them. Anyway, theres a lot happening, much of it within what I call the three Ds of investment technology: disintermediation, dissemination and democratization.

Disintermediation : What AngelList did for high-net-worth individuals, new platforms soon will be doing for institutional investors. Powerful matchmaking and correlation engines will help institutional investors connect with unique and thoughtfully identified investment opportunities (for example, companies that match up with the comparative advantages, networks and geographies of institutional investors). Those companies that made their money in financial services because they sat at the intersection of networks (brokerages, bankers and even some asset managers) should be nervous. Think of it this way: When was the last time you went to a travel agent? Now apply that same idea to an entire segment of the financial services industry.

: What AngelList did for high-net-worth individuals, new platforms soon will be doing for institutional investors. Powerful matchmaking and correlation engines will help institutional investors connect with unique and thoughtfully identified investment opportunities (for example, companies that match up with the comparative advantages, networks and geographies of institutional investors). Those companies that made their money in financial services because they sat at the intersection of networks (brokerages, bankers and even some asset managers) should be nervous. Think of it this way: When was the last time you went to a travel agent? Now apply that same idea to an entire segment of the financial services industry. Dissemination : Installing a robust IT system means faster dissemination of data, which youd think would mean better investment decisions and performance. If only it were so simple. Building the sorts of IT backbones required to move reliable data quickly is time-consuming, expensive and painful. Moreover, getting data from one risk or analytics engine or service provider to talk to other engines and providers is extremely difficult. Can you build these types of systems using spreadsheets? No chance. The processing power required to chug through the complex equations and big data would crush your laptop. But isnt this just what you get with a Bloomberg terminal? No. This is about intelligently overlaying a funds proprietary portfolio data on market and third-party data to develop unique investment insights that are truly real-time and bespoke. These companies will offer the equivalent of a financial iPhone; youll run all your apps on their standards and data.

: Installing a robust IT system means faster dissemination of data, which youd think would mean better investment decisions and performance. If only it were so simple. Building the sorts of IT backbones required to move reliable data quickly is time-consuming, expensive and painful. Moreover, getting data from one risk or analytics engine or service provider to talk to other engines and providers is extremely difficult. Can you build these types of systems using spreadsheets? No chance. The processing power required to chug through the complex equations and big data would crush your laptop. But isnt this just what you get with a Bloomberg terminal? No. This is about intelligently overlaying a funds proprietary portfolio data on market and third-party data to develop unique investment insights that are truly real-time and bespoke. These companies will offer the equivalent of a financial iPhone; youll run all your apps on their standards and data. Democratization: When the computational revolution really kicked off, three decades ago, hedge funds and savvy asset managers accumulated power because they had technology nobody else had. Today that authoritarian control of computation is being democratized. The processing power that cost $100 million in 1980 now costs a few thousand dollars. Although in the past only the most-sophisticated asset managers possessed the tools required to manage complex global portfolios, soon the most-sophisticated systems on earth will be available to all. As a result, new companies are emerging to provide black boxes to the masses.

As institutional investors adopt these innovative technologies, they will have the power to dispense with antiquated rules in the investment industry. The rule that seems most prone for dispensation is the one that says managers should get paid a percentage of assets under management. Managers would like institutional investors to believe that moving money is similar to moving dirt in trucks from point A to point B  that it requires a constant fee that escalates in parallel with the rise in total assets under management. But as it turns out, moving a nine-digit number from computer A to computer B is as costly as moving an 11-digit number. Yes, big trades are harder to place and certain investment strategies have capacity constraints, which may warrant higher fees. But in these exceptions the service provider should be forced to justify the management fee; it should not be the standard upon which all investment contracts are based.

Ultimately, technology will help institutional investors streamline and strengthen operations, manage and distribute knowledge, access unique (and currently expensive) markets and level the playing field with the private financial services industry.

Development of New Conceptual Tools

The fourth thrust of our research has to do with the adoption of new theories and concepts by institutional investors. My interest in studying conceptual tools and their adoption was sparked by sociologist Donald MacKenzie. His research shows that financial theories do not just describe financial markets, they also shape them by influencing the behavior of the actors. They are endogenous. Man has become the tool of his tools, as Henry David Thoreau said. If we can change the finance and investment tools, we can change the investment man and his world.

Because of the recent crises, theres a real opportunity to change or at least supplement the existing tools. To quote another philosopher, Marshall McLuhan, Most of our assumptions have outlived their uselessness. Indeed, the recipes of institutional investment inherited from the past  Modern Portfolio Theory, the Capital Asset Pricing Model, the Efficient Market Hypothesis, Mean-Variance Optimization and Value at Risk, among others  no longer seem to match up with the ingredients in todays financial markets. Some investors are already operating in a post-MPT world, supplementing the existing models with new conceptual tools so as not to be shaped by models with unrealistic assumptions.

For those investors looking to move beyond traditional theories and dogmas, investment beliefs have become quite popular. Beliefs refer to accepted truths about the world and financial markets that an institutional investors management team and board have agreed should guide their behavior. These can include such beliefs as alpha is rare or environmental sustainability will add value in the long run. These beliefs are not necessarily theoretically proven (yet), but investors collectively choose that these beliefs should guide their thinking. In so doing, the beliefs provide long-term investors with rigor while allowing for more flexibility than traditional, often short-term, theories. I was lucky to be invited to give a presentation on investment beliefs to the California Public Employees Retirement System board a few years ago and was quite surprised to see that these beliefs were being taken as key signposts for long-term decisions.

Other conceptual models are growing in importance, such as real options approaches for dealing with long-term uncertainty, which borrow the tools of financial options for real-world contracts. Theres also the Universal Owner Hypothesis framework, which helps guide investors engagement with the broader economy. Last, investors are increasingly interested in using an impact lens as a means of guiding long-term capital to its most productive uses, which in turn can (in the right contexts) drive high returns. For example, Malaysias Khazanah Nasional generated 14 percent dollar returns for more than a decade using a developmental objective overlay.

In addition to conceptual tools for guiding investments, many investors are developing new tools for managing organizational and investment risk. These include the development of risk budgets, the hiring of risk officers and the use of innovative models for assessing and dealing with risk. The work that Richard Bookstaber is doing at the U.S. Treasurys Office of Financial Research is quite important in advancing the mainstream appeal of new risk models. Theres also a growing trend among investors to think in terms of governance budgets, similar to risk budgets. For Oxfords Clark and Towers Watsons Urwin, governance is a finite and measurable resource, and a funds investment style and strategy should match its governance budget.

Within our community at Stanford, were hoping that our work to develop new professional capabilities, new aligned intermediaries, new technological tools and new conceptual reference points will help asset owners extend their time horizons and reroot themselves in the real economy. It should be noted that its in their interest to do so. Recent research by Toronto-based CEM Benchmarking shows that the institutional investors that take this approach  in-sourcing some of their assets  outperform those that dont. This is new research that merits additional study to verify its accuracy, but even if it is an anomaly, its at least anomalous in the right direction.

The new generation of long-term investors that Im working with  as an academic, investor, consultant and often therapist  should have the ability to take end-to-end management of their assets. They may not choose to invest directly, but they will at least be able to weigh an internal option against the services being offered in the marketplace. And when those services are too expensive (that is, almost all of the time), they will have a credible alternative. Moreover, having the capacity to do direct deals will build a culture of risk and responsibility, and trigger a whole series of insights that all institutional investors should have. The more you know, the more you know what you dont know.

By innovating and having direct capabilities, institutional investors will be able to use local competitive advantages to develop structural alpha opportunities. Many institutional investors have advantages they arent leveraging today. These investors will also be able to take countercyclical positions. When markets are crashing as a result of illiquidity, they can step in and catch the falling knife  not because they think its right for society (though it is) but because theyre going to get compensated for doing so when markets rebound (which they usually do). In a similar vein, these investors can allocate into markets that might otherwise be deemed inefficient or illiquid. They can get paid for lockups. They can sell insurance. They can play in markets that short-term investors cannot. You get the idea. What Im trying to say here is that the long-term investing that I want to foster is not (necessarily) about buying and holding. Its being smart about the intrinsic long-term competitive advantages that institutional investors have and using them to the maximum effect.

The mass production of finance undoubtedly served to bring finance to more people. But it came with underappreciated costs for capitalism and society. And in the same way that society has begun to revolt against the mass production of food, in part represented by the wild success of Whole Foods Market and the organic food industry, a small group of asset owners are starting to move away from overly processed and engineered products and mandates, and instead are working to get access to real assets in the real economy  lets call this whole finance. These investors are reducing the layers of complexity and abstraction that have served to enrich the financial services providers and are finding ways to access the real economy in more-aligned and cost-effective structures and vehicles. This, we can only hope, will help to put our economy on the right track.

What I find most interesting about this new dawn of financial capitalism is how we are coming back full circle to some of the themes and concepts that marked my great-grandfathers experiences. The technological advances  such as the one that allowed wire transfers to replace young bankers stuffing their vests with cash and traveling across the country  were viewed as universally positive. For a long time there wasnt recognition that we were losing something in the process of gaining so much. We lost the personal interactions that led to the development of trust. They were replaced with diversification, productization and homogenization. But now technology is becoming powerful enough that we might get back to some of those roots: local knowledge (big data), communities (crowd sourcing) and trust-based relationships (networks). This is encouraging because the next generation may live with a form of finance and capitalism that is far more aligned with and interested in what the local community wants and needs than it has been for decades.

When I look at J.B. Monks vest with the slit down the side today, Im reminded that changing finance, and indeed capitalism, wont happen through words alone. At some point, like J.B did, you have to be willing to head out to the frontier and be a pioneer in this business. Its for this reason that Ive been on partial leave from Stanford for the past few years. For every three days I spend at the university as an academic studying large asset owners, I spend another three days as a consultant working with and for large asset owners on innovative models of investment. For me, todays pioneering investors, willing to entertain many innovative models to get greater alignment with the real economy, are just as much of an inspiration as J.B. Monk.  




Venezuela increasingly seems to be on the verge of collapse. The economy, which contracted by about 10 percent in the past two years, is in free fall. The central bank sold off 16 percent of its gold reserves in the first quarter alone to raise cash. LATAM Airlines Group and Deutsche Lufthansa suspended flights to the country in recent days because they cant get money out of the country. And the political opposition is campaigning for a referendum to recall the countrys socialist president, Nicolas Maduro.

Amid the mounting chaos, however, Maduro is digging in to secure his grip on power, dimming hopes for an early or peaceful transition that could end the countrys nightmare.

On May 13 Maduro announced a nationwide state of emergency, initially for 60 days, but analysts say it could be extended until next year. The measure allows the government to take almost any action deemed necessary to maintain public order, including expropriating private companies. The president has also adopted increasingly threatening language. At a news conference on May 17, he said the opposition-controlled National Assembly was against the national interest and that it was only a matter of time before it disappears.

Its unraveling before our eyes, as we speak, Patrick Duddy, former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela, told Fox Business Network. There have been a couple of indications within the last week which would suggest, at least economically, things are going to get worse before they get better.

Many Venezuelans appear resigned to that scenario. Maduro has support from around a quarter of the population, says Rafael Klemprer, a real estate developer in Caracas. He will not just resign. Most people are totally fed up, but they are afraid of protesting. Its not clear if the opposition will be able to gather enough protesters to force the governments hand on the referendum.

The opposition has drawn tens of thousands of supporters into the streets recently to protest against the government, but those efforts paled in comparison with the massive demonstrations that occurred in Venezuela two years ago, or the protests that brought millions into the streets of Brazil in recent months to call for the removal of President Dilma Rousseff, who was suspended May 12, pending an impeachment trial. Many opposition members appear cowed by the violent clashes in the country in 2014, which left more than 40 people dead.

The army, which has benefited in myriad ways from the rule of Maduro and that of his predecessor, former army colonel Hugo Chavez, has so far largely stayed out of the countrys political crisis.

The armed forces are a complicated organization, says Ricardo Hausmann, a Venezuelan who heads the Center for International Development at Harvard University. It is easier for them to do nothing. The big test will come if lots of people start to demonstrate and Maduro calls on the army to use bullets on protesters. Are they prepared to turn on the Venezuelan people?

In early May the national guard, which is part of the army, used tear gas and pepper spray to break up a demonstration in Caracas led by Henrique Capriles, who ran against Maduro in the 2013 presidential election. The guard also blocked a march led by Capriles and Henry Ramos Allup, a socialist but opposition supporter who now heads the countrys National Assembly.

Some elements within the army seem amenable to the opposition. Cliver Alcala, a retired general major who was close to Chavez, recently said Maduro had handled the late presidents legacy very badly and that the government should allow the recall referendum to take place. However, general in chief Vladimir Padrino Lopez, the current army commander and minister of Defense, and other senior officers have recently pledged their unswerving allegiance to the Maduro government.

The president also has some other important cards in his hand. The countrys Supreme Court, which he stuffed with supporters last December, unwaveringly backs him, as does the National Electoral Council, known by its Spanish initials CNE. Maduros approval rating stands at 26.8 percent, according to pollster Datanalisis, underscoring a significant level of hard-core support for chavismo, the highly personalized style of socialism practiced by Maduro and Chavez. By contrast, Brazils Rousseff saw her approval rating plunge to 11 percent at the time of her impeachment.

The economic crisis is inflicting serious hardship on the Venezuelan people. According to Barclays, imports are expected to almost halve, to $20 billion this year from $37 billion last year, causing a severe drop in living standards. People wait in line for hours outside supermarkets, even though most stores lack many basic consumer goods. The authorities have taken drastic steps to raise cash, with the central bank cutting its gold reserves in the first quarter through the sale of 1.38 million ounces, worth nearly $1.7 billion at current prices.

But there are signs that the economic tide may be turning in Maduros favor. The recent rebound in oil prices, which has seen Brent crude rise above $50 a barrel in late May, compared with a 13-year low of $27.50 in January, is easing pressure on the government.

Analysts now believe that Petroleos de Venezuela, the state-owned oil company that acts as an arm of the state and funds many of the countrys social programs, should be in a better position to pay back $4 billion in maturing foreign debt and $5 billion of debt interest that is due at the end of the year. The companys benchmark dollar bond due in 2027 was quoted at 41.70 cents on the dollar on May 31, near the years high.

Miguel Perez Abad, the countrys vice president for economic policy, recently told journalists that China would renew a $5 billion loan to Venezuela within the next two months. The government has already secured a $400 million loan from the Inter-American Development Bank, and it is expecting between $4 billion and $5 billion in mining investment this year, says Perez.

Against that backdrop, the opposition must jump through a series of hoops to force a recall referendum. It has already collected 1.85 million signatures, far above the required 1 percent of the countrys 19.8 million registered voters. However, more than 180,000 people must go to the offices of the CNE to verify in person that they back a referendum.

If referendum supporters clear that hurdle, they must gather signatures from more than 20 percent of people on the electoral roll. Assuming a referendum takes place, recall supporters must obtain more than 7.5 million votes, exceeding the number of people who voted for Maduro in the past presidential election, in 2013.

All of this has to happen on an accelerated timetable if the opposition wants to guarantee a real change of power. The referendum must take place by mid-January to force a fresh presidential election. Otherwise, a successful recall drive would simply see Vice President Aristobulo Isturiz complete Maduros term, which runs until January 2019. Earlier this month Isturiz said Maduro would not be ousted by a referendum this year because one would not take place.

The CNE, headed by Maduro loyalist Tibisay Lucena, seems to be dragging its heels on the referendum process. Some opposition leaders believe that one of the reasons the government recently reduced the working week for public sector employees to two days from five was to make it harder for the CNE to verify referendum signatures.

In a recent poll, Datanalisis found that just over 63 percent of respondents said they would like Maduro to resign or be removed by a referendum this year.

Latin Americas famous pink tide seems to be turning. Not only is Rousseff likely to be convicted by the Brazilian National Congress, but also Argentina now has a center-right president, Mauricio Macri. Evo Morales, Bolivias left-wing president, lost a referendum this year that would have cleared the way for him to run for a fourth term in 2019. Even Cuba, where Maduro received his political training, is moderating its policies, establishing relations with the U.S. and hosting President Barack Obama for a historic visit in March.

Maduro is also becoming more isolated in the region. In mid-May he had a sharp exchange of words with Luis Almagro, the former Uruguayan foreign minister who is now secretary general of the Organization of American States. Almagro attacked Maduro as a traitor and a petty dictator after the president had accused him of being a CIA agent. On May 31 Almagro called for an urgent meeting of the OAS to consider suspending Venezuelas membership over alleged breaches of democracy, but it was far from clear whether that initiative could garner the required support of two thirds of the groups 35 member nations.

In practice, the OAS has little power to force change in Venezuela, and most of the countrys big neighbors are engulfed in their own political problems. If change is going to come, it will have to be driven by domestic forces.
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In a tumultuous year, new analysts rise to the top as their firms compete for leading spots in the 51st annual ranking.
Some of the worlds largest insurance companies are eyeing two forthcoming opportunities in the Southeast Asia market.Canadas Manulife is one of the bidders hoping to secure a large slice of the life insurance unit of Siam Commercial Bank according to Reuters. Sources close to the deal say that British firm Prudential and Asian firm AIA are also on the list of interested parties.A 49 per cent stake in SCB Life Assurance is likely to cost around $3 billion and would be one of the largest deals of its kind in the region. The company has access to Siams 1,200 outlets, making it an attractive proposition.Meanwhile, South Korean insurer ING Life could be sold to China Life Insurance or China Taiping Insurance who have emerged as interested parties in another $3 billion deal. Market Insight reports that there are 7 bidders left in the process.Chief executives of some large financial institutions admit they dont know if their business has been the target of a cyber incident in the last two years.A survey by KPMG has found that 12 per cent of the 100 CEOs of banks with more than $20 billion in assets lacked the insights into whether their cyber security had been breached.Banks are under an onslaught of attacks from bad actors, so the fact that 12 per cent of banking CEOs reported that they dont know if theyve been compromised is troublesome. Cyber is a business bottom-line issue: a true CEO issue, said Charlie Jacco, Financial Services Cyber Leader at KPMG.At lower levels of management, the lack of awareness is greater with 47 per cent of executive vice presidents and managing directors, and 72 per cent of senior vice presidents unsure if theyve been hacked.Intact Insurance is to create a dedicated national team to grow its commercial lines specialty solutions business. The firm will be hiring around 150 insurance professions over the next few years."Our vision is to become a market leader and be widely recognized as the top provider of specialty insurance products and expertise. Our national scale, combined with our comprehensive suite of solutions, will provide brokers with the expertise and support they need to help them meet the changing needs of their customers," said Jean-Francois Blais, President, Intact Insurance.Blais went on to say that, alongside the national team, Intacts regional presence helps to support brokers and customers alike.
By Jan-Henrik Forster and Jan Schwalbe(Bloomberg) -- Martin Senn, the Zurich Insurance Group AG chief executive officer who stepped down in a December shakeup, is dead after committing suicide, the company said in a statement last night."We are profoundly shocked by the news of the sudden death," the company said.The family informed Zurich Insurance that Senn had taken his life on Friday, according to the statement.With the passing of Martin, we lose not only a highly valued former CEO and colleague but also a close friend.Our thoughts are with his bereaved family and friends, to whom we extend our deepest sympathies, the statement continued.Senn, 59, was found in his holiday house in Klosters, Switzerland, Blick newspaper reported. The cantonal police of Grisons wouldnt confirm the death but said officers had been deployed on Friday in connection with Senn.This is a huge loss; Martin Senn was an amazing person, said Martin Naville, CEO of the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce, where Senn had served as president. Human beings are hard to understand but we have to accept his decision.Zurich went through a shakeup in 2013 when Chief Financial Officer Pierre Wauthier was found dead in his home and Chairman Josef Ackermann later quit.Senn in December acknowledged setbacks in the months before his departure after higher-than-expected claims at the general insurance unit forced the company to abandon a takeover bid for RSA Insurance Group Plc. The company announced an overhaul of the general-insurance business.Mario Greco, the former CEO of Italys Assicurazioni Generali SpA, took over Senns role in March. UBS Group AG CEO Sergio Ermotti was set to take over as president of the chamber of commerce in June.
Former Zurich Insurance boss Martin Senn has committed suicide six months after leaving the company under a cloud, a tragedy that comes less than three years after Zurichs finance chief took his own life.

Senn, 59, shot himself at his familys Alpine resort home in Klosters, Swiss newspaper Blick reported. He had quit as chief executive of Zurich in December following a series of profit warnings and a botched takeover of British rival RSA.

Martin Senns family has informed us that Martin committed suicide last Friday, the company said in a statement on Monday, adding it was stunned and deeply shaken.

His death follows the suicide of Zurichs finance chief Pierre Wauthier in August 2013, which brought into sharp focus the pressures facing senior corporate executives in Switzerland and elsewhere.

Wauthier, 53, killed himself after writing a suicide note addressed To whom it may concern in which he described becoming demoralized by what he called a new, more aggressive tone at Zurich under then-Chairman Josef Ackermann.

Ackermann, a former head of Deutsche Bank, denied any wrongdoing but quit soon after Wauthiers death.

Weeks before Wauthiers death, Swisscom Chief Executive Carsten Schloter had taken his own life.

Senn had been CEO since 2010 at Zurich, which he joined after stints with Swiss banks in Asia. He was married to a Korean musician and had two grown children.

Acquaintances, who asked not to be named given the sensitivity of the situation, described him as withdrawn

and reclusive following his departure from the company, which Zurich said at the time was by mutual agreement.

He wasnt doing so well, a former colleague said, but added that Senn had not given the impression of being suicidal.

One person close to Senn said he had taken Wauthiers death hard.

The rate of suicide has been falling in most countries in Europe since 2000, according to Ulrich Hegerl of the German Depression Foundation, a charity to prevent suicide.

He said a suicide sometimes encourages other people to do the same. If someone you know and respect commits suicide, then there is a risk in depression of a copycat suicide, he added.

Zurich Insurance paid Senn 2.5 million Swiss francs in 2015, its annual report showed in March.

His failure to meet performance targets, in an insurance sector that has struggled since the financial crisis, meant he missed out on an extra stock payout.

(Additional reporting by Angelika Gruber, John Miller and Oliver Hirt in Zurich; Editing by John ODonnell and Pravin Char)

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Delta Lloyd NV started selling its entire 30.2 percent stake in wealth manager Van Lanschot NV as part of the insurers plan to boost capital.

A total of 11.3 million existing depository receipts of Van Lanschot are on sale at 15 euros to 18 euros apiece, Delta Lloyd said in a statement on Tuesday. Members of Van Lanschots executive board have agreed to subscribe to stock of the wealth manager with a total value of 1.06 million euros ($1.18 million).

Its not going to be an easy offering, said Joost van Beek, an analyst at Theodoor Gilissen Bankiers NV, who has a hold rating on Delta Lloyd. Van Lanschot has difficult growth prospects, while Delta Lloyd really needs the money. It could explain why the pricing is on the low end.

The sale follows the Dutch companys 650 million-euro rights offer in April. Delta Lloyd has been under pressure to meet stricter capital requirements for insurers under rules known as Solvency II.

Delta Lloyd was down 1.3 percent at 4.54 euros as of 9:19 a.m. in Amsterdam after having risen as much as 1.5 percent earlier. Van Lanschot was 4.4 percent lower at 17.43 euros. Shares of the wealth manager are down about 20 percent this year.

The offering includes shares representing a 27.4 percent stake in Van Lanschot plus an over-allotment option of as much as 10 percent of the main offering. The final price will be determined following a bookbuilding process that runs through June 8.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Bank of America Corp. and ABN Amro Group NV are managing the offering.

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Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics Auto
Health insurance companies would no longer be able to raise rates for Affordable Care Act consumers in Missouri without review by a state agency under a measure awaiting the governors signature.

Advocates say the change is long overdue. Missouri is the only state that does not receive or review health insurance rates, said Yaryna Klimchak, spokeswoman for the state Department of Insurance, Financial Institutions and Professional Registration. Only the federal government reviews rate changes before they are implemented in Missouri.

State lawmakers have approved Senate Bill 865, which includes a provision giving the state agency authority to review any proposed rate increase before it affects consumers who get individual health insurance through the ACA. The notification would also give consumers a chance to comment on the rate hike proposals.

The measure must still be signed into law by Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon.

The Missouri Health Insurance Rate Transparency Act would allow the state agency to determine if the rate increase is reasonable, and request a change if it is deemed unreasonable. The state agency wouldnt have the authority to reject the rate hike, but could make it public.

The bills sponsor, Republican Sen. David Sater, said consumers will benefit by learning about proposed rate hikes before they occur. About 350,000 Missourians each year are eligible to obtain an individual health plan through the Affordable Care Act.

Transparency is always good, Sater said.

Charles Gaba, founder of ACASignups.net, who has tracked Affordable Care Act enrollments since the exchanges launched in October 2013, said some states have laws giving them approval power over rate increases. While the Missouri measure stops short of that, this is a lot better than nothing, Gaba said. I think its long overdue.

State-based ACA exchanges provide coverage to more than 12 million people nationwide but several health insurers are considering significantly scaling back next year. Their bottom lines have been impacted because of sicker-than-expected customers and the inability to attract enough younger, healthy people to the exchanges.

UnitedHealth Group Inc., the nations biggest insurer, said that it was cutting its participation in the exchanges down to only a handful of states in 2017. Missouri is among those being cut. Humana this month served notice it might leave some exchanges.

Each year that has passed since the Affordable Care Act began we have lost plan offerings, said Rep. Justin Hill, a Republican from Lake St. Louis.

Many industry observers say they expect insurers to seek significant premium hikes in several markets. Final rates will come out later this year, and enrollment for 2017 coverage will begin Nov. 1.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Pricing Trends Missouri
Trade representatives for the United States and the European Union, who met May 24 and 25 to negotiate a bilateral covered agreement on regulations for insurers and reinsurers, on Friday issued a joint statement indicating they have not reached a final agreement but that they will continue their efforts.

U.S. and EU representatives are committed to pursuit of an agreement that will improve regulatory and supervisory treatment for insurers and reinsurers operating on both sides of the Atlantic. Both sides are considering next steps to ensure advancement of the negotiations, the statement said.

The joint statement said both sides agreed to continue in good faith to pursue an agreement on matters relating to group supervision, exchange of confidential information between supervisory authorities on both sides, and reinsurance supervision, including collateral.

In November 2015, the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) announced their intention to begin negotiating a covered agreement with the European Union. U.S. and EU representatives first met in Brussels in February 2016.

A covered agreement is an agreement between the U.S. and one or more foreign governments, authorities or regulatory entities regarding prudential measures with respect to insurance or reinsurance.

European reinsurers and regulators want the U.S. to lift reinsurance collateral requirements on foreign reinsurers and treat them like U.S. reinsurers. European reinsurers and Lloyds of London syndicates complain they are disadvantaged compared to American competitors by the additional capital and collateral requirements of some states. They note that they must also now comply with new EU solvency [Solvency II) rules.

Michael McRaith, director of the Federal Insurance Office (FIO) within Treasury, has called negotiating a covered agreement with the European Union a critical step toward leveling the playing field for American insurers and reinsurers.

U.S. insurance groups want assurances that the EU under its Solvency II regulations will treat U.S. insurers fairly and that there will be U.S.-EU mutual recognition of each others regulatory schemes. Solvency II provide a process for non-EU countries to be determined to be equivalent to the Solvency II regime.

One system should not be imposed on the other and U.S. companies should not be disadvantaged in Europe, said Bob Woody, vice president of policy for the Property Casualty Insurers of America (PCI).

The American Insurance Association (AIA) thinks a covered agreement is vital.

As Solvency II continues to be implemented, it is becoming ever clearer that we not only need a successful outcome of the covered agreement negotiations, we need it to be reached as quickly as possible, said Steve Simchak, director of International Affairs for the AIA.

Simchak said regulatory friction between the U.S. and EU is not in anyones interests. Likewise, any discriminatory treatment of U.S. insurers is very troubling. The good news is that the covered agreement can be the process through which fair treatment of each others insurers is affirmed, and can foster regulatory cooperation between our two jurisdictions and other jurisdictions in the future, he said.

Dangerous Precedent

The National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies (NAMIC) has been more cautious about the covered agreement talks, expressing concerns that if other issues are allowed to be injected into the talks, any agreement could ultimately undermine the functional state regulators.

If this agreement is viewed as the first in a series of attempts to subvert the authority of state regulation through preemption, it might be seen as a dangerous precedent, Jimi Grande, senior vice president of federal and political affairs for NAMIC, said last November when Treasury announced it intended to pursue an agreement.

The U.S. has the power and influence to demand equivalency for our state-based insurance regulatory regime and NAMIC encourages our U.S. officials to use all means necessary to avoid regulatory changes and market disruptions due to self-serving pressure from abroad, he said.

State insurance regulators and some insurers are concerned that a covered agreement could potentially preempt state law and undermine the U.S. system of state regulation of insurance. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) believes states should continue to handle the situation through its model law process. The NAIC has a model law that eases the collateral requirements for foreign reinsurers that about 32 states (about 66 percent of the market) have adopted.

The NAIC has said it has assurances that state regulators will have direct and meaningful participation in the U.S.-EU discussions. The administration has promised it will consult with Congress and state regulators throughout the negotiation process.

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Why a Covered Agreement Makes Sense for Global Insurers: News in late November that the U.S. Treasury and U.S. Trade Representative planned to negotiate a covered agreement on insurance with the European Union was music to the ears of Patricia Henry, executive vice president of Global Government Affairs for Chubb. In this interview with Carrier Management in January, she explained what global insurers see as the the key benefits.

Topics Carriers USA Legislation Europe Reinsurance
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear an appeal by State Farm contesting a jury finding that the insurance company defrauded the federal government when assessing damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 along the Gulf of Mexico coast.

The court will review a 2015 ruling by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding the verdict in a suit brought under the federal False Claims Act, which lets people sue over allegations that the government has been defrauded.

The court will consider a lawsuit brought by sisters Cori and Kerri Rigsby, former claims adjusters who worked with State Farm after the hurricane. People win a portion of the damages if such a False Claims Act suit is successful.

The jury found that the U.S. government had been defrauded of $250,000 over a house that had sustained Katrina-related damage in Biloxi, Mississippi.

The Rigsbys said the damage was caused by wind, which would be covered by the owners policy with State Farm. But State Farm concluded that the damage was flood-related, which was covered by the federal governments flood insurance program.

The court said State Farm would have to pay $758,000 in damages. The Rigsbys were awarded $227,000 under the False Claims Act.

State Farm argued in part that the lawsuit should have been thrown out because the Rigsbys former lawyer, Dickie Scruggs, had distributed information about the lawsuit to members of the media. False Claims Act lawsuits are required to be filed under seal and remain private for 60 days.

In 2008, Scruggs was convicted of conspiring to bribe a judge in a different case. He was sentenced to five years in prison.

The court will hear oral arguments and issue a ruling in the case during its next term, which begins in October and ends in June 2017.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

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Topics Lawsuits USA Claims
Property/casualty insurer Zurich has named Dave Anderson to be head of Credit & Political Risk, effective immediately. A 14-year veteran of Zurich, Anderson since 2012 has been global business development director for Credit & Political Risk.

In his new role, Anderson is accountable for the direction, management and performance of the unit, which is part of Specialty Products of Zurich North America Commercial and has political risk and single risk trade credit underwriting teams in the Americas, London, Continental Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, and a short-term multi-buyer trade credit team in New York and London.

Zurich Credit & Political Risk provides insurance for financial institutions, multinational corporations, investors, exporters, contractors and infrastructure developers globally.

Anderson will remain based in Washington, D.C. and report to Bryan Salvatore, president of Zurich Specialty Products.

Anderson started with Zurich in 2002, launched the Sydney, Australia, Credit & Political Risk underwriting office in 2006, launched the Singapore office in 2009 and managed the Asia-Pacific regional team until 2012. Prior to joining Zurich, he led Great American Insurance Groups FCIAs eastern region for multibuyer credit insurance out of New York and underwrote political risk insurance for Citicorp International Trade Indemnity, handling mainly Sub-Saharan Africa.
A former Oklahoma insurance executive has been chosen to head the Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the states property insurer of last resort.

Richard Newberry has been named the new chief executive officer. The Advocate reports state Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon says Newberrys first day on the job will be May 31.

Donelon says Newberry has 23 years of experience in the industry, most of that time at the Oklahoma Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Co. He was executive vice president and general manager of the Oklahoma Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance.

The Citizens board of directors will meet at 1 p.m. Tuesday to vote on Newberrys salary.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Louisiana Oklahoma
South Carolinas coastal property insurance market is strong, but the states significant catastrophe risk remains an ongoing threat and not one that should be taken lightly. That is the message South Carolina Insurance Director Raymond Farmer hopes to get across to residents as the 2016 storm season gets underway.

South Carolina is heading into its first storm season since floods ravaged the state last October. The mega-storm dumped nearly two feet of rain in some parts of South Carolina over a 48-hour period and caused billions of dollars of damage to autos, homes, businesses and crops.

While the crisis is over and 95 percent of the states flood claims have been closed, Farmer said, the lessons learned from the event will live on.

South Carolina suffered a tremendous flood last October, primarily in areas not flooded before and not in a flood zone, Farmer said in an interview with Insurance Journal. This hurricane season we are encouraging citizens to plan, prepare and protect their families.

Farmer said the devastating floods from last fall havent changed the way the Department of Insurance will approach this years hurricane season, but everyone is now more mindful that catastrophes can occur in areas where they havent in the past or where you may not expect them.

It emphasizes the importance for the citizens in our state to consider if they should purchase flood coverage, he said.

SCDOI kicked off the start of hurricane season with events targeted towards educating consumers on the importance of disaster preparedness. On June 2, it will host a coastal property insurance market hearing and information session in Bluffton, where it will present highlights of the states Status of the South Carolina Coastal Property Insurance Market, released in January.

Farmer said the goal is to show consumers that the states homeowners market is as competitive as it has ever been, with 67 new companies licensed to do business in the state since 2010. Farmer said a number of those companies are also doing business on the coast.

SCDOIs annual coastal property report shows that the portfolio of the South Carolina Wind and Hail Underwriting Association (SCWHUA) the states residual property insurance market  is decreasing after reaching its high point in August 2011. The Associations total insured limits, or exposure, decreased by almost $5.7 billion since August 31, 2011, the considered highpoint of the SCWHUAs book of business.

According to the SCDOIs data call of 89 personal lines carriers in the states admitted market, the total number of new policies issued in the wind pool area increased by 11 percent for the first three quarters of 2015 compared to 2014.

Overall, the report concluded that the coastal property insurance market is stable, and there is ample capacity from admitted insurers along South Carolinas coastline.

Our objective is to get as many competitors in the marketplace and make sure rates are not excessive, inadequate or unfairly discriminatory, Farmer said.

On June 4, SCDOI will hold a home expo with insurance representatives, as well as state and local emergency preparedness organizations, to offer ways homeowners can protect their homes against storm events and lower their insurance costs.

Farmer says the department will continue its efforts throughout storm season by visiting all 46 South Carolina counties and holding information sessions for consumers where residents can talk with local officials and law enforcement.

SCDOI has also been encouraging consumers to ensure their insurance policies are adequate to cover them in the event of a catastrophe. Consumers can shop coverage through SCDOIs Market Assistance Program, which serves as an insurance rate comparison site for state residents. Farmer encouraged carriers and agents to sign up to participate in the marketplace.

Farmer said last years flood gave him confidence in how the industry will respond should another devastating catastrophe event occur. After last years event, SCDOI and insurance reps pulled together to help state residents.

I think the industry excels at the time that you really need them  at the time of a catastrophe, Farmer said. Our industry showed upinsurance companies brought in over 600 emergency adjusters to add to the already 2,500 adjusters in the state. This was a flood event that was primarily not covered by homeowners policies, but [the industry] got out there in a timely fashion and was ready to start handling claims.

Related:

Topics Catastrophe Flood Agribusiness Property Market South Carolina
Florida businesses could soon be paying almost 20 percent more for workers compensation coverage. In response to a recent decision from the Florida Supreme Court, the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) filed a 17.1 percent rate increase with the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) for all new, renewal and additional policies in effect on a pro-rata basis.

Its the first rate filing from NCCI, which files on behalf of 260 Florida workers comp insurers, since the Florida Supreme Court struck a devastating blow to the states workers compensation system.

The court ruled on April 28 that the attorney fee schedule passed in 2009 is unconstitutional under both Floridas and the U.S. Constitution as a violation of due process. NCCI said the increase addresses the first year projected impact of the Courts ruling on what was a key cost-reducing component to Floridas Workers Compensation Act.

The states high court issued the ruling in the case of Marvin Castellanos, an injured employee who sued his employer Next Door Co. and its insurer, Amerisure.

The Castellanos court ruling said the current schedule eliminates the right of a claimant to get a reasonable attorneys fees  a critical feature of the workers compensation law. The court said the statute violates due process by installing an irrebuttable presumption that whatever fee the schedule comes up with is reasonable and by not providing any way for a claimant to refute the fee.

NCCI submitted its rate filing on May 27 with proposed rate increases of 17.1 percent, equaling $623 million. The statewide average increase of 15 percent was proposed to cover the first year impact to workers comp costs in Florida from the Castellano decision and a 1.8 percent increase related to the adoption of the 2015 Edition of the HCPR Manual, which goes into effect July 1, 2016.

Former Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty predicted the courts decision would have a significant impact on rates. McCarty, who was still commissioner at the time of the ruling, said OIR would go to work immediately with NCCI to determine what the rate impact would be, but said the increase would be significant.

And the higher rates could also be coming sooner than expected. NCCI proposed an effective date of August 1, 2016 for new and renewal workers compensation policies and that the 17.1 percent rate increase apply to all workers compensation policies in effect as of August 1, 2016 on a pro-rata basis for the remainder of each policys term. NCCIs rate changes have traditionally gone into effect on January 1.

State insurance experts, including McCarty, expect rates will not be the only consequence of the courts ruling. Attorneys specializing in workers compensation claims said a wave of new litigation challenging old claims with the now-declared unconstitutional fee schedule is expected. McCarty said the ruling could have a destabilizing effect on Floridas workers comp market.

In its proposed rate filing, NCCI did not consider the retroactive impact as part of the proposed rate increase, but said the Castellanos decision is expected to increase overall system costs in the state for accidents occurring prior to August 1, 2016 that remain open or are re-opened.

Because workers compensation ratemaking is prospective only, insurers are not afforded the opportunity to recoup premium to cover such unforeseen increases in system costs. Therefore, it is expected that a significant unfunded liability will be created due to the retroactive impact of this court decision, NCCI said in its rate filing release.

NCCI said it is currently in the process of estimating the unfunded liability and will provide further information on those costs at a later date.

OIR plans to hold a public rate hearing in July to give NCCI an opportunity to discuss the filing and interested parties and other stakeholders the ability to provide testimony or comments. If the rate increase is approved, NCCI said Floridas rates would be the highest of its Southeast neighbors, as well as Louisiana.

The rate increase from NCCI is the first one the state has seen from the organization since 2014. Rate decreases for 2016 of 4.7 percent went into effect in January.

Related:

Topics Florida Legislation Workers' Compensation
An attorney representing mechanics for a school bus company says the company has agreed to pay $11.5 million to settle a California lawsuit claiming they used unsafe buses to transport San Francisco students.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that two mechanics with First Student Inc. claimed the companys buses had threadbare tires, worn brakes and other issues, resulting in safety violations between 2006 and 2011.

Attorneys say First Students records show 300 violations of inspection requirements over a nine-month period.

The San Francisco Unified School District will receive $3.5 million of the settlement. The mechanics and their attorneys will receive the rest.

First Student representatives could not be reached for comment. The company replaced its 230 San Francisco buses last fall after signing a five-year contract with the school district.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits California Education
E arrivata lufficialita, dopo una giornata di voci rincorrenti: per il triennio 2018-2021 sara lemittente Sky a godere dei diritti televisivi per trasmettere, in esclusiva assoluta, le partite non solo delle prossime edizioni dellEuropa League ma anche quelle della massima competizione continentale, la Champions. Un pacchetto da favola per il quale la tv satellitare di Rupert Murdoch avrebbe messo sul piatto unofferta giudicata piu congrua di quella presentata dalla concorrente Mediaset. A dare lannuncio dellaffare concluso e stata la stessa Sky che, in un comunicato, ha spiegato che il nuovo format sviluppato dalla UEFA ci consentira di portare ai nostri abbonati un prodotto rivoluzionario per il calcio europeo in Italia. Per la prima volta la UEFA Champions League e la UEFA Europa League saranno insieme in unesclusiva offerta integrata, che permettera agli appassionati di seguire fino a 7 squadre italiane, mai cosi tante prima dora, impegnate nelle sfide con i migliori club europei.

Sky: Rafforzata leadership

Anche il livello tecnico dellofferta sara altissimo ed e ancora lemittente a rivelare i dettagli: Continueremo a fare innovazione, trasmettendo le partite piu importanti anche in 4K HDR. Questofferta senza precedenti rafforza la posizione di Sky come leader della programmazione sportiva in Italia ed e anche un altro passo importante di sostegno al calcio italiano. Insomma, per i prossimi tre anni, sara unegemonia totale quella della satellitare sul calcio europeo, avendo mantenuto il pacchetto Europa League (gia sua esclusiva) e affiancandola a quello ancor piu appetibile della Champions League ad appannaggio Mediaset dal 2015 al 2018.

Sfida Serie A

Ora la sfida fra i due colossi delle trasmissioni sportive si spostera sui diritti televisivi della prossima Serie A, per la quale si e ancora in attesa di un nuovo bando che, come annunciato dal commissario della Lega, Carlo Tavecchio, avra le stesse caratteristiche del precedente, andato pero a vuoto: solo una delle offerte presentate per i cinque pacchetti, infatti, superava la soglia minima richiesta dalla base dasta. Niente di fatto, quindi, anche in virtu della stessa Mediaset che, in sostanza, ha disertato il bando (giudicato inaccettabile) non presentando alcuna offerta. La battaglia, anche in questo caso, sara sulle esclusive: del resto, dopo essersi vista scivolare via una componente importante come la Champions, sulla Serie A Mediaset dara sicuramente battaglia.
Quasi 10 milioni di italiani si metteranno in viaggio per la Pasqua 2017, con un incremento del 2,3% rispetto allo stesso periodo dello scorso anno. Il 93% scegliera di rimanere in Italia mentre il restante 7% optera per una localita estera. E in crescita anche il giro daffari, che si attesta a quota 3,34 miliardi di euro (+3,6%). Emerge dai dati previsionali di Federalberghi sulle vacanze pasquali degli italiani.

Le mete preferite dagli italiani che rimarranno nel Belpaese saranno le localita darte (29,1%), il mare (28,8%), la montagna (21,4%) e i laghi (4,5%). Per chi andra allestero, le grandi capitali europee assorbiranno il 69,5% della domanda, seguito dal 13,8% delle localita marine e crociere. La permanenza media si attestera sulle 3,4 notti (contro le 3,5 notti del 2016) con una spesa media comprensiva di tutte le voci (trasporto, alloggio, cibo e divertimenti) pari a 337 euro (contro i 332 euro del 2016) con un dettaglio di 310 euro per chi restera in Italia e di 679 euro per chi scegliera destinazioni estere. La struttura ricettiva preferita, sara per il 32,5% la casa di parenti e amici, seguita dallalbergo (26,7%), dalla casa di proprieta (14,6%), dai bed and breakfast (10,4%), dallagriturismo (4,4%), dai residence (3,4%) e dallappartamento in affitto (3%).

Con questi presupposti, il segnale positivo che ci viene dal mercato consente di analizzare la situazione con moderato ottimismo  ha commentato il presidente di Federalberghi, Bernabo Bocca  vi e senzaltro da considerare il calendario che questanno colloca le festivita a meta del mese di aprile. E anche se la durata dei pernottamenti sara lievemente inferiore rispetto allo scorso anno, occorre leggere questa lieve flessione nella giusta prospettiva, tenendo conto delle occasioni di vacanza che gli italiani avranno nelle prossime due settimane, con i ponti del 25 aprile e del primo maggio. Le imprese del settore, ha aggiunto, chiedono a gran voce misure concrete volte a contrastare labusivismo, ridurre la pressione fiscale, potenziare le infrastrutture. Ultimo ma non meno importante, a quasi un mese dallabrogazione dei voucher, siamo ancora in attesa dello strumento alternativo che dovra mettere le imprese in condizione di far fronte alle esigenze di flessibilita imposte dal mercato.
Although Canada does not receive the same kudos for innovation and technological development as the United States, it punches above its weight when it comes to emerging financial technology (fintech) companies. Here's a look at five Canadian fintech companies that are making a name for themselves by providing innovative financial solutions for customers: Payfirma, Quandl, Mogo, Shopify, and Cryptologic.

Key Takeaways Payfirma is a Vancouver-based payment processing company that operates on a cloud-based platform, allowing business analytics, such as sales data, to be retrieved easily.

Quandl, founded in 2012, provides access to extensive financial, economic, and social datasets from companies such as NASDAQ, Zacks Investment Research, and Zillow Group Inc.

Mogo Finance Technology Inc., sometimes considered the Uber of finance, operates an online lending platform aimed at providing young people with a variety of credit solutions, such as short-term loans and prepaid credit cards.

Shopify provides a cloud-based multichannel commerce platform for businesses of all sizes.

Cryptologic Corp. began as a web-based business-to-business (B2B) risk management and payment solutions but now operates as a cryptocurrency miner and blockchain application development company.

1. Payfirma

Payfirma, founded by Michael Gokturk in 2010, is a Vancouver-based payment processing company with a vision for allowing customers to pay anyway, anywhere, and at any time. It helps businesses accept online credit and debit card payments for mobile, e-commerce, and in-store locations under a single merchant account.

Payfirma processes transactions on a cloud-based platform, allowing business analytics, such as sales data, to be retrieved easily. The company has won several awards and honors, including the ACT Canada Innovation Award in 2012, the CIX Top 20 Innovators of 2013, the BC Business Top Innovators in 2013, DigiBCs Top 25 Most Innovative Tech Companies in British Columbia in 2014, and the Fintech Company of the Year at the Canadian Fintech Awards in 2015.

Payfirma received C$5.5 million in angel funding between 2011 and 2013. In 2015, then Dundee Capital Markets, a division of Dundee Securities, Ltd., backed Payfirma with a C$13 million investment.

2. Quandl

Toronto-based Quandl operates a platform for financial, economic, and alternative data. Founded in 2012 by Abraham Thomas and Tammer Kamel, Quandl provides access to extensive financial, economic, and social datasets from companies such as NASDAQ, Zacks Investment Research, and Zillow Group Inc. (Z).

Quandl permits data access via an application program interface (API), which allows customers to customize the information in a format that is suitable for their needs. Its customers include many of the largest hedge funds, banks, and consulting firms in the United States. In 2015, August Capital invested C$5.4 million in the company, and in 2016, Nexus Venture Partners led a round of funding that raised another C$12 million.

3. Mogo Inc.

Mogo Finance Technology Inc. (MOGO), founded in 2003, operates an online lending platform aimed at providing millennials with a variety of credit solutions, such as short-term loans and prepaid credit cards. In 2018, the company released MogoCrypto for buying and selling Bitcoin cryptocurrency. As of July 2021, more than 1.6 million people had signed up as Mogo users.

Mogo is sometimes considered to be the Uber of finance, as it provides quick access to a competitively priced service and focuses on the user's experience. Founders Greg and David Feller found inspiration to help young Canadians pay off debt at lower rates in their own experiences of struggling to pay down credit debt while in college. The Vancouver-based company made its debut on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) in June 2015. A key investor is Fortress Investment Group LLC (FIG).

4. Shopify

Shopify Inc. (SHOP) provides a cloud-based multichannel commerce platform for businesses of all sizes. Founded in Ottawa by Daniel Weinand, Scott Lake, and Tobias Lutke in 2004, Shopify allows merchants to improve their overall customer experience by managing multiple sales channels, such as social media, web, and mobile. As of April 2021, the company had more than 1.7 million customers in roughly 175 countries. Prominent customers include Heinz (KHC); Budweiser which is part of Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV (BUD); and Mondelez International. Shopify raised C$100 million in Series C funding in 2013 and went public in 2015.

5. Cryptologic Corp.

Vogogo Inc. has undergone some major changes since it was founded by Rodney Thompson and Geoff Gordon in 2008. The company first offered web-based business-to-business (B2B) risk management and payment solutions and began focusing on cryptocurrency in 2013. The company went public in 2012, and after failing to gain traction, suspended its operations in late 2016.

Vogogo relaunched in April 2018 as a cryptocurrency miner and blockchain application development company after acquiring 14,000 mining machines and facilities in Quebec. Cryptocurrency mining is the process by which transactions are verified and added to the public ledger, or the blockchain, and also the means through which new cryptocurrency is released.
Robots are increasingly being used in every industry and are here to stay, and robotics usage has both positive and negative impacts on business and employees. The following are a variety of ways that robots affect the economy.

Key Takeaways Robots are taking your jobs!

They have been encroaching in manufacturing work for decades and now making literal inroads into tasks like driving, logistics, and inventory management.

While there may be a negative effect on some labor segments, robots and automation increase productivity, lower production costs, and can create new jobs in the tech sector.

The Rise of the Machines

Technology has played a role in making work more efficient for thousands of years, from simple farming tools to current-day assembly-line robots in factories. Robots are becoming present in more and more situations in business. They work right alongside human workers or completely replace them. For example, Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) uses a variety of robots in its warehouses to stock inventory, and retrieve and package items. Tesla Motors Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) boasts robotic and automated assembly lines for its electric cars and batteries. Robots are even being used in therapy sessions for children. While it is certainly true that robots are replacing jobs and are a significant threat to low-skilled workers and somewhat of a threat to middle-skilled workers, there are many positive effects that robots have on the economy.

Productivity Growth

Higher living standards can come about through higher wages, lower pricing of goods and services, and an overall greater variety of products and services. Labor productivity growth, as measured as output per hour, is what leads these things to occur. Growth results from one or a mixture of three things: increases in the quality of labor, increases in capital and total factory productivity (TFP), also known as multi-factor productivity.

Increases in the quality of labor come from more and better education and training of employees. Capital drives productivity growth via investments in machines, computers, robotics and other items that produce output. TFP, often cited as the most important source of productivity growth, comes from the synergies of labor and capital working together as efficiently as possible. As an example, keeping the education and productivity of the workforce constant, if the machines they use increase in productivity, the TFP still rises. Robots are unquestionably making the "machine" aspect of production facilities more efficient. Even if the human component of factories remains constant, increased efficiencies from robotics inevitably leads to more productivity growth.

Gross Domestic Product Growth

Not surprisingly, with increased productivity comes an increase in gross domestic product (GDP). In December 2018, a paper by Georg Graetz of Uppsala University and Guy Michaels of the London School of Economics titled "Robots at Work" studied the effects of robots in the economy. They looked at the United States and 16 other countries, and analyzed a variety of data for a 15-year period ending in 2007. Graetz and Michaels found that, on average, across the 17 countries, the increasing use of industrial robots over the time period raised the annual growth of GDP by 0.36%. They compared this substantial growth to the boosts in productivity that occurred at the turn of the 20th century from steam technology.

Job Creation

Many people fail to realize that robots are actually creating new, high-paying jobs that require skilled workers. While it is true that robots are replacing low-skilled workers and automating the tasks that they perform, robots and automation are requiring jobs that focus workers on higher-value work. For example, in manufacturing, robots can perform menial tasks such as raw materials sorting, transporting and stocking, while higher-skilled roles such as quality-related tasks, which humans are more suitable for, can be completed by higher-skilled workers.

While it is true that robots and automation are taking away entire categories of jobs across a multitude of industries, it has never been a better time for workers to get higher-skilled, higher-paying jobs as long as they become skilled and educated enough themselves to fill those roles.
Social media companies have moved into the focus of many active traders in recent weeks. Analyst forecasts and recent quarterly results seem to be pointing to sharp climbs in daily active users and other key metrics. Some traders are using the strong numbers as a leading indicator of potential moves higher over the coming weeks. In this article, we look at a few charts from across the social media segment and try to determine how traders will be positioning themselves in case of a major move higher.

Key Takeaways Strong metrics in Snap Inc.'s (SNAP) recent earnings report suggest that many people are turning to social media for connection. This macro-level shift could drive share prices over the weeks and months ahead.

The nearby support and resistance levels shown on the charts will likely be used as guides for trend traders when deciding where to place buy and stop orders.

Global X Social Media Index ETF (SOCL)

Active traders who are interested in niche market segments such as social media often turn to exchange-traded products such as the Global X Social Media Index ETF (SOCL). Fundamentally, the fund comprises 39 companies and has total net assets of approximately $230 million.

Looking at the chart below, you see that the bulls have been in clear control of the momentum since early May and that the period of consolidation as shown by the trendlines appears to be over. The recent break beyond the resistance near $51.50 will likely be used by followers of technical analysis to mark the beginning of a move higher. From a risk-management perspective, stop-loss orders will most likely be placed below $49.45 in case of a sudden shift in market fundamentals.

StockCharts.com

Snap Inc. (SNAP)

The social media company that has caught the attention of many over the past two weeks is Snap. The company recently reported that its number of daily active users climbed by 18% year over year to 249 million. As many people find themselves more physically disconnected due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, many are turning online for social connection.

The shift in user behavior has helped push revenues for the company sharply higher to $679 million, which was significantly more than the $550.1 million that analysts were expecting. Looking at the chart, you can see that the price has moved out of a defined trading range and now looks poised to move higher.

StockCharts.com

Twitter, Inc. (TWTR)

Another top social media stock that many active traders will be watching closely over the weeks ahead is Twitter, Inc. (TWTR). Looking at the chart below, you can see that the defined range has acted as a strong guide for traders since the bounce in March. The recent rise toward the top end of the range suggests that the stock has the interest of the bulls.

Trend traders will likely keep a close watch on Twitter stock over the next several sessions because a close above the nearby trendline could mark the a new leg of the uptrend. From a risk-management perspective, stop-loss orders will likely be placed below the combined support of the 50-day moving average and the trendline in case of a sudden shift in market sentiment or company fundamentals.

StockCharts.com

Social media's role in helping businesses is significant. It facilitates communication with customers, enabling the melding of social interactions on e-commerce sites. Its ability to collect information helps focus on marketing efforts and market research. Social media can also help in promoting products and services, as it enables the distribution of targeted, timely, and exclusive sales and coupons to would-be customers. Further, it can help in building customer relationships through loyalty programs linked to social media.

The Bottom Line

Social media stocks are starting to take center stage as many people start to find themselves more isolated than usual. The shift in user behavior is a positive for companies in the social media sector, and based on the charts discussed above, it appears as though prices could be headed higher from current levels.

At the time of writing, Casey Murphy did not own a position in any of the assets mentioned.
The financial planning profession has grown exponentially in the past few decades. One reason for this is the increased public awareness of the need for sound financial advice from trained and knowledgeable professionals.

Many financial planners and firms are responding to this demand with increased mobility, online support, and other forms of technological assistance. These innovations have allowed a small but growing number of financial planners to carve out a new niche in their profession by working from home, either part or full time.

Key Takeaways Becoming a financial planner can be a lucrative career move, helping people with their investments and personal finances.

Once based out of traditional offices, several new platforms allow financial planners to work remotely from home.

Financial planners who decide to work remotely as freelancers often experience a new level of personal autonomy and flexibility.

The downsides of self-employment for financial planners include a lack of guaranteed income and no fringe benefits.

Online-based financial advisory companies can be a good source of employment for financial planners looking to work from home.

Working From Home

Although this trend started in many other areas such as the travel industry, it was initially slower to take hold in the financial community because some clients required a level of personalized service and advice that had traditionally been available only through face-to-face contact. But technology has reached the point where planners can work effectively with clients online and provide advice and information via phone, email, and video conferencing.

The number of websites that allow clients with relatively simple financial situations to enter their information and receive personalized recommendations and advice is growing rapidly along with the array of products and services that these sites provide.

A New Opportunity for Planners

Planners who choose to work for firms that offer online advice may still have to spend at least some time in an office, but in many cases, this arrangement will allow them to avoid the daily nine to five grind. Anyone who has the proper licensure and credentials just needs a computer, Internet access, and a space to work at home in order to conduct business.

Some planners will meet clients in person by appointment for an introductory meeting and then communicate with them via phone or online from then on, while other planners work exclusively from home and may never see the majority of their clients in person, depending upon their firm's policy.

Some planners may also be able to meet with clients directly in their (the planners') homes if they have the means to create a separate office and meeting area at their residence. Of course, working from home has always been an option to some extent, but in times past this generally required a regular commute to a central office to deliver paperwork and accomplish other tasks. While this is still sometimes necessary, new data-sharing technology such as Dropbox has made it much easier to transmit and share documentation electronically.

In a June 2020 survey of Chief Financial Officers working in the financial services industry, 61% said they plan to make remote work permanent for roles that allow it.

Getting Started

One way to get started working from home as a financial planner is to work as an employee for a company that allows their financial advisors work flexibility and remote work options. Financial planning companies that are primarily online-based can be a good source of employment for financial planners looking to work from home. These companies have already embraced online technology as a means to interact efficiently and conveniently with their customers, so it makes sense that they extend these benefits to their workforce as well.

Many websites that offer online planning either allow or require their clients to upload most or all of their financial accounts and information into a sophisticated proprietary planning or budgeting program that allows the planner to see the client's entire financial picture at a glance.

This level of technological transparency greatly reduces the amount of time that planners traditionally had to spend gathering and entering their clients' financial information. Clients who provide all of their information properly through this channel can often receive immediate feedback from the planner on certain topics.

Personal Capital is an example of a company that offers financial advisory jobs that are either partially or fully remote. Bill Harris, a former CEO of PayPal and Intuit, launched his financial planning advisory firm in 2011 in an effort to provide effective money management for clients with $100,000 to $2,000,000 to invest. Personal Capital provides a turbo-charged indexing investment program and assigns a personal advisor to communicate directly with each client. Clients can also link all of their financial accounts together on the online financial dashboard. Basic membership is free and personalized advice and money management are priced very competitively.

Compensation and Benefits

Financial planners who work remotely for companies are usually paid either by the client or receive a salary. And while most planners are still expected to market themselves in their sphere of contacts, substantial leads are typically provided on a regular basis. But the benefits of this niche go beyond dollars and cents. Some sites offer 24/7 access to a financial planner, which could be an attractive option for those who enjoy working nights.

As with other work-at-home jobs, this alternative could also appeal to planners with young children. Parents who left their financial careers to care for young children may be much more able to fit this type of arrangement into their schedules than a traditional advisor position, and this option will most likely pay considerably more than most other work-from-home alternatives.

The Bottom Line

During the 2020 crisis, many financial advisory firms shifted their office workforce to working at home. This trend in the industry is likely to mushroom in the next few years, as several of the sites that use offsite advisors have plans for substantial expansion. Additionally, reports show that at-home workers maintained their productivity while working from home, and more than 70% of financial services employers found the work-from-home shift to be successful or very successful.
Unless you are a government employee, youve likely never heard of the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS), but if you work in the public sector or plan to in the near future, FERS is an acronym you will soon know well.

The Federal Employees Retirement System, or FERS, is the retirement plan for all U.S. civilian employees. The plan covers all employees in the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of the federal government. 

FERS, however, does not cover military personnel or employees of state or local governments. Employees under FERS receive retirement benefits from three sources: the basic benefit plan, Social Security, and the Thrift Savings Plan, or TSP. 

Key Takeaways The Federal Employees Retirement System, or FERS, is the retirement plan for all U.S. civilian employees.

Employees under FERS receive retirement benefits from three sources: the basic benefit plan, Social Security, and the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP).

The plan covers all employees in the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of the federal government but not military personnel or employees of state or local governments.

Basic Benefit Plan

The basic benefit plan is a pension in which the employee receives a set amount, regardless of the amount they have contributed. The amount depends on the length of service and the "high-3" average. "High-3" refers to the highest three consecutive years of service. Often, those are the last three years you worked, but if you held a higher paying position earlier in your career, your high three could be during that time.

This calculation only takes into account your basic salary. It does not include overtime, bonuses, or other extra payments. Your years of credible service are reported on the SF-50 form you receive at least once per year. Then, the agency you work for adds a 1% multiplier to your high-3.

However, employees who are 62 or older with at least 20 years of service will receive a multiplier of 1.1%.  The formula for the basic benefit plan is as follows:

High-3 Salary x Years of Service x Pension Multiplier = Annual Pension Benefit

If you worked for 25 years and earned $75,000 per year, your monthly payment would be around $1,560, according to the formula.

Social Security

Unlike some public pension plans, employees covered under FERS pay into the Social Security fund at the same rate as private employees. Anybody paying into Social Security will pay 6.2% of earnings with the agency matching the contribution.

If you were born in 1975, earn $50,000 per year, and plan to retire at age 65, your estimated payments would be about $3,000 per month adjusted for inflation ($1,500 in todays dollars).

Thrift Savings Plan

Think of the Thrift Savings Plan as a 401(k). Congress established the TSP in 1986 and it offers the same types of tax benefits and savings as a 401(k). Each pay period, the agency you work for deposits 1% of your basic pay into your TSP. On top of that, you have the option of making additional contributions, which your agency will match (up to 5% of your pay).

These extra contributions are tax-deferred and administered by the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board. Just like a 401(k), you can choose how these funds are invested. Upon setting up the TSP, you will be given a list of fund choices. 

If you earned $40,000 and had agency contributions of 5% and a 6% rate of return, after 30 years of service, you would have earned about $335,200, or about $1,400 per year for 20 years. Because the TSP does not function as a pension like the basic benefit plan and Social Security, your earnings after 30 years would be based on the funds you choose, the amount of money you contribute above the amount your employer deposits, and market conditions that are outside of your control.

Just like a 401(k), there is a limit to how much you can contribute to your Thrift Savings Plan. Because your agency only matches up to 5%, speak to a trusted financial advisor about how to invest additional funds. It might be better to invest non-matched funds into an IRA or other investment vehicle.

"The biggest federal employee mistake I see is not contributing up to the 5% agency match. Simply choosing to contribute 5% and leaving it in the G-Fund will guarantee an automatic 100% rate of return. No investor can consistently beat that," says Cooper Mitchell, president of Dane Financial LLC, in Springfield, Mo., and creator of FedRetirementPlanning.com.

Types of Retirement

Disability Retirement

If you have completed at least 18 months of service and meet the requirements for disability, you may receive benefits from all three parts of your retirement plan.

Early Retirement

Early retirement can include retiring at the federal minimum retirement age (MRA), which, for anybody born after 1969, is 57 years old. It can also include early retirement due to a reduction in force or discontinued service because of involuntary separation.

Voluntary Retirement

Traditional retirement provides you with full benefits provided you meet all requirements.

Deferred Retirement

This type of retirement is for former federal employees covered by FERS.

How Do You Receive Benefits?

The Office of Personnel Management provides helpful information that covers the steps you need to take to prepare for retirement five years prior to the projected date. Once you are within two months of your retirement date, complete the required application found on the OPM website. The responsible agencies will work with you to complete the application and ensure that you begin receiving benefits soon after your retirement date.

The Bottom Line

Employees eligible for FERS receive benefits from three separate plans. In a world where pensions are being discontinued by corporations and governments, FERS is still seen as one of the best retirement packages available. Some believe, however, that as the federal government continues to rein in costs, FERS could undergo changes that would make it less attractive.
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Mullen (NASDAQ: MULN) Continues Acquisition Path With Purchase of ELMS Assets Including Factory in Mishawaka, IN., Enabling EV Production for Retail and Commercial Vehicle Lines

BREA, Calif. - October 19, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Mullen Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN), an emerging electric vehicle ("EV") manufacturer, announces the US Bankruptcy Court approval on Oct. 13th, 2022 of its acquisition of electric vehicle company ELMS's (Electric Last Mile Solutions) assets in an all cash purchase.

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BREA, Calif. - October 24, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Mullen Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN), an emerging electric vehicle ("EV") manufacturer, announces today it has secured exclusive sales, distribution and branding rights to the new compact urban delivery electric vehicle, the I-GO, which is fully EU Standard homologated and certified for sale in select European Markets.

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Vancouver, Delta, BC - October 20, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Investorideas.com, a leading investor news resource covering EV and automotive stocks releases a special report featuring Mullen Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN), covering the continued growth of the EV market as government policy and infrastructure plans sync up with consumer and investor interest in the EV space.

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I am shouldered off my usual whimsical path this week by the sheer power and truth of Jean Farrell's recent article about the fact that Irish Catholics like myself and herself grew up under the severe gaze of a God of fear rather than a gentle God of love. Every line Jean wrote hit me between the two eyes like a sledgehammer.

Yes, indeed, that was the sad reality for the overwhelming majority of those of us whom that God has allowed to reside on this earth for more than 60 years.

We Irish of those generations, as Jean pointed out so powerfully and concisely, were raised to fear rather than to love the God whose powerful bearded figure glared down upon us from tens of thousands of huge stained glass windows in the chapels of Ireland.

I have been a God-fearing poor little sinner since the time I went into the confessional boxes in my short boyhood trousers to confess my sins to the great dome of God's priest on the other side of the prison bars of the old confessionals that reeked of old wood and new layers of guilt. I was God-fearing then, like all my people of that parish, and I am just as God-fearing today.

A powerful almost superstitious fear it is too. There are cells of me, this minute, which would not be surprised at all if I am stricken down dead before I conclude this piece.

When I was at primary school, for example, we were visited annually in the classrooms by two large men in black. We feared both equally back then in Fermanagh.

One was the huge RUC police sergeant who came in, allegedly, to inform us about road safety. He had a huge revolver with a shiny butt in a black leather holster on one hip and a baton on the other hip. You feared the sight of him for sure.

Equally, you feared the other big man in black who came. He was the priest who examined the classes for their religious knowledge, especially the children making their First Communion that spring.

The examinations were strict. The examiner projected fear rather than any kind of love at all.

The Sunday sermons from the pulpits in front of those stained glass windows were not much different in tone or context, especially those dealing with sexual behavior.

The paint on the silenced benches was especially blistered when the annual missionaries came, crucifixes jammed into their leather belts like swords, spouting even hotter fire and brimstone than your own parish priest.

Strangely, even as a little altar boy in those years, I can recall being puzzled about why new mothers among our people had to wait after Mass was over to be "churched" at the altar rails. And they always looked a bit ashamed of themselves, those poor ladies.

Read more: In Ireland, we grew up with a God of fear, not a God of love

It was years later before I learned that they had to be somehow cleansed for any sexual satisfaction they might have experienced in bringing another little Catholic into God-fearing Ireland. The mind boggles.

It was fact in that God-fearing Irish society that, if you were lucky enough to get to secondary education after primary level, you were constantly beaten in the classrooms of alleged learning by teaching priests and brothers. It was part of your day and you knew no better.

Furthermore, so total was the church's control, you would not get much sympathy from even caring parents like mine if you complained about the constant canings when you went home.

"I'm sure you earned it," would have been the most likely response from parents who had been through the mill themselves.

I was never brutalized or kicked or punched, in all fairness, but there were days when I would have been caned (six on each hand often) three or four times a day. The punishments were not for major offenses either, often for matters such as not having homework done properly or not paying attention in class.

It was a reality too that some priests and religious brothers seemed to get a certain kind of satisfaction out of handing out the beatings. That was not true of all of them so you came to know the difference. It was quite shocking.

Equally shocking in more recent years have been the revelations in relation to the sexual misbehavior on both sides of the border by admittedly a tiny minority of the clergy we had mounted on high pedestals of fear. Though still totally God-fearing, those stories eventually caused me to no longer go to Mass regularly even though I still feel guilty about that.

I drop into quiet chapels nowadays about weekly, drop down on my knees in front of the stained glass God of fear high above, adopt the mode of a supplicant, and beg for a little peace and happiness if at all possible for all those that I love and cherish.

Then I normally light a small, hopeful candle in front of the altar, genuflect, and go back out into the world again. It seems to be a little bit less threatening out there if you know what I mean.

I thank Jean Farrell for her splendidly rendered piece. I will light a candle just for her next time I enter a chapel.

She says she has now found a God of love in her life. She is well ahead of this poor God-fearing sinner.
A survey commissioned by European Movement Ireland shows that 86 percent of people in the Republic of Ireland believe that the United Kingdom should stay in the European Union. On June 23, 2016 British voters will decide whether the UK will leave the EU in what the British media refers to as the "Brexit" referendum.

The results of the survey, carried out by Red C poll, show that while 86 percent of Irish people think the UK should remain in the EU, this rises to 92 percent among young people. The same poll also indicates that 81 percent of people in the Irish Republic believe the country should remain in the EU regardless of the United Kingdoms position.

Of the Irish adults polled, 87 percent believe that the Republic of Ireland has benefited from being a member of the EU. These figures represent a sligh rise in pro-EU sentiment as compared with 2013, when 83 percent believed Ireland had benefited from EU membership, and 2015, when that figure was 84 percent.

The recent survey found the Connacht-Ulster region, which borders Northern Ireland, is the largest supporter of the EU membership at 96 percent.

European Movement Ireland Executive Director Noelle OConnell welcomed the high levels of support for the EU saying, There is unprecedented support for Irelands EU membership, at 90 percent, since we began tracking sentiment in 2013. Perhaps the forthcoming UK referendum on its EU membership has focused minds here in Ireland? It is very noteworthy that in the last two years, a growing number of Irish people believe that even if our nearest neighbors leave, that Ireland should remain in the EU, notwithstanding that we both joined on the same day in 1973.

The results also indicate that young Irish people in particular overwhelmingly believe that Ireland has benefited from EU membership, with 91 percent agreeing with this statement in the poll.

The highlights of the results are as follows:

- 90 percent of Irish people want Ireland to remain in the EU; for young people this is 94 percent, up from 85 percent in 2015. Support for EU membership is highest in Connacht-Ulster at 96 percent

- 87 percent of people believe Ireland has, on balance, benefited from membership of the EU. This increases to 91 percent for those aged 24 and under and was again highest in Connacht Ulster at 91 percent

- 81 percent want Ireland to remain in the EU, even if the UK leaves; this rose to 84 percent in Dublin

- 86 percent of Irish people think the UK should remain in the EU, rising to 92 percent for young people

- When asked if they are aware that the EU will abolish mobile phone roaming charges by June 15, 2017, 92 percent are aware, with the lowest levels of awareness among young people, at 82 percent and farmers at 79 percent. Those living in Munster are most aware of this at 94 percent.

The poll was conducted among a representative sample of over 1,015 people aged 18 and over from across the country. The full results are available from the European Movements site here.

This weekend Taoiseach (Irelands Prime Minister) Enda Kenny asked the Irish in Britain to vote to remain in the EU. Speaking in London he commented on the fact that customs controls would have to be established at the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland if Britain left the EU.

Kenny urged the Irish in the UK, who make up a substantial part of the electorate, to use their vote. The campaign group Irish 4 Europe estimates that there are half a million first generation Irish people living in Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales). This figure rises to the millions when second and third generation Irish are considered.

Speaking in London, the Taoiseach said, We would say, with particular reference to the Irish people living in Britain, this is a really important decision. Its outcome would affect people in the North, it would affect Ireland itself and obviously will have an impact upon the European Union for many years to come.

He said that in the event of the UK leaving the EU there would have to be significant, complex and difficult negotiations.

Kenny continued, Ireland in Europe would still stand by Britain being a member of the Union and of its importance, but I have no idea what other European countries, how they would look at Britain whether they decide to leave, given the fact that weve come a long way since the 1970s.

So whether there would be border controls or custom controls, these things are a possibility, but obviously they would require some very serious negotiations and my preference for the Irish electorate who have a significant part in this referendum is to vote to stay, for Britain to stay as a strong and central member of the European Union for the future.

Would you vote for the United Kingdom to stay or leave the European Union? Let us know below.
Irish leader Enda Kenny described Donald Trumps comments as racist and dangerous in todays Dail (Irish parliament) session, adding there is an alternative to vote for.

This marks a significant change from Kennys previously conciliatory approach to the presumptive Republican nominee for president.

Earlier in May, during a visit to Washington DC, Kenny told RTE that Trump had made provocative remarks but that some of them had been rowed back on.

"The world will have to work with whatever president there is and given our traditional association with the United States we will manage to do that," he said.

Following that statement, Kenny was criticized for striking such a deferential tone. IrishCentrals Niall ODowd questioned why he was so quick to join the appeasement chorus holding out hope that Donald Trump will mend his ways and work with other leaders, and noted that the Taoiseach was almost alone among European leaders to take such a stance.

In todays Dail session, Kenny faced questions from Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin and Anti-Austerity People Before Profits Richard Boyd Barrett about the Irish governments intentions should Trump be elected president.

Boyd Barrett questioned Kenny about whether the Irish government would continue to welcome US military planes at Shannon Airport if Trump, as president, chose to increase military involvement in the Middle East.

Mr. Trump has talked about wiping people out across the Middle East and massively escalating US military action in that region, Boyd Barrett said.

Whatever about the previous differences between the Taoiseach and I on this issue, is he seriously going to tell the House that if Donald Trump was President of the United States, the Taoiseach would carry on with the policy of facilitating the US military at Shannon Airport?

If the Taoiseach did that, it would beggar belief because everybody recognizes what a dangerous man Donald Trump is.

Kenny initially declined to comment, calling the topic of the next US president a matter for the American people.

Eventually, he concluded If Trumps comments are racist and dangerous, which they are, there is an alternative to vote for.

Micheal Martin said that while the members of the Dail are not in a place to predict who would win the next American election, it is important to stand up for basic principles.

It is worrying the kind of stuff that has been articulated in the United States election; its not acceptable, he said, citing Donald Trumps remarks on certain religions and ethnic groups, as well as his proposal to build a border wall between the US and Mexico.

It sets an appalling example for the way the free world should be talking I think that we as a government and we as politicians have to articulate that very clearly.
Former US attorney general Eric Holder has said whistleblower Edward Snowden performed a "public service" by sparking a debate about secret domestic surveillance programmes, but insisted that he should still return to the US to stand trial.

As a National Security Agency contractor, Mr Snowden leaked details in 2013 of the US government's warrantless surveillance of its citizens before fleeing the country.
A 50-year-old man has been charged with a public order offence after a pub-goer was seen wearing a T-shirt mocking the Hillsborough disaster.

Paul Grange, from Worcester, was charged by West Mercia Police with displaying threatening and abusive writing likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress.

A police spokesman said Grange had been bailed to appear at Worcester Magistrates' Court on a date in July.

The West Mercia force launched an inquiry on Sunday after a man was seen wearing a T-shirt describing the 1989 disaster, in which 96 Liverpool fans died, as "God's way of helping" a pest control firm.

Pictures have been posted on social media of the man, who was asked to leave the Brewers Arms, in the St John's area of Worcester, by the landlord.

Superintendent Kevin Purcell said: "I understand the alarm and distress the offensive language shown on this t-shirt will have caused to both the people in and around the pub and further afield.

"I would like to thank the landlord of the pub for his support and all the members of the public who were in the pub at the time and came forward to report it."
Update - 3pm: A woman claiming to be the mother of the boy who fell into a gorilla enclosure in Cincinnati Zoo, leading to the animal's shooting has said that "accidents happen".

Michelle Gregg, broke her silence saying people were too quick to judge parents.

She wrote on Facebook: I want to thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers today. What started off as a wonderful day turned into a scary one.

For those of you that have seen the news or been on social media that was my son that fell in the gorilla exhibit at the zoo. God protected my child until the authorities were able to get to him.

My son is safe and was able to walk away with a concussion and a few scrapes ... no broken bones or internal injuries.

As a society we are quick to judge how a parent could take their eyes off of their child and if anyone knows me I keep a tight watch on my kids. Accidents happen but I am thankful that the right people were in the right place today.

Earlier: The director of the Cincinnati Zoo says it remains safe for its 1.6 million annual visitors despite a weekend tragedy in which a gorilla was fatally shot to protect a four-year-old boy who had entered its exhibit.

Thane Maynard, however, said a review is under way to determine any improvements that can make the zoo safer.

The male western lowland gorilla named Harambe was killed on Saturday by a special zoo response team that feared for the boy's safety. Video taken by zoo visitors showed the gorilla at times appeared to be protective of the boy but also violently dragged him through the shallow moat.

Mr Maynard said the decision to kill the gorilla was the right one. He said the gorilla was agitated and disoriented by the commotion during the 10 minutes after the boy fell. He said the gorilla could crush a coconut in one hand and there was no doubt that the boy's life was in danger.

Thane Maynard

In an interview with Boston television station WFXT, conservationist and television host Jeff Corwin suggested that the boy's family should shoulder some of the blame, saying "zoos aren't your baby sitter".

"I don't think this happened in seconds or minutes. I think this took time for this kid, this little boy, to find himself in that situation. Ultimately it's the gorilla that's paid this price," he said.

A Cincinnati police spokesman said no charges against the parents were being considered. A spokeswoman for the family said they had no plans to comment.

"I do think there's a degree of responsibility they have to be held to," said Kate Villanueva, a mother of two children from Erlanger, Kentucky, who started the Justice for Harambe page and attended a vigil for the gorilla outside the Cincinnati Zoo on Monday. "You have to be watching your children at all times."

The Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas, where Harambe spent most of his life, said its staff is deeply saddened by the gorilla's death. Harambe was sent to Cincinnati less than two years ago in hopes he would eventually breed with gorillas there.

Jerry Stones, facilities director at Gladys Porter Zoo raised Harambe since birth and has worked with the gorilla's family since they first entered the US, the Brownsville Herald reported.

Mr Stones said: "He was a character. He grew up to be a beautiful, beautiful animal, never aggressive and never mean. He would tease the heck out of people and would do things to irritate you just like some kids."

Mr Stones said he would take Harambe home with him when the gorilla was a baby and let him sleep on his bed, according to Texas television station KRGV-TV.

There are critics of the zoo's decision to kill Harambe. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said the zoo should have had better barriers between humans and the gorillas.

Mr Maynard said the atmosphere following the incident is "very emotional".

"Not everyone shares the same opinion and that's okay," he said. "But we all share the love for animals."

Mr Maynard said the zoo has received messages of support and condolences from around the world, including from other zoo directors and gorilla experts.

He said zoo visitors have been leaving flowers at the exhibit and asking how they could support gorilla conservation.
Police are investigating the circumstances surrounding a four-year-old boy entering a gorilla's exhibit at Cincinnati Zoo and the animal being shot dead to protect the child.

A federal inspection less than two months ago found no problems with the zoo's Gorilla World exhibit but earlier zoo inspections reported issues including the potential danger to the public from a March incident involving wandering polar bears.

Cincinnati police are investigating what transpired with the death of the gorilla, named Harambe, on Saturday, Hamilton County prosecutor Joe Deters' office said. Police will then talk with prosecutors about whether charges are warranted, the office said.

Police said over the weekend that no charges were planned but spokeswoman Tiffaney Hardy said they are still gathering information on what happened.

Some critics have said the boy's parents should be charged with child endangering, while others want the zoo held responsible for the death of the 17-year-old western lowland gorilla.

The boy was released from hospital later on Saturday and his family has said he is "doing just fine" at home.

Tanya Espinosa, a spokeswoman for the US Department of Agriculture (USDA)'s animal and plant health inspection service, said there was not an investigation open yet but that it would be looking into the incident for any violations of the Animal Welfare Act.

Zoo director Thane Maynard said the zoo has received a lot of support from visitors and animal experts since Saturday.

Federal reports showed an inspector warned the zoo that the public could have been "at great risk for injury, harm or death" on March 16 when two polar bears went through an open den door into a behind-the-scenes service hallway. At the time, zoo officials said some visitors were moved for safety as the bears were returned to their main holding area. No one was injured.

The federal inspection found that two doors were left open by keepers and there did not appear to be "a formalised method" for double-checking locks and doors.

The report said animals can be harmed when they access areas not meant for their use, adding: "Surprising the bears in the keeper area could have resulted in human injury or death." It also said the public would have been at great risk if the bears had got outside.

The report said the zoo's dangerous-animal response team used tranquilliser darts on the two bears. Mr Maynard said that using tranquillisers on the gorilla would probably have put the boy in greater danger because they do not take effect immediately.

A routine inspection from April 4-7 that included the gorilla area did not find any violations, another report said.

Inspections in 2014 found several issues including the need to repair areas where monkeys and horses were housed and a camel that appeared to be badly bothered by flies.

Mr Maynard said the zoo remains safe for its 1.6 million annual visitors, but a review is under way to determine any improvements that can be made.

The executive director of a Cincinnati-based animal rights organisation is calling on the USDA to fine the zoo.

"The (zoo's) barrier obviously isn't sufficient to keep the public out," said Michael Budkie, of Stop Animal Exploitation Now. "Otherwise, Harambe wouldn't be dead."

Jack Hanna, host of Jack Hanna's Into The Wild, said the zoo made the right call by shooting the gorilla.

Mr Hanna said he saw video of the gorilla jerking the boy through a shallow moat inside the enclosure and knew what would happen if the animal was not killed.

"I'll bet my life on this, that child would not be here today," Mr Hanna told WBNS-TV.

In an interview with Boston television station WFXT, conservationist and television host Jeff Corwin suggested that the boy's family should shoulder some of the blame, saying "zoos aren't your babysitter".

"I don't think this happened in seconds or minutes. I think this took time for this kid, this little boy, to find himself in that situation. Ultimately it's the gorilla that's paid this price," he said.

The family has declined to comment further.
The director of Cincinnati Zoo's has insisted the decision to kill a gorilla after a boy entered its enclosure was the right one.

Thane Maynard told a news conference that the four-year-old boy's life was in danger when he strayed into the moat at Gorilla World.

He said the 420lbs gorilla called Harambe was agitated and disoriented and acting erratically.

He added the western lowland gorilla was extreme strong and could crush a coconut in its hand.

A witness reported hearing the boy tell his mother he wanted to get in the water at the enclosure on Saturday afternoon. She said no, but the boy entered a moat in the gorilla exhibit anyway.

Mr Maynard said the zoo is reviewing security measures to ensure both visitors and animals are safe.

He revealed staff have received messages of support and condolences from around the world after the decision to shoot the gorilla.

He acknowledged there were also critics of the zoo's decision, describing the situation as "very emotional".

"Not everyone shares the same opinion and that's OK," Mr Maynard said.

"But we all share the love for animals."

Earlier animal rights activists staged a vigil for Harambe at the zoo.

Anthony Seta, of Cincinnati, called the animal's death "a senseless tragedy", but said the purpose of the vigil was not to point fingers but to pay tribute to the gorilla, named Harambe.

"People can shout at the parents and people can shout at the zoo," Mr Seta said.

"The fact is that a gorilla that just celebrated his birthday has been killed."

The gorilla's birthday was on May 27, the day before he was shot.

There has been an outpouring on social media of people upset about the killing.

A Facebook page called Justice for Harambe has drawn wide attention, along with online petitions and another page calling for a protest at the zoo on June 5.

Videos taken by zoo visitors showed the gorilla at times appeared to be protective of the boy, but he also dragged him through the shallow moat.

The boy was taken to Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Centre for treatment and was released on Saturday night. His parents said in a statement on Sunday that he was "doing just fine".

Many social media commenters have criticised the parents and said they should be held accountable.

Villanueva, a 28-year-old mother-of two, said: "I do think there's a degree of responsibility they have to be held to. You have to be watching your children at all times."

A Cincinnati police spokesman said there are no charges being considered. A spokeswoman for the family said they have no plans to make additional comments.

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals released a statement from its primatologist Julia Gallucci saying the zoo should have had better barriers between humans and gorillas.

"This tragedy is exactly why Peta urges families to stay away from any facility that displays animals as sideshows for humans to gawk at," the statement said.

The zoo said it is the first such spectator breach at Gorilla World since it opened in 1978 and that the exhibit undergoes regular outside inspections.

The zoo said earlier this year it plans to expand the exhibit.

Gorilla World remained closed on Monday.
The UKs EU referendum, a US Federal Reserve policy decision, an Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) meeting, and the prospect of another muddled Spanish general election are all due in June.

Like it or not, the biggest investors must take positions, particularly to spread their risk, according to David Tan at JP Morgan Asset Management in London.

We cant hide, said Mr Tan, adding that government bonds are in demand for their track record of weathering market volatility better than many asset classes.

The key is in the calibration of our exposures, as well as ensuring that portfolios are well-diversified.

Money managers struggling to develop a clear market view beyond June say they are turning to gold and the Japanese yen, which tend to benefit when investors become more conservative.

Sovereign bonds from major economies are being used as a hedge even though yields are close to historic lows.

They have slipped to below zero on $8.3trn of debt, or about a third of the total.

Risk events for investors start as soon as this week, with Opecs ministers gathering in Vienna to discuss oil output levels and prices, an ECB meeting and the US payrolls report for May.

June may produce risk-off catalysts in global financial markets, as options already are pricing in materially higher volatility for the end of the month, said Mark Dowding, a money manager at BlueBay Asset Management.

There clearly will be an elevated sense of risk in the month of June, he said.

Mr Dowding said that he is using foreign currencies as the clearest way to hedge.

There is universal agreement if we see a Brexit you will initially see a very sharp fall in the pound, he said.

Sterling was trading yesterday at just over 76 pence against the euro, suggesting fears about the UK exiting the EU have receded.

Sterling was trading as low as 81 pence in early April.

A weak euro tends to help Irish firms exporting into Britain.
The disagreement could further delay the disbursement of the bailout funds which Athens badly needs to pay off IMF loans in June, bonds of the ECB maturing in July and increasing state arrears.

Last week, after months of negotiations, Greece and its lenders concluded a key bailout review, opening the way for debt relief that Greece has long desired.

But in a letter sent to the lenders last week, finance minister Euclid Tsakalotos said some of the additional demands could not be fulfilled, the sources said.

According to one of the sources, some of them were related to bad loans and to pension reforms.

Greek newspaper Ta Nea said the letter had been sent to EU Commissioner Pierre Moscovici, the ECBs Benoit Coeure and the IMFs Poul Thomsen.

In Brussels, an EU official confirmed that the two sides were still working to finalise the measures required after Athens raised its latest concerns.

The Ta Nea newspaper said specific areas of disagreement also included the privatisation of the countrys grid operator Admie and freezing the wages of essential services such as the coastguard and police.

Prime minister Alexis Tsipras has said a wage freeze would have been a great injustice for men and women in the army, police, and coastguard who work 24/7 helping a country that is struggling with an unprecedented refugee crisis to stand on its feet.

The measures have tested the left-led coalition, which has a narrow parliamentary majority with 153 of the 300 lawmakers. One lawmaker has resigned from Mr Tsipras Syriza party in protest over the measures.
The CSOs Pension Provision report showed under 47% of people with jobs had a pension, while only 46% of working women had made any provision for their retirement.

The findings are from the large Quarterly National Household Survey for the last three months of 2015, published yesterday.

They show a huge slump from the same period in 2009 when just over half  51%  of the States working population had provided for a pension for their retirement, and 49% of employed women had done so.

The CSO survey covered most types of pension  occupational, personal, and both, it said.

Governments and think tanks across Europe have long warned about the costs and the probability of poverty facing many people of working age when they reach retirement age and will depend on comparatively low level of State pensions for their livelihood.

Policy here has long been to encourage people with jobs to take out a private pension through deferred tax credits.

With just over 14% of workers aged 20 to 24, and 36% of workers between 25 to 34 years, holding a pension, the CSO figures may again reignite the debate about pension provision here.

The CSO said 39% of workers said they could not afford a pension. A 2014 report by the Organisation for Economic and Co-operation and Development (OECD), which had been requested by the then Social Protection Minister Joan Burton, said that compared with other OECD countries, the States pensions expenditure will be comparatively low even though there were large projected increases over the next 50 years.

However, it found private pension coverage, both in occupational and personal pensions, is uneven and needs to be increased urgently; that the existing tax deferral structure in Ireland provides greater incentives for those with high incomes to save for retirement; that the Irish legislation regarding the protection of defined benefit (DB) plan members is weak; and there is unequal treatment of public and private sector workers due to the prevalence of DB plans in the public sector and DC (defined contribution) plans in the private sector.

Ciaran Phelan, CEO Irish Brokers Association said the CSO spelt it out the Government must give attention to the issue of retirement funding, or lack thereof. The State has a duty.
The hotel, which features in James Joyces Ulysses, was bought by developer Bernard McNamara in 2006 for 17m, a year after it closed.

Mr McNamara put it on the market in 2009 with a price tag of 7m, but it was subsequently bought by Mr Fernandes Monteco Holdings for less than 2.5m.

Earlier this year, Monteco lodged revised plans for a 121-bedroom hotel at the site with the firms consultants stating that the plan can make a significant contribution to the rejuvenation of the site, the surrounding area and the wider city through the introduction of a high quality use that will meet the needs for additional hotel accommodation in Dublin.

The consultants also said that the proposal will deliver a significant improvement to the visual appearance of the area.

However, the plan has attracted opposition from local residents and councillor Mannix Flynn.

In his objection, Mr Flynn claimed that the proposed hotel development presents a monolithic, sprawling expanse to Ormond Quayand is, in effect, architectural wallpaper, designed to be as inoffensive as possible, and, as a result, fails to contribute in an intelligent and creative manner demanded of this critical site in the heart of the city.

James Moore of the Save Joycean Dublin Committee claims the proposed facade is unoriginal, corporate, bland, generic, and characterless, and would be a travesty if it replaced the current facade, with its original and elegant fenestration and which has a genuine place in the citys literary and historical heart and fabric.

A number of residents on Little Strand St have told the City Council that the plan will have a huge impact on residents and are disappointed that no attempt was made by the applicant to meet with them before the plans were lodged.

The residents claim that the proposed development is inconsistent with the philosophy of creating a vibrant, safe, comfortable and attractive urban space. Council planners have requested Monteco to submit revised plans for the proposal.
The Credit Review Office (CRO) was established by the government in 2010 to evaluate bank credit refusals and work to have such decisions reversed for businesses where appropriate.

As the sale of SME and farm loans to so-called vulture funds appears to be gathering pace, and with increased political focus on the issue, the CRO has issued guidelines for borrowers whose loans have been sold.

Credit reviewer John Trethowan, who heads the CRO, told businesses they would have to prepare themselves for the demands of the new owners of their loan should they wish to stay in business.

If a voluntary sale of the assets, combined with a further cash settlement, is agreed upon, business owners would have to find a way of making the payment.

At some point in time you will need to be talking with another bank to provide finance to meet the settlement figure demanded by the new loan owner, if you wish to continue trading, said Mr Trethowan.

As well as looking to establish or develop a relationship with one of the few remaining banks who actively lend to SMEs, business owners are encouraged to look for alternative sources of finance and consider approaching friends and family.

You may need to get part of the settlement money from a non-bank source  an investor in your business.

"If practicable you should be talking with friends and family about the upcoming need for refinancing, Mr Trethowan wrote.

ISME chief executive Mark Fielding said the advice seems like a bit of a cop-out.

Having been bailed out by the taxpayer to the tune of 64bn, banks should at least be capable of lending to businesses now.

He added that government supports such as the Government Guarantee Scheme and Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland should particularly help banks in making funds available to SMEs struggling to maintain control of their business.

Bailed out banks could be instructed to refinance SMEs to protect their businesses, he suggested.

ISME has received calls from distressed business owners in relation to unreasonable demands being made by vulture funds and threats to appoint a receiver to their business.

Given time, many SMEs would be in a position to repay their loans but are not being afforded that time, Mr Fielding said.

Mr Fielding added that there is an issue with incomplete documentation relating to loan security, repayment dates and the loan purpose which is now being discovered by banks.

This is encouraging them to engage aggressively with borrowers, he said.

Ulster Bank was criticised last week over its decision to sell 2.5bn of distressed loans as part of Project Oyster.

Some 65% of the loan book is made up of business loans.

Ulster Bank said the loans do not belong to typical customers and are all in the banks problem debt management unit and in arrears or under specialist management for a significant period of time.

Fianna Fail finance spo-kesman, Michael McGrath, described the sale as very concerning, however, and called on the Central Bank to urgently examine the impact of selling business loans to vulture funds.
Youre not sure how people will react or if your family and friends will accept you for who you are.

I realised, at a very young age, that I was trans (even if I did not know the term). I also learned it was "wrong". I was invisible. #TDOV

Irish woman and writer Aoife Martin had come out as trans to friends last year and has been out on Twitter for a few months now but still hadnt told her sister.

I could go on but last year I decided enough was enough. I came out to some close friends & was accepted. Suddenly I was visible. #TDOV  Aoife Martin (@aoifemrtn) March 31, 2016

Yesterday, she bravely took the plunge, texting her sister to tell her. Aoife shared the screengrab of her responses on Twitter - and what her sister had to say is incredibly moving.

Aoife Martin/Twitter

Aoife Martin/Twitter

Its received a great reaction on Twitter - with the general consensus being that it reduced everyone to blubbering messes.

That's really one of the nicest things I've read in a long time.  Darren Geraghty (@GeraghtyDarren) May 31, 2016

Congratulations to Aoife - and her sister!

H/T: BreakingNews.ie
NASA are working with four universities, in Massachusetts and Scotland, on creating human-like robots that will be sent to Mars to set up habitats on the Red Planet ahead of astronauts arriving.

The robot, named Valkyrie, is designed to carry out tasks in environments deadly to humans and in the short term could be sent into disaster areas where human lives would be at risk.
He said his voluntary supply-reduction scheme would compensate farmers for producing less, while allowing others to expand should they so decide.

Its clear farmers have been effectively abandoned to take the hit alone from the downturn in the dairy markets, said Mr Comer.

All other links in the supply chain are insulating themselves and policymakers at both national and EU level are allowing and assisting them to do so.

Mr Comer said the cost of producing milk stands at around 28c per litre, whereas co-ops are paying around 22cpl on average.

This just cant go on and policymakers telling farmers that this is simply a trough in the market, to cut costs and to restructure loans to survive is simply pointless, said Mr Comer.

Mr Comers proposal follows CSO figures showing Irish milk output up 18.5% in the year following the end of EU quotas  from April 1, 2015, to March 31, 2016.

Irish milk output rose 38.9% in January to February 2016, from 340m tonnes to 472m tonnes, but fell 4.1% to 752m tonnes in April 2016 versus April 2015, the first fall in Irish output in 14 months. Germany produced 5.4bn tonnes of milk in January to February, up 7.8%.

While volume increases have been higher in larger EU states, Irish outputs grew at the fastest pace.

Milk output rose by 3.7% in Germany and by 1.3% in France during 2015; Belgian output rose 14.2%, with the Netherlands rising 11.9%.

These output increases coincided with the Irish milk price falling by more than 40% from the highs of 38cpl in 2014 to 22cpl today.

European Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan said the EU is not alone in oversupply driving down prices.

He urged farmers to produce less milk so as to help rebalance the market.

It is now genuinely in the hands of dairy farmers who may, if they so wish, join forces and collectively decide to reduce production, said Mr Hogan.

Mr Comer said responsibility for the dairy income crisis lies with the European Commission, saying nobody else has the power to address the issues. He said a voluntary supply reduction scheme would help rebalance the market.

In relation to the 4.1% milk output reduction for April, IFA dairy chairman Sean OLeary said milk output growth is slowing in many of the EUs main milk- producing countries, and other dairy regions around the world.

He also said April 2015 milk supplies were boosted by carry-forward from the previous quota restricted month.

The fall in the Irish April 2016 output also reflects the late and cold spring which saw poor grass grows, and cows indoors for part of the day, said Mr OLeary.

The bad spring was a factor in northern Europe, but affected most of all the grass-based farms in Ireland and parts of the UK.

There is also little doubt that the fact that most European farmers are now producing at a significant loss is also starting to affect output growth. Danish milk collections were up 8.9% in March, but only by 2.7% for April.

"French milk production was off 1.1% in March and is predicted to be back 3.6% for April, with slower growth also evident in Germany [+0.3% only for week 18], where 16% more cows were slaughtered in the first 17 weeks of the year.

UK output is falling since February, with deliveries down 2.3% for the two weeks ending May 21, 2016.

He said New Zealand is finishing its 2015/16 season with 3% less milk than in 2014/15, with Australia down 1.1% for its season to April.

Only the US output seems to be buoyed by low feed and labour costs, with USDA reporting 1.2% rise in April output.

Bearing in mind that spot milk and dairy prices, EU average quotes and international futures have all been firming  albeit timidly and from very low levels  it is fair to think that we are seeing the first signs that global supply and demand has slowly started to rebalance, he said.

Agriculture consultant and land agent Mike Brady said: Comparing April 2015 with April 2016 is not relevant due to the hold- over of milk in 2015 to avoid superlevy fines. January to April milk is up and will continue to increase.

Irelands cost of production is lower than our European neighbours and, I believe, will win out in the long term because of this fact.

Editorial: 10
Lorcan O Snodaigh, aged 18, pleaded guilty yesterday to the theft of the beer, worth 10, at Supervalu on Talbot St in Dublin on April 12 last year.

However, he was left go after making a 50 court poor box payment.

The youths case was heard at Dublin Childrens Court, as he was aged 17 and a minor at the time of the incident, but he has since turned 18, reaching adulthood by the time the summons was issued.

Defence counsel Damian McKeone told Judge John OConnor that the youth, who is from the Naas Road, Bluebell, Dublin 12, was pleading guilty to the charge.

The teen was accompanied to the proceedings by his father, a Sinn Fein TD for Dublin South Central constituency and the party spokesperson on social protection and communities.

Lorcan O Snodaigh spoke to confirm he did not want the case to be dealt with before a jury in the circuit court, which has tougher sentencing powers.

He said keep it in this court, when given the choice.

Judge OConnor accepted jurisdiction.

Garda David Leahy told the court that he had responded to a call that a security guard had detained a male in the shop.

He also viewed CCTV footage, which showed the youth took a box of Desperados beer and passed all points without payment.

The beer was recovered in saleable condition and the youth was co-operative, the garda said.

The court heard he had eight prior criminal convictions, which included entering with intent to commit an offence, criminal damage, and six for thefts, which led to him being bound to keep the peace.

Mr McKeone, defending, asked the court to note that the offence went back to last year and his client has since turned 18. He had been going to college, but dropped out and hopes to resume a computer course in September.

Pleading with the court to spare him a conviction, Mr McKeone said the youth was drunk at the time of the incident and he accepted it was a foolish thing to do and was remorseful.

Counsel said the young man, who is getting a disability payment, had 50 to offer to charity.

The judge said he was sure the young man had turned it around and he accepted the offer, which he said would go to St Vincent de Paul charity.

Once the money was handed over, the judge marked the facts proven, but the case was struck out.
Figures issued by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) showed a national increase of 12.5% over the previous year in passenger numbers using the airports, with the number of departing passengers marginally exceeding those arriving for the main airports in 2015.

Dublin airport accounted for 83.8% of all passengers last year, up almost 9% compared to figures for 2008 and up 15% compared to 2014.

Shannon Airport also boosted its passenger numbers for the third year in a row and had an 8% rise in 2015 compared with the previous year. Yet, while other airports including Kerry and Donegal registered an increase, Knock had a 2.7% drop and Cork Airport saw passenger numbers fall for the third year in a row, down 3.4% in 2015 compared with figures for 2014.

However, spokesman for Cork Airport, Kevin Cullinane, said he expected the downward trend of recent years would be reversed in 2016, with figures already showing an increase in the number of people using the airport.

Already this year Cork Airport is the fastest growing airport in the State, with 8% growth in the year to date, he said.

Even with that 3.4% decline last year we were still the second busiest in the country.

The reason there is growth this year is because of eight new routes and four new airlines at the airport, so the foundations for this years growth were set last year.

It emerged yesterday the Cork-Menorca route due to begin next month has been dropped with CityJet indicating that it was notified in recent days by travel agents operating the route that it was not going ahead, with a lack of demand being blamed.

The CSO figures also show passengers from the UK accounted for almost half of all Europeans using Irish airports last year, while more than 2.8m North Americans passed through Irish airports in 2015.

Almost nine out of every 10 passengers on international flights in the five main airports were travelling to or from Europe, while the three most popular countries of origin/destination were the United Kingdom, Spain, and the United States.

Almost 232,000 flights were handled by the countrys five main airports last year with Dublin accounting for more than 81% of all flights, while Cork handled almost 8% of all flights. July was the busiest month with 3.2m passengers travelling.

The London-Heathrow, London-Gatwick and London-Stansted routes were the most popular for passengers in Dublin Airport while, for Cork, the top three routes were London-Heathrow, London-Stansted and Amsterdam.

In Shannon, the main routes were London-Heathrow, London-Stansted, and New YorkJohn F Kennedy while London-Stansted, London-Luton, and Liverpool-John Lennon were the most popular routes to and from Knock.
Raquel Reynolds, aged 48, a native of Columbia who has been living in Ireland for the past 13 years, told Judge John Hannan her car had been rear-ended while stationary at traffic lights in Santry, Dublin, just under two years ago.

Justin McQuade, counsel for mother of two Ms Reynolds, said the former trained accountant had won an award for balloon art, which she now specialises in, at an international convention in Denver, Colerado, two years ago.

Mr McQuade, who appeared with Hussey Fraser Solicitors, told Judge Hannan that Ms Reynolds, of St Bridgets Road, Artane, Dublin 5, had been removed in a head brace and on a spinal board from her car in July 2014.

He said her work as a balloon artist, for which she employs two part-time assistants, was affected by injuries to her neck, left hand, and lower back.

She still complained of pain to her lower back.

Mr McQuade said his client had been recalled to the emergency department of Beaumont Hospital for exploratory x-ray examination following continued pain in her back but no acute bony injury had been found.

Insurers for the other motorist and defendant Rachel Marrinan, Rialto Drive, Rialto, Dublin, had conceded liability and Judge Hannan had been asked to assess damages for personal injury.

The judge said 2,500 of damage to the rear of Ms Reynolds car was indicative of the force of the impact. That bill had already been met by Ms Marrinans insurers.

Balloon art is a very important part of her life and it is clear there is a significant amount of manual dexterity required in relation to that work, Judge Hannan said.

I have seen evidence on her iPhone of her beautiful artwork, which requires a high degree of physical mobility.

He awarded Ms Reynolds damages of 22,546 and, on indication of a possible appeal against the amount, directed the defendants insurers to make a pay-out of 17,500 with costs.
Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald is believed to be finalising proposals on beefing up the powers of the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB), including the level of assets where investigations can be pursued.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny last week told the Dail that all necessary resources would be made available to gardai to tackle gangland crime  but only after he earlier said that he could not stop the killing spree.

Government sources confirmed that a discussion on gangland crime will take place at Cabinet today. This could include a number of elements, including how to strengthen facilities and resources to target gangland criminals.

It was reported at the weekend that Ms Fitzgerald is examining new laws to strengthen the powers of CAB. This could include lowering the threshold by which it can formally launch investigations into the proceeds of crime, from cases involving 13,000 to just 1,000. Such a measure would allow the garda agency investigate low-level criminals who may be linked to gang leaders or who are working for criminal groups.

Mr Kenny last week met gardai in the wake of the latest gangland-linked killing, a feud which to date has claimed seven lives.

The latest victim, Gareth Hutch, was gunned down in Dublins North inner city. Mr Hutch was the nephew of Gerard The Monk Hutch.

Meanwhile, the Labour party will launch its first Dail motion today since entering opposition in a bid to highlight the needs of the lower paid but also to embarrass its former coalition partners, Fine Gael.

Brendan Howlins party will use a private members motion to demand that the minimum wage be increased to levels above and beyond that promised in the new Programme for Government.

While the Fine Gael-Independent minority government is promising to raise the wage to 10.50 in its lifetime, Labour wants it pegged at 60% of median earnings. The party also wants a living wage of 11.50 across the public sector.
A HSE taskforce is likely to decide by this Thursday whether or not to approve paying out for Nivolumab and Pembrolizumab.

Speaking to the media, Mr Harris said that as part of the last Budget, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform had ruled that drugs above a certain threshold would have to be sanctioned by the Government.

That would appear to give his department more power when it comes to a final decision, but the minister said he would wait until the HSE had completed its considerations on the merits of the drugs before taking the next step.

Ive spent most of the weekend liaising with the HSE, said Mr Harris. My primary concern is for the patients affected, and patients, who their clinicians believe could benefit from these drugs. I have spoken to the HSE several times over the weekend.

I have been made aware that the HSE will be meeting to consider these drugs this week and I have been asked that I be advised of their recommendation this week, so that I can then decide how best to proceed.

He then made a direct appeal to the manufacturers to show some compassion.

They previously had ran a Compassionate Access Programme, which a number of Irish patients had benefited from, and Im sure theyre extraordinarily grateful for, he said. That programme has closed now and what I would respectfully ask the drug manufacturers this afternoon is to reopen that Compassionate Access Programme, whilst this approval process is ongoing.

Mr Harris also said there needed to be a serious look at public policy in relation to the purchasing of new medicines, saying it needed a really mature and informed discussion.

Is it right that a minister for health or any other minister need to make a recommendation to Government about whether to fund a drug, when I believe we should be led on these matters by clinicians?

The manufacturer of Pembrolizumab  Merck Sharp and Dohme  said it had been continuing to provide the drug to approximately 100 patients, who had been on the Compassionate Access Programme up to when it ceased earlier this year, and this would continue.

However, it is understood around 30 new patients, who have not been able to access the drug, are awaiting the decision of the HSE later this week.

The drug has already been deemed cost-effective by the National Council of Pharmoeconomics.

Representatives of Bristol-Myers Squibb, manufacturer of Nivolumab, were unavailable for comment, as it was a bank holiday in the UK yesterday.

Will compassionate plea be listened to?

Q. Whats going on here exactly?

A. Last week Prof John Crown, oncologist and former senator, claimed patients could die due to new cancer drug delays and they have to take a less effective medication that is just as expensive.

Q. What drugs are we talking about?

A. The HSE has been assessing the cost of providing two cancer drugs  pembrolizumab (pembro) and nivolumab (nivo)  to determine value-for-money and patient benefits.

Q. Whats the problem?

A. Where do you want to start? Prof Crown said up to 150 people die from melanoma every year and there is good evidence some of those people could live a lot longer and others could be cured with treatment, but cost is an issue. These two drugs are not cheap.

Q. How expensive are they?

A. One estimate was the initial pricing for pembro at 134,000 per patient per year.

Q. Cant the minister for health just make the HSE pay out for the drugs?

A. This is as clear as mud. The granting of approval for a new medicine is a comprehensive process, involving consideration by the National Council for Pharmoeconomics as part of that assessment. There was an overarching agreement with drugs manufacturers on the cost of medicines but that lapsed last October. As yet a fresh agreement to replace it has not materialised. In any event, for any drug priced at more than 45,000 per patient per year the HSE negotiates directly with the drug manufacturer. On Sunday evening the HSE also reminded everyone that while it makes decisions in relation to new medicines, decisions that would have a substantial budget impact for the HSE also require approval by the appropriate departments in consultation with Government.

Q. So the ball is back in Minister Simon Harriss court then?

A. Possibly, but he is asking the HSE to speed up its review of the drugs in question and yesterday called on the drugs manufacturers to re-engage with a Compassionate Access Programme, which is now closed. He called on the companies to restart it.

Q. OK then  will they?

A. Who knows  the offices of Bristol-Myers Squibb, which manufactures nivo, were closed yesterday due to a bank holiday in the UK, and MSD (Merck Sharp & Dohme), manufacturer of pembro, said the programme was continuing while the review process was ongoing.
Wayne Dundon, aged 37, of Lenihan Avenue, Ballinacurra Weston, was found guilty by the Special Criminal Court in 2012 of threatening Alice Collins that he would kill or cause serious harm to her sons, Gareth and Jimmy Collins, at Hyde Avenue, Limerick on September 30, 2010.

The non-jury court also found him guilty of the intimidation of potential prosecution witnesses Alice and April Collins with the intention of obstructing the course of justice on the same occasion.

Wayne Dundons younger brother, John Dundon, aged 33, with an address at Hyde Rd, Limerick, had also been found guilty of threatening to kill April Collins at Hyde Rd on the weekend of April 3 and 4, 2011.

Following their convictions, the three-judge Special Criminal Court sentenced Wayne to six years imprisonment and John to five-and-a-half years imprisonment on April 18, 2012.

In a judgment delivered yesterday the Court of Appeal dismissed the brothers appeals on all grounds and affirmed their convictions.

Giving judgment, Mr Justice George Birmingham said the Court of Appeal had been forced to conclude that it was being asked by Wayne Dundons lawyers to substitute a view on the facts for the view formed by the trial judges who had heard the evidence. The Court of Appeal was not prepared to do that, he said.

There was evidence, which if accepted by the Special Criminal Court, could support Wayne Dundons conviction, Mr Justice Birmingham said.

It was for the court of trial to decide whether it was satisfied in relation to that evidence and in a situation where the court was so satisfied, the Court of Appeal was not in a position to intervene, he said.

Mr Justice Birmingham, who sat with Mr Justice Alan Mahon and Mr Justice John Edwards, commented that Wayne Dundons lawyers were operating on the basis that an appellant can dip in and out of the transcripts of a trial held on another occasion at will. The Court of Appeal deprecates any such suggestion, he said.

The Dundon brothers gave no reaction when the judgment was delivered. They were lead away to continue serving their prison sentences.

Wayne Dundon is also currently serving a life sentence for the revenge murder of innocent businessman Roy Collins in Limerick, on April 9, 2009.

Mr Collins father, Steve Collins, was believed to have been the intended target due to his involvement in a previous successful prosecution against Wayne Dundon.
And the good news is that the sunshine is here to stay for this week at least, with temperatures set to be above average for this time of the year.

The outlook is that the good weather will last until the long weekend at least, with the midlands and the west enjoying the best of the sunshine.

Tuesday will see plentiful sunshine through the day and most areas will hold dry, said Met Eireann, forecasting temperatures of over 21C for the rest of the week.

It will be rather warm, with above normal maxima, widely rising to 21C or even 22C.

Tomorrow will again be sunny and warm with hazy sunshine and temperatures ranging from 19 to 22 degrees.

Temperatures will be a few degrees lower though for north and northwest counties with onshore breezes and possibly a little low cloud or fog.

Darragh Gunnigan and Toby Kiely, from Passage West, busy with their buckets and spades during the fine weather at the beach at Myrtleville, Co Cork

Winds will be northerly and light to moderate. However, the weather is not completely settled and some showery rain can be expected in some areas.

It will be much duller day on Thursday, especially in the east of Leinster, where there is the likelihood of occasional rain or drizzle.

Ethan Kiely and Aoife Gunnigan, Passage West, having fun during the fine weather at Myrtleville, Co Cork.

It will be brighter in the west of the country, though, with some nice sunny spells. Temperatures will be a little lower than recent days but still above normal for most areas.

Highest temperatures will range 14C to 20C, all the while best in the west.

It will be coolest along the east coast, with moderate to fresh northeast winds feeding in off the Irish Sea.

But the sun will make another appearance on Friday with good spells of sunshine across the country.

Ashkan Javid, Aylin Uretici, and Thomas Milka enjoying the fine weather in Fitzgeralds Park, Cork

It will be a warmer and brighter day than Thursday, with highest temperatures of 16 to 22 degrees Celsius.

Good spells of sunshine are expected and it should hold fully dry with just light northeast breezes.

Olivia, Donna, and Cian Gough from Glanmire, enjoying the fine weather at Myrtleville, Co Cork.

There is, however, a chance of the odd burst of showery rain, with local sea breezes developing along western coasts through the day.

Current indications suggest the warm spell will persist into the weekend, with the start of June bursting out all over.

Kristina Mannion, Grainne Horgan, Olivia Gallagher, and Caitlin Russell, from Douglas and Chitung Ip, Moira OSullivan, and Jemma Barry, Rochestown, having fun in Myrtleville.

Met Eireann forecaster David Rogers said: Current indications suggest the warm spell will persist into next weekend, possibly with even higher temperatures.

Most of the temperatures will be higher than normal and it will be quite pleasant.

It is too soon to tell but the general trend will probably be the same at least for the start of the June Bank Holiday weekend.
The latest appeal for information on the disappearance of Charles Brooke Pickard, 42, is in light of new avenues of enquiry which have been identified.

The case has been examined by the garda serious crime review teams cold case unit and arising from that new lines of investigation have opened up, Supt Flor Murphy of Killarney gardai said yesterday.

Gardai believe Mr Pickard, who had moved to live in Castlecove in south Kerry, was killed in the immediate aftermath of the abduction and his body disposed of  it has never been recovered.

Masked men were seen moving towards Mr Pickards van on the White Strand near Castlecove on April 26, 1991  three weeks later his English registered van was found burnt out in a forested area 25 miles away.

Gardai were appealing to people who had been on the periphery of the abduction 25 years ago, or who may not have been in a position to give information at the time to come forward.

We want to advance the investigation and also bring closure to his wife Penny and their three sons, Supt Murphy said.

Mr Pickard and his wife Penny had moved to Castlecove from Leeds in 1983. They had four children aged 15, 11, 7 and 5, at the time of his disappearance. The family were hit with a number of tragedies after the abduction, including the death in a road traffic accident of Lisa, the eldest child.

Gardai believe Mr Pickard was abducted, killed and despite extensive searches his body has never been recovered. The last his wife Penny, and children saw of him was when he left home on that Friday morning.

His abduction featured on Crime Call on RTE1 last night.
Dublin Childrens Court heard gardai feared for their own safety after they found the missing boy, aged 13, at a house party but were set on by 15 to 20 youths.

Garda David Egan was repeatedly punched and dragged away by youths, while his colleague Gda Paula Carter was knocked unconscious and kicked on the ground.

The now 15-year-old boy had denied violent disorder and assaulting Garda Egan in connection with the incident in north Dublin in February last year.

However, he was found guilty following a trial before Judge John OConnor.

The repeat teen offender, who has five prior criminal convictions, had sentencing adjourned for a probation report to be prepared.

Garda Egan said a 13-year-old boy was reported missing by his mother who feared he was going to self-harm and had recently been hospitalised for a suspected drug overdose.

He was located at a house where there were 15 to 20 other young people. He told Judge OConnor he and his colleague attempted to speak to the boy but we were set on by the group. Gda Carter was grabbed by her shoulders and abuse was shouted at them.

Gda Egan said as he tried to get the missing boy to their patrol car, one youth began pulling out of me and flung Gda Carter to the ground and kicked her on the ground.

Gda Egan said he tried to hold that youth but the defendant and two or three other males were dragging out of me.

He said he received punches to the back of his head and the then 14-year-old defendant punched him to the side of his head leaving him slightly dazed. He feared for his safety and that of his colleague.

In cross-examination with defence solicitor Mairead White, he explained that when the group of youths were hitting him, I was getting pulled up the road.

Ms White said her client did not have the best recollection and thought he was trying to help his friend and when told to go he left. Gda Egan disagreed and said he was certain he was assaulted by the boy.

Gda Carter described being pulled by her shoulders while Gda Egan was engaged with two or three other youths. A youth threw me to the ground and I lost consciousness she said, adding she feared for her safety during the violent incident. She was taken to hospital and received a stitch to a gash to back of her head.

The court heard the teenager is in an educational course but has prior convictions for robbery, production of weapon during a fight, criminal damage, and theft, and had previously been placed on probation and received a suspended sentence.

The judge warned the teenager, who was accompanied to court by his mother, that he is at a high risk of getting a custodial sentence.
Yep, its up there with Barack Obamas Is feidir linn and Queen Elizabeths A Uachtarain agus a chairde.

Despite our own love-hate relationship with Irish, why is that we Irish cant help feeling a stupid burst of pride when foreign VIPs flatter us in our native tongue?

The makers of Star Wars have taken out an advertisement in todays Irish Examiner thanking the people of Crookhaven, Goleen, and the Brow Head peninsula in West Cork for their hospitality while the latest Star Wars movie was being filmed.

Lucasfilm say they have been captivated by the landscape of the Wild Atlantic Way and that it provided a spectacular backdrop for our story (cue champagne corks popping at Failte Ireland Towers).

The tireless commitment of our Irish crew, the enthusiasm and support of all the people of West Cork have made our Irish adventure one we will always treasure, they wrote.

Go mbeidh an forsa leat!  May the force be with you!

Cue t-shirt makers going into overdrive for the summers must-have slogan.
Jurors have been deliberating for more than 28 hours over the course of six days days in the trial of four former bankers alleged to have conspired to mislead investors about the true financial health of Anglo Irish Bank.

They will return today to begin a seventh day considering a verdict.
One baby died on Sunday morning and the other died last Wednesday.

It is understood that Caesarean sections were required in both cases. Autopsy results are imminent.

The baby who died last Wednesday was just one day old. The newborn died unexpectedly and the cause of death is being investigated.

The second baby died before delivery on Sunday. It is understood that an emergency C-section was being carried out in an attempt to save both the life of the mother and the baby.

A consultant is required to be in the hospital for the surgery to take place.

It is believed that part of the inquiry will examine whether there was any delay in contacting the on-call obstetrician to carry out the operation.

The HSE is investigating both cases and awaiting their autopsy results.

Cavan General is part of the new Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland hospital group.

The RCSI Hospitals Group can confirm that two investigations have commenced directly in regard to Cavan General Hospital. It is not the policy of Cavan General Hospital to comment on individual cases, a spokesman told the Irish Examiner last night.

The HSE classifies the death of a newborn as a serious reportable event where an investigation is needed to ascertain whether the death was a preventable incident or not.

Some deaths may be a result of natural causes.

Cavan General Hospital has been subject to several investigations when four newborns died within a two-and-a-half year period, between late 2012 and May 2015.

The hospital has one of the smallest maternity units in the country.

The States 19 maternity hospitals and units are required to publish statements each month on patient safety. The most up-to-date for Cavan is from last December.

There were 120 births recorded in that month and the figures adjusted per 1,000 births, similar to the rate in the UK. More than one third of births involved a Caesarean, the statement said.
Mr McGuinness, speaking to the Irish Examiner, has defended his decision to reveal in the Dail last Thursday the controversial meeting which took place on January 24, 2014, in a hotel car park outside Dublin.

He was pressed yesterday as to why he did not reveal the meeting to the recently-completed OHiggins commission but he insisted it was not relevant to that inquiry.

That meeting was not relevant to the terms of the OHiggins Commission, said Mr McGuinness. Perhaps I could have mentioned it but I did so in the context that the whistleblower Sergeant Maurice McCabe is still being questioned as to his motive.

My decision to stay quiet at the time allowed for McCabe to come before the PAC at the time and my decision has been vindicated.

Serious questions remain unanswered including is there a continued culture to cover up, within the garda force, the whistleblowers that are under siege in that force.

Ex-garda commissioner Martin Callinan

However, the Fianna Fail TD for Kilkenny said he had made the call having heard the OHiggins report, and having listened to the debate that it was time to put on record a piece of proof that the culture within the force continued in the vein that militated against Sergeant Maurice McCabe.

Former PAC member and Sinn Fein deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald said there were well-founded reasons for not disclosing it at the time.

She said the priority had been to get Sgt McCabe to give evidence to the committee about abuse of the penalty points by gardai. However, Ms McDonald called on Mr McGuinness to further reveal what exactly Mr Callinan told him about the whistleblower.

The Sinn Fein TD said Mr McGuinness should have brought to the OHiggins commission of investigation details of the Callinan meeting.

Whistleblower Sergeant Maurice McCabe

Speaking on RTEs News at One, Ms McDonald called for an immediate response from Mr Callinan on the issue.

Attempts to contact the former commissioner last night were unsuccessful.

Ms McDonald called on Mr McGuinness to outline what the former Garda commissioner said to him about Sgt McCabe.

In addition, she called on the current Garda Commissioner, Noirin OSullivan, to outline if she had any knowledge of the meeting.

She said as a member of the PAC at the time, she was not aware of the meeting or the content of what was said to Mr McGuinness.

Garda Commissioner Noirin OSullivan

She added there was merit in the concern expressed by Mr McGuinness that to reveal details of the meeting before Sgt McCabe gave his evidence to the PAC may have derailed the process as there was no appetite within the system to have Sgt McCabe appear before the committee.

In a statement last night, Ms OSullivan said she was not aware of any private meeting between former Commissioner Callinan and Deputy McGuinness as outlined by Deputy McGuinness in the Dail.
Neil Kelly, aged 41, with a last address at Bohatch, Mountshannon, Co Clare, had pleaded guilty at Ennis Circuit Criminal Court to the criminal damage of Garda Aine Troys car at Scarriff Garda Station in the early hours of March 19, 2013.

He was given a wholly suspended three-year sentence by Judge Gerard Keyes on May 1, 2015.

The Court of Appeal refused to review Kellys sentence yesterday following an application by the Director of Public Prosecutions on grounds that it was unduly lenient.

Giving judgement, Mr Justice Garrett Sheehan said it was a borderline case but the suspended sentence imposed by the Circuit Court judge was within the margin of appreciation obliged to be afforded to him.

Giving background, Mr Justice Sheehan said Garda Troy was on mobile patrol near Scarriff when she noticed a vehicle, which she had stopped the previous evening, at a service station. It was being driven by a third party and was seized by Garda Troy at the service station for having no insurance.

Mr Justice Sheehan said Kellys co-accused had been abusive to Garda Troy and had said to her that youll see a silver spark later and youll know who did it.

Kelly had intervened on Garda Troys behalf at the time and endeavoured to get his colleague to desist from misbehaving, to behave himself and submit to the gardas request, the judge said.

The three men left, having taken some cans of beer from the car, and went to the pub, where they stayed for some time. They returned to Scarrif Garda Station two hours later, where they set fire to Garda Troys car, the judge said.

Mr Justice Sheehan said Kelly had a good working record and had a successful car valeting business but this collapsed immediately after locals became aware of his involvement in the offence.

He said Kelly paid Garda Troy 6,000 compensation and was also remorseful. Detective Sergeant Oliver Nevin said that, from what he had come to know, Kellys behaviour on the night in question was out of character. He had also disassociated himself from his co-accused and had moved to another address.

Mr Justice Sheehan said the evidence suggested that Kellys co-accused was the person who initiated the offence.

It was not only an offence against Garda Troy but effectively an attack on the rule of law that would require a prison sentence on that fact alone.

Mr Justice Sheehan said that, in one sense, a garda is always on duty and this crime interfered with Garda Troy in this regard and with the protection of the wider community.

The offence had a serious affect on Garda Troy, happening shortly before she was due to be married. The compensation paid by Kelly and his co-accused meant she was at no financial loss.

Mr Justice Sheehan said this was a borderline case and Kelly was just about on the correct side of that border.

There was sufficient mitigation  his guilty plea, his remorse, absence of relevant previous convictions, and his intervention earlier in the evening when his associate was disrespectful  to allow the Circuit Court judge to impose a suspended sentence, he said.

Mr Justice Sheehan, who sat with Mr Justice George Birmingham and Mr Justice John Edwards, refused the DPPs application for a review of sentence.
Last night, there were clear signs that Mr Callinan acted alone in seeking the meeting with Mr McGuinness. Current Garda Commissioner Noirin OSullivan said she was not aware of any private meeting between the two men as outlined by Mr McGuinness in the Dail last week

Commissioner OSullivan was not aware of any private meeting between former Commissioner Callinan and Deputy McGuinness as outlined by Deputy McGuinness in the Dail, her spokesman said.

The meeting  on January 24, 2014  happened in the car park of Bewleys Hotel on the Naas Road, six days before Sgt McCabe appeared a private session of the PAC.

Mr McGuinness said Mr Callinan sought to stop Sgt McCabe from being brought before the committee.

The former commissioner has remained tight-lipped since the meeting was reported and was not responding to calls last night.

Ex- Public Accounts Committee chair John McGuinness

Mr McGuinness strongly rejected criticisms of his decision to only reveal his secret meeting with ex-Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan last week.

Mr McGuinness, speaking to the Irish Examiner, has defended his decision to reveal the controversial meeting in the Dail last Thursday.

Mr McGuinness was pressed yesterday as to why he did not reveal the meeting to the recently completed OHiggins Commission.

Yesterday, Mr McGuinness said: That meeting was not relevant to the terms of the OHiggins Commission. Perhaps I could have mentioned it but I did so in the context that the whistleblower Sergeant Maurice McCabe is still being questioned as to his motive.

My decision to stay quiet at the time allowed for McCabe to come before the PAC at the time and my decision has been vindicated.

Serious questions remain unanswered, including is there a continued culture of cover up within the Garda force, the whistleblowers that are under siege in that force.

Whistleblower Sergeant Maurice McCabe

However, the Kilkenny TD said he had made the call having heard the OHiggins report, and having listened to the debate that it was time to put on record a piece of proof that the culture within the force continued in the vein that militated against Sergeant Maurice McCabe.

Former PAC deputy chairman Kieran ODonnell also called for clarity around the precise chronology, the sequence for the meeting and how long after the request for it was it held needs to be clarified.

The meeting should have been brought to the attention of committee members, the former Limerick Fine Gael TD said.

Former PAC member and Sinn Fein deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald said there were well-founded reasons for not disclosing it at the time.

She said the priority had been to get Sgt McCabe to give evidence in the committee about abuse of the penalty points by gardai.

Sinn Fein deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald

However, Ms McDonald called on Mr McGuinness to further reveal what exactly Mr Callinan told him about the whistleblower.

She also said he should have brought details of the Callinan meeting to the OHiggins commission of investigation.

Ms McDonald called for an immediate response from Mr Callinan on the issue.

In a statement to the Irish Examiner, a spokesman for Ms OSullivan said: In relation to whistle blowers, Commissioner OSullivan has consistently stated that dissent is not disloyalty and as a service we are determined to learn from our experiences.

An Garda Siochana agrees that whistleblowers are part of the solution to the problems facing the service.
In a moving and poignant open letter to the minister, Sophie Geaney, a sixth-year pupil from Cork, contrasts the frenetic campaign on water charges with the lack of attention given to the countrys appalling suicide rates.

Irelands youth suicide rate is the highest in Europe and the leading cause of death of young people here.

The Leaving Cert pupil also criticises the decision by the Department of Health and the HSE to divert 12m of the 35m ring-fenced for mental health in the last budget to other areas in health.

Sophie, from Gurranabraher, Cork City, writes that two people she knew personally took their own lives  one a man in his 50s and another a 17-year-old girl.

Sophie describes the teenager as the most beautiful and bubbly girl I have ever met.

More than ever, we need the Government to make a stand on mental health and invest more in it; but instead they are taking funding away, she said.

Its not enough to have a mental health talk in school once a year. There should be a class every week where teenagers learn that its OK not to be OK, that its not weak to speak.

People need to learn to voice what is going on in their heads. It needs to be a natural instinct to reach out; to say there is something wrong, I need help. We need these classes from first year and not just in fifth and sixth year.

Sophie said that both suicides came as a bolt from the blue and that nobody was aware that either had been suffering any kind of mental health problem.

Sophie Geaney: A close friend and the father of a friend both died by suicide within a week of each other.

The Samaritans released figures this week that showed the suicide rate among women increased 14.7% between 2013 and 2014, while the rate for men fell by 6.4%.

However, men in Ireland are still four times more likely than women to take their own lives. In 2014, 459 people took their own lives, of whom 368 were men and 91 were women. Men aged 50-54 are the most likely to die by suicide, while women appear to be most vulnerable when aged 25-29 years.

The Samaritans, who collated the research from Central Statistics Office data, urged the Government to make suicide prevention a priority.

Dear Minister,

I am a 6th year (17 years) student living in Cork City.

I am writing to you to discuss how disgusted I am at the choices you and the rest of our government are making regarding mental health in our country. Im not here to give you the facts and figures of our countries suicide rates as you of all people should know just how shocking they are.

I am appalled that it has been decided that mental health isnt as important as other things and 12 million has been cut from the funds. Do you know how many lives 12m could save?

Neither do I but even if it only saved one life it would be worth it. I am even more appalled at how much campaigning and time goes into other projects such as water charges and household tax, when in reality the way the people of our country are feeling and the stress they are under regarding money will leave the government with no population to pay such fees.

I dont know about you but I think anxiety, depression and bipolar disorder etc. are just as terminal as cancer and eventually like every other illness take their toll so why are they not treated as serious?

Just this week, two people I personally knew decided to take their own lives, if two people took their own lives every week that would be a total of 104 people in Cork City alone.

Its about time the stigma about mental health is lifted, its not something to be ashamed of and you as a government need to campaign that instead of your oh so important water charges. If students in secondary school had a class promoting good mental health just once a week, a place where they could learn that its okay not to be okay and its not weak to speak

imagine all the hurt it would save in the long run.

As I have already mentioned I am a sixth year pupil and one of the people I knew that took their own life just yesterday was a peer of mine. She was the most beautiful and bubbly girl I have ever met and she was only in 5th year. I dont know about your personal experiences minister but if you have ever had to walk around a school like I did today and experience the

silence and hurt in the air you would be taking serious precautions to help the people of todays Ireland, because mental health illnesses are real and they are becoming more common everyday, its time to make a change and that change has to begin with ye.

Regards,

Sophie Geaney

A citizen seeking help
LE Roisin crewmembers found the dead man when they boarded a 12m-long dinghy packed with 123 migrants on Saturday.

The craft was boarded 28 nautical miles north-west of Tripoli.

His body was handed over to the Italian authorities yesterday morning when LE Roisin docked in the southern Italian port of Brindisi.

Immediately following the rescue of the 123 migrants, LE Roisin was re-tasked to rendezvous with an Italian ship, Bettica, which transferred a further 101 migrants to her.

A short time later LE Roisin came alongside the German ship Karlsruhe, which transferred another 123 migrants to her.

The naval service ship was then told by the Italian authorities to come into Brindisi where all 347 migrants and the body of the dead man were taken ashore yesterday morning.

Following that the crew refuelled, restocked and cleaned the ship before exiting the port last night on its way back to its area of operations, just off the Libyan coast.

Last year the Naval service rescued 8,631 migrants from the Mediterranean Sea. To date LE Roisin has taken onboard 643 migrants, bringing the total rescued to 9,274.

The UN refugee agency says at least 700 people are presumed drowned in the past few days after three migrant boats capsized.
Counsel Ray Boland applied on behalf of the social worker for an injunction against the parents yesterday because of the threats made.

Mr Boland said it arose out of a situation where the mother and father had access to their child at a meeting arranged on March 29 by the Child and Family Agency, which is part of the HSE.

Mr Boland yesterday at Cork Circuit Court that there was a disagreement between the parents and the social worker over the child being taken into care  an issue which had been the subject matter of court proceedings.

A difficulty emerged at a meeting where the parents were to have access to their child. The parents made threats against the social worker on voicemail messages recorded on her phone.

Mr Boland said the father of the child told the social worker: You are a dirty tramp. I am going to cut your fucking throat, you dirty fucking slut. The kids were supposed to be on their own there today.

At another stage, the father said to the social worker: I am going to dance on you, fucking dirty fucking whore. If there is nothing fucking else I am going to cut your fucking throat, you fucking tramp.

A voicemail from the childs mother said: You better ring me fucking back now, girl, I am telling you like, like those children are very upset out in [name of area] You are a c***. The next time I see you Ill dance on top of you.

Colm Roberts, solicitor, on behalf of the father, said the father had no difficulty giving an undertaking to stay away from the social worker and make no contact.

Counsel Paul McCarthy, who appeared for the mother, gave a similar undertaking to Judge Sean O Donnabhain.

In those circumstances, Mr Boland said there was no necessity to proceed with the injunctive proceedings.
Liliana Etropolska with an address at Kiltegan Crescent, Rochestown Road, Cork, was given an 18-month jail sentence suspended on condition that she would leave Ireland within seven days.

Judge Sean O Donnabhain said the only reason the 70-year-old was not getting a prison sentence was because she had brought the full amount of 45,000 to court to compensate the State for everything she stole.

This was a conscious, deliberate and ongoing fraud in which she was fully involved. Because she recompensed the State I will measure a sentence at 18 months suspended, the judge said.

The judge directed gardai to return the accused womans passport which she previously handed up as a condition of her bail. As well as leaving here within seven days it is a condition of the suspension of the sentence that she would not return to Ireland for five years.

The 70-year-old was arrested on Friday, March 18, by Garda Kevin Hefffernan at Cork Airport and brought before a special sitting of Cork District Court that weekend.

Garda Heffernan, who is on secondment to the Department of Social Protection, testified yesterday at Cork Circuit Criminal Court that the accused came to Ireland in January 2011 as her son was married and living in Cork. She obtained a PPS number in January 2011 and told the authorities she was residing here full time. However, she returned to live in Bulgaria after securing the PPS number.

She returned just before her 66th birthday and applied for non-contributory pension which she was given. She left Ireland a week later but she had stated she would be residing permanently in Ireland. She provided documentation to support her claim that she was resident here full time.

The scam came to light when social welfare inspector, Fergus McCarthy, carried out a check on her entitlement and called to the address given by the accused. The owner of the house knew the accused but said she was not living there permanently.

Gardai were alerted and flight manifests from Aer Lingus were examined for the five-year period. These showed that she flew in a week before applying for her PPS number and flew out a week later and a similar pattern around the time she applied for the pension which was paid into an AIB bank account. The records showed that in 2012 she spent 40 days in Ireland.

Sinead Behan said the matter had been very stressful for the 70-year-old who had health problems. She said the money was used to pay her sons mortgage.

Judge O Donnabhain said he did not sympathise with the defendant for the stress she was feeling as it essentially emanated from being caught, adding she would have claimed the pension forever had she not been caught.
Mr Justice Bernard Barton said he did not accept that retired sergeant Michael Conroy, aged 60, had to retire in 2009 because of his injuries. He adjourned the question of an award of further special damages until next month.

Judge Barton said in February 1998, Mr Conroy was based in Salthill, Galway, and had been on duty during the Statoil Galway International Rally.

Individuals in the crowd had started throwing missiles, including bottles, at gardai and shouted abuse at them. As Mr Conroy arrested a spectator, he had been attacked from behind by another man.

He had been kicked and pushed, landing heavily on a car bonnet. He continued assisting his colleagues with a very hostile crowd, before attending Galway General Hospital with pain and bruising in his left leg.

The State had claimed Mr Conroy had not indicated at the time that he was retiring on illness grounds. The State also alleged that Mr Conroy was not suffering from PTSD symptoms, but depression.

The judge said Mr Conroy may require back surgery.

Awarding him 105,000 damages, the judge said he did not accept Mr Conroys claim that he retired because of his injuries. The judge said he had inherited a small farm at the time: There are a number of factors explaining why he had retired without enquiring as to why he had no appointment with the Chief Medical Officer.

I am not satisfied that Mr Conroy was unaware of his entitlement to be examined to retire on illness grounds.
The message I am bringing here, today, into this building is: Dont just shove all this on the acute hospital. Yes, there is absolutely a role for the acute hospital, but theres equally a role for the social care division of the HSE, and for the primary care division, Mr Harris said.

He was speaking ahead of a task force meeting between the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) and the HSE yesterday.

His comments came on the same day as 224 people were on trolleys in Irish hospitals.

The solution to the pressures being faced by our EDs [emergency departments] does not lie wholly, in any way, shape or form with our acute hospitals and there is a reason there isnt a Minister for State for Primary Care, its because it is my job as Minister for Health to also be the Minister for Primary Care.

If we are to be serious in addressing the challenges in terms of capacity in our emergency departments, we also have to look at how we can keep people out of our hospitals, what we can provide in the community, we have to look at the responsibility of primary care, Mr Harris said.

He stated that the HSEs social care division needs to be utilised fully in terms of providing home-help packages, respite care, and long-term and short-term care beds.

When asked about the 224 people on hospital trolleys around Ireland yesterday, he did not deny the problem, but said the cause needs to be examined.

The pressure on trolleys remains and there is a need for constant examination of new and innovative solutions.

We have to look at the reason why people are ending up in hospitals, we have to look at the reason why people end up in hospital after theyve been clinically discharged, Mr Harris answered.

Minister for Health Simon Harris

The minister will be visiting a number of emergency departments around the country to discuss the issue with frontline staff.

The Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) also met with the Minister for Health.

Dr Gerard Crotty, IHCA president, said that there needs to be a significant increase of hospital beds and access to operating theatres.

Hundreds of patients are being treated on trolleys every day, over 74,000 patients were awaiting essential surgery at the end of April and the cancellation of surgical appointments is a regular occurrence because of the shortage of hospital beds, Dr Crotty said.
Christopher Fitzpatricks victim impact statement was one of three read to the court yesterday during Mahons sentencing hearing.

The Dubliner was found guilty earlier this month of killing his partners son, the older brother of missing teenager Amy Fitzpatrick. Mahon has said he will not appeal his manslaughter verdict.

The 45-year-old was cleared of murdering the father of one, with whom he did not get along, on May 26, 2013. He had pleaded not guilty.

The 23-year-old received a stab wound to the abdomen outside the apartment that his mother, Audrey Fitzpatrick, shared with Mahon at Burnell Square, Northern Cross.

His sentencing hearing heard that Mahon had been caught for dangerous, drunk and careless driving on New Years Day that year. Hed received a four-month sentence, which had been suspended for a year, and it was during this suspension that he killed Mr Fitzpatrick.

Remy Farrell, prosecuting, read three victim impact statements to the court. These were prepared by Mr Fitzpatricks father, Christopher Fitzpatrick; his partner and the mother of his son, Sarah ORourke; and his mother, who is now Audrey Mahon, having since married the accused.

On the 9th of March, 1990, Dean took his first breath into the world. I was full of joy, happiness and love to have a son so small and precious, wrote Christopher Fitzpatrick in his report.

He mentioned his daughter Amys disappearance in 2008 while in the care of her mother on the Costa Del Sol, after Audrey took my children on a two-week holiday to Spain in 2004 and didnt return.

I thought Amys disappearance was the worst thing that would happen in my life, he said. In 2013, my world came crashing down once again.

When Dean was brutally killed, I realised I was never going to see Dean see his son grow up, he said.

He said that, following his death, he was faced with a High Court case over his funeral and he secured the right to bury his son in his own plot.

In the time since Deans death, Ive been admitted to hospital because of the stress, he said.

Dean Fitzpatrick

He said that it was upsetting that some of the media had portrayed Mahon as Dean and Amys stepdad. It was also upsetting to read about Mahon going on holidays to Spain following the killing.

He said he still had a hope that Amy would be found alive.

I cannot have the same hope for Dean, he said, adding that all he had now were visits to his resting place.

There are no words to describe the pain, anger and despair, he added. Dean was a loving father son, brother, nephew, and cousin, who is sadly missed.

Sarah ORourkes was the next statement read out.

On the 25th of May, 2013, my life changed forever, she wrote. This was the day Dean was killed. I cannot describe how it felt when two guards came to my home to tell me the most devastating news. My world fell apart. She said she struggled to take it in.

It didnt feel real, she explained. Knowing Id never see Dean again was soul destroying, she said.

Ms ORourke expressed the impact her partners death had on their son, who was only 18 months old when his father died.

He was a little young to understand why his Daddy wasnt here, she said, recalling that he was saying: Dada at that stage.

That broke my heart, listening to my son looking for his Dad, she said, adding that he had loved his father so much. I had to tell him that his Daddy was a star in the sky and angels took him.

The final statement Mr Farrell read to the court was prepared by Audrey Mahon.

Since I received the tragic news of my sons death, my life has been like a living nightmare, she wrote. Dean and I shared a special bond like only a mother and son can. She said that despite her sons difficulties, he had a cheeky grin and a heart of gold.

Ive lost everything, she wrote. This is not a single tragedy. Its losing both of my children. She said that all of it had affected her physically, mentally and emotionally.

Dave, too, has lost everything, she wrote. He did everything in his power to find his beloved stepdaughter, Amy, and he still does and will continue to do so.

She said she had an ongoing illness.

Dave has been there to literally pick me up off the floor, she said.

I would not be here only for Dave, she said.

For my part, I cannot disagree with the jurys verdict. David did produce a knife, she said. I have forgiven Dave but not forgotten. He will always be my husband, carer and best friend.

Sean Guerin, defending, handed in some testimonials on behalf of his client, saying they showed this offence was out of character and that he had no history of violence.

He accepts the verdict of the jury. There will not be an appeal against conviction in this case, he said.

He apologised on behalf of his client to all who knew the deceased, especially those who had made victim impact statements.

He then made his case for a lenient sentence to Ms Justice Margaret Heneghan.

He said Mahon had offered a plea to manslaughter. He said that his client would find prison more difficult due to problems with his hips; he has had two replacements and is awaiting a revision to one.

The State argued during his trial that Mahon was drunk, angry and agitated when he thrust a knife into his stepson with deadly intent. Mahon claimed his death was an accident or possible suicide and that Mr Fitzpatrick had walked into the knife while they had been arguing.

Ms Justice Heneghan said she would hand down sentence on June 13 and remanded him in custody until then.
And particularly with the growth of online commerce worldwide, it is now easier than ever to do from home. If you spot a niche in the market, or have a passion you would love to make a living from, there are supports available to you when starting out.

I asked two people who have started online businesses in the last few years where they had found the most help and both gave the same answer  their Local Enterprise Office (LEO). They are based on opposite sides of the country, but both gained valuable support from their local branch.

Sinead Sinnott had experience running her own business, but wanted guidance on online retailing when she set up www.weddingcandlesireland.com. I did a good few day courses with the local enterprise board  good value at 50 per day with good trainers. They have a wide selection of courses and were very strong with all the online selling, social media promotion, etc.

Mary MacSweeney, senior executive officer with the LEO Dublin City said they can provide assistance in many areas, depending on need. The supports we provide range from training, access to experienced mentors, financial supports, and business networks. The financial supports are limited to certain sectors and types of businesses, and there is information about this on the website, www.localenterprise.ie.

Judy OSullivan, MD of www.rowdyjewellery.com, also recommended the LEO.

"I used one of their mentors and she was brilliant. The office run a load of courses  everything from flushing out your business idea to helping you prepare for a grant.

Funding is key in the early stages. Microfinance Ireland is a government-backed initiative that provides loans of up to 25,000 to small businesses, including start-ups. You can check eligibility and apply from microfinanceireland.ie.

There are other grants and state supports, such as tax relief, depending on the type of business and the stage of development. You can get detailed information on these at www.startups.ie.

If you are getting certain social welfare payments, there are other supports to help you become self-employed. You may be eligible for either the the Back to Work Enterprise Allowance or the Short-Term Enterprise Allowance  ask at your local social welfare office.

You might also be able to get extra assistance in starting your business under these schemes, such as grants for training, market research, and business plans.

I asked MacSweeney where she would recommend people start.

Completing a Start Your Own Business Course would be an excellent starting point, she suggested. Speaking to a mentor about your ideas can also assist in identifying gaps in knowledge or experience and can help in reducing the risk.

Enterprise Ireland have an Innovation Voucher that people can apply for that allows them to work on the business idea with the help of third level students which can be of great assistance in developing an idea or product.

And the most common mistakes she sees? Assuming that they will be able to charge a fee for their service that will cover their costs and eventually be profitable. The best advice I could offer is that a person researches others providing a similar product, that they get feedback from potential customers, and that their limit their spending in the early stages.

To limit costs around website design in the early days, Sinnott recommended Shopify.com.

Shopify.com is a template-type, manage-yourself website which was very helpful. You can use an off-the-shelf template to test until you feel you have a good money-making idea or can afford to get a custom-made site.

They have good discussion forums and are very helpful with any questions you may have.

DEAL OF THE WEEK

If you are starting to get organised for your summer holidays and think your luggage needs an upgrade, look no further than Homestore and More.

They are currently running a half-price sale on luggage, including everything from weekend bags to large cases.

They are offering a Cloudnine Planes Weekend Bag, in a variety of patterns, for 25.99  down from 49.99.

The lightweight wheeled case weighs just 1.9kg, perfect for staying under airline limits.

They also have hardshell options, with a small hard case reduced from 69.99 to 35.99 and larger options available for 40 and 50.

For longer trips or family packing they are selling a large Cloudnine Black & Red Lightweight for 45, down from 89.99.

The bag weighs just over three kilos but has a 112-litre capacity, and a recessed locking trolley handle.

The luggage is available both online, at www.homestoreandmore.ie, and in their 17 stores nationwide.
Two German aircraft bombed Dublin shortly after midnight on May 31, 1941. They had apparently become disorientated while on a bombing mission over either the Mersey, or the Bristol area, both of which were bombed that night.

About 30 German aircraft were sighted around Dublin. The first plane arrived shortly after midnight. A flare was sent up to denote neutral territory, but the plane dropped a bomb off the North Circular Road; it fell on soft waste ground and did little more than excavate a huge crater.

Other bombs were dropped in the Phoenix Park, where they caused great excitement among the animals in Dublin Zoo.

Most damage was done by another aircraft, which dropped four bombs in the North Stand area, leaving a 1,000-yard swathe of destruction, and killing 28 people with hundreds injured.

Twenty houses were demolished, and some 55 others rendered virtually uninhabitable. More than 400 people were left homeless.

The bombs were promptly identified as German and a diplomatic protest was lodged in Berlin.

The Germans explained in reply that if their aircraft were responsible it was an accident as there can be no question of any intentional attack on Eire territory,

Nazi planes dropped their loads of death over a wide area of Dublin, killing and wounding more than a hundred people, Pathe News, the movie house newsreel, reported.

The Eire Government has protested to Berlin against the wanton attack on their professed neutrality  but unfortunately protests will not bring back the dead or heal the wounds of the injured! Maybe this is the price that Eire has to pay for sitting on the fence.

Taoiseach Eamon de Valera made no effort to rouse public passions.

I dont think de Valera is going to change his line unless forced to do so, David Gray, the US representative in Dublin, wrote to president Franklin D Roosevelt on June 9, 1941.

He has deliberately passed up the chance to excite anti-German feeling over the recent bombing. He has in fact clamped down on expression of anti-German feeling. He either has an understanding with the Germans on which he relies or, what is more likely, he is blindly taking the thousand-to-one chance that he can escape involvement.

De Valera had secretly been providing just about all the help he could give to the Allies, but Gray persistently ignored this.

He had, for instance, recently agreed to allow the British to fly directly over Donegal to and from their airbase on Lough Erne, Co Fermanagh.

Moreover, in June 1941, just days after the bombing of Dublin, the Irish government made another secret concession, allowing the Royal Navy to station the Robert Hastie in Killybegs, Co Donegal, for air-sea rescue purposes.

It was an armed tugboat with a crew of 11. The crew wore Royal Navy uniforms at sea, but they donned civilian clothes in port.

Joseph Walshe, Secretary of the Department of External Affairs, suggested to John Maffey, the British ambassador, that the Royal Navy could station a similar boat at Cobh or Berehaven.

The British seemingly never followed up on this, suggesting that they really did not want those facilities, as the sea route south of Ireland was so vulnerable to attack from German aircraft based in France that it was virtually unusable. The strategic value of those southern ports was grossly exaggerated.

Nonetheless, an English language broadcast from Germany in early May 1941 warned that the London government was so anxious to get hold of Irish ports that the British intend to bomb Eire and then declare this crime was committed by Germany.

Hence there was speculation that the British were actually responsible for the bombing, or that the Germans had done so in order to blame the British.

The reason for the bombing had never been explained, but there have been plenty of theories. One theory was that the British had bent the radio beams that the Germans were using to locate their targets.

The British were certainly trying to interfere with those radio signals. It was therefore possible that some of the German aircraft involved in bombing Bristol or Liverpool had become disorientated and arrived over Dublin.

It was a clear night, and Dublin was lit up, so it should not have been mistaken for a British city, which were all blacked out.

No evidence has been found among German documents to suggest that the bombing was a deliberate attack on Dublin.

There were suggestions that the bombing was a revenge attack for the role of the Dublin and Dundalk fire brigades in going to Belfast to help fight the fires there following the German bombing of the city a month earlier. Lord Haw Haw had denounced, on German radio, the role of the southern fire brigades in Belfast.

It was significant, however, that Edouard Hempel, the German minister to Ireland, never objected. In fact, he adopted an understanding and distinctly sympathetic approach to the role of the southern fire brigades.

It was a deed of sympathy for your people, your Irish people, Hempel said, and we fully understand what you felt. Your own people were in danger.

His attitude helps to explain de Valeras subsequent gesture at the end of the war, in proffering condolence to Hempel following the death of Hitler. De Valera had no sympathy for Hitler; his gesture was directed towards Hempel.

Only hours before learning of the death of Hitler, de Valera had a heated meeting with Gray, who upbraided him for supposedly doing nothing to help the Allies during the war.

De Valera was possibly still smarting at the contemptible and distorted arrogance of the American representative. He never did try to explain his actions publicly, but he did write to Robert Brennan, the Irish minister to the US.

During the whole of the war, Dr Hempels conduct was irreproachable, de Valera wrote. He was always and invariably correct  in marked contrast with Gray. I certainly was not going to add to his humiliation in the hour of defeat.

Germany ultimately accepted responsibility for the Dublin bombing. In 1958, the Bonn government paid 327,000 in compensation for the destruction of life and property.
On the walls of the grand old houses of this Balearic port which attracts millions of foreigners every year, a new kind of graffiti has flourished: Tourists go home.

Although still a minority protest, it points to tensions in Palma de Mallorca and elsewhere in Spain over rising numbers of visitors who are propelling the economy but also disrupting the lives of locals and straining services from transport to water.

With tourism accounting for 12% of economic output and 16% of jobs, Spain can ill afford a backlash.

Long a popular beach destination, this year Spain is drawing record numbers of visitors who are shunning destinations where security is a concern, notably Tunisia, Egypt, and Turkey.

The surge has helped the country recover from recession and alleviate a jobs crisis. But, for many Spaniards, the jump in tourism has a downside.

They want to turn us into a theme park, a place you close the doors on at night because no-one lives there, said Luis Clar, who heads an association in the La Seu neighbourhood of Palma de Mallorca, home to its main monuments.

Here the city council recently banned parking near the sandstone cathedral, where vehicles on its sea-facing esplanade were deemed an eyesore.

But losing that parking space has forced many families living in the areas narrow alleys to park much further afield or spend hours circling, Clar said. Most streets are narrow and often filled with sightseers. One couple had recently left the area as a result, Clar said.

In the Balearics off Spains eastern Mediterranean coast, nearly a third of employment depends on the sector. It accounts for nearly half the economic output, more than in any other region. The local economy has just recovered to its pre-crisis level after a five-year downturn.

Yet unease over the boom is spreading among the population.

In drought-prone island Ibiza, water reserves are getting scarce and in rural Menorca fears are mounting that natural beauty spots risk being spoiled.

On one day last August, the population across the Balearics nearly doubled, reaching a record 2m.

The latest data from March shows visitors to the archipelago were up nearly 50% from 2015 in that month alone, swelled by arrivals from Britain in particular. All-inclusive holidays for peak summer months are selling out.

In Palma, residents know there are days to avoid the city centre, especially when cruise ships carrying thousands of passengers amass in the harbor, and some worry entire neighbourhoods will turn into holiday lets.

Similar concerns led to angry protests in Barcelona two years ago, where residents in beachfront areas rallied against the rise in drunk and disorderly holidaymakers that coincided with a blossoming trade in tourist apartments.

For Gaspar Alomar, a temporary worker in a bookshop in one of Palmas medieval quarters, the spate of anti-tourist graffiti in the city has at least appeared to stoke a debate over whether this type of growth is desirable.

The resources we have are finite, its logical that there should be a finite number of people coming, 30-year-old Alomar said.

If we build our whole economy around tourism, well have nothing to hold onto if trends change. In the long run, its not sustainable.

In some respects, local authorities are leaning, if not toward limiting tourism, at least toward controlling it.

Next year, the smallest of the Balearics four main islands, Formentera, could tax cars entering the area, and the region is looking into capping accommodation for tourists, said the local tourism minister, Biel Barcelo.

In July, the left-wing government in charge of the archipelago since 2015 will bring in a tourism tax of up to 2 for overnight stays, though measures such as these have also sparked an outcry among travel firms and hoteliers.

We already live well enough from tourism  we should not be demanding a top-up, said Monica Garcia, a worker at the small Ritzi guesthouse in central Palma.

Hotel groups have said the tax could hurt revenues in the long run, and dismay at any attempts to curb tourism is also evident among many people who depend on the trade in Mallorca, from taxi drivers to souvenir sellers.

Barcelo argued improved regulation and planning  from more efforts to attract visitors out of season to better management of the glut of visitors disembarking all at once from cruise ships  would help protect the industry from the risk of a backlash if residents become overwhelmed.

The tax, he said, aims to raise between 50m and 70m a year, mainly for environmental projects.

The tourism sector should be the first to want to ensure there is no backlash, Barcelo said. We want to keep living off tourism and we need to make it sustainable for the next 30 or 40 years.
Mr Johnson, 63, won the nomination on the second ballot at the partys convention in Orlando, Florida, defeating Austin Petersen, founder of The Libertarian Republic magazine, and anti-computer virus company founder John McAfee.

The delegates selected former Massachusetts governor William Weld to be his vice-presidential running mate.

Former New Mexico governor Mr Johnson, the partys nominee in 2012, told the delegates that his job will be to get the Libertarian platform before the voters at a level the party has not seen.

I am fiscally conservative in spades and I am socially liberal in spades, he said. I would cut back on military interventions that have the unintended consequence of making us less safe in the world.

Mr Johnson proposes eliminating federal income and corporate taxes and replacing them with a national sales tax.

He would cut spending by eliminating the Internal Revenue Service, the commerce and education departments, the Food and Drug Administration and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

On social issues, Libertarians generally support abortion rights, gun rights, same-sex marriage, and drug legalisation, saying people should be allowed to do anything that does not hurt others.

Mr Johnson served as New Mexicos governor from 1995 to 2003 as a Republican after a career as the owner of one of the states largest construction companies.

He registered as Libertarian in 2012, winning the partys nomination and gaining just short of 1% of the vote against Democrat incumbent Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

For Mr Johnson to make a serious run this year, he needs to qualify for the presidential debates by averaging 15% in five recognised polls.

He hopes that is possible because Mr Trump and Mrs Clinton are seen unfavourably by a majority of voters, according to recent polls.

The Libertarian Party has been running in presidential elections since 1972

.
His trial had begun in July 2015.

Cheers, and fists pumping the air from scores of Habres former prisoners and their supporters greeted the ruling by Judge Gberdao Gustave Kam in a Senegal courtroom.

Habres trial, by the Extraordinary African Chambers, is the first in which the courts of one country are prosecuting the former ruler of another for alleged human rights crimes.

He was convicted of being responsible for thousands of deaths and tortures in prisons, during his rule, from 1982 to 1990.

A 1992 Chadian Truth Commission accused Habres government of systematic torture, saying 40,000 people died during his rule.

The commission placed particular blame on his political police force.

The ex-dictator, who has lived in Senegals capital, Dakar, since he fled Chad in 1990, denounced his trial as being politically motivated.

He and his supporters disrupted proceedings several times with shouting and singing.

He refused legal representation, but the court appointed him Senegalese lawyers.

Chads government, led by president Idriss Deby, who served as Habres military adviser before forcing him from power, supported the trial.

The trial of Habre was forged by many of those who had been jailed by his government and who have campaigned for his prosecution for more than 15 years.

This case was not started by a prosecutor in the Hague or by the Security Council.

"The architects, the visionaries of this case, are the Chadian victims themselves and their supporters, said Reed Brody, counsel for Human Rights Watch, who has been working on the case since 2000.

The work, by the survivors, to bring Habre to justice, influenced all aspects of the trial, including the way the charges were framed, he said.

Habre was first indicted by a Senegalese judge in 2000, but legal twists and turns, over a decade, saw the case go to Belgium and then, finally, back to Senegal, after unwavering pursuit by the survivors.

In 2001, the police forces archives were discovered on the floor of its headquarters in Chad, records that went back to Habres rule and which mention more than 12,000 victims of Chads detention network.

The extraordinary court was formed by Senegal and the African Union to try Habre for the crimes that took place during his rule.

A second set of hearings, on damages for the more than 4,000 registered civil parties, will take place in the coming days.

The defence has about 15 days to appeal. If they do, an appeals court must be set up.

Habre was made prime minister of Chad in 1978. He deposed Goukouni Oueddei in a coup in 1982, and became president; the post of prime minister was abolished.
The much-loved motoring series, which is also being broadcast on Sundays on RTE2, returned to screens with Evans and former Friends actor Matt LeBlanc at the helm.

Previous frontman Clarkson was sacked for an unprovoked physical and verbal attack on producer Oisin Tymon, apparently over catering, and Evans could not resist bringing it up during his opening segment.

He introduced a group of people from an Indian restaurant and asked the audience what they thought they were doing there. One person suggested they were there to prepare the food, and Evans said playfully: By the way, we dont talk about catering on this show any more.

During the first episode, Evans, 50, visited the US naval base which is famously the home of Top Gun, where he raced a Dodge Viper ACR against a Corvette Z06.

LeBlanc, the first non-British host in the shows 39-year history, went for a spin through the Moroccan desert in an Ariel Nomad.

The pair also braved the cold weather as they raced from London to Blackpool in roofless Reliant Rialtos, and welcomed celebrity guests Gordon Ramsay and Jesse Eisenberg who took part in the new Star In A Rallycross Car part of the show.

The first episode with the new hosts failed to reach the viewing figures of the last series with Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May. It drew 4.4m viewers, with a peak of 4.7m, while the last series bowed out with 5.8m viewers.

However, the first episode was still the most-watched programme in the 8pm time slot, beating Antiques Roadshow on BBC One and the British Soap Awards on ITV.

It also trumped the last time the show launched in 2002, when it got 3.5m viewers.

Viewers were quick to slam the show on social media. One tweeted:

Much of the criticism was levelled at Evans performance as host, with fans accusing him of shouting and being too excitable.

US star LeBlanc, 48, escaped most of the barbs and some fans said that his segment with the Nomad was one of the highlights.

Clarkson and his co-presenters Richard Hammond and James May will be back with a new Amazon Prime motoring show called The Grand Tour, which will make its debut on the streaming service in the autumn.

TV presenter Carol Vorderman was among those to comment online. She tweeted:

Sorry #TopGear ... switching off ... looking forward to the proper boys on @amazonprimenow soon ... night all xxx  Carol Vorderman (@carolvorders) May 29, 2016

Later in the series, Evans and LeBlanc will be seen driving around Co Kerry along part of the Wild Atlantic Way in an episode they filmed in mid-April.

The new Top Gear is a hit. OFFICIALLY. 23 % audience share. 12% MORE than the opening episode of the last series. These are the FACTS.  Chris Evans (@achrisevans) May 30, 2016

Top Gear audience grew throughout the hour. FACT. Won its slot. FACT. Still number one on i Player. FACT. These are THE FACTS folks.  Chris Evans (@achrisevans) May 30, 2016
A fireman and a man he was trying to rescue in Schwaebisch Gmuend were sucked into a flooded underpass.

Both men were presumed dead, though their bodies had not yet been recovered yesterday, police said.
Mark Stribling, 35, from Farningham, Kent, and Robert Stilwell, 33, from Dartford, appeared at Medway Magistrates Court to face charges under Section 25 (1) of the Immigration Act 1971.

They were ordered to remain in custody until the next hearing, at Maidstone Crown Court on June 27.

Two children and a woman were among the group of 18 Albanians aboard the rigid-hulled inflatable boat which began to sink off Dymchurch, Kent, on Saturday night.

Along with the Albanians, two British men were also rescued by the Coastguard, working with the RNLI, and handed over to the Border Force.

It has been reported the people on board had alerted their families in Calais, who raised the alarm with the French authorities.

A second vessel, believed to be linked to the inflatable that got into trouble, was discovered on the beach on Sunday at Dymchurch and was seized by the authorities.

The incident has sparked fears that tragedies seen in Greece or Italy could start to occur in the Channel.

President of the French coastguard, Bernard Barron, told Sky News: Its starting to become a very similar situation to that seen in the Mediterranean and my biggest fear is that the same kind of tragedies we see in Greece or Italy will start to repeat in the Channel.

Mr Barron said that, even though the smugglers are being given large sums of money, there are not providing suitable transport for a sea filled with danger, with strong currents, storms and heavy traffic of larger vessels.

Lucy Moreton, general secretary of the Immigration Services Union, said large stretches of Britains coastline is being left unpoliced and officials simply do not know how many people have sneaked into the country undetected.

However, she said her gut feeling and anecdotal evidence suggest Britains coasts are facing the biggest ever onslaught of people smugglers.

The incident came after 17 suspected Albanian migrants and a British man wanted on suspicion of murder in Spain were detained after a catamaran arrived at Chichester Marina in West Sussex on Tuesday last week.

The 55-year-old man, who was the subject of a European Arrest Warrant, was also detained on suspicion of facilitating illegal immigration, while the 17 Albanian men were held on suspicion of entering the UK illegally.

The Albanians in this earlier incident have been detained pending Home Office consideration of their cases.

Last month, two Iranian men were found floating in an ill-equipped dinghy in the English Channel.
Asia South Korea: Attempted North Korea Missile Launch Fails

North Korea attempted to fire a missile from its east coast early on Tuesday, but the launch appears to have failed, South Korean officials say.

SEOUL  North Korea attempted to fire a missile from its east coast early on Tuesday, but the launch appears to have failed, South Korean officials said, in what would be the latest in a string of unsuccessful ballistic missile tests by the isolated country.

The launch attempt took place at around 5:20 am Seoul time, said the officials, who asked not to be identified, without elaborating.

Tension in Northeast Asia has been high since North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in January and followed that with a satellite launch and test launches of various missiles.

Japan put its military alert on Monday for a possible North Korean ballistic missile launch.

We have no reports of any damage in Japan. We are gathering and analyzing data. The defense ministry is prepared to respond to any situation, Japanese Minister of Defense Gen. Nakatani told a media briefing.

North Korea shows no sign of abandoning the development of nuclear missiles and so we will continue to work closely with the US and South Korea in response and maintain a close watch on North Korea, Nakatani said.

South Koreas Yonhap News Agency said it appeared North Korea had attempted to launch an intermediate-range Musudan missile. North Korea attempted three test launches of the Musudan in April, all of which failed, US and South Korean officials have said.

Yonhap quoted a South Korean government source as saying the missile was likely to have exploded at about the time it lifted off from a mobile launcher.

The flurry of weapons technology tests this year came in the run-up to the first congress in 36 years of North Koreas ruling Workers Party early this month, where young leader Kim Jong-un further consolidated his control.

Tuesdays attempted launch appears to have been its first missile test since then, and experts have said it was unusual to test-fire a missile so soon after a previous failure.

The South Korean military said Pyongyangs continuous missile launches could stem from Kims order in March for further tests of nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles.

They mustve been in a rush. Maybe Kim Jong-un was very upset about the failures, said Lee Choon-geun, senior research fellow at South Koreas state-run Science and Technology Policy Institute.

Repeated Failures

North Korea has never had a successful launch of the Musudan missile, which theoretically has the range to reach any part of Japan and the US territory of Guam.

North Korea is believed to have roughly 20 to 30 Musudan missiles, according to South Korean media, which officials said were first deployed in around 2007.

It could have cracks and something wrong with the welding, Lee said of possible causes for the latest failure. But deployment before test-firing these to complete development seems unusual.

The attempted launch took place near the east coast city of Wonson, one of the South Korean officials said, the same area where previous Musudan tests had taken place.

Separately, Japans Kyodo news agency reported on Tuesday that career diplomat Ri Su-yong, one of North Koreas highest-profile officials, would visit China on Tuesday.

There was no indication of any link between the latest failed missile launch and Ris visit to China.

China is reclusive North Koreas only major ally but has been angered by Pyongyangs nuclear and missile tests and signed up to tough UN sanctions against the reclusive country.

Ri was North Koreas foreign minister until he was named a member of the politburo during the recent Workers Party congress.
Burma Bangkok Wants Wa Army Bases Withdrawn From Thai Territory

Thailand has requested the Burma Armys help in encouraging the United Wa State Army to withdraw troops allegedly based on Thai territory.

Thai military officials have asked their Burma Army counterparts to help in convincing a powerful ethnic Wa armed group, the United Wa State Army (UWSA), to withdraw its bases on the Thai-Burma border, where some are on Thai territory.

The Thai authorities made the appeal during a meeting between Thai and Burmese border security officials held in the Thai border town of Mae Sai, which sits adjacent Burmas Tachileik town, on Monday, according to sources close to both the Thai and Burmese militaries.

The request comes just a few days after the Burma Army chief, Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing, visited the Thai capital of Bangkok on Thursday, when he met with top-ranking Thai military brass including junta leader Gen. Prayuth Chan-Ocha, who is also the countrys prime minister.

During a meeting with the Thai prime minister, Min Aung Hlaing said: Illicit drug trafficking can affect all the countries in the region; cooperation is necessary to ensure that the armed groups relying on such drug trafficking do not exist.

Prayuth agreed to working together on this point.

Min Aung Hlaing, however, did not mention the UWSA, which reportedly relies heavily on drug trafficking and the border trade for funding. The UWSA is estimated to have up to 30,000 armed soldiers, approximately 10,000 of whom are based in southern Shan State along the border with Chiang Mai province in northern Thailand. Formed of remnants of the defunct Communist Party of Burma (CPB), the UWSA and Burmas former junta government reached a ceasefire agreement in 1989 that has held strong since.

The Burma military representatives told the delegation from the Thai military in Mae Sai that they would report the proposal to higher officials, according to Burmese media outlet Network Media Group, quoting Thai intelligence sources in Mae Sai.

The UWSA bases that the Thai delegation wants removed are in Chiang Dao district in Chiang Mai province and in Pai district in Mae Hong Son province, both in northern Thailand, according to the Thai military sources.

More than a dozen UWSA bases are in southern Shan State near or across the Thai border. Other UWSA bases are also reportedly on Thai soil in Mae Hong Son province as well as Mae Sai and Mae Ai districts in Chiang Mai province.

However, a military source who is close to both Burmese authorities and the UWSA in Mae Sai told The Irrawaddy that he did not think the UWSA would voluntarily withdraw their bases on the Thai border, something the Burma Army has requested that they do several times in the past to no avail.

They [UWSA] were asked [by the Burma Army] to withdraw their bases in the past. But they didnt care and nothing happened to them, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

However, he said Burma Army units in Mongton and Mongsat regions in southern Shan State had been bolstering their military installations in the days since Min Aung Hlaing returned from his recent visit to Thailand.

[The Burma Army] has been fortifying their bases as if they are preparing for war. Theyve built walls and fenced in their outposts with barbed wire. They have deployed more troops and ammunition. This started just after Min Aung Hlaings visit [to Thailand], said the source.

I think they would like to cut off communications between the UWSAs northern and southern units, he added.

The Wa control two noncontiguous territories in Shan State, the other being the Wa Special Region bordering China and comprising the townships of Hopang, Mongma, Panwai, Panghsang, Narphan and Metman.

The border security meeting in Mae Sai was attended by 25 members of the Burmese military, led by Lt-Col Aung Myint Oo, and 47 members of the Thai military, led by Col. Prapat Found Suwan.
Burma Lacking Documents, Mandalay Squatters Struggle for Low-Cost Housing

In Mandalay, thousands of squatters without ID cards are left out of the previous governments housing plan, but the new administration gives little hope.

MANDALAY  As the Mandalay City Development Committee (MCDC) has moved forward with its plan to relocate squatters in the city, complaints are being raised that many squatters were not properly accorded housing while some impostors were given more than one residence.

The complaints came after MCDC on Monday held a housing lottery for squatters to relocate them to a last batch of nearly 400 units in a newly built apartment complex along the Irrawaddy River.

Many squatters said they were not on the list to participate in the drawing, yet some people who did not live in the squatter camp were.

People who were awarded the apartments rarely live in squatters huts. Some of them even received two or three apartments because they submitted the forms with the names of every family member, said Ma Myo, one of the squatters living in Mandalays Kyaukthabeik riverbank area.

The squatters complained that they were not allowed to submit the forms to apply for the permit to stay in an apartment because they lacked the required documents, such as a national registration card, an alternative ID card or a registered family member list.

They [MCDC] said the housing is for the squatters, but if we do not have an ID card or family member list, we cannot apply. However, there were many people who were not squatters who were allowed to apply, and they received apartments, claimed Thein Soe, a one-time leader of a squatter community in Mandalay.

Living in small huts along the Irrawaddy River, the squatters mostly came from nearby villages in Mandalay Division. Many earn a living on Mandalays jetties, where they mostly work as porters, carrying goods from boats to trucks.

Weve lived here for many years but we only have a national registration card. They said it is not enough and we feel very sad because the water level of the river is rising and we will soon have no place to live, said Cho Cho Oo, a squatter who works at Maychan Jetty.

The Black Market

When the MCDC called for applications, some people did not submit forms, saying they didnt want to live in tall buildings because they were afraid of earthquakes, said Maw Maw Oo, who lives near Mandalays Gawwain Jetty.

But when the MCDC announced that the squatters huts were going to be destroyed after providing the apartments, and when some people sold their apartments illegally to earn money, they rushed to apply, she added.

According to former squatters living in the apartments, some units were sold illegally, without the MCDCs knowledge, and the sellers fled far from Mandalay. The price of the apartments ranged from 1.7 million to 2.5 million kyats (US$1,400 to $2,140).

Some even rented out their apartments and moved to another area of the town to live as squatters again or went back to their villages, said Than Win Naing, a one-time squatter who is now living in a government-provided apartment.

We are afraid to report this to MCDC because the people [breaking the law] may harm us. Were also afraid MCDC would not believe us, he added.

Impostors

Cities like Rangoon and Mandalay, where there are many businesses and job opportunities, have attracted hundreds of thousands of poor from the countryside. But since they are often only able to work as day laborers, they earn just enough to feed themselves and their families and have no extra money to rent a home, leading them to settle for small huts in the squatter areas located on the outskirts of the big cities.

In Mandalay, before 2010, squatters were relocated to a newly established new town project area, where they were given ownership of small plots of land and houses.

However, when land prices in Mandalay rose, many sold their land to earn money and again moved back to their original squatter settlements.

According to squatters who are currently living in relocation apartments, the opportunists are working in groups and build their huts in squatter-dense areas when there is news of a relocation project.

Even in this riverbank area, there are many squatters who just came and built their huts after hearing we received the apartments, said Thant Zin Soe, a day laborer who so far has been unable to submit the proper forms to MCDC.

They said they were here 20 years ago and they applied for the apartment. They have the required documents and once they receive their apartments, they sell them or rent them out, he said.

And now, they flee here with their money, and we never see them again, he added.

MCDCs Plans for Relocating Squatters

Nearly 1,600 apartments in six-story complexes are being rented to squatters at the low rate of 30,000 kyats per month.

The apartment buildings were built after a visit from the Norwegian monarch to Mandalay in December 2014. A royal tour by boat that included a stop in Mandalay prompted authorities to evict scores of squatters ahead of his arrival, a move met with criticism at the time.

Applications for living in the apartments were opened in that year and the chance to live in the complex was determined by a lottery. On Monday and Tuesday, the MCDC held a drawing for the last 393 apartments.

After receiving an apartment, the squatters must leave their huts along the river and are not allowed to stay in the area.

The early applicants were given priority. We heard complaints about the documents but if a person cannot present both an ID and a family members list, it would be difficult for us to register them and to handle related issues, said Saw Tun Oo, an officer from MCDCs administration department.

The officer said any form of ID is important for the department as they need to register the squatters to prevent possible duplicates or impostors.

We heard some people sold their national registration cards or family member lists, while some lent their IDs to make money. In such cases, they do not have their proof of ID, and we cant help them, he explained.

We are also investigating the selling and renting of these apartments. Once we have more information, we will take legal action against them, kick them out of the area and will give those apartments to those who are really in need, he added.

According to MCDCs rules, selling or renting the low-cost housing is illegal, and should result in both buyers being kicked out and the sellers forfeiting the apartments.

The apartment buildings, which cost over 1 billion kyats to construct, were built in 2015 with funding from MCDC and the Mandalay divisional government under a plan by the previous mayor.

Since there are more than 3,000 squatters living along the riverbank, the MCDC said there are not enough apartments to relocate all of them. Further, plans to build more housing for the squatters have yet to be unveiled by the newly installed mayor and divisional government.

In early May, Zaw Myint Maung, the chief minister of Mandalay Division, told the media his government is collaborating with the MCDC to collect and register the squatters who live in Mandalay city. The chief minister said they will formulate a better plan to eliminate the culture of squatting and will try their best to create better living conditions for the homeless poor once enough data has been compiled.
Burma Photographer Barred From Shooting Controversial Construction Site in Rangoon

An Irrawaddy photographer is blocked from taking photos of a construction site to be reviewed by the city due to its proximity to govt buildings.

RANGOON  On Tuesday, a photographer from The Irrawaddy was prevented from photographing a construction site that is set to be reviewed by the Yangon City Development Committee (YCDC), after questions were raised about the project in the Rangoon divisional parliament on the previous day.

The planned 12-story building is located at the corner of Khayaypin Road and Ahlone Road, Dagon Township, near the compound where the Rangoon Divisional Government, Parliament and Chief Minister Residence are located.

The project is set to be reviewed by YCDC due to its close proximity to the government buildings, said Rangoon Mayor Maung Maung Soe during the divisional parliament session on Monday in response to a lawmaker who questioned whether the project was in accordance with YCDC regulations. The building was approved by the previous divisional government in 2013.

Myo Min Soe, an Irrawaddy photojournalist, was assigned to take pictures of the ongoing Manawhari Commercial Complex construction site, which is being developed by the Waminn Group of Companies.

The photographer said he was taking pictures from the sidewalk across the street from the site, when he was accosted by people wearing helmets and safety vests who appeared to be working at the location.

I just took two or three frames and two guys arrived and asked me, Why did you take pictures without permission? he said.

More men from the site joined in and soon the photographer was surrounded. Men shouted, Dont let him go.

The photographer managed to take refuge in a parliament security booth nearby while nearly 15 people from the site waited outside. They were blocked by the security guards from going inside, but they then took pictures of the photographer from outside the booth.

Were it not for the security booth there, I dont know what would have happened to me because some of the men looked really serious, he said.

Why should I need to ask permission when I am just taking photos from a public space? What are they afraid of? Are they doing something unlawful? Is the site concerned with state security? Are they trying to threaten the media? he asked.

The move came a few days after another event considered to be an attack on press freedom. A reporter from a local news agency was obstructed by nationalist monks while he was trying to cover a meeting between the monks and the management of the luxury Sedona Hotel in Rangoon on Thursday.

Myint Kyaw, a Myanmar Press Council member, said taking a picture in a public space should not be considered off-limits.

If [the construction company] wants to take action, they could make an official complaint if there is something defaming them in the story, he said. Now there is no story yet, and preventing someone from taking pictures from a sidewalk is a threat to the media.

The Irrawaddy has submitted an official complaint about restrictions to the Dagon Township Police Station.
Burma Rangoon Chief Minister Attempts to Defuse Electricity Concerns

Rangoons chief minister says the city will continue to face blackouts as attempts are made to address weak power cables and growing electricity demands.

RANGOON  Rangoon Chief Minister Phyo Min Thein said on Tuesday that Burmas commercial capital will continue to face blackouts in the coming months as attempts are made to address the citys weak power cables and growing electricity demands.

We need to think about the long-term, sustainable reconstruction of underground cables that were weak in the past due to the governments limited budget and lack of a master plan, Phyo Min Thein said at a press conference at the Yangon Electricity Supply Corporation.

He added that blackouts throughout Rangoon in recent days have been due to a combination of scorching temperatures and heavy rain, which have damaged power cables.

We need to repair these cables, which will take some time. During this period, we could experience some additional blackouts, Phyo Min Thein explained, saying that advanced warning of power outages will be given to the public through media.

Well make an announcement, but these blackouts will be because of maintenance and repair of underground cables and cable towers [and not due to an insufficient electricity supply].

Burmas former capital uses more than half of the countrys total electricity consumption, some 1,150 megawatts, a demand the chief minister said is difficult to meet.

This demand is likely to increase in Rangoon, as over 200 high-rise buildings, some 500 hotels and many other new projects are being constructed. It will continue to be a struggle to distribute a sufficient supply of electricity in the coming months, Phyo Min Thein said.

The newly sworn-in National League for Democracy (NLD)-led government has been criticized for the frequent power outages across the country. Lower House Speaker Win Myint also stressed during a parliamentary session on Tuesday that the Ministry of Electric Power and Energy solve the problem. Even local newspapers have chimed in, with cartoons mocking Rangoons electricity situation as worse now than it was under the previous government.

The new government is attempting to find a way to begin addressing [this problem] within 60 days, Phyo Min Thein told reporters at the press conference.

He said that Rangoons regional government is discussing with companies and international organizations how to meet electricity demands, a goal they hope to achieve by next year.

Currently, we need to get an additional 400 megawatts [for Rangoon]. One challenge will be the cost. It costs at least 130 kyats (US$0.11) per unit [to purchase the gas]. At present, were only collecting 35 kyats ($0.03) per unit for under 100 units from consumers. Well have to further discuss this price, Phyo Min Thein said.
Burma Suu Kyi Heads New Committee for Troubled Arakan State

Aung San Suu Kyi will chair a committee tasked with bringing peace, stability and development to impoverished and restive Arakan State.

RANGOON  Burmas State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi is to chair a new high-level committee on Arakan State, according to an announcement from the Presidents Office on Monday. The initiative could represent a change in tack for the National League for Democracy (NLD) government and Suu Kyi, who at several points have played down the significance of the ongoing crisis in Arakan State, despite international pressure.

Although the precise role of the Central Committee for Arakan State Peace, Stability and Development has yet to be spelled out, its purview includes resettling internally displaced persons (IDPs) along with social development, and coordinating the activities of UN agencies and international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs). A sub-committee will be formed for each of these two thematic areas.

Arakan State, a coastal strip along the Bay of Bengal in the west of Burma, remains one the most sensitive, conflict prone regions of the country. In 2012 and 2013, anti-Muslim violence flared across the state, leaving more than 140,000 displaced, the majority of whom were Rohingya Muslims, a stateless minority concentrated in the north of Arakan State. Only small numbers have been returned or relocatedmost remain confined to IDP camps, with limited access to markets, education and health care. Outside the camps, the government has kept the Buddhist majority and Muslim minority largely segregated, purportedly for security reasons.

In the last six months, Arakan State has also suffered conflict between the Burma Army and the Arakan Army, a non-state ethnic armed group, which has displaced several thousand in the northern townships of the state. Lawmakers from the Arakan National Party (ANP), which represents the states Buddhist Arakanese majority, have called in the national Parliament for the Arakan Army to be included in peace negotiations between the government, Burma Army and various ethnic armed groupsbut the Burma Army remains determined to defeat them militarily.

Arakan State also suffers from severe underdevelopment after decades of neglect under former military-led governments, leaving a legacy of resentment and distrust toward central-level leaders from the Burman majority, which includes Suu Kyi. UN agencies and INGOs are perceived by many Buddhist Arakanese to be biased, in directing assistance chiefly toward displaced Muslims, despite general poverty in the state. Coordinating UN and INGO efforts, to achieve fairness, could also prove sensitive for the new committee.

Earlier this year, relations deteriorated between the ANP and the ruling NLD, led by Suu Kyi, after the latter made it clear it would be selecting someone from within its own party to be chief minister of Arakan State, despite the ANP winning the largest plurality in the state legislature. The ANP has since styled itself as an opposition party. The communal conflict in Arakan State is an area of acute vulnerability for the NLD government, especially given prior nationalist rhetoric about the NLD being sympathetic to Muslims.

The new Arakan committee includes as vice chairmen the Arakan State Chief Minister Nyi Pu, an NLD appointee, and Union Border and Security Affairs Minister Lt-Gen Ye Aung, a military appointee. The other 24 committee members are drawn from various ministries and departments, paving the way for coordination across the apparatus of government. The absence of an ANP representative, however, is likely to only heighten political tensions in Arakan State and could contribute to local opposition to the initiatives of the committee.

Suu Kyi convened a meeting in Naypyidaw on Friday, with the Arakan State chief minister and the Union ministers of Home Affairs, of Security and Border Affairs, of Labor, Immigration and Population, and of Information. Participants discussed stability and development in Arakan State, and the controversial citizenship verification process, which reportedly resumed for IDPs in Arakan State this month.

The ANPs chairman, Aye Maung, in conversation with The Irrawaddy, criticized what he described as the NLDs intention to deliver stability and development in Arakan State without consulting the party with the biggest electoral mandate in the statethe ANP. He urged the NLD government to hold political dialogue with the ANP if the party wished to succeed in their aims, rather than only relying on their own ministries. He also stressed the crucial role played by opposition parties, such as his, in relation to any government, citing the veteran opposition role formerly played by the now ruling NLD.

However, Aye Maung remained pessimistic, saying he dared not expect anything of the new Arakan committee. Upbraiding the NLD on their lack of detailed policy, he said: What is their national strategic plan? What is their plan for the poorest states of the country [such as Arakan State]?

Aye Maung commented on the limited powers and resources held by regional governments vis-a-vis the Union government. He stated that chief ministers of states and divisions could only request additional budgets from Naypyidaw, and that all state and divisional budgets added up to less than 10 percent of the total Union budget. These budgetary constraints, he asserted, made it impossible to deliver real development and stability.

Aye Maung asked whether the NLD government would outline additional special economic areas in Arakan State, with zero commercial tax for 30 years as a means of attracting foreign direct investment. What can we expect of the NLD without knowing their policies? he said.

Arakanese social activist Wai Hun Aung told The Irrawaddy that, as a first priority, the committee should address the Bengali (the word used by many Burmese for the Rohingya to imply they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh) issue in line with the 1982 Citizenship Lawa law which defines citizenship entitlement on the basis of ethnicity and condemns most Rohingya to statelessness, since they are not a recognized ethnic group.

Wai Hun Aung said that, secondly, the committee should invite the Arakan Army into the formal peace process between the government, Burma Army and various ethnic armed groups, in order to prevent further conflict in Arakan State. Wai Hun Aung also stressed decentralization and resource-sharing between the state and Union government as a top priority.

The announcement from the Presidents Office, which was circulated online, has prompted some local Arakanese to speculate that the new Arakan committee would oversee the relocation of IDPs to urban areas of Arakan State, which could heighten tensions if implemented quickly, and would require deft management.

Since the 2012 and 2013 violence, urban areas of Arakan State have remained largely empty of Muslims, where formerly these comprised a sizeable contingentwith the notable exception of Thandwe in southern Arakan State, where a longstanding community of Kaman Muslims (a group recognized under the 1982 Citizenship Law, unlike the Rohingya) continue to live alongside their Buddhist neighbors.

Sittwe, the state capital, contains a Muslim majority ward, Aung Mingalar, but the area functions effectively as an IDP camp, with heavy restrictions on movement in and out, and comprehensive segregation vis-a-vis Buddhist families. A headcount of Muslim communities carried out this month by local authorities in Aung Mingalarwhich revealed no appreciable change in the population since 2012was driven by claims by some local Arakanese Buddhists that the Muslim population had been swelled by interlopers from the countryside.

Khaing Kaung San, director of the Wunlark Development Foundation, a Sittwe-based civil society group, said that, although conditions have been peaceful in more recent years, the time was not right for IDPs, the large majority of whom are Muslim, to be relocated within Sittwe. The two communities, referring to Buddhists and Muslims, still need more time to build trust, he contended, though, with a strict regime of segregation still in place, practical questions remain about how such trust could be built.

Khaing Kaung noted the many Bengali and Arakanese houses burned down during the fighting, and said more houses would have to be built if comprehensive relocation were to happen.

The ANPs Aye Maung warned the NLD government to be cautious and think deeply about possible negative impacts before handling this issue. If they throw even a small stone into the lake, there will be ripples across the surface.

The Irrawaddy attempted on Tuesday to contact the Arakan State governments spokesman, Min Aung, but he did not answer his phone.

Additional reporting by The Irrawaddys Su Myat Mon.
Tuesday, May 31st, 2016 (12:29 pm) - Score 1,446

A joint roll-out of Vodafone and Ericssons new portable mini base-station radio units (Ericsson Radio System), which are about half the size and weight of a standard radio unit that would usually need to be craned up a building, is being used to boost 4G mobile signals and data speeds around London.

Apparently the new kit also offers three times the capacity of Vodafones traditional hardware (largely thanks to its support for three-way Carrier Aggregation via LTE-Advanced technology) and, as well as being easier to deploy on rooftops in urban areas, theyre also more energy efficient.

The first trial until has already been installed in the Southwark area of London and Vodafone will soon begin rolling out the new system across the capital and in other urban areas. The 3-way Carrier Aggregation also allows the operator to combine slices of their 800MHz, 1.8GHz and 2.6GHz spectrum in order to deliver shared download speeds of up to 240Mbps (this will soon rise to 700Mbps).

Jorge Fernandes, Vodafone UKs CTO, said: We continue to look at new and innovative ways of providing improved mobile coverage in order to meet our customers soaring demand for mobile data and video while minimising disruption to the general public and improving the aesthetics of the surrounding area. We are delighted to be partnering with Ericsson, one of our key network suppliers, on this project and look forward to further engaging with local councils and Government to look at ways of reducing red tape around site planning for mobile mast installations.

The operator is also exploring the deployment of new antennas and small cells in order to further improve their network coverage and capacity.
It appears that a new discovery has led to more bewilderment as history reveals a jewel of DNA that could alter human history. As science and history collide, a newly discovered DNA from a Phoenician not only stunned the scientist but it has brought bewilderment to the world as well.

DNA taken from an ancient Phoenician could have shed new light on one of the great early civilizations of the Middle East, and researchers have sequenced the first complete genome of a 2,500-year-old body discovered in Carthage, Tunisia, and found the man had European heritage, reports Mail Online.

The man's maternal lineage is believed to have come from the north Mediterranean coast, which would be the first known evidence of a rare European genetic population in North Africa. Scientists claim discovery could give a new light on the history of human movement, as noted by the same post.

Given the fact that the Phoenicians are best known as the creators of the first alphabet, it is revealed that they have lived in the coastal cities, Tyre, Sidon, Byblos and Arwad, and those regions are the present Lebanon and southern Syria.

More report from Fox News revealed of how the research team, co-led by Professor Lisa Matisoo-Smith of the University of Otago in New Zealand, and the experts studied the remains of the "Young Man of Byrsa" or "Ariche," whose remains were taken from a sarcophagus in the ancient city of Carthage.

The findings offer the earliest evidence of the European mitochondrial haplogroup U5b2c1 in North Africa that dates back to the sixth century B.C., as further explained by the same post.

"U5b2c1 is considered to be one of the most ancient haplogroups in Europe and is associated with hunter-gatherer populations there," she explained in a press release. "It is remarkably rare in modern populations today, found in Europe at levels of less than one per cent. Interestingly, our analysis showed that Ariche's mitochondrial genetic make-up most closely matches that of the sequence of a particular modern day individual from Portugal."
Google Photos, an application that allows its users to store and share images online, celebrates its first anniversary this May.

According to Google's official blog, it is currently used by 200 million people who have collectively uploaded 1.6 billion videos, collages and images, using services offered by the application. It also claims to have applied 2 trillion labels, of which 24 billion are selfies.

With the need for increased storage space rising each year, services like Google Photos that allow its users to save large amounts of data in cloud storage are becoming indispensable. This is proven by the fact that Google Photos has facilitated the freeing of a combined 13.7 petabytes, or 13,700 terabytes, of data from the phones of its several billion users all over the world, as stated by Google on its blog. The enormity of this figure is easily understood when people note Google's statement that it would take one 424 years to look through those many photos.

At present, Google Photos offers unlimited free storage for 'high quality images' or images of a resolution of not more than 16 megapixels. However, users who wish to store their images at their original quality need to pay for the service. According to a report by Android Police, this may no longer apply to users of Google's own phone, Nexus, which will allow them to upload their photos, as well as videos at their original quality.

As stated earlier, Google Photos also allows its users to make collages, albums and movies, and share these creations with others online. Google celebrated the birthday by presenting users with tips and updates to the application on its blog. One update allows families to create a common album for the family, where all the members can share images with each other. It has also several keyboard shortcuts to make the app more user-friendly.
In terms of strength, agility and stature, Peugeot L500 R Hybrid would stand out from the crowd. There are many notions that the next futuristic race car would be the Peugeot L500 R Hybrid, owing to its specs and features.

Peugeot did not front up at this year's Indianapolis 500, but that does not mean the French brand does not have a strong connection to the Brickyard because the Peugeot "Charlatans" team won the Indy 500 in 1913, 1916 and 1919. It indicates that the L500R HYbrid is a concept designed to celebrate this history, while still keeping an eye on the future of motorsports, according to Gizmag.

Also, it might be designed to celebrate the past. But the L500 R HYbrid's powertrain is a thoroughly modern hybrid setup with 500 hp (373 kW) and 730 Nm (538 lb ft) of torque and with just 1,000 kg (2,205 lbs) to shift. The combination of a 270 hp (201 kW) gasoline engine and electric motors on both axles will catapult the car to 100 km/h in just 2.5 seconds, as further noted by the same post.

In addition, it has the capacity to devour the standing kilometer of 0.62 mi in just a span of 19 seconds. More data from Motoring relayed on how the segment is painted blue and black paint like the original L45, the low-slung L500 measures just a meter high, while it comes with only one seat, wherein the driver can employ a virtual co-driver via the vehicle's virtual reality headset.

Naturally, Pug says that the L500 R HYbrid concept pays tribute to the century-old two-seat L45 racer driven by Dario Resta. And it was powered by a 4.5-liter engine that pushed the open-top Peugeot racer to an average speed of 135 km/h in the 1916 Indy 500, notes the same post.

It seems that the upgraded features of the Peugeot L500 R Hybrid are implying on how the segment promises futuristic features that make it one of kind. With Peugeot L500 R Hybrid, the future could be within sight.
Social Media sites such as Facebook and Twitter have long been banned in Iran, but the Iranian government is now taking further steps in order to control the internet activity of its citizens. Despite international concerns regarding privacy and security, the government is adamant to implement some very strict rules within the year. All app companies that cater to Iranian users must strictly comply to the new regulation.

According to CNet, the government is giving app companies a year to move all servers with Iranian data into the country's servers. The execution of this requirement is meant to allow for easier monitoring of any and all conversations conducted by Iranian citizens - which, in turn, should make it easier for the government to find and target individuals and groups that are sharing what they consider "immoral content."

It would seem that messaging apps have been gaining a lot of followers in Iran recently. By November of last year, as many as 20 groups were arrested by authorities for spreading this type of content over the popular messaging app, Telegram.

As stated by Iran's Supreme Council of Cyberspace, "Foreign messaging companies active in the country are required to transfer all data and activity linked to Iranian citizens into the country in order to ensure their continued activity." Reportedly, the regulation is based on the "guidelines and concerns of the supreme leader," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

As noted by Reuters, probably no other app company will be hit as hard by this new regulation as Telegram. Catering to an estimated 20 million Iranian citizens, out of 80 million, a handful of who have already voiced out their concerns and speculations.

One individual tweeted, "Telegram's data centers are to be moved inside the country so they can delete what they want and arrest who they want." Another one shared his or her opinion, advising others not to use Telegram at all because it will no longer be safe for users.
On June 23 - 26, it will be Michelin's Goodwood Festival of Speed. It has been confirmed that the new Mercedes-AMG GT R will be making its debut during that time.

Michelin has since withdrawn the announcement since it seems to have made the statement too early. For now, the press release has stated the following: "details of product debuts and special appearances will be confirmed in future announcements."

Fortunately, reports have already surfaced of the details that were briefly available. Overdrive reported that the new avatar should have improved from its predecessor's 4.0-litre turbo V8 petrol by a power boost of 67HP from the original AMG GT S. Although Mercedes has not confirmed the numbers for the R model, the unit should total around 570HP.

As for aesthetic changes, a new Panamericana front grille has been included, as well as a carbon-fiber rear wing. Auto Blog added that the new unit is also expected to have bigger front air intakes and a different set of wheels. The publication also expects a more track-oriented suspension tune, bigger breaks and some weight reduction.

AMG officer Tobias Moers has warned car enthusiasts, however, that their new GT R was built with more than just speed on the team member's minds. As reported by Yahoo, one of the company's main goals was to balance driving dynamics with extra speed added onto the unit.

The GT R is expected to be available for purchase in the U.S. by the summer of next year and should be upward of the GT S's pricing of $130,825.

The Goodwood Festival of Speed is an annual hill climb featuring racing vehicles held in West Sussex, England. It was founded in 1993 in an attempt to bring racing back into the grounds of the Goodwood Estate, which is full of British racing history.
It looks like Apple is really getting rid of the headphone jack on the iPhone 7 if these new images of Lightning-connected dongles are anything to go by.

Lightning-to-Headphone Adapters Spotted

According to Apple Insider, the dongles look like they have separate volume controls. Two of its models have a micro USB port for charging while using headphones. It appears that the images were possibly concepts or prototypes. The dongles do not seem available for purchase as of yet since there are no price tags advertised on Tama's website. Apple Insider also reported that the rumored phone accessory is not yet marketed as Made for iPhone accessories.

Apple is ditching the industry standard 3.5mm audio jack from its upcoming iPhone model in favor for a sleeker, thinner handset, The Verge reported. The lack of a headphone port presumably means that users would need to rely on a Bluetooth wireless headset or a Lightning-connected headphone.

The phone company is also rumored to have been working on a new pair of Lightning EarPods, in anticipation of the iPhone 7's changes. The EarPods are said to be connected and charged through the Lightning port, similar to the iPad Pro's Apple Pencil.

What Apple Customers Really Want

Apple's aim to make the new iPhone 7 thinner by removing the audio jack might be a step in the right direction, as far as innovation is concerned. But is it the best idea?

The Verge states that while wireless charging is one of the most requested features of the iPhone (along with waterproofing, which Samsung and Sony have already achieved way ahead of Apple), making the handset thinner is the least of the consumers' worries.

As with all phones, battery life is of the utmost importance. That would probably require a larger, thicker iPhone, unless Apple comes up with a thinner but more powerful battery pack, of course.

The next Apple flagship is slated to launch by September of this year as usual. It is expected to start at around $600.
Fujitsu can now offer its customers fast and efficient ways of provisioning connections to cloud services, including Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.

Fujitsu has signed a global reseller agreement with leading Elastic Interconnection provider Megaport, allowing its customers access to a comprehensive range of cloud platforms via an "on-demand" provisioning model. Megaport points of presence will be established in the Fujitsu Malaga (Perth), and North Ryde (Sydney) data centres.

Megaports Fabric also enables customers to connect directly with Fujitsus managed services across a globally distributed platform using the Megaport portal or API to order direct, elastic connectivity. This expands the reach of Fujitsus managed services to additional customer segments and service markets.

The new service greatly reduces the time and complexity of provisioning cloud services, allowing customers wider coverage speed to market while reducing costs and enabling real-time provisioning across one platform.

Mike Foster, chief executive officer, Fujitsu Australia and New Zealand, said: We are continually looking to add value to our customers by maximising the performance, reliability, security and sustainability of our data offering. This partnership is the next step in our vision to meet the challenges of digital transformation and support our customers needs in an increasingly hyper-connected world.

The Megaport partnership is also aligned with Fujitsus Data Centre Roadmap, which was announced in 2015 and outlines ongoing investment in the companys data-centre capability to keep abreast of evolving customer needs. The announcement of the additional functionality follows some enhancements recently highlighted including the planned Tier IV certification of the Fujitsu Malaga data centre and a significant power upgrade to its Western Sydney data centre.

Denver Maddux, chief executive of Megaport, said: We are truly excited to have a trusted global data leader like Fujitsu joining the Megaport ecosystem. Our alliance enables us to address the need for scalable cloud services in Western Australia with real-time speed and greater optionality. Having Fujitsus managed services available across the Megaport Fabric provides great value to our global customers as they execute on their hybrid IT strategies.
Perth secondary college Mazenod College has deployed a new IP networking solution from Brocade as part of a comprehensive campus LAN upgrade.

Brocade says Mazenod is one of the first high schools in Australia to embrace new IP networking which enables the school to guarantee that each of its 850 students have access up to 100 Mbps of bandwidth on the network at all times.

Hugo van Niekerk, ICT director of Mazenod College, said fast wired and wireless network access is an absolute must for us to deliver high-quality computing experience for every department, as well as for all students, teachers, and parents.

We also required a smart, agile network that could support changes on the fly, such as a last-minute classroom shift, with the technology automatically moving with the teacher.

Brocade says IP networking allows the school to maximise the use of locally hosted high-definition video, multimedia and other content utilised in enhanced teaching and learning activities.

Founded in 1966, Mazenod College is a Catholic secondary college for boys in years 7-12, located in Lesmurdie, Western Australia. It is one of three schools run by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) and the only OMI school in Western Australia.

Adam Judd, vice-president for Asia Pacific Japan (APJ) at Brocade, said last year, Mazenod College bumped up against the limitations of its existing network infrastructure.

Judd said the schools legacy wired and wireless campus network could no longer cope with growing demand from laptops, tablets, and interactive data projectors for access to multimedia assets, which were stored on central IP SAN and NAS arrays  slowing down the students in all 45 classrooms using their work folders and access materials at the start of each lesson.

We supported Mazenod College through a very successful proof-of-concept test prior to the deployment of our solution, in time for the start of the school year.

Schools want networks that simply work and meet their needs without a lot of administrative effort. The new Mazenod campus network is a great example of just how simple this can be. With built-in intelligence to automate what were previously manual tasks, teachers can now save time and put more focus on their students.

Judd said that with the new Brocade network in place, students now receive Microsoft OneNote class updates from teachers in their work folders in just 20 seconds  a process that used to take up to 15 minutes.

And, leveraging greatly increased network capacity, the college is currently testing a system based on Microsoft SharePoint that will enable each lesson to be captured in real time, allowing students to replay classes in high definition, on demand.

Judd says the school has also been able to implement a strong disaster recovery solution for the first time, with a 100 terabyte storage array housed in a concrete bunker.

Brocade ICX 7250 campus network switches have been deployed throughout Mazenod College, providing 1 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) ports for wired devices with each of the schools new Fortinet 802.11ac wireless access points.
Brocade has finally secured Wi-Fi leader Ruckus Wireless with a US$1.2 billion acquisition, completing its ambition to be a "complete" pure-play networking provider capable of dethroning companies like Cisco or Juniper.

The intent to acquire was flagged by iTWire in early April and at that time Brocade's chief executive Lloyd Carney said, History shows that focused, pure-play companies often innovate faster, are more agile, and deliver better value to their customers. With the rapidly evolving requirements of the digital transformation era, we are positioning ourselves to lead where technology is headed. We believe that combining our portfolios will provide significant benefits to our customers and will enable us to accelerate our growth and value creation."

Brocades key aim was to address, critical networking requirements from the data centre to the wireless network edge and a natural extension of Brocade's advanced offering of fabrics, software-based virtualisation, network analytics and mobile networking solutions.

The acquisition also positions Brocade to provide differentiated solutions and scale-out capabilities in support of emerging opportunities, such as OpenG technology and 5G services, Internet of Things (IoT), and smart cities.

Carney said: "The combined company will be able to deliver superior focus and speed of innovation and best-in-class solutions spanning the full spectrum of networking. Our combined world-class portfolio now provides customers with greater flexibility in meeting today's infrastructure requirements, including high-performance, flexible, secure access networks. We are thrilled to welcome the Ruckus team to Brocade and look forward to working together to help our customers transform their networks into an open platform for business innovation."

Selina Lo, president and chief executive of Ruckus, said, "The combination of our two companies will create an exciting new thought leader in networking and significant opportunities for our stakeholders to participate in the combined company's future growth potential. We operate in adjacent segments of the larger networking market with some common customers for our complementary products and have a successful track record of working together. We are excited for the opportunity to join the Brocade team and to jointly deliver innovative, value-added solutions to our enterprise and service provider customers."

What does this mean?

Brocade is playing for keeps  focusing squarely on all comers but especially Cisco and Juniper. The latter has lost some strategic partners like Nokia to Alcatel-Lucent, and some of its potential suitors like Ericsson to Cisco and Aruba to HPE. The enterprise WLAN market is consolidating. Juniper stated, Juniper intends to continue working with Ruckus Wireless to provide customers open, converged wired and wireless network solutions as part of our Open Convergence Framework. We plan to maintain our focus on providing flexibility and choice with best-of-breed technologies and continue working with key industry players to deliver comprehensive solutions optimised for the unique requirements of the enterprise.

It is also now in a stronger position to challenge Cisco as an end-to-end player stretching from cloud platforms to the mobile edge and analysts say that it is further advanced on Network Function Virtualisation with its new Virtual Core for Mobile (VCM)  a product designed to outclass Ciscos Virtualised Packet Core.

Ruckus is an ace as it has already been active in developing NFV-enabled Wi-Fi platforms, including as a partner for Googles scheme to roll out "business home spots" in the US  hotspots managed from the cloud, which are offered to small and medium enterprises if they keep a second SSID open for public access.

Brocade said: Wireless is a critical access technology, and the combination of Brocade and Ruckus creates a new type of pure-play networking company, with solutions spanning from the heart of the data centre to the wireless network edge. Also the acquisition is expected to accelerate cross-selling activities into the respective companies' partner and customer bases, opening up new revenue opportunities for the combined company across a variety of verticals, including large enterprises, K-12 and higher education, government, hospitality, and service providers.
RyanClements joins Tecala with more than 13 years experience in the IT industry during which time he has specialised in IT business strategy development and infrastructure management.

Melbourne is a growth market for Tecala, one of Australias leading cloud and managed services, enterprise-class ICT consulting companies. Clements has joined its Victorian team.

Based in Melbourne, Clements is tasked with both managing and supporting momentum for Tecalas cloud and infrastructure services business among both private and public sector organisations in Victoria. He will also support the existing national Tecala technical team.

Most recently, Clements was business development manager at Dilignet where he was responsible for designing and developing customer hybrid cloud solutions as well as an internal datacentre capability.

Before that, he was principal consultant for Bawn Consulting Group where he was responsible for streamlining IT processes for a Victorian training-based institute as well as defining its SLA requirements. Clements has also worked in business development management roles for Southern Cross Computer Systems and Think Solutions as well as in technical IT management for IR Gurus Interactive.

Pieter DeGunst, managing director, Tecala, said, Were delighted to appoint Ryan to the Victorian team at this time. His sales success in winning and managing new accounts will be a great asset to the company at a time when the company is focused on providing industry leadership for IT transformation projects for both existing and new clients. At the same time, his experience and understanding of the challenges which our customers face will be a pivotal asset in reinforcing Tecala as a leader in IT consulting, managed, cloud and communications services.
There has been much relief among free and open source software developers following Google's win in its copyright battle with Oracle.

But few appear to have realised that in the net analysis, Google's bid to defend its use of Java code without permission has actually queered the pitch for all developers.

When Oracle sued Google back in 2010, there were three aspects to the case: Oracle had accused Google of copying Java application programming interface (API) designs into the APIs of its Android mobile operating system; basing Android class libraries on Java API designs; and copying from Java code into Android code.

It had also alleged that Google had violated its patents  seven were originally cited, but five were overturned before the trial, and only two were considered.

In the first phase, the jurythat while Google was guilty of copyright violation, it could not decide whether this was covered by the principle of fair use or not.

The second phase of the trial, dealing with patents, went decisively in favour of Google, with the jury concluding that Oracle's patents were in no way violated.

In the final phase of the trial, Judge William Alsup ruled that APIs were not copyrightable. This was the judge's decision and the jury had nothing to do with it.

But Oracle got that final judgement reversed in May 2014; thus APIs can now be copyrighted in the US. And that is something for which all developers will have to watch out.

Google won the recent case against Oracle because it has deep pockets and is able to hire highly-paid lawyers to defend its use of others' code.

Not all developers can afford lawyers who can represent them were they to be sued for copying APIs in the course of developing software.

Prior to the Google-Oracle case, APIs were not covered by copyright. This was not just among free and open source software developers but also among developers from proprietary software companies.

There are companies that are called patent trolls, companies that buy up patents solely for the purpose of making money by suing others over alleged violation of this patent or the other. And given that litigation is very costly, these cases are more often settled out of court.

A similar thing could happen with APIs. What happens now if a small software company, which has used APIs belonging to some other company at a time when it was okay to do so, gets a legal notice? Where does this smaller entity find the funds to put up the defence of fair use, the same defence that Google used?

The verdict will be appealed by Oracle but it does not seem very likely that a jury decision will be overturned. Had it been the judge making this decision on his own, then there was a better chance that Oracle would prevail.

Be that as it may, it is clear in its hurry to compete in the smartphone market, Google has not done developers any favours.
The average knowledge worker spends most of their day in front of a computer monitor. Monitors have come a long way over the past few years, and the next big trend is curved.

Samsung has commissioned research that shows the way we use monitors is changing and eye-comfort is now an important purchasing driver. Enter its 2016 curved and flat range covering from 22" to 34.

Todd Lynton, Samsung Australias director of business solutions  rather its IT division that manages monitors, printers and the new T3, a 2TB SSD portable drive was positive about the research. We released curved monitors in 2015, and already they are at 18% of the market (GFK retail consumer data)  we think it will be 33% by the end of next year, he said.

Curved is the new black  immersive, more eye-comfort (less eye-strain and fatigue), and an aesthetically pleasing design will give curved monitors a strong growth curve this year.

The research also shows monitors are no longer a black rectangle relegated to the "study"  they are increasingly being seen in lounge rooms (22%) and bedrooms (16%) as well as being used for video streaming and gaming (43%). They have evolved past "work" processing.

A Harvard Medical School research study has just released a paper  Comparison of Flat and Curved Monitors: Eyestrain Caused by Intensive Visual Search Task that shows curved screens are better.

In rigorous scientific manner, each participant was asked to complete pre- and post-viewing questionnaires to measure their comfort levels across 22 unique vision symptoms. Significantly more participants reported some worsening symptoms when viewing a flat-screen, including eyestrain, difficulty focusing, blurred vision and tired eyes. Curved monitors came out as less taxing and more enjoyable. Of course, results may vary for different panel types, brightness/contrast, and colour gamma.

A highlight of the new curved range (24, 27, 32) is a new ultra-slim design, VA TFT Panels, 1920 x 1080p, 16:9, AMD FreeSync game support, small side bezels (allowing for multiple monitor use), brightness of 250cd/m2 and static contrast of 3000:1. The 2016 range has the circular stand (see header photo)  not the older bar stand. They look great and work with Windows or Mac. There is also a lower cost 22 curved monitor coming.

The 27 LC27F591 is my favourite. It has 119.3% SRGB coverage, HDMI, Display Port, and integrated speakers  I am hoping to review two of these in a multi-monitor setup shortly. Its curvature is 19. Samsung is trying to set a standard for all curved makers to measure the curve that can range from 15-22.

But lets not forget flat which are still 82% of the market. There are four new flat monitors including 22, 24, 27 and 32. You can find these here.

So there you have it  curved has gone from zero to 18% market share in a year, Harvard Medical says they are better and at first looks I probably concur.

I will update this article below with further details as they become known.

Pricing and Availability

The new curved monitor range is available now from selected retailers, with recommended retail prices as set out below:

CF390 (22-inch model) RRP$289.95

CF390 (24-inch models) RRP$349.95

CF390 (27-inch models) RRP$519.95

CF591 (27-inch model) RRP$549.95

CF391 (32-inch model) RRP$699.95
Marketing-software maker Marketo has agreed to be acquired by private equity firm Vista Equity Partners for $1.79 billion, the company announced Tuesday.

Marketo shareholders will receive $35.25 in cash per share -- a sum the company says represents a 64 percent premium over its closing price earlier this month, before reports emerged that it was exploring strategic alternatives.

The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of 2016. Marketo's headquarters will remain in San Mateo, California, the company said.

"The acquisition will allow Marketo to continue to focus on customer success and to remain the independent category leader," said Phil Fernandez, Marketo's chairman and CEO.

Marketo's marketing-automation software is designed to help companies develop long-term relationships with their customers. Shares of the company's stock were up more than 9 percent on Tuesday.

Some Marketo customers are worried by the acquisition, according to Ray Wang, founder and principal analyst with Constellation Research.

"In the past, when Vista has made acquisitions like this, such as of Tibco, they've done weird things," Wang explained.

Asking employees to take "weird management tests" is one example, Wang said. "That's part of the process."

So, in addition to the talent loss that Marketo would have naturally experienced following its 2013 initial public offering (IPO), there will likely be "a little bit of an exodus" following this latest news, he predicted.

Private equity firms like Vista also "typically stretch out R&D investment," Wang said, pushing out deadlines on projects already under way. They often tend to reduce expenditures on sales and marketing as well, as a way of cutting costs.

"Pretty soon it's just about keeping a maintenance stream of customers and not really growing the market," he explained. "What most of our customers are worried about is the lack of innovation that could occur, especially given Vista's reputation."

That's not to say that there aren't potential upsides to the deal, however. Vista has already made numerous other acquisitions of related technologies, so "they could make some synergies here," said Cindy Zhou, a vice president and principal analyst with Constellation Research.

Vista Equity Partners couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
It's not your average company that can trace its origins back to a nineteenth-century Russian tsar, but then, Sberbank is no average financial institution.

Established through a decree by Emperor Nikolai I in 1841, Sberbank is Russia's oldest bank and has played a long and storied role in the nation's history. Today, with more than 16,000 branches in all 83 constituent entities of the Russian Federation -- traversing 11 time zones -- it serves roughly 70 percent of the Russian population.

Therein lie the roots of the bank's very modern challenge.

Whereas once virtually all transactions were conducted in person during office hours and on bank premises, the arrival of the Internet turned that pattern on its head. No longer constrained by branch operating schedules or the on-site availability of bank officers, customer-service demands skyrocketed as consumer expectations extended 24/7.

To wit: Roughly a decade ago, Sberbank had to handle 30 or so transactions per second; today, it's more like 3,000 to 4,000 transactions, said Mikhail Khasin, the bank's senior managing director.

"The problem we faced is one that's common to any tier one bank in the world," Khasin said. "The development of digital channels over the last 10 to 15 years has resulted in a dramatic increase in workload."

'The systems couldn't cope'

Also contributing to the increase is the sheer number of transactions being executed. It's not so much that more money is being exchanged overall, Khasin explained; rather, consumers are breaking many kinds of expenditures down into smaller increments across a much larger number of transactions.

"Say a consumer used to pay $100 a month to top up their mobile phone," he said. "Today, they may spend $2 or $3 per day."

More transactions means yet more workload. By late 2014 it had become clear: "The systems built 15 years ago couldn't cope," Khasin said.

Traditionally, the obvious solution would be a hardware upgrade. And under traditional banking conditions -- including periods of time when no branches are open, so no transactions need occur -- there would be ample time for the batch processing and maintenance that go along with that approach.

In this era of round-the-clock banking, however, that kind of solution didn't make sense, Khasin said.

Sberbank also hoped to achieve better integration across its various products and services. Typically, banks have had a series of vertical software stacks, Khasin explained -- one for payments, for example, another for mortgages. With the advent of the Internet era, clients began to want access to all their products in the same place.

"It's a huge effort to build an integration layer that interacts with all these platforms and provides a client-centric view," he said.

Many financial-services offerings today are also packages that cross product boundary lines, making integration even more important.

As smaller, nimbler banks increasingly emerged with more flexible IT, the pressure was on to implement something different. Inspiration came from technologies that had supported the rapid growth of Internet giants like Facebook and Google.

"They grew from startups and never had the money for big mainframes, so usually they bought small machines," Khasin explained. "When they grew, they bought more."

With similar scalability in mind, Sberbank zeroed in on in-memory data grid technology, through which data structures reside in RAM and are distributed among multiple commodity servers. Often aimed at big-data applications, in-memory computing promises new levels of performance and scale on standard, inexpensive hardware.

'It will be a client-centric architecture'

Numerous vendors offer such technology, including big names such as SAP and Oracle, and Sberbank spent the better part of 2015 conducting pilot tests. At the end of that year, it settled on GridGain Systems' In-Memory Data Fabric platform. The first pieces of its new technology recently came into production.

GridGain offers clustering and compute capabilities, database-agnostic data processing and a real-time streaming engine as well as Hadoop acceleration. It can connect multiple data sources -- including relational and NoSQL databases -- with Java, .NET and C++ applications in a distributed, massively parallel architecture for high-speed access and processing.

So far, Sberbank has implemented a grid of three "nodes," or machines, for processing payments using GridGain's in-memory technology and industry-standard hardware. Performance and time to market are among the top benefits Khasin cites. Horizontal scalabililty is limited only by the number of nodes in place, and performance has increased by at least a factor of 10, Khasin said. Hardware costs, meanwhile, are minimal.

Training has also been less of an issue than it might have been for Sberbank because GridGain's software is based on open-source Apache Ignite technology, and has been openly worked on by a large community, Khasin said. Hundreds of the bank's 5,000 or so software developers have been trained in using GridGain, and now they're contributing back to the community as well.

Among the biggest challenges Sberbank has faced so far is the newness of in-memory technology and the relative lack of expertise on the market in implementing it. The size of the bank's implementation -- ultimately encompassing several petabytes of data -- makes that challenge even tougher.

As the implementation scales, there's still more work to be done on a fault tolerance layer, Khasin said. But he has no doubt the technology is the wave of the future.

"Banks are usually conservative, but everybody believes this is the right direction," he said. "Otherwise, you spend all your IT budget on hardware upgrades."

Sberbank was so pleased with the initial results it saw that it became an investor in GridGain early this year. Over time, it plans to expand its three nodes to hundreds.

"It will be a client-centric architecture where every client with all his data and products will live on a particular node on the grid," Khasin said. "It's all in memory, and there's always a single version of the truth for all client and transaction data."
Privacy Shield has a new detractor, and that spells bad news for businesses built on the transatlantic transfer of personal data.

The Privacy Shield agreement is intended to protect the privacy of European Union citizens when their personal information is processed in the U.S., but it has found few supporters since the European Commission unveiled an unfinished draft of the agreement in January.

Even after the Commission published further details, in April, the critics continued to pile on. Last month, national data protection authorities from across the EU said it still needed significant work, and last week the European Parliament said it too is unsatisfied.

Now it's the turn of the European data protection supervisor, appointed by the Commission to advise EU institutions on privacy and data protection matters.

EDPS Giovanni Buttarelli wants the Commission to negotiate improvements to Privacy Shield in three main areas: limiting exemptions to its provisions; improving its redress and oversight mechanisms, and integrating all the main EU data protection principles.

The Commission began negotiating Privacy Shield last October, when the Court of Justice of the EU struck down its predecessor, the Safe Harbor Agreement, saying it was inadequate.

Businesses that had previously relied on Safe Harbor were invited by the Commission to use other mechanisms provided for in the 1995 Data Protection Directive, such as standard contract clauses and binding corporate rules, to continue legally exporting data.

Many observers have said that those alternative mechanisms suffer from the same deficiencies as did Safe Harbor, particularly the protection of personal data from bulk surveillance by U.S. security services, but their adequacy has not yet been tested in court.

That may soon change, as the Irish data protection commissioner called last week for the CJEU to examine the legality of standard contract clauses. If the court decides they too are inadequate, then a swift conclusion to the Privacy Shield negotiations will be vital if the transatlantic flow of data is not to be interrupted.

The EDPS is concerned that Privacy Shield's provisions on surveillance are a step in the wrong direction.

"Whereas the 2000 Safe Harbour Decision formally treated access for national security as an exception, the attention devoted in the Privacy Shield draft decision to access, filtering and analysis by law enforcement and intelligence of personal data transferred for commercial purposes indicates that the exception may have become the rule," Buttarelli wrote in a report published late Monday.

"The purposes for which exceptions are allowed and the requirement of a legal basis should be more precise," he wrote.

Buttarelli's concerns echo those of the European Parliament, expressed in a resolution last Thursday.

They too warned of deficiencies in the arrangement, notably the possibility for U.S. authorities to collect bulk data in ways that do not meet the criteria of necessity and proportionality. They also criticized the complexity of the redress mechanism if data is mishandled, and the insufficient independence of the U.S. ombudsperson who will resolve data disputes.
The IT layoffs at MassMutual Financial Group will happen over a period of many months, and it's going to be painful for employees.

Employees say they are training overseas workers via Web conferencing sessions. There are contractors in the office as well, some of whom may be working on temporary H-1B visas. Employees say they notice more foreign workers in the hallways.

Approximately 100 employees are affected. They work in IT support and infrastructure, which includes managing operating systems, virtualization, databases and other systems.

The employees are angry but can't show it. A loss of composure, anything other than quiet acquiescence, means risking two weeks of severance pay for each year on the job. But maintaining composure is hard to do.

"I know a few people that are probably close to a breakdown," said one IT employee.

Many employees are over the ages of 40 and 50, and have worked for years at the firm. Some have been rebadged to Cognizant Technology Solutions, a U.S.-based IT services contractor and major user of H-1B visa workers. Most of the layoffs are expected to take place between June and October, say employees, but the company put the entire process at around 18 months.

A second IT employee described the emotional impact of the layoffs on employees in this way: "It's like a never-ending funeral."

Two MassMutual employees were contacted directly by Computerworld. A third was reached through Sara Blackwell, a Florida labor attorney, who began hearing from MassMutual employees before the layoffs were officially announced. None of the employees wanted to be identified by name.

When local Massachusetts media first reported the layoffs in early April, MassMutual didn't disclose the name of the contractor, or explain that some of the work was moving overseas. Employees have had to sign nondisclosure agreements as part of their severance, and were told not to talk to outsiders. These kinds of gag orders have been criticized by lawmakers.

When MassMutual was asked by Computerworld about employee claims that they have to train their replacements, a spokesman said this "is not correct." He declined to elaborate.

Despite the denial, it appears to be going on, only by a different name. The outsourcing industry generally calls the process "knowledge transfer." At MassMutual, the term is "transitioning knowledge," say employees.

The argument for calling this transitioning knowledge, versus training your replacement, is that the contractors know the underlying technology and applications and are not in need of technical training. Instead, employees are passing along specific processes, methods and knowledge unique to the client company. But IT professionals subject to this are adamant about calling it what it is: Training your replacement.

The "knowledge transfer" argument was used after Cognizant was hired by EmblemHealth in New York. The company is cutting some 200 IT employees in a plan to outsource their jobs. Emblem refuted the idea that its employees were training their replacements.

"It truly is a knowledge transfer, it's not training," an Emblem spokeswoman told Crain's New York in April.

Employees who have been through "knowledge transfer" said there is no real back-and-forth discussion. "It's like talking to a wall," said a former Cengage Learning IT employee, in an interview last week, who trained her contractor replacements. "They are just recording it," she said. She lost her job after that firm shifted its work to a contractor.

"The whole process is very dehumanizing," said the second IT employee at MassMutual.

In the case of MassMutual, the Web sessions are typically followed with in-person shadowing, where the contractors and client IT employees take turns following each other.

Another reason for the industry to call this knowledge transfer versus replacement training is to try to blunt the criticism over the use of foreign workers.

MassMutual IT employees believe visa workers are on-site at the Springfield, Mass. offices. Some of these workers recently arrived from India, said two employees. The idea that there are visa workers at this site is supported by multiple Labor Condition Application (LCA) filings, which include salaries for visa workers and have been filed for the Springfield workplace, according to the online database maintained by MyVisaJobs.

The original intent of the now 26-year-old H-1B visa program was to make foreign workers available to meet specific skill needs when a U.S. worker wasn't available. But the major users of the visa are offshore outsourcing firms.

IT employees at multiple firms, from different contractors, have voiced complaints similar to those from the MassMutual employees. But the practice is legal, and the Department of Labor has told lawmakers that it has no grounds for enforcement action.

The MassMutual employees are either getting laid off over an 18-month transition, or are being rebadged as Cognizant employees. Any employee rejecting a job with Cognizant is left without severance. Rebadged employees get a one-year contract.

In response to queries about its actions, MassMutual released a statement similar to what it released in April to local media. The firm "continually reviews its operations to ensure we are operating as efficiently and effectively as possible to deliver the greatest value to our policyowners and customers. At times, these decisions impact our staffing levels and when they do, we are committed to a thoughtful and respectful process. While decisions like this are never easy, such activities are necessary to meet the evolving needs of our customers and compete as effectively as possible both today and in the future."

MassMutual says it is "growing and hiring," and the effected IT employees can apply for other jobs at the company. Employees say that there is little expectation that many will find other jobs at MassMutual, or that those rebadged to Cognizant will become long-term employees of Cognizant. MassMutual laid off 360 employees earlier in the year.

Employees believe the motivation for outsourcing IT services is cost savings. MassMutual ended 2015 reporting sales of whole life insurance up 15% from the prior year, "the 10th consecutive year of record results." The firm's CEO, Roger Crandall, received a 21% raise last year to nearly $12 million, reported The Boston Globe.

In the absence of action by Congress to the use of visa workers in offshore outsourcing engagements, multiple lawsuits have been filed challenging the use of foreign workers to displace U.S. workers.

Blackwell has embarked on one such effort. She is representing Walt Disney Parks & Resort IT employees who have filed lawsuits against the contractors there, which includes Cognizant. Some 250 IT employees at Disney were displaced last year.

The lawsuits allege that Disney and the contractors engaged in a "conspiracy to displace U.S. workers" with foreign visa-holding workers and makes it claims under the Federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).

Disney, in a motion for dismissal recently filed in federal court in Tampa, Fla., said the goal was to transition its "IT department from one concentrated on maintaining existing IT systems to one more focused on developing new technologies" and denies that there was anything unlawful. It argues that the allegations of conspiracy are unsupported, and what occurred was an ordinary business arrangement. Cognizant has filed a motion for dismissal as well. These motions are pending.

Blackwell sent the company a letter, on behalf of an organization she heads called Protecting U.S. Workers, attempting to dissuade MassMutual from its course of action. It did not respond to her letter. Blackwell wrote, in part, "Come out as an American insurance company who stands with the Americans, not against them."
Serious vulnerabilities have crept into the software tools that PC manufacturers preload on Windows computers, but the full extent of the problem is much worse than previously thought.

Researchers from security firm Duo Security have tested the software updaters that come installed by default on laptops from five PC OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) -- Acer, ASUSTeK Computer, Lenovo, Dell and HP -- and all of them had at least one serious vulnerability. The flaws could have allowed attackers to remotely execute code with system privileges, leading to a full system compromise.

In most cases, the problems resulted from the OEM software updaters not using encrypted HTTPS connections when checking for or downloading updates. In addition, some updaters didn't verify that the downloaded files were digitally signed by the OEM before executing them.

The lack of encryption for the communication channel between an update tool and the OEM's servers allows attackers to intercept requests and to serve malicious software that would be executed by the tool. This is known as a man-in-the-middle attack and can be launched from insecure wireless networks, from compromised routers, or from higher up in the Internet infrastructure by rogue ISPs or intelligence agencies.

In some cases, even when the OEMs implemented HTTPS and digital signature validation, there were other oversights and flaws that could have allowed attackers to bypass the security measures, the Duo Security researchers found.

"During our research, we were often greeted by an intricate mess of system services, web services, COM servers, browser extensions, sockets, and named pipes," the researchers said in their report. "Many confusing design decisions made us wonder if projects were assembled entirely from poor StackOverflow posts."

The five companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the Duo Security report.

The security and behavior of the update tools were not even consistent on the same system, let alone the same manufacturer. In some cases, OEMs had different tools that downloaded updates from different sources with significantly different levels of security, the researchers found.

For example, the Lenovo Solutions Center (LSC) was one of the best software updaters tested by the researchers, with solid man-in-the-middle protections. This might be because other flaws were found in LSC several times in the past, drawing the company's attention to it.

On the other hand, the tested Lenovo systems also had a second update tool installed called UpdateAgent that had absolutely no security features and was one of the worst updaters Duo Security analyzed.

The tools preloaded by Dell, namely the Dell Update software and the update plugin of the Dell Foundation Services (DFS), were some of the most well-designed updaters, but that's only if a critical issue caused by the self-signed eDellRoot certificate, found by Duo Security back in November, is excluded.

Since then Dell seems to have beefed up its software update implementations. The Duo researchers found several other issues in the DFS version that came preinstalled on their system, but Dell silently patched them in an update in January before they even had a chance to report them.

HP's updater, the HP Support Solutions Framework (HPSSF) with its HP Download and Install Assistant component, also had decent security in place at first glance. However, the researchers found several ways to bypass some of those protections, mainly because of inconsistent implementations.

The issues with HPSSF stem from its large number of components and the different ways in which they interact with each other. Sometimes the same type of protection, like the signature verification was implemented in multiple places in different ways.

This tendency for complexity was also observed in HP's decision to install an unusually large number of support tools on its PCs.

HP "exposed the most attack surface due to the enormous number of proprietary tools included with the machine," the researchers said. "Were not really sure what they all do and we kind of got sick of reversing them after a while, so we stopped."

The updaters that fared worse, aside from Lenovo's UpdateAgent, which the company plans to retire and remove from systems in June, were those from Acer and Asus. Not only did they lack HTTPS or file signature validation, but according to Duo Security, the issues remain unpatched.

The main advice of the Duo researchers for users is to wipe the preloaded Windows version that comes with their computer and to install a clean copy of Windows. In most cases they should be able to use their existing license key, which in newer Windows versions is detected automatically during Windows installation.

"The level of sophistication required to exploit most of the vulnerabilities we found is somewhere between that possessed by a coffee stain on the Duo lunch room floor and your average potted plant -- meaning, trivial," the Duo researchers said in a blog post.

And that's based only on an analysis of OEM update tools, not all the third-party software that vendors commonly install on new computers. Who knows what other flaws those applications might have?
Intel's upcoming 7th Generation Core processor family, code-named Kaby Lake, is off to a quick start.

More than 400 devices with Intel's upcoming chip design will reach the market, said Navin Shenoy, corporate vice president and general manager for Intel's Client Computing Group.

One of those devices will be Asus' Surface-like Transformer 3, which will ship in the third quarter starting at US$799. The device has a 12.6-inch screen that displays images at a resolution of 2880 x 1920 pixels. It weighs 695 grams and is 6.9 millimeters thick. The device has a 13-megapixel camera, and it can be configured with a 512GB SSD and up to 8GB RAM.

Shenoy, speaking during a keynote at the Computex trade show in Taipei, also showed a 2-in-1 made by Compal during the keynote. It's not clear if the first Kaby Lake chips to reach PCs will be low-power Core M or the faster Core i chips.

Other PC makers will also announce Kaby Lake devices, though it's not clear when.

Devices with Kaby Lake will include Thunderbolt 3, IR cameras for Windows Hello, and the latest graphics technologies to handle 4K content, Shenoy said. He didn't share more information about Kaby Lake, however, and Intel declined to provide additional chip details.

Kaby Lake will succeed the current crop of 6th Generation Core processors code-named Skylake. The processor design has the underpinnings of Skylake, but should have better graphics, power management, and integration of I/O technologies.

The look ahead to Kaby Lake comes as Intel retools its PC strategy to be in line with the realities of today's PC market. Intel will focus on a handful of distinct markets, primarily 2-in-1s and gaming and enthusiast PCs, with sales growing in an otherwise slumping PC market. The company will also continue to focus on mini-PCs like NUC desktops, Shenoy said.

At the same time, Intel is restructuring operations to shed its long-time reliance on PCs to focus on growth areas like the Internet of Things, cloud computing, data-center hardware, communications technology, and memory. Intel in April said it would lay off up to 12,000 employees worldwide and would cut products it deemed unprofitable or irrelevant. Some Atom chips for mobile phones are already on the chopping block.

Shenoy reiterated the company's commitment to PCs, saying computer designs are constantly changing with emerging applications like virtual reality.

The addition of Kaby Lake to Intel's chip lineup last year was unexpected and broke Intel's tradition of making two Core chip designs with every manufacturing process. It is the third Core chip design on the 14-nanometer process after Broadwell and Skylake and was added after manufacturing issues caused Intel to delay a move to the 10-nm process. Kaby Lake continues Intel's tradition of delivering yearly chip upgrades.

The successor to Kaby Lake is a chip code-named Cannonlake, which will be made using the 10-nm process and be available for PCs in the second half of 2017.

Intel later this year will also ship processors code-named Apollo Lake for entry-level PCs and tablets. The chips will sell under the Pentium and Celeron brands.

Competition to Kaby Lake will come from AMD's processors based on the Zen CPU architecture, which will first gaming systems later this year, and to mainstream laptops and desktops next year. AMD has focused on improving raw CPU performance in the Zen-based chips.
In Muskegon, MI, opportunities are about to unfold this summer. Muskegon County job-seekers will get the chance for some job fairs and resume workshops.

Recently, the employment rate in the Muskegon County showed some improvement with their April numbers this year. Previously, the unemployment rate in the area was 6.2%. Now, it's at 4.6%. Muskegon County added 1,100 jobs during April, which state analysts called "The largest monthly increase in April since 2012." Jobs are going up and most of the added jobs were in financial activities, manufacturing and mining, logging and construction sectors.

If you'd like to make sure your paperworks are in order, MLive has it that West Michigan Works! is planning to hold a resume workshop (May 31) at 9:00 AM until 11:00 AM. Head down to the Muskegon service center at 316 Morris Ave. Make sure to bring an extra resume with you and have a digital one ready in a flash drive (or save it in your email for keeps).

If you think your resume is already spruced up, then head down to the hiring event at 121 Clover St. In Holland. At 10:00 AM until 2:00 PM, the event opens up positions for customer service reps and more. Don't forget to dress appropriately - iron that suit and press that jacket.

If you're looking for a much more interactive job fair, there's a meet-and-greet event where applicants will get the chance to meet employers personally. Job-seekers are invited to meet with representatives of Tradesmen International, learn more about the company and apply for positions. Tradesmen International is currently hiring concrete workers, construction workers, carpenter's apprentices and workers in the electrical field.

It looks like Muskegon, MI is going to do well in terms of employment and job growth this year. Head down to the events centers and learn more about the job opportunities in the area.
The director of the Cincinnati Zoo, Thane Maynard, defends the actions taken by the establishment to shoot the lowland gorilla, Harambe, which ultimately led to its death.

The zoo operators were faced with a hard situation where a 4-year-old boy fell into the enclosure, and left with no other option but to shoot the gorilla before it might potentially harm the injured boy, according to the BBC.

The boy's family commended the quick actions of the rangers stating that it was "a very difficult decision for them."

The Cincinnati Fire Department released information that the first responders witnessed the gorilla violently dragging and throwing the child within its enclosure. The 400-pound gorilla was with the boy for about 10 minutes before the zoo's Dangerous Animal Response Team declared the situation as a matter of life and death for the boy, according to Cincinnati news website.

"The choice was made to put down, or shoot, Harambe," Maynard said to the press. "We've never had a situation like this at the Cincinnati Zoo where a dangerous animal needed to be dispatched in an emergency situation," he continued.

The fire department press release indicated that by the time the shot was taken, the boy was beneath the Harambe; between the gorilla's legs.

Maynard said that the zoo's response team responded accordingly to their protocol, and followed procedures that they practice in drills. The director also stated that during entire 38-year history of the zoo's gorilla habitat exhibit, the zoo never had experienced anyone get into the enclosure by accident.

Cincinnati Zoo has to face the backlash of their actions, where many opted for social media to express their outcry against the zoo's actions. The hashtag #Harambe circulated social media, with many celebrities has joined in.

Many have also defended the gorilla and stated that the mother was to blame due to negligence. Many grieve the loss of the lowland gorilla, according to the Telegraph.

The highly exposed incident might've forced the zoo to issue a statement that their actions are justified.
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Ten world-class musicians will descend upon Milwaukee with one objective this week: To edge out competitors and jump-start their careers.

The 17th biennial North American PianoArts competition and Music Festival kicks off Thursday and goes through Wednesday. The competition prepares musicians ages 16 to 20 for careers in music through rehearsal time and performances with Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra mentors and critiques from internationally acclaimed jury members.

Applicants are competing for prizes totaling $27,000, scholarships, fellowships with the MSO and performance opportunities. The winner will receive a scholarship to attend the International Keyboard Institute and Festival in New York City in July.

This is the first year that 10 semifinalists were chosen instead of 12. PianoArts Founder and Artistic Director Sue Medford said this gives semifinalists more rehearsal time with the program's MSO mentors in three rounds  practice with the conductor, in a quintet and with the full orchestra  before performing with the MSO in the Awards Concert.

"The beautiful thing is that they walk into that rehearsal already knowing people they rehearsed with before," Medford said. "That in itself took more time to give to these young people."

Performances will take place at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, 1584 N Prospect Ave.; the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts, 19805 W Capitol Drive, Brookfield; and, for the first time, the Milwaukee Art Museum, 700 N Art Museum Drive.

For more information on tickets, events and more, visit pianoarts.org.

Other festival highlights:

After working primarily in Europe, the 2008 PianoArts winner Pallavi Mahidhara will return to perform in the Prelude Concert Friday at 7:30 p.m. Tickets will be $25 for adults, $15 for students.

In a rare performance, all three of the lauded jury members  Joseph Kalichstein, Ursula Oppens and Peter Takacs  will perform Tuesday in a chamber concert with MSO members Benjamin Adler, Susan Babini, Ilana Setapen and Scott Tisdel. The show starts at 7:30 p.m. and will be $25 for adults, $15 for students.

Sit in on master classes that will be taught by the jury members to selected pianists Sunday at 10:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m.

For the first time in the festival's history, attendees can meet the finalists at the Milwaukee Art Museum on Tuesday at 1 p.m. before they head into their final performance.

The final round, in which the three competition finalists perform with the MSO, will be held at the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts on June 8. The show starts at 7:30 p.m. and is $30 for adults, $15 for students.
Judy Joo

Growing up in New Jersey, Judy Joo spent countless hours preparing seaweed, kimchi and other Korean staples that her family loved but couldn't find here. Food has always been an important part of her life, but coming from a family of scientists and high achievers meant that she never considered cooking as a career.

She attended Columbia University, got an engineering degree and then a good job on Wall Street. A few years in, she realized it wasn't for her.

Taking a sharp detour from that path, she attended the French Culinary Institute, learned the art of pastry, went to work with Thomas Keller and opened her own Korean restaurants in London and Hong Kong.

She's an Iron Chef UK and host of the Cooking Channel show "Korean Food Made Simple," which is also the title of her newly released first cookbook. From her vantage as a "French-trained Korean-American Londoner," she's introducing Korean ingredients and flavors to audiences around the world.

Unabashedly using traditional Korean flavors while explaining recipes and their history for new audiences, Joo instructs in the basics of kimchi, hand-torn noodle soup, her mother's mandu (meaty dumplings) and Korean fried chicken. She gets playful in fusing her influences into recipes for pork belly cheesesteak, drunken rice fro-yo, even seaweed shortbread.

Joo, 40, who is considering opening a restaurant in New York, spoke with us by phone during a recent visit.

Q.Give us a little of your family background and approach to food.

A. My father was born in North Korea, back well before the war. It was one Korea then. ... My mom was born just outside of Seoul.

My father's family fled on foot. He kind of grew up in a war refugee camp, studied his butt off and made it to Seoul High School and Seoul National Medical School.

In 1964 he graduated, and like 90% of his class came over. They call it the great brain drain of Korea; everyone was leaving because the country was so incredibly poor.

My mom came from a family that really believed in education. That's incredible, because particularly back then a lot of families weren't even educating their daughters. My mom's father was a principal in a high school, and he really pushed them.

My mom got a full scholarship to study chemistry at Ohio State. She came by herself. It was unheard of back then for a woman to travel alone. Her brother was one of my dad's classmates. That's how my parents met.

There were few Korean or Chinese grocery stores. My parents had to make everything from scratch back then to get the flavors from home. Seaweed was hanging in our garage. The laundry room had things fermenting, while the back porch had pots of kimchi. My mom would get a lot of ingredients sent from Korea.

Now you can buy seasoned seaweed. I remember having to make stacks and stacks of seaweed.

Q.Do you consider yourself a late bloomer entering the food industry?

A. From an early age it was said that I had to go to one of these certain schools or it would be shameful. I was considered not as smart as my sister because she went to Yale and I went to Columbia.

It was pretty much science all the way. My mom is a chemist. My dad is a physician. I didn't know what else was out there for me. I got to Columbia, graduated with a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering...

I landed a job at Morgan Stanley, spent about five years selling fixed-income derivatives. After a while, I thought, "I just don't love it, and I don't want to do this for the rest of my life. Is this where I see myself 20 to 30 years from now?" The answer was no.

I did some soul searching, the whole "What color is my parachute?" kind of stuff. I quit and went to cooking school. I graduated in 2004.

Q.Your cooking is a mix of Korean tradition and other influences. How do you describe it?

A. It's me. I am a French-trained Korean-American Londoner. I am taking influence from all around the world and you see that. I'm also a trained pastry chef, so I have a chapter on bread in the book. I love making bread. There are so many French-style bakeries popping up all over Korea.

Q.What have you seen as far as the evolution and interest in Korean food?

A. The fact that you can get Korean ingredients on Amazon.com now is a huge testament to how popular it is becoming. It is here to stay. People are falling in love with Korean flavors.

Q.How often do you get back to Korea?

A. Last year I was back there a lot, filming my show and doing the book. I do have a lot of family there. I spent some summers there when I was little.

Korea has changed so much from when I went as a child to now. When I was little, Korea was still kind of uncomfortable; they still had the squatting toilets and whatnot. Now it is more modern and advanced than America.

Q.What do you always bring back from trips?

A. Some Korean solar salts are particularly good and hard to find here.

Q.What's your Korean pantry staple?

A. Gochujang, a fermented chile paste. It comes in a red magical box. That will be your favorite hot sauce used in a number of different applications. You can eat it raw with rice or use in marinades and dressings, soups, stews. I kind of just take a spoonful and throw it in chicken stock, and I've got a nice spicy broth to throw dumplings or noodles in.

Q.What's your comfort food?

A. A spicy, silken tofu soup, I love it. I have a vegetarian version in the book.

Q.What's a Korean recipe you want to introduce to new audiences?

A. Definitely try kimchi. It is an unusual ingredient and makes everything taste better, and it is chock-full of lactobacillus and very good for you.

Q.Most underappreciated Korean dish?

A. In the Western world, the soups and stews. The thick, bubbling stews, they are a bit funkier and stronger in taste, but once you give them a taste they are so good.

There's an episode in my show where I'm eating a big seafood soup in Korea. It looks like the sea just threw up in a bowl. You get the entire whole clam, the whole fish, an entire whole octopus, a whole crab, then you're given scissors and cut your way through everything. There is nothing subtle about Korean food. Just get over it and try it.

Q.When you started teaching others, what was your goal?

A. Spreading Korean cuisine globally, and not just the cuisine but the culture. People have heard of Samsung and Daewoo, but they don't know they're Korean. They think Japanese.

Nobody knows what a traditional Korean dress looks like, while they know a Japanese kimono. So with the show, the book, even in my restaurants, I showcase the colors and architecture of Korea, the beauty. I make sure I'm using Korean chopsticks, because Chinese and Japanese chopsticks are different.
Ronald Haefner Credit: Wisconsin Department of Corrections

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Months after he had settled into a six-year prison sentence for embezzling more than $400,000 from Ripon College, its former IT director Ronald Haefner got hit with new felonies.

Prosecutors in Ozaukee County, where Haefner, 56, lived (in Mequon) while embezzling the money, charged him with five counts of income tax fraud for not reporting the stolen money on his returns for 2010 through 2014, a rare follow-up punch, especially in a case where the defendant has paid a lot of restitution  about a half- million dollars, his attorney said.

That was last fall. On Tuesday, Haefner, who had to be transported to Port Washington from prison in western Wisconsin for the hearing, pleaded no contest to a single count and was sentenced to another 18 months in prison and another three years of extended supervision.

That sentence will run concurrent to the term that he already was serving at Oakhill Correctional Institution in Oregon, which ends in March 2021, when he will begin extended supervision in the community.

He also will have to pay back taxes, penalties and interest, the exact amount of which will be determined at another hearing in August. Lawyers said the calculations are complicated by the restitution and tax specialists may need to get involved.

The complaint charged that Haefner avoided more than $57,000 in taxes.

His attorney, Jonathan LaVoy, said his client was surprised to get hit with state income tax charges after he already had been convicted of the embezzling and repaid more than $400,000. District Attorney Adam Gerol and Circuit Judge Paul V. Malloy agreed that they had rarely, if ever, seen criminal tax charges filed after a theft case had been concluded.

Gerol said he was filling in for an assistant who first charged the case at the request of the state Department of Revenue.

Haefner, handcuffed and wearing orange jail clothes, took the opportunity to apologize for his crimes and laud the support of his wife and grown children, two of whom joined their mother in court Tuesday.

In 2014, Fond du Lac County prosecutors charged Haefner with 64 counts, and he ultimately pleaded guilty to 10 and was sentenced in March 2015 to six years in prison.

The complaint charged Haefner, who began working for Ripon College in 1999, with improperly using a school credit card for a variety of personal expenses, from iTunes downloads and Apple computers to airline tickets and antique furniture.

Many of the items that Haefner charged to Ripon wound up in North Carolina, where he gave them as gifts to Brevard College, headed at the time by a former Ripon president.

He was fired in 2013 when college officials discovered the embezzlement.
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A long-running fraud case against a motorcycle showman and firearms dealer specializing in machine gun sales ended when the defendant killed himself.

Nikki Lee, 54, shot himself May 10 as U.S. marshals were preparing to arrest him at an apartment in Ann Arbor, Mich., according to a death certificate and the prosecutor on the case.

"As they were entering the apartment to effect an arrest, he shot himself," Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Kanter said Tuesday. The report on his death says Lee shot himself in the chest.

Lee was charged in federal court in Milwaukee with 30 counts of fraud and lying in bankruptcy proceedings nearly four years ago.

The case has been delayed by appeals and Lee's history of changing lawyers. He was represented by nine different attorneys, records show. At one point, Lee was going to represent himself.

He had been scheduled to appear in U.S. District Judge Charles Clevert's courtroom on April 13. He didn't show and a warrant was issued for his arrest, records show. The marshals were executing that warrant when Lee killed himself, Kanter said.

Lee, who lived near Green Bay as of 2008, was known as the "Burnout King" for his prowess in burning out motorcycle tires at biker shows. Lee traveled on the so-called "World Burnout Tour." Lee was touted as holding various records for the longest burnout  where the rider revs a motorcycle with the back wheel spinning until it disintegrates.

Lee, who also went by Nick Lee, was arrested in Port Huron, Mich., in 2012 after he crossed over from Canada.

According to the indictment, Lee lied on a home-equity loan of $270,000 in 2007, claiming he was making $24,000 a month. In 2007 and 2008, he purchased five Harley-Davidson motorcycles and a trailer. Right after making these purchases, Lee filed for bankruptcy in federal court in Milwaukee, according to the indictment.

Lee, whose former name was James Wellens, was a gun dealer authorized to deal in fully automatic machine guns as a National Firearms Act Class III dealer.

During the bankruptcy, he said he had sold that gun-dealing business when he had not, according to the indictment. He also failed to disclose that he owned 13 motorcycles, two trailers, two boats, a motor home and a car, it said.
Hope Christian, which serves more than 1,900 children at six school sites, including one shown here at Hope Prima in Milwaukee, announced plans Monday for a seventh school. Credit: Journal Sentinel files

SHARE The current site of the North Point Lighthouse Charter School on Douglas Ave. in Milwaukee will be reopened as Hope Christian School: Fidelis next fall. Journal Sentinel files

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Hope Christian Schools, the largest operator of voucher schools in Milwaukee outside of the Catholic Church, will open its seventh school in the fall, in a building vacated this spring by a failed charter school.

School officials said Tuesday that it had begun enrolling students in its newest school  Hope Christian School: Fidelis  in the former North Point Lighthouse Charter School at 4200 W. Douglas Ave. on the city's north side.

Zach Verriden, executive director of Hope Christian Schools in Wisconsin, said the plan is to enroll 150 students in 4-year-old kindergarten through fifth grade in the first year.

"And we'd like to grow that out to serve all the way to eighth grade," he said.

Lighthouse, run by a Florida-based nonprofit, announced in February that it would close at the end of the school year. Opened in 2012, the school had struggled with academic performance, leadership, enrollment and other issues, and was on the verge of being closed by the City of Milwaukee's chartering authority.

The fast-growing Hope franchise, operated by Waukesha-based Educational Enterprises, has fared better in Milwaukee's highly competitive education market.

Opened in 2002 with 50 students, it now serves more than 1,900 students in five Milwaukee schools and one in Racine. All but a handful of its students this year attended on state-funded vouchers through the Milwaukee and Racine parental choice programs.

The nonprofit Educational Enterprises, founded by former Wisconsin Republican congressman Mark Neumann, also operates two schools in St. Louis, with a third set to open in the fall, and four in Phoenix.

Neumann's son, Andrew, serves as president. The organization posted revenue of $13.2 million in the fiscal year ending in June 2015, according to its latest IRS filing. It posted expenses of $13.7 million, leaving a deficit of more than $500,000.

The schools bill themselves as building the "Three C's"  Christ, college readiness and character. Their academic performance, however, is mixed, according to state assessment data.

The percentage of students who scored as proficient or advanced on the latest Badger exam ranged from zero to 38%, depending on the subject or grade.

Verriden said Hope eighth-graders outperformed their local public school peers in reading and math in the last WKCE exam and that that their pace of improvement exceeded those of students nationally and locally in what's known as the MAP assessment.

For the last five years, all graduates have been accepted into at least some type of post-secondary program. Verriden said Tuesday that 80% of 2015 graduates were currently enrolled in college.
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Camp Tariq, Iraq  Elite Iraqi special forces began their push Monday into Fallujah, expecting to encounter the stiffest resistance yet in the campaign to free territory from the Islamic State group.

The city 40 miles west of Baghdad has been under militant control longer than any other part of Iraq, and Islamic State fighters have had more than two years to dig in. Networks of tunnels like those found in other Islamic State-held territory have already been discovered in its northeastern outskirts.

The Iraqi troops, also known as the counterterrorism forces, are leading the assault on Fallujah, slowly moving up from the southern edge in a column of armored Humvees.

Their advance is expected to be slow because tens of thousands of civilians remain trapped in Fallujah, and hidden bombs are believed to have been left throughout the city, according to special forces commanders at the scene. They expect fierce resistance from the jihadis, who have nowhere to run.

"This is the decisive battle for us and for Daesh," said Gen. Saad Harbiya, head of Fallujah operations for the Iraqi army, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.

The offensive, supported by airstrikes from the U.S.-led coalition, was launched a week ago. In that time, other wings of Iraq's security forces have cleared the city's edges. Shiite militia forces under the government umbrella of the Popular Mobilization Forces and the federal police lead operations that have taken back 80% of the territory around Fallujah, according to Iraqi Maj. Dhia Thamir.

The predominantly Sunni city in Anbar province is one of the last major Islamic State strongholds in Iraq. The extremist group still controls territory in the north and west, as well as the second-largest city of Mosul.

Harbiya said Fallujah "is like the Kaaba" for the Islamic State group, referring to the most sacred Muslim site in the world in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

The 500 to 700 Islamic State fighters holed up in Fallujah are expected to be some of the group's best-trained, a special forces commander at the scene said. The commander spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters.

The counter terrorism forces started pushing into Fallujah from its southern edge at dawn, said Brig. Haider al-Obeidi. He described the fighting as "fierce," with the Islamic State deploying snipers and releasing a volley of mortar rounds on the Iraqi forces.

Humanitarian groups say that as the violence intensifies, their concerns for civilians trapped inside Fallujah mount.

"With every moment that passes, their need for safe exits becomes more critical," said Nasr Muflahi, the country director for the Norwegian Refugee Council, an international humanitarian group active in Anbar province.

In past operations, Iraq's Shiite militia forces have been accused of committing abuses against civilians in majority Sunni towns and cities. Sunni lawmakers already have accused the security forces of using indiscriminate force that has endangered the more than 50,000 civilians estimated to be still inside Fallujah.

Shiite militia commanders have routinely rejected the accusations.

"The troops have been recommended to respect families and treat them gently," said Hadi al-Amiri, the Shiite militia commander who also heads the Badr Organization political party, while overseeing operations outside Fallujah.

Islamic State extremists, meanwhile, claimed responsibility for a wave of bombings Monday in and around the capital that killed at least 24 people.

The Islamic State has been behind many of the recent deadly attacks, and the bombings show the group's enduring ability to launch operations despite territorial losses. Iraqi officials say the bombings are an attempt by the militants to distract the security forces' attention from the front lines.
Texas Jays, an exotic dance club at 813 S. 1st. St. in Milwaukee, faces city revocation of its license. Credit: Michael Sears

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As developments including apartments, offices and trendy restaurants continue to alter the character of the Walker's Point neighborhood, an anchor of its past still stands at S. 1st St. and National Ave.: Texas Jay's, an exotic dance club.

Now the city wants to shut it down, after police say it failed to report assaults that left patrons unconscious for eight minutes and one man hospitalized for days.

Police also say that when they investigated the assaults, they found evidence of prostitution at the club  two beds in an upstairs room and an empty condom wrapper.

Altogether, the city contends, activities at the club "had a substantial adverse effect upon the health, safety or convenience and prosperity of the immediate neighborhood."

Club owner John A. Urban of Waterford will have a chance to tell his side of the story Tuesday to the Licenses Committee of the Common Council, which could then make a recommendation to the full council.

His attorney, Michael Whitcomb, said he'll be seeking dismissal of the complaint, which he said does not come close to proving Texas Jay's maintains a "riotous, indecent or improper house" under the law.

He called it rare, if not unprecedented, for a tavern to be taken to special revocation over a fight. "There are no drugs, no shootings," he said. "The entire incident lasted 27 seconds."

The council renewed the club's license in February, but a March 1 letter warned that if previous police concerns at the business weren't addressed, the city might seek to suspend or revoke the license.

Violent incident

According to city records:

Around closing time April 2, Jonathan Rutter argued with a Texas Jay's manager he thought still had his credit card, even though someone in Rutter's party had already collected it for him.

At one point, Rutter took a swing at the manager, Ryan Urban, who then grabbed Rutter around the chest and the two fell onto a table during a very brief tussle, in Whitcomb's description. When they got up, Rutter's friend Jeremy Calteux and another friend had come over to calm the situation and guide Rutter outside.

That's when two patrons knocked Calteux and Rutter out with sucker punches.

Rutter told police he woke up on the floor, with Calteux unconscious beside him. When Calteux finally came to, he and the rest of his party left.

The next day, Calteux's father found his son badly injured at home, vomiting, unable to walk on his own and without recall of what happened the night before.

Calteux, 27, was admitted to a hospital where he spent 11 days, four of them in intensive care. He suffered two skull fractures, developed Bell's palsy and required speech and physical therapy.

According to police, Calteux's injuries were aggravated because of the delay in receiving medical treatment.

His attorney, Christopher Stawski, said Calteux is still getting therapy and hasn't been able to return to his job as a truck driver.

Informed of Calteux's attack, police returned to Texas Jay's to ask questions about the previous night. Urban and two bartenders recalled the incident but said the men who got punched were down only a few seconds and no bar employees hit anyone.

The following Monday, police returned with a search warrant to seize surveillance video, which police contend shows Calteux and Rutter were knocked out by separate assailants, dragged to the doorway by patrons and staff, and appeared to be on the floor unable to move for eight minutes.

While looking for any other video, police found the beds upstairs and the condom wrapper. Whitcomb said there was no basis for the claim the area was used for prostitution.

Before it was Texas Jay's, the club was known as Solid Gold (the gold palm trees still decorate the exterior) and before that, Club Paradise.

Booming part of town

Once an ignored section of town, Walker's Point has followed the neighboring Third Ward into prominence as a trendy spot for restaurants and other redevelopment projects, such as Federal Commons, with event space, offices and 40 apartments planned; Trio MKE, three five-story buildings for 120 apartments, and Shoe Factory Lofts.

Milwaukee does not welcome new strip clubs. Last year, a federal appeals court upheld a $435,500 jury award in favor of a nude dance club owner who claimed the city violated his rights during efforts to open a club downtown or in Walker's Point.

The same owners, who operate Silk Exotic on the city's far west side and at two other locations in the state, filed a new federal case against the city last year, challenging a new ordinance regulating strip clubs. They have sought judgment in their favor without trial.

Jeff Scott Olson, a Madison attorney representing the Silk Exotic owners and not involved with Texas Jay's, said he offers the same advice to all his strip club clients.

"All adult clubs should expect a little bit more scrutiny" than other kinds of bars and clubs, he said. "Once you find a guy unconscious on the floor, the breaks generally aren't going to go in the club's favor."
Milwaukee Public Works Department crews repair a break in the city-owned section of a lead service lateral between the water main and a private property boundary in the 2100 block of S. 14th St. in January. Credit: Angela Peterson

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A safe, clean water supply is fundamental to human health and a thriving economy.

That's why the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources is moving so quickly to take advantage of new flexibility in a federal loan program to help communities such as Milwaukee deal with a 150-year legacy of lead service lines that are still delivering drinking water in vulnerable neighborhoods.

A March decision by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency conferred more flexibility to states in allocating federal funds for water infrastructure projects. The DNR, with the support of Gov. Scott Walker, quickly recognized the opportunity to apply this flexibility, and we are now moving forward rapidly to solve a problem that has been haunting communities for generations.

We are the first state in our region to do so. And the first checks to communities should be cut by mid-August. That's light speed compared to the glacial pace of problem-solving seen in some locales up to now.

Comments we received on this groundbreaking initiative helped us make some changes in our original proposal. We have increased to $1 million the cap on available funding to the cities in the largest category  namely, Milwaukee  and affirmed the availability of money outside of this cap to help licensed day cares and schools get the lead out. We estimate that the availability of funds for schools and day care centers could bring an additional $1.8 million in private lead service line replacement funding for the city of Milwaukee. I would like to thank state Sen. Lena Taylor for reaching out to us to discuss her concerns for Milwaukee and offer her assistance on any future initiatives.

Will the total $11.8 million available to DNR in this current funding cycle be enough to solve the lead service line problems of Milwaukee and every other community in the state? Of course not, but we are taking steps to do what we can to address the lead problem with the resources available to us at this time. The governor asked us to take on the challenge of providing assistance to the most communities possible throughout the state, and we are doing that.

Funding goes to the municipalities, which in turn make the decisions on which private lead service lines are a priority. It's the municipalities' choice. Clearly, the average $3,000 cost of each full lead service line replacement is too great a burden for many homeowners in our most vulnerable communities to bear. However, we want to allow for discretion in how community leaders decide what they feel is best to help affected residents.

Correcting this century-old problem won't be easy. Policy-makers at all levels of government are paying serious attention to drinking water challenges. How we leverage state and federal funding with local and private sources will determine a comprehensive solution.

The Wisconsin DNR stands ready and able to help.

Cathy Stepp is secretary of the state Department of Natural Resources.
Students study in a geometry class at Veritas High School, a charter school, in 2010. A study shows that independent charter schools such as Veritas do better for students and taxpayers than do public schools, according to William Flanders, a co-author of the study. Credit: Gary Porter

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All public schools in Milwaukee are not created equal. With traditional Milwaukee Public Schools and three different types of charter schools, public schools in Milwaukee vary greatly in their levels of funding, autonomy and, more particularly, in their independence from MPS.

A study I co-authored looks for the first time at which of these schools obtain the best student outcomes per taxpayer dollars spent. Our study found that, after controlling for socioeconomic factors, charter schools with the most autonomy and without union teachers do the most for students despite receiving significantly less funding. This has major public policy ramifications.

In Milwaukee, there are three types of charter schools. Instrumentality charters are very closely connected to the school district. Their employees are generally unionized employees of MPS, and their curriculum is not independently determined. While non-instrumentalities are still authorized by MPS, they are similar to independent charters in a number of other respects. Employees of these schools work for the school rather than the district. Perhaps most critically, independent and non-instrumentality charters receive $2,186 less in per student funding than instrumentality charters and regular public schools. Do these funding and differences in the degree of charter school independence lead to differences in the return-on-investment for taxpayers?

Our study used the most recent WKCE science and Badger Exam math scores for each public school in Milwaukee to create a measure of efficiency  student outcomes per tax dollar spent. We used an econometric analysis, which controlled for the school's racial composition, English-language learner status and the extent of free and reduced lunch eligibility to verify the findings of our more straightforward analysis.

We found that, on average, independent and non-instrumentality charter schools are more efficient than instrumentality charter schools and traditional public schools. Among schools with predominantly low-income students, the most efficient on the WKCE were independents  such as Veritas High School and Seeds of Health  and non-instrumentalities  such as Carmen High School.

Similar patterns were observed when looking at all schools and the Badger Exam in math. Per $1,000 spent, independent charter schools earned about 2.5% higher on the WKCE and Badger Exams than traditional MPS schools. Non-instrumentalities were not far behind. Put another way, taxpayers receive the most "bang for the buck" at these schools.

A portion of this efficiency difference is likely due to the tremendous legacy costs borne by MPS. While Act 10 has gone a long way in improving the outlook for the district, these costs do not disappear overnight, and MPS may be paying for the sins of its past. From the perspective of the taxpayers of Wisconsin, however, it is important to know where their tax dollars accomplish the most, and our study suggests that they are best spent on independent and non-instrumentality charters.

So what does this research mean? Given that independent charter schools give taxpayers the best return on investment, policy-makers should consider ways to expand the opportunities for children to attend these schools. This could happen by expanding the number of charter school authorizers in Milwaukee (and statewide) as well as increasing the purview of existing charter schools.

Serious consideration should be given to reclassifying instrumentality charter schools under a different name. While a name change may seem superficial, it might help policy-makers and the public make clearer distinctions between true charter schools and instrumentalities, which are as inefficient as traditional public schools.

Lastly, this report raises the all-important question about unfair funding inequalities. Independent and non-instrumentality charters receive less funding than traditional schools. Yet our report shows that these schools are some of the most efficient schools in the district. It is possible that these schools could perform even better if funding was increased to the same level that MPS receives.

This report adds to the growing evidence that independent and non-instrumentality charter schools work. It is incumbent on policy-makers to determine how best to expand access to what are some of the best public schools in the city of Milwaukee.

William Flanders is education research director at the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty.
What's changed about Milwaukee's absentee ballots since 2018 strife

The tight partisan races next month come in the context of controversy over absentee ballots in the 2020 and 2018 elections.
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A woman was killed Monday after running onto a Racine County road to get her dog and getting hit by a semitrailer truck.

Amy Krenzke, 43, of Sturtevant, was struck about 3 a.m. in the 15800 block of Durand Ave. in the Town of Yorkville in what the Racine County Sheriff's Office described as "an unfortunate accident."

Krenzke was taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead. The semi driver is cooperating with the investigation.
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Consumer spending climbed in April by the most in almost seven years, a sign U.S. households are ready to help jump start growth after a first-quarter slowdown.

Consumer purchases climbed 1% in April (versus 0.7% forecast) after little change in March. The monthly increase in spending was the biggest since August 2009.

The strong April showing for consumer spending, which accounts for 70% of economic activity, is a good sign that the economy is performing notably better this quarter after nearly stalling out at the start of the year. Many economists believe the economy is growing at a 2.5% rate, outpacing a 0.8% gain in the first quarter.

All major components showed solid gains, led by a 2.3% surge in spending on durable goods such as autos. Spending on nondurable goods, such as clothing and food, expanded a solid 1.4%, while spending on services such as rent payments and utility bills increased 0.6%.

Personal income climbed 0.4% for a second month.

Tbe Federal Reserve's preferred measure of inflation (tied to consumer spending) climbed 0.3% from month before, the biggest since May 2015.

Households will need to do the heavy lifting if a growth rebound is to materialize this quarter as global demand and corporate investment remain sluggish. Continued increases in payrolls and a gradual pickup in wages should help give consumers the means and the willingness to spend.

"American shoppers came racing back to the malls, auto shops and online stores in April," said Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets.

"There was a lot of presumably pent up spending given that the last few months were quite soft for consumption," said Michelle Meyer, deputy head of U.S. economist at Bank of America Corp. in New York. "The consumer should be a fairly bright spot for the economy."

"You definitely want to see that pickup in April to fit into the story of a second-quarter rebound," Sophia Kearney-Lederman, an economic analyst at FTN Financial in New York, said before the report. Supporting the increase, "We have seen strong payrolls and incomes coming up, we've seen vehicle sales rebound, and we saw housing had a pretty good month."

Purchases of durable goods jumped 2.2% in April.

Fed Chair Janet Yellen said Friday that a hike in a key Fed interest rate would be appropriate in coming months if the economy keeps improving and inflation keeps moving toward the Fed's 2% goal. Yellen did not specify an exact date for what would be the Fed's second rate hike, but many economists think it could come as soon as the Fed's next meeting in June.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Ankara is angered by Washingtons support for Kurdish fighters in Syria in the fight against [the so-called] Islamic State group [IS].

Turkey is offering to join forces with Washington for a special operation inside Syria on the condition that the United States does not include the latters closet ally against the Islamic State group: a Syrian Kurdish militia blacklisted by Ankara .

Such a coalition could easily head to [IS]s de facto capital in Raqqa, said Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.

The subject we are discussing with the Americans is the closure of the Manbij pocket as soon as possible  and the opening of a second front, Cavusoglu said, referring to a backdoor border route favored by IS for smuggling jihadists in and out of Syria.

Unfortunately, both Russia and the United States see a terrorist organisation as a partner and support it.

There was no immediate reaction to the proposal from the United States, whose strategy for fighting jihadists inside Syria is pinned on its Kurdish-Arab alliance, the Syrian Democratic Forces.

The SDF is still dominated by the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units, or YPG, which Turkey sees as the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which has fought a three decade insurgency against the Turkish state. Some experts believe the U.S. pushed for the creation of the SDF to get around the appearance of arming a group aligned with the PKK, which the U.S. State Department labels a terrorist organization.

Cavusoglu said Syrian Arab opposition forces opposing the regime of President Bashar al-Assad could be backed by special forces from Turkey, the United States as well as France, Britain and Germany.

Via TeleSur



Related video added by Juan Cole:

Aljazeera English: Inside Story  How will Ankara and Washington heal their rift?
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By Sam Brennan | ( Open Democracy ) |  

The Yarmouk Valley is run by ISIS  and left alone by Israel. This is a testament to the complex, cynical and calculated machinations of the actors in this conflict.

There is a strange relationship between Israel and a small sect of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) based next to the Golan Heights. The very presence of a group like ISIS so close to Israel poses many questions.

Firstly why has ISIS not attacked Israel  a country they have sworn to destroy  from said base? Similarly why has the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) not attacked this small and weak group of extremists on their border? The answers to such questions show the truth behind the rhetoric all actors use in this conflict.

The Yarmouk valley is wedged between Jordan, Syria and the Israeli-occupied territories of the Golan Heights. The valley consists of a few small towns, the majority of which are now controlled by the ISIS affiliated Liwa Shuhada al-Yarmouk or the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade (YMB). This group was established by Mohammad al-Baridi, known by his nickname The Uncle in 2012 in southwest Syria. The group started off relatively moderate, with a close alliance to the Free Syrian Army. But the moderation quickly dissipated during the course of the Syrian civil war.

The start of 2013 saw the YMB gain power in the Yarmouk Valley. The YMB in 2013 started to have military clashes with Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian al-Qaeda group who held the power in the Daraa governorate (the southwest governorate of Syria). This led to the assassination of al-Baridi by al-Nusra in November 2015. During this time, the group carved out a small area for themselves on the fringe of the Daraa governorate next to the Golan Heights. YMB continued to distance themselves from al-Nusra, while still promoting conservative Islamic laws.

The YMB in 2015 began implementing Islamist reforms through the islah policy. The policy was implemented under al-Baridi and sought to correct the policies of the previous regime. This included the creation of an Islamic court and police force. YMB also changed the name of its department of governance to Diwan al-Hisba, Diwan translating to the regional name for ISIS. The group even changed their logo to incorporate the ISIS flag. By the end of 2015 YMB became a sub-group of ISIS, only a stones throw away from Israel.

The YMB alliance means that ISIS now shares a border with Israel, yet they have not acted on this. In one of al-Baghdadis speeches he discussed Israel, however he only referred to the area as Palestine, probably in an effort to avoid indirectly acknowledging statehood through using the term Israel. Al-Baghdadi reminded the Jews in Palestine that ISIS has not forgotten you. Such messages from al-Baghdadi are very rare; this one was presumably made due to internal pressure in ISIS to reaffirm its anti-Israel stance. He then went on to say that with the help of Allah, we [ISIS] are getting closer to you [Israel] every day. This is puzzling, for ISIS has an armed group of fighters next door to Israel, to get any closer would mean they would be literally inside the country. So why has ISIS not followed through on their threats and invaded?

ISIS are significantly more likely to attack the weak then the strong. While there are some reports that the YMB have an armoured division looted from campaigns in Daraa they still predominantly use small arms and homemade explosives. ISIS is currently being pressed on all fronts; if they have to choose between attacking Israel and attacking a largely civilian area in the already decimated Deir ez-Zur province, historically they have picked the latter. Yet that does not explain Israels reaction to ISIS possession of such a threatening territory.

The YMB have already provoked international outrage. In 2013 the YMB kidnapped some 20 Filipino United Nation peacekeepers. They held them for two weeks before releasing them. However YMB kidnapped these peacekeepers from inside Israeli occupied territories. While YMB was only loosely affiliated with ISIS in 2013 there have been no repercussions for an Islamic militant group infiltrating an Israeli buffer-zone and kidnapping UN peacekeepers. Israel has shown in the past it is willing to attack groups on its borders that it perceives as a threat.

Israel has during the Syria civil war authorised airstrikes in Syria multiple times. These airstrikes however have aimed not at ISIS, nor al-Nusra or other Sunni jihadist groups. These strikes have overwhelmingly been targeted at the assets of Shia-affiliated groups, predominantly Hezbollah.

Israel in September 2014 also shot down a Syrian Air Force fighter jet for straying into Golan airspace: the first time since the 1973 ArabIsraeli war that the IDF has attacked Syrias official military. Israel has shown during the Syrian civil war that it is willing to attack those who threaten its territorial integrity  but not ISIS.

The YMB has entered Israeli-held territory, yet there has been no reported conflict between the two groups. In fact there have been reports by Foreign Policy Magazine claiming that far from fighting the militias on the Golan boarder, Israel has been providing health care to the militants. Around 1,000 Syrians within fourteen months have been given treatment, according to Lt. Col. Peter Lerner. The Lt. Col. went on to say, we dont do any vetting or check where they are from or which group they are fighting for, or whether they are civilians.

There seems to be very different treatment for rebel groups on the south of the Golan Heights border than for those in the north. But why would Israel, which authorised multiple bombings on Syrian militant groups, take such a relaxed view towards ISIS on their doorstep?

Israel is focused not on ISIS and Sunni groups, but on the Shia groups in Syria. Israels airstrikes have hit Assads Shia-backed regime and Hezbollah, not ISIS or al-Nusra. Correspondence between the then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and political advisor Jacob Sullivan about Israels aims in the region tried to rationalise why Israel ignores ISIS.

In 2012 at the start of the conflict, Sullivan said that there was a positive side to the civil war in Syria. This so-called positive side to a war that has cost some 400,000 lives was that, if the Assad regime topples, Iran would lose its only ally in the Middle East and would be isolated. This would please Israel, which under the Netanyahu government has fixated on the perceived Iranian threat. A war which destabilizes Irans ally, Assad, would benefit Israeli interests. This Machiavellian belief could explain why ISIS is not focused on. The Iranian backed Shia militias are the biggest concern for Israel, not extremist groups such as ISIS.

A senior Israel military advisor when asked about Israeli policy in the Syrian civil war apparently quoted Sun Tzu, saying he will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight. This is a sentiment that is followed by ISIS and Israel alike. ISIS knows it is too weak to fight Israel and Israel is concerned with enemies it thinks are worse. The Yarmouk Valley is on one of the most contested borders in the world, controlled by one of the most aggressive and disliked military forces, and is next to a country notorious for being extremely conscientious about its border security, all taking place in a warzone where violence is expected.

Despite all this, the Yarmouk Valley is still run by ISIS, left alone by Israel and is a testament to the complex, cynical and calculated machinations of the actors in this conflict.

Via Open Democracy



Related video added by Juan Cole:

From last year: 2015-04-28 Islamic Front in combat with ISIS on the Golan-Heights near the border of Israel
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) |  

Former US Attorney General Eric Holder said in an interview that what NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden did was illegal but added We can certainly argue about the way in which Snowden did what he did, but I think that he actually performed a public service by raising the debate we engaged in and by the changes that we made . . .

But nobody in the Obama administration still in office ever said that Snowden did a public service. He certainly did, since the NSA and other intelligence organizations had gone rogue. In essence, they unilaterally abrogated the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution. PBS Frontline alleged that the NSA did not even read Obama into their warrantless surveillance of millions of Americans until 2010! In a system like that, the president isnt really the president the Deep State does as it pleases.

It is also clear that the NSA has been sharing metadata with local law enforcement, which has been using it to build cases against people without ever seeking a warrant, and then lying to judges about how they knew someone was, e.g., in touch with a drug dealer by phone. In other words, NSA surveillance has corrupted the entire justice system of the United States and made the Fourth Amendment a dead letter.

Such sharing of illicitly-gathered private information among US government agencies is becoming routine. (These cases have nothing to do with terrorism.)

So Holders sudden appreciation of Snowden is hypocritical. He went on to say,

Hes broken the law. In my view, he needs to get lawyers, come on back and decide what he wants to do  go to trial, try to cut a deal . . . But in deciding what an appropriate sentence should be, a judge could take into account the usefulness of having that national debate . . .

Mr. Holder is a man of the US justice system and knows exactly how it functions, so he knows very well that Snowden will not be allowed to present a whistle blower defense if he is tried in the US and that no judge will be allowed to take his public service into account.

So Holder is lying. The only question is why. Is this an attempt to go on justifying the Obama administrations despicable war on whistle blowers? Or does Holder think Snowden will be so stupid as to be enticed back with a few false promises?

Here is a revised version of what I wrote on this issue when other Obama administration officials made similar dishonest statements, substituting Holder:

[ Revised and expanded]

Holder is either amazingly ignorant or being disingenuous when he suggests that Snowden would be allowed to make his case if he returned to the US. No one outside the penal justice system would ever see him again, the moment he set foot here, assuming he was not given a prior deal. He could maybe try to explain himself to the prison guards, assuming they didnt stick him in solitary. Here are some reasons Mr. Snowden would be unwise to trust himself to that system, given the charges against him:

1. The United Nations Special Rapporteur found that the US was guilty of cruel and inhuman treatment of Chelsea (Bradley) Manning, who was responsible for the Wikileaks and revelations of US killing of unarmed journalists in Iraq. Manning was kept in solitary confinement and isolated 23 hours a day for months on end, was kept naked and chained to a bed, and was subjected to sleep deprivation techniques, all three well known forms of torture, on the trumped up pretext that he was suicidal (his psychiatrist disagreed).

2. The Espionage Act under which Snowden would likely be tried is a fascist law from the time when President Woodrow Wilson (like Obama a scholar of the constitution) was trying to take the US into the war, and was used to repeal the First Amendment right of Americans to protest this action. It was used to arbitrarily imprison thousands and is full of unconstitutional provisions. In recent decades the act was used against whistleblowers only three times, but Barack Obama loves it to death. It is an embarrassment that it is still on the books and it reflects extremely badly on Obama and on Eric Holder that they revived it as a tool against whistle blowing (which is most often a public service).

3. John Kiriakou, who revealed CIA torture under Bush-Cheney, was prevented by the Espionage Act from addressing the jury to explain the intentions behind his actions and therefore forced into a plea bargain. None of the CIA officers who perpetrated the torture or their superiors, who ordered it, have been punished, but Kiriakou went to prison and and his family suffered because of the lack of income. The US public deserved to know about the torture rather than having Obama bury it the way he has buried so many other things wrong with the system.

4. National security officials such as Snowden are not covered by protections for whistleblowers in the Federal government, as Thomas Drake discovered. Drake helped bring to public attention the National Security Agency abuses that Snowden eventually made more transparent. But he was forced to plea bargain to a charge of misusing government computers. He lost his career and his retirement, for trying to let us know that when faced with a choice between a surveillance system that was indiscriminate and one that was targeted, the US government went indiscriminate. Indiscriminate is unconstitutional.

5. Not only did the US torture Manning, US officials have on many occasions practiced arbitrary arrest and imprisonment and torture. Most often these policies have been enacted abroad, as at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Guantanamo, and black sites in countries such as Poland. But arbitrary arrest, trigger-happy killings, and extended solitary confinement are all practiced domestically as well, on Americas vast gulag of 2.4 million prisoners, 4/5s of them black or brown. A fourth of all the prisoners in jail in the entire world of 7 billion people are in the United States. At any one time 80,000 US prisoners are in 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement. Abu Ghraib wasnt a low-level military excess. It was simply the transposition to Iraq of the ideals of an incarcerating society, dedicated to disciplining and interrogating those who fall into the systems hands. You dont get these outcomes a fourth of the worlds prisoners and a small city worth people in solitary confinement by accident. These abuses are systemic, and worsened by the privatization of prisons. Eric Holders notion that there is a fair trial to be had for Snowden in this cruelly flawed system is bizarre.

Holder is a bright and informed man and knows all this. I vote for disingenuous. He is just trying to deflect Snowdens obvious popularity with the public and is trying imply that Snowdens revelations put the issue behind us. They havent.



Related video :

Newsy: Eric Holder Gives Snowden Props For Performing A Public Service'
HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA--(Marketwired - May 30, 2016) - Erdene Resource Development Corp. (TSX:ERD) ("Erdene" or the "Company"), is pleased to announce it intends to issue, by way of a non-brokered private placement, 1,063,830 shares to Teck Resources Limited ("Teck") at a price of $0.47 per share for gross proceeds of $500,000 ("Private Placement"). This fulfills Teck's annual equity investment obligation pursuant to the Strategic Alliance between Erdene and Teck announced by Erdene on April 11, 2013. Net proceeds of the Private Placement will be used for exploration of the Company's Teck-Alliance projects in Mongolia.

The Private Placement is expected to close on or before June 15, 2016, and is subject to certain conditions, including, but not limited to, the receipt of all necessary approvals including the approval and acceptance by the Toronto Stock Exchange. All securities to be issued pursuant to the Private Placement will be subject to a four-month hold period from the closing date.

About the Strategic Alliance

The Alliance with Teck was entered into in April 2013, and was formed by the signing of option and private placement agreements (collectively, "Agreement") to fund and carry out mineral exploration in the Trans Altai region of southwest Mongolia. Under the terms of the Agreement, Teck has the option to subscribe for shares of Erdene, priced at the then current market plus 10%, until it has invested $3 million or acquired through subscriptions 19.9% of the outstanding shares of Erdene, whichever occurs first. A minimum of $500,000 is to be subscribed by Teck on each anniversary date of the closing of the Agreement to renew the Alliance. On April 22, 2016, Erdene announced it had agreed with Teck to extend the subscription date for 2016 by 60 days to June 23, 2016. To date, Teck has subscribed for $2.5 million in Erdene shares and owns 10.8% of Erdene's issued and outstanding common shares after giving effect to this subscription.

Excluded from the Alliance are the Company's Bayan Khundii Gold Project and Altan Nar Gold-Polymetallic Project.

A multi-year program of regional exploration, designed to identify porphyry and porphyry-related mineralization, has been underway since inception. The program has provided the Alliance with a significant amount of technical information that continues to be evaluated. During the 2015 program the Alliance was able to secure new exploration licenses within the targeted area and is now reviewing the potential for future acquisitions within the Mongolia licensing system. With the renewal of the Alliance, the 2016 exploration program will consist of surface geochemical sampling, geological mapping and prospecting, and analysis of newly acquired satellite data.

About Erdene

Erdene Resource Development Corp. is a Canada-based resource company focused on the acquisition, exploration, and development of base and precious metals in underexplored and highly prospective Mongolia. The Company holds four exploration licenses and a mining license in southwest Mongolia. These include: Altan Nar - an extensive, high-grade, near-surface, gold-polymetallic project that the Company is advancing toward a production decision, however the Company has not yet completed a mining study to support the technical feasibility and economic viability of Altan Nar; Bayan Khundii - an earlier-stage, high-grade gold discovery made in Q2-2015; Khuvyn Khar - an early-stage, copper-silver porphyry project with multiple drill targets and significant copper intersections; Zuun Mod - a large molybdenum-copper porphyry deposit; and Altan Arrow - an early-stage, high-grade, gold-silver project. In addition to the above properties, the Company has an Alliance with Teck Resources Limited on regional, copper-gold exploration in the prospective Trans Altay region of southwest Mongolia. For further information on the Company, please visit www.erdene.com. Erdene has 120,817,595 issued and outstanding common shares and a fully diluted position of 132,448,621 common shares, after giving effect to the Teck Private Placement.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain information regarding Erdene contained herein may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements may include estimates, plans, expectations, opinions, forecasts, projections, guidance or other statements that are not statements of fact. Although Erdene believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to have been correct. Erdene cautions that actual performance will be affected by a number of factors, most of which are beyond its control, and that future events and results may vary substantially from what Erdene currently foresees. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include market prices, exploitation and exploration results, continued availability of capital and financing and general economic, market or business conditions. The forward-looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. The information contained herein is stated as of the current date and is subject to change after that date. The Company does not assume the obligation to revise or update these forward-looking statements, except as may be required under applicable securities laws.

NO REGULATORY AUTHORITY HAS APPROVED OR DISAPPROVED THE CONTENTS OF THIS RELEASE.
TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - May 31, 2016) - Denison Mines Corp. ("Denison" or the "Company") (TSX:DML)(NYSE MKT:DNN) is pleased to report that its 22.5% owned McClean Lake mill has obtained authorization from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission ("CNSC") to increase its annual production capacity of uranium ("U 3 O 8 ") from 13 million to 24 million pounds per year.

Located in the infrastructure rich eastern portion of the Athabasca Basin region, in Northern of Saskatchewan, the McClean Lake mill is one of the most technologically advanced uranium mills in operation and is the only facility in the world designed to process high grade uranium ore without dilution. Since 2013, the McClean Lake mill has been in the process of an upgrade and expansion program to improve, modernize and increase the capacity of various circuits while ensuring high standards of employee safety and environmental protection.

The McClean Lake mill is owned by the McClean Lake Joint Venture ("MLJV"), a joint venture between AREVA Resources Canada Inc. ("AREVA") (70%), Denison (22.5%) and OURD (Canada) Co. Ltd. (7.5%), and is operated by AREVA. The McClean Lake mill is currently processing ore from the Cigar Lake mine under a toll milling agreement.

This regulatory approval from the CNSC will lead to a progressive ramp-up of the mill in line with the Cigar Lake mine's ramp-up to 18 million pounds U 3 O 8 annually. The tandem of the Cigar Lake mine and McClean Lake mill will therefore become the second-largest uranium production centre in the world.

Denison's President and CEO, David Cates, commented, "The restart of the McClean Lake mill has been a tremendous success for the MLJV and we are very pleased with the AREVA's commitment to delivering operational results while maintaining a focus on the safety of the MLJV's workers and the environment. With authorization from the CNSC to increase the annual production at the mill, the MLJV is now in a position to deliver on its tolling commitment with the Cigar Lake joint venture and will have excess licensed processing capacity - which speaks to the strategic importance of the mill to the entire region."

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, 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. (GXU: CSE) to sell its African interests, with an expected closing date in late May or early June, 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.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Certain information contained in this press release constitutes "forward-looking information", within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and similar Canadian legislation concerning the business, operations and financial performance and condition of Denison. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "believes", or the negatives and/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 "has the potential to". In particular, this press release contains forward-looking information pertaining to the activities, plans and objectives of joint venture partners and other contractual parties, including the proposed expansion of production at the McClean Lake mill, and Denison's interest therein.

Forward looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management as of the date such statements are made, and they are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of Denison to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Denison believes that the expectations reflected in this forward-looking information are reasonable but there can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and may differ materially from those anticipated in this forward looking information. For a discussion in respect of risks and other factors that could influence forward-looking events, please refer to the "Risk Factors" in Denison's Annual Information Form dated March 24, 2016 available under its profile at www.sedar.com and in its Form 40-F available at www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml. These factors are not, and should not be construed as being, exhaustive.

Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The forward-looking information contained in this press release is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. Denison does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking information after the date of this press release to conform such information to actual results or to changes in its expectations except as otherwise required by applicable legislation.
The US Supreme Court [official website] granted certiorari [order list, PDF] Tuesday in State Farm Fire and Casualty Co. v. United States ex rel. Rigsby [docket; cert. petition, PDF], a case concerning allegations that the insurance company defrauded the government in assessing damage following Hurricane Katrina [JURIST news archive]. The court limited to grant to question 1: What standard governs the decision whether to dismiss a relators claim for violation of the [False Claims Act]s seal requirement? Section 3730(b) [text] of the False Claims Act (FCA) permits a private person (relator) to bring a civil action in the name of the US government for violation of the act. The complaint shall be filed in camera, shall remain under seal for at least 60 days, and shall not be served on the defendant until the court so orders. There is a circuit split on the standard for determining whether to dismiss a relators claim for violation of the seal requirement.

Sisters Cori and Kerri Rigsby, former claims adjusters who worked with State Farm after the hurricane, sued State Farm under the FCA, alleging that the company defrauded the government. A jury found that State Farm falsely claimed that damages to a home in Biloxi, Mississippi, were caused by flooding instead of wind. The court ordered State Farm to pay $758,000 in damages and awarded the Rigsbys $227,000 under the FCA. State Farm argued that the lawsuit should have been dismissed because the Rigsbys lawyer distributed information about the lawsuit to members of the media, violating the seal requirement.
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Norway-based dairy group Tine and Irish co-op Dairygold are to set up a new production facility to manufacture Jarlsberg cheese in Ireland.

Dairygold has produced Jarlsberg for Tine under licence for a decade but the Norwegian company said it needed to expand production. The new facility will be on Dairygolds existing cheese site in Mogeely in County Cork.

The experience is good and the partnership is working well, but Tine need to expand production of Jarlsberg outside Norway in order to serve international markets in the future, a Tine spokesperson told just-food today (31 May).

The spokesperson cited two reasons for Tines decision to manufacture in Ireland. Access to a sufficient amount of milk of high quality is the most important reason, together with the fact that the Irish agricultural sector is highly developed with high animal welfare.

The new plant will mean Tine will no longer manufacture Jarlsberg in Norway for international markets. At present, around half of Jarlsbergs total production is carried out in Norway, with a second site in the US manufacturing the rest.

Tine will still produce Jarlsberg in Norway for its domestic market. Asked if there would be a reduction in jobs in Norway, the spokesperson said: Not directly. We are conducting a change in our factory structure to meet expanding demand for several dairy products in Norway. We will still manufacture Jarlsberg in Norway for export markets until a plant in Ireland is in full production.

Dairygold chairman James Lynch said production at the plant is scheduled to start in 2019. Tines decision to invest alongside Dairygold on the Mogeely site reflects a strong vote of confidence in the commitment of our farmers and staff to quality dairy production at all levels.
The Air Force bomber pilot who oversees U.S. Strategic Commands nuclear forces answers to the call sign Nuke.

Its a moniker with a history going back 69 years, to Aug. 6, 1945.

Thats the day the grandfather and namesake of Brig. Gen. Paul Warfield Tibbets IV piloted the mission that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.

The bomb killed between 90,000 and 166,000 Japanese people, most of them civilians. But it also heralded the end of World War II and ended the need for an invasion of the Japanese mainland. Historians say the planned invasion, called Operation Downfall, might have killed as many as 1 million American soldiers and up to 10 million Japanese soldiers and civilians.

For his efforts, then-Col. Paul W. Tibbets Jr. was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Armys second-highest award for valor. The unit he organized and commanded, the 509th Composite Group of the U.S. Army Air Forces, would go down in history because of its momentous mission to deploy and drop the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki from its base on the western Pacific island of Tinian.

It is an honor to be related to someone like Paul Tibbets (Jr.), said Tibbets IV, 47, who took over as StratComs deputy director for nuclear operations in February. I welcome that part of my heritage.

In that job, he is responsible for StratComs nuclear mission, including overseeing the day-to-day readiness of the nations ballistic-missile submarines, ground-based ICBMs and strategic bombers.

In a sense, Tibbets IV is the heir to his grandfathers mission, which was to organize a unit capable of deploying nuclear bombs. Americas current arsenal includes 4,800 warheads. In his grandfathers day, there were two  and he used them both.

Of course, their circumstances are quite different. Tibbets Jr.s mission was to use his bombs to win a war. Tibbets IVs job is to use the nations nuclear stockpile to prevent one.

Its a different world today, Tibbets IV said during a recent interview at StratCom headquarters on Offutt Air Force Base near Bellevue. This is serious business that requires a safe, secure and effective deterrent capability.

Tibbets IV also must restore confidence in a nuclear force that has been hit by a series of scandals in the past year. And the aging weapons, as well as the platforms that deliver them, are badly in need of an expensive upgrade even as Congress has cut defense spending and rivals China and Russia are improving their arsenals.

What were all challenged to do is do the best with what we have, Tibbets IV said.

The familys love of flying began on a warm Miami winter day in 1927, when Tibbets Jr. was 12. He took his first flight in a biplane hired by his father  the first Paul Tibbets, a Miami candy distributor.

The elder Tibbets wanted to toss free samples of a then-new candy bar called Baby Ruth to people on the ground at Hialeah Park racetrack. Tibbets Jr. did the tossing and found a calling in the air.

Nothing else would satisfy me, once I was given an exhilarating sample of the life of an airman, Tibbets Jr. said in a 2002 interview with the online magazine Airport Journals. He died in 2007, at age 92.

He joined the Army Air Corps 10 years after that first flight, disappointing his father, who wanted him to be a doctor. But his mother, Enola Gay Tibbets, encouraged him.

Tibbets Jr. climbed quickly through the Army Air Corps ranks and was among the first to fly the B-10 and B-17 bombers. Before World War II, he was a personal pilot and hunting buddy of Brig. Gen. George Patton.

After the war started, he flew 25 B-17 missions over Europe and ferried top generals Lt. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower and Maj. Gen. Mark Clark, on overseas missions. He served on the 12th Air Force staff of Maj. Gen. Jimmy Doolittle in North Africa.

Tibbets Jr. was called home in early 1943 to work out problems with the new B-29 bomber still in development. He helped set up a school for B-29 instructor pilots in Grand Island, Nebraska. He was promoted to full colonel before he turned 30, while setting up the 509th Composite Group.

In May 1945, Tibbets Jr. handpicked the aircraft that would become the Enola Gay from the assembly line at the Martin bomber plant at Offutt Field. He had the name painted on the nose of the aircraft the night before the Hiroshima mission, in honor of his mother.

He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross immediately upon his return to Tinian from the 12-hour Hiroshima raid. The Japanese surrendered nine days later, spurred by the dropping of a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki.

Tibbets Jr.s military career would stretch two more decades. He was an advisor on nuclear bombing tests in the Bikini Atoll in 1946 and in the 1950s aided in the development of the B-47 jet bomber. He wrapped up his career with a two-year stint as a military attache in India. He retired from the Air Force as a brigadier general in 1966.

Tibbets IV was born about the time his grandfather retired. But he said it was his pharmacist father, Paul Tibbets III, who influenced him to join the military more than his grandfather, whom he didnt know well until he was an adult.

(My grandfather) was busy, I was busy, and we lived in different parts of the country, Tibbets IV said. Growing up in Alabama, Tibbets IV enjoyed youth service through organizations like the Key Club, an organization for young people affiliated with the Kiwanis.

His father, who served 30 years in the Army Reserve, suggested Tibbets IV channel his desire to serve into a military career.

He loved that job as a part-timer in the Reserves more than his day job as a pharmacist in a hospital, Tibbets IV recalled. I trusted my fathers advice. It made sense to me.

Tibbets IV liked aviation, so he applied to the Air Force Academy in 1985 and received an appointment.

His grandfather was delighted. But the elder Tibbets knew carrying the famous name might sometimes pose a burden for his grandson. He gave Tibbets IV some advice before he left for his plebe year.

He said, Youve got an exciting career ahead of you, Tibbets IV recalled. People are going to know you because of your name. Just remember: Its your career, not mine.

After graduation, he qualified for flight training. He wanted to fly bombers because he liked the idea of working with the larger crews that typically fly bombers.

Its a team spirit. And we love it, Tibbets IV said.

Over the years, he would fly both the B-1 Lancer and the B-2 Spirit bombers. He earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for exceptional courage, skill and endurance during a 30-hour B-2 combat mission flown over Yugoslavia April 8, 1999.

At the time, Tibbets IV was a pilot with the 509th Bomb Wing  the heir to the unit his grandfather commanded in 1945. Later, he would command the 393rd Bomb Squadron, which also had been part of his grandfathers unit during the war. And he would command an air wing in Asia that was supporting the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Last year, serving in a senior position with the Air Force Global Strike Command, he qualified as a pilot in the B-52 bomber. Hes one of a small group of pilots to fly all three of the Air Forces long-range bombers, along with the B-1 and the B-2.

In his grandfathers later years, Tibbets IV and Tibbets Jr. got together more often. The best time spent together, though, came in 1998, when they flew together in Fifi, the last flyable model of the B-29.

Anyone who looks at the photo my grandfather and I took in the cockpit of Fifi that day will notice I am grinning ear-to-ear, Tibbets IV said in an email.

Now he works in an office just down the road from the former Martin Bomber building where his grandfather selected the aircraft that was named for his great-grandmother.

It holds special meaning, knowing the history that took place there, he said.

Of course, bearing the Tibbets name links him not only to a famous grandfather, but also to a controversial moment in history.

Tibbets IV has never visited Hiroshima, where the Aug. 6 anniversary is noted with somber ceremonies in Peace Park, near the epicenter of the explosion.

He defers to his late grandfather, who repeated in interviews to the end of his life his view that the attack saved both American and Japanese lives.

Those guys understood, We were at war. War is hell. We want to bring it to an end,  Tibbets IV said. We did the best we could.
LINCOLN  Nebraska home-school families turned out in force Tuesday to denounce new rules that they described as tyranny and government interference in religion.

Speakers at a public hearing said the proposed rules go beyond state law and would impose unnecessary and onerous deadlines and paperwork.

More than 200 people filled a room in Lincoln and satellite sites in Grand Island and Scottsbluff for the hearing.

We have a God-given right and responsibility to educate our children our way, said Kirby Wilson, a home-school parent from Kearney.

But Russ Inbody, a state education official, said the proposed rules were not intended to create more burdens on home schoolers.

Rather, they were aimed at clarifying the status of home-school students, so local school officials and law enforcement know they are not violating Nebraskas beefed up truancy laws.

Were not trying to control anybody, Inbody said.

The proposed rules were prompted by a truancy case against a Farnam, Neb., couple that went all the way to the Nebraska Supreme Court.

Eric Thacker and Gail Morgan-Thacker were convicted of violating Nebraskas compulsory education law in 2011 because they refused to enroll their children in public school while filing paperwork to set up a home school.

The former New Jersey residents planned to start their home-school year in November and file the paperwork 30 days prior, as required under current state rules.

But the public school started Aug. 17, leaving a gap when the children were at home but not listed as being home schooled.

The state high court ruled in the Thackers favor at the end of May.

The proposed rules would move up the deadline for parents to file paperwork notifying the state their children will be taught at home.

Current regulations require parents to file notification 30 days before a home school starts operating and by July 15 each following year.

As proposed, the deadline would move to July 1 for most home-school parents. People moving to the state after that date would have to file when they become Nebraska residents.

People making the decision mid-year to start home schooling would have to file as soon as practicable. Those parents could not pull their children out of public or private school before getting state acknowledgment of their home-school status

State officials said the changes would give the state more time to process paperwork and notify school districts which children will be home schooled.

But home schoolers see the proposed rules as a creep toward more government oversight.

Nebraska has allowed children to be home schooled or taught in an unapproved private school since 1984. The home-school law was passed following a long battle by Christian groups.

Parents who want to home school need not get approval from the state but must notify state officials of their plans. About 7,200 Nebraska kids are home schooled.

But Haley Buell, a senior who has been home schooled, said the earlier paperwork deadlines would give parents less time to choose the right curriculum for their children.

The filings must include information about the planned program of instruction. Most curriculum fairs take place in May and June.

Buell also objected to the idea that students would have to stay in a public or private school while waiting for state acknowledgment of the home school, which could take up to 30 days.

She pointed to the attack on a Lincoln Pius X High School student as an example of a case where parents may decide to get their child out of a school right away.

David Lostroh, legislative liaison for the Nebraska Christian Home Educators Association, questioned the legality of the proposed regulations.

Nebraska law does not allow for a waiting period when a family decides to start home schooling, he said. Instead, a parents choice takes effect when the notification is filed.

Lostroh called the proposed rules an imposition and a distraction on a parents ability to home school, and no real benefit.

Jolene Catlett, speaking from Grand Island, said she doesnt believe any of the changes are needed. She said the Thacker case has been the only one of its kind and doesnt justify the proposed changes to notification rules for new home schoolers.

Omaha State Sen. Beau McCoy, a Republican candidate for governor, did not attend the hearing but submitted written testimony opposing the changes.

He said the proposed rules not only ignore parental control and parental choice, but current law.

State Board of Education member John Sieler said at a recent meeting that the rule change amounts to over-regulation.

He said almost all home-school parents are acting in good faith and noted that 2011 Miss America Teresa Scanlan was home schooled in Nebraska.

No decision was made on the proposed rules Tuesday. They could undergo some revisions before being presented to the State Board of Education, which will make the final decision.
PLEASANTON  For the past 30 years at the end of the Memorial Day services at the Pleasanton Cemetery, all that could be heard was the flapping of American flags in the wind and the humming of a distant airplane.

Monday, the plane approached the cemetery from the south and could clearly be seen flying only 100 feet from the ground. The plane circled 270 degrees to the right and climbed above 4,000 feet, flying west and out of sight.

The flight across the cemetery is the Gone West Flyby in memory of fallen pilots. It has been a 30-year tradition at the Pleasanton Cemetery. Norman Hand, 85, of Pleasanton has flown the tribute route every year in his 1947 Piper L-14 airplane.

Its just a tribute to the fliers thats gone west, he said of why he has done the flight every year.

As Hand flew his plane west for the last time this year, he decided it was time to sell the plane.

Hands health has deterred him from flying solo the past few years. He said he didnt pass a required medical test because a catheter was used to examine his heart. Though the catheter wasnt permanent, he said he was told he might as well turn in his license now.

Hell, Im all right. I can do anything you ever could, Hand said.

But, You dont argue with the feds, he said.

Because Hand isnt medically cleared to fly solo, he has been accompanied by co-pilots on his flights. This year, Don Streeter of Holdrege went with him on his last flight and will take over the flyby tradition at the Pleasanton Cemetery Memorial Day service next year in his Piper J-3 Cub.

Hands Piper L-14 was recently featured in Aviators magazine, and Hand said he heard that a copy of the magazine was hanging in Switzerland at the European Fly-In. Hand said the advertising is what sold the plane.

He told the Hub Saturday that he had already sold the plane to a man in Minnesota, who has a Piper L-13 and Piper L-15, but Hand told the buyer he couldnt have it until after Memorial Day.

Its bittersweet, you know, its kind of like losing a best friend you know, Hand said of selling the plane.

Hands connection with the plane began 30 years ago when he bought and restored the plane in his machine shop, Hand Machining. The restoration took 2 years.

Hand said only 14 of the Piper L-14s were made because when ordered in the summer of 1945 by the U.S. military, World War II was just ending. The plane was never used overseas for that same reason, but its original purpose was to pick up an injured soldier in the battlefield, Hand said.

It can hold one person on a gurney and the passenger seat can fold down so a medic could take care of a patient, Hand said.

It was also built to fly as slow as 20 miles per hour, Hand said, and could fit in tight places.

So you could sneak up to the front of the line, you know, pick up your patient and get the hell out of there, Hand added.

He said he usually cruises at 89 miles per hour.

Hand tore the plane completely apart so he could restore it to its original state.

Hand traveled to the U.S. Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio, where he retrieved a copy of the planes parts catalog. He then interpreted measurements from the catalog.

Hand said he also specifically built an oven to bend the planes windshield, and he overhauled the engine. The yellow paint on the plane was then replaced with a U.S. Amy green.

The Piper L-14 was not Hands first experience with airplanes. He said he began riding on the late Floyd Capelluns airplanes at Hazard.

Normans wife, June, said: Well, he (Capellun) found this kid (Hand) would fly with him, so he would come down and pick him up. That left me to milk the cows, she joked.

Once I got off the ground, I just kind of like the feeling, Hand added. The old bug bit.

Hand bought his first airplane, a Piper J-3 Cub, in 1952 for $400. Hand also owned Piper Tri-Pacer and Navion airplanes in his lifetime, and his love of aviation was passed down to his children and grandchildren.

Hands daughter Sherry Fisher of Scottsbluff has her pilots license, and he and June have found it convenient flying west to visit her and her family.

Hand said now that he has sold his plane he will fly as a passenger with his friends and family.

I will have to tell her (Fisher), I will pay for your trip back if you come back once in a while, Hand joked.
Thirteen state senators  including five Republicans  pushed back Monday against Gov. Pete Ricketts call that platform Republicans, who will consistently support his positions, be elected to the Nebraska Legislature.

In a public statement, the senators expressed concern that Ricketts was trying to add partisanship to Nebraskas officially nonpartisan Legislature and noted that the states constitution calls for a separation of powers between the Governors Office and the Legislature.

Governor Ricketts believes political party trumps principle, the state senators wrote. Our nonpartisan, unicameral legislature has lasted for 80 years, and, barring the will of the people for a new legislative experiment, we will not surrender our nonpartisan and constitutional duties.

Ricketts had made his comments at the state Republican convention on May 14.

A spokesman for the governor provided a brief response Monday night: Gov. Ricketts respects the separation of powers delineated in the constitution. It is appropriate in a public forum for the governor, or anyone else, to

point out the public votes cast by legislators. The collective will of the voters is greater than the will of any elected official.

The lawmakers in their statement quoted George Norris, the former U.S. senator and founder of the states nonpartisan, unicameral Legislature: Qualifications, not politics, should be the criterion for public service.

Today, his message is more important than ever, the senators wrote. We support the Nebraska Constitution and not any particular political party.

The senators signing the letter were Laura Ebke of Crete (Republican); Mike Gloor of Grand Island (Republican); Ernie Chambers (independent), Tanya Cook (Democrat), Burke Harr (Democrat), Sara Howard (Democrat), Bob Krist (Republican) and Heath Mello (Democrat), all of Omaha; Colby Coash (Republican), Kathy Campbell (Republican), Adam Morfeld (Democrat) and Patty Pansing Brooks (Democrat), all of Lincoln; and Kate Sullivan (Democrat) of Cedar Rapids.

They said: Individually we are Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians and Independents. Together we are the singular Nebraska Legislature  an institution which operates through collaboration and expertise to uphold its distinct powers and privileges to create laws and policies.

The statement was released Monday, Memorial Day, but was written by committee over the past couple of weeks, expressing ideas all the senators could agree on, Harr said by phone Monday evening.

We want to make it abundantly clear that partisan politics does not work, Harr said. He said he would push back against a Democratic governor the same way.

We believe in the importance of nonpartisanship, he said. The Washington way doesnt work.
Theres a meme floating around the Internet: If Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are in a boat and it capsizes, who wins?

America.

A year ago, it was almost unthinkable that the Republican Partys presidential nominee would be the bombastic real estate mogul, especially given the partys deep bench and the strength and talent of its field.

As many pundits have explained, Trumps views and past statements belie the claim that he is Republican at all.

Lies, it seems, are Trumps currency.

Even six months ago, it was laughable that Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders would not only still be in the race by now but would also be giving the likely Democratic nominee, Clinton, a run for her money.

Sanders is still drawing huge numbers of devoted supporters to his rallies and has vowed not to suspend his campaign before the partys July convention in Philadelphia, further delaying Clintons attempts to coalesce the party around her.

The Republican and Democratic parties are both in turmoil, sharply divided over the candidates who have survived the primary season.

Come November, American voters will face a choice between two of the most dishonest, disliked and corrupt candidates in modern political history.

Which is why the calls for a third-party run are not only compelling, but such a candidacy may represent the only acceptable choice for millions of Americans.

While many anti-Trump conservatives began floating the idea of an independent run after Trump started collecting delegates, support has increased in recent weeks.

Several names have been suggested, including an unabashed Trump critic, Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, and former Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, both Republicans.

But the most probable candidate for a third-party claim is Mitt Romney.

Romneys name isnt necessarily associated with victory  he failed to earn the Republican nomination in 2008 and lost a disappointing general election race to President Barack Obama in 2012. Criticized for his stiffness and capacity for making politically tone-deaf comments, Romney did not garner enough enthusiasm in his own party to defeat a strong incumbent.

But he quickly proved that charisma is not the equivalent of leadership or wisdom.

In the ensuing years, Romney has become a respected party elder, in part because, as writer David French explains, hes been vindicated by events.

Perhaps more important, Romney possesses integrity, a virtue lacking in both front-runner rivals. In March, Romney addressed the Republican Party passionately, detailing why Trump was not acceptable to represent the GOP in the general election.

He opted not to endorse any of the candidates who remained in the field but made clear that even with Clinton as a rival, conservatives should feel uncomfortable voting for Trump.

To be clear, were Romney to stage a third-party run, hed likely endure vilification within his own party.

Still, a recent Washington Post-ABC poll tested a hypothetical three-way race and found that among registered voters, Clinton gets 37 percent, Trump 35 percent and Romney 22 percent. With so much at stake this election cycle, and sadly no good choices available, little time remains for an alternative candidate.

Still, a Romney run would represent a better option for conservatives and a better option for America than either of the current candidates.

Cynthia M. Allen is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Readers may send her email at cmallen@star-telegram.com.
The resource extraction and knowledge sectors can complement each other, futurist Jesse Hirsh told a crowd at the B.C. Chamber of Commerce convention at the Delta Grand hotel on Monday.
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For the last couple of days, the Twitter medical community has been discussing the latest in a long line of papers attempting to estimate the role of medical error as a cause of death.

A recent entry appeared in the BMJ and was by a surgeon at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Martin Makary, who claims that 251,454 patients die from medical error every year.

Makarys review extrapolated that figure from three papers published before 2009 which had a combined 35 supposedly preventable deaths. Thats not a typo: 35 deaths in all. One of the papers stated that all nine deaths in three tertiary care hospitals were preventable. In his BMJ paper, Makary says, some argue that all iatrogenic deaths are preventable.

I disagree. I have analyzed other papers on this subject and pointed out that certain complications and deaths are not 100 percent preventable. For example, no study of deep venous thrombosis and pulmonary embolism shows total efficacy of any prevention strategy. And some patients will suffer myocardial infarctions and die even when they are properly treated.

In this months BMJ Quality and Safety, Dr. Helen Hogan of the Department of Health Service Research and Policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine discusses the problems associated with using preventable deaths as a measure of quality.

In the UK, 40 percent of deaths occur in patients over 80 years old, and half of the people in the UK end their lives in hospitals. Hogan says, Expected deaths as a result of underlying disease account for a large proportion of mortality, making it difficult to identify a signal of preventable deaths due to problems with care. When errors occur, it can be difficult to decide how much they contribute to the mortality of elderly patients. Whether a death is preventable or not is often subjective and may depend upon the completeness of records and the hindsight bias of the reviewers.

The largest retrospective case record review done in England found that only 3.6 percent of deaths were preventable. Hogan writes, The vast majority of deaths do not involve quality problems [and] preventability of death is often difficult to determine.

Who dies in U.S. hospitals? According to the Centers for Disease Control, about 715,000 people died in hospitals in 2010. Of those who died, 75 percent were age 65 and over, and 27 percent of in-hospital deaths were in patients 85 and over. The average age of patients who died in a hospital in the first decade of this century was 72 to 73.

Makary wants the CDC to start tracking medical errors. In a Forbes blog post about his paper, he said in an interview, We need to insure legal protections so doctors can report accurately without repercussions.

I laughed out loud at that. I dont think there is a doctor in the United States who would be stupid enough to write medical error on a death certificate for any patient.

About 18 years ago, The Institute of Medicine called for a culture of confession in its first report on medical error. So far, that culture has not materialized.

Makary co-authored a 2015 paper entitled Early hospital readmission for gastrointestinal-related complications predicts long-term mortality after pancreatectomy. Hospital readmission within 30 days for gastrointestinal complications occurred in 128 (21.5 percent) of 595 patients who underwent pancreatectomy from 2005 to 2010, and 31 (29 percent) of those patients admitted within 30 days of their surgery died.

Did Makary or his colleagues write medical error on the death certificates of any of these 31 patients or were all of the deaths not preventable?

Medical errors do occur, and they should be identified and prevented. Makarys essay shines no new light, only heat, on the subject.

Skeptical Scalpel is a surgeon who blogs at his self-titled site, Skeptical Scalpel.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
Leaving the European Union would cause a serious shock to the UK economy that could lead to 950,000 job losses and leave the average household 3,700 worse off by 2020, a report commissioned by the CBI business lobby group has warned.

In a stark warning, an analysis conducted by accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers for the CBI said that Brexit could cost the UK economy 100bn  the equivalent of 5% of GDP  by 2020 and would cause long-lasting economic damage from which it would never recover.

Household incomes could be between 2,100 and 3,700 lower if Britain voted to leave the EU, while the UKs unemployment rate, currently one of the lowest in the EU at 5.1%, would be between 2 and 3 percentage points higher, with 950,000 jobs potentially lost.

Carolyn Fairbairn, the CBIs director general, said: This analysis shows very clearly why leaving the European Union would be a real blow for living standards, jobs and growth. The savings from reduced EU budget contributions and regulation are greatly outweighed by the negative impact on trade and investment. Even in the best case this would cause a serious shock to the UK economy.

The CBI report angered Brexit campaigners, who believe the government is trying to scare voters into supporting Britain remaining in the EU.

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of Vote Leave, said: Even in the CBIs skewed choice of scenarios for exit, they are forced to admit that employment and the economy will continue to grow after we Vote Leave.

The EU funded CBI are desperate to recreate the same scare stories they spread when they urged Britain to scrap the pound and join the euro. They were wrong then and they are wrong now. If we want to take back control and strike the kind of free-trade deal the CBI refuses to even consider, the only safe option is to Vote Leave.

By taking a clear stance on Brexit, the CBI differs from the smaller business lobby group the British Chambers of Commerce, which is trying to be impartial. It recently suspended its director general, John Longworth, from his post after he suggested that Britain would be better off outside the EU.

The analysis came as former prime minister Sir John Major warned Britain faced a momentous decision in 23 June referendum

This vote will be momentous. It will decide Britains place in the world for generations to come, he said, before concluding: It will be a fateful choice: Great Britain or Little Britain.

Writing in the Telegraph, he set out a series of reasons for staying in the EU. When we joined the EU we were the sick man of Europe: today, as a result of our domestic reforms and membership of the European Single Market, we have the best performing economy in Europe, Major said.

The CBI said PwC examined two different exit scenarios: one at the optimistic end of the range, and the other assuming difficult trade negotiations that eventually result in trade deals being concluded. It stressed that much more pessimistic scenarios could be envisaged.

Under both scenarios, UK living standards, GDP and employment would be significantly reduced if Britain left the EU, according to the report. Even if a free trade agreement with the EU was secured rapidly, the analysis suggests GDP could be 3% lower by 2020. Economic growth between 2017 and 2020 could be much lower than if Britain stayed in the EU, and possibly wiped out altogether in 2017 and 2018.

Fairbairn warned: The economy would slowly recover over time, but never quite track back to where it would have been. Leaving the EU would mean a smaller economy in 2030.

While other organisations such as US investment banks JP Morgan and Citi along with BlackRock, the worlds largest fund manager, have warned that a Brexit vote would damage Britains economy, the CBIs analysis is the most detailed yet into the potential impact on the economy.

Last week a new report from the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at the London School of Economics also warned that UK trade and living standards would suffer. Average incomes would fall by 850 a household in the most optimistic post-Brexit scenario for UK trade, in which Britain adopts Norways model and remains part of the EUs single market. But the CEP estimated that the impact from reduced trade and lower productivity could be as high as 6,400 per household, similar to the decline seen at the height of the financial crisis in 2008-09.

The governments first official analysis into how Brexit would unfold, published last month, predicted a decade of uncertainty that would hit financial markets, investment and the value of the pound.

Fairbairn and Rain Newton-Smith, the CBI economics director, will set out the case for continued EU membership during an economics lecture to senior business leaders at the London Business School this morning. They will talk about the lack of attractive alternatives to full EU membership and the impact of leaving on trade, regulation and investment.

Fairbairn will say that if the UK leaves the EU without a free trade deal, 90% of British exports to the EU could face tariffs, with sectors such as textiles and transport equipment hit particularly hard.

In the CBI and PwCs report, under the FTA scenario, the most optimistic Brexit outcome, the UK negotiates a free trade agreement with no tariffs on exports and imports between the UK and the EU by 2020. As it is no longer in the single market, it experiences a modest rise in non-trade barriers. It has existing free trade agreements with other countries currently held by the EU, and signs a new trade deal with the US.

The WTO scenario assumes the UK fails to secure a deal with the EU and trades under World Trade Organisation rules after leaving. Tariff and non-tariff barriers with the EU rise significantly. The UK loses its existing free trade agreements with other countries, but renegotiates them on the same terms by 2026 and signs a deal with the US in the same year.

The PwC research finds that under the WTO scenario investment in Britain could fall by a quarter by 2020, and would still be 10% lower by 2030, compared with the UK staying in the EU. With a free trade agreement, investment would fall by 16% by 2020.

The analysis comes a week after the CBI published a survey of its members, which employ a third of all private sector employees in Britain. It found that 80% believe being part of the EU is best for their business and 77% said it was better for the UK economy as whole.

The Britain Stronger In Europe campaign will today launch its biggest leaflet drop to date, delivering them to more than 20m households across the UK.

Copyright  2016 theguardian.com. All rights reserved.
Navy Sailor Cody Henken salutes the flag while standing at attention at the USS Saratoga memorial, as he takes part in the Memorial Day Ceremony at Ivy Green Cemetery in Bremerton on Monday. (MEEGAN M. REID / KITSAP SUN)

SHARE Monni Hawkins, 7, puts his arm around his father, Mervin Hawkins, of Port Orchard, as they visit the gravesite of Monni's grandfather and Mervin's father, Navy veteran Mervin Hawkins, at Ivy Green Cemetery in Bremerton on Monday.(MEEGAN M. REID / KITSAP SUN) Bremerton-Olympic Peninsula Council of the Navy League President Tim Katona (left) and Lt. Col. Scott M. Reed, Commanding Officer, Marine Corps Security Force Battalion Bangor, lay a wreathe into the water during the Memorial Day event on the USS Turner Joy. (MEEGAN M. REID / KITSAP SUN) Petty Office Aaron Deaton (center) plays taps at the end of the Memorial Day ceremony aboard the USS Turner Joy on Monday. (MEEGAN M. REID / KITSAP SUN) Union Jacks and American flags flap in the breeze among the headstones at Ivy Green Cemetery in Bremerton on Monday, May 30, 2016.(MEEGAN M. REID / KITSAP SUN)

By Josh Farley of the Kitsap Sun

BREMERTON  It might've been the giant flag waving in the wind from the fantail of the USS Turner Joy. Perhaps it was the freshly painted Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Ivy Green Cemetery off Naval Avenue. Or 21 booms from the 40 mm saluting guns off the USS Nimitz, one of the city's home-ported aircraft carriers.

Bottom line: if you were in Bremerton Monday, you felt Memorial Day.

"This is a community where really everybody has a connection to the military," U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer told a crowd gathered on the Turner Joy Monday morning.

The famous Vietnam-era destroyer's stern was filled to the gills on a pristine blue-sky day, as Bremerton-Olympic Peninsula Council of the Navy League President Tim Katona and Lt. Col. Scott M. Reed the commanding officer of Marine Corps Security Force Battalion Bangor, sent a wreath into Sinclair Inlet to honor those who might've met a watery grave during battle.

It was a day to pay respects. Reed, in his own remarks, talked about the diversity of those who gave their lives for their country.

"They were ordinary people responding in extraordinary times," Reed said.

Later in the afternoon, Ivy Green Cemetery swelled with a similar ceremony. Those gathered might not know of a volunteer effort taking up weeks beforehand that refurbished grave markers, painted and polished Bremerton's rare Tomb of the Unknown Soldier memorial  among the few in the country  and readied the municipal cemetery for a crowd. Mick Hersey, who restores and maintains memorials all over Kitsap, and Richard Huddy, a Bremerton city councilman, led a small army of volunteers in recent weeks, a group that even cleaned and painted the exteriors of nearby homes.

Meanwhile, at noon, the Nimitz began firing one saluting cannon each minute 21 times in a row.

"We're out here today to pay our respects to all the service members that made the ultimate sacrifice for our great country," said Nimitz Chief Aviation Ordnanceman Russell German. "The 21-gun salute is a tradition that Nimitz is proud to be apart of."
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By Rachel Seymour of the Kitsap Sun

KINGSTON  The Port of Kingston is hoping to give the community's economy a kick with the help of a $35,000 grant from the state's Community Economic Revitalization Board.

The grant, which was awarded this month, will help pay for a feasibility study to develop a plan that will look at ways to grow and support the local and regional economy of Kingston using developed land already owned by the port.

The port also is contributing $12,000 to the study that will help decide how and what to develop on the land by its parking lot at West Kingston Road and Central Avenue.

Ports were founded on developing growth for local economy, according to Jim Pivarnik, the port's executive director, and it is a mandate of the Port of Kingston to support local growth.

Pivarnik started with the Port of Kingston on April 25 after working for the Port of Port Townsend for 15 years.

The two lots being considered for development total 1.33 acres, according to county documents. There is one existing building on the property, which Pivarnik referred to as the "old hill house."

The feasibility study will give the port, and the community, a better idea of what development should take place at the site, and will include options for providing jobs at or above the current median wage, interviews with potential developers to assess market interest, market analysis, along with meetings and workshops with the Kitsap Economic Development Alliance, Kingston Chamber of Commerce and general public.

According to the Port of Kingston's grant application, the goal is to provide long-term revitalization.

Pivarnik said the port will be working to hire a consultant for the project in July and then begin gathering community input into what residents would like to see and what they think can help Kingston's economy.

Once a consultant is hired, community input meetings will be scheduled, Pivarnik said.

The study is expected to be complete early next year.

The Port of Bremerton also received a CERB grant for a similar feasibility study. The port is matching its $49,500 grant with $25,500.
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By Cal Thomas

"Rules are made to be broken" is a saying that has many variations, but perhaps no one has summed up Hillary Clinton's attitude (and Bill's, too) about rules more than the late science-fiction writer, Robert A. Heinlein, who said: "I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do."

In its report on how Hillary Clinton handled her "private" emails while serving as secretary of state, the State Department's inspector general (IG) has found that Hillary Clinton disregarded cyber security guidelines when she used a private computer server. She continues to deny she did anything wrong and falsely claims she turned over "all" of her emails to the State Department after she left office. In fact, she, or members of her team, deleted about 30,000 of them before an investigation of her practices began.

The IG's report chides her, saying she should have "preserved any federal records she created and received on her personal account by printing and filing those records with the related files in the Office of the Secretary. At a minimum, Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department business before leaving government service and, because she did not do so, she did not comply with the Department's policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act."

There are federal penalties for tampering with a smoke detector on an airplane and disobeying flight attendants that can include fines and even jail time. Isn't what Hillary Clinton did far worse than that, if she potentially compromised U.S. secrets?

The IG also says she stonewalled requests by the government for access to her server, which was in her Chappaqua, N.Y., home, with another discovered at an unsecured location in a Denver bathroom closet. Marcel Lazar, the Romanian computer hacker calling himself "Guccifer," claims to have hacked into Clinton's servers. He pleaded guilty to the charge before a Virginia judge this week. Might there also be Chinese and Russian hackers out there who've also had a look at Clinton's emails?

Hillary Clinton has claimed she only used private email for her daughter's wedding and yoga classes. Who believes that, other than her partisan supporters and uninformed voters? High-ranking government officials are aware of the regulations governing their tenure while in office and their responsibilities for the handling of records once they leave it. Will Hillary Clinton's failure to comply with the State Department's policies on records necessarily lead to an indictment? That is what an FBI investigation is attempting to determine.

Hillary Clinton has invoked the "everybody has done it" defense, but again that's not true. She often cites former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who also used a private email server, but as a Wall Street Journal editorial notes, Mr. Powell's use of private email was limited, and he never set up an unsecure server in his home, not to mention a Denver bathroom.

Something else from the IG's report that firmly rebuts Hillary Clinton's defense: "Notification is required when a user suspects compromise of, among other things, a personally owned device containing personally identifiable information." But the IG found "no evidence" that she or her aides complied.

For years the Clintons have skirted laws and practiced disinformation, rhetorical gymnastics ("It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is.") obfuscation, changing the subject, non sequiturs and anything else that might block their enrichment or achievement of political goals.

This time, Hillary Clinton should not be allowed to get away with it, nor should she have her incidents of malfeasance rewarded by being elected president of the United States.
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By John Crisp

Not that he needs my particular encouragement, but Bernie Sanders should ignore calls for party unity and continue to wage his campaign until the Democratic convention in July.

I have my own political opinions, of course, but this issue has less to do with politics than with patriotism. Ironically, Americans who really want to put America first may have to put aside their party and factional loyalties in service of the well-being of the nation.

This includes Sanders supporters who threaten to stay away from the polls if Hillary Clinton is nominated, as well as Republicans whose natural inclination is to support their party, despite its nominee. If we all have to become Never Trumpers to protect the nation, then let's get started.

Back to Sanders in a moment. The two candidates most likely to compete for the presidency in November are Clinton and Donald Trump, who, as others have noted, are two of the most disliked candidates in decades.

A recent ABC/Washington Post poll saw Trump receive a 60 percent unfavorable rating and found Clinton not far behind  or ahead  at 53 percent. The difference between the two is that Trump's unfavorable rating is likely to go down while Clinton's is likely to go up.

We saw the worst of Trump from the beginning, but his crude, condescending, unfiltered narcissism didn't put off primary voters. And now that he appears to have the nomination wrapped up, he wisely is nurturing a more evenhanded, moderate, presidential image. And as more leading Republicans accept the inevitability of his candidacy, his unfavorable rating is likely to go only one way: down.

Clinton, on the other hand, appeared to have the nomination wrapped up from the beginning but still can't achieve an unfavorable rating below 50 percent. While more scrutiny of Clinton is hard to imagine, if she gets the nomination, the scandalous issues Republicans will raise will have to compete for attention.

Benghazi. The Clinton Foundation. Her reactions to her husband's affairs. Travelgate. Whitewater. The Wall Street speeches. The list is impressive. Last week, Trump even brought up the suicide of a Bill Clinton deputy White House counsel, Vince Foster.

The allegations against Clinton don't have to have merit to have legs. But it appears that some of them do have merit. Her vote in favor of the ill-advised Iraq War, for example, or the fabricated sniper fire in Sarajevo.

And on May 25, the State Department's inspector general delivered to Congress a report critical of Clinton's use of a personal email server installed at her residence during her four-year tenure as secretary of state. Clinton has already admitted that conducting State Department business on a private server was a mistake. But the inspector's report calls into question a number of the arguments that Clinton has made in defense of the practice and, at best, portrays her as careless and capricious with regard to the department's policies and regulations.

Where does this leave Sanders? If Clinton is nominated, I doubt that many Sanders supporters would actually vote for Trump. But last week an avid tea party friend of mine said that if he had to choose between Trump and Sanders, he might well vote for Sanders.

Of course, this makes no sense politically. But it's a strange political season and his theoretical vote for Sanders might have as much rational depth as do the reasons many voters give for supporting Trump or Clinton.

In fact, Trump and Clinton notwithstanding, American politics may still have room for a truly authentic politician who doesn't equivocate about where he wants to take the country.

So Sanders should stay in the race. One likely candidate for president has trouble with truth and transparency and, after decades in the public eye, still has trouble getting people to like her.

The other candidate has trouble with reality and represents a genuinely scary turn for our republic.

Sanders? We could do worse.

John M. Crisp, an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service, teaches in the English Department at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas. Readers may send him email at jcrisp@delmar.edu.
Stuff reports:

Wellington Airport is close to reaching a deal to allow Uber drivers to pick up passengers, which could change the payment terms for all taxi services to the airport. Currently Uber, a private hire service where passengers order cars on mobile phones, is not meant to pick up passengers from the airport, as doing so avoids paying the $5 fee faced by regular taxis. Steve Sanderson, chief executive of Wellington Airport has threatened to trespass drivers who breach the rules It was only fair that Uber paid the same as taxis, as they were operating a commercial business on private property, Sanderson said. We want all operators who operate transport services out of the airport to all be on a level playing field, Sanderson said, adding that he expected to secure an agreement within Uber within a month. Taxis and Uber will pay the same amount.

Thats good. But my understanding is from Day One Uber has been willing to pay this fee. It is the Airport that has refused to let them in, to keep the taxi companies happy. Regardless, good to see progress.

While currently taxis are only charged fees for picking up passengers at the airport, Sanderson confirmed that this could be replaced with a split between pick-ups and drop-offs. We are looking at other options of making the fees in the airport more equal to arrivals and departures.

Sounds sensible.

Taxi Federation acting executive director Tim Reddish said Uber and other similar services should pay the same as taxis, and this should also take into account the money taxis paid to wait outside the baggage reclaim area. Any deal struck with Uber has to be on an even playing field basis, Reddish said. The taxi companies that have a presence at the airport tender significant money for that, and that determines that Uber should be paying the same sort of money.

No. That is a decision made by individual taxi companies to have a rank. Why impose their business model on a company with a different model. Uber cars do not wait around on ranks. They come when a passenger wants them.

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Dan Ryan categorically states that home-based businesses won't decline because of the improved job market and that, in fact, corporate staffing trends support them. He's the principal at Ryan Search & Consulting Inc. in Franklin, Tenn. (Credit: Courtesy of Ryan Search & Consulting Inc.)

Many people resorted to home-based businesses during periods of limited job opportunities. They had to earn enough to cover their own insurance or survive, at a measure of risk, without it. The younger they were, the easier it was to forgo benefits their corporate peers simply expected  regular paychecks, health insurance, paid days off and vacations. They were a hearty lot, doing what they had to do.

Did they fit in the corporate world? Often, not. Small business ownership out of their homes was clearly a second choice for those who were hard-working and competent and sought the benefits of corporate existence. It was a solution to a large problem.

Fast-forward to todays improved economy, which offers traditional work again and to a changed corporate attitude toward home-based work, facilitated by technology and its expense-cutting. Will home-based business owners return to a newly welcoming corporate world?

It doesnt seem likely. Eoin (pronounced Owen) O'Toole, co-founder and managing partner of San Franciscos Arete Partners Inc., conducts executive search in the mid-level pool of people who might leave their home-based businesses, if this trend were to materialize. Specializing in technology, Arete Partners recruits for fintech to biotech, software to big data, and all companies in digital transformation. OToole has noticed major shifts in the marketplace that give these mini-businesses cache.

Two recessions have proved wrong that when companies are larger and centralized, theyre too big to fail, he remarks. In other words, the smallness of home-based enterprises is no longer held against them.

He also notes contributors to the popularity of small business in the shift to retain Americas businesses here rather than relocate offshore and the increased use of local businesses. In addition, lending services for small- to medium-sized businesses have allowed greater freedom and capital, he says, making them more durable.

A decision to remain home-based may also be supported by the economy, from the perspective of Michelle Garrett of Garrett Public Relations in Columbus, Ohio, who writes and handles media relations for start-ups to corporations. When the economy and job market improve, Garrett observes, those of us with home-based service businesses probably have more opportunities to win projects. So, that would be another reason to continue working for oneself  or perhaps a good time to launch a home-based service business.

Dan Ryan would agree that an improved economy doesnt sound the death knell for these mini-enterprises. Principal at the talent acquisition firm Ryan Search & Consulting Inc. in Franklin, Tennessee, he searches widely in such industries as health care, architecture, engineering, construction and manufacturing. Ryan mentions that the Affordable Care Act brings health care within reach of people who arent corporate.

Home-based and new businesses will flourish, Ryan predicts, because people are becoming more entrepreneurial because of the way work is getting done. A number of typical corporate employees weve worked with are starting to see the value of (hanging) their own shingle.

People with a particular skill set and valid network realize that they can actually sell themselves in the market, he continues. (Also), many organizations see value in buying what they need rather than putting someone on the payroll.

The Internet and the mobile revolution changed everything, according to Vadim Bichutskiy, director of data science at Arlington, Virginias Innovizo LLC, a data science and technology consultancy. He finds technology less strict than previously, with many companies allowing flexible schedules. The mentality the industry seems to be adopting is for people to be on-site only when necessary and just to do their work. Yet he concedes that hed consider an offer from Google.

(Knoxville News Sentinel syndicated columnist Mildred Culp, Ph.D., welcomes your questions. Contact her at culp@workwise.net.  2016 Passage Media.)
By Ed Marcum of the Knoxville News Sentinel

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam told Rotary Club members Tuesday that he shares concerns that a tough trade stance if Donald Trump were elected president could prompt a trade war damaging to the Tennessee economy.

He also said he was generally against government mandating people's bathroom use and felt that it is a local issue. These views were all in response to questions from the audience as Haslam addressed a noon meeting of the Rotary Club of Knoxville at the Knoxville Marriott downtown.

After a brief talk about state accomplishments, Haslam took questions from the audience and was asked if he had concerns that if Donald Trump were elected president, he might involve the country in a trade war at a time Tennessee and the Knox County economies have extensive economic ties with other countries.

"I'm actually really worried about this," he said.

Haslam said that within the past few weeks, he wrapped up a trade trip to China, South Korea and Japan and those he spoke with had the same question: "Tell us, does Donald Trump mean what he says?"

Haslam said that, next to California, Tennessee is Japan's largest U.S. trading partner. Tennessee tends to export 25 percent more goods to countries with which it has trade agreements, he said.

It is not realistic to think America can be a completely self-sufficient nation, Haslam said. "And, if you like that thought, then just be prepared for everything you pay for to cost a lot more."

Placing tariffs on foreign goods will just bring tariffs on local goods, he said.

Tennessee is one of 11 states that are suing the federal government over guidance the Obama administration issued to public schools on which bathrooms transgender students may use.

"These are difficult, sensitive, hard issues to think about, and I think they are best handled at the local level," Haslam said.

He said Tennessee school systems are handling the issue and he does not see a need for a state law, but feels the Obama administration's response was an "overreach."
By Don Jacobs of the Knoxville News Sentinel

An attorney representing two East Tennessee pastors accused of human trafficking urged the public to "keep an open mind" as the charges that resulted from a law enforcement sting wend through the court system.

Jason Kennedy, 46, of Knoxville and Zubin Percy Parakh, 32, of Oak Ridge appeared Tuesday in Knox County General Sessions Court for the first time since their arrests earlier in May.

Attorney Gregory P. Isaacs told General Sessions Court Judge Tony Stansberry that prosecutors agreed to a June 20 preliminary hearing for each man. Both men pleaded not guilty.

Kennedy and Parakh are accused of human trafficking and of patronizing prostitution. The human trafficking charges stem from allegations each minister responded to an online advertisement for sex and either expected to meet an underage girl or requested a teenage girl when meeting with undercover officers.

Because the law enforcement sting occurred in a motel near a church, penalties for the patronizing prostitution offenses  upon conviction  can be enhanced from six months to 11 months and 29 days in jail.

After the appearances in court, which lasted less than one minute for each man, Isaacs made a brief statement to the media. He said prostitution stings are "high pressure law enforcement operations that ensnare a lot of people not predisposed" to engage in the conduct for which they are accused.

"I would encourage everyone to keep an open mind as this matter goes forward," Isaacs said.

Each man was ready to pay $100 for sex with an underage teen girl, authorities allege.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the Knoxville Police Department conducted the sting during three days in May. The operation resulted in charges against 27 men and five women.

Kennedy was children's minister at Grace Baptist Church until his arrest. He was released Saturday from jail on a $50,500 bond.

Parakh was a volunteer creative minister at Lifehouse Church in Oak Ridge. He also was dismissed after his arrest. He was released last week from the jail after posting a $100,000 bond.
SHARE Raynella Dossett Leath (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL)

By Jamie Satterfield of the Knoxville News Sentinel

Already thick with plot twists, the case of a black-widow suspect took another turn Tuesday with a judge approving a deal on bond that will set her free pending a new trial.

Special prosecutors Cynthia A. LeCroy-Schemel and Joseph Y. McCoin Jr. offered  with little explanation  a bond recommendation of $50,000 for Raynella Dossett Leath. Her defense team of Joshua Hedrick and Rebecca LeGrand quickly agreed Tuesday afternoon, and Senior Judge Paul Summers inked his approval.

"We are very happy to see Mrs. Leath reunited with her family," the defense attorneys said in a statement to the News Sentinel.

Summers set a new trial date of Jan. 12, 2017.

Leath has twice been accused of killing husbands  former Knox County District Attorney General Ed Dossett, who died in 1992, and Dossett's best friend, David Leath, who died in 2003. She was tried twice in David Leath's shooting death. A jury deadlocked in the first. She was convicted in the second. Prosecutors then dropped similar charges in Dossett's death.

Last month Summers tossed out the first-degree murder conviction in her second husband's death and awarded Raynella Dossett Leath a new trial. Summers ruled former Knox County Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner was so high and pill-obsessed during the January 2010 trial that he robbed Leath of a constitutionally sound proceeding.

That ruling entitled Leath, who was serving a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole after 51 years, a shot at freedom via bond. Tennessee law entitles defendants charged but not yet convicted to bond. Although bond amounts are not prescribed in the law for each offense, bail in first-degree murder cases typically ranges from $250,000 to $1 million.

In a one-page document filed on the issue of bond, prosecutors LeCroy-Schemel and McCoin wrote, "The proof in two difficult trials speaks for itself."

The prosecutors also filed notice Tuesday they intend to ask the state attorney general's office to appeal Summers' decision. It is up to the attorney general's office to decide.

Prosecutors have contended Leath gave Dossett a lethal dose of morphine and staged his death to appear to be the result of a cattle trampling and also drugged her second husband, staging his shooting to appear to be a suicide. After her second husband wound up dead, Dossett's death got a second look.

Baumgartner refused Leath a new trial just days before he was forced to step down amid a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation probe into his buying of painkillers from a felon on probation in his court.
By Hayes Hickman of the Knoxville News Sentinel

A "major person of interest" in the shooting death of a 12-year-old Knoxville boy was booked into a Knox County jail Wednesday morning after his arrest in Chattanooga.

Marquez Travell Billingsley, 18, had been sought for questioning since the April 16 crossfire at Danny Mayfield Park in Mechanicsville that killed Jajuan Latham.

Billingsley was booked into the Roger D. Wilson Detention Facility at 5:14 a.m., according to the jail.

Billingsley's capture was announced Tuesday amid Knoxville Police Chief David Rausch's latest pledge to crack down on gang violence.

Billingsley, who was added to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation's most wanted list May 19, was arrested during a traffic stop in Chattanooga by TBI agents, U.S. marshals and local police Tuesday afternoon, according to a TBI news release.

Authorities have not specified how Billingsley might be connected to the boy's killing, other than to say he "may have some knowledge" about the shooting.

No one has been charged in the shooting, which erupted during a birthday party in the park, where an estimated 150-200 people were in attendance. Police have made repeated public pleas for witnesses to come forward with information on the shootout, which also resulted in the death of an unborn child when an expectant mother in the crowd tried to flee the gunfire and fell.

"Our intent is to charge whoever is responsible for those who lost their lives," Rausch said.

On Tuesday, the police chief said the party was a 21st birthday celebration for a known gang member, adding that the "vast majority" of the attendees also had gang affiliations. Police previously said Billingsley has gang ties as well.

The killing spurred the police chief to revamp a KPD gang task force launched in the wake of the Dec. 17 shooting death of 15-year-old Zaevion Dobson, a distant cousin of Jajuan.

Authorities have said both boys were mistakenly killed in an ongoing series of retaliatory attacks among local street gangs.

"The vast majority of the time they're not directly involved in a gang effort," Rausch said of the shootings.

More often, the attacks are spurred by petty, personal feuds  over girls, debts, perceived acts of disrespect and even posts on social media, he said. Sometimes, the violence can occur between subsets of the same gang, whether it's the Bloods, Crips, Gangster Disciples or Vice Lords.

Rausch said that according to some reports, the shooting that killed Jajuan was payback after members of one gang robbed those in another. Rausch would not specify whether Billingsley might be connected to that robbery.

Billingsley faces outstanding warrants on charges that include carjacking, aggravated armed robbery and aggravated assault in connection with a May 19 holdup on Jefferson Avenue in East Knoxville.

Locally, these "neighborhood gangs" usually have only loose affiliations with larger, nationally known groups outside Knoxville, Rausch said.

"It's usually in name only," Rausch said. "It's kids who have decided they're going to control the crime in that neighborhood."

KPD's gang task force, now deemed the "violence reduction team," continues to make arrests of known gang members, the police chief said. The FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency, U.S. Marshals and TBI also are assisting.

"We know who you are and we are coming for you," Rausch said. "We are working on cases right now to remove you from our community.  Give up or go to prison."

In February, Rausch said the task force had netted 50 felony arrests and collected valuable intelligence to help officers take a more targeted approach.

On Tuesday, however, he said he did not immediately know how many arrests have been made by the team.

And although arrest records are public, Rausch would not identify any known gang members arrested by the task force since it was launched in January. He cited regulations prohibiting the release of information kept in federal databases on gang members, calling it a "privacy issue."

No one has been charged in Zaevion's killing, either. The Fulton High School sophomore was gunned down as he shielded two friends from a barrage of gunfire in Lonsdale. Zaevion's sacrifice drew public praise from President Barack Obama and brought renewed attention to gun violence and gangs in the city.

Two men labeled by police as persons of interest in the Zaevion case  Christopher Drone Bassett Jr. and Kipling Deshawn Colbert Jr., both 20  are in custody on unrelated charges pending a Knox County grand jury review.

A third person connected to the shooting, 23-year-old Brandon Perry, was killed in a subsequent shooting hours later.

Authorities are still working to charge someone with Zaevion's death, Rausch said Tuesday, but he is confident that no one involved in the shooting remains at large.
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By Bob Fowler of the Knoxville News Sentinel

CLINTON  A $15 million wrongful death lawsuit has been filed by the husband of a Roane County Schools employee who died after her vehicle was hit by a woman accused of being under the influence of an intoxicant.

Christopher Lee Duncan of Harriman filed the Anderson County Circuit Court complaint on behalf of the estate of Christy Brown Duncan, killed in the May 6 wreck. Duncan, 37, had been a certified school social worker for seven years.

Janna Kay Duncan, the couple's 4-year-old daughter, who was injured in the crash, is also named as a plaintiff.

Vickie G. Gilmore, 61, of Oak Ridge, is the defendant in the civil case and has been charged in criminal warrants with vehicular homicide, DUI, reckless driving, leaving the scene of an accident, failure to maintain a lane of travel and violation of the implied consent law.

Christy Brown Duncan was stopped for a turn signal in the westbound lane of Oak Ridge Turnpike at its intersection with Jefferson Avenue when Gilmore's speeding 2006 Ford Escape collided into the back of Duncan's 2010 Nissan Altima. After the initial crash, Gilmore's vehicle slid sideways into another vehicle stopped in the turnpike's other westbound lane, according to arrest warrants. Witness statements indicate Gilmore "failed to slow down or even hit the brakes," the warrants state.

Duncan was transported by ambulance to University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville, where she died. Her injured daughter was also taken there, according to warrants.

Gilmore had constricted pupils and droopy eyelids and had a "blank stare and appeared to be confused about what happened," Oak Ridge Police Officer Derek A. Burchfield wrote in an arrest warrant's narrative.

The officer said he checked Gilmore's vitals and concluded she was on a "narcotic analgesic" at the time.

The lawsuit alleges Gilmore was negligent because she was speeding, following too closely, driving under the influence of an intoxicant, and didn't maintain control of her vehicle.

The complaint seeks $10 million in punitive damages and $5 million in compensatory damages.
SHARE A bald eagle found dead in the yard of a Blount County family is pictured recently. Matthew Cameron, spokesman for the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, said the homeowner returned home from an outing and discovered the dead eagle. "There were no obvious signs of injury, but we suspect that it may have been struck by something or flew into something," Cameron said. A radiograph taken at a veterinarian clinic disclosed two broken vertebrae, Cameron said. (SPECIAL TO THE NEWS SENTINEL)

By Don Jacobs of the Knoxville News Sentinel

Authorities suspect a bald eagle found dead this week in the yard of a Blount County family might have struck a cable in flight.

Matthew Cameron, spokesman for the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, said the Louisville homeowner returned home shortly after noon Monday from an outing and discovered the dead eagle.

"There were no obvious signs of injury, but we suspect that it may have been struck by something or flew into something," Cameron said.

The homeowner contacted Zoo Knoxville, which alerted the Upstate Birds of Prey organization in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Group members took the eagle to a veterinary clinic, where a radiograph disclosed two broken vertebrae, Cameron said.

Cameron said there were reports the eagle flew into a cable, but the incident remains under investigation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Madeline Rogero

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By Megan Boehnke of the Knoxville News Sentinel

Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero will leave for Beijing on Friday for a summit on reducing carbon emissions and creating greener cities.

The event from June 7-8 will bring together mayors from the U.S. and China to share ideas, successes and challenges on how to create "low-carbon, climate-resistant" cities.

"Some of the things we are doing we'll be able to talk about, but also we want to learn from other cities, other U.S. and Chinese cities, and learn best practices," Rogero said Tuesday. "I don't know a lot about China, so I'd like to see what they're doing."

Rogero will travel with Erin Gill, Knoxville's sustainability director, and the airfare and lodging for both will be covered by C40 Cities, an organization that supports efforts to address climate change.

Rogero received an invitation from the White House to participate in the U.S.-China Climate-Smart/Low Carbon Cities Summit. Knoxville has committed to reducing local greenhouse gas emissions.

Between 2010 and 2015, the city has reduced its energy consumption in municipal buildings by more than 20 percent.

Rogero said she also plans to share Knoxville's Extreme Energy Makeover program, a $15 million push to provide energy upgrades and lower utility bills for 1,200 homes across the city. She also pointed to a public works building that will include geothermal energy and to initiatives to promote local food production.

"We are known across the country in some of our sustainability efforts," Rogero said.

The summit follows the "Paris Agreement" announced in December where nearly 200 countries adopted the first global pact to fight climate change.

The pact aims to keep global temperatures from rising another degree Celsius between now and 2100, a key demand of poor countries ravaged by rising sea levels and other effects of climate change.
Gov. Bill Haslam was the featured speaker at the Rotary Club of Knoxville lunch Tuesday, May 31, 2016. (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL)

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By Richard Locker of the Knoxville News Sentinel

NASHVILLE  Gov. Bill Haslam expressed concern last month when the Tennessee Legislature approved a bill to cut the state's Hall income tax rate this year and to eliminate it entirely in 2022  but he signed the bill into law on May 20, without any public comment on his change in view.

But when questioned about it, the governor, in Knoxville Tuesday, said he had received assurances from legislative leaders that lawmakers would cut state spending to make up for the revenue lost from eliminating the tax if overall revenues decrease to the point that spending cuts are needed.

"I told the Legislature my concern was they were promising to cut taxes without promising to make commensurate expense cuts, and if the economy slowed down and revenues didn't continue where they are, then that would be a problem. Their leadership assured me that if that time came, they would make the appropriate adjustments," Haslam said in a brief question-and-answer session after a speech to the Knoxville Rotary Club.

The governor also said the reduction and ultimate loss of Hall tax revenue by cities and counties who share in its proceeds didn't weigh heavily into the decision to approve the bill. Since the Hall income tax on certain dividend and interest income was enacted in 1929, its proceeds have been divided between the state and local governments, with 5/8ths flowing to the state's general fund and 3/8ths to the city or county where the taxpayer resides.

That formula favors the most populous cities and counties and its most affluent suburbs where more people who own stocks and bonds live. For example, the top local government recipients of Hall income tax revenue in fiscal year 2015 were Memphis $14.8 million, Nashville $14.6 million, Knoxville $10 million, Brentwood $4.2 million, Chattanooga $4.17 million, Franklin $3.7 million, Knox County $3.3 million, Germantown $3.1 million, Cleveland $2.2 million and Belle Meade, $2.1 million.

Some local governments rely entirely on revenue from state-shared taxes like the Hall income tax and levy no local taxes like property taxes and local sales taxes.

Haslam said that from the state's perspective, the Hall tax was never really fair because some communities were better able to rely on it than others. "Some local communities just happen to do really well because they have a lot of people who paid it, whereas a similar community wasn't getting anything."

When the Legislature was considering the bill, Senate Bill 47, this year, the debate was over how much to reduce the 6 percent tax rate this year and when to repeal it entirely. Lawmakers discussed reducing it to 5.5 percent, 5.25 percent or 5 percent before settling on 5 percent, effective with tax year 2016. And they discussed phasing out the tax by continued reductions of one percentage point a year over, contingent on certain growth in overall state revenue, and settled on complete repeal effective with tax year 2022 combined with a nonbinding "legislative intent" for annual reductions until then.

During the height of those discussions, the governor's Finance Commissioner Larry Martin and Deputy to the Governor Jim Henry appeared before the House and Senate finance committees to encourage lawmakers to leave future cuts to future legislative sessions depending on the state's needs at the time.
Trousdale Turner Correctional Center is shown Tuesday, May 24, 2016, in Hartsville, Tenn. Tennessee's newest prison has had to halt new admissions after just four months of full operation. A memorandum from a state prison official about the privately run facility says guards there do not have control of the housing units, aren't counting inmates correctly, and are sending them to solitary confinement for no documented reason. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

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Tennessee's newest, privately run prison is not immune to the malaise afflicting the rest of the state's correctional system.

The Trousdale Turner Correctional Center in Hartsville stopped accepting new prisoners more than two weeks ago, according to The Associated Press and The Tennessean, leaving the prison operated by Corrections Corporation of America about two-thirds full four months after opening.

A Tennessee Department of Correction memo obtained through open records requests by the news organizations states that guards at the prison couldn't control housing units, failed to correctly count inmates and tossed prisoners into "segregated housing"  similar to solitary confinement  without documented reasons. Staffing is an issue. In March, Nashville-based CCA, which operates three other prisons for the department, replaced the warden.

The memo, sent by Correction Administrator Tony Howerton to Assistant Correction Commissioner Tony Parker, came after a two-day visit to the facility located northeast of Nashville near the Kentucky border.

Guards "do not have control of the housing units and it appears inmates are free to mingle around the unit at will," Howerton wrote. Prisoner counts took too long, in one case were inaccurate and sometimes were not conducted at all, he continued. Prisoners were sent to segregated housing, where they can have roommates but are often confined for 23 hours a day with limited contact with others, without explanation. The memo also noted unsanitary conditions and at least one incident of excessive force.

Howerton wrote, "There are some serious issues with the top level supervisors" and recommended halting new admissions. As of April 30, the prison housed 1,706 inmates, well below its capacity of 2,500. Parker told the AP no more prisoners would be assigned to Trousdale Turner "until CCA has an opportunity to increase its recruiting efforts and staffing."

Staffing issues and other problems over the past year in the Department of Correction are well documented. They include an alarming rate of staff turnover blamed by many on changes to scheduling and overtime policies, a change in incident designations that masked the number of prison assaults, and reclassifying maximum-security prisoners to minimum-security status to save costs.

The problems led the state to ask the American Correctional Association, the primary prison accreditation organization in the country, to review operations. A three-member team recommended that the state make changes in scheduling and incident reporting.

Correction Commissioner Derrick Schofield, who faced calls for his removal, responded by giving individual facilities autonomy in scheduling and reclassifying inmate-guard incidents to better reflect the level of violence in Tennessee prisons. Gov. Bill Haslam's budget for the next fiscal year included more than $8.3 million for raises for guards, other prison workers, probation officers and parole officers.

The Department of Correction must correct its management flaws. The state's prisons, whether managed by the state or a contractor, need to be run in a safe, competent manner for the safety of the guards, the prisoners and the citizens of Tennessee.
More than 20 South Korean companies signed deals worth more than $3.1 million with African partners, mostly Ugandan firms, by capitalizing on President Park Geun-hye's African tour, South Korea's presidential office said Monday.

The deals were reached in a meeting between executives of 27 South Korean companies and more than 210 Ugandan firms and other African firms as well as multinational corporations in Uganda's capital, Kampala, on Monday.

South Korea said $3.1 million accounts more than 15 percent of its exports to Uganda last year.

Park arrived in Kenya earlier in the day from Uganda, the second stop on her swing through Africa. The trip already took her to Ethiopia, where South Korean companies signed deals worth $24 million.

The South Korean business executives have come along on Park's trip to explore new business opportunities in Africa. (Yonhap)
By Lee Hyo-sik



The World Health Organization (WHO) is trying to conceal the Australian government's failure to reduce smoking in the nation through uniform packaging, tobacco companies argued Tuesday.



They said the WHO has been distorting the outcome of Australia's controversial Plain Packaging Act, which failed to slash cigarette sales in the country. Instead, the act has led to excessive regulation of intellectual property and trademark rights.



In December 2012, Australia's Department of Health enacted the regulation, which saw cigarette packaging unadorned with brand names or ads, instead replaced by prominent and graphic anti-smoking messages.



But the health department's regulatory review showed the branding ban has had no effect on the long-term decline in smoking rates over the years.



Despite having failed to prove the regulation's effectiveness, the department decided to rely on guesswork and mere speculation to convince its own and other governments that plain packaging was effective, according to Japan Tobacco International (JTI).



"Australia's health department has produced little more than shaky guesswork in its attempts to cover up the failure of plain packaging," JTI vice president Michiel Reerink said. "The WHO is citing Australia as an example as it tries to push other governments into unnecessary bans on the use of trademarks by legitimate tax-paying companies."



Reerink claimed that the WHO is orchestrating tobacco control lobbyists to travel the world on taxpayers' money in a bid to persuade governments that banning branding from tobacco packages is a worthwhile health priority.



"Governments around the world would be well-advised to cut through the noise the WHO is trying to drum up today. Instead, policymakers should look at the official data," the vice president said. "The ban on cigarette brands in Australia has deprived legitimate companies of their rights, and has handed a gift to the criminals who traffic in illegal and counterfeit cigarettes. But as a public health measure, plain packaging has failed."



The Australian government conducted a post-implementation review (PIR) on new regulations to assess whether they are appropriate and meet their aims.



It began gathering evidence for its review of the plain packaging act in March 2015 and was obliged to publish the PIR within three months.



But it delayed the release of the PIR as it struggled to find reliable evidence that the ban had met its aim, JTI and other cigarette makers said.



Last February, it published a weak and thoroughly unconvincing PIR, according to the companies, which argued that the report only guessed the ban might be "beginning to work" and might be effective "over time."




Dongwon Chairman writes rags to riches story for young people today

By Lee Hyo-sik





Dongwon Group Chairman Kim Jae-chul's biography

Dongwon Group Chairman Kim Jae-chul is a self-made man who wrote one of the most incredible rags to riches stories in Korea's modern history.

Kim, who built one of the world's largest deep-sea fishing companies, may not be known as well as Samsung Group founder Lee Byung-chul and Hyundai Group founder Chung Ju-young. But what he has achieved in his life is no less than what the Samsung and Hyundai founders did.

Kim's rise from being a poor fisherman to becoming one of the country's richest men offers valuable lessons for today's young people, many of whom struggle to find paths to the future.

To share his life experiences with those just starting out, the chairman recently published a story of his life, which was full of adversity, and about his entrepreneurial spirit and management philosophy.

"What Kim has achieved in business is inspiring," a Dongwon Group official said. "Besides building and managing successful enterprises, he has taken on various public roles and involved himself in an array of volunteer activities to care for the underprivileged and supporting young people in pursuing their dreams."

Gong Byoung-ho, one of the nation's most respected economics and management writers, wrote Kim's biography consisting of 6 parts and 16 chapters, after interviewing him many times.



The book covers extensively what the Dongwon founder has gone through, being the eldest son of 11 children from a poor farming family to becoming one of the most influential business leaders in the nation.

Lee O-young, former culture minister, wrote in the recommendation for the book, "This biography pays homage not only to an individual who discovered the ocean and opened it up but to Korea's industrial history as well."

Born in Gangjin, South Jeolla Province, in 1935, Kim chose to go to a fishery college in Busan instead of going to Seoul National University, in the belief that the ocean would provide him bigger opportunities.



At the age of 23, he got on the Jinam, the first deep-sea fishing ship in the country, and headed to the South Pacific.



Two years later, he became the captain of the Jinam II, navigating through the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean, and laying the foundation for Korea to become a fishery powerhouse.



After borrowing a ship from his Japanese business partner, Kim established Dongwon Industries in 1969, which grew into Korea's largest deep-sea fishing company. In 1980, he also founded Korea Investment Group, one of the country's largest investment firms.

The 81-year-old now leads Dongwon Group, which earned 4.7 trillion won in sales last year, and Korea Investment Group with 4.6 trillion won in sales. Both groups have more than 30 subsidiaries combined.

Unlike other controlling families of large business groups, Dongwon has never been implicated in tax evasion or other illicit activities.

"In 1991 when the chairman gave part of his holdings to his eldest son, he paid 6.24 billion won in gift taxes. At the time, paying a gift tax voluntarily was unprecedented," the Dongwon official said. "I hope many people, young adults in particular, read Kim's biography. His diligent work ethic and can-do-sprit, as well as his never-ending pursuit for excellence will certainly inspire his readers who are now undergoing hardships."
By Choi Sung-jin

The U.S. Department of Commerce has imposed a preliminary antidumping tariff of 47.8 percent on Korean steel imports from Hyundai Steel without referring to the company's data, officials said Tuesday.

According to the Washington office of the Korea International Trade Association (KITA), the commerce department did not properly reflect the data and statistics submitted by Hyundai Steel before imposing the antidumping duty. Instead, the U.S. officials calculated dumping margins by using the "adverse facts available," or AFA, to the disadvantage of Korean exporters.

The U.S. department had demanded Hyundai Steel present unduly detailed data and complicated proof of export price conditions, KITA said. Hyundai Steel supplies most of its exports to Hyundai Motor, and it is an extremely complicated process to classify the volume and occupancy of steel used for numerous auto parts, and put prices on them.

Hyundai Steel attempted to persuade the U.S. department that the "proof of constructed value is not necessary," but failed to do so and was slapped with the steep punitive tariffs based on the AFA.

"The episode points to the protectionist sentiments widespread in the United States," the KITA office said.

The U.S. International Trade Commission will make a final ruling on July 8, and if it decides Korean exports have damaged the U.S. industry, the punitive tariffs will go into effect on July 15.

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and the Korea Iron and Steel Association held an emergency meeting Tuesday to discuss countermeasures to the commerce department's decision.
South Korea's industrial output fell for the second consecutive month and widened its downward pace in April due mainly to a sharp drop in the production of the auto and electronics parts sectors, a government report showed Tuesday.



Production in the mining, manufacturing, gas and electricity industries fell 2.8 percent last month from a year ago, according to the report by Statistics Korea. From a month earlier, industrial output also retreated 1.3 percent.



The April figure represents a contraction for two months in a row after it backtracked to a 0.6 percent on-year fall in March. In February, the country's industrial output rose 2.2 percent on-year.



Production in the service sector expanded 2.1 percent from a year earlier and improved 0.5 percent on-month.



For all industries, output inched up 0.8 percent in April from the same month in 2015 but fell 0.8 percent from a month earlier.



Sluggish car production led the decline, sinking 8.7 percent on-year, while the output of electronics parts, including displays, plunged 12.7 percent.



Production in the semiconductor and petroleum industries jumped 15.1 percent and 9.1 percent, respectively, to offset the sharp decline.



"As South Korea's exports have been in doldrums for months, key industries such as cars and electronics can't help being at their low ebb," said Eo Woon-sun, director of the NSO's short-term industrial statistics division.



April's average plant utilization in the manufacturing sector reached 71 percent, down 2.7 percentage points from a month earlier.



Meanwhile, domestic consumption continued its uptick pace last month to rise 4.2 percent on-year, following a four-month high, 5.7-percent on-year jump in March, on the back of robust sales of durable goods like passenger cars.



From a month earlier, consumption edged down 0.7 percent after hitting a 4.2 percent on-month gain in March, the highest monthly figure since February 2009, when it hit 5 percent.



The South Korean government extended an excise tax cut program on passenger cars until June in a bid to repeat the brisk performance in October and November last year, when the consumption figures soared 8.6 percent and 6.2 percent, respectively.



"The production side is weak as exports and world trade remained in a slump. But we can say that domestic demand is in good form. We still have recovery momentum," said the official. "We expect better figures for the next months on better-than-expected outbound shipments data."



The country's exports have decreased for 16 straight months since January last year, the longest minus streak in history. But the latest customs data showed that outbound shipments rose 2.7 percent on-year for the first 20 days of May, raising hopes that it would end the record-long negative run.



The trade ministry will release such data on Wednesday. (Yonhap)




By Kim Jae-won



Bondholders of Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM) approved Tuesday to reschedule debt worth 300 billion won of the cash-shorted shipper, helping the company clear a major hurdle for survival.



Investors holding corporate bonds in HMM agreed with the company to swap half of its debt for stock in the shipper while allowing it to pay back the remaining part of the bond in two years. The meeting was held at the main office of Hyundai Group in central Seoul.



The rescheduling of the debt came one week after the company's creditors agreed to swap 680 billion won worth of debt for stock in the shipper. Hyundai Merchant had debts of about 5.2 trillion won as of the end of March.



Other groups of bondholders plan to discuss rescheduling the debt today. The Korea Development Bank, the main creditor of Hyundai, said that everything is going well with the shipper's efforts to keep afloat.



"Bondholders approved debt rescheduling because they have no reason to oppose it," said a KDB spokesman. "I think other bondholders will also follow in their footsteps."



He said that the state-run lender will take responsibility as a major shareholder after it completes transferring its debt in the stake. The amount of the stake is not available yet because it is considering the capital reduction of the company.



Market watchers said that rescheduling the debt will help the shipper negotiate with its ship owners to cut their charter fees. The KDB said that the negotiations are going smoothly as five key containership owners are close to lowering the fees.



Creditors believe that high charter rates are cutting into the shipper's financial health, and a cut in the leasing rates is one of the key conditions for the survival of the shipper.



Hyundai pays four to five times higher fees than market prices as they signed long-term contracts with the ship owners before the 2008 global financial crisis when the demand for shipping was high. The shipper paid a total of 1.9 trillion won to 22 owners of its chartered ships last year, which accounted for 32 percent of its annual sales of 5.8 trillion won.



Creditors also demanded that the shipper be included in a global shipping alliance to stay competitive. Hyundai Merchant claims that its inclusion in a global shipping alliance will be guaranteed if it successfully completes talks over the charter rate cuts.




K-pop boy band EXO / Korea Times file



By Kim Da-hee

K-pop boy band EXO gave some hints about its upcoming album at a fan meeting in Shanghai on Saturday.

The group's four members  Chanyeol, D.O., Kai and Sehun  attended a promotional event for hat brand "HAT'S ON" for which they model.

In response to a fan's question about the band's new album, to be released in June, Kai confidently responded, "The new album is something unusual, but great."

"We've prepared a powerful performance that fans can really look forward to."
A weeping woman shows a picture of her late son at a press conference in front of the Ministry of National Defense building in Yongsan, Seoul, Aug. 6. She and other bereaved families called on the ministry to help restore the honor of soldiers who died from hazing while serving their mandatory military service. / Yonhap



Activists urge military to uphold human rights



By Park Ji-won, Chung Hyun-chae, Nam Hyun-woo



Koreans are outraged over the death of an Army private first class, surnamed Yoon, who suffered brutal abuse and violence at the hands of his superiors.



Yoon, who belonged to the Army's 28th Division, was brutally beaten by five senior soldiers, then put on an IV drip to recover  only to be beaten again and endure more torture before his death in April.



Ranking military officials and politicians have vowed to uphold soldiers' rights and prevent future tragedies by establishing a human rights council within the armed forces.



For some men who have already completed their mandatory military service, however, Yoon's story came as no surprise. They have experienced, witnessed, or at least heard of similar cases.



An office worker in Seoul, surnamed Lee, 32, finished his military service in 2007. His superiors subjected him to abuse too, he recalls.



"I still don't understand why I was beaten," he said.



Lee, then a private, was responsible for managing an ammunition depot. He worked with a sergeant, who was younger than him and constantly picked fights to remind Lee of his inferior rank.



"I'm younger than you," the sergeant repeatedly pointed out to Lee. "Is that a problem for you?"



The sergeant often kicked Lee in the stomach and punched him in the neck when

they were alone in the depot.



"I never said anything about his age, but he picked fights with me and repeatedly attacked me," Lee said.



Lee required medical treatment for his injuries, but the sergeant bullied him into remaining silent about how he got his bruises and why he was bleeding. The assaults continued until the sergeant was discharged.



"If I ever met him again, I would definitely have him killed," Lee said.





A soldier holds a rifle while attending a special lecture on human rights at an Army camp in Goyang, northwest of Seoul, Aug. 8. All soldiers are required to attend such lectures amid mounting criticism over hazing in the barracks following the death of an army private first class, surnamed Yoon, who suffered from brutal abuse from his colleagues. / Yonhap



"I still suffer trauma, but there is no one I can complain to about this and get redress," he added. "The government should also come up with measures to help victims like me."



Kim, 28, who was discharged from the Army two years ago, said he had witnessed hazing.



"Many say there is no violence in the military anymore, but I don't believe that," Kim said.



"Some people are slow to understand or do something. And one of my colleagues was like that. Superiors always used foul language when talking to him, and often they even cursed his parents and attacked him."



The victim was bullied for absurd reasons, Kim recalls.



"Verbal abuse and assaults happened because the victim did not follow stupid customs, which obviously had nothing to do with improving combat readiness," he said.



For example, Kim said his colleague was forced to lick shoe polish because his boots were not shiny enough. Another colleague reported the violence to a ranking officer, and the victim was transferred to another barracks. The attackers were sent to the guardhouse.



"It was a rare case, given that other units' officers tend to cover things up to evade close investigation, because officers don't want a mess," he said. "I heard from one of my friends that his colleague committed suicide because of hazing, but the death was recorded as an accident."



Kim declined to elaborate.



An office worker, surnamed Gil, 28, said one of his colleagues served time in the guardhouse for beating an underling.



"While on night duty, he ordered a private first class not to move off a small tile on the floor.



A single move outside of the tile's borders would be followed by assaults," Gil recalled.



Noh, 24, a college senior who completed his service last year, witnessed sexual violence. The victim was a private first class and the perpetrator was a corporal.



"The private first class reported the corporal's deed to the authorities, and the offender was given a military prison term and transferred to a different unit," he said.



These stories are a source of anxiety for young men who still face conscription, and for their parents.



College student Oh, 21, finished his four weeks of basic military training on Aug. 1. Now he works at a food company as part of an alternative civilian service program.



Though he braved the training without any problem, his parents were not as brave.



"Even though the training lasted only a month, I couldn't help worrying about my son," said his mother, surnamed Yoo. "Who knows if something bad will happen within that short time?



"In the photo my son sent, some of his colleagues had tattoos on their arms. After I saw that, I started to worry. What if they bully my son?" she said.



"Other parents [whose sons don't qualify for alternative programs] must have bigger worries, but I also worry about my son's safety."



According to data from the Ministry of National Defense, between 2003 and last year, 874 servicemen died either as a result of suicide or accidents. An average of 80 men died every year.



Human rights activists have long urged the government to take action on violence and bullying in the military. But the response remains tepid, consisting only of vague orders.



In 2012, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) suggested guidelines to safeguard servicemen's human rights. Those were the strongest measures the agency believed it was capable of taking, but apparently they were insufficient.



The NHRC's role is limited  it can only make suggestions, not binding regulations. However, critics say the watchdog should have been more active in carrying out its duties  at the very least, it could have disclosed problems to the public.



It was the Center for Military Human Rights that revealed the details of Yoon's case

to the media.



"We have repeatedly urged the military to open itself to the public, allowing civilian human rights experts to visit the barracks and meet with soldiers," said Lim Tae-hoon, a representative of the center. "However, the military kept saying no to civilian experts  that it would handle intra-military matters by itself."
A woman pushes a stroller away from a cafe after being asked to leave. More restaurants and cafes are refusing patrons with children for etiquette and safety reasons. / Korea Times file



Restaurants' ban on children stirs pro-and-con debate



By Baek Byung-yeul, Kwon Ji-youn

A local court recently ruled that two restaurants should pay 10 million won and 47 million won to two children, respectively, who were scalded while dining. One child ran into a restaurant employee carrying hot water and another was burned by charcoal fire.

Once the verdict was announced, some restaurant owners started to refuse customers with children as they didn't want to be held responsible for any accidents their child could cause. This issue has emerged as a hotbed for online debate ever since.

Korea isn't the first to join the movement. In two U.S. states, Texas and Pennsylvania, restaurants have banned kids, while cafes in Berlin have created child-free zones for their patrons. Some have even barred strollers, which are considered safety hazards in densely populated areas such as malls or restaurants.

Even some airlines are following suit. Malaysia Air banned children under two from flying first class, while AsiaAir created a "quiet zone" for fliers above the age of 12.

Restaurant owners blame children for reckless behaviors in a potentially dangerous environment involving fire and other cooking equipment, as well as disturbing other patrons' dining experience.

The question is this: Do parents have the right to bring their children to cafes and restaurants, where they are at risk of getting burned, where they may be bothersome to fellow patrons? Or do restaurants have the right to refuse patrons with children for safety and etiquette reasons?

Many parents with children protested, saying that this is a violation of equal rights.

Choi Jung-soon, who raised two children, aged six and eight, said this is a clear example of an equal rights violation.

"My kids have the right to enter any cafe or restaurant," the 33-year-old Seoulite said.





A sign posted on the door of a restaurant located in Seongnam City, Gyeonggi Province, bars children who are elementary-school age or younger.

/ Korea Times



"People who say parents bringing their toddlers to restaurants do not discipline children inside and let their kids run loose, but this is completely wrong.

"I definitely do try to pay attention to my kids, making sure they don't go on a rampage inside a restaurant, but they should understand that kids aren't able to completely control themselves," she said.

Heo Eun-mi, a 32-year-old mom, hadn't heard about the movement to ban kids until recently.

"When I heard that a group of restaurants were banning kids, I thought to myself, no way,' because my kid loves to eat out" she said. "Before such a policy takes effect across the city, restaurants should designate child-friendly zones, where families with children can dine free from the glares of childless patrons and the narrow confines of a restaurant."

She stressed that this should be the first step restaurant owners take before implementing a no kids' policy.

"Then, at least they've made an effort to satisfy all customers. We're customers, too," she said. "If that still didn't work, then sure, ban kids. Also, where else will kids learn proper restaurant etiquette?"

She emphasized that with a little caution, restaurant owners and parents will definitely be able to find a way to coexist.

"I think the responsibility falls with both parties. Parents should be a little more attentive, and restaurant employees should be a little more careful," she said. "That's as simple as it gets."

Another mother, with a seven-year-old daughter, said she had to order take-out at a coffee shop because her daughter wasn't allowed in, but she didn't mind.

"When I saw the news, the first thought that came to my mind was, aren't the parents responsible for the safety of their children?'" she said on condition of anonymity. "How are restaurant owners supposed to control children while working?"

Jeong Soon-ok, a college student, does admit that her experience at a restaurant in Sinsa-dong, southern Seoul, wasn't all that enjoyable because of a child who walked from table to table stealing peoples' salt and pepper shakers.

"At first it was cute, but when the meals were served, we needed the salt shaker. So we took it from him and he just fell on his bottom and started screaming," she said. "The mother then came and started telling us off for forcibly taking the child's toy' away. I didn't know what to say in response."

Jeong recalled another incident in where a child slipped while running in a dining room.

"I remember the mother started yelling at the employees for wiping the floor down with a wet mop," she said. "I thought to myself, should they have used a dry mop?'"

Ryu Seung-min, who runs a Korean-style barbeque restaurant in Seoul, agrees with ban, adding that "parents sometimes just cannot control their children."

"I don't implement that kind of policy in my restaurant as my customers are mostly office workers, but I definitely agree with the food establishments that do ban kids," said the restaurant owner.

"I think parents who bring their children to restaurants and don't pay attention to them seem to not understand how dangerous this place actually is. They should know that we are dealing with hot food that could burn someone if dropped.

"In addition, parents who don't even try to control their careless kids are unaware they are disturbing those around them. They may have gotten used to their loud kids but this doesn't apply to the customers around them," he said.

Ryu also pointed out the necessity of campaigns urging parents to better observe public etiquette while in restaurants.

"I guess we need to find common ground between owners and parents. I think educating parents the virtue of paying more attention to their kids while dining is a good, first step," he said.

The National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRC) states that it is illegal for a business to ban children from entering restaurants, adding that it is against the rights of equality.

However, this presents a catch-22. If restaurants ban children, then these establishments are breaking the existing laws. But if a restaurant has put forth clear grounds as to why it restricts access to kids, then there is no way to impose sanctions on the offending restaurant.

To illustrate this point, NHRC dismissed a case in 2010 filed by an anonymous informant that a restaurant implements a "no kids" policy in their judgment that the restaurant had clear reason to do so.

"As long as we, restaurant owners, are responsible for any accidents involving children, it is crystal-clear that more and more restaurants and cafes will adopt the no kids' policy," Ryu added.
By Chung Ah-young

The Constitutional Court has ruled that the government's order to ban English immersion programs for first and second graders in private elementary schools is constitutional.



The court ruled unanimously on Thursday that the ban could be seen as the proper means of preventing the negative impact of excessive private tutoring.



Parents of students at Younghoon Elementary School, a high-profile private school, filed a petition in December 2013 asking the court to review the constitutionality of the ban.



Under the English immersion curriculum, the school taught most subjects, such as mathematics and science, in English.



"The government's instruction was designed to prevent parents' excessive zeal over private education for English so that young children could grow as well-rounded people," the court said.



The court said that because English was included in the elementary education curriculum in 1995, elementary schools did not teach English to first and second graders.













"Such rules are based on experts' opinions that early English education can hamper young children from developing Korean language skills," the court said.



The court also said that the autonomous curricula of private schools were allowed only within the government's educational policy.



"If private schools violate this, it will bring inequality of education and spur social polarization," it said.



The case goes back to 2013 when the Ministry of Education clashed with parents of students at private elementary schools after announcing the ban in December 2012.



Under the ban, the schools were required to limit English courses to two hours a week for third and fourth graders and three hours for fifth and sixth graders, and none for first and second graders.



Parents of private school students including those at Younghoon strongly opposed the measure.



"The government's claim that English education can prevent the lower graders from developing Korean has no objective or scientific grounds," a group of parents said.



"Given that international schools are not subject to such rules, it is a breach of rights."
South Korea's global competitiveness ranking fell by four notches this year due mainly to sluggish economic performance and business efficiency, an international institute said Tuesday.

According to the 2016 report by the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), South Korea ranked 29th in terms of global competitiveness among 61 countries surveyed.

IMD is a Swiss-based institute that releases competitiveness rankings every year based on a country's economic achievements, infrastructure, and government and corporate efficiency. It has been issuing the report since 1997.

In terms of economic achievements and infrastructure, South Korea placed 21st, down six notches from a year earlier, as the country's economic growth contracted to 2.6 percent last year from the previous year's 3.3 percent expansion.

Corporate efficiency tumbled by 11 notches as a toxic humidifier scandal dealt a huge blow to the country along with on-going corporate restructuring issues. As a result, the country's labor market, entrepreneurial attitude and management practices received lower ratings from the IMD assessment.

The humidifier disinfectant case, one of the worst scandals involving a consumer product using chemicals, is rocking the country as the state prosecution has been intensifying the investigation into the product maker, Oxy Reckitt Benckiser. Some 220 people are confirmed to be killed from the poisonous substances.

In the government efficiency sector, however, South Korea rose to 26th from 28th, marking the first ranking upgrade in three years. The IMD gave higher scores for public finance and fiscal policies.

"The poor rating may be attributable to a slowdown in the economy and employment, corporate restructuring issues and corporate ethics problems," the finance ministry said in a release.

IMD suggested that the South Korean government carry out structural reforms in the business and labor sectors and map out plans to boost domestic demand and create jobs for the young generation, according to the ministry.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong topped the list in terms of global competitiveness for 2016, relegating the former No. 1 United States to the third place after Switzerland.

Among Asian countries, China fell to the 25th spot from 22nd and Japan rose one step to 26th, while Singapore and Taiwan placed fourth and 14th, respectively. (Yonhap)
Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn said Tuesday that the new National Assembly should focus on revitalizing the country's economy, adding the government will take steps to work closely with lawmakers.

"It is regrettable that the major economy-related laws were not concluded at the 19th National Assembly," Hwang said during the Cabinet meeting.

The comments come as the 20th National Assembly began work on Monday with lawmakers from both the ruling and opposition parties placing more emphasis on cooperation to pass bills that can stimulate growth and help improve peoples' lives.

"Each ministry must make an effort to get laws that directly affect people's everyday lives discussed in parliament," he said. He emphasized that laws that can benefit people and the economy should be passed as soon as possible.

Under the new parliament, the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea grabbed 123 seats out of 300 up for grabs. The ruling Saenuri Party secured 122 seats, while the splinter People's Party won 38.

Last week, South Korea's Cabinet asked the National Assembly to review the controversial hearings bill that allows the parliament to open hearings more often. The move fueled tension between the government and the opposition at the dawn of the new parliament.

Hwang also said the government will speed up efforts to find solutions to important public issues, including fine dust emissions and the Oxy Reckitt Benckiser humidifier sterilizer scandal, which has sounded alarms on the safety of certain household products. (Yonhap)
By Choi Sung-jin



Conservative forces in South Korea should change their positions on North Korea, former Unification Minister Ryu Gil-jae said at an academic conference Monday.



Ryu's remark drew interest, as he served as the first unification minister in the conservative Park Geun-hye administration. "Under the constitutional system like now, it is very important what views the President and governing elite harbor (on the North)," he said. "The same holds true if the opposition party takes power."



The inter-Korean affairs expert, noting that conservatives will play a role as vested interest groups even if the liberal opposition party holds power, called on them to change their position. But Ryu did not elaborate on that position or how the conservatives should change.



"Conservative forces should first ease their position on North Korean issues and make concessions," he said. "Conservatives in the South are indifferent to national reunification falling into individualism. If they reflect on themselves and create a consensus (on unification) with liberals through communication, it will lead to a huge success."



Rep. Chung Dong-young of the opposition People's Party, who worked as the unification minister in the Roh Moo-hyun administration, stressed the importance of a now-defunct inter-Korean factory park. "Gaeseong Industrial Complex was the strategy to practice peaceful unification," Chung said. "The 20th National Assembly should revive the South-North industrial park shut down by the Park administration."



Describing the outcome of the April 13 elections as an event that could change political power had Korea adopted the parliamentary cabinet system, the opposition lawmaker said voters made a judgment on the incumbent regime, and among its many failures was the deadlocked inter-Korean relationship.



"The Assembly needs to have a unification-related special committee that can pursue inter-Korean policy different from that of the executive branch," Chung said. "The committee should begin to play a leading, independent role in unification issues, starting with the discussion on reopening the joint industrial park."



Professor Kim Chong-su of Soongsil University, who organized the conference, made a similar proposal during his opening speech, calling for a special parliamentary committee on unification that discusses various ways of unification.



"The South-North relationship has strained for a protracted period because of the North's fourth nuclear test and other reasons," Kim said. "In order to break the inter-Korean stalemate and dissolve conflicts between rival groups within the South, the Assembly should take a lead in pursuing a sustainable unification policy."



Another inter-Korean expert voiced his support. "So far, the government has taken the lead in unification and North Korea policies, but now is the time for civil society to play a more active role in discussing unification and spreading relevant awareness among the public," said Professor Kang Won-taek of Seoul National University. "The nation should train people into democratic citizens in diverse areas, including education about unification."



Most other participants, such as professors majoring in North Korea and unification affairs, and other experts, also called for society to pay more attention to unification education.




Pyongyang fails to launch Musudan for fourth time



By Jun Ji-hye



North Korea attempted to launch what appeared to be a Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) Tuesday morning, but it exploded right after ignition, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).



This is the fourth time this year that Pyongyang has failed to launch a Musudan  a humiliating series of incidents for the Kim Jong-un regime.



The failures also cast serious doubts over the quality of the missiles, which were first deployed when Kim's late father, Kim Jong-il, ruled the regime.



"North Korea attempted to launch an unidentified missile from Wonsan, Gangwon Province, at around 5:20 a.m., but it is presumed to have been unsuccessful," said the JCS in a briefing.



"The military is studying details of the launch and is maintaining a high level of combat readiness in preparation for any additional provocations."



The previous day, the South Korean military said it detected signs of the North deploying a ballistic missile near the east coast city of Wonsan for a potential launch.



Japan's Kyodo News also reported that the North might be preparing to launch a ballistic missile.



The Musudan, also known as the BM-25, is thought to have a range of some 3,000 to 4,000 kilometers, long enough to reach Guam, home to U.S. naval and air bases.



The repressive state deployed the Musudan missiles in 2007 without testing them, according to defense sources.



Pyongyang conducted the first launch of the missile on April 15, the 104th anniversary of the birth of North Korean founder Kim Il-sung  the grandfather of current leader Kim Jong-un  as the regime was gearing up for a high-profile ruling party congress in early May. The missile exploded in the air at the time, according to the JCS.



Then on April 28, the North conducted launches in the morning and afternoon, respectively. Both attempts ended in failure.



Sources noted that the North has apparently tried to analyze the causes of the failures in previous launches and address deficiencies before pushing ahead with the latest. The fourth failure once again highlighted problems involving the regime's technology related to the IRBMs.



They said the North is apparently switching from its charm offensive toward Seoul to provocative action.



After the Seventh Workers' Party Congress was concluded on May 9, the isolated state repeatedly called on the South to accept offers of dialogue.



As these offers were rejected by Seoul  which called for denuclearization steps prior to any inter-Korean dialogue  the North has increased military tension in recent days.



On Saturday, the regime said it would open fire without warning on any South Korean warship that intrudes across the "border" in the West Sea.



The North claims that the South Korean Navy's firing of warning shots at its vessels which crossed the Northern Limit Line (NLL) was "a premeditated plot" to heighten inter-Korean tension.



On Friday morning, a fishing boat and a patrol boat from North Korea violated the maritime border. They returned to the northern side after the South Korean Navy fired five warning shots.




By Kim Bo-eun



A preparation committee was launched Tuesday to carry out the controversial Korea-Japan verbal agreement to found an organization to support women forced into sexual slavery by Japan before and during World War II.



The committee, however, did not have the endorsement of the former sex slaves who reject the deal. Also disputes over the financial support Japan plans to provide remain unresolved.



The committee formation followed the agreement made between the two governments, Dec. 28, to put the long-disputed issue to rest, with Tokyo pledging to provide 1 billion yen (10.7 billion won) for the victims.



Kim Tae-hyeon, an emeritus professor at Sungshin Women's University, heads the 11-member committee comprised of scholars and government officials from the foreign affairs and gender equality ministries.



"The average age of the remaining victims is 89.4. Time is running out and we need to take action before they pass away," Kim said in a press conference at the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History in downtown Seoul.



"We will communicate closely with victims to provide them with what they need to heal their scars and recover their dignity."



The preparation committee is planning an official launch of the foundation, which will decide how the 1 billion yen fund will be used, next month.



Kim, however, drew protests from civic groups and victims by saying that the 1 billion yen was "healing money," rather than compensation.



"The Japanese government is providing the money to heal the victims' pain and restore their honor, so I don't see the money as compensation," she said.



Her comment contradicts the Korean government's stance of regarding the money as compensation as the Japanese government has apologized for its wrongdoing.



The definition of the fund is critical because it can determine whether the Japanese government accepted its responsibility, according to the victims and civic groups.



The victims claim the Japanese government took moral responsibility but not legal responsibility. They say the 1 billion yen is merely a donation for the victims and not legal compensation.



Victims and civic groups have continued to voice their opposition to the government proceeding with the agreement, saying they cannot recognize its validity.



A group of university students hosted a press conference in front of the museum, denouncing the government for excluding victims' opinions in making and carrying out the deal.



Last Thursday, an association of civic groups also hosted a press conference, urging the 20th National Assembly to nullify the agreement and calling for renegotiations.



"Who can call the agreement, which the victims have called invalid, as being final and irreversible?" the association said in a statement.



In March, the victims filed a petition with the Constitutional Court over the agreement.



Meanwhile, with regards to the comfort woman statue in front of the Japanese Embassy, which Tokyo requested be removed on the sidelines of the agreement, Kim reaffirmed the government's stance that the 1 billion yen fund and statue were separate issues.




By Kang Seung-woo



The KATUSA Veterans Association (KVA) and the U.S. Army's 2nd Infantry Division plan to hold a memorial service for the fallen Korean and U.S. soldiers, including 36 KATUSAs, during the Nakdong River Battle in the 1950-1953 Korean War.



The event will be held at the U.N. Memorial Cemetery in Busan on Memorial Day that falls on Monday.



KATUSA stands for Korean Augmentation to the United States Army, a group of enlisted soldiers who serve their military duty with the 28,500 American troops stationed here.



According to the KVA, KVA Chairman Kim Jong-wook, Maj. Gen. Theodore Martin, commanding general of the 2nd Infantry Division, Dutch ambassador to Korea Lody Embrechts, and other guests, including representatives from the Korean Army and U.S. service members, will attend the memorial service, where those who fought and died were buried.



The KVA has organized the commemorative event since 2013 to pay tribute to the fallen soldiers' sacrifices for South Korea.



Soldiers of the division arrived in Busan on July 23, 1950, about a month after the outbreak of the Korean War as the first unit from the United States and were sent to defend the Busan Perimeter  the last line of defense for the allied forces.



The Nakdong Battle occurred from August through September, 1950, marking the first turning point in the conflict that began the U.N. forces' drive north.



The KATUSAs were inaugurated during the war to guide U.S. troops and fight alongside them against the invading forces.




By Kang Seung-woo





Ban Ki-moon

United Nations (U.N.) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is apparently seeking to project a public image as a political leader who can unite the nation and change North Korea, analysts said Tuesday.



Ban emerged as the preferred presidential candidate following a recent visit to South Korea, during which he gave the strongest hint yet about his bid for Cheong Wa Dae.



Analysts said that Ban may stay away from domestic politics until he ends his second U.N. term at the end of this year, but his influence on national politics will grow further.



In a poll conducted by the JoongAng Ilbo, released on Monday, Ban topped the list with 28.4 percent, followed by Moon Jae-in of the Minjoo Party of Korea with 16.2 percent and Ahn Cheol-soo, the co-chairman of the People's Party with 11.9 percent.



However, there is skepticism that if Ban is out in the political circles for a long time, his popularity may dwindle.



"Ban said that the nation is too deeply divided by regionalism and ideology. Given that he is from North Chungcheong Province and served under both liberal and conservative governments, he may try to establish himself as the right person to tackle the nation's old plagues," said Cho Jin-man, a professor of political science at Duksung Women's University.



At a forum on Jeju Island, he criticized domestic politics, saying, "Political leaders should work harder for national unity. Someone should outline a vision for grand unity and a leader who is willing to abandon everything for national unity should step forward."



Along with the unifying leadership, Ban stressed the need to resume dialogue with North Korea.



"From now on, Ban is expected to focus on U.N. works related with North Korea in preparation for the presidential election," said Bae Jong-chan, the chief director of political pollster Research and Research.



"His moves will attract attention from South Koreans, who have much interest in security issues, and help him appeal to voters  especially supporters for the ruling Saenuri Party."



Hwang Tae-soon, a political commentator, also said that Ban may seek to visit Pyongyang again.



In May last year, he planned to travel to North Korea, but the repressive state cancelled this one day ahead of his visit. He also told a forum on Jeju Island last week that he would continue to make efforts to visit the North.



"In order to boost his positive image as the U.N. secretary-general, he may consider visiting North Korea, while distancing himself from domestic political circles," he said.



"Should he bring back dialogue to the Korean Peninsula, he would boost his reputation positively as a presidential candidate. It is a back-door strategy."



Bae said that if Ban visits North Korea before leaving the U.N., he will place himself way ahead of his potential rivals Moon Jae-in and Ahn Cheol-soo.



"At a time of inter-Korean detente, Ban will seek to brand himself as the best possible candidate for president and if so, Moon and Ahn cannot vie with the U.N. secretary-general," he said.



"Ban is using diplomacy as his best yet available card on his way toward the presidential election."
Aiming to become a hub of Asia's financial technology (Fintech) sector, South Korea agreed Monday to join hands with France.

The two sides signed a memorandum of understanding on sharing related information and supporting their Fintech firms on each other's soil.

The deal between South Korea's Fintech Center and the French Tech Hub Seoul was reached on the sidelines of a joint Fintech seminar to commemorate the 130th anniversary of the two nations forging formal diplomatic relations.

"When South Korea entered the smartphone business in the 2000s, many said it might be too late. But South Korea has become a global smartphone power," Financial Services Commission Chairman Yim Jong-yong said in a speech at the forum of the Convention and Exhibition Center in southern Seoul. "(The government) will make South Korea's Fintech spread across the world."

He said it's meaningful for South Korea to team up with France, a core part of the eurozone economy, for synergy.

Meanwhile, the French Embassy in Seoul will open the two-day "French Tech Days in Korea" event later in the day.

It's designed to introduce French innovative companies to potential business partners in the South Korean market.

With the three subthemes of Fintech, Medtech and the Internet of Things (IoT), major French technologies will be on display at COEX.

A series of roundtable discussions and business-to-business meetings will be held as well, joined by dozens of French firms, including Airbus Defense and Space, Thales and French Healthcare Alliance. (Yonhap)
Members of the Friendship Force International (FF) prepare rice cakes with heavy mallets at Yongsan Family Park, Seoul, Saturday.

/ Courtesy of John Redmond

By John Redmond

British, American and Australians members of the Friendship Force International (FF) enjoyed a weeklong homestay in Korea as part of a program to promote intercultural ties.

During their visit, members of the international cultural exchange program visited the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), Gyeongbok Palace, the Korean Folk Village, the Museum of Modern Art in Anyang, the National Museum of Korea and the War Memorial of Korea as well as Seoul's Insa-dong for sightseeing and shopping.

The group of 18 FF members including representatives of the Tamworth FF, Hobart FF leaders, two Americans and two from the U.K., also hiked Mt. Nam with their host families, watched a taekwondo demonstration and visited Olympic Park.

Team leader Annette Watson commented on how language was not a barrier during the visit.

"Some hosts and day hosts were worried they had little English and probably could not understand that for visitors who live in a totally English-speaking country half the fun is trying to communicate," wrote Watson on the group Facebook page. "A smile, a warm handshake or a hug and lots of gestures is enough. For me learning any words in a different language is a big challenge."

Joined by members of the Korea Australia Friendship Society (KAFS) and international exchange students, the group enjoyed a picnic and the chance to play traditional Korean games and make rice cakes at Yongsan Family Park on Saturday.

Leaving Monday, Watson had high praise for the hospitality shown by her Korean hosts.

"Our week with our new friends in Korea has ended," she wrote. "It has been an absolute joy to stay in the homes of these very warm, welcoming and generous people. They laugh a lot, dance and party. The pace is hectic. We walked a lot and talked a lot and did not have much time to sleep."

Founded by Wayne Smith and introduced by U.S. President Jimmy Carter in March 1977 at a White House gathering of state governors, FF provides an opportunity to bring people together through home hospitality, where visitors share in meals, conversation and the routines of daily life. The nonprofit has chapters in 377 communities in 56 countries.

For more information, visit www.thefriendshipforce.org.
By Trudy Rubin



In the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet empire, most Western nations basked in the illusion that liberal democracy had triumphed. Many thought NATO had become an anachronism in an era of permanent European peace.



Some countries freed from Kremlin control, including tiny Estonia, knew better. Only 2 { decades later, the European Union teeters and populism thrives  on both sides of the Atlantic. A revanchist Russia bent on restoring past glory makes nuclear threats against members of the NATO alliance.



So this is an opportune moment to listen to Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, who was in Philadelphia last week to address a Baltic studies conference at the University of Pennsylvania. (The son of Estonian refugees, he studied in the United States and is a Penn alumnus.)



"Twenty-five years of Western history are over," he said bluntly. "The optimism of the 1990s has been shattered by Russia. Russia is back with 19th-century goals and 21st-century means."



But, he cautioned, "We are clueless amid transformational change to which we do not know how to respond because we don't know what we want to achieve."



Of course, the threats to the Europe of 1990s dreams are internal as well as external. The populist parties that are gaining strength across Europe and the appeal of Trumpism (and Bernie Sanders) here are outgrowths of the economic pain wreaked on citizens by globalization and the failure of traditional parties to respond.



But, as Ilves noted, the economic travails of Western democracies present openings for a reckless Russia to meddle. Populist leaders in Europe, some openly encouraged by Russian President Vladimir Putin, are pressing for the breakup of the European Union. On June 23, the British will vote on whether to leave the EU, and the vote looks likely to be close.



Meantime, Donald Trump, talks of possibly leaving NATO, while constantly complimenting Putin. Although Ilves never mentioned Trump by name, he is clearly concerned.



"East Europeans were told to get over their fears of Russia," he said, "but today Western Europe recognizes there is an ongoing war in Europe."



Indeed, Russian planes conduct provocative stunts, like recently buzzing within 30 feet of a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Baltic Sea and flying with transponders off over Baltic countries, risking a collision with civilian aircraft.



And there are things that worry Ilves even more.



"Today, threats to use nuclear weapons are part of the Russian discourse, with simulated nuclear attacks on Stockholm and Poland," he said.



Kremlin emissaries have reportedly threatened a nuclear response if NATO moved troops into the Baltic, and last year Putin warned he might call for a nuclear alert as Russia was invading Crimea. Moscow is reportedly considering putting nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad, a small Russian territory on the Baltic Sea.



Making nuclear threats against the West reeks of the Cold War. "The Soviet Union never did this after 1962," Ilves said an interview. "It is one of the things that is shocking today."



Would an economically weak Russia really contemplate using such weapons? Would Putin ever consider invading a NATO member such as Estonia?



The Estonian president wants to take no chances. "The thinking of Russian leaders is unpredictable," he answers.



Indeed, Ilves says it took NATO members far too long to grasp the significance of Putin's invasion of Ukraine: "Changing borders in Europe has been a no-no since 1945. The last time was 1938 (when Germany invaded) the Sudetenland. (Yet) there are still countries that want to end sanctions (against Russia on account of Ukraine)."



Ilves believes sanctions have had "a deterring effect," and caving on them would only encourage Putin to nibble further, possibly on the Baltics.



"We need a credible deterrence policy in the Baltic region to influence the Russian calculus to make the costs of interference too high," says Ilves. "Russia's behavior requires a decisive and united (NATO) response."



Of course, isolationists here and in Europe echo the Kremlin charge that Putin is reacting to a fear of encirclement brought on by NATO expansion to the Baltics and Eastern Europe. It's far more useful to consider the alternative. As Ilves points out, Putin felt free to invade Ukraine precisely because it wasn't a member of NATO.



What Trumpism ignores is Ilves' larger point: The West must recognize the value of a free and secure Europe, something that NATO countries took for granted during the past two decades.



The threat that Russia presents is more complex than in Cold War times. Putin wants to divide and weaken NATO and the European Union and promote a new brand of managed "democracy," with himself as the leader. His nuclear-rattling may be testing the alliance's staying power.



So far, NATO has held firm, and will deploy several thousand additional troops to the Baltics and Poland on a rotating basis. Key NATO countries also seem to be waking up to the need to spend more on defense.



"NATO has not been this relevant for a long, long time," says the Estonian leader. "Europeans haven't been under this kind of threat since Gorbachev's time."



Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer. It was distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.




By Kim Da-hee

The European Union's intensifying sanctions will only make North Korea stronger, the North Korea's foreign ministry spokesman has told the country's media.

He rejected suggestions of economic/political instability escalating in the face of international sanctions to stop the nation's long-range missile and nuclear bomb tests.

The spokesman made a rare appearance on the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) Monday, criticizing the EU for "explicitly jumping on the U.S.-led bandwagon of anti-North Korea policy." The remark came days after the EU imposed more sanctions on the North.

"The sanction was modeled after the U.S. sanction, which was made in violation of the U.N. Charter," the spokesman said. "The EU should behave with discernment because the union fell into the worst refugee crisis after following the U.S. policy subverting the sovereignties of Middle Eastern nations."

The North Korean diplomat urged the EU to concentrate on its complicated domestic issues, saying its collaboration is not helpful in "guaranteeing international justice."
Ri Su-yong, vice chairman of the North Korean ruling party's Central Committee, arrives at Pyongyang International Airport before departing for Beijing, Tuesday. / Yonhap



By Yi Whan-woo

Ri Su-yong, vice chairman of North Korea's ruling Workers' Party, visited China, Tuesday, as a special envoy for leader Kim Jong-un, according to officials here.

Ri is the highest-ranking North Korean official to visit China since Pyongyang conducted its fourth nuclear test, Jan. 6. He was accompanied by a large delegation.

He is expected to stay in Beijing for three days of meetings with Chinese officials. The visit is seen as Pyongyang's efforts to mend soured ties after the last nuclear test.

Government officials and analysts in Seoul speculated that the young North Korean leader sent Ri to China in order to improve bilateral ties and create a rift in international commitments to the U.N. Security Council's (UNSC) latest sanctions on Pyongyang.

They also said that Ri may be carrying a message from Kim asking for a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

"It is likely Ri will discuss the results of the Workers' Party Congress, including Kim's announcement of North Korea as a responsible nuclear state," said Kim Yong-hyun, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University.












North Korea launches its own version of Facebook called "Best Korea's Social Network" on Friday. /Courtesy of Twitter



By Lee Jin-a

North Korea launched its own version of Facebook -- "Best Korea's Social Network" -- on Friday but shut it down soon after a Scottish teenager hacked into it.

According to CNN Money, Doug Madory, the director of Internet analysis firm Dyn DNS, found the website on a North Korean server and told the media it was available to people outside the isolated country at www.starcon.net.kp

But within hours of its launch, Scottish teenager Andrew McKean hacked the website by using "admin" and "password" for the login details.

He said he could "delete and suspend users, change the site's name, censor certain words, manage the ads and see everyone's emails."

The website not only looked like Facebook, but had similar functions such as uploading a cover photo and profile picture, finding friends, sending messages and posting a status message.

Madory said: "[I'm] not sure this was an official North Korean government project. But someone inside the country had to have done this."

He said the website was hosted in North Korea, unlike other North Korean websites, which were hosted in China.
By Yi Whan-woo, Jun Ji-hye



Senior party officials from North Korea and China agreed to boost cooperation, according to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Tuesday.

The agreement was made during talks Ri Su-yong, vice chairman of North's ruling Workers' Party had with his Chinese counterpart, Song Tao, minister of the International Department of the party, late Tuesday.

The agreement was seen as a fresh sign that the traditional allies are trying to mend soured ties after the international community imposed its harshest sanctions yet on the North in early March for its fourth nuclear weapons test.

Ri arrived in Beijing earlier in the day for a three-day visit as a special envoy of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Song and Ri agreed to "strengthen exchanges and cooperation between the two parties," the CCP said in a brief statement posted on its website.

The two also agreed on the "promotion of regional peace and stability," according to the statement.

Ri, the highest-ranking North Korean official to visit China since Pyongyang conducted the nuclear test, Jan. 6, was accompanied by a large delegation.

Government officials and analysts in Seoul speculated that the young North Korean leader sent him to China in order to improve bilateral ties and create a rift in international commitments to the U.N. Security Council's (UNSC) latest sanctions on Pyongyang.












By Frank Ching

The visit to Hong Kong by Chinese leader Zhang Dejiang  third-ranking official of the Chinese Communist Party, chairman of the standing committee of the National People's Congress and the top official responsible for Hong Kong affairs  was clearly an attempt by Beijing to appear to be conciliatory, with Zhang holding a brief meeting with and four pan-democratic legislators.

The Chinese leader warned against calls for self-determination and Hong Kong independence, urging the 7.3 million people of Hong Kong to "stick to the one-country, two-systems' principle [and] stick to the Basic Law." If these were abandoned, he warned, Hong Kong "would undoubtedly rot."

The Chinese leader started his three-day visit by saying that he was in Hong Kong to see, to listen and to speak. Hopefully, he had a chance to see things from Hong Kong's point of view.

Most people in Hong Kong would agree that it is vital to uphold the "one country, two systems" principle and the Basic Law. But many believe that the Chinese government has violated them while paying them lip service.

Indeed, a reminder of the reality ofBeijing's actions was provided last week when Angela Gui, the 22-year-old daughter of disappeared Hong Kong bookseller GuiMinhai, testified before the US Congressional-Executive Commission on Chinain Washington and pleaded with the US to put pressure on the Chinese government to release her father, who was apparently plucked by Chinese agents from his home in Pattaya, Thailand and taken illegally across international borders into China.

Gui's associate, Lee Bo, a British national, disappeared from Hong Kong last December and the United Kingdom said in its latest six-monthly report that information indicates that "Mr. Lee was involuntarily removed to the mainland without any due process" which "undermines the principle of one country, two systems.'"

According to the Basic Law, Chinese law enforcement agencies are not permitted to operate in Hong Kong without authorization. Thus, the abduction of Lee Bo is a violation of the Basic Law.

So far, China has ignored pressure from all quarters. In late April the European Union, in its annual report on Hong Kong, reported on the disappearance of Gui and four other booksellers, calling this case "the most serious challenge to Hong Kong's Basic Law and the one country, two systems' principle since Hong Kong's handover to the PRC [People's Republic of China] in 1997."

"The circumstances of the disappearances were suspicious," the report said. "The fifth person who disappeared from Hong Kong territory seems to have been abducted."

So the EU saw China as the threat to Hong Kong's future, not youngsters advocating localism or people calling for self-determination.

And how did China respond? A spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry's Commission in Hong Kong, instead of commenting on the facts cited in the report, avoided the issue by saying: "Hong Kong affairs are entirely China's internal affair. We are firmly against the interference into China's internal affairs by any foreign government, institution or individual in whatever way."

In May, the US State Department issued a wide-ranging annual report on American relations with Hong Kong. Under the heading "Significant Developments," it cited international media reports regarding the disappearance of "five men affiliated with Mighty Current Publishing House and the Causeway Bay Bookstore, known for distributing and selling books critical of the Chinese Communist Party and its leaders."

The report pointed out that these cases have raised serious concerns in Hong Kong and "represents what appears to be the most significant breach of the one country, two systems' policy since 1997."

So the US, like the EU, saw the seriousness of the case of the five booksellers and how China's actions had contravened its own "one country, two systems" principle.

And, like the EU, the US was told by the Chinese Foreign Ministry that "Hong Kong affairs are entirely China's internal affair that no foreign country has any right to interfere in."

But then, in Hong Kong, when Zhang met the pan-democrats, they specifically raised the issue. They certainly can't be accused of "interfering" in Hong Kong affairs. If Zhang didn't know about the booksellers case before, he certainly does now.

So if NPC Chairman Zhang was really looking and listening during his visit, he should now be in a position to report back to his comrades on the Politburo the source of the threat to "one country, two systems" and the Basic Law: The Communist Party, which has infringed on the powers of the Hong Kong government, as enshrined in the Basic Law enacted by China's National People's Congress. Who would have thought it?

Frank Ching is a free-lancer journalist based in Hong Kong. Contact him at Frank.ching@gmail.com.
By Anais FaureFor about a decade now, South Korea's foreign policy has been marked by the active usage of "middle power diplomacy." The concept itself iswidespread in high-level policy statements, while on the practical side, the main mechanism to advance this strategy has been network diplomacy  strengthening bilateral and multilateral relations through expanded cooperation across all regions.As is only natural, President Park Geun-hye's overseas state visits play a key role within these efforts. In 2015, some notable examples of "middle power networking" were Park's Latin American tour through Brazil, Colombia, Peru, and Chile in April, and the first ever Korea-Visegrad Group (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) Summit held in Prague in December.But when it comes to 2016, the nature of bilateral summits held in Korea and overseas so far suggest that the push for middle power-based network diplomacy is ever more at the forefront of Park's agenda. And within this push, two main trends emerge: the global scope of this year's summits  compared with 2015's regionalized focus  and the drive for positioning Korea as key partner for key regional powers across the globe.Taking a closer look at the President's summit diplomacy agenda further illustrates this.On Feb. 18 and March 3, respectively, Korea-Palestine and Korea-Egypt Summits were held at Cheong Wa Dae. And, after attending the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C., President Park flew to Mexico City for the Korea-Mexico Summit on April 5.Later that month, Cheong Wa Dae hosted the Korea-Norway Summit on the 15th, followed by the first-ever Korea-Iran Summit in Tehran on May 2. With two working-level meetings with Kuwait's Prime Minister and Argentina's Vice-President in between, the most recent summit was the Korea-Indonesia one hosted in Seoul May 16. Park is in the midst of a tour that included Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda by the end of this month, followed by her second state visit to France.The state visits to Africa were also very relevant, as they featured the first-ever visit of a Korean President to the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa and the official launch of Korea Aid, the newest overseas development assistance (ODA) initiative targeting African countries.Notably, development assistance is an integral component of Korea's middle power diplomacy, as the country's self-positioning as a bridge between developed and developing countries  based on its own experience  has allowed it to play an increasingly important role in international development.And last but not least, Park's state visit to France highlighted deepening ties between the two countries.As portrayed above, so far this has been a busy year for President Park. And, in contrast to the convoluted domestic political context, her foreign policy agenda has shown a clear drive for expanding Korea's networks by actively combining summit, cultural and economic diplomacy.All in all, this underscores two main aspirations: enhancing Korea's status from a middle power to that of a leading middle power and, in line with domestic concerns, giving renewed influx to a stagnating economy by conquering new markets.Anais Faure recently attained a master's degree in Korean studies from the Academy of Korean Studies and also holds a master's degree in development policy from the KDI School of Public Policy and Management. Write to faure.ag@gmail.com
By Park Yoon-bae

Deputy managing editor

I still remember that Pyo Chang-won, a former professor at the Korean National Police University, described the Sewol ferry tragedy as a "massacre by the state" right after the nation's worst maritime disaster took place on April 16, 2014.

He made the description during a roundtable discussion organized by The Korea Times and Transparency International Korea (TI-Korea) three weeks after the ill-fated ferry sank off Jindo Island, South Jeolla Province, killing more than 300 passengers including 250 high school students.

I realized how serious he was in criticizing the government, which he held ultimately accountable for the shipwreck. He made it clear that the government should get the blame for its rampant corruption and incompetence.

I cannot and will not forget what he said during the discussion not least because little has changed to build a better society by establishing watertight safety systems and breaking the corrupt ties among entrepreneurs, regulators, bureaucrats and politicians.

Pyo, chief of the Pyo Institute of Crime Science, was elected to the National Assembly representing Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, in the general election last month on the ticket of the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea.

I hope he will work together with other lawmakers to get rid of corruption in officialdom and look after the safety of the people through active legislative efforts.

I am sorry to bring up the Sewol issue again, as many Koreans are going through fatigue from the disaster. But I have to do so because no one has yet been found to be culpable of the maritime disaster after more than two years have passed.

It is hard to forget that President Park Geun-hye and her policymakers vowed to bring justice to those responsible for the calamity as well as clean up what she described as the "accumulated evils" of Korea.

Now, she has proven that she and her policymakers have just been long on words and short on action. This has been all the more so when looking at the shocking case of mass deaths caused by toxic humidifier disinfectants.

The biocide case, one of the worst scandals involving a consumer product in Korea, occurred in 2011 after four pregnant women died from unknown lung problems. It has so far claimed 146 lives.

But regrettably, the prosecution belatedly began a full-pledged investigation into the scandal in February this year, deepening the agony of the victims' families and those still suffering from lung damage caused by the harmful products.

The biocide crisis has thus far failed to draw much public attention although it happened well before the Sewol episode. It is apparent that the government and law enforcement authorities have turned a deaf ear on the immeasurable pain and suffering of innocent consumers who inhaled the hazardous sterilizers.

The disinfectant scandal is no less shocking than the Sewol shipwreck. And the two cases have much in common.

First, the two tragedies were triggered by the total disruption of the safety system designed to protect the lives and health of the people.

Second, the calamities were also derived from deep-rooted corruption between bureaucrats, regulators and businesspeople.

Third, the blind pursuit of money is the common denominator for the ferry sinking and the biocide.

Fourth, a long-held disregard for life is also responsible for the mass killing of the Sewol passengers and the disinfectant consumers.

Last but not least, no one is being held responsible for the tragedies. Furthermore, the administration, the legislature and the judicature have shown no strong will to bring to justice those responsible for the catastrophe to prevent such a manmade disaster from happening again.

Sad to say, Koreans have failed to learn a painful but valuable lesson from the Sewol calamity.

Can the prosecution get to the bottom of the biocide case and get tougher with the manufacturers and distributors of the deadly humidifier disinfectants?

It is difficult to come up with a clear answer. But I still hope that the authorities will conduct a thorough investigation into those who caused the biocide deaths.

First of all, the prosecutors should prove that Oxy Reckitt Benckiser, Lotte Mart, Homeplus and other disinfectant makers and sellers had knowingly sold the toxic products.

The investigation must also focus on confirming allegations of Oxy's fabrication of test results on the harmful effects of its product in collaboration with a Seoul National University professor who reportedly accepted bribes from the company.

It is also necessary for the prosecution to confirm whether the U.K. headquarters of Reckitt Benckiser is implicated in the alleged cover-up of the biocide scandal.

Finally the government is required to set up a stricter regulatory system to properly manage and control toxic chemicals. Policymakers should realize that no one wants to see more people die again due to negligence, lack of supervision, corruption, the blind pursuit of profits and a blatant disregard for life.
Starkey Korea CEO Richard Shim, left, poses with Rotary Club Governor Kim Do-youl, in front of its booth while attending this year's Rotary Convention

at KINTEX in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, Tuesday. / Courtesy of Starkey Korea



By Lee Min-hyung

Starkey Korea participated in this year's Rotary Convention, as part of its efforts to extend humanitarian aid to the world, the company said Tuesday.

The local subsidiary of the hearing aid manufacturer offers free hearing tests and consultations at its booth during the five-day event, which kicked off Saturday at the KINTEX convention center in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province.

The Rotary International Convention is held in a different city annually, discussing ways to tackle humanitarian challenges facing the world.

"The Rotary Club has made a miraculous donation for 6 million children suffering from polio across the world," U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a congratulatory speech at the event, Saturday.

The number of participants for this year's convention was the largest ever, participated in by some 50,000 Rotary members.

The U.N. chief and Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn joined the event, pledging to continue their support of fighting issues such as international conflicts, water pollution and disease.

Starkey Korea CEO Richard Shim and Starkey Hearing Technologies Vice President Brandon Sawalich, stressed the company would extend its corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities by continuing to participate in key social activities  including human resource cultivation and donations of hearing aids.

For every sale, the company donates to the Starkey Hearing Foundation, helping the underprivileged around the world get hearing-related support. The company has so far donated more than 1 million hearing aids globally.

Rotary International marks its 107th convention since the first in 1905.

In recent years, Rotary members across the world have focused on resolving six pressing challenges  including basic education, pollution and community development.

The Starkey Korea head pledged last year at a regional meeting that it would share its expertise with other Asian countries, offering its marketing and business strategies to such countries as Indonesia and Singapore.

Starkey was founded in 1967 under the motto of "Together, we can change the world." Starkey Hearing Technologies were co-founded by Bill Austin and Tani Austin.
Sangmyung University President Goo Kee-heon, left, and Sangmyung Academic Foundation Chairman Lee Jun-bang, second from left, participate in a ribbon-cutting ceremony to launch a European porcelain exhibition at Sangmyung University Museum in Seoul, Monday. Posing with them are Executive Vice President for Development and External Affairs Kim Chong-hee, second from right, and Vice President Hong Seong-tae. / Courtesy of Sangmyung University



By Chung Hyun-chae



The Sangmyung University Museum launched a three-month exhibition featuring 200 pieces of European porcelain, Monday, to celebrate the 79th anniversary of the Sangmyung Academy Foundation and the 51st anniversary of Sangmyung University.



"Ours is the only university museum that holds European porcelain in our collections," said Lyu Han-su, director of the museum.



The exhibition includes a Meissen Blue Onion Tea Set decorated in Chinese patterns, made by potters in Meissen, eastern Germany, in the 18th century.



Also on display is the Royal Crown Derby Imari Tea Set having Japanese patterns, manufactured by an English potter in the 17th century.



"The exhibition will help visitors appreciate cultural heritages related to exchanges between the East and West," curator Whang A-ra said.



The museum's porcelain collection was donated by Bokjeon Young-ja, director of the European Porcelain Museum, which is part of the Bucheon City Museum in Gyeonggi Province.



The museum regularly runs an art and cultural program related to porcelain.

"We hold a 12-week porcelain-painting class twice a year which many local residents participate in," Whang said.





[caption]



Sangmyung University President Goo Kee-heon, left, and Sangmyung Academic Foundation Chairman Lee Jun-bang, second from left, participate in a ribbon-cutting ceremony to launch a European porcelain exhibition at Sangmyung University Museum in Seoul, Monday. Posing with them are Executive Vice President for Development and External Affairs Kim Chong-hee, second from right, and Vice President Hong Seong-tae.

Courtesy of Sangmyung University
By Lee Min-hyung

Samsung Electronics said Tuesday that five startups will be spun off from its creative laboratory (C-Lab) project introduced in 2012 to breed an innovative corporate culture.

The five companies are scheduled to launch as independent corporations Wednesday, focusing on introducing their products during the second half of this year, according to the nation's largest electronics giant.

Samsung has conducted a thorough evaluation process with venture capitalists to name the five companies. Eighteen former Samsung executives and employees of the startups will focus on marketing and completion of the new products.

The startups include producers of the WELT smart belt and the intelligent energy cost management service Save Energy Cost.

"Samsung C-Lab has completed over 130 projects, with some 480 employees participating in the program since it started in 2012," Lee Jae-il, vice president at Samsung Electronics' Digital Media & Communications (DMC) R&D center, said in a statement.

"Forty out of the 130 projects are in the process of commercialization. We are making all-out efforts to link such ideas to businesses by continuing to unveil them at the world's leading tradeshows including the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and the Mobile World Congress (MWC)," he said.

In February, Samsung's first spinoff startup Salted Venture debuted at this year's MWC, unveiling its smart shoes IoFIT.

Samsung said the C-Lab project motivates employees to embrace challenges and foster entrepreneurship, thereby extending communication channels into other untapped areas.

Selected startups can benefit from the company's business knowhow and Samsung's profit-making capabilities. Regardless of their success or failure, participants can return to their original positions at Samsung anytime, the company said.

Samsung guarantees management autonomy for selected C-Lab members. One of the key features of the program is that participants can handle business management on their own, including budget execution and teambuilding processes, the company said.

In last year's C-Lab program, the company selected nine venture ideas, helping turn them into reality.
A noodle restaurant in Hanoi has soared in popularity after U.S. President Barack Obama made a spontaneous visit there two days ago.



Bun cha Huong Lien in the district of Hai Ba Trung was bustling with at least 70 patrons well past the rush hour of 1 p.m. on Tuesday.



"We have at least 30 percent more customers now that Obama was here," said a 60-year-old employee at the shop that specializes in the traditional Vietnamese dish "bun cha" consisting of grilled pork served in a broth or with dipping sauce, flanked by rice noodles and fresh herbs.



Obama, who arrived in Vietnam on Sunday, dropped by the next day along with chef Anthony Bourdain, who hosts CNN's "Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown."



The owner of the joint, which has been around for 23 years, said she was contacted by the White House and the local police just hours before his visit.



"I don't know why they chose our restaurant, but I was happy to serve traditional Vietnamese food to a global VIP such as the U.S. president," the 58-year-old woman said.



Some of her patrons were taking photos of the second floor where Obama sat. A mom-and-pop establishment, the restaurant has a humble interior with no ornamentation. An old air conditioner whistles in the corner, barely keeping the place at a tolerable temperature.



A 39-year-old office worker said she waited 10 times longer than normal to get seated.



"Normally it takes five minutes, but today, I waited 50 minutes to get a seat," she said.



She also spoke favorably of Obama's visit, saying the future between Vietnam and the U.S. was more important than fuming over the Vietnam War, which "ended decades ago."



During his visit, Obama lifted a decadeslong ban on weapons exports to Vietnam as part of deepened cooperation between the U.S. and Vietnam.



An American tourist, Annie Hahn, said she was incredulous at first that she and her country's leader missed each other by only a couple of days.



"I hope relations between the U.S. and Vietnam improve down the road," the 27-year-old said. (Yonhap)




The United States acknowledges the "pain of the past" associated with its 1945 atomic bombings of Japan, and wants to move toward building a stronger alliance with the foe-turned-ally, the State Department said Wednesday.

State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner made the remark when asked to comment on Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida's reported statements that the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were "extremely regrettable."

"I would just say that, you know, we acknowledge the pain of the past and we look forward to building a stronger future," Toner said. "With that in mind, that we need to move beyond the conflicts, and suffering and sacrifices and build a stronger alliance with respect to that."

Kishida made the remarks on Tuesday, just days before U.S. President Barack Obama pays a visit to Hiroshima in a move that critics say could dilute Japan's wartime aggression by making it look more like a victim, rather than the one who started the Pacific war by bombing Pearl Harbor.

According to China's Xinhua news agency, Kishida said that the atomic bombings claimed many lives and brought about "an extremely regrettable humanitarian situation." He also said that the atomic bombings do not conform to humanitarianism.












Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Friday that Japan can never escape its responsibility for World War II as U.S. President Barack Obama made a historic visit to Hiroshima, which was devastated by the world's first nuclear strike more than 70 years ago.

Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima since it was hit by an American nuclear bomb in 1945. Along with the second nuclear bombing of Nagasaki, these attacks forced Japan to accept an unconditional surrender that hastened the end of the war.

Without making an apology, Obama has said he would use the visit to Hiroshima as an occasion to promote his vision of a world without nuclear weapons.

But concerns persist among Japan's neighbors, which have suffered Japan's wartime atrocities, that the trip by Obama to Hiroshima could allow Japan to portray itself as a victim of the war.

"Hiroshima deserves attention; so does Nanjing," Wang told a forum, according to a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying.

Japan invaded the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing in 1937 and committed a massacre in which China says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital.

"Victims deserve our sympathy, but the perpetrators should not get away from their responsibility," Wang was quoted as saying.

The U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima killed 140,000 people, and the second bomb dropped on Nagasaki killed 70,000 people. (Yonhap)
U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has faulted President Barack Obama over his recent visit to the atomic-bombed Japanese city of Hiroshima, saying he didn't even mention Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor.



"Does President Obama ever discuss the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor while he's in Japan? Thousands of American lives lost," Trump said of Obama's visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial in a Twitter message Saturday ahead of Monday's Memorial Day.



Obama visited Hiroshima on Friday, becoming the first sitting American president to do so since the 1945 bombing despite concern it could dilute Japan's wartime aggression by making the country look more like a victim, rather than the one who started the Pacific War by bombing Pearl Harbor.



Just days ahead of the visit, Japan's Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida sought to reinforce the notion of victimhood, saying the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were "extremely regrettable" and do not conform to "humanitarianism."



The visit also raised eyebrows of many World War II veterans and their children who believe that the decision to drop the bombs saved countless American lives that would otherwise have been lost.



Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee and now a key supporter of Trump, also denounced Obama's visit as an "apology lap," accusing him of "dissing our vets."



Speaking at a Trump campaign rally in San Diego on Friday, Palin said the visit amounts to suggesting, "We were wrong to prove that we would eradicate evil in World War II."



American veterans groups had urged Obama not to visit Hiroshima until the Japanese apologize for the wartime treatment of American prisoners of war, thousands of whom died of abuse and starvation in Japanese prison camps.



But Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made clear that he has no plans to visit Pearl Harbor. Instead, Abe sought to emphasize Japan's image as a victim.



"In Hiroshima, numerous citizens sacrificed their lives, and even now there are those of us suffering because of the atomic bombing. And what those Japanese people suffering from the atomic bomb desire is never to repeat such tragedy in the world," Abe said during a joint news conference after talks with Obama.



Obama's decision to go to Hiroshima could be the latest in a series of efforts to build his legacy in his final year in office. It could also be a reward for a nation that has done everything possible to help address American economic and security needs in a region marked by China's rise, including expanding Japan's military roles overseas.



White House officials have stressed that the visit wasn't an apology, and that it was aimed at highlighting his commitment to pursuing the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons" and to honor the memory of all innocents who were lost during the war.



During Friday's visit to the Hiroshima memorial, Obama laid a wreath and delivered a long speech honoring all innocent victims of the war, including Korean victims, while underscoring his call for a world without nuclear weapons.



Obama's mention of Korean A-bomb victims, which also marked the first time for a U.S. president to do so, was seen as an effort to underscore the point that the visit was aimed at honoring all victims of the atomic bombings and does not represent an apology to Japan.



But Obama stopped short of visiting a separate memorial honoring Korean victims. (Yonhap)




American Red Cross volunteers from southern Missouri have gone to Texas to assist in the flood relief efforts.

Ten volunteers from Greene, Jasper, Taney, Laclede, Douglas and Hickory counties were deployed to Austin and Houston to work in damage assessment and sheltering.

Damage assessment information helps the Red Cross and other relief agencies to determine where to place resources. Red Cross shelters are set up to provide clean, safe places to stay for people displaced by the flooding.

The volunteers from southern Missouri are joining others from around the country responding to the devastating flooding after some parts of Texas received 19 inches of rain over the holiday weekend.

Since the beginning of the year, numerous storms have ravaged the state, displacing thousands of families and devastating homes and businesses.

Brenham -- about 65 miles northwest of Houston -- received 18 inches of rain in a 24-hour period over the weekend. Houston, which has been hammered with severe weather and flooding for several months, was again in the storms path and people were forced to leave their homes.

The threat isnt over. Weather experts predict flooding will continue for several more days. Emergency officials estimate that some 6,000 homes may be affected.

The Red Cross is monitoring the ongoing threat for more flooding and is setting up in areas that are likely to be hit by the next onslaught of bad weather later this week.
The SLFP does not condone the continuation of the Emergency Regulations (The Public Security Ordinance) more than a day necessary

Read more
The former Van Nuys Hotel. Photo by Gary Leonard.

Writing in the Downtown News, longtime local historian Greg Fischer visits the corner of 4th and Main in what's called the Old Bank District to remind people why the name Van Nuys is on a few things in Los Angeles. At that corner is the Barclay Building, erected in 1897 as the Van Nuys Hotel, at the time considered a very nice hotel by Los Angeles standards of the day. You can still see the Van Nuys lettering high on the facade of the Barclay if you have the right vantage point. A good spot for that is diagonally across the intersection in the Lankershim Building, the first loft housing retrofit in the Old Bank District.

The Van Nuys and Lankershim names are intimately linked in Los Angeles history, and not just because both are the names of north-south boulevards that take a dogleg or two as they cut across the Valley. From Fischer's piece:

Isaac Newton Van Nuys, from an old Dutch family in New York, arrived in Los Angeles a few years after the Civil War. In 1880, he married the former Susanna Hill Lankershim, thus uniting the Van Nuys and Lankershim families. Susannas father, Isaac Lankershim (changed from Lankesheim), was a partner with Van Nuys in a farming syndicate that owned almost the entire southern half of the San Fernando Valley, some 60,000 acres south of Roscoe Boulevard. The property had been acquired from Don Pio Pico, the last Mexican governor of the portion of California that today is in the United States. Don Pios brother, General Andres Pico, held the balance of the Valley lands, about 60,000 acres north of Roscoe Boulevard. No doubt the sale of the southern half of the Valley helped Don Pio finance the building of the Pico House hotel at todays El Pueblo Plaza. It opened in 1869, about a year after Pico sold the Valley acreage. In 1896, Isaac and Susanna Lankershim Van Nuys built the Van Nuys Hotel on the northwest corner of Fourth and Main streets. It was constructed on the site of the former home of Colonel James Howard and his wife. Howard was a prominent attorney and the Howards lived next to former Gov. John G. Downey. These were the days when South Main Street was very in as a residential neighborhood.... his hotel is where Henry Huntington stayed while on trips to scope out Los Angeles as a place in which to invest, long before he built his estate at San Marino. President William McKinley stayed at the Van Nuys when visiting Los Angeles in 1901, several months before his assassination. A photo from the time shows the president in a carriage arriving amidst a throng of well-wishers jammed into the intersection. The hotel is decked out with flags in every window and guests waving at the presidential entourage.



It was on that trip to Los Angeles when McKinley was photographed in a crowd at the Soldier's Home that became the West LA Veterans Affairs campus, and also when he attended a party at the home of LA Times publisher Harrison Gray Otis that I talk about a bit in my book on Wilshire Boulevard. The Otis home at the corner of Park View Street was one of the first homes built on the new Wilshire Boulevard, if not the first.

Just to be clear, since I know LA's history is not everybody's cup of tea, the Roscoe Boulevard that Fischer refers to at the time was just a plough furrow scratched into the grass range of the Valley to mark the Lankershim ranch's boundary. Decades later, when the Valley acreage began to be divided up more, a road gradually began to appear along the boundary between south and north. The name for Roscoe Boulevard came from one of the towns established along the railroad tracks; that settlement was renamed Sun Valley in the suburban era.

That 1870s dividing line between ranches, and later subdivisions, is also why some main streets across the Valley  Sepulveda Boulevard is a good example  follow different alignments on either side of Roscoe. Through the years, the traffic jams that resulted from a forced turn to continue driving on Sepulveda and other streets were relieved by smoothing out the old mismatch. That's why Sepulveda, arrow straight for most of its traverse of the Valley, curves gently just below Roscoe.
PRESS RELEASE

China and India Will Both Play a Vital Role in Promoting Asias Infrastructure Development, Says Chinas Global Times

May 29, 2016 (EIRNS)Responding to geopolitical analysts hue and cry that the recently concluded Iran-India-Afghanistan agreement to develop Irans Chabahar Port as a transport hub to facilitate trade between India, Indian Ocean littoral states, Iran, and landlocked Afghanistan and Central Asia is a "counter-measure" to the China-proposed China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, Chinas official Global Times ran a business article May 27 heralding "Indian Deal with Iran Shows Commitment to Infrastructure that Will Benefit China Too." The daily said,

"China is likely to be happy if India can join the ranks of improving infrastructure networks in the region. As a key strategic location connecting East Asia, Southeast Asia and Central Asia, India can promote infrastructure development that will be conducive to economic development in the entire region."

Rebuking the geopolitical mavens, the Global Times pointed out that some people evaluate these projects from the perspective of geopolitics, and imply that China and India are in a race to win strategic trade routes.

"However, this way of thinking also contributes to the complex situation facing Central Asia, which has long been beset by backward infrastructure and only fringe participation in globalization,"

wrote author Hu Weijia.

In conclusion, the Hu assured that

"China is unlikely to engage in strategic confrontation with India. It is clear that the improvement of infrastructure in Central Asia will also provide opportunities for Chinese multinational corporations, which hope to find potential overseas markets in the region."

It also said that
PRESS RELEASE

Will Deutsche Be the Next Lehman Brothers?, Financial Column Asks

May 29, 2016 (EIRNS)On May 24, Michael Snyder, writing for Seeking Alpha, raised in its headline the question, "Will Deutsche Bank Survive This Wave of Trouble Or Will It Be the Next Lehman Brothers?" Deutsche is a 1.69 trillion ($1.81 trillion) in assets bank, that has a derivatives exposure of between $55 to $70 trillion (the officially released figure is constantly changed), an amount that is more than 12 times the GDP of Germany.

On May 23, Moodys rating service took the step of downgrading Deutsche. According to the Moodys press release,

"Moodys Investors Service has today downgraded the ratings of Deutsche Bank AG and affiliates, including the banks long-term deposit rating to A3 from A2, [and] its unsecured debt rating to Baa2 from Baa1."

In most cases, Deutsches debt is now just two grades above junk.

On the same day, Deutsche was compelled to report a 450 million ($500 million) charge that it took in 2015 for equity trading fraud (without disclosing further details; part of Deutsches 6.8 billion/$7.7 billion loss for 2015). On top of this, the May 23 Fortune magazine reports that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is reportedly investigating the bank regarding the false pricing and reporting of mortgage backed securities.

The Seeking Alpha article on Deutsche Bank, which is reflected in parallel articles in Zero Hedge etc., is reflective of the fact that the entire Trans-Atlantic financial system is irredeemably, systemically bankrupt. It must be cancelled and replaced by a revolutionary new system vectored on Hamiltonian directed credit.

The danger for Deutsche Bank is that it has used so many frauds, that one cannot support the others, and any incident can cause its worthless derivatives contracts to unfold. The same is true of JP Morgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland, Goldman Sachs, and the $1.7 quadrillion derivatives market.
PRESS RELEASE

Russia Doesnt Want War, But Is Preparing for It

May 29, 2016 (EIRNS)In a lengthy May 26 article in the Unz Review, the famous, pseudonymous pro-Russian blogger, the Saker, explains in depth the Russian view of the threat against it stemming from NATO expansion and confrontation. Russia, he points out, is very upset about NATOs military buildup, even though in military technical terms it doesnt no represent much of a threat. After all, what can NATO realistically do with 4,000 troops and a missile defense installation that can, at best, only intercept 10-20 warheads? First of all, he writes,

"Because the current U.S./NATO moves might well be just the first steps of a much larger effort which, given enough time, might begin presenting a very real danger for Russia."

Secondly, there are no European statesmen, such as Charles de Gaulle or Helmut Schmidt, capable of pushing back against U.S. domination of the European continent. Thirdly,

"The Russians believe that what the Americans are doing is, at best, to use tensions with Russia to revive a dormant Cold War v2 and, at worst, to actually start a real shooting war in Europe."

So this is what the Russians are responding to.

The measures the Russians are taking are based on the following. First, if the U.S. is stupid enough to start a shooting war, the U.S. mainland will not be immune to Russian counterfire. In other words, the U.S. will pay "an immense price" for starting such a war. Secondly, the Russians are now evidently assuming that a conventional threat from the West might materialize in the foreseeable future. They are therefore taking the measures needed to counter that conventional threat. Third, since the U.S. appears to be dead set on deploying an anti-ballistic missile system not only in Europe, but also in the Far East, the Russians are taking the measures to both defeat and bypass this system.

The specific steps Russia is taking in response include the recreating of the First Guards Tank Army in the Western Military District, directly modeled on the 1st TGA of the Soviet period but with 21st-century attributes. The other steps include the deployment of the Iskander M ballistic missile, the development of the Sarmat ICBMwhich, according to Russian reports, will be able to attack from any direction, not just over the North Poleand the so-called Status 6 nuclear torpedo project. On Status 6, the Saker claims that this is based on the concept of the T-15 nuclear torpedo and is large enough to carry a 100-megaton bomb (twice the size of Khrushchovs "Tsar Bomba" tested in 1961, though Im sure no warheads exist like it today). The T-15 was proposed by Andrei Sakharov in the early 1950s as a means of delivering a nuclear attack on American cities at a time when the Soviet Union had no other means of such attacks. The T-15 apparently never found support in the Soviet military, but Sakharov resurrected it again after the Tsar Bomba test because that device was too large and bulky to be used, militarily, in any other way.

The Sakers main message is this: The reality is that the notion that the United States could trigger a war against Russia (or China for that matter) and not suffer the consequences on the U.S. mainland is absolutely ridiculous, despite what the crazy politicians and generals in the West might be saying. The other part of his message is that the Russians hate war, and try to avoid it at all costs, but are getting ready for it because they see it as a struggle for survival, while the lunatics in the West really do see war as "politics by other means."
PRESS RELEASE

African Nations Are Anxious To Be Part of the New Silk Road

May 30, 2016 (EIRNS)"African countries bid for anchor points in Chinas billion-dollar Silk Road planit could set off mini battles," is the headline on an article in the May 29 Mail & Guardian Africa.

The lead is the current state visit of Togo President Faure Gnassingbe to Beijing, where he was interviewed by Xinhua. With him is a 30-man business delegation. "Togo intends to be the anchor point in West Africa for the New Silk Road initiative," he said. It "posses[es] many advantages to serve as a gateway, including its geography." China has been building infrastructure in Togo over the past decade, the article reports, including roads and rail and ports. Gnassingbe said that he wants to strengthen the bilateral relationship. Recently the government stated support for Chinas claims in the South China Sea.

Other African countries are also interested. In December, at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Johannesburg, Moroccos King Mohammed VI said,

Given its geographical location, the Kingdom of Morocco could play a constructive role in extending the Maritime Silk Road, not only to Atlantic Europe, but also and especially to West African nations, with whom my country has multi-dimensional ties."

Recently, Cameroon President Paul Biya described his nation as the strategic crossroads between West and Central Africa, with potential Maritime Silk Road participation. Cameroons new Kribi deepwater port is being built by China, and there are at least five ports on the western African coast that are considered strategic in the Belt and Road plan, in Tunisia, Senegal, Gabon, and Ghana, among others.
PRESS RELEASE

Is NATO Exercising Its Way into Confrontation with Russia?

May 30, 2016 (EIRNS)NATO is running exercise after exercise in the Baltics and Poland. Exercise Saber Strike, with 10,000 troops from 13 countries, kicked off on May 27 in the Baltic states. The U.S. Armys 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, concurrent with Saber Strike, left its base in Vilseck, Germany, last week, for a 2,200-km Dragoon Ride, meandering through the Czech Republic (where they are now), Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and, finally, Estonia, over the course of June. This and the Saber Strike exercise follow the recently concluded Spring Storm exercise, which saw 6,000 troops in Estonia. Also recently concluded is Exercise Brilliant Jump, which ran from May 17 to 26, which tested the very-high-readiness Joint Task Force and the Spanish-led NATO Force Integration Headquarters in Poland. All of this will be followed by Exercise Anakonda in Poland later in June and into July, in the run-up to the NATO summit in Warsaw on July 8-9.

NATOs exercising isnt limited to Poland and the Baltics, however. Exercise Noble Partner concluded in Georgia, last week. U.K. troops participating in the exercise were treated to a visit by General Sir Adrian Bradshaw, who also met with the Georgian defense minister.

In the middle of this, notes Sputnik, sits Poland, whose right-wing government has been playing a crucial role in stoking the flames of confrontation. Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski reportedly is saying that Warsaw wont agree to any more discussions between NATO and Russia until NATO finally approves the additional troop deployments to Poland and the Baltic states. "Only then will we give our consent to the meeting [of the Russia-NATO Council]," he said, adding that NATO has agreed to this. Its likely that Russia will see no point in resuming NATO-Russia Council discussions under such conditions.
Life transitions are never easy, but by far one of the hardest, one filled with ups and downs and uncertainty, is the transition from active military service to civilian life.

If youre a veteran struggling, youre not alone: 61 percent of post-9/11 veterans reported difficulty adjusting to civilian life, according to the report The State of the American Veteran: The Orange County Veterans Study by the University of Southern California School of Social Work.

One of the biggest roadblocks to a smooth transition is that, in most cases, theres no clear road at all, says Stephanie J. Wong, Ph.D., a licensed clinical psychologist in San Mateo, California. No one tells you, Step one: Do X. Step two: Do Y. Step three: Do Z.

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But its easier than you might think to chart your best course, no matter what stage of re-integration youre in. These five strategies will help.

Dont go it alone

You didnt shoulder missions alone in the service and you neednt start now. Be honest with yourself if you need help  and about what kind of support would benefit you. There are so many organizations that want to help, says Kathy Copeland, Ph.D., Vice President of Human Services for Goodwill of Orange County, which operates the Tierney Center for Veteran Services in Tustin. A good first step: Ask around and search the internet to get an idea of what exists.

Overwhelmed? One of the Tierney Centers objectives is to help veterans navigate and connect with services to meet your unique needs. Theyve built partnerships with local organizations in all areas, including those that provide family-centric treatment and support (such as the Child Guidance Center), affordable or pro bono legal services (Veterans Legal Institute), mental health services (Strength in Support) and government agencies (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs).

Seek out a trusted confidant

Apart from organizations, one-on-one support from a loved one or peer or counselor who will collaborate and assist you can be a powerful tool.

Choose someone you feel comfortable opening up to, whether its a sibling or parent, spouse or friend, former teacher or employer or fellow veteran. Dr. Copeland sees veterans regularly interacting at the Tierney Center and recommends veterans lean on each other to get advice and share experiences.

Research shows peer support  folks who have been there, done that and are back on their feet  is really key, she says.

If youre a veteran who hasnt needed the services of an organization or has successfully made the transition, consider offering yourself as a resource to others  you might be pleasantly surprised by the effects on your own life. Theres a brotherhood and sisterhood that exists among veterans, Dr. Copeland says. We encourage all vets to get connected.

Get control of your finances

According to the USC report, more than one in three post-9/11 veterans have an annual income below or near $23, 850, the U.S. national household poverty level for 2014.

Returning to the civilian world with no job and, in many cases, no stable living situation, can be a rude awakening for veterans. Youre used to getting a regular paycheck and your three squares; its hard to plan for (what comes after), Dr. Copeland says.

Many organizations, including the Tierney Center, offer financial wellness classes that help vets establish and learn the basics and provide other education, including classes on veteran benefits such as VA loans to buy a home.

Learn to apply military experience to civilian employment

Dont feel married to whatever type of job you held in the military. A dedicated career counselor at a veteran services organization like the Tierney Center can talk you through your skills and experience  even if they dont seem directly related to a civilian job  and help you figure out how to describe them on a resume and market them to potential employers.

Our program looks at the whole vet, Dr. Copeland says. And through long-term relationships with employers in Orange County and beyond, they have a high rate of job placement, she says.

Be patient with yourself

Routine, structure and discipline are built into military life, so many veterans find civilian life at first feels unsettlingly dynamic and even frenetic. With so many factors to juggle  reconnecting with loved ones, getting and keeping a job, obtaining housing and budgeting  be sure you take time for yourself, to adjust and check in with yourself.

But managing your mental health can be a challenge thats hard to face, clinical psychologist Dr. Wong says. Keep in mind that even if you dont have telltale signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, its normal for issues to creep up. If you start feeling depressed, anxious or just off, talk to your confidant or a mental health professional. Asking for help is a strength  not a weakness, she says.

Thats true no matter what type of support you need or organization you reach out to. There are a lot of misunderstandings about veterans options and what they can do during this time, Dr. Copeland says. These services are not a handout; theyre a hand up.

 Paige Worthy for Goodwill of Orange County
A federal judge Tuesday sentenced the former head of the California Public Employees Retirement System to 4 1/2 years in prison after the former chief executive acknowledged accepting more than $200,000 in bribes and trying to steer investments to help an associate.

Senior U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer called the case against Federico Buenrostro Jr., head of the nations largest public pension fund, seriously troubling and said it reflected a spectacular breach of trust for the most venal of purposes, which is self-enrichment.

Buenrostro pleaded guilty to fraud and bribery charges two years ago, saying he started taking bribes around 2005 to try to get CalPERS staff members to make investment decisions that helped Alfred Villalobos, an investment manager and former board member of the pension fund.

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Buenrostro said he accepted cash and a trip around the world and allowed Villalobos to pay for his wedding in Lake Tahoe. Villalobos killed himself last year, weeks before he was set to go on trial. He had pleaded not guilty to fraud charges.

I take full responsibility and accept the consequences of the actions I took, Buenrostro, in a blue jail outfit and leg irons, told the judge before he was sentenced. Im humiliated, embarrassed and deeply ashamed of my actions.

Buenrostros guilty plea came out of a years-long investigation into the role of money-management firm middlemen, called placement agents, in helping clients win investment business from the pension fund. The fund manages health and retirement benefits for state employees and has about $290 billion in assets.

As part of his plea deal, Buenrostro acknowledged giving Villalobos access to confidential investment information and forging letters that enabled firms connected with Villalobos to collect a $14-million commission on $3 billion worth of pension fund investments.

Buenrostro faced up to five years in prison, but the U.S. attorneys office asked for a four-year term, citing the former executives cooperation in the case against Villalobos. Buenrostro also has agreed to pay back $250,000 to the state, prosecutors said.

Tim Lucey, representing the U.S. attorneys office, said Buenrostro had helped prosecutors understand the extent of his conspiracy with Villalobos and investigate other cases. Lucey did not provide details about the other cases.

This was one of the most startling and serious cases of public corruption in the history of the state of California, Lucey said. That being said, Mr. Buenrostro did come forward and admit to what he had done.

Prosecutors sought the shorter sentence despite Buenrostro getting sent to jail when he violated the terms of his probation on a misdemeanor domestic violence charge by making contact with the victim, authorities say. He pleaded no contest in that case in March.

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Trump University instructed employees on how to play on peoples emotions to get them to buy more expensive seminars for succeeding in real estate, according to nearly 400 pages of court documents unsealed Tuesday.

The playbooks for the now-defunct business owned by Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, offer detailed sales scripts and tell employees how to overcome obstacles such as potential customers who have reached their credit card limits or want to check with a spouse before buying.

The documents unsealed in San Diego were part of a lawsuit by customers who say they were defrauded. Last Friday, a judge agreed with attorneys for the Washington Post that the public had a right to know what was previously confidential.

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The documents outline how employees should guide customers through the roller coaster of emotions once they have expressed interest.

The motivation that they experienced can die quickly as the realities of their daily lives take over. It is our job to rekindle that motivation to make them once again see the potential of achieving their dream, according to a Trump University sales playbook.

Trump Universitys core customers are identified in the documents as male heads of households 40 to 54 years old with annual household incomes of at least $90,000, a college education and a net worth of more than $200,000.

The documents show meticulous attention to details such as seating at seminars. Room temperature should be set no higher than 68 degrees and music should be the OJays For the Love of Money.

TRAIL GUIDE: All the latest news on the 2016 presidential campaign >>

Trump has maintained that customers were overwhelmingly satisfied with the offerings. His attorneys didnt immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

The 6-year-old case in San Diego is scheduled to go to trial shortly after the November presidential election.

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The European Union reached an agreement Tuesday with some of the worlds biggest social media firms, including Facebook and Twitter, on ways to fight the spread of hate speech online.

Under the terms of a code of conduct, the firms, which also include YouTube and Microsoft, have committed to quickly and efficiently tackle illegal hate speech directed against anyone over issues of race, color, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin. The sites have often been used by terrorist organizations to relay messages and incite hatred against certain individuals or groups.

Among the measures agreed to with the EUs executive arm, the firms have said they will establish internal procedures and staff training to guarantee that a majority of illegal content is assessed and, where necessary, removed within 24 hours.

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They have also agreed to strengthen their partnerships with civil society organizations that often flag content promoting incitement to violence and hateful conduct. The European Commission and the firms have also agreed to support civil society organizations to deliver anti-hate campaigns.

The internet is a place for free speech, not hate speech, said Vera Jourova, the EU commissioner responsible for justice, consumers and gender equality. She added that the code of conduct, which will be regularly reviewed in terms of its scope and impact, will ensure that public incitement to violence to hatred has no place online.

The firms themselves say theres no conflict between their mission statements to promote the freedom of expression and clamping down on hate speech.

Twitter, which has been at the center of much of the hate speech thats spread online over the past few years, says it will continue to tackle the issue head-on along with partners in industry and civil society.

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We remain committed to letting the tweets flow, said Twitters European head of public policy, Karen White. However, there is a clear distinction between freedom of expression and conduct that incites violence and hate.

And Facebooks head of global policy management, Monika Bickert, urged the companys 1.6 million users to use the sites in-built reporting tools in the event they find content they consider unacceptable.

Our teams around the world review these reports around the clock and take swift action, she said.

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The 48-year-old Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena calls his dense, earnest and grassroots edition of the Venice Architecture Biennale, which opened Saturday to the public and will run through November, Reporting From the Front. The show collects work from a range of architects operating on the forward lines of what Aravena calls battles against inequality, crushing poverty and environmental crisis and puts it on display with the informality of a journalistic sketch.

An equally good title would be The Borrowers. The stars of this biennale  both in Aravenas main exhibition and the various national pavilions that complement it  are those in debt, in many senses of that word.

They borrow money; running through this biennale is a multifaceted critique of global real-estate speculation and its effects on domestic life.

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They borrow ideas from other architects, from pools of collective knowledge or from the past. And they borrow the kinds of spaces common to the sharing economy: the backseat for the Uber ride, the bedroom for the Airbnb stay.

The emphasis is very much, as biennale President Paolo Baratta points out, on the demand (as opposed to supply) side of the architectural equation. This biennale shines a spotlight not just on the architects who design buildings but the people who use, buy, rent, build and clean them.

Because borrowing is by definition temporary, it also tilts from the permanent and the fixed and toward the expedient: the repair job instead of the grand gesture.

In material and visual terms this means a largely handmade or masonry biennale  an earthy show dominated by brick, ceramics, wood and rammed earth rather than steel, glass or pixels. (As the text accompanying a project by architect Anna Heringer puts it, Three billion people on this planet live in buildings made of mud.) Formal novelty is largely sidelined  along with the broader notion of novelty as a shrine where architects ought to worship  in favor of an emphasis on place, climate and tradition.

In thematic terms it means a show dedicated to the importance of incremental and bottom-up progress; what the north can learn from the south and the west from the east; and the value of cooperative or indigenous architecture rather than signature projects by the stars of the profession. Among the subjects that pop up in several corners of the exhibition are ritual; drones and their relationship to architecture and urbanism; and forensics and evidence.

It has been a heady few months for Aravena, whose most influential designs are social housing complexes in Chile but who increasingly oversees a global practice. In a year that it is not yet half over he has collected a Pritzker Prize, the leading honor in the profession, and served as biennale director, a slot that is typically filled by older and better-known figures.

The speed with which he has rocketed to the top ranks of the field reflects larger shifts in a discipline still dealing with the aftereffects of the 2008 financial crisis and eager to move past two decades of venerating a few celebrity architects at the expense of younger or more obscure figures without wealthy clients or teams of publicists.

It is surely something of a paradox that Aravena should arrive in Venice as one of the unmistakable stars of architectures post-star era  and bringing with him an anti-star agenda for the biennale to boot.

Though theres an urgency and sincerity that gives his show an energy rare among recent biennales, this approach  fittingly, given the overarching emphasis on borrowing  is dependent on both new and old movements in architecture.

It is clearly connected to a surge of interest in history, communitarianism and vernacular architecture that helped shape recent biennales by Kazuyo Sejima (2010), David Chipperfield (2012) and Rem Koolhaas (2014). Looking back it has become clear that 2010 marked a turning point, a shift away from the often glossy or futuristic biennales of the 1990s and 2000s by directors including Kurt Forster and Aaron Betsky.

Aravenas show has something in common with the primitivism  the interest in the primeval, the very long past  evident in recent work by the Chinese duo Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu and the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor (who are in the main show) and Aravenas fellow Chilean Smiljan Radic (who is not).

Its critique of global markets and state surveillance, mixed with occasional post-apocalyptic scenarios, is a blend of Edward Snowden, Thomas Piketty, Naomi Klein and George Millers 2015 version of Mad Max. There are echoes of the 2007 Cooper-Hewitt exhibition Design for the Other 90% and the 2004 Bruce Mau book and museum show Massive Change.

There is also noticeable overlap between Aravenas effort and the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial last fall, which was curated by Joseph Grima and Sarah Herda and also focused on the ad hoc and the shared. (Those featured in both shows include architect Francis Kere, the U.K. art and architecture collective Assemble and Mexico Citys Tatiana Bilbao, among many others.) The more distant intellectual forebears for Aravenas biennale include figures from the 1960s and 1970s like Bernard Rudofsky (Architecture Without Architects) and Victor Papanek (Design for the Real World).

You wouldnt learn any of that from the catalog, though. In part because Aravena had just 10 months to put together the show (as opposed to nearly twice that for Koolhaas) and in part because he wanted to underscore an interest in an architecture of action rather than repose and process instead of polish, there are no ruminative theoretical essays in the catalog. No essays at all, in fact, apart from brief introductory texts by Baratta and Aravena.

Instead the catalog, like the show itself, is full of examples of contemporary architecture as it is practiced on the ground and in the moment. The overall effect is less a manifesto for a new philosophy of architecture or exhibition-making than a series of dispatches, heartfelt and dashed off, about how design can be enlisted to help the poor and the marginalized as well as new waves of migrants struggling to survive brutal journeys to Europe and elsewhere.

It is not quite as grim as all that. Aravena makes a point of insisting that the show include not just strategic but beautiful work. His biennale is generally optimistic if also sometimes overly altruistic (with a few notable exceptions, including a sharply political project by Eyal Weizman analyzing the distinct architectural signature of drone strikes by the U.S. military).

In general Aravenas focus is on escape hatches (from oppression, lack of opportunity or architectural stagnation) and where to find them  or more to the point how to make them yourself, with your bare hands.

The only entry in the main exhibition made up entirely of American architects is from the Rural Studio, the design-build group operated in Hale County, Ala., by the architecture department of Auburn University. An American documentarian, Gary Hustwit, is also here showing a new film, something of an outlier in the Aravena universe, on the design of the 21st century office.

That sparse U.S. showing leaves the American pavilion, organized at each biennale by the State Department, to shoulder a heavier weight than is usually the case, at least in terms of suggesting the current preoccupations of one nations architects. Titled The Architectural Imagination, it has been directed  in controversial fashion  by the editor and writer Cynthia Davidson and by Monica Ponce de Leon, for years architecture dean at the University of Michigan and now in the same position at Princeton.

The pavilions dozen projects re-imagining sites in Detroit have drawn fire for imposing lofty, formally overwrought proposals on a struggling city. Though the exhibit itself is beautifully designed by Ponce de Leon, the projects (by architects including Greg Lynn, Preston Scott Cohen, Pita & Bloom and Andrew Zago) do stand quite blithely for everything Aravena wants to rail against: top-down and slickly rendered solutions shot through with disdain for the kind of expertise required to get architecture at this vast scale approved, financed and built.

The urban space cleared out by Detroits long decline is recast as an irresistible tabula rasa, a playground for American architectures digitally savvy but (with very few exceptions) politically illiterate parametric wing.

More effective are the national pavilions whose presentations suggest some solidarity with the larger themes of Aravenas show without swallowing them whole. The British pavilion, overseen by Shumi Bose, Jack Self and Finn Williams, is an experiment in redefining residential architecture in terms of time rather than space. It includes full-scale mock-ups of apartments designed to be lived in for a few hours or months  there are the borrowers again  as well as a few years or decades.

Even better is the Belgian pavilion, produced by the firms De Vylder Vinck Taillieu and Doorzon and the photographer Filip Dujardin. Linked in spirit to Aravenas interest in unpretentious as opposed to preening beauty, it begins by asking if bravura architectural effects are still possible in cities struggling since 2008 with austerity and scarcity.

The answers are not what youd expect. In displays by 13 contributors, including Stephane Beel and Office Kersten Geers David Van Severen, the pavilion combines experiments in remaking existing buildings in physically crude but poetic ways with digitally manipulated photographs by Dujardin of buildings with no apparent function.

Dujardin calls some of these fictional constructions memorials, but its hard to tell what theyre commemorating beyond a grotesque banality or shrunken, apologetic sublime. One, a pavilion made of a mismatched collection of skinny columns holding up a wide roof, stands by itself on an abandoned concrete plaza; another shows a boulder squeezed between two apartment buildings. All of them are pictured under Soviet-gray skies.

The results celebrate the same architectural imagination as the American pavilion, but in ways that are both more subtle and more provocative.

Aravenas main show, though full of timely and meaningful projects, doesnt succeed terribly well strictly as an exhibition  as a sensory and visual experience on its own terms. (Over the last seven or eight biennales only Sejimas rigorous, precisely choreographed 2010 show managed to impress in this way.) The little rectangles of text explaining each entry, hanging from small poles resting on the floor, are hard to read and then  when you are able to do so  blandly written. Some of the displays are overstuffed with projects and information, a sign that Aravena hasnt been sufficiently ruthless in reminding the participants that the biennale entries that work best are almost always in presentation confidently stripped-down and in tone (choose one) blunt, elegiac or ironic.

In part this weakness may be explained by the quick time frame; it also seems to flow from Aravenas generous sensibility, his interest in opening his arms wide to the architecture of the moment and featuring a range of voices usually not heard in Venice. In that sense a desire for inclusion is his Achilles heel.

Some architects  some architects left out of the show, that is  complained in Venice that what Aravena has produced is little more than a politically correct biennale. Its true that the only way this exhibition is likely to give offense is in its reluctance to give offense.

Yet the tone is more tolerant and curious than strident or doctrinaire. Ultimately the PC charge is a caricature, a reflection mostly of the anxiety of a Western architectural elite realizing that its influence is waning even in Venice, the place it has long gathered every two years to toast itself.

christopher.hawthorne@latimes.com
Hacker who leaked presidential paintings pleads guilty. UC San Diego shuts down its art gallery amid a storm of criticism. SFMOMA in copycat pastry debacle. And, the downtown L.A. culture strip that is facing demolition. Plus, reviews of the Venice Architecture Biennale are starting to pour in and Alexandra Lange looks at the way a pair of high-falutin park designs have been received in London and New York. Heres the Roundup:

 The Romanian hacker known as Guccifer, who revealed that former George W. Bush was making paintings, pleads guilty to breaking into the former presidents email. (Artnet)

American Indian advocates hold a news conference at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington to contest a Paris auction houses sale of sacred objects. (Andrew Harnik / Associated Press )

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 The National Museum of the American Indian held an emergency meeting about a Paris auction that trafficked in Indian spiritual items. The auction houses response: The tribes are welcome to buy their stuff back at auction. Has to be read to be believed.

 UC San Diego is shutting down its art gallery to employ the building as classroom space  making it the only UC campus not to have a designated space in which to display art. Students and others have launched a petition in support of keeping the gallery open. Call me crazy, but I thought a gallery was a classroom...

People gather by the controversial mural painted by artist Dave Powers in Elgin, Ill. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune )

 An Illinois town has just figured out that a decade-old mural depicts a scene from an infamous image of an Indiana lynching.

 The microscopic eruptions that can destroy paintings. Awesome science and art conservation geekery. (Weisslink)

 Cake or death: SFMOMAs new cafe has art-inspired cakes on its menu. The problem is that the art-inspired cakes were the brainchild of a pastry chef no longer associated with the museum. I imagine the museum will simply bill the new cakes as a work of appropriation.

 In New York, a new art project invites people to confess their sins of gentrification. This self-flagellation would be way more awesome if it involved whips.

 Andes Hruby writes a moving essay about being photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe as a child.

 In the Netherlands, repurposing prisons as refugee centers.

 When crime is art  a fascinating piece by Andrew Russeth.

 It is the public, consulted after the fact, who will have to pay part of the bill. Alexandra Lange picks apart New Yorks and Londons plans for two different Thomas Heatherwick-designed, super expensive above-water parks. Essential reading about private money and public space.

 A feature that seems more appropriate to the Las Vegas strip than the Fort Worth cultural district. Architecture critic Mark Lamster is no fan of the new landscaping plans for the parking lot around the Louis Kahn-designed Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth.

 How construction in one part of Houston leads to flooding in another  the type of environmentally disastrous suburban development that is all too often subsidized by taxpayers.

 Speaking of subsidies: Apparently a well-to-do development company is in need of financial aid from the city of L.A. to build hotels and luxury apartments across from Disney Hall. Because what the taxpayers of L.A. need to be subsidizing is more non-affordable housing.

A crowd hangs out at the Smell nightclub in downtown L.A. in 2000. The space is now threatened with demolition. (Clarence Williams / Los Angeles Times )

 In even more dire news for downtown: The Smell, the Jalisco bar and the Downtown Independent theater on Main Street are threatened with demolition. The Jalisco should be a neighborhood landmark as far as Im concerned. What would downtown L.A. be without this wondrous combo of nightclub, Mexican gay hangout and indie movie screening room? CORPORATE AND BORING.

 Christopher Hawthorne reviews Alejandro Aravenas Venice Architecture Biennale: In thematic terms it means a show dedicated to the importance of incremental and bottom-up progress; what the north can learn from the south and the west from the east. Plus: Reviews from Rowan Moore and Oliver Wainwright in the Guardian.

 How one African architect has made Modern buildings employing traditional materials and techniques. Inga Saffron writes about the innovative work of Francis Kere , currently on view in Philadelphia.

 Neanderthal stalagmite architecture.

 A Stanford historian and a Tijuana artist team up to tell the story of braceros, the more than 2 million Mexican guest workers who tilled U.S. fields between 1942 and 1964.

 A terrific essay by Rebecca Carroll on the black cultural moment.

 And bringing some joy to a post-holiday Tuesday: A skater gets groovy to Jolene.

Find me on Twitter @cmonstah.
When artist Noah Davis died late last summer from a rare form of cancer, it was the story of a promising career cut short. Only 32 at the time of his death, the Los Angeles painter, brother of artist and director Kahlil Joseph, had a rising profile: His work had been acquired by important U.S. institutions, and in 2012, hed launched an alternative arts space, the Underground Museum, which, in its short lifespan, had drawn positive notice from critics and fellow artists.

As part of the Underground project, Davis established a groundbreaking partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art, which allowed him to curate a series of shows drawn from MOCAs permanent collection. These would be staged in the Underground Museums warren of adjoining storefronts on Washington Boulevard in Arlington Heights, and they would be free to the public  part of the artists goal of bringing museum-quality works to a working-class neighborhood.

Anyone concerned that Davis untimely death might have put an end to this innovative arts program can rest easy. The Underground Museum is thriving  largely because of the efforts of Davis family and a new director, Megan Steinman, who have picked up where the founder let off. MOCA chief curator Helen Molesworth, who helped make the partnership happen, also is involved.

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In late March, the space unveiled a new exhibition, Non-Fiction, a taut gathering of works selected by Davis prior to his death that examine themes of violence against African Americans. In his review, Times critic Christopher Knight described it as a show that resonates beyond its modest scale.

Currently, the team is at work on a variety of public programs  dubbed UM Academy  that will include everything from lectures to screenings to art-making sessions. The lineup will be announced in the coming weeks.

A detail from a screenprinted wallpaper by Robert Gober titled Hanging Man/Sleeping Man, from 1989. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times )

I live and breathe the museum, says Karon Davis, the artists widow  also an artist herself. Right now, I dont have time for anything else, except my son.

In addition to Karon, the rest of Noahs family also has come together to help administer the space. Joseph, best known for his work with Kendrick Lamar and lately Beyonce, plus his show at MOCA, is involved, as is Josephs wife, Onye Anyanwu.

It has gotten so much support, Joseph said. I just feel really blessed  and honored that Noah allowed me to be an integral part of this. And I think a lot of people involved with this project feel like that.

Installations by Robert Gober and Kerry James Marshall touch on violence and death at the Underground Museum. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times )

Steinman says that together, the team has cohered into a group that feels less like a bureaucracy at a nonprofit and more like a group of artists whose goal is to realize the vision of a colleague whose life ended prematurely.

Its a very personal space, she says. In a way, its being around artists and friends.

Certainly, the groups ability to maintain Davis vision has plenty to do with the artists probing and methodical nature.

Noah was all about the details, the details, the details, Karon says. He left us blueprints for about 18 shows and so many notes of what he wanted to happen in the space.

For the artist, the Underground Museum wasnt simply a space to show art  it was an artwork itself, a space in which he could bring together seemingly unrelated bits of cultural output and combine them in profound and revealing ways.

A detail of a canvas by Henry Taylor: Warning Shots Not Required, 2011. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times )

The first exhibition in collaboration with MOCA, held last year, featured a series of video works by South African artist William Kentridge, an internationally recognized figure who has shown his stop-motion animation pieces in museums around Europe and the United States. Among the works Davis chose to display was 7 Fragments for George Melies, a rumination on the nature of creation  a fitting work for an artist to want to contemplate.

Non-Fiction, which is on view until next March, is built around three works from MOCAs collection: a painting by Henry Taylor, a cut-out work by Kara Walker and a poignant photograph of the widow of a lynching victim by Marion Palfi  all works that touch on the fraught nature of the black experience in the United States.

Noah was all about the details, the details, the details. He left us blueprints for about 18 shows and so many notes of what he wanted to happen in the space.  Karon Davis, widow of artist Noah Davis

These are paired with other objects that Davis  and the Underground Museum team, in his wake  secured on their own: David Hammons ghostly installation of a hooded sweatshirt (evocative of Trayvon Martins death in Florida) and Robert Gobers searing art wallpaper, featuring the image of a lynched black man, alongside a white man sleeping peacefully. The exhibition features only a dozen works, but its punch is powerful.

Together, the museum and the team at the Underground Museum are hashing out which of Davis many ideas will serve as the core of the next exhibition, which hasnt been determined. But the artist had signed on with MOCA for a three-year collaboration, and the museum intends to stand by that.

Ghost-like in its own little chamber is In the Hood (Gray), 2016, by David Hammons. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times )

The Underground Museum is really interesting because its a full collaboration, says MOCA director Philippe Vergne. Its not just MOCA. Its how can we make possible for someone who has such a great vision, who wants to bring art in the neighborhood, who changes the way a collection is experienced?

For Davis family, who is still mourning his death, fulfilling his plan for the Underground Museum is a way of keeping his presence alive.

We are all crazy excited about what this means, Joseph says. Anyone who is here, its like Noah left them something, like Noah created the space for them to be there.

I love the work, says Karon thoughtfully. And he is in the work.

For family members, the Underground Museum is something they would like to maintain  even once MOCA is no longer a partner.

There are so many possibilities, Karon says. I would really like this to leave a legacy.

Non-Fiction

Where: 3508 W. Washington Blvd., Arlington Heights, Los Angeles

When: Through March 1

Info: theunderground-museum.org and moca.org.

ALSO:

An unassuming storefront. A major museum. A collaboration that takes museum art to the people of L.A.

Heinous history as potent muse in Underground Museums Non-fiction

Kendrick Lamars video director Kahlil Joseph takes his hypnotic art to MOCA

Wolvesmouth at MOCA: Craig Thornton puts his art on a plate, and then you eat it

City of Conversation playwright Anthony Giardina on Americas politics of destruction

Find me on Twitter @cmonstah.
Gearing up for a battle for control of media company Viacom, board members on Monday took the unusual step of vowing to fight an expected campaign by Sumner Redstone and his family to shake up the board.

In a letter to shareholders and employees, Viacoms lead independent director Frederic Salerno on Monday said the board would fight any board removals in court in Delaware, where Viacom is incorporated.

Sumner Redstone and his family are at odds with leaders of Viacom, which has seen its stock plummet more than 45% in the last two years. The family controls 80% of the Class A voting shares of Viacom, but their economic stake in the company is about 10%.

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Sumner Redstone this month added to his legal team a prominent Los Angeles litigator, Michael Tu, who specializes in securities law  raising the possibility of a legal campaign to dump Viacom Chairman and Chief Executive Philippe Dauman and other members of the board.

We will contest the purported removal if it comes, because we see that as our responsibility to the non-control shareholders of Viacom who own 90% of the equity of the company  and to the legacy of a man we greatly admire and consider a dear friend, Salerno wrote in Mondays letter.

Redstones daughter Shari Redstone is vice chair of the media company, which boasts such TV channels as Nickelodeon, MTV, VH1, Comedy Central and BET.

Some Viacom executives believe that Shari Redstone is orchestrating a campaign to get rid of Dauman and others.

We know that such an attempt, on its face, would be completely inconsistent with Sumners lifetime commitment to an independent board and professional management for Viacom after his incapacity or death, Salerno wrote. More specifically, it would be equally inconsistent with his stated judgment for many years that his daughter, Shari, should not control Viacom or his other companies.

A spokesperson for Shari Redstone declined to comment late Monday.

Viacom board members suspect that Sumner Redstone  who celebrated his 93rd birthday on Friday  might be incapacitated. He was in the hospital briefly more than a week ago, where he was treated for dehydration, according to a person close to the Redstone family.

Despite several recent requests, Salerno said that he and another independent board member have been denied the opportunity to visit Redstone at his Beverly Park home.

Ten days ago, Tu sent a letter to Dauman and another Viacom board member, George Abrams, notifying them that they had been ousted as directors of the Redstone investment vehicle, National Amusements Inc., as well as from the trust that will oversee Redstones controlling stake in the two media companies.

Dauman and Abrams last week filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts probate court to try to block their dismissals. A day later, two allies of Shari Redstone were named to the trust and to the board of National Amusements, which holds the familys controlling shares in Viacom and CBS.

National Amusements is expected to call for an election and vote its shares to withhold support for Dauman and other Viacom board members. The move comes just two months after Viacoms annual shareholders meeting.

Should we acquiesce in or contest a removal attempt? Salerno wrote. Acquiescence is appealing  it would remove some of the antagonism and public controversy, and avoid contentious and time consuming litigation.

However, he said, we feel the responsibility to challenge in court what we honestly believe would be legally flawed removals.

A spokesperson for Sumner Redstone declined to comment Monday. Late last week, a person close to the Redstone legal team said: We will be responding to Mr. Salerno, but we do not believe discussions between Mr. Redstone and the board should be conducted through the news media.

Viacom also plans to continue to pursue a planned sale of a minority interest in the Hollywood movie studio, Paramount Pictures, despite objections by Sumner Redstone.

The mogul has made it clear that he objects to the sale of any portion of his treasured studio.

We know that none of us is entitled to his or her Board seat, Salerno said. But we were elected, until our terms expire or we are properly removed, to look after the interests of all the stockholders of Viacom. ...That is what Delaware law requires  and that is what Sumner Redstone has always expected.

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meg.james@latimes.com

@MegJamesLAT

UPDATES:

9:05 p.m. This article was updated to note that a representative of Shari Redstone declined comment.
Espionage reports travel a circuitous route from British-controlled Manhattan Island to the Continental Army in New Jersey on Many Mickles Make a Muckle, Episode 306 of AMCs Turn: Washingtons Spies.

Coffeehouse proprietor Robert Townsend (Nick Westrate) gathers intel on British military operations in New York and writes down his observations using invisible ink. Then he initiates a lengthy relay system by placing a coded newspaper ad that alerts the Culper Spy Ring.

Roberts father, Samuel (John Billingsley), picks up the message in New York and returns to his farm in Oyster Bay, Long Island. Then spy ring leader Abraham Woodhull (Jamie Bell) retrieves the message from Samuel and rides home to Setauket.

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Finally, Lt. Caleb Brewster (Daniel Henshall) transports the message from Setauket to Gen. George Washington (Ian Kahn) at his Middlebrook encampment.

Because of this convoluted delivery system, Washington received word too late for his troops to intercept a ship laden with counterfeit bills.

Orchestrating the printing and distribution of these fake dollars is Major John Andre (JJ Feild), head of British Intelligence, who intends to wreak havoc on the colonial economy.

To hasten the flow of spy reports, Washington orders Caleb to cut Abe out of the loop by picking up messages directly from Samuel.

But theres a problem.

At Abes request, Caleb once posed as a British Queens Ranger and viciously beat Samuel. This cruel deception prompted Robert to retaliate against the Redcoats by agreeing to spy for the Americans.

Courageously volunteering to replace Caleb is Anna Strong (Heather Lind), who meets Samuel and Robert on Thanksgiving in Oyster Bay. Abe also attends the holiday dinner as Caleb hides nearby.

The gathering almost turns deadly when mercenary Robert Rogers (Angus Macfadyen) arrives and demands intel on his hated rival Andre. According to a spy report, Andre is smitten with a young woman. And unless Rogers learns her identity, hell shoot Anna.

Thats when Caleb bursts in and blows his cover.

Youre him, Samuel exclaims. You attacked me and you burned my farm!

Its true, Abe admits. But he claims the assault was necessary because Robert, a pacifist raised in a Quaker home, wavered about serving as a spy.

I chose for you, Abe says, because you couldnt do it yourself!

I want you gone, Robert angrily insists. You think I would trust any of you?

Now Robert reveals the information Rogers brutally requested: Andres female friend is actress Philomena Cheer (Amy Gumenick).

Figuring he can use Philomena to locate Andre, Rogers takes off with murder on his mind. In close pursuit are the real Queens Rangers led by Captain John Graves Simcoe (Samuel Roukin).

Rogers isnt aware, however, that Andres true love is Philadelphia socialite Peggy Shippen (Ksenia Solo). And Peggy is so devoted to Andre that she pretends to adore Patriot Gen. Benedict Arnold (Owain Yeoman) while encouraging him to commit treason.

Peggys artful manipulations hit a snag, however, when Arnold and Washington renew their friendship.

Arnold faces a court martial for allegedly misappropriating property that could have been sold to support the war effort. Seeking to clear his name, Arnold pleads for Washingtons help in conducting the trial as soon as possible.

Opposing an early trial is Joseph Reed (Alex Miller), an influential politician needing more time to gather evidence against Arnold. And aggravating Reed would complicate Washingtons work with Congress to address the counterfeiting fiasco by recalling all currency in circulation.

After careful consideration, Washington sides with Arnold by promising to expedite his hearing.

Youll have your day before the board of inquiry, Washington tells a grateful Arnold. It is the least you are owed.
Rouha Sadighi, the chef behind a new breakfast-centered food truck called the Rooster, which hit the streets of Los Angeles in January, is on a mission to make breakfast dope again. And shes succeeding, one Rico Suave tater tot-loaded breakfast burrito at a time.

Yes, her breakfast burrito is called the Rico Suave (named after Gerardo Mejias 90s anthem), because the Rico Suave is just fun, Sadighi said. And it is.

The tortilla, crisp and chewy, is stuffed with soft scrambled eggs, bacon, a cheddar and cotija cheese blend, tater tots, avocado, molcajete salsa and cilantro crema. Its big: The tater tots are plentiful, and the salsa  less a bully than a smokey condiment of roasted tomatoes and chiles that Sadighi makes on the truck every morning  is hard to stop eating. If someone wants to share, politely decline and order your own.

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Youll also probably want to order your own Killit Skillit (tortilla chips and tater tots topped with chorizo, over-medium eggs and cotija cheese) along with a Basic Bitch, also known as the avocado toast  a thick slice of brioche with avocado, cilantro and an over-medium egg (Sadighi has a thing for over-medium eggs).

Avo toast is a thing, said Sadighi, who is from Santa Monica and all too familiar with avocado toast. I think it may be forever a thing. And its so basic. Theres nothing wrong with that. Im basic, besides my assortment of Vans.

(At the moment, she owns 18 pairs of Vans. But the new season is coming up, so that may change.)

The 33-year-old skater-shoe-loving chef from Santa Monica didnt take a traditional path to chef-dom (if there is one). When she was 9, she told her parents she wanted to either be in a band or a chef. She worked as a host at a Souplantation restaurant when she was 16.

She tried the rock star thing, but that never really panned out. While working in client services at a sound design studio (a job that required her to work both the front desk and cook pancakes for clients) she decided to go to culinary school and enrolled in the Art Institute in Santa Monica. Her first restaurant job as an adult was at the now-closed Joes on Abbot Kinney Boulevard. She went on to work at RockSugar, Bouchon, Penelope in New York City, Cleo in Hollywood, Sangers & Joe in Pasadena and Kyes in Santa Monica before slinging Rico Suave breakfast burritos.

Now, Sadighi starts every day around 6 a.m. on the truck, making almost everything for her menu from scratch, except for the breads (from Drago Bakery in Culver City) and the tots (which she recognizes are essential to the anatomy of the burrito).

I love going places and seeing tots as an option, Sadighi said. Now its like a thing, but in the Rico for example, it adds a texture variance that is just awesome. Its a great vehicle to carry all the other ingredients in any dishes.

If your idea of the ideal breakfast involves a sandwich (no tots), Sadighi has two options: the Bodega and the Rooster Burger. The Bodega is Sadighis classic breakfast sandwich, made on a soft ciabatta roll with an over-easy egg, crisp bacon, a blanket of cheddar cheese (the slice is big enough to cover the entire sandwich and melt down the sides) and Kill Sauce, also known as the hot sauce she and a friend make from scratch. Its spicy, but not too hot, and just vinegary enough, with a deep slow burn that makes the sandwich.

As for the burger, its more along the lines of something youll find at a steakhouse: Wagyu beef that melts like butter, an over-medium egg and ketchup on a ciabatta roll. Ask for napkins.

At the end of the day, were just feeding people great food, Sadighi said. In time, Id like to have a second truck so we can do more simultaneously and then an actual space. There are a lot more items I have to put out, but the truck is a great way to snapshot whats to come.

For now, the Rooster is on a pretty fixed schedule, so visit the website for where to find the truck next.

www.theroosterla.com

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An FBI agents stolen handgun was recovered Tuesday, but his badge and credentials remained missing after they were taken from his vehicle this weekend in San Francisco, according to authorities.

Members of the FBI SWAT team searched a home near Keith and Thomas streets at 11 a.m. Tuesday and retrieved the handgun, according to FBI spokesman Prentice Danner.

Surveillance cameras in the area where the theft occurred led FBI investigators to the gun.

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One person at the home was arrested in connection with the stolen weapon, Danner said. Authorities are still looking for the agents badge and credentials.

The agent reported that his vehicle was burglarized sometime between 12:30 and 12:40 p.m. Sunday when it was parked on Hayes and Pierce streets near an area of historic Victorian homes, according to Officer Carlos Manfredi, spokesman for the San Francisco Police Department.

The gun was identified as a .40-caliber Glock 27.

KPIX-TV reported the agent was not from the area. He was visiting San Francisco with his family when the weapon and credentials were quickly swiped from his vehicle. The Glock was his personal handgun, the news station reported.

The area has been recently hit with a string of thefts.

Last year, a weapon that had been reported stolen from a Bureau of Land Management agents car in downtown San Francisco was used in the shooting death of a woman days later.

Four days after the weapon was stolen, Kate Steinle, 32, was shot and killed on July 1, 2015, while walking with her father on San Franciscos Embarcadero.

The accused shooter, Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, said he found a gun wrapped in a T-shirt and accidentally fired at Steinle.

Interested in the stories shaping California? Sign up for the free Essential California newsletter >>

Steinles family has filed a federal lawsuit against San Francisco Countys former sheriff, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the federal Bureau of Land Management. Lopez-Sanchez, a Mexican laborer with a lengthy criminal record, had been deported from the U.S. five times, and the shooting death prompted outrage over what many saw as lax enforcement of immigration law.

Staff writer Joseph Serna contributed to this report.

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For breaking news in California, follow VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter.

UPDATES:

12:26 p.m.: This story was updated with authorities recovering the FBI agents gun.

This article was originally published at 9:12 a.m.
The weather was warm and sunny with a soft breeze, a perfect day to head to the beach, fire up the grill or hit the outlet sales. But for Rafael Vila, the only destination that made sense Monday was the flag-dappled lawn of Los Angeles National Cemetery.

I dont know if theres any place else Id rather be than honoring people who served, said Vila, a Vietnam-era Navy veteran from Long Beach. With graves stretching in perfect lines behind him, he said the sacrifice of the military made possible the freedoms Americans love.

They are the reason people are able to go shopping at the mall today, Vila said.

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 Memorial Day at Los Angeles National Cemetery (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

Vila and his wife, Angelica, were among hundreds who gathered at the cemetery Monday morning for a ceremony featuring music, prayer, reenactors on horseback and a salute to the Tuskegee Airmen, the all-African American World War II flying squadron that paved the way for military integration. Eight members of the group, including Walter Crenshaw, a 106-year-old believed to be the oldest living Tuskegee Airman, attended and received a standing ovation.

The crowd was enthusiastic, but many said it should have been larger, especially given the number of Americans currently deployed abroad. More than 88,000 veterans and family members are buried on the 114-acre Westwood property, which opened in 1889.

God bless you for taking the time to be here, the keynote speaker, retired Army Lt. General Rick Lynch, told the gathering. Lynch, whose four-decade military career included commanding 25,000 in the Iraqi surge, said he starts every morning in prayer for the 153 of his troops killed in that campaign.

I believe that every day should be Memorial Day, he said. He contrasted those present with others spending the holiday hanging out in some barbecue or beer joint and noted a recent poll that found that more than three-quarters of Americans admitted not understanding the challenges facing veterans.

So 75% of the public is just walking around oblivious. They are just enjoying the freedom we provided them and that aint right, Lynch said, urging the crowd to spread the holidays true meaning to those folks who didnt make time to be here.

In her invocation, Mindie Snyder, a rabbi in Flagstaff, Ariz., whose father was permanently disabled while serving in the Army, described the cemetery as the home of 80,000 stories of bravery and asked those gathered to join her in a vow of remembrance.

As long as we live, they too shall live as she began.

We remember them, the crowd responded. One man in a row of veterans lifted his sunglasses to wipe away tears.

David Houck, who lives near the Westwood cemetery, brought his 6-year-old son, David Jr., and a large American flag. He said they have attended every year of the boys life. Beyond the attractions to a youngster  weapons displays, cannons, plane flyovers and uniforms  Houck said the day held important lessons.

I have a great deal of respect for our freedoms, and I want to teach those values to my son, Houck said.

Ray Polo of Torrance said he hoped visiting the cemetery would help his 6-year-old son, Lucas, better understand what hed learned about the holiday in kindergarten.

Theres so many distractions, Polo said. What you hear on TV [about Memorial Day] -- its all about sale this, sale that. Gesturing toward the acres of gravestones and waving flags, he said, When he saw this, he said, Thats a lot of flags, Dad, and I said, Yep. Thats what it takes. 

harriet.ryan@latimes.com

@latimesharriet

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Pastor Paul Crouch calls it "God's economy of giving," and here is how it works:

People who donate to Crouch's Trinity Broadcasting Network will reap financial blessings from a grateful God. The more they give TBN, the more he will give them.

Being broke or in debt is no excuse not to write a check. In fact, it's an ideal opportunity. For God is especially generous to those who give when they can least afford it.

"He'll give you thousands, hundreds of thousands," Crouch told his viewers during a telethon last November. "He'll give millions and billions of dollars."

Preachers who pass the hat while praising the Lord have long been the stuff of ridicule in film and fiction. But for Crouch and his Orange County-based television ministry, God's economy of giving is no laughing matter. It brings a rich bounty, year after year.

Crouch has used a doctrine called the "prosperity gospel" to underwrite a worldwide broadcasting network and a life of luxury for himself and his family.

For at least a century, preachers have plied the notion that dropping money in the collection plate will bring blessings from God -- material as well as spiritual. But Crouch, through inspired salesmanship and advanced telecommunications technology, has converted this timeworn creed into a potent financial engine.

Get Jesus on that credit card!  Bishop Clarence McClendon

TBN collects more than $120 million a year from viewers of its Christian programming -- more than any other TV ministry. Those donations have fueled its rise from a rented studio in Santa Ana to a global broadcasting system whose programs appear on thousands of channels -- via satellite, cable and over-the-air broadcasts -- in a dozen languages.

The network's donors also help fund generous salaries for Crouch ($403,700 a year) and his wife, Jan ($361,000), and an array of perks, including a TBN-owned jet and 30 homes across the country, among them a pair of Newport Beach mansions and a ranch in Texas.

The prosperity gospel is rooted in the idea that God wants Christians to prosper and that believers have the right to ask him for financial gifts. TBN has woven this notion into its round-the-clock programming as well as the thousands of fund-raising letters it mails every day.

During one telethon, Crouch, 70, told viewers that if they did their part to advance the Kingdom of God -- such as by donating money to TBN -- they should not be shy about asking God for a reward.

"If my heart really, honestly desires a nice Cadillac ... would there be something terribly wrong with me saying, 'Lord, it is the desire of my heart to have a nice car ... and I'll use it for your glory?' " Crouch asked. "I think I could do that and in time, as I walked in obedience with God, I believe I'd have it."

If you have been healed or saved or blessed through TBN and have not contributed ... you are robbing God and will lose your reward in heaven  Pastor Paul Crouch

Other preachers who appear on the network offer variations on the theme that God appreciates wealth and likes to share it. One of them, John Avanzini, once told viewers that Jesus, despite his humble image, was a man of means.

"John 19 tells us that Jesus wore designer clothes," Avanzini said, referring to the purple robe that Christ's tormentors wrapped around him before the Crucifixion. "I mean, you didn't get the stuff he wore off the rack.... No, this was custom stuff. It was the kind of garment that kings and rich merchants wore."

TBN viewers are told that if they don't reap a windfall despite their donations, they must be doing something to "block God's blessing" -- most likely, not giving enough.

Crouch has particularly stern words for those who are not giving at all.

"If you have been healed or saved or blessed through TBN and have not contributed ... you are robbing God and will lose your reward in heaven," he said during a 1997 telecast.

A central element of the prosperity gospel is that no one is too poor or too indebted to donate. Bishop Clarence McClendon, a preacher whose show "Take It By Force" appears on TBN, told viewers in March that God had asked him to deliver a message to those in financial difficulty:

They should "sow a seed" by using their credit cards to make donations. In return, the Lord would see to it that the balances would be paid off within 30 days.

"Get Jesus on that credit card!" McClendon said.

Ask and Receive

Proponents of the prosperity gospel -- also known as the "name it and claim it" gospel and the "health and wealth" gospel -- point to a verse in the Hebrew Scriptures in which the Lord warns the faithful not to "rob" him by withholding their tithes:

" 'Test me in this,' says the Lord Almighty, 'and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.' "

E.W. Kenyon, an evangelical pastor in the first half of the 20th century, was an early and influential advocate of the idea that God would grant material wishes.

Kenyon wrote about the "power of faith" to bring health and wealth. He depicted an Almighty who not only protected his followers and forgave their sins, but handed out gifts if asked. The important thing was to ask.

Kenyon's ideas inspired what came to be known as the Word of Faith movement. Many of the phrases Kenyon coined -- such as "What I confess, I possess" -- are still used by evangelists.

After Kenyon's death in 1948, other pastors used aspects of his teachings to draw an even more emphatic connection between piety and prosperity. Pentecostalists such as Oral Roberts were particularly ardent in espousing this doctrine.

In the 1960s, Pastor Kenneth Hagin, often described as the father of the Word of Faith movement, raised the profile of the prosperity gospel still further, promoting it on television and in books with titles such as "Godliness Is Profitable" and "How to Write Your Own Ticket with God."

Hagin preached a four-part formula that he said he received in a vision from Jesus: Say it. Do it. Receive it. Tell it.

Looking southwest across the 405, the Headquarters of Trinity Broadcasting Network creates quite a spectacle for passing motorists. (Kevin P. Casey/The LA Times) (Los Angeles Times)

First, believers must ask God for what they want. Next, they must demonstrate their faith through donations. Then they will tap into the "powerhouse of heaven" and receive their gifts. Finally, they must spread the news.

Most of today's leading televangelists preach some version of this creed.

Paul and Jan Crouch were brought up in the Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal denomination where the prosperity gospel flourishes. After working in ministries in South Dakota and Michigan, the couple moved to Southern California in 1961 to run an Assemblies of God TV production facility in Burbank.

They launched their own network in 1973. After two nights on the air on KBSA-TV Channel 46 in Santa Ana, they were broke. So the next night, they staged a telethon.

The phones hardly rang. Then Paul Crouch hit on an idea, he recalled in his autobiography, "Hello World!" He told Jan to announce on the air that an anonymous donor had promised to give $20,000 -- on condition that viewers pledge the same amount that night.

Paul Crouch, cofounder of the world s largest Christian broadcasting network. Paul and his wife Jan have parleyed their viewers small expressions of faith into a worldwide broadcasting empire and life of luxury. (TBN Video) (Test)

The anonymous donor was Crouch, and the $20,000 was money the couple had already lent the network. If viewers came through with $20,000, they would forgo repayment of the loan.

By evening's end, viewers had phoned in $30,000 in pledges, enough to keep TBN on the air.

"Without really realizing it at the time, I had put into motion one of God's most powerful laws -- the law of giving and receiving, sowing and reaping," Crouch wrote. "Thirty-, 60- and 100-fold blessing is, indeed, a glorious truth and blessing for those who will simply obey the word of the Lord!"

The prosperity gospel became the foundation of TBN fundraising. The Crouches and TBN personalities such as faith healer Benny Hinn present the doctrine with passion and a flair for the dramatic.

During fundraising "Praise-a-thons," the Crouches read testimonials from donors whose debts supposedly were miraculously forgiven -- or who inexplicably received checks in the mail. They pray over donors' pledge cards.

In 2000, TBN televangelists told viewers that those who promised $2,000 would get the money back before the end of the year -- and would find that their debts had been canceled. Later, donors were invited to send in loan statements and other debt paperwork. The documents were burned on a stone altar.

During another pitch, Crouch read on camera a letter he said was from a financially strapped viewer who had pledged $4,000.

According to Crouch, the donor wrote: "Within 15 minutes of that time, I received a check in the U.S. mail in the amount of $5,496.70. No explanation.... I know it's not an income tax return. I don't make enough money to file returns."

That year, in a fundraising letter to the network's "prayer partners," Crouch wrote: "Praise the Lord, the reports of awesome miracles of debts canceled and God's people coming out of debt continue to come in. God's economy of giving really works!"

What Windfall?

Most mainstream theologians and pastors say the prosperity gospel is at best a doctrinal error and at worst a con game. They point out that Jesus and his disciples abandoned their possessions in order to live a spiritually rich life.

"It is difficult to fathom how anyone familiar with the abundance of biblical teaching about the 'deceitfulness of riches' could have devised the prosperity gospel," said William Martin, a sociology professor at Rice University and author of a biography of Billy Graham.

"While the Bible does not condemn all wealth, it surely points to its dangers in numerous passages."

Critics of TBN say that the promise of financial miracles -- besides being a distraction from the core principles of Christianity -- can cause real harm.

Jeane Fish is an 86yearold widow, living in Tustin, California who is a loyal Trinity Broadcasting Network viewer and contributor.She feels that TBN helped her to get over the loss of her husband in 1985, and she used to be a Prayer Partner. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) (Test)

Ole E. Anthony, founder of the Trinity Foundation in Dallas, a televangelist watchdog, said he knew people who had given the last of their savings to TV preachers, hoping for a windfall that never came.

"The people on TBN are living the lifestyle of fabulous wealth on the backs of the poorest and most desperate people in our society," Anthony said. "People have lost their faith in God because they believe they weren't worthy after not receiving their financial blessing."

Thomas D. Horne, of Williford, Ark., a disabled Vietnam-era veteran, said that in 1994 he was swept away by the rhetoric of TBN pastors and donated about $6,000 in disability benefits.

Time went by and he did not receive the promised surfeit of money. Last year, he found out that TBN had purchased a Newport Beach mansion overlooking the Pacific. He wrote to the network, asking for his money back.

"I want to recoup my hard-earned disability money I sent to these despicable people," said Horne. He said he has received no reply.

Philip McPeake is another donor for whom God's economy of giving did not deliver. Out of work and out of luck in November 1998, McPeake heard the Rev. R.W. Schambach make an impassioned plea for donations on TBN's Kansas City television station, KTAJ.

Schambach promised that if viewers sent $200 as a down payment on a $2,000 pledge, God would give them the rest within 90 days -- with a bonus to follow.

McPeake sent in his money and waited for his luck to change. When it didn't, he complained to the Missouri state attorney general's office and the Federal Communications Commission. TBN refunded his donation.

Carl Geisendorfer, who runs a low-power Christian television station in Quincy, Ill., offered TBN programming for 19 years -- until, he said, he grew disgusted by the televangelists' financial appeals.

He said he pulled TBN off the air in 2002 after watching a preacher tell viewers that they should pledge $2,000 -- even if they didn't have it -- in order to receive a financial miracle from God.

"I should have canceled TBN several years earlier, but I thought Paul Crouch would finally see the light on how foolish and prideful that false gospel is," said Geisendorfer, president of Believer's Broadcasting Corp., a small media group. "I'm sorry I waited as long as I did."

Geisendorfer said donations to his station dropped 25% after he dropped TBN's programs. He said Paul Crouch called him and, during a 90-minute conversation, admitted to struggling over how far to go in promising financial rewards to donors.

"He said, 'What's the difference if some believe it or not. It works for many people. Why not?' " Geisendorfer wrote in a newsletter sent to station supporters last year. He quoted Crouch as saying: "The money comes in and the world is being reached by the Gospel."

Crouch declined to be interviewed for this article. His son, Paul Crouch Jr., a TBN executive, said critics of the prosperity gospel overlook the fact that the network has used viewers' contributions to bring God's word to millions of people.

He said it was unfortunate that "the prosperity gospel is a lightning rod for the Body of Christ. It's not what drives TBN."

If TBN was interested only in money, the younger Crouch said, it would sell advertisements instead of funding its operations primarily with viewers' contributions.

"We could double our money tomorrow," he said.

He added that appeals for money make up a small part of TBN programming and are prominent mainly during TBN's twice-yearly, weeklong "Praise-a-thons."

Those are the times when Rick Johnston, a retired pastor who lives near Flagstaff, Ariz., swings into action.

Johnston, 56, organizes groups of like-minded Christians to try to jam TBN's phone lines during "Praise-a-thons." The strategy is to stay on the line as long as possible offering phony pledges.

"I feel like a little fly trying to knock down Goliath," Johnston said. "But if I can stop somebody from being robbed of $100, I'm going to do it. There are worse things in life I could be guilty of doing."

Not all TBN donors are looking for a financial payback. Many say they are more interested in the promise of salvation and in helping spread the message of Jesus.

Jeanne Fish, 87, a widow who lives in a Tustin apartment, said she took solace from TBN when her husband died nearly 20 years ago and has been a loyal viewer ever since.

"I get so much out of it," she said. "It's almost like getting a theology degree. It's kind of hard to turn off, in fact."

Loyal viewers are dumbfounded that TBN generates controversy within the evangelical community.

"I'm just so amazed and shocked that so many people don't like [TBN] in the Christian world," said Arthur Robbins, an artist who lives near Santa Cruz. "It's a huge undertaking to promote the Gospel worldwide, and they're doing it."

On the air, Paul Crouch responds to criticism of the prosperity gospel by invoking Satan.

"If the devil can keep all of us Christians poor, we won't have any disposable income to build Christian television stations," Crouch said once.

Michael Giuliano, an expert in televangelism at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, said this is an effective strategy.

"It's very, very powerful," he said. "In a world of uncertainty, you know who the good guys in the white hats are and who the guys in the black hats are. And giving money to TBN is a tangible way to join the fight for the good guys."

Times staff writer Scott Martelle contributed to this report.

READ MORE

Jan Crouch dies at 78; televangelist co-founded Trinity Broadcasting Network

Pastor's empire built on acts of faith, and cash

Paul Crouch dies at 79; founded Trinity Broadcasting Network
Managing Editor S. Mitra Kalita is leaving the Los Angeles Times and returning to her home state of New York, Times Editor/Publisher Davan Maharaj announced. She has accepted an offter to become vice president of programming at CNN.

As one of The Times three managing editors, Kalita has worked with colleagues throughout the newsroom to bring more readers to The Times journalism, by finding ways to connect meaningfully with readers on topics that stirred their passions. We all learned Mitras mantra: the most successful digital stories are those that are original, genuine and felt, Maharaj said.

The audience on latimes.com has nearly doubled in the last year  to nearly 60 million unique visitors a month. Traffic from social media has also grown, and more than half of readers come to The Times from mobile.

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Also in the last year, The Times newsroom has become more diverse; more than a third are people of color, up significantly from a year ago.

Maharaj credits Kalita with playing a significant role in all of these achievements.

In a note to the newsroom, Kalita said that serving as a managing editor of The Times has been among the greatest honors of her life.

I was brought here to lead editorial strategy and to continue to transform the newsroom. The truth is, I learned so much more from all of you.  S. Mitra Kalita

I was brought here to lead editorial strategy and to continue to transform the newsroom, she said. The truth is, I learned so much more from all of you. This place has experts on everything, from trade and tacos to quake fault lines and the box position on B.B. Kings guitar.

Kalita added, L.A.s poet laureate Luis Rodriguez recently said of the city, All these palm trees are so strong, the winds and they hang in there. The people are like that. You really are.

Maharaj said it isnt surprising that CNN offered Kalita a top position; her skills have been fiercely sought after in the news industry. Earlier this month, the New York Observer listed Kalita among the top 10 most poachable news executives.

For Kalita, it will be a homecoming. Her family is on the East Coast, and she has deep roots in New York  earning the moniker The Queen of Queens at her last employer, Quartz.

Maharaj said The Times will keep innovating to continue serving readers with great journalism in the digital age.

The good news for The Times is that we have built a deep and talented team over the past year, which has helped advance our digital success, Maharaj said. With our team in place, I am confident we can continue this progress.

readers.representative@latimes.com

For staff and newsroom news, follow @LATreadersrep
Pastor Michael Fisher had just left his Compton church when he saw a red car punctured with bullet holes.

The driver was slumped in the front seat. Another man who had been riding in the car was in the street nearby, fatally wounded and lying in his own blood.

Fisher pulled over on South Wilmington Avenue and got out to help. He looked into the pained eyes of the man on the ground and grabbed his hand. The pastor prayed as Boston Farley, a father of a 1-year-old boy, vomited, then slipped away.

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We can no longer lose our sons and daughters to senseless violence, the pastor said later. The community has got to stand up.

Farleys fatal shooting this month came amid a surge in violence in Compton. So far this year, killings have tripled compared with the same period last year, reaching 15, two more than all of 2015, according to figures from the Compton sheriffs station. This month alone, seven people have been killed in the city of roughly 100,000 residents.

Los Angeles County sheriffs officials say most of the killings have some sort of gang tie. In February, the city made national headlines after 1-year-old Autumn Johnson was struck and killed by gunfire as she stood in her crib. Authorities believe gang members were targeting the childs father. But other homicides, like Farleys, remain a mystery. Most of the killings remain unsolved.

NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>

The violence threatens to undo some of the progress the city has made in recent years to shed an image that has been associated with gangs and crime. And the shootings are testing a pledge made by federal authorities in October to help the city curb crime by providing extra resources to make meaningful and long-lasting improvements to the daily lives of Compton residents. At the time, the announcement of federal help was hailed as a game-changer by Compton Mayor Aja Brown.

1 / 11 Relatives of Andre McMihelk mourn at a memorial left in his honor along South Nestor Avenue in Compton. McMihelk was shot and killed while walking to a friends house for a gathering on May 14. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 11 Student minister Robert Muhammed, third from left, and Vicky Lindsey, founder of Project Cry No More, fourth from left, join a circle of people who pray for the victims of recent shootings in Compton. The prayer circle met where two people were shot and killed at a gas station at Caldwell Street and Wilmington Avenue. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 11 Vicky Lindsey, founder of Project Cry No More, is frustrated with the recent shooting deaths in Compton, where she grew up. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 11 A student walks past a memorial for shooting victim Anthony Alexander as school lets out at Robert F. Kennedy Elementary on West Caldwell Street in Compton. The shooting happened next to the school. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 11 Jeffery Wandick, right, talks with Los Angeles County Sheriffs Lt. Laura Lecrivain and Senior Deputy Rafer Owens at the end of a Stop the Violence rally in Gonzalez Park in Compton. Wandick is the grandfather of Autumn Johnson, 1, who was killed in a gang-related shooting while sleeping in her crib in February 2016. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 6 / 11 Residents of Compton join city officials, clergy, members of law enforcement and other victims of gang violence at Stop the Violence rally in Gonzalez Park in Compton. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 11 Compton City Council member Emma Sharif, right, hugs Earlene Diggs, 80, at the end of a rally to Stop the Violence in Compton. Diggs son and grandson were killed in gang-related shootings in the city. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 8 / 11 Photographs of Andre McMihelk are part of a memorial in his honor along South Nestor Avenue in Compton. McMihelk was shot and killed while walking to a friends house on May 14. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 9 / 11 Allen Reyes, 3, plays across the street from where Andre McMihelk was shot and killed on South Nestor Avenue in Compton. In the first five months of 2016, 13 people have been killed in Compton, compared with only four people killed during the same time last year, an increase authorities say is troubling. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 10 / 11 Tracie Bryant visits a memorial for shooting victim Anthony Alexander next to Robert F. Kennedy Elementary School on West Caldwell Street in Compton. He lay right there, said Bryant, as she pointed to a dark spot in the middle of the road. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 11 / 11 Jesus Sevilla rides his horse down West Caldwell Street where one of four killings occurred over the weekend of May 14-15, 2016, in Compton. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

At a town hall meeting last week, city and local law enforcement officials reassured anxious residents that they were doing all they could to combat the problem. The L.A. County Sheriffs Department says it has boosted patrols. And city leaders said the federal program, the Violence Reduction Network, has already begun providing much-needed training and resources that will help deter crime.

We want people to know that were looking out for you, said Satra Zurita, a local school board member who is helping the city manage the federal program. Zurita and her sister, City Councilwoman Janna Zurita, knew the mother of one of the recent homicide victims. It hits very close to home.

Other cities that have been a part of the federal network have had success in reducing and solving crime. In Wilmington, Del., police created a new homicide unit and within a year, the citys rate for solving killings tripled, federal authorities said. Last year, Detroit police reported a decline in robberies and a slight drop in homicides. So far this year, the number of killings in Oakland is down by more than 40% compared with the same period in 2015.

However, Chicago, which is also part of the network, has suffered a dramatic increase in homicides while shootings are up 50% so far this year.

In Compton, Satra Zurita said the federal partnership has helped get some gang-bangers, pimps and young girls off the street. The attention of multiple agencies, such as the Department of Justice, the FBI and the district attorneys office is positive, because you are communicating and resources match up, she said.

Recently, the city applied for a $1-million grant from the Justice Department that would provide technology that detects and pinpoints the location of gunshots when they occur and youth intervention services over three years. In addition, Compton is working on an application for a smaller grant that would offer training for authorities who deal with those who are mentally ill.

People think that the [federal program] comes and cures all, Zurita said. But what it does is provide expertise and resources, and that helps in the long run.

The recent violence has yet to hit the levels seen more than a decade ago, when Compton recorded more than 70 killings in a single year. Since then, homicides have fallen dramatically. Last years tally of 13 killings was the lowest in more than a decade, according to figures provided by the Sheriffs Department.

Sheriffs Capt. Michael Thatcher, who heads the Compton station, said his department was taking the crime spike seriously and has deployed additional patrols, though he declined to give specifics. There are extra gang officers on the streets, sheriffs officials said, and the city has started a public awareness campaign to urge the community to call in tips about crimes.

Its very troubling to us, Thatcher said of the homicide increase.

Thatcher said it was too early to judge the effectiveness of the federal Violence Reduction Network.

In a statement, the Justice Department said the program was meant to provide a long-term, sustainable strategy to reduce violent crime. The department declined requests to make available people in charge of the program nationally and locally to give specifics on how the network could bolster local efforts to contain crime.

So far, Compton has received training in gang prevention from Arizona State University, learned techniques to improve community relations from the Oakland Police Department, created youth programs and formed a parolee re-entry program, city officials said.

In addition, the Justice Department said local law enforcement has received training on a number of subjects, including the use of improved technology.

An Arizona State professor is conducting research on local gangs and will provide recommendations for addressing gang violence.

These are systemic problems that we want to address, most important, the long-term gang problem in the city, the Justice Department said in its statement.

I dont understand why people are going around thinking its OK to just shoot at people. You cant even go to the gas station these days.  Alaricka Hayes, sister of victim Boston Farley

Many of the killings this year have been emblematic of the citys stubborn gang problem.

In February, Jeremiah Isaiah Dunn, 17, was visiting family for the Super Bowl when he got into a fight in a neighbors front yard. A rival gang member pulled out a gun and shot him, investigators said. No arrests have been made.

On May 14, Anthony Alexander was riding a bike on West Caldwell Street in Compton and reportedly taunted rival gang members in the area, who responded with gunfire, authorities said.

Outside Robert F. Kennedy Elementary School, near where he was shot, blue and white candles recently adorned the sidewalk, along with a blue bandanna and an empty bottle of liquor in honor of Alexander, 26. Cars slowed in curiosity as a family friend stopped to pay her respects.

He lay right there, said Trecie Bryant as she pointed to a dark spot in the middle of the road. Bryant, who is friends with Alexanders mother, said the recent violence scares the living life out of me.

Bryant worries about her 16-year-old son, who she says likes to travel from Compton to Long Beach on the Blue Line.

All we can do is pray and put it in Gods hands, she said.

See the most-read stories this hour >>

Alexanders killing remains unsolved, city officials said.

Pam Carolina, a lifelong resident of the citys Campanella Park neighborhood, said she believes local law enforcement will have difficulty effectively combating crime because they have a poor reputation among some residents. Carolina, who works with people who have lost loved ones to violence, said shes heard deputies swear at grieving family members.

Theyre very insensitive to families at times like this, she said.

Farley, 23, was gunned down May 15, one of four people killed in this years bloodiest weekend. The man who was killed while driving Farley was Richard Williams, 24.

A sheriffs homicide lieutenant said it is unclear why the men were targeted. Neither was a gang member, he said.

Farley, a Compton native, was working at a warehouse and planning to attend school to become a barber, said his older sister, Alaricka Hayes.

I dont understand why people are going around thinking its OK to just shoot at people, she said. You cant even go to the gas station these days.

At Thursday evenings town hall event, a group that included city officials, activists, and Fisher, the pastor who had tended to Farley as he was dying, held more than a dozen candles, each one representing a person killed this year.

Moments later, another man addressed the crowd. When Jeffery Wandick said he was related to the 1-year-old girl who was shot to death, people in the audience gasped.

If you got to the root of why people are being killed here, its probably because of nothing, he said. That needs to change.

Fisher, 36, who oversees services at Greater Zion Church Family, told the crowd of nearly 100 that they couldnt let the violence scare them into hiding.

Three days after he stood over Farley near the gas station, he returned, he said later, to confront his fears. Now, he drives through that intersection instead of finding another route.

I know how easy it is to allow that trauma to set in, he said. We cant go another way. We cant look the other way.

nicole.santacruz@latimes.com

angel.jennings@latimes.com

@nicolesantacruz

@angeljennings

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Investigators say they will continue following leads in the disappearance of 15-year-old Pearl Pinson, who was last seen being dragged off by a man who later died in a gun battle with police.

Authorities have not searched for Pearl since Saturday, when they called off an intense effort in the Willow Creek area in Sonoma Coast State Park, according to the Solano County Sheriffs Office. Crews spent two days looking for Pearl from the air and ground, but found no signs of her.

However, sheriffs officials are urging the public to call their tip line at (707) 784-1963 with any information on Pearls whereabouts.

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Investigators continue to follow up on leads and any future search will depend on where those leads take us, the Sheriffs Office said.

See the most-read stories this hour >>

Meanwhile, friends and family have not given up hope that the missing teen will be found.

Shes alive, and I know it, Rose Pinson, Pearls sister, told NBC-TV Bay Area. I believe she is going to be found.

Pearls sister also created a Go Fund Me page for the familys search efforts. Pearls disappearance has triggered grief among people who knew the Jesse Bethel High School student.

Cindy Dashner said she was Pearls first-grade teacher, and has never forgotten her.

Pearl was so special to me from 1st grade, & I always carry her in my heart (& your family), she wrote on the website. Ive been devastated by these reports, crying & praying for a safe return.

Pearl was kidnapped Wednesday in Vallejo while walking to a school bus stop near her home. Authorities think Pearl is injured, based on witness accounts and evidence found at the scene of her abduction.

Debby Rhoads said she served Pearl breakfast every morning at school.

I enjoyed seeing and talking to her, she wrote. I am distraught over her disappearance. It was easy to like her.

Join the conversation on Facebook >>

A witness saw the girl being pulled away by an armed man at a pedestrian bridge that crosses Interstate 780, the Sheriffs Office said. She was reportedly bleeding and screaming for help as she was dragged off. The witness ran to help and heard a gunshot, authorities said.

At the pedestrian bridge, deputies found blood on the ground.

The next day, the California Highway Patrol issued an Amber Alert for Pearl and identified 19-year-old Fernando Castro as her kidnapper.

Hours after the alert, Castro was spotted in a vehicle at 3:10 p.m. near Los Alamos heading south alone on the 101 Freeway. At one point, he drove the wrong way on the freeway, according to Santa Barbara County Sheriffs Department spokeswoman Kelly Hoover.

Authorities followed Castro into Solvang, where he crashed into a barricade at a mobile home park.

Castro broke into a mobile home and barricaded himself inside, while a woman who lived there managed to escape without injury. Castro then jumped into a Toyota Tundra truck at the home and tried to flee.

Castro exchanged gunfire with deputies as they closed in on him. He was pronounced dead at the scene from multiple gunshot wounds.

Authorities said Castro was an acquaintance of Pearls. He often was seen roaming around her neighborhood, her sister said.

veronica.rocha@latimes.com

For breaking news in California, follow VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter.

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A Los Angeles man was charged Tuesday after he was seen apparently drugging his dates drink at a restaurant, prosecutors said.

Michael Hsu, 24, faces one felony count each of administering a drug and assault with the intent to commit a sex crime, according to the Los Angeles County district attorneys office.

If Hsu is convicted of the charges, he faces up to six years in prison, prosecutors said.

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Hsu was arrested Thursday at Fig restaurant, according to Santa Monica Police Lt. Saul Rodriguez. Hsu remains in custody on $1-million bail.

Three women were credited with alerting the woman before she could take a drink, and with notifying restaurant staff.

See the most-read stories this hour >>

Sonia Ulrich, Marla Saltzer and Monica Kenyon were dining in the Wilshire Boulevard restaurant about 6:15 p.m. when Kenyon said she spotted a man dropping a substance into his dates drink while she was in the restroom.

Ulrich described the incident on Facebook.

He pulled her glass toward him, kind of awkwardly, then he took out a little black vial, she wrote. He opened it up and dropped something in. Then he tried to play it cool, like checking his phone and hiding the vial in his hand and then trying to bring it back down slyly.

After pondering what their next steps should be, Ulrich went looking for Hsus date, she wrote.

After a few Oh god. What do we dos, I got up to find her in the bathroom to tell her. Warn her. Tell her to get up and leave this creep. Make him drink it. Something, she wrote.

Ulrich told the woman, who was shocked and described Hsu as one of her best friends.

Hsu and his date worked together and had known each other for about a year and a half, Ulrich said.

Meanwhile, Kenyon notified a server about the drink.

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Hsus date had to play it cool for 40 minutes until police arrived and arrested him, she said.

The staff wanted to jump in and dump the glass, dump him, do something, Ulrich wrote. I was going through fantasies of walking up and demanding he drink the tainted glass of wine.

Security workers later told the women surveillance video had filmed Hsu dropping the substance into the drink, Ulrich said.

Police took the drink and other items as evidence, Rodriguez said. They also searched Hsus home.

Police are now looking for witnesses and additional victims, he said.

Anyone who has details about Hsu or is a victim is urged to contact Det. Nicole Sierra at (310) 458-8941, Sgt. Sal Lucio at (310) 458-8760 or the Santa Monica Police Department at (310) 458-8495.

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For breaking news in California, follow VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter.

UPDATES:

1:05 p.m.: This article was updated with prosecutors filing charges against Michael Hsu.

This article was posted at 6:54 a.m.
A search is underway for a student pilot and his flight instructor after their small plane disappeared over the coast of Catalina Island during the Memorial Day weekend.

Edmond Haronian, 50, of Woodland Hills and his instructor, Jason Glazier, 52, of Encino have been missing since Saturday when their single-engine Cessna 172 never landed at its intended destination.

The aircraft departed Catalina Island Airport on Saturday afternoon, but failed to arrive on time at Van Nuys Airport, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said.

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The FAA alerted authorities that the plane was overdue, he said.

#LASD Air Rescue 5 continues coastal search this morning for signs of missing aircraft last seen at Catalina Island. pic.twitter.com/jv0sIi6GNB  SEB (@SEBLASD) May 31, 2016

The Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department are searching for the missing aircraft. The U.S. Coast Guard suspended its search late Monday after it said no signs of any aircraft or anyone in distress were found.

Haronians family commissioned three helicopters to help rescuers search for the aircraft during the weekend. At least one helicopters was aiding in Tuesdays search.

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Just hours before the two men disappeared, a smiling Haronian posted several photographs on Facebook showing him with the aircraft.

We have no clue where he is, his brother, Edwin Haronian, said. The plane has not been found.

He had been flying for about a year at the Van Nuys-based Encore Flight Academy. Haronian had exchanged a few text messages the day he disappeared, but has not been heard from since, his brother said.

Haronian was recently featured in a Times story about the role of insurance agents in Californias Obamacare enrollment.

Haronian was recognized as a top producer in enrolling people in Obamacare. He told The Times he enrolled more than 1,000 people in the program.

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A man wanted in the fatal shooting of his pregnant girlfriend in Los Angeles in April was arrested Sunday after he became lost and mistakenly drove to the San Ysidro border crossing with a woman he recently met at a strip club, authorities said.

Philip Patrick Policarpio, 39, was added to the FBIs Ten Most Wanted list in May after he was charged with murder in the shooting death of his girlfriend in East Hollywood.

Policarpio told border agents he was a Mexican citizen who had made a wrong turn when he was stopped at the San Ysidro crossing around 4:45 p.m., according to a news release issued by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency.

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He was carrying several pieces of identification and told border agents he intended not to return to the U.S., according to Dierdre Fike, special agent in charge of the FBIs Los Angeles office.

Policarpio had pulled into a lane used by low-risk, pre-approved drivers who take part in the CBPs trusted traveler program, said Sidney Aki, port director at the San Ysidro crossing.

He was very vague in regards to providing information, Aki said at a morning news conference to discuss the arrest. That of course sets off red flags among us.

See the most-read stories this hour >>

After scanning his fingerprints, the agents noticed a warrant had been issued for Policarpios arrest in connection with a Los Angeles homicide. Fike said he tried to flee but was captured quickly.

Policarpio was traveling with a 22-year-old Mexican woman whom he had recently met at a strip club, according to Fike. She was released and allowed to return to Mexico after agents determined she did not have a legal right to enter the U.S., according to the release.

Policarpio initially was detained Sunday on a federal warrant accusing him of fleeing prosecution, though the FBI expects to drop that charge so he can be immediately prosecuted on murder charges in the deaths of his girlfriend and her unborn child.

Policarpio is accused of killing 32-year-old Lauren Elaine Olguin, during an April 12 gathering in East Hollywood, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court.

After bursting into a room where Olguin was playing cards, Policarpio became angry and struck his girlfriend several times before shooting her in the forehead, court records show.

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Police recently said they believed Policarpio might have fled to Las Vegas after the shooting, but he hadnt been seen until Sunday, authorities said. Evidence gathered Sunday indicated Policarpio had been living in the Tijuana area in recent weeks, the FBI said.

At the time of the April killing, Policarpio was on parole stemming from a 2001 assault conviction, the FBI said.

In that case, authorities said, Policarpio fired several rounds at an occupied vehicle in Burbank in June 2000, seriously injuring a man and a woman.

He fled to the Philippines later that year, but was deported back to the U.S. after he was arrested there. Policarpio served 14 years in prison in the assault case, and was released in May 2015.

Jerilyn Olguin, the victims mother, said she was surprised when a police officer called her on Sunday to let her know Policarpio had been captured.

I was very relieved, she said. I was very worried he was going to hurt somebody else.

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Follow @JamesQueallyLAT and @VeronicaRochaLA for crime and police news in California.

UPDATES:

3:01 p.m.: This story was updated with additional information provided at an FBI news conference.
Despite two decades of efforts to improve relations, Los Angeles County law enforcement is still struggling to build trust among African American residents, according to a new poll.

Leaders at the Los Angeles Police Department and other agencies have diversified their ranks, changed tactics and launched community programs in hopes of shedding a longstanding image among some black residents that authorities treat them unfairly  efforts that have drawn praise from others.

But the new survey, published Tuesday by the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, revealed mixed reviews of law enforcement in Los Angeles County, with the greatest skepticism coming from African Americans.

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About half of the 2,425 L.A. County residents polled rated the quality of their police services, along with the conduct and professionalism of officers, as good, according to the surveys results.

But when African Americans were asked to rate police, the percentages dropped. About a quarter of African Americans polled considered the conduct and professionalism of officers good. About a third  31.5%  described officers behavior as poor. The rest said it was fair.

When asked how confident they were that police in their communities treated all races equally, just over 42% of the black residents surveyed said they were not confident, compared with 30% of Latinos polled, 25% of whites and nearly 20% of Asian Americans.

See the most-read stories this hour >>

The phone poll, conducted over a six-week span in January and February, took place amid a heated national conversation about how and when police officers use force, particularly against African Americans. The residents surveyed were asked a range of questions about public safety in their communities, the results of which were compiled in a report published Tuesday.

Two-thirds of respondents said they believed most officers only used the amount of force necessary to accomplish their tasks. The report did not break down those results by race or ethnicity.

Fernando Guerra, the director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles, said the survey offered a real reaction from L.A. County residents on public safety issues that often generate fierce debate.

Everybody has an opinion  from police commissioners to the police themselves, advocates, etc., Guerra said. But this is what the residents think.

The majority of residents polled indicated that they believed their neighborhoods were safe, despite an uptick in crime that continues to plague local police. Though Los Angeles police officials said last week that they were making progress in driving down some crimes across the city, violent crime remains nearly 16% higher than this time last year.

Still, almost 78% of L.A. residents polled said they considered their neighborhoods a safe place to live. Nearly 88% of L.A. County residents said the same.

This is really giving voice to the community.  Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles

The findings also indicated widespread support of body cameras for law enforcement officers. Agencies including the LAPD and Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department have begun using the devices.

More than 92% of residents living in the city of Los Angeles said they thought the new technology was a good idea, according to the poll. Almost 91% of county residents agreed.

The LAPD is poised to become the largest law enforcement agency in the nation to use body cameras on a widespread scale, with plans to roll out 7,000 cameras in the coming years. But lingering questions from city lawmakers over the programs implementation and funding have delayed the initiative.

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The Sheriffs Department has tested the cameras in a pilot program and is now evaluating the logistics involved in using the devices, said Cmdr. Eddie Rivero, a department spokesman. He anticipated the department would start rolling out cameras in phases in a year or two.

Guerra said he was initially surprised by the high percentage of residents who backed the use of the new technology.

We hardly ever see that level of support on anything, Guerra said. The bottom line is residents believe this needs to be done.

When asked about the surveys results and public attitudes about local policing, Rivero pointed to several initiatives the Sheriffs Department recently launched within the community, including a pen pal program with elementary school students and youth sports teams.

Sheriffs officials also work with the local chapter of a national group, Concerned Black Men, to engage with African American residents and address any concerns they may have about law enforcement, Rivero said.

But, Rivero said, Sheriff Jim McDonnell has a very clear message for his deputies: day-to-day interactions are key to earning the publics trust in law enforcement.

Regardless of what the call for service is, we are there to be the protectors, the guardians of the community, Rivero said. We need to leave that contact where the person who calls us feels that we were there to help them. Every single day, that has to occur.

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kate.mather@latimes.com

Follow me on Twitter: @katemather

UPDATES:

8:43 p.m.: This post has been updated to include comments from the Sheriffs Department.

This post was originally published at 1:27 p.m.
It was midmorning on Tuesday, July 19, 1960, and two 376-foot U.S. Navy destroyers, foghorns blaring, were groping their way through dense fog five miles off Newport Beach.

Both ships, the Ammen, which was heading to San Diego from the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station, where it had unloaded its ammunition, and the Collett, sailing from San Diego to Long Beach, had been in the thick of combat in the Pacific during World War II.

The Ammen had miraculously survived sinking during the 1944 Battle of Leyte Gulf when a Japanese kamikaze plane plunged deep into its superstructure, causing massive damage, killing five crewmen and critically injuring 26. The Collett had seen action at Iwo Jima, Okinawa and the Philippines, and on Sept. 2, 1945, it was moored in Tokyo Bay next to the battleship Missouri, where Gen. Douglas MacArthur received the Japanese surrender. Both ships also saw combat during the 1950-1953 Korean War.

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On that fateful day off Newport Beach nearly 57 years ago, as the fog thickened and the sea became increasingly choppy, Cmdr. Zaven Mukhalian, 41, skipper of the Ammen, and his 235-man crew were presented with a sight that would strike terror in the heart of any mariner.

Out of the fog loomed the Collett, carrying a crew of 239, traveling at an estimated speed of 17 knots (19.5 mph) directly toward the slower-moving Ammens port side.

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Wreckage from the USS Ammen that contained three sailors bodies is removed in a Terminal Island drydock the day of the collision with the Ammen off Newport Beach. (Charles Crawford / Los Angeles Times)

Mukhalian and Cmdr. Albert T. Ford, 39, captain of the Collett, frantically ordered evasive action and instructed their helmsmen to reverse course.

It was too late.

At 9:42 a.m., the bow of the Collett sliced into the port side of the Ammen, which was due to be decommissioned and sent to the Navys mothball fleet after it reached San Diego.

The force of the impact gouged a huge hole below the Ammens waterline, sending water rushing in and damaging its engine, electronics repair shops and fire rooms so badly they were left looking like a junkyard, the Los Angeles Times noted in a Page One story the next day.

Aboard the Collett, a new bow fitted only two weeks earlier was crumpled back, its upper part pressed against the ships port side, its lower part ripped open and wedged against its starboard side. The Colletts left anchor was embedded in the Ammen, and its gun control tower was sheared off at its base and lay on its side on the deck. The damage was described by The Times as grotesque.

The situation aboard the Ammen was much worse.

Its aft engine room and forward fire room filling with water, the ship took a sharp list, and it was feared the Ammen would turn on its side and sink. But its pumps stemmed the flooding, and the Ammen remained afloat, although still listing at a dangerous angle.

Several crewmen on the Collett, which was able to back free from the Ammen, suffered minor lacerations, cuts and bruises.

But on the Ammen, it was a different story.

Collett bow lookout Patrick Madeiros, then 19, who told the Associated Press that he had yelled ship dead ahead! when he realized his vessel was rapidly approaching the Ammen, said he heard the awesome sounds of disaster coming from the Ammen when the two vessels collided.

Frantic shouts ... the clanging of bells ... death screams ... the hiss of steam ... the rip and tear of steel, he recounted.

The death toll on the Ammen reached 11. All those killed were enlisted men. At least 20 other crewmen were injured. The force of the collision was so great that two Ammen crewmen  one died later that day, and the other was critically injured -- were catapulted from the deck of the Ammen to the deck of the Collett.

Most of the dead and injured had been in the Ammens fire and engine rooms when the ships collided. There had been a foreboding of disaster among some of the officers and men aboard the Ammen just before the ramming.

If we collide with another ship in this fog, we wont have a chance, crewman Royce L. Jones recalled he had warned his shipmates.

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Mukhalian stated at a Long Beach news conference that evening, If we hadnt unloaded our ammunition, including the depth charges, at Seal Beach before the collision, both ships would have been blown to kingdom come.

In Newport Beach, rescue operations began at once when authorities were alerted to the disaster.

Learning of the collision from Coast Guard and Navy radio reports, Newport Beachs lifeguard rescue boat the Sea Watch and the Harbor Departments Boat No. 2 raced to the scene in heavy fog and choppy seas.

Boat No. 2 was the first to arrive, and Bob McBride, one of its crew, told the daily Globe-Herald and Pilot (which a year later became the Daily Pilot), There was no panic aboard the ships when we came alongside and started to take off the injured.

Stan Annin, deputy chief of the Newport Beach Harbor Department who was aboard the Sea Watch, told Almon Lockabey, the Globe-Herald and Pilots boating and marine editor, It was so foggy that we couldnt see more than an eighth of a mile.

Wreckage on the Ammens deck was terrific. Cabins were caved in. The Ammens deck, which was only five feet above water, was crushed like a beer can, wrote Lockabey, a fixture on the Orange Coast boating scene who died in 1995 at the age of 85.

The Island Lady, a Newport-Catalina tourist boat, joined in the evacuation, assisting in the removal of the Ammens dead and injured as the ship continued its list, raising fears it might turn over.

About 11:30 a.m., the dead and injured had been taken off the Ammen, and the Collett, assisted by a Navy tugboat, was able to limp under its own power to the Long Beach Naval Base. The Ammen, still listing and its engine inoperable, was towed to the Long Beach Naval Shipyard by the Gear, a submarine rescue ship.

A week after the disaster, a Navy court martial heard testimony from the captains of the Ammen and Collett that their ships radars were working properly before the crash and that they could not explain why the two warships had come together with such destructive force.

NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>

Four months later, on Nov. 11, 1960, The Times reported that Ford had pleaded guilty to negligently handling his ship, but that he had pleaded not guilty to not maintaining adequate watches on his ships bow and in the radar room.

The court reprimanded him and sentenced him to the loss of 100 numbers on the Navy promotion list. This effectively banned him from promotion to the rank of captain and ended his Navy career.

As for the futures of the two vessels, the Ammen was patched up at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard and towed to San Diego, where it was decommissioned and sold for scrap the following year to the National Metal and Steel Corp.

The Collett was fitted with its second new bow in three months and returned to active duty, conducting patrols in the Pacific and along the California coast. In 1974, it was bought by Argentina to serve as a spare parts ship for the nations navy. The Argentines found that the Collett was in such good shape that they renamed the ship the ARA Piedrama and added it to their seagoing inventory.

During the 1982 Falklands War with Britain, the Piedrama served as an escort ship and rescued the survivors of the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano, which was sunk by the British attack submarine Conqueror.

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

For the record

10:30 a.m., May 31: An earlier verson of this post misspelled the name of the Argentine cruiser sunk during the Falklands War. It was the General Belgrano, not Belgramo.

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

Three years later, the 31-year-old Collett was decommissioned by the Argentine navy and sunk by guided missiles during a naval exercise.

Today, more than a half-century after the two destroyers collided off Newport Beach, the tragedy remains one of the worst peacetime sea disasters in U.S. Pacific Coast naval history.

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A jury on Tuesday convicted an actor who played a police officer on TV of second-degree murder in the shooting death of his wife that was partially witnessed by their two young sons.

The verdict in the trial of Michael Jace, who appeared on the FX series The Shield, came after a weeklong trial in which Los Angeles jurors were told the actor shot his wife, April, in the back and then twice in the legs with a revolver that belonged to her father.

Jace, 53, did not testify in his own defense. He told detectives soon after the attack that he had retrieved the gun to kill himself but couldnt do it. Instead, he planned to shoot his wife, an avid runner, in the leg so she would feel pain, Jace told detectives in a recorded interview.

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Deputy Dist. Atty. Tannaz Mokayef told jurors the actor was waiting for his wife and he shot her in the back and taunted her before shooting each of her legs.

Jaces 10-year-old son testified that he heard his father say,  If you like running, then run to heaven,  before firing the second time.

Savoy Brown, an adult son of April Jace, said the family was pleased with the verdict. He said watching Jace has been difficult for the family, and said he is hoping the actor, who bit his bottom lip when the verdict was read but showed no other emotion, will show his feelings when he is sentenced.

Mokayef said the potential sentence would be 40 years to life in prison.

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She said during the trial that the actor was upset that his wife wanted a divorce and believed she was having an affair, although no evidence was presented during the trial that she was cheating.

Jaces attorney, Jamon Hicks, said his client is remorseful for killing his wife. He said the actor may speak during his sentencing hearing to express his remorse, but he wants to be respectful of April Jaces family.

Hicks previously told jurors the actor accepted responsibility for killing his wife but should be convicted of voluntary manslaughter because he shot her in the heat of passion.

Jace also had small roles in films such as Planet of the Apes, 'Boogie Nights and Forrest Gump.

He turned himself in to police after the shooting and has been jailed since.

April Jace, 40, was a financial aid counselor at Biola University.

Before the trial, Los Angeles police investigators obtained a method to open the locked iPhonebelonging to Jaces wife.

LAPD detectives found an alternative way to bypass the security features on the white iPhone 5S belonging to April Jace.

The bypass occurred earlier this year, during the same period that the FBI was demanding that Apple unlock the iPhone 5C of San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook. The FBI eventually said it found another method, without using Apple, for unlocking the phone, which was equipped with a newer and more advanced operating system than April Jaces phone.

Its unclear what operating system April Jaces phone had, although her killing occurred months before Apple rolled out the operating system iOS8, which has more enhanced encryption.

An Apple technician had previously helped the LAPD access information from April Jaces phone, but investigators later sought an alternative way to bypass the phones lock, according to the warrant.

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UPDATES:

1:23 p.m.: Updated with background.

11:30 a.m.: This article was updated with additional information.

10:54 a.m.: This article was with the verdict.

This article was originally published at 10:32 a.m.
A former tycoon wanted on allegations of embezzlement and fraud in Taiwan has died in a car accident in California, the islands Foreign Ministry confirmed Tuesday. He had been hiding in the United States for years.

The official Central News Agency said Wang You-theng, former chairman of the China Rebar Group, was killed in a Friday morning crash on a highway in West Covina. His wife was injured but was in stable condition, the report said.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Eleanor Wang confirmed the report when reached by telephone, but did not provide further details.

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Wang founded Rebar in 1959 to build steel beams, and made a fortune from the business, but when Rebar sank into financial difficulties in 2006, Wang fled Taiwan and eventually arrived in the United States, where he had lived as one of the most wanted fugitives by Taiwanese authorities.

Wang had been indicted on a long list of charges, including fraud, money laundering and insider trading, the news agency said. Wang and his family were accused of siphoning off more than $9 billion in Rebar assets.

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A San Fernando Valley teaching assistant who worked with special education students has been charged with sexually abusing two boys over a six-year period, the Los Angeles County district attorneys office announced Tuesday.

Joaquin Diaz, 44, was charged Friday with two counts of continuous sexual abuse and one count of kidnapping for child molesting, the district attorneys office said in a statement.

Diaz worked for Los Angeles Unified School District schools when the crimes occurred, authorities said. However, the contact may have occurred while Diaz was acting as a private tutor outside of his employment with LAUSD, authorities said.

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Diaz sexually abused one victim, now age 19, from September 2009 through December 2014, officials said. He also is accused of abusing a second boy, now age 11, from July 2015 to May 20, 2016. It is on May 20 that Diaz is believed to have kidnapped the victim, prosecutors said.

He has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to appear in court on June 28. If convicted, Diaz faces up to multiple life terms in state prison.

Police arrested Diaz, also known as Joaquin Diaz-Orgaz, at his Woodland Hills home on May 25, said Det. Stefanie Diaz of the Los Angeles Police Departments Devonshire Station, which is handling the investigation.

Diaz worked for numerous LAUSD schools, the most recent being Sunny Brae Elementary in Winnetka, where he had worked since December 2011, Det. Diaz said.

The suspect also is known to have worked at Valley View Elementary in the Hollywood Hills, Portola Middle School in Tarzana and Woodland Hills Academy, police said. He also did private tutoring.

Det. Diaz said she could not comment on the specifics of the allegations because the victims were minors. She said the alleged abuse was first reported to Devonshire investigators in March and that they learned about the second victim after Diazs arrest.

Any parent would never want this to happen to their child, never, Det. Diaz said. I cant comment on how they feel, but clearly he has to face the consequences of his actions. He was in a position of trust. These children trusted him, and their families trusted him.

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The Los Angeles Unified School District said in a statement that it was cooperating with police.

L.A. Unified has worked diligently to provide a secure environment for all students to learn and succeed, the district said. However, a small number of individuals have acted in gross violation of the districts commitment to keep our children safe.

The nations second-largest school system has been plagued in recent years by a series of cases in which officials missed indications of teacher misconduct, and, in some instances, continued to employ teachers who were under a cloud, or ignored or overlooked direct complaints.

Payouts to parents and attorneys have surpassed $300 million in the last four years.

In its statement Tuesday, the school district said it will convene an advisory committee comprised of district officials, child protection experts, parents and community partners to examine current practices for safeguarding students and to recommend additional strategies, as needed.

According to the school district, it has improved training for recognizing and reporting abuse, created a Student Safety Investigative Team made up of law enforcement veterans and developed a comprehensive data warehouse that allows the district to better track and document misconduct allegations against employees.

Devonshire police said they are reaching out to the public to find out if there are additional alleged victims or more information about Diaz.

Anyone with information about Diaz or other potential victims is encouraged to call Devonshire detectives at (818) 832-0609.

Diaz remained in custody Tuesday in lieu of $3-million bail.

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hailey.branson@latimes.com

Twitter: @haileybranson

UPDATES:

12:48 p.m.: This story was updated with additional information from the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Members of a federal task force found 182 pounds of cocaine hidden inside a charter bus that traveled from Mexico to Wilmington, authorities said Tuesday.

There were no passengers on the bus when the bust  conducted by the Department of Justices L.A. IMPACT task force  took place.

The drugs were found about 9 a.m. at an auto body shop after investigators tailed the bus from the San Ysidro border crossing about 4 a.m., said task force deputy director Carlos Mendoza.

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The 83 kilos of cocaine were encased in foil in a 15-foot long hidden compartment above the left rear tire, blocked by the bus radiator, Mendoza said. The drugs went undetected during a sweep by border officers, he said.

Authorities believe the drug shipment is connected to Mexican cartels because of its size and the relative sophistication involved in hiding it, Mendoza said. It had an estimated wholesale value of $2.1 million and street value of $10 million, the DOJ said.

Police arrested Victor Fainz Miranda, Jaime Jimenez and Humberto Vazquez when they searched the business.

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The DOJs IMPACT team made headlines last week when they arrested five men in a Hooters parking lot in Ontario after they allegedly tried to sell 53 pounds of methamphetamine. The men were allegedly linked to the Sinaloa cartel.

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For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna.
Medical officials Tuesday identified a woman who was bitten by a shark while swimming off the coast of Corona del Mar State Beach as Maria Korcsmaros, a 52-year-old personal trainer and aerobics instructor from Corona.

Korcsmaros was swimming along the buoys about 150 yards offshore as part of her training for an Ironman competition scheduled for July in Canada when she was attacked at about 4:15 p.m. Sunday, according to officials from Orange County Global Medical Center in Santa Ana, where Korcsmaros is recovering from surgery.

Officials are not certain about the species of shark that bit Korcsmaros.

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However, Chris Lowe, head of the Shark Lab at Cal State Long Beach, said Tuesday that based on the size of her wounds it was likely an adult great white measuring more than 10 feet long.

Lifeguards searched for the shark by boat and helicopter Tuesday morning and reopened the beach between the Balboa Pier and the Wedge about noon after no sharks were seen.

Corona del Mar State Beach remained closed to swimmers Tuesday afternoon.

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The open water along the buoys off Corona del Mar is a popular spot for long-distance swimmers to train for triathlons and other events because it is relatively calm, said Newport Beach Chief Lifeguard Rob Williams.

Lifeguard Andy Matsuyama and Capt. Mike Ure were patrolling on a boat about 30 yards from Korcsmaros when they noticed an unusual splash of white water and saw the woman jolted to the side. They didnt see a shark, Williams said.

Korcsmaros began treading water, yelled and shot her hand in the air to signal for help. In less than a minute, lifeguards pulled the bleeding woman, who was wearing a wetsuit, onto the boat and applied a tourniquet to her arm.

The lifeguards sped to the Orange County Sheriffs Department Harbor Patrol in Newport Harbor, where paramedics were waiting.

It was very fortunate we had a boat patrolling in the area, Williams said.

Beachgoers are seen near the Newport Pier. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times )

Korcsmaros later told doctors that the attack was very sudden and that she felt something hit her, according to Philip Rotter, director of orthopedic trauma surgery at Orange County Global Medical Center.

Thirty minutes after she was pulled from the chilly ocean, Korcsmaros arrived at the hospital, where a team of doctors began trying to stabilize her before taking her into surgery.

Korcsmaros had multiple teeth marks on her right side extending from her shoulder area in a semicircular pattern to her lower pelvis. She also had lacerations on her right arm, an open chest wound and multiple rib fractures and had lost about a liter of blood, doctors said.

Were a trauma center, we see trauma every day, but I havent seen this type of trauma, Rotter said of the wounds.

Rotter, one of several doctors in the operating room during the more than three-hour surgery, said Korcsmaros was remarkably calm when she arrived.

Doctors said they looked for teeth left behind by the shark but didnt find any.

Korcsmaros is recovering at the hospital and taking antibiotics to help stave off any infection.

Rotter said its too early to determine whether shell have use of her arm.

Korcsmaros, a mother of three, is a seasoned athlete who has competed in various triathlons as well as an Ironman competition in 2008. Her husband, Alex, was reportedly on the beach when the attack occurred, according to Williams.

Doctors credited her level of physical fitness for her ability to survive the attack.

She had significant open wounds on her upper body and on her pelvis, Rotter said. Those are wounds that would have bled a lot, and she was able to tread water and hold her own until help arrived. Thats pretty remarkable.

On Tuesday morning, Felicia Walz of Colorado was ankle deep in the water at Corona del Mar with her husband and three children when a lifeguard ran down the beach to stop her from entering further.

Walz and her family had stopped in Newport Beach during their vacation so they could experience the beach for the first time. They werent planning to go far into the water, given the cool, overcast conditions, she said.

News about the shark attack affirmed her decision to only dip her toes in the water.

Its a little freaky to think there could be a shark so close out there, she said. We camp a lot at home, so we deal with bears and other predators and were used to that, but not sharks.

Lowe, of the Cal State Long Beach Shark Lab, has been studying juvenile great white sharks in the area for about 10 years. Typically, juvenile sharks are born around the Channel Islands and the pups swim toward the beaches. The mothers are never sighted, he said.

Theyre more common during the fall months off Central California, he said. We just dont see great white sharks along our beaches.

A person being bitten also is uncommon.

There have been two reports of unprovoked shark attacks in Orange County since 1926, according to data from the Florida Museum of Natural History.

hannah.fry@latimes.com

Twitter: @HannahFryTCN

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The U.S. Supreme Court ruled for landowners Tuesday who are fighting the government over whether their property includes protected wetlands.

In a unanimous decision, the justices said property owners may go to court and obtain a prompt judicial review of claims by federal environmental regulators that their dry land may in fact be a wetland.

This issue, while procedural, has arisen around the nation when home builders or companies announce plans to develop their land. Sometimes, the Army of Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency assert the land contains protected wetlands and cannot be developed.

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These determinations rest on the claimoften disputedthat the land has a connection to the navigable waters of the United States.

In Tuesdays ruling, the high court sided with a Minnesota company that wanted to mine a peat bog on its land which lies 120 miles from the Red River of the North, the nearest navigable river.

Nonetheless, the Army Corps determined this land was part of the navigable waters of the United States and subject to federal control because water could drain from there to the river.

The company was then left with two bad choices: seek a federal permit to begin mining the peat, which would cost more than $100,000 and take years to complete, or go ahead with their development and risk fines of up $37,000 a day and perhaps criminal prosecution for illegally discharging pollutants into protected waters.

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The Supreme Court gave the landowners a third option. They could go to court and challenge the governments claim that the peat bogs are connected to navigable waters. They need not assume such risks [of huge fines] while waiting for EPA to drop the hammer in order to have their day in court, said Chief Justice John G. Roberts in U.S. Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes Co.

In the past, the high court has been split on how to define the limit of federal control over wetlands. But more recently, all the justices have agreed that landowners should be permitted to challenge the decisions of federal environmental regulators.

Both the Army Corps and EPA have authority to enforce the Clean Water Act and protect against discharges of pollutants into U.S. waters. When challenged, the agencies have said landowners must apply for a permit and then, if necessary, go to court.

But the justices said they may go to court immediately in a decision that will likely be seen as strengthening property rights.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy hinted he and others may go further if the judicial review proves ineffective. In a concurring opinion joined by Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas, Kennedy said he remained concerned about the ominous reach of environmental regulators.

This authority continues to raise troubling questions regarding the governments power to cast doubt on the full use and enjoyment of private property throughout the nation, he said.

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Just after midnight Tuesday, in one of the last shootings of the Memorial Day weekend, two people pulled out guns and started firing in East Garfield Park.

The first call to police was for one person shot on Homan Avenue. Then a second victim. Then a third. Then someone walked into a hospital a few minutes later. In all, 69 people were hit by gunfire in a violent holiday weekend in Chicago, 27 of them in a single neighborhood. So many people were shot in or near the troubled Harrison District that police promised Sunday to beef up patrols. Even still, by Tuesday, nine more people had been shot.

Neighbors watch as police investigate a shooting in their Ashburn neighborhood. (Haley Bemiller / Chicago Tribune )

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While the number of shootings was up from last year, the number of deaths was down.

Last year, 12 people were killed and 44 wounded over the holiday weekend. This weekend, 13 more people were shot, but six fewer people were killed.

Still, the breakdown from the weekend was bleak: Three people killed and 12 people wounded Friday afternoon through early Saturday; one person killed and 24 people wounded Saturday evening through early Sunday; 13 people wounded Sunday afternoon through early Monday; and 16 people shot Monday into early Tuesday, two of them fatally.

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The holiday weekend was police Supt. Eddie Johnsons first since Mayor Rahm Emanuel picked the veteran cop to lead the embattled department in late March. The department sought volunteers to work overtime over the weekend, although police did not release figures on how many officers worked.

Instead of hiring more cops during a city budget crunch, Emanuel instead has relied heavily on overtime to try to tamp down violence. The weekend shooting scenes played out from a gas station in Dunning on the Northwest Side to a narrow tree-lined street in the South Sides West Pullman neighborhood. Residents and passersby at times grabbed towels and ice packs to aid the wounded. Others tried to figure out if the victims were friends or loved ones.

Left mourning were family members, including those of Veronica Lopez. The 15-year-old was the youngest of the murder victims, shot as she rode with two older men police identified as known gang members along Lake Shore Drive early Saturday.

One of the men also was hit but survived. That afternoon, her mother, Diana Mercado, wept outside her familys home above a storefront in the Belmont Craigin neighborhood.

She said she had begun planning to move with Veronica to Florida in a year because of the citys violence. Now they took my baby, she said. Later that day, in the Lawndale neighborhood, the mother of another teen, Shequita Evans, walked up to a scene where a woman was shot in the neck while driving down Lexington Avenue.

Evans lamented that she had to get through one more summer until her 17-year-old could graduate high school and would be able to attend college outside the city. At another scene in the Back of the Yards, a woman had to explain to a small boy how the loud pops they had heard werent fireworks from the White Sox game. The boy smoothed the cape of a Superman doll as he asked officers if they had gotten the bad guys.

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Bernie Sanders insists Democratic race will not be over after June 7

Bernie Sanders offered some advice to Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party on Tuesday: Dont be so fast when it comes to ending the primary.

Sanders, down in delegates and the path narrowing in his quest for the Democratic presidential nomination, insisted that after the June 7 contests, Clinton will not have enough delegates to become the partys nominee.

No candidate  not Hillary Clinton, not Bernie Sanders  will have received the number of pledged delegates  that he or she needs to become the Democratic nominee, Sanders, at a rally in Santa Cruz, said Tuesday afternoon.

But math is not on the Vermont senators side.

To date, Clinton has won 2,310 delegates and must win an additional 73 to reach the 2,383 delegates needed to secure the nomination. (This total also includes super-delegates, in which Clinton also outpaces Sanders.) Sanders trails Clinton by more than 700 delegates.

Still, Sanders, whose populist message has resonated with progressives, has vowed to remain in the race and fight for a more liberal platform at the partys July convention in Philadelphia.

On Tuesday, Sanders campaign was dealt a blow when California Gov. Jerry Brown, who is widely popular in the state, endorsed Clinton, noting that the Democratic primary is essentially over.

Sanders, citing some polls that show him faring better against GOP nominee Donald Trump, said the Democratic party must decide its future.

The message to the Democratic leadership is that if the Democratic Party is to be the party of working people and young people and the middle class, theyve got to open up the doors, said Sanders, noting the strong support hes received from young adults. You are the future of this country  and the Democratic Party has got to be a party that is more than its candidates going to wealthy peoples homes to raise outrageous sums of money.
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

Primary Concerns

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How important is winning the California primary one week from today? Bernie Sanders has been campaigning nonstop through the state, and with at least one public poll showing the race is now a tie, Hillary Clinton will be coming back early to campaign. Meanwhile, Donald Trump keeps popping up as all-purpose boogeyman in races, such as for the state Assembly, with which he has no connection.

In Compton, a Most Violent Year

Fifteen people have been killed in Compton so far this year. Thats triple the number of killings for the same period in 2015. Though the city of roughly 100,000 has had a violent past -- more than a decade ago, 70 people were killed in just one year  authorities are worried the current surge is undoing the progress made in recent years. That includes federal help to fight crime. Read on to see whats behind the killings and how they might be stopped.

The Medicine That Was Headed for Prince

We still dont know the cause of Princes death more than a month ago, but authorities are trying to determine if prescription drugs played a role. That investigation has put a spotlight on a medication called buprenorphine. A drug-addiction consultant headed to Princes home was carrying a small amount of it, according to the consultants attorney. While some praise the drug as one of the most effective treatments for opioid addiction, others warn that it can cause dependency.

Feel the Berg: The Politics of Oscar

Steven Spielberg. Kenneth Babyface Edmonds. Laura Dern. In this years elections for the Oscars board of governors, these three candidates and many more are trying to woo disaffected voters who are angry about not being heard. (Sound familiar?) Theres a flood of contenders this time around. Some, like composer William Goldstein, are upset about the film academy enacting big changes to its membership. One wonders: Is anyone vowing to make the academy great again?

Silk Roadblocks

China has a vision of forging a modern Silk Road, from the western Chinese hinterlands through Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe  mirroring the route once traveled by Marco Polo. That plan starts in Pakistan. So China is handing out $46 billion in investments to improve its neighbors infrastructure. But that also means families are being uprooted to make way, and judges are putting the brakes on some projects.

OUR MUST-READS FROM THE WEEKEND

-- Sen. Edward J. Markey is calling for investigation of Purdue Pharma after a Times story on OxyContin.

-- The handsome undercover cop smiles. Is he entrapping gay men or cleaning up a park?

-- Trump weirdness in Fresno: Latinos who love him, and police who charm the protesters.

-- The case of a fired hospital worker points to a trail of stolen drugs and thousands of patients at risk.

-- L.A. Fire Department inspectors accuse supervisors of cutting corners and ignoring fire hazards.

-- The Philippines has 1.8 million abandoned children. Heres what keeps many from adoption.

-- Summer TV: A new Roots, Cameron Crowes Roadies and a guide to all the shows youll want to watch this season.

-- Discover our desert national parks and rediscover yourself. You can start with Joshua Tree.

CALIFORNIA

-- Hundreds gather for a Memorial Day ceremony at Los Angeles National Cemetery, home to 80,000 stories of bravery.

-- Graffiti is scrubbed from veterans memorial in Venice, but more restoration work remains.

-- Shes alive, and I know it, the sister of kidnapped Pearl Pinson says, as authorities suspend their search.

-- Santa Catalina Island will vote on allowing marijuana dispensaries.

NATION-WORLD

-- President Obama, marking Memorial Day, calls on Americans to remember those from whom we asked everything.

-- Chicago will release police videos and reports from 100 incidents in a bid to gain public trust.

-- Animal rights activists held a vigil for the gorilla killed at the Cincinnati Zoo.

-- Extra wide, pink parking spots for women in China spark an online debate about sexism.

-- Health experts question a federal study linking cellphones to brain tumors.

HOLLYWOOD AND THE ARTS

-- This terminally ill comedian is standing up to his cancer in an HBO special.

-- X-Men director Bryan Singer reveals how he built the Apocalypse.

-- This years Venice Architecture Biennale shines a spotlight not just on the architects but also the people who use, buy, rent, build and clean the buildings.

-- Foxs Megyn Kelly could test the value of star power in a changing TV news market.

-- Small world: Disney characters are spotted at a rival Chinese theme park.

BUSINESS

-- A federal case could take Googles payday lending crackdown one step further.

-- Viacom board members vow to fight an attempt to remove them.

-- Why hasnt TSA PreCheck reduced airport wait times?

-- Auto review: The 2017 Chrysler Pacifica minivan.

SPORTS

-- Stephen Curry wins a battle of the superstars, leading the Golden State Warriors to the NBA Finals.

-- Mexican soccer star Alan Pulido was rescued several hours after being abducted, authorities said.

OPINION

-- Reforming the police disciplinary system should be done in public view, not in backroom negotiations.

-- A professor writes that Russias got a point: The U.S. broke a NATO promise.

WHAT OUR EDITORS ARE READING

-- In China, they arent quite sure what to think of Trump. (South China Morning Post)

-- Kim Jong Uns aunt will do your dry-cleaning in New York. (Washington Post)

-- A newly translated story by Alexander Pushkin. (Literary Hub)

ONLY IN L.A.

Giant batch freezers. Liquid nitrogen. Bicycles. L.A. is home to a lot of ways to make ice cream. With our newly updated guide to where to get ice cream and gelato, you can compare and contrast the methods  all in the name of research, of course. If you have ever wondered what cinnamon-date-tahini ice cream or chocolate-jalapeno gelato tastes like, heres the stuff.

Please send comments and ideas to Davan Maharaj.
The brutal beating of Rodney King by the Los Angeles police and the riots that followed were still fresh in voters minds when they went to the polls on June 2, 1992, and overwhelmingly endorsed a package of police accountability reforms.

One of the reforms made changes to the structure of the Board of Rights, the disciplinary panel created in the 1930s that makes the final determination about whether officers deserve to be fired. One of the more damning revelations by the Christopher Commission, which was formed in the wake of the King beating, was that the department was excessively lenient on officers accused of using excessive force.

Officers werent happy about the restructuring of the discipline panel, and particularly the requirement that one member of the three-member board be a civilian. Who knew how civilians would view police work or how harsh they would be in their judgments? The Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union that represents rank-and-file officers, actively campaigned against the change, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to try to stop the reform package.

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But all that worrying was for nothing, it seems. Twenty-four years later, it turns out that civilians are consistently more lenient to police officers facing dismissal than the two department representatives on the board, according to police officials.

Now, the union wants another update to the disciplinary board. This time, it would like the panels to be made up entirely of civilians, with no police members at all. Go figure.

The way the system now works is that the police chief recommends punishments for officers, but for recommendations harsher than 22 days of suspension, the request must go to the Board of Rights, which holds a hearing to review all the evidence and then rules on the case. Three Board of Rights members are chosen for each case -- two officers selected randomly from the ranks of departments command staff and one civilian picked from a pool of people who apply and are selected by the Police Commission.

The union began meeting earlier this year with the mayors office to discuss changes. Its apparent concern is that officers cannot get a fair shake from the panel because two of the three members owe their positions and rank to the chief.

But the meetings with the mayor broke down in April, after what should have been obvious all along was acknowledged: that the police disciplinary process is detailed in the city charter and any change must be voted on by the public. Instead of going down that road, however, the police union decided to bypass the voters and go right to court. It filed a federal lawsuit in May charging that the LAPDs disciplinary system is unconstitutional and deprives officers of due process because the chief has unfair influence over two of the three members of the Board of Rights.Though a judge will ultimately decide, the evidence so far doesnt seem persuasive. For one thing, Board of Rights panels have opted to impose a lighter punishment in more than half of the 184 cases in which Chief Charlie Beck recommended dismissal over the last five years. To an outsider, that doesnt look like a system that is secretly controlled by the chief.

As part of the case, the police union cites four previous lawsuits against the department in which high-ranking officers said they felt pressured to fire people while serving on the Board of Rights, or believed they were retaliated against later for not voting to fire an officer. But thats hardly proof.

The timing of the lawsuit is also questionable. Although the ballot measure in 1992 changed its composition, the LAPDs Board of Rights process has been in place for about 85 years. If it was inherently unconstitutional, why wouldnt the union would have sued long ago? Frankly, this seems more like another broadside against Chief Beck by a union that has been extremely critical of him in recent months.

And even though the mayor has been open to discussing changes to the disciplinary system with the union, he hasnt said that theres anything substantially wrong with the system as it exists, only that it is old and outdated. Garcetti staffers have said the system might create a perception that the chief has undue influence.

Its fine for the mayor to be responsive to police officers, who have an important and dangerous job protecting the city. But if there is a discussion to be had about reforming the disciplinary system it should be held in public, not in backroom negotiations.

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The natural gas leak at the Aliso Canyon gas storage facility was a disaster with continuing widespread repercussions. In addition to the obvious harm to public and environmental health, officials now speculate the Southland will face summer blackouts because of the shuttering of the facility. Thats because Aliso Canyon plays an important role in the current iteration of L.A.s electricity generation infrastructure.

Until its closure in late 2015, the facility supplied natural gas to power plants for immediate use during peak periods of high electricity demand. On high electricity demand days, peaker plants  which run intermittently as backups to the main system  are used to quickly generate the extra electricity. Officials from SoCal Gas, California Energy Commission and the California Public Utilities Commission warn that without Aliso Canyon, there wont be enough gas to turn on the backup plants this summer when temperatures soar and residents are desperate for air conditioning.

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Whether these blackouts actually occur remains to be seen. But the panic surrounding their possible arrival could lead us to make some poor decisions about the future of our energy infrastructure if were not careful. Continuing to rely on natural gas peakers may address the immediate problem, but the supply systems for these plants  as the Aliso Canyon leak demonstrated  are fragile.

The problem goes beyond shoddy infrastructure. Adding more electricity to the grid creates trouble when demand dips lower than supply. The excess energy produced needs a place to go  and is often sold for cheap to incentivize increased consumption.

Natural gas operations are already intense greenhouse gas emitters. The structure of our power grid only makes things worse.

Instead of propping up our old system, based on speculated power shortages, we should be thinking critically about how to transform our grid so that we never experience blackouts again  not to mention another disastrous natural gas leak.

The Aliso Canyon disaster demonstrates the need for L.A. to move beyond big, dirty plants powering a central grid. Instead, we should be enabling neighborhoods to locally generate their own power through the creation of small, green, localized grids  or microgrids  independent from the central grid. This distributed power network would help reduce system-wide vulnerabilities and eliminate the need for gas-fired backup plants to meet high electricity demands.

In some parts of the country, solar generation is already able to meet peak electricity demands on hot and sunny days. Because peak demand energy is typically far more expensive than other times of the day, locally distributed solar can reduce long-term system costs for customers.

Additionally, solar generation and energy storage systems can be customized to meet the needs of a given community. For example, brownfields (land abandoned due to contamination) for solar farms could provide clean energy for a community on otherwise marginal land. Paired with battery storage systems, these solar farms could supply around the clock electricity.

Making this shift, however, wont be easy.

So far, investor-owned utilities such as Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric have been hesitant to invest in distributed energy  as it represents a shift from their current business model of buying mass amounts of electricity from existing power plants. Distributed energy infrastructure, on the other hand, would reduce the amount of money utilities spend on purchasing electricity, but would require large up-front infrastructure costs.

There is some hope in persuading utilities to change their approach. All energy companies in California are required to meet clean energy goals set by the state. Incentives can be used to help them transition to a sustainable microgrid model. The California Public Utilities Commission recently introduced a proposal to incentivize just such a transition.

Even if utilities can be convinced to change their model, however, challenges remain. Determining the type of local generation and storage systems appropriate to individual communities across the Southland requires a comprehensive understanding of the areas energy needs and generation potential  a level of understanding that would require exhaustive study to acquire.

Further complicating matters, utilities have traditionally not made electricity and natural gas consumption data public for analysis. This lack of transparency makes it difficult for outside entities to conduct these studies and lobby for the smartest plan.

Here in the Southland, we can help solve this part of the energy puzzle by using UCLAs California Center for Sustainability Energy Atlas. The atlas displays aggregated electricity and natural gas billing data for the L.A. area, which can be used to analyze energy consumption for specific neighborhoods by characteristics such as building type, building size or household income. This data can help policy makers and utilities go neighborhood to neighborhood, building to building, focusing on where to construct new microgrids or where conservation might be more fruitful.

It will take thought and planning to move beyond the status quo and to reduce our dependency on the central grid. Alison Canyon was an environmental tragedy. If we want to prevent something like it from happening again, we need to improve the state of our power grid and move beyond our dependence on natural gas. The longer we wait, the more difficult this transition will become.

Alex Ricklefs is a staff researcher at the California Center for Sustainable Communities, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, UCLA

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To the editor: Kudos to Stephen Marche for discussing masculine overcompensation. What was left out, though, is its negative effects on women. (Donald Trump is a parody of American manhood  and thats what lifts him, Opinion, May 27)

Masculine overcompensation essentially is ordering women to idolize, aggrandize and basically fall in love with those men, based on nothing except those mens desire to be idolized, aggrandized and loved by women. What should be axiomatically apparent is that no one can force that of anyone else, through what ends up being nothing more than sexist and misogynist bigotry against women in the case of masculine overcompensation. After all, why would any woman love a sexist and misogynist bigot?

Likely Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump claims, Women love me. Well, Im a woman, and I detest and have zero respect for him and all other men with that self-serving, self-centered and self-aggrandizing agenda. Love embodies mutual respect, and that must be both earned and reciprocated, or its not mutual.

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Julie-Beth Adele, Long Beach

..

To the editor: I want to thank Marche for helping me decide how to cast my vote in November. Although I did not see any MD or Ph.D. after his name, Marches analysis of Trump seems to be right on.

The point that finally convinced me was Marches statement that Trump does not know how to wear a tie. He uses an old-fashioned Windsor knot, and his tip hangs four inches below his belt.

Its a sad state of affairs when we base political decisions on fashion advice from someone who writes for Esquire magazine. If we are to base our voting on the length of a tie and the type of knot used, then we have some serious problems in determining the qualities of a candidate.

Thankfully, we have watchdogs like Marche to save us.

Jerry Hendrix, Simi Valley

..

To the editor: It didnt take long to spot the word-twisting that the left-wing media engage in so enthusiastically.

The caption under the large picture of Trump and anti-Trump protestors squaring off read in part, The likely GOP nominee unleashed his anti-immigration vitriol. Nice try.

Nothing in the Republican Partys platform or in the presumptive nominees policy proposals is anti-immigration. We are a nation of immigrants, and that includes my own family. The key word so obviously and regularly excluded is illegal.

Wiping that from our lexicon has helped the Democrats. The Times aids and abets that partys fantasy.

Janet Price, Sherman Oaks

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
Hillary Clintons campaign had once hoped the California primary could be a coronation for the former secretary of State, the last major stop en route to claiming the Democratic presidential nomination.

Instead, it has turned into a dogfight with Bernie Sanders, who has been campaigning nonstop through the state. With at least one public poll showing the race now a tie, the Clinton campaign has decided to step up her appearances in the state.

Its going to be closer than we thought, said former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a longtime Clinton backer, adding that he ultimately expected her to win the state.

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Hillarys going to be the nominee, but Californias the big prize, and obviously shed like to go into the convention with a win in California, he said.

Hillarys going to be the nominee, but Californias the big prize, and obviously shed like to go into the convention with a win in California.  Antonio Villaraigosa, former Los Angeles Mayor

Clinton does not need to win California to clinch the nomination. She now has 2,310 delegates to this summers nominating convention, according to the latest count, and needs only 73 more for a majority. She is expected to win a significant majority of Puerto Ricos 67 delegates in its primary on Sunday.

By the time California and five other states vote on June 7, Clinton will need only a few of the 694 pledged delegates up for grabs that day.

Despite all that, a loss in this enormous, diverse, overwhelmingly Democratic state would be an ugly stain in the lead-up to the partys convention in July in Philadelphia.

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Shes going to be able to give an important victory speech on Tuesday as the presumptive nominee, and its clearly more appealing to do that when the chyron at the bottom of the [television] screen is reading that Clinton is the projected winner of California, said Dan Newman, a veteran Democratic operative whose San Francisco-based firm is aiding Clintons campaign in the state.

California is important because its California. Its big, its overwhelmingly Democratic, and shes the nominee regardless, but it would send her into the general election with an extra head of steam to win California. Its certainly not do or die, but its always preferable to win everywhere.

And Clinton, despite her significant lead over Sanders in the popular vote and in the delegate tally, has not won everywhere. The Vermont senator has racked up 20 wins, compared with her 26, and he has taken three of the last five contests.

Clinton was widely expected to win California this year by about 8 percentage points, the same margin by which she beat then-Sen. Barack Obama in the 2008 primary. She and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, have forged strong ties to the states Democrats during their decades in public life.

California has been uncommonly good to my family, Bill Clinton told more than 1,000 people in a courtyard at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College in April when he campaigned for his wife here.

The state, where the couple first lived together as boyfriend and girlfriend in the early 1970s, has provided support, solace and tens of millions of dollars in campaign cash for the familys pursuits.

Bill Clinton clinched his 1992 Democratic nomination in California, over now-Gov. Jerry Brown. Hillary Clintons victory here in 2008 provided momentum she sorely needed that allowed her to continue her ultimately unsuccessful bid.

But Sanders has not let up here, holding rallies that draw thousands of ardent supporters as he barnstormed California in recent days.

California is the big enchilada, so to speak, Sanders said on NBCs Meet the Press on Sunday. Obviously, if we dont do well in California, it will make our path much, much harder. No question about it.

Sanders aggressive approach to campaigning in the state has clearly helped him, said veteran Democratic operative Garry South, who is not working for either campaign.

Hes campaigning in California like he was running in Iowa, South said. Most presidential candidates fly in, do a rally and go to Beverly Hills to do a fundraiser, and then they leave.

Clintons campaign and her supporters have responded. The candidate purchased at least $1 million of ad time last week, reversing a pattern of not spending money on ads in the final primaries.

Her allies have also announced plans to advertise to support her bid, albeit on a relatively small scale. The American Federation of Teachers was the latest backer to announce such a plan Monday.

And Clintons campaign announced Monday that she plans to return to the state on Thursday, earlier than expected, and will campaign here through the eve of the primary.

A spokesman for Clintons campaign said her efforts are aimed at showing as much support as possible from Democratic voters.

Hillary Clinton has fought for every vote since the start of the primaries, and shes going to continue that until the end, no matter how far ahead we are in delegates, Jesse Ferguson said.

Our grass-roots campaign is built on ambitious organizing efforts especially in Californias diverse communities and fueled by her commitment to meet directly with as many voters as possible.

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seema.mehta@latimes.com

For the latest on national and California politics, follow @LATSeema on Twitter.
Donald Trump repeatedly lashed out at the media, conservative opponents and Republican foes in a testy news conference Tuesday that he had called to answer criticism over his contributions to veterans charities.

Trump reeled off a list of charities that he said had received a total of $5.6 million he had raised. The list came after weeks of questions from reporters and remained short of the $6 million he had promised during a veterans event in January on the eve of the Iowa caucuses.

But the attempt to protect the reputation of his charitable efforts was at least partially eclipsed by his extensive airing of personal grievances, during which he called one reporter a sleaze and labeled a prominent conservative pundit a loser.

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Trumps advisors have been saying for weeks that he would begin to act more presidential and above the fray as he attempts to unite the Republican Party and broaden his appeal for the general election. But he clearly has other ideas.

You think Im going to change? Im not changing, Trump said during the 45-minute news conference at Trump Tower.

That was mere seconds after calling Mitt Romney a fool and renewing his complaints that New Mexicos Republican governor, Susana Martinez, was not nice in her comments about him.

The message: Those who criticize or scrutinize Trump  including reporters and fellow Republicans  will be hit back hard.

The formula worked well for Trump during the primaries. Many of his core supporters have long been suspicious, even contemptuous, of the media and the GOP establishment and have enjoyed watching Trump take them on. But like every aspect of Trumps campaign and persona, his grievance-fed approach has not yet been tested among general-election voters.

You think Im going to change? Im not changing.  Donald Trump

Tuesdays fiery exchanges also served as a preview of what a Trump administration media briefing might look like.

Yeah, it is going to be like this, Trump said in response to a question from a reporter who called Tuesdays news conference a new bar for contentiousness with the press corps.

The attention Trump gave to calling out enemies, large and small, and the related questions he received from reporters, left little time for other issues that might typically emerge during a presidential campaign.

Trump, for example, gave a lengthy response to a question about William Kristol, the conservative magazine editor and former White House official who is trying to recruit a third-party candidate to run in the general election.

Trump warned that the balance of the U.S. Supreme Court is at stake in the election, but also called Kristol a loser and took a shot at his failing magazine, the Weekly Standard.

He interrupted a question from CNNs Jim Acosta to lob a sarcastic remark at the reporter: Excuse me, excuse me. Ive watched you on television, youre a real beauty.

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The news conference came amid pressure on Trump to explain contradictions in the statements that he and his campaign aides have made about the money he has claimed to have raised for veterans.

The promised donations had either yet to materialize, were smaller than expected or came only after prodding from journalists.

On Tuesday, Trump said he was disbursing less than originally promised, while insisting more money may come. He blamed the delays on the need to vet more than two dozen charities receiving the money.

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The press should be ashamed of themselves, Trump said. I have never received such bad publicity for doing such a good job.

Trump, who has repeatedly boasted of his donations to charity, insisted several times that he was trying to keep a low profile.

I didnt want the credit for it, he said repeatedly. I dont want the credit for it, but I shouldnt be lambasted.

The controversy over the donations has been one of the few during the past year that has kept Trump on the defense. Trumps difficulties with it have reinforced Democrats hopes of portraying him as more bluster than follow-through.

The questions about the donations fit a narrative, like Trumps failure to release his taxes, that has allowed opponents to question whether his claims about his money hold up to scrutiny.

I like scrutiny, but you know what, Trump said. When I raise money for the veterans, and its a massive amount of money. Find out how much Hillary Clintons given to the veterans  nothing.

Clintons campaign did not respond to emailed questions about her charitable giving.

Trump held his veterans event Jan. 28 in Iowa after he backed out of a Fox News debate. During the event, Trump said he raised $6 million for veterans groups, including a personal donation of $1 million.

But when reporters from the Washington Post, CNN and other organizations recently contacted veterans organizations that Trumps campaign said had received the money, they could not account for all of it, including the money Trump pledged.

A CNN report last month, for example, found $2.9 million disbursed to 27 veterans organizations. The Washington Post found $3.1 million had been given out as of last week, not including Trumps $1-million pledge.

Earlier this month, Trumps campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, told the Post the campaign had actually raised $4.5 million. A week later, Trump told the paper the sum was $5.5 million, while disputing that he had ever promised $6 million.

After a Post reporter began posting questions on Twitter about Trumps personal pledge, the candidate promised last week to give the entire $1 million to a single organization.

Clinton and veterans groups supporting her campaign were eager to pounce, blasting out a statement before Trumps news conference began that contrasted her record on veterans with his.

There is a difference between what Donald Trump says and what Donald Trump does, Clinton said during a call to CNN later in the day.

It took a reporter to shame him into actually making this contribution and giving the money to veterans, she added. I dont know he should get much credit for that.

Other veterans groups also weighed in Tuesday.

Donald Trump is a walking, talking fraud, Jon Soltz, an Iraq War veteran and chairman of VoteVets.org, a liberal group, said in a statement.

But Trump, who claimed that protesting veterans outside his news conference were Clinton plants, has his own supporters.

Gina Franano, executive director of Connected Warriors, said in a phone interview that she appreciated the $75,000 her group got from Trump and the attention he has given to veterans.

Al Baldasaro, a New Hampshire state representative and Trump backer who heads one of the charities receiving some of the donations, stood next to Trump during Tuesdays news conference and at one point approached the lectern to denounce the liberal media.

Get your head out of your butt, Baldasaro said. Focus on the real issues.

Times staff writers Chris Megerian and Jill Ornitz contributed to this article.

noah.bierman@latimes.com

Twitter: @noahbierman

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UPDATES:

2:37 p.m.: This article was updated with additional background on Trumps statements, a response from Hillary Clinton and comment from veterans groups.

This article was originally published at 9:28 a.m.
Editors note: This story was reported and written by students in Stanford Universitys graduate program in journalism.

More than half of Californias counties  most of them small and rural  dont provide online access to campaign finance records, and they say they arent likely to change any time soon, an assessment of county-level contribution records shows.



For the record: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that NetFile is the states only commercial provider of electronically searchable campaign finance portals. SouthTech Systems currently provides searchable campaign finance portals for San Diego and San Benito counties and the city of Long Beach.

Only 28 of the states 58 counties provide campaign finance information online. And of those, just 17 make the data available in formats that make it easy to search and analyze the money influencing local elections.

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Some counties say shifting online would be too expensive given tight budgets. Others have implemented electronic filing systems, but have not made them mandatory for candidates and committees. That means its more difficult to determine whom local donors are, how much money they raised and for which campaigns. Counties operate independently because there is no state law requiring online filing.

California accepted the first electronic filing of a campaign statement in U.S. history in 1998. Little has changed since then.

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We were early out of the gate, but when other states set up their systems, they could do it with better technology and lessons learned from other states, and we havent upgraded much from the initial system, said Gavin Baker, Open Government Program Manager for California Common Cause.

The most recent efforts to make campaign information accessible date to 2012, when the Political Reform Act of 1974 was amended to allow local jurisdictions to eliminate the paper filing requirement for campaign statements and create an electronic filing system. But the legislation, which went into effect on January 1, 2013, made the electronic system optional.

Transparency at the local level is, in some ways, even more critical because the amounts that can be given to candidates can be so much higher, said Nicolas Heidorn, who serves as policy and legislation counsel to Common Cause, a nonpartisan group that promotes government accountability. Instead, contribution limits vary county by county.

In Riverside County, where there are no limits on campaign contributions, supporters have made individual donations of $40,000 or more at least 53 times in the last decade, with some donations as large as $200,000, based on an analysis of contributions in NetFile, one of the providers of electronically searchable campaign finance portals used by counties in the state.

Santa Clara County caps local election contributions at $1,000.

Seven of Californias 10 largest counties have searchable online election data, but population size is not the main factor for whether counties provide public portals for e-files  sometimes it is pressure from local citizens or journalists.

NetFile administers many of the county portals that provide full downloadable electronic election filings. SouthTech Systems provides portals for San Diego and San Benito counties, and Los Angeles County built its own custom system. Depending on a jurisdictions population and whether local officials request custom features, annual licenses for local portals can cost anywhere from $10,000 to about $100,000.

In 2013, Butte County, with a population of just over 220,000, transitioned from maintaining hard copies of election filings in the elections office to NetFile. The county pays $10,000 a year for its campaign filing disclosure portal. Butte County clerk-recorder Candace Grubbs said pressure from newspapers and from election researchers put a strain on her staffers to maintain and produce the documents.

We thought if people could do their own research it would be better, Grubbs said. And its worked out well.

In Tehama County, media attention on election transparency has produced less tangible results. In August 2015, the California Fair Political Practices Commission fined state Sen. Jim Nielsen (R-Gerber) and Tehama County Supervisor Bob Williams for campaign finance violations stemming from Williams unsuccessful 2012 run for the Tehama County Assembly.

Four years later, in 2016, Tehama County still has no plans to ease access to its campaign finance filings. Tehama doesnt have the budget or personnel to switch to e-files, said Mackenzi Parkinson, the assistant registrar of voters.

For Parkinson, switching to a NetFile portal would be unnecessary due to the small scale of elections in Tehama County. We are an office of three people, and our campaign contributions are well below the $25,000 threshold, she said.

People who wish to view financial records for the countys elections office must request it in person or file a public records request.

Some of Californias rural counties say the pricetag for creating an online system remains too high. In Calaveras County, one of the states smallest with a population of less than 45,000, a lack of allocated funding prevents campaign finance filings from going beyond hard copies in a binder, said Calaveras County Clerk-Recorder-Election Coordinator Robin Glanville.

Wed love to [go online] if we ever have funding for it, Glanville said. Right now its not a possibility.

The number of counties with e-filing systems is increasing gradually, said Baker, with California Common Cause.

But given that there are a lot of very small population counties in this state, unless there is a mandate, or theres a free system that the counties can use, I dont know if its ever going to get to 100 percent, Baker said. We need to make a change to make it a system for the 21st Century.

Stanford University graduate students Jeff Barrera, Saurabh Datar, Kim Kenny, Shane Newell, Travis Shafer, Jamie Stark and Carolyn Zhang contributed to this report. More information is here.

This story was edited by Christina Bellantoni.
Im Christina Bellantoni. This is Essential Politics, and were one week away from the big primary finale.

Over the weekend, the Golden State was the focus. Sen. Bernie Sanders kept up an aggressive schedule of rallies, closing out the holiday weekend watching the Golden State Warriors win Game 7. Hillary Clinton announced she will be back in California for most of the next week, even scrapping a planned New Jersey event.

And California Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday morning endorsed Clinton in an open letter, complimenting Sanders but saying he just cant risk Donald Trump taking the oath of office next January.

Seema Mehta talked to some of Clintons top allies as it all comes down to this state and what Sanders dubbed the big enchilada.

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ALL POLITICS IS LOCAL

[I]f I were here in your state, I would vote yes on that issue, Sanders said of Californias November ballot measure to legalize pot for recreational use.

Trump, meanwhile, waded into Californias perennial water wars, taking the side of agriculture and vowing to boost the states farmers even if it means cutting back environmental protections. After a private half-hour meeting with farmers, Trump said the group told him there was no drought in California, but rather a failure to preserve and wisely use the water the state has on tap.

But there are challenges to the strategy as well, as Cathleen Decker reported after trailing Sanders in the Central Valley over the weekend.

As Sanders found out over the course of two days in the place that feeds the nation a quarter of its food, there is a central complication of the region. The very industries that cause pollution, water and income issues here are the ones on which it relies for survival: agriculture and the oil and gas industry, Decker writes. Instead, in the days before the June 7 primary, the areas struggles have been wedged neatly into the candidates preexisting ideologies.

In her Sunday column, Decker also examined two burning questions for elections officials: Will the hundreds of thousands of Californians who recently signed up to vote actually show up for the June 7 primary? And if they do, how do they keep those voters around?

For the latest on the campaign, keep an eye on Trail Guide and follow @latimespolitics.

TRUMP AS THE BOOGEYMAN

Javier Panzar reports on some of the down-ticket campaigns around California that are injecting Trump into local races with which he has nothing to do, in order to raise money and bring out voters. Unflattering images of Trump and his infamous comments about Mexican immigrants are being used in a variety of races, from one to fill a Los Angeles County supervisor seat all the way to the re-election campaign for a liberal East Bay state lawmaker in a safe blue seat.

Even in races with no meaningful Republican opposition, Democrats are turning to Trump, the boogeyman, to help their cause.

RECORD SPENDING IN LEGISLATIVE RACES

Campaign spending by outside groups like oil companies and education advocates has blown past the previous record ahead of Tuesdays primary for state legislative candidates.

In 2014, there was $16.7 million spent on independent expenditures. This year, its already cracked $24 million, and theres still a week to go, Chris Megerian and Patrick McGreevy report. In some races, the outside groups are spending far more money than the candidates themselves.

Whats an independent expenditure? Heres our guide to the California equivalent of a super PAC.

Well keep tracking all of the interesting races this week on our Essential Politics news feed.

BACKING TWO HORSES IN ONE RACE

Well-heeled interest groups have spent thousands of dollars to back not just one, but two candidates in Assembly District 47. The California Realtors Assn., the California New Car Dealers Assn., and the California Chamber of Commerce have all supported Assemblywoman Cheryl Brown (D-San Bernardino) in her tough re-election bid against Colton attorney Eloise Reyes.

But theyve also been quietly funneling money into committees to support the races only Republican, Aissa Sanchez, a 24-year-old with no previous political experience and who has raised no money of her own.

They could be trying to game Californias top-two primary system and edge Reyes, a formidable challenger who is positioning herself to the left of Brown, out of Novembers election.

SENATE HOPEFULS TOOK DIFFERENT PATHS LEADING STATE GOP

Although theyve been lagging behind the top Democrats in the polls, one of the Republicans in Californias U.S. Senate race still has a shot at finishing in the top two in next weeks primary election and earning a ticket to the November general election.

Phil Willon provides a political snapshot for two of those GOP contenders, Tom Del Beccaro and George Duf Sundheim, both of whom served as chairmen of the California Republican Party.

Del Beccaro offers a message that appeals to the the partys right wing and to libertarians, but he faces criticism for leaving the party in debt after his two years at the top. Sundheim holds bedrock Republican views on foreign policy and the economy, but is more progressive on social issues. But he too has baggage from his year leading the state GOP.

THE LIBERTARIANS

Melanie Mason reported from Orlando on the steep climb ahead for newly chosen Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson.

The former New Mexico governor earned 1 million votes  about 1% of those cast in 2012  the last time he was on the ballot. Can Johnson make it onto a debate stage? And can the party be about more than legalizing pot?

YOURE INVITED: POLITICS, THE PRIMARY AND PILSNER

Who will win the primary? What role does California play, and whats the most important race youre not paying attention to? Join me and other journalists from our political team for an informal chat about the primary and the state of the general election race against Trump.

Hope to see you Thursday night at the Redwood in downtown Los Angeles. RSVP here.

TODAYS ESSENTIALS

 Noah Bierman examines what it means for the Democratic Party that Sanders has begun pushing Democrats toward a platform fight over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

 Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he isnt ready to endorse Trump.

 Latino leaders in California working to mend the GOPs relationship with their community were filled with dread, not joy, as Trump clinched their partys nomination for the presidency and threatened to unravel the progress theyve made to repair a schism created by Prop 187.

 After protests got out of hand outside Trumps San Diego rally Friday, police arrested 35 people. At least 18 people received medical attention.

 Kate Linthicum details the RV tour that Hollywood stars Rosario Dawson, Shailene Woodley and Kendrick Sampson are making for Sanders across California.

 The Supreme Court is being asked to take up a bankruptcy dispute involving the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City and to decide whether to restore the health and pension benefits of more than 1,000 casino workers.

 The White House likes Gov. Browns proposal to streamline affordable housing development. And a Brown-endorsed bill designed to make it easier for developers to add density to affordable housing projects cleared the Assembly. But Liam Dillon writes that cities could have an incentive to cheat under the housing plan.

 About 100 former foster children stormed the U.S. Capitol this week and shadowed their member of Congress at the invitation of Rep. Karen Bass, as part of an annual event to put a local face on needs within the foster care system.

 A high-profile bill to open up some internal records about police misconduct died in a Senate committee Friday. Miss any of the bills killed in the quiet procedure known as clearing of the suspense file? From driving while high to helping fight eating disorders among models, our team in Sacramento has you covered.

 Tom Steyers latest anti-Trump ads are in Spanish.

 What do you think of Trump? Readers can weigh in with our quick survey.

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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.
Efforts to extradite filmmaker Roman Polanski to the United States to face sentencing on child sex charges were given a new boost on Tuesday by Polands justice minister, who said the director shouldnt get special treatment because of his celebrity.

Zbigniew Ziobro, who is also the countrys prosecutor general, announced he would appeal an earlier court decision in Krakow not to send the Oscar winner to California. Ziobro said he believes Polanskis fame has protected him from being held accountable for his crime.

If he was just a regular guy, a teacher, doctor, plumber, decorator, then Im sure hed have been deported from any country to the U.S. a long time ago, Ziobro told Polish state radio, according to the Reuters news agency.This is the latest twist in a 40-year legal battle that began when the director, who is now 82, was arrested in 1977 and pleaded guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl during a photo shoot.

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He served 42 days in jail for psychological testing but fled the United States to Europe on the eve of his sentencing, fearful the judge planned to give him extra prison time.

A 40-year legal battle has ensued. The Los Angeles County district attorneys office maintains that Polanski is a fugitive and must return to California.

An attempt was made to have him extradited from Switzerland after he was arrested at a film festival and placed under house arrest.

When that failed, U.S. authorities sought to secure his extradition with the help of Polish authorities. In October, a court in Krakow said that Polanskis extradition to the U.S. would be an obviously unlawful abuse of his liberty and was forbidden under Polish law.

NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>

It also questioned whether the U.S. would provide him with humane enough conditions while he was incarcerated. In November, prosecutors said they had no plans to object.

But Ziobro, who took office at the end of last year, after the ruling, and is a member of the countrys new conservative government, now seeks to challenge that. In a statement issued on Tuesday, he announced that he had appealed to Polands Supreme Court to annul the October ruling.

If he was just a regular guy, a teacher, doctor, plumber, decorator, then Im sure hed have been deported from any country to the U.S. a long time ago  Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobrow

Ziobro said in a statement that under the terms of a Polish-U.S. extradition agreement, Polanski, the director of Chinatown and Rosemarys Baby among other films, should be handed over to the United States.

Any time he spent behind bars or under house arrest is not a punishment for the crime of which he has been accused, the minister said.

Polanski, who holds Polish and French citizenship, lives in Paris but makes frequent trips to Poland, where he owns property. He was last seen there last week at a press event.

Polanskis Polish lawyer said that his client was aware of these new developments and they were not unexpected.

The courts verdict stands and Mr. Polanski is a free man, Jan Olszewski told the Associated Press. But I cannot exclude that this situation will affect his decisions as to visiting Poland.

Boyle is a special correspondent

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A newly released Amnesty International report has found a staggering increase in the number of Afghans driven from their homes by the deepening unrest, political instability and economic stagnation in the country.

The report, My Children Will Die This Winter: Afghanistans Broken Promise to the Displaced, concludes that the most neglected are not necessarily those whove made perilous trips seeking asylum in Europe, but those whove been uprooted and left to wander and seek shelter in their own country.

More than 1.2 million Afghans are now displaced  a twofold increase in three years. The report, made public late Monday, said that more than 118,000 have fled in the first four months of 2016 alone.

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Though the 178,000 Afghans who have sought asylum in Europe over the last year and a half have received steady media attention, those who have sought refuge inside the country have gone largely unnoticed.

Nassim Majidi, director at Samuel Hall, a Kabul-based think tank, said the focus in Afghanistan should be on integrating the huge numbers of displaced people, rather than treating them as outsiders.

Those forced to flee their homes, by and large, lived in squalid conditions and were often housed in makeshift shelters with no protection from the hot summers and cold winters, the report said of the nearly 1,000 people who are counted as newly displaced each day.

Those who live in makeshift camps that dot the nations urban centers have found themselves in a state of un-ending limbo.

Qand Agha, 32, has spent the last seven years in Kabuls Chaman-e Babrak camp, which houses more than 700 other displaced families.

The settlement -- defined by simple mud houses, open sewers and dirt roads -- stands in contrast to its glitzy neighbors.

Only a few hundred feet away lie symbols of Kabuls wealth, brightly colored wedding halls -- complete with light-up replicas of the Eiffel Tower -- and a plastic surgery center offering $300 rhinoplasties.

We are the people who suffered through decades of bomb blasts and flying bullets, but now we are left here in this squalor with no hope for a future, said Bismillah, another camp resident in his mid-40s.

The aid that once flowed to the citys displaced populations has seemingly dried up in the last two years.

A displaced Afghan works in Barikab, Afghanistan. (Paula Bronstein / Getty Images )

Before [nonprofits] and businessmen would come with blankets, firewood and food assistance, but we havent seen anything in two years now, said Qand Agha.

In the past, Qand Agha said, well-to-do Afghans would come by and hand out money or supplies. But not anymore.

Now, even those people cant find work to feed themselves, and those who have the money get on rickety boats to Europe.

The lack of attention described by the Chaman-e Babrak residents comes despite the Afghan governments endorsement of a new national policy in 2014, aimed at assisting the nations internally displaced people.

Though that policy was envisioned as a comprehensive solution to the nations growing refugee problem, Amnesty said it has amounted to little more than a broken promise that has done little to address the needs of one of Afghanistans most vulnerable populations.

This lack of progress, said Amnesty, is the result of several intersecting issues that seemed to consume the nation in the last two years.

The plan was approved in the last days of the administration of former President Hamid Karzai. The 2014 presidential election that followed dragged on for more than 10 months and was plagued with accusations of widespread, government-assisted fraud.

The tensions within the national unity government grew worse when President Ashraf Ghani was forced to accept his election rival, Abdullah Abdullah, as his chief executive.

And the economic downturn made matters worse.

For Qand Agha, the storm of negative developments left the nations displaced people to fend for themselves, often treated as second-class citizens.

When our children go to school they are made fun of for being from the camps. Teachers and students mock them, saying: You are dirty, you dont bathe, you have no shoes.

Though his home in the eastern province of Laghman is only a two-hour drive from Kabul, Qand Agha said rising insecurity makes it impossible for his family, including four children, to return.

Day or night, there is no relief from the violence. At night people hide in fear of airstrikes, during the day they are caught in the crossfire of the battles between the security forces and the Taliban.

However, its not just the Taliban and foreign forces that pose a threat to the lives of Afghans.

In the eastern province of Nangarhar, thousands have been forced to flee their homes as a new group of fighters claiming to be allied with the Iraq and Syria-based Islamic State have made inroads.

Displaced people in Nangarhar said even government officials who have gathered forces to take on these new fighters appear to have done little to help those living in tents and makeshift homes in Jalalabad -- the provincial capital -- and Kabul.

Peoples expectations are for local integration. The political and development communities need to implement local integration options, said Majidi.

The camps, Majidi said, have only further separated the displaced people from local populations.

Latifi is a special correspondent.

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As Iraqi forces pressed an offensive Tuesday to dislodge Islamic State militants from Fallouja, conditions are worsening for tens of thousands of civilians trapped in the city, and a leading aid group raised alarm over an unfolding human catastrophe.

Islamic State fighters launched a fierce counterattack on the southern edge of the city, slowing the progress of the elite Iraqi counterterrorism troops, and the militants reportedly corralled civilians into a single neighborhood for use as human shields.

With an estimated 50,000 civilians still inside Fallouja, humanitarian groups renewed calls on both sides to open safe corridors for noncombatants to flee  an action that seems unlikely because it would require negotiations between Islamic State and the Iraqi forces to agree on a cessation of hostilities. In addition, Iraqi authorities want to prevent fighters from the terror group from escaping the city by melting into the fleeing civilian population.

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Iraqi forces repelled the four-hour counterattack a day after entering the southern part of Fallouja with the help of U.S.-led airstrikes. The dawn attack unfolded in the Nuaimiya area, most of which was captured by Iraqi troops on Monday, two special forces officers told the Associated Press. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

Islamic State militants used tunnels and snipers and targeted Iraqi forces with six explosives-laden cars that were destroyed before they reached their targets, the officers said. Iraqi forces suffered casualties, but no details were given.

The clashes subsided by Tuesday afternoon, but the officers said progress was slowed by roadside bombs the militants left behind. The troops also paused to destroy tunnels in the area. Since Monday, 106 militants have been killed, the officers said.

The push into Nuaimiya, a sprawling agricultural area, was the first attempt by Iraqi forces to enter Fallouja, which fell to Islamic State in 2014. In recent days, Iraqi forces had focused on expelling the militants from outlying areas to tighten a siege on the city, which is 40 miles west of Baghdad.

NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>

The Sunni majority city was the first in Iraq to fall to Islamic State and is the last major urban area controlled by the extremist group in western Iraq. The Sunni-led militants still control the countrys second-largest city, Mosul, in the north.

The U.S.-led coalition and Iranian-backed Shiite militia forces are helping the Iraqi army in the offensive. But the fight is expected to be protracted because the militants have had more than two years to dig in, hidden bombs are believed to be strewn throughout the city and the presence of trapped civilians will limit the use of supporting airstrikes.

Displaced Iraqis who fled fighting between government forces and the Islamic State group in Anbar province line up to collect donated food at the Alexanzan camp in the Dora neighborhood on the southern outskirts of Baghdad on May 31, 2016. (Sabah Arar / AFP/Getty Images )

A human catastrophe is unfolding in Fallouja, said Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council.

Only one family managed to escape the town Monday, he said. Since the offensive began more than a week ago, 554 other families have fled areas surrounding Fallujah.

Warring parties must guarantee civilians safe exit now, before its too late and more lives are lost, Egeland added. A lack of food, medicine, safe drinking water and electricity is pushing families to the brink of desperation, the NRC said.

At a briefing in Geneva, the spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency, William Spindler, cited figures by Iraqi authorities that said 624 families  about 3,700 individuals  have fled in the past week.

The UNHCR understands another 500 men and boys over 12 years old are held for security screening, which can take five to seven days, Spindler said.

We understand some 27 men were released on Monday, he said.

The 56-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation  the worlds largest body of Muslim-majority countries  expressed deep concern about the safety of civilians in Fallouja. In a statement, the groups leader also reiterated its opposition to sectarian violence and expressed support for the Iraqi government.

Some Sunni lawmakers in Iraq have accused the security forces of using indiscriminate force and say the Shiite militias have committed abuses against civilians in mainly Sunni towns and cities. The security forces and the militias deny the accusations.

The government-sanctioned umbrella group of mostly Shiite militias is not taking part in the current push into Fallouja, officials said, adding that the task is being handled solely by the elite counterterrorism force.

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A former Turkish beauty queen Tuesday was convicted of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan by sharing a poem on social media, raising more concerns about what many consider the governments crackdown on freedom of expression.

The 27-year-old model, Merve Buyuksarac, shared a poem from the popular Turkish comic book, Uykusuz, on her Instagram account in 2014, while Erdogan was prime minister. He became president that year.

The poem, known as the Masters Poem, critiqued Erdogans rule, particularly corruption allegations that have plagued him for years, and riffed off the Turkish national anthem.

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I shared it because I found it funny, Buyuksarac, who was named Miss Turkey in 2006, said at the time, according to local media reports.

But Erdogans lawyers sought a more than four-year prison sentence, arguing that her post exceeded the boundaries of criticism and amounted to an attack against Erdogans personal rights.

We want the defendant to be punished, Erdogans lawyer, Hatice Ozay, said Tuesday according to Hurriyet Daily News.

A Turkish court Tuesday said Buyuksarac insulted a public official and handed down a 14-month suspended sentence.

NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>

Buyuksarac has denied insulting Erdogan and her lawyer has vowed to appeal her case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.

Rights groups worry that Erdogan is systematically invoking obscure legislation, barely used in the history of the Turkish Republic, to intimidate critics and crush dissent.

The goal is to muzzle any kind of criticism. Such cases terrorize people and stifles lively discussion in a democratic society.  Emma Sinclair-Webb, senior Turkey researcher at Human Rights Watch

The goal is to muzzle any kind of criticism, said Emma Sinclair-Webb, senior Turkey researcher at Human Rights Watch. Such cases terrorize people and stifles lively discussion in a democratic society.

Since Erdogan rose to the presidency in 2014, prosecutors have opened some 2,000 cases claiming insults against the president. They have targeted rival politicians, teenagers, doctors, now a former Miss Turkey.

The government also has sought to prosecute insults from abroad.

Germany recently allowed for the prosecution of a comedian on charges of insulting Erdogan. Meantime, the Turkish consulate in Holland sparked outrage after asking Turks in that country to inform the consulate of insults against Erdogan within their communities.

A flag with an image of Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan waves during celebrations of the 563rd anniversary of the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, now Istanbul, in Turkeys capital on Sunday. (Emrah Gurel / Associated Press )

Analysts and other observers say the cases raise questions about the rule of law in Turkey. Erdogan has seized control over much of the judiciary, with the Constitutional Court now seen as the last independent court.

In one recent case, a Turkish court reportedly had to bring in a team of experts to assess whether the creature Gollum in The Lord of the Rings film series was a force of good or evil.

A doctor, Bilgin Ciftci, had posted images on social media likening Erdogan to J.R.R Tolkiens fictional creature last year. He was fired from his job and accused of insulting Erdogan.

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Johnson is a special correspondent.
Americans have other political parties to vote for, and the Libertarian Party showcased their best during the recent national convention. One Libertarian, however, went the extra mile in showcasing why he's the preferred candidate for the party's chairman position.

James Weeks Shows Most

On Sunday, Libertarian delegates gathered in Orlando, Florida, to vote for their presidential nominee. Their nominee turned out to be former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson. The former governor has previously selected former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Wald to serve as his vice president, but the delegates are required to vote on the pick. While voting took place for the vice presidential pick, Libertarians heard speeches from candidates seeking the role of the party's chairman.

A man named James Weeks offered his candidacy.

With only a couple minutes granted to deliver why delegates should elect him, Weeks decided to offer a dance, slowly taking off pieces of clothing and leaving all but his underwear.

Libertarians in the Rosen Centre Hotel had mixed to negative opinions. While some laughed and offered Weeks money, many can be heard jeering and criticizing Weeks. Following his strip show, Weeks announced his withdrawal from the chairman position.

Calls For Removal

Once Weeks left the stage, many Libertarians lined up behind microphones to share their disgust of Weeks' actions. Some called for Weeks' removal from either the remainder of the convention or even from the political party.

This occurred as voting for the vice presidential pick was still underway.

In the end, a delegate called on fellow Libertarians to forget about Weeks' performance and proceed with the main order of business.

Shortly after, Weld was elected as the vice presidential pick.
American citizens will have a third presidential option this November with Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, former Republican governor of New Mexico, where Latinos currently comprise 47 percent of the state's population. One stance Latinos may want to keep an eye on is Johnson's views on immigration.

Johnson on Trump's "Insanity"

Last week, Johnson appeared on CNN and denounced Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's ideas regarding immigration and border security. Trump has previously called for a wall between the southern U.S. border and Mexico, mass deportation of up to 11 million undocumented immigrants and labeled Mexican immigrants as murderers and rapists.

"Insanity comes to mind," Johnson said about Trump's proposals. "Look, this is really rooted in misinformation. They are the cream of the crop when it comes to workers. They're not murderers and rapists. Statistically they commit far less crime than U.S. citizens. We should make it as easy as possible for somebody who wants to come into this country to work to get a work visa."

Johnson added that the work visa should include a background check and a security security card for tax purposes. He said the U.S. government is responsible for these "illegal" immigrants because the jobs already exists in the U.S. and the immigrants simply want to make life better for themselves.

"They're not taking jobs that U.S. citizens want," Johnson said.

Mass Deportation Opposition

Johnson has repeatedly said he opposes the concept of mass deportation and a wall, regardless of its size. As his campaign website states Johnson "understands that a bigger fence will only produce taller ladders and deeper tunnels," and the increase of migrants is due to a failed legal immigration system.

While he prefers an easier and streamline of the legal immigration process -- to further reduce the undocumented immigration population - Johnson wants a system that match immigrants with employers in order to enhance the economy and labor marketplace.

Latin Post did reach out to Johnson's campaign regarding his stance on President Barack Obama's two deferred action programs -- Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA) -- which would grant approximately 4.9 million undocumented immigrants with temporary protections from deportation. Johnson's campaign did not immediately respond to our DACA and DAPA inquiry, but an update will be provided once a response arrives.

Johnson was formally named as the Libertarian Party's presidential candidate on Sunday, May 29, during their national convention. He is running with his vice presidential pick William Weld, previously served as governor of Massachusetts.

__

For the latest updates, follow Latin Post's Michael Oleaga on Twitter: @EditorMikeO or contact via email: m.oleaga@latinpost.com.
Immigration advocacy group CASA and leaders of Washington D.C.'s Ecuadorian community are urging President Barack Obama to extend Temporary Protection Status (TPS) to victims of April's devastating earthquake in Ecuador.

The groups scheduled a June 1 morning press conference near the White House where they will join in a prayer circle and outline why the Obama Administration should welcome displaced refugees. The magnitude quake killed over 600 people and left thousands injured, according to a CASA press release published Tuesday.

"At such difficult times, we must stand with our Latin American brothers and sisters and demand that they not be sent back to a country where it is unsafe for them to return," said CASA Executive Director Gustavo Torres.

Torres said TPS implementation is "common sense," adding that "We are only asking the President to make good on his promise to the people of Ecuador."

Working Around TPS Requirements

Foreign individuals seeking asylum are eligible for TPS if they native country is recognized as such by the Department of Homeland Security. The DHS Secretary designates a country for TPS based on the severity and epoch of their situation, be it civil war, an environmental disaster, or other extenuating circumstances.

Ecuador is not currently designated for TPS, but April's earthquake prompted U.S. lawmakers to call for change. Last month, Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., penned a letter Obama to circumvent Congress approval in aiding the immigrants.

"Given the magnitude of the destruction, Ecuadorians cannot safely return home," Gutierrez said. "Extending TPS is the compassionate response that would provide the many Ecuadorians throughout our country with much-needed security and stability in this time of personal, familial, and national crisis."

Ecuador Still Recovering

The April 16 quake was Latin America's strongest in over two decades. Thousand remain homeless over a month later, many living in parks or makeshift communities surrounded by countless buildings and homes that were destroyed.

Ecuador President Rafael Correa announced a 12-to-14-percent tax increase, a one-time levy on millionaires, and the liquidation of assets - in addition to $600 million worth of contingency loans - to help offset recovery costs. The U.S. government donated nearly $3 million of humanitarian aid and the European Commission has contributed over $5.5 million, nevertheless food and water distribution is slow-coming.

Volunteers from around the world remain in Ecuador for this reason, 100,000 arriving as part of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The IFRC said they will provide assistance over the next 12 months.
Portlaoise actor Robert Sheehan and his brother Brendan are leading the 'Dingle Mingle' trek to support EB patient ambassador Emma Fogarty from Laois.

Irelands eligible and active singles are invited to sign up for Debra Irelands three-day Kerry Challenge from June 17-19.

The challenge includes three days of trekking though the Dingle Peninsula (up to 25km per day) followed by nights of fun and craic in lively pubs while staying in the four-star Dingle Skelligs hotel.

Debra Ireland needs our help so that they can continue to provide support services to patients and families living with EB, said Robert.

The event costs 300 per person, including accommodation, all meals and snacks, transport to and from the route, on-site physio and a celebratory dinner and prize giving.

Participants are asked to raise a further 350 for the charity, which provides support for those living with the rare, painful incurable genetic skin condition epidermolysis bullosa (EB).

Debra Patient Ambassador Emma Fogarty from Laois will attend the challenge.

"Its not just a fantastic way to make new friends, all proceeds go towards services for people like me living with EB," said Emma.

See www.debraireland. org or call (01) 412 6924.
Six years ago my ideas about inequality in society were given a jolt by the publication of a book with the intriguing title The Spirit Level: Why equality is better for everyone, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. The authors  both academics  drew on research from many sources to show that societies in which there are huge variations in income are bad for everyone, rich or poor, and that more equal societies benefit all their members.

We might expect inequality to have an impact on factors such as life expectancy and educational performance, but the authors observed its effects in some surprising areas of life, from obesity (wider income gaps = wider waists) to teenage births. And in each case the effect was seen right across the income spectrum. The sobering truth is that, amongst the developed nations, the UK is one of the more unequal countries.

I organise the Social Liberal Forum annual conference, and this year we thought it would be interesting to revisit some of these seminal ideas. Responding to the level of interest in the book when it was published in 2010, the authors set up The Equality Trust to carry forward their work, and we have worked with the Trust in putting the programme together. We have given it the title Inequality Street, and it will happen on 16th July in London.

An article by Shiv Malik in The Guardian caught our eye recently. It has the challenging title Why inequality is not the root of all evil, and we are delighted that he has responded to our invitation to engage in a debate with Prateek Buch.

A number of current parliamentarians will also be speaking (Norman Lamb, Lindsay Northover, Claire Tyler, Jonny Oates) as well as party members and invited guests such as Neal Lawson from Compass and Simon Howard from United Kingdom Sustainable Investment & Finance Association. Vince Cable will give the William Beveridge Memorial Lecture.

The Social Liberal Forum Conference is always a good day of debate, reflection and socialising. You dont have to be a member of the Social Liberal Forum in order to attend  indeed the conference is designed to be of interest to all Liberal Democrats.

Further details and registration are here. The Early Bird rate ends today so now would be a good time to book your place.

* 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.
For the first time ever, Liberal International has held its Executive Committee in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, at the invitation of the Republican Party of Georgia. Regional and global security were at the top of the agenda, with a strong presentation by Georgias Defence Minister, Tinatin Tina Khidasheli on the challenges facing former Soviet republics now finding themselves on the periphery of an expansionist Russia.

To drive the point home, we participants were all bussed out of the city to the occupation line, which marks the current limit of Russian encroachment into Georgian territory just south of South Ossetia (which the Russians have already effectively annexed, as they did with Ukraines Crimea). Just days before, the Russians had rolled a giant barbed wire fence further into Georgian territory, leaving some Georgian farmers cut off from their land and families divided. Tens of thousands of Georgians have already fled South Ossetia and have been resettled or temporarily rehoused.

The trouble is, a tiny country like Georgia cannot stand up to a giant like Putins Russia, and so has to adopt a policy of what the Tbilisi government calls strategic patience. However, one can quite see why the Georgians are keen to join both the EU and NATO. Poignantly, Slovenias former Defence Minister, Roman Jakic, appealed to the LI Executive, You cant say you have an open-door policy and then turn people away.

Other sessions included a debate on whether the world can unite against ISIS/Daesh  a conflict in which Vladimir Putin and the West ought in principle to be on the same side. There was also a very lively discussion about the implications of the Iran nuclear deal, with the former junior Foreign Minister of Belgium, Annemie Neyts, arguing strongly that we must engage with Tehran, while others urged caution.

However, it was the spectre of the Russian bear that stuck in the minds of many delegates, including myself, and this will doubtless also be the subject of discussion at the ALDE (European Liberal Democrats) Party Council meeting in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, in a few days time.

* Jonathan Fryer is Chair of the Federal International Relations Committee.
So, the latest salvo from the Leave camp is an assertion that the EU is stopping us from cutting VAT on domestic fuel.

There is one man amongst the ranks of the Brexiters who knows all about VAT on domestic fuel. Thats right. Step forward former Chancellor Norman Lamont. It was he who decided to put VAT on domestic fuel at the rate of 8% from April 1 1994. The EU didnt force him to do this. He was doing it to cut public spending, something Tories have a bit of an obsession with. Not only that, but he would have been quite happy to raise it to 17.5% the year after.

Heres a story from the Independent at the time where Mr Lamont is doing his usual Je ne regrette rien line.

Fellow now Brexiteer Michael Portillo, then Chief Secretary to the Treasury, added his twopence worth:

And in an atmosphere of growing confusion, a damaging Commons row broke out last night after Michael Portillo, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, suggested that poorer people would not suffer too much because of the swings and roundaboutsof the Income Support system.

A parliamentary briefing from 1997 gives more detail.

Member States are only permitted to charge zero rates which were in place on 1 January 1991. No Member State can introduce a new zero rate or reintroduce a zero rate once it has been abolished. Following the abolition of the zero rate on fuel & power on 1 April 1994, the UK may charge a rate as low as 5% on these supplies, but no lower.

Had Norman Lamont done the fair thing by the poorest households at the time, none of us would be paying any VAT on our fuel now. If people want someone to blame, he is your guy, not the EU. He knowingly introduced a tax that he knew could not be put back to zero because of a change in EU taxation law that the UK Government had agreed. If the Tory government had wanted to, it could have vetoed that clause. Did it? No.

This is not the only issue where Leave have tried to blame the EU for the Tories actions. Yesterday, Jo Swinson had to slap down Steve Hilton for saying that the EU tried to stop the coalition from offering extra parental leave. Jo was the minister who introduced shared parental leave, a key Liberal Democrat policy, and she says that it was the Tories who put paid to that idea. From the Independent:

Jo Swinson, a former business minister whose portfolio in the Coalition included women and equalities issues, told The Independent there was no conceivable universe in which the EU could prevent Britain from offering workers extra parental leave. Ms Swinson said that far from campaigning for more time off for new mothers and fathers, the Conservatives actually fought tooth and nail against a Liberal Democrat initiative to extend parental leave. She said her party, led by Nick Clegg, had wanted to follow a successful Scandinavian trial which saw men take up a fairer portion of paternal leave if a greater number of weeks were offered to the couple as a whole. Maybe he (Mr Hilton) was negotiating on his side and it was blocked by his Conservative colleagues, she said. But in my time, it was very much the Conservatives who were fighting tooth and nail our attempts to make shared parental leave a success. The way EU directives work is that they set out a minimum number of weeks; if we wanted to offer more we would be able to, she added. I was minister from 2012 and parental leave was in my portfolio. I do not understand in what conceivable universe it could be true that the EU blocked plans here.

We do know that the EU has done more to ensure workers rights than any Tory Government ever has, securing such things as maternity rights, paid holiday, and limiting the amount of hours you can be asked to work.

Do Labour voters interested in workers rights really trust the likes of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove with them? They have not been known for supporting them in the past. The EU, on the other hand, has a proven track record of delivery on that front.

The problem is that the Leave campaign secures huge publicity with their false claims and people dont necessarily hear the rebuttal.

All we have is to get out there and talk to as many people as we can in the next 3 weeks. Its conversations on doorsteps, in the streets, amongst our families and friends that really could make the difference. We cant afford to duck this. We might be knackered after elections, but this matters. People might vote to leave an organisation that benefits every single one of us on the basis of a bunch of false claims from Leave  some of them, like the insinuation that 76 million Turkish people are headed for Scotland if we dont vote to leave  containing more than a strong whiff of racism.

The Leave campaign is breaking just about every rule of decent campaigning that there is. Its down to us to make sure they dont get away with it.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
AN BORD Pleanala has refused planning permission to build 110 houses at the former Greenpark racecourse site, saying that the proposed development could be regarded as piecemeal and premature.

In particular, the board was concerned about the provision of vehicular access to the site from Dock Road in accordance with an agreed masterplan for the entire Greenpark racecourse site.

There were nearly 40 objectors against the plans, including the nearby Log na gCapall residents association. Many cited issues such as flood risk management, traffic management and the ad hoc historical approach to the site.

For a number of years, Limerick Racecourse PLC had been hoping to move their attentions from their current Greenmount horse racing track in Patrickswell, towards the old track at Greenpark, and capitalise on the value of that site, estimated to be worth several million euro.

With signs that property prices are starting to stabilise we have turned our attention to the companys 100 acre property in Greenpark. We are currently working on a strategy to reduce debt while maximising the value of the site over the next five years, they stated in recent financial accounts.

The board also considered that the proposed development would endanger public safety by reason of a traffic hazard, particularly for residents and pedestrians and other vulnerable road users due to the increased traffic through Log na gCapall estate and would also contribute to traffic congestion within the local road network.

In addition, the board said that the development would adversely affect the carrying capacity of South Circular Road and the Ballinacurra Road, the R526, an important traffic route for Limerick City by reason of the additional traffic resulting from the proposed development.

It is, therefore, considered that the proposed development would be contrary to the proper planning and sustainable development of the area.

The Limerick Racecourse company revived its long-running but to date fruitless plans for the site in June last.

The development was pitched to include 31 four-bed detached units, 72 four-bed semi-detached units, four three-bed semi-detached units, and three three-bed terrace units.

The plans were also refused permission by Limerick City and County Council in December last.

The decision by the national planning board followed a 44-page report by their inspector, who also recommended that the development be refused on the same grounds.

Labour city councillor Joe Leddin, who lives in the area, was among those who had expressed some concerns in relation to the site, given its chequered history going back a decade. I would certainly welcome some kind of development, but I dont think it should be done in a piece-meal way. It is one of the last major significant sites within the city boundary, and I would like to see some kind of masterplan or blueprint.

In May 2013, the then council refused an extension to planning permission they received five years ago to build 353 homes.
THE Italian ambassador to Ireland has heaped praise on Limerick on his first official visit to the city.

His Excellency, Giovanni Adorni Braccesi Chiassi was on Shannonside for a two-day visit.

He journeyed to King Johns Castle and Glenstal Abbey, where he met Mayor of Limerick, Cllr Liam Galvin.

Following this, he enjoyed dinner at Da Vincenzos restaurant in the George Hotel alongside the chief executive of Limerick City and County Council Conn Murray, and metropolitan district mayor, Cllr Jerry ODea.

The business, run by Naples man Vincenzo del Santo, is itself marking a year trading.

I have had such a warm welcome here, Ambassador Chiassi said. Its the first time I have ever been to Limerick. Last year, I went to Kerry and Dingle, so could not stop in Limerick. But it is beautiful, a very beautiful city.

He especially praised the River Shannon, and King Johns Castle, adding: It is a very beautiful castle. It is very pretty. The view you have from the tower makes you understand it was a very important protective point.

While in Limerick, the ambassador met some of the Italian Diaspora who have made the city their home.

There are quite a number of Italians. I know you have Italian students not just coming to Limerick to learn English, but also studying full time, he said.

Mr Chiassi said one thing he noticed was that many of Limericks Italian population come from a very small region near the capital Rome.

They would often wonder whether they are more Italian or more Irish, as they are three or four generations here. But they are very united. They don't forget they are from Italy. Theygo back home every year, and bring a lot of Irish people there to visit. And I am sure it goes the other way too, he explained.

As he sat down to dinner, the ambassador also noted that one thing which links the Irish and the Italian community is a love of food.

Italians love good food. They love to spend a lot of time around the table to enjoy drinking and eating with friends. The difference between Italian and Irish people is we drink with food. You drink very often without food! But I have noticed while I have been here, there is more and more priority given to good food, he added.
THERE is a cry for help in Limerick, Fine Gael council leader, Cllr John Sheahan said when Limerick City and County councillors passed two motions, dealing with suicide and mental health issues, recently.

More people lose their lives through mental health issues than through road deaths, he said, and mental health continued to be a major issue.

Sinn Fein councillor Ciara McMahon outlined to councillors the work of the Community Crisis Response Team which was set up by two very strong and intelligent women earlier this year to provide direct interventions for people who are suicidal or in distress.

It is not just a voice at the end of a phone, she said. They go out and meet the person who is in distress. Since the initiative was set up in January, the team had made 14 direct interventions, she added.

The team now needed to get more people trained in ASIST, Cllr McMahon said and there were 15 people waiting to do that training. She asked councillors for their support to write to the Minister for Health Simon Harris and the HSE asking them to provide that training.

This initiative is going to roll out nationally, she predicted.

Cllr Daniel Butler said he would encourage as many people as possible to go on ASIST. It was an excellent programme he said, and he commended the work of the Community Crisis Response Team who were now looking for space to operate from. The motion was agreed unanimously.

Councillors also agreed a motion proposed by Cllr Lisa Marie Sheehy on behalf of the Suicide Prevention Working Group of the Community, Leisure and Emergency Services special strategic committee.

The motion called on Minister Harris to outline how he proposed to speed up intervention and support service waiting times for people with mental health difficulties in Limerick city and county and what he plans to do about the urban rural divide in getting access to services.

The aim of the working committee is action, the councillor said who added that suicide was one of the biggest challenges being faced in Limerick.

Time is crucial when a person asks for help, she said, and she outlined how young people from the county were disadvantaged when trying to get to Limerick for counselling.
WITH the deadline for expressions of interest to run Limericks two new secondary schools looming, it looks like two parties will compete to run both.

The Limerick and Clare Education and Training Board (LCETB) is bidding to be patron of the schools, which will be located in Mungret and Castletroy.

And it will compete with Educate Together, which runs two non-denominational primary schools. It is unclear whether any other parties are bidding for patronage.

The schools are slated to open in the next two years, catering for around 600 students each.

While Educate Together (ET) had long expected to bid to run the Mungret secondary school, the chair of the campaign to run the schools Anne Cronin said there is parental desire for both schools to be designated in this way. ET schools are unique in that children are accepted regardless of where they live, and religious belief. Decisions are sought democratically with the views of teachers, students and parents all carrying an equal weight.

More than 1,000 parents across Limerick have already signed an expression of interest indicating they would be happy to send their children to an ET secondary.

While the campaign for the new ET schools have been able to organise public meetings and lobby for parental support, the LCETB have not been able to do this, as it is a public body.

LCETB chief executive George OCallaghan has launched his groups bid to run Limericks two new schools.

He said: The LCETB has a proven track record in post-primary education across Limerick and Clare. We currently operate 18 schools that are attended by over 9,000 students and we are very keen to bring our educational heritage to both these new schools as well.

The LCETB currently runs four schools in Limerick: Castletroy College, Colaiste Chiarain in Croom, Thomond Community College (a merger between St Nessans and the Salesian secondary), and Gaelcholaiste Luimni.

Fianna Fail councillor James Collins, Dooradoyle, has expressed concern at how difficult it might be for parents to express an interest in either patron  and he is also sceptical that, as the council has not yet signed over land for the Mungret secondary, it may not be ready to open at its target date of September 2017.

He said he believes there may be room for one of each school in Limerick.

A spokesperson for the Department of Education said full information on the patronage of Limericks two new schools is available at www.education.ie or at 01-889-6400. They said following the deadline for expressions of interest, there will be an extensive assessment process over the summer, with an announcement in early autumn.
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Meat-eating dinosaurs' teeth were long thought to stick out of their mouths like a crocodile's  but that might not have been the case.

T. rex may have had lips. Yes, you read that right. Lips.

Robert Reisz, a paleontologist at the University of Toronto, is challenging the long-standing image of meat-eating theropod dinosaurs such as T. rex. Specifically, Reisz suggests that theropods' teeth were not bared all the time, extending outside their mouths and fully visible whether their jaws were open or closed. Rather, these teeth were kept hidden, covered by scaly lips, he said in a presentation May 20 at the Canadian Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's annual meeting in Ontario. [Gory Guts: Photos of a T. Rex Autopsy]

Reisz told Live Science in an email that he had always been bothered by the typical "permanent smile" portrayal of theropod dinosaur teeth. He first looked to the closest living relatives of theropod dinosaurs  crocodiles  for clues about tooth exposure.

At first glance, it could seem like the expectation for large theropods to have exposed teeth was on the right track. Crocodiles' teeth are covered by gums for about one-quarter of their length, but lips are absent and the tooth crowns are permanently exposed, Reisz explained.

However, if you look closer at tooth structure, a different story might emerge, he noted in his presentation.

The hard enamel of animals' teeth has low water content, and is typically kept hydrated by saliva. Without lips to keep moisture in and prevent the teeth from drying out, the tough enamel would become brittle and more prone to damage and wear, Reisz told Live Science.

Crocodiles live in watery environments and would rely on their habitat to keep exposed teeth hydrated. But land-dwelling theropods' large teeth  which are known to have enamel  could have been compromised by perpetual exposure, and likely needed to be covered by lips in order to stay moist, Reisz said in the presentation.

What about elephants?

But crocodiles aren't the only animals with exposed teeth  elephants, for instance, have exposed teeth as well, and many extinct saber-toothed predators had very long canines that were also exposed when their mouths were closed. Wouldn't their teeth have been vulnerable to serious drying out, too?

Not necessarily. A mammal's tooth structure is actually quite different from a reptile's, said Zhijie Jack Tseng, a paleontologist who studies bite-force biomechanics in extinct carnivores at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

"Mammalian teeth are prismatic  they have a crisscrossing structure," Tseng told Live Science. He explained that when mammal teeth grow, the enamel emerges from the root area and "races outward in all directions," creating a 3D shape that may be better at keeping water inside.

In reptile teeth, the enamel grows in one direction, creating a different type of structure that may not retain water as effectively  potentially making their teeth more likely to chip or crack, Tseng suggested.

But for reptiles  and theropod dinosaurs  damaging or losing a tooth simply isn't as big a deal as it would be for a mammal, Tseng added. Mammals typically grow a set of baby teeth followed by a set of adult teeth, whereas reptiles  and likely many, if not all, dinosaurs  replace individual teeth throughout their lifetimes, scientists have found.

"Each tooth  relatively speaking  doesn't have as much value to the animal as in mammals," Tseng said. "T. rex could chip a tooth or get one stuck in prey, and just replace it. Evolving protection for teeth is not a critical component of how they eat."

The dinos, they are a-changin'

Reisz suggested in a statement that people may be reluctant to abandon the terrifying but familiar image of a "ferocious-looking" T. rex with bared teeth.

But now more than ever, scientists are challenging traditional ideas about how dinosaurs may have looked and behaved. New fossil evidence, computer modeling and comparisons with living creatures are helping scientists to paint a clearer picture of these extinct animals, overturning many historic conceptions of their postures, gaits, skin coverings and colors.

Long gone are the days when dinosaurs were almost uniformly pictured as grayish-green, ponderous reptiles with scaly skin. Contrary to their portrayal in popular films, dinosaurs are now widely accepted by scientists as having been covered in feathers, possibly in a range of colors, much like the colorful plumage of modern birds, which are a living dinosaur lineage.

Is it really so far-fetched to suggest that T. rex's toothy grin should also be relegated to the past? Time  and further research  will tell, Reisz said.

Original article on Live Science.
An archaeologist thinks he has found the tomb of Aristotle at Stagira, an ancient city where the Greek philosopher lived for much of his life.

But several other archaeologists say there is hardly enough evidence to link the tomb to Aristotle, and there's probably no way to confirm it either way. Even so, historical records do support the idea that Aristotle could be buried in the area.

Konstantinos Sismanidis, the archaeologist who discovered the tomb in question, has told media outlets that he cannot be certain that the structure is Aristotle's tomb. [Bones with Names: Long-Dead Bodies Archaeologists Have Identified]

Aristotle's ashes

Now retired, Sismanidis announced the possible discovery of Aristotle's tomb in a paper presented recently at the Aristotle 2,400 Years World Congress, which marks 2,400 years since Aristotle's birth. The tomb, he said, is a small building with an altar and marble floor, and this building is located next to a larger, semicircular structure that could have functioned as a gathering place for the people of the city.

"It's a public building, and it was constructed at the period of Alexander the Great," Sismanidis wrote in the summary of his presentation. Aristotle  who taught and wrote on a wide range of subjects, including logic, metaphysics, ethics, poetry and biology  was a tutor to Alexander.

Though ancient records say Aristotle died on the island of Euboea in 322 B.C., Sismanidis noted that Arabic copies of a text written by a historian named Ptolemy (who lived from A.D. 90 to 168) say Aristotle's ashes were brought to Stagira (also spelled Stageira), where they were interred in a building constructed in his honor.

No human remains or inscriptions mentioning Aristotle were discovered in the tomb at Stagira. Sismanidis first uncovered the building in 1996, and he has excavated at Stagira for more than 20 years. He plans to publish his findings this fall in a multivolume book, according to news reports.

Skeptical reaction

Since the announcement last week, media outlets all over the world have reported on the discovery of the supposed tomb.

However, many of the archaeologists Live Science contacted expressed doubts about the discovery.

"I would be skeptical, especially after the so-called discovery of Alexander's tomb at Amphipolis," said R. Angus Smith, a professor at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, who excavates in Greece. "It would be lovely if true, but I have not seen evidence to convince me of the connection."

In September 2014, some media outlets and archaeologists speculated that a tomb found at Amphipolis in Macedonia (a historical region of Greece; not to be confused with the modern country of Macedonia) belonged to Alexander himself. However, further investigation revealed evidence, including an inscription, that the tomb likely belonged to the Macedonian king's friend, Hephaestion. [Photos: Mysterious Ancient Tomb in Amphipolis]

"That the tomb found by Sismanidis at Stagira is that of Aristotle is a plausible suggestion but not a provable one, as the Greek archaeologist himself admits," said Jerome Pollitt, a professor of art history at Yale University. "Barring the discovery of an inscription, that state of affairs is unlikely to change."

Spencer Pope, a classical archaeologist at McMaster University in Ontario, commented that "while the tomb at Stagira dates to the time of Aristotle and has a seemingly commensurable monumentality with the ancient philosopher, further evidence linking it with a specific historical figure would be needed for a convincing attribution."

Perhaps the strongest reaction against Sismanidis' claim came from Edith Hall, a professor at the Centre for Hellenic Studies at King's College London.

"Call me a cynic, but has archaeologist Kostas Sismanidis really found a single shred of evidence that the tomb excavated in ancient Stageira long ago in 1996 houses the remains of Aristotle?" she wrote in a post on her blog. "Releasing the information in the 2,400th anniversary year of Aristotle's birth strikes me as a little too much of a coincidence," she added.

Sismanidis is not the first archaeologist who has claimed to have found Aristotle's tomb, Hall noted. In 1891, Charles Waldstein, an archaeologist at the American School of Archaeology of Athens, excavated a tomb at the site of Eretria that he claimed was Aristotle's. Waldstein claimed to have found writing instruments.

"Waldstein's 'tomb of Aristotle' is much nearer [to] the place where the actual ancient sources said the philosopher died," Hall wrote.

Voice of support

Although most archaeologists Live Science contacted were skeptical of Sismanidis' claim, one researcher did voice support. "It is most likely his [Aristotle's] tomb," said Elizabeth Kosmetatou, a professor of ancient history at the University of Illinois.

Kosmetatou told Live Science that she has heard that the structure uncovered by Sismanidis contains roof tiles stamped with Greek letters showing that they were produced at a royal workshop for pottery in Pella, the capital of ancient Macedonia. Those letters would indicate that the tomb and semicircular structure were public buildings that may have been financed by the city or the Kingdom of Macedonia.

Ptolemy claimed that Aristotle's tomb became a focal point for the city of Stagira, meaning that public gatherings likely would have taken place there, Kosmetatou said. The semicircular structure beside the tomb would have been a good place for such meetings or other public events, she noted.

"He's probably reliable," Kosmetatou said of the ancient historian, adding that just because Ptolemy's account survives only in Arabic doesn't mean it isn't accurate.

Still, Kosmetatou said there is no way to be sure that Aristotle's tomb has been discovered. "We don't have the time machine to go there," she said.

Original article on Live Science.
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Two Dublin men accused of carrying out an aggravated burglary at a house in Edgeworthstown were sentenced to nine years each in prison with the final two years suspended at a recent sitting of Longford Circuit Court.

Noel Kinsella (41), 15A St Anthonys Road, Rialto, Dublin 8 and John Ryan (35), 104 Cashel Avenue, Crumlin, Dublin 12 pleaded guilty to an aggravated burglary at 25 Cloverwell, Edgeworthstown on October 11, 2015.

The court heard that the house was occupied at the time and that a laptop, cash, jewellery, an iPod, mobile phones and keys to a van and cars were among the items taken in the burglary.

The court heard that the house was occupied at the time by Adil Raza and his wife Hafa Hussain, their two young children and Mr Raza's parents.

In his statement, Mr Raza explained that his father, who is confined to a wheelchair, slept in a downstairs bedroom at the front of the house.

On the night in question, Mr Raza went downstairs when he heard his father call to him, telling him that there were two men outside. Ms Hussain also came downstairs after seeing someone in the backyard of the house.

Mr Raza said he opened a window and shouted at a man, who had been peeping out from behind the familys van. They then heard a bang, as a second man hit the back patio door with an iron bar, used for market stalls, which was shown to the court.

Mr Raza then said that he went to the dining area and picked up a kitchen chair in case he succeeded in entering the house, but he then heard two big bangs at the front door, where the man who had been at the front of the house gained entry.

The man was wearing a protective mask and allegedly put a knife to Mr Razas father and told the family members to stand in one place. Mr Raza's mother, the court heard, had come downstairs shortly beforehand.

The court then heard that the men asked for money, and that one of them shook the knife at Mr Raza and ordered him upstairs with a black bag. The men got distracted and Mr Raza quickly called his mother-in-law to alert the authorities.

Giving his evidence, Garda Gary Beattie told the court that when he arrived at the house, he saw two men wearing building helmets and hi-vis jackets coming out of the front door. He shouted at them to stop, but they ran and he gave chase to both on foot. He observed the taller of the two men, later revealed to be Mr Ryan, jumping over a wall but caught and restrained the second man, Mr Kinsella, and cautioned him.

On his way to Granard Garda Station Mr Kinsella began to kick the rear window of the patrol car, refused to give his details, and upon arrival at the Garda station, he took off his clothes and threw everything apart from his underwear on the ground. When one Garda informed a second Garda of the defendants identity, Mr Kinsella struck him.

He was then taken to his cell, where he continued to invite members of an Garda Siochana in to fight and he refused to accept the forensic suit he was offered by the Gardai, instead spitting at the hatch. He was not fit for questioning on the night. He was later interviewed but gave no comment.

Counsel for Mr Kinsella, Mr Ray, BL, revealed that Mr Kinsella is a father-of-two and that he lives with his parents. His client left school at 11 and later found himself in institutions including Trinity House, St Lawrences and St Patricks.

The court heard that from the age of 12, Mr Kinsella had been abusing alcohol and moved onto other substances such as cannabis, sleeping tablets and diamorphine. Mr Ray also revealed that his client had taken sleeping tablets on the night of the offence and that he is now on a methadone programme in the prison system.

The second defendant, John Ryan, believed to have used the knife in the burglary, was arrested a short time later by Garda Angela Keegan, who said she stopped the defendant in a car at approximately 2.11am.

Garda Keegan then explained that as they entered the rear door of the Garda station, the defendant lunged forward with his head, breaking glass in the door and injuring himself. He became agitated and a GP was called, who directed that questioning be suspended until the defendant was fit.

It was believed that both defendants were heavily under the influence of drugs on the night in question.

When questioned by Counsel for Mr Ryan, Mr Dwyer, BL, Garda Keegan admitted that Mr Ryan could have escaped on the night but had co-operated.

The court then heard that both defendants have previous convictions and were currently serving sentences for other matters.

Mr Dwyer then revealed that Mr Ryan is in a long-term relationship since the age of twenty and that his partner has serious medical issues. The couple have a son, who also has health issues.

Victim impact statements

Four victim impact statements were then read out to the court prepared by Mr Raza, his parents and his wife.

The statements detailed how the family had to move overnight to a home which did not suit their needs.

Both Mr Raza and Ms Hussain outlined their ongoing fears after the event.

Ms Hussain pointed out that she had been forced to give up some of her responsibilities at work while her online business was forced to close. She also pointed out that due to their move, her father-in-law is sleeping in a single bed in the kitchen.

Mr Razas father explained that the incident has made him stressed and has caused numerous health issues while his mother revealed that her health and mental health had suffered.

Mr Ray then addressed the court, revealing that his client had been dealing with the Rialto Community Drug team prior to his incarceration, while he had three certificates from Merchants Quay and other organisations. Mr Ray also handed in a handwritten letter from Mr Kinsella which detailed many of the matters raised by a report from the Rialto Community Drug team. He also handed in a clinical psychologist's report before adding that Mr Kinsella wished to put his addiction, the key to his offending, behind him.

Speaking on behalf of his client Mr Ryan, Mr Dwyer expressed sincere remorse to the victims of the crime, to the community and to the court. Mr Dwyer revealed that Mr Ryan is now drug-free, including methadone, while a psychological report which came before the court stated that Mr Ryan had engaged well with the tasks put to him.

Stating that Mr Ryan had a happy childhood, Mr Dwyer said his client had engaged in anti-social behaviour as a youth and spent many years in St Patricks. He also abused a variety of drugs and left school at the age of 15.

The court then heard that while Mr Ryan had been clean for a time after receiving treatment in 2009, the death of his father and sister saw him slip back into drugs.

Both men were sentenced to nine years each in prison with the final two years suspended. Judge Keenan Johnson described what happened as a serious offence and directed that while in prison each of the men engage positively with the drug addiction and counselling services available to them.

During his deliberations on the matter, Judge Johnson said that each of the accused entered the house in Edgeworthstown as trespassers and stole a quantity of assorted items.

He remarked at length about the distress the incident had caused to the family and the impact it has had on them.

Judge Johnson went on to say that no sentence imposed by the court could undo the grave wrong that had been perpetrated on Mr Raza and his family.

He added, I would urge Mr Raza and his family to try and move on from this experience and not allow it to define and constrain their lives.

The Judge also said that there was some consolation from the fact that aggravated burglaries in areas like Edgeworthstown were relatively rare and the family was unlikely to become victims of a similar type of offence in the future.

The Judge also complemented the Gardai on their handling of the situation, giving special mention to Garda Beatty for what he described as the Gardas bravery in going to the scene on his own and tackling the offenders.
Woman in Distressed Near Kismet Beach Rescued By Coast Guard, Local Agencies on Memorial Day

Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: May 31 2016

A Coast Guard Station Fire Island boatcrew rescued a woman in distress near Kismet Beach, New York, Monday.

The woman was safely rescued with no injuries reported.

Kismet Beach, NY - May 30, 2016 - A Coast Guard Station Fire Island boatcrew rescued a woman in distress near Kismet Beach, New York, Monday.

At approximately 2:00 p.m., watchstanders at Coast Guard Sector Long Island Sound received report, from Suffolk County Dispatch, of a woman who entered the water near Kismet Beach and was in distress.

Good Samaritans on the beach lost sight of the woman due to dense fog in the area and began to hear shouting coming from the womans direction.

Sector Long Island Sound issued an Urgent Marine Information Broadcast and launched Coast Guard Station Fire Island to assist with the rescue of the distressed woman.

At 2:42 p.m., Station Fire Island located and safely rescued the woman from the water.

Assets involved with the search include:

-Coast Guard Station Fire Island 29263

-Saltaire volunteer Fire Department

-Fair Harbor volunteer Fire Department

-Kismet volunteer Fire Department

-Marine Juliet

-Suffolk Police Departments 3, 5, 37, 50

-National Park services

Station Fire Island safely transported the distressed woman back to Station Fire Island for treatment by West Islip Fire Department Emergency Medical Services.

No injuries have been reported.
Family & Parenting, Sports & Recreation, Local News, Community, Charity & Cause, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: May 31 2016

The Junior League of Long Island & the Town of Oyster Bay have partnered together in The Junior Leagues Project Playground.

Oyster Bay, NY - May 24, 2016 - The Junior League of Long Island & the Town of Oyster Bay have partnered together in The Junior Leagues Project Playground. Oyster Bay Town Councilwoman Rebecca M. Alesia announced that the Town of Oyster Bay will soon be adding a new inclusive playground to Haypath Park, which is located on Haypath Road in Old Bethpage.

The project is expected to be complete ahead of the summer season. Inclusive playgrounds are designed to be fully useable and exciting to children with a wide spectrum of abilities," Councilwoman Alesia said. It is more than just a handicapped accessible play area. This playground will be designed so that all children will be able to play side by side with one another in a sensory rich and socially inclusive environment.

The new playground will be constructed in partnership with the Junior League of Long Island (JLLI), which not only raised funds for the project, but will also provide some of their membership to help build it.

Junior League of Long Island is an organization of women committed to promoting voluntarism, developing the potential of women and to improving the community through the effective action and leadership of trained volunteers, Councilwoman Alesia said. They approached the Town about supporting the development of this inclusive playground and, after discussing the logistics, Haypath Park was selected as a well-suited central location. Needless to say, we are thrilled about the prospect of our residents enjoying this unique playground and are grateful to JLLI for helping make it a reality.

Junior League of Long Islands current President, Joel Blainey, said her members appreciated the opportunity to work with the Town of Oyster Bay. Junior League of Long Island and the Town of Oyster Bay share a philosophy of identifying and fulfilling community needs, Mrs. Blainey said. Initiative such as this inclusive playground, make the local community a healthier, more vital place to live.

It is a great example of government and a local philanthropic organization working together to greatly enhance the community, Councilwoman Alesia said. The Junior League of Long Island has been instrumental in bringing this play area to fruition and the Town of Oyster Bay will maintain it for the enjoyment of its residents for years to come. It is truly a win-win for everyone.

Councilwoman Alesia said she and her colleagues on the Oyster Bay Town Board are very proud of the Towns commitment to providing recreational opportunities for children with special needs. The Towns new inclusive playground is just one of the many features that make the Town of Oyster Bay a great place to live and raise a family, Councilwoman Alesia said. We are happy to join with JLLI to create this comprehensive inclusive play space and social experience for all children. We fully expect it to provide years of fun while, at the same time, providing common ground between children of all abilities.

About the Junior League of Long Island

The Junior League of Long Island is an organization of women committed to promoting voluntarism, developing the potential of women, and improving communities through the effective action and leadership of trained volunteers. Tracing its origins to 1951, the Junior League of Long Island has over 200 members in Nassau and Suffolk counties. Headquartered in the Village of Roslyn, the Junior League of Long Island is affiliated with the Association of Junior Leagues International an organization of 293 Leagues throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico and England. The Junior League of Long Island is designated as a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization. Our purpose is exclusively educational and charitable. www.jlli.org
Local News, Crime, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: May 31 2016

Nassau County Executive Edward P. Mangano and Acting Nassau County Police Commissioner Thomas C. Krumpter offered an update on the Memorial Day Weekend "STOP DWI" initiative.

The STOP-DWI Initiative over this past Memorial Day Weekend resulted in several arrests.

Nassau County, NY - May 31, 2016 - Nassau County Executive Edward P. Mangano and Acting Nassau County Police Commissioner Thomas C. Krumpter announce that between 7:00 PM Friday, May 27, 2016 and 7:00 AM Tuesday, May 31, 2016, the Nassau County Police Department affected 50 arrests for DWI. The additional patrols were due in part by the New York State Grant STOP DWI campaign.

The Nassau County Police Department will continue to aggressively arrest those individuals who drink and drive.
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
Three of al Qaedas official branches have jointly published a eulogy for Mullah Mansour, the Taliban leader who was killed in an American drone strike on May 21. The statement of condolences is signed by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and Al Nusrah Front.

The al Qaeda groups released the two page eulogy on their respective Twitter feeds and other social media sites on May 29. They praise Mansour at length, saying his jihad began more than three decades ago and he achieved martyrdom at the hands of the Crusaders. The statements authors praise Mansour as a worthy successor to Mullah Omar, the Talibans first emir. They also claim that Mansour was part of a long succession of Muslim leaders and emirs from the dawn of Islam to the present day.

The statement honoring Mansour is similar to the eulogy that was published for Mullah Omar.

On Aug. 5, 2015, the same three al Qaeda groups published a remembrance for Omar. Just days beforehand, the Taliban conceded that Omar died sometime in 2013. The al Qaeda branches praised the Talibans founder for refusing to turn over Osama bin Laden despite considerable international pressure both before and after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. [See LWJ report, 3 al Qaeda branches issue joint eulogy for Mullah Omar.]

Osama bin Laden swore his own allegiance to Mullah Omar prior to Sept. 11, 2001. Ayman al Zawahiri, bin Ladens replacement, also swore his fealty to Omar and then to Mullah Mansour.

By virtue of Zawahiris oath to the Talibans most senior leader, all of al Qaedas commanders and fighters are technically loyal to the Talibans chieftain as well.

The al Qaeda branches eulogy for Mansour does not say that the jihadists have sworn bayah (an oath of allegiance) to Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, who was quickly appointed as Mansours replacement. But this is not surprising.

In al Qaedas hierarchy, the regional branches  Al Nusrah, AQAP, AQIM, Shabaab in Somalia and al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS)  swear allegiance to Zawahiri. These groups are then responsible for waging jihad in their designated regions on behalf of al Qaeda. This means that they must follow al Qaedas preferred manhaj (methodology), which includes a set of guidelines for launching attacks.

In the past, Zawahiri has pledged his fealty to the Talibans emir directly. It is likely that Zawahiri will repeat this step once again with Mullah Haibatullah. At that point, al Qaedas regional branches would be bound by a blood oath to Mullah Haibatullah as well.

Al Qaedas allegiance to the Talibans top man has become a key part of the organizations rivalry with the Islamic State. The so-called caliphate says that Abu Bakr al Baghdadi is the new caliph and, therefore, all Muslims owe him their loyalty. But al Qaeda claims that Baghdadi broke his allegiance to Zawahiri and any oaths to Baghdadi are invalid. Al Qaeda and its allies also argue that Baghdadi lacks religious legitimacy because recognized jihadist authorities didnt agree to his selection as caliph.

After the Islamic State rose to prominence in 2013 and 2014, al Qaeda aggressively marketed Mullah Omar as the rightful Emir of the Believers, a title usually reserved for the caliph. This became a source of embarrassment in 2015, however, after other senior Taliban leaders admitted that they covered up Omars death. The Islamic State regularly points out that Zawahiri and al Qaedas members reaffirmed their loyalty to a dead man.

Despite the problems caused by Omars death, however, al Qaedas branches remained openly loyal to Zawahiri and Mansour.

Other jihadist organizations quickly eulogized Mansour as well. Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a faction of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP), released a statement honoring Mansour on May 25. The TTP subsequently issued its own eulogy on May 30. The Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), which is part of the al Qaeda-Taliban axis in Afghanistan and Syria, has posted a remembrance of the Talibans fallen emir as well.

Note: This article was updated in the second paragraph on May 31 with additional quotes from the al Qaeda branches eulogy.

Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for FDD's Long War Journal.

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Luton is a large town, borough and unitary authority area of Bedfordshire. Luton and its near neighbours, Dunstable and Houghton Regis, form the Luton/Dunstable Urban Area with a population of about 258,000. Luton is home to Championship team Luton Town Football Club, London Luton Airport and The University of Bedfordshire. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter. For all the latest news from Luton sign up to our newsletter here.
Luxury Gone Wild in British Columbia

promises an exquisite taste of a bygone era, when the adventurous travelled in and with extraordinary luxury, residential comfort and personalized service  no matter their city or wilderness destination.Theadventure begins or ends in the city of Vancouver, where guests will be wrapped in the Forbes Five Star comfort of the splendidly restored historic Rosewood Hotel Georgia - 156 rooms and suites embellished with sublime-comfort and stylish elegance equal to its landmark location in the very heart of one of the most cosmopolitan, livable cities in the world. The stay includes a complimentary breakfast, a copy of celebrated explorer Levison Woods superb book Walking the Himalayas, and an upgrade to the next available category at time of booking.The Rosewood Hotel Georgia features Vancouvers finest and most awarded restaurant, the ultra-glamorous Hawksworth Restaurant, and the classic Prohibition bar, reminiscent of a Roaring Twenties speakeasy.Theadventure continues a short floatplane ride away, to a sumptuousness safari in the Unesco-designated Clayoquot Sound Biosphere Reserve on Canadas westernmost shore, on Vancouver Island. In this remote, untamed wilderness, the Clayoquot Wilderness Resort, inspired by 19Century Great Camps, brings the ultimate in world-class luxury and soft adventure. Guests experience Relais & Chateaux comfort in one of the most pristine, biodiverse and breathtakingly beautiful natural environments in the world.Deluxe prospector tent accommodation with Relais & Chateaux in-room, five-star dining, and spa amenities complement an unrivalled adventure program. Deep-sea fishing, horseback riding, kayaking, whale and bear watching, skeet and target shooting, archery, wild-food foraging, wildlife habitat restoration & education, plus dozens of heli-adventures, highlight a supernatural menu. A single mountain-top Cloud Camp offers the truly adventurous an overnight on the edge of paradise, overlooking the Clayoquot Wilderness Resort base camp  the Bedwell River Outpost. The remote Cloud Camp experience is accompanied by a private guide and private chef.Upon arrival at the Clayoquot Wilderness Resort, guests are welcomed with a complimentary mens or womens Arcteryx Beta SL GORE-TEX multi-adventure jacket, (a $350 value).Thepackage has a minimum one night stay at the Rosewood Hotel Georgia at a starting price of $489 CAD, subject to availability, plus any three or four night stays at the Clayoquot Wilderness Resort http://www.wildretreat.com/rates/overview/
The Ritz-Carlton, Bachelor Gulch Presents Summer Wildflower Program Offerings

Wildflower-Infused Spa Treatments



Scenic Serenity  Be fully immersed in the beauty of the Colorado wildflower season. Explore vast meadows and winding trails with vibrant colors on a private 90-minute guided hike with an expert Resort Naturalist. Then, retreat back to the Bachelor Gulch Spa for a 90-minute signature massage infused with a choice of a wildflower essential oil, each containing natural restorative benefits. $295 per guest (two guest minimum)

Be fully immersed in the beauty of the Colorado wildflower season. Explore vast meadows and winding trails with vibrant colors on a private 90-minute guided hike with an expert Resort Naturalist. Then, retreat back to the Bachelor Gulch Spa for a 90-minute signature massage infused with a choice of a wildflower essential oil, each containing natural restorative benefits. $295 per guest (two guest minimum)

Bachelor Gulch Spa Signature Scrub  Let the refreshing power of the resorts antioxidant-rich blueberry sugar scrub reveal youthful, more radiant skin with a full body exfoliation. Next, enjoy a detoxifying hydration body wrap and refreshing Vichy shower. A warm Tahitian vanilla massage completes the invigorating experience. $215 per guest; 75 minutes

Let the refreshing power of the resorts antioxidant-rich blueberry sugar scrub reveal youthful, more radiant skin with a full body exfoliation. Next, enjoy a detoxifying hydration body wrap and refreshing Vichy shower. A warm Tahitian vanilla massage completes the invigorating experience. $215 per guest; 75 minutes

Apres Sun Facial  This revitalizing treatment is essential for active and adventurous guests. Wind burned, sun damaged or dry skin and lips will be transformed with products made for Colorados unique climate. Skilled estheticians will repair and replenish skin, leaving it with a healthy, hydrated glow. $155 per guest; 45 minutes



Wildflower-Inspired Cocktails

Naturalist Activities



Whiskey and Woodburning  Create a one-of-a-kind souvenir of your trip by using a wood burning tool to etch a unique design into your choice of a wooden cheese board or coaster set. Offered Friday 4:00  5:00 p.m. $25 per person; includes signature whiskey drink

 Create a one-of-a-kind souvenir of your trip by using a wood burning tool to etch a unique design into your choice of a wooden cheese board or coaster set. Offered Friday 4:00  5:00 p.m. $25 per person; includes signature whiskey drink

Paint and Pour  Let the majestic Rockies inspire you as you spend the afternoon sipping wine and painting a rustic masterpiece by following step-by-step instructions. Offered Saturday from 4:00  5:00 p.m. $25 per person; includes glass of wine



With hundreds of varieties spanning every color of the rainbow, the lush Colorado landscape is covered with pops of bold pinks, bright yellows, deep violets, clean whites, rich blacks and more. Starting June 18, the resort-wide program offers guests a unique way to experience Colorados natural wonders. From daily nature hikes led by the resorts Resident Naturalists, to wildflower-infused spa treatments, to specialty floral cocktails, The Ritz-Carlton, Bachelor Gulch provides an immersive summer escape for every type of traveler.Guests can enjoy the beauty of Colorado wildflower season in cocktail form with a trio of handcrafted floral cocktails, offered exclusively during summer months in Buffalos. Sample cocktails include a Lavender Cucumber Spritz (lavender, cucumber, lemon, Woody Creek gin, seltzer); Blossoming Bouquet (Ketel One Citroen, white wine, orange blossom water, lemon juice, simple syrup); and Rhubarb Bellini (Moet & Chandon Champagne, St. Germaine elderflower liquor, rhubarb syrup).Led by the resorts expert Resident Naturalists, guests can learn about and explore the picturesque scenery that surrounds The Ritz-Carlton, Bachelor Gulch. From Daily Group Hikes through the surrounding White River National Forest, to Mountainside Bird Watching, to Fire Building and Smores, guests can actively relish in all the beauty and adventure Colorado has to offer. Additional highlights include:Guests wishing for a private activity can select from a range of experiences, such as Canine Adventure Hikes with Bachelor or Belle (the resorts resident canines); Sunset Strolls including stargazing and Native American legends along the way; Village-to-Village Hikes to Beaver Creek Village; and Perfectly Paired Picnics featuring scenic wildflower hikes to a secluded spot, followed by a gourmet lunch with sparkling water, wine/bubbly or Colorado microbrews.Well-mannered pets are welcome at all nature programs. More information and reservations may be acquired by contacting Recreation Supervisor Jackie Elder at Jackie.Elder@ritzcarlton.com or by contacting the Bachelor Gulch Spa at (970) 343-1138.For more information on The Ritz-Carlton, Bachelor Gulch, visit www.ritzcarlton.com/en/hotels/colorado/bachelor-gulch
Bulgarian state energy holding company BEH and Greek natural gas company Gastrade have set up a joint task force to prepare a proposal to build an off-shore liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in northern Greece, Gastrade said on Tuesday.



Greece currently has one LNG terminal on an islet off Athens and Gastrade, part of Greek energy group Copelouzos, is planning a second LNG terminal near the northern city of Alexandroupolis.



The task force will prepare and submit a proposal to the Bulgarian government for the best possible way to take part in the project, Gastrade said in a statement.



The facility, with an estimated annual capacity of 6.1 billion cubic metres (bcm), will seek to supply gas to southeastern Europe via another natural gas pipeline scheme that will cross through Greece, the Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria (IGB). Bulgaria and Greece signed the final investment agreement for the pipeline last year.



The IGB and the LNG terminal fit with the construction of the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) which will transport Caspian gas to European markets and was signed off by Greece and its partners this month.



The Alexandroupolis terminal is expected to cost about 370 million euros ($413 million) and is expected to be operational at the end of 2018, an official at Gastrade told Reuters.



Cheniere Energy, a U.S-based liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter, is interested in a minority stake in the LNG project, a senior company official said last year.





Reporting by Angeliki Koutantou
Quintiq, a Dassault Systemes company, announced that Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. has selected its software solution to optimize the assignment of more than 80,000 crew members across its various brands and ships globally.

As a global company, Royal Caribbean required a solution that could handle increasingly complex workforce planning conditions unique to the cruise business, and its manual approach to crew planning and scheduling was time-consuming and left no room for optimization.

Quintiq is able to incorporate all the rules, regulations and requirements of its planning environment. Royal Caribbean crew planners will no longer need to spend vast amounts of time manually incorporating these complex rules and requirements into plans. Quintiqs solution will also optimize plans to maximize the productivity and performance of their crew in order to lower operating costs while increasing workforce performance, customer satisfaction and profitability.
DNV GL has added to its registry as of March 2016 a new vessel built for Ceylon Shipping Corporation (CSC), a fully Sri Lanka Government-owned commercial enterprise and company with a 45-year-long tradition in shipping.

Bulk carrier Ceylon Breeze built at the AVIC Weihai Shipyard Co, Ltd China will be flying the Sri Lanka Flag, with home port Colombo and is the first of two sister vessels having a registered length of 199 metres and displacement of 63,323 DWT, the CSC said in a media announcement.

According to a report in The Sunday Times Sri Lanka, the vessel was built to DNV GL Class Rules under close supervision of CSCs own supervisors and the DNV GL consultants. Recently the full-term certificates of MV. Ceylon Breeze were handed over to CSC Chairman Shashi Dhanatunge by DNV GL Country Manager  Maritime, Lal de Silva.

Dhanatunge confirmed that the Board of Directors of CSC instructed its Technical Manger and onsite supervisors to focus on the quality and finish in addition to the guaranteed performance and class agreed by the shipyard.

Being a great supporter of the national maritime agenda and well aware of difficulties young Sri Lankan seafarers are facing in gaining first seamans experience Ceylon Shipping Corporation Ltd. created an additional 26 berths for cadets, a unique provision for this type of vessel. This will provide a stable stream of seafarers to the benefit of Sri Lanka maritime community and the national economy at large.
DNV GLs Ellen Crivella was honored with the 2016 Rising Star Award at the Women of Wind Energy (WoWE) luncheon at the 2016 AWEA Windpower Conference and Exhibition. Each year, the Rising Star Award recognizes a woman relatively new to wind energy who has already made significant professional contributions and shown unusual talent, dedication and innovation in their wind industry work.

As DNV GLs global head of practice for environmental and permitting services, Ellen has been involved in the siting, permitting and financing of over 10,000 MW of renewable energy projects. Ellen has recruited key talent and quickly established DNV GL as an expert advisor in avian and other wildlife issues for wind power.

Ellen is remarkable for her environmental expertise and her business acumen, but she is most commendable for her passion and her generosity to share her knowledge, said Clint Johnson, senior vice president in renewable energy for DNV GL.

During her time at DNV GL, Ellen has doubled the size of the team and expanded both the scope and depth of our environmental and permitting services, all while being a tireless champion of WoWE, he said.

At DNV GL, Ellen leads a team of 20 focused on comprehensive permitting, regulatory compliance and environmental due diligence services for renewable energy developments. She is responsible for all technical, financial, commercial and quality assurance aspects of the services in her practice while developing and mentoring a young and growing team.

Crivella holds masters degrees from Vermont Law School and The Ohio State University.

She frequently presents at AWEA and other industry conferences and teaches seminars such as AWEAs Wind Energy 101 series.

She is a committed volunteer, with roles that include board member and secretary of Solar Oregon, member of Oregon Association of Environmental Professionals, industry awards committee past chair of Soil Science Society of America, member of the National Mentoring Program Committee at WoWE and the Portland WoWE chapter president.

At a time when wind power is growing in adoption, this recognition by WoWE  which is itself playing an important role in shaping the future of wind energy  of Ellens role as a mentor and leader, is greatly valued by all of us at DNV GL, said Carole Barbeau, DNV GL president of energy advisory for the Americas region.
Hamburg Port Authority (HPA) has taken delivery of the Sauger III, a custom floating pump station by Damen Shipyards Group for supporting dredging operations. Situated 110 km inland on the River Elbe and with a tidal range of 3.6 meters, the Hamburg Port requires regularly dredging like most ports. 37 metres in length and 10 meters wide, the station features a powerful, dual pump installation and comfortable accommodation for the crew.

The Sauger III was built to a completely new design following a European tender process that began with ten yards and was finally won by Damen. The order was placed in December 2014 and the vessel built in 15 months at Damen Shipyards Hardinxveld The structure is essentially a pontoon fitted with sophisticated pumping equipment capable of managing very large volumes of sediment, plus crew accommodation. The core equipment consists of two pumps each connected to an arm on deck. One of these pumps takes the contaminated mud from the barges that come alongside to offload and then pumps it ashore via a floating line. The second pump/arm combination adds sea water to the mud to keep it in a liquefied state. The sediment is cleaned as it passes through the pumping apparatus, allowing to be safely dumped or used for a variety of purposes.

Damen Dredging Equipment built the dredge pump using the same moulds as previously used by the Hamburg Port Authority. For the jet pump a standard Damen design was used. The station is moored against piles and so does not have an independent propulsion system. The entire operation requires a crew of just two men, and is managed from a state-of-the-art pump control room. It is powered by electricity supplied via a shore connection with a transformer that converts it to the 690v and 400v necessary for the pumps.

The Sauger III is the first vessel that Damen has built for the Hamburg Port Authority. With the dredging equipment and pumps coming from Damen Dredging Equipment, 60 percent of the components came from Damen. This allowed the client to deal with a single party for all aspects of the project and a comprehensive service package will ensure that it operates at peak performance in the years ahead.

The vessel has been designed and built to comply with all German regulations and is certified by Germanischer Lloyd. In a nice touch, the Sauger III was towed from Damen Shipyards Hardinxveld to Hamburg by the Noordstroom, a new Damen Shoalbuster 3512 handed over to its owner Van Wijngaarden Marine Services B.V. by the same yard just a few weeks previously. The Sauger III is now undergoing commissioning and trials and will begin operations after the summer.
Kvichak Marine Industries informs it continues to expand production of its high performance vessel line with delivery of another Response Boat - Medium Commercial

Kvichak, a Vigor company, delivered a fourth, 45-foot Response Boat - Medium C (RB-M C) to its longtime customer, the New York Police Department Harbor Unit.

The Kvichak RB-M C is the commercial variant of the Response Boat - Medium (RB-M), purpose built for the U.S. Coast Guard. To date, 174 RB-Ms have been delivered to the Coast Guard. The vessel was designed by Kvichak in partnership with Camarc Design for high speed and high performance, including tactical handling and specialized mission capabilities, the shipbuilder said.

The commercial variant offers more crew comfort and amenities than the RB-M but features the same exacting capabilities needed for maritime security. It has proven itself to be ideal for patrol, law enforcement and search and rescue operations, said Art Parker, Vigor Business Development Manager. Kvichak has built six RB-M Cs for three different police departments to date and is in active negotiations for more at home and abroad.

Following its merger with Vigor last year, Kvichak has steadily expanded both its production capabilities and its international footprint in high performance vessels. One of the most exciting aspects of our merger with Vigor, has been joining forces with Oregon Iron Works, now Vigor Works. Their Combatant Craft Medium (CCM) and Sealion I and II for the U.S. Navy have earned great respect around the world, explains Keith Whittemore, Kvichak co-founder and now Vigor EVP of Business Development. Bringing our two highly specialized teams of designers, engineers and builders together has opened up a world of possibility, particularly in foreign military sales.

RB-M C Characteristics

Overall length: 4411

Beam, overall: 147

Draft (RFS): 3.0

(2) Detroit Diesel 60 series engines

Twin Disc MG5114SC marine gears

Rolls Royce Kamewa FF375S waterjets

Fuel capacity: 495 gallons

Top speed: >40 knots

(2) Rescue zones

Vector-Stick integrated control system

SeaFLIR Voyager III system

Kohler 9kW genset for AC power

Deck Heat

Furuno Navnet system

Redundant GPS & sounders

Climate controlled pilot house and cabin

Heated windows
On May 25, 2016, The University of the West Indies Arthur Lok Jack Graduate School of Business (UWI-ALJGSB) together with the Trinidad and Tobago Shipbuilding & Repair Maritime Cluster (TTSR) signed a Memorandum of Understanding to undertake maritime project initiatives involving research, the sharing of knowledge and showcase technologies in the context of improving energy efficiency and reducing CO2 emissions in the maritime sector.

One such initiative involves an Expression of Interest to the International Maritime Organization (IMO) for the establishment of a regional Maritime Technical Cooperation Center (MTCC) for the benefit of the IMOs 14 Member Caribbean States, of which Trinidad and Tobago is a signatory country. This forms part of an ambitious project to establish a global network of Maritime Technology Cooperation Centers (MTCCs) in developing countries, thanks to a 10 million funding contribution from the European Union. This project will be coordinated by IMOs Marine Environment Division through a dedicated unit at IMO headquarters in London.

The UWI-ALJGSB, Mount Hope Campus is simultaneously completing a brand new building, which will be a major component in their proposal to host the regional MTCC in Trinidad and Tobago. The State-of-the-art office structure when completed in December 2016 is intended to realize cost-effective measures which enhance energy efficiency and will accommodate additional classrooms for their specialized Masters Program in Port and Maritime Management, the MBA in International Trade, Logistics and Procurement (ITL&P) together with the MBA in Sustainable Energy Management which has been carefully designed to meet current and future economic challenges.

This is the beginning of a new era in the regional maritime sector which focuses on safety, security, energy efficiency, reducing CO2, networking and innovative solutions. The project has the potential for creating employment, entrepreneurship and aligning the Caribbean region to the rest of the world, said Dr. Zaffar Khan, Program Director at UWI-ALJGSB and Coordinator of the project.

The TTSR was established in 2007 by the now Prime Minister of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, the Honourable Keith Rowley, MP when he was the Minister of Trade and Industry. Today, the maritime cluster comprises some 56-Stakeholders and includes major local and global maritime companies, such as, MASSY CAT, Massy Group (a leading provider of medium and high-speed marine diesel engines and generator sets), Robert Allan Limited (Canada's oldest privately owned consulting Naval Architectural firm, established in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1930), SHOES INDUSTRIAL Services Limited (ABS, Lloyds Register and DNV-GL certified suppliers and servicing of fire suppression equipment), Alstons Shipping Limited, ANSA McAL Group (a major shipping agency and cargo service provider in the Caribbean region), Maritime Preservation Limited (a leading Shipyard located in the port of Port of Spain) and Non-Destructive Testers Limited (provider of a range of inspection, testing and heat treatment services to the marine, petroleum and petrochemical sectors). The Caribbean Shipping Association also expressed their interest in being a strategic partner for this initiative.

The signing of the MOU is especially important, as the past 11 months have been the hottest such months in 135 years of recordkeeping, a streak that has itself set a record and puts in clear terms just how much the planet, including the vulnerable Caribbean region has warmed due to the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Gasoline shifted from tankers to landed storage or sold off; forward gasoline prices to flip to backwardation from July.



The number of tankers storing gasoline in waters off Singapore and Malaysia is dwindling as the fuel is sold off or shifted to cheaper onshore storage because of changes in forward delivery terms, traders familiar with the matter said.



With the economics of storing the fuel on tankers no longer viable due to a stronger forward market, there are now fewer than three long-range (LR) vessels holding gasoline in the area.



The traders said by the end of this week all remaining tankers could be discharged as the fuel's owners seek to sell the gasoline or store it more cheaply onshore.



"It's not economical to store gasoline on ships now compared to before unless they have no buyers or land storage," said one Singapore-based gasoline trader with knowledge of the deals.



Ships recently used to store gasoline were chartered by Statoil, Total, Vitol, Gunvor and Unipec, trading arm of China state refiner Sinopec , according to the traders.



This could not be directly confirmed with company officials, who do not typically comment on trading operations.



LR tankers can store 55,000 to 75,000 tonnes of gasoline, depending on the size of the ship.



The gasoline market forward price curve will flip to backwardation from July, meaning lower prices for future deliveries than for those sold immediately.



That contrasts with the contango structure for the first-half of the year, with future deliveries more expensive than prompt cargoes, making it attractive to store gasoline for sale at a later date.



A month ago, April in the forward curve was about $1 a barrel below May, with the June price about 30-40 cents below July. This contango will flip into backwardation from July.



The current weak market is in part due to an expected fall in gasoline imports from top regional consumer Indonesia, where state oil firm Pertamina is expected to reduce imports later this year as it negotiates deals to make more of the fuel.



Chinese gasoline exports are also up more than 50 percent for the first four months of the year, although going forward, China could scale back its volumes.



"Maintenance in May and June, particularly at (Chinese) teapot refiners will ... lower gasoline output," analysts at BMI Research said in a note to clients this week, while strong Chinese demand would help tighten the regional market.



Even if the stored fuel is not sold, traders are shifting the gasoline into onshore tanks because they estimate it costs at least $100,000 less a month to hold the fuel on land.

Reporting by Seng Li Peng
The U.S. Coast Guard informs it is continuing to monitor and respond to the 833-foot U.S. cargo vessel Roger Blough, which ran aground Friday afternoon on Gros Cap Reef in Whitefish Bay in Lake Superior.

The chance of a fuel spill is minimal and flooding on the vessel is stable, the Coast Guard said. The Roger Blough crew is said to be in good condition with no reported injuries.

Plans to free the grounded freighter continue to progress through the combined efforts of Canadian partners, company representatives and the U.S. Coast Guard.

A vessel response plan has been activated to ensure environmental safety. The plan includes coordination with an oil spill response organization to deploy oil containment equipment as well as underwater dive surveys to more effectively assess the damage and unground the vessel.

A boom has been deployed around the ships stern, and in the area of the vessel's fuel tanks, as a precautionary measure.



Safety inspections are also being performed throughout the ship. Coast Guard crews have been conducting exterior draft readings of the vessel, while the crew of the Roger Blough continued interior soundings of the tanks to ensure flooding remains under control.

A Coast Guard Auxiliary aircrew conducted an overflight of the area late Sunday morning and reported no signs of pollution.

Coast Guard Cutter Mobile Bay is on scene to enforce a 500-yard safety zone around the grounded freighter. The zone and salvage operations continue to have little impact on vessel traffic transiting through the area, the Coast Guard said.

Representatives from the National Transportation Safety Board will assist the Coast Guard in investigating the cause of the grounding.
On 19 May, Ziemelblazma Culture Palace in Riga, the Latvian capital was the venue for a meeting between numerous representatives of the Ports of Liepaja, Riga, Ventspils, Lubeck, Kiel and Hamburg. This was hosted by the three Latvian ports and Port of Hamburg Marketing (HHM). For Marina Basso Michael, Head of Market Development for the Baltic Region and Eastern Europe for HHM, and Axel Mattern, CEO of HHM, Riga was an excellent place to hold the first German-Latvian Maritime Forum. The two HHM representatives pointed out that current topics and challenges on the overall economic development of the Baltic region closely link all the ports participating in the event.



Mutual briefing and readiness for discussion are leading to greater cooperation and understanding among ports that are competitors, but also specialize in very different directions.



We are delighted to have been able, for the first time, to attract all three of Latvias ports as partners for the event. Against the background of the trade sanctions still in force and the tight economic situation in Russia, Latvias increased foreign trade with the USA, China and other countries in the EU as well, has developed remarkably steadily, said Marina Basso Michael. The significance of transit traffic with Russia and other states means that the logistics sector is of great importance in Latvia, contributing around 10 percent of national GDP.



In his words of welcome, Andis Ameriks, Deputy Mayor of Riga and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Riga Freeport Authority, alluded to the shared history of the Hanseatic cities of Riga, Lubeck and Hamburg. The German Ambassador, Rolf Schutte, used his speech to mention how gratified he was about the excellent attendance at this first maritime forum, thanking Port of Hamburg Marketing and the Latvian ports for their strong commitment. In their presentations, port and logistics experts from both countries reported on current developments and discussed the economic opportunities and prospects for the ports and the region.



Andris Maldups, Head of the Transit Department at the Latvian Ministry of Transport, supplied an overview of the state of the transport sector in his country and welcomed the Forum as a fine platform for the ports to exchange their experience. Lutz Birke, a member of the Executive Management Board of HPA - Hamburg Port Authority - briefed his audience on the digitalization in the port that is opening up substantial opportunities for boosting efficiency.



The Forum in Riga was a tremendous opportunity. We enjoyed a highly valuable exchange with our colleagues from Riga, especially on the topic of cruises. I feel that Hamburg and Riga could cooperate more closely in this area and learn much from each other, since a sustainable cruise business is of great importance for such city-centre ports as Riga and Hamburg. The EU project Green Cruise Port headed by HPA is an important platform for this, reported Lutz Birke.



In the concluding speech, Prof Dr Sebastian Jurgens, Managing Director of Lubecker Hafen-Gesellschaft port operating company, addressed the importance of the ferry services between Lubeck and the Latvian ports. Lubeck is seen as the leading pooling centre for cargo flows between Germany and Latvia. Trade relations between the Baltic states and Russia offer immense potential. For us, the expansion of mutual relations is of great importance. This joint Forum offered a good opportunity to meet business partners from the ports of Ventspils and Liepaja and to discuss new joint projects. Among these were the further development of existing ferry services and joint schemes for hinterland services, said Jurgens.



A platform discussion featuring Oskars Osis, Freight Commercial Manager for Stena Line Freight Scandinavia, Axel Mattern, CEO of HHM, Michel Intorf of HHLA marketing, Janis Lapins, Deputy CEO of the Port of Liepaja, Leonids Loginovs, CEO Freeport of Riga Authority and Imants Sarmulis, CEO Freeport of Ventspils Authority, assessed and discussed, from various angles, the repercussions of the existing trade restrictions caused by sanctions on the transport and logistics sector in the Baltic region, as well as the effects of the new Chinese One Belt, One Road initiative.



This joint event brought numerous port experts to Riga and boosted our mutual exchange of information and experience. New business does not exactly grow on trees and such meetings offer potential for discussing new projects during the various encounters, stressed Imants Sarmulis from Ventspils.



His port colleague Leonids Loginovs from Riga adds: The changes in worldwide freight flows, the intermeshing of all modes of transport and the measures to promote environmental protection affecting all of us present ports throughout Europe with the same challenges. This is what makes an exchange of experience on successful examples in practice, and the pooling of all our efforts to master outstanding challenges, of such great importance.



The first German-Latvian Maritime Forum, preceded by a joint press conference organized by the hosts and attended by numerous representatives of the Latvian media, was rated by over 120 participants as extremely successful.



For the Port of Hamburg and many of our member companies, Latvia is an important trading partner in the Baltic region. For Latvia, Port of Hamburg performs a hub function as a highly efficient hub port for seaborne foreign trade. Through the feeder services with Latvian ports, Hamburg with its dense network of liner services to all regions of the world offers superb opportunities for shipping cargo, said Axel Mattern, CEO of HHM.



For Marina Basso Michael, Port of Hamburg Marketings Head of Market Development for the Baltic Region and Eastern Europe, new event formats such as the Maritime Forum offer an outstanding platform for maintaining contacts with Latvian partners and for introducing new business contacts with companies from the Hamburg Metropolitan Region.
1900 - Sailors and Marines from USS Newark (C 1) and USS Oregon (BB 3) arrive at Peking (now known as Beijing), China, to protect U.S. and foreign diplomatic legations during the Boxer Rebellion.

1918 - USS President Lincoln is torpedoed and sunk by German submarine, (U 90). Twenty-six lives are lost.

1919 - Curtiss flying boat NC 4 lands at Plymouth, England, concluding the first transatlantic flight.

1944 - USS England (DE 635), assisted by six destroyers and destroyer escorts, sinks sixth Japanese submarine in less than two weeks.

1944 - USS Barb (SS 220) and USS Herring (SS 233) attack Japanese shipping in the Sea of Okhotsk about 150 miles west of Matsuwa Island, Kuril Islands, sinking several ships.

(Source: Naval History and Heritage Command, Communication and Outreach Division)
Petrobras reports that it has received the letter of resignation of Mr. Aldemir Bendine the functions of a member of the Board of Directors and President of the Company today. In addition, Mr. Bendine also resigned today, the office of member of the Board of Directors of Petrobras Distribuidora - BR.



In view of the resignation, the Board held a special meeting that has elected Pedro Pullen Parente engineer as a member of the Board of Petrobras today. The Council at the same meeting also elected Mr. Pedro Parente for the office of President of the Company since 05.31.2016 and has appointed the Director of Human Resources, Safety, Environment and Health and Human Services, Hugo Repsold Junior, for the interim exercise of the functions of the President of the Company.



Petrobras also reports that it has received the letter of resignation of the Director of Administration Luciano Coutinho today and that the post remain vacant until the election of a new member to the Council.



Pedro Pullen Parente began his career in public service in Banco do Brasil in 1971, and in 1973 was transferred to the Central Bank, both through public tender. He was a consultant to the International Monetary Fund and public institutions in Brazil, including Secretaries of State and the National Constituent Assembly of 1988, having acted in various positions in the economic area of the government. He was Minister of State between 1999 and 2002, having been the coordinator of the transition team of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso the Government of President Lula.



In that period, it was important his role as Speaker of the House Management Energy Crisis. He was a member of the Board of Directors of Petrobras from 24/03/1999 to 31/12/2002 and President of the Council from 25/03/2002. He was Executive Vice President (COO) of RBS Group in the period 2003 to 2009 and President and CEO of Bunge Brazil between 2010 and 2014. He is currently a board member of SBR-Global, as well as being Managing Partner group of companies Prada consulting and financial advice. He is also Chairman of the Board of Directors of BM & FBOVESPA since March 2015.
Around 1,300 offshore support vessels lying idle worldwide.



Not everyone in shipping is bemoaning the industry's worst crisis in living memory: a cluster of companies that help preserve equipment and provide security for vessels parked around southeast Asia are busier than they have been for years.



A popular lay-up anchorage near Indonesia's Batam island, a short hop from Singapore, is growing crowded, and firms such as Ocean Shipcare and Brubay Shipcare are running out of space at another at Brunei Bay, near Labuan, off northern Borneo.



"Where do we go next? It's a good question, because we are trying to explore some other areas also," said Kanen Senasendram, base manager at Ocean Shipcare, which operates in Brunei Bay. He says he may need to hire more staff.



The industry is battling chronic oversupply, languishing oil prices and lacklustre container shipments as China's weaker growth weighs on global trade.



And the worst is yet to come this year, as large deliveries loom of vessels - such as those that tow oil rigs or ships that service drilling units - ordered during boom times in 2013-2014.



Wilhelmsen Ship Management, part of Norwegian-based global shipping and logistics group Wilh. Wilhelmsen Holding ASA , said it has about 60 ships in its lay-up care in Brunei Bay: the highest since the depths of the global financial crisis in 2009.



"This is the busiest I have seen the lay-up industry for a long time, probably since at least 1993," said Phil Shearer, managing director of shipping services firm Marine Assurance.



"1993 was bad, but the container and bulk markets were not also down."



OIL GLUT

Soaring output has left global oil markets awash with crude, causing traffic jams of tankers at ports in the Middle East, China and global storage hub Singapore, as buyers take advantage of cheap fuel.



But the glut has also driven oil prices down by up to 70 percent since 2014, making deepwater drilling unprofitable and prompting companies to cut back drastically on new exploration.



That has sharply reduced demand for offshore vessels such as drillships, and also for oil rigs.



While some are stacking up in anchorages around the North Sea, West Africa and the United States, the biggest lay-up hub is in Southeast Asian waters around Singapore, a location free from cyclonic storms due to its proximity to the equator.



About 1,300 offshore support vessels are lying idle worldwide, among them about 600 platform supply vessels (PSVs) and anchor handling tug supply vessels (AHTS), Lee Keng Lin, chief operating officer at PACC Offshore Services Holdings (POSH) told Reuters.



Most of the ships clogging these maritime parking lots are in so-called cold lay-up, meaning they are basically shut down and their crew signed off - a tacit admission from the owners that they do not expect any work for them for at least a year.



For companies with strong balance sheets the market turmoil represents an opportunity to replace old fleets cheaply, Marine Assurance's Shearer said.



STACK OR SCRAP?

"Cold stacked" vessels still require maintenance - from dehumidifying interiors and greasing exposed metal to putting security guards on board.



But for certain offshore support vessels (OSVs) that can cost up to $9,000-a-day to operate, ship management company Thome Group estimates running costs can be cut by 80 percent.



Currently 5,480 such vessels are in operation, totalling 10.1 million deadweight tonnes according to Clarkson, the British shipping services firm. Another 450 vessels, equivalent to 12.5 percent of the current fleet in tonnage are on order, with the majority set for delivery this year.



At the same time, charter rates are tumbling, hitting companies such as POSH and Pacific Radiance. Average charter rates for a large anchor handling OSV are down to about $16,000 per day, less than half the level in 2014, Clarkson data showed.



"The problem is the oversupply. There is a lot old tonnage out there. And what has to happen is - people need to scrap," said Phillip Chamberlain, chief operating officer at Thome Offshore Management.



But that is easier said than done, as there is very little scrap value in OSVs. A medium-sized OSV could yield around 2,000 tonnes of scrap metal, compared with 42,000 tonnes for a very large crude carrier (VLCC) - a difference of between $500,000 and $11 million based on current scrap prices, shipping data showed.



Crude prices have rebounded about 85 percent since hitting 12-year lows of around $27 a barrel in the first quarter, supported by falling U.S. production, and climbed above $50 a barrel last week for the first time in 2016.



That could bring some offshore vessels back into service. A recovery in oil prices to $65-70 a barrel would start to reactivate idled vessels, said shipbroker Banchero Costa.



Still prices remain less than half their level in mid-2014 and world oil supply remains in a glut.



For now, Ocean Shipcare's Senasendram is requesting the authorities for more space to stack ships.



"Most of the owners know that Brunei Bay is full. But some owners still send enquiries, for them we have to say: sorry. They have to find other places."



Reporting By Keith Wallis and Aradhana Aravindan
The U.S. Coast Guard is scheduled to discontinue 166 navigational aids within the Virginia Inside Passage (VIP) due to shoaling and other navigational safety concerns throughout the area.

Fixed aids to navigation will be removed as Coast Guard resources permit over the next several years and will be listed under an Advance Notice in future Local Notice to Mariners.

The decision follows a 2013 proposal, which identified 241 navigational aids for removal. The Army Corps of Engineers completed water surveys in 2015, and the Coast Guard, working with the state of Virginia, completed an environmental assessment in March. Following the public comment period, the Coast Guard evaluated 42 public comments and took feedback from local, state and congressional members.

The Coast Guard will continue to maintain navigational aids in Wachapreague Inlet, Great Machipango Inlet, Chincoteague Inlet and certain sections in the vicinity of Quinby Creek/Inlet that are scheduled to be dredged periodically by the Army Corps of Engineers to maintain a safe, navigable waterway. Additionally, it was determined natural deep water exists near Folley Creek, Wallops Island and at the southern tip of the VIP just northeast of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge where portions are planned to be remarked with floating buoys because the fixed aids no longer mark good water. The Coast Guard will keep or replace 52 aids and will reevaluate 23 aids upon conclusion of dredging projects.

The Coast Guard is responsible for providing navigational systems, information and services that enable safe navigation. Many of the aids within the VIP no longer accurately mark the waterway and may be misleading to the mariner  a condition potentially more dangerous than having no aids to navigation at all.

The Coast Guard continues to work with federal, state and local partner agencies regarding the viability of marking the waterways; however, the respective waterways must be reasonably stable and of sufficient depth for the Coast Guard to safely service the area.

"Removing 166 navigational aids is not a decision we take lightly," said Capt. Jerry Barnes, the 5th Coast Guard District chief of prevention. "With our decision, we are balancing the needs of the local communities with the availability of federal funds to maintain these waterways. Our navigational aids guide mariners, and the presence of navigational aids signifies the Coast Guard deems a waterway safe. With the extent of shoaling in these areas, we are unable to provide a safe navigation system and cannot in good conscience continue to mark them."
The PALFINGER Group has signed today the acquisition of 100 per cent of the shares in Herkules Harding Holding AS and thus, the globally operating Harding Group. The seller is the Norwegian private equity fund Herkules. Harding is one of the leading suppliers of lifesaving equipment and lifecycle services for maritime installations and ships. Through this acquisition, PALFINGER will add new products and an international service network to its marine business. The final closing of this acquisition of Harding by PALFINGER is contingent on the approval of the authorities. Both parties have agreed not to disclose the purchase price.



Styrk Bekkenes, CEO of Harding, is very enthusiastic about the acquisition. PALFINGER is a perfect match for Harding. Our combined range of products and services will be unique in todays marine industry. We will stand stronger together and see huge advantages for both the equipment and service side of our business. For our customers, this will be a huge advantage, as we in the future will be able to offer services on more than one type of equipment during the same service assignment, Bekkenes elaborates.



The acquisition is the largest carried out in the history of the PALFINGER Group. PALFINGERs marine business will almost double its business volume and, with more than EUR 300 million, contribute substantially more than 20 per cent to the Groups revenue in the future. The service segment would gain in importance immensely, and help to reduce PALFINGER MARINE business dependence on the oil price and therefore the investment propensity of the oil industry. With Harding, PALFINGER will come a huge step closer to its strategic aim of becoming an integrated supplier of marine deck equipment with global service locations.


Scrapping ships and no new builds is the fastest road to recovery for the dry bulk market

BIMCO President Philippe Louis-Dreyfus comments on BIMCOs latest market analysis:



The dry bulk market could become profitable again in 2019  but only if a series of extremely tough and sustained measures are taken by shipowners, year on year. This is the message from BIMCO President, Philippe Louis-Dreyfus, ahead of Posidonia 2016 as BIMCO releases new market analysis  The Road to Recovery  on what the dry bulk sector must do to return to profitability.



BIMCO has developed a new analysis model designed to highlight the actions needed for struggling shipping markets to recover  and to be able to track the progress of the recovery. Using this model, BIMCO has developed a zero supply side growth scenario for recovery of the dry bulk market. This scenario requires shipowners to neutralise the delivery of new ships every year by scrapping an equal amount of capacity from the existing fleet.



Commenting on the new analysis Mr Louis-Dreyfus described the dry bulk market as being in a terrible condition. He said: We cannot expect to be helped by growth in demand, the recovery of the market is wholly and exclusively in the hands of us, the shipowners.



The medicine is not going to be easy to take, zero supply growth has been achieved only three times in recent history, during the 1980s and 1990s. The task ahead of us is huge and must be sustained year after year.



We need to demolish an enormous number of ships and refrain from building new ships.



BIMCO President Philippe Louis-Dreyfus also insists that scrapping older vessels is not only a good way forward to a better market, it is also an essential measure in favour of the environment and, last but not least, the safety of crews.



The first piece of analysis using this model focuses on the dry bulk sector, but BIMCO will later also use the model to analyse fundamental changes in other shipping markets.
China will "pressure" the United States on maritime issues at talks in Beijing next week because of Chinese concern about an increased U.S. military presence in the disputed South China Sea, a major state-run newspaper said on Tuesday.



China has been angered by what it views as provocative U.S. military patrols close to islands China controls in the South China Sea. The United States says the patrols are to protect freedom of navigation.



"Beijing will pressure Washington over maritime issues during the upcoming Strategic and Economic Dialogue, as the United States' increasing military presence in the South China Sea is among China's major concerns," the official China Daily said, citing unidentified officials.



China claims most of the South China Sea, through which $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have overlapping claims.



This month, Beijing demanded an end to U.S. surveillance near China after two Chinese fighter jets carried out what the Pentagon said was an "unsafe" intercept of a U.S. military reconnaissance aircraft over the South China Sea.



The South China Sea is also likely to feature at a June 3-5 security forum in Singapore known as the Shangri-La Dialogue.



China's Defence Ministry said on Tuesday that Admiral Sun Jianguo, a deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission, would lead China's delegation at the Singapore talks.



At the Beijing talks with the United States, which U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will attend, other issues will also be on the table.



China will bring up the issue of self-ruled Taiwan - claimed by Beijing but which elected a pro-independence party to power in January - as well as the situation on the Korean peninsula, the China Daily added.



"The two countries have differing pursuits on major issues at the strategic level. However, the two still have many common interests," the paper said.



"Whether it is on the South China Sea issue or on the Korean Peninsula issue, the two countries have a shared security goal to maintain regional stability," it added.



The newspaper did not elaborate.



China is reclusive North Korea's only major ally but has been angered by Pyongyang's nuclear and missile tests and signed up to tough U.N. sanctions against it in March.



Reporting by Ben Blanchard
Signal Mutual Indemnity Association, a self-insured group provider of Longshore benefits, presented MSHS President Are Friesecke with the Francis R. Sharp Executive Leadership In Safety award at the associations meeting in Park City, Utah. Friesecke was selected from more than 240 other member CEOs in recognition for the steady and innovative improvements in safety under his leadership.

Gunther Hoock, Signals Vice President of Safety Resources, read several remarks about Frieseckes leadership from MSHS team members, including, When Are says, Our people are our most important asset., he means it, and he backs it up with his support, and his leadership.

Hoock added, I would say it this way. Are is making it personal, and taking it personal. Signal Mutual even uses examples of MSHS processes as training guides for other Mutual Members.

In his acceptance remarks, Friesecke was quick to give credit to his team, Team and consistency make it work. I have trust in my people. We work hard. We work on cruise ships, cargo ships and power plants. We work coast to coast. If I did not have this trust in my people, they would not be able to perform their jobs in the field.
Ports and vessel operators challenge what they call flawed pilotage fees

A coalition of U.S. Great Lakes ports, vessel operating companies and maritime trade associations today filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging the U.S. Coast Guards 2016 increase in Great Lakes pilotage rates, the American Great Lakes Ports Association (AGLPA) announced.

The complaint was filed by a coalition including the AGLPA, along with the Shipping Federation of Canada and the U.S. Great Lakes Shipping Association, as well as vessel operating companies Fednav International Ltd, Canfornav Inc., Polish Steamship Company, Spliethoff Transport, Brochart Shipping and Wagenborg Shipping.

The coalition disputes the agency's proposed 58 percent increase in pilotage fees to be implemented over 2016 and 2017, arguing flaws in the agency's work.

Great Lakes pilotage costs have gone up 114 percent over the last 10 years. The Coast Guard wants to increase them another 58 percent by 2017. These increases are unsustainable and will ultimately erode the viability of international trade through Great Lakes ports, said Will Friedman, President of the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority.

Steve Fisher, Executive Director of the American Great Lakes Ports Association, said, Pilotage is currently one of the single largest costs to vessel operators engaged in international trade on the Great Lakes. On average, the daily cost of a pilot now exceeds the cost of chartering the entire cargo ship and its crew.

Under federal law, all oceangoing vessels operating on the Great Lakes Seaway System are required to hire local pilots to assist with navigation. The U.S. Coast Guard regulates all aspects of Great Lakes pilotage and has granted three private companies a monopoly to provide these services. Rates are set annually by the Coast Guard through a federal rulemaking.

In its 2016 rate-setting, the Coast Guard decided to expand the number of pilots, increase pilot compensation to $326,000/year, and ensure that pilots have 10 days off each month during the nine-month shipping season.

In response to runaway pilotage costs, Rich Cooper, CEO of Ports of Indiana, said, Shippers already face tremendous handicaps and higher costs when operating in the Great Lakes. Adding this excessive fee will discourage companies from doing business in the Great Lakes region and could shut down a vital transportation system.

John Loftus, Executive Director of the Port of Detroit, said, The Coast Guard maintains a Great Lakes pilotage system largely unchanged since the 1960s. It is time that the agency modernize its approach, identify cost efficiencies and protect the thousands of jobs dependent on the Great Lakes navigation system.

In its complaint, the coalition argued that the Coast Guard violated the Administrative Procedures Act by making arbitrary and unsubstantiated decisions during development of the 2016 pilotage rates. The plaintiffs have asked the court to remand the rulemaking back to the Coast Guard for revision.
Strategic Marine announced the kick-off of its first collaboration with PT. Pelayaran Tanjung Kumawa, expecting to deliver an exclusive luxury crewboat in November this year.



The vessel is currently under construction at Strategic Marines facility in Vietnam, said Rob Boersma, Senior Business Development Manager of Strategic Marine. This 24-metre luxury catamaran, with capacity for 72 passengers, will be built to the highest industry standard with sixty reclining seats on main deck and a lounge area on its upper deck.



The luxury crewboat will transfer crews from shore to LNG and natural gas processing plant in Indonesias oil and gas industry. Strategic Marine is working closely with Incat Crowther, the naval architect company appointed, to ensure the designs meeting all specific requirements.



This is Strategics first collaboration with PT. Pelayaran Tanjung Kumawa and we are honoured to be awarded the project as it is a clear testament to our competitive solutions, Boersma added. Strategic Marines flexibility in customising designs to meet clients requirements, excellent track record delivering high quality vessels, and competitive pricing, led us to secure the contract.



This contract award highlights Strategic Marines outstanding performance in aluminium ferry construction. As of the first quarter of 2016, current orders received for aluminium vessels reached 14, ranging between 24 to 70 metres.




Greek port workers walked off the job for a sixth day on Tuesday and marched through central Athens to protest the state-sanctioned selloff of the country's two largest ports, Piraeus and Thessaloniki.



Privatisations have been a pillar of a succession of international bailouts for Greece since 2010, but political resistance and bureaucracy has stymied the task. From an initial target of 50 billion in revenue from asset sales, Greece has barely managed to scrape together 3 billion euros.



Fearing layoffs, port workers have been on 48-hour rolling strikes since last week and have said they will not return to work unless their requests are addressed.



"Everything, taxes, bills, the living cost, is going up. Daily food has become more expensive. And myself, I don't know if I have job tomorrow," said port worker Antonis Peristerakis, 49, father of two children.



"I need security. I want to have food for my children. I don't want to look for a job at the age of 49."



Greece sealed last month the sale of a 67 percent stake in Piraeus Port to shipping giant China COSCO for 368.5 million euros.



CARGO OPERATIONS DISRUPTED

Piraeus Port's shareholders met on Tuesday to approve the 36-year concession between COSCO and the government. Some 200 port workers gathered outside a hotel building hosting the meeting to protest the sale.



The workers want COSCO to safeguard jobs for a minimum number of people, along with their current labour contracts, as part of the concession agreement. Piraeus port employs 1,100 people.



The strike is mainly disrupting cargo operations but Greece's cruise ship-owners union has said that the walkout could also affect cruise ships docking in Piraeus.



Under the privatisation scheme, Athens is also selling a 67 percent stake in Thessaloniki Port. Sources close to the process have said the binding bids are expected at the end of September.



Denmark's container terminal operator APM Terminals , Phillipines-based International Container Terminal Services ICTS and Dubai-based P&O Steam Navigation Company (DP World) were strongly interested in the Thessaloniki port, the head of the privatisation agency said last month.



Greece aims at raising more than 2 billion euros from divesting state assets this year to meet a bailout target of about 6 billion euros from asset sales by 2018. The country has said it will use the proceeds to reduce its mountainous debt and boost growth through public investments.





By Angeliki Koutantou
Salvage divers from DonJon-Smit plan to begin an underwater survey of the hull of 833-foot U.S. cargo vessel Roger Blough, which ran aground Friday afternoon on Gros Cap Reef in Whitefish Bay in Lake Superior. The divers aim to identify any damage the freighter may have sustained during the grounding.

The U.S. Coast Guard said it continues to monitor and respond to the motor vessel, along with Canadian partners and company representatives.

A preventative booming was put in place, though the Coast Guard believes there is minimal chance of a fuel spill. A Coast Guard Auxiliary overflight is scheduled to take place Tuesday afternoon with a Coast Guard pollution responder aboard.

A National Transportation Safety Board representative arrived Monday night and is assisting Coast Guard investigators to determine the cause of the grounding.

Coast Guard Cutter Mobile Bay is on scene to enforce a 500-yard safety zone around the grounded freighter. The zone and salvage operations are said to have little impact on vessel traffic transiting through the area, according to the Coast Guard.
BREXIT Gold Diversification As Vote Fuels Market Uncertainty

BREXIT gold diversification is taking place due to concerns about the BREXIT vote on June 23rd as smart money institutions, banks and investors diversify into non negative yielding gold.



One of the oldest private banks in the world, Berenberg, established in 1590 and with assets under management of 40 billion said in an interview that demand for precious metals should see prices rebound by as much as 40 percent in the next two years to a level last seen in October 2012 according to Bloomberg:

Joh. Berenberg Gossler & Co. plans to increase its holdings of gold and other precious metals, betting that demand will be lifted by uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the U.S. elections and the vote on the U.K.s membership of the European Union. Chief Investment Officer Manfred Schlumberger, who joined the Hamburg-based bank in January, expects gold, silver and platinum markets to rebound by as much as 40 percent in the next two years to a level last seen in October 2012. For that reason, Berenberg plans to double the share of precious metals in its investment portfolio to about 10 percent in the weeks ahead, he said. The company manages about 40 billion euros ($45 billion) of assets. People used to go for 10-year German government bonds or treasuries, but as they dont offer any yield, more investors will consider buying bullion, Schlumberger, 58, said in an interview. It will be a segment that will benefit from political uncertainties like Brexit or a possible Donald Trump election victory. Schlumberger is targeting an entry-level price of between $1,200 and 1,230 an ounce. Bloomberg article here

The smart money, large institutional money, who understands diversification and golds function as a store of value continues to diversify into gold. There is an awareness of golds benefit as a hedging instrument and safe haven asset but also an awareness that the outlook for prices at these still depressed levels is very positive.

This is seen in the view of Berenberg, which is in the fifth century of its existence and one of the oldest owner managed banks in the world, who see gold returning to 2012 levels at $1,900/oz per ounce.

The less informed money continues not to appreciate the risks that are again building in the system. Risk appetite remains high and there is a distinct lack of awareness regarding how risks, such as BREXIT, may impact financial markets and traditional assets such as stocks, bonds, property and indeed deposits.

This update can be found on the GoldCore blog here.

Mark O'Byrne

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The states Department of Environmental Quality recently advised a Mountain Valley Pipeline partner that the agency could require the project to pay for hiring additional technical expertise to monitor erosion and sediment plans for pipeline construction.

The May 16 letter from DEQ to Megan Neylon, senior environmental coordinator for EQT Corp., suggests the department wont relinquish its watchdog role if the interstate natural gas transmission pipeline project moves forward.

DEQ sent an essentially identical letter to Dominion, a partner in the separate but similar Atlantic Coast Pipeline.

Opponents of both the Mountain Valley and Atlantic Coast projects have worried the department would abdicate its authority because of the projects large scope and Gov. Terry McAuliffes support for both.

The May 16 letter has helped ease those fears to some extent. But concerns remain along the routes.

Were encouraged that DEQ is finally requiring minimum standards for sedimentation and erosion control, said Tammy Belinsky, an environmental lawyer active in two groups opposing the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

Belinsky and many others in the Bent Mountain area have emphasized that the pipeline project could degrade the watershed for Bottom Creek, a portion of which is considered to be an exceptional state waters stream.

This is a significant first step, but conservation of a Tier III stream and its watershed demands more, including water quality monitoring, Belinsky said.

DEQs letter to the pipeline projects cites four project-specific requirements. Among other things, the department directs Mountain Valley and Atlantic Coast to file an erosion and sediment plan with DEQ and to post the plan online.

Bill Hayden, a DEQ spokesman, was asked whether there would be related public comment opportunities.

That is still being looked at, he said.

Hayden said the DEQ letters represent some of the chief concerns expressed by the public, about the level of departmental scrutiny of the projects.

The Dominion Pipeline Monitoring Coalition, coordinated by Rick Webb, has held DEQs feet to the fire for months, demanding clarity about how it would ensure compliance by the pipeline projects to erosion and sediment controls required by state law.

On Tuesday, Webb said the letters leave some questions unanswered.

Its not yet clear that DEQ will apply the same storm water management requirements that apply to other earth disturbing projects, Webb said. This could have profound implications for receiving streams and karst groundwater systems.

Excavating a trench both deep enough and wide enough to bury a 42-inch diameter steel pipe seems destined to challenge efforts to control erosion and sediment runoff, especially on the steep, rugged slopes the proposed pipelines would encounter along their routes.

For example, the Mountain Valley route through Roanoke County would traverse steep slopes on Poor Mountain and related trenching and right-of-way clearing would occur in soils determined to be especially susceptible to erosion.

The construction right-of-way would be 125 feet wide and possibly wider on steep slopes. The right-of-way would be cleared of trees, brush, stumps and rocks. Blasting might be necessary.

In September, Tom Gates, county administrator for Roanoke County, wrote McAuliffe, advocating that the DEQ play an active watchdog role.

We believe that robust DEQ involvement in project oversight is necessary to protect our surface waters and groundwater, he wrote.

As proposed, the Mountain Valley project would transport natural gas at high pressure from Wetzel County, West Virginia, to the Transco pipeline in Pittsylvania County, Virginia. The 301-mile, $3.5 billion project is a joint venture of EQT, NextEra Energy, RGC Midstream and others.

The $5 billion Atlantic Coast project would be about 600 miles long, originating in Harrison County, West Virginia, and traveling to Greensville County, Virginia, and then toward southern North Carolina. The project would include a 20-inch diameter branch pipeline of nearly 70 miles to Hampton Roads.

Both projects say they will supply natural gas from the Appalachian Basin to underserved markets in the Southeast or to electricity generating plants using natural gas as a fuel.

Atlantic Coast says 96 percent of its pipelines capacity has been subscribed by customers. Mountain Valley says its gas is fully subscribed.

As interstate pipelines, the projects need approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Both have applied to FERC for the required certificate and the commission is working on separate draft environmental impact statements for the projects.

Meanwhile, like Webb, Roberta Bondurant, a resident of Bent Mountain and an active pipeline opponent, said the DEQ letters fail to address significant concerns.

She cited potential impacts to Bottom Creek and a related letter she received in early 2016 from David Paylor, DEQs director. Paylor suggested the department typically does not devote resources to water quality monitoring for specific construction projects, noting that related pollution sources tend to be temporary.

Bondurant reacted.

Even before considering the colossally damaging effects of the unprecedented clearing of trees and vegetation, blasting, earth movement and trenching required for pipeline construction, DEQ is already deficient in developing a [water quality monitoring plan] for Bottom Creek, Bondurant said.

The damage wont be temporary, she said.

On Tuesday, Aaron Ruby, a spokesman for Atlantic Coast, and Natalie Cox, a spokeswoman for Mountain Valley, each said the project they represent has agreed to abide by DEQs requirements.
Tens of thousands of electric cars were to be rolling off assembly lines by now at a Mississippi factory funded by millions of dollars in foreign money. But last year, GreenTech Automotive, the company Terry McAuliffe co-founded and described as part of a rebirth for American manufacturing, produced just 25 vehicles and sold none, according to federal records.

A total of 75 people worked at the plant in rural Tunica County and at the companys Virginia office  less than a fifth the number of employees the company projected in 2011. The operation lost money from 2009 to Aug. 31, 2015, the records state. A GreenTech business plan pledges better days to come, but the federal agency that decides whether the companys foreign investors get green cards doesnt buy it. Company projections, a federal official wrote, are not credible by the preponderance of the evidence.

That conclusion helped prompt officials to reject an EB-5 green card application filed by a GreenTech investor from Inner Mongolia, China, according to a 34-page U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services decision obtained by The Roanoke Times. The document provides a rare and deep look inside the struggles of the company McAuliffe left behind in December 2012 to concentrate on his successful run for governor.

His foreign business dealings before taking up residence in the Executive Mansion are being investigated by the federal Department of Justice, James Cooper, an attorney for the governor, said last week. The governor has not been accused of wrongdoing.

Cooper has said officials have mentioned the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires people to register if they are seeking to influence the domestic or foreign policy of the United States on behalf of a foreign entity. CNN has reported that the Department of Justice investigation into McAuliffe began roughly a year ago. Federal authorities have declined to comment.

An inspector generals report published March 24, 2015, said McAuliffe received favorable treatment from former immigration services chief Alejandro Mayorkas in 2011, when the GreenTech chairman and future governor sought help getting EB-5 visas approved for foreign investors in his fledgling car company. Cooper said in an email to The Roanoke Times that McAuliffes lobbying of Mayorkas is not a focus of the probe. The governors lawyer could not be reached for further comment on whether GreenTech is part of the investigation in any respect.

Asked earlier this month about GreenTech, McAuliffe replied: Ive been out of the company three and a half years and I have no idea what theyre doing today.

Several months after losing the Democratic gubernatorial primary in 2009, McAuliffe advocated for GreenTech to Virginia economic officials, who raised concerns about the companys reliance on EB-5 money.

Under the federal program, foreign nationals who have invested at least $500,000 in a domestic business venture may receive green cards if they show their investment generated at least 10 jobs or comparable economic value. An investor seeking a green card may present either tax records of 10 qualifying new employees or a company business plan that demonstrates a need for 10 new employees and lists their likely hiring dates.

Nicholas Colucci, chief of the federal immigrant investor program, signed the decision that said companywide payroll at GreenTech, which operates an office in McLean in addition to the Tunica factory, totaled 75 people. The decision also dismissed a company projection that GreenTech would employ 125 people this year, 175 next and 250 in 2018.

GreenTech said three years ago it had lined up almost 150 EB-5 investors; the company would have needed to create at least 1,500 jobs, or exhibit the potential to do so, for those petitioners to win green cards.

That number seemed possible in the fall of 2009, shortly after McAuliffe joined Xiaolin Charlie Wang in founding GreenTech. The company touted plans to Mississippi officials to bring to the state a $1 billion plant employing 1,500 people.

A former Wall Street securities lawyer raised in China, Wang led the firm with McAuliffe, a revered Democratic fundraiser who guided longtime friend Hillary Clintons unsuccessful 2008 bid for the partys presidential nomination.

Following his earlier gubernatorial defeat, McAuliffe turned his pitchman skills to GreenTech, describing it as part of a wave that would reshape American manufacturing as well as automobile travel. A new line would feature two-seat, low-speed electric vehicles with ranges of 50 to 115 miles per charge.

GreenTech, McAuliffe predicted, would producethousands of high-quality manufacturing jobs starting with the factory in Mississippi and possibly including a second plant in Virginia.

I want to create jobs here that will be around for the next 20, 30, 40 years, McAuliffe told an interviewer in 2011.

A site near Martinsville was included among potential locations for a GreenTech plant when McAuliffe first queried state officials about locating in Virginia. But GreenTech never came through when asked to provide Virginia economic officials with more information.

Tunica County, in Mississippis northwest corner, embraced GreenTech, hoping to diversify an economy built on agriculture until the 1990s, when casinos came to the region. A March 2013 GreenTech prospectus described investments of $73 million by 146 EB-5 investors. And the company sought more.

In mid-2011, state and local officials in Mississippi packaged loans, tax rebates, exemptions and other support worth at least $8 million for GreenTech, which agreed to invest $60 million and create 350 jobs paying at least $35,000 annually apiece by the end of 2014. A temporary plant in Horn Lake, Mississippi, hosted a celebration attended by former President Bill Clinton and then-Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour in summer 2012.

Five months later, McAuliffe left the company. In fall 2014, with McAuliffe in the governors mansion and his GreenTech shares sold, the company finally opened its Tunica factory. The plant was smaller than expected. Hiring moved slowly. By the end of the year, GreenTech had reached neither its investment nor jobs goals, said Jeff Rent, a spokesman for the Mississippi Development Authority.

Last year, GreenTech asked officials to renegotiate its 2011 incentives deal, Rent said.

At this time, Rent said, there is not a modified agreement, but the state of Mississippi is working with the company to best protect its investment and to keep Mississippians working at the plant.

Local officials are undaunted.

When you come in and start a new business, Tunica Mayor Chuck Cariker said, theres always setbacks that you dont foresee. As long as youre working to meet the goal and obligation, Im glad theyre here.

Coluccis decision was less sanguine.

In a year when new vehicle sales in the U.S. hit a record 17.5 million, GreenTech records showed that as of December 2015, the company had produced 25 vehicles  10 for demonstration, 10 for engineering and testing and five for marketing, according to the Colucci decision. GreenTech business plans submitted in the companys early years turned out to be unattainable.

The projections for this company have gone from, in July 2009, a factory, machine shop, office building, museum and residential housing while having the expectation of being able to produce one million vehicles a year, to the December 2015 business plan where GTA has produced 25 vehicles, the decision said.

Past struggles cast a shadow over company forecasts, Colucci wrote, describing GreenTech as experiencing a general lack of credibility from the failure to meet any projected timelines. Colucci raised doubts about the companys production targets of 2,050 vehicles in 2016, 6,200 in 2017 and 12,400 in 2018.

Regulators said they had yet to see proof of a market for the companys products, which include a gasoline-engine pickup and van and the electric MyCar, which is 5 feet shorter than a typical 14-foot American sedan, specifications show.

Neither federal immigration officials nor a lawyer named in Coluccis decision would comment on the document. The investor whose visa application was rejected could not be reached for comment.

Investors rejected for EB-5 visas can appeal but must have federal approval to enter and remain in the country. A GreenTech financial prospectus says investors denied green cards may request repayment of their investment.

Immigration services spokesman Steve Blando said investor petitions are judged on a case-by-case basis and denied for failure to meet specific eligibility requirements. He declined to summarize agency rulings on GreenTech investor petitions or to address the outcomes for other GreenTech investors who relied on the company meeting its business plans to back their visa applications.

Asked if he still wished GreenTech had located in Virginia, McAuliffe said: Its not fair for me to talk. Im not part of the leadership of the company.

Wang did not respond to multiple requests for comment left at his McLean office and another left at his Great Falls home. Minnie Xin, Wangs assistant, said Wednesday that he was out of the country on business. She said she did not know when he would return.

Xin said she could not locate a representative of Gulf Coast Funds Management, GreenTechs fundraising affiliate, to talk to a reporter. Gulf Coast is based in the same McLean office as GreenTech. The firm formerly was headed by Tony Rodham, Hillary Clintons brother, who traveled across China with Wang seeking EB-5 investors.

Eighty-five percent of EB-5 green card applicants in fiscal year 2015 were from China, according to the State Department.

Virginia economic officials have softened their resistance to EB-5 since McAuliffe took office, according to emails obtained by The Roanoke Times.

In 2015, a Shanghai law firm posted a Facebook ad soliciting EB-5 money for China-based UniTao Pharmaceuticals a few months after the company said it was idling a Petersburg project where it planned to invest $22.5 million and hire 376 people. McAuliffe helped broker that deal, meeting with company officials in China to discuss a project in Virginia and approving a $1 million grant for the company. UniTao did not collect the grant.

Signed into law in 1990, EB-5 was largely obscure until the recent recessionary credit crunch sent investments under the program soaring. Concerns also began rising.

In April, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accused two men and their companies of misusing portions of $350 million raised from EB-5 investors to build a ski resort and biomedical research plant in Vermont. A civil complaint outlined what regulators called a massive, eight-year fraudulent scheme.

U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, a longtime EB-5 supporter, said the case proves the need for reform.

Congress has authorized EB-5 to continue until Sept. 30 while lawmakers debate fixes. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has said the program is deeply flawed and lacks adequate oversight.
Vehicle thefts cost consumers and insurance companies millions of dollars each year. This drives up the cost of insurance premiums and has far reaching social effects, so local law enforcement agencies are teaming up to combat the problem.

The Martinsville Sheriffs Office, Martinsville Police Department, Henry County Sheriffs Office, Martinsville Fire Department, and the Virginia State Police H.E.A.T. (Help Eliminate Auto Theft) Program have partnered to offer residents an opportunity to take advantage of a program in which their vehicles Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) is etched into the window glass of the vehicle, allowing police officers to quickly identify stolen cars, according to a release from the city sheriffs office.

The agencies will promote the H.E.A.T. program and the VIN Etching on Tuesday when the Martinsville Mustangs play Savannah at Hooker Field. The first 200 adults in attendance will receive insulated bags, key chains, and other promotional items, the release stated.

The VIN Etching is free of charge and is open to all residents of Martinsville and Henry County. In addition, some automobile insurance companies offer discounts for etched vehicles, according to the release.

Any resident who would like to participate in the program can come to the Martinsville Fire Station No. 1, located at 65 W. Church St., from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday. You will need your vehicle registration card and operators license, and your name must appear on the registration card, the release stated.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions web site, motor vehicle injuries are a leading cause of death among children in the United States, but many of these deaths can be prevented. Buckling children in age and size-appropriate car seats, booster seats, and seat belts reduces serious and fatal injuries by more than half, the release said.

Car seat use reduces the risk for death to infants (aged less than 1 year) by 71 percent; and to toddlers (aged 14 years) by 54 percent in passenger vehicles.

Booster seat use reduces the risk for serious injury by 45 percent for children aged 48 years when compared with seat belt use alone.

For older children and adults, seat belt use reduces the risk for death and serious injury by approximately half, the release stated.

The staff of the Martinsville Fire Department will be available on Saturday to assist with inspection and proper installation of Child Safety Seats.
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In a recent press release, Dr. Anne Schuchat, a senior Obama administration official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), stated that Everything we look at with this [Zika] virus seems to be a bit scarier than we initially thought. As of April 2016, there have been 700 confirmed cases related to the Zika Virus in the United States.

Image: Day DonaldsonThere have also been 358 cases in US-controlled territories, including 32 pregnant women and seven cases in which the disease was sexually transmitted. In February 2016, The World Health Organization declared a global health emergency due to epidemic levels of microcephaly and other neurological disorders caused by the Zika virus.

Earlier this year, the Obama administration requested an emergency appropriation of $1.8 billion to address the danger posed by Zika in the US, but this was rejected by Congress, on the basis that the administration should first use money set aside to combat Ebola. As a result, the CDC has stated that public health officials will have to divert money from flu vaccine, malaria, and other state-led prevention programs.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has stated that precautionary measures must be taken quickly, as the more we learn about the neurological aspects, the more we look around and say this is very serious. He also noted that officials have been forced to take money from other areas of non-Zika research to start. We couldn't just stop and wait for the money.

As with everything under capitalism, the public health system is suffering from capitalist crisis and austerity, and millions of peoples lives are directly affected and in danger.

What is the Zika Virus?

Originally isolated in Uganda in 1947, Zika virus is a flavivirus related to yellow fever, dengue, the West Nile and Japanese encephalitis viruses. Zika is spread primarily through mosquito bites, and often also through sexual transmission. Other possible ways in which the virus spreads is through pregnancy (mother-to-child infection) and blood transfusions.

Symptoms of the Zika virus include mild fever, rashes, headaches, and pink eye. While studies have shown that only one in every five persons exposed to the Zika virus is actually infected, the recent Zika epidemic is related to pregnancy problems and birth defects. At the moment, there is no vaccine or preventive drug for Zika infections.

Zika virus in South America

It was not until 2015 that the Zika virus received widespread attention from medical professionals and others. Thousands of infected Brazilian women gave birth to babies with with undersized skulls and brains. As of March 2016, there have been a total of 6,158 microcephaly related cases just in the country of Brazil.

At the moment, doctors in Brazil are having a difficult time understanding the relationship between Zika and brain damage in unborn children. The Guardian recently reported on the alarming rise in microcephaly cases in mostly working class neighborhoods, such as Recife: Oddly, the babies in Recife were of normal weight and most had good Apgar scores, measuring heart rate, breathing, muscle tone, reflexes and skin colour at birth. They were able to breastfeed. But their chances of normal development with the sort of calcifications of the brain that were seen on CT scans were zero. Some had spasticity. Many were irritable From the beginning, the children would scream and scream and scream. It is very hard for families coping with that.

Many doctors began to discover further similar cases of brain damage in unborn fetuses, describing the situation as a feeling of being in a horror movie and having no cure for it. While at the moment, there is no clear correlation between microcephaly and the Zika virus, many doctors in Brazil are concluding that Zika infects the pregnant mother, where the viral infection damages the brain and cortex of the unborn baby before eventually dying out.

Among adult cases, Zika has also been the source of the Guillain-Barre syndrome, a muscle-weakening disease that is related to paralysis. Throughout South America the Zika Virus is resonating with Guillain-Barre syndrome. In countries like Colombia, for instance, there have been more than 227 cases of the syndrome whilst there have also been a total of 64,839 Colombians infected with the Zika virus. In other neighboring countries, there has been a rise in the number of Guillain-Barre syndrome and microcephaly cases. In Venezuela it is disputed whether the number of Zika virus cases is as low as 3,700 or actually as high as 400,000. This large discrepancy between the government and doctors with regard to how many people have actually been infected with Zika is a mere reflection of how ill-planned the nations leaders and administrations are in dealing with this situation.

Zika Virus: Medical Assault on the Working Class

It should come as no surprise that most of the microcephaly and other related cases are occurring in the most underdeveloped neighborhoods in Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, and other Latin American countries. In Recife, and other favelas (slums), the residents have previously been exposed to other deadly diseases through the Zika virus-carrying mosquito (Aedes aegypti), such as dengue and chikungunya. While the number of cases in these outbreaks were fewer than the number of Zika cases, there has been no proper treatment to prevent the Aedes aegypti mosquito from spreading further. In fact water storage in areas like Recife is not properly maintained, as water pools in the bottom of open plastic bowls and buckets where mosquitoes can breed. In most favelas water is only supplied on one in every four days, which forces residents to preserve and ration the water as efficiently as possible. This creates ideal conditions for mosquito-breeding.

While many residents have been advised by national health officials to use mosquito repellent, such products are financially inaccessible. As one resident states, They tell us to turn bottles upside down and cover the water tank and use repellent. We cant afford to buy repellent. They say to use it but they dont give it to us.

In these areas, where many residents live on less than $220 per month, access to screened windows and mosquito repellent is considered a luxury. Furthermore, there is no proper provision of public services in many of these favelas. Jardim Jandaia and other neighborhoods, for instance, are plagued by informal garbage dumps, and in some places, raw sewage trickles along sidewalks.

The disparity in income inequality is extremely visible in Brazil, with these favelas being situated side by side with luxury shopping centers, high-rises with shining glass windows and air conditioning. Furthermore, the hospitals surrounding these favelas serve patients with private insurance or who can afford the fees (who dont usually have or carry the virus).

At other public health clinics that surround the vicinity, such as Quintino Facci II, the situation is different. These clinics are filled with untrained doctors or medical students with inadequate quantities of materials and medicines. Dozens of patients, particularly pregnant women, wait for four to seven hours to be examined by a doctor, in which they are treated with saline solution to prevent the dehydration caused by dengue rather than Zika.

At private hospitals, on the other hand, patients are called in for regular check ups that usually last for little more than an hour, and they are able to leave with prevention kits and other materials.

According to the Guardian, the options that face favela residents are in complete contrast with the options available in upper middle class areas:

Regardless of the cause, those on lower incomes have fewer choices when deciding how to deal with the risks. Some wealthy pregnant women are quitting their jobs and taking refuge overseas until their babies are born. Others are having illegal pre-emptive abortions at private clinics rather than take the risk of their foetus being diagnosed with microcephaly closer to term.

Poorer women cannot afford to run anywhere that would make a difference and are less likely to be able to pay for a termination.

This is not the first time that poor sanitation, polluted water supplies, inadequate healthcare and inadequate social services have had a massive impact during a viral epidemic in Brazil or elsewhere. Prior to Zika, mosquito-born viruses such as dengue and Chikungunya were (and still are) a major issue in low-income, working class neighborhoods, yet no preemptive action was taken by state officials to resolve these problems.

Similarly, in southern Mexico the Zika virus is becoming a rampant issue, as poor neighborhoods like Tixtla, and areas in Guerrero, Chiapas and Oaxaca lack adequate water supplies. For many families, water comes once every week or even as little as once every two weeks. As with the favelas in Brazil, these small quantities of water, contained as they are in storage tanks, become ideal breeding grounds for mosquitos.

U.S. Imperialism and the Zika Virus

From the creation of the Monroe Doctrine, to the construction of the Panama Canal, through to the modern day, U.S. imperialism has continued to encroach across Latin America in all spheres, including medicine and public health. The establishment of multinational pharmaceutical companies with investments in countries like Brazil and Colombia could not have taken place without the assistance of philanthropic organizations such as the Rockefeller Foundation. Through the creation of public health initiatives and services, such as free health clinics in favelas, such groups laid the basis for the participation of multinational pharmaceutical and private insurance companies. The stranglehold of such companies over the prices of vaccines, to which they hold the patents and intellectual rights, is guaranteed by their complete domination of the medical industries in these countries. Those who desperately need access to care, such as favela residents, are now unable to afford the materials and medical assistance, the supply of which is controlled by these foreign companies. The absence of well-equipped hospitals and clinics trained in dealing with pandemics is what ultimately results in ill-planned emergency actions such as those we are now seeing in the Zika case.

Another recent example of this was given by the handling of the Ebola epidemic, where international drug companies had again left countries in Africa without a strong infrastructure of primary care clinics and hospitals. For these companies to have taken an interest in tackling Ebola, it would have to have first been a profit making opportunity, which it was not. We previously wrote (20 October 2014) the following at the time of the outbreak:

(...) questions have to asked about the preparedness and even the willingness of the big international drugs companies in terms of their research and development. Diseases that affect the low income countries have always been the ones with the lowest priority for the drug corporations because there is no profit in them. They have therefore had the least amount of research and development.

(...) Lassa fever and Ebola have relatively few resources committed to them so the development of vaccinations is slow at best. But now that there is a serious possibility of this disease spreading outside of Africa and given its very high mortality, we can now expect western government to direct big Pharma to commit far more significant resources to vaccination development.

Zika in the United States

Photo: phillies1fan777/Public DomainAs of April 2016, there have been 358 cases related to the Zika virus in the United States, mostly concentrated in Puerto Rico. In Puerto Rico, where government austerity measures combine with its water shortages, poor neighborhoods are being hit hard.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, A quarter of the islands 3.5 million people will probably get the Zika virus within a year, and eventually 80 percent or more may be infected.

Through the attacks on the working class by the current right-wing government, led by the Popular Democratic Party, there has been a series of privatizations affecting chemical companies that would otherwise have provided the insecticides used to exterminate mosquitoes. According to the New York Times, thousands of civic workers needed to fight mosquitoes have been laid off. Instead, the government has been using drug abuse convicts to dispose and clean cemeteries, abandoned houses, auto junkyards, unsealed septic tanks and piles of old tires. In addition, the mosquitos carrying the virus have grown resistant to the previous pesticides, a devastating blow to the attempts of the chemical companies and the CDC to contain the situation.

In Puerto Rico too, many of the expenses associated with hospital visits, as well as prevention kits and abortions (which are legal in Puerto Rico), are beyond the means of many.

Doctors and scientists are predicting that the Zika virus will become a serious issue across the United States as a whole, especially in areas like Flint, Los Angeles, West Baltimore, and other barren neighborhoods where unsanitary water systems could create a breeding ground for mosquitoes.

While areas like Baltimore do not have the particular climate in which the aedes aegypti mosquito is able to breed, in low income communities, with less access in general to health care, symptoms may also be more likely to go unnoticed as mosquito species have adopted survival and reproductive strategies that depend upon the artificial urban environments created by humans. Meanwhile in areas that have climates that are hospitable for the mosquito, like Miami and New Orleans, theres potentially a greater danger because of the more hospitable climate for Aedes aegypti and, again, relatively high poverty rates.

The recent halt imposed by the White House on budgeting for the Zika virus, and the inability of the the Brazilian, Colombian, Venezuelan, Mexican, Puerto Rican and other Latin American governments in zones affected by the Zika outbreak to properly deal with the situation is a reflection of the crisis of the system itself. Whilst these respective governments have all agreed that the Zika virus is a global health emergency, no one is acting proactively to resolve the issue.

Whilst many research companies, such as Intrexon, Cerus and Inovio, are in the process of developing possible vaccines for the Zika virus, many investors remain unconvinced that the virus is worth investing in. According to an article in Forbes magazine, the CEO of Inovio, Joseph Kim, claimed that it would take some time for such a vaccine to become a marketable asset due to the lack of urgency being shown in the United States. Such an attitude reflects the ruling classs general disinterest in solving the Zika epidemic.

In the past years, we have seen deadly viruses and diseases metamorphosing into global health emergencies, as we have seen with Ebola and dengue. Yet outcries soon die out once insufficient demand is found to satisfy the profit motive of the giant pharmaceutical companies. Furthermore, as in the case of Ebola, Zika treatments and prevention kits are not accessible for the majority of those who have been affected, as this is a virus that results from sanitary issuesa situation that is prominent in slums and poor working class neighborhoods across South America and the United States.

The failure to allocate resources and materials with which to eliminate the Zika virus is a reflection of the artificial scarcity that capitalism creates. The Zika virus is completely preventable  were repellents, nets, clean water, and sanitary incentives to be provided and implemented in Zika-infected areas. It is not a question of whether the capitalist class can afford to solve the problem but rather one of whether they can profit from it. It is the dislocation and mismanagement caused by cutting spending on public services, sanitary programs, and changes to water systems (in the case of Flint and Brazil) that encouraged the proliferation of the virus. Yet, it is the working class who are facing the burden of the virus. Whether a cure for Zika is found or not, its distribution among residents of the favelas and among the low-income residents of underdeveloped neighborhoods is extremely doubtful as it would be the same healthcare officials and distribution networks that previously refused to distribute repellants and preventions kits that would be charged with the distribution of a cure.

In Brazil, where abortion is illegal, backstreet abortions are not affordable for the majority of pregnant, Zika-infected women. Of the backstreet abortions that are conducted, many are not carried out properly due to a lack of medical equipment. Such abortions can cost anywhere from $800 to $4,000 USD.

In the recent period, Brazilian authorities have seized abortion pills from women who fear that they might be infected with Zika. Even in such a situation, providing pregnancy-ending alternatives to women in a country where abortion is in most cases illegal is proving to be nearly impossible.

Were Zika to find its way to the United States, it would stir yet another controversy as abortions remain inaccessible for many working class women. Just last year, a woman was sentenced to twenty years in prison for feticide. Whether it is Brazil or the United States, the same bourgeois morality exists, which uses intimidation to dissuade women from seeking abortions. As we have stated elsewhere:

Even though abortion has been legalized, it is not so simple for working class women to get one if they choose to have one. 58% of women seeking abortion are in their 20s and don't have a regular or high enough income, or a partner to help cover the costs. Most health care plans won't cover the cost of an abortion, which averages $500, but can approach $1,500 in the first trimester. 42% of women seeking abortions have an income level below the poverty linea percentage that has surely increased dramatically since 2008.

Capitalism: Humanitys illness

The Zika virus is a direct byproduct of a system that is fueled by market anarchy and profit. In a world where scientists and engineers have developed extraordinary methods in purifying water, from dirty river water to seawater, providing access to clean water in these neighborhoods should not pose any problems. It is capitalism itself which is no longer able to properly handle such crises when they occur, as we can see with the garbage and water situation in areas like Recife and Tixtla.

The solution to the Zika virus lies in first nationalizing the multinational pharmaceutical companies under workers control, which would then be able to provide the large quantities of medical supplies necessary to assist current Zika-infected patients, offer access to abortions for pregnant women, and distribute trained medical and sanitary staff able to protect and clean neighborhoods and install water systems capable of providing residents with more than enough water for their requirements, without the need for rationing. This is not on the ruling classs agenda, however, as this would mean cutting their profits and attacking their own interests. Capitalism itself is unable to resolve this taskit is in a crisis from which it cannot extricate itself. The only solution is a socialist solution, which will unleash the tremendous latent human potential and creativity that exists within society. Not only will we then be able to eliminate this deadly virus but we will ensure the elimination of poverty, hunger, war and disease in general, which are at the heart of these problems.
The Monkees 1969.jpg

Mickey Dolenz, Mike Nesmith and Davey Jones of The Monkees seen here in a 1969 publicity photograph.

The Monkees popularity was on the wane by the time they appeared at the Coliseum on the Eastern States Exposition grounds in West Springfield during the summer of 1969.

The quartet was manufactured in 1965 by Screen Gems for teen consumption and clearly modeled on The Beatles' "A Hard Days Night" persona.

But by the start of 1969, things had soured.

The Monkees' once-popular TV series had been canceled by NBC. Their feature film debut, "Head," was a commercial and critical flop. And the band was no longer churning out Top 40 hits.

Bass guitarist Peter Tork, unhappy with the atmosphere that had surrounded recent recording sessions, was so miserable that he bought himself out of the remaining years on his contract.

Bandmates Davey Jones, Mickey Dolenz and Mike Nesmith carried on as a trio and launched a North American tour in March 1969.

The performance at the Coliseum on June 20, 1969 was the group's sole New England appearance that year. Tickets were priced at $3, $4 and $5.

Hours before the concert, The Monkees' comments on drug use became front-page news in Springfield.

The secretary of the Springfield Mental Health Association had invited the media to talk with the band at Storrowton Tavern, expecting The Monkees to echo her group's strong anti-drug stance.

Instead, one unidentified band member indicated he was pro-drugs, while Nesmith added, "Don't believe everything you read."

What songs were played on stage that Friday night is uncertain, but the band typically opened and closed their 1969 tour stops with a cover of Neil Diamond's "I'm a Believer." Hits like "Pleasant Valley Sunday" and "Daydream Believer" often made the setlist.

Following their stop in West Springfield, The Monkees' tour continued on to Milwaukee with later stops in Mexico City and Toronto. It came to a close on Dec. 6 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

It would prove to be the last tour for The Monkees until a partial reunion tour in 1986.

Of the 1969 tour, Dolenz once said, "(it) was like kicking a dead horse. The phenomenon had peaked."
joel-crouse-hero-628x378.jpg

Joel Crouse

(File Photo)

Local country artist Joel Crouse comes back to the area to perform at Mohegan Sun's Wolf Den on July 17 at 7 p.m.

A native of Holland, MA, Crouse moved to Nashville and in his still-young career has opened for Taylor Swift (Gillette Stadium) and Darius Rucker (The Big E).

He was featured on Rolling Stone's Artists to Watch list in September of 2014. The magazine described his music as "John Mayer meets Keith Urban meets Jake Owen."

Shows at Mohegan's Wolf Den are free and seating is offered on a first come-first served basis.
SPRINGFIELD - The Red Cross is helping three people displaced by a cellar fire at a multi-family home in the city's Upper Hill neighborhood.

Dennis Leger, aide to the Springfield Fire Commissioner, said the fire started between the ceiling and the first floor at around 6:27 p.m. Monday. No one was hurt.

The fire caused less than $5,000 worth of damage to one unit. Power was cut to two apartments, and three tenants will stay elsewhere until both are inhabitable again.

The cause of the fire has not been determined. The Springfield Arson & Bomb Squad is investigating.
HOLYOKE -- Bennett W. Walsh said Monday he officially takes over today as superintendent of the Holyoke Soldiers' Home.

But Walsh, a lieutenant colonel with 24 years in the U.S. Marine Corps, visited the state-run facility and held Memorial Day chats with residents and their families.

"Incredibly humbled, and the outpouring of people that have told me how much this place means to them and their families, it's overwhelming," said Bennett, a Springfield native.

Walsh is the son of Springfield City Councilor Kateri Walsh and Daniel Walsh, formerly the city of Springfield's veterans services director and a decorated Marine Corps veteran.

Specifics about Walsh's contract were unavailable Monday. The job was advertised with a yearly salary of $57,285 to $151,560.

The Holyoke Soldiers' Home is on Cherry Street overlooking Interstate 91. The facility employs more than 300 people, has 265 long-term care beds and 30 private rooms for veterans and serves 2,200 veterans a year with its in- and out-patient facilities. It was founded in 1952 and has a yearly budget of $23.1 million.

Walsh said that he was eager to begin as Holyoke Soldiers' Home superintendent and that the priority will be ensuring veterans get the care they deserve,

"It's a wonderful experience," he said. "It feels like it was meant to be."

A problem cited by Paul Barabani, who retired as Holyoke Soldiers' Home superintendent in January after five years, was that the state had failed to provide sufficient funding to run the facility. State officials disputed that and said the Holyoke Soldiers' Home was well-funded.

Walsh previously was executive officer with the U.S. Marine Corps at Parris Island in South Carolina. His extensive Marine experiences include being infantry platoon commander in Mogadishu, Somalia and commander of combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with training and recruitment duties, according to Walsh's resume and a state press release.

Walsh has a master's of arts in national security strategy from the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, a master's of arts in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts and a bachelor's of arts in political science from Providence College in Rhode Island, according to his resume.

Walsh and wife Shannon have four children and are relocating to Western Massachusetts, said a press release from the office of Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, who appointed Walsh earlier this month. Baker also visited the Holyoke Soldiers' Home Monday.

"Our mission is to provide the quality care that these veterans have earned through their service to our nation," Walsh said in a video (see above).



"I'm incredibly, not only humbled to be here, but excited because it's, being with the veterans, it's like a living history in here, just the battles that the men and women have fought in," he said.

Francisco A. Urena, secretary of the state Department of Veterans' Services, said he was confident Walsh will continue the commitment to care of veterans established at the Holyoke Soldiers' Home and a similar facility in Chelsea.

"He's an outstanding leader of Marines, somebody that knows the community and the community knows him," Urena said.

Baker had appointed Cheryl Lussier Poppe, superintendent of the Chelsea Soldiers' Home, interim director of the Holyoke Soldiers' Home after Barabani retired. She will return as Chelsea Soldiers' Home superintendent, the Baker press release said.

Barabani had been superintendent since 2011 and retired in 2002 as a colonel after 32 years in the Army National Guard.
GILL -- A body recovered from the Connecticut River on Monday afternoon was wearing clothes that appear to match the description of murder suspect Tyler Hagmaier.

Police Chief David W. Hastings said the body, which has not been positively identified, was discovered by town Selectman Greg Snedeker and his 8-year-old daughter. They found it at about 3:15 p.m. caught up in reeds near their boat dock about a mile downstream from the French King Bridge.

Hastings said Hagmaier was described as wearing a leather jacket, pink shirt and Nike shoes. The body appeared to be dressed in a similar way.

Police have been searching for Hagmaier, 24, since the death of 76-year-old Quincy College professor Vibeke Rasmussen in Plymouth on May 5. Rasmussen was stabbed more than 30 times. Police found the suspect's car near the French King Bridge.

"It's obvious that it's been in the water for an extended period of time, based on the appearance of it," said Hastings of the body.

A positive identification will come from the medical examiner's office. It's unclear how long that will take.

The Gill police and fire departments were on scene Monday along with the state police detective unit and dive team.
Invest Africa, the leading business and investment platform for African markets, and Standard Chartered Private Bank, a leading international private bank for emerging market clients, are pleased to announce a strategic partnership, focused on driving the growth of Standard Chartereds private banking services across the continent.

The new collaboration will involve a programme of targeted business development opportunities in key hubs such as London, Dubai and Cape Town to showcase the banks expertise and thought-leadership in areas like sustainable investing. Standard Chartereds relationship managers, investment advisors and product specialists are also able to leverage Invest Africas global reach, market intelligence and networking opportunities with fellow members.

Karen Taylor, CEO of Invest Africa said, In todays turbulent times, the importance of effective wealth management and succession planning has never been more evident. We look forward to supporting Standard Chartered Private Bank, as a leading private bank of choice across the Continent, to develop its business and find new ways of connecting through our network.

Demir Avigdor, Managing Director, Market Head, Private Banking, Europe and Africa, Standard Chartered Bank commented, Im delighted to announce our partnership with Invest Africa. The relationship shows our commitment to growing our private banking business in Africa and serving our clients in the continent, and supporting the long-term sustainable growth of the region.

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by Tanya Gazdik , May 31, 2016

Philadelphia is launching a $2 million campaign that promotes all there is to see and do in the historic areas of the city.

The effort, which broke during Memorial Day weekend, includes a new logo and creative advertising. It aims to redefine and rename the citys oldest area, now dubbed Historic Philadelphia. The campaign runs through 2017, when the new Museum of the American Revolution opens.

While the marketing effort touts the areas powerful place in the countrys founding, it also showcases the restaurants, bars, shops, galleries and attractions that make it appealing to current residents and visitors.

The media buy includes outdoor, online and radio placements. Nine Visit Philly channels (with one million fans and followers) are distributing original and user-generated history-themed content and engage with fans through organic and paid measures. All social efforts encourage the use of the #historicphilly hashtag as a way to identify traffic online and direct traffic on the ground in real-time.

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The new logo features a custom-illustrated Liberty Bell that exhibits a playful quality, along with the words Historic Philadelphia in a hand-drawn typeface, displaying youthfulness and energy. The colors were chosen as a fresh and modern alternative to the traditional red, white and blue commonly associated with U.S. history.

In 2015, 4.3 million people visited Independence National Historical Park and spent $247 million, according to the National Park Service, but a study by Drexel University students in 2014 revealed that the majority limited their visits to the Liberty Bell Center, Independence Hall and the Independence Visitor Center.

We want to change this pattern, said Rosalind Remer, vice provost and Lenfest executive director for the Center for Cultural Partnerships, in a release. This campaign encourages people to explore and appreciate the hidden jewels that Historic Philadelphia has to offer.

Historic Philadelphia encompasses the Delaware River waterfront, Old City, Society Hill and Independence National Historical Park, with the official boundaries running from the river to 7th Street and from Vine to Lombard Streets  Philadelphias original city.
by Sarah Mahoney @mahoney_sarah, May 31, 2016

The summer tourism kickoff is always a big deal in Maine, which lures millions each year to its lighthouses, lobster shacks, and rocky coast. But this year, it has taken on more meaning, with the potential of a new national park dangling over the blueberry-dappled landscape.

Whats at play is a controversial 87,500-acre parcel of land just east of Maines Baxter State Park, home to the spectacular Mt. Katahdin and the beginning (or end) of the Appalachian Trail. Hopes are high that the gift of the land owned by conservationist Roxanne Quimby, founder of Burts Bees, would earn the North Woods region national monument status, often a precursor to becoming a national park. Ultimately, planners envision a park with 150,000 acres, funded by the $40 million Quimby endowment.

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Most people favor the plan, which proponents say would bring jobs to the Katahdin region, decimated by the closure of all its paper mills. With monument status, we would look forward to increased visitors to our region, and more ways for them to spend money, says Gail Fanjoy, president of the Katahdin Area Chamber of Commerce. (Its board is unanimously in support of the monument.). And we think once people see the area, they'll love it. They will want to move here and start building our population again.

While statewide polls suggest about 67% of residents favor the park, there is opposition, especially among small pockets of locals who say they would prefer to see more forestry jobs, fear restrictions on snowmobiles and ATVs, or are wary of federal oversight in general. (That includes Maine Gov. Paul LePage, who opposes the monument.)

Maine is already home to Acadia National Park, one of the busiest in the country, which attracted 2.81 million visitors last summer. If the North Woods could attract even a fraction of those visitors, supporters say, it would be a tourism win.

Unless and until there is a national designation, the area will remain largely a secret to the great masses of people, Fanjoy tells Marketing Daily. But nationally designated land? People will seek that out.

The controversy has already stirred up interest in the region, she says, and she is expecting a strong summer. And overall, Maine is expecting much as 30% increase in visits in some places, including Bar Harbor with Acadia's centennial celebration this year, says the Maine Office of Tourism.

Its also hoping to build on its strong 2015 first timers visitation, which was up 43%, primarily from the Mid-Atlantic region. And these first-time visitors are more likely to be primarily visiting the Maine Highlands, the Maine Lakes & Mountains region, and Aroostook County, it says.

Visitation to the Maine rose 2.9% last year, to 33.9 million visits in 2015. Total spending reached a record $5.65 billion.
by Bob Garfield , Featured Columnist, May 31, 2016

We fiddle, and the republic burns.

It's sickening. Donald Trump, man-child arsonist, is day by day torching the most sacred American values -- threatening the welfare of millions, undermining the pillars of our democracy, igniting the ugliest impulses of the society's id -- and we, the media, are covering it like a bemused recap of House of Cards.

The rapacious CBS Chairman Les Moonves and the cable-newslike channels are delighted at the spectacle; disaster is always great for ratings. But this is not a show, to be consumed and titillated by and parsed. It is a conflagration of hatred and authoritarianism on its way to consuming us, or at least that which makes us us. Trumpism is raging out of control and the Fourth Estate responds how?

By going through the motions.

The usual false balance. The usual staged cable bickering. The usual dry contextual analysis. The usual intermittent truth-squading to garnish our careless daily servings of uncontested hate speech, incitement and manifest lies. The usual reluctance to be part of the story -- which, in fact, we are inextricably part of because we in large measure created it by giving oxygen to his every incendiary outrage and being our soundbitten, compulsively enabling selves.

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Again.

It is precisely this craven faux objectivity, after all, that fueled the historically ruinous Iraq war. It is just this fetishized impartiality that gave us a decade of stenography as the country's political center moved to the far fringes of the right. (Alas, this is not my first call to vigilance.) When one side of a story is madness, medieval anti-intellectualism, scapegoating. demagoguery and lies, the neutral broker in the middle has in fact made a choice. The wrong choice.

The only right choice is for truth. And righteous condemnation, not ghettoized on opinion pages but front and center. Every day.

Are we not supposed to be the watchdogs, the speakers of truth to power, the guardians of democracy? It's time for a gut check. Colleagues, stop gawking. Stop debating. Stop obsessing on the process. Stop being distracted by the daily Trumpruption. Stop analyzing his policy positions, his vp choice, his potential Supreme Court nominees, his unreleased tax returns.

This reflexive focus on the latest development, the political ebb and flow and the architecture of the coming election simply buries the lede -- that the man is monstrously unfit and un-American -- and normalizes the grossly, tragically abnormal.

He is racist. He is misogynistic. He is a xenophobe in the nation of immigrants. He has repeatedly incited violence. He shows neither understanding nor respect for the balance of powers, or any other aspect of the Constitution. To protect his personally thin skin, he has promised to weaken the First Amendment. He shows no appreciation for the role of government, but embraces a dictatorial vision of executive power, threatening to unilaterally scuttle international agreements, repeal legislation and default on the national debt.

He supports torture and war crimes against civilians.

He has played footsie with and failed to disown some of his most extreme supporters, including avowed racists and anti-Semites. He has ridiculed the disabled. He has disparaged the heroism of POW John McCain. He has defended the size of his junk on national television.

Oh, and he's a pathological liar.

Barry Goldwater? Sen Joseph McCarthy? Pat Buchanan? Statesmen and pussycats all compared to Trump, rabid predator and evil clown.

So if all of his horrifying disqualifications are as stated -- and they are -- why has there been no media crusade to deny him the presidency? The press jumps to warn America about missing children, tainted meat and approaching dustings of snow? Why are we not on high fucking alert?

Well, there are actually three impediments. The first is the aforementioned fairness imperative, which is obviously well-intentioned and laudable -- until it bends over backwards into a paralyzing contortion. As so often documented, the balance reflex often endows false legitimacy on illegitimate positions, among them climate denial, the anti-vax movement, creationism, Birthers, 9/11 Truthers and a whole host of objectively indefensible fantasies, superstitions and conspiracy theories.

The second countervailing force is simple fear. For three decades, the media have faced the accusation from the right that it is infected with liberal bias. The likes of Fox News Channel, Drudge Report, Breitbart, Rush Limbaugh, NewsMax, The Daily Caller and Glenn Beck have risen in direct response to the supposed juggernaut of pinkoism they face in what Sarah Palin calls the lamestream media. To crusade against Trump would be the smoking gun the political right is looking for, proof positive that they were right all along.

Finally is the third obstacle: Godwin's Law. First promulgated by lawyer and author Mike Godwin to chasten Internet debaters who veer inexorably toward analogies with Nazism, it has done a good job of dissuading serious commentators from trivializing complex issues with glib logical extensions to the Holocaust. To invoke Hitler, et al., is considered -- in the pundit class -- to be rhetorically cheap, if not hysterical.

This bias against overreach is all well and good when the logical extensions must extend a ludicrous distance. But Trumpism has changed the calculus. In this scary moment, comparisons to European-style fascism are suddenly non-trivial, because the playbook is hauntingly familiar: Vilify sinister others. Preach hyper exceptionalism. Seek vast executive power. Prey on a sense of humiliation at the hands of enemies, foreign and domestic. Portray yourself as supremely imbued to personally deliver a hitherto lost destiny.

Indeed, if ever there were a sign of perilous times, this would be it: debates, raging for the past two weeks in prominent media channels, over whether Donald Trump is himself a fascist. Brookings Institution fellow Robert Kagan says it's a fair characterization (Successful fascism was not about policies but about the strongman, the leaderin whom could be entrusted the fate of the nation.) Neocon historian Michael Ledeen, in Forbes and elsewhere, says fiddle faddle. ("Being a strong leader isn't enough to make you a fascist.)

But even this debate is just a spat about how many Nazis can fit on the head of a pin. One scholar looks to 20th-century Europe for dire cautionary tales. The other enumerates the many reasons, from the dictionary of political science, that the comparisons are specious -- all amounting to this:

Robert Kagan: Look out! He's got a rifle!

Michael Ledeen: You fool. That's a shotgun.

Next: Blam. Blammm.

As Adam Gopnik observed in the last issue of The New Yorker, the assault is long since underway -- not potentially, not hypothetically, but in word and in deed already now.

One can argue about whether to call him a fascist or an authoritarian populist or a grotesque joke made in a nightmare shared between Philip K. Dick and Tom Wolfe, but under any label Trump is a declared enemy of the liberal constitutional order of the United Statesthe order that has made it, in fact, the great and plural country that it already is. He announces his enmity to America by word and action every day.

The American Republic stands threatened by the first overtly anti-democratic leader of a large party in its modern historyan authoritarian with no grasp of history, no impulse control, and no apparent barriers on his will to power. The right thing to do, for everyone who believes in liberal democracy, is to gather around and work to defeat him on Election Day.

At long last, colleagues, have you no sense of history? It has happened before. It is happening elsewhere. It is happening here. Gopnik's broadside is and must be the model for journalistic action, not to wallow in distraction, but to focus singlemindedly on the Trumpian core.

Heed not the (apocryphally) detached Nero but the resolute Cicero, who denounced Lucius Catiline in the Senate not once but four times, lest the scheming demagogue overthrow Rome.

When, O Catiline, do you mean to cease abusing our patience? How long is that madness of yours still to mock us? When is there to be an end of that unbridled audacity of yours, swaggering about as it does now?

Such audacity must not be amplified. Do not enable Trump, do not elevate him -- do not above all market him. Every bit of deference -- and worse, every outrageous daily sound bite -- is a bellows to the flame.

Fires burn on oxygen. We must cut off the supply.
by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, May 30, 2016

A lot of the creating of a smart home for a consumer is hardly a do-it-yourself proposition.

It looks like the most consumer satisfaction in smart home device setup comes from others who provide for the installation of devices rather than from consumers doing the tasks themselves.

While some consumers are up to the challenge of setting up their own smart home devices, the most satisfaction seems to come when service providers do all the work, based on a new survey.

It also turns out that those who have others install their systems focus three to four times more on home security than do-it-yourselfers, according to the report by Argus Insights, which monitored more than 56,000 app and device reviews.

Self-installing consumers, on the other hand, have climate control systems on the top of their minds.

But whether smart home devices are set up by homeowners or some outside entity, the number of smart homes is growing.

The number of smart homes in North America and Europe reached 18 million last year, according to new research from Berg Insight.

Most (13 million) of those smart homes are in North America, a growth of 56% from a year earlier.

North American smart home growth is now predicted to reach 46 million within four years, according to Berg.

The most successful products on the smart home market include smart thermostats, security systems, smart light bulbs, network cameras and multi-room audio systems.

Amazons Echo continues to dominate as the most popular hub for a smart home, at least at the moment.

There also continues to be a relatively healthy number of brands creating or marketing various products. These include Philips Lighting, Honeywell, Belkin, Nest, Ecobee, MyFox, Sonos, Canary, Netatmo and D-Link

For whole-home smart home systems, such as those dealing with energy, security and communication services, there are companies including Vivint, ADT, Comcast, Control4 and AT&T in North America.

No matter how it gets done or who does it, more and more homes are getting to be made smart.
by Gord Hotchkiss , Featured Contributor, May 31, 2016

One of the more interesting movies Ive watched in the past year has been "Ex Machina." Unlike the abysmally disappointing "Transcendence" (based loosely on the ideas of futurist Ray Kurzweil -- how can you screw up Kurzweil, for Gods sake?), "Ex Machina" is a tightly directed, frighteningly claustrophobic sci-fi thriller that peels back the moral layers of artificial intelligence one by one.

If you havent seen it, do so.

But until you do, heres the basic set-up. Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson) is a programmer at a huge Internet search company called Bluebook (think Google). He wins a contest where the prize is a week spent with the CEO, Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac) at his private retreat. Batemans character is best described as Larry Page meets Steve Jobs meets Larry Ellison meets Charlie Sheen  brilliant as hell, but one messed-up dude. It soon becomes apparent that the contest is a ruse and Smith is there to play the human in an elaborate Turing Test to determine if the robot Ava (Alicia Vikander) is capable of consciousness.

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About halfway through the movie, Bateman confesses to Smith the source of Avas intelligence software. It came from BlueBooks own search data: "It was the weird thing about search engines. They were like striking oil in a world that hadnt invented internal combustion. They gave too much raw material. No one knew what to do with it. My competitors were fixated on sucking it up, and trying to monetize via shopping and social media. They thought engines were a map of what people were thinking. But actually, they were a map of how people were thinking. Impulse, response. Fluid, imperfect. Patterned, chaotic.

As a search behavior guy, I must say, that sounded more like fact than fiction. Ive always thought search data could reveal much about how we think. Thats why John Motavallis recent column, "Google Looks Into Your Brain And Figures You Out," caught my eye. Here, it seemed, fiction was indeed becoming fact.

And that fact is, when we use one source for a significant chunk of our online lives, we give that source the ability to capture a representative view of our related thinking. Google and our searching behaviors or Facebook and our social behaviors both come immediately to mind.

Motavallis reference to Dan Arielys post about micro-moments is just one example of how Google can peek under the hood of our noggins and start to suss out whats happening in there. What makes this either interesting or scary as hell, depending on your philosophic bent, is that Arielys area of study is not our logical, carefully processed thoughts -- but our subconscious, irrational behaviors. And when were talking artificial intelligence, its that murky underbelly of cognition that is the toughest nut to crack.

I think "Ex Machina"s writer/director Alex Garland may have tapped something fundamental in the little bit of dialogue quoted above. If the data we willingly give up in return for online functionality provides a blueprint for understanding human thought, thats a big deal -- a very big deal.

Arielys blog post talks about how a better understanding of micro-moments can lead to better ad targeting. To me, thats kind of like using your new Maserati to drive across the street and visit your neighbor -- it seems a total waste of horsepower. Im sure there are higher things we can aspire to than figuring out a better way to deliver a hotels.com ad.

Both Google and Facebook are full of really smart people. Im pretty sure someone there is capable of connecting the dots between true artificial intelligence and their own brand of world domination.

At the very least, they could probably whip up a really sexy robot.
by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, May 31, 2016

Siding with Delta Air Lines, a California appellate court has ruled that the company's app need not comply with a state law requiring Web site operators to post privacy policies.

The Court of Appeal's First Appellate District accepted Delta's argument that a federal law governing airlines trumped California's Online Privacy Protection Act. The decision upheld a 2013 ruling by a trial judge.

"If each state were to require Delta to comply with its own version of the OPPA, it would force Delta to design different mobile applications to meet the requirements of each state," the appellate court wrote in a ruling issued last week. "Enforcement of the OPPAs privacy policy requirements might well make it impossible for an airline to use a mobile application as a marketing mechanism at all."

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The decision stems from a lawsuit brought against the airline in 2012 by Attorney General Kamala Harris. She alleged that Delta violated California's 2003 privacy law, which requires Web site operators that collect personally identifiable information from state residents to display links to privacy policies. Harris sought an injunction banning Delta from continuing to offer the app until it adds a privacy policy, and fines of up to $2,500 per download.

Harris alleged that even though Delta's Web site has a privacy policy, the document doesn't detail everything collected by the Fly Delta app -- including geolocation data and photos.

Delta countered that the federal Airline Deregulation Act prohibits individual states from regulating critical business operations, including airlines' ability to collect and handle customer information and communicate with customers. The airline added that the Department of Transportation is the only entity empowered with regulating airline Web sites, privacy policies, and information practices.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Marla Miller accepted Delta's argument and dismissed the complaint. Harris then appealed.

Among other arguments, she said that the complaint against Delta doesn't relate to its "services."

The appeals court said it rejected that stance, writing that the app can be used for activities like checking in, viewing reservations, rebooking cancelled flights and paying for checked luggage.

Harris, who is running for U.S. Senate as a Democrat, has made mobile privacy one of her priorities. In 2012, she persuaded Google, Apple, Facebook and other companies to require available apps to have privacy policies.
by Sara Guaglione , May 31, 2016

New York Media is partnering with Sailthru, a customer retention cloud company, to turn unique visitors into loyal subscribers. The partnership will focus on subscriber growth and prioritize retention efforts using personalized customer engagement across all digital communication channels, such as email, mobile apps and Web sites.

New York Media, which publishes brands such as New York, Vulture, The Cut and Grub Street, hopes to use Sailthrus technology to strategically personalize content to drive subscriber growth, re-activation and engagement.

New York Media has always prioritized the individual value of each reader, and we sought to partner with a company that matched this vision, Ken Sheldon, executive director of audience development at New York Media told Publishers Daily.

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As many of New York Medias loyal readers subscribe to their daily newsletters, the company wanted to retain and expand that audience with Sailthrus solution.

Our daily email newsletters are critical to driving onsite advertising revenue, Sheldon said. With a continued investment in subscriber engagement and retention, we hope to capitalize on Sailthrus personalization and cross-channel capabilities to drive new and current readers to New York Medias sites and increase both frequency of visit and depth of session.

Neil Lustig, CEO at Sailthru, told Publishers Daily that in order for publishers to turn unique visitors into a loyal audience of subscribers, you have to speak to them as individuals.

New York has a variety of different articles and subjects and topics of interest. Every New Yorker is going to have their favorite parts of the magazine. Why not reflect and highlight that and build an engagement based on what a reader is excited to read? he said.

Sailthru observes what content an individual reads, what interests them and what they click on. After a few weeks of engagement, the technology builds an individual profile on the subjects that each reader cares and doesnt care about.

Then Sailthru sends out email communications to the reader and helps tailor the Web site experience for each individual.

We select from the available content to match the content with your individual interest. Well actually scale all the available content and see which of the articles you are more interested in. We are going to highlight those in the daily newsletter and prioritize those, Lustig said.

Sailthru can track each individual reader and detect when somebody stops visiting the brand and when somebodys engagement starts tailing off.

Part of our platform is some data science on which of your users are likely to churn and engage them differently and not wait for them to actually churn, Lustig said.

Digital media is a tough business and publishers are struggling to maintain a subscriber base given the array of choice, Lustig said. He added that more Sailthrus consumers are adopting retention as a core metric.

You have to adapt to the reader, find out where they are and communicate to them the subjects that they are interested in and in the mode they want to read it in  an app, web site, email, but more likely its a combination of all three. You cant do this manually, you have to do this with machine learning, he said.

Lustig said the goal is to have readers feel like the content is curated by hand, with the most engaging content for each individual reader put in front of them.

If you dont do that, you care going to lose readers, he said.
by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, May 31, 2016

At least 419 million people are blocking ads on smartphones -- including Facebook, but excluding content-blocking apps, in-app ad blockers, and opt-in browser ad blockers, according to a study released Tuesday.

The move will have app makers rethink how they will address search and advertising with mobile applications. PageFair has released a report titled Adblocking Goes Mobile, which estimates there are twice as many mobile ad blockers as desktop ad blockers. Twenty-two percent of the worlds 1.9 billion smartphone users block ads on the mobile Web.

Mobile ad blocking is more popular in emerging markets such as China, India, Pakistan and Indonesia, where 36% of smartphone users in Asia-Pacific block ads on the mobile Web.

The biggest issue for search marketers is that browsers can now block in-app ads.

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Mobile ad blocking is less developed in North America and Europe. In March 2016 there were 14 million monthly active users of ad-blocking browsers in Europe and North America, where 4.9 million content blocking and in-app ad-blocking apps were downloaded from app stores since September 2014.

One way to reinvent search and advertising within apps involves discounts and specials within mapping applications such as Google's recent move to use beacons and ask individuals to opt-in.

Another is Microsoft Bing's position to put the advertising in its own bucket within the app. The potential rise of ad blocking in apps prompted Bing to reinvent the way it viewed ads in its mobile app. Advertising in Bing's app relies on Near By Deals as a way to advertise specials and discounts based on location.

Apps are now available to block third-party ads in apps like Spotify, Apple News or CNN. These apps also block ads in any installed browsers for devices running iOS and Android.

The PageFair study reports that most in-app ad-blocking apps operate with an HTTP Proxy that works only on WiFi connections.

Some in-app ad-blocking apps operate a VPN, which works on both WiFi and cellular connections. And while in-app ad-blocking apps have previously been banned for violating PlayStore policies, VPN-based ad-blocking apps are getting around these rules, according to the report.

It's no surprise that the PageFair report predicts ad-blocking browsers will continue to grow wherever data costs are high. Wireless carriers will attempt to remain competitive and reduce costs for their subscribers, and unless the bandwidth cost of current advertising is addressed, the ad-funded digital media industry will never get a chance to grow in developing economies.
by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, May 31, 2016

Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and YouTube agreed to follow European regulations announced Tuesday that require them to review hateful online content within 24 hours of being notified and to remove it, as part of a new code of conduct aimed at combating hate speech and terrorist propaganda across the European Union.

Calling terrorist propaganda "illegal hate speech," the EU has been pushing for Web companies to step in to counter efforts from groups like ISIS. Some companies have developed their own rules to counter groups like ISIS, but the code of conduct announced today marks the first effort to unify policy on online hate speech across the EU.

Google search users querying extremist-related content on the search engine in Britain saw anti-radicalization links under a pilot program for nonprofits through an AdWords grant in February. At the time Google had received more than 100,000 reports flagging inappropriate content related to terrorist propaganda from the public.

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The AdWords grants, which nonprofits can use to target particular keywords, allowed those eligible to run campaigns focused on counterterrorism. The searches would apply to words linked to religious extremism. The campaigns aimed at countering radicalism used search engine advertising.
by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, May 31, 2016

A confluence of annoying ads and accessible software has resulted in a mobile ad-blocking revolution.

Worldwide, more than one in five (22%) of smartphone owners are actively using mobile ad-blocking browsers, per the latest findings from PageFair.

Year-over-year, that represents a 90% jump in blocker usage, according to the ad-blocking solutions provider. Among some 1.9 billion smartphone users, meanwhile, that comes out to about 419 million consumers never seeing your ads.

Of course, the vast majority of blocking is taking place in Asia. As of March, there were 159 million users of mobile ad-blocking browsers in China; 122 million in India; and 38 million in Indonesia.

That doesnt mean that mobile blocking isnt occurring in the West. With the help of app-intelligence firm Priori Data, PageFair counted 14 million monthly active users of mobile ad-blocking browsers in North America and Europe, as of March.

Yet, mobile ad blocking remains a rare activity in the United States. Throughout North America, in fact, a mere 1.2% of smartphone owners are using browsers that automatically block ads, while content-blocking apps now reside on just 0.9% of smartphones.

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Still, U.S. publishers and platforms -- many of which are looking abroad to scale their businesses -- should be concerned about the findings.

Industry leaders insist that theyre aware of the rising threat. Consumers are pushing back on mobile and online ads, Nancy Hill, CEO of the 4As, toldPageFair for its report.

Whats the solution? For one, advertisers and marketers need to take a hard look at how they may be contributing to the problem, according to Hill.

From there, it will be critical to correct the issue to better engage with the consumers were trying to reach, Hill said.
by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, May 31, 2016

Chinese Internet giant Alibaba Group Holdings, which runs China's Taobao online shopping marketplace, has invested an undisclosed amount in Twiggle, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based company developing ecommerce search technologies, as part of its Series A financing.

Amir Konigsberg, CEO and co-founder of Twiggle, declined to say how and if the two companies will work together, but it's well documented that Twiggle aims to support ecommerce companies whether or not they become investors.

The most recent round brings total funding to about $20 million, according to sources familiar with the deal. The company will use it to grow its research and development team in Israel and drive global expansion plans.

Those expansion plans mean that Twiggle must have the ability to integrate with varying kinds of product catalogs, taxonomies, and data sets.

In addition to Alibaba investment, Naspers Ventures led a $12.5 million Series A round in April with participation from new and existing investors including Yahoo Japan, State of Mind Ventures, and Sir Ronald Cohen. The company also previously raised $2.2 million in seed funding.

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The latest financing round will support Twiggle's research and development (R&D) team as they expand on their work in integration, natural language processing and artificial intelligence, along with support for search.

The R&D will improve the way ecommerce search engines understand and interpret user queries, according to Konigsberg.

Better interpretation meaning more variations of language, more languages, and at much greater nuance, Konigsberg said.

"Language is a very complex phenomenon and to understand it well you need to understand what words and sentences mean, you need to know how people use language, and you also need to know many things about the world, and the way the world works, so as to be able to make the appropriate interpretations," he said.

Twiggle also announced that Udi Manber, former chief scientist at Yahoo, and founder and CEO of Amazons search unit A9, and head of search at Google, has joined the companys Board of Directors. Manber left Google in 2015 to join the National Institutes of Health.

Noa Ganot, former head of product in eBays structured data organization, also joined Twiggle as VP of product.
Osteoarthritis (OA) is a degenerative joint disease that can affect the knees. Treatments include knee injections and a partial or complete knee replacement. This article outlines two main therapies for OA of the knee: knee injection therapy and knee replacement surgery. It also outlines the side effects and risks that are associated with these treatment approaches and offers some tips on easing knee pain at home.

Overview Share on Pinterest MoMo Productions/Getty Images OA is a chronic condition that causes the breakdown of cartilage between the joints. Cartilage provides a smooth, slippery surface, allowing the bones to glide against each other. Without this surface, bones can rub or grind against each other, causing pain, stiffness, and swelling. Knee injection therapy or knee replacement surgery can provide relief from the symptoms of knee OA. There are also other ways a person can relieve the symptoms, including: prescribed or over-the-counter (OTC) pain medication

physical therapy

losing weight Arthritis is a spectrum, and different treatments are appropriate for different stages. In the early stages, knee injections or lifestyle changes may be appropriate. Severe OA may need a partial or total knee replacement. Learn more about osteoarthritis of the knee.

Knee replacement surgery Knee injections can provide fast and effective relief from knee pain and inflammation, but the effects are only temporary. As OA progresses, a person may experience a decline in mobility and quality of life. At this point, a doctor may recommend knee replacement surgery, or knee arthroplasty. There are two main types of knee replacement surgery  total knee replacement and partial knee resurfacing. Total knee replacement A total knee replacement involves removing the worn-out cartilage of the knee and capping it with metal and high-grade plastic. The prosthesis allows the individual bones of the knee joint to slide over each other smoothly, reducing pain and improving the range of motion in the joint. The surgery typically takes 12 hours. A person may then need to stay in hospital for 13 days while they recover from the surgery. Partial knee resurfacing Partial knee resurfacing involves removing and replacing only the damaged surface of the knee joint and leaving any healthy cartilage intact. Doctors may recommend this procedure for people who have disease or damage to only one area of the knee. Because a partial knee replacement preserves healthy bone, cartilage, and ligaments, it may feel more natural than a total knee replacement. Compared with a total knee replacement, a partial knee replacement involves a smaller surgical incision. As such, OrthoInfo associates it with the following benefits: faster recovery time

less pain following surgery

reduced risk of infection and blood clots

Which is best? When faced with the option of surgery, some people may wonder which is the most effective method  total knee replacement or partial knee resurfacing. The below table compares the pros and cons of both procedures. Partial knee resurfacing Total knee replacement Doctors may recommend if OA is in just one of three knee compartments. Doctors may recommend if OA has progressed and affects mobility and quality of life. May last up to 10 years, after which a person may need revision surgery. May last up to 20 years. Faster recovery time, lower risk of infection, and less pain following surgery. Surgery typically lasts 12 hours and may require a stay in hospital for 13 days. May feel more natural than a total knee replacement. Involves inserting a prosthesis made of metal and plastic. A person may feel more residual anterior knee pain, or frontal knee pain, after the procedure. May allow someone to resume normal activities if other nonsurgical options are no longer helpful. A 2020 randomized controlled trial analyzed findings from 528 patients who either had total knee replacement or partial knee resurfacing. Researchers collected follow-up data for 5 years after the surgery. They found that both surgery methods were effective, and both had similar clinical outcomes. They also found that both methods had similar reoperation and complication rates. However, the study found that partial knee resurfacing had significantly higher rates of patient approval than total knee replacement in some cases. This may mean that patients were generally more satisfied with the results of partial knee resurfacing. Researchers also found that partial knee resurfacing was more cost-effective than total knee replacement after 5 years.

Risks of knee surgery As with other types of surgery, knee replacement surgery is associated with the following risks: infection

nerve damage

complications from general anesthesia

blood clots or deep vein thrombosis (DVT)

heart attack

stroke

fatality However, people should be aware that delaying knee replacement surgery may lead to further deterioration of the knee joint. This presents other risks, such as: an increased risk of abnormalities developing inside and outside the joint

an increased risk of muscles, ligaments, and other structures becoming weak and losing function

increased pain or an inability to manage pain

increased disability or lack of mobility

difficulty with normal daily activities Before electing to have knee replacement surgery, a person should speak with a doctor about the potential risks and benefits of the procedure.

Things to try at home to ease knee pain The following home remedies may help to alleviate knee pain in some cases: Avoid putting weight on the knee: A person should rest the knee as much as possible and avoid standing for long periods of time.

A person should rest the knee as much as possible and avoid standing for long periods of time. Apply a cold compress: A person can try applying an ice pack to their knee to help relieve the pain. It is important to wrap the ice in a cloth or towel first. Applying ice directly to the skin can result in permanent injury.

A person applying an ice pack to their knee to help relieve the pain. It is important to wrap the ice in a cloth or towel first. Applying ice directly to the skin can result in permanent injury. Take over-the-counter pain relief: Acetaminophen can help to alleviate knee pain, while nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen can help to reduce both pain and inflammation.

Acetaminophen can help to alleviate knee pain, while nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen can help to reduce both pain and inflammation. Exercise: Light, low-impact exercise, such as exercising on a stationary bike, may be beneficial for the knees.

Light, low-impact exercise, such as exercising on a stationary bike, may be beneficial for the knees. Avoid stairs: Using stairs may worsen pain in the knee.
Scientists at the University of Utah, ARUP Laboratories, and IDbyDNA, Inc., have developed ultra-fast, meta-genomics analysis software called Taxonomer that dramatically improves the accuracy and speed of pathogen detection. In a paper published in Genome Biology, the collaborators demonstrated the ability of Taxonomer to analyze the sequences of all nucleic acids in a clinical specimen (DNA and RNA) and to detect pathogens, as well as profile the patient's gene expression, in a matter of minutes.

Infectious diseases are one of the biggest killers in the world. Almost 5 million children under age 5 die each year from infectious diseases worldwide, yet many infections are treatable if the pathogen culprit can be quickly and accurately identified.

"In the realm of infectious diseases, this type of technology could be as significant as sequencing the human genome," says co-author Mark Yandell, PhD, professor of human genetics at the University of Utah (U of U), H.A. & Edna Benning Presidential Endowed Chair holder, co-director of the USTAR Center for Genetic Discovery, and co-founder of IDbyDNA. "Very few people have inherited genetic disease. But at some point, everyone gets sick from infections."

It is difficult for infectious pathogens to hide when their genetic material is laid bare. Taxonomer opens up an entirely new approach for infectious disease diagnosis, driven by sophisticated genomic analysis and computational technologies. After a patient's sample is sequenced, the data are uploaded via the internet to Taxonomer. In less than one minute, the tool displays a thumbnail inventory of all pathogens in the sample, including viruses, bacteria, and fungi. The interactive, real-time user interface of Taxonomer is powered by the IOBIO system developed by the laboratory of Gabor Marth, DSc, professor of human genetics at the U of U and co-Director of the USTAR Center for Genetic Discovery.

"Our benchmark analyses show Taxonomer being ten to a hundred times faster than similar tools," says co-author Robert Schlaberg, MD, Dr Med, MPH, a medical director at ARUP Laboratories and cofounder of IDbyDNA. Schlaberg was awarded a $100,000 grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to apply Taxonomer toward decreasing high mortality rates of children with infectious diseases in resource-limited settings.

Schlaberg points out that current diagnostic testing still relies heavily on growing cultures of suspected pathogens in the laboratory, which is often inconclusive and time consuming. Even with much faster tests like PCR, the number of pathogens that can be detected is limited.

Schlaberg explains that Taxonomer can identify an infection without the physician having to decide what to test for, something a PCR-based test cannot do. In other words, a doctor doesn't have to suspect the cause of a patient's infection, but can instead simply ask, "What does my patient have?" and Taxonomer will identify the pathogens.

In the new study, Taxonomer was put to the test with real-world cases using data published by others and samples provided by ARUP Laboratories and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Taxonomer determined that some patients who exhibited Ebola-like symptoms in the recent African outbreak did not have Ebola but severe bacterial infections that likely caused their symptoms. "This technology can be applied whenever we don't know the cause of the disease, including the detection of sudden outbreaks of disease. It is very clear we urgently need more accurate diagnostics to greatly enhance the ability of public health response and clinical care," says Seema Jain, MD, medical epidemiologist at the CDC.

Another unique feature of Taxonomer is its ability to delve into human gene expression profiling, which provides information on how or if the patient's body is reacting to an infection. "As a clinician, this gives you a better idea, when we identify a pathogen whether it is really the cause of the disease," says Carrie L. Byington, MD, professor of pediatrics of the U of U and co-director of the Center for Clinical and Translational Science. "This tool will also allow us to determine if the patient is responding to a bacterial or viral infection when we don't find a pathogen or when we find multiple potential causes." She says that she sees the exceptional value of this tool for treating children, who experience more life-threatening infections early in life. "Seeing how a host [patient] reacts is extremely valuable; I believe this is a paradigm shift in how we diagnose people. It is why I wanted to be involved."

In a previous paper published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, Schlaberg and his collaborators demonstrated that high-throughput sequencing in combination with Taxonomer can reliably detect pathogens, and identify previously missed pathogens, in patient samples. "Taxonomer provides a critical step forward, as it is extremely fast, accurate, and easy enough to use for implementation in diagnostic laboratories," says Schlaberg.
Medical societies, including the American Society of Clinical Oncology, recommend that patients with advanced cancer receive palliative care soon after diagnosis and receive hospice care for at least the last three days of their life. Yet major gaps persist between these recommendations and real-life practice, a new study shows.

Risha Gidwani, DrPH, a health economist at Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Economics Resource Center and a consulting assistant professor of medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and her colleagues examined care received by all veterans over the age of 65 with cancer who died in 2012, a total of 11,896 individuals.

The researchers found that 71 percent of veterans received hospice care, but only 52 percent received palliative care. They also found that exposure to hospice care differed significantly between patients treated by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and those enrolled in Medicare. In addition, many patients who received palliative care received it late in their disease's progression rather than immediately following diagnosis, as recommended by ASCO.

Gidwani is the lead author of the study, which will be published online in the Journal of Palliative Medicine. The senior author is Vincent Mor, PhD, a professor of health services, policy and practice at Brown University.

Differences between hospice, palliative care

Hospice and palliative care are often confused, but they are two distinct services, Gidwani explained. Palliative care is intended to alleviate symptoms and improve quality of life, and is appropriate for all patients with serious illness, not just those who are at the end of life. Conversely, hospice care is end-of-life care, which can also provide social support for family members. Physicians can recommend hospice care only if they believe the patient has fewer than 180 days to live.

"The main lesson learned is we need to improve exposure to palliative care, both in terms of how many patients receive it and when they receive it," Gidwani said. The team's analysis of palliative care focused on care provided by the VA because palliative care is not coded consistently in Medicare. However, the researchers could examine hospice care in both environments. When they compared the timing and provision of hospice care between patients treated by the VA and those who received care paid for by Medicare, they discovered differences that could not be explained by cancer types. For example, patients receiving VA care were less likely to receive hospice care for the minimum recommended three days compared with those in Medicare or in other contracted care paid for by VA. VA patients first received hospice care a median of 14 days before death, compared with patients in VA-contracted care who entered hospice a median of 28 days before death.

"Ideally, there shouldn't be any difference in timing of this care," Gidwani said. "Patients should receive a service based on their clinical need, not due to health-care system factors."

Hospice care policies differ

Interestingly, Medicare and the VA have different policies on the use of hospice care; VA cancer patients can continue receiving curative treatment while in hospice care, but Medicare patients must stop any chemotherapy or radiation before beginning hospice. However, nearly 70 percent of VA patients stopped curative treatment before entering hospice, even though they didn't need to, Gidwani said. She and colleagues are planning future research to understand why.

The team also found differences in the use of hospice and palliative care between cancer types and ages. Patients with brain cancer were more likely to receive palliative care than those with kidney cancer, for example. In addition, patients older than 85 were less likely to receive palliative care than patients between the ages of 65 and 69. But patients older than 80 were more likely to receive hospice care than younger patients. Those with brain cancer, melanoma or pancreatic cancer were more likely to receive hospice than patients with prostate or lung cancer.

"Our work indicates palliative care needs to be better integrated into standard oncological care and that there is wide variation in receipt of hospice care. The VA is strongly supportive of palliative care and hospice, so it's possible that other non-VA environments are performing even worse with respect to appropriate receipt of hospice and palliative care for cancer patients," Gidwani said.

The research did uncover some positive findings, said VJ Periyakoil, MD, clinical associate professor of medicine at Stanford and director of the Stanford Palliative Care Education and Training Program, who was not involved with the study.

"The authors found that 85.6 percent of veterans had some exposure to hospice care or palliative care in the approximately 180 days before death. This is a much higher percentage than what we see in the community," Periyakoil said. The higher number is likely due to the size of the VA and its commitment to improving the care for seriously ill veterans, she said.

However, the study highlights opportunities to improve access to care for patients older than 85, who are likely to have several medical ailments, Periyakoil said. In addition, the study's findings on palliative care are worrisome.

"We know that early palliative care increases both longevity and quality of life. It is really puzzling as to why patients are referred so late despite compelling data to do otherwise," she said. "Some doctors may say that they are unsure about the prognosis and that is why they refer patients late. However, that argument does not hold water as earlier referrals are better, and at worst we would be guilty of referring a patient a little earlier in the trajectory."

Another Stanford-affiliated co-author of the study is Todd Wagner, PhD, a fellow at Stanford's Center for Health Policy and Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research. He is also the associate director of the VA Health Economics Resource Center and of the VA Center for Innovation to Implementation.

Researchers affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania, Providence VA Medical Center, Philadelphia VA Medical Center and Eastern Colorado VA Healthcare System and Brown University also co-authored the study.

The study was funded by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Article: Gap between Recommendations and Practice of Palliative Care and Hospice in Cancer Patients, Gidwani Risha, Joyce Nina, Kinosian Bruce, Faricy-Anderson Katherine, Levy Cari, Miller Susan C., Ersek Mary, Wagner Todd, and Mor Vincent, Journal of Palliative Medicine, doi:10.1089/jpm.2015.0514, published online 26 May 2016.
While no dengue vaccine has yet been approved for general use, several candidates are in clinical development. Data from the clinical trials can be used in mathematical models to estimate the benefits and risks and of different vaccination strategies. A study published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases suggests that even a moderately efficient dengue vaccine - if it induces long-lasting immunity - can substantially reduce disease burden. However, if immunity wanes over time, vaccination could cause years with higher numbers of sick people, unless the initial vaccination is followed by regular boosters.

Dengue disease is on the rise and presents unique challenges for prevention and control. Disease incidence (i.e., the number of new cases per year) world-wide has consistently increased for the last five decades. Efforts in the post-DDT era to control the Aedes mosquitoes that transmit the virus have failed, and the virus has spread into new regions. There are four different subtypes of the dengue virus, individuals can be infected multiple times with different viral subtypes, and re-infection is associated with an increased risk for severe disease.

Thomas Hladish, from the University of Florida in Gainesville, USA, and colleagues focused their study on Yucatan state in Mexico because dengue is a serious problem there and detailed information on disease incidence exists. The researchers started by building a mathematical model based on the primary factors that influence dengue transmission. These include mosquito population dynamics and behavior throughout the year, human movement and demography, the build-up of immunity following natural infection in the population over time, and the immune response following re-exposure.

Next they fitted their model to the data on dengue occurrence in the Yucatan over previous years and ran simulations to estimate the impact of potential vaccination strategies. They compared the effectiveness of several vaccination strategies over a 20-year period. Vaccine efficacy was set at an average of 60% (actual numbers depended on the different virus subtypes and on whether a person had been exposed due to a prior natural infection) based on recent phase III trial results for the Sanofi-Pasteur vaccine that had shown moderate effectiveness.

Because a number of trials suggested that vaccination efficiency is higher in people who had some previous exposure to dengue, the researchers considered routine vaccination of children at different ages (2, 9, or 16 years), with and without a one-time catch-up campaign targeting individuals up to age 30 who had missed routine vaccinations. The durability of the vaccine (that is, how long protective immunity lasts after vaccination) is not yet established, and one longer-duration follow-up study of vaccinated individuals suggested that vaccination might not convey long-lasting immunity to all recipients. Therefore, the researchers considered vaccines that confer either life-long or waning immunity, and evaluated the use of booster doses (every two years) to counter waning.

Plausible vaccination scenarios with a durable vaccine, the researchers found, are clearly beneficial: such strategies would reduce annual dengue incidence by as much as 80% within five years, and that annual vaccine effectiveness approaches 65% by the end of the 20-year forecast period. However, if vaccine efficacy wanes after administration, the researchers found that there could be years with larger epidemics than would occur without any vaccination (the baseline scenario), and that vaccine booster doses are necessary to prevent this outcome.

Years with larger-than-baseline epidemics can occur with a waning vaccine because the vaccine delays - rather than prevents - many infections. Initially, vaccines are protected, and some cases that occur in the baseline scenario are avoided. But when vaccine protection fades, the number of vulnerable people in the population becomes unusually large, and some previously-avoided cases occur. Cumulative effectiveness over a longer time period, however, does show a small net benefit as a small number of the "delayed" cases never end up happening due to chance.

Like all mathematical models, the researchers acknowledge that theirs is based on assumptions and can only provide estimates. As they describe, their "ability to forecast vaccination impact is primarily limited by the current uncertainty regarding whether and how vaccine efficacy wanes over time and how vaccine efficacy is affected by prior infection". "Nevertheless", they state, "the model provides a useful perspective on how vaccine properties and strategic choices affect the relative size and severity of projected epidemics", and conclude that, "a vaccine like the Sanofi-Pasteur candidate can be an effective tool for reducing the dengue burden, although a vaccine with waning efficacy would require a booster program".

This work was supported by a Dengue Vaccine Initiative Grant to MEH and IML, National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases R37 AI32042 to MEH and IML, and a Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study (MIDAS) Center Grant (National Institutes of Health/National Institute of General Medical Sciences U54 GM111274) to MEH. HGD and IML received funding from Sanofi Pasteur Laboratories. JRCP is supported by the Research and Policy on Infectious Disease Dynamics (RAPIDD) Program of the Fogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health and Science and Technology Directorate, Department of Homeland Security. DPR is supported by a Fulbright-Colciencias doctoral scholarship.

TJH and GLR were supported by grants from the Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Program (no website) through funding from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official positions or views of the Intelligence Community or any other U.S. Government agency. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying U.S. Government authentication of information or Intelligence Community endorsement of the authors' views. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Article: Projected Impact of Dengue Vaccination in Yucatan, Mexico, Thomas J. Hladish , Carl A. B. Pearson, Dennis L. Chao, Diana Patricia Rojas, Gabriel L. Recchia, Hector Gomez-Dantes, M. Elizabeth Halloran, Juliet R. C. Pulliam, Ira M. Longini, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, doi: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0004661, published 26 May 2016.
In a very rare case, a baby boy in Delhi was found to hit puberty when he was one-year-old. He had developed fully grown sex organs and experienced sexual desires similar to a 25-year-old man.



Akash's parents first noticed these abnormal changes in this body at six months of age. They were ignoring it by assuming that he was a big baby. But his grandmother told them that his changes are very unusual and they decided to consult a doctor.

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A one-year-old baby boy in Delhi has been diagnosed with precocious puberty, where he has fully grown sex organs and sexual desires similar to a 25-year-old man due to exceptionally high testosterone levels in his body.

Baby Boy Attends Puberty at the Age of 1 in Delhi
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Ayush, 8, died on May 27 after he was administered 'oxygen' through a mask; he died in the operation theater.Rajveer, who is only 18 months old, is in serious condition after being administered 'oxygen' on May 28 in the same operation theater.Sumit Shukla, a surgeon at the hospital, said that there are two separate color-coded pipes in the operation theater, one for oxygen and the other for nitrous oxide which is widely used medically for its anesthetic and analgesic effects.It seemed that the pipe meant to supply oxygen yielded the wrong gas, he said.Shukla said the hospital was conducting its own inquiry as to how the horrible mix-up took place.Some people, however, said the hospital has been guilty of gross medical negligence and is evading its responsibility in the matter.Local legislator and Congress leader Jitu Patwari said the culprits are among the administration and the hospital authorities, and they are the ones who should face stern action.Contractor Rajendra Chadhary, who has been arrested, said he has been made a scapegoat."My job was only to install the pipes. Using those pipes to supply gas was the job of the hospital," he said.Maharaja Yeshwantrao Hospital is the largest government hospital in Indore city.Source: IANS


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Marrying a person or befriending people cleverer than you can help boost your intelligence quotient (IQ).



It has long been thought that intelligence remains static when a person turns 18. But, a New Zealand-based psychologist says that IQ can grow all through adulthood, especially for people with stimulating lifestyles.

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Marry Someone Smarter Than You to Increase Your IQ
On May 29, 2016, the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reported on attempts by the Lebanese government to bypass the new U.S. sanctions recently imposed on Hizbullah. Citing Lebanese sources, including Hizbullah sources within the Lebanese parliament, the daily wrote that for the past two months the Lebanese finance ministry has been paying the salaries of Hizbullah ministers and MPs in cash in contrast to the payment method it uses when paying the country's other MPs and ministers. [1] It should be noted that Lebanese banks recently closed accounts of several Hizbullah ministers and MPs in compliance with the U.S. sanctions.

In December 2015, U.S. Congress passed the Hizballah International Financing Prevention Act, aimed at curtailing the organization's funding of its domestic and international activities, and also at combatting its global criminal activities - including money laundering, drug trafficking, and human trafficking - by which it funds the terror operations that it carries out worldwide.[2] The law bars any "foreign financial institution" that engages in transactions with Hizbullah or with persons or bodies affiliated with it, or which provides them with financial services or launder money for them, from maintaining a relationship with the U.S. banking system. This means that any bank in the world, including in Lebanon, that provides financial services to the organization will be denied access to U.S. financial institutions - and thus to the global financial sector. The ramifications of this are far-reaching and can lead these banks to collapse. The law also imposes sanctions and penalties (fines, imprisonment or both) on individuals or bodies that violate its provisions. It came into effect on April 15, 2016, after the U.S. Treasury issued regulations for its implementation; the Treasury also published a list of some 100 bodies and figures associated with Hizbullah with whom financial institutions may not conduct dealings.[3]

A MEMRI report from May 17, 2016 reviewed Hizbullah's furious responses to these sanctions and its attempts to fight them by reaching understandings with the governor of Lebanon's central bank: As Lebanon's Banks Begin To Implement U.S. Sanctions Against Hizbullah, Hizbullah Criticizes Banking Sector, Warns Of Chaos In Lebanon And More 'Actions Against The American Takeover Plan'



Assistant secretary Glaser meets with Lebanese Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil (Source: Nna-leb.gov.lb, May 26, 2016)

U.S. Treasury Assistant Secretary Daniel Glaser: The Law Does Not Distinguish Among Hizbullah Members It Applies Equally To MPs, Ministers

A delegation on behalf of the U.S. Treasury, headed by the Treasury assistant secretary for terrorist financing, Daniel Glaser, recently visited Beirut and met with Lebanese Prime Minister Tammam Salam, Al-Mustaqbal faction chair and former Lebanese prime minister Sa'd Al-Hariri, Finance Minister 'Ali Hassan Khalil, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and with the Association of Banks in Lebanon (ABL) and central bank governor Riad Salameh. Glaser also met with Lebanese General Security chief 'Abbas Ibrahim, who is known for his ties with Hizbullah. A statement issued by the U.S. Embassy in Beirut at the close of the visit stated that Glaser had encouraged the Lebanese authorities and banks to keep up their efforts to combat terrorist financing and prevent attempts to evade the U.S. sanctions.[4]

In an interview with the Lebanese LBC channel during his visit, Glaser expressed his confidence that central bank governor Salameh understands both the Lebanese financial system and the U.S. law, adding that Salameh has been an excellent and responsible partner. Glaser stated that the purpose of his visit was to discuss the implementation of the U.S. law, and stressed that the law was not meant to target the Shi'ite community or any other community in Lebanon, but only Hizbullah. Asked whether the sanctions would apply to Hizbullah ministers and MPs, Glaser said that the law does not "make a distinction between Hizbullah members. The law is very clear. If you engage knowingly in a significant financial transaction with Hizbullah, then you become subject to this law."[5] It was in this context that the daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat published the notice about the cash salary payments to Hizbullah ministers and MPs as mechanism to bypass any American sanction targeting them.

Hizbullah Furious At Central Bank Governor For Ignoring Its Demands

In this context, it should be noted that Hizbullah's relations with central bank governor Riad Salameh remain strained over the issue of the Lebanese banks' and the central bank's implementation of the U.S. law. On May 27, the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, which is close to Hizbullah, reported that the organization was furious with Salameh for the new instructions he had issued to Lebanese banks on May 26 regarding the manner of compliance with the U.S. law. These instructions revoked the authorization Salameh had granted the banks in early May to immediately close any suspicious bank account at their own discretion. Instead, the regulations require the banks to inform the central bank of their intention to close an account, and then allow 30 days for the central bank to oppose the move if it deems it necessary. On the face of it, Hizbullah should have been pleased with these new regulations, which are in line with its demand to prevent what it calls the arbitrary application of the law. However, according to Al-Akhbar, the organization is displeased because Salameh "ignored its two basic demands." The first demand was that the banks be explicitly required to allow 30 days for the central bank to review each request, with an option of a 30-day extension. The second demand was that the law be applied retroactively to all Hizbullah accounts that have been closed since April 2016, meaning that the central bank would reexamine the decision to close them. Salameh indeed disregarded these two demands, to Hizbullah's chagrin.[6]

Shi'ite Business Owners Feeling The Weight Of The Sanctions; Hizbullah May Direct Its Public To Boycott Lebanese Banks

The pro-Hizbullah dailies Al-Akhbar and Al-Safir noted recently that one of the options available to Hizbullah is to instruct the members of its public to boycott the banks - which according to Hizbullah are being overzealous in implementing the U.S. law - by withdrawing all their funds from them. According to Al-Safir, these bank accounts represent a 30-40% share of the economy. [7]

In the meantime, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reports that Shi'ite business owners, especially in the Dahiya, a Hizbullah stronghold in south Beirut, are beginning to feel the weight of the sanctions. According to the daily, these dealers are questioned about every sum of money entering their accounts from abroad, and in many cases the transfer is refused, forcing them to rely on business partners, especially Christian ones.[8]

Endnotes:

[1] Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), May 29, 2016.
On May 25, 2016, during an official visit to Hungary, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov gave an interview to the Hungarian newspaper Magyar Nemzet that is generally supportive of Prime Minister Viktor Orban. In the interview, Lavrov addressed three major topics: Russia's support to Hungary's Paks nuclear power plant, Russia-EU relations and Russia-NATO relations.

Concerning the Paks nuclear power plant, Lavrov told the Hungarian daily that the project was "strategically" important. However, during the joint press conference with his Hungarian counterpart, Lavrov said that "Russia-Hungary relations do not depend on any one project."[1] The Paks nuclear power plant is the pet project of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, but it has been strongly criticized by the Hungarian opposition and the European Commission. The Orban government, which has been isolated in the EU due to its "illiberal" policies, views Russia as a possible political and economic partner. On the other hand, Russia, laboring under EU sanctions, seeks to find European partners to break its isolation.

On February 17, 2016, during Orban's visit to Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed that Hungary is Russia's "longstanding, reliable partner". Orban reciprocated by saying that Hungary wants to see "normalization of Russian-European relations."[2] In an interview with the Hungarian Minister of Human Resources Zoltan Balog, published by the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita on May 23, 2016, Hungary-Russia relations were discussed in connection with former U.S. President Bill Clinton's recent comments describing Hungary and Poland as "Putin-like dictatorships." Balog said: "We are aware of the risks posed by Russian ambitions for greater power. However... [Hungary] is an entirely different system, we neither want to emulate, nor copy [Russia] ... but isolation of Russia by the EU also carries risks."[3] During the joint press conference in Budapest, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said that Hungary "cannot accept" the automatic extension of sanctions imposed on Russia by the EU, adding that "boosting Europe's competitiveness can only be possible if pragmatic and rational cooperation is established between Europe and Russia."[4]

It is worth noting that in the same week that Lavrov travelled to Budapest, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Greece seeking to mend ties between Russia and the EU. Hungary and Greece are two internal critics of the EU's sanctions policy against Russia.

Following are excerpts from Lavrov's interview with Magyar Nemzet:[5]



Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov shaking hands with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. (Source: Kormany.hu, May 25, 2016)

Lavrov: "Paks Nuclear Power Station, Which Was Built With The Soviet Union's Technical Assistance, Is A Strategic Project"

Question: "The expansion of the Paks nuclear power station is a key issue on the bilateral agenda, but pressure from Brussels can hinder the implementation of this project. Do you think that Hungary can give up the project due to this pressure? Does such a possibility exist?"

Lavrov: "The project of the state corporation Rosatom [State Atomic Energy Corporation, a Rusian state-owned corporation ] to expand the Paks nuclear power station, which was built with the Soviet Union's technical assistance, is a strategic project, in terms of the costs involved - over 10 billion Euros, the timeframe - 2032, and its role in reliably ensuring Hungary's energy security. Paks already produces over 40 per cent of the electricity generated in the country. I would like to stress that a large part of the project will be implemented by Hungarian companies and experts, who will ultimately operate the station.

Of course, we are aware of the attention to this joint project from European organizations, in particular, the European Commission, which has initiated several proceedings in this connection. At this stage, we see no grounds to doubt that the Hungarian Government, which on numerous occasions has declared its firm resolve to implement the project, will answer all of Brussels' questions."



Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at a joint news conference with Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary Peter Szijjarto, Budapest, May 25, 2016 (Source: Mid.ru, May 25, 2016)

Lavrov: The EU Should Show Political Resolve

Question: "Hungary is one of those EU member states that do not regard the current EU sanctions policy against Russia as normal or fair, even though they voted for these sanctions. What steps can Russia take in response to this European policy? Under what conditions could these sanctions be lifted?"

Lavrov: "It is obvious that the attempts to pressure Russia by means of unilateral sanctions will not force us to abandon our principled stance or sacrifice Russia's national interests. Our response to these unfriendly actions was balanced and took into account Russia's rights and commitments under international treaties, including within the WTO framework.

"As for the future of this policy of restrictions, the question should be addressed to those who initiated and spurred this policy. We have never discussed and will not discuss any conditions or criteria for the lifting of these restrictions. The EU has conditioned the lifting of restrictions on the implementation of the Minsk Agreements by Russia. This is absurd, because Russia is not a party to the Ukrainian conflict. This approach is only encouraging Kiev to sabotage the implementation of the Minsk Package. It is obvious that Russia-EU relations have been made hostage to the irresponsible policies of the Ukrainian authorities.

"We have tried to explain to our partners that this logic is faulty and the existing situation is unacceptable. The EU and its member states should show political resolve. Judging by our contacts with European countries, a growing number of our partners are becoming aware of the destructive effects of confrontation, which is fuelled by sanctions. Some of them, including our Hungarian friends, have said openly that we must leave behind this dark page in our history as soon as possible. Unfortunately, we have not succeeded in this so far."



Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Hungary's Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto (Source: Rt.com, May 25, 2016)

Lavrov: The Ukrainian Crisis Has Exposed The EU's Strong Reliance On Washington's Political And Economic Influence .

Question: "There is a feeling that Moscow is disillusioned with Europe. Brussels clearly sees the Kremlin as an aggressor and countries continuing to cooperate with Moscow, including Hungary, as the Trojan horse Russia is using to undermine the EU's unity. What kind of Europe is Russia interested in: weak or strong? How do you see the EU's future? And to pursue this issue, does the EU need Russia more or is Russia more interested in cooperation with the EU?"

Lavrov: "First of all, I'd like to say that the current crisis in relations with the EU stems from our partners' outright refusal to build a dialogue based on true partnership. Russia has repeatedly declared its readiness to work together with the EU on a broad range of issues - from abolishing short-term visas to energy rapprochement. Unfortunately, Brussels is dominated by a short-sighted policy that seeks to take control of the geopolitical space, including via the Eastern Partnership initiative, and to divide nations into "us" and "others". This policy line has culminated in the Ukrainian coup backed by some EU nations.[6] When the Ukrainian nationalists seized power in Kiev and put the country on the brink of disintegration by their irresponsible actions leading to a civil war - Western nations decided to put the blame on Russia and introduced unilateral restrictions against us.

"We have clearly overestimated Europe's independence on the global arena. The Ukrainian crisis has exposed the EU's strong reliance on Washington's political and economic influence. We would like to work with a strong EU that would build its relations with partners in the international arena by acting on its own interests rather than [displaying] solidarity with actors from outside the region. Brussels' sanctions are adversely affecting EU economies, destroying decades-long ties between businesses, challenging stability and trust on the European continent and creating new divisions in Europe.

"However, we firmly believe that we are capable of reversing the current negative trend and resuming stable cooperation. There is no sensible alternative to mutually advantageous partnership between Russia and the EU - we have very strong geographic, economic, historical and person-to-person links. Russia and the EU are the largest players on the European continent. Our country is bound to remain the EU's main energy partner in the foreseeable future. Therefore, it is in our common interests to pursue stronger cooperation in addressing new threats and challenges, in law enforcement, research and culture.

"Such policies, however, cannot succeed unless they are free of confrontation and restraint, [and] unless a dialogue based on equality and respect for mutual interests exists. In other words, there is no place for 'business as usual' when our partners tried to impose certain forms of cooperation on Russia, which were in conflict with its interests, and when Russia was confronted with a fait accompli.

"Now Russia and the EU have reached the point where we have to decide how we view our future relations and what direction we intend to take. We remain convinced that both sides would benefit from gradually establishing a zone of economic and humanitarian cooperation stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, which would rely upon equal and undivided security. That would require aligning European and Eurasian integration processes."

Lavrov: "We Cannot Ignore The Growing Negative Trends...Of NATO's Course Towards Deliberately Eroding The Strategic Balance Of Forces In Europe"

Question: "Central Europe is seeing the growing presence, on the one hand, of NATO forces, and on the other, of US forces. Military infrastructure is approaching the Russian borders and many people believe this makes the outbreak of a new world war more likely. Do you agree with this?"

Lavrov: "I would not like to follow in the footsteps of those irresponsible politicians who are willing to sacrifice the interests of peace and stability in Europe to their own ambitions and, without considering the consequences, continue to up the ante, fueling an alarmist mood.

"We are not inclined to overdramatize the situation. Having said this, we certainly cannot ignore the growing negative trends that are evolving as a result of NATO's course towards deliberately eroding the strategic balance of forces in Europe, including the strengthening of the NATO military capability in proximity to the Russian borders and the deployment of the European segment of the U.S. global missile defense system. Such actions can hardly be described as anything other than destabilizing and shortsighted.

"In this context, Russia will continue to do all it can to counter the risks and threats to our national security. At the same time, Russia is committed to building a mutually beneficial and broad European cooperation architecture based on the principle of integrity and reliance on international law. We hope that common sense will eventually prevail within NATO and that our Western partners will stop building confrontational plans arising from their desire to ensure their own security at the expense of others."

Question: "A new Russian foreign policy doctrine is pending. What are its priorities? How does Russia position itself in the changing world? As a regional power with global ambitions or as a global power? To what extent will the realization of these ambitions be impeded by internal, primarily, economic difficulties?"

Lavrov: "Indeed, the work to update Russia's foreign policy concept is underway. The updated text will reflect our assessments of the changes that have taken place in international affairs over the past three years, including the cooling of relations with the West, the intensification of integration processes in the Eurasian space, the deterioration of the situation in the Middle East and North Africa and the related surge in terrorism and extremism.

"However, it is hardly appropriate to talk about a new foreign policy 'doctrine.' The document will reaffirm the key principles of Russia's foreign policy, including inter alia its independent, multi-vector character and its openness to collaboration on the basis of parity with any interested party, to effectively address today's current issues. They have withstood the test of time and proven their effectiveness and relevance.

"The world is going through a difficult, turbulent period in the evolution of a new polycentric system of global order. Growing competition exists over the format the future international system [will take]..."

Endnotes:
Entertainment / Arts

by Thulani Nkala

On the 25th June 2016 Siphesakhe Threatre Group will launch its Gukurahundi Play called Loyiko in the heart of Johannesburg at Hilbrow Theatre.Siphesakhe is a group of young people of Xhosa origin who are well in tune with what happened in Zimbabwe between 1983 to 1987. "We want to play our part in exposing the genocide which happened in Zimbabwe, this has got nothing to do with Ndebeles being our cousins, we would do the same if the Ndebeles had killed the Shonas, our aim is to achieve justice for the victims" said one of the Sephesakhe Group members.When engaging a group of people from Matebeleland the group leader, stated that many South Africans are not aware of the genocide and some are not even aware of the existence of Mzilikazi's people in Zimbabwe. He went onto to say that their interaction with Matebele people has revealed to them the genocide but above all the continued mistreatment at the hands of the Shona government. "We are not ashamed to take sides in this saga, we believe we are on the right side of history, we are aware that the Matebeles suffered untold psychological trauma and hence they are not able to voice their plight to the world, but we are aware that soon they will find their voice and they shall fight their struggle of recognition in Zimbabwe" Sephesakhe grp leader said.Millions of Matebeles sought refuge in South Africa in the 1980s at the height of the genocide and Hilbrow is the epicentre of their settlement. The group invites all the people from Matebeleland, Sothos, Tswanas, Vendas, Ngunis, Kalangas etc to this great launch which definitely unlock the gates and confer the confidence onto the victims so they can voice their plight.It is hoped that different groups and individuals from Matebeleland, ranging from media houses, music and cultural groups will attend this great event.Uncouth people have tried to hijack the play with a view of preventing the group from telling the truth, however, the group has rejected the blood money', they are fundraising in different ways, such as the sale of t-shirts and sponsorships/donations:https://www.gofundme.com/24vhdd74 #sthash .DwrieTx9.dpufYou can contact them directly at: loyikotheatreplay@gmail.com or call 0027717548206/0027627649602 and 0027849603154.
News / Africa

by Agencies

DAKAR - Former Chad president Hissene Habre, a Cold War ally of the West, was convicted on Monday of war crimes and crimes against humanity for ordering the killing and torture of thousands of political opponents during his eight-year rule.The verdict capped a 16-year battle by victims and rights campaigners to bring the former strongman to justice in Senegal, where he fled after being toppled in a 1990 coup in his impoverished central African nation.Habre, 73, was sentenced to life in prison by the Special African Chamber (CAE), a tribunal created in 2013 by Senegal and the African Union. He was also convicted of rape.Dressed in white robes with dark sunglasses and a head scarf covering most of his face, Habre was defiant after his conviction and sentence were announced, raising his arms and shouting to his supporters as he was led from the courtroom.Many, including some of his victims present in the courtroom, cheered in celebration."After years of struggle and many setbacks on the way to justice, this verdict is as historic as it was hard-won," said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein. "In a world scarred by a constant stream of atrocities, the ramifications of this verdict are global."Habre has refused to recognise the CAE trying him in Senegal and was at times had to be forced to appear in court, delaying proceedings.The tribunal is supported by the African Union but is part of Senegal's justice system, making it the first time in modern history that one country's domestic courts have prosecuted the former leader of another country on rights charges. Other such cases have been tried by international tribunals.The case centred on whether Habre, who was feted at the White House in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan after expelling Libyan forces from Chad, ordered the large-scale assassination and torture of political opponents and ethnic rivals.A 1992 Chadian Truth Commission accused Habre's government of up to 40,000 political murders as well as systematic torture, mostly by his intelligence police, the Documentation and Security Directorate (DDS).An investigation by Human Rights Watch in 2001 unearthed thousands of documents in the abandoned DDS headquarters updating Habre on the status of detainees. During the trial, a court handwriting expert confirmed margin notes on one document to be Habre's.During the trial, many of his victims testified in Habre's presence, recounting at length the acts of torture to which they were submitted.Presiding Judge Gustave Kam recounted how Habre was directly involved in interrogations and torture, sometimes inflicting the the abuse himself or ordering it by phone or walkie talkie."Habre's conviction for these horrific crimes after 25 years is a huge victory for his Chadian victims," said Reed Brody, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, who helped investigate the crimes."The verdict sends a powerful message that the days when tyrants could brutalize their people, pillage their treasury and escape abroad to a life of luxury are coming to an end."Habre's lawyers now have two weeks to launch an appeal.The trial was seen as a boost for African countries who say they should be free to charge their own, at a time of growing criticism of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for indicting only Africans."We are proud that this trial took place on African soil. Never this type of terror again," said Clement Abaifouta, president of the Chadian Victims' Association (AVCRP), whose aim was to bring Habre to justice.
News / Africa

by Staff Reporter

DOZENS of mourners gathered to pay their last respects to two priests who drowned during a baptising ceremony at the Vaal River last week.Daily Sun reported the two, Luyanda Fulumeni (20), a priest at New Naledi Apostolic Christian Church, and Lungile Fulumeni (20), a priest at the Methodist Christian Church in South Africa, were officiating at the baptism ceremony of a church member.They drowned while the congregation was singing hymns.Their cousin, Thandiwe Fulumeni (22), said people were singing hymns when the two waded into the water.She said: "Part of the church rules is that the congregation must look away when priests are praying in the water. We were singing hymns when Luyanda and Lungile went into the river. I am not sure why, but something made me turn and look and that is when I saw two hands waving."According to Thandiwe, her cousins were filling in for another priest who did not show up.They were buried at Vanderbijl-park Cemetery on Saturday.
News / Local

by Stephen Jakes

An MDC-T member in Maroindera Central Tendai Nungu was recently allegedly assaulted by Zanu PF member Gift Midzi for refusing to board a bus which was transporting people to the Heroes acre in Dombotombo.Zimbabwe Peace Project reported that on 3 April 2016, in Marondera Central, Nungu of MDC-T refused to board a bus to Heroes Acre in Dombotombo, which he was being forced to board by Gift Midzi of Zanu-PF."He was then assaulted by Midzi resulting in him suffering a broken leg. It is reported that the victim's leg was broken at several points," ZPP reported."On 10 April 2016, people in Hwedza North were told to pay US$0.50 as transport for maize. People paid money thinking that they were going to get maize. On 15 April 2016 people were told to top up another US$0.50 to make it a dollar for Independence Day celebrations," ZPP reported."The Zanu-PF party district coordinating committee chairperson, Peter Chigodora gave the instruction throughout the Hwedza District. All cell leaders in Hwedza North among them, Philip Ben and Barry Chimusipu, were tasked with collecting the contributions. People were forced to contribute after being threatened that if they did not pay they were not going to get maize. The celebrations were attended by mainly school children and very few adults at Hwedza Centre. There were a lot of food leftovers due to low attendance."ZPP also said on 15 April 2016, in Ward 20 Mutoko South at the town centre, ZimPF supporters had booked to have a rally to fill the gaps in their party structures but the police refused to clear them on several occasions."On this day they met at Mutoko dip tank but they did not know that a Zanu-PF youth chairperson Jembere had connived with the police. The police in the company of Jembere stormed the meeting and arrested Foya and ten others. The rest escaped and sustained injuries in the process. The victims were forced to fill in the party structure form inside the Criminal Investigation Department office to enable the police to know the identities of people in those positions," ZPP reported.ZimPF youth leader Prosper Gavanga confirmed the incident.On 16 April 2016, John Kadera (former MDC-T candidate in 2008) wanted to go to a Zanu-PF meeting at Makaha Primary School in Ward 14, Mudzi South. He was asked by Philip Chinovava what he wanted since he was an MDC-T member."He told them that he wanted to join Zanu-PF but was told to go back home. After he left it was reported that Chinovava told his colleagues (Chinovava's) that they were going to deal with him in 2018 as he wanted to spy on Zanu-PF to report to MDC-T," reported ZPP.
A. Meeting with representatives of an Indonesian parliamentary committee



The Deputy Foreign Minister for international economic relations, Dimitris Mardas, today met with representatives of an Indonesian parliamentary committee.



The meeting looked at recent developments in the Greek and Indonesian economies, with emphasis on issues of common interest, such as the strengthening of bilateral economic and trade relations, promotion of Greek exports to Indonesia, cooperation in the shipping sector, and cooperation on renewable energy sources and environmental issues.



Finally, there was a discussion of issues concerning the signing of a memorandum of cooperation between the Athens Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) and the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KADIN), as well as the organization of a Greek business mission to Jakarta this coming November.



B. Meeting with representatives of the Embassy of South Korea and the Korea Business Center (KOTRA)



In a follow-up to the meeting of the Greek-Korean Joint Interministerial Committee, which took place on 23 May 2016, in Athens, a meeting took place today between Deputy Foreign Minister Dimitris Mardas and representatives of the Embassy of South Korea and the Korea Business Center (KOTRA).



During the meeting there was a discussion of the organization of a Greek business mission to Seoul in the last quarter of this year, in parallel with the hosting of a Business Conference for attracting investments to and creating joint ventures in Greece, with a focus on the sectors of high technology and electromechanics.



C. Meeting with Israeli Ambassador Irit Ben-Abba



Mr. Mardas met at the Foreign Ministry today with the Israeli Ambassador to Athens, Irit Ben-Abba, on the subject of enhancing bilateral cooperation in the construction sector.
The Deputy Foreign Minister for International Economic Relations, Dimitris Mardas, met at the Foreign Ministry today, Tuesday, 31 May, with New Zealands Minister of Trade, Todd McClay, with the New Zealand Ambassador to Greece, Patrick Rata, in attendance.



The discussion, which took place in an excellent climate, focused on issues of strengthening the cooperation between the two countries on the bilateral and multilateral levels.



Mr. McClay emphasized the prospect of his countrys concluding a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the EU, expressing his satisfaction at our countrys support on this matter.



Mr. Mardas referred to the potential for increasing the bilateral volume of trade and investments between Greece and New Zealand, despite the great geographical distance that separates the two countries. Specifically, Mr. Mardas put particular emphasis on the field of economic cooperation, including tourism and construction projects in third countries, while he made separate mention of the need to protect designations of geographical origin and to lift the tariff barriers to exports of Greek canned peaches.
Dear Official Guests,

Ladies and Gentlemen Ambassadors,

Ladies and Gentlemen,



It is with a sense of great honor and pleasure that I welcome you to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.



Todays event marks the Foreign Ministry initiative to shed light, through the volume Greek Righteous Among the Nations, on an aspect of the history of the Occupation  an aspect that is unfortunately overlooked by many and that concerns the 327 Greek citizens who bear the honorific of Righteous Among the Nations because they saved, at risk to their own lives, our Jewish fellow citizens.



During the Second World War, Greece paid, for its size, a disproportionately heavy price for the freedom we enjoy today. Following the bitter fight to the finish against the invaders, our country suffered from hunger, the crimes against its population and the courageous Resistance against the occupation forces.



I believe that the persecution of the Jewish Greeks, in particular, is among the most heinous crimes perpetrated by the Axis powers in Greece.



The numbers are revealing: Before the Second World War, the thriving Jewish Greek community numbered over 75,000, of whom 67,151 lost their lives. Despite the fact that the Holocaust virtually wiped out the Jewish community of Thessaloniki  given that, of the 56,000 Greek Jews of the largest Sephardic community in Europe, only 1,950 were saved  the Jews living in Athens, Ioannina, Larissa, Corfu and Rhodes also faced the barbarity of the Nazis.



Those who managed to survive the persecutions and the Holocaust did so, in most cases, with the help of friends, neighbours, even officials of the time. The best way for us to comprehend the real moral magnitude of these actions of valor is to consider the unprecedented barbarity of those dark days.



However, despite the courage of many Christian Greeks  not just the ones we are honoring today, but others as well, the exact number of whom we shall perhaps never know  about 86% of the Jewish Greek population was exterminated in the Nazi camps. Thus, our county was left deprived of a vital part of its traditional polymorphism; poorer, an amputee.



Ladies and Gentlemen,



Greece participates actively in all of the international initiatives and takes all the necessary measures on a national level to consolidate policies against xenophobia, racism and every other kind of discrimination, including anti-Semitism, naturally.



The Greek government directly condemns and takes the appropriate measures against acts of intolerance and anti-Semitism, in accordance with Greek principles and values as well as national, European and international law. It is no coincidence that our country is among the European countries with the fewest incidents of anti-Semitism. Moreover, none of these few, sporadic incidents involves physical violence  a fact that has been acknowledged by the Jewish Greek Community.



Whats more, the Greek state has in recent years adopted and implemented a number of measures and initiatives in favor of the Jewish community. In this context, three major legislative initiatives have been taken, based on which:



i. Israeli citizens who were born in Greece before 1945 can regain their Greece citizenship [Law 4018/2011 (article 13)].



ii. The Jewish Greek Community was paid compensation for the Old Jewish Cemetery of Thessaloniki (Law 3143/2011 (article 45)]



ii. The chair of Jewish studies at the University of Thessaloniki was recently restored.



By decision of the Hellenic Parliament, International Holocaust Remembrance Day is observed every year, on 27 January, in events throughout the country and with the official participation of the Greek state. It is worth mentioning at this point that, on this years Remembrance Day, for the first time in the Hellenic Parliament, the President of the Hellenic Republic inaugurated a monument with the names of the 327 Greek Righteous Among the Nations. It must be noted that, apart from France, Greece is the only European state that honours its Righteous in this manner.



Holocaust monuments have been raised in Athens and Thessaloniki, including a monument to the Old Jewish Cemetery, within the grounds of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.



Moreover, we participate actively in international organizations and meetings concerning the Holocaust. The Greek state collaborates closely with the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, while there is a permanent Greek exhibit at the Auschwitz Museum.



In this context, the Foreign Ministrys Historical and Diplomatic Archive Service started its pioneering and praiseworthy publishing effort in 2000, with the aim of shedding light on aspects of the history of our countrys Jewish Community and, in particular, its rich contribution to the progress of our homeland.



This new book  the third in the series  from the Foreign Ministry demonstrates the indissoluble brotherly ties that connected and continue to connect Greeks of the Christian and Jewish faiths, proving that Greece has a national memory and moral standards.



At the same time, we are fulfilling an historical, national and moral duty. We are safeguarding our society  and I am referring first and foremost to our young people  from the constant danger of ignorance, of the falsification of history and of forgetting the brutality that indelibly marked our homeland and all humanity.



Ladies and Gentlemen,



People are capable of the best and the worst. The Holocaust is a salient example of this truth.



Beyond the honor due to the victims, unrelenting vigilance, raising awareness and educating are the only path to our gaining  and, most importantly, maintaining  consciousness of the worst that humankind are capable of perpetrating, so as to rally the best that we have in us.



Defending  vigorously and consistently  the values of our culture, our right to live in a society of democracy and equal rights, we will succeed in definitively marginalizing the voices of hatred, of racism, anti-Semitism and of intolerance; voices which, unfortunately, continue to menace modern societies.



Thank you for your attention.
Mr. Chairman,

Dear Colleagues,

Ladies and Gentlemen,



First of all I would like to thank the Bulgarian C-i-O for their achievements at this 20th Anniversary of SEECP. I take this opportunity to also thank Goran Svilanovic for his impeccable job as head of the RCC.



Todays thematic discussion is very relevant, given that regional cooperation is indeed about growth and stability. Our assessment though, looking back at 20 years of the SEECP, is that regional interaction has been rather low. Yet, there have been successes, achieved mostly thanks to individual merits, rather than as a result of regional cooperation.



The question is, What can be done at this turning point in SEECP history? Can we be more bold and ambitious? Can we overcome past constraints that kept regional interaction low?



We believe that we should set our differences aside and capitalize on what unites us most, on common interests and common agendas. We can easily identify these common interests: infrastructure projects, European integration, business opportunities, civil society and youth, the fight against terrorism, just to name a few.



After having identified fields of common interest, we should inject all our energy to achieve tangible results. Results will create trust. Trust will boost regional cooperation and help us to address more complex and perhaps controversial issues. It is a methodological approach that merits further exploration.



Let me give you an example:



We all agree that European integration of the entire region is our strategic objective. I do respect the RCCs and the European Commissions role in this regard. Yet, there is no cooperation between EU and non-EU Participants, there is no collective SEECP effort to push forward the European agenda. There are 5 EU members in SEECP, who all went through the most demanding negotiations. There is something to offer in terms of experience-sharing and best practices, notwithstanding EU knowhow transfer. We see a real added value in such an exercise.



The RCC is proposing to expand the scale and geographical scope of interventions to include other SEECP participants, in particular EU members. It is a new approach that goes in the right direction. I am confident that the RCC can identify specific fields of common interest that would be open to an all-inclusive regional cooperation, using their expertise and knowhow.



We need a positive agenda that generates win-win benefits for all. This would create trust, which lies at the heart of any regional cooperation, boosting stability and growth in our region. The RCC has a valuable role to play in this regard.



Thank you
The Foreign Ministry expresses its grief at the passing of Ambassador Emeritus Leonidas Mavromichalis.



Leonidas Mavromichalis entered the Diplomatic Service in 1958 and represented Greece serving as Consul General in Stuttgart and London, and as Ambassador to Prague and Ottawa. He served as Permanent Representative at the Permanent Representation in Strasbourg and as Inspector General at the Central Service.



Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias and the political and civil leadership of the Foreign Ministry express their condolences to his loved ones.


Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias made the following statement to Independent Balkan News Agency reporter Spyros Sideris, on the margins of the proceedings of the Ministerial Meeting of the South East European Cooperation Process (SEECP), in Pravets, Bulgaria:



We had an extremely good meeting with the Bulgarian Prime Minister, with whom we discussed the preparation for the Intergovernmental meeting and its content: what basic sectors we want to develop in our cooperation at the Summit, such as economy, foreign policy and our role in the region. We also talked about other matters, such as culture, research, cooperation among our educational institutions.



Also discussed were our bilateral relations as such, as regards the common action and common projects we can carry out; major projects, like railways, roads and energy, as well as smaller projects that concern our cross-border relations. We also talked about tourism, naturally, as it is well known how fond the Bulgarians are of Greece and how often they visit.



We also discussed the need for us to organize additional informal meetings between the leaderships of the two countries, so that we can talk about issues of wider and regional interest.



We need to have many meetings with the Bulgarian side. The priority right now is the meeting between the two governments in a multi-minister format. The second is for the Bulgarian Prime Minister to visit Greece, and the third is the new SEECP meeting this coming October. There are many meetings, which will be happening with greater frequency in the coming time, since Greece and Bulgaria, as we agreed with Mr. Borisov, constitute an anchor of stability and security for Southeast Europe.
News / Local

by Staff Reporter

A Waterfalls man has appeared in court for defrauding his employer of 1379 bags of cement worth $12 000.Tofara Fortune Zishiri (28) of main way Meadows in Harare appeared e before Mbare magistrate Moyo charged with fraud.He allegedly defraud his employer Kevarez Investment Private Limited.The court heard that Zishiri was sometime in August 2015 employed by the company as a cashier who was responsible for receiving selling cement and handling cash realised from the sale.Zishiri was then expected to hand over cash to the company at the end of the day. It is alleged that during period from August 2015 to April this year he did not remit cash of 1379 bags of cement sold for the company. Her allegedly converted all the money into his own use.The offence was discovered after an audit and this led to his arrest.
News / Local

by Staff Reporter

A Harare man reportedly lied in court when he applied for a protection order from a woman tenant at his house whom he accused of immoral behaviour and disposing used condoms on the door way but the woman told the court that he was just jealous because they have a sexual relationship.Rifaro Mazhindu took his tenant Maria Magudha to court seeking a peace order against her immoral and abusive conduct."My problem is that she brings different men to the house at odd hours and i always have to pick up her used condoms every morning in front of my family," he said."Whenever i reprimand her about her foul behaviour she always physically and verbally abuse me in front of our neighbours. She threatens me with unspecified action and at one point she pushed me and i fell and got injured and then i made a police report."maria denied all the allegations saying she was in a romantic relationship with Mazhindu and she went on to produce evidence in the from of sexual text messages."He is misleading the court . It is true that when i started staying at his house i was juts a tenant but then our relationship developed. He asked me to get an HIV test anmd after my results came out as negative he then asked me to move into the main house with him. He is lying that he lives with his wife and kids, his wife left for the UK a while ago," she said.Magistrate Barbra Mateko dismissed the application.
News / National

by Melody Baya

A MAN from Njube suburb in Bulawayo has been fined $200 for burying the body of his day-old niece in a bush in Old Pumula suburb without a burial order or the baby's mother's consent. Jacob Gatsi, 26, (pictured) buried the infant's body with an unidentified accomplice who is still at large. Gatsi yesterday pleaded guilty to a charge of disposing a body without a burial order before Western Commonage magistrate Themba Chimiso."For your crime you're going to pay a fine of $200. And failure to pay is going to attract 60 days imprisonment," said Chimiso. Rebecca Samupindi, the baby's mother, gave birth to the baby girl at home early last month. The court heard that the infant died a day after birth."I heard the baby sneezing as we were sleeping. When she sneezed for the third time she just went silent. We checked and realised she was dead," said Clara Mashinda, the infant's grandmother. Mashinda and Samupindi then took the body to the home of the late infant's father, Isaac Gatsi."I called my daughter's boyfriend, Isaac Gatsi and informed him of what had transpired and he instructed us to meet him at his grandmother's house in Njube. I carried the dead baby and with my daughter we proceeded to Njube and got there at around 4.30AM," said Mashinda."We met up with Isaac, his mother Irene Mwanga and the grandmother. We presented to them their dead granddaughter and we left the dead child there. After going home I never heard from Isaac and his mother, neither did they call to inform me of how they buried the baby."Prosecuting, Mufaro Mageza said on April 7 at around 4PM, Samupindi gave birth to a baby girl at home under the supervision of her mother. "On April 8 at around 2AM the baby girl passed away and Mashinda informed the father of the baby of what had happened. "They proceeded to his place of residence where the two families met and talked before the accused buried the deceased infant without a burial order in a bush in Old Pumula," said Mageza.
MLive.com reports the bear shot Sunday north of Baldwin was believed to be 1 to 3 years old and its carcass was taken to a lab for analysis. Michigan Department of Natural Resources wildlife technician Katie Keen says the bear was shot on private property.

Keen says about eight people, including children, were camping in tents and a camper when the bear came near their site. She says the bear "repeatedly came in and showed aggressive behavior toward humans" and "would come back continually."

Keen says bears usually leave after food sources are removed and humans scare them off, but the bear wouldn't be frightened away.
SEBEWAING  Because of an ordinance prohibiting solicitation in roadways, donations collected by Sebewaing area service organizations are down by half.

In 2015, the Sebewaing Village Council passed an ordinance prohibiting solicitation in roadways. That decision impacted Buddy Poppy sales for veteran programs that are done just before Memorial Day, as well as White Cane fundraiser efforts to help those with vision issues, and Knights of Columbus Tootsie Roll sales for special needs programs.

Our Buddy Poppy sales are down by 50 percent, said Sebewaing American Legion Commander Mike McGee. That really hurts our efforts to help others with funding from that program.

He estimates about $1,000 less in revenue in Buddy Poppy sales from not being able to do fundraising in roadways, which has been done for decades.

To make up for the funding loss from poppy sales, American Legion members hosted a hot dog and bratwurst sale.

Besides raising money for veteran needs, the Buddy Poppy is a symbol that Memorial Day is time to remember those who died serving their county.

The red of the poppy represents the blood for those who gave their life. The black in the center of the poppy represents the mourning of those who lost loved ones, and the green leaf is for future growth after wars distraction and the hope for peace.

That law hurt others (service organizations) too, said McGee, who is also a deputy grand knight of the Knights of Columbus, and president of the Sebewaing Lions Club. White Cane collections are down by about $1,300, and funds from Knights of Columbus candy sales is down by $1,600 to $1,700. There is no way to make up those kind of financial losses.

We dont have a Walmart that gets a lot of traffic or anything like that, he added.

Prohibiting solicitation in roadways is not just a regulation the Village of Sebewaing just created. State law R28.1713 Rule 713 outlines the same restriction in the Uniform Traffic Code of Michigan.

That law was discovered when the villages street superintendent attended a meeting with the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) a few years ago.

After learning about that state law, council struggled whether to follow the letter of the law or to just ignore it like most other municipalities do, and allow civic organizations to do fundraisers in roadways.

In 2015, council set letters to service organizations that do fundraisers in roadways about their intent to prohibit roadway solicitation.

Public outcry over the financial impact the regulation would have, as well as the fact that poppies, white cane tags and Tootsie Roll supplies had been ordered, stalled enacting the ordinance.

However, when Lansing firefighter Dennis Rodeman died in a hit-and-run incident while doing the Fill the Boot Muscular Dystrophy fundraiser, the village council decided they could not risk the liability.

While it was a difficult action to take, council decided to enact and enforce the ordinance to protect the village from liability.

The Knights of Columbus, the Sebewaing Lions Club, and the American Legion each carry a $1 million insurance policy that protects the village, McGee said.

However, lawsuits generally seek and are awarded more than $1 million in liability compensation.

Calls made to Sebewaing Village President Alexander Khoury were not returned before press time.
They are just a few instances of the tensions that have surfaced in the contentious 2016 presidential campaign, where hostilities have revolved around the ascendancy of Trump, first toward minorities and now by minorities protesting his policies.

In San Diego on Friday, protesters waved Mexican flags, shouted obscenities and clashed with police outside a Trump rally while inside, Trump made derisive comments about Gonzalo Curiel, the federal judge who is hearing a class-action lawsuit against one of Trump's business ventures, noting that Curiel is Mexican American as he called the judge a "hater" who had "railroaded" him.

On Tuesday, protesters in New Mexico opposing Trump threw burning T-shirts, plastic bottles and other items at police officers, injuring several, and toppled trash cans and barricades. Police responded by firing pepper spray and smoke grenades into the crowd outside the Albuquerque Convention Center.

Karla Molinar, 21, a University of New Mexico student, participated in a planned disruption of Trump's speech and said she had no choice because Trump is sparking hatred of Mexican immigrants. Trump, among other things, has called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States and declared that he will build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

"Trump is causing the hate to get worse," she said.

Earlier this year, demonstrators against Trump swarmed outside the hotel near San Francisco airport, forcing the candidate Trump to crawl under a fence to enter the hotel where he met with local GOP power brokers. Other protesters tangled with authorities and damaged police cars after a Trump rally in Orange County, California.

Earlier, the violence was aimed toward minorities. For example:

 A black woman was surrounded, cursed and shoved by white onlookers at a Trump rally in Louisville, Kentucky in March.

 Latino demonstrators Ariel Rojas was kicked and dragged by a white Trump supporter at a rally in Miami in October.

 A black male protester, Rakeem Jones, was punched from behind by white Trump supporter John McGraw as Jones was being ejected from a rally by police in North Carolina. McGraw was later arrested.

 Video captured Trump supporters physically assaulting Mercutio Southall Jr., an African-American activist, at a rally in Birmingham, Alabama in November. Southall said afterward he was called several expletives by the crowd and later compared them to a "lynch mob."

While political violence is not unknown, like the 1968 violence at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago where 119 police and 100 protesters were injured, rarely has it been targeted so specifically at minorities, said Matt Dallak, a professor of political management in the Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University.

He also laid much of the responsibility on Trump, who started his political campaign by comparing undocumented immigrants from Mexico to criminals and rapists. The crowds at Trump's rallies are feeding off him "demonizing particular segments of the population, including racial minorities" he said.

"When you are whipping people up, it contributes to an atmosphere that leads to the potential of political violence. Words matter," he said.

Trump says he does not encourage violence; the fault, he says, lies with the demonstrators. But the political rhetoric is feeding into misplaced myths about the contributions of minorities to this society, said Sol Trujillo, founder and chair of the Latino Donor Collaborative.

"We're a country of breaking barriers, not erecting barriers," he said.

Ken Burns, an Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker, said some of Trump's comments and actions  like forgetting that he had repudiated a Ku Klux Klan leader  "that is the wink-wink dog whistle that signals to our unreconstructed brothers."

"We'd like to believe in our better selves but in point of fact, a lot of us aren't that," said Burns, who explored racial tensions in his documentary, "Jackie Robinson."

No one has died yet this campaign season. However, violence  including some that has been fatal  has often been suffered by minorities participating in political processes and social protesting.

For example, an estimated 150 blacks and three whites were killed after white Louisianans attempted to take over a courthouse in Colfax, Louisiana on Easter Sunday after losing a statewide election to reconstructionists in 1872, which became known as the Colfax Massacre. And Rev. George Lee was gunned down in Belzoni, Mississippi in May 7, 1954 for his attempts to get blacks to vote. In August 1955, World War II veteran Lamar Smith was shot on the courthouse lawn in Brookhaven, Mississippi, for urging blacks to vote.

Lee had turned down police protection because it was offered only on the condition he stopped his voter registration efforts.

While political violence is not unknown, like the 1968 violence at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago where 119 police and 100 protesters were injured, rarely has it been targeted so specifically at minorities, said Matt Dallak, a professor of political management in the Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University.

He also laid much of the responsibility on Trump, who started his political campaign by comparing immigrants who enter the country illegally from Mexico to criminals and rapists. The crowds at Trump's rallies are feeding off him "demonizing particular segments of the population, including racial minorities" he said.

"When you are whipping people up, it contributes to an atmosphere that leads to the potential of political violence. Words matter," he said.

Trump says he does not encourage violence; the fault, he says, lies with the demonstrators. But the political rhetoric is feeding into misplaced myths about the contributions of minorities to this society, said Sol Trujillo, founder and chair of the Latino Donor Collaborative.

"We're a country of breaking barriers, not erecting barriers," he 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.
Two U.S. troops were wounded -- one in Iraq and one in Syria -- over the weekend by indirect fire in a sign of the increasing danger to U.S. forces as the campaign against ISIS accelerates, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

The American casualty in Syria was the first acknowledged by the Defense Department in the effort by Special Forces to train and advise an alliance of rebel groups focused on retaking the self-proclaimed capital of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in the northeastern city of Raqqa.

The other U.S. casualty occurred west of Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish region, where U.S. trainers and advisers have been assisting Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in the early stages of the push to retake Mosul, the main ISIS stronghold in northwestern Iraq.

The statement by the Pentagon that they were hit by "indirect fire" usually indicates that they were wounded by mortar, artillery or rocket fire rather than small arms.

In both cases, Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to describe the nature or extent of the injuries to the U.S. service members. They were hurt badly enough to prevent their immediate return to duty, Davis said, but "We dont talk in detail about our wounded because we don't want to telegraph battle-damage assessments to our enemy."

Both of the wounded troops were "operating behind the forward line of troops (FLOT). They were not on the front lines, they were not engaged in active combat, they were not out trigger-pulling offensively," Davis told Pentagon reporters.

According to The Washington Post, about 14 U.S. service members have been wounded since the start of the U.S. train, advise and assist mission on the ground began in the late spring and summer of 2014 as ISIS swept out of Syria to take over large swaths of territory in Iraq against little resistance from the Iraqi security forces.

Although they are limited to the train, advise and assist role, three U.S. service members -- Special Forces Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler; Marine Staff Sgt. Louis Cardin; and Chief Petty Officer Charles Keating IV, a Navy SEAL -- have been killed in what the Pentagon has said was ground combat. Cardin was killed by ISIS rocket rife; Keating and Wheeler were killed in firefights, according to the Pentagon.

In his Memorial Day address at Arlington National Cemetery, President Barack Obama, who has authorized the deployment of about 4,000 U.S. troops for the campaign against ISIS, said that Wheeler, Cardin and Keating had died in combat.

"In Iraq, in our fight against ISIL, three Americans have given their lives in combat on our behalf," Obama said, using another acronym for ISIS.

Last fall, Obama approved sending about 50 Special Forces advisers into Syria and 250 more were authorized by the White House in April for the ramped-up effort to retake Raqqa. At the same time, the Pentagon authorized sending an additional 217 mostly Special Forces advisers into Iraq in the campaign for Mosul.

U.S. troops are expected to operate well behind the front lines to avoid being involved in direct combat, but the question of how far behind the lines they stay became muddled last week when three U.S. Special Forces advisers turned up in Agence France Presse photos with the U.S. backed Syrian Democratic Forces -- an umbrella group of Kurdish, Arab and Christian fighters -- as they advanced towards Raqqa.

Army Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve in Baghdad, said in a Pentagon briefing that front lines often become fluid but U.S. troops were expected to stay at least a "terrain feature" away from the enemy.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.

Related video:
News / National

by Richard Muponde

THE Minister of Primary and Secondary Education, Lazarus Dokora, has said it is illegal for schools to take parents who default paying school fees to debt collectors.In an interview on the side-lines of Global Action Week for Education commemorations held in Gwanda, Dokora said if schools decide to take the legal route to recover outstanding fees they should approach the Small Claims Court, not debt collectors.He reiterated that no child should be excluded from school for non-payment of fees. Some schools especially in Bulawayo and Gwanda have handed defaulting parents to debt collectors to force them to pay outstanding fees."Which schools are doing that? That's not the proper channel and it's not done that way. No parent should be taken to debt collectors. That's not their job to do so. If the schools decide to recover money from parents they should instead go to the Small Claims Court which is part of the magistrates' courts. What those schools are doing is illegal," said Dokora.The Minister said schools should engage parents to pay fees while their children are attending classes."Don't let the children even know that there's dialogue between you and their parents involving fees. Let them walk into school and learn without hindrance. No child should be excluded from school because of non-payment of fees," said the minister.
Over 6,000 veterans attending Ashford University may find their school no longer approved for GI Bill benefits after June 30, 2016. The state of Iowa will be withdrawing its approval for GI Bill benefits after that date.

Ashford is attempting to gain approval for its programs from the state of California before the Iowa approval runs out. This would keep GI Bill benefits flowing to enrolled students. However, Bridgepoint Education, the parent company of Ashford is currently under investigation by the California Attorney General for the company's scholarship and institutional loan programs and other extensions of credit made by Bridgepoint to students, as well as enrollment and retention details. Ashford joins the growing list of for-profit universities under investigation by state and federal authorities which includes DeVry University, the University of Phoenix, ITT Tech, and Corinthian Colleges.

Bridgepoint is also facing two federal subpoenas from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission related to the California investigation and a Consumer Finance Protection Bureau investigation.

The Department of Veterans Affairs does not approve schools for GI Bill benefits, instead it relies on an arcane process of having individual states approve "programs of education". The VA will approve each program based on the state's input. Theoretically a school could have a sociology program approved for GI Bill benefits, while a calculus program would not be approved, although this rarely happens. This process of the federal government relying on the states to do the investigative and administrative work dates back to the days before nationwide for-profit chains offered internet based degrees.

The Iowa State Approving Agency's withdrawal of Ashford's GI Bill approval comes as a result of the closing of Ashford's physical campus in Clinton, IA. About 1 percent of Ashford's 42,000 students attended the physical campus in Clinton. The Iowa campus was bought by Ashford in 2005, it had been in operation since 1893 when it began as Mount St. Clare Academy, a female only institution. Ashford announced last July that the Clinton campus would close because it had been unable to attract enough students to make up for a "significant and ongoing enrollment shortfall." The campus's final commencement on May 9 had about 200 students.

Since Iowa has withdrawn its approval of Ashford University, the school must now seek approval in another state where it has a campus or offices. Bridgepoint Education, Ashford's parent company has its headquarters in San Diego.

Students currently drawing GI Bill benefits to attend Ashford will not be affected until their present term ends. The company said in a statement that "Those students whose period of enrollment begins on or before June 30, 2016 will continue to receive GI Bill benefits until the completion of the student's term. At this time we cannot be certain that approval through the California State Approving Agency will be obtained by June 30, 2016, and any potential delays or gaps in coverage for GI Bill benefits, including as a result of following the [Iowa State Approving Agency's] recommendation to seek approval elsewhere, could have a material adverse effect on current and future military student enrollment."
Depending on your PT test, the order of swimming may best be determined by where it is in the order of events of that test.
The Orioles have acquired first baseman Steve Pearce from the Yankees and designated utility man Bill Hall for assignment, according to Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com (via Twitter). The Yankees will receive cash considerations in return, tweets Brittany Ghiroli of MLB.com.

Pearce, 29, signed a minor league deal with the Yanks in late March after spending the first seven seasons of his career with the Pirates. In 52 games with Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre this season, Pearce hit .321/.422/.574 with eleven homers.

Hall, 32, was just added to the club's 25 and 40-man rosters yesterday after having his contract purchased. The veteran was also DFA'd by the team on May 25th before clearing waivers. Hall has a .221/.272/.372 slash line with three home runs in 21 Triple-A games this year.
News / National

by Stephen Jakes

Some motorists in Harare have complained that police were tormenting them over the small spare wheels which are popularly known as biscuit spare wheels.Darlington Farai Gwatidzo said he was particularly troubled by police harassment in relation to spare wheels."I drive a Mercedes Benz E class that comes with a "biscuit " spare tyre. I had a heated argument with police at a road block two days ago after he said my spare wheel was illegal," he said.."I challenged him that Mercedes was considered one of the safest cars in the world and that for the purpose of a spare wheel they saw it fit and safe to be one and also challenged the law he was referring to. He called his colleague who had a printed A4 that had different instruments as he called it."Gwatidzo said the .police officer cited section 14, 26."I think and 53 all of which I read and do not talk about biscuit spare wheels. I challenged him and in the end he gave up and let me go but after 20 minutes. He had said if I wanted to go to court they would have to book in my car meaning compounding it yet is it not right that the only time they can take your vehicle is when one does not have a license? People are being fined every single day for these types of spare wheels. Also when was this law, if it exists, gazetted and approved by parliament," he said.
MACKINAC ISLAND, MI -- Key players in Michigan business and politics are set to meet on Mackinac Island this week for the 2016 Mackinac Policy Conference, but those wishing to keep tabs from afar can follow along.

The Detroit Regional Chamber, which hosts the annual conference, is offering a live stream for the public that will be available to watch online. Check out a livestream of the conference below, which includes speeches from Quicken Loans Founder Dan Gilbert; Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan; Gov. Rick Snyder; and Daymond John, star of ABC's "Shark Tank."

The conference runs Wednesday through Friday.

This year's conference will focus on entrepreneurship, urban education and investing in the future. It is chaired by Dennis Archer Jr., the founding principal and president of Archer Corporate Services and Chief Executive Officer of Ignition Media Group.

For a full conference agenda, visit the Detroit Regional Chamber's Mackinac Policy Conference website.

Lauren Gibbons is a political reporter on MLive's Impact team. She can be reached at lgibbon2@mlive.com.
If old travel postcards are like doorways into Michigan's past, then Don Harrison is the keeper of the keys: The Traverse City professional postcard collector and dealer has thousands upon thousands of vintage postcards dating back to the earliest days of Michigan's travel and tourism industry (his postcard business' name is, fittingly, Up North Memories).

There's quite the market at postcard shows and on sites like eBay for some of the more rare images, but the importance of these cards goes well beyond monetary value. We chatted with Harrison about his passion for postcard collecting, and the historical significance of ephemera such as this:

How did you get into postcard collecting?

I've been sort of a sentimental guy and a packrat collector ever since I was a kid. I instilled sentimentality into my own kids and started collecting postcards related to places we'd been -- like where I taught my son to trout fish for the first time. From there it grew into an appreciation for photographic excellence and Michigan heritage.

How many postcards would you say you have?

As a dealer I'll probably take, I don't know, maybe 50 or 60 thousand to a postcard show. At some of the bigger card shows, some of the dealers will have hundreds of thousands.

Where do you find postcards?

Often people bring postcards to me -- but not often enough. There's a lot of searching. And there's a lot of family papers and things when people pass away -- if a family member doesn't have an interest in that kind of thing, they don't know what to do with them. So I try to rescue postcards from the recycle bin.

Do you keep a personal collection separate from the cards you sell?

I'm pretty much just collecting things in Benzie County now. It's probably the largest Benzie County collection in the world, which is funny because Benzie is the smallest county in Michigan.

Do you specialize in any particular types of postcards?

People know me as a Michigan specialist. I sell other types of cards -- over the years I've collected cards relating to holidays, railroads, ships -- but I really try and excel at finding things that are related to Michigan, and then I try to tell a story with those cards.

There are a lot of railroad and steamship collectors. Some of those images are historically significant -- the steamships of the era gone by, which went up and down the west coast of Michigan. A lot of those ships brought people from Chicago or somewhere else around the Great Lakes to Northern Michigan, which started this whole "travel and tourism" thing. We didn't have a good set of roads, we didn't have freeways, so people would get to their destinations on ship and via railroad.

There's often not much information on these historic cards. Do you do a lot of research to learn more about the people and places behind them?

I do a tremendous amount of research. When I get an image, I scan it and then try to crop into it to see what I can see, and see what the photographer was seeing. In the beginning, these postcards were actually real photos. Some of these photographers were extremely talented, going back to the early 1900s.

How much do postcards like these cost?

When it comes to prices for these postcards, there are actually a lot of variables. Condition is one of them, and age. People collect postcards for different reasons, and certain kinds of postcards are sought after -- and of course that adds to the value of the card as well as its collectibility.

What's the most expensive card you've seen?

Cards have sold for upwards of over $1,000, easily. But then you're really talking about something that's historically significant, like a work of art. It's one of a kind. There was a postcard sold recently that made national headlines -- it was one of the few actual photos of Jesse James. Somebody bought it for a million dollars.

Incredible! Who determines the prices for these extra-special cards?

The value is something that the dealer puts on it but it's that people that are collecting it either at auction or searching it out -- what's it worth to those people.

You started a community on Facebook for these historic Northern Michigan postcards. Why the interest, do you think?

More communities are really suffering for local historical museums; an awful lot of communities don't have the funds to make new acquisitions or even open their doors. This is another way to support and share history. I post the cards with the hopes that people will find them and be able to appreciate them like I do, and have it bring back a memory.

Some people just have an appreciation for their own communities, too, so these historical images of their communities ground them and give them some sort of roots. The big box stores destroy the downtown look of so many villages. Sometimes people need to see the way it was. It gives them a sense of pride or longing for the past.

Don Harrison, right, with the late Phil Balyeat, one of Michigan's prominent 20th century postcard photographers.

Emily Bingham covers Michigan life and culture for MLive, reporting on history, travel and other aspects of life in the Great Lakes State. Follow her on Twitter or contact her via email at ebingham@mlive.com.
by Kathleen Alexander

On the weekend of June 24th and 25th, the Ingham County Fairgrounds will be used for its original purpose, to showcase innovations and achievements in local agriculture. The 16th annual Michigan Energy Fair in Mason welcomes individuals and families to experience 100 exhibits, food, music and two new features including the Sustainable Living Summit and the Emergency Preparedness Expo.

Kirk Heinze, host of Greening of the Great Lakes, meets with Douglas Elbinger, energy systems analyst for Newman Consulting Group of Farmington Hills and volunteer coordinator for the Sustainable Living Summit, to gain an understanding of the event and its new attractions.

"It's an educational event," he explains. "It's a fun thing to do because you're going to learn a lot of stuff, meet lots of new people, and meet experts in different fields that will give you insight on what you can do to improve your energy footprint and sustainable lifestyle."

The Great Lakes Renewable Energy Association, who produces the Michigan Energy Fair, started 25 years ago as a non-profit organization for individuals with a strong interest in renewable energy and energy conservation. Today, the fair is expected to bring in between three and five thousand people seeking education and information on geothermal, solar, and wind energy, social responsibility, sustainable agriculture and other technology breakthroughs.

Exhibitors will include leading authorities in environmental preservation such as Ingham County Drain Commissioner and water conservationist, Patrick Lindemann, agronomist, Ron Deutsch, and Jim Newman, a leader in green building.

"All of this is really going to focus around Michigan people, Michigan innovation, Michigan jobs and what's happening here in the Great Lakes State," says Elbinger.

He mentions the state of Michigan as a leader in the green movement.

Elbinger points out, "This is just a natural evolution of what has been happening, and between Michigan State and Ingham Country, has always been a world leader in agricultural innovation, and you're going to see a lot more of it happening in the near future."

Apart from the exhibits, fairgoers can visit the Sustainable Living Summit focused on renewable energy and energy efficiency, and gain knowledge about survival during natural and manmade disasters at the Great Lakes Emergency Preparedness Expo.

Elbinger concludes the talk by reiterating the family friendly atmosphere of the fair. "It's really a folksy, down to earth, grassroots, educational experience for the whole family."

Click here to listen to the Heinze/Elbinger conversation and learn more about the Energy Fair.

Greening of the Great Lakes airs every Sunday evening at 7:00 on News/Talk 760 WJR and around the state each weekend via the Michigan Talk Network.
Christopher_Taylor_Amanda_Edmonds_121115_RJS_01.jpg

Ann Arbor Mayor Christopher Taylor and Ypsilanti Mayor Amanda Edmonds.

(File photo | The Ann Arbor News)

ANN ARBOR, MI -- The mayors of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti are both supporting a newly unveiled regional transit plan.

The Southeast Michigan Regional Transit Authority on Tuesday morning released endorsement statements from both mayors.

"The RTA's regional transit master plan provides an essential launching point for a well-connected regional transit system that southeast Michigan must achieve to be a thriving, competitive and equitable region," said Ypsilanti Mayor Amanda Edmonds. "In Washtenaw County, we will build off of the strong local service AAATA provides to then connect our county to the region."

Edmonds said Ypsilanti residents, institutions and businesses would benefit greatly from stronger regional transit options, better connecting the community to the rest of the four-county region through a mix of transit services.

"Our priority as regional commuter rail with a stop in Ypsilanti will open us to more connections to jobs and opportunities, as well as economic growth that regional transit has proven to stimulate," she said. "This is a tremendous opportunity for southeast Michigan that we must harness."

Ann Arbor Mayor Christopher Taylor offered similar remarks about connecting Ann Arbor to the broader southeast Michigan community.

"We are fortunate to have outstanding local service provided by AAATA and this regional service would work alongside TheRide to finally implement commuter rail to Detroit, increase our options for travel to the airport, support rapid routes from Ann Arbor to Ypsilanti, and connect educational as well as healthcare institutions across the region," he said. "Regional transit is necessary to a vibrant community and this plan will deliver what southeast Michigan needs."

While the RTA proposal has the support of Edmonds and Taylor, it's the citizens of Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and Washtenaw counties who will decide the RTA plan's fate at the ballot box in the November presidential election.

The RTA is asking voters to approve a 20-year, 1.2-mill tax to fund the $4.6 billion plan.

A 1.2-mill tax would cost the owner of a home with a $200,000 market value and a $100,000 taxable value an extra $120 per year.

Related: New regional transit plan: What's in it for Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti?

Ryan Stanton covers the city beat for The Ann Arbor News. Reach him at ryanstanton@mlive.com.
News / National

by Stephen Jakes

Controversial Zanu PF youth member Fidelis Fengu has asked the minister of Indeginisation Patrick Zhuwao to create a Harare index to benefit the youth through the empowerment fund."Hon. P. Zhuwawo would it not benefit us as a nation to expedite the creation of a Harare Index. At this bourse we could promote youth owned enterprises and help them raise capital and the various youth funds and empowerment funds could be invested into that alternative stock exchange and we could have meaningful progress towards youth empowerment and employment creation," said Fengu."I challenge you to explore this idea versus LEAF (Localised Empowerment Acceleration Fund )."He said if the ZYC had competent staff in the economic front they would carry the flag of a youth stock exchange and engage with ZSE or W. Bonyongwe and her team.
News / National

by Staff reporter

President Robert Mugabe is the only Head of State attending the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) meeting underway in the Papua New Guinea (PNG) capital of Port Moresby.Early this year, Mugabe was also due to attend a low-key Indian Cultural Festival and later left in a huff under the guise of security concerns, as it emerged that even the host country's leader, President Pranab Mukherjee, had snubbed the event.Deputy Minister of Information, Thokozile Mathuthu yesterday said it was not Mugabe's problem that other leaders did not attend.PNG Prime Minister Peter O'Neill was set to officially open the summit yesterday, with the closing ceremony set for tomorrow.
News / National

by Staff reporter

President Robert Mugabe has urged the High Court to dismiss an application by David Gweshe, seeking an order compelling the Head of State to appoint him Gweshe as substantive Chief Negomo instead of the incumbent acting chief Lucious Chitsinde, saying the court no longer has jurisdiction to preside over chieftainship wrangles.Through his lawyer from the Attorney General's Office, Happy Mugadure said in terms of Section 283 of the Constitution, the High Court has no jurisdiction to entertain disputes concerning the appointment, removal and suspension of chiefs.




An online platform for import and export licences is expected to go live on June 7, helping to streamline approvals, cut costs and reduce opportunities for agents to sell counterfeit documents, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

The system will initially be limited to trade in products that do not also need approval from other ministries, such as textiles, said U Min Min, deputy director in the Trade Development Department.

Companies applying for licences through the new website will need to have a bank account, and can fill out the application form and pay fees online, before printing out their licences.

Companies are often unable to travel to our offices in Yangon and Nay Pyi Taw. They have to pay agents to get a license, which is expensive, said U Min Min.

Now applicants can meet the ministry directly online, and agents will not be able to sell imitation documents. If the applicants fill out their forms correctly they will be able to get a licence within 10 minutes.

This is the ministrys second attempt to set up an online platform; its first attempt failed because it created additional work for traders, who were still required to visit the ministry in person to pick up their licences.

Companies hoping to import products that could be harmful to public health or to the environment will still need to meet a ministry official face-to-face, said U Min Min.





Anyone who wants to import food, medicines, live animals or insects cannot apply for a licence online, he said.

The Customs Department is also setting up its own online platform which is likely to be finished this November.

Translation by Khine Thazin Han
The former permanent secretary for the Ministry of Finance has been appointed deputy minister for the newly formed Ministry of Planning and Finance, according to a May 26 announcement.





U Maung Maung Win will become deputy minister, while U Tun Tun Naing, permanent secretary at the now-defunct Ministry of National Planning and Economic Development, will become the permanent secretary for the new ministry.

The new deputy minister was appointed chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this month, replacing U Maung Maung Thein, who was also deputy finance minister for the former government.

President U Htin Kyaw made the appointments, according to an announcement posted on the Presidents Office website.

In his first move as president-elect, U Htin Kyaw cut the number of government ministries from 36 to 21, and said he would cut all deputy minister posts, while reducing the number of ministers in the Presidents Office from six to one.

The plan was aimed primarily at cutting costs to reduce the budget deficit, according to the National League for Democracy. Since then, deputy ministers have gradually been appointed  there are now 21 Union ministers and seven deputies.

The new planning and finance ministry is one of the largest  the Ministry of Finance had 11 departments and state-owned financial institutions with a total of over 20,000 staff, while the Ministry of National Planning and Economic Development (MNPED) had six departments.

Plans are under-way to restructure the departments, though no details have yet been released, a senior ministry official said yesterday.





When the new government took power it promised each ministry would publish plans for its first 100 days in office  most have not yet done this. U Maung Maung Win told The Myanmar Times last week that his ministrys 100-day plan is still at the draft stage and will be made public at the end of June.
The Indian embassy on Yangons Merchant Road is the latest historic building to receive a blue plaque from Yangon Heritage Trust.





At a ceremony yesterday, the plaque was installed on one of the tallest structures to be recognised for its historical and architectural features, said YHT communications manager Ma Shwe Yinn Mar Oo.

The five-storey embassy is the 12th building in Yangon to be recognised by YHT.

Build in 1914 to house the offices of a Calcutta-based insurance firm, Oriental Life Assurance, the building has been occupied by the Indian embassy since 1957.

A 1999-2000 renovation left many original signature notes in place, said Ma Shwe Yinn Mar Oo.

U Thant Myint-U, founder and chair of Yangon Heritage Trust, said, This century-old building is important less because it once housed the Oriental Life Assurance Company than because it has been home to the Embassy of India since the 1950s.

There are so many places in downtown Yangon that can be regarded as a shared heritage between India and Myanmar, for example places linked to the many visits of Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru in the early 20th century, he said.

Ambassador Gautam Mukhopadhaya said, In both India and Myanmar, a rapid construction boom has destroyed many historical and cultural buildings. Many new skyscrapers are emerging in downtown Yangon as old heritage buildings are disappearing. I am very proud that the Indian embassy should be recognised as a Yangon Heritage building.





YHT blue plaques already decorate 11 other buildings, including City Hall, AYA Bank headquarters beside Sule Pagoda, the Armenian Church, the Central Fire Station, the General Post Office, Myanmar Agricultural Development Bank on Pansodan Street and the Central Press Building.
Foreign investment and the livelihoods of thousands of construction workers have been put at risk by the Yangon Region governments decision to suspend all construction, developers say.





Developers of hundreds of high-rise buildings now under construction in Yangon Region were forced to suspend building work on May 14 while the government reviews all projects with nine floors or more, to decide which will be given permission to go ahead.

More than 200 high-rise building projects had received varying levels of approval under the previous administration, according to U Than Htay, head of Yangon City Development Committees building engineering department.

Over 60 of those projects have already been granted permits to start construction, while more than 120 projects are already being built. They have all been forced to suspend operations, pending a review of their permits, to see if the projects correspond with city development and zoning plans.

In a sharp reaction, U Khin Shwe, president of the Myanmar Construction Entrepreneurs Association (MCEA) and chair of Zaykabar Company, told The Myanmar Times that the order could put thousands out of work.

All construction operations have been stopped. We employ at least 1000 labourers on each site. This decision is a blow to them and to entrepreneurs, he said.

U Khin Shwe said new high-rise buildings must be located in townships with good transportation  a reflection of industry fears that new zoning plans may relegate large-scale projects to the citys edges.

If high-rises are only granted permits in outlying townships like Hmawbi and Kyauktan, no foreign investors would come forward. The government has to consider the needs of the construction industry, which is vital to the economy, and of its thousands of workers, he said.





The government may have the power to decide, but they need experience. They should seek advice from people with experience, he said, adding that decisions of this kind should be taken after discussions between architects, business leaders and the government.

If the government had asked my advice, I would be ready not only to explain, but also to help solve the problems, said U Khin Shwe.

Most major high-rise projects under construction in Yangon are joint ventures between local and foreign investors. Construction costs for one high-rise building range from US$20 million to $150 million, U Khin Shwe said.

Developers say that despite the wave of new construction over the past few years, there is still a need for new residential buildings downtown, where foreign visitors prefer to live and work, because hotel room charges are still very high.

Developer U Than Naing said, [The decision to suspend construction has cost] entrepreneurs a lot, and thousands of workers are jobless. Most of the high-rise projects are high-investment joint ventures with foreign companies. This could deter foreign investors who have borrowed extensively to do business here.

Foreign investors were reportedly spooked last year when the Presidents Office cancelled five mixed-use projects near to Shwe-

dagon Pagoda, including the $300 million Dagon City 1, a joint venture between local firm Thu Kha Yadanar and Hong Kong-based Marga Landmark.

U Than Naing said final approval to resume construction would be granted only after repeat inspections by YCDC and even regional cabinet-level approval. The government needs to reconsider the effect on foreign direct investment, he said.

U Than Htay, head of YCDCs building engineering department, told The Myanmar Times last week that teams will be formed to review as many of these projects as quickly as possible and that permits would be granted swiftly so as not to delay projects.

Translation by San Layy
Yangon Region parliament discussed two high-rise projects that will be watched closely by the local government yesterday, with MPs suggesting the developments may be up for review.





The highest condominium in Yangon is one of the two buildings placed on a regional parliament watch-list and officials say they will object if the developers continue to build before a thorough investigation of the projects is complete.

Daw Sandar Min, who heads the regional Finance, Planning and Economic Committee, suggested the parliament should publicise a city zoning plan, as well as laws and regulations governing high-rise construction.

She said that Diamond Inya Palace Condominium  which would be the tallest building in the country if its 34 floors are completed  is in a low-rise zone according to the draft city zoning plan.

The project, which is located on U Tun Nyein Street in Mayangone

township, has all the necessary permissions under Yangon City Development Committee rules. Even though the zoning plan has not yet been approved, there should be no high-rises in this area, she said.

We dont think this building should have 34 floors and the mayor has said he will use existing rules and regulations to handle the issue. If the developer continues construction, our parliament will object.





Developer Mandalay Golden Wing Construction has built 26 floors already and the project is due for completion later this year. Last November, construction was temporarily halted when a fire broke out in the early- morning hours. Firefighters said a falling searchlight ignited plywood and timber on the 22nd floor.

U Than Htay, head of the Engineering Department (Building) at YCDC, said that Diamond Inya Palace Condominium never received its final construction permit and is being investigated.

We have suspended construction because the developer did not get a final construction permit. We are still deciding whether it should continue or not, he told The Myanmar Times. The company was unavailable for comment yesterday.

Yangon Region government is reviewing all high-rise projects of nine floors or higher to determine which will go ahead  even those already under construction.

More than 200 high-rises had received varying levels of approval under the previous administration, according to YCDCs building engineering department. Over 60 of those projects have already been granted permits to start construction, while more than 120 projects are already being built.

Another high-rise building of 11 storeys, located near Yangons parliament building, was also discussed during yesterdays session, in relation to the security of parliament and nearby government offices.

U Kyaw Zay Ya of Dagon township asked Mayor U Maung Maung Soe whether the building should be located so near to the compound. The mayor responded that the building should not be so close.

An official from developer Waminn Group, which is building the project, said yesterday that his company will follow the rules of the new government and that it has no plans to object if the government cancels the project.

We have finished the foundations of the building. We are now suspending our work, he said.
Ousted senior officials from the Union Solidarity and Development Party are threatening to take their feud to the election commission if their request for a party conference is not heeded.





Seventeen members of the former ruling party, including former Speaker Thura U Shwe Mann and his camp, were expelled from the USDP on April 22, soon after former president U Thein Sein resumed the reins.

Through press conferences and personal appeals, the ousted members have demanded a party conference where the expulsions can be discussed and addressed via a party vote.

Yesterday, Thura U Shwe Mann and his allies released an open letter demanding the party leadership provide justification for the expulsions in line with party rules and regulations.

[We ask them] not to bring the party into darkness. Thats why we are urging them to solve this issue according to the partys rules and regulations, expelled USDP member U Zaw Myint Pe said at the press conference held at Thingaha Hotel in Nay Pyi Taw yesterday.

Four of the ousted ruling party members attended the press event, but Thura U Shwe Mann was absent.

The expulsions, believed to have been ordered by U Thein Sein shortly after he and senior party officials held a strategy meeting in March, confirmed deep rifts within the USDP which suffered a crushing defeat by the National League for Democracy in last Novembers election. Since receiving the dismissal notices, Thura U Shwe Mann has demanded that the USDP hold an emergency conference to decide whether the party had acted within due reason.





U Zaw Myint Pe said the feud has grown beyond the parameters of an intra-party issue and could affect the well-being of the state and the public should it continue. He added that a complaint will be filed with the Union Election Commission if the USDP continues to violate party principles.

It is already clear that the commission would take action against the USDP, but we dont want to destroy a big party. Thats why we havent complained yet, he said.

U Zaw Myint Pe warned that the more U Thein Seins camp resists the request, the worse off the party image will be and the less ground it has for the 2020 election.

They act like dictators in solving inter-party issues, he said.

The USDP has yet to respond to the expelled members requests. But party spokesperson U Khin Ye told reporters last week that a conference will be held in August and that until then, the party will be busy preparing.

U Khin Ye said all party issues would be decided at the conference, but did not discuss whether the dismissal of Thura U Shwe Mann and his allies would be on the agenda.

The party h as to pay attention to the party reform process. We dont have time to resolve other issues, a party officer who asked not to be named told The Myanmar Times.

Another ousted member, U Win Than, said all decisions made since Thura U Shwe Mann was sacked from chairing the party last August have flouted the party rules. The former Speaker was forced to resign amid an inter-party coup flanked by security forces. His close working relations with state counsellor and then-opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and his support for constitutional amendments, were believed to have alienated the military and some of the less reform-minded members of the USDP.

The former Speaker and the ex-president have long had a tense relationship, with their factions within the party often at odds.

Last week, U Thein Sein held meetings in Yangon with senior party officials to discuss revitalising the party for the next ballot. The USDP has announced plans to establish a party think tank led by former ministers U Soe Thein and U Aung Min. Yesterday, the party began a media training program at its headquarters in order to train members on how to better interact with the press corps.

We have a duty to act as watchdog for the NLD government, said U Hla Swe, a former USDP Amyotha Hluttaw MP.

We will point out the mistakes in their work and we will fill the blanks they cannot.
Over 100 refugees displaced by ongoing fighting gathered in Thibaw/Hsipaw township yesterday to protest the clashes that have kept them from returning to their homes.





The protesters held up white placards reading Stop the war, Solve conflict peacefully and Let children go to school.

They were not given official permission for the demonstration.

At first, the IDPs wanted to protest by marching around the township. But when we approached the township administration, they told us to wait five days for a permit. But the IDPs dont want to wait, said U Myint Thein, a member of the Civil Ceasefire Watch Committee in Hsipaw who helped organise the protest.

People want to go back to their homes and their childrens schools, he added.

Instead of the planned march, the protesters held up placards at the gates of the monastery where they have sought temporary shelter.

They just held the cards to express their feelings and stood in front of the monastery, said U Dol Lar, a member of the Civil Ceasefire Watch Committee.





Now the school season is starting and we dont know what to do about the IDP childrens education, he added.

Over 1100 IDPs have taken refuge throughout Hsipaw township since third week of May. Among those IDPs, 280 are currently staying at the Hsipaw Boe Daw Monastery due to ongoing fighting between the Tatmadaw and the Shan State Army-North.

Soldiers have forbidden villagers from returning.

On May 28, the soldiers told us its still a war zone and not safe yet when we sent food for Khaung Mai villagers who decided to stay at the local monastery to protect their village, said Sai Kham Pan, from the Shan Literature and Cultural Organisation of Hsipaw.
News / Regional

by Staff reporter

A few months after the Vic Falls and Harare International Carnival, the home of arts - Bulawayo - hosts its first edition of the fete this weekend. Over 20 musicians from the city including Antivirus, Iyasa, Alaina, ASAPH, Mzoe 7, Guluva 7, TKP, Sandra Ndebele, Djembe Monks and One Stand Band are billed to perform at the carnival being held at Hartsfield Tshisa Nyama on Saturday.DJs Victor Bravo, Mellow T, Slimza, Liz, Crazy Black, Slamma and Wellyonz will take care of business on the decks with Arthur Evans, Joe tha OG, Babongile Sikhonjwa and Saimon "Mambazo" Phiri being MCs.Organiser of the Bulawayo Music Carnival - Mduduzi Mdlongwa said the festivities would begin at midday as it will be a family gathering. Regular entry tickets have pegged at $3 while those who want to be in the VIP section will have to part with $20. Stalls will also be put in place for artistes to sell their CDs, T-shirts and other promotional material.Taking a leaf from the just ended Durban Music Carnival, Mdlongwa said besides organising an event conducive for families, their main aim was to expose talent from Bulawayo."As 3D Events, we've been promoting artistes from Harare and South Africa and I felt we needed to do more to support our own hence the music carnival."There's a lot of talent in this city and it's up to us to expose them. I'm confident they'll be able attract a huge crowd come Saturday," Mdlongwa said. Mdlongwa who has hosted Cassper Nyovest, Black Coffee and Winky D said they were going all out with the carnival as if it were an international artistes' concert."We're going big as we want to give local artistes the same treatment we give artistes we usually promote. The stage will match that of international concerts, it's now up to the artistes to prove their worth on the day."
The government has launched a project to bring water to every village in the country through a 24-hour supply system. Rural development department director general U Khant Zaw told the media on May 26 that the agriculture ministry was already spending K25-30 billion every year on water purification for drought-stricken villages.





Now the government has set a goal of supplying affected villages permanently by 2030, said the director general.

As part of the 100-day projects, we are digging wells and pools for more than 500 villages. We are also repairing and upgrading wells, pools and pump machines, he said.

The Department of Rural Deve-lopment has been carrying out water purification work in more than 2000 villages every year, including 1000 villages particularly affected by this years powerful El Nino phenomenon. They were working closely with civil society and public donors, he said.

U Khant Zaw said the Ministry of Electricity and Energy was working with his department to provide or upgrade electricity in 1800 off-grid villages.

UNICEF and the Department of Rural Development, with funding from the United Kingdoms Department for International Development, had also been providing permanent door-to-door water supplies to 110 villages, said the director general.

U Khin Aung Thein, who runs UNICEFs water project, said earlier this month that the UNs childrens fund had already started work in those villages.





Now about 70 villages in Magwe and Mandalay regions have been provided with water supply systems as model villages for the rest of the country.
In a narrow victory, vendors thrown out of work by the blaze that destroyed Mandalays Mingalar Market have voted to replace the damaged building rather than try to repair it. The vote between the two options took place following a sometimes fractious debate over the best way to proceed after last Marchs disastrous fire.





The results of the poll were announced by Mandalay City Development Committee on May 27.

There seemed to be a majority in favour of repairing when vendors and residents met with the chief minister, said an MCDC spokesperson. But now there is a majority in favour of rebuilding.

The rebuilding option won by 208 votes to 205, a majority of three.

Many people preferred to repair the market building, but I think this is the right result. We look forward to getting back to work, said vendor Ma Aye Mi.

City engineers had calculated that there was not much difference in the cost between the two options.

The three-storey Mingalar Market caught fire on March 22. Hundreds of rooms and offices were destroyed in the blaze, which began after-hours at a bedding store. Mandalay City Development Committee estimated that the fire caused over K1 billion in damage (US$878,000). There were 321 rooms including offices, shops and residential rooms and 43 transient stalls destroyed and over K1054.6 million lost. The building value was over K554.7 million and the materials were valued at more than K500 million, according to MCDC.

Translation by San Layy
Two drug kingpins suspected of masterminding major smuggling operations via Muse border gate are still on the run, police said yesterday. On May 28, Muse and Kutkai police seized US$42 million-worth of methamphetamine (yaba) on the Kutkai-Kaung Khar road in Muse, according to state-owned media.





Acting on a tip-off, officers searched a 12-wheel truck and seized 21 million stimulant tablets. Police say the culprit is Liu Zhi Xiao who, with his accomplice Ko Aung San, is also the chief suspect in the seizure of more than $30 million worth of narcotics in Mandalay in March. According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Myanmar is the second-largest opium producer in the world and is also a large producer of methamphetamine.

The chair of the Restoration Council of Shan State/Shan State Army (RCSS/SSA), Lieutenant General Yawd Serk, said the illegal narcotics trade was a major issue in northern Shan State. Drug-related crime should be eliminated down to the roots. Just dealing with surface issues will not be enough, he said, as more than 600 people took part in a recent rally marking Kachin Anti-Drug Day in Kutkai.

Mandalay anti-narcotics officers said the March total haul included Ecstasy tablets worth K6.7 million, over 24 kilograms of heroin, 15kg of opium solids, 82kg of ice methamphetamine tablets, 1150 gallons (4353 litres) of chloroform, 2000kg of phenol, 550 gallons (2082L) of ammonium hydroxide, 300 gallons (1136L) of hydrocholoride, and over 3700kg of ammonium as well as ethanol, engine oil and empty gas tanks. Police also confiscated K16 million in cash hidden in the glove compartments of two of the cars.

Police said they made the K37 billion seizure in front of a house on the corner of San Pya and Mingala streets in Mandalays Pyigyitagun township.

The arrested people were running a serious drug business and are important people in the trade, said Police Lieutenant Colonel Myint Aung from the Mandalay Region anti-narcotic force. The amount of drugs we seized hit a new record high in Mandalay.
Yangon City Development Committee is repairing a retaining wall in Sanchaung township that collapsed due to heavy rainfall on May 22 and put nearby residential buildings at risk.





The drainage system wall in Aung Chan Thar ward will be rebuilt using a different construction method after the previous wall lasted only six months, according to an official of YCDCs Engineering Department for Roads and Bridges. The wall will be reinforced using cement and curved iron.

The ditch was first repaired in the 2015-16 fiscal year at a cost of more than K400 million. Within months, a 20-feet stretch of wall between Aung Chan Thar and Min Oo streets collapsed.

I still dont know exactly how much it will cost. YCDC said they will build it with a [reinforced concrete] system. The building of concrete posts should have been finished by May 29, Yangon Region MP U Thawdar Aung said.

Local residents have not been informed about the new plan and worry whether the new wall will be better.

The department needs to tell the public how they plan to build a strong wall. The wall collapsed in two places. It is like wasting public money. I want to know how they will guarantee it will be strong this time, but they havent told us anything yet, said U Kyaw Soe who lives on Aung Chan Thar Street.

There are eight six-storey buildings and three two-storey buildings within a few metres of the collapsed wall. Residents have been told they are not in danger.

Translation by Khant Lin Oo
Myanmar's new National League for Democracy government has a huge set of reform challenges waiting for it, but few could be more important and intractable than corruption.





During decades of military rule graft became ubiquitous. To the anger of ordinary citizens, bribes were required for the simplest government services, while it became the norm in doing business and obtaining licences in the country. During the former U Thein Sein government, there was little change in this situation.

Fighting corruption is a defining principle of the NLD, along with democratic practices. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, as minister for the Presidents Office, recently banned civil servants from accepting gifts worth more than K25,000 (US$23), while a leading MP has said that clean government is the life blood of the party.

But rooting out bribery will be easier said than done; a recent experience reminded me just how deeply entrenched the problem is among the underpaid civil service.

Last month, I went to the immigration office in Yangons North Okkalapa township, where I grew up, to obtain a simple document stating that I no longer reside there. I had moved to the citys centre and needed this document to register in my new neighbourhood.

Posters inside said the document would be made available free of charge within a single day if the applicant had the necessary papers.

I approached a middle-aged woman in charge of serving customers and handed her my documents and application. As she sat behind a desk filled with stacks of disintegrating notebooks, she looked through my papers, going through them several times.





She then looked at me with clear dismay, which signalled  I knew from experience  that I had broken the unspoken rule and failed to include tea money, a euphemism for a small bribe paid in exchange for services. She took out a thick registry book with tattered corners and threw it before me, muttering, Search for your name in here.

I protested, upon which she said with a frown, Come back the day after tomorrow. I was familiar with the routine: A lack of tea money would see the government workers put ones request through an oblique and torturous waiting process that could take hours, if not days.

I remember in 1995 I paid K200 to get my first national registration card  and in 2012 I reluctantly paid K20,000 to renew it. Growing up, I saw at state-owned hospitals how you bribed the doctors and nurses for medical attention, as a student you bribed teachers for admission to school of your choice, and if you end up in court you could bribe police and judges to get out of a case.

In 2015, Transparency International ranked Myanmar 147 out of 168 countries assessed for graft, on par with the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Chad.

However, since Myanmar is now under a new government, said to oppose graft, I decided I would not play along this time, reminding myself that ending corruption also involves action by the public.

I confronted the immigration official and asked whether she refused to serve me as I failed to pay tea money. She recoiled and said the official in charge of giving approvals was not available that day. Behind her, another official scoffed at my demand, and said, Why dont you find people who can work here for a small salary like ours?

Most lowest-tier civil servants indeed work for a pittance, earning between $100 and $200 per month, far below whats needed to support a family these days. I felt bad for withholding their additional income, but also think we have a collective responsibility to resist corruption in all forms.

I decided I would face the consequences, and a possible waste of my time, and would not pay the bribe. I told staff I would come back the next day and file an official complaint with the Ministry of Labour and Immigration if my application was still being denied.

As I left, I received a surprise applause from three elderly ladies who were waiting on a wooden bench in the hot office building for their applications. Terrific! one said with a smile.

I didnt feel particularly heroic though; in my mind I had always imagined the fight against corruption to target those businesspeople and top officials raking in ill-gotten gains from the countrys rich resources such as jade, timber, and oil and gas. But here I was, arguing with poorly paid civil servants.

When I returned the next day, bracing myself for further intransigence, I was in for a surprise. I was handed my documents right away and without hassle. Perhaps, I thought, there is now among the public and civil service a heightened awareness of how unacceptable graft is to the new government and that it demands a truly clean civil service.

But lets hope that more can be done too to raise income among many civil servants, so they can more easily abandon their old habits. And lets also make sure the new governments fight against corruption targets those top officials, military officers and businesspeople who became corrupted and fabulously wealthy in past decades while the country slid into poverty.

 Myanmar Now
[May 31, 2016] Pixium Vision Receives Clinical Trial Approval From UK Regulatory Authority for 150 Electrode IRISII Bionic Vision System

Pixium Vision (Paris:PIX) (FR0011950641 - PIX), a company developing innovative bionic vision systems to allow patients who have lost their sight to lead more independent lives, today announced that it has received approval from the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in the UK to initiate a clinical trial for patients who have lost sight due to retinitis pigmentosa (RP) with the IRIS II bionic vision system. This system being evaluated includes a mini bio-inspired camera and a 150 electrode epi-retinal implant with an explantable design. Participation of Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust broadens the clinical study centres of excellence in addition to sites across France, Germany and Austria. Moorfields Eye Hospital is the oldest and largest centre for ophthalmic treatment, teaching and research in Europe. Additional clinical centres across Europe enables broader patient outreach, increased opportunity to participate in the clinical trial, and paves the way for future commercialisation of the bionic vision system. In parallel, Pixium Vision initiated last December CE mark approval process on the basis of IRIS clinical experience. Subject to CE mark approval timing, commercialisation is expected to start in H2 2016. Mahi Muqit, PhD FRCOphth, Consultant Ophthalmologist and Vitreoretinal Surgeon at Moorfields Eye Hospital, study Principal Investigator (UK) said, "We are excited to participate in the clinical trial of IRISII and be the first site in the UK. Patients with RP can now benefit from a new choice of retinal implant that may potentially further improve visual outcomes. This new clinical trial is key for ophthalmic reference centres like Moorfields to evaluate the latest technologies, and provide patients with a retinal implant that is differentiated and allows retinal implant exchanges in the future. We are delighted to work ith Pixium Vision to develop solutions for retinal dystrophies like RP and age-related macular degeneration (AMD (News - Alert))y."



Commenting on the announcement, Khalid Ishaque, CEO of Pixium Vision said, "The UK approval for the clinical study further reinforces our confidence in the IRISII platform, our first innovative bionic vision system." Khalid Ishaque added: "Currently as the only company developing an epi-retinal system for RP patients and a sub-retinal wireless photovoltaic implant for AMD patients, we are delighted to initiate this clinical partnership with the world renowned Moorfields Eye Hospital in the UK." IRIS II epi-retinal system incorporates innovative features being evaluated, including:

A bio-inspired camera that is intended to mimic the functioning of the human eye: the imaging sensor does not take sequence of video frames with redundant information, but continuously captures the changes in a visual scene with its time independent pixels;

that is intended to mimic the functioning of the human eye: the imaging sensor does not take sequence of video frames with redundant information, but continuously captures the changes in a visual scene with its time independent pixels; An epi-retinal implant with 150 electrodes, almost three times more electrodes than available previously; An explantable design: the electrode array is secured on the retinal surface by a patented support system that allows to explant, minimising risk of retinal damage and permitting potential for upgrade to newer therapy options. About Moorfields Eye Hospital - www.moorfields.nhs.uk. About the IRIS II clinical study - http://www.pixium-vision.com/en/media/press-releases About Pixium Vision - www.pixium-vision.com The company is EN ISO 13485 certified. Pixium Vision collaborates closely with academic and research partners spanning across the prestigious Vision research institutions including the Institut de la Vision in Paris, the Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory at Stanford University, and Moorfields Eye Hospital in London. Pixium Vision is listed on Euronext (Compartiment C) in Paris.

ISIN: FR0011950641; Mnemo: PIX IRIS is a trademark of Pixium-Vision SA Disclaimer - http://www.pixium-vision.com/en/media/press-releases View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160531005551/en/

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[May 31, 2016] Huawei Leads Digitization through ICT Innovation

SINGAPORE, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Over 500 regional ministerial representatives, internationally renowned economists and global industry thought leaders and professionals attended the Asia ICT Innovation Forum 2016 organised by Singapore Exhibition Services. Huawei, as the strategic partner, outlined its roadmap to accelerate ICT transformation to enable more people in Asia Pacific to reap the benefits of ICT and move towards a Better Connected World. To achieve technological and economic growth, countries must accelerate their digitization process through open collaboration with stakeholders across the ICT ecosystem. Huawei also outlined the need for countries to measure and track their digitization development so as to steer the focus of ICT development roadmaps. "Today, Building a Better Connected World has become the common aspiration of our entire industry. We are committed to the value propositions of Ubiquitous Broadband, Agile Innovation, and Inspired Experience and fully connecting people to people, people to things, and things to things," said Zhou Jianjun, President of Carrier Business, Huawei Southern Pacific. Consumers are increasingly expecting rich and inspiring experiences when interacting with content. For example, virtual reality (VR) has been applied in manyareas, including gaming, shopping, tourism, and training. To deliver a perfect virtual reality experience, VR needs to process about 5.2 gigabytes of data every second and have a latency of less than 20 milliseconds. To that end, ubiquitous ultra-broadband networks with zero wait time and inspired experiences are needed, which will drive constant changes and innovation of networks and provide tremendous opportunities for industry development.



Historically, technological transformations have disrupted and driven social progress and industry development. A Better Connected World will be a wellspring of opportunities for industries. These will include the 100-billion-dollar video industry, the one-trillion-dollar market for cloud transformation in enterprise IT, and the Internet of Things (IoT) industry whose user base is expected to grow by a factor of 10. Huawei will work in the areas of enhancing connectivity, improving the user experience, expanding access under all scenarios, and helping vertical industries go digital to drive the ICT industry forward. "Successful ICT transformation requires joint efforts from governments and all industry players. Huawei adheres to a pipe strategy that focuses on ICT infrastructure and smart devices, and is dedicated to building an ecosystem characterized by openness, collaboration, and shared success, in order to accelerate digital transformation. Huawei remains true to investing for the future especially in research and development to create new and innovative technologies that help our customers achieve continued business successes," said Zhou Jianjun.

Through the company's experience in working with governments and businesses around the world to build smarter cities and industries, Huawei continues to push boundaries to develop solutions that propel digital transformation. The Asia ICT Innovation Forum is held in conjunction with CommunicAsia2016, the largest ICT trade event in the region, where Huawei showcases latest innovations and solutions together with 50 partners off-site. Together with industry partners, Huawei aims to deepen cooperation across verticals and strengthen the ICT value chain. At Huawei's booth, visitors will be able to experience a series of interactive activities that will provide them the opportunity to experience the multitude possibilities of a connected nation. For example, visitors will be able to design a unique fashion piece in virtual reality that may well be how the design process may turn out in the future. Dancing Robot was brought on-site to interact and entertain with visitors. For more information, please refer to www.huawei.com/minisite/communicasia2016. About Huawei Huawei is a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider. Our aim is to enrich life and improve efficiency through a better connected world, acting as a responsible corporate citizen, innovative enabler for the information society, and collaborative contributor to the industry. Driven by customer-centric innovation and open partnerships, Huawei has established an end-to-end ICT solutions portfolio that gives customers competitive advantages in telecom and enterprise networks, devices and cloud computing. Huawei's 170,000 employees worldwide are committed to creating maximum value for telecom operators, enterprises and consumers. Our innovative ICT solutions, products and services are used in more than 170 countries and regions, serving over one-third of the world's population. Founded in 1987, Huawei is a private company fully owned by its employees. For more information, please visit Huawei online at www.huawei.com or follow us on: http://www.twitter.com/HuaweiAPAC

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[May 31, 2016] The Rise of Autonomous Device Networks - a White Paper by Wirepas and Frost & Sullivan

The Internet of Things (IoT) for Industries is transforming both the consumer and the business landscape, offering tremendous opportunities for agile suppliers. However, businesses founded on connectivity across devices, geographies, applications and services require diversity in business models. Each industry and company will need a customized approach to connectivity based on its unique requirement. As a result, the existing "massive IoT" approach of having a common monolithic connectivity solution must be relooked to accommodate the diverse possibilities of connectivity requirements in the future. In this regard, a de-centralized and self-organising device network is a more economical, reliable, and scalable approach towards connectivity. Within the Industrial Internet paradigm in particular, an autonomous device network offers significant benefits. Essentially, the choice of connectivity solutions in business models should steer technical developments in Industrial IoT (IIoT) as opposed to a one-size-fits-all standard. In its whitepaper, Wirepas, along with research partner Frost & Sullivan, explores the suitability of autonomous device networks as a base for the IoT model. The White Paper (News - Alert), The Rise of Autonomous Device Networks, maps this idea against select emerging IIoT applications such as Smart Cities, Smart Meters, logistics, asset tracking, and the Industrial Internet, highlighting the key business requirements for successful transitioning. While the wide area approach to connectivity is relevant for many business applications, a de-centralized and autonomous device network should be the automatic choice fo connectivity when scalability is a critical parameter for success.



"From an availability point of view, autonomous device networks with de-centralized architecture offer the best availability," argues Jussi Numminen, Head of Radio Strategy and IPR at Wirepas and co-author of the White Paper. "When applicable, the data should be stored, analyzed and used locally to optimize availability." "From an operational standpoint, the seat of intelligence in a connected enterprise is not one of primary concern," adds Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert) Industrial Automation & Process Control Program Manager Karthik Sundaram. "Whether it is centralised somewhere deep in the system or located in an anonymous location, real value for autonomous device networks can only be achieved through a de-centralised intelligence framework."

With IoT becoming the single biggest opportunity for industrial suppliers to adopt and promote their solutions and services, the focus should be on adopting the best communication approach to optimize prospects. "We believe that business systems and models work best if they are kept simple and optimized rather than made complicated," concludes Jussi Numminen. "Therefore, simplicity should be a key goal in design and unnecessary complexity should be avoided. This applies also to device connectivity in IoT applications." To receive a copy of the White Paper please contact Sebastian Linko, Marketing and Communications, Sebastian.linko(at)Wirepas.com Wirepas in brief Wirepas is focused on providing the most reliable, optimized, scalable and simple to use connectivity for large-scale IoT applications. With Wirepas Connectivity there is no need for traditional repeaters, because every wireless device is a smart router of the network. The connected devices form the network - easy as that. In nature, things are communicating and making autonomous decisions based on de-centralized protocols that fulfill the need as efficiently as possible - nothing more, nothing less. This is also what Wirepas is all about. Wirepas has its headquarters in Tampere, Finland and offices in Brazil, France, South Korea and the United States. Things connected - Naturally, www.wirepas.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/20160531005542/en/

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Opinion / Columnist

The MDC-T is thoroughly unimpressed with the indifference exhibited by President Robert Mugabe when issues of corruption in his government are exposed. Everyone is getting concerned with the level of inertia that Mugabe continues to show; particularly when cases of corruption by top government officials are exposed.The past 36 years under Zanu-PF rule shall go down in the history of Zimbabwe as a bunch of wasted decades as a few well-connected individuals became fabulously rich by draining the economy whilst the majority of the people were pauperised and reduced to vendors and beggars in their own country of birth.Since the Sandura Commission that exposed the Willovale motor vehicles scandal in the 1980s, no other effective remedial action to expose and combat corruption within the public and private sectors has ever been instituted by the Zanu-PF regime.Over the past decades,corruption has become part and parcel of the Zanu-PF regime's DNA. Zanu-PF and corruption have become like inseparable Siamese twins.The so-called indigenisation policy actually took the "art" of corruption to the next level. Senior government officials that passionately and incessantly drove the indigenisation mantra actually became so hopelessly corrupt. They flagrantly abused the power and authority that was entrusted upon them by openly soliciting for bribes and demanding huge kickbacks from company owners and other affected business executives.They became so wealthy that one of them built a 50 bedroom mansion that he hoped to convert into a hotel in case things went the other way. No one spoke a word as it was business as usual within the Zanu-PF regime.In 2014, elephants were poisoned by cyanide. No one from the top government offices ever bothered to check how cyanide was imported. Obviously it was a heavy duty ring. Elephants died in their hundreds. Money changed hands. A few villagers were sacrificed to serve lengthy terms in prison as the real culprits (government ministers) reaped huge profits and walked away scot free.When one Ignatious Chombo became the Minister of Local Government, he acquired several immovable properties nationwide through blatant and corrupt of office.Little wonder, therefore, that Chombo is now one of the wealthiest Cabinet Ministers in the Zanu-PF regime. No one uttered a word. And to date, Chombo is still a free man!One Cuthbert Dube literally brought down the PSMAS by, amongst other corrupt shenanigans, paying himself a staggering and obscene salary in the sum of $500 000 per month for literally doing nothing. No punitive government action was taken against him except giving him a golden handshake!Then followed the $15 billion dollars diamonds scandal. President Mugabe casually mentioned the issue and thundered from the podium that such corruption was amazing. The issue was to be investigated; a polite tactic to keep the public anger under control.Minister Samuel Undenge entered the scene and blindly awarded a $500 million tender to one Wicknell Chivhayo,a secondary school drop out from Cranborne Boys' High in Harare who was also an ex convict. The controversial man would splash resources and do nothing on the project. To cover his tracks, he would spoil Grace Mugabe and her children with restaurant meals and designer clothes. He would also do a publicity stunt by rescuing hunger fleeing ladies from Zimbabwe now in Kuwait in search of jobs and livelihood (thanks to the Zanu-PF regime's ineptitude). Nothing happened to Samuel Undenge and he still walks free because he is one of the Zanu-PF regime's wheeler dealers!The maddening story goes on and on. Now Zimbabwe is on its knees.The country is now a fully-fledged banana republic as the nation awaits the introduction of bond notes (effectively Zimbabwe dollars by another name) within the next few months.This is the tragic story of Zimbabwe after 36 years of Zanu-PF's ruinous and disastrous rule.MDC : EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALLObert Chaurura GutuMDC National Spokesperson
Mr Samuel Darko

31.05.2016 LISTEN

Following his recent comments on how negatively the much talked about telenovela, Kumkum Bhagya has affected the movie industry in Ghana, Mr Samuel Darko known in the industry as Samdakus has gone ahead to express his disappointment in Adom TV.

According to the CEO of Kumawood in an interview with Anning Ogee Oscar of Bekwai based Dess FM 90.3, Adom TV has failed the local movie producers with their promises they made to them when they were coming for the first time.

"I am very much disappointed in Adom TV. When they were coming for the first time, they told us they're coming in to promote the local movie industry so I led a group of producers to help patronize Adom TV. Producers paid some amounts to them to promote our industry. Now this Kumkum Bhagya is shown throughout the week, meaning all local movies whiich were shown around that time are cancelled. Someone will buy our CDs and will come home in the evening to meet Kumkum Bhagya showing on TV. What time will the person get again to watch the local movies. They're rather promoting the foreigners instead of our own. At least the Kumkum Bhagya should be shown for about two or three times and the rest for local series. In fact, I am very disappointed."

The issue of Kumkum Bhagya and its effects on Ghana's movie industry has been a very big headache to some local producers who think the foreign series is killing the local industry. Paramount among them is Mr Samuel Darko known in the industry as Samdakus.

Meanwhile, the management of Adom TV has hinted the general public about another series titled, 'Veera'.
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By Desmond Davies, London Bureau Chief

London, May 30, GNA - The UK topped the table of aid donors in 2014 by spending 188 per head of its population of 65 million, more than twice the figure of 61 for the US whose population of 332 million is more than five times that of the UK's, according to figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The updated aid table was released for the G7 summit taking place in Japan on Thursday and Friday. It showed that while the UK spent 13.2 billion on aid in 2014, the American government gave 22 billion during the same period, making it the highest provider of development assistance.

The ongoing heated aid debate in the UK has been further aggravated by Prime Minister David Cameron who, before his Anti-Corruption Summit in London earlier this month, said that Nigeria and Afghanistan, two of the highest recipients of UK aid, were 'fantastically corrupt'.

Despite strong opposition from British politicians who feel that UK money should not go to corrupt countries, Mr Cameron's Conservative government has not touched the aid budget in the face of massive budget cuts.

In keeping with a UN target of spending 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) on foreign assistance, the UK is the only G7 member out of only six aid-giving countries that have adhered to this - the others being Sweden, Norway Luxembourg, Denmark and the United Arab Emirates.

British Conservative politicians who have been on the government's back to have an aid rethink pounced on the latest figures to call for change of the 2015 legislation that led to the ring fencing of the UK's aid budget.

Conservative MP Philip Davies was quoted by The Daily Telegraph as saying: 'We are clearly the mugs of the world.

'The Prime Minister might think it makes us look compassionate to spend more and more money when we're in debt - to hand it over to some fantastically corrupt countries around the world.

'I personally think it makes us look stupid.

'You should spend what you can afford.

'It is absolutely unjustifiable.'

Another Conservative MP, Peter Bone, said in the newspaper: 'We should learn a lesson from other countries that put their populations first and decide to spend money at home, rather than to give away a sum of money which is completely not based on need - it's based on a percentage.'

He used the opportunity to campaign for the UK's withdrawal from the European Union (EU) when the referendum to decide the country's future relationship with the 28-member bloc is held on June 23.

The Telegraph quoted him as saying: 'The real solution to poverty is not aid, but trade and the worst offender at blocking developing countries is of course the European Union: particularly blocking foreign farmers from selling in from developing nations to protect French farmers and the like.

'If we came out, we would be able to open our markets up to these developing countries.

'At the same time, we could reduce our aid budget, so we could do more good for less money.'

A spokesman for Mr Cameron said: 'UK investment in overseas development is firmly in the country's national interest as well as being part of the manifesto on which the government was elected.'

The OECD, in its Aid Survey for 2016, reveals that there is a shift in overall priorities over the medium term.

The Survey warns: 'In the case of Africa, a worrying trend is that two-thirds of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa are projected to receive less aid in 2017 than in 2014.

'Only for a few countries [on the continent as a whole] is it expected to increase (e.g. Cameroon, Mali, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria and Tunisia).'

In the case of Country Programme Aid (CPA) to Africa, the Survey notes that this grew more rapidly (by +13 per cent) than in other regions from 2012 to 2013 and as such the continent maintained its position as the largest CPA recipient region,

But the Survey says that projections indicate a slowdown in growth for 2014 and a decrease from 2015 onwards, while CPA to Asia, which increased by 10 per cent in 2013, is projected to continue to grow up to 2017.

GNA
The family of a 22-year-old man said to have been tortured to death in Kumasi by errant police officers is berserk over an autopsy report suggesting the victim died from a natural cause.

The autopsy conducted by the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) exonerated the police officers contrary to claims the officers manhandled the deceased person.

Reports suggested the officers accosted the victim whom they suspected to be an armed robber, beat him up with the barrels of their guns and shocked him a number of times with their tasers.

The victim died shortly after the assault. His death triggered violent protests in the Ashanti Regional town of Krofrom, last Friday.

Angry youth burnt tires, chanted war songs and brandished placards warning the police to stay away from them.

The protests forced the police to begin investigations into the matter and also arrested the officers accused of assaulting the deceased person.

The body of the deceased person was also sent to the KATH for an autopsy to conducted to ascertain the cause of death.

In what the family members describe as shocking, the autopsy report suggested that the deceased, Richmond Osei died of congestive Heart failure, which is natural.

The report was conducted by Dr Ossei Sampene the Pathologist and his assistant Dr Ernest Adjei all of KATH.

The family members some of whom claimed to have seen the police manhandle their brother are smelling foul play and have vowed to use other means, including 'the african power' popular called 'juju' to bring the perpetrators to book.

They told Luv FM's Erastus Asare Donkor but for the assault on their brother, he would not have died.

They are however waiting to officially hear from the police command, Asare Donkor reported.

Meanwhile, the Police administration is expected to issue a statement on the matter very soon
31.05.2016 LISTEN

Do not seek happiness for its own sake, you will not find it. Seek for purpose, and happiness will follow.

-Gin Khin Wee

As the above quote indicates, if you seek happiness for its own sake, you will not find it. However, if you live with passion and purpose, happiness, peace and joy will adorn your life.

If you are happy with your life, it means you are contributing meaningfully to the lives of others. It means you live your life in a way that adds value to the life of someone else; this could be your spouse, children, friends, your community or the world in general.

When my life hits rock bottom, I ponder on the things in my life that gave me real happiness. That insightful realization comes with the positive contributions I have been making in the lives of others.

As a priest I have the privilege to deliver sermons that inspire people to see their own potential and take measures to achieve their best life through their own efforts. I teach and encourage people to pattern their life after the life of Jesus Christ our greatest mentor and live by heavenly principles according to the gospel.

As a prison officer, my preoccupation is to see to the welfare and reformation of prison inmates. I have dedicated my life to helping these people turn a new leaf so that on release from prison they can lead a law-abiding and productive life.

I also regularly submit useful content to various newspapers with the sole objective of making a difference in the lives of others. I have received many emails and phone calls from readers commending me for the feature articles that I write.

Friend, with or without money in my pocket, I am a happy man knowing that my life is impacting the lives of others in many positive ways.

I can say that my major definite purpose in life which is for my life to touch the lives of others positively is being fulfilled.

You will be making a sad mistake if you think the people who have lots of money are the happiest. The people who have lots of money always live in fear of either being robbed or losing their money through unforeseen circumstances such as natural disasters or fires. They focus and get so much hooked to their security; they have sleepless nights and find no happiness in their lives. Besides money can neither buy happiness nor appetite.

I must say that I am deeply grateful to God for the many opportunities and skills he has given to enable me add value to the lives of others.

The key to happiness in life is this: Service to humanity. Its by giving to others that we make ourselves happy. To achieve this you have no option but to live purposefully.

How do you find your purpose in life? In other words why are you here on earth in the first place?

First realize that you are a unique person, fearfully and wonderfully made; there is no other person exactly like you. Your fingerprints will always be different from any other persons.

To find your purpose, ask the question: How will I like to be remembered when I come to the end of my life, when I have crossed the bar?

From the aforementioned, it is the pursuit of purpose not pursuit of happiness that makes people happiest. If you live with passion and purpose, adding value to the human family, happiness, peace, joy and fulfillment will follow. You are a unique person imbued with the qualities to positively impact your generation; you were made a star, go on and be it. Live with zest, passion and purpose. Live with joy.

Yours in inspiration,

ARK AWOLUGUTU

Correction Officer, Priest & Author

Email: [email protected]

Cell: 0208 455 296
31.05.2016 LISTEN

The British High Commission in Ghana has denied media reports the Central Regional Chairman of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), Allotey Jacob was arrested at Heathrow Airport in London.

A statement issue by the High Commission said claims that the outspoken member of the NDC was apprehended on charges of money laundering and/or drug bust are "simply untrue."

News of Mr Jacobs arrest flooded social media on Sunday May 29 with some people suggesting he was arrested for money laundering. It was alleged he had over 500, 000 British pounds on him at the time of his arrest.

Another report said he was arrested for carrying a parcel of cocaine on him.

The British High Commissioner, Jon Benjamin had earlier on denied the claim in a tweet saying "The story is not true."

But the opposition political parties and some individuals basked in on the arrest claiming Mr Jacob was questioned by the UK authorities.

However, the UK has denied those claims explaining "Mr Jacobs was not detained, nor was he questioned. There was absolutely no evidence of money laundering or drugs."

The High Commission said its denial of the allegation was not motivated by any political consideration adding "Had we been asked to confirm or deny the alleged arrest of anyone else of any other political affiliation, we would have acted in exactly the same way  purely factually."

Read full statement below:

Mr Allotey Jacobs, Statement by the British High Commission

The British High Commission would like definitively to clarify the situation concerning the alleged arrest of Mr Allotey Jacobs at Londons Heathrow Airport on Sunday, 29 May.

We became aware around Sunday lunchtime of online and social media rumours to the effect that Mr Jacobs had been arrested on arrival at London Heathrow from Accra, allegedly variously accused of money laundering or of being involved in a drugs bust. Both claims are simply untrue. There was no such arrest. Mr Jacobs was not detained, nor was he questioned. There was absolutely no evidence of money laundering or drugs.

Subsequently, there were persistent further rumours that Mr Jacobs had at least been escorted off the plane by UK law enforcement. After exhaustive, multiple enquiries we state unequivocally that the UK law enforcement authorities with jurisdiction at Heathrow Airport all confirm that they did not board the aeroplane to speak to Mr Jacobs, nor did they do so subsequently within the airport, and they certainly did not escort Mr Jacobs off the flight concerned. Our law enforcement authorities keep meticulous records, including of any escorting off aeroplanes  there is no such record in the case of Mr Jacobs, as there was no such event. We understand that Mr Jacobs caught his connecting flight to the US on time and without incident.

British Airways tell us that they, too, have no record of any law enforcement boarding directed at Mr Jacobs. A public claim has been made that Mr Jacobs was escorted from a seat in Row 15 in business class. However, on the flight in question, Row 15 was not in, and indeed some distance from, business class, the class in which Mr Jacobs travelled, so that claim falls away.

Mr Jacobs political affiliation is of no interest to us. Had we been asked to confirm or deny the alleged arrest of anyone else of any other political affiliation, we would have acted in exactly the same way  purely factually. The UK government is and will remain entirely neutral in Ghanaian domestic politics. We do, however, have the full right to respond to claims made about law enforcement issues in the UK itself, particularly when, as in this case, those claims are wholly wrong.
31.05.2016 LISTEN

The Dental and Medical Council has said it will introduce practitioners' stamps in July 2016, to help weed out quack doctors operating in the country. This follows reports that a man claiming to be a doctor was arrested after practicing medicine for 20 years without a licence.

Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show, the Registrar of the Council, Dr. Eli Kwasi Atikpui, said, by July this year, we would have introduced practitioner stamps so when you go into an institution and you are examined and given a prescription, a stamp will be affixed on your transcription from. This is something that we are doing.

Health facilities could display proof of sanction

Dr. Atikpui also indicated that the Ghana Health Service and the Health Facilities Regulatory Agency could play a part in attempts to rid the system of the quack doctors by having all health facilities display a proof of sanction.

The Health Facilities Regulatory Agency is mandated to receive, consider and approve applications for licenses per the Health Facilities Regulatory Agency Act 829.

If that institution is registered by the Health Facility Regulatory Agency, we can have something displayed there indicating that this is an accredited institution which could be renewed every three years or whatever, he stated.

Dr. Atikpui however noted that the regulation of health facilities was not the responsibility of his outfit but indicated that the Dental and Medical Council will be playing its part with the introduction of the practitioner stamps in July.

Public should demand licenses of practitioners

The Dental and Medical Council may eventually start requesting that doctors in specific institutions display their registration certificates as additional measures according to Dr. Atikpui.

He also urged the public to be vigilant and demand the licenses of practitioners if they had any reason to suspect any fraud.

You have the right to challenge anybody who puts his or her hand on you to examine you and prescribe for you as a doctor. If the person wants to prove a little difficult, you call the medical and dental council offices and we can check, Dr. Atikpui stated.

Fake doctor arrested

The Dental and Medical Council's remarks followed reports in the Daily Graphic that a special task force they set up reportedly arrested a quack doctor believed to have practiced for more than two decades without a license and a certificate.

The man in question, one Adams Arimeyaw, was allegedly was arrested at Madina where he operated a healthcare facility from a compound house.

But Citi News checks revealed that Adams Arimeyaw, was not arrested .

The alleged faked doctor



By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana
In an interview with Deutsche Welle, Afonso Dhlakama, head of the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) and long-time rebel leader, accused Mozambique's government of plans to assassinate him. He also presented conditions for peace talks with the ruling party Frelimo.

Dhlakama has been under siege at the headquarters of his party in the Gorongosa Mountains, the 63-year-old said: "The soldiers are in Gorongosa because Frelimo decided to kill me and to sow confusion."

Dhlakama holds the government responsible for multiple attacks attempted against him last year: "They believe that Dhlakama's death will be the end of democracy in Mozambique, and the end of Renamo. Because Frelimo has never believed in democracy."

Nonetheless, he said he was ready to meet with President Filipe Nyusi if the army ends its siege of Renamo's headquarters. "There can be no serious negotiations in Maputo if Renamo's leader is besieged," Dhlakama said.

He proposed that the European Union, South Africa and the Mozambican Catholic Church serve as negotiators for the peace talks: "The government didn't want any foreigners mediating. But in any country of the world there would have to be mediation."

He repeated the demand to govern six provinces that the opposition says it won in 2014 presidential elections, before the ruling party manipulated the results. "We don't want to divide the country," he said, but added that "Renamo is not taking back this demand."

Dhlakama discounted the idea of a unity government with Frelimo, in which he would serve as vice president. "I don't see any way that either I or someone from Renamo could work together with Frelimo. It would kill off democracy in Mozambique, and even kill off Renamo."
President John Dramani Mahama and Nana Addo in a lovely hand shake

31.05.2016 LISTEN

Sometimes, silence is golden, but would a haughty lot see wisdom in adages and ancestral admonitions? Ghana, a country of plenty is now a country of lacking. We are in need of everything, and we are suffering for no other reason than the injudicious manner of allowing John Mahama and his cronies steal the 2012 elections, which they wish to repeat in 2016.

The facts stated by Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo at the NPP branch meeting in Paris, recently, were the basic facts of today's Ghana. And they are simply irrefutable! The revelation about the importation of plantain is not only enigmatic, but a confirmation of the hopelessness that Ghana has arrived at under the drunken eyes of a feckless bunch of obstreperous con artists who want to apply cosmetics to make this curse appear a blessing. Little do they know that no matter the special effects, a monkey would remain a monkey even if it were made up to look like Marilyn Monroe.

For their own good, the NDC must refrain Kofi Adams from speaking on their behalf, because his perpetual state of intoxication, and being under the influence, only serves to accentuate their erroneousness, impudence, confusion and want for good governance. Kofi Adams is not only a fabricator of lies, he is enjoying the suffering that Ghanaians are going through under the incompetent President, John Mahama, and witless officials that represent his government.

A couple of months ago, I stopped by a roasted plantain seller's stall to buy some kofi brokeman and peanuts. Paradoxically, roasted plantains and peanuts were the food for the poor in previous times until John Mahama came to power and successfully transformed it to the rich man's food due of its unaffordability. In fact, I was flabbergasted when she informed me that a roasted half piece of plantain was GHs 2. She felt ashamed to tell me. She had no option but to do so, "opanin, me pa wo kyeow, nans3n a b)diy3 ne h). John Mahama, Nyame b3 tua ne ka paa," to wit, "Senior, please, lately, plantains are scarce. GOD will pay John Mahama (in his own coin)."

However, little did I know that Ghana was importing plantains from Ivory Coast. Besides, which revived industries is this weed smoker, Kofi Adams, talking about? Komenda sugar factory? That is a factory that does not have the capacity for more than 250 employees and an extended job creation of less than 250. Where does this man get his statistics from? Did I hear that he said Ivory Coast is envious of Ghana in the energy sector? What palpable lies! If John Mahama had the industries at heart, he would have used the 139 million dollars that was spent on sanitary pads imported from China to revamp the only factory in Ghana that produces same! If John Mahama had the industries at heart, he would not have imported cloth from China for school uniforms when our cloth industries in Ghana are limping! If John Mahama had the industries at heart, he would have protected the existing ones by creating laws and legislations to curb the inflow of cheap products from other countries that can be manufactured in Ghana. What a shame!

What road networks was Kofi Madams talking about? John Mahama earmarked one billion dollars for the resurfacing of roads in Accra. The foolishness in the implementation is seen everywhere. Good roads are being resurfaced while the bad ones are neglected. The shoddiest jobs are visible proofs of this madness. Liquid bitumen spread on the stretch of good roads and covered by a layer of large chippings, unprofessionally, make for the jobs that contractors are paid 1.4 million dollars per kilometer for, when their actual cost is about 200,000 dollars. That is, also, destroying the good roads! I was informed by an investor that prior to the award of a contract, interested persons are told that they would have to bribe 50% of the face value of the work. It is no longer 10%. The NDC goons have promoted themselves to the highest levels of corruption.

Did Kofi Adams mention interchanges and bridges? Heavens! The circle interchange is a disgrace to engineering. John Mahama's tourist attraction flooded recently in the same manner as last year's. This overpriced project is said to have made somebody 100 million dollars richer. The Kasoa interchange made somebody 70 million dollars richer. The Ridge Hospital extension is said to have made somebody 80 million dollars richer.

Meanwhile, after 8 years of NDC governance, the Accra-Kumasi stretch of road remains a death trap. The Suhum bridge is unfinished; the other side of the dual carriage has been abandoned, and yet Kofi Adams runs his drug effusing mouth as if all is well. The Eastern corridor is non-existent. The western corridor is a tragedy! And he has the guts to lie to the nation in this manner? Anyway that is no longer strange of the NDC!

Mr kofi Adams, John Mahama and your NDC government have not achieved anything. Eight years of NDC have produced nothing except disgrace, poverty, tribal schisms, pandemonium, demonstrations, hills of filth, grave illnesses, higher rate of child mortality, High crime rate, rampant human rights abuse, rich government officials, greater national indebtedness, food shortages, aggrieved public servants, massive unemployment, excruciatingly painful electricity and water tariffs, unrestrained theft of the national coffers, yo-yo currency, unprecedented threat of social media blockage on election day, HIPC, etc etc etc and the list of shameful non-achievements is endless.

#NanaAddoHasExposedNDC #KofiAdamsIsALiar #JohnMahamIsAShame #JohnMahamaWillFall
31.05.2016 LISTEN

Most often a time, people look at a glass as half empty instead of seeing it as half full. Lets rather focus on the good aspects of social media even though the few disadvantages are a reality. For the purpose of todays discussion I wont dwell much on the benefits of social media.

Social media has made it a lot easier to communicate as compared to those days where it could take up to three months to get messages abroad and also three months for you to get responses. In those days, it virtually could take you half of a year to communicate with someone in a foreign land. If youve ever used the airmail system before then you would understand what Im talking about. Social media has made this trend a thing of the past. What do we see today? With just a click of a button or key, messages could be sent and received by anyone anywhere in the world.

The use of Facebook dates as far back as February 4, 2004, Whatsapp as far back as 2009, twitter founded on March 21, 2006 and Skype, August 29, 2003

So clearly, some of these social media apps existed before the 2004 elections, others came in after 2008 elections, others came before the 2012 elections and a lot more such as telegram, Imo, are still coming into the system. Unless Im proven wrong; theres no research data in Ghana indicating or suggesting the cause(s) of elections violence as social media.

So the question is; what has changed hence the call or intent to ban the use of social media on Election Day?

I see the call or intent of the Inspector General of the Ghana Police service to ban social media before and during the Election Day as a rather unfortunate one; most especially at a time where our Electoral Commission seems not to know exactly what they are doing and an alleged use of the security services to intimidate the opposition political parties by government. In my candid opinion, He is leading a diabolic agenda to perpetuate or condone heinous crimes against the good people of Ghana on the Election Day. If not why would he try to deny us access to social media and by larger extension information on the day of election? If this act is enforced, it will rather plunge the country into chaos and sabotage democracy. Where will our freedom of expression be? Dont forget, on Election Day, when people do not know exactly what is going on, they will begin to speculate and when this happens, it becomes a good recipe for chaos.

If you care to know, those of us on social media engaging in active partisan politics are but a few in number, just that we keep repeating our ideas hence the social media dominance of political activities. Dont be deceived, dominance doesnt mean large numbers. So why block social media because of few political activists against a greater majority of Ghanaians who use it for other relatively important endeavors?

If the Ghana Police Service has that expertise, why dont they channel it into crime prevention and killing cyber fraud? A lot of these sakawa boys and girls operate through social media. Thats what matters!!

Come to think of it; does the IGP, hence the police have that constitutional backing to deny us access to information and hence a ban on social media? What gives them that legal backing? I stand to be corrected, I believe it is only the government, acting through the ministry of interior and ministry of communication who has the power to exercise that prerogative and even in doing so it will requires a parliamentary approval or an order from a court of competent jurisdiction. This leaves me asking a lot of questions; is the IGP doing the bidding for the government, the political Party in power or who? Is he testing the waters to see how people will react to it? Well, I dont have the answers!

On what grounds is the IGP making that motive or intent? What is his hypothesis based on? If they have any intelligence suggesting that someone or group of persons are plotting to use social media to cause mayhem on Election Day what stops them from picking them up for questioning?

On a lighter note, I think the IGP wants to do lazy work and get it all too easy on the Election Day.

Have you realized this trend? The vast majority of people supporting this call made by the IGP are people who sympathize with the ruling NDC Party, or are NDC activists and loyalists. This gives me more room for suspicion. So I quizzed myself: what are they running away from? What are they hiding or trying to hide? What have they plotted or trying to plot. A lot of questions run through my mind with no tangible answers. Unfortunately history favors the NDC when it comes to stifling democracy.

A ban on social media before and during the election will be a wrong move. It will be a very good recipe for chaos and its a good step in democratic retrogression. This should not be encouraged or entertained. For God and Country Ghana must stand!!

ELECTION 2016, YOUR MIND 4 DEY

Raphael Kumah Abolasom

Frmer SRC President-UDS, Tamale

[email protected]
Opinion / Columnist

The Auditor General's Office (AGO) is formally engaged in executing a sterling job of auditing and exposing rot, misappropriation of funds, and corruption in public entities, but there is little or no commensurate action is applied to address, and/or compliment such effort for the good of the nation.The recent revelations by the Parliament's Public Accounts Committee (PPAC), chaired by Honourable Paurina Mpariwa, is amazing and nerve-tinkling. It is inundating to realise that Parliament receives such crucial information from the Auditor General, Ms Mildred Chiri, regularly, and it opts to ignore the criminality at the expense of the whole nation.Ideally, AGO reinforces Government operations by identifying grey corners that need attention and concentration on crevices. If public funds are misused or misdirected, certainly, Parliament has an indispensible legal obligation to work hard by complimenting the Finance Minister, Patrick Chinamasa, who is spending sleepless nights hunting for cash to keep the nation going, by plugging all perforations as well as ensuring that available funds are put to good use.The strategy is simple here, once the Auditor General exposes rotten apples in the basket in her reports to parliament, the next route is to apprehend the culprits, and drag them before courts for justice to take its course. If there is need for further investigations on corruption, recommendations can be made for the Zimbabwe Anti-corruption Commission (ZAC), to do due diligence before prosecution is instituted.In the case of legal loop-holes as noted by the PPAC, the Parliament is compelled to table down suitable re-alignments of the relevant statutory instruments in line with the new national constitution to empower appropriate national institutions to deal with such a cancer threatening to collapse our national systems.Zimbabweans cannot afford to live another day with this rot in public enterprises like ministries, parastatals and local authorities. This should be expeditiously weeded out instantly to improve life-styles for the generality of the populace by investing public funds on public utilities like roads, bridges, hospitals, schools, poverty alleviation programmes, and all civil service delivery systems to benefit the entire nation, than to condone insatiable evil ambitions of selfish and corrupt officials in various bodies.The most essential aspect to find lasting solutions to this problem is to motivate ZAC which currently needs the legislative blessing of the Law, and the universal participation of all stakeholders in our community. This is the only sure way of stamping out the gnawing nuisance of corruption which is threatening to tear apart our society. The worst current vice in this country is corruption which is characterising almost every public entity and the entirety of the corporate world.The most effective way for anti-corruption commission to prevent the evil is to identify corruption areas and then promulgate policies, procedures and regulations that can seal loop-holes. In addition ZAC should also cast its eyes on public procurement unit, hiring, retention and promotion of public officials, management of public finances, and the construction of projects.In the meantime, the ZAC's hands seem to be tied as there is an outstanding legal hurdle, which is fully catered for by the new constitution Section 255 subsection 3 which states that, 'The Government must ensure that, through legislative and other means, that the Zimbabwe Anti-corruption Commission has power to recommend the arrest and secure the prosecution of persons reasonably suspected of corruption, abuse of power and other improper conduct which falls within the Commission's jurisdiction'It is an optimistic anticipation that with the wide and special powers which can be provided for under the prospective re-alignment of the law in line with the constitutional provision, ZAC can be more formidable and powerful enough to curb corruption. The investigative measures to be adopted by ZAC can be more apparent and transparent for the good of the society as offenders can be arrested, tried and sentenced accordingly in the courts of justice.The expected law can also empower the ordinary citizens by creating a platforms upon which they can also furnish the ZAC with relevant information or tips which can enhance them to execute their responsibilities.However the buck stops with the Parliament to action accordingly.---------------Sparkleford Masiyambiri
Donald Trump

31.05.2016 LISTEN

What is the difference between Donald Trump abuse of women and those of Clinton or Cosby? Some would easily answer that it is the involvement of drugs. While Cosby women felt abused, Trumps claimed they were flattered and one of Clintons demurred. Well, it is much deeper. Bill Cosby forgot who he was when it comes to the way America looks at color, sex and drugs. By every known statistics, blacks and whites use drugs equally but blacks are punished more.

There is another difference, it is the number of women that have come out and defend Trumps sexual activities as flattering and even upset that a major newspaper cast him and them out of contest in a bad light. At least one of them went as far as thinking about suing in a court of law for libel or defamation. No one has called any of these women a disgrace to their gender.

Trump belittled women not only in his own domain but publicly in front of the camera and gets away with it. Indeed, he challenges anyone that dared him for any reason and called them names too. One cannot say it is because he is running for office as a politician because many politicians are brought under scrutiny, including their sexual activities as in Gary Harts Monkey Biz. Trump has now gone on offence against Bill Clinton; as if he is a political opponent.

There are so many black ladies that are ready to crucify Bill Cosby, accusing other black ladies as blinded by racial affinity for supporting him. They have worse epitaph for black men supporting Bill Cosby. It feeds into the stereotype created in the white dominated culture that only white males are civilized and know how to treat women right. Statistics proved otherwise though. If anything, black males are under radar and watched more closely for anything than white males.

You cannot even imagine an African/American as the pioneer of Playboy Magazine or Club. Donald Trump brags about what Bill Cosby is paying dearly for. Oh yes, Hugh Hefner has now been joined in a suit with Bill Cosby as providing the fertile ground for Cosbys abuse. How many of the Playboy guests are they going to be charged to courts and what are their chances of success after claiming to be flattered contributors, as Trump backers are now proclaiming?

Compare these women that are supporting Trump to those women that supported Cosby at some point. They ran Cosby supporters underground and gave them all kinds of names. Some of them were made to feel so guilty of defending Cosby, they changed their minds or simply went under and unheard from again. Most Black magazines have their anti-Cosby columnists wondering why these women would bury their heads in the sand simply because Cosby is black.

No matter how uncouth Donald Trump disparages women on television or Twitter, supporters remain unmoved. Anyone that dares them knows what is coming her way. Most see themselves as married and conservative women willing to tolerate the boorish behavior of their men and husbands that could be Trump. In other words, no matter what Trumps does to women, he has supporters among women, mostly conservatives, willing to defend him.

The same is not true of Bill Clinton because liberal supporters are also the most active members of the Women Liberation Movement, which conservative women classed antithetical. Even in Playboy and other magazines, women are divided just as Ms. World pageant in Kaduna, Nigeria. Some are flattered as Trump girls while others denounce them as flesh magazines. Yet the difference between Trump and Bill Clinton is that between serial monogamists and polygamists.

The same is true about sexual activities. It is easier to call a black woman a prostitute for the same sexual activities engaged in by a white woman. In the case of a black man, it is even worse than any group. Out of Africa, the sexual prowess of Africans are exaggerated, dreamed up and feared that he may take over other women. Even a white girl that voluntarily falls for a black man would succumb and blackmail him when jeered and confronted in her community.

In order to fight the stereotype of promiscuous blacks and other cosmetic blights, African Americans have tried their best and succeeded in colleges, universities and in the workforce. The black women are in many cases the keeper of homes when their men are not around for variety of reasons. Despite all that, African American women still do not get the respect they deserve. So they always go out of their way to prove that they do not tolerate abuse of women.

You blame them? Look at what Mrs. Cosby has been subjected to in the court of law and some whispering in the gossip circles. We can say that of Mrs. Clinton is political. But in reality, these are human beings that are forced to pay for the sins of their husbands. No one actually believed that these women encourage their husbands. If anything, they are victims themselves.

So Cosby; is the black ladies show of resistance to ladies abuse and sleaze. These professional black women massacre him for his disgraceful behavior whatever the circumstances. Of course no black encourages Bill Cosbys behavior but he has been treated unlike any other men in the same circumstances. Is there anyone around the world that does not know what Playboy Club and parties stand for and the type of men and women privileged and flattered to be admitted?

Trumps special case is borne out by his privileged position. He was the same one that defended Bill Clinton vigorously during the Monica Lewinsky tribulation of the Clinton family. Time and situation has changed since he is now running against Mrs. Hilary Clinton. It was Mr. Trump who objected to the Republicans hypocrisy when defending Bill Clinton. He has now turned around and uses it against the wife. He is re-victimizing Mrs. Clinton again!

Family Value, is the mantra Conservatives always hide under, such as like Henry Hyde, Bob Barr, Newt Gingrich, Bill Livingston, Dennis Hastert, Strom Thurmond etc. used to cover themselves during Monica Lewinsky saga. Only to find out later those were the hypocrites worse than Bill Clinton. But they sat in his judgment and passed morality verdict over him.

There is no doubt that Bill Clinton and Bill Cosby brought this upon themselves. Especially Cosby that preached: holier than thou sermons about young African American boys. The hypocrisy was glaring as if his Playboy chapter has closed. He became almost like one of the conservatives that prosecuted Bill Clinton only to find out later they were doing worse to women.
Guwahati, 31 May: The Assam Press Correspondents Union (APCU) organized a media talk and also a health camp for its members on Monday in the city. Nearly hundred rural reporters from different parts of the State joined in the program and took advantages of healthcare consultations. Journalist Nava Thakuria, while attending the meeting as a resource person, pointed out that the media in India was facing severe crisis of credibility. He however expressed optimism that amidst all the troubles & limitations, the journalists of northeast India would come out as authentic narrators of the situation to their respective reader, audience and viewers.

Chaired by APCU president Manoj Singh, the meeting earlier decided to launch an annual award in memory of journalist Budhindra Hazarika, which would be offered to a television scribe. Moreover, the meeting resolved that the death anniversary of journalist Kamala Saikia, who was killed by militants 25 years back, would be observed on 9 August in the city. A history of APCU will be prepared in a book form by senior journalist Shobhit Chetri, where as the next APCU session would be organized at Majuli river island under Jorhat district.

The general health check-up for the participants was sponsored by Assams well known Dispur Hospitals, where the second dose of Hepatitis-B vaccine was also administered on the rural correspondents, who received the first dose of the vaccine on 30 April last. The meeting was also attended by Dispur Hospitals Pvt Ltd public relation officer Ujjal Saikia, APCU working president Mousamjyoti Baishya, its secretary general Hemanta Saikia with other office bearers. The forum also extended gratitude to Dr Jayanta Bardoloi, the MD of Dispur Hospitals, for his mission to make journalists across the region Hepatitis-B free.

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Nana Akufo-Addo - NPP Presidential Candidate

31.05.2016 LISTEN

As the two major political parties battle it out for a chance to preside over the cocoa, gold and oil resources of Ghana for the next four years, it has become clear that the presidency will not be decided by the swing regions as usual, but probably one of the parties strongholds.

It is now on record that the ruling National Democratic Congress party has vowed to scoop as much as one million votes from the compound of the opposition New Patriotic Party in the Ashanti region and share the spoils in the Eastern Region as well in their operation 50:50.

Interestingly too, the opposition New Patriotic Party has gained much confidence in recent times leading the partys officials in the coveted World Bank of the National Democratic Congress in the Volta region to declare 30% of Volta votes for the party in the upcoming general election.

These developments should call for an exciting contest just five months to come in a very intriguing manner judging from the fact that the two major parties had previously maximized their efforts in their strongholds rather than wasting valuable time and resources in enemy territory.

In perspective, the highest figure in percentage terms for the NDC in the Ashanti region is the 28.67% the party garnered in the 2012 presidential election as against 25.61% in 2008. This figure primarily boosts the confidence of the NDC as they saw their 2008 tally of 479,633 votes for John Mills rise by 131,971 to 611,604 for John Mahama in 2012.

That said, it is right and justifiably so for the party to excite itself in the possibility of regularly increasing its tally in the region. However, the issues and facts that support their determination are not new, but presently tainted.

First of all, the NDC has largely been seen as a northern party, winning elections in all three regions up north since 1992. And looking at the correlation between the three northern regions and the Ashanti region, it is clear and without dispute to say that the two regions are integrating at a faster speed than any other regions in socio-economic terms.

The people from the three northern regions have indeed established cultural hubs in significant parts of the Ashanti region. The Zongo communities easily come to mind, but the extension of the three regions in the north to the Ashanti region goes beyond the penetration of Zongo communities.

Therefore, it is only natural and reasonable to realize that as many more northerners who are mostly tied to the NDC move and settle in the Ashanti region, the votes of the NDC definitely increases in that proportion.

Secondly, it is important to note that the marriage between the three northern regions and Ashanti region has been established and continues to flourish because of the push and pull factors of migration caused by huge economic disparities between the two regions.

In this case, it is problematic for the NDC to assume significance in the Ashanti Region because the economic parameters that favored this marriage of Ashanti and northern Ghana have been significantly distorted. This is because of the nationwide distribution of poverty and hardships which has not left out the Ashanti region.

And so with the comfort of migrant population from the north destabilized by voluminous rise in cost of living and cost of doing business leading to rise in unemployment in record proportions and deepening of poverty, that portion of the NDC votes are most likely going to be affected.

Additionally, the relationship between the Ashantis and northerners has most of the time played out against the fortunes of the NPP in the region. Northerners are most often chastised and denigrated by their Ashanti colleagues in so harsh terms that they often resent the NPP which they see as an extension of the Ashantis. Unsurprisingly, the NDC has often sought the least of opportunities to pitch northerners against Ashantis in every election year.

However, with the economic challenges of the country as a shared commonality between Ashantis and northerners, the concentration this time is most likely to be on the party that can best turn their fortunes around.

Besides, a noticeable humble and mild expression of the opposition leader, Nana Akuffo Addo has quite impacted positively on the communications posture of the party officials and thereby endearing him and the party to a lot more northerners who now consider him capable of being a calm father for all.

Finally, the AkyemAshanti rivalry as epitomized by the Kufuor, AlanNana factions has impacted on the performance of the NPP in the Ashanti region. This is so significant that political analysts believe it was the major driving factor that caused a change of government in 2009, and the NDC has brilliantly worked out another perfect plan to divide the ranks of the NPP in that direction.

However, very brave decisions taken by the leadership of the party to discipline top party officials is enough to portray the party as one focused on maintaining a strong identity, and not one willing to tolerate everything just for the sake of winning an election.

So the hopes of the NDC securing their one million votes target in the Ashanti region are very loose and virtually empty.

Contrary to the imagination of the NDC that they will attain their one million votes because their votes tally has been appreciating over the years in the Ashanti region, without due consideration of the permutations therein, the NPPs position has been established by a determination of the Volta region led by their chiefs, to crown the NPP with the presidency.

Scientific studies and theories have thought us that patterns are very key in determining future events. This is helpful to the NDCs analysis because they have consistently been appreciating in the Ashanti region.

Unfortunately however, social phenomena such as elections and human decisions are determined by the environmental, social and economic conditions of the time. This is the major reason why previous results of the NDC in Ashanti have taken them to dreamland. They may well learn from the NPP who consistently appreciated in the Volta Region to a high of 14.98% in 2008 only to fall back to 12.93% in 2012.

The NPP as has been this time, remained cautious, wary of setting targets especially in their worst territory until they were virtually invited and called upon by the chiefs of the land they dread the most electorally, to rise up and stake their claim.

On May 20, 2016, the chief of the Mafi Traditional Area, Togbe Atatim whiles speaking on behalf of chiefs of South and Central Tongu in a meeting with NPP Flagbearer, Nana Akuffo Addo, expressed confidence in Nana Akuffo Addo saying he is capable of rising to the occasion and will not disappoint us if he is given the opportunity to occupy the presidency.

The chief numbered various projects which were either done or started by the NPP government under President Kuffuor to back his confidence in the opposition leader. He mentioned the upgrading of Adidome Senior High School, construction of Adidome-Sogakope-Kpedzeglo road, Adidome town roads and the police headquarters in Adidome.

The loss of faith of the Volta chiefs in the Mahama government is clear from the speech of the chiefs. This is because in most instances, the chiefs will only beautifully commend the candidate and party they are hosting without saying a thing about their darling candidate or party. But this was not the case as the chiefs expressed utter disappointment in the NDC government for abandoning important projects started in the region by the NPP such as the police headquarters in Adidome.

Again, on 21 May, 2016, the NPP flag bearer gained public discussion for his mammoth rally at Keta which attracted a record crowd. The opposition leaders call on the crowd to ignore the propaganda of the NDC was on point judging from the fact that the NDC has used every means to secure their World Bank apart from meaningful development for Voltarians.

As panicking as the NDC could be, they struggled to downplay the crowd that poured out to listen to Nana Addo by first attributing it to busing of supporters and later suggesting the influence of the market day.

Whatever, the reason for such an unusual crowd, it is important to note that the main purpose of a political rally is not to find out why people come to listen to you, but to attract the numbers and sell your message and policies to them. It is quiet important in this case to realize that the percentage of people a candidate can attract at a rally is only proportional to the total number of people at the rally.

If the NPP could not attract this crowd in the past, there are many reasons why they got it this time around.

Also, on 24 May, 2016, the founder of the ruling NDC government, Jerry Rawlings, did the boom again. This time, it was open and very disastrous. The former President expressed disappointment in the NDC in recent times and labeled them alongside other Nkrumahists political parties criminals who pretend to be pursuing the Nkrumah ideology.

This open disappointment of the NDC founder expressed about the party that has the consistent support of the Volta Region is seen as the feeling of the larger Voltarian community. It is also important to note that Jerry Rawlings remains the reason for the Volta region being the World Bank of the NDC.

The question now is this: will the residents remain in the palace if the chief leaves the palace because he doesnt consider it safe again?

Quite importantly, the same JJ seemed to have dispelled all fears of his followers in the Volta region about the NPP flag bearer. The people of the region are seen to have the impression that Nana Akuffo Addo will not be any friend to the Volta Region considering the alleged animosity between Ewes and Akans.

But the man they trust with every blood in their veins said, whatever Nana Addos shortcomings, tribalism is not one of them. It is seen by many as a blanket statement to suggest that people in the Volta region should feel free to vote for the NPP leader because he is not what the NDC says he is.

Comparatively, I leave it for Ghanaians to judge the audacity of the two parties to stake out claims for percentages and numbers in their opponents strongholds.

But quiet humbly, the NPP has solid grounds, based on the confidence of Volta chiefs in their flag bearer; the disappointment of the Volta chiefs and people in the NDC government; the eagerness of the people of the Volta to listen to their flag bearer; the disappointment of Jerry Rawlings in the NDC; and the confidence of Jerry Rawlings that the NPP flag bearer is not tribal.

Therefore, by staking claim for 30% of Volta votes, the NPP has ordinarily acknowledged the confidence of Voltarians in their party. Even though Voltarians may be disappointed in the NPP for not claiming an even higher stake, November or December 7 definitely promises to be interesting for all who live to that date.

However, no matter the justification of the NPP to target 30% of Volta votes, there is definitely more work to do.

It is an open secret that the NPP has more Assembly Members in most districts in the region. That said, the party should not put these Assembly Members in the fore front of their campaign since such an act has negative ramifications. The Assembly Members should be made to appear as neutral individuals who can definitely affect constituents with their private and personal views on the performance of the government in power. And because they are seen as neutral Assembly Members, their personal opinions are most likely to be appreciated by voters.

In addition, the tendency of the NPP to obtain 30% of the votes in Volta Region is only expressed in the open space of big rallies and TV and radio broadcasts as well as in the minds of the elite population. Once the NDC realizes that it has lost the intelligentsia, it most often shifts focus to the hinterlands where it can use every falsehood and material resources to deceive the electorate therein to vote for them. In this regard, the NPP has to activate its polling station executive machinery to counter every NDC falsehood and project rightly, the policy message of the flag bearer.

Also, the party leadership ought to be overly cautious in their expressions even in moments of greater confrontations. This is because a desperate NDC party that is well aware of the emerging fortunes of the NPP in the Volta region will manufacture every statement, and massage every word of NPP communicators against the good people of the Volta region.

Finally, if closer is truly dearer, then it is important for the two top shots of the party, Nana Akuffo Addo and Dr. Bawumia to pay two more visits to the Volta Region before the polls open. It is clear that the people of the Volta region have fallen in love with the most brilliant political and economic brains in our times, and it is only natural and morally demanding that they return that love.

As Ghana enters its most intriguing election ever, the nation seems to be on the horizon of a new frontier in its political development, as it will be the first time ever that an opposition party will come to win a presidential election right in the stronghold of the ruling party. At the end, it will not be by the political smartness or might of the NPP, but by the choice of a new kingmaker in Ghanas political history: the Volta.

By David Azuliya

Mobile: 0505005012

Email: [email protected]
31.05.2016 LISTEN

Martin Luther King Junior once said, a man cannot ride your back unless it is bent'. How long should we fold our arms and stay mute even if we are right? To how long should we wait for somebody to speak for us even if we have the chance to? Our moral duty, as citizens of this great nation of ours - Ghana, is to hold our corrupt leaders accountable devoid of ones level of education, religion, tribe, political party, or social status.

Failure to criticize leadership is far more than a lively fun opinion on a social platform. We cannot afford to let nostalgia and media or political charisma deny statesmen the ability to review and criticize constructively. Why should it be the case that those who review and criticize are been tagged as party faithfuls?

A slave is the one who waits for someone else to free him or her. Should we fold our arms and allow foreign organizations to criticize our ill minded politicians. The people of Asia were slaves because they had not learnt how to pronounce the word 'NO'!. Until we begin to speak for ourselves, no one could speak for us. In order for an act to be a crime, libertarians say, someone must be harmed - there must be a victim ( Countryman Songo). Anything that's peaceful, voluntary and honest should be tolerated regardless of whether we agree to it or not. Part of our freedom is to allow others to be free. In the mind of Patrick Osei Agyeman, affectionately called Countryman Songo, was to speak for his people who cannot speak for themselves.

Too many people are only willing to defend rights that are personally important to them. It's selfish ignorance, and it is exactly why kleptocratic government like ours are able to get away by trampling on the ordinary Ghanaians. Freedom does not mean freedom just for the things I think I should be able to do. Anyway, but if people will not speak for other peoples right, there will come a time when they will lose their own. Why should one then be troubled when speaking for his people in this nation?

To those who profess to favour freedom and yet depreciate criticism and agitation, are like farmers who wants crops without ploughing, they want rain without lightening and thunder, they want the oceans without the road of its many waters. The struggle to criticize constructively may be a moral one, or it may be physical, or both but the flag must be a struggle because we have done nothing wrong to deny us of visionary leaders and not deceptive party communicators.

So in redressing ownership of our resources, those in governance and those who wills to criticize constructively and draw to the masses attention on the corrupt practices. If criticism is been chained, then this nation needs to be awarded back into the hands of our colonial masters. Indeed, the white were not too wrong. Without a critical assessment of leadership and the duties of leaders, we will only select party faithfuls, entertainers, cool cats, and team B members as opposed to visionary leaders.

I choose to be optimistic that, criticism devoid of unnecessary tag when given a place in our democratic dispensation will be of a class. I am therefore with only one plea, which is for Patrick Osei Agyeman affectionately called Countryman Songo, the host of "Fire for Fire" on Adom TV to get back to his post. Because he desires to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. He speak on behalf of those who are willing to stand tall for their rights but do not have the platform.

He speak for those who have the platform, however, because of their parochial interest, they are intrinsically chained. A critical scrutiny of what led to Countryman's Songo suspension from ADOM TV is dubious. We want him back to speak for the underprivileged ones in Ghana. The truth hurts, but it needs to be told.

Akwasi Brobbey

( Offinso College of Education, Offinso )

0548412192/0266175686

[email protected]
31.05.2016 LISTEN

Northern Nigeria is made up of 19 states and in many of these cities, there are amazing destinations which tourists love to visit.

In Kaduna , the magnificent Kajuru Castle is sited, the ancient Kano City Wall in Kano, the popular Yankari Games reserve in Bauchi, the Gashaka Gumpti park between Adamawa and Taraba and the Chappal Waddi Mountain in Taraba with the tallest mountain in Nigeria.

There is so much to discover in this part of Nigeria. For tourists who are craving for a hitch free adventure in Northern Nigeria, Jovago.com, Africas No.1 hotel booking portal roll-out some helpful tips.

Do not dress scantily

A large chunk of the states in Northern Nigeria are predominantly Muslim. The religion has a huge influence on their way of life. In line with religious beliefs, women wear clothes which cover their body. Therefore, one of the things that will endear tourists to the locals especially for the women is to cover their body, They take exception to scantily clad women. And do not always cover your hair whether you are a Muslim or non-Muslim.

Prepare for the hot climate

The climate in Northern Nigeria is very hot. So, this is one of the battles you have to overcome on a visit to the region. So, you need a hat, sunglasses and bottles of water. So, you have to plan your itinerary properly so that your trip is not disrupted by the scorching sun. Importantly, do not go mountain climbing if you cannot withstand the stress.

Get a local who speak hausa fluently

Having someone who can speak the local language has its pros. You get everything you buy at an affordable price, and you will feel secured especially when you are among strangers. The truth is that you cannot find your way if you do not speak Hausa. So hire someone who speak hausa.

Stay away from religious arguments

Whether you agree or disagree with their religious creed, you should keep it to yourself. As a tourists you should focus on exploring the various destination at your disposal. They do not joke with their religion especially persons. Do not allow anyone drag you into any religious argument. Always remember that you are a tourists.

Avoid public display of affection

Men and women mingling is not frowned let alone displaying your affection to your lover. If you want to display any affection, you must do private and also ensure that men and women do things separately.

Be security conscious

The government is winning the war against Boko Haram and peace is returning to Northeast Nigeria. However, this doesnt wander indiscriminately. In addition, always remember to inform your friends about your whereabouts.
Former President Jerry John Rawlings in a hand shake with Nana Addo

31.05.2016 LISTEN

Starrfmonline.coms report of Nana Akufo-Addos most recent tour of the Volta Region was perhaps the best of its kind in recent weeks, for it uncannily captured the essence of what the 2016 presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has been preaching all along, namely, that the revolutionary politics of ethnic disunity and chauvinism ought to have been chucked into the rusty dustbin of history the moment Ghanaians decided they had had enough of the morally reprehensible reign-of-terror furiously championed by the Rawlings-led Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC).

And before the latter, of course, the equally brutal, albeit transient, and insufferably bloody junta of the Chairman Rawlings-led Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC)  (See Dont Fear Me  Akufo-Addo to V/R Ghanaweb.com 5/19/16).

He did not use these exact same words, for Akufo-Addo is rather too diplomatic and progressive to fully appreciate the fact that further roiling of the already murky and treacherous waters of political incrimination and recrimination would not advance the nations cause and rapid movement towards socioeconomic and cultural enlightenment within the shortest possible time. Already, too much time has been wasted marking time to nowhere meaningful or morally instructive, except the static politics of mutual self-denigration.

And so it is definitely time to move the clock of national development forward. The preceding notwithstanding, what has been wickedly ironic here is the fact that those who brought us this abysmally low have also been those who have been the most successful in demonizing those who have harbored the best interests of the nation at large.

Indeed, it is for this reason that one had hoped that Nana Akufo-Addo would have spent a considerable percentage of his temporal audience with the Anwomefia of Anloga, Togbui Sri, III, highlighting the material achievements brought to the region by adherents of the Danquah-Busia-Dombo Tradition, and to have dispassionately balanced off the remarkable impact of such landmark achievements with those of the other ideological suasions.

As well, Nana Akufo-Addo could have highlighted the seismic psychological impact brought to bear on the proverbial Ghanaian personality by such humanistically salutary measures as the Repeal of the Criminal Libel Law, which the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has been fighting tooth-and-nail to restore, thereby guaranteeing the return of Ghanaians to the inexcusably depraved era of neocolonialism, unenviably, albeit doggedly and viciously, pursued by the key operatives of the Nkrumah-led regime of the so-called Convention Peoples Party (CPP).

Likewise, rather than take the defensive path of apologetically promising not to discriminate against the Volta people or Voltaians, or Voltaics, Nana Akufo-Addo could have done even better to highlight some of the reasons why the National Democratic Congress, the longest-ruling Fourth-Republican political party, has not served the interests of the very people whose votes it gloats about having taken for granted in the cynical name of the World Bank.

These tours, between now and Election Day, ought to be strategically seized upon by the three-time presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party to lay out his partys development agenda for each and every one of the 275 electoral districts or constituencies in the country. Already, Alhaji Mahamudu Bawumia, Akufo-Addos astute running-mate, has been doing remarkably practical wonders around the country, as admonished some time ago by yours truly, by helping several rural communities gain ready access to potable drinking water and toilet facilities.

Of course, it was also very refreshing for Akufo-Addo to stay away from the obvious, the incontrovertible fact that reprobate political characters like Chairman Jerry John Rawlings and the Tsikatas, specifically speaking Kojo and Tsatsu, have indisputably done more to seriously regress the development of the Volta Region, both materially and psychologically, than any other Ghanaian leaders or political parties, including the so-called National Democratic Congress, of course.

It was also morally and psychologically refreshing to hear the paramount chief of the Anlo-Ewe people heartily welcome the NPPs flagbearer to his traditional polity as both a friend and a bona fide son of the soil. This is what nation-building ought to be about.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs
Government has secured a 24.5 million dollar facility from the Indian government through the Indian Exim Bank for the development of the Komenda sugar factory project.

This was disclosed by President Mahama on Monday during the inauguration of Komenda sugar factory in the Central Region.

In order to ensure sustainable raw material production base for this project, a 24.5 million dollar facility has been approved by the government of India through the Indian Exim bank for the development of sugarcane plantations with irrigation facility to feed this factory, he stated.

According to the President, the firm is to ensure sustainable development of sugarcane plantations and in turn, harness the continuous growth and smooth running of the facility.

This project is targeted at covering an irrigable area estimated at above 2,000 acres. The loan facility will be used to establish irrigation facilities to cover over 2,000 acres to serve as a core farm to feed the factory. Part of the facility will also be used to support out growers who are willing to supply raw material to the factory.

President John Mahama also urged the people of Komenda to contribute to make the project successful,

The irrigated core farm of the factory will be able to supply 40% of the raw material this factory needs. The remaining 60% must come from the out growers.

Meanwhile government says it will set up a corporative society to assist sugarcane farmers increase their production.

The factory is therefore going to setup a farmers' corporative involving all farmers who supply sugarcane to the factory. They will be registered assisted to increase their sugar production. The farmers will also be given other incentives and encouragement to be able to work together with the factory, Mr. Mahama assured.

The factory according to the president is designed to create over 7,000 jobs for Ghanaians, most especially the youth and inhabitants in the Central Region.



By: Jessica Ayorkor Aryee/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana
The multinational oil giant Shell must not be allowed to palm off its responsibility to clean up decades of oil pollution which continues to blight the Niger Delta, said Amnesty International ahead of the Nigerian governments long overdue clean-up of Ogoniland, due to begin on 2 June.

Scores of oil spills from Shell operations in the Niger Delta have yet to be properly cleaned up, and even sites the multi-national company claims to have cleaned remain polluted. To make matters worse, there were at least 130 oil spills from Shell operations in 2015.

Under Nigerian law, companies are obliged to clean up whatever the cause.

The Niger Delta is one of the most oil-polluted places in the world. That is because companies like Shell are failing to prevent or clean up spills years, sometimes decades, after they happen. Shell cannot rely on the Nigerian government to clean up its dirty work for it, said Joe Westby, Business & Human Rights Campaigner at Amnesty International.

The tragedy is that the oil spills continue to destroy the livelihoods of thousands of local people to this day. Shell will tell you that the vast majority are a result of theft, even though Amnesty International has repeatedly published evidence showing Shell misstates the cause of oil spills.

But whatever their cause, Nigerian law still says that the company who operates the pipeline has to clean up. That is something Shell has failed to do for decades.

After years of lobbying, on 29 April President Buharis government announced it would start the clean-up programme on 2 June. The clean-up was called for in 2011 by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), in a report exposing massive levels of pollution caused by oil spills from Shell pipelines in the Ogoniland region.

The start of the clean-up is a much-needed, long-awaited step for people who have lived with polluted waters and farmlands for decades. They have a right to be sceptical, they have seen clean-ups promised and people paid to do the work in the past, only for little improvements to be delivered. This time the rhetoric must translate into action on the ground, said Joe Westby.
Kofi Jumah

31.05.2016 LISTEN

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Folks, since ex-President Kufuor created the elbow room for Maxwell Kofi Jumah to function in as an NPP operative, everything that he has done or said goes to prove that we in Ghana are lost when it comes to democracy.

Let me be blunt upfront to say that any democracy that doesn't refine the citizens for them to behave rationally and ensure national development is a doomed democracy. Ours is just that!!

Take all the happenings in the country as the basis for apprehensions that our democracy isn't helping us develop our country the way others use it to advantage. It is so because of the hordes of misfits digging in to settle in its grooves to misbehave all over the place without being punished. A democracy that encourages this kind of behaviour is no democracy to uphold. Ours is just that!!

How many times haven't characters of Kofi Jumah's type given cause for concern that our democracy is a mere window-dressing for upstarts to exploit?

Pardon me for picking on Jumah, but his own waywardness has established him as a classic example of the problems that our democracy cannot solve. And there are many of his kind in the system who have grown ugly horns because the system itself allows them to do so.

Since Kufuor brought down this Jumah to be part of his administration, he has done things and made public pronouncements that are nothing but a sad reflection of the mish-mash that a Ghanaian living overseas for many years can represent.; One might think that exposure to the finesse of behaviour and politics in the advanced world would help a Ghanaian like Jumah know how to do things properly. But it is not to be so; and Jumah had spent many years outside Ghana, trying his hands at odds and ends before being salvaged by Kufuor.

What has he brought to national politics? Nothing but shame. Consider how he did things when in charge of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly and how he got booted out for Ms. Apiagyei to take over only for him to descend into the gutter, condemning her for using her "buttocks" to win favours from Kufuor. No wonder he lost the Asokwa seat but is still bent on causing trouble.

What he did during the NPP's primary in that constituency brought him face-to-face with the law, but the weaknesses of our Ghanaian legal regime/regimen freed him. The offence for which he was arrested and prepared for trial was serious, but he managed to wriggle himself out of troubleand to toughen his horns for more mischief.

Why did the Attorney-General's office not prosecute him as such? What happened to that case?

Emboldened by happenings, Jumah is taking his notoriety to a different level, this time, insulting the British High Commissioner (Jon Benjamin) and the British government-a very serious misconduct that will have serious implications for now and beyond.

What is the cause? The British High Commissioner had deflated the NPP's campaign of calumny against the NDC's Central Regional Chairman (Allotey Jacobs) and suddenly became the target for Jumah and the NPP operatives. Leading the attack, Jumah is reported to have described him without any hesitation as a fool.

So if Britain wants someone as a High Commissioner to Ghana, must they appoint a fool like Jon Benjamin as their Commissioner to Ghana? That man is a fool, he angrily said on NEAT FMs morning show 'Ghana Montie'. (See http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Why-must-UK-appoint-a-fool-as-a-commissioner-to-Ghana-Jumah-443208).

Is this the kind of politics that one expects Jumah and those in the NPP to do for Ghana's good? And so far, no reaction has come from Akufo-Addo and the NPP camp to help matters?

Folks, I am appalled at Jumah's misconduct and blame our judicial system for letting him loose to misbehave this way. Had the law taken its cause, he wouldn't have been so foolhardy to go this distance. He would have been nailed by now.

The long and short of it all is that Jumah gives Ghanaians abroad a very bad signal. If returning home to do politics is what Jumah portrays, who will be attracted? Not me!!

Of course, Jumah and others like him who returned to Ghana knew what they were looking for. Have they had it yet? I don't know; but all I know is that once they fall foul of the law, they should be taken on so they don't behave with impunity as Jumah is doing.

I wait to see the fallouts from his outright damnation of the British High Commissioner. It seems, though, that this British High Commissioner has inserted himself too much into Ghanaian affairs, commenting on issues that other diplomats shy away from. Why does he feel that only he has the balls to do so?

Given the numerous controversies in which he has involved himself, I won't be surprised if he is recalled one of these days; but I won't miss the fact too that characters of Jumah's type who insult foreign diplomats are a problem for Ghana to solve. In truth, then, Maxwell Kofi Jumah is a disgrace!! And there are many of his type all over the place, abusing the system with impunity without being dealt with. Our kind of democracy is a mockery!!

Lawlessness of this type doesn't grow it; instead, if destroys public confidence in it. Eventually, it degenerates into something else to be feared.

I shall return
Opinion / Columnist

My departed grandfather (may his dear soul rest in eternal peace) used to tell me that one might enjoy lying to others but it is dangerously suicidal to lie to yourself.The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T), led by Morgan Tsvangirai, is not only lying to itself, but also hallucinating more than a person who has taken a tonne of cocaine.Indeed the MDC-T, after having gathered a few thousand hooligans for its recent demonstrations in Harare and Bulawayo, the party suddenly lies to itself that come 2018, its discredited leader, Tsvangirai's new bedroom will be at the State House.Well, our democracy allows even zombies to dream.According to the BBC, during the Harare MDC-T demonstration, only a paltry 2 000 rowdy crowd demonstrated. This gave the overzealous Tsvangirai courage to call for the resignation of President Mugabe so that the opposition leader can sneak into the State House through the back door.In Bulawayo, the party howled its usual slogans that "Mugabe must go; No to bond notes; Where is $15 billion; Stay away from MDC Municipalities etc'' as expected, yet the leadership addressed less than 4 000 supporters out of 30 000 the party had hoped would attend.Some of the attendees were bussed from Matabeleland North and South Provinces; and yet that party is lying to its self through the teeth, that Bulawayo is its stronghold.The Secretary General of the confused party, Douglas Mwonzora, was earlier on quoted saying "Bulawayo was the party's stronghold and the march will be bigger than ZANU (PF)'s Million Man March in Harare".Not to be outdone, Mwonzora's "learned colleague", Obert Gutu the spokesperson, also waffled that "ZANU (PF) Million Man March in Harare attracted less than 5 000 people''.The MDC-T is demonstrating saying that the government should not interfere in local authorities under its control. Some dirty fish smells here. The MDC-T wants to hide its rampant corruption in local authorities.It is public Knowledge that the party is siphoning money from local authorities under its control in order to fund its nefarious activities, including its leader's unstoppable womanising. The recent Gweru debacle is a case in point.Gutu, surely numbers don't lie, and you know it.As that was not enough, Gutu further lied that ZANU (PF) spent $200 million dollars (American by the way) on transport in addition to commandeering school buses to ferry people to the march. Am I missing something here; 200 million dollars to ferry less than 5 000 people within the borders of Zimbabwe? Gutu is showing us his interest in ZANU (PF) to the extent that he attends the party's gatherings just to make head counts.Gutu and Mwonzora please stop casting the noble law profession in bad light since we know you first as lawyers. You are the ones busy promoting the adage that "Lawyers are trained to lie on behalf of their clients''.In another interesting twist of events, which exposed MDC-T's lies, we now know that the MDC-T has been abusing names of missing people, claiming that they belong to that party.This was recently confirmed by Paul Chizuze's wife, Sibongile Maposa. Chizuze allegedly went missing in 2012. Sibongile had this to say, "These people are just using my husband's picture for selfish reasons. When he disappeared in 2012, they never even came to our house to show their support. Besides, he was not even MDC-T; how then does he fit in their campaigns?''.Maposa even confronted the MDC-T leadership threatening to sue that party over the abuse of Chizuze's name, forcing Mwonzora to swallow humble pie.The MDC-T should stop lying and hallucinating. Zimbabweans are not fools who it can take for a ride. You are alleging that ZANU (PF) looted $15 billion diamond money; conveniently forgetting that President Mugabe is the one who revealed this development to the nation. Currently appropriate investigations are underway.While MDC-T is wasting time with the usual useless rhetoric at its gatherings; ZANU (PF) holds such gathering to iron out its differences and seek ways to solve national problems.----------Chadzimura Mhute
File Photo

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Ghana has been ranked the 34th country with the most modern slaves out of 167 countries in the world, with survey results estimating that there are 103,300 people enslaved in the country.

According to the Global Slavery Index Report released on Tuesday, out of the 103,300 enslaved people in Ghana, 85 percent are in forced labour in the fishing and farming industries, retail sales, manual labour and factory work whiles the remaining 15 percent are in forced marriages.

The Report also listed Ghana as number 13 out of 15 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa on its Prevalence Index Rank.

The Report estimated that 45.8 million men, women and children around the world are today trapped in modern slavery; 28% more than previously estimated and they are enslaved through human trafficking, forced labour, debt bondage, forced or servile marriage or commercial sexual exploitation.

North Korea is the country with the greatest prevalence of modern slavery, with 4.37% of its population estimated to be enslaved. It is also the country with the weakest government response in terms of actions taken to combat modern slavery. The next highest prevalence of slavery is found in Uzbekistan (3.97%), followed by Cambodia (1.65%).

Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for approximately 13.6% (6,245,800) of the world's total enslaved population. Within the region, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, and the Central African Republic have the highest prevalence of modern slavery (all 1.13%).

The Communications Manager for Challenging Heights, Miss Pomaa Arthur in a statement said that although the report is a reflection that Ghana is making some progress in bringing an end to modern slavery, more needed to be done.

In 2014, the Global Slavery Index ranked Ghana 21st in the world and 8th in Sub-Saharan Africa with an estimated 193,100 people enslaved. It is good news that our prevalence rate is dropping but we shouldnt forget that there are still 103,300 trapped in slavery in the country, she said.

Miss Arthur said a better coordination between the Government and NGOs working to bring an end to slavery such as Challenging Heights which has rescued over 1,500 children from the Lake Volta would be very instrumental in tackling the issue of trafficking.

It is estimated that there are 21,000 enslaved on the Lake Volta but the governments responses in all areas of combating slavery such as prevention, protection, prosecution and policy implementation are very slow, she added.

Miss Arthur urged the general public to take the issue of human trafficking and modern slavery seriously and make it their business to join the fight against the menace.
Vegetable Farmers in the Keta Municipality of the Volta Region, who rely on electricity to power their irrigation pumps, have hit the streets to demonstrate against what they say is the high cost of vegetable production as a result of increasing electricity tariffs.

According to the farmers, government has failed to redeem a promise made in 2012 to put farmers who use electricity in any form for agricultural purposes on a special tariff, instead of the current Non-Residential Tariff.

From 2009-2012, Ghana embarked on the Agricultural Water Solution Project with funding from the Bill Gates Foundation and supported by International Water Management Institutes (IWMI), International Food Policy Research Institutes(IFPRI), International Development Institutes(IDI), Food and Agricultural Organization(FAO) and others.

The aim of the project was to boost income and food security for the millions of small-holder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and India by providing reliable access to water for irrigation.

At one of such stakeholder workshops held at Erata Hotel from 28-29 March 2012, and chaired by Dr. Alhassan Yakubu, Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Food and Agriculture the following decisions on rural irrigation were arrived at:

 Extensive rural electrification, which is a government policy, should include sending electricity to irrigated areas to ensure that electricity is used for economic productive purposes in rural areas.

 There is need for synchronization of electricity and rural roads provision to irrigated areas. That implies collaborative planning by the relevant stakeholders, especially electricity providers and distributors, Department of Feeder Roads and District Assemblies.

 There is need to argue for reasonable tariffs to be charged for electricity for irrigation but AWM/GIDA must provide evidence-based information on the costs and benefits of electricity for irrigation vis-a-vis diesel/petrol and make suggestions of reasonable tariffs.

 Subsidies on electricity of the type that exists in some states of India should not be contemplated because it is not sustainable.

 There is need to link farmers to appropriate markets so that their produce do not go waste after spending so much on production.

 The decisions of the workshop should be presented to the relevant people in the Ministries of Energy and Food and Agriculture, PURC and the Energy Commission for reactions and then a memo should be produced for cabinet.

The Chairman of the Keta Municipality Vegetable Farmers and Marketers Association, Mr. Roland Tudzi, said there have been several failed attempts to draw the attention of stakeholders to redeem their promise including several letters to the office of the President.

He said the situation was worsening as they continue to bear the brunt of the high electricity bills.

Presenting their petition to the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) for Keta, Mr. Sylvester Tonyeava, the group called on government to expedite action towards the implementation of the project and support activities of farmers in the area by including them on the various interventions.

The farmers were seen clad in red wielding placards with inscriptions such as, the bills are too much, we need special tariffs now among others.

Farmers along the shoreline of Southern Volta have over the years been practicing tube well irrigation system to cultivate crops.

The system allows farmers to construct a tube-well which is about 9 meters into the soil, and with an electric pump, water is pumped into a sprinkler irrigation system which is used to water their crops.



By: King Norbert Akpablie/citifmonline.com/Ghana
The Ghana Medical Association has expressed worry at the gradual re-introduction of the cash and carry health care delivery system at various health facilities across the country due to prolonged indebtedness of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) to service providers.

According to the association, the bureaucratic cash inflows to the NHIS risk collapsing the NHIS policy if government does not urgently address the issue.

In a press statement issued at the end of the third National Executive Council meeting of the Ghana Medical Association in Bolgatanga, Upper East Regional president of the GMA, Dr. Afful- Mensah said, the major problem with delays in prompt payment by NHIA to service providers is the lackadaisical attitude of the authorities that be, to transfer mandatory funds from the consolidated fund to the NHIA for onward payment to service providers.

The 2.5% VAT on goods and some similar taxes charged on GETFund and allotted to the National Health Insurance Authority as mandatory payments towards funding the National Health Insurance Scheme but what we hear from the NHIA is that, whenever we have meetings with them is that, what is suppose to go to them does not go to them direct.

Although the amount generated from the 2.5% on VAT goes to the National Consolidated Fund from which the NHIA is paid. But the amount that is supposed to be paid to the NHIA in bulk as expected from the consolidated fund is not always given on time or given only when its convenient for the authorities that be, thus resulting in the delays of payment to service providers.

The National president of the GMA DCOP Dr. Ewusi-Emmim wants the NHIA and government to urgently take steps to settle arrears owed service providers to avert the collapse of the scheme.

The GMA is gravely concerned with the gradual re-introduction of cash and carry at the various health care facilities across the country. It is a fact that, the facilities are restoring to cash and carry because of prolonged indebtedness of the NHIS to them. Indeed, some facilities have not been paid their claims in the last quarter of 2015.

The NHIA should as a matter of urgency take steps to pay the facilities the amounts owed them to save the system from total collapse because we cannot afford to return to the days of cash and carry.

Dr. Emmim appealed to government to reduce the current astronomical utility tariffs which are having dire implications on health service delivery.



By: Frederick Awuni/citifmonline.com/Ghana
By Pascal Kafu Abotsi

Over 13,000 community health nurses across the country, will effective today, Tuesday, May 31, embark on an industrial strike action, until such a time that their demand from government is given attention. The decision was taken after a three-week ultimatum issued to the Ministry of Health to revert their designation from Health Assistants back to the known and called Community Health Nurses, for which they were trained, proved fruitless.

In fact, the nurses, at a press conference in Accra yesterday, glaringly stated that they had been in touch with the ministry, through the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), since last year, to have their grievances addressed, but no attempt had been made to give them hearing.

According to the National President of the Community Health Nurses Association of Ghana, The name Community Health Nurse has been a household name so far as preventive health care in Ghana is concerned and we still cannot understand why it should be taken from people trained in Community Health Nursing.

Ms Esther Frimpongmaa Bamfo, the president of the association told the press that the Nursing and Midwifery Council, last year, changed their traditional name to Nurse Assistants and had since been issuing certificates in that regard. She said the health professionals approached the registrar to make meaning of the cause of the conversion, only to be told that his (registrar) outfit had been empowered by the Health Regulatory Bodies Act (Act 857) to do so.

However, it is interesting to know that there is nowhere in the said Act which indicates that Community Health Nurses are called Nurse Assistants and as such it is disheartening to see them issue certificates to our members as Nurse Assistants after completing their training successfully, Ms Bamfo explained.

She further revealed that following the discrepancy in the information, the Association petitioned the Minister of Health, the Director General of the Ghana Health Service and the Director of the Nursing and Midwifery Services at the Ministry of Health on several occasions concerning the intended move by the NMC, but nothing was done about the situation.

Even though the group confirmed that their salaries had not been affected in anyway, they expressed concern about the future repercussions the change of name could have on them should they gullibly accept it at the moment.

We wish to state that we dont want to be called nurse assistants and until our grievances are addressed accordingly by the Honourable Minister of Health and the major stakeholders of health, we shall not continue to render our services to various communities in the country, the national president warned.

Community health nurses are individuals who are given two-year training in community health nursing, mostly after completing Senior High School education. As part of their contribution to society, they work at the community level to undertake and champion health promotion and prevention.
A popular Sekondi-Takoradi-based Herbal doctor, Opayin Paul Adjei Domfeh, has appealed to the international community to keep an eagle eye on the impending November 7 general election by way of resourcing the Electoral Commission (EC).

Considering the brouhaha that characterized the just-ended limited registration exercise with its attendant breakdown of verification machines, the herbal doctor believes the earlier the international community came to the aid of the EC to resource it, the better it would be for Ghana.

Opayin Adjei Domfeh, a Civil Engineer by profession who came to the offices of this paper to make the appeal believed his call was in the right direction. This is because looking at the controversies that surrounded the ECs preparedness ahead of the November 7 election, it was obvious the electoral body was not well-resourced and equipped enough to conduct the polls on November 7.

To him therefore, it would be appropriate if international bodies came to the aid of the EC. The breakdown of verification machines among other unpardonable things that characterized the limited registration exercise was enough to tell everyone that the EC was not well resourced and needed back up.
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Brigadier General Nunoo-Mensah (Rtd), Coordinator of Human Security at the Office of the President has expressed dissatisfaction over the dependency on Government by the citizenry for educational infrastructure.

He said it is time Ghanaians forget the notion that government is there to provide everything for them. Gen Nunoo-Mensah was speaking at the Speech and Prize-Giving Day and 25th Anniversary Celebration of Gomoa Senior High Technical School at Gomoa Dawurampong.

It was on the theme: 25 years of Gomoa Senior High Technical School, impact and Challenges. Gen Nunoo-Mensah said Ghanaians should not always expect government to do everything for them but must endeavour to play their parts as patriotic citizenry to move the country forward.

Gen Nunoo-Mensah who was among the Guest of Honours had single handedly completed the first floor of the Girls' dormitory of the School, which was gutted by fire in 2014. The project being financed by Ghana Education Trust Fund has been abandoned by the contractor for lack of funds.

Gen Nunoo-Mensah called on individuals and corporate bodies to complement the efforts of the government in the provision of health, education and other structures. He asked parents to encourage their children to study hard to enable them achieve academic laurels. He expressed concern about the inability of the present crop of students to burn the candle to learn, resulting in mass failure of examinations.

Mr Joseph Denanyoh, Headmaster of the School enumerated a number of projects that have been initiated by the school with its Internal Generated Fund.He called on the parents to support the efforts of the authorities to improve structures to enhance quality teaching and learning. The Headmaster complained of inadequate bungalows at the school, which had compelled more than 60 tutors commute from Agona Swedru, Winneba, and Apam to teach.

GNA
From Richard Owusu-Akyaw, Kumasi

Residents of Asem and Fante New-Town (both suburbs of Kumasi) on Sunday were stunned with the killing of a suspected armed robber whose lifeless and mutilated body was found a few meters away from the palace of the Chief of Asem, along the Dwabrem route near Jacksons Park.

The rumour mill has it that the alleged robber was chased from BB, an arena at Asafo Neoplan, noted for night life where he and his accomplices were on a robbery agenda. The robber, who is believed to be in mid 20s, was seen in a pool of blood from machete wounds all over the body.

Thomas Ekow Sackey, Assembly man for the Asem electoral area explained in an interview with the paper that he was on his routine rounds when a young man approached him and complained that an armed robber had been killed near the Asemhenes palace.

Hon Sackey, also known as Ogede continued that he informed the Zongo Police and Rev. Dr. Superintendent Samuel Andane Nyamekye and his team swiftly arrived at the scene and ordered that the body be covered and sent to the hospital.

Ogede indicated that the suspected robber who sought for refuge from a house near St Cyprian Anglican Church was turned away. Touching on security issues in his electoral area, Mr. Sackey slammed the Kumasi Metropolitan Chief Executive, Mr. Kojo Bonsu that his inaction is fueling insecurity at Asem.

He explained that Asem cluster of schools are thrown into abject darkness at night and that the place has become the haven for thieves and armed robbers, a development he said is worrisome. He said the security of the area was a collective responsibility and appealed to shop owners to contribute towards maintenance of security there. Meanwhile, the mortal remains of the suspected armed robber has been deposited at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) morgue by the police.
31.05.2016 LISTEN

From Alfred Adams

THE Ghana Health Service, in collaboration with the Mental Health Authority, has held a day's workshop to train newsmen and women on the new Mental Health Act (846). The workshop, which was attended by journalists drawn from both the print and electronic media, was to hone their knowledge and equip them with the tools to report effectively on mental issues, without infringing on the right of persons considered as metal patients.

The Mental Health Act has been enacted to improve Mental Health Care in Ghana. The act sets out to re-focus the way mental health services are provided  a shift from impatient or institutional care to a more community-based approach. Taking journalists through the Act, the Regional Health Mental Coordinator, Mr. Charles Kwame Vigbedor, observed that if they (journalists) are well informed on mental health, they could well inform and shape society's perception about mental patients.

The focus of the workshop was therefore to court the help of the media in shaping the perception society has about mental health. Touching on forms of mental diseases, the Regional Health Coordinator mentioned that there were different forms of mental illness. He mentioned them as moderate and severe mental illness.

The severe form is where, according to the Mental Coordinator, the illness affects the occupational function of the individual. Charles Vigbedor disclosed to the journalists that there were about 300 severe cases of mental patients in the Western Region.

Touching on the role of the media, he reminded them that every mental patient, either on the street or confined, had rights, just as every citizen. According to him, the new Act frowned on society discriminating against mental patients and as well, referring to them as 'crazy'. The mental patients, he noted, had the right to visit every facility and must be treated equally as every patient.
31.05.2016 LISTEN

Were immortal words that will continue to be the standard of true leadership in our country. Those words remind us of the master's teaching that 'to save one's life we must be prepared to lose it'. selflessness and sacrifice was brought to the fore. What a leader!!!?. His diatribe resonated with the entire nation as there was massive suffering. Inspired by former president Jerry John Rawlings for showing bravery even at the point of death,young officers and other officers forcibly released him and his men on the morning of June 4th 1979.

In the night of June 3rd 1979, junior military officers broke into the jail where former president Jerry John Rawlings was being held and freed him, and ostensibly matched him to the national Radio station to make an announcement. The first the public heard from former president Jerry Rawlings was now legendary statement that he Jerry Rawlings had been released by the junior officers and that he was under their command. He requested all soldiers to meet with them at the Nicholson stadium in Burma Camp in Accra.

The entire nation went up in uproar. To some of us loyal to former president Jerry John Rawlings,June 4 uprising was the most significant event on the nation's political calendar apart from the achievement of Ghana's independence.

The uprising has to be memorised because the revolution fought corruption, greed, nepotism and many other canker at that time and it's still relevant today. Celebrating June 4 should be a time of reflection on the issues that brought about the revolution.

The AFRC carried out a house-cleaning exercise in the armed forces and society at large, while restoring a sense of moral responsibility and the principle of accountability and probity in public life. The AFRC was in office for only three months and, in pursuance of a programme already set in motion before the uprising, allowed general elections to be held. Very historic in world politics because it never happen.

June 4th is about values and principles; It is a reminder that principles must be the core platform on which we build a Great and Strong nation- the cause of right- the cause of justice, the cause of fairness and the cause of brotherhood. The June 4th celebration until 2004 was a public holiday but was revoked by the previous NPP government led by former president John Agyakum Kufour who argued the celebration of the June 4th was touching the sensitivity of some group of Ghanaians whose families fall as victims to the June 4th uprising. It's should have been there to serve as a reminder to criminals elements within the Ghanaian society. The revolution purportedly aimed to alleviate corruption which was at the time rising uncontrollable. The period was also tough times for an ordinary Ghanaian.

However, the June 4th uprising seems not to have served its intended purpose considering the allege corruption level in the country which continues to deny the ordinary Ghanaian of a better education, employment, good clean drinking water, electricity, good roads, rule of law, social justice and equality among other amenities should be blame on the npp for legalizing corruption.

June 4th has never been about making all poor people to become rich and everyone equal. It has never proclaimed as its goal the banishment of poverty from the land. What Its has done is to underscore the need for fairness, equity and the creation of opportunities such that all who truly aspire and apply themselves diligently and make a genuine endeavor can rise progressively out of the doldrums and show that individual and societal progress can be achieved by all classes of people regardless of birth, creed, ethnicity, social status or so called "privileged education" .

Our leaders should use events of June 4 to rebuild the confidence reposed in them, fight corruption and create more jobs for the youth.

We have a lots of work to do to be able to change this country. May the souls of these great men who laid their lives for this country on this great day rest in perfect peace.

I'm setting up a June four memorial school in tamale in honor of Flt Jerry John Rawlings. I'm appealing for all kinds of supports both cash and kind. No donation is small. Your donations are mostly welcome.

Long live Jerry Rawlings!,long live June four,Long live Ghana!!!.

Ibrahim Hardi, email:[email protected],contact 0208235615
Opinion / Columnist

"You must be careful of people who speak with a forked tongue and, whatever happens, you must never give in to the temptation of being one such person yourself," my late mother used to warn us. "The world is full of conman would take you for a ride at your expense and often they become victims of their own deception.""Asia for the Asians!" was Japan's slogan and excuse for fighting in the Second World War to drive the Americans, British and other western nations out of Asia in a straight swap of one colonial power for another. Forget all the black nationalists' rhetoric of fighting for freedom, justice and human rights; just like the Japanese, President Mugabe and his fellow Zanu PF leaders were fighting to replace the whites as the new lord of the manor.It took the average black Zimbabwean ten years or so after independence to accept that they were second class citizen whose freedoms, human rights including the right to a meaningful say in the governance and even the right to life itself were routinely denied by the ruling elite. After 36 years of corrupt, incompetent and tyrannical Zanu PF rule with millions now languishing in abject poverty and over 30 000 murdered by the regime in pursuit of its selfish agenda of staying in power at all cost; there can be no doubt that Zanu PF leaders spoke with a forked tongue and they still do to this day."When you went to war (ex-combatants) you were very young but you remain resolute, but up to now you don't have anything to show (for it). All I see is poverty written on your fac-es," war veterans leader Chris Mutsvangwa to his members in Masvingo las week, according to a Daily News report."But we have seen the bad part of not rewarding ourselves, the G40 is doing whatever they want with us because they corruptly acquired wealth."The notable thing here is how Zanu PF leaders like Mutsvangwa have again and again ex-pressed their concern about poverty amongst the war vets but have refused to even acknowledge that millions of ordinary Zimbabweans too are wallowing in poverty. Worse still these Zanu PF leaders have refused to acknowledge that root cause of the country's eco-nomic mess is because for the last 36 years the ruling elite have allowed mismanagement and corruption to grow and spread precisely because they were "rewarding" themselves.Whatever quarrel Mutsvangwa has with the G40 faction it is nonsensical to blame the later for the war veterans' poverty given the faction only emerged in August 2014, long after the nation's economic decline was well established. Worse still Mutsvangwa and his fellow war veterans are deluding themselves if they believe imposing Mnangagwa, just as they have im-posed President Mugabe on the nation, is the panacea to their economic poverty. It will take a lot more than swapping one dictator for another to achieve meaningful economic recovery."The president acknowledged that we are the ones who gave him that position, we the war veterans and war collaborators, we campaigned for him to win elections in 1980," said Mutsvangwa. President Mugabe acknowledged the war vets' contribution in the 2008 run-off where President Mugabe used wanton violence to force the people to vote for him. The war vets were the regime's storm troopers then and have been ever since."We the war veterans, are the compass of this country, isu toziva ichi (chigaro) kwachinoen-da (we know who is going to take over)."My late mother would have never guessed that self-deception could have more tragic conse-quences than is seen in Zimbabwe today; the whole nation is already up to its eyes in this man-made cesspit after 36 years of Zanu PF misrule but instead of those responsible seeing the serious shortcomings they still believe they "are the compass" of the nation. We are com-pletely lost because the compass, the maps, etc. are all wrong!The right to a meaningful vote is a right, not a privilege to be granted to some and denied others by war veterans and Zanu PF leaders. But most important of all, the right to a mean-ingful vote is the heart and soul of good and competent government. Given the economic mess the country is in after 36 years of Zanu PF misrule it is imperative that the people now claim their right to a meaningful vote with resolve and refuse to be detracted by misguided individuals like Mutsvangwa whose ego is blinding them from seeing themselves as the cor-rupt and incompetent individuals they are.If the ordinary person has been short changed all these last 36 years because they played a small or no part in the liberation way, then it is time they played their part be demanding the full implementation of the democratic reforms to restore all their individual freedoms and rights. The right to a meaningful say in who is going to rule Zimbabwe from now is every-one's right and not a preserve of war veterans alone  that is no negotiable!
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business India could give long-term returns that Japanese funds want: Pro Japanese pension funds are looking at long-term returns and they have very little opportunity to get those kind of returns in Japan, says Takuma Hatano, President, JOIN.
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Providing every household in India uninterrupted supply of electricity at an affordable price remains a challenge for the government, a bigger challenge would be to tap into non-conventional sources of energy in order to provide cleaner and pollution free energy.

Under the Paris Agreement in December 2015, India made a commitment to reduce its greenhouse emissions and to have 40 percent cumulative power capacity from non-fossil fuel based sources by 2030.

The Piyush Goyal-led Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has launched the following initiatives to increase the dependency on cleaner and more efficient sources of energy and lighting.

Domestic Efficient Lighting Programme (DELP)

Launched as the Unnat Jyoti by Affordable LEDs for All (UJALA) on May 1, 2015, this scheme aims to replace 77 crore incandescent bulbs with LEDs by 2019, and in the process bring down peak load demand by about 20,000 MW.

A part of this scheme, the Street Lighting National Programme (SLNP) also aims to replace 3.5 crore conventional street lamps.

Results as of March 21, 2016:

1. UJALA (Source: MOP_Annual_Report_2015-16):

2. SLNP (Source: MOP_Annual_Report_2015-16):

Indian governments ambitious renewable energy targets:

#ULBs stand for Urban Local Bodies

To reduce dependency on fossil fuel based sources of energy, the government plans to ramp up its renewable energy capacity to 175 GW by 2022, compared to the current 37 GW.

India now will lead the world towards clean energy rather than follow- Piyush Goyal.

This appears to be a herculean task, but the power ministry plans to do this by adding 100 GW of solar power, even as the installed capacity of solar power in India is only about 6 GW in April 2016.

-Indian renewable energy companies attracted USD 548 million in venture capital/ private equity funding in 2015, more than all of Europe (USD 301 million) and second only to the United States.

-India signed a total of 927 deals in the renewables energy space in 2015, according to Preqin, almost twice the number seen in 2014.

-India was an important focus of new-build renewable energy financing last year, with a total of USD 9.1 billion raised  the most since 2011, and an increase of 34 percent on 2014.

- The focus on solar energy is clear: Investments in the sector surpassed those made in wind power for the first time ever.

- The rising share of renewable energy poses a challenge for the thermal power generators in medium to long term.

- There is a need to make sure that the transmission network keeps up with the capacity addition.

- The high growth in the space may lead to irrational project bidding, which could lead to execution delays.

- Apart from domestic banks, access to finance from institutional debt investors will be key to addressing capital needs of the renewable energy sector.

- Establishing credible distribution companies is crucial for the successful growth of renewable energy sector.

Related: Is Modi govt on track to achieve 24x7 power dream?
business Here's a wrap of day three of FM Arun Jaitley's Japan visit Watch CNBC-TV18's Rituparna Bhuyan wrap up day three of the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's visit to the land of the rising sun and a glimpse of his meeting with a whole host of potential investors.
business Bull's Eye: Buy Dish TV, Titan, Corporation Bank, Gruh Finance Jay Thakkar of Sharekhan is of the view that one may buy Corporation Bank with a target of Rs 37.15.
business Maruti Suzuki, Tata Motors top buys: Parag Thakkar According to Parag Thakkar of HDFC Securities, Maruti Suzuki and Tata Motors are the top buys.
Banks havent fared well in the market this year. All four major banks are down around 10%. And a large reason why is the global boycott on banks. This isnt helped when banks underperform on results, either. However, soon banks might start to experience a boost in capital. The Australian Tax Office (ATO) recently issued  Read More

Banks havent fared well in the market this year. All four major banks are down around 10%. And a large reason why is the global boycott on banks. This isnt helped when banks underperform on results, either.

However, soon banks might start to experience a boost in capital. The Australian Tax Office (ATO) recently issued a private ruling that allows banks to issue hybrids via an offshore branch. By issuing these offshore, banks wont have to attach franking credits to their interest payments. This new cost saving rule will lower issuing costs for banks by 30%.

The new ruling could open the door to tens of billions of dollars in global funding for banks. ANZ Banking Group [ASX:ANZ] has already planned a US-dollar hybrid of at least US$750 million.

But before we delve any deeper into the specifics, whats a hybrid?

A company can issue more than just stocks. But for now lets just focus on equities (common stocks) and debt (bonds). The term hybrid relates to a security which includes elements of equities and debt.

Just like a bond, a hybrid can promise to pay a rate of return. This return can be fixed or floating, and is valid until a certain date. In ANZs case the return will be 5.50% above the bank bill swap rate which is sitting around 1.84% to 2.11%.

Straight away this looks attractive to yield hungry investors. Five year term deposits within the market are yielding around 3.6%. As you can imagine, a hybrid security yielding 7.6% is expected to be well received.

Hybrids can also be greatly affected by stock prices. The main reason is because they can be converted into ordinary shares. In ANZs case, their hybrids are ranked ahead of shares. They pay distributions to holders unless the bank is under stress. And if ANZs capital ratio falls below 5.125% then their hybrids will be forcibly converted into ordinary shares.

These hybrids will be issued with a 510 year call date. This just means ANZ can purchase them back from holders within 510 years. And the issue will be a first from a major bank since the global financial meltdown.

ANZ has already begun marketing their new US-dollar deal. On Monday, Standards & Poors (S&P) assigned ANZs new hybrid securities a BBB-. Some believe this new incentive will encourage others to issue offshore hybrids. This would effectively reduce supply of domestic hybrids, and in turn support their prices.

Commonwealth Banks of Australia [ASX:CBA] and Westpac Banking Corp [ASX:WBC] recently closed successful hybrid deals with ASX. Both banks saw a significant take-up by institutions. This was no surprise; its normally institutional investors who dominate the primary market.

But what does this all mean for us retail investors in the secondary market?

Some are predicting well see a surge in offshore hybrids. If this were to happen then it could negatively affect secondary markets. How? Institutional money is a large part of the market. If they start placing their capital in offshore hybrids instead of ordinary shares, volume and liquidity could take a dive.

But realistically it might not mean too much. Share prices might just stagnate for a while. Time will tell if ANZs issue will disadvantage retail investors or not.

Harje Ronngard,

Junior Analyst, Money Morning

PS: Sometimes investing can seem complicated. But the article above shows how financial jargon can be made simple. And the easier it is to understand concepts, the better your investment choices will be.

According to Money Mornings Publisher, Kris Sayce, there are five great stocks on the ASX this year.

In Kriss report, The Five Best ASX Stocks for 2016, hell explain in very simple terms why these five stocks are a buy. In additional Kris will show you a sneaky why to play the Aussie property market. And he shares his thoughts on why Aussie retailers could be in for a revival. To get your free copy of Kriss report, click here.
NEW YORK CITYPenthouse Pet Natasha Starr and barely legal starlet Rebel Lynn are currently shooting in Europe through June 27, working exclusively with Sandy's Models. The sexy pair will be shooting in Budapest, Prague, Paris, Spain, Poland, and The Netherlands, for a handful of adult studios, including 21st Sextury, Rocco Siffredi, Marcellino Class Models, Klixxen, Woodman Films, and DDF.

"I'm very excited to have a star like Natasha coming back to her European roots to work; she is amazing performer, said Orsolya Deak from Sandy's Models. And she's coming with her girlfriend Rebel Lynna Porn Pros and Tushy contract star. From what we have seen, she is a superstar in the making.

The requests for both girls have been overwhelming," he continued. "While they are touring in Europe, all those interested in booking these beautiful, sexy, and exciting ladies may contact me directly at [email protected].

Fans may follow Natasha Starr on Twitter and see her sexy exploits at NatashaStarr.com.

Fans may follow Rebel Lynn on Twitter and on Instagram.
LOS ANGELESAlways looking to put a new spin on the cuckold fantasy, Severe Sex Films has released the third volume in its AVN Award-nominated Kinky Cuckold series, available now from Exile Distribution. Titled Kinky Cuckold 3: Gangbang, it offers three fresh and funny fantasies. (Click here to see a trailer on AVNLive.com.)

The cuckold genre continues to grow in popularity and a lot of studios are doing it, said Severe Sex co-owner Jimmy Broadway (a veteran of more than 300 cuckold scenes), who directed the release with partner Dee Severe. So we look at how we can put a different spin on each scene, be it through story, or adding fetish elements or including more extreme sex.

Ive been wanting to put a femdom spin on a gangbang for a while, and what could be more fun than a cuckold scene with three bulls? noted Severe. Dava Foxx drags out-of-shape husband Broadway to the gym, where Jovan Jordan, Steve Rodgers and Rob X are working out their buff bodies, and one thing leads to another. We did all kinds of crazy positions on the gym equipment, noted Broadway, and I really want to give props to our awesome cast for a great job in a long, demanding scene.

I had a blast shooting my first cuckold gangbang! It was my first time working with everyone in the scene, added Foxx. They were all great to work with.

Kinky Cuckold 3 also demonstrates that cuckolded husbands are not limited to the suburbs with Hipster Cuckold, wherein Edyn Blair shows her more-hipster-than-thou husband Jay Wimp what fun really means. They pick up college professor Mickey Mod at a Nepalese folk music show, but while Wimp thinks theyre all headed back to their place for an intellectual discussion, Edyn and Mickey have other ideas.

I personally love cuckold scenes, noted Blair. There is just something about getting to worship one guy and dominate another that really gets my wheels turning. This story really gave me an opportunity to play with my improv skills and really make a statement in the scene.

In Hotwife Cuckold the twist is the cuckold is an active and willing participant in the proceedings. I've never done a fetish BBG scene before and it was an absolutely kinky blast, said Mercedes Carrera. In the scene, my kinky cuck husband Jimmy Broadway and I went cruising for a hot stud (Ritchie Black) and we were not disappointed with how it all turned out. You'll have to watch the scene to see what debauchery ensues, and I guarantee you'll enjoy it as much as we did!"

Added Exile chief Howard Levine, "Kinky Cuckold 3 is the latest in a very successful series from Severe Sex. We have sold out of #1 and #2 and had to reorder. As far as a cuckold series is concerned, it is the best on the market."

For foreign and domestic sales as well as media inquiries, call or email Howard at (866) 629-4271 or [email protected]

Above, a screen grab from Kinky Cuckold 3's "Hipster Cuckold" segment.
Italian Court Acquits Man Charged After Trying To Pay Child Support With Pizza

Trending News: Judge OKs Man's Attempt To Use Pizza To Pay Child Support

Why Is This Important?

Because he paid the dough, but not the right kind.

Long Story Short

An Italian man was taken to criminal court by his ex-wife for not paying alimony, but the court ruled that while the man didn't pay the child support, his offer to pay in take-out pizza was sufficient. Only in Italy.

Long Story

Like millions across the globe, Nicola Toso came upon hard times in 2008 when the financial crisis hit. By 2010, he was forced to close his business  a takeaway restaurant specializing in what else you expect from Italy ? Pizza and calzone.

Strapped for cash during those two years, Toso offered to pay his ex-wife, whom he split from in 2002, the dough for child support for the daughter they had together. But according to Il Gazzettino, Toso didn't offer the right kind of dough. Instead of the 300 euros ($334 USD) per month, he offered to pay in pizza, calzone and other meals from the restaurant he managed.

As you might imagine, Toso's ex-wife, Nicoletta Zuin, wasn't too impressed. Understandably, it's hard to put clothes on your kid with pepperoni and cheese.

So, she took Toso to criminal court, but the judge made a surprise ruling.

In lieu of money, the defendant offered his ex-wife the same amount of compensation in the form of takeaway pizzas from his workplace, an offer promptly rejected as beggars change, said Judge Chiara Bitozzi in her ruling, as quoted by The Telegraph.

But considering the financial crisis and that Toso held up the rest of the custody obligations, the judge ruled that the pizza was a reasonable way to pay the child support.

Another reason in Toso's favor was that in 2011 he took his daughter in while his ex-wife was having trouble with her mother and Zuin didn't pay him for the time he had custody.

The worst part of this whole thing is that since Zuin rejected the pizzas and the restaurant is closed, nobody is getting any takeaway pies. Bummer.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question

Would you pick pizza, calzone or pasta?

Disrupt Your Feed

This would never fly in the U.S.

Drop This Fact

The case was uncovered by a 60-year-old veteran journalist who was sifting through court documents  maybe looking for stories about the mob or terrorism  but was surprised when he saw this bizarre case.
Maintaining independence and editorial freedom is essential to our mission of empowering investor success. We provide a platform for our authors to report on investments fairly, accurately, and from the investors point of view. We also respect individual opinionsthey represent the unvarnished thinking of our people and exacting analysis of our research processes. Our authors can publish views that we may or may not agree with, but they show their work, distinguish facts from opinions, and make sure their analysis is clear and in no way misleading or deceptive.

To further protect the integrity of our editorial content, we keep a strict separation between our sales teams and authors to remove any pressure or influence on our analyses and research.

Read our editorial policy to learn more about our process.
North Korea Media Endorses Donald Trump As Wise Choice For President

Trending News: Donald Trump Just Got An Endorsement From An Unlikely Source

Why Is This Important?

Because in this election, theres no end to the unexpected and bizarre.

Long Story Short

A North Korean state-run media outlet ran a gushing editorial about Donald Trump, calling him a wise politician and a far-sighted presidential candidate.

Long Story

Foreign policy has long been a weak spot with Donald Trumps candidacy. As a candidate with zero experience in the field, whose views have rattled the USs allies and has a penchant for saying things that are, well, undiplomatic, its safe to say that Trump is pretty poorly regarded on the world stage.

But not in one surreal, isolated hermit kingdom on Asias periphery!

North Korea has endorsed Trump. If any country knows about the best interest of its citizens, it's them.  CAFE (@cafedotcom) May 31, 2016

An editorial in DPRK Today praised the Donald, especially regarding his views over American commitment to security on the Korean peninsula.

They are unconventional.

Earlier this year, Trump said Japan and South Korea should either start contributing more financially to support the US presence in its Asian allies  it currently has 54,000 troops in Japan and 28,500 in South Korea  and arm itself with nuclear weapons or else see American troops depart.

Japan is better if it protects itself against this maniac of North Korea, he told CNN. We are better off frankly if South Korea is going to start protecting itself ... they have to protect themselves or they have to pay us.

RELATED: The Libertarian Party's Candidate, Gary Johnson, Is Suddenly Presidential Hopeful

Confirming every warning by every grown-up who has a mature understanding of the delicate security balance in northeast Asia, Trumps policy was music to North Korean ears. Referencing his apparent indifference to an outbreak of hostilities in the regionhe described a war between a nuclear-armed North Korea and Japan as a terrible thing but if they do, they do. Good luck. Enjoy yourself, folks  and his commitment to bringing troops home, the editorial was absolutely over the moon.

Trump saying he'll "open the water to end the drought" reminds me of proclamations from North Korea about Glorious Leader's achievements.  Chris Kluwe (@ChrisWarcraft) May 28, 2016

Trump said he will not get involved in the war between the South and the North, isnt this fortunate from North Koreans perspective? it read. As for withdrawing its military presence: Yes do it, now  Who knew that the slogan Yankee Go Home would come true like this The day when the Yankee Go Home slogan becomes real would be the day of Korean Unification.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question: Does Trumps promise to Make America Great Again stand up when hes being praised by one of the most appalling regimes on Earth?

Disrupt Your Feed: Following through on Trumps Asian isolationism would suit China just fine.

Drop This Fact: North Korea makes an unlikely Trump supporter. He has said hed make Kim Jong-Un disappear one way or another if he became president.
The provincial government of Alberta announced that it would help Fort McMurray get back on track economically by prioritizing the awarding of contracts to local firms.



As reported by The Canadian Press, Fort McMurray suppliers and builders will have the first pick of rebuilding contracts in the community devastated by the long-running wildfire. In particular, Alberta Economic Development Minister Deron Bilous pointed at the sustained weakness of oil prices as a factor driving Fort McMurray down further.



The wildfire and subsequent evacuations have had a devastating impact on employers in the region, Bilous said on Thursday (May 26). We are committed to assisting employers in the Fort McMurray area to get access to the resources they need in their return to the community.



The Fort McMurray Construction Association has warned that the communitys firms are being passed over for jobs, with president Charles Iggulden saying that frustration is mounting among local workers who have been displaced by the destruction.



Its baffling that in a time of great need, and when many people in Fort McMurray are looking for work, that these jobs would be outsourced, Wildrose MLA (Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo) Tany Yao stated, in connection with the recent influx of workers from outside the region.



The 580,000-hectare wildfire, which burns just around 25 kilometres away from the city, is showing no signs of stopping any time soon, even with the recent addition of professionals from all over Canada and the U.S. to supplement the roughly 2,300 personnel fighting the blaze.
Part II: I have read several of your answers about referrals. It seems like everyone is trying to sell me a referral based system. I realize that I need to get more referrals, but I don't know where to start. Can you give me some direction?--Denise from New JerseyLast week we set the stage to address this issue basically by saying referrals should be a way of life. Now we will delve into specifics by covering the importance of letting others know how they can help you and who you should ask. Our short answer is that you should ask everyone, but that would not be helpful. So let's take an example from your sphere. In this case we will cover your personal segment of the sphere  friends, family and neighbors. Many are reticent to ask for help from those they know. But if you read Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, he discusses the concept of an emotional bank account. Basically, these are the people that know you and should be willing to help you as you have helped them throughout your life.Why are we reticent? There are two main reasons. First, we don't want to appear as "weak" to our close contacts. Secondly, we don't want to hammer them for business. In reality, asking for help is a sign of strength as we demonstrate how important our business is to us. And we don't need to hammer them for business. For example, your next-door neighbor is not going to buy another home because it would help you. We don't deal in Girl Scout cookies. But if they knew a real estate agent well, or perhaps a financial planner, would they introduce the two of you? The answer is yes. Thus, the big issue is that we don't ask for help and we don't define how they can help us. Your neighbor does not know you need to be introduced to financial planners or real estate agents. Next week, we will go through additional examples related to this concept.--Dave HershmanDave Hershman has been the leading author and a top speaker for the industry for decades with six books authored and hundreds of articles published. His website is www.originationpro.com . If you have a reaction to this commentary or another question you would like answered in this column? Email Dave directly at [email protected]
Officers of big banks that engage in shady practices may find themselves responsible to shareholders in more ways than one if the Delaware Supreme Court has its say. The court has ruled that shareholders accusing Citigroup of tricking them into holding onto risky stock by misrepresenting its exposure to soured mortgage bonds can sue the companys officers directly.



The shareholders suit was originally dismissed by a federal judge, who found it should have been brought derivatively on behalf of Citigroup and all its shareholders, according to a report by Thompson Reuters Legal Solutions Blog. But an appeals court ruled that the issue was one of Delaware state law.



In November, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals certified the question to the Delaware Supreme Court, Legal Solutions reported. The court ruled that investors who held onto previously purchased stock based on reliance on misleading statements from the company could sue directly.



The lawsuit was originally filed by Arthur Williams, founder of insurance company A.L. Williams & Associates. Williams received 17.6 million shares of stock in a 1998 merger. He transferred the stock to AHW Investment Partnership, MFS Inc., and several trusts, according to Legal Solutions Blog. Williams decided to liquidate his Citigroup holdings in 2007, but changed his mind after a review of the companys financial statements, which led him to believe Citigroup was in good financial shape.



But the stock price had plummeted 95% by 2009, as the company disclosed its investments in securities backed by toxic subprime mortgages. In 2010, Williams and other shareholders filed suit against Citigroup, along with then-CEO Vikram Pandit, former CEO Charles Prince and former CFO Gary Crittenden. The shareholders said they wouldnt have held onto their stock had the defendants not misrepresented the companys financial health, Legal Solutions Blog reported.



The case will now go back to the Second Circuit, which will decide whether to uphold the dismissal of the suit using the Delaware decision as guidance.
Six Ways Stoicism Can Help You Be A Better Entrepreneur And Leader

Trending News: Learn How To Flip Obstacles Into Opportunities

Why Is This Important?

Because Stoicism is the branch of ancient Western philosophy you need in your business life.

Long Story Short

Stoicism hasnt been popular for a while, but its making an international comeback. Petrina Coventry, a non executive director with the Australasian Association of Philosophy (AAP) and the Australian Human Resource Industry (AHRI) has outlined six ways it can help business entrepreneurs.

Long Story

Stoicism is back. And its been gone so long you probably dont even remember what it is.

The school of philosophy originated in Athens three centuries before the birth of Christ. Stoicisms founder Zeno of Citium taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment and that it is virtuous to maintain a will thats in accordance with nature.

Stoics presented their philosophy as a way of life, and believed it was much more important the things people did rather than what they said. Later Stoics  such as Seneca and Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius  talked about virtue being sufficient for happiness, and because of this a true sage was immune to misfortune. Its from this that the idea of stoic calm" was born.

Stoicism focuses on mindfulness, resilience, creativity and more, all of which allows you flourish and live a good life. The University of Adelaides Petrina Coventry writes in The Conversation that when compared to other Western philosophies, stoicism is practical and straightforward.

Its a lengthy but engaging write-up that you should marinate on but in short, there are six reasons, Coventry says, why Stoicism should be embraced by businesspeople and entrepreneurs.

1. Rationality, perspective and logic

Before we try to control events, we have to control ourselves, because self-control is the only thing that we can succeed at 100 percent of the time.

2. Authenticity

While role models are important, theres a thin line between emulation and imitation. You must embrace your quirks and leverage your uniqueness.

3. Self-mastery and purposeful action

Its important to know exactly what you want from your day and set clear goals. Stoics write these goals down, creating a sense of commitment and expectation that increases the likelihood of achievement.

4. Military leaders follow its principles.

Coventry uses the example of airforce pilot James Stockdale, who credited Stoicism as helping save his life when he spent over seven years in a Vietnamese prison.

5. Stoicism is ideal for the entrepreneur

It allows you to practice misfortune, flip obstacles into opportunities and remember how small you are, keeping your ego in check.

6. Stoicism lends itself to globalization

According to Coventry, it was one of the first philosophies to preach universal fraternity and the importance of loving the world as much as you love your own town.

Coventry points to Barack Obama as an example of a modern-day stoic, but there are plenty of others: Tim Duncan is infamous for his stoic heroics, Bill Clinton rereads Marcus Aurelius every single year, and even young thinkers like Ryan Holiday are challenging us to adopt this bracing form of mindfulness.

Youd be advised to do the same.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question: What are the downsides to Stoicism? Are there any?

Disrupt Your Feed: Are there other ancient philosophies we should be learning from?

Drop This Fact: The Stoic schools were ordered closed in 529 AD by the Emperor Justinian I, who perceived their pagan character to be at odds with his Christian faith.
The FBI is warning U.S. energy companies that the oil industrys downturn is increasing their vulnerability to theft of technological secrets.

Companies that long have faced the prospect of economic espionage now must be prepared for the possibility that workers who have been laid off could be targeted by foreign entities and competitors wanting to steal intellectual property.

FBI investigations indicate economic espionage and trade secret theft against U.S. oil and natural gas companies and institutes are on the rise, according to an unclassified briefing report prepared for the energy industry.

Agents shared the report recently with about 150 energy sector executives, managers and others who gathered behind closed doors at the FBI building here.

These energy companies are on the front lines, said Perrye K. Turner, special agent in charge of the FBIs Houston Division.

Were trying to raise awareness, educate them about the vulnerabilities and send them away with the best practices on how to protect themselves from insider threats and economic espionage, he said.

Economic espionage  which involves a proprietary product, process or idea being stolen for the benefit of a foreign government, including state-owned companies  is a federal crime that carries a sentence of up to 15 years in prison and millions of dollars in fines. China has been amajor offender, according to officials.

The FBI meeting was not open to the public. Attendees declined requests to be interviewed and asked that their presence remain private.

Economic espionage is an especially sticky subject in the business world, and even those seeking information on how to prevent it are known to make investors nervous.

Trade secrets related to the search for crude oil beneath the land and sea and refining oil into gasoline are of particular interest as foreign entities target U.S. companies, universities, think tanks and researchers, according to the FBI.

Computer hacking, theft, unauthorized photography, dumpster diving and the secret elicitation of information from unsuspecting employees are just some of the ways trade secrets, proprietary information and research can land in the wrong hands, according to the FBI.

David H. Laufman, chief of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section at the Department of Justice, said U.S. corporations arent just facing foreign companies but also governments.

The threat you all face includes hackers with the full backing of their governments and criminal syndicates; you should not have to face those threats by yourself, Laufman said as he cautioned the executives to safeguard their companies.

Identify what you deem to be your crown jewels and implement tiered security efforts to protect them, he said.

Remain vigilant

Former workers could knowingly or unknowingly divulge material protected by law and worth many millions of dollars, said Special Agent Michael S. Morgan, a member of the FBI Houston Divisions national security branch.

There are increased incidents of employees taking proprietary information when they believe they will be, or are, searching for a new job, Morgan said.

With the loss of so many jobs in the oil and gas sector, it is important to remain vigilant in their efforts to protect their intellectual property from both domestic and foreign business competitors, he continued. Failure to do so will likely result in the businesses losing their competitive advantage.

Few companies have felt the impact of economic espionage as quickly and brutally as American Superconductor Corp., a company that designs wind turbines and technology used to operate them. AMSC lost nearly $1 billion in one day on the stock market in 2011 after reporting its woes.

If they want to steal windmill technology, they pretty much want to steal everything, the companys Chief Executive Officer Daniel McGahn, said as he shared his story with the gathering at the FBI building.

A personally troubled employee sold some of AM-SCs secrets to a Chinese firm, which had presented itself as a potential partner for the U.S. company but instead sought to run it out of business.

You need to know

McGahn said it is important for companies to know their employees and realize that some of them, depending on their positions, could reveal compromising information about themselves and open the door to trouble for the company.

If they are going to put it out on Facebook, Twitter, whatever, you may want to have your people know what they are putting out publicly, he said noting that this employee was going through a divorce and had a love for foreign girlfriends, money and international travel.

You dont want to cross lines of personal privacy, I am not advocating that in anyway, he said. But you need to know what your people are up to as much as possible.

He noted that his company has recovered from the incident, but said that several employees he had to lay off as a result of the loss are now working in China.

The DOJs Laufman pointed to about a half-dozen economic espionage cases that have recently made their way into federal courtrooms around the country.

One defendant, who pleaded guilty earlier this year, was arrested in Iowa after being spotted in a corn field looking for special inbred corn seeds that a company had developed.

In 2014 in Pennsylvania, five Chinese military officers, who remain fugitives, were indicted for allegedly hacking into the computer systems of Westinghouse and others.

Also in 2014, an engineer in California was sentenced to 15 years for stealing secrets, basically the formula for the color of his companys white paint. It marked the first jury conviction for the charge, as most defendants plead guilty in bids for leniency, Laufman said.

Anyone with concerns about insider threats or economic espionage may contact the Houston FBI Strategic Partnerships Coordinator via email at Economic.Espionage@ic.fbi.gov
The oil market is rebalancing, but no one should count on prices recovering to $100 a barrel again: thats the message from Norways petroleum and energy minister.

Brent crude has surged more than 75 percent from a 12-year low earlier this year as a global glut shows signs of easing, bringing relief to oil companies and producing countries like Norway, which have been pummeled by the worst market downturn in a generation. While its quite obvious that supply and demand will return to equilibrium, it doesnt mean Norway is planning -- or even hoping -- for prices to go back to what they were, Tord Lien said in a Bloomberg TV interview at the ministrys offices in Oslo Tuesday.

Its better to plan for $60 and let the people who want to hope for $100, hope for $100, he said. We saw oil prices hitting $140 a barrel, and that does not contribute to economic growth. So therefore Im not hoping for it.

The collapse in crude prices has put Norway, western Europes biggest oil and gas producer, at a crossroads, with investments in its offshore industry falling the most since 2000 and the government for the first time dipping into its $850 billion sovereign wealth fund to plug budget holes.

State-controlled Statoil, Norways biggest oil company, said Liens comment on planning for $60 was a reasonable business model.

Id be surprised if we dont see $100 again, Statoil Senior Vice President for Marketing and Trading Tor Martin Anfinnsen said in an interview in Oslo Wednesday. But I hope, as Tord Lien, that we dont get a new level of $100 or above. That would undermine the industrys long-term perspective.

Even as 40,000 jobs disappeared in two years, the Nordic country resisted deploying drastic measures, like tax breaks for the oil industry introduced in the United Kingdom. The Norwegian petroleum-tax system, which includes a top tax of 78 percent but offers generous deductions for exploration and development spending, is the best there is and remains attractive because of its stability, Lien said.

Norway has instead kept offering new acreage to explorers, such as new licenses in a virgin area of the Arctic Barents Sea along the maritime border with Russia as recently as last week. It was the first time Norway opened entirely new blocks to the industry in more than 20 years. After crude production dropped by half since a 2000 peak and as exploration results hit an almost 10-year low in 2015, the Nordic country is betting on the Barents Sea to help it maintain output in the coming decades.

Both Norwegian authorities and the companies involved have a strong belief in the possibility of finding significant resources in the Barents Sea, Lien said Tuesday.

Norways petroleum minister, himself a native of the countrys high north, hit back at environmental organizations criticism that it was unwise to open new swaths of the Arctic to exploration because offshore oil and gas in this region, usually more expensive to extract than in other areas, will have to remain in the ground if the world is to succeed in limiting global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius.

To state that all the oil and gas resources in the Barents Sea arent profitable does not have any scientific backing, Lien said. A huge part of the supply today comes out of offshore resources and huge fields that are in decline already. Just to maintain production at todays level 10 to 15 years from now demands huge investments in oil and gas production.

While the government has been willing to accept the postponement of new projects off Norway during the current downturn, such as the Johan Castberg field in the Barents Sea, it will continue to demand that oil companies maintain investments designed to maximize production from existing deposits and where decisions are time-sensitive because of existing infrastructure, Lien said. One example is Statoils Snorre 2040 project, designed to extract an additional 200 million barrels of oil from the Snorre field in the North Sea.

Producers in Norway must make sure that no resources in place on the Norwegian continental shelf are wasted due to short-term decisions, he said. The companies involved in Snorre 2040 know quite well what we expect them to do. As always, I do expect the companies to follow up on the clear messages that we have given to them.
Bond has been set at $500,000 for a 26-year-old man charged with murder in connection with a fatal shooting Saturday night, according to Midland County jail records.

Ernesto Natividad was being held Tuesday for a first-degree felony murder charge in the death of 20-year-old Walter Galicia of Midland.
MPD accepting Kids Academy applications

The Midland Police Department is taking applications for Kids Academy, which is June 20-24. The academy, for children 8-12, is set for 8-11:45 a.m. at the MLK Community Center, 2300 Butternut Lane.

Students in the academy will learn about the various divisions of the department and justice system, as well as life skills such as dealing with bullying and exercise.

Attendance is free. New applicants will be considered on a first-come, first-served basis for the 30 available spots, and those who have been through the academy before may be considered if there are spots remaining.

Deadline to apply is June 13. Parent or guardian must sign the application.

Applications are available at the police department, 601 N. Loraine, or can be downloaded at www.midlandtexas.gov/KidsAcademy. Completed applications can be returned to the police department, faxed to 432-685-7585, or emailed to Larry Woodruff, Community Relations officer at lwoodruff@midlandtexas.gov.

MC recognizes instructors, staff

Midland College employees were recognized earlier this month at the annual awards celebration.

A highlight of the event was the presentation of the Instructors of the Year for the 2015-16 school year. Students cast the ballots for this award, and nine faculty were chosen:

Pete Avalos, department chair, automotive/diesel technology; Doug Avery, economics professor; Rabon Bewley, department chair, drama and music; Sylvia Brown, program chair, business systems; Michael Dixon, mathematics associate professor; Chesley Herd, program chair, alcohol and drug abuse counseling; Doug Johnson, department chair, business; Donna Thompson, psychology professor; and Linda Penny, math faculty, was named Adjunct Instructor of the Year.

Staff excellence awards were presented to secretary Lisa Eddins; Emma King, library circulation clerk; and Kay Schipper, Veterans Affairs coordinator.

Curt Pervier, dean of applied technology, received the Institutional Ambassador award for his dedication in helping to promote Midland College programs to the community and advance the colleges mission of supporting economic development for the Permian Basin through a skilled workforce.

Retirement awards were presented to Lee Almaguer, government faculty; Joan Brooks, Petroleum Professional Development Center coordinator; Claudia Hinds, biology faculty; Judy Jordan, Student Support Services director; Bob Peetz, criminal justice faculty; and Dale Williams, counselor/disability specialist.

In addition, employees were recognized for years of service -- beginning with five years through 35 years. Those receiving 35-year service awards were Glenda Hicks, English faculty; Michael Jordan, music faculty; Cecilia Miranda, automation/technical services librarian; and Mike Stevens, director of Chaparral Center.

Midlander receives honorary doctorate

BANGOR, Maine -- Husson University confered an honorary doctorate on Midand businessman Fred Newman during the 117th annual commencement exercises on May 8. Newman, a member of the Husson University Board of Visitors, is the grandson of William Newman, for whom the universitys Newman Gymnasium is named.

In addition, Newmans uncle created a scholarship in the familys name.
Several top contenders for a Never Trump nomination continued to insist Tuesday that they were not interested, but that hasnt dampened growing speculation that a third party candidate will materialize before the November election.

The not-me list includes Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., an outspoken Donald Trump critic whose spokesman said Tuesday that he would not run -- and that nothing has changed since the last time Sasse said he wasnt running. Three top recruits who were considering the prospect have decided against it, according to the Huffington Post, which did not name the potential candidates in question.
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"If it requires removing all cabinet ...
A Lakeland personal trainer has a special affinity for training people with disabilities.

Stuart Sagraves trains disabled people at the Planet Fitness in North Lakeland.

One of the people he trains is Shauna English, who is blind. She brings her service dog, PJ, to the gym, and Sagraves taught PJ to walk on a treadmill next to Shauna.

"I saw it on the internet," said Sagraves. Dogs walking on a treadmill. I said to Shauna, 'why don't we get PJ to walk on a treadmill?' She was up for the idea."

Sagraves said he decided to make a special effort to train people with disabilities after helping care for his dying grandmother for two years.

That sense of compassion came through to Shauna English the first time she met Sagraves.

"I was able to open up to him about what was going on with me, and I felt like I made a friend that day," said English.



Sagraves, in turn, said he is inspired by Shauna.

I couldn't imagine not having my sight," said Sagraves. "She gets out and does it by memory."

Gregg Hall is another of Sagraves' clients. Hall had half of his brain removed when he was 10 as a last ditch effort to cure seizures.

As a result, Hall is very weak on one side of his body. But he enjoys every trip to Planet Fitness to see Sagraves.

"He makes it seem like you can't wait to come back the next day," said Hall.


Every state is concerned about jobs. The same can be said of states governors.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott has been trying to bring jobs to state

California governor says his state has added twice as many jobs as Florida

Florida Gov. Rick Scott has been trying to bring more jobs to the state, but his approach has upset some of his counterparts. Thats because hes been traveling to other states offering incentives to companies hoping to get them to move.

Scotts most recent trip was to California. To throw off Scott, California Gov. Jerry Brown compared the two states saying, California has added twice as many jobs as Florida over the past year.

PolitiFact Florida heard the claim and gave it a HALF TRUE rating.

PolitiFact writer Josh Gillin said Brown was telling the truth  but there was one caveat.

What you need to realize here is California is a much larger state than Florida, almost twice as big, and so you would almost expect twice as many jobs in that regard.

Gillin also said that despite the above statement, Floridas rate of job growth was a bit higher than California's: 2.4 percent to 2.2 percent.

For that reason, Brown's statement received a HALF TRUE rating.

SOURCES: Brown says California brought in more jobs than Florida in the past year
An investigation is underway after one person was injured during an overnight shooting at a gas station in Orlando, deputies said.

Shooting call came in about 11:22 p.m.

1 person found shot in parking lot

Search underway for shooter

The Orange County Sheriff's Office received a 911 call about 11:22 p.m. for a shooting at the Chevron gas station at 5419 Silver Star Rd.

Deputies responded to the scene and found a 25-year-old man shot in the parking lot. The victim was transported to an area hospital with life-threatening injuries.

The unknown suspect fled the area in a dark-colored vehicle, but deputies are unsure of the make and model. Deputies said the events leading up to the shooting are unclear at this time.

On Wednesday, the Orange County Sheriff's Office released a photo of the suspect via Twitter.

"PLs RT: Who is this man? He's a suspect in shooting at Chevron gas station 5419 Silver Star Road last night.," the tweet stated.

Anyone with information about this shooting is asked to call Crimeline at 800-423-TIPS (8477).
A Volusia County man is being accused of repeatedly trying to drown a pit bull in a retention pond, according to Daytona Beach Police.



Witness said he saw man trying to drown a pit bull



Kurtis Kimble was arrested for felony animal cruelty

Dog was taken to emergency animal hospital and treated for its injuries

Bobby Owens, a witness to the incident, said he didn't know what was happening at first.

"I was looking out my bedroom window, and I saw the pit bull swimming out there in the park, which I didn't think anything of it  it's hot," Owens said. "I said, 'Maybe the owner is close by.' So, I walked around the house to my patio door and I see this guy throwing sticks at the dog, so I say,'What's going on?'"

Daytona Beach Police arrested Kurtis Kimble, 35, for felony animal cruelty. Investigators said he repeatedly tried to drown the pit bull over the course of several minutes.

"This guy walked up, got into the water up to his waist and grabbed the dog around the collar and pushed him down in the water, trying to drown him," Owens said. "So, the dog was fighting and both of them came out. They came back to shore. Both of them laying there and the dog finally came to his senses and he went back into the water and this guy went back after him again."

The incident happened at the North Street Park retention pond on Bethune Street in Daytona Beach on Sunday afternoon.

Owens then said the man picked up the dog and body-slammed it.

Daytona Beach Police arrested Kimble at the scene. The pit bull was taken to a nearby emergency animal hospital and treated for its injuries.
A 44-year-old Texas man has pleaded guilty to two charges of first-degree murder in the deaths of two young women here 20 years ago, authorities said.

David Bruce Morton appeared before State District Judge Stephen Pfeffer Tuesday to plead guilty to killing Janet Ann Benoit in 1983 and Teri Lynn Mulvaney in 1984.

Morton was sentenced to two life terms that he will serve in New Mexico, Santa Fe police Deputy Chief Eric Johnson said.

Johnson and other detectives interviewed Morton in Lovelady, Texas, where he was serving a life sentence in the 1990 murder of Kimberly Kendall.

"At that time he admitted to those (Benoit and Mulvaney's) murders," Johnson said, adding that Morton provided details about the cases that only a person involved with the crimes would know.

Benoit had stopped in Santa Fe on her way to a job in Phoenix when she was bound and repeatedly stabbed in a motel room.

Mulvaney was Morton's next-door neighbor at a Santa Fe apartment complex in 1984. She was found strangled in her bed.

Morton was tried for Mulvaney's death in 1988, but it ended in a mistrial.

"I'm sorry this ever happened," Morton said when asked by the judge if he wanted to say anything to the families of the victims. "I wish I could take it back. I'm truly sorry for the families."

In a telephone interview from Kankakee, Ill., Benoit's brother David told the Santa Fe New Mexican he is glad his sister's killer has been sentenced.

"I don't feel any closure," he said. "We all still miss Janet. We always will."
SOUTHINGTON  A passenger in a fatal December crash filed an intent to sue the Southington Police Department for reportedly failing to stop the intoxicated minivan driver who killed two children and injured two adults.



Michael Luponio, a Meriden resident, was charged with several crimes, including manslaughter, second-degree assault and drunk driving after he crashed into another car on Middle Street in Bristol on Dec. 13. The crash injured the driver of the car, Kayla Torres, of Meriden, and a passenger, Miguel Melendez. Torres two children, Veronica Martinez, 7, and Yvette Martinez, 4, were killed.



Torres was headed home to Meriden from Bristol after picking up her children and cousin after leaving work. Torres told police she remembered a car turning into her lane and attempted to avoid it. The next thing she remembered was waking up in the hospital, according to Luponios arrest warrant. She suffered a broken ankle and a bruised chest and arms. Melendez suffered a broken collarbone and other injuries.



Last week Melendez filed an intent to sue for damages arising from the accident.



Luponio reportedly sped past a Southington police officer prior to the crash but wasnt pulled over. The officer failed to pursue the Luponio vehicle despite observed and reported evidence of speeding and other unlawful conduct which evinced predictable, preventable and foreseeable harm, the letter said.



The notice was written by Nicholas Kocian, a New Britain lawyer.



The crash occurred within minutes of Luponio driving past a Southington police officer on Route 229, near the Bristol line, the warrant said.



Southington police officer Matthew Vose told investigators a van drove by him at a noticeably faster speed. He turned his cruiser lights on, but did not make them flash or strobe. Vose opted not to pursue the vehicle, however, as the speed violation was minor and he did not want to pursue it outside of his jurisdiction, the warrant said.



Vose was then flagged down by a man who told Bristol investigators he was getting off Interstate 84 at Exit 31 when his vehicle was nearly struck by Luponios minivan. Luponio yelled an expletive at him and threw a glass bottle at his vehicle, the warrant stated. The man said Luponio was driving at a high rate of speed on West Street in Southington and that he stopped to talk to Vose after Luponio blew by the officer.



A woman who saw Luponio driving on West Street agreed he was traveling fast and also wondered why the officer did not stop him. She later identified the minivan driven by Luponio in the crash as the same one speeding down West Street, the warrant said.



Police found two empty 18-packs of beer, two empty nipper bottles, a partially empty pint of Jagermeister and two additional empty beer cans inside Luponios car. He was going about 65 mph at the time of the crash.



Vose, the police department, the town and police Chief Jack Daly are all named in the notice. Kocian wrote that the officer failed to stop a vehicle that was a danger to the public and also failed to notify Bristol police as Luponio headed out of Southington.



Daly, the town and the department are included since they failed to institute appropriate pursuit policies and failed to properly train its officers in the protection of the public to prevent injuries, damages and death.



Melendezs injuries included a fractured clavicle as well as significant mental and emotional pain and distress that is associated with witnessing the death of two minor children, the letter said.



Melendez has paid and will likely have to continue to pay large sums of money for hospital and medical care, x-rays, therapies and medications.



Luponio is next scheduled to appear in New Britain Superior Court on Thursday.



jbuchanan@record-journal.com 203-317-2230 Twitter: @JBuchananRJ






Gov. Dannel P. Malloys 2014 re-election fueled a narrative among national analysts that Connecticut was holding strong as a blue state amid a Republican midterm romp. Republicans took control of the U.S. Senate, gained a majority in a number of state legislative chambers, and stretched their hold on the majority of governors seats nationwide.



Just two years later, though, Republicans could be poised to take control of one, or possible both, legislative chambers in Connecticut, some political observers say.



Observers say a Senate majority is the far more likely scenario for Republicans, who last held the majority in the chamber in 1996.



Governing Magazine last week rated the chamber as a tossup, and Quinnipiac political science Professor Scott McLean said thats consistent with what hes heard from political insiders and even Senate Democrats.



Louis Jacobson, who wrote the story for Governing Magazine, said he rated the House, meanwhile, as leaning Democratic.



Democrats hold a 87-64 majority in the House, and a 21-15 margin in the Senate.



Jacobson said one reason he thinks Republicans could pick up the four-seat swing they need for a Senate majority is because Sen. Andrew M. Maynard, D-Stonington, is retiring.



That leaves Grotons Heath Somers, the Republican lieutenant governor nominee in 2014, and Prestons Timothy Bowles, a former Democratic state representative, to vie for the seat.



Republicans have made inroads in both chambers since 2008, when Democrats rode support from President Barack Obama to win 114 seats in the House and 24 in the Senate.



McLean said that the trend in recent elections indicates that a two-party system is on its way back in Connecticut, and that Democrats will have to compromise even more with Republicans, even if they maintain control.



Democrats insist that theyre not worried about the projections.



We feel good about the Senate, said Leigh Appleby, spokesman for the state Democratic party. Were confident going into the election.



Senate President Pro Tempore Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, echoed the sentiment, saying hes confident that people will look at what we did positively.



Senate Minority Leader Leonard A. Fasano, R-North Haven, said Democrats, however, are in a panic. A recent poll rated Malloy the second least popular governor in the nation, earning an approval rating of just 29 percent, and Fasano said that reflects the peoples rejection of the direction of the state in recent years.



Malloy is not up for re-election, but Fasano said Republicans plan to hammer Democrats who voted for his policies and supported budgets that the governor negotiated with lawmakers.



McLean said said Malloys low rating levels the playing field for Republicans.



If youre in a tight race this November, youre not going to be able to call in the governor, he said.



House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, R-Derby, said Malloy has also lost favor with labor unions for his budget proposals, a frustration that has spilled over to the legislative leaders who negotiated and supported it.



McLean agreed that the states budget woes and struggling recovery will be the primary issues for voters this November.



House Majority Leader Joe Aresimowicz, D-Berlin, accused Republicans of being hypocritical in their arguments over the budget, though.



Republicans have criticized Democrats for cutting funding for human services, hospital, and municipal aid, but Aresimowicz said those same lawmakers have been calling for less spending for years.



This is the problem with Republicans in Connecticut, they want it both ways, said Aresimowicz, in line to be House speaker if Democrats keep their majority.



He also said the states economy is improving, noting General Dynamics commitment to add 800 jobs to its Electric Boat facility in Groton and growth in the bioscience sector.



msavino@record-journal.com 203-317-2266 Twitter: @reporter_savino






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As San Antonio's high school seniors graduate or prepare for that big day, many of us are filled with nostalgic thoughts about our own graduation.

San Antonio's TV newscasters, weather anchors and hosts are no exception. For fun, many agreed to share their old photos -- some from yearbooks, others from their senior year or graduation ceremony. That way, viewers can see how they started out and ways they've changed.

RELATED: San Antonio TV news anchors come clean: No makeup!

Some even shared their insecurities and high points of high school; others offered advice to today's graduates.

For example:

KENS-TV's Deborah Knapp recalled her wonderful journalism teacher, "who ignited my passion for reporting. I decided I wanted to be a reporter when I was 14 and I love what I do today as much as when I began!"

WOAI-TV's Delaine Mathieu mentioned how much her appearance has changed thanks to modern beauty utensils: "In the world of flat irons and hair relaxers, my hair is so much easier to deal with these days, although I loved those curls."

RELATED: San Antonio TV anchors then and now

KSAT-TV's Leslie Mouton said of her graduation day: "I remember feeling so excited and scared -- ready to head off to college! How have I changed? I'm more confident and grounded in who I am -- but I still feel like that high school girl at heart."

Her KSAT morning and noon co-anchor Mark Austin will have the perfect opportunity to look back at the good times when he heads to his 30th reunion this fall. "It'll be fun to be back in the D.C. area right before the election. That area is home."

Karen Grace, formerly of KENS-TV, didn't always have the straight set of pearly whites that she flashes on the weekend news. "I learned to smile to compensate for my crooked teeth," she said.

After graduating, Grace endured three years of Invisalign followed by three more of adult traditional braces. "Now, I smile a lot more, not just because I'm happy working my dream job, but because I spent a small fortune on my smile!"

KABB-TV's Ryan Wolf, co-anchor of the 9 p.m. news, sends this advice to today's grads: Take risks and expose yourself to a variety of experiences to up your chances of "finding a career you love. Push yourself as much as possible!"

OK, now scroll through the slideshow above and guess which photo matches your favorite news anchor. My, how some have changed!

jjakle@express-news.net
At a clinic in Harlem where many of the patients have roots in the Dominican Republic, Dr. Juan Tapia-Mendoza talks to patients about the Zika virus every day. He asks if they are planning to visit the island this summer. He reminds them that the virus can be transmitted through sex.

In New York City, there have been 109 reported cases of Zika, including 17 women who were pregnant when they learned they had the virus, according to city health officials. They all contracted the virus while visiting other countries.

Now, as the annual wave of summer travel between New York and the Caribbean begins, Tapia-Mendoza is worried that the number of cases in the community will rise.

"Our concern is this is just the tip of the iceberg," he said of the city's growing number of cases. While the symptoms of Zika, including fever, rash and joint pain, are relatively mild, the disease is of particular concern for pregnant women because of a link to microcephaly, a condition in which infants are born with unusually small heads and, most often, brain damage.

On the city's subways, bright yellow posters with images of mosquitoes urge New Yorkers  in English and Spanish  to use repellent this summer and to remove standing water at home.

The mosquito known to transmit the virus, the Aedes aegypti, is typically found in Southern states like Texas and Florida, and not in New York. But state and city officials are working to combat another type of mosquito, the Aedes albopictus, that is found in New York and might be capable of passing on the virus.

"We're optimistic that we won't see Zika transmission in New York City," the city's health commissioner, Dr. Mary T. Bassett, said, "but we have the potential for it, so we are taking very seriously the potential risk and seeking to reduce it."

The bigger danger for New Yorkers, for the moment, is travel to an area affected by Zika, by either a woman who is pregnant or a sexual partner.

Doctors are urging pregnant women to avoid traveling to regions affected by the virus and to use condoms or to forgo sex if their partner has visited those areas. Television ads warn travelers of the risks.

New York state Health Commissioner Dr. Howard A. Zucker said the number of sexually transmitted cases was small, but it was best to err on the side of caution.

"If the partner has traveled to one of those regions, then using condoms to protect the mother is important," Zucker said. For low-income pregnant women, the state Health Department is distributing kits with repellent, condoms and larvicide tablets to treat standing water. The state has 50 confirmed cases of the Zika virus outside New York City, state health officials said.

In New York City, health officials are urging doctors in Spanish-speaking communities to talk to people about the virus and to test those who have symptoms. At the Pediatrics 2000 clinic in Harlem, Tapia-Mendoza said many patients did not seem worried about traveling to the Caribbean and were more concerned about getting dengue fever.

"When I tell them about Zika, and especially that it is sexually transmitted, I feel like a lot of my patients brush it off," Tapia-Mendoza said.

Obed Ledezma, 19, arrived at the clinic at 135th Street and Broadway for an appointment recently. When he told Tapia-Mendoza that he was considering visiting the Dominican Republic this summer, the doctor explained the risks of the Zika virus.

Ledezma said he did not realize men could be infected or that the virus could be transmitted sexually.

"I thought it was only pregnant women. I feel like they're not specific enough," he said of news reports on the virus.
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A fire destroyed a house in the 400 block of Humboldt around 6 p.m. Monday.

When firefighters arrived, the entire house was engulfed in flames, San Antonio Fire Department battalion chief Russell Johnson said. Nobody was injured, though a dog was reported missing.

The owner , a 60-year-old man, told them he had left his home for a short time, came back to find his mattress on fire and unsuccessfully tried to put out the flames and drag it out of the room, Johnson said.

Arson investigators are investigating, Johnson said.

While fighting the fire, officials discovered a live wire had energized a fence on the back part of the lot. Johnson said at least two neighboring houses will not have power until the issue is fixed by CPS Energy.

Johnson estimated damage to the house to be around $85,000, and personal property damages to be about $10,000.

Mmedina@mysa.com
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SAN ANTONIO  Investigators filed new charges against a man who has been jailed since April over the weekend after linking him to a January robbery by a unique face tattoo.

Derrek Roland Caballero, 24, has been charged with aggravated robbery, a felony, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.

RELATED: Suspect arrested in Kirby home invasion had been arrested more than a dozen times in Bexar County

The affidavit said that San Antonio Police officers received a report of a robbery in the 6700 block of Interstate 35 around 1:30 p.m. on Jan. 9.

The document said a man told investigators that a male suspect ran up to him while he was walking to work and demanded his duffle bag and wallet at gunpoint.

The victim complied with the suspect, who then punched him in the face and took off on foot.

The victim walked over to a nearby business and called police.

SEE ALSO: Hot Pocket arrest uncovers mugshots tracking evolution of hipster Aryan Brotherhood member in Texas

The document said he told officers that the suspect had numerous facial tattoos, including a picture of the Alamo placed squarely on his chin.

The alleged victim later identified the suspect as Caballero in a photo lineup months after the incident.

Caballero is still being held at the Bexar County Jail, according to jail records. He had been taken into custody at least a month ago on an unrelated charge, according to the document.

mdwilson@express-news.net

Twitter: @MDWilsonSA
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SAN ANTONIO  The National Weather Service issued a flash flood watch for all of South Central Texas, including San Antonio, through at least Thursday morning.

NWS Meteorologist Brett Williams said forecasters are expecting between 3 to 6 inches of rainfall throughout the region through 7 a.m. on Thursday, with chances for isolated heavy downpours bringing up to 10 inches.

After a week of steady rainfall throughout the region, Williams said the area is primed for flooding because of saturated soil and full rivers and lakes.

RELATED: USGS data show how recent rain has pushed Medina Lake to near capacity

Were talking about 3 to 6 inches of rain on top of ground that has already had 5 to 7 inches in the last week, he said. It is not going to take much more to get flash flooding.

Though the watch will end at 7 a.m. on Thursday, Williams said the region will not necessarily be out of the woods in terms of heavy rain.

MORE: 8 tips to escape your car in a high water emergency

The heavy rains caused the temporary closure of the Comal River in New Braunfels on Tuesday, according to a Facebook post from the New Braunfels Police Department. The river will be closed to all recreational activities until further notice. The Guadalupe River was also closed to all but guided trips within city limits.

Forecasters are expecting rainfall to continue into the weekend, though exact expectations are not immediately clear.

As with last weeks downpours, meteorologists are unsure where exactly the heaviest rain will fall.

Radar imaging shows a line of storms currently developing to the west of San Antonio, stretching all the way north into Kansas.

UPDATE: Thousands of San Antonio area residents were without power Tuesday afternoon into late Tuesday evening. See the power outage map below.



Guadalupe Valley Electric Cooperative Outage map

mdwilson@express-news.net

Twitter: @MDWilsonSA
Gilbert Howard DeWind, who served in the Air Force for 26 years, including in Vietnam in the late 1960s, died at home May 16. He was 85.

The youngest of five children born during the Great Depression, DeWind grew up on a farm in New York.

Joining the Air Force in 1952, DeWind worked as a radar specialist, frequently out of the country, his daughter Laurie Ternes said.

He met his future wife by accident while back in New York, when her original date, a friend of DeWinds, was unable to meet her as planned.

It was destiny, Ternes said.

They married in 1954 but had only a brief time together before DeWind had to go back to Newfoundland, to a remote radar site, Ternes said. He finally returned  after eight months.

More Information Gilbert Howard DeWind Born: Jan. 27, 1931, Walworth, New York Died: May 16, 2016, Selma Preceded by: Wife Lorraine DeWind; parents Leonard and Jennie DeWind; a sister and two brothers. Survived by: Son Gilbert J. DeWind and daughter-in-law Bonnie; daughters Debbie DeHanes and son-in-law Bruce, Laurie Ternes and son-in-law Don, Beth Haumann, and Darlene Mielke and son-in-law Kevin; nine grandchildren, 10 great-grandchildren; a sister. Services: Burial set for 11:30 a.m. May 31 at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, 1520 Harry Wurzbach Road. See More Collapse

The couple were devoted to each other almost 60 years.

My mom and dad had a loving nickname, kochanies, which means my love in Polish, his daughter Darlene Mielke said. They would say that to each other all the time.

DeWind was briefly out of the military but reenlisted and was immediately sent to Fairbanks, Alaska, leaving behind his wife and young children.

They ended up getting some sort of a waiver so Mom could go to Fairbanks, Ternes said.

Separation was a routine difficulty.

My mom would always say, Its not easy being a military wife, Ternes said. They definitely worked together as a team.

To change his Air Force specialty, DeWind cross-trained as an aircraft electronics technician at Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi, and was there with his family when the category 5 Hurricane Camille struck.

I remember he got us quickly  to the shelter, his daughter Darlene Mielke said. When we all came back to the house, you could see the water line, how high it was on the wall. We dont have a lot of baby photos  so many things were destroyed.

Sent to Vietnam in 1966, DeWind was stationed at Cam Ranh Bay while his wife lived in New York. They exchanged reel-to-reel audio tapes by mail to bridge the distance, Ternes said.

Even so, DeWind loved the Air Force, Ternes said. He joined to travel, and when he retired, he and Mom would go on military aircraft, to Hawaii, Korea, Japan  Greece.

Retiring from the Air Force in 1978, DeWind worked in civil service in New York and Los Angeles before retiring a second time, moving to Texas in 2004.

They adopted Texas as their new homeland, Ternes said. Texas was welcoming and different; a change of pace.

mheidbrink@express-news.net
Does anyone remember Russell's Chili that used to be sold in local grocery stores?

I remember it was sold in the refrigerated section and was in a brick form. It was made on Mr. Russell's premises on Dry Valley Road in Rossville. I visited there a few times and talked with Mr. Russell, but he would not reveal his secret recipe. What happened to Mr. Russell and his recipe? It was the best chili I have ever eaten!

I believe there was a rumor that was circulated that he was using ground goat meat in the chili which caused a reduction in sales, but most of his customers remained loyal.

Contact me at 423 653-5937 or wigleyman1@yahoo.com.
SHARE Above: Jay Murphy, chaplain for American Legion Post 303, salutes the empty chair left in honor of POW/MIA service members. Left: Bonita Springs Mayor Peter Simmons opens the service. Bonita Springs Mayor Peter Simmons opens the Memorial Day Service at Riverside Park May 30. Laura Gates/Banner Correspondent The Naples Young Marines help out at the Memorial Day Service greeting and passing out programs. Members of the Marine Corps League make the final fold on the American flag as former Bonita Springs Councilman Richard Ferreira announces each fold's symbolism while dignitaries salute.

By Laura Gates, Banner Correspondent

Patty Cuccio admits she was one of those people: The kind who thinks Memorial Day is an opportunity to enjoy a long weekend and a backyard barbecue.

That all changed after she married her husband, Ed, a Vietnam veteran whom she credits with teaching her gratitude. Now the couple makes an annual tradition of attending the Bonita Springs Memorial Day service at Riverside Park to honor those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice for America's freedom.

"I cry during the service," Cuccio said of her transformation. "When they have the families (of fallen military members) stand by those flags, that makes it real. That puts a face on it."

As she listened to the Oath of a Soldier, recited in solemnity, Cuccio said she got goose bumps. Monday's ceremony included "the right amount of pomp and circumstance, with the right amount of sincerity, from the heart," added her husband.

Each Memorial Day, Riverside Park is dramatically decorated in the colors of the flag. The memorial walkway, which includes bricks honoring Bonita Springs veterans, is lined with 100 American flags, each having once adorned the casket of a local veteran.

Floyd Wright, 93, read the names of fellow service members as he walked the path with his wife, Sonja, searching for the commemorative brick which bears his name.

"I think of the people I've known who were killed during the war and just reflect on the memories," said Wright, who served in the U.S. military 32 years, fighting in both World War II and the Korean War. He remembers inspecting his soldiers' feet for "trench foot" during the Battle of the Bulge.

According to the U.S. Veteran's Administration, fewer than 700,000 of the 16 million who served in World War II remain alive today, with more than 400 dying daily. A handful of those heroes attended the Bonita Springs Memorial Day ceremony Monday.

Seated with the dignitaries on stage was William Pace, a Purple Heart recipient who survived two Prisoner of War camps after his plane was shot down by the Germans. His story, along with the memories of other WWII veterans, was recently documented by the Bonita Springs Historical Society for a film project called, "Bonita's Greatest Generation: In Their Own Words," which was released in November.

The recording came none too early for sailor Vic Buckett, who died one month after recounting his story of surviving the sinking of the USS Indianapolis after it was torpedoed in the Pacific by the Japanese on July 30, 1945. Just 316 of 1,196 men survived.

Bonita Springs Veteran David Grossi conducted the interviews and was keynote speaker at Monday's Memorial Service. He served in the Vietnam War as a sergeant in the U.S. Air Force and is a retired police officer who has become one of Bonita's biggest advocates for veterans. As former chairman of the Veterans Advisory Committee, Grossi took charge of raising $90,000 for the Veterans Memorial Monument, erected at Riverside Park in 2012.

Memorial Day, he said, is a day for the veterans' community to bond, recounting the horrors of war, the separation from family, the grief and the hope. It's also an opportunity for citizens to acknowledge the "debt of honor" we owe to those who have fought for our rights, Grossi added.

"There are no noble wars," he said. "We fight for the prize of freedom."

At the opening of the ceremony, Adam Prentki III, commander of American Legion Post 303, dedicated a symbolically empty chair.

"Let us always be mindful of those men and women who give the ultimate sacrifice, those who remain prisoners of war and those who are classified as missing in action," he said.

There also was an empty casket front and center, solemnly draped with the American flag, representing the thousands of military members who never returned home in America's enduing pursuit of freedom.

Mayor Peter Simmons used words like "courage, pride, determination, selflessness, dedication and duty" to describe these heroic men and women.

"They were extraordinary people that served in extraordinary ways," he said. "They rose to the call of our nation."

After the ceremony, many lingered on the flag-lined path, honoring the memories of those who served. Finally, it was time for members of Boy Scout Troop 109 to carefully take down each flag.

As he worked, Boy Scout Zachary Bonia reflected on the significance of commemorating Memorial Day with something more meaningful than a barbecue.

"It reminded me about what I should be putting first in my life," he said, "not worrying about small things, looking at the bigger picture."
SHARE Florida Gov. Rick Scott signs the Legacy Florida legislation into law at a ceremony at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary on Tuesday, May 31, 2016, in rural Collier County. The bill dedicates up to $200 million annually for Everglades restoration. (David Albers/Staff) Florida Gov. Rick Scott speaks at a legislation signing ceremony at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary on Tuesday, May 31, 2016, in rural Collier County. Scott signed the Legacy Florida bill dedicating up to $200 million annually for Everglades restoration. (David Albers/Staff) Florida Gov. Rick Scott speaks at a legislation signing ceremony at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary on Tuesday, May 31, 2016, in rural Collier County. Scott signed the Legacy Florida bill dedicating up to $200 million annually for Everglades restoration. (David Albers/Staff) Florida Senator Lizbeth Benacquisto visits with other attendees of a signing ceremony for the Legacy Florida bill at a ceremony at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary on Tuesday, May 31, 2016, in rural Collier County. Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed the bill at the ceremony dedicating up to $200 million annually for Everglades restoration. (David Albers/Staff) Related Photos PHOTOS: Gov. Scott signs Legacy Florida bill

By Eric Staats of the Naples Daily News

Gov. Rick Scott stopped by Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary on Tuesday for a ceremony to mark signing a bill dedicating up to $200 million annually for Everglades restoration.

The Legacy Florida bill allocates money voters set aside for land conservation when they approved Amendment 1, which has been the center of complaints from some environmental advocates that the money wasn't being spent as voters intended. The Legislature passed the bill this year, and Scott officially signed it in April.

Backed Tuesday by two dozen environmental advocates, Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Jon Steverson and Southwest Florida legislators in the Blair Audubon Center at the sanctuary, Scott said the spending represents a milestone for Everglades restoration.

"We can focus on finishing projects now," Scott said. "When I ran back in 2010, the complaint was that we weren't finishing projects. We start a lot of projects, but we weren't finishing projects. That's not true today."

The projects include building reservoirs to control harmful discharges from Lake Okeechobee into the Caloosahatchee River and St. Lucie River estuaries.

Rep. Matt Caldwell, R-Lehigh Acres, said it's been clear for decades that a lack of funding has hampered the completion of Everglades restoration projects. The Legacy Florida bill will change that.

"It's a huge tectonic shift in where we've been, basically, in a stalemate for the last three decades, knowing what we need to do but not being able to get those projects done," he said.

Audubon Florida executive director Eric Draper said he is "confident" the bill in coming years will help pay for projects to send water south from Lake Okeechobee and into the Everglades, where water naturally flowed before the Everglades were drained for agriculture. Water managers should speed up planning for those projects, he said.

"This is a step in the right direction of using Amendment 1 dollars exactly the way they are supposed to be used," Draper said.

The bill also sets aside $50 million annually for springs restoration and $5 million for restoration of Lake Apopka, a former world-class bass fishing lake near Orlando polluted by agricultural runoff and wastewater discharges.

"I can't wait to see what we can do with that," said Steverson, the DEP secretary.

Staff writer Ryan Mills contributed to this report.
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By Liz Freeman of the Naples Daily News

You've got time to quit the habit before Hodges University steps in.

The private university with campuses in Naples and Fort Myers aims to become tobacco free by May 1, 2017.

Hodges wants to promote a campus environment that instills a healthy lifestyle, Carol Morrison, senior vice president of student and academic services, said in a press release.

The university created a tobacco-free committee of faculty and staff, and is working with Tobacco Free Florida and Tobacco Free Collier to help develop the policy. The committee was formed earlier this year, Hodges spokeswoman Nicole Roe said.

The reason to wait one year before the tobacco ban takes effect is to get feedback, she said.

"We want to give people time to get accustomed to it," Roe said. "We understand this is something we know can't happen overnight."

Becoming a tobacco-free campus is a proposal now and needs to go before the 16-member board of trustees for approval, she said.

Hodges plans to survey faculty, employees and students to get an idea how many people smoke, and the university will explore offering smoking cessation programs, she said.

The university has 1,627 students enrolled and 323 employees, which includes adjunct faculty members.

Hodges prohibits smoking or use of smokeless cigarettes in any indoor spaces. The university currently has two outdoor designated smoking areas at each of its campuses in Naples and Fort Myers

According to the U.S. Surgeon General's report of 2012, about 25 percent of full-time college students aged 18 to 22 were smokers in 2010.

In Florida, 20 colleges and universities have gone 100 percent tobacco free, which include Florida Southwestern State College, Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida International University in Miami, Nova University in Davie, the University of Florida in Gainesville and others, according to the American Lung Association.

Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers became tobacco free effective May 9; the university began discussions about going tobacco free in 2012. Until the recent ban, there were designated smoking areas on the 800-acre campus of FGCU.

Florida Southwestern State went smoke free in 2010 when it was still Edison State College.

Tobacco free policies are increasing on college campuses and nationwide about nearly 1,500 colleges and universities have adopted policies to prohibit tobacco use, according to Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights. What has helped with the trend is a position statement by the American College Health Association in 2009.
Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise (CNE) assists many homeowners with rehab and repair projects, underscoring its commitment to strengthening communities and improving the health and livability of homes for people living in Chattanooga.

CNE currently offers home improvement loans to Chattanooga homeowners who qualify. These low interest loans can be used for repairs including roof repair, interior and exterior repairs, foundation repairs, HVAC repair or replacement, and electrical and plumbing repairs. A homeownership rehab project may also include lead abatement, and if applicable, the lead abatement portion is a grant to the homeowner.



By helping owners rehab and repair their homes, CNE achieves a number of community development goals, including helping owners improve their homes energy efficiency. This results in lowering costs and improving the livability and healthfulness of their homes, said Martina Guilfoil, president and CEO of CNE.



CNE offers the program through the City of Chattanooga CDBG program funding to make affordable loans to provide homeowners the ability to make home repairs or improvements. In order to qualify, homeowners must live in the City of Chattanooga; the home must be their primary residence; and applicants are subject to income limitations.



As a member the NeighborWorks network, a group of more than 245 community development nonprofits doing business throughout the United States, CNE contributed to more than 7,700 owners receiving rehab help in 2015. Importantly, homeowners who engage CNE and other NeighborWorks network organizations often connect with loan and grant products that could make the cost of significant rehab work more affordable than whats available from traditional lenders.



CNE is committed to helping lower income owners realize sustainable homeownership, Homeownership Center Manager Carolyn Burke said. On one hand we support sustainability by helping existing owners rehab and repair their homes. On the other hand, our sustainable homeownership efforts involve helping buyers understand the mortgage process. That understanding includes: shopping for the right mortgage, working with a home inspector to be as aware as possible about the potential problems, and offering guidance on choosing a qualified contractor to avoid home improvement scams.



For information on how CNE can help homeowners affordably rehab and repair their homes, contact CNE at (423) 756-6201 or info@cneinc.org.


Uribe Jiminez, the stepfather of Diana Alvares, a 9-year-old San Carlos Park girl that went missing on Sunday, wipes away tears as waits in the yard of neighbors on Monday, May 30, 2016, in San Carlos Park. Law enforcement has not allowed the family access to their home due to an ongoing investigation. (Jack Hardman/The News-Press)

By Stacey Henson, The News-Press

Rita Hernandez wipes her face with a napkin, the humidity taking its toll as she sits under a tree, anxiously awaiting word of her daughter, Diana Alvares, 9. Diana has been missing for more than 31 hours.

The Lee County Sheriff's Department has set up a temporary headquarters a block away, taking up three full lanes of parking spaces at the Publix, near the south Fort Myers home on Unique Circle. Deputies searched the area with bloodhounds, and banned the family members from their home.

Neri Jimenez, 18, translated for Hernandez, who speaks Spanish.

"She doesn't know anything," Jimenez, the cousin of Diana's step-father, Uribe Jiminez. About 15 family members and friends sat under a tree for shade, two homes down from the clean, white trailer that has a Christmas wreath hanging on the front door.

Hernandez last saw Diana at 2 a.m. Saturday, when she went to the bathroom. At eight months pregnant, that's part of her routine. By 7 a.m., she peeked in at Diana's bed, and couldn't find her.

As she started looking around the trailer, with Diana's younger siblings, she yelled at Jimenez to call the police.

Hernandez said she didn't know where Diana could possibly be; she has never spent the night away from her mother. They've lived at the trailer park for two years.

"All she wants, she wants her to be back home already," Neri Jimenez said.

Police said Diana is Hispanic, and about 4 feet, 5 inches and 95 pounds with black hair and brown eyes. She is a second-grader at San Carlos Park Elementary School.

Her step-father was upset as he talked about the deputies restricting the family's access to their home.

"We are a good family," he said. "And all my neighbors, they can tell how we are."

Hernandez said Diana typically played in front of the house, going no farther than each corner. Neighbors said she was attentive to her three younger siblings and her disappearance is out of character.

With an artistic bent, Diana uses her mother's phone to do Google searches for pictures. Hernandez said the previous three days, Diana was searching and drawing ponies.

Hernandez said the only thing out of character was an incident two months ago, when Diana brought home a paper inviting her to a classmates's home. With no phone number or addresses, Hernandez told her she couldn't go. Diana tore the paper to pieces.

Anyone with information about the girl should contact the Lee County Sheriff's Office by calling 239-477-1000 or 911.
By Alexandra Glorioso, alexandra.glorioso@naplesnews.com

About a thousand people gathered Monday to remember veterans lost, joining together in the early morning sun for solemn Memorial Day ceremonies held at Riverside Park in Bonita Springs and at a Naples funeral home and cemetery.

"This year, I wanted to get back to the basics," said Adam Prentki III, commander of the American Legion Post 303 in Bonita Springs. "It's not just about picnics and long weekends, it's about those who lost their lives."

Prentki was a key organizer in Bonita's ceremony along with Bobby Hunter, a Lee County Sheriff's deputy and chairman of the city's Veterans Advisory Committee. The event featured a Burial with Honors ceremony at the end of the procession, which is usually done over a gravesite.

"Memorial Day is about recognizing those who have passed away," he said.

"The younger generation doesn't understand what Memorial was originally about. You went to the cemetery and put flags on the graves," said Prentki, who was a sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps.

One-hundred flags circled the edges of the park, each representing a Bonita Springs veteran who was lost.

In Naples, Bernadette La Paglia, the community liaison for Hodges Funeral Home, described their Memorial Day service as "solemnity in celebration." The event was organized by Collier County Veterans Council.

"I hope that doesn't sound like an oxymoron," she said. "The over arching theme needs to be solemnity but then it turns to celebration."

In contrast to Riverside Park's dramatic display of soldiers firing gunshots through the air, a more quiet ceremony at Hodges Funeral included an annual barbecue produced by three Cook brothers, Greg, Michael and Danny, whose father, Ronald Cook, served aboard the USS Keppler and was buried five years ago in the Hodges cemetery.

Hodges hosted speakers, a flag-folding ceremony, a memorial wreath laying and a procession of all those in attendance who have served.

Before the cookout, Linda Serna, cried over the gravestone that had etched on it her father's name, Cecilio C. Amandor. Serna said her father nearly died in Japan during World War II.

"He was stabbed with a Japanese bayonet and lay on the ground, bleeding for nearly a week until people found him," she said.

Amandor stood in his uniform inside a brown, wooden picture frame, an old photo washed over in sepia tones. Serna said he served for two years before he was injured.

She eventually lost him in 1997 and returns every year on Memorial Day to honor him.

"I'm lucky this year because there aren't any chairs on his grave," she said, referring to the rows of white plastic chairs that line the cemetery so that guests, many of whom are older, can sit through the procession. For Serna, sitting on top of the dead defeats the purpose of the ceremony.

"I get upset when I see people trampling on them," she said. "I want to be on the ground, close to him, because he was proud. He was proud he served his country."

Pappy Wagner, 90, who was a young corporal during the World War II battle at Iwo Jima, readily shook a little boy's hand as he walked through the cemetery's mausoleum. Wagner then paused, and said during the ceremony, he thought about friends he'd lost to war.

He remembered Elmer Muller, from Detroit, who died from mortar fire while fighting with Wagner in the Pacific. And Walter Harris Jr., a sergeant, who went to school with Wagner.

"It takes you back for sure," he said. "There were five of us and only two walked away."

"You remember in a sad way. But that's life," he said.

Wayne O. Smith, 72, who was an Air Force fighter pilot in Vietnam, was held prisoner for more than five years. As he left the Memorial Day service, Smith, who earned a Purple Heart and numerous other service medals, projected a kind of resilient satisfaction.

"I was lucky to be alive," he said, reflecting on his 1,882 days in captivity.

Smith said he lost 19 of his school classmates in Vietnam.

"It was a long time ago. After that, I went on to be a corporate executive for several companies, and just went on with my life," he said.

Smith retired in 1999 as chief operating officer of MidAmerican Energy after serving as president and chief operating officer of BF Goodrich.

Both Smith and Wagner now live in Naples.

"The ceremony helps," said Smith. "I think it helps us mourn them."
Here are some things to know about voting in Collier County
SHARE Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

By Ledyard King, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON  In March, Marco Rubio dismissed Donald Trump as a "con artist" and "the most vulgar person ever to aspire to the presidency."

Last week, the Florida senator told reporters he'll not only vote for Trump, he'd be willing to speak on his behalf at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this summer. And he didn't rule out the possibility of serving in a Trump administration.

Rubio said his apparent shift isn't that hard to understand. Supporting Trump as the presumptive GOP presidential nominee is an easy choice, he said, compared to the prospect of a Hillary Clinton victory at the polls in November.

"Donald Trump will sign the repeal of Obamacare. She won't," Rubio said. "I want the successor to Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court to be a conservative. I believe that's the kind of judge that he'll appoint, and I know she won't. I want someone that will defend life. I know he will and she won't."

Rubio said Trump earned his status as the GOP presumptive nominee at the ballot box.

"He campaigned and the voters chose him," he said. "I respect that process. And so I'm going to support him. I'm going to vote for him."

Social media, of course, won't let him off the hook that easily.

"Rubio is truly a politician with no ideas, just a jumble of crap, ready to support any position, person, anything to help him get ahead," progressive radio talk show host Mike Signorile tweeted.

"Stop Excusing Republicans Like Rubio For Supporting Trump Because Of A Stupid, Worthless Pledge," tweeted the conservative blog Red State, referring to Rubio's frequent promise during the campaign to get behind the eventual nominee.

While Rubio was still a presidential contender, his rivalry with Trump featured highly charged, personal attacks.

Trump, mocked the Florida senator as "Little Marco" and poked fun at his tendency to sweat on the debate stage and drink lots of water.

Rubio said Trump was unfit for the Oval Office, citing his inflammatory rhetoric, his past support for Democratic policies, and his call for deporting undocumented immigrants.

He also criticized Trump's physical features: "You know what they say about men with small hands," now an infamous Rubio comment on the trail. "You can't trust them."

But Rubio also consistently said he would support whomever Republican voters nominated. Despite the heated campaign, Rubio said it's time to move on.

"We were competitors," he said of Trump. "I don't dislike him. I don't have any negative feelings about him personally. I disagree with a lot of his positions. That was well established during the campaign. (But) I also think he happens to be substantially better than Hillary Clinton."

Al Cardenas, former head of the Florida Republican Party and a Rubio confidant, said the possibility that he and many other Republicans will support Trump is a "work in progress." But he's not willing to judge Rubio.

"It's a fairly quick turnaround in his conversion to becoming a supporter, but so be it," said Cardenas, former chairman of the American Conservative Union. "I'm still not there. I guess Marco figured out a way to get there."
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Can we talk?

1  Yes, regularly. 2  Yes, but not often. 3  Yes, through an intermediary. 4  Not interested.

When it comes to three major elected government boards making decisions affecting the everyday lives of Collier County residents and taxpayers, the current answer to the question arguably is either 2 or 3. The answer should be No. 1.

The last time the Collier County Commission and Naples City Council held a joint meeting to talk about their common concerns was more than four years ago  April 2012, according to county records. The last such get-together between the County Commission and Marco Island City Council was Dec. 2, 2014.

There are good reasons for that infrequency to change.

For one, growth has returned with a vengeance. What's occurring within city limits affects the unincorporated area and vice-versa. The way city limits are configured, in some cases you go through one government's jurisdiction to get to another. That was evident with a recent discussion about Goodland Drive, partially inside the Marco city limits and part of it outside.

For another, the Naples City Council took on a significantly different look in March with the election of a former mayor and three new members. As many as four of the five seats on the Collier commission could change in fall elections. There are four seats on the November ballot in Marco's election for its seven-member council. With leadership changes, priorities may realign.

In touch?

We've seen a member of the County Commission speak before the Naples City Council. We've seen members of the Marco council come to commission chambers recently to address a public safety issue of concern to the island. We've seen Commissioner Donna Fiala hold an occasional town hall on Marco Island to hear from constituents. There are boards, such as the transportation-oriented Metropolitan Planning Organization and Tourist Development Council, on which members of each elected body serve.

We don't see that, collectively, as a suitable replacement for regular face-to-face discussion that we'd suggest should occur annually between governing bodies whose issues overlap. Here are a few common concerns to air:

Naples-Commission agenda

The recent Naples election raised a question about relocating some special events from the city to the unincorporated area to help alleviate the volume of traffic that descends on the downtown area in season.

We see Collier commissioners considering intensive redevelopment in the Gateway Triangle just outside Naples city limits, with 9-story, 11-story and 18-story towers planned near the corner of U.S. 41 and Davis Boulevard. Notably, less than a mile away there is a 42-foot height limit on commercial buildings in the city. Commissioners want developers of 5 acres they're selling for two towers to agree to oppose annexation by the city. So annexation is an appropriate topic.

At a recent Naples council discussion of the city's $5.4 million funding shortfall to build the $12.8 million Baker Park, Councilman Doug Finlay raised a question about what county government is contributing to city parks. After all, Naples property owners pay significant county government taxes and residents of the unincorporated area may use the park, crossing the Gordon River via pedestrian bridge.

Marco-Commission agenda

With one way in and out on a road that floods because it needs elevated two to three feet, Goodland residents are at risk. The road was ceded by county leaders to the city of Marco in 2002 along with $1 million per year for 15 years, but the road isn't fixed. Now, county government may want $2 million and control back of the road that cuts through the city.

Marco leaders, dissatisfied with ambulance response, want to set up their own service instead of using county government's. They had yet to apply as of Tuesday.

Off-island development along Collier Boulevard will send more traffic into the city of Marco for services.

Naples and Marco Island have beach concerns in common. That might be a fitting discussion for joint meetings. But only if elected leaders agree "yes, let's talk."
Hodges University announced today that it will become a tobacco-free campus on May 1, 2017. In honor of World No Tobacco Day, the university is hosting a kickoff event on its Fort Myers and Naples campuses today with table displays and representatives from Hodges, Tobacco Free Florida and Tobacco Free Collier providing cessation resources to students, faculty and staff.

Leading the yearlong campus campaign is a Tobacco-Free Committee comprised of faculty and staff, as well as representatives from Tobacco Free Florida and Tobacco Free Collier, who will oversee the development and implementation of the campaign, which will include developing cessation resources and educational programs, marketing initiatives and an implementation plan.

Hodges University wants to promote a campus environment that instills a healthy lifestyle. A current smoker who quits can reduce future health care costs, serve as a positive influence on other family members and friends, and will benefit from the additional money saved, said Carol Morrison, senior vice president of student and academic services at Hodges University.

Currently, Hodges University prohibits smoking or any other tobacco or smokeless cigarettes use in enclosed indoor spaces, and the university has designated areas for students, faculty, staff and visitors to smoke.

The proposed policy, which would become effective May 1, 2017, states, Hodges University is a tobacco-free campus. The use, promotion, distribution or sale of any form of tobacco are prohibited in all Hodges University facilities and on all properties owned or leased by the university, at university-sponsored events or in publications produced by the university, with no exception. This includes, but is not limited to, all indoor and outdoor areas and properties.

According to the American Nonsmokers Rights Foundation (ANRF), as of April 1, 2016, there were 1,483 100 percent smoke-free campuses, of which 1,137  more than two-thirds  were fully tobacco-free.

In June 2016, students, faculty, staff, alumni and university-affiliated organization members will receive a survey created by the committee to determine how many individuals use tobacco products, as well as gauge the interest of the types of cessation resources offered by Hodges.

About Hodges University:

Hodges University, a private, nonprofit institution of higher learning, was founded in Naples, Florida in 1990 as International College. In 2007, International College was renamed Hodges University in honor of its main benefactors, Earl and Thelma Hodges, long-time residents of Naples and supporters of Hodges University. Hodges mission is to provide transformation learner-driven educational opportunities. To accomplish this mission Hodges schools offer a variety of academic programs online and on the Fort Myers and Naples campuses. Hodges University is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges to award associate, bachelor's and master's degrees.
Bob Edwards, Managing Director  Investments, Senior PIM Portfolio Manager of Moran Edwards Asset Management Group of Wells Fargo Advisors (www.MoranEdwards.com), was named to Southwest Florida Faces of of Philanthropy, an award created to recognize outstanding philanthropists in the Southwest Florida in honor of National Philanthropy Day (NPD) by the Southwest Florida Community Foundation and Brian Tietz Photography.

Faces of Philanthropy highlights the achievements of an individual with a proven record of exceptional generosity through direct financial support for the past several years. Honorees were selected based on their philanthropic activities, including giving their time, talent, and passion to organizations within our community. They must live within the five-county area of Lee, Collier, Charlotte, Hendry and Glades counties. The Faces of Philanthropy honorees were photographed by commercial, editorial, and corporate photographer Brian Tietz, and featured in the Southwest Florida Community Foundations Photo Art Exhibit Faces of Philanthropy that is on exhibit all summer at the Community Hub, the SWFL Community Foundation main office space, 8771 College Pkwy, Bldg. 2 Ste. 201, Fort Myers.

A financial advisor for over 30 years, Edwards has earned extensive national and local recognitions, including most recently being listed on Barrons annual list of Americas Top 1,200 Financial Advisors for the third consecutive year, and on Barrons Americas Top 1,000 Financial Advisors in 2011, 2012, and 2013. He was recognized for the 8th consecutive year as a Southwest Florida 2015 Five Star Wealth Manager by Gulfshore Life magazine and Five Star Professional. Edwards was also named one of Naples Daily News inaugural 25 Over 50 award recipients and one of Naples Supermen in the September 2013 issue of Naples Illustrated for his work in the financial services industry, and for his dedication to the Naples Children & Education Foundation and its Naples Winter Wine Festival. In addition to advising an affluent clientele in Naples, Edwards counsels other wealth managers and has been an industry speaker at conferences for financial professionals in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Orlando, Philadelphia, and San Diego.
Chattanooga States Economic and Community Education Department is offering a personal trainer certification class at the main campus on Saturdays beginning June 11 from 9 a.m.-2 p.m. The class runs through Aug. 13.

Employers like 24-Hour Fitness, LA Fitness, and Golds Gym are just a few of the club groups that seek out graduates of this course, said officials.

This course is taught over a nine-week period for better retention and skill competency. The National Exam is held on the ninth week. The Certified Personal Trainer course is formatted as a 62-hour program and provides 16 hours of lecture, 16 hours of hands-on practical training, and a 30-hour internship that networks many new graduates right into a job.

The course covers topics that include biomechanics, exercise physiology, fitness testing, and equipment usage and health assessment. CPR/AED is needed to receive certification. World Instructor Training Schools is the only major certifying body in the country providing comprehensive practical training and internship components. A textbook is required and is not included in the course fees. Call to order and start reading immediately (888) 330-9487 or go to www.witseducation.com to order the book prior to the beginning of class.

To register sign up online here, call the Continuing Education Department at 697-3100, or email continuinged@chattanoogastate.edu.






KeyCorp's $4.1 billion bid to buy First Niagara Financial Group Inc. is facing scrutiny over a U.S. investigation into First Niagara's minority lending practices, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The Justice Department more than two years ago began examining whether First Niagara violated a federal law that prohibits discrimination in issuing loans, said the people, who requested anonymity because the probe hasn't been disclosed publicly. The investigation has prompted questions from U.S. regulators who must sign off on the bank's sale to Cleveland-based KeyCorp, the people said. It couldn't be determined whether the scrutiny is holding up the deal, which the banks announced in October and is still months away from the expected completion date.

KeyCorp is seeking approval from the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for an acquisition that would increase its assets by about $40 billion to $133 billion. The combined company would probably be among the top 20 U.S. banks by assets, according to data compiled by banking agencies.

First Niagara "will continue to engage in safe, sound and fair banking practices that focus on the underserved," said David Lanzillo, a company spokesman who declined to comment on the investigation or its implications on the sale. Jack Sparks, a KeyCorp spokesman, and spokesmen for the Justice Department and the bank regulators declined to comment.

Buffalo, N.Y.-based First Niagara lends in New York and surrounding states. It couldn't be determined what, if anything, was found, what part of the bank's territory the probe focused on or whether the Justice Department plans to take action.

Under the Fair Housing Act's redlining provision, denying loans or granting them on more stringent terms "must be justified on the basis of economic factors and without regard to race." The Justice Department's fair-lending unit has increasingly emphasized cases involving credit to minorities after inner cities suffered from high foreclosure rates amid the 2008 financial crisis. Some of the biggest U.S. lenders have settled federal fair-lending claims without admitting wrongdoing, including Bank of America Corp. agreeing to a $335 million settlement and Wells Fargo & Co. paying about $235 million.

It's been almost a decade since U.S. bank regulators last released a public assessment of First Niagara's community lending practices. In the 2007 report from the now-defunct Office of Thrift Supervision, the bank's share of loans in poorer areas was slightly below the industry norm, and it had higher-than-average activity in wealthier neighborhoods. The report deemed the company's geographic distribution of mortgages as "adequate."

First Niagara's most recent filings under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act show that about 9% of the home loans it originated in the Buffalo area in 2014 went to minority borrowers  less than the 12% at M&T Bank Corp. or the 18% at Bank of America in the same geographical area. New York Fed data show about 19% of residents in the Buffalo metropolitan area are non-white.

Critics of the sale to KeyCorp, who have expressed concern about the publics access to credit, highlighted First Niagara's lending discrepancies.

"Though poverty, unemployment and other economic factors can impact originations, there is little to explain the gaps in lending to minority borrowers," John Washington of People United for Sustainable Housing in Buffalo, wrote in a December letter to regulators, objecting to the merged banks continuing the same service to minority borrowers that he argued needs "significant improvements."

New York politicians have criticized the merger for unrelated reasons, including U.S. Sen Chuck Schumer, who wrote a letter expressing concern that the deal would have a major effect on jobs in the state, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who warned of a "devastating impact on the retail banking industry and consumer access."

First Niagara  doing business since 1870  has changed rapidly since 2007, with purchases of Great Lakes Bancorp, dozens of former National City Corp. branches, Connecticut-based NewAlliance Bancshares Inc. and branches of HSBC Holdings Plc's banking unit in New York.

A similar redlining revelation cropped up in the recent merger between M&T and Hudson City Bancorp. That matter was resolved when Hudson City agreed, without admitting wrongdoing, to pay more than $30 million in a settlement last year with the Justice Department and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The sale to M&T got final government approval days later.

In the same region that's home to First Niagara, Evans Bancorp Inc. settled allegations by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman that it discriminated in lending in Buffalo's East Side neighborhoods. Evans agreed to settle without admitting misconduct.

In the KeyCorp-First Niagara merger, the Justice Department and Federal Reserve also reviewed whether the deal could be anti-competitive. The banks agreed to sell 18 branches in the Buffalo area to Northwest Bancshares Inc. to address that concern.
Beyonce Ate At Buck's In Wicker Park And Gave The Chef Free 'Formation' Tickets

By Rachel Cromidas in Food on May 31, 2016 8:43PM



Beyonce attends the 2016 Met Gala in New York. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images for People.com)

Soldier Field was the place to be this weekend, thanks to Beyonce's two-day Chicago stop on her Formation World Tour. But it looks like Wicker Park's southern food outpost, Buck's, was the place to be after her Friday night performance: The Queen herself reportedly stopped in the Division Street restaurant after her show, with a crew that included her husband Jay Z and Michelle Williams.

Beyonce and her friends arrived at Buck's around 12:30 a.m. and stayed for hours after the spot closed, a restaurant rep confirmed for Chicagoist. Social media and photography were banned during the visit, but staff members did not leave empty-handed: Beyonce gave four fourth-row tickets to her Saturday night performance to the restaurant's chef, who in turn gave some out to the late-night waitstaff.

Chef Bernard Bennett told Chicagoist that he was nervous to cook for Beyonce. Her late-night visit took the 29-year-old by surprise.

"A representative of theirs called, and was looking for somewhere to be. I thought it was fake at first... then they called back and said 'Yeah, we're coming,'" he said. Since Buck's was getting ready to close around 1 a.m., Bennett "set them up in our lounge and let them be upstairs by themselves."

Beyonce was "dressed down," he added, in "regular clothes"not a tour leotard in the house. Before she left at around 3 a.m., she thanked Bennett with the tickets, which he shared with two Buck's waitresses who had also stayed late to serve Beyonce.

Beyonce, Jay Z and company dined on several of Buck's signature Southern dishes, according to rep Isabella Palmer, including fried green tomatoes, fried chicken, buttermilk biscuits and a dish of eggs, smoked salmon and Creole mustard. For dessert, the group ordered Beignets with espresso butterscotch and S'mores Biscuits.
Every Chicago Police Officer Is Now Trained To Use A Taser

By Mae Rice in News on May 31, 2016 7:51PM



Photo of a police taser from October, 2011. (Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images)

As of this week, every Chicago police officer responding to calls has been trained on how to properly use a taser, the Chicago Police Department announced Tuesday. Officers responding to calls will now be issued a taser at the beginning of each shift. The aim of the change is to create "the safest environment possible" for police and civilians, according to a CPD press release.

The shift is also is in keeping with a commitment Mayor Rahm Emanuel made in December to increase taser usage among Chicago police. Emanuel's commitment came in the aftermath of the release of the Laquan McDonald video, which showed 17-year-old McDonald being fatally shot by officer Jason Van Dyke (who has since been charged with murder). At the time, tasers were used by Chicago's police force, but not every officer had been trained to use one. Emanuel hoped to change that, as part of a larger effort to encourage officers to de-escalate conflictsrather than killing someone within seconds of arriving on the scene, as Van Dyke did.

Though tasers are meant to lower the incidence of the fatal, police-involved shootings, especially of black people, that have caused a stream of protests in Chicago since the McDonald footage was released, they come with their own pitfalls. Tasers can be abused, tooas they appeared to be in the case of Philip Coleman, who died soon after being tased while lying on a cot. (His family received a $4.9 million settlement from the city in April.)

Also, once an Elgin police oficer accidentally tased himself while trying to arrest a naked man, an incident that ultimately sent two police officers to the hospital.
Fluoride impairs childhood brain development

Putting an end to fluoridated water

(NaturalNews) For years, anyone who questioned the efficacy of fluoridated water was cast to the lunatic fringe. Fortunately, concerns over fluoridated water, and its impact on childhood health, are beginning to be heard on a national level. Early last year, the federal government lowered the recommended level of fluoride in U.S. community drinking water to 0.7 milligrams per liter.The updated recommendations were due to a growing prevalence of dental fluorosis in children and adolescents, as well as the fact that Americans already receive fluoride through a myriad of other sources, like toothpaste and mouthwashes. Approximately 200 million Americans had a fluoridated community water system in 2012, according to the report. Although the federal government still recommends fluoridated water for dental health reasons, the choice to add fluoride to community water systems is in the hands of state and local governments.The drop in fluoride levels in water is a small victory, but some scientists, such as Philippe Grandjean, an adjunct professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, don't think these recommendations go far enough. "Lowering the recommended fluoridation level to 0.7 mg per liter is very well-justified. I would in fact recommend that the level be reduced even further," he said in an article forThese concerns are provoked by the impact fluoridated water may have on childhood brain development. It is known that high levels of fluoride can cause neurotoxicity in adults. Research on rats suggests that fluoride can impair memory and learning, but not much is known about its effects on brain development in children. In order to answer this question, a meta-analysis was conducted by researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and China Medical University in Shenyang in 2012.The study was published in the journal. After combing through 27 studies, the team found a strong correlation between fluoride and impaired cognitive development in children. Nearly all the studies reviewed were from China, where the risks attached to fluoride are well known. At the time of the review, no human studies examining the relationship between fluoride and brain development had been conducted in the U.S.The studies from China were incomplete and varied in several ways. Taken together, however, the review is a valuable contribution to understanding the potential risks of fluoridated water . "For the first time we have been able to do a comprehensive meta-analysis that has the potential for helping us plan better studies. We want to make sure that cognitive development is considered as a possible target for fluoride toxicity," said lead author of the study, Anna Choi.Researchers gathered epidemiological studies of children who consumed fluoride via drinking water. Studies were drawn from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure database. The researchers then looked for possible links between fluoride consumption and the IQ levels of 8,000 children. Only one study did not find a link between high fluoride levels and impaired cognitive development.The team discovered that fluoridated water was associated with a drop of seven IQ points using IQ scores with standard deviation of 15. Some of the studies indicated that even slightly heightened fluoride exposure could be poisonous to the brain. Unsurprisingly, children from high-fluoridated communities had significantly lower IQ points in comparison to children from low-fluoridated communities."Fluoride seems to fit in with lead, mercury, and other poisons that cause chemical brain drain," Grandjean says. "The effect of each toxicant may seem small, but the combined damage on a population scale can be serious, especially because the brain power of the next generation is crucial to all of us."Nearly 75 percent of the U.S. population receives drinking water with 0.7-1.2 parts per million (ppm) of fluoride, based on federal recommendations made more than four decades ago. As noted earlier, the decision to add fluoride to drinking water systems is made by the state and local governments. According to reports by the CDC, Massachusetts, which is currently mired in controversy regarding fluoridation, tends to add concentrations of 1.0 ppm of fluoride to their drinking water."Just because we did studies over the last 70 years, it doesn't mean that we did everything that is necessary to know for sure that fluoridation is not toxic to some processes in the body or development of the brain. Those studies have actually not been done," Grandjean added.Although progress has been made in lowering fluoride concentrations at a national level, more work needs to be done. Demand the end of water fluoridation in your community. Phone those responsible for water fluoridation and put an end to what they are doing. Alert them to the potential dangers fluoridated water poses to the public, that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work with respect to health, and that the government has no business prescribing drugs to the masses. In short: It's time to say goodbye to fluoride.(1) PublicHealthReports.org (2) HSPH.Harvard.edu (3) HSPH.Harvard.edu (4) HSPH.Harvard.edu (5) TV.NaturalNews (6) Science.NaturalNews.com
Women shouldn't be inconvenienced by seeing a doctor, says Planned Parenthood

$1.4 billion in net assets

(NaturalNews) Nearly 60 million babies have been aborted in the United States since the Supreme Court's ruling in Roe v. Wade. The large majority of those lives were taken inside Planned Parenthood clinics around the nation  a taxpayer organization allowed to operate with impunity.Though entangled in one of America's most publicized scandals, in which it violated federal law through the trafficking of aborted fetuses across state lines, Planned Parenthood's unethical conduct continues in full force under the protection of the courts.Last month, the non-profit released its 2014-2015 annual report , detailing what it believes are its top achievements  of which abortion is included, of course. Planned Parenthood's new report brags about prevailing in the court system, describing victories in Indiana, Louisiana and Wisconsin, in which it overcame proposed restrictions on abortions, as well as its success in blocking legislation in Iowa that would have banned webcam abortions.Webcam abortions, or tele-abortions, involve a method in which women are allowed to abort their babies without a physician present. Instead, a "secure drawer" is opened remotely by a doctor at another location, which then dispenses an abortion-inducing drug. The procedure is banned in 18 states for safety reasons, as abortion drugs sometimes cause life-threatening health effects, including "hemorrhaging, bleeding, sepsis, even loss of future fertility," reported last October.These side effects are dangerous with a doctor present, let alone without. Yet, Planned Parenthood argues that had the ban gone into effect, women would have had to suffer the inconvenience of traveling back and forth for doctor visits."Had this ban gone into effect, many women would have had to take multiple trips of up to 400 miles to access safe, legal abortion , as more than one-third of Iowans live in rural areas," the non-profit said.Iowa was the first state in which Planned Parenthood started performing webcam abortions in 2008  killing more than 7,000 babies in this way since then. The practice was threatened in 2013 when the Iowa Board of Medicine "passed standards that require physicians to perform a physical examination of the patient in person and to be with the patient when the abortion-inducing drug is taken," reports Upset by their inability to perform webcam abortions, the nonprofit took the Iowa Board of Medicine to court, and the Iowa Supreme Court sided with Planned Parenthood, ruling 60 that the regulations were somehow "unconstitutional." A former Planned Parenthood employee, turned whistle-blower , accused the non-profit of defrauding the Medicaid system as it routinely billed abortion-related services including ultrasounds, office visits and medication.The whistle-blower alleged that tele-abortions were just another way for the organization to make money on a "shoestring budget with little medical involvement."Planned Parenthood received more heat last year than usual, but you won't see the controversy reflected in its report, which reveals that the agency still managed to obtain more than $553 million dollars in taxpayer funding  more than 40 percent of which comes from government health services, grants and reimbursements, reportsThe non-profit's total net assets for 2014 exceeded $1.4 billion. However, while government donations increased, Planned Parenthood's clientele is on the decline "They lost a significant share of their patients, provided fewer actual medical services, spent far more money on other things, made less profit, and became even more dependent on government funding," said Jamie Hall, a senior policy analyst with the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation.The number of abortions it performed slightly decreased from 327,653 in 2014 to 323,999 in 2015.
Bringing scientific transparency to the cannabis marketplace

Thousands of cannabis strains preserved, their DNA mapped out for future growing specialties

(NaturalNews) "Jackpot!" exclaimed Mowgli Holmes, a 43-year-old geneticist with a doctorate in microbiology and immunology from Columbia University. He had just come across an old treasure from the 1930s, something that he could use to restore scientific knowledge regarding the medicinal qualities of cannabis . This treasure was a huge missing piece in his quest to bring transparency to the genome of cannabis, a collection that he could analyze and map out to forever change how entire societies view marijuana When marijuana prohibition began sweeping through America in 1937 with the Marijuana Tax Act, attitudes toward cannabis quickly darkened. The plant, and all of its eclectic uses, dropped into the shadows, off the grid, into obscurity. A war was slowly waged against the plant over the next several decades. Cannabis hysteria spread, and all the virtues of the plant became demonized.In 2013, after spending years in HIV research, chief scientific officer of Phylos Bioscience, Mowgli Holmes, saw an entirely new career path unfolding right in front of him. With Oregon only a year away from legalizing marijuana for recreational use, Holmes saw a new opportunity for research: studying the genome of cannabis."In every other academic field, you have to find the tiniest little corner of the world to study. It's almost impossible to find something nobody else has done, and immediately someone is competing with you," he says. "Here, we have an entire organism that there's basically no body of knowledge on.... This doesn't happen in science, where you have a plant like this that's been cordoned off from research." He reiterated, "There's a whole new industry exploding all around it."By mapping out the genome of cannabis , he could take cannabis out of the shadows and validate all the cannabis product claims currently circulating. By comparing and differentiating between different strains of bud, the entire cannabis underworld would come out of the dark and into the light of transparency, validating current medicinal claims , while also preventing the sale of falsely advertised buds.Since cannabis is vilified and outlawed, it's produced in the dark, with no transparency or oversight governing the medicinal quality of the strains produced. Recreational consumers and medical patients buy up cannabis products by simply just trusting the supplier. Many products contain catchy labels that are oftentimes misleading.The treasure Holmes discovered had belonged to a legend of the cannabis movement, Ohio lawyer Don Wirtshafter. They met at the Marijuana Business Conference and Expo in Las Vegas in 2014. The treasure is a 1930s collection of cannabis tinctures, representing various ancient strains . Wirtshafter obtained the collection from the wife of a former federal employee who defied cannabis prohibition through the years.With this collection, Holmes could study various strains of U.S. cannabis DNA from before prohibition, to compare it with his ever-increasing database of world cannabis strains. The differentiations he could make would be vital for public knowledge, to bring clarity to the entire marijuana market  from growers, to dispensers, to product manufacturers.At this point, Holmes has collected nearly 2,000 specimens from around the world. Working at their own Oregon Health and Science University, Holmes and ten other colleagues search for different cannabis strains throughout the world, mostly through word-of-mouth treasure huntsBy entering the cannabis genome information into his software program and organizing the DNA into clusters, Holmes is able to get a visual representation of how the different strains relate to one another. The most valuable samples have come from museums and collectors from Colombia, Afghanistan, India and Thailand. He is currently trying to gain access to a 2,700-year-old strain from Northern China.One of Holmes' future goals is to work with growers to create new strains that have specific traits. He also looks forward to mapping the history of human travels by studying the migration of cannabis through history.As the world's cannabis genome is mapped out, buyers and patients will be able to find the strain that is best suited for them. This will bring extraordinary scientific clarity to the growing cannabis marketplace
Tom Hanks knows he can naturally reverse Type-2 diabetes

Important lifestyle changes for reversing type-2 diabetes

Eliminate endocrine disrupting chemicals from your life. The best place to start is by filtering your water using a scientifically-validated water purification system that removes pesticides, herbicides, heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, BPA and other plastic chemicals. Municipal water, bottled water and even well water is often a questionable soup of chemicals and metals that interfere with nutrient absorption and normal hormone activities in the body.

Eliminate processed meats containing sodium nitrite  a meat preservative that causes problems with the pancreas, leading to insulin resistance.

Stop consuming refined sugars and refined white bread products. This process takes time, but is important. High fructose corn syrup aggressively harms the pancreas and the metabolism, allowing the type-2 diabetes to persist.

Add hot peppers to the diet, such as cayenne, jalapeno and habaneros. These delights have shown promise for "jump-starting" the islet cells in the pancreas that produce insulin.

Add fenugreek seed to your diet. This hard, bitter seed is easier to consume as a powdered supplement, but nonetheless, is known for helping the body regulate insulin levels naturally.

Plunges and surges in blood sugar can also be controlled by including more polyphenols in the diet. Polyphenols are essentially plant medicines found throughout nature. One of the most abundant classes of polyphenols is tannins which are concentrated in various herbs, leaf tissue, bark, flowers and fruits.

Daily exercise is also a vital way to reverse diabetes, especially when that exercise is coupled with healthy sun exposure. Vitamin D, manufactured in the skin after sunlight absorption, is necessary for maintaining a healthy immune and endocrine system.

Consuming higher amounts of superfoods and antioxidant-rich berries helps reverse diabetes. Spirulina, chlorella, astaxanthanin and blueberries are all important to include in your lifestyle.

(NaturalNews) Most people diagnosed with Type-2 diabetes believe it's a condition they will have for the rest of their lives. Convinced that there is little they can do to stop it, they accept their diagnoses and allow the pharmaceutical system to manage their condition for the rest of their lives. It's a helpless mindset, a thought process that gets imprinted into their minds by a clueless medical culture that has a hard time seeing and admitting the root causes of the metabolic problems associated with Type-2 diabetes Type-2 diabetes can actually be reversed solely through natural lifestyle changes. Famous actor Tom Hanks knows this, and has spoke out about his problems publicly. "I'm part of the lazy American generation that has blindly kept dancing through the party and now finds ourselves with a malady," he said, as reported by. "I was heavy. You've seen me in movies. You know what I looked like. I was a total idiot.""I thought I could avoid it by removing the buns from my cheeseburgers," he explained. "Well, it takes a little bit more than that."Hanks has publicly remarked that he grew up learning very little about nutrition as a child, and this lack of knowledge has affected him as an adult. Onin 2013, he opened up about getting a diagnosis and feeling trapped with it. "My doctor said, 'Look, if you can weigh as much as you weighed in high school, you will essentially be completely healthy. You will not have Type 2 diabetes,' And then I said to her, 'Well, then, I'm gonna have Type 2 diabetes, because there is no way I can weigh as much as I did in high school.'"Tom Hanks knows that the diagnosis can be entirely eliminated from his life, making way for an entirely new, healthy lifestyle. He has recently decided to stop compromising his health for movie roles."I've talked to a number of actors who have gained weight for roles, and just the sheer physical toll it puts on one's knees and shouldersno one wants to do it again," Hanks said at the 2013 BFI London Film Festival. "I'm 57 and I don't think I'm going to take on any job or go on vacation again and see to it that I can gain 30 pounds."The good news is that Tom Hanks knows that Type-2 diabetes is something he can overcome. He just has to change key areas of his lifestyle so he can naturally reverse it.You do not have to be fooled by pharmaceutical advertisements into believing that you need medication to manage type-2 diabetes. Pathetically, popular TV psychologist Dr. Phil has partnered with AstraZeneca The bottom line is this: diabetes doeshave to be a lifelong condition. You do not have to be dependent on pharmaceuticals that are only a death sentence.
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Photo: Taxi Crashes Through Baggage Claim Door At O'Hare Airport

By Mae Rice in News on May 31, 2016 3:39PM

If O'Hare International Airport has a 2016 motto, it's "Damn, we can't catch a break!" Just as the airport's nightmarish security lines began clearing up... a taxi crashed through a glass door on the airport's lower level.

Here's a photo of the scene:



Photo courtesy of Padraig McCoid

The crash happened at 5:33 p.m. on Memorial Day, police said, when a car jumped the curb and crashed into Door D of Terminal 3's lower levelhome to American Airlines' baggage claim, according to a spokesperson for the Chicago Department of Aviation.

No one was injured in the crash, and the driver of the vehicle was issued a citation for "failure to reduce speed to avoid an accident," police said.

Because no one was injured, we feel okay sharing this Tweet about the incident:
Zoo biologists have found out over the years that gorillas have some of the strongest maternal instincts in the animal kingdom. A recent footage captured at the Cincinatti zoo, raised a debate whether Harambe, the 400-pound silverback was merely protecting the boy who fell into his moat and not trying to hurt him.

On Monday, Harambe was fatally shot after a four-year-old boy slipped into his moat. The authorities said they did not have a choice so they pulled the trigger.

Having said that, witnesses who were in the scene said the boy was not in danger. In fact, Harambe was protecting the child.

The new footage, captured on a cell phone camera by onlookers shows the western lowland gorilla standing guard over the boy in the corner of the moat. At one part, the two even shared a brief moment holding hands.

The authorities believe the child crawled past the railing and fell 10 feet into the gorilla's habitat.

Cincinnati's WLWT5 was able to talk to a witness named Kim O'Connor.

Narrating the incident O'Connor said the gorilla must have been stressed because of the people screaming and panicking, prompting him to drag the boy further away from the crowd.

"I don't know is screaming did it or too many people hanging on the edge and he though we're coming in, but then he pulled away the boy down further from the big group," she told the news site.

'We'd make the same call today': Zoo stands by killing of gorilla to protect boy despite outrage https://t.co/icRJljmW0z  Fox News (@FoxNews) May 31, 2016

Meanwhile, Jerry Stones who raised Harambe since birth was heartbroken of the incident.

"He was a special guy in my life. Harambe was my heart. It's like losing a member of the family," he told Mirror.UK

Stones describes Harambe as a gentle giant and a sweet cute little pie.

Craig Saffoe, a well-known biologist and curator if the Great Cats and Bears units at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in an interview with Megan Gambino of Smithsonian.com said gorillas are the best mothers.

"I've watched a gorilla nurture her young, and I don't know if it's just so close to home with primates, but if I had to pick a best mom, I think that the gorilla is a great mom," he told the website.

Animal lovers and conservationist groups are outraged after the endangered animal had to be shot dead by zoo staff to protect the boy.
We all have heard about the massive coral bleaching that wiped off 93 percent of the magnificent Great Barrier Reef. So why is Australia's heritage site not included on United Nations' list of world heritage sites threatened by climate change?

Apparently, the Australian government does not want their name of the list because it might negatively impact their tourism industry.

In an exclusive report, The Guardian Australia revealed how the report was altered.

According to The Guardian, the initial report titled "World Heritage and Tourism in a Changing Climate" had the Great Barrier Reef on the list. However, the key chapter was removed after the Australian Department of Environment saw it. Thereby all mention of Australia on their "endangered" list was scraped off in a puff on the final version, despite the fact that the reef is strongly vulnerable to climate change.

The Great Barrier Reef, which stretches 1,200 miles along the coast, is the world's largest living ecosystem. With its beauty that boasts of 400 types of corals, 1,500 species of fish and 4,000 kinds of molluscs, it attracts about two million tourists each year, BBC reported.

Shadow Environment Minister Mark Butler told News.com.au that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's denial is evident.

"Report after report, expert after expert, tells us that the biggest threat to the Great Barrier Reef is climate change. How could UNESCO miss this? They didn't. The Government made sure it was left out."

He added further that hiding from the reality that the Great Barrier Reef is vulnerable will only worsen its state.

The scientists recently found climate change caused the ocean temperatures to rise to emergency levels. On March this year, the worst bleaching on record occurred in Great Barrier Reef.

Meanwhile, other iconic sites in the list were not removed. The report, jointly published by UNESCO, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the United Nations Environmental Program, includes 31 World Heritage properties in 29 countries around the world.
The ocean is home to the most terrifying and most unbelievable creatures on our planet. And just recently, a statistical ecologist from Scotland suggested that a giant squid longer than a school bus might be living in the open ocean.

Charles Paxton, the study's sole author, said the squid may measure up to 66 feet, larger than his first estimate of 43 feet.

School-bus-size giant squid may be lurking deep in the sea:

Steeped in mystery, the elusive, deep-sea-dwelli... https://t.co/O8a5dwMd3U  Coast to Coast AM (@coasttocoastam) May 29, 2016

There have been several rumors about the giant squid, Architeuthis dux, for the past years, but many are still in doubt about its existence. That was the case until a photo of it was published by Japanese researchers in 2004.

Paxton's provocative study, titled "Unleashing the Kraken: On the Maximum Length in the Giant Squid," published on May 17 in the Journal of Zoology provides a basis to conclude that these beasts may be larger and much bigger than previously estimated.

Using statistical analysis, Paxton argued that previous studies had underestimated the size of the giant squid.

"Lots of people believe all sorts of stuff about giant squids, which actually isn't what the evidence says, [including] that it was the kraken and that it is pretty small," he told National Geographic.

Paxton collated the size of numerous parts of the giant squid that have been gathered as evidence over the centuries. The data he gathered from those reports were analyzed to get the total of the maximum length of the giant squid.

As cited by Live Science, the study included analyzing 164 measures of mantle (body) length; 39 measures of standard length; and 47 measures of total length.

"I am extrapolating here, and extrapolation can sometimes be a bit sketchy," Paxton told Live Science.

"But I think these are fairly safe extrapolations. I genuinely think that giant-squid size has been underestimated," he added.

The giant squid is an elusive and puzzling animal.

A brief profile of the giant squid as presented by MarineBio.org said they are the largest invertebrate ever known to exist; they even have the largest eyes in the world and can weigh up to 900 kilograms.

They are believed to have a large nervous system, making them quite interesting to scientists. But being a solitary hunter, they remain mostly off human's radar.

But until more evidence is discovered, it seems like this giant beast may continue to stay off our radar.
A woman is feared to be dead after being attacked by a crocodile during a late-night swim with a friend in Australia's Daintree National Park.

Cindy Waldron, 46, who was from Lithgow, New South Wales, was reportedly swimming in waist-deep water with a friend on Sunday night at Thornton Beach north of Cairns in Queensland when she was attacked.

"It's certainly very, very concerning at this stage and we would hold grave fears for the welfare of the woman," senior police spokesman Russell Parker told ABC.

According to the police, Waldron's 47-year-old friend tried to grab her and drag her to safety, but failed to do so. The woman ran to a nearby business and alerted the people about the incident.

Neil Noble from the Queensland state ambulance service told ABC that a 5-meter crocodile had been spotted in the area recently. Noble said that according to the surviving woman, they felt a nudge and her companion started to scream and was dragged into the water.

"The whole of Cairns and up into the Cape is known for its large crocodiles," Noble said.

Thornton Beach is known as a crocodile habitat. Police said that the women were obviously unaware of the dangers as they were not locals.

But Warren Entsch, local Queensland representative, told The Independent that the women must have seen several crocodile warning signs in the region.

"You can't legislate against human stupidity. If you go swimming at 10 o'clock at night, you're going to get consumed," he added.

A rescue helicopter using thermal imaging equipment was sent to the area but failed to find any trace of Waldron. There are also land-based and boat rescue teams in the area.

The victim's friend suffered from shock and a graze on her arm, which was said to be from the crocodile. She was taken to a hospital in Mossman.

According to AFP news agency, crocodiles are common in the northern part of Australia, and these crocodiles kill about two people on average every year. In 2014, four people were killed by saltwater crocodiles in the Northern Territory, which is the highest number of crocodile-related deaths since 1974, bringing the total casualties to 21.

According to experts, most of these deaths were due to negligence in crocodile-infested waters. Other reasons are that residents have become complacent about their safety and that crocodile population is continuously rising after crocodile hunting was banned in 1971.
The search continues for a Japanese boy who went missing after his parents left him in a bear-infested forest, police said.

Seven-year-old Yamato Tanooka went missing on Saturday in Mt. Komagatake in Nanae, Hokkaido. According to a report in Japan Today, the boy's parents initially told the police that he got lost while the family was out walking in the area to pick wild vegetables.

However, Tanooka's father, 44-year-old Takayuki, told the authorities on Sunday that they had left the boy alone in the forest as a punishment for throwing stones at people and cars during a visit to a nearby park. According to a police spokesman, the parents said they went back to the site after five minutes but the boy was gone.

In a news report in BBC, Tanooka's father said: "I wanted to discipline him, so made him get out of the car to scare him a bit. He's an active, lively boy, but I'm worried how he's doing."

He told reporters at TV Asahi that he did not dare admit the truth to authorities when he first requested for help in searching for his son.

Tanooka has not been seen for three days since his parents left him alone in the woods in northern Hokkaido, which is said to be home to species of wild bears.

The search for the missing boy had begun on Monday, with police and school officials heading the search. According to a report in the South China Morning Post, about 180 Japanese rescuers expanded the search area, mobilizing sniffer dogs and horses to go deeper into the woodlands.

Mitsuru Wakayama, a representative of the local town of Nanae, said that only local residents pass through the area occasionally as a short-cut, and that it is usually dark in the area.

The incident has sparked indignation from the Japanese public, condemning the actions of Tanooka's parents and worrying about the child who is alone in the forest with no food or water.

It is not known if the parents will face charges, police said.
Airbnb provides the opportunity for guests to rate hosts, and vice versa. Now, neighbors of Airbnb listings can chime in.

Coined "Airbnb and your neighborhood," neighbors next to Airbnb houses can express their concerns or complaints directly to the company, according to the Airbnb blog.

Neighbors are free to rant about noise, parties, trash or other disturbances. Any submissions will be anonymous, according to Airbnb.

"Well treat each case seriously and ensure that we give hosts and their neighbors the opportunity to resolve concerns themselves, whenever possible," Airbnb said on its blog.

Once a complaint is submitted, Airbnb will verify the email address and create a case number, according to the blog. The company promises to follow up within five days and says it will suspend or kick out Airbnb hosts who repeatedly ignore the rules.

That was something that could have been helpful to Donald Garner, of Los Altos, whose neighbor's Airbnb rental became a repeated "party pad" for hundreds of teenagers.

"It wasn't the first time," Gardner said about the parties. "It was the third weekend in a row."

Los Altos police Chief Tuck Younis said on that third occasion, about 300 teenagers had rented the house, and when officers arrived, the partiers scattered throughout the neighborhood, causing damage.

That Airbnb rental was taken off the website the day after an NBC Bay Area story aired about it last summer.

It remains empty, and neighbors aren't sure what it will be used for.
Animal rights protesters jumped barricades at a Bernie Sanders rally late Monday in Oakland, California, accusing the candidate of falling short in his efforts to fight "factory farming."

The Democratic presidential hopeful was addressing supporters at Frank Ogawa Plaza at City Hall when five people in their 20s and 30s hopped over barricades and attempted to rush the podium before Secret Service agents escorted them away. Agents also surrounded Sanders.

The group identified itself as the Bay Area-based "Direct Action Everywhere," or DXE. Spokesman Zachary Groff, 24, said "roughly two dozen members of the animal liberation network" were present at the rally.

The group claims to have participated in demonstrations in 152 cities worldwide, including at least four other Sanders rallies.

Groff identified the five group members as Ashley Johnson, of New York City; Rebecca Muniz, of Berkeley; Matt Johnson, of Iowa; Aidan Cook, of Denver; and Amy Halpern-Laff, of Berkeley. They were detained for an hour or two, Groff said, and released without charge.

Video appears to show a Secret Service agent striking one of the barricade jumpers several times with a night stick. Groff identified that person as Johnson, whom he said suffered a bloody wound on his hand.

Although Sanders is, in many ways, the most progressive candidate campaigning, the group says he is not progressive enough when it comes to animal issues.

"Sanders claims to oppose 'factory farming,' but what he hides is that virtually all farms in the United States, including farms he supports, are essentially factory farms," said Groff, a Yale University graduate who is moving to Berkeley. "This was a success. We got the whole country talking about animal rights. You can't really be progressive and oppose animal rights."

Protesters jumped barricades and interrupted a Bernie Sanders rally late Monday in Oakland. Pete Suratos reports.

Activists were not protesting Sanders himself, Groff said, but were trying to pull him in a more progressive direction. The group gave Hillary Clinton higher marks for releasing a campaign platform on animal issues, although the Democratic front-runner also "stops far short of what activists would like to see," Groff said.

Activists said they expect Sanders, "the progressive candidate, to support more radical action to provide animals not just with improved conditions but with legal rights to be free from harm."

The brief scuffle didn't seem to deter Sanders.

"We don't get intimidated easily," the candidate said afterward.

The crowd of about 20,000 was otherwise mostly peaceful. They cheered when Sanders donned a Golden State Warriors cap and told the crowd why he would be the best option for Democrats come November.

"In virtually every state and national poll, we do much better than Trump than Secretary Clinton does," he said.

But Sanders faces an uphill battle, as his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton is about 70 delegates away from clinching the nomination. A large number of those are superdelegates who could change their minds, and that's what Sanders and his supporters are banking on. Sanders believes a win in California, a state with 475 delegates, would be a giant first step in the right direction.

"If there is a large voter turnout, we will win and win big," he told the gathering in Oakland.

[NATL] Highlights From the 2016 Campaign Trail

Supporters aren't giving up either.

"He should stay in to the very last minute," said Joshua Harris, who was at the Oakland rally. "He should stay in as long as he can."

Another Sanders supporter, Jeff Nibert, agreed: "If California can send a message to the country next Tuesday, that would be a shocker around the world."
Two Novato High School students, both minors, will be charged with murder and attempted murder of their classmate as adults, the Marin County district attorney's office said Tuesday.

A 20-year-old man was arrested Sunday in connection with the fatal shooting in Novato last week. Elmer Fernando Machado-Rivera, of San Rafael, who is also the cousin of one of the juvenile defendants, was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy after the fact in the homicide case stemming from the shooting death of Novato High School student Edwin Josue Ramirez Guerra, 17, of San Rafael. Another student, Lefferson Diaz, also was shot and stabbed in the incident but survived.

The Marin County DA's office announced Tuesday that it will be filing murder, attempted murder and special circumstances charges against the two minors, Juan Carlos Martinez Henriquez and Edwin Guevara, in the adult court system.

Machado-Rivera is not being charged with the murder or the attempted murder but as an accessory after the fact.

Neither juvenile faces the death penalty because they were juveniles at the time of the offense. Under court decisions and California statutory law death penalty cannot be imposed on juveniles, Marin County District Attorney Edward S. Berberian said. "They are subject to the possibility of life without parole sentences but under California statutory law that punishment is discretionary with the court and if convicted on qualifying crimes would be addressed during the sentencing process," Berberian said.

Law enforcement agencies conducted two raids at two homes in the Novato area on Thursday and arrested the two minors.

The district attorney's office said the two students will be placed in a yet-to-be determined felony criminal department Wednesday morning.

Classes resumed at Novato High School for the first time Tuesday since the fatal shooting. Counselors were present to help the community of 1,400 students to cope with their grief. Student body president Romario Conrado has set up a GoFundMe account to raise money for the victim's families.

The account has so far raised $2,470.

"I am always here for anyone, even if we've never even communicated. Do not hesitate on sending me a message if you need an ear, a shoulder, a friend, or even a hug," Conrado says in a message on the page.
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A Bible excerpt, included in a Chinese language textbook for seventh-graders in Beijing, is meant to expand students' horizon on western culture, a staff from the textbook regulator said.

A Bible excerpt is included in a Chinese language textbook for seventh-graders in Beijing. [File photo]

"God created the Universe," a translated version of a Bible excerpt in Genesis, has been included in the Chinese language textbook for seventh-graders in the country's capital city, reported the Beijing Youth Daily.

The textbook, which has sparked controversy since the news came out recently, was actually published 10 years ago and included other content from ancient Chinese myths and legends.

"The inclusion of a Bible story in this edition of the Chinese textbook is to help expand the students' horizon," explained a staff member from the Beijing Educations Scientific Research Institute, the regulator of textbooks used in the city.
Two Pittsburg teens drowned Saturday while on a camping trip in Amador County, according to the Amador County Sheriff's Office.

The victims - Zuleica Miranda Ruiz, 18, and Brandon Carranza, 19 - were cousins, according to Pittsburg Unified School District Superintendent Dr. Janet Schultz.

Ruiz was scheduled to graduate from Pittsburg High School next week. Carranza graduated last year, Schulze said in a letter to the school community.

"Our deepest condolences go out to the families of these two teens with such bright futures ahead of them," she wrote. "It is a time of enormous sorrow."

Ruiz participated in the Explorers Program and the Foot Pursuit Running Club with the Pittsburg Police Department. She was planning to attend Sacramento State in the Fall. Carranza was active in the school's AVID program.

Amador County Undersheriff Jim Wegner said the two teens were jumping off rocks into the Mokelumne River when they were swept away downstream around 2:30 p.m. Saturday.

Wegner said the water was moving very swiftly over the weekend.

There was no cell service in the area so someone had to drive to call 911.

Sheriff's deputies, a swift water rescue team and a California Highway Patrol helicopter searched for the teens, while PG&E lowered the flow of the river, according to Wegner.

Ruiz and Carranza were eventually located and pronounced dead at the scene.

Schulze said grief counselors are available at the school to speak with students about the tragedy. The school is also planning a vigil at 6 p.m. Wednesday.

The teenagers' families set up GoFundMe fundraising accounts to help pay for burial costs. Zulieca Ruiz's is here and Brandon Carranza's is here.
Someone altered three Texas Department of Transportation electronic road signs over the holiday weekend and made their political preferences known to the world.

The portable signs  which typically display messages like "Exit Closed" or "Lanes Shift Ahead"  read "Bernie for President" and "Donald Trump Is a Shape-Shifting Lizard" during the morning commute Tuesday. Workers with TxDOT began turning the signs off shortly before 6 a.m.

All the signs were found in west Dallas. The "Trump" sign greeted drivers headed west on Interstate 30 as they approach the Cockrell Hill Road exit. The "Bernie" sign was positioned nearby on Westmoreland Road beneath I-30.

A third sign that read "Work Is Canceled  Go Back Home" was later found on Westmoreland Road, just north of I-30.

UPDATE: TxDOT crews just came and turned off the hacked sign here at Westmoreland & I-30 pic.twitter.com/fB4B6ik6UJ  Tim Ciesco (@TimCiesco) May 31, 2016

TxDOT officials said the signs belong to a contractor who has been performing work along I-30. They believe the signs were turned off and locked before the holiday weekend.

According to TxDOT spokesman Ryan LaFontaine, who is concerned about the hacker's "boldness," the signs cannot be altered remotely and must be changed manually at the control panels.

"You have to actually be there," he said. "Power it up and get in there and break the password."

Similar situations have been reported across the country, with those responsible gaining access to the electronic signs control panel and changing the message it displays.

"Any sort of tampering with that sort of stuff is a third-degree felony and it's punishable. We're talking prison time," LaFontaine said. "It's not something that's taken lightly be any means."

A third-degree felony is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. LaFontaine says if anyone notices suspicious activity around portable signs, especially when there is no construction, to contact TXDOT or local police.

NBC 5's Chris Van Horne and Tim Ciesco contributed to this report.
The city of Chicago has settled a police department "code of silence" lawsuit brought by two whistleblowers, on the day the trial in the case was set to begin.



The city settled Tuesday for $2 million, a sum the City Council still must approve.



The settlement follows a federal judge's ruling Friday that the city cannot just admit that a code of silence exists within the Chicago Police Department -- he wants to hear Mayor Rahm Emanuel describe it for himself.



The city's corporate counsel said Tuesday the settlement has "nothing to do with preventing the mayor from testifying."

The testimony was ordered for a case where two veteran police officers, Shannon Spalding and Daniel Echeverria, say they faced retaliation after attempting to expose corruption in the Ida B. Wells housing project on Chicagos South Side.



"We are hopeful this will signal the beginning of the end of the code of silence that permeates within the Chicago Police Department," attorney Jeffrey Taren, one of the lawyers representing the two officers, said Tuesday of the settlement.

After Emanuel spoke of an unwritten code in remarks before the Chicago City Council last fall, Spalding and Echeverrias attorneys added the mayor to their potential witness list. City lawyers fought to exclude his testimony, even offering to stipulate to the existence of the so-called code."

But Judge Gary Feinerman refused, ruling that Emanuel would offer "further evidence of an unwritten policy and practice."

But that wasnt the officers only victory. Over city objections, the Judge also ruled that the Spalding and Echeverria could introduce the findings of the recent police accountability task force.

The code of silence is not just an unwritten rule, or an unfortunate element of police culture past and present, the task force wrote. The code of silence is institutionalized and reinforced by CPD rules and policies.

It is extraordinarily prejudicial, city attorney Alan King told the court. I think it is an inappropriate position to be put in.

Of the $2 million, $1 million will pay for attorney fees and the two officers will split $1 million.
During a Tuesday press conference, Mayor Rahm Emanuel lauded Illinois lawmakers efforts to override Gov. Bruce Rauners veto of a plan to reduce Chicago's payments to its police and fire pension funds.

Not only do I want to thank our allies in both parties in both chambers, I also want to thank allies in labor and business and community groups who came together to help us with the effort, Emanuel said. It helped Chicago avoid raising property taxes another $300 million that was not necessary.

Last week, Rauner vetoed the plan that would save the city an estimated $1 billion by decreasing pension payments over the next five years, saying it was the kind of "irresponsible" practice that led to Illinois' deep financial woes.

Following Fridays veto, Emanuel said the Republican governor "just told every Chicago taxpayer to take a hike." Emanuel also said the move would lead to "the Rauner tax."

Rauner called Monday's override vote "unfortunate," saying the move puts an additional $18.6 billion "on the backs of taxpayers."

"Clearly, those who supported this measure havent recognized what happens when governments fail to promptly fund pension obligations," Rauner said in a statement. "Instead of kicking the can down the road, local and state governments should instead focus on reforms that will grow our economy, create jobs and enable us live up to the promises weve made to police and firefighters.

Emanuel rebuffed Rauners claims Tuesday.

This is not kicking the can down the road, this is actually confronting the issue, Emanuel said.

The Legislature approved the Chicago police and fire pension bill last year. Democrats said it would save the retirement funds without crushing taxpayers.

Chicago's payments to the funds are set to jump to $840 million this year, up from $300 million. The legislation would set the 2016 payment at $619 million.
A 29-year-old man was stabbed during a fight with another person on a CTA bus on the city's Southwest Side Tuesday night.

Police said the incident happened around 7:30 p.m. in the 7000 block of South Western Avenue of the citys Marquette Park neighborhood.

The man was transported to the hospital with stab wounds to the chest and shoulder, police said.

The suspect tried to run after the stabbing, but was quickly arrested.

Further information on what caused the altercation was not made immediately available.
A popular Chicago restaurant is fighting back after being vandalized with anti-gay graffiti over the weekend.

Hamburger Marys in the citys Andersonville neighborhood said an employee found the words Die F--s spray painted on one of the restaurants bathroom doors Saturday.

My first reaction when I saw it was actually annoyed, said owner Ashley Wright. Literally a split second later it was just sort of this gut wrenching feeling.

The LGBT-friendly North Side restaurant, described as an open-air bar and grille for open-minded people, is one of 14 restaurants nationwide and one of two in Chicago. It was recently featured on an episode of CBS Undercover Boss.

This was someone who came into my house, my establishment and spray painted a hateful message to me and my customers and staff, Wright said.

The owner has since painted over the graffiti with rainbow colors and the word Love and notified police of the incident.

I was like, Im just going to have fun with this and make this kind of a testament to- a shrine if you will- to acceptance and diversity, Wright said.

Wright said surveillance video from the restaurant shows the alleged suspect. That video is expected to be turned over to authorities.

Police confirmed an investigation into the incident is ongoing.
A 13-year-old girl has died and her 12-year-old brother is still missing after the siblings fell into dangerous waters in the Kankakee River Monday evening.

Just before 6 p.m., authorities in Wilmington, roughly 60 miles southwest of Chicago, were called to a report of people distressed in the river and unable to get out.

Officials said two children who had been in the area for a family picnic, were playing in the river in South Island Park when they got too close to the dam.

According to Chief Phillip Arnold, the children began struggling to swim when two Good Samaritans jumped in to help them. The Good Samaritans then began having trouble in the turbulent water and officials arriving at the scene managed to rescue one of them using throw ropes while the other was pulled out of the water.

The 13-year-old girl was ejected from rolling water near the dam and pulled out by bystanders along the shore with the help of a rope, authorities said. She was pronounced dead at Joliet Hospital.

The dam produces that turbulent effect thats why we have the signs posted down there because its hard to get out of once you get into it, said Deputy Chief Todd Friddle.

The girls 12-year-old brother was still missing as of Monday evening.

Police said the search for the boy was suspended for the evening and would resume as a recovery mission at dawn.
A 36-year-old suburban Chicago woman is accused of putting nail polish remover in her 17-month-old stepdaughters bottle.

Andrea Vazquez-Hernandez, of Carol Stream, was charged with felony aggravated battery and domestic battery and faces up to five years in prison. Her bond was set at $250,000 Tuesday.

Police were called to Vazquez-Hernandezs home Sunday evening for a child who may have ingested nail polish remover. The father of the baby told officers he attempted to give his daughter a bottle of milk earlier in the night and she immediately spit it out, prosecutors said.

The girl was taken to a hospital, where tests came back normal and she was later released.

An investigation into the matter, however, revealed that at some point during the day, the babys stepmother added roughly one inch of nail polish remover to the bottle, prosecutors said Tuesday.

The allegations against this defendant are extremely disturbing, DuPage County States Attorney Robert Berlin said in a statement. Thankfully, the young victim in this case did not ingest any of the nail polish remover allegedly supplied by her stepmother.

Vazquez-Hernandez is expected to appear in court again on June 27. It was not immediately known if she had an attorney.
State police responded to two fatal crashes over the long holiday weekend, issued thousands of tickets and charged 51 drivers accused of driving under the influence.

Between 12:01 a.m. on Thursday and 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, state police issued 1,263 tickets for speeding, 903 for seatbelt violations and 4,111 for hazardous moving violations, including unsafe lane changes, following too closely, using a cellphone while driving or texting while driving.

State police also investigated 447 crashes, including 74 with injuries.

One fatal crash was on Route 8 in Waterbury on Saturday morning and the other was on Route 44 in North Cannan on Sunday evening.

Melvin Gordils, 26, of Bridgeport, was on foot on the Route 8 exit 33 ramp to Interstate 84 West when he was hit by a car just after 2 a.m. on Saturday, according to police. He was pronounced dead at the scene, according to state police.

Ronald Westerveit, 74, of Shokan, New York, was killed in a crash on Route 44 in North Canaan just after 5:15 p.m. on Sunday, according to state police.

Over the 2015 Memorial Day weekend, police investigated two fatal crashes and issued 1,254 tickets for speeding, 1,454 for seatbelt violations and 4,548 for hazardous moving violations.

They made DWI arrests and investigated 285 crashes.
A cashier working with several people stole $11,000 in merchandise from the Polo outlet at Clinton Crossing, according to police, and authorities are trying to identify her accomplices.

Police called this an organized retail theft case and said the crimes happened between January and March.

The employee, working as a cashier, orchestrated the thefts with four to five people who posed as customers, police said.

Police Investigate Thefts from Polo in Clinton

To steal the items, the cashier would void large transactions, then place the merchandise from the voided transactions in the customers bags and allow them to leave, police said.

The employee has admitted to the scam but refused to name her accomplices, who might be from the New London area, according to police.

Anyone with information should call Officer Matakaetis or Sergeant Flynn at 860-669-0451 or email Gmatakaetis@clintonct.org or jflynn@clintonct.org.
Fifteen associations of history scholars and educators in Japan issued a joint statement on Monday, demanding the related parties sincerely face the "comfort women" issue so as to fundamentally solve this problem.

The statement said that the Japan-Korea Agreement, which was reached following a conference held at the end of last December between the two nations'foreign ministers, failed to sufficiently address the hopes and desires of the parties involved, adding that it only represents an intra-governmental accord that appears designed to suppress future debates.

The 15 associations consist of the Japanese Historical Council, the Japanese Society for Historical Studies and the Association of Historical Science believe that the agreement obscures the issue of official involvement in the "comfort women" system as it only vaguely acknowledges the "involvement of the Japanese military authorities."

Under the Dec. 28 agreement, Japan pledged to pay 1 billion yen (about 8.3 million U.S. dollars) from its state funds to launch a new foundation for the so-called comfort women, a euphemism referring to Korean women coerced into sexual servitude for Japanese military brothels before and during WWII.

In return, Seoul agreed on a "final and irreversible "resolution on the wartime sex slavery and the two countries" will refrain from accusing or criticizing each other"in the international community. Regarding this, the statement said the agreement threatens to suppress subsequent historical research and any future solutions to the issue that research can provide.

The statement also pointed out that the agreement makes no reference to historical education, despite the fact that accounts of the "comfort women" issue continue to be removed from Japanese textbooks.

"We believe that the agreement is incapable of truly and fundamentally resolving the 'comfort women' issue," the statement said.

South Korea's foreign ministry declared Monday that a preparatory committee would be launched on Tuesday to establish the World War II sexual slavery victims foundation, which was agreed upon in December last year with Japan.

South Korean sex slavery victims and advocacy groups have continued rally to protest the agreement every Wednesday in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, expressing their reluctance to receive the funds from Japanese coffers and demanding the nullification of the agreement.
Students at a Connecticut public charter school are protesting what they say is a lack of diversity among the staff.

About 100 students gathered near the campus of Achievement First Amistad High School in New Haven on Tuesday morning.

The New Haven Register reports the protests come as the city's public schools have acknowledged they need to "accelerate and expand" hiring of diverse candidates.

Statistics provided by Achievement First show that 98 percent of its 1,910 students across five New Haven schools are black or Latino. Seventeen percent of the 314 staff members are black or Latino.

The charter school's assistant superintendent says leadership plans to meet with protesters.

Achievement First is a charter school network with 30 schools across five cities in New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island.
Reginald Dwayne Betts refuses to let his time in prison define his life. But he admits that he can't escape it. Even with an Ivy League education.

Days before he received his degree from Yale Law School on May 23, the Maryland native was splitting time between writing his final research paper and helping a longtime friend write letters to his parole officer.

It took a special bond to grab Betts' attention during one of the most hectic weeks in his life, a bond born when the two shared a cellblock in a Virginia prison.

"I've come a considerable distance from who I was at 16, but I'm still intimately connected to it, given the work I'm doing," Betts said. "Of course, it feels amazing to say I've come this huge distance, but the distance I've traveled is only worth it if I'm able to pull other people up."

At 16, Betts used a borrowed pistol to carjack a man sleeping in his car at Virginia's Springfield Mall, an offense that put him behind bars for eight years. At 35, he has a wife and two energetic sons, a degree from one of the top law schools in the country, and a desire to change the national conversation about incarceration.

"It's useful to have someone who's experienced both sides to be part of the conversation," he said. "The law is a way to think and argue, and a way to find solutions. We think of people in the system, but we don't think of how to get them out from under the thumb of the system."

Betts spent a good part of his life trying to outrun his criminal record. But few can move faster than three felonies, and Betts found that they were always waiting for him.

On job applications. In the leasing offices for apartment complexes. There was always that box to check, a question about "criminal history" that dug up the specter of a life-changing mistake forged in the heat of a teenager's brash recklessness.

He found freedom from his past at a place some might call unlikely. At Yale, Betts was surrounded by a different class of people. Young men and women who flocked to the campus because their parents were lawyers. Because, they told him, it was the next logical step in their lives.

He never felt alienated. In fact, his ease of assimilation steeled his resolve.

"My ability to connect with my classmates told me it's possible to have a society that doesn't judge me for my past mistakes," he said. "That it's possible to create the notion that pre- and post-arrest, even pre- and post-incarceration, you're still a part of society."

As comfortable as he felt at Yale, law school wasn't always Betts' goal. He strove to be a writer, and has had more success in that field than most. A memoir and two collections of poetry. Fellowships to Warren Wilson College, where he earned a masters of fine arts, and Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

"Law is the language of power, and understanding that language is important to understanding power," he said. "My concern with the law started with me being arrested, but it didn't necessarily put me in law school."

During his stint in prison, Betts realized he wasn't being properly credited for the time he'd served between his arrest and his conviction. But he didn't know how to communicate that through the proper channels. So he took a paralegal course.

"I didn't do it because I wanted to be a lawyer," he said. "I did it because I didn't want to be in another situation where I didn't know the answers to questions that affected my life."

That desire to learn, to gain leverage over the forces that control life, was apparent the first time Betts walked into Heather Gerken's constitutional law class.

"He was constantly asking me for extra reading; no one needs extra reading in law school," Gerken said. "It was like he was in a different world and was determined to figure it out and master it."

Gerken's was one of the first classes Betts took in New Haven. He wasn't the only one who learned from the experience.

"I've been in this business 15 years, and he taught me," Gerken said. "We teach that different classifications are acceptable if you're convicted of a felony. He's the living embodiment of why we should take issues with that and challenge that."

Betts believes part of his success with his classmates and professors at Yale came from his openness he's not afraid, he said, to talk about his past.

It was his first and only crime, an uncharacteristic one. Betts was an honors student, the treasurer of his class at Suitland High, a magnet school in the Washington suburbs. But a streak of anger ran through him.

"I talked too much as a kid, never connected with teachers or who I needed to build my future," he said. "I didn't live in a place where you talked with people like me about going to college."

He started skipping the classes he excelled at and fell in with peers who didn't share his gifts, whose ambitions didn't extend beyond the streets they idled on.

"As a kid, robbery was a possibility, and one night, it became an option," he said. "I didn't think enough, but it wasn't peer pressure. I don't want to put this on another person. I just thought I was different, that I could avoid jail."

It was February, chilly. Betts remembers the look on his victim's face when he tapped the muzzle of the pistol on the window of the green Pontiac Grand Prix. Afterward, sitting in the stolen car, there was little joy.

"As soon as it happened, I knew I was going to prison," he said. "I remember feeling it, even as I was driving away from the mall, I knew it."

He was arrested the next day at another mall, Pentagon City in Arlington, during a shopping trip with the Pontiac owner's stolen credit card. Betts spent the following eight years in jail for carjacking, use of a firearm during a felony and attempted robbery.

Post-release, Betts' life was flurry of activity. A job as an assistant manager of a bookstore in Maryland. Degrees from community college, the University of Maryland, Warren Wilson College. A marriage to Terese. The births of Micah and Miles.

"He's a one-man wrecking ball for prejudice against people who often get written off," said Noah Messing, who taught Betts during his second year at Yale. "Yale did not make Dwayne. He's already an extraordinary person. Yale is giving him the first opportunity in an environment to think critically."

Messing said he got a firsthand look at Betts' "charm and personality" during a class on legal writing and research. Though he was the oldest student in the room, Betts excelled at forging relationships, according to his former professor.

"He creates, in a really rare way, an amazing chance for people to talk to folks who've had contact with the criminal justice system and explore what it's like," Messing said.

Beyond those relationships, Betts was a competent student, a voracious reader who pressed Messing for ways to adapt his literary writing style to the utilitarian approach lawyers thrive on.

"It's one of the most remarkable things about Dwayne," he said. "It makes me wonder with such heartbreak about what extraordinary potential is being left on the sidelines because people don't get second chances in life."

Betts isn't wasting his. He plans to take the bar exam in Pennsylvania and Connecticut. And, armed with a fellowship from Yale's Arthur Liman Public Interest Program, he hopes to research and practice public interest lawyering "around criminal justice issues," he said.

Post-conviction relief will be his main focus.

"This, all of this, allows me to prove my story is useful," Betts said. "In conversations, lawmakers will look at me and say 'you're an exception.' Yeah, well, in 2005, I wasn't. And I want to fight for that guy."
A female Somers High School student accused of making a threat against the school on Instagram has been charged and school officials determined the threat was not credible, according to the superintendent's office.

A parent of a student who received the threat reached out to school officials around 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday, according to the superintendent, Dr. Maynard M. Suffredini Jr., and police began investigating.

State police said the student was charged with breach of peace.

The school was not locked down because the school doors are always locked and people have to buzz to get into the school, according to the superintendent.

Parents, as well as administrators of the elemetary and middle school, were notified of the situation.
Jurors found former suburban Chicago police officer Drew Peterson guilty Tuesday in a plot to kill the prosecutor who helped convict him in 2012 of murdering his third wife.

The verdict was reached within two hours of closing arguments and after about an hour of deliberation.

"The evidence in this case was clear that the defendant plotted from jail to solicit the murder of States Attorney Jim Glasgow," Attorney General Lisa Madigan said. "I thank the members of the jury for their service, and I commend the prosecutors for their hard work and relentless commitment to bringing this case to a successful conclusion."



"This just put another nail in his coffin," said Cassandra Cales, the sister of Stacy Peterson, Peterson's fourth wife who remains missing. "Now I obviously hope that he sees that he's never getting out of jail."



Peterson, 62, is serving a 38-year sentence for the death of Kathleen Savio and faces up to 60 more years in prison.

A prison informant testified last week that Peterson enlisted him to plot the death of Glasgow, the Will County state's attorney.



"It's the defendant's own words that prove him guilty beyond reasonable doubt," said Steve Nate of the Illinois attorney general's office, which assisted Randolph County prosecutors with the case.



In a written statement after the verdict, Glasgow said a jury "once again has held him accountable for his unlawful actions."



"Four years ago, I successfully prosecuted Drew Peterson for the murder of his third wife, Kathleen Savio," Glasgow said. "He is now serving a 38-year prison sentence for a brutal act of violence that claimed the life of an innocent woman. Rather than accepting responsibility for his crime and serving his sentence, he has continued his illegal activities behind bars by plotting my murder, a crime which his recorded conversations show he would have been all too happy to take care of himself."

Prosecutors said Peterson believed he would be able to successfully appeal his conviction in Savio's death if Glasgow was dead.

Peterson's court-appointed public defender has dismissed the secret recordings of his client arranging for the hit with informant Antonio "Beast" Smith as exaggerated prison boasts. The lawyer also attacked the informant's credibility.



According to wiretapped conversations played in court, Peterson was planning an alcohol-fueled prison celebration after arranging for another inmate's uncle to kill the prosecutor.



"You know this (expletive) gonna be all over the news," Smith says in the recordings. "This is about to be huge."



"But the first thing they will identify him as the guy that got me," Peterson responds. "That's what he's known for, the guy that prosecuted Drew Peterson."



Told by Smith that his uncle  whom he never actually called  would commit the crime by the next month, Peterson suggested that Glasgow's death would be a "nice Christmas present."



The recordings show that Peterson also discussed selling drugs in Mexico if he gets out of prison, as well as his fears that Glasgow would also charge him in the death of Stacy Peterson.



Savio's death was initially deemed accidental. Glasgow reopened the case after the 2007 disappearance of Stacy Peterson, Peterson's 23-year-old fourth wife. Peterson was never charged in her disappearance but told the informant he worried that Glasgow would eventually do so.
The buzz around town in Manchester, New Hampshire, is about the popular show "COPS" filming in the city, but the first night of filming has turned into the crew's last.

Manchester Chief Nick Willard discontinued participation with "COPS" after he says he heard too many concerns from residents and business owners that the filming would give his city a bad name.

When a photo showing a film crew riding along with police Friday night hit Facebook feeds across Manchester, opinions started flying.

"A lot of people were sharing it," said resident Ethan Moorhouse.

Some people say they liked the idea of having their city featured.

"By bringing it out in the open, it shines a light on things going on," said longtime Manchester resident Chrissy Simonds.

But according to hundreds of comments on the Facebook page Manchester Information, the majority of people wanted "COPS" to go home.

"Having cops here is giving Manchester a bad vibe," Moorhouse said.

James Crawford agreed, saying, "That's just the way of nature, you don't want to show your worst side."

In response to concerns like that, Chief Willard sent a letter to Mayor Gatsas and city leaders Sunday, telling them he had pulled the plug on filming.

"MPD officers are the epitome of true American law enforcement so to showcase them was my intent... However, I have since heard from many in the community... who have expressed concern that the show would have a negative impact on the city's image, which is the very last thing I would want," Willard wrote.

"It's the Chief listening to residents and trying to do the best thing he can for Manchester," said another resident Dan Legallo.

"It's really showing that he actually cares about the city and not that it is just going to get publicity for them," Moorhouse said.

Mayor Gatsas tells necn he supports the chief's decision to stop filming. "COPS"producers have not yet returned our calls for comment.

"COPS" aired its first episode in 1989.
Rescuers in Japan were searching Monday for a young boy whose parents abandoned him in bear-inhabited woods as a form of punishment, NBC News reported.

A Hokkaido police spokesperson told NBC News the boy's parents initially said their son became separated from them while looking for wild plants in the woodland.

However, police told NBC News that a family member changed the story the next day to say Yamato Tanooka, 7, had been left behind as a "form of discipline." Relatives couldn't find the boy when they returned moments later, police added.

Tanooka's father was asked on Japanese television why the family had changed its story.

"I couldn't bring myself to say it was to discipline him  and then ask the police to search for him," said the father, whose name has been withheld by officials.

Local temperatures dropped to 46.5 degrees Sunday night, the Hokkaido Shimbun Press reported
More than a dozen big checks flowed out of New York last week, bound for veterans' charities from Donald Trump. On Tuesday, he announced he had made good on his promise of last January to give the groups millions of dollars from a highly publicized fundraiser.

The announcement by the presumptive Republican presidential candidate came in the midst of a 40-minute rant against "dishonest" and "sleazy" reporters who have been pressing the issue.

The largest donation, a $1 million check dated May 24 and drawn from Donald J. Trump's personal account, was addressed to a small Tuckahoe, New York, group that provides scholarships to the children of fallen Marines.

Trump had been interviewed that same day by The Washington Post, which for weeks had been raising questions about where the promised money was, urging him to disclose recipients of the millions raised during a splashy telethon-style fundraiser he held in Iowa in January in place of a Fox debate he was boycotting.

At a news conference Tuesday, Trump released a list of 41 groups he said had received $5.6 million.

"Most of the money went out quite a while ago," Trump said. "Some of it went out more recently. But all of this has gone out."

Throughout Tuesday's confrontational event, Trump repeatedly slammed the media as "unbelievably dishonest" for its treatment of the issue and dismissed an ABC reporter as "a sleaze." He said many times that he didn't want credit for the fundraising but seemed peeved that he wasn't thanked for it.

"Instead of being like, 'Thank you very much, Mr. Trump,' or 'Trump did a good job,' everyone's saying, 'Who got it? Who got it? Who got it?' And you make me look very bad," Trump complained, taking on reporters in the room. "I have never received such bad publicity for doing such a good job."

The Associated Press spoke or left messages with each of the organizations Trump named. Of the 30 groups that responded by Tuesday, about half said they had received checks from Trump just last week.

Several said the checks were dated May 24  the same date as Trump's interview with The Post, and shipped out overnight express.

Among them was the big check from Trump himself, written to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation. Trump's campaign had previously told the newspaper that his promised $1 million personal donation had already been distributed.

Though the foundation had received a $100,000 check from Trump's charity in March, last week's $1 million donation came as something of a surprise.

"It is obviously a wonderful donation," said Sue Boulhosa, the group's executive director and sole employee. She said the group had "an inkling" that more might come but the amount was a happy surprise.

Trump has a longstanding relationship with the group, which Boulhosa said typically raises a total of between $2 million and $3 million a year. The foundation had presented Trump with an award at its 2015 gala held at a New York hotel.

Appearing on CNN Tuesday, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said she was glad that Trump had given out the promised money.

"The problem here is the difference between what Donald Trump says and what Donald Trump does," Clinton said. "He's bragged for months about raising $6 million for vets and donating $1 million himself, but it took a reporter to shame him into actually making the contribution."

Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski had originally told the Post that the event had raised about $4.5 million  less than the $6 million originally announced by Trump  because some who'd pledged had backed out. Lewandowski also said all the money had been given out.

Trump had claimed during the fundraiser that he'd raised $6 million through a combination of pledges from wealthy friends, the public and $1 million from himself.

But the campaign refused for months to disclose which charities had received the money, leading to questions about whether the money raised was less than he had said.

"It was very unfair that the press treated us so badly," Trump complained Tuesday.

He suggested he had hoped to keep the donations private. However, Trump hadn't appeared shy about giving away poster-sized checks at campaign events in the weeks after the fundraiser.

On Jan. 30, just before the campaign's leadoff caucuses in Iowa, he gave a $100,000 check to the Puppy Jake Foundation, which provides service dogs to wounded veterans. Representatives from the foundation, accompanies by several service dogs, accepted the check at the Adler Theater in Davenport, Iowa, where Trump was being interviewed on stage by Jerry Falwell Jr.

The next day, in Council Bluffs, Trump presented another check, also for $100,000, to Partners for Patriots, which also provides service dogs to disabled veterans.

The public presentations trickled off within days, though some of the groups contacted by AP did report receiving checks in February, March and April.

But the biggest batch appeared to have gone out May 24, with several of the groups saying they had no contact with the Trump organization before that.

Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks denied Tuesday that timing had anything to do with questions from the media.

"Mr. Trump's team worked very hard to complete this lengthy process prior to Memorial Day Weekend," she said. The campaign also said it had taken months to carefully vet each of the groups receiving money.

NBC News has confirmed at least 27 charities received those donations, totaling $3,820,000 in confirmed contributions, including: 22Kill, Task Force Dagger Foundation, Projects for Patriots, America's Vetdogs  The Veterans K9 Corps Inc., Armed Services YMCA of the USA, Bob Woodruff Foundation, Fisher House Foundation, Folds of Honor, Homes for our Troops, Honoring Americas Warriors, K9 for Warriors and Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation.

Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation confirmed to NBC News Tuesday they received a $1 million personal check from Trump himself last week as well as $100,000 check from the Trump Foundation a few months ago.

Thats a significant donation. We have received it in the past from other donors, but its obviously very significant, said Sue Boulhosa, executive director of the organization.
As the sun set Memorial Day evening, a crowd gathered in memory of a woman who once served in the U.S. Army.

But 52-year old Antoinette Brown did not die in service to her country. She died after being mauled by a pack of loose dogs on the streets of South Dallas.

"I feel like Antoinette Brown could have been my neighbor," said vigil organizer Carla Atkins. "She could have been any one of us."

Brown was mauled in the early morning hours of May 2. She had at least 100 dog bites and spent a week in a coma at Baylor University Medical Center before she died.

"This never should have happened," said Atkins, who never met Brown before organizing Monday's candlelight remembrance.

"I just know that I have this very powerful thing in my heart that told me that I needed to do this," she explained. "I've never met anyone in her family, but I want them to know that she was an important woman. She should not have lost her life."

Brown's daughter, Matisha Ward, and her niece, Breanna Breedlove, came to the ceremony on the Ronald Kirk Pedestrian Bridge.

"I would never have thought my aunt would have so many people show her love like this," Breedlove told the crowd through her tears. "We love you all."

City leaders have vowed to crack down on the problem of loose, stray and aggressive dogs, and Dallas Animal Services has had a more visible presence in problem neighborhoods in South Dallas since the deadly attack.

"I had no fear of dogs until I moved to Dallas," Atkins said.

She has three dogs of her own and said she has fostered at least one a month since moving to Dallas last December.

"What is it going to take for you to realize that the loose dog issues in Dallas are at crisis level and need immediate and desperate attention?" she said.

Dallas Police are still investigating the deadly mauling, but so far there have been no arrests.
Long security line wait times at airports across the country have been an issue for weeks and experts caution it could only get worse during the summer travel months.

Fresh off the Memorial Day weekend holiday, D/FW International Airport's board is set to approve a contract with Dallas-based AT&T to study those wait times, among other concerns.

The airport's finance and audit committee will learn more about the proposal at it's meeting on Tuesday. The full board is scheduled to address the contract on Thursday.

According to board documents, the airport and AT&T are looking at a three-year contract costing $600,012 beginning in June. AT&T will use data from it's airport Wi-Fi network to provide the airport data, in real time, on how people move throughout the airport.

Data will include where people are and how many people there are at the airport per hour, day and week. The data should also provide airport officials with information on how traffic is flowing through the five terminals.

And, perhaps most important to travelers, data on how long it takes people to get through TSA security checkpoints will be provided from the analysis.

It's unclear if the study will provide any immediate reduction in security wait times.

American Airlines told NBC News earlier this year that, during the Spring Break travel season, D/FW Airport had the second most passengers missing flights due to security checkpoint lines.

It's possible the data will allow airport officials to determine when extra staff is needed during peak travel times, which security checkpoints get more use than others, and generally how to improve getting around the airport.

The resolution states that data will remain anonymous from users on the airport WiFi-network.
A Dallas man is searching for the owner of a Vietnam veteran's ring found outside a Fort Worth grocery store.

Victor Barbosa tells NBC 5 his mother found the ring outside of the Fiesta Grocery store located on Northeast 28th Street in Fort Worth.

"I said, 'We have to give it back,'" said Barbosa.

He believes the ring belongs to a Vietnam veteran.

"The ring has the 'Vietnam Veteran' wording there," Barbosa said. "On the side, it's going to have the ribbon in the colors with the Republic of Vietnam Service, and on the other side it has the wall on the Washington Mall with the words 'You Were Not Forgotten.'"

Barbosa believes it has sentimental value to the owner, and he has made it his mission to return it.

"Whatever the ring is worth it's not worth the sentimental value that somebody who has served for us has for it," Barbosa said.

The initials "PMH" are inscribed inside the ring along with the dates 1954-1964.

Barbosa is hoping an owner comes forward and has asked they call him at 682-557-7465.

"It would be an honor to hand it back to him, shake his hand and say 'thank you,'" Barbosa said.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has promised more freedom and financial support for the science and technology (S&T) sector as China seeks to boost development through innovation and establish itself as a world leader in this regard.

Li made the remarks at a national conference on S&T innovation Monday afternoon.

In his morning address at the conference, President Xi Jinping said that China should be one of the most innovative nations by 2020; a leading innovator by 2030; before finally establishing itself as a world-leading S&T power by the centenary anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China in 2049.

Li said innovation is crucial to supply-side structural reform and will boost China's competitiveness. He called for innovation "in every field and stage of economic and social development."

The premier called for stable, long-term financial assistance as well as support for S&T institutes, universities, enterprises and social groups in setting up laboratories and S&T centers that facilitate research.

Stressing the role of applied research, Li encouraged S&T entities to pursue market-oriented projects that benefit new industries and foster new growth sectors.

According to Li, more will be done to slash red tape and improve the government's functions so that institutes and universities are granted more autonomy.

"We should free S&T specialists from restrictions and give them space to explore," Li said, adding that those affiliated with successful innovation projects should be amply rewarded.

Li also urged an improved academic assessment system and better intellectual property rights protection as this will create a sound S&T environment where "toil, knowledge, talent and creation are respected."

The afternoon meeting was presided over by Liu Yunshan, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee.
Police said a 61-year-old man was fatally shot at a Dallas motel late Monday night. [[381355051,C]]

Dallas police said they responded to the Days Inn Dallas DFW in the 8300 block of South Lancaster Road at 11:24 p.m. after guests reported hearing gunshots.

When officers arrived, they found the victim -- later identified as David Haskell Sparks -- lying near the doorway of a second-floor room.

No arrests have been made.

Investigators said people who were in the area at the time of the shooting provided them with little information.

Dallas police asked anyone with information about this incident contact their homicide unit at 214-671-3661 or Crime Stoppers at 214-373-8477 (TIPS). Crime Stoppers will pay up to $5,000 for information leading to an indictment.
A North Texas man has been arrested after authorities say he confessed to killing his girlfriend, then posted a photo of her body on Facebook. [[381326151,C]]

Kenneth Alan Amyx, 45, is facing a murder charge in connection with the stabbing death of Jennifer Spears.

Investigators said Amyx took a photo of himself and one of the victim's body and posted them on her Facebook page, then sent the same photo to the victim's mother.

Spears, 43, was found dead Sunday after police were called to a disturbance at an apartment in the 2300 block of Kathryn Lane in Plano. Police said she had been stabbed.

One neighbor told NBC5 she hasn't been able to sleep since hearing about the horror across the road.

"Just that somebody so close, right across could do that and what kind of person would post that on facebook for friends and family to see. Thats just a horrible human being. Why would you do that?" said neighbor Rebecca Miller.

Police also found Amyx in Spears' apartment suffering from knife wounds, which police believe may have been self-inflicted. He was arrested after being treated at a local hospital.

Court records show he told police, "Oh I killed her, oh I lost her, I'll never get her back, just kill me."

Amyx also faces charges of indecency with a child in Dallas County and continuous sex abuse of a child under 14 in Rockwall County.

Police say he told them he and Spears were planning to run away together because he was a fugitive but decided on the suicide pact instead.

Friends NBC5 spoke with say that doesn't match the loving daughter, sister and friend they knew.

They want the focus back on who Spears was, calling her sweet, caring, outgoing, loving and there for anyone who needed her.

Those friends say Amyx and Spears had known each other since high school at South Garland and he always had a crush on her, but he didn't start coming out with her until the past couple months and since then they'd seen less of her.

Friends say Amyx struck them as odd but they never saw this coming.

He is now in the Collin County Jail with a bond set at $600,000.

Information on an attorney for Amyx was not immediately available.

Felony Probable Cause Affidavit: [[381397241,c]]
Police said Tuesday they are investigating the parents of the 3-year-old boy who fell into a gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo and had to be rescued by a team that shot the 400-pound animal to death.

Authorities said the investigation will look at the parents' actions leading up to the incident  not the operation of the zoo, which is overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Police will then confer with prosecutors over whether charges should be filed, Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters said.

The incident has triggered a furor online, with some saying the boy's mother should be charged with child endangering, while others want the zoo held responsible for the animal's death.

Separately, USDA said it will investigate Saturday's incident for any violations of the Animal Welfare Act.

Zoo authorities said the unidentified boy climbed over a 3-foot-high railing, walked through bushes and plunged about 15 feet into a shallow moat. The zoo's dangerous-animal response team killed the gorilla as it dragged the boy through the water, authorities said. The boy had only minor scrapes on his head and knee, according to police.

Ohio State University criminal law professor Ric Simmons said he doubts a charge of child endangering could be proved in this instance, since the offense typically involves leaving a youngster unattended for an extended time, not a case of a child momentarily wandering off.

"The mother was standing next to a zoo exhibit and lost track of her child for perhaps a minute or so," Simons said in an email. "That has happened to almost every parent in the world in a public place."

The boy's family said he is "doing just fine" at home, and it had no further comment.

A federal inspection by USDA less than two months ago found no problems with the Gorilla World exhibit, but earlier zoo inspections detailed an incident in March in which polar bears escaped through an open den door into a behind-the-scenes hallway. No one was hurt, but an inspector warned that the public could have been "at great risk for injury, harm or death."

Zoo director Thane Maynard said that using tranquilizers on the gorilla would not have knocked the animal out right away, leaving the boy in danger. Maynard said 17-year-old Harambe was agitated by the commotion from the crowd and was extremely powerful, capable of crushing a coconut in one hand.

He said the zoo remains safe for its 1.6 million annual visitors, but a review is underway to determine whether any improvements can be made.

Donald Trump weighed in Tuesday, saying the zoo had little choice but to kill the gorilla. Trump said it was "a very tough call," but the child's life was at stake.

The executive director of a Cincinnati-based animal rights organization is calling on the USDA to fine the zoo.

"The barrier obviously isn't sufficient to keep the public out," said Michael Budkie of Stop Animal Exploitation NOW. "Otherwise, Harambe wouldn't be dead."

Jack Hanna, host of "Jack Hanna's Into the Wild," said the zoo made the right call by shooting the gorilla, telling WBNS-TV: "I'll bet my life on this, that child would not be here today."

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the child's parents said Monday the family had no plans to comment. But the mother wrote in a since-deleted Facebook post that her child is "safe and was able to walk away with a concussion and a few scrapes."

She said "as a society we are quick to judge how a parent could take their eyes off of their child," and added that "accidents happen."

In a subsequent statement on Sunday, the family thanked zoo staff for their "quick action," NBC News reported.
A rapper charged in a deadly shooting at a New York City concert hall has pleaded not guilty.

Rapper Troy Ave was arraigned Monday in the shooting during a hip-hop concert featuring artist T.I. that killed one person and injured three others on Wednesday night.

Troy Ave's real name is Roland Collins. He was arraigned on charges including attempted murder.

After ballistics tests, Collins' charges could be upgraded to murder in the death of 30-year-old Ronald McPhatter.

Prosecutors said Collins recklessly fired a gun five times in a crowded venue with no concern about the consequences.

But Collins' lawyer, Scott Leemon, said McPhatter was not shot by Collins.

Prosecutors say Collins shot himself in the leg. Leemon said someone else shot Collins.
Police were searching for two armed men who attempted to rob a student at California State University Northridge late Monday night, campus police said.

The attempted robbery was reported around 11 p.m. as the student was traveling on his skateboard on Prairie Street as he headed eastbound toward Etiwanda Avenue, according to the CSUN Police Department.

The victim was approached from behind by two men. One of them asked the victim "what you got" and pulled out a possible handgun, police said.

The victim refused to give the men any property and continued traveling to campus.

The student said he saw the two men get into a gray sedan that drove towards Reseda Boulevard, according to campus police.

Campus police sent an email around midnight alerting students about the attempted robbery.
California Gov. Jerry Brown announced Tuesday that he plans to support former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton next week in the state's presidential primary election.

Brown said a vote for the Democratic front-runner is the "only path forward to win the presidency and stop the dangerous candidacy of Donald Trump." Brown made the announcement Tuesday morning in a post on his website titled, "An Open Letter to California Democrats and Independents."

Brown said he is "impressed" with Clinton's rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, but called on Democrats to unite around Clinton.

"For her part, Hillary Clinton has convincingly made the case that she knows how to get things done and has the tenacity and skill to advance the Democratic agenda," said Brown, who waged his own bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, 1980 and 1992. "Clintons lead is insurmountable and Democrats have shown  by millions of votes  that they want her as their nominee.

"Next January, I want to be sure that it is Hillary Clinton who takes the oath of office, not Donald Trump."

Clinton is 72 delegates away from the magic number needed for a majority of delegates to clinch the Democratic nomination.

Both Democratic candidates made campaign stops last week in California, hoping to rally support ahead of next week's primary. Sanders spent Memorial Day in the Bay Area with a stop in Emeryville planned for Tuesday as he looks to close Clinton's 2-percentage point lead in California.
A gunman who killed one person and wounded several others during a weekend attack that began at a Houston auto detail shop was an Army veteran from California who was haunted by his deployment in Afghanistan, his relatives said.

Family members identified Dionisio Garza III, 25, of Rancho Cucamonga, California, as the man who opened fire Sunday morning, killing 56-year-old Eugene Linscomb, a customer who had arrived moments earlier at the shop.

Garza, who was on foot, proceeded to spray the west Houston neighborhood with dozens of shots from what police said was an AR-15 style military rifle. A police SWAT officer killed Garza about an hour after the shooting began.

Garza spent four years in the Army, receiving his discharge in 2014, according to Pentagon records released Tuesday. During that time, he served two tours in Afghanistan, the first from December 2009 to November 2010 and the second from December 2012 to August 2013. Assigned to infantry, he reached the rank of sergeant in December 2011.

"Just in the last two weeks it progressively got worse," his father Dionisio told NBC affiliate KPRC. "It was not the same boy that we raised. Not the loving uncle, the loving brother. Six people were wounded, including two police officers and some people who were driving through the area. Patrol cars were riddled with bullets and a police helicopter was hit by at least five shots.

Police haven't publicly identified Garza as the gunman, leaving that to the medical examiner's office, which hadn't done so as of midday Tuesday and hadn't responded to phone or email messages seeking that information. Police said they would release additional details at a news conference later Tuesday.

Garza's family told KPRC something snapped in him following the two tours in Afghanistan and that his condition worsened in the weeks before he traveled to Houston to visit an Army friend.

"Something snapped. It wasn't him anymore. I'm not making excuses. No excuses," Dionisio Garza told KPRC. I know he did this, but it wasn't him anymore. My son was broken."
After a man was struck and killed in the roadway in the middle of the night in Ventura, police were searching for the driver Monday.

Ventura police responded to the intersection of Blackburn Road and Tracy Place at 3 a.m. after receiving a 911 call reporting that someone got hit by a car.

When officers arrived, they found a man with severe injuries lying in the two-lane roadway with skid marks streaking across the ground. He died at the scene, Ventura police said.

Ventura Police Commander David Dickey said it was believed that the man who was killed was a pedestrian hit by a passing car. There are no sidewalks along the road.

Blackburn Road between Wells Road and Saticoy Avenue was shut down to traffic for several hours as authorities investigated.

The victim was not yet identified as next of kin had not been notified.

There was no vehicle description available.

Anyone with information on the crash or suspected driver was encouraged to call Ventura Police Department at (805) 339-4323.
An attempted murder suspect is on the run in Southern California after police said he shot a pregnant woman in a car and stole a Jeep at a gas station minutes later.

The man, identified by police as 28-year-old Twonn Alonzo McCoy, was sitting in a car with the pregnant victim in the 1300 block of North F Street in San Bernardino when they began to argue just before 9 p.m. Sunday, police said.

Police said McCoy pulled out a gun and shot the woman multiple times before taking off.

The pregnant woman was taken to a hospital, and she and the baby were in critical but stable condition, police said.

[2016 UPDATED 12/20] 2016 Southern California Year in Photos

McCoy then ran to and robbed a nearby Arco gas station on Base Line Street.

"He attempted to rob that gas station for an undetermined amount of money," said San Bernardino police spokeswoman Eileen Hards, who said McCoy then tried unsuccessfully to steal a vehicle in the parking lot.

After his failed carjacking attempt, McCoy demanded a black 1998 Jeep Cherokee at gunpoint from another customer in the parking lot, Fontana police said. He fled in the stolen Jeep.

Fontana police said the Jeep was found abandoned near the scene of another carjacking that occurred an hour after the shooting in the 16100 block of Valley Boulevard.

In the Valley Boulevard carjacking, a woman and her adult daughter were sitting in their van when a man approached them, brandished a gun, and demanded they get out, Fontana police said.

They surrendered their green 1997 Dodge Caravan around 9:55 p.m. and the carjacker was last seen heading south on Citrus Avenue toward the 10 Freeway.

The man behind the carjacking on Valley Boulevard was not initially confirmed to be McCoy, Fontana police said.

Police were searching for McCoy and encouraged anyone with information to contact the San Bernardino Police Department at 909-383-5311.

[NATL] Top News Photos: Pope Visits Japan, and More
Chinese President Xi Jinping addresses an event conflating the national conference on science and technology, the biennial conference of the country's two top think tanks, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering, and the national congress of the China Association for Science and Technology, in Beijing, May 30, 2016. [Xinhua]

Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged greater commitment to research and application of science and technology as he made the remarks at an event combining the national conference on S&T, the biennial conference of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), and the national congress of the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) on Monday.

The conference, chaired by Premier Li Keqiang, was also attended by senior leaders Zhang Dejiang, Yu Zhengsheng, Liu Yunshan and Wang Qishan.

China should establish itself as one of the most innovative countries by 2020 and a leading innovator by 2030 before realizing the objective of becoming a world-leading S&T power by the centenary anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China in 2049, Xi said.

Importance of innovation

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, stressed the role of S&T as a bedrock upon which "the country relies for its power, enterprises rely for success, and people rely for a better life."

"Great scientific and technological capacity is a must for China to be strong and for people's lives to improve," he said, calling for new ideas, designs, and strategies in science and technology.

China now ranks among the world's most advanced countries in some important fields in S&T development, Xi said.

The country is in an important transitional stage from quantity to a leap in quality, and from breakthroughs in limited areas to an improvement in overall capacity, he said.

The president hailed innovation as an important force in promoting development of a country as well as mankind.

"It won't do without innovation, nor will it do if the innovation is carried out slowly," Xi said.

"We could be thrown into an unfavorable situation and miss opportunities for development -- or miss an entire era -- if we fail to recognize changes, respond to changes and innovatively seek changes," he added.

It is "an inevitable choice" for China to implement its strategy of innovation-driven development, Xi said.

This strategy aims to ensure China's decision-making power for its own development, improve its core competitiveness, accelerate adjustment of its development pattern, solve deep-rooted problems, better guide economic development in the "new normal," and maintain sustainable and healthy economic development, Xi said.

In seeking to become a world-leading S&T power, China aims to speed up S&T innovations in all fields and seize the initiative in global S&T competition, Xi said.

Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation.
A woman hospitalized after being attacked off the coast of Newport Beach, possibly by a shark, was identified Tuesday as a physical fitness instructor whose conditioning likely helped her survive serious injuries, according to doctors.

Maria Korcs-Maros, 52, was remarkably calm when she arrived at the hospital in critical condition after suffering what appeared to be a shark bite that stretched from her shoulder to her pelvic area, according to doctors. The triathlete and mother of three children was training at about 4 p.m. Sunday 1.5 miles off Corona del Mar State Beach for an upcoming triathlon event when she was attacked.

Dr. Philip Rotter, director of orthopedic surgery at Orange County Global Medical Center, said Korcs-Maros suffered what appeared to be one large bite on the right side of her body. Lifeguards on a patrol boat who responded to Korcs-Maros did not find a shark, but the bite appears consistent with that of a shark, doctors said.

"You can see individual marks from individual teeth," said Dr. Philip Rotter, director of orthopedic surgery at Orange County Global Medical Center.

Korcs-Maros, of Corona, remained hospitalized Tuesday. She was training for a July 10 competition in Canada, and Rotter and Dr. Humberto Sauri both credited Korcsmaros' level of physical fitness for helping to save her life.

"She had significant open wounds ... those are wounds that would have bled a lot," Rotter said. "She was able to tread water and hold her own until help arrived. So that's pretty remarkable."

Both doctors also said she was calm throughout the ordeal.

"She's a very strong lady. She's remarkably calm," Sauri said.

Sauri said Korcs-Maros will likely be hospitalized for at least another week. According to Rotter, time will tell if she will have full use of her right arm.

"Remarkably, right now her nerves are all functioning," he said. "It's much too early to tell... but right now it looks good."

The attack prompted authorities to clear the ocean water of swimmers from the Balboa Pier south to Crystal Cove State Beach. The stretch of beach from The Wedge to Balboa Pier was reopened Tuesday while the stretch from Corona del Mar State Beach south to Crystal Cove is expected to remain closed until at least Wednesday morning.
A mural in Venice honoring veterans of the Vietnam War will need to be redone due to the extent of the graffiti damage it sustained last week, according to a city official, who also said a reward totaling $20,000 was in the works to find the vandals.

Metro workers on Memorial Day used a tarp to cover what's been viewed as not just as vandalism but an insult. The painting of graffiti over a mural honoring POWs and MIAs is something Marine veteran Wayne Brown is struggling to understand.

"This is one of the many reasons why I think everyone should serve their country in one way or another, so they can come to appreciate it," Brown said.

Volunteers tried on Sunday to remove some of the graffiti, but the scrubbing also meant removing some of the names of the more than 2,000 veterans honored. The city may have no choice but to start all over again and restore a mural that was created nearly 25 years ago.

"We're asking folks who have historical photos of the mural, details of the names, to make sure they send them to us just so we can make sure we don't forget anybody," City Councilman Mike Bonin said.

Not everyone agrees with the idea of covering up the vandalism with a tarp. Marine veteran John Scudder told Metro workers he thinks it sends a signal that the vandals won.

"That's like giving into the graffiti artist that he won," he said. "The whole goal out here is to make a statement that hey, we're not going to stand for this."

But veterans say they appreciate the overwhelming support they've received from the public.

"We even had people that took shifts last night that volunteered to watch this wall," Scudder said.

Bonin says detectives are looking at surveillance video and social media to see if they can identify the vandals. Three murals have been vandalized in the last couple of weeks, he said.
A Florida man who threw an alligator through a drive-thru window was sentenced to a year of probation after throwing himself at the mercy of the court.

Twenty-four-year-old Joshua James told the judge Tuesday that he's sorry he threw the alligator through the window at a Wendy's last October. He said he found the nearly four-foot gator by the side of the road and meant to play a prank on a friend at the restaurant.

James was initially charged with felonies including assault with a deadly weapon. But no one was hurt by the gator, which was captured and returned to the wild.

The Palm Beach Post reports that James entered an open plea on two misdemeanors.
A Florida woman whose beating by a police officer while she was handcuffed was caught on video has pleaded not guilty to charges including resisting arrest with violence.

Attorney Reid Hart says his 31-year-old client Mayra Martinez also entered not guilty pleas to trespassing, resisting arrest and misdemeanor battery on Tuesday.

Video released by the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office showed Officer Akinyemi Borisade striking Martinez, who attempted to kick him as she was being restrained and checked into a jail in April.

Martinez had been arrested at a strip club after police say she refused to leave.

The 26-year-old Borisade, a probationary patrol officer, was fired and arrested on a charge of battery.
Heres your daily dose of cute!

Zoo Miami is welcoming the arrival of a young male koala named Milo, who arrived in South Florida from the San Diego Zoo on May 3.

Milo had to remain in quarantine when he arrived to make sure he was healthy and acclimated to his new environment, the zoo said.

Zoo Miamis koala exhibit has been empty since the death of the zoo's 19-year-old koala Cobber last February. He was one of the oldest koalas in the country.

Milo, a Queensland koala, was born at the San Diego Zoo in July 2011. He'll celebrate his fifth birthday July 2.

Milo made his first public appearance on Tuesday.
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A taxi fitted with a smart system in Guangzhou City. [Photo from Guangzhou Daily]

The transportation authorities of Guangzhou City in south China's Guangdong Province are considering a regulation to force every taxi to install a smart system.

The Guangzhou Municipal Transportation Committee released the draft regulation on taxi management on Monday to solicit public opinion.

According to the regulation, a smart system will be installed on all taxis and be connected to a real-time, remote surveillance platform operated by the transportation committee.

At least three CCTV systems will be included in the smart system. They will monitor the front and back rows, the front passenger side window and the rear storage compartment. The footage will be kept for at least seven days on the surveillance platform.

When using the surveillance data, the privacy of taxi drivers and passengers must be protected, the regulation said.

Other features of the smart system include an electronic screen to display the driver's qualifications, an electronic payment terminal allowing passengers to pay the fare by their mobile phones, a GPS navigation system and an online ride-hailing system.

The main purpose of installing the smart system is to collect evidence to address passengers' complaints and help passengers recover lost items, the transportation committee said.

Some taxis in Guangzhou have already installed the system.
Even as Chicago Police beefed up patrols for Memorial Day, more than 60 people were shot during the violent three-day holiday weekend, an uptick in violence that Mayor Rahm Emanuel called "unacceptable."

By Monday evening, at least 62 people had been shot across the city since Friday afternoon, including six who were killed. That surpassed the number of people shot during last year's Memorial Day weekend. Chicago Police News Affairs said murders were down 50 percent compared to last Memorial Day.

Among the youngest shooting victims was a 15-year-old girl who was fatally shot while riding in a car with a documented gang member on Lake Shore Drive.

First Deputy Superintendent John Escalante had said the departments plan for Monday was to increase patrols in designated areas, including along Lake Shore Drive.

As weve said before, its about 1,500 people that are driving the violence, Escalente said. Those are the people were trying to concentrate on.

Chicago has been pulled into headlines nationwide as police struggle to curtail the citys growing reputation for violence. Escalante said he was confident the department could get things under control, but others were skeptical.

The police cannot stop the killings in the Chicagoland area and its not their fault, community activist Tio Hardiman told NBC 5. The community needs to organize in high numbers and work with these guys on street corners in an aggressive way.

As the city wraps up the fifth month of 2016, the Chicago Tribune reports there have already been more than 1,400 shooting victims so far this year.

Shootings across the city included the following:

FRIDAY

The first shooting of the holiday weekend occurred at just before 1 p.m. Friday, when a 52-year-old man was shot in the city's Brighton Park neighborhood, police said. Details on the shooting weren't immediately known.

At least four others were shot within an hour and a half across the city, including a 16-year-old boy who was wounded in the city's Washington Park neighborhood.

Just after 2:30 p.m., the city's first fatal shooting took place in the 6700 block of South Loomis. Two men were sitting on a porch when a gunman came out of a gangway and opened fire before fleeing the scene. A 39-year-old man was shot in the chest and taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center where he was later pronounced dead. A 26-year-old man was shot in the right leg and lower back and listed in stable condition at Holy Cross Hospital.

At 9:25 p.m. Friday, a teen boy was shot in a drive-by shooting, authorities said. Police said an 18-year-old man was standing on a front porch in the 1200 block of W Grenshaw in the University Village neighborhood when a dark car drove by and someone inside fired shots. He sustained a gunshot wound to both legs, and was taken to Stroger Hospital in stable condition, authorities said.

A 25-year-old man was the second person killed over the weekend, when he was fatally shot at 10:55 p.m. in the Ashburn neighborhood. Later identified as Mark Lindsey by the Cook County Medical Examiners office, he was sitting in a car parked in the 3700 block of W 75th Pl at 10:55 p.m. when an unknown offender approached on foot and fired shots, police said. He sustained multiple gunshot wounds to the chest and body, and was taken in critical condition to Advocate Christ Medical Centr, where he was pronounced dead.

SATURDAY

Two people were shot at 1:10 a.m. in the South Deering neighborhood. A 50-year-old man was standing on the front porch of a home in the 9900 block of S Paxton when 2 men walked up and fired shots. The victim sustained a gunshot wound to the right forearm and refused medical attention at the scene. A 53-year-old woman was inside a bedroom in the home and was struck in the lower back. She was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in stable condition.

A 15-year-old girl was killed and a man in his twenties was injured in a shooting on Lake Shore Drive in Lincoln Park early Saturday. Veronica Lopez was a passenger in a car in the 2400 block of N Lake Shore Drive just before 1:30 a.m. when a black Nissan pulled alongside them and someone inside fired shots, police said. They took themselves to Presence Saint Joseph Hospital, but Lopez was later transferred to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead. The man, a documented gang member and convicted felon, was shot in the arm and suffered a graze wound to the head, according to police. Hes listed in stable condition.

At 1:45 a.m., three men were standing outside in the 3300 block of W Walnut in the East Garfield Park neighborhood when someone in an unknown vehicle drove up and fired shots. A 26-year-old man was taken to Stroger hospital in stable condition with a gunshot wound to the leg, a 27-year-old man was taken to Stroger in stable condition with a gunshot wound to the thigh and a third man, 23, was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in guarded condition, meaning very critical, with a gunshot wound to the back.

At 2:35 a.m., a 17-year-old boy was standing outside in the 1200 block of S Independence in the North Lawndale neighborhood when the occupant of a black SUV fired shots, striking the victim. He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in good condition with a gunshot wound to the knee, police said.

A 21-year-old man was driving in the 4300 block of N Kimball in Irving Park at 2:55 a.m., according to police, when someone fired shots. He sustained a gunshot wound to the clavicle and was taken in serious condition to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, according to police.

A 25-year-old man was standing outside in the 4600 block of S Honore in the Back of the Yards neighborhood at 3:13 a.m., according to police. An unknown offender fired shots, striking him in the leg, and he was taken to Stroger Hospital in stable condition, police said.

Around 4 a.m., a 24-year-old man was outside in a park in the 4600 block of W Jackson St in Austin when an unknown offender approached and fired shots, according to police. The victim, a documented gang member, was hit in the leg and taken to Stroger Hospital where he was listed in stable condition, according to police.

At 4:35 a.m., a 24-year-old man was walking in the 4300 block of W West End in the West Garfield Park neighborhood when two unknown offenders approached, produced a handgun, and opened fire, according to police. He suffered graze wounds to the arm and hand and was taken to Stroger in good condition, police said. According to authorities, he is a documented gang member.

The fourth fatal shooting of the weekend happened in a normally quiet area of the Portage Park neighborhood on the citys Northwest Side, police said. A 23-year-old man later identified by the Cook County Medical Examiners office as Damien Cionzynski of Harwood Heights was one of two men who walked into a business at 5:15 a.m. in the 6300 block of W Montrose, according to police. The men got into an altercation, at which point one produced a weapon and shot Cionzynski in the head. He was pronounced dead at the scene, according to police.

Two men were shot in a robbery in the East Garfield Park neighborhood on Saturday, according to police. At around 3:45 p.m., the victims, both 46, were walking in the 3900 block of W Erie when three unknown male offenders approached, fired shots and stole the victims property before fleeing. One man was shot in the left leg, the other in the right ankle, according to police, and both were taken to Stroger Hospital in good condition.

A 24-year-old man was walking down the sidewalk in the 1400 block of W 99th St in the Longwood Manor neighborhood at 4:20 p.m., police said, when an unknown offender opened fire. Authorities said the victim, a documented gang member, sustained a gunshot wound to the leg and was taken in serious condition to Advocate Christ Medical Center. According to police, he was not cooperating with investigators, and a weapon was recovered from the scene of the shooting.

A 27-year-old man was fatally shot in the Fuller Park neighborhood on Saturday evening. Later identified as 27-year-old Garvin Whitmore by the Cook County Medical Examiners office, he was in the drivers seat of a car in the 200 block of W Root when someone approached on foot and fired shots, striking him in the head. A 26-year-old woman in the vehicle with him then exited the vehicle and fired shots at the offenders. She was not injured but was taken into custody and charged with reckless discharge of a firearm and aggravated unlawful use of a weapon without a FOID card, both felonies, according to police. Whitmore was pronounced dead on the scene.

A 19-year-old man was walking in the 8300 block of S Dante in the Avalon Park neighborhood, according to police, when he heard shots and felt pain. Authorities said a dark colored vehicle drove by and an unknown offender inside opened fire, striking him in the buttocks. He was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in stable condition, according to police.

A 26-year-old woman was driving eastbound in the 3900 block of W Lexington in Lawndale at 8 p.m. when someone fired shots, striking her in the neck, police said. She continued to drive on Lexington, police said, before crashing her vehicle into a parked car. She was discovered unresponsive in her car and taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in critical condition.

Around 8:40 p.m., two men were in a car stopped at a red light in the 1600 block of W 47th St in the Back of the Yards neighborhood when another car pulled up from behind and passengers in that car opened fire. A 32-year-old man was shot in the right leg, and a 22-year-old man in the left leg, according to police. Both were taken in stable condition to Stroger Hospital and officials believe the incident may have been gang-related.

Around 9 p.m., a 23-year-old man was walking down the sidewalk in the 5100 block of W Chicago in Austin when a light-colored car drove by, and occupants opened fire, police said. He was struck in the upper right leg and taken to Mount Sinai in stable condition.

Three people were shot in a shooting around 9:40 p.m. in 2000 block of W 68th Pl in the West Englewood neighborhood, according to police. The first victim was a 48-year-old woman who was a passenger in a car heading south on Damen. Police said she was the unintended target, struck when occupants of two separate vehicles fired shots. She was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in stable condition with a graze wound to the neck. Two men standing on a front porch at that time were struck in the shooting. A 17-year-old boy sustained a gunshot wound to the right knee and a 23-year-old man was shot in the right foot. Both were listed in stable condition at Holy Cross Hospital.

At 10:15 p.m., a 17-year-old boy was standing on the sidewalk in the 1500 block of S Ridgeway in Lawndale when he heard shots and felt pain, police said. He was then dropped off at Mount Sinai Hospital in stable condition with a gunshot wound to the lower left leg, authorities said.

Just before midnight, two men were standing on the sidewalk in the 700 block of S Independence in West Garfield Park when they heard shots and felt pain, police said. A 28-year-old was hit in the left thigh, and a 29-year-old man in the left ankle. Both were taken to Mount Sinai in stable condition, according to police, and both are documented gang members.

SUNDAY

A 37-year-old man was critically wounded in a shooting at 12:20 a.m. in Austin, according to police. He was standing in an alley in the 4700 block of W Erie when a male offender approached on foot and opened fire, according to police. He was taken to Stroger Hospital in critical condition with a gunshot wound to the chest and leg, police said.

At 1:05 a.m., two men were walking on the sidewalk in the 700 block of N Kedzie in East Garfield Park when they heard shots and felt pain. A 21-year-old man had a graze wound to the back and a 22-year-old man had a gunshot wound to the left hand, according to police. They drove to Norwegian American Hospital, where the younger man was transferred to Stroger. Both were listed in stable condition, authorities said, and the shooting may have been gang-related.

At 2 a.m., a 28-year-old man was shot in the 900 block of N Cambridge in the Near North Side neighborhood, police said. He was involved in a verbal dispute with another person when the offender pulled out a gun and shot the victim twice in the arm. He was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where his condition was unknown, according to police.

A 23-year-old man was sitting in the drivers seat of a parked car in the 9700 block of S Vincennes in the Washington Heights neighborhood when he was shot, police said. Authorities said a man exited another vehicle and approached on foot. They men exchanged words when the offender produced a handgun and opened fire, police said. The victim drove himself to St. Bernard Hospital in stable condition with a gunshot wound to the left thigh, police said.

Around 4:40 a.m., a 26-year-old woman was shot while driving in the 3900 block of W Wilcox in the East Garfield Park neighborhood, police said. Two men approached her car and opened fire, according to police, striking her in the back. She had other passengers in the car who were documented gang members and convicted felons, police said, but no one else was hit. She was dropped off at Loretto Hospital and transferred to Stroger in serious condition.

Just five minutes later, a 27-year-old man was standing on the sidewalk in the 5000 block of W West End Ave in Austin when he heard shots and felt pain, police said. He took himself to Stroger Hospital in stable condition with a gunshot wound to the right leg, according to police.

Around 5:15 a.m., a 17-year-old boy was wounded in a shooting in the 300 block of West 108th Street, police confirmed. Further details on the shooting weren't immediately known.

A 20-year-old man was shot around 12 p.m. in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood, according to police. He was standing outside in the 8500 block of S Ashland when he heard shots and felt pain. He took himself to Little Company of Mary Hospital where he was listed in stable condition with a gunshot wound to the arm.

A 24-year-old man was shot during an argument with someone he knows in the West Pullman neighborhood, police said. The incident occurred around 12:35 p.m. in the 11500 block of S Peoria, police said. He was taken in stable condition to Advocate Christ Medical Center with a gunshot wound to the right thigh.

At 4:40 p.m., a 23-year-old man was in the 1200 block of W 85th St in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood when he was shot in the right hip, police said. He was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center, in unknown condition, and authorities said he is a documented gang member.

Just before 6 p.m., a 29-year-old man was shot walking out of a store in the 11500 block of South Wentworth in the citys West Pullman neighborhood. He was shot in the shoulder and drove himself to be treated to MetroSouth Medical Center in Blue Island, police said.

At 10:45 p.m. a 25-year-old was shot in the left hand in the 3800 block of South Lake Park Avenue of the citys Oakland neighborhood, police said, before being taken to Cook Countys Stroger Hospital to be treated.

At 11 p.m., two men were shot in the Lawndale neighborhood on the citys Southwest Side. Police said the men were walking in the 2100 block of South Harding when another man approached them and started firing. One of the men, a 35-year-old, was hit in the buttocks and the other, a 58-year-old, was shot in the right leg. Both were taken to Mount Sinai Hospital to be treated, police said.

A half hour later, a 21-year-old who police say was a documented gang member was shot in the leg in the 5900 block of South Princeton in Englewood. He showed up with the gunshot wound at St. Bernard Hospital, police said.

MONDAY

 About 12:30 a.m., police said a 35-year-old was injured in a drive-by shooting in the Austin neighborhood. The man was standing on a porch in the 900 block of North Massasoit when a car drove past and fired shots, police said. He was hit in the leg and taken to Loyola University Medical Center to be treated, police said.

 Around 1 a.m., a man was shot during an attempted robbery in the South Sides Park Manor neighborhood. Police say the 28-year-old was in the 400 block of East 74th Street when two men approached him and announced a robbery. When he tried to run away, he was shot in the back, police said. He was taken to Stroger Hospital to be treated.

 At 1:30 a.m., two documented gang members were shot while walking in the Humboldt Park neighborhood on the citys West Side. The men, both 18, were in the 1300 block of North Pulaski when someone walked up and started shooting, police said. One was struck in the back and the other in the leg. Both were taken to Stroger Hospital, police said.

 At 10:35 a.m., a 17-year-old boy was shot twice in the hip when someone in a black SUV fired shots in his direction. The vehicle fled the scene and the victim was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in fair condition.

 Just before 11 a.m., two men were shot while standing on a street in the 3800 block of West Gladys in the city's East Garfield Park neighborhood. A 21-year-old man was shot in the left elbow and taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in good condition and a 28-year-old man was shot in the lower back and taken to Stroger Hospital in serious condition. Police said a black Nissan drove by the pair and someone inside the vehicle opened fire. No one was in custody as of Monday evening.

 Around 4 p.m., a 15-year-old boy was shot in the back while walking in the 6700 block of South Sangamon. Police said the teen was walking on the street when he heard shots and felt pain. He was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in stable condition.

 An hour later, a 16-year-old boy was shot while talking to someone in the 8700 block of South Escanaba. Police said a gunman emerged from a gangway in the area and fired several shots at the pair striking the teen in the right leg.

 Around 5:30 p.m., a 17-year-old boy was shot in the right thumb in the 3600 block of West 30th Street. The teen told police he was walking down the block when a man across the street, who was walking with another man, fired shots at him. The victim was taken to St. Anthony Hospital in good condition.
Under pressure to account for money he claimed to raise for veterans, an angry and irritated Donald Trump outlined a list of charities Tuesday he says have now received millions of dollars from a fundraiser he held earlier this year.

Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, told reporters at a testy news conference in New York that the fundraiser, held in boycott of a Fox News presidential debate, raised $5.6 million. Trump had previously refused to disclose which charities had received the funds and his campaign has gone back and forth about how much was raised.

"The money's all been sent," Trump said at a press conference at Trump Tower Tuesday morning.

Trump repeatedly criticized the press for making the money an issue, saying reporters "should be ashamed of themselves" for asking where the money had gone.

Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski had originally told The Washington Post that the event had raised about $4.5 million  less than the $6 million originally announced by Trump  because some who'd pledged contributions had backed out. Lewandowski also said all the money had been given out.

Trump contradicted those comments when he later told the paper that the total raised was higher and that his team had been busy vetting the groups.

Trump had claimed during the fundraiser that he'd raised $6 million through a combination of pledges from wealthy friends, the public and $1 million from himself after a splashy telethon-style fundraiser he held in Iowa in January in place of the Fox debate.

But his campaign refused for months to disclose which charities had received the money, leading some news organizations and critics to speculate that the money raised was less than he had claimed.

At Tuesday's news conference, he listed several groups that received money, including 22Kil, American Hero Adventures and Americans for Equaal Living.

"It was very unfair that the press treated us so badly," Trump complained.

New York veterans affiliated with the group "the #VetsVsHate" protested outside Trump Tower to complain that Trump "has used veterans as political props."

"Trump has been evasive and dishonest about this money, and only after being confronted for attempting to defraud vets was he shamed into accounting for the missing funds," the group said in a release.
A former military sniper known as "Rambo" has been sentenced to 20 years behind bars for plotting to kill a Drug Enforcement Administration agent.

Former Army Sgt. Joseph M. Hunter was sentenced on the conspiracy charges Tuesday a in a Manhattan courtroom. In addition to his sentence, the 51-year-old, 20-year veteran will have to serve 10 years of supervised release and will have to pay a $300 special assessment.

"The sentencing of Joseph Hunter, an admitted contract killer, convicted drug trafficker, and ringleader of trained assassins, ends another chapter in a chilling criminal case that spanned the globe," said U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. "Hunter and his cohorts turned from serving their countries as soldiers to becoming mercenaries for hire, plotting to kill a DEA agent and informant and trafficking in massive quantities of cocaine."

At Tuesday's sentencing hearing, Hunter cried as he apologized for his crimes in front of U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain. He had pleaded guilty after his arrest in 2013.

Showing some leniency, the judge credited Hunter for an honorable military career that led to numerous commendations. But she said his "grave and serious" crimes warranted stern punishment.

DEA agents said Hunter recruited the former soldiers by reviewing resumes he received via email.

They said the team worked to obtain weapons for the planned hits, including a sniper rifle, .22-caliber revolvers with silencers, sub-machine guns. In the sting, Hunter allegedly agreed to an $800,000 payment for his team to kill the DEA agent.

Members of the team met with three people they thought were representatives of a Colombian cocaine cartel but were actually undercover informants for the DEA. In June, four members of the team went to the Caribbean to conduct surveillance on an airplane they were told was flying cocaine to the U.S.

Members of the team allegedly met with the undercover informants in Asia to plan how they would kill a DEA agent in Africa and another person they were told was providing information to the U.S. government. Prosecutors say two members of the team flew to Africa to carry out the murder but were arrested there.

The other soldiers in the scheme pleaded guilty to their crimes in 2015 and all but one has been sentenced to prison.
A man was shot and killed on a Brooklyn street corner Tuesday morning, police said.

The 46-year-old victim was shot once in the chest at about 1:45 a.m. near the corner of Schenectady Avenue and St. Johns Place in Crown Heights, authorities said.

First responders rushed the man to Kings County Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said.

No arrests have been made and the investigation is ongoing, authorities said.
A gas station owner was shot to death in Newark Monday afternoon, and the man's family said they think he was targeted because he is Sikh.

Davinder Singh, 47, was shot at the Power Gas Station on West Market Street sometime before 4:25 p.m. Monday.

Police said Singh, of Iselin, was found unresponsive at the gas station and taken to a University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly before 4:45 p.m.

Singh's son, Jatinder Singh, said that he thought his father, who had moved to the United States from India 25 years ago may have been targeted because he was Sikh and wore a turban.

"There was no robbery, no struggle, no confrontation," he said. "I don't know what else it could be other than a hate crime."

Jatinder Singh told NBC 4 New York that his father was "the best man I ever knew" and that the family had worried about him working in Newark.

The son said the 47-year-old had been robbed before but had always fought back. But on Monday afternoon, he didn't even have a chance.

"My dad came out to get some fresh air and the male came up to my dad, pointed a gun and shot him point-blank," he said.

Detectives from the Essex County Prosecutors Major Crimes Task Force are investigating the shooting. They didn't comment as to whether the case is being investigated as a hate crime.
A New Jersey township voted unanimously to ban commercial leaf blowers this summer.

The blowers, often used by professional landscaping companies, will not be permitted in Maplewood from June 1 to Aug. 31. The ban was first reported by NJ.com.

The ban is meant as a pilot program that will be assessed at the end of the summer. It was put in place to combat resident noise complaints about the blowers.

At the meeting where the ordinance was passed on May 17, NJ.com reports that some residents opposed the measure. Resident Martin Youngberg told the town council residents could pay the price.

"As a homeowner and a person who has physical disabilities, I have to employ groundskeepers...if you ban the leaf blowers it's going to require more time for those people to finish the job they are doing," he said.

Homeowner George Kolodiy told NBC 4 New York on Monday that he doesn't like the sound of commercial leafblowers but thought a blanket ban went too far. He said that landscapers currently go from house to house, making for hours of noise.

"They go from one house to another altogether," he said. "It's a couple hours, you're going to hear that noise."

Landscapers in the town, meanwhile, bristled at the ban. Charlie Bravoco said that other options -- like power brooms -- are just as loud as the leaf blowers they use.

"It's at least as loud, or definitely louder," he said.
Sino-German agreements that seek to interlink Germany's "Industry 4.0" strategy with China's "Made in China 2025" initiative were signed earlier this year. German and Chinese firms will cooperate in the field of intelligent manufacturing and the digital networking of production processes and develop collaboration on standards, security and intellectual property.

Germany and China are both manufacturing and export powerhouses. German industry is at the cutting edge of technology and the development of digital innovation. Some 15 percent of its companies are strongly focused on digital technology. By comparison, China's manufacturing industry remains relatively backward. So, its 2025 development plan aims to move production processes up the value chain and this requires the application of revolutionary manufacturing technologies. The 2025 plan involves state-led investment in 10 key industries including robotics, information technology, aerospace, railways and electric vehicles, and China will establish 15 manufacturing innovation centers by 2020, and 40 by 2025.

INFOGRAPHIC: Made in China 2025

The scope of German scientific and technical cooperation with China is immense, particularly because China's strategy focuses on applying automation and robotics to production processes. However, there are those in Germany who believe the U.S. is a more suitable partner, as intellectual property is better protected there, and their economies have greater synergy in their digital-manufacturing balance. The U.S. leads the world in digital creativity, whereas China is a manufacturing competitor with Germany.

Sluggish economic growth in Europe and Germany also inspired recent protests to defend the German steel industry, which took on a nationalist tone. Sadly, the leadership of the IG Metal union collaborated with a number of government representatives and employers to attack Chinese steel exports to Germany. The hullaballoo against China's exports and overseas investments is completely unjustified. A glance at comparative investment figures reveals that German investment into China totals over 60 billion compared to about 7 billion worth of Chinese investments into Germany.

German business interest in China is connected to the vast potential for the application of technology based on the so-called "internet of things." The internet of things interconnects people, objects and machines. China's urban environments and people can be welded into an organic whole by these means. This technology lies at the core of Germany's Industry 4.0 policy. It is expected to become the driving force of a new technical revolution and its applications are almost universal. For example, if cars driven by people communicate with other vehicles and the physical environment, they can function in a "smart" way. They can avert collisions by informing other cars of danger, or they can generate messages to alert emergency services in the event of an accident. The applications of these technologies will be ubiquitous and unexpected and will radically change our relationship with people, objects and machines.

The universal applicability of these added-on services and the complexity of their interconnections, make integrative and collaborative operational ecosystems essential. Users will require functionality that is useful and simple.

At present, the main areas of application are industry, mobility, energy, smart homes and smart cities. The German government's Industry 4.0 initiative revolves around advancing technology and intercommunication in production processes. It aims to make manufacturing processes more efficient and this affects the products that are produced. In energy production and consumption, big efficiency savings are expected. For example, at present the average person in Beijing consumes 25 percent of the energy of an average New Yorker. This low consumption level in Beijing can be sustained, or even reduced, by smart energy utilization that adjusts consumption to meet individualized, real-time demands. This can greatly reduce waste.

However, there are dilemmas that stem from the private ownership of digital tools, ideas and innovation. On the one hand, as private companies seek to maximize profits, they focus on the return on investment to their company. On the other hand, the universal nature of such technologies will affect human social relations and interactions in ways that require private interests to be subordinate to the interests of society. The state-driven development of innovation capabilities is often slated for its lack of dynamism, as it is connected to bureaucratic decision-making with top-down features. However, where new technologies are essential to humanity, the contrast between private and public interests comes to the fore in the most dramatic way.

Perhaps the most glaring example in recent decades is the development of anti-retroviral drugs that prevent HIV from developing into AIDS. They were first approved in 1997, yet the private profit motives of GlaxoSmithKline, the pharmaceutical giant, dictated that the drugs were unaffordable for millions of sufferers in poor countries. Even today, 73 percent of HIV carriers, roughly 25 million people, remain untreated. Most of them will die because of this. As a result, China's focus on state-led technological innovation is not simply important to kick-start investment, it is also essential to apply these technologies in ways that serve the good of the people.

The objective of the Chinese Communist Party is to become the world's leading industrial power by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the Chinese revolution. If China reaches this level, the Communist objective, to create a society organized around the administration of things, rather than people, will be within reach.

Heiko Khoo is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://china.org.cn/opinion/heikokhoo.htm

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
Police are searching for the men who put a gun to a womans head as she was coming home to her Bronx apartment.

The 41-year-old woman was about to open her apartment door last Wednesday morning in Kingsbridge Heights when the men approached her.

One of the suspects put a handgun to the womans head and demanded her valuables, police said.

The woman yelled for help and all of the suspects took off running.

Police ask anyone with information to call Crime Stoppers at 800-577-TIPS.
A home that's been sitting vacant on a Staten Island block three and a half years after Sandy is collapsing, and neighbors say their complaints about it have been ignored for years.

The structure has been the eyesore of Mason Avenue in Midland Beach for years, its walls cracking and roof rippling. Rats have made a home there, and it's likely mold still grows inside. Neighbors say they have had enough.

"We're desperate. We need action now," said Thea Friscia. "Look at it, it's melting. The house is melting."

Maureen Childs, who lives next door to the home, said, "The fire department told me if I hear creaks, run. They say get out of the way."

Keri Mullen, whose yard sits right behind the vacant house, says she feels punished after years of complaining to the city: Building inspectors have placed a vacate order on her backyard, saying it is too close to a potential collapse zone.

"I was told verbally that it would be a $5,000 fine if anyone is in that backyard, whether it's us or anyone coming in," she said.

Kathleen Cole, former owner of the house, told NBC 4 New York that she never intended to leave behind a vacant home, but was forced to endure a long nightmare of dealing with her insurance company, mortgage lender and the city's Sandy recovery program.

I struggled for almost four years to do the right thing and rectify the situation, she said. We fought with the insurance company for over a year regarding cleanup costs and final payout.

I had to wait months for an engineer to come on site to inspect my house.

Cole said her family was one of the first to sign up for the NYC Build It Back Program in July 2013, but was removed from the program when she unsuccessfully tried to short-sale the property to a builder.

She eventually got back into the program with help from former Congressman Michael Grimm's office and several months later was given the choice of rebuilding or taking a state buyout. By then, the house appeared to be beyond repair, she said, adding that she took the buyout

Records show a number of complaints have been made to the Department of Buildings in the last four years: In November 2012, someone complained that parts of the house were collapsing; in July 2014, another caller told 311 that the roof was collapsing.

In December 2014, the buildings department issued an unsafe building violation but two months later, the violation was dismissed. Then, this past month, there were complaints that the walls were leaning in.

State inspectors are now checking the property, and drawing up plans for an emergency demolition. A state spokeswoman could not confirm an exact date for when the house would be taken down, but said they need time to ensure the structure can be demolished safely, and with minimal impact on neighbors.
A large truck overturned on a New Jersey highway Tuesday morning, police said.

The 8-wheel truck was traveling westbound on I-280 near exit one in Parsipanny at about 11:20 a.m. when it overturned, authorities said.

Traffic was delayed for about a mile as crews worked to clear the wreck from the roadway.

It was not immediately clear if anyone was injured in the crash, authorities said.
A 16-year-old girl charged with homicide in the death of her classmate after a beating at their Delaware high school last month moved one step closer on Tuesday to potentially facing trial as an adult.

At a case review hearing Tuesday morning, a Delaware court granted prosecutors' request for an amenability hearing to decide whether the teen's case will be moved to adult court. That hearing is scheduled for July 11.

The teen, whose identity NBC10 is withholding because she is charged as a juvenile, faces charges of criminally negligent homicide and conspiracy in connection with the death of Amy Joyner-Francis, also 16, after an April 21 fight among girls in a bathroom at Howard High School of Technology in Wilmington.

Two other teen girls face conspiracy charges in the case. Both waived hearings earlier this month and are scheduled to face trial in June.

Joyner-Francis died of complications related to a pre-existing heart condition after the morning bathroom brawl inside the high school, authorities said. The investigation into the fight lasted a few weeks before the state Department of Justice decided to recommend charges, ruling that despite having a pre-existing condition, Joyner-Francis would not have died if not for the fight.

The 16-year-old charged with homicide is accused of hitting Joyner-Francis during the fight.

Joyner-Francis was the first of two tragedies for the Wilmington high school: Brandon Wingo, 15, a freshman at Howard, was gunned down in an unrelated incident May 19 a few blocks from the school. Police have not announced any arrests or suspects in that shooting.
Three masked men carjacked three family members, including a man with cerebral palsy, at gunpoint early Monday morning in the Roxborough section of Philadelphia, according to police.

A 40-year-old woman, her 52-year-old brother who has cerebral palsy, and her 25-year-old niece pulled up in front of their home on the 500 block of Gerhard Street around 12:35 a.m. As the trio got out of their vehicle, three masked and armed men approached them, according to investigators.

The 40-year-old woman told police she was attempting to unlock her door when one of the suspects approached her from behind and grabbed her pocketbook. When the woman turned around she spotted a second suspect holding a gun to her brothers head by their car.

They pretty much got him and put a gun to his head, said the woman, who did not want to be identified. One came up beside me and just asked for my purse and cellphone and the other one got my niece."

Residents in the area heard the man's cries for help as the suspect held him at gunpoint.

"The first thing that came to my mouth was, Oh Jesus! Oh Jesus! Oh Jesus! I was so scared," he said.

The three suspects then jumped into the womans vehicle, backed up into a car that was parked behind it and traveled westbound on Gerhard Street.

The woman contacted her alarm company who notified police. When police arrived they searched the area but couldnt find the suspects. None of the victims were injured during the incident.

The suspects stole credit, bank and ID cards from the victims, their glasses, iPhones and their house and car keys. Neighbors showed NBC10 surveillance video of the suspects that they plan on turning over to police. The video shows the three masked men in hoodies going down Gerhard Street from Ridge Avenue. Moments later a man with a gun runs back up the street with the victims purse and the two other suspects take off in the familys car.

News of the robbery sparked outrage on social media.

Were a lot scared and a lot afraid for our safety and our childrens safety, said Maureen Wilson, a neighbor.

The victim told NBC10 that while shes upset about what happened shes happy her and her family were unharmed.

Thank God they spared our lives, she said. It could have turned out so much worse.

The first suspect is described as a man in his 20s with a thin to medium build standing between 5-foot-9 and 5-foot-10. The second suspect is described as a thin man in his 20s standing between 5-foot-9 and 6-feet. The third suspect is described as a thin man in his 20s standing 6-feet. All three suspects were wearing masks and all-black clothing.

The family's vehicle is a blue, 2008 Acura MDX with the Pennsylvania tag, GVH0977.

If you have any information on the incident, please call Philadelphia Police.




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Your chance to get all supernatural with Santana starts in just one day -- and you wont even have to perform a soul sacrifice to get tickets. The iconic Latin rock band, fronted by Tijuanas Carlos Santana, brings their Luminosity tour to San Diego at the Open Air Theatre on Aug. 31, with the ticket presale beginning Wednesday, June 1, at 10 a.m.

The band made headlines recently for releasing Santana IV, the 23rd studio album under the Santana name, which dropped April 15. But what made this record so special is that its only the fourth released as the (nearly) original Woodstock-era lineup -- and the first in some 45 years. While it looks as though the tour will included Santanas usual touring band (as opposed to the Gregg Rolie, Neal Schon, Mike Carabello and Michael Shrieve lineup from the record), its been five years since Santana has performed in San Diego.

Tickets for the general public go on sale Friday, June 3, at 10 a.m. and are available at ticketmaster.com.
HIYA, OCEAN: If you adhere to the notion that everything is connected, from the smallest jacaranda bud to the highest peaks in the Sierra Nevada, then you likely greet each natural wonder you encounter not just with reverence but with a spoken hello, or wave, or shout of acclaim. Think of the redwoods coming into view after a long drive -- do you yell "hooray, redwoods"? Do you let out a sigh when a cloud of birds passes suddenly overhead on a hike? And do you give the ocean some love, or at least a loving glance, when you see it? These are all sweet gestures, but, of course and as always, there are bigger gestures to make, when and where we can. World Ocean Day reminds us of this urgent calling each year, via the information it shares about our planet's Great Water and the earthlings that call it home. If you're a "hiya, ocean" kind of person, someone who regularly ponders the larger cycle of all ecosystems (and how humans can play a helpful role in their care), make for...

MONTEREY BAY AQUARIUM... on Saturday, June 4 and Sunday, June 5. "You'll learn about the treasures of the ocean, the threats it faces and what we can do to keep it healthy," says the Cannery Row aquatic institution. Actor/producer Adrian Grenier will receive the Paul Walker Ocean Leadership Award, as will ocean advocate Meg Kikkeri. Crafts, tunes, and educational doings will fill out the weekend, wall-to-wall, giving those who adore the salty and sublime part of our planet their knowledge-packed fill. Are you ready to move a bit beyond greeting the ocean upon seeing it and learning how you can lend it support and stewardship? Make for Monterey over the first weekend in June.
San Diegos Ballast Point Brewing & Spirits will invest $47.8 million to establish East Coast brewing operations in suburban Roanoke, Va., the Virginia governors office announced.

Ballast Point will be the third major San Diego brewer to establish East Coast facilities in Virginia, following previously announced operations now getting underway at Stone Brewing Co. and Green Flash Brewing Co. Stone is gearing up facilities in Richmond, and Green Flash is preparing to brew in Virginia Beach.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said in a statement that he met with Ballast Point officials at their Miramar headquarters in September 2015, as part of a West Coast business marketing mission. Virginia competed against several Eastern states for the project, which will create 178 jobs in Botetourt County near Roanoke.

We are fortunate that there is a growing appreciation of beer across the country and the world, and opening a brewery location in Virginia will better allow us to get fresh, great-quality beer in the hands of our customers, said Ballast Point founder Jack White, in the governors statement.

The Virginia Economic Development Partnership worked with Botetourt County and the Roanoke Regional Partnership to secure the project for Virginia, with a $2.4 million grant from the states Opportunity Fund approved by the governor. Ballast Point will also be eligible to receive a $250,000 grant from the governors Agriculture and Forestry Industries Development Fund.

The statement said funding and services to support Ballast Points employee training activities will be provided through the Virginia Jobs Investment Program.

Ballast Point last year was acquired by New York-based Constellation Brands, in a $1 billion deal. It is the nations 11th largest craft beer maker based on 2015 sales volume, and the second-largest among San Diego County brewers after Escondido-based Stone Brewing.

Additional stories from the San Diego Business Journal are available here. Sign up for their free daily email newsletter.
A San Diego-based U.S. Coast Guard rescued an elderly woman from a cruise ship near La Jolla Monday after the passenger began experiencing heart attack-type symptoms.

U.S. Coast Guard officials said Sector San Diego received a report from a Carnival Imagination cruise ship around 9 p.m. stating a woman aboard the ship was ill. The cruise ship was approximately 33 miles west of La Jolla at the time of the call.

A Coast Guard duty flight surgeon recommended that the 81-year-old passenger be medically evacuated from the ship for emergency treatment. San Diego Coast Guard crews launched a Response Boat-Medium (RBM) to the cruise ship and the woman, her husband and a nurse embarked onto the Coast Guards vessel.

Coast Guard officials said the RBM arrived in San Diego at 12:30 a.m. and the victim was then transferred to an ambulance and taken to Scripps Mercy Hospital in Hillcrest.

No further details were released. The womans condition, as of Tuesday afternoon, is unknown.
Several playbooks used by Trump University were released to the public Tuesday and detail how much students paid to attend the now-closed school.

According to the confidential Trump documents, after a free seminar to attract potential clients, the next step was to sign students up for a $1,495 three-day-training. After that, according to a flow chart released with the documents, the Trump University sales people were asked to convince students to sign-up for elite levels of training. The students might pay anywhere from $10-35,000 for the Trump Elite Packages," according to the documents.

This included a quick start retreat at the Silver Elite and Bronze Elite levels. The $35,000 Gold Elite level training included a $13,495 savings for students, the documents detail.

Click here to read more about the packages.

The Washington Post asked U.S. Federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel to intervene in order to ask for thousands of pages of documents to be unsealed in one of the class-action lawsuits against Donald Trump and Trump University. The judge agreed issued the unsealing Friday in a San Diego courtroom.

In the class action lawsuits, Trump University is accused of misleading students with unfulfilled promises of teaching them the secret to being successful in the real estate business.

The allegations outlined in court documents include Trump University, which took in over $40 million, was fraudulent and deceptive.

One of the documents released was a transcript from a 2012 video deposition of Michael Sexton.

According to the transcript, it was Sexton's idea to start Trump University. In the transcript it describes how he presented the idea to Trump in 2004 through a former partners brother-in-law, who was a golfing buddy of Trump.

In the transcript of the deposition, Sexton said Trump University never sought accreditation to become a university.

Click here to read the entire deposition of Sexton.

The confidential Trump University documents include a letter signed by Trump to be sent to prospective University students.

Titled Mailer is Sent 7-10 Days Prior," it begins I am personally inviting you and a guest to a powerful wealth building event." The letter continues, when I speak, people listen...when I send out invitations, people attend because they know my invitation means one thing-there is money to be made."

Click here to read the letter signed by Trump.

Two class-action lawsuits against the now-closed Trump University are being heard in San Diego courtrooms, another lawsuit is based in a New York court. The San Diego cases include: Cohen v. Trump, a nationwide class action lawsuit and Makaeff v. Trump, a class action in California, Florida and New York.

Click here to read more about the Trump University lawsuits.

Trump denies the allegations in the lawsuits. His attorney, Daniel Petrocelli said, the case is unwarranted; (Trump) will defend himself fully."

The documents released Tuesday are associated with the Cohen v. Trump case.

Click here to read the corrected unsealing order.

In a statement, Jill Martin, an attorney representing Trump and Trump University said, "the Courts order unsealing documents has no bearing on the merits of Trump Universitys case. Much of the unsealed evidence, including declarations and surveys from former Trump University students, demonstrates the high level of satisfaction from students and that Trump University taught valuable real estate information. Trump University looks forward to using this evidence, along with much more, to win when the case is brought before a jury."

Other documents released Tuesday include the Trump University sales playbook and several positive reviews from Trump University event attendees.

The sales playbook was given to University sales people to sell the schools various real estate programs to school attendees.

Click here to read pages from the sales playbook.

In the playbook, the companys sales force is instructed to use a two-part sales process to set and close a client described as The Roller Coaster of Emotions. The book details how the sales force was directed to bring a prospective client back to the moment they requested information about the sales course.

The motivation they experience can die quickly as the realities of their daily lives take over, the sales playbook instructs. Its is our job to rekindle that motivation.

According to the playbook, a formula for success included 80 to 100 phone calls a day minimum with 15 sales appointments scheduled for Monday through Friday.

Dont ask people what they THINK about something youve said. Instead, always ask them how they FEEL about it, the screeners were told in the sales playbook.

When a potential candidate asks if the program will guarantee success, the screener is instructed to reply:

I wish I could answer it. You See, we have no control over whether we have a client who is going to show up for all their phone appointments with their coach or if theyre going to get off the couch and get out there and do the assignments theyre given...Actually its YOU who need to assure us that if youre selected for this advanced training that youre actually going to get out there and do this.

According to the transcript of the deposition of Sexton, the target audience for Trump University enrollment was college-educated males, 40-48 years old, "maybe 40 to 55" years-old.

Also provided were instructions on what to do if a potential client objected by saying they dont like running up credit card debt or they needed to check with their wives first before signing up for any course.
Wearing sunglasses and a sleeveless shirt, a cigar hanging from his mouth and a huge gun in his hands, Chief Petty Officer Charles Keating IV looks like a Hollywood action star.

Although the photograph itself was taken as a joke, its now an iconic image on the back of a T-Shirt, helping to raising money for two charities in Keatings name.

The 31-year-old Keating didnt want the spotlight, but when a Navy SEAL dies in combat, America takes notice.

Keating died on May 3, after taking direct fire during an ISIS-led siege in Iraq.

The shirts surfaced at his memorial service at the request of family members who asked Keatings friend and clothing company founder Ian Urtnowski to make them and hand them out. All 1,500 shirts disappeared in a flash.

A paragraph on the URT clothing company website explains what happened next:

After talking to Chuck's closest family, we have decided to make the shirt available for purchase. The proceeds from the shirt will benefit the Navy SEAL Foundation and Charlie's favorite non-profit organization: One More Wave Surf Corp. 1MW's purpose is to make custom boards and wetsuits for veterans who have been wounded in combat. It is what Chuck would've wanted.

Urtnowski spoke with NBC 7 Monday and called the last two weeks a whirlwind. There has been an overwhelming response from the public.

After getting mentions on social media from movie stars and professional athletes, the company has printed nearly 5,000 shirts.

Urtnowski said his website has crashed 10 times.

The front of the shirt has four letters: CKIV which stands for Charles Keating IV. The back of the shirt has the words Chuck Heavy along with Keatings Rambo-esque picture.

We call it Chuck heavy, cause Charlies beer of choice was Budweiser. He didnt drink Bud Light, he drank Bud Heavy and heavy just sums up the whole emotional feeling for all of us said Urtnowski.

The shirts sell for $25 on the website.
The drinking water in all Alexandria City public schools was tested over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, school officials said Tuesday.

The school system said it's not aware of higher than usual lead levels in the area, but did the testing in response to the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.

In 2014, Flint began using the Flint River but didn't treat the water for corrosion. As a result, lead leached from old pipes for 18 months. Flint switched back to a Detroit-area water system last fall but the lead problem still isn't fully solved.

School officials in Alexandria said the water was tested over the Memorial Day holiday weekend because the water in the building had to be undisturbed for 12 to 18 hours prior to testing.

Test results are expected in mid to late June.
A Maryland woman is grieving the loss of her dog after boarding her pets with a Clinton, Maryland, pet resort last week.

Hugo, a 1-year-old Italian mastiff, was found dead on the side of the road a dozen miles from the location where he was being kept. Kayla Roman believes her dog, Sasha, a 1-year-old Cane Corso, is grieving the loss of her brother, Hugo, her littermate, from whom she has never been separated.

Roman said a family emergency forced her to board those two dogs plus her 7-year-old boxer, named Phillie, on Thursday, May 19 at Axiom Pet Resort. She said she called to check on them every day, and on Sunday, May 22, she got the feeling something was wrong.

She went to the resort the next morning and said an employee presented her with only two of her dogs. Video taken a short time later shows a lethargic Sasha and Roman, now extremely concerned, contacted Prince George's County Police.

Another video showed the limp that prompted Roman to take the dog to the vet, where she learned, to her horror, that two days earlier, someone had spotted the body of a dog fitting Hugo's description on the side of Route 301, near the Lowe's in Waldorf, more than a dozen miles away.

Roman and her family found the remains of the gentle giant at that location. The dog's death and the circumstances leading up to it are under investigation by Prince George's County Animal Control.

On Tuesday, news partners WTOP received a statement from Axion Pet Resort to tell their side of the story.

"A dog (Hugo) escaped from his kennel area and was located in Waldorf, approximately 12 miles away on May 23. The dog was last seen the night of May 22 at approximately 7:30 p.m., when he was last fed.

"When interviewing the employee on that shift (one of our 3 most senior employees), he noted that he had left the pass-through door open overnight(this allows dogs access to the outside from the inside space), because he was unable to get the dog inside and was unable to go into the kennel as the dog was being aggressive (owner also noted this on drop off). This, in itself, is completely against our policies, as all dogs are required to be inside following their dinner meal. We immediately terminated the employee responsible.

"From there, the dog had to either jump out of his outdoor kennel space or somehow manipulate the latch. We know he did escape from his outdoor kennel, as we found stool in our secondary containment fence area.

"From there, we assume the dog either squeezed through a narrow opening found between our fence and shed or jumped over the fence, as a few bags of mulch were stacked up by the fence. As soon as we discovered this (on May 23), we created flyers and sent out search parties. Eventually, the dog was located, deceased on the side of the road in Waldorf by one of our employees, who then covered the dog and notified a manager.

"As far as the other two dogs (Sasha & Phillie), the owner claimed the dogs were not acting normal. We directed them to a local vet office, where they were then cleared of any injuries. The owners then asked to go to a different vet and took them to an animal hospital of their choice, where they were also cleared of any physical injuries (one dog had pre-existing masses, and that was noted by the vet in the report, which we have also released). We assume this is either from a much prior incident or the house fire the dogs were just in, as they were being boarded with us due to that.

"Following the incident, PG County animal control conducted interviews and inspections. After the investigation, Animal Control cleared Axiom Pet Resort of any negligence or wrong doing (other than the fact a dog escaped) and notified us we have been cleared.

"Anyone who knows us can attest we are lifelog dog loving people who have devoted our lives to these animals and would never allow this to happen. All employees prior to working must complete weeks of training to include 'The Dog Gurus' program as well as canine familiarity and care via Dogs101 videos on each breed. The employee responsible was terminated, all vet bills were imminently paid by us, and we are deeply saddened by this event as we fully understand that dogs really are members of our family.

"We would like to thank all of our current customers who are speaking out in our support, as we truly pour our heart and souls into each dog that comes in. This is a terrible incident that we take full responsibility for. We ask people not to judge us based on the poor decisions of a single employee who knew the protocols and regulations and chose not to follow them."
What to Know Presents for 10-year-old Jabril Crossman were kept in a designated place at a Sky Zone Trampoline Park.

At the end of the party, employees told his mother they had surveillance video of someone else taking the presents.

The presents were returned after News4's report, but police still want to charge the thief.

A Maryland boy had one of the best parts of any birthday party taken from him when someone stole all his presents.

Assiatu Crossman, of Montgomery County, said it was the last big birthday party her son Jabril was going to have for a while so they decided to go all out. She paid almost $500 to throw her son's 10th birthday party at a Sky Zone Trampoline Park May 7.

When they got to the park, they were told there was a specific place for presents.

A tall shelf right there with the kids name on it, Crossman said.

More than two dozen children showed up with gifts. Jabril was excited about the party at Sky Zone but even more excited about opening his gifts, his mother said.

He kind with one of his friends, Oh, this is heavy. I bet there are a lot of Lego pieces in there, she said.

But when the party ended the gifts were gone. Employees told her a family was seen on surveillance video stealing the presents, Crossman said.

She struggled to break the news to her son.

He was very sad and then he said, Well, maybe they need the gifts. Maybe we should just let them have it,' Crossman said.

Shortly after News4 reported the crime Tuesday, the gifts were returned, but police are still looking for the thief, who faces several theft charges.

A manager at Sky Zone said they are cooperating with police but they're not responsible for stolen items.

Sky Zone released a statement saying, What happened at our park was extremely unfortunate, and we are doing everything in our power to work with the police to find the perpetrator.

Police said it is an ongoing investigation.

It's not about the gifts," Crossman said. "It's just the fact that somebody would steal from a 10-year-old.
What to Know PGPCS CEO Dr. Kevin Maxwell commissioned task force after arrest of former school aide Deonte Carraway on child porn and abuse allegations.

Task force did not explore Carraway's case.

School district did not hand over copies of any background checks on Carraway or performance reviews for the principal due to criminal case.

A task force created by the Prince George's County Public Schools board recommended new reporting requirements and curriculum changes after a former school aide and volunteer was arrested and accused of victimizing 19 elementary school students.

The Student Safety Task Force report made five major recommendations for immediate consideration, 61 specific considerations and 28 suggestions how administrative procedures can be updated, clarified or enhanced.

As I read the report, its not that people didnt know what they were doing, PGPCS CEO Dr. Kevin Maxwell said. Its a way to improve.

Maxwell commissioned the task force following the arrest of Deonte Carraway in February. Hes facing federal charges of sexually assaulting and videotaping students on and off school property.

Recommendations range from a new curriculum teaching all students sexual abuse prevention to training for everyone who has contact with students, but there was no exploration into the case that spawned the creation of the task force.

We were not asked to investigate the Carraway case and we did not, said Prince Georges Community College President Charlene Dukes, who chaired the task force. That was not our goal.

According to charging documents, Carraway formed a club that allowed him access to victims during and after school hours. Despite documented complaints from students about Carraway, it took a relative of one of the victims going to police before Carraway was arrested.

During a press conference Tuesday announcing what the task force found, Dukes said there were no interviews conducted with anyone connected to the Carraway case.

School district records obtained by the News4 I-Team show a top order of business for the task force was to shield its deliberations from the public.

A meeting agenda obtained under the Maryland Public Information Act shows the task force began its March 3 session by discussing why the group was not required to release notes from its meetings.

The school district also decided it would not hand over copies of any background checks performed on Carraway or release performance reviews of the principal of the elementary school. The schools said all of those records relate to the ongoing criminal case against Carraway.

Carraway made videos of children having sex with him and each other at the Glenarden school, at a church and at other locations in Maryland, according to the criminal indictment.

Carraway pleaded not guilty to numerous counts of sexually exploiting children.
Authorities are still investigating what happened after a body was found on the ground outside of a condominium building in Rockville, Maryland, Monday evening.

Montgomery County police were called to the 11700 block of Old Georgetown Road around 5:30 p.m. When they arrived, they found an adult on the ground dead.

A spokesman said the injuries suffered by the person were consistent with a fall from a height. He said there were no witnesses who saw anyone jump from the condo building.

Police are calling it a death investigation and have not released any details about the victim.
A dead dog was found in a crate on a New Haven sidewalk on Memorial Day, police confirmed.

On Monday morning, a dead dog in a crate was found between paper bags of leaves put out as trash on Blake Street, police said.

At 11 a.m., a caller said the dog was in a covered crate on the sidewalk.

Police describe the animal as a small white "lap dog" with no noticeable signs of trauma, according to patrol sergeant Steven Teague.

"It's likely the case of someone who's pet died and they didn't know how to properly deal with the situation -- perhaps someone elderly," Teague said.

It is not clear who the dog belongs to or the cause of its death.

Police are investigating the incident but said not necessarily for criminal wrongdoing.
One police officer was injured and a teen arrested following a series of large fights involving hundreds of people at New Hampshire's Hampton Beach last week.

Police were initially called to a report of a large fight at the Hampton Beach Pavilion around 6:30 p.m. on May 25.

Police found a group fighting and arrested the person they determined to be the aggressor - Julian Cruz, 18, of Manchester - for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. He had to be Tasered during the course of the arrest. He was released on bail and is scheduled to be arraigned on July 12.

As the officer was taking Cruz into custody, a large group of about 300 people surrounded the officer and began chanting at him.

A number of other large groups remained in the area following the initial disturbance, and police were forced to respond to the pavilion again for a potential riot. Hundreds of people were there, and several fights broke out, with some people throwing objects at police.

New Hampshire State Police and Seabrook Police were called in to assist Hampton Police in clearing the groups from the area.

One Hampton police officer was transported by Hampton Fire to Portsmouth Hospital with minor injuries.

Additional staff were called in from state police and other neighboring departments to help patrol the beach throughout Memorial Day weekend. They made several sweeps of the beach area, removing people who had open containers of alcohol or who were acting in a disorderly fashion.

Anyone with information on the May 25 incident or any other similar incidents at the beach are urged to call Hampton Police at 603-929-4444.
Two arrests have been made in connection with the May 27, 2016 murder of Robert Pierog, a 22-year-old man from Littleton, New Hampshire.

Damion Yeargle, 21, of Littleton was arrrested and charged with one count of first-degree murder for purposely causing Pierog's death by shooting him multiple times.

Quade Kadle, 18, of Jefferson, was also arrested and charged with one count of accomplice to first degree murder.

The investigation to the murder began on May 27, 2016 when Littleton Police first responded to an emergency call at 124 West Main Street, Apartment, at about 10:30 p.m.

When police arrived, Pierog was outside of the residence suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

An autopsy was performed on May 28 and it was determined that the cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds, and the manner of death was homicide.

Yeargle and Kadle are scheduled to be arraigned on Tuesday, May 31, 2016.
Manchester, New Hampshire, Police responded to a Stop-N-Go at 188 Massabesic Street today for an armed robbery. The clerk described the assailant as an Hispanic male wearing a white shirt and blue pants. He was armed with a sharp stone when he approached the clerk and demanded cash.

The assailant was described as being thin with a goat-t style beard and mustache and was last seen on foot. He fled with an undisclosed amount of cash. You can contact the Manchester Police Detective Division at 603-792-5500 if you recognize the man in the photograph. You may also contact the Manchester Police Crime Line at 603-624-4040 and may be eligible for a cash reward.
Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker is now promising to sign a bill banning discrimination against transgender people in public accommodations. Governor Baker said he supports the house bill in its current form.

Weve certainly listened to a variety of points of view from many sides and have said, from the beginning, that we dont want people to be discriminated against, Baker said in an interview today. If the House bill were to pass in its current form, yeah, I would sign it.

The House version calls for penalties for people who use gender identity for improper reasons. That bill is scheduled for debate tomorrow. Up until now, the governor has declined to say whether he would sign the legislation.
Biologists with the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife continue working to rescue a state-owned island from the brink of destruction by birds.



"It's quiet compared to the way it used to be here," said biologist John Gobeille as he stepped from a boat onto Young Island in Lake Champlain. "You used to need earplugs."



Today, Young Island is green and grassy. Not too long ago, the spot was barren and rocky because its surfaces were denuded. The island was infested with shrieking ring-billed gulls and cormorants, whose toxic guano killed vegetation.



"It's coming back," Gobeille said, observing plant life on the island.



Gobeille was applying cooking oil to the gulls' eggs, so they wouldn't hatch. He said over the past fifteen or so years, the approach helped cut the population of ring-billed gulls to less than a tenth of the 15,000 that once dominated Young Island. They would bully other birds, keeping species away, Gobeille explained.



"The species diversity here had declined to only, like, two [bird] species," Gobeille told necn, recalling the situation on the island in the 1990s.



For cormorants, the oil work, combined with shooting the birds in a prescribed process more than ten years ago, dramatically minimized numbers on Young Island, fish and wildlife officials said. However, regular visitors to the lake will see cormorants at many other locations on and around the water.



Now, with the gull numbers down on Young Island, Mark Scott, the wildlife director of the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, said birds including the black duck and the common tern have been able to nest on the island again. The common tern, despite its name, is listed as a state-endangered species in Vermont.



"I'm smiling today," Scott said on a recent visit to the island. "I look at this island and go, 'Wow, this is really neat what's happened here.'"



Scott and Gobeille noted the department has planted trees and ground-covering plants to replace what the invaders killed. Not only would the birds' acidic waste prevent plants from growing, but the birds would also defoliate trees and shrubs to build nests, Gobeille explained, turning the island into something resembling the surface of the moon.



Despite the encouraging turnaround in Young Island's appearance, the department said it knows there is a lot more habitat restoration work that needs to be done on Lake Champlain. The department said it is currently watching five other state-owned islands, one private island through financial backing of the landowner, and another private island where the state deters birds that may interfere with nesting of the common tern.



Thousands of cormorants are still damaging other land, boaters and fishermen have reported in recent years. And many sportsmen believe the cormorants are robbing the lake of fish by gobbling up perch and smelt.



Fishermen have long complained about the cormorants, insisting more needs to be done to control the large, black birds' numbers.



Funding a cormorant fix on the lake Vermont shares with New York and Quebec has been a long-running problem, Scott acknowledged.



"The challenge comes down to money; you know, economics," Scott told necn. "People say, 'Well, why don't you just let people go out and hunt [cormorants] on their own? Well, they're not classified as a game species under federal law."



Even with more challenges ahead, the dramatic transformation of Young Island has left the department optimistic that habitat management can work.



Scott said the department does its gull and cormorant work with just over $40,000 in state funding, but to be even more effective, he said his team would need $100,000 in additional monies from federal grants, state appropriations, non-profit support, or other sources.




Two students at Brown University have developed the technology for color-changing cotton swabs that officials say will be "transformative" for the investigation of sexual assaults.

The Providence Journal reports senior Richard Park and graduating master's student Bella Okiddy, both 23, invented cotton swabs that activate when they come in contact with semen as part of their "Technologies Against Assault" venture.

The swabs are similar to home pregnancy tests in that they detect the existence of sperm. Additional tests would still be required for DNA matching.

While sex assault victims in Rhode Island generally receive results of "rape kit" examinations within one month, Park and Okiddy's innovation could reduce the wait period to mere minutes.

Park and Okiddy hope to have U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval by December 2017.
A male body was found in the Connecticut River in Gill, Massachusetts on Monday afternoon.

According tot he Northwest County District Attorney's office, the body was discovered in the general area in which the State Police dive team was conducting a search for the suspect of a Plymouth County murder.

At this time, the police cannot confirm whether the body is that of the suspect for which they were searching.
Burlington, Vermont, police are searching for two persons of interest in connection with the fatal beating of a transgender man at a homeless encampment in the Vermont city.

Investigators seek to question 21-year-old Erick Averill and 23-year-old Myia Barber, two transients living in Burlington, about the May 22 attack on 38-year-old Amos Beede.

Beede was found unconscious suffering from facial fractures, a subdural hematoma and broken ribs near the Barge Canal on Pine Street. Lt. Shawn Burke says the victim had a tent at the homeless encampment.

Beede died of his injuries Sunday at the University of Vermont Medical Center.

A hate crime hasn't been ruled out as a possible motive for the beating, although investigators say bias doesn't appear to be a primary factor in the fatal attack so far.
A battle over solar panels installed on the roof of a Westerly, Rhode Island, ice cream shop may be thawing.

A lawyer for the family that owns the St. Clair Annex shop and an attorney for the Watch Hill Fire District tell The Westerly Sun that a settlement is in the works.

The family installed a 36.9-kilowatt solar array on the shop's roof in December with a $42,000 grant administered by the state's economic development agency.

The fire district appealed, saying permits for the panels should not have been issued before a development plan review was conducted. District officials also say the panels detract from the architectural character of the area.

Lawyers say they are not yet prepared to discuss specifics of the settlement.
A second pedestrian injured in a car crash on Monday morning in Oxford, Massachusetts, has died.

Gina Cappello, 52, of Andover, the vice chancellor of UMass Boston, died Tuesday as a result of injuries suffered in the crash. She had been in critical condition at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester since Monday.

UMass Chancellor J. Keith Motley said Cappello inspired everyone "with her incredible talent, her unfailing kindness, and her unstintingly generous commitment to moving this institution forward ... Our heartfelt thoughts are with the Cappello and Sullivan families at this difficult time, especially Gina's daughters, Kristina and Gabrielle."

Also killed in the crash was Daniel Sullivan, 53, of Oxford. He died at the scene.

A preliminary police investigation shows that the operator of a Lexus lost control of the vehicle and struck a Toyota Corolla. The Corolla then hit Sullivan and Cappello, who were on foot.

The driver of the Lexus and the passengers in the Corolla were treated for non-life-threatening injuries.

Its unclear what caused the crash, but witnesses say that its possible the driver of the Lexus suffered a medical emergency.

The cause of the crash is under investigation. No charges have been filed.
At the MIT EmTech Digital conference, startup Nervana announced plans to design and build a custom ASIC processor for neural networks and machine learning applications that the companys CEO, Naveen Rao, claims will run 10 times faster than graphic processor units (GPU).

The news comes after Google last week announced it had secretly deployed its neural network and machine-learning-tailored processors in its data centers about a year ago. The company reported that its custom processor had improved performance by an order of magnitude. Googles approach and improvements in performance validate Nervanas technical strategy.

+ More on Network World: +

GPUs have become synonymous with machine learning. Interest in machine learning exploded a few years ago when Alex Krizhevsky, a student of artificial intelligence (AI) luminary Geoff Hinton at the University of Toronto, proved that machine learning systems could be trained on economically priced GPU hardware. Krizevsky programmed a massively parallel GPU board to solve deep learning problems after he recognized that GPUs could be repurposed to accelerate neural network vector mathematics calculations. The application of GPUs in the hyperscale mobile market has made these processors cheap and effective, but not optimized for machine learning, according to Rao.

Nervanas custom ASIC, called the Nervana Engine, has 32GB of memory packaged with each processor module. Within the processing module, on-chip storage memory interconnect transfer rates are 8Tbps. The processor modules are interconnected in a supercomputer-like Torus configuration and can transfer data memory to memory at 2.4Tbps.

Rao said the training of machine learning systems is 10 ten times faster because much larger data models can be loaded into memory and processed in parallel. Rao quoted Antoine de Saint-Exupery while explaining the Nervana Engines architecture, Perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove. The instruction set was reduced to a set of primitives optimized for machine learning much how RISC processors were designed with fewer instructions. Because neural network programs prescribe operations and memory access, the managed memory cache hierarchy used in GPUs was eliminated, speeding execution and opening more die space.

The Nervana Engine will be fabricated by TSMC with a 28nm device size, due for delivery in early 2017. Rao says a subsequent shrink to a 16nm device size could double performance.

Neon gives Nervana engineers more control, higher performance

Nervana developed its own Python-based machine learning libraries called Neon that are optimized for neural network applications, such as machine translation, image classification, object localization, text analysis and video indexing. Neon currently runs on Nvidia GPUs that run proprietary microcode. With engineering control over the application layer and microcode layer, Nervana engineers have optimized execution times. When the Nervana Engine is released, it will be able to optimize all three layers: application, microcode and hardware.

Nervana has published benchmarks of Neon running on Nvidia GPUsby Facebook researcher Soumith Chintalato claim first place in machine learning performance. When Nervana Engines are delivered the benchmarks, Rao says performance will improve by an order of magnitude.

Nervana offers Neon running on Nvidia GPUs as a cloud service to customers, which includes Monsanto. These workloads will be shifted to the Nervana Engine in 2017.

The last machine learning mile

The quantity of machine learning experts and programmers doesnt approach the number needed by enterprises to solve high-value problems with machine learning. The Economist recently published a report about the competition for AI experts between Silicon Valleys marquee companies and academia. In the competition for technical talent, enterprises are a distant third choice for greatly sought after experts.

Nervana is delivering the machine learning last mile with professional services that augment enterprise IT departments, data scientists and statisticians.
During my conversations with security executives, a topic that consistently comes up is what, exactly, constitutes a modern hacking operation. Security professionals understand theyre no longer facing script kiddies who lack a comprehensive plan. However, theyre also not fully aware of how detail-oriented adversaries are when developing an attack campaign.

Todays hacking operations are well-organized and developed by well-funded teams of highly trained adversaries who have diverse experiences and backgrounds. In fact, attack planning is handled like a business operation and includes hiring plans, budgets and timelines.

To help security professionals better understand the attacks theyre facing, I thought Id share some of my observations on the work that goes into planning a hack.

Goals define the operation

An attack starts long before a network is breached. The first step in any attack is setting the operations goals. Hackers dont randomly pick an entity, blindly attack it and hope theyll discover valuable information. Targets are selected based on the data they possess and how that information will help the hackers meet their goals.

Typically, the criminal entity behind the attack sets the goals, which vary depending on their objectives and motives. For example, a nation-state that uses a cyber attack to provide the countrys businesses with a research and development advantage would set a goal of stealing intellectual property and trade secrets from prosperous companies.

+ Also on Network World: Rip up the script when assembling a modern security team +

Larger campaigns may often include several smaller goals that when combined reach the main objective. In some cases, the campaign may include hacking into several targets to achieve a goal. For example, an operation may include hacking into another company in order to infiltrate the intended targets network. Hackers used this approach in the Target breach when they first compromised the HVAC vendors system to access the Target network.

This leads me to my next point about goals: Hackers will do anything to accomplish them. Theyll disregard rules and will use deception whenever possible. Criminals intent on making money, obtaining intellectual property or carrying out other nefarious activities are behind these operations, not people who follow corporate policies.

Getting to know you

The reconnaissance that hackers conduct goes beyond mapping a companys IT network or learning about its technology. Theyre interested in gathering as much information as possible on their target, especially around how the business and its key personnel operate. These details will help attackers navigate around any technological or human barriers that hinder the attack.

To collect these details, hackers will use social media to learn where key members of your security team worked or went to college. If a hacker has penetrated your network, theyll review emails and calendar entries to learn when key security personnel are on vacation and attack when theres a staffing gap.

Not to make you paranoid, but in some cases hacking organizations will use insiders to obtain information on their target. Theyll either use a person already working at the organization or attempt to get someone hired by the company, allowing them to operate from within the target. Job interviews can teach the adversary how the company handles security events and how security personnel are measured and evaluated. If an adversary knows, for example, that a companys security team is measured by how quickly it remediates incidents, an attack may include malware thats easy to discover as a way to distract them from the real operation.

Gathering all this information makes reconnaissance very time consuming. Ive seen some hackers start reconnaissance a year before the initial infiltration. But all of this preparation increases the chances of the operation succeeding.

Celebrate diversity

Hacking teams are composed of people who have various backgrounds whose expertise can help the operation. An attack targeted at a mine may include a geological expert, for instance, who can provide firsthand knowledge on how this organization functions. This diversity gives the hackers new ways of approaching the operation. Companies would be wise to follow a similar practice when building out their security teams, a point I made in a recent Network World blog.

The roles on a hacking team are also diverse. For example, theres usually a group of people dedicated to deception. This often-overlooked group creates a campaign that distracts the security team from the main operation. The distraction is meant to mitigate the risk of the campaign being discovered. Some of the more common distractions include a DDoS attack that brings down a companys website or malware that a security team can easily detect. These decoy threats mask the real threat and allow it to continue unabated.

Penetrating a network is the simplest part of an operation and is sometimes outsourced, a point that surprises many people because they consider penetration the operations most important component. But outsourcing penetration to someone who specializes in the task guarantees that the hackers will get into the organization. The reason is simple: Teams that handle penetration get paid only if they infiltrate the target. With their paycheck on the line, these teams will do everything possible to defeat a companys defenses.

Taking it easy

Hacking operations arent rushed. Attackers want to remain undetected in your IT environment for as long as possible. This approach allows them to minimize mistakes and, of course, gather more data and compromise more systems. Ive seen cases where attackers went undetected for a year, giving them ample time to access systems like Microsoft Active Directory and Outlook Web App. Having this access let attackers collect every employees log-in credentials and maintain persistence in the environment.

Think like the enemy

To combat more complex hacking operations, security teams need to adopt a hackers mindset. Remember, hackers are out to deceive a company. Security incidents, even minor ones, should be treated as a potential threat. Companies need to aggressively monitor their IT environment and look for any behavioral changes. Catching just one incident could expose the entire campaign.
Microsofts CEO Satya Nadella is visiting India, reflecting the growing importance of the country as a market for multinational technology companies.

Nadellas visit follows the first trip to India by Apple CEO Tim Cook, who visited the country this month to drum up support for the companys plans to offer refurbished iPhones in the price-sensitive market as well as to get permission to set up its wholly-owned stores in the country. Both deals appear to have been blocked by regulators, according to reports.

While Apple was largely seen as lacking focus on India until recently, when its China revenue fell 11 percent, while iPhone sales in India grew 56 percent year-on-year in the last quarter, Microsoft has been a long-time player in the Indian market.

It announced in September last year the availability of Microsoft Azure services from local datacenter regions in the country, followed by Office 365 and CRM Online services.

The public cloud services market in India is projected to grow 30.4 percent in 2016 to US$1.26 billion, according to Gartner. With the local cloud services offered by Microsoft, regulated industries such as the banking and financial services industries, government departments and state-owned enterprises will be able to keep their data on servers within the country.

During his one-day visit to India, which a Microsoft spokeswoman described as part of a tour of some Asian countries, India-born Nadella will meet with customers, startups and developers, apart from addressing CEOs at an event hosted by industry association, Confederation of Indian Industry.

An issue that is likely to surface during Nadellas visit, his third since taking charge as CEO, will be Microsofts bid to provide connectivity to rural areas on vacated TV spectrum. That move has run into opposition from mobile service providers who want the spectrum to be auctioned.

Besides its sales and marketing operation, Microsoft also does global product development, support and research in the country.
A recent test of pre-installed updater software on 10 laptops showed that every single one had security problems.

"We went and bought about 10 laptops," said Darren Kemp, security researcher at Duo Security. "And every single vendor had their own piece of software to perform software updates, including the Microsoft Signature Editions, and they were all pretty terrible."

For example, some laptop manufacturers weren't using encryption in their updaters.

"We found exploitable vulnerabilities in every vendor," he said.

We found exploitable vulnerabilities in every vendor.

Darren Kemp, security researcher at Duo Security

There was one updater that was pretty secure, he added, on a Lenovo laptop. But that same laptop also had a second updater installed, which had no security features whatsoever.

The Dell laptop had a high-risk vulnerability related to certificates. Asus and Lenovo each had a high-risk vulnerability that could have resulted in arbitrate code execution, while Hewlett Packard and Acer each had two.

"The nature and the type of vulnerabilities is that they are easy to find and easy to exploit, in most cases," Kemp said. "It doesn't require a lot of technical wizardry to find and exploit these vulnerabilities. They're very easy to target."

Laptop manufacturers build their own, proprietary updaters to update the software that they install on the machines, such as their proprietary management and support tools.

"Right now, the Microsoft updater is used to update only Microsoft software and approved drivers," Kemp said, forcing manufacturers to build their own.

However, the main function of the proprietary updaters is to update all the bloatware that they pre-install on their machines -- bloatware that itself has been linked to many security vulnerabilities.

"It seemed with some of these vendors, that even they had difficulty tracking their systems and who had what where," Kemp said.

Enterprises can build their own clean images, that they know and trust, for the laptops they issue to employees, he said.

Laptops running Microsoft "Signature Edition" systems are intended to be free of third-party bloatware. However, proprietary software updaters and support packages are often still present on the machines.

Companies can also move to thin clients such as the Chromebook, that run a stripped-down operating system and a browser.

"It is absolutely a solution to that problem because of the hardening features and ease of management," said Kemp.

The researchers tested laptops running Windows 8.1 or Windows 10, in both out-of-box configurations and after pending updates were applied. The 10 laptops were the Lenovo Flex 3, the HP Envy, the Microsoft Signature Edition of the HP Stream x360, the UK version of the Lenovo G50-80, the UK version of the Acer Aspire F15, the Canada version of the Dell Inspiron 14, the Microsoft Signature Edition of the Dell Inspiron 15-5548, the Asus TP200s and the Microsoft Signature Edition of the Asus TP200s.

Duo Labs recommended that vendors harden their updaters through consistent use of TLS, implement manifest signing, and perform proper validation of Authenticode signatures.

This story, "Laptop updaters riddled with security holes" was originally published by CSO .
Today, Sirin Labs announced an ultra-secure luxury smartphone called the Solarin for the international business person who wants both style and security. It will compete with the category of phones produced by Silent Circle, GranitePhone, BlackBerry and Samsung phones with KNOX mobile security software.

This is a well-timed introduction, matching the shift to mobile from PCs.

Even with price of the Solarin starting at 9,500 (~$13,750), there is a market for smartphones that prove to be impenetrable. Thats because the cost of providing managed services to secure executives devices can be quite high. Also, the price of the phone is far less than the cost of a breach should a phone fall into the wrong hands.

The Solarin phone was developed in Sweden and Tel Aviv, two regions that are among the worlds leaders in telecommunications and military-grade security. It was designed by Karim Rashid, whom Time magazine called the "most famous industrial designer in all the Americas, to be a stylish executive communications device that provides fast, seamless connectivity on almost any of the mobile carrier networks around the world.

+ More on Network World: How to create seamless mobile security for employees +

The Solarin uses Zimperiums intrusion prevention system, employing an array of advanced device and network applications, including machine learning, to thwart mobile cyberattacks.

Zimperiums masthead includes founder and former security researcher for the Israeli Defence Forces, Itzhak Avraham, and famed hacker-turned-security-researcher Kevin Mitnick. Zimperiums deep Android roots would suggest that the Solarin runs a fork of the Android Open Source Project.

The partnership with KoolSpan to integrate chip-to-chip 256-bit AES encryption in the Solarin is an example of Sirins curated design. The encryption in the phone is the the same technology used by the militaries and national security agencies around the world to protect their communications. When the Security Switch on the back of the handset is turned on, the phone enters a shielded mode, fully encrypting calls and messages.

The Solarins specs

The phones ability to be a secure and trusted Wi-Fi hotspot for traveling teams working on confidential projects is much more interesting than the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor that powers the phone. The 810 processor is configured to include X10 LTE, 450 Mbps downlink speeds, and up to 150 Mbps uplink speeds. It delivers high-speed WAN connectivity to meet the needs of multiple people using the Solarin as a trusted hotspot. Its support for 24 bands LTE compatibility will match most carriers infrastructure around the world, offering reliable connectivity.

The Solarin supports 802.11ac 2x2 MU-MIMO (multi-user, multiple input, multiple output) technology, offering up to three times the speed and capacity of conventional 1x1 configuration. Having WiGig (802.11ad) multi-gigabit Wi-Fi technology with speeds of up to 4.6 Gbps future-proofs the phone.

Qualcomm Quick Charge for fast charging and power optimization integrated with the 810 processor chip extends battery life for the traveling executive. Power management is an additional benefit of the choice of Qualcomms system on a chip (SoC). By selecting the Snapdragon 810 SoC, the Solarin gets not only X10 LTE and 24 radio frequency bands, but also extended battery life. After all, a secure phone with a dead battery is of little value.

The Solarin phone has a 23.8-megapixel camera, with laser autofocus and industry-leading four-tone flash, plus a front-facing flash and 5.5 IPS LED 2k resolution screen with a 120 percent sRGB color gamut. It also has beam-forming audio and a state-of-the-art sound system. It uses three bass-boosted speakers all linked through a smart amplifier to maximize volume while controlling distortion to produce flawless sound. These nice consumer features will be appreciated, but not as much as its ability to ensure secure voice and data communications with 256-bit AES encryption.

The Solarin will be sold at the companys first store in Mayfair, London, beginning June 1 and sold by Harrods in Knightsbridge, London, beginning June 30.
Contrary to scattered reports, Microsoft has not backpedaled from its latest aggressive tactic to boost Windows 10 adoption.

Accounts claiming that Microsoft has only now introduced a new warning dialog are incorrect: That secondary notice has been part of Microsoft's campaign since at least the first week of May -- before word spread about the company's unusual interpretation of a click on the red "X" in the upper-right corner of a notification that a pre-scheduled upgrade to Windows 10 was imminent.

Since at least March 23, and probably as far back as February, Microsoft has been defining a click-the-X as approving the scheduled upgrade, rather than the expected behavior of ignoring the notice and closing the window. Microsoft's interpretation of clicking the X runs counter to its own design rules.

Some reports, including one in Forbes last week, claimed that Microsoft had "buckled under public and media pressure" and added a new notice to the pre-upgrade process. That notice, according to a Microsoft support document, was "based on customer feedback," confirms the time of the scheduled upgrade, and "provides you an additional opportunity for cancelling or rescheduling the upgrade."

But Microsoft has not bent to criticism: The additional dialog has been part of the campaign since early May, when Computerworld first examined the support document. That was approximately two weeks before reports of the click-the-X trick multiplied.

Forbes quoted a Microsoft statement that said, "Based on customer feedback, we've also added another notification that confirms the time of the scheduled upgrade and provides the customer an additional opportunity for cancelling or rescheduling the upgrade." That was virtually the same wording as that used by the support document, including the phrase "based on customer feedback."

So while the Redmond, Wash. company may have revised the campaign to give users one last opportunity to reject the upgrade, it did so long before the negative news stories and blog posts appeared last week.

Anecdotal accounts of users affected by the new upgrade campaign have been widespread.

After Computerworld's May 16 story on the click-the-X dilemma, reader Brad File reported that he had been victimized by the tactic. "I clicked on the red X to get rid of the Windows upgrade notice and went to the kitchen for a snack," File wrote in an email. "When I returned, the upgrade had forcibly started. The real problem is that the installation failed, and my computer is [now] unable to boot."

But organized criticism has not appeared.

Change.org, a popular online petition website, shows no recent activity on the subject of Microsoft's Windows 10 upgrade strategy.

One petition demanding that the company stop pushing Windows 10 launched six months ago, but has collected fewer than 60 signatures, a puny number when compared to others that have targeted the new operating system. For example, a petition begun in October 2015 that asked Microsoft to let customers delay or ignore feature and functionality updates has collected nearly 6,400 signatures.

The free Windows 10 upgrade offer will expire July 29, after which Microsoft may disable the "Get Windows 10" (GWX) app that it planted on millions of Windows 7 and 8.1 PCs last year. GWX was responsible for the scheduled upgrade notifications users have encountered.

Microsoft This confirmation notice of a pending upgrade to Windows 10 -- and a last chance to cancel the process -- was not new, but harked back to early May.

This story, "No, Microsoft hasn't backtracked from zealous Windows 10 upgrade tactics" was originally published by Computerworld .
MADISON  Heading into another election season, Republicans and Democrats are talking about Wisconsins economic health as if they lived in different states.

Gov. Scott Walker and Republican legislators laud the Wisconsin comeback, touting low unemployment, a high labor participation rate and positive reviews of the states business climate from the nations CEOs.

Meanwhile, Democrats focus on job creation and wage growth trailing the national average, big layoff announcements from companies such as Oscar Mayer and indications of weak startup activity.

The reality is the Wisconsin economy is getting a little better slowly, said Tom Hefty, a former Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Wisconsin CEO and economic adviser to both Republican and Democratic governors.

Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca, D-Kenosha  who argued in a recent opinion column that for many communities, families and businesses the comeback never came  acknowledged in an interview with the Wisconsin State Journal that the state economy is growing, but emphasized it lags the national and regional economies. He said the state needs aggressive, bold, creative ideas to try and rebuild our middle class and boost the economy.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, who recently asserted in a column that Wisconsins economy is strong, also agreed in an interview that economic growth in Wisconsin has been slow, but said the fundamentals of the economy are solid.

Almost everywhere I drive there are Help Wanted signs, Vos said. To the average person thats an indicator people are hiring, which is good for the economy.

Points for participation

In recent months, Walker has touted the Wisconsin comeback by juxtaposing two statistics  the workforce participation rate is one of the 10 highest in the country and the total number of people working is at an all-time high. As of the latest comprehensive quarterly data, there were more than 2.8 million people employed, a 1.2 percent increase from the previous year.

Its true employment levels are at historic highs (so is the states population), but the states labor force participation rate last year was the lowest since 1986. The state ranked ninth nationally, which is its average rank on that measure over the past 40 years.

Walker, who declined an interview request, also notes in his appearances around the state that Wisconsin was one of 10 states that had lower unemployment in 2015 than it did in 2007 before the Great Recession.

John Koskinen, chief economist for the states Revenue Department, said Wisconsin is approaching full employment, a strong sign that Wisconsins economy is healthy. Sluggishness in the states economy reflects the trend at the national level.

You cant escape a national picture, Koskinen said. Because of our diversification, weve been able to keep going forward at a very good pace, even if we have some of these bumps in the road of some of these industries.

Wisconsin has been growing the number of private sector jobs in recent years, but Marquette University economist Abdur Chowdhury noted at the national and state level many are in low-paying, low-skilled sectors such as hospitality and recreation. Job growth in the high-paying, high-skilled areas such as manufacturing, construction and financial services has not been as strong as lower-wage sectors, and as a result wages have not shot up, he said.

Between September 2010 and September 2015, per capita personal income in Wisconsin grew 17.5 percent compared with 18.4 percent nationally. A Pew Charitable Trusts report last year found Wisconsins middle class saw the largest percentage point drop between 2000 and 2013 of any state.

Walker has pointed to monthly job numbers showing the state created 34,100 manufacturing jobs from when he took office through April, placing it in the top 10.

Looking at the most recent national numbers from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, which Walker has called the gold standard for measuring job creation, Wisconsin ranked 11th in manufacturing job creation between September 2010 and September 2015. Wisconsins 7.1 percent growth in manufacturing jobs over that period ranks 24th.

Updated QCEW figures comparing all states through the end of 2015 are due out in early June.

Layoffs spike in 2015

Democrats have highlighted the number of layoffs in 2015 as signs of economic distress.

Layoffs did spike last year after five years in which the number of workers affected by layoffs held relatively consistent, according to the Department of Workforce Development. There was a more than 50 percent increase in the number of workers affected by layoff notices last year (9,630) compared with the prior five-year average (6,377). So far in 2016 there have been 3,356 employees affected by layoff notices.

Whether last years spike can be attributed to action or inaction by the state is less clear, according to Marc Schaffer, an assistant economics professor at St. Norbert College in De Pere.

(Private sector) business investment has been weak, Schaffer said. A lot of that has to do with the global economic conditions right now. Manufacturing is one of our biggest sectors and we do a decent amount of exports. Anything were producing here that were sending to other countries just got weaker with the strong dollar.

The recent spike in layoffs could reflect a high concentration of manufacturers adversely affected by Chinas slowdown and a strengthening U.S. dollar, low oil prices dampening the U.S. energy boom, and a national skills gap dilemma hitting Wisconsin harder than other states.

Its been kind of a rough patch here, said Bill Testa, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. It has been a little disconcerting to see some of their losses lately, but I dont think its an indication that Wisconsin has done anything wrong.

Closing the skills gap

Walker promised to create 250,000 jobs in his first term, but fell short by half. More recently he has emphasized the so-called skills gap as a reason why job creation has stalled.

Mark Immekus, president and chief sales officer of Brookfield-based QPS Employment, the states largest staffing company, said businesses have reported increasing demand for their products, but they are unable to fill the jobs necessary to produce them because of a lack of qualified workers.

In certain cases were seeing it impede growth, Immekus said. You can imagine how frustrating that is for certain businesses.

Immekus said the job skills gap is a national issue, though Wisconsin has perhaps been harder hit than the majority of other states given its manufacturing base. A recent QPS survey of the companys clients in Wisconsin found 68 percent considered finding qualified employees a top issue, up from 28 percent in 2011. Those who say the economy is a top issue has declined from 65 percent to 43 percent.

In response, employers are adapting their qualifications for certain jobs, reducing the number of years experience required and, particularly in the past six months, increasing salaries, Immekus said.

Vos said one approach lawmakers might consider to address the skills gap is differentiating college tuition for students enrolling in high-demand career fields. He also emphasized the importance of making sure all able-bodied adults are working.

Barca said the state should increase funding to technical colleges, which is down 22 percent from where it was in 2010 (excluding aid that was used to reduce property taxes). Democrats also proposed spending an additional $49 million on workforce training grants this past session.

Walker has pledged more resources to education and job training, though the states tight financial situation has made it difficult to enact major initiatives. He has put more than $65 million into the Fast Forward and Blueprint for Prosperity grant programs to help train skilled workers.

Startups lacking

Democrats point out that job creation has trailed the national average in every quarterly report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics since Walker took office.

Noah Williams, an economics professor at UW-Madison, noted Wisconsins population has also grown very slowly  from 2010 to 2015 Wisconsin grew 1.5 percent while the country grew 3.9 percent. Looking at per capita gross domestic product, Wisconsin has seen 4.1 percent growth over the past five years compared with 3.9 percent growth nationally.

Overall the trends are positive, Williams said. Longer term theres been a slowdown in new business formation and startups. Wisconsin hasnt done as well on that.

Walker and Republicans have emphasized the states business climate being ranked 11th in the most recent Chief Executive Magazine survey, up from 41st in 2010. However, a report from the Kauffman Foundation, which studies entrepreneurship, ranked Wisconsin last in entrepreneurial activity in 2015.

Wisconsin created a $30 million venture capital fund in 2014, though it has taken time for the fund to get up and running. Ken Johnson, who oversees the fund for Fitchburg-based Kegonsa Capital Partners, said he expects to finalize contracts with regional fund managers in the coming weeks, which should spur the creation of startups over the next year.

Its been kind of a rough patch here. It has been a little disconcerting to see some of their losses lately, but I dont think its an indication that Wisconsin has done anything wrong. Bill Testa, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago economist
MADISON  Wisconsin employers vastly overpaid for unemployment-related costs during the Great Recession because the state wasnt adequately prepared. And when the next big downturn comes, the state could face the same problem all over again.

The issue resurfaced last week when Republican Gov. Scott Walker highlighted a likely drop in what employers are required to pay into the fund covering unemployment benefits. With a $1 billion balance in the fund, legislators and state officials are pointing to it as a success.

But the state Department of Workforce Development stands by a year-old report saying the financing system has longer-term structural challenges and faces high risks in the event of another recession.

Weve got to be prepared, because we dont want to be put in the same position we were 10 years ago, said Dale Knapp, research director at Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance.

Unemployment benefits are paid out of a state trust fund financed by employer taxes. Like many states, Wisconsins fund dipped into the red following the recession, falling to a $1.3 billion deficit in 2010. It quickly climbed out of that hole to a $1 billion balance thanks to an improving economy and business-friendly changes that have cut down on benefit payments and fraud.

But the ability of Wisconsins unemployment fund to withstand another downturn is still below what it should be, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, which ranks Wisconsin 35th among the 50 states, Washington, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

The fund has been in a rough spot for more than a decade. It was dwindling even from 2004 to 2006 when the economy was doing well.

We heard talk from some legislators and from some state officials that it was something we need to address and we never did, Knapp said. And along came the recession and we were put in a real bad position.

Had the states fund been in a better condition ahead of the recession in 2007, employers could have saved $369 million during that period, according to an April 2015 Department of Workforce Development financial outlook report.

Instead, employers lost federal tax credits and had to cover interest payments, in addition to paying higher fund taxes. Taxpayers also had to cover $25 million in interest payments.

Yet many employers say they would rather have lower taxes when times are good and deal with an economic downturn as it happens.

The idea that we ought to be increasing taxes on employers and just socking money away in the event that we might have a great big recession in the future  thats not just something that we think is good policy, said Scott Manley, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce Senior Vice President of Government Relations.

He said a survey of members shows most would rather keep their money and put it to better use than having it sit in a trust fund.

From a business perspective, youre not going to want to increase your taxes at all, said Allied Construction Employers Association CEO John Topp. That, to me, would not be the way to go.

Knapp said the challenge with that approach is that businesses are actually better able to afford higher taxes during good times. He said the state would probably be better off having higher taxes over the entire time period.

The state could also further cut down on benefit payments to address the funds solvency.

Changing any policies would require legislative action, with input coming from the Unemployment Insurance Advisory Council. Department of Workforce Development spokesman John Dipko said the department hasnt changed its position since the April 2015 report, which recommends the council review the policies and provide solutions to the governor and Legislature on how to further strengthen the trust fund.

But any major changes are unlikely to happen in the near future. Manley, who is on the advisory council, said he doesnt think solvency is a concern right now, and Knapp said legislators likely see the billion-dollar balance and are unconcerned.

I think its one of those issues where we should always be vigilant of where were at, Knapp said.
The Voices of Millions Pray for the Sanctification of Priests

646-355-4106,



NEW YORK, May 31, 2016 /



The Annual Global Rosary Relay idea is a simple one. Each of the 100 participating shrines in some 50 countries prays a specific mystery of the rosary at a particular half hour on the day in thanksgiving to God for our priests and to implore the protection and loving care of Our Lady, Mother of all priests, for all her priestly sons. With the coming of midnight on the 3 June 2016, the entire world will have been encircled in prayer for our priests on this The Annual Rosary Relay Day.



It was the great Irish priest Fr. Patrick Peyton who never tired of saying that 'The family that prays together stays together.' As the family of the Church, you are invited to join your prayers to the prayers of millions throughout the world on 3 June this year. It is an opportunity for all of us to raise our hearts to God for all priests in the exercise of their ministry, praying that they will be blessed, through our prayers, with God's grace for their priesthood. We ask that through this worldwide communion of prayer for them, they may experience our gratitude and support and that they will persevere in unity with Christ and his Church and shepherd the Lord's flock to the safe pastures of his Kingdom.



At 10:30 on the morning of 3 June, the Feast of the Sacred Heart, a special Mass will be celebrated in St Peter's Square by Pope Francis, which will be attended by priests, bishops and cardinals from around the globe. World Priest founder Marion Mulhall and her colleagues Niall Kennedy and Anne Brady will attend this Mass. What a wonderful way this will be to celebrate the Annual Global Rosary Relay for Priests day by being present in Rome, the eternal city, at a Mass celebrated by Pope Francis!



On 1 June the Jubilee for Priests, given by Pope Francis, commences in the Vatican and is a very important event on the calendar of the Jubilee Year of Mercy, marking a very special time of retreat for priests. This three-day retreat closes in St Peter's Square on the evening of 3 June at 6 pm, the feast of the Sacred Heart with the praying of the Annual Global Rosary Relay for Priests, with five priests praying the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary in five languages. This represents a most historic moment in time for the World Priest Apostolate and all who have supported this Apostolate will share in the blessings of this great day.



People in Rome on the day are invited to mark the end of these days of prayer for the work of priests by joining the rosary in St. Peter's Square. You can of course join in spiritually from wherever in the world you are with young and old people alike, from over 50 countries at over 100 shrines.



Join your prayers with the voices of millions of others for the sanctification of all priests serving throughout the world. Pray also for Pope Francis, who has imparted his Apostolic Blessing to this unique global event.



PRAY THE ROSARY,UNITE WITH YOUR COUNTRY AND HELP ENCIRCLE THE WORLD IN PRAYER



'A world at prayer is a world at peace'  Servant of God Father Patrick Peyton.



Follow World Priest on Facebook and Twitter and enjoy the moments of the Annual Rosary Relay for Priests. Post us your pictures from all over the world during the relay.



The Annual Rosary Relay for Priests 2016 is organised and coordinated by World Priest.



For further information email

Share Tweet Contact: Marion Mulhall,646-355-4106, Info.worldpriest@gmail.com NEW YORK, May 31, 2016 / Christian Newswire / -- This year there is a special focus on Rome as the seventh Annual Global Rosary Relay for Priests gets underway on 3 June.The Annual Global Rosary Relay idea is a simple one. Each of the 100 participating shrines in some 50 countries prays a specific mystery of the rosary at a particular half hour on the day in thanksgiving to God for our priests and to implore the protection and loving care of Our Lady, Mother of all priests, for all her priestly sons. With the coming of midnight on the 3 June 2016, the entire world will have been encircled in prayer for our priests on this The Annual Rosary Relay Day.It was the great Irish priest Fr. Patrick Peyton who never tired of saying that 'The family that prays together stays together.' As the family of the Church, you are invited to join your prayers to the prayers of millions throughout the world on 3 June this year. It is an opportunity for all of us to raise our hearts to God for all priests in the exercise of their ministry, praying that they will be blessed, through our prayers, with God's grace for their priesthood. We ask that through this worldwide communion of prayer for them, they may experience our gratitude and support and that they will persevere in unity with Christ and his Church and shepherd the Lord's flock to the safe pastures of his Kingdom.At 10:30 on the morning of 3 June, the Feast of the Sacred Heart, a special Mass will be celebrated in St Peter's Square by Pope Francis, which will be attended by priests, bishops and cardinals from around the globe. World Priest founder Marion Mulhall and her colleagues Niall Kennedy and Anne Brady will attend this Mass. What a wonderful way this will be to celebrate the Annual Global Rosary Relay for Priests day by being present in Rome, the eternal city, at a Mass celebrated by Pope Francis!On 1 June the Jubilee for Priests, given by Pope Francis, commences in the Vatican and is a very important event on the calendar of the Jubilee Year of Mercy, marking a very special time of retreat for priests. This three-day retreat closes in St Peter's Square on the evening of 3 June at 6 pm, the feast of the Sacred Heart with the praying of the Annual Global Rosary Relay for Priests, with five priests praying the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary in five languages. This represents a most historic moment in time for the World Priest Apostolate and all who have supported this Apostolate will share in the blessings of this great day.People in Rome on the day are invited to mark the end of these days of prayer for the work of priests by joining the rosary in St. Peter's Square. You can of course join in spiritually from wherever in the world you are with young and old people alike, from over 50 countries at over 100 shrines.Join your prayers with the voices of millions of others for the sanctification of all priests serving throughout the world. Pray also for Pope Francis, who has imparted his Apostolic Blessing to this unique global event.PRAY THE ROSARY,UNITE WITH YOUR COUNTRY AND HELP ENCIRCLE THE WORLD IN PRAYER'A world at prayer is a world at peace'  Servant of God Father Patrick Peyton.Follow World Priest on Facebook and Twitter and enjoy the moments of the Annual Rosary Relay for Priests. Post us your pictures from all over the world during the relay.The Annual Rosary Relay for Priests 2016 is organised and coordinated by World Priest.For further information email Info.worldpriest@gmail.com or consult our website at www.worldpriest.com
Champaign, IL (61820)

Today

Thunderstorms. High 62F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Locally heavy rainfall possible..

Tonight

Showers this evening, becoming a steady rain overnight. Low 44F. S winds shifting to NNW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 70%. Locally heavy rainfall possible.
home World Britons 'benefit a great deal' from Sharia law, says British Home Secretary Theresa May

British Home Secretary Theresa May believes that many Britons benefit from Sharia law as she launches a probe that will investigate whether the British law is being bent for the sake of Sharia ideas.

"Many British people of different faiths follow religious codes and practices, and benefit a great deal from the guidance they offer," said May.

May emphasized that the investigation will only look at how the Islamic law is "misused or exploited." She also said it's a significant concern how a number of women have reported discriminatory decisions by Sharia courts. She assured that the country recognizes only one rule of law for the rights and security of its citizens.

"It will not be a review of the totality of Sharia law, which is a source of guidance for many Muslims in the UK," Lord Ahmed of Wimbledon reassured Muslims, in a statement announcing the review.

According to Express, many Britons reacted negatively and took to social media to lambast May's controversial comment.

"My reservation is that it won't get to the root of the problem...a lot of Muslim women I know say that the men in their communities just laugh at this proposed investigation, that they will go underground, so the investigation will have to be very robust," Baroness Cox told The Telegraph.

Cox also said that she believes in freedom of religion and that some aspects of Sharia law are unproblematic while citing those that she deems "unacceptable" and not just "distortions" of the law.

The inquiry will look into cases of divorce, domestic violence, and child custody to investigate instances of discrimination against women. It is expected to last up to 18 months and will be chaired by Professor Mona Siddiqui, an expert in Islamic theology. It will also include a panel of experts such as retired high court judge Sir Mark Hedley, leading barristers, and two leading imams.
Reporter/Columnist

Julie Wurth is a reporter covering the University of Illinois at The News-Gazette. Her email is jwurth@news-gazette.com, and you can follow her on Twitter (@jawurth).
A bunion, also known as hallux vulgus, is a deformity of the bone at the bottom of the big toe. It causes the big toe to turn in towards the smaller toes and sometimes overlap with the second toe. Occasionally, a bunion can also cause a deformity in the second toe. A lump can form on the top of the joint which may become inflamed, red, blistered, or infected. Some bunions cause pain while others do not. The size of a bunion can also vary.

Image Copyright: Photographee.eu, Image ID: 150622418

Who Suffers from Bunions?

Both men and women can have bunions but they are more common in women. About 15% of all women in the UK have bunions. Children can also suffer from bunions.

Why do Bunions Form?

In most cases, bunions are not caused by shoes alone. There are many reasons why this deformity arises in a person.

Bunions do tend to run in families suggesting that there may be a genetic link in some cases. If a member of your family such as a parent already has them, this can increase the risk of you developing them. People who have very flexible joints can be more prone to bunions and this can be an inherited bone condition. Also, low muscle tone can encourage bunions.

Genetics & Genomics eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today

Arthritis can lead to bunions. Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease that causes inflammation and pain in joints. Due to the way that it affects joints, it can lead to bunions in the toes. Psoriatic arthritis is seen in around one in five people who suffer from the flaky skin condition called psoriasis. It can affect the joints of the body. The big toe foot joint can develop a bunion. Gout, another form of arthritis more common in men than women, is another potential cause of arthritis. This can result in pain in the toe joint, swelling and red shiny skin over the bunion area.

Cerebral palsy, a disease that affects people from birth can result in stiffness in the patients movement. Marfan syndrome impacts the connective tissues of the body. The condition which develops in 1 in every 5000 people can cause bunions in affected people.

Badly fitted shoes can encourage bunions. Shoes that do not offer enough support can be the culprits such as high heels and shoes where the toes are crammed at the front. Strapless shoes can also be a problem.

How to Avoid Bunions?

Wearing lower-heeled shoes, up to 4 cm, can help a patient to avoid bunions on the feet. Wide fittings with enough space for comfort are also sensible ways to minimize risk of a bunion. Backless shoes should be avoided. Ideally shoes should have straps or laces to keep the foot in place. Backless shoes can lead to the toes clawing inside the shoes at the front for extra support. Ideally a patient with the condition should wear shoes with different heel heights. Exercises that involve calf muscles can also help keep the feet in good condition.

References

Further Reading
The Zika epidemic has long assumed global proportions, experts told the Congress of the European Academy of Neurology in Copenhagen. Europe needs to get prepared to deal with the relentless spread of the health threat, in particular with a view to "imported" infection. Awareness for prevention and personal protection is important, in particular with thousands of athletes and fans soon travelling to the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, a region particularly hit by the virus.

"Time is not on our side. The Zika virus is more and more not only showing its ugly face, but also its potential to go truly global", Prof Raad Shakir (London, UK), President of the World Federation of Neurology (WFN) told the Second Congress of the European Academy of Neurology which is taking place in Copenhagen, Denmark. The global Zika virus epidemic, its neurological angle and its implications for Europe are among the topical issues discussed at this major medical meeting. "We clearly see a relentless spread of the epidemic, and Europe will not be spared from this development."

Neurological expertise crucial to deal with Zika consequences

"Neurological expertise will be crucial to deal with the consequences of Zika", Prof Shakir stressed. "The WFN has recently established a working group in support of the efforts of international organisations, agencies and governments in response to the Zika crisis." One important task the group of high level experts is currently undertaking is the development of formal guidelines outlining diagnostic criteria for neurological complications of the Zika virus.

There are many misunderstandings and a lack of awareness about the actual risks involved in Zika virus infections, the WFN President said. "Many people still seem to believe that only pregnant women should be concerned because of the devastating foetal malformations when the infection is acquired during pregnancy, such as microcephaly. While this is, indeed, a particularly tragic consequence of the virus, we need to be aware that infected persons are also at risk of developing serious neurological conditions such as Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS), myelitis or meningoencephalitis. But the full spectrum of neurological complications from this viral infection still remains unknown."

While the effects of Zika on the adult nervous system are still being studied and not fully understood, preliminary findings such as a recent study from Brazil published in the Lancet suggest that exposure to the virus increases the odds for GBS 60 fold. GBS leads to paralysis due to immunological effects of the virus. Morbidity and mortality are high. In the absence of supportive treatment, more than five percent of affected individuals will die.

Europe will not be spared

"Europe certainly needs to get prepared, just as other parts of the world, to cope with the consequences of the fact that the geographical distribution of the virus is steadily and rapidly expanding," said John England, Professor of neurology at Louisiana State University in New Orleans and chair of the WFN Zika Working Group. "The most recent WHO document places most of Europe in a low to moderate risk category mosquito transmission of Zika. The exceptions are where Aedes mosquitos are known to exist. I believe that in Europe, the concern should mainly be about people contracting Zika elsewhere and then returning to Europe.

We have already seen a number of person-to-person transmissions in Europe, inter alia in Germany and France. A case of possibly Zika-related microcephaly is under verification in Spain and a case of GBS associated with Zika virus infection has already been reported in a returning traveller to the Netherlands. The Rio Olympics are a special epidemiological risk since so many people are expected to go there. It would be unrealistic not to assume that we will see more imported cases after thousands of athletes and fans return from the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, an area particularly hit by the virus."

In coping with Zika and its consequences, Europe has a clear advantage compared to other regions, Prof England said: "In this part of the world there is a relatively high amount of resources for neurological care available. This is not the case for many of the countries which are right now affected most by the virus and where we have witnessed unnecessary deaths which would not have happened in less deprived parts of the world."

With no specific effective treatment and no vaccination in prospect on the short run, although some vaccine candidates are being developed, awareness for prevention and personal protection needs to be created. Prof England: "All European countries should put measures in place in order to detect imported cases of Zika virus early and should provide public health advice to travellers to and from affected countries, including on sexual transmission."

In addition, in countries with a high likelihood of transmission strengthening vector-control activities to prevent the introduction and spread of mosquitoes, and reduce their density, particularly for areas with Aedes aegypti, is very important, the expert underlined.

According to recommendations which WHO and the Pan American Health Organisation PAHO have recently published, athletes and visitors to the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Brazil should, inter alia, protect themselves from mosquito bites by using insect repellents and wearing adequate clothing; practice safe sex or abstain from sex during their stay and four weeks after their return and choose air-conditioned accommodation. Pregnant women continue to be advised not to travel to areas with ongoing Zika virus transmission, and this includes Rio de Janeiro.

60 countries report Zika transmission

According to latest WHO figures, as of 18 May 2016, 60 countries and territories report continuing mosquito-born Zika transmission. Ten countries, among them Germany and France, have reported person-to-person transmission of Zika virus, most probably via a sexual route. Microcephaly and other fetal malformations potentially associated with Zika virus infection or suggestive of congenital infection have been reported in eight countries or territories. Thirteen countries and territories worldwide have reported an increased incidence of Guillain-Barre syndrome and/or laboratory confirmation of Zika virus infection among GBS cases.
New research presented at Euroanaesthesia 2016 (London 27-30 May) shows that patients undergoing breast cancer surgery need less painkilling medication post-surgery if they have anaesthesia that is free of opioid drugs. The study is by Dr Sarah Saxena, Jules Bordet Institute, Brussels, Belgium, and colleagues,

While opioid drugs provide an excellent painkilling (analgesia) effect throughout operations, they also have side-effects. Post-operative complications, such as respiratory depression, post-operative nausea and vomiting, itching, difficulty going to the toilet and bowel obstruction are well known examples of such side effects.

In this study, painkiller requirements were examined after patients received opiate anaesthesia and non-opiate anaesthesia. A randomised controlled trial was conducted, containing two groups each containing 33 breast cancer patients undergoing a mastectomy or lumpectomy. The study took place between September 2014 and July 2015 at the Jules Bordet Institute, Brussels.

Perioperative non-opiate analgesia was obtained by combining clonidine (0.2 mcg/kg), ketamine (0.3 mg/kg) and lidocaine (1.5 mg/kg). An extra bolus of ketamine (0.2mg/kg) was given if necessary. Opiate analgesia was obtained via a combination of remifentanil infusion, ketamine (0.3 mg/kg) and lidocaine (1.5 mg/kg). Both groups received intravenous paracetamol (1000mg/6h) and intravenous diclofenac (75 mg/12h). Patients received a PCA (patient-controlled analgesia) pump for breakthrough pain during the first 24 hours post-operatively.

Clinical characteristics and post-operative piritramide painkiller consumption (through the patient controlled pump) were assessed during the first 24 hours post-operatively. Data were not complete for two patients in the non-opiate group, and thus a total of 64 patients were included in the study. The total mean piritramide usage 24 hours post-operatively was 8.1 mg (range 2.0-14.5) in the non-opiate group and 13.1 mg (range 6.0-16.0) in the opioid group. The difference observed was statistically significant.

Dr Saxena concludes: "Our results show that patients in the non-opiate group require less painkillers, but receive adequate pain relief. Patients require less analgesics 24 hours after a non-opiate anaesthesia than after an opiate anaesthesia."

She adds: "This study shows a possible interesting benefit of this type of approach, which needs to be confirmed in further studies. Non-opiate anaesthesia in breast cancer surgery might avoid several opiate-related side effects such as post-operative nausea and vomiting. It might also reduce cancer recurrence. However, it is too early to recommend non-opiate anaesthesia to all breast cancer patients. We will be doing further research to confirm and extend our findings.
Mercedes-Benz is not affected by the diesel ban thats been implemented in many states in India. Thats the reason why they are bullish on the luxury SUV segment in India. We recently went to Coorg to drive the all new Mercedes-Benz GLC.The GLC is pitted against the likes of Audi Q5 and the BMW X3 in India. Its positioned over the baby SUV, GLA by Mercedes-Benz in India. The GLC is launching in India on June 2, 2016 and we are expecting the car to be priced between Rs 50-55 lakh.The GLC will come in India in its petrol avatar as well. The diesel engine mill on the GLC is the same engine that powers the C-Class by the company. The 2143cc diesel engine produces 170hp at @3000-4200 rpm and 400nm of torque @1400-2800 rpm. The is also capable of doing a 0-100 km/h dash in just 8.3 seconds with a top speed of 210 Km/h. But if you live in Delhi-NCR forget about owning this one till the NGT ban lifts.For folks in Delhi-NCR, there is still hope as Mercedes-Benz will also be launching a much powerful petrol variant of the SUV. The 1991cc petrol engine has a power output of 245hp and offers 370nm of torque. Its also faster when it comes to 0-100 km/h acceleration which it achieves in just 6.5 seconds. The top speed of the petrol variant is 222 km/h.Both the versions are mated to a 9G-TRONIC automatic transmission thats smooth and offer 5 different driving modes; Comfort, ECO, Sport, Sport+ and Individual. In addition the GLC is also capable to handle off-roading conditions as well. There are three different off-road modes as well on the GLC.For safety the GLC has a five star rating by NCAP and comes with 7-airbags, ABS, ESP and ETS. The GLC will also offer two trim options for customers to choose from for its interiors.The GLC drives just like how one will expect a Mercedes-Benz car to drive. The GLC is neither too big nor to small for an SUV and for five passengers offers a good cabin space. Overall the Mercedes-Benz GLC is the most updated luxury SUV that money can buy and is bound to give its competition the Audi Q5 and the BMW X3 a run for their money.Watch this space for more on the Mercedes-Benz GLC.
CNN News 18 had first reported in 2007 about Faizan. Nine years later his desperate father Naseem Ahmed, a resident of Garhwa in Jharkhand, has got in touch with the channel again hoping that someone would hear him out and help him save his dying son.

The Central Government was asked to monitor Faizans situation and step in if Safdarjung Hospital failed to provide him with medical help," says Ahmeds laywer Sughriva Dubey.

"Children tease me. They say I will never get married," Faizan innocently says.



Its a story of government apathy that has played out for more than 10 years. An alleged lapse on the part of Safdarjung Hospital in New Delhi in 2007 led to a five-year-old Faizan getting HIV infected blood during a treatment for anaemia.Ahmed and the 16-year-old Faizan, who now is suffering from full blown AIDS, are fighting a battle which they are unlikely to win. "I have no strength left to fight," says a dejected Ahmed.In 2007 Delhi High Court had held Safdarjung Hospital liable for injecting Faizan with a HIV+ blood and ordered the hospital to bear his medical expenses.Almost a decade later Ahmed and Faizan are struggling for existence, face more legal battles and hope for justice."He does not have much time left. His is suffering from AIDS," Ahmed says matter of fact and then narrates the story of his familys 10-year long struggle.A tailor by profession, Ahmed had put together his meagre resources to travel to Delhi in 2005 after Faizan was diagnosed with acute anaemia. Doctors had promised a good life for Faizan, after treatment at the "bada hospitals (big hospitals)" of Delhi.He was admitted to Safdarjung Hospital and given blood transfusion multiple times between July 31 and August 20, 2005.Ahmed claims Faizan was HIV free then as his blood reports from Garhwa and Safardjung proves. His blood tests took place within one hour of admission in Safadrjung Hospital. He was fine then, Naseem argues.In 2006 Safdarjung discharged Faizan and blood tests at the time of discharge showed him to be HIV positive.A legal battle ensured an interim order from Delhi High Court but neither Safadrjung Hospital nor the Centre paid any compensation, accoridng to Ahmed.Feeding a family of five and battling his son's deadly disease was not easy for him.Faizan is ostracised in his school and neighbourhood back in Garhwa. In spite of his illness the 16-year-old sells petrol on the Garhwa-Ranchi highway to earn a few extra rupees for his family.Children have named him AIDS. Can you imagine what a father feels when he hears this," Naseem laments. Faizan does not really understand the consequence of his disease but has stopped going to school for fear of being ostracised.Safarjung Hospital has challenged the Delhi HC indictment which means Naseem has to travel to Delhi to attend court proceedings every three months. He also travels to Ranchi, 200 kilometre from his village to get the free tablet for AIDS victims that Government of India provides.Buying the medicine at the local chemist would cost him Rs 2,000 every month which he cant afford.Ahmed knows his son will not live for long but wants accountability fixed so that another Faizan is not born at the countrys premier hospitals.: Faizan, from Garwah, Jharkhand, was being treated at a Ranchi hospital for anaemia: The nine-year-old was referred to Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital after he was diagnosed with an acute case of anaemia: His blood transfusion took place between July 31 and August 20, 2005. He was admitted to the hospital several times.: Faizan was discharged and was diagnosed as HIV positive: Faizans father, Naseem Ahmed filed a petition in the Delhi HC seeking direction to the government for free treatment and to meet other expenses: The Delhi HC ruled that the cost of Faizans treatment will now be borne by Safdarjung Hospital. The court also ordered that if Safdarjang is unable, then the Centre will have to pay for the treatment
A massive fire and resultant explosions at Indian Army's largest ammunition depot at Pulgaon in Wardha district of Maharashtra has resulted in the death of at least 16 soldiers including two officers, and left several others injured.



The fire was reported at around 1:30 am on Tuesday following which there was a massive explosion. A secondary explosion was reported after a few hours.



The officers and jawans present inside the depot tried to douse the massive blazed but many were caught in it leading to the death of two officers and 14 jawans of the Defence Service Corps.



At least 19 other Armymen have been injured. Senior Army officers say the death toll is likely to rise. The two dead officers have been identified as Lieutenant Colonel RS Pawar and Major K Manoj.



The Central Ammunition Depot, Pulgaon, which is almost 110 km from Nagpur, is spread over 10,000 acres. It stores all types of ammunition used by the Army including artillery shells, anti-tank missiles and the supersonic cruise missile BrahMos.



There are three major ordinance factories in the nearby regions at Ambajhari, Chamba and Nagpur. The depot also has the war wastage reserve, ie, the reserve that can last for at least three weeks in case of war. Ammunition from various ordinance factories come to the Pulgaon depot first and is then distributed to various forward areas.







Defence expert Nitin Gokhale said that the depot housed ammunition of different vintage and it is very likely that the old stock caught fire. There seems to be a failure of controlled temperature system as many of these sheds have different temperature control systems. This one is located is in a high temperature zone. The temperature could have been so high that they exploded, he said.



He added that the investigators would look at all angles including accident, sabotage, insider job, and faulty equipment.



While the police say the fire has been controlled but Army maintains that secondary explosions are making it difficult for rescue workers to pull out bodies. A court of enquiry has been ordered.



Three nearby villages have been evacuated as a precautionary measure.



Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag will be visiting the depot later on Tuesday.
Pained by loss of lives caused by a fire at central ammunition depot in Pulgaon, Maharashtra. My thoughts are with the bereaved families.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) May 31, 2016

I pray that those who are injured recover quickly. Have asked RM @manoharparrikar to visit the spot & take stock of the situation.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) May 31, 2016

My prayers are with the families of the victims. I hope those injured in the accident are given due medical care and support.  Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) May 31, 2016

At least two Army officers and 15 Defence Security Corps jawans have been killed after a fire broke out in the intervening night of Monday and Tuesday at the central ammunition depot in Pulgaon, near Nagpur in Maharashtra. A massive explosion rocked the depot soon after the fire broke out.Lieutenant Colonel RS Pawar and Major K Manoj were among those dead in the fire at Army's largest ammunition depot in the country.Army officials said that 19 others have been injured in the fire. Some of the injured have been admitted to Military Hospital Pulgaon while others have been sent to Civil Hospital in Wardha.The fire broke out between 1:30 AM and 2 AM on Tuesday."At around 1:30 AM, I heard a loud noise. We came out. I went to the factory and saw flames," an eye-witness said.Several fire engines were rushed to the deport and the blaze was brought under control. The Army maintains that secondary explosions are still occurring which is making it difficult for rescue workers to pull out bodies.A court of inquiry has now been ordered into the accident. Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag will visit the depot to make first hand assessment of the situation and the on-going salvage operations.As a precautionary measure, three villages have been evacuated.Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar is likely to visit the depot to take stock of the situation.Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis have extended their condolences to victims' families."Many of our brave men have lost their lives. The fire has been brought under control. All possible help will be given. Medical help has been sought from us and we are extending our full cooperation," Fadnavis said.
In a new twist in the September 2015 Dadri lynching incident, a forensic report has claimed that the meat found in Mohammad Akhlaq's house was beef and not mutton, said sources on Tuesday.



Uttar Pradesh Police had sent the meat samples to a forensic laboratory in Mathura for testing which has reported that the meat belonged to "cow or its progeny".



Interestingly, in an initial report by a government veterinarian had claimed that the meat was from a goat.



In a gruesome incident, 50-year-old Akhlaq was beaten to death by a mob on September 28 after a public announcement from the local temple that a calf had been slaughtered and his family had eaten beef. His 22-year-old son Danish was also attacked.





Then a report sent to the Home Ministry by the UP government mentioned that Akhlaq and his son Danish were attacked by some unidentified people over unconfirmed allegations of having consumed "pratibandhit pashu ka maans" (meat of an animal banned from slaughter).



The incident sparked state wide protest and took a communal turn forcing the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to urge people to maintain harmony and peace.







"Hindus and Muslims should work together to fight poverty and not against each other. The country has to stay united. Only communal harmony and brotherhood will take the nation forward," Modi had said.








[Video] Ranbir Kapoor & Katrina Kaif on the sets of #JaggaJasoos . #RanbirKapoor #Ranbir #KatrinaKaif #Katrina #RanKat #Bollywood A video posted by Ranbir Kapoor Universe (@ranbirkapooruniverse) on May 27, 2016 at 10:13am PDT

Katrina Kaif and Ranbir Kapoor have maintained a dignified silence on their breakup so far. The alleged couple broke up earlier this year, sending their fans into a state a frenzy. Katrina Kaif ignored all personal questions that came her way during the promotions of 'Fitoor' but not anymore.The actress recently gave a 'tell-all' interview to Vogue , where she openly talked about her breakup with Ranbir and much more. Kaif revealed that she's a guarded person and doesn't like unwanted attention seeping in her personal life. The 32 Years old actress was quoted saying. "People share things all the time, it doesnt come naturally to me."The actress has returned after completing 'Jagga Jasoos' shoot in Morocco. Sharing space with your ex is always difficult, but being a professional, Katrina knows her responsibility. Her dance video with Ranbir went viral on Social platform, a place she's still unfamiliar with. Talking about her online presence Kaif says, "I fear I might get into a war of words, constantly clarifying myself. I guess there is a positive and negative side to it. But it is something I say I have been thinking of doing for a while."Without saying anything directly, Katrina shrugs off her silence on break-up as a Cancerian trait of being guarded and 'about just being a girl'.Ranbir and Katrina started dating right after they met on the sets of 'Ajab Prem Ki Gazab Kahani'. The duo seemed quite serious when they moved in together and speculations of their engagement and marriage were making rounds when things ended. Kaif certainly looks affected by the breakup and looks like she has lost faith in 'Bollywood' relationships. As she puts it, "I think I no longer make friends in a way that I am too attached or dependent on people. This is the film industry, this is a place of work and sometimes we mix the personal and professional life too closely. "Personal life might be hard for Miss Kaif right now, but the year looks busy for her. After the release of 'Fitoor' earlier, Katrina is busy with 'Baar Baar Dekho' and 'Jagga Jasoos' on work front.
New Delhi: Having faced poll debacle in four states, Congress is expected to hold a 'chintan shivir' (brainstorming session) in June either in party ruled Himachal Pradesh or Uttarakhand.



It will be the first such exercise after the 2014 Lok Sabha polls which saw Congress securing its worst ever performance of just 45 seats in a House of 543.



A senior leader, who declined to be identified, said that such a programme is being finalised and most probably it will be held in a hill state. Karnataka, which is also a party-ruled state, could also be considered.



The brainstorming session is being held at a time when Rahul Gandhi's elevation to the party chief's post is being talked about in party circles.



Soon after the poll debacle, party leaders have said that a meeting of the Congress Working Committee to deliberate on the causes of the reverses would be held soon.



In 2003, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi had organised a chintan shivir at Shimla where the Congress for the first time gave indications of its openness to share power at the Centre by calling for unity of secular forces. In 2004, Congress-led UPA had ensured ouster of the NDA Government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee.



In the last chintan shivir held at Jaipur in January 2013, Rahul was elevated as the party vice president and was the 'face' of the party in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.



The chintan shivir is being held at a time when the party is facing an onslaught from the BJP and the Sangh Parivar on one side and on the other, secular parties are attempting to eat into its space.



The Congress wants the unity of anti-BJP secular parties but does not want to have a national-level alliance with them.



A section of party leaders believes that it is facing a threat to its very existence the way the Narendra Modi-led BJP and government is targeting it and its leadership.



The Congress has a challenge at hand with a series of Assembly elections including in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, on the cards next year. Polls in Goa, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur and Gujarat are also scheduled in 2017.



First such chintan shivir was organised by Sonia Gandhi at Pachmarhi in Madhya Pradesh in 1998 soon after taking over reins of the organisation.
Rae Bareli: Congress chief Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday hit out at Narendra Modi saying he is the Prime Minister of India and not a 'shahenshah' (emperor). She made the comment when she was asked about Modi government's second anniversary celebrations.



She accused the BJP-led NDA government of indulging in lavish celebrations even as several regions of the country are battling drought and farmers were suffering due to poor agricultural output. A five-hour show was staged at India Gate in the national capital which was attended by politicians and celebrities as part of the 15-day "Vikas Parv" from May 26 to June 10 to highlight the Centre's achievements.



When questioned about BJP MP Kirit Somaiya's demand for Enforcement Directorate probe in the alleged links between her son-in-law Robert Vadra and an alleged arms dealer, Sonia replied, "This is a conspiracy. What does "Congress mukt Bharat" mean? They make false allegations against us every day. There should be an impartial probe. Truth will come out."



Sonia is on a two-day visit to her constituency Rae Bareli from Tuesday.



On June 1, Sonia will meet people at the Bhuemau guest house and inaugurate the Jan Suvidha Kendra at Vikas Bhawan. She will also meet the members of the District Vigilance and Monitoring Committee.




The decision, which will see him take over the reins of the Grand Old Party from his mother Sonia Gandhi, has been hanging in the air ever since he became Congress vice president in 2013.

Congress workers, too, have long complained about a state of paralysis and indecision because of the presence of dual power centres.

Rahul Gandhi will soon be crowned as Congress president, bringing an end to a long running debate on what should be the perfect timing for his ascension to the top of India's Grand Old Party.His crowning, said by top sources in the party to be imminent, will end one of the most debated topics in Indian politics in recent times. It will also herald a generational shift in the Congress that is struggling for relevance following a series of electoral defeats."You cannot have this confused twin leadership for long," said a top functionary, asking not to be identified.Sources said Rahul's ascension as Congress president would be accompanied by an overhaul of party structures to populate them with younger people . Older party functionaries will be asked to step down and make way for a new order, they said.The Congress' first family has been waiting for the right time for the coronation, but have now veered around to the view that doing it sooner is better.But there exists deep divisions in the Congress on whether he should be appointed party president. Most of the seniors are uncomfortable with what some described as the Gandhi scion's brusque and impatient style of functioning, and want his mother to helm the Congress for some more time.They have also long argued that Rahul, under whose effective charge the party has hurtled from one defeat to another, needs to be protected from electoral failures and making him the president would bring him directly in the line of opposition fire.But the decision to go in for the change now, sources said, was dictated by the belief that status quo cannot continue and the Congress could no longer carry on with dual power centres. The older generations of Congress leaders view Sonia Gandhi as their leader, while the younger generation prefers Rahul who turns 46 in June.Many say when they approach Sonia Gandhi with a problem she listens to them, but sends them to Rahul for solution. When they approach Rahul, he sends them back saying he would decide only after consulting his mother.Top party functionaries said that the Gandhi family has begun to realise that such a situation couldn't work anymore, especially at a time the Congress is going through one of its worst periods in history. It won only 44 seats in the May 2014 elections, and since then has lost a string of state elections, most recently in Assam and Kerala.Several senior Congress leaders have been calling for changes in recent days. Congress' leader in Punjab Captain Amarinder Singh unequivocally told CNN-News18 in an interview that it was time for Rahul to take over.A few others have been even more vocal.Former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijaya Singh, long considered to be close to Rahul, spoke about a need for "surgery" in the Congress after the party suffered humiliating defeats in the recent state elections.
Jaipur: Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje on Monday asked the party MPs and MLAs to take the schemes and programmes of the government to the masses and collect feedback from public so that any improvement in the programmes, if required, could be made.



Addressing them at a workshop in Jaipur, Raje said that public representatives should go to the level of gram panchayat and discuss the schemes and programme like Bhamashah scheme and Jal Swavalamban Abhiyan and collect feedback from the public.



She said that public representatives should make optimum use of social media to publicise the schemes.



Raje also said that MPs should have at least 1 lakh followers and MLAs 50,000 followers on social media.



The CM also called upon them to support in bringing electricity transmission and distribution losses down.



The MPs and MLAs also informed the Chief Minister about the works being done in their constituencies.



MPs, MLAs and members of the council of ministers were present in the workshop.


Beijing: These days, when people over 80 in Beijing take a bus, see a doctor or spend money, their activities are digitally tracked by the government, as part of an effort to improve services for the country's rapidly growing elderly population.



The data amassed with each swipe of the multi-purpose "Beijing Connect" old person's card goes into a massive database of the elderly in the capital. City authorities hope the information will enable them to better cope with their burgeoning population of over-60s, which already stands at 3 million.



Though geared toward the elderly, the program demonstrates how China more broadly is using big data to better direct the use of government resources for the country's 1.4 billion people. Beijing's strategy is to use new technology and its heavily censored Internet to innovate and propel China's transformation to a services-based economy  a strategy that Premier Li Keqiang has said "will trigger a new Industrial Revolution."



In a sophisticated example, Beijing municipal government is collecting the disparate data on the elderly in order to predict what services will be needed in the future. This is to make sure it has the necessary budget and services in place, by taking into account people's decreasing mobility, for example, said Bai Qiang, vice president of Beijing Community Service Association, a city government agency.



"All of the data we are collecting now, including visits to parks, the use of public transport and (numbers of) shopping trips, will help us to predict whether the elderly will become disabled in the future," Bai said.



The thinking is that if an elderly man is paying fewer visits to parks or taking buses less, that will show up in the data. The government can then judge what the disability rate will be in future and prepare a budget plan in advance, Bai said.



Cardholders interviewed said they weren't concerned about a loss of privacy and praised the program as far more convenient than the coupons the government used to give them for the same services.



"I've no worries. Elderly people don't have any secrets," said Liu Huizhen, 84, who was using her card to buy steamed bread in a small supermarket.



"It's hard for elderly people to count" coin-by-coin, Liu said. "And when you take the bus you just swipe the card, it's very simple and convenient."



The State Council, China's Cabinet, issued a plan to promote big data in August, calling for the accessing and sharing of government data to improve governance. In response, the southern province of Guangdong on April 25 announced a strategy promoting the collection and use of big data in areas including the integration of air and water monitoring information with pollution forecasting, the creation of electronic medical records and the sharing of information on tourists traveling to scenic spots to better manage traffic.



The Guangdong plan also called for the collection of population data on the elderly and a "comprehensive analysis" of their service needs, similar to what Beijing is now offering.



While China is still behind countries such as the United States, Britain and Germany in terms of the development of big data infrastructure, it is unique in its commitment to the project and the speed with which it is progressing, said Zhang Yue, managing director of The Boston Consulting Group in China.



Although China's national and local governments, ministries and departments are the owners of a large quantity of financial, residential and other data, they have yet to share the information among themselves, Zhang said.



"The government has realized that if they want to really take full advantage of (what is in) their possession they need to integrate those, otherwise the value of the data is quite limited," she added.



At the same time, China needs to deal with the needs of a rapidly aging population, the result of rapid economic development, longer lifespans and a strict, 35-year-long family planning policy that limited births, creating a shrinking working-age population. While the elderly were traditionally looked after by their children, they are increasingly turning to oversubscribed old people's homes or fending for themselves at home, sometimes with the help of visiting caregivers.



Other regional authorities are also using data-gathering to help the elderly, including in the northeastern city of Shenyang. The city is trying to use the information on the 1.6 million older residents in its database to better match them up with its more than 160 old people's homes.



However, none of those efforts are as wide-ranging and integrated as Beijing's own multi-purpose card, which is slated to be expanded to cover the nearly 20 million people aged 60 and above who live in Beijing and the neighboring regions of Hebei and Tianjin city by the end of 2018.



The card functions as ID and gives free access to public transport and public parks. The government also tops up the card with 100 yuan ($15) each month, and cardholders can activate an additional function to enable them to use it as a bank card onto which money can be transferred from an account.



Zhao Fangjun, strolling along in a park where a row of elderly were sunning themselves one morning, said that in addition to the government subsidy, his mother-in-law transfers 250 yuan ($38) onto the card each month. He said the card can be used not just in selected shops and restaurants, but also to hire a cleaner and take out a newspaper subscription.



Rogier Creemers, who researches China's governance of technology at the University of Oxford, said China is a world leader in the degree to which it is integrating such functions.



"What allows China to do something like this is the fact that behind everything you have a single unified network of power, which is the Chinese Communist Party," Creemers said.



Some cities, like Nanjing, have social security cards with an e-payment function that can be used for public transport and medical treatment and are available to all residents, not just the elderly. Shanghai, China's most populous city, has just introduced a card for people 65 and over that distributes government subsidies, offers discounts in restaurants and free rides on public transport and can also be used as a bank card. This card doesn't collect big data, however, according to Shanghai government's social security office.



Beijing's database, set up last year, aims to improve home-based care. It includes information on the numbers of elderly living alone, their incomes, and those requiring meal deliveries or simply someone to talk to. Elderly people applying for the card fill out registration forms with government offices found in every neighborhood.



Bai says the data is confidential and cannot be accessed or distributed by anyone without government approval.



"What we are doing is not monitoring, but collecting the data," he said. "All the data we collect aims to enable the government to provide better services to the elderly. For example, if we detected that a type of service was in great demand, we would get in touch with the relevant companies to request a discount."
The Town of Bedford will hold a public meeting at 7:30 p.m. June 9 at the Bedford Center of Central Virginia Community College.

The meeting is to discuss issues related to retail and general commercial business development within the town.

The information shared and gained at this meeting also will be considered as part of the revision of the Towns Comprehensive Plan and will be hosted by Assistant Town Manager Bart Warner.

The Town Planning Commission has been working for several months to analyze key factual data related to the community and to develop the framework for future goals and objectives.

Previous meetings have identified concerns about sign policy and parking that will be addressed and participants will also be given an opportunity to ask questions and present their own ideas for consideration.

Contact bwarner@bedfordva.gov or call (540)587-6022 for more information.
Jobless youths

Anthony Paul. Paul, 36, is a lifeguard instructor whos Maracas born-and-bred, believes young people are not progressive.

Most of the young people dont have a high education background and they dont open their minds to opportunities on the outside. They just stick to Maracas alone. The majority just stick around the village and either fish or sell bake and shark. Community programmes directed towards young people learning trades and other business skills are needed to combat this problem, Paul said.

Entrepreneur Jamelia Williams, 25, agreed with Paul: A lot of youth drop out of school early and I think it may be a lack of motivation or they just dont see the sense in it. They see themselves in a small box where all they need is common sense and a lot of them dont look far ahead. Williams has been operating a sales and rental business in the Maracas area for the past five years. As a business owner, Williams said she contributes to the community through providing employment for young men who would otherwise be hustling. Yet, she believes residents could do more to support community development.

There are some businesses in the area owned by residents that make a substantial amount of money. And even though they might have a little Christmas party for children or take on young people sometimes, they could do a lot more. Williams said change needed to start from the bottom, and pointed out that vendors had just as much responsibility as the government in development. Look at some of the vendors: Yes, you have a landlord and the landlord has to do his part, but you are also responsible. Some people rent sheds and then go to work for other establishments letting their own businesses run down. Sound education could be a turning point, however, according to Williams. Education could play a pivotal role in transformation. People up here have lots of skills, but they dont know how to benefit from them. A lot of them dont take education seriously and are just doing it because theyre forced to. If there were more programmes that could help some people turn these skills into businesses then they might be more inclined to learn and see the value in it, she said.

Other residents noted that many young people were actively seeking employment but facing too many obstacles. Natasha Bharath said lack of opportunity was the main cause of youth unemployment in.

Bharath, 37, owns a mini mart.

She pointed out that it was difficult for young people to get jobs after completing secondary school. If they want to work with TDC in Maracas, they have to know somebody and get a link. Other than that, they have to go outside to work and things outside real hard. Bharath suggested that the local government should step in with community programmes for youth.

There are a lot of them who dont know how to go about getting work and they need help. The MP and the councillors should have some programmes like career counselling programmes to help them. In the eyes of Daphne Singh, 61, Maracas is a family- oriented community and peaceful area. Singh, a resident of 41 years, makes her living through vending bake and shark at the bay. She has a different belief to most and said there has been a lot of development in the area.

Life is very nice in Maracas.

Things have changed plenty.

Now isnt like long time. Now we have lights and pipe-borne water and better roads. She added that all her children were educated and did not feel that living in Maracas presented any lack of opportunities.

All of my children are educated.

I have a daughter who is a teacher, another one who is a librarian. The other one is a seamstress. Singh said that those members of community who fish full-time choose that lifestyle and are not forced into it as many perceive.

While she applauds the development, the most current, incomplete project is hampering Singhs business.

Right now, I cant sell because of the mess that they have with the construction that has been stalled, she said. She added that she continues to pay rent to the TDC although the incomplete construction work means she is only able to work for approximately eight days in each month. A victim of theft, Singh also lamented the lack of security to patrol the vending stalls at night.

They have security, but its only for the carpark. They break in my shed about four times already and you dont know who it is and you have nothing to get after. Singh said the TDC should also look into insurance for vendors.

Lifeguarding: A Maracas Career While many residents in Maracas lamented the high youth employment levels and lack of options for work in the community, there seems to be one viable, overlooked career path: lifeguarding. As one of Trinidads most popular beaches, Maracas Bay, and nearby Tyrico Bay, have the most lifeguards on duty of all patrolled beaches in Trinidad.

According to the Ministry of Tourism, there they have about 16 lifeguards daily and as many as 30 on public holidays. Most of the lifeguards are from the area.

Lifeguard Patrol Captain for Maracas, Kirk Morton, said that contrary to many beliefs, lifeguarding is a fulfilling career option with room for promotion.

Morton, 55, a lifelong resident, has been a lifeguard for the past 37 years.

Its a career. There are three promotions that exist in the system right now and developments are taking place to make it even more beneficial, he said. Morton, is currently the highest level lifeguard in the system. The other levels include instructor, water safety officer and lifeguard 2. Morton said lifeguards play a very important role in promoting beach safety and awareness outside of excessive financial gain.

The passion for the job is not about money but the gratification in knowing that you can save lives, he said.

Paul, a lifeguard for the past 12 years, said he was proud and happy to make a contribution to the community through his work. I love the work that I do and I dont see it as a dead end. The service is continually being adjusted to create more avenues for people to develop. However, according to Morton, some young people have received ministry training, but are yet to be employed. He said this was unfair and that while Maracas had more guards than most beaches, visitors could have added safety if more lifeguards were enlisted. The hiring and training of lifeguards would also help to combat unemployment and allow young people to work within their community.

Culture of Dependency There is a total dependency on the government, said Lyndon Lara, vice chairman of the San Juan/Laventille Regional Corporation and councillor for Maracas/Santa Cruz/La Fillette.

Social services are provided for the most vulnerable in our society, but everybody considers themselves vulnerable at this point in time and that cant be. People need to understand the limits to where the government can assist, he added.

Noting that residents could be impatient at times, Lara said people all around the country held the belief that they were being poorly represented while failing to recognise areas where growth has been achieved. People dont see the progress because its so small and slow, but there has been progress. Most of the roads in Maracas are paved. We had a ground done. We have a pavilion, lights from T&TEC, a community centre. So some of the major issues are being addressed its just that people want to have everything now. Lara made these comments while also admitting that the yearly allocation to each district from central government for development projects was not sufficient. He said that during his two terms in office he has been lobbying for increases.

He also pointed out that his remit as councillor, stretched far beyond the Maracas Valley.

He expressed faith that local government reform would help corporations better serve communities, however.

Lara added that he stood in solidarity with residents who felt slighted and displaced by the stalled TDC beach project.

He said the project was well-intended but the contractor was dismissed for poor performance and did not take the residents into consideration during execution.

Consistent attempts to reach TDCs CEO Keith Chin were unsuccessful.
The Bear Attacked, So She

'Popped It Right in the Nose'
One four-year-old boy recently fell into a gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo on Saturday. While the zoo took the decision to shoot and kill the animal, so that they could save the boy, animal lovers and activists are criticizing the action, while a petition has been filed to denounce the boy's parents as responsible for the gorilla's death.

Harambe, the 17-year-old mountain gorilla grabbed and dragged the boy. It appeared to act strangely protective as well as aggressive towards the four-year-old.

One woman who captured the incident on a video that became viral said she overheard the boy declare that he was going to breach the barrier and go inside the gorilla enclosure.

"I heard the exchange while I'm waiting. 'I'm going to go in.' 'No, you're not.' 'I'm going to go in.' 'No, you're not.' The mother turns around to her other children," Kim O'Connor said.

Zoo director Thane Maynard said he was regretful that they had to shoot the gorilla, yet "the right choice was made." He was remorseful that the Western lowland silverback, a critically endangered species, had to be shot dead.

"The zoo's in the business of taking care of endangered animals, and we don't want to be in the situation in which they have to be killed," Maynard said. "Harambe was a good guy."

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which is firm that animals should not even be kept in captivity, said the zoo should have had a second protective barrier between the gorillas' home and the public.

"Even under the 'best' circumstances, captivity is never acceptable for gorillas or other primates, and in cases like this, it's even deadly," the organization said in a statement. "This tragedy is exactly why PETA urges families to stay away from any facility that displays animals as sideshows for humans to gawk at."

Still, there were some animal lovers that appreciated the zoo's, in spite of the unfortunate incident.

"They cannot tranquilize it. It takes five to 10 minutes," said Jack Hanna, director emeritus of the Columbus Zoo, also in Ohio, and a well-known TV personality. "We are all sorry. All of us in the zoo world are heartfelt for this thing, but thank goodness a human being is alive today because the decision the Cincinnati Zoo made."
Donald Trump has slowly taken over universal mysteries. Even Stephen Hawking cannot explain him. Though he has some answers to the "formation of the universe and the nature of black holes," there is just one mystery that he has not been able to crack the code of---the rise of Donal Trump.

When Hawking was asked to explain on British TV why Trump was successful so highly in the American Presidential race, Hawking said: "I can't. He's a demagogue who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator."

The 74-year-old, diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 1963 and granted just a couple of years to live, cannot speak without assistance, and uses a computerized voice box. Every word used by him is spelt out, one letter at a time.

As Hawking is a strong interviewee, with frank opinions on politics, he participated in the debate on whether the U.K. should move away from the European Union in the impending referendum.

Said the 74-year old scientist to Good Morning Britain: "Gone are the days when we could stand on our own, against the world. We need to be part of a larger group of nations, both for our security and our trade. The possibility of our leaving the EU has already led to a sharp fall in the pound, because the markets judge that it will damage our economy."

"There are two obvious reasons why we should stay in. The first is that it promotes the mobility of people. Students can come here from EU countries to study, and our students can go to other EU universities. More importantly, at the level of research, the exchange of people enables skills to transfer more quickly, and brings new people with different ideas, derived from their different backgrounds," he said.

Other memorable quotes of Hawking include those of Zayn Malik of One Direction.

"My advice to any heartbroken young girl is to pay close attention to the study of theoretical physics, because one day there may well be proof of multiple universes," he said in response to a question about Zayn leaving the band at the Sydney Opera House last year.

"It would not be beyond the realms of possibility that somewhere outside of our own universe lies another different universe - and in that universe, Zayn is still in One Direction."

Did Eddie Redmayne's expression of his character in the movie enhance his female fan base, he was asked.

He replied: "I had many fans before Eddie Redmayne played me."
New Delhi:

Assam Board (Secondary Education Board of Assam) is expected to announce the class 10th result shortly. As per the latest inputs, the results will be rolled shortly. Students should log on to sebaonline.org to check their marks.

However, there are doubts over the board publishing results at its official website resultsassam.nic.in.High School Leaving Certificate Examination Results 2016 will not be published in this site says a notification on the website.

SEBA (Secondary Education Board of Assam) is expected to release Class 10 result on May 31, 2016 by 11 am. The class 10th exams were conducted between February 19 and March 12.

HSLC exam made headlines when 5,000 to 10,000 answer sheets were gutted in a major fire that broke out in an evaluation centre. Also, Secondary Education Board of Assam (SEBA) will be releasing the Assam High Madrassa (AHM) examination results.

A CID inquiry was ordered into the incident.

Here is how to check the results:

Although its not clear if the results will be declared online or not. Here are some simple step to follow in case of an online announcement of results:

Log On to resultsassam.nic.in. Official website and click on the relevant link.

Enter the required details such as roll number, date of birth and other details.

Your results will publish

Candidates are advised need to take a print out of the same or future reference.

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Brasilia:

The government of Brazils interim president Michel Temer has taken a fresh hit when the anti-corruption minister resigned after a recording revealed him criticising a probe into graft at state oil giant Petrobras.

Fabiano Silveira was the second minister to exit in the span of a week from Temers government, which has only been in power for 18 days following the suspension of Dilma Rousseff for an impeachment trial.

In audio released by Globo television last night, Silveira was heard talking to Senate President Renan Calheiros and Sergio Machado, the president of Petrobras subsidiary Transpetro, both of whom are being investigated in the embezzlement probe.

In the recording, Silveira was heard saying that the prosecution in the case was lost and gave advice to Machado on how to protect himself from the investigation.

The recording was made in March when Silveira was serving on the National Council of Justice.

Brazilian media said Machado recorded the conversation, trading the information for leniency from prosecution.

The presidential palaces media office confirmed Silveiras resignation.

In his resignation letter, excerpts of which were published by Brazilian media, Silveira defended himself and said his remarks were generic comments and simple opinion, amplified by the climate of political exasperation to which we all bear witness.

Yesterday, officials from the Transparency Ministry, created by Temer to fight rampant corruption in Brazil, staged protests to call for Silveiras ouster.

Corruption watchdog Transparency International also called for Silveira to step down.

His exit comes about one week after a main Temer ally, Romero Juca, was fired from his planning minister post after another leaked recording in which he apparently discussed using Rousseffs impeachment as a way to derail the Petrobras probe.

The probe, codenamed Operation Car Wash, has seen investigations and prosecutions opened against dozens of politicians and executives including Juca.

Temer, who was vice president and took over from Rousseff after her suspension for an impeachment trial on May 12, is trying to push through economic reforms to pull Brazil out of deep recession.

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New Delhi:

A group of African students in the national capital today called off a demonstration to protest the spate of assaults against the community after the government assured them of better security.

The students said they had a meeting with officials of the Ministry of External Affairs where they were assured of security and safety. The government officials also requested them not to go ahead with their planned protest at Jantar Mantar.

There was a high-level meeting with the Permanent Secretary of Ministry of External Affairs yesterday. He listened to our grievances and has made commitments to ensure our safety in India. Leaders of 15 African countries were also present during the meeting, the Association of African Students in India said in a statement.

It further said, There was also a meeting with Delhi Police Commissioner and other senior officials where contact details of high level officials were shared with us and they promised us of better policing with respect to Africans.

There was also a meeting with the African Ambassador body in which they advised us to take the path of diplomacy and hold the Indian government to their words....and also fast track justice for past cases. The parents of Congolese youth M K Olivier have also requested us to not take part in the protest, it said.

Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar had yesterday met a group of African students who raised their concerns over host of issues including better security in the wake of the killing of Congolese and cases of assaults against the community.

There has been a series of attacks on African nationals in the last few days including killing of the Congolese youth and assault on a 23-year-old Nigerian student in Hyderabad.

Five persons have so far been arrested in connection with the attacks.

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Mumbai:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today asked Defence Minister to visit the central ammunition depot in Maharashtras Pulgaon to take stock of the situation after a major fire killed at least 17 security personnel, including two Army officers, there.

Modi also expressed pain over the loss of lives caused by the fire and prayed for quick recovery of the injured.

I pray that those who are injured recover quickly. Have asked RM @manoharparrikar to visit the spot & take stock of the situation.

Pained by loss of lives caused by a fire at central ammunition depot in Pulgaon, Maharashtra. My thoughts are with the bereaved families, the Prime Minister said on micro-blogging site twitter.

The central ammunition depot at Pulgaon isthe countrys biggest ammunition storehouse.

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Panaji:

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar today criticised judiciary claiming that some of the directives given by it are senseless and without any scientific basis. Senseless directions are being given without any scientific basis. Some people who do not understand science have begun interpreting it, he said while speaking at a public function here.



I was reading a report about Mercedes Benz company. They have stopped investment in India because they say the decisions of the court are beyond the limit of understanding. (They say) we dont understand the logic of banning diesel vehicles.



We understand that you can ban diesel vehicles which are polluting but what is the point in banning a diesel vehicle which may not pollute or be less polluting than the petrol vehicle, Parrikar said.



The minister was addressing a gathering here after inaugurating a Solid Waste Management Facility in Saligao-Calangute plateau. He said garbage and sewerage treatment is a major scam area as even those built as part of the central schemes are left unaudited.



The garbage and sewerage treatment is a major scam area. Ninety per cent of the toilets built under Central government schemes goes into disuse after three to four years, Parrikar said.



Some people use these toilets to pile woodstock. Some people dont even use it for the purpose it is built. But no one can audit it. How can one audit whether toilet is functional or not without using it? he asked. The Minister said garbage treatment has become a big business across the country.



There are vested interests in this sector...Comptroller and Auditor General audits everything but I have not seen the audit of the garbage treatment. Who will dare go in the dump of garbage? he said.



The solid waste management facility inaugurated today has the capacity to treat 100 tonnes of garbage per day, which will be collected from North Goas coastal belt.

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Morocco:

Vice President Hamid Ansari has condemned the string of assaults on African nationals in India as despicable, saying they are our guests and should be looked after in the wake of violation of law and order.

Interacting with media on board his special aircraft before arriving here in the Moroccan capital, Ansari said, Attack on anyone whether own person or guest, it is despicable.

Nobody or no government can say anything different condemning all types of violence, he said. He said, They (Africans) are our guests. We have to look after them in the wake of violation of law and order.

Describing Indias ties with African countries as good, Ansari said, We greatly value our relationship with African countries and we always stood by them.

Even before 1947 we talked of decolonisation of Africa, he said, adding that the stand of the previous UPA government and the present NDA government has been no different.

Ansari is on a five-day visit to two North African countries Morocco and Tunisia - as part of efforts to build on diplomatic gains from the India-Africa summit held in New Delhi in October last year.

The Vice President said India attaches great importance to Africa, and in that context he was undertaking the trip to Morocco and Tunisia.

There has been a spate of attacks on African nationals in the last few days including killing of a Congolese youth in the national capital and assault on a 23-year-old Nigerian student in Hyderabad.

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Lucknow:

Taking a swipe at BJP chief Amit Shahs plan to have a meal with a Dalit family in Varanasi, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav today charged it was being done with an eye on the UP Assembly polls and said the Samajwadi Party does not see people on the basis of caste.

The Chief Minister said his party aims to reach out to people only on the basis of their work. In Uttar Pradesh, such things were done in the past too. Elections are near and these are done to give a message. Some will take a dip (in river) also.

I also had lunch with labourers recently but did not discriminate on the basis of caste. If you all have pictures, go and find out the caste of the labourer who sat next to me, Akhilesh told reporters.

I thank media for showing photos of poor people drinking mineral water and having mutton and chicken when I had lunch with them, he said referring to his recent lunch with labourers at the construction site of the new secretariat building here.

We dont see things on the basis of caste and creed. One should reach out to people on the basis of work and achievements, the Chief Minister said.

Shah is today scheduled to have a meal with Girjaprasad Bind and Ikbal Binds family, who belong to the Dalit community, in Jogiyapur village in Sevapuri Assembly segment under Prime Minister Narendra Modis Lok Sabha constituency of Varanasi.

On banning liquor in the state, Akhilesh said, I will urge people not to drink. Its a big issue for Uttar Pradesh and will have to be thoroughly considered before any decision is taken. I want that none should drink.

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New Delhi :

Dadri lynching, a case which created furore across the country few months back has again rose its head with a new turn of events. A forensic laboratory has confirmed that the meat found in victim Mohammad Ikhlaqs house was from a cow or its progeny. Few days back, a report suggested that it was goat meat not cow and he was wrongly alleged.

Last year September, fifty-two-year-old Ikhlaq and his son Danish were attacked by a mob at Bisada village in Dadri over rumours that they had slaughtered a cow.

Ikhlaq succumbed to his injuries at a hospital, while his son survived with a fractured skull. The incident sparked a nationwide debate over intolerance and beef politics. The unfortunate incident triggered a chain of protests across the country, with prominent writers, film-makers and scientists returning their awards.

In an initial report last year, a local government veterinarian said that the flesh looks like mutton.

A fast-track court recently allowed the lawyers of the suspects who allegedly lynched Ikhlaq to get a copy of the forensic report.

The court rejected the application of the public prosecutor who had objected to the disclosure of the report.

The police have apprehended eighteen people, including two juveniles, in the case so far and a chargesheet has been filed against them.

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New Delhi:

Chinese mobile device maker Xiaomi has withdrawn its request seeking complete exemption from the mandatory 30 per cent local sourcing norms for opening single-brand retail stores in India. The company in April had approached the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) for opening single brand retail trading in India.



They were seeking exemption from the mandatory local sourcing norms. Now they have withdrawn this request, an official said.



No immediate comments were received from the company. The development has come close on the heels of Finance Ministry rejecting a proposal to give exemption to iPhone maker Apple from the mandatory local sourcing norms for opening its retail stores in the country.



However, Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said that she will discuss the issue with the Finance Ministry. Last year, the government had relaxed the foreign direct investment (FDI) policy for single-brand retailing.



As per the policy, the government may relax the sourcing norms for entities undertaking single-brand retailing of products having state-of-the-art and cutting edge technology and where local sourcing is not possible.



At present, 100 per cent FDI is permitted in the sector but the companies are required to take FIPB permission if the limit exceeds 49 per cent. In respect of proposals involving FDI beyond 51 per cent, sourcing of 30 per cent of the value of goods purchased will be from India, preferably from MSMEs, village and cottage industries, artisans and craftsmen, in all sectors.



Xiaomi sells its devices through select e-commerce platforms and retail stores. India is one of the biggest markets for Xiaomi globally, which assembles devices like Redmi 2 and Redmi Note at the manufacturing facility of Foxconn, a leading contract manufacturer.
New Delhi :

Industry body COAI today rejected allegation of inappropriately using the radio link time out technology for masking call drops and it is used globally by all operators to ensure optimal customer experience.

We would like to reiterate that network operators in India have not used this feature to inappropriately mask dropped calls or charge customers.

We believe this is just part of a campaign by vested interests to continue to malign the hard work being done by the government and operators to address the issue of network quality, COAI said in a statement.

According to an official source, telecom operators are using RLT to mask call drops. With help of this technology, the calls remains connected even if a consumer moves to poor network coverage area for which he is billed.

Mobile service operators categorically reject such allegations as mischievous, motivated and totally without merit, The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) said.

The industry body said that the so called call drop masking technology, is actually a network parameter called, Radio Link Time Out (RLT) feature, which is a part of the GSM standards.

The particular RLT feature has been used globally by all operators to ensure optimal customer experience and it is surprising that operators are now being accused of using it as a means to mask call drops and disenfranchise customers, whereas its objective is just the opposite, COAI said.

It said that RLT is just one of the parameters, which decides for how long the call should be sustained if the signal quality drops below a certain threshold.

For a momentary loss of signal quality it is undesirable to disconnect the call immediately to avoid the inconvenience to the customer of redialing the number, COAI said.

Explaining with the help of an example, it said that a customer is travelling on a highway or in the city and in such a situation the signal quality might get impacted due to varying radio signal strength.

If the value of this RLT parameter is kept low in such cases then the call would get disconnected frequently even though there may be only a momentary loss of voice quality, leaving the subscriber with no option other than to frequently redial the number to initiate a new call, COAI said.

Thus, RLT is just one of the various parameters which balances situations such as those listed above in order to avoid customer inconvenience, it said.

Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has asked the Department of Telecom to look into the matter and work with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on this issue.
New Delhi :

Hitting back at Sonia Gandhi for her defence of son-in-law Robert Vadra, BJP today said it has exposed the farce that he was merely a private citizen and took a dig at her over her Shahenshah jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying people had sent the emperors packing in the 2014 polls.

It also mocked the Congress chiefs dare to the government to order a probe into the accusations against Vadra, saying the opposition party has dubbed such enquiries as vendetta earlier.

The Congress chiefs comments have exposed this farce that Vadra is merely a private citizen. It has established that he is the Gandhi family and the Gandhi family is him. When we do probe, then Congress quickly dismisses it as vendetta. BJP wonders why she is so rattled over some questions being asked about Vadra over some media reports.

Those who behaved and ruled like Shahenshah were sent packing by voters in 2014. Those emperors are now on bail in the National Herald case involving corruption of over Rs 5000 crore. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that he is Pradhan Sewak and he has been serving people, its national secretary Shrikant Sharma said.

Sonia Gandhi had assailed the Modi government over charges against Vadra, calling it a part of a conspiracy of levelling false allegations in its bid for a Congress-free India. She had also dared the government to order an impartial probe and attacked it over the celebrations of two years in office, describing Modi as Shahenshah.

On a visit to her Parliamentary constituency, Gandhi was asked by newsmen on reports citing a probe by Income Tax department into transactions of an arms dealer and his links with Vadra, especially with regard to ownership of a house in central London.

This is a conspiracy for Congress-free country. What is the meaning of Congress-free India. Everyday they make new excuses. They level false charges. If there is something, then there should be an impartial probe. Everything will become clear, she said.

News reports today quoted from purported papers seized by the IT department during searches last month on the arms dealers premises that allegedly led to a trail of emails between Vadra and his assistant on the one hand and the dealers aide on the other regarding the purchase of a London house for approximately Rs 19 crore in 2009 which was subsequently said to have been sold.

Vadras legal firm has denied that he owned the London property directly or indirectly. It also denied that Vadra had any business ties with the arms dealer or his aide.

The party of emperors, he said in a swipe at Congress, now ruled merely over 5 per cent of the countrys population.

While Congress has launched a disinformation campaign against the Modi government, it has launched its campaign based on facts, he said.

The government has zero tolerance against corruption, he said, asking Gandhi to not issue threats.

I have never seen anything like this. A Prime Minister is there, not an emperor. He is the countrys Prime Minister. There is so much poverty in the country. There is drought.

Farmers are in trouble. I do not find it appropriate (that government) shows off like this, Gandhi had said.

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New Delhi :

Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Vice President Rahul Gandhi today expressed shock & deep anguish at the death of 16 people, including two Army officers, in blasts and fire that ravaged one of Asias biggest ammunition depot in Maharashtras Pulgaon.

Extending her condolences to the family members of the deceased, Sonia Gandhi hoped that the injured were being taken care of and ample efforts were being undertaken to limit and control the damage.

Deeply saddened and pained to learn of the deaths of Jawans and Officers in the fire at Central Ammunition Depot in Maharashtra.

My prayers are with the families of the victims. I hope those injured in the accident are given due medical care and support, Rahul Gandhi tweeted.

At least 16 people, including two Army officers, were today killed in blasts and a massive blaze which ravaged the ammunition depot that houses the largest stockpile of weapons in the country.

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When the Connecticut Main Street Centers judges were reviewing the 2016 nominations for its annual Business Owner of the Year award, there was one applicant that stood out.

The Fairfield Theatre Co., the first nonprofit to receive the title, met all the qualifications for a downtown business owner worthy of the award.

When we reviewed the entries, this was the slam dunk, said Kimberley Parsons-Whitaker, associate director at the center. What they saw specifically in FTC was a really dynamic entity.

On Monday, the perfoming arts organization will receive the honor in a ceremony in Storrs Center in Mansfield. Were really excited to be recognized, said John Reid, producing artistic director for the company. I do think that is, to some degree, a recognition of the role we play in the town.

The FTC has an annual $3 million operating budget, produces more than 250 events each year and draws roughly 60,000 people downtown.

Thats a lot of people who dine either before or after in the downtown, said Parsons-Whitaker.

The nonprofit is also invested in the success of the downtown, she added. Theyre smart enough to recognize that unless the downtown is successful, they wont be successful, Parsons-Whitaker said, adding that FTC often supports other nonprofit organizations.

She said the companys relationship with the town also played a role in the decision-making process. Its downtown location, near the train station, is owned by the town, which receives a portion of ticket revenues through a per-ticket surcharge.

The performing arts company opened The Warehouse last fall, a venue with a 640-person capacity. Nearly 50 shows have been held there.

Its Stage One venue, on the other hand, has a capacity of roughly 220 people. The two spaces can now be used simultaneously, raising the number of shows the company can produce, Reid said.

Its going great, he said. It really has exceeded everybodys expectations.

He said the companys next project is a renovation of its green room and dressing rooms.

The Connecticut Main Street Center award marks the second time in a year that the theater company has received an honor usually reserved for businesses after it won the Fairfield Chamber of Commerces Company of the Year award for 2015.

First Selectman Michael Tetreau said the nonprofit has helped create a more dynamic downtown. FTCs quality shows and forums, as well as its newly opened versatile Warehouse, have helped our downtown become an even more vibrant destination for shopping, dining, arts and culture, he said. Kudos to the entire FTC community for your forward-thinking approach that makes Fairfield Center the place to visit.

Another award that will be given out Monday is the Property Owner of the Year award, which will be presented to Tony Silvestri, developer and property manager of New Londons City Flats.

There can be no doubt that Connecticuts downtowns play a strong role in maintaining Connecticut's quality of life, said Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. Not only are they economic drivers with their dense array of shops, restaurants and businesses, but their cultural offerings, walkable streets and modern housing contribute to a vibrant state. I congratulate this year's winners for continuing the tradition of downtown being the epicenter of ingenuity, opportunity and public discourse.

ktorres@hearstmediact.com; 203-330-6227
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NEWTOWN - Activists are calling for a day of orange on Thursday to mark the second annual National Gun Violence Awareness Day.

Activists, including leaders from two Newtown non-profits, plan a march Thursday night as part of the day of awareness, a rally with speakers, and a special screening of a new documentary about gun violence.

The emphasis on orange began with friends of a Chicago teenager who was shot and killed by a random bullet one week after a dancing performance at President Obamas second inauguration. The friends wore orange - the color hunters use in the woods to protect themselves - and inspired a national movement.

Thursdays march in Newtown is organized by the Newtown Action Alliance, Sandy Hook Promise, Connecticut Against Gun Violence, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, and the Brady Campaign Southwest CT Chapter, among other organizations, according to a release.

The march is planned at 6 p.m. from Newtowns Fairfield Hills campus to the Edmond Town Hall on Main Street, where speakers will include First Selectwoman Pat Llodra, Connecticut Against Gun Violence Executive Director Ron Pinciaro, Sandy Hook Promise founder Nicole HOckkley, Newtown Action Alliance Chairman Po Murray and the Rev. Matt Crebbin of Netown Congregational Church.

At 8 p.m. Thursday, a screening of the documentary Under the Gun, by Katie Couric and Stephanie Soechtig, will be held at the AMC Danbury Loews. After the film, a panel discussion will be held with producer Kristen Lazure, Sandy Hook parents Mark and Jackie Barden, and other members of the Sandy Hook Promise organization.

Over 100,000 Americans have been killed by guns and over 250,000 Americans have been injured by guns since the tragic shooting at the Sandy Hook ELementary School, organizers said in a release about the event. Newtown is moving forward, but Newtown has not moved on.
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REDDING  This small Connecticut town could see its name spread worldwide if the U.S. Navy agrees to a request to name a new ship after it.

Town officials and U.S. congressmen have requested that the Navy name one of its new ships after Redding in honor of its 250th anniversary next year, as well as its rich colonial history and contributions to the drive for American independence.

Redding Historical Society President Joe Bonomo came up with the idea after seeing a document presented to Congress on the ship-naming program. A Navy vessel has never been named after Redding, and he decided it would be a nice way to honor the town.

Being that we were a big player in the Revolutionary War, I figured, Why not? said Bonomo, who retired from the Navy in 1997 after serving on two aircraft carriers and a submarine.

Troops posted in Redding helped defend New England during the Revolutionary War. Putnam State Park was also the site of a difficult winter encampment and is referred to as the Valley Forge of Connecticut.

Navy ships are named by the secretary of the Navy. Each type of ship is named after a specific category of people or places, including states, cities and towns.

Expeditionary Fast Transport ships, or EPFs, and Littoral Combat Ships, or LCSs, are two of the main types of ships that can be named after small American cities. EPFs are high-speed ships designed to transport medium-sized cargo, including Army and Marine companies and their vehicles. LCS are smaller than the Navys frigates and generally operate close to shore.

The Navy has named 24 LCSs since 2008 and 10 EPFs since 2010.

Were very fortunate that we have a lot of great American cities, said Cpt. Patrick McNally, a spokesman for Navy Secretary Ray Mabus. The unfortunate thing is that we dont have as many ships to name after them.

Bonomo acknowledged that Redding might be a long shot to win the honor.

Im sure Secretary Mabus gets a bunch of requests each year for this, so well see what happens, Bonomo said.

The Navy has contracts this year for one new EPF and two LCSs that are expected to be named after small cities or counties. Redding joins about a dozen other towns and cities making naming requests, including one for Chattanooga, Tenn., where five service members were killed last year, McNally said.

Theyre all compelling cases, McNally said. Its a tough decision.

Mabus takes many factors into consideration when making his decision, McNally said, including the historical significance of the community and its ties to the Navy. He also takes Congressional backing into consideration.

Redding made its pitch in letters to Mabus, to the towns representatives in Congress as well as members of the Armed Services committees in the U.S. House and Senate. U.S. Rep. James Himes and U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy wrote to Mabus on the towns behalf.

The town of Redding is a perfect example of a small American city, and its historical significance makes it worthy of recognition, the congressmen wrote in the letter.

First Selectman Julia Pemberton read the letters at a recent Board of Selectmen meeting.

Im so happy to see our congressmen and senators advocating on our behalf to the Secretary of the Navy, she said.

McNally said the naming program is a great way for the Navy to connect with communities. Hes seen residents rally around the ship during the ships construction, christening and service. Generally the ships last about 40 years.

That ship goes around the world and is a great representative of not only the U.S. but that city its named after, he said.

kkoerting@newstimes.com; 203-731-3345; @kkoerting
OTTAWA, May 30, 2016 /CNW/ - Assembly of First Nations (AFN) National Chief Perry Bellegarde today participated in a seminar for MPs, Senators, and their staff on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (the Declaration), urging all parties to work cooperatively with Indigenous peoples on measures to adopt and implement the Declaration in Canada.

"You have an historic opportunity to work with us to ensure the human rights of First Nations are finally respected through concrete action all across this country," National Chief Bellegarde told the MPs and Senators. "We must turn Canada's unqualified support for the Declaration into action. We need to craft legislation that supports the Declaration and ensures all levels of Government in Canada respect and honour its principles. The UN Declaration provides a framework for reconciliation and the implementation of inherent Treaty rights, title and jurisdiction. The Declaration is a clear path forward."

National Chief Bellegarde spoke today at a Library of Parliament Seminar on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which included Paul Joffe, a lawyer with extensive experience in international human rights and constitutional law. The National Chief called on Parliamentarians to commit to working together to implement the UN Declaration, stating that Canadian law must be reformed to ensure it reflects and supports the UN Declaration and to create legislation supporting the Declaration.

The Declaration was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2007. It sets out minimum standards for ensuring Indigenous peoples enjoy all fundamental human rights as peoples and individuals - from culture and language to education and the collective right to self-determination in their traditional territories. On May 10, the Minister of Indigenous Affairs and Norther Development, the Honourable Dr. Carolyn Bennett stated at the 15th Session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues that Canada now fully supports of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples without qualification.

The Assembly of First Nation is the national organization representing First Nation citizens in Canada. Follow AFN on Twitter @AFN_Comms, @AFN_Updates and visit the AFN website at www.afn.ca.

SOURCE Assembly of First Nations

For further information: Jenna Young Castro AFN Communications Officer 613-241-6789, ext. 401; 613-314-8157 or [email protected]; Alain Garon AFN Bilingual Communications Officer 613-241-6789, ext. 382; 613-292-0857 or [email protected]
OTTAWA, May 27, 2016 /CNW/ - Assembly of First Nations (AFN) National Chief Perry Bellegarde today said the federal government's announcement of funding and support to strengthen the First Nations labour market is a step in the right direction to address decades of underfunding. The Honourable MaryAnn Mihychuk, Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour Canada made the announcement on Wednesday May 25, 2016 during the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations Spring Legislative Assembly.

"We are the fastest growing population in this country and our people are seeking jobs and good training," said National Chief Bellegarde. "We need initiatives that start to close the gap in employment, income and education between First Nations people and the rest of Canada. We look forward to working with the federal government on First Nations employment, training and labour market needs based on a nation-to-nation relationship and a new fiscal relationship based on respect."

AFN Saskatchewan Regional Chief Bobby Cameron stated: "We welcome the federal government investment into the development of our people's skills and training needs. Our First Nation people require education and training opportunities to build healthier families and communities. This is a positive step forward to the importance of life-long learning. We look forward to our continued nation-to-nation Inherent and Treaty based relationship."

On May 25, the federal government announced a new call for proposals for the $50 million Skills and Partnership Fund and funding for at-risk communities and the Aboriginal Skills and Employment Training Strategy (ASETS). The AFN Chiefs Committee on Human Resource Development and First Nations Technical Working Group on Human Resources Development continue to prepare for discussions on a new labour market agreement to follow the ASETS.

The Government of Canada will be providing more support to Indigenous employment and training organizations serving Indigenous people across Canada. Minister Mihychuk announced a new call for proposals for the Skills and Partnership Fund, with a total value of $50 million. The Fund encourages Indigenous organizations to create partnerships with governments, businesses and community organizations to improve skills training. The call for proposals closes on July 5, 2016.

The Assembly of First Nation is the national organization representing First Nation citizens in Canada. Follow AFN on Twitter @AFN_Comms, @AFN_Updates and visit the AFN website at www.afn.ca.

SOURCE Assembly of First Nations

For further information: Alain Garon AFN Bilingual Communications Officer 613-241-6789, ext. 382; 613-292-0857 or [email protected] ; Jenna Young Castro AFN Communications Officer 613-241-6789, ext. 401; 613-314-8157 or [email protected]
MONTREAL, May 30, 2016 /CNW Telbec/ - The 26th session of the World Model United Nations MMXVII will be held in Montreal from March 13 to 17, 2017, thanks to the winning bid submitted by Dawson College. Parijat Lal, Secretary-General of Harvard WorldMUN made the announcement this past weekend. It is a first for Montreal and coincides with celebrations of both the city's 375th anniversary and with Canada's 150th anniversary since Confederation.

The driving force behind the successful bid was Dawson College Model UN (DCMUN), led by Dawson teachers Ted Irwin, DCMUN Coordinator, and Chris Bourne, DCMUN Faculty Adviser, with Dawson graduate Jonathan Sasson, now studying law at Universite de Montreal, and a dedicated team of Dawson College students and alumni. The bid also received support from Tourisme Montreal, the Palais des Congres, and was endorsed by all three levels of government.

Over the last eight years, DCMUN has developed a reputation for excellence, professionalism, and diplomacy, having sent hundreds of students to dozens of Model UN competitions across Montreal, Canada, and the United States, and has competed at Harvard WorldMUN in Brussels, Seoul, and Rome.

"Dawson's bid to host WorldMUN in 2017 demonstrates not only the College's dedication to its academic mission, but its belief that good citizenry extends beyond our borders, by building a community of global citizens, creating a centre of both local and global excellence, and doing its part to position Montreal as a global city," said Richard Filion, Dawson College Director General.

Nearly 3,000 participants are expected from post-secondary educational institutions around the world, with delegates participating in simulations and activities within the Model United Nations conference, bringing together young people to build greater awareness of the work of the United Nations and multilateral diplomacy, and to seek solutions to pressing international challenges of concern to us all.

"WorldMUN [has] celebrated twenty-five years: a period that has seen this conference grow from just over 300 delegates to more than 2,000 [delegates]," Mr. Lal wrote. "As we set out to write a fresh chapter in WorldMUN's vibrant and storied history, it is important for us to honor the real spirit of this conference, a spirit that has guided us since 1992.

"At the heart of this lies the delegate experience, whether this is the enriching debate and diplomacy inside committee or the unique opportunity of sharing one's background and interests with passionate peers from over 110 nations. With a commitment to the experience of our participants in mind, the team this year is looking forward to providing the substantive excellence and social interactions that set WorldMUN apart," he concluded.

"This will present an excellent opportunity to showcase Montreal to a world of young people," added Mr. Filion. "And Dawson College, as a post-secondary educational leader in the greater Montreal community for nearly 50 years, is proud to be at the centre of this prestigious event."

SOURCE Dawson College

For further information: For Dawson College, Donna Varrica, 514 931 8731 ext 1352, cell 514 809 1302; For DCMUN, Ted Irwin, 514 931 8731 ext 1582, cell 514 791 8121; Chris Bourne, 514 931 8731 ext 4164, cell 514 974 0899
MUNICH, May 31, 2016 /CNW/ - H.C. Starck, one of the leading manufacturers of customer-specific powders and components made of technology metals and technical ceramics, performed well in 2015 despite a difficult market environment. The company increased its revenues from the previous year to 815.2 million euros (2014: 785.9 million). By December 31st 2015, the company employed a total of 2,679 employees worldwide (2014: 2,678).

"Last year was, once again, due to the situation on the raw material markets highly challenging for H.C. Starck," explained Dr. Engelbert Heimes, CEO of the management at H.C. Starck. "Currently, there is an imbalance between supply and demand for some of our most important raw materials, which has led to a significant drop in prices. However, this unusual market situation will not be permanent. It is only a question of time before the market achieves a new balance and the price level can increase significantly once again."

Changes to company management

As we have already announced, Dr. Engelbert Heimes, former Chairman of the Advisory Board, has taken over the position of CEO after Dr. Andreas Meier left the company. In doing so, he vacates his office as Chairman of the Advisory Board, which is being taken over by Gregor Bohm, Co-head of the Europe Buyout Advisory Group at The Carlyle Group. In addition, Dr. Jens Knoll is advancing to become Chief Operating Officer (COO).

Until Dr. Michael Rei returns, the organizational structure on the GmbH level will be established as follows:

CEO: Dr. Engelbert Heimes

CFO: Dr. Matthias Schmitz

COO: Dr. Jens Knoll

Read the full release at http://www.hcstarck.com/en/hc_starck_group/press/press_releases.html

SOURCE H.C. Starck GmbH

For further information: Wolfgang Weinseis, PR H.C. Starck, Tel.: +49-89-24-44-76-50, [email protected]
5 things returning Fort McMurray residents need to know about insurance

EDMONTON, May 30, 2016 /CNW/ - There are many questions consumers have about the re-entry to Fort McMurray following the evacuation because of the devastating northern Alberta wildfires. We want to provide answers to those returning to the community.

Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) executives in Alberta will hold a 30-minute media conference call to answer insurance-related questions.

Date: Tuesday, May 31, 2016



Time: 2 p.m. MT



Dial in: Local calls (403) 451-9838, (647) 427-7450

Toll-free (888) 231-8191

Conference ID -- 24050858



Participants: Heather Mack, Director, Government Relations, IBC

Steve Kee, Director, Media & Digital Communications, IBC





Following brief opening remarks, the conference will open to questions from the media. Because of the large number of participants expected, please dial in 15 minutes in advance to ensure we have an opportunity to answer your questions.

For more insurance-related information on the wildfires, consumers can call 1-844-2ask-IBC or email [email protected]. There is also information at ibc.ca and by following IBC on Twitter -- @insurancebureau and @ibc_west.

About Insurance Bureau of Canada

Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) is the national industry association representing Canada's private home, auto and business insurers. Its member companies make up 90% of the property and casualty (P&C) insurance market in Canada. For more than 50 years, IBC has worked with governments across the country to help make affordable home, auto and business insurance available for all Canadians. IBC supports the vision of consumers and governments trusting, valuing and supporting the private P&C insurance industry. It champions key issues and helps educate consumers on how best to protect their homes, cars, businesses and properties.

P&C insurance touches the lives of nearly every Canadian and plays a critical role in keeping businesses safe and the Canadian economy strong. It employs more than 120,000 Canadians, pays $8.2 billion in taxes and has a total premium base of $49 billion.

For media releases and more information, visit IBC's Media Centre at www.ibc.ca. Follow IBC on Twitter @InsuranceBureau and @IBC_West or like us on Facebook. If you have a question about home, auto or business insurance, contact IBC's Consumer Information Centre at 1-844-2ask-IBC.

SOURCE Insurance Bureau of Canada

For further information: Steve Kee, Director, Media & Digital Communications, IBC, 416-362-2031 ext. 4387 (office), 416-841-5669 (after hours), [email protected]
EDMONTON, May 29, 2016 /CNW/ - The Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) and Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) are pleased to announce the creation of a new fellowship aimed at improving the skills of Indigenous journalists.

CAJ president Nick Taylor-Vaisey and APTN executive director of news and current affairs Karyn Pugliese revealed the new program during the #CAJ16 conference banquet, held at the Coast Edmonton Plaza Hotel earlier today.

This new Aboriginal Investigative Journalism Fellowship will provide a 12-week, paid placement with the APTN Investigates team based in Winnipeg, Man., this coming fall. The goal is to have the recipient produce a full-length piece of original, investigative journalism that would air on APTN Investigates. The CAJ is providing promotional and logistical support to the judging panel.

"This partnership is a natural fit for the CAJ as it allows us to partner with another media organization to help build and improve on the quantity and quality of investigative reporting that takes place within our borders," CAJ president Nick Taylor-Vaisey said. "It's a natural complement to the other fellowship programs we're a part of, our annual investigative awards program and our conference."

The CAJ will provide the fellowship recipient with a complimentary one-year membership. Moreover, they will be invited to #CAJ17 in Ottawa next year to screen the finished piece for conference delegates and discuss how it came together and was received after broadcast.

"We're pleased to have the CAJ as partners to support this new opportunity for Aboriginal journalists who want to move into the investigative field," APTN executive director of news and current affairs Karyn Pugliese said. "We're looking forward to creating a new opportunity for an Aboriginal journalist to hone their skills, advance their career and tell compelling stories."

Look for a full release of information on the program, how to apply and the entry requirements within the next few months. These details will be shared and cross-posted by APTN and the CAJ.

ABOUT CAJ:

The CAJ is Canada's largest national professional organization for journalists from all media, representing over 600 members across the country. The CAJ's primary roles are to provide public-interest advocacy and high-quality professional development for its members.



ABOUT APTN:

September 1, 2015, marked the 16-year anniversary of the launch of the first national Aboriginal television network in the world with programming by, for and about Aboriginal Peoples to share with all Canadians and viewers around the world. APTN is available in approximately 11 million Canadian households and commercial establishments with cable, direct-to-home satellite, telco-delivered and fixed wireless television service providers. The network launched its high definition channel, APTN HD, in the spring of 2008. APTN does not receive government funding for operations but generates revenue through subscriber fees, advertising sales and strategic partnerships. APTN broadcasts programming with 56% offered in English, 16% in French and 28% in Aboriginal languages. For program schedule or for more information, please contact APTN at (204) 947-9331 or toll-free at 1-888-278-8862 (Canada), or visit the website at www.aptn.ca

SOURCE Canadian Association of Journalists

For further information: Nick Taylor-Vaisey, CAJ president, 647-968-2393, [email protected], For further information about APTN or image requests, contact: Jacqueline Jubinville, Manager of Communications, APTN, (204) 947-9331, ext. 339, [email protected]
EDMONTON, May 30, 2016 /CNW/ - The Canadian Red Cross will provide an additional $40 million to help evacuees return home following the devastating wildfires in Alberta. The Red Cross will work in close collaboration with the Government of Alberta, the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo and community groups to support families and individuals as they re-enter their communities over the coming weeks and months.

This will support transportation for people evacuated as a result of the fires who do not have any financial assistance available through work or insurance to travel back. This service will include charter buses from Edmonton, Calgary and Lac La Biche as well as flights from across the country. The Red Cross will also provide a second wave of emergency financial assistance available after re-entry  $300 for one member of each household and $50 for each additional member.

"Going home will not be easy  the fires not only destroyed homes and infrastructure but for many families also wiped out their basic supplies such as food, clothing, linens and hygiene items," said Jenn McManus, vice president of Alberta operations for the Canadian Red Cross. "Thanks to the generosity of Canadians, I am pleased to announce that we are able to provide additional emergency financial assistance to households after re-entry, to help people meet their immediate needs."

The Canadian Red Cross will offer a range of additional services to all residents when they arrive, such as fire cleaning kits for damaged households and guides on returning home for parents and caregivers. Teams of Red Cross staff and volunteers will validate information for financial assistance, and provide kits and safety and well-being services at eight Information Centres set-up throughout the community.

"It is a priority for us to get our citizens back home safely, with services in place to best help them through what is bound to be a very challenging experience," said Mayor Melissa Blake, Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo. "We look forward to working alongside the Government of Alberta and the Canadian Red Cross to successfully bring our residents home."

"The Canadian Red Cross is extremely proud to work with the municipal and provincial governments to help people through this challenging time," said McManus.

Visit www.redcross.ca/albertafiresinfo to access:

For a Media Fact Sheet on Red Cross support for Alberta wildfire evacuees as they return home, please click here.

Visit www.redcross.ca/blog to read stories by Red Cross staff, volunteers, supporters and friends.

SOURCE Canadian Red Cross

PDF available at: http://stream1.newswire.ca/media/2016/05/30/20160530_C6739_PDF_EN_701967.pdf

For further information: Canadian Red Cross media line: 1-877-599-9602; Alberta media can call: 1-403-541-4431; Quebec media can call: 1-888-418-9111
24-hour, toll-free number provides information, identifies needs of local business owners

FORT MCMURRAY, AB, May 31, 2016 /CNW/ - Businesses in the Fort McMurray area were equally impacted by the fires and subsequent evacuation, and they now have a key resource to assist them with their return to the region.

The Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo with the support of Economic Developers Alberta and the Canadian Red Cross has launched a hotline that will operate 24 hours a day; seven days a week for the first two weeks. Called the Business Recovery Hotline, it is designed to provide business owners access to information resources. It also helps them to identify what their needs are to get their businesses operational after the devastating fire.

"We're committed to business in Wood Buffalo. Our businesses are the backbone of the region. They are critical economic drivers of our community, providing residents with vital goods, services and  above all  jobs," said Melissa Blake, mayor of the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo. "Our business owners are highly resilient, but we want to ensure that they access to the necessary tools and resources to help them as we move forward."

The number, 855-RMWB BIZ (855-769-2249), will provide updates for business and link them to local resources that will assist them with issues or concerns. The hotline will also be the point of entry for business owners to complete a business recovery survey that will distinguish the business community's distinct short and long-term needs.

"The Canadian Red Cross is proud to support the Business Recovery Hotline," said Jenn McManus, vice president of Alberta operations for the Canadian Red Cross. "Businesses are vital to all regions impacted by the wildfires, and this hotline will help identify the most pressing needs of business owners as they re-enter and re-establish in their communities."

SOURCE Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo

For further information: Media inquiries: Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, [email protected]; Canadian Red Cross Society, 403-541-4431; Economic Developers Alberta (EDA), Leann Hackman-Carty, EDA CEO, [email protected], 403-807-7746
Following the outbreak of religious violence in Pandogari, Rafi local government area of Niger state and the killing of a Christian, over ...

Following the outbreak of religious violence in Pandogari, Rafi local government area of Niger state and the killing of a Christian, over alleged blasphemous comments about Prophet Mohammed on the social media, the Nigerian Army has imposed a dusk to dawn curfew in the town.A statement signed by Major NC Agwu, Assistant Director, Army Public Relations, said the curfew came into effect as rioters embarked on violence, looting shops and blocking the Lagos  Kaduna Road, a major artery connecting the northern and southern parts of the country.Regrettably, one church, one house and a shop were burnt while 25 other shops were looted following the violence. Three other persons including personnel of the NSCDC also lost their lives it said.Continuing it said, Some arrests have been made in connection with the violence and the suspects handed over to the police. The military and other security agencies are currently embarking on confidence building patrols in all nooks and crannies of the town.Giving further details on the violence, Major Ugwu said, At about 6pm on Sunday, 29 May 2016, one Mr. Methodus Chimaije Emmanuel, a 24 year old trader based in Pandogari, Rafi LGA of Niger State was attacked and killed by a mob in the town on allegation of posting a blasphemous statement about Prophet Muhammad on the social media.Early Monday morning however, the rioters embarked on further violence, looting shops and blocking the Lagos  Kaduna Road, a major artery connecting the northern and southern parts of the country.Again, troops in conjunction with the personnel of Nigeria Police and Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) took control of the situation to forestall escalation of violence and any threat to the peace in the town.As part of the measures to de-escalate tensions and ensure a lasting peace in the town, the military is working with the Local Government Council authorities and community leaders, including the Kagara Emirate Council to pacify all aggrieved parties and build on the peace so far established.However, while the military will continue with its current non-violent approach to maintaining peace in Pandogari town, it will not take kindly to any unscrupulous element who would attempt to visit violence on innocent and law abiding Nigerians.The general public is therefore warned to abide by the conditions of the curfew so far emplaced. All law abiding citizens are enjoined to go about their legitimate businesses without any fear of intimidation.They are to be rest assured that the security forces will remain fully present to guarantee their safety and security across the length and breadth of the town, within their rules of engagement.
The All Progressives Congress in Ekiti State has warned Governor Ayodele Fayose to stop maligning former Governor Kayode Fayemi over his ...

The All Progressives Congress in Ekiti State has warned Governor Ayodele Fayose to stop maligning former Governor Kayode Fayemi over his inability to pay workers salaries.It said blaming the former governor for purportedly plunging the state into debts was a wicked manipulation of the people to justify an unconscionable and mindless treatment of Ekiti workers while Fayose enjoys lavish life.The organised labour in Ekiti on Thursday began an indefinite strike to press home the demand for the payment of outstanding five months salaries of public workers.But the governor in a state broadcast on the same day said he had no immediate solution to the demand of the workers because of the debt challenges facing the state.However, the APC in a statement by its state Publicity Secretary, Taiwo Olatunbosun, on Monday praised the workers for their resolve to continue the strike over Fayoses deceitful way to deny them their entitlements.The party said while Fayemi borrowed for development purposes, which could be seen in roads and other development structures across the state, Fayose kept padding and spending Ekiti money on projects rehabilitation fraudulently over-priced and given to his friends and cronies while Ekiti workers were suffering.The Adewale Omirin-led House of Assembly approved for Fayose to take N2bn Central Bank loan for artisans and small scale traders, but up till now, he has not given one naira to anybody.He deceived the workers that the April federal allocation is N700m even though the Federal Ministry of Finance figure as published in the newspapers indicated that Ekiti collected N1.08bn and you wonder what the governor did with the balance of N300m.He has so far collected about N20bn loan which he would not disclose to Ekiti people. These include the N9.6bn bailout cash and another N10bn taken from another bank while he also denied collecting refunds on federal roads and misapplied N2bn ecological funds which he denied collecting for a long time until our party applied the FoI Act to get the fact from the Ecology Fund Office in Abuja.He paid one month salary from N9.6bn bailout and nobody knows what he did with the balance the same way that no one knows what he does with the fresh N10bn loan and the interest it generates in the secret account he keeps the money after vowing several times never to borrow a naira to run his government.Meanwhile, the Ekiti State Government has invited labour leaders to a meeting to discuss issues surrounding the industrial action embarked upon by the unions.The meeting followed a declaration by Governor Ayodele Fayose that he would invoke the doctrine of no-work, no-pay rule to break the resolve of the labour leaders to continue with the strike.According to a copy of the invitation letter, the unions are to meet with the state government today (Tuesday) in the governors office.It is to be attended by the chairmen and secretaries of the Nigeria Labour Congress, the Trade Union Congress, the Joint Negotiating Council, the Nigeria Union of Teachers, the Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees and the Academic Staff Union of Secondary Schools.The letter was signed by one Dapo Alade of the Office of Establishment and Training for the Head of Service, Dr. Gbenga Faseluka.
The Nigerian Army has explained that its troops, alongside other security agencies, invoked the extant Rules of Engagement by acting in se...

The Nigerian Army has explained that its troops, alongside other security agencies, invoked the extant Rules of Engagement by acting in self-defence as well as in defence of lives and property when it shot dead about five members of the Movement for the Actualisation of Sovereign State of Biafra, MASSOB, and Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, on Monday.The pro-Biafra activists were killed as they marched to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the declaration of the defunct Biafra Republic by late leader of the old Eastern region, Odumegwu Ojukwu, but the Army claimed that the MASSOB and IPOB members launched an attack on peace loving populace as well as security agencies while marking the first anniversary of the democratically elected government of President Muhammadu Buhari.This was contained in a statement signed by Colonel HA Gambo, Deputy Director of Army Public Relations, 82 Division of the Nigerian Army in Enugu, which stressed that the major objective of the security agency was to ensure peace, security and stability.Claiming that members of MASSOB and IPOB attacked security agencies with a variety of firearms, crude weapons, volatile cocktails such as acid and dynamites, it pointed out that eight other members of the separatist organisations were wounded while nine were arrested for due legal actions.The statement reads, The attention of the general public is hereby drawn to the unwarranted attack that was launched by combined members of the Movement for Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) and the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) against the peace loving populace as well as security agencies at about 0415 hours on 30 May 2016.This attack was purported to have been orchestrated in order to mar the first anniversary of the present democratic government as part of the activities earmarked to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Biafra.Due to the wide spread panic, tension and apprehension that generated from the activities of the MASSOB and IPOB members, security agencies which comprised of detachment of Nigerian Navy, Nigeria Police, Department of State Service, National Drug Law Enforcement Agency were compelled to intervene in consonance with constitutional provisions of aid to civil authority where and when such occasion demands. The over arching imperative to ensure a reign of peace, security and stability in this circumstance was most starring.
The Grand Khadi of the Kwara State Sharia Court of Appeal, Justice Sali Mohammad, has urged Nigerians to be patient with President Muhamm...

The Grand Khadi of the Kwara State Sharia Court of Appeal, Justice Sali Mohammad, has urged Nigerians to be patient with President Muhammadu Buharis administration.The grand Khadi said President Buhari took over power at a very difficult time when things were too bad.He said if an institution was collapsing, it takes time before it could be revived, adding that with patience, we would certainly get there.Alhaji Mohammad advised the president to inject recovered looted funds into the countrys economy, urging him to begin the implementation of his change mantra as his government enters the second year.Before the second quarter of his second year, Nigerians should begin to feel the impact of his change mantra in practical terms. Let us see food on our table, water flowing, electricity, effective and efficient transportation system, because the time is now, not tomorrow.Mohammad gave the advice in Ilorin, the state capital while speaking at the graduation ceremony of Baraje Centre for Arabic and Islamic Studies.The school, which was established by a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Alhaji Abubakar Kawu Baraje, graduated 153 students.The Grand Khadi who is the Chairman, Board of Trustees of the school, said the school was established to impact everlasting legacy in the younger generation.He added that pure Arabic, Islamic Studies and moral discipline were being imparted into the students.He advised the Kwara State Board for Arabic and Islamic Studies to remain focused in its assignment by ensuring proper coordination of all Arabic schools in the state.Former Commissioner for Education Dr. Saad Abdullahi Baraje for his philanthropic gesture. He urged the Federal Government and other stakeholders to urgently arrest the falling standard of education in the country.
Sola Adeyeye, lawmaker representing Osun central senatorial district, has expressed disappointment with Ben Bruce, his colleague from Baye...

Sola Adeyeye, lawmaker representing Osun central senatorial district, has expressed disappointment with Ben Bruce, his colleague from Bayelsa east, for allegedly misleading the public over the incident that happened at the presidential villa in Abuja on Monday.Bruce had said officials of the Department of State Services (DSS) denied him access to President Muhammadu Buhari, but allowed another senator to meet the president.He went on to say that the secret police could have acted in that manner because of his critical stance on the government.But Adeyeye disagreed with Bruce, saying Dino Melaye, the senator who criticises Buhari the most, was not prevented from seeing the president.Adeyeye said the security operatives intervened when lawmakers breached dinner protocol, adding that Barnabas Gemade, a lawmaker of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was also prevented from meeting the president.I was at the dinner. I sat in the front row along with other principal officers of the national assembly. I had a vantage view of what transpired. I am disappointed by this comment from a respected colleague, he said in a statement.I have on two occasions provided robust defense of Sen Ben Bruce. Not this time! It was Sen Dino Melaye who first went to greet those seated at the presidents table, including President Buhari.He was well greeted. No one in the senate has criticised President Buhari more than Sen Melaye. But as others rose to do what Dino had done, the scene got clumsy and indecorous because people were approaching the presidents table from different directions.I sat between Sen Olujimi and Sen Bwacha. The three of us felt embarrassed by what was clearly a breach of dinner protocol. At that level, if dinner was served or being served, good etiquette demanded that the presidents table should not be approached. One should wait until people had finished eating.No senator in the USA would breach such elementary protocol. We (on my table) predicted in whispers that colleagues would soon be barred from approaching the presidents table and it happened.The first person to be turned back was Sen Gemade who was visibly embarrassed. He belongs to the APC; he is not a known critic of the president.When I noticed that most people had finished their food, I approached the table and offered my pleasantries. Others followed suit. No one was turned back.Shehu Sani, an APC senator from Kaduna state, also shared his own experience at the villa.Sani said he doubted if the security agents acted on the orders of the president.We met with Mr. President at the Villa yester night. He was frank and blunt with us and we were honest with him. He addressed us, and those nominated to speak responded, raised issues and asked questions of which he answered. I actually wanted to speak but I was not so lucky, he wrote on Facebook.I was surprised to learn that one of us later disclosed that he was prevented by security agents from coming close to Mr President. I personally experienced NO such. And I dont think Mr President can bar any legislature from coming close to him for holding different opinion on national issues. I always have an independent mind and will always speak my mind when there is the need to do so. For decades, Mr President knows me for that and still respects me for that. Its not everything the security agents do that Mr President will know.
Following yesterdays violent clash between pro-Biafra activists and security agents, the Deputy Senate President, Chief Ike Ekweremadu ha...

Following yesterdays violent clash between pro-Biafra activists and security agents, the Deputy Senate President, Chief Ike Ekweremadu has expressed concern over the excesses of security operatives in handling protests.Moving a motion through Order 43 of the Senate Standing Rules, the lawmaker condemned the killing of protesters by troops and urged all those involved in maintaining peace and order to be responsible enough in doing that.Mr Senate President, Distinguished Colleagues, you recall that major Newspapers headlines today showed killing of protesters in major parts of the South East especially those that concern the future of this Country and I urge Security Agents to be responsible, Ekweremadu said.
President Muhammadu Buhari has appealed to the National Assembly members to ensure the speedy passage of five Executive bill before it to ...





President Muhammadu Buhari has appealed to the National Assembly members to ensure the speedy passage of five Executive bill before it to help his anti-corruption war.The bills are the Money Laundering and Prevention Bill of 2016, Bills for Acts for domestication of agreements for avoidance of double taxation between Nigeria and South Korea, Spain and Sweden respectively, Mutual legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Bill, 2016 the Federal Capital Territory Appropriation Bill, 2016 and Statutory Budget of Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), 2016.He made the appeal while hosting the members of the federal legislature and some chieftains of the All Progressives Congress, APC at the presidential villa, Abuja on Monday night to a dinner to mark the 2016 democracy day and his one year in office. The president who was particular about the Federal Capital Territory Appropriation Bill, 2016 and Statutory Budget of Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), 2016, stated that the bodies would be financially handicapped to execute their project and run the affairs of their offices if their budget was not passed. While pledging to uphold the principles of separation of powers, President Buhari also expressed gratitude to the lawmakers for passing the 2016 budget. He said:This is first, to mark the 2016 Democracy Day and further to appreciate the National Assembly leadership, membership and management for the great work they have done in considering and approving as thought fit several bills and measures submitted by the executive and those bills originated by the legislature which have enabled the government function according to law.Let me again appreciate the work of the National Assembly for the painstaking and consensual work they did with the Executive to deliver the 2016 Appropriation Act. It is on record that this is one rare occasion where the Appropriation Act was assented to with the schedule i.e the details. This is a good start in our journey of change.I seize this opportunity to please draw attention to the under listed bills which have been submitted to the National Assembly and appeal for accelerated consideration and passage.The bills include Bills for Acts of domestication of agreements for avoidance of double taxation between Nigeria and South Korea, Spain and Sweden respectively; Federal Capital Territory Appropriation Bill 2016; Money Laundering (Prevention and Prohibition) Bill 2016; Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Bill 2016; and the Statutory Budget of the Niger Delta Development Commission 2016.I am conscious that on June 9, 2016, the National Assembly will complete one legislative year.May I appeal to you to consider and pass these submitted bills, particularly the statutory budget of the FCT, the NDDC Budget and the budget of statutory corporations.These bodies cannot execute their statutory mandate nor incur expenditure for the year unless their budgets are approved by the National Assembly.I hereby re-state the commitment of this administration to observe the principles of separation of powers which defines and delineates the functions and powers of each arm of government.Thus far, we in the executive have restricted ourselves to our constitutional roles. Therefore I, as the President, and we as the Executive arm of government will not interfere in the functions, functioning and process of the Legislature nor the Judiciary.In the same vein, I urge other arms of government to please appraise and ensure that each action conceived and taken by it is in strict accord with its constitutionally limited powers.I urge you as legislators and the legislature to take out time and communicate with your constituents and other Nigerians the policies of the government which are based on laws approved by the National Assembly.Making his remarks earlier, the senate president and chairman of the National Assembly, Bukola Saraki, appreciated President Buhari for invitation to dinner. He was also excited that the country has practiced 17 years of uninterrupted democracy, saying it shows that our democracy has matured.We will request for more and more of this kind of interaction, now that the budget has been released the food will be more sumptuous. It will strengthen our relationship with the executive and solidify the democracy of our country, he said.Among those who graced the dinner were former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, the leader of All Progressive Congress, APC, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, National Chairman of the party, John Oyegun, Speaker of House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara and APC Deputy national chairman, south, Segun Oni.
President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday held a closed- door meeting with some South East politicians led by former Senate President, Ken Nna...

President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday held a closed- door meeting with some South East politicians led by former Senate President, Ken Nnamani, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.The meeting came a day after members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) held demonstrations in the South East and South-South parts of the country.The 18-member delegation, which arrived in a bus belonging to the Ken Nnamani Leadership Institute, came under the aegis of Southeast Group for Change.They comprised mainly members of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC).The delegation included the National Auditor of APC, George Moghalu; former Senators Ifeanyi Ararume and Osita Izunaso; former House of Representatives member, Sharon Ikeazor and former Executive Vice-Chairman of Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC), Ernest Ndukwe.Also in the team were the APC National Vice-Chairman (South East), Hon. Emma Eneukwu; member of the APC Board of Trustees, Chief Austin Edeze; Dr. Uzoma Obiyo and Chris Akomas.Nnamani and other member of the delegation declined to speak with State House correspondents at the end of the meeting.As he walked past the journalists, Nnamani only replied the question from journalists on whether the issue of Biafra came up for discussion during the meeting with: No, no, not now.No official statement has been issued on the meeting at the time of filing this report.
President Muhammadu Buhari will on Thursday visit the Niger Delta region, rocked by attacks on oil and gas facilities, for the first time...

President Muhammadu Buhari will on Thursday visit the Niger Delta region, rocked by attacks on oil and gas facilities, for the first time since taking office a year ago, Reuters quoted a government official as saying this on Monday.The visit was announced a day after Buhari said the government would hold talks with leaders in Nigerias main oil-producing region to address their grievances, in a bid to stop a surge in pipeline attacks.Buhari will visit Ogoniland to launch a much-delayed programme to clean up areas heavily polluted by oil spills, the official said.People in the southern swamps, where oil giants such as Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron operate, have for years complained about the oil industrys pollution and about economic marginalisation by the state.Some have taken up arms, and a surge in attacks on oil installations has cut Nigerias oil output to a 20-year low.A militant group called Niger Delta Avengers, which staged several attacks in recent weeks, has accused Buhari of having never visited the Niger Delta region to hear about local problems.Local officials and Western allies such as Britain have told Buhari that moving army reinforcements to the Delta would not be enough to stop the attacks and that the populations grievances should be dealt with.On Thursday, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu, said an amnesty programme for former militants, signed in 2009 to end a previous insurgency, needed to improve.The scheme providing cash benefits and job training to those who lay down their arms has had its funding cut by two thirds. Buhari has also upset former militants by ending contracts to protect pipelines, part of a drive to tackle graft.




Chinese club Shanghai SIPG are looking to sell Ghana striker Asamoah Gyan at the first available opportunity, and replace him with Zenit st, Petersburg forward, Hulk.The Black Stars striker joined the Shanghai side from Abu Dhabi team Al Ain mid-2015 and his reported weekly salary of 227,000 makes him one of the highest paid players in the world.However, the 30-year-old has been hit by a series of injuries and the Chinese Super League side now feel that they would be better served by having the player off their roster.Gyan has managed just six appearances (three of them as a substitute) for Shanghai in their 11 CSL matches in the 2016 season, notching just two goals in the process.Selling Gyan would both lessen the clubs wage bill and free up another non-AFC Federation berth in their squad, thus allowing them to sign another foreign star.The Chinese side have reportedly lined up Brazilian Hulk as Gyans potential replacement.
The National Coordinator of Oodua Peoples Congress, (OPC) Gani Adams has said that his men may not be able provide enough security for the...

The National Coordinator of Oodua Peoples Congress, (OPC) Gani Adams has said that his men may not be able provide enough security for the Southwest people as the Fulani herdsmen attacks persist in the states.Adams said the people must be prepared to defend themselves against the attack by herdsmen, which he added, continued unabated.The OPC leader spoke yesterday at a lecture organised by the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Ondo State Council, to commemorate the 2016 Democracy Day.Themed: Herdsmen/ Fulani clashes: What implication for inter-Ethnic Relations/ Nigerian Economy?, Adams, said Yoruba peoples negative comments over the activities of the OPC has demoralised the group.He said the group lost the zeal to protect the people because its members were branded touts, thugs and terrorists by the same Yoruba race.The OPC chieftain added that they were only recognised during elections, but politicians shot their doors against them after they might have won.
Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State, on Monday, dared the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government to carry out the alleged ...

Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State, on Monday, dared the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government to carry out the alleged plot of preventing him from travelling out of the country , saying, under the federal system of government, State governors are not appendages of the President and as a leading opposition figure in Nigeria, I cant be cowed by President Muhammadu Buhari and his agents.The governor, who reacted to reports that two governors, one from the Southwest and another from the South South have been placed on travel restriction on President Buharis order, in a press conference addressed by his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, said; whenever he wished to travel out Nigeria, he will do so in the full glare of the public.He said: I am not surprised or disappointed by this latest plot of the Buharis government because the President Buhari that we know is a man without any atom of respect for the rights of Nigerians as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights and this he demonstrated as a military dictator and now demonstrating as a democratically elected president.The governor said he was however amazed that this dangerous dimension of compelling a sitting governor that enjoys Constitutional Immunity like the President to obtain clearance from the Director General of the Department of State Service (DSS) before travelling out of Nigeria can ever be contemplated.He said President Buhari and his agents should be mindful of the fact that under a federal system of government, the states and national government both enjoy some autonomy, with sovereign power formally divided between the national government and the States such that each State retains some degree of control over its internal affairs. Olayinka, who was flanked by the Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Mr Idowu Adelusi said; Few days ago, when Governor Ayodele Fayose was reliably informed that President Muhammadu Buhari had directed that he should be banned from traveling outside Nigeria, he simply took the information as mere rumour, concluding that disrespect for the constitution of Nigeria and Buharis dictatorship would not be extended to the most ridiculous level of preventing a governor elected just as the president from traveling out of the country.The thinking of Governor Fayose was that even though the Buharis presidency was capable of even attempting to prevent those opposed to the President from breathing the air, it must still be sane enough to be conscious of the consequences of placing any Nigerian under travel ban without an order of the court, not to talk of a sitting governor that enjoys constitutional immunity like the President.However, when we read the story titled; 2 govs under watch, face travel ban published on Sunday by two major national dailies, we have no option than to once again alert the public on President Buharis new dictatorial plot to infringe on the constitutional rights of Governor Fayose just because of his critical position on the Presidents dictatorial tendencies.The question is; if Governor Fayose has become a threat to the security of Nigeria just because he criticises President Buhari and says the truth about his mis-governance of the country, is this not a confirmation that the President hates dissenting views? Section 35 (1) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) provides that; Every person shall be entitled to his personal liberty and no person shall be deprived of such liberty, while Section 41 (1) provides that Every citizen of Nigeria is entitled to move freely throughout Nigeria and to reside in any part thereof, and no citizen of Nigeria shall be expelled from Nigeria or refused entry thereto or exit therefrom. Article 13 (1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to which Nigeria is a signatory provides that Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the border of each State while Article 13 (2) provides that Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and return to his country, ditto Article 12 (2) of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights.President Buhari and his agents should also be mindful of the fact that under a federal system of government, the states and national government both enjoy some autonomy, with sovereign power formally divided between the national government and the States such that each State retains some degree of control over its internal affairs.Therefore, the President of Nigeria cannot lord himself over any State governor and President Buhari and his agents should accept this basic reality and stop behaving as if they own Nigeria in totality.President Buhari and his agents, especially his kinsman; Alhaji Lawal Daura of the DSS need to purge themselves of this blood of dictatorship running in their veins and be guided by the Constitution of Nigeria. Even ordinary Nigerians do not require clearance from the DSS or any security agency to travel outside Nigeria unless travel restriction is placed by an order of the court, not to talk of State Governors that enjoy immunity just like the President and are not under the control of the President.The president and his agents should know that this is not 1984 when General Buhari, as a military dictator prevented late Chief Obafemi Awolowo from travelling outside Nigeria for medical treatment, thereby leading to his (Awolowo) untimely death in 1987!They should also be reminded that the same way Buhari humiliated the late Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuwade; late Emir of Kano Alhaji Ado Bayero and late Obi of Onitsha, Ofala Akulalia Alphonsus Ogugua in 1984 by seizing their passports and restricting them to their palaces just because they travelled to Israel for business, he cannot restrict State governors from travelling outside Nigeria under whatever guise. I therefore wish to state on behalf of Governor Ayodele Fayose that as an opposition figure, he cannot be cowed by this pettiness from the presidency.Governor Fayose, by this press conference is daring President Buhari and his anti-democratic agents to carry out this evil and shameful plot and let us all see how far it will take them. Anytime Governor Fayose wishes to travel out of Nigeria, he will do so in the full glare of the public and we await how he will be prevented from exercising his rights as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution (as amended) as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights. We also wish to inform the President and his DSS men that as they were disgraced when they invaded Ekiti State House of Assembly, arresting members of the House indiscriminately, they will be put to shame this time too.Also, the National Assembly is being alerted of this new threat to the Constitution of Nigeria by those who swore to protect it. Members of the National Assembly should by now begin to imagine what will be their fate if attempt is now being made to place travel restriction on State Governors. It is our considered view that President Buhari should rather concern himself with the growing insecurity in the country and charge the security agencies, especially the DSS to perform their functions as enshrined in the constitution instead of running after petty issues.The President should focus his attention on the economy of Nigeria that is almost collapsing and stop using his position to oppress other Nigerians. He should know that Nigerians are only interested in having food on their tables, not the number of people their President hounds into detention or oppress with his powers.
Imo Governor, Rochas Okorocha has denied having anything to do with the posters of the governor of Borno State, Alhaji Kashim Shettima runni...

Imo Governor, Rochas Okorocha has denied having anything to do with the posters of the governor of Borno State, Alhaji Kashim Shettima running for the 2019 Presidency Rochas as the Vice President.The governor said the posters were another mischief by mischievous elements cowed by his monumental achievements in Imo and what he represents in the politics of the South-East and Nigeria in general today. A statement signed by his Chief Press Secretary, Sam Onwuemeodo said those behind this mischief first invaded the social media with the fake posters and when they discovered that the comments by decent men and women doubted the source and the genuineness of the posters, they decided to paste them in Abuja.On the part of the Imo State Governor, it is very difficult to capture what the folks behind this pettiness want to achieve or what must have prompted them, in the first place Since 2015 elections when he cowed his detractors, they have never left any stone unturned to ensure that they put knife in the enviable relationship existing between the president and Governor Okorocha. Their latest unfortunate outing is the posters in question.Interestingly, Governor Okorocha has for sometime now been reported to have told those willing to hear that he wont run for the 2019 presidential election because of President Buhari.And by repeatedly saying that, he succeeded in disarming the little minds who had used that issue to blackmail him. And now, they have begun to publish about Okorocha being the vice-presidential candidate to Governor Shettima. And for the sake of exposing these petty minded fellows, one can ask whether Rochas and Shettima would start campaign in 2016 for 2019 election?
New militant group responsible for the bombing of oil facilities in the Niger Delta region, the Niger Delta Avengers, NDA, on Tuesday, sa...

Our attention has the drawn to the arrest of 10 @NDAvengers boys by Nigeria Military.None of our Strike team has been arrested its all a lie May 31, 2016

Nigeria Military also lied that NDA kill soldiers. we havnt engage in combat wth them bt if they want us to kill them let them come after us  Niger Delta Avengers (@NDAvengers) May 31, 2016

Our attention has the drawn to the arrest of 10 @NDAvengers boys by Nigeria Military.None of our Strike team has been arrested its all a lie May 31, 2016

The Nigerian Army said it arrested 10 suspected militants and pipeline vandals in the Niger Delta region, on Sunday.The Commander, 4 Brigade, Nigerian Army, Benin City, Farouk Yahaya, while addressing journalists had said that the the Nigerian Army arrested 10 suspected militants and pipeline vandals in the Niger Delta region, on Sunday. Yahaya had said the suspects were arrested during a cordon and search exercise conducted in Oporozoa community and its environs in Delta State.However, Mr. Yahaya, a Brigadier General, said the arrested suspects may have links with the Niger Delta Avengers. He said guns, ammunition and other equipment were recovered from them. He said the operation was conducted professionally in line with the code of conduct and rules of engagement of the Nigerian Army.He said the Army is committed to tackling pipeline vandalism in the Niger Delta region. But in a tweet today, via its Twitter handle, @NDAvengers, the militant group said: Our attention has been drawn to the arrest of 10Niger Delta Avengers boys by Nigerian Military. None of our Strike Team has been arrested. Its all lies.
Norwich City are interested in signing Nigeria international William Troost-Ekong.Norwich are rebuilding as they hope to promptly bounce back to the English Premier League after they were relegated earlier this month.Central defender Troost-Ekong, who has dual citizenship, has also been linked with Swansea City.Interestingly, he started out at English clubs Fulham and Tottenham Hotspur.He has shone as captain of Norwegian club Haugesund on loan from Belgian club Gent.He has won several caps for Nigeria after he represented Holland at age-group levels.
Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar says he was queried by President Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999 for proposing the privatisation of the Nig...

Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar says he was queried by President Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999 for proposing the privatisation of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).Speaking on Tuesday at the launch of We Are All Biafrans, a book of essays by journalism and activist, Chido Onumah, in Abuja, Atiku said he made the proposal before the Obasanjo government was inaugurated 17 years ago.In May 1999, I attended the OTC in Houston, Texas, where I advocated that NNPC should be privatised, he said.When I returned my boss (Obasanjo) queried me for saying that. Indeed, when we were inaugurated and he formed his cabinet, he allocated the portfolio of minister of petroleum to himselfHowever, Obasanjo said last week that his greatest regret was not privatising NNPC during his eight years in power. That is 17 years after I proposed it.Abubakar, who was vice-president from 1999 to 2007, said the reliance on oil has destroyed the political and economic structure of Nigeria.
The National Secretariat of the Peoples Democratic Party has reopened for business.

The National Secretariat of the Peoples Democratic Party has reopened for business.The secretariat, which was sealed off by armed policemen, on May 22 after the leadership tussle in the party worsened was reopened today, with workers returning gradually.A statement by the Head of Publicity Division at the partys secretariat, Chinwe Nnorom, in Abuja, earlier today had said the Secretary of the PDPs Board of Trustees, Chief Ojo Maduekwe would address workers at 1pm.The statement read, Please be informed that the PDP National Secretariat re-opens today being Tuesday May 31, 2016 for members of establishment staff only.The BoT Secretary, Amb. Chief Ojo Maduekwe will be addressing members of staff at 1Pm today in the NEC Hall.As of the time of filing this report, Maduekwe had arrived at the secretariat and some other persons were seen making their way in.
Men of Counter Terrorism Unit (CTU), of the Rivers state Police command on Monday disrupted the peaceful match by members of Ralph Uwazu...

Men of Counter Terrorism Unit (CTU), of the Rivers state Police command on Monday disrupted the peaceful match by members of Ralph Uwazurike-led Movement For the Actualization of the Sovereign States of Biafra (MASSOP), at Obigbo, in Obigbo Local Government Area of the state.The Biafra agitators numbering over 200 were on a peacefulmatch along the streets of the LGA to mark their annual Biafra Day, when the men in five truckload double crossed them and ordered them to stop.After brief explanations by the agitators and some phonecalls by the leader of the team, their banners, some members Identity cards andapron, especiallythose marked Biafra Red Cross were removed from their owners (body and necks), and taken away by the Police.Twelve of the members were also arrested, including the middle aged woman, and six members of the band (music), group who were playingband for them as they matched and danced. All the musical instruments were alsoseized.The agitators who did not struggle with the Police during the arrest expressed surprise that the Police could interfere with their peaceful exercise, which did not in any way affect traffic in the area. The leadership of the group said that the Divisional Police Officer (DPO), in charge of Obigbo Police station knew about the match. They expressed concern that they did not know where their members were taken to.They called on the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Solomon Arase to direct his men to release their members and return all their properties seized as soon as possible, insisting that MASSOB is a non-violent Movement that preaches peace. Reacting shortly after the incident, the Zonal Administrator, Rivers South, Sunday Kalu Amuzie said, Today is a very big day to all Biafrans around the World, we are marking the anniversary of the Independence of Biafra. It is being celebrated across the globe.But our activity today was somehow disrupted by Men of the Nigerian Police who interfered in our peaceful streetmatch program and arrested 12 of our members including a woman and members of our band. The arresting Police officers also made away with our banners, members Identity cards,apronsand band instrument, but we neither struggled with them nor reacted to their action.Asked if he knew about the subsisting ban on all forms ofstreet match by the state government, said: We were not informed, moreover, we were on a peaceful street match pass, to create awareness of the Biafra Day celebration, June 30, every year and not to make orcreate any troubles.Also asked if the state Commissioner ofPolice was aware ofthe exercise, said, admitted that he was not informed but that the DPO Obigbo Police station wassomehow informed, since it was a non-violent exercise. The groups state Director, information and publicity, Anukem Anthony recalled that Biafra Day celebration was revived 17 years ago by their Leader, Uwazurike, and has since them been celebrated without any hitch on this date (June 30).He condemned the arrest of their members by the police, and called for the IGs quick intervention. The Spokesman of the state police command Ahmad Muhammad, a Deputy Superintendent of Police was unable to react to the incident as at press time. He said that he was yet to be briefed.
The Sokoto State Government has concluded plans to employ no fewer than 10,000 qualified teachers, the state governor, Aminu Tambuwal ha...

The Sokoto State Government has concluded plans to employ no fewer than 10,000 qualified teachers, the state governor, Aminu Tambuwal has said.Governor Tambuwal, who made the disclosure yesterday at a media chat to mark the 2016 Democracy Day in Sokoto, said this was part of the recommendations in a report of a technical committee he earlier set up to advise the government on the education sector. The governor said the committee was headed by Professor Riskuwa Shehu, the immediate past Vice Chancellor of Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto. According to him: The state government set up the committee as part of the measures to improve the standard of the education sector in the state. According to the committees report, we are short of no fewer than 10,000 qualified teachers in the state. We will do everything possible in moving our standard of education forward in order to guarantee a productive citizenry in the state.The government will also cover the training and retraining of teachers in line with the global trend of making education a priority. He stated that the state of emergency on education already declared in the state would remain until the government achieved the desired standard.Tambuwal also noted that the committee had recommended the construction of additional 6,000 classrooms in the state, saying the government would implement the committees report to generally improve the education sector in the state. He called on the people of the state to always complement the efforts of the government in funding education at all levels.Tambuwal urged the people to jealously guard all ongoing projects as well as assist the government in their routine The governor said the state would collaborate with investors in Europe and China to improve power supply in the state. According to Tambuwal, the foreign investors were going to focus on the use of solar energy and wind power to generate more energy for the state. He said: Already, five companies have shown interest in the proposed project and discussions are on with them.The issue of power is key and fundamental to the sustenance of every society, as it can boost socioeconomic development. The states independent power project has also reached between 80 and 85 per cent completion stage and it will provide about 38 megawatts upon completion.
Concerned Trade Unions in Ekiti State, comprising artisans and commercial drivers , Tuesday held an anti-workers rally in Ado-Ekiti, descr...

Concerned Trade Unions in Ekiti State, comprising artisans and commercial drivers , Tuesday held an anti-workers rally in Ado-Ekiti, describing the ongoing strike declared by labour unions to press home for the payment of myriad of outstanding benefits as politically motivated.They also accused the leadership of labour of taking N25 million bribe to destabilize the Ayo Fayose-led government .The protesters led by the Chairmen of Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria, Com. Samuel Agbede and National Union of Road Transport Workers, Com Clement Adekola, paraded placards of various inscriptions, massed at the popular Fajuyi Park and marched to Ijigbo to shore up supports for Fayoses government.While speaking with newsmen, the RTEAN Chairman said the workers industrial came at the wrong time, saying he expected the labour leaders to take a cue from Ondo , Oyo , Benue and Osun States, who are owing more than five months salaries without the workers going on strike.In his words, the workers cannot afford to paralyse the state because Governor Fayose has demonstrated transparency in the distribution of federal allocations accruing to Ekiti. The labour leaders were part of the negotiation that agreed that two month allocations should be lumped up to pay one month salary.But as we speak now, two months allocations cant even pay one month salary. The governor used March and April allocations to pay for December and where do they expect him to get money to pay full salary of about N2.6 billion monthly now?We expect them to show understanding . But we are beginning to see that this strike has political undertone, he alleged.He berated the labour unions for asking Fayose to spend the internally generated revenue to pay workers salary together with federal allocations, urging them to desist from arrogating the state to workers alone.
The Chief Security Officer (CSO) to the late Head of State Gen. Sani Abacha, Major Hamzat al-Mustapha yesterday said there is nothing li...

The Chief Security Officer (CSO) to the late Head of State Gen. Sani Abacha, Major Hamzat al-Mustapha yesterday said there is nothing like Abacha loot.He said he does not harbour grudges against his prosecutors and Sergeant Rogers, who was the prosecution witness in court, adding that he has taken solace in Gods blessings. He said he was also consoled by the fact that some members of the panel that tried him had washed their hands clean because he was being victimised.The military officer, who was released from detention three years ago, promised to release his memoir, which he said, will give details on his involvement in the Abacha government, its economic activities, how the military leader died and his travails outside power.Mustapha disputed the claim of an Abacha loot, urging the authorities to disclose the date of lodgment, the people behind the money and the amount. He said while Abacha left 9.732 dollars in the coffers, it was mismanaged by the administration that cried foul about an Abacha loot.The said his next move would be determined by the outcome of the case for the determination of his military status by the court.The former CSO spoke with reporters in Lagos on his ordeal in detention, his protracted trial alleged moves to continually tarnish Abachas image because he stepped on toes.Denying the allegation of assisting the former military leader to ferry money abroad, he said: The proper facts about the Abacha loot are not known. Where was the money from? What was it meant for? How was it taken out? Who kept the money there? Abacha was not leaving Nigeria at a later time. His journeys were within Africa because the toes he had stepped upon were bent on removing him.In November 1998, I told the government to prosecute me, if I have any bank account than my salary account with the Bank of the North.Mustapha, who said he is recuperating from the trauma of detention, torture and protracted trial, urged Nigerians to wait for his book. He lamented that an earlier book written by Gen. M.T Alli was not allowed to circulate because it exposed the atrocities of many Nigerian leaders.He said: I am just recuperating from what I went through. I went through punishment and torture. I was in chains. I was not allowed to see a doctor, family and lawyer. There was no light in my cell. I only wore my singlet, which was full of blood. You sighted food and you are denied. I was treated like an animal.
Taraba State Governor, Darius Ishaku has disclosed that PDP governors are begging the ousted chairman of the party, Senator Ali Madu Sheri...

Taraba State Governor, Darius Ishaku has disclosed that PDP governors are begging the ousted chairman of the party, Senator Ali Madu Sheriff, to withdraw the court case he instituted challenging his removal.Ishaku said this in Jalingo yesterday that Sheriff had done his best for the party and deserved to be honoured.Ishaku recalled that he and the governor of Gombe State, Ibrahim Hassan Dankwambo, endorsed Sheriff as the only candidate for the partys chairmanship from North-East.He said they, however, changed their mind at the partys national convention held in Port Harcourt, when Sheriff was rejected by 10 out of 12 governors.Its only myself and Dankwambo that supported Sheriff at the convention and we have no option than to allow the voice of the majority to prevail, Ishaku said.
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On May 20, 2016, New Jersey author Marci Aboff spoke to the students at Valley View School in Lebanon Township.

During her presentations, she discussed her experiences as an author, gave the students writing tips, and even showed them her rejection letters to highlight that success doesn't come easy.

Aboff stressed the importance of hard work and perseverance. 'Author's Day' is an annual event at Valley View sponsored by the Lebanon Township PTA. (courtesy photo)

This item was submitted by Valley View School.
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The students of Acorn Montessori School in Lebanon, decorated American flags that were delivered to the residents of Rolling Hills Care Center in honor of Memorial Day.

A group of students visit monthly to sing songs and spend some time with the "Grandmas and Grandpas" as the children call them. The children recently sang patriotic songs to remember those who have served our country. (courtesy photo)

This item was submitted by Heather Brisby.
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Senator Richard J. Codey helped kick off the Madison Area YMCA's The Mind Matters 5K Run and 1-Mile Family Fun Run/Walk held on Wednesday, May 25, at Giralda Farms in Madison. Pictured (from left) are Madison Area YMCA's Project Community Pride Director Lisa Sprague; Senator Richard J. Codey; Madison Area YMCA President & CEO Diane Mann, Madison Area YMCA Vice President of Operations Bob Conley and Wendy Lazarus, Director of Government Relations and Public Affairs of Pfizer Inc. (courtesy photo)

Senator Richard J. Codey helped kick off the Madison Area YMCA's The Mind Matters 5K Run and 1-Mile Family Fun Run/Walk held on Wednesday, May 25, at Giralda Farms in Madison that benefitted the Y's Community Mental Health Initiative and Project Community Pride of the Madison Area YMCA.

Senator Codey, a champion of mental health, established The Codey Fund for Mental Health with his wife Mary Jo in 2012. The fund supports organizations and programs that raise public awareness of mental health issues and the advancement of mental health education.

More than 540 runners participated in the event. Pfizer, Inc. served as the lead corporate sponsor of the race for the 20th year. Realogy Holdings Corp. joined the race for the second year as a supporting corporate sponsor.

The Madison Area YMCA donated the remaining food from the event to the Community Soup Kitchen (CSK), which included six boxes of apples, five boxes of oranges and two boxes of bananas. A CSK volunteer who picked up the produce expressed his gratitude.

"Every bit of this produce will go to families who come to CSK's market," he said, noting that the CSK's Healthy Choice Fresh Market runs every Friday and is open to all low-income families who may shop at no cost.

Project Community Pride of the Madison Area YMCA, a no-fee youth counseling program, is an important extension of youth development services for children, teens and their families throughout the Madison Area YMCA's service area. The Madison Area YMCA's Community Mental Health Initiative (CMHI) raises awareness and lowers the stigmas associated with mental illness. CMHI focuses on reducing barriers to mental health care by providing community members with knowledge and skills to increase help-offering behaviors.

Project Community Pride of the Madison Area YMCA responds to the needs of the community at a time when mental health is rapidly becoming a leading issue across our nation. Services are provided in the schools and at the program's offices by licensed clinical social workers.

More than 61.5 million Americans experience the effects of mental illness each year with approximately 20 percent of 13- to 18-year olds receiving a severe mental health disorder diagnosis. The program is made possible through the collaboration of community leaders and the municipalities and school districts of the Chathams, Florham Park and Madison.

The YMCA's Community Mental Health Initiative sheds light on mental health, takes charge of the battle against mental illness stigma and dispels any misconceptions.

This item was submitted by the Madison YMCA.
The 80-year-old man who was critically injured after being struck by a U.S. Postal tractor-trailer last week has died.

Enrique Castro of Passaic was struck by the 28-foot truck driven by a 67-year-old Secaucus resident on New York Avenue near the 30th Street intersection on Thursday, officials said.

Castro's son, Rick Castro, said his father died Friday afternoon at Jersey City Medical Center-Barnabas Health. He said Castro was a man "who dedicated his life to help others achieve their dreams."

Born in Cuba, Castro lost his father when he was 5. He started working at a young age and educated himself. He had a "love affair" with reading, according to his son.

During the Cuban revolution, Castro's family was incarcerated and later escaped Cuba with help from his brother.

About a month later, Castro landed in New Orleans, was granted political asylum and pursued his "American Dream." He later servef in the U.S. Navy, was a Kiwanis member and successful jeweler, his son said.

"Never forgetting the kindness imparted to him by this country and others, he always assisted others in achieving their own American dreams," Rick Castro said. "Charity, compassion, selflessness, and a love for humanity is what differentiated my father from others."

Castro leaves behind his wife of 43 years, Clara E. Castro, his children Henry, John and his wife Gloria, Ligia, Rick, Mary Ann and her husband Robert, and nine grandchildren, Jonathan, Christian, Clarissa, Idalis, Paris, Elias, Noah, Lukas and Victoria.

No charges or summonses have been issued so far in the crash. A spokesman for the Hudson County Sheriff's Office said the investigation has been handed over to the Hudson County Prosecutor's Office.

A request for comment was not immediately returned.
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Fireworks over the Delaware River between New Hope, Pa. and Lambertville in this file photo. (Walter Choroszewski)

NEW HOPE, Pa. -- A barge that drifted into the middle of the Delaware River Sunday and got stuck on the Lambertville Wing Dam was apparently cut loose on purpose, police said Tuesday.

The barge, owned by Tony Demusz, was going to be used to launch fireworks for the Lambertville-New Hope 1st Fridays fireworks show Friday night, June 3, police said.

The Delaware River Towns Chamber of Commerce, which puts on the show, said the fireworks will go on Friday and they are offering a $1,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest.

The New Hope Police Department said in a statement Tuesday evening that the barge had been secured Saturday behind at South Main Street house. It was not visible from the street.

Fireworks explode over the Delaware River between Lambertville, New Jersey and New Hope. File photo.

It was last seen at 12 a.m. Sunday, secured to a tree with a chain and padlock, police said.

At some point, the barge drifted into the river, through the dam opening to the south and became lodged on the rocks about 20 feet below the dam, police said.

A police investigation found the chain was intact but the lock was missing, and police found footprints in the mud coming out of the river.

The barge has since taken on water and the owner is attempting to recover it from the river, police said.

"The barge was private property and we take this criminal act seriously," New Hope police said in a statement.

"While criminals may have destroyed our fireworks barge, they have not diminished our excitement or our commitment to our downtowns, the chamber said in a Facebook post.

Firefighters spent Sunday assisting in the barge's recovery.

A similar incident occurred in May 2012 to a barge that was going to be used in the same fireworks display.

In that incident, someone cut the ropes securing a barge docked at the end of Coryell and Waterloo streets. It floated over the wing dam and became lodged on rocks in the middle of the river across from the Waterworks condos.

The chamber of commerce also offered a $1,000 reward for information leading at an arrest after that incident as well.

Anyone with information about the barge is asked to call the New Hope Police Department at 215-862 3033 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday or the police dispatch number at 215-345-7400 during all other hours and days.

Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@kevintshea. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
TRENTON -- A Mercer County sheriff's officer pleaded guilty Tuesday to unlawfully providing a newspaper with arrest photos last year of a juvenile teenager who had been shot by police in Trenton, authorities announced.

Christopher J. McKenna, 37, of Hamilton, pleaded guilty to the third-degree crime of wrongful access and disclosure of information in Burlington County Superior Court in Mount Holly as part of a plea agreement with the state Attorney General's office.

The agreement calls for McKenna to forfeit his job as a sheriff's officer and be permanently barred from public employment in New Jersey, the Attorney General's office said in a statement.

Prosecutors will also recommend that McKenna be sentenced to up to 364 days in a county jail as a condition of probation when he is sentenced in July.

In court, McKenna admitted that he accessed a restricted law enforcement database to obtain three arrest photos of a juvenile and provided the photos to a newspaper reporter for The Trentonian, in August 2015.

The newspaper published the three photos with a story that named the juvenile in the photos and included details of the teen's prior arrests, the statement said.

Juvenile photos and records are sealed and it is illegal for police to distribute them to the public, the Attorney General's office said.

The Attorney General's office has never publicly named the teen, but he was identified by family members last year as Radazz Hearns.

Hearns was charged with aggravated assault, possession of a handgun and possession of a defaced firearm following an Aug. 7, 2015 confrontation with police in North Trenton.

State authorities alleged he pointed a gun at the officers as he ran. The teen was shot several times by two officers, one a Mercer sheriff's officer and one a state trooper.

The shooting drew widespread attention, public protests and repeated claims on the teen's behalf that he was unarmed during the incident.

Hearns pleaded guilty in January to possession of a defaced firearm during a proceeding in Mercer County Superior Court's Family Division, three law enforcement officers with knowledge of the outcome have said.

McKenna was indicted in January on the wrongful access and disclosure of information charge, as well as official misconduct. He was originally charged in October 2015 and suspended without pay from his position.

McKenna joined the Mercer sheriff's office in 2003 and was assigned to the Mercer County Criminal Courthouse.

Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@kevintshea. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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Perth Amboy's suspended police chief Benjamin Ruiz, 54, leaving the Perth Amboy Police Department on Tuesday, May 31, 2016. Ruiz on Tuesday was arrested and charged with trespassing and impersonating an officer.

(Spencer Kent | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

PERTH AMBOY -- The city's already suspended police chief was arrested Tuesday and charged with trespassing on the property of a convenience store, and claiming he was a police officer when he was confronted by the owner and employees, according to a statement from the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office.

Perth Amboy's suspended police chief Benjamin Ruiz, 54, leaving the Perth Amboy Police Department on Tuesday, May 31, 2016. Ruiz on Tuesday was arrested and charged with trespassing and impersonating an officer.

Benjamin Ruiz, 54, of Perth Amboy, had allegedly been "hiding outside the convenience store" for months to "watch an unidentified neighbor," the statement said.

When employees at the Smith Street store repeatedly confronted and questioned Ruiz, he told them he was a police officer.

But, the prosecutor's office said Ruiz "was not acting as a police officer and had been suspended from duty in December 2014, after he was arrested and charged in an unrelated theft case."

Those charges stemmed from three separate incidents between Dec. 8, 2013 and July 29, 2014 when the chief allegedly ordered city mechanics to work on his motorcycle, his classic Mustang and a friend's car, previous report said.

Those alleged incidents led Ruiz -- who started as a city police officer in 1988, and then was appointed chief in September 2012 -- being indicted in February 2015 on two charges of official misconduct, theft of services and witness tampering.

The investigation into Tuesday's charges remain ongoing, and officials asked that anyone with information to contact the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office at (732) 745-3300.

Spencer Kent may be reached at skent@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SpencerMKent. Find the Find NJ.com on Facebook.
As a former search and rescue swimmer, Navy veteran Michael Dowens is used to helping others, but starting Thursday morning he'll begin a grueling new mission on dry land.



Dowens, 37, a police officer in Holmdel, and a friend are walking from the New Jersey Vietnam Veterans Memorial in his town to the national Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., to raise money to help veterans get treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.



"We're leaving Thursday morning at 6:30 a.m., on the 200-plus-miles to the Vietnam memorial in Washington D.C. It's non-stop, no sleep, to raise awareness for service men and women suffering from PTSD," he said. "The reason for doing it non-stop is to symbolize the struggle."



The veteran and a companion will only stop to eat, and he plans to wear 70 pounds of body armor and a pack containing the supplies, water and food for the trip. After a brief ceremony at 6:30 a.m. at the Vietnam Era Museum and Educational Center, Dowens and his friend will start their trek.



"The money raised through a GoFundMe page will sponsor a veteran to get treatment for PTSD at The Refuge, a treatment center in Florida," Dowens said. "We have close to $11,000. They'll get one month of treatment for that."



Dowens is hoping the money will start an ongoing non-profit to help veterans get treatment for PTSD, which claims the lives of 22 veterans a day through suicide, he said. He knows the work that The Refuge does first hand after being deployed in the Middle East, Liberia and Somalia from 2002 to 2006.

"I went through the program, it saved my life," he said.



Dowens was honorably discharged in 2006 for asthma he developed while overseas, but afterward he suffered intense symptoms of PTSD for years before he finally sought treatment.

"I struggled with the fact that I wasn't in the Navy any longer," said Dowens. "I had survivor's guilt and tried to get back into the military nine times."

During the trek, Dowens will carry a flag that flew outside his cabin at The Refuge, which was passed on to him by other veterans helped by the program.



Fund raising is ongoing through his Go Fund Me page at Unbroken Warriors.



Dowens walk is similar to the Last Patrol, a group of New Jersey Vietnam veterans who walked from Washington, D.C., in 1989 to the site of what became the New Jersey Vietnam Veterans' Memorial in Holmdel to raise support, and funds for that memorial.



Larry Higgs may be reached at lhiggs@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @commutinglarry. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
LOWER TOWNSHIP -- As the tide began to drop on Delaware Bay, oyster farmer Joe Moro unloaded a few mesh bags of oysters from his pickup truck and loaded them onto a wheelbarrow to haul out to the beach.

The wheelbarrow, he noted, is not exactly the four-wheeled all terrain vehicle he had hoped to be using this spring.

Why didn't he buy the quad?

Moro blames the birds.

"Right now, I'm afraid to spend any more money because every year, they change the rules (to protect the birds)."

Moro's avian nemesis is the red knot, a tiny shore bird who arrives on the beaches here by the thousands each spring to fatten up on horseshoe crab eggs, a key pit stop in their near tops-in-the-animal world migration.

Joe Moro, a Cape May County oyster farmer, walks to his small oyster farm past the Rutgers University Cape Shore Laboratory, a center for aquaculture research on May 19, 2016. Moro says uncertainty over regulations growers face kept him from expanding his farm and upgrading to a motorized all terrain vehicle this year. (Brian Donohue | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

Growers like Moro are operating under a new set of rules this year designed to protect the species, which in December 2014 was placed on the list of threatened species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. (According to some estimates, the population of the species has dropped by as much as 80 percent since the 1980s.)

Because of the new rules, Moro says he scuttled plans to double the number of racks he grew last year from 30 to 60. And he's sticking with the wheelbarrow for now.

"All these oyster are sold, every one," he says, pushing the wheelbarrow through a foot deep tidal pool.

On the other hand, he adds, "I've never even seen a red knot. These birds are invisible."

An unlikely turf war has erupted on these muddy tidal flats this spring. The conflict has pitted protectors of one of the state's most spectacular natural phenomenon -- the shorebird and horseshoe crab frenzy -- against one of its oldest, and most embattled industries, oysters.

And the controversy has cast the oyster, widely seen by scientists as a sustainable food source and green solution to shoreline protection and water pollution, as a potential environmental threat.

Environmental groups like NJ Audubon fear the budding aquaculture industry could push the birds closer to extinction, with racks of growing oysters blocking horseshoe crabs from reaching the beaches to lay their eggs. If Moro has never seen a red knot on his farm, they say, that's exactly the point. The growers scared the skittish birds off.

The growers, meanwhile, say they're being scapegoated for problems like climate change and possible factors hurting the birds in their summer and winter homes of Canada and South America.

The tiny stretches of shoreline where they operate could hardly make a dent in the red knots population, they argue. The birds ignore them, and the crabs just slide right past their racks.

A horseshoe crab swims alongside a rack of growing oysters on an oyster farm in Lower Township, Cape May County, NJ on May 19, 2016. Oyster growers say their racks do not keep the crabs from reaching the beach to lay their eggs, while environmentalists disagree. (Brian Donohue | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

On a recent May afternoon, growers grumbled and cursed about the rules as they pulled on their waders and headed out to the mud flats. Binocular-toting scientists sat on shore counting birds and watching the oyster farmers like hawks to ensure they weren't breaking the rules.

"There is considerable animosity,'' said David Mizrahi, vice president for research with NJ Audubon.

What makes this season particularly fraught are new rules issued in 2016 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Between May 1 and June 7, oyster growers can only access their farms for the two hours both before and after low tide, with no access on Saturday or Sunday. All gear must be placed at least 300 feet out past the high tide line. They can only travel certain routes from the beach to the farms.

Among other rules, the plan also divides the stretch of Cape May County shoreline into two zones: a northern zone, with stronger protection for birds and a southern zone where farmers can operate -- and the industry expand -- more freely.

"We're trying to balance the needs of an industry that has long been a part of the fiber of the bayshore with the ecologic needs of a species that has been a part of that for an even longer period," said Larry Hajna, spokesman for the NJ Department of Environmental Protection, which is enforcing the new rules. "That's compromise -- neither side will be completely happy about everything,"

Richard Cash, one of the growers operating in the northern section, has already moved his operation to a lease in the southern zone, saying it would be impossible to operate in his old location along Kimble's Beach.

Cash noted the irony of environmentalists seeking to restrict an industry widely hailed not only for sustainability, but one that scientists believe actually improves water quality. Environmental groups like the Littoral Society have in the past been known for trying create oyster reefs, not prevent them from being grown.

"It's one of the greenest industries in the world,'' Cash said. "It's crazy that it's being targeted."

Racks of oysters line run perpendicular to the beach with 'lanes' between each rack in Lower Township, Cape May County, NJ. Advocates for the red knots, a threatened shorebird species, say the growth of aquaculture threatens the birds, which fatten up on horseshoe crab eggs along these beaches to complete their South America to Canada migration. (Brian Donohue | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

Advocates for the birds say the new rules don't go far enough -- that aquaculture should be banned altogether in the northern section and the DEP is failing to speed through approvals for new growers in areas where few red knots congregate and which no one is fighting over.

"The clean solution should have been protect an area for the birds and protect an area for aquaculture and don't mix the two up because they can't coexist," said Tim Dillingham, Executive Director of the American Littoral Society.

They also say the growers underestimate how harmful their operations are on these birds.

Unlike traditional oyster harvesting that took place in deeper waters of the bay, the 15 or so growers in the budding industry employ a newer system in which oysters grow in bags resting atop four-legged racks arranged in rows running perpendicular to shore.

The racks are submerged during high tide and exposed during low tide. When farmers arrive to sort the oysters, tend to the racks and power wash the livestock to remove silt and prevent parasites from gaining hold, the birds scatter. Even the ATV's and other equipment they use can compact the sand and make it tough for crabs to bury their eggs.

Carlos Arbeto, a worker with Atlantic Cape Fisheries, the larger oyster grower in New Jersey, power washes racks of oysters along a beach in Lower Township, Cape May County, NJ. on May 19, 2016. Oyster farmers need to power wash the oysters regularly to keep mud from building up and parasites from taking hold. (Brian Donohue | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

Bird advocates are amassing research they say will prove the racks prevent crabs from reaching the beach. And even if the small scale farms operating now have little impact, that is likely to change.

Officials have touted aquaculture as a source of new jobs, amid Atlantic City casino layoffs and high levels of unemployment in rural areas of Cape May and Cumberland Counties.

Meanwhile, oyster farmers have been unable to meet white-hot demand for Cape May Salts, as local oysters are known.

With culinary trends favoring locally produced foods and seafoods, South Jersey officials say the $1 million a year industry is poised to explode, with more growers already on a waiting list for leases to get farms up and running.

Bird advocates say it's crucial to get rules in place now, before it's too late. They want the industry to grow, too. Just not on the crucial beaches used by the birds.

"At this point they're not working a lot of racks, but they have potential to put in many hundreds if not thousands of racks, said Mizrahi, of NJ Audubon. "So this is where the conflict is - or the dynamic tension."

The stakes, they argue, could not be higher.

"People keep minimizing the idea that this is an endangered species," said Dillingham. "Remember, extinction is forever."
gator_Jackson.jpg

Jackson police, with the assistance of animal control, pulled a 2-foot alligator out of a lake on Monday.

(Jackson Police Department)

JACKSON -- Police captured an alligator that was found in a lake on the site of a campgrounds on Monday.

The gator, identified as an American alligator, was approximately 2-feet in length. It was found shortly after 4 p.m. at the Maple Lake Campground on East Veterans Highway, police said.

Jackson police Capt. Steven Laskiewicz said authorities believe a resident in the area had it as a pet and released it into the lake once it grew too big. American alligators can grow up to 11-feet in length, according to Laskiewicz.

According to National Geographic, that species of alligator was once deemed endangered but now has a population of more than 1 million. American alligators are usually found in Florida and Louisiana, the magazine said.

Jackson police officers who responded to the call were assisted by Animal Control Officer Jim Rand.

The gator is now in the hands of a licensed exotic reptile handler, who is working with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection's Division of Fish & Wildlife to find out where it will go next.

Alex Napoliello may be reached at anapoliello@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @alexnapoNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
TOMS RIVER - A 57-year-old Plumstead Township man was indicted by an Ocean County grand jury on Wednesday for stabbing his wife to death in 2015.

At approximately 10 a.m. on Aug. 25, 2015, officials at New Egypt High School called 911 after being alerted to a domestic dispute taking place at 120 Evergreen Road in Plumsted Township.

When police arrived, they found a deceased female victim - later identified as 48-year-old Susanne Haskoor, who lived at the Evergreen Road address - who had apparently succumbed to stab wounds in the property's driveway, the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office said.

Authorities say Arthur Haskoor, 57, stabbed his wife to death at their Plumsted Township home in 2015. (Ocean County Prosecutor's Office)

The officers them proceeded to the front door of the home where they found a note telling police that there are guns in the house and that the occupant would kill them, authorities said.

As a result, the residence was secured and officers from the prosecutor's office, the Ocean County Northern Regional SWAT Team, the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office, the Plumsted Township Police Department, the Ocean County Sheriff's Department, and the New Jersey State Police were called and a perimeter was established to contain the barricaded occupant.

A camera-equipped robot made entry to the residence at approximately 2:30 p.m. and found the male occupant - later identified as Arthur Haskoor, 56, of the Evergreen Road address - in the garage area of the home unresponsive.

Arthur Haskoor had suffered serious, but non-life threatening self-inflicted injuries and was treated at Capital Health Regional Trauma Center in Trenton. Sources close to the investigation later told NJ Advance Media that Haskoor took an overdose of drugs.

Superior Court Judge Wendel E. Daniels said in September that Haskoor stabbed and slashed his wife "multiple times" with a knife used to skin and cut animals. She sustained wounds to her face, neck, chest and torso, he said.

Authorities have not said what led to the killing, but have said the couple was in the process of divorcing after 20 years of marriage. They have two sons, ages 17 and 18.

Police later confirmed, through interviews with one of the suspect's sons, that there were at least six weapons owned by Arthur Haskoor in the home.

Supervising Assistant Ocean County Prosecutor William Porter said the couple's younger son found his mother in the driveway of their Evergreen Road home.

"This crime was a particularly personal, angry and heinous crime," Porter said in September.

An Ocean County Grand Jury returned a three-count indictment against Haskoor on Wednesday for first-degree murder, third-degree possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose and fourth-degree unlawful possession of a weapon.

If convicted on the murder charge, Haskoor could face 30 years to life in a New Jersey State Prison. He is still incarcerated in the Ocean County Jail on $1 million bail with no 10-percent option.

Rob Spahr may be reached at rspahr@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TheRobSpahr. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
By Cory Booker, Greg Lalevee and Tom Bracken

Anyone who has ever put off repairs on their home or car knows the perils of deferred maintenance. Procrastinate for too long and you may soon reach the point of catastrophe as problems compound themselves and your repair bill skyrockets.

Our nation's habit of deferring infrastructure investment has led to disrepair giving way to a state of emergency -- our roads, rails, bridges, and highways are in many cases literally crumbling.

The same is true for our state infrastructure, that is why federal and state elected officials have been joined by business and labor leadership in standing together to urge immediate action because New Jersey cannot wait.

We are already paying a steep price because of the decay -- a price that too often gets ignored in debates over infrastructure investment from Trenton to Capitol Hill. Officials need to get control of this problem -- now -- before it grows even worse, cripples our economic growth, and further endangers public safety. The long-term costs of further deferral vastly outweigh the short-term costs of actually addressing the problem.

Most New Jerseyans can't afford to be late to work or to pick up their kids from childcare, yet last year commuters lost two weeks of their time because of traffic congestion on our state roadways. This lost time is invaluable, time that could be spent in our communities, with our friends, with our families.

For New Jersey families struggling to make ends meet, the wages lost to extra time commuting or the cost of replacing a tire because of bad roads could mean the difference between making this month's rent and falling further behind. The average New Jersey driver pays about $2,000 extra per year because of added wear and tear on their cars caused by crumbling roads.

New Jersey businesses big and small are also suffering because of our outdated infrastructure.

Close to 2 million jobs in New Jersey rely on the continued work done by our transportation industry.

The impact on public safety is even more concerning.

Crashes related to poor road conditions cost New Jersey residents and businesses an estimated $4.6 billion every year. Another study said that one third of fatal New Jersey car crashes, poor road conditions played a role.

These tremendous financial and human costs borne by taxpayers don't get nearly the attention they deserve. But the costs are real and they should absolutely factor into important decisions about infrastructure investment.

This year the federal government took an important step forward with the FAST Act. This is not as robust an infrastructure bill our country needs, but it is nonetheless the best Congress can do right now to address highway and infrastructure funding. In New Jersey, our transportation trust fund is on the verge of running dry this summer if state officials don't act. Rather than again kicking the can down the road, this can be a moment when we finally begin tackling the problem for the long-term.

New Jersey families have enough to worry about, and they and our state's businesses have shouldered the costs of our state's poor infrastructure for too long. It's time to develop a strategy that ensures a sustainable and robust transportation trust fund.

Investing in our infrastructure isn't money out the door -- it catalyzes economic growth and provides dividends for decades. Upgrading infrastructure creates jobs and grows our economy -- data shows that for every billion dollars invested in infrastructure, over 20,000 jobs are created. A 2012 Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco report estimated that every dollar invested into infrastructure increases economic output by at least 2 dollars.

The value of freight shipments from New Jersey businesses are set to double in value over the next three decades. In order to keep up with the pace of this growth, we're going to need to keep up the pace of our infrastructure development. We can't do that without a robust transportation trust fund.

Charting the course forward for a sustainable transportation trust fund is a big first step in ensuring that New Jerseyans can work and travel safely and our state's businesses can compete.

The time to act is now! Taxpayers can't afford anything less.

Cory Booker (D-NJ) is a U.S. senator.

Greg Lalevee is business manager for International Union of Operating Engineers Local 825.

Tom Bracken is president of New Jersey Chamber of Commerce.

Follow NJ.com Opinion on Twitter @NJ_Opinion. Find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.
(See update below on the Donald's good poll numbers in New Jersey that were just released.)

It seems like every day another self-described conservative either comes out in favor of Hillary Clinton or supports a third-party candidacy against Donald Trump, which would have the same effect as electing Clinton.

This is what our liberal friends like to call a "teachable moment."

For some years now I have been endeavoring to instruct my readers on the difference between conservatives and "neo" conservatives. (If you remain confused please read this simple description.)

I have Donald Trump to thank for making that distinction quite clear.

The emergence of Trump as the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party has sent the neocons into a frenzy. Meanwhile we genuine conservatives consider him a huge improvement over the prior Republican presidential nominee.

That was of course Mitt Romney. In the last cycle, most Republicans expected Romney to cruise to victory over Barack Obama. Some were predicting a landslide as late as the afternoon of Election Day.

That landslide might have materialized for a candidate with some charisma and some ideas. But Romney was robotic and lacked any recognizable plan for governance.

He performed worse against expectations than any candidate in recent history. Never mind, though, the people who pass for conservatives inside the Beltway are clamoring for Romney to run again, this time as a third-party candidate.

Such a run could not possible succeed. For one thing, Romney has no political talent. For another, the deadline for getting on the ballot in Texas has already passed. Deadlines in several other states loom, many with massive signature requirements for ballot position.

Yet the effort has been supported by such neocon leading lights as Bill Kristol and Erick Erickson, of the Red State blog, which also proposes the nutty idea that the delegates should desert Trump and vote for Cruz.

And just what were the perceived torts that led these and other neocons to turn on Trump?

For that, let us turn to my favorite non-conservative "conservative," Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post blog "Right Turn."

Only inside the Beltway could such a writer be considered a right-winger. I have never been able to identify any positions she has taken as right-wing. Her verbiage certainly isn't.

In her daily attacks on the Donald, Rubin employs such terms as "nativist," "racist," "xenophobic" and "misogynist" to deride the Donald. Robert Kagan, who also writes on the Post's op-ed page, threw in "fascist" in an essay that ran on these pages recently.

That's how liberals talk. As for us right-wingers, we rarely utter such terms. It's not that we don't oppose the behavior designated by a strict definition of such terms. It's that the definition tends to get stretched beyond recognition.

Real right-wing support: In my 40 years of covering politics, I never before saw a hand-painted lawn sign endorsing a candidate. but as I was driving through Brick Township Monday I came across this specimen. The guy who owned the house told me "God bless Donald Trump." Somehow I don't think Hillary fires up the Democratic base quite the same way.

Take "xenophobic." It derives from the Greek roots that mean "stranger fearing." But it is often applied to Trump for insisting that he will deport foreigners who are here illegally - or in other words that he will follow the law as written.

You can certainly make an argument for changing the law. But that's the job of Congress. The chief executive's job is to enforce what's on the books.

That's the divide, and the neocons are on the liberal side of it. In fact, I've yet to see one utter a denunciation of Trump based on any recognizably right-wing principle.

Trump's economic and social positions don't stray far from Republican orthodoxy. So what are the neocons all worked up about?

Foreign policy, that's what. Here is Rubin on failed candidate Carly Fiorina's attack on Trump's foreign policy "meanness."

"Extolling America as a generous country was a refreshing change of pace," she wrote.

For liberals perhaps. Not for us right-wingers. We think America has been much too generous to foreigners.

Trump hit that issue head-on when he went before the Post's thoroughly neocon editorial board in March and told them, "I don't think we should be nation-building anymore. I think it's proven not to work. And we have a different country than we did then. You know we have 19 trillion dollars in debt."

This is the core dispute between conservatives and the neocons. The deciding moment came in a February debate when Trump went after Jeb Bush over his brother's bungling in Iraq during a debate.

"Obviously the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake," he said, adding "We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Mideast."

It remains an article of faith to the neocons that Bush was right in removing the secular dictator Saddam Hussein and that we need to do the same to the secular strongman in Syria.

Hillary Clinton supports that position as well. And therefore the neocons lean to Clinton - by hook or by crook, as it were.

But the great mass of Republicans don't care much about foreign policy in general or the Mideast in particular. On demestic policy, they hate Hillary the way so many Democrats hate the Donald.

It is along those lines that this battle will be fought out - with the neocons on the sidelines.

UPDATE -THE DONALD'S DOING BETTER THAN EXPECTED IN JERSEY:

It's been an article of faith since the 1990s that a Republican can't win New Jersey, so why campaign?

Consider that in light of the Monmouth University Poll just released.:

"In a head-to-head contest, Clinton currently has the support of 38% of New Jersey registered voters and Trump has the support of 34%. Another 11% volunteer that they will vote for a third party or independent candidate even though the poll question did not include that option, and 15% say they are undecided."

This is bad news for the Clinton campaign. It's not so much that they could lose Jersey, but they certainly have to play defense there. Meanwhile Trump could dominate in the crucial Rust Belt states where his right-wing message on trade and immigration resonates.

I suspect this is the real fear of the Beltway pseudo-conservatives: Not a Republican loss in November but a Republican victory.

ADD - HOW THE MEDIA REALLY HELP THE DONALD: Watch this video of a press conference at which yet another supposedly neutral reporter lectures Trump for not being politically correct. In this case the issue was whether Trump was wrong to use the name "Pocahontas" to lampoon Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. As trump defends himself, a voice from the media mob can be heard telling him the term is offensive.

I've been in the media business 40 years as a reporter, editor and columnist. This breaks all the rules of press conferences. You can ask any tough question you want, but it's not your job to tell the candidate how to talk.

Listen to Trump's response. Once again he doubles down on his position and he uses the occasion to once again point out how Warren described herself as "Native American" on college applications to win special treatment.

I'm sure the neocons and other liberals see this sort of thing as harming Trump, but they're delusional. This is exactly why he steamrollered the Republican primary field. And if I were a campaign consultant to Hillary, I'd be asking myself what I could do to get equally favorable media coverage.

I'd also be worried that my opponent doesn't fear going before hostile press scrums and instead seems to enjoy it - and why my own candidate can't seem to do so.

COMMENTS: A lot of people not in the business of decoding political spin might fall for the neocon line to the effect that Trump is not conservative enough.

He's certainly to the right of Romney, and the same people didn't whine about Mitt's conservative credentials, even though he invented Obamacare.

Read this 2011 article to get an idea of how Romney was even more liberal than Teddy Kennedy before he decide to run for the Republican nomination for president.

Then go to Richard Viguerie's Conservative Headquarters to read George Rasley making the exact point I make above.

It might also be helpful if anyone falling for that line would try to point out a single criticism from these neocons like Kristol and Rubin that comes from the right.

I certainly can't think of one. It all sounds like typical p.c. verbiage to me.

But if you can think of such a statement, please share it with us.

Hint: Hillary's endorsement of a liberal international/neocon foreign policy doesn't count; read here where I debunk the idea that Hillary's endless nation-building adventures in the Mideast are anything but liberal in nature.
Legislatures in New Jersey and New York have been discussing repairs at the Port Authority for so long that you can almost forget why it's so crucial.

So let's take stock. This is the agency that raised tolls to $15 after a secretive and deceptive process designed to protect the two governors from accountability.

It was the corrupt tool of choice for the Bridgegate conspirators, and has long been a rich repository of high-paying patronage jobs. Both governors have used the Port Authority as a giant slush fund, one they can tap without the messy constraints of democratic process. The $1 billion siphoned off for repairs of the Pulaski Skyway is a glaring example.

And the money it wastes, even in austere times, is on a scale that is breathtaking. This agency spends more money than many state governments. It just opened a $4 billion PATH station in Manhattan that is fit for the Gods, but that the agency's own former executive director called "a symbol of excess." Cost overruns at the World Trade Center were another $4 billion.

Now, finally, real reform is within reach. The final step is for Democratic leaders in New Jersey to go along.

They are hesitating now because Gov. Chris Christie just issued a conditional veto of a strong reform, taking away key legislative powers of oversight. The changes are obnoxious but not debilitating.

Keep in mind that any reform of this agency must

be approved by both states, with legislation that is identical, word for word. So if New Jersey Democrats balk now, the reform movement could be set back for years.

Much would be lost. The core structural problem at the Port Authority is that it is a two-headed monster, with each state guaranteed its own fiefdom. New Jersey gets to name the chairman, and the deputy executive director; New York gets the executive director and the deputy chairman. It is run like Lebanon, which each side pushing its parochial interests.

The reform would rationalize the structure, putting one executive director in charge after a national search. The chairmanship would rotate.

Under the reform, the Port Authority could never again raise tolls without an independent assessment of need, and a thorough public vetting. Whistleblowers would get new protections, and rules barring conflicts of interests would be strengthened. These are tangible gains agreed to by reformers in both parties.

The governor stripped away a requirement that senior executives appear regularly before the legislatures, and another that established an auditor for all large construction projects.

But the bill matches the bill in New York now. And Christie did agree to the meat of the reform.

Under chairman John Degnan, some of these reforms have been put into effect already. But putting them into law would make them permanent, and help the agency recruit top talent.

So it's time for Democrats to sound a strategic retreat, and to take what the governor is offering. To let this opportunity pass would be a crazy mistake.

More: Tom Moran columns

Tom Moran may be reached at tmoran@starledger.com or call (973) 836-4909. Follow him on Twitter @tomamoran. Find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.
To the Editor:

I would like to applaud columnist Mark Di Ionno on his May 29 article, "These veterans' toughest battles came at home."

As someone who served in Vietnam in 1966, I remember coming home to a world I no longer recognized. It had never occurred to me that people continued to get on with their lives while I was there. What people need to understand is the courage it takes to kiss your loved ones good-bye, never knowing if you'll ever see them again.

Once these brave men and women arrive at their assigned destination, their lives change dramatically. And, for the time they are there, their lives stand still.

I believe that any veteran who reads Mr. Di Ionno's article can relate to it. My concern is that much of the general public will choose to ignore it. I blame the mass media for our general complacency toward this tragic epidemic.

We seem to be inundated with news of presidential candidates pandering to segments of the population in the hope of garnering votes. We no longer see the war correspondents who were once on the front lines telling the stories of these brave men and women. Perhaps that's no longer the politically correct thing to do.

Thank you, Mr. Di Ionno for your article. I hope more journalists follow your lead.

Dominic Scardino

Sewell

U.S. again bows to Islamic nations

To the Editor:

Once again, the Obama administration has allowed Islamic religion to trump American troops' lives by telling them to bend to a questionable Turkish official's dastardly request.

After photos surfaced of U.S. special forces wearing arm patches of the YPG -- a Kurdish unit that is fighting ISIS alongside them in Syria -- the Turkish premier called it unacceptable. The Pentagon said the patches were unauthorized and ordered their removal.

I cannot wait to vote for Donald Trump for president -- a president who will not be bullied by foreign Islamic-run countries with tons of misdeeds and human-rights abuses. And yet, President Barack Obama continues to arm such evil regimes as Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

Larry Lueder

Mantua Township

Donald Norcross the one for jobs

To the Editor:

U.S. Rep. Donald Norcross, D-1st Dist., has the right plan for our economy: more jobs and better wages.

He knows how to create jobs. Construction, manufacturing, health care, high-tech -- you name it, he's had a hand in bringing it to South Jersey. (Incumbent Norcross is opposed by Alex Law in a bid for the Democrats' 1st Dist. congressional nomination in the June 7 primary.)

Norcross also knows that good jobs need good pay, since he's been a working man himself. That's why he's been vocal about the need to raise the minimum wage, get equal pay for women and raise incomes for senior citizens who worked all their lives for a good retirement.

He's not just saying it, he's doing it. That's why I'm voting for Norcross.

Frank Cianci

Sewell

Send a letter to the editor of South Jersey Times at sjletters@njadvancemedia.com
WASHINGTON -- When former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits East Brunswick Tuesday to raise money for her presidential campaign, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker will be there.

It may not be the last time the two are together on the campaign trail. Booker is mentioned as a potential running mate if Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, which could happen in the June 7 New Jersey primary.

Here are five reasons why Booker could wind up on the ticket.

1. The African-American vote is crucial.

Even as he received the support of just 39 percent of white voters, President Barack Obama won re-election in 2012 because he received 93 percent of the African-American vote. Also, the blacks' share of the electorate grew to 13 percent from 11 percent in 2004, the last time a Republican was elected president, according to network exit polls.

Clinton needs blacks to turn out the way they did to elect the first African-American president, and selecting Booker as a running mate could help.

Could Booker be vice president?

2. Progressives need to be energized.

In Clinton's home state of New York, almost 3 in 10 Democratic primary voters described themselves in network exit polls as very liberal, and 56 percent of them supported Sanders. In New Jersey, which votes June 7, 52 percent of very liberal likely voters said they would back Sanders, according to a Quinnipiac University poll.

While Booker has reached out to Republicans on issues such as overhauling the criminal justice system, he has compiled a strong progressive voting record in the Senate. The liberal Americans for Democratic Action gave him a 90 percent score and Sanders 95 percent in 2014, the most recent ratings. The League of Conservation Voters gave Booker a lifetime score of 97 percent, higher than Sanders' 95 percent.

Booker has shared the stage with liberal icon Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts U.S. senator, on more than one occasion, including joining her and Obama at a February 2015 event to push for more financial protection for retirees.

The percentage of liberals in Democratic primaries rose to 62 percent in 2016 from around 47 percent in 2008, according to an analysis of network exit polls by ABC News pollster Gary Langer. Very liberal voters accounted for 25 percent of Democratic primary voters in 2016 from around 17 percent in previous elections.

With recent polls showing a tight race between Clinton and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, Democrats need progressives to turn out.

3. Clinton needs to get young people out to vote.

Ever since 18-year-olds were given the franchise in time for the 1972 presidential election, a powerful youth vote never has materialized. Still, Sanders can credit his strength in part to his 71 percent to 28 percent edge over Clinton among voters under 30.

At 47, Booker is a lot closer in age to those voters than Clinton, 68.

4. Booker could add excitement.

There's a reason Booker was asked to be the featured speaker at the reception of a major progressive think tank, the Center for American Progress, earlier this month.

"His passion for addressing the needs of every day people in America is so poignant," said Carmel Martin, CAP's executive vice president for policy. "He has committed himself to giving voice to the voiceless."

Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-12th Dist.) cited Booker's "tremendous presence" and "capacity to communicate," while Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-9th Dist.) said Booker would bring an important element to the Democratic ticket.

"Cory Booker would add a lot of zip to a campaign that is at times lacking it," Pascrell said.

5. He backed Clinton early and often.

Booker was one of the few prominent New Jersey Democratic politicians to back Obama over Clinton, then a U.S. senator from the neighboring state of New York, in 2008.

He's more than made up for it this time, endorsing her last June and campaigning around the country for her, including in the crucial states of Iowa and South Carolina. As she nears the nomination, Booker hasn't slowed down; he's a featured guest at Tuesday's fundraising event.

Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook
TEWKSBURY -- Donald Trump may have locked up the Republican presidential nomination, but one of the state's most prominent GOP leaders is urging the party faithful to vote against him in next week's New Jersey primary.

Former Gov. Christie Whitman, a two-term Republican governor, said Republicans should make a statement and cast a protest vote for Ohio Gov. John Kasich or U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in the June 7 primary.

"I hope voters will express what they feel. Don't be steamrolled into thinking you have to be for Donald Trump because he's now locked up the nomination," Whitman said in an interview at her Hunterdon County farm Friday.

Whitman, an outspoken member of the moderate wing of the Republican party, has been one of Trump's harshest critics. Earlier this year, she endorsed Kasich and compared Trump's rise to the ascent of Hitler and Mussolini before World War II.

She also said in February she was "ashamed" fellow Republican Gov. Chris Christie endorsed Trump given the candidate's statements about race.

There is still time for New Jersey Republicans to make their feelings about Trump known, she said.

"Let the party know that this has gotten out of control and we are not the kind of people that Donald Trump portrays us as being," Whitman said. "And this is not the way we want to go forward."

Whitman is on the ballot as a delegate for Kasich. She isn't expecting Kasich or Cruz -- who remain on the New Jersey ballot despite dropping out of the race in May -- to get enough votes in New Jersey to send delegates to the Republican convention. But, she hopes enough New Jersey voters will vote against Trump for the party and Trump to take notice.

"It's not going to change anything because Trump has the delegates he needs," Whitman said. "But it will send a message and it will make people listen. And, hopefully it will, maybe, change him a little bit."

Whitman, who was New Jersey's first female governor and later served in President George W. Bush's administration, held a fundraiser for Kasich on her Tewksbury farm in April.

She has previously said she would consider voting for Democrat Hillary Clinton instead of Trump in a general election.

But, last week Whitman stopped short of throwing her support to Clinton if the candidate defeats U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and becomes the Democratic nominee.

"I don't know if she is even going to make it to the end of the day," Whitman said, sitting in her home office. "I will not vote for Donald Trump -- that's a given. And I will vote. The option is always to write in. And a lot of people will say you're wasting your vote and I say, no, I'm sending a message."

Whitman joins a list of moderate Republicans who say they won't vote for Trump under any circumstances. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, former New York Gov. George Pataki, U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) and former Oklahoma Rep. J.C. Watts have all said they will not vote for Trump in November.

Kelly Heyboer may be reached at kheyboer@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @KellyHeyboer. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
TRENTON -- Did you think the drama over Atlantic City was over now that Gov. Chris Christie has signed a long-debated rescue package?

State Senate President Stephen Sweeney said Tuesday he'll be "shocked" if the seaside gambling resort fulfills the goal of the legislation and drafts an acceptable plan to fix its troubled finances by October, the deadline to avoid a state takeover.

Instead, Sweeney (D-Gloucester) told a group of reporters at his Statehouse office that he expects the state to reject whatever plan the city submits and then for local officials to file a lawsuit to block a takeover.

"At the end of the day, I am not confident they will solve their own problem," he concluded.

That scenario would likely reignite the months-long battle that appeared to end Friday when Christie signed a bill to help rescue the city from the brink of bankruptcy by giving the local government 150 days to draft a five-year financial plan.

If the state doesn't accept the city's plan, it can then take over large parts of the local government, including restructuring debt, renegotiating union contracts, selling off city assets, and more.

Sweeney stressed Tuesday that he's hopeful the city will formulate a feasible plan -- but he isn't optimistic.

"Am I hoping and praying they do? Yes," he said. "Will I be shocked if they do? Absolutely. All you can go by is past behavior. Their past behavior is to point a finger and blame others."

The city will likely have to cut tens of millions from its $250 million budget under the rescue package. Mayor Don Guardian said Friday it "will not be easy," but he believes they will "be able to accomplish this historic mission."

Wall Street bond rating agency Moody's Investor's Service said Friday that Christie's signing removes the immediate threat of the city defaulting on its debt or needing to file for bankruptcy, but it will "continue monitoring" the situation.

Friday's development appeared to quell months of tumult, in which opposing sides of the state Legislature -- one led by Sweeney, the other by state Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto (D-Hudson) -- fought over how the state can help the city.

But Sweeney said he gathered reporters Tuesday to set the record straight after Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto (D-Hudson) wrote an op-ed last Thursday for The Star-Ledger saying the compromise bill Christie signed was "worth the time and effort."

"We forced compromise, and New Jersey got better legislation," Prieto wrote.

Sweeney called the column a "great piece of fiction" and said Prieto was always playing politics instead of searching for a solution.

Christie and Sweeney had been pushing for an immediate state takeover of the city, which has suffered from four casinos closing in recent years. But Prieto pushed back, saying that plan would hurt unions, and introduced his own bill to give the city two years to fix its problems. The two sides agreed to the compromise earlier this month.

Still, Sweeney argued Tuesday that the deal is similar to a plan laid out in a memo the state presented local officials last July. The memo gave the city 90 days to formulate a financial plan before state intervention.

Sweeney said local leaders rejected that and another memo in October.

"We wanted the city to fix itself," Sweeney said. "There was no need for any of this. We wasted all this time."

"We've done nothing but damage," he added.

Spokespeople for Guardian and Prieto did not immediately return messages seeking comment Tuesday.

Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @johnsb01. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.
PILESGROVE TWP. -- For being such a small community, Salem County has paid a high price in the long battle to keep America free.

That was the message Monday as veterans, their families and supporters gathered for a Memorial Day tribute at the Salem County Veterans Cemetery.

"We all probably served alongside someone who is not here today because he or she was killed in action," guest speaker Patrick Hassler said, addressing the veterans in the audience.

Hassler, senior vice commander of VFW Post 253 in Elsinboro, served as U.S. Navy commander in the Persian Gulf.

Since World War I, 213 soldiers from the county have died in combat, Hassler said. The first in World War I was Cpl. Joseph C. Toulson in 1918 in Europe and one of the last was Specialist Richard "Richie" Emmons in 2011 in Afghanistan.

In World War II the toll was 136, in the Korean Conflict 24 and in Vietnam 28.

Hassler said the average age of the Salem County soldiers killed in action was just over 19 years old. Most never had the chance to live their lives to the fullest.

"They were young, they were innocent, they were noble and they were brave," Hassler said.

In such a close-knit county, the names of those who died in battle for their country are familiar to all.

"Let's remember those who went off and gave their lives. For no greater love does a man have than to give his life for his friends and everyone of them did that. Let's remember that. Let's never forget that," Hassler said. "That's what Memorial Day is all about."

Richard Brennan, pastor of the Quinton Baptist Church, told the crowd that those who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country "put themselves between us and those of evil intent."

Many at Monday's ceremony have loved ones buried in the cemetery.

Among those was Kim Dickerson Adams whose mother and grandfather, both U.S. military veterans, are there.

"It gives me a chance to give my thanks and also remember my mom," she she said of why she was there with several other family members.

Despite the threatening skies, the crowd at the veterans cemetery was large a around 500 people.A

Master of ceremonies Mike Shimp, quartermaster of VFW Post 253, said the turnout was "just great."

"A lot of people are here to honor the loved ones," he said.

More than 2,700 veterans and their spouses are buried in the cemetery on Route 45.

A rifle salute and the paying of "Taps" ended the ceremony.

Bill Gallo Jr. may be reached at bgallo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow Bill Gallo Jr. on Twitter @bgallojr. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
PILESGROVE TWP. -- An animal rights group is asking police to investigate the death of a 19-year-old cowboy who was killed at a New Jersey rodeo over Memorial Day weekend.

The animal rights group -- SHARK (Showing Animals Respect and Kindness) -- sent a letter to New Jersey State Police asking authorities to investigate whether or not an electro-shock device was used on the horse that fatally stepped on Coy Lutz Saturday night after he fell from him while riding bareback at Cowtown Rodeo.

"In the bigger picture, this is not the first time a rider has fallen off or been taken out in a stretcher. There's a real question going on there," Stuart Chaifetz, with SHARK, said Tuesday.

Lutz, of Howard, Pennsylvania, was competing in the bareback bronc riding event on the opening night of the Cowtown Rodeo's 62nd season.

The horse, named H3, began bucking in a tight circle in a spinning motion instead of bucking while in a forward motion. Lutz was bucked off and fell to the arena's floor under the horse's hooves where he was stepped on several times, leading to fatal injuries.

In the letter written to Col. Joseph R. Fuentes, with New Jersey State Police, SPARK claims they have evidence of electro-shocked horses at Cowntown in the past, therefore they want to look into whether or not it was a factor in Lutz's death, according to Chaifetz.

"I won't allow any of my animals to be intentionally abused," Cowtown Rodeo Owner Grant Harris said Tuesday in response to the allegations.

Harris did not comment further on the incident.

While SHARK has sent a request to state police requesting a criminal investigation, New Jersey State Police Woodstown Barracks Asst. Station Commander Christopher Quirk says there is no suspicion at this time.

"We took a general report the night it happened because it was a death but there is nothing suspicious. It was strictly an accident," Quirk said Tuesday.

State police added that even if there are requests for additional investigation,

they would not conduct one because they've already ruled on the cause of death being accidental.

Brittany Wehner may be reached at bwehner@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @brittanymwehner. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
SOMERVILLE -- Gary Wilson, whose testimony helped lead to the acquittal of David Granskie, Jr. of murder and aggravated manslaughter in the 2009 death of the girlfriend of Granskie's father, has been indicted on perjury.

Wilson, 33, currently serving a 45-year sentence in the New Jersey State Prison, was indicted for perjured testimony offered at Granskie's trial during September of 2014. He is charged with three counts of third degree perjury and two counts of fourth degree false swearing.

Somerset County Acting Prosecutor Michael H. Robertson stated Monday that during Granskie's trial on charges of murder, aggravated sexual assault, and conspiracy to commit both murder and sexual assault of Carolyn Stone, Wilson was called as a witness by the defense.

While under oath, Wilson testified that he had observed Granskie go inside the residence, and that he was not present for the murder and sexual assault that took place in the backyard area of that residence, according to Robertson.

Wilson further testified that he had not observed co-defendant Rocky DiTaranto engage in sexual intercourse with the victim, and that he had not observed DiTaranto choking the victim during that act of sexual intercourse. The indictment alleges that these statements materially affected the outcome of that trial, in that they may have led the jury to reach a decision it may not have otherwise reached, Robertson stated in a news release.

At the end of that trial, Granskie was acquitted of the murder counts that would otherwise subject him to a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. He was also acquitted of purposeful and knowing murder and the lesser-included offense of aggravated manslaughter. The jury could not reach a decision with regard to the remaining counts of first degree felony murder, first degree conspiracy to commit murder, second degree conspiracy to commit sexual assault, and the lesser-included offense of reckless manslaughter, according to a news release.

The statements that Wilson gave at that trial were at odds not only with what he had previously stated under oath, but also contradicted by statements made subsequently by Granskie in his own guilty plea, Robertson stated.

Wilson had previously testified during his own guilty plea in July of 2011 that he had, in fact, observed DiTaranto engaged in sexual intercourse with the victim in the backyard of the residence, and while doing so, DiTaranto was choking her, according to Robertson. Wilson said nothing about co-defendant Granskie at that guilty plea.

Also, Granskie entered a guilty plea on Nov. 30, 2015, wherein he acknowledged that he had not gone inside the residence and he had, in fact, assisted in carrying the victim to the backyard, knowing that Wilson and DiTaranto intended to sexually assault her. Granskie further testified that Wilson's statements made at trial regarding Granskie's lack of involvement were not true, Robertson stated.

Dave Hutchinson may be reached at

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Ohio Jewish Rabbis React to State Expert Offering 'Christian Understanding' of Abortion Law

Legal action from the Jewish community has begun in Florida, Indiana and Kentucky.

By Madeline Fening Oct 25, 2022

In a battle that has long ebbed between science and religion, Republicans in Ohio have begun using explicitly Christian rationale to try and limit abortion care access for everyone in the state. During an Oct. 7 hearing in a Hamilton County Court, Judge Christian Jenkins ruled to indefinitely block the state of Ohios six-week abortion ban...
The federal government plans to pour $125 million into the fight against a mysterious disease that has ravaged corals in Florida and much of the Caribbean, and now poses a dire threat to the treasured reefs off the Louisiana and Texas coasts.
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.
Bob was born on August 15, 1946, in Williamson, W.V., to Evelyn (Medley) and Robert Jeffrey, Sr. During his senior year of high school, Bob moved to Council Bluffs, where he graduated from Lewis Central High School in 1964, and where he met his wife, LaDonna (Hillman). Bob and LaDonna married on September 24, 1966. Bob served in the Army for two years. He was a loving father to his two daughters, Amy and Jill. Bob worked in management and sales in the container business, where his honesty and charm earned him several awards and many friendships. Bob loved music, his cats, reading, writing, keeping up with friends on Facebook, and making his family laugh.
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On the eve of Holden State of Origin Game One, New South Wales skipper Paul Gallen has said to expect fireworks when the states' "genuine hatred" for one another boils over once again.

Speaking at ANZ Stadium at the Blues' captain's run on Tuesday morning, Gallen anticipated the rulebook to be thrown out the window when the two teams come together.

Gallen also expected debutants Josh Mansour, Matt Moylan, Adam Reynolds and Dylan Walker to fit nicely into the Origin arena and the hurt that comes with it.

"There's a lot of emotion and a lot of passion from both sides. We both love it, we both hate each other and at the end of the day we're trying to hurt each other," Gallen said.

"It's an Origin game and a lot of NRL rules go out the window. I'm sure there will be a lot of niggle in every single tackle. There is genuine hatred between the two sides and it will erupt. You'll see some fireworks."

"The debutants will be ready for that. They're not coming here to pull on the blue jumper and be happy to be here, they're here to make a difference which I'm sure they will."

Draw Widget - Round 1 - Blues vs Maroons



With the intimidation factor of Origin non-existent in his mind, Gallen also quashed suggestions Cooper Cronk would be ruled out for Queensland and said they were using the veteran halfback's ankle injury as a "pawn" in their own mind games.

"He will play there is no doubt about it," Gallen said. "Cooper is not one to play mind games so I think they are using him a bit of a pawn there.

"Cooper is not that sort of a guy and I don't think he will appreciate being treated like that. He is the ultimate professional and he will be doing everything to get himself right."

Forever focused on their own backyard, Gallen said NSW's opposed session with Intrust Super Premiership outfit North Sydney Bears last Sunday night has done them the world of good.

Gallen didn't beat around the bush when detailing how the Bears knocked them off their high horse after a highly successful camp in Coffs Harbour.

"We were doing it a little bit too easy in Coffs Harbour. Having opposition in front of us brought us back a peg," Gallen said.

"We were too good in Coffs, we were going unbelievable to be honest with you. It was good to have opposition in front of us who didn't know exactly what was going on so the opposed session has really helped us."
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GARY  Colby Birdsong, holding her 11-month-old daughter, blew into a device that looked like a Breathalyzer.

"Take a deep breath for me," said community health worker Pamela Wade. "Blow for as long as you can."

The carbon-monoxide test would determine whether Birdsong had been smoking over the past month.

She passed.

The clinic, Community HealthNet, recently became the first site in Northwest Indiana to offer Baby & Me Tobacco Free, a program that essentially pays pregnant women to quit smoking. The moms get a $25 voucher for diapers every month they remain free of tobacco during the first year of their child's life.

Research has found that about two-thirds of the moms enrolled in the program nationally quit smoking. The state has identified Baby & Me Tobacco Free as a way to decrease Indiana's high infant mortality rate.

Tobacco use during pregnancy can cause birth defects, preterm labor, low birth weights and sudden infant death syndrome.

"Anytime you can get a mother to not do harmful things during the pregnancy, you're going to increase the risk you'll have a successful outcome in the pregnancy and fewer risk factors that can lead to infant mortality in the child," said Dr. Janet Seabrook, executive director of Community HealthNet. The federally funded health center has locations in Gary, Hammond and Merrillville.

Ninety mothers and 10 partners are currently participating in the program, which was launched thanks to a $10,000 grant from the March of Dimes. Six women have given birth and not gone back to smoking.

Wade, the program coordinator, meets with the moms monthly to discuss strategies for not using tobacco, including keeping a journal to identify emotional triggers and satisfying the oral fixation with gum or candy. The women often develop their own coping mechanisms: a couple of them crochet as a way to keep their hands busy; one mom does spoken-word performances of her journal entries.

Smoking is actually what alerted April Howse, of Gary, to the fact she was pregnant. She would smoke a Black & Mild, and her stomach would turn and she'd start gagging.

Even so, she was addicted. Then she found out about Baby & Me Tobacco Free.

"I wanted to quit, not only for the Pampers, but for my baby's health as well as my own," the 31-year-old said. "It gives you that extra push."

Howse, whose baby is due in August, recently gave up the habit. She says the urge to smoke lessens with time.

"I fight my cravings by eating, mostly fruit and fast food," she said. "I'm not going to lie; if I can get me a Polish deep-fried and some fries, I forget all about the smoking."

Birdsong, of Gary, didn't think she was going to be able to quit this time around. She'd given up smoking while she was carrying her now 11-month-old daughter, Zaniyah. But when she got pregnant just a month after Zaniyah was born, she got stressed and picked the habit back up.

Wade encouraged Birdsong to track what triggered her to smoke. When those emotions arose, Birdsong would do healthier activities, like pray, listen to music or call a friend. She went from smoking 20 cigarettes a day, to five, to two.

Some days were easier than others; pregnancy hormones certainly didn't help. But she persevered.

Birdsong, 27, said Wade provided more than just smoking cessation, acting as a therapist of sorts.

"She was a mentor and a friend," Birdsong said in Wade's office the other day, causing the health worker to choke up. A poster on the wall listed the chemicals present in cigarettes: arsenic, lead, formaldehyde.

"She would call me and check on me, see how I was doing. She gave me hope."

Zaniyah wiggled around on her mother's lap, babbling and making grunting noises

"You came in with hope," Wade said. "Nothing beats a failure but a try. That's all we needed you to do, was just try. You accepted the challenge, you really did."
EAST CHICAGO  Rudy Ortega remembers growing up in East Chicago and finding it hard to fit in.

He said he grew up in a single-family household with eight cousins, two aunts and his grandmother.

"I can remember as a kid just trying to fit in and fitting in became easiest through life on the streets," he said.

"I made friends I used to call brothers because we grew up with the same struggles. We spent birthdays together, shared in the loss of loved ones and watched our kids play together."

He said it came to an end when his brother was killed and he became a different person, living a life filled with vengeance, searching for the man who killed his brother.

"I would go to the projects with my gun and my gang questioning whoever came across our path, but found nothing," he said.

"My wounds began to heal, but in the end you always reap what you sow. One night I stepped out the door of a club, turned around and was shot with an AK-47 four times and then five additional times with a .40 caliber pistol. I jumped into a vehicle, but was pushed out."

Ortega recovered but was sentenced to five years in prison for an incident where he was driving while intoxicated and killed an innocent woman. He said in his third year, he began attending a prison ministry called Gods Elected Warriors, and connected with an Elkhart-based program called The Crossing.

Today, Ortega is a job-training coordinator for Elkhart-based The Crossing School of Business and Entrepreneurship. He hopes his life story will help turn around the lives of teens who have gotten involved in gangs and other crime.

That agency has now partnered with School City of East Chicago to help at-risk youth.

Newly named East Chicago school Superintendent Paige McNulty said she and retiring Superintendent Youssef "Dr. Joe" Yomtoob are excited to partner with the Crossings to help provide an opportunity for students who have dropped out of school to get their high school diploma.

"This program is for students who have already dropped out of school and are now wanting an avenue to finish their high school education," she said.

"They do not have a designated space yet for the program. No students have been enrolled as of yet. The Crossings will start recruiting students in the near future. We look forward to making a high school diploma accessible to all our students."

How it works

Quentin Bishop, chief officer of The Crossing School of Business and Entrepreneurship, said the program operates 28 locations across the state working with at-risk youth.

"We have a three-prong approach, including first partnering with a school corporation," Bishop said.

"We're not an alternative school. We're the alternative to the alternative. Our program is much more unique than that. It's a public-school partnership with the school and community.

"When they graduate from this program, they will have their high school diploma, a career skill and/or a job and a character education piece that is worked into the program."

He said the job training program starts micro businesses with students such as a candle company, a pallet company, a firewood company and some sort of clothing company.

"We haven't found a location yet, but we're going to need about 7,000 square feet of space to establish these micro businesses," Bishop said.

The program is not a charter school but is considered a private school. It will be funded through the East Chicago schools, with part of the school district's funding transferred to the program, Bishop said.

The Crossing, like more than 100 other private schools in the state, is listed as Freeway Accredited by Indiana Department of Education. Indiana adopted a freeway schools law in the mid-1990s, allowing some private schools to escape cumbersome school requirements concerning curriculum or textbooks. In exchange, Freeway schools must sign a contract saying they will maintain high levels of achievement.

The Crossing is 13 years old and has served more than 10,000 students over that time. It hopes to enroll at least 125 students in East Chicago.

Ortega said the agency will obtain dropout lists from the School City of East Chicago and surrounding school districts in hopes of enticing those students to earn their diploma.

"With me coming from this area, I know about the violence in the streets and what happens when these kids should be in school," Ortega said.
The Economic Development Corporation Michigan City honored 11 companies for making new investments and others for anniversaries at its recent Business Investment & Anniversary Awards Ceremony at Blue Chip Casino Hotel.

The event is part of the organizations ongoing business retention efforts which help support and retain businesses by acknowledging their investments in new technology, buildings and employees.

On behalf of the city and its citizens, we are proud to have these businesses call Michigan City, Indiana, home, Mayor Ron Meer said. They represent the types of businesses that have helped Michigan City grow over many years. The city is committed to partnering with the EDCMC in continuing to make this community a great place to live, work and play.

The keynote speaker at the event was Emerson Spartz, founder and CEO of DOSE, the Chicago-based company behind DOSE & OMG Facts, one of the worlds fastest-growing digital media companies.

Companies receiving Business Investment Awards were Central States Manufacturing Inc., CVG Sprague Devices LLC, Dekker Vacuum Technologies Inc., Franciscan St. Anthony Health  Michigan City, KTR Corp., Lindos/LaPaloma Restaurant, Michigan City Paperbox, St. Andrews Products, Vermillion Development, Zorn Holding LLC and Chicago Faucets, a Geberit Company.

Companies achieving special anniversaries were: R&E Pallets, 10 years; Central States Manufacturing and Impreglon Inc., 20 years; Sound Technologies, 25 years; Chicago Faucets, a Geberit Company, Sager Metal Strip Company LLC and TEACO, 40 years; PUBCO Inc., 50 years; Jet Fabricators, Prinova Solutions and Sanlo Inc., 60 years; Guardian Couplings and Woodruff & Sons Inc., 70 years; and CVG Sprague Devices LLC, 75 years.
CROWN POINT  An Illinois man admitted to robbing two Merrillville banks last June.

Don E. Bevly, 55, of Elmwood and Zion, Illinois, pleaded guilty to two counts of theft, Level 6 felonies. Lake Criminal Judge Diane Boswell sentenced Bevly to four years in prison.

He admitted to robbing on June 20, 2015, the First Midwest Bank in the 7900 block of Broadway in Merrillville, according to the plea agreement. Bevly left with $8,925 from the bank.

Four days later, he walked into Chase Bank at 6700 Broadway in Merrillville where he took $1,761, according to the plea agreement.

His wife, Christina Bevly, told Boswell her husband was a good role model for her four children. Though Bevly was not the biological father of the children, he was raising them as his own. The couple has been married for more than a year.

Before his arrest, Christina Bevly said her husband at one point had three jobs and then later worked two jobs. She said the family attended church events and family gatherings.

Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Judith Massa painted a different picture of Don Bevly who she described as a con man. She said hes had convictions in seven states.

Massa said he was on supervised release in an Illinois federal case that stemmed from a bank robbery when the Merrillville robberies happened.

Though he didnt use a weapon, Massa said the bank workers were left shaken by the incidents. One worker has since quit, and another worker expressed to prosecutors feeling stressed.

Defense attorney Joseph Curosh III asked Boswell not to consider some of his clients convictions, because they date back to the 1980s and arent recent.

Don Bevly told Boswell he pleaded guilty in the interest of justice. He said he tries to positively mentor youth and regularly did community service.

Im just trying to do the right thing, he said.

Boswell asked him why he committed the crimes if he was working two to three jobs at the time. Don Bevly did not give her a specific reason.

I committed the crimes, and Im ready to accept my punishment, he said.

When Boswell asked him if he wanted an appellate public defense attorney assigned to the case, Don Bevly answered, Nah, Im cool, your honor.
CROWN POINT  A Munster man was sentenced to 18 months in prison after admitting to being drunk during a fatal crash.

Matthew E. Kallen, 35, pleaded guilty to causing death when operating a motor vehicle with an alcohol-blood level of .08 or more, according to the plea agreement.

Other charges he had faced were dismissed.

The crash happened Sept. 2, 2015, in the 7400 block of Grand Avenue in Hammond as Kallen was making a left turn into an alleyway. As he was making the turn, Robert Nawrocki Jr., 48, of Hammond, hit the passenger side door of Kallens Toyota Tercel, according to the plea agreement.

Nawrocki, who was riding a scooter, died at the scene. It later was determined there was alcohol, marijuana and cocaine in Nawrockis system, according to the agreement. Kallens blood-alcohol level was .16 at the time of the crash. The legal limit in Indiana is .08.

During Tuesdays sentencing hearing in front of Lake Criminal Judge Salvador Vasquez, Kallen apologized to Nawrockis family.

Vasquez told Kallen that if he needed help, he should have sought it.

About a year before the crash in Hammond, Kallen had been released from probation in a reckless driving case, according to court records. As part of his probation, Kallen had been ordered not to drink, possess or enter any establishment that serves alcohol.

Vasquez told Kallen he will be allowed to participate in the Lake County Community Transition Court.
VALPARAISO  A 46-year-old Merrillville man faces multiple charges after a friend found childrens underwear and child pornography in his possession, according to police.

Michael Benain is charged with three counts of possessing child pornography and one count of child exploitation, according to court documents.

A friend told police that when Benain was arrested in April 2015 in an unrelated matter, she found the underwear in his van.

While checking on a missed call on his cellphone, she discovered images and videos of child pornography, police said. One of the images was of a child, who appeared to be less than 5 years old.
GARY  A 74-year-old woman was robbed of money she had just withdrawn from an ATM on Friday after pulling up at a gas station on Clark Road, police said.

The woman told Gary police she withdrew $400 from an ATM on West Ridge Road in Griffith and drover to the Midwest gas station at 2490 Clark Road.

She pulled up at the gas pump about 3 p.m., and her 35-year-old son went inside the store, Lt. Nelson Otano said.

A large tan SUV pulled up at another pump, a man got out of the passenger's side and pointed a rusty-colored handgun at her face, police said.

The man said, "Give me your money," and the woman replied, "What money?"

The man then entered her vehicle, ransacked the inside and took the cash she had hidden in a compartment, police said. The man got back into the SUV, which headed north on Clark Road.

The suspect was described as a young, black man with dark skin and a low haircut, 5 foot 9 inches tall and 150 pounds. He was wearing a white muscle shirt.

Anyone with information is asked to call Detective Sgt. John Basaldua at (219) 881-1210. To remain anonymous, call (866) CRIME-GP.
For the second year in a row, Paris is hosting Region university students as they study photography and art appreciation in addition to exploring the citys historic landmarks.

Last summer, four Purdue Northwest students participated in the Paris study abroad program. This year, nine of them departed for the City of Light on May 14 and are scheduled to return on June 10.

PNW sophomore communication student Erica McDermott is enrolled in both the photography and art appreciation courses, taught by PNW Communication and Creative Arts department head Dr. Thomas J. Roach and PNW continuing lecturer Ken Bronowski, respectively.

It has been a dream of mine to visit Paris since I was a little girl. My room was Paris themed and my family even has pictures of Paris scenery around the house, McDermott said. When the opportunity presented itself, I just couldnt say no.

Among the locations included on the itinerary are as the Louvre Museum, Notre Dame Cathedral and the Eiffel Tower, as well as several modern art museums and privately owned galleries.

PNW senior communication student Haley Smith spent nearly a month studying in Paris last summer and said it was a fun, eye opening experience to be immersed in the culture while not being able to speak French.

Some of us got lost on like the third day and we had never navigated with a map before, so we were walking around aimlessly in Paris and missed a class, Smith said. Its not all schoolwork. The weekends were open and were a lot of fun, and we saw historic landmarks like the catacombs.

Grace Wilk, PNW senior communication student with an emphasis in public relations, also participated in the Paris study abroad program last summer and said the photography course taught by Roach helped prepare her for working in the public relations field.

We were in Paris so its not just about school. (Roach) wanted us to get good grades of course, but also to have fun, Wilk said. I would definitely recommend it, especially for Purdue Northwest students because most of them have lived in the Region their whole lives.

Wilk said one of her most memorable moments involved a late night trip to the Eiffel Tower and a near encounter with one of the most famous celebrity couples.

One night we got up at 4 a.m. and took the Metro to the Eiffel Tower. It was really cool to be there at that time because the streets were empty, Wilk said. We were actually there when Kanye West was renting out the Eiffel Tower when he was renewing his vows to Kim Kardashian.
You wouldn't know it from looking at him now, but Ernest Talarico Sr. had quite a mop of hair when he was aboard the USS Haven during World War II.

"I would do what they call the dance," Talarico, 91, said.

"I had a wet mop on my head, a brassiere with two balloons  you know where I put those  silk stockings, and I did the shuffle."

The dress he wore when he was on stage was all part of his act, warming up the audience with some dancing and jokes before other entertainers performed.

But it isn't all fun and games during war, not even for a guy with Talarico's sense of humor.

Talarico was recently honored at a surprise reception at Carlo's Restaurant in Chicago Heights, where a U.S. Marine Corps sergeant presented him with a U.S. flag in recognition of Talarico's service to his country.

He served in both World War II and the Korean War. That makes him one of the lucky ones. Some of the boys he grew up with didn't return from Europe or the Pacific.

In his Italian neighborhood on Chicago's West Side, about 600 joined the military during WWII. That's a big chunk out of a neighborhood of 3,000 to 4,000 people.

Talarico, who now lives in Glenwood, was senior class president and valedictorian of his high school, but it wasn't a prep school. He struggled academically at Wright Junior College. So when his friends suggested joining the Navy, he enlisted.

"When I look back on it, I didn't really join the Navy because I was patriotic. I think I really joined the Navy because I wanted to get away from going to that college," Talarico said.

He remembers that enlistment well.

"Before I knew it, they had my clothes off ... and (I) had needles in my arms, and I took the oath of office, and that was it," he said.

"Then we were on the train, off to Great Lakes, took my clothes off again; they shaved my head, I took the oath, and I'm in the Navy."

Talarico chose the Navy because he could choose his occupation. That's what put him on a hospital ship, the USS Haven.

It was the first time Talarico had been aboard a ship -- "other than a canoe ride in Humboldt Park," he said.

The ship sailed from its home port in Richmond, Virginia, to Brooklyn, New York, then the Mediterranean, through the Panama Canal, to Mexico, then off to the Pacific islands. He didn't get seasick, fortunately.

"That was pretty good for a boy who lived all his life in a square mile," he said.

Talarico was aboard the USS Haven when it became the first hospital ship to reach Nagasaki, Japan, on Aug. 15, 1945  the day Japan's Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender that ended World War II.

The Haven arrived just six days after Bockscar, a U.S. B-29 bomber, dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki  the second and final time an atomic bomb has ever been dropped on an enemy nation. The death toll was estimated at 40,000.

Japanese men, women and children in Nagasaki walked around with handkerchiefs in their hands, held over their mouths and noses, Talarico said.

Right after the ship docked, he went ashore to help the Allied POWs, who were in bad shape.

"Some of the guys, we put shoes on them, and they needed help walking, because their shoes were too heavy," he said.

The men were badly malnourished, to the point that they ate so much they made themselves sick. They had to be given smaller portions to build their bodies back up to where they could eat normal meals, he said.

"Most of them came aboard on stretchers," he said. The wounds were bad. One was worse than the others.

"He had a tremendous wound in his back, and there were maggots in there," Talarico said. "I poured penicillin in there. The guy was screaming." The patient recovered.

Talarico was in the reserves following World War II, then called back to active duty, this time in the U.S. Marine Corps, during the Korean War.

He was flown in a small airplane into a combat zone, although being a corpsman he wasn't shooting at the enemy.

He has vivid memories of a boy about 9 years old whose eye had come out of its socket and whose mouth was wide open. The boy was a victim of war.

It's a chilling tale, even in a land where the winters were more brutal than the normal person in the Region can imagine.

Talarico had a special trick of his own for staying warm during that 60-below weather.

"I was carrying a picture of Marilyn Monroe, and I carried it in my sleeping bag, so I was never too cold," he said.
EAST CHICAGO  The City Council has not approved an additional appropriation ordinance that would have provided $1,240,250 to pay the principal and interest payment due in July for bonds issued last year to build and equip community centers in the city.

A second ordinance on the agenda that would have moved funds from the street construction account to the debt service account to make the payment also did not garner enough votes for approval.

Both times, council members Lenny Franciski, Gilda Orange, Juda Parks and Christine Vasquez voted to approve, but members Robert Garcia, Richard Medina and Kenneth Monroe did not agree.

First District Councilwoman Myrna Maldonado was absent.

"I totally disagree with taking that street construction and using it for debt services," Garcia said.

Garcia said he has been sending requests for a couple months to the mayor's office and the engineering department regarding streets needing repair that have not yet been serviced. He said the money should come out of the gaming fund and not street reconstruction.

Orange asked what will happen if the July 15 deadline to make payment is not met.

"If we don't make our principal and interest payments semi-annually, we will be in default," said Karl Cender, financial adviser to the City Council. "And that would not be a good thing for the city."

In November 2015, the City Council approved an ordinance to issue bonds in an amount not to exceed $11.4 million to construct and equip community centers.

In February 2015, Mayor Anthony Copeland told the council that community centers would be built in the 1st, 2nd,3rd and 6th districts.

Marino Solorio, city economic development director, told the council last week it makes more financial sense to build just one center.

"It was decided that it would be an injustice to create four centers with repetitive spaces when we can build one center that would accommodate more spaces for the community, more uses," Solorio said.

Garcia said the council was not informed of the change in plans.

"If the the megacenter does not happen, we are going back to the four community centers," Solorio said.

He said the city has about three locations in mind but did not want to divulge where to avoid affecting negotiations.

"We're slowly working on the design, but the location hasn't been set," Solorio said.

After the meeting, Cender said it will be up to the city administration regarding if the ordinances not approved will come before the council again, but some plan will have to be devised to appropriate the money.

"Otherwise, the city will probably never be able to issue debt again if they don't make good on their bond payments," Cender said.
HOBART  In recognition of National Nurses Week, St. Mary Medical Center administration and staff awarded five nurses the 2016 Nursing Pillar Awards.

The awards honor nurses who go above and beyond their duties, providing the best in patient care across five categories that represent the hospitals operational mission and goals: Service, Quality, Finance, Growth and People, as well as a Super Star Award for the nurse who best exemplifies the characteristics of all categories combined.

The Nursing Pillar Awards provides an opportunity for nurse peers to recognize the outstanding contributions of their co-workers, said Tammie Jones, vice president of Patient Care Services and chief nursing officer at St. Mary Medical Center.

Our nurses are the heart of the hospital, providing compassionate care to our patients every day, said Janice Ryba, CEO of St. Mary Medical Center. It is an honor to celebrate their dedication to our mission in providing exceptional care to the community.

The award recipients are:

Service  Steve Lopez, RN, Griffith

Lopez has worked at St. Mary Medical Center for more than three years. He is supportive of and greets new initiatives on the unit with positivity and enthusiasm. Lopez is routinely recognized by his patients and peers for the care he provides. He is described as compassionate, treating each patient with extreme dignity and empathy. Lopez is consistent in his hourly rounding and bedside shift reports, ensuring patient safety remains top priority.

Quality  Josette Crostreet, RN, Valparaiso

Crostreet has served at St. Mary Medical Center for more than seven years. She strives to make improvements to the quality of patient care on a daily basis, utilizing evidence-based practices to help improve processes. Crostreets patient reports are clear, concise and organized, and physicians trust and value her input. She often helps to train new nurses and actively takes part in unit education, as well as updating protocols.

Finance  Sheena Tinner, RN, Gary

Tinner has been at St. Mary Medical Center for more than six years. She is described as efficient, always working hard to increase productivity and decrease costs. Tinner proactively takes action to minimize complications and provides outstanding patient care, maintaining a safe environment. She has also implemented several ideas to better utilize supplies and minimize waste in her unit.

Growth  Jennifer Mulvihill, RN, Portage

Mulvihill has worked at St. Mary Medical Center for more than seven years. She is described as the first to rally her team whenever there are new programs or initiatives implemented. When additional education or research is needed, Mulvihill is always willing go above and beyond. Her positive attitude and spirit help drive others in her unit to success.

People  Randall Quirk, RN, Crown Point

Quirk has been at St. Mary Medical Center for nearly a year. He is described as a team player, dependable and reliable, who goes out of his way to help others. Quirk willingly offers help, even when he is working a busy shift. He exudes compassion when working with patients and their families, always serving with a positive attitude.

Super Star  Jodie Blackman, RN, Lowell

Blackman has served at St. Mary Medical Center for nearly six years. Her peers follow her example and physicians value the care she provides her patients. Blackman is described as the go to person on her unit. She knows what is going on with the entire department and will go out of her way to help others. Blackman fully supports new programs and remains efficient while providing quality patient care. She continues to advance her knowledge by obtaining additional education whenever she can. Blackman is truly a super star to those who know and work with her.
LEROY  Memorial Days have been a lot harder for Elva Hernandez since 2009. That's the year her son, Joseph, a 24-year-old Army corporal from Hammond, was killed serving in Afghanistan. She has mixed emotions on the last Monday in May: wishing Joseph was still here, while recognizing how important his sacrifice was.

"Memorial Day is a rough day," Elva said Monday after laying a wreath at the foot of the Stoney Run County Park veterans memorial in her son's honor, the hot sun beating down. "But it reminds me he gave his life for his country."

Hundreds of Northwest Indiana residents came out to Memorial Day ceremonies across the Region on Monday to pay their respects to the men and women who like, Joseph Hernandez, died serving their country.

"No words can describe their sacrifice," Marty Dzeiglowicz, a member of American Legion East Chicago Post 369, said at a service at the Munster Community Veterans Memorial. "Memorial Day should be a time of pride and gratitude for those who gave their lives to build the world we have today."

Dzieglowicz noted that since last Memorial Day Lake County suffered another battlefield casualty, though one that had taken place decades earlier. The remains of Donald Carr, of East Chicago, were identified after being found along the border of Laos and Cambodia. He had been declared missing in action after his plane was shot down during the Vietnam War in 1971.

"No one can replace these fallen heroes, especially to their families," Dzieglowicz said. "We owe it to the heroes and their loved ones left behind that their sacrifices are remembered and service to this nation always honored."

Joe Simonetto, a member of American Legion Munster Post 16, noted that this year marks the 50th anniversary of the escalation of hostilities in Vietnam. He put that conflict into perspective.

"From 1955 to 1975, 58,252 U.S. armed forces were killed in the Vietnam War," he said.

Lake County Sheriff John Buncich said that while the draft was controversial at the time of that war, with some protesters going as far as to burn their draft cards, more than two-thirds of those killed in Vietnam were volunteers. He asserted that many Americans' anger at that conflict led them to forget the sacrifices made by the soldiers who fought it.

"We can ever allow our freedoms to be taken for granted," Buncich said.

While many of us use Memorial Day to honor soldiers who have died in the line of battle, others live with it 365 days of the year.

"As we remember our fallen heroes, our hearts heart go out to those who can never forget," said Loray Robinson, a member of Veterans of Foreign Wars Munster Post 2697. "Let us remember and pay tribute to our nation's Gold Star Mothers."

Those are the moms who got a knock on their doors from officers notifying them that their sons or daughters were killed at war. Moms like Elva Hernandez.

"I'm his mom, I miss him," she said Monday of her late son, Joseph. "But I'm proud of him."
VALPARAISO  Eilene and Ben Dougherty, their four young sons in tow, walked to the Porter County Museum for a Memorial Day commemoration honoring fallen soldiers.

"It's our first time coming here after moving to Valparaiso a year ago," Eilene Dougherty said.

The Dougherty children, dressed in red, white and blue shirts, range in age from 5 1/2 to 1 month.

"We wanted to teach them about Memorial Day and we have veterans in our family. It's important to learn about history," she said.

The Memorial Day ceremony, attended by some 50 people, was presented by the David D. Porter Camp No. 116 Sons of the Union Veterans of the Civil War.

It was Porter County men who were among the first in the state to formally join the Union Army after the Civil War started on April 12, 1861, Kevin Pazour said.

Pazour, executive director for the Porter County Museum, relayed some of the Civil War area history on Monday.

"Porter County has the honor of being the first in the state to raise a company," Pazour said.

He said of those who enlisted from Porter County there were 149 who died whether from illness, being wounded or shot.

"Today we remember these people who unselfishly put the needs of the nation before their own," Pazour said.

Steve A. Mockler, a junior vice commander of the local Sons of the Union Veterans of the Civil War, said those in the group, like himself, became interested in joining the organization because they have relatives who fought in the Civil War.

"We're the direct heirs," Mockler said.

Mockler and other members this past year have started a push to raise money and use it toward cleaning headstones of those who served in the Civil War.

The push also included placing an American flag at each grave on the Memorial Day weekend.

The group this year were able to take care of 300 of the 570 Civil War veterans in Porter County.

"We did as many as we could with the funding we had. Our goal is to include all of them, Mockler said.

Mockler's dad, Steve E. Mockler, the group's commander, was among those re-enactors donning Civil War era uniforms and taking part in the ceremony which included the reading of the Gettysburg Address.

The senior Mockler took part in a flag-folding ceremony with fellow member Herb Smith and also played taps, using a 150-year-old horn passed down to him from a Civil War soldier on his wife's side.

Music during the ceremony was performed by the members of the South Shore Brass Band Quintet and included "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "Dixie."

"Dixie" was one of the favorite songs of President Abraham Lincoln, chaplain Pat Doyle said.

Doyle, also a member of the Sons of the Union Veterans of the Civil War, said Lincoln asked a northern band to play "Dixie" shortly after the war ended to help in the healing process, Doyle said.

A week later Lincoln was assassinated.

For more information on the Sons of the Union Veterans of the Civil War, send emails to: campporter@gmail.com.
The next president of the United States must act to rescind the Iranian deal that U.S. Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., supported. Without support from Donnelly and a few other Democrats, the Iranian deal would not have passed.

Last year, Donnelly stated, I am willing to give this agreement the opportunity to succeed.

I would beg to differ.

First, understand Irans development of nuclear and ballistic weapons means nuclear and ballistic proliferation throughout the Middle East. Sunni-based Saudi Arabia and fellow Gulf Cooperation States fear Shia-based Iran more than any other threat in the region. Rightfully so.

Iran signed a nuclear nonproliferation treaty in 1968 and renewed this treaty several times. In 2002, U.S. spy satellites revealed Iranian uranium enrichment plants that Iran did not report to the International Atomic Agency. Interestingly, Iran later admitted to hiding uranium enrichment facilities from the world for nearly 20 years.

In October 2015, after inking the Iranian deal, medium range EMAD rockets were launched/tested by Iran in violation of international law. These missiles were ballistic and capable of delivering nuclear warheads. In just eight years, Iran will be allowed to conduct ballistic missile tests under the Iranian deal.

In January, 11 international companies and individuals who assisted Iran in developing ballistic missile systems, against international treaties, were sanctioned by the Obama administration.

In the spring, Iran test-launched a defensive intermediate range ballistic missile system, and Russia began the process of delivering to Iran its most advanced S-300 surface-to-air missile system capable of engaging multiple aircraft and ballistic missiles 90 miles away. Russia had canceled this contract in 2010, but President Vladimir Putin lifted his self-imposed ban just one year after the U.S.-Iranian deal became reality.

Economics and the enforceability of the Iranian deal serve as another basis for rescission in 2017. Billions of frozen dollars were released to Iran, and hundreds of billions in huge new contracts were inked between Iran and European multinational and state-owned corporations.

As investment spreads in the Iranian economy, more interconnectedness occurs at an accelerating pace that is difficult to reverse. Irans huge financial contracts with Europeans serve to divide American and European security interests.

Those charged with monitoring Irans civil nuclear energy do not get 24/7 access touted by President Barack Obama to Iranian nuclear facilities. Certain nuclear sites have unfettered access. Other, more strategic, locations do not. Iran has 14 days to push back on a request to inspect undeclared sites.

With Iranian objections, a long bureaucratic wait can be placed on inspections while Iranian officials dismantle, modify or undo nuclear-developed projects.

As of today, certain arms control experts see Irans uranium-enrichment and plutonium enrichment capacity being just one year away from production of a nuclear bomb.

So what is the grand illusion? It is believing that the Iranian deal will bring us peace and safety and prohibit Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Donnelly seems satisfied in fostering such a dangerous illusion.
Tsai Ing-wen has been formally inaugurated as the new president of Taiwan. She is the first woman to hold this top government position, a milestone of tremendous importance.

This also brings political complications with mainland China. The new governing party, the Democratic Progressive Party, is formally committed to independence from China.

Beijing has stridently demanded that President Tsai publicly acknowledge Taiwan is part of China. She has not publicly confirmed the established public reference to one China.

Current assertiveness of China in maritime and military terms adds teeth to the rhetoric. Beijing already has reduced  but not terminated  trade and tourism.

Nonetheless, these tensions likely will be mitigated short of armed conflict. The earlier DPP government from 2000 to 2008 was able to finesse the political challenges with Beijing. Today, economic concerns are more important than ideological for the communist great power.

On May 25, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Chicago hosted a small seminar to review and discuss President Tsais inaugural address. There was general agreement she had effectively described, and explicitly endorsed, the framework of cooperation initiated by Beijing and Taipei in 1992.

Doors for women at the top are opening, and opening as well in China-Taiwan cooperation. On Feb. 11, 2014, representatives of the island and mainland agreed to exchange representative offices. Face-to-face negotiations were led by Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Zhijun of China, head of the Taiwan Affairs Office, and Taiwan Mainland Affairs Minister Wang Yu-chi.

The two sides share a bitter legacy of battle and blood. In 1949, Nationalist forces of General Chiang Kai-shek evacuated to Taiwan. Mao Zedongs armies controlled mainland China.

The Korean War of 1950-1953 made the Cold War global, with China and the United States direct combatants. U.S. commitment to Taiwan security became explicit.

The foundation of cooperation has been built steadily over time. Pragmatism characterizes Taiwans approach to mainland China.

In November 2008, agreement was reached on far-reaching trade accords, including direct shipping, expansion of weekly passenger flights from 36 to 108 and introduction of up to 60 cargo flights per month.

In 2010, the bilateral Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement was concluded. This has been a major triumph for previous President Ma Ying-jeou.

Taiwan has become an essential investor for the enormous industrial revolution taking place on the mainland. Commercially successful, generally well-educated overseas Chinese in turn are a vital source of capital for the mainland. Expatriate Chinese also vote in Taiwan elections.

The ECFA framework is now so strong that a return to earlier hostility across the Taiwan Strait is unlikely.

The female leader at the pinnacle of Taiwan politics symbolizes equality, fairness and progress. Open competitive markets undercut unfair rigidity of tradition and ideology. Taiwan over three decades has effectively embraced representative democracy.
CAMP TARIQ, Iraq  Elite Iraqi special forces began their push Monday into Fallujah, expecting to encounter the stiffest resistance yet in the campaign to free territory from the Islamic State group.

The city 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Baghdad has been under militant control longer than any other part of Iraq, and IS fighters have had more than two years to dig in. Networks of tunnels like those found in other IS-held territory have already been discovered in its northeastern outskirts.

The Iraqi troops, also known as the counterterrorism forces, are leading the assault on Fallujah, slowly moving up from the southern edge in a column of armored Humvees.

Their advance is expected to be slow because tens of thousands of civilians remain trapped in Fallujah and hidden bombs are believed to have been left throughout the city, according to special forces commanders at the scene. They expect fierce resistance from the jihadis, who have nowhere to run.

"This is the decisive battle for us and for Daesh," said Gen. Saad Harbiya head of Fallujah operations for the Iraqi army, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.

The offensive, supported by airstrikes from the U.S.-led coalition, was launched a week ago. In that time, other wings of Iraq's security forces have cleared the city's edges. Shiite militia forces under the government umbrella of the Popular Mobilization Forces and the federal police lead operations that have taken back 80 percent of the territory around Fallujah, according to Iraqi Maj. Dhia Thamir.

The predominantly Sunni city in Anbar province is one of the last major IS strongholds in Iraq. The extremist group still controls territory in the north and west, as well as the second-largest city of Mosul.

Harbiya said Fallujah "is like the Kaaba" for the Islamic State group, referring to the most sacred Muslim site in the world in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

The 500-700 IS fighters holed up in Fallujah are expected to be some of the group's best-trained, a special forces commander at the scene said. The commander spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters.

The counterterrorism forces started pushing into Fallujah from its southern edge at dawn, said Brig. Haider al-Obeidi. He described the fighting as "fierce," with IS deploying snipers and releasing a volley of mortar rounds on the Iraqi forces.

Humanitarian groups say that as the violence intensifies, their concerns for civilians trapped inside Fallujah mount.

"With every moment that passes, their need for safe exits becomes more critical," said Nasr Muflahi, the country director for the Norwegian Refugee Council, an international humanitarian group active in Anbar province.

In past operations, Iraq's Shiite militia forces have been accused of committing abuses against civilians in majority Sunni towns and cities. Sunni lawmakers already have accused the security forces of using indiscriminate force that has endangered the more than 50,000 civilians estimated to be still inside Fallujah.

Shiite militia commanders have routinely rejected the accusations.

"The troops have been recommended to respect families and treat them gently," said Hadi al-Amiri, the Shiite militia commander who also heads the Badr Organization political party, while overseeing operations outside Fallujah.

Islamic State extremists, meanwhile, claimed responsibility for a wave of bombings Monday in and around the capital that killed at least 24 people.

IS has been behind many of the recent deadly attacks, and the bombings show the group's enduring ability to launch operations despite territorial losses. Iraqi officials say the bombings are an attempt by the militants to distract the security forces' attention from the front lines.

"By launching such attacks, the militants aimed at thwarting our determination and resolution to continue with our victories in Fallujah," said Arkan Jabbar, a soldier manning a checkpoint in Baghdad not far from where one of the blasts hit.

The deadliest of the blasts took place in the northern, Shiite-dominated Shaab neighborhood of Baghdad, where a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into a checkpoint next to a commercial area, killing eight civilians and three soldiers. The explosion also wounded up to 14 people, a police officer said.

A suicide car bomber struck an outdoor market in the town of Tarmiyah, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of Baghdad, killing seven civilians and three policemen, another police officer said, adding that 24 people were wounded in that bombing.

And in Baghdad's eastern Shiite Sadr City district, a bomb on a motorcycle went off at a market, killing three and wounding 10, police said. Medical officials confirmed the casualty figures, and all the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release information.

In an online statement, IS said it was responsible for the attacks, saying they targeted members of the Shiite militias and a government office. The Associated Press could not verify the authenticity of the statement but it was posted on a militant website commonly used by extremists.

___

Salaheddin reported from Baghdad. Associated Press writers Murtada Faraj and Faris Mohammed in Baghdad and Maamoun Youssef in Cairo contributed to this report.
Rapper Troy Ave has been arraigned on attempted murder charges for his alleged part in a deadly shooting at Irving Plaza last week.



Sources say the 33-year old, whose real name is Roland Collins, is being held in police custody.

He's also charged with two counts of criminal possession of a weapon, according to the criminal complaint.

Police say surveillance video shows Collins firing shots in a green room during a T.I. concert at Irving Plaza Wednesday.

A member of his security team, Ronald McPhatter, was killed.

Two other people were shot but survived.


Charles M. Harper, who in the 1970s and 1980s transformed a faltering food company called ConAgra into a global giant to rival Kraft and Kellogg, and whose own health issues inspired the creation of the brand Healthy Choice, died on Saturday at his home in Omaha. He was 88.

His death was confirmed by his daughter Kathleen Wenngatz, who said he had been in gradual decline.

In 1985, when ConAgras expansion was in full swing, Mr. Harper had a heart attack and was forced to change his eating habits. This led him to introduce a line of lower-calorie products, which ended up being called Healthy Choice. In part inspired by a turkey chili dish made by Mr. Harpers wife, Joan, Healthy Choice meals aimed to be tasty as well as healthier. She was a great cook, Ms. Wenngatz said. He brought that idea to the company.

Sales of Healthy Choice took off quickly, and the line is still offered by ConAgra.

This is a rare case of a C.E.O. coming up with a product that changed the company, said William Leach, who followed ConAgra as a stock analyst when Mr. Harper was chief executive.

Later in his career, Mr. Harper was chief executive of RJR Nabisco, the food and tobacco company in which Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, a leveraged buyout firm, had a large stake.
After more than 1,100 deaths exposed dangerous labor conditions in Bangladesh in 2013, brands like H&M, Walmart and Gap were among the most powerful companies that pledged to improve the safety of some of the countrys poorest workers.

But human rights groups say that three years later, those promises are still unfulfilled, and that safety, labor and other issues persist in Bangladesh and other countries where global retailers benefit from an inexpensive work force.

A series of new reports by the Asia Floor Wage Alliance, a coalition of trade unions and other research and advocacy groups, has put a new spotlight on the conditions. In Bangladesh, the group says, tens of thousands of workers sew garments in buildings without proper fire exits. In Indonesia, India and elsewhere, pregnant women are vulnerable to reduced wages and discrimination. In Cambodia, workers who protested for an extra $20 a month were shot and killed.

The brands say that in recent years they have aggressively pushed stronger labor protections and vastly increased their monitoring of the factories that make their products. They have also made significant structural and fire repairs at many factories in Bangladesh.
Michael Dann, one of the most powerful and effective programmers in network television in the 1950s and 1960s, who brought The Defenders, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and 60 Minutes to the screen, as well as less prestigious but enormously popular shows like Hee Haw and The Beverly Hillbillies, died on Friday at his home in Boca Raton, Fla. He was 94.

His death was confirmed by his daughter Patty Dann.

Mr. Dann began his television career at NBC, where he worked alongside Pat Weaver as he transformed the network and created such innovative programs as Today and Tonight.

At CBS, where he rose to become head of programming in 1963, he proved an astute judge of audience appeal, a master of scheduling and a shrewd marketer.

When CBS broadcast the movie Born Free, Mr. Dann promoted it heavily on the networks Saturday morning cartoon shows and enlisted Dick Van Dyke to introduce it. It earned the third-highest ratings for a film in television history, after The Bridge on the River Kwai and The Birds.
New York City abhors a vacuum. And, in some ways, the scraggly parkland along the Bushwick Inlet in Brooklyn, pocked with industrial ruins and warehouses where a 28-acre park was to be born, is exactly that. It is a hole in the cityscape, waiting to be filled.

So it makes sense that as the city continues to struggle to make good on a more than decade-old promise to develop the park  stymied by its inability to acquire all the necessary land and slowed by the laborious process of cleaning up the areas legacy of industrial grime  a competing idea has arisen, sprouting through the cracks in the process like weeds through a sidewalk.

And of course, since this is Brooklyn, the two visions for the site peel back to reveal something familiar: the clash of Brooklyn past and Brooklyn hipster.

The original plan would tear down the graveyard of rusting oil refineries that sit on the site, which stretches from Greenpoint to Williamsburg along the East River, and return the reedy riverbank to something closer to nature. The new idea, called Maker Park, would keep the refineries and turn them into a sort of industrial theme park  a beautiful and otherworldly industrial topography, according to the website of its advocates.
The rapper Troy Ave was formally charged with attempted murder and criminal possession of a weapon in Manhattan Criminal Court on Monday evening in connection with a fatal shooting last week during a concert at Irving Plaza.

Appearing in court in a wheelchair, Troy Ave, 33, whose real name is Roland Collins, asked the judge for $50,000 bail through his lawyers, who stressed that he had no criminal record. But Judge Ushir Pandit-Durant heeded a prosecutors recommendation and ordered him held without bail until trial.

His lawyers, Scott E. Leemon and John Stella, said Mr. Collins was not responsible for the gunfire that erupted at 10:15 p.m. on Wednesday in a backstage green room above the clubs stage just before the rapper T.I. was to perform.

One of Mr. Collinss bodyguards, Ronald McPhatter, was killed in the shooting. Three people were wounded, including Mr. Collins, who was shot in the leg.
So Republicans in moderate states will be forced, over the next five months, to show that they are not the same as their partys presidential nominee, while at the same time latching on to the anti-Washington sentiment that Mr. Trump has built his political success on. They may be incumbents, their argument goes, but they are the real outsiders in their races. Theyre outsiders that use their place in Congress to get things done within the parameters of power. You know, an outsiders type of insider.

Talk to the people running Republican campaigns in battleground states, and they will insist, officially, that everything is fine, and actually, its Democrats who need to worry about the impact Hillary Clinton will have on their down-ballot candidates. But when these operatives are given the chance to speak candidly, you get a clear sense of their frustration and panic about dealing with the man at the top of the ticket..

Yeah, its going to be awful, one senior staffer on a Republican congressional campaign told me. Every time he says something crazy, theyre asking for us to respond to it.

Democrats need to retake at least four Republican-held seats to regain control of the Senate. History is on their side, as presidential election years have been better for Democratic turnout. And this year, when 70 percent of female voters dont like the Republican nominee, at least four incumbent Republican senators in battleground states are running against female candidates: Mark Kirk of Illinois, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, John McCain of Arizona, and Richard Burr of North Carolina.

The playbook for these incumbents, according to the N.R.S.C., is to run their Senate campaigns like sheriffs races, emphasizing local issues and trying their best to ignore the national conversation. The question is whether this hyperlocal approach to campaigning will be able to drown out the barrage of Democratic attack ads that will inevitably link each candidate to Donald Trump.
To the Editor:

Re The Saga of My Rape Kit (Op-Ed, May 19):

Im relieved to hear that Emily Winslows rape kit was preserved and tested. This reality, however, does not exist for millions of survivors in the United States. I was raped in Massachusetts, where untested, unreported rape kits can be destroyed within six months even if the statute of limitations to report is 15 years.

In New Hampshire, kits can be destroyed in two months. In Florida it can happen in 30 days. For survivors in these states, justice is obstructed simply by geography.

But there is a hope: The Survivor Rights Act, which addresses this issue, has unanimously passed the Senate (news article, May 25). I know firsthand the failings of the justice system, but I still believe in the change our legislative process can bring.

With this bill, millions of survivors are one step closer to closure. One step closer to justice. I call on our federal and state legislators to pass the Survivor Rights Act and codify these long-overdue civil rights.
The National Firearms Act includes much of what the N.R.A. fights against, but the lobbying group hasnt directly challenged it. That may be because the firearms database, which includes weapons owned by both private citizens and law enforcement agencies, accounts for only a small percentage of the 300 million firearms estimated to be in private hands. Perhaps it should fight against it, though, because the 1934 law makes a good case against the N.R.A. The more than four million weapons inventoried  including machine guns, missiles, hand grenades and mortars  are the best example we have of gun control that works.

The N.F.A. was designed to control what todays Justice Department calls dangerous weapons that empower a single individual to take many lives in a single incident. Millions of firearms now in private hands, including assault rifles designed for use by the military, are just as lethal as weapons covered by the N.F.A. They should be brought under the act.

Jeff Folloder, the executive director of the N.F.A. Trade and Collectors Association, says his members have learned to live with gun registration and lose no sleep worrying about confiscation. There are still an enormous number of people who think if they register and purchase an N.F.A. weapon, theyre giving A.T.F. permission to come knock on their door at any time, and thats just not true, Mr. Folloder told me. Youre not giving up any rights.

Mr. Folloder, a manufacturer and collector of machine guns and silencers, is no fan of the firearms act. Hed like to make machine guns more readily available, and lobbied successfully to repeal a requirement that N.F.A. owners be preapproved by a local law enforcement officer. But Mr. Folloder and the A.T.F. agree that registrants are rarely implicated in crimes. People with registered weapons who can pay $40,000 for a machine gun bend over backwards to obey the law, he says. If youre going to spend that much money and put that much effort into obtaining one of these, youre not going to be holding up the liquor store.

N.F.A.-classified weapons do show up at crime scenes. But nearly all of them were unregistered, so the simple act of possession was a crime. According to A.T.F. analysis, among N.F.A. weapon owners there were only 12 felony convictions between 2006 and 2014, and those crimes did not involve an N.F.A. weapon. If that conviction rate were applied to the owners of the other privately owned firearms in the United States, gun crime would virtually disappear.
I HAVE been attacked pretty much my entire career by Gawker. I made its list of least important writers twice, and it put me in 62nd place on its worst 100 white men list, which also included Judas Iscariot and Joe Paterno. Gawker writers have called me a terrible writer and a terrible sexist and insinuated that my wife wants to stab me.

I thought things might be changing last year, when Gawkers managing editor and founder, Nick Denton, sent me a surprisingly complimentary email about a piece I wrote for The Los Angeles Review of Books. He ended up holding a book party for me where I met and joked with all the Gawker writers who had publicly insulted me. But it didnt stop the attacks. Just a month ago its sister site Jezebel wrote a parody of an article I wrote for The Guardian about misogyny in which they called me Brosephine Baker (which is, O.K., pretty funny).

Such childish hostility notwithstanding, I believe that Gawker serves an essential function in a celebrity-obsessed culture, and if it were to disappear the world would be poorer and the cause of journalistic truth would be damaged. In its struggle against the billionaire Peter Thiel  who, it turns out, secretly funded Hulk Hogans privacy lawsuit against the website, resulting in a $140 million jury award  Gawker deserves more support than it is getting.

Gawker is new media, but it possesses an old-fashioned sensibility that dates from the 18th century. The editors and writers want power to be made uncomfortable whether or not it deserves the discomfort, and they believe that the public right to information is more important than any individuals right to privacy. I would say, to anyone who believes that Gawker is just the gutter press, that those values are worth something even in the gutter.
Across New York, a law-abiding person can walk into a sporting goods or hardware store and buy a standard, pocket-size folding knife  and be breaking the law.

While exact numbers are not available, thousands of New Yorkers are arrested every year and charged with possessing a gravity knife, which the law defines as one that opens with the force of gravity or the application of centrifugal force. In other words, with a flick of the wrist.

In 1958, state legislators banned knives that had a blade that fell out of the handle when the user pointed it at the ground and pushed a lever. The same law bans weapons like brass knuckles and Kung Fu stars. But the modern knives sold in countless stores bear little resemblance to the knives that were the original subjects of the ban. Many people, including carpenters, construction workers and stagehands, have no idea that their knives can be made to open with a flick of a wrist  a skill many New York police officers have developed. Most dont know that simply possessing such a knife breaks the law.
Three and a half million Americans live on an island that is in economic free-fall, and Congress still isnt sure whether it will throw them a lifeline. A bipartisan bill to help Puerto Rico is expected to come to a vote soon in the House. It has flaws and it is facing opposition on many fronts, but at this late hour it offers the island its best chance of survival.

This is how urgent the situation is: Thousands of residents leave for the mainland every month to seek jobs and better public services, and the exodus will accelerate if nothing is done to change Puerto Ricos trajectory.

With its economy in decline for a decade, the island has accumulated huge debts that it cannot repay. It owes $72 billion to investors and about $46 billion to government pension funds. The island started missing bond payments in January and it is expected to default on a nearly $2 billion payment due on July 1, which will surely prompt creditors to file a wave of lawsuits seeking repayment.

Two weeks ago, Republican and Democratic lawmakers in the House and the Obama administration reached a compromise on aiding Puerto Rico. The bill they have negotiated would establish a financial control board to oversee the islands government and help restructure its debt in federal court, in a process similar to bankruptcy. The legislation would also require the government and the board to adequately finance public pension funds that are perilously close to empty. And it would temporarily stay, or pause, lawsuits by creditors against the islands government while the board is established and begins its work.
Say this for John Quigley, until a few days ago the state of Pennsylvanias top environmental officer. With a profanity-laced email that played a role in his resignation he put the dangers of hydraulic fracturing front and center in the public consciousness. Mr. Quigley had backed tough new updates in state rules governing drilling for natural gas. But after legislators voted them down, he blistered environmentalists for failing to support the cause.

Where the (expletive) were you people yesterday? he wrote in an email on April 13. The House and Senate hold Russian show trials on vital environmental issues, and theres no pushback at all from the environmental community? Nobody bothering to insert themselves in the news cycle?

A few more expletives later and Gov. Tom Wolf reportedly began questioning whether Mr. Quigley could any longer be effective in his job.
I loved going to work with my father when I was a little tiny kid because we didnt have sodas in our refrigerator and I knew if I went to the shop, Id get to have a soda with lunch, says John Nese, the second generation Nese to own Galcos Old World Grocery in Highland Park, Los Angeles. A neighborhood Italian grocery founded in 1897, the store now stocks soda exclusively  carrying over 750 varieties from independent brands, and drawing visitors from around the world.

Neses fathers first job was selling newspapers in front of the store as a kid; around twenty-five years later he returned to the same spot, but as partner. Business was good for a while and the family gained full ownership of the store, but by the early 90s, sales were hurting. Chain stores took over the distribution channels and suddenly the prices for small groceries skyrocketed, Nese says. It was cheaper for us to go buy one can of tomatoes from a supermarket than buy in bulk. Nese watched nervously as other independents went out of business one by one.

A turning point came when a Pepsi retailer visited the store. The salesman waltzed in promising the best price on a pallet of Pepsi, but Nese would only make $30 from the hundreds of sodas and hed have to charge customers more than theyd pay at a chain store. When he said he wasnt interested, the salesman just laughed and insisted that customers would demand Pepsi.
WASHINGTON  A judge, called a hater by Donald J. Trump for his handling of a lawsuit related to the businessmans Trump University real estate school, has ordered documents related to the case to be unsealed.

Mr. Trump is fighting a lawsuit that accuses his school venture of misleading thousands of people who paid up to $35,000 for seminars to learn about Mr. Trumps real estate investment strategies.

In an order signed on Friday, Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel of United States District Court said that related materials, including Trump University procedures on dealing with students and the news media, should be unsealed.

He noted that the material had already been published by Politico and that a magistrate judge described them previously as routine and commonplace.
WASHINGTON  President Obama invited a Syrian refugee to this years State of the Union address, and he has spoken passionately about embracing refugees as a core American value.

But nearly eight months into an effort to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees in the United States, Mr. Obamas administration has admitted just over 2,500. And as his administration prepares for a new round of deportations of Central Americans, including many women and children pleading for humanitarian protection, the president is facing intense criticism from allies in Congress and advocacy groups about his administrations treatment of migrants.

They say Mr. Obamas lofty message about the need to welcome those who come to the United States seeking protection has not been matched by action. And they warn that the president, who will host a summit meeting on refugees in September during the United Nations General Assembly session, risks undercutting his influence on the issue at a time when American leadership is needed to counteract a backlash against refugees.

Given that weve resettled so few refugees and were employing a deterrence strategy to refugees on our Southern border, I wouldnt think wed be giving advice to any other nations about doing better, said Kevin Appleby, the senior director of international migration policy at the Center for Migration Studies of New York.
RIO DE JANEIRO  The anticorruption minister of Brazils interim president, Michel Temer, resigned Monday night after a secret recording seemed to show that he tried to stymie the sweeping corruption investigation revolving around Petrobras, the national oil company.

The fall of Fabiano Silveira, whose title was minister of transparency, dealt another blow to a government that seems to limp from one scandal to the next just weeks after Mr. Temer replaced Dilma Rousseff. Ms. Rousseff was suspended as president to face claims of budgetary manipulation in an impeachment trial.

One of Mr. Temers top aides, Romero Juca, stepped down last week as planning minister after another recording indicated that their centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, or P.M.D.B., had sought Ms. Rousseffs ouster to thwart the inquiry into the Petrobras graft scheme.

In an increasingly paranoid atmosphere in the capital, Brasilia, members of the countrys political and business elite are secretly recording one another with the aim of reaching plea deals. Sergio Machado, a politician who was the chief executive of a Petrobras transportation unit for more than a decade, has turned over a trove of recordings to investigators.
They want to show company owners that they are going to punish any businessman in any part of the world, Mr. Bitkov said, explaining why he believes the bank has pursued them for so long over what he called false charges.

Image Igor Bitkov last year. He is being held in a Guatemalan jail. Credit... Grigory Pasko

Harvey Pacay, a Guatemalan lawyer for VTB in the case, said the banks concern was strictly business related. Our principal objective in this case was really for the investigation into the false documents, and then their expulsion so that they can be judged in their own country, he said.

We dont know if they face political persecution, if they have problems with Vladimir Putin, Mr. Pacay added.

The couples account of the case against them in Russia echoes the pattern of other corporate raids in that country. Company owners targeted by rivals or even by government officials often face a legal onslaught and the threat of prison time, intended to force them out.

The Bitkovs said their problems began in 2006 after they refused to collaborate with Georgi V. Boos, the new governor of Kaliningrad, where they were one of the largest employers.

Ms. Bitkova said she had declined an invitation from the deputy governor to act as the regional representative for Mr. Putins party. We didnt want to become their puppets, her husband said.

Threats grew over the next two years, the Bitkovs said. The couple said Anastasia was kidnapped when she was 16, and was found three days later, only after they paid $200,000 to the police. They then sent her to study in Britain.
LONDON  Putting aside very recent and bitter differences, Londons new mayor, Sadiq Khan of the Labour Party, on Monday joined forces with David Cameron, the Conservative prime minister, in the campaign to keep Britain in the European Union.

The importance of the June 23 referendum on whether to remain a member has caused Mr. Khan and Mr. Cameron to bury the heated exchanges of the mayoral campaign. Mr. Cameron supported the Conservative candidate in suggestions that Mr. Khan, a Muslim, had historic ties to Islamic extremists.

Mr. Khan, who was elected this month, believes it is vital for London, its financial markets and its businesses to stay within the single market of the European Union. His views are a sharp contrast to his predecessor as mayor, Boris Johnson, a Conservative who is one of the leaders of the Leave campaign, and who has challenged Mr. Camerons leadership.

Mr. Khan is also drawing a contrast to the leader of his own party, Jeremy Corbyn, who has come out in favor of remaining but with little passion, and who has refused to campaign alongside Mr. Cameron.
But they said they were holding out for a broad deal to free all of them and to allow international monitors into the prisons. They called for the United Nations Syrian envoy, Staffan de Mistura, and the global powers to push for the enforcement of Security Council Resolution 2254, which calls for the protection and release of detainees.

Otherwise, they said, they feared they could be killed or face other reprisals for the revolt.

General Taha told a delegation of prisoners that he had no control over other security agencies and might even be killed along with them, said Fahad al-Moosa, one of the lawyers. Mr. Moosa added that intelligence officials were preventing General Taha from getting his diabetes medicine sent into the prison.

The regime is using the policy of starvation and subjugation and exhaustion of detainees health to break the prison, Mr. Moosa said from an insurgent-held area where he runs a shelter for released prisoners. After they take it over, they will start to torture these prisoners.

Syrias prisons, ranging from official ones like Hama Central Prison, the site of the revolt, to a network of sites controlled by secret police agencies and pro-government militias, are riddled with torture, arbitrary detention, overcrowding and a lack of food and medicine, according to numerous reports by Syrian and international human rights groups.

Opposition groups say that at least tens of thousands of people are now detained, with families often left in the dark for years about the prisoners location and condition.

One antigovernment monitoring group, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, recently contended that according to government sources, at least 60,000 people had died in detention since the uprising against Mr. Assad began with street protests five years ago.

The government denies such allegations and says its prisoners are terrorists and other criminals.

Many other combatants  armed opposition groups, the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, Islamic State militants and Kurdish fighters, to name a few  are holding prisoners and hostages, but plans for prisoner exchanges as part of the latest round of talks in Geneva never got off the ground.
Mays album chart belonged to Drake.

Drakes latest release, Views (Young Money/Cash Money/Republic), holds the top spot on Billboards latest chart for a fourth week in a row, dominating the rankings ever since the album was released on April 29. This week it faced close competition from new records by Ariana Grande and Blake Shelton, but beat them thanks to what continue to be extraordinary streaming numbers.

In its latest week, Views had just 50,000 sales in the United States as a complete album, according to Nielsen  far less than new releases by Ms. Grande, whose Dangerous Woman (Republic) had 129,000 sales, and Mr. Sheltons If Im Honest (Warner Bros. Nashville), with 153,000. Downloads of individual songs also factor into the overall chart position, and by that measurement Views was not exceptional; its 274,000 track downloads were only slightly ahead of the 201,000 for Dangerous Woman.

But for a fourth week straight, Views really pulled ahead in streaming. Its songs had 166.2 million streams in its latest week, compared with 38.6 million for Dangerous Woman and just 3.9 million for If Im Honest. When combined with album and track sales, Views led the chart with 189,000 album equivalent units, in the latest chartspeak, compared to 175,000 for Dangerous Woman and 170,000 for If Im Honest. (In Britain, Ms. Grandes album squeaked past Drake by a margin of just 600 equivalent sales.)

Also this week, Beyonces Lemonade (Parkwood/Columbia) is No. 4, Rihannas Anti (Roc Nation) is No. 5, and two new albums by rock elders open high on the chart: Eric Claptons new I Still Do (Bushbranch/Surfdog) starts at No. 6, and Bob Dylans latest collection of standards, Fallen Angels (Columbia), bows at No. 7.
Parsley. Its a garnish. Its also the word that Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic, used in 1937 to send thousands of immigrant Haitian cane-cutters to their deaths. He identified the Creole-speaking Haitians by having his soldiers demand they pronounce the Spanish word perejil (parsley). They were killed if they could not properly roll their Rs.

Image Rita Doves new collection spans decades of her career as a poet. Credit... Fred Viebahn

Ms. Doves poem about this massacre is among her most ambitious and assured. She moves between perspectives. At one moment we are in the cane fields, the next Trujillos palace. She pivots formally, too, between hints of the sestina and the villanelle.

In Trujillo we witness homicidal glee but also a bruised humanity. Ms. Dove writes:

The general sees the fields of sugarcane, lashed by

rain and streaming.

He sees his mothers smile, the teeth

gnawed to arrowheads. He hears

the Haitians sing without Rs

as they swing the great machetes:

Katalina, they sing, Katalina,

mi madle, mi amol en muelte. God knows

his mother was no stupid woman; she

could roll her Rs like a queen.



Ms. Dove was born in Akron, Ohio, in 1952. Her father was one of the first black chemists in the American tire industry. She was a gifted and determined student. She studied in West Germany on a Fulbright scholarship and received her M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers Workshop in 1977. Her first book of poems, The Yellow House on the Corner, was published in 1980.

She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for Thomas and Beulah, a collection based loosely on the lives of her maternal grandparents. In Thomas and Beulah she woos back her memories of her own family and through them scrutinizes the moral arc of the 20th century.

A poem from that collection, Wingfoot Lake (Independence Day, 1964), so well observed that your heart and your internal cinema struggle to hold all it puts on display, begins:

On her 36th birthday, Thomas had shown her

her first swimming pool. It had been his favorite color, exactlyjust

so much of it, the swimmers white arms jutting

into the chevrons of high society.

She had rolled up her window

And told him to drive on, fast.
Five months ago, Carl C. Icahn deplored Pfizers proposed takeover of the Ireland-based drug maker Allergan as a travesty meant to help one of Americas biggest companies lower its tax bill by moving abroad.

Now Mr. Icahn says he has taken a piece of Allergan.

The billionaire activist investor disclosed in a statement on his website on Tuesday that his investment company has bought a large position in Allergan, which is technically headquartered in Dublin. He didnt detail how large of a stake or when the purchase was made.

Allergan said in a statement after the announcement, that it has no reason to believe that this investment was made for purposes of influencing the actions of management or control of the company. We welcome all investors who recognize the value of our business.

Mr. Icahn has been opposed to Pfizer forsaking its American passport to cut its taxes. In a letter to lawmakers in October, he urged them to change laws to prevent companies from doing so and announced a $150 million political action fund to finance the cause.
Great Plains Energy, the parent company of Kansas City Power and Light Company, said on Tuesday that it had agreed to acquire Westar Energy for $8.6 billion in cash and stock.

The transaction would create an energy provider with more than 1.5 million customers in Kansas and Missouri.

Under the terms of the deal, Great Plains Energy would pay $60 a share in cash and stock for Westar, representing a 13 percent premium on Westars closing price on Friday.

Including the assumption of debt, the transaction values Westar at $12.2 billion.

The combination of our two companies is the best fit for meeting our regions energy needs, Terry Bassham, the Great Plains Energy chairman and chief executive, said in a news release. By combining our two companies, we are keeping ownership local and management responsive to regulators, customers and regional needs, while enhancing our ability to build long-term value for shareholders.
The Justice Department filed the case under a provision of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act, known as Firrea, which authorizes civil penalties for violations of the federal fraud laws that affect a financial institution. That law led to substantial settlements with banks for their subprime mortgage practices, including a record $16.65 billion settlement by Bank of America in 2014 for other mortgage-related violations.

This was the only case to go to trial under the statute, setting what seemed to be a benchmark for proving fraud in connection with questionable mortgage practices. The government introduced evidence that a Countrywide program called the High-Speed Swim Lane, or hustle, resulted in providing mortgages that did not meet the requirements set forth in contracts permitting them to be sold to Fannie and Freddie. Ms. Mairone oversaw the program that the government claimed caused more than $1 billion in losses to the two housing finance companies.

Judge Rakoff wrote that the hustle program was the vehicle for a brazen fraud, but the appeals court focused on the much narrower question of when a breach of contract can amount to a violation. Countrywide may well have known it was spewing bad loans that fell short of its contractual obligations for selling them, but the appellate judges concluded there was no affirmative misstatement about the quality of its mortgages at the time they were sold.

According to the appeals court, the key question is whether willful but silent noncompliance constituted a fraud  a knowingly false statement, made with intent to defraud  or is it simply an intentional breach of contract? There was no evidence that Countrywide made a false statement when it signed the contracts with Fannie and Freddie, only that it later decided to breach the agreement by selling bad mortgages without alerting the companies to that fact. Therefore, the Justice Department failed to prove fraudulent intent at the time of contract execution; evidence of a subsequent, willful breach cannot sustain the claim.

In the criminal law, which this case involved even though it was brought as a civil Firrea lawsuit, there must be what is known as a concurrence of the elements. For fraud, the misstatement and the intent to defraud must be present at the same time, so that a subsequent decision to intentionally violate an agreement by supplying a shoddy product does not establish that a misstatement took place with the requisite intent at the time the contract was signed.
LONDON  Jazz Pharmaceuticals said on Tuesday that it had agreed to buy Celator Pharmaceuticals, which makes a treatment for a form of leukemia, for $1.5 billion in cash.

The deal would continue rapid consolidation in the pharmaceutical sector, where mergers allow companies to increase scale or to gain access to treatments for rare diseases without having to fund the research and development of the therapies.

The transaction would further bolster Jazzs portfolio. Jazz agreed to acquire Gentium, an Italian biopharmaceutical company that develops treatments for rare diseases, in a deal valued at about $1 billion in 2013.

Under the terms of the new agreement, Jazz, which is based in Dublin, would pay $30.25 a share for Celator, the Ewing, N.J., maker of Vyxeos, a treatment for a form of leukemia. That would be a 73 percent premium on Celators closing price on Friday of $17.53 a share.
The directors have also written a letter to Viacom constituencies stating that they would challenge their removal because we see that as our responsibility to the noncontrolling shareholders of Viacom who own 90 percent of the equity in the company. Funny that a board so beholden to Mr. Redstone and willing to dole out excessive compensation to both Mr. Redstone and Mr. Dauman over the years now cares about other constituencies.

In any event, there is no corporate law that I know of that requires a controlling shareholder to speak to the directors of the company he controls. If Mr. Redstone wanted to communicate by carrier pigeon, that would be his prerogative. So Mr. Salerno is engaging in a public relations battle, but one that is not on very firm legal ground.

Viacom itself also initially made murmurs of discontent. But as I pointed out before, the employees of Viacom should be careful. Taking sides against your majority shareholders on behalf of your chief executive is a breach of fiduciary duty, not to mention something that could get you fired when that controlling shareholder inevitably takes control back of the company.

As for that Delaware litigation, it might still be coming.

That litigation, by the way, is probably a loser for the Viacom directors. If you want to know why, you can read one of the key opinions on the rights of controlling shareholders and their companies, Adlerstein v. Wertheimer. In that opinion, the court held that a controlling shareholder, no matter how nefarious, had a right to control the board of the company. And that case even featured Ilan K. Reich. (If you dont know who he is, you really should.)

In that case the court ordered the company into receivership, but that was because it was failing. In this case we have a simple business dispute. The law is pretty clear that a majority shareholder can act over a company unless it is looting it. The Viacom directors may try and litigate in New York to get a judge who is less versed in these issues, but that is probably their best option.

I would add that the main law firm representing the company started representing the directors and then was sued for that conflict. I cant overemphasize the importance here that must be placed on keeping the company neutral in this fight.

And here the majority shareholder is National Amusements. In that case, the board is made up of Sumner Redstone and two people he just appointed, along with Shari Redstone, her son Tyler and David Andelman, a CBS director. While the Viacom directors will try to argue that there is a conflict, it is hard to see how this establishes legal grounds to void National Amusements actions. It is also hard to see the Delaware courts wanting to wade into the question of Mr. Redstones capacity and trying to go higher up the chain.
Why doesnt the government just give everybody money?

Figure out a reasonable amount  the official poverty line amounts to about $25,000 for a family of four; a full-time job at $15 an hour would provide about $30,000 a year  and hand every adult a monthly check. The minimum-wage worker stretching to make it to payday, the single mother balancing child care and a job  everybody would get the same thing.

Poverty would be over, at a stroke.

Being universal  that is, for the homeless and the masters of the universe alike  the program would be free of the cumbersome assessments required to determine eligibility. It would also escape the stigma typically attached to programs for the poor.

And it would be politically secure. Programs for the poor are often maligned as poor programs. Indeed, defunding antipoverty programs rarely carries political consequences because the poor rarely vote. Its another story entirely when everybody benefits.

The idea of universal basic income sounds extravagant, right? Well, the Finns and even the Swiss are thinking about it. On Sunday, Swiss citizens will vote in a referendum on whether to hand out 30,000 francs a year  just over $30,000  to every citizen, regardless of wealth, work status or whatever.
BOSTON  Christopher Kimball spent much of the last year as the dark prince of the recipe world, a brooding exile who had left his multimillion-dollar Americas Test Kitchen empire in a painful split he hadnt seen coming.

Now he is moving on. Instead of polishing his carefully created New England sensibility and hovering over the obsessive recipe-testing platform on which he built Cooks Illustrated magazine and its offspring, Mr. Kimball is loosening his bow tie and shifting his culinary worldview.

His new project is called Milk Street Kitchen. With $6 million from investors and more at the ready, Mr. Kimball is remodeling the ground floor of the Flour & Grain Exchange building on Milk Street in the financial district here in Boston. In the fall, he plans to publish a new magazine, shoot a public television series and begin writing books. Hell start a cooking school, and promote the whole enterprise at a dozen live road shows. He is even designing a chefs knife to sell.

The big idea is to bring techniques from the worlds kitchens to Americas Wednesday night dinner table. Its a bold pivot for a man whose magazines rarely showcased ethnic recipes.
A coffee shop is not just a coffee shop, Majora Carter said the other day.

Ms. Carter, who hails from the South Bronx and has been a longtime agent of change in what was once viewed as the most hardscrabble of New York neighborhoods, was talking about the arrival last week of Birch Coffee, whose exposed brick, reclaimed wood and $2.75 macchiatos make it an outlier on a stretch of Hunts Point Avenue dominated by dime stores, bodegas and auto shops.

A coffee shop, she was saying, can be a community hub and a tinderbox of creativity. People collide and cross paths over cappuccino, sharing catalytic ideas and business plans, and Hunts Point hasnt had a spot quite like it for as long as she can remember.

I find it funny and sad at the same time when people walk in and say, Hey, I feel like Im in Manhattan, said Ms. Carter, who has collaborated on the cafe with Jeremy Lyman and Paul Schlader, the entrepreneurs who have planted seven Birch outposts in other parts of the city. You know what? You are in the Bronx, and we can have this here as well.

But whats truly remarkable is that the South Bronx suddenly has two such overnight arrivals. Over in Mott Haven, a few stops away on the No. 6 train, in the shadow of the Major Deegan Expressway, a shop called Filtered Coffee opened in April with a red La Marzocco espresso machine, drowsy indie rock on the sound system and financier pastries shaped like teddy bears.
To the Editor:

In Obama Is Pressed to Speed Effort to Add Migrants (front page, May 31), the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, says, When you step back and look at the longer-term picture in terms of the United States record on the U.N. refugee program, its hard for other countries to criticize.

Indeed, over the last 40 years, the United States has admitted more than three million refugees, including 207,000 in 1980 alone, the year the Refugee Act of 1980 was passed in response to the Indochinese, Cuban and Soviet Jewish refugee crises.

During the Obama administration, however, the United States Refugee Admissions Program has strangled itself with red tape and bureaucratic checks that can take years to navigate, with thousands getting stuck without resolution because refugees are given no information as to why their cases are being delayed or denied. They cannot overcome information that is not shared with them.

Is the only way we can be safe by being slow? Why were we so much swifter to accept refugees fleeing Communism than those now fleeing Islamic extremism and a brutal dictator?
To the Editor:

As a native Harlemite, I found it hard not to shed a tear when reading The End of Black Harlem, by Michael Henry Adams (Sunday Review, May 29). The place so many of us know and love as the black cultural mecca has become a shell of its former self.

The hardest part of all is seeing the gradual loss of the heart and soul of the community, the black church. Historic churches are being replaced by million-dollar condos. Moreover, residents have long fought to have goods and services like quality supermarkets, bookstores and fitness centers, but they came only once the demographics began to shift.

Sadly, a rallying cry of the anti-gentrification movement  development without displacement  has fallen on deaf ears in my beloved Harlem.

JULIAN KENNETH BRAXTON

Boston

To the Editor:

I share Michael Henry Adamss concern about the fate of Harlems poor. Our city has long failed to follow through on promises as New York has evolved. But Harlem is, and will long remain, the iconic African-American cultural nexus.
To the Editor:

Re Playing Chicken in the South China Sea (editorial, May 21):

China is exercising its legitimate rights by upholding the sovereignty of our islands in the South China Sea.

Chinas sovereignty over the Nansha Islands and Xisha Islands was restored after World War II, in accordance with the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Proclamation. But in the 1970s, certain countries started to illegally occupy some islands and reefs of the Nansha Islands.

Negotiation between states directly concerned is the only way to resolve the disputes. China has already signed border treaties through peaceful negotiations with 12 out of 14 land neighbors. The same practice should be adopted in the South China Sea.

While pursuing diplomatic resolution, China is exercising restraint. The construction activities on the islands and reefs are all for peaceful purposes and do not affect in any way freedom of navigation and overflight.
To the Editor:

Making Kosovo Fertile Ground for ISIS (Secrets of the Kingdom series, front page, May 22) is correct in pointing out the past difficulties Kosovo faced with radicalized youths and the Islamic State. But it does not adequately recognize the efforts my government has taken to combat this scourge.

My governments response to the increased radical interpretation of Islam has been robust. New antiterror laws have made it possible to arrest and convict those who go to fight with ISIS in Syria. There are now fewer than 60 Kosovars participating in the Syrian war, a record drop in Europe.

We are actively contributing to the global coalition against ISIS. Secretary of State John Kerry noted on a recent visit to Kosovo that Kosovars are the regional leaders in combating violent extremism. The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, also recognized Kosovos active role in the promotion of global interfaith dialogue in a report last year.

Kosovo will not be held hostage by a small group of violent religious extremists whose absolutist interpretation of Islam is overwhelmingly at odds with our secular tradition.
KIEV, Ukraine  In July 2014, I went to Donetsk, a separatist-controlled region in eastern Ukraine, to cover the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. It was a dangerous place at the time. The Ukrainian military and the rebels were shelling each other, and temperamental men with Kalashnikovs who had been known to kidnap journalists were everywhere.

Like many foreign reporters, I was there to relay what was happening to the remains of the downed flights 298 passengers and crew members. Before I went to the crash site, I obtained accreditation from the separatists. This did not guarantee that I would be safe, but it was the only way to get past the armed checkpoints.

Now Ukraine has labeled me an accomplice in terrorism.

On May 7, the website Mirotvorets (Peacemaker), courtesy of anonymous hackers, published part of the separatists accreditation records. My name, email address and phone number were among those of more than 4,000 journalists, including freelancers like me, as well as correspondents from this newspaper, Reuters, the BBC and other outlets. We were collectively labeled terrorist collaborators for gaining accreditation from the separatists. The lists publishers claimed not to know what the consequences would be of releasing this information, but it seemed clear that the intent was to encourage people to take action against the journalists on their own.

Anton Gerashchenko, a member of Ukraines Parliament and an adviser to the Ministry of Interior, praised the publication of the list and called for journalists to assist Ukraine in its information war with Russia. Condemnation of the list followed from organizations including the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the Committee to Protect Journalists. Ukraines ombudsman called for the website to be blocked. As criticism built, the people running Mirotvorets said they would take their website offline and the Kiev prosecutors office began an investigation into whether or not those running the site had committed a crime.
In supporting Mr. Abes effort to restore Japans ability to join and wage wars, Mr. Obama has chosen the wrong strategic partner. The next U.S. president will inherit an East Asia policy vulnerable to the uncertainties of Japans transition away from pacifism. Since 2012, Mr. Abes foreign policy decisions have harmed Japans relationships with its neighbors, including the U.S. ally South Korea. Several of his political appointees have proven scandal-prone in matters of diplomacy.

And Japan might not accept Americas strategic dictates. Firm supporters of Mr. Abes agenda see their efforts as the casting off of the final remnants of the American occupation, so that Japan can reclaim its own superpower status. In the ideological terrain of contemporary Japanese politics, the accommodation of American interests is chiefly opportunistic, and the underlying motive is often retrograde nationalism. Mr. Abes push to revise the Constitution has coincided with cabinet-level attempts to renegotiate history: Whether so-called comfort women used by Japanese soldiers during World War II were sex slaves or if their work was a form of indentured servitude; and how many Chinese civilians died in the Nanking Massacre in 1937.

For Japanese voters, these debates formed the political and social context of Mr. Obamas visit. Questions of war memory dominated press coverage. According to a 2015 survey by Pew Research, 56 percent of Americans believe the atomic bombings were necessary; 14 percent of Japanese agree. By delivering an appeal for disarmament in a nation whose pacifist Constitution his Asian pivot has helped to controvert, Mr. Obama has risked lending credibility to the dangerous notion beneath Abes rhetoric: that Japan can best retain its identity as a peace-loving culture by embracing the restoration of its martial role in international affairs.

If it were the will of the Japanese electorate to adopt the Abe doctrine, then the question of how Mr. Obamas visit has contributed to its legitimization would be academic. But nearly none of Abes policies, including revision of the pacifist Constitution, poll well. He nonetheless enjoys reliably favorable approval ratings, attributed by the center-right media to his carefully-cultivated public persona and by the left to calculated manipulation of the national psyche.

Mr. Abes attempts to claim Japans collective memory have been less than democratic. He has been at war with the press since he took office, and has been especially zealous about destabilizing the countrys foremost daily newspaper, the Asahi Shimbun, chief antagonist of his most hawkish positions. He has responded to multiple Supreme Court decisions requiring reform of the nations broken electoral system with a plan calculated to delay changes for as long as possible, a manipulation intended to give him time to build an opposition-proof majority in Parliament, and to create the illusion of an overwhelming mandate to remove pacifist language from the Constitution.
Against this background, Greek voters elected my then party, Syriza, in January 2015 to negotiate an end to self-defeating austerity in exchange for serious reforms. With the state now living within its means, I strove, as the countrys new finance minister, to convince our European and institutional lenders that their interest and ours would best be served by reducing tax rates and avoiding further cuts to already much reduced pensions. As a compromise, I even promised a deficit brake  automatic tax hikes that would kick in if government revenues did not pick up within an agreed period.

My pleas fell on deaf ears, and I resigned. Greeces creditors insisted instead on even higher sales taxes, as well as new cuts in pensions and wages. The Greek governments capitulation to the creditors even involved a preposterous obligation that all Greek companies should pay, immediately and in full, their estimated tax for the next year. The cruel screw of austerity turned again.

Once the new measures were implemented, incomes in Greece, which had picked up slightly while we put austerity on hold, began to fall again. The bank closures that were forced by Greeces creditors to make our government yield, and the new austerity that followed, revived the recession. This increased the number of nonperforming loans on banks balance sheets  an astounding 45 percent of all loans  with the effect of denying credit to potentially profitable export-oriented firms. In 2014, close to half of Greek families had no adult in employment, while the cuts in public spending mean that for the past two years less than 10 percent of the jobless receive any unemployment benefit.

Behind the grim numbers, an ugly reality looms, one that gets uglier by the day. Small businesses have been crushed by punitive taxes, and a wave of home foreclosures is on the horizon. Greeces hospitals are running out of basic necessities, while our universities cannot even afford to provide toilet paper in their restrooms. In Athens these days, only the soup kitchens are flourishing.

Amid this endless suffering, have any lessons been learned? It seems not.

Greeces economic misery seemed set to provoke a new standoff recently  except that, this time, it was between the International Monetary Fund and the European Unions Brussels-Berlin nexus. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany is reluctant to confess to the Bundestag that Greeces bailout loans were always unsustainable. To maintain the fantasy that they will be repaid as planned under the terms of last years deal, Berlin has insisted on setting a ludicrous target for Greeces budget surplus. (That target is 3.5 percent of gross domestic product every year starting in 2018  roughly equivalent, as a percentage of G.D.P., to Americas military budget, but in Greeces case, purely to service its foreign debt.)
Conservation groups submitted an emergency petition last week requesting that the United States Fish and Wildlife Service increase protection for the only wild population of red wolves left in the world.

Red wolves, which are bigger than coyotes, but smaller than gray wolves, are the only wolf species found completely within the United States. Trapping, shooting, poisoning and destruction of habitat in the 1960s, however, eliminated all but 17 of them from their native range, which was primarily in the Southeast. In By 1980, red wolves were declared extinct in the wild, and the last animals were gathered and bred, then reintroduced in North Carolina in 1987. They were the first federally-listed species to be returned to their native habitat, and have served as models for other programs.

Recently the population has declined by more than 50 percent in just two years. There are only 45 to 60 red wolves now living in the wild, and they are threatened, mostly by hunters mistaking them for coyotes and shooting them, said Tara Zuardo, a wildlife lawyer at the Animal Welfare Institute. The wildlife service recently announced a review of the Red Wolf Recovery Program. It was prompted in part by pressure from North Carolinas Wildlife Resources Commission, a state-run conservation agency funded in part by the sale of hunting and fishing licenses, which has called the program a failure and claimed that wolves have damaged private land. Some changes to the program were taken against the advice of some of the biologists of the federal red wolf program.
After about 10 minutes, zoo workers shot and killed the animal. The boy, who was hurt but not severely, was taken to a hospital and released on Saturday night, zoo officials said.

Thane Maynard, the zoos director, has forcefully rejected criticism of the decision to kill the gorilla instead of using a tranquilizer dart. He said at a news conference on Monday that the dart could have caused the animal, capable of crushing a coconut with his hands, to become even more agitated.

We are all devastated that this tragic accident resulted in the death of a critically endangered gorilla, Mr. Maynard said.

A statement from the boys family, released through a public relations company, said:

We are so thankful to the Lord that our child is safe. He is home and doing just fine. We extend our heartfelt thanks for the quick action by the Cincinnati Zoo staff. We know that this was a very difficult decision for them, and that they are grieving the loss of their gorilla. We hope that you will respect our privacy at this time.

The animal rights group Stop Animal Exploitation Now said the zoo had been cited twice recently for problems with its enclosures and facilities. In the negligence complaint it filed with the Department of Agriculture against the zoo, it called for the maximum federal penalty of $10,000 per infraction per animal, it said in a statement.
I like Jerry Brown, but people can make their own choices, Mr. Sanders said. What we have had to do, and we have done pretty well in every state in this country, is taken on Democratic governors, taken on Democratic senators, taken on Democratic members of the House, Democratic mayors and all of their political apparatus. And yet we have won in 20 states, and I think we are going to win here in California.

Mr. Brown, in his letter, offered strong praise for Mr. Sanders, noting the similarities between the Sanders campaign and the one Mr. Brown waged when he ran for president in 1992.

He has driven home the message that the top 1 percent has unfairly captured way too much of Americas wealth, leaving the majority of people far behind, he wrote. In 1992, I attempted a similar campaign.

Still, the governor, who lost to Bill Clinton in a contest that left lingering bitterness between the two men, offered a powerful case against Mr. Trump in arguing that Mrs. Clinton had proved not only that she had abundant support among Democrats, but the ability to win in November. Mr. Brown met privately with Mrs. Clinton in San Francisco and Mr. Clinton in Sacramento last week.

Mr. Trump, Mr. Brown noted in his letter, has called climate change a hoax and said he will tear up the Paris Climate Agreement.

He has promised to deport millions of immigrants and ominously suggested that other countries may need the nuclear bomb. He has also pledged to pack the Supreme Court with only those who please the extreme right, Mr. Brown wrote.

The stakes couldnt be higher, he added.

Even if she loses here, Mrs. Clinton will almost certainly have enough delegates to win the nomination. But a loss in the largest state  and in a Democratic stronghold  would not only provide a dark end to what has been at times an unhappy campaign, but might also empower Mr. Sanders to stay in the race, further delaying the point when Mrs. Clinton can turn her full attention to Mr. Trump.
More than at any time in memory, the United States faces a choice this fall between unpopular presidential candidates. Most voters view Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump with disdain.

Yet one popular politician looms over the contest. Thats President Obama, who this spring has seen his approval rating again creep past 50 percent. For Democrats hoping to hold the White House, that has come at just the right time.

Mr. Obamas standing marks a final-year turn in the arc of a presidency defined largely by the intensity of his opposition. But it also colors the November battle to choose his successor.

Notwithstanding hopes to the contrary when his career began, the nations first African-American president has proved powerless to reverse a decades-long trend toward political polarization. As a result, his average approval rating in the Gallup Poll has rarely surpassed 50 percent for six of his seven full years in office.
Stephen Hawking, the great explainer of cosmic mysteries, is also known for sharing his wisdom on more earthly matters. He has weighed in on climate change (bold action is needed), boycotting Israel (he favored it), and the departure of Zayn Malik from the boy band One Direction (he could still be in the band in a parallel universe).

But on ITVs Good Morning Britain on Tuesday, Mr. Hawking, a theoretical physicist and best-selling author, acknowledged a mystery that he has found impenetrable.

Asked to explain the political ascendance of Donald J. Trump, he said simply, I cant.

He is a demagogue who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator, he said in prerecorded remarks.

A message left with the Trump campaign on Tuesday was not immediately returned. The subject did not come up at a news conference that the Republican presidential candidate held in Manhattan on Tuesday.
New Jersey has backed Democrats in every presidential election since 1992, but a new poll released on Tuesday shows that the state would be in play in a matchup between Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump  as long as Gov. Chris Christie is not on his ticket.

A poll from Monmouth University found that 38 percent of registered voters support Mrs. Clinton and 34 percent back Mr. Trump. The survey, which had a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points, found that the remaining voters would either back a third-party candidate or that they remain undecided.

Blue Jersey doesnt appear quite so blue at this stage of the campaign, but we should keep in mind that neither major party candidate has fully locked in the support of their partisan bases, said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute.

When that happens, Mr. Murray suggested, it could benefit Mrs. Clinton because there are more Democrats than Republicans in New Jersey.
WASHINGTON  The Supreme Court on Tuesday took action in two death penalty cases, rejecting a broad constitutional challenge to capital punishment from Louisiana and reversing a death sentence from Arizona.

The moves were in keeping with the courts general approach in this area. It has been open to cutting back on the availability of the death penalty but not inclined to test its constitutionality.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer, dissenting in Glossip v. Gross last year, urged his colleagues to consider the larger question. Rather than try to patch up the death penaltys legal wounds one at a time, he wrote, I would ask for full briefing on a more basic question: whether the death penalty violates the Constitution.

The case from Louisiana asked the justices to consider that question, but the court turned down the appeal without comment. Justice Breyer dissented and, as in Glossip, only Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined him.
CARACAS, Venezuela  The Organization of American States said Tuesday that it had begun taking steps against Venezuela to defend democracy in the region, a rare rebuke once reserved for countries undergoing crises like coups.

The move by the O.A.S., a United Nations-like group that represents every country in the hemisphere except for Cuba, now starts a process that could eventually lead to Venezuela being suspended from the body.

The O.A.S. cited what it called an alteration of constitutional order in Venezuela, which it said had gravely affected the countrys democracy. Sergio Jellinek, a spokesman for the bodys secretary general, Luis Almagro, said Venezuela now was plagued by a political system with no outcomes where the government operates by decree.

Venezuelas government, with its low popularity and one of the worlds worst economic collapses, is facing a growing chorus accusing it of doubling down on authoritarianism.
KABUL, Afghanistan  The number of Afghans internally displaced by the 15-year conflict in their country has more than doubled since the beginning of 2013, with an average of 1,000 people a day forced from their homes this year alone, Amnesty International said on Tuesday.

A sign that the war continues to affect civilians in large numbers came even as Amnesty sought to draw attention to their desperate situation. The Taliban attacked passenger buses in the northern province of Kunduz early Tuesday morning, killing at least 10 passengers and abducting dozens, local officials said.

The Amnesty report, released at a news conference in Kabul, the capital, said that many of the 1.2 million displaced Afghans were living in miserable conditions in camps, lacking adequate water, food and health facilities.

While their number, which stood at about 500,000 at the end of 2012, has more than doubled since then, resources allocated to dealing with the situation have reached the lowest point since 2009, the report said.
LONDON  A company can bar a Muslim female employee from wearing a head scarf at work, as long as the policy applies to all religious garb and does not single out Islam, according to an advisory opinion that the European Unions highest court released on Tuesday.

The opinion was handed down in a case brought by a Muslim woman in Belgium, Samira Achbita, who was fired from her job as a receptionist at a security company. It comes as Europe struggles with the role of Islam in the public sphere, a debate fueled in recent years by rising immigration, the refugee crisis and concerns about terrorism.

Juliane Kokott, an advocate general with the European Court of Justice, wrote in the opinion that a ban on head scarves does not constitute direct discrimination based on religion, which would violate European regulations, if that ban is founded on a general company rule prohibiting visible political, philosophical and religious symbols in the workplace, and not on stereotypes or prejudice against one or more particular religions or against religious beliefs in general.

The opinion is not the final word on the matter; a formal judgment is expected later this year. But advisory opinions are usually a reliable guide to the thinking of the court, which is based in Luxembourg and interprets European law for the 28-nation union. The courts powers have expanded as a result of the 2009 Lisbon Treaty; where once it focused mostly on trade and competition cases, it now has oversight in areas like civil rights as well.
And France, which has reverted under the current Socialist government to a more mistrusting view of NATO and its American leadership, is stretched thin in its military campaigns in Mali, the Central African Republic and North Africa and Syria, let alone patrolling its own streets against terrorist attack.

France is likely to contribute only about 150 soldiers to the new deployments, NATO officials say, after finally agreeing to the idea of forward deployments in Poland after initial opposition. Germany, which six months ago opposed these deployments, agreed in return for efforts at renewed dialogue with Russia. It also agreed to lead one battalion.

So the search goes on for a fourth lead nation. Mr. Stoltenberg is confident it will be found by the summit meeting.

The deployments are important, because these combat battalions are designed not to be simple tripwires, but to be large enough and sufficiently well equipped to do an invader real damage. Then they can be reinforced more quickly with the enhanced rapid-reaction force and  another NATO and American decision  to station another United States armored combat brigade of around 5,000 soldiers in Europe (for a total of three) and to pre-position its heavy equipment like tanks and artillery.

Poland is demanding that some of that equipment be pre-positioned on its territory, but for the moment, most of it will go to Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, which have storage and transport facilities dating from the Cold War.

Only now, in fact, is NATO actually surveying the infrastructure  the bridges, roads and railways  of relatively newer member states in Central and Eastern Europe, not having judged it necessary before to plan how to quickly reinforce them in case of a Russian invasion. Pre-positioning in Eastern Europe would currently require large sums for capital investment to build special new warehouses and infrastructure, Mr. Lute said.
Georgia, a proud nation in the Caucasus that went to war with Russia in 2008, is no stranger to conflict. But a weekend assault by sausage-wielding attackers at a vegan cafe in central Tbilisi is fanning concerns that a simmering culture war could be intensifying.

The attack began Sunday evening at the bohemian Kiwi Cafe  a popular spot for foreigners and Georgians alike  when, witnesses say, more than a dozen men carrying slabs of meat on skewers suddenly showed up and began pelting patrons with grilled meat, sausages and fish.

Witnesses writing on social media said that customers at the cafe, who were watching an animated science fiction sitcom called Rick and Morty, felt intimidated by the men, who refused to leave. The cafe referred to the attackers, some of whom wore sausages around their necks, as anti-vegan extremists.

A group of people who prepared an anti-vegan provocative action, entered and started to be violent, said a post on the cafes Facebook page. They pulled out some grilled meat, sausages, fish and started eating them and throwing them at us, and finally they started to smoke. It added, They were just trying to provoke our friends and disrespect us. The cafe said that it called the police, but that the assailants fled and no one was arrested.
BERGA, Spain  The Patum, a spectacular festival here that dates to medieval times, plays out the struggle between good and evil  represented by costumes and statues of angels, fire-wielding demons and dragons, and Christian knights fighting Turks and Moors  amid raucous celebrations over five days.

But here in the heartland of Catalonia, the festival has also come to symbolize the far more modern political and social struggles of Spain  between right and left, church and state, the Spanish government in Madrid and Catalan secessionists.

Catalonias independence drive has imbued the Patum, like so many other cultural symbols and expressions here, with ever greater nationalist significance for Catalans.

On Sunday, the far-left mayor of Berga, Montserrat Venturos, 30, watched the climax of the Patum from the town halls balcony. Other separatist politicians sat alongside her, but no representatives from the Catholic Church or the Spanish military were present, apparently for the first time in the festivals history.
LONDON  The Polish government said on Tuesday that it would revive an effort to extradite the filmmaker Roman Polanski, whom the American authorities have wanted for decades. He pleaded guilty in 1977 to having sex with a 13-year-old girl but fled to Europe the next year, on the eve of his sentencing.

The announcement is the latest twist in a long-running legal battle that, at least in Poland, seemed to have ended.

On Oct. 30, a judge in Krakow, Poland, ruled that turning over Mr. Polanski would be an obviously unlawful deprivation of liberty and that the state of California was unlikely to provide humane conditions of confinement for the filmmaker, who is 82. The next month, the Krakow prosecutors office said it would abide by the judges ruling.

But in a statement on Tuesday, Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro, who is also Polands chief prosecutor, said he had decided to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court, calling the trial judges decision a serious breach of the extradition agreement between the United States and Poland.
JERUSALEM  Three Palestinians convicted of murder were executed in the Hamas-controlled coastal territory of Gaza on Tuesday, less than a week after Hamas lawmakers called for the resumption of capital punishment.

The three men had exhausted their appeals, and the families of the victims refused a last-minute request to spare the men, who were executed at police headquarters in Gaza City, according to Alresalah, a pro-Hamas website, and Maan, a Palestinian news agency.

The executions, the first approved by a court in nearly two years, were meant to deter those who may think of committing such crimes, the Gaza general prosecutors office said in a statement, according to a translation published in Maan. No one at the office was immediately available for comment.

Two men were hanged, one after being found guilty of beating another man to death with a hammer in August, Alresalah reported, and the other on a murder conviction. A third man was executed by a firing squad after he shot and killed a man in 2014 who was trying to collect a debt.
NEAR FALLUJA, Iraq  Along the battle line north of Falluja, small units of Shiite fighters are raining mortar shells and rockets down on the city and its Islamic State occupiers. Militia graffiti is scrawled in red paint along a network of low walls cratered by bullets and bombs, and a wailing ambulance siren signals another load of wounded bound for treatment away from the front.

The battle for Falluja has become entrenched outside the city itself. Iraqi forces surrounding the area have been bogged down by a fierce Islamic State counterattack. A few civilians managed to escape the city as the fighting closed in, but the status of tens of thousands still trapped there is an urgent question.

Some parts of the extended battlefield are lush with date palm trees and almost bucolic, familiar to anyone who watched television images of American Marines fighting over the same territory more than a decade ago. But mostly, the land is brown and parched, scarred by the fighting. A charred tank, split in two, sits at an intersection, and smoke is always rising in the distance, from an airstrike, a mortar or a car bomb.
TEHRAN  A leading conservative was re-elected speaker of Irans Parliament on Tuesday, denying reformists a post they thought they had earned with a big win in February elections.

In a mild surprise, an overwhelming majority of Irans lawmakers chose a conservative candidate, Ali Larijani, who has held the position since 2008. Mr. Larijani, 57, scion of a powerful Iranian family, is not considered a die-hard conservative, as he managed the Parliaments approval last summer of the nuclear agreement with Western powers.

Moreover, Mr. Larijani has supported in recent years the government of President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate who was elected on promises of reaching a nuclear deal and loosening Irans severe restrictions on personal freedoms.

Of 276 lawmakers present in the 290-seat house, Mr. Larijani won 237 votes, Iranian state television reported.
TEHRAN  A popular Iranian actress whose latest movie won two awards at the recent Cannes Film Festival threw her native country into an uproar on Tuesday after images emerged suggesting that she had a feminist tattoo on her arm.

At a news conference on Monday celebrating the return of the cast of the movie, The Salesman, to Tehran, cameras captured what appeared to be a tattoo of the woman power symbol of a raised fist sticking out from under the sleeve of the lead actress, Taraneh Alidoosti, 32, known by some as the Natalie Portman of Iran.

On Irans vibrant social media scene, hard-liners were quick to criticize Ms. Alidoosti, who is married and has a daughter, saying the symbol meant she supported abortion rights and was against the family.

Her many fans came to her defense on Twitter. Now that I think about it, I have been feminist from the very beginning, wrote one woman. Other Twitter users were less flattering. You are advertising foreigners, said one.
JERUSALEM  An Israeli labor court on Tuesday awarded compensation to a former maintenance man in the official residence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accepting the workers claims of abusive terms of employment at the hands of Mr. Netanyahus wife, Sara.

The court award was the latest blow to the Netanyahus, who are under scrutiny over the use of public funds and the management of their official and private households, and longstanding accusations that they have been living the high life at the expense of others.

The Netanyahus have denied any wrongdoing. The Netanyahu family attorneys in the law office of Dr. J. Weinroth and Co. described the allegations of the maintenance worker as mendacious and said they had no basis in reality.

The court award came two days after the police announced that they had completed a 15-month investigation of the prime ministers residences that focused on a number of issues that raised the suspicion of the commission of criminal offenses including fraud and breach of trust.
BEIRUT, Lebanon  Rescue workers pulled children and other victims from the rubble of their homes in insurgent-held northern Syria on Tuesday morning after the latest aerial bombardments killed dozens of people.

The attacks in the cities of Idlib and Aleppo began Monday night, and, witnesses said, they appeared to be airstrikes conducted by Syrian government forces or their Russian allies. Rescue workers and antigovernment activists said that more than 20 people had been killed, with dozens more injured.

In Idlib, eight strikes around the National Hospital destroyed several buildings in a crowded area of the city; earlier, opposition activists had said the hospital had been struck. The attacks disrupted services at one of the areas few remaining hospitals; in Aleppo, a hospital was damaged.
What in the World offers you glimpses of what our journalists are observing around the globe. Let us know what you think: whatintheworld@nytimes.com

If you want to visit Mount Everest, you had better be pretty adventurous  and not just for the climb. Getting to the mountain usually means flying into Lukla, Nepal, home of Tenzing-Hillary Airport, one of the scariest airstrips in the world.

Its just a short flight to Lukla from Kathmandu, the capital, but its plenty challenging for pilots, who have to guide 19-passenger turboprops through rugged mountain terrain where the wind often swirls at 30 to 40 miles per hour and thick fogs can form. Not much weather data is available for conditions along the way, so pilots have to rely on reports from previous flights before deciding whether to take off.

Midway through a recent flight, as passengers fumbled to take photographs of the Himalayas, the plane ran into turbulence, dropped sharply and pivoted left. The pilot told passengers not to worry, and one trekker laughed through his teeth.
When Gertrude Stein wrote a rose is a rose is a rose, she probably wasnt thinking about perfume.

When it comes to fragrances, rose is a coveted ingredient that is able to shape-shift; there is no one true rose scent. Instead, the flower, which mythologically bloomed from Aphrodites tears over her lover Adonis, plays extremely well with other ingredients, allowing a perfumer to use it as a kind of lush canvas upon which to dream up a new olfactory memory.

Depending on the perfumers vision, rose can smell fresh or feral, peppery or syrupy, whisper light or as dank as a mossy cave. It can soften up a woodsy composition or add a voluptuous undernote to an otherwise chemical scent. It turns ouds creamy and makes fruits flirtatious.

Yet despite its heroic position in the perfumers tool kit, rose has backslid in recent years as a star ingredient (with the exception of some popular designer fragrances, like Stella McCartneys signature powdery bonbon or the over-honeyed party spritz that is Viktor & Rolfs Flowerbomb). Most contemporary rose scents in the mainstream market are aimed at young women, who presumably want to smell like an inoffensive, dewy bouquet. Such fragrances often come in pink and violet bottles, tied up with grosgrain ribbon or with waxy rose-shaped caps. (See Dolce & Gabbanas latest offering, Rosa Excelsa.)

But independent perfumers are now bringing back the rose in all its glory, liberating it from the delicate bottles and coquettish reputation to prove that giant, heady rose can be a powerhouse on men and women alike. Rose  the scent of passion, of love, of dulcet longing  is the new unisex.
An uncooked chicken, it might as well be Evies heart, so keenly does she yearn to follow the brazen, raven-haired Suzanne, to pledge into her familial contract with the other girls.

She gets her chance when her bike chain derails on a dirt road. Suzanne and four others pull up in a black bus festooned with a painted crude heart, crowned with drippy lashes, like an eye. What a perfect prophecy, an unstoppable dark force married to everything Evie craves  to be seen and to be loved.

The girls, speaking of a godlike man named Russell, take Evie to a ranch where she registers, then discounts, how everything seemed sticky and a little rotten because everyone seems to belong. When Suzanne braids Evies hair, the scrim of romantic yearning that can veil such friendships is, for a moment, lit:

It was an unexplained blessing. Her tangy breath on my neck as she swept my hair to one side. . . . Even the pimples Id seen on her jaw seemed obliquely beautiful, the rosy flame an inner excess made visible.

Suzanne worships Russell, so Evie meets him with her heart laid bare. Little tests, first, she recalls. A touch on my back, a pulse of my hand. . . . And how quickly hed ramped it up, easing his pants to his knees. (Jeff Guinns biography Manson, a good companion to this novel, reveals a fast demand for fellatio to be a Manson technique as well.)

Evie passes test after test as she commutes to the ranch by bike. She keeps servicing Russell, receiving his towel with gratitude to clean herself. But she steals to please Suzanne; she washes windows with joy because Suzanne is there, singing. Still a virgin, she lets Suzanne coax her to bed with a guitarist, Mitch Lewis, from whom Russell hopes to extract a recording deal for his songs. Suzanne seems clearly modeled on Susan Atkins, who kissed Mansons feet the day they met. Atkins either stabbed or held down Sharon Tate (she confessed to both). How could it not be right, she said in court, when it is done with love? Unlike Atkins, Suzanne cultivates her own devotee. She praises Evie, instructs her and annexes her with light touches. She throws Evies life into sharp, mysterious relief, revealing a world beyond the known world, the hidden passage behind the bookcase. Also unlike Atkins, Suzanne flashes a surprising protective side that will prove pivotal.

Cline makes Russell, like Manson, a master manipulator who can speak to a young girls insecurities with the precision of a picador. The flattered sickness in me was so pleasurable, Evie recalls. Like Manson, Russell can sweet-talk people out of cash and cars. And his friendship with Mitch recapitulates Mansons attempted lock on Dennis Wilson, the Beach Boys drummer.

But Cline withholds the truly vicious Manson who kept his followers paranoid, awaited a race war, sodomized a 13-year-old girl in front of the others, beat some girls and used others for knife-throwing games and traded their bodies like currency. This keeps Evie sympathetic. If she doesnt glimpse pure evil, can she be blamed for signing on? Its also conceivable that Cline flinched, for in not pushing Evie to the edge, she eludes a harrowing, possibly profound exploration of her soul.
Board of Education Area 3: Ken Williams

Incumbent Ken Williams is running against longtime Irvine Unified School District Trustee Michael Parham and former Irvine school board candidate Margaret Brown.

Mr. Williams has our endorsement. He has proven himself a willing opponent of the entrenched interests in education and an advocate for greater parental choice.

Im struggling against the establishment, against a status quo that is hurting kids, Mr. Williams told us. Ive always been for limited government and more freedoms, liberties and responsibilities for students and parents.

And in that struggle, Mr. Williams has done well for the students of Orange County. The voters should return him to the Board of Education.

Area 4: Jack Bedell

Incumbent Jack Bedell is squaring off with former county supervisor and state Assemblyman Chris Norby and Zonya Marcenaro-Townsend.

Jack Bedell is our choice. He has shown a willingness to put the interests of students and parents first. He also has the respect of both charter organizations and teachers unions. While the ability to cross the aisle is a good quality, the union support brings concern because of their aversion to charter schools and other reforms.

However, the endorsement of the California Charter Schools Association and fellow OCBE Trustee Linda Lindholm carry considerable weight with us. We hope Mr. Bedell will continue to lean toward greater educational reform and parental choice. We will certainly be watching.

As for challenger Chris Norby, we respect his lengthy service to the residents and taxpayers of Orange County, but we dont see a reason to unseat Mr. Bedell.
Its sounds silly, but Wendel Zeller wants his Liberty Bell back.

Of course, when you dig a little deeper, its not silly at all. The bell, all 350 pounds of it, has been missing for more than a decade. Zeller hasnt called police because he doesnt know if a crime was committed. He just wants someone, possibly a kid who can use the internet, to help him find it.

Who would steal the Liberty Bell?

His wife, Kathi, after much discussion, has allowed a space in their Cypress garage for the Liberty Bell if he ever gets it back.

Zeller is 77 now, with a lifetime of stories about having his freedom snatched from him as a child. He talks about the meaning of the word liberty and about how replicas of the Statue of Liberty and the Liberty Bell  both obsessions of his that make Kathis eyes roll  need to be together to honor the great country where a boy from just outside Budapest, Hungary, could make a home and a life.

If I stay healthy long enough, Ill bring them together, Zeller said at his home on Memorial Day, when he was not spending the holiday like he wanted to. He wanted to be out front parading his two hulking masterpieces on the street, playing marching music and hearing the ringing sounds of liberty.

He saved an 18-foot-tall Statue of Liberty last year after it appeared as a float in the Rose Parade. Zeller simply called up the float-making company and asked if he could have it before they sent it to the salvage yard. They said yes. He hauled it into a storage facility, added heft to its structure and repainted it turquoise.

But he knew his dream wasnt complete as long as his Liberty Bell was missing.

Zeller was a boy in Dunabogdany, Hungary, in 1947, just after the end of World War II, when the communists scooped him up in the middle of the night. He and his family were relocated to East Germany.

After the war, his father heard about a priest in Los Angeles at St. Stephen Catholic Church who was helping immigrants from Hungary and Germany, so thats where they moved. The year was 1951. Zeller remembers how much he didnt want to come.

He went to St. Agnes High School in Los Angeles. Then his father decided he need to go back to Germany to learn the metal trade. He spent four years as an apprentice and journeyman in a metal foundry. For a second time, he didnt want to go to America.

But in 1958, he returned. And he fell in love  with Kathi and his new country. They had two children, Robert, 50, and Rita, 46. They heard about a place they just had to see: Orange County.

Everything was inexpensive and new, Zeller said.

They bought their home in Cypress in August of 1972 for $38,000. He established his own metal fabrication business in Los Alamitos.

The Liberty Bell idea came to him during George H.W. Bushs presidency. It was 1992, and Zeller was filled with patriotism. So he called Philadelphia to get the dimensions of the actual Liberty Bell  12 feet in diameter, 2,080 pounds. He made a replica out of scrap metal, concrete and plaster of Paris. The bell, 48 inches in diameter and 36 inches tall, weighed 150 pounds (including the replica crack); the frame to hold it weighed 200 pounds.

Zeller was so proud of his creation. He pulled it on a cart in parades in Bellflower and La Palma.

Finally, he donated the bell to Oxford Academy, an award-winning high school in Cypress. Zellers bell found a home in the computer lab.

This is where the story gets a little murky. In the early 2000s, Oxford added an auditorium. Zeller heard that while the place was under construction, an unidentified person showed up to take away the Liberty Bell.

But that may be only a rumor. What is true is that Wendel Zellers replica Liberty Bell is no longer at the school. He hasnt seen it since the early 2000s.

Zeller promises there will be no questions asked if his Liberty Bell is returned.

Someday, he wants to find a permanent home for his two replicas. The ideal place would be Alpine Village in Torrance, he said, noting the German-themed atmosphere.

His wife, meanwhile, doesnt always understand the effort he puts into his patriotic projects.

Hes always building something, she said. Were fighting about it all the time. He has funny, strange ideas. Sometimes hes crazy.

She doesnt have much hope that he will find the bell. It was a nice bell, but its gone, she said.

Zeller said hes just a guy driven by patriotism.

Maybe Im just thankful to live in a country like this, he said. When I was a kid, I had my freedom taken away.

Contact the writer:
Danny Gamboa held the steel frame steady while two volunteers spray-painted the bike a chalky, impervious white.

Like a cross planted at a roadside memorial, the white ghost bike would be placed in Newport Beach, at the very spot where an 8-year-old  described as a wonderful boy by neighbors  died when he and his bicycle were struck by a garbage truck the day before.

Later, volunteers shrouded another bike in flat white paint. This one was for Rod Bennett, a 53-year-old math teacher at Arroyo Seco Junior High School killed instantly that same afternoon in Santa Clarita. A car crashed into Bennett who was on his Eddy Merckx bike riding in the far-right eastbound lanes of Placerita Canyon Road, the California Highway Patrol reported.

Gamboa, 42, founder of the group Ghost Bikes, used the two recent bicycle fatalities as object lessons for his students, ages 14 to 18, during a class on bike safety at Houghton Park in Long Beach on a recent afternoon.

It could happen to any one of us at any moment, he said.

Gamboa became interested in the movement, which started in St. Louis and New York, when a neighbor, Anthony Navarro, lost his 6-year-old son in a bicycle accident. It was Thanksgiving Day. Navarro was preparing the turkey when he ran outside to see his son lying dead in the street.

Gamboa grabbed his own sons bike, painted it white and placed it at the collision scene.

It really struck me, like this couldve been my son, Gamboa said. It couldve been anyones son. I took it kind of personal.

He ended up making a small movie about the Ghost Bike club and is working on a full-length documentary on the topic.

The group uses volunteers to paint the bikes and place them at the scene. Members are mostly made up of mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles and grandparents whove lost loved ones in bicycle collisions, he said.

We welcome them with open arms, Gamboa said. For Anthony (Navarro), it has been very therapeutic. It has helped him get through five years of missing his 6-year-old boy.

The ghostbikes.org website says there are 630 of the painted bikes throughout the world. But dont ask Gamboa how many hes placed.

I lost count at like, 100, he said.

By having the students create the ghost bikes, he hopes the message of bicycle safety will be imprinted in their heads and hearts. He also teaches about wearing helmets, riding with traffic (not the wrong way) and using a light at night.

I want to teach them there is the possibility of a collision and not to put yourself in that situation, he said.

Gamboa has a network of volunteers, including Ted Rogers of BikinginLA, and Ed Ryder who keeps stats in Orange County, who alert him when theres been a bicycle death. As a former project manager, coordinating the ghost bike ceremonies comes easily for him. He gets old bikes from people who view his website and drop off rusted beach cruisers and 10-speeds and from companies who donate used bikes.

He sadly confirmed what Rogers and others say, that there are about 70-80 bike deaths in Southern California a year  and rising. He doesnt see ghost bikes as a protest but more like street art.

Vincent Chang, who started Bike San Gabriel Valley, remembers two ghost bikes he helped place in Pasadena.

Its to honor the individual who passed, Chang said. Also, theres hope that it brings to light the need for safety improvements. They act as a reminder to vehicles that we have to share the road.

Gamboas been asked if he has a morbid fixation. Its a question he quickly shrugs off.

Our goal is to be put out of business so we dont ever have to do this again, he answered.
LOS ANGELES  Gov. Jerry Brown endorsed Hillary Clinton for president on Tuesday, intervening in the highly contested Democratic primary and telling voters she has the tenacity and skill to advance the Democratic agenda.

Democrats have shown, by millions of votes, that they want her as their nominee, he said.

But Browns endorsement, which came one week before next Tuesdays primary in his state, also offered strong praise for Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has been campaigning nearly full-time in California in an attempt to post a victory that might lift his long-shot battle to defeat Clinton. In doing so, Brown took note of the similarities between the campaign the California governor ran for president in 1992 and Sanders own appeal.

He has driven home the message that the top one percent has unfairly captured way too much of Americas wealth, leaving the majority of people far behind, he said in an open letter to Democrats and independents, who are permitted to vote in the primary. In 1992, I attempted a similar campaign.

Brown lost that race to Clintons husband, Bill Clinton, in a contest that left lingering bitterness between the two men. Bill Clinton met with Brown in his office in Sacramento last week, suggesting any remaining strain between the two political figures are easing.

But the governor, who is now 78 and midway through his fourth and final term as the states chief executive, made clear that more than anything, his decision was driven by his concern about Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee.

Trump, Brown noted in his letter, has called climate change a hoax and said he will tear up the Paris Climate Agreement. He has promised to deport millions of immigrants and ominously suggested that other countries may need the nuclear bomb. He has also pledged to pack the Supreme Court with only those who please the extreme right.

The stakes couldnt be higher, Brown said.
After a few years of working at Chinese and Japanese restaurants, Banny Hong said he decided to introduce Orange County to a new cuisine from his native country, Burma.

Irrawaddy Taste Of Burma, 7076 Katella Ave., Stanton, next to a Smart and Final market, opened in March. While there are Burmese restaurants popping up in Northern California and the Bay Area, Hong believes his is the first in Orange County.

Hong said he opened a Burmese restaurant to stand out among the numerous Chinese and Japanese restaurants competing with each other locally.

We really know Burmese food, Hong said. And its not only food, we are bringing our culture. Orange County is a big population, and they dont know about Burmese restaurants.

Also known as Myanmar, Burma is a southeast Asian country bordered by India, China and Thailand. Burmese food combines flavors from the three countries while adding its own characteristics through cooking techniques and spices, Hong said.

Some of the specialties on Irrawaddys menu include the common Burmese street food dish Moh Hinga, a catfish soup made with rice noodles, lentils, boiled egg and lemongrass.

Tea leaves are also an ingredient. A tea leaf salad is made with crunchy peas, roasted peanuts, romaine lettuce, lime and green tea leaves imported from Burma. A lamb dish is also made with Burmese tea leaves and a mix of spices including tamarind.

Most main dishes vary in price from $10 to $15. Appetizers and sides are $5 or more. Irrawaddy is open from 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.

Mi Casita es su casita

Three years after a fire damaged its kitchen, Placentia eatery Mi Casita Restaurante will open on Friday.

Mi Casita closed after a fire that had started in a neighboring building destroyed half the restaurant, including the kitchen, a walk-in refrigerator and storage area. New equipment was purchased.

Renovations include new flooring, a patio area and additional decorative arches. But, the menu hasnt changed, manager Jesus Gonzalez said.

The molcajetes are back, he said about the restaurants famous dish of homemade salsa, cactus, cheese, chorizo and choice of meat served in the traditional Mexican mortar and pestle.

The restaurants hours have changed. Mi Casitia will now be open Tuesday through Sunday and closed Mondays. Tuesday it will be open from 4 to 10 p.m. and serve only tacos.

The restaurant will have a grand opening reception starting at 4:30 p.m. on Friday. Attendees will get a free taco and can participate in activities, including a photo booth.

Clothing for a cause

The Orange-based nonprofit Casa Teresa will open a clothing store today in a 1905 Victorian bungalow at 234 N. Glassell.

Collection by Casa Teresa will provide a place for residents of its programs to get work and customer service experience. The store will also help support the nonprofits finances.

Items sold will include lightly used mens and womens clothing, accessories and shoes. The store will be open 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Thursdays and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

Casa Teresa provides pregnant women facing difficult circumstances with a home and programs that will help them with their futures.

Send business tips and news to aratzlaff@ocregister.com.

Contact the writer: aratzlaff@ocregister.com 714-796-7831
BAGHDAD  Iraqi forces pushed into the southern edge of Fallujah on Monday, enduring car bombs and sniper fire from Islamic State fighters determined to hold on to the strategic western city.

Lt. Gen. Abdulwahab al-Saedi, commander of the governments offensive, said forces from Iraqs army, police and elite Counterterrorism Service launched the assault on southern Fallujah early Monday.

Since Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the operation just over a week ago, government forces, together with Shiite militia troops and tribal fighters, mostly from Sunni Anbar province, have taken territory around Fallujah in preparation for an assault on its urban area.

Forces are still advancing, and clashes are ongoing, Saedi told state television.

Saedi said the government forces were approaching the Shuhadaa neighborhood in southern Fallujah on Monday afternoon. Speaking later to The Washington Post, he said militants detonated at least two car bombs and were using snipers and rockets to try to fend off the advancing troops.

The Counterterrorism Service forces have the experience to fight them, just like they did in Ramadi, Hit and Rutba, Saedi said, referring to other recent battles.

Military officials said the forces had not yet entered the city proper. North of Fallujah, federal police, soldiers and militiamen pressed into the town of Saqlawiya, while police SWAT forces raised the Iraqi flag over the police station in Naimiyah south of the city.

The Iraqi military also said its warplanes had launched attacks on Islamic State positions around Fallujah on Monday. Col. Steve Warren, a U.S. military spokesman, said American aircraft were also conducting strikes.

Lt. Gen. Abdul Ghani al-Assadi, commander of the Counterterrorism Service, said Fallujah was an especially complicated operation, because of its history of supporting insurgents and because the battle would unfold in an urban area with a significant civilian population.

Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, the U.S. commander in Iraq, warned last week that government forces may have to contend with Islamic State sympathizers among the local population.

Reasserting government control of Fallujah would deal a major blow to the group in western Iraq, where it has been able to draw strength from fellow militants in neighboring Syria.
Approval of Measure A in the upcoming primary would authorize the Orange County Board of Supervisors to establish a new commission to oversee campaign finance and ethics violations throughout the county, replacing the non-partisan California Fair Political Practices Commission that currently has this responsibility. The voter pamphlet includes an argument in favor of Measure A and the CFPPC does not weigh in either way on local government measures.

Still, its odd that there isnt some kind of rebuttal to the argument since, for no other reason, it appears to allow the fox to guard the hen house concerning campaign financing, conflicts of interest, lobbying and government ethics, plus it expands the size of government. So, why do we want to do this? What is broken that needs fixing? And just as important, what will it cost us? Oh, wait, a regulation requiring a fiscal impact analysis for any countywide ballot measure doesnt exist yet, so the backers of Measure A dont have to disclose that. Ironically, Measure B, also on the ballot, would establish just such a requirement for financial disclosure.

The case for Measure A isnt made when even it is not transparent and has not been sufficiently explained to the voters.

Sharon Sorensen

Fullerton

Stranger than fiction

I find it interesting that Stephen King, writer of violent novels, is speaking out against Donald Trump for his appeals to the basest and most violent elements in society. Apparently, King doesnt listen to the news. The violent elements in society seem to be coming out in droves, but they are not Donald Trump supporters.

You dont see throngs of Trump supporters showing up at Sanders or Clinton rallies trying to block the streets and the entrances to events. It is Democrats who want to shut down the free speech and free assembly of those who do not fall in line with their extremist views.

Gail Brunell

Laguna Niguel

Verdict reached

After reading the back and forth allegations in the race for the Superior Court seat held by Judge Scott Steiner, it appears the jury is in on justice in Orange County. It is stained by corruption, cronyism and nepotism.

Jon Railsback

Brea
Where More Musicians Get More Airtime

A 1 hour live broadcast Tuesday mornings from 10-11 AM that highlights and promotes the music of local artists and those playing in the Ottawa area. The focus is on alternative and independent musicians. We cover festivals, CD releases, events and the business of the music industry.
A Costa Mesa-based eye surgeon accused of negligence for signing medical marijuana recommendations after consulting with patients over video chat has relinquished his medical license.

Dr. Marc Richard Rose, who ran OC Medical Center in Anaheim, surrendered his license May 20 in the interest of a prompt and speedy settlement.

In 2014, the California Medical Board filed a petition to revoke Roses license two years after two of its investigators had posed as patients and visited his Anaheim clinic, seeking recommendations for medical marijuana to relieve severe headaches.

They each obtained recommendations valid for one year after chatting with the physician via video for less than three minutes each.

The board said Rose did not perform physical exams, did not discuss the risks nor the benefits of medical marijuana and did not ask them about their headache histories or the degree of their suffering or what their suffering prevented them from doing.

The board argued the ophthalmologist should have considered alternative treatments before recommending marijuana.

Dr. Rose made no effort to ensure adequate treatment of these two patients. He simply gave them the paper they wanted and sent them on their way, the board said.

Roses attorney could not be reached for comment.

One of his prior attorneys, Bruce Margolin of West Hollywood, has told the Register that medical marijuana dispensing requirements for doctors are unclear and that too many unnecessary steps could prevent patients from access to which they are legally entitled.

Contact the writer: jchandler@ocregister.com and @jennakchandler on Twitter
By the time someone could reach her, Elli had dug her face into dirt, frantically attempting to escape the horde of bees attacking her.

The seven-month-old pup was in the back yard of her La Habra Heights home late afternoon Friday when a swarm of bees descended, stinging her at least 150 times.

Ellis owner, Michael Francis Schiotis, a real estate agent, had just left to meet with clients, he said. His next-door neighbor saw the attack through a chain-link fence and rushed over to pound on the front door.

Schiotiss stepson, Chad Portugal, 17, and a friend tried to rescue the dog, but the bees overcame them.

They were chased down the street a good 500 yards, Schiotis said. It all happened so quickly.

Meanwhile, the neighbor donned protective clothing, a helmet and welders gloves and managed to carry the wounded dog inside the house.

She just plopped down and went into labored breathing, Schiotis said. Dirt was ground deep into her eyelids.

Portugal drove the dog to an animal clinic in Fullerton, where Schiotis met up with them. By then, Elli was limp from low blood pressure and nauseated.

They moved her to the head of the line, Schiotis said.

Elli stayed overnight at the hospital receiving fluids and antihistamines.

She is doing remarkably well, Schiotis said. Shes sleeping a lot, but shes eating well. We have to give her food a little at a time because she had stings inside her mouth.

The chocolate labs full name is Ghirardelli  inspired by, of course, the famous chocolatier.

Schiotis believes the bees escaped from a neighbors back yard. I just learned theres a beekeeper on our street, he said.

He hopes the beekeeper will cover the $1,900 veterinarian bill. But I would gladly have paid it regardless, Schiotis added.

For now, he is relieved to see Elli on the mend.

Im excited about watching her grow up, Schiotis said. Shes a good girl.

Contact the writer: sgoulding@ocregister.com
California Treasurer John Chiang recently threw his bookkeepers green eyeshade into the ring for governor in 2018. Hes running on his reputation as a numbers guy who has made it easier for people to access data on state and local public employee pay and pensions. Hes done so both in his current position since 2015 and for eight years before that as the state controller.

His finest hour came in 2011 when, as controller, he enforced Proposition 25, which voters had passed the previous November. It stipulated state legislators paychecks be withheld if they didnt pass a balanced budget by the June 15 constitutional deadline. I will enforce the voters demand, Mr. Chiang vowed when holding back the checks. Unfortunately, a state court ruled he didnt have jurisdiction, and the checks went out to the wayward lawmakers.

Currently, his major Democratic opponents could be Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who announced in 2015, and the former mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, who still is contemplating a run.

He certainly wouldnt gain the Libertarian Partys nomination for governor, Claremont McKenna College Political Science Professor Jack Pitney told us of Mr. Chiang. But compared to Newsom and Villaraigosa, he probably would be more fiscally prudent. Its good to have somebody out there who knows what the numbers are.

Mr. Pitney said the race could come down to that between a numbers nerd, Mr. Chiang, and the flash of the other two Democrats. This is a case of identity politics. Chiangs is that of a nerd. There are a lot of nerds out there.

A lot could depend on an endorsement by outgoing Gov. Jerry Brown, a self-described cheap politician who has balanced budgets in both his first stint of governor, 1975-83, and since 2011, when he brought the state out of the $20 billion-plus deficits of the Great Recession.

In releasing the May Revision of his 2016-17 state budget, Gov. Brown specifically said he was trying to avoid the overspending in good times that led to deficits in bad times, as under Gov. Gray Davis, a fellow Democrat, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican.

Mr. Newsom so far has taken the tack of backing two major initiatives on the Nov. 8 ballot. One would legalize marijuana in California, which we favor. The other would tighten gun regulations, which we think would not help reduce crime but could weaken Second Amendment rights.

Of Republicans, the only prominent potential candidate is San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, Mr. Pitney said. But the trouble is, hes not known elsewhere in the state. The two previous GOP candidates for governor, Meg Whitman in 2010 and Neel Kashkari in 2014, were crushed by Gov. Brown.
Memorial Day weekend marks the traditional start of the summer vacation season, but Americans customary yearning to travel can no longer be taken for granted.

Some could decide to stay home this year amid concerns about terrorism and associated airport-security headaches, fears about political tensions and labor strikes in Europe, and awareness of gasoline prices in California.

But others will still be enthusiastic about braving the worries and inconveniences  and even intent on carrying on with summer travel plans as usual to make a point that terrorists wont keep us down.

Are you eager or hesitant to travel this summer?

Fears about flying have been renewed by the crash of an Egypt Air flight from Paris to Cairo on May 19. Would you feel safe from terrorism if you travel by air? Have your feelings changed since the months after 9/11?

It used to be that a common dream vacation was a trip to Paris. Has that changed since last years terrorist attacks in and near Paris?

Authorities urge travelers to get to the airport two hours before domestic flights, three hours before international flights. Security snarls led to a shake-up in the Transportation Security Administration in May. Do long lines at airport security checkpoints discourage you?

All of these variables aside, do you have the money for a vacation this year?

Email your thoughts to letters@ocregister.com. Please include your full name and city or community of residence. Provide a daytime phone number.
Rescue teams have been scouring the thick woods of northern Hokkaido, Japan, for the past three days in search of a young boy who had been abandoned there by his parents, as punishment for being naughty.

7-year-old Yamato Tano-oka was first reported missing on Saturday, when his parents alerted the police saying that he had become separated while they were out walking through the forest, looking for wild vegetables. However, a day later, during questioning, one of the parents admitted that Yamato had been left alone in the bear-infested woods on purpose, as a form of punishment for misbehaving. Although the police has yet to confirm the exact reasons for this punishment, local media reports that he had been throwing rocks at passing cars and people.

Photo: Asahi TV video caption

It is still unclear how long Yamato was left on his own in the wild, but Japanese media claims the parents only lost sight of him for five minute before returning to get him, but he was nowhere to be found. The boys father. Takayuki Tano-oka, revealed that they were reluctant to alert the police at first, because of the circumstances of his disappearance, but were left with no choice after failing to find him on their own. I was not able to ask for (a search) with a reason of punishment, he told TV Asahi. I thought it might be taken as a domestic violence.

Over 150 rescuers and police officers are currently looking for Yamato, checking streams and heavy undergrowth, but have so far found no clues regarding his whereabouts. With no food or water, and with heavy rainfall having hit the area overnight, rescuers are doing all they can to find the missing boy as soon as possible. The chances of him running into someone in the woods are slim, as people from the nearby town of Nanae only rarely pass through the mountainous area, as a shortcut.

Photo: Asahi TV video caption

As the Telegraph notes, the forests of Hokkaido are home to around 3,000 Ussuri brown bears, which can be very aggressive. Two men were killed in bear attacks on the island this month, after venturing in the forest to pick wild bamboo shoots.

As expected, the story of Yamatos disappearance has infuriated the Japanese public. A large number of people has taken to social media to express their outrage against the parents reckless actions. This is not punishment but abuse! on Twitter user wrote. The parents are so stupid that I am speechless, another added.

It is yet unclear whether Takayuki Tano-oka and his wife will face criminal charges, but one thing is for sure  they regret everything. I want to apologize to my son, also for causing trouble for so many people, the father said. Im just filled with the feeling hoping that he comes back safely.

Sources: Japan Times, CNN
While most 10-year-olds are busy playing games, learning the ropes at school and enjoying their childhood, Janna Jihad risks her life reporting on the Palestinian  Israeli conflict in the occupied West Bank, in an effort to raise awareness to the plight of her people.

A resident of Nabi Saleh, a small Palestinian village north of the West Bank city of Ramallah, Janna has been a witness to the tragedies of war from a very young age. Her mother, Nawal, says she was traumatized after one of her friends was shot dead by the Israeli army. He was older than her but used to always be friendly and nice to her so that she became attached to him. When she saw his blood on the ground, she became frantic. She used to pen her feelings and frustrations in a locked journal every night, but the deaths of two of her relatives  her cousin, Mustafa Tamimi, and another uncle, Rushdie Tamimi  inspired her to get involved and reveal the injustice the people in her village are being subjected to.

Photo: Janna Jihad/Facebook

Jannas amateur journalist career began when she was only seven years old. Using her mothers iPhone, she began recording protests staged by locals and international peace activists, and the reaction of the Israeli army. Although professional journalists are often present at this kind of events, Janna feels they dont always report everything, so she considers it her responsibility to show the world the whole picture. To do this, she posts her videos on various social media platforms, like YouTube, Facebook or Snapchat. I want the world to know that we are not terrorists and to expose the armys violence against us, she told The Arab Weekly. Her Facebook page alone currently has over 80,000 likes.

Jannas mother says she is both proud of her, but also very scared for her safety. I am proud of my daughter because as a child, she tells her message to the world. She shares her fears, what she feels, and the problems of attending school, Nawal told Al Jazeera. But I am scared for her, when the army comes in the middle of the night and tear-gases our house, and we wake up in smoke  They attack our people who demonstrate against the settlers and the Israeli occupation.

Photo: Janna Jihad/Facebook

The girls uncle, Bilal, shares Nawals fears, but also feels that Palestinian children have no real choice. She should be playing and studying, but in our life its not a choice, he says. We must teach our children to not accept humiliation and not be cowards. We are under occupation. We cannot teach our children silence; they must fight for their freedom.

After rising to internet fame in 2014, and being hailed as one of the worlds youngest amateur reporters, Janna Jihad has expanded her work, traveling with her mother to places like Jerusalem, Hebron, Nablus and Jordan to shoot video reports and post them online.

Photo: Janna Jihad/Facebook

Janna says her dream is to study professional journalism at Harvard and get a job at CNN or FOX News, because they do not talk about Palestine, and I want to make reports on Palestine.

Seeing Janna in front of the camera speaking about the Palestinian  Israeli conflict and the atrocities taking place in the West Bank on a daily basis, its easy to forget she is just a 10-year-old girl. However, the playful child does come out, when the circumstances are right. Asked what an ideal world would look like to her, Janna says I want it to be pink.
Joe Honick

As I have written many times, this presidential election campaign is anything but presidential in character or dignity. Even before the party conventions, this campaign could be more precisely classified as vulgar.

Explanations should not be necessary any longer.

Whats of greater concern is to watch the most powerful partisan critics from the Republican party as they gradually but assuredly cave in to the man now tagged as the Presumptive Candidate, a description hardly ever used in the past before party conventions. In other words, despite some of the angriest, and certainly some of the most specific criticisms of Donald Trump by the likes of respected Speaker Paul Ryan, among others, they now seem to be coming to terms that party is more important than principle.

One of the lonelier but more courageous voices among the Republican party has been former candidate George Romney, who, even in his toughest campaign oratory, never descended to the level of Donald Trump who casually describes opponents of either party as liars and worse. Regarding Romney, Trump once declared: I have a store worth more than he is! And well he might, considering the largesse derived from his father. But, then, neither were Jesus, Moses nor a host of other courageous leaders so commercially endowed.

Even the conservative Wall Street Journal, which has waged a strong editorial opposition to the yellow-haired 70ish Trump, seems to be moderating its voice slowly so as not to look as it has completely surrendered in order to focus its efforts on Hillary Clinton, the other presumptive candidate. This reality was evidenced in the May 28-29 column by the very competent Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, whose essay proclaimed Ms. Clinton personified the decadence of Washington, D.C. It was not made clear what Trump personified, though many belonging to both parties have done their best to explain.

Amid all this nastiness, there is the sad descent of the once independent and politically defined ethicist Bernie Sanders, who has become just one more demagogue as he works overtime to diminish his own partys candidate. Some who have joked that Sanders could be a terrific VP partner for Mr. Trump, whose stances have changed or moderated on so many issues, he might even tolerate the Vermont Senator, if only to continue his sneer at the American electorate.

Nor can we avoid the reality that so many PR professionals have been powerful generators of partisan propaganda and how our industrys efforts will be described in years to come if, that is, the very media cooperating this time around are willing to confess their cooperation when the chance comes.

The final sadness and, perhaps the greatest danger, is that neither party can claim to have the right leadership needed at such a precarious time in our history.



* * *



Joe Honick is President of GMA International.
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COLUMBUS  A 27-year-old area man charged with four felonies stemming from a May 17 high-speed chase that morphed into a weeklong crime spree over multiple jurisdictions is scheduled to appear next week in Platte County Court.

County Court Judge Frank Skorupa set Anthony Mattison for a status hearing June 9 on theft by receiving stolen property, operating a motor vehicle to avoid arrest, possession of a controlled substance and habitual criminal charges.

The judge set Mattisons bond at $75,000, 10 percent allowed for release. The defendant has been in custody at the county jail since his arrest in Hastings a week ago.

The weeklong binge began with the May 17 incident in Columbus that got underway following a complaint about a loud vehicle in the 2500 block of 47th Avenue.

Columbus Police Officer Heath Aldrich wrote in his arrest statement that he made contact with Mattison, who was sitting behind the wheel of a Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS at the scene of the complaint.

As I started to ask for identification, the subject reached up to the steering column and did something that made the car start, Aldrich wrote in his statement. I told him to shut it off and he did not respond. I then saw him grab the shifter ... the subject then put it in gear and backed up at a high rate of speed.

Aldrich wrote that the suspect then accelerated rapidly, with the tires squealing and the vehicle sliding sideways, onto 47th Avenue and sped away.

Authorities believe Mattison, who was wanted for probation violations, stole a 2008 Chevrolet Silverado from Ernst Auto Body in Columbus, although he hasnt been charged in connection with that theft, which is still under investigation. The vehicle was involved in a pursuit involving the Nebraska State Patrol before it was abandoned in Grand Island, where another vehicle was reported stolen a short time later.

Members of the Central Nebraska Drug and Safe Streets Task Force arrested Mattison around 4:30 p.m. May 24 after locating a stolen vehicle in Hastings and staking out the location.

Task force authorities involved in the arrest in Hastings said the suspect has been connected to a vehicle theft in Aurora and police chase in Kearney that ended when the suspect crashed on a rural road and escaped on foot. A vehicle stolen in Gibbon was located in Hastings, which led to the arrest after a brief foot pursuit.

Mattisons most recent address was in Osceola, but he has family in Columbus.
COLUMBUS  An Omaha man was arrested last week in Columbus after arranging a sexual encounter with who he believed was a 14-year-old girl.

James Bruno, a 37-year-old who works as a street sweeper in Omaha, was arrested Friday after he came to Columbus to meet with a young female he met on Craigslist. The girl was actually an undercover police officer.

According to court documents, the "teenage girl" indicated several times over a six-week period that she was 14 years old and in the eighth grade during online communication with Bruno.

An affidavit supporting Bruno's arrest indicates he initiated communication about sexual acts and agreed to meet the girl at Centennial Park in Columbus, where he was arrested.

Bruno admitted to police that he wanted to hang out with the girl, saying " ... if sexual contact happened, he was good with that," court documents show.

The investigation began April 11.

Bruno was charged with sexual assault-use of a communication device. His bail was set at $250,000, 10 percent allowed for release.

He has two other pending cases involving sexual assault of a child charges in Douglas County.

"He admitted that he had a problem, and had interest in younger females," the affidavit stated.
Gavilon has again disappointed its Japanese parent company, with Marubeni attributing a sharp decline in profit to the Omaha grain trader.

The decline in profits mainly reflects the larger-than-expected downturn in the grain business, centered on Gavilon, Marubeni said this month, in an investor question-and-answer transcript released in Japan after full-year earnings were reported.

The Tokyo-based conglomerate, whose operations include oil exploration and commodities trading, said this month fiscal 2016 profit fell 40 percent, to $564 million.

The hammer  or at least the part visible at this point  fell last week in Omaha. Gavilon, employer of about 375 people in Omaha, said last week after inquiries by The World-Herald that it has cut an unspecified number of jobs in unspecified locations. Those cuts came after the disappointing fiscal 2016 at Marubeni and a few months after Gavilons top three executives left following an earlier excoriation of their performance by the home office in Japan.

Gavilon spokesman Patrick Burke said Thursday that the company eliminated positions to remain competitive in the grain trading business. Burke said Friday the company had no comment on Marubenis latest concerns about Gavilons performance.

But the concerns are clear.

The macroeconomic environment surrounding the grain business is severe, Marubeni wrote in its investor transcript this month, vowing to continue to promote cost cutting.

It all adds up to a rough patch for the company that started off as the grain trading division of Omaha-based food maker ConAgra. Marubeni bought Gavilon in 2013 for $2.7 billion, and not long after wrote down its value by $420 million on disappointing results.

In February, Marubeni Chief Executive Fumiya Kokubu pulled no punches in a transcript of the companys third-quarter conference call.

Gavilon continues to experience difficulty, he said. So we will be taking dramatic measures.

That month, Chief Executive Jim Anderson and two top lieutenants left. Former Archer Daniels Midland executive Lewis Batchelder was named CEO.

Gavilon hasnt said where the unspecified number of job cuts last week occurred; the global company operates 300 locations storing and handling grain, feed and fertilizer. Spokesman Burke did say the cuts were not concentrated solely in Omaha. The 375 employed in Omaha recently are out of about 1,900 overall in recent periods.

Contact the writer: 402-444-3197, russell.hubbard@owh.com
Thirteen state senators  including five Republicans  pushed back Monday against Gov. Pete Ricketts call that platform Republicans, who will consistently support his positions, be elected to the Nebraska Legislature.

In a public statement, the senators expressed concern that Ricketts was trying to add partisanship to Nebraskas officially nonpartisan Legislature and noted that the states constitution calls for a separation of powers between the Governors Office and the Legislature.

Governor Ricketts believes political party trumps principle, the state senators wrote. Our nonpartisan, unicameral legislature has lasted for 80 years, and, barring the will of the people for a new legislative experiment, we will not surrender our nonpartisan and constitutional duties.

Ricketts had made his comments at the state Republican convention on May 14.

A spokesman for the governor provided a brief response Monday night: Gov. Ricketts respects the separation of powers delineated in the constitution. It is appropriate in a public forum for the governor, or anyone else, to point out the public votes cast by legislators. The collective will of the voters is greater than the will of any elected official.

The lawmakers in their statement quoted George Norris, the former U.S. senator and founder of the states nonpartisan, unicameral Legislature: Qualifications, not politics, should be the criterion for public service.

Today, his message is more important than ever, the senators wrote. We support the Nebraska Constitution and not any particular political party.

The senators signing the letter were Laura Ebke of Crete (Republican); Mike Gloor of Grand Island (Republican); Ernie Chambers (independent), Tanya Cook (Democrat), Burke Harr (Democrat), Sara Howard (Democrat), Bob Krist (Republican) and Heath Mello (Democrat), all of Omaha; Colby Coash (Republican), Kathy Campbell (Republican), Adam Morfeld (Democrat) and Patty Pansing Brooks (Democrat), all of Lincoln; and Kate Sullivan (Democrat) of Cedar Rapids.

They said: Individually we are Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians and Independents. Together we are the singular Nebraska Legislature  an institution which operates through collaboration and expertise to uphold its distinct powers and privileges to create laws and policies.

The statement was released Monday, Memorial Day, but was written by committee over the past couple of weeks, expressing ideas all the senators could agree on, Harr said by phone Monday evening.

We want to make it abundantly clear that partisan politics does not work, Harr said. He said he would push back against a Democratic governor the same way.

We believe in the importance of nonpartisanship, he said. The Washington way doesnt work.
BROKEN BOW, Neb.  Marilyn Mauldin of Broken Bow vividly remembers the day she discovered her youngest child, Patrick, had joined the military.

He came home that day, and I said, Pat, do you have something you want to tell me? He said, No I dont think so. So I told him, Pat, I know you joined the Navy today. Im not sure he would have ever told me on his own, Marilyn said with a laugh.

It was Dec. 12, 1983. Mauldin enlisted in the Navy in El Paso, Texas, and began his training in San Diego.

On Friday, Mauldin was honored for his service by AseraCare Hospice of Kearney. AseraCare is a partner in We Honor Veterans, a program of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization.

Marlene Williams, volunteer coordinator for AseraCare Hospice, thanked Mauldin for his sacrifices and willingness to serve his country.

When you see this pin, please know that your service to our great nation is deeply, deeply appreciated, she said.

Broken Bow American Legion Commander Rocky Schall was present at the ceremony in the Mauldin home, and placed the pin on Maudlin.

Mauldin was diagnosed with epithelioid sarcoma in 2014. He chose to not seek further treatment for the cancer that is growing in his left shoulder and left leg.

Mauldin said that in order to remove the tumors, doctors would most likely have to remove both limbs with no guarantee that would stop the cancer.

I really dont know how much time I have, but its ultimately going to kill me, he said. Ive already had two surgeries, and I just finally said enough is enough.

He just wants to enjoy life and thats what hospice tries to focus on, is comfort and quality of life, Williams said.

Maudlin said he was a sonar man. He liked it so much that in April 1984, he extended his service time by two years.

Mauldin said he thought about joining the Army, but everyone he knew at that time in the Army was stationed in Germany and he didnt want to go there.

I really wanted to see more of the Pacific. And Im glad I did. I got to go to Hawaii, Japan, Guam, Singapore, the Philippines  I just really got to see a lot more of the world, he said.
In a midnight crackdown, police detains TET candidates; BJP says WB or Hitler's Germany?

A dream, a call and some courage: How a 15-year-old stopped her marriage

West Bengal police on alert; 20 crude bombs recovered

West Bengal

oi-Shalini

Kolkata: Police is on alert as atleast 20 crude bombs was recovered on Tuesday, May 30 from container in Bhatar area of Bardhaman district in West bengal.

According to reports, bombs were kept in a drum in a house. Later police officials

rushed to the spot and diffused the bomb on time.

The investigation in the matter has been started by the police who are present at the spot.

More are detail awaited.

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Story first published: Tuesday, May 31, 2016, 12:32 [IST]
India always views war as last resort, but... : PM Modi to armed forces in Kargil

Achievements of Ministry of Agriculture in Last Two Years

Feature

oi-Lisa

By Lisa

Narendra Modi government completed two years in power on the 26th of May. The government is enthusiastically communicating with the public about the government's various ministries. Also the ministers are interacting with the citizens through various mediums like Facebook Chats and airing interviews where they talk about how they have tried to improve the lives of the people of India in last two years.

The Minister of Agriculture Radha Mohan Singh yesterday held a Facebook Chat with the citizens of India and he answered numerous queries of theirs.

Today the Ministry of Agriculture is using caricatures to promote all the good work done by it in last couple of years. Let us have a look at what the ministry has done to improve the lives of farmers who feel India's 125 crore people.

One achievement of the ministry that was promoted was that, "Government curbed black marketing of urea. For the first time after independence, urea production in surplus".

Govt curbed black marketing of urea. For the first time after independence, urea production in surplus #KhushalKisan pic.twitter.com/JTOFlFPFHq May 31, 2016

The second achievement of the agriculture ministry that was listed was that Modi government launched Kisan Tv, India's first television channel dedicated to farmers.

Modi govt launches Kisan Tv, India's first television channel dedicated to farmers. #KhushalKisan pic.twitter.com/BlR2jqBbbQ  Yuva TV (@YuvaiTV) May 31, 2016

The third achievement of the Modi Government's Agriculture Ministry is that, "Modi government launched free soil health card for farmers". Till now 1.84 crore soil health cards have been distributed. The target is to cover all 14 crore agriculture land owning farmers by March 2017.

Modi government launched free soil health card for farmers. #KhushalKisan pic.twitter.com/Pn7rMSrQeq  Yuva TV (@YuvaiTV) May 31, 2016

For prosperous farmers and developed India, the government has worked hard to increase crop production per drop of water. Also under the Prime Minister's Irrigation Scheme now 28.5 hectare land is irrigated. Under AIBP 89 different irrigations schemes have been undertaken.

NABARD will be assigned a sum of Rs. 20,000 crore so that the sum can be used for a long time for keeping land irrigated. To produce organic manure under MGNREGA people will be asked to dig 10 lakh holes. Also under MGNREGA 5 lakh farm ponds and wells will be dug. Also now for farmers 100% neem quoted urea is available.

Thanks to the efforts of the government during the year 2014-15 food grain production was 252.02 million tons. For the year 2015-16 the estimated food grain production was 252.23 million tons. During two years there has been increase in food grain production and base support price fluctuation has been very less.

1,088 kms of Optical Fibre laid last week. Now Optical Fibre has reached 52,758 Gram Panchayats. #KhushalKisan pic.twitter.com/OhcsDWekPF  Ravi Shankar Prasad (@rsprasad) May 31, 2016

Also four mobile apps have been created for farmers.
Dalit man in Kerala beaten up by wife's brother allegedly for not converting to Christianity

In UP, ex-pradhan thrashes Dalit girl, throws her out of school over uniform

Dalit homes, a political 'shelter' for ministers, nothing more

Feature

oi-Pallavi

By Pallavi

Ministers turning up in Dalit households has become a trend now. Forget the expenses that the household incurs on every such visit, the political gimmick is not going unnoticed. It all started with Rahul Gandhi sharing a plate at a Dalit household before the General elections in 2014. But what was coined as a "picnicking spree" by Narendra Modi was soon adopted by his party members too.

Taking a string from the pro-Dalit hat of the Congress, the BJP too is trying to pose a compassionate face to its otherwise rigid political ideologies, sans the Godra riots.

Amit Shah and Rahul Gandhi cavalcade

Now, BJP National President Amit Shah will be dining with the Dalit and the backward caste villagers in Varanasi after addressing the Sardar Patel Kisan Mahasammelan' in Allahabad today.

Earlier this very month, Shah took a holy dip with Dalit sadhus in Kshipra river at Kumbh in Ujjain.

BJP worker Girija Prasad Bind who belongs to the backward community has offered to host the 50 BJP workers and other residents of the Jogiyapur and adjoining villages for the lunch.

Bind said, "I am making arrangements for nearly 600 people. Food will be cooked at my home. The party is financially supporting me in making the arrangements... My pucca house is being decorated with mango and banana leaves."

This reminds us of a similar stopover by Rahul Gandhi on his way to Jakheri village in Hamirpur district, when he took a detour to Mauranipur to inspect the UPCF outlet.

Vasundhara Raje's adventures

The villagers were impressed by the Royal presence at the village. During the mass connect governance initiative Sarkar Aapke Dwar, chief minister Vasundhara Raje had stopped at Raghunathi Gurjar's house in Sawai Madhopur.

Thankfully, the favour was returned, but after two years when Raghunathi was invited for the regional launch of the Pradhan Mantri Ujwala Yojana at Dahod and given LPG connection along with 15 other BPL women. Call that luck? Certainly, the CM remembered the lady suddenly and called for her ta a short notice.

Note this, that the LPG connection was given in public (for its reference of the government's undertakings for the dalit and the downtrodden).

Gadkari's...oops RaGa's signature move

Nitin Gadkari showed the way to his party members by lunching at a Dalit's house. Perhaps, while showing the way to combat the Congress's gimmicks (sic Rahul's Dalit visits) and become more acceptable to the Aam Aadmi, Gadkari forgot that he was imitating RaGa 'unconsciously'. Or should we say, BJP is giving Congress the taste of its own medicine?

All said and done, our heart goes out to the families who host these ministers with Poori Sabzi and whatever little they are left with, especially when these ministers consider their homes as a political asylum for vote banks, and a stopover in between journies.....sometimes.

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Story first published: Tuesday, May 31, 2016, 17:20 [IST]
Social media companies free to do business, but should be accountable to Indian laws: Ravi Shankar Prasad

Big step towards transparency: Prasad on first compliance report by Google, FB under new IT rules

e-Sampark is Governments Direct Communication Channel with Citizens

Feature

oi-Lisa

By Lisa

Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad yesterday launched e-Sampark website which will work as a platform to pass on messages to the people and also receive messages from people. Till now government was using social media to address people's issues.

Launched the eSampark portal https://t.co/zw79yhIpL3. It will improve govt communications with citizens.  Ravi Shankar Prasad (@rsprasad) May 30, 2016

e-Sampark is a mechanism to connect the government directly with citizens across India by running mailer, outbound dialing and SMS campaigns. From launch till now through e-Sampark 210 campaigns have already been conducted and 89.46 crore emails have also been sent.

The e-sampark portal goes online now https://t.co/LpdpbC3o6x. It says nearly 90 Cr e-mailers sent out to citizens by Modi Govt so far! woah!  Aman Sharma (@AmanKayamHai_ET) May 30, 2016

The platform is used for sharing informational and public service messages. The concept of e-Sampark has been introduced to establish proactive communication by digitisation of campaigns.

The multi-faceted platform facilitates not only seamless communication between the government and citizens, but also maintains a database of contacts of the nodal officers, representatives and citizens. In addition, users can also view the previous campaigns conducted.

e-Sampark signifies the essence of Digital India. It enables the government to communicate with the citizens about several programs and initiatives.

Features

1. Provision for sending informational and public service messages in the form of mailers, SMSs and outbound dialing to citizens, elected representatives and government employees through customised user lists

2. Similarly, SMSs can also be sent to a customised user-base using the application

3. Extensive database of elected representatives and government officials that is updated periodically

4. Provision for updating the database either individually or through bulk upload

5. Provision of a Dashboard showing nodal officers the campaign analytics i.e. number of mailers and SMSes sent, percentage read, percentage of forwards, URL clicks etc.

6. Provision for individual users to subscribe to the "e-Sampark" database. By subscribing to a list, a user gives his/her consent to receive mailers and SMSes from the Government. The user can unsubscribe from the list at any time.

Benefits

1. Extensive structured database of government officials (of both Central and State governments) for sending official information

2. Information, alerts, draft policies etc. can be shared with customised user base thereby improving the efficiency of the communication

3. Information dissemination of existent or proposed policy/decision of the Government and new schemes to be launched

4. Increased awareness among the citizens by sharing urgent alerts of national or public interest and government updates

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Story first published: Tuesday, May 31, 2016, 13:17 [IST]
Rahul Gandhi's only success till date: How Congress did well in UP in 2009 LS poll

Feature

oi-Shubham

By Shubham

The Congress, which otherwise doesn't excite the psephologists nowadays, tasted a welcome success in Uttar Pradesh, politically India's most crucial state, in the 2009 Lok Sabha election.

Its seat tally went up to 21 (from nine in the 2004 Lok Sabha poll) while the vote-share jumped from 10 per cent to 18.2 per cent. The performance made the experts say that the age of Rahul Gandhi has come.

What happened in the next seven years since that election is something that everybody has seen. The 2009 show was the first and till now the last time Rahul Gandhi succeeded in inspiring the Congress in an electoral battle. The party though had lost six of its sitting MPs, but it also won 18 new ones. [BJP looks up to Kalyan Singh to take on Mayawati]

But how did the grand-old party succeed in 2009?

BSP did not fulfil voters' aspirations

The Congress gained in 2009 primarily because its opponents had made strategic mistakes. The BSP (20 seats) led by Mayawati had thought of doing the trick through its unique Brahmin-Dalit alliance like it did in the 2007 Assembly election but it did not happen this time. The reason was the BSP's failure in bringing development which had left both the upper-caste and Dalit voters disappointed. [Modi's team focuses on Up for a happier third anniversary]

Samajwadi Party erred in backing Kalyan Singh

The Samajwadi Party (23 seats) failed to dominate because its strategy to rope in Kalyan Singh, a senior backward caste leader, to woo those castes backfired. The Muslims, who stood as a support pillar for Mulayam Singh Yadav's party in the past, felt cheated since Singh, who had left the BJP then to form his own party, was the chief architect behind the demolition of the Babri mosque in December 1992.

BJP lost upper-caste voters to Congress

The BJP's problem lied in the fact that its plan to polarise the Hindu votes by allying with the Rashtriya Lok Dal did not deliver. Many upper-caste voters silently backed the Congress in that election. Also, the lack of a high-stature Brahmin leader in the BJP after the exit of former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee from the political arena worked to its disadvantage.
Know constituencies of UP Assembly polls 2017: BEHAT (GEN)

Feature

oi-Shubham

By Shubham

Uttar Pradesh will go to Assembly elections early in 2017. The state has an Assembly comprising 403 seats and a party/alliance has to win 202 seats to form the government. In 2012 when election was held for the last time in UP, the Samajwadi Party had won 224 seats to get a decisive majority.

-------> Next seat: NAKUR (2)

We, at Oneindia, will take one Assembly constituency a day and have a look at electoral information related to it:

Constituency Name: Behat [includes Behat tehsil]

Constituency No. 1

District: Saharanpur (Saharanpur Lok Sabha constituency)

Area of district: 3,689 square kilometres (rural 3,582 sq km)

District population: 34,66,382 (78% general caste; 22% SC; 0% ST)

District literacy: 60%

District urbanisation: 30%

2012 Assembly election result in Behat

Winner: Mahaveer Singh Rana (Bahujan Samaj Party)

Votes received: 70,274

Vote percentage: 31.8

Nearest rival: Naresh (Congress)

Votes: 69,760

Percentage: 31.5

Difference: 514 votes

Margin %: 0.3

Total voters in 2012: 3,03,273

Turnout: 72.91%

Party which has won Behat most number of times: Congress (6 times since 1962)

BSP won it 2 times; Samajwadi Party never.

2014 LS election result in Saharanpur

2014 Lok Sabha result in Saharanpur: Raghav Lakhanpal (BJP) defeated Imran Masood (Congress) by 65,090 votes (margin% - 5.45)

Other information on Behat:

Behat is famous for production of fruits like mangoes and guavas, moorhas (reed stools), brass bells, and wrought-iron handicrafts. It is situated on the northern tip of Uttar Pradesh. Saharanpur is famous for exporting handicraft and woodcraft of which moorhas come from Behat. However, because of the middleman problem, the local cratsmen do not gain much.

Major issues of the constituency:

Lack of development in infrastructure

Lack of higher education centres

Shortage of facilities for traders of fruits and furniture business.

Electricity crisis is a major problem in Saharanpur
Fact Check: Did Trump thank Musk for welcoming him back to Twitter

Trump's Hiroshima remark proves why he is a failed businessman

Feature

oi-Pallavi

By Pallavi

Every business needs ethics and Donald Trump has none. The very fact that being an American and non repentance of the atom bombing in Hiroshima Nagasaki shows how insensitive the entrepreneur can get. And that insensitivity showed in his businesses too.

However, that is a different topic altogether.

Digging his own grave

Given the success of President Barack Obama as the one propagating peace and sanctity, Donald Trump can never reach that pinnacle. Barack Obam flew to Japan's historical cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki to pay his respects for the victims of the atom bomb attacks.

A gesture very few national leaders would have made to show that they truely believe in peace.

Being the first sitting US President to visit Hiroshima since the end of World War II, Barack Obama set an example for the world.

He said, "Seventy-one years ago, on a bright cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed. A flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself.

Why do we come to this place, to Hiroshima? We come to ponder a terrible force unleashed in a not-so-distant past. We come to mourn the dead, including over 100,000 Japanese men, women and children, thousands of Koreans, a dozen Americans held prisoner.

Their souls speak to us. They ask us to look inward, to take stock of who we are and what we might become."

Although there was no formal apology from Obama, the intentions were clear.

On the contrary, Trump invoked the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack, which was the site of the world's first atomic bombing. Criticizing Obama for his 'apology' in Hiroshima, Trump wrote on Twitter, "Does President Obama ever discuss the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor while he's in Japan? Thousands of American lives lost. #MDW."

The idea was misconstrued

The fact that Obama had gone to mourn the killing of a Japanese woman by a former US marine was entirely lost somewhere in the debate.

Obama had said, "The U.S. will continue to cooperate fully" and will continue to ensure "justice is done under the Japanese legal system."

Speaking of the decadence of war and regretting the reason behind the warring heads of the US and Japan, Obama criticized the colonial motivations that put Japan on the war path with the US in the first place.

"The war grew out of the same base instinct for domination or conquest that had caused conflicts among the simplest tribes, an old pattern amplified by new capabilities and without new constraints," Obama said.

Warning of human's ability to destroy themselves with nuclear weapons, Obama said, "We must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them."

Unaware of the intentions behind the speech, Trump remarks about the close relation between the US and Japan, rebuilt over the past three-plus decades. He further added that Japanese - along with countries like Mexico, China, and South Korea - have unfairly benefited from globalization to America's detriment.

To add icing to the cake was the accusation that Japan was responsible for deliberately weakening its currency to stimulate exports.

He also hinted at ending the decades-long strategic agreement between the two countries.

Now to the Trump (mis)adventures

When ending the foreign relations between US and Japan comes, one is reminded of similar such misadventures by Trump in his business. Some of them being the Trump new media, the Trump Network, Trump on the Ocean, The New Jersey Generals, Trump Ice, Trump University, Trump Mortgage, Trump Vodka, Trump Airlines, GoTrump.com, Trump Steaks, and many more. These agencies were brought down due to sheer mismanagement, lack of planning and business outlook.

[Read: Donald Trump's economics would 'bankrupt America', says Hillary Clinton ]

Having said that, how ending the US-Japan foreign ties over a historical event stands a strong chance of being appreciated is waited to be seen.
Assam government readies plan to fight illegal immigration

Guwahati

oi-Vicky

Guwahati, May 31: The BJP has just begun its first innings in Assam and the first priority for the government would be to tackle the issue of illegal migrants. The promise to act against the illegal migrants was one of the major poll promises made by the BJP before it swept Assam.

Chief Minister of Assam, Sarbanand Sonowal has assured that he would tackle the issue effectively in the next two years. Looking at the situation, the government would have to effectively tackle the situation as soon as possible as it is turning into a ticking time bomb.

North-east needs a different time zone for development: Will Modi & Sonowal look into it?

As of 1998, illegal migrant voters were in majority in 40 assembly constituencies in Assam and this explains briefly the gravity of the situation.

S K Sinha's recommendations need to be implemented

Lieutenant General (retd) S K Sinha who served as the governor of Assam and Jammu and Kashmir had prepared a detailed report on the problem. He had made 14 recommendations. The recommendations need to be implemented as it appears to be the only or most feasible way of solving the problem of illegal migration.

There were various recommendations that had been made which included fencing the border properly apart from updating the National Register of Citizens. However none in the Congress were supportive of his recommendations. Some 14 MPs of the Congress had even demanded his recall.

One of the main recommendations of fencing the 262 kilometre with Bangladesh needs to be implemented at the earliest. Only proper fencing would ensure that more migrants do not come in and snatch away the rights of the locals.

The lack of fencing will not only contribute to more migrants coming in, but will also help terrorist groups push in their cadres like was the case of Kashmir several years back before the 700 kilometre fencing was done in record time.

Dealing with the existing illegal migrants

Sending the migrants back to Bangladesh is not an option at all. It would be impossible to undertake such an exercise owing to humanitarian grounds. There is a good chance they will be stuck in the middle of no where since even Bangladesh will not take them back.

Migrants from Bangladesh have importance as long as they have voting rights. Depriving them of voting rights would be the first priority for the BJP government. This would ensure that political parties do not pamper them and attempts to bring in more to build a vote bank would stop immediately.

The other step would be to deny them rights to acquire property in India. This has been a core issue that the Hindus in Assam have been complaining about.

The Hindus have complained that they are being deprived of their rights in areas where the illegal migrant population is high.

If these rights are deprived, the locals would feel at ease. Moreover the lack of such incentives which the migrants would never get back in Bangladesh would also act as a deterrent for them to illegally enter and stay in India.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Tuesday, May 31, 2016, 12:54 [IST]
Africans are 'our guests', attacks on them 'despicable':Ansari

India

oi-PTI

Rabat (Morocco), May 31: Vice President Hamid Ansari has condemned the string of assaults on African nationals in India as "despicable", saying they are "our guests" and should be looked after in the wake of "violation of law and order".

Interacting with media on board his special aircraft before arriving here in the Moroccan capital, Ansari said, "Attack on anyone  whether own person or guest, it is despicable."

"Nobody or no government can say anything different  condemning all types of violence," he said. He said, "They (Africans) are our guests. We have to look after them in the wake of violation of law and order."

Describing India's ties with African countries as "good", Ansari said, "We greatly value our relationship with African countries and we always stood by them." "Even before 1947 we talked of decolonisation of Africa," he said, adding that the stand of the previous UPA government and the present NDA government has been no different.

Ansari is on a five-day visit to two North African countries  Morocco and Tunisia - as part of efforts to build on diplomatic gains from the India-Africa summit held in New Delhi in October last year.

The Vice President said India attaches great importance to Africa, and in that context he was undertaking the trip to Morocco and Tunisia.

There has been a spate of attacks on African nationals in the last few days including killing of a Congolese youth in the national capital and assault on a 23-year-old Nigerian student in Hyderabad.

PTI
Attack on Nigerian student: DGP refutes racial angle

India

oi-PTI

Hyderabad, May 31: Telangana Director General of Police Anurag Sharma today refuted any racial angle behind the last week's incident in the city wherein a Nigerian student was assaulted by a local resident.

"It was a dispute which occurred at spur of the moment regarding parking of a vehicle...it is not a racial incident nor (any such) intention is involved in this," Sharma told reporters here. "...still we assure all the communities and all the students, who come from other countries to Hyderabad and Telangana, of their safety and security," the DGP said.

"In this particular case, the accused has been arrested. All the sections of the society will get equal protection from police force and we would ensure that," Hyderabad Police Commissioner M Mahendar Reddy said.

The DGP and Hyderabad Police Commissioner were responding to queries regarding assault on a 23-year-old Nigerian student, who received head injuries after a man in his neighbourhood hit him with a rod following a dispute over car parking in Banjara Hills area here on Wednesday last.

Reacting to a query on Maoist activities in the state, the Telangana Police Chief said, "Maoist activities have come down to a large extent in the state.

However, the ultras come in from neighbouring states into Telangana and we are alert and search parties are patrolling the areas in Khammam, Karimnagar and Adilabad districts bordering neighbouring states."

"Anything that is democratic is welcome...but, persons who do not believe in democracy and democratic ways we also cannot tolerate that," he warned. Reacting to another query, the DGP said, "We do not support anybody (in police force) who is corrupt and who misbehaves...wherever such cases have come to our notice we have taken stringent action.

We do not tolerate any corruption." A delegation led by Sharma had recently visited the UK and the US to study the best practises being adopted by the police there. "We conducted a study tour and focus was on technology usage by police," the DGP said adding that a report will be submitted to the government in this regard.

PTI
The joy of our lives: Sushma Swaraj's husband warm birthday wishes for late leader

Remembering Sushma Swaraj on her death anniversary: Facts about Iron Lady of India

News flash: Today the entire west, the entire world looks at India: Ajit Doval

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

Bengaluru, May 31: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav to adopt a village in Shravasti district under state nutrition mission. Meanwhile, Sushma Swaraj to meet African students today.

Get all the latest news updates of the day:

9:30 pm: No notice has been sent to Robert by either ED or Income tax department which are under the charge of govt: Pavan Verma, JD(U).

9:00 pm: India can never have a racist mindset, says External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.

8:15 pm: CRPF seize explosives, cylinder bombs, cane bomb magazine & bullets belonging to Maoists in Palamu, Jharkhand.

7:45 pm: You cannot come to any conclusion on the basis of intelligence inputs: P Chidambaram on missing Ishrat Files.

7.05 pm: When society is a mute spectator & not riled up, then national will is not where it has got to be, says NSA.

6.55 pm: India is not only able to feed 125 crore people, but is also able to export, says NSA Ajit Doval in Pune.

6.49 pm: Today the entire west, the entire world looks at India with hope, says NSA Ajit Doval in Pune.

6.43 pm: NSA Ajit Doval speaking at an event in Pune (Maharashtra).

6.14 pm: Deeply pained at loss of lives,they sacrificed their lives & managed to contain fire.Fire has been doused but we're monitoring, says Defence Min.

6.13 pm: 16 lives lost, they sacrificed their lives to ensure that fire doesn't spread, says Manohar Parrikar.

6.10 pm: PM Narendra Modi approves extending retirement age of doctors of Central Health Services to 65 years.

5.43 pm: Uttarkhand High Court restrains CBI from arresting Harish Rawat in sting operation case.

5.42 pm: Annual GDP growth rate for 2015-16 is 7.6% at constant prices.

5.41 pm: Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar meets people injured in Pulgaon Central ammunition depot fire.

5.37 pm: The cause of fire will be known after Army's inquiry: Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Pulgaon central ammunition depot fire.

5.30 pm:Go back, read the affidavit, and tell me which word is politically, ethically & legally wrong, says P Chidambaram on Ishrat Jahan matter.

5.00 pm:But I also want to say that I have no doubt that 6 years after today if Im elected that Shiv Sena itself will change its mind, says P Chidambaram.

4.45 pm: Sushil Kumar Shinde is an extremely deserving candidate (for RS) & would have brought great honor had he been nominated, says P Chidambaram.

4.35 pm: As per Mathura forensic lab report the meat sample recovered from Dadri incident victim's house, belongs to cow or it's progeny.

4.15 pm: BJP President Amit Shah eats at a Dalits' residence in Varanasi (UP).

4.00 pm: CCTV footage clearly shows that Indian citizens who were present at spot, tried their best to save Masunda Oliver, says Sushma Swaraj.

3.35 pm: We will initiate progs of awareness and sensitization in areas with max population of African students,so that such incidents don't recur, says Sushma swaraj.

3.15 pm: The day this incident took place, I sought a report from Lt Governor and I was informed that 2 people have been arrested, says Sushma Swaraj.

3.00 pm: Being a mother I can understand the pain of parents of Congo student (Oliver) who lost their son on a foreign soil, says Sushma Swaraj.

2.45 pm: Death of Congo student is not a case of racial attack, should not be seen in that context, says Sushma Swaraj.

2.30 pm: NGT gives 3 weeks time to all States to furnish info on the pollution levels in the worst affected cities in their respective states.

1.49 pm: Statement of CBI Director Anil Sinha not required in AgustaWestland scam case.

1.43 pm: Huge fire was raging; my house walls have broken, the door fell off its hinges, says resident of nearby village.

1.35 pm: There was a huge explosion when incident happened. Houses have suffered a lot of damage, says resident of nearby village.

1.26 pm: P Chidambaram files nomination for Rajya Sabha from Maharashtra, mumbai.

1.00 pm: Aftermath of the fire that broke out at central ammunition depot in Pulgaon (Maharashtra), houses suffered damage.

12.45 pm: Does any hakeem know the remedy? No, no hakeem knows what I do, says Naseem Changezi,106 year-old on increasing life span.

12.37 pm: I am going there and will assess the situation, says Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Maharashtra CAD fire in Pulgaon.

12.34 pm: Our nation is facing drought, poverty, farmer is in pain; at these times a "show" is not appropriate, says Sonia Gandhi on 2 Years Of Modi Govt.

12.25 pm: I've never seen anything like this, Modi is a PM not a shehenshah, says Sonia Gandhi in Raebareli on on 2 Years Of Modi Govt.

12.13 pm: BJP protest outside CM's residence over water crisis and power cuts,protesters lift up the police barricades.

12.10 pm: Police use tear gas against locals as they stone pelt in protest against anti-encroachment drive in Gujarat.

12.00 pm: At least 20 crude bombs recovered from a container in Bhatar area of Bardhaman district. Bomb squad rushes to the spot in West Bengal.

11.45 am: Nirmala Sitharaman files nomination from Rajya Sabha in Bengaluru.

11.42 am: NGT rejects AOL's plea, to pay compensation by bank guarantee for violation of environment norms during a cultural event organized in March.

11.25 am: Locals protest against police and Municipal corporation team during an encroachment drive, torch vehicles in Gujarat.

11.00 am: I pray that those who are injured recover quickly. Have asked RM Manohar Parrikar to visit the spot and take stock of the situation, says PM Modi.

10.50 am: We are providing whatever assistance and resources required, primarily medical assistance, says Devendra Fadnavis.

10.46 am: According to my information,fire is now under control and injured are being given proper treatment, says Wardha MP,Ramdas Tadas on Central ammunition depot fire.

10.45 am: Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar likely to visit Central ammunition Depot in Pulgaon (Maharashtra) where fire broke out last night killing 17.

10.30 am: 2 Officers and 17 DSC jawans injured in fire accident at army depot in Maharashtra, admitted to hosp. Death toll is 17.

10.25 am: Defence minister Manohar Parrikar to visit the fire site in Pulgaon, Maharashtra.

9.55 am: 15 Defence Security Corps jawans and two officers killed in fire; 19 injured: Army officials.

9.40 am: Admiral Sunil Lanba takes charge as the new Chief of the Naval Staff.

9.20 am: Two officers and 15 DSC jawan died in major fire at central ammunition depot in Pulgaon in Maharashtra.

8.57 am: One boat with 7 Indian fishermen from Rameswaram arrested by SriLanka Navy near Talaimannar.

8.40 am: Fire broke out at Central ammunition Depot in Pulgaon, Maharashtra last night, 19 injured.

Maharashtra: Fire broke out at Central ammunition Depot in Pulgaon last night,19 injured.Nearby villages evacuated pic.twitter.com/ASPjHmbTBd  ANI (@ANI_news) May 31, 2016

8.23 am: Standardised packaging of tobacco products; Tobacco kills nearly 6 million people each year: WHO.

8.10 am: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav to adopt a village in Shravasti district under state nutrition mission.

8.00 am: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to meet African students today.

OneIndia News
Delhi: African students call off protest after govt assurance

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, May 31: A group of African students in the national capital on Tuesday called off a demonstration to protest the spate of assaults against the community after the government assured them of better security.

The students said they had a meeting with officials of the Ministry of External Affairs where they were assured of security and safety. The government officials also requested them not to go ahead with their planned protest at Jantar Mantar.

MEA official meets deceased Congolese national's family

"There was a high-level meeting with the Permanent Secretary of Ministry of External Affairs yesterday. He listened to our grievances and has made commitments to ensure our safety in India. Leaders of 15 African countries were also present during the meeting," the Association of African Students in India said in a statement.

It further said, "There was also a meeting with Delhi Police Commissioner and other senior officials where contact details of high level officials were shared with us and they promised us of better policing with respect to Africans".

"There was also a meeting with the African Ambassador body in which they advised us to take the path of diplomacy and hold the Indian government to their words....and also fast track justice for past cases. The parents of Congolese youth M K Olivier have also requested us to not take part in the protest," it said.

Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar had yesterday met a group of African students who raised their concerns over host of issues including better security in the wake of the killing of Congolese and cases of assaults against the community.

There has been a series of attacks on African nationals in the last few days including killing of the Congolese youth and assault on a 23-year-old Nigerian student in Hyderabad. Five persons have so far been arrested in connection with the attacks.

PTI
Goans annoyed with Nigerians' attitude: Goa CM Laxmikant Parsekar

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Panaji, May 31: Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar has said that Goans are "annoyed" with the behaviour, attitude and way of life of Nigerians living in the coastal state.

Speaking to media, Parsekar also said that he was getting complaints against Nigerians on many occasions from locals.

"The Goans in general are complaining about these foreigners. We get people from all other countries, but in general the people of Goa are very much annoyed with their (Nigerians') behaviour, with their attitude, with their way of life," Parsekar said, even as police on Monday arrested a Nigerian for allegedly raping a 31-year-old woman in Assagao village, 20 km from Panaji.

"I cannot generalise. But generally people in Goa are not happy with these people," Parsekar said, adding that he regularly hears complaints about Nigerians.

Earlier, Goa's Tourism Minister Dilip Parulekar had demanded a new law to facilitate quick deportation of Nigerians, who Parulekar claimed got embroiled in criminal cases on purpose, in order to extend their stay in India.

"Nigerians create problem not just in Goa, but in the entire country. Nigerian students come to Goa and India to study, they get an FIR filed (against them), make it a judicial matter and they try to stay in India or Goa and indulge in drugs and other unwanted things," Parulekar said on Monday.

In October 2013, over 50 Nigerians had blocked the National Highway 17 in Goa, to protest against police inaction following a murder of a Nigerian national, allegedly by a local drug cartel.

The blockade had also seen police and locals being beaten up by the protesting Nigerians, before some of the foreigners were also beaten up in retaliation by a local mob.

IANS
Solar eclipse to be sighted in Bengaluru for 45 minutes: Report

HAL-built HTT-40s first flight successful

India

oi-Oneindia

By OneIndia Defence Desk

Bengaluru, May 31: The home-grown Basic Trainer Aircraft (BTA) from the hangars of Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) had its first flight in Bengaluru on Tuesday.

The Hindustan Turbo Trainer (HTT-40) was piloted by Group Capt Subramaniam (Retd), Chief Test Pilot, HAL. According to sources, the flight lasted for about 30 minutes.

"Everything went as per the script. The aircraft was cleared for its maiden sortie in the morning by the certifying agencies. Eventually it took off around 8.20 am and landed back after a 30-minute sortie," says an official.

On expected lines, the pilot did not try out any maneuvers and only undertook circuit flying. "The aircraft performance was satisfactory and we will be analysing the data," says the official.

Chief of Air Staff Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha, who flew the Light Combat Aircraft Tejas from an HAL facility recently, is said to have taken stock of the HTT-40, ahead of its maiden flight.

Earlier in December, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar had complimented HAL for sticking to the schedules of HTT-40 project. A total of 72 HTT-40s will be required by the Indian Air Force.

In June last year, Honeywell Aerospace announced in Paris that HAL has selected the TPE331-12B turboprop engine to power the HTT-40.

HAL on its part kept a low-key on this project after the IAF made its displeasure over HAL's desi BTA. IAF displeasure was primarily due to HAL's failure to deliver the Intermediate Jet Trainer.

On February 2, this year, HAL announced the roll-out the first prototype of HTT-40. HAL also said that there are plans to weaponise and optimise the trainer.

Meanwhile, it was festive mood at HAL's Aircraft Research and Design Centre (ARDC) on Tuesday soon after HTT-40 landed after its maiden sortie.

HAL Chairman T Suvarna Raju has complimented the young HTT-40 team, who played a significant role in executing the BTA project successfully.

"It is a historic day for us and I am inspired by my young team," Raju told OneIndia.

OneIndia News
Ishrat Jahan case: Discharge plea of two ex-cops to be heard on Aug 7

Ishrat Jahan files still missing: Report to be submitted today

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, May 31: The one man committee probing the missing documents in the Ishrat Jahan case will submit its report today.

The report will be submitted despite not being able to trace the missing documents in which the narrative in the case is alleged to have been changed.

The committee comprising additional secretary B K Prasad had been constituted by the Home Ministry to probe into the missing papers.

The two files that are missing are very crucial ones. They include a copy of the affidavit that was vetted by the then Attorney General which was submitted in the Gujarat High Court and also a second draft of the affidavit in which the changes are alleged to have been made.

Ishrat Jahan Case - Story Until Now

Home Ministry to decide:

The committee is unlikely to suggest action against anyone. It will report that the papers have not been traceable. It is now up to the Home Ministry to take a final call on the matter.

The ministry will study the report and then decide on the next course of action.

The committee had recorded the statements of several officials including that of Dharmendra Singh who was part of the internal security division between 2007 and 2009.

The affidavit in which the narrative changed was submitted to the Gujarat High Court in 2009.

The committee had also attempted contacting several officers. However it was unable to reach many of them. Sources say that it would require a probe by an investigating agency to find out how the papers went missing.

It is unclear where exactly the papers are, but there is a good chance that it may have been destroyed sources also say.

OneIndia News
8 out 10 ISIS aspirants not disgruntled with India- They are swayed by the Caliphate

India

oi-Vicky

Bengaluru, May 31: The Intelligence Bureau which keeps a tab on the youth trying to join the ISIS has learnt that in 8 out of ten cases, the Muslim youth have not complained about atrocities in India.

They speak with a handler who keeps asking them if they feel neglected in India and the answer 8 out of 10 times has been "no."

If this is the case then what exactly is it that attracts these youth towards the ISIS? An Intelligence Bureau officer part of the process says that in all the conversations that he has recorded, the only thing that seems to be attracting these youth is the promise of establishing a Caliphate. This is the only thing that attracts them, the officer says.

The anger is not against India:

There was one particular conversation in which the handler is heard asking the youth if he felt neglected in India. The youth answers in the negative and also goes on to say that life is peaceful, there are no restrictions, no discrimination while applying for jobs etc.

To this the handler shoots back, " then why do you want to join the ISIS?" The youth replies, " the ISIS will establish a Caliphate. Moreover the ISIS is fighting against the West and we would love to join the battle and offer help." This is clearly an indication that the youth is not against India. He just feels that he should be part of an exercise that will help the ISIS establish the Caliphate and also fight against the West.

The officer says that this is one of the main reasons why the ISIS has not attained much success in India. Many do convey their desire to join the outfit, but chicken out at the end of it. In many cases, when they have attempted to leave the country, we have stopped them.

Few ISIS youth want to attack India

The officer says that this would not mean that all share the same feelings. There are a couple of youth from Jammu and Kashmir, Telangana, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh who have complained about the country. They even suggest to their handler that they would like to launch attacks in India.

Although such persons are in a minority at least in ISIS specific cases, they still pose a danger. These persons had plans of training in Syria and returning to India so that they could carry out attacks, the officer said. Most of these persons were part of the module that the NIA recently busted.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Tuesday, May 31, 2016, 12:31 [IST]
India always views war as last resort, but... : PM Modi to armed forces in Kargil

Modi is PM not Shehenshah, says Sonia Gandhi on 2 year of Modi government

India

oi-Shalini

Raebareli, May 31: Congress chief Sonia Gandhi dared the rulling government to conduct an inuiry if they have proof against his son-in-law, Robert Vadra on the matter of whether Vadra has bought a Benami house in London by the arms dealer who was raided last month by the investigative officials.

Sonia targeted Prime Minister, Narendra Modi on his second year anniversary of ruling government and said that " All conspiracy is coined by Modi and he wants to defame the opposition congress party by saying "Congress Mukt Bharat".

While targeting PM Modi, Sonia also said that "Our nation is facing severe crisis in drought, poverty and farmers are in pain. At this time a 'show' is not appropriate."

"The Modi government always makes false allegation on the Vadra inquiry on land deal in Haryana, when congress governed the state. Let them (BJP) hold inquiry as truth will be disclosed very soon," Sonia said during her visit to Raebareli in Uttar pradesh.

"PM ek PM hain, koi shehenshah nahin", says Cong Pres. Sonia Gandhi on #2YearsOfModiGovt celebrationshttps://t.co/13u92cXdgy  ANI (@ANI_news) May 31, 2016

#WATCH Congress President Sonia Gandhi reacts on allegations on Robert Vadra of links with arms dealerhttps://t.co/CYS9754KBH  ANI (@ANI_news) May 31, 2016

Our nation is facing drought, poverty, farmer is in pain; at these times a "show" is not appropriate: Sonia Gandhi on #2YearsOfModiGovt  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) May 31, 2016

OneIndia News
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Mumbai shocker: Grandfather throws minor grandson from 6th floor balcony, here is why

India

oi-Jagriti

Mumbai, May 31: An elderly man has been arrested by Mumbai police for allegedly thorwing off a minor from the 6th floor balcony.

According to reports, the accused who was upset over his daughter-in-law's behaviour threw his three-year old grandson from the 6th floor balcony.

The accused identified as Nivrutti Kharche took the step after argument with his daughter-in-law over a property matter on Sunday. Kharche was alos upset over his ill health.

He alleged that his daughter-in-law did not take good care of him and even never gav efood on time.

Kharche has been charged for murder under relevant section of the Indian Penal Code and has sent him to police custody till June 2.

OneIndia News
Diwali means \"end of terror\": PM Modi tells soliders in Kargil, takes a swipe at Pak

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India always views war as last resort, but... : PM Modi to armed forces in Kargil

Narendra Modi condoles deaths in Maharashtra ammo depot fire

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

New Delhi, May 31: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday expressed grief over the deaths caused by a fire at Central Ammunition Depot in Wardha in Maharashtra.

Modi said he was "pained by loss of lives" and asked Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar to visit the spot.

Explosion at ammunition depot in Maharashtra; 17 Army personnel dead

"My thoughts are with the bereaved families. I pray that those who are injured recover quickly," Modi tweeted.

Pained by loss of lives caused by a fire at central ammunition depot in Pulgaon, Maharashtra. My thoughts are with the bereaved families.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) May 31, 2016

"Have asked Manohar Parrikar to take stock of the situation," he said.

At least 15 people were killed and another 19 injured in a major fire followed by a blast in the depot early on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Army Chief General Dalbir Singh also left for Pulgaon (Maharashtra) where the fire broke out.

IANS
No comment on Pranab Mukherjee book before reading it: Former Union Minister

After controversial excerpt, Pranab Mukherjees family feuds over his memoirs

PM Modi did not discuss demonetisation: Pranab Mukherjee in memoir

Pranab memoirs: PM Modi must speak more often in Parliament

President visits relative's house in Howrah

India

oi-PTI

Kolkata, May 31: President Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday, May 31 paid a brief visit to the city to attend a family programme at Howrah.

After arriving at the N S C Bose Airport, the President left for Howrah where he attended a programme at a close relative's place.

Mukherjee spent 1 hour 15 minutes at the relative's house at Kasundia area. He did not speak to the media persons present there.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee met the President at the RCTC Helicopter Ground. Earlier, Governor K N Tripathi, state Agriculture Minister Purnendu Bose and other officials received the President at the airport. He left in the afternoon.

PTI
After the 'Jihad' comment, Patil now claims \"I never said it\"

Time for new generation to come to fore in Congress: Amarinder

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

New Delhi, May 30: The time has come for the new generation to emerge in the party, Congress Punjab unit president Amarinder Singh said, adding that party chief Sonia Gandhi is "obviously tired".

"I have worked with Sonia Gandhi and found her (to be) a very good leader. But she is (aged) 70. Time has come for the new generation to emerge (in the party). Obviously, she is tired," Singh said in an interview to CNN News18.

He was asked if the party has been harmed by the simultaneous presence of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi at the top of the Congress hierarchy.

"It will be only fair if she wishes to hand over (party reins)," the former Punjab chief minister said.

In response to a question, Singh said Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi "will also emerge" (as a good leader) once given power and responsibility.

"I have worked with his (Rahul's) father (late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi). He was also like this. Rahul will also emerge (as a good leader) in due course," the Congress MP from Amritsar in Punjab said.

He also said that the "Congress has to strengthen itself after whatever has happened in the country," in an obvious reference to the party's debacle in the assembly elections in four states.

Singh also said that the Congress high command should delegate more powers to its state leaders, especially to fight "regional leaders" in their respective states.

"If you have to deal with regional leadership, you must give some powers to the state leaders of the Congress," the Punjab Congress chief said.

IANS


Uncertainity ends over future of prominent Patna school

India

oi-PTI

Patna, May 31: Decks have been cleared for DAV BSEB, a prominent city school, to admit students for plus two level in this session with the Bihar State Power (Holding) Company Limited (BSPHCL), which owns the land and the school building, permitting the institution to begin its academic activities.

A controversy had surfaced last year involving a girl student last year prompting the CBSE to de-affiliate it and BSPHCL serving an eviction notice to it.

The CBSE had restored affiliation to the school last month and the BSPHCL which had asked the school to vacate its premises for alleged irregularities in its functioning by today gave them the go-ahead to begin its academic activities after taking an assurance that past "irregularities" would not be repeated, BSPHCL officials said.

With the crisis tiding over, an elated Principal V S Ojha told PTI "we wish to thank the CBSE as well BSPHCL for expressing faith in the school and safeguarding career of students." " Let bygones be bygones...DAV management assures CBSE, BSPHCL and parents that it would maintain high standard of academic activities and would try to scale newer heights of excellence in future," Ojha said.

Trouble had hit the premier school after a +2 student went missing on February 28, 2015. She surfaced three weeks later on March 19 and during questioning by the police, she revealed that she was deliberately failed in Class XI examination.

Surprisingly, the school procured from the CBSE her admit card for Class XII examination, but the same could be be delivered to her as she had gone missing.

She was allegedly gang-raped while in captivity of two unidentified youths. Police had arrested three teachers of the school in this connection and the school Principal Ramanuj Prasad was suspended by the DAV management. In the wake of the episode,CBSE had ordered de-affiliation of the school through a letter on May 19, 2015.

PTI
6 killed, 20 injured in two bomb attacks in Turkey

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Ankara, May 31: Six persons, including two police officers, were killed and 20 others were injured in two bomb attacks in Turkey's Sirnak province on Monday, local media reported.

In the first attack, the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants placed explosives under manhole cover and detonated it with remote control while a police vehicle was passing, killing four and injuring 19 people, Xinhua news agency reported.

Two police officers were killed and one other was injured in the second attack by the PKK members in Van province. The bomb was detonated with remote control targeting an armored police car.

IANS


Barack Obama calls on nation to remember US war dead

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Washington, May 31: US President Barack Obama on Monday visited Arlington National Cemetery, as is traditional on Memorial Day, to pay tribute to the country's war dead, whom he said represent "the best" the nation has to offer.

Memorial Day, since the end of the Vietnam War, has served to recall the problems confronting veterans upon their return home and those of the families who lose loved ones in combat, EFE news reported.

The solemn ceremony at Arlington, where thousands of those who served and died in US wars are interred, began with Obama placing a floral offering at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

The president then gave a brief speech in which he emphasised that the troops who rest in the cemetery and their families only ask one thing in exchange for their "heroism" and sacrifices: to be remembered.

"The Americans who rest here and their families represent the best of us," Obama said. "They ask of us today only one thing in return - that we remember them."

He added that "We have to do better. We have to be there not only when we need them, but when they need us."

IANS
China may support ban on Masood Azhar if India resubmits plea: Subramanian Swamy

International

oi-PTI

Beijing, May 31: The Sino-Indian deadlock over a UN ban on JeM chief Masood Azhar and others may end if India resubmits its application focussing on evidence against him than attempting to "censure" Pakistan, BJP MP Subramanian Swamy today said here after talks with Chinese officials.

"My impression is that India can expect cooperation from China on the issue of declaring Masood Azhar, leader of Jaish-e-Muhammad, as terrorist who should face trial in India, if India in the UN concentrated more on him than seeking to censure Pakistan as a sponsor of terror," Swamy told PTI.

Swamy, who is here on a pilgrimage to Kailash-Manasarovar in Tibet, said he is visiting China in an individual capacity as an "old friend" but with the knowledge of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other senior ministers of his cabinet.

The BJP leader said "as a tactical move it would (be) prudent (to) resubmit the complaint in UN which was blocked after China put a technical hold."

"Based on what I learnt here, I will be very surprised if China continues to obstruct once it is limited to hard evidence," said Swamy after meeting Wang Guo Qing, Director of the foreign affairs committee of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Committee, and Wu Hailong, President of the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs (CPIFA).

He said the application submitted by India in UN was more Pakistan-centric than Azhar. "I think for the limited purpose it was submitted which was to get UN sanctions, the report should be resubmitted," he said.

"I assume the Chinese would find it difficult to say no, once the report is limited to hard evidence. In fact it would (be a) good idea if there is pre-UN trilateral consultation between India, China and Pakistan," he said.

China, which previously blocked India's attempts to get a UN ban on Mumbai terror attack mastermind and LeT commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, also put a hold on listing of Azhar as global terrorist for his role in the Pathankot attack.

The issue has cast a shadow on bilateral ties as India has expressed disappointment over China's actions while the two countries are seeking a way out to end the impasse.

The issue also figured in the just concluded visit of President Pranab Mukherjee. Swamy suggested India, China and Pakistan trilateral talks to address the issues of cross border terrorism.

He said Prime Minister Modi is working hard to resume dialogue with Pakistan, but the "problem is that we can only talk to the constitutional authority in Pakistan which is the Prime Minister, who do not seem to have a final word. The army seems to have veto along with the ISI and Mullahs."

"China being a friend of Pakistan can help peace in South Asia by encouraging the constitutional authorities to assert their authority.

If China convenes a tripartite meeting on India-China-Pakistan on issue of terrorism because terrorism from Pakistan is no longer a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan any more. It is also trilateral issue as terrorists from Pakistan also go to (Muslim-majority) Xinjiang," he said.

PTI
Dalai Lama says 'too many' refugees in Europe

International

oi-PTI

Berlin, May 31: The Dalai Lama said in an interview published today that Europe has accepted "too many" refugees, and that they should eventually return to help rebuild their home countries.

"When we look into the face of every single refugee, especially the children and women, we can feel their suffering," said the Tibetan spiritual leader, who has himself lived in exile for over half a century.

"A human being who is a bit more fortunate has the duty to help them. On the other hand, there are too many now," he said, according to the German translation of the interview in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

"Europe, for example Germany, cannot become an Arab country," he added with a laugh, the daily reported.

"Germany is Germany. "There are so many that in practice it becomes difficult." The Dalai Lama added that "from a moral point of view too, I think that the refugees should only be admitted temporarily".

"The goal should be that they return and help rebuild their countries."

Germany last year took in 1.1 million people fleeing war and misery in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries, but the flow was reduced sharply by the decision of Balkan countries to close their borders to people travelling through Turkey and into northern Europe.

The Dalai Lama also said in the interview, conducted in Dharamsala, seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile in northern India, that he hopes to one day return to Tibet. "Maybe in a few years," said the 80-year-old.

"If an opportunity for my return arises, or at least for a short visit, that would be a source of great joy." Thousands of Tibetans have fled their Himalayan homeland since China sent in troops in 1951, and many have settled in India.

AFP
Hamas authorities execute 3 men in Gaza Strip: official

International

oi-PTI

Gaza City (Palestine), May 31: Hamas authorities in the Gaza Strip executed three men for murder on Tuesday, the attorney general said, signalling more could follow despite appeals from the United Nations for a halt.

The three men were put to death behind closed doors at dawn. "To achieve public deterrence and curb crime, the competent authorities carried out at dawn today, May 31, 2016 execution rulings against three of those convicted of shocking murders," a statement from the attorney general said.

In theory all execution orders in the Palestinian territories must be approved by president Mahmud Abbas, who is based in the occupied West Bank. But Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, no longer recognises his legitimacy, and the Attorney General in Gaza Ismail Jaber recently announced that the authorities there would carry out the executions without Abbas's backing. Xavier Abu Eid, an adviser to Abbas, condemned the executions on Twitter.

The UN envoy for the Middle East had previously called on Hamas to abandon the planned executions. "I urge Hamas not to carry out these executions," Nickolay Mladenov told the UN Security Council last week.

Human Rights Watch also condemned the use of the death penalty, with its Israel and Palestine director Sari Bashi calling it "particularly egregious to execute defendants sentenced in Gaza, whose court system is rife with coercion, torture and compromised procedures."

The attorney general's statement announcing the executions said they had all been given a fair trial.

PTI
Attacks on Hindus in UK: Are Muslims frustrated over spread and reach of Hinduism?

What the Karnataka High Court had said on hijab ban

Hijab ban: With SC delivering a split verdict, here is what happens next

No Muslims should engage in birth control: Erdogan

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Ankara, May 31: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday that no Muslim family should adopt birth control measures, stressing that his country's population will grow.

"I am saying this clearly, we will increase our posterity and reproduce generations. As for population planning or birth control, no Muslim family can engage in such a mentality," EFE news quoted Erdogan as saying.

Speaking to the Service for Youth and Education Foundation of Turkey, Erdogan emphasised, "we will follow the road that my God and dear Prophet (Mohammed) says."

The Turkish president has opposed abortion on several occasions, describing it as "murder".

IANS
Slip of Tongue in Pak Parliament: Speaker pronounces Nawaz Sharif's name instead of Shehbaz Sharif

Nawaz Sharif likely to return to Pakistan next month: Imran Khan

Maryam Nawaz gets her passport back after 3 years; meets father Nawaz Sharif in London

Pak PM Nawaz Sharif undergoes successful open heart surgery in London

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

London/Islamabad, May 31: Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif successfully underwent open heart surgery at a private hospital in central London on Tuesday, the premier's second cardiac procedure in five years, his family and hospital officials confirmed.

"Surgery successful by The Grace Of Almighty. The Prime Minister is off the pump now. Will be shifted to ICU in the next 60 mins or so," Sharif's daughter Maryam Nawaz said in tweets sent out on Twitter.

Minutes earlier, she said that the procedure of grafting all arteries had been completed successfully, and that the operation may take another 60 to 90 minutes.

But at 4.17 p.m. -- about four hours after the surgery began at the private clinic in central London, she confirmed that doctors had completed the operation successfully.

Hospital officials also confirmed that the open heart surgery had been completed without any complications.

"Alhamdulliah, he was very calm and in high spirits when he was taken to the operating room. He & family recited Quran before he went in for surgery," Sharif's son Hussain Nawaz told Geo News earlier.

According to family members, the prime minister spoke to his mother over telephone before going into the operation theatre prior to the surgery. Family sources said Sharif informed his mother that he was feeling well and asked her to pray for his successful operation.

Sharif, 66, left for London earlier this week for medical check-ups where his doctors decided to carry out the surgery.

The surgery was performed for "perforation of the heart", a complication from an earlier procedure in 2011, his daughter said earlier.

On Monday, the prime minister's spokesperson Musaddik Malik told reporters that Sharif would stay at the hospital for a few days after surgery and later he would be shifted home, he said.

The spokesman said they would be kept updated about the details of the prime minister's treatment as well as schedule of PM's return as to be advised by the doctors.

Special prayers were offered by people ahead of the prime minister's surgery. Even Sharif's staunch opponent and political rival, PTI chief Imran Khan wished him health and a speedy recovery.

People from all over the world, including key world leaders and notable personalities, called the prime minister before the surgery to convey their well wishes.

Turkish president Tayyab Erdogan called Nawaz Sharif this morning and expressed his hope for his early recovery.

Pakistani education activist Malala Yousufzai also called the prime minister Tuesday morning and conveyed her prayers and well wishes for the prime minister and his quick recovery.

Sharif also spoke to his Indian counterpart Prime Minister Narendra Modi from London on Monday. Vikas Swarup, spokesman for India's External Affairs ministry, said on Twitter that Modi received a phone call from Nawaz Sharif, and that the Indian prime minister wished his Pakistani counterpart a speedy recovery.

Doctors have advised Sharif to take a week-long rest after his open heart surgery is completed successfully.

IANS


Fact Check: Did Trump thank Musk for welcoming him back to Twitter

Stephen Hawking has no explanation for Donald Trump's popularity

International

oi-Sandra

Washington, May 31: While his aura and personality may have charmed many Americans, there is one person who is baffled by Donald Trump's popularity. British physicist Stephen Hawking has said that he has no explanation for Trump's success.

Speaking to ITV's 'Good Morning Britain', Hawking said that Trump is a 'demagogue who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator.'

Those in US illegally treated better than veterans, says Trump

When asked an explanation for Trump's popularity, he simply replied: "I can't." Hawking during his interview also made a plea to the British voters to choose to remain in the European Union in the June 23 referendum.

Meanwhile, Trump on Sunday said that the US military veterans were less cared for when compared to illegal immigrants in the country. Trump will be addressing his next rally in Sacramento.

OneIndia News
Central team roped in as dengue cases in Bihar rise to over 5000

Bihar govt for effective single window system

Patna

oi-PTI

Patna, May 31: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today said the state government is committed for "effective" and "functional" single window system to promote and facilitate clearances for private investments in the state.

"We have single window system policy to promote investments in the state. The system will be reviewed if the need arises."

We want an effective and functional single window system so that entrepreneurs do not face hiccups or problems in getting clearances for their projects/proposals," industries department Principal Secretary S Siddharth said quoting Kumar during his interaction with entrepreneurs at the 8th Udyami Panchayat meeting held at 'Samvad', the Chief Minister's Secretariat.

Entrepreneurs who put up their views, problems and grievances, hailed from various sectors of industries including food processing, health care industries, plastic industries, agriculture equipment and opportunity, Hotels and Restaurants Association of Bihar, travel and tourism, garments and textile etc.

Stating that Udyami Panchayat would now be a regular affair on every fifth Monday of the month, Kumar said the Industrial Incentive Policy would be amended so that entrepreneurs do not face any problems.

"SIPB should clear the proposals at the earliest. There should not be any obstacles/hurdles in getting clearances for setting up industries in the state," Kumar said adding entrepreneurs today praised the state's 2011 Industrial Policy.

Stating that the current industrial policy was effective till June 30, 2016, Kumar said "the new Industrial Incentive Policy will be ready by June 30, 2016. The suggestions and ideas given by the entrepreneurs in today's meeting will also be incorporated in the new policy."

PTI
Investing in Kerala: Can Pinarayi Vijayan ensure a consensus in the Left?

Thiruvananthapuram

oi-Vicky

Thiruvananthapuram, May 31: The newly elected Chief Minister of Kerala Pinarayi Vijayan invited multi nationals to invite in the state. Vijayan has big plans for Kerala and he even met with the co-founder of Infosys, Kris Gopalkrishnan and discussed setting up silicone valley hubs in the state.

The vibes are positive and the moves by Vijayan are commendable, but there also remains a major issue and that is regarding consensus. Vijayan will have to get all his colleagues in the Left on the same page to ensure that investors are not troubled like they were in the past in the state.

Consensus first:

Kerala has several times in the past reported problems for investors thanks to stubborn unions. The problems faced by Coco Cola and Appolo Tyres due to problems in the unions is still fresh in the minds of several investors. Keeping these issues in mind and the Left controlled unions, Vijayan sure does have his task cut out.

Vijayan is an enthusiastic leader and wants to change the face of Kerala in the next five years. The state well known for its tourism and high remittances from the Gulf apart from being a 100 per cent literate state has potential.

In order to bring the investments in, Vijayan is the best bet, observers in the state say. He has the capabilities and can deal with an iron fist.

However, for Vijayan creating that balance would be the problem. He will have to convince the investor of their safety in the state. In order to do so, he will need to build a consensus within his party and ensure that the unions do not trouble the investors.

This would be his biggest challenge. No investor would like to put his money in the state and face the wrath of the unions which have a tendency of going on strike at the drop of a hat.

Vijayan however, sounds optimistic and feels that he could tide over these problems. He had said that the unions are showing cooperation and this will help bring in the investor. While this sounds like good news to the state, Vijayan's biggest challenge still lies in building a consensus within his party. Will he able to do so? Time will tell.

OneIndia News

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Founded in 1986, the Basic Income European Network (BIEN) is the international NGO that promotes BIG around the world. It held its last conference "Re-democratizing the Economy" at McGill's Faculty of Law in 2014. A North American congress is being held in Winnipeg in May 2016 and its 16th congress in July in Seoul, South Korea. Its credo is that some sort of economic right based upon citizenship rather than upon one's relationship to the production process or one's family status is called for as part of the just solution to social problems in advanced societies.

We are half way there with welfare, various subsidies, unemployment insurance, pensions, but as more people join the "precariat", subsisting on part time work or permanently unemployed, the current ad hoc support network for this 'economic right' requires a people-centred radical reform. This is the logical conclusion of the UN Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1976) which recognizes the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living.

There are basic income groups and movements in many countries. The idea is simmering below the surface of conventional political thinking and policy-making across Europe, South America and most of the world. It has actually broken the surface in Switzerland where there is to be a referendum on whether to introduce it. Basic income has proved itself in pilot schemes, in Canada and Namibia as well as in India, but government in both the former countries is hostile.

The idea is most advanced in Brazil where Bolsa Familia ('family bowl'), a universal basic income scheme became law in 2004 and is being introduced in stages. Bolsa Familia has since dramatically reduced poverty where it applies. Inevitably, Bolsa Familia has been denounced for encouraging laziness, but the World Bank has surveyed the scheme and found that it did not discourage working, and even encouraged harder work and entrepreneurship.

In Namibia in 2008 a non-profit coalition implemented a monthly cash of approximately $13 to every Otjivero citizen. Otjivero is a settlement of 1,000 in a hot and dusty region 100 kilometers east of Windhoek, surrounded on all four sides by the electric fences of rich, white farmers. The results were outstanding in reducing child malnutrition and absolute poverty. It has increased entrepreneurial activity, creating a local multiplier effect, increasing employment and mutual support. Crime is down and children can finally attend school.

Only the local white farmers are unhappy. Siggi von Luttwitz: "They all drink, you know, and if you give them 100 dollars, they'll just drink more." Luttwitz, a Namibian of German descent, is a farmer. He pays his workers, his "cadets," the minimum hourly wage of 2.21 Namibian dollars, which is about 20 euro cents, as well as rations of meat and milk, which he believes is sufficient. The general consensus is that Africa's poor should be given food vouchers and wells, but no responsibility.

Economic activity in the village has grown by 10%, more people are paying tuition and doctors' fees, health is improving and the crime rate is down. Before the introduction of the basic income, women prostituted themselves to earn money for food, while the men stole and poached. They spent the rest of their time sitting idle and in a daze in front of their dilapidated huts.

Now, some mothers are raising chickens and men are buying cement for construction. Amy Richardson: Everybody was the same so there was no shame. Only 3% percent of the gross domestic product, or $150 million, would be enough to provide a basic income for all Namibians. Namibian President Hage Geingob announced new plans to eradicate poverty by 2025. At the heart of his strategy is the introduction of basic income grants.

The results of the 1974 pilot project in Manitoba under the socialist government provided a guaranteed minimum income for all the residents of Dauphin. Good results: only new mothers and teens stopped working, the former to spend more time rearing newborns, the latter to study, showing higher test scores and lower dropout rates. There was also an increase in adults continuing education. The period saw a reduction in rates of psychiatric hospitalization, and in the number of mental illness-related consultations.

Amy Richardson, a mother of six whose husband was disabled: "It was enough to bring your income up to where it should be. It was enough to add some cream to the coffee. Everybody was the same so there was no shame." Doreen Henderson, a stay at home mother whose husband worked as a janitor also appreciated the benefits: "Give them enough money to raise their kids. People work hard, and it's still not enough. This isn't welfare. This is making sure kids have enough to eat."

One of the real bonuses is it attempts to take away a lot of the behavioural constraints of existing welfare programs, Forget said. "So people aren't quite so focused on who they should live with, or how many nights a month your [partner] might be spending with you, or whether or not you are looking hard enough for a job."

The experiment was ended under the Conservatives in 1979, and Canada is well down the list in terms of social equality, along with Britain, the US and Australia.

The scourge of poverty causes even US Republicans to lose some sleep. The US came close to instituting a GAI in the late 1960s under Nixon, conducting experiments in 1968--1972 in New Jersey, Iowa, North Carolina, Indiana, Washington state and Colorado. They found that workers decreased labor supply (employment) by two to four weeks per year, 13%, mostly wives and children. That hopeful experiment lapsed with Watergate.

Since the election of the Liberal Justin Trudeau, the policy is back on the table in Canada. Former Toronto mayor, (Liberal) Senator Art Eagleton tabled a motion in the Senate recently calling on the government to create a pilot project that would test a basic income. University of Manitoba health economist Evelyn Forget was invited to address the issue at the House of Commons finance committee in February. A pilot project is part of (Liberal) Ontario's budget for next year.

This is no coincidence. (Liberal) Pierre Trudeau provided support to the Manitoba pilot project in 1974, and Quebec's (Liberal) Minister of Employment and Social Solidarity, Francois Blais, just happens to be author of Ending Poverty: A Basic Income for All Canadians (2002). (Liberal) Senator Art Eagleton: Many families struggle to pay the rent; they can't afford their children's school supplies or school trips. Many rely on donations at the food bank just to feed their families.

Indian experience

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Reprinted from Consortium News

Dear Democrats,

Please don't commit suicide by nominating Hillary Clinton. Allow me to explain. I have been a Democrat since birth. My first political memory was Robert Kennedy's assassination. I remember thinking that perhaps the best politician that ever was had died and being terribly sad from that thought.

I will never forget the election of 1972, watching as state after state chose Nixon instead of McGovern. "How can they all be so wrong?" I remember thinking as a young girl. Ignorance and selfishness seemed the only answers.

I suffered through Nixon and Ford before enjoying, briefly, the interruption of Jimmy Carter for a term. Then it was another 12 years of Republican rule under Reagan and George H. W. Bush. From my childhood to adulthood I had seen 24 years of Republicans and only four years of Democratic rule. The country felt profoundly unfair.

It's the money in politics, I realized somewhere along the way to the 1992 election. So when Jerry Brown, the past and future governor of California, said he would only take $100 campaign contributions because money in politics was corrupting America, for the first time I walked into a campaign office and volunteered. Getting money out of politics profoundly inspired me. I wanted to join the cause. I fell into my first political love affair.

The antagonist in that election, as you well know, were the Clintons. They came as a package. But there was something about them, their love for pomp and circumstance and money, that set me on edge from the beginning. That said, when I heard fellow "Brownies" might be voting for Perot if Brown lost, I argued vigorously the Democrats are not the problem. The Clintons may be, but don't blame the party.

No matter how much we hate the Clintons, we have to suck it up and vote for the Democrats. Yes, I really had those conversations. And I lived to regret them. But that's getting ahead of the story.

During my time on the Brown campaign, I saw how completely biased and inaccurate the media was. I would go to an event with 3,000 people in attendance and see it dismissed as "a small handful" of supporters. I thought, if the media is this wrong about something I have firsthand knowledge of, what else are they wrong about?

I started reading many more sources than the typical mainstream ones. I didn't rely on television news for information. So as the debate for North American Free Trade Agreement was going on, I found myself drawn to C-SPAN, where I could hear the Senators argue for and against the trade agreement without a filter.

It was clear to me, listening to both sides, that those who opposed NAFTA were correct and those who supported it were incorrect. I was so incensed I promised myself that I would volunteer in 1996 for anyone who had opposed NAFTA. I reached out to Rep. Dick Gephardt's office, as he had led the opposition to NAFTA, but sadly, he declined to run that year. The Democratic Party had failed me yet again by offering no principled opposition to a president who could best be described as "Republican Lite."

Rationalizing War

And it wasn't just NAFTA. I was not impressed by our "humanitarian" efforts in Kosovo once I learned how a photograph that appeared to show people inside a fence in a modern-day concentration camp really showed people outside a fence looking in , among many other lies. Having learned from Mark Fineman's Los Angeles Times story " The Oil Factor in Somalia ," which was one of Project Censored's top stories from 1993 , that George H.W. Bush's "humanitarian" efforts in Somalia were run out of the oil companies there in the hopes of securing the oil that studies had indicated were underground there, I learned to be suspicious of "humanitarian" excuses for attacks on other countries.

Rumors abounded that our efforts in Kosovo were also more oil than a humanitarian effort, and specifically, an oil pipeline. The mainstream media chimed in many times to tell us these were simply "conspiracy theories," that no pipeline was planned, that our efforts were simply to help the poor people of Kosovo. But that wasn't true. This pipeline is now in existence. As George Monbiot spelled out in The Guardian of Feb. 15, 2001:

"During the Balkans war, some of the critics of NATO's intervention alleged that the western powers were seeking to secure a passage for oil from the Caspian Sea. This claim was widely mocked. Robin Cook observed that 'there is no oil in Kosovo.' This was, of course, true but irrelevant. His discovery was repeated by an eminent commentator for this paper, who clinched his argument by recording that the Caspian Sea is 'half a continent away, lodged between Iran and Turkmenistan.'

"For the past few weeks, a freelance researcher called Keith Fisher has been doggedly documenting a project which has, as far as I can discover, yet to be reported in any British, European or US newspaper. It's called the Trans-Balkan Pipeline, and it's due for approval at the end of next month. Its purpose is to secure a passage for oil from the Caspian Sea."
"Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.

There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the Earth."

--Rumi

A new documentary, Love Thy Nature, directed by Sylvie Rokab, presents the premise that in order to tackle the problems facing the environment, we need to reactivate our individual and collective connection to nature.

Combining visceral cinematography with thoughtful interviews, Rokab

offers the voice of Liam Neeson as the representative of Homo sapiens.







(Image by Love Thy Nature) Details DMCA



Beginning with lush and verdant scenes accompanied by the sounds of rushing waters and birds, Rokab cuts to the hectic pace of modern urban life. As Neeson reflects on the degree of wisdom possessed by Homo sapiens, scenes of trash dumps, oil soaked birds, and industrial factories flash by.

Cosmologist, Brian Swimme, states flatly, "There has not been this kind of destruction on the planet since the time of the dinosaurs, sixty-five million years ago." He adds, "Progress has its price."

During the Agrarian Revolution (10,000 BC to 3500 BC), society was in sync with nature. Three hundred years ago, the Industrial Revolution took place; the 20th and 21st centuries have manifested the Digital Revolution. This has marked a shift from people working in tandem with nature and its rhythms to the goal of taming nature to bend to our will.

"We are so far away from nature, that we are running into an evolutionary wall," explains social scientist, Duane Elgin.

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Congress Switchboard: 202-224-3121

"The book is very well written...very important in this individualized capitalistic illusory world that enslaves us all within its tentacles and forces us to believe that we are atomized and disconnected beings. Indigenous Lakota people end prayers with "Mitakuye Oyasin...all my relations..." An ancient African proverb states, "A person is a person only because of and with others..." This instructive text is very useful for us living in what we are always told is the modern world, because it reconnects us all and reminds us that ultimately, the endless circle of the Universe binds and connects us all and the Earth is Mother to us with no hierarchy...the ones at the bottom matter the most...like the ants who build mounds and hills, all working in unison and harmony...the book teaches that we were created for community and our destiny is organic community...anything else is doomed..."



Julian Kunnie, Professor of Religious Studies/Classics at the University of Arizona and author of The Cost of Globalization: Dangers to the Earth and Its People
June 2016 issue were current updates re animal issues addressed by the Congress

as well as other in depth articles on a particular animal issue.

He wrote briefly about the 15 animal issue bills currently before Congress. It seems

to be slow going for a bill like the SAFE Act which would stop the sending of our

wild horses to Canada and Mexico for cruel slaughtering. Why? Obviously, we

don't have enough compassionate legislators or voters agitating for its passage.

One of the in depth articles in the Humane Activist involves an Oklahoma state

constitutional amendment. State Question 777- deceptively titled the "Right to

Farm" measure will be on the ballot in November. I couldn't believe what I read

re this issue so well covered by Joe Maxwell for the Humane Activist. Here he

explains what he believes is the intent of this Right to Farm bill:

"The proposed amendment would allow industrial factory farms in Oklahoma to

continue operating with little concern for the environment, consumer safety, animal

welfare or neighbors downstream or down wind."

If the above wasn't bad enough showing no concern whatever for animals, people

safety and the environment --the bill would also disallow any further discussion

on the subject:

"At the same time, State Question 777 would prevent family farmers and other

concerned residents from proposing future ballot measures to enact even the most

basic protections regarding animal welfare and food safety, like prohibiting factory

farms from dumping massive amounts of animal waste into streams or on neighboring

lands."

Unbelievable that they had the audacity to forbid in their bill any future changes which

others might deem necessary. This is more like the doings of a dictatorship than a

democracy.

Reading this- I found yet another reason to be glad that I am vegan. I am also glad that

I don't live near a factory farm. Though my concern is mostly for the suffering incarcerated

farm animals, I also feel sorry for people who have to put up with factory farm run off in their

near by waters. I recalled the plight of the people of Toledo who last year were unable to

drink their water because of the algae-tainted water due to the nearby factory farm run off

into Lake Erie.

Re the State Question 777 bill, Maxwell- a fourth-generation farmer in Missouri says it

should not be passed because it shields industrial agriculture from the democratic process.

No other industry is given this right nor does it deserve blanket protection from common

sense oversight.

Thank goodness that both Nebraska and West Virginia legislatures recently blocked a Right

to Farm provision to their states' constitution. However, proponents of this bad law say they

will be back. Hopefully, they will not win because -if it is ultimately passed, it will be the

innocent farm animals who will suffer. The Right to Farm is sadly only a cruel effort by the

industrial factory farm owners to secure the RIGHT TO HARM. May thinking and compassionate

hearts prevail and say NO to State Question 777.
Reprinted from Wallwritings

When the Democratic nominating convention meets in Philadelphia, July 25, the Platform Committee deliberations will indicate how much Hillary Clinton feels she needs Bernie Sanders' support. Given the dire, looming alternative of a President Donald Trump, it is tempting to stop worrying about the Bern and embrace the New York Times' pro-Clinton narrative. Not so fast. There is still ample time to support the party's nominee after the Bernie Sanders' forces make their Platform Committee stand. Sanders has lain down a defiant marker by selecting three major pro-Palestinian Platform Committee members: Cornel West, James Zogby and Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, each of whom brings a unique background to this fight. That trio sounds like one of those powerful law firm of West, Zogby and Ellison, a team you would not want to face in the courtroom of public opinion when the issue is the continuous torture of a battered client. The Arab American Institution posted a video introducing five progressive activists appointed by Sanders to represent him on the Platform Committee.

Sanders will arrive in Philadelphia lacking enough delegates for the nomination. But thanks to his delegates, including his progressive "Dream Team" on the platform committee, he is in a strong position to shape the platform. The New York Times, and the rest of the establishment mainline media, constantly remind voters that platforms do not matter. And to be sure, Democrats in Congress are not guided by the party platform. Still, the media thrives on conflict and since this should be a lively platform committee conflict, those sessions will get attention. First, we need to debunk portions of the mainstream media pro-Clinton narrative . The Washington Post report on Sanders and his platform committee choices, began this way: "Sen. Bernie Sanders was given unprecedented say over the Democratic Party platform Monday in a move party leaders hope will soothe a bitter split with backers of the longshot challenger to Hillary Clinton -- and Sanders immediately used his new power to name a well-known advocate for Palestinian rights to help draft Democratic policy." Sanders did not suddenly gain his "new power." A candidate still in the race for the nomination, with earned delegates, is entitled to an allocated percentage of committee seats. Contrary to the Post, Sanders was not "given unprecedented say over the Democratic Party platform." He earned those committee seats by winning delegates. He was not given seats to "sooth a bitter split," and he did not use "his new power" to name committee members. He did not get them as largess from the DNC. He got them the "old fashioned way." He earned them. Party unity can wait until after the convention. Sanders should stay in this race as long as he and his delegates can impact the future of the party.

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Whenever Donald Trump has a bad few days, or must avoid answering difficult questions, he falls back to attacks on Bill Clinton, with two goals in mind: change the subject and sully Hillary Clinton with her husband's indiscretions.



This week, the issues were his tax returns, the backlash for calling Oakland and Ferguson the most dangerous places in the world, and news reports of his history with women. So, in an interview with Sean Hannity, following a negative New York Times article in which past women in his life were interviewed, Trump was led by Hannity into a most likely pre-arranged discussion of a 17-year old rape allegation against Bill Clinton -- let's get that subject changed, by all means.

At one point during the interview with Hannity, Trump brought up a 1999 allegation of rape by Juanita Broaddrick, an allegation that actually went nowhere at the time, probably because Broaddrick changed her story twice, and, when the charge was made, the alleged incident was already 21 years old. Two sisters, friends of Broaddrick, and also angry with Clinton because he had commuted the sentence of the man who had murdered their father, claimed that Broaddrick had told them about the rape, but they had not come forward at the time either.

But the point, of course, is moot. None of this is relevant to the Clinton campaign or to her qualifications to be President. On the other hand, Trump is running for President, and his attitude and past behavior towards women is relevant. Let's stick to the subject, Donald.

In other campaign news this week, Trump insisted that Clinton is not qualified to be President because of her poor judgement in supporting the Iraq War and her role in the regime change in Libya. In fact, he told Morning Joe Scarborough, during an interview on May 20 that he would never have invaded Iraq nor gone into Libya. Funny thing how words come back to haunt. The Donald is on video having supported both of those when they occurred. None of this will probably matter to his diehard supporters, however, who seem to be willing to forgive far worse than this.

Other reversals have included a walking back of his initial statement that the minimum wage was too high, now stating that it must be raised, and a reversal of his original tax plan which gave even more breaks to the rich.

Perhaps more important was his insistence that he was so rich he did not need any outside funding for his campaign. This position alone endeared him to a large base of white blue-collar males who have been left out of the recovery and who believe that the big monied interests have no concern for them. Now, however, according to The Winnipeg Free Press , he has asked hedge-fund manager Steven Mnuchin to begin a national fund-raising operation to raise $1 billion. This will mean that monied contributors will certainly be offered perks for writing those checks. And a Trump super-pac has also been formed. What will his supporters think now, or will they even bother to listen? It seems that Trump is making friends in new places, and those places do not include the downtrodden Americans he promises to save.

Trump may seem like a "different" politician to all of the low-information voters who support him. He is not "establishment;" he is going to bring all of their jobs back; and he is going to rid us of all those things we fear-- Mexican rapists, Syrian refugees, abortion, transgenders, all Muslims, and ISIS, who is quietly invading our great nation and hiding out in Mosques. He is no different from the Republicans in Congress, playing on the fears of a Black, foreign-born socialist, fascist President whose agenda is to take their guns and force them to pee with members of the opposite sex. And while we're at it, we can fear Hillary Clinton because her husband was a womanizer. There is much to fear, but it is not any of those things -- it is Donald Trump as President.

It's impossible to know where Donald Trump stands on any policy, really, and that's a dangerous thing.

But the fans who are so adamantly supporting him would do well to reach into his past and have a good long hard look at his behavior. This will provide a much clearer understanding of the type of President he will be. If they do this honestly, they will not like what they see. All of the positions that these supporters so love now have never been his positions. They are being duped once again.
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Fuel Company of Rosatom TVEL and Global Nuclear Fuel Sign Agreement to License and Supply TVS-K Fuel in U.S.

Fuel Company of Rosatom TVEL and Global Nuclear Fuel-Americas (GNF-A, a subsidiary of GE Hitachi) signed an agreement to work together toward the licensing, marketing and fabrication of fuel for U.S. customers operating Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs). Under the agreement, TVEL and GNF-A will form a strategic alliance with the purpose of introducing lead use assemblies (LUAs) of the Russian TVS-K fuel design in the U.S. and seeking licensing approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to supply the fuel in reload quantities.Within the alliance GNF-A will provide U.S.-based project management, licensing, quality assurance and engineering services while TVEL will provide TVS-K design expertise, engineering support and initial fabrication of lead use assemblies. Subsequent FAs are planned to be jointly produced at GNF-As Wilmington N.C. facility.Being one of the leaders in the world nuclear fuel market, TVEL Fuel Company used its wide range of proven engineering solutions for VVER fuel manufacturing to develop its own fuel design for Pressurized Water Reactors. This fuel is unique as its design and technology genetics as well as cladding alloy differ from other alternatives. This will provide additional diversification of fuel supplies to PWRs, said Oleg Grigoryev, Vice President, TVEL. We have already introduced our TVS-K fuel in Europe, and the first results leave no room for doubt in its reliability, safety and high economic performance. We are glad to have aligned with such a globally renowned company as GNF-A to promote our fuel in the U.S. market. We feel confident of success of this project that will bring enhanced competition in the U.S. PWR fuel market, concluded Mr. Grigoryev.U.S. Pressurized Water Reactor operators are looking for additional competition and choice, said Lance Hall, Executive Vice President, Nuclear Fuels and Services, GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH). We are in discussion with several customers regarding lead use assemblies and how this alliance will bring increased choice to the industry.The TVS-K is a 17x17-lattice PWR nuclear fuel assembly developed by TVEL for operation in Westinghouse-designed 3- and 4-loop PWRs. There are currently 35 of these reactors operating in the U.S. The TVS-K design is based on a proven track record and many years of experience in development, manufacturing and operation of nuclear fuel in VVER-1000 reactors. TVEL supplies nuclear fuel to 78 power reactors in 14 countries, research reactors in 9 countries and nuclear-powered ships.The alliance agreement expands on GEHs recent entry into the PWR services market. Last fall, GEH successfully supported its first PWR services outage, in partnership with Exelon Generation, at the R.E. Ginna Nuclear Power Plant in Ontario, New York. The outage was completed under budget and ahead of schedule with no safety-related or human performance issues.About TVEL JSCTVEL JSC  nuclear fuel company of Rosatom  develops, manufactures and supplies nuclear fuel that meets the most stringent international reliability and safety requirements to both Russian and foreign nuclear power plants as well as research reactors and marine nuclear steam generating plants. TVEL is a major supplier of enrichment and conversion services in the world.TVEL was established in 1996 to improve the management of nuclear fuel cycle enterprises and it consolidates conversion, enrichment and fabrication facilities, gaseous centrifuges development and production plants as well as specialized R&D centers. This allows TVEL to offer its customers package proposals on all front-end stages of NFC.About GNFGlobal Nuclear Fuel (GNF) is a world-leading supplier of boiling water reactor fuel, including uranium dioxide and MOX fuel and fuel-related engineering services. GNF is a GE-led joint venture with Hitachi, Ltd. and Toshiba Corporation and operates primarily through Global Nuclear Fuel-Americas, LLC in Wilmington, N.C., and Global Nuclear Fuel-Japan Co. Ltd. in Kurihama, Japan.About GEHBased in Wilmington, N.C., GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) is a world-leading provider of advanced reactors and nuclear services. Established in 2007, GEH is a global nuclear alliance created by GE and Hitachi to serve the global nuclear industry. The nuclear alliance executes a single, strategic vision to create a broader portfolio of solutions, expanding its capabilities for new reactor and service opportunities. The alliance offers customers around the world the technological leadership required to effectively enhance reactor performance, power output and safety.One Raffles Place, Tower 2, #1961; Singapore
Global Cloud Based Language Learning  Strategic Assessment and Forecast Till 2021 Market Research Report by Beige Market Intelligence

Cloud Based Language Leaning - Market Research by Beige Market Intelligence.com

http://www.beigemarketintelligence.com/reports/market-research-reports-education-industry/cloud-based-language-learning-strategic-assessment-market-research-report/

http://www.beigemarketintelligence.com/reports/market-research-reports-education-industry/cloud-based-language-learning-strategic-assessment-market-research-report/

Cloud Based Language Learning  Report HighlightsWorldwide Cloud Based Language Learning market research report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the Worldwide Cloud Based Language Learning Market for the period 2015  2021. The report provides in  depth analysis of the market size and growth of the Worldwide Cloud Based Language Learning market. This research report includes a detailed market segmentation of the Worldwide Cloud Based Language Learning Market shown byTarget Use1) K12 (kindergarten to Class 12)2) Higher Education3) Vocational Training4) Corporate Training5) Examination Training6) OthersLanguage Type1) English Language Learning2) Chinese Language Learning3) Spanish Language Learning4) Arabic Language Learning5) OthersGeographic Segmentation1)APAC2) EMEA2.1)Europe2.2) Middle East2.3) Africa3) North America4) Latin AmericaThe report also provides market share and profiles the key vendors operating in the Worldwide Cloud Based Language Learning Market and further shows a detailed competitive landscape of key players.To know more about the report, please visitCloud Based Language Learning  Market Size and DynamicsMarket Research Analysts at Beige Intelligence, expect the Worldwide Cloud Based Language Learning Market to reach approx. US $6 billion by 2021 and the market to grow at a CAGR of 6.05% during the forecast period. The Cloud-based platforms are turning out to be perfect language learning environments for that they not only offer seamless access to information and enable easy sharing of data but also foster multi-user collaboration effectively. The global language-learning market is undergoing a dramatic shift on account of a rapid increase in adoption of cost-efficient and technology-based products that challenge the traditional classroom pedagogy. The growth in adoption of cloud based technologies is primarily driven by an increasing consumer appetite for platforms that can overcome geographical barriers, while offering the best of content for user access. Further, the cloud technologies are promoting effective peer communication and cross-cultural awareness at a fraction of cost incurred on the conventional pedagogic methods.The Worldwide Cloud Based Language Learning Market has been segmented on the basis of language, user segment and geography. Vocational training accounted is the largest application segment, constituting as much as of 26% of the revenue share. While English is the majorly learnt language with a revenue share of 63% in 2015, APAC stands as the largest market for cloud based language learning both in terms of users and revenues.Cloud Based Language Learning  Trends, Drivers and ChallengesThis market research report provides an overview of the factors driving and restraining the growth of the Worldwide Cloud Based Language Learning market. The report also outlines the key trends emerging in the market that will contribute to the growth of market during the forecast period. Some of the factors driving the growth of the cloud based language learning market include rapidly growing penetration of internet and internet enabled devices and an increased emigration of students and workforce. The introduction of cost-effective cloud-based platforms is further enabling the entry of several startups that are revolutionizing the way language is taught. These startups are attracting significant interest from private equity and venture funds. There are more than 350 language learning start-ups globally which are funded privately, through angel investors or established venture capital or private equity firms. There has been an investment of US$ 186 Million in just 1.5 years since January 2014 until July 2015. A total of $ 464 million was invested in the language learning market over the period 2010-2013 with a majority of investments channeled from companies based out of US.Some of the impending challenges confronting the Cloud based Language Learning Market include the lack of a viable monetization model and the need for continuous investments. Most of the new age learning solutions are being provided free to the end consumers, with very few companies recovering the costs incurred on the content creation and management. Also, the intensity of price-based competition between the players is on a rise with the entry of new players in the market. The revenue and monetization models of these new generation companies are often questionable.One of the major trends observed in the Cloud Based Language Learning market is the growing prominence of gamification in language learning. With a growing number of applications choices in the market, the success of any platform is primarily determined by its ability to engage customers over a longer term. Gamification fills in this need, ensuring language learning can be fun and engaging, highlighting and challenging the monotonous and conventional language learning methods. The report also provides a commentary on the Porters five forces analysis along with a description of each of the forces and its impact on the market.To enquire about the report, please visitCloud Based Language Learning  Key Vendors and Market ShareThis market research report profiles the major companies in the market and also provides a competitive landscape of key players. The major players in the market includes Speexx, Rosette Stone, Duolingo, Bussu and Babbel. Some of the other prominent vendors featured in the report include 50 Languages, Linguatronics, Sanako, Okpanda, Livemocha, Sans, Voxy, Sanoma, Memrise and Edusoft.Please contact Beige Market Intelligence atMail: contactus@beigemarketintelligence.comUS: +1 347 903 9949UK: +44 20 323 99499APAC: +91 99 012 75473Beige Market Intelligence: We are a new-age provider of competitive business intelligence, working across various industry verticals. Our expertise and knowledge ensures that the market analysis Beige provides is comprehensive, detailed and complete. The analysis helps our client organizations become aware and make educated decisions, as far as investing or devising a marketing strategy is concerned. The actionable insights delivered through our market research provide a comprehensive market analysis for every level of market segmentation in an industry. Beige Market Intelligence is a quality driven high end Market Research organization. Our team of experts ensure the analysis you receive is not just analyzed and smartly presented, but is completely customized based on the clients requirement. Our deliverables guarantee our current global client base does not look beyond Beige when it comes to any kind of industry and market analysis.Name of the company: Beige Market IntelligencePostal Address: Chinnapanahalli Main Road,Doddanekundi Village, Bangalore Bangalore KA 560037, IndiaPress Contact: Jency Jacob (media@beigemarketintelligence.com)
Get the latest Asterisk open source phone system by Allora Consulting for your organization!

http://alloraconsulting.com/it-services/pbx-phone-system-asterisk-with-freepbx

The use of the phone systems in big and small firms has changed a lot I the current scenario. Owing to the latest technology, such as Asterisk with FreePBX has enabled organizations to get better and efficient results out of their phone system. Asterisk is technologically advanced open source software which also acts as a phone server. The FreePBX acts as a web console which controls the phone server. It has many added advantages in comparison with other traditional phone systems like Avaya! In this competitive age of business, a customer looks for best value out of the money he or she spends. Here, one is bound to get many benefits in comparison with the other mundane phone systems.FreePBX is definitely very cost effective when compared to VoIP PBX phone systems. This system works with approximately 50% less cost than traditional phone systems like Avaya or Shortel. The less cost of these modules makes it perfect for small business enterprises. This system with Asterisk as a back end can be used with most types of analog and other phones which use SIP. This solves the problems of many companies who do not want to stick to a particular type of phone system. FreePBX works on Linux and is compatible with any real or virtual server. It can also work on the cloud. Also, there is no licensing fee per server required with the use of Asterisk working on FreePBX. Owing to the flexibility and efficiency of this software, it can work perfectly in sync with an enterprise of any size.Owing to the many advantages of using FreePBX phone system, a general trend has been observed in their growing clientage. More and more people are shifting to this software because of the flexibility and numerous usage options that they get here. Such a non proprietary software and hardware as provided by this work is subject to up gradation from time to time. The firm provides this product up to just Raleigh area which is within 200 miles of this company. For more information and purchase of this product log on toAllora consulting has brought their new product Asterisk with FreePBX which is an open source phone system (VoIP PBX) for SMB (small to midsize businesses in Raleigh area).Contact :PO Box 2286,Chapel Hill, North Carolina27515, United StatesPhone : 888-255-6728Fax : 877-255-6728Emailid :info@alloraconsulting.com
Merkel, Abe at Odds on How to Improve World Economy

http://www.nikkoholdings.com

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Japanese Leader Shinzo Abe differ on how best to boost the worldwide economy ahead of a G7 gathering this month.New York, NY, USA, May 31, 2016 -- While Abe made a trademark pitch for major boost in spending, Merkel said Germany was already doing what is needed, referring to the additional increase in domestic demand brought by the arrival of one million evacuees and transients a year ago.The leaders of the European and East Asian trade powers will put forward their opposing views when Japan hosts a meeting of the G7 nations including England, Canada, France, Italy and the US.Head of Corporate trading at Nikko-Desjardins Asset Management, Stuart Poulson commented, I think both Germany and Japan are taking the necessary steps towards financial recovery for world markets. With Merkel and Abe at the forefront we see very positive reforms on the horizon even if their philosophies on immediate action differ.Abe who is known for his "Abenomics" endeavours to fortify financial growth through expanded open spendinghas been urging G7 countries to make an increased effort to boost the world economy."We talked about the world financial situation and that we can't simply sit tight for typical financial cycles, we need to proactively handle the dangers to restore the global economy," he said."We require an acceleration of basic changes and broad monetary strategies," he told a press gathering, after a meeting at Germany's state visitor house, a palace north of Berlin.Merkel, however, believes that Germany, Europe's top economy, is doing what is necessary."With the numerous displaced people we took in a year ago, we saw a boost in consumption which, from my perspective, will generate improvement in the world economy," she said.She said Berlin encouraged a three-tier system of reforms, "We are looking to consolidate strong economic spending policies with improved development and increased investment.Abe came to the presidency in December 2012 vowing to revive the world's third-biggest economy.Abe's method yielded some results initially when the yen weakened rapidly, making exports cheaper and sparking a securities exchange rally. However, global economic weakness since has seen the yen rebound, as investors rush to the Japanese currency which is viewed as a safe haven.German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Japanese Leader Shinzo Abe differ on how best to boost the worldwide economy ahead of a G7 gathering this month.Arin TakashiNikko-Desjardins Asset ManagementTokyo, Japan+81-345781539itadmin@nikkoholdings.com
Magnetic Materials Market Projected to Reach 96.00 Billion USD by 2020

Magnetic Materials Market, Magnetic Materials Market Research Report

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/magnetic-materials-397.html

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/requestsample.asp?id=397

http://www.marketsandmarketsblog.com/market-reports/chemical

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com

The report "Magnetic Materials Market by Type (Semi-Hard Magnet, Soft Magnet, Hard/Permanent Magnet) & by Application (Automotive, Electronics, Industrial, Power Generation, and Others) - Global Forecasts to 2020", The market size of magnetic materials is projected to reach USD 96.00 Billion by 2020, at a CAGR of 9.6% between 2015 and 2020.The market is driven by the growing automotive industry in Asia-Pacific. The increasing demand for automobiles in emerging economies such as China, India, and Japan is fueling the growth of magnetic materials in the region. Another major factor contributing to the growth is modernization of infrastructure coupled with innovative technologies.Browse 71 tables and 38 figures spread through 116 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Magnetic Materials Market - Global Forecasts to 2020"Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report.Semi-hard magnet to account for the major share of the magnetic materials market till 2020The magnetic materials market is segmented by types, namely, semi-hard magnet, soft magnet, and permanent/hard magnet. Semi-hard magnet range between soft and permanent/hard magnetic materials. Semi-hard is the most extensively used magnetic material owing to global demand for technological systems and devices used to develop innovative products. Some of the related products are antitheft articles, electronic systems, automotive devices, and smart electronic bank cards.Growing industrialization drives the automotive application segmentThe automotive application segment leads the magnetic materials market. Magnetic materials are used in various parts of automobile, such as motors, sensors, actuators, and switches. Growing concerns for enhancing fuel economy of vehicles force manufacturers to extensively reduce vehicle weight and increasing combustion efficiency.Asia-Pacific to be the fastest-growing market during forecast periodThe magnetic materials market is broadly segmented into four regions, namely, Asia-Pacific, North America, Europe, and RoW. Asia-Pacific is the largest and fastest-growing market for magnetic materials. Growing industrialization, backed by technical demand from OEMs in the region, has offered enormous opportunity for the use of magnetic materials in Asia-Pacific.Request for Sample PDF:Currently, the global magnetic materials market is dominated by various market players, such as Hitachi Metals Ltd. (Japan), Daido Steel Co. Ltd. (Japan), Molycorp Magnequench (Canada), Shin-Etsu Chemical Co. Ltd. (Japan), TDK Corp. (Japan), and others.The research study is aimed at identifying emerging trends and opportunities in the global magnetic materials market along with a detailed classification of the market, in terms of revenue and volume. It provides a comprehensive competitive landscape and identifies the key players in the global market. The research study also includes a detailed segmentation of the market on the basis of application, type, and region.About MarketsandMarketsMarketsandMarkets is the worlds 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&Ms flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. The new included chapters on Methodology and Benchmarking presented with high quality analytical infographics in our reports gives complete visibility of how the numbers have been arrived and defend the accuracy of the numbers.We at MarketsandMarkets are inspired to help our clients grow by providing apt business insight with our huge market intelligence repository.Contact:Mr. RohanMarkets and MarketsUNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZMagarpatta city, HadapsarPune, Maharashtra 411013, India.Tel: +1-888-600-6441Email: sales@marketsandmarkets.comVisit MarketsandMarkets Blog @Visit MarketsandMarkets @MarketsandMarkets is the worlds 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.Markets and MarketsUNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZMagarpatta city, HadapsarPune, Maharashtra 411013, India.
Automated Breast Ultrasound System Market report provides historic data of 2014 along with a forecast from 2015 to 2020

http://www.syndicatemarketresearch.com/market-analysis/automated-breast-ultrasound-system-market.html

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Automated Breast Ultrasound System Market -Global industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Devleopment, Research and Forecast, 2014 - 2020The report provides detailed segmentation of the automated breast ultrasound system market based on end-user and region. Invenia (GE Healthcare, SOFIA (Hitachi ltd.), ACUSON S2000 (Siemens AG) and Sonecine (SoneCine, Inc.) are key company brand product includes in automated breast ultrasound system market. On the basis of application the automated breast ultrasound system market is segmented into hospitals and diagnostic imaging laboratories. Hospital dominated the overall market in terms of revenue. Hospital segment was continuous to grow at a moderate rate. All segments have been analyzed based on historic, present, and future trends, and the market has been estimated from 2015 to 2020The automated breast ultrasound system is a painless, safe, radiation-free and non-invasive 3D ultrasound system used for early diagnosis of breast cancer. Automated breast ultrasound system is particularly developed for entire breast imaging. Automated breast ultrasound is designed to acquire ultrasound images of the breast using a broadband transducer that is scanned over the entire breast, in an automated fashion, to collect three dimensional (3D) ultrasound volume data. The automated breast ultrasound system device uses a fully automated process to capture 3D images using a high frequency broadband transducer.Read More @Growing radiology market, increasing prevalence of breast cancer globally, and wide-ranging research and development in the imaging techniques are the major driving factors for the growth of automated breast ultrasound system. However, high manufacturing price of equipment and accessories and scarcity of expertise factors are expected to hamper the market growth.Geographically, the automated breast ultrasound system market has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Middle East & Africa, further bifurcation of region on the country level, which include U.S., Germany, UK, France, China, Japan and India. North America was the leading market share of automated breast ultrasound system. North America is followed by Europe. The growth of the North American market is likely to be driven due to extensive advancement in the technology and major market player in this region. Europe is the second largest medical device technologies market owing to improved geriatric population and government regulations fueling the market growth.Sample Report @Some of the key players operating in global the automated breast ultrasound system market such as SonoCine, Inc., General Electronic Co., Hitachi Ltd., and Siemens AG.The report segments the global automated breast ultrasound system market into:Global Automated Breast Ultrasound System Market: End-User Segment AnalysisHospitalsDiagnostic Imaging LaboratoriesGlobal Automated Breast Ultrasound System Market: Regional Segment AnalysisNorth AmericaU.S.EuropeUKFranceGermanyAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaLatin AmericaBrazilMiddle East & AfricaSyndicate Market Research provides a range of marketing and business research solutions designed for our clients specific needs based on our expert resources. The business scopes of Syndicate Market Research cover more than 30 industries includsing energy, new materials, transportation, daily consumer goods, chemicals, etc. We provide our clients with one-stop solution for all the research requirements.Contact US: Joel John3422 SW 15 Street,Suit #8138Deerfield Beach,Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Email: sales@syndicatemarketresearch.comWebsite:
(Un)locking made easy

ESCHA multi-clip in eleven different colors.

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Halver, 30 May 2016  For a quick and easy un- and locking of overmolded RJ45-connectors, the connectivity specialist ESCHA is promptly providing the new ESCHA multi-clip. This is easily plugged onto the overmolded RJ45-connector body and is immediately ready-to-use.With ESCHA multi-clip, RJ45-connectors deeply plugged into the port, with their unlocking lugs being hard- or even impossible to reach for by finger, can be unlocked. Besides, RJ45-connectors already plugged cannot be unlocked by mistake which might unintentionally disconnect important connections. To this effect, the muti-clip lug is pushed under the RJ45 lug.The ESCHA multi-clip is available in eleven colors (blue, red, green, yellow, pink, orange, violet, black, gray, white, and beige) and consists of high-grade POM (polyoxymethylene). Due to their various colors, the clips are suited for marking or allocating of overmolded RJ45-connectors.The ESCHA Group is a leading supplier in the fields of connectivity and housing technology. For more than 30 years, the family-controlled company has been developing and manufacturing innovative product novelties taking dynamics to the market for automation components. Based on its standard products, the company designs custom-made connectivity and individual special solutions. With about 600 employees around the globe and highly in-depth development and production, ESCHA is extending its product portfolio constantly and independently. The annual group turnover amounts to 55 million Euros. ESCHA guarantees high availability and consistent quality of its products worldwide through production facilities in Germany, Czech Republic and China as well as licensed production in USA and Mexico.ESCHA Bauelemente GmbHElberfelder Str. 3258553 Halver | GermanyDipl.-Medienokonom Florian SchnellHead of Corporate CommunicationsTel.: +49 2353 708-8156E-Mail: f.schnell@escha.net
Global Oil and Gas Logistics Market Growth, Trends, Forecast and Value Chain 2015  2021

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Oil and gas logistics covers transportation of drilling equipment, extracted crude oil & natural gas. Oil & gas transportation covers entire phases from upstream to downstream. Oil and gas logistics synchronizes with every kind of equipment from multiple origins to the areas that are tough to access with the continual concern for force and atmosphere. In terms of revenue and consumption, the oil and gas logistics market for each application type and each of these regions has been forecast in the report for the period from 2015 to 2021.Browse the full Oil and Gas Logistics Market- Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis and Forecast, 2014  2020 report atGlobal oil & gas logistic market is primarily driven by rising demand from ever-increasing population across the globe. Advent of shale reserves in Middle East and North America region is also expected to boost the growth of the oil and gas logistics market within the forecast period. However, fluctuating feedstock prices may impede the growth of the market. Moreover, ongoing development are likely to disclose the new opportunity for the major players of oil and gas logistics market in near future.The report provides a decisive view of the oil and gas logistics market by segmenting the market based on phases and end-use. Based on phases, market segmentation includes upstream, midstream and downstream. By end-use industry the market segmentation includes pipeline, tanker/barge, truck and rail.In order to give the users of this report a comprehensive view on the oil and gas logistics market, we have included a detailed value chain analysis. To understand the competitive landscape in the market, an analysis of Porters Five Forces model for the oil and gas logistics market has also been included. The study encompasses a market attractiveness analysis, wherein product segments and application segments are benchmarked based on their market size, growth rate and general attractiveness.Get Request Sample @The study provides the comprehensive perspective on the oil and gas logistics market growth, throughout the forecast period in terms of volume (in Barrels) and revenue (in USD Million), across different region including North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East and Africa with its further bifurcation into major countries including U.S. Germany, France, UK, China, Japan, India and Brazil. This segmentation includes demand for oil and gas logistics market based on individual products in all the regions and countries.The report also includes detailed profiles of end players such as Kuehne + Nagel Company, Gulf Agency Company Ltd, Bollore Africa Logistics Ltd, BDP International, DB Schenker, Neovia Logistics, SGS Logistics, Agility Project Logistics Inc, SDV International Logistics and among others. The detailed description of players includes parameters such as company overview, financial overview, business strategies and recent developments of the company.Get Illustrative Sample before buying:The global oil and gas logistics market has been segmented as follows:Oil and Gas Logistics Market: Phase Segment Analysis Upstream Midstream DownstreamOil and Gas Logistics Market: End-Use Segment Analysis Pipeline Tanker/barge Truck RailOil and Gas Logistics Market: Regional Segment Analysis North Americao U.S. Europeo UKo Franceo Germany Asia Pacifico Chinao Japano India Latin Americao Brazil Middle East and AfricaSyndicate Market Research provides a range of marketing and business research solutions designed for our clients specific needs based on our expert resources. The business scopes of Syndicate Market Research cover more than 30 industries includsing energy, new materials, transportation, daily consumer goods, chemicals, etc. We provide our clients with one-stop solution for all the research requirements.Contact US3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138,Deerfield Beach,Florida 33442,USATel: +1-386-310-3803GMT Tel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll Free No.1-855-465-4651Email: sales@syndicatemarketresearch.comWeb:
Global Internet Of Things Security Market To Expand At 55.01% CAGR During 2016-2020 Due To Growing Demand From Utilities Sector

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MarketResearchReports.biz has added a new research report to its repository. The report, titled Global Internet of Things Security Market 2016-2020, offers a comprehensive study on the global Internet of Things (IoT) security market and projects the market to take a leap at a CAGR of 55.01% during the period between 2016 and 2020. The report analyzes the present scenario of the market and presents insights into the key factors impacting the growth of the market. The global Internet of Things security market has been studies across some of the key regions. The report further profiles some of the major vendors operating in the market.Internet of Things, better known as IoT refers to the communication between connected devices within a network. Data transfer taking place between two smart devices such as thermostats and sensors, can be further connected to individual mobile devices. Efficiency of IoT depends on the interconnection between communication services, hardware devices, and IT and software devices. IoT is very helpful in effective management and remote monitoring of numerous interconnected devices and hence, is widely used across smart homes, smart healthcare, smart transportation, and others.View Press Release atThe report states that the recent advances in sensor technology have fuelled the growth of the global IoT security market. Innovations in material sciences have led to the introduction of different types of sensors. Nowadays, sensor technologies have developed in terms of performance, miniaturization, cost, and energy consumption. Sensors help boost remote monitoring, enterprise mobility, and remote system control across industries. All these factors will lead to the increased adoption of IoT security. However, high total cost of ownership of IoT security solutions will negatively impact the growth of the market during the forecast period. The emergence of integrated security solutions will open new opportunities for the market in the near future.In terms of end-use industries, the report segments the global IoT security market into healthcare, automotive, and utilities. During the forecast period, the utilities sector is expected to drive the demand from the market with highest adoption of IoT security solutions. Extensive implementation of smart meters and IoT for utility management systems such as gas, energy, water, and oil will contribute towards the growth of the market.For Sample Copy, click here:The report studies the global IoT security market across some of the key regions such as the Americas, EMEA, and APAC. The report takes into consideration the various micro- and macro-economic factors impacting the growth of the market across each of the regions.Describing the competitive landscape, the report profiles some of the major vendors in the global IoT security market such as Symantec, Infineon Technologies, Cisco Systems, Intel, Broadcom, Axeda Machine Cloud, Digi International, Ericsson, Fortinet, Eurotech, IBM, Gemalto, Kore Wireless, Nokia, NetComm Wireless, Palo Alto Networks, Numerex, Rockwell Automation, Sierra Wireless, Secure Crossing, Systech Solutions, Sophos, Tofino, Telit, and Ventus Wireless.MarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.State Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Xanthan Gum Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015  2021

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Xanthan gum which is primarily used as a food thickening agent and also in reducing water mobility in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) method is composed of pentasaccharide repeat units. It comprises of glucose, glucuronic acid and mannose in the molar ratio of 2.0:1.0:2.0. On the basis of application the market is segmented into food and beverages, oil and gas, pharmaceutical, cosmetics and others.The global xanthan gum market witnessed growth in recent years due to the increasing demand for emulsifiers derived from natural sources that are being used in bakery and in confectionery products. Moreover, the increase in the use of emulsifiers in peanut butter, chocolate, salad dressings, frozen desserts and margarine is expected to drive the market for xanthan gum. The rapid growth in oil and gas industry as a result of increasing energy requirements for the growing population is also anticipated to propel demand over the forecast period. The growing consumer awareness regarding the harmful nature of synthetic derived personal care products is expected to fuel the growth of natural personal care products. This in turn serves as a driving factor for the growth of xanthan gum market.Download And Get FREE Sample PDF File Of Xanthan Gum :Threat of substitutes from gaur gum and locust bean gum serves as a restraining factor in the growth of the xanthan gum market. In addition, xanthan gum may be sourced from a variety of mediums that are themselves common allergens, such as, wheat, corn, soy, dairy and as a result it might trigger allergic response in people sensitive to these mediums.Recent trend shows that leading companies are entering into strategic partnerships and joint ventures which are expected to strengthen the global market for xanthan gum over the forecast period. In February 2015, Pfizer Inc. declared that it would acquire Hospira Inc.in order to increase the use of xanthan gum in pharmaceutical applications. In January 2013, Cargill and Arasco entered into a joint venture in order to manufacture starch and sweetener based products in Saudi Arabia.In 2013 Asia Pacific held the largest market in terms of revenue for xanthan gum and the market is expected to grow due to increase in demand of food processing industry in the region. Rapid economic development in China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam is also expected to fuel the demand for xanthan gum. Moreover, favorable government policies in India and China along with increasing foreign investments in oil & gas sector in the region is expected to boost xanthan gum market over the forecast period. Growing domestic demand for foods & beverages in emerging markets of BRICS is anticipated to create a positive impact on the global food & beverage industry which will result in growth in the demand for xanthan gum over the forecast period.Some of the key players operating in the.xanthan gum market are Fufeng Group Company Ltd, Deosen Biochemical Ltd, Cargill, Hebei Xinhe Biochemical Co Ltd, Gum Technology Corporation, Meihua Holdings Group Co. Ltd, Pfizer Inc, Qingdao Unichem Co Ltd., Sancho & Lee Co. Ltd., Jungbunzlauer AG., Archer-Daniels-Midland Company and CP Kelco ApS among others.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMR's experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.ContactMr. Sudip. STransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:Visit :
Baking Enzymes Market - Global Industry Analysis, Forecast 2016  2023

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Enzymes is one of the most important ingredients used in majority of bakery products. Enzymes are used to change the functional characteristics of products. Some of the important uses of baking enzymes include fermentation and relaxation of dough, dough stability, prolonging crumb softness, providing flour enhancement, improving volume, texture and color. Enzymes today are considered as natural and innovative solution to baking business today due to its ability to increase the quality of products.The global market for baking enzymes can be segmented on the basis of product type as protease, lipase, carbohydrase and others. On the basis of end user application the market can be segmented as cakes & pastries, cookies breads and biscuits. Geographically the global baking enzymes market is segmented as North America, APAC, Europe and Rest of the World.Enquiry before Buying@The major drivers for growth in baking enzymes market include declining use of emulsifiers, uncovering of health and nutritional values and high disposable income among consumers. Some of the restraints are response/inability of enzymes in changing temperature and pH level. North America is market leader for this market due to diverse consumption patterns and increasing concerns of health among consumers.The global market for baking enzymes is expected to grow at a healthy rate with single digit growth across all geographies from 2013  2019. Use of enzymes across the globe has gained popularity in recent past due to ban on use of chemical additives in baking and other fermented products. The market is expected to witness opportunity as a result of use of enzymes for development of gluten free products.Some of the major player in this market are Royal DSM, Stern Enzym, Aumenzymes, Maps Enzyme Limited, AB Enzymes Gmbh, Puratos Group NV, E.I.Dupont De Nemours&Company, Amano Enzyme Inc., and Dydaic International Inc.The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs 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.ContactMr.Sudip S90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Software Services for Logistics Companies in USA, Canada and UK

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Texas (USA), Canada (Toronto) & India (Business Network)Suma Soft offers Software Services for Logistics Companies in USA, Canada and UK. The need for software services for Logistics companies in USA, Canada and UK has increased exponentially as companies are look at unlocking value in the global market. For a business as extensive as supply chain that includes material handling, packaging, warehousing, freight transportation, physical distribution, sales order processing and several other intricate processes, having a third party logistics software support can result in major cost-reduction and time-saving.What are the advantages of using a transport and logistics software?1. A logistics software helps automate several functions such as load tendering to carriers, paperwork and load planning2. The scope of human error in handling vast data and multiple checks decreases with the help of a software3. Software automation helps the business processes to work accurately and speedily4. A web based transport software can help quoting, rating, shipping and tracking the packages5. With a mobile app, logistics enterprises can increase mobility and real-time monitoring of packages6. Supply chain management software also helps in increasing scalability while keeping costs under controlThe above facts state that automating logistics services can add multiple advantages to your business process. In order to gain a competitive advantage in the global logistics market, enterprises need to adopt the latest technology and software expertise.With a deep understanding of industrys best practices and proven benchmarks providing customized software solutions, Suma Soft is a reliable partner for adding value to your supply chain management. The company offers software such as shipping portal development, mobile application development, legacy logistics application migration and open source platform to streamline your logistics services.Suma Soft Pvt. Ltd.Name : Stuart SmithFor USA : +1 281 764 1825Email : info@sumasoft.com7880 San Felipe Street,Ste 120, Houston TX 77063-1647
Oxalyl Chloride Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016  2023

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Oxalyl Chloride Market: OverviewOxalyl chloride also known as oxalyl dichloride, oxalic acid chloride or ethanedioyl dichloride is a colorless liquid. Oxalyl chloride is a dicacid chloride of oxalic acid. Oxalyl chloride is used as chemical reagent in synthesis of various chemicals. Oxalyl chloride is manufactured by treating phosphorus pentachloride with oxalic acid. Oxalyl chloride is incompatible with alcohols, bases, steels and oxidizing agents among others. Oxalyl chloride is moisture sensitive liquid. Oxalyl chloride reacts with water and releasing toxic gases. Oxalyl chloride is used in Friedel-Crafts acylation.It is also used in the production of oxalate diesters which are used in manufacturing of glow sticks. Oxalyl chloride is used as raw material in manufacturing of anti-biotics and other pharmaceuticals. Moreover, it is also used as a stabilizer for color photographic material. Oxalyl chloride is also used in formation of monomers of thermally stable polymers. In addition, it can be also used in formation of polyamides. It is also used in the production of resins used for affinity photography. One of the niche applications of oxalyl chloride is in the formation of X-ray contrasting agents.Download Free Research Report Brochure :Oxalyl Chloride Market: DriversThe market for oxalyl chloride was primarily driven by growing demand from pharmaceutical industry. Oxalyl chloride is used in formulation and manufacturing of various medicines and anti biotics. In crop protection chemicals, it is used in manufacturing of highly potent pesticide and herbicide. In addition, oxalyl chloride is used in manufacturing of chlorine based organic compounds. In polymer industry, it is used as polymer cross linking agent in various processes. Moreover, oxalyl chloride is also used as polymerization agent in wide range of reactions. It is also used in production of chemiluminescent formulations.Preparation of antioxidants is also one of the major applications of oxalyl chloride. In spite of so many applications the market demand for oxalyl chloride is expected to be weak over the forecast period. Moreover, health and environmental regulations associated with oxalyl chloride is likely to hinder the growth of market in near future. Oxalyl chloride is considered among toxic and highly corrosive chemical material. It is also considered as lachrymatory agent which can cause pain, tears, vomiting and blindness.Oxalyl Chloride Market: Regional DynamicsIn terms of demand, North America exhibited the largest demand for oxalyl chloride in 2013. The demand in this region is largely dictated by the massive demand from the pharmaceutical and agrochemical industry. There is rise in demand for herbicides in North America region driving the demand for oxalyl chloride. U.S. led the demand for oxalyl chloride in this region from past few years. North America was trailed by the Asia Pacific region.Asia Pacific is regarded as being among the fastest growing markets for oxalyl chloride. The rapidly mounting demand from chlorinated compounds and agrochemicals is driving the demand for oxalyl chloride in this region. China, India, and Japan had the highest demand for oxalyl chloride in this region. However, countries such as Taiwan and Singapore are likely to offer huge opportunities for oxalyl chloride market in near future. Europe had the third largest demand for oxalyl chloride in 2013. Western Europe showed the greatest demand in the Europe region.Russia, where economic growth is on track, is expected to expand its share in the oxalyl chloride market in near future. Rest of the World exhibited the lowest demand for oxalyl chloride as of 2013. Going forward, the Middle East and South America are also projected to show optimistic growth for the oxalyl chloride market in the future thanks largely to the increasing demand from agrochemical sector.Among the topmost manufacturers in the oxalyl chloride market are TCI Chemicals, MainPlus Chemicals Ltd., Sarchem Laboratories, Inc. and Sant Cruz Biotechnology Inc. among others.The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMR's experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.ContactMr. Sudip. STransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:Visit :
Global 3D Scanning Consumption Industry Report 2016

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The recently published report titled Global 3D Scanning Consumption Industry 2016 Market Research Report is an in depth study providing complete analysis of the industry for the period 2016  2021. It provides complete overview of Global 3D Scanning Consumption market considering all the major industry trends, market dynamics and competitive scenario.The Global 3D Scanning Consumption Industry Report 2016 is an in depth study analyzing the current state of the Global 3D Scanning Consumption market. It provides brief overview of the market focusing on definitions, market segmentation, end-use applications and industry chain analysis. The study on Global 3D Scanning Consumption market provides analysis of market covering the industry trends, recent developments in the market and competitive landscape. Competitive analysis includes competitive information of leading players in market, their company profiles, product portfolio, capacity, production, and company financials. In addition, report also provides upstream raw material analysis and downstream demand analysis along with the key development trends and sales channel analysis. Research study on Global 3D Scanning Consumption market also discusses the opportunity areas for investors.With 153 tables and figures, the report provides key statistics on the state of the industry and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market.Download Sample this Report:8 Major Manufacturers Analysis of 3D Scanning8.1 3D Systems Corporation8.1.1 Company Profile8.1.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.1.3 Sales Volume, Sales Revenue, Sale Price and Gross Margin8.1.4 Contact Information8.2 Solutionix Corporation8.2.1 Company Profile8.2.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.2.3 Sales Volume, Sales Revenue, Sale Price and Gross Margin8.2.4 Contact Information8.3 Laser Design Inc8.3.1 Company Profile8.3.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.3.3 Sales Volume, Sales Revenue, Sale Price and Gross Margin8.3.4 Contact Information8.4 Basis Software, Inc (Surphaser)8.4.1 Company Profile8.4.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.4.3 Sales Volume, Sales Revenue, Sale Price and Gross Margin8.4.4 Contact Information8.5 3D Scan Company8.5.1 Company Profile8.5.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.5.3 Sales Volume, Sales Revenue, Sale Price and Gross Margin8.5.4 Contact Information8.6 Ametek Corporation8.6.1 Company Profile8.6.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.6.3 Sales Volume, Sales Revenue, Sale Price and Gross Margin8.6.4 Contact Information8.7 3D Digital Corporation8.7.1 Company Profile8.7.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.7.3 Sales Volume, Sales Revenue, Sale Price and Gross Margin8.7.4 Contact Information8.8 Faro Technologies8.8.1 Company Profile8.8.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.8.3 Sales Volume, Sales Revenue, Sale Price and Gross Margin8.8.4 Contact Information8.9 Maptek Pty Ltd8.9.1 Company Profile8.9.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.9.3 Sales Volume, Sales Revenue, Sale Price and Gross Margin8.9.4 Contact Information8.10 Topcon Corporation8.10.1 Company Profile8.10.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.10.3 Sales Volume, Sales Revenue, Sale Price and Gross Margin8.10.4 Contact InformationTo Purchase this premium Report atGlobal QY Research is the one spot destination for all your research needs. Global QY Research holds the repository of quality research reports from numerous publishers across the globe. Our inventory of research reports caters to various industry verticals including Healthcare, Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Technology and Media, Chemicals, Materials, Energy, Heavy Industry, etc. With the complete information about the publishers and the industries they cater to for developing market research reports, we help our clients in making purchase decision by understanding their requirements and suggesting best possible collection matching their needs.Unit1, 26 Cleveland Road, South Woodford, London, E182AN, United KingdomEmail: sales@globalqyresearch.comFollow us:
Buying baby clothes is not so easy today

http://littlehairbowshop.com

Buying clothes for your baby is the most difficult task and especially when you are not an experienced parent, you can contact anyone who has had a kid or currently has kids, about how many baby wears they can go through. Indeed some kids can go through 4 or 5 dresses in a day!If you plan on purchasing baby clothes for a baby, consider the following things in mind; you want to set the reason for the clothes that you are getting. Buying the baby clothes because your baby really requires them or, buying the baby clothes for other functionalities. You like to buy Party Wear Baby Clothes for a special occasion or buy clothes for regular use.Once you know what kind of baby dress you are going to purchase, it's always great idea to get clothes for one size bigger than what the kid is currently wears. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to feel that babies grow very rapidly. Buying one size ahead will secure you a lot of money in the long run and the kid can still wear clothes that are a small baggy! If you are getting an outfit for a party, ensure that you purchase darker colored clothing for the kid. Darker colors conceal the stains better and won't require cleaned as often.LittleHairbowShop is one of the most suitable baby dresses and accessories store, located in the Georgetown, TX. We offer a huge range of baby dresses, baby hair accessories, baby shoes at our online store. In our baby clothes, you can get a vast collection of baby bow satin bloomers, baby chiffon bloomers, baby skirts, baby Party Wear Baby Clothes, baby strip dress and many other stylish and designer dresses. As like dress category, we bring amazing collection of trendy and fashionable baby hair accessories for your baby where you can find bow clips, cheer bows, knot bows, ribbon clips and more.In our online baby accessory store, we also provide various kinds of baby shoes such as stripped shoes, floral shoes, shabby shoes, etc. All the shoes are available in high quality, soft material and various catchy colors like pink, purple, red, etc. You can also get stylish sandals for your baby. These sandals are really very tempting and available in many color, design, size and pattern.We aim to provide latest baby clothes, baby hair accessories and baby shoes to embellish your babies like princess.Contact us:Little hair bow shopGeorgetown, TXCall: 512-887-2354Mail id: beki@littlehairbowshop.comWebsite:In our online baby accessory store, we also provide various kinds of baby shoes such as stripped shoes, floral shoes, shabby shoes, etc. All the shoes are available in high quality, soft material and various catchy colors like pink, purple, red, etc. You can also get stylish sandals for your baby. These sandals are really very tempting and available in many color, design, size and pattern.We aim to provide latest baby clothes, baby hair accessories and baby shoes to embellish your babies like princess.Little hair bow shopGeorgetown, TXCall: 512-887-2354
New report to study the Global Integral Horsepower Motors Market Analysis, Segments, Growth and Value Chain 2020 by SMR

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http://www.syndicatemarketresearch.com/market-analysis/integral-horsepower-motors-market.html

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An electric motor is an electrical machine that converts electrical energy into mechanical motion. There are two types of electric motors based on their power classification such as fractional horsepower motors and integral horsepower motors. Integral horsepower motors are primarily used in the automotive, mining, utilities, and food and beverage industries. The integral horsepower motors are classified into two categories namely three phases and single phase integral horse power motors. Integral horsepower motors are suitable for many industries such as printing converting, machine tool, moving webs, automation, material handling, and food packaging & production applications. It is divided into three product type such as small motors, medium motors, and large motors.Rising demand for energy efficient motors is a key driving factor of integral horsepower motors. Increasing demand for automobiles and growing industrial applications are expected drive the market for improving economic conditions in the European regions. The growing awareness of alternate sources of energy, for example, water and waste water is also supporting the growth of this market. However, the high maintenance price of motors is predicted to hamper the growth of integral horsepower motors market.Browse sample report@The global integral horsepower motors market is segmented on the basis of type, application and region. Based on different type market is segmented as small, medium and large motors. Furthermore, application of the integral horsepower motors market can be segmented as automotive industries, mining, power generation, food & beverages, HVAC segments and others.This report provides detailed analysis and forecast of the integral horsepower motors market on a global and regional level. The report includes detailed competitive landscape of the global integral horsepower motors market and an analysis of Porters five forces model for the integral horsepower motors market has also been included. The study encompasses a market attractiveness analysis, wherein application segments are benchmarked based on their market size, growth rate and general attractiveness. It includes company market share analysis, the product portfolio of the major industry participants.Application segments have been analyzed based on historic, present, and future trends, and the market has been estimated from 2015 to 2020 in terms of revenue (USD Million). Major regional segments analyzed in this study include North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East and Africa with its further bifurcation into major countries including U.S., Germany, France, UK, China, Japan, India, and Brazil.Read More@Some of the key players for global integral horsepower motors market includes Johnson Electric, Allied Motion Technologies, Emerson Electric, Danaher Corporation, Rockwell Automation, Siemens AG, TECO Westinghouse, Danaher Motion, Regal Beloit, Brook Crompton and ABB Ltd.This report segments the global integral horsepower motors market as follows:Integral Horsepower Motors Market: Product Types Segment AnalysisSmallMediumLargeIntegral Horsepower Motors Market: Application Segment AnalysisAutomotive IndustriesMiningPower GenerationFood & BeveragesHVACIntegral Horsepower Motors Market: Regional Segment AnalysisNorth AmericaU.S.EuropeUKFranceGermanyAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaLatin AmericaBrazilMiddle East & AfricaSyndicate Market Research provides a range of marketing and business research solutions designed for our clients specific needs based on our expert resources. The business scopes of Syndicate Market Research cover more than 30 industries includsing energy, new materials, transportation, daily consumer goods, chemicals, etc. We provide our clients with one-stop solution for all the research requirements.Contact US:Joel John3422 SW 15 Street,Suit #8138Deerfield Beach,Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Email: sale@syndicatemarketresearch.comWebsite:
The Importance Of Miracles Past And Present - Author Donna Louis Gives Readers The Most Important Gift Of All - Hope

Christian author Donna Louis

http://www.miraclebook.net

As detailed on a number of news sites recently, including a piece on WGN-TV.com, a 70 year old woman in India gave birth to her first child. Daljinder Kaur gave birth last month after two years of treatment using donor eggs at a fertility clinic in the northern state of Haryana. Their son, born healthy and hearty and weighing 4.4lb, was named Arman."God heard our prayers. My life feels complete now, she told Agence France-Presse. I am looking after the baby all by myself. I feel so full of energy. My husband is also very caring and helps me as much as he can.Is this a modern day miracle? Many believe it is. It is a stunning example of hope and faith.Miracles are important for one primary reason - they give us hope at a completely different level. While hope is important, miracles give us the proof that there is a real, verifiable reason to hope. Hope without a reason for hope is just empty. Hope combined with a verifiable reason for hope becomes faith. Without faith, a human life holds not much more value than an animal's life or the life of a tree. Miracles lead to hope, hope to faith and faith to belief in the sanctity and value of human life. They put our lives in perspective within the framework of the universe.Donna Louis' new book, 'Miracles of Direction, Miracles of Conquest, Miracles of Provision and Miracles of Purpose' explores biblical miracles that took place while Jesus was here on earth. She then references with miracles that take place on a daily basis in the modern world. She separates these miracles into four categories and presents insightful example of each type, taken directly from the Bible.Louis knows her subject well, as she has personally experienced three miracles. As the result of those life-altering experiences, she began an in-depth study of some of Christianity's most well-documented miracles. In her book, she attempts to expand upon and explain both the purpose and the direction of those miracles."I wrote this book so that people can know that GOD is still in the miracle working business now just like he was in the Old Testament," Louis stated. "Once we have no hope we might as well be dead! Hope allows us to dream about what could happen or what could be true. I see hope as H = Healthy O = Outlook P = Positive E = Energy. This is what we need to have on a daily basis. A healthy outlook with positive energy about our futures."Donna Louis was chosen as a winner in the 2015 '50 Great Writers You Should Be Reading' awards contest. 'Miracles' has also received rave reviews from readers. One review called it "amazing, uplifting and inspirational". Another stated, "I was profoundly impressed by the writing."Donna Louis is available for media interviews and can be reached using the information below or by email at donnalouisgodsmessenger@aol.com. 'Miracles of Direction, Miracles of Conquest, Miracles of Provision and Miracles of Purpose' is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Xulon Press. More information is available at her website.Donna Louis is happily married to her husband of 30 years Patrick Louis and currently resides in Florida. She lives to accomplish the task that God created her for and on a daily basis to follow Proverbs 3:5-6. "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths."PO Box 1613Shallotte, NC 28459
Wireless Dataloggers Ensure Accuracy in a Calibration House

Wireless DataLoggers for Enviro Monitoring

www.DataLoggerInc.com

www.dataloggerinc.com

Users Pull Environmental Data with a Button PressCHESTERLAND, OHMay 31, 2016CAS DataLoggers recently provided the datalogging solution for Total Calibration Solutions Inc., an Ohio-based calibration house for test and measurement instruments throughout North America. As an ISO/IEC 17025:2005 and ANSI/NCSL Z540-1-1994-accredited calibrator, Total Calibration is using the loggers not only to log and verify sensor calibration for their customers, but also to help customers with specific applications including monitoring a clients warehouse. Total Solutions also offers NIST calibration and complies with FDA/FAA regulations.General Manager Mark Hanson explains, We use several different types of dataloggers, both individually and in groups, to provide NIST-traceable calibration services. Additionally we assist customers utilizing loggers for internal projects. An example of this would be warehouse temperature and humidity validation. This is required to meet certain FDA guidelines for product storage.Installation:Total Calibration uses T&D RTR-500 Series wireless dataloggers to take automated temperature and humidity measurements. This includes T&Ds RTR-503 Wireless Temperature and Humidity loggers and RTR-500DC Wireless Handheld Data Collector.Mark continues, We have multiple calibration chambers used to calibrate our customers sensors. The most utilized chamber in which we log data is about 24x24x36 square inches. We also have larger chambers up to 36x36x48 square inches from top to bottom.The RTR-503 is currently deployed inside our main calibration chamber. Previously to sourcing T&D, we used little USB loggers to record the temperature and RH data with 10 or 15 loggers to a chamber, for example placing 5 on the top rack, 5 on the bottom rack. After running each test, we had to go through the labor of downloading all of the dates from each one for comparison. Now we simply place a wireless logger inside, and collect data live to produce an Environmental Chamber Survey for our customers.How Has Data Logging Helped Your Calibration House?Using the loggers has helped us to automate many calibration tasks.We use the temperature and humidity datalogger to monitor incubators for our customers. I like T&Ds automated recording capability so I can leave the logger to record while running a calibration cycle in the incubators.For example we have a humidity generator that cycles through certain humidity set points throughout the day, so with the automated logger we can just let it record. Afterward we view the time-stamped readings and then present all our calibration data to the customer.I feel that for many of these types of applications, people should be using loggers instead of analog and display-only devices. Its just too time-consuming to check readings manually so this product is really a time-saver.Warehouse Data Collection:One of our customers who owns a warehouse really loves T&D too. Were continually monitoring the interior temperature at several points. In most cases I collect the data from several loggers using the RTR-500DC handheld data collector. Its neat because the collector lets you specify which remote units you want to collect data from, then it pulls all the temperature data via USB, or you can view data from the collectors LCD one at a time.The T&D loggers are completely wireless and we can set groups, locations etc., then just pull the data all at once. You dont need an Ethernet connection. We do use Ethernet dataloggers in other HVAC setups, and theyre great for certain applications and utilizing Wi-Fi with T&D, you dont have to wire everything to get the data, so we like doing it this way.Configuration & Setup Software:Lab Manager Josh Hanson handled setup of the T&D units for monitoring the customers warehouse and has also calibrated a sensor grid for them in the main calibration chamber. It was pretty easy to pick up the software; it didnt take me more than 15 minutes to set it up.T&D is especially neat for us when it comes to projects like ourwarehouse application. The software lets us name each logger and color-code different areas, so the north wall is colored blue, the west portion of the warehouse is picked out in green, etc.Would you recommend T&D Wireless Products to Other Calibrators?Mark Hanson responds, Yes, certainly. These T&D units are nice in a calibration sense. We like the ease of use of the data collector and the software, and the RTR-503s accuracy is surprisingly good. Right out of the box the accuracy is good and after testing we didnt have to make any adjustments. T&D is competitively-priced so you dont have to spend a fortune for a true 2% logger.For more information on T&D Wireless Dataloggers, additional T&D products, or to find the ideal solution for your application-specific needs, contact a CAS Data Logger Applications Specialist at (800) 956-4437 or visit our website atContact Information:CAS DataLoggers, Inc.8437 Mayfield Rd.Chesterland, Ohio 44026(440) 729-2570(800) 956-4437sales@dataloggerinc.com
German companies offered a change to tap into the talent gold mine

The Tampere Region has an exceptionally good availability of talents and technology teams for R&D needs of German companies. Tampere Region Economic Development Agency Tredeas team is heading to North Rhine-Westphalia to introduce German companies to Finnish customers, partners and technology providers.TAMPERE  A TALENT GOLD MINETampere Region has an exceptionally good availability of talents and technology teams for R&D needs of German companies. Recent changes at Microsoft Mobile and Nokia (Alcatel-Lucent) has released over 1000 highly experienced (with experience of 10-20 years) technology professionals in Tampere region. This talent pool is seeking flexible cooperation with NRW industry to address German expert shortage.Tampere based companies Leadin and TreLab with the Tampere Region Economic Development Agency Tredea are doing a road trip to Germany in North Rhine-Westphalia June 7th to 9th. They are meeting North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) based companies to highlight what Tampere has to offer e.g. in Industry 4.0 and Industrial Internet sectors, to introduce German companies to Finnish customers, partners and technology providers, to tell about Tampere Region's leading research teams in the three universities and to connect them with the start-up community in order to generate new business models and revenue streams.TAMPERE INDUSTRY COLLABORATION IN A NUTSHELLTampere, Finland, acts as a living lab for companies which develop smart city technologies, products and service solutions enabled by the open data. Tampere University of Technology, Tampere University and Tampere University of Applied Sciences are internationally ranked amongst the highest for industry collaboration. Multidisciplinary students solve companies' challenges through Demola, an award winning innovation platform.FOR MORE INFORMATIONOula Valipakka, Senior Manager, Business Development and Invest inTampere Region Economic Development Agency Tredeatel. +358405522000, oula.valipakka@tredea.fiOliver Hussey, Senior Manager, Business Development and Invest inTampere Region Economic Development Agency Tredeatel. +358406794142, oliver.hussey@tredea.fiABOUT TREDEATampere Region Economic Development Agency Tredea promotes and facilitates international investments in Tampere, Finland. Tredea assists international companies that are looking to find partners, set up research collaborations and to find top-level staff in the Tampere Region. The service is free of charge and confidential.Tampere Region Economic Development Agency TredeaJuhlatalonkatu 533100 TampereFinland
SRMA to host networking social at Bury Me Brewing for manufacturers and business professionals

The Southwest Regional Manufacturers Association (SRMA) will host its next social gathering and membership drive for manufacturers and business professionals from 5-7 p.m. Thursday, June 23, at the newly opened Bury Me Brewing in Fort Myers. This social event provides networking opportunities for prospective members to learn more about the manufacturing organization from its members.Our goal is to provide valuable support and opportunities for manufacturers here in Southwest Florida. Monthly roundtable discussions, after-hours socials, plant tours, marketing, awards and recognitions are all part of the annual membership benefits, said SRMA Executive Director Peter Bagwell. All manufacturers who sign up or renew membership prior to June 30 will receive additional marketing perks on our regional website.The cost to attend the meeting is $20 for guests and $10 for members. Bury Me Brewing is located at 4224 S. Cleveland Ave., Fort Myers. To learn more, visit SRMA.net.About the Southwest Regional Manufacturers AssociationThe purpose and objective of the Southwest Regional Manufacturers Association is to bring together manufacturers to encourage the economic development of Southwest Florida through manufacturing, and to act as a forum for the expression and exchange of ideas and information among its members. The SRMA provides the platform to promote the general welfare of our members in relation to economic, civic, and educational challenges. We encourage the cooperative interchange of information and assistance in all matters of mutual interest, fostering social relationships and community involvement among our membership.CONRIC PR6216 Whiskey Creek DrSuite BFort Myers, FL 33919
Automated Intelligence wins SharePoint email integration contract with global law firm

www.automated-intelligence.com

Automated Intelligence has announced a deal with a British multinational corporate law firm to employ its SharePoint email integration software.The legal consulting and solutions provider has introduced the tool in order to seamlessly integrate Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Outlook.Automated Intelligences AI.SYNCPOINT will allow users to work within the Outlook environment they are used to, while easily storing important information within its SharePoint platform designed to meet the strict internal information policies that need to be upheld.The software will aid the firm in increasing its tracking and auditability of information. It will also introduce a system which allows users to save time when searching for client cases. This will ultimately lead to increased time efficiency, with the ability for these savings to be passed on to the customer.Mark Godfrey, CEO of Automated Intelligence, said; Through investing in a system which encourages user adoption of its SharePoint platform, as well as ensuring the compliance of information is upheld within the Outlook environment, the company and its clients will reap the benefit of increased efficiency and cost reduction. With many organisations in the commercial space working tirelessly to avoid breaches in compliance of information, it is increasingly evident that a simple but powerful solution such as a SharePoint email integration can gain the buy-in required for successful software implementation.While the law firm will use the software internally in its own legal department, it will also be reselling the Automated Intelligence tool as part of its legal consultancy services.For more information on how SharePoint email integration tool AI.SYNCPOINT can benefit your organisation, please contact info@automated-intelligence.com.Automated Intelligence (AI) is a Microsoft Gold Partner. We provide software and services which enable the enterprise to manage their information end-to-end through its lifecycle more effectively. Founded in 2010, the company now has over 60 customers including the Department for Education, HM Treasury, Department of Health, City of Cardiff Council, British Red Cross and many more. These customers are using AIs solutions to improve user experience, data compliance and significantly reduce the cost of managing and storing unstructured data. The technology successfully meets new requirements for data management, compliance, mobile capabilities and cloud computing models.SpecialtiesData Analytics, Content Migration, Data Transformation, Automated Data Management, SharePoint Email Integration, Information Governance, SharePoint CRM Integration, Cloud ServicesRyan KyleAutomated IntelligenceUnit 4, The Legacy BuildingQueens RoadBelfastCo. AntrimBT3 9DT
Josef Waclaw, the new CEO of Infotecs GmbH

Josef Waclaw is new CEO of Infotecs GmbH

www.infotecs.biz

www.facebook.com/pages/Infotecs-Gmbh_english/400720220013566

Berlin, May 31, 2016  Josef Waclaw is appointed as CEO of Infotecs Internet Security Software GmbH. He is responsible for strengthening the market position and for the strategic expansion of the technology and distribution network in EMEA.Josef Waclaw was appointed to Chief Executive Officer of Infotecs GmbH in Berlin. The new manager is responsible for strategic development of the high security solutions for the EMEA region and the further expansion of the international sales partner network. Mr. Waclaw has been working in Infotecs since 2013 as a sales manager for Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Before that, he had been holding various executive positions in sales and marketing at Oracle and Sun Microsystems for over 20 years. With a degree in computer science and many years of sales experience in the IT area, Josef Waclaw brings both technical and commercial competence to his new position.I look forward to the CEO position, comments Josef Waclaw. My strategic focus for the next years will be to address the requirements with our unique software technology especially for the markets Mobile Security, Industrial Security, Critical infrastructures and for the Internet of Things. In particular, Infotecs GmbH is focused on cooperation with technology partners in the area of developing solutions that can be easily customized to specific requirements. This flexibility and the unique nature of ViPNet technology are confirmed by numerous awards our high security solutions got from independent committees."Infotecs offers a wide range of solutions for information and network security. Its highly secure end-to-end encryption solutions, next-generation firewalls and endpoint security software protect companies around the world against cyber-attacks. Infotecs offers both compact Mobile Security Solutions  like applications for iOS and Android  and the solutions for remote maintenance of industrial control systems as well as the products for critical infrastructures protection.A pioneer of software-based VPN solutions since 1991, Infotecs developed its Peer-to-Peer ViPNet technology to deliver greater security, flexibility, and throughput than IPSec and other standards-based VPN products. ViPNet is the only VPN solution that supports true endpoint to endpoint security. More than 1,000,000 clients, offices, and servers have been securely connected with ViPNet products, backed up by an unparalleled world-class support, development, and technical team. Our solutions are designed to solve the toughest security challenges by providing superior protection that is flexible and effective. Company has a strong network of partners and actively develops its international presence having subsidiaries in Europe and Americas. Additional information on the company is available at visit:ContactInfotecs GmbHAnja MuellerMarketing & CommunicationsOberwallstr. 2410117 Berlin, GermanyPhone: +49 30 206 43 66-52anja.mueller@infotecs.bizTwitter: twitter.com/InfotecsEnglishFacebook:
Universities, companies and society cooperation drive workforce employability and economic competitiveness for South Mediterranean region

The SM Weld project will establish a Welding Centre in the participating countries  Algeria and Tunisia  to coordinate the partnerships in place and implement welding quality certification of companiesThe South Mediterranean region includes some of the most competitive African economies, as highlighted in the latest world competitiveness report from the World Economic Forum, with strong economic growth and a young population1 eager to enter the workforce, which is often difficult since unemployment is still very high. The SM WELD (South Mediterranean Welding Centre for Education, Training and Quality Control) project aims at bringing together Universities, Enterprises and Society as a whole to improve workforce employability.This will be achieved through a comprehensive initiative encompassing learning innovation, specialization, training and qualification through the creation of welding and joining consultancy, welding trainers and welding audit firms. The new educational and training model proposed by SM WELD aims at enhancing the employability of academic and technical personnel as well as fostering the entrepreneurial culture, thus contributing to the improvement of living standards. Another dimension is to drive the quality of the workforce while contributing to knowledge transfer, while supplying the North-African industry with highly qualified personnel.SM WELD objectives are structured for three main audiences - the Academic community, Welding Personnel and Companies who need certification in welding in compliance with ISO 3884.Partnership for competitiveness and workforce qualification in the South Mediterranean CountriesThe Northern Africa region has some of the most thriving economies in the continent, with young population and still growing quickly. The high unemployment rate among young educated people highlights the fact that access to education does not secure job creation by itself, that quality of education and skills matching employers requirements requires a virtuous ecosystem involving all relevant players to be put in place to achieve growth. As manufacturing is widely perceived as the most important driving force for the modernization of the region versus the most traditional reliance on commodities2, whose prices vary much more frequently, companies in this sector need to serve their local customers and, most of all, to be able to compete on global markets. Indeed, as pointed out by The Economist in 2014, few countries have been able to escape poverty without employing a significant amount of their people in manufacturing activities. The SM WELD objectives are then structured in three key growing layers  Academic, Welding Personnel and Companies.On the academic front, the focus is the MSc Specialization in Welding and Coordination in line with the International Welding Engineer / International Welding Technicians qualification. On a second layer, the focus is the implementation and coordination activities for training and qualification of welding personnel. Lastly, the project will look at coordinate the implementation and certification of welding organizations in compliance with ISO 3884.The SM WELD project has the purpose to bring the university, enterprises and society closer to foster employability through learning innovation, specialization, training and qualification and enhancing entrepreneurship. This will be achieved by the creation of welding and joining consultancy, welding trainers and welding audit firms. By implementing the International System for Higher Education and Practical Qualification of Welding Personnel based on the harmonized European System for Welding, the project will address three key factors on workforce qualification and companies competitiveness  Quality, Environment and Health and Safety. As a result, the projects aimed outputs are the integration of the module Welding and Joining Specialization MSc in manufacturing programmes and training with the objective of obtaining the International Welding Engineer Qualification, the development of training modules in Welding for non-tertial education and certification training for International Welding Technologist Qualification, the creation of a common European recognized EdTrCert system for Partnership Countries (PCs) and, lastly, the establishment of the Welding Centre in the PCs to coordinate the partnerships and implement welding quality certification of companies.Project outcomes and participating partnersSM Weld is being developed wih a long-term vision of its regional role and its impact in students, teachers and the industry. The project will therefore increase student and staff mobility between South Mediterranean and European universities through the development of education programmes according to Bologna process system in Welding and Joining, as well as build partnerships between universities in Algeria and Tunisia, companies and other stakeholders for knowledge transfer, including the System for Education and Qualification of Welding Personnel and the creation of the Welding Centre. Another key benefit will the growing welding knowledge and practical skills of students by developing and implementing comprehensive welding Open Education Resources (OERs) for both regions, which will contribute to a stronger competitiveness of regional companies on global markets by an easier access to the recognition of the EU Certification programmes for International Welding Engineers and welding audit for quality assessment of companies according to ISO 3834 in the South Mediterranean region. This, in turn, will improve welfare and the standards of living in the region through the creation of new jobs in strategic manufacturing areas.About the European Federation for Welding, Joining and CuttingEWF is a pioneer in implementing a harmonized qualification and certification system for joining professionals. Through European projects EWF has been innovating in training methodologies, and involved in the development of new technologies and uses for joining. Through its member organisations, EWF has established a firm link to the local industry, providing knowledge and training as well as participating in research initiatives that address the most pressing questions and challenges in the field of joining technologiesAv. Prof Dr. Cavaco Silva, 33 TagusPark  Apartado 012P-2740-120 Porto Salvo  PORTUGAL
IndicThreads 2016 to equip software developers for the Internet Of Things (IoT) era

IndicThreads.com Software Developer Conference, 3-4 June 2016, Pune, India

http://Pune16.IndicThreads.com

http://Pune16.IndicThreads.com/

We are rapidly moving into a world where everything around us is connected and online. Not just your computer and mobile device, but even your car, microwave and even your toothbrush and chair will soon be sensing your actions and talking online. This smart new world of Internet Of Things (IoT) however comes with many challenges and security risks that need to be dealt with by those building IoT enabled software.The IndicThreads.com Conference 2016 is focused on the promise of IoT software and also the many IoT pitfalls to watch out.Speakers and participants from across India will come together for this annual tech fest.Schedule, registration & other information is available atKishore Himane, Director at PTC Software will look at how IoT and Augmented Reality are revolutionizing business. Kedar Sovani, Senior Manager at Marvell Semiconductors looks at how to secure connected devices, Abhimanyu Prabhavalkar, Vice President at Oracle talks of how enterprises can embrace IoT and Girish Kolapkar, Software Specialist at SAS Research will dive into IoT software quality assurance.The conference also has many other distinguished speakers talking about buzzing new technologies like MicroServices, GoLang, Functional Programming, latest in Java, Video Streaming, RxJava, Bitcoin and the new HTTP/2 standard for the web.The IndicThreads Conferences were initiated in 2006 by Sangeeta and Harshad Oak, the 2016 conference is also a 10 year celebration of the event.Harshad Oak, founder, IndicThreads, said IndicThreads has always been about opening up developers to emerging technologies, tackling current challenges and getting techies thinking of maybe that great new solution. Being at IndicThreads is an investment in the future of the individual and the organization.IndicThreads.com Software Developer Conference, 3-4 June 2016, Pune, IndiaIndicThreads.com is one of India's leading software development magazine. It also hosts some of India's finest independent software development conferences. IndicThreads is a venture of Rightrix Solutions, which is active in the field of software development, technology media & research.IndicThreadsAmitshree, Bhandarkar Road, Pune 411004, IndiaPress Contact:Harshad Oakharshad@rightrix.com912032907882
Halver, 18.08.2009 - Many fitters know the following daily problem: During installation, suddenly they are dealing with two couplings, two plugs or variously coded plugs and couplings. These, however cannot be interconnected. So far, there have been two solutions to this problem. Either compatible cables had to be re-ordered or short junction cables were used. However, in many applications there is not even sufficient space for the shortest junction cables. In 
Gloria Mae White

Gloria Mae (Bower) White, 69, of Carlisle, passed away suddenly on Thursday, May 19, 2016 at the Carlisle Regional Medical Center.

The daughter of Gladys (Sheibley) Bower McCracken and the late John Bower, she was born May 30, 1946 in Carlisle, PA. Gloria married William F. White on March 28, 1970 at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD.

Hoffman Funeral Home & Crematory, 2020 W. Trindle Road, Carlisle, PA is assisting with arrangements. To read the full obituary and sign the guestbook, please visit www.HoffmanFH.com
An influx of invasive weeds inspired a new idea for Alesia Skinner.

Skinner, the owner and CEO of Paxtang Cemetery in Lower Paxton Township, noticed the treeline disappearing thanks to poison ivy and honeysuckle weeds strangling the trees of the forest. She kept the 12 acre woods behind the grounds with trails for hikers and bikers and didnt want to see that disappear.

There are very few acres of woods left in Harrisburg, and this allowed us to keep it going and still maintain a business, she said.

What she settled on was an area for green burials.

Though some cemeteries nationwide have been accepting green burials for years, Paxtang Cemetery is the only cemetery in Central Pennsylvania to offer it. The Woods Edge portion of what is considered a hybrid cemetery by the Green Burial Council opened in fall 2014 and offers a new alternative to traditional burials and cremation.

Green burial

A green burial can involve a number of different options with the main focus being to cut down on anything that would negatively affect the earth.

Bodies are buried in a shroud or a biodegradable casket that could be made with wicker, bamboo, seagrass and other eco-friendly material. To make sure the body does not harm to the environment around it, the average embalming fluid is not used.

Pennsylvania law requires some type of embalming fluid to be used if there is an open casket service, and an environmentally-friendly version is available in those circumstances.

Chad Snyder, co-owner of Charles F. Snyder Funeral Home in Lancaster County, is the only funeral home in the Midstate to offer green burial services. He said they have the new type of embalming fluid, but have never used it since they started offering green burials in 2008. In the cases the funeral home has handled, Snyder said all have been closed casket.

Skinner found that education is key in getting the word out about green burials, especially given the rise in interest for cremation for reasons of cost and environment.

A lot of people get confused, Snyder said. They think that cremations must be green because youre conserving land. Crematories are regulated by the Department of Environmental Protection and have emission controls on it.

Chris Hoffman, owner and president of Hoffman Funeral Home & Crematory, said modern crematories are advanced and little to no pollution exits the crematory. His, instead, funnels the exhaust back into the chamber to keep burning and reduce the carbon footprint.

In addition to environmental factors, cost is also a key factor, and Skinner said green burials can range in cost, just as cremations and traditional burials do. However, she said a basic green burial can cost less than a cremation with services.

Green burials can cost just as much or low as a cremation, she said. It definitely is a lot cheaper than a traditional burial.

Part of the cost savings compared to a traditional burial involve the price of the casket, a concrete vault, preparation of the body and the monuments. At Paxtang Cemetery, the Woods Edge uses boulders or river rocks with name inscriptions instead of heavy monuments. The comparison in price is about $400 for a river rock and about $1,200 to $2,200 for an average monument.

Challenges

Though both Skinner and Snyder handle green burials in various stages, they differ on the interest theyve seen in green burials.

Skinner said shes seen a lot of interest in lots at the Woods Edge. Weve been doing pre-planning for people in State College, Baltimore, Philadelphia, West Chester, Lancaster. They come from all over the place, not just locally. Theyre looking at this place because of the conservation effort.

Snyder, meanwhile, has only been involved in arranging a few dozen green burials since 2008. Some of the challenges in those looking at the option is simply where to place the bodies.

Green burials have not become popular, he said. Its more of a conversation than actual decision-making. Most cemeteries require vaults. Very few do not.

Snyder explained that the concrete vaults protect the caskets and the bodies from the weight placed on the ground on top of it, which includes landscaping equipment and monuments that would otherwise condense and crush the casket beneath. A vault can be flipped to have some protection of a green burial and fulfill the requirement, but it would require something that isnt biodegradable.

With cemeteries already facing financial difficulties, he said its unlikely the area will see more green burial cemeteries.

There are some green cemeteries popping up. They just arent going to be a profitable endeavor, he said. Its usually nonprofits  using it as a service to the community. Cemetery operation is a pretty costly management endeavor. Theres a lot of maintenance.

In his view, Snyder said the green burial alternative is just thatan alternative choice for someone who wants something other than a cremation or traditional burial.

Like other industries, the green movement has entered into the funeral service profession, he said. The whole premise behind this is to have that personalization. Green means so many different things to so many different people.

For Skinner, having that greener alternative was importantas it was for her mother who was the first person to have a green burial at Paxtang Cemetery.

It wasnt intended that way, she said of her mother. She was a wonderful, supportive mother, and she and I got into the green area.

Though the Woods Edge is still in its beginning phases of the master plan of more trees and shrubbery that will be planted on top of the burial lots, Skinner said having green burials as an option is important to those who love nature.

If you go there, youll instantly understand why I didnt want to move into the forest (with an expansion of the cemetery), she said. If youre a nature lover, youll want to protect it, too.
A Lower Allen Township man is facing felony charges after police say he broke into another persons home, stole money and assaulted a woman early Monday morning.

Leonard Carlson, 58, is charged with felony robbery, burglary, misdemeanor defiant trespass, theft and drug possession after he broke into a 78-year-old womans home in the 1500 block of Letchworth Road shortly after midnight Monday and stole money and the womans phone, according to Lower Allen Township Police.

The woman attempted to get the money back from Carlson, but he pushed her to the floor before leaving, police said.

Police arrived at Carlsons home to find the victims son there, according to police.

When Carlson arrived home, he was taken into custody and he was found in possession of what was believed to be cocaine, police said.

Carlson is currently in Cumberland County Prison in lieu of $25,000 bail.

A preliminary hearing is scheduled for 10:15 a.m. June 8 in front of Magisterial District Judge Charles Clement Jr.
A reporter error misidentified the speaker at the Mechanicsburg Memorial Day service. Capt. Kevin Jones, chief of staff at Naval Supply Systems in Mechanicsburg was the speaker.

Memorial Day is a day for remembrance; remembrance of mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, and sons and daughters who paid the highest price in service to the United States of America.

Its just a day for me to remember all my brothers in arms, Dave Donmoyer, who served in the U.S. Army special forces during the Vietnam War, said while awaiting the start of the parade Monday morning in downtown Carlisle.

In Newville, Carlisle, Mechanicsburg and towns across the Midstate and beyond, troves of people gathered on the streets to say thank you to those who have served and remember those who did not make it home.

Even with the fanfare, the marching bands and the patriotic revelry, the true meaning of the day was summed up by what Maj. Gen. William E. Rapp, commandant of the U.S. Army War College, called a reverent celebration.

On Veterans Day in November we thank those who have served in uniform. Today, however, we honor those whose service resulted in their ultimate sacrifice so that we may continue to live our lives in freedom and security, Rapp said. It is right and fitting that we may do so.

Memorial Day is about honoring the heroes who are here only in spirit, he added. It is to keep their memories alive.

Rapp spoke to crowd at the at Veterans Memorial Courtyard in Carlisle following the parade.

Similar ceremonies were held throughout the Midstate, including one at the GAR monument inside Mechanicsburg Cemetery.

(Memorial Day) means really taking a day out of your life to acknowledge the men and women who have given their lives for our county, to make it free so we can live and here right today, Rich Adams, commander for American Legion Post 109, said. Its something that too many people dont remember. We are memorializing the men and women in the armed services who gave their lives.

Adams served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War.

Memorial Day is a day for remembrance and a way to teach the next generation about the sacrifices of the previous, so they may have a brighter future.

Teach your children about the ones who did not come home," Capt. Kevin Jones, chief of staff at Naval Supply Systems in Mechanicsburg said while choking back tears, during the Mechanicsburg ceremony.

Jones said this was a way to make sure those lives that were sacrificed were done so with meaning.
Twelve competitors from the Northwood Business Professionals of America team recently traveled to Boston for national-level competition.

Selected team members took part in events at the BPAs 2016 National Leadership Conference and were chosen based on their outstanding performance at the statewide Michigan BPA competition held in February in Grand Rapids.

Freshman Kennedy Jo Shea, from Beaverton moved on to the national competition after taking 1st place in the Advanced Interview Skills category at the Michigan state competition. In Boston,

Shea competed against students from 12 universities from across the nation and placed 2nd. She also placed 2nd in the prepared speech category and 16th out of 122 national participants in the Management, Marketing & Human Resources competition.

Jacob Adam Taylor, from Escanaba, placed high at nationals as well, earning 2nd-place standings in both the Banking & Finance and Legal Office Procedures competitions.

Other Northwood University students competing at the national level in Boston included:

Blake Andrew Allen - Macomb

Alicia Marie Boulier - Midland

Taylor Renee Bovee - Midland

Sara Ann Brown - Tawas City

Hannah Louise Ex - Ortonville

Kristy Lynn Godley - Ithaca

Scott William Loughlin - Ortonville

Matthew Jacob Schnurr - Midland

Shelby Renee Slazakowski - Clinton Township

Morgan Michelle Stoewsand-Kryscio - Midland
(Monday, May 30) The Soldiers of the 3d U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard) participate in an Armed Forces Full Honor Wreath Laying ceremony in honor of Memorial Day by the Honorable Barack H. Obama, 44th President of the United States of America, at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Arlington National Cemetery, Va. Memorial Day is to honor those who paid the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our country. (U.S. Army photos by Sgt. Cody W. Torkelson)

(Sunday, May 29) President John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy, commonly referred to by his initials JFK, is honored Sunday, on what would have been his 99th birthday.
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Looking to reduce their utility bills, Sue and Chris Streeter had a decision to make: take the plunge and install solar panels, or not. The retired Sanford couple decided to go ahead and leap into the world of solar.

For the past two years, everything we did around here was energy-related, Chris Streeter said. We replaced light bulbs with LEDs and we were trying to minimize all the energy usage we can. Every month Consumers (Energy) sends us a statement that says, Youre the worst, or highest, consumer in the area.

After adding more insulation last year, the Streeters began investigating the use of solar by visiting a Solarize Michigan seminar, a program designed to promote the benefits of solar through community education and by simplifying the process of installing solar technology in a short amount of time. Savings are achieved by partnering with solar installers and manufacturers, and by joining together large pools of interested homeowners and small businesses, negotiating discounts and passing the savings on to customers.

Were excited about getting a large number of installations to really start changing the mindset that solar is not a boutique industry. It really is a mainstream investment that folks can make to offset or completely eliminate their electric bill, said Stephen Wooden, project manager for Solarize Michigan.

Following the selection of Green Panel to install the 30 solar panels on the south side of their house, the Streeters became the first installation for Solarize Michigan.

Were really excited that the Streeters saw the economic value and theyre saving about $1,300 a year on their electric bill, Wooden said. The solar panels are made by Suniva in Saginaw. So, it is also an economic issue by supporting their local industry.

The initial outlay of $23,000 didnt scare off the Streeters.

Right now there is a 30 percent tax break, which makes a big difference, Chris said. They say it will take 10 years to pay it off.

The installation should be completed by Friday.

This should offset their full electrical usage at their home for the next 25 years, Green Panel Managing Director Adam Harris said. There is really no maintenance involved with them. Because we are in Michigan, we get cooler temperatures at night and warmer during the day, so the circuit runs more efficiently.

As Wooden stated, Harris agreed that it is an educational process for solar.

People have a misconception that it wont work in Michigan, Harris said. Germany is at a 43 degree latitude, the same as we are at and all their power comes from renewable and 80 percent of that is from solar.

Homeowners and small business owners in Bay, Midland and Saginaw counties have until Oct. 31 to sign-up with Solarize Michigan, a grassroots effort led by the Institute for Energy Innovation in partnership with 5 Lakes Energy, funding from the Mott Foundation and support from Bay Future, Inc., Midland Tomorrow and Saginaw Future.

Anyone interested in obtaining a free assessment may call (989) 272-2636 or visit solarizemichigan.com.
Never forgotten: Team Andersen honors fallen comrades

Attendees of the RAIDR 21 Re-dedication ceremony gather around the RAIDR 21 monument May 28, 2016, in Adelup, Guam. The monument was beautified by Alex Wood, a boy scout, who constructed a retaining wall, painted the surrounding area and cleaned the monument. The monument honors six B-52 Stratofortress crew members who lost their lives during a training mission July 21, 2008. The six aviators, from the 20th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron, were slated to participate in a flyover for Guam's Liberation Day Parade. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Benjamin Gonsier)
BLOOMINGTON  Twin City residents didn't forget the meaning of Monday's Memorial Day holiday.

Despite crowd-pleasing entries including the Bloomington High School and Normal Community High School marching bands, city and town officials and U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood, the biggest cheers at Monday's annual parade were reserved for military, veterans and their fallen brethren.

Hundreds lined the route, from the downtown courthouse to Miller Park, and lauded agencies including the American Legion, Civil Air Patrol, Illinois National Guard and Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Post 454.

"When it comes to people attending the parade, I'm really proud of that number," said Dan Heaton, a Normal resident and former paratrooper who sat in Miller Park along the route. "It's wonderful."

Heaton, who attended with his wife, Millie, brought out his "parade flag"  an American flag on a short pole that he propped up by his seat  and let it "greet the people walking by" during the 45-minute parade.

"We try to make it every year," he said of the Memorial Day parade.

Heaton was part of a much smaller group to linger after the parade for speeches at the park  which had extra memorials near its Korean and Vietnam War monument describing the lives of four Bloomington men killed in action in Vietnam.

"It's an excellent message, and young people should hear it," Heaton said of veterans' stories. "I'm of the age where I have (only) a few years left, and I hope young people have the same feeling I had when I was young: warmth for their country and patriotism."

Based on Monday's floats, many do: dozens marched on behalf of organizations including Boy Scouts of America, high schools, Relay for Life and 4-H.

"It's great to get together our 4-H family and do something meaningful for our fallen heroes," said Jordan Witte, a member of the Linden Lead'em 4-H Club. Club members carried a banner listing more than 40 deceased veterans who were members, including some killed in action.

Jordan, 17, participated in the parade alongside three siblings  15-year-old Genesis, 12-year-old Jacob and 10-year-old Jonah  and their mother, Angela Witte. All five said they plan to come back for next year's parade.

"We wouldn't miss it," Angela said.

McLean County residents also honored fallen veterans at several memorial services at cemeteries, including Evergreen Cemetery in Bloomington.

A combined honor guard of American Legion Post 56 in Bloomington and Post 635 in Normal performed a 21-gun salute and folded an American flag to present to the descendants of World War II veteran John Willard Clary, who died in 2006 but didn't receive military honors at that time.

Terry Hansen, Clary's grandson and a six-year U.S. Air Force veteran, received the flag in front of about 25 attendees.

"This means everything to me," he said of the service.
NEW YORK  Nearly 40,000 striking Verizon employees will return to work Wednesday after reaching a tentative contract agreement that includes 1,300 new call center jobs and nearly 11 percent in raises over four years but also makes health care plan changes to save the company money, the company and unions said Monday.

The pact, subject to approval by union members, stands to end one of the largest strikes in the United States in recent years. Workers and Verizon Communications Inc. had reached an agreement in principle Friday but hadnt released details or a date for the workers return. The strike began in mid-April.

The Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers unions, which both represent the strikers, called the deal a victory for American workers.

We are turning the tide from cutbacks against working people to building a stronger labor movement and strengthening the power of working Americans, Dennis G. Trainor, vice president of the unions District 1 in the Northeast, said in a statement. The IBEW said it protected American jobs amid concern about concern about work moving overseas.

New York-based Verizon Communications Inc. said it was a good deal for workers, customers and the telecom giant alike.
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For kids and adults with autism, simple things like shopping are a real struggle. In order to help them, a certain Superstore in the UK known as Asda is going the extra effort of making their store autism-friendly.

What the store does in order to accommodate their customer with autism is that they would have a "quiet hour" in the store. The music will be turned off and so will the escalators, as these are the things that overwhelm a person with autism. The display TV's will be turned off also, and customers will be given a map with pictures instead of words. This will help make shopping more pleasant for them.

According to Parents.com, the inspiration to make their store as such is because of an incident some six months ago. Simon Lea is the manager of the said store, explained that she saw the boy in the store having sensory issues at that time. The clerk told the father that his son is having some discipline issue to which the father replied that his son couldn't help the situation and that it was because of his autism.

It's a great thing to know as well that people are beginning to get it. Although most people will not be able to understand what goes on in an autistic mind. Other nearby stores in the area store have been reported that they are now following suit with Asda taking the lead as reported by Independent. They are implementing quiet hours as well.

Parents who have children with special needs such as this could attest that the struggle is real when your child is having sensory issues and you are in a public place. Jamie Pacton, contributor writer for Parent.com expressed her wish that store clerks will be kinder to parents with kids that have autism. She also hopes that the US store will follow when they hear this kind of news.

For a better understanding of autism, sensory overload and meltdowns watch the video below. It will give you an idea about the struggle behind autism especially in public places.
George RR Martin's long overdue book, "The Winds of Winter" remains to be the most wanted book at the time. Unfortunately, fans have been waiting for it for four years and counting yet, its release date remains in the dark. To appease fans, the celebrity author treats them with a free chapter at Balticon.

George RR Martin Treats Balticon Participants With A New Reading Of 'The Winds of Winter';

Wherever George RR Martin goes, fans don't expect him to talk about "The Winds of Winter" but they hope he would. Martin already admitted that he is a slow writer, he often rewrites whatever he does when his creativity requires it.

This is fine for some readers who understands that they can only read the best "TWOW" in this way. Meanwhile, others have dubbed the "The Winds of Winter" author unprofessional for making fans wait long. Either way, George RR Martin is doing little things to comfort fans that "The Winds of Winter" is in progress.

According to Heavy, George RR Martini allowed fans to choose among three chapters, which are as follows: Aeron "Damphair" Greyjoy, a chapter about Arya Stark's alter ego Mercy and some ancient history of Westeros called "Sons of the Dragon."

The loudest shout in the room was for the Damphair chapter and Martin commented that there were lots of Greyjoy fans adding, "you scary sons of bitches." Since the Aeron chapter was what fans want, the author said "The Greyjoys have it - you sick motherfuckers."

About The Aegon Chapter In 'The Winds of Winter'

For "A Song of Ice and Fire" fans who think that Ramsay Bolton is the most twisted and sick character in the series, wait until you read "The Winds of Winter." The new chapter may convince you to change your mind and pick Euron Greyjoy as the sickest character instead. Fans created a summary of George RR Martin's new "TWOW" reading featuring the sickening treatment of Euron Greyjoy to Aeron.

George RR Martin welcomes questions from fans and when asked about the chapter he most relates, he said that he relates to all of "The Winds of Winter" chapters because he developed sympathy for them. As for the new chapter, Martin explained that he does not share Aeron's faith but finds it interesting. Despite Martin's welcoming attitude and kindness to discuss "The Winds of Winter" fans did not ask for the book's release date, per International Business Times. Perhaps, they know he has no answers for it at the time.

Do you agree that fans should not ask George RR Martin about the release date of "The Winds of Winter?" How do you find Euron? Is he sicker than Ramsay Bolton? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
"Sherlock" Season 4 is currently in the middle of production, but several reports claim that Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman and the rest of the cast and crew will be moving to Morocco. It has been previously speculated that Tom Hiddleston will be joining the cast of the BBC series. Is he joining the cast in Morocco?

This article contains spoilers. Read on if you want to learn more about this story.

"Sherlock" Season 4 may see the addition of another A-list actor as rumors are rife that Tom Hiddleston may be joining Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman in the upcoming season of the BBC drama. According to Unreality TV, even series creator Mark Gatiss has previously expressed interest in casting the actor in the show.

Gatiss said that he is willing to go to extreme lengths in hopes of casting the actor for "Sherlock" Season 4. This led to speculations that Hiddleston will be playing the role of Sherlock's third brother, Sherrinford.

In "Sherlock" Season 3, Sherlock has seemingly made reference to their third brother. Fans expressed their excitement over the possible addition of Hiddleston in the upcoming season of the show.

However, it remains to be seen whether the actor has time to squeeze in between his other projects such as "The Night Manager" and "Kong: Skull Island." "Sherlock" Season 4 may opt to cast a new actor instead of Hiddleston.

Meanwhile, Den of Geek reports that several scenes for "Sherlock" Series 4 will be filmed in Morocco. According to the publication, the production team is headed to Marrakesh, Morocco to film some scenes.

What will push Sherlock and Watson (Martin Freeman) to go to Morocco? Does it have anything to do with Sherlock's third brother, Sherrinford?

Find out when "Sherlock" Season 4 premieres in early 2017 on BBC.

Do you think Tom Hiddleston will be perfect as Sherlock's brother in "Sherlock" Season 4? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!


Cody Dortch, an 11-year-old boy from Edmond, Oklahoma treated his former teachers to dinner. He wanted to honor them as he leaves elementary school for middle school next. He saved up money for the treat and the inspiration to do this came from an unlikely sourcefrom his brother's friend who died in October 2015 and from his own dad, who is also a teacher.

According to ABC News, Cody Dortch, who studied at the Northern Hills Elementary School, treated seven of his elementary teachers from kindergarten to the fifth grade. It was held on April 13 and the 11-year-old prepared for this ahead of time by doing extra chores at home and around the neighborhood.

He contributed more work at home so that his parents could raise his allowance and he also babysat for the neighbors. Any money he received for Christmas and his birthday went to his savings. He was able to raise $200.

Cody Dortch Wanted To Show Appreciation For His Teachers

Then, Cody Dortch also elaborately prepared for the dinner by sending his teachers an invitation he made himself on the computer. His mom, Ashley Dortch, helped him track down his other teachers who were no longer working at the school so that they could give them the invites.

At dinner, Cody Dortch also handed his teachers flowers. "He wanted to show his appreciation for all they had done throughout the years," said his mother.

Teachers Praised Cody Dortch's Sweet Gesture

With tears of joy, his teachers were pleased and appreciative of the boy's sweet and unexpected gesture. They only learned that dinner was Cody Dortch's treat as they were eating together. One teacher said that in her 23 years of work, this has yet to happen to them. But Cody is unlike any other boy in class as he realizes the sacrifice that teachers make by watching his own father, TJ, who is a Chemistry teacher.

His mother said that he was also inspired by the friend of his brother, who died at a young age. "He started thinking that he needs to show people that you don't have that much time," said Ashley, per WDay. Cody Dortch had great teachers in his elementary years and he wanted to pay them back, even in a small way, before he heads to middle school.
One good way to teach children about being responsible is to let them care for pets. If they start caring for another living being early on, they will be able to develop routines and good habits, which they can adapt to other aspects of their life when they become adults. Proper pet care also teaches the kids about the consequences of neglecting animals. Bayer Animal Health has partnered with a well-loved Scholastic children's book character, Clifford the Big Red Dog, to raise awareness about pet care among the children.

This month, Bayer Animal Health has been going around schools and communities in Miami, Florida with Clifford the Big Red Dog to promote and share best pet care tips. Because May has been tagged as National Lyme Disease Awareness Month and National Pet Month, the timing couldn't be more perfect.

Without proper pet care, animals could develop fleas and ticks that could affect gravely affect the health of the pet. In humans, bites from fleas and ticks could lead to Lyme disease and other vector-borne diseases. According to the Center for Disease Control, at least 30,000 cases of Lyme disease are reported every year in the U.S., when this can be preventable.

Check out: 'Clifford Goes to the Doctor' to learn how to prevent fleas, ticks & heartworms! #HealthyPet @Scholastic pic.twitter.com/6NdNx8AEXb  BayerAnimalHealth US (@Bayer4Pets) May 12, 2016

Aside from teaching the kids on pet care, they children also given a book that contains tips to prevent diseases via "Clifford Goes to the Doctor." "Pets can teach children valuable lessons when it comes to responsibility," said Dr. Dan Carey, the head veterinarian at the Bayer Animal Health in a press release emailed to Parent Herald.

He emphasized that kids, no matter what age, can already be taught about proper pet care and it's actually good for them to learn some about dealing with pets early. Dr. Carey also advised parents to not hesitate in discussing their pet concerns to a veterinarian, especially when it comes to managing and preventing parasites. They should also consider using products that could kill as well as repel these parasites.
The rising popularity of charter schools has impeded enrollment levels in public schools. The school districts of Los Angeles, Detroit and Philadelphia are seeing huge enrollment levels in charter schools.

What are charter schools? They still receive government funding, but charter schools operate independently under a set of rules that are different from the established public school system of a certain district. Charter schools are sometimes allowed to try new curriculum and techniques in teaching.

Schools Districts Are Struggling Financially

In Los Angeles, over 100,000 students are now enrolled in charter schools. In 2014, more than 2.6 million students nationwide attended charters. Aside from the popularity of charters, families moving to the suburbs and America's declining birth rates are also causing fewer public school enrollments, ABC News reported (via the Associated Press).

This trend is negatively affecting the finances of some school districts. Majority of states in the U.S. receive school funding that is based per student. Even though there are fewer students in public schools, districts still have to follow fixed costs. And with low funding, districts will be unable to pay for those expenses, leading to financial struggles.

Charter schools have attracted half of the Latino and black students in California's largest school district, Los Angeles Unified, the San Diego Union-Tribune noted. In Detroit, students are driven away from public schools by corruption, mishandling of finances and families moving to other areas. Only 46,000 students remain in Detroit's public schools this year.

Districts Coming Up With Remedies

Schools districts have resorted to extreme measures to remedy the situation. In Philadelphia, for instance, more than 30 schools have shut down and cut 20 percent of its staff since 2012. Districts are also rolling out public relations campaigns to attract families back to public schools, the AP further reported.

Major school districts in New Orleans are also closing traditional public schools, the Washington Post wrote. It doesn't help that many states encourage charters as the replacement of traditional public schools. Forty-two states promote charter schools, and 44 percent of students in the District of Columbia attend charters.

More investments are a sign of America's increasing commitment to charter schools. The Charter School Capital based in Portland, Oregon got a $7 million investment for expansions and programming, according to the Phoenix Business Journal. In addition, students in charter schools have impressive academic performance in their SAT test scores in the year 2014.
Good news, parents! KinderCare Education, America's leading provider of early childhood education, is now offering healthier options on its menus that kids will surely enjoy.

Healthier Food Options For Kids

According to its press release, KinderCare Education is revamping its menus on more than 2,000 centers and sites across the United States. The company is reportedly ditching fried foods and juice to focus on healthier food choices such as fruits and vegetables, lean proteins and whole grains.

KinderCare's Commitment

The recent changes in KinderCare Education are reportedly part of the company's commitment of helping more than 160,000 children it serves to boost their holistic growth and development including physical, social, emotional and academic skills. In fact, KinderCare nutritionist Courtney Hines said the company's latest nutritional tactic goes beyond the intention of feeding the kids with healthier meals but also aims to develop healthy eating habits.

In addition, Hines also emphasized their commitment to positively influence children by introducing them to a wide range of healthy foods, textures and delectable flavors. KinderCare Education Chief Academic Officer Dr. Elanna Yalow also echoed Hines' statements, saying developing a child's eating habits is significant and the "right thing" to do.

"Our goal is to help children develop healthy eating habits for lifeit's the right thing to do and, most importantly, it's what parents want," Yalow said in the company's press release. "That's why we work to continually improve the meal and snack options for the children in our centers."

Yalow also added that a group of teachers and children, who tried the new menus in selected KinderCare centers, are providing the company with feedbacks regularly. Yalow said the feedbacks are helping them develop more nutritious and tasty recipes and options, as well as updates on KinderCare's menus.

KinderCare And Partnership For A Healthier America

Since KinderCare Education's collaboration with the Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA) almost two years ago, the company has boosted its efforts in controlling the rise of childhood obesity by promoting healthy eating and physical activity. In fact, the company's staff and teachers in their more than 2,000 centers and sites are also urging parents to take part of their monthly symposium regarding the significance of nutrition, in addition to knowing what their children have learned.

In addition, KinderCare also implemented healthy eating and physical activity to their curriculum. That's why PHA president Lawrence A. Soler highly praised the company's commitment of ensuring all kids are physically fit and maintain a healthy weight.

What are your thoughts on KinderCare Education's menu changes? Sound off below and follow Parent Herald for more news and updates.
Lex Luthor's final scene in "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" may have hinted at the possibility that fans haven't seen the last of the villain, although Jesse Eisenberg has initially stated that he wasn't sure if he will reprise the role. Now it looks like Lex Luthor will be returning in "Justice League - Part 1" and he could be teaming up with the next Big Bad in the DC Extended Universe film!

Jesse Eisenberg Confirms Lex Luthor's Return In "Justice League - Part 1"

Jesse Eisenberg had recently attended the MCM London Comic-Con, where he was asked whether Lex Luthor will return in more DCEU movies (via DigitalSpy). The "Batman v Superman" actor admitted that Lex Luthor is coming back, but he hasn't filmed any scenes for "Justice League - Part 1" just yet.

Jesse Eisenberg says Lex Luthor will be back for Justice League: https://t.co/FSPdWaqrso pic.twitter.com/ICENKNTOPx  ScreenCrush (@screencrushnews) May 31, 2016

"I'm kind of in wait," Eisenberg stated, adding that his previous costars are already shooting their scenes. "They just started filming 'Justice League,' so I'm kind of, like, waiting for my crack at it." However, Jesse Eisenberg didn't want to share any details about Lex Luthor's appearance in "Justice League - Part 1," just in case that he reveals too much.

"I don't know what I'm allowed to say, because I feel like there's probably some drone following me from DC, and if I say anything wrong I get, you know, picked off," Eisenberg declared. It certainly sounds like the DC camp is trying to keep secrets about "Justice League - Part 1," but some fans already have some theories about Lex Luthor's appearance in the DCEU film.

Lex Luthor Teams Up With Steppenwolf?

A deleted scene from "Batman v Superman" reveals that Lex Luthor met a mysterious alien in the genesis chamber of General Zod's ship. The "Communion" clip shows Lex Luthor kneeling before the strange horned being with three boxes that look a lot like the box used to revive Cyborg in his short cameo. Fans are quick to point out that the alien was DC villain Steppenwolf and the boxes are mother boxes. But will Steppenwolf return to Earth in "Justice League - Part 1?" There are rumors pointing to Darkseid's uncle as being the major villain in "Justice League" and there is a possibility that he will call Lex Luthor to his side (via Heroic Hollywood).

Can the Justice League defeat Lex Luthor and Steppenwolf? "Justice League - Part 1" is scheduled for release on November 17, 2017.
A TV report on the morning news today in Calgary, Canada, covered what rights people have when they witness something and capture it on their smartphone camera or tablet. Do they have to turn over your device to police? The actions of Vancouver Police Department officers caught on camera are being questioned a day after a police-involved in a shooting.

"I need to take that as evidence, sir," an officer says to a person with smartphone footage at the scene. "No, it's mine. My property," the man responds. The officer responds, "Not anymore. This is under investigation, so I need to take that video as evidence." The executive director of the BC Civil Liberties Association, Josh Paterson, says "Not so."

Paterson further added that "It's totally your right to send them that footage afterwards, to send an email to the officer attending, but you don't have to turn over your phone to the police.

He further noted that that the police can issue a warrant for a device, and are entitled to seize a witness' cellphone for evidence on scene if they reasonably believe the footage would be deleted.

"We're very concerned police may ask in a way that people don't understand that they have a right to say no, and provide evidence in another way."

Police also took an iPad from Debbie Gajdosik, though she consented to giving police her device. "We wanted to do our civic duty," she said.

But Gajdosik wanted to stay with her iPad so she could get it back that evening and that meant she ended up waiting three hours at VPD headquarters.

"After about one and a half hours, they told us we could leave, and I said, 'I'm not leaving without my device.' Getting it back proved to be a hassle," she said.

Paterson says that if police officers want footage or photos from witnesses on scene, they should get their contact information, and ask them to email it later.

"This is your own personal belonging  it has personal details of your emails, your bank accounts, texts with your loved ones, all kinds of things that police have absolutely no right to have," he said.

The report concludes that "There's no question that police should not be confiscating people's cellphones."

Yet at the end of the day, the loophole of officers being "entitled to seize a witness' cellphone for evidence on scene if they reasonably believe the footage would be deleted," is likely going to be forcefully demanded of citizens going forward by the Police and that intimidation will likely mean citizens hand over their devices against their rights. It's clear that the laws have to be beefed up on this point so that citizens, at least in Canada, will be able to confidently tell the police that they'll email a video to them but that they have the right to deny their device from being confiscated.

For the record: The report which originally ran in Vancouver, Canada, on May 25, was aired in Calgary and other parts of Canada today.



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Despite Nvidia's CEO thinking that VR's problems will take another 20 years to resolve, the industry is still racing forward to accommodate VR applications. Nvidia's new GeForce GTX 1080 will greatly assist VR applications on the desktop in 2016 and so will the new chip from ARM that's due to arrive in time for the 2017 iPhone.

According to Trusted Reviews, ARM has laid its cards down for a mobile gaming future fuelled by VR. The chip architecture design company, which is behind the architecture for processors seen in phones including the Samsung Galaxy S7 and the iPhone 6S, has launched its new processor and graphics architecture at Computex, with particular focus on VR content consumption.

The new ARM Mali-G71 is of particular interest; mostly because the company reckons it's faster than an Nvidia GeForce GTX 740M. Considering this is a low-end graphics card for laptops from 2013, you may scoff, but this is on a piece of kit the smaller than the size of your fingernail. It's also more powerful than Intel HD Graphics 5500, found on last-generation Intel laptop processors.

The Mali-G71 is the first GPU based on ARM's new 'Bifrost' architecture and has double the number of shader cores (the bits that do the bulk of the work) compared to the previous high-end Mali-T880 GPU, for a total performance increase of 50%. Despite this, it's still 20% more power-efficient than the previous model, and the size of the GPU is only slightly larger.

With all of this, ARM is expecting to be able to deliver smoother performance with augmented reality, virtual reality and 120Hz 4K video, as well as an increase in the number of cameras and sensors on handheld devices. It makes you wonder if Apple's VR headset could debut in concert with the new 2017 iPhone. For more on this see the full Trusted Reviews report here.

According to ARM, the 2017 ARM premium IP will redefine virtual reality and augmented reality on flagship devices. The new processor is based on 10nm FinFET process technology.

"The smartphone is the world's most ubiquitous compute device, offering experiences that improve with each new product generation," said Pete Hutton, executive vice president and president, product groups, ARM. "In 2017, we will see devices with the Cortex-A73 and Mali-G71 processors that stand out thanks to their impressive and sustained performance, and even more stunning visuals. This technology can make engaging with 4K video, virtual reality and augmented reality an everyday experience on a mobile device."

"VR is one of the most important technological breakthroughs for the gaming industry in a generation," said Niklas Smedberg, technical director, platform partnerships, Epic Games. "The ability to deliver a compelling VR experience on all platforms, but especially mobile, is critical for the industry's continued growth and advancement. To enable a great mobile VR experience, devices need to be the highest performing and most energy efficient available." For more about the technicals, see ARM's full press release here.

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Summer break is here and its time to play, but do you really know how? Many adults, it seems, have distanced themselves from any kind of meaningful play. In his book Play, Dr. Stuart Brown says that when we lose are connection to play, we pay a high price. In fact, Brown says, The opposite of play is not workthe opposite of play is depression. (p.126) Brown lists what he calls the seven properties of play. When play is happening, all or most of these seven things are firing.

Play is Apparently Purposeless

Play has no strictly essential purpose for human survival. Play does not get you food, money, or shelter. Its not the play has no purpose. Its that the purpose of play is not immediately apparent. Its not until people lack any significant kind of play in their lives that we begin to see how important it is.

Play is Voluntary

Play is not required by duty. It cannot be undertaken by compulsion. Play has to be entered into freely. Weve all known the one hold-out who is forced to play a game but will not play freely. They tank the experience for everyone else. Its a protective measure against the vulnerability of play.

Play has an Inherent Attraction

We naturally want to play. What constitutes play for me, may not be play for you. Play is what feels good, or fun, or stimulating for you. Because we love to do it, play is a cure for boredom.

Play involves a Freedom from Time

When we are involved in play we loose track of time. We are so present to the moment that time often seems to fly, or even cease to exist. Time doesnt matter so much when we play because we are too focused on the activities of the present moment.

Play involves a Diminished Consciousness of Self

During play we stop thinking about the fact that we are thinking. Hence, we stop caring about what we look like when we play. We stop posing and attempting to control others opinions about us. We are not thinking about ourselves at all. In fact, when we play we are able to try on different selves, or aspects of our own selfhood.

Play involves Improvisational Potential

Play allows us the space to improvise, imagine, and follow those new inclinations to see what happens. Through play we stumble onto new (to us), patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting in the world. These new patterns offer us new ways of being and connecting with other people.

Play produces Continuation Desire

Play makes us want to keep on playing. We dont want it to end. We will often improvise or bend the rules in order to keep on playing. You know that you are involved in play when you are genuinely unhappy to see it come to an end.
Patna: Police in Patna on Thursday freed a kidnapped businessman while arresting four men in the case, including a constable attached with the Secretariat Police Station.

City Superintendent of Police (SP) Rajiv Mishra, at a press conference, said Sunil Kumar Upadhyaya, a travel agency owner, was called by Deepak Kumar, a Patna constable, in connection with some irregularities in railway tickets.

Kumar told Upadhyaya to meet him near the Sipara Bridge under Beur police station on June 6. When Upadhyaya arrived there, the constable and three of his men forced him on one of the motorcycles and drove him to a house in Yarpur owned by one Amit Pratap Singh where he was kept hostage.

Soon the criminals contacted the victim's family and demanded a ransom of Rs. 6 lakh for his safe release.

Being a constable, Kumar was able to monitor all police activities allowing him to move Upadhyaya from one place to another. However, in the end, the police, through the mobile records, traced the whereabouts of the criminals and freed the victim while arresting all four men in the case, the SP said.
Patna: Armed criminals in Shiv Nagar area near New Bypass under Ram Krishna Nagar police station in Patna on Sunday night shot and killed a grocery store owner sparking a massive protest forcing police to use light force to control the angry crowd.

38-year old Raju Gupta, the owner of Raju Ji Kirana, was shot dead in the presence of three other employees of the store. After the shooting, the criminals grabbed the cash box and escaped.

Those present at the crime scene told the police that three men around 10:00 pm on Sunday night came on a motorcycle and without wasting a moment, opened fire on Gupta. The first bullet missed the show owner but the second one hit him that proved to be fatal. The criminals then grabbed the cash box and sped away on their motorbike.

Gupta was rushed to a nearby hospital that referred him to the Nalanda Medical College and Hospital (NMCH) where he was declared dead on arrival.

Enraged by the crime and the hospital's refusal to provide emergency medical care to Gupta, other shop owners and residents in the area blocked the New Bypass Road demanding the arrest of criminals and compensation for the family of the victim.

Authorities first tried to remove the blockade by asking the crowd to disperse but when that failed, police resorted to mild lathi charge and also brandished their firearms to scare off the crowd.

Police have recovered two empty shells from the crime scene. Attempts are also being made to obtain video surveillance footage present in the area, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Manu Maharaj said.
A St. Louis man was seriously injured in an ATV crash Sunday at 5:20 p.m. off Moonbeam Road in Washington County.

According to the Missouri State Highway Patrol, Chance Hodges, 31, was riding northbound on Moonbeam Road at Daylily Road on his 1995 Polaris 300 when he failed to negotiate a curve to the right, causing the vehicle to overturn on top of him.

Hodges was airlifted to Mercy Creve Coeur by Air Evac with serious injuries.

On Friday at 6:28 p.m. also in Washington County, a Cadet man was injured in a crash off of Route CC.

According to the patrol, Kristopher Lashley, 36, was driving westbound on Route CC a half a mile east of Route E in his 1996 Chevrolet Blazer when the Blazer went off the right side of the road, over-corrected, returned to the road and overturned.

Lashley was wearing his seat belt and was taken to Washington County Memorial Hospital with minor injuries.

Lashley was arrested for suspicion of driving while intoxicated.
Podcast

About 75% of military recruits arrive at a training base with no bank account and have to be bussed to a local bank to open one, says Jill Castilla, CEO of Citizens Bank of Edmond. The bank's team is building a platform that will help service members save and build credit.
Iran Presses U.S. To Guarantee No Sanctions On European Banks

05/31/16

Source: RFE/RL

The United States must do more to open up the Western banking system to keep its end of the bargain with Iran under last year's nuclear agreement, Tehran's top diplomat says.

On a tour of Europe to drum up business for Iran now that nuclear-related sanctions have been removed, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Western banks have refrained from doing business with Iran as they continue to fear running afoul of remaining U.S. sanctions despite U.S. assurances to the contrary.

"The European countries, and especially the U.S., are not taking the implementation of the nuclear deal seriously enough, especially when it comes to banking," Zarif said on May 31 as he visited Warsaw, Mehr news agency reported.

With the world's largest banks hesitating, Zarif said he wanted the United States to guarantee that no company would be penalized for working with Iran.

Zarif met with Polish leaders, who pledged to increase trade with Iran to $1 billion a year from $57 million in 2014.

Zarif also plans to travel to Finland, Sweden, and Latvia before ending his trip on June 2.

Based on reporting by dpa, AP, and AFP

Copyright (c) 2016 RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org
Volleyball: France defeats Iran in Olympic Qualifier

05/31/16

Source: FIVB

Tokyo, Japan, May 31, 2016 - France improved their win-loss record to 2-1, after they recorded a straight-set (25-20, 25-18, 25-22) win over Iran at the Men's World Olympic Qualification Tournament at Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium on Tuesday.

France took advantage of the absence of Iran's main hitter Amir Ghafour, as they were able to set up a wall on the other Iranian hitters. Iran looked completely different without their main opposite spiker Ghafour, as Shahram Mahmoudi and Milad Ebadipour were forced to run their offence with minimal support from their team-mates. Mahmoudi, however, topped all scorers with 19 points. Ebadipour chipped in 14 points on a losing effort for Iran. Antonin Rouzier looked sharp on his offence and scored 18 points, while Kevin Tillie had a good stint from the flanks, scored 13 points.

France accomplished to break up the Iranian defence with their balanced distribution of offence. On the other side, only Ebadipour and Mamoudi notched substantial points for Iran to keep up with the French upsurge. All the French starters contributed to their 25-20 win in the first set, as Earvin Ngapeth and Rouzier led the pack with a combined total of nine markers. The two Kevins - Tillie and Le Roux - kept their team upbeat in the second set with spikes from the left flank and middle. Earvin Ngapeth made an excellent save to securely return the ball to the Iranian side, then Nicolas Le Goff finished it off with a solid block on Seyed Mohammed Mousavi to gain a 12-8 edge. France still led with a 22-15 cushion, then five exchanges later, Hamzeh Zarini served to the net that ended the set 25-18 in favour of France.

Iran captain Mir Saeid Marouflakrani engineered creative plays to set-up Mahmoudi and Ebadipour drill through the French defence. France did not give up and Rouzier's spike clipped the line to tie the score at 16-all. France gained ground and got a 20-19 lead, then moved to set point at 24-21, as Mousavi was called for a lift on his attack. Tillie sealed the set and match victory 25-22 with a strong spike.





Iran v France - 2016 Men's World Olympic Qualification Tournament
The best 2-in-1 laptop 2022: our picks of the best convertible laptops

These are the best 2-in-1 laptops you can buy right now
On paper, Intels massive new 10-coreyes, 10Broadwell-E gaming chips top out at 3.8GHz. But buying one is like purchasing a lottery ticket to free overclockingwithout voiding your warranty.

The flagship feature of the new Broadwell-E line is something Intel calls Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0, a technology that tests each individual core on the chip and figures out which one can be safely pushed beyond its normal limits.Thats on top of a 20- to 25-percent improvement over its previous gaming chip, the Haswell-E generation, Intel claims.

Its the biggest, baddest CPU weve ever done, said Frank Soqui, the general manager of the enthusiast client platform division at Intel, in an interview prior to the Computex show in Taipei, where the chip was announced Tuesday.

Four new chips make up the Broadwell-E family, including the mammoth 6950X, a 3GHz, 10-core beast that includes a whopping 25MB of onboard cache, with a thermal design power (TDP) of 140 watts. All that power comes at an enormous price: an incredible $1,723, more than $700 higher than the $999 Intel usually charges for its premium CPUs. At $1,089, the 6900K isnt much better.

Broadwell-E is so powerful, simply playing a single game or running an application isnt enough. Intels new message is megatasking. The Broadwell-E chip can handle scenarios where the chip is being asked to one, process 4K games at 60 frames per second; two, encode that gameplay; and three, stream it out at 1080p resolution to a live stream. Who would have thought that CPUs would begin to outstrip everything we would normally think to throw at them?

Broadwell-E is a re-purposed server part. That blank space to the right is server logic thats been turned off for desktop use.

Speeds and feeds

For the story behind Broadwell-Es specs, check out Gordon Mah Ungs deep dive into benchmarks. Broadwell-Es key improvements over its predecessor, 2014s Haswell-E 22nm gaming chips, include:

A jump from 20MB to 25MB of cache

An increase from 4-channel DDR 2133 memory to DDR 2400

Several overclocking-specific features

Thunderbolt 3.0

The new Turbo Boost Max 3.0

Intel considers its four new unlocked Broadwell-E chips its extreme performance lineup, perching on top of its existing, unlocked 4-core 6700K and 6600K chips.

Intel

Though Intel releases its chips in a tick-tock cadencefirst a process shrink of the previous generations core, than a redesigned core on the same processthat pattern doesnt really hold true with its high-end processors. Intels 14nm Broadwell generation was released before the 14nm Skylake chips, but Intel usually waits to release its E-series gaming chips until last. In other words, Intels 6700K chips are actually members of the latest Skylake family, which require new motherboards compatible with the latest LGA 1151 socket. But the very latest 6950X, 6900X, 6850X and 6800X chips are all members of the older Broadwell generation.

Why is that important? Because the new Broadwell-E chips are drop-in replacements to the previous Haswell-E gaming chips, using the same LGA 2011-v3 socket and X99 chipset. Just make sure that the board vendor enables the appropriate BIOS update to take advantage of the new Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0. (Antonio Vera Jr., an Intel desktop platform marketing manager, said board vendors should be releasing their BIOS updates at the chips launch on Tuesday.)

Intel Intel has steadily increased the number of cores in its processors over the years, even as its peak clock speeds have remained roughly constant.

As its done with previous generations, the low-end 6800K is priced within shouting distance of the previous flagship, the 6700K. Unfortunately, what youll save in keeping your old motherboard, youll probably be plowing into the cost of the chip.

Early leaks of the chip suggested that the single-core performance of the new Broadwell-E parts was actually slower compared to the Skylake chips already in the market. Its not hard to see why: Each new core is clocked relatively low. Thats been done to accommodate the higher number of cores within the same 140W thermal envelope as its predecessor, Soqui said.

We didnt want to do that, Soqui said. Its a consequence. So what we did was design something that was designed to eliminate the need to reduce frequency.

The flagship feature: Intel Turbo Boost Max 3.0

If youve been a PC enthusiast for a while, youve undoubtedly heard of bin splits or speed binning. Slight variations in the chips capacitance, for instance, or in how the various layers line up, can affect the maximum clock speed of a particular chip, according to Dean McCarron, an analyst with Mercury Research. These variations allow a lucky overclocker to push the CPU (or GPU) far above the rated speed. Somewhat ironically, McCarron added, chip designers actually hate these variations, and over time the industry has worked to smooth them out.

The BIOS of the Asus X99 Deluxe II board shows the list of available cores. The asterisk indicates what is the best core of the litter.

Intels Turbo Boost Max 3.0 uses these variations to your advantage. A chip like the 6950X runs at a core clock speed of 3GHz, turbo boosting to 3.5GHz when needed. Whats new here is that the chip will actually pick the highest-performing core and, through a driver, allow you to pin a particular application to it.

Consequently each core will bin out at different speeds, with a variation of about 15 percent, Soqui said. If an app suddenly demands all the single-core performance it can get, that core will be boostedbeyond the turbo boost frequency specified by the chip. Put another way: On paper, the 6950X turbo-boosts to 3.5GHz. Tack on another 15 percent, or 0.5GHz, and your chip boosts to 4GHz for free.

We know youre going to get higher than Turbo Boost Technology 2.0, Soqui said. And heres the most important partyoure not going to void your warranty. Thats because by Intels definition, Turbo Boost Max 3.0 isnt overclocking. Theres a fun little bonus for those who spend more to buy more cores: The more you buy, the greater the chance that youll get a lucky Turbo Boost Max 3.0 core.

If you are an overclocker, however, Intel has also tossed in three overclocking-specific features: per-core overclocking, AVX ratio offers, and VccU voltage control. Per-core overclocking is the most obvious, tapping into the individual core controls of Turbo Boost Max 3.0. AVX ratio offsets allow overclockers to dial down the amount of resources dedicated to the new AVX instructions, as opposed to the older SSE instruction set. Finally, VccU voltage control allows overclockers to tweak the ring voltages used by the chip, all in the name of higher clock frequencies.

Thunderbolt 3.0 is now available, too

Intels older Thunderbolt technology has had middling success, largely appearing in Apples Macs and not much else. Thunderbolt 3.0, however, has jumped into the Windows PC space with both feet, sharing the USB-C port on a number of Skylake PCs. Now, X99 motherboards can include Thunderbolt 3.0 as well, a 40GBps, bi-directional interface that Intel claims is 8 times faster than USB 3.0 and 40 times faster than FireWire.

With Thunderbolt 3.0 (and the appropriate devices, of course) youll be able to daisy-chain six devices on a single port, including dual 4K displays. Alternatively, two PCs can be connected at 10-gigabit ethernet speeds.

Intels new Broadwell-E chips already support 40 PCI Express 3.0 lanes, which the Haswell-E parts did as well. Note that the 6700K, Intels highest-performance Skylake part, only supports 16 lanes at the moment.

A server chip in gamers clothing

Analysts say the Broadwell-E is basically a server chip in gamers clothing; if so, youre lucky youre not paying the several thousand dollars server makers usually pay to Intel for its Xeons.

Weve already learned a few things from the Broadwell-E we have in-house. In multi-threaded tests, those 10 cores pay off with very nice dividends. Intels touting some very respectable numbers, including up to 30 percent faster using the 3DMark Fire Strike benchmark versus the i7-5960X Haswell-E chip, and an 85fps boost on Tom Clancys The Division when using a 10-core chip compared to a 4-core model.

Intel Intels own Broadwell-E performance claims typically compare the i7-6950X to the i7-6700K.

Tapping into everything the Broadwell-E can offer may require multiple CPU-intensive apps running simultaneously, which may be a foreign concept to those raised on tweaking HiMEM.SYS to allow a game to run.

Server makers typically gobble up everything that hardware makers offer, and more, with virtualization environments that simulate several client PCs co-existing on a given CPU. That wont necessarily be the case on the desktop, McCarron said. Not everybody running a desktop PC will be running enough applications to use up all those cores, McCarron said.

Thats not going to matter to gamers with the available cash to buy one, though, especially the cheaper, 6-core 6850X and 6800X models. Although Intel may now consider PCs, drones, and connected toothbrushes as all just generic client devices, gaming PCs is one area where Intel is all in, Soqui said.

Why? In part, because the PC gaming hardware market is expected to grow from $24.6 billion in 2015 to $30 billion by 2018, according to Jon Peddie Research. HP may have just recorded its seventh straight quarter of revenue declines, Chromebooks may have overtaken Macs in sales, and the PC market may still be tanking, but gaming PCs are skyrocketing. With the bonus overclocking features Intel has tossed into Broadwell-E, they may well continue.

All the horror stories in the PC industry dont exist here, McCarron said.
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

-- Voltaire, 1698-1774

The first thing to understand is that, before it's a presidential election, it's a TV program. To the suits at CNN, NBC, and Fox News, that means it's about ratings and money. So of course they're going to play it as a cliffhanger.

Do they ever say "Tune in Saturday to watch the Alabama Crimson Tide humiliate hopelessly overmatched Kent State!"?

Never.

So it's going to be with Trump vs. Clinton. Almost regardless of what political scientists and number-crunchers say, the race will be depicted as a nail-biter. The fact that Charles Manson could win Texas' electoral votes with an "R" after his name, while Democrats could take Massachusetts with a Kardashian sister, will prolong the manufactured suspense.

It's going to be a very long six months.

Even so, it's hard to imagine a manifest fraud like Donald J. Trump becoming president of the United States. Surely voters have too much self-respect.

"If Trump came to power," writes The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik, "there is a decent chance that the American experiment would be over. This is not a hyperbolic prediction; it is not a hysterical prediction; it is simply a candid reading of what history tells us happens in countries with leaders like Trump. Countries don't really recover from being taken over by unstable authoritarian nationalists of any political bent, left or right -- not by Perons or Castros or Putins or Francos or Lenins or fill in the blanks."

All politicians fudge the truth, exaggerating their successes and minimizing their failures. Trump, however, takes it to a different level. He's a contemporary version of Baron Von Munchausen, an 18th-century literary character whose wildly exaggerated military exploits -- riding on a cannonball, voyaging to the moon -- made him a comic-heroic favorite for generations.

Trump tells falsehoods so brazen as to redefine political lying. To see what I mean, let's compare a couple of Clinton classics that emailers harangue me about all the time.

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

The beauty of this Clintonian masterpiece lies in the fact that people often misquote it -- changing "sexual relations" to "sex." Because, according to the evidence assiduously gathered by independent counsel Kenneth Starr, it's literally true and therefore perjury-proof.

Cunning and deliberately deceptive, yes. But sexual relations means "intercourse," and that supposedly didn't happen. Cute, huh?

That's Bill Clinton.

Readers who have never lied about sex are encouraged to vent.

Then there's Hillary's infamous Bosnian adventure: "I remember landing under sniper fire," she told a 2008 audience. "There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles."

Confronted with CBS News footage that showed her walking calmly across the tarmac of Tuzla airport from an Air Force C-17 in 1996, Mrs. Clinton basically blamed an overactive memory. She'd actually written about the incident in her 2003 book "Living History" without mentioning the imaginary snipers.

Her press secretary later explained the possible origin of Mrs. Clinton's false memory: "We were issued flak jackets for the final leg because of possible sniper fire near Tuzla. As an additional precaution, the First Lady and Chelsea were moved to the armored cockpit for the descent into Tuzla."

She won't say so, but I'm guessing Hillary got scared, and her mind played a trick on her. Confronted with the discrepancy, however, she owned it.

Suffice it to say that is not the Trump method. With a background in professional wrestling, he understands that there's a vast audience out there only slightly more discerning than a potted geranium and willing to believe (or pretend to believe) damn near anything.

Trump doesn't trim or embroider as much as invent huge, thunderous fictions aimed at boosting himself or hurting his enemies -- evidence be damned. In Trump World, facts don't exist. He cannot be shamed.

Trump went on "Morning Joe" recently to attack Hillary's terrible judgment about Libya. See, if people had listened to Donald, the U.S. would never have helped NATO overthrow Gadhafi.

"I would have stayed out of Libya," he affirmed.

Except that Trump shot a video back in 2011 urging an immediate invasion: "Gadhafi in Libya is killing thousands of people," he said then. "Nobody knows how bad it is, and we're sitting around, we have soldiers all (around) the Middle East, and we're not bringing them in to stop this horrible carnage ... Now we should go in, we should stop this guy, which would be very easy and very quick."

The candidate does this stuff every day, on every imaginable topic. It's brutal, demagogic make-believe, demanding his followers blind themselves to reality and enlist in his cult of personality.

So who are you going to believe, Trump or your lying eyes?
To do that, Makani has built a craft that actually looks more like a drone but is tethered to the ground like a kite. It has four main components: the kite, the tether, a ground station, and a computer.

The company has been part of Google X since 2013, working to come up with a new, more efficient way to transform wind into energy.

Kites arent just for kids anymore. Just ask Makani Power, which is developing a smart energy kite that can generate up to 50 percent more electricity than a conventional wind turbine.

Eight rotors on the kite function much like the blades on a wind turbine. As the craft flies in a circular path, air moving across the rotors drives a generator which produces electricity. The electricity travels down the wire tether and is transferred to the ground station.

The station takes up significantly less space than a conventional wind turbine, and it can be installed in places not suitable for conventional turbines, such as areas that are too hilly or remote. The ground station also makes it easy to maintain the craft, which can be reeled in on its tether when its time for a service.

The kite can reach higher altitudes than a conventional turbine, so it has access to stronger, more consistent winds, and the computer is key to making the whole system efficient. Using a GPS and various sensors, it makes makes thousands of real time calculations to ensure the kite stays on the optimal path.

Thats important, Makani says, because whenever the wind speed doubles, the amount of available power increases eightfold.

Martyn Williams The rotors on the Makani energy kite function like the blades of a wind turbine, driving a generator to produce electricity.

Makani doesn not have energy kites on the market yet, but is currently working on its latest prototype, the M600. It has eight brushless motors and is able to produce 600 kilowatts of power. The company did not say when it would release the product commercially.
After laying dormant for quite some time, Microsoft has announced that it is getting back into directly investing in startups. Microsoft Ventures has been overhauled, though its not clear why Microsoft has decided to get back into investing  or if the company is in it for the long haul.

Nagraj Kashyap, the corporate vice president of Microsoft Ventures, laid out his vision for the investing arm in a blog post Monday, saying that the fund will be used to support early-stage companies and help Microsoft be more involved in new technology developments.

Microsofts existing series of startup accelerators, and its BizSpark program to offer discounts on software, will be rolled into a new Microsoft Accelerator organization. For larger business partnerships and acquisitions, Microsoft will rely on a different team. This version of Ventures is supposed to fill in a gap Microsoft left open when it stopped directly investing in companies.

Kashyap said that Microsoft is interested in a wide variety of technologies, especially cutting-edge companies focused on complementing and accelerating the global transition toward using the cloud.

Companies developing product and services that complement Azure infrastructure, building new business SaaS applications, promoting more personal computing by enriching the Windows and HoloLens ecosystems, new disruptive enterprise, consumer productivity, and communication products around Office 365 are interesting areas from an investment perspective, Kashyap said.

Kashyaps pitch isnt the first time that the company has tried to be a part of the investing ecosystem. That started in 2012 with the launch of the Bing Fund, an investment fund aimed at getting developers to use special tools from Microsofts search engine.

In 2013, that morphed into Microsoft Ventures, which included a venture investing arm, along with the company initiatives that are being rolled into the Microsoft Accelerators.

One of the risks of taking money from Microsoft is that the company may still decide to compete with a startup that it invests in. Take the case of SkyGiraffe, a company that makes tools to enable everyday employees to build mobile apps using company data. Its currently facing competition from Microsofts PowerApps product, despite being the first investment from Microsoft Ventures when it was introduced in 2013.

SkyGiraffe CEO Boaz Hecht said that hes happy to see Microsoft get back into investing, but that he doesnt expect to work together with the Ventures arm at the moment.

Our paths may cross with them again in the future given the core technologies we are both focusing on, but at this point we see them more as a competitor than a partner, Hecht said in an email.

Microsoft is far from the only tech giant with an investing arm. Kashyap himself came to Microsoft Ventures after spending 12 years at Qualcomm Ventures. Google parent company Alphabet has both GV and Google Capital under its purview, while Intel, Salesforce, and others also offer funding to investors.

Right now, the company hasnt funded any firms as part of the new Microsoft Ventures push, but Kashyaps blog post would seem to indicate that theres at least more news coming from Microsoft Ventures in the near future.
Serious vulnerabilities have crept into the software tools that PC manufacturers preload on Windows computers, but the full extent of the problem is much worse than previously thought.

Researchers from security firm Duo Security have tested the software updaters that come installed by default on laptops from five PC OEMs (original equipment manufacturers)  Acer, ASUSTeK Computer, Lenovo, Dell and HP  and all of them had at least one serious vulnerability. The flaws could have allowed attackers to remotely execute code with system privileges, leading to a full system compromise.

In most cases, the problems resulted from the OEM software updaters not using encrypted HTTPS connections when checking for or downloading updates. In addition, some updaters didnt verify that the downloaded files were digitally signed by the OEM before executing them.

The lack of encryption for the communication channel between an update tool and the OEMs servers allows attackers to intercept requests and to serve malicious software that would be executed by the tool. This is known as a man-in-the-middle attack and can be launched from insecure wireless networks, from compromised routers, or from higher up in the Internet infrastructure by rogue ISPs or intelligence agencies.

Who designed this stuff?

In some cases, even when the OEMs implemented HTTPS and digital signature validation, there were other oversights and flaws that could have allowed attackers to bypass the security measures, the Duo Security researchers found.

During our research, we were often greeted by an intricate mess of system services, web services, COM servers, browser extensions, sockets, and named pipes, the researchers said in their report. Many confusing design decisions made us wonder if projects were assembled entirely from poor StackOverflow posts.

The five companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the Duo Security report.

The security and behavior of the update tools were not even consistent on the same system, let alone the same manufacturer. In some cases, OEMs had different tools that downloaded updates from different sources with significantly different levels of security, the researchers found.

For example, the Lenovo Solutions Center (LSC) was one of the best software updaters tested by the researchers, with solid man-in-the-middle protections. This might be because other flaws were found in LSC several times in the past, drawing the companys attention to it.

On the other hand, the tested Lenovo systems also had a second update tool installed called UpdateAgent that had absolutely no security features and was one of the worst updaters Duo Security analyzed.

The tools preloaded by Dell, namely the Dell Update software and the update plugin of the Dell Foundation Services (DFS), were some of the most well-designed updaters, but thats only if a critical issue caused by the self-signed eDellRoot certificate, found by Duo Security back in November, is excluded.

Since then Dell seems to have beefed up its software update implementations. The Duo researchers found several other issues in the DFS version that came preinstalled on their system, but Dell silently patched them in an update in January before they even had a chance to report them.

HPs updater, the HP Support Solutions Framework (HPSSF) with its HP Download and Install Assistant component, also had decent security in place at first glance. However, the researchers found several ways to bypass some of those protections, mainly because of inconsistent implementations.

The issues with HPSSF stem from its large number of components and the different ways in which they interact with each other. Sometimes the same type of protection, like the signature verification was implemented in multiple places in different ways.

HPs bloatware was the worst

This tendency for complexity was also observed in HPs decision to install an unusually large number of support tools on its PCs.

HP exposed the most attack surface due to the enormous number of proprietary tools included with the machine, the researchers said. Were not really sure what they all do and we kind of got sick of reversing them after a while, so we stopped.

The updaters that fared worse, aside from Lenovos UpdateAgent, which the company plans to retire and remove from systems in June, were those from Acer and Asus. Not only did they lack HTTPS or file signature validation, but according to Duo Security, the issues remain unpatched.

The main advice of the Duo researchers for users is to wipe the preloaded Windows version that comes with their computer and to install a clean copy of Windows. In most cases they should be able to use their existing license key, which in newer Windows versions is detected automatically during Windows installation.

The level of sophistication required to exploit most of the vulnerabilities we found is somewhere between that possessed by a coffee stain on the Duo lunch room floor and your average potted plant  meaning, trivial, the Duo researchers said in a blog post.

And thats based only on an analysis of OEM update tools, not all the third-party software that vendors commonly install on new computers. Who knows what other flaws those applications might have?
Intels upcoming 7th Generation Core processor family, code-named Kaby Lake, is off to a quick start.

More than 400 devices with Intels upcoming chip design will reach the market, said Navin Shenoy, corporate vice president and general manager for Intels Client Computing Group.

One of those devices will be Asus Surface-like Transformer 3, which will ship in the third quarter starting at US$799. The device has a 12.6-inch screen that displays images at a resolution of 2880 x 1920 pixels. It weighs 695 grams and is 6.9 millimeters thick. The device has a 13-megapixel camera, and it can be configured with a 512GB SSD and up to 8GB RAM.

Shenoy, speaking during a keynote at the Computex trade show in Taipei, also showed a 2-in-1 made by Compal during the keynote. Its not clear if the first Kaby Lake chips to reach PCs will be low-power Core M or the faster Core i chips.

Other PC makers will also announce Kaby Lake devices, though its not clear when.

Devices with Kaby Lake will include Thunderbolt 3, IR cameras for Windows Hello, and the latest graphics technologies to handle 4K content, Shenoy said. He didnt share more information about Kaby Lake, however, and Intel declined to provide additional chip details.

Kaby Lake will succeed the current crop of 6th Generation Core processors code-named Skylake. The processor design has the underpinnings of Skylake, but should have better graphics, power management, and integration of I/O technologies.

The look ahead to Kaby Lake comes as Intel retools its PC strategy to be in line with the realities of todays PC market. Intel will focus on a handful of distinct markets, primarily 2-in-1s and gaming and enthusiast PCs, with sales growing in an otherwise slumping PC market. The company will also continue to focus on mini-PCs like NUC desktops, Shenoy said.

At the same time, Intel is restructuring operations to shed its long-time reliance on PCs to focus on growth areas like the Internet of Things, cloud computing, data-center hardware, communications technology, and memory. Intel in April said it would lay off up to 12,000 employees worldwide and would cut products it deemed unprofitable or irrelevant. Some Atom chips for mobile phones are already on the chopping block.

Shenoy reiterated the companys commitment to PCs, saying computer designs are constantly changing with emerging applications like virtual reality.

The addition of Kaby Lake to Intels chip lineup last year was unexpected and broke Intels tradition of making two Core chip designs with every manufacturing process. It is the third Core chip design on the 14-nanometer process after Broadwell and Skylake and was added after manufacturing issues caused Intel to delay a move to the 10-nm process. Kaby Lake continues Intels tradition of delivering yearly chip upgrades.

The successor to Kaby Lake is a chip code-named Cannonlake, which will be made using the 10-nm process and be available for PCs in the second half of 2017.

Intel later this year will also ship processors code-named Apollo Lake for entry-level PCs and tablets. The chips will sell under the Pentium and Celeron brands.

Competition to Kaby Lake will come from AMDs processors based on the Zen CPU architecture, which will first gaming systems later this year, and to mainstream laptops and desktops next year. AMD has focused on improving raw CPU performance in the Zen-based chips.
A motorcyclist was hit Monday afternoon, May 30, by a driver who apparently passed out behind the wheel, then a bystander stole his belongings, police say.

The driver of the SUV was traveling north on F Street when he lost consciousness, perhaps because of a medical issue, said police Sgt. Shauna Gates.

The driver of the SUV hit the motorcycle, which was traveling westbound (on Base Line), then crashed into the business, Gates said, pointing to the hole in the wall of Baseline Appliance where the car and driver remained more than an hour after the 1:43 p.m. crash. The driver of the SUV is uninjured. The driver of the motorcycle was taken to the hospital with moderate injuries, possibly broken bones.

A large crowd gathered shortly after the crash, but police did not have a detailed description of the suspected thief.

When he was hit and his wallet and things flew out of his pocket, someone grabbed it and ran, Gates said. Which is horrendous.

Tay Reddic, who lives nearby, said he was walking to the store when he heard a crash.

All I saw was the guy on the motorcycle flying through the air, Reddic said. There wasnt no need to call 911, because right after it happened everyone was calling, and 30 or 40 seconds later (police) pulled up.

Base Line was closed between F Street and N Berkeley Ave because of the crash.
LOS ANGELES  Gov. Jerry Brown endorsed Hillary Clinton for president on Tuesday, intervening in the highly contested Democratic primary and telling voters she has the tenacity and skill to advance the Democratic agenda.

Democrats have shown, by millions of votes, that they want her as their nominee, he said.

But Browns endorsement, which came one week before next Tuesdays primary in his state, also offered strong praise for Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has been campaigning nearly full-time in California in an attempt to post a victory that might lift his long-shot battle to defeat Clinton. In doing so, Brown took note of the similarities between the campaign the California governor ran for president in 1992 and Sanders own appeal.

He has driven home the message that the top one percent has unfairly captured way too much of Americas wealth, leaving the majority of people far behind, he said in an open letter to Democrats and independents, who are permitted to vote in the primary. In 1992, I attempted a similar campaign.

Brown lost that race to Clintons husband, Bill Clinton, in a contest that left lingering bitterness between the two men. Bill Clinton met with Brown in his office in Sacramento last week, suggesting any remaining strain between the two political figures are easing.

But the governor, who is now 78 and midway through his fourth and final term as the states chief executive, made clear that more than anything, his decision was driven by his concern about Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee.

Trump, Brown noted in his letter, has called climate change a hoax and said he will tear up the Paris Climate Agreement. He has promised to deport millions of immigrants and ominously suggested that other countries may need the nuclear bomb. He has also pledged to pack the Supreme Court with only those who please the extreme right.

The stakes couldnt be higher, Brown said.
Authorities are searching for an inmate who walked away from the Pilot Rock Conservation firefighter camp near Crestline early Tuesday, officials said.

Chad Ellebracht, 40, was discovered to have gone missing about 7:30 a.m., according to a statement from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. He was last seen in the camp around 5:30 a.m., during an inmate count.

Surrounding law enforcement departments were alerted and are helping look for Ellebracht, who was sentenced to three years in state prison on a drug charge, officials said.

Ellenbracht is 5-foot-11, weighs about 200 pounds and has several tattoos on his chest and arms, including his last name across his back. He has light brown hair, which is currently shaved, brown eyes and no facial hair.

Anyone with information on his whereabouts is asked to call 911 or the Pilot Rock Conservation Camp at 909-338-1950.

Cal Fire and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation operate 42 adult and two Division of Juvenile Justice conservation camps which house more than 4,000 inmates, according to corrections officials. The Pilot Rock camp is along Highway 138 on the north side of the San Bernardino Mountains, east of Silverwood Lake.

Inmate firefighters are Cal Fires only hand crews. They often work in remote, rugged terrain during and after fires. The inmate crews have been instrumental in battling some of the states largest recent fires including the Lake Fire in the Big Bear area and the Springs Fire in Ventura County.
In a three-car garage, about a dozen people drank wine and ate cheese and crackers  and waited.

Finally, a smiling Paul Chabot hurried up, yard signs advertising his congressional campaign tucked under one arm. His wife and three of his four children (the fourth was at gymnastics practice) had arrived a few minutes before. They munched on snacks while they watched their father, who has been running for the 31st Congressional District seat much of their lives, address the dozen or so residents gathered there, many of whom had worked to help defeat a proposed tax in Rancho Cucamonga last year.

Its going to be a very competitive race, Chabot said, one elementary school age daughter with her arms around his waist as he spoke.

In his own words, hes never stopped running after losing the 2014 election to Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-San Bernardino, whom Chabot mostly referred to as the current member of Congress or my opponent.

He criticized Aguilar for voting in favor of President Barack Obamas nuclear deal, called Aguilar weak on immigration and outlined his ambitious plan to turn Norton Air Force Base into a joint military base, complete with drone construction and military intelligence offices.

Both national security and immigration are recurrent themes for Chabot, a naval reservist.

If a child can walk across that border, so can a terrorist, he said, combining both concerns into one.

Although Chabot rarely referred to Aguilar by name, he didnt mention the other three candidates in the race at all. Retired school teacher Kaiser Ahmed is running against Aguilar as a Democrat. And there are two other Republicans in the race, economist Sean Flynn and former Congressman (and former Democrat) Joe Baca. The three Republicans are hoping to finish in the top two in the June 7 primary and win the chance to take on the incumbent in November.

Were not too focused on either of those, Chabot said the next day. Were staying on target against Aguilar. Thats who were going to face in the general (election). We dont want to get distracted by anybody else in this race.

Chabot is banking on his military and law enforcement history to sway voters in the 31st District, which stretches across the Inland Empire, from Redlands to Rancho Cucamonga.

We just dont see him as someone the district is going to relate to, Chabot said. The district here is concerned about terrorism and the rise in crime, and I think theyll prefer someone who has that kind of background and experience.

Sean Flynn

Its Chabots third political campaign, including his 2014 bid for the 31st Congressional District and a losing bid for the 63rd Assembly District in 2010. But Flynn is even more of a political newcomer.

Dr. Chabot has been running for races and losing them since 2010, Flynn said. So, yeah, as the rookie  who got into the race late, my biggest problem is name recognition.

Flynn, an economics professor at Scripps College, has made being the author of Economics for Dummies his calling card. And he said such business sense gives him something that Chabot cannot offer voters.

Good man, patriot, military veteran, but when it comes down to the Republican case and Republican cause, it comes down to way more than national defense and security, which is completely what hes about, Flynn said. Were the party of small business, and thats something I never see him talking about.  I dont see a lot of the traditional messaging coming out of the Chabot camp.

Flynns candidacy is pitched as sending an economic educator to Washington.

I am personally tired of the gridlock myself, he said. Neither party seems to be getting anything meaningful done. Things have been at complete loggerheads since the run-up to Obamacare. What the world needs is the best non-partisan ideas.

That includes tackling the student debt crisis, congressional gridlock and taking a budgetary ax to Obamacare, Flynn said.

Ive studied the best health care ideas in the world, Flynn said. The country can provide better health care and still cut costs by about 75 percent.

In his advertisements, Flynn has described himself as The Republican in the race. But the Redlands Tea Party Patriots, who endorsed Chabot in April, criticized Flynn for receiving campaign donations from donors with a history of donating to Democrats.

People have come up with this idea that Im not a real Republican because they dont have much else against me, Flynn said. Theyre willing to see things that really arent there.  It really elicits laughs among people who know me.

Joe Baca

The only Republican in the race not claiming to be a political newcomer is former Rep. Joe Baca, who served in the Assembly from 1992 to 1999, the state Senate in 1998 and the House of Representatives from 1999 to 2013.

Ive got name ID, Baca said. Ive got a proven track record and proven results of accomplishing things when I was in Congress.

Last year, Baca switched sides and now is running against Aguilar as a Republican. As a Democrat, Baca came in fifth out of seven candidates in the June 13, 2014, primary.

I think the system is broken, Baca said. The last time that Pete ran, he said the system was broken and was going there to fix it, and all hes done is fall in line.

Baca said his legislative experience, including being a member of Congress on Sept. 11, 2001, will serve the district well.

On Dec. 2, when the incident happened in San Bernardino, it was all over the nation about what happened out here, Baca said. When the iron was hot, I would have gone to (the appropriations committee) and would have put in an amendment to get law enforcement reimbursed. I wouldnt have waited until February, when you need good publicity because you have to run for re-election.

(Aguilar and San Bernardino County officials began working on the process in January, including during a visit by local law enforcement officials to Washington when they were guests at the State of the Union.)

Baca has been criticized for his change in party affiliation, but he said its a virtue, not a hindrance.

People really like the fact that Im now a Republican. They say, Im glad you saw the light, Baca laughed. I still believe in a lot of the values I always had. Ive always been conservative.

Baca said he always has been anti-abortion and a strong supporter of the right to own firearms.

In order to be effective in Congress, you have to have the ability with to work with both sides of the aisle, he said.

The national GOP

After losing in 2014, Chabot repeatedly blamed the National Republican Congressional Committees failure to support his campaign financially for his loss to Aguilar. Hes confident that wont happen again, although as of March 31, the end of the most recent reporting period, Chabot has not received a penny from the committee.

The NRCC will not engage in this race until after the primary, but they have identified Aguilar as a No. 1 target to defeat, Chabot said. They will absolutely support the Republican nominee this time around because they saw how close it was last time around.

According to the Federal Election Commission, Chabots campaign committee had $143,795 cash on hand as of March 31. Flynn had $390,390 cash on hand, although $350,000 of that comes from a loan he made to himself. And Baca had $5,054 cash on hand, a tenth of what he raised in his failed bid to become mayor of Fontana in 2014.

Even if the NRCC leaves the sidelines this election cycle and supports whichever Republican or Republicans win the June 7 primary, the numbers still arent great for the GOP in the 31st: As of April 8, registered district voters are 39.86 percent Democratic, 33.38 percent Republican, 21.95 percent no party preference and the rest split among smaller political parties. And incumbents of Congress have a sky-high rate of re-election: 95 percent in the 2014 election cycle and never below 85 percent in the past 52 years.

As for Chabot, who essentially has been running against Aguilar for almost four years now, hes confident that hell be getting his rematch come November.

Were definitely going to win in June, Chabot said. Were absolutely focused on Aguilar in the general. We dont want to get distracted.

Contact the writer: beau.yarbrough@langnews.com Twitter: @LBY3
Dec. 2, 2015, profoundly changed the county and its response to critical incidents.

Peer support took on a whole new meaning after 13 county health inspectors and supervisors and one other person were fatally gunned down by Syed Rizwan Farook at the Inland Regional Center, and another 22 were wounded in the mass shooting.

Of the roughly 100 employees in the county Environmental Health Services Division, the number of those killed or wounded in the terrorist attack made up roughly 35 percent of the departments workforce.

I think were finally getting a little bit of stability, said Corwin Porter, assistant director for the county Department of Public Health, which oversees the Environmental Health Services Division.

Six months after that day on which 14 people died and 22 others were wounded, a sense of normalcy has begun to return.

Everything is still very fluid, Porter said. Its never going to be normal again per se, but were getting back to that normal business approach.

Crisis counseling services traditionally provided to police officers and sheriffs deputies following critical incidents were expanded to include county employees traumatized by the tragedy. And a special quiet room was dedicated in the Department of Public Health building for employees experiencing trigger events rekindling memories of that horrific day.

More than 50 percent of the Environmental Health Services Divisions employees  52 of 100  are working, but not all are working full time, and the fluidity of the workforce has been challenging.

Weve had a lot of help through contract positions. About 27 people are on contract filling the void for employees not back to work, Porter said. Thats been the challenge  making sure the work gets done with all these moving pieces.

About 25 percent of the countys health inspectors were killed in the attack committed by Farook, himself a health inspector, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 29, in what the FBI declared the deadliest terrorist strike on U.S. soil since 9/11.

While 50 percent of environmental health staff remain on leave, temporary staff remain on loan from Riverside, Orange, Los Angeles, Contra Costa, Marin, Ventura and San Luis Obispo counties, Porter said.

But things are looking up. About 20 new health inspectors hired in the last six months have completed training and are ready to be put to work, Porter said.

As a result, were scaling back our mutual aid. Were starting to stand up on our own again, which is really nice, said Porter. We still have a lot of help, but its positive. Were moving in the right direction.

Meanwhile, $3 million in renovations are underway at the Environmental Health Services Division, on the second floor of the county Government Center in Arrowhead Plaza. The office has been gutted, and when work is completed this summer it will in no way resemble how it looked prior to Dec. 2, county spokesman David Wert said.

Environmental Health employees have been temporarily relocated to county offices on Third Street, next to the Department of Public Health.

The goal, said Wert, is for the new office to not remind any returning employees of the IRC attack and the victims it claimed  anything that can spur a trigger event. Even something like a cracked light switch cover plate could trigger an undesired effect, he said.

Building security has also weighed heavily on the minds of employees since the attack. Last week the Board of Supervisors approved three-year contracts with two security companies, Irvine-based TRC Engineers Inc. and Los Angeles-based Guidepost Solutions LLC., to assess security at more than 500 owned or leased county buildings encompassing 12 million square feet.

The county has already taken steps to make county facilities more secure, including activating cardkey-only access to many offices during working hours and ramping up security where appropriate, Wert said.

The emphasis will be on employee safety, and the highest priority will be on buildings where the public comes to do business with county employees, Wert said.

In the aftermath of the shooting, Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in San Bernardino, opening the door for the county to receive money from the state to help cover the costs associated with the attack.

The county has incurred $20 million in costs associated with the shooting, according to county CEO Greg Devereaux, including emergency response, the temporary shuttering of the Environmental Health Services Division in the wake of the shooting, counseling services for traumatized employees, and the renovation of the Environmental Health Services Division, among other things.

But securing federal funding has been tricky, as the reimbursement process is geared toward large-scale natural disasters and not man-made disasters such as a terrorist attack. That means only about $8 million of the $20 million in costs incurred by the county appears to be eligible for reimbursement under current rules.

We have become far more prepared to address man-made disasters in terms of preparedness, prevention and response, but that system is not nearly as well developed in terms of recovery, so most of our recovery funding and programs are still geared toward natural disasters, Devereaux said in a telephone interview Friday.

In response, the county is sponsoring state legislation, Senate Bill 1385, sponsored by Sen. Connie M. Leyva, D-Chino, to address that gap. The proposed law would guarantee full reimbursement for local law enforcement agencies that responded to the Dec. 2 mass shooting.

I believe that the county of San Bernardino  as well as other local and law enforcement agencies that responded to the horrific December 2nd attack  deserve to receive full reimbursement for eligible costs incurred as a result of their rapid and heroic actions, Leyva said in an email. The county and these agencies should not have to absorb millions of dollars in unreimbursed costs, as that would directly impact the high quality services that they provide to the people of San Bernardino.

Devereaux said it is imperative that in a world where terrorist attacks and other man-made critical incidents are occurring more frequently, the state and federal government must implement funding programs tailored for such events.

Other funding sources the county is trying to tap include the U.S. Department of Justices Office of Victim Compensation and the state Office of Emergency Services, Devereaux said.

There are some sources were still pursuing that may still come through, he said, adding that the county may be eligible for between $5 million and $6 million from the state Office of Emergency Services.

The impacts of Dec. 2 and trying to address those impacts is something that we deal with on a daily basis, Devereaux said. The county was already a work environment that was very busy and had a lot of demands. This is placed over the top of all of them  this additional layer of responsibility that we need to address.

As the county moves forward, Devereaux said, it is committed to rising to the challenge former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani gave during his Jan. 4 visit to Ontario, when he was guest speaker at a special event at the Citizens Business Bank Arena honoring those killed in the Dec. 2 attack.

Were committed to the challenge that Mayor Giuliani gave to us to not let the terrorists defeat us, said Devereaux. And so were working on that and working with businesses and the investment community to make sure thats what happens, that we come together as a community and we emerge stronger than before.
The thunder of motorcycles and a C-130. T-34 warbirds and bagpipes. Flags and Taps. The Inland area found a myriad of ways to give thanks this Memorial Day.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald used his Memorial Day address at Riverside National Cemetery on Monday to roll out a new program designed to use the nations national cemeteries as history lessons for school children.

The National Cemetery Administrations Legacy Program, McDonald said, would use the stories of veterans buried at the cemeteries to help illustrate American history. Riverside National Cemetery is one of two pilot sites for the program. The other is Beaufort Cemetery in South Carolina.

Although recently under fire for the VAs continuing problem with serving veterans in a timely fashion, McDonalds appearance likely drew many of those attending the Riverside ceremonies. Some took the time to show McDonald their support.

All those who came were greeted by the rumble of motorcycles, a crush of cars and flags strewn in rows across the burial grounds green lawns. At the cemetery entrance, a Marine in dress uniform saluted those passing through the gate.

Supporters of the West Coast Thunder riders lined Van Buren Boulevard, cheering on the motorcycles, many of which turned off the main route to make a tour through the cemetery. Some of those stopped and there were clusters of leather- and bandana- clad riders standing next to rows of parked bikes.

The sound of the riders acted as a drumroll for the memorial event that kicked off at 10:30 a.m. with patriotic music played by the Riverside Concert Band.

As people filtered in, filling the cemeterys amphitheater, Charlene Barton, 59, of Calimesa, sat near the back of the bowl. Barton said she had been thinking of coming to the Memorial Day event for years, but this was the first time she actually made it.

Its very humbling, she said of the setting, looking out at the lake beyond the amphitheater stage. It puts the little troubles you have in perspective and makes you appreciate everything you have.

Just coming in here today and seeing all the flags, she added, I felt overwhelmed with gratitude. Its just very emotional.

Barton wiped tears from her eyes.

Not far away, Army veteran Hasan Reed, 43, of Moreno Valley said he was thinking of fellow soldiers who deployed with him to Iraq  where Reed said he did four tours  and did not return. This was the first time he had come to the event. Usually, he said, he stays home and watches war movies.

Memorial Day is all about remembering our veterans who served and I just wanted to do something different and come here and talk to other veterans, Reed said. I feel like I belong here. This here is what Memorial Day is about.

Just as master of ceremonies Mike Warren got things underway, a C-17 belonging to March Air Reserve Bases 452nd Air Mobility Wing thundered overhead to cheers form the crowd.

Part of the traditional program includes the winner of a local high school essay contest. This year, Jolene Ryan, an 11th grader at Martin Luther King High School, talked about the history of Memorial Day and its meaning.

Ryan wanted those present to honor those who gave up their tomorrows so we could have today, and said Memorial Day was not limited to the last Monday in May.

We celebrate this day every day, she said, referring to such activities as saying the Pledge of Allegiance or singing The Star Spangled Banner. Every time a flag goes up a pole, its Memorial Day.

During his address, McDonald, a graduate of West Point and a retired Army Captain, focused on the historic contribution made by men and women in uniform.

Service members are defending America against threats to our values and democracy at this very moment, McDonald said. They all fight for something greater than themselves.

Memorial Day should be more than simply a salute, he said.

Remembering means more than calling the roll of the fallen, he said. it means honoring the unfinished work of the men and women who gave their lives.

HOMETOWN HEROES HONORED

In Menifee more than 100 people were drawn to Wheatfield Park for its sixth annual Memorial Day Remembrance that included a 3 Ship Fly By of T-34 warbirds from the March Air Reserve Base Aero Club.

Several members of Boy Scout Troop 374 took part in the ceremony, which included assisting Menifee Mayor Pro Tem Greg August in laying a wreath at the base of the Menifee Veterans Memorial while Piper Lass played Amazing Grace on the bagpipes.

A large chalkboard Freedom Wall was placed alongside the memorial to give visitors the chance to finish the sentence: Because of your sacrifice, I have the freedom to

Just thank everyone, wrote Averi David, 14, of Temecula.

After writing his thanks on the board, her brother, Parker, 10, said its amazing how they sacrificed themselves for us.

Rows of photographs of men and women in the service were on display as Hometown Heroes honoring those in uniform today and those who have served in the past.

Members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1956 provided the invocation, a POW/MIA tribute and the keynote speech.

Robert Lennox, community services director for the city of Menifee, said the program grows each year along with the city that has increased its population by about 4,000 in the past year.

Vietnam War veteran Bill Hutchinson was attending for the first time, having just moved to the area from Paramount.

Its nice to be able to honor those who have gone to their eternal rest before me  but at the same time, its difficult, he said.

SAYING THANKS

More than 150 visitors attended San Jacinto Valley Cemeterys annual Memorial Day ceremony which was with the help of American Legion Post 53 from Hemet. Carol Griese, general manager for the cemetery district, said the partnership began about 50 years ago.

This is a day we collectively want to say thanks for those that put their lives on the line in defense of our country and its allies, said Post Commander Matt Casey, 68.

Dianne Verdugo, who arrived early for the ceremony, had been at Riverside National Cemetery on Sunday reading names for the roll call, which she has done for the past eight years.

Im honored to have the opportunity to do that, she said.

For 13 years she maintained a public billboard in Hemet to honor fallen soldiers. Now she travels to local events with a poster sized version.

Tony ONeal is one of about 75 members of the Friends of the San Jacinto Valley Cemetery, which raises money to do things the district cant afford, such as providing refreshments at the Memorial Day ceremony.

Family members who attended the event with him included his four-year-old granddaughter, Delilah ONeal.

We put flags up for the soldiers and they died for us and thats why were celebrating them today, she said.

Contributing writer Diane Rhodes added to this report.

Contact the writer: mmuckenfuss@pressenterprise.com or 951-368-9595
Mins Dumpling House in Corona is not your Americanized, dumbed-down version of Chinese food.

Perhaps I should say, the restaurant embraces so much more than my familys limited preferences while eating out in my native Syracuse, N.Y.: chop suey, chicken chow mein, moo goo gai pan or sweet and sour pork. For something more daring and exotic, wed scoop meat and veggies into moo shu pork wraps and smear them with that rich, sweet sauce.

Mins features 123 selections written in English and Chinese. The menu groups two dozen Americana throwbacks as chefs favorites, including broccoli beef, cashew nuts with chicken, sweet and sour fish fillet and kung pao beef, ranging from $8.95 -$11.95.

But for the adventurous or those unfamiliar with authentic Chinese food, Mins will definitely provide a different culinary experience. Or, as Mins website says: a modern interpretation of classic dishes, smorgasbord from eclectic regions, including Canton, Sichuan and Hunan.

My friend Val and I started with a small, cold appetizer. The crunchy, cut-up cucumber pieces in a hoisin sauce laced with sesame seeds for $3.95, seemed, well, far more appetizing than the seaweed cold dish, hot and spicy pig lung or deep fried peanuts.

We advanced to the vaunted dim sum, bite-sized dumplings served in steamer baskets. The menus dim sum directory listed 29 varieties, $6.95- $8.95, including the main draws, juicy pork dumplings and the onion pancake (a k a Chinese pizza); red bean buns; Shanghai style fried rice cake; steamed bok choy and pork dumplings; steamed shrimp and pork dumpling; beef roll; and pumpkin mochi cake.

We played it safe with the steamed vegetable dumplings, 10 pieces for $7.95, which we rubbed in a mixture of soy sauce and vinegar. The thin but substantial skin housed a delicious cluster of freshly sauteed and minced water chestnuts, scallions and garlic.

Everything is made-to-order so dont expect instant gratification, although the servers appear to glide on jet skis. The place is tiny and crowds up quickly. We got there at the 11 a.m. opening and by noon the diners, mostly Asians, filled every table.

Val ordered sauteed lamb for $10.95. Its one of the tamer platters from the homestyle section, which range from $7.95 for shredded pork with tofu slices to the $16.95 hot and spicy chitterling (pig intestines) in a hotpot.

Gustatory thrill seekers and connoisseurs of organ meats, fish and fowl wont be disappointed. Homestyle also means spicy pig kidney, chicken kidney with hot chili pepper, pickle and celery with pig tripe, hot and spicy chicken gizzard in a hotpot and dried daikon with duck.

Marinated and cooked in a savory sauce, Vals lamb slices were tender and easier on the choppers than bulgogi, the grilled meat from our previous outing to a Korean restaurant.

True to tradition, the menus 16 Hunan dishes were mostly made with fresh chili peppers, including the seeds and membranes which pack most of the heat. The food ranges from $9.95-$18.95: fish head in hot chili pepper; hot and spicy frog in a hotpot; hot and spicy chicken; Hunan-style bean curd puff with spareribs; hot and spicy pork belly with sliced lotus roots. Request your level of spiciness.

The flavor of my braised eggplant dish for $7.95 was bolstered by a hearty, sweet sort of barbecue sauce, minus the pork.

The one sour note was the sweet corn soup with rice balls for $7.95. Our server warned that it was a dessert and very sweet. We plunged in, anyway, then put our spoons down. The thin broth dotted with marble-sized rice balls tasted like candy.

I certainly understand why Mins, which also has locations in Chino and Rancho Cucamonga, has a loyal following. The food is a refreshing change from burgers, fries and pizza, well-prepared and reasonably priced. Our bill, before the tip, came to $44.01.

All meals for Dining Review profiles are paid for by The Press-Enterprise.

Contact the writer: llucas@pressenterprise.com, 951-368-9559
A man came into a Houston auto detail shop and began shooting, killing a man known to be a customer and putting a neighborhood on lockdown Sunday before being killed by a SWAT officer, police said.

The shooter was identified by Los Angeles broadcast media as Dionisio Garza III, a 2009 Rancho Cucamonga High School graduate, citing a source close to the investigation. People who identified themselves as members of Garzas family confirmed the report in interviews with Texas and Los Angeles TV stations this morning.

Police have not released the suspects name and say they dont know a motive for the shooting.

The station said Garza served two tours of duty in Afghanistan and was discharged from active duty in 2014.

A man and woman who identified themselves as Garzas father and stepmother told media outlets in Houston that he was a kind man who they believed suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.

That boy that did that horrific thing was not Dionisio Garza, a woman who identified herself as Garzas mother told Houston TV station KPRC, Channel 2. Its not the boy Ive raised.

Im sorry for what happened, the woman told the TV station. Im sorry to the families. Words are just words. I wish there was more that we could do.

The couple told the TV station that two tours of duty in Afghanistan changed the Army veteran, who grew more unstable and would often call his parents overcome with emotion and fearful that the United States government was on the verge of collapse.

Just in the last two weeks it progressively got worse, a man who identified himself as Garzas father told KPRC-TV. It was not the same boy that we raised. Not the loving uncle, the loving brother.

Something snapped. It wasnt him anymore  my son was broken, the father told the TV station.

A woman who identified herself as Garzas stepmother told KABC News, Channel 7 in Los Angeles: Were devastated. I cant think of all the families that were affected by this, and its just not him. Thats not who he was.

Several people were shot and injured, including a man authorities initially described as another suspect because he was present and armed. Police said later Sunday they were investigating further whether he played any role.

Three others  two of them male and one female  were hospitalized with injuries police said were not believed to be life-threatening. Two officers who were shot were released from the hospital later Sunday.

Police, who said they have no indication yet of a motive, said they got their first call about the shootings around 10:15 a.m. The customer described as a man in his 50s had just driven in to the auto shop. Within a minute or two, authorities said, the gunman came in and started shooting. Others in the shop ran out to take cover nearby and call for help.

Neighbors described hearing many gunshots, and some of the victims taken to the hospital were shot while driving their vehicles. Police say they believe a fire at a gas station next door began when gunfire hit a pump. At least three police vehicles were damaged by gunfire, one of them struck 21 times, and a police helicopter was shot at with a high-powered weapon and was hit five times, authorities said.

Stephen Dittoe, 55, lives in the house right behind the shooting scene, separated by a fence and tall shrubbery at the end of cul-de-sac.

I heard the first shot and I thought it was a transformer exploding, he said. His wife, Ha, 41, said it went on too long for that and described the series of staccato sounds.

She took their two children, ages 6 and 7, into the bathroom, told them to eat breakfast in there, and called 911.

About an hour after the shootings began, a SWAT officer killed the gunman, said police spokesman John Cannon.

If he hadnt taken that action that quickly, this likely would have been a lot worse than it was, Cannon said.

The county medical examiner may identify the gunman on Monday, Cannon said.

Houston Police Union President Ray Hunt says an officer who was hit several times in the chest was wearing both a metal breastplate and a bulletproof vest. The second officer was shot in the hand.

At the Dittoe house, Ha Dittoe said police came to the door about two hours later and asked if anyone in the house was being held captive, and if they could walk around the backyard.

The streets were still blocked off late Sunday afternoon with many police cars and fire trucks on the scene. A police SUV was seen with a shattered windshield and the back window broken out, and police said two patrol cars were riddled with bullets.



Michael Graczyk of The Associated Press reported from Houston.
A Riverside man has pleaded guilty to multiple counts of grand theft for his role in selling hundreds of thousands of dollars in bogus bonds, state insurance officials said Monday, May 30.

John Antonio Ruiz, 49, is accused of selling $334,972 in bogus surety bonds and stealing the clients premiums while representing Cornerstone Surety and Insurance Agency of Temecula, according to a news release from the California Department of Insurance.

Ruiz is listed as the CEO on the company website. He pleaded guilty to 11 felony counts of grand theft, the news released stated.

State officials contend Ruiz issued multiple performance and payment bonds to a general contractor which unwittingly included the bonds with a winning bid for retail construction projects across the U.S. When the retailer attempted to satisfy liens filed by subcontractors it was discovered the premiums were never remitted to the insurance company, the news release stated.

State officials said Ruiz pocket the premiums and believe the scam could expose the retailer to financial losses on the construction projects.

Ruiz is scheduled to be sentenced July 15 in Riverside County Superior Court.

 Tom Sheridan
Riverside National Cemetery has a lot of stories to tell, VA Secretary Robert McDonald said on Monday, during a visit where he was the keynote speaker at the cemeterys Memorial Day ceremonies.

During his speech McDonald announced the rollout of the National Cemetery Administrations Legacy Program. Riverside National Cemetery is one of two pilot sites for the initiative.

The idea is to use our national cemeteries to help teachers, Boy Scout leaders, Girl Scout leaders to teach the young people today about what it means to be a patriot, McDonald said.

The program provides online lesson plans and resources that provide information on some of the veterans interred in the cemetery. Interactive maps link students to the grave makers and short histories of selected service people.

The idea came when I was in San Diego at the cemetery there that looks out on the bay, McDonald said. I saw a chief petty officer taking his recruits through the cemetery, telling them how important their roles were based on the stories of the people there.

The program was a chance for McDonald to highlight something positive amid all the fire hes been taking lately. At a breakfast meeting sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor on May 23, McDonald was asked about the continuing problem of long waits for appointments at the VA.

When you go to Disney, do they measure the number of hours you wait in line? Or whats important? McDonald replied, according to multiple news agencies. Whats important is, whats your satisfaction with the experience?

Politicians, particularly Republicans, were quick to criticize the comments. State Senator Jeff Stone, R-Temecula, said McDonalds comment illustrates a fundamental failure . . . to understand the massive problems with how our wounded warriors are treated at local VA Hospitals. He called for McDonald to resign or be fired.

McDonald declined to address Stones statement directly.

Im here to serve veterans, he said.

He pointed out that the VA has been pushing to keep up with increasing demand by veterans. He pointed to the addition of 1,400 doctors, 2,300 nurses and 4 million square feet of new clinic space since 2014.

Most veterans, he said, have other insurance options and many use the VA for only part of their care, if at all.

The average veteran uses the VA for 34 percent of their health care, he said.

A single percentage increase, he said, means the VA needs another $1.4 billion just to keep up.

Our goal is that by December  if we get the budget and funding we need from Congress  every veteran who comes to the VA will begin to get resolution that very same day.

McDonald found supporters at Mondays event. Several veterans expressed their thanks to him.

Steve Wright, 73, of Moreno Valley, said hes been very satisfied with the care he and family members have received at the VA. Hes happy with McDonald.

He does the best with what he has, Wright said.

Contact the writer: mmuckenfuss@pressenterprise.com or 951-368-9595
LOS ANGELES  Mandy Pifer drove to the Los Angeles Police Department last week and prepared to face a fresh wave of grief.

Pifer, a crisis counselor, has spent the last six years comforting people in the aftermath of death. The woman whose sister killed herself with an electric chainsaw. The 8-year-old girl who found her mother shot to death on their couch.

The grief she was preparing to encounter was her own.

Nearly six months ago, her boyfriend Shannon Johnson was among the 14 killed in the San Bernardino attack. Grappling with the anguish, she left counseling to mourn, retreating into her Koreatown apartment filled with their photographs.

Driving to the LAPD office to meet with her crisis team colleagues, she imagined seeing many friends for the first time since the attack would bring the entire ordeal back. She wanted to return, but she also wondered how she would react.

Was she ready to go back behind the yellow tape?



Pifer was one year out of a long-term relationship when she decided to give online dating a try. Johnsons profile picture immediately attracted her. He had a warm smile and his orange tabby, Jerry, peeked over the side of one shoulder.

They started chatting and quickly, decided to meet.

For their first date, they decided to meet at Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. Inside its towering, ornate marble halls, they talked about growing up in the South  he in Georgia, she in Tennessee  and moving to California as adults.

Johnson wasnt like people she had dated before. He had full sleeves of tattoos and had spent 10 years traveling across the country as a truck driver. At 42, he was also twice divorced. Both, she said, had barriers up.

Johnson wasnt afraid of marrying again, but he also didnt want to another divorce, she said. Pifer feared getting hurt, terrified of falling in love with him.

It was the scariest experience of my life. I used to tell him it felt like I was hanging on to the edge of a great, deep pit, Pifer said.

Six months later, Pifer was on the hunt for a new apartment. A studio across from Johnsons apartment in a pre-War Koreatown building opened up.

He told her she should move in.



Pifer first learned about the mayors crisis team when she was a graduate student studying clinical psychology. A friend passed along a police bulletin calling for volunteers to respond to homicides, suicides and death notifications.

I remember thinking, I want to do that, Pifer said. Somebody has to.

Soon enough, she had graduated from training and was crossing behind the yellow tape at some of the most grisly scenes in Los Angeles. Her job: To counsel those who have no one  no relatives, no friends  there to console them.

There are dozens of calls that linger in her memory. The first time she smelt death. The first time she had to leave a scene and walk around the block to compose herself. The first time she accompanied the police on a death notification.

I learned to never be looking someone in the eye when they receive news that their loved one had died, she said. Because I saw their heart break.



On Dec. 2, 2015, Pifer woke up and found a text from Johnson.

Have a great day, he wrote. I love you.

By that time, Pifer and Johnson had been together three years. Their belongings were now equally scattered across both apartments: One affectionately known as the couples West Wing, the other their East.

Johnson worked as a health inspector in San Bernardino, an expansive, mountainous county to the east of Los Angeles he commuted to daily. That morning, hed left extra early to make it to his departments holiday gathering.

The two imagined moving out to the desert when Johnson retired in another 10 years, or maybe, returning to the South. On his computer that morning, Pifer found an internet browser opened to a page showing properties for sale in Georgia.

Pifer was meeting with therapy clients when the first reports of an active shooter in San Bernardino came in.

She sent Johnson text messages. No replies.

When Pifer called the crisis teams director that afternoon, he assumed she was offering to help console survivors and victims families.

No, no, no, she told him. I cant get a hold of Shannon.

Then, as she was driving home, she listened to the radio and heard that the shooting had happened at a meeting for Environmental Health Department workers.

Pifer immediately pulled over.

She knew.



In his last moments, Johnson had huddled with a colleague, 27-year-old Denise Peraza, under a table, shielding her from a flurry of bullets, she said. I got you, he told her  a phrase that became a trending hashtag on social media. Pifer started making plans to start a foundation to spread Johnsons message of compassion.

There were interviews with reporters, calls from politicians and a hug from President Barack Obama.

It all passed like a blur. Adrenaline coursed through her body.

She wasnt in denial, but as a crisis counselor used to consoling others, she perhaps wasnt certain how to grieve her own loss.

She kept thinking about the other families. She arranged for therapeutic miniature horses to visit the other bereaved relatives and his traumatized co-workers. She remembers feeling pressed to make sure the families were getting the services they needed.

Then, three months later, the anguish hit.

Getting out of bed, she said, her voice trailing. I just didnt do it.

Its now been another three months and, maybe, the pain is letting up a bit. She can now listen to the songs on Johnsons iPhone playlist that hummed like a soundtrack in the background of their lives together. She wants to return to work.

Still, the grief comes in jarring waves of pain, with triggers she is still learning to detect.



Pifer turned off her cars ignition outside the LAPD office.

She exited her car and made her way through the haze of Koreatown at sunset. She climbed up the stairs to the police bureau and immediately spotted an old friend. Burnett Oliver wrapped her in a bear hug. Pifer wept.

Give it time, he told her as he patted her on the back.

She picked up all the papers she needed filled with resources for victims. Two days later, she was back on the roster  signed up for an overnight on-call shift from home. She still wasnt exactly sure how shed feel going out to a police scene but something had changed.

I realized that, you know, I need to go back, because a large part of my identity is helping others, she said. I refuse to live in a world of fear.

As she got ready for bed, she kept her fully charged phone nearby. A photo of Johnson in a frame with the word Love rested on her nightstand.

She waited for the phone to ring.
Irate youth in Krofrom, a suburb of Kumasi in the Ashanti region, are said to be on the rampage.



Aside having blocked the main street which links the Suame roundabout to the Airport roundabout, they are reportedly burning tyres in the streets and chasing police officers detailed to maintain law and order in the area.



According to HelloFM's Senior Reporter, Sampson Nyamekye, the action by the angry youth is premised on the conclusions of an autopsy report which was made public today.



They are unhappy with the report which exonerated three Police officers accused of the death of a 22-year-old man Osei Tawiah who was arrested in the area last week.



Peacefmonline.com sources say, the autopsy report conducted by pathologists at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital indicates the deceased, who the Police suspected to be a criminal, died of a congestive heart failure.



Background



22-year-old Tawiah died on Friday after some policemen who were said to be chasing suspected armed robbers on a motorbike pounced on him and mistook him to be an armed robber.



Eyewitnesses said Tawiah had left his bag behind a house and went to the public toilet only to be arrested by the police team.



The police were said to have handcuffed and beaten him up while his family members looked on since his house was close to where the incident happened.



He was said to have been pushed to the ground and crashed his head. The police claimed they were chasing two robbers on a bike.



All this was said to have happened within 30 minutes.



Confusion ensued in the area after the incident as protestors burned tyres, smashed bottles on the streets and brandished cutlasses and other weapons and threatened to revenge the death of their brother and colleague.



The three police officers were then arrested by the Kumasi Police pending the outcome of investigations and the autopsy report.

Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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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National Lottery Authority (NLA) has presented four incubators worth Fifty six thousand Ghana cedis (Ghs 56,000) to the Volta Regional Hospital in Ho. The hospital prior to the presentation had three old incubators which were inadequate.



The Ho Regional Sales Manager of National Lottery Authority, Reuben Baye who presented the incubators to management of the hospital said NLA was touched by the plight of the hospital when the chiefs of Asogli State made the requisition on behalf of the hospital and charged management to put the equipment to good use.



The donation which forms part of the Authoritys Corporate Social Responsibility will therefore complement the efforts of Medical staff to enhance neo-natal care at the Childrens hospital.



Corporate Communications Manager of NLA, Kesewaah Dolphyne said NLA is keen on investing in the health of the people and that includes resourcing hospitals with equipment to reduce infant mortality.



She indicated that when people play NLAs games and they do not win, the money comes back to support projects of this nature which inures to the benefit of society and so either way one is still a winner.



Dr. Lord Mensah, Head of the Childrens Department Management of the hospital thanked NLA for their support. He also thanked the chief of Ho Heve, Togbe Anikpe III and chiefs of the Asogli State, for soliciting support on behalf of the hospital.





Source: 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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Students of the University of Cape Coast have served notice that they are not in a position to pay for their cost of utility.



According to the them, they have observed that management of the various universities have come under pressure to bill students with the utility change.



Clearly it comes to us students that university management is acting on external pressure both from the utility service providers and government.



We believe that this is a clear attempt to truncate the educational lives of the poor Ghanaian students. We want to by this medium express our STRONG DISPLEASURE on recent happenings, after our students leadership was informed about plans advanced to bill students of UCC with the utility charge and not just UCC, information reaching us clearly indicates that there are attempts of management of other schools to levy students with the said charge.



The students in a statement signed by Dennis Appiah Larbi-Ampofo, SRC President said the students will resist any attempt to foist on them GHC 300-1000 extra as utility charge.





Below is the full statement



Colleagues, it is a sad moment for the Ghanaian student as in the quest to obtain knowledge to serve our dear nation, we stand a great price to pay. Our dreams of gaining knowledge is threatened by the people we believed and hoped to receive assurance with regards to our hopes for a brighter future, and this very people sadly seem unconcerned.



We do not intend to, by this message blame anyone but we want to clearly state our position on Governments actions and inactions to get the Ghanaian student to bear the COST of UTILITY, it is not as if we have the money and we are refusing to pay but the truth is that we as students and financiers of our education, the cost of utility in the running of our educational facility is too much , WE JUST CANT PAY .



In the last few weeks, we have observed as our various university management have come under intense PRESSURE to bill students with the utility change.



Again information reaching us clearly indicate that the Ghanaian student stand the risk of paying between 300-1000 cedis extra as utility charge.



Now our logical question is that how on earth does Government expect that the poor trader, or the poor fisher folk from Apewosika, the farmer at Bole and several other struggling parents pay this in addition to the ever increasing fees?



How do we expect an orphan to raise such an amount? Our cry is no longer the cry of one institution but the cry of all Ghanaian students



What we are humbly expecting government to do if truly they are not playing politics with our rights is to come clear and strong on this topic and let the world know that they are on the stand that students shouldnt pay.



A colleague student as I write this, my heart is troubled knowing that some powerful men of our era wants to cut down our dreams of attaining higher education.



On behalf of voiceless students we shall RESIST THE OPPRESSORS RULE ,our humble plea is that the government comes to our aid by strengthening the COST SHARING policy and taking off this utility bill from the already burdened poor student



We also hope to see the action of all student stakeholders of national development: churches, civil rights, NGOs, parliament, not forgetting all student mother unions USAG, NUGS among others



As leaders of our front we know clearly we will come under attack but we REMAIN RESOLUTE and firm on these issues that threatens the educational life of our people



We hope to stand together in this good course. Our RESOLVE REMAINS UNBROKEN in the light of this NECESSITY



We shall not pay utility bill simply because we cannot pay. PERIOD



#Y3NTUA_utility



Yours in students service



Dennis Appiah Larbi-Ampofo



(UCC SRC PRESIDENT)









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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President John Dramani Mahama has reiterated his pledge to create more jobs for the teeming number of unemployed Ghanaians should he be given a second term to govern the country.



According to the President, he has spent his first term fixing the macroeconomic fundamentals of the country.



This he said has paved the way for investments to be made in the economy which will yield the fruits of jobs in his second term.



President John Mahama repeated these comments at the inauguration ceremony of the Komenda Sugar Factory in the Central Region today [Monday].



He said the next term of office will see a launching of the green revolution in Ghana. Were already designing and preparing for establishment 50 new farmer service centres across the country to provide subsidized fertilizers, agricultural mechanization services, improved seeds to farmers in all parts of this country.



Indeed, the next term of office will see a massive investment in the real sector. In the first term as president, I have been engrossed with trying to ensure macroeconomic stability and restoring the social and economic infrastructure. That has been my focus in the first term. The second term is going to see massive investment in the real sector and that is the sector that creates jobs across the country.



He said through the move millions of jobs will be created for our young people and the private sector is invited to increase their investment appetite for these projects and academia is also to intensify research for the attainment of these plans.







Source: citifmonline.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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The aftermath of the Supreme Court judgment in the Abu Ramadan case which ordered the Electoral Commission to take immediate steps to delete names of persons who used NHI cards as proof of identification is just about confirming prophecies by General Overseer and founder of the Glorious Way Revival Ministries, Rev. OwusuBempah and others that, the November 7 elections may not come of, if Ghanaians fail to pray.



Aside the controversy, the judgment has generated and the enormity of work it imposes on the EC with barely five months to the elections. Many fear the looming legal consequences inherent in the judgment are most likely to affect the running of the elections on the proposed November 7 date or even December 7 as the case may be.



Already, while some are advocating for the postponement of the elections to allow the EC time to put the register in proper shape, others are also threatening to use all available lawful means to force the election management to enforce the SC ruling to the latter.



Even more worrying among the implications likely to hold back the election are reports that some persons are preparing to challenge the election of President John DramaniMahama and the 275 elected Members of Parliament on the basis that they were elected with a flawed register.



Even though the Supreme Court in its judgment explained that those who utilized the NHI cards as proof of identification in the 2012 elections did so lawfully at the time, and by implication the election of the President and MPs couldnt have been said to be flawed, these persons, The aL-hAJJ has gathered, are hell bent on creating confusion in order to block the EC from conducting the polls for this year.



If they succeed in stopping the EC from organizing the elections with this and other impending needless suits, what will then happen is that President Mahama and the MPs term in office will come to an end and the Chief Justice would have to be sworn in as president after which an interim government will be put in place to oversee the conduct of fresh elections, a source with deep knowledge of this diabolic agenda disclosed to this paper.



This yet-to-be executed plot will confirm prophecies by Rev OwusuBempah and other seers that some people are plotting to make the organisation of this years presidential and parliamentary elections slated for November 7 impossible.



Speaking on Accra-based Rainbow radio early this year, the man of God said those plotting to block the elections are planning a coup and if care is not taken, they will take over government and when they take over, we will not be able to conduct the 2016 elections. Such a situation will force the United Nations to question the November 7 general elections.



Earlier in 2015, the man of God he had a revelation from God. In the revelation, I saw trouble looming and a terrible wind blowing over the country, I saw bloodshed and I was alarmed, Rev. OwusuBempah told journalists at his Busia-Junction Church, urging the clergy to pray for the country in order to prevent any tragedy. If we dont pray to avert the situation, what happened to Cote dIvoire and Liberia might befall us too, the man of God warned.



An Islamic cleric MallamShamunaUstazJibril, who is also credited with many predictions which he attributes to Allah has warned of a possible doom ahead of this years elections.

The soothsayer noted that  Ghana is likely to experience an uprising similar to what happened during the 2010 Ivorian presidential election.

I, however, doubt if there is going to be elections this year. Should there be elections, however, the foregone are the results to be registered, the man of God said.



Similarly, the Head of legal department at ADB was also reported to have said last year that disaster looms over the country and the country should put in place appropriate measures to avert it.

He said The observation and research I have made indicates that there are dark clouds hanging over the country. In the next 25 months, Ghana is likely to witness a civil strife through election violence.



His statement was supported by Managing editor of TheaL-hAJJ, AlhajiBatureIddrisu, who also stated The country is sitting on a time bomb which is likely to plunge the country into civil strife during the 2016 general elections.



AlhajiBature, therefore, appealed to religious leaders, civil society organizations, the National Peace Council, the security agencies and eminent personalities in the country to rise up and adopt measures for peace before, during, and after the 2016 general election.

He said for the first time in the history of Ghana, the country may experience chaos.



Ask to justify his assertion AlhajiBature said the belligerent posture taken by the opposition party portends a gloomy picture for the country for the next general elections, which would be held in November 2016, if the current constitutional amendment goes through.

You dont need a soothsayer or a Mallam to tell you that the country is heading for danger, he warned.



According to him, the opposition had made strenuous efforts to run down the Electoral Commission (EC), the security agencies and the Supreme Court, against their defeat in the 2012 elections.



Sensing a possible disorder if the EC is not allowed some time to put the current voter register into proper shape, founding president of IMANI Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe, has called for a postponement of the elections.



Making reference to neighboring Nigeria which did same for a proper voter database to succeed, Mr.Cudjoe, in a short e-mail message sent to News Ghana, indicated that Our current electoral woes are symptomatic of the current outbreak of the Zika disease, and that has forced a scientifically backed decision to postpone the Olympics. Postpone the Ghanaian elections and lets get the database right else there is likely to be chaos,MrCudjoe stated.





Confirming MrCudjoes fears, a member of the pressure group Occupy Ghana, Sydney Casely-Hayford, hints of plans to challenge the eligibility of every person on the voters register when the EC begins the exhibition exercise.



Speaking on Citi FMs news analysis program, The Big Issue, MrCasely-Hayford said As for me, Im going to my polling station in McCarthy hill and Im going to tell the electoral people there that everybody whose name is on that register is an alien and illegal persons and I dont know them and I suspect they are all foreigners whose names are on the register. So, I expect each one of them to be removed from the register and they should be told to come back and come and clarify.



He added I will recruit 29,000 people and assign each of them to a polling station and when they go to the polling station, they are supposed to challenge everybodys name on the polling register.



Mr. Casely-Hayford believes his action is legal because it is backed by the Constitutional Instrument (C.I.) 91. He argued that the C.1.91 creates a big loophole hence must be checked since it has the tendency of creating chaos in the country.



I will be a registered voter and I have a right. They are saying that according to C.I. 91, I should go and check and if anybodys name is on the register and I suspect to be an alien, I should report that person and they will go to the magistrate court to go and prove themselves. Its a big loophole because I will get 29,000 people and they should challenge every name on the poll, he added.



His comment follows lamentations by some electoral observers during the recent limited voter registration exercise that the various political parties were abusing the challenge form which is usually filled in protest of minors or foreigners seeking to be captured on the nations electoral register.





However, TheaL-hAJJ has also gathered that there are persons who are also warming up to mount stiff challenge to any attempts to have their names deleted from the voter register.

Source: The Al-Hajj









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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Volta 4 Change will be hosting a Health Walk and Health screening on Saturday June 4th, 2016 in Hohoe.



The march will commence at 6am from the Atabu Park and end at CMB with a free health screening and treatment. This march is endorsed by Agenda 4 Change Volta, The Disappointed NDC Youth of Volta and the ''Action Club Volta''.



The recent voter registration exercise was a complete farce and it manifested the epitome of corruption that flourishes under Mahamas NDC regime. Sensing the nationwide unpopularity with their governance, which by all indices has been an absolute failure, John Mahama has resorted to any means, however despicable, to preserve his scandal-ridden incumbency.



The threats of blocking Social Media and the cultivation of a Togolese constituency is indicative of the depths that John Mahama will stoop to in order to maintain his loosening grip on power.



With Voltarians seeing the John Mahama government for what they really are - a band of selfish opportunist grasping thieves, rotten to the core - they have sought to ingratiate themselves with foreigners in order to shore up their crumbling support, bussing them into Ghana where necessary, bribing them with NHIS cards and motorbikes as they plan to curtail free speech and information.



Volta 4 Change says no more.



Voltarians cannot sit by idly whilst corruption underpinned by violence flourishes in our region in order for Mahama to maintain the illusion of the Volta being the NDCs World Bank.



When it comes to morality, it is completely absent from John Mahamas DNA. For he is pathologically immoral, corrupt and debased. John Mahamas nefarious tactics are disgusting and have no place in a democracy.



As proud Voltarians and Ghanaians, it is our duty to challenge these malpractices taking place in our region and right under our noses. To turn a blind eye will amount to dereliction of our civic duty. We are not the NDCs lapdogs.



We call on all Voltarians and Ghanaians who love their region, to join Volta 4 Change on the Health and Screening March on Saturday June 4th, 2016. Volta needs change. Volta must change. Volta will change. God bless and prosper the Volta Region and Ghana.



Volta4Change.



Mi Dez Na Ttr !



Signed



Eyram Doe (Volta4Change)

+233249621772



Abraham Futukpor (Volta4Change)

+233200131918



Robert Tetteyfio Adjase ( Disappointed NDC Youth Volta)

+233244582458



Christo Wisdom (Agenda For Change)

+233243801996

Source: 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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The British High Commissioner to Ghana Jon Benjamin has strongly rejected claims that hes doing the bidding of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC).



According to him, he does not support any party not even in his country let alone in Ghana.



Some members of the opposition New Patriotic Party have launched a scathing attack on the blunt diplomat on social media after he denied allegations that the NDCs Central regional chairman Benjamin Allotey Jacobs had been arrested in the UK for drug and money laundering offences.



He has been heavily criticized for being quick at interfering in the internal politics of Ghana, with some even tweeting at the handle of the British Home secretary for international affairs asking him to re-post Mr. Benjamin.



But Mr Benjamin in a tweet has cleared himself of any wrongdoing and accusation saying I absolutely dont have a party, not in the UK let alone here. Im neutral.

Source: kasapafmonline.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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The opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) has come out with 'the real story in the Allotey Jacobs saga'.



Rumours that were circulating on social media over the weekend indicated that the Central Regional Chairman of the ruling National Democratic Congress(NDC), Allotey Jacobs was arrested at the Heathrow Airport, UK, for allegedly engaging in money laundering.



The British High Commissioner to Ghana, Jon Benjamin after the rumour emerged, denied that Allotey Jacobs had been arrested in the UK.



A section of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) started attacking Jon Benjamin and accused him of being the spokesperson of Allotey Jacobs and the NDC.



Meanwhile, Allotey Jacobs in an interview on PEACE FM morning show 'Kokrokoo' denied being arrested.



A statement signed by Nana Akomea, Communications Director, urged members of the NPP to desist from attacking Jon Benjamin.



Read full statement below



The New Patriotic Party wishes to urge all communicators, members, as well as sympathisers to not get involved in the unsavoury accusations against the British High Commissioner, Jon Benjamin, that he lied and aided corruption by defending the Central Regional Chairman of the National Democratic Congress.



Clearly, the British diplomat is not above criticism but it can be done without attacks on his person. The NPP finds the attacks against the integrity of Mr Jon Benjamin unsavoury and diversionary. What we believe Ghanaians must focus on are the issues bordering on incompetence and corruption which the trip by the NDC Regional Chairman represents.



We appreciate that the story over an alleged incident on the British Airways flight from Accra at Heathrow last Sunday involving Bernard Allotey Jacobs first emanated from a person who claimed, with evidence of presence, to have been an eyewitness on board that flight. Nevertheless, Ghanaians should have no reason to doubt the official statement issued by the representative of the British government in Ghana.



This incident, allegedly in the form of British Security Agencies boarding the said British Airways Flight from Accra to London and interrogating the Central Region Chairman on suspicion of money laundering, amongst other unproven allegations, according to the British High Commissioner, never happened, as per his thorough checks with the airport authorities.



In the absence of any form of evidence to prove otherwise, we urge all NPP members who have commented and may still be commenting on this issue to ceasefire and desist from attacking the British High Commissioner. We also condemn such baseless attacks.



Indeed, if there has been any diplomat who has been forthright and proactive in voicing his concerns about the high levels of corruption and incompetence in Ghana, it has been Jon Benjamin. From urging Small and Medium Enterprises in the country to demand governments commitment to eliminate corruption and foster growth of the sector, to lamenting about governments failure in not tackling corruption, Mr Benjamins pronouncements against rising levels of corruption in Ghana is well-documented and deserves commendation.



Indeed, the corruption and incompetence that have characterized the Mahama administration is readily evidenced in this Allotey Bernard Saga where the dealings of an important State institution, the National Petroleum Authority, is subjected to party cronyism and left in the hands of a board member who is bereft of the competence and expertise in the activities of the institution mandated to regulate, oversee and monitor the petroleum downstream industry in Ghana.



Authentix, a US company, which, according to Allotey Jacobs, has dealings with the NPA specializes in safeguarding clients in the refined fuels, pharmaceuticals, consumer goods, agrochemicals and spirits industries from counterfeiting, product theft, product diversion, smuggling and adulteration. It is an interest player in procurements in the petroleum sector, which the NPA has oversight responsibility.



It is essentially a 2-week paid holiday for Mr. Allotey Jacobs. In one breadth, he claims the Board of Directors of the NPA sent him to Dallas to represent the company. In another breadth, he states that the entire cost of his trip is being funded by Authentix. Both issues raise red flags in Ghana and in the United States of America.



The trip raises some major questions:



1. What was the purpose of the trip that appeared to have been sanctioned by the NPA Board of Directors?



2. What was the Board of Directors thought process behind choosing Allotey Jacobs to represent the NPA? Did competence inform the decision to settle on him? And if so, which competency?



3. Was the business class return ticket sponsored by the NPA or by the US company as claimed publicly by the NDC Central Regional Chairman?



4. Did the company also sponsor the business class return ticket for Mrs Agbenotor, the other NPA staff who was on the trip?



5. Did the company also sponsor their hotel bills, as the lowest rate at the Westin Galleria Hotel, in Dallas, where Allotey Jacobs is staying, goes for $2,800 a night. Or, are Ghanaian taxpayers paying for the NDC Regional Chairmans 12-day stay at the hotel, which is estimated to cost at least $33,600 or $67,200 for the two?



6. Is the US company also providing per diem and if so how much?



If this trip is sponsored by the Ghanaian taxpayer, we wish to know if it is in consonance with the recent directive from the Office of Chief of Staff, ostensibly issued to curtail wasteful, expensive, luxurious travels by public officials.



If Allotey Jacobs trip, as he boldly stated on radio Monday, is being funded by Authentix, then we wish to draw the attention of the United States government to a possible breach of Federal rules.



The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977, as amended, 15 U.S.C.  78dd-1, et seq. ("FCPA"), was enacted for the purpose of making it unlawful for certain classes of persons and entities to make payments to foreign government officials to assist in obtaining or retaining business. Allotey Jacobs' claims on Citi FM's Eye Witness News, gives cause for Authentix to be investigated by the SEC for flouting the FCPA.



Based on this disclosure, there is a possibility of an infringement of this specific provision of the FCPA by Authentix, and the NPP is by this, drawing the attention of the United States Embassy to this potential breach.



The people of Ghana must see this usual habit of the NDC as highly unethical and smacking of the kind of corruption that has buried our nation under an ever-heaping pile of debts. It is wrong for a board member of state regulatory body such as the NPA to easily, willingly and boastfully open himself up to be corrupted by receiving perks from a company that has contractual interests in procurements to do with the very state agency for which the board member works.



This is just another example of the corruption and incompetence that have been the hallmark of John Mahamas presidency.



We, however, encourage Ghanaian journalists not to be disturbed by the vile insults from the likes of Allotey Jacobs when they probe the propriety or otherwise of such actions by public officials.







.signed



Nana Akomea



(Communications Director)

Source: 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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If blocking social media for less than 24 hours will guarantee peace in Ghana on the day of election and beyond, the Inspector General of Police, Mr. John Kudalor, must not hesitate to carry out the action Amass Ghana has suggested.



The Inspector General of Police stated that the Ghana Police Service is considering shutting down social media services during the November 7 general elections.



The move according to him is to curtail abuse of the social media platforms where members of the general public hide behind them to create tension.



His suggestion has been met with backlash by some members of the public, political parties and Ghana Journalist Association.



But Amass Ghana, a peace advocacy network has urged the IGP not to be deterred from banning social media services if it could plunge Ghana into a state of anarchy. This was captured in a release copied to Peacefmonline.com.



They emphatically stated that they believes the IGP is on top of issues and is more enlightened on security details than several individuals and groups who have lambasted him for suggesting social media services could be banned on election day if the need be.







Statement Below:



Amass Ghana has observed with great censure the commentary emanating from the public, political parties, Ghana Journalist Association, The Press Foundation and some persons from the inky fraternity pooh-poohing an open statement made by the Inspector General of Police, Mr. John Kudalor, hinting that, social media will face a temporal shutdown on the eve of the impending general elections, thus if things get critical.



Mr. John Kudalor was clear about the shutdown, at one stage I was even saying that if it becomes critical on the eve of the election day we shall block all social media as other countries have done, adding that if people are churning out the type of information which are quite false, then why not? The security of this nation is paramount.



Amass Ghana is of the view that, no person is more enlightened on security details than the IGP as far as the security of this country is concern so why do we hear people with no security expertise calling the shots? One would have thought that those against the move were much better informed on the social media issues and its negative repercussions than such naked display of crass ignorant and infantile gimmicks.



We think this country is knee-deep in a state of conundrums, with tension oozing from every corner of this country, war drums are lying deep in our subconscious mind as thick as pebbles on the seashore, so shutting social media should be the least of our problems.



The problems which can derail us of our peace is far more critical than that of social media, with the arguments over a credible voter register, which have been scorched on our memories like a tyre tracks on virgin snow, so we think the media, politicians, public etc. should give it another lick.



Amass Ghana, a peace advocacy network, closely observing the activities trending on social media believes that, if issues of social media are not addressed properly, the peace we have all dotted-on can go bye-bye in a blink of an eye.



On this note, we will want to entreat Mr. John Kudalor not to hesitate to block social media platforms, should need be, besides if blocking social media for less than 24 hours will guarantee a safe sail through the eve of the elections then what are we to lose?



Thank you



Long Live Ghana



Long Live AmassGhana



..signed



Mr. Kofi Asamoah-Ababio

President

0204 269 117



Mr. Benjamin Asalimba

G. Secretary

0243 358 644

Source: Chris Joe Quaicoe/ email:[email protected]









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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By now, most are familiar with the heavy shitstorm that was 60 Minutes failed kidnapping of a child in Lebanon, which resulted in four journalists being locked up in a Beirut prison for a fortnight, and potential criminal charges from the countrys officials.

This week, the Nine Network handed down the findings of an internal review into the incident and ultimately decided to sack long-serving producer Stephen Rice.

Its now being alleged Rice has lawyered up in response to his termination, hiring high-profile workplace lawyer John Laxon, who previously represented ex-Nine boss Mark Llewellyn in his famous case against the network.

A close friend of Rices spoke to The Daily Telegraph, saying that Rice was blindsided.

They said right from the beginning no one was going to get the sack. Because of this he wasnt legally represented at the review and hadnt sought any legal advice. [Hes spent] the last four weeks or so since coming out of prison believing he was safe in his job. Whatever his mistakes were, he was there with Nines full knowledge and blessing. Steve has realised that he needs representation. Having the network name him (as the main person responsible for Beirut) has damaged his career, his reputation and his prospects of earning income.

Reporter Tara Brown, cameraman Ben Williamson, and sound recordist David Ballment only received formal cautions.

The network aired their mea culpa regarding the massive incident two nights ago, with over 700,000 people tuning in hear 60 Minutes founder and former executive producer Gerald Stone slamming the actions of the team.

Source: Daily Telegraph.
Here we are, ladies and gents, denizens of the internet in the ~year of our lord 2016~, and the leader of Australias most bigoted group has just called everyone who doesnt share his views a Nazi.

Lyle Shelton, leader of the Australian Christian Lobby, wrote a blog post today. I know, right? *So* 2010.

In it, he linked the rise of Nazi Germany to Bill Shortens support of the Safe Schools program, which, we all know, literally just teaches kids that not everybody is straight, that not everybody is cisgendered, and however you identify is absolutely okay and you are worthy of love and friendship. Not, as it were, genocide.

He quotes the obituary of Fritz Stern, a German expatriate who fled Nazi Germany in the late 1930s and spent much of his career focusing on the rise of Nationalist Socialism in Germany during the first half of the 20th century.

Hitlers rise, he [Stern] argued, owed less to the Austrian corporals personality, his thuggish supporters add brutish ideas, than to his opponents cowardice and the weakness of Germanys gatekeepers  the guardians of its cultural and moral standards.



This, Shelton claims, is similar to the lack of opposition to Safe Schools. (You what now? Lack of opposition?) That the gatekeepers of Australias moral standards are weak.

He writes:

That Labor leader Bill Shorten can promise during an election to fund the so-called Safe Schools program which teaches children as young as four that only you can know if you are a boy or a girl  no one can tell you and there be so little push back is a failure of those of us who know better. Changing the definition of marriage to entrench motherless and fatherlessness in public policy and teaching our kids their gender is fluid should be opposed. The cowardice and weakness of Australias gatekeepers is causing unthinkable things to happen, just as unthinkable things happened in Germany in the 1930s.

Really, we can only come to one, logical conclusion: that Lyle Shelton has fallen into the same trap thats tripped up so many irrational and utterly incensed internet commenters before him.

Got no solid argument? Invoke Hitler. *Thatll* convince em.

Source: ALC.


I guarantee a fair whack, if not most of you have thought about leading a nomadic life at one point or another. Casting the shackles of the work-a-day world off and hitting the road permanently; bouncing from town to town, city to city, country to country; constantly flipping ~the man~ the goddamned bird and living in a way thats only dictated by you and you alone. Making art, making love, making life, man. Living life free.

Maximum Kerouac, basically.

Vaguely relevant preamble aside, one drifter has found himself a permanent home in the prison systems of Victoria for the next 6 months, after a Melbourne Magistrate tossed him in the slammer for the next half a year over graffiti-related crimes.

Internationally-known and reasonably infamous tagger Jim Clay Harper, who goes by the non de plume Ether, will spend the next six months behind Australian prison bars after the Magistrates court handed down the sentence to the 31-year-old American for attempted robbery and committing criminal damage.

Harper, along with his partner Danielle Bremner (who goes by the tagging name Utah) have developed something of a reputation for themselves, as the pair has used the past few years to travel around the world, tagging trains, buildings, and everything in between.

As Utah & Ether, the pair have been described on at least one occasion by the New York Times as the Bonnie & Clyde of the international graffiti scene. The pair broke probation back in their native US in 2011, skipping the country to bounce around Europe and Asia on a virtually endless quest.

Together, the pair have produced several films and books on their exploits, tagging across multiple continents and countries, including the likes of Argentina, France, Japan, China, Italy, and back in their native USA.

The pair arrived in Melbourne via the United Arab Emirates on April 21st, and proceeded to commence work tagging areas around Melbourne three days later.

Tags created by the pair have been spotted in a variety of locations, including Bayswater, South Kensington, and Pakenham train stations, as well as in Collingwood, Abbotsford, Footscray, the CBD, and at both RMIT University and Etihad Stadium.

Harper was arrested on May 4th after he and an associate were caught pasting stickers up on the windows of businesses on Brunswick Street in Fitzroy. A witness caught the duo in the act and confronted them, only for Harpers associate to turn and yell at the witness.

Youre in fucking Fitzroy, mate. If you dont like it, go back to the burbs.

Charming, no?

The witness pursued the pair and tried to take their photo, at which point Harper attempted to snatch the phone off of the man, who resisted, leading Harper to punch him in the face.

Police later caught up with Harper and arrested him. Bremners whereabouts is at this point still unknown, though Harpers legal team asserted in court that she was already en route to Hong Kong.

This stint in prison might not be the only one Harper completes, either. Its entirely likely that upon his release hell be extradited back to the US, where he faces another six month stint in New Yorks infamous Rikers Island jail for outstanding graffiti-related charges.

Harper, and Bremner, have both already served time in prison previously.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald.

Photo: UtahEther.com.
Weve heard of David & Goliath-style battles in the past, but this one just about puts them all in the shit.

A student from Brisbane has taken one half of the nations megalithic supermarket duopoly, as well as the exceedingly powerful union that looks after its workers, and knocked them both the fuck out.

Duncan Hart, clearly the name of a fearless ledge, took both Coles and the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association (better known to most of yall as the SDA) to the Fair Work Commission over an enterprise bargaining agreement that he believed to be manifestly unfair, and left workers worse off than the agreement that preceded it.

The Coles EBA, which covers the wages and working conditions of some 77,000 employees, and was implemented in July of last year, was ruled by the Commission to not satisfy the Better Off Overall Test, or the BOOT.

The ruling, handed down by the Commission today, stated that under the conditions specified by the current EBA, workers are worse off than they would be under the current award rates. Therefore, the EBA is invalid.

Hart successfully argued that the agreement was substantially unfair, in that it mandated a base pay rise for all supermarket workers, but cut penalty rates for weekends and nights. Hart also argued that Coles and SDA overstated the value of fringe benefits afforded to workers.

Coles argued that these associated benefits (which included blood donor leave, emergency services leave, and an extra five minutes of meal time for employees working shifts greater than four hours in length) outweighed any wage losses for workers in regards to lowered or frozen penalty rates.

The Commission smacked that talk down, siding with Hart and his argument that the benefits are unequal to the losses.

Overall we consider the provisions in the agreement to be beneficial for employees but the level of benefit is not large. We are not satisfied that a consideration of all benefits and detriments under the agreement results in each employee and each prospective employee being better off overall under the agreement compared to the award. It follows that we are not satisfied that the agreement passes the BOOT.

The BOOT asserts that any EBA must leave workers better off than the industry award for the agreement to be valid.

As a result of the ruling, Coles now have 10 days to either remedy the failings of the EBA, or respond to the Commissions ruling. Its a massive call in that this could force Coles and the SDA to renegotiate their entire pay structure and working conditions.

All because one absolute ledge saw something that stank and decided to do something about it.

What an absolute bloody champion. Hell yes to you, Duncan Hart.

Source: ABC News.

Photo: Ian Waldie/Getty.
Sydney will host the first ever bitcoin auction outside the United States next month, with Ernst & Young selling 24,518 coins on behalf of an undisclosed vendor. The currency was allegedly confiscated from an Australian man involved in commercial drug trafficking in 2014.

Bitcoin, if youre still not familiar, is a popular cryptocurrency, which has no central authority and works purely on digital, peer-to-peer transactions. Its a source of some controversy, as governments try to regulate it and it maintains notoriety for being used as a dark currency in online markets for illegal goods.

But that doesnt stop speculators and investors from getting stuck in.

Regardless, bitcoin is doing better than it has in the past  after a much publicised crash in 2013, its being reported today that its at a 21-month high after rising 21 percent over 4 days.

The auction is only the second of its kind, after U.S. Marshalls auctioned off $160 million worth of bitcoin seized from Ross Ulbricht, founder of online drug marketplace Silk Road.

Adam Nikitins of Ernst & Young told Business Insider that he expects the majority of the buyers of this batch to come from North America and Europe.

With each lot of Bitcoin currently valued at more than AUD $1m, we are targeting sophisticated investors who can see the value of investing in a growing digital asset, he said.

Interest in this technology continues to grow. The number of bitcoin transactions since 2012 has quadrupled and parties are seeing more opportunities and uses for the technology.

We dont know how many PEDESTRIAN.TV readers are interested in buying cryptocurrency in $1 million batches, but if youre out there, submissions of interest for the auction open on June 7. Also, feel free to submit your interest in becoming a patron of this website. We will accept monthly submissions of $10 million.

Source: Business Insider.

Photo: Getty Images.
3-shot-at-PA-pool-party.jpg

Olympic Swim and Health Club owner Mary Sullivan is pictured in wake of a shooting at a private Memorial Day pool party that turned violent Monday when gunfire broke out, hitting three people at the western Pennsylvania recreation facility.

(Courtesy of TribLive.com)

A private Memorial Day pool party turned violent Monday when gunfire broke out at the western Pennsylvania recreation facility.

TribLive.com in Pittsburgh reports that three people were shot when the bullets began flying, sending pool party participants at the Olympic Swim & Health Club in Penn Hills, Allegheny County, running for cover.

The shooting happened about 6:30 p.m. Monday.

One victim was shot in the leg, another in the chest, and a third person was shot in the shoulder, Penn Hills police Sgt. Paul Markham told TribLive.

There are no suspects in the case. However, police tell TribLive that they believe the shooter was part of the party and did not engage in a drive-by shooting because of the location of the pool.
HARRISBURG- Nine empty freight cars derailed in downtown Harrisburg Tuesday along a curve in the railroad tracks near the Amtrak train station.

No one was hurt, no utility poles or buildings were damaged and no hazardous materials were involved in the 12:30 p.m. incident near the Mulberry Street bridge.

The city's fire officials learned about the derailment from PennLive, prompting Fire Chief Brian Enterline to demand a meeting within a week with Norfolk Southern representatives. The railroad initially reported to Dauphin County emergency dispatchers that no cars were overturned.

"As we can tell, there are overturned cars," Enterline told PennLive. "There's obviously a lack of communication...We need to be on top of our game and get timely information."

The incident represented the second time in six months that firefighters weren't notified about a derailment in the city, Enterline said.

"I thought we would have got a little bit better response given that this is the second one in a six-month time frame," he told reporters at the scene. "My concern is the last time was empty box cars, today was empty box cars, but if it's a day like today (when the city population doubles from commuters) and we have an ammonia car overturn, and an hour and a half delay in getting information, that's significant and it's disheartening."

Dave Pidgeon, a Norfolk Southern spokesman, did not have specific information to release about the communication lapse or the derailment, including what caused it or where the train was headed. He said the timeline to reopen the tracks was unknown.

About an hour after the derailment, railroad employees broke the train and moved the rest of the cars away from the derailed cars. A crane was expected to lift the remaining derailed cars so they could be moved off the tracks.

Enterline questioned railroad employees at the scene who told him that the derailed cars and nearby cars, which included oil tanks, were all empty.

The incident delayed some passenger trains at the nearby Amtrak station.

Amtrak's Pennsylvania train 42 coming from Pittsburgh, which was supposed to have arrived in Harrisburg at 12:55 p.m., was delayed, said Mike Tolbert, Amtrak spokesman.

Likewise, the Pennsylvanian train 43 from New York to Pittsburgh was delayed. Keystone service was not affected, Tolbert said.

It was unclear if additional passenger trains would be delayed while the cleanup continued Tuesday afternoon.
Mayor Eric Papenfuse

Harrisburg Mayor Eric Papenfuse is kicking off a series of neighborhood meetings May 31.

(CHRISTINE BAKER)

HARRISBURG- Harrisburg Mayor Eric Papenfuse is expected to hold a rescheduled neighborhood meeting at the Derry Street United Methodist Church Tuesday night.

The meeting was originally scheduled for May 5, but was cancelled after a wall collapsed next to the Mulberry Street bridge.

The May 31 meeting, requested by the Rev. Mack Granderson and his congregation, is planned for 6 p.m. at the church at 1508 Derry Street.

The church was the site of an armed robbery earlier this month. A woman waiting to meet her parents in the parking lot was robbed at gunpoint of her wallet. Granderson had already requested a meeting with the mayor prior to the crime.

The mayor expects to hold similar meetings throughout the city in the coming months to speak in with residents in their neighborhoods, according to a news release. He will provide his assessment of the most important issues facing the city, as well as hear concerns and suggestions from residents.
After a small group of animal rights protesters rushed the stage Monday night, Secret Service agents jumped up to protect Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

The Vermont senator was speaking to a crowd of about 20,000 people at Frank Ogawa Plaza in Oakland, Calif., when four people with Direction Action Everywhere disrupted the rally, according to CNN and an ABC News affiliate in San Francisco.

Sanders was uninjured and continued speaking, but several Secret Service agents hugged him and pushed him away from the microphone, CNN reported.

Direct Action Everywhere claimed responsibility for the disruption in a press release, according to CNN.

"Activists do not protest at Bernie Sanders rallies in opposition to Sanders himself, but rather to pull Sanders in their direction," the group said in a press release, CNN reported. "Activists expect Bernie Sanders, the progressive candidate, to support more radical action to provide animals not just with improved conditions but with legal rights to be free from harm."

Sanders didn't mention animal rights during his speech. He instead talked about getting money out of politics, climate change, universal healthcare and his plan for free college educations at public institutions, according to ABC7.
UPDATE:

Seven Norfolk Southern train cars have derailed in Harrisburg between Mulberry and Paxton streets.

No hazardous materials are on the train, said David Pidgeon, Norfolk Southern spokesman.

Amtrak's Pennsylvania train 42 coming from Pittsburgh, which was supposed to have arrived in Harrisburg at 12:55 p.m., is delayed, said Mike Tolbert, Amtrak spokesman.

Likewise, the Pennsylvanian train 43 from New York to Pittsburgh is also delayed. Keystone service is not affected, Tolbert said.

Pidgeon said he doesn't know yet how long it will take to move the cars.
Gov. Dick 5-31-2016 002.JPG

Vandalism May 30 at Governor Dick tower.

(submitted)

The observation tower at Governor Dick Recreation Area was again hit by graffiti vandals.

Cornwall police said the latest case occurred between 7-7:30 p.m. Monday in the park along Pinch Road near Mount Gretna. Hikers who were in the area at the time are assisting police in attempting to identify those responsible.

Arrests are pending for a vandalism incident April 30 in which graffiti was spray painted on boulders near the tower. The tower was also spray painted earlier this spring by vandals.
A 25-year-old woman was sentenced Tuesday to 6 to 23 months in Dauphin County Prison after pleading guilty to participating in a burglary at a Swatara Township business last fall.



President Judge Richard A. Lewis also ordered Stefanie Fraunfelter, of Lancaster, to pay $6,000 in restitution reflecting her take from the break-in at Stephenson Equipment Inc.



Deputy District Attorney Christopher Jason said Fraunfelter, her husband and another man stole computer equipment from the firm. Fraunfelter is the only defendant who has pleaded guilty in the case. The others are awaiting trial.



"This was a drug issue," Public Defender Andrea Haynes told the judge, adding that Fraunfelter has gone through rehab. Haynes asked Lewis to place Fraunfelter on probation so she could begin working to pay her restitution.



Fraunfelter said she plans to resume working as a certified nursing assistant. "I'll do the best I can to pay it off," she told Lewis.




clinton sanders.jpg

Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton (PennLive file photo).

(Wilfredo Lee/AP Photo)

By Bob Quarteroni

"Promises and pie crusts are made to be broken." Jonathan Swift

And this is one of those times when a broken promise would be a good thing -- a very good thing.

Bob Quarteroni (PennLive file)

That's because the future of the presidential election, the nation and the world rests in the hands of the 719 Democratic party super-delegates, who are currently backing Hilary Clinton over Bernie Sanders.

If you didn't know, super-delegates are party bigwigs -- all Democratic members of the House, Senate, sitting Democratic governors, etc. -- who are free to chose who they want to vote for and could eventually decide on the nominee, even if that person didn't have the highest number of pledged delegates.

They can change their minds at any time, up until they actually vote for a candidate during the Democratic Convention.

As of this writing, Clinton has a 2,310 to 1,542 lead over Sanders, with 2,238 needed to secure that nomination. Of that tally, Clinton leads 541-43 among super-delegates.

Most of Clinton's super-delegates selected her in that misty past -- last year -- when she was not only the prohibitive favorite, but when it looked like no one was going to even challenge her for the Democratic nomination.

So for them it was a no-brainer which is starting to look literally like that: a no-brain decision.

That's for a host of reasons.

First, Hillary is imploding amidst a rash of bad news -- from her bloated speaking fees to her dubious control over her potential co-president husband to this latest installment in the email saga that won't die.

Second, Sanders often beats presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump in head-to-head polls. The Manhattan mogul has pulled even with Clinton in many national canvasses.

And in the all-important California primary on June 7, Sanders and Clinton are in a statistical dead heat.

But most importantly, Sanders, like President Barack Obama eight years ago, has spawned a passion and an eagerness that has energized the Democratic party far more than Clinton's.

And then there's the obvious fact that it just isn't fair: Super-delegates get to trump the voters, and that's not what a democracy is all about.

Sally Kohn, a CNN political commentator, wrote a withering attack on super-delegates, calling them "supremely undemocratic."

She said we all know the quote about democracy the worst form of government except for all the others and added, "Here's another quote: 'Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy. 'That one comes from Mussolini, who was a fascist, and, perhaps if he were alive today, would be a super-delegate."

The polls showing Clinton and Trump in a general election deadlock should be enough to scare the bejeezus out of the supers.

And it should be enough for them to realize that a promise made to last year's candidate, one who no longer exists, is a promise just crying out to be broken.

They have the chance to look at where we are today, not yesterday, and after careful and deliberate thought and rumination, hopefully change their vote to Sanders as the last best choice, before it is too late.

Is it too late? Not really.

Last Thursday, Sanders picked up another super-delegate: West Virginia Democratic National Committeewoman Elaine Harris, who said, "The people voted here (and) I felt like the people needed to vote first."

And petitions urging the super-delegates to switch are springing up. Moveon.org has such a petition with more than 200,000 signatures on it.

Granted, there are a lot of ifs here: Sanders almost definitely has to win the California primary June 7 to give him enough momentum going into the convention to convince the super-delegates to back him.

And the super-delegates have to be willing to listen to Sanders' arguments, which have so far fallen on mostly deaf ears.

Why, I don't understand at this point.

Granted, it made sense in that alternate universe when Hillary was all ready to be crowned; but there's a lot of tarnish on that crown now and I don't understand why the super-delegates haven't budged.

Loyalty? I doubt it.

Crowd instinct? You bet. Distaste that an Independent who self-describes himself as a Democratic Socialist doesn't deserve the party's nomination: Absolutely and in spades.

But if they don't want to take a chance on turning the world over to a preening megalomaniac, it would seem wise to consider Sanders as their party's best choice to win the White House.

Tom Gallagher -- a Sanders supporter -- wrote in the Los Angeles Times last Friday that the difficulty of changing the minds of a large number of super-delegates "can hardly be overstated."

But, he said, consider this: "A year ago, who would have seriously believed that a democratic socialist, down 50 points in the polls, could run a national presidential campaign decrying the dominance of government by billionaires, rejecting corporate cash and funding it with millions of donations averaging $27 -- and still be winning primaries in May? Change does happen."

We can only hope.

Bob Quarteroni, a frequent PennLive Opinion contributor, is a former columnist and editor at the Centre Daily Times. He lives in Swoyersville, Pa. Readers may email him at bobqsix@verizon.net.
Barack Obama

In this May 6, 2016, file photo, President Barack Obama speaks in the briefing room of the White House in Washington. Roughly 5 million more U.S. workers will soon become eligible for overtime pay under new rules issued by the Obama administration. The policy changes would benefit many salaried employees in the fast food and retail industries who often work long hours, are called managers, but are paid just above the current $23,660 annual threshold that allows companies to deny overtime pay. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

(Carolyn Kaster)

By Cynthia Tucker

Small wonder that President Barack Obama is enjoying his highest approval rating -- now at 51 percent, according to a Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll -- since his second inaugural.

Cynthia Tucker (PennLive file)

Voters need only take a cursory survey of the shenanigans on the campaign trail to conclude that the man occupying the Oval Office deserves respect, admiration and appreciation.

But it isn't just in comparison to the current crop of candidates that Obama's political and intellectual gifts are clear.

Judged against the panorama of American presidents, Obama will come out in the topmost tier -- a leader with courage, tenacity, wisdom, character, even glimmers of brilliance.

He came into office in 2009 riding a wave of giddy enthusiasm about his election as the nation's first black president.

But that enthusiasm was soon overwhelmed by an equally potent backlash fueled by resentment, racism and fear of the demographic change -- the challenge to white privilege -- that his election represented.

That backlash has supplied formidable opposition to every single initiative Obama has proposed, a force of resistance, reaction and repression that has been willing to damage the country to jeopardize his presidency.

Historians will reckon with that force when they judge Obama's accomplishments. Despite resistance, he dealt ably with the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, a financial near-collapse that forced hundreds of thousands of people into foreclosure, that bankrupted businesses and individuals alike, that propelled unemployment into the double digits.

While wages are still stagnant (they've been stagnating for decades), unemployment is now down to 5 percent, near a historic low.

Perhaps Obama's greatest domestic accomplishment was pushing through the Affordable Care Act, the biggest expansion of health care since Medicare was passed. Democrats have been attempting to expand access to doctors and hospitals since the era of Franklin Roosevelt; Bill and Hillary Clinton tried to push through an expansion in the 1990s but failed.

While Obamacare is hardly perfect, it has given millions of Americans access to health care and aided economic security.

As for foreign policy, Obama is the president who finally brought down Osama bin Laden, the terrorist who was the architect of the 9/11 atrocities.

He's also employed a policy of drone strikes that has alienated some on the left and caused no small amount of heartburn in foreign capitals. But he doesn't shy away from making tough calls.

Still, Obama's decision-making on national security and foreign policy has met more criticism from moderate thinkers and centrist pundits than any other element of his presidency.

He is out of step with the hawkish "Washington consensus," as The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg recently reported.

The president thinks before he speaks. He appreciates nuance. He isn't high on saber-rattling.

He doesn't believe the might of the U.S. armed forces, considerable though it may be, can solve every problem. Count me among those who believe a break from the "Washington consensus," which approved of the invasion of Iraq, is a very good thing.

Obama snubbed that groupthink to negotiate a historic deal with Iran, a bold bet to try to halt their efforts to produce nuclear weapons.

It will be years, if not decades, before foreign policy experts can assess its consequences, but the president was wise to try.

And he got it done over the outlandish theatrics of a Republican-dominated Congress. None of Obama's many accomplishments would have been possible were he not a man of stellar integrity.

His enemies have been greatly disappointed that they have not been able to sniff out scandal in his administration.

The president and his wife, Michelle, also display even-tempered and well-grounded personalities that resist pettiness and petulance, anger and affront, even in the face of vicious insults.

And while most of the singularly offensive rants have come from the right wing, a few have been lobbed from the left.

College professor and professional provocateur Cornel West has called Obama a "Rockefeller Republican in blackface."

The Obamas have been a lovely antidote to the politics of personal destruction.

By the time they leave, the president's approval ratings should be higher still.

Cynthia Tucker is a syndicated columnist. Her work appears on Tuesdays on PennLive. Readers may email her at cynthia@cynthiatucker.com.
EJPS receives COPS School Violence Prevention grant

The district was one of eight in the state to receive funding for improving safety technology throughout the buildings.
Iraq raise oil exports ahead of OPEC meeting

Reuters/Essam Al-Sudani



A worker checks the valves at Al-Sheiba oil refinery in the southern Iraq city of Basra, January 26, 2016.

SINGAPORE/DUBAI

Petroleumworld.com 05 31 2016

Iraq will supply 5 million barrels of extra crude to its partners in June, industry sources familiar with the issue said, joining other Middle East producers by lifting market share ahead of an OPEC meeting this week.

Iraq, which is the second-largest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, had already been targeting record crude export volumes from southern terminals next month of 3.47 million barrels per day.

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran and the United Arab Emirates, also plan to raise supplies in the third quarter.

A recovery in global oil prices from 12-year lows to above $50 a barrel LCOc1 and rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran have dampened expectations that OPEC will rein in supplies at Thursday's meeting.

While additional exports could make up for shrinking output and supply disruptions elsewhere, the new supplies also risk delaying a re-balancing of a global market still awash with oil.

"OPEC is indeed increasing supplies, practising their market share first strategy," said Victor Shum, managing director of downstream energy consulting at IHS, referring to a Saudi-led drive to boost OPEC's production to take back market share.

He said that additional oil from Saudi and Iraq may slow down a re-balancing of the global market, although this could be countered by supply disruptions from other places and strong seasonal demand.

Iraq's Oil Marketing Company (SOMO) allocated 5 million more barrels of Basra Light crude loading in June to upstream partners including PetroChina, Eni and Lukoil, three sources familiar with the matter said.

Foreign companies are paid in oil under technical service contracts (TSCs) signed with SOMO, although payments have been delayed after the oil price drop squeezed Iraq's budget.

A Gulf industry source said the additional oil was given "because of the pressure from the TSC contractors".

Iraq is also obligated to meet payments to contractors as part of conditions of an International Monetary Fund loan, he said.

The additional supplies come from an expansion of the Luhais and Artawi fields in southern Iraq. Iraq wants to increase its oil output by up to a third by 2020.

SOMO could not be immediately reached for comment.

A source from one of the companies that received the oil said the additional 1 million barrels of Basra Light was sold two hours after SOMO's notification, signalling that demand for Iraqi crude remained firm amid expectations the official selling prices (OSPs) would rise in July.

Still, spot premiums for June supplies have dropped to 40-80 cents a barrel, down from more than $1 in May, on the big export volume and a rise in June's OSPs, traders said.






Fujimori seen winning presidential election in Peru next week

LIMA

Petroleumworld.com 05 31 2016

Peruvian presidential contender Keiko Fujimori is seen beating rival Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in the June 5 run-off election, according to an Ipsos poll released on Sunday, consolidating the lead she had gained in recent weeks.

Fujimori, the 40-year-old daughter of imprisoned ex-president Alberto Fujimori, was seen garnering 45.9 percent of votes, according to the poll published in local newspaper El Comercio.

Kuczynski, a 77-year-old former World Bank economist who narrowly moved onto the second-round election after coming in second to Fujimori ahead of a leftist rival, is seen getting 40.6 percent of votes.

The Ipsos survey of 1,815 people has a 2.3 point margin of error up or down and was taken between May 26-27. Some 13.5 percent of voters were still undecided or planned to cast a spoiled ballot.

Fujimori was seen winning 53.1 percent of valid votes, which does not include blank or spoiled votes, compared to Kuczynski's 46.9 percent.

Fujimori has solidified her lead despite a scandal involving a top aide. The senior aide resigned from her center-right party in a bid to calm an uproar following media reports that linked the two to money laundering, accusations that both have denied.

Fujimori and Kuczynski are scheduled to face off Sunday night in the last televised debate before voters head to the ballot box.

In 2011, Fujimori lost her first presidential bid to President Ollanta Humala, who cannot run again this year because of term limits.






Justice Rescue, a Delaware County animal-welfare group, has increased its offered reward to $3,000 for information about two dogs whose burned remains were found Saturday night in Chester.

The remains, found shortly after 8:30 p.m. in the 2000 block of West Sixth Street, were in a plastic container that had been set on fire, according to Justice Rescue. It is not known if the animals were killed before they were burned.

Justice Rescue initially had offered a $1,000 reward. Additionally, the group has raised an undisclosed amount of money to cover the cost of forensic tests, a spokeswoman said Monday.

Anyone with information is urged to call Justice Rescue at 215-942-6363 or email abuse@justice-rescue.com.

jlai@phillynews.com

856-779-3220

@elaijuh
MERCITA BRETT Kane likely spent more years at what is now the campus of Immaculata University than most students, her family says.

"She was in the boarding school in Immaculata from the time she was 4 years old," in 1918, her daughter, Maryanna Massey, said in a phone interview.

Mrs. Kane attended elementary, high school, and college classes there, graduating in 1935.

The reason is that a great aunt, Mother Loyola, headed the religious order, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which had opened what is now Villa Maria Lower School on the Malvern campus in 1914.

Mother Loyola persuaded Mrs. Kane's parents, who were living in the Frankford neighborhood of Philadelphia, to send Mercita to the Villa Maria elementary school.

And in 1920, Mother Loyola became the first president of Villa Maria College, which in 1929 became Immaculata College, the university website states.

On Wednesday, Mrs. Kane, 101, of Sicklerville, a former elocution teacher in Frankford, died at Virtua Hospital in Marlton.

Mrs. Kane earned a bachelor's in English at what is now Immaculata University, for which her family said she had strong ties, and some heartbreak.

"She talked all her life about how homesick she was," in her early years in Malvern, her daughter said, because she came home only "on holidays and in the summer."

She was not entirely isolated in Malvern.

"Her sister, Marie, who was two years older," was there, Massey said, and later she was joined by her sister Bernadette, who was four years younger.

In 2014, when she turned 100, Mrs. Kane showed her pride in Immaculata.

The school made a point of celebrating her birthday outside of a Villa Maria hall, where she had taken classes when she was very young.

In her senior college year, Mrs. Kane was president of the Cue and Curtain Drama Club there and was briefly an actress at WFIL radio in Philadelphia.

Instead of continuing on radio, she opened the Brett School of Elocution at her parents' home in the 4600 block of Horrocks Street, "until she married" in 1940, Massey said, when "that became her job."

And when she spoke of her life, Howells said, Mrs. Kane spoke not only of her early years in Malvern but "of working with kids who had speech impediments."

Besides her daughter, Mrs. Kane is survived by sons John J. Jr., Michael, and Peter, 23 grandchildren, and 42 great-grandchildren. Her husband, John J., died in 1999.

A viewing is scheduled for 9 to 10:45 a.m. Tuesday, May 31, at the Danks-Hinski Funeral Home, 125 N. White Horse Pike, Lindenwold, before an 11 a.m. Funeral Mass at St. Lawrence Church, 100 South Ave., Lindenwold, with interment in Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Berlin.

Donations may be sent to www.immaculata.edu.

wnaedele@phillynews.com

610-313-8134 @WNaedele
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Ireland United States Minor Outlying Islands United States of America Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe
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After Donald Trump attacked the media at his press conference, the media attacked back.

At his press conference, Trump said, I have to tell you. The press is so dishonest and so unfair. Trump whined, I sent people checks of a lot of money, and were going to give you the names right now, which is what you want, and instead of being like thank you very much, Mr. Trump or Trump, did a good job. Everyones saying who got it, who got it, and you make me look vert bad I have never received such bad publicity for doing such a good job, so I will give you the names if thats what you want. 

Trump called a reporter from ABC News a sleaze:

WATCH: Donald Trump calls ABC reporter "a sleaze." pic.twitter.com/0DxoksTgzb  Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) May 31, 2016

Here is a Vine of some of Trumps attacks on the media at his press conference:

The media hit Trump hard with legitimate questions, and stripped the glossy image off of the Republican nominee:

Last wk Team Clinton was fretting abt coverage of an empty lectern. Now theyre wondering how they can get this occupied one played on loop  Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) May 31, 2016

Imagine, for a moment, this happening during an East Room press conference with a visiting head of state. https://t.co/MSqLM8GFcl  Phil Elliott (@Philip_Elliott) May 31, 2016

To recap: Trump said he raised $6 million for veterans. He didn't raise $6 million for veterans. He believes pointing this out is dishonest.  Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) May 31, 2016

.@DanaBashCNN, @KateBolduan, and @JohnBerman, visibly exasperated, are doing a great job pushing back on this Trump lunacy right now.  Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) May 31, 2016

Its our job to ask these questions, she says. Yes it is . https://t.co/oFHAe7efbN  Holly Bailey (@hollybdc) May 31, 2016

Trump being Trump, still stunning how he embraces idea of attacking any pol who isn't w/him, It's not just bad politics, it's bad governing  Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) May 31, 2016

Some in the press are beginning to change their tune on Trump after the Republican nominee said at his press conference that he will continue to attack the media if he elected president. The Trump press conference was a complete debacle, and it is clear that there is a growing consensus among the media that they are sick of Trumps demands for special treatment, and failure to understand the job of a journalist.
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Donald Trumps recent praise of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has paid off already as the countrys state media agency has now thrown its support behind the presumptive GOP nominee.

DPRK Todays endorsement of the spray-tanned billionaire, which was published on Tuesday, hilariously called Trump wise and far-sighted and praised him for his recent promise to meet with potential fellow dictator Kim Jong-un.

There are many positive aspects to Trumps inflammatory policies, the editorial read.

The write-up also complimented Trump on his suggestion that he will withdraw American forces from South Korea, which is still officially at war with North Korea.

Trump said he will not get involved in the war between the South and the North, isnt this fortunate from North Koreans perspective? the piece read.

According to the Huffington Post, the pro-Trump article  written by North Korean scholar Han Yong-mook  is not the governments official opinion but more than likely reflects the thinking of the totalitarian regime.

Of course, those who agree with Trump on many of his foreign policy proposals are few and far between. Officials in both major political parties in the U.S. criticized the New York billionaires proposal to meet with the brutal dictator.

So, if youre keeping score at home, Donald Trump has successfully alienated Americas closest ally, helped terrorist organizations recruit members, and now has the support of a country that currently enslaves over a million of its citizens.

It should be noted that the editorial also advised Americans to not elect Hillary Clinton as the next president, so the choice is yours on whose side to take.
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President Obama reminded America of the kind of character required of a president, while Donald Trump spent the day ranting about his own petty gripes without mentions the sacrifices of the fallen on Memorial Day.

Video of Obama:

Here is what Obama said about Americas fallen heroes while speaking at Arlington Cemetery, A nation reveals itself not only by the people it produces, but by those it remembers. We do so not just by hoisting a flag, but by lifting up our neighbors. Not just by pausing in silence, but by practicing in our own lives the ideals of opportunity and liberty and equality that they fought for. We can serve others, and contribute to the causes they believed in, and above all, keep their stories alive so that one day, when he grows up and thinks of his dad, an American like David Wheeler can tell them, as well, the stories of the lives that others gave for all of us.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump remembered those who paid the ultimate sacrifice by going on a Twitter rant about the judge in the Trump University case:

I hope everyone had a great Memorial Day!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2016

I have a judge in the Trump University civil case, Gonzalo Curiel (San Diego), who is very unfair. An Obama pick. Totally biased-hates Trump  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2016

I should have easily won the Trump University case on summary judgement but have a judge, Gonzalo Curiel, who is totally biased against me.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2016

Trump did manage to add a tweet on Tuesday morning that whined about the media coverage that his fundraiser for vets generated:

I have raised/given a tremendous amount of money to our great VETERANS, and have got nothing but bad publicity for doing so. Watch!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 31, 2016

At no time on Memorial Day did Trump mention that sacrifice made by those who gave their lives for this country. Instead, Trump obsessed over his own petty personal issues.

Among the many jobs that a president has is to be the conscience of the country. At times of great tragedy, think of the many mass shootings during the Obama presidency, the President has had to lead the country through times of grief.

With a single paragraph in a single solemn speech, Obama demonstrated what voters should expect out of their president. With a series of tweets on the same solemn day of remembrance, Trump revealed that he did not have the depth required of a President Of The United States.
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*The following is an opinion column by R Muse *

Over the course of Barack Obamas tenure in the Oval Office, Republicans have steadily made being blatantly racist wildly popular among far too many Americans. All that pre-production work accomplished was conditioning the nation for a racist like Donald Trump who abandoned the use of Republicans typical dog whistles and innuendos and went all in portraying non-whites as a plague on America. No group has suffered Trumps racist assaults more than Hispanics, and the Donald feels emboldened enough to extend his racial attacks on a federal district court judge in California as part of his presidential campaign.

The Wall Street Journal reported that during a campaign stop in California, Trump spent a full 12 minutes of a 58-minute speech on an extended tirade focused on the Trump University fraud case. Part and parcel of the racial rant was Trump once again taking particular exception to judge from California, the judges race, and that he was appointed by an African American President; its not too difficult to discern exactly what his objection really is.

One doesnt have to think too hard to surmise that Trumps problem is not necessarily with the Judge from California, his racial heritage, or the sitting President who nominated him; his objection is being challenged for defrauding thousands of Americans. The fact that the Judge is an Hispanic man is just another dog whistle Trump uses to incite his nasty nativist supporters.

The Donald believes, and is ramping up his rhetoric, that because the former federal prosecutor who took on Mexican drug cartels was appointed by President Barack Obama, might be a Hispanic, is a hater, and probably is a Mexican that he is out to get Donald Trump. Worst of all, Trump tells his audience; the California judge should be ashamed of himself. Why? For being a Mexican, not obeying the Donald, and for being a federal judge? A judge, by the way, who was easily confirmed by a voice vote with no opposition whatsoever, not even from Republicans after being nominated by President Obama.

During the 12-minute rant Trump told his racist supporters that federal district court Judge Gonzalo Curiel should be removed from the case against him over his pretend universitys fraud because he was appointed to the bench by President Obama and Trump believes Curiel is Mexican; a remark that drew a wild chorus of boos from the racist crowd. At an Alabama rally previously, Trump told racist supporters that this case should have been thrown out years ago, but because it was me and because theres a hostility toward me by the judge  tremendous hostility  beyond belief, the one-of-several lawsuits is going forward.

In San Diego Trump continued his ill-advised attacks on a federal judge and said,

I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater. Hes a hater. His name is Gonzalo Curiel. I think Judge Curiel should be ashamed of himself.

The latest outburst is not Trumps first attack on the Judge, and it is apparent that he knows nothing whatsoever about the man or he wouldnt be openly questioning the integrity of the federal jurist. Judge Curiel was a highly regarded federal prosecutor under the George H.W. Bush and after unflinching attacks on the drug cartels, is considered by many to be a genuine badass. After taking every kind of death threat and intimidation by Mexican drug lords, Judge Curiel is certainly not going to be intimidated by the likes of Donald Trump.

In fact, on the same day, Friday, that Trump was railing against the Judge in San Diego, Judge Curiel ordered all internal Trump University documents to be released as part of the class-action lawsuit alleging the now-defunct business venture owned by the presumptive GOP nominee defrauded students. The Judge also got a back-handed slap at Trump by referencing his bitching about a civil lawsuit during a presidential campaign. He noted that,

Trump is the front-runner for the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential race, and has placed the integrity of these court proceedings at issue.

It is noteworthy that the class-action suit against the scam disguised as a university is not Trumps first encounter with the criminal justice system over defrauding students out of millions-of-dollars. In fact, according to Think Progress Trump University, which was not actually an accredited university and did not hand out degrees, has several fraud cases proceeding against it.

One of the fraud proceedings began in 2013 when New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued Trump University alleging it was a fraud and had fleeced 5,000 people out of millions of dollars. After Trump made his racist statements about Judge Curiel, Mr. Schneiderman issued a statement saying,

I will not engage in a debate about an ongoing litigation. But there is no place in this process for racial demagoguery directed at respected members of the judiciary.

Schneiderman then noted that according to a New York state Supreme Court ruling, Trump University was a fraud and operated illegally in New York as an unlicensed educational institution.

According to complaints against Trumps now defunct company, the victims accused it, and by virtue of ownership Donald Trump, of scamming students by misleading them into paying handsomely for insight from a highly-qualified staff of business experts they were told were hand-picked by Donald Trump. The plaintiffs in the class-action case before Judge Curiel assert that they were lied to and scammed into paying up to $35,000 for expert real estate advice at Trump University.

However, the so-called business expert professors who were said to be personally vetted by Donald Trump himself all had dubious credentials; they certainly were not professors. It appears that Trump not only did not personally vet the professors, according to his own depositions in the case last December he failed to recognize even a single name of any of the so-called expert professors instructing students at his University.

The good news for the media is that Trump will have his day in court and a face-to-face with the Mexican hater judge Trump continues demonizing, in late November when the lawsuit goes to trial in San Diego federal court, after the election. According to his lawyer, Donald Trump plans on testifying before a jury and one can only imagine how the fraudster con-mans bullying will play in a federal court.

Donald Trump is a masterful media manipulator; of that there is little dispute. However, his racist attacks on a highly-respected federal District Court Judge cannot possibly be regarded as masterful. Trump has not done anything to endear himself to Hispanic Americans, and he apparently could not care less if they despise him or not, even if he needs their support to win in November.

Trump should count himself extremely fortunate that he picked on a tougher-than-nails federal judge, because no matter how nasty and racially-offensive Trumps attacks on Judge Curiel are, the Judges integrity guarantees that Trump will get a fair hearing and trial. It is more than he deserves and more than he affords anyone who refuses to kiss his ass or throw out lawsuits on the grounds that Donald Trump is untouchable.
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ST. PAUL  A new Minnesota law is designed to give businesses some extra protection against what some say are excessive lawsuits over alleged violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The law is designed largely to curb the practices of one Minneapolis attorney, Paul Hansmeier, who's filed more than 160 cases in the past three years, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported Monday. By comparison, fewer than 10 cases were filed annually in the five years before Hansmeier's first ADA case, said Beth Kadoun, a Minnesota Chamber of Commerce vice president.

In July 2015, Hansmeier filed disability access suits against at least eight Rochester businesses. Hillcrest Shopping Center and Kahler Hotels were among the Rochester businesses targeted by Hansmeier.

Hansmeier's critics say he's targeting businesses over minor ADA infractions to make money. But he says that's not true and that he's increasing accessibility for the disabled.

"Most of my clients are people who very actively tried to get voluntary compliance ... for years," Hansmeier said. "No one paid attention to them. ... It's not until they started bringing lawsuits that businesses started whipping themselves into shape."

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The new law provides additional defenses for businesses and outlines what must be included in letters sent to businesses before a lawsuit begins. The person sending the letter must include the exact violation and can't demand money.

William Rust, a White Bear Lake architect and contractor, was sued by Hansmeier for a few inches' difference between the ground and entrance of a building he's owned since 1983. He added a portable ramp within weeks of hearing from Hansmeier. Rust was pressured to take a $3,000 settlement to avoid steeper fees, but he refused.

"I just feel strongly that this guy needs to be stopped," Rust said.

Even Hansmeier's critics agree his lawsuits have sparked a statewide conversation about accessibility.

But David Fenley, legislative coordinator with the Minnesota State Council on Disability, feared the lawsuits give the ADA a bad name. Fenley said he's pleased with the new law.

"These demand letters just inform businesses of what they've got to be doing. You didn't know, now you do, it's time to fix it and move on. If we can do it without filing lawsuits, that's great. But if we need to file, then we will," he said.

House bill sponsor Dennis Smith, R-Maple Grove, said he's pleased with the compromise signed into law but said the issue is not settled.
AUSTIN  A woman who police believe is connected to nearly a pound of methamphetamine found in a motel room has pleaded guilty in the case.

Bonnie Lee Sutton, 34, of Austin, pleaded guilty Friday in Mower County District Court to first-degree drug crime-subsequent offense. In exchange, an identical count is expected to be dismissed at her Aug. 5 sentencing, as are additional counts of felony fifth-degree drug possession, misdemeanor fourth-degree DUI and misdemeanor driving after revocation.

She remains in custody in lieu of $250,000 conditional bail.

The charges stem from an incident that began late March 27, when an Austin police officer saw a car leave an Austin motel after being there "a very short time," the complaint says, and suspected drug activity.

The officer followed the vehicle as it traveled west on Interstate 90, crossing the fog line and varying in speed from 55 to 63 mph. He stopped the vehicle and identified the driver as Sutton. As the officer spoke with her, he noted her pupils had little reaction to light, she was speaking quickly and her hand movements were "quick and fidgety," court documents say.

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When the officer learned Sutton's driver's license was revoked, he asked her to step out of the vehicle. She reportedly failed all of the field sobriety tests administered at the scene but told the officer she hadn't used meth for more than a year, and he was "more than welcome" to search the car.

According to the criminal complaint, the officer smelled marijuana coming from the vehicle; a police dog alerted on the gas cap. A passenger in the car said Sutton had picked him up at a bar to take him home but stopped at Room 133 of the Rodeway Inn first.

The man claimed he saw Sutton take about a half-ounce of meth from the room and put it near the trunk of the car. The officers could see a plastic bag behind the locking gas cap cover; they removed the bag, which allegedly held 28.5 grams of meth  just more than an ounce.

Sutton was arrested and taken to jail, where staff found a bag with 0.11 grams of cocaine in her coat pocket, the reports say; a meth pipe later was found in her genital area.

A search warrant executed at Room 133 recovered about 5 grams of marijuana in the refrigerator; a sock and digital scale were found in a bathroom vent, the complaint says. The sock reportedly contained about 422 grams of meth, or about 15 ounces.

The street value of the meth was estimated at about $45,000.
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A 45-year-old man is in custody today after authorities say he threatened a woman he knew, then tried to kidnap her at knifepoint.

Roland Ned Outlaw was arrested without incident at his job Saturday morning at Crossroads Drive.

The incident began about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, when the 55-year-old woman got into Outlaw's van to talk to him at a business in the 1800 block of Assisi Drive Northwest. Outlaw was upset with the woman, said Capt. John Sherwin, "and that's when the trouble began."

According to the police reports, Outlaw pulled out a knife and tried to drive away with the woman; she was able to jump out of the moving vehicle.

After the initial report was made, Outlaw continued to contact the alleged victim, threatening her, Sherwin said.

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During the course of the investigation, authorities reportedly learned Outlaw is wanted in Illinois for attempted murder.

"This is a dangerous guy," Sherwin said.

Officials have referred charges of second-degree assault, attempted kidnapping and witness tampering, he said.
BYRON  A man accused of leading law enforcement on a 10-mile pursuit  narrowly avoiding a collision with another vehicle on U.S. Highway 14  was arrested late Saturday night, officials said.

An Olmsted County Sheriff's deputy on patrol about 11 p.m. in the area of 10th Avenue and Seventh Street Northeast in Byron spotted a vehicle driving 60 mph in a 45 mph zone, said Capt. Scott Behrns.

"The deputy tried to catch up with him, and the chase was on," he said.

The pursuit wound from Olmsted County Road 3 Northwest until the car died on Heather Drive Southwest, likely from a blown engine, Behrns said.

At one point, the driver  identified as Nicholas Michael Douglas, 18, of Houston  "blew through the stop sign" with U.S. 14 as he drove south on County 3, "narrowly missing a westbound vehicle," Behrns said.

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According to the reports, Douglas was still in the vehicle in the middle of Heather Drive when officers arrived. He told them he fled "because he thought somebody was chasing him," Behrns said.

Charges of fleeing a peace officer in a motor vehicle, speeding and reckless driving have been referred to the Olmsted County Attorney's office.
AUSTIN  One of two women accused of throwing bleach around a house and car in an apparent jealous rage has been sentenced to a year in jail, stayed for two years, and must apologize to the victim.

Tempestt Noel Haymore, 28, also was sentenced to 24 days in jail, with credit for 24 days served, and to pay restitution if so ordered.

In March, Haymore pleaded guilty in Mower County District Court to one count each of felony first-degree criminal damage to property and misdemeanor fifth-degree assault. In exchange, two felony counts of first-degree burglary were dismissed at Thursday's sentencing, and the criminal damage to property charge was reduced to a gross misdemeanor.

Her co-defendant, Shante Denise Morgan, 25, has pleaded not guilty to the same four counts. She's due back in court June 24.

The charges stem from an incident Aug. 8, when Austin police officers responded to the 800 block of 12th Avenue Southwest. The female resident of the home and her friend were waiting; the friend had a scratch on the bridge of her nose and swelling over one eye.

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The resident said she'd been in the shower about 20 minutes earlier when she heard a loud crash. She came out of the bathroom to find her mirror and new flat-screen TV had been smashed by Haymore, the complaint says. The woman said Haymore was upset because her boyfriend was at the home; Haymore and the man then left.

About 10 minutes later, Haymore returned to the home with Morgan. The resident's friend tried to stop them on the front steps, but Haymore forced her way past, broke the storm door and went inside.

She was carrying a jug of bleach, court documents say, which she dumped on the floor, walls, couch and clothing in the home. Haymore then walked back outside, got a container of anti-freeze from her car, then dumped it "liberally" inside the car of the woman who lived there, the report says.

The woman who had tried to block Haymore from entering the house then yelled at her to stop, and Morgan hit her in the face. According to the criminal complaint, Haymore and Morgan then pulled the woman to the ground by her hair and punched and kicked her.

Empty bleach and anti-freeze bottles were found at the scene.

The injured woman didn't seek medical treatment.
Hello, Answer Man, maybe you can get an answer to this one. I had gift cards to Whiskey Creek in Rochester. After the restaurant unexpectedly closed in February, I called and gave them my gift card numbers, and they said we will be reimbursed. Then on March 7, I called the phone number again and was told the same thing.

Now it's May and I still have no reimbursement of the gift cards. Will I ever see my money again? -- Terry

My crystal ball is partly cloudy regarding that refund, Terry, so I contacted Whiskey Creek's corporate office in Kearney, Neb. Heidi Johnson, the company's franchise administrator, told me what you probably already know: "The Rochester restaurant was a franchised location which was locally owned and operated. Since we have no ownership of that location, I recommend that you contact them directly about their refunds."

I called the local phone number and was told refunds will be honored if you provide basic information, so it still seems worth a shot. If you need the phone number, let me know.

Dear Answer Man, I have a lot of questions about the $240 million pork processing plant that Mason City decided not to do business with. Two of them are, when did that project first come up? It seems like it came out of nowhere. And how much would the jobs have paid?

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Very good questions, and I have many more about how and why that little piggy didn't make it to market. For today, I'll just deal with your questions, because as you know, the reader always comes first in my world.

Frankly, this project came out of the blue for people in the Mason City area, just as abruptly as did the Destination Medical Center plan in Rochester, which hit like a thunderbolt in January 2013 and five months later was a legislative reality.

According to an FAQ compiled by the website North Iowa Today , the Iowa Economic Development Authority first contacted the North Iowa Corridor Economic Development Corp. on Dec. 17. The next day, the EDC and Mason City officials met with people from North Carolina-based Prestage Farms about the proposal. The Mason City City Council got a full look at the proposal in mid-January, but it was mid-March before a full announcement was made in Mason City, with Gov. Terry Branstadon hand, and that's when Prestage Farms was identified as the company.

Barely six weeks later , the Mason City City Council voted to reject the project, pleasing some people in the community who were opposed to the project for various reasons, and disappointing others. Some have said since then that the project was rushed through too quickly; others have said there were racial overtones to the community reaction, since the plant may have drawn minority employees.

The proposed plant would have processed as many as 10,000 hogs daily, for starters, and eventually could have employed as many as 2,000 workers. How much would those jobs have paid? In March, the company said the average starting wage would be $30,000 to $35,000, with the overall average being about $40,000.

According to data on the Mason City city website , the average salary would have been higher -- in the high 40's, and by the third year in the low 50's.
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
MINNEAPOLIS  Prominent Twin Cities attorney and local radio host Ron Rosenbaum has died of complications from cancer.

Rosenbaum's brother, former federal judge James Rosenbaum, told The Associated Press on Monday that Ron died Sunday at his St. Paul home. He was 68.

Ron Rosenbaum was known for his wit and was a regular on The Dan Barreiro Show. The pair also co-hosted a local television show called "Enough Said."

Rosenbaum hosted the "Holding Court" radio show from 1998 to 2006. He and his wife later co-hosted a podcast with that name.

As an attorney, Rosenbaum worked on several high-profile cases.

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Memorial service arrangements are pending.
A proposed $180 million to $200 million downtown Rochester waterfront project is about more than making a profit, says the Abu Dhabi-based developer.

"There's this feeling that Mayo Clinic has been good for UAE dignitaries. We'd like to give back and contribute to the DMC (Destination Medical Center) plan," said Sameh Muhtadi, Bloom Holding's chief executive officer. "What prompted this is the close relationship of UAE with Mayo Clinic. In particular, shareholders of our company frequent Mayo Clinic on a regular basis."

He shared more about Bloom's vision during an interview the day after presenting an early version of the plan to the DMC Corp. Board.

Bloom is a multi-billion-dollar real estate firm with hospitality, residential and education projects in the UAE and around the globe. Bloom is under the umbrella of National Holding, which is owned by members of Abu Dhabi's royal family.

Early plans for the massive Rochester project showed a mixed-use development with two towers along the Zumbro River that would include about 100 condos, 40 leased apartments, 120 hotel rooms and 45 serviced apartments in the hotel. The tentative plans showed more than 94,000 square feet of office space, 20,000 square feet for food and beverage establishments and 2,400 feet for retail.

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The project, including a large public plaza with water features and other amenities, is slated to be built south of Second Street Southeast and east of South Broadway Avenue, along the Zumbro River.

Bloom is negotiating with the city of Rochester for use of the riverfront land. The city and Bloom hope to have an agreement and "a fixed concept" for the project by the end of 2016.

Change of plans

The seeds of this ambitious project go back many years. Bloom International Realty bought the seven-story Associated Bank building on the southeast corner of South Broadway and Second Street for $7 million in 2013. Working with Rochester's Oxford Property Management, Bloom originally planned to demolish the almost 50-year-old building and construct a luxury hotel on the site.

"It was a very simple plan. But then our architects and designers looked at it and found the plot is not ideal for that," Muhtadi said. "We began looking around and noticed the parking ramp behind it is old and destined to be demolished. Then we started talking to the city about the riverfront."

As it stands, the proposal now is a three-phase plan that will add more more high-end hotel rooms, apartments, retail and office space to Rochester's blossoming downtown.

The first phase will be renovating and upgrading the Associated Bank building and bringing in new tenants. Most of the former tenants left when it was expected to be demolished.

Building a tower with parking on the city-owned property known as the Labor Temple building on Fourth Street is slated to be the second phase. That will provide parking options when the old public ramp behind the Associated Building is demolished in the third phase.

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Muthadi said the proposal will include 120 hotel rooms, about 20 percent of which will include five-star amenities. That goes against the local belief that there is not a enough demand to support five-star rooms in Rochester.

"Quite frankly, local economic consultants discouraged us from doing that, but we felt we needed to go outside of the box in our thinking," he said. "For most part, it will be a four star, but a four star in UAE is much more like a five star hotel here. It will be a higher standard than anything this town has."

Bloom envisions those rooms will be occupied by American visitors as well as international ones from China, Russia, the UAE and elsewhere.

"There is a feeling that Rochester can do with some enhanced services, some enhanced hospitality and a residential component within proximity of Mayo. We've noticed most people who work at Mayo don't live within walking distance. We'd like to create a 'work, live, play mix' to encourage people to stay within the town itself," Muthadi said.

He believes that, along with extended-stay options for visiting patients, will benefit Mayo Clinic and the city. They plan to enhance their offerings with "a lifestyle component," which means adding spas, state-of-art gyms, a private theater and concierge services.
A number of political volunteers used to working behind the scenes are stepping forward to run for office this fall.

Will Waggoner is one of them. The 21-year-old has volunteered for Republican campaigns in the past but now is planning to put his own name on the ballot. He is slated to file today to run against DFL Rochester Rep. Tina Liebling in November.

"I really was looking at it as how can I make a difference and get a voice of younger generation heard," Waggoner said.

Today is the deadline for candidates to file for federal, state, county and some local offices. Candidates have until 5 p.m. to file. Several Republican legislative candidates are expected to participate in a mass filing today at the Minnesota Secretary of State's Office in St. Paul  including Waggoner.

The Rochester Republican grew up in the area and graduated from Hayfield High School. He recently graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College with a bachelor's degree in political science. He is a manager at a Hy-Vee in Rochester. Waggoner said his priorities include making sure all high school students have access to courses that will help prepare them for their future careers. He supports boosting the use of clean energy in the district and wants to make sure the state's health care policies enable Mayo Clinic to continue to thrive and grow because the clinic "is the life blood of our district."

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Elgin Democrat challenges Drazkowski

Elise Diesslin has filed to run against Mazeppa Republican Rep. Steve Drazkowski. The Elgin Democrat said she has spent plenty of time helping legislative candidates run for office. She volunteered on former DFL Rep. Andy Welti's campaign and interned with the Minnesota DFL. She also has been involved with Wabasha County's DFL since 2008.

"I decided to step up because I think I would be a good candidate to go up against the incumbent. I'm very much the opposite of him in many ways," she said.

Diessin said she is particularly concerned about the high cost of college.

"The costs of getting an education are higher than they ever have been, and it's really important to maintain that availability for students," she said.

She said she also would support efforts to improve the affordability and accessibility of health care. The 26-year-old said she was worried about losing her health insurance after she no longer qualified to be on her parents' health insurance plan. She was lucky because she got a job in the communications department at the University of Minnesota  Rochester, which provides health insurance.

A Republican primary

Two Republicans are vying for the chance to take on Austin DFL Sen. Dan Sparks in November. Gene Dornink, of Hayfield, and Cynthia Gail, of Albert Lea, have filed to run.

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Dornink has long been active in the local Republican party, but this is the first time he's run for office.

"I think what we're missing up (in St. Paul) is common men, common women that live in the trenches. And you can see with the political atmosphere that's out there that people are fed up with the status quo, and I am, too," he said.

Dornink grew up on a dairy farm and became a journeyman carpenter. In 2009, he started his own carpentry business. He said he does not like big government and believes strongly in following the Constitution. Asked about his legislative priorities, Dornink said he first wants to talk with the voters of the district to get a sense of what they are concerned about.

"I definitely want to listen to the people as I start to get involved and knock on doors and start to talk to people," he said.

So far, he said people are very concerned about MNsure, the state-run health insurance exchange, and the high cost of health care. Voters also have told him they are upset with all the bickering in St. Paul.

Gail said her main concerns economic stability for anyone, no matter their social status, mental health for all individuals, especially children and teens, and being cognizant of political boundaries if she were to get elected in November. "I feel for people with different struggles, but I still have to be loyal to my faith," she said.

A part-time art teacher with a degrees in teaching, art and management, Gail graduated from Albert Lea High School in 1976, and is single with four grown children. She has also spent time as a missionary, undertaking four missionary trips in her life. "My faith is important to me," she said.

Gail had previously run for the Minnesota House as a member of the Green Party in 2006, she said.

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Republicans in Senate District 27 are expected to gather June 14 to decide which candidate to endorse.

A legislative rematch

Not everyone challenging an incumbent is a political newcomer. Austin Republican Dennis Schminke is seeking a rematch against Austin DFL Rep. Jeanne Poppe. Schminke ran against Poppe in 2014 and lost by a vote of 54 percent to 46 percent.

Schminke, Mower County Republicans' deputy chairman, said he spent two years working to recruit a candidate to run against Poppe but had no luck. He decided it was important voters have a choice and chose to run again. Schminke, who retired from Hormel Foods after working in accounting and finance, said Minnesota needs to be more business-friendly.

"We are not where we could be and should be in terms of being a place where you start a business, grow a business, expand a business or move a business here from some place else because it's a tough place to do business," he said.

Schminke noted that the Tax Foundation ranks Minnesota 47th in terms of its business tax climate. He said lowering taxes would go a long way in helping encourage more businesses to come to the state and stay. He said he also believes that the needs of rural Minnesota are not being addressed in St. Paul.

"In large part, I don't believe that Austin, Mower County or the district does very well by Gov. Dayton and we'll just call them the metro-centric DFL leadership up there," Schminke said. "We get a nod of the hat with a few million for rural broadband and then we get put on the hook for hundreds of millions to do silly things like Vikings stadiums with no way to finance them."

From enforcing laws to making them

In Senate District 24, incumbent Sen. Vicki Jensen of Owatonna will face a primary challenge from Rich Bailey, 46, a Faribault resident who has worked in law enforcement after a six-year stint in the U.S. Navy, where he served during the first Gulf War.

Bailey, who has a two-year degree in law enforcement from Inver Hills Community College, said his technical knowledge of how laws effect people on the street will help him in what he hopes is his next step of government service. "I want to watch what happens in government," he said. "I want to do what I can for the labor unions and the farmers."

That means making sure retirees are protected against the underfunded retirement accounts, and small farmers are given a fair chance to compete in the market.

Bailey said everyday Minnesotans face huge hurdles when trying to deal with government, and he would like to help them understand what is available to them and how to access the help they need. "I want to implement things that are tested and work for the people," he said.

If he survives the primary, Bailey would face off against Republican John Jasinski in November. Rather than point out differences with his opponents, Bailey said he respects anyone who has served in government like Jasinski, the mayor of Faribault, and Sen. Jensen.

Jensen has served one term in the Minnesota Senate, and serves as vice chair of the economics committee. The Owatonna insurance agent is a mother of three.
In the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet empire, most Western nations basked in the illusion that liberal democracy had triumphed. Many thought NATO had become an anachronism in an era of permanent European peace.

Some countries freed from Kremlin control, including tiny Estonia, knew better. Only 2 1/2 decades later, the European Union teeters and populism thrives  on both sides of the Atlantic. A revanchist Russia bent on restoring past glory makes nuclear threats against members of the NATO alliance.

So this is an opportune moment to listen to Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, who was in Philadelphia last week to address a Baltic studies conference at the University of Pennsylvania. (The son of Estonian refugees, he studied in the United States and is a Penn alumnus.)

"Twenty-five years of Western history are over," he said bluntly. "The optimism of the 1990s has been shattered by Russia. Russia is back with 19th-century goals and 21st-century means."

But, he cautioned, "We are clueless amid transformational change to which we do not know how to respond because we don't know what we want to achieve."

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Of course, the threats to the Europe of 1990s dreams are internal as well as external. The populist parties that are gaining strength across Europe and the appeal of Trumpism (and Bernie Sanders) here are outgrowths of the economic pain wreaked on citizens by globalization and the failure of traditional parties to respond.

But, as Ilves noted, the economic travails of Western democracies present openings for a reckless Russia to meddle. Populist leaders in Europe, some openly encouraged by Russian President Vladimir Putin, are pressing for the breakup of the European Union. On June 23, the British will vote on whether to leave the EU, and the vote looks likely to be close.

Meantime, Donald Trump, talks of possibly leaving NATO, while constantly complimenting Putin. Although Ilves never mentioned Trump by name, he is clearly concerned.

"East Europeans were told to get over their fears of Russia," he said, "but today Western Europe recognizes there is an ongoing war in Europe."

Indeed, Russian planes conduct provocative stunts, like recently buzzing within 30 feet of a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Baltic Sea and flying with transponders off over Baltic countries, risking a collision with civilian aircraft.

And there are things that worry Ilves even more.

"Today, threats to use nuclear weapons are part of the Russian discourse, with simulated nuclear attacks on Stockholm and Poland," he said.

Kremlin emissaries have reportedly threatened a nuclear response if NATO moved troops into the Baltic, and last year Putin warned he might call for a nuclear alert as Russia was invading Crimea. Moscow is reportedly considering putting nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad, a small Russian territory on the Baltic Sea.

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Making nuclear threats against the West reeks of the Cold War. "The Soviet Union never did this after 1962," Ilves said an interview. "It is one of the things that is shocking today."

Would an economically weak Russia really contemplate using such weapons? Would Putin ever consider invading a NATO member such as Estonia?

The Estonian president wants to take no chances. "The thinking of Russian leaders is unpredictable," he answers.

Indeed, Ilves says it took NATO members far too long to grasp the significance of Putin's invasion of Ukraine: "Changing borders in Europe has been a no-no since 1945. The last time was 1938 (when Germany invaded) the Sudetenland. (Yet) there are still countries that want to end sanctions (against Russia on account of Ukraine)."

Ilves believes sanctions have had "a deterring effect," and caving on them would only encourage Putin to nibble further, possibly on the Baltics.

"We need a credible deterrence policy in the Baltic region to influence the Russian calculus to make the costs of interference too high," says Ilves. "Russia's behavior requires a decisive and united (NATO) response."

Of course, isolationists here and in Europe echo the Kremlin charge that Putin is reacting to a fear of encirclement brought on by NATO expansion to the Baltics and Eastern Europe. It's far more useful to consider the alternative. As Ilves points out, Putin felt free to invade Ukraine precisely because it wasn't a member of NATO.

What Trumpism ignores is Ilves' larger point: The West must recognize the value of a free and secure Europe, something that NATO countries took for granted during the past two decades.

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The threat that Russia presents is more complex than in Cold War times. Putin wants to divide and weaken NATO and the European Union and promote a new brand of managed "democracy," with himself as the leader. His nuclear-rattling may be testing the alliance's staying power.

So far, NATO has held firm, and will deploy several thousand additional troops to the Baltics and Poland on a rotating basis. Key NATO countries also seem to be waking up to the need to spend more on defense.

"NATO has not been this relevant for a long, long time," says the Estonian leader. "Europeans haven't been under this kind of threat since Gorbachev's time."

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
I like much of Peter Bakers reporting. I liked his book about the George W. Bush administration. I dont like this article by Baker called Rise of Donald Trump Tracks Growing Debate Over Global Fascism.

Its a slippery piece. Baker doesnt argue that Trump is a fascist  its more along the lines of some people say Trump is a fascist. But by choosing to repeat the charge, and writing a long article about it, Baker lends respectability to the claim.

People have said all sorts of very bad things about President Obama. I dont see the mainstream media converting these claims into news stories, except maybe for ones that attempt to paint Obamas critics as deranged.

I discussed the matter of Trump and fascism here, borrowing extensively from Michael Ledeen, an expert on fascism. To summarize, there is no viable case that Trump is a fascist. Robert Kagan embarrassed himself when he tried to make one.

Speaking of experts on fascism, it is not until deep in Bakers article that we encounter any (before then, we hear instead from William Weld and the Mexican president  why Baker gives them the floor on a matter of political theory is anyones guess). The experts Baker finally quotes dont think Trump fits the fascist label.

Robert O. Paxton, a Columbia professor whom Baker identifies as one of the most prominent scholars of fascism, points out that fascists believe in strong state control, not get-government-off-your-back individualism and deregulation (as Trump does, at least to some extent).

Volker Perthes, the director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin, rejects the Trump-as-fascist claim:

All the phenomena he describes are raising concerns, but I would still not call Trump or his campaign fascist. Maybe with German and European history in mind, we are a bit more cautious than others in using the label fascism. Mr. Perthes said real fascism requires two more elements  an outright rejection of democracy and a harsher definition of order.

Charles Grant, the director of the Center for European Reform in London, explains the distinction between hard-line nationalism and actual fascism:

Historically, [fascism] means the demonization of minorities within a society to the extent that they feel insecure. It means encouraging the use of violence against critics. It means a bellicose foreign policy that may lead to war, to excite a nationalist feeling. It takes xenophobia to extremes. And it is contemptuous of a rules-based liberal order.

Grant argues that even Marine Le Pens far right party in France isnt fascist. Yet, her National Front is much more stridently anti-immigrant than Trump. For example, Le Pen doesnt favor bringing illegal immigrants back into France once they have been expelled and vetted.

Other scholars suggest that Trump may represent a wave of right-wing populist nationalism or illiberal democracy. Im not sure that either label quite applies to Trump (the latter isnt a bad fit for Obama). In any event, this isnt fascism.

The title of Bakers article should be Experts Reject Claim That Trump Is Fascist. Better yet, the article shouldnt have been written.
As Scott discusses below, Dartmouth has declared that it will not punish the BlackLivesMatter-supporting students who rampaged through Dartmouths Baker Library, cursing at and intimidating students as they tried to study for exams. Dartmouths decision is disgraceful.

If the concept of a safe space has any meaning, it applies to Baker Library. But if youre angry and Black, you can disrupt that space by insulting students as they go about the business of learning.

Why did Dartmouth take no disciplinary action against the rampaging, threatening students? Meg Ramsden, Assistant Director, Alumni Leadership wrote:

After concluding its investigation with respect to the complaints and studying what was seen in the video in Baker-Berry Library, it was determined that there were no specific violations of the Standards of Conduct. In essence, no rules for which there are recorded and communicated sanctions were broken.

But Standard II of the Dartmouth Community Standards of Conduct prohibits Disorderly Conduct, defined as any disruption of the orderly processes of the College. Standard II also states:

The College requires orderly conduct of all students while in Hanover and its environs, as well as at any College-related function or activity, whether in Hanover or elsewhere. . . .

Studying in a college library is obviously an orderly process of the College. The BlackLivesMatter protesters disrupted it through disorderly behavior.

Thus, Rumsdens claim that no specific violation occurred fails. It cannot be the real reason why Dartmouth let off every student who participated in the Baker Library rampage, even those who threatened students and screamed racist abuse (e.g., Stand the f*** up! You filthy racist white piece of s***!) at them.

What is the real reason? Either president Phil Hanlon is afraid to stand up to Dartmouths radical black students or he believes that their conduct is excusable. Either way, its clear that Hanlon is not competent to lead Dartmouth.

In her letter to alums, Ramsden states:

Students were counseled in serious conversations about judgment, the pledge of citizenship and behavior appropriate within a civil community.

But the students didnt take the serious conversations seriously. Recently, Dartmouths BlackLivesMatter movement tore down a pro-police display that College Republicans erected to commemorate National Police Week. The College Republicans had received approval from Dartmouth to erect the display.

Why wouldnt the BlackLivesMatter folks tear down the display? They know the administration wont take action against them.

In her letter explaining why Dartmouth didnt punish the Baker Library protesters, Rumsden invoked the First Amendment. She said that in an academic setting, freedom of speech is mission crucial. She concluded, inelegantly, that the standards of the First Amendment are what are used to guide this process.

But the destruction of the pro-police display makes a mockery of this claim. Freedom of speech includes the right to display pro-police material. Yet black students were able to deprive other students of this right, apparently with impunity.

At Dartmouth, free speech is a one way street. It protects the right of left-wing Black students to racially insult and threaten white students, but does not protect the right of conservative students to articulate their ideas. How warped!

Is such a College still worthy of alumni support?
PR-Inside.com: 2016-05-31 09:04:01

Policy Roadmap Looks Towards 5G Connectivity and Services Across Europe

GSMA Outlines Seven Steps to Achieving European Leadership in Mobile

Media:

Olivier Lechien, +32 479 99 01 63

PR Director, Europe

olechien@gsma.com

or

GSMA Press Office

pressoffice@gsma.com

The GSMA today outlined seven policy steps necessary for Europe to regain a leading position in mobile. Demand for mobile data continues to rise across the continent, especially with the growth in 4G. As mobile technology progresses towards 5G, Europe has an opportunity to reclaim a leading digital role and extend fast mobile connectivity to all of its citizens. To make this a reality and better exploit the scale of a Digital Single Market, governments and policymakers must deliver a regulatory reset that attracts investment and promotes the rollout of advanced mobile solutions across industries and public services.

This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/201605310053

GSMA Outlines Seven Steps to Achieving European Leadership in Mobile (Photo: Business Wire)

For Europe to catch up in 4G and become a leader in 5G, a fundamental change in approach to telecoms policy is required, said John Giusti, Chief Regulatory Officer, GSMA. We have identified seven critical areas for action that, taken together, can propel Europe to the forefront of the global digital economy and deliver the next wave of mobile innovation to its citizens.

Seven Policy Actions to Realise European 5G Ambitions

1. Change objectives of the EU telecoms framework to target investment and sustainable competition in the long term interests of consumers

European regulation must aim to achieve consistently higher levels of network investment than it has seen in recent years if it is to achieve Europes ambitions in 5G. This is only possible if regulators target sustainable levels of competition to maximise consumer benefits over the long term. The framework should therefore require regulators to promote growth, innovation, and investment in communications markets for the long-term benefit of end users.

2. Deregulate mobile services and refocus policy in relation to spectrum

With new forms of competition in telecoms services markets on the rise, policymakers must seize the opportunity to deregulate and gain a leading role for Europe in 5G. Sector-specific regulation should be withdrawn where competition exists. The deregulation initiative should also include the removal of conditions in spectrum licences, such as wholesale access obligations, which are unrelated to the efficient allocation of spectrum.

3. Launch an ambitious mobile cost reduction initiative

The significant increase in investment levels needed to drive a European roadmap to 5G will only be achieved if the costs of mobile network deployment are significantly reduced. The European Commission should examine what can be done to further reduce the costs of mobile network deployment, including the costs of sites, spectrum fees and other input taxes.

4. Focus on what drives high performance

BEREC should lead in developing a better understanding of the factors needed to produce high performing markets that meet the needs of consumers. Regulators should seek to expand the supply of spectrum in order to reduce the need for spectrum caps or other interventions.

5. Allow networks to meet new demands by providing flexibility

The demands placed on mobile networks today are straightforward in comparison with the future requirements of the Internet of Things, connected apps and an expected significant growth in data traffic over the next five years. Regulations that set simple, uniform targets for network coverage or that equate network quality with speed will no longer be appropriate or relevant in the future. Net neutrality regulations that ignore the vastly different performance standards required by different applications will inhibit innovation, raise costs and harm consumers.

6. Ensure spectrum rights promote investment

Spectrum policy needs to be growth and investment-focused if Europe is to take a leading role in 5G. We need to simplify and clarify renewal terms and aim to move to perpetual licences in the long term. As more spectrum is released, the need for spectrum caps should reduce, while action is needed on fees, reserve prices and regulatory obligations to ensure that spectrum is licensed in a way that promotes the network investment required to exploit it.

7. Prioritise mobile in delivering wider policy goals

European policymakers should ensure they prioritise mobile when designing policies to address wider goals and the delivery of public services to citizens. Many of these goals will be achieved commercially if the supplementary actions proposed by the GSMA are implemented. If subsidies are required to meet objectives that benefit society as a whole, then they should be met from general taxation.

-ENDS-

About the GSMA

The GSMA represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide, uniting nearly 800 operators with more than 250 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset and device makers, software companies, equipment providers and internet companies, as well as organisations in adjacent industry sectors. The GSMA also produces industry-leading events such as Mobile World Congress, Mobile World Congress Shanghai and the Mobile 360 Series conferences.

For more information, please visit the GSMA corporate website at www.gsma.com. Follow the GSMA on Twitter: @GSMA.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/201605310053
President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the formation of a presidential commission that would help improve the ease of doing business in Nigeria, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has said.

The latest World Bank Doing Business Report 2016 said it was more difficult to do business in Nigeria in 2016 than it was last year, as the country remained one of the poorest business destinations in the world.

Of 189 countries surveyed, Nigeria improved marginally by just one step from its ranking last year, moving from 170th position with 43.56 per cent points in 2015 to 169 with 44.69 per cent points.

Mr. Osinbajo said at the first quarterly consultative meeting between the presidency and the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, MAN, on Friday, that the commission would work to make it easy to do business in the country.

Mr. Osinbajo said the commission would have a secretariat that would be headed by a private sector professional who would pay greater attention to issues of doing business in the country.

At the meeting, MAN raised several concerns about multiple taxation, which the vice president promised to ensure was captured as one of the key issues the presidential commission would address to allay the fears of prospective investors in the country.

At the end of the meeting, MAN president, Frank Jacobs, expressed concern about vandalism of the countrys oil and gas facilities.

Although he said the association was happy about what the Federal Government was doing to create the right environment, Mr. Jacobs said MAN was concerned about the situation in the Niger Delta area, describing it as sabotage on the economic activities of government.
Mark Essien, the founder and chief executive of the largest hotel booking site in Nigeria, started Hotels.ng in 2013. Since then, the platform has grown to become the largest database for booking hotels in the country, with about 80 employees.

PREMIUM TIMES recently met with Mr. Essien to share his experiences in the first of a series of interviews with Nigerias young, innovative and smart entrepreneurs who continue to make a difference in society, dedicated to improving their lives and other Nigerians. Excerpts:

PREMIUM TIMES: Give us a story from your background that should resonate with the average Nigerian youth

ESSIEN: Back in my pre-teen and teen years, I had asked a lot of questions, quite like every young person. This was at a time when Google was not yet available. So, I could not just ask the internet. The closest thing, however, was the public library in Ikot Ekpene, Akwa Ibom state, where I spent most of my free time.

I think being a reader and an observer of people in society, and having a father who was so passionate about building stuff, led me down this career path. What I am saying essentially is this: everyones story has a developmental phase, which has a mix of good, bad and neutral life-shapers. If you meander towards the seemingly inconsequential, yet positive influences of your life, you will be positioning yourself to ride the wave towards defining yourself as the person you would be proud of introducing to other people.

PREMIUM TIMES: Enlighten us on your educational background and experience?

ESSIEN: I spent the first 18 years of my life in Ikot Ekpene, Akwa Ibom. After I was done with secondary school in Federal Government College, Ikot Ekpene, I went to Germany for my tertiary education where I acquired a Bachelors Degree in Engineering and a Masters in Science. In that time I honed my coding skills and started building applications for the then  nascent Apple App Store. I have since then returned to Nigeria to set up Hotels.ng.

PREMIUM TIMES: You once said your first paid job was as a night watchman for a paralysed man. How many phases would you say you have passed between that time and where you are now?

ESSIEN: I would say about six phases. First, as an employee, then as a student, a freelancer, as an App developer, as a masters student, and now as a founder of Hotels.ng.

PREMIUM TIMES: Aside Hotels.ng, what other business engagements are you involved in? Tell us the process that led up to the establishment of Hotels.ng.

ESSIEN: I am currently not involved in other businesses, because I believe in the power of focus. In the moments that led up to me founding Hotels.ng, start-up fever had just gripped Africa and innovators were exploring ways to tap into the market that the continent promised. This was the time where Jumia and Konga had started some operational tilling.

I observed that travel was also going to be the next big thing. I compared the Brazil and Indian hotel experience and travel tech space and I figured that it should be possible to replicate the model in Nigeria, as both countries bore similarities to Nigeria at that growth phase.

This was in the final months of my M.Sc and I was seriously considering a career

that would lead me on a worthwhile venture in Nigeria. My ideas for Hotels.ng at the time were, at best, a well-researched hypothesis. So, I returned to Nigeria to test them out and the results since then have justified my thinking.

PREMIUM TIMES: What informed your decision to establish Hotels.ng? What were your expectations for the platform? Have they been met?

ESSIEN: I conducted a rigorous market analysis before I started Hotels.ng. My expectations have largely been exceeded- the market is larger than even I anticipated. Although I started the company with just $300 in 2013, we are currently selling hotel rooms in billions of naira after under three years of operation. Suffice it to say that I am living quite comfortably.

PREMIUM TIMES: What are the real or perceived threats to the Nigerian innovation space?

ESSIEN: A potential threat to innovation happens when the innovators get pulled into fields that pay well, but do not require innovation. This calls attention to unemployment in the country. Therefore, we all have a duty to support and preserve innovative minds for Nigeria to achieve more.

PREMIUM TIMES: What can unemployed youth who are interested in entrepreneurship do in current circumstances to become successful business owners?

ESSIEN: They should study their field of interest, and not just cursorily. True innovation comes from in-depth understanding of the workings of a particular field.

Today, at Hotels.ng, we reach over 400 million people, this would not be possible if those working there did not have a deep understanding of what the job entails.

We create and improve every day, something all entrepreneurs have to master if they will make a difference. However, every prospective entrepreneur must be aware that all entrepreneurs face challenges and must be prepared for that. Managing a growing team is a challenge that one has to deal with daily. There are, of course, also the standard Nigerian problems of power and internet.

PREMIUM TIMES: If you were not a software developer, what would you be?

ESSIEN: I would probably be a police officer.

PREMIUM TIMES: What is your opinion on Nigerian entrepreneurs? Would you invest in small upcoming businesses?

ESSIEN: I am not yet at the stage where I am ready to invest. But there is no doubt that Nigerian entrepreneurs are some of the best in the world.

PREMIUM TIMES: Your blogpost How to become rich in a time of a dying Naira, published on February 13, 2016, was rather impressive. What is the one advice you have for upcoming entrepreneurs in the country with the current economic downturn?

ESSIEN: I would say the focus for Nigeria and Nigerians should be on producing and building right now. If you can produce anything in Nigeria that can be sold online to a foreign market, you are guaranteed to be a winner with the current exchange rate. Also, I would advise them to stick to building entrepreneurship based on business before engaging in social entrepreneurship.

PREMIUM TIMES: Tell us about your companys Corporate Social Responsibility portfolio.

ESSIEN: Lately we have been educating the public about Nigerias flora and fauna  the wildlife, and the beauty and the potential it holds for all of us. It is paradoxical that it is at once flourishing and becoming endangered. So, we embarked on several social campaigns to reverse this effect.

In January 2016, we launched the #ThisYearIMustVisit, a campaign that spotlights some of the lesser-known tourist destinations in Nigeria, using our analytics to bring insights into hitherto overlooked parts of the country.

We also had a #RestoreOurcampaign, a collaborative project where we tried to rehabilitate iconic landmarks in the country. This is an on-going project. We also raised awareness after the death of the Jos Lion about Africas diminishing lion population. We are always interested in partnering with platforms that intersect with our field for social good.

PREMIUM TIMES: Thank you indeed for your time.

ESSIEN: Thank you for having me.
The Federal Government has said that there will be no going back on the 45 per cent increase in electricity tariff, adding that a reversal will cost over N575 billion.

The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, made the statement in Abuja on Tuesday when he briefed the Senate Committees on Labour and Power during a public hearing on the new electricity tariff.

The Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) in January announced a 45 per cent increment in electricity tariff.

The Senate, after considering a motion at plenary in January, directed that the tariff be reversed to enable it conclude hearing on the case.

However, the minister explained that the new tariff could not be reversed as it was necessary for the market to survive.

He said a number of indices, such as borrowing rate for investors, exchange rate , availability and cost of gas, among others also contributed to the hike.

One of the reasons why the tariff had to go up was that a major component, a significant number of our power plant depends on gas and out of about 26 power plants that we have only about three are hydro.

We were heavily dependent on gas, people were exporting gas because gas was selling outside the country at four dollars and it was selling for domestic use at one dollar, he said.

The minister said even with the recent hike in electricity tariff, Nigeria was still among countries with the lowest electricity tariffs in Africa and the world.

Mr. Fashola added that since 2005 when the power privatization process started till 2013 when it was concluded, every segment of government was involved and would share the blame if there was any failure.

Enabling laws for the process were passed by the National Assembly in 2005 , the process completed by the Executive in 2013: if the process was bad, where was oversight? he asked.

Mr. Fashola, however, pleaded with the lawmakers and Nigerians to be more patient with the government and investors on the process, saying three years was not enough to judge its success or failure.

Explaining the non-implementation of the directive by Senate to reverse the tariff, Anthony Akah, Acting Chairman, NERC, said that the directive would have created avoidable setbacks in the sector.

He said if the directive was implemented, a market gap of about N575 billion would have been created which would have compounded the initial market gap of N187 billion the take-off tariff put on investors.

He said that NERC was also hindered by a court order, obtained by six generating and distribution companies.

He said that the commission could also not easily reverse the tariff as the process was in compliance with section 76 (8) of the law guiding the operations of the commission.

But the joint committee insisted that it was unacceptable for Nigerians to be paying so much but have limited power supply.

The committee adjourned the public hearing to Wednesday.

(NAN)
The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja on Tuesday failed to continue hearing into an application filed by the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, challenging the jurisdiction of the Code of Conduct Tribunal trying him for alleged false asset declaration.

Mr. Saraki is facing a 16-count charge for alleged false asset declaration while he was governor of Kwara State and later senator.

The Court had during its last sitting in April set aside May 31 to continue hearing on the senate presidents application, challenging an earlier ruling by the CCT.

It also held that a five-member panel, which would form a quorum would preside over Tuesdays sitting, but had to adjourn following the inability of the members of the bench to form quorum.

A three-member panel of the court, led by Justice Moore Adumien, stated that Mr. Sarakis case would be adjourned till June 2, following the inability of two of its members to join the sitting.

It is a constitutional matter which requires a quorum, Mr. Adumien said.

Mr. Sarakis lawyers had approached the appeal court after the CCT chairman, Danladi Umar, on March 24, dismissed an application challenging the jurisdiction of the tribunal to try him (Mr. Saraki).

The application which was filed by Kanu Agabi, lead counsel to Mr. Saraki, on March 11, sought to establish the validity of the senste presidents charge.

Mr. Agabi had in that application argued that his client should have been given the privilege to either affirm or deny the charges against him before he was arraigned before the CCT.

Mr. Agabi also contended that the tribunal had in a previous ruling nullified a similar case involving a former Lagos State governor, Bola Tinubu.

He therefore prayed the tribunal set aside the ongoing trial, describing it as invalid, and against Mr. Sarakis right to fair hearing.

But in a ruling March 24, Mr. Umar held that the arguments raised by Mr. Agabi in the motion filed could come up along with the substantive suit.

Mr. Umar also held that the application lacked merit and could not warrant the discontinuation of Mr. Sarakis trial.
Nigeria has more enslaved people than any country in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Global Slavery Index 2016, released on Tuesday, has revealed.

The survey, conducted in 167 countries across the world by anti-modern slavery organisation, Walk Free Foundation, revealed that there are 875,500 people living in slavery in Nigeria.

The survey said of the 45.8 million people living in slavery in the world, 13.6 percent (6,228,800) are in Africa.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (873,100 people) and Ethiopia (411,600 people) have the second and third largest numbers of people living in slavery sub-Saharan Africa respectively.

According to the survey, slavery in Nigeria takes the form of forced labour in the domestic sector. Forced marriages also account for the second highest form of slavery in the country, the report revealed.

The report revealed that conflict, economic crisis and environmental disaster are the major enablers of modern slavery in Sub-Saharan Africa.

For instance, the survey showed that the Boko Haram conflict in the countrys north east led to an increase of people living in slavery in Nigeria and other neighbouring countries like Chad and Cameroon.

The Islamist group has kidnapped thousands of people in the north east region most of them women and children who they use as sex slaves and put to forced labour.

Modern slavery in the Sub-Sahara was enabled by economic conditions, violent conflict and territorial displacement, in addition to widespread humanitarian and environmental crises, the report said.

The escalation of violence in Nigeria following the Boko Haram conflict has had widespread effects on Nigeria and across the region, particularly in Cameroon where refugees fleeing conflict have sparked a humanitarian crisis.

As of February 2016, 2.5 million people were displaced as a result of the conflict and 20,000 people have been killed. Conflict is also prevalent in Chad and Cameroon, where Boko Haram is also active in creating violent conflicts, and in recruiting young entrepreneurs through predatory loans.

The report, which has been described as the most accurate up-to-date analysis of slavery in history, was arrived at after 42,000 interviews conducted in 53 languages, covering 44% of global population.

It revealed that there are 28 percent (10 million) more people in slavery across the world than previously estimated. Modern slavery, it noted, takes the form of human trafficking, forced labour, debt bondage, forced or servile marriage or commercial sexual exploitation.

Globally, North Korea is the country with the greatest prevalence of modern slavery, with 4.37% of its population estimated to be enslaved. It is also the country with the weakest government response in terms of actions taken to combat modern slavery, the report showed.

In terms of absolute numbers, the report discovered that India has the highest with an estimated 18.35 million enslaved people, followed by China (3.39m), Pakistan (2.13m), Bangladesh (1.53m) and Uzbekistan (1.23m).

Combined, these five countries account for almost 58% of the worlds enslaved, or 26.6 million people.

Government response

Walk Free Foundation described the response of governments in Sub-Sahara Africa to modern slavery in their domains as inadequate. It said that reports on actions taken by governments to combat modern slavery do not exist.

Government responses to modern slavery in Sub-Saharan Africa were characterised by inadequate victim protection and a lack of coordination between government agencies and NGO bodies.

Reliable data on the steps taken by the government to combat modern slavery was unavailable.

Despite 33 of the 45 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa running campaigns against known modern slavery risks since 2010, few have raised awareness on methods to identify victims.

The only country to make this an annual practice was Burundi, whose Children and Ethics Brigade ran anti-trafficking awareness programmes from at least 2011 to 2014. While 28 countries provided a mechanism to report modern slavery, less than half covered all demographics and even fewer had evidence of translation services. Comprehensive reporting mechanisms were only provided in South Africa and Lesotho.
Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar on Tuesday urged Nigerians to give President Muhammadu Buhari a pass mark for his efforts in the first year of his administration.

He made the call in Abuja at the launch of a book titled We Are All Biafrans written by Chido Onumah.

According to Atiku, who was chairman at the occasion, of the five areas the Buhari administration pledged to face, he has accomplished two and should be encouraged.

He promised to look into issues like power, insurgency, unemployment, corruption and diversification and if you are to take two out of five, you can give him a pass mark.

He has dealt with corruption and with Boko Haram. For power, give him time, he said.

Atiku said that power supply issue was complex, adding that unless the Niger Delta issue was resolved Nigeria may not get electricity soon.

I think the Niger Delta should be handled with a stick and carrot approach. In 2007, before I ran for president, I met with various stakeholders on the Niger Delta issue and they came up with a policy.

Part of the recommendations was that the ministry be moved to the Niger Delta and not Abuja. We have had administrations that did not do their homework on the Niger Delta.

If I had won, I would have sold 10 per cent shares in the NNPC; that will give me 20 billion dollars which would build infrastructure for the Niger Delta but we will always end up with accidental leadership.

Bring peace and development to the Niger Delta then they will stop blowing up pipelines. Then, we will get gas and then power can be stable but until then, we will not get it.

Other recommendations he gave for a better Nigeria were a smaller, leaner Federal Government with reduced responsibilities. This means devolution of powers and resources to states and local governments.

State and local governments should control education, health, agriculture, roads and other infrastructure.

A true federal system will allow the federating states to keep their resources while the Federal Government retains the power of taxation and regulatory authority over standards.

The result will be a political and governmental system that empowers local authorities and gives them greater autonomy to address peculiar local issues, while enhancing accountability and contributing to the general good of the country.

Such a robust federal system will reduce the tensions that are built into our current over-centralized system, he said.

The former president also preached autonomy for states, a tax-centred revenue base, enhanced, diversified economic activities and productivity in order to enlarge their tax bases.

He also proposed an end to the indigene-settler dichotomy, the creation of a state police to complement the federal police and help in the fight against crime.

He called for a restructuring of the country, saying Nigeria is not working as well as it should and part of the reason is the way we have structured our country and governance, especially since the late 1960s.

The Federal Government is too big and too powerful relative to the federating states. That situation needs to change and calling for that change is patriotic.

We must refrain from the habit of assuming that anyone calling for the restructuring of our federation is working for the break-up of the country.

An excessively powerful centre does not equate with national unity. If anything, it has made our unity more fragile, our government more unstable and our country more unsafe.

He said that restructuring would promote healthy rivalries among the federating units and local authorities thereby making us richer and stronger as a nation.

The author of the book said that he believed in true federalism and that the 214-page would sensitise the reader to note that most, if not all, of the problems of Nigeria were located in the way the country was structured.

A journalist, blogger and human rights activist, Mr. Onumah called for a look at the socio-political restructuring of Nigeria to ward off a looming catastrophe that could endanger our collective well-being. (NAN)
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, has announced the completion of electronic voting system for members of the lower chamber.

Mr. Dogara said the adoption of the system was in tandem with the legislative goals of the 8th National Assembly.

In a statement posted on his personal Website Monday, Mr. Dogara said paperworks had been dispatched to all the 360 lawmakers in the House for collation of data needed for production of their e-voting cards.

Mr. Dogara said the modern voting system made provisions for easy scrutiny of members voting records, patterns and punctuality by their constituents.

According to the legislative agenda of the 8th Assembly, The 8th House commits to the use of ICT (Information and communications technology) in the daily conduct of legislative activities of the House. E-parliament and e-voting platforms will be made a regular feature of the House.

E-voting will be used regularly during voting to properly reflect voting records of Members and parliamentary accountability. The House shall collaborate with relevant stakeholders to achieve the goal of an e-parliament, the agenda reads.

The electronic-parliament will operate on a modern, cutting edge digital technology, Mr. Dogara said.
Niger Delta Avengers, the new militant group that has claimed responsibility for recent attacks on oil and gas installations in the Niger Delta, has denied a Nigerian militarys claim that its members were arrested.

The 4th Brigade of the Nigerian Army, garrisoned in Benin, had on Sunday announced the arrest of 10 suspected militants specialised in disruption of oil and gas facilities and their weapons.

But, in a post on its Twitter handle early Tuesday, the Avengers said the militarys claims were spurious.

Our attention has (been) drawn to the arrest of 10 Niger Delta Avengers boys by Nigeria Military. None of our strike team has been arrested, the group said. Its all a lie.

The Avengers also denied that any of its members had been killed, contrary to a claim credited to the military Joint-Task Force operating in the region.

Nigeria Military also lied that NDA kill(ed) soldiers. We havent engaged in combat with them but if they want us to kill them let them come after us, the group said.

Army spokesman, Sani Usman, told PREMIUM TIMES those paraded confirmed membership of the militant group during interrogations.

We paraded them for the world to see because we were able to establish that theyre militants and members of that new group, Mr. Sani, a colonel, said. The group has resulted to propaganda because they know the media will report their activities and I think the general public should be wary of the unfounded claims being made by this faceless group.

Nigerian Army is a constituted authority in this country and we will not lower ourselves to cheap lies like the Avengers, that is where you cant see any basis for comparison between us and them, Mr. Sani said.

The Avengers has launched several attacks on oil and gas infrastructure since February 2016, demanding a sovereign nation of the Niger Delta people.

Last Thursday, it claimed responsibility for an attack on a gas pipeline belonging to Chevron in Delta state.

We warned Chevron, but they didnt listen. NDA just blew up the Escravos tank farm main electricity feed pipeline, the group said.

The militants said the oil facilities were sabotaged following attempts by Chevron to carry out repairs of main Escravos crude oil pipeline it blew up earlier.

A spokesperson for the group, Mudoch Agbinibo, had earlier this month warned the Nigerian government of further attacks if their demands were not met.

Last week, Chevrons Makaraba crude oil line was attacked on the offshore Okan manifold in the region.

The attack followed previous ones on the companys facilities at Abiteye, Utunana and Makaraba platforms in Warri South-West area of Delta State resulting in the loss of over 40,000 barrels of oil per day.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, on Tuesday presented 40 documents containing evidences against former Jigawa governor, Sule Lamido.

Mr. Lamido is standing trial at the Federal High Court, Abuja, for alleged financial misappropriation.

Also charged are Mr. Lamidos children, Aminu and Mustapha, as well as two companies, Bamaina Holdings construction company and Speeds International Limited.

The documents, which were tendered by lead prosecution counsel, Chile Okoroma, were added to 110 other documents earlier presented in court, containing financial transactions by Mr. Lamido through Dantata and Sawoe Nigeria Limited, as well as Bamaina Company Ltd.

According to the documents, between N5 million and over N20 million were paid to the companies on the former governors instruction.

After the documents were tendered during a session which lasted over six hours, the judge, Adeniyi Ademola, asked the prosecution to re-organise the documents for ease of presentation.

Mr. Ademola said if the documents were self-explanatory, it was unnecessary to admit them individually.

The judge added that the statements of the prosecution witness, Micheal Wetkas, formed the basis for the admissibility of the documents.

Mr. Ademola therefore asked that the defence be provided copies of the documents, to allow them review same for ease of presentation in court.

Other documents tendered as evidence were a letter of proposal for supply of consumables to Dantata and Sawoe Construction Company Ltd from Speeds International Ltd, along with financial documents for the transaction.

The case was adjourned till Tuesday for further hearing.
There are at least seven steps the Nigerian government should take to end the brewing military conflict in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, a coalition of several civil society activists and organizations have said.

The region is facing increasing military operations as the government responds to a new wave of militancy led by a group named Niger Delta Avengers, which has claimed responsibility for a series of attacks on oil and gas infrastructure.

Oil accounts for about 35 percent of Nigerias gross domestic product and petroleum exports revenue represents over 90 percent of total exports revenue.

The oil and gas industry is also key to the functioning of other sectors, including power.

Attacks by the new militant group has shut down nearly 50 percent of output and production is down to 1.1 million barrels per day, experts say.

The militants say they want a sovereign Niger Delta state.

In a statement endorsed by 29 individuals and organization, on Tuesday in Port Harcourt, activists advised the government to demilitarize and pursue a non-violent approaches as well as other key steps to resolve the conflict. They suggest seven steps.

Convene a meeting involving stakeholders drawn from both the civil society, community leadership and the state actors including representations of women and gender experts in line with the UNSCR 1325 to discuss the way forward as a matter of urgency.

Adopt a sustainable long-term approach of peace-building and conflict transformation in the Niger Delta that does not merely focus on reducing the symptoms of social restiveness.

Review the strategy of invasion by the military and paramilitary agencies currently going on in most Niger Delta communities in order not to further escalate the conflict.

There is an urgent need for multi-governmental security collaboration among the Federal, States and local governments, as well as the communities in the Niger Delta region for the adoption and implementation of a more efficient and effective security blueprint in the region.

Tone down the narrative of show of force and explore alternative ways of dealing with the conflict.

Ensure legal and financial support for the take-off of the Maritime University in Okerenkoko, desired by the vast majority of persons in the locale.

Holistic implementation of the Ledum Mittee Technical Report as well as review the decision to expunge the Host Community fund clause in the PIB pending in the National Assembly.

On the part of the militants, the activists advised that Sheath (their) swords and embrace peaceful resolution of conflict.
A senator from Bayelsa State, Ben Murray-Bruce, on Monday said operatives of the State Security Service prevented him from greeting President Muhammadu Buhari at a state dinner organised to mark 2016 Democracy Day.

Mr. Murray-Bruce tweeted around 10:45pm on Monday, I was at the Presidential Villa today, went to the presidents table. DSS wouldnt allow me greet him, but let another senator greet him.

The senator later expanded the tweet on his Facebook page, adding, I have nothing against the President, however, nobody is too important to be criticized and my mouth will never be silenced!

He did not name the senator that was allowed passage to the president after he (Murray-Bruce) was bounced.

The SSS could not be reached for comments. The agency has had no spokesperson since its former press interface, Marilyn Ogar, was sacked from service.

The dinner was hosted by Mr. Buhari, and had in attendance the President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki; the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara; former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and a aational leader of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu, among others.

Mr. Murray-Bruce, who is a Peoples Democratic Party member, and one of the ardent critics of the Buhari administration, had earlier tweeted a photo of himself in the company of other guests at the dinner.

The senator is famous among Nigerians for his #BuyNaijaGrowTheNaira campaign which is meant to encourage patronage for indigenous goods and services.

President Buhari at the dinner urged the National Assembly to speed up the passage of the 2016 budgets of the Federal Capital Territory, and the Niger Delta Development Commission.
The Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase, has directed that members of the Indigenous people of Biafra, IPOB, arrested in connection with the killing of policemen during a clash on Monday, be tried for murder.

At least five protesters were shot dead by soldiers near the Niger Bridge as the group held protests to mark the 49th anniversary of the declaration of the defunct Biafra Republic.

Pro-Biafra activists attacked and killed two policemen and injured two others during the fracas.

The army said it arrested nine protesters and handed them over to the police.

More protesters were arrested in Ebonyi when they gathered to observe what the group as the Biafra Day.

The police chief, Mr. Arase, said in a statement, Tuesday, that the IPOB members be disarmed, wherever they are found bearing arms.

He lamented the killing of the groups members but said the police and other security organisations will not allow any group disturb the peace of the nation.

Following the manifestation of the disposition of the armed IPOB activists to undertake premeditated attacks on Police officers engaged in operations aimed at restoring public order in States in the South-East and South-South geopolitical zone of the country, the Inspector-General of Police, IGP Solomon Arase, has directed the Assistant Inspectors General of Police and the Commissioners of Police in the affected area to disarm members of the group operating firearms immediately, said the statement signed by the force spokesperson, Olabisi Kolawole.

IGP Arase, while condemning the killing by members of IPOB, also directed the arrest of any member of the group found in possession of firearm and bring him/her to deserved justice, while all IPOB activists arrested in connection with the killing of the policemen should be charged to court for murder, the statement said.

Mr. Arase assured Nigerians of his commitment to their safety and security, adding that efforts would be focused on eliminating all forms of internal threats by unlawful groups.
The 31 Artillery Brigade of the Nigerian Army, Minna, on Tuesday said the religious violence, which claimed four lives in Rafi Local Government Area of Niger on Sunday, had been brought under control.

Njideka Agwu, a major and the Assistant Director, Army Public Relations Officer (APRO), who made this known to journalists in Minna, said the army, police and the NSCDC had restored peace in the area.

She said Methodus Emmanuel, a 24-year-old trader based in Padongari, was killed on Sunday by a mob over allegations of blasphemy.

Three other persons, including personnel of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps also lost their lives.

Troops of the 31 Artillery Brigade of One Division, Nigeria Army, quickly intervened and restored law and order while a dusk-to-dawn curfew was imposed in the town, she said.

Ms. Agwu also said that a religious house, a house and a shop were burnt while 25 other shops were looted following the violence.

She said that the hoodlums embarked on further violence on Monday morning, looting shops and blocking the Lagos  Kaduna road, a major highway connecting the northern and southern parts of the country.

The spokesperson said that the army had made some arrests in connection with the incident, adding that the suspects had been handed over to the police.

The army and other security agencies have commenced confidence building patrols in all the nooks and crannies of the area toward restoring peace.

As part of measures to de-escalate tension and ensure lasting peace in the town, the military is working with the local government council authorities and community leaders, including the Kagara Emirate Council, to pacify all aggrieved parties and build on the peace so far established, she said.

Ms. Agwu said that the army would continue with its non-violent approach to maintaining peace in the area.

She, however, warned that the army would deal with any person attempting to promote violence in the community.

Ms. Agwu enjoined members of the public to abide by the conditions of the curfew put in place in order to maintain peace.(NAN)
The outgoing Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Adamawa, Joel Madaki, on Tuesday denied media reports that he promised to refund N5 million to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Mr. Madakis name was among those listed to have received money from former Petroleum Minister, Diezani Allison-Madueke for the 2015 Presidential Campaign.

In a statement issued in Yola, Mr. Madaki said he never made such promise to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

I never promised to return the N5 million.

What I said was that if it is proven beyond reasonable doubt that the N5 million is from the Presidential Campaign Fund and when it is discovered that it was not used for that purpose, then the Adamawa PDP Secretariat and myself shall arrange to refund.

Mr. Madaki acknowledged that he received N450 million as campaign fund for the state, but said that the money was delivered to a Disbursement Committee at the Government House, Yola.

According to him, the disbursement committee gave the party only N5 million out of the money.

Since I was not a member of the distribution committee, as soon as the money was handed to the committee and they counted it to be correct, I left the venue, he stated.

(NAN)
The senator representing Bayelsa East Senatorial District, Ben Murray-Bruce, was ruffled by presidential security detail during a dinner with the president Monday night because he breached elementary protocol, his colleagues present at the event said.

An infuriated Mr. Murray-Bruce had shortly after the feast taken to his Twitter page to protest the way he was treated, suggesting that the action was meted out to him because of his criticism of Mr. Buharis policies.

I was at the Presidential Villa today. Went to the Presidents table. DSS wouldnt allow me greet him but let another Senator greet him! Mr. Bruce tweeted.

A few minutes later, the lawmaker responded to a Twitter user who challenged him on his claim, saying, Kadir, if PMBs handlers selectively block access to him, he runs the risk of being surrounded only by sycophants!

My critics say I shouldnt criticize the president openly, so I go and meet him one on one and Im blocked. Am I not a Nigerian citizen?

Mr. Bruces tweets immediately went viral, with many of his supporters saying their fears that Mr. Buhari was intolerant of dissent had been bolstered by the development.

But in separate reactions to the news on Tuesday, Mr. Murray-Bruces colleagues in the senate said they were disappointed.

Sola Adeyeye, the senator representing Osun Central Senatorial District, said he had a vivid recollection of what transpired at the dinner because he was seated at the front row.

I was at the dinner. I sat in the front row along with other principal officers of the National Assembly. I had a vantage view of what transpired, Mr. Adeyeye said. I am disappointed by this comment from a respected colleague.

I have on two occasions provided robust defence of Senator Ben Bruce. Not this time!

Mr. Adeyeye offered more explanation about the events.

It was Sen Dino Melaye who first went to greet those seated at the Presidents table, including President Buhari. He was well greeted. No one in the senate has criticized President Buhari more than Sen Melaye.

But as others rose to do what Dino had done, the scene got clumsy and indecorous because people were approaching the Presidents table from different directions. I sat between Sen Olujimi and Sen Bwacha. The three of us felt embarrassed by what was clearly a breach of dinner protocol. At that level, if dinner was served or being served, good etiquette demanded that the Presidents table should not be approached.

One should wait until people had finished eating. No senator in the USA would breach such elementary protocol. We (on my table) predicted in whispers that colleagues would soon be barred from approaching the Presidents table and it happened.

The first person to be turned back was Sen Gemade who was visibly embarrassed. He belongs to the APC; he is not a known critic of the President.

When I noticed that most people had finished their food, I approached the table and offered my pleasantries. Others followed suit. No one was turned back, Mr. Adeyeye said.

The senator representing Kaduna Central Senator District, Shehu Sani, who was also present at the dinner, similarly rebuked Mr. Murray-Bruce for his outburst.

We met with Mr. President at the Villa yesternight. He was frank and blunt with us and we were honest with him. He addressed us, and those nominated to speak responded, raised issues and asked questions of which he answered. I actually wanted to speak but I was not so lucky, Mr. Sani said.

Mr. Sani further explained that he was taken aback by Mr. Murray-Bruces claim.

I was surprised to learn that one of us later disclosed that he was prevented by security agents from coming close to Mr. President.

I personally experienced no such. And I dont think Mr. President can bar any legislator from coming close to him for holding different opinion on national issues. I always have an independent mind and will always speak my mind when there is the need to do so.

For decades, Mr President knows me for that and still respects me for that. Its not everything the security agents do that Mr. President will know.

Mr. Presidents address to us was comprehensive and satisfying. Wishing him Lords blessings and good health in this historic mission to rebuild our great country. PMB is a leader we most need and deserve at this time.

PREMIUM TIMES later gathered that Mr. Sani was the senator who met with Mr. President before Mr. Murray-Bruce was declined access.

Mr. Murray-Bruce did not return PREMIUM TIMES text message seeking for his comment for this story.
Want to shrink your air conditioning costs this summer? Invest in a good fan!

The average central air conditioner uses 3,500 watts of electricity, while the average ceiling fan uses only 75 watts  and smaller units use even less. If using a fan means running the A/C a little less every day, this can add up to noticeable savings over time.

While a fan doesn't cool down the air like an air conditioner, it does move warm air away from your skin to leave you feeling cooler. On top of that, if you're in a space that's already air-conditioned, a fan helps to circulate the cold air from the A/C to cool a room more quickly.

If you're fan shopping this summer, here's what you need to know about the different types, features, prices, and brands to look out for.

8 Fantastic Types of Fans

Not all fans are made alike. The type of fan you want will depend on what you're using it for: Do you want to keep your cubicle at work cool, or do you need to cool your entire living room? Typically, the larger the fan, the larger the space it will cool, so consider where yours will stay before you buy.

Box, Desk, Pedestal, and Wall-Mount Fans

These appliances are likely what you think of when you think of a fan. They have propeller-style blades that spin to circulate air, located behind a grate for safety. The different names simply refer to different sizes and case styles, each of which is better for a different use.

Box Fans

Box fans are large and square, with an open back that can help them pull air from one space to another  especially if you place them in a doorway or window. Their size can make them good choices for cooling large rooms, but they can be bulky.

Typical cost: $20 - $40

Desk Fans

Desk fans are just what they sound like: small appliances designed to sit on your desk. These low-power fans can keep you cool, but not much more. The smallest models may be powered by USB from your computer, though most have a standard power cord.

Typical cost: $15 - $30

Pedestal Fans

Pedestal fans are mounted on a pedestal, sometimes with an adjustable height and angle to let you point them where you need the air to go.

Typical cost: $25 - $50

Wall-Mount Fans

Designed to be mounted to the wall, this style is perfect for when you need a permanent fan but don't have the space for a ceiling unit. These can be good solutions for garages, workshops, and even patios.

Typical cost: $40 - $60

SEE ALSO: Don't Sweat It! 9 Tips for Getting Air Conditioning on a Budget

Tower Fans

These fans are tall and slim, with blades hidden away inside the tower. They're typically large enough to cool entire rooms. Plus, they take up less space than box fans, which makes them easy to leave out all summer long. Watch out, because some can be top-heavy and tip over easily.

Typical cost: $30 - $80

Bladeless Fans

The name is a bit of a misnomer because these fans actually do have blades, but they're hidden away inside the base. They're often powerful  even small bladeless fans can move a lot of air  but they're also the priciest fans you'll find. This category is dominated by the brand Dyson.

Typical cost: $250 - $400

Ceiling Fans

These fans are permanently mounted to the ceiling of rooms inside or outside of your home. (Before you buy a ceiling fan for outdoor use, confirm that it's rated for that.) They're the biggest fans you'll find, which makes them perfect for cooling large spaces, but sizing them right is important. A typical small bedroom should have a 36" to 42" unit; a typical master bedroom needs a 44" fan; and living rooms or other large spaces require something in the 50" to 54" range. Here, style and design affect price, too.

Typical cost: $50 - $200

Air Purifier/Fan Combos

For allergy sufferers, an air purifier that removes allergens and other potential irritants from the air can be a must-have  and some have built-in fans to circulate the air, thus doing double duty. However, whether these can serve as worthwhile fans varies greatly by brand and style. Furthermore, these appliances can be pricey. The Dyson Pure Cool Link line combines a bladeless fan with a high-end air purifier, but these models start at $400.

Typical cost: $100 - $550

9 Fan Features to Look For

While you don't necessarily need all of these features, here are nine you should keep an eye out for when you're shopping.

CFM: Standing for "cubic feet per minute," this number gives you an estimate of how much air the fan circulates (though it won't always be advertised on packaging). A higher CFM means more air movement, which means a more powerful product.

Noise: How loud a fan is can have a big impact on how much you'll enjoy having it around. You don't want to buy a device that's so noisy it keeps you from falling asleep, or so loud that you have to crank up the TV. Unfortunately, most fans won't note how loud they are (usually measured in decibels), so it's best if you can check out your choices in a store to hear how they sound.

Safety: Is the fan easy to tip over? Could children reach the blades and hurt themselves? If you have kids or pets in the house, you'll want to buy something that won't be hazardous.

Cleanability: How easy is it to clean? You'll want to clean your fan regularly to keep it from blowing dust and dirt around the room. With some fans, getting to the blades and wiping them down is simple, while others make this process difficult.

Size: Is the fan powerful enough to circulate air in the space where you plan to put it? Will it fit in your room? You don't want a fan that's too big or too small.

Oscillation: Many fans have an oscillation mode, which is ideal for larger rooms with multiple people to cool. For a desk fan, this isn't very important. But if you have a tower fan in your living room, oscillation will help everyone feel the breeze.

Adjustability: Can you adjust the height, tilt, or other settings to aim the fan just where you want it? Does it have multiple power settings? How many options you need is up to you, though you want enough customization to create your perfect breeze.

Remote control: Many fans  even ceiling fans  offer remotes. Look for one if it's a feature you'll use, but expect at least a slight price increase for units with this perk.

Warranty: You may not care if your $20 desk fan doesn't have a warranty, but you'll want one for your $500 ceiling unit.

SEE ALSO: Your 9 Biggest Warranty Questions  Answered

7 Reliable Fan Brands

There's no single brand to watch out for in the fan category, but a number of them reliably produce good products:

Honeywell, Holmes, and Seville Classics: These general consumer brands make a variety of fans that typically have good build quality. They're rarely the very best products you can buy, but they're never the worst  and they're moderately priced.

Vornado: Vornado's fans are designed to be "whole room air circulators" that keep the air moving at an even temperature. They can be a little loud and expensive compared to other brands, but they do an excellent job and often come with an impressive 5-year warranty.

Dyson: Though they're expensive, we can't deny that Dyson's bladeless fans are quiet and powerful  and the Pure Cool Link is something allergy sufferers will be interested in, despite the price.

Hunter: The company has been manufacturing ceiling fans since 1886, and it continues to make solid products in a range of prices, from budget-friendly to luxury.

Hampton Bay: Home Depot's house brand, Hampton Bay makes good ceiling fans at reasonable prices.

Readers, what features do you look for when you're buying a fan? Is there a brand you always tend to go with? Let us know in the comments below!
President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday met separately with some South East chieftains of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and six governors at the presidential villa, Abuja.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the two meetings were held behind closed doors.

NAN reports that the president first met with the governors of Zamfara, Akwa Ibom, Edo, Katsina, Ondo and Imo before the meeting with the South East politicians led by former Senate President, Ken Nnamani.

The 18-member delegation, under the aegis of South East Group for Change, comprised mainly members of the ruling APC.

The delegation included the National Auditor of APC, George Moghalu; former Senators Ifeanyi Ararume and Osita Izunaso.

Others were the former House of Representatives member, Sharon Ikeazor, and the former Executive Vice-Chairman of Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC), Ernest Ndukwe.

The rest were the APC National Vice-Chairman (South East), Emma Eneukwu; member of the APC Board of Trustees, Austin Edeze; Uzoma Obiyo and Chris Akomas.

When accosted by State House correspondents on the outcome of their meetings with the president, both the governors and the leadership of the South East APC delegation declined comments.

NAN reports that no official statement has been issued on the meetings as at the time of filing this report.

(NAN)
The Federal Government of Nigeria has taken over the care of the girls currently studying in the US, who escaped from Boko Haram captivity after being abducted from the Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, on April 14, 2014, the Nigerian ministry of women affairs has said.

Following a meeting held on May 25, between parents of the escaped Chibok girls studying in America and officials of the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development in charge of the Chibok Girls Desk specially set up by President Muhammadu Buhari, the Federal Government, including its representatives and agents, is now in charge of the girls. The parents signed Declaration forms authorizing the ministry to take over guardianship of their daughters, the ministry said via a statement by Temitope Bamgboye, the director of social welfare at the Ministry.

Any previous guardianship arrangement has thus been revoked, the statement sent to PREMIUM TIMES on Tuesday night said.

The statement added, This information has been transmitted to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is to ensure that this is effected through the Nigerian Embassy in DC. The same will also be communicated to the US State Department through the US Embassy in Nigeria.

The plan is that the girls remain in the US to pursue further education and to graduate, uninterrupted, in a safe and nurturing environment and away from the public glare, which was supposed to be the plan in the first place.

The girls suffering at the hands of their Boko Haram captors is painful enough and they must at all costs be protected from any further ordeals.

The Federal Government would also like to caution parents to exercise care and caution when signing away to any individual or group, the rights of guardianship to their children. They must be sure that they know exactly who the person or group is, and that they fully understand their intentions for their children.

Emmanuel Ogebe, a US-based human rights lawyer, had in 2014 taken 10 of the escaped girls to the US to continue their education. He had been raising funds to care for them.

It remains unclear why the government decided to take over the custody of the girls from him.

Mr. Ogebe could not be reached as at the time of this report.
The police have announced the posting of a new commissioner of police to Bayelsa State.

The new commissioner, Adeyinka Sodipo, who assumed duty on Tuesday in Yenagoa, the state capital, takes over from Peter Ogunyanwo, says a statement issued, Tuesday, by the Police

Public Relations Officer in the state, Asinim Butswat.

Mr. Sodipo was the commissioner of police in Osun State before his new posting, the statement said.

The former commissioner, Mr. Ogunyanwo, has been deployed to the force headquarters, Abuja.

The Command solicits the cooperation and partnership of the good and well-meaning people of Bayelsa State, to accord the new Commissioner of Police, the necessary support to discharge his duties of maintaining law and order in the State, the statement said.
The Police in Abia on Tuesday said four pro-Biafra activists arrested during the celebration of Biafra Day on Monday in Umuahia would be charged to court.

The Commands Spokesman, Ezekiel Onyeke, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Umuahia that the suspects would be arraigned on Wednesday.

Those arrested were in Umuahia and no arrest was made in Aba but l cannot ascertain the charge levelled against them. The charge sheet will be made available in court.

The activists will be transferred from the Central Police Station, where they were detained, to Zone 9 Command, Umuahia.

The zonal command had been handling similar Biafran cases and the zonal legal department will prepare the charge against them.

This command will no longer treat the activities of the group with `kid gloves because you cannot have another sovereign state in a sovereign country, he said.

Mr. Onyeke warned that the command would henceforth clampdown on any group that threatened the peace in any part of the state.

Pro-Biafra agitators converged on the city centre, Isi-gate, on Monday for a prayer session to commemorate the declaration of the defunct republic.

They were dispersed by a detachment of armed police men with teargas, which led to stampede and arrest of some members of the group. (NAN)
Civil Servants in Ondo State are to begin an indefinite strike action on Wednesday, June 1, to protest the non-payment of over five months salary.

The strike notice is contained in a communique issued in Akure by the state chairmen and secretaries of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Joint Negotiating Council (JNC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC).

It said that the decision followed an emergency meeting of the labour unions which reviewed the failure of the state government to pay the workers since January 2016.

It has become unbearable that workers have not received salaries for the past five months at a stretch.

That non-payment of salaries to workers have affected the wellbeing of workers/pensioners economically, socially, psychologically and health wise.

That workers of Ondo State can no longer bear this situation, in view of the untold hardship suffered by these workers, it added.

The unions, therefore, directed all civil servants in the state to remain at home beginning from June 1, until the government settles the salary arrears.

The communique was signed by the state NLC Chairman, Bose Daramola, NLC Secretary, Adewale Sanusi, JNC Chairman, Sunday Adeleye, his Secretary Akinlolu Oluwole, as well as TUC Chairman and Secretary Ekundayo Soladoye and Fatuase Clement, respectively.(NAN)
Commercial drivers and artisans under the aegis of Concerned Trade Unions in Ekiti State, on Tuesday staged a protests in Ado Ekiti against the Nigeria Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress, accusing their leadership of receiving a N25 million bribe to destabilise the Ayo Fayose-led government.

The protesters, led by the chairman of the Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria, Samuel Agbede, and his National Union of Road Transport Workers, counterpart, Clement Adekola, described the ongoing strike declared by labour unions as politically-motivated.

Holding up placards with various anti-Labour inscriptions, the protesters gathered at the popular Fajuyi Park and marched to Ijigbo in support of the governor, Ayo Fayose.

The RTEAN chairman expressed disappointment at the workers, who, he said, should have taken a cue from Ondo, Oyo, Benue and Osun States, where workers were owed up to five months but are not on strike.

The workers cannot afford to paralyse the state because Governor Fayose has demonstrated transparency in the distribution of federal allocations accruing to Ekiti, said Mr. Agbede.

The labour leaders were part of the negotiation that agreed that two months allocation should be lumped up to pay one month salary.

But as we speak now, two months allocation cant even pay one month salary. The governor used March and April allocations to pay for December and where do they expect him to get money to pay full salary of about N2.6 billion monthly now?

We expect them to show understanding. But we are beginning to see that this strike has political undertone, he said.

Mr. Agbede berated the labour unions for asking Mr. Fayose to spend the internally generated revenue to pay workers salary together with federal allocations, urging them to desist from arrogating the state to workers alone.

He, however, said the concerned unions will appeal to Mr. Fayose to use the allocations left over to pay whatever percentage it could offer to workers to alleviate their sufferings.

Mr. Adekola, on his part, noted that striking workers should not expect Mr. Fayose to borrow to pay salaries and halt all the ongoing projects.

Ekiti state belongs to both public and private sectors. So, they shouldnt see Ekiti as belonging to them alone, he said.

We even learnt from reliable sources that the labour leaders got a sum of N25m to destabilize Ekiti. We want them to return to negotiation table in the interest of our future.

But Labour dismissed the attack by the protesters, describing their action as a show of ignorance.

It also denied the allegation that its leaders had been bribed to engage in the protest.

What we are agitating for is our rights and we cant wait for any political party to tell us when to take action, TUC Chairman, Odunayo Adesoye, declared.

The pensioners are dying every day. Workers have become paupers and beggars. What we want is our money and nothing more.

The drivers and artisans must reason along with us and stop displaying ignorance and illiteracy.
ITC - Paperboards and Specialty Papers Division has been part of the PrintWeek Awards in the previous editions and will continue to be so. T...
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.




TELTOW, Germany and REHOVOT, Israel, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI) adds eye tracking to the Lumus DK-50

- Cross reference: Picture is available at AP Images (http://www.apimages.com ) -

Eye tracking pioneers SensoMotoric Instruments and leaders in augmented reality near-to-eye displays Lumus have joined forces to create an AR experience like no other.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160531/373467 )



The Lumus DK-50 AR glasses have been fitted with eye tracking cameras and SMI's advanced software to create a solution that is highly reactive to the wearer's gaze. This means, for example, that a courier using the glasses need only look at a QR code on a package to get the delivery address displayed in the waveguide (see through screen), thus minimizing the use of the buttons on the side of the glasses.

Such intuitive and hands-free functionality is set to benefit manufacturing, logistics, technical services, medical and other professional fields.

This modified Lumus DK-50 will be showcased at Augmented World Expo (AWE) June 1-2, 2016 in Santa Clara, California.

Visit SMI at booth 419.

Visit Lumus at booth 522.

"The ability to superimpose information and instructions onto real objects gives the wearer the benefit of at-a-glance, attention-based information. In the workplace this could be cargo instructions, patient health data, or machine performance analysis," said Christian Villwock, Director of SMI's OEM Solutions Business.

"Given the augmented reality market is set to be as big as the smartphone market in 5-10 years, we see a wealth of opportunities beyond this collaboration," he added.

Chief Product Officer at Lumus Ltd, Eli Glikman said: "Lumus is always looking for innovative ways to improve the AR experience. Beyond further breakthroughs in our waveguide technology, working with partners like SMI on integrating their market-leading eye-tracking solution is a perfect example of the type of cooperation between two leading innovators that can push the needle further toward mass adoption of augmented reality."

Key to a good AR experience is the individual stereoscopic accuracy with which information is overlaid onto viewed objects. Eye tracking is indispensable in this regard, enabling correct depth perception and in turn, crisp 3D objects.

SMI's collaboration with Lumus is yet another example of its eye tracking integrating with wearable technologies to create a vastly improved user experience. In the area of augmented reality SMI eye tracking has previously been added to the Epson Moverio BT-200. For virtual reality, it has been integrated into the Oculus Rift DK2, the Zeiss VR One and most recently, the Samsung Gear VR.

About SMI

SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI) is a world leader in eye tracking technology, developing and marketing eye & gaze tracking solutions for scientists and professionals, OEM and medical solutions for a wide range of applications. Find out more at http://www.smivision.com. Follow @SMIeyetracking on Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Twitter.

About Lumus

Lumus (http://www.lumusvision.com) products enable the fusion of the digital and physical world, allowing businesses and individuals to maximize the potential of augmented reality and smart eyewear today. Lumus has developed ground-breaking technology for see-through wearable displays via its patented Light-guide Optical Element (LOE) platform. Lumus technology makes possible the only sleek, natural-looking form factor, wide field of view, and true see-through performance available today. The augmented reality technology developed by Lumus is in fact already used by leading consumer electronics and smart-eyewear manufacturers. Health care, the military, aviation, and logistics are among the industries that rely on Lumus alone for the optical technology underlying their pioneering AR applications.

Media Contacts

SensoMotoric Instruments GmbH (SMI)

Tim Stott

+49-1622-716-166

tim.stott@smi.de



Lumus

David Andrew Goldman

+1-877-893-0314

dgoldman@lumus-optical.com



SensoMotoric Instruments GmbH

Warthestrasse 21

14513 Teltow

Germany



Phone: +49-(0)3328-3955-00

Fax: +49-(0)3328-3955-99

WEB: http://www.smivision.com

E-Mail: info@smivision.de



Geschaeftsfuehrer / Managing Director Dipl.-Ing. Eberhard Schmidt, Amtsgericht Potsdam HRB 22447 P; VAT-No.: DE 26650 8899

SOURCE SensoMotoric Instruments GmbH (SMI)
CORAL GABLES, Florida, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- AerSale, a global supplier of aircraft, engine, and OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) used serviceable material, reports that Boeing 737 NG series aircraft equipped with its product AerSafe are exempted from compliance with the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) No. FAA-2016-6139, released on May 3, 2016, requiring modification of the fuel quantity indicating system (FQIS).

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160517/368595LOGO

"If the proposed amendment to the Airworthiness Directive (AD) 14 CFR part 39.13 is approved later this year, it will mandate all operators of Boeing 737-600, -700, 700C, -800, -900 and -900ER worldwide to find a viable solution to the FTFR rule," said Nicolas Finazzo, Chief Executive Officer of AerSale. "Currently we have a Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) approving AerSafe for the Boeing 737 NG series, and are working on the 737 Classic and 767 with expected approvals by mid-June. We are studying other Boeing and Airbus models and by the time this AD becomes effective, we expect to have an AerSafe solution for virtually all of the commercial models affected by the AD."

AerSafe is one of the few FAA-approved flammability reduction means that complies with the Fuel Tank Flammability Reduction (FTFR) rule. Tested and developed to exact tolerances to fill the cavity of the center fuel tank, AerSafe limits the amount of available oxygen that can ignite fuel vapors and prevents sparks from igniting an explosion. The proposed AD does not apply to aircraft with the AerSafe system installed. At approximately one quarter of the cost of the nitrogen inerting system over the course of 10 years, AerSafe provides air carriers an economical solution. In addition, AerSafe has a lead time of less than six (6) weeks, and comes as a complete prefabricated kit that can be installed at any hangar around the world. After initial installation, the system requires no maintenance or expensive spare parts.

The FAA enacted the FTFR rule after the crash of TWA flight 800 off the coast of New York. Federal investigations revealed that the accident was the result of an explosion caused by a spark igniting fumes in the center fuel tank of the Boeing 747. The FTFR rule requires fuel tank ignition sources and flammability exposure to be reduced in aircraft most at risk. The FAA gave two options: a flammability reduction means such as nitrogen inerting or an ignition mitigation means such as AerSafe. These systems must be installed by December 26, 2017, on all passenger aircraft that have high flammability fuel tanks and fly within or into the United States.

A global aviation leader, AerSale supplies aftermarket commercial aircraft, engines, and OEM used serviceable material to passenger and cargo airlines, leasing organizations, government entities, multinational OEMs, and independent MROs. AerSale also offers asset management services to owners of end-of-life aircraft and engine portfolios. Headquartered in Coral Gables, Florida, AerSale maintains offices and operations in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

For more information, visit our website at www.aersale.com or contact AerSale Media Relations by calling (305) 764-3200 or via e-mail at media.relations@aersale.com.

Follow us on:

LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

Contact: Lyndelle Nieuwkerk

Telephone: (305) 764-3200

Email: media.relations@aersale.com

Related Links

http://www.aersale.com



SOURCE AerSale
DUBAI, UAE, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

In UAE, ordering car care and maintenance services via a user-friendly mobile app.

Carbox Services today launched a user friendly multi-platform mobile application that allows customers to access all car related services on the palm of their hands, enabling users to order and pay via a Smartphone. The free mobile application immediately available to the entire community in Dubai for both Android and Apple iOS users.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160531/373470 )



The present changes the past, we are currently entering the new era of car cleaning and maintenance services. The future of advanced mobile technologies and modern car cleaning systems is in high demand. Arises in Dubai, Carbox services as an on-demand Car care company that provides range of services through a mobile application whereas customers can have an easy access to all their car needs.

"The heart and soul of our company is based on the core concept of Carbox app that is designed to make the whole UAE community lives easier, with just a tap away customers can order their Car care services. With accessible mobile payment so we are always ready to offer our services at customers doorsteps!" says Youssef Bissani, Managing Partner of Carbox Services.

Carbox app is developed using advanced technological system which enables customers the freedom to choose from their desired payment method. Services can be paid either by app payment, card payment, cash on delivery, through loyalty points or it can be done by a quick pay via an Etisalat postpaid bill. The app incorporates accurate GPS Google map system which allows users to setup location anywhere, anytime.

Furthermore, the mobile car cleaning company is fully equipped with state of the art technology, using an Eco-friendly steam cleaning systems that have the ability to remove dirt and road grime without damaging the car's paint, also terminating all kinds of bacteria and tiny parasites found living on textiles inside cars.

Carbox Services are here to relieve us from the worries of car issues, a hassle-free and convenient premium car care services. "The steam machine is a waterless system that uses less than 5 liter of water per vehicle, saving around 200 liter compared to traditional car cleaning techniques," he therefore concluded.

About Carbox Services

Carbox Services was established in 2015 as an on-demand Car Care company specially designed for the distinguished people of today. Offering complete car cleaning, detailing and maintenance services at customers doorsteps.

Download Carbox application found on Google Play and the App Store.

Android: https://goo.gl/JY1mf9

iOS: https://appsto.re/ae/qIBz_.i

For any Car service order or inquiries, please contact operations@carbox.io/ +971-600-541-004

Visit: http://www.Carbox.io

SOURCE Carbox Services
DUBLIN, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "China TV Shopping Industry Report, 2016" report to their offering.

The market size jumped from RMB6.73 billion in 2007 to RMB39.93 billion in 2015, at a CAGR of 24.9%.



China's TV shopping industry scale is still small and only accounts for less than 0.2% of the total retail sales of social consumer goods, much lower than over 8% in Japan, South Korea, the United States and other developed countries but implying huge market potentials. In the wake of the technological advance of mobile phones, tablet computers and other electronic terminals, the rapid emergence of mobile social media as well as wide application of big data and cloud computing, TV shopping will develop quickly with computers and mobile terminals to form three-screen interaction. By 2020, Chinese TV shopping market will value RMB80 billion, with a CAGR of 14.9% compared with 2015.



Although the overall outlook for the TV shopping industry is promising, different business models bring different effects. The modern home shopping based on professional television shopping channels of TV stations is entertaining and informative, which is quite favored by the audience (consumers), so the relevant enterprises flourish. However, it is difficult for the traditional TV direct sales model to survive. One of the top two traditional giants -- 7-STAR quitted from the field of TV shopping after being acquired in 2015 formally; the other tycoon Acorn International has suffered losses, cut advertising budget and sought transformation over the past few years.



In terms of competition pattern, as of early 2016, the SARFT (State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television of the People's Republic of China) had approved a total of 38 TV shopping companies, of which 11 ones held nationwide licenses and 27 ones had regional licenses. Nationwide license holders are entitled to cover more areas and more people, so they enjoy superiority in market size.



By revenue, Chinese TV shopping competition pattern shows three echelons: The first echelon is led by the overwhelming OCJ whose television channel revenue hit about RMB5 billion in 2015; the second echelon is comprised of national TV shopping channels including Happigo, JYH.com, FS Shopping and Hao24 which garner the television channel revenue of over RMB500 million each, wherein Happigo fetched RMB1.6 billion and FS Shopping gained nearly RMB1.5 billion in 2015; the third echelon embraces other local TV shopping channels whose television channel revenue is RMB500 million or less respectively.



China TV Shopping Industry Report, 2016 mainly studies the followings:



- Overview of TV shopping industry (including definition, classification, industry chain, market characteristics, business models, policies, etc.);

- Influence of macro-economy on China TV shopping industry;

- Overview of Chinese TV shopping market (including development course, market size, competition pattern, market structure, regional analysis, development prospects);



Analysis (including profile, business performance, revenue structure, R & D spending, TV shopping business, strategies, etc.) on 14 TV shopping companies such as



- Acorn International

- Best 1

- CCTV Home Shopping

- CNRMALL

- Eastern Home Shopping

- FS Shopping

- Hao24

- Hunan HappiGO

- JYH.com

- Jiajia Shopping

- OCJ

- QVC

- SSGO

- Shenzhen Eachome Co., Ltd.



For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/9dffns/china_tv_shopping

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.

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
AMSTERDAM, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

PaperHive Will Enable Users to Access, Share and Annotate Content From Elsevier's ScienceDirect Database

Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, today announced it will collaborate with Berlin-based scientific collaboration platform PaperHive to enable researchers to easily discover, share and annotate the over 12 million articles on ScienceDirect, the world's largest database of scientific, technical and medical full-text content.



"It's Elsevier's ambition to support researchers by developing the best and most efficient workflow solutions that assist them in making discoveries faster and more easily," said Olivier Dumon, Managing Director, Academic and Research Markets at Elsevier. "The agreement with PaperHive is a great example of how scientific collaboration networks and publishers can work together to facilitate collaboration and sharing of quality research publications. In PaperHive we've found an ambitious and innovative startup, supported by the European Union, that can facilitate easy, copyright-compliant sharing of Elsevier content on the user's platform of choice."



PaperHive will integrate the ScienceDirect Application Programming Interface (API) to enable their users to search through full-text ScienceDirect articles - the official versions of record - from the PaperHive platform, and will enable sharing and annotating. Unique to the PaperHive approach, compared with most other sharing tools, is that it will not host the ScienceDirect articles themselves, but rely on the ScienceDirect API to deliver the article to PaperHive users.

"Enabling collaborative reading and content enrichment for the entire corpus of ScienceDirect documents adds true value for researchers in many disciplines," says Alexander Naydenov, Co-Founder of PaperHive. "We are glad to see that Elsevier supports open communication in science and is among the first to collaborate with PaperHive."



The integration is fully compliant with the STM principles for article sharing, as it will enable users to share the best available version of an article, while ensuring Elsevier can track readership statistics that enable article recommendations and reporting to authors and customers. The collaboration will include access to all 12 million+ content items on ScienceDirect.

About PaperHive

PaperHive is an integrated web platform for collaborative reading and a cross-publisher layer of interaction on top of research documents. The Berlin-based startup strives to make efficient collaboration the driving force throughout the entire research process, thus helping researchers to save time, get inspired by the contributions of others, and get in contact with future collaborators. After starting with arXiv PaperHive is continuously extending the content that can be read and discussed on its platform by integrating with other publishers and pre-print repositories. paperhive.org

About Elsevier

Elsevier is a world-leading provider of information solutions that enhance the performance of science, health, and technology professionals, empowering them to make better decisions, deliver better care, and sometimes make groundbreaking discoveries that advance the boundaries of knowledge and human progress. Elsevier provides web-based, digital solutions - among them ScienceDirect, Scopus, Elsevier Research Intelligence and ClinicalKey - and publishes over 2,500 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and more than 35,000 book titles, including a number of iconic reference works. Elsevier is part of RELX Group, a world-leading provider of information and analytics for professional and business customers across industries. www.elsevier.com

Media contact

Harald Boersma

Director Corporate Relations, Elsevier

+31 20 485 27 36

h.boersma@elsevier.com



SOURCE Elsevier
HAMBURG, Germany, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Hotels and other venues can now drastically improve their meeting sales with EVENTMACHINE MEETING. Meeting configuration becomes as easy as booking a hotel room online. The configurator runs directly in a hotel's website for a branded, seamless experience. This innovative cloud-based meeting configuration solution has entered its beta-phase at eventmachine.xyz .

EVENTMACHINE MEETING is the key to direct meeting bookings and new leads. Using an intuitive web interface, the user configures his custom conference in a few simple steps. The user is guided through the process of selecting meeting rooms, catering, accommodations and even activities. They receive all prices and details immediately - 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

EVENTMACHINE MEETING is the answer to users expectations to get results instantly and at any time. "Pressure in the MICE business is enormous. More and more quotes are being written, and sales conversions are decreasing," says CEO and co-founder Florian Zelfel. "Especially for smaller inquiries, the effort is often hugely disproportionate to the revenue generated. Hotels and venues that automate now secure a real competitive advantage."

"We know that users are much more likely to buy if they can immediately customize their products," adds CTO and co-founder Peter Warren (Oregon, USA). "We have designed a first-of-its-kind meeting configurator which guides the user through the whole sales process, including instant quoting! EVENTMACHINE MEETING boosts efficiency and generates qualified leads."

EVENTMACHINE MEETING offers the right pricing plan for any venue. "We don't charge commissions and our clients have total flexibility. Clients don't pay setup fees, and they don't have to invest in their IT infrastructure," Florian Zelfel explains. "And anybody can test EVENTMACHINE MEETING for free."

All features are built in already, even smart yield management. EVENTMACHINE MEETING is the turnkey solution for automated conference configuration and quoting on a supplier's own website. "This is the digital age. Why are sales teams still putting together meeting quotes by hand?" Peter Warren concludes.

Further information:

Website

Imprint

Press contact:

Florian Zelfel

+49-(0)40-386-29-000

service@eventmachine.xyz



SOURCE ZELFMADE GmbH
HELSINKI, Finland, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Fairspectrum today began a Licensed Shared Access (LSA) service pilot for 2.3 GHz wireless camera users in the Netherlands. The Netherlands is the first country in Europe to pilot mutual interference management of wireless cameras with LSA. The Netherlands is also the first country to issue radio licenses for commercial end users with a requirement to use LSA spectrum management. Fairspectrum was selected by Agentschap Telecom to provide the LSA pilot spectrum management system in the Netherlands.

LSA system allows dynamic spectrum sharing without harmful interference. The spectrum users record their frequency, time of use and location in the system. When a new user would like to begin use of spectrum, the system computes which frequency bands are available in the given location. Piloted wireless cameras are used for Electronic News Gathering (ENG) and Outdoor Broadcasting (OB). The main operational target in the system is to have a reservation system, which helps to avoid interference between ENG/OB users. Another longer term target for the system is to prepare for mobile broadband use on 2.3 GHz band. ECC Decision (14)02 aims to allow the mobile broadband on the band.

Gerard Cuijten from Agentschap Telecom said that "This pilot helps us to get spectrum in more efficient and shared use." "The Netherlands LSA pilot is unique as it manages the mutual interference of the real wireless camera users," commented Heikki Kokkinen from Fairspectrum.

About Fairspectrum

Fairspectrum is a Finnish private company providing online spectrum management services, software and related consulting. Fairspectrum has solutions for TVWS, Licensed Shared Access (LSA), and Citizen's Broadband Radio Service (CBRS). Learn more on http://www.fairspectrum.com .

Contact:

Heikki Kokkinen

Email: heikki.kokkinen@fairspectrum.com

Mobile: +358-50-483-9510

SOURCE Fairspectrum Oy
DUBLIN, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Global and China Telematics Box (T-Box) Industry Report, 2016-2020" report to their offering.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160330/349511LOGO)

The world's IC market size was approximately USD287.1 billion in 2015, of which the automotive IC market accounted for 7.3%; and in 2019 the IC market scale will climb to USD358.7 billion, but the automotive IC market share will edge up 0.8 percentage points from 2015 and the size is to hit USD29.2 billion mainly because of the gradual fall in the cost and price of automotive IC, especially MCU, analog components, the logic components for special applications, etc.



In the automotive electronic system, the in-vehicle electronics have seen a rising share year after year, with the share 2% higher in 2015 than that in 2011. The automotive electronic system occupies at most 30% of total costs of an ordinary car but makes up more than 50% of total costs of a new energy vehicle.



During 2015-2020, the new energy vehicles in China will present a CAGR of 57.6%, giving strong impetus to the development of Chinese automotive electronics market. We believe that the automotive electronics market size of China will show a CARG of over 20% in the next five years and will reach RMB1,000 billion.



As the output of OEM terminals increases and market competition pricks up, both price and cost of T-box will decrease by degrees. The penetration rate of pre-installations will be 30% in 2020 when Chinese T-box market size is believed to hit RMB8.1 billion.



The main players in T-box field consist of Huawei Technologies, Flaircomm Microelectronics, Thread Tech, etc., yet the rivalry is still mainly from foreign competitors such as Bosch, Continental, Harman, Denso and LG. Still about 95% of T-box market in China is to be developed because CANBUS protocol development is quite difficult. We expect that the detailed national rules and regulations will be issued at the end of 2016, and by then the rate of T-box pre-installations in new energy vehicle will be significantly improved, growing from less than 50% at present to close to 100% as estimated.



Key Topics Covered:



1 Overview of T-box



2 Global T-box Industry



3 Foreign T-box Companies



4 China T-box Industry



5 Chinese T-box Companies



Companies Mentioned



- Flaircomm Microelectronics, Inc.

- FutureMove Telematics Co., Ltd.

- Guangzhou Automobile Group Co., Ltd (GAC)

- Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.

- Jiangsu CAS-TIANAN Smart Science & Technology Co., Ltd.

- Neusoft Corporation

- PATEO Corporation

- Shenzhen Autonet Co., Ltd.

- Shenzhen Thread Tech Co., Ltd.

- Wuhan Intest Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. (INTEST)

- Yaxon Network

- ZTE Corporation



For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/kfvmdp/global_and_china



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



SOURCE Research and Markets
With ultra-high definition, 180-degree and 360-degree video and powerful Smart Tracking capabilities, the PanoVu Series from Hikvision is the most compelling argument ever for panoramic surveillance, suitable for expansive, open-area monitoring

HANGZHOU, China, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Hikvision, the world's leading supplier in innovative video surveillance products and solutions, introduces its new PanoVu Series Panoramic Cameras. The cameras provide 180- and 360-degree, distortion-free, ultra-high-definition video, seamlessly integrating video from multiple sensors in one unit.

Add to this the PanoVu's powerful Smart Tracking abilities, linkage to PTZ and zooming into images at up to 36x optical and 16x digital, its user-friendly installation and configuration, and its ultra-low light performance, and the result is the best equipped high-end panoramic solution on the market.

Powerful All-in-One Design

Designed for large-scale security monitoring applications such as stadiums, city centers, airports and parking lots, the PanoVu series allows users to replace multiple cameras with one multi-sensor unit -- curtailing costs and reducing technical complexity.

The traditional surveillance solution for this type of large 180- or 360-degree scene would require several cameras and server-level video stitching software to blend the images and create a single panoramic picture. Hikvision's PanoVu Series is an all-in-one solution which integrates multiple sensors into the one unit, eliminating the need for video stitching software.

The PanoVu Cameras' all-in-one design allows only one Ethernet and one power supply cable, providing for easy installation and simple configuration. The cameras have also been designed to offer easy preview images to further aid in set-up, and to dramatically reduce maintenance times and costs.

Superior Low Light Performance

Hikvision's low-light color-imaging leads the industry in performance, and the PanoVu Series Cameras are no exception. The units all incorporate Hikvision's DarkEye super-large aperture lens, sharing the same ultra-low-light performance with Hikvision's DarkFighter Series. They are able to capture highly detailed, high resolution color images in as little light as 0.002 Lux, meaning around-the-clock, 360-degree monitoring is available  critical for high-risk locations like open public spaces in city centers.

Smart Tracking and Smart Functions

Smart Tracking means the PanoVu Cameras support a link to an additional PTZ tracking camera, enabling PanoVu's powerful zoom capabilities to magnify tiny details in the panoramic image. Smart Tracking allows the simultaneous tracking of multiple targets, in both auto and manual tracking modes. The cameras also feature a wide range of Smart functions including intrusion detection, line crossing detection, and region entrance and exit detection.

Application-specific Models

The PanoVu Series Cameras are available in 8 MP, 180-degree and 16 MP, 360-degree variants, allowing users to select the ideal model for their specific surveillance application. The 16 MP 360-degree models use 8 x 1/1.9" Progressive Scan CMOS sensors to create their panoramic images, while the 8 MP models incorporate four sensors to generate their 180-degree images. All of the PanoVu Series Cameras are IP66-rated for use in a wide variety of weather conditions and applications.

Hikvision PanoVu has won the "Golden Excellence Award" at the 15th China Public Security Expo and iF's 2016 Design Award. To learn more about this product series, and other cutting edge video surveillance solutions of Hikvision, visit their booth at IFSEC International, #E800, in London ExCel, 21 - 23 June 2016.

About Hikvision

Hikvision is the world's leading supplier of video surveillance solutions. Featuring the industry's strongest R&D workforce, Hikvision uses its state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities to design and develop innovative CCTV and video surveillance products for any security need. For more information, please visit Hikvision's website at www.hikvision.com.

Related Links

http://www.hikvision.com



SOURCE Hikvision Digital Technology Co., Ltd.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Intouch Relocations, the largest mobility consultancy in MEA, announced today it has acquired Cielo's Middle East-based mobility services division.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160223/336468LOGO

The acquisition of Cielo's mobility service comes on the back of the acquisition of Elliot Corporate Relocations in South Africa and Nigeria and is in line with Intouch's strategy of providing high quality services in all areas of the relocation spectrum.

Sebastien Besson, CEO of Intouch Relocations, commented, "We are confident that the fantastic resources that made Cielo's mobility service a success will add to the Intouch brand as we grow our business across the MEA region."

Craig Pointon, Cielo's Managing Director of Middle East and Africa, said, "We are pleased that our mobility service has attracted the interest of an organisation like Intouch and are excited to see the evolution of the business moving forward."

Cielo and Intouch Relocations will remain strategic partners for relocation services.

About Intouch Relocations

Intouch Relocations is the largest provider of relocation services in the MEA region, servicing over 26 countries from our regional hubs in the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria. Founded in 1996, the company has grown to be the market leader in its field moving over 5000 families to their new cities every year.

About Cielo

Cielo is the world's leading strategic Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) partner. Under its WE BECOME YOU philosophy, Cielo's dedicated recruitment teams primarily serve clients in the financial and business services, consumer brands, technology and media, engineering, life sciences and healthcare industries. Cielo's global presence includes 1,400 employees, serving 130 clients across 69 countries in 32 languages. The industry has verified Cielo's reputation for executing innovative solutions that provide business impact through numerous awards and recognitions, including its annual top three leadership position on the HRO Today RPO Baker's Dozen listing, Peak Matrix Leader placement by Everest Group and Industry Leader designation by NelsonHall. Cielo knows talent is rising  and with it, an organization's opportunity to rise above. For more information, visit cielotalent.com.

Cielo Contact:

Bethany Perkins

bethany.perkins@cielotalent.com

+1 262-439-1443

Related Links

http://www.cielotalent.com



SOURCE Cielo
BURSCHEID, Germany, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Seating expertise for luxury-class sedan

With its Volvo S90 available this summer, the manufacturer of premium automobiles is heralding a new era in design, innovation and Swedish luxury. The new sedan combines handsome natural materials with sophisticated, intuitive technologies that focus on the driver and the design of the interior. Volvo worked with Johnson Controls for the vehicles' seats. The seats use high-quality seat cover material, comfortable upholstery and top-quality workmanship to guarantee luxury and comfort. In addition, Johnson Controls developed and integrated the Volvo S90's rear seating, including its metal structures.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160530/373395 )

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160530/373396 )

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160530/373397 )

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160530/373398 )

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160530/373399 )

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The Volvo S90 sets a new standard in the luxury-class sedan segment. According to the motto "Scandinavian elegance", the Swedish automaker has combined the most advanced vehicle technologies with a straightforward design for both the exterior and the interior, for which Volvo worked in close collaboration with Johnson Controls.

"We're very pleased to have had the opportunity to contribute our many years of experience in seating development and manufacturing to the interior design of the Volvo S90," said Tony Malila, vice president & general manager, Customer Group Volvo, at Johnson Controls Automotive Seating. "Collaborating closely with the team at Volvo, we designed a seat that optimally utilizes the vehicle's interior, providing all occupants with plenty of space and comfort. The goal was to make riding in the Volvo S90 feel like driving through the quiet, relaxed calm of the Swedish wilderness. Our task was to create a seating experience that supported that goal. The initial testing of the Volvo S90 by prominent trade media outlets has positively emphasized its seats in particular, which is a great acknowledgement of our collaboration."

In addition to the seat covers and upholstery for all of the Volvo S90's seats, Johnson Controls developed the rear seat bench. Johnson Controls was responsible for its entire development process, from designing and supplying the metal structure to integration.

"The Volvo S90 is a very modern automobile. This is reflected in the equal measure of esteem that every occupant enjoys. The seats also had to meet that standard," said Malila. "The design of the rear seats is closely based on the driver seat, and is in no way inferior in terms of comfort. Since all of the stages of development and integration were in our hands, we were able to create a holistic seating experience, not only through the high quality of the seats, but the optimal use of interior space."

With the support of Johnson Controls, Volvo has created a comprehensive spatial concept, which in its clear, reduced design is typically Scandinavian. The Volvo S90 has been imbued with luxury through a fusion of premium materials, a passion for detail, exceptional workmanship and, above all, sufficient space.

"In a vehicle's interior, space is the greatest luxury," said Malila. "Volvo Cars recognized this and consciously applied it to the Volvo S90. While the front seats offer the highest degree of comfort, they take up relatively little space, primarily due to their extremely slim backrests. This allowed for plenty of legroom for the rear passengers. Our aim in designing and integrating the rear seat bench was to support Volvo's approach in this area."

About Johnson Controls

Johnson Controls is a global diversified technology and industrial leader serving customers in more than 150 countries. Our 150,000 employees create quality products, services and solutions to optimize energy and operational efficiencies of buildings; lead-acid automotive batteries and advanced batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles; and seating components and systems for automobiles. Our commitment to sustainability dates back to our roots in 1885, with the invention of the first electric room thermostat. Through our growth strategies and by increasing market share we are committed to delivering value to shareholders and making our customers successful.

Johnson Controls Automotive Experience

Johnson Controls Automotive Experience is a global leader in automotive seating components and systems. The company supports all major automakers in the differentiation of their vehicles through its products, technologies and advanced manufacturing capabilities. With more than 200 locations worldwide, Johnson Controls is where its customers need it to be. Consumers have enjoyed the comfort and style of Johnson Controls products, from single components to complete seat systems. With its global capability the company supplies more than 50 million cars per year. Johnson Controls pursues a spin-off of its Automotive Experience business. Following the separation, which is expected to take effect early in fiscal year 2017, the Automotive Experience business will operate as the independent, publicly traded company Adient. Bruce McDonald will serve as the chairman and CEO of the new company.

For more information, please contact:

Johnson Controls GmbH

Automotive Seating

Industriestrae 20-30

51399 Burscheid

Germany

Lars Boelke

Tel.: +49-2174-65-1117

E-Mail: lars.boelke@jci.com

Internet: http://www.johnsoncontrols.co.uk

Follow us on Twitter: @JCseating

SOURCE Johnson Controls
OXFORD, England, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

OmPrompt, the world leader in Customer Automation Management, today announced its new 'Automated Data Extraction' (ADE) solution. This new product development, combined with OmPrompt's existing rules-based data extraction engine, offers a truly unique end-to-end automation solution for the entire order-to-cash process.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160229/338584LOGO )



The new ADE solution uses powerful data extraction algorithms and self-learning cognitive processing tools to solve a common supply chain challenge directly, accurately and promptly. This issue (having to manually process a diverse range of lower-volume documents from the extended customer community) is currently a challenge for companies, in both labour and time.

OmPrompt CEO, John Wakeman, explains: "The customer-facing supply chain is typically the most challenging area because of its inherent diversity, caused by the fact that customers 'call the shots'. Customer-prescribed data formats and processes need to be accommodated by suppliers. OmPrompt is uniquely placed to solve this problem for suppliers."

With the combination of OmPrompt's new ADE product offering and its existing EDI and higher volume rules-based data extraction solutions, OmPrompt can now offer a market-leading and unique extraction and automation solution: for any order-to-cash process; for any data or image format; and for both high and low volumes of documents.

"We believe that this is the world's first truly combined rules-based and self-learning extraction solution specifically designed and configured to allow companies to automate and take control of their order-to-cash processes," said Steve Luscombe, OmPrompt's Chief Solutions Officer.

While companies have previously been able to input data from various streams into multiple applications - for example - using EDI or a bespoke automation tool, to input transactions such as orders, this is the first time that a platform has been able to offer such a full range of data input sources as part of a single automation platform.

OmPrompt combines three data input methods:

Transaction input with semi-automated methods, via a web portal

Fully-automated (hands-free) data capture using OmPrompt's bespoke Customer Automation Management solution

Existing data source input from common streams, including EDI and ERP.

OmPrompt's Customer Automation Management software solution provides a platform-agnostic answer for data integration across the supply chain.

"This revolutionary technology has long been considered a pipe dream. However, we've been working in the automation world for more than a decade, constantly aiming to provide the best possible customer experience, and we now believe that our complete solution is able to meet any data requirements in the supply chain. We're proud to be able to deliver this service to businesses far beyond those who have typically been tempted to automate their supply chain," said CEO, John Wakeman.

Furthermore, he adds, "While manual processes are inefficient and cause the organisation to, effectively 'run blind', we can build in efficiency with automation so companies can proactively optimise and digitise their order-to-cash solution. This enables both visibility and the proactive management of the supply chain."

OmPrompt already automates transaction processing (including purchase orders, PODs, claims, invoices, delivery notes, etc.) for some of the world's largest manufacturers in more than 50 countries around the world. With this new level of automation, the possibility of transferring data from any source to any other source is now a reality.

OmPrompt is the leader in customer automation management. OmPrompt helps large companies with complex supply chains bridge gaps by eliminating the need for human workarounds when transactional systems can't cope with diverse operational requirements from customers.

OmPrompt's award-winning platform enables companies across a wide range of industries - including FMCG, healthcare, and logistics such as Unilever, Stryker and Kimberly-Clark- to gain competitive edge through superior customer service provided by resource freed from back-office functions.

OmPrompt's managed service offers multi-format support, intelligent business rules, master data validation and accelerated exception management to deliver the transactional excellence enjoyed by global brands worldwide.

OmPrompt processes transactions in 50 countries and 6 continents and is headquartered in Oxfordshire, UK.

To learn more about Customer Automation Management, visit http://www.omprompt.com.

SOURCE OmPrompt
OXFORD, England, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Oxitec and Piracicaba City Hall have today finalized their multi-year expansion of the 'Friendly Aedes aegypti Project' to cover an area of 60,000 people in the center of the city of Piracicaba, Brazil. Due to the large number of people who travel through this region, this project may also benefit neighbouring areas of the city. Additionally, the initial project, which has been deploying Oxitec's OX513A solution in an area of 5,000 people in the CECAP/Eldorado district since April 2015, has been extended.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150630/227348 )



"Piracicaba's decision to broaden the reach of our project demonstrates their confidence in our innovative vector control solution and is an important step forward in the effort to combat the dangerous Aedes aegypti mosquito, and the viruses it transmits, in a highly targeted and environmentally safe manner," said Oxitec Chief Executive Officer Hadyn Parry. "We have a cost-effective solution that is proven and ready to be deployed to make a real impact in saving lives and protecting economies."

It is estimated that up to half of the world's population lives alongside the dangerous Aedes aegypti mosquitoes which are the primary vector for dengue, chikungunya, and Zika virus -- some of the most damaging arboviruses to public health and economies of nations. For Brazil in particular, this mosquito has become an increasing health risk given the significant incidence of dengue as well as the rise in Zika and chikungunya infections. The Zika virus has been linked to birth defects such as microcephaly, and all three viruses cause a number of neurological disorders such as acute myelitis, meningoencephalitis, and Guillain-Barre syndrome.

Efficacy trials of Oxitec's genetically engineered OX513A mosquito across Brazil, Panama and the Cayman Islands all resulted in a greater than 90% suppression of the wild Ae. aegypti mosquito population - an unprecedented level of control. Oxitec's solution was recently recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) for deployment in operational conditions, and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) recently declared it will provide technical support for countries that wish to implement OX513A in the fight against this menacing mosquito.

Under the terms of the expansion/extension agreement, Oxitec will deploy its 'Friendly Aedes aegypti' control solution near the center of the city of Piracicaba for two years, and continue to protect people in the CECAP/Eldorado district for another year. To support this growing program and to meet increasing demand for its proprietary vector control solution, Oxitec is building a new mosquito production facility in Piracicaba that will generate many jobs in the region. This facility will have the capacity to produce 60 million Oxitec male mosquitoes a week to help protect over 300,000 people.

The Health Secretary of Piracicaba, Pedro Mello, commented, "It is with great joy that we signed this contract. It's one more step we take towards making the city of Piracicaba the first in the world to rid itself of this mosquito that has caused so much harm to millions of people worldwide. From July 2014 to 2015, CECAP/Eldorado had 133 dengue fever cases. From July 2015 to May 20th, 2016, the same neighborhood had only 7 confirmed cases. Importantly we are doing this with a technology that is innovative, clean, environmentally friendly and sustainable."

About Oxitec

Oxitec is the only GM insect company in the world and a pioneer in using genetic engineering to control insect pests that spread disease and damage crops. Oxitec was founded in 2002 as a spinout from Oxford University (UK), and is now a subsidiary of Intrexon Corporation (NYSE: XON), which engineers biology to help solve some of the world's biggest problems. Oxitec's self-limiting insect control targets only the one species of pest in a way that is non-toxic and pesticide-free, providing vector control that is both effective and environmentally friendly. Follow us on Twitter at @Oxitec.

Oxitec Contact:

Matthew Warren

Press Officer

Tel: +44-(0)-1235-832-393

info@oxitec.com



SOURCE Oxitec Ltd
MUNICH, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Paygoo launches Reloadable MasterCard

Exclusive partnership with Reitan Convenience to offer outstanding distribution network

Wirecard Card Solutions Ltd, a Wirecard Group company, is the card issuer of Norwegian-based prepaid programme manager Paygoo. Paygoo have recently launched their first prepaid reloadable MasterCard following the previous launch of their MasterCard Gift Card programme earlier this year. The cards can be purchased and loaded throughout Reitan Convenience, one of Europe's largest convenience store chains including the retail brands 7-Eleven, Shell and Narvesan, offering instant issue at extensive point-of-sale outlets as well as online.

Paygoo's rapidly expanding portfolio already includes the MasterCard gift card programme sold through Reitan Convenience stores in Norway and Sweden and offering consumers a gift card product which can be used at over 35 million merchants worldwide instore or online through the MasterCard acceptance network, making it the perfect gift card for any occasion. The Paygoo gift cards are also available to the corporate market as a reward or incentive mechanism for their employees or third parties.

The new Paygoo Reload MasterCard targets foreign workers and the unbanked and has initially launched successfully in Norway. An imminent launch in Sweden will soon follow to secure wide reach and adoption across the Nordics.

"We are delighted to establish a partnership with Wirecard which we are sure will support our growth ambitions in the Nordic prepaid market. For Paygoo it was important to choose an issuer with outstanding experience and knowledge, combined with a mind-set characterized by innovation and creativity," said CEO of Paygoo, Per Erik Nygaard.

Wirecard Card Solutions is a specialist for prepaid card issuance. The UK-based Company is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and operates under its Electronic Money license with permissions to issue cards throughout the SEPA region. Wirecard Card Solutions accompanies its clients throughout all stages of their business development and offers a vast array of products, services and experience needed to take a new a prepaid card programme to market.

Brian Lawlor, Director of Sales and Business Development at Wirecard Card Solutions said, "We're delighted to be working with the highly experienced team at Paygoo. With Paygoo's exclusive distribution channels, this product has fantastic reach within the Nordic region. This programme further cements Wirecard's position as one of the leading prepaid issuers in Europe."

About Wirecard:

Wirecard AG is a global technology group that supports companies in accepting electronic payments from all sales channels. As a leading independent supplier, the Wirecard Group offers outsourcing and white label solutions for electronic payments. A global platform bundles international payment acceptances and methods with supplementary fraud prevention solutions. With regard to issuing own payment instruments in the form of cards or mobile payment solutions, the Wirecard Group provides companies with an end-to-end infrastructure, including the requisite licences for card and account products. Wirecard AG is listed on the Frankfurt Securities Exchange (TecDAX, ISIN DE0007472060, WDI). For further information about Wirecard, please visit http://www.wirecard.com or follow us on Twitter @wirecard.

About Wirecard Card Solutions:

Wirecard Card Solutions Ltd (WDCS), a subsidiary of Wirecard AG, is a multi-award winning issuer of prepaid cards and products in Europe. WDCS is an FCA regulated Electronic Money institution specialising in BIN Sponsorship and is a principal member of both MasterCard International and Visa Europe. WDCS issues plastic and digital prepaid products for many of the biggest and most innovative programmes in the European marketplace. http://www.wirecard-cardsolutions.co.uk.

About Paygoo:

Paygoo has grown rapidly to be the preferred supplier of gift cards and payment cards across the Nordics. They believe in creating great user experiences with a vision to offer the best in user experience and innovation. Formerly the Spendon (Sparebank) gift card product, Paygoo was first launched recently. The reloadable and gift card products are available through the Reitan and Blackhawk networks.

Wirecard media contact:

Wirecard AG

Jana Tilz

Tel.: +49-(0)89-4424-1363

E-Mail: jana.tilz@wirecard.com

Wirecard Card Solutions Limited

Annelleise Miles

Tel.: +44-191-277-5472

E-Mail: marketing.uk@wirecard.com

Paygoo media contact:

Per Erik Nygaard

Tel.: +47-480-73-171

E-Mail: per.erik.nygaard@paygoo.no



SOURCE Wirecard AG
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LONDON, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Prepaid Financial Services (PFS) are delighted to announce that their CEO, Noel Moran, has made the shortlist in the International category of the EY Entrepreneur Of the Year Ireland.

Now in its 30th year globally, the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year programme celebrates exceptional entrepreneurs who can see the future, and through their businesses, are helping to redefine it. The competition is run in 145 cities across 60 countries with just one winner being selected from each country.

The EY Entrepreneur Of The Year programme has been running in Ireland for over 18 years, which has been identified as one of the strongest programmes worldwide. Noel has been nominated in the International category for PFS and Navan based eCOMM Merchant Solutions.

PFS has grown significantly year on year; from humble beginnings operating from a kitchen table in Navan, Ireland, the company now employs 128 dedicated and committed members of staff across three different locations. The company is acknowledged as the fastest growing MasterCard prepaid issuer in Europe, with a customer base of 2.5 million cardholders, and a further 1.3 million new prepaid cards due to be issued in 2016 alone.

eCOMM Merchant Solutions deals with the provision of online payments facilities for merchants throughout Europe. Noel feels passionately about demonstrating that Ireland based FinTechs are on an equal footing with other countries and are not inhibited by being based outside of 'financial hubs' like London.

Noel Moran, CEO, Prepaid Financial Services said: "PFS is acknowledged as the fastest growing MasterCard prepaid issuer in Europe with a customer base of 2.5 million cardholders, and we are incredibly proud of the company's achievements, which we have worked hard to build together.

PFS has been providing its payments technology and range of e-money and banking solutions to governments, local authorities, mobile network operators, banks and corporates globally, for a number of years now. In fact, by the end of this calendar year, we will have more customers and cardholders than any Irish Bank - all without funding or external investment."

The Irish entrepreneur winners will be announced at a prestigious Awards Gala held in Dublin in October 2016. Following this, the country winners of the EY Entrepreneur Of the Year programme from across the globe will then go on to compete for the coveted title of EY World Entrepreneur Of the Year at the global awards ceremony, which is due to be held in Monte Carlo in June 2017.

Notes to editors

About Prepaid Financial Services:

Prepaid Financial Services (PFS) is an award winning payments technology specialist offering a comprehensive range of e-money and banking solutions including e-wallets, physical and virtual prepaid cards and current accounts in the UK and the Eurozone. Authorised and regulated by the FCA in the UK, PFS has passported its e-money license across the SEPA region to enable card issuance throughout the region.

Founded in 2008, PFS is now one of the fastest growing issuers in Europe, with programmes live and active in 23 countries with the ability to transact in 20 different currencies. Its products and cutting-edge technology platforms are utilised by governments, local authorities, mobile network operators, banks and corporates globally.

PFS has been listed within the top 25 fastest growing technology companies in the UK by the Sunday Times Tech Track 100 for 3 consecutive years and most recently ranked number 108 in Deloitte's EMEA Technology Fast 500.

For more information about PFS's payment solutions please contact: sales@prepaidfinancialservices.com

SOURCE Prepaid Financial Services (PFS)
DUBLIN, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Global Lecture Capture Solutions Market 2016-2020" report to their offering.

The global lecture capture solutions market to grow at a CAGR of 21.77% during the period 2016-2020.

Global Lecture Capture Solutions Market 2016-2020, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.

The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global lecture capture solutions market for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, it considers the revenue generated by vendors through the sales of lecture capture solutions and related services for a fee or license.

One trend that is having a positive impact on growth is the development in IT infrastructure for education. Over the past few years, various economies have spent heavily on the development of education infrastructure by implementing IT in the education system. Economically developed countries in North America and Europe proactively adopt these facilities because of government initiatives that promote the benefits of digital content in the education system.

Developing countries in APAC and ROW are integrating IT into the education sector by enabling various modern teaching methods. Vendors of lecture capture solutions such as Panopto and Sonic Foundry get acquainted with schools and other institutions to provide devices and software appropriate to institutions' needs. This is to improve interactive training and enhance learning efficiency.

According to the report, a key growth driver is the intensified demand for distance education. Distance learning offers opportunities for learning to people worldwide, especially those who find it difficult to attend universities because of financial, geographical, or time constraints. Many students prefer distance education courses to traditional education due to the low-cost incurred in traditional education. The distance education also gives students flexibility while learning as they are less bound by time and location.

Further, the report states that one challenge that could hamper market growth is the lack or limited availability of IT infrastructure.

While calculating the revenue generated in the market, the following products were considered:

- Software

- Hardware

Key vendors

- Echo360

- Panopto

- Sonic Foundry

- Tegrity

Other prominent vendors

- Accordent Technologies

- Cisco Systems

- Creston Electronics

- Dell

- Kaltura

- MediaCore

- OpenEye

- Qumu

- TechSmith

- Telestream

- VBrick Systems

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/5b4gp9/global_lecture

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
LONDON, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Exchanging Townsville for the pristine sands of Dubai, The Powerpuff Girls were spotted soaring across the Dubai skyline yesterday as they celebrated their on-air return to Cartoon Network after more than a decade. The three much-loved, super-powered little girls Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup descended upon the city, sailing through the air against the backdrop of the Burj Al Arab, the twinkling Persian Gulf and finally the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160530/373263 )

Unsuspecting sunbathers marveled at the seemingly magic flying blue (Bubbles), green (Buttercup) and pink (Blossom) superheroes. Returning with more cartoon capers and humorous situations, the original ambassadors of girl power are now sharing their powers with a whole new generation of fans across the globe. In the Middle East, all-new episodes premiere on Cartoon Network. One of Cartoon Network's most enduring original series, the initial run of The Powerpuff Girls, created by Craig McCracken, premiered in 1998 and earned two Emmy Awards along with five nominations and countless animation honors during its 78-episode run. The series also spawned a feature film with Warner Bros. Pictures in 2002. Powerpuff Girls is currently airing on Cartoon Network Channels in the Middle East and across the world.

Link to Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFydsESJ3EM

Images on Dropbox

SOURCE The Powerpuff Girls, Cartoon Network
TAIPEI, Taiwan, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- TYAN, an industry-leading server platform design manufacturer and subsidiary of MiTAC Computing Technology Corporation, exhibits its expansive lines of storage, cloud computing and HPC solutions optimized for data center, virtualization, supercomputing, cloud and enterprise environments this week at Computex 2016. Highlights of TYAN's new developments in system architecture and power efficiency include the GT62B-B5539 1U Intel Xeon processor D-1500 based storage server and the FT76-B7922 4U 4-socket Intel Xeon processor E7-8800/4800 v3/v4 based server with support up to 4x Intel Xeon Phi coprocessor modules. TYAN's latest dual-socket Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v4-based platforms and NVMe optimized server platforms will also be on display.

"Nowadays, operators of enterprises, data centers and cloud server providers seek for solutions with highest performance, the lowest power consumption and the best price-performance ratio for their infrastructure deployment. TYAN's Intel Xeon based solutions can meet the future trend of cloud computing to deliver high performance, low power consumption with a high price-performance ratio to address a wide range of different applications," said Albert Mu, Vice President of MiTAC Computing Technology Corporation's TYAN Business Unit.

Intel Xeon Processor D-1500 Based-Platform to Bring Efficiency and Intelligence to the Storage Market

For the high efficiency intelligent storage market, TYAN GT62B-B5539 system platform features the new Intel Xeon processor D-1500, a low-power SoC (System-on-Chip) architecture. It is designed to deliver the best performance-per-watt for the storage market. The 1U GT62B-B5539 platform supports Intel Xeon processor D-1500 series CPU with up to 16 cores, 4x DDR4 DIMM slots, 2x 10GbE (Intel X557) and 2x GbE LOM, 1x FH/HL PCI-E x8 slot, 2x mezzanine slots for various options and 10x hot-swap 2.5" storage devices, which include up to 4x NVMe devices.

4-socket FT76-B7922 Maximizes the Performance of In-memory Computing for HPC

TYAN FT76-B7922 is the first multi-purpose server platform that simultaneously supports scale-up (fat node) and scale-out (many-core CPU node) application scenarios. The platform accommodates 4x Intel Xeon processor E7-8800/4800 v4 CPUs and 4x Intel Xeon Phi 7120P (5110P/3120P) cards or four GPGPUs within the enclosure for typical HPC applications. With 1:1 CPU-to-GPU, or CPU-to-Coprocessor ratio, TYAN FT76-B7922 provides a high price-performance and performance-per-watt for HPC community that both needs CPU- and GPU-intensive computing workloads. The quad-socket Intel Xeon E7-8800/4800 v4 platform is able to offer customers a maximum memory pool that reaches 6TB of RAM when 96x 64GB DDR4 DIMMs are deployed.

Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v4-based Platform to Deliver Energy Efficient Performance for Datacenters

TYAN also exhibits the latest Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v4-based servers and motherboards. The dual-socket solution is capable of offering up to 44 cores and 88 threads per motherboard along with 1.5TB of DDR4-2400 memory speed by populating 64GB DIMMs on all slots. The TYAN Xeon E5 platform-based server systems and motherboards enable enterprise and datacenter customers to benefit from the latest advances in cloud computing, HPC, and storage applications.

Related Links

http://www.tyan.com



SOURCE MiTAC Computing - TYAN
NEW YORK, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Artificial Intelligence refers to the study and integration of intelligent systems which are capable of accomplishing the tasks which employ human intelligence such as visual perception, speech recognition, and decision-making. The integrated systems work on a particular set of algorithms predefined by the analysts and scientists. These algorithms act as a knowledge database to the machines. The usage of artificial intelligence is gaining momentum as the accuracy of the task performed by the system of the machine is several times higher than human beings. The major advantage of artificial intelligence is that machines or systems do not require periodic breaks, and are capable of performing the same activity repetitively.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140117/663730 )



United States Artificial Intelligence Market: Outlook

The United States artificial intelligence market was in an embryonic phase in 2015. However, the market has been witnessing rapid developments on account of growing usage for image and speech recognition in consumer electronic devices such as smartphones, tablets, smart wearables, smart TV, etc.

The competitive landscape of the market is highly fragmented as there is a significant year on year increase in the number of technology start-ups emerging in this market. These start-ups are majorly backed by angel investors and venture capitalists.

The investments in the artificial intelligence applications such as machine learning, natural language processing, cyber security, robotics, and automation are registering a sharp increase.

United States Artificial Intelligence Market: Key Drivers

Artificial intelligence market is burgeoning on account of growing venture capital investment. The major venture capitalist active in the artificial intelligence market are Accel, General Catalyst Partners, GV, Work-Bench, Promus Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Khosla Ventures, Samsung Electronics, Wipro Technologies, Samsung Global Innovation Center, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Formation 8, and so on.

In addition, to growing series of acquisition by technology giants such as Apple, Google, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft. etc. to enhance their research and development activities in artificial intelligence space is driving the United States artificial intelligence market. For instance, Apple major acquisition in artificial intelligence market includes Perceptio (machine learning and image recognition company), VocalIQ (speech recognition), and Faceshift (image recognition).

Moreover, growing installation of speech recognition, image recognition, and natural language processing artificial intelligence applications in consumer electronic devices are stimulating the artificial intelligence market in the United States. Autonomous vehicle market is also contributing significantly to the growing demand for artificial intelligence.

United States Artificial Intelligence Market: Emerging Trends

The artificial intelligence market is an innovation driven market. The usage of artificial intelligence applications across the industry verticals such as healthcare, consumer electronics, space exploration, fraud detection, record keeping, etc. is fueling innovation in the artificial intelligence market.

Artificial intelligence is increasingly finding usage in detection of cancer, cancer imaging and identifying the patterns of neurological ailments in the country. In addition, integration of intelligent machine learning tools as a surgery simulator in the prominent medical institutes are minimizing the risks of false diagnosis thereby, reducing the risks of intra-operative complications.

Amalgamation of artificial intelligence with cyber security is proving to be a robust cyber defense mechanism in the country. Artificial intelligence supported by real time analytics deciphers the pattern of cyber-attacks and shields the critical infrastructure of the country from cyber-attacks on real time basis. During 2016-18 the Government of the United States is anticipated to invest around US$ 32 billion on cyber security which is projected to drive the artificial intelligence use in cyber security.

United States Artificial Intelligence Market: Segmentation

The United States Artificial Intelligence Market can be segmented on the basis of Application, End User, and Region.

Based on the Application, the United States Artificial Intelligence Market can be divided into the following segments:

Speech Recognition

Image Recognition

Natural Language Processing

Gesture Control

Cyber Security

Others (Robotics, Virtual Personal Assistant, Querying, Video Analysis, Context Aware Processing, Image Processing)

Based on the End User, the United States Artificial Intelligence Market can be divided into the following segments:

Consumer Electronics

Security & Access Control

Transport

Healthcare

Federal Government

Others (BFSI, Oil & Gas, Power and Utilities, Taxation and Judiciary, Retail, etc.)

Based on the Region, the United States Artificial Intelligence Market can be divided into the following segments:

North- East

Mid-West

South

West

United States Artificial Intelligence Market: Key Players

Leading players in the United States Artificial Intelligence market include Apple, Google, Microsoft, IBM, Kensho Technologies, Nuance Corporation, IPsoft, Next IT Corporation, etc.

Information on these key players is covered in the United States Artificial Intelligence Market report. The report provides detailed company profiles including key segments including business segments, product offerings, financial facts and figures along with the historical data and operating history of the company.

Why Should You Buy This Report?

To gain an in-depth understanding of the United States Artificial Intelligence Market

To identify the on-going trends and anticipated growth over next five years

To help industry consultants, and artificial intelligence based solution providers to align their market-centric strategies

To obtain research-based business decisions and add weight to presentations and marketing material

To gain competitive knowledge of leading market players

To avail 10% customization in the report without any extra charges and get the research data or trends added in the report as per the buyer's specific needs

The report is an outcome of in-depth secondary and primary research by industry experts. This market research report is a strategic guide to market players offering artificial intelligence solutions. The key trends and growth drivers, challenges, end user industry adoption trends, etc. have been taken into consideration before devising the United States as well as the country's regional market size and market share in the artificial intelligence. The report discusses in detail about the reasoning behind current market growth as well as historical market size and analysis, along with the forecast market size and key reasons and analysis for the same.

Report Highlights:

Market Size & Forecast

Market Share & Forecast - By Application, By End User, By Company, By Region

Regional & Segmental Analysis

Emerging Trends & Upcoming Opportunities

Market Attractiveness Index

Competitive Landscape

Strategic Recommendations

Key Questions This Study Will Answer

What is artificial intelligence and how the market will grow in the United States ?

? Which are the key opportunity areas to invest in the market?

What are the key drivers which will take the market to next level?

What are the challenges prevailing in the market?

Which are the dominating regions in the country and how these regions will grow in the coming years?

Which are the key players providing artificial intelligence based solutions? What is the market share of key players in the United States Artificial Intelligence market and how market share dynamics will change in the coming five years?

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
English-speaking Markets Less Complex Overall

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA) has issued its 2016 report on the Most Complex Contingent Markets Globally. Sixty different staffing markets were assessed across six continents in SIA's most detailed analysis of market complexity to date. The findings cover both emerging and established staffing markets, and complexity is identified according to 11 different criteria.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160531/373601

Most Complex Contingent Markets 2016

This year's report found Venezuela to be the most complex market, followed by Egypt and with Italy ranking third in complexity. Heavy regulation on temporary work, low VMS/MSP maturity, labor market inefficiencies and political instability were among contributing factors to Venezuela's high level of complexity. India was the most complex of the Asian markets, with Indonesia following.

The United Kingdom ranked as the least complex contingent market, followed by Australia and the United States as joint second in the rankings. English-speaking markets are less complex overall and scored favorably across most criteria, deeming them easier places in general for employers to develop a contingent workforce.

"This report provides a framework by which to understand the relative ease of deploying or extending a contingent workforce program," said Barry Asin, President of SIA. "Complexity should not be interpreted as lack of feasibility. It simply suggests additional considerations may need to be taken into account when choosing to extend activities in a particular geography or region. Conversely, those markets that are the least complex still require extensive market knowledge, along with strategic and cultural alignment as part of a successful approach to contingent work."

Argentina, Bulgaria, Estonia and Kuwait and Malaysia were all less complex compared to findings for 2015. Markets that have become more complex in the past year include Egypt, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden and Turkey. Algeria, Israel, Slovakia, Slovenia and Venezuela were additional countries included in the assessment for the first time this year.

The full report is available for CWS Council Members here, along with the excel-based Market Complexity Assessment Tool (MACAT). The MACAT allows users to conduct their own evaluations by weighting the indicators which are most relevant to their business activities and specific risk profile/appetite.

About Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA)

SIA is the Global Advisor on Staffing and Workforce Solutions

Founded in 1989, SIA is the global advisor on staffing and workforce solutions. Our proprietary research covers all categories of employed and non-employed work including temporary staffing, independent contracting and other types of contingent labor. As a division of the international business media company, Crain Communications Inc., SIA is headquartered in Mountain View, California, with offices in London, England. Read more about SIA here.

Media Contact

Jennifer Arcuni, Communications Director, Staffing Industry Analysts

jarcuni@staffingindustry.com | +1 650-390-6171 | www.staffingindustry.com

Related Links

http://www.staffingindustry.com



SOURCE Staffing Industry Analysts
SUMNER, Wash., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- 1,000 new mattresses have been donated by mattress retailer Mattress Ranch and its manufacturing partner, Sound Sleep Products, to underprivileged children in 18 of Alaska's most remote villages. The donation is in support of the Boys and Girls Club of Alaska's "Beds for Kids" program. Children from the ages of 5-15 in each village will receive their own new mattress.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160531/373630

Mattresses are being delivered to locations as geographically diverse and difficult to access as the Arctic Slope, Bering Strait, Lower Yukon, Bristol Bay and SE Alaska. Most villages are only accessible by small plane or boat.

Lynden Transport has donated the shipping of the mattresses to Alaska and onto many remote locations. Several aircraft operators are donating space on their planes for final delivery. The deliveries should be completed by the end of June.

The First Delivery

John Larsen, CEO of Sound Sleep Products, and Ted Sadtler of Mattress Ranch accompanied the first of the mattress deliveries on a Spernak Air small aircraft to the village of Tyonek, population 193, located on the Kenai Peninsula.

Upon arrival, Ted and John were welcomed by Jennifer Brown of the Boys and Girls Club of Alaska and the representatives of of the Tyonek Boys and Girls Club. John and Ted were led to the school gymnasium where they had an opportunity to meet some of the 38 children who each received a new mattress.

One child approached Ted and asked him if he was Santa Claus. Ted, the flamboyant public persona of Mattress Ranch, responded, "No, I'm not Santa. I am just an old guy having fun and trying to make a difference."

The children had an opportunity to jump and play on the mattresses as part of the celebration. Each were clearly excited to receive a new bed.

"There isn't anything more gratifying than to see the smile on a child's face," states John Larsen of Sound Sleep Products. "We all know how important a good night's sleep is to a child's development."

The Children

"These mattresses are likely the only mattresses these children have ever owned," states Guy Klabunde, the Director of Alaska Native Partnerships for the Boys and Girls Club of Alaska.

"It is common for 3-4 children to sleep on one threadbare mattress or on the floor. We are so appreciative of the generous donation and the impact these mattresses will make in the children's lives."

63 mattresses were recently delivered to the village of Metlakatla, an island village near Ketchikan. Because of its relatively inaccessible location, the mattresses were delivered by a purse seine fishing boat owned by a villager.

"As two of the mattresses were presented to one family, the mother and children all burst into tears. They were tears of joy, of course," shared Guy, clearly emotionally moved.

The Boys and Girls Clubs play a critical role in these small villages. Suicide and drug abuse are rampant in these very remote locations. There are few jobs and young adults often foresee a bleak future. Hunger is common amongst the children and their families. Villagers often eat only what they harvest as subsistence hunters.

Project Logistics

For the project, each mattress was compressed, rolled and wrapped into a bundle not much larger than a duffel bag. This allowed for efficient transport in sea containers, automobiles, boats and small aircraft. Surprisingly, within 30 minutes of opening the mattresses, the beds return to their original shape, ready for the children's sleep.

Guy Klabunde, the Director of Alaska Native Partnerships for the Boys and Girls Club of Alaska, has done a tremendous job coordinating the delivery of the mattresses and working with the many participants.

In addition to Mattress Ranch, who spearheaded the project and Sound Sleep Products who manufactured the mattresses, several other companies played a key part in the endeavor.

In the lower 48, Pratrivero Nonwovens (Greenville, SC), AI Factory Trading (Sante Fe Springs, CA), WM T Burnett (Phoenix, AZ) and Innocor Foam (Longview, WA) donated products and materials for the project. Lynden Transport graciously donated all transportation services to Alaska.

In Alaska, Everts Air Cargo, Superman Moving and Delivery Service, Fishing Vessel Troika and it's owners Chris and Darcy Booth, Ryan Air, Spernak Air, Coastal Television Broadcasting Company and the Hydaburg Cooperative Association have all generously donated their resources and time.

For Media inquiries or to schedule an interview with John Larsen, Guy Klabunde, or Ted Sadtler, please contact Brad Fransen at 253 880 6342 or via email at [email protected].

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This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com

SOURCE Sound Sleep Products
LONDON, June 1, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

132 businesses from 32 European countries are hoping to be named a winner in Europe's biggest and toughest business competition, the European Business Awards, sponsored by RSM, at its Gala Event Final on 17th June in Milan, Italy.

Businesses will be celebrating success following a 16-month journey, which began when the competition engaged with over 32,000 businesses at its entry stage in spring last year, from which it named 678 National Champions in September 2015.

After a series of video presentations, face to face interviews and a public vote, the finalists in Milan are the ten shortlisted companies for each of the competition's 11 categories and the 'National Public Champions'; the companies whose video achieved the highest number of votes in their country. The public vote this year generated over 227,000 votes from across the globe.

The Event at the Milan Marriott Hotel will have two parts; a 100% Growth Conference during the day where businesses leaders will get together to debate and identify ways to double the size of their businesses, and a Gala Dinner in the evening when the final winners will be announced.

Alongside the successful finalists in attendance there will also be VIPs including leading academics, politicians, ambassadors, and business leaders from the most successful organisations in Europe, many of whom acted as judges for the Awards.

Adrian Tripp, CEO of the European Business Awards said: "The Gala Event Final is the result of enormous effort and achievement. It also presents a powerful opportunity for businesses to meet peers, discover new solutions, do business and celebrate phenomenal success. I wish all our finalists the best of luck."

Jean Stephens, CEO of RSM, the sixth largest global network of independent audit, tax and consulting firms said: "The European Business Awards are an ideal platform to celebrate the innovation, strength of leadership and depth of business acumen of the finalists. But more than that, they provide a forum for leaders to discuss the evolving landscape, learnings and insights and how these can be utilised to drive business initiatives and growth across the continent."

In the 2015/16 competition, all EU member markets were represented plus Turkey, Norway, Switzerland, Serbia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Their combined revenue exceeded 1.2 trillion employing over 2.5 million people.

The European Business Awards' primary purpose is to support the development of a stronger and more successful business community throughout Europe. Additional sponsors and partners of the Awards include UK Trade and Investment, ELITE and PR Newswire.

For further information about the European Business Awards and RSM please go to http://www.businessawardseurope.com or http://www.rsm.global and follow us on twitter at @rsmEBA

NOTES TO EDITORS:

About the European Business Awards:

The European Business Awards' primary purpose is to support the development of a stronger and more successful business community throughout Europe.

For all citizens of Europe, prosperity, social and healthcare systems are reliant on businesses creating an even stronger, more innovative, successful, international and ethical business community - one that forms the beating heart of an increasingly globalised economy.

The European Business Awards programme serves the European business community in three ways:

 It celebrates and endorses individuals' and organisations' success

 It provides and promotes examples of excellence for the business community to aspire to

 It engages with the European business community to create debate on key issues

The European Business Awards is now in its 10th year. It attracted over 32,000 businesses to the competition last year and in the public vote generated over 170,000 votes from across Europe. Sponsors and partners include RSM, ELITE, UKTI and PR Newswire.

http://www.businessawardseurope.com.

About RSM

RSM is the sixth largest network of independent audit, tax and consulting firms, encompassing over 120 countries, 760 offices and more than 38,000 people internationally. The network's total fee income is US$4.64 billion.

RSM is the lead sponsor and corporate champion of the European Business Awards promoting commercial excellence and recognition of entrepreneurial brilliance.

RSM is a member of the Forum of Firms, with the shared objective to promote consistent and high quality standards of financial and auditing practices worldwide.

RSM is the brand used by a network of independent accounting and advisory firms each of which practices in its own right. RSM International Limited does not itself provide any accounting and advisory services. Member firms are driven by a common vision of providing high quality professional services, both in their domestic markets and in serving the international professional service needs of their client base. http://www.rsm.global

About UK Trade & Investment:

UKTI works with UK based businesses to export to international markets and supports overseas companies to look at the UK as the best place to set up or expand their business. If you are a company interested in expanding in to the UK, please contact [email protected] or visit http://www.gov.uk/ukti

About ELITE:

ELITE is an integrated service designed to help SMEs prepare and structure for the next stage of growth through access to long term financing opportunities.

ELITE targets SMEs with a sound business model, clear growth strategy and a desire to obtain funding in the near future.

ELITE offers an innovative approach, including a training programme, a working zone supported by a tutorship model and direct access to the financial community through dedicated digital community facilities. It is "capital neutral" to any financing opportunity, providing access to Private Equity and Venture Capital Funds, debt products, etc.

ELITE was successfully launched in Italy in 2012 and in the UK in 2014. It now accounts for more than 200 companies of different sizes and sectors, more than 150 partners and more than 70 long term investors. It is a European platform deeply rooted in each domestic market, through partnership with local institutions combined with the opportunity to access international support and advice.

It will be a community of excellence: companies, advisors, investors and stakeholders with an interest in supporting SMEs. The larger the community, the wider the range of business and growth opportunities offered to ELITE members.

About PR Newswire

PR Newswire is the leading global provider of PR and corporate communications tools that enable clients to distribute news and rich content. We distribute our client's content across traditional, digital and social media channels in real time with fully actionable reporting and monitoring.

Combining the world's largest multi-channel, multi-cultural content distribution and optimisation 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 Europe, Middle East, Africa, the Americas and the Asia-Pacific region.

For more information on PR Newswire please visit http://www.prnewswire.co.uk

SOURCE The European Business Awards
NEW YORK, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- 2016 ASEAN Automotive Outlook : ASEAN to be the Fifth-Largest Automotive Market in 2016

This research service discusses in detail the Automotive Outlook in ASEAN during 2015 and presents the expected trends for 2016. It provides an analysis of the automotive outlook in the region with focus on the three key markets in ASEANThailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. It also touches upon the trends in other ASEAN countries with smaller but growing automotive markets. Besides presenting the unit shipment market trends and forecasts in the key countries, the study also analyzes the current and future factors affecting them. It includes the executive summary, research scope, objectives, background, and methodology, definitions and segmentation, ASEAN market outlook, regional market trends and forecasts for Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia, conclusions, and the future outlook and appendix.

2015 Key Highlights

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) vehicle sales declined % in 2015 over 2014 due to a slack in economic growth and the resulting low purchasing power and a negative consumer sentiment.

1 Key markets Thailand and Indonesia saw a decline in demand; smaller markets saw considerable growth The key markets of Indonesia and Thailand once again saw a decline in vehicle sales due to the depressed economy, weak consumer spending power, and falling export demand. While Malaysia maintained its performance, other countries such as Vietnam, Singapore, and the Philippines saw high vehicle sales driven by economic growth and rising income levels.

2 Passenger vehicles (PVs) experienced higher growth PVs saw higher growth in 2015 driven by eco cars in Thailand, low cost green cars (LCGCs) and sport utility vehicle (SUVs) in Indonesia, and SUVs in Malaysia. Multi-purpose vehicles (MPVs) saw a considerable drop in sales in both Indonesia and Malaysia. In terms of commercial vehicles (CVs), pick-ups' sales grew in Malaysia and Thailand. In Indonesia too, small pickups and double cabs saw positive growth.

3 Launch of new models/facelifts pushed up vehicle sales In all the three key markets, sale of new models/facelift launches in both PV and CV segments helped to push up vehicle uptake. This included the launch of new pickup and SUV models in Thailand, such as Toyota Hilux Revo, Mazda BT50, Mitsubishi Pajero, Isuzu D-Maxx, Toyota Fortuner, and Honda CR-V facelift. The models launched in Malaysia were Perodua Myvi facelift, HR-V, Mercedes C-Class and Mazda3, Isuzu D-Max Diablo (special edition) & V-Cross, new-generation Mitsubishi Triton, and Nissan Navara, and facelift for Ford Ranger.

4 Japanese brands continue to be market leaders in key ASEAN markets Toyota continued to be the leader in the PV segment in Indonesia and Thailand, and in the CV segment in Malaysia. National car makers Perodua and Proton continued to lead the PV segment in Malaysia. The market concentration of top brands increased in Malaysia and Indonesia, and dropped in Thailand. Honda consolidated its position in Indonesia and Malaysia, emerging as one of the key participants in the region.

Key Questions This Study Will Answer

- What is the business environment of the automotive market in the 3 key ASEAN countries of Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia?

- Which vehicle segments are preferred and which have a higher growth potential in these markets?

- Which are the key OEMs in the ASEAN automotive market?

Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p03862984-summary/view-report.html

About Reportlinker

ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.

http://www.reportlinker.com

__________________________

Contact Clare: [email protected]

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SOURCE Reportlinker

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28% more people across the world are trapped in modern slavery than previously estimated, according to the Global Slavery Index 2016

Walk Free Foundation's Andrew Forrest calls on top ten economies of the world to enact laws to ensure all organisations are held accountable for modern slavery in their supply chains

Significant increase in the estimation of the total number of people enslaved due to enhanced research methodology

North American governments are taking action to respond to modern slavery through national legislation and policies

The most accurate up-to-date analysis of slavery in history

#UnderstandSlavery #EndSlavery

Global Slavery Index 2016 key findings:

-- Total number of people enslaved globally: 45.8 million people.

-- Enhanced methodology reveals that 10 million more people are enslaved than previously estimated  a 28% increase.

-- India remains the country with highest absolute number of people in slavery (18.3m). Its government's response is strengthening rapidly.

-- Survey research includes over 42,000 interviews in 53 languages across 25 countries, representing 44% of global population, including 15 state-level surveys in India.

-- Modern slavery exists in all 167 countries covered by the Global Slavery Index.

-- The United States and Canada among countries that demonstrate lowest prevalence of modern slavery, along with countries in Western Europe, and Australia and New Zealand.

-- The United States government ranks number two among the list of governments that are taking steps to respond to modern slavery.

-- North Korea has the highest incidence of modern slavery (4.37% of population) and weakest government response.

LONDON and PERTH, Australia, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- An estimated 45.8 million men, women and children around the world are today trapped in modern slavery1 - 28% more than previously estimated. They are enslaved through human trafficking, forced labour, debt bondage, forced or servile marriage or commercial sexual exploitation. This is revealed in the 2016 Global Slavery Index, the flagship research report published today by the Walk Free Foundation.

North Korea is the country with the greatest prevalence of modern slavery, with 4.37% of its population estimated to be enslaved. It is also the country with the weakest government response in terms of actions taken to combat modern slavery. The next highest prevalence of slavery is found in Uzbekistan (3.97%), followed by Cambodia (1.65%).

Canada and the United States are among the list of nations that demonstrate the lowest prevalence of slavery in the 2016 Index, at 0.018%, along with many Western European countries, and Australia and New Zealand. In absolute numbers, the United States is estimated to count 57,700 and Canada 6,500 enslaved people.

In terms of absolute numbers, India remains the highest with an estimated 18.35 million enslaved people, followed by China (3.39m), Pakistan (2.13m), Bangladesh (1.53m) and Uzbekistan (1.23m). Combined, these five countries account for almost 58% of the world's enslaved, or 26.6 million people.

The 2016 Global Slavery Index estimates that 28% more people are enslaved than reported in the 2014 edition. This significant increase is due to enhanced data collection and research methodology. Survey research for the 2016 Global Slavery Index included over 42,000 interviews conducted in 53 languages across 25 countries, including 15 state-level surveys in India. These representative surveys cover 44% of the global population.

In 2016 the Walk Free Foundation, Gallup, and Polaris undertook survey research to better understand the general awareness of the NHTRC's hotline number among the American public, through the Gallup U.S. nightly public opinion survey. Ultimately, the results suggest that a relatively small proportion of the American public are informed about it, with only 6.7% indicating they know the NHTRC specifically and 12% aware that there is a hotline focused on human trafficking. This indicates that the 5,544 cases reported in 2015 is likely a small proportion of the actual prevalence of human trafficking in the United States.

Government response

The Global Slavery Index also tracks government actions and responses to modern slavery. Of the 161 assessed2, 124 countries have criminalised human trafficking in line with the UN Trafficking Protocol and 96 have developed national action plans to coordinate government response. The governments leading the charge against modern slavery are The Netherlands, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Australia, Portugal, Croatia, Spain, Belgium and Norway.

Some significant progress has been made by many governments since the publication of the 2014 report. The UK Government introduced the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and has appointed an Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, Mr Kevin Hyland. President Barack Obama closed a loophole in US law to now ban the importation of goods made with forced or child labour.

The United States government ranks number two among the list of governments that are taking steps to respond to modern slavery, most of which are predominantly high GDP countries. Within the Americas, following the United States, the highest government response rankings were held by Argentina, Canada and Brazil, respectively.

The United States offers a model for survivor leadership. President Barack Obama has formed an Advisory Council on Human Trafficking made up entirely of survivors, while a national network of over 200 survivors across the country meet regularly to work on strategic advocacy at both local and national levels. Additionally, the Senior Policy Operating Group (SPOG) of the President's Interagency Task Force on Human Trafficking reported in 2015 that the federal government has achieved the first Partnership for Freedom competition that encourages public-private partnerships to innovate solutions to problems related to modern slavery as well as cross-agency collaboration on the Anti-Trafficking Coordination Team (ACTeam) Initiative and implementation of the Federal Strategic Action Plan on Services to Victims of Human Trafficking in the United States. In 2015, the US Government also established the Office on Trafficking in Persons (OTIP), a new bureau dedicated to trafficking in persons in the Department of Health and Human Services which aims to establish a cohesive national human trafficking victim service delivery system for all trafficking victims in the United States.

Countries such as Croatia, Montenegro, Brazil, Macedonia, the Philippines, Georgia, Moldova, Albania and Jamaica are taking positive steps to respond to modern slavery relative to their wealth.

While India has more people enslaved than any other country, it has made significant progress in introducing measures to tackle the problem. It has criminalised trafficking, slavery, forced labour, child prostitution and forced marriage. The Indian government is currently tightening legislation against human trafficking, with tougher punishment for repeat offenders. It will offer victims protection and recovery support.

Call to action

Mr Andrew Forrest, Chairman and Founder of Walk Free Foundation, said eradicating slavery makes sense, morally, politically, logically and economically, and called on the governments of the world's leading economies to provide an example to others by enacting and implementing robust anti-slavery measures.

"We call on governments of the top 10 economies of the world to enact laws, at least as strong as the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015, with a budget and capability to ensure organisations are held to account for modern slavery in their supply chains, and to empower independent oversight. Leaders of the world's major economies must bring the power of business to this issue, by requiring a focus on supply chain transparency."

"I believe in the critical role of leaders in government, business and civil society," Mr Forrest said. "Through our responsible use of power, strength of conviction, determination and collective will, we all can lead the world to end slavery."

Mr Forrest emphasised the key role that business needs to play in eradicating slavery: "Businesses that don't actively look for forced labour within their supply chains are standing on a burning platform. Business leaders who refuse to look into the realities of their own supply chains are misguided and irresponsible."

The Global Slavery Index report can be found at www.globalslaveryindex.org

Notes to Editors

Slavery exists in each of the 167 countries included in the Index

Highest prevalence:

Prevalence: 1. North Korea (4.37%); 2. Uzbekistan (3.97%); 3. Cambodia (1.65%); India (1.40%) Qatar (1.36%).

Absolute numbers: 1. India (18.35m); 2. China (3.39m); 3. Pakistan (2.13m); 4. Bangladesh (1.53m); 5. Uzbekistan (1.23m).

Lowest prevalence: 52. (All with 0.02% prevalence): Luxembourg; New Zealand; Ireland; Norway; Denmark; Switzerland; Austria; Sweden; Belgium; Australia; Canada; Spain; United Kingdom; France; Germany; US.

Strongest action: 1. Netherlands; 2. US; 3. UK; 4. Sweden; 5. Australia.

Weakest action: 161. North Korea; 160. Iran; 159. Eritrea; 158. Equatorial Guinea; 157. Hong Kong SAR, China.

About the Index:

The Global Slavery Index gives the most accurate and comprehensive measure of the extent and risk of modern slavery available today. It is the only global report of its kind, providing a country-by-country estimate of the number of people living in modern slavery today, an analysis of its prevalence in terms of the percentage of a national population and the total number of people enslaved in 167 countries. The Global Slavery Index also measures government responses and actions to combat modern slavery.

The prevalence estimates in the Index draw on over 42,000 face to face interviews conducted in 53 languages, covering 44% of global population. Where surveying could not be done, these results were extrapolated to countries with an equivalent risk profile. We develop that risk profile by looking at 24 variables, covering key indicators such as risk of corruption, conflict, discrimination and violence in the population.

We have tested our 2014 extrapolated results against later survey results - and they are within 1% of each other, when taken as a percentage of population which is what the Index measures. We use an internationally recognised company Gallup. All work is guided by an Expert Working Group of imminent statisticians and subject matter experts, and also has been subjected to external review. We have published our methodology in various peer reviewed journals.

The Global Slavery Index is a critical tool for governments, citizens, NGOs and businesses to end slavery. The methodology for the Index was developed through extensive consultations with an international and independent Expert Advisory Group.

About the Walk Free Foundation:

The hidden, global and complex nature of modern slavery has led the Walk Free Foundation to develop an integrated strategy to sustainably respond to this crime. This includes the generation of high quality research; a private donor fund to scale up effective interventions; engagement with the world's major leaders, and organisations including faiths; and support for a global coordinated strategy. The Foundation also incubated a global movement of supporters with a shared vision to end modern slavery.

1 Please note that throughout, the terms 'enslaved' and 'slavery' are used as synonyms of 'modern slavery' and should not be interpreted to suggest traditional slavery in which people were held in bondage as legal property, which has been outlawed in every country across the world.

2 Due to the ongoing conflict and extreme disruption to government function, ratings for Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen have not been included.

SOURCE The Walk Free Foundation

Related Links

http://www.walkfreefoundation.org


CLEVELAND, Tenn., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- This month, don't miss Check Into Cash's Cash For Kids Facebook giveaway benefitting St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Check Into Cash will match June's $500 giveaway prize with a $500 donation to St. Jude. St. Jude works to advance cures and prevention for pediatric catastrophic diseases, such as cancer, through research and treatment.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160531/373539

"It means a lot to Check Into Cash that we find ways to show community appreciation while helping those who need it most," said Check Into Cash President Steve Scoggins. "June's cash prize will put a smile on our winner's face, and the donation to St. Jude will help sick children."

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital does not deny children treatment based on the family's ability to pay. The families of ill children never receive a bill from St. Jude, and unlike other hospitals, most of St. Jude's funding comes from individual contributions.

"The plight of a family with a severely ill child is tough to imagine," explained Scoggins. "The last thing they need to be worried about is hospital bills and money."

For anyone who wants to enter for a chance to win $500, visit Facebook.com/CheckIntoCash before midnight on June 30, 2016, and select the Cash For Kids Giveaway tab. To learn more about Check Into Cash stores and services, check out CheckIntoCash.com.

Learn more or get involved with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital at StJude.org.

About Check Into Cash

Founded in Cleveland, Tennessee, in 1993 by entrepreneur and philanthropist Allan Jones, the Check Into Cash brand is state regulated and offers customers a wide variety of financial solutions. Check Into Cash stores offer consumer micro-loans, check cashing, Western Union money transfers, prepaid U.S. Money Cards, and other convenient services as a complete one stop money shop.

Check Into Cash is a founding member of the Community Financial Services Association of America (CFSA), the trade association representing the nation's payday lenders. The CFSA advocates for best practices and helps enact legislation that balances the needs of the consumer with the interests of the industry.

As a national leader and industry standard bearer, Check Into Cash firmly believes in truthful advertising and full disclosure of its services.

2016 Check Into Cash, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com

SOURCE Check Into Cash, Inc.
CHICAGO, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- On May 12, 2016, over 350 consumer industry professionals from across the country gathered in San Francisco, CA for the 3rd annual Lincoln International Consumer Conference. This conference is one of the best of its kind bringing together entrepreneurs, private equity investors, business executives and industry experts for a day of networking and knowledge sharing centered on trends, challenges and key growth drivers for today's consumer-focused businesses.

This year, 41 diverse, high growth companies spanning the consumer goods, retail and food & beverage sectors presented at the conference. Lincoln also organized over 200 one-on-one meetings between presenting companies and potential investors. Keynote speakers included digital marketing experts Jay Baer, bestselling author and founder of strategy consulting firm Convince & Convert, and Erik Qualman, bestselling author and motivational keynote speaker, who shared their insights on driving brand awareness and consumer engagement through their proven concepts of Youtility (Jay Baer) and Socialnomics (Erik Qualman).

Trevor Nelson, Managing Director at Alliance Consumer Growth LLC, commented, "It was a truly fantastic conference on all levelsIt was well organized, well attended and informative, with great people, great brands, great speakers and a great vibegreat all around."

Vincent Fantegrossi, President and CEO of Back to Nature Foods, reflected, "The conference was extremely worthwhile. I made a number of valuable contacts and got some great insights both from conversations and the speakers."

Mary Miller, Business Development at TSG Consumer Partners, commented, "Congratulations on a fantastic roster of high growth companies. It was an extremely productive day."

More than 100 companies have presented at Lincoln International's Consumer Conference over the past three years. The rich content and abundant networking opportunities provided by the conference continue to attract the highest caliber consumer industry investors, the most sought after high growth consumer companies and the industry's leading experts. To learn more about the Lincoln International Consumer Conference, please visit http://www.lincolninternational.com/industries/consumer/.

About Lincoln International

Lincoln International specializes in merger and acquisition advisory services, debt advisory services, private capital raising and restructuring advice on mid-market transactions. Lincoln International also provides fairness opinions, valuations and pension advisory services on a wide range of transaction sizes. With sixteen offices in the Americas, Asia and Europe, Lincoln International has strong local knowledge and contacts in key global economies. The firm provides clients with senior-level attention, in-depth industry expertise and integrated resources. By being focused and independent, Lincoln International serves its clients without conflicts of interest. More information about Lincoln International can be obtained at www.lincolninternational.com.

Media Contact: Kelly Neroda

[email protected]

(312) 506-1950

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SOURCE Lincoln International LLC

Related Links

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GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- AgroAmerica has donated $20,000 to the Red Cross to help victims of the devastating earthquake that struck Ecuador last month. In addition, the company provided much needed food to over 250 families of the Flavio Alfaro Canton in the province of Manabi, in northwestern Ecuador.

AgroAmerica workers helped prepare the food donations, coordinate logistics and then delivered food directly to the affected families.

"To see the happy faces of the families when we delivered the food, makes it all worthwhile," said Damian Arevalo, AgroAmerica's head of certifications in Ecuador. "We are proud to be able to help, and hope that these contributions will make a difference in the lives of those who are suffering."

AgroAmerica also has ongoing social programs in Ecuador. In the province of Guayas, the company sponsors the "Buenos Aires" school providing various needs of the school, such as building needed classrooms, and providing school supplies. The company also helps daycare "Lorenzo de Garaicoa" sponsoring malnutrition and parasite control campaigns, as well as providing health and medical services for the children who attend.

For more information about AgroAmerica, please visit their web page.

SOURCE AgroAmerica

Related Links

http://www.agroamerica.com


LEHIGH VALLEY, Pa., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Air Products (NYSE:APD) is committed to helping metals processors around the world improve product quality, reduce operating costs, increase yields, and enhance processing windows. As part of this effort, the company will introduce its new continuous dew point monitoring system among its range of industrial gases, equipment, and technology solutions for powder metallurgy and additive manufacturing at POWDERMET2016 in Boston, Mass., from June 6-7.

Maintaining the appropriate atmosphere conditions in each furnace zone is critical to achieve consistent sintered product quality. The atmosphere dew point is an important parameter, however, continuous monitoring of the dew point in the hot zone can be challenging. Dew point readings can drift significantly, causing erroneous measurement and necessitating frequent cleaning, recalibration, and sensor replacement. With Air Products' continuous dew point monitoring system, these issues can be significantly mitigated. Additionally, continuous dew point monitoring helps manufacturers comply with CQI-9 and NADCAP requirements, and enables operators to plan ahead for shutdowns and preventive maintenance of their furnaces.

Tradeshow attendees are invited to stop by Air Products booth 319 to speak with a knowledgeable representative about the challenges they face in their day-to-day operations. In addition to gases, equipment, and technology solutions, Air Products' technical specialists can provide applications knowledge and consulting services for a variety of processes, including powder production, sintering, heat treating, inerting, and additive manufacturing.

Air Products also operates laboratories in Allentown, Pa., where it can perform metals processing research and applications development, as well as testing for simulating, troubleshooting, and optimizing customer operations. Frequently used work tools include heat treating furnaces with a wide variety of atmospheres, metallurgical examinations, atmosphere analyses, thermodynamic equilibrium and diffusional calculations, as well as computational fluid dynamics modeling. Air Products provides customer support for ongoing operational efficiency, product quality improvements, and new process development projects.

For more information about Air Products' complete portfolio of offerings for the metals processing industry, call 800-654-4567, email [email protected], or visit www.airproducts.com/mp.

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.

SOURCE Air Products

Related Links

http://www.airproducts.com


DUBLIN, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Allergan plc (NYSE: AGN), a leading global pharmaceutical company, today announced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the company's supplemental New Drug Application (sNDA) for TEFLARO (ceftaroline fosamil), granting new indications for pediatric patients 2 months of age to less than 18 years of age with acute bacterial skin and skin structure infections (ABSSSI), including infections caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), and community-acquired bacterial pneumonia (CABP) caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae and other designated susceptible bacteria.

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"The impact of ABSSSI and CABP among children is significant, as these infections often require hospitalization and are met with limited pediatric treatment options, particularly as resistance increases among the pathogens that cause these infections," said David Nicholson, Chief R&D Officer, Allergan. "These new indications are yet another testament to our ongoing research and development in anti-infectives to address the evolving challenges of serious infections. Importantly, it allows us to educate physicians on the data they need to prescribe TEFLARO to appropriate pediatric patients in need of an option that is safe and effective against some of the most difficult-to-treat pathogens in ABSSSI and CABP."

ABSSSI and CABP are common causes of healthcare visits and hospitalizations among children. Studies show more than 70,000 hospitalizations for ABSSSI occur among children per year  a rate that has more than doubled over the past 13 years.1 A study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also found children younger than 5 years of age accounted for 70 percent of children hospitalized for community-acquired pneumonia.2

These new indications were approved based on results from clinical studies evaluating TEFLARO in pediatric patients (2 months to less than 18 years of age), including one active-controlled study in ABSSSI and two active-controlled studies in CABP. In the ABSSSI active-controlled study, the efficacy and safety of TEFLARO was compared with vancomycin or cefazolin (each with optional aztreonam). In the CABP studies, TEFLARO was compared with ceftriaxone. Use of TEFLARO in pediatric patients 2 months to less than 18 years of age is supported by evidence from adequate and well-controlled studies of TEFLARO in adults, as well as additional pharmacokinetic and safety data from pediatric trials.

The primary objective of the pediatric ABSSSI and CABP studies was to evaluate the safety and tolerability of TEFLARO. These studies were not powered for comparative inferential efficacy analysis, and no efficacy endpoints were identified as primary.

To evaluate the treatment effect of TEFLARO in the ABSSSI pediatric trial, an analysis was conducted in 159 patients with ABSSSI in the Modified Intent-to-Treat (MITT) population. This analysis evaluated responder rates based on achieving both cessation of lesion spread and absence of fever on Study Day 3. Patients treated with TEFLARO showed a higher response at Study Day 3 versus the comparator group, with clinical response achieved in 80.4 percent (86/107) of patients treated with TEFLARO and 75 percent (39/52) of patients in the comparator group, with a treatment difference of 5.4 percent (95 percent Confidence Interval [CI] -7.8, 20.3). Clinical cure rates at the test of cure (TOC) visit (8 to 15 days after the end of therapy) for the ABSSSI pediatric trial were 94.4 percent (101/107) for patients treated with TEFLARO and 86.5 percent (45/52) for the comparator, with a treatment difference of 7.9 (95 percent CI -1.2, 20.2).

To evaluate the treatment effect of TEFLARO in the CABP trial submitted for this pediatric filing, an analysis was conducted in 143 patients with CABP in the MITT population. This analysis evaluated responder rates at Study Day 4 based on achieving improvement in at least two out of seven symptoms (cough, dyspnea, chest pain, sputum production, chills, feeling of warmth/feverish and exercise intolerance or lethargy), and worsening in none of these symptoms. The clinical response at Study Day 4 was 69.2 percent (74/107) for patients treated with TEFLARO and 66.7 percent (24/36) for the comparator, with a treatment difference of 2.5 percent (95 percent CI -13.9, 20.9). Clinical cure rates at TOC were 87.9 percent (94/107) for patients treated with TEFLARO and 88.9 percent (32/36) for the comparator, with a treatment difference of -1.0 (95 percent CI -11.5, 14.1).

Results from the clinical studies in pediatric patients showed that TEFLARO demonstrated a safety profile that was compatible with treatment of ABSSSI and CABP at the clinical dosages studied. The safety findings were similar to those seen in the adult studies, and no safety concerns were identified beyond those already known to be cephalosporin class effects.

TEFLARO is the first and only cephalosporin indicated in adults and pediatric patients 2 months of age and older for the treatment of ABSSSI and CABP due to designated susceptible pathogens that can be administered by intravenous (IV) infusion in five minutes to one hour.

ABOUT TEFLARO

TEFLARO was first approved by the U.S. FDA in October 2010 for the treatment of adults with CABP and ABSSSI due to designated susceptible pathogens. TEFLARO is a bactericidal cephalosporin with activity against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative pathogens. TEFLARO is indicated in adult and pediatric patients 2 months of age and older for the treatment of CABP, including cases caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae, and ABSSSI, including cases caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). TEFLARO is the first and only cephalosporin with activity against MRSA in ABSSSI. In clinical trials, TEFLARO was generally well-tolerated with an adverse event profile consistent with the cephalosporin class of antibiotics. TEFLARO has been administered in over 2.3 million days of therapy, treating more than 350,000 patients.

Allergan plc (formerly Forest Laboratories) obtained the worldwide rights (excluding Japan, where Takeda Pharmaceuticals holds rights) to TEFLARO in 2007 when it acquired Cerexa, Inc., a privately held biopharmaceutical company. In August 2009, Forest Laboratories and AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN) entered into a definitive collaboration agreement to co-develop and commercialize ceftaroline fosamil in all markets outside the U.S., Canada and Japan.

INDICATIONS AND USAGE

TEFLARO  (ceftaroline fosamil) is indicated in adult and pediatric patients 2 months of age and older for the treatment of acute b ac terial skin and skin structure infections ( AB S SS I ) caused by susceptible isolates of the following Gram-positive and Gram-negative microorganisms: S taphylococcus aureus (including methicillin-susceptible and -resistant isolates), S treptococcus pyogenes , Streptococcus agalactiae , Escherichia coli , Klebsiella pneumoniae , and Klebsiella oxytoca .

(ceftaroline fosamil) is indicated in adult and pediatric patients 2 months of age and older for the treatment of caused by susceptible isolates of the following Gram-positive and Gram-negative microorganisms: (including methicillin-susceptible and -resistant isolates), , , , , and . TEFLARO is also indicated in adult and pediatric patients 2 months of age and older for the treatment of c o m m u n ity-acquired bacterial pneumonia ( CABP ) caused by susceptible isolates of the following Gram-positive and Gram-negative microorganisms: S treptococcus pneumoniae (including cases with concurrent bacteremia), S taphylococcus aureus (methicillin-susceptible isolates only), Haemophilus influenzae , Klebsiella pneumoniae , Klebsiella oxytoca , and Escherichia coli.

caused by susceptible isolates of the following Gram-positive and Gram-negative microorganisms: (including cases with concurrent bacteremia), (methicillin-susceptible isolates only), , , , and To reduce the development of drug-resistant bacteria and maintain the effectiveness of TEFLARO and other antibacterial drugs, TEFLARO should be used to treat only ABSSSI or CABP that are proven or strongly suspected to be caused by susceptible bacteria. Appropriate specimens for microbiological examination should be obtained in order to isolate and identify the causative pathogens and to determine their susceptibility to ceftaroline. When culture and susceptibility information are available, they should be considered in selecting or modifying antibacterial therapy. In the absence of such data, local epidemiology and susceptibility patterns may contribute to the empiric selection of therapy.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION

Contraindications

TEFLARO is contraindicated in patients with known serious hypersensitivity to ceftaroline or other members of the cephalosporin class. Anaphylaxis has been reported with ceftaroline.

Warnings and Precautions

Hypersensitivity Reactions

Serious and occasionally fatal hypersensitivity (anaphylactic) reactions and serious skin reactions have been reported with beta-lactam antibacterial drugs. Before therapy with TEFLARO is instituted, careful inquiry about previous hypersensitivity reactions to other cephalosporins, penicillins, or carbapenems should be made. Maintain clinical supervision if this product is to be given to a penicillin- or other beta-lactam-allergic patient, because cross sensitivity among beta-lactam antibacterial agents has been clearly established.

If an allergic reaction to TEFLARO occurs, discontinue TEFLARO and institute appropriate treatment and supportive measures.

Clostridium difficile-Associated Diarrhea

Clostridium difficile-Associated Diarrhea (CDAD) has been reported for nearly all systemic antibacterial agents, including TEFLARO, and may range in severity from mild diarrhea to fatal colitis. Careful medical history is necessary because CDAD has been reported to occur more than 2 months after the administration of antibacterial agents. If CDAD is suspected or confirmed, antibacterials not directed against C. difficile should be discontinued, if possible.

Direct Coombs' Test Seroconversion

In adults, seroconversion from a negative to a positive direct Coombs' test result occurred in 120/1114 (10.8%) of patients receiving TEFLARO and 49/1116 (4.4%) of patients receiving comparator drugs in the four pooled adult Phase 3 trials.

In children, seroconversion from a negative to a positive direct Coombs' test result occurred in 42/234 (17.9%) of patients receiving TEFLARO and 3/93 (3.2%) of patients receiving comparator drugs in the three pooled pediatric trials.

No adverse reactions representing hemolytic anemia were reported in any treatment group. If anemia develops during or after treatment with TEFLARO, drug-induced hemolytic anemia should be considered. If drug-induced hemolytic anemia is suspected, discontinuation of TEFLARO should be considered and supportive care should be administered to the patient if clinically indicated.

Development of Drug-Resistant Bacteria

Prescribing TEFLARO in the absence of a proven or strongly suspected bacterial infection is unlikely to provide benefit to the patient and increases the risk of the development of drug-resistant bacteria.

Adverse Reactions in Adults

In the four pooled adult Phase 3 clinical trials, serious adverse reactions occurred in 98/1300 (7.5%) of patients receiving TEFLARO and 100/1297 (7.7%) of patients receiving comparator drugs. Treatment discontinuation due to adverse reactions occurred in 35/1300 (2.7%) of patients receiving TEFLARO and 48/1297 (3.7%) of patients receiving comparator drugs with the most common adverse reactions leading to discontinuation being hypersensitivity for both treatment groups at a rate of 0.3% in the TEFLARO group and 0.5% in the comparator group.

The most common adverse reactions occurring in >2% of patients receiving TEFLARO in the adult pooled Phase 3 clinical trials were diarrhea (5%) nausea (4%), and rash (3%).

Adverse Reactions in Pediatrics

In the three pooled pediatric clinical trials, serious adverse reactions occurred in 10/257 (4%) of patients receiving TEFLARO and 3/102 (3%) of patients receiving comparator drugs. Treatment discontinuation due to adverse reactions occurred in 10/257 (3.9%) of patients receiving TEFLARO and 2/102 (2%) of patients receiving comparator drugs with the most common adverse reaction leading to discontinuation being rash in 2/257 (0.8%) of patients treated with TEFLARO

The most common adverse reactions occurring in  3% of patients receiving TEFLARO in the pooled pediatric clinical trials were diarrhea (8%), rash (7%), vomiting (5%), pyrexia (3%) and nausea (3%).

Drug Interactions

No clinical drug-drug interaction studies have been conducted with TEFLARO. There is minimal potential for drug- drug interactions between TEFLARO and CYP450 substrates, inhibitors, or inducers; drugs known to undergo active renal secretion; and drugs that may alter renal blood flow.

Use in Specific Populations

There have been no adequate and well-controlled studies with TEFLARO in pregnant or nursing women.

Safety and effectiveness in pediatric patients below the age of 2 months have not been established as no data are available.

Because elderly patients, those 65 years of age, are more likely to have decreased renal function and ceftaroline is excreted primarily by the kidney, care should be taken in dose selection in this age group and it may be useful to monitor renal function. Dosage adjustment for elderly patients should therefore be based on renal function.

Dosage adjustment is required in adult patients with moderate (CrCl >30 to 50 mL/min) or severe (CrCl 15 to 30mL/min) renal impairment and in patients with end-stage renal disease (CrCl <15 mL/min). There is insufficient information to recommend a dosage regimen for pediatric patients with CrCl < 50 ml/min/1.73m 2 .

. The pharmacokinetics of ceftaroline in patients with hepatic impairment have not been established.

Please also see the full Prescribing Information at www.TEFLARO.com.

About ABSSSI

In 2014, there were 2.7 million hospital admissions for ABSSSI, of which 11 percent were for pediatric patients, which included patients with cellulitis, erysipelas, wound infection and major cutaneous abscess.3 The majority of all skin and soft tissue infections in hospitalized patients are caused by streptococci and Staphylococcus aureus, and approximately 59 percent of these Staphylococcus aureus infections in the U.S. are estimated to be caused by MRSA.4 Early and effective treatment of ABSSSI is critical to optimize patient recovery and for certain patients may also help to avoid potentially lengthy and costly hospital stays.

About CABP

In 2014, there were 1.3 million hospital admissions for CABP, of which 8 percent were for pediatric patients.3 While the overall incidence of pneumonia is declining, it is still a leading cause of mortality accounting for more than 50,000 deaths in 2013.5 The economic burden of community-acquired pneumonia in the U.S. is significant, due to high hospitalization and mortality rates associated with community-acquired pneumonia.6 More than $17 billion is spent on caring for patients with community-acquired pneumonia annually.6 Community-acquired pneumonia hospitalization costs for children alone amounted to $1 billion in 2009.2

About Allergan

Allergan plc (NYSE: AGN), headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, is a unique, global pharmaceutical company and a leader in a new industry model  Growth Pharma. Allergan is focused on developing, manufacturing and commercializing innovative branded pharmaceuticals, high-quality generic and over-the-counter medicines and biologic products for patients around the world.

Allergan markets a portfolio of best-in-class products that provide valuable treatments for the central nervous system, eye care, medical aesthetics, gastroenterology, women's health, urology, cardiovascular and anti-infective therapeutic categories, and operates the world's third-largest global generics business, providing patients around the globe with increased access to affordable, high-quality medicines. Allergan is an industry leader in research and development, with one of the broadest development pipelines in the pharmaceutical industry and a leading position in the submission of generic product applications globally.

With commercial operations in approximately 100 countries, Allergan is committed to working with physicians, healthcare providers and patients to deliver innovative and meaningful treatments that help people around the world live longer, healthier lives.

For more information, visit Allergan's website at www.allergan.com.

Forward-Looking Statement

Statements contained in this press release that refer to future events or other non-historical facts are forward-looking statements that reflect Allergan's current perspective of existing trends and information as of the date of this release. Except as expressly required by law, Allergan disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from Allergan's current expectations depending upon a number of factors affecting Allergan's business. These factors include, among others, the difficulty of predicting the timing or outcome of FDA approvals or actions, if any; the impact of competitive products and pricing; market acceptance of and continued demand for Allergan's products; difficulties or delays in manufacturing; and other risks and uncertainties detailed in Allergan's periodic public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to Allergan's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015 (certain of such periodic public filings having been filed under the "Actavis plc" name). Except as expressly required by law, Allergan disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

CONTACTS:

Investors:

Lisa DeFrancesco

(862) 261-7152

Media:

Mark Marmur

(862) 261-7558

1 Lopez MA, Cruz AT, Kowalkowski MA, et al. Trends in resource utilization for hospitalized children with skin and soft tissue infections. Pediatrics. 2013;131:e718e725.

2 Jain S, Williams DJ, Arnold SR, et al. Community-acquired pneumonia requiring hospitalization among U.S. children. N Engl J Med. 2015;372:835-45.

3 Decision Resources Group. PatientBase hospital-treated infections epidemiology. 2014.

4 Moran GJ, Abrahamian FM, LoVecchio F, et al. Acute bacterial skin infections: developments since the 2005 Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA) guidelines. J Emerg Med. 2013;44(6):e397-e412.

5 FastStats pneumonia. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website. 2015. Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/pneumonia.htm. Accessed May 17, 2016.

6 Sato R, Rey GG, Nelson S, et al. Community-acquired pneumonia episode costs by age and risk in commercially insured US adults aged 50 years. Appl Health Econ Health Policy. 2013;11:251258.

SOURCE Allergan plc

Related Links

http://www.allergan.com


RIVERSIDE, Calif., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Attorney Zulu Ali, a state and federal trial and appellate attorney, has lobbied State Trial and Appeals Courts and State Legislators to reform advisements regarding immigration consequences of criminal charges provided to noncitizens accused of crimes before they enter plea bargain agreements.

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Attorney Ali, a Tennessee native who is a former Police Officer and U.S. Marine Corps veteran, advises that in 1977 California Legislators enacted Penal Code 1016.5 to promote fairness by requiring the entry of plea by a noncitizen to be proceeded by an appropriate warning of the special consequences that may result from the plea. However, since the enactment of the statute, there has been vast changes regarding immigration law that impact the consequences of entering a guilty plea other than those mentioned in the statute, resulting in the advisements currently given being outdated and unfair.

Ali argues that in light of the vast changes in immigration laws since the enactment of the statute, the advisements given by the Courts is extremely unfair and does nothing more than force ill-advised noncitizen defendants into deportation, impacting the lives of the noncitizen and their families. If noncitizens are properly advised, they can challenge the charges by going to trial or seeking an alternative plea.

As recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in Padilla vs. Kentucky, the consequences of a guilty plea on a noncitizen is extremely important as the consequences of the resulting immigration consequences are often more important and significant to the noncitizen than the criminal charge itself. Without being adequately advised of those consequences, a knowing and intelligent wavier of a right to challenge the charges cannot be adequately made.

Ali is proposing that the statute include advisements related to the consequences related to relief from removal, including cancellation of removal, asylum, and adjustment of status; as well, as full advisement to be reflected on the record and not buried in some generic boilerplate plea agreement.

Ali has filed challenges to the lack of advisement in trial and appellate courts, and organized the Immigration Criminal Advisement Reform Committee to lobby State Legislators to modify the statute to adequately advise noncitizens of immigration consequences before entering a plea agreement.

Media Contact:

ZULU ALI

951-782-8722

SOURCE Law Office of Zulu Ali
ENGLEWOOD, Colo., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Aytu BioScience, Inc. (OTCQX: AYTU), a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on global commercialization of novel products in the field of urology, today announced that its Chief Operating Officer, Jarrett Disbrow, and Managing Director of International Operations, David Yakich, will attend the 2016 Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) International Convention being held June 6 - 9, 2016, in San Francisco.

Aytu is currently commercializing its portfolio of differentiated, FDA-approved urology therapeutics ProstaScint and Primsol and MiOXSYS, the company's CE Marked diagnostic system for male infertility assessment. Aytu has also recently acquired exclusive license to Natesto, the only FDA-approved nasally-administered testosterone replacement therapy (TRT), for which the Company has U.S. rights. The Company is interested in evaluating complementary assets for potential acquisition or licensure, as well as potentially out-licensing its rights to certain of its current products for commercialization in ex-US territories. Interested parties may contact Aytu through the BIO One-on-One Partnering system or by contacting Jarrett Disbrow at [email protected].

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.

For Investors & Media:

Tiberend Strategic Advisors, Inc.

Joshua Drumm, Ph.D.: [email protected]; (212) 375-2664

Janine McCargo: [email protected]; (646) 604-5150

Forward Looking Statement

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 presentation, 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: the potential future commercialization of our product candidates, the anticipated start dates, durations and completion dates, as well as the potential future results, of our ongoing and future clinical trials, the anticipated designs of our future clinical trials, anticipated future regulatory submissions and events, risks relating to gaining market acceptance of our products, obtaining reimbursement by third-party payors, 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.
LONDON, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- This study focuses on China's Bath Products market trends. In the two past decades, the market has been growing at a fast pace. The dramatic expansions of the manufacturing capabilities and rising consumer consumptions in China have transformed China's society and economy. China is one of the world's major producers for industrial and consumer products. Far outpacing other economies in the world, China is the world's fastest growing market for the consumptions of goods and services. The Chinese economy maintains a high speed growth which has been stimulated by the consecutive increases of industrial output, imports & exports, consumer consumption and capital investment for over two decades. Rapid consolidation between medium and large players is anticipated since the Chinese government has been encouraging industry consolidation with an effort to regulate the industry and to improve competitiveness in the world market.



Although China has enjoyed the benefits of an expanding market for production and distribution, the industry is suffering from minimal innovation and investment in R&D and new product development. The sector's economies of scale have yet to be achieved. Most domestic manufacturers lack the autonomic intellectual property and financial resources to develop their own brand name products.



This new study focuses on market trends and forecasts with historical data (2005, 2010 and 2015) and long-term forecasts through 2020 and 2025 are presented.

The primary and secondary research is done in China in order to access up-to-date government regulations, market information and industry data. Data were collected from the Chinese government publications, Chinese language newspapers and magazines, industry associations, local governments' industry bureaus, industry publications, and our in-house databases.



Asia Market Info & Dev Co. is one of the leading sources for up-to-date market information and research on the fastest-growing Chinese markets. We have published over 2,000 reports focusing on the Chinese markets, industry forecasts and company profiles. We provide hard-to-find market data and analyses. Our publications are intended to help international marketers identify business opportunities and promote their product sales in the Chinese markets.



Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/3851598/



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PUNE, India, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The report "Bioresorbable (Resorbable) Polymers Market by Type (Agro-Polymers - Proteins and Polysaccharides and Biopolyesters - Polyglycolic Acid, Polylactic Acid, and Polycaprolactone), Application (Orthopedics, and Drug Deliver), and Region - Global Trends & Forecasts to 2021", published by MarketsandMarkets, The global market size was USD 661.9 Million in 2015 and is projected to reach USD 1,407.5 Million by 2021, at a CAGR of 13.42% between 2016 and 2021.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302 )



Browse 89 market data Tables with 75 Figures spread through 145 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Bioresorbable (Resorbable) Polymers Market"

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/bioresorbable-polymer-market-235258717.html

Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report.

The cost-effectiveness and patient-friendliness of bioresorbable polymers and rapidly increasing demand from existing applications are expected to drive the market.

Biopolyesters captures the largest share of the bioresorbable polymers market

The bioresorbable polymers market is segmented based on types, namely, agro-polymers and biopolyesters. In 2015, biopolyesters captured the maximum share of the overall market and is expected to witness high growth rate during the forecast period. The demand of biopolyesters is increasing because of its enhanced quality and better resistance to weather that make it suitable for use in various applications in the medical sector.

Growing demand from drug delivery applications to boost bioresorbable polymers market

The bioresorbable polymers market is also segmented based on applications. The major applications of the bioresorbable polymers market are orthopedics, drug delivery, and others. Orthopedics is the leading application of the Bioresorbable Polymers Market due to its high demand in the knee and trauma sub-applications.

Make an Inquiry @ http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Enquiry_Before_Buying.asp?id=235258717

North America is the largest bioresorbable polymers market

The bioresorbable polymers market is broadly segmented into six regions, namely, North America, Western Europe, Central Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East & Africa, and Latin America. North America is the largest bioresorbable polymers market, closely followed by Western Europe, in terms of value. The rising demand from applications such as drug delivery and orthopedics in this region is driving the bioresorbable polymers market.

Currently, various market players such as Corbion N.V. (Netherlands), Evonik Industries AG (Germany), Foster Corporation (U.S.), KLS Martin (Germany), and Poly-Med Inc. (U.S.) dominate the global bioresorbable polymers market.

Browse Related Reports:

Bioplastics & Biopolymers Market by Type (Bio PET, Bio PE, PLA, PHA, Bio PBS, Starch Blends, and Regenerated Cellulose), by Application (Packaging, Bottles, Fibers, Agriculture, Automotive, and Others) & by Geography - Trends & Forecasts to 2018

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/biopolymers-bioplastics-market-88795240.html

Renewable Chemicals Market - Alcohols (Ethanol, Methanol), Biopolymers (Starch Blends, Regenerated Cellulose, PBS, Bio-PET, PLA, PHA, Bio-PE, and Others), Platform Chemicals & Others - Global Trends & Forecast to 2020

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/renewable-chemical-274.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.

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SOURCE MarketsandMarkets
SAN RAMON, Calif., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- BioVentrix Inc., an emerging medical device company for less invasive treatment of heart failure (HF), today announced that it has received a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) approval to initiate its pivotal clinical trial, named ALIVE (American Less Invasive Ventricular Enhancement). The trial is designed to demonstrate the safety and effectiveness of the Revivent TC TransCatheter Ventricular Enhancement System; a hybrid closed-chest transcatheter procedure to treat patients suffering from ischemic cardiomyopathy by reshaping and restoring the left ventricle (LV). This is accomplished by implanting micro-anchoring pairs in the LV to exclude scarred myocardium from the healthy tissue.

"Heart failure continues to be an epidemic and the BioVentrix technology fills a critical need here in the U.S. for ischemic patients," said lead U.S. Principal Investigator Dr. Andrew Wechsler. "The current therapy, surgical ventricular reconstruction, is effective yet it is highly invasive and limited in terms of patients being able to withstand the procedure. This IDE approval provides another treatment option that physicians can consider when exploring the best therapy solution for heart failure patients," continued Dr. Wechsler.

The ALIVE trial plans to enroll 120 patients at up to 20 sites nationwide with a primary endpoint analysis at 1 year. The trial endpoints include positive effects on volume reduction, ejection fraction, quality of life (QOL), New York Heart Association (NYHA) Class, 6 minute walk test, and rehospitalization. Admission rates following heart failure hospitalization remain high, with  50% patients readmitted to hospital within 6 months of discharge. Annually, over 1 million patients are hospitalized with a primary diagnosis of heart failure, accounting for a total Medicare expenditure exceeding $17 billion1.

"The Revivent TC system has recently demonstrated efficacy in clinical trials performed in the EU," said Dr. Ryan Brown, Cardiologist and Vice President of Medical Affairs for BioVentrix. "This technology provides a less invasive means for LV scar reduction/exclusion in patients with prior myocardial infarction and LV dysfunction. Restoration of LV morphologic and volume characteristics in a less invasive manner, compared with current surgical ventricular restoration, will ideally avail this technology and procedural concept to a larger patient population," continued Dr. Brown.

BioVentrix has shown in multiple clinical trials in Europe that the exclusion of scar tissue from the LV cavity in patients suffering from ischemic cardiomyopathy and heart failure symptoms results in substantial improvements in LV volume, NYHA Class, 6 minute walk tests, and Quality of Life2. Additionally, previous studies reported in the surgical literature have shown that a significant LV volume reduction conveys a survival benefit for treated patients3.

About the Revivent TC System and the LIVE (Less Invasive Ventricular Enhancement) Procedure

Placement of the Revivent TC System via the LIVE procedure obviates the need for more invasive surgery. Instead, small titanium anchors are placed along the outer surface of the heart and along one of the interior walls via a closed-chest, endovascular approach. The anchors are then pulled toward one another, effectively excluding the scarred and non-functioning heart wall. Ventricular volume is immediately reduced as a result of the exclusion, by as much as 30-40 percent1.

Click here for corporate video with animation

About the LIVE Procedure: The World's Only Reshaping Left Ventricle Therapy

The LIVE procedure is based upon a well-defined law of physics called the law of Laplace, which describes the relationship between the radius and pressure of the LV, and its resulting wall tension. Increased wall tension is the underlying cause of LV enlargement, worsening heart failure symptoms and ultimately patient death. Reducing wall tension is key to preventing further LV enlargement and treats the progression of the disease. The Revivent TC System, placed via the LIVE procedure, is uniquely designed to directly reduce the LV radius, which in turn decreases wall tension and interrupts the ongoing, destructive process of heart failure.

1Desai, A. et al., Rehospitalization for heart failure. Circulation. 24 July 2012 (126:501-506).

2Wechsler, A. et al., Clinical benefits twelve months after less invasive ventricular restoration operations without ventriculotomy. Annual meeting of the European Society of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery, 07 Oct. 2013, Vienna, Austria.

3Michler R et al. Insights from the STICH trial: Change in left ventricular size after coronary artery bypass grafting with and without surgical ventricular reconstruction. J of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. 29 October 2012 (10.1016/j.jtcvs.2012.09.007).

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151207/293907LOGO

SOURCE BioVentrix Inc.

Related Links

http://www.bioventrix.com


Smoke damage from a kitchen fire destroyed food and pet food for a family with two adults, three children and five pets Sunday night. No one was injured.

Lebanon firefighters got the call at 7:22 p.m. from the 39300 block of Davis Street in the community of Waterloo. Chief Gordon Sletmoe said the fire was caused by a boilover on the stove that splashed grease onto cabinets, which then ignited.

Kathy Fitzwater of Linn County Fire Corps, which was among the responders, said the family had temporary housing while repairs are made. She said canned and other nonperishable food, as well as dog food, is being sought for the family and can be brought to stations of the Lebanon Fire Department.

Sletmoe said he would make arrangements for any donations to be brought to Fire Corps.

Disaster responders with the American Red Cross Cascades Region responded Monday afternoon and provided resources to help address the family's immediate needs.
VANCOUVER, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Brazil Resources Inc. (the "Company" or "Brazil Resources") (TSX-V: BRI; OTCQX: BRIZF) is pleased to announce that further to its press releases dated April 18, 2016 and May 17, 2016, the Company has filed a National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101") technical report (the "Technical Report") for its Whistler Gold Project (the "Whistler Project" or "Project") located in South Central Alaska.

The Technical Report includes the following resource estimates for the Whistler Gold Project.

Deposit1 Class. Cut-off Tonnes Grade Contained Metal AuEq.2,3,4 (g/t) (Mt) Au (g/t) Ag (g/t) Cu (%) AuEq. (g/t) Au (Moz) Ag (Moz) Cu (Mlb) Au Eq. (Moz) Whistler Indicated 0.3 79.20 0.51 1.97 0.17 0.88 1.280 5.030 302.000 2.250 IM Indicated 0.3 31.080 0.49 1.10 0.06 0.55 0.485 1.10 41.120 0.547





110.280 0.50 1.72 0.14 0.79 1.765 6.13 343.120 2.797























Whistler Inferred 0.3 145.80 0.40 1.75 0.15 0.73 1.850 8.210 467.000 3.350 IM Inferred 0.3 82.020 0.47 1.02 0.05 0.53 1.237 2.69 90.430 1.390 RW (Zone A) Inferred 0.6 51.760 0.68 3.74 0.10 0.86 1.130 6.22 114.130 1.428 RW (Zone B) Inferred 0.3 31.680 0.40 5.39 0.06 0.55 0.409 5.49 41.910 0.563





311.260 0.47 2.26 0.11 0.68 4.626 22.61 713.470 6.731

Table Notes:

1Island Mountain abbreviated to "IM" and Raintree West abbreviated to "RW". 2Gold equivalent grade for the Whistler resource assumes metal prices of US$990 /oz gold, US$15.40 /oz silver and US$2.91 /lb copper. 3Gold equivalent grade for the Island Mountain resource assumes metal prices of US$1,250 /oz gold, US$16.50 /oz silver and US$2.10 /lb copper and recoveries of 90% for gold (cyanide), 80% for copper (flotation) and 25% silver (recovery in copper concentrate). 4Gold equivalent for the Raintree West resource assumes metal prices of US$1,250 /oz gold, US$16.50 /oz silver and US$2.10 /lb copper and recoveries of 75% for gold, 85% for copper and 75% for silver. Totals may not represent the sum of the parts due to rounding. The Mineral Resources for the Whistler Project have been prepared by Giroux Consulting Ltd. in conformity with "CIM Definition Standards for Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves 2014".

The Technical Report, dated effective March 24, 2016, is titled "NI 43-101 Resource Estimate for the Whistler Project". The Technical Report was authored by Gary H. Giroux, P.Eng., M.A. Sc., who is a qualified person within the meaning of NI 43-101 and is independent of the Company. A version of the report was filed under the Company's SEDAR profile on May 27, 2016, which included a clerical error in the resource information in the "Summary" section and should be disregarded. Readers should refer to the Technical Report, amended and filed under the Company's SEDAR profile on May 30, 2016, for the corrected version of the report. There are no material differences between the results announced in the Company's April 18, 2016 and May 17, 2016 press releases and the results contained in the Technical Report.

About Brazil Resources Inc.

Brazil Resources Inc. is a public mineral exploration company with a focus on the acquisition, exploration and development of projects in Brazil, United States, Canada and other regions of the Americas. Brazil Resources is advancing its Whistler Gold Project, located in Alaska, United States, its Sao Jorge and Cachoeira Gold Projects, located in the State of Para, northeastern Brazil, and its Rea Uranium Project, located in the western Athabasca Basin in northeast Alberta, Canada.

Paulo Pereira, Brazil Resources' President, has reviewed and approved the technical information contained in this news release. Mr. Pereira holds a bachelors degree in Geology from Universidade do Amazonas in Brazil, is a Qualified Person as defined in NI 43-101 and is a member of the Association of Professional Geoscientists of Ontario.

Cautionary Note

Investors are cautioned not to assume that any part or all of the mineral deposits in the "indicated" and "Inferred" categories will ever be converted into mineral reserves with demonstrated economic viability or that inferred mineral resources will be converted to the measured and/or indicated categories through further drilling. In addition, the estimation of inferred resources involves far greater uncertainty as to their existence and economic viability than the estimation of other categories of resources. Under Canadian rules, estimates of Inferred Mineral Resources may not form the basis of feasibility or other economic studies.

Forward Looking Statements

This document contains certain forward-looking statements that reflect the current views and/or expectations of Brazil Resources with respect to its business and future events, including statements regarding the estimation of mineral resources and the Company's expectations respecting the Whistler Project. Forward-looking statements are based on the then-current expectations, beliefs, assumptions, estimates and forecasts about the business and the markets in which Brazil Resources operates. Investors are cautioned that all forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including: the inherent risks involved in the exploration and development of mineral properties, the uncertainties involved in interpreting drill results and other exploration data, the potential for delays in exploration or development activities, the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits, the possibility that future exploration, development or mining results will not be consistent with Brazil Resources' expectations, accidents, equipment breakdowns, title and permitting matters, labour disputes or other unanticipated difficulties with or interruptions in operations, fluctuating metal prices, unanticipated costs and expenses, uncertainties relating to the availability and costs of financing needed in the future, commodity price fluctuations, regulatory restrictions, including environmental regulatory restrictions, or any failure to integrate acquired companies and projects into the Company's existing business as planned. These risks, as well as others, including those set forth in Brazil Resources' filings with Canadian securities regulators, could cause actual results and events to vary significantly. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and information. There can be no assurance that forward-looking information, or the material factors or assumptions used to develop such forward looking information, will prove to be accurate. Brazil Resources does not undertake any obligations to release publicly any revisions for updating any voluntary forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable securities 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 news release.

SOURCE Brazil Resources Inc.

Related Links

www.brazilresources.com


TUPELO, Miss., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- BancorpSouth Insurance Services (BXSI) announces the addition of Edward B. Scheinuk, CPCU and his team to the agency. Scheinuk recently served as President of Eustis Risk Management Resources in Metairie, Louisiana. This Louisiana addition marks the second Metairie BXSI office location and greatly enhances BXSI's ability to serve clients in and around the New Orleans area.

According to BXSI President Markham McKnight, this expansion is part of the agency's long-term growth strategy to expand its successful business in Louisiana and to diversify the portfolio of BXSI and its parent company, BancorpSouth Bank.

"We are pleased to welcome Ed (Scheinuk) and his team into the BXSI family," McKnight said. "The decision to establish an office to be a part of our legacy is one we never take lightly, but this process was eased considerably because of the people we know who will be servicing clients there."

Scheinuk has 35 years of insurance industry experience. He provides risk management and insurance advice to regional, national and international commercial accounts. Additionally, he provides litigation support and expert witness services as well as ad hoc advisory services to fee-based clients.

"We are excited to be a part of an organization that has a strong history in Louisiana that dates back to 1882," Scheinuk said. "This is an opportunity to bring clients a wealth of new resources while working with a group of people whose vision and philosophy regarding plan management and client service are in tune with our knowledge-based client service philosophy and practice."

The new BXSI office is at 321 Veterans Memorial Boulevard, Suite 200, Metairie, Louisiana 70005, the same location where Scheinuk's team previously operated.

About BancorpSouth Insurance Services

BancorpSouth Insurance Services, Inc. (BXSI), a wholly owned subsidiary of BancorpSouth Bank, is licensed in all 50 states. BXSI has more than 650 insurance and risk management professionals ready to provide local expertise backed by worldwide resources. For more information, visit bxsi.com. "Like" us on Facebook at BancorpSouth Insurance; follow us on Twitter @MyBXSI; or join us on LinkedIn through our BancorpSouth Insurance Services, Inc. page.

About BancorpSouth

BancorpSouth, Inc. (NYSE: BXS) is a financial holding company headquartered in Tupelo, Mississippi, with $13.9 billion in assets. BancorpSouth Bank, a wholly-owned subsidiary of BancorpSouth, Inc., operates 239 full service branch locations as well as additional mortgage, insurance and loan production offices in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee and Texas, including an insurance location in Illinois. "Like" us on Facebook; follow us on Twitter: @MyBXS; or connect with us through LinkedIn.

SOURCE BancorpSouth, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.bancorpsouth.com


LAS VEGAS, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Author Eve Littlepage (blog: http://www.evelittlepage.com/blog/ ) is donating her May and June royalties from CELESTIAL BODIES IN ORBIT: Memoirs of the Unknown Stripper to the Burlesque Hall of Fame (BHoF website: http://www.burlesquehall.com/ ).

Littlepage is using hashtag #CBO4BHoF for the Fundraiser on social media, noting that, '"Celestial Bodies in Orbit Book Sale Benefit for the Burlesque Hall of Fame,' is a bit long."

Eve Littlepage in 1984, Video Magic Night, Lansdowne St. Boston, MA Celestial Bodies in Orbit new cover design, released in 2016 on Amazon

Celestial Bodies in Orbit is the author's memoir of striptease dancing in the Boston area during the 1970s and 80s. She published it in 2012 after funding it through Kickstarter. Her story is laced with references to the I Ching, ghostly visitations, and spiritual epiphanies. It is also laced with references to, and celebrations of, Burlesque.

In the process of publishing her book, Littlepage discovered the Burlesque Hall of Fame, and the rebirth of the art form as Neo-Burlesque. She wishes to support The BHoF in their efforts to preserve the past and serve up a new evolution of burlesque.

The Burlesque Hall of Fame is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit museum, located at the corner of Fremont & 6th Streets in historic Downtown Las Vegas, with a mission to preserve, celebrate, and inspire the art of burlesque.

The Burlesque Hall of Fame Weekend, is BHoF's principal fundraising event, and takes place June 2-5, 2016 at The Orleans Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. The weekend has grown from humble beginnings in the 1950s, when it was conceived by Burlesque Legend Jennie Lee, and nurtured by Dixie Evans and others into an elaborate extravaganza.

The BHoF Weekend (http://bhofweekend.com/ is the longest-running burlesque event in the world: four days of flirty and fun Burly-Q events, including classes and performances from Legends and Neo-Burlesquers, so popular that it has a waiting list to attend this year.

Littlepage says it is fitting to do a fundraiser to re-launch her memoir. She has had a long history of volunteering and fundraising for non-profits, which began during her 'Celestial Bodies in Orbit' days.

Littlepage's donation will help bring Burlesque Legends to the 2016 BHoF Weekend and support the Museum. Her royalties from May and June through Amazon will go to the BHoF.* (link to Celestial Bodies in Orbit : www.evelittlepage.com/CBO/ )

*(Purchases of her memoir are not tax-deductible for buyers, but the royalties Eve Littlepage gives to BHoF will be a charitable donation.

For more information see:

Eve's Little Page: http://www.evelittlepage.com/blog/

The Burlesque Hall of Fame: http://www.burlesquehall.com/

Littlepage is also encouraging people to make a (tax-deductible)* donation to the Burlesque Hall Of Fame if they would prefer to support them directly. There is a donation link on their website.

Contact for Book and CBO4HBoF Benefit:

Eve Littlepage, Author

Email

941-870-4143

Contact for Burlesque Hall of Fame:

Kay Sera, PR Coordinator

Email

(888) 661-6465

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160531/373483

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160531/373484

SOURCE Eve Littlepage

Related Links

http://www.evelittlepage.com/blog


ATLANTA, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Shannon and Florian Radke pitched their California-based vegan gourmet cinnamon roll shop to the sharks on the ABC show "Shark Tank" in 2014. Since then the business that entices the customer to create their own custom cinnamon roll from a selection of 30 different flavors and toppings, has become an American success story.

The concept that Shannon together with her husband Florian created in Berkeley, California, has been a local favorite since 2010 and has won several awards before getting international attention.

Cinnaholic has sold over 40 franchises since airing on Shark Tank and is preparing to open its first Atlanta location. Atlanta franchisee Jarrod Nackley is bringing the concept to the Edgewood Retail District in Atlanta - the very first location in Georgia. Another location is slated to open in Athens this summer with 8 more following in Atlanta over the next two years.

"I am beyond thrilled to be working with Jarrod on bringing our ooey gooey cinnamon rolls to the Little Five Points community," says co-founder Shannon Radke. "We both believe that Atlanta is the perfect City to be welcoming the first Cinnaholic in Georgia."

There are several more franchise locations slated to open this year including Las Vegas, Orange County, San Diego and Charlotte.

Cinnaholic is the only custom gourmet cinnamon roll bakery in the world. In addition to all products being vegan, Cinnaholic offers more than just the average 'Old Fashioned' roll with over 30 different frosting flavors and a variety of different toppings.

Cinnaholic Edgewood is located at 1230 Caroline Street and will open this Thursday June 2nd at 8am.

SOURCE Cinnaholic

Related Links

http://www.cinnaholic.com


TWIN LAKES, Wis., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Citronella Candles, the most popular outdoor mosquito repellent, has been rendered obsolete by a new natural outdoor repellent, Citronella Outdoor Sticks. Recent scientific testing has shown that Citronella Outdoor Sticks are 10x more effective in repelling mosquitoes than citronella candles. Compared to Citronella Outdoor Sticks citronella candles are virtually useless. Obsolete.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160527/372994

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160527/372993

Lotus Brands, Inc. of Twin Lakes, Wisconsin, the distributor, is ramping up sales for the third season and now releases the conclusions of scientific testing which proves it is the most effective natural Mosquito outdoor repellent ever tested. Widely published biological researcher, Jonathan Matias, Director at Poseidon Sciences designed and ran the testing.

The product is Citronella Outdoor Sticks, a smoking mosquito repellent made with six different essential oils including citronella. Adding five other plant oils to citronella seems to supercharge the repellent effect. These five oils are thyme, rosemary, lemongrass, geranium and geraniol. They were chosen because of their effectiveness as repellents in the scientific literature. Synergistically they create the magnified repellent action of Citronella Outdoor Sticks over citronella fragrance alone.

This new formulation was tested against the standard formula 3% citronella candle. Citronella Outdoor Sticks was 1000% more effective than citronella candles at repelling mosquitoes. In other words, 10x more effective on average. The choice is more than obvious. With the growing public awareness of the nuisance of mosquitoes, it is essential.

Repelling mosquitoes in 3 dimensional space has always been a challenge. Citronella Outdoor Sticks solves that problem and they work far better than traditional citronella candles for outdoor activities like picnics, parties and camping.

Citronella Outdoor Sticks burn for approximately one hour once lit. A package has ten sticks and is economically priced at about the cost of most citronella candles. Several sticks can be placed around an outdoor area to increase outdoor enjoyment. They are great for decks and patios, and have a fragrance that is reminiscent of waking up in a citrus grove.

Citronella Outdoor Sticks are sold in the mass market by selected Bed, Bath and Beyond stores.

This all-natural product can be found in many health food stores, and in leading health chains such as Sprouts, NRG, and selected Whole Foods stores. This product was developed in Florida by Gainesville residents and aroma researchers Michael Rose, MA and Thomas Korula, MS, MBA.

Individual consumers can also buy the product online at:

www.Internatural.com

www.amazon.com

www.greenmarket.com

www.swansonvitamins.com

and other fine online retailers.

Retailers who wish to carry the product can contact Lotus Brands, the master distributor.

Contact: Lotus Brands

P.O. Box 325, Twin Lakes, WI 53181

[email protected]

262.889.8561 (Phone) | 262.889.2461 (Fax) | 800.824.6396 (Toll Free)

www.lotusbrands.com

Media Contact:

Shanta Krinsky, PR Director

262 889 8561 ph; 262 889 2461 fax

Email

SOURCE Lotus Brands, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.lotusbrands.com


NEW YORK, May 30, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Report Details



- Visiongain assesses that the civil helicopter market is valued at $7,876m in 2016. Civil helicopters offer a number of capabilities that cannot be achieved with fixed wing aircraft. Vertical take-off and landing capabilities mean that helicopters can operate in areas that are remote, have difficult terrain characteristics or where ground transport infrastructure or airfield facilities are under-developed or non-existent. In terms of manufacturers, the market is very compact with a handful of companies dominating in all categories of helicopter types; light, medium and large. Current market conditions are changing where demand for civil helicopters is coming from with a decline in offshore transport along with continuing demand for helicopters in EMS or law enforcement. It is therefore critical that you have your timescales correct and knowledge of significant competitive developments. This report will ensure that you do.



- Visiongain's report will ensure that you keep informed and ahead of your competitors. Gain that competitive advantage.



The report will answer questions such as:





- What are the key trends, opportunities and challenges for the civil helicopter market currently and in the future?

- What factors are behind these trends and what are the prospects are for related submarkets and regional markets?

- Who are the leading companies in the civil helicopter industry?

- What are stakeholders doing in response to the market environment?



5 Reasons why you must order and read this report today:



1) The report quantifies and analyses the civil helicopter market with the following segmentation.

- Forecasts of the global market

- Forecasts of the associated submarket sectors  light civil helicopters, intermediate civil helicopters, medium civil helicopters, large & heavy civil helicopters  at the global and regional level.

- Forecasts of key regional markets  Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, Middle East / Africa, North America, all further subdivided into the 4 submarkets.

- Analysis of factors that are driving or restraining market activity



2) The study reveals where civil helicopter stakeholders are investing. We show you information relating to:

- Contracts and programmes

- Products and services

- Recent mergers, acquisitions and divestiture activity

- Geographical distribution



3) 337 contracts providing understanding of which sectors of the civil helicopter market are in demand



4) Profiling of the top 11 civil helicopter companies including information relating to key financial indicators



5) SWOT analysis of the global civil helicopter market



- Competitive advantage

This independent, 228 page report, guarantees that you will remain better informed than your competitors. With 207 tables and figures examining the civil helicopter market, the report gives you an immediate, one-stop breakdown of the leading players in your market, as well as analysis keep your knowledge that one step ahead of your rivals.



How will you benefit from this report?

- This report you will keep your knowledge base up to speed. Don't get left behind

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- You will better understand the competitive landscape and identify potential new business opportunities & partnerships



Who should read this report?

- Anyone involved with the civil helicopter industry

- Aviation regulators

- Contractors

- Helicopter operators

- Helicopter operator marketing and management / executives

- Aerospace OEMs and system integrators

- R&D personnel

- CEO's

- COO's

- CIO's

- Business development managers

- Marketing managers

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- Engineers

- Suppliers

- Investors

- Banks



Don't miss out

This report is essential reading for you or anyone in the civil helicopter sector. Purchasing this report today will help you to recognise those important market opportunities and understand the possibilities there. Order the Civil Helicopter Market Report 2016-2026: Commercial Prospects for Top Companies with Light, Intermediate, Medium and Large & Heavy Rotorcraft now. We look forward to receiving your order.

Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p03861493-summary/view-report.html



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ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



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Contact Clare: [email protected]

US: (339)-368-6001

Intl: +1 339-368-6001

SOURCE Reportlinker

Related Links

http://www.reportlinker.com


NESS ZIONA, Israel, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- CollPlant Ltd. (TASE: CLPT), a regenerative medicine company utilizing its proprietary plant-based rhCollagen technology for tissue repair products - announces that it has received authorization from the Chief Scientist of Israel's Ministry of Economy, for funding approximately 50% of its NIS 12 million development project for 2016. The Chief Scientist's grant amount to NIS 5.6 million, measurably higher than last year's authorized grant, which totaled NIS 4.7 million.

Bio-Ink for 3D printing, Illustration

The development programs for which the funding was authorized include human collagen-based medical products leveraging CollPlant's technology. Of note, the Chief Scientist authorized the support of development of collagen and cell-based formulations intended for use as BioInk for 3D printing of tissues and organs. Also receiving Chief Scientist funding is a product to treat tears in tendons and ligaments, such as the Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) in the knee joint. The development plans authorized by the Chief Scientist also include support for the completion of the development process of VergenixSTR, a product to heal tendons inflammation, and other products.

Yehiel Tal, Chief Executive Officer - CollPlant: "We are delighted to receive the Chief Scientist's authorization for funding of CollPlant's development programs. The Chief Scientist's support over the years is an expression of his trust in the commercial potential of the Company's products. We are currently working on the European sales launch of VergenixFG, our wound healing product, and are in discussions with potential parties for European distribution of VergenixSTR, our product to treat tendons inflammation, based on the projection that marketing authorization will be granted in the coming months. CollPlant is also working diligently to expand its pipeline products through the development of innovative new products addressing significant market needs, and which will contribute meaningfully to the value of the company."

About CollPlant

CollPlant is a clinical-stage regenerative medicine company leveraging its proprietary, plant-based rhCollagen technology for the development and commercialization of tissue repair products, initially for the orthobiologics and advanced wound care markets. The Company's cutting-edge technology is designed to generate and process proprietary recombinant human collagen (rhCollagen), among other patent-protected recombinant proteins. Given that CollPlant's rhCollagen is identical to the type I collagen produced by the human body, it offers significant advantages compared to currently marketed tissue-derived collagen, including improved biofunctionality, superior homogeneity and reduced risk of immune response. The Company's broad development pipeline includes biomaterials indicated for orthopedics and advanced wound healing. Lead products include: VergenixSTR (Soft Tissue Repair Matrix), for the treatment of tendinopathy; VergenixFG (Flowable Gel) wound filler, for treatment of acute and chronic wounds, and; VergenixBVF (Bone Void Filler), for use in spinal fusion procedures and trauma. CollPlant's business strategy includes proprietary development and manufacturing of tissue repair products and their commercialization and distribution, together with leading third parties, alongside alliances with leading companies for joint development, manufacturing and marketing of additional products.

For more information about CollPlant, visit http://www.collplant.com

Contact at CollPlant:

Eran Rotem

Chief Financial Officer

Tel: + 972-73-2325600/612

Email: [email protected]

Contact at Rx Communications Group, LLC

Paula Schwartz (for US Investors)

Managing Director

Tel: +1-917-322-2216

Email: [email protected]

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160531/373465)

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/collplant-receives-chief-scientists-authorization-for-a-nis-12-million-research-and-development-projects-with-funding-of-approximately-50-300276791.html

SOURCE CollPlant Ltd

Related Links

http://www.collplant.com


DANIA BEACH, Fla., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Cruise.com, a subsidiary of Omega World Travel, Inc. and one of the Internet's leading cruise sellers, received two highly coveted awards from Vacation.com. The announcement was made on May 25, 2016 at Vacation.com's 18th International Conference & Trade Show at the Diplomat Resort & Spa in Hollywood, Florida.

Cruise.com received the prestigious U.S. Chairman's Preferred Award and the Distinctive Voyages Top Booker Award. Vacation.com President, John Lovell, CTC, noted, "Cruise.com has always been an exceptional partner. They go above and beyond expectations and we are proud to recognize them for their achievements."

Anthony Hamawy, President, Cruise.com, said, "It has always been our goal to provide our clients with highly personalized service to meet all their needs. Our team is dedicated to excellence and I am very proud to accept this award on their behalf."

"Being acknowledged in both categories reflects our efforts to provide the best vacation experience, service and value along with offering the latest technology options," said Jeanne Wyndrum, Senior Vice President of Cruise.com.

Cruise.com recently received the highest level of recognition by Applause.com for its popular mobile app in the cruise category. The free app was launched in 2012 and was designed to quickly offer a host of cruise-related information.

About Cruise.com

Established in 1998, Cruise.com is one of the Internet's largest cruise specialists. Cruise.com offers comprehensive itineraries and ship details for more than 70 cruise lines worldwide at the most competitive prices and is one of the top sellers of cruises on the Internet. Cruise.com has received Vacation.com's coveted Chairman's Award for the fourth time. Cruise.com is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Omega World Travel, Inc. Travelers interested in booking their cruise can contact Cruise.com at 866-401-0895 or visit its website at www.cruise.com. In addition to cruises, Cruise.com's full-service team offers a wide menu of other services including a variety of land packages and tours, shore excursions, vacation homes and villas through www.cruise.com and their other websites, www.LuxuryTravelTeam.com, www.tourdeals.com and www.HomesandVillasInternational.com.

About Omega World Travel

Omega World Travel is a woman-owned, diversity supplier, and the fourth largest travel management company in the U.S. Headquartered in Fairfax, VA, Omega World Travel services corporate, government, meeting, and leisure clients throughout the U.S., Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Omega World Travel also owns Cruise.com, one of the largest sellers of cruises on the Internet, and TravTech, a software development company. For additional information about Omega World Travel please visit their website at www.OmegaTravel.com

SOURCE Cruise.com

Related Links

http://www.cruise.com


NEW YORK, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The following statement is being issued by Levi & Korsinsky, LLP:

To: All persons or entities who purchased or otherwise acquired securities of DS Healthcare Group, Inc. ("DS Healthcare") (NASDAQ: DSKX) between May 15, 2014 and April 3, 2016 .

You are hereby notified that a securities class action lawsuit has been commenced in the USDC for the Southern District of Florida. If you purchased or otherwise acquired DS Healthcare securities between May 15, 2014 and April 3, 2016, your rights may be affected by this action. To get more information go to: http://www.zlk.com/pslra/ds-healthcare-group.

On March 23, 2016, DS Healthcare revealed that its financial statements for the two fiscal quarters ended June 30, 2015 and September 30, 2015 were found to have revenue recognition errors and improper recording of certain equity. The Company also announced that the Audit Committee and independent counsel had initiated an investigation in connection with the company's President, Daniel Khesin, and that Mr. Khesin had been dismissed. Then on April 3, 2016, the Company announced Khesin had "engaged in totally inappropriate conduct, including an illegal campaign of self-help, additional violations of the federal securities laws, as well as intimidation and defamation against Board members, management and outside professionals" prior--and subsequent--to his dismissal.

If you suffered a loss in DS Healthcare you have until May 31, 2016 to request that the Court appoint you as lead plaintiff. Your ability to share in any recovery doesn't require that you serve as a lead plaintiff. To obtain additional information, contact Joseph E. Levi, Esq. either via email at [email protected] or by telephone at (212) 363-7500, toll-free: (877) 363-5972, or visit http://www.zlk.com/pslra/ds-healthcare-group.

Levi & Korsinsky is a national firm with offices in New York, New Jersey, California, Connecticut, and Washington D.C. The firm's attorneys have extensive expertise and experience representing investors in securities litigation involving financial fraud, and have recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for aggrieved shareholders. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.

CONTACT:

Levi & Korsinsky, LLP

Joseph E. Levi, 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

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120409/MM84375LOGO

SOURCE Levi & Korsinsky, LLP

Related Links

http://www.zlk.com


PUNE, India, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

According to a new market research report "Digital Pathology Market by Product (Scanners, Software), by Type (Human, Animal Pathology), by End User (Pharmaceutical Company, Hospital, Academic Institutions), by Application (Teleconsultation, Drug Discovery) - Global Forecasts to 2021", published by MarketsandMarkets, studies the global Digital Pathology Market for the forecast period of 2016 to 2021. This market is expected to reach USD 679.1 Million by 2021 from USD 384.3 Million in 2016, at a CAGR of 12.1%.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302 )





Browse 78 market data Tables and 41 Figures spread through 152 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Digital Pathology Market"

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/digital-pathology-market-844.html

Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report.

A number of factors such as the rising cancer prevalence, increasing tele-consultations, utilization of digital pathology for drug discovery & companion diagnostics, rising studies on digital pathology, and improvement in laboratory workflow efficiency are driving the demand for digital pathology systems and solutions. Moreover, this market is boosted by increasing government and industry player's initiatives into the pathological services across the globe. However, stringent regulatory concerns for primary diagnosis and lack of standard guidelines for digital pathology are among key factors likely to hamper the growth of the market.

The global Digital Pathology Market is segmented on the basis of product, type, end-users, application and regions.

Based on the product, the global Digital Pathology Market is segmented into scanners, software, communication system and storage systems. The scanners segment is estimated to account for the largest share of the global Digital Pathology Market in 2016, while the software segment is projected to grow at the highest CAGR the forecast period.

Based on type, the global Digital Pathology Market is segmented into human and animal pathology. The human pathology segment is estimated to account for the largest share of the global Digital Pathology Market in 2016, due to factors such as increasing utilization of digital pathology for chronic disease diagnosis and rising technological developments in human pathology diagnostics across the globe.

Based on end user, the global Digital Pathology Market is broadly segmented into pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and contract research organizations (CROs); hospitals and reference laboratories; and academic and government agencies. The pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and CROs segment is estimated to account for the largest share of the global market in 2016. Additionally, this segment is projected to grow at the highest CAGR.

Based on the application, the global Digital Pathology Market is broadly segmented into disease diagnosis; teleconsultation; drug discovery; and education & training. The teleconsultation application segment is estimated to account for the largest share of the global Digital Pathology Market in 2016. Additionally, this segment is projected to grow at the highest CAGR.

On the basis of region, the global market is divided into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Rest of the World (RoW). In 2016, North America is estimated to account for the largest share of the global Digital Pathology Market, followed by Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Rest of the World. The Asia-Pacific market is slated to grow at the highest CAGR and serve as a revenue pocket for companies offering digital pathology.

Speak To The Research Analyst: http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/speaktoanalyst.asp?id=844

Prominent players in the global Digital Pathology Market are Leica Biosystems Nussloch GMBH (Germany), Ventana Medical Systems, Inc. (U.S.), Hamamatsu Photonics K.K (Japan), 3D Histech Ltd. (Hungary), Philips Healthcare (Netherlands), Apollo Enterprise Imaging Corp. (U.S.), Xifin, Inc. (U.S.), Definiens AG (Germany), Visiopharm A/S (Denmark), Omnyx LLC (U.S.), Corista LLC (U.S.).

About MarketsandMarkets:

MarketsandMarkets is the world's No. 2 firm in terms of annually published premium market research reports. Serving 1700 global fortune enterprises with more than 1200 premium studies in a year, M&M is catering to a multitude of clients across 8 different industrial verticals. We specialize in consulting assignments and business research across high growth markets, cutting edge technologies and newer applications. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model - GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors.

M&M's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. The new included chapters on Methodology and Benchmarking presented with high quality analytical infographics in our reports gives complete visibility of how the numbers have been arrived and defend the accuracy of the numbers.

We at MarketsandMarkets are inspired to help our clients grow by providing apt business insight with our huge market intelligence repository.

Contact:

Mr. Rohan

Unit No. 802, 8th Floor,

Tower - 7, Magarpatta City SEZ,

Hadapsar, Pune - 411013,

Maharashtra, India.

Tel: +1-888-6006-441.

Email: [email protected]



Visit MarketsandMarkets Blog @ http://mnmblog.org/market-research/healthcare/healthcareit

Connect with us on LinkedIn @ http://www.linkedin.com/company/marketsandmarkets

SOURCE MarketsandMarkets
On Memorial Day, Col. Monique DeSpain said, it's important to remember  but also to be inspired.

The Eugene resident, Air National Guard assistant to the Command Staff Judge Advocate, Pacific Air Forces, was the keynote speaker Monday for Memorial Day services held at Timber-Linn Memorial Park.

On the day set aside to honor Americans who gave their lives in military service, DeSpain said, "We are refreshed and reminded of the values we hold high: courage, honor, sacrifice, service, tenacity and integrity."

And to honor those values, she said, it's important to be "the Americans they fought to protect ... so that their sacrifice is not in vain."

DeSpain spoke Monday to an audience of close to 300 gathered at Timber-Linn Memorial Park for the annual observance.

"Only Americans have demanded and secured the freedoms we enjoy," she said, reminding the audience that Americans today battle freedom's adversaries in every corner of the globe.

"Our fallen did it for us," she continued. "They stood strong and ready through every adversity."

Sunshine and a flag-snapping breeze greeted visitors to Timber-Linn Memorial Park on Monday.

Hands doffed caps marked "Navy," "Air Force," "Vietnam Veteran" and "The Greatest Generation" as members of the Linn Benton Young Marines posted the colors and Pete Kozak led the crowd in the National Anthem.

Pastor Larry Gaskin of East Side Christian Church gave the invocation. Floyd Bacon, chaplain of American Legion Post 10, gave the benediction.

In between, Master of Ceremonies Randy Martinak invited, one at a time, a variety of family members and representatives of armed service organizations to lay wreaths in memory of those who never made it home.

Those included Terri Thorpe, laying a wreath for her son, Tyler Troyer, shot by a sniper in Iraq, and for all Gold Star Mothers; Frank Perry of American Legion Post 10, a 75-day prisoner of war, for Prisoners of War/Missing in Action; Staff Sgt. Elizabeth Cristner for Soldiers Cross; Faye Swain for the Daughters of the American Revolution; Cynthia Ross in memory of her great-great-grandfather Sterling Ross, for the Grand Army of the Republic; Post 10 Commander Steve Adams for World War I; and Dody Torgeson and her daughter, Michele, for their family member Leland Crocker and all those who died in World War II.

The World War II wreath was missing from Monday's ceremonies, so Korean War veteran Bud Stutheit, who was scheduled to place the wreath for the Korean War, offered his wreath for the Torgesons to use.*

Others who placed wreaths Monday included Stephanie Soderstrom-Taylor, sister of Sgt. William E. Soderstrom, for all those killed in action in Vietnam; Steven Olson, who served in Afghanistan and is now president of the Linn-Benton Community College Veterans Club, for all veterans of Afghanistan; John Maine, Iraq veteran and vice president of the LBCC club, for all veterans of the Iraq War; and Eric Czernowski for the Military Order of the Purple Heart.

Also, Ray Poppleton, president of the Linn County Chapter 17 of Disabled American Veterans; Commander Ed Rose and Auxiliary President Sandy Gore of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 584; Marlin Rice, Linn County Voiture 727 of the 40 & 8; Post 10 Adjutant Bob Sechrest and Auxiliary President Penny McCarthy, American Legion Post 10; Commandant Tim Beach, Marine Corps League; Bob Gore and Linda Rose, Military Order of the Cootie; Mark Smith, AMVETS; and Faithful Navigator Bernie Covino and members of the 4th Degree Knights of Columbus.

The Honor Guard of the Oregon State University Naval Reserve Officers' Training Corps gave the rifle salute, and Glenn Hunter, bugler for Post 10's Honor Guard, performed "Taps."

Following the ceremony, all were invited to a luncheon at American Legion Post 10.

* Editor's note: This story has been corrected from the print version, which stated incorrectly that Stutheit was not able to be present Monday.
Nominations are now being accepted online at www.eaglerarelife.com . The 2017 Grand Prize winner will receive a $50,000 donation to the charity of their choice. Six runners-up will receive $5,000 for their charities.

The Rare Life Awards honor individuals who exhibit courage, leadership, survival, devotion, character and heroism. Those making nominations will identify which Rare Life value their nominee's story best represents. The general public will vote for the person who most embodies the "Rare Life" core values, with the top 30 across all categories considered for the Grand Prize and the top five in each category considered for a runner-up prize. Nominations and voting are open beginning today and continue through Jan. 4, 2017. Winners will be announced in March of 2017.

"The accomplishments of our past winners are incredible, and we look forward to more stories of everyday people making a difference," said Kris Comstock, Eagle Rare Bourbon brand manager. "We are honored to help bring awareness to charities working to make the world a better place, and to people who truly embody what it means to live a rare life."

About Eagle Rare Bourbon

Eagle Rare Bourbon Whiskey is part of the award-winning Buffalo Trace Distillery, an American family-owned company based in Frankfort, (Franklin County), Kentucky. The Distillery's rich distilling tradition dates back to 1773 and includes such legends as E.H. Taylor, Jr., George T. Stagg, Albert B. Blanton, Orville Schupp, and Elmer T. Lee. Eagle Rare Bourbon is a 10-year-old bourbon that has won multiple awards, including five double gold medals from the San Francisco World Spirits Competition. To learn more about Eagle Rare, visit www.eaglerarelife.com.

Video - http://origin-qps.onstreammedia.com/origin/multivu_archive/PRNA/ENR/BuffaloTrace-vid.mp4

SOURCE Buffalo Trace Distillery

Related Links

http://www.buffalotrace.com


MESA, Ariz., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Edupoint Educational Systems, creator of the industry-leading Synergy Education Platform for K-12 student information and learning management, has been selected by the Maine Department of Education (Maine DOE) to provide a State Level Student Information and Reporting System (SSIRS). As the sole award recipient from a field of seven competitive bidders, the Synergy State solution will replace the state's existing Infinite Campus State Edition with a scalable student information database to aggregate data from all school administrative units (SAUs), using Ed-Fi to collect data on Maine's 180,000 students for state and federal reporting mandated by the state's Department of Education.

"Maine's student data represents one of the cornerstones for the Department of Education as we try to make informed decisions on improving educational results," says Maine's Education Data Manager, Brian Snow. "The Synergy product promises better control of the quality of information collected, which can then ensure better decisions."

The Synergy State solution will provide Maine with a centralized database that connects SAU local data systems with the state's student data collection process, improving overall reporting functionality and the quality and accuracy of student data. Districts that do not have local data systems to enter data may log into the Synergy State system directly and input data using any supported web browser. Student demographics, enrollment, health, assessment, CTE, and special education data will be submitted by SAUs through the securely hosted Synergy State solution, where query and reporting tools will allow the state to access, display, and analyze data in real time.

Under terms of the contract, SAUs have the option to license the Synergy Education Platform directly with the Department at pre-negotiated rates without needing to go through the bid process. The Synergy Education Platform unites distinct K-12 data management functions in one fully-integrated solution, creating system-wide data connections that help improve administrative processes and learning outcomes without the hassle or cost of third-party system integrations. Along with the industry's richest student information system feature set, Synergy includes comprehensive assessment, learning and curriculum management, analytics, online registration, role-based mobile applications, and tools to help ensure IEP compliance.

"Edupoint is pleased to provide Maine with a technologically advanced solution for their State Level Student Information and Reporting System," says Rob Wilson, Edupoint's President and Chief Innovation Officer. "It is an honor to partner with a state that values the importance of harnessing both student and instructional data to help transform the way schools and districts operate. We look forward to developing a longstanding relationship with the Maine Department of Education, and to welcoming districts throughout the state to the Synergy family."

The contract is currently awaiting final approval from the Bureau of Purchases. Maine SAUs are scheduled to begin reporting data to the state via the Synergy State solution in July 2017.

About Edupoint Educational Systems:

For more than thirty years, the leadership of Edupoint Educational Systems has provided well designed, technologically advanced student data management systems that empower all K-12 stakeholders with the tools they need to improve student achievement. The Synergy Education Platform is a suite of integrated solutions that includes Synergy SIS, the most powerful K-12 student information system available today, Synergy LMS, an all-in-one learning and assessment platform, and Synergy Special Education, a comprehensive special education data management system. More than a data management tool, Synergy is a collaborative environment that facilitates improved communication between educators, administrators, parents and students resulting in better instructional decisions at all levels.

To learn why thousands of schools across the country use the Synergy Education Platform to manage more than 3.5 million students, visit www.Edupoint.com.

*LOGO: Send2Press.com/mediaboom/16-0126-edupoint-300dpi.jpg

This release was issued through Send2Press, a unit of Neotrope. For more information, visit Send2Press Newswire at https://www.Send2Press.com



SOURCE Edupoint Educational Systems

Related Links

http://www.Edupoint.com


PETAH TIKVA, Israel, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Emerald Medical Applications Corp. (OTCQB: MRLA), ("Emerald" or the "Company"), an Israeli-based company engaged in the development and sale of DermaCompare, its proprietary artificial intelligence technology for the early diagnosis of melanoma and other skin cancers, will be presenting at the 2016 Marcum MicroCap Conference being held at the Grand Hyatt New York in New York City. Joseph Salvani, Chief Financial Consultant, will be providing an overview of the company's Vision, product, business and growth strategy on June 1 and June 2.

Mr. Salvani will be available for one-on-one meetings at the conference. Members of the investment community interested in scheduling meetings are encouraged to do so by e-mailing [email protected] .

About Emerald Medical Applications Corp

Emerald Medical Applications is an Israeli-based medical technology company that utilizes proprietary military image processing technology and state of the art data analytics to improve the analysis of medical images. Emerald's flagship solution, DermaCompare, is an FDA Class #1 approved, HIPPA-compliant, skin cancer (melanoma) screening platform that enables physicians to identify and monitor changes in their patients' skin health, specifically the early detection of cancerous moles and skin anomalies.

The DermaCompare patient application is available in Mac or Android based platforms and works using virtually any digital camera, including cell phones, iPads, tablets and other similar devices, to take Total Body Photography ("TBP") images and, in real-time, transmit these images for dermatological evaluation and identification of suspicious moles, lesions and other skin conditions. These images are then compared using Emerald's cloud database, as well as the patient's previous Total Body Photography images, which will dramatically enhance a physician's ability to detect melanoma earlier, more accurately and more efficiently than other means of diagnosis.

For more information, visit: http://www.dermacompare.com/

Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release may contain forward-looking statements, about Emerald's expectations, beliefs or intentions regarding, among other things, its product development efforts, business, financial condition, results of operations, strategies or prospects. In addition, from time to time, Emerald or its representatives have made or may make forward-looking statements, orally or in writing. Forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking words such as "believe," "expect," "intend," "plan," "may," "should" or "anticipate" or their negatives or other variations of these words or other comparable words or by the fact that these statements do not relate strictly to historical or current matters. These forward-looking statements may be included in, but are not limited to, various filings made by Emerald with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, press releases or oral statements made by or with the approval of one of Emerald's authorized executive officers. Forward-looking statements relate to anticipated or expected events, activities, trends or results as of the date they are made. Because forward-looking statements relate to matters that have not yet occurred, these statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause Emerald's actual results to differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Many factors could cause Emerald's actual activities or results to differ materially from the activities and results anticipated in such forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, the factors summarized in Emerald's filings with the SEC. In addition, Emerald operates in an industry sector where securities values are highly volatile and may be influenced by economic and other factors beyond its control. Emerald does not undertake any obligation to publicly update these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Reference is made to the disclosure under "risk factors" included in our Registration Statement on Form S-1 which was declared effective by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on January 20, 2016.

Contact:

LiorWayn, CEO

+1-917-7242059

+972-50-6816300

[email protected]

SOURCE Emerald Medical Applications Corp.
SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- AUGMENTED WORLD EXPO, Epson, providers of the Moverio augmented reality (AR) smart eyewear platform, will demonstrate AR applications for the Moverio BT-300 smart glasses at the 7th Annual Augmented World Expo (AWE), June 1-2, 2016 in Santa Clara, Calif.

Featuring Epson's breakthrough silicon-based OLED (organic light emitting diode) display technology, the Moverio BT-300 enables transparent, mobile AR for businesses and consumers in a comfortable, lightweight form factor at an affordable price. Powered by Android OS 5.1, the Moverio BT-300 seamlessly renders 3D content in the real world with no display background or edges in the field of view, creating a true AR experience.

The following companies will be showcasing their applications on the Epson Moverio BT-300 at AWE Booth #5 in the AR Hall:

AR-Cadia, an Israeli start-up now headquartered in Silicon Valley, will demonstrate technology that instantly brings mobile phone apps to life on the Moverio BT-300. From social media sites to streaming video services, the software allows mobile apps to be enjoyed privately via a large, transparent display in the Moverio user's field of view. In addition, AR-Cadia enables Moverio users to 'pin' apps, web pages or 3D images as 'holograms' to targets in the physical world. These images can then be viewed from any angle as objects 'floating' in space. One demo will show how an e-commerce app user, for instance, can simply push a button on their phone to view a new pair of shoes as a 3D image before purchasing.

Navisens, based in San Francisco , will showcase its motionDNA  technology optimized for the Moverio platform that locates personnel and mobile devices indoors and underground without WiFi, GPS or Bluetooth beacons. Originally developed to track firefighters inside burning structures, Navisens technology processes data from sensors inside mobile devices to provide 3D navigation visualization in real time.

, will showcase its motionDNA technology optimized for the Moverio platform that locates personnel and mobile devices indoors and underground without WiFi, GPS or Bluetooth beacons. Originally developed to track firefighters inside burning structures, Navisens technology processes data from sensors inside mobile devices to provide 3D navigation visualization in real time. Augumenta, Ltd., a Finnish company, will showcase its latest gesture control and virtual inputs on the Moverio smart glasses, enabling intuitive interaction with enterprise and consumer applications.

Rochester Optical, a New York-based optics company that designs and manufactures prescription eyewear solutions for the smart glasses industry, will be showing its array of Moverio-optimized products.

"These innovative applications will provide AWE attendees with a first glimpse of the power of the Moverio BT-300," said Eric Mizufuka, product manager, New Ventures for Epson America. "I'm confident that the Moverio BT-300 represents the next display technology - the 4th screen - that will soon dominate the electronics industry."

Available in late 2016, the Epson Moverio BT-300 may be pre-ordered at Epson.com/Moverio. For a complete product overview of the Moverio BT-300, please visit the following link.

About Epson

Epson is a global technology leader dedicated to connecting people, things and information with its original efficient, compact and precision technologies. With a lineup that ranges from inkjet printers and digital printing systems to 3LCD projectors, smart glasses, sensing systems and industrial robots, the company is focused on driving innovations and exceeding customer expectations in inkjet, visual communications, wearables and robotics.

Led by the Japan-based Seiko Epson Corporation, the Epson Group comprises more than 67,000 employees in 90 companies around the world, and is proud of its contributions to the communities in which it operates and its ongoing efforts to reduce environmental impacts.

Epson America, Inc., based in Long Beach, Calif., is Epson's regional headquarters for the U.S., Canada, and Latin America. To learn more about Epson, please visit: epson.com. You may also connect with Epson America on Facebook (facebook.com/Epson), Twitter (twitter.com/EpsonAmerica), YouTube (youtube.com/EpsonAmerica), and Instagram (instagram.com/EpsonAmerica).

Note: Specifications are subject to change without notice. EPSON and Moverio are registered trademarks, and EPSON Exceed Your Vision is a registered logomark of Seiko Epson Corporation. All other product and brand names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Epson disclaims any and all rights in these marks.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20121130/LA21891LOGO

SOURCE Epson
PLAYA MUJERES, Mexico, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Excellence Goup Luxury Hotels & Resorts announces that as of September 1, 2016 their award winning boutique hotel Beloved Playa Mujeres will become an adult-only Boutique All-Inclusive hotel and Excellence Group's most luxurious and best property to date.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160531/373608

Excellence Group Converts Boutique All-Inclusive Brand, BELOVED, Into Adults Only

Excellence Group has made the decision to convert Beloved Playa Mujeres into an intimate adult only hotel with 109 suites to further expand its unparalleled boutique experience. In doing so, the company will take its Beloved brand to the next level of luxury, wellness and, of course, romance with new features and amenities to be announced.

Currently, Beloved Playa Mujeres enjoys the highest satisfaction ratings in the hotel's history, racking up awards like the 2016 Traveler's Choice winner for all-inclusive resorts both worldwide and in Mexico, and the 2015 Trip Advisor Hall of Fame award, among other distinctions.

"Excellence Group is yet again raising the bar in All-Inclusive luxury and this is accomplished by listening to our guests," states Excellence Group Luxury Hotels & Resorts' VP of Sales & Marketing, Domingo Aznar.

"Beloved Playa Mujeres has become the very best product within the Excellence Group portfolio."

About Excellence Group Luxury Hotels & Resorts

Excellence Group Luxury Hotels & Resorts is a familyowned and operated resort group, specialized in hotel management and worldwide real estate development, with a primary presence in the Caribbean. A joint investment between Medieval Times and ETI (Explotacions Turistiques de les Illes), the group owns and manages fivestar, award winning resort properties in the Dominican Republic and Mexico under three brands of AllInclusive luxury: AdultsOnly at Excellence Resorts; Boutique Adults-Only at Beloved Hotels; and Modern Luxury at Finest Resorts. In 2015 and 2016, Excellence Group properties won the Sunny Heart Award, TripAdvisor HALL of FAME and Travelers' Choice Awards for Top 25 Resorts across multiple categories to name a few.

For more information on The Excellence Group and its brands of resort properties, go to www.excellencegroupluxuryresorts.com and visit belovedhotels.com.

Contact:

Jaime Katz

Publicity Coordinator

Full Scale Media

Tel: 212-537-9236

[email protected]

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com

SOURCE Excellence Group Luxury Hotels & Resorts

Related Links

http://belovedhotels.com


SAN FRANCISCO, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Genstar Capital, a leading middle-market private equity firm focused on investments in targeted segments of the industrial technology, software, healthcare, and financial services industries, today announced the acquisition of Infinite RF Holdings, Inc. (IRF), a market leading supplier of engineering grade radio frequency (RF) technology components.

Based in Irvine, CA, Infinite RF offers a broad range of connectivity components and assemblies serving the aerospace/defense, industrial, government, consumer electronics, instrumentation, education/medical, and telecommunications markets. Operating under the Pasternack and Fairview brand names, IRF serves a global engineering customer base with deep technical expertise and one of the broadest inventories of RF products available for immediate shipment.

Rob Rutledge, Managing Director at Genstar, said, "The IRF management team, led by CEO Terry Jarnigan, has done an excellent job building a strong reputation and a loyal customer base through intense customer focus and flawless execution. The Company will continue to benefit from increased R&D in the RF space including from secular trends in automation and internet of things. The IRF acquisition builds upon Genstar's continued commitment to the industrial technology sector. We believe through our partnership with the management team, IRF will accelerate growth both organically and through strategic acquisitions."

Terry Jarnigan, President and Chief Executive Officer of IRF, said, "The global RF market is highly attractive and IRF's products address a wide selection of applications. IRF leads the industry in terms of new product introductions which has led to proven and stable growth and we continue to see tremendous potential for adjacent product lines to serve existing customers and fulfill product needs of new customers. Genstar has extensive expertise investing in the industrial technology sector and we look forward to working with them to accelerate the growth of the company."

About Genstar Capital

Genstar Capital (www.gencap.com) is a leading private equity firm that has been actively investing in high quality companies for more than 20 years. Based in San Francisco, Genstar works in partnership with its management teams and its network of operating executives and strategic advisors to transform its portfolio companies into industry-leading businesses. Genstar manages funds with total capital commitments of over $5 billion and targets investments focused on selected sectors within the industrial technology, software, healthcare, and financial services industries.

Contact: Chris Tofalli

Chris Tofalli Public Relations

914-834-4334

SOURCE Genstar Capital

Related Links

http://www.gencap.com


SAN FRANCISCO, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- GI Partners announced that is has completed the acquisition of 825 Stewart Drive located in Sunnyvale, California. The acquisition was made through DataCore, L.P. ("DataCore"), a $500 million fully discretionary core real estate fund managed by GI Partners on behalf of The California State Teachers' Retirement System ("CalSTRS").

825 Stewart Drive is an approximately 75,000 square foot class A office and R&D property developed in 1968 and subsequently repositioned in 2002 and 2015. The property is 100% leased to a prominent technology company.

"On behalf of DataCore, GI is pleased to add 825 Stewart to our growing technology-advantaged real estate portfolio," commented Mike Armstrong, Principal of GI Partners. "The confluence of existing tenancy, use, and the burgeoning ecosystem of global technology companies in the immediate vicinity presents an attractive opportunity."

CalSTRS and GI Partners created DataCore in 2012 as a core investment vehicle to invest in technology-advantaged real estate in the United States, including data centers, internet gateways, corporate campuses for technology tenants, and life science properties, located in primary markets and leased to industry-leading tenants. Since inception, DataCore has acquired approximately 1.8 million square feet of properties throughout the United States.

About CalSTRS

The California State Teachers' Retirement System, with a portfolio valued at $187.4 billion as of April 30, 2016, is the largest educator-only pension fund in the world. CalSTRS administers a hybrid retirement system, consisting of traditional defined benefit, cash balance and voluntary defined contribution plans. CalSTRS also provides disability and survivor benefits. CalSTRS serves California's 896,000 public school educators and their families from the state's 1,700 school districts, county offices of education and community college districts.

About GI Partners

Founded in 2001, GI Partners is a leading private investment firm based in San Francisco, California. The firm currently manages over $12 billion in capital commitments through private equity and real estate strategies for recognized institutional investors, including some of the largest state and sovereign pension funds in North America, Europe, Australia, Asia, and the Middle East. GI Partners' real estate team invests across a number of property types and investment strategies, including industrial, apartments, life sciences, and technology-oriented data centers and corporate campuses. For more information on GI Partners, please visit www.gipartners.com.

Contact: Chris Tofalli

Chris Tofalli Public Relations

914-834-4334

[email protected]

SOURCE GI Partners

Related Links

http://www.gipartners.com


Sir Richard Branson was in Australia to launch the Global Corporate Challenge (GCC) -- a 100-day corporate well-being experience focused on improving employee health and productivity.

The event just kicked off; with almost 400,000 participants from more than 1,500 organizations in 185 countries expected to participate in 2016. It is the first year the event has taken place since GCC joined the Virgin Pulse family in February this year. Virgin Pulse is the leading provider of software solutions designed to engage employees in improving their well-being, build workplace culture, and drive productivity across organizations around the world.

Sir Richard Branson said, "I'm excited to be in Australia for the launch of the 2016 GCC. It's my strong belief that business owners have enormous power to do good and this event has been founded on a desire to change people's lives for the better."

"Bringing the GCC into the Virgin Pulse family is part of our broader vision to create healthier, more productive workforces. We have already collectively changed the lives of more than 5 million people and together, we aim to improve the lives of millions more."

GCC CEO Tom Sermon said the GCC's mission was unabashedly about changing lives and said its growth and expansion were proof that socially responsible goals were good for business.

"The GCC has grown year-on-year since inception and this year's event is our biggest in history," he said.

"We have always been very ambitious about reaching as many people as possible with this concept and by joining forces with Virgin Pulse, we've massively expanded our potential to do that. Over the past 12 years, the GCC has been rolled out in 185 countries worldwide."

"We are absolutely thrilled that together with Virgin Pulse and Sir Richard Branson, we have the opportunity to change the lives of an unprecedented number of people and expand at a pace and scale that we previously could only have dreamed about."

Founder and President of GCC Glenn Riseley said, the secret to the program's success was not only the positive outcomes but the fact that it's incredibly entertaining to do.

"The GCC was always intended to be about taking people on a journey to better health and wellbeing in a way that's so fun and engaging, they don't even notice it's good for them," he said.

"We knew early on that you can't bore people into making life changes, it has to be enjoyable so we've really focused on that. We've helped over 2 million people change their lives for the better over the past 12 years and we are looking forward to seeing that number grow dramatically in the years to come."

"It's an incredibly rewarding feeling coming to work every day knowing that what we do is going to help people live longer, healthier and happier lives."

The GCC features a 100 Day virtual journey as part of a 12-month program. A second challenge will be held in September for those who missed the May event.

For further information, please contact a media representative in your region:

Australia, New Zealand & Asia: Contact Emma Nguyen at [email protected] or +61 3 9536 8160

USA/Canada: Contact Natalie Austin at [email protected] or +1 917 291 2746.

UK: Contact Emily Sowden at [email protected]m or +44 (0)845 873 9304 or Charlotte Church at [email protected] or +44 (0)3304 30 30 30.

Europe: Contact Vicky Kummer at [email protected] or +41 79 932 10 58.

ABOUT GCC AND VIRGIN PULSE

GCC, founded in Melbourne Australia in 2004, brings a wealth of global expertise in delivering a culturally relevant program which measurably improves the health, engagement and performance of employees around the world. During GCC's evidence-based and scientifically proven 100 Day global journey, participants from thousands of the world's most respected companies engage in friendly competition designed to improve employee engagement, health, productivity and corporate culture.

Virgin Pulse, part of Sir Richard Branson's famed Virgin Group, replenishes employees with tools that help them build better habits. Through its award-winning platform, the company helps employees thrive at work and across all aspects of life. The Virgin Pulse platform is purpose-built to deliver a personalized, consumer-grade user experience designed to promote health, productivity, and culture across organizations and employees.

With more than 30 years of experience between them, Virgin Pulse and GCC have collectively empowered more than 5 million employees across 6,500 organizations to change their lives, and counting.

Find out more at:

www.gettheworldmoving.com

www.virginpulse.com

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160527/372913

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160527/372914LOGO

SOURCE Global Corporate Challenge (GCC)

Related Links

http://www.gettheworldmoving.com


BRUSSELS, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- GS1, the global standards organization, announced the successful global launch of GDSN Major Release 3, an update to the Global Data Synchronization NetworkTM (GDSN) standard. The launch brings a new level of speed, efficiency and information-sharing flexibility to the nearly 40,000 organizations worldwide that rely on GDSN to share trusted product data with their business partners in an automatic, and immediate way. With enhancements like richer product information sharing, industry-specific functionality and better regulatory compliance features, the release of GDSN Major Release 3 empowers organizations to respond to new and emerging marketplace demands like never before.

GDSN is a networked product data sharing system that is managed by the GDSN standard (www.gs1.org/gdsn). It contains over 20 million products. This standard ensures that information, like pricing or product data, exchanged among networked trading partners is accurate. Any change made to one company's database is immediately shared with the other partners. The GDSN Major Release 3 update takes this process to the next level with over 1,500 improvements, including support for new product attributes and the consistent sharing of imagery that corresponds with those products. The updates are designed to help businesses deliver an unmatched customer experience. For example, through GDSN Major Release 3, application developers will have the most up-to-date trusted data to deliver a better shopping experience; hospitals will gain flexibility to quickly respond to market needs; and improved data sharing will enable retailers and brand owners to track products globally.

"The GDSN Major Release update was developed and launched in response to requirements from industry, business trading partners and regulatory agencies," says Malcolm Bowden, president, Global Solutions, GS1.

"What's exciting about the GDSN Major Release 3 is it's really setting the foundation for the future of commerce. It enables the sharing of richer and more accurate product information for today's omni-channel consumer," says John Phillips, Senior Vice President, Customer Supply Chain & Global Go-To-Market, PepsiCo. Other industry leaders are also praising the competitive advantages that the GDSN Major Release 3 update brings. "We are going to have more opportunities, more speed and changes, more local approach," says Vincent De Hertogh of retailer Delhaize Group.

Bowden explains that the successful launch of GDSN Major Release 3 on May 26 was the result of impressive collaboration and dynamic planning amongst all the parties impacted by the update. This includes the data pool community that supports GDSN, GS1 Member Organizations, businesses that directly manage their own GDSN-activities and many other trading partners throughout the global supply chain.

The first company in the world to have sent "live" trade item information according to the new GDSN Major Release 3 standard was fresh salmon Swedish manufacturer Leroy Sverige AB. Ann-Christin Nilsson, Marketing and Sales Coordinator of the company said: "we are very proud of this achievement which could not have happened without the great collaboration with GS1 Sweden."

With a successful launch completed, GS1 will continue to monitor, communicate and collaborate with the GDSN community to gather feedback and inform about future updates to the GDSN.

About GS1

GS1 is a neutral, not-for-profit, global organization that develops and maintains the most widely used supply chain standards system in the world. GS1 standards improve the efficiency, safety and visibility of supply chains across multiple sectors. With local Member Organizations in over 110 countries, GS1 engages with communities of trading partners, industry organizations, governments and technology providers to understand and respond to their business needs through the adoption and implementation of global standards. GS1 is driven by over a million user companies, which execute more than six billion transactions daily in 150 countries using GS1 standards. For more information, go to http://www.gs1.org

SOURCE GS1 US

Related Links

http://www.gs1us.org


LONDON, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- International Game Technology PLC ("IGT") (NYSE: IGT) announced that Marina Bogard, IGT Vice President of Strategic Accounts, North America, and Cari Blomquist, IGT Game Studio Director, were honored at the seventh annual Women in Gaming Awards gala at the Jumeirah Carlton Tower Hotel in London on May 20.

"Marina Bogard and Cari Blomquist demonstrate outstanding leadership and talent, which speak to their commitment to excellence, and set a great example for everyone at IGT. We are extremely proud of their accomplishments and the global recognition they receive for winning the Women in Gaming Awards," said Renato Ascoli, IGT CEO North America Gaming & Interactive (DoubleDown Casino).

Honored as 'Sales Manager of the Year', Marina Bogard joined IGT six years ago and has led the expansion of a large division of the IGT sales department. Through her leadership, Marina's team orchestrates significant sales deals, long-term systems commitments with key gaming customers and ongoing strategic initiatives that contribute to the evolution of gaming.

Named 'Employee of the Year', Cari Blomquist ascended to leadership through her remarkable expertise in enhancing communication and building relationships between various departments. Leveraging this effort has helped her lead a successful game studio, which propels results in more efficient game design and testing.

In addition to these achievements, there were three other IGT finalists nominated in the following categories: Hidden Talent of the Year, Industry Achiever of the Year, and Leader of the Year. The Women in Gaming Awards recognizes female team leaders within their organizations and their contribution to the success of their businesses.

For more information, visit IGT or go to Facebook at facebook.com/IGT, follow us on Twitter, twitter.com/IGTnews or watch IGT videos on YouTube, youtube.com/igt. Play IGT's DoubleDown Casino on Facebook or at doubledowncasino.com.

About IGT

IGT (NYSE:IGT) is the global leader in gaming. We enable players to experience their favorite games across all channels and regulated segments, from Gaming Machines and Lotteries to Interactive and Social Gaming. Leveraging a wealth of premium content, substantial investment in innovation, in-depth customer intelligence, operational expertise and leading-edge technology, our gaming solutions anticipate the demands of consumers wherever they decide to play. We have a well-established local presence and relationships with governments and regulators in more than 100 countries around the world, and create value by adhering to the highest standards of service, integrity, and responsibility. IGT has over 12,000 employees. For more information, please visit www.IGT.com.

Contact:

Ortal Dahan, IGT, +1 (702) 669-7662

 2016 IGT

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150406/196736LOGO

SOURCE IGT

Related Links

http://www.gtech.com


March 3, 1945  May 25, 2016

Carolyn Shew, 71, of Albany was called home to the lord, where she most certainly joined his heavenly choir, on May 25 at the Mennonite Home.

She was born in Columbia, South Carolina, to Robert Davis and Virginia Davis (Barnett). They moved to Oregon while she was in grade school, living first in Hermiston before settling in Philomath. She graduated from Philomath High School in 1963 with her future husband, Thomas Shew. They married on Sept. 5, 1964, and went on to enjoy 51 years of marriage.

Her joys in life were keeping a loving home for her husband and children. After her youngest child entered middle school, she worked as a CNA/CMA at the Mennonite Home in Albany for seven years.

She had a life-long love for singing and was a member of the choir at First Assembly of God in Albany for over 25 years. In 2010, she and her husband became charter members of Bible Baptist Church of Lebanon.

She is survived by her husband, Thomas Shew; sons Chris and wife Lynda, Mark and wife Lesley, and Paul and wife Crystal, all of Albany; daughter Brenda and husband Joel of Salem; sister Diane Davis of Keizer; nine grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

A service will be at 2 p.m. Saturday, June 4, at Bible Baptist Church in Lebanon.

Memorial contributions may be made to The Mission or Building Fund of Bible Baptist Church, 200 Market St. Unit 277, Lebanon, OR 97355.
LOS GATOS, Calif., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Impetus Technologies, a big data thought leader and software solutions company, today announced it will be featuring StreamAnalytix 2.0 at Spark Summit West, taking place June 6-8 at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square hotel in San Francisco, California. Impetus Technologies, an event sponsor, will be demonstrating the ability of the platform to easily and rapidly build, deploy and monitor Spark Streaming applications at booth K-F2.

StreamAnalytix 2.0 is the industry's first open-source based, enterprise-grade, multi-engine platform that empowers developers and data analysts to use drag-and-drop operators to rapidly and easily create real-time streaming analytics applications for any industry vertical, any data format and any use case. With support for Apache Spark Streaming, in addition to Apache Storm, StreamAnalytix 2.0 is used by leading Fortune 1000 companies to process fast data for improved business outcomes. Overall, the platform has helped organizations in areas such as Internet of Things (IoT), sensor data analytics, e-Commerce and Internet advertising, security, fraud, insurance claim validation, credit-line management, call center analytics, business activity monitoring and log analytics.

Earlier this year at Spark Summit East, Impetus Technologies debuted StreamAnalytix 2.0. Riding the wave of interest in real-time analytics and Apache Spark, Impetus will demonstrate the full capabilities and related benefits of the platform to the more than 2,500 engineers, analysts, scientists, and business professionals that will be in attendance at Spark Summit West.

Members of the media interested in booking a meeting with the company at the summit to learn more, or for a live StreamAnalytix demonstration, should contact [email protected].

About StreamAnalytix

StreamAnalytix, an Impetus Technologies product, enables enterprises to analyze and respond to events in real-time at big data scale. It provides enterprises with the advantages of an open-source based, enterprise-grade platform for rapid and easy development of real-time streaming analytics applications. StreamAnalytix is designed to quickly build and deploy streaming analytics applications for any industry vertical, any data format and any use case. Now featuring support for Apache Spark Streaming, in addition to the current support for Apache Storm, StreamAnalytix is currently the industry's only platform that provides the powerful advantage of offering users with multi-engine support and the flexibility to match the choice of a stream processing engine to the requirements of a particular use case. To learn more, visit: http://streamanalytix.com or write to: [email protected], and follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/StreamAnalytix and LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/1Q3LzBy.

About Impetus Technologies

Impetus Technologies is focused on creating big business impact through big data solutions for Fortune 1000 enterprises. The company offers a unique mix of software products, consulting services, data science capabilities and technology expertise. It offers full life-cycle services for big data technology implementations, including technology strategy, solution architecture, proof of concept, production implementation and on-going support to its clients. To learn more, visit: www.impetus.com or write to: [email protected], and follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/impetustech and LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/impetus.

Media Contacts

Meghan Locke

LEWIS

781-418-2434

[email protected]

SOURCE Impetus Technologies

Related Links

http://www.impetus.com


John Boyce , M.D.  retired director of hospital epidemiology and infection control at Yale-New Haven Hospital and retired clinical professor at the Yale University School of Medicine

, M.D.  retired director of hospital epidemiology and infection control at Yale-New Haven Hospital and retired clinical professor at the Matthew Zirwas , M.D.- board-certified dermatologist specializing in occupational and contact dermatitis based in Columbus, Ohio

, M.D.- board-certified dermatologist specializing in occupational and contact dermatitis based in Srini Venkatesh , Ph.D.  chief science officer, GOJO

These three speakers will share their perspectives on hand hygiene and skin health and the impact skin health has on patient safety and hand hygiene compliance. Dr. Boyce will provide an overview of hand hygiene's importance to infection prevention. Dr. Venkatesh will enhance the audience's knowledge around product formulations by sharing how products are designed to deliver good efficacy skin health and skin feel. Finally, Dr. Zirwas will deliver practical advice for infection preventionists and discuss interventions and therapies to restore skin health among healthcare workers.

"We all know how critically important hand hygiene is in preventing healthcare-associated infections, but if a healthcare worker's skin is damaged, this may present a barrier to practicing hand hygiene and reducing the spread of infection," said Jeff Hall, GOJO healthcare business vice president and general manager. "Our objective with the symposium is to provide APIC attendees with knowledge around hand hygiene formulations and their effects on the skin, an understanding of the importance of maintaining skin health and to deliver practical advice from a board-certified dermatologist about maintaining and improving skin health."

Breakfast will be provided at the symposium and 2.0 CE credits are available for those who attend. Register for the GOJO Interactive Breakfast Symposium today. For more information about GOJO at the APIC 2016 Annual Conference go to http://tradeshows.gojo.com/

About GOJO

GOJO Industries is the inventor of PURELL Hand Sanitizer and the leading global producer and marketer of skin health and hygiene solutions for away-from-home settings. The broad GOJO product portfolio includes hand cleaning, handwashing, hand sanitizing and skin care formulas under the GOJO, PURELL and PROVON brand names. GOJO formulations use the latest advances in the science of skin care and sustainability. GOJO is known for state-of-the-art dispensing technology, engineered with attention to design, sustainability and functionality. GOJO programs promote healthy behaviors for hand hygiene, skin care and compliance in critical environments. GOJO is a privately held corporation headquartered in Akron, Ohio, with operations in the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Japan, Mexico, Canada and Brazil.

www.gojo.com

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140430/82508

SOURCE GOJO Industries

Related Links

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NEW YORK, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Growing Automobile Sales, Increasing Per Capita Income Levels and Expanding Automobile Fleet to Boost Tire Sales in India Until 2021

New Age TechSci Research Logo (PRNewsFoto/New Age TechSci Research)

According to TechSci Research report, "India Tire Market Forecast & Opportunities, 2021", tire market in India is projected to record $8.5 Billion market size in 2016. The country's tire market is dominated by the replacement tire segment on account of expanding automotive fleet. The volume sales in India are largely driven by two-wheeler tires followed by the passenger car and medium & heavy commercial vehicle tires. In 2015, two-wheeler tire sales accounted for majority of the volume sales of tires in India. On the other hand, increasing sales of passenger cars on account of rising disposable income and expanding middle class consumers in the country has also been boosting passenger car tire demand in both OEM as well as replacement tire segments.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140117/663730 )



Browse 85 market data Tables and 102 Figures spread through 270 Pages and an in-depth TOC on

"India Tire Market "

http://www.techsciresearch.com/report/india-tire-market-forecast-opportunities-2021/672.html

Launch of 'Automotive Mission Plan, 2016-2026' is anticipated to augment the automobile production in the country in the coming years, which is expected to drive demand for tires till 2021. Moreover, rising foreign direct investments are expected to boost the country's automobile industry, including the tire market, during the forecast period. In 2015, tire market in India was dominated by domestic tire players such as MRF, CEAT, Birla Tyres, TVS Srichakra, Apollo Tyres and JK Tyre & Industries. Few of the leading international tire brands operating in the country include Goodyear, Bridgestone, Michelin, Continental, Yokohama, and Hankook.

Download Sample Report @ http://www.techsciresearch.com/sample-report.aspx?cid=672

Customers can also request for 10% free customization on this report.

Over the last five years, adoption of radial tire technology has increased significantly in India. Despite almost 100% radialization in the passenger car tire segment, the country still offers huge growth potential for radialization in the commercial vehicle and two-wheeler tire segments. With continuing increase in R&D activities for developing cost-effective radial tires by major domestic tire companies, coupled with the growing imports of low cost Chinese radial tires, the adoption of radial tires is anticipated to grow in the coming years.

"India Tire Market Forecast & Opportunities, 2021" has evaluated the future growth potential of India tire market and provides statistics and information on market size, market share, growth forecast and car owners buying habits in India. The report is intended to provide cutting-edge market intelligence and help decision makers take sound investment evaluation. Besides, the report also identifies and analyzes the emerging trends along with essential drivers, challenges and opportunities in India tire market.

Browse Related Reports

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

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

Sri Lanka Tire Market Forecast and Opportunities, 2021

http://www.techsciresearch.com/report/sri-lanka-tire-market-forecast-and-opportunities-2021/654.html

Malaysia Tire Market Forecast and Opportunities, 2021

http://www.techsciresearch.com/report/malaysia-tyre-market-forecast-and-opportunities-2020/246.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
JENSEN BEACH, Fla., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- JPB Capital Partners recently acquired a majority interest in Mulligans Beach House Bar and Grill headquartered in Stuart, Florida. George Hart the founder of Mulligans, had grown his business from one location in Ft Lauderdale to six locations on the east coast of the state over the past 19 years.

The concept worked well up and down the Treasure coast and George realized that Mulligans could expand much more quickly with help from a partner. Mr. Hart wanted a strategic buyer that could take his concept nationally and internationally.

He knew who to turn to, Transworld Business Advisors' Agent John DeVries. DeVries was able confidentially market worldwide to selectively find a particular strategic buyer that fit the bill.

After a few short weeks of searching, Mr DeVries facilitated several meetings with top investors from all over the world that created an interviewing process which Mr Hart could selectively choose the right buyer and terms for his business.

After negotiations with publicly traded companies, Private Equity Groups and Private Investors, JPB's offer was chosen. DeVries then assisted with every aspect of the transaction until both parties were able to accomplish their goals. After the closing Hart was quoted, "We are going to open Mulligans all over the state of Florida in the next four or five years."

"Mulligan's is a great investment," said Greg Carey, JPB's managing director. "The plan is to grow it, which takes some time." Terms of the transaction were not disclosed but Carey said Hart still owns a "significant piece of the company."

Devries added "This was a complicated deal with a lot of moving parts. It required the right buyer with industry knowledge and the resources to get the deal done. Having overseen over 150 transactions in my career and with Transworld's global reach, we were able to a great buyer at the right price and terms for George."

About Transworld Business Advisors

Transworld Business Advisors is the premier business brokerage firm in Florida and now a worldwide franchisor. Established in 1979, the company is headquartered in West Palm Beach, FL. with over 100 offices throughout the USA. The company specializes in a wide range of industries including manufacturing, distribution, service, technology, and retail businesses. Currently, the company boasts a staff of 300 agents and more than 3000 business listings, making it one of the largest brokerage firms in the country. For more information, visit the web site at www.tworld.com.

About John Devries

Mr. Devries has been with Transworld for over 10 years and is one of the top producers over his tenure with the firm. Notably John was 2005 Rookie of the year, Presidents Club winner 2005-2016, Million Dollar Award winner 2005-2016, Top Deal Maker award winner 2012-2016, #1 Top Producing agent in Florida 2012-2015 and Gold Cup award winner. He often specializes in the hospitality and service sectors, business sales, mergers and acquisitions.

SOURCE Transworld Business Advisors

Related Links

http://www.tworld.com


The MICHELIN Guide Washington will become the 29 th edition of the international MICHELIN Guides collection and the first to cover an American city in the Mid-Atlantic region. With the addition of Washington, the MICHELIN Guide inspectors will now evaluate and select restaurants for four U.S. cities, also including New York, San Francisco and Chicago. Michelin's highly-regarded restaurant guide promises to put the city more firmly on the world stage of great gastronomic destinations.

The new MICHELIN Guide Washington, D.C., will go on sale starting Oct. 13, 2016.

"I am excited to announce that the MICHELIN Guide will be a part of the extraordinary and eclectic food scene in America's great capital," said Michael Ellis, international director of the MICHELIN guides. "Washington is one of the great cosmopolitan cities in the world, with a unique and storied past that includes, among so many other things, a rich culinary tradition that continues to evolve in exciting new directions."

Ellis said the first edition of the MICHELIN Guide Washington, D.C., will include restaurants within the District's boundaries exclusively; subsequent editions will expand to cover the greater metropolitan area.

Meticulous in maintaining their confidentiality, Michelin inspectors from the United States and other countries have been selecting restaurants in the District for several months. As always, they make dining reservations anonymously, pay for all their meals, ensuring that they are treated the same as any other customer.

Of course, the Michelin Guide inspectors are famous for awarding stars to restaurants. However, they also recommend a broad selection of restaurants, including a list of Michelin inspectors' favorites for good value called Bib Gourmand. For the frugal foodie, Michelin also publishes a list of great places to eat a full meal for $25 dollars or less.

"After Seoul, Singapore and Shanghai, Washington is the fourth city which we have added this year," said Claire Dorland-Clauzel, Michelin executive vice-president, brands and external relations. "This international development is a strong sign for gastronomy worldwide. Thanks to the distinctions awarded each year, the MICHELIN Guide contributes to the international culinary scene's visibility and creates strong value to inhabitants and visitors.

"With its rigorous methodology and its historical knowledge of the food and hospitality sectors, it offers to its customers a unique expertise and high value global service," concluded Claire Dorland-Clauzel.

About the MICHELIN Guide

Thanks to the rigorous MICHELIN Guide selection process that is applied independently and consistently around 27 countries, the MICHELIN Guide has become an international benchmark in fine dining. The selections of all restaurants in the Guide are made by Michelin's anonymous inspectors, who are trained to scrupulously apply the same time-tested methods used by Michelin inspectors for many decades throughout the world. This ensures a uniform, international standard of excellence. As a further guarantee of complete objectivity, Michelin inspectors pay all their bills in full, and only the quality of the cuisine is evaluated. To fully assess the quality of a restaurant, the inspectors apply five criteria defined by Michelin: product quality; preparation and flavors; the chef's personality as revealed through his or her cuisine; value for money; and consistency over time and across the entire menu. These objective criteria are respected by all MICHELIN Guide inspectors, whether in Japan, the United States, China or Europe. They guarantee a consistent selection so that a star restaurant as the same value regardless of whether it is located in Paris, New York or Tokyo.

Michelin has been a pioneering force in advancing mobility through innovation and excellence in manufacturing quality. The Company patented the pneumatic, or air-filled, tire in the late 1800s. This was a milestone moment in mobility, permitting automobile owners to travel at great length in a single journey. Then, in an effort to prompt travelers to enjoy their newfound mobility, the company created guides and detailed maps to steer travelers on their way. The most famous publication that developed from this is the internationally recognized MICHELIN Guide.

About Michelin North America, Inc.

Dedicated to the improvement of sustainable mobility, Michelin designs, manufactures and sells tires for every type of vehicle, including airplanes, automobiles, bicycles, Earthmovers, farm equipment, heavy-duty trucks and motorcycles. The Company also publishes travel guides, hotel and restaurant guides, maps and road atlases. Headquartered in Greenville, S.C., Michelin North America (www.michelinman.com) employs more than 22,650 people and operates 19 major manufacturing plants in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

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SOURCE Michelin

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NEW YORK, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Open Road Integrated Media, a digital publisher and multimedia content company, announced today that Jane Friedman, co-founder and CEO, will serve in a new role as Chairman of the Board and as Executive Publisher. Paul Slavin, the veteran media executive who joined Open Road in the fall of 2015, has been named CEO of the company.

Under Friedman's leadership, Open Road has built an e-book catalogue of more than 10,000 titles from more than 2,000 authors including backlists from legendary authors such as Pearl Buck, James Jones, Mary McCarthy, Iris Murdoch, William Styron and Alice Walker. In addition to her expanded board activities, Friedman will also continue to help support the company's efforts to acquire the best available eBooks.

Slavin will lead the company's next phase beyond content - spearheading Open Road's expanding focus on engaging and connecting with consumers while creating multiple new revenue streams through media and e-commerce.

"I'm so proud of what Open Road Integrated Media is a company that publishes and markets stories which entertain and illuminate readers around the world," Friedman said. "Open Road continues to deliver on its promise of breathing new life into classic and contemporary works. With the growing success of Early Bird Books and The Lineup brands in our portfolio, we are proving every day that content is king."

"Jane Friedman is an industry legend, and it is a privilege to work with her. Jane and our team of editors, marketers, and producers have achieved so much over the past few years," said Slavin. "I believe that we have the right strategies, practices, and creative energy to continue in this direction."

"I know that Open Road's authors, partners, and staff will work incredibly well with Paul," Friedman said. "His experience in developing successful digital media companies, his business acumen, and his deep appreciation for media position him well to capitalize on the incredible growth that we've seen. And he's someone who understands the value of our books and authors."

Slavin, the former COO of Everyday Health, joined Open Road after 30 years of experience at the Walt Disney Company and ABC News. An award winning journalist, Slavin also has extensive experience in data-driven marketing solutions, and is known for leading efficient and impactful audience-development and content-generation teams. Using innovative and strategic approaches, Slavin has helped to realign companies, increase their profitability and sustain their growth.

Prior to founding Open Road Integrated Media in 2009, Friedman served as President and CEO of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide, one of the world's leading English-language publishers. Friedman came to HarperCollins from Random House, where she was Executive Vice President of Random House Inc., Executive Vice President of the Knopf Publishing Group, Publisher of Vintage Books, and Founder and President of Random House Audio Publishing.

About Open Road Integrated Media

Open Road Integrated Media is a global ebook publisher and digital content company that publishes and markets ebooks by legendary authors including Dee Brown, Pat Conroy, Walker Percy and Leon Uris. Open Road also oversees a network of social websites built around authors, books, and the love of reading.

SOURCE Open Road Integrated Media
LANSING, Mich., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The leading Michigan Lobbying firm of Kelley Cawthorne announced today that Melissa Yutzey has been named a partner in the multi-client organization.

Ms. Yutzey, who has been with the firm since 2005, was named one of Michigan's top five (5) women lobbyists in surveys by both MIRS News and Inside Michigan Politics and one of the Top 10 overall in the state.

"We're thrilled to have Melissa become a partner in Kelley Cawthorne," said Rob Elhenicky, a principal of the firm. "She has truly earned this promotion. She is well known in the Capitol as a relentless fighter on behalf of our clients."

Ms. Yutzey specializes in Fire Safety and Services, Transportation and Infrastructure, Higher Education/Graduate Medical Education, Healthcare, Appropriations, Procurement and State Contracts, and PAC Development Strategy.

"I'm proud to join the leadership team at Kelley Cawthorne," says Ms. Yutzey. "Lansing lobbying is changing rapidly. I'm excited to help shape the firm's strategic direction in addition to providing client service."

Ms. Yutzey is an experienced Lansing hand having worked for a Democratic House Speaker and two (2) Senate Democratic Leaders. She also served as Assistant Vice President of Government Affairs at Western Michigan University before joining the firm.

"Whether it's a roomful of firefighters  or legislators  Melissa has a commanding presence," says Elhenicky. "That's why she's on the front lines of Kelley Cawthorne's toughest issues. It's also why she's consistently recognized as one of Michigan's top (female) lobbyists."

Ms. Yutzey, a native of Grand Blanc, earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations and Political Theory and Constitutional Democracy from Michigan State University's prestigious James Madison College.

When Ms. Yutzey is not fighting for her clients in the Capitol, she is active in a host of volunteer activities including Habitat for Humanity and the Special Olympics in Michigan, where she serves as the event coordinator for the Legislative Polar Plunge, the only event of its kind in the nation. She also serves as Co-Chair of the Auction Committee for the Children's Trust Fund.

The well respected lobbying firm, which opened a Detroit office in 2015 headed by Dr. Oscar W. King III, has a growing roster of clients including: DTE Energy, Wayne State University, Deloitte, Ford Motor Company, the Detroit Police and Firefighters Retirement System, the Michigan Professional Firefighters, and McLaren-Karmanos Cancer Center, among others.

Kelley Cawthorne is consistently rated as one of Michigan's leading lobbying organizations, by Inside Michigan Politics and MIRS News as are many of its individual lobbyists including Dennis Cawthorne, Dave Ladd, Rob Elhenicky, and Melissa Yutzey. It is the only statewide lobbying firm with offices in Lansing and Detroit. The bi-partisan firm was co-founded by former Michigan Attorney General Frank Kelley. It has a highly diverse nine (9) person lobbying team with the policy and advocacy expertise necessary to open doors and create value for its local, state and national clients.

Editor's Note: a high-resolution, four-color headshot of Ms. Yutzey is available for publication. Please photo credit courtesy of Kelley Cawthorne. Thank you.

SOURCE Kelley Cawthorne
LOS ANGELES, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire-HISPANIC PR WIRE/ -- Today, Kinecta/NIX Neighborhood Lending became the largest Juntos Avanzamos (Together We Advance) designated credit union in California. It is the 50th credit union to be evaluated for the nationwide designation, a new and important milestone for the program.

In the U.S., minorities remain largely unbanked and vulnerable to predatory financial service providers. Originated in 2005, Juntos Avanzamos recognizes commitments from credit unions seeking to empower the Hispanic consumer and serve the Hispanic market more effectively. To qualify, credit unions must demonstrate that they have flexible loan underwriting and CIP policies, offer affordable credit, savings and transaction services, and that they make their products, services and financial education accessible to Spanish-speakers. The National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions (the Federation) leads a nationwide expansion of the program in collaboration with the California Credit Union League and a number of other industry partners.

In recognition of the honor, executives from Kinecta/Nix and the Federation of CDCU, together with Senior Vice President, Member Solutions of California Credit Union League Larry Palochik, joined Los Angeles elected officials, local business and community leaders, as well as credit union members to celebrate a Juntos Avanzamos flag raising ceremony at Nix Neighborhood Lending, located at 1009 W. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Los Angeles. Opening remarks were delivered by Kinecta President and CEO Keith Sultemeier, and by NIX President Luis Peralta, who accepted the Juntos Avanzamos flag and proclamation from the Federation Senior Vice President Pablo DeFilippi. Guest speakers included Luis Manuel Lopez from the Mexican Consulate and Linda Lopez, Deputy Mayor for Immigrant Affairs. Also in attendance were members of the community, supporters and NIX employees who helped celebrate the designation.

"As Nix approaches its 50-year anniversary of serving the residents of Los Angeles, we are honored to be recognized for our commitment to the Hispanic community," said Peralta. "This accreditation is an important acknowledgement of the efforts Nix and Kinecta have put in place in order to expand access for marginalized minorities to affordable small-dollar credit and to help build credit for consumers who don't fit the traditional borrower model."

"Kinecta/NIX is the largest credit union in California to join our effort and we salute their leadership, vision and commitment to financial inclusion for underserved communities throughout Los Angeles," said DeFilippi. "Juntos Avanzamos seeks to provide consistency around product delivery, institutional requirement and documentation requirements that identifies participant credit unions as Hispanic-friendly. The program is a bridge to connect consumers with credit unions committed to financial inclusion."

About Kinecta FCU

Kinecta Federal Credit Union (kinecta.org) is one of the nation's largest credit unions, with approximately $3.80 billion in assets; 22 branches; three retail mortgage centers; 30 Nix customer service centers and 10 Kinecta branches at Nix locations; and more than 282,000 members nationwide. Kinecta offers its members a full range of financial products through the Credit Union and its subsidiaries, Kinecta Financial & Insurance Services and Kinecta Alternative Financial Solutions, dba Nix Neighborhood Lending (nixlending.com).

About NIX Neighborhood Lending

For nearly 50 years, NIX Neighborhood Lending has served as a trusted financial partner to consumers throughout greater Los Angeles. A subsidiary of Kinecta Federal Credit Union, NIX's clear, convenient financial solutions help consumers break the cycle of debt, improving financial health, and align with the Center for Financial Services Innovation's Compass Principles, guidelines that affirm standards of excellence for small-dollar financial products. A strong community partner to local worthy organizations including Para Los Ninos, Green Dot Public Schools, and Parents of Watts, NIX is endorsed by the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions and its Juntos Avanzamos (Together We Advance) initiative, which works to ensure credit unions meet the financial needs of underserved Hispanics nationwide. Each of NIX's more than 30 branches is professionally staffed by employees that live in the community. For more information about NIX, please visit www.nixlending.com and "Like" us on Facebook.

About Juntamos Avanzamos

Juntos Avanzamos, Together We Advance, is a designation for credit unions committed to serving and empowering Hispanic consumers, and was developed by the Cornerstone Credit Union League, which represents Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas. The Federation, working with the Cornerstone League and Coopera, Iowa-based consultants to the industry on the Hispanic market, the Network of Latino Credit Unions and Professionals (NLCUP), the California Credit Union League and other industry partners, work together to bring the program to a national credit union audience. Visit http://www.cdcu.coop/initiatives/serving-underserved-markets/immigrants/juntos-avanzamos

Related Links

http://kinecta.org



SOURCE Kinecta/NIX Neighborhood Lending
DENVER, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT), Arab Satellite Communications Organization and King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) have successfully completed a comprehensive technical review of Arabsat 6A and Hellas-Sat-4/SaudiGeoSat-1, two satellites that will provide television, internet, telephone and secure communications, to customers in the Middle East, Africa and Europe.

To achieve this milestone, Lockheed Martin completed the Critical Design Review of the satellite and each subsystem, demonstrating the satellite design meets technical specifications and is ready for the next phase of production. With Critical Design Review complete and manufacturing underway, the Lockheed Martin team will now move further into the production process.

"Now that we've completed this intensive design review, we're moving forward into the build, integration and test phase for Arabsat 6A and Hellas-Sat-4/SaudiGeoSat-1," said Carl Marchetto, Lockheed Martin's vice president and general manager of Commercial Space. "We're already producing important components for the satellites including antenna reflectors, panels and the core structure, and are excited to continue manufacturing these important satellites."

Arabsat 6A will be located at 30.5 degrees East and Hellas-Sat-4/SaudiGeoSat-1 will be located at 39 degrees East. Both satellites will be designed for a 15-year service life, and will be manufactured in Denver, Colorado. There are five modernized A2100 satellites currently under contract to Lockheed Martin and they are designed for a host of missions and customers around the globe.

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.

Media Contacts:

Arabsat: Saad Al Tehaif, 00 966 11 4820000 (Ext.) 9603; [email protected]

Lockheed Martin (KSA): Kara Schoeffling, + 971 02-304-2329; [email protected]

Lockheed Martin (US): Jill Krugman, +1 303-947-2930; [email protected]

SOURCE Lockheed Martin

Related Links

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GAITHERSBURG, Md., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) was recently selected to continue technical support of the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA's) Microprocessor-En Route Automated Radar Tracking System (Micro-EARTS). This system receives and integrates air traffic data from multiple surveillance sources and displays the information for use in air traffic control. Micro-EARTS is currently installed in four FAA facilities at Alaska, Guam, Puerto Rico, Hawaii and at the FAA Academy and the William J. Hughes Technical Center.

With more than 20 years of operative proficiency for the National Airspace System, the Micro-EARTS program is an easily adapted and scalable system. This platform, used in large consolidated facilities as well as small configurations, provides common air traffic control functionality to all Micro-EARTS sites with a standard software and hardware model. Under this new five-year contract valued at $28.3 million, Lockheed Martin will continue to support the FAA in the analysis, design, development and testing of air traffic control functionalities for Micro-EARTS within this program.

"In conjunction with the FAA, Lockheed Martin developed and deployed Micro-EARTS and continues to provide development and maintenance support," said Paul Engola, vice president of transportation and financial solutions at Lockheed Martin Information Systems & Global Solutions. "We value our more than 60-year partnership with FAA to enhance efficiency and safety through air traffic control automation. We look forward to providing life-cycle support services that ensure Micro-EARTS is a superior automation system for years to come as it serves its important sites and integrates with FAA's NextGen capabilities."

For additional information, visit our website: www.lockheedmartin.com .

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.

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SOURCE Lockheed Martin

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June 13, 1948  May 26, 2016

Olga Margarita (Meza) Quinonez was born June 13, 1948, to Edmundo and Emma (Herrera) Meza in San Jose Poaquil, Guatemala. Olga passed away peacefully from complications due to congested heart failure May 26, 2016, at River Bend Hospital in Springfield.

In her younger years she attended a catholic church. During her high school years she travelled daily to Chimaltenango a neighboring town. There she met her first husband, Roberto Del Valle, and they married in 1964. Olga and Roberto became acquainted with Mennonite missionaries and started attending services regularly; they were baptized and became members at the Chimaltenango Mennonite Church. Roberto passed away in 1969. They had three children, Luis, David and Jorge Del Valle.

During her years as a widow she was a school teacher, ran a small store, sold baked goods, and was a photographer. She married David Quinonez on Dec. 13, 1975. They had a daughter, Patricia Quinonez. They joined the Mennonite Air Mission headquartered in Guatemala City and both served several years as teachers in rural outposts in the interior where due to the ruggedness and lack of decent roads the best way to travel in and out was flying in a small aircraft. During this time Olga trained and became a certified midwife to deliver babies in these rural areas, and often was called during late hours to assist in difficult deliveries.

In June of 1981 during the height of civil unrest and political instability the family felt threatened by this turmoil and moved to Los Angeles, California, with plans to live close to Olgas mother and siblings. It was not long before they realized it was not the environment they wanted to raise their children. In the fall of 1981 they accepted an invitation to move to Oregon. In Oregon she overcame the language barrier, and after making many mistakes in her communication she learned to communicate with many people who became her close friends. They attended the Tangent Mennonite Church. They lived for a short time in Harrisburg before settling in the Halsey area where she lived until her death.

Before her health deteriorated, Olga enjoyed canning, sewing, quilting and crocheting. She loved flowers  roses in particular, were her favorites.

Surviving are her husband David Quinonez and her children, David Del Valle (Lillian) of Shedd, Jorge Del Valle (Maria) of Canton, Ohio, and Patty Quinones of Halsey; and six grandchildren, Brandon, Tyson, Bradford and Randall Del Valle of Shedd, and Jenna and Jose Del Valle of Canton, Ohio. Also surviving are her siblings, Marta Lara from Los Angeles, California, Mario Meza from Rio Rancho, New Mexico, Sonia Romero from Crawfordsville, Ana Kauffman from Halsey and Alicia Schaper from Los Angeles, California; and many nieces and nephews.

Preceding her in death were her first husband, Roberto Del Valle; new-born son Luis Roberto; father Edmundo Meza; and mother Emma Herrera de Meza.

The family wishes to thank everyone who was involved in her life, for the prayers on her behalf as she battled her illness, for the gifts of food and other items and greatly appreciate the expressions of love and sympathy we have received during this difficult time of her parting.

She will be greatly missed!

A funeral service was held on May 31 at Halsey Mennonite Church. Interment was at Alford Cemetery.

Contributions may be made to Halsey Mennonite Church.

Online condolences for the family may be made at www.fisherfuneralhome.com.
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Marken today announced a new alliance with Green Cross LabCell in Korea. The partnership will expand the global network options for pharma and life science clients who require delivery of biological specimens and diagnostic tools, and will greatly enhance the service available to labs and patients.

Marken is the leading patient-centric supply chain organization and provides solutions and services to the life sciences industry. They were the only logistics company granted permission by the government to deliver the first direct to patient shipment of clinical drug product in Korea during the outbreak of Middle East Respiratory System (MERS). This precedent-setting shipment allowed many patients in South Korea to continue receiving their clinical trial drugs. Green Cross LabCell is the leader in pathological diagnostics, biological sample and infectious substance including Zika, Anti-HCV, Tuberculosis, MERS etc. shipments throughout Korea and serves all the government and private sector hospitals. Also Green Cross LabCell developed own Smart Tag with RFID monitoring system which is on based IoT and able to track Temperature, GPS, Shock (Vibration) in real time bases on each boxes. According to this MOU, Green Cross LabCell's RFID technology is currently available to apply for Marken customer and plans to expand the RFID technology as well as overseas global services.

Michael Culme-Seymour, Marken's Vice President Asia Pacific Region, commented on the goals of both organizations, "This is an exciting partnership and represents a new and superior level of service for our clinical trial and life science clients. Through this partnership, Green Cross can extend its service offering from clients in Korea to the global market via Marken. The partnership offers numerous opportunities including joint sales and operations, the development of RFID technology and depot development."

Bok-Soo Park, Chief Executive Officer of Green Cross LabCell said, "We expect to create better service for the international businesses in the life sciences industry through Marken's global network." He also said "Through this partnership, we plan to continue expanding to global market customers."

Marken's expanding network of Marken offices and depots will enable them to work closely with Green Cross to build on and expand services around RFID and GPS technology to improve the constant monitoring of biological shipments. Both companies are planning areas of cooperation around joint logistics, both in Korea and internationally.

About Marken

Marken is the only patient-centric supply chain organization 100% dedicated to the pharmaceutical and life sciences industries. Marken maintains the leading position for Direct to Patient services and biological sample shipments, and offers a state of the art GMP-compliant depot network and logistic hubs in 43 locations worldwide. Marken's 630 staff members manage 50,000 drug and biological shipments every month at all temperature ranges in more than 150 countries. Additional services such as biological kit production, ancillary material sourcing, storage and distribution, shipment lane verification and qualifications, as well as GDP, regulatory and compliance consultancy add to Marken's unique position in the pharma and logistics industry.

About Green Cross LabCell

Green Cross LabCell is a biotechnology company newly established in July 2011 based on Cell Therapy, Cell Banking, Clinical Laboratory Service, Central Lab Business and Bio logistics that Green Cross Corporation strategically focuses its energies on. Especially in the world's first stem cell therapy product was commercialized in Korea in 2011. Green Cross LabCell has selected Natural killer (NK) cell based immune cell therapy that is currently in Phase II clinical trials and stem cell therapy for incurable diseases as the core strategic projects. We will continue to concentrate our effort on these 5 core business areas to become a global leader.

www.marken.com

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SOURCE Marken

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WASHINGTON and NEW YORK and LONDON, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- MarketResearch.com is pleased to announce the addition to its collection of three new or updated original Freedonia Focus Reports forecasting various US markets for metals products and services.

Focus Reports provide market insights such as historical market size and industry output, segmentation by products and/or markets, market drivers and constraints, segment-by-segment outlooks in five-year forecasts, and profiles of leading companies. Specifically, these new reports analyze three different components of the metals industry: metal services, titanium, and fabrication gold.

According to the report Metal Services: United States, U.S. metal service center shipments are forecast to total $158 billion in 2020, a significant boost from $134 billion in 2015. Expanding durable goods and construction activity are expected to remain two major factors boosting demand for primary metal products and supporting related sales. To learn more about the current and future market for metal services, visit the report page: http://www.marketresearch.com/Freedonia-Focus-v3334/Metal-Services-United-States-10048241/?progid=88737

In Titanium: United States, analysts are forecasting that titanium metal demand will reach 100,000 metric tons in 2020, representing annual growth of 3.9% from 2015. Suppliers will benefit from rising production of civil aerospace equipment, as well as from the higher proportions of titanium consumed by aircraft manufacturers. To learn more, visit the report page: http://www.marketresearch.com/Freedonia-Focus-v3334/Titanium-United-States-9968690/?progid=88737

According to Fabrication Gold: United States, U.S. demand for fabrication gold is expected to reach 5.9 million troy ounces in 2019, representing annual growth of 2.3% from 2014. Increased disposable income levels and falling gold prices will support high demand for gold jewelry and other gold consumer goods products. To find out more, visit the report page: http://www.marketresearch.com/Freedonia-Focus-v3334/Fabrication-Gold-United-States-9598753/?progid=88737

These Freedonia Focus Reports are also available on www.profound.com, where subscribers are able to purchase the individual sections, chapters, tables, or charts of a report they need without having to pay for the pieces they don't.

About MarketResearch.com

MarketResearch.com is the leading provider of global market intelligence products and services. With research reports from more than 720 top consulting and advisory firms, MarketResearch.com offers instant online access to the world's most extensive database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, and trends. Moreover, MarketResearch.com's Research Specialists have in-depth knowledge of the publishers and the various types of reports in their respective industries and are ready to provide research assistance.

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About The Freedonia Group

The Freedonia Group, a division of MarketResearch.com, is a leading international industrial market research company that publishes more than 400 research studies annually and offers custom research solutions. Since 1985 they have provided research to customers ranging in size from global conglomerates to one-person consulting firms. More than 90% of the industrial companies in the Fortune 500 use Freedonia Group research to help with their strategic planning. Reports can be purchased at www.freedoniagroup.com and are also available on www.marketresearch.com and www.profound.com.

Press Contact:

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+1.240.747.3086

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SOURCE MarketResearch.com

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As AOR, Finn Partners is responsible for all mHealth Israel public communication, including media relations, creative, social media and reputation positioning. Additionally, Finn Partners will offer counsel for the annual mHealth Israel global conference, the largest digital health conference in Israel, which attracts 600-plus attendees from around the world.

"After benefiting from media results and seeing firsthand Finn Partners' ability to navigate the ever-changing needs in digital health, we look to the Israel office of this global PR network as our counsel," said Levi Shapiro, Founder, mHealth Israel and noted venture capital leader. "As agency of record, Finn Partners brings an ability to communicate both locally and globally, the value of Israel's contributions to digital-health technologies and improved patient care."

mHealth Israel is the largest community for digital-health entrepreneurship in Israel, with more than 2,500 members. The group facilitates global meetups, roadshows, social-media postings and online databases for the digital health community. mHealth Israel is the host of the annual mHealth Israel Conference, a key worldwide gathering of health/tech innovators that draws an audience ranging from the world's large health innovators to start-up disrupters who may change the face of patient care.

"The Israel health system is known for its high medication compliance and engineering skills that lead to smart technologies  from life-saving apps to patient-monitoring advances to eye-care and cardiovascular innovations," said Goel Jasper, senior partner and managing director, Finn Partners Israel. "Under Levi's leadership, we seek to project the power of mHealth to promote this country's digital-health community globally."

About Finn Partners, Inc.

Finn Partners was launched in late 2011 to realize Peter Finn's vision to create a leading communications agency dedicated to shaping a bold new future in which innovation and partnership are strong brand drivers. Finn Partners specializes in the full spectrum of public and corporate affairs services, including digital and social media. Practice areas include arts, consumer, CSR, education, health, technology and travel & lifestyle.

Since its inception four years ago, Finn Partners has received six agency awards that are indicators of client and cultural leadership: "Best Midsize Agency" in 2015, "Best Agency to Work For" in 2013 and "Best New Agency" in 2012 from the Holmes Report and "Midsize PR Firm of the Year" in 2015 and "Top Places to Work in PR" in 2013 from PR News. Headquartered in New York City, the company has approximately 500 employees, with offices in Chicago, Detroit, Fort Lauderdale, Jerusalem, London, Los Angeles, Munich, Nashville, Paris, San Francisco and Washington D.C., and offers international capabilities through its own global network and PROI Worldwide. Find us at www.finnpartners.com and follow us on Twitter @finnpartners.

About mHealth Israel:

With over 2,500 members, mHealth Israel is the largest community for digital health entrepreneurship in Israel. Activities include Meetups, Global Roadshows, social media, online database and the annual mHealth Israel Conference. The conference, the largest of its kind in Israel, brings together the world's leading health tech experts from over a dozen countries, including top executives from Fortune 1000 global health and technology companies, as well as industry analysts and investors. For more information: http://www.mhealthisrael.com

Media Contacts:

[email protected]

Finn Partners Israel

929-222-8012

[email protected]

Finn Partners New York

212-715-1600



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SOURCE Finn Partners

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NEW YORK, May 30, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Superplasticizers are admixtures that are used to control the rheological properties of the concrete mixtures. In other words, superplasticizers control the water content in the concrete mixtures. Superplasticizers are added into concrete mixture at the time of applications, and can reduce the water to cement ratio in concrete mixture by 30.0%- 40.0%. They are predominantly used in geographies that have dry weather conditions. Increased population and the consequent need for improved infrastructure are the major factors anticipated to increase concrete admixtures in the Middle East and Africa. This is expected to lead to growth in the superplasticizers market in the region.



The application segments of superplasticizers include ready mix concrete, precast concrete, shotcrete, high performance concrete, self-compacting concrete, fly ash concrete, and others. Ready mix concrete is the most widely used type of concrete in most of the constructions, as it can be prepared at the place of operations. Other major applications include shotcrete and precast concrete. Superplasticizers are more prominently used in the liquid form, as the liquid form consists of 40.0% of the active materials which are necessary for particle suspension and are required so that the superplasticizers mix freely with concrete. Other forms include powder, which is used in specific applications.



The Middle East & Africa superplasticizer market, by type, has been classified into as Sulfonated Melamine Formaldehydes (SMF), Sulfonated Naphthalene Formaldehydes (SNF), Modified Lignosulfonates (MLS), and Polycarboxylates (PC). Sulfonated Naphthalene Formaldehydes (SNF) and Sulfonated Melamine Formaldehydes (SMF) constitute more than half of the superplasticizers used. The countries considered in this report are Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, South Africa, and others.



This market research study provides a detailed qualitative and quantitative analysis of the Middle East and Africa superplasticizers market. Various secondary sources, such as encyclopedia, directories, industry journals, and databases have been used to identify and collect information useful for this extensive commercial study of the superplasticizers market. The primary sources include experts from related industries and suppliers have been interviewed to obtain and verify critical information as well as to assess the future prospects of the market.



Competitive scenario of the top players in the superplasticizers market has been discussed in detail. Leading players of this industry, along with their recent developments and other strategic industry activities, have also been covered in the report. Air products & Chemicals, Inc. (U.S.), Arkema S.A. (France), BASF SE (Germany), Hangzhou Lans Concrete Admixture, Inc. (China), Kao Corporation (Japan), Ruetgers Polymers Ltd. (Canada), Sika AG (Switzerland), and W. R. Grace & Co. (U.S.) are the key companies operational in this market.



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CAMBRIDGE, Mass., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The MIT Sloan School of Management announces a major gift from alumnus Bennett (Ben) W. Golub to support the MIT Center for Finance and Policy. Dr. Golub is senior managing director and chief risk officer of BlackRock, the global investment and risk management firm. In recognition of his gift, the Center will be named the Bennett W. Golub Center for Finance and Policy (GCFP). The mission of the Center is to serve as a catalyst for innovative, cross-disciplinary and nonpartisan research and educational initiatives that address the unique challenges facing governments in their role as financial institutions and as regulators of the financial system.

"In countries around the world, the past decade has demonstrated what is at stake when financial institutions and regulations confront intense systemic problems," says MIT President L. Rafael Reif. "From its home inside MIT Sloan's Finance Group, one of the top financial economics units in the world, the Golub Center for Finance and Policy will bring together leading minds from economics, political science, and engineering to develop innovative solutions to these looming problems. Ben Golub's generous gift will greatly advance the Center's reach and effectiveness."

Golub says, "I believe that MIT is uniquely capable of providing a platform for rigorous and nonpartisan research in risk management, financial regulation, and systemic risk. This research is sorely needed, as we all have been witness to the unfortunate economic consequences when the financial system stumbles. My hope is that this gift will permit the Center to leverage the outstanding talent at MIT to help improve the safety and efficiency of the financial system.

"We are thankful for Ben Golub's support of the GCFP, as this gift strengthens our commitment to research and educational initiatives at the intersection of finance and policy," says MIT Sloan Dean David Schmittlein. "This commitment stems from MIT's mission to generate, disseminate, and preserve knowledge, and work with others to bring this knowledge to bear on the world's greatest challenges. There is a high demand for new and objective insights on critical issues of financial policy, and the Golub Center is well positioned to fill that need."

MIT Sloan Prof. Deborah Lucas, director of the Golub Center for Finance and Policy, notes, "This gift will expand the Center's capacity to undertake timely analyses that help inform policy decisions that will have major consequences for the health of financial markets and the wider economy. It also will allow us to bring to MIT a leading researcher who will focus on regulatory issues. Ben Golub has shown tremendous leadership not only through his financial support of the Center, but also through his service as chair of the Center's Advisory Board. We are very appreciative of his gift, which will help the Golub Center realize its goal of becoming the go-to source for nonpartisan analyses of financial policies."

MIT Sloan Prof. Robert Merton, co-director of the GCFP, adds, "Ben Golub's generous gift underscores that the need for rigorous financial analysis of public policy has never been greater. We are honored to add his name to the Center, as he is an exceptionally well-respected and trusted leader in the finance world."

The Golub Center focuses on three broad research areas: government financial institutions, financial regulatory policies, and public risk management, including the study of systemic risk. The Center provides resources for scholars to conduct innovative research and policy analysis in an objective, quantitative, and non-partisan manner. Through its research, educational and outreach activities, it seeks to provide greater transparency about financial policy, innovative educational materials and programs, and new venues for discussion, with the goal of providing regulators, policymakers, and other public-sector stakeholders with tools and ideas that will elevate the quality of public-policy debate and decisions.

Headed by Lucas, co-directors of the Center include Merton, MIT Sloan Prof. Andrew Lo, and MIT Sloan Prof. Jonathan Parker. Doug Criscitello serves as executive director.

About Bennett W. Golub:

Dr. Golub holds three degrees from MIT, including an SB degree and an SM degree in Management as well as a PhD degree in Applied Economics and Finance. He is a member of the MIT Sloan North American Executive Board and chair of the Golub Center's Advisory Board.

In 1988, Dr. Golub co-founded the firm that evolved into BlackRock. He has served as co-head and co-founder of BlackRock Solutions, BlackRock's risk advisory business. He also served as the acting CEO of Trepp, LLC, a former BlackRock affiliate that pioneered the creation and distribution of data and models for collateralized commercial-backed securities.

Currently, Dr. Golub is a member of the Global Executive Committee and co-head of the Risk & Quantitative Analysis Group of BlackRock. He has served as chief risk officer since 2009 and is chair of BlackRock's Enterprise Management Committee.

About MIT Sloan:

The MIT Sloan School of Management is where smart, independent leaders come together to solve problems, create new organizations, and improve the world. Learn more at mitsloan.mit.edu.

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SOURCE MIT Sloan School of Management

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FREEHOLD, N.J., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Monmouth Real Estate Investment Corporation (NYSE: MNR) will present at REITWeek 2016: NAREIT's Investor Forum, to be held in New York City, at the Waldorf Astoria New York, on Tuesday, June 7, 2016, at 11:00AM ET.

The presentation will be available live via webcast and accessible at the Company's website, www.mreic.reit, with a link on the homepage in the Webcast section. The webcast replay will be available for 90 days after the presentation. Presentation materials will also be available at the Company's website Homepage, under the Highlights section.

Monmouth Real Estate Investment Corporation, founded in 1968, is one of the oldest public equity REITs in the U.S. The Company specializes in single-tenant, net-leased properties, subject to long-term leases, primarily to investment grade tenants. Monmouth Real Estate Investment Corporation is a fully-integrated and self-managed real estate company, whose property portfolio consists of ninety-five properties located in thirty states, containing a total of approximately 15.0 million rentable square feet. In addition, the Company owns a portfolio of REIT securities.

SOURCE Monmouth Real Estate Investment Corporation

Related Links

http://mreic.com/


Founded by John B. Quinn, and designed by Brown Design Group, The Museum of Broken Relationships, Los Angeles, will be open 7 days a week, featuring more than 3,500 feet of exhibition space, with soaring 14-foot ceilings and filtered natural light, housing nearly 300-items from the permanent collection of donated artifacts.

"The museum is an opportunity for visitors from around the world to experience the emotions and memories embodied in objects and told through narratives contributed by others," said John. B Quinn. "From this we learn how different people and their relationships are, but also, when it comes to break ups, how much we share. I cannot imagine a more fitting city than ours, which, much like love itself, is filled with as many wild dreams as it is crushing defeats."

For the inaugural exhibition, Director, Alexis Hyde and Assistant Director, Amanda Vandenberg, have selected nearly 100 items from the museum's ongoing global call for objects, each accompanied by a brief description. The installation is designed to take visitors on a diverse emotional journey, ending with stories that affirm not every broken relationship is, or remains a negative.

"The vast range of items we're presenting may not seem extraordinary, but when paired with their stories, they tap into a depth of the human experience that connects us all," said Alexis Hyde. "Our first installation is designed to be a journey as honest and relatable as it is cathartic and promising."

"In a world where our lives are increasingly digital, nearly everyone knows the sensation of holding onto physical mementos," added Amanda Vandenberg. "We can't help but treasure these instances of tangible ephemera. And because our memories have been invested into these objects, we take care to package them up and bring them along with us every time we package ourselves up to be someplace new. The museum offers a unique opportunity to let go and to overcome emotional collapse through creation."

In addition to 6 exhibition rooms, there will be a private "confessional" space where visitors may write and leave anonymous notes, as well as a gift shop with branded items, fiction and art books based on the theme of broken relationships and a new, custom book with a selection from the call for objects.

Hours of Operation

The Museum of Broken Relationships will be open to the public seven days a week at the following times: Mondays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.; and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. The Museum will be closed to the public on Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and New Year's Day.

Ticketing Information

General admission to the Museum of Broken Relationships is $18.00. Student and Senior tickets are $15.00. Advance online reservations and same day reservations are now available at http://brokenships.la/ticket-booking/

About The Museum of Broken Relationships

The Museum Of Broken Relationships seeks to explore the concept and broad spectrum of failed relationships through the relics they leave behind. This includes not only romantic relationships, but relationships of all kinds, from parent-child relationships, to relationships with a home, country, city, or business, friendships and others.

The concept for the Museum of Broken Relationships was born in 2006 when former artist couple, Olinka Vistica and Drazen Grubisic, wondered what people did with objects that had been meaningful in their relationships. In 2010, they created a museum to house the collection they assembled in Zagreb, Croatia. In 2015, John B. Quinn discovered the museum on a family trip, opening doors to the Los Angeles Museum on June 4, 2016.

For more information on the Museum of Broken Relationships visit:

www.brokenships.la

To donate an object visit:

www.brokenships.la/donate-an-exhibit/

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160530/373420

SOURCE Museum of Broken Relationships

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EndoStim has developed a unique, minimally-invasive implantable device designed to provide long-term reflux control by restoring normal esophageal function through low-energy personalized neurostimulation. The therapy directly targets the patient's weak or dysfunctional lower esophageal sphincter (LES) muscle between the stomach and the esophagus, often the underlying cause of reflux.

Presentations included:

One year results of an international multi-center study of EndoStim therapy for refractory GERD

This report included data from 37 patients from 10 sites and was presented at the podium by Prof. Peter Siersema, MD, PhD, Professor of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy at Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and the principal investigator of this multicenter study.

"The treatment of GERD is evolving, and I believe EndoStim therapy will play a major role in shaping the future of reflux care," said Prof. Siersema. "The consistency in the safety and efficacy outcomes in our international multi-center trial with the other ongoing EndoStim trials is impressive and very encouraging. The longevity of these data suggests that the therapy is durable for long-term reflux control." Prof. Siersema added that the results show a significant and sustained drop in esophageal acid exposure from a median of 10% at baseline to 4.4% - near normal levels, at one year follow-up, allowing for 81% of patients to completely stop use of proton pump inhibitor (PPI) medication.

Interim results from EndoStim's international patient registry

This study reported interim results of a prospective multi-center observational registry of lower esophageal sphincter stimulation for GERD. To date, 138 patients have been enrolled at 11 sites. Results were reported by Prof. Joachim Labenz, MD, Professor and Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine, Diakonie Klinikum, Siegen, Germany, who commented: "It is encouraging to see that the safety and effectiveness of LES stimulation in international trials are replicated in a routine clinical practice setting. We are also observing the reduction in health care resource utilization of patients after receiving EndoStim."

Four year outcomes of EndoStim therapy

This study reported long term results of a single center study of Electrical Stimulation Therapy (EST) of the Lower Esophageal Sphincter (LES) for treating GERD. Prof. Edy Soffer, MD, Professor of Gastroenterology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA, and the presenter of the abstract commented: "The profound and sustained improvement in both acid exposure and GERD symptoms over a prolonged follow-up of four years along with the low rate of adverse events and side effects very encouraging for a GERD therapy."

Effect of EndoStim on reflux mechanisms in GERD patients

This study is the first to evaluate the effect of LES stimulation on reflux mechanisms, especially on transient LES relaxations (TLESRs)  believed to be the most important and prevalent mechanism of reflux. Dr. Jose Conchillo, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor at the Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Maastricht University Medical Centre (MUMC), Maastricht, The Netherlands, and the senior author of the study commented: "The study demonstrated that LES stimulation significantly reduced the total number and duration of TLESRs and number of TLESRs associated with reflux, and suggests this reduction in TLESRs is one of the mechanisms by which EndoStim therapy improves acid exposure and GERD symptoms."

The Lost Reflux Patient

Additionally, an independent study revealing a significant group of under-diagnosed and inadequately-treated GERD patients in community clinics in Germany  termed "Lost Patients," was presented at DDW by Prof. Joachim Labenz. The "LOPA" study shows that under-treated GERD patients are often overlooked in general practice and highlights the need for regional interdisciplinary reflux centers.

Inadequate Symptom Control on Long-Term PPI Therapy in GERD  Fact or Fiction?

The "Lost Patient," or "LOPA," study of 333 GERD patients seen in 16 general practice clinics in Germany revealed almost half of the patients taking PPI medication for more than 1 year complain of heartburn or regurgitation symptoms at least 2 days per week despite their medication. Fourteen percent of these patients were considered "Lost Patients"  with established diagnosis of GERD, insufficient efficacy of PPI therapy, and no previous attempt to identify the reason(s) for insufficient PPI effect. According to Prof. Labenz, "These patients should be methodically identified and considered for further diagnostics and/or treatment modification. Interdisciplinary reflux centers can play an important role in improving the care of these patients."

About EndoStim

EndoStim is a medical device company based in St. Louis, Missouri, and Nijmegen, The Netherlands, developing and commercializing a revolutionary treatment for GERD. The EndoStim system is CE Marked for patients with gastro-esophageal reflux disease with symptom duration of six months or longer, and is available in a number of countries throughout Europe, Latin America, and Asia Pacific. The EndoStim system is not approved for sale in the US and is limited by US federal law to investigational use only. For more information, visit www.endostim.com.

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SOURCE EndoStim, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.endostim.com


VANCOUVER, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Orex Minerals Inc.  (TSX-V: REX) ("Orex"), is pleased to announce that the Phase-II diamond drilling program is complete on the Sandra Escobar Project in Durango, Mexico. Assays for eight more drill holes are now available. These include holes SA-16-031 to SA-16-038 in the southeastern region of the project. The Sandra Escobar Project is being advanced by Orex under an option agreement with Canasil Resources Inc.  (TSX.V: CLZ) ("Canasil").

Highlight for this batch of holes is SA-16-038 in a step-out hole, 350 metres west of the Main Zone, which yielded 46 metres core length (26 m true thickness) grading 156 g/t silver, starting from surface. Within this is a sub-interval of 8 metres (4.5 m true thickness) grading 282 g/t silver.

Two test reconnaissance holes, SA-16-037 and 038, were drilled in the Burro Zone, 350 metres west of the Main Zone, both of which yielded good silver grades. These are the first two holes in the Burro Zone. One test reconnaissance hole, SA-16-036, was drilled in a step-out hole, 500 metres south of the Main Zone, which yielded anomalous silver values.

Five of the eight holes, SA-16-031 to 035, are in the eastern portion of the Main Zone. While these limit the eastern extension, the Main Zone is still open to the south and west.

Orex's President, Gary Cope says, "We are very pleased with the new results from step-out drilling, particularly in the Burro Zone. Silver mineralization starts right from surface and is of similar style and thickness. The next phase of drilling will include more holes in this zone."

Sandra Escobar Project  2015-2016 Diamond Drilling Program  Holes 31 to 38 Hole From (m) To (m) Core Length (m) True Thick. (m) Ag (g/t) FA











STEP-OUT DRILLING  350 METRES WEST OF THE MAIN ZONE











SA-16-037 2.60 17.00 14.40 13.50 101 Includes 8.00 17.00 9.00 8.44 129 Includes 13.00 15.00 2.00 1.88 212











SA-16-038 1.85 48.00 46.15 26.00 156 Includes 12.00 24.00 12.00 6.76 235 Includes 12.00 20.00 8.00 4.51 282 Includes 12.00 15.00 3.00 1.69 404











MAIN ZONE











SA-16-031 No Significant Intercepts











SA-16-032 67.00 80.50 13.50 11.48 23











SA-16-033 46.00 55.00 9.00 7.65 51 Includes 51.00 53.00 2.00 1.70 128 Includes 52.00 53.00 1.00 0.85 169











SA-16-034 52.00 84.00 32.00 29.00 52 Includes 70.00 79.00 9.00 8.16 83 Includes 77.00 78.00 1.00 0.91 189











SA-16-035 46.00 70.00 24.00 22.00 36











STEP-OUT DRILLING  500 METRES SOUTH OF THE MAIN ZONE











SA-16-036 13.00 17.00 4.00 2.83 43 Includes 14.00 16.00 2.00 1.41 54













Kluane Drilling Ltd. provides the drilling services utilizing an environmentally low-impact KD-1000 man-portable diamond drill rig.

Silver mineralization is hosted on the north side of a rhyolite volcanic dome. An altered and highly permeable volcaniclastic unit contains disseminations of silver bearing minerals and broadly spaced stockwork veinlets. The current working model has a porphyritic rhyolite unit as an impermeable cap, which may have focused mineralizing fluids into the host permeable volcaniclastic unit.

True thicknesses are estimated based on structural and stratigraphic interpretations. A map showing the locations of the drill holes and sample cross sections are available on the Orex website.

Orex maintains a QA/QC sampling protocol for the diamond drilling program, including the insertion of commercial analytical standards and blank samples. Analytical testing is performed by SGS Mineral Services and Bureau Veritas. Silver values are determined by fire assay with a gravimetric finish. Multi-element analyses are also determined using a 4-acid digestion and ICP-MS (Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry).

Sandra Escobar Silver-Gold Project, Durango, Mexico

Sandra Escobar is situated north of the town of Tepehuanes, Durango, in the heart of the "Mexican Silver Trend", midway between the mining districts of Tovar and Guanacevi and is 75 km west of Silver Standard's La Pitarrilla. This prolific trend hosts some of the world's largest silver camps and deposits, including Fresnillo, Guanajuato, La Pitarrilla, La Preciosa, Real de Angeles and Zacatecas.

The project consists of 6,976 hectares of mineral concessions and covers multiple mineralized epithermal quartz veins and breccia structures. These veins form a high level silver-gold-base metals system, hosted in andesitic and rhyolitic rocks, centered on a large rhyolite dome complex in the north and silver systems in smaller rhyolite dome complexes to the southeast. Intense alteration zones and fluid flooding in permeable formations indicates the presence of bulk tonnage targets. Excellent infrastructure exists in the Sandra Escobar area, including paved road access, electrical power, water and manpower from nearby communities.

Dale Brittliffe, P.Geo., and Ben Whiting, P.Geo., are Qualified Persons, as defined in NI 43-101, and take responsibility for the technical disclosure contained within this news release.

ABOUT OREX MINERALS INC.

Orex is a Canadian-based junior exploration company comprised of highly qualified mining professionals. Orex has several current projects: the Coneto Gold-Silver Project in Durango, Mexico, a joint venture with Fresnillo PLC, the Jumping Josephine Gold-Silver Project in British Columbia, Canada, plus this newest Sandra Escobar Silver Project in Durango, Mexico, with Canasil Resources Inc.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Gary Cope

President

This News Release may contain forward-looking statements including but not limited to comments regarding the timing and content of upcoming work programs, geological interpretations, receipt of property titles, potential mineral recovery processes, etc. Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions and therefore involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements and Orex undertakes no obligation to update such statements, except as required by law.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE Orex Minerals Inc.

Related Links

www.orexminerals.com


HARRISBURG, Pa., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Secretary of Education Pedro A. Rivera met with student teams from around Pennsylvania on Friday at The Governor's Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Competition, held at Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology in Lancaster.

"A growing number of today's good paying careers are in the STEM fields," Rivera said. "In Pennsylvania we're aiming to educate an increasing number of students in these subjects to meet the growing demand for STEM-trained professionals in the commonwealth, around the country, and globally."

Rivera added that increasing the number of full-time students enrolled in STEM specific majors at state-supported institutions of higher education is one of Governor Tom Wolf's goals for postsecondary education.

The STEM Competition included 24 student teams from around the state that qualified for the competition by winning a regional competition last winter. This year the competition had 180 teams register, and 700 students participated in a regional competition. Teams began designing and building their projects at the beginning of the school year, and were able to make improvements after the regional competition.

Rivera and other officials from the Department of Education (PDE), and Stevens President Dr. William Griscom were able to see demonstrations of the student projects.

"This competition gives students an opportunity to work on every aspect of creating something new, whether it is inventing a new product or devising a new process," Rivera said. "It gives students a chance to have a vision, develop a concept, and design and construct the project over several months."

A team from Fort Cherry High School in Washington County won the competition with a device that would improve the lives of people with disabilities. The team designed a joystick with attachments that would allow a person with motor skill challenges to be able to type. The key design was based on the most used keys in the English language. The joystick was color coded to allow for all the letters to be used, and could be used desk top or mounted to a wheel chair. The team did product tests with people with disabilities in their region to determine functionality and improvements from regional to state competition.



Moon Area High School in Allegheny County took second place, and Williamsport Area High School in Lycoming County finished third.

MEDIA CONTACT: Nicole Reigelman, 717-783-9802

SOURCE Pennsylvania Department of Education

Related Links

http://www.state.pa.us


PARSIPPANY, N.J., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- PBF Logistics LP (NYSE: PBFX) announced today that the partnership's management will be meeting with and presenting to investors and industry analysts on June 1 to June 3, 2016, at the MLPA (Master Limited Partnership Association) 2016 Investor Conference in Orlando, Florida.

The partnership's meeting materials will be available on the Investor Relations section of the PBF Logistics LP website at www.pbflogistics.com.

About PBF Logistics LP

PBF Logistics LP (NYSE: PBFX), headquartered in Parsippany, New Jersey, is a fee-based, growth-oriented master limited partnership formed by PBF Energy Inc. to own or lease, operate, develop and acquire crude oil and refined petroleum products terminals, pipelines, storage facilities and similar logistics assets.

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SOURCE PBF Logistics LP

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"Someday these middle school students will run our businesses and change our world," PenFed Credit Union President and CEO James Schenck told the board of directors of Junior Achievement of Greater Washington during a luncheon celebrating the first year of the JA Finance Park in Prince George's County. "But first, these students are learning valuable life skills right here."

As the students enter the doors of JA Finance Park, they leave behind their lives as middle school students and assume an adult financial identity: an avatar with a career, salary, credit score, debt, family, and financial obligations.

On tablet computers, led by volunteer role models from the community, students make their way through various life stages, adjusting their budgets for unexpected events.

The PenFed Credit Union educational branch empowers each student to decide how to finance a car within a budget. As in real life, each choice a student makesthe type of car, the options, and the terms of the loanwill have an impact on their bottom line. But instead of waiting until the end of the month to discover whether they can make ends meet, students at JA Finance Park figure it out by the end of the day.

"These students are learning to be financially capable, tenacious, and creative problem solvers; they are learning to manage risks and become ready for success," said Schenck. "As one of America's leading providers of financial services, PenFed understands that preparing the next generation of consumers will support our nation's future economy."

"JA Finance Park is about inspiring a generation of Prince George's County youth, giving them the ability to make the right financial choices," said Ed Grenier, president and CEO of Junior Achievement of Greater Washington. "It's about giving them a new perspective on why staying in school and setting career goals is vital to achieving their dreams."

About JA Finance Park of Prince George's County

The 13,500-square-foot experiential financial literacy supercenter is located on the campus of G. James Gholson Middle School and Cora L. Rice Elementary School in Landover. PenFed Credit Union's partners include Capital One Investing, Chick-fil-A of Capital Boulevard and Steeplechase, Community Foundation of the National Capital Area, Doctor's Community Hospital, E*TRADE, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Financial Assurance Corporation, Geico, Lerner, Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, Pepco Holdings, Inc., Prince George's County Community College, United Healthcare, Walmart, Washington Gas, and the Washington Redskins Charitable Foundation.

About PenFed Credit Union

Established in 1935 as the War Department Credit Union, PenFed Credit Union is one of the largest credit unions in the country, serving 1.4 million members worldwide; with $20 billion in assets. Its long-standing mission has been to provide superior financial services in a cost effective manner, while being responsive to members' needs. PenFed Credit Union offers market-leading mortgages, automobile loans, credit cards, checking, and a wide range of other financial services with its members' interests always in mind. PenFed Credit Union serves a diverse population, and no military service is required to join. We offer many paths to membership, including numerous employee groups and association affiliations. It's easy to apply. We invite you to come see why you belong at PenFed Credit Union. To learn more about PenFed Credit Union, visit PenFed.org, like us on Facebook and follow us @PenFed on Twitter. Interested in working for PenFed? Check us out on Linkedin. We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer: M/F/V/D.

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SOURCE PenFed

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DALLAS, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Crow Holdings Industrial (CHI), the industrial development affiliate of Dallasbased Crow Holdings, today announced that Philip J. Prassas has joined the firm as Senior Managing Director and head of a new office based in Los Angeles, California. Mr. Prassas joins CHI from KTR Capital Partners, where he served as Senior Vice President of Investments, and was responsible for the acquisition and development of more than $1 billion of industrial product on the west coast.

"Phil brings unique perspective to our efforts in Southern California - the most dynamic industrial market in the country," said Ken Valach, CHI's Chief Executive Officer. "His relationships, market knowledge and investment acumen will be instrumental as we capture opportunities created by proximity to North America's largest ports and population center. The Crow family has deep roots in the industrial development business and returning to California was a logical next step. We look forward to supporting Phil and his team in Southern California and beyond."

Harlan Crow, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Crow Holdings, added, "Our new office in Los Angeles continues our proud tradition in the region, which began with my father's early work in the industrial business and subsequent expansion into Southern California in the 1970's. We are excited that this business is once again active in one of the nation's premier markets."

Mr. Prassas added, "I am extremely pleased and honored to join the Crow family, which has maintained its reputation as one of the preeminent developers in the country for more than 65 years. Additionally, they have consistently displayed the energy and focus of true entrepreneurs while maintaining their trademark integrity. My goal is to build a team worthy of the Crow family's name."

Prior to KTR, Phil worked as Vice President at Duke Realty Corporation and at RREEF/DB Real Estate where he was responsible for sourcing investment opportunities in multiple markets across the country. Mr. Prassas earned a Bachelor of Science in Finance from Miami University in Ohio.

ABOUT CROW HOLDINGS INDUSTRIAL

Crow Holdings Industrial (CHI) is focused on the development of speculative and build-to-suit warehouse/distribution, manufacturing and fulfillment facilities in major distribution markets across the country. For more information, please visit www.CrowHoldingsIndustrial.com.

ABOUT CROW HOLDINGS

With the construction of a single warehouse in Dallas, Texas, in 1948, Trammell Crow began investing in real estate. Today, Crow Holdings is a Dallas-based global investment enterprise encompassing multiple operating businesses and signature properties. These operating businesses include Crow Holdings Capital, a registered investment advisor (RIA) which serves as the Manager to private equity real estate and other private funds and provides investment advisory services to Family Offices, Trammell Crow Residential (TCR), which has developed over 240,000 multi-family units and currently has $5 billion under development, and Crow Holdings Industrial. For more information on Crow Holdings, please visit www.CrowHoldings.com.

Contact :

Perry Street Communications

Jon Morgan

214-965-9955

[email protected]

SOURCE Crow Holdings Industrial

Related Links

http://www.CrowHoldingsIndustrial.com


ARLINGTON, Va., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Bloomberg BNA today announced its final agenda and speaker lineup for its second annual Big Law Business Summit. The premier legal event is being held Thursday, June 9 at New York City's Apella. The company's Big Law Business website features breaking news, videos, and contributed commentary that highlight trends and developments shaping the legal industry. Summit information and registration is available at http://on.bna.com/4nqUai. To follow the event on Twitter, use #BigLawSummit.

The 2016 summit identifies the most pressing legal and business issues that will impact the practice of law over the next few years, including cybersecurity, increased scrutiny of corporate transactions, and compliance with securities regulations. Attendees will hear from Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. on collaborating across borders and sectors to detect and prevent cybercrimes and New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman will deliver the closing keynote.

Recently added to the roster of speakers include:

Pia Flanagan , Vice President, Corporate Secretary and Assistant General Counsel, MassMutual Financial Group

, Vice President, Corporate Secretary and Assistant General Counsel, MassMutual Financial Group Stasia Kelly , Co-Managing Partner, Americas, DLA Piper

, Co-Managing Partner, Americas, DLA Piper Jennifer Manton , Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer, Kramer Levin

, Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer, Blane Prescott , Chief Operating Officer, Foley & Lardner LLP

, Chief Operating Officer, Foley & Lardner LLP Kristen Prohl , Vice President, Chief Regulatory Counsel, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc.

, Vice President, Chief Regulatory Counsel, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. Mitchell Zuklie , Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Orrick

The event is sponsored by Aderant, Baretz+Brunelle, Bentham IMF, Integreon, HBR Consulting, Mindcrest and Epiq.

About Bloomberg BNA

Bloomberg BNA, a wholly owned subsidiary of Bloomberg, is a leading source of legal, regulatory, and business information for professionals. Its network of more than 2,500 reporters, correspondents, and leading practitioners delivers expert analysis, news, practice tools, and guidance  the information that matters most to professionals. Bloomberg BNA's authoritative coverage spans a full range of legal practice areas, including tax & accounting, labor & employment, intellectual property, banking & securities, employee benefits, health care, privacy & data security, human resources, and environment, health & safety.

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SOURCE Bloomberg BNA

Related Links

http://www.bna.com


KNOXVILLE, Tenn., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Radio Systems Corporation (RSC), an industry leader in the development of innovative pet behavioral, containment and lifestyle products through its PetSafe Brand, Invisible Fence Brand and SportDOG Brand, has acquired Piddle Place. The acquisition was finalized May 31, 2016.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160531/373738LOGO

Based in Jupiter, Fla., Piddle Place is an eco-friendly, cost-effective alternative to disposable puppy pads and expensive dog walkers. The indoor dog toilet was developed by Kathleen Hillman, who came up with the idea for the award-winning product while working in the emergency department at a local hospital and often found herself too busy to run home to take out her dog, Kippers.

"Piddle Place is a perfect complement to our current assortment of pet waste management solutions," said Lance Tracy, Chief Commercial Officer, Radio Systems Corporation. "Behavioral issues, such as house soiling, are one of the top reasons pets end up in shelters, so we are excited to team up with Piddle Place to expand our line with cutting-edge products that help pets and their owners live happier, healthier lives together."

Piddle Place will be the latest addition to RSC's waste management line, which currently includes innovative products like the Pet Loo, a portable indoor/outdoor pet toilet, and ScoopFree automatic litter boxes and accessories.

"RSC has an impressive portfolio of brands and is highly respected within the pet industry," said Kathleen Hillman, founder and creator of Piddle Place. "I look forward to combining forces and working together to improve the lives of pets and pet parents by providing a convenient, affordable solution to pet waste management."

In addition to the indoor pet potty, Piddle Place also produces the Piddle Place Bio-Enzyme Treatment, an eco-friendly concentrate that breaks down pet waste and eliminates stubborn pet odors.

About Radio Systems Corporation

Radio Systems Corporation is the world's leading manufacturer of pet products headquartered in Knoxville, Tenn. but with remote offices in various places across the globe. The Radio Systems Corporation family of brands includes PetSafe Brand, Invisible Fence Brand and SportDOG Brand. Since its founding in 1991, Radio Systems has grown into an international corporation selling in over 52 countries, and is a company driven by innovation and dedication to their customers and communities. The Radio Systems Corporation portfolio includes a wide array of electronic training and containment systems, waste management products, fountains, toys, pet doors, and much more.

About Piddle Place

Piddle Place is a sanitary, portable, no mess, no smell, easy clean and easy drain pet relief system that has helped thousands of pets and pet owners live better lives. What makes Piddle Place unique is its Bio-Enzyme Treatment that safely helps break down all pet waste and control odor. Developed by former nurse, Kathleen Hillman, Piddle Place has won several distinct honors and awards for its innovation including Good Morning America's Dr. Marty Becker's Best Product 2014 and Editor's Choice by Pet Product News International. Piddle Place also supports several charities and animal shelters. Piddle Place's headquarters are based in Jupiter, Florida. For more information, please visit www.piddleplace.com or follow Piddle Place on Facebook at www.facebook.com/PiddlePlaceLLC.

SOURCE Radio Systems Corporation
"With leaders like Representative Schlossberg who are willing to sponsor legislation that enhances mental health and suicide prevention, AFSP will be much closer to reaching its goal of reducing the suicide rate 20 percent by the year 2025," said Robert Gebbia , the CEO of AFSP .

Representative Mike Schlossberg fights for mental health and suicide prevention daily within local and state governments, and continually advocates for people living with mental illness and for removing barriers to mental health treatment. In 2015 he helped create the bipartisan Mental Health Caucus, allowing him to focus on helping other members of the General Assembly and the citizens of Pennsylvania to understand mental health issues and concerns; he now serves as Democratic co-chair of the Caucus. He has also introduced a Resolution designating the month of May as Mental Health Awareness Month in Pennsylvania each year he has been in office (since 2013).

He participated in a House Human Services Committee public hearing on April 2, 2015 titled "Eliminating Stigma in Mental Health," supporting a change in societal perception he believes is long overdue.

Representative Schlossberg lives with a mental illness himself, and is not afraid to talk publicly about his mental health. After the death of Robin Williams, he bravely detailed his own struggles with depression in a guest column in "The Morning Call".

He regularly attends and speaks at the AFSP Out of the Darkness Walk in Allentown, and in 2015 he was named Honorary Chair of the Greater Lehigh Valley Chapter of American Foundation for Suicide Prevention's annual Out of the Darkness walk.

Suicide in Pennsylvania

Over twice as many people die by suicide in Pennsylvania annually than by homicide. Suicide cost Pennsylvania a total of $1.8 billion of combined lifetime medical and work loss cost in 2010, or an average of $1.1 million per suicide death. Suicide is the 11th leading cause of death overall in Pennsylvania.

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention is dedicated to saving lives and bringing hope to those affected by suicide. AFSP creates a culture that's smart about mental health through education and community programs, develops suicide prevention through research and advocacy, and provides support for those affected by suicide. Led by CEO Robert Gebbia and headquartered in New York, and with a public policy office in Washington, D.C., AFSP has local chapters in all 50 states with programs and events nationwide. Learn more about AFSP in its latest Annual Report, and join the conversation on suicide prevention by following AFSP on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160531/373578

SOURCE American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

Related Links

http://www.afsp.org


ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- It is often said, "food is the great equalizer." That is why Restaurant.com will join together with millions of individuals, restaurants and companies in celebration of equality and in support of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month.

"I believe that everyone deserves to be treated equally and living free of discrimination. As a result, I strive to work with restaurants, businesses and vendors that feeland behavethat same way," said Kenneth C. Chessick, CEO, Restaurant.com. "Restaurants and dining are inclusive of everyone, and everyone should enjoy the experiences that dining out brings without judgment."

Celebrate at Birthplace of Gay Pride

On June 1, 2016, Restaurant.com will kick off LGBT Pride Month by celebrating the birthplace of Gay Pride  Stonewall Inn, New York City. Restaurant.com will offer FREE Certificates to participating area restaurants within the neighborhood of the NYC landmark. Diners can visit Restaurant.com on June 1st to find more than 100 participating restaurants marked as $0 within about 1.5 mile radius of Stonewall Inn. The certificates will be limited to one per customer, while supplies last.

The legendary Stonewall Inn is the birthplace of the modern Gay Rights movement. On June 28th, 1969, patrons of the establishment fought back against what had become regular harassment by the police department. The Stonewall Inn rebellion became the iconic flashpoint that ignited the long, ongoing battle towards equality for all members of the Gay community.

#YouBeYou

To celebrate individuality and diversity, Restaurant.com will use hashtag, #YouBeYou throughout LGBT Month. Social followers and those in favor of equality and individuality are asked to join in the conversation using the designated hashtag.

Continuing the Battle Towards Equality

Dr. Chessick is passionate about supporting individuality and equality as well as raising a voice against discrimination.

"I firmly believe if you are not a part of the solution, you are a part of the problem," said Chessick. "As we get ready to celebrate LGBT Pride Month, we need to not lose sight that there is still a battle to end discrimination going on. I hope everyone will join together to make our voices heard and let lawmakers know we oppose discriminatory laws, behavior and actions."

Read entire open letter from Dr. Chessick here.

About Restaurant.com

Restaurant.com is the trusted and valued source connecting diners, restaurants, businesses and communities since 1999. The company offers savings at more than 22,000 restaurants nationwide with more than 45,000 dining deals on its website and mobile app. Restaurant.com brings people together to relax, converse and enjoy well-prepared and served meals at affordable prices. To date, Restaurant.com diners have saved more than $1 billion, filling more than 3.5 million tables annually. Restaurant.com is a pioneer in the deal space and is headquartered in Arlington Heights, IL.

Media Contact: Mary Adduci

Circle Public Relations

Phone: (708) 373-5754

Email: [email protected]

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SOURCE Restaurant.com

Related Links

http://www.restaurant.com


CHICAGO and NEW YORK, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Chicago-based R.J. O'Brien & Associates (RJO), the oldest and largest independent futures brokerage and clearing firm in the United States, today announced that Profit & Loss Magazine has named the firm "Best FX Broker-Dealer" in its annual FoXy Readers' Choice Awards. This year, Profit & Loss readers cast record numbers of votes for the awards, with more than 800 individuals across multiple time zones participating.

Tony Dalton, Head of RJO's Global FX Division, accepted the trophy at the magazine's awards luncheon late last week. He said: "I'm honored to receive this prestigious award on behalf of RJO. We are truly grateful to all the voters, our clients and others in the industry who support us.This is a great reinforcement of the fact that our team's hard work is paying off."

Julie Ros, the magazine's founding publisher and editor-in-chief, said: "Profit & Loss congratulates R.J. O'Brien for its selection as the best FX broker-dealer in our 2016 Readers' Choice Awards (aka, the FoXys). RJO has been focused on growing its FX franchise, and I'm pleased to see that these efforts are being recognized by our readers."

RJO Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Gerald F. Corcoran said: "We're delighted to receive this recognition from Profit & Loss, and more importantly, from clients who clearly appreciate our offering. Service is the cornerstone of RJO, and nothing pleases us more than satisfied clients. Tony and the FX Division have been doing an outstanding job of growing and enhancing our comprehensive foreign exchange capabilities."

Launched in 1999, Profit & Loss is the leading publisher and conference producer for the foreign exchange industry.

About R.J. O'Brien

Founded in 1914, R.J. O'Brien & Associates is the largest independent futures brokerage firm in the United States, serving institutional, commercial and individual clients globally, in addition to a network of 400 introducing brokers (IBs). Clearing more than 80,000 client accounts, RJO services the industry's most expansive global network of IBs, a vast array of middle market firms and many of the world's largest financial, industrial and agricultural institutions. The firm offers state-of-the-art electronic trading and 24-hour trade execution on every major futures exchange worldwide.

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SOURCE R.J. O'Brien & Associates

Related Links

http://www.rjobrien.com


CALI, Colombia, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Sannabis SAS, subsidiary of New Colombia Resources, Inc. (OTC: NEWC), a Colombian company listed in the U.S., is pleased to announce a signed contract with Editorial Planeta Colombiana S.A., a division of international book publisher Grupo Planeta, to author a book titled Doctor Cannabis.

Grupo Planeta is a multimedia company based in Barcelona, Spain that is the largest publishing group in the Spanish language and the sixth largest in the World. They have over 50 publishing houses in Spain, Portugal, France, and the Americas. For information about the publisher visit http://www.planeta.es/es/editorial-planeta-colombia.

Doctor Cannabis will focus on how the body's major systems react to medical marijuana. Sannabis' scientific advisor, Dr. Robert Melamede, Ph.D., a world renowned expert on the body's Endocannabinoid System is contributing to the book that will educate the public about why cannabis heals while creating awareness to the Sannabis brand of medical marijuana products.

Sannabis will submit the book to the publisher this Fall to be sold online, in bookstores, direct sales, book clubs, mail orders, kiosks, large superstores, and other specialized locations. Sannabis believes this book will increase sales therefore is taking steps to ramp up production in order to satisfy anticipated demand from this and other marketing efforts.

In December 2015, President Santos signed an executive order legalizing medical marijuana in Colombia and last week the Congress also approved a medical marijuana law. Sannabis has an alliance and proudly provides cannabis oil to the Fundacion Cultivanda Esperanza, a foundation for children with epilepsy. The foundation's Director, Natalia Tangarife's son Jacabo has epilepsy and was instrumental in the approval of medical marijuana by Congress last week. Here is Natalia with the Senator Galan, sponsor of the bill. https://twitter.com/juanmanuelgalan/status/735603600219623425/video/1

To learn about the Cultivando Esperanza (Growing Hope) Foundation, follow them on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/fundacioncultivandoesperanza/ . Sannabis donates and offers special pricing to Cultivando Esperanza so no sick child is left behind, to make a donation to the foundation contact [email protected]

To view or purchase Sannabis products visit www.sannabis.co. Follow Sannabis on Facebook for photos and testimonials at https://www.facebook.com/sannabis.cannamedicinal

New Colombia Resources, Inc.

New Colombia Resources, Inc. is focused on the acquisition and development of high-quality metallurgical coal properties and other available resources in the Republic of Colombia. They expect to have several revenue producing businesses including; metallurgical coal mining and rock quarry aggregates for domestic Colombian highway and railroad building projects. The Company owns 100% of La Tabaquera metallurgical coal mine in Colombia with an estimated 15- 17 million tonnes of reserves. They have another pending acquisition for 390 ha and a solicitation contract for 184 ha metallurgical coal concession. New Colombia Resources also holds a significant position in Sannabis SAS which legally produces medical marijuana products in the Republic of Colombia, visit www.sannabis.co. For more information on the Company visit www.newcolombiaresources.com.

Forward Looking Statements

Forward Looking Statements; This Press Release includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Act of 1934. A statement containing works such as "anticipate," "seek," intend," "believe," "plan," "estimate," "expect," "project," "plan," or similar phrases may be deemed "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Some or all of the events or results anticipated by these forward-looking statements might not occur. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include financing, the future U.S. and global economies, the impact of competition, and the Company's reliance on existing regulations. New Colombia Resources, Inc. does not undertake any duty nor does it intend to update the results of these forward-looking statements.



Company Contact:

New Colombia Resources, Inc.

John Campo

President/Chairman

(+1)-410-236-8200 USA

[email protected]

[email protected]



Sannabis SAS

www.sannabis.co



SOURCE New Colombia Resources, Inc.
CORRALITOS, Calif., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- In honor of The United Nations World Refugee Day, June 20th, the global emotional intelligence network Six Seconds will sponsor a worldwide awareness raising campaign, "Seeking Refuge". With over 800 people leading workshops in 62 countries, with a reach of over 20,000 people, this is an opportunity to increase inclusion, compassion, optimism, and to unite people instead of divide them. The project includes three parts: "chalkboard conversation" experiences to raise awareness, dialog sessions, and online sharing to create a "virtual quilt" in honor of those seeking and giving refuge today. Anyone can Sign up to lead an event in their community! Six Seconds is providing a facilitator's kit and slides to assist engagement on this important topic.

Seeking Refuge Banner Six Seconds logo

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160527/373054

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160527/373055

Stage 1: Teams will set up a chalkboard conversations where people in their communities can express their feelings about giving and seeking refuge. Facilitators will literally set up a chalkboard in a public space and invite the public to share their thoughts and feelings about what it means to seek and give refuge in these times. The comments people write will be photographed and shared online.

Stage 2: The next stage is a free workshop where participants will unlock the power of emotional intelligence to support one another to be more effective in giving and seeking refuge. They'll create a "quilt square" synthesizing what they learned.

Stage 3: The final stage is the creation of a "virtual quilt" of this shared human experience  in honor of all the people today seeking and giving refuge. This will include photographs and statements from participants from 42 countries.

While the global refugee crisis is a geopolitical issue, it also can provoke questions about values, ethics, and humanity on a personal and collective level. We all have the power to give refuge -- to create a place of physical and emotional safety where we can nourish one another, to create a space to support and care for fellow humans.

Participants will get a free "Brain Talent Profile" and learn more about:

Emotional intelligence as a toolset to help all of us in challenging times.

How to increase empathy and mutual understanding.

Being a changemaker to support a more just and compassionate society.

The Seeking Refuge campaign is about the shared human experience of displacement and acceptance. Together we will explore big questions, such as:

What can each of us give to support one another?

What do we do when we feel like we don't fit in?

Who has stood up for you?

What does it take to stand up for others?

What does it take to stand up as someone who chooses civil society?

Where are the opportunities in our own communities to support a world where more people can find the refuge they need?

All around the world the week of June 20th volunteers will also offer a free Six Seconds Brain Talents Profile for participants.

What is a Brain Talents Profile?

Each of us has strengths and talents we come by naturally or have cultivated over time. The 18 "Brain Apps" describe unique, powerful capabilities to create performance and positive change. Using the metaphor that the brain is like a smart phone and contains many useful "apps", this assessment produces a list of your brain's most prominent talents. These include talents such as connection, data mining, design, problem solving, critical thinking, emotional insight and collaboration. www.6seconds.org/brain

For more information on the "Seeking Refuge" project, please see: http://6sec.org/refuge

Six Seconds is a global network supporting people to create positive change  everywhere, all the time. Our vision is a billion people practicing the skills of emotional intelligence worldwide. Founded in 1997, Six Seconds is the first and largest organization 100% dedicated to the development of emotional intelligence. We teach the skills of emotional intelligence to enable individuals, teams, organizations, families, schools and communities to flourish. We have offices and representatives in over 25 countries. Our clients include global companies, schools, business leaders, and individuals.

Contact: Rachel Anne Goodman

831-419-9047, 831-457-8098

Email

SOURCE Six Seconds: The Emotional Intelligence Network

Related Links

http://6sec.org/refuge


AVENTURA, Fla., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- MINGO AFFILIATES SERVICES INC./ MINGO GOLD, a leading provider of RAW & refined gold, precious metals, stones and other minerals, today announced that they are opening a new Gold Mine in Kedougou, Senegal, in order to expand the company's gold production and increase its gold reserves which will better meet the supply for increase gold demands.

Plans to expand operations in Kedougou, Senegal were initiated by market demands and the company's strategic plan designed to increase and expand the company's gold production and reserves over the next five years. The new Gold Mine (Bencoutou Gold Mine) which also includes the Benkanto Seekoto Mine and the Sining Kang Mine will be the company's third of seven Gold Mining operations in the region.

"The opening of Mingo Affiliates Services Inc. / Mingo Gold's Bencoutou Gold Mine is an important step towards realizing the company's expansion goals, the new Gold Mine will be the third of seven important acquisitions for the company in relating to market conditions and how company is responding to them."

The price of gold has risen more than 18% since the turn of the year. Gold produces have a new spring in their step. Gold has been one of the best preforming commodities this year as investors have sought a safe haven amid equity market volatility. ," states Aaron Jenkins, Business Development Administrator- Mingo Gold.

Anthem Blanchard founder & CEO of Anthem Vaults states.."$1500 an oz. is not out of the rim of possibility. According to World Gold Council the demand for gold has shot up 21% in the first quarter" The new Bencoutou Gold Mine is expected to generate sales of approximately 10 Billion dollars over the next 35 years. This figure is in addition to the 21 Billion dollars in reserves from its Benkanto Seekoto and Sining Kang Mining operation.

The Company intends to hire additional mining professionals, technicians, laborers and other human resource personnel to facilitate the company's continued growth. They intend to form partnerships and joint venture relationships to effectively capitalize on expansion, growth and productivity. Interested parties may visit their website to learn about the opportunities available to join their team and participate in the company's expansion efforts. Once on the site, the first step would be to take the Investor Credit Survey. The survey information gathered will be used to contact interested parties via a follow-up meeting to discuss specific opportunities with company.

About MINGO AFFILIATES SERVICES INC./ MINGO GOLD

The company was founded in 2003 and was incorporated in the state of Florida, USA. The company has a subsidiary company (Mingo Gold) formed under Senegalese Law and located in Dakar, Senegal with offices in Kedougou, Senegal. Mingo Gold's strategic vision with respect to doing business in Senegal, consists of developing a partnership with local chartered community organizations and the government, incorporating their staff of experts, managers, technicians and financial professionals into the business relationship and in essence become one unified entity operating under legal governance of the two countries.

The social and humanitarian impact of this project will have a significant positive economic effect upon the company's joint venture partners and the surrounding community. The Company will initially create 50 permanent jobs and 20 temporary jobs in the first months of operation. The company intends to add an additional 30 permanent jobs per year as its operation expands and the business grows. The company will purchase materials, supplies, lubricants, gas and food locally, financially stimulating the local community.

The Democratic Republic of Senegal is a close ally of America, and has been politically stable since the country gained its independence from the French. America has a large Embassy in Senegal and assists in the promotion of trade and commerce between the two countries. From a geopolitical perspective this model works very well. This module significantly lowers the risk associated with investing in foreign markets, since the locals have a vested interest in the success of the company.

Visit MINGO AFFILIATES SERVICES INC./ MINGO GOLD, visit website at www.mingogold.com

For more additional information, please contact:

Aaron Jenkins / Director of Business Development

USA Headquarters 2090 N.E. 30th Ave 8TH Floor Aventura, Florida 33180 Phone: 800-234-8098 Ext: 102. Fax: 888-788-2643. Email: [email protected]

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com

SOURCE Mingo Affiliates Services, Inc.
When it comes to company data and overall IT services, nobody likes surprises, and as with any kind of project, assessing the amount of resources demanded can prove tricky. Sharegate's new feature fixes this by providing administrators with a complete estimate tailored to their environment, thus cutting time on preparation as well as the migration's execution. Moreover, being able to properly assess the task at hands is a pain point often leading to delays and concerns from top management.

The new Sharegate Inventory connects to the servers and file shares planned for migration and lists the amount of files, the data volume and time required to move it all to your selected SharePoint version, either on-premises or online on Office 365. Sharegate will also display every warnings and errors foreseen during the migration.

Simon De Baene, CEO at Sharegate, commented: "Moving from file shares to SharePoint is a huge milestone for any enterprise, no matter their size. Sharegate's mission has always been to promote the adoption of the platform by simplify its management, and our new inventory does exactly that! We've boiled the migration down to its simplest for the user, but leaving your old file servers behind should be as easy."

With the recent release of SharePoint 2016, a new migration wave is expected. The new version published by Microsoft is, by far, their most intuitive and user friendly one to date, making it more attractive to a wider audience of enterprises. De Baene added: "SharePoint is a great tool. We think everyone would benefit using it and should be as soon as possible. This is why we've made our inventory fully available in our free trial version."

About Sharegate

Sharegate simplifies management tasks for SharePoint, Office 365, and OneDrive for Business for thousands of administrators and IT professionals around the world. A privately-held company based in Montreal, Sharegate is trusted by more than 10,000 organizations. As a leader in its industry, Sharegate lives by the motto: "Innovate and keep things simple & fun." For more information, visit www.share-gate.com.

Guillaume Leverdier

Marketing Specialist

Sharegate

(514) 303-8203

[email protected]

This release was issued through WebWire(R). For more information visit http://www.webwire.com.

SOURCE Sharegate

Related Links

http://www.share-gate.com


HERMOSA BEACH, California, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

SharkReach, Inc. ("SharkReach" or the "Company") (OTC: SHRK) a millennial influence marketing company today announced that on April 7, 2016 it entered into an offer letter to purchase 100% of a 30+ year old advertising and marketing agency. The transaction is structured in cash and stock, with SharkReach acquiring the majority the stock at the initial close, with the remainder being acquired one year later. Under the Agreement, the parties are required to keep the identity of the target and some details confidential until closing.

The total purchase price for 100% of the target is approximately $16 million dollars, including earnouts; $5 million at the closing and another $11 million in stock with delivery spread out over a two and a half year period at the then current trading price of the stock at the time of issuance. The transaction is subject to entering into a definitive share purchase agreement, customary conditions, due diligence and financing commitments.

Steve Smith, the Company's CEO said, "We couldn't be more pleased with this opportunity. This is a strong, internationally recognized advertising and marketing company with Fortune 100 clients, steady annual growth, a stellar management team, top line revenues last year of just under $3,900,000 with EBITDA of over 30%. It's a natural fit for SharkReach, and represents our first of hopefully many similar acquisitions to build shareholder value.

We believe this will enhance our service offerings, provide us significant opportunities for growth as well the opportunity to gain a larger foothold in the market.

About SharkReach, Inc.

SharkReach, Inc. (OTC: SHRK). SharkReach is a disruptive millennial media company that combines the strength of an influencer owned network with proprietary technology for creating, posting, managing and monitoring branded sharable content.

What sets SharkReach apart from other companies in the marketplace is that its influencers (both grass roots individuals and celebrities) are also its shareholders and that its network has a larger market reach than the top 5 television networks combined!

20,000+ Influencers  with 500+ million Followers  with 200+ million Likes & Shares  produces an Aggregate Reach of 2.9 billion.

SharkReach as one of the first companies in this space is the established leader in Influencer Marketing. It presently has the largest footprint, and plans to further enlarge its market share through various acquisitions. It has shown that is has the unique ability to reach the Gen Y and Millennial demographic.

Millennials demand exacting standards in the products and services that are essential to satisfying their social conscience and personal needs. They are the first of several generations to come that will veer away from traditional media. They do NOT watch television, and they do not trust brands and commercials. Their purchasing decisions are impacted by the individuals, friends, and celebrities that they follow on Social Media and YouTube.

It's criteria for target acquisitions are companies are those that will bring: 1. Content Management; 2. Sentiment Tracking; 3. Large Client Lists; and 4. Proven Track Record of 2+ Years In The Influencer Marketing Space.

Historically, and in this order, television, radio, magazine and newspaper advertising were the ways to reach clients. To reach more clients and to increase sales, Celebrity Endorsements were added to Brands to increase the effectiveness of these traditional media outlets.

Sponsored Social Media Influencer Marketing, now sits atop the field!

In a recent report of the most effective marketing ratings, Influencer Marketing, in absolute ratings, beat Celebrity Endorsements, Television, Radio, Magazine and Newspaper advertising.

In the last year alone, Influencer Marketing has seen positive gains, significantly out-pacing all tested approaches in "Positive Momentum":

Change in Marketer Regard vs. Year Ago Influencer Marketing -7/+65

Celeb Endorsements -12/+21

TV Ads -20/+12

Radio Ads -32/+11

Magazine Ads -36/+4

Newspaper Ads -56/+6 Our Tracking & Reporting platform and quantifying systems enable clients to select suitable Influencers and to track campaigns in ways they have not been available before. There are three main components: SharkRank: Influencer Ranking System and Influencer Marketplace. Allows clients to select suitable Influencers for their Campaign utilizing Shark Rank's proprietary influencer-ranking algorithm. SharkScore: Campaign Level Reporting Engine. Reporting engine that allows clients to log in and view the statistics of delivery of the campaign in real time calculating impressions, views, like and shares, carrying the reporting across all social media outlets and the web. SharkPulse: Campaign Effectiveness Monitoring & Brand Sentiment Reporting. SharkPulse Real-Time Reporting Dashboard allows our clients to view in real-time the activity of their campaigns through our proprietary dashboard across all social media networks ! It monitors brand sentiment across Social Media and the Web a first in influencer marketing. Ability to set up auto responders for Negative posts. Acts as an insurance policy for your brand allowing you to follow every conversation and respond. *** For more information on SharkReach, please visit the Company's website at http://www.SharkReach.com. To be added to the SharkReach investor email list, please email [email protected] with SHRK in the subject line. FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This press release contains forward-looking statements as defined within Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These statements relate to future events, including our ability to raise capital, or to our future financial performance, and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, levels of activity, performance, or achievements to be materially different from any future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements since they involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which are, in some cases, beyond our control and which could, and likely will, materially affect actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. Any forward-looking statement reflects our current views with respect to future events and is subject to these and other risks, uncertainties and assumptions relating to our operations, results of operations, growth strategy and liquidity. We assume no obligation to publicly update or revise these forward-looking statements for any reason, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future. For a discussion of these risks and uncertainties, please see our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Our public filings with the SEC are available from commercial document retrieval services and at the website maintained by the SEC at http://www.sec.gov. Steve Smith

T. +1-888-481-6161

F. +1-888-481-6161

http://www.sharkreach.com



SOURCE SharkReach Inc
SAN FRANCISCO, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- SillaJen, Inc., a private, clinical-stage, biotherapeutics company focused on the development of oncolytic immunotherapy products for cancer, today announced that it will present at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Meeting in early June in Chicago. The details for the poster presentation are as follows:

Date and Time: Saturday, June 4, 2016, 8:00 a.m.  11:30 a.m. CDT

Abstract Title: PHOCUS: A phase 3 randomized, open-label study comparing the oncolytic immunotherapy pexa-vec followed by sorafenib (SOR) vs SOR in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) without prior systemic therapy.

Abstract Number: TPS4146

Location: Hall A

Poster Board: #130b

Poster Session: Gastrointestinal (Noncolorectal) Cancer

Presenter: Ghassan K. Abou-Alfa, MD - Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Phase 3 PHOCUS Trial Currently Enrolling Patients

The Phase 3 trial, named the PHOCUS trial, is designed to enroll 600 patients who have not received prior systemic treatment for their cancer, and they will be randomized to one of two treatment groups: one which will receive Pexa-Vec followed by sorafenib and one which will receive sorafenib alone. The randomized study will be conducted at approximately 140 sites worldwide including North America, Asia, Australia, and Europe. SillaJen reached agreement with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on a Special Protocol Assessment (SPA) for this global Phase 3 clinical trial. The primary objective of the study will be to determine the overall survival of patients treated with Pexa-Vec, followed by sorafenib versus sorafenib alone. Secondary objectives will include safety as well as assessments for tumor responses between the two groups as measured by the following endpoints: time to progression, progression-free survival, overall response rate and disease control rate. To learn more about the trial, please visit: http://www.pexavectrials.com/.

Pexa-Vec Clinical Development Program and SOLVE Platform

Pexa-Vec is the most advanced product candidate from SillaJen's proprietary SOLVE (Selective Oncolytic Vaccinia Engineering) platform. The vaccinia strain backbone of Pexa-Vec has been used safely in millions of people as part of a worldwide vaccination program. This strain naturally targets cancer cells due to common genetic defects in cancer cells; Pexa-Vec was engineered to enhance this by deleting its thymidine kinase (TK) gene, thus making it dependent on the cellular TK expressed at persistently high levels in cancer cells. Pexa-Vec is also engineered to express the immunogenic GM-CSF protein. GM-CSF complements the cancer cell lysis of the product candidate, leading to a cascade of events resulting in tumor necrosis, tumor vasculature shutdown and sustained anti-tumoral immune attack.

About SillaJen

SillaJen, Inc. is a South Korean based biotechnology company headquartered in Busan South Korea, with satellite offices in Seoul, South Korea and San Francisco, CA. The company is focused on the development and commercialization of oncolytic immunotherapy products using the SOLVETM platform, including its lead product Pexa-Vec, which is currently in Phase 3 trials for the treatment of advanced primary liver cancer. Additional information about SillaJen is available at www.sillajen.com.

About SillaJen's Regional Partners for Pexa-Vec

Transgene

Transgene S.A. (Euronext: TNG), part of Institut Merieux, is a publicly traded French biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing targeted immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer and infectious diseases. Transgene's programs utilize viral vector technology with the goal of indirectly or directly killing infected or cancerous cells. The Company's two lead clinical-stage programs are: TG4010 for non-small cell lung cancer and Pexa-Vec for liver cancer. The Company has several other programs in clinical and pre-clinical development. Transgene is based in Strasbourg, France, and has additional operations in Lyon, as well as satellite offices in China and the U.S. Additional information about Transgene is available at www.transgene.fr.

Lee's Pharma

Lee's Pharmaceutical Holdings Limited is a research-based biopharmaceutical company listed in Hong Kong with over 20 years operation in China's pharmaceutical industry. It is fully integrated with strong infrastructures in drug development, manufacturing, sales and marketing. It has established extensive partnership with over 20 international companies and currently has 14 products in the market place. Lee's focuses on several key disease areas such as cardiovascular, oncology, gynecology, dermatology and ophthalmology. Lee's development program is lauded with 47 products stemming from both internal R&D efforts and collaborations with US, European and Japanese companies and aspiring to combat diseases such as liver cancer and pulmonary hypertension. The mission of Lee's is to become a successful biopharmaceutical group in Asia providing innovative products to fight diseases and improve health and quality of life. Additional information about Lee's Pharmaceutical is available at www.leespharm.com.

SOURCE SillaJen, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.sillajen.com


ROTTERDAM, Netherlands and LAGUNA HILLS, Calif., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- SkylineDx today announced the presentation of four posters that reconfirm the prognostic value of MMprofiler with SKY92, the only gene-based signature proven superior to the biomarkers currently used for risk-stratifying newly-diagnosed and relapsed multiple myeloma patients.1 Of the four posters, three will be presented Friday, June 10, 2016, at the European Hematology Association (EHA) 21st Annual Congress in Copenhagen, Denmark. The fourth will be presented as an E-poster. Additionally, SkylineDx will host a "Meet the Experts" event in booth #C4.328 on June 10, from 2:30  3:30 p.m. (CEST).

Each of the four new abstracts utilized MMprofiler and its novel gene signature, SKY92, to determine the prognostic validity in both the clinical and analytical setting in identifying high risk or standard risk stratification in patients with multiple myeloma. Results show that the SKY92 signature, a key component of MMprofiler, is a powerful and robust prognostic marker, not only for overall survival, but also for progression free survival in younger, elderly, newly diagnosed, and relapsed patients with multiple myeloma across various treatments. Moreover, it can be used reliably as a predictor for survival to optimize follow-up and treatment strategies in an early stage.

"We are pleased to showcase MMprofiler and its reliability in determining risk stratification to optimize treatment in patients with multiple myeloma through these four posters," said Dharminder S. Chahal, Chief Executive Officer of SkylineDx. "We are confident that these additional studies will help inform patients and physicians with clinically actionable information that will guide and speed up the therapeutic decision-making process, no matter what stage of the disease the patient is experiencing."

MMprofiler with SKY92 is a gene-based risk identification signature that determines the level of risk for patients with multiple myeloma by classifying them into a "high" or "standard" risk group. MMprofiler assesses risk by measuring the activity of 92 genes (the SKY92 gene signature) that are directly or indirectly related to the disease. Patients with a "high" risk classification have a poor prognosis as compared to patients with a standard risk profile, regardless of treatment. The performance of the SKY92 gene signature to risk stratify these patients exceeds that of standard clinical parameters that include FISH, and earlier gene expression signatures utilized in myeloma.



"With the information that MMprofiler provides, physicians are now able to make better informed decisions," said Antonio Palumbo, M.D., Chief of Myeloma Unit, Department of Oncology, University of Torino, Italy. "The power to classify a patient's risk level using MMprofiler enables the physician to potentially tailor a more precise and beneficial treatment for their multiple myeloma patient, thus potentially avoiding ineffective, costly, or potentially harmful treatments."

The following three posters will be presented on Friday, June 10, from 5:15-6:45 p.m. (CEST) in Hall H of the Bella Center, Copenhagen, Denmark:

Abstract #P283: Martin van Vliet Ph.D., SkylineDx, Rotterdam, Netherlands Risk Stratification by SKY92+ISS Outperforms iFISH Markers t(4;14) and Del(17P) in Multiple Myeloma

Abstract #P282: Martin van Vliet Ph.D., SkylineDx, Rotterdam, Netherlands Precision as Part of the Analytical Validation of the SKY92 High Risk Signature and the MMprofiler Assay

Abstract #P276: Martin van Vliet Ph.D., SkylineDx, Rotterdam, Netherlands The SKY92 Prognostic Marker is Validated in Eight Multiple Myeloma Clinical Datasets



Additionally, the E-poster will be on display on E-poster screens from 9:30 a.m. (CEST) Friday, June 10 to 7:00 p.m. (CEST) Saturday, June 11, 2016:

Abstract #E1262: Martin van Vliet Ph.D., SkylineDx, Rotterdam, Netherlands Robustness of the Prognostic Value of the SKY92 Marker Versus FISH Markers Across Nine Multiple Myeloma Cohorts



About Multiple Myeloma

Multiple myeloma (MM) is a cancer that arises from plasma cells, a type of white blood cell made in the bone marrow. In patients with MM, the plasma cells become abnormal, multiply uncontrollably, and release only one type of antibody  known as M-protein  which has no useful function. It is often through the measurement of M- protein that MM is diagnosed and monitored. Most medical problems related to MM are caused by the build-up of abnormal plasma cells in the bone marrow and the presence of the M-protein in the blood or urine. The most common symptoms of MM include bone pain, recurring infection, kidney damage, and fatigue. According to the World Cancer Research Fund International, an estimated 114,000 people around the world are diagnosed with MM annually, and the disease represents 0.8% of all cancers globally.

For more information about MM, visit www.hematon.nl/myeloom (information available in Dutch only), www.themmrf.org, www.myeloma.org.uk, or www.myeloma.org

About MMprofiler

MMprofiler with SKY92 is the only CE-IVD marked, gene-based risk identification signature that has been proven superior to the biomarkers currently used for risk- stratifying newly diagnosed and relapsed multiple myeloma patients1. A recently published peer reviewed study showed that MMprofiler is more accurate at identifying high-risk patients, and is the strongest predictor of overall survival  where median survival was 24 months for the highest-risk group2. MMprofiler is available in Europe to be run quickly and confidently in laboratories or as a service from the SkylineDx laboratory in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. In the U.S., MMprofiler is available only as an investigational use and/or research use tool, as the performance characteristics of this product have not been established. For more information, please visit www.mmprofiler.com .

About SkylineDx

SkylineDx is a commercial-stage biotech company based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Originally a spin-off of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the company specializes in the development and marketing of innovative gene signature- based diagnostic tests to assist healthcare professionals in making personalized treatment decisions for individual patients. These tests are designed to accurately determine the type or status of the disease or to predict a patient's response to a specific treatment. Based on the test results, healthcare professionals can tailor the treatment to the individual patient. MMprofiler is the company's lead product. To learn more, please visit www.skylinedx.com.

1. Van Beers EH, et al. SKY92 GEP, iFISH, and ISS comparisons for risk stratification in multiple myeloma. Poster p661 presented at 2015 European Hematology Association Congress.



2. Kuiper R, et al. Prediction of high- and low-risk multiple myeloma based on gene expression and the International Staging System. Blood. 22 October 2015, Volume 126, Number 17, Pages 1996-2004

SOURCE SkylineDx

Related Links

http://skylinedx.com


"Only recently have small towns across the country started to see fiber Internet become available from pioneering communications companies," said Phil Wagschal, President of Slic Networks. "With fiber, everything you do online will feel faster and smoother, providing the residents and businesses with the best experience available anywhere."

Gigabit fiber is already being deployed around the U.S. by Google, AT&T, and other emerging providers. Those deployments are usually offered in larger, more metropolitan cities including Kansas City, Austin or Atlanta, while some communities like Chattanooga, TN have built their own gigabit networks.

"Slic's efforts have brought fast and reliable services to Long Lake," said Clark Seaman, Long Lake Town Supervisor. "They are providing critical infrastructure for the growth and sustainment of the community as we look toward the future. And, their locally based support team has been outstanding, delivering great customer service."

This announcement comes just days after Strategic Networks Group, a world leader in broadband econometrics, ranked New York State number one in the nation for broadband activity and investment.

Funded by a combination of State of New York grant money and investment from Slic Network Solutions, the 30-mile project demonstrates how public-private partnerships address the access gap which many rural New York communities face. "This Regional Council Award has helped expand our network to many towns that lacked access to high-speed Internet," added Wagschal, "We believe the combination of this program, and New York State's unparalleled support, are critical elements to the economic development of the North Country."

The Long Lake project is the first of eight Slic expansion communities supported by New York State and administered by the New York State Broadband Program Office. The remaining seven build outs will bring the same fiber optic services to the northern New York communities of Minerva, Newcomb, Schroon Lake, Bellmont, Lyon Mountain, and Black Lake.

Once completed, these projects will add over 320 route miles to Slic's existing 800 miles throughout northern New York. The new projects will provide unsurpassed connectivity to over 4700 homes and businesses that lack high-speed Internet access today. Slic currently provides these advanced services to over 23 communities north of Long Lake.

"Just five years ago, fiber-optic service and these Internet speeds were unimaginable throughout Long Lake," said Bill Farber, Chairman of the Hamilton County Board of Supervisors. "We appreciate the efforts of New York State, the leadership of Governor Cuomo, and the commitment of Slic Networks in making this a reality. Fiber connectivity is a real game changer in regards to the quality of life and economic potential for the residents of the county."

"Governor Cuomo's leadership has made it possible for the most remote areas of the state to become active participants in the digital economy," said Empire State Development Executive Director of Broadband & Innovation Jeffrey Nordhaus. "The Broadband Program Office congratulates Slic on its formal opening of the Long Lake market, supported by a Regional Council Round 2 grant. This is a win for the Adirondacks and New York State's vision for broadband for all."

Some Long Lake subscribers are already enjoying Slic's speedy and reliable Internet while seasonal residents are scheduling installations for the coming summer months. "The service has been fabulous with Internet speeds that are so much faster that what I've ever had before," said Stephanie Wells of Long Lake, NY.

For more information on the Long Lake fiber network, visit www.slic.com/longlake

About Slic Network Solutions

A wholly owned subsidiary of Nicholville Telephone Company, Slic Network Solutions delivers fiber optic based high-speed Internet, phone, and television services to 23 communities throughout northern New York.

For SLIC Networks Solutions:

Contact: Andy Abramson, Comunicano

Phone: +1(858) 777-9777

E-mail: [email protected]

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160527/373106

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160527/373107LOGO

SOURCE Slic Network Solutions

Related Links

http://www.slic.com


LAVAL, QC, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - InterTrade Systems Inc., an industry leader in supply chain collaboration covering both EDI VAN and catalogue solutions, announced today that US online retailer Rue La La (www.ruelala.com) has selected InterTrade as its exclusive product catalogue solution provider.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160530/373401LOGO)

InterTrade's catalogue solution, ecCatalogue, will serve as the platform for Rue La La to synchronize and integrate critical product information from its suppliers & trading partners.

Through InterTrade's product catalogue solution, Rue La La will automate the collection of detailed product information from all of its suppliers in one single location. Critical product data includes GTIN/UPC codes, descriptions and dimensions, as well as rich content like product images. This solution plays an important role for online retailers like Rue La La to reduce their go-to-market cycle, from merchandise planning to the publication of richer product descriptions on their online storefronts. With InterTrade's product catalogue, Rue La La looks to unlock new efficiencies in its overall procurement and increase its speed to market.

"We are thrilled to welcome Rue La La and their vendors to the InterTrade ecCatalogue", said Tony D'Angelo, InterTrade's Sales & Marketing Vice President. "Our team of specialists is excited to roll out this project and work closely with Rue La La and their vendors to streamline their supply chain operations."

Lisa Rhodes, Chief Merchandising Officer, Rue La La affirms, ''we are pleased that we can now introduce our brand partners to an efficient electronic catalog that will replace the current time consuming process."

''With each new client relationship, we make sure to listen to their retail supply chain challenges'', adds Andreanne Simon, InterTrade's General Manager. ''Our objective at InterTrade is to continuously improve our services to provide solutions that respond to the evolving needs of our clients and add tangible value to their operations. With this in mind, we look forward to collaborating with Rue La La and supporting their growth.''

About InterTrade Systems

Since its creation in 1996, InterTrade Systems has established itself as a partner of choice for companies, large and small, seeking to address their supply chain challenges and associated EDI needs. As a Tier-1 EDI VAN and Catalogue solutions provider, InterTrade is recognized for its strong expertise in EDI networking solutions as well as its product data synchronization (catalogues) offering. Its experienced team caters to thousands of clients, with top marquee international companies. InterTrade became an even stronger player in the market in 2010 by joining Mediagrif Interactive Technologies Inc. (TSX: MDF). Find more information about InterTrade at www.intertrade.com or by calling 1-800-873-7803.

LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/company/15970

Twitter profile: @InterTradeSys

About Mediagrif Interactive Technologies

Mediagrif Interactive Technologies Inc. (TSX: MDF) is a Canadian leader in information technology, owner of several recognized web and mobile platforms including InterTrade, Jobboom, LesPAC, Reseau Contact, MERX, Carrus and BidNet. Mediagrif's e-commerce solutions are used by millions of consumers and businesses in North America and around the world. Mediagrif has offices in Canada, the United States and China. For more information, please visit us at www.mediagrif.com or call 1-877-677-9088.

About Rue La La

Rue La La strives to be the most engaging off-price, online style destination connecting world-class brands with the next generation shopper. Each day, Rue La La Members discover the most desired men's, women's and children's apparel and accessories; home decor and accents; and exclusive destinations and experiences. Rue La La's engaging approach to retail has brought theatre and excitement to online shopping, creating a captivating e-commerce destination that strategically supports its brand partners and inspires its Members daily. Rue La La is ranked #11 on Internet Retailer's 2014 Mobile 500 List and was recognized as the 2012 Mobile Merchandiser of the Year by Mobile Commerce Daily. Visit us at www.ruelala.com.

SOURCE InterTrade Systems Inc.
NEW YORK, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- BluTours, LLC, a student-run startup that provides college-prospects personalized, 1-on-1 campus "experiences," now offers their service at over 100 colleges and universities nationwide. Their mission and message to students: to help you find your fit.

"As an athlete, I was lucky enough to have both a unique and meaningful experience visiting colleges," says 19-year-old company Founder and CEO, Ibrahim Abukwaik, "But the large majority of students don't get that special, personalized treatment."

The BluTours experience targets some of the major issues and challenges that occur with traditional campus tours: large groups, repetitive "one-size-fits-all" messaging, and scheduling issues that come with limited availability. BluTours' solutions have gained significant praise from guidance counselors: "The vision is brilliant. I've been on many tours where the parents are doing all the listening and asking all the questions while the kids are behind the crowd on their phones. Students need to get involved."

The process is simple: students visit the BluTours website, create an account, select any of the available campuses, select their interests, and give a brief (3-5 sentence) description about themselves. Upon submission, BluTours uses this information to connect you with best matches for hosts, destinations, and topics - all to make your visit on campus as personal, insightful, and enjoyable as possible.

Don't miss the ride! You can try BluTours for free until the end of the summer.

For more information please visit www.blutours.us.

Contact:

Ibrahim Abukwaik

Founder & CEO

[email protected]

119 W 24th St.

New York, NY, 10011

(800) 707 8098 (ext. 700)

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160531/373554LOGO

SOURCE BluTours, LLC

Related Links

http://blutours.us


GREENSBORO, N.C., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Tanger Factory Outlet Centers, Inc. (NYSE: SKT) announced today that Steven B. Tanger, President and Chief Executive Officer, will be a featured presenter at NAREIT's REITWeek Conference on Tuesday, June 7, 2016 at 11:45 a.m. EDT.

A link to the live audio-only webcast will be available online at investors.tangeroutlets.com, or at https://reitstream.com/reitweek2016/tangeroutlets. An online replay will be available at the same locations for 30 days beginning approximately four hours after the conclusion of the panel.

The company's management presentation, for the first quarter ended March 31, 2016, may be accessed through investors.tangeroutlets.com.

About Tanger Factory Outlet Centers

Tanger Factory Outlet Centers, Inc. (NYSE: SKT), is a publicly-traded REIT headquartered in Greensboro, North Carolina that presently operates and owns, or has an ownership interest in, a portfolio of 42 upscale outlet shopping centers and 2 additional centers currently under construction. Tanger's operating properties are located in 21 states coast to coast and in Canada, totaling approximately 14.4 million square feet, leased to over 3,000 stores which are operated by more than 480 different brand name companies. The company has more than 35 years of experience in the outlet industry. Tanger Outlet Centers continue to attract more than 185 million shoppers annually. For more information on Tanger Outlet Centers, call 1-800-4TANGER or visit the company's web site at www.tangeroutlets.com.

Contact: Cyndi Holt

Vice President of Investor Relations

(336) 834-6892

[email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120907/CL70706LOGO-b

SOURCE Tanger Factory Outlet Centers, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.tangeroutlet.com


UTAH VALLEY, Utah, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- In just two days, the 2016 Utah Valley Parade of Homes will open the doors of 40 custom-built residences for attendees to tour and admire.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160527/373097

A photo rendering of this year's home built by McEwan Custom Homes

"With 40 homes in the Parade and 13 valued at over $1 million, this is our biggest year so far," said UVHBA Executive Officer Steve Caldwell. "Expect to be impressed."

The Parade of Homes is an annual, must-see summer event running from June 2 through June 18. During the two-week event, attendees can visit any of the homes between noon and 9 pm Tuesday through Saturday.

Presented by the Utah Valley Home Builders Association (UVHBA), the self-guided home tour features superior home designs and unique, high-end features in brand new homes in neighborhoods from Highland to Elk Ridge.

This year, attendees can look forward to tour many homes featuring pieces from well-known furniture lines including Joanna Gaines' Magnolia Home collection, the Trisha Yearwood Home Collection and Eric Church's Highway to Home line.

"The quality of design, craftsmanship and landscaping this year is truly spectacular," said Crystal Hintze, 2016 Parade of Homes Chairman. "I cannot wait for people to get a look at these gorgeous homes."

The variety of homes range 1,438 square feet to an impressive 16,906 square feet and start in the mid-$200s, topping out at $2.6 million. With 13 homes hovering at or above $1 million, attendees are sure to be impressed.

"This is a great chance for homeowners looking for ideas or planning a future home to find inspiration by so many beautiful designs," Hintze said. "There is something here for every style and every price range."

Tickets are $15 (children five and under are free) and can be purchased from the app, online at www.uvparade.com, at Osmond Design locations in Lehi and Orem, or at Central Bank in Springville, Mapleton, Spanish Fork and Payson and at the UVHBA office in Orem.

ABOUT UVHBA AND PARADE OF HOMES:

The Utah Valley Home Builders Association (UVHBA) leads the way in Utah to actively protect, preserve and promote home builders and individuals working in the construction industry. Members of the UVHBA adhere to a strict code of ethics and are frequently recognized as industry leaders for their award-winning projects.

For more information, visit: www.uvhba.com and www.uvparade.com

Media Contact:

Chelsea Oldroyd

Sorenson Advertising

Email

435-216-9418

SOURCE Utah Valley Home Builders Association

Related Links

http://www.uvhba.com


CHICAGO, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Wear Orange campaign (www.WearOrange.org) today announced that on Thursday more than 400 influencers, corporations, mayors, partner organizations and a series of iconic landmarks across the country including the Empire State Building will participate in the second annual National Gun Violence Awareness Day.

Wear Orange was inspired by friends of Hadiya Pendleton, a 15-year-old Chicago high school student killed by gunfire, who decided to honor her life by wearing orange  the color hunters wear in the woods to protect themselves and others.

"June 2 is Hadiya's birthday and it's an emotional day for our family and friendsand unfortunately far too many other families in our community," said Nate and Cleo Pendleton, whose daughter Hadiya Pendleton was shot and killed in Chicago, founders of Hadiya's Promise, a Wear Orange coalition partner. "We started Hadiya's Promise and chose her birthday as the day for National Gun Violence Awareness Day to celebrate her spirit and to give everyone who has been personally affected by gun violence a day to celebrate their loved ones along with us. Seeing the Wear Orange coalition continue to grow and the Orange message spread to millions of people across the country brings us hopehope that we can and will bring change to our communities and see a future free of gun violencethat is what Orange is all about."

Events to celebrate National Gun Violence Awareness day, coined Orange meet-ups, will happen all over the country on Thursday, June 2. These events will bring people together to showcase the full creativity of Orange supportersfrom concerts to picnics in the park to Orange walks and meetings at local landmarks as they turn orange. All events are searchable via an online map (available here) and easy to track on June 2 by following the #WearOrange hashtag.

About Wear Orange

In 2013, a small group of teens at a South Side Chicago high school asked their classmates to honor the life of their murdered friend Hadiya Pendleton by wearing orange  the color hunters wear in the woods to protect themselves and others and a color that reflects the value of human life. They inspired the Wear Orange campaign (wearorange.org), a coalition of more than 200 non-profits, cultural influencers and elected officials working to reduce gun violence in America. Spearheaded by Everytown for Gun Safety, the campaign asks Americans who believe we can do more to save lives from gun violence to do one simple thing on June 2, National Gun Violence Awareness Day: Wear Orange. Those who wear orange pledge to honor the lives of Americans stolen by gun violence, to help keep firearms out of dangerous hands and to protect our children from gun violence. Wear Orange has already reached more than 220 million people worldwide and is fast becoming the symbol of the gun violence prevention movement.

MEDIA CONTACT

[email protected] or 269.271.2331

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150514/216081LOGO

SOURCE Wear Orange

Related Links

http://wearorange.org


SAN DIEGO, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Trestle Energy LLC, a low carbon fuel company working with ethanol producers across the Midwest, and Larksen LLC, a biomass company providing sustainably sourced agricultural residues to Midwestern power plants, announce today their collaboration to commercialize a new Fuel Pathway Management Platform. The platform is designed to enable ethanol producers to substantially reduce their fuel carbon intensity and to facilitate cost-effective use of biomass fuel pellets at existing power plants.

Trestle and Larksen's integrated approach furthers ethanol producers' ability to scale up production of low carbon biofuels and allows existing power plants to generate electricity with the cost and reliability of coal and with carbon emissions similar to wind. This will dramatically expand supplies of dispatchable, renewable energy and substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions from domestic energy supplies. Delivering these benefits at existing energy facilities while building feedstock supplies for emerging cellulosic industries will help smooth the energy sector's transition to a low carbon economy.

James Rhodes, Ph.D., of Trestle Energy notes that, "this initiative is a clear example of how American energy can both grow the economy and advance important environmental priorities. It promises to deliver new jobs and economic development across America's farm communities, enhance the value of American industries and American-made products, advance ambitious climate and renewable energy policies, and measurably improve environmental quality."

Of particular importance to domestic markets and producers, this partnership charts a cost-effective path for American energy companies to comply with ambitious climate and energy programs, like Low Carbon Fuel Standards (LCFS), thereby enabling greater access to premium regulated markets. Johan Neels of Larksen commented that, "with the recent signing of the Paris Agreement (COP21), and with the anticipation of CO 2 rules to advance the goals of the Clean Power Plan (CPP), our partnership with Trestle Energy gives participating producers a clear economic advantage."

About Trestle: Trestle Energy LLC is a California-based biofuel company specializing in low carbon production systems that offer reliable, scalable and cost-effective methods for producing low-carbon fuels with low lifecycle carbon emissionsbenefiting America's economy, environment, and energy supply. http://trestleenergy.com

About Larksen: Larksen, LLC is a biomass company with operations throughout the Midwest. Larsken's innovative approach for supplying cost effective biomass pellets to fuel coal-fired power plants via cofire or fuel switching was recently demonstrated in Iowa. http://larksen.com

SOURCE Trestle Energy

Related Links

http://www.trestleenergy.com


BALTIMORE, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Cancer Center has been awarded the National Cancer Institute's highest designation as a Comprehensive Cancer Center. The prestigious distinction recognizes the cancer center's high caliber of scientific leadership and robust programs in basic, clinical and population science research, placing it in the top tier of cancer centers nationwide. The new name of the center is the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center (UMGCCC).

The cancer center was granted NCI-designated Cancer Center status in 2008 and applied last fall to become a Comprehensive Cancer Center. NCI awarded the center the new designation after a rigorous review, which included a three-day site visit by 22 NCI reviewers in late February. The reviewers cited the cancer center's "impressive progress" over the past five years and rated the center "outstanding." The new designation goes into effect at the start of the cancer center's next grant cycle August 1.

"We are extremely proud to have met the NCI's exacting standards to be recognized as a Comprehensive Cancer Center and to be ranked in the very top echelon of cancer centers in the country," says Kevin J. Cullen, MD, the Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Distinguished Professor of Oncology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the cancer center's director. "This designation is a tremendous achievement for our entire team and will significantly enhance our ability to translate discoveries in the laboratory into better treatments for cancer patients in Maryland and beyond."

The Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center is one of only 46 NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers in the United States. There are a total of 69 NCI-designated Cancer Centers in 35 states and Washington, D.C.

"The Greenebaum family could not be more pleased that the Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Cancer Center has achieved this important milestone," says Michael Greenebaum, President, Greenebaum Enterprises, Inc. "To see the cancer center reach the highest echelon under the direction of Dr. Cullen is truly a dream come true for my Mom and Dad."

As a result of the new designation, the cancer center's grant will increase 50 percent, to $1.5 million, and the center will be eligible for other funding from the NCI and other public and private sources.

"We have made significant strides in expanding our basic and clinical research to include a strong population science program to help reduce disparities in both cancer treatment and prevention that threaten the health of minority populations," Dr. Cullen says. "About 33 percent of the patients who take part in our clinical trials are African-American, reflecting our cancer center's unique position and mission to involve the minority community in state-of-the-art clinical and translational research."

Dr. Cullen adds that the cancer center has also developed a comprehensive education and training program to educate the next generation of clinicians and scientists.

NCI Comprehensive Cancer Centers have comprehensive, well-integrated programs in population health, education and cancer prevention as well as outstanding basic, clinical and translational research programs.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who was treated for Stage III non-Hodgkin lymphoma at the cancer center in 2015, has advocated for the center's efforts to achieve Comprehensive Cancer Center status. "Our state takes enormous pride in the Greenebaum Cancer Center's accomplishments and commitment to helping reduce cancer risks, increase access to care and improve the health of all Marylanders," Mr. Hogan says. "The cutting-edge research being conducted at the cancer center has changed the ways cancer is treated, not only here in Maryland but around the world.

"Personally, I could not be more grateful to have been the recipient of the outstanding medical care that the center is known for," Mr. Hogan says. "And it is because of this expert and compassionate care, combined with a lot of support and prayers, that I am proud to say that I am now in complete remission and cancer-free."

"This is a significant achievement for the Greenebaum Cancer Center, and one that perfectly reflects the research-intensive ethos and culture of the School of Medicine," says E. Albert Reece, MD., PhD, MBA, vice president for medical affairs at the University of Maryland and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor and dean of the University of Maryland School of Medicine. "With our commitment to discovery-based medicine, this designation further supports the culture and research productivity of our faculty in developing major breakthroughs in cancer that will benefit patients in our community and around the world."

"This designation reflects the commitment to scientific discovery, precision medicine and cancer prevention that makes the Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center a world-class institution, known for its innovative research but also its compassionate patient care," says Jay A. Perman, MD, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB). "Faculty members at the School of Nursing and other professional schools at UMB work very closely with the cancer center on a number of major research initiatives, including exploring methods to eradicate debilitating cancer-related pain."

The UMGCCC is part of both the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the University of Maryland Medical Center. All of the physicians and the majority of the basic scientists are employees and faculty members of the School of Medicine. The cancer center also is at the heart of the University of Maryland Cancer Network, which includes cancer centers at several community hospitals in the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS)  the University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center, the University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Medical Center, and the University of Maryland Baltimore Washington Medical Center.

"This designation marks a significant milestone for the Greenebaum Cancer Center, further advancing the extraordinary levels of clinical services and research available to the people of Maryland and the region," says Robert A. Chrencik, president and chief executive officer of the University of Maryland Medical System. "Through the University of Maryland Cancer Network, our affiliated cancer centers treat Marylanders with the innovative and outstanding care they would expect from an academic cancer center  but closer to their homes."

NCI-designated Cancer Centers are the backbone of the NCI's programs to study and control cancer. About three-quarters of NCI's grants for investigator-initiated research are awarded to NCI-designated Cancer Centers, and many new therapies are available to patients as part of clinical trials. Studies have shown that patients treated at NCI-designated Cancer Centers have increased survival rates.

About the University of Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center

The University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center is a National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center in Baltimore. The center is a joint entity of the University of Maryland Medical Center and University of Maryland School of Medicine. It offers a multidisciplinary approach to treating all types of cancer and has an active cancer research program. It is ranked in the top 50 cancer programs in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. www.umgcc.org.

About the University of Maryland School of Medicine

The University of Maryland School of Medicine was chartered in 1807 and is the first public medical school in the United States. It continues today as an innovative leader in accelerating innovation and discovery in medicine. The School of Medicine is the founding school of the University of Maryland and is an integral part of the 11-campus University System of Maryland. Located on the University of Maryland's Baltimore campus, the School of Medicine works closely with the University of Maryland Medical Center and Medical System to provide a research-intensive, academic and clinically based education. With 43 academic departments, centers and institutes and a faculty of more than 3,000 physicians and research scientists plus more than $400 million in extramural funding, the School is regarded as one of the leading biomedical research institutions in the U.S. with top-tier faculty and programs in cancer, brain science, surgery and transplantation, trauma and emergency medicine, vaccine development and human genomics, among other centers of excellence. The School is not only concerned with the health of the citizens of Maryland and the nation, but also has a global presence, with research and treatment facilities in more than 35 countries around the world. medschool.umaryland.edu/

About the University of Maryland Medical Center

The University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) is comprised of two hospitals in Baltimore: an 800-bed teaching hospital  the flagship institution of the 12-hospital University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS)  and a 200-bed community teaching hospital, UMMC Midtown Campus. UMMC is a national and regional referral center for trauma, cancer care, neurocare, cardiac care, diabetes and endocrinology, women's and children's health and has one of the largest solid organ transplant programs in the country. All physicians on staff at the flagship hospital are faculty physicians of the University of Maryland School of Medicine. At UMMC Midtown Campus, faculty physicians work alongside community physicians to provide patients with the highest quality care. UMMC Midtown Campus was founded in 1881 and is located one mile away from the University Campus hospital. For more information, visit www.umm.edu

Contact: Karen Warmkessel, [email protected]

(410) 328-8919

SOURCE University of Maryland Medical Center

Related Links

http://www.umm.edu


LAVAL, Quebec, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Inc. (NYSE: VRX) (TSX: VRX) ("Valeant" or the "Company") today announced that it plans to host a conference call and live webcast on June 7, 2016 to discuss first quarter 2016 financial results.

Conference Call Details:

Date June 7, 2016 Time 8:00 a.m. ET Webcast http://ir.valeant.com/events-and-presentations Participant Event Dial-in (877) 876-8393 (North America)

(973) 200-3961 (International) Participant Passcode 88949054 Replay Dial-in (855) 859-2056 (North America)

(404) 537-3406 (International) Replay Passcode 88949054 (Replay available until 06/15/2016)

The Company also provided an update on regulatory matters. In response to an application made by the Company in connection with the Company's previously announced delay in filing its interim financial statements for the quarter ended March 31, 2016 (together with the required associated filings, the "Canadian Required Filings") with Canadian securities regulators until after the May 15, 2016 filing deadline, the Autorite des marches financiers (the company's principal securities regulator in Canada) issued a customary management cease trade order ("MCTO") on May 17, 2016 relating to the trading in securities of the Company by the Company's CEO and CFO and each other member of the Company's board of directors. Keeping with common practice, an MCTO relating to a director of the Company who is resident in Ontario was issued by the Ontario Securities Commission on that same date. The MCTOs do not affect the ability of other shareholders to trade in the securities of the Company.

In connection with the issuance of the MCTOs, and in accordance with its obligation to provide bi-weekly updates under the alternative information guidelines set out in National Policy 12-203 Cease Trade Orders for Continuous Disclosure Defaults, the Company confirms that it has fulfilled its stated intentions regarding compliance with such alternative information guidelines and that, except as previously disclosed, there have been no material changes to the information relating to the Company's delay in making the Canadian Required Filings or its other required filings under applicable Canadian securities laws or otherwise concerning the affairs of the Company.

About Valeant

Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Inc. (NYSE/TSX:VRX) is a multinational specialty pharmaceutical company that develops, manufactures and markets a broad range of pharmaceutical products primarily in the areas of dermatology, gastrointestinal disorders, eye health, neurology and branded generics. More information about Valeant can be found at www.valeant.com.

Forward-looking Statements

This press release may contain forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, statements regarding Valeant's financial reporting and future prospects. Forward-looking statements may generally be identified by the use of the words "anticipates," "expects," "intends," "plans," "should," "could," "would," "may," "will," "believes," "estimates," "potential," "target," or "continue" and variations or similar expressions. These statements are based upon the current expectations and beliefs of management and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties discussed in the Company's most recent annual or quarterly report and detailed from time to time in Valeant's other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Canadian Securities Administrators, which factors are incorporated herein by reference. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any of these forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof. Valeant undertakes no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this press release or to reflect actual outcomes, unless required by law.

Contact Information:

Laurie W. Little

[email protected]

or

Elif McDonald

[email protected]

514-856-3855

877-281-6642 (toll free)

Media:

Renee Soto

or

Chris Kittredge/Jared Levy

Sard Verbinnen & Co.

212-687-8080

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20101025/LA87217LOGO

SOURCE Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.valeant.com


MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA) has issued its 2016 report on the Most Complex Contingent Markets Globally. Sixty different staffing markets were assessed across six continents in SIA's most detailed analysis of market complexity to date. The findings cover both emerging and established staffing markets, and complexity is identified according to 11 different criteria.

Most Complex Contingent Markets 2016

This year's report found Venezuela to be the most complex market, followed by Egypt and with Italy ranking third in complexity. Heavy regulation on temporary work, low VMS/MSP maturity, labor market inefficiencies and political instability were among contributing factors to Venezuela's high level of complexity. India was the most complex of the Asian markets, with Indonesia following.

The United Kingdom ranked as the least complex contingent market, followed by Australia and the United States as joint second in the rankings. English-speaking markets are less complex overall and scored favorably across most criteria, deeming them easier places in general for employers to develop a contingent workforce.

"This report provides a framework by which to understand the relative ease of deploying or extending a contingent workforce program," said Barry Asin, President of SIA. "Complexity should not be interpreted as lack of feasibility. It simply suggests additional considerations may need to be taken into account when choosing to extend activities in a particular geography or region. Conversely, those markets that are the least complex still require extensive market knowledge, along with strategic and cultural alignment as part of a successful approach to contingent work."

Argentina, Bulgaria, Estonia and Kuwait and Malaysia were all less complex compared to findings for 2015. Markets that have become more complex in the past year include Egypt, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden and Turkey. Algeria, Israel, Slovakia, Slovenia and Venezuela were additional countries included in the assessment for the first time this year.

The full report is available for CWS Council Members here, along with the excel-based Market Complexity Assessment Tool (MACAT). The MACAT allows users to conduct their own evaluations by weighting the indicators which are most relevant to their business activities and specific risk profile/appetite.

About Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA)

SIA is the Global Advisor on Staffing and Workforce Solutions

Founded in 1989, SIA is the global advisor on staffing and workforce solutions. Our proprietary research covers all categories of employed and non-employed work including temporary staffing, independent contracting and other types of contingent labor. As a division of the international business media company, Crain Communications Inc., SIA is headquartered in Mountain View, California, with offices in London, England. Read more about SIA here.

Media Contact

Jennifer Arcuni, Communications Director, Staffing Industry Analysts

[email protected] | +1 650-390-6171 | www.staffingindustry.com

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160531/373601

SOURCE Staffing Industry Analysts

Related Links

http://www.staffingindustry.com


FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. and CHICAGO, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Vigilant Biosciences, Inc. ("Vigilant"), a leading innovator and developer of solutions that aid in the early detection and intervention of cancer, today announced the launch of the OncAlert Labs OraMark Test, the first quantitative oral rinse test to accurately measure a tumor-initiating and stem cell associated biomarker for oral cancer detection at its earliest stages. The OraMark test will be available to clinicians in the U.S. as a laboratory developed test beginning in second half of 2016 exclusively through OncAlert Labs, LLC, a CLIA-certified laboratory and a Vigilant Biosciences affiliated company.

Vigilant Biosciences will debut OraMark in Booth #24100 at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2016 Annual Meeting, taking place in Chicago, Il June 3 - 7, 2016.

OraMark is based on advanced patented technology, including an innovative methodology for measuring the tumor-initiating and stem cell associated biomarker CD44 in combination with total protein, enabling earlier and more accurate detection of oral cancer even potentially before visual indicators. The test provides highly-actionable information pre- and post-biopsy, which complements visual examination and other tools used by head and neck specialists for detecting oral cancer to help optimize patient management and surveillance.

"The launch of OraMark is a major milestone for our Company as it represents our first product available in the U.S. aiding clinicians with actionable information in the early detection of oral cancer with a quantitative oral rinse test," said Matthew H.J. Kim, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Vigilant Biosciences. "We are thrilled to be making our U.S. debut of the OncAlert Labs OraMark test at ASCO and look forward to launching the test later this year while continuing to expand our product line and distribution channels both in the U.S. and internationally."

OraMark science leverages more than a decade of clinical research conducted by Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

"The OraMark test is unique in that it is a quantitative test that provides supportive information to clinicians who specialize in diagnosing and treating oral cancer, aiding them in deciphering the complex presentation of patients who may have non-specific oral cancer symptoms or other risk factors for oral cancer," said Michael J. Donovan, Ph.D., M.D., Chief Clinical Officer of Vigilant Biosciences. "The proprietary technology behind OraMark measures biomarkers that are known to indicate an elevated risk for oral cancer and has the potential, with continued clinical validation, to lead to more successful outcomes from this deadly disease."

OraMark tests an easy-to-collect oral rinse that is sent to OncAlert Labs for analysis. The cost-effective test is easy to administer, non-invasive for the patient, and provides easy-to-interpret results for clinicians.

Vigilant Biosciences' product offerings also include the OncAlert Oral Cancer product line, which is CE Marked and available for sale in select international markets. The OncAlert Oral Cancer product line includes the OncAlert Oral Cancer RAPID Test and the OncAlert Oral Cancer LAB Test. Both products measure soluble CD44 and total protein levels  protein markers clinically validated to be associated specifically with oral cancer when measured in an oral rinse  aiding clinicians in the early detection and intervention of oral cancer. Both products use a simple, oral rinse collection and measurement procedure that is easy to administer and non-invasive for the patient. The accurate, cost-effective tests can benefit every adult, with particular emphasis on high-risk populations (i.e., current and former tobacco users, those who consume excessive alcohol, and people with human papillomavirus, HPV-16). The OncAlert Oral Cancer product line is not yet available for sale in the U.S.

Additionally, Vigilant Biosciences announced ASCO selected its abstract, Oral Rinse Test as a Diagnostic Aid for Oral Cancer, for online publication in conjunction with the 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting. The abstract reported the results of a study demonstrating the association of salivary CD44 and total protein levels with oral cavity and oropharyngeal cancer while also validating previously set cut points for those biomarkers. The research was conducted in support of the Company's CE registered OncAlert Oral Cancer LAB Test available in select European markets. The abstract is available on www.asco.org and jco.ascopubs.org.

About Oral Cancer

There are more than 600,000 new cases of oral cancer each year worldwide. More than 48,000 individuals estimated in the United States alone will be diagnosed with oral or oropharyngeal cancer this year with close to 9,600 deaths resulting from this disease, killing roughly one person per hour, 24 hours a day. Worldwide, the mortality rates reach up to an estimated 360,000 deaths each year. Historically the death rate associated with this cancer is particularly high due to late-stage diagnosis and intervention. Currently, the vast majority of patients are detected through a visual exam and/or are symptomatic, at which point they are likely late stage. As a result, oral cancer often goes undetected to the point of metastasizing. Early diagnosis of oral cancer results in a cure rate of up to 90 percent.

For more information or to set up a meeting with Vigilant Biosciences or OncAlert Labs at ASCO, please contact Jennifer Moritz at [email protected], 917-748-4006.

About Vigilant Biosciences, Inc.

Vigilant Biosciences is a leading innovator and developer of solutions that aid clinicians in the early detection and intervention of cancer. OncAlert Labs, LLC, is a CLIA-certified lab and part of the Vigilant Biosciences family of companies. The Vigilant Biosciences OncAlert Oral Cancer and OncAlert Labs product lines include point-of-care and lab-based products that are simple, accurate and cost-effective, and empower healthcare practitioners to improve lives through earlier intervention. The OncAlert Oral Cancer LAB Test and the OncAlert Oral Cancer RAPID Test are CE Marked and available in select international markets outside the U.S. The OraMark Test is only available in the U.S. exclusively through OncAlert Labs. For more information, visit www.vigilantbiosciences.com and www.oncalertlabs.com.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20141210/163560LOGO

SOURCE Vigilant Biosciences, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.vigilantbiosciences.com


NEW YORK, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Voya Financial, Inc. (NYSE: VOYA), announced today that seven nonprofit organizations have been selected in the second quarter to receive grants through the company's charitable giving arm, Voya Foundation. Voya Foundation provides quarterly grants to support the educational initiatives of local and national nonprofits, which is consistent with its focus on education as key to fostering economic growth and healthy, sustainable communities.

Below is an overview of the second-quarter 2016 grant recipients.

AmeriCares (International)  Voya will continue its longstanding relationship with AmeriCares through the continuation of funding that supports communities following a natural disaster. The grant also includes continued support for domestic health clinics in vulnerable communities across the country.

Cristo Rey New York High School (New York)  For the second consecutive year, Voya will sponsor Cristo Rey's Summer Academy and Business Boot Camp, a three-week program that prepares incoming students for success in the Cristo Rey school system. The program includes a rigorous curriculum and work experience with partnering organizations. Classes focus on English and math skill development along with the training needed to work in a corporate setting, to professionally interact with adults and even to navigate their morning commutes.

Junior Achievement USA (National) Funding will be used to continue Voya's volunteer and financial support for financial education programming with Junior Achievement affiliates in cities near major Voya sites across the country.

The Children's Museum (Connecticut)  Grant funding will support the museum's "Science Achievement for All" program that gives approximately 750 area students access to The Children's Museum STEM education programming and provide hands-on STEM experiences in line with Connecticut Department of Education standards.

Medgar Evers College Scholarship Fund (New York)  The Taking Root: Scholarship Fund provides college scholarships to students pursuing academics in business and finance. Medgar Evers College is the only historically black college within the City University of New York system, with a vast majority of students coming from disadvantaged backgrounds and being the first in their families to attend college.

Futures and Options (New York)  Voya will continue its support for the Future and Options Internship Program, which gives determined, resilient high school students in New York City the chance to explore and realize futures and career paths they may not know are possible. Participating students  whose personal and economic challenges might limit their career possibilities  are provided training programs, mentoring and paid internships to help them develop the professional and interpersonal skills needed to succeed in school and in the workplace.

Through its charitable giving, Voya Foundation supports exemplary programs in the areas of financial education and children's education to help build an educated workforce. The Board of Directors of Voya Foundation and the Community Investment Review Committee review applicants and distribute grants on a quarterly basis.

As an industry leader and advocate for greater retirement readiness, Voya Financial is committed to achieving its vision to be America's Retirement Company and fulfilling its mission to make a secure financial future possible  one person, one family, one institution at a time.

Media Contact:

Mary Beth Conklin

Voya Financial

Cell: (423) 596-1449

[email protected]

Investor Contact:

Darin Arita

212-309-8999

[email protected]

About Voya Foundation

Voya Foundation's mission is to improve the quality of life in communities where Voya Financial operates and its employees and customers live. Voya Foundation provides grants and establishes signature partnerships in the areas of financial literacy and children's education and fosters employee engagement to deepen our positive impact on the community. For more information, visit www.voyafoundation.com.

About Voya Financial

Voya Financial, Inc. (NYSE: VOYA), helps Americans plan, invest and protect their savings  to get ready to retire better. Serving the financial needs of approximately 13 million individual and institutional customers in the United States, Voya is a Fortune 500 company that had $11 billion in revenue in 2015. The company had $458 billion in total assets under management and administration as of March 31, 2016. With a clear mission to make a secure financial future possible  one person, one family, one institution at a time  Voya's vision is to be America's Retirement Company. The company is equally committed to conducting business in a way that is socially, environmentally, economically and ethically responsible  Voya has been recognized as one of the 2016 World's Most Ethical Companies by the Ethisphere Institute, and as one of the Top Green Companies in the U.S., by Newsweek magazine. For more information, visit voya.com. Follow Voya Financial on Facebook and Twitter @Voya.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150206/174115LOGO

SOURCE Voya Financial, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.voya.com


CRYSTAL LAKE, Ill., May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- WEATHER GUARD, a manufacturing leader in truck and van storage equipment, today introduced the WEATHER GUARD Defender Series, the latest in affordable truck box solutions designed specifically for professional level protection. Compatible with any storage need, the WEATHER GUARD Defender Series is now available with more than 20 products across five categories, including Saddle and Cross Boxes, All-Purpose Chests, Lo-Side and Hi-Side boxes.

"The Defender Series is a welcome addition to our existing line of truck box solutions," said Jeff Kotz, Senior Product Manager at WEATHER GUARD. "The WEATHER GUARD brand is known for its heavy-duty security and professional durability and with the new Defender Series line, now there is a WEATHER GUARD for every truck and user out there."

With four piece welded construction and C-channel reinforced lid for professional durability, the WEATHER GUARD Defender Series provides professional features, at the right price. The new products offer heavy-duty security including push button locks, a reinforced front panel and two dual stage rotary latches with looped strikers. Additional product highlights include:

Multiple Styles: Affordable truck box solutions available in different styles including: Saddle and Cross Boxes, All-Purpose Chests, Low-Profile, Lo-Side and Hi-Side Boxes.

Affordable truck box solutions available in different styles including: Saddle and Cross Boxes, All-Purpose Chests, Low-Profile, Lo-Side and Hi-Side Boxes. Multiple Colors: Available in Clear Aluminum and Gloss Black powder coat protection.

Available in Clear Aluminum and Gloss Black powder coat protection. Weather Resistance: Defender Series  truck boxes feature a D-shaped ribbed weather strip and foam along the hinge to offer 4-sided weather resistance, keeping tools protected from the elements.

Defender Series truck boxes feature a D-shaped ribbed weather strip and foam along the hinge to offer 4-sided weather resistance, keeping tools protected from the elements. Heavy-Duty Security: The new series features tamper resistant push button locks, preventing theft and allowing ease of access for the user. The rigid reinforced front panel helps deter break-ins by preventing thieves from prying into the box.

The new series features tamper resistant push button locks, preventing theft and allowing ease of access for the user. The rigid reinforced front panel helps deter break-ins by preventing thieves from prying into the box. Gas Strut Support and Sleeves: The dual dynamic gas strut supported lid makes for easier access and the plastic sleeve prevents damage from moving materials.

The dual dynamic gas strut supported lid makes for easier access and the plastic sleeve prevents damage from moving materials. Plastic Storage Tray: Most of the WEATHER GUARD  Defender Series  products come with an included plastic storage tray to organize smaller tools and accessories.

Most of the WEATHER GUARD Defender Series products come with an included plastic storage tray to organize smaller tools and accessories. No-Drill Mounting Kit*: The mounting kit requires no drilling during installation, making the process quick and stress-free.

The mounting kit requires no drilling during installation, making the process quick and stress-free. 7 Year Warranty

The WEATHER GUARD Defender Series provides the professional grade durability, security and weather resistance the brand is known for at a more affordable price. The Defender Series now offers a WEATHER GUARD truck box for everyone. For more information on the Defender Series, please visit www.weatherguard.com/defender.

ABOUT WEATHER GUARD

WEATHER GUARD, a WernerCo brand, is an industry leader in truck and van equipment, including truck boxes, drawer units, shelving, cabinets, and racks for trucks, vans and utility vehicles. WEATHER GUARD organizes your truck and van for greater productivity and provides your tools and valuables superior protection against break-ins and weather. WEATHER GUARD products are manufactured in Crystal Lake, Illinois. For more information, visit www.weatherguard.com.

ABOUT WERNERCO

WernerCo is a privately owned, fully-integrated, international manufacturer and distributor of climbing products, fall protection equipment and jobsite, truck and van storage equipment. WernerCo has manufacturing, warehousing, sales and distribution facilities in the United States, Australia, Canada, China, Mexico, Vietnam and the United Kingdom. WernerCo's international headquarters are in Schaffhausen, Switzerland and its US headquarters are in Greenville, Pennsylvania. For more information, visit www.wernerworldwide.com .

*Drilling is required for the support legs on the Lo-Side and Hi-Side boxes.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Marquita Kordes, Werner Co., 724-588-2000 Ext 2704; [email protected]

Angie Maddox, Seed Factory Marketing, 404-996-4041; [email protected]

SOURCE WEATHER GUARD

Related Links

http://www.weatherguard.com


Name : php

Product : Fedora 24

Version : 5.6.22

Release : 1.fc24

URL : http://www.php.net/

Summary : PHP scripting language for creating dynamic web sites

Description :

PHP is an HTML-embedded scripting language. PHP attempts to make it

easy for developers to write dynamically generated web pages. PHP also

offers built-in database integration for several commercial and

non-commercial database management systems, so writing a

database-enabled webpage with PHP is fairly simple. The most common

use of PHP coding is probably as a replacement for CGI scripts.



The php package contains the module (often referred to as mod_php)

which adds support for the PHP language to Apache HTTP Server.



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

-

Update Information:



26 May 2016, **PHP 5.6.22** **Core:** * Fixed bug #72172 (zend_hex_strtod

should not use strlen). (bwitz at hotmail dot com ) * Fixed bug #72114

(Integer

underflow / arbitrary null write in fread/gzread). (Stas) * Fixed bug #72135

(Integer Overflow in php_html_entities). (Stas) **GD:** * Fixed bug #72227

(imagescale out-of-bounds read). (Stas) **Intl:** * Fixed bug #64524 (Add

intl.use_exceptions to php.ini-*). (Anatol) * Fixed bug #72241

(get_icu_value_internal out-of-bounds read). (Stas) **Postgres:** * Fixed bug

#72151 (mysqli_fetch_object changed behaviour). (Anatol)

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

-

References:



[ 1 ] Bug #1339949 - CVE-2016-5096 php: Integer underflow causing arbitrary

null write in fread/gzread

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1339949

[ 2 ] Bug #1339590 - CVE-2016-5093 php: Out-of-bounds heap read in

get_icu_value_internal

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1339590

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

-



This update can be installed with the "yum" update program. Use

su -c 'yum update php' at the command line.

For more information, refer to "Managing Software with yum",

available at https://docs.fedoraproject.org/yum/.



All packages are signed with the Fedora Project GPG key. More details on the

GPG keys used by the Fedora Project can be found at

https://fedoraproject.org/keys

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

-

_______________________________________________

package-announce mailing list

package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org

https://lists.fedoraproject.org/admin/lists/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org


Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged 90.1 billion yen ($820 million) in loans for Ho Chi Minh City's metro project at a meeting on Saturday with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.

The government news website reported that Japan has agreed to provide Vietnam four loans in official development assistance worth 166 billion yen in total.

This latest tranche included 54.9 billion yen ($500 million) for the Thai Binh thermal power plant, 20.96 billion yen ($191 million) to improve the water system in Ho Chi Minh City and 90.17 billion yen ($820 million) for the metro project.

Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc (L) at a press conference with his Japanese counterpart, Shinzo Abe, after their talks in Tokyo on Saturday. Photo by VGP/ Quang Hieu

After their meeting, Vietnamese Prime Minister Phuc said he "wants to take relations between the two countries to the next level."

Abe expressed his support for Vietnam in its fight against the prolonged drought and salinity.

The natural disaster has cost the Southeast Asian country about $287 million in the first four months of this year. The drought, accompanied with extensive saltwater intrusion, has badly affected nearly 140,000 hectares in the southern Mekong Delta food basket.

Abe also promised 300 million yen ($2.5 million) in emergency grants.

Earlier this year, Japan lent Vietnam 95 billion yen for major infrastructure projects. The loan was the first tranche of the 300 billion yen loan that Japan pledged for Vietnam in the 2015 fiscal year.

Yen loans are usually repayable over 30-40 years with a 10-year grace period.

Japan is by far the biggest aid donor to Vietnam.
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New Delhi, May 26 : Vice President Hamid Ansari will embark on a five-day foreign tour on May 30 that will take him to the north African nations of Morocco and Tunisia.

On May 30, he will reach Morocco's capital Rabat at the invitation of Abdelilah Benkirane, prime minister and head of government of Morocco.

"This visit intends to further strengthen the cordial relations between the two countries, further develop and diversify profile of bilateral economic cooperation and explore new avenues of co-operation and partnership on a wide range of issues of shared common interest," an external affairs ministry statement said.

During the course of visit, Ansari will hold discussions with King Mohammed VI and Prime Minister Benkirane.

Speakers of both houses of the Moroccan parliament and the Moroccan minister for foreign affairs and cooperation will call on Ansari.

The vice president and the Moroccan prime minister will also jointly launch the India-Morocco Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Rabat. Members of the Indian diaspora will interact with Ansari during this event.

During the course of his visit, Ansari will also meet with leading intellectuals and imams of Morocco besides delivering a talk at Mohammed V University in Rabat.

In the second leg of his visit to Morocco, he will visit the city of Marrakesh where he will be hosted by the governor of Marrakesh.

From Morocco, Ansari will reach Tunis on June 2 for a two-day visit to Tunisia at the invitation of Tunisian Prime Minister Habib Essid.

"India has very cordial bilateral relations with Tunisia," another external affairs ministry statement said.

"The economic cooperation between the two countries is deepening with Indian investments in the phosphate sector. During this visit, further avenues of cooperation in various areas of growth would be discussed," it added.

During the course of the visit, Ansari will hold discussions President Beji Caid Essebsi and Prime Minister Essid on a wide range of issues of shared common interest.

The vice president will also be received by the president of the Assembly of the Representatives of the People of Tunisia where he will meet with members of parliament from various parties and the Tunisian-India Parliamentary Group.

Ansari will also deliver a keynote address to the Tunisian diplomatic corps and leading scholars and think tanks at the Tunisian Institute for Strategic Studies.

During his visit to both the countries, Ansari will be accompanied by union Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilisers Hansraj Gangaram Ahir and four members of parliament.
Nay Pyi Taw, May 27 : The Union Peace Dialogue Joint Committee (UPDJC) in Myanmar will be reformed with State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi heading the 18-member body, said official sources on Friday.

At least three vice chairmen were nominated to the committee, namely U Kyaw Tint Swe, Padoh Saw Kwel Htoo Win and U Thu Wai, while former government peace negotiator U Hla Maung Shwe of the previous Myanmar Peace Centre will serve as secretary of the committee, Xinhua reported.

Suu Kyi said on the first day of the UPDJC meeting that the reconstituted committee will include some old members who are representatives from ethnic groups, political parties and the government.

Discussions on details of the reform will be continued during Saturday's meeting, which will also touch upon issues including the establishment of the new National Reconciliation and Peace Centre (NRPC) and preparation for the 21st Century Panglong Ethnic Conference in Nay Pyi Taw.

The previous Myanmar government and eight ethnic armed groups out of 15 signed the Nationwide Ceasefire Accord (NCA) on October 15, 2015.

After that a union-level joint ceasefire monitoring committee was formed along with the tripartite UPDJC to draft a framework for holding political dialogue as part of the implementation of the NCA.
Kuala Lumpur, May 28 : Syrian refugees arrived on Saturday at the Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) airbase as the country welcomed its second batch of migrants from the war-torn country.

A total of 68 people, mostly families, disembarked from a chartered plane at the air base in Subang, 20 km west of capital Kuala Lumpur, EFE news reported.

It was the second batch of refugees received by the country after Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak pledged at the UN General Assembly in October 2015 to accept 3,000 Syrians over the next three years to help ease the refugee crisis.

The refugees, who had flown from the Bekaa Valley Camp in Lebanon, were welcomed by NGOs and politicians including Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, who said the government had initially targeted 150 Syrians but that only 68 passed health and security checks, the Star Online reported.

He said that the migrants would be housed in Malaysia on a temporary basis, with adults given temporary work permits and children given student visas, until the situation in Syria stabilized.

The government is currently screening more migrants at the Lebanon refugee camp as it aims to welcome another 200 Syrians during the Ramadan fasting month, which begins next week.
Damascus, May 29 : Over 6,000 people have fled areas in northern Syria as a result of the attacks by the Islamic State (IS) militants, a monitor group reported on Sunday.

The mass exodus was witnessed in the towns of Sheikh Issa, Mare' and other towns in the northern province of Aleppo as a result of the IS attacks on these areas that are under the control of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Xinhua news agency reported.

The Islamic State has recently unleashed a wide-scale offensive on the SDF controlled areas in the northern countryside of Aleppo, in retaliation to the SDF attacks on the terror group's positions in the northern countryside of the province of al-Raqqa, the de facto capital of the IS.

The SDF managed to repel the IS attacks on Mare', which is considered as the "capital of revolution" by the Syrian rebels, as the town was the first to witness armed insurgency that spread to the city of Aleppo in the early years of Syria's five-year-old conflict.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the people fled to other areas under the SDF control, adding that tough humanitarian situation is prevailing in such towns as a result of the military showdown there.

The SDF, which has recently been formed from Kurdish and Arab fighters, unleashed an offensive to control areas in northern al-Raqqa under heavy US air cover.

The observatory, which relies on a network of activists on ground, said the SDF advance has slowed down, as the IS militants were prepared well for the battle.

The aim of the SDF offensive was to control a triangle between Aleppo and al-Raqqa to cut the IS routes between both provinces.

Mare' is also of great significance as it borders Turkey and constitutes an important supply line to the rebel fighters in northern Aleppo.
Colombo, May 31 : The European Union (EU), in close consultation with the Sri Lkaann government, is currently in the process of revising its development strategy for Sri Lanka, a Sri Lanka - EU joint statement said on Monday.

The Working Group on Cooperation under the framework of the European Union-Sri Lanka Joint Commission concluded its meeting in Colombo on Monday, Xinhua news agency reported.

"We hope that the new priorities will assist the government in the implementation of the UNHRC Resolution on Sri Lanka, encompassing the areas of accountability and transitional justice, resettlement and durable solutions, governance and reconciliation," Jorge de la Caballeria, head of Unit for South and South East Asia of European Commission Directorate General for International Cooperation and Development said.

The Sri Lankan government meanwhile said it appreciates the assistance received from the EU for the development of the country and its citizens and hopes that EU will continue to assist the government in achieving its medium term target of becoming an upper middle income country.
Ankara, May 31 : Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday that no Muslim family should adopt birth control measures, stressing that his country's population will grow "I am saying this clearly, we will increase our posterity and reproduce generations. As for population planning or birth control, no Muslim family can engage in such a mentality," EFE news quoted Erdogan as saying.

Speaking to the Service for Youth and Education Foundation of Turkey, Erdogan emphasised, "we will follow the road that my God and dear Prophet (Mohammed) says."

The Turkish president has opposed abortion on several occasions, describing it as "murder".
Tehran, May 31 : Iran will continue sending military advisers to Syria and Iraq in a fight against terrorism, Iranian Defence Minister said here on Monday.

"We will help Syria and Iraq as much as we can because parts of the Islamic community have been under attack and we are defending (them)," Xinhua quoted Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan as saying.

The Islamic republic deploys military advisers to these countries in a bid to defend Islamic countries as "Islam and Muslim nations are important to us," he said.

As for the strategic city of Aleppo in northern Syria, he said, "eventually, the occupied territories in Aleppo will be liberated (from the terrorists) by the resistance front."
Riyadh, May 31 : Saudi Arabia will allow non-Muslims to enter four mosques in Jeddah, local media reported on Monday.

The main purpose of the move is to allow non-Muslims to get acquainted with the Islamic civilization, Xinhua news agency quoted a media report as saying.

Saudi Arabia banned non-Muslims from entering Mecca city, which is a sacred land for Muslims around the world.

Although many Islamic countries have been allowing non-Muslims to visit mosques as tourist attractions for years, mosques in the Kingdom until now were off-limit to them.
Ankara, May 31 : Six persons, including two police officers, were killed and 20 others were injured in two bomb attacks in Turkey's Sirnak province on Monday, local media reported.

In the first attack, the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants placed explosives under manhole cover and detonated it with remote control while a police vehicle was passing, killing four and injuring 19 people, Xinhua news agency reported.

Two police officers were killed and one other was injured in the second attack by the PKK members in Van province. The bomb was detonated with remote control targeting an armored police car.
The authority is checking packages of sausage produced by Viet Foods. Photo by VnExpress/Nguyet Trieu

A representative from the Vietnam Food Joint Stock Company (Viet Foods) said that her company is on the verge of bankruptcy after Hanois Bureau of Market Management wrongly stated its products contained a carcinogen.

Huynh Vu Thi Minh Loan, deputy general director of Viet Foods, said that a batch of 2.2 tons of sausages was seized by the bureau for allegedly containing a substance that causes cancer. The company was fined and since then, has been going through a difficult time.

Viet Foods was forced to suspend operations for over a month and many customers returned their products. More than 100 workers quit their jobs, and the combined losses soared into billions of dong.

Viet Foods said that if the bureau does not remove the violation from its record and offer a public apology through the media, the company will take the bureau to court.

We are suffering serious losses because management agencies spoke in such an irresponsible way and misled customers. Even though we have been vindicated we are still struggling to regain our market share, Loan said.

She added that the incident has also affected other businesses in the food sector.

A representative from Ha Long Canned Food Company said that its sales have dropped sharply over the last month, even though their products have been tested and proven safe.

Behn Meyer Company, which specializes in additives, said that their sales revenue has collapsed by 50 percent.

The incident has killed Viet Foods and hit other companies. I think the authorities should have investigated the case more carefully before releasing that kind of damaging information, said a representative from Behn Meyer.

On April 20, Team 14 under Hanois Bureau of Market Management decided to fine Viet Foods and seize 2.2 tons of sausages they claimed contained sodium nitrate, a carcinogen.

Viet Foods responded by sending a letter to Hanois Department of Food Safety, asking for the matter to be looked into.

After conducting a further investigation, the department said that the Ministry of Health allows food companies to use a certain amount of sodium nitrate, Viet Foods's products had not exceeded the regulated level.

Nguyen Thanh Danh, deputy head of the Bureau of Market Management in Binh Duong Province, where the companys factory is located, said that at the time of the inspection, the factory met food safety requirements and had the necessary legal documents to operate.

I think the bureau should compensate the company and apologize for its mistake. Media agencies should also be cautious about publishing information that is unfounded, Danh said.

The sausages in question have been returned Viet Foods, but the bureau has yet to apologize or compensate the company.
Algeris, May 31 : Algeria and France held a security meeting in Algiers to boost their bilateral anti-terror cooperation, the media reported.

Co-chaired by the Algerian Minister for Maghreb Affairs, the African Union and the Arab League, Abdelkader Messahel, and France's National Intelligence Coordinator, Ambassador Didier Le Bret, this first-of-its-kind meeting on Monday focused on bilateral security cooperation amid the unstable regional situation, with the participation of security experts from both countries, Xinhua news agency reported.

Messahel told reporters: "During the meeting, we discussed the situation in Libya, Tunisia, the Sahel region, and the Western Sahara issue," adding that: "These issues impact our regional stability."

He noted further that "the fight against terrorism and strengthening cooperation in the field, especially through exchange of experience, was also on the meeting's agenda".

Consultations with our partners, including France, will continue as part of our efforts to restore stability to our troubled region, elaborated Mesahel.

As for Le Bret, he said the meeting presented an opportunity to exchange views on issues of common interest, including the fight against terrorism and preventing extremism.

He specified that "the meeting included the participation of all concerned departments, namely defense, foreign affairs and intelligence services, in order to merge our efforts and address issues which provoke regional instability, especially in Libya and Northern Mali."

The North African and Sahel regions have been plagued by unprecedented security and political instability in recent years.

France, concerned about securing its regional economic and political interests, views Algeria as a key partner in the fight against terrorism.
Mumbai, May 31 : Producer Vikas Mohan, who was also a well known trade analyst, passed away on Tuesday at a hospital here.

An official from the CritiCare Hospital told IANS that "he passed away on Tuesday morning", without divulging much details.

Mohan reportedly had suffered a heart attack late Monday evening.

His cremation will take place on Tuesday afternoon around 2.00 p.m.

He had produced Madhuri Dixit and Akshay Kumar starrer "Aarzoo".
Rabat, May 31 : Vice President M. Hamid Ansari on Tuesday said that India has traditionally maintained strong ties with Morocco.

"India has a substantial economic relationship with Morocco on account of the large quantity of phosphate which is imported by India and is critical for agriculture. Apart from this, the cooperation is also deepening in the sectors of automobile, pharmaceuticals, and information and technology," he told reporters on board his special aircraft.

The vice president is on his official visit to Morocco and Tunisia from May 30-June 3.

India's trade with Morocco stands at more than $1 billion, he said.

Responding to a question on recent attacks on African Students in India, the vice president said that such incidents must be condemned in the strongest terms.

"African students are guests in India and the government remains fully committed to their safety and security," he said.

Asked about India's cooperation with Morocco and Tunisia in tackling terrorism, Ansari said New Delhi continued to work closely to share intelligence and security-related information with other countries.

He added: "Sharing real-time cyber security related information is crucial in the efforts to tackle terrorism."

Commenting on China's increasing presence in the region, he said that India and China had different approaches towards the African nations.

"India does not see itself in competition with China. We had always sought to partner with African nations in their development journey, particularly in areas of information technology, telecommunication and health among others," he added.
New Delhi, May 31 : The Supreme Court on Tuesday slammed the AICTE for not adhering to the schedule for granting recognition to institutions and not intimating this to the A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technical University in Uttar Pradesh, thereby endangering the prospects of students.

"We can be exemplarily ruthless in dealing with any flouting of our order," an vacation bench of Justice P.C. Ghose and Justice Amitava Roy said.

The bench asked the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) to file an affidavit explaining the delay in intimating to the A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technical University about the recognition granted by it to 612 institutions in Uttar Pradesh.

Based on the reply by AICTE, which is the regulator of technical education in the country, the court would decide "cost and damages" to be imposed on it, the court said.

The top court had set in December 2012 the schedule for grant of recognition to institutions which AICTE failed to adhered to.

The bench extended till June 10 the time for the university to grant or deny the affiliation and complete the process of admission according to the schedule given by it (university).
Rae Bareli/New Delhi, May 31 : Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday backed her son-in-law Robert Vadra over the allegation that he owns a 'benami' property in London, saying the charge is a political conspiracy.

She also dared the government to investigate the allegation 'unbiasedly'.

Senior BJP leader Kirit Somaiya on Monday sought detailed inquiry by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) into alleged involvement of Robert Vadra in the 2009 purchase of a 'benami' or proxy-owned mansion in London.

Reacting to the allegations, Sonia Gandhi said: "This is also a political conspiracy. What do you mean by Congress-mukt Bharat? Everyday they give excuses and level wrong allegations."

"If this is true, then they should conduct an unbiased probe. Everything will become clear," said an angry Sonia Gandhi, who was on a two-day visit to Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh.

On the completion of two years of National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Gandhi said: "I have never seen anything like this, Modi ji is the PM, and not a Shehenshah (King)."

"Our nation is facing drought, poverty, farmers are in pain. At these times, such a "show" is not appropriate," said Gandhi, criticising Modi for organising a gala event on completion of NDA government's two years.
Chennai, May 31 : The DMK has demanded a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED) into the seizure of Rs 570 crore by an Election Commission team near Coimbatore.

The principal opposition party in Tamil Nadu sent a letter on Monday to Prime Minister Narendra Modi requesting him to direct an impartial probe by the CBI and the ED into the cash seizure and subsequent release issue.

The DMK spokesman and former member of parliament T.K.S. Elangovan, who wrote the letter, has also sent a representation to Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Chief Election Commissioner Nazim Zaidi, Reserve Bank of India's Governor Raghuram Rajan, CBI Director and others.

On May 13, 2016, Election Commission's surveillance team at Tirupur in Tamil Nadu chased and seized three container lorries transporting cash to the tune of Rs 570 crore.

"The seized lorries were brought and parked in the office of District Collector of Tirupur from 14.05.2016 to 17.05.2016," Elangovan said.

"The surveillance team found that the documents submitted by these persons did not have the vehicle numbers of the container lorries. The security officers who accompanied the vehicles belonged to Andhra Pradesh and were not in uniform," he said.

Elangovan said it was given to understand that after a lapse of 18 hours after the seizure of cash some letters were created in the name of State Bank of India (SBI) and the Income Tax department made a claim before the Chief Electoral Officer requesting transport of the three containers to SBI Treasury Branch Coimbatore.

According to Elangovan in one of the alleged SBI's inter-departmental letters there was a reference to a direction from RBI-Chennai and that cash remittance for Rs 570 crore is sought.

"However we are given to understand that RBI-Chennai has not given any such direction or permission for such cash remittances of Rs 570 crore," Elangovan said in his letter.

He said as per RBI guidelines, whenever huge monies are to be transported between the currency chest of the same or different banks within the state or inter-state, the same has to be done only through rail and has to be escorted by the local police.

"However, no such steps have been undertaken in the instant case. Therefore, serious doubt arises about the genuineness of the belated claims of the officials of the State Bank of India over the said sum of Rs 570 crore," he added.
Ranchi, May 31 : A police officer was abducted and shot dead by Maoist guerrillas in Gumla district of Jharkhand, police said on tuesday.

According to the police, the bullet ridden body of Badrinath Tiwari alias Vinod Tirkey, inspector at Chainpur police station, was found on Tuesday.

Maoist pamphlets were also found near the body which was later sent for post-mortem, the police said.

Few years ago another inspector posted in Khuti district was abducted and beheaded by the maoists.

Maoist Guerrillas are active in 18 of the state's 24 districts.
New Delhi : A resident of Pune, Maharashtra's second-most developed city, uses five times as much water as her counterpart in Latur, the district most ravaged by drought in the south-central Marathwada region.

That's the extent of water inequality in Maharashtra, India's most developed state, according to an IndiaSpend analysis of statewide water use, characterised by disproportionate availability and consumption of water across regions, crops and consumers.

The coastal region of Konkan - occupying a tenth of the state's landmass and home to 14 per cent of its population (except Mumbai) - contains more than half of Maharashtra's water, according to government data.

The populous, dry and rain-shadow regions of western, central Maharashtra, Marathwada and Vidarbha, retain the other half, clashing with each other and neighbouring states for water.

But the natural imbalance of water does not make drought inevitable. That happens because water has been deliberately routed to areas where it is already plentiful and to farmers who are politically powerful.

Sugarcane - which is grown on four per cent of the state's farms - consumes 70 per cent of water available for irrigation, IndiaSpend reported earlier, although no more than 1.1 million farmers grow the lucrative cash crop. In contrast, about 10 million jowar (sorghum), pulses and oilseeds farmers get no more than 10 percent of irrigation water.

"The earlier Congress-Nationalist Congress Party-led government was entrenched in sugar politics with 13 of the 30 cabinet ministers owning or controlling sugar factories," Parineeta Dandekar, associate coordinator of South Asian Network for Dams, Rivers and People, wrote in her analysis of the sugarcane situation in Maharashtra.

Water inequality is a natural phenomenon

There are five river basins in Maharashtra: Krishna, Godavari, Tapi, Narmada and a combined basin of westward flowing rivers in the coastal Konkan region.

Of these, three are agriculturally important - Krishna, Godavari and Tapi. They cover 89 per cent of the state's area; 0.4 per cent of the state falls under the Narmada river basin.

The Konkan basin drains 10.9 per cent of the land, while containing 55 per cent of the state's water.

The Krishna basin drains most parts of Western Maharashtra, the prosperous districts of Kolhapur, Pune, Satara, Sangli and Solapur and some perennially drought-plagued areas, such as the eastern swathes of Sangli, Satara and Solapur districts.

The Godavari basin covers the drought-hit regions of Marathwada and Vidarbha.

Of the 125 billion cubic metres (BCM) surface water available in Maharashtra's river basins, most of the 69 BCM in the Konkan region goes unutilised, according to a 2012 Maharashtra government White Paper on Irrigation.

In contrast, the 17 BCM in the Krishna and 34 BCM in the Godavari basins are insufficient for the regions they water.

"In Maharashtra, sugarcane cultivation, which is on less than four per cent of the total cropped area of the state, takes away almost 70 percent of irrigation water in the state, leading to massive inequity in the use of water within the state," said the sugarcane price policy report, 2014-15, issued by the Commission on Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP).

The CACP tabulates the share of irrigation water used by major crops in Maharashtra.

How sugarcane corners irrigation water

Sugarcane is the only crop in Maharashtra which is wholly irrigated. Irrigation water is available for no more than nine percent of pulses and four per cent of oilseeds.

About 10 million farmers grow jowar, pulses and oilseeds - no more than a tenth of these farms are irrigated, as we said-and these crops use about 2.2 million litres of water per hectare, about 2,000 MCM of water through the year.

Sugarcane's 1.1 million farmers use 18.7 million litres per hectare and consume 18,000 MCM - nine times that of jowar, oilseeds and pulses - annually across the state.

More developed the city, more the water used

Urban water consumption patterns are heavily tilted towards developed cities.

The city of Latur in Marathwada consumes 60 litres per person daily, while an average Mumbaikar uses around 260 litres a day. The average daily use of water per person in Pune is 352 litres, according to IndiaSpend calculations, based on daily water requirements of these cities and the latest available population figures.

The-officially set-rural-urban water imbalance

A village with less than 20,000 people should get 40 litres of water per person per day, five litres less than the water prescribed to flush a toilet in a city such as Mumbai - these are the standards set in 1993 by the Bureau of Indian Standards in its Code of Basic Requirements.

The standards also recommend reduced water supply to poorer localities in urban areas.

In 2015, the Kelkar Committee on balanced regional development in Maharashtra recommended 140 litres per capita per day across rural and urban Maharashtra.

The recommendation has not yet been included in the state's water policy.

(31.05.2016 - In arrangement with IndiaSpend.org, a data-driven, non-profit, public interest journalism platform, with whom Abhishek Waghmare is an analyst. The views expressed are those of IndiaSpend. The author can be contacted at respond@indiaspend.org)
Islamabad, May 31 : The JF-17 multi-role combat aircraft is capable enough to meet Pakistan's defence requirements, a top Pakistani minister said on Tuesday.

Federal Minister for Defence Production Rana Tanveer said Pakistan had a fleet of the state-of-the-art JF-17 Thunder aircraft which carried all specifications of any advanced fighter jet.

He said Pakistan was at the top among 10 countries having a fleet of the JF-17 lightweight, single-engine, multi-role combat aircraft, and added that the country's defence was impregnable and had the capability to meet all challenges.

Tanveer said Pakistan was in contact with the US for delivery of F-16 aircraft, and in case the deal did not materialise, it would approach other countries for the purpose.

The federal minister went on to say that the country was in talks with Russia for acquiring MI-35 helicopters and expressed optimism that positive development will take place in upcoming months.

MI-35 is the upgraded version of the Russia-made MI-24 attack and transport helicopter. Several countries in the world, including India, are using the helicopter which is also called "flying tank" for its fighting capability.
Baghdad, May 31 : At least four people were killed and 11 others injured on Tuesday in two suicide bomb attacks targeting government-backed paramilitary Shia unit in Iraq's Salahudin province, a security source said.

A suicide bomber blew himself up at a checkpoint manned by Hashd Shaabi unit in Sulaiman Beg town, Xinhua quoted the source as saying.

Minutes later, another blast occurred as the security forces and people gathered at the site, the source said.

The attackers followed a familiar tactic by creating an initial explosion to attract people, and then setting off another blast to inflict heavier casualties, he said.

The Iraqi army and allied paramilitary units have been battling IS militants to recapture territories in northern and western Iraq that was seized by the militant group since June 2014.

A report by the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq said 741 Iraqis were killed and 1,374 injured in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflicts in April across the country.